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I've assumed the Ehereals have some connection to the Warp.

Warp Storms cut off the race on the eve of there destruction, then during the storms the Ethereals show up out of no were, and finally when the Tau achieved a technological level rivaling all except possibly the eldar the Warp Storms cease.

EzeKK wrote:

Soviet Yam wrote:As far as i can tell, the Eldar are behind the Tau. They could have made the warp storm, and i cannot remember where, but some where i read something the heavily implied that ethereals are manipulated by Eldar

Eldar make the most sense.

They are space Commies though so they are a bit weird.

Don't be silly... referring to Tau as "Space Commies" is a pet peeve of mine...

Henners91 wrote:

......referring to Tau as "Space Commies" is a pet peeve of mine...

x2

Im a big fan of the idea that the Old Ones created the Tau, but with so many loose ends and rumors hidden within the piles of fluff GW provides us with the truth will probably never be known. Personally I like a an idea that I came up with through the combination of fluff from the Tau, Tau Empire, and Necron Codex's.

My theory:
Codex Necrons suggests that degenerated/lesser decendants of the Old Ones may still exist. (specifically the codex says that the Eldar would use them as bait to lure the Necrons into a trap since the Necrons hated the old ones so much) Could it be that they regressed physically and psychiclly so much that they are actually Tau Ethereals? The Old Ones were known for making new races to fight wars for them, such as the Orks, Eldar, and Jokero. Could it be that the Old Ones decendants who regressed into what are currently Tau etherals seeded the tau home world, accelerated their growth, then decended from the skies just as they were about to tear themselves apart saving them by using the mind control that Ethereals apparently have over the other Tau casts. At the same time they bring with them all sorts of blue prints for advanced weapon tech to arm the army they grew. Tau history says the Ethereals literally decended from the sky, so they must have had technology before the rest of the tau did. Also the reoccurance of the question in the Etheral codex description of if they are leading in battle or observing (observing like a scientist over an experiment?). Again going back to the idea of the Old Ones creating other races, what if the idea of gathering all the other races under one banner "the greater good" is just the Old Ones/Ethereals way of regathering all the armies they once built to fight the return of the enemy who nearly killed them to extinction: the necrons.

Anyways, this is the theory I like, but who knows how GW will change the backstory when the next Tau book is written.

^^^^

That would be kool, although I would doubt that they regressed to become ehtereals.

If anything they created Ehtereals to be in the image of the Tau, and instructed them on the proper timing to come from the skys. Giving the Ethereals the drive(and the means) to unite the races of the Galaxy, possibly with the end goal of uniting the Old ones others Races(Eldar,Orks) under one banner to defeat the Necrons.

Regression could of been purposeful by the hands of the old ones, is it so far out of their ability to change their own bodies to suit their needs in their desprate hour?

I'm say the Eldar made the etherals(sp?). I think I read some where that the Tau found aliens space ship on their own moon. A little gift so they could get better tech?

They Tau may seem innocent now, but eventually chaos will corrupt them.
It may be just a coincidence that the warp storms occured and kept them in the safety of isolation, but I belive the chaos gods did it, so that they would have yet another race to claim.

They have corrupted the eldar and the humans. Soon they will need a new source of souls.

Read the novel "Fire Warrior" where Chaos tries in vain to corrupt just one battle worn Fire Warrior, not to speak of the ethereal. Even Chaos has its limits
BTW Xenology hints at the fact that Eldar created ethereals to create a race immune to Chaos.
Both are not the best sources for background information, but it's all we have ATM.

Psh, Chaos was just bluffing. Everyone knows Dark Tau are the real masterminds. "For the greater bad!"

vodo40k wrote: I have a theory that the ork 'gods' (gork and mork) are the same as two of the eldar gods (the laughing god and khaine)

That theory isn't just yours, its also suggested towards the end of Xenology.

As for the Tau, I reckon they were created by the old ones, as throughout Xenology it repeatedly draws attention to the archetypal design of most of the races in the galaxy (Man, Eldar, Ork, Tau) but each with differences that had been improved upon when making the other race to hopefully come up with a master race to destroy the c'tan.
For example- Eldar were the most highly advanced race. They were basically perfect in the sense of their physical and mental evolution. Their perfection ended up being their downfall, their vast warp signature which gave them their awesome psychic power and their capabilities to experience such heightened emotions led to the creation of slaanesh, and the fall of the Eldar. This showed the old ones that they had to be more refined with their creations and that they couldn't just create a race in the galaxy without effecting the warp and p***ing off chaos, The creation of the eldar made the succes of the future races more difficult due to the creation of slaanesh and enraging the chaos gods in general.

