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 DoomShakaLaka wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
I'd actually advocate for slavery and force them to produce arms for the IoM's military and convert all of their worlds into either agri-worlds or forgeworlds.


I mean free labor is free right?

/shrugs and then dies from a laspistol shot fired by a commisar to the back of the head/

The Imperium already has free labor. Round up a couple billion criminals across the sector, turn them into servitors, and BAM, mindless slave labor force that can't even rebel.

I'm sorry I can't talk to you I'm already dead.


But yeah your point is valid. One thing I don't understand though

If turning a person into a servitor is supposed to be a horrible punishment, why don't they do it to conquered xenos more often? Too much work I guess

Because Xenos are unworthy to serve the Machine-God.

Ubl1k wrote:
I said 3rd class citizen, Imagine how much good fishing could be done by the dirty fish people.

Tau aren't fish people. Why does everyone keep saying they are fish people? They evolved from plains creatures. They have hooves (litterally the worst appendage to swim with). They are more closely related to horses and such.

OP: Yeah they would proly just get the ax. Why waste the resources on finding a way to make them servitors (the current method might not work on them since they may have differently wired brains and such), and why take the risk of them rebelling after being made into slaves (it takes one etheral to get thru and then everyone around him is unified in his defense)

The Jokaero survive because they're non-sentient. They just have a genetic understanding of technology. Give them a huge pile of parts and the Jokaero will assemble... something.... out of it. You can't ask one to build you a digi-melta and get a digi-melta, it's just the luck of the draw over a long enough time-line.

The Tau? They're intelligent. They would be exterminated.

Official: Suffer Not The Alien to Live

And some cunning traders would get really rich.

DorianGray wrote:
It's too bad the original European colonists and imperialists of the 17th - 19th century didn't implement that policy for the Americas and Africa. Things would be so much better right?

90% of the Americas population died because colonialism, 90 million people.

And also different aims, the Europeans wanted slaves. The IoM doesn't tolerate xenos even as slaves.

It depends on what your definition of Tau are. The race, or the culture? Either way, the Imperium would do their best to annex and annihilate both, though remnants would survive.

The Tau culture, or the Greater Good, is bigger than the Tau. Sure, they use Ethereals to enforce it, but not among allied races - a lot of them just buy the concept. If the Tau were wiped out, the Greater Good may still survive among their client races, but more as a guerillia movement. As they'd no longer inhabit a set area of space, this could mean the Greater Good gets spread more widely by traders, refuggees and nomads, and becomes a form of underground cult/philosophy.

As some of the Tau client races are spacefaring or nomadic, it's likely some of the actual Tau would survive and become spacefaring, and/or retreat to the outer rim. This would be a harsh existence, but they'd still continue as a race in some fashion, with their philosophy helping them endure. If the Ethereals were wiped out though, there is a possibility they'd revert to their sectarian nature and wipe themselves out, as it's hinted they only follow the Greater Good due to pheremone control, and not faith, like the others.

Traders would swoop in and steal technology, which would embolden the Imperium's enemies. None of the main factions would want or need it, but rebels and pirates would suddenly get a major tech upgrade. The Imperium would lose a problem on one border, but also inherit the Tau's Tyranid problem, so they'd not really gain anything.

So essentially, the Tau would continue to exist, but adopt a more underground role. They and their influence would be spread much wider, but also much thinner. They'd go from an empire into a kind of terrorist organisation, kind of like the Logicians, with major influence in one sector, and tendrils in others, preaching the heresy of the Greater Good, and formenting smaller cults and uprisings.

Essentially, they'd likely turn into a corrupting asymmetric force, with gifts of technology rather than mutations. Kind of like a nicer version of Chaos. All in, considering their philosophy, it'd probably work out better for that in the end. Memes spread much better from the ground up than the top down.

With the Tau being the most-advanced of their allies, if the Tau fall, those client-species are not far behind. If the Tau couldn't stop the Imperium, the Kroot, Vespid and Demiurge certainly aren't going to.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
What would happen is some other faction would make humanity pay for their reallocation of resources many times over what the Tau have taken from the Imperium.

Abaddon sacks Cadia and it's game over for the IoM.

It honestly wouldn't require the allocation of many resources. The Tau Empire is about 0.01% the size of the Imperium. If the Imperium did decide to go on an extermination campaign of the Tau Empire, it wouldn't be that much of a deficit to other sectors, especially not Cadia.

 Psienesis wrote:
With the Tau being the most-advanced of their allies, if the Tau fall, those client-species are not far behind. If the Tau couldn't stop the Imperium, the Kroot, Vespid and Demiurge certainly aren't going to.

At what point did I say they were going to stop the Imperium? I said they were going to survive a genocide. That's a completely and utterly different concept.

Also, the Tau falling doesn't mean the others would. Destroying a static empire is easier than hunting down and annihilating species that are already semi-nomadic and spaceborne in a lot of cases. The Imperium doesn't even distinguish properly between Eldar and Dark Eldar. What makes you think they even know, or care, what a Demiurge is? Once the last of the Septs are wiped out, that's job done as far as they're concerned.

