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It can't be because they have little or no presence in the Warp. Chaos can corrupt the soulless Men of Iron and CSM vehicles, so that's right out. The Tau would have to be anathema to Chaos somehow.

Total faith in and dedication to the Ethereals.

Chaos only really effects inanimate objects when they have been subject to prolonged exposure to chaos or through ritual.

The Tau don't really know much of the warp. I'm sure the flesh can be corrupted and probably the soul too, but Chaos needs to make a physical connection with them as their presence is so negligible within the warp.

IIRC there was an article in a WD many moons ago explaining why Daemon Hunters/Grey Knights would fight the Tau. It essentially boiled down to a Daemonic artifact allowing possession of an Ethereal, the Tau now believing the Ethereal had been transformed still followed the code of the Tau and obeyed the Daemons commands.

Remember, the Tau homeworld was wreathed in Warp storms for thousands of years. Any planet even within the line of sight of a visible Warp disruption gets affected by Chaos - you get side-effects like Cadian purple eyes, or a large number of psykers. Besides, even during the Great Crusade, when militant atheist human chauvinism was essentially required, the Chaos gods were still a viable threat to the Imperium. Also, Chaos feeds off of emotion, sensation, anarchy and stagnation, and all civilizations except the Tau feed it just by existing.

There's something special - or, to be precise, wrong - about the Tau. Anything that can't be affected by Chaos is suspect.

Off topic, but in response to Hawkwind, do Cadians still have purple eyes? Or did that stop some time between Lorgar's visit and the fortyoneth millenium?

They're like gingers, they have no souls

But if it's something besides their low warp signature, than i don't know what it is.It seems like these days GW has stayed away from Chaos having too much of a corrupting influence on non humans. When was the last time you've read about Chaos corrupting an Eldar, Ork, Kroot, Tyranid?

I know the Eldar are scared S less of Slaanesh, but when was the last time you heard of a Demon worshiping/possessed Eldar?

Long ago they had Khornate Ork Storm Boyz, but that idea is pretty much as dead as squats.

Don't get me started on the Chaos Eldar. If I had my way, every Slaaneshi battleforce could take them as Elites.

And Orks should be buddies with Khorne! The only difference between them is that Khorne is red and Gork and Mork and Mindy are green, but that just means that Khorne will go faster!

I agree, the story behind the demon Prince for my Emperor's Children army is a corrupted Eldar female. I converted her out of the old Wood Elf Ariel model.

But i haven't read anything about the actual existence of "Chaos Eldar" from GW.
If you know of some please point me towards it so I may consume it with my mind

Actually... I really don't have any evidence to back up my claim right now. The sole bit of fluff I had to go on (I think) was a third or second edition Chaos sourcebook that mentioned Eldar trapped on the Crone Worlds, their bodies warped and twisted by Chaos.

I just find it sad that it wasn't developed. Can you imagine how cool looking a fully painted Chaos Eldar could look? With the fleshy armor and the carapace and the tentacles EVERYWHERE!

the main reason the Tau don't get corrupted is because their low Warp Signiture doesn't attract much attention.


the Tau are also pretty far from any major warp storms(aside from the one that shielded their planet from imperial colonists that disappated)

somecallmeJack wrote:Off topic, but in response to Hawkwind, do Cadians still have purple eyes? Or did that stop some time between Lorgar's visit and the fortyoneth millenium?

They still do.

Tau back ground hints heavily in the direction that someone engineered them. If that it true then it's probable that whoever did that was an enemy of chaos and new that the best way to fight an enemy like chaos is to make a race that would be impossible to corrupt (or at least too difficult to be worth their time/efforts).

I think de call dem chaos woshippin eldar dark eldar

Chamleoneyes wrote:Tau back ground hints heavily in the direction that someone engineered them. If that it true then it's probable that whoever did that was an enemy of chaos and new that the best way to fight an enemy like chaos is to make a race that would be impossible to corrupt (or at least too difficult to be worth their time/efforts).

Besides the codex, where is a good place to read about this background? I play Tau and I feel bad knowing so little about their fluff. Are there any books that dive heavily into Tau fluff?

I remember reading somewhere that the etherals just showed up one day and took control of the different castes....seems very odd to me!

Tau can be corrupted by Chaos, it's just that thus far they haven't (mainly by dint of being on the other side of the galaxy from the largest Warp-space overlap, and generally being too small and insignificant to attract much attention (seriously, why would the Chaos Gods try to focus on such a small Empire?)) Have the Demiurg every been corrupted?

