LincLoud
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MycroftWallace
for the butter good
3Davideo
Warhammer 40k AU where instead of being authoritarian and xenophobic they're egalitarian and xenophilic.
IlluminaBlade
You are now imagining a Tau sneeze.
Idsertian
#6 Hope? Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
LincLoud
"Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils for it prolongs the torments of man" - Friedrich Nietzsche
Clayman8
#10 im really annoyed as a Kroot fan that her rifle isnt nearly as large as it should be.
ADMNtek
For the Greater good.
ElecTech
The greatest good is becoming part of the swarm by first being its food.
BeardOnTheInside
All of this Tau posting going on recently makes me kind of want to finish my Ethereal that i keep hemming and hawing over for months
baldbear
Ooh, what a beauty! I'll follow her immediately!
FrackingBleepBloop
My art is pretty ok. But you have to look for the hidden gems
NeutralGoodAndrew
This post made me wonder if Tau have artificial or bionic limbs. There's not much source material for this but I'd guess they'd have really advanced cybernetic body parts available.
Vebrandsson
I feel like tau should actually get a new feline auxiliary species that joins them as melee shock troops that get bonuses off tau's infamous marker lights mechanic because cats and laser pointers.
mrose50
Or double bonuses because cats and laser pointers. /jk
sherlockhooves
And they should all be orange
eronth
Tau should get a bunch of aux branch-offs anyways. Having Kroot and Vespids only really undersells the lore.
JabesMcJabesface
They also are the smallest nation in the lore that is a primary faction; a major point in their lore is that they do not believe the human empire is nearly as large as the humans claim it is. While they definitely should have ork auxiliaries, they just have not spread to enough systems to have reasonably encountered that many other races they can use.
PirateRubberDuck
I get that, but after teasing that new auxiliaries will be coming in the future for over 20 years, I feel like the fault is with the company, not the lore.
Ultrashotpull
IIRC Orks are one of the 'Yeah, we aren't going to even TRY integrating these guys' species. The Tau may be naive, but they HAVE been hit with the reality that, yes, there genuinely ARE aliens out there that want abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING to do with them and their Greater Good, they only want their bone marrow so they can make paint, sigils and runes for the Gods.
So they might have some Blood Axe mercenaries, but no Ork auxiliaries.
TheJomsborgViking
So whats their hitch? Do they kill and eat people after sex like preying mantis?
Seems every group has some terrible reason you would never want to be in their empire.
Wheter it be sycophancy to death and slaughter, sycophancy towards torture lust, sycophancy towards absolute filth and disease... Sycophancy towards technology and necromancy... Then theres Tau, which people generally shit on and I do not know why. I am NOT too afraid to ask either.
RayneOfSalt
I like the T'au, they crumble so nicely under the weight of a berserker charge. Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! Milk for the Khorne Flakes!
laserfork
T'au are fascist in a more traditional sense. Everyone and everything exists to serve the state, right down to the very biology of the castes they deliberately bred themselves into. The Greater Good is, in practice, just the prerogative of the ethereal leadership caste and not at all literal. And their racism is more the 'first among equals' kind of light racism. That said people shit on the t'au because of the obvious anime influences.
LincLoud
I can't speak with absolute certainty but from what I understand, marriage/procreating is heavily controlled by the Ethereals. I am not sure if any T'au and Humans have developed relationships but it may go against their ways. The T'au seem to lead a sort of "separate but equal" type of society. Some say they don't fit into the grim dark aspect but I've heard arguments that they represent a civilization in its youth with naivete of peace and prosperity.
SharkoutofWata
Tau are very “join or die” and do not shrink from impersonal war crimes. Drone strikes are standard operating procedure. Chemically castrating subjugated people. Anything that doesn’t match their version of zen is dangerous, including their own, and they’re horribly rigid as a society. I don’t know enough about the Farsight enclaves to say anything about their almost rebel faction.
Eiladar
Part of it is the Farsight enclaves got far enough away and stayed away long enough that the Etherials mind control no longer worked. The Tau aren't unified so much as subjugated themselves.
Silversalvation
If you don't do EXACTLY what they say you may as well be dead. You will be "re-educated" for falling out of line. They will happily make races they don't like (humans) infertile to kill them off slowly. That said being on the lowest rung of the Tau empire/farsight enclave is 100x better than anything but the highest tier of the empire. Also there is some hints of Tau mind controlling people and other races to get what they want.
sortofkindamadbutnotreally
They have an extremely caste based society. "For the greater good" is actually highly subjective to theur ruling class. They only seem like a better option because they are only 3 kinds of fucked in a universe of factions that are 837 kinds of fucked minimum. Also they are XENO FILTH.
MattTheImperialRadarTechnician
This is why the Tau are scary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9fLLl339iE
IlluminaBlade
Their ruling class may or may not also be beaming out literal pacification waves that make anyone of the species in within range believe in the 'Greater Good'.
FortuneBee
Tau are there in theory to be "Hey these guys are actually nice guys in a universe where everything is horrible, shame they are basically a tiny blip on the scale haha."
There are some elements of oppression and systemic silencing in their political spectrum, fall in line with the greater good or you will be sent to the re-education center to be reaffirmed. There is no war in Ba-sing-se, there is no Commander Farsight, there are no human sterilization camps.
