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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
TBH I think the sides in this debate come down to this: some people would rather their masters be the same species as them no matter how badly they are treated as long as their species remained dominant over all others while others would be willing to be a slaves to another species so long as their individual lives were relatively safe and comfortable.

You say this but I'm okay being a sex slave to a big-tiddied alien lady. She can even call me names and hit me sometimes, I'll even pretend it bothers me in front of the other aliens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chimera0205 wrote:
Yes and no. The Tau were basically Stalling the Imperium completely on the ground and if they had decided to fight to the end that battle lilely would have gone on in definitely but the imperium decided thag fighting the Tau in an enending forever battle wasnt fething worth it and just fethed off to go fight bugs.

Basically, this is the 40k lore equivalent of "if coach would have put me in, we could have gone all the way to the State Championships and i could be in the NFL right now". Speculation, and we may never know.

Not speculation. They litteralyl were objectively kicking the Imperiums ass on the ground. Thats a fact. They stalled the Crusade out entirely with just the local forces of a single major world.

chimera0205 wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
TBH I think the sides in this debate come down to this: some people would rather their masters be the same species as them no matter how badly they are treated as long as their species remained dominant over all others while others would be willing to be a slaves to another species so long as their individual lives were relatively safe and comfortable.

You say this but I'm okay being a sex slave to a big-tiddied alien lady. She can even call me names and hit me sometimes, I'll even pretend it bothers me in front of the other aliens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chimera0205 wrote:
Yes and no. The Tau were basically Stalling the Imperium completely on the ground and if they had decided to fight to the end that battle lilely would have gone on in definitely but the imperium decided thag fighting the Tau in an enending forever battle wasnt fething worth it and just fethed off to go fight bugs.

Basically, this is the 40k lore equivalent of "if coach would have put me in, we could have gone all the way to the State Championships and i could be in the NFL right now". Speculation, and we may never know.

Not speculation. They litteralyl were objectively kicking the Imperiums ass on the ground. Thats a fact. They stalled the Crusade out entirely with just the local forces of a single major world.

Can you tell me about any books in which the Tau get their gak utterly kicked in? I’ve never heard of anything bad happening to the Tau in a conflict, and my suspicions are that it is because of author’s pet faction.
Remember when that Execution Force of Assassins was sent against Tau leadership? Only one of the Honcho targets was killed, and the worst thing that happened to anybody else was injury? From my understanding, a Callidus was somehow found out, the Eversor ripped through hundreds of people and several Battle suits but Character Farsight narrowly manages to live, the Vindicare is noticed and tracked by the Darkstrider fellow, and only the Culexus ghosts his way to the target.

I don't think it's very productive to 'argue' about fictional factions in earnest with people who take them way too seriously. The most polite way I can put this, is that it comes off like a disturbing obsession and that unnerves me.

I don’t buy your alien dominatrix queen hypothetical, Doritos. The Tau are just gross. No matter how ample Shadowsun’s bosom, they are still disgusting blue alien milkers totally unsuitable for human enjoyment. That’s the thing about aliens; they are alien. You can anthropormorphize them (including Rule 34 style fetishization) but you’re just kidding yourself.

Submitting as a slave to aliens is never going to be psychologically or morally acceptable to a species that comes up with a philosophy like Monodominat Puritanism. It’d be the ultimate genetic and cultural cuckoldry. I can’t think of any coherent rationalization where the imperium are morally superior to the Tau but neither can I imagine submission to the Tau as anything but the pathetic abdication of humanity, which has to be counted as the worst moral transgression of all in the 40k setting.

Do the Tau have a morally superior way of life? I mean, maybe for the Tau themselves. Maybe the Tau are living their best lives. But the idea of humans willingly embracing the so-called Greater Good is a vomit inducing betrayal.

Monodominant Puritanism is a harsh but honest account of humanity, at least in the setting.

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t buy your alien dominatrix queen hypothetical, Doritos. The Tau are just gross. No matter how ample Shadowsun’s bosom, they are still disgusting blue alien milkers totally unsuitable for human enjoyment. That’s the thing about aliens; they are alien. You can anthropormorphize them (including Rule 34 style fetishization) but you’re just kidding yourself.

I never said 'Tau', those are nasty and the females are just males with two slits instead of one.

Personally, I'm more down for something from Star Trek or Star Wars, basically "A hot chick with weird skin and some piece of rubber on her forehead because we got a budget".

Didn't the Tau recently get "outfoxed" by a group of Orkz (basically, the green skins tricked them into walking into an ambush)? Dunno if that qualifies as "getting your gak kicked in", but it probably ain't a proud moment anyway.