The orks are far more durable than the Eldar and due to being part fungi reproduce on such a fast scale that they wouldn't die out as the Eldar did. They have a minuscule warp presence when compared to the Eldar and therefore are much less vulnerable to chaos. Their downfall however is that their tribal and fight-for-the-sake-of-fighting attitude made it impossible to unite all of the trillions of orks to fight the c'tan. their creation made it harder for all future races to succeed due to the galaxy being infested with orks.

Mankind were an attempt at reaching a middle ground between the orks and eldar, giving them the organisation and coordination of the eldar. They also have a smaller warp presence, allowing them to make use of the warp for travel and to harness psychic abilities. their warp precence proved to be both possitie and negative, the possitive being that in allowed the expansion of imperium and allows for the quick travel across the galaxy to give support where it is needed. the negative being that it still allowed for chaos to detect the emperors primarch project and effectively ruin it (which if it had been avoided would have made mankind the indisputable masters of the galaxy) and left them in the grimdark mess that they are in now.

As a final attempt the old ones tried to make a race completely independent of the warp (the Tau) before their eventual dying out. This is where I think the two theories could combine...The Eldar perceive the creation of the Tau as the old ones pass on (either the warpstorms around their home planet are created by the dying of the old ones in an attempt to protect the Tau from the now dominant imperium, or the Eldar cause it to protect what they may have realised could being peace to the galaxy). The Eldar then go on to help advance the Tau's evolution by the creation of the ethereals, by crossing tau with the queen of the Q'Orl (the bug things that also use pheromones to control their race as someone had already mentioned)(another thing that leads me to think this is a galactic map in Xenology that onlt features the region of space inhabited by the Q'Orl, below the eye of terror, and the tau empire (seems odd only to show the tau on there randomly)). The Eldar then help raise the Tau without their knowledge buy helping them advance their technologies and the creation of the castes, when they are still protected by the warp storm. when the tau are strong enough the warp storm closes up and allows for their expansion. This conveniently benefits the Eldar by now having a significant force between craftworld iyaden and hivefleet behemoth.


That might not all make 100% perfect sense, its half 2 in the morning and im tired, just thought i would give my view

^^^It sounds good with a few exceptions. For example this line: "The Eldar then help raise the Tau without their knowledge buy helping them advance their technologies and the creation of the castes" There is no way the Eldar had anything to do with the Caste system as it was more or less in effect even during the Tau tribal stage.

The rest sounds good though.

Fair enough, I wrote that whilst half asleep and I've never read any of the fluff for the Tau so I wasn't expecting to get anything close to being plausible . I just liked the idea of it

I'm trying to dig up the book so I can get the exact quote, but in Codex Tau (not Tau Empire) Eldred is quoted saying somthing along the line of: "I watch the future of the Tau with great hope and curiosity, and foresee them doing great deeds for the good of the galaxy."

Take this for what it is worth, as far as I know, the quote never appeared anywhere else besides Codex Tau. This was also predating the Eye of Terror campaign where Eldred got his soul eaten by Slannesh, (around 10 years ago) so if this quote was meant to mean anything back then, there has been plenty of time for the fluff to get twisted around and lost in the normal GW backstory inconsistancy warp, for the intention of this quote to be lost forever.

I take it as the Eldar were aware of the Tau, their capabilties, and saw glimpses of their future, but were in no way responsible for their creation. If the Eldar were responcible for the Tau's creation, i would think they would have a more defined goal set for them.

However I wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility that the Eldar noticed the Tau's homeworld from afar and decided to manipulate them for the future. Eldar are know for their maniputions of others for their benefit.

Sorry I'm still new to some of this stuff....

I have the Tau Empire codex, what's the Codex Tau?

Same thing

I personally think the Tau are a random occurance but if I had to choose one it would be the old ones. The Tau greater good seems to be a very useful method for uniting the remaining species with as least death as possible. This would leave more soldiers for the war with the Necrons (and possibly the Tyranids as I doubt that the Old Ones like them very much either). The Old Ones also learned from their last attempt that Psycic powers cause as many problems as benefits, so creating a species with no warp signature would be the way foward.

I don't know if this is true but I have never heard any mentions of eldar bioengineering, and so I wouldn't have thought that it was one of their strong points.

xGhost4000x wrote:Sorry I'm still new to some of this stuff....
I have the Tau Empire codex, what's the Codex Tau?

