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How about you call them the OutCaste

Ahem, a little like this?





The colours of my Tau army are black with crimson and white/yellow Sept markings.

For the record, he's not Chaotic, nor possessed. He has, however, gone a little off the rails. In my take on Farsight, he's been away from the influence of the Tau Empire and has reverted somewhat to the warlike ways. He understands the power of psychological warfare. He adorns his armour with trophies and, in some cases, armour and weapons gleaned from the enemy because he often has no choice, due to the isolation and lack of resources.

He's not evil. But he is very, very angry...

The Tau culture is already based around mind control and social stratification. One could quite easily collect a Codex army with lots of Kroot and Vespid units (and even human auxiliaries) made to look like beaten-down, abused and lobotomised slaves and give the Tau units more of a 'spiky' look to signify they're on the 'disorder' side of the goody/baddy dichotomy used to team up Tyranids, Necrons and Black Legion in fluff-based multiplayer games.

The main thing distinguishing 'Dark' Tau would be a lower PR budget.

Ovion wrote:

nomotog wrote:

Ovion wrote:Got a fairly solid idea for the basic troops choice floating in my brain already...

But why the hell not.

Spoiler:

Oh the idea is to make a whole extra codex. (I thought the idea was just modeling things differently.) This sounds fun. So what is your basic troop idea?

As far as I can tell, the initial thing was the fellow wanted a line of models / a new race, but couldnt be bothered to create a codex himself.
I just thought it was a fun idea and was debating doing it, then with such huge nay-saying in such a silly manner, I decided I just had to do it to annoy those guys as much as attempt to pull it off

My idea for the troop so far is a quicker mobile unit with shorter range weaponry, something that can move/shoot/move and has something like 2 pistols with an 18inch range, the option to switch pistols to ccws and such, and the option of adding a couple of bigger guns, such as special rifles etc.

Kroothawk wrote:A Mont'au army is easy: special rule: "Mont'au army may only attack itself, may not use any advanced weapons." Sounds like an interesting game

I'm doing this as basically a kind of... Tau Mafia or maybe Yakuza type thing, using the power of a name to strike fear

So what is the thinking here. Like is it just expending farisight into a full army or a completely new tau army.

Well, being I only learnt about farsight after starting to take part in this thread.... Not that.

Am currently trying to get a cheapy tau codex off ebay.

I'm thinking from a more DE standpoint combined with some more general organised crime / dissidant elements.

As far as a fluff basis for "dark" Tau, there was a reference to a corrupted Tau colony in the early part of the Black Library Book "Black Tide" by James Swallow.

There is also a former Tau sept world mentioned in the codex. A world which the Tau abandoned under untold circumstances. Tau originally from that world are still considered untrustworthy by other Tau.


Also there is another Sept world that spent many years isolated from the rest of the Empire. It has since been re-integrated but there is talk of technological if not social regression.

So after a few days thinking on it (hours of being bored of work are great) I've figured through a few things for the Mont'au Raiders, and it's changed up a bit (one wonders if they could overly be classed as 'dark' anymore either...) and am going to run the ideas through here before I start my own thread later in the week / next week.

So
Mont'au Raiders:
- They're immune to whatever effect Ethereals normally have on tau. No one is sure why or how.
-- The immunity is genetic, via a recessive gene.
-- It's insanely rare, I'm not sure of the current population of the Tau but I'm thinking something like 1% or less are carriers, let alone actually immune.
-- Those that are immune are able to tell others like them by sight. Again, it's not known how or why this is.

- The raiders were initially akin to a secret underground on T'au, knowledge of their group spread by word of mouth among their kind.
-- Currently led by a former member of the Air Caste, who orchestrated their crowning achievement - the theft of a trio of Mantas and enabling the succession of a large number of their kind from T'au.
-- Now live on what's thought by the Tau Empire to be an uninhabited world. A small city has been carved deep into a large cliff face, centered around a massive natural cavern that holds their small shipyards and what little navy they have.
-- Have recently completed setting up mining facilities (have so far been processing ore from carving out the city) and so are now able to easily produce own gear.

- To the immune Mont'au doesnt mean the end of their race or 'destruction' it means 'freedom'.
-- They believe that the majority of the Tau race is under a kind of mind control, practically enslaved by the ethereals.
-- Continue to run expeditions to find and extract the immune from tau worlds, including several infiltrating the society to act as facilitators.
-- Are of the opinion there's little they can do about the ethereals - they're too small in number to fight a full fledged war, whatever they attempt to do in regards to making their bretheren see whats going on would be nullified by a few words from an ethereal etc.
-- Run raids to aqquire additional technology, infomation, funds, food, equipment etc.


That's what I got so far.

Mantas don't have warp drive if you where thinking that.

The Tau, in general, don't have warp drives... at least, not in the serious, long-reaching way of pretty much everyone else in the galaxy. They basically "skip" across the surface of the warp like a stone on a lake, which is one of the reasons their empire is so tiny... they simply don't have the technology to fly further.

Yep, and the Mantas don't even have that capability, which I believe was nomotog's point.

The Tau mind control in Xenology is theorized to be based on those shiny rocks in the center of the Etherals heads being the same structure as another jelly fish looking things shiny rock organs. These emit pheremones or some such nonsense causing those that can sense them a reduced self preservation and replaces it with an extreme loyalty to those around them.

If you just stuffed up the Tau faceholes they should go back to thinking about themselves. I'd have to dig the book out, but I think thats the gist of it.

