Editing Nobledark Imperium Member States (section)

== Tarellians ==

The Steward's forces first encountered the Tarellians during the Unification and the Great Crusade. Though their race had never risen to match the levels of the Eldar, the Tarellians had a modest interstellar confederation of loosely aligned agri-worlds. At first, things went well enough. The Tarellians were cautious, and after a few inconclusive skirmishes, were receptive to human ambassadors. In fact, they scorned worlds that were not self-sufficient enough to be able to survive off of their own food supplies, meaning they did not contest Imperial settlers that took the barren (if mineral resource rich), unexploited rocks in systems surrounding them. But, eventually, one Tarellian governor got greedy, and attempted to enslave a human colony ''en masse'' to manufacture weapons for his soldiers. In response, the Imperial Navy sent a ship to free the colonists and ''dissuade'' the governor from repeating the incident. In defiance of rationality and good sense, the governor ran back to his confederates pleading for aid against an unjust invasion, and a war started. 

The Tarellians fought cunningly and ferociously, and managed to seize a few victories against their technologically- and numerically-superior foes — aided as they were by the bickering and overconfidence of Imperial generals. The incompetence displayed in the Imperial forces' initial engagements proved intolerable, and new resources were directed to combat the Tarellians. Those new resources soon arrived, in the form of a Primarch. Fortunately for the Tarellians that Primarch was Rogal Dorn, who was disinclined to slaughter the children of his enemies and burn their homes to ashes, but the Tarellians suffered catastrophic losses all the same. The Tarellians were quickly forced into a white peace with mild reparations, but the shame of the loss shattered the Tarellian Confederacy. The dissolution of the Tarellian Confederacy saw the formation of a fractured mosaic of independent states, collectively dubbed "Tarellian Space", which were largely left alone to became yet another lawless backwater. 

Then the Tyranids came. 

The Imperium intervened on the Tarellians' behalf, even over the protest of some particularly proud Tarellian despots, sending arms and men to save the Tarellian people from annihilation. By the time help arrived, however, the Tyranids had long made landfall. Though ultimately an Imperial-Tarellian victory, the damage to the Tarellians was disastrous; over a full quarter of the Tarellian population had fought and died on the consumed worlds, leaving a battered and tired amalgamation of former Confederacy worlds to rebuild and repair. 

Nowadays, the Tarellian sector is a peaceful one, providing mercenaries and foodstuffs to the galaxy at large. They're likeable enough, and cautiously judged by the Inquisition as mostly loyal subjects — even if some Tarellian mercenaries are found among Ork and Chaos warbands, and the rest tend to mutter about how Tarellia will rise again from time to time. It is generally considered bad form among Imperial officers to remind the Tau of the Tarellian histories — though Tarellians themselves seem to regard the Tau quite fondly, particularly for their resistance to joining the Imperium.

The Tarellians are a highly adaptable and variable people, showing a remarkable plasticity in response to their local conditions. They can, for example, range wildly in body size — ranging from Tau-sized to slightly taller than a baseline human — based on the environment and ecology of their planet. The variation they exhibited is not limited to the physiological; when the Tarellians spread out from their homeworld they developed a number of highly divergent cultures, each practically unique to the planets they colonized. Even during their most unified periods, Tarellian culture and social norms could vary wildly depending on locale. Hence the Tarellian Confederacy instead of the Tarellian Republic or the Tarellian Empire. Nevertheless, there are enough cultural similarities between them that the Tarellian cultures see themselves as distinctly Tarellian, much like the different Greek or Mesoamerican city-states saw themselves as a distinct cultural unit.

Of course, it is entirely possible that there are many different groups of lizardmen out there in the galaxy, of which the Tarellians are but the best known because they developed the most extensive interstellar network. The Imperium, lacking imagination, might refer to the species as a whole as Tarellians, even though the term only really applies to the worlds of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy.

