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Hey guys. Starting a guard army to ally with my girlfriends Tau, and I'm wondering if a human auxiliary to the empire be promoted to pilot a crisis suit. I'm fairly new to all things tau, so do mercenaries for the empire follow different command structure, or could they be similar to the fire caste? Cause I was planning on making a small crisis team with human pilots. Any help appreciated guys, cheers.

Auxiliaries are usually just that auxiliaries. They are not part of the Fire Caste Command structure. When on campaign with a Cadre, auxiliaries are attached at the strategic level and usually take orders from Shas'O in charge. That said, the Tau are fairly lenient and generous with their technology, especially with their auxiliaries, so it wouldn't be too strange for a unit of two of suits be in Human auxiliaries.

All right. So just a couple of guys in suits but a commander is probably a bit much then. Ok thanks for the help.

On the contrary, it'd probably the commander and his command squad/bodyguard being the ones in the suits. Getting a suit is pretty much the same as getting a promotion for the Tau.

Oh sorted. Thanks for the help mate

In the book 'kill team' Brains got fried trying to pilot an Crisis suit, it has a security system for intruders. In the tau codex, auxiliaries are given just pulse weaponry at the most, but it is a big universe and you can dictate your fluff.

I think it would be possible for a human to get promoted enough to pilot a suit but certain criteria would have to be met.

1. He would need to have been born on a world already under the Tau's control. Some ex-Emperor worshiping factory worker, Imperial Guard soldier, Arbites officer etc. would never get promoted.
2. He would have to have served faithfully for many years.
3. He would most likely need to be favored by several higher ranking Tau as only they could influence the judgement of a Commander to promote him.

Wouldn't it require none standard suit modifications too? If I recall the suits aren't so much "piloted" as they are plugged into the tau's nervous system. As terrible a book as it was, Fire Warrior had a chapter or two from the POV of a crisis team and gave a pretty good depiction of how to control them. I doubt a human could just use a suit at will (see big macs comment about kill team), but for someone to be specifically picked to pilot them from the auxiliaries, it'd mean creating specific human compatible suits?

And humans are generally larger than members of the fire caste I'm guessing?

 sierra 1247 wrote:
And humans are generally larger than members of the fire caste I'm guessing?

That too. Ignoring model sizes aren't the average firecast around 4-5 feet tall?

Tau technology can hand-wave a human suit easily enough, in my opinion. In a world of psychic space elves, daemons, and warmongering fungus, having one of the most technologically advanced races - never mind that they're very quick with their advances, too - be able to come up with a way of plugging a human into a battlesuit shouldn't be too far beyond the pale.

The only problem is that most human Auxiliaries aren't given the same level of technology in their equipment. They might get the basic weapons and armour but they don't get the shiny railguns or tanks or jets. They are there to pretty much make up the numbers in a garrison or an assault if they're unlucky. I'd say it's more unlikely for a human to be in a crisis suit than it is impossible. Tau have been known to go a little of the rails...

As it has been said before you can direct the fluff yourself.

It would be a commander as they would promote him first, but you will find there is a Shas'O leading him to start, give it time he may be running his own squad but it would take time.

It could be your commander saved an ethereal from a horde of rampaging fungus or you gave him a roll of Andrex when he was caught short.

 doc1234 wrote:

 sierra 1247 wrote:
And humans are generally larger than members of the fire caste I'm guessing?

That too. Ignoring model sizes aren't the average firecast around 4-5 feet tall?

That's a bit too small. They are supposed to be slightly shorter (think 5'7" instead of 6').
(I'll have an approximation in a sec).

All right guys cheers for the assist



Automatically Appended Next Post:
All right guys cheers for the assist

This is actually a pretty cool idea. In the Farsight Enclaves book, you have a Crisis suit being piloted completely by an artificial intelligence, so having a different sort of actual being in the cockpit shouldn't be an issue.

As to fluff reasons...

1. A Tau delegation is cut off and stuck on an Imperial planet. The Shas'O in charge recruits human auxillaries and ultimately has his Earth Caste engineering crew refit some Crisis Suits to accomodate them as his own Tau warriors fall in combat.

2. A particulary talented (or some might say, heretical) Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus discovers a Tau Outpost wiped out by a virus, leaving the tech intact. He studies and modifies the weaponry in order for it to work for humans. If going this route, add some nice Imperial conversions. Human plasma cannons instead of plasma rifles, for example.

3. An Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos enters into negotiations with some Water Caste diplomats in an effort to broker peace in a specific system. As a part of the truce, gifts are exchanged. A single crisis suit is exchanged for a holy relic of the God-Emperor. Little do the they know, but each side is secretly false. The "relic" is a stasis bomb programmed to go off in the presence of any Ethereals. The Crisis Suit is riddled with surveillance gear and is constantly broadcasting secrets and war plans back to Tau Command. Suitably grimdark I think, and the Codex =][= says Ordo Xenos will negotiate with Xenos to gain the upper hand.