As a side note, How did the Etherals get there mind control smell creators all the way from the western side of the Galaxy? DUN DUn DUN!

Is not Xenology supposed to be written (and read as) the heavily-edited, tour de force of propaganda that the Infantryman's Uplifting primer was?

I recently got a Damocles Gulf edition of the IUP, and while reading it, I learned that the Tau are:

Afraid of fire
Afraid of water
Afraid of shadows
Dull-witted and stupid
Nearly blind
Have weak, hollow bones, which snap easily
Will sacrifice human babies to their alien gods

This, of course, is why we must eradicate them from the Galaxy. They simply don't deserve to live.

... that said, if Xenology is written in the same manner, I would not take anything it contains as actual truth about the race depicted.

It's not. The primer is full of lies because it's meant for the guardsmen. Xenology is written by a inquisitor for inquisitors. It's not meant to be a pack of lies. (It might have things wrong in it though.)

Tau mind control could fill up several threads. It's a theory, but not proven. That's about the basics of it.

No one knows how it happens, which is why no one knows how ey're immune.

The manta things just meant to be an imppressive feat, allowing a lot of them to escape, the planet was going to be local though I can change that to a jump drive enabled ship, and have the planet further out just to be cooler - they're still pirates after all

Ovion wrote: - To the immune Mont'au doesnt mean the end of their race or 'destruction' it means 'freedom'.

"Bloodshed is peace! Civil war is freedom! Kill everyone who wants to help you! For the Greater Violence!"

What about dark orks? Or dark tyranids? How about dark dark eldar?

Kroothawk wrote:

Ovion wrote: - To the immune Mont'au doesnt mean the end of their race or 'destruction' it means 'freedom'.

"Bloodshed is peace! Civil war is freedom! Kill everyone who wants to help you! For the Greater Violence!"

See you keep spewing this sorta thing but you forget 2 relatively important points.
1; This is proposed rules, a place where you create fiction to add to fiction, not just slag things off, you haven't actually given any actual input so far nor done anything constructive, infact your entire input seems to have been 'lololol your ideas suck' regardless of what's said.

2; Being these are piratical raiders, immune to the mind control of the ethereals, working outdside regular tau society and norms with their own sub-dialect (think difference between spanish and catalan or whatever it is they speak in the pironese that funny spench language.) with lots of similarities and a few of the same words meaning different things.

I mean, I've been thinking up viable ideas, but you seem to think that an entire race will behave in the exact same manner with no indiiduality. And while this may well be true to an extent especially under the influence of the ethereals - it's going to nose dive once you remove that (ie farsight or anyone outside their influence for X time) so logically tau immune to the ethereals effect that have grown and developed in tau society will have developed differently to their precivilised equivalent.

Aswell as that it took hundreds if not thousands of years to get to the point of self destruction, so even if they ARE delusional, it'll be a while till it comes to that.

Ultimately though, it's a bit of fun, like everything in proposed rules so stop taking the piss and ttollig.

Relax. He was just having a little fun. Or maybe he was just following what he thinks most people would do for "The Worser Bad"!

By the by - are there any known names / classes for tau starships?

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Tau_Navy_(Kor'vattra)

This is proposed rules, a place where you create fiction to add to fiction

Proposed rules is for adding rules for a game system. Fluff should be in the 40K Background or, like this is, in 40K General Discussion.

Kroothawk's post was referencing Orwell's 1984 btw, which to me would be an excellent starting point for a 'dark' Tau force. A perversion of their greater good ideals into a brutal autocracy. Sounds good to me.

forgot this threads in general - missed that on the phonebrowser and am normally there.

I'm also generally involved more with building units and codices, which includes fluff aswell.

And thanks for the tau navy link. theresnothingthere:(

Gotcha, also, found this old thread on ATT, does all of the typing on what Xenology, and the different conspiracy theories surrounding the Tau.

http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3797&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Ok - my phone just screwed up on opening the link. Stupid phone.

peebzguy wrote:Okay so maybe the Dark Eldar was a bad example. I'm not thinking about the Chaos aspect of anything, though that would be cool. I was just thinking of a pirate-themed Tau equivalent. I'd definitely play it because I think the models would be totally rad. I guess I'm coming at this from mostly a modeling aspect, but I also think the fluff could be fun.

You don't need Dark Tau fluff to paint up and model your Tau army this way. If you want a pirate themed Tau army then by all means make one. You don't need special rules to do the modeling project.

Skriker

Kroothawk wrote:

Ovion wrote: - To the immune Mont'au doesnt mean the end of their race or 'destruction' it means 'freedom'.

"Bloodshed is peace! Civil war is freedom! Kill everyone who wants to help you! For the Greater Violence!"

Reminds me on Tau during the Nibosa campaign

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tau#Space_Fleet

see also:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Kor%27vattra

... for Tau interstellar capabilities and vehicles.

Ok, so I figure it'll make more sense (and be a somewhat more daring feat) if they stole a trio of Gal'Leath-class Starships (and associated escorts) and dissapeared into the night.

This would also give a logical start-point for colonising a planet as these things are more than capable of holding the resources and materials to do so, as well as a more sensible capacity to carry ther kin off-world, and a somewhat better foundation for their navy.

Though I intend them to have their own 'flair' in regards to tech and design of vehicles etc.

The explorer is a ugly ship. Use the Custodian.