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Just wondering if any major developments in Tau lore have happened I've missed.

I remember the Fourth Sphere Expansion, and the client/servant races combined Warp presence made a Greater Good Chaos Entity.

I heard that Commander Shadowsun was maybe worshiping the warp entity that was created from the Greater Good ideology.

Commander Farseer got pretty close to getting corrupted by Khorne while fighting orks one time.

And I think Nurgle has been showing interest in screwing with the Tau in particular.

They have a new allied race called the Nicassar who are like psyker bears.

I can't think of any really big developments with the Tau.

Nicassar aren’t new. Those lads got back to BFG, and the Nicassar Dhow.

Farsight wasn't almost corrupted, Khorne showed him a vision of what could be if Farsight fell to Khorne when Farsight worried about how often he relied on melee and the feelings that evoked and Farsight rejected Khorne immediately.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Nicassar aren’t new. Those lads got back to BFG, and the Nicassar Dhow.

They also weren't bears until parroted memelore that no one realized was meant as a joke, ended up being repeated in one of Phil Kellys novels (So it seems he fell for the memes too and/or got his information from the wiki). They were originally described as avian-like.

It happens weirdly often that the writers fall for fanon, doesn't it?

See the Saturnine suits. The aesthetic and the "Saturnine" name were never associated with each other (both existed, but with no connection) until fans randomly started doing it at some point, and now we have them in plastic.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Nicassar aren’t new. Those lads got back to BFG, and the Nicassar Dhow.

They also weren't bears until parroted memelore that no one realized was meant as a joke, ended up being repeated in one of Phil Kellys novels (So it seems he fell for the memes too and/or got his information from the wiki). They were originally described as avian-like.

To be fair, so are Kroot. And Vespid are winged, but more insectile.
Bears are cool.

 Ashiraya wrote:
It happens weirdly often that the writers fall for fanon, doesn't it?

See the Saturnine suits. The aesthetic and the "Saturnine" name were never associated with each other (both existed, but with no connection) until fans randomly started doing it at some point, and now we have them in plastic.

Purple being the Ork Sneaky paint colour has actually become a thing too now (unfortunately). Also happened with the Squats being Eaten by Tyranids which was never actually a thing, that isn't quite part of the lore (it's vaguely referenced as the Tau think the Demiurg were all eaten but that's it) but everyone still thinks it is.

There's so much 'lore' that just gets parroted out of context until that original context is completely lost and no one realizes it's not how they claim.

The problem is more that from the early 2000s GW was hiring fans to write the setting. the original writers were leaving, so you had people coming in with fanon in their heads already.

Flanderisation happened throughout this time because the nuances that Priestley et al had were lost in the fan discussion and the next gen of writers didn't have first hand knowledge of that original thinking.

It was a game of telephone between writers, flanderising everything down into simpler and simpler things as each successive writer got less of the original themes.

It's usually why people who write sequels to other author's stuff after they die tend to do a worse job. they just don't have the unknown unknowns in their head the way the original creator did.

Doesn't mean they can't improve on it, but for the specific aspects by previous writers that are forgotten, it shows up later.

The best writers IMO are the ones that can 'yes and' the setting without walking all over previous material - which means people like Abnett aren't great by this metric.

Abnett has been in it for so long that he arguably has spent more time defining the lore than needing to think about subverting it. Hard to blame him for that. When he joined in, 40k was so, so much smaller.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Abnett has been in it for so long that he arguably has spent more time defining the lore than needing to think about subverting it. Hard to blame him for that. When he joined in, 40k was so, so much smaller.

When he started he contradicted and wrote over existing things and because he was their first successful author got far more control over how 40k should look that he should have. His designs on 40k are not Rick Priestley's who set the tone for the setting. Abnett's efforts I would argue have stripped a lot of the 40k from 40k, his writing makes it look a lot more generic scifi.

The end and the death is IMO Abnett's 'star wars Prequels' or 'Hobbit trilogy' moment - when a creative is given no oversight because of previous work and just spends their time navel gazing without critique.

Abnett's only skill was creating characters to tell stories about, and the little incidental things to fill out the setting. His attempts at larger metaphysics additions are just terrible and cause far too many issues for no reason, except to give his characters their snowflake special moments by inventing a problematic thing for them to fight or gain. Ignoring what it would do to the wider setting.



I'd challenge if 40k really was smaller, you'd have to define what you mean by that for me to comment.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
It happens weirdly often that the writers fall for fanon, doesn't it?

See the Saturnine suits. The aesthetic and the "Saturnine" name were never associated with each other (both existed, but with no connection) until fans randomly started doing it at some point, and now we have them in plastic.

Purple being the Ork Sneaky paint colour has actually become a thing too now (unfortunately). Also happened with the Squats being Eaten by Tyranids which was never actually a thing, that isn't quite part of the lore (it's vaguely referenced as the Tau think the Demiurg were all eaten but that's it) but everyone still thinks it is.

Not quite with regards to the Kin. Now it is a League of them got devastated by the Tyranids, not their whole race and now they have a special character that is basically the lone survivor trying to seek revenge in a death quest. The Demiurg have now been written as a specific League that traded with the Tau, giving them ion cannon technology.