Only other instance I can think of is when the Tau were having issues dealing with some Nidz, so the DE offered to help em out. Once again, that turned out pretty badly...

 flandarz wrote:
Only other instance I can think of is when the Tau were having issues dealing with some Nidz, so the DE offered to help em out. Once again, that turned out pretty badly...

At the point where you're willing to believe that the guys with spikes and severed appendages hanging off their belts are "here to help", you have demonstrated that your species is doomed.

The sad part is that "spikes and severed appendages" is an apt description more than one Faction in 40k.

 flandarz wrote:
The sad part is that "spikes and severed appendages" is an apt description more than one Faction in 40k.

Well, true.

The rule is, if it's just the bones they're probably less of a psychopath.

Slightly.

Star Trek and Star Wars are like fantasy settings in that non-humans are just proxy humans.

The space elves in 40k, however, are meant to be totally inhuman to the point of, upon any kind of in-person examination, being inherently horrific to humans. How much more so the slit-faced, hooved blue skins? Ugh.

Living with/among Tau would be endlessly traumatic for humans. If they aren’t heavily sedated, mass hypnotized, or covertly lobotomized, it’s hard to see how such captives would not simply die of stress. Maybe that’s what happens. What is the mortality rate of humans domesticated by Tau captors, I wonder? Probably higher than hive gangers but compared to the peasantry of Macragge, I bet it is quite low.

Whether some alien philosophy is superior to the black satire of human civilization in 40k is IMO a totally moot point simply because alien philosophy is ultimately not applicable to human psychology.

I mean, try imagining the reverse. Imagine expecting a Tau to try and see the Imperium as a superior system. They just couldn’t even begin to, because their alien brains would not even be able to grasp the fundamental assumptions of a society that is, to them, utterly alien.

I think Tau philosophy seems tempting because we understand it metaphorically rather than directly. We say, oh it like X or Y when X and Y are actually human analogs for something that in some way superficially resembles Tau ways, but of course every metaphor is just totally wanting. It’s like saying Cthulhu “looks like” a winged squid dude. That’s actually just the best the human brain can do, right before snapping completely. It’s not actually what the Great Old One “looks like.”

chimera0205 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, Kryptman did exterminatus a bunch of planets. Planets that were in the path of the Tyranids. he did it to deny the hive mind biomass. Much like firefighters will burn a strip of forest to deny a forest fire fuel, or how chemotherapy kills a whole bunch of cells so that the cancer will die.

And it worked. The Hive fleets were forced to turn away as there was no biomass to consume. Killing billions to save trillions. That is the tragedy of the Imperium.

Yeah except he coulda just know EVACUATED THE fething PLANETS!!! You know that is a thing you can do right?

Nope. You're never going to find enough ships to evacuate many hundreds of billions of people on short notice. Human lives are the one thing the Imperium has an endless supply of. It would simply not be worth the expenditure of fuel, food, and ships to evacuate the planets.

There’s no point even pretending to weigh the value of human lives against the cost of an evacuation and relocation. Evacuation and relocation are simply non-options. The infrastructure of the Imperium is not built to accomplish such things. Best approximation would conscripting some Guard regiments before abandoning their homeworlds to their fates.

TBH theres Kroot and other aliens living in imperial space or with humans just fine. Look at blackstone fortress.
I believe you are hard analizing this in a way no GW author has ever done.
Also, please, no more big tiddy alien dominatrix shaming,. Is rude.

 Galas wrote:
TBH theres Kroot and other aliens living in imperial space or with humans just fine. Look at blackstone fortress.

That's more a thing done on the sly. And where the Blackstone Fortress is, it's pretty much 'the Imperium but only because the Imperium says so', it's not like there's a real presence out there to actually enforce the standards.

Dude Blackstone is the ultimate corner case. Humans don’t live with aliens, at least not the kind of humans other human are willing to tolerate, as a matter of IoM society.

Also your alien kink deserves maximum shaming, heretic!

Well, the Jokaero are (I believe) pretty prevalent within the Imperium. Though (to be fair) I suppose the Imps probably consider them to be little more than trained monkeys rather than actual rival species.

 Galas wrote:
I believe you are hard analizing this in a way no GW author has ever done.

Throne forbid!

 Manchu wrote:
Also your alien kink deserves maximum shaming, heretic!

Don't talk to me or my hatchling ever again, bigot.

 flandarz wrote:
Well, the Jokaero are (I believe) pretty prevalent within the Imperium. Though (to be fair) I suppose the Imps probably consider them to be little more than trained monkeys rather than actual rival species.

