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Made in tw
Regular Dakkanaut





I haven't read a lot of Tau stuff, other than seeing pieces of lore of them here and there (good job Sicarius, for crushing that Tau with a stomp), however, now that we know Eldrad the somehow was able to see their potential and that the Tau sorta have a premature warp deity...it all seemed like things are better for them compared to the old players in that cursed galaxy (eldar, humans, etc...), but, a rapidly growing civilization like theirs would be facing a tons of aliens on the way, regardless of the hostility, so that's where the question came from.
Now, I'm aware the Tau would normally offer some alien folks the chance to join their empire, and for those who acted like dorks and resisted stubbornly, they'd gun them down. However, what if there's an ATHEIST xeno species that possesses immense melee combat talents, and no, they did not resist and was pretty much okay or even welcomed to be ruled by these blue skinned outsiders... provided with these conditions , would these relatively peaceful and cooperative aliens be put down due to their reluctance to embrace the "gREATER gOod"?

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/06/14 13:13:44


 
   
Made in de
Boom! Leman Russ Commander






Could you clarify a bit? You wrote that this hypothetical Xenos species would be Ok with being rules by the T'au. Why would they then need to be exterminated?
You underlined that they might be atheist, do you think that would be a reason for extinction? Edit: or do you mean that they while being Ok with Tau rule refuse the philosophic concept of the greater good

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/14 07:09:03


~6550 build and painted
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Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






This is really confusing and I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
If you're saying that these aliens were OK with being part of the T'au Empire but didn't vibe with the Greater Good, then why would the T'au simply eradicate them? They aren't causing real problems for anyone, just keep them confined to their planet with a bogus made up reason for a while. The Kroot don't particularly give a rats about the Greater Good but they didn't get nuked from orbit. Maybe this new species is particularly good at paperwork and their planet can be turned into one big admin office.
   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

The Kroot generally don't embrace The Greater Good (and worship their own gods), they simply see the Tau as another mercenary employer.
   
Made in tw
Regular Dakkanaut





 Gert wrote:
This is really confusing and I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
If you're saying that these aliens were OK with being part of the T'au Empire but didn't vibe with the Greater Good, then why would the T'au simply eradicate them? They aren't causing real problems for anyone, just keep them confined to their planet with a bogus made up reason for a while. The Kroot don't particularly give a rats about the Greater Good but they didn't get nuked from orbit. Maybe this new species is particularly good at paperwork and their planet can be turned into one big admin office.

What I was trying to convey is that they are pretty much positive to be part of the Tau Empire, but won’t accept the greater good no matter what. However, to make the issue a bit more extreme, let’s just say they are better than the Kroot in melee, but the species as a whole is openly against the greater good for no reason and MIGHT potentially spread their atheistic agenda to other species that allied with the Tau Empire.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/14 13:15:59


 
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






I think you underestimate the T'au ability to influence others in their beliefs through political manipulation, propaganda and by ensuring any old guard that might fight against them die in glorious combat for the Greater Good. If none of this works, which would be a huge if, then the T'au might consider gradual sterilisation to keep the troops but slowly get rid of the problematic species.
But IMO there's no reason to make T'au into the Imperium. Keep them as a "good guy" faction as long as possible.
   
Made in fr
Longtime Dakkanaut






I'm ok with the tau as a 'good guy' Frankly all these "KILL!KILL!KILL!" races who exist to destroy and conquer get tiresome after a while.

I'm not sure if the kroot have gods, i seem to remember a kroot telling a human they don't worship things, they accept them. Humans worship things.

And what's this about a tau god forming in the warp? More info please.

"But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed..." 
   
Made in de
Boom! Leman Russ Commander






Also even if you integrate them into the T'au Empire the T'au shouldn't have to many problems limiting exchange with their other planets if they fear the Xenos might have a bad influence. Just keep their language from being translated, come up with a reason why trading between the planet and the rest of the empire should only be performed by specialized (highly loyal) traders, maybe "discover" a certain local phenomena related to bacteria that comes down to "neither should any outsider der foot on this planet, nor should they ever set foot on another T'au world - it's for their own best" and the T'au would be good to go.

