Sept V'iet

The V'iet Sept is a small colony of Tau living on the loosely controlled deathworld known as D'yannoi.

D'yannoi[edit | edit source]

D'yannoi is a lush deathworld that bands of Catachan and the V'iet hold in conflict, with the occasional Ork raid. The planet has sustained life for billions of years, yielding a thick layer of nutrient and hydrocarbon-rich soil that feeds the many forests and jungles of the planet, save for the desolate wastelands of the poles, quenched by swampy rivers that cut across the landscape and feed into the coastlines of the three continents. The system has a single sun, and is so far away from most shipping and naval routes of both the Imperium and Tau that inhabitants of both sides have cast aside reliance on the arrival of supplies.

V'iet[edit | edit source]

After years of guerilla warfare in the jungle, the Fire Warriors of the V'iet Sept are considered especially backward and uncivil by their brethren. It is rumored that they now hold the Greater Good in grim skepticism, eat and live alongside their Kroot auxillaries, and desecrate the bodies of their enemies. Without much contact or support from the colonies closer to the Tau homeworld, they have developed a way of life all their own, and a discipline of battle alien to the procedures sacred to most Fire Warriors.

The V'iet set lethal booby traps in the jungles to wither down their Catachan adversaries; digging pits lined with spears, sedating Knarloc to be woken at key points, or packing old drones with explosives to be used as airborne mines. During and after every skirmish, won or lost, they gather the bodies of their own dead and those of their enemies so that the true number of casualities are known only to the V'iet, and later burn the bodies in a bizarre ritual devoted to a macabre parody of the Greater Good.

Due to their apartness from the main Tau logistics, the V'iet are constantly having to reuse and fix old or broken equipment. Many of the initial and current arrivals of combat suits and gunships are stripped down for parts or weapons, and it is not uncommon to see a newly arrived Devilfish relieved of its armaments for infantry use, and its hull entrenched into the ground as a subterranean bunker, a new node in their intricate system of hidden tunnels and encampments. The V'iet are feared for their ability to ambush suddenly from the floor of the jungle and vanish back into the earth.

About[edit | edit source]

The concepts and fluff for the V'iet were inspired by the idea of a "Viet Cong Tau" in a thread concerning the lack of serious fanmade content for the Tau, primarily as a parallel and foe of the Vietnam-era US commando theme of the Catachans, who are all basically Rambo. We all know how things turn out for the Vietcong who face Rambo.

Also here: "[1]" is a discussion and writefagging on the nature and aftermath of a Tau force fighting Vietcong-style Chaos Cultists on an unamed jungle deathworld. Bits and pieces of "The Things they Carried" are mixed in.

Dumb Fanfic[edit | edit source]

How's the debriefing going?

As bad as always. He just sits there, staring at nothing, sometimes mumbling to himself. He still hasn't answered our questions; sometimes he ignores them, sometimes he jerks or shivers violently, sometimes he mutters things like 'no' or 'not again'. Every once in a while we get gibberish.

What kind of gibberish, Fio'La?

The insane kind, Shas'Vre. Nonsense, mostly, occasionally snippits from local myths.

Myths?

Imperial trash. Monsters and such.

Open the door.

What, now? The patient-

Open the door.

Yes, Shas'Vre.

intheleavesbutnotinthemarethemoutofthemtheyreinsideofthembuttheymovetheymoveifyouburnthemtheymovethenthey

Shas'La Bork'an?

.....

Shas'La Bork'an Mont'yr?

NoMoreISaidNo- Shas'Vre? Is that really you?

Yes, it is. I came by to see how you're doing. We'd really like to know what happened in Karrmoun.

You weren't there. You didn't see it.

I know, Shas'La. That's why I want you to tell me about it.

I don't think I can. It's bad enough with them inside of my eyelids. I don't want them on my tongue too.

You'll be fine, Shas'La. Tell me. What sort of weapon did the insurgents use at Karrmoun?

I don't know.