Grey Templar wrote:Same thing

Actually no. Codex Tau was the name of the first, 3rd edition Codex featuring the Tau. With only one Xeno ally in the Codex, there was no need yet to call it an empire of a multitude of races. With the introduction of the Vespids in 4th edition, the emphasise shifted and the new Codex was renamed "Tau Empire" (others say, the new name was chosen, because you can't copyright the name "Tau", being too generic, only "Tau Empire" )

Kroothawk wrote:Read the novel "Fire Warrior" where Chaos tries in vain to corrupt just one battle worn Fire Warrior, not to speak of the ethereal. Even Chaos has its limits
BTW Xenology hints at the fact that Eldar created ethereals to create a race immune to Chaos.
Both are not the best sources for background information, but it's all we have ATM.

Chaos & Tau?

"BA / black tide" : Tau colony snatched by chaos and Fabius Bile has enough Tau on that asteroid to exepriment with.
The usual mutations and insanity. The pursuing BA could only destroy the colony but not get their hands on Bile ( yet ).

xGhost4000x wrote:Sorry I'm still new to some of this stuff....

I have the Tau Empire codex, what's the Codex Tau?

Cpdex Tau is the original, 3rd edition Tau codex which introduced the faction to the game.

In my opinion, it would be cool if the C'Tan theory was correct (even if it is incredibly far fetched)

However, I like the idea of combining the Eldar and Old Ones theories. The Old Ones create them, and the Eldar manipulate them.

I'm not a Tau fan (I hate them in gameplay, but that's just me), but now I'm really interested in learning more about them because of this

Some of the theories here are very cool, and plausible, but I don't really see the issue. The Tau were discovered in M35, according to the codex, and at that time they were plains dwellers. It took six thousand years for them to step on to the galactic playing field. The codex said they were ruled over by the Ethereals for 1000 years, which means 1000 years of %100 progress with an entire planet working together. No time wasted on war, ONLY progress. So they already had rudimentary societies when they were discovered, we can allow about 5000 years for them to develop to at least small nations (according to the codex), during which, they were developing weapons to fight each other. Then the nations suddenly band together because of the Ethereals, and get straight to work on getting to space and spreading out. That speed doesn't seem that improbable to me, it's just that they were united instead of destroying technologies before they could take off (a la Greece/Rome/Egypt).

And we can also assume, if we need to, that they might have just been a "quicker" race than humans.

1hadhq wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:Read the novel "Fire Warrior" where Chaos tries in vain to corrupt just one battle worn Fire Warrior, not to speak of the ethereal. Even Chaos has its limits
BTW Xenology hints at the fact that Eldar created ethereals to create a race immune to Chaos.
Both are not the best sources for background information, but it's all we have ATM.

Chaos & Tau?

"BA / black tide" : Tau colony snatched by chaos and Fabius Bile has enough Tau on that asteroid to exepriment with.
The usual mutations and insanity. The pursuing BA could only destroy the colony but not get their hands on Bile ( yet ).

Yea, and as mentioned in there, Fabius Bile operates for mainly the hell of it and knowledge, so the warp isn't involved in whats going on with the Tau, it's just Fabius(cough). They became insane because of the pain, brain surgery or drug tests.

Soladrin wrote:

1hadhq wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:Read the novel "Fire Warrior" where Chaos tries in vain to corrupt just one battle worn Fire Warrior, not to speak of the ethereal. Even Chaos has its limits
BTW Xenology hints at the fact that Eldar created ethereals to create a race immune to Chaos.
Both are not the best sources for background information, but it's all we have ATM.

Chaos & Tau?

"BA / black tide" : Tau colony snatched by chaos and Fabius Bile has enough Tau on that asteroid to exepriment with.
The usual mutations and insanity. The pursuing BA could only destroy the colony but not get their hands on Bile ( yet ).

Yea, and as mentioned in there, Fabius Bile operates for mainly the hell of it and knowledge, so the warp isn't involved in whats going on with the Tau, it's just Fabius(cough). They became insane because of the pain, brain surgery or drug tests.

The warp was the transportation method to snatch the asteroid from the T'au.
Both, sorcery or the dark mech technology is tainted with the warp/demon infested and i doubt its possible to reproduce Fabuis's
experiments without any of both.