Like some groups of Native Americans (e.g. Comanche, Sioux), Tarellians are well known for their mobility in war, able to move hundreds of miles from base camp at a rapid rate to strike their targets. Where the Native American tribes did this through the use of horses, however, the Tarellians do this on foot. Tarellians originally evolved in an arid environment, where they had to keep pace over shifting sand dunes and the uneven terrains of arroyos in extreme heat. Marching through a relatively flat environment in balmy weather is near literally a walk in the park for them. The Tarellians don’t really have riding cavalry; it's hard to see a need for it when you can run as fast as a racehorse, though they do domesticate heavier draft animals.

===General Tarellian Society===

Describing Tarellian society in broad strokes is difficult task, as Tarellians — like humans — do not have a unified cultural baseline. The Tarellian planet of Maza’s decentralized rule by a Council of Tribal Elders is very different from the highly stratified society ruled by the Xibalaniqan mage-priests on Tikan, and so on and so forth. However, the following type of social structure is the commonest variant, practiced on the Tarellian homeworld after the Age of Strife as well as Nova Tarellia, the current cultural heart of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy in the wake of Hive Fleet Kraken. In addition, this type of societal structure is present in some form on many of the lesser colony worlds founded by the Tarellians, most of which were settled by colonists from Tarellia during the time of the Tarellian Confederacy or as resettled refugees following the attack of Hive Fleet Kraken. Therefore, this particular social structure is the closest one gets to a “generic” picture of Tarellian society. 

The basic functional unit of Tarellian society is the hunter-pack — a group composed of several associated individuals from a military unit — and their offspring. Each hunter-pack lives in a 'hauden', a structure made of an artificial cement-like mixture that is part barracks, part homestead, and part domicile. Each pack is expected to be responsible for their own needs, be it producing and hunting their own food or maintaining their own equipment. The individuals that form a hunter-pack may or may not be genetically related, as hunter-packs are often at least partially composed of more familiar family units, but individuals may leave or join new packs upon bonding with another individual. Most Tarellians on Nova Tarellia and the colony worlds will be part of at least one pack at some point in their lives.

Tarellians are fiercely meritocratic. The leader of a hunter-pack is elevated to that position based on the consensus of their peers, usually on the basis of the glory they have won. The process of elevating one to a position of leadership is called “shield-raising”, so termed from the historical practice of raising the chosen leader upon the shields of the hunter-pack to symbolize both the unity of the hunter-pack and the worthiness of the leader; a prospective leader could not be hoisted on the shoulders of their comrades if the majority of the pack did not cooperate, and an individual could only be raised up if they trusted those around them. By these traditional values, individuals are not to be elevated to leadership status solely based on their ability to slay their foes, but rather on their perceived ability to lead and command others. No Tarellian wants to follow a leader they do not trust to make good decisions, after all. The leaders of a group of hunter-packs are then organized into their own group, who choose their own leader, and so on and so forth until one reaches the highest levels of Tarellian society. As a result, every Tarellian is aware of their place in the social hierarchy at all times, but it is a societal structure that allows for a great deal of social mobility and individual say. These meritocratic ideals are present on many other worlds, like Tikal and Maza, even those which differ dramatically in social structure. Maza, for example, has little social organization beyond a Council of Elders drawn from the Matriarchs of each tribe, but nevertheless retains this meritocratic tradition in various forms.

This system makes the division between civilians and military in Tarellian society exceedingly murky. Almost every adult Tarellian is capable of picking up a weapon and defending themselves in times of war — although the same thing could be said of many human and almost all Eldar societies as well. Does this mean the Tarellians are nothing more than an authoritarian system where civil society is merely an outgrowth of the military? Or is Tarellian society primarily a civilian militia that simply happens to be organized into a highly stratified fashion? Tarellian leaders are subject to the will of their citizens, something which is typically not present in a military dictatorship. An argument could be made for either. The Tarellians would say those who debate such things are far too fixated on the details, it is what it is and should be considered on its own merits.

