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Has there even been a definitive answer on the tau's origin? I've heard rumors they are connected to the ancient necrontyr, perhaps even a strain of their race that settled a world amd slowly evolved back to a healthy, if short lived, species. Other theories suggest the eldar had something to do with their origin, or that even "da emprah" somehow created them as eventual human allies. (Some people think that the eye of terror started when da emprah lit a fart while experimenting with creating space portals..)

There seem to be some things reminiscent of the necrons in the tau. Advanced tech, an orderly society, the utter dedication of the majority to the ethereal almost as if they had something like command protocols, use of drones, leaders wielding staffs, no psykers, a tjing about the warp, etc.

Yes the tau necron connection has some plausbility to it. Anyone know any more about this?

Origin? Well, when a blue fish man and a blue fish woman love each other very much...

Yeah, go ahead and quit your day job, I'm sure you'll do fine as a comedian.

Eeesh, someone’s cranky. Excuse my moment of levity. You have “lit a fart” in the OP so eh. ;-)

Well, there are two different threads to the Tau that you may(or may not) be crossing. There's the Tau themselves and there is the shady as anything Ethereals.

Either way, I don't know if there's a lot of stuff out there before the Ethereals showed up. Much like there's not too much pre-Emperor stuff...

The Tau were an unremarkable species on the eastern fringe that was earmarked for routine extermination by The Imperium when warp storms prevented that (which explains their rapid rise from stone age tech to what they have now in such a short space of time.)


As for the Ethereals- no one knows. Unless... Well, this depends entirely on if you consider Xenology canon, OP (some people don't due to the massive inaccuracies in some things biologies, most notably the Tau themselves have feet rather than hooves) wherein a Magos Biologus stumbles upon a conspiracy where the Ethereal caste are engineered by the Eldar using crystals taken from a race called the Q'orl.

As I recall the Necron-Tau thing was just a fam theory. The big catch for me is that Necrons quite clearly have (well, had) a humanoid foot structure compared to Tau hooves.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
As I recall the Necron-Tau thing was just a fam theory. The big catch for me is that Necrons quite clearly have (well, had) a humanoid foot structure compared to Tau hooves.

Over 60 million years maybe the hooves were an evolutionary adaptation?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
As I recall the Necron-Tau thing was just a fam theory. The big catch for me is that Necrons quite clearly have (well, had) a humanoid foot structure compared to Tau hooves.

Over 60 million years maybe the hooves were an evolutionary adaptation?

No.

Why would the Necrontyr have regressed to stone age tech when first encountered?

You're clutching at straws- The Necrontyr were long dead before the Tau walked on two legs.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
As I recall the Necron-Tau thing was just a fam theory. The big catch for me is that Necrons quite clearly have (well, had) a humanoid foot structure compared to Tau hooves.

Over 60 million years maybe the hooves were an evolutionary adaptation?

It would be pretty random to have that be the case.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
As I recall the Necron-Tau thing was just a fam theory. The big catch for me is that Necrons quite clearly have (well, had) a humanoid foot structure compared to Tau hooves.

We don't know that necron bodies are based on Necrontyr anatomy. They could be based on the typical skeletal structure of an Old One-created species to strike terror into them. The C'Tan lead Necrons were very much into terror.

That is true, but afaik we do not have anything to suggest something outside of the default assumption. Also Necrons do not particularly resemble Eldar or Orks, maybe a vague combination of the two but that is a stretch.

Necrontyr did have a connection to the warp, during their apotheosis to the metal bodies, shoals of daemons fed upon the souls released as they were transferred according to the first Necron book. They were also incredibly fractious, like everyone else and needed an external enemy to unite them - protocols and adherence to a leader is something the Necrons have built in, not the Necrontyr.

Necron bodies are almost certainly modelled on Necrontyr bodies, if deviating from the basic body plan is a sign of madness/causes madness - and you have Necrons dedicated to finding a better host body then chances are, the necron body we see is a metal version of the Necrontyr body. What we see as a skeleton might even be an exoskeleton to the Necron. They lived on a planet bathed in radioactivity from the sun, and whilst softer bodied creatures lived in the sea on Earth before the ozone layer formed, insects who are more resistant to radiation colonised the land before things like fish did.

