Editing Spheres of Expansion (section)

=== Second Sphere - Cooking with gas, and the burns that result ===
It cannot be overstated how important the ZFR drive is to the Tau: without it, they'd still be struggling to hold eight worlds, occasionally backed up by Kroot. But once the ZFR drive was tested and proven, the Etherials decided that time was once again to go and spread the Greater Good to the universe, and this was by far their most aggressive expansion, nearly doubling up the number of Septs founded from the first, and to this day remains their most successful sphere. A good portion of that expansion came from [[Commander Puretide]], who began his legend during this crucial expansion, striking fear and concern into the heart of all orks everywhere by doing something Orks couldn't process: he made combat ''not fun.'' And nothing was worse than a fight that wasn't fun. These incredible tactical victories against such a foe were so great that the Tau were finally able to cross the Damocles Gulf for the first time, something that had eluded them for centuries.

Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and daisies; they were able to found just as many septs as they were because they continued to follow the same path of "closest cluster of stars and planets seems safest to go to", and were still running headlong into multitudes of Ork invasions. It was also here on the other side of the Damocles Gulf that the Tau got to meet the biggest power in the Galaxy: [[The Imperium of Man]], and humanity. Initially, they had run into only the very isolated and not all that loyal worlds just outside the gulf, who had been cut off by warp storms and Eldar Corsairs, and at that point were willing to take help from whoever could give it, meaning eventually the Tau ended up colonizing those worlds fairly quickly and painlessly, assuming that the Humans would be a fun new friend to bring the Greater Good.

And then the warp storms ended. [[Damocles Crusade| And the Imperium came back to see what had happened and were not fucking pleased by any of it.]]

So yeah. The Second Sphere's expansion period kinda ends in a hard snap after that whole debacle, and to this day the T'au borders rare if ever expand too far beyond the Damocles Gulf. And just when they started to consolidate resources and make ready for the next phase of their development, they got an uninvited visit from [[Hive Fleet Kraken]] and it's many splinter fleets. And the Orks came back in force, now fully interested in giving the Tau a taste of what REAL fun combat is supposed to be like, and were only finally beaten back after losses beyond measure by unfreezing one of [[Shadowsun| Puretide's greatest students]] and giving them near total control of the entire combined forces of the empire, and a thorough scrubbing thereafter.

Needless to say, it was a couple centuries of rebulding to go before the next Sphere got going.