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Let's get this out of the way:
- I'm not trolling
- yes I know it is HERESY to even discuss this
- yes I know a bunch of you groaned just reading the subject line

As I understand it the Tau have no psychic potential and thus no presence in the Warp due to their biology, specifically their brain chemistry.

My hypothetical is this: could a Sorcerer of Tzeentch create a retrovirus that could rewrite a Tau's DNA to give them psychic potential, and thus a presence in the Warp?

I don't see Khorne, Nurgle or Slaanesh corrupted Tau being possible, but I do see Tzeentch as the Chaos God of Change having this potential.

I'm not saying it would definitely happen, I'm just arguing that it's possible but unlikely.

What do you think?

I don't actually see anything that would 100% rule it out. After all, the Eldar were created specifically with a strong psychic presence.

I would think however that the methods for doing so are beyond the knowledge of pretty much all races in the galaxy at the moment.

I would say that if anyone was able to do it it would be Tzeentchian dudes. Perhaps the Dark Eldar Haemonculi with their peerless knowledge of fleshcraft.

The question I suppose we have to answer is whether warp presence actually has anything at all to do with DNA or a being's physical body at all. A warp presence is a soul. If you transplanted the soul of a human into an Eldar's body, would it have an Eldar's psychic presence? I'd argue not.

Given that, I suppose Tzeentch would be the favourite to be able to pull it off. Motive, and closest we have to method.

I'll lay something out that explains this question.

Tau castes give narrow, predetermined skills and careers. They are smaller in stature than humans. When they premiered, it was specified that most of them have short lives, say forty years. They also have weak warp presences.

Eldar individually can consummately master dozens of skills throughout their time on the paths or as trueborn DE. They are taller, faster, smarter, and by some accounts (William King), stronger than humans. They live for thousands of years. They also, even the nominally or mildly psychic ones, have very strong souls or warp signatures.


So what this means is that an individual Tau, who starts out with narrow career options, who will not develop multiple skills, will not live long, and is not significantly strong, affects the universe in a small ways. This is reflected in their warp signature being modest

An individual elder can do immense feats, and can have multiple careers over their lives. A given elder has great ability to affect the universe. This is reflected in their strong signature.

Psykers can be very physically weak, or they can be strong. However, they always have strong warp signatures compared to their non-psyker compatriots. This is because if they are malnourished, mutated wyrding hedge wizards from an oppressed part of the underhive, they can still affect the world much more than they should be able to, according to their level of health, literacy, and social influence.

Then at other other end of the spectrum their are blanks. Blanks cannot do things for themselves. A Culexus overthrows tyrants, but has no life or agency and is just a weaponized body. The most famous blank is Alizabeth Bequin. She is a drifter and outcast before she meets Eisenhorn and he employs her. This is the most important part. She and Eisenhorn fall in love, and they can never even say it or even spend extensive time with each other. She is charming, resourceful, beautiful, and professionally capable, yet spends her life without her love and is killed in a prologue. So even though she is not an sour, cigarette-smoking, acne-ridden outcast like Jurgen or Frauka, it is the difference between her extensive potential and relatively ignominious life that makes her a blank.

Most of these things are affected by DNA. In terrestrial DNA, length and reparablity of telomeres determines length of life. Most other qualities are affected by it too. When you take an illiterate, malnourished child who l will never get off his planet and implant, in his body, organs with the DNA of a primarch, he can kill stars. So it seems, on the face of it, possible to modify and breed members of a species to acquire psychic ability.

I think that in the specific case of the tau, there are indications it is unlikely.

pelicaniforce wrote:
I'll lay something out that explains this question.

Tau castes give narrow, predetermined skills and careers. They are smaller in stature than humans. When they premiered, it was specified that most of them have short lives, say forty years. They also have weak warp presences.

Eldar individually can consummately master dozens of skills throughout their time on the paths or as trueborn DE. They are taller, faster, smarter, and by some accounts (William King), stronger than humans. They live for thousands of years. They also, even the nominally or mildly psychic ones, have very strong souls or warp signatures.


So what this means is that an individual Tau, who starts out with narrow career options, who will not develop multiple skills, will not live long, and is not significantly strong, affects the universe in a small ways. This is reflected in their warp signature being modest

An individual elder can do immense feats, and can have multiple careers over their lives. A given elder has great ability to affect the universe. This is reflected in their strong signature.

Psykers can be very physically weak, or they can be strong. However, they always have strong warp signatures compared to their non-psyker compatriots. This is because if they are malnourished, mutated wyrding hedge wizards from an oppressed part of the underhive, they can still affect the world much more than they should be able to, according to their level of health, literacy, and social influence.