The secondary point is that if the purpose of the Tau is to spread the Greater Good, being scattered in such a way is probably ultimately beneficial to that concept. Ideas historically propagate better from the bottom up than the top down. Transitioning from a localised empire to a widespread religion would be a much easier way to achieve this. The client races could easily adopt the technology and culture of the Tau and spread themselves throughout the galaxy, using trade, diplomacy, and even terrorism as a way to advance their goals.

It's a far more efficient way of spreading an idea than how they currently operate. Just look at Chaos. If they only propagated their ideals through military conquest and rule, they'd have almost no influence anywhere in the Galaxy outside the Eye or Terror, and a few other small regions of space like the Maelstrom. The fact they have agents spreading it in the shadows is what makes it such a success. With gifts of technology and promises of freedoms in advance of what the Imperium offers, Tau cults would be a much harder thing to eradicate than a Tau empire.

Because expansion of the Imperium doesn't stop. Not now, nto ever. It may not happen today, tomorrow, or even next week but someday the Imperium will find these people and exterminate them, even if it doesn't remember them from when they destroyed the Tau. Why? Because that is how the Imperium functions.

So you arm a bunch of space-pirates with some pulse rifles. Space-Pirates encounter a Sector Battlegroup and get pwned, because the Tau do not enjoy space-superiority over the Imperium. Those rifles never come into play because they don't have AU ranges.

Some cultists on some Hive World get Fusion Blasters and an old Riptide... and then vanish when the Arbites or the Inquisition catches them.... *or* the smugglers themselves get turned in because, despite how desperate their lives may be, a lot of Imperial citizens are not going to risk their immortal souls by having truck with the Xenos.

 Psienesis wrote:
Because expansion of the Imperium doesn't stop. Not now, nto ever. It may not happen today, tomorrow, or even next week but someday the Imperium will find these people and exterminate them, even if it doesn't remember them from when they destroyed the Tau. Why? Because that is how the Imperium functions.

So you arm a bunch of space-pirates with some pulse rifles. Space-Pirates encounter a Sector Battlegroup and get pwned, because the Tau do not enjoy space-superiority over the Imperium. Those rifles never come into play because they don't have AU ranges.

Some cultists on some Hive World get Fusion Blasters and an old Riptide... and then vanish when the Arbites or the Inquisition catches them.... *or* the smugglers themselves get turned in because, despite how desperate their lives may be, a lot of Imperial citizens are not going to risk their immortal souls by having truck with the Xenos.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire fluff.

By your reading, Chaos cults don't exist. Or Heretek cults. Or Genestealer cults. They're actually impossible to establish, apparently. Planets don't rebel, and the Imperium responds instantly, not on the scale of centuries at times. On top of that, no non-Imperial regions of space exist. Or minor alien species, carving out an existence.

All of this is completely wrong. To the degree that I wonder if you're just assuming the entire Imperium is run the same way as Ultramar.

Imperial citizens regularly risk their immortal souls, that's why Humans are the favourites of Chaos. They're easily corruptible. Look at the Calixis Sector as a good example - it's an entire sector of the Imperium literally teeming with cults of all kinds, Xenos of all kinds, with plenty of Human dealings with both, and the Imperium is largely powerless to do anything but try to police it as best they can. Hell, in lots of regions of space, the Imperium is just an abstract concept that collect tithes now and again.

That's how large parts of the Imperium operate. That's the scenario I'm describing.

Oh, not at all, they absolutely do exist... and, in most cases? They amount to nothing. Nothing. It is only the rarest of rare events that they actually achieve something of note somewhere on some world. Events like Armageddon are extremely rare.

Yes, let's look at the Calixis Sector. You have a bunch of Heretics of high-grade threat running around with small collections of servants (enough to pose a challenge to a group of 3 to 5 Throne Agents) and half a dozen highly-populated worlds.

On said worlds, less than 1/100th of 1 percent of the population is involved in any way, shape or form with either Xenos or Chaos Cults. The vast majority of such conspiracies and cabals numbers, at best, a few score of people. The Tau don't enter into it at all as the Calixis Sector is on the other side of the galaxy from the Tau Empire.

Recidivist Cults? Now, those are lots more popular, and numerous, but involve neither Chaos nor Xenos. Could they eventually come to involve such things? Yes, it's possible, but not a given, and most such groups don't start out that way.

Worlds where the Imperium is a vague and distant memory? Common as hell. You know what Imperial organizations are active on these worlds? The Ecclesiarchy. Arbites. The Administratum. These three pillars alone are found on almost every world of the Imperium in some capacity, the Ecclesiarchy, especially. Even if there are no Sisters attached to the local cathedrals (which is typical), the Church runs its own security and, perhaps even more-effective, the Church gets the citizens to spy on one another for them.

Think your neighbor is running obscura? Praying to the wrong gods? Considering heresy? Trading with Xenos? Tell a priest! The Ecclesiarchy is a militant church, it can more than handle some low-key upstarts just by whipping the congregation into a hate-fueled mob.

If the Tau were conquered, the planets would be purged, purified and then turned into Forge Worlds for Ultramar.

The Final Solution is too inefficient for the Imperium, with the resources and manpower used to build, operate, and maintain the facilities better spent for other purposes. Non-important worlds would be reduced to lifeless orbs in space with cyclonic torpedoes, and then re-purposed as Mining Worlds once the fighting is over. Important ones would be cleansed the old-fashioned way, with the soldiers involved being the first settlers on the new Imperial worlds once the fighting is done.