Are the Tau on the Wrong Side of the Great Rift

[Skaorn]

I'll be honest, I haven't really been enthusiastic about new Tau fluff since after we got the results of the 13th Black Crusade and the Tau Empire expanded dramatically because of our performance. While there are things that I think are just bad (looking at you Greater Good God), I do think that putting the Tau Empire on the same side of the Rift as Terra was a big mistake. They needed the warp gate because they're caught between the Rift and Maccragge (let's face it, Maccragge will only fall if GW wants to tell a story about the UM heroically retaking it). Had they been separated by the Rift, they could have easily continued expanding with less worry that they'll get hit by a Crusade with more soldiers than they have citizens in the Empire. You'd have plenty of Imperial worlds that would probably turn to the Tau because support was unlikely from the Imperium proper and strongholds like Baal have a lot to handle. The Tau could have actually been setup to start growing into a serious threat to the cut off portion of the Imperium. They could have even kept the warp gate so that the Tau would also be able to have a foothold on the other side of the Rift too.

 

I think GW wasted this opportunity. What do you think?

[Panzer]

Define wrong side.

I think it would've been great for them to end up on the other side because it would basically give them once more time to evolve ridiculously fast without getting bothered by the Imperium all that much just like it happened with the warpstrom around T'au that lead to them evolving far enough to defend themselves in the first place.

However the map clearly shows that the T'au Empire is on the same side of the rift as Terra and Ultramar. This isn't wrong either since it means they are more likely to find themselves getting involved in bigger things. At least not wrong for us readers.

 

So if they were on the other side of the rift it would definitely better for them as race/faction in-universe, but it would be worse for the overall narrative and basically just repeating the deus ex that made them possible to exist in the first place to some degree. It's both, they are on the wrong side of the great rift and on the right side, depending on your point of view.

Depending on what GW plans to do with the T'au narratively I'd actually say it would've been a wasted opportunity to put them on the other side since now we can have some serious interaction between Ultramar being led my a mostly reasonable person in form of Guilliman and the T'au as xenos race that doesn't attack on sight like most others. Some actual alliance, even if just temporary, could be possible which would be pretty unique for the 40k setting. Now THAT's what I call an opportunity, not rehashing their origin.

[Commander Dawnstar]

Isn't such an alliance presently impossible thanks to the whole Gulf-on-fire thing post-Mont'ka that led to the development and loss of the Fourth Sphere fleet?

[Panzer]

The Gulf got snuffed out by the great rift.

[Commander Dawnstar]

Well ... I'm clearly behind when it comes to the lore. I guess I should be glad that I didn't put up my longer post last night which leaned more on that.

[Triszin]

where exactly is the 5th expansion located on the galactic map? i haven't really been able to find it.

[Arkangilos]

Are we sure it's a "greater good god" and not just tzeentch?

 

When I was reading the description of those events what o read sounded like him.

 

He saves the fourth expansion. He then convinces them to start killing their own auxiliaries because they think it will weaken him, but really it's just weakening them and causing friction in the empire.

[Panzer]

Are we sure it's a "greater good god" and not just tzeentch?

 

When I was reading the description of those events what o read sounded like him.

 

He saves the fourth expansion. He then convinces them to start killing their own auxiliaries because they think it will weaken him, but really it's just weakening them and causing friction in the empire.

 

Considering Tzeentch is the god of trickery you can't ever be sure something is not Tzeentch.

But no, it didn't read like it's something else than what it is described as. The entity didn't convince them to kill the auxiliary races. That was completely on the T'au who were just this shaken by facing a warp entity that embodies their philosophy and got manifested by the psychic presence of those auxiliary races.

 

 

Also I think I know where Kelly got the inspiration for that entity from.

That's the description:

 

It had… many arms, I think. Some of those were made to nurture, or to provide, others to destroy. In physique it was familiar to us, for it was built much like a member of the aun.’ He paused, lost in the memory, and his shio’he wrinkled. ‘Though in retrospect it was bulkier, and many of its hands had five digits. As if the notion of human beauty had mingled with the optimal form of the t’au.