T'au also have a connection to the warp, it's just not very strong compared to humans or Eldar, but still enough to fuel a ritual if you need them. Possibly more diffuse than a human or eldar's rather than being weaker, due to more emphasis on a sense of one's part in a society than as an individual.

Necron nanotech has an issue with the warp, as do the C'tan. Necrontyr themselves just weren't wizards like the Old Ones were.

Additionally the T'au weren't an ordered society until the Eldar came along - they were in a Napoleonic era civil war that was on the cusp of wiping out their species until the Ethereals turned up.

Only 'concrete' thing we know is that there is a passing resemblance of part of an Ethereal's anatomy to that of a Qoorl Queen's. And at some point a group of Harlequins took a Qoorl Hive's Queen for some reason. According to a Necron Lord.

They resemble them a whole hell of a lot compared to something that isn't a bipedal humanoid. Besides, Eldar and orks are only two of the many, many races engineered by the Old Ones, and both pretty late to the party. (Orks were definitely created after the Necrontyr became Necrons, and I believe the Eldar were, too.). It's not really a big stretch to suggest the Necron skeleton is meant to be evocative to on or even all of the created races; the C'Tan put the fear of the Reaper in all the created races (except orks), after all.

Of course, it's possible the Necrontyr themselves resembled the creations of the Old Ones...

But it IS a stretch to conclude that somehow living Necrontyr survived for 60 million years (despite early death and cancerous growths being the primary traits of the species, plus that whole galaxy-wide war thing) and randomly evolved into the newly sapient Tau 6000 years ago.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
They resemble them a whole hell of a lot compared to something that isn't a bipedal humanoid. Besides, Eldar and orks are only two of the many, many races engineered by the Old Ones, and both pretty late to the party. (Orks were definitely created after the Necrontyr became Necrons, and I believe the Eldar were, too.). It's not really a big stretch to suggest the Necron skeleton is meant to be evocative to on or even all of the created races; the C'Tan put the fear of the Reaper in all the created races (except orks), after all.

Of course, it's possible the Necrontyr themselves resembled the creations of the Old Ones...

But if you've got guys trying to find a new living body that can hold minds, and modification of your existing form sends you mad - where are all the necron looking necrons? They're not fighting the C'tans' wars anymore, and can clearly change their shapes and remain functional (they're locked into "warriors" or anything like that). Also as you say -the Reaper C'tan form was put into the other races' psyches, they didn't do the opposite and pull the Reaper form from their psyches. Why would the Lords decide to randomly keep being skeletons, or even become skeleton/beetle centaurs and not think about changing the skeleton bit? They're also not Ork or Eldar skeletons, and the Old Ones presumably also reincarnated so are not going to attach the same connotations to a skull (they probably each have a whole bunch of their own!) - who's going to be intimidated by artistic skeletons that look like they belong to some other species?

Makes more sense that ancient Necrontyr must have looked quite a bit like modern Necrons - but the necron form could be skeleton or exoskeleton. Much bigger stretch to say they look like modern tau but decided on the current necron form (and stuck with it) for other reasons.

First of all, I'm not trying to argue that the Tau are related to the Necrontyr. I side more on the Xenology side, where they are puppets of some faction of Eldar, either working against Chaos or perhaps working in conjunction with other Old One races against the Necrons/Enslavers/Mon'Keigh.

The old codex says that the C'Tan Necrons ruled much of the galaxy for eons before the Old Ones' last hurrah--plenty long enough for the Necrons to have gone completely bonkers or forget their fleshy forms. After all, fleshy Necrontyr probably weren't hovering beetle centaurs, but destroyer lords seem pretty cool with that body style. In all likelihood, we will never know what the Necrontyr actually looked like. Despite being unimaginative, a fleshy immortal or lord form is most likely, which at least then raises questions about their provenance in relation to the Old Ones.