The meritocratic nature of Tarellian society is one reason for the Tarellians' dislike of the Imperium. While not ungrateful that the Imperium was willing to provide assistance in the rebuilding of the Neo-Confederacy, they do not appreciate the Imperium summarily imposing their will on them afterwards. The idea of having a leader imposed on them, rather than chosen, is to the Tarellians something akin to an immoral or taboo act. If the Imperium had presented the rescue of the Tarellian race as evidence for their ability to perform as leaders, some Tarellians might have even considered this enough of a valid argument to voluntarily shield-raise them. But the Imperium did not. Instead, they unilaterally assumed control. As social pack-hunters, the idea of unfamiliar outsiders having power over them on any level is vexing.

This long-standing issue dominates Tarellian interactions with the greater Imperium. Tarellians are well known for their caustic, contrarian attitudes in Imperial politics — though despite their stereotype of being bitter and grumpy, Tarellians are more than capable of forming positive relationships with individual humans (Tarellians have a rather common saying that roughly translates to “beyond more than two degrees of separation in the chain of command, everyone is a grunt”). Rather, the political actions of the Neo-Confederacy are due to the Tarellian custom of subordinates being expected to voice dissenting opinions to the leader of their hunter-packs, for the dual purposes of ensuring their leader is both answerable to those they command and open to the ideas of their subordinates. To the Tarellians, their contrarian behavior is smugly considered to be fair play. After all, since humanity waltzed in and declared themselves in charge, they'd best take charge — and everything unpleasant that accompanies it.

===Tarellian Weapons===

The Tarellians' weapon of choice is the disruptor rifle. Invented and primarily used by the various Tarellian worlds, the disruptor is a weapon which quite literally boils the molecules of its targets. Aside from disruptors, Tarellians also make some use of autoguns and lasweapons when available. Mazans in particular tend to prefer wearing chainmail and arming themselves with longbows and other light skirmish gear.

==== Kultarr ====

Aside from their disruption weaponry, perhaps the most distinctive weapon of the Tarellians is the kultarr. The Tarellians' melee weapon of choice, kultarrs resemble a cross between a polearm, a pickaxe, and a hatchet.  At the far end of the kultarr is a simple spike, which is used for blunting cavalry or infantry charges, or finish off a downed foe. Behind this spike is a second, recurved spike which functions as the primary blade of the kultarr. Typically, a kultarr is swung downwards like a tomahawk to brain a foe or impale them, thus allowing said foe to be dragged closer to the wielder. The spikes can also be used as a hook to drag cavalry from their mounts or pull an opponent off balance (their more traditional use, seeing as the Tarellians did not have cavalry until the Industrial Era).The kultarr was originally thought to have started out as a simple hand tool repurposed for war, developing over time into the weapon used today.

The kultarr's battlefield successes led the Tarellians to produce numerous derivations upon the basic design, each to fill a specific niche upon the battlefield. The most prominent of these is the mahukultarr, which replaces the recurved spike of the kultarr with several backwards-slanting blades appressed together to form a massive cutting edge. The purpose of a mahukultarr is to leave large, jagged wounds that bleed readily and are difficult to easily close. The cutting edge itself is composed of numerous smaller blades — as opposed to the single, complex piece of metal seen in other kultarr designs — thus making the weapon both sturdier and more easily repaired, as the broken smaller blades can simply be replaced. Although resembling a broadsword, the sheer weight of a mahukultarr means that it is more likely to be wielded like an axe or club — though it is nevertheless quite deadly in this role.  However, this same weight also means that it is almost impossible for a Tarellian soldier to carry both one of these weapons and a rifle at the same time. As a result, mahukultarr wielding-soldiers are relatively rare.

==== Tarellian Blessed Atlatls ====

The Warp is a realm of myth and metaphor. A place where emotion and symbology supersede matter and logic, often to deadly effect. It is for this reason that melee weapons like swords and spears are so effective at banishing daemons and other creatures of the Warp where bolters and other projectile weapons fail. 

For there is something instinctively satisfying about striking down an enemy with a blade, telling the striker that the foe is gone and cannot hurt you any longer. It is an act that resonates with the nature of the universe, for the very act of believing the creature dead makes it more likely to be so. It is a primal, visceral feeling. One entrenched in the very core of human beings. Although powder weapons — and their derivative apparatus — have been a part of human history for nearly forty thousand years, melee weapons like swords and spears have been entrenched in human consciousness for much longer.

