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Saw some discussion in the Chaos Tau thread about O'Shovah (farsight) and his motivations and thought i would share my ideas on the matter in a new thread just about Commander Farsight and who is pullling his puppet strings.

focusedfire wrote:Has anyone ever ventured to think that maybe the Tau were engineered by the last, hidden, remnants of the Old ones and thats why they are pretty much chaos proof.

These are my thoughts exactly

In the beginning when the tau were still without technology they were discovered by the imperium, a fleet was dispatched to purge and colonize the planet. A warp storm of unusual ferocity whipped up encircling current tau space and the entire fleet was lost. Meanwhile on the Tau home world bloody civil war had been raging for many years at the height of the war strange fireballs and lightning storms filled the sky and on that night the ethereals emerged to bring peace to the Tau uniting the 4 castes. Technology evolved at a supernatural rate and by the time the warp storms dissipated the newly emergent Tau race was fully capable of defending itself in the brutal universe it was born into.

Now as far as the Ethereals go it is very apparent that they were genetically engineered by an outside source, there used to be an article on the GW site that talked about how they emit a pheromone that commands obedience from regular tau. So if it is as I suspect and the Ethereals were engineered by the Old Ones it would really tie the whole Farsight scenario in.

Imagine this,

Farsight and his Ethereals land on a desolate alien planet they approach the tomb where they found the Dawnblade (The Eldar blade Anaris) The Nightbringer knowing this is the one weapon that can destroy him has left traps in place to destroy any of the Old Ones minions (Eldar were created by the Old Ones) the Ethereals die a horrific death but the Tau themselves not being creations of the old ones walk into the tomb and claim Anaris as there own. However without their Ethereals they become disillusioned with the greater good breaking off from the Tau empire.

Enter Aun'va and Shadowsun; an epic battle takes place between the renegade and loyalist Tau culminating in Farsight and the space pope coming face to face. Aun'va re-asserts Ethereal control over O'Shovah and now the Tau are poised to become the saviors of the universe by stopping the Nightbringer and his Necron Scourge.

As a side note is says in the Necron Codex that when the Nightbringer went to seal himself in his stasis tomb agents of the Old Ones interrupted the process resulting is the stasis tomb being damaged and unable to sustain the Nightbringer over the millenia he survived only by consuming the energy of his minions he was interred with. What if the world where this took place was the world the Nightbringer interred himself on making sense that Anaris would be there as Eldanesh died in his confrontation and it would take something as powerful as a sword of Vaul to break a necron stasis tomb leaving Anaris there in the tomb for millenia waiting for someone to reclaim it.

Farsight isn't under the control of the C'tan he is the instrument of their destruction!

Except, that in Graham McNeil's "Nightbringer", the Nightbringer is woken by Dark Eldar and the Ultramarines on the imperial world Pavonis.

oh thats right pavonis, forgot about that

pavonis aside, I quite like the theory about the old ones creating the ethereals.

wasnt there something about the old ones in a HH novel? The one about the Alpha Legion, I think.

somecallmeJack wrote:pavonis aside, I quite like the theory about the old ones creating the ethereals.

wasnt there something about the old ones in a HH novel? The one about the Alpha Legion, I think.

"Legion" has the cabal as faction mentioned, a organization of Xenos.

And the theory about the old ones as creators of the etherals is a good one.
The old ones created the eldar and orks, so its possible that some of the most experienced bioengineers in this
galaxy are also to blame for the rise of tau. Would make sense for the old ones to try again to find a race to use.

Legion, thats the one. I remember a thread where someone said either a Slaan or an old one was part of the cabal, or something similar, the exact thing he said escapes me. I havent actually read the book myself though.