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Are there any imperial divisions that might employ any xenos races in the front lines?
My reason for asking this is the background of my tau army is that they have left the greater good and are now fighting alongside imperial forces in the name of the emperor.
so is there any existing imperial division that would allow this, or should I make up a new one to make this feasible?

Yea, unlikely.

Even near-human races such as ogryn and ratlings are treated as cannon fodder at best, and many times killed for no better reason then they waste food.

There used to be fluff,and a few models I think for imperial guard beastmen.

Yeah, I didn't think so. i'll have to make a new one.
what's the difference between adeptus and ordo and which one should I make the new division?

Tau fighting for imperial forces really doesn't sit right. The Imperium is adamantly against xenos contact outside the limited sanctioned contact for rogue traders, ordo xenos and the like. Your average guardsmen are so indoctrinated that any long term alliance with the IG as basically unworkable. You could ally Tau and Stormtroopers as part of Ordo Xenos easily enough, though even then I don't think it likely Tau would give up the Greater Good for anything the Imperium has to offer. The Imperium is backwards thinking, has worse technology and is highly xenophobic so what was your reason for them seeing the glory of the Imperial Truth?

Humans joining the Tau is much more believable, and of course short term alliance is another thing entirely but I think you want something more fluffy and permanent.

 Yonan wrote:
so what was your reason for them seeing the glory of the Imperial Truth?

Their ship crashed on an uncolonised moon orbiting terra. they tried calling their home world but they were ignored and after a good few years of being stranded there, they began to reject the greater good. Then they found another crashed ship, but this one was imperial. They searched it and found some imperial texts. They read the texts and thought "hmm, this Emperor guy seems pretty boss"

Then eventually they were found by some lesser xenos hating imperials and they were put into their own division called the Adeptus Xenotarum.

They just have to avoid the Inquisition and Ordo Xenos.

you're assuming there ARE unsettled moons in the Sol system in 40k.

proably not a good assumption, as any moons without a settlement are apt to be used for secrect installations, such as Titan

A bit of a stretch, but not completely out of bounds of plausibility. You'd need to fluff out the tolerance of the imperials that found them, perhaps a PDF force on the fringe that is used to non-violent xenos contact. You could emphasise the threat chaos poses, and due to the Tau having no affinity for the warp deciding to side with the Imperium as the only hope to defeat chaos.

edit: Terra? Yeah that's a no go. Sol is probably the most fortified system in the galaxy, no way would a Tau ship get in there. Not to mention Tau ships have limited FTL, they basically *can't* get there.

Ok so maybe not a terran moon.
I was thinking that maybe the Adeptus Xenotarum was a division before they found the tau and they were just inducted into it

Perhaps they have allied not with the Imperium but with a undiscovered human colony world etc. There are plenty of lost human settlements in the galaxy that haven't come into contact with the Imperium yet. Perhaps you could ally humans with Tau because these humans don't follow the Imperium 's beliefs or polices.

I remember in the old inquisitor game you could have a kroot mercenary as part of the retinue they even made the mini for it though this was all in 54mm , same with BFG the magazine had rules for kroot and demiurge ships as mercenary's aswell so xenos joining the empire not unheard of .

 MrFlutterPie wrote:
Perhaps they have allied not with the Imperium but with a undiscovered human colony world etc. There are plenty of lost human settlements in the galaxy that haven't come into contact with the Imperium yet. Perhaps you could ally humans with Tau because these humans don't follow the Imperium 's beliefs or polices.

I don't want to ally them with humans, I want them to fight for the Emperor. I have already made the models for them and I cut off all of the t'au sept symbols and replaced them with etched brass imperial eagles.
Good thought though.

Here's a few for you.

- Your Tau commander believes in the doctrines of the Emperor, not the corrupt Imperium built around him. He leads rogue Imperials in the name of what he considers the Emperors true beliefs.

-The commander understands that the Etherials are mentally dominating the Tau and oppressing them. He believes that through the Emperor, he can somehow resist the Etherials domination.

-A rogue trader converted him to the Imperial Cult, and he believes in some heretical version of the Imperial cult that preaches unity between the different species.

