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Hey Dakka Dakka,

Lately I have made some mechs and also have found out that I will most likely not be able to use them in my local GW. So to make it possible for me to play games with them I decided to Convert them up with some Crisis Suits. The idea about it is that a new race has entered the 40K universe and being so far from home and don't have many resources so they have been replacing busted and broken parts with parts from Tau Battle Suits. There are a lot of ideas floating around in my head about how they came into the 40k universe and other things. So far I have this:

My "Count's as Tau" race [still need to figure out a name for it. (Ideas?)] was trying to get away from something and jumped to warp speed and when they came out of warp speed they entered the warhammer 40k known part of space only to be attacked by a lone ork vessel. They fought the orks of but at a steep price, Many of their mech suits where in peaces. Soon afterward they came across a Tau colony on the outskirts of the Tau Empire. They landed their ship on a nearby moon and sent a recon team onto the planet. After a while of studying the Tau and silently taking Battlesuit's, knocking out the Tau's Com's, and taking any other useful equiptment off of the planet, they began to assalt it. The Tau were slaughtered over night. Ever since that day the aliens have been trying to find a way home and fighting tau and orks alike [Tau for equiptment and orks for revenge and a need to purge the orks from this new space].

My race is [instead of being communist] Fascist.

C & C welcome. I will be posting more backstory as it comes to my head.

Uh... why not just play Tau?

ETA: Also... how does your new race replace casualties between battles? They don't appear to have much time between one fight and the next (at least not the months/years orks or humans would require to replenish their population) and every casualty will be rather keenly felt.

The Battlesuits of the Tau, afaik, are not remotely-piloted vehicles, they're the Tau answer to Power Armor. Thus, there's a guy inside that suit that's walking it around. I don't suspect your new xenos have a way around this issue?

Other than that... well, they kinda sound like the Tau, but Evil, with goatees.

Not much fluff in your fluff. They have mechs and got beat up by Orks sounds like Tau to me.

@Psienesis

I have tried to play JUST tau but I just couldnt get into it even though I loved the battle suits and farsight. Then I tried a grot rebellion with the tau codex and still couldn't get into it. So now I am trying for a 3rd time. And I am mostly a converter so I want to customize them.

The are actually not always fighting their schedual consists with:
Figuring out how to quickly take out an enemy with the least amount of casualties, Fighting, and finding a way back home. I've also been thinking about the casualties and Idea came to mind that they have people who sometimes go onto their side to help the aliens also the idea that some of their mech suits [they try not to resort to it] are powered by AI's.

Actually the only part of the Crisis Battle Suits that has a tau in it would be the chest, the rest of the peaces are mechanical through and through. And with a bit of adjusting they can fit into the chest of a crisis suit

And they aren't so much evil as they are scared and trying to find a way home and to do that they need parts. I may have it that they work WITH the tau though and change a bit of the back story. And they hate orks because they attacked them.

@Nicholas
Shut up

@All
There will be more to come

Mont'ka wrote:

@Nicholas
Shut up

You asked for people's opinions. Why should he shut up?

Wasn't trying to be offensive if that's what you thought, but you really don't have much fluff their. Flesh them out first. If you took offense feel free to defend your race with no backstory and tell everyone who says such to shut up.

Well, they've invaded a world. I don't know if this is a Tau world, an Imperial world, an Ork world or what but... with the exception of the Tau world... none of these factions is going to avoid shooting first, and they may, centuries hence, ask questions... but probably not. That said, they're not likely to have a lot of time between battles, especially if they're fighting Orks. Orks will keep sending Boyz as long as there are a pair of Boyz to go stompin' to see which of them is the best at stompin'.

Now, if they are doing the same "Greater Good" idea as the Tau, in recruiting auxiliaries from other armies... well, again, we have the Tau. Might want to just make up a custom Sept with a cool paint job and go from there, since this same thing is the modus operandi of the Tau.

Given that... well, if your xeno race is willing to accept auxiliaries, why not just join the Tau cause? You killed a few of their people, that sucks, but the Tau are likely to forgive that if you join the Greater Good.

Unfortunately, the Tau don't have very good FTL, so that might be a dead end. And unless your xeno race features lots of green-skinned (or blue or red or pink or whatever) lithe beauties (in the opinions of the Tau or Humans) as well as morphic DNA structures that allow them to breed with other species... well, this is going to be a war of attrition you simply cannot win. Which might be good from a storyline perspective.

What were they running from in the first place?

How many of them were on the run?

Where did they come from initially and is the population still intact on their homeworld/place of origin?