Then at other other end of the spectrum their are blanks. Blanks cannot do things for themselves. A Culexus overthrows tyrants, but has no life or agency and is just a weaponized body. The most famous blank is Alizabeth Bequin. She is a drifter and outcast before she meets Eisenhorn and he employs her. This is the most important part. She and Eisenhorn fall in love, and they can never even say it or even spend extensive time with each other. She is charming, resourceful, beautiful, and professionally capable, yet spends her life without her love and is killed in a prologue. So even though she is not an sour, cigarette-smoking, acne-ridden outcast like Jurgen or Frauka, it is the difference between her extensive potential and relatively ignominious life that makes her a blank.

Most of these things are affected by DNA. In terrestrial DNA, length and reparablity of telomeres determines length of life. Most other qualities are affected by it too. When you take an illiterate, malnourished child who l will never get off his planet and implant, in his body, organs with the DNA of a primarch, he can kill stars. So it seems, on the face of it, possible to modify and breed members of a species to acquire psychic ability.

I think that in the specific case of the tau, there are indications it is unlikely.

While that's an interesting philosophical worldview on psychic ability, I'm not certain it holds a particular degree of water when you hold it up to the fluff.

If psychic ability is proportional to a being's ability to affect the universe, then you'd find that the top tier of change-makers are all uniformly powerful psykers. However, the Necrontyr were also psychically blunt. Arguably, they are the race who has had the most effect on the 40k universe aside from the Old Ones. It was their war which fethed up the galaxy. It was their war which resulted in the creation of the Eldar and the Orks, major players in the galaxy today who have had a massive effect through the years. They've also pretty much genocided the two most powerful races the galaxy has ever seen (the Old Ones and the C'Tan). They are the most influential race in the galaxy's history beyond the Old Ones, and they're psychically weak.

Interesting point you raise about geneseed and psychic ability though. That is a solid indication that psychic ability does have some sort of connection to genetics, as editing the genome of Marines' implants has resulted in Astartes with wildly different psychic ability.

You both bring up some excellent points. I had not thought of a person's potential for affecting the world as the determination for the strength of their Soul.

I did some more reading and it mentions that 'Tau Souls are feeble and barely register in the Warp'. That works perfectly with pelicaniforce's explanation.

I also read that 'Tau brain chemistry MAY be the reason that they do not have psychic powers'. Also Kroot have the potential to 'develop psychic powers if they consume a creature with psychic powers'. Yes, Tau and Kroot have completely different DNA, but this seems to indicate that biological changes can lead to psychic potential.

As to what would facilitate this biological change other than medical science methods, perhaps Biomancy or even something similar to Soul Binding. From what I read on Soul Binding it sounds like there would be great potential for harming or killing the subject though.

I still don't know how these theoretical biological changes would affect a Tau's Soul. Of course if you're monkeying around with their biology to point of giving them psychic powers, it seems like it would be easy to lengthen their lifespan and thus give them greater potential to affect the world around them

And how would science change a being's soul? Science can't change that which it can not detect...

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And how would science change a being's soul? Science can't change that which it can not detect...

Well I don't see a retrovirus or some other form of gene therapy necessarily affecting a creature's soul, but I can see Biomancy possibly effecting it.

However ignoring the 'potential=soul strength' theory for a moment, it seems to me like the official fluff makes a possible link between psychic powers and Soul strength. If that's true then even mundane methods of granting psychic abilities should effect a creature's soul strength.

pelicaniforce wrote:

They also have weak warp presences.

The investment to turn a T'au into a psyker would not be done just for giggles, so what does chaos gain from this?

 1hadhq wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:

They also have weak warp presences.

The investment to turn a T'au into a psyker would not be done just for giggles, so what does chaos gain from this?

Well my original thoughts were that if you could turn entire colony then you would have the starting point of a new race of Tau, completely unaware of the dangers of Chaos, ripe for the corrupting.

Tzeentch seems like the only Chaos God with powers to make that, and the only one patient enough because he knows he has forever for his plan to unfold.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And how would science change a being's soul? Science can't change that which it can not detect...

Science seems to work just fine ripping giant holes in Space-Time for parallel physics-ignoring dimensional travel.

I don't see why science couldn't cause a physical body to produce a bit more Soulstuff, particularly given we have clear indications that psychic potential is at least partially genetics-based.

We know for a fact that the warp can be modified, amplified, depressed, and manipulated by nothing more than technology, and I see no reason why a biological machine (i.e. a creature's body) couldn't do something similar.

The fact that implanting a normal human with Thousand Sons geneseed raises the odds of them turning into a psyker in later life creates quite compelling evidence that it is possible to modify warp signature/soul strength through biological means.

Accordingly, there is no reason why such a thing could not happen with the Tau. There is clearly precedent.

Sounds legit to me. The psyker/navigator/astropath genes all manifested during humanities early years and has always been described as biological. Tyranids have zoaphrones that's simply genetically composed psyker monsters. Whatever is tying a soul + psychic potential + genetics togheter can clearly be tampered with.

As a counter argument the Taus natural low warp signature may have something to do with the etherials tampering with the species. As might the state regulated births. So it's possible it'd be a great challenge to change the nature of the Tau. Maybe it'd be neccesary to surgically remove that pesky control cystal, who can say?