Dargonadan
from what i understand the greater good is very much a "do what we tell you to do, forever" kinda thing. if it is determined that the best you can offer is sweeping toilets, thats what you are doing for the rest of your life. doesn't matter what you want to do, thats what brings the "greater good". you also wont be allowed to leave, marry, have children, live the way u want, etc. personal freedoms are only available for those that use those freedoms for "the greater good"
greatgoatman
Sounds like the Qun from Dragon Age.
eronth
In addition to what others have mentioned, they're sort of the absolute closest to "good guys" you get, and they have functionally no hope of actually winning long-term. They have signs of earlier human progress and seem like they'll just be taking the same path humans did as well.
Ultrashotpull
Rigid caste system that you are born into and can rarely if ever leave, reproduction is a social obligation thing (i.e. Tau will have a child but generally leave it to the public system to actually raise), and also the smallest nation in the galaxy. They're the Tau Enclaves for a reason - they're next door to Ultramar and the only reason they weren't wiped out earlier is because the Imperium had to pull forces from what was a non-vital front to deal with Tyranids elsewhere.
Ultrashotpull
Aside from that, chemical castration of non-Tau life within the Empire is something hinted at, but never fully confirmed - and if it is, it seems to be entirely directed at humans. No other race seems to have that targeted at them.
As for the reason people shit on them - it's because when they came out, they were genuinely The Good Guys. There was nothing wrong with them, and were idealists in a pessimistic world. All the grim stuff they're said to do came later to fit them in.
WaxedApple
A lot of negative imperial propaganda against the only people in the galaxy genuinely trying to make things better
Eiladar
The problem is, the only version of 'better' they accept is their own; and it's not even the Tau definition of better, it's the Etherials specifically. Tau are kept in line by an implant form of conditioning/mind control.
knightoftempest
Most of that stuff was a retcon based on the fact that when they first came out, Tau Models were outselling Space Marines. The problem there was that Tau were a lot cheaper to build a decent army out of, so GW put the kibosh on the Tau's Original Ouvre in order to make them just as dark as the rest of the factions, thereby decreasing their attractiveness to players. It was essentially a retcon meant to boost sales of Space Marines. . .
DarksteelPenguin
The idea that T'au have a darkside to them is not a retcon. The Farsight enclaves (which where there since the first codex) are supposed to show that T'au society heavily represses freedom.
Pseudosim
The tau empire is presently having to deal with the fact that the faith of the non tau have managed to create a warp god of the greater good... the solution at this time is killing the humans. It is uh... not working.
JabesMcJabesface
Really?
Pseudosim
Yep. The tau expansion sphere(?) commander allied with the Dark Angels to do so. Its... a situation.
JabesMcJabesface
I can believe that the ethereals are so pissed off that they might actually have to hold two things or piss off the greater good and suffer consequences rather than just do whatever they want.
SteveMND
I clearly am not familiar with the lore. I thought the Tau were exclusively aliens, but they have humans working with them as well?
Thisisnottheend
Humans are just the aliens you are.
jackal12345
They only have 2 species on their "Do not under any circumstances try to negotiate with" and that's the Orks and Tyrannids. I don't think they understand the difference between Eldar and Dark Eldar so though weary they will engage in talks with Eldar if possible.
GCRust
Oh yeah. Especially in the wake of the opening of the Great Rift which left a lot of Imperial Worlds adrift and cut off from the rest of the Imperium, the Tau have come in and brought a lot of worlds under their umbrella.
There are now entire Human populations that have never known anything but being part of the Greater Good.
kurastwolf
The Tau accept and recruit any who are willing to adhere to the Greater Good. Many misguided Imperials see this as escaping their duty in lower rungs of imperial society.
Idsertian
Only to be chemically sterilised, I hasten to add.
kranchan
That's Imperial propaganda.
Idsertian
I mean, I'm just going by the Tau ending of Dark Crusade (iirc).
Thisisnottheend
Ah, Dark Crusade. Where not even being the dev's original character do not steal space marine chapter would save you from an eternity of find the waygate.
RElGNMAN
TheAnswerWasAlwaysMoreLube
The water caste Tau diplomats cannot be that persuasive right?
JabesMcJabesface
Is he meant to look distressed in the first one? I thought the humans that go over were actually kind of happy there
DarksteelPenguin
It's not like this actually happens anyway. T'au forbid interclass relationships, they're not going to allow non-t'au relationships. A Gueve'sa is more likely to get a Kroot girlfriend than a T'au girlfriend.
DocBenny
the spirit is strong but the flesh is spongy and bruised
FortuneBee
Propaganda, the humans that go over there are sterilized and kept in ghettos as cannon fodder. Everything else is fan-art/memes.
Aurentis
This does not appear to be a true statement.
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Gue%27vesa
borgmaster
Typical anti-tau propaganda.
FortuneBee
One of the canonical games outright talks about the effects of a human world taken over by Tau, including re-education camps, single-gendered ghettos and suspected sterlization projects as the reason that human population dropped to 5% within a single generation of Tau occupation.
Aurentis
Okay. Which game? I looked up on the wiki and I didn't see it mentioned - though of course I may have missed it. Will you share the source?