Shas'La, I am trying to be patient, but-

I DON'T KNOW! That's the whole point! We had the rebels trapped in the village. Eight days we tracked them, eight days through that hideous jungle. The first day, I knew something was wrong. We've all heard of bodies strung up like laundry, slogans against the Greater Good painted in blood. It wasn't like the stories. The bodies weren't strung; they were... I don't even know. Arms weren't where they should be, stomachs were split open, joints were twisted in ways they were never meant to twist. Bodies were torn and split, and had been squished back together all wrong. It honestly looked like something an artisan would create, like whoever did this was taking pride in it. Some pack of animals must have gotten there before we had, too, because most of the bodies were torn, ripped, and bitten out of. The markings weren't like any animal I'd ever seen though, on this world or any other. The teeth marks...

Focus, Shas'La. The insurgents.

Right. After the display, we started finding bits and pieces all over the place. We were in unmapped territory at this point; land that no T'au had ever set foot on since the war started. Maybe it was memories of the art gallery, but

Wait, the art gallery?

That's what we took to calling it. Wasn't the only one either, scouts reported the location of others. They had made a perimeter out of them, or had tried to. Anyway, maybe it was me remembering that, but the whole jungle just felt wrong. I know it always does, but more so. I felt like I was being watched all the time, and I wasn't the only one. Everyone was on edge, and that's when the attacks came.

When a warrior died, there had to be blame. Ji’ross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kio’a for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the Gue'la. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame citizens who were too lazy to read a report, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched por'hui channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole worlds. You could blame Aun. You could blame the Water Caste or O'Var or payment for the sins of Mont'au.

One morning in Sai’on she'd asked what it was all about 'This whole war,' she said, 'why was everybody so mad at everybody else?'

I shook my head. 'They weren't mad exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing.'

'What did you want?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'To stay alive.'

'That's all?'

'Yes.’

I want you to understand, Shas'Vre: our camp was secure. We had sentries patrolling three times as closely as regulation allows, and our Shas'Ui had managed to get ahold of some drones with special optics. We even had seismic monitors deployed. Nothing, not T'au, not gue'la, not animal, nothing could get past us. We had nineteen alerts that night; 8 birds, 6 worms, 4 beetles and a snake. One false alarm came when a Shas'Saal fell in a mud puddle and the drones saw movement that wasn't a t'au. We were secure.

The screaming came first. Piercing, horrible screams. I was in my bunk, reading a book I brought from home. I was so surprised I fell out, and by the time I had grabbed my pulse rifle the whole camp was in panic. Rebels, everywhere. They had firearms, but most weren't using them. They were mostly just stabbing, and cutting, and I swear I saw one of them bite a warrior's neck. The commissary was in ruins, two hab units were on fire, and every time we got ourselves together to fight back they weren't there anymore. When the whole camp had finally got its head on straight and we were making progress against them, it stopped. The group I was engaging broke off, ran behind a hab unit, and when we got around where they went it was empty. We stood there motionless, trying to figure out which way they went, but all we heard was the rustling of the leaves as the wind blew through them.

Five minutes later we got a perimeter breach. The whole camp was in arms within seconds. It was a damned sparrow. We piled the bodies of the ones we killed and burned them. The next day we pushed further into the jungle. Command gave us some lip about malfunctions in the surveillance equipment. Nobody believed them.

More vines got incinerated that day than I can even describe. We blew through two engagements worth of ammunition that day shooting at nothing, thinking that the tiniest whistle was a throwing dagger, or the lightest wiggle of a branch was an enemy leaping towards us. Even the supply Por'Ui, whose literal job it was to stop us from doing exactly this, didn't say a word. He was as scared as the rest of us. No attack came, but the traps were everywhere. They must have been watching us, because the traps were just too cunning to not be controlled. They played into our fear, there'd be a spear come thrusting up out of the ground so we'd jump back, but then another would come up out of the ground right where we had jumped. Pits wouldn't open until the entire fireteam was standing over them. Sometimes a trap wouldn't trigger until half the company had moved through the area, so the pointmen who were even more on edge than the rest of us called back the area was safe, and then it wasn't. That, and some of the traps were just too well aimed. I saw the man in front of me get skewered right through the eye, not once but TWICE. Same eyeball even. One time he had just turned around to say something to me when it went off, so I'm standing not a meter away from his face when the weapon come firing up out of the ground. You think you're safe, and them boom: the warrior you've known since your days in training has a jagged bit of metal through his eyeball, you've got his eye juice on your cheek, he's frozen mid-scream, you're too scared or you'd finish it for him. My Shas'Ui grabbed me and pulled me away, sideways, and it's a good thing too because right at that moment another spear came up out of the ground. The whole thing was timed to kill us both. No one slept in the camp. I don't think I let go of my pulse rifle the whole night.

