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it's quite possiable Tau technology has sort of plateaued. if they've made all the discoveries and advancements in a field they reasonably can without break throughs in other areas it could slow em down quite a bit.

Don't forget, they've also taken and held various and sundry Imperial planets.

And the Imperium of course has long held Rejuvenat treatments, albeit only for the wealthy and powerful.

Tau, being dirty little tech monkies like modern man/SG-1, would probably find it quite easy to figure out the principle behind such things, and adapt to their own unique physiology - and likely with better, perhaps longer lasting results?

Then there's the Puretide Engram Chip. If that's been refined and perfect, clip it onto a Shas'O, and boom - Shadowsun is back right there, even if it's only for the one engagement/war. Could also mean she can act in multiple theatres of war.

Pick up a book. Seriously. Time is relative. Einstein theorized about all of this. You don't need an explanation for them being alive X amount of terran years later, because one year on one planet isn't the same as on another.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Realistically, all Tau characters from 7th should be dead now.

Except Farsight, the Dawnblade extends his life by a number of years equal to the number of years each person he kills with the Dawnblade had until they died naturally(source: the farsight enclave supplemental). And as far as we know ork do not have a finite natural life span, and Farsight has killed a lot of ork with his sword so Farsight will probably never die, except in battle. Maybe it is unclear if the Dawnblade's power would save him from a deathblow or if it only keeps him from dying of old age, probably just the latter.

Two things - it's been mentioned a few times, but there's a lot of near-c realspace travel for Tau ships. Earliest BFG descriptions of their warp-drives sounded like they'd originally been used to accelerate the ships rather than to bypass areas of space - holding them 'under' the surface of reality and using the 'bounce' when they float back up to the surface to send their ships travelling at impossible speeds. So a Tau who has travelled a lot might have experienced only a short amount of subjective time even if they stayed out of Cryo.

Also a Tau'Cyr is 80% of a human year, so knock 20% of those ages. A T'au living to 80 Tau'Cyr has been around for just over 65 Terran Annis.

As for the age when a Tau will make a name for themselves or become a commander, it's going to be a lot less than a human equivalent as a Tau spends around 30% more time awake. And whilst it's probably not the case for 40K era humans, they're also probably going to spend a lot more time working than a modern day human will. So our 30 year old human captain in the army may have spent around 1000 hours on the job (assuming he took no holiday in the 12 years since he enlisted at 18, and had a day or two off sick) -a T'au who also took no holidays, takes three hours off to sleep and has 3 hours of personal time a day would have the same amount of on the job experience in 3.8 (Terran) years or 4.7 Tau'Cyr.

So a Tau firewarrior could spend 4 years a child, 4 years as a 'Saal training, 4 years as a line warrior, 4 years as a suit pilot and then be ready for their first command at 16.

Which would be roughly the same awake hours/conscious experience as going starting secondary school at 11, leaving school, going to uni and graduating with a degree, then getting a commission as an army officer at 22. Working up through the ranks until 33 and then being a major in the US army (apparently the average rank for that age in the US military for officers, so this might not include high-flyers like Shadowsun). Though the human officer would have a much more diverse set of experiences than the laser focused T'au.

Dunno if anyone's mentioned this yet but I think I recall reading somewhere that Shadowsun is kept in cryostasis until needed, as the Ethereals didn't put much trust in the Puretide chip. I wouldn't be surprised that after the last conflict, they just threw her right back in the cooler.

Hmm, Tau don't have warp travel and/or juvenat treatments, eh?

Therefore, Shadowsun might be dead. That is, if she's a normal Tau and this is only a question of Tau technology.

I don't care either way but this *is* an interesting question in general.

No different to CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED. Long dead but the tabletop game can account for that.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
No different to CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED. Long dead but the tabletop game can account for that.

Isn't Creed actually only MIA?

Even if imperial records might have written him as KIA.

He's in a Pokéball last we heard.