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I've been thinking about writing some background for my Tau army when a question came to me; which castes are responsible for jobs such as fire fighters, police officers and hospital staff? I imagine police forces would be filled by the fire caste since that involves conflict, but what about other jobs?

Opinions?

I think drones would cover fire fighters and Water caste for the rest.

The Water Caste serve the Tau Empire as traders, merchants, public servants, bureaucrats, administrators, diplomats, and ambassadors. They interact with other races when such affairs are not handled by the Fire Caste, and often act as administrators of Tau worlds in the absence of an Ethereal governor. Like water, Water Caste bureacrats fluidly move between other Castes and alien races incorporated within the Emperor to make sure the Tau Empire flows smoothly. The Water Caste tend to be tall and slender compared to other Tau, and are known for their great linguistic, diplomatic, and negotiation skills. Members of the Water Caste are often the ones who initiate first contact with new species encountered by the Empire, skilfully negotiating their union with the Tau.

thats form lexicanum.

I read an interesting fanfic from the ATT that described the Water Caste as handling the police work. The reasoning for this is the crime, rare as it might be within the empire, would probably happen as castes or indentured races clashed. As a result, they'd need expert mediators to either talk down the aggressors or smooth everything over and ensure operations continued smoothly.

I think a Tau police force would probably be a joint operation with both fire caste and water caste. Acekevin's reasons are sound, but there's always going to be the odd situation where you need police for riot-style events. Water caste for investigation and public safety, fire caste for busting heads.

Fire fighters would, I think, be a division of the earth caste. It's a skilled manual labor job, really, so I think it would fall into their purview. Most hospital staff (like doctors and the like) I would think would be earth caste too, although I imagine they have water caste attached to their organizational structure to handle bureaucratic needs and adminstrative functions.

That's just my personal opinion, of course.

Drones... drones everywhere!!! Maybe they have drone that are programmed to provide long term care to wounded and sick Tau. I know we see more combat oriented drones but it possible that battlefield medic is not am option im the tau tactical mindset.. figure that if you are getting hurt you are doing something wrong.

I think the doctors, fire fighters and such are Earth Caste, while the "police" are Ethereal Caste. Makes sense, since who could be better "policemen" than the Ethereal?

 AtoMaki wrote:
I think the doctors, fire fighters and such are Earth Caste, while the "police" are Ethereal Caste. Makes sense, since who could be better "policemen" than the Ethereal?

I could see ethereals being judges and authority figures, but I'm having hard time seeing an ethereal writing up a speeding ticket.

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:
I think the doctors, fire fighters and such are Earth Caste, while the "police" are Ethereal Caste. Makes sense, since who could be better "policemen" than the Ethereal?

I could see ethereals being judges and authority figures, but I'm having hard time seeing an ethereal writing up a speeding ticket.

I don't think that the Tau has such lowly problems. Their crime rate is probably really-really low thankfully to this Greater Good stuff. So I guess they only have serious stuff for the police, like murder (and maybe even smuggling).