Such is also the case with the humble javelin. Javelins have been present throughout human history as a weapon of choice — from the earliest hunter-gathers, to the armies of ancient Roma, to the city states of Middle Merika, it was javelins and atlatls that our ancestors harnessed to bring down the great beasts that roamed the frigid taigas and to defend against the scimitar-toothed predators that lurked in the night. Even harpoons, which are javelins in a sense, were once used to hunt the great leviathans that once prowled the oceans of Old Earth. Thus, javelins have attained a rather prominent position in the collective human psyche.

For javelins kill monsters.

In this, humanity and the Tarellians share common ground. Although a much more carnivorous species than mankind, Tarellians also developed their own javelin throwers and atlatls to bring down their respective megafauna. The Tarellian atlatl also attained the status of the “killer of monsters” in their minds and hearts. Thus, when the Tarellians first encountered daemonkind — vile creatures of the dark and id — is it any wonder that they dusted off their ancient tools the same way humanity repurposed its old swords and axes?

The atlatls are little more than inefficient novelties when employed against other species, but are lethal to beasts of the warp. As such, blessed atlatls are the Tarellians' first weapon of choice against daemons and other warp foes. The method of manufacturing has changed to fit the times — the darts are now forged of stainless steel and titanium, rather than the fire-hardened wood or stone of old — but the weapon is the same, just as the force halberd of a Grey Knight has its ancestry in the ancient designs of Old Earth’s Bronze Age. The Tarellians painstakingly craft these weapons with intricate ritual, imparting significance and meaning to their weapons by infusing their very essence into the process. They consider their implements to be blessed by the Old Ones, gifted with the power to strike down the Neverborn in their name — to draw a more human comparison, it is as though Zeus himself had gifted mortals his thunderbolts to wield. Javelin throwers are a rare, but highly respected, sight in Tarellian armies. Their shots are few in number, thus their wielders must be skilled to make every shaft count. When those darts do hit their intended target, however, they are guaranteed to hurt.

===Worlds of the Tarellian Neo-Confederacy===

See [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#The_Tarellian_Neo-Confederacy|The Tarellian Neo-Confederacy]]

===Tarellian Religion===

EDITOR'S NOTE: Per original writer, section with Be'lakor could use some rewriting/expansion

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The Tarellians, in a rather roundabout fashion, worship the Old Ones as their gods. The Old Ones, from what little we know about them, seem to have some sort of connection to the Tarellians. However, the Tarellians are not direct descendants of the Old Ones. The Old Ones, despite having dry and leathery skin, were still semi-aquatic and had to return to the water to breed. In contrast, the Tarellians have scaly skin, and lay eggs independent of water. Instead, the Tarellians appear to be descended from components of the Old Ones’ biosphere, likely spread to other planets in the Old Ones’ first attempts at terraforming. In human terms, it would be as if a race of sapient rats rose to power long after the extinction of humanity, only to find human artifacts and thus came to believe humans represented a race of gods.

The Tarellians did not evolve on the original homeworld of the Old Ones. Whatever planet the Old Ones originally hailed from, it was lost long before the War in Heaven even began — although there are numerous fringe theories as to where said planet might have gone. The Tarellian world with the greatest concentration of Old One artifacts was Tarellia, the planet where the Tarellians originally evolved sentience. Unfortunately, most of the Old One technology on the planet was rendered non-functional beyond any means of repair, and only the simplest, most resilient objects — statues, tablets, stone carvings, and the like — remained intact. Ironically, the few Old One artifacts that have survived the millions of years since the War in Heaven tend to be either exceedingly primitive (e.g. stone carvings and tablets) or ridiculously advanced (e.g. the Blackstone Fortresses, the Webway, three of the four Ruinous Powers). According the Tarellians, the writing on these Old One artifacts inspired their own writing system and they can even translate it to a crude degree, though modern Tarellian differs greatly from the language used by the Old Ones.