Don't blanks have the pariah gene? If a gene can make you blank, then it could also make you a psyker.

Nerak wrote:Sounds legit to me. The psyker/navigator/astropath genes all manifested during humanities early years and has always been described as biological.

It's worth mentioning that it's explicitly stated in HH Book One, that humanity was genetically rebuilt by the Emperor during the Unification Era, to repair all the damage that was done by warp storms and radiation/chemical warfare. The Navigators were brought back from near-extinction via genetic treatment and it's implied that even if the Emperor did not directly create them (Which some suspect he did), then he certainly had a hand in re-creating them. So that gives us proof of obtaining or increasing psyker power via genetic experimentation.

On the other hand, it's later stated that the Astropaths have their powers molded and enhanced by the Emperor himself during the Soul-Binding. So that there gives proof that it is possibly to alter an individuals psychic potential via psychic means.

In summary, assuming the same genetic and physics rules apply to Tau as to Humans, then it seems possible to alter psychic traits via both genetic and psychic means.

The problem is grass4hopper - Fish DNA and the warp just don't splice.

In theory, it can.

The HUMAN genome was modified to carry the pariah gene, so if one can make a negative, one should, in theory be able to kindle the weak flame within the T'au. (Yeah, yeah, the necron wizzerds did it).

They're blunts, true - but they aren't proper pariahs. They're tofu and boiled chayote on the soul smorgasbord - but even those two can be given some *zing!*

 chromedog wrote:
In theory, it can.

The HUMAN genome was modified to carry the pariah gene, so if one can make a negative, one should, in theory be able to kindle the weak flame within the T'au. (Yeah, yeah, the necron wizzerds did it).

They're blunts, true - but they aren't proper pariahs. They're tofu and boiled chayote on the soul smorgasbord - but even those two can be given some *zing!*

Yeah agreed.

The human genome can be modified to change its warp signature, as evidenced by Navigators and Blanks.

The eldar genome is wildly different to the human genome, but they still have warp signatures.

Ergo, there's nothing stopping the tau genome from being changed to increase it's warp signature beyond expertise. There's no indication there's anything special about the tau genome to exclude it from this, given that examples of different genetic structures to humans still have connection to the warp.

I would still say that the knowledge to perform this is currently beyond the expertise of pretty much anyone in the galaxy at present. Perhaps Fabius could have a shot at it, although I expect he'll have mixed results. The Dark Eldar might have the expertise too, but their blanket ban on psykers puts paid to that. Perhaps Tzeentch could teach you how, but you'll be certain that whatever bargain you make will come at a price, either to you or furthering Tzeentch's schemes.

Ragnar69 wrote:
Don't blanks have the pariah gene? If a gene can make you blank, then it could also make you a psyker.

Yes, it's a mutation, so it would mean altered genes.

To continue the earlier discussion about soul strength, the Lexicanum in the article for human Pariahs says

of most sentient beings have a connection to the Warp. This Warp signature is commonly called the soul. Psykers have especially strong connections to the Warp, and thus have very bright souls.

I didn't realize that a creature's soul is simply a measurement of Warp signature strength. So given that explanation, yes a creature's soul definitely increases if their psychic potential/Warp signature increases.

Thinking about delivery methods, those of you familiar with the original Mass Effect trilogy might remember how the Genophage (and potentially the Genophage cure) were spread through the Shroud tower on Tuchanka. A Tau colony with a similar atmospheric control or terraforming system would be a prime target. Preferably without the Tau detecting what's going on, so they don't quarantine or sterile.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:
The problem is grass4hopper - Fish DNA and the warp just don't splice.

I beg to differ

What souls actually are in 40k is pretty debatable. It's said deamon princes have their souls removed and replaced with warp stuff. Pariaths are said to be soulless, but they can be diffrent ammount of soulless. So negative souls are a thing (Iirc there's 6 levels of Pariaths with the highest one being relative in power to s Alphs level psyker, but backwards). A soul can be detected through chaos to the material realm, it's hos chaos deamons finds them. They see/smell/notice them. A soul can be consumed for power, yet a soul is not powerfull in itself. The psykers ability to tap into the warp and change reality is not more or less powerfull depending on their souls but rather on the ammount of chaos they can handle bringing without going insane.

Souls are not psycher power levels in 40k.

 Nerak wrote:
What souls actually are in 40k is pretty debatable. It's said deamon princes have their souls removed and replaced with warp stuff. Pariaths are said to be soulless, but they can be diffrent ammount of soulless. So negative souls are a thing (Iirc there's 6 levels of Pariaths with the highest one being relative in power to s Alphs level psyker, but backwards). A soul can be detected through chaos to the material realm, it's hos chaos deamons finds them. They see/smell/notice them. A soul can be consumed for power, yet a soul is not powerfull in itself. The psykers ability to tap into the warp and change reality is not more or less powerfull depending on their souls but rather on the ammount of chaos they can handle bringing without going insane.