If they want to use them for war they would just have to make sure they are deployed separated from other auxilia

~6550 build and painted
819 build and painted
830 
   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut





 Gert wrote:
If you're saying that these aliens were OK with being part of the T'au Empire but didn't vibe with the Greater Good, then why would the T'au simply eradicate them? They aren't causing real problems for anyone, just keep them confined to their planet with a bogus made up reason for a while.

Because planets are valuable and the world could see better use as Tau colony? See sept of Bork'an - it formerly belonged to the Poctroon species, but after Tau conquered the world, a 'mysterious disease' wiped them out. And with how much Tau medical tech tends to be wanked, it's vastly more likely Tau engineered the disease, than the fact they couldn't beat a natural one...
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






Why didn't the T'au kill the Kroot or Vespid then? The Vespid got given fancy headsets and suddenly became cool with the Greater Good and accepted peaceful annexation. There's a hundred ways to get a race to accept you and the T'au especially shouldn't automatically go for genocide when they are the "good" faction in 40k. If there's only "bad" factions then the setting is just boring because there's no real ideological conflict between any of the factions.
   
Made in tw
Regular Dakkanaut





 Matt Swain wrote:
I'm ok with the tau as a 'good guy' Frankly all these "KILL!KILL!KILL!" races who exist to destroy and conquer get tiresome after a while.

I'm not sure if the kroot have gods, i seem to remember a kroot telling a human they don't worship things, they accept them. Humans worship things.

And what's this about a tau god forming in the warp? More info please.

You can check this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/798899.page
   
Made in ca
Fireknife Shas'el






The Tau aren't religious, per se. The Greater Good is a philosophy, not a religion. Some of the humans annexed by the Tau empire have turned The Greater Good into a religion and are forming a nascent warp god as a result, but the Tau themselves barely register in the warp (not that having a warp god is required to have a religion, but the Tau don't worship anything).

As to the Tau's relative prosperity, you have to remember that the Tau empire is SMALL. It's a few dozen worlds colonized over the last couple thousand years or so, because Tau space travel is highly limited in terms of speed. Most of their colonies were colonized via sublight sleeper ships and they only relatively recently got warp skimming technology, and their attempts at proper warp jumps went pretty badly (Startide Nexus). It's easy to defend your territory when it's small and heavily fortified because every stage of your colonization took many generations.

Contrast with human colonization, where they could plonk down a few tens of thousands of colonists 100 light years from the nearest other colony. Humanity spread out extremely thinly across the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology and had the Men of Iron to protect their colonies. Once the Men of Iron turned on them everything completely fell apart. If they had stuck to a bubble of space within 400LY of Terra with the same manpower and ships, humanity would have recovered from their fall quite quickly and the Imperium would be basically be invincible in its own territories.

   
Made in gr
Storm Trooper with Maglight





 Cognitive wrote:
 Gert wrote:
This is really confusing and I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
If you're saying that these aliens were OK with being part of the T'au Empire but didn't vibe with the Greater Good, then why would the T'au simply eradicate them? They aren't causing real problems for anyone, just keep them confined to their planet with a bogus made up reason for a while. The Kroot don't particularly give a rats about the Greater Good but they didn't get nuked from orbit. Maybe this new species is particularly good at paperwork and their planet can be turned into one big admin office.

What I was trying to convey is that they are pretty much positive to be part of the Tau Empire, but won’t accept the greater good no matter what. However, to make the issue a bit more extreme, let’s just say they are better than the Kroot in melee, but the species as a whole is openly against the greater good for no reason and MIGHT potentially spread their atheistic agenda to other species that allied with the Tau Empire.