 Hellebore wrote:


Abnett's only skill was creating characters to tell stories about, and the little incidental things to fill out the setting. His attempts at larger metaphysics additions are just terrible and cause far too many issues for no reason, except to give his characters their snowflake special moments by inventing a problematic thing for them to fight or gain. Ignoring what it would do to the wider setting.

I just wanted to say that I think this is one of the best critical assessments of Dan Abnett's writing in such a small space.

I'm a pretty big fan of the Gaunt's Ghosts series, Horus Rising is what got me into the HH setting, and despite my issues with the ending, I quite enjoyed Legion... but when I think back to what I liked about all those stories, it was the characters and their interactions with each other that carried the weight of everything. Not to say that's inherently a problem, that is one of, if not THE most important thing that you need to get down to write a good story, but I see what you're getting at with those things taking precedent over the broader narrative structure of the setting in general.

The end of Legion is a great example of this. I mean, he was basically painted into a corner from the get go, but that was still a pretty weak explanation for their "fall" and cascaded down into all the Alpha Legion stuff later. Not that some of it wasn't good, but knowing that it had to end up a certain way at the end prevented anything truly great coming from the idea; though that has always been an issue with something like the HH, writing within an established unchangeable framework.

Sorry if that was too off topic, I started to get a little rambly there.

I would argue the idea that the XXth supported Horus because Eldrad said so was the failure of Legion.
It was a bad plot and BL editors haven't been able to tell Abnett "no" for years.

The Ghosts series has the same problems that End/Death has. It stops being about the story and about how much Abnett can tie the current book in with every other book. Enuncia, Samus, Tormageddon, etc.
Like was it really necessary for both Samus and Tormageddon to show up in the Ghosts books? And Samus is just bound to some random Blood Pact guy. Samus. The Daemon that literally started the Heresy and ended it as well.

Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, but I didn't mind Legion. It's not like Eldrad just told him. Alpharius was shown a complex psychic vision from a prediction device which showed the horrors (that we as the audience are familiar of as being 40k) of the future in which Horus didn't win. A vision that must have been all the more convincing because it was real and true, what it showed did in fact come to pass.That vision device is presented as utterly harrowing.

And it's not like he accepted it wholeheartedly. Alpharius reluctantly accepted the vision but Omegon, his other half (almost literally), rejected it out of hand, which seems to have led to all the contradictory actions carried out by the Alpha Legion in the subsequent Heresy, as it was torn between Alpharius and Omegon's agenda.

I think the biggest stretch about it all is that a Primarch would ever accept the eradication of humanity as a price to pay, regardless of stakes and the consequences of inaction. But jam ten thousand years of horror (and the as of yet unseen end times as 40k keeps devolving) into his brain and I figure even a Primarch might just crack, just like how Dorn

Iracundus wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
It happens weirdly often that the writers fall for fanon, doesn't it?

See the Saturnine suits. The aesthetic and the "Saturnine" name were never associated with each other (both existed, but with no connection) until fans randomly started doing it at some point, and now we have them in plastic.

Purple being the Ork Sneaky paint colour has actually become a thing too now (unfortunately). Also happened with the Squats being Eaten by Tyranids which was never actually a thing, that isn't quite part of the lore (it's vaguely referenced as the Tau think the Demiurg were all eaten but that's it) but everyone still thinks it is.

Not quite with regards to the Kin. Now it is a League of them got devastated by the Tyranids, not their whole race and now they have a special character that is basically the lone survivor trying to seek revenge in a death quest. The Demiurg have now been written as a specific League that traded with the Tau, giving them ion cannon technology.

The Mad Core isn't really meant to be an "updated" / canon version of "All the Squats got eaten by Tyranids", though. They're just both events that involve Tyranids.

As for the Demiurg, they have not been written as a specific League. All Kin are also Demiurg, it's just the Tau know the Kin as Demiurg and their trading has mostly been with the Serantok Meranctile League (who they think are the full extent of the Demiurg because they haven't realized there are others despite having had interactions with them)

 Mentlegen324 wrote:


The Mad Core isn't really meant to be an "updated" / canon version of "All the Squats got eaten by Tyranids", though. They're just both events that involve Tyranids.

I think it is. Obviously GW is not going to come out and explicitly say it, but it appears pretty clear nod to the old "Squats get eaten" while updating it since obviously the Kin are not extinct. Maybe it was reported as such by Imperial observers when they saw a swathe of space get stripped by the Tyranids and the League in that area get destroyed, only they didn't realize it was not all the Kin. Remember, we as outside readers know the full extent of the Kin and their various Leagues but Imperials within the universe may have only knowledge of their specific tiny corner of space and maybe one specific League.

IIRC it was a League aligned with the Imperium so obviously the Imperium were like "damn, oh well there goes that Abhuman species homeworlds, guess it's just refugees left".

And then the Demiurg show up and the Imperium just takes it at face value and goes "Ew more Xenos" because they're similar but also slightly different to descriptions of the Squats the Imperium knew before.

And in a galaxy full of different species, nobody really cares all that much if some of them look similar. An Eldar is an Eldar, some just happen to be spiky and some look like clowns but they're all enemies of the Imperium.

 Hellebore wrote:
because he was their first successful author

Jack Yeovil/Ken Newman says "Hi".