There's absolutely nothing saying that the Tau are incorruptible as far as I know (unlike the Grey Knights, who are stated to be completely uncorruptible). As for the Warp Storm, they don't necessarily mean that mutations will take place (even if they did, that might explain the separations between the Castes, the appearance of the Ethereals, or the massive civil war that almost caused Tau extinction. Any of them could be explained by unknown influence from the Warp.)

Thelaugher wrote:I think de call dem chaos woshippin eldar dark eldar

Nope, Dark Eldar are as Slaanesh fearing as the regular Eldar. They just appease Slaanesh by feeding it souls in hopes that it won't eat theirs. They get no chaos granted powers from this, nor do they mutate.

They're not incorruptible but they are very, very resilient to both the temptations offered by the Ruinous Powers and their Warp-spawned effects.

In Fire Warrior, one Tau was eventually corrupted but only by the exertion of huge amounts of effort and the use of vast amounts of energy by the Gods.

Frankly it's not worth their effort, especially when there are easily-swayed humans in their trillions eager to serve...

Good luck trying to seduce a mind that wants nothing you have to offer.

Tau live to serve Ethereals and the greater good. They literally resent names until they have earned them. If an Ethereal ordered a Fire Warrior to kill himself he would be obeyed without question on the spot.

For their part, Chaos wants nothing to do with a race like that. They are more after races like Eldar and Humans which have no shortage of heavily registered souls in the warp that appease Chaos. If they really wanted to corrupt the Tau they would try, but all fluff points to this being a futile effort. Tau being a non-psyker race puts the plot armor on that at about 2+

Hawkward wrote:It can't be because they have little or no presence in the Warp. Chaos can corrupt the soulless Men of Iron and CSM vehicles, so that's right out. The Tau would have to be anathema to Chaos somehow.

I would not say that that the Tau are by any means incorruptible, mainly b/c there is no writing anywhere stating that they are not. Simply b/c Chaos has not made a major impact on them does not mean they are. I would say the reason there has not been a major impact of chaos on the Tau could be for 2 reasons that have not been mentioned

1.) The tau are a young race and have not been a real power for very long at all, the Chaos gods may no see much point to corrupting them b/c there may be little to gain
2.) The Ethreals, not really sure how. But the Ethreals are regarded as semi divine beings no? They came out of nowhere to lead the hunter gather old Tau from obscurity into a galactic Empire, albeit a small one at the moment. Perhaps there is some unexplained or unwritten power possessed by the ethreals that allows them to protect the Tau from Chaos? If for no reason other than there is no written evidence suggesting they do not have this power I could believe that they do.

Then who is to say that the have been no signs of chaos? Commander Farsight went against the tactics and teachings of the ethreals and has since broken away forming his own empire, could he perhaps have been tempted by chaos to do this? I personally do not believe so, but it is possible. Or in fact maby it was not he who was tempted by chaos but some of the other ethreals themselves, which is why his enclave broke away. I also do not personally believe this, but once again it is also possible lol

but to repeat a previous poster are there any sort of books that delve into Tau lore, besides the white scars one where it talks about the crusade against the tau. Im talking more about a tau flavored book, not space marine with some dead tau in it book

@darcloud92: Read Miraclefish's post.

In the book, Fire Warrior (yeah it's all about Tau); one half-crazy Tau turns to chaos but the amount of energy spent to do it was incredible; much easier to just take some of the willing, easily corruptible humans.
1) see above.
2) Ethereal's aren't seen as divine or godly or any other nonsense. There's nothing to indicate that Tau even follow anything like a religion. Ethereals are more along the lines of a patriarch in a confucianist society. Some say Pheromones, some say that they are just honored teachers/leaders. There's no strong fluff one way or the other.


Somewhat related. Are Orks immune because they're plants or because Gork and Mork are stronger than the Chaos Ghods?

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:Tau can be corrupted by Chaos, it's just that thus far they haven't (mainly by dint of being on the other side of the galaxy from the largest Warp-space overlap, and generally being too small and insignificant to attract much attention (seriously, why would the Chaos Gods try to focus on such a small Empire?)) Have the Demiurg every been corrupted?

There's absolutely nothing saying that the Tau are incorruptible as far as I know (unlike the Grey Knights, who are stated to be completely uncorruptible). As for the Warp Storm, they don't necessarily mean that mutations will take place (even if they did, that might explain the separations between the Castes, the appearance of the Ethereals, or the massive civil war that almost caused Tau extinction. Any of them could be explained by unknown influence from the Warp.)