Listen, Shas'La. I know it was hard, but we need to know what happened after we lost contact. What did they do in Karrmoun?

Eight days, Shas'Vre. Eight days of being hunted. We were a sleep-deprived, haggard mess. We had taken five times the expected number of pre-battle casualties. When we finally got to the village it was more terrifying than any of us expected. We tracked an army of several thousand to this backwater hole. We were equipped for fortifications. Hostilities were expected upon our approach. We were ready for a battle.

The place was all but deserted. Gue'la, about a couple hundred of them, simple peasant folk. Worst weapon among them were simple machetes, the likes of which our scouts had taken to carrying. Ground and low atmosphere scans turned up nothing, and high orbit couldn't get a lock on us. The comms had been acting up since day four, and by now we could hardly get a word through. I think it was here that the battlegroup was marked MIA.

It was.

Oh. We weren't sure. Some in command wanted to turn around right then, others said we should raze the village first. The Shas'Vre was having nothing of it though, and were were ordered to enter the city and pacify the locals. Just imagine: an entire Tau Battlegroup moving in to occupy a tiny farming town in the middle of nowhere! I tried to feel light about it, I tried to think of the silliness of the moment as we marched down the closest thing to a street we could find. It didn't work. I grabbed my rifle so tight I thought the grip was going to crack. The locals all watched us as we marched by, our Shas'Ui used the drones to tell everyone to go back in their homes in their language. Not a single one budged.

As Fire Warriors, most of them were common Shas’la and carried the standard plasma-firing pulse rifle. The weapon weighed 7.5 tor’lek unloaded, 8.2 tor’lek with its full 20-round magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as topography and psychology, the warrior carried anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines, usually in magnetic bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 tor’lek at minimum, 14 tor’lek at maximum. When it was available, they also carried maintenance gear—rods and steel brushes and swabs and tubes of cooling oil—all of which weighed about a tor’lek. Among the Shas’la, some carried pulse carbines with underslung photon grenade launchers, an additional 5.9 tor’lek unloaded, a reasonably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighed 10 tor’il. The typical load was 25 rounds.

But Te’vener, who was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than’khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 tor’lek of ammunition, plus the armor and helmet and rations and water evaporator and bonding knife and blacksun filter and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kio’a, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something just boom, then down—not like the Gue’la movies where the dead soldier rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over helmet—not like that, Kio’a said, the poor eur’ii just flat-au fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It was a bright morning in the first Kai’rotaa. Shas’ui C’oss felt the pain. He blamed himself. They stripped off Te’vener's rations and ammo, all the heavy things, and Ra’kile said the obvious, the soldier is dead, and Mit’hel used his wave radio to report one Shas’la KIA and to request a Devilfish. Then they wrapped Te’vener in his thermal blanket. They carried him out to a dry paddy, established security, and sat drinking the dead warrior's ky’husa until the Devilfish came.

We got the order to force them off the street, so I approached the nearest group. Male and a female, shorter than me. They stared into my eyes with no emotion at all; I repeated the phrase I had heard from the drone and they didn't react in the slightest. It was like talking to the trees. I shoved the male, hard, enough to knock him back. He fell, looked up at me, and I saw the glimmer of a smile. I repeated the message again, and he got up, took the female by her hand, and walked slowly inside. As she crossed the doorway, she turned to face me and I swear to you she licked her lips like she was hungry. I just moved on by.