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After Tarellia, the Tarellian world with the greatest concentration of Old One artifacts was the colony of Xibalanique. Xibalanique was a harsh, dry world even by the Tarellians' standards — which is one of the reasons why so many artifacts preserved for so long in the first place. Said artifacts were just about the only reason the world was of any interest to the Tarellian Empire, as the world was barely habitable otherwise, and its population before the Age of Strife was almost entirely composed to researchers studying the Old One artifacts. When Xibalanique was cut off from the rest of the galaxy during the Age of Strife, the Tarellians stranded there had to either adapt or die. Xibalaniquans are short and stocky compared to other Tarellians and tend to be relatively heavyset, which is thought to be due to genetic adaptations towards conserving energy for times of famine in harsh environments.

The inhabitants of Xibalanique were also notable in that all were psykers; a situation somewhat analogous to a Tarellian Prospero. It is not clear if this is because of something the Old Ones did to Xibalanique, or if it was simply due to a founder effect from the original population of researchers having a higher-than average proportion of psyker genes relative to the rest of the Tarellian worlds — Tarellian psykers are not unique to Xibalanique, it should be noted. Tarellian psykers are normally so stoic and dispassionate as to appear almost emotionless, interspersed with huge spikes of emotion whenever they use their powers. There are a variety of Tarellian idioms and proverbs that allude to this, common in the Imperium is "past years' passions land fast as lightning," in reference to these sudden onsets of emotional impact. On the one hand, this behaviour makes Tarellian psykers noticeably less susceptible to daemonic attention than the psykers of other races. On the other hand, this also results in a tendency to use their powers in quick bursts and thus become rapidly exhausted when attempting to do anything strenuous afterwards, as the stress of the moment becomes entangled with emotionally-depleting psychic highs and lows of feeling and realization. Nevertheless, this safeguard was insufficient to completely avoid the attentions and depredations of hostile forces, and Xibalanique was destroyed shortly after the end of the Age of Strife.

The Xibalaniquans that survived their planet’s destruction migrated to the other Tarellian worlds, where they were eagerly assimilated with open arms. The Xibalaniquans were of interest not only for their psychic abilities, which were of value to any Tarellian warlord, but also for any potential lost knowledge that had been lost to the wider Tarellian Confederacy. Due to their psychic powers the Tarellians viewed psykers as being closer to the Old Ones, and on many worlds these psykers (typically Xibalaniquans) were organized into councils of mage-priests who would often served as advisors to the resident warlord. This arrangement varied from world to world; where Maza has no mage-priests in any administrative position, the mage-priests of Tikal became the direct rulers of the planet at some point in their history. The organization of mage-priests into councils was not simply for symbolic reasons, as it also allowed for the organization of mage-priests into choirs similar to the human Astropath system for interstellar communication. Even today, the Tarellians remain one of the few non-human, non-Eldar races to use their own methods of faster-than-light communication. The practical concerns of this system have likewise influenced Tarellian politics, as these councils are clearest in casting their messages when they are in unanimity as to the content, thus encouraging local cohesion as a necessary prerequisite for wider organization.



The Tarellians know the bare basics of the War in Heaven. They know that their gods were in a war with a pantheon of anti-gods and that their gods spawned a race of dark gods to help them. They know that the gods made lesser beings to act as soldiers. However, this is where the Tarellians get a few things wrong. They believe that they were the race created by the gods to fight in their war, when they were not. Indeed, in terms of age, the Tarellians are closer to humanity or the Kinebrach than the truly ancient races like the Eldar or Orks.

The Tarellians believe the stylized bipeds in the Old One hieroglyphics at the right hand of their gods — figured to the same scale that peasants are often figured relative to gods and royalty — are the semi-mythical ancestor kings and queens, from who the Tarellians claim their descent. They’re not, but don’t bother try telling the Tarellians that. They’re actually representatives of the various gods of the mortal races the Old Ones uplifted during the War in Heaven. Isha recognized herself in the carvings, as well as Kurnous and Qah. Actual mortal representatives of those races are nowhere to be seen.