 

That's the impression it gave of:

 

‘I found it strangely calming to behold, master, But I also felt its hunger to grow, to spread its many limbs from the tip of one of the galaxy’s spiral arm to the other. To remake everything in its own image. I remember feeling that, and then feeling like it peered directly into my soul.'

 

And this is all I could think about while reading it:

 

 

"Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara

Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara. Guanyin women's vihara, Anhui, China

One prominent Buddhist story tells of Avalokiteśvara vowing never to rest until he had freed all sentient beings from saṃsāra. Despite strenuous effort, he realizes that many unhappy beings were yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, his head splits into eleven pieces. Amitābha, seeing his plight, gives him eleven heads with which to hear the cries of the suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara tries to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that his two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitābha comes to his aid and invests him with a thousand arms with which to aid the suffering multitudes.

 

[Arkangilos]

Huh. See I didn't see the actual quotes.

 

It makes sense though. The Orks have warp gods, the humans and the eldar have warp gods, so it would make sense that the Tau eventually would make an entity.

 

It also lends credence to the Emperor possibly actually becoming a god

[Panzer]

But that's the thing. The T'au didn't make that warp god. It's the humans of the T'au Empire in combination with other psychically gifted auxiliary races that created that warp god since for humans there's apparently no difference between believing in a philosophy like the Greater Good and an actual religion.

The thing that doesn't make sense here is that the humans and auxiliary races in the T'au Empire are few compared to the amount in the rest of the galaxy so if that was enough to create a warp entity then there should be a lot more human born warp entities around already lol

[Arkangilos]

It could just be a powerful daemon? Not all are aligned.

[Panzer]

The terms for daemons and warp entities are basically exchangeable. Especially unaligned daemons.

[MajorNese]

The thing that doesn't make sense here is that the humans and auxiliary races in the T'au Empire are few compared to the amount in the rest of the galaxy so if that was enough to create a warp entity then there should be a lot more human born warp entities around already lol

That's the point - the amount of humans etc. in the T'au empire is tiny compared to the imperium's masses. One hive (not hive world, hive city) has as many human inhabitants as one sept has total population (most of them psychically inert T'au). Those masses are mostly believers in the emperor, by that logic it would be creating a god several magnitudes more powerful than a T'au god could ever be.

 

Considering the emperor's direct interventions (LotD, saints) are very limited in comparison to what the fourth sphere experienced, the T'au god theory doesn't make much sense. The miraculous warp intervention that enabled the T'au to rise in the first place happened before their belief was even established, and even longer before it was spread to psychically connected races, so that would have probably been Tzeentch. As the survivors in the codex call their savior "possessing a hideous sentience" and "primal horror", this doesn't match Kelly's description, but rather Tzeentch again.

 

Creating a warp god doesn't just happen because a few people believe in it. The monent a warp entity is created, it exists in the same realm as all other warp entities, who will immediately try to consume it. The birth of Slaanesh only succeeded because Slaanesh sucked dry the souls of a galaxy-spanning empire of psychically potent beings, giving him temporary power to fight off the established gods until it gained a foothold in the warp.

 

Also, in those 100+ novels I've read so far, there wasn't a single mention of a "good" warp entity beyond emperor, LotD and saints - creating an immensely powerful one without psykers/masses just in the moment when needed seems like bad writing to me. T'au have several advantages over the imperium of mankind, but their most obvious weakness (besides not having a galaxy-spanning empire) is their total lack of warp knowledge and power. Fixing this just because it's needed for one fleet makes way less sense than Tzeentch thinking "Hey, those guys are fun and change. Let's help them out so they lead to even more change".

 

All in all, Kelly's T'au god thing doesn't make much sense to me. It seems like a random thing to make a point for his book, but doesn't fit the established fluff. Maybe Tzeentch having a laugh, changing allegiances within the T'au empire, but that's it.

[Panzer]

All good points but it really doesn't read like that's the case. And considering all the other awful fluff Kelly wrote involving T'au I'll just settle on it being another example of why Kelly shouldn't be allowed to even think about T'au fluff.

[MajorNese]

And considering all the other awful fluff Kelly wrote involving T'au I'll just settle on it being another example of why Kelly shouldn't be allowed to even think about T'au fluff.