Souls are not psycher power levels in 40k.

This.

We don't know what they are or precisely how they work, because no-one in the 40k universe knows what they are and precisely how they work. Or, if they do, they're certainly not telling us.

So we go back to the original position really. Yes it's probably possible, but I doubt many if anyone knows how anymore.

Huh, ok. Do any of you know the source of that information I quoted from the Lexicanum wiki?

Is this just one of those many cases where there is seemingly contradictory information?

I've been told before that's just part of 40k lore.

Could you link the relevant lexicanum entry? Going full disclosure on sources is time consuming but I could get on it tonight if you wish.

Edit: @grass4hopper

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Perhaps Tzeentch could teach you how, but you'll be certain that whatever bargain you make will come at a price, either to you or furthering Tzeentch's schemes.

Yeah, in my hypothetical situation Tzeentch would be helping whoever came up with the plan or more likely it's his plan to begin with. I mean what does he have to lose? If it works he's opened the door to a whole new species to the influence of Chaos. If he fails, it's not like the Tau were appetizing to the Chaos Gods to begin with, so he's lost nothing.

@Nerak. The Lexicanum entry is for Blank, but the paragraph I quoted from is tagged as "citation needed".

Humans did it wth the navigaotor gene, through selective breeding and gene alteration, so it's not impossible.

 Xenomancers wrote:
The problem is grass4hopper - Fish DNA and the warp just don't splice.

I guess he never heard that song by Loverboy.

Tl;DR - I don't think the lesser races have the knowledge or ability to modify DNA in the manner of the old ones, so I think the ability to uplift a species and give them powerful souls capable of psychic powers is not possible currently.

I think we can safely say that a soul in 40k is a spark of the immaterium wrapped in flesh. When the flesh passes the soul returns to the immaterium, where it's fate depends on it's potency. Weak souls like those found in humans and tau fade into nothingness, wholly returned from whence they came. Stronger souls like those of the eldar (and probably the old ones) retain coherence after death and can be reincarnated, or more recently consumed by slaanesh. I don't think an eldar soul could be reincarnated into a human body, not because human bodies couldn't take the power (human alpha level psykers could certainly give the any farseer a run for their money) but because human bodies are somehow inappropriate. I'll call this aspect of the soul body relationship the two being in resonance.

Genetics appears to be what causes this resonance in the body (though in the same way a blueprint causes doors), and you can tweak certain aspects of the soul by tweaking certain aspects of the genome. The pariah genes and the navigator genes are both the product of human engineering, and I'd guess they accidentally made the pariahs in their attempt to make the navigators. This was with dark ages of technology levels of understanding the human genome, with strong AI to help them. Even with that I think it was a hard problem that required AI super intelligence, lots of tries, and more than a little luck.

I think this is because creating a body capable of a resonance which can sustain a soul requires a sublime understanding of the warp as well as genetics. I don't think the lesser races have that understanding, so I don't think it's currently possible to give the Tau souls as the eldar or even humans have them. If the Old ones returned in some fashion or another they could do it, but if the old ones return I imagine it will be with a can of raid and big stompy boots.

This is also why i don't think the Necrons will ever be able to reverse transference, they can transfer their memories into flesh, but it will still not have a soul. The necrons built the pillars of cadia, broke into the webway, and out of the surviving races probably have the best understanding of the interactions between the warp and the material plane, and they can't give themselves their souls back. Instead they are bulk harvesting and performing horrific research on the lesser races in order to create vessels capable of having necrontyr souls.

 Grimgold wrote:
Tl;DR - I don't think the lesser races have the knowledge or ability to modify DNA in the manner of the old ones, so I think the ability to uplift a species and give them powerful souls capable of psychic powers is not possible currently.

I think we can safely say that a soul in 40k is a spark of the immaterium wrapped in flesh. When the flesh passes the soul returns to the immaterium, where it's fate depends on it's potency. Weak souls like those found in humans and tau fade into nothingness, wholly returned from whence they came. Stronger souls like those of the eldar (and probably the old ones) retain coherence after death and can be reincarnated, or more recently consumed by slaanesh. I don't think an eldar soul could be reincarnated into a human body, not because human bodies couldn't take the power (human alpha level psykers could certainly give the any farseer a run for their money) but because human bodies are somehow inappropriate. I'll call this aspect of the soul body relationship the two being in resonance.

Genetics appears to be what causes this resonance in the body (though in the same way a blueprint causes doors), and you can tweak certain aspects of the soul by tweaking certain aspects of the genome. The pariah genes and the navigator genes are both the product of human engineering, and I'd guess they accidentally made the pariahs in their attempt to make the navigators. This was with dark ages of technology levels of understanding the human genome, with strong AI to help them. Even with that I think it was a hard problem that required AI super intelligence, lots of tries, and more than a little luck.