The list goes on and on. Be Creative!

 Kriswall wrote:


3. An Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos enters into negotiations with some Water Caste diplomats in an effort to broker peace in a specific system. As a part of the truce, gifts are exchanged. A single crisis suit is exchanged for a holy relic of the God-Emperor. Little do the they know, but each side is secretly false. The "relic" is a stasis bomb programmed to go off in the presence of any Ethereals. The Crisis Suit is riddled with surveillance gear and is constantly broadcasting secrets and war plans back to Tau Command. Suitably grimdark I think, and the Codex =][= says Ordo Xenos will negotiate with Xenos to gain the upper hand.

The list goes on and on. Be Creative!

I like this one the best. This is making *me* want to have Tau allies now!

Kris, that's a pretty darn cool idea! cheers for that

Lol... thanks! I actually used to work for GW as a proper store manager before all the stores went single man. We were actively encouraged to think up reasons for every faction to be involved in every event we threw. I would usually write up a single paragraph of background for each army. It was one of my favorite parts of the job!

Damn, wish I did that for a living...

If it was modified enough I guess. Tau are physically smaller than Humans and the Battlesuits are built for their physical standards.

Also... hooves.

Is it possible? I'd say sure. Would GW approve it? Who can say. But I for one would relish the opportunity to play a well thought out and modified army. Just because it hasn't happened in the books doesn't mean it's impossible, so I say go for it.

 doc1234 wrote:
Wouldn't it require none standard suit modifications too? If I recall the suits aren't so much "piloted" as they are plugged into the tau's nervous system. As terrible a book as it was, Fire Warrior had a chapter or two from the POV of a crisis team and gave a pretty good depiction of how to control them. I doubt a human could just use a suit at will (see big macs comment about kill team), but for someone to be specifically picked to pilot them from the auxiliaries, it'd mean creating specific human compatible suits?

It would be pretty simple for the Tau to adapt it if they wanted to, or at least well within their competency. Supposedly, as per fluff, they are constantly upgrading all of their weapon systems, and do adapt tech to fit other races.

I run my farsight army with some human piloted crisis suits. Nothing in the fluff would prevent that, assuming the Tau modified it (and of any race, they would be the ones to do it).

I vaguely recall some fluff a while back that Tau were providing battlesuits similar to syprer gang suits to a hive where they were recording information for an inevitable attack.

nobody wrote:
I vaguely recall some fluff a while back that Tau were providing battlesuits similar to syprer gang suits to a hive where they were recording information for an inevitable attack.

I always thought it was really weird, but there is enough evidence in the old school Tau codex to pin Spyrer suit creation on them, or at least make an argument for that to be the case (always thought they would make more sense as the result of Eldar tampering, but that's just me.). If they've already made battlesuit plans to fit humans then it shouldn't be too big a deal to bulk them up and give them bigger weapons to match Crisis suit levels.

The humans could also have been born on a planet with different gravity or with a strange "mutation" (like Ratlings and Ogryns) that made them shorter and/or more in the size and shape of a Tau making the original size of the Crisis suit ideal.
This in turn could also been the reason they were chosen, sort of as a test but also a sign of trust/reward.

I think it would be a tough sell. The Tau have the industrial capability to put a larger proportion of the Shasla in suits, but they can't due to a psychological phenomenon known as 'Battlesuit Psychosis'. The only angle I could see was that humans neurelogically are not prone to Battle Suit Psychosis (which I assume is similar to people who reject internment in a dred sarcophogaus) and therefore can be outfitted in greater proportion than regular Tau. Plus they will fight harder, since they know how bad it will be for them if they surrender or are captured.

I would go with something along those lines. The suit would have to be modified extensively, since there are numerous differences between humans and tau, like the number of digits, the architecture of the head and face and body, total configuration changes and a much different, probably more complex neural system in humans.

Also you could have humans pilot some sort of experimental suit which cannot be given fully to either the Fire Caste or the Air Caste as it could be considered to fall under either of their jurisdictions. A work around, especially during IOC testing would be to have a human do it.

What about an average human who saved a Earth caste center from some disaster? Would the high muckity mucks (sorry dont play Tau) maybe consider that worthy if the human was young enough to be trained?

Or a human female saves an Ethereal from certain death on some random Imperial world, dying in the process of giving birth due to her wounds. The Ethereal then raises the boy child raising him from some sense of obligation and makes him a regular instead of auxiluary, and his ability in combat makes him a perfect test subject?

The latter of those doesn't work, Alexi - the idea of adoption is pretty rare in Tau society, since until "The Last of Kiru's Line", Tau babies were raised in creches to foster the idea that the entire race is their family.