This exactly.

[Panzer]

Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that there's a Greater Good warp entity now. GW could never mention it again so it gets semi-retconned, but this would take a long time considering how comparatively rare T'au stories are and if it's Kelly who keeps writing them then the chances for that to happen are low.

There's always room for headcanon of course but I personally prefer my headcanon not to directly contradict official canon even if I dislike it. ^^

[Arkangilos]

Well in the source you mentioned from the book it's from a character's perspective so we can always just count it as him being wrong.

 

And again, they started killing their own people because of it. Also is there an out of character omnipotent thing that says it was the auxiliaries that caused it or is that a theory from a character?

[Panzer]

Well in the source you mentioned from the book it's from a character's perspective so we can always just count it as him being wrong.

 

And again, they started killing their own people because of it. Also is there an out of character omnipotent thing that says it was the auxiliaries that caused it or is that a theory from a character?

 

That's basically always the case. GW often said that all their books are canon but that doesn't necessarily mean they all are true. So we don't really have a choice except for believing it's true until proven otherwise. ^^

 

I don't really remember how exactly they came to that conclusion but iirc it was in-character.

[Commander Dawnstar]

It's a theory based on the daemons within the warp preying first on the non-T'au, Imperial theories about the Warp learned from Gue'vesa, and even Farsight's own conjecture after his experiences and efforts to read between the lines of information kept under Ethereal censure. It's a best guess by individuals with limited knowledge of the subject.

 

I feel like the thing that makes this development supremely frustrating is that it just ... isn't a big deal. The Codex didn't have anything on this or deal with any specifics about why the Fourth Sphere T'au ended up turning on their auxiliaries, and War of Secrets is a novel that provides this explanation only in passing and takes place at some indeterminate point in the past before the Fifth Sphere showed up, reinstated a sort of order and entered their new war with the Death Guard. We didn't learn about this through a T'au-centric novel exploring the journey through the Rift and its impact on the Fourth Sphere from their perspective. All we got was a vague explanation from an unreliable narrator with no evidence that said plot thread will amount to anything whatsoever in the long term.

 

It could have been the Tau'va incarnate, it could have been Tzeentch or some other warp-based entity, or it could even have been something else completely left field. In the end it's a plot point which is utterly irrelevant unless GW actually does something with it in the long term, and at this point I'd imagine we're unlikely to see that until Phil Kelly decides to write a T'au novel that isn't about the adventures of Farsight and friends pre-Dark Imperium.

[Panzer]

Well almost irrelevant. We now have a stable and insanely heavily guarded warp tunnel to the other side of the great rift. :P

[Trevak Dal]

Multiple armed thing sounds like Genestealer foolery.

[Xisor]

Multiple armed thing sounds like Genestealer foolery.

Came to say precisely that too.

 

It reads shockingly like a bit of Genestealer hypnosis jiggery-pokery.

 

It's less God more Cult of the Greater Good.

[Kelborn]

Did not Fehervari wrote a Genestealer / Tau story?

Have to reread those quotes or the codex itself but I can't imagine a benelovent "god".

 

Somehow, it reminds me of a very old theory of mine about the Ethereals being unknowing priests of Tzeentch and their goal to reshape the universe through technnology would be another greater scheme of him.

[Triszin]

Did not Fehervari wrote a Genestealer / Tau story?

Have to reread those quotes or the codex itself but I can't imagine a benelovent "god".

 

Somehow, it reminds me of a very old theory of mine about the Ethereals being unknowing priests of Tzeentch and their goal to reshape the universe through technnology would be another greater scheme of him.

My own theory is, the Ethereals are something created by a fragmented old one.

[MajorNese]

Wasn't there hints that the eldar were linked to the creation of the ethereals? Stealing a spider-species' broodmother, which controls her offspring like the ethereals can control tau?

 

Would at least make sense for the eldar - strengthen a race that is not connected to the warp and opposed to any kind of religion or strong emotion. The further they rise and the more they conquer, the less worship and emotions for the chaos gods to feed on. With a relatively small investment on the eldar's side, they can install a proxy to weaken their eternal foes.