I think this is because creating a body capable of a resonance which can sustain a soul requires a sublime understanding of the warp as well as genetics. I don't think the lesser races have that understanding, so I don't think it's currently possible to give the Tau souls as the eldar or even humans have them. If the Old ones returned in some fashion or another they could do it, but if the old ones return I imagine it will be with a can of raid and big stompy boots.

This is also why i don't think the Necrons will ever be able to reverse transference, they can transfer their memories into flesh, but it will still not have a soul. The necrons built the pillars of cadia, broke into the webway, and out of the surviving races probably have the best understanding of the interactions between the warp and the material plane, and they can't give themselves their souls back. Instead they are bulk harvesting and performing horrific research on the lesser races in order to create vessels capable of having necrontyr souls.

Ooh I really like that explanation. Makes a ton of sense, and fits what we actually know about the 40k universe (not much) rather than making a set of assumptions based on other assumptions.

While the Necrons do have very good knowledge of how to manipulate the warp's interaction with realspace, it's specifically stated that they don't really comprehend how souls actually work. The Dark Eldar, on the other hand, come from a race with deep-rooted understanding of how the warp interacts with mortal creatures, have more present understanding of genetic manipulation than any other race, and have technologies specifically designed around manipulating soulstuff. If anyone can do it, I'd say the Haemonculi can. However, I would agree that it'd be fantastically difficult. They wouldn't be trotting out alpha-psyker supersoldiers overnight like so many Primaris Marines. It would also be completely taboo in DEldar culture, and for the DEldar to find something taboo it'd have to be treated pretty severely.

Oh, and thankyou for reminding me how much I love the 'harvester-Necrons' fluff. Utterly more compelling as a motivation than 'we're senile and we want out empire back'.

 Grimgold wrote:
Tl;DR - I don't think the lesser races have the knowledge or ability to modify DNA in the manner of the old ones.

I'd agree with the possible exception of the Tyranids. They lack any intrest im uplifting species or transending, buy they sure can create psykers out of biomass.

Grimgold 728963 9445580 wrote:
I think we can safely say that a soul in 40k is a spark of the immaterium wrapped in flesh. When the flesh passes the soul returns to the immaterium, where it's fate depends on it's potency. Weak souls like those found in humans and tau fade into nothingness, wholly returned from whence they came. Stronger souls like those of the eldar (and probably the old ones) retain coherence after death and can be reincarnated, or more recently consumed by slaanesh. I don't think an eldar soul could be reincarnated into a human body, not because human bodies couldn't take the power (human alpha level psykers could certainly give the any farseer a run for their money) but because human bodies are somehow inappropriate. I'll call this aspect of the soul body relationship the two being in resonance.

What? Eldars can't reincarnate, unless there's some pre fall Eldar or some post Ynnead wakening stuff that I don't know about. When an Eldar dies two things can happen. They can be gobbled up by slaanesh and they can trap their souls in something. Even if Slaanesh wasn't around nothing current suggest they could jump into a new body. The trapped soul can either (if they lost themselves) be bound into an exarch armour (where it shares a consiousnesses with previous exarchs) or it can be bound to the infinity circut (where, at most, it can be inserted into a wraith construct). I assume the dark Eldar have similar ways of escaping Slaanesh though I'm much less knowledgable about them.

Grimgold 728963 9445580 wrote:
Genetics appears to be what causes this resonance in the body (though in the same way a blueprint causes doors), and you can tweak certain aspects of the soul by tweaking certain aspects of the genome. The pariah genes and the navigator genes are both the product of human engineering, and I'd guess they accidentally made the pariahs in their attempt to make the navigators. This was with dark ages of technology levels of understanding the human genome, with strong AI to help them. Even with that I think it was a hard problem that required AI super intelligence, lots of tries, and more than a little luck.

Not sure about this. During the golden age mankind built warp gates linking stable warp currents. Naturally the gellar field would have to be invented before this. This makes for clear warp exposure way before the unification wars, when the Emperor supposedly created navigators. I honestly don't think he did. I share @Warpig1815 earlier posts opinion on this.

It's not clear if the pariaths are a product of human engineering or a natural thing. Humanity has certainly managed to construct pariaths somehow but they're also born naturally. Psykers certainly spawned naturally and had nothing to do with the Emperor. This suggests pariaths did to.

On warptech:
Actually I'd like to make a point on the gellar fields and Imperial warp tech in general, because it's probably the most intresting piece of tech that's mostly overlooked. A psyker draws from chaos to reshape reality. The gellar field does the opposite, it draws from reality to reshape the warp. As a ship travels through the warp the gellar field grasps a pocket of reality, creating an alien environment in the warp. Void shields work the same way. They drop material projectiles into the warp. Null rods basicly turn the warp interaction off in a small area. Psyk-out grenades sever a bodys connection to the warp. The astronomican is probably the biggest realspace/warpspace interaction device there is. Neither Tau, necrons nor Eldar has theese things so maybe it's pretty strange tech? I actually forgot my point while writing this.