What's wrong with "they evolved on their planet like 99.9999% of all lifeforms in the galaxy". Not everything needs to be a genetic experiment to produce the supreme warrior race by an ancient nearly all powerful race of xenos/an ancient nearly all powerful supreme psyker. That very single faction in 40K (bar normal humans) is that is actually rather strange.

epronovost wrote:
What's wrong with "they evolved on their planet like 99.9999% of all lifeforms in the galaxy". Not everything needs to be a genetic experiment to produce the supreme warrior race by an ancient nearly all powerful race of xenos/an ancient nearly all powerful supreme psyker. That very single faction in 40K (bar normal humans) is that is actually rather strange.

It doesn't really explain why Ethereals just popped up.

pm713 wrote:

It doesn't really explain why Ethereals just popped up.

Which is why "where did the Ethereals come from" is the pertinent question, not "where did the Tau come from".

Sterling191 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

It doesn't really explain why Ethereals just popped up.

Which is why "where did the Ethereals come from" is the pertinent question, not "where did the Tau come from".

I've been treating the questions as one and the same since the Tau would not exist on the galactic stage if not for their ethereals uniting the various Tau tribes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

epronovost wrote:
What's wrong with "they evolved on their planet like 99.9999% of all lifeforms in the galaxy". Not everything needs to be a genetic experiment to produce the supreme warrior race by an ancient nearly all powerful race of xenos/an ancient nearly all powerful supreme psyker. That very single faction in 40K (bar normal humans) is that is actually rather strange.

Humans are also the product of Old Ones tinkering, even if indirectly. All psykic races are.

But, really, tall the 40k races were independently-evolved hominids before the Oldcron codex, and it was ridiculous. Science fiction readers of the time were increasingly unimpressed with such old, campy concepts. Even Star Trek realized they needed to explain that much convergent evolution. And the Oldcron codex tied everything together with a grimmer, darker backstory that created plenty of mysteries and added depth to the setting that was sorely lacking.

It really didn't, both in 40k and in Star Trek. It was the functional equivalent of 'But what are midichlorians?' Pseudo-scientific/pseudo-mystic garbage to answer a question no one asked.

'A wizard (Old One) did it!' doesn't add depth. In fact it subtracts mysteries, as everything is rounded up and dumped into a circular file rather than exploring other possibilities.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

I've been treating the questions as one and the same since the Tau would not exist on the galactic stage if not for their ethereals uniting the various Tau tribes.

And therein lies the problem with your reasoning. They're two very different things, and the current lore pretty heavily implies that the Etherals are the work of something sneaky.

It's also why Farsight and his folks, as well as the dissident movement within the Tau Empire, are such a big honking deal.

Well, it's pretty heavily implied something has been helping the tau survive and advance. The warpstorms that saved them from imperial extermination may have been chance, but were awfully conveniently timed. The arrical of the ethereals during this time, after seeing lights in the sky, again very fortuitous, the fact they just happily discovered an unknown alien ship adrift at the edge of their system when they had expanded to it that contained a FTL drive they could use... Oh come on! Don;t you think we get the fact someone very powerful is protecting and manipulating them?!

I just wondered if there's been any indication who it might be. The necron theory seemed plausible given the way the ethereals seem to almost have like "command protocols" like the necron hierarchy does.

To me it seems unlikely for the Necron's to be the Tau's protector/maniplulator.
Why would they ? Ofcourse you never know in 40k but still seems way out of character.

Now i can imagine the smug eldar trying to imitate their creators by acting as a "benefactor".
Perhaps not as a whole but rather a "seperate" group who saw oppertunity.

Not that i'm an expert on the lore, but thats my $0.02

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Humans are also the product of Old Ones tinkering, even if indirectly. All psykic races are.

I wish people would stop saying this, it isn't true. The old ones had nothing to do with human evolution on earth, they were long dead before humans even existed in recognizable form. It is one of the reasons why the eldar have so much disdain for humanity, we are basically a disgusting fungus that grew for too long in the fridge and is now everywhere.

Well, their technological advance is only 'suspicious' when compared to everyone else's stagnation, and what we know of Man's ascent.

But consider this. Humanity had all the fun of the fair during the Dark Ages, when Religious Leaders basically clamped down on anything 'other'. Men and Women of learning and knowledge were persecuted and had all sorts of awful things happen to them.