There's nothing been said they can be corrupted. It's been stated a few times that Tau have little or no presence in the Warp, which means the Chaos Powers have to go to a lot more effort to corrupt the soul of a Tau. The body is still only flesh, so as susceptible to corruption as a human body. Tau also have no other real purpose than to serve the Greater Good. They would never abandon it, and wouldn't have to be far away from any Ethereals to allow it to happen.

It's never been stated that Grey Knights are incorruptible. They are EXTREMELY RESISTANT to the temptations of Chaos, and not one has as yet fallen. The Warp storm may well be the cause of the Ethereals, but the Castes are more down to basic evolution and a strict law of no inter-breeding than Warp corruption. It kind of poses the question of whether time flowed differently whilst they were trapped by the storm.

Hawkward wrote:Chaos can corrupt the soulless Men of Iron and CSM vehicles, so that's right out.

You are forgetting your fluff, in 40K vehicles have machine spirits and Men of Iron would have even stronger machine spirits, this is how they can be corrupted.

1.) There is no definite answer in the fluff.
2.) There seems to be a slight difference between ethereals and other Tau in this.
3.) The novel Fire Warrior is about a Daemon trying to corrupt Tau. He doesn't even see a chance with the ethereal, but he sees one in a million Tau to be emotional enough to crack him. In the end he doesn't even succeed with him, the exhausted Fire Warrior survives all attempts uncorrupted but broken.
4.) Xenology suggests the daring theory that Eldar manufactured the ethereals (adding the olphactory organ on the forehead) and send them to make the Tau "immune" to Chaos corruption. Never supported by any other book (and Xenology also features a Tau pic with feet instead of hooves).
5.) Tau have almost no presence in the warp, being low on emotions and having no psykers. So even if they were corruptable, it would be like searching for hard bread crumbs in a chocolate factory.

I could be wrong but I thought there was some hinting that commander Farsights sword was a daemonblade corrupting him and thats why he turned away from the etherials and takes a more aggressive stance in war.

The Tau thing is pretty settled, and I agree with "not incoruptable but damn near impossible."

So here's my 2 cents:

Orks have had Korne dedications in the past. This idea is pretty much dead, but it could be that their gods protect them from it. Don't really know.

Eldar are NOT incorruptable, it is just rare because of the Eldar Paths. The Paths are put there to focus an eldar's mind to make it less suseptable to Chaos, give him less emotions, so the Fall cannot happen again. Altansar was in the warp for 10,000 years and came up completely uncorrupted.

From Lexicanum: "Altansar is regarded with open suspicion and hostility, for how could any Eldar remain untouched by the predations of Chaos for so many millennia?"

Also: "Currently Altansar is somewhere close to Terra, although how it has managed to get there without Imperial retaliation is unknown."

Makes me think there's something else going here.

I think the ethereals keep the negative emotions that feed chaos in check through their pheromones.

bthom37 wrote:I think the ethereals keep the negative emotions that feed chaos in check through their pheromones.

Chaos is not fed my negative emotions alone. They are also fed by positive ones. Slaanesh, for example, also feeds on happyness, love, and pleasure. Slaanesh is excess of feeling. Nurgle is both life and death. Well, rebirth more than life, but it's still possitive. Tzeentch is knowledge. Can you honestly tell me that the desire for knowledge is a negative thing?

I can honestly tell you that the desire for knowledge is a negative thing as far as the Imperium is concerned.

Here are some "imperial thoughts of the day" from Dawn of War

"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt."
"Thought begets Heresy; Heresy begets Retribution."
"Educate men without faith and you but make them clever devils."
"A narrow view sees better."

Yeah, and most people can agree that the IoM ideology is bass ackwards as far as technology goes. It's like the Holy Roman Church burning "heretical" technology. That doesn't make the persuit of knowledge bad, just heretical in the eyes of the IoM.

bocirish wrote:I could be wrong but I thought there was some hinting that commander Farsights sword was a daemonblade corrupting him and thats why he turned away from the etherials and takes a more aggressive stance in war.

The Dawn Blade has been hinted to be of many numbers, including C'tan, Old Ones and Chaos

Sothas wrote:Slaanesh, for example, also feeds on happyness, love, and pleasure.

I know this is off topic but where is the fluff that Slaanesh is linked to love? Slaanesh was created by excess, decadence and sexuality, not love, if it was linked to love it wouldn't have taken till the Fall to develop in the warp.