-By winning great victories against Chaos, he somehow thinks he can convince the Imperium to renounce their persecution of Xenos.

The Imperium hires xenos mercenaries relatively often, usually recruiting from the likes of the Kroot, Ork Freebootaz/Blood Axes, Eldar Corsairs, and the like.

 HELLvJUMPER wrote:
Are there any imperial divisions that might employ any xenos races in the front lines?
My reason for asking this is the background of my tau army is that they have left the greater good and are now fighting alongside imperial forces in the name of the emperor.
so is there any existing imperial division that would allow this, or should I make up a new one to make this feasible?

There are definately elements of the Ordo Xenos who employ Xenos forces - large scale formations fighting alongside humans is hardy to justify, but not impossible - the Inquisition do very much believe in lets you and him fight......

some good ideas in the thread:

our Tau commander believes in the doctrines of the Emperor, not the corrupt Imperium built around him. He leads rogue Imperials in the name of what he considers the Emperors true beliefs.

-The commander understands that the Etherials are mentally dominating the Tau and oppressing them. He believes that through the Emperor, he can somehow resist the Etherials domination.

-A rogue trader converted him to the Imperial Cult, and he believes in some heretical version of the Imperial cult that preaches unity between the different species.

I quite like the diea that the Tau commander has not been told that the Imperial Faith as best demands his suibjegation and preferably death.

Another thought - maybe they are under the control of a Genestealer Cult......................just read Steve Parkers Deathwatch which does portray a Genestealer Cult (and quite how unpleasent they are) very well............

Well, he explicitly stated that he wants his Xenos to be a part of the Imperium rather than just fight for it as mercenaries.

Overall I think that there's no chance they would be accepted by the wider Imperium because, as it was stated, they're xenos and they are meant to be hated. Of course you can make fluff with a renegade Sept that that somehow renounced the Ethereals' brainwashing and, say, lived peacefully with loyalists on an imperial planet and were accepted by them into the fold after, say, helping fending off Chaos raiding force, Dark Eldar pirates, and/or providing them with supplies.

See, while the Imperium itself would pretty much never officially accept xenos as part of it(it even treats abhumans like trash so xenos.. go figure), but if, say, those worlds were separated by a Warp Storm, they could be a bit more lax about living with the aliens that helped them and if there would be no Schola Progenium or ultra-zealous and hateful Adeptus Ministorum representatives, they could see that the people are actually nice in the Imperium and the Emperor is always shown as a benevolent god, they could begin worshipping him, especially given the fact that they're so gullible and positive thinking.

So yeah, no way they would be officially aknowledged a part of the Imperium and first Ordo Xenos puritans would have all the planets they worked with bombed with cyclonic torpedoes(Exterminatus), but they could join a part of the Empire that is a bit secluded.

You need to think about several things:
-Why renounce Greater Good and the Ethereals, basically betraying their own race;
-How would they make the imperials accept them;
-Why has noone found out yet(and sent a small expedition to get rid of them and all those human traitors that accepted them or outright destroyed the planets through measures of Exterminatus);
-Why would they join the cult of the Emperor;
-How are they going to stay away out of trouble within the Imperium;
-How come they don't know that Imperium is an oppressive, depressing church state that promotes stupidity, hatred, racism, violence and blind zeal and that noone in his right mind would want to be a part of that awful, bleak fold as countless worlds seem to wish to secede from it, but are either too afraid or quickly corrected by the Inquisition, Arbites and the Commissariat.

Overall your idea seems unlikely without some exploits and maybe a bit of cheese, but it can be done if it's written well enough to sound believable. You just have to be thorough with the reasoning.

Edit: Mr Morden raised a valid point with radical Ordo Xenos inquisitors actually accepting things like Tau Cadres to fight for them, but they'd be constantly in danger from puritan inquisitors and would have to be kept secret.

Ok, so the backstory of my tau is, the landed on a random moon and couldn't contact their homeworld so they thought they were being rejected by the ethereals and began to think about how the ethereals are "mentally dominating and oppressing the tau".

Later on, they were found by a Deathwatch crusade and they thought that the tau possess knowlage that could benefit the imperium, so they were assigned to the Adeptus Xenotarum.