How many ships do they have and of what size/type?

How big is the ork vessel? A rok? A battlekroozer? A space hulk? How many orks?

What were their mech suits like before they were all broken?

How are they acquiring the battlesuits without the Tau knowing what's going on? How is their spaceship (assuming its in orbit) not been discovered?

How big was the Tau colony, and again, how many of your race are there?

And why are they fascist? Explain their organization that is supposedly 'fascist' in nature.

Once you can answer these questions, you might have some kind of working fluff that makes sense.

@Psienesis
The world they invaded was a "Tau colony on the outskirts of the Tau Empire" as I said in my first post. And they have more time than you think that is away from fighting most of which is figuring out how to get home and studying their enemy's although I might have them work with the tau [Idk]. The reason [as I said before] is that I am creative and the last few times I tried to play tau it didnt do to well.

To answer Blacksails questions:
1) They were ambushed and jump to warp speed [dont know what ambushed them yet, but its basicly going to be a large force bent on domination of their part of the universe].
2) Their homeworld is still intact [still need to figure out a name].
3) They only have one medium sized ship [Now the teaming up with tau sounds good].
4) It was a small ork vessel.
5) It was a skinnier than the crisis suit but a bit longer too. It was piloted by someone inside of it [not remotely piloted].
6) Like I said before they are secretly taking them off world. And also like I said before they hide behind moons and anything they can hide behind.
7) Think of how big the colony in 'Aliens' was and full of mostly unarmed Tau.
8) They are fascist in the fact that everyone who reaches a certain age has to join their military/army/fleet/etc. for 5 years and joining up makes things easier [I got the idea from Starship Troopers]

@Nicholas
I did believe that you were being kind of rude and I know that there is not alot of backstory but I have just gotten started.

Mont'ka wrote:
To answer Blacksails questions:
1) They were ambushed and jump to warp speed [dont know what ambushed them yet, but its basicly going to be a large force bent on domination of their part of the universe].
2) Their homeworld is still intact [still need to figure out a name].
3) They only have one medium sized ship [Now the teaming up with tau sounds good].
4) It was a small ork vessel.
5) It was a skinnier than the crisis suit but a bit longer too. It was piloted by someone inside of it [not remotely piloted].
6) Like I said before they are secretly taking them off world. And also like I said before they hide behind moons and anything they can hide behind.
7) Think of how big the colony in 'Aliens' was and full of mostly unarmed Tau.
8) They are fascist in the fact that everyone who reaches a certain age has to join their military/army/fleet/etc. for 5 years and joining up makes things easier [I got the idea from Starship Troopers]

I'm going to pick apart these parts a little more, if you don't mind. I apologize in advance if this may come accross as being rude, but if you want a backstory, it might as well be; a) Good, and b) plausible (at least in the 40k sense).

How did they get to our universe? The technology required to jump between galaxies is staggering in the 40k world. The Eldar were still restricted to the galaxy (best of my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong) using the webway. The Necrons might be able to, though I'm unsure. Only the 'nids have the explicit ability to travel inter-galactic. Some kind of fluff would need to be created to justify this, or you can simply say they came from one of the fringes of the galaxy, outside the reach of the astronomican.

Also, fluffing out the enemy might help, though if done properly, leaving them as an unknown force could work. Difficult to pull off without looking like you're cheating away from the hard work.

I don't buy them, hiding a ship 'behind moons and anything'. If its a cruiser (medium sized), its still not exactly small and the Tau are known to have listening posts and small outposts throughout systems to detect things of that exact nature. Hard to justify their super stealthiness unless you give them stealth plot armour.

Why is the Tau colony unarmed, yet they manage to acquire a lot of weaponry from them? Seems inherently contradictory. If they are mostly unarmed, there would be very little to loot, and consequently easy to conquer with the limited means your race has at their disposal. If the Tau are actually armed, then they could acquire the weaponry, but have a hard time conquering the planet.

Mandatory service is not fascist. Sure, fascist regimes often include such a law, but it does not make a society fascist. Switzerland still has mandatory service (among many others), yet they are FAR from fascism. Plus, Starship Troopers is not a fascist regime. Terms like 'fascism' and 'communism' shouldn't be tossed around lightly unless you intend to make your race some form of clever parody (like much of the 40k universe).

Finally, you still haven't addressed how they replenish casualties so far away from home.

*EDIT* Again, don't want to come accross as being rude in the slightest, just things you need to consider when fluffing an entire race in a pre-existing universe. It can be done, and done quite well with the effort and thought, especially if that's what you enjoy doing. Food for thought.