Yeah, note that the IoM seems to be ok with non-sentient xeno fauna. So Yvraine’s lynx is probably fine but Bobby can’t bring her home for dinner.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Also your alien kink deserves maximum shaming, heretic!

Don't talk to me or my hatchling ever again, bigot.

I will not tolerate the lack of intolerance.

Are Jokaero actually non-sentient, or is it one of those "don't ask, don't tell" situations where they're useful and docile enough that no one cares if they can think or not?

 flandarz wrote:
Are Jokaero actually non-sentient, or is it one of those "don't ask, don't tell" situations where they're useful and docile enough that no one cares if they can think or not?

It's on par with a pet that does interesting tricks that are useful.

As far as anyone is concerned when it comes to the Inquisitors using them.

Apart from "who is morally superior?" I also think that evacuating planets in a sensible timeframe is realistically nearly impossible. I know there are examples in the fluff where it was managed (as Chimera mentioned the Tau also did it), but that's the usual "if the author wants it, it will work".

Just to put that into perspective, take our 2019 earth with its roughly 7.7 Billion people. Its would be far from being a hive world, more like a single hive maybe. Roughly in the range of a civilized world.
If you could somehow manage to evacuate 1 million people a day (which is rather ambitious) you would need 21 years to evacuate them - IF they stop reproducing while you do it.
If you could manage to make it 1 million per HOUR (which would be crazy) you could maybe go down to 10 months
If you could drop it to 1 Million a minute (seriously?): 5 days

And remember: evacuating is not just "loading up". It means
1. load evacuation ships with enough food and water for some weeks of travel for the passengers
2. getting into the system
3. fly from the mandeville point to the planet in sublight speed (which might take weeks)
4. land on the planet, what most large, warp capable transports will not be able to. Therefore you need ferries or shuttles to land
5. load and refuel the shuttles
6. fly back through the atmosphere to the warp capable transports
7. transfer people from shuttles to Transports
8. fly back to the Mandeville point, jump to the evacuation systems Mandeville point, fly in sublight speed to those planets
9. distribute people to evacuation systems, as you cannot just drop some billion people on one replacement planet. They need food, water etc., so you have to split them up
10. refuel your big transports, also get new water and food (you might have to fly to the next agriworld for that).
11. as your ships and shuttles fly like crazy to manage 1 million evacuees per day or even hour, you will have to repair and replace them in time.

Its just... not really possible I think. Even if you look at settings like stargate where you can drop most of the problems listed above, getting 1 Million people per hour to arrive at the gate, pass through it onto another planet and distribute there fast enough to not clog it up is... rather ambitious. And I have not even taken into account the mentioned necessity to filter for Genestealer infestation etc.


Don't get me wrong: its still cruel when an evacuation is not even tried. Its just that I find it hard to believe that evacuations of hive planets are managed at all in the fluff

Couple of points. They are rare. They look like terran apes. The humans that tolerate having them around are radical Inquisitors. So I’d say this is deep into the grey area.

Fair enough on both counts.

 Manchu wrote:
Star Trek and Star Wars are like fantasy settings in that non-humans are just proxy humans.

The space elves in 40k, however, are meant to be totally inhuman to the point of, upon any kind of in-person examination, being inherently horrific to humans. How much more so the slit-faced, hooved blue skins? Ugh.

Living with/among Tau would be endlessly traumatic for humans. If they aren’t heavily sedated, mass hypnotized, or covertly lobotomized, it’s hard to see how such captives would not simply die of stress. Maybe that’s what happens. What is the mortality rate of humans domesticated by Tau captors, I wonder? Probably higher than hive gangers but compared to the peasantry of Macragge, I bet it is quite low.

Whether some alien philosophy is superior to the black satire of human civilization in 40k is IMO a totally moot point simply because alien philosophy is ultimately not applicable to human psychology.

I mean, try imagining the reverse. Imagine expecting a Tau to try and see the Imperium as a superior system. They just couldn’t even begin to, because their alien brains would not even be able to grasp the fundamental assumptions of a society that is, to them, utterly alien.

I think Tau philosophy seems tempting because we understand it metaphorically rather than directly. We say, oh it like X or Y when X and Y are actually human analogs for something that in some way superficially resembles Tau ways, but of course every metaphor is just totally wanting. It’s like saying Cthulhu “looks like” a winged squid dude. That’s actually just the best the human brain can do, right before snapping completely. It’s not actually what the Great Old One “looks like.”