More on souls:
A common misconception is that a powerfull soul=psychic powers. This is not the case because non-psykers can have powerfull souls. In WD 319 p23 (2006) it's stated that planetary governors have powerfull and important souls. So there seem to be some sort of fate or position in power involved. In "dead sky black sun" a deamon sees space marines through their souls and comment on how powerfull the protaganists soul is.
Souls seem to be a meassurement of achievements, possible future achievements and state of minds. We know every single psyker can become a gate to the warp, no matter how powerfull (or weak) they are. If you, no matter your "soul size" or psychic potential, can open up a warp portal and doom worlds then it seems every psycher has great potential. So once again this makes the matter not at all as clear as it would seem.
For instance I think it'd be more prominent to say that all Eldars have powerfull souls and are psykers. The two are exclusive traits.

Final Tau question:
What I'd like to know the most is if the (reverse is true that the) Tau had psykers before the Etherials showed up. I'd honestly wager so because every Taus birth is regulated and has a control cystal implanted. This cystal could be dulling their warp signature. We've seen Imperial tech do similar things already. What the Etherials might actually be doing is the exact same thing the Emperor did, to starve chaos. Their method of doing so however could be by supressing the psychic potential of their species.

Edit: on the Necron memory thing:
It's common practice in the Adeptus Mechanicus to download a consiousnesses into hard drives and upload it into new bodies. See the novel "gunheads" for an example of this. There's also the Eisenhorn case which I will not spoil, but for all of you who've read it the soul sure seems to tag along with the consiousnesses.

Edit 2: The ammount of time this took to write...

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 Nerak wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
Tl;DR - I don't think the lesser races have the knowledge or ability to modify DNA in the manner of the old ones.

I'd agree with the possible exception of the Tyranids. They lack any intrest im uplifting species or transending, buy they sure can create psykers out of biomass.

Ah, forgot about Tyranids. Yeah they can absolutely do it (Zoanthropes), but yeah. No real interest in teaching anyone else.

 Nerak wrote:

What? Eldars can't reincarnate, unless there's some pre fall Eldar or some post Ynnead wakening stuff that I don't know about. When an Eldar dies two things can happen. They can be gobbled up by slaanesh and they can trap their souls in something. Even if Slaanesh wasn't around nothing current suggest they could jump into a new body. The trapped soul can either (if they lost themselves) be bound into an exarch armour (where it shares a consiousnesses with previous exarchs) or it can be bound to the infinity circut (where, at most, it can be inserted into a wraith construct). I assume the dark Eldar have similar ways of escaping Slaanesh though I'm much less knowledgable about them.

Pre-Fall Eldar used to be able to reincarnate. Upon death, their souls floated around in the mostly peaceful (to them) warp until they found another suitable body. Whether that was another identical body retaining who they were, or just another new Eldar that just so happened to have an old soul isn't known. It could also be superstition like real-world reincarnation beliefs, given I haven't seen any first hand evidence in the pre-Fall books, but that's a slimmer possibility. That all came to an end with Slaanesh, who would devour Eldar souls when they entered the warp.

As for the Dark Eldar's solution to Slaanesh, I find it quite elegant (if ambitious). Just don't die in the first place.

Through a form of soul-vampirism they can extend their life pretty much indefinitely, as far as we can tell (Vect's still around from pre-Fall, and Lelith is even older). If they are killed on the battlefield, DEldar who have pacts with Haemonculi can have their remains dragged back to Commorragh (with their soul frantically clinging onto them) and have a new body regrown around them. More powerful DEldar even leave a fragment of their soul (usually attached to a severed body part) in the care of a Haemonculus Coven in case their body is destroyed so utterly it cannot be salvaged.

Quite neat if you think about it

 Nerak wrote:

Grimgold 728963 9445580 wrote:
Genetics appears to be what causes this resonance in the body (though in the same way a blueprint causes doors), and you can tweak certain aspects of the soul by tweaking certain aspects of the genome. The pariah genes and the navigator genes are both the product of human engineering, and I'd guess they accidentally made the pariahs in their attempt to make the navigators. This was with dark ages of technology levels of understanding the human genome, with strong AI to help them. Even with that I think it was a hard problem that required AI super intelligence, lots of tries, and more than a little luck.

Not sure about this. During the golden age mankind built warp gates linking stable warp currents. Naturally the gellar field would have to be invented before this. This makes for clear warp exposure way before the unification wars, when the Emperor supposedly created navigators. I honestly don't think he did. I share @Warpig1815 earlier posts opinion on this.

It's not clear if the pariaths are a product of human engineering or a natural thing. Humanity has certainly managed to construct pariaths somehow but they're also born naturally. Psykers certainly spawned naturally and had nothing to do with the Emperor. This suggests pariaths did to.

Yeah there's a period of time where mankind had warp travel but no Navigators. There's two possible explanations for this:

1. Mankind travelled the warp in short jumps, which are possible without Navigation
2. Their AI systems were able to navigate for them

Neither of which has solid evidence either way as far as I know so you're free to believe what you will.