Then consider how much was lost. Look to Roman Villas, and Ancient Egypt. Those were two civilisations far in advance of most of their contemporaries. Romans had things like underfloor heating for a start. China was another early starter in terms of overall organisation and technological know-how.

Then add in Ethereals. When you can unit an entire species under the guise of a 'Greater Good', and can get people to accept that without question, you get an entire world all pulling in one direction. With distrust and paranoia stripped away, how fast do you think Man could've advanced in a similar time period? Look at the advances made when the West was more or less united post Second World War. The sharing of knowledge and technology got us from prop engines to the Moon in what, 3 decades?

So overall, the rate they advanced isn't overly suspicious. Especially when they had the luck to find a ruined starship on a nearby moon, and backwards engineer it's tech. That's a massive leg up. And given the ridiculous level of ongoing carnage in 40k, not actually 'suspiciously convenient'.

That leaves just one question - how did the Ethereals do it, and where were they during the dark times of the Tau? The rest actually makes logical sense.

It could be that they're a random mutation - akin to the emergence of Psykers in mankind. Or perhaps an Earthcaste did some genetic tinkering, and created a beneficial monster, either through accident or design.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Well, it's pretty heavily implied something has been helping the tau survive and advance. The warpstorms that saved them from imperial extermination may have been chance, but were awfully conveniently timed. The arrical of the ethereals during this time, after seeing lights in the sky, again very fortuitous, the fact they just happily discovered an unknown alien ship adrift at the edge of their system when they had expanded to it that contained a FTL drive they could use... Oh come on! Don;t you think we get the fact someone very powerful is protecting and manipulating them?!

I just wondered if there's been any indication who it might be. The necron theory seemed plausible given the way the ethereals seem to almost have like "command protocols" like the necron hierarchy does.

No solid indication. There were hints at one point it might have been the Eldar. Eldrad in particular seemed to have soft spot for the Tau. We know he has been knocking around since the HH and broke with the cabal over their view of the future. May the Tau were his own pet project.

Clearly they're Tzeentch's little pets. They just don't know it yet.

JUST AS PLANNED.

I personally think that the Eldar-support hypothesis makes the most sense. A lot of the Tau story is far too coincidental, and the Eldar have the most means and motive to support a fledgling race into an anti-Chaos weapon. As for the Tau themselves, they either evolved totally naturally, or perhaps from some very basic seeds left by the Old Ones (hence the bipedalism). But I think the Xenology explanation for the Ethereals is very logical.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, their technological advance is only 'suspicious' when compared to everyone else's stagnation, and what we know of Man's ascent.

But consider this. Humanity had all the fun of the fair during the Dark Ages, when Religious Leaders basically clamped down on anything 'other'. Men and Women of learning and knowledge were persecuted and had all sorts of awful things happen to them.

Then consider how much was lost. Look to Roman Villas, and Ancient Egypt. Those were two civilisations far in advance of most of their contemporaries. Romans had things like underfloor heating for a start. China was another early starter in terms of overall organisation and technological know-how.

Although a lot less was lost than the common public perception has, and advances continued in many areas too. Medieval Europe was not just some black hole of bigotry and stupidity.

Then add in Ethereals. When you can unit an entire species under the guise of a 'Greater Good', and can get people to accept that without question, you get an entire world all pulling in one direction. With distrust and paranoia stripped away, how fast do you think Man could've advanced in a similar time period? Look at the advances made when the West was more or less united post Second World War. The sharing of knowledge and technology got us from prop engines to the Moon in what, 3 decades?

Distrust, paranoia and ethics stripped away. Part of the reason the Tau are able to advance so quickly is that under the absolute control of the Ethereal Caste, no one bats an eyelid when a load of Tau are killed in an experiment, or Fire Warriors are dying early through using early forms of a new weapon type, or an entire expansion fleet is lost in the Warp. The Ethereals have ensured that ethics are completely forgone in the name of utilitarian goals- the death of an individual matters not if it is for the greater good (unless that individual was particularly notable of course, like an Ethereal...).