For as tiny as it was, the town was a maze. Buildings were placed what seemed like at random, and the construction wasn't like anything I had ever seen. Gue'la architecture is usually very straight and simple; lots of right angles and smooth surfaces. Not here. Angles were random, roofs sloped strangely, doorways were shaped in ways that didn't make any sense. Entire houses would be built on top of other houses, with corners protruding out and propped up with bamboo. The town looked ramshackle, shoddy, and weird. Navigation was close to impossible; if it wasn't so small and if we didn't have so many men we'd have been lost for sure. As it was though we had the place pretty well saturated.

The natives just watched us as we moved, most of them having gone inside but still they watched. Windows, doorways, holes in walls and roofs, it seemed like every hole we saw had eyes in them. One of my teammates mentioned, in what I'm sure he thought sounded like a casual aside, that there seemed to be more faces watching us now than there had been while we were manoeuvring through the town. He was right. By the time the sun started to go down, it seemed like every time I looked away, when I looked back there would be more eyes than last time. I think I found a way to grip my rifle even tighter.

Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hit you until, say, ten tau’cyr later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you've forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife's breathing. The war's over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Aun, what's the point?

This one wakes me up.

In the mountains that day, I watched Lem’on turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Ra’kile. Then he took a funny half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped artillery round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Je’sen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow. The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up ten tau’cyr later is Je’sen singing "Lem’on Tree" as we threw down the parts.

Night fell. The whole battlegroup was terrified. Drones dashed back and forth relaying orders; it was the only way the Shas'Vre could communicate with us since the comms were down. The fireteams were ordered to be ready to fire at an instant's notice, but he needn't have bothered. We were already in formation, rifles aimed at the awful, staring eyes. Every once in a while we'd hear the echo of a shot firing, but the drones urged us to hold our fire. We were all just that jumpy.

Is that when the attack came? What did they use?

Arg. Sorry, Shas'Vre, this is all difficult to talk about. Every time I close my eyes...

It's fine, Shas'la. You're safe. Did they attack in the night?

That's the thing, no they didn't. They left us there, quivering in our boots, the whole night. Not a one of them moved. I don't even think any of them blinked.

Did they pull out? Did the insurgents ambush you from outside the perimeter? Was that their trick?

Ha. No. That's not what happened. I don't think they were scared of us, and I don't think they were out to mess with our heads. I think they just wanted us to see it.

See what? Shas'la, please, what did they do? How did 50,000 Tau get reduced to one fool who won't give a straight answer!?

Dawn broke over the treeline. It was wrong though; the light was wrong. Off. Not right. Like we were seeing it through... I don't know. Our orders were to stand at full readiness and wait for further instruction, the same as they had been the entire night. We could hear the Shas'Vre's voice, and he was almost hysterical. We had heard stories of tunnel networks being dug under villages like this, but seismic and infrared readings showed absolutely nothing. Thousands of armed insurgents we knew for a fact were retreating towards this village had vanished into the trees, leaving behind nothing but these fucking farmers who wouldn't stop fucking staring at us the entire fucking time!

The Shas'la behind me might have started it, but really I think he was just in the wrong place in the wrong time. He kept talking, saying that he wanted to just get it over with already. He said he was just going to open fire, and we should all join in. He said we should tear this place to the ground and get the hell...

Get the hell what, Shas'La? Get the hell out?

I don't know what he was going to say, but he got what he asked for. The wall stopped.

Stopped... what?

Just stopped being. It wasn't there. Instead of a wall, we were looking inside the house... After that it's mostly a blur. They jumped into the middle of us, we all started shooting, but after almost 24 hours of preparing for this we still weren't ready. We were all so broken down from the push inward, but honestly I think we could have floated in fresh off of furlough and things wouldn't have gone much differently. Plasma didn't do much. Rail guns were effective, but they took them out quickly. I'll never forget watching them tear off an emplaced rail gun; they just oozed up and around it, everyone pouring fire into them with no effect, then they just popped it off like the cap on a bottle. I don't know why I didn't die in the first minute. I shot everything I could see, ever misbegotten creature-

Wait, back up, what are you talking about? The insurgents did all this?