Agreed, but the warp is not infecting the Tau's however you see it. It's purely doing what Fabius is commanding it to do, all the alterations the Tau had were medical in nature.

candlehand wrote:Some of the theories here are very cool, and plausible, but I don't really see the issue. The Tau were discovered in M35, according to the codex, and at that time they were plains dwellers. It took six thousand years for them to step on to the galactic playing field. The codex said they were ruled over by the Ethereals for 1000 years, which means 1000 years of %100 progress with an entire planet working together. No time wasted on war, ONLY progress. So they already had rudimentary societies when they were discovered, we can allow about 5000 years for them to develop to at least small nations (according to the codex), during which, they were developing weapons to fight each other. Then the nations suddenly band together because of the Ethereals, and get straight to work on getting to space and spreading out. That speed doesn't seem that improbable to me, it's just that they were united instead of destroying technologies before they could take off (a la Greece/Rome/Egypt).

And we can also assume, if we need to, that they might have just been a "quicker" race than humans.

If you look at human evolution, or rather cultural and technical development, it went from pre-literate agricultural and pastoral societies about 4,000BC to landing on the Moon in the 1970s.

Make the assumption for fictional purposes that FTL travel is possible, and we found an alien spaceship on the Moon, and the timeline does not look so unlikely.

Of course the Tau fought a planet wide war, re-unified their society, achieved spaceflight, and got FTL, made a load of allies and settled a load of planets, in the same amount of time. But that could be explained by their faster learning and longer working days.

OTOH in the GW universe nearly everything is the result of some deep laid plot by either the C'Tan or the Old Ones.

Soladrin wrote:Agreed, but the warp is not infecting the Tau's however you see it. It's purely doing what Fabius is commanding it to do, all the alterations the Tau had were medical in nature.

Did the usage of tech to do the surgery maybe hint on the possibility that some of the experiments would not lead to any effort without
the warp? Fabius seems to be able to merge body parts from almost every race ( not getting a sane or efficient build ) and later
it goes on to a creature that is a combo of tyranids and demons.

Maybe the warp didn't 'infect' the Tau. Still they lost a complete colony to a weird scientist. And it was taken from Tau space.
Got the impression the Tau were welcoming bile and found out too late what their fate is...

Shouldn't feel safe from the warp or its dwellers.

Ok, in my opinion, that Warp storm could had appeared randomly, as other Warp storms. The Tau where there and got cut from the rest of the galaxy, but I think that was bad luck (or not so bad, because they evolved incredibly).

Kilkrazy wrote:

candlehand wrote:Some of the theories here are very cool, and plausible, but I don't really see the issue. The Tau were discovered in M35, according to the codex, and at that time they were plains dwellers. It took six thousand years for them to step on to the galactic playing field. The codex said they were ruled over by the Ethereals for 1000 years, which means 1000 years of %100 progress with an entire planet working together. No time wasted on war, ONLY progress. So they already had rudimentary societies when they were discovered, we can allow about 5000 years for them to develop to at least small nations (according to the codex), during which, they were developing weapons to fight each other. Then the nations suddenly band together because of the Ethereals, and get straight to work on getting to space and spreading out. That speed doesn't seem that improbable to me, it's just that they were united instead of destroying technologies before they could take off (a la Greece/Rome/Egypt).

And we can also assume, if we need to, that they might have just been a "quicker" race than humans.

If you look at human evolution, or rather cultural and technical development, it went from pre-literate agricultural and pastoral societies about 4,000BC to landing on the Moon in the 1970s.

Make the assumption for fictional purposes that FTL travel is possible, and we found an alien spaceship on the Moon, and the timeline does not look so unlikely.

Of course the Tau fought a planet wide war, re-unified their society, achieved spaceflight, and got FTL, made a load of allies and settled a load of planets, in the same amount of time. But that could be explained by their faster learning and longer working days.

OTOH in the GW universe nearly everything is the result of some deep laid plot by either the C'Tan or the Old Ones.

Especially when you consider a lot of human advances have been held up or lost entirely and (sometimes) been reinvented due to war. We still haven't figured out exactly what went into Greek Fire, for example. The most significant jumps in technology are when large groups of humans are united in some common task; only negative is said uniting influence is some form of war. The sheer magnitude of what was learnt during the Manhattan Project or the Space Race is astounding.

Another limiting factor has been lack of adaptability during a lifetime. Young people pick up the new and shiny toys easily, older generations want to go back to 'more civilised' ones they grew up with. Shorter lifespan = less lag in accepting new ideas.