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I was just wondering what Tau would think of Chaos space marines and Chaos daemons

Mon'Tau

The Ethereals know who and what they are.


The rank and file of the Empire probably look at Chaos as just another alien faction, with Human allies among their ranks. Any mention of the true nature of Chaos, by Human traitors in the Empire, would be dismissed as superstition.

"The Mont'au is the term in the Tau Lexicon that literally translates into the Low Gothic language ofMankind as "the terror." The term refers to the dark and violent time before the Ethereal Caste arose inTau society to unite all the castes of the Tau behind the concept of the Greater Good. In more recent times, the term has come to be the way the Tau refer to the Forces of Chaos in the Tau Lexicon. The Tau have learned the hard way, like the Imperium of Manbefore them, that the Greater Good has no meaning to the servants of the Ruinous Powers, who care only for the destruction of all that the Tau Empire has sought to build"

 Blitzen the Solitaire wrote:
"The Mont'au is the term in the Tau Lexicon that literally translates into the Low Gothic language ofMankind as "the terror." The term refers to the dark and violent time before the Ethereal Caste arose inTau society to unite all the castes of the Tau behind the concept of the Greater Good. In more recent times, the term has come to be the way the Tau refer to the Forces of Chaos in the Tau Lexicon. The Tau have learned the hard way, like the Imperium of Manbefore them, that the Greater Good has no meaning to the servants of the Ruinous Powers, who care only for the destruction of all that the Tau Empire has sought to build"

Indeed.


But that doesn't mean that everybody in the Empire knows the truth about Chaos. The Ethereals have taken great pains to suppress that knowledge among the population. And low ranking members of the military, who learned the truth,or seen too much, have been dealt with harshly. That was part of the reason Farsight turned against the Ethereals.

Indeed.

But that doesn't mean that everybody in the Empire knows the truth about Chaos. The Ethereals have taken great pains to suppress that knowledge among the population. And low ranking members of the military, who learned the truth,or seen too much, have been dealt with harshly. That was part of the reason Farsight turned against the Ethereals.

Individuals will always be susceptible or sympathetic. On the same note tho, there are no individuals in Tau society. The way of the Tau is completely opposed to anything that relates to the Mon'Tau which is a race memory now and pretty much the boogie man that keeps all Tau in line. So Tau society would always be completely opposed to anything Chaos because of that connection.

I remember an official Tau story where they are battling some Chaos cult of some kind. They believe the cult's leader to be a person named 'Slaanesh'. Upon storming the cult stronghold and killing the Daemon prince leading it, the Tau proudly proclaim that they have killed Slaanesh....

Tau don't register in the warp, so they're naturally resistant to corruption by Chaos. But they have fought Chaos before.

That story was official I thought some fan made it up

 Blitzen the Solitaire wrote:
The way of the Tau is completely opposed to anything that relates to the Mon'Tau which is a race memory now and pretty much the boogie man that keeps all Tau in line. So Tau society would always be completely opposed to anything Chaos because of that connection.

They sure fight a lot of battles, shed a lot of blood and take a great deal of pride in their victories for a society opposed to Khorne.

In fact, it's impossible for them to truly oppose the gods of Chaos. Chaos is just the psychic echo of sentient emotions. The tau may not be psychic, but they have the same emotions as every other species that evolved from pack-hunting predators.

 Lord Inquisitor Nathandar wrote:
That story was official I thought some fan made it up

http://web.archive.org/web/20080415232735/http://uk.games-workshop.com/tau/background/2/

The story in question

It's from the old old GW website, back in the days when it had interesting stuff on it

I'd imagine the rank and file think of chaos as similar to orks - can't negotiate with it so shoot on sight.

It unlikely they understand the metaphysical aspect of chaos though.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:


The Ethereals know who and what they are.


The rank and file of the Empire probably look at Chaos as just another alien faction, with Human allies among their ranks. Any mention of the true nature of Chaos, by Human traitors in the Empire, would be dismissed as superstition.

Well, it's going to be pretty hard to dismiss chaos as superstition on the battlefield when demons are materializing out of thin air and flying around shooting eye lazorz and crushing vehicles.

I can understand the imperium as wanting to suppress this information for fear of chaos cults, but because tau seem more or less completely immune to chaos taint, and since they're supposed to be logical, it seems like it would make more sense for them to instruct their commanders of the unique dangers of fighting chaos powers, rather than let their troops get blindsided on the battlefield.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:


Well, it's going to be pretty hard to dismiss chaos as superstition on the battlefield when demons are materializing out of thin air and flying around shooting eye lazorz and crushing vehicles.

I can understand the imperium as wanting to suppress this information for fear of chaos cults, but because tau seem more or less completely immune to chaos taint, and since they're supposed to be logical, it seems like it would make more sense for them to instruct their commanders of the unique dangers of fighting chaos powers, rather than let their troops get blindsided on the battlefield.