I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe everyone got blown to bits in the jungle and the whole battle is just my imagination. Maybe they had some kind of mind-warping weapon that made us see things. Anything that will get them out of my damned eyes...

What did you see Shas'La?

Daemons. Don't say what I know you want to. There's no other word for them. Some looked like great mockeries of the Tau form. Some... didn't. Rebels were in with them, only even they weren't right. It was like the bodies from the art gallery had come to life and were attacking us. Bloated things, arms that weren't arms anymore, heads and mouths that split open and tried to eat us. I burned up every round of ammo I had faster than I can think about it. One of the things lumbered towards me, and I'm not sure if I was screaming or crying. I ended up hitting it across the head with my gun, and I snapped its neck around until it was looking backwards. Its flesh oozed and flowed until the eyes were looking at me again and kept coming.

Everyone was dying. I heard screams coming from the Shas'Vre's drone line, and then a deep roar. Then nothing but static. In the distance the sky had started to darken, and I realize there were flying daemons in the air. They were coming up from out of the jungle. I won't try to hide it. I ran. I ran faster than I've ever ran before. I wasn't the only one, either, but the flying things grabbed the others one by one, or else some dog-bear-wolf-spike-fire-tenticle... thing would jump out of the air and kill them. I made it to the edge of the jungle, and I saw more of the daemons coming out of the trees towards the town. One of them had its eyes on me, and I surely would have died if some warrior I had never met before hadn't shot it between its mandables. It would have been quite noble, if one of the rebels hadn't torn his legs out from under him a second later.

Me, I just ran. I ran into the jungle. I jumped over a torso that was dragging itself towards Karrmoun. I ran and I ran and I ran until my strength finally gave out and I collapsed on the jungle floor. Looking up, I saw the same hazy outline I had seen that morning, the one that had distorted the sun. It looked like skulls, millions of them, billions even, piled up as far as I could see. It was then that I passed out.

Which is where you were when the scout teams found you and brought you here. Shas'la... by your timeline you abandoned your post nine days after the battlegroup left Tau controlled territory, one day after communication was completely cut.

Yes, and?

Shas'la... command didn't send scouts looking for the battlegroup until 30 days after contact was lost. Do you remember anything else?

No. Nothing coherent. Just swirling madness and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Damn it Shas'la! Stop rubbing your damned eye and tell me! Do you remember anything between the battle and being rescued?

Just dreams, Shas'vre. Dreams of things too horrible to contemplate, and too insane to put into words. I survived for a reason, Shas'vre. Whoever they are, they want to be known. They want me to tell you what I told you. They want me to keep staring at those awful, awful eyes.

I've had enough. Thank you, Shas'la.

Did you get what you needed, Shas'Vre?

Yes, Fio'La. We're done here.

And the record? Shall I mark him debriefed?

Shas'La Bork'an Mont'yr was killed in action during the battle of Karrmoun, along with the rest of his battle group. There were no survivors. After action reports gathered from the vehicles confirm that the insurgents used ingenious tactics and advanced weaponry we were unware they possessed but are fully able to handle. The incident will be remembered as a lesson not to underestimate an enemy.

Shas'Vre! Are you really telling me to profane the record keeping of the Greater Good? You are no Earth caste, you cannot-

Yes, I can. Shas'La Bork'an Mont'yr's body was brought out of the jungle for autopsy.

There is a living, breathing Tau in that room and I will not stand for-

There. Now there is a corpse. Put that down as the result of the autopsy: killed by gue'la autogun shot to the cranium.

You carry a gue'la weapon? How many more "autopsies" have you performed?

What would you have me do Fio'La!? Let a maddened coward spread nonsense about monsters and boogymen? These Tau who come out of the jungle, their minds are so warped that they spout these delusions! What should I do; let these fairy tales poison the resolves of the rest of our soldiers? Should we all become like him, quivering like infants, afraid of the dark?

How many more?

Enough. Their deaths serve the Greater Good, Fio'La, and you will do good to remember that. Now complete the autopsy; the body has fallen off the operating table. Be glad you are not censured for sloppiness.

Go with T'au, Shas'Vre.

Go with T'au, Fio'La.