The Greater Good is neither a deity nor a religion but a philosophical doctrine. If anything, the Empire can be described as state atheist itself. There is an entity prancing around in the Warp which appears to be a psionic manifestation of the Greater Good concept, but the Tau Empire is (officially, at least) not even aware of its existence, while the only Tau who did witness it, the colonists of the 4th Sphere, were freaked out by it. It's one of the reasons why the 4th Sphere people are considered to be a bit, uh, "special" by the rest of the Empire.
So your hypothetical atheist melee fighter race sounds like it would fit neatly into the Empire.
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






 Cognitive wrote:
 Matt Swain wrote:
I'm ok with the tau as a 'good guy' Frankly all these "KILL!KILL!KILL!" races who exist to destroy and conquer get tiresome after a while.

I'm not sure if the kroot have gods, i seem to remember a kroot telling a human they don't worship things, they accept them. Humans worship things.

And what's this about a tau god forming in the warp? More info please.

You can check this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/798899.page


You're misunderstanding the events of Psychic Awakening as they relate to the Tau.

The Tau as a species do not seem to be warp-capable. The lost expansion sphere that used an experimental warp drive to enter the warp encountered some kind of warp entity that appeared to be based on the simplistic understanding of the philosophy of the Greater Good as understood by the gue'vesa, the human allies who basically took their blind faith in the emperor and just turned it into blind faith in...this other thing.

Different Tau within the expansion sphere reacted differently to seeing that entity, and some ships wiped out their human allies upon seeing the thing that the humans had evidently created with their beliefs (basically, seeing the danger of Psykers for the first time, as the Tau have no psykers or appear to have no psykers).

When the tau landed on the planet, Genestealer Cultists had laid traps and seeded agents into the gue'vesa who were supposed to be sabotaging the imperial government and paving the way for the tau to take over.

The tau who had wiped out their human allies en route, immediately opened fire on any humans they saw upon landing on the planet, and those tau survived the genestealer cult ambushes, while the tau who landed and trusted the humans got murdered.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Gert wrote:
Why didn't the T'au kill the Kroot or Vespid then? The Vespid got given fancy headsets and suddenly became cool with the Greater Good and accepted peaceful annexation. There's a hundred ways to get a race to accept you and the T'au especially shouldn't automatically go for genocide when they are the "good" faction in 40k. If there's only "bad" factions then the setting is just boring because there's no real ideological conflict between any of the factions.


People have this fundamental misunderstanding of how the tau work narratively in the setting of 40k.

They're the optimistic, innocent idealists, and their role in the grim dark future of the 41st millennium is to encounter the terrible gak out there waiting in the universe to consume them. They dont need to be 'secretly evil' to fit into the narrative fabric of 40k.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/14 17:30:34


"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
Morally-Flexible Malleus Hearing Whispers




I remember in the Cain book where the Tau are sitting on a nest of GSC, and can't understand what they are dealing with. The Kroot go ballistic when one of their pack is taken by the GSC and "implanted". The Tau are like dumb children with Gundum suits and nukes.
   
Made in gb
Preparing the Invasion of Terra






That's not 100% true. Initially, the T'au may be naive and trusting but as soon as a race sides against them they are rapidly able to adapt to and overcome their enemies.
POWs are then given the choice of joining the Empire and are basically pardoned and integrated into T'au society.
   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I remember in the Cain book where the Tau are sitting on a nest of GSC, and can't understand what they are dealing with. The Kroot go ballistic when one of their pack is taken by the GSC and "implanted". The Tau are like dumb children with Gundum suits and nukes.
And at the current point in the timeline Tau are well aware of GSC, and have special tactics and units to deal with them ('Voice of Experience' has examples).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/14 18:56:52


 
   
Made in us
Morally-Flexible Malleus Hearing Whispers




It's been a long time since I read the book, but I thought the Kroot were initially extremely upset because they felt they had been "sacrified" to discover what had happened, but were still sent in blind as to what the GSC were or were doing to the Alphas. Like when they eat their squad member.
   
 
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