The Tarellians also believe that their gods walk among them, though perhaps not in a physical fashion. When Isha discovered this fact in M30 this, as well as the general physical similarity between the Tarellians and the Old Ones, it was enough to excite the then recently-freed Eldar goddess about the possibility of finding fellow survivors of the War in Heaven and Age of Strife. Although still acclimating to the current situation in the galaxy, Isha made plans to travel to Tarellian space at the first opportunity. The mage-priests were excited at the prospect of an outsider taking an interest in their gods, and eagerly escorted Isha to the nearest temple to “show her their gods”. However, Isha’s hopes were dashed. Instead of finding living, breathing Old Ones, she found stone statues and temples filled with a few attending devotees. Isha, furious at having her hopes raised at and having that hope robbed from her just as quickly, almost lashed out at the “horrid little newts” in her grief and rage, before being calmed down by the Handmaidens. The mage-priests at the time were confused and did not know what they had done to make the outsider so angry. It is thought that later priests figured out what had happened and were slightly bitter to the Eldar about it, as they saw Isha’s reaction as a dismissal of their gods.



When the Daemon Prince Be’lakor, the last of the Old Ones, found out that the Tarellians worshipped the Old Ones, he realized he had a potential means to take control of the Confederacy. It has long been known that Be’lakor has a habit of setting himself up as the power behind the throne in a number of empires, both human and Xenos, in his attempts to break free from the machinations of the Chaos Gods — though typically his involvement with these petty empires was visible only in retrospect. Be’lakor often likes to cover up any evidence of his existence — or better yet lay contradictory evidence, or trick his enemies into destroying the evidence for him. However, in the millennia following the Age of Apostasy, Be’lakor began to find he had fewer and fewer civilizations naïve to Chaos to work with, with most either being absorbed by the Imperium, subverted by other aspects of Chaos, or being outright destroyed. When Be’lakor discovered the Tarellians worshipped his people, being the last of the Old Ones he decided he was by default their rightfully inherited master.

When Be'lakor felt he had gathered enough information, he made contact with the Tarellians and enunciated his demands. At first, the Tarellians were surprisingly receptive to Be’lakor, apparently believing his claims and requesting that he meet their mage priests at their peoples’ traditional sacred meeting grounds to consecrate his reign. However, when Be’lakor and his court of Warp anomalies manifested in front of the Tarellian mage-priests, the Tarellians dropped the act. In that moment, Be’lakor realized that for the first time in millennia he had miscalculated. Despite worshipping the Old Ones, Tarellian society is largely meritocratic and achievement-based, to the point that social advancement is based on personal deeds. For Be’lakor to appear and claim that the Tarellians should fall to their knees and worship him because he is one of their long lost gods simply because he is a god, rather than what he has accomplished with his godhood, was highly insulting. The mage priests told him as much to his face.

This, according to Kroak, leader of the Tarellian delegation, meant one of two things. Either he was a fake god who knew nothing of Tarellian culture and was stealing someone else's title and accomplishments for his own ends, or he was a terrible god with no glory to his name and did not deserve to be worshipped in the first place. On that note, the Tarellians revealed that the so-called “sacred meeting grounds” Be’lakor had met them at was actually a fake (which, the Tarellians added, if Be’lakor had really been one of their gods he would have realized was a fake in the first place), built above a vast cavern and wired with explosives. The trap sent Be’lakor and his retinue screaming down the mile-deep crevasse. Kroak himself dealt the final blow, striking the daemon prince with a house-sized rock as he tried to fly out of the rockslide and burying Be’lakor beneath the debris.

Unfortunately, the Tarellians paid a terrible price for their accomplishment. The Tarellians had maintained their freedom, but they had done so by humiliating Be’lakor, someone to disrespect at your own peril. Be’lakor would not tolerate such disrespect from the younger races, but he was patient and more than willing to play the long game to get his revenge. Less than twenty years after the Tarellians banished Be’lakor, Hive Fleet Leviathan made galaxyfall. It is rather noteworthy that despite coming from the same general direction as Behemoth, something made the Hive Fleet change course at the last minute and caused it to take a different path through the galaxy — right through Tarellian space.

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