I completely agree. Unfortunately the writers haven't been so charitable as to endow the Empire with common sense or, rather, they've taken it away in recent years.

The most concise answer is "they don't".

Despite what many people believe, the Tau are not IMMUNE to Chaos corruption, they are RESISTANT. They have SOME Warp presence, just a small one
So Tau probably hate and Fear Chaos.

 Chaos Spawn wrote:
Despite what many people believe, the Tau are not IMMUNE to Chaos corruption, they are RESISTANT. They have SOME Warp presence, just a small one
So Tau probably hate and Fear Chaos.

This is entirely correct as seen in the novel "Fire Warrior"
Ethereals are immune, the rest of Tau society is resistant unless accompanied by an etheral inside their sphere of mental influence.

I would assume as they register in the same way a rock or bug registers in the warp.

they are still corruptable in the same way chaos can corrupt inanimate objects.

as well Tau still should negligibly feed chaos as i assume they still feel things like pride, fear, malice and other things. perhaps its the constant brainwashing for the greater good thing that it kinda suppresses most of those feelings. like hey we need to procreate, not because it feels good or whatever but because its for the greater good. and other examples like that.

as to do they know? im sure most of the mooks dont care and just assume they are another flavor of humans, but not sure of official cannon.

this is all assumptions though.

 Blitzen the Solitaire wrote:
"The Mont'au is the term in the Tau Lexicon that literally translates into the Low Gothic language ofMankind as "the terror." The term refers to the dark and violent time before the Ethereal Caste arose inTau society to unite all the castes of the Tau behind the concept of the Greater Good. In more recent times, the term has come to be the way the Tau refer to the Forces of Chaos in the Tau Lexicon. The Tau have learned the hard way, like the Imperium of Manbefore them, that the Greater Good has no meaning to the servants of the Ruinous Powers, who care only for the destruction of all that the Tau Empire has sought to build"

Did you seriously just copy a quote from the 40kwiki? Don't you know that the 40kwiki is like 80% fan fiction? It cites the 3rd and 4th edition codices as source, but that quote is not in the 3rd edition codex at all...
It just says that Mont'au refers to the "Tau race's worst nightmare. The time before the coming of the Ethereal Caste when the other Castes were set against one another. A barbaric time of war that the Tau fear could return should any Tau put himself before the Greater Good.'' No connection to Chaos whatsoever.

It also says:
"Given their limited exposure to the Warp, the Tau found it difficult to comprehend the halluginogenic effect it had on other races and the terrible threat it could represent to psykers. Such talents were a mystery to the Tau as they had no psychic abilities whatsoever, their minds barely registering in the Warp at all." I am not aware that this has been retconned. The Tau are not able to really comprehend Chaos and what it is, there is many examples of this in Tau fluff, from the 3rd edition codex all the way to the Farsight supplement and 7th edition codex. They tend to see stories of daemons as just being superstition and when they encounter daemons they see them as just another alien species (like the Imperium used to do in the days of the Great Crusade). O'Shovah is the only Tau that is aware of Chaos as being more than that apart from the Ethereals. And the Ethereals are very zealous in supressing any unscientific superstitions like the existence of alternate dimensions amonst the Tau (like in the Farsight supplement).

So to sum it up, the average Tau does not think of Chaos at all and if they were to encounter Chaos Daemons, would see them as an unknown alien species, rather than something extradimensional. What the Ethereals do or do not know is unknown (it is only O'Shovah's suspection that they know more than they let on), but whatever knowledge they may have they hide jealously from all other Tau.

 Blitzen the Solitaire wrote:
Ethereals are immune, . . .

And that's exactly what Tzeentch wants them to think.

 EnTyme wrote:

 Blitzen the Solitaire wrote:
Ethereals are immune, . . .

And that's exactly what Tzeentch wants them to think.

This was proven on Fire Warrior when all 4 chaos gods were trying to turn the first Tau etheral and found nothing inside him for them to twist.
But hey all those books are written from perspective as well, so entirely possible still

So Ethereals are Tyranids now?

I didn't think Tau where resistant to the warp so much as they have such a tiny psionic presence that the forces of chaos gain so little from corrupting a Tau that its not worth the effort. Also Tau are indoctrinated by the Greater Good so there is little leverage that Chaos has on a Tau. Similar to Orks in that individually Chaos don't really gain much from individual Orks and Chaos has very little they can entice Orks to join chaos with that they don't already get from their Ork kulture and following Gork and Mork.

As per what Tau thinks of Chaos and CSMs? The Tau population for the most part don't know about Chaos and research into the Warp I believe was stopped due to either being unable to comprehend thus pointless or that the Ethereals determined that it wasn't worth investigating further. The Ethereal caste is aware of Chaos in a limited sense but they don't share this information with the rest of Tau society. This was one of the major reasons Farsight left the Tau to start his own Tau Empire (with blackjack and hookers).