What the feth are you talking about? Often times the only thing that truly changes when the Tau take over a human planet is that the Human now have wide assess to really good civilian technology that improves there standard of living across the board. Theres no evidence of Tau lobotomizing there human citizens. Or sedating them, or hypnotizing them. Like at all. Like seriosuly the only major diffrence being a human living on a Tau World and Human world is that the Tau actually make an attempt to better your life and give a gak about you. There is no domesticion. There not slaves. At absolute WORST there second class citizens but even as second class citizens they still have far more rights and privileges then imperial citizens have. Every single depiction of battles involving the Tau show the Tau doing everything in there power to evacuate civilians no matter if there Kroot, Human, Tau or any other client race. Yeah sure they may give slight preferential trestment to Tau and if the only choice is between evacing a Human and Evacing a Tau theyll obviously choose the Tau but if its at all possible to evac both then theyll do so. Honestly just the fact that there actually willing to evac civvies at all ane put any effort into actually protecting the lives of there civilians should AUTOMATICALLY put them above the Imperium.

It's not that the Imperium isn't willing. If they could magically transport them away, they would. But they can't.

It's that the second and third order effects of even trying would cause more catastrophic loss of life than just doing an exterminatus.

You're obviously very angry that your favorite faction was criticized and you're not being rational at all. I'm just gonna let the mods wrangle you.

Okay... firstly, not true - the Imperium did try where possible:

"Every world within the reach of the Leviathan's advance was to be evacuated and undergo immediate Exterminatus wherever possible, so that its biomass could not become new grist for the Tyranids' production of new bioforms"

Secondly there are several cases, especially on larger worlds, where the Imperium did exactly as you suggest - deploy enough ground forces to make the hive commit to a large-scale sybdual swarm deployment, *then* bomb the crap out of the surface. One such is documented in BFG Armada.

As to the tau having no problems, also not true - there are at least two cases of chaos cults popping up on tau gue colonies, one starting with the earth cast indulging the indigenous tribe in a 'fertility magic ritual' alongside their efforts to stem a plague/famine which resulted in a snuggle incursion, and one where a cadre was hunting down insurgents on a newly compliant human world, in particular an off worlder warlord called 'slaanesh'. The latter resulted in the 'O having to execute basically his entire kroot auxiliary after they went wibbly mutant insane when they ended up agreeing with something they ate...

This is not even a genuine moral issue. Rather, it is purely a matter of resource management. As other have pointed out, human life is a practically infinite resource for the Imperium. Billions of lost lives are of purely local consequence. For the puny, galactically insignificant Tau Empire, such losses would be a staggering setback.

As to the rest, here’s where you get to pick an interpretation.

On one hand, maybe the Tau are just narrative proxies for humanity and they are just another joke in the satire of 40k (“even the aliens are more “humane” than humans har har!). In that case, we can say, morality is universal and the Imperium and the Tau Empire can be judged by the same measuring stick. (Along with Necrons and Orks and even Chaos, I guess? Seems pretty dumb to me.)

On the other hand, maybe the Tau are actually aliens. In that case, there is no bridging the gap between the psychology of the two species and morality as such is a matter purely internal to each.

The implication of the latter is that co-existence would at minimum be severely stressful.

locarno24 wrote:
which resulted in a snuggle incursion

Throne preserve us.

People also tend to forget what is gonna happen when you try to evacuate a hive world.

Billions of people. Information exchange and distribution is limited.

Suddenly a rumor starts about there being not enough room on the ships, or that diseases are spreading. There isn't enough food on the ships, etc.

Now you have panic, disorder, riots... outright rebellion.

People start attacking the evacuation overseers and security personnel. Mobs rush the ramps, children are trampled, people are already dying in droves.

I don't care who you are, no amount of armed personnel and intimidation is going to keep back this tidal wave of terrified people.

Now a ship- an irreplaceable one, and an important one, is in danger. Maybe it crashes into a hive. Millions more die.

More panic. Food hasn't come in. And the other captains do not want to lose their ships.

Then there's the matter of where these people will go... if you can get a portion of them out. Another hive? More poverty, more mouths to feed? No jobs? Absolute ruin.

The evacuation en masse seems like a great solution, until you look at the next group of problems that will pop up and be even worse. And the solutions to these problems can't be just handwaved and solved.

Earlier it was said, what would push Chaos away- better living conditions, better treatment, and education... LOL

Where will you get these things from, is the Emperor going to just warp-fart them out?

Do you think there are ever food riots in Tau cities?

Or are there never even shortages?

I mean, if Tau society is as great as assumed then Tau are not just morally superior they are purest utopian delusion. Which is another way of agreeing with the people who say Tau don’t belong in 40k.

I’m not one of those people. I think Tau belong in 40k. I think their society has all kinds of problems that are solved by brutal application of force that is marketed via their religion as necessary. I mean, that’s obvious right? That the “greater good” is a clear dystopian irony?