I'm with you on the idea that the Emperor didn't invent Navigators. I find it fantastically tedious and unimaginative to distill everything great Mankind has ever created to basically 'The Emperor did it'. In fact, my take on the early history of The Emperor and mankind is a little radical and would probably get me burnt as a heretic (spoilered below as it's off-topic).

 Nerak wrote:

On warptech:
Actually I'd like to make a point on the gellar fields and Imperial warp tech in general, because it's probably the most intresting piece of tech that's mostly overlooked. A psyker draws from chaos to reshape reality. The gellar field does the opposite, it draws from reality to reshape the warp. As a ship travels through the warp the gellar field grasps a pocket of reality, creating an alien environment in the warp. Void shields work the same way. They drop material projectiles into the warp. Null rods basicly turn the warp interaction off in a small area. Psyk-out grenades sever a bodys connection to the warp. The astronomican is probably the biggest realspace/warpspace interaction device there is. Neither Tau, necrons nor Eldar has theese things so maybe it's pretty strange tech? I actually forgot my point while writing this.

You know that's a fascinating insight Gellar Fields are a fantastic piece of technology, and do speak to the sheer technological capability of DAoT mankind. It also makes the neat little implication that the semi-permeable membrane that divides the two dimensions, materium and immaterium, works both ways. I wonder if you get rifts of reality bleeding into the warp, much like warp rifts in the materium. I wonder if it works like a pressure gradient, with more energy on the warp side forcing it through to the materium, and if the warp calms somewhat you'd get the opposite effect.

From the xenotech perspective there is precedent for similar high-tech warp devices (and some more powerful). I can also see why they didn't quite follow the same technological path as humanity, which speaks to the depth of thought that actually goes into constructing their backgrounds (I'll try to remember that next time I b*tch about fluff).

The Necrons constructed the Cadian Pylons, which are in effect massively scaled up Null Rods powerful enough to hold back warp bleeds into reality. However, I can see why they would never come up with Gellar Fields as travel through the warp itself was probably never an idea they stumbled upon. They have a good understanding of the warp, but probably only due to studying its effects on the materium. They have no real understanding of the warp itself, so travel through it would not be a concept they'd explore.

Similarly, the Eldar had the webway from the get-go so they'd never have the need to construct Gellar Fields. However, they do certainly have technomancy that provides the same function on a smaller scale. There's a story of a group of Farseers heavily warding themselves and travelling to Nurgle's domain to rescue Isha (didn't end so well for them), which strikes me as having a similar effect to the man-portable Gellar Field Mr Mary Sue himself Kaldor Draigo has. Also, their D-Scythes function by severing the souls of those they're used upon. However, they don't appear to possess Null tech. This fits with them being a uniformly psychic race, to which such devices would be deeply painful if not incomprehensible. The Dark Eldar do appear to have Null tech, but they are psychically atrophied so it wouldn't have the same effect.

Tau certainly do not possess much technology pertaining to the warp, a consequence of their psychic Bluntness and early stage of technological development. Oh, and the Pharos was an astronomican-like device constructed by an extinct xenos race that dwarfed the Astronomican, so again that tech isn't solely the domain of mankind.

However, in the present 40k universe, Mankind does have the most impressive warp-travel technology of any race which is neat to think about. The Astronomican, Navigators and Gellar Fields provide an edge over all races in some way (aside from the Newcrons with their OP Alcubierre Drives).

The Imperium is more manoeuverable than the Tau in all respects.
The Imperium isn't more manoeuverable than the Eldar in terms of raw speed, but the advantage they have is versatility. The Eldar can only travel to where there is a webway gate in close proximity. Humanity can travel basically anywhere there isn't a warp storm. That's genuinely impressive.
The Imperium is more manoeuverable than the Tyranids in all respects, so long as they stay away from them.

 Nerak wrote:

More on souls:
A common misconception is that a powerfull soul=psychic powers. This is not the case because non-psykers can have powerfull souls. In WD 319 p23 (2006) it's stated that planetary governors have powerfull and important souls. So there seem to be some sort of fate or position in power involved. In "dead sky black sun" a deamon sees space marines through their souls and comment on how powerfull the protaganists soul is.
Souls seem to be a meassurement of achievements, possible future achievements and state of minds. We know every single psyker can become a gate to the warp, no matter how powerfull (or weak) they are. If you, no matter your "soul size" or psychic potential, can open up a warp portal and doom worlds then it seems every psycher has great potential. So once again this makes the matter not at all as clear as it would seem.
For instance I think it'd be more prominent to say that all Eldars have powerfull souls and are psykers. The two are exclusive traits.

Very interesting too, and definitely fits better with the evidence we have at hand.

I like the idea that a soul's strength (although I prefer brightness) is to do with 'potential' in its rawest form. Potential to do something, anything. I'm assuming Mr Protagonist did something impressive in the book, so we have one link between 'potential to do something' and a soul's strength. Your example of psykers is a good one too. Psykers have 'brighter' souls than non-psykers, and are also capable of plunging whole worlds into daemon-infested chaos regardless of psychic might or whether they meant to or not.

So, it could well be that the brightness of a soul is to do with 'potential', but only has a coincidental link to psychic power.

 Nerak wrote:

Final Tau question:
What I'd like to know the most is if the (reverse is true that the) Tau had psykers before the Etherials showed up. I'd honestly wager so because every Taus birth is regulated and has a control cystal implanted. This cystal could be dulling their warp signature. We've seen Imperial tech do similar things already. What the Etherials might actually be doing is the exact same thing the Emperor did, to starve chaos. Their method of doing so however could be by supressing the psychic potential of their species.

That would be interesting if that proved to be the case. I don't see any evidence of it beyond conspiracy, but the Tau are pretty shady so I wouldn't put any conspiracy past actually being true.

Hmmm, actually, thinking about it I'd say it's likely to not be true. The evidence against it is the lack of psykers seen thus far in the Farsight Enclaves which have no Ethereals. Neat little headcanon thing you could do though if you wanted a Tau psyker in an Enclaves army, and do some neat grimdark stuff with their first interactions with daemons.

 Nerak wrote:

Edit: on the Necron memory thing:
It's common practice in the Adeptus Mechanicus to download a consiousnesses into hard drives and upload it into new bodies. See the novel "gunheads" for an example of this. There's also the Eisenhorn case which I will not spoil, but for all of you who've read it the soul sure seems to tag along with the consiousnesses.

Hmmm, that is interesting indeed. I wonder if there's something in there about the soul having to have something biological to cling onto, and then being able to hitch a ride. Thinking about the Dark Eldar, that's what they do.

Although, thinking about it, there's a bit of fluff where a daemon basically says that pretty much everything has some form of rudimentary soul. Things like weapons have a soul, through which daemons can corrupt them. That would rule out needing anything biological for a soul to cling to.

I wonder if, again given the wibbly wobbly nature of the warp and causality, it's not quite as straight forwards as that. Perhaps it's a case of 'Grandfather's Axe'.

Your grandfather had an axe. Through the years, its handle has snapped so it was replaced. Its blade has dulled so that was replaced too, perhaps with a more modern design. The handle snapped again, so again it was replaced. Hickory this time, since trade with the States has picked up since your Grandfather's days. However, it is still your Grandfather's Axe. So what if a few bits have been changed here or there, it was still handed down to your father and now to you. You could go out and buy an axe that's design is completely identical to the axe your Grandfather held in his hand so long ago, but it wouldn't actually be your Grandfather's Axe. The one you hold in your hand, physically completely unrecognisable. That is your Grandfather's Axe.

This is something that all human cultures understand, yet makes very little objective sense. Perhaps this is how soul transference works. It certainly has that odd quasi-mystical feel to it of warp interactions, that don't quite follow the rules of the physical universe.

Arch Magos Torimal the Third began his life as any normal Tech Adept. Through the years, he changed his bionics. Limbs here and there, dendrites and wetwired exo-cogitators, malmetal endo-skeletons and optical inserts. He'd even had his mind directly uploaded to a dormant archaeotech voidcraft in order to gain access to it. The resultant implosion had destroyed his body so he'd had to construct a new one. As a joke, one of his 'colleagues' had cloned him once. The great metal behemoth, only 2% biological from his latest estimation, gazed down on his younger self. Yet, this clone, this facsimile, this imitation was not Torimal the Third. Torimal knew that. Whatever it was he was looking at was not him.

I wonder if the Tau or the Necrons, with their weak and non-existent souls, understand this paradox...

Ynneadwraith wrote:I wonder if, again given the wibbly wobbly nature of the warp and causality, it's not quite as straight forwards as that. Perhaps it's a case of 'Grandfather's Axe'.

Your grandfather had an axe. Through the years, its handle has snapped so it was replaced. Its blade has dulled so that was replaced too, perhaps with a more modern design. The handle snapped again, so again it was replaced. Hickory this time, since trade with the States has picked up since your Grandfather's days. However, it is still your Grandfather's Axe. So what if a few bits have been changed here or there, it was still handed down to your father and now to you. You could go out and buy an axe that's design is completely identical to the axe your Grandfather held in his hand so long ago, but it wouldn't actually be your Grandfather's Axe. The one you hold in your hand, physically completely unrecognisable. That is your Grandfather's Axe.

This is something that all human cultures understand, yet makes very little objective sense. Perhaps this is how soul transference works. It certainly has that odd quasi-mystical feel to it of warp interactions, that don't quite follow the rules of the physical universe.

Theseus's Ship Paradox - It's an issue that has been discussed for, quite literally, thousands of years - about 1900 years give or take a decade, and probably for a lot longer than that. The real brain bender comes in the 1500's when Thomas Hobbes asks whether, if you gathered up all the old, replaced planks of Theseus's ship (Or the old dulled blade and cracked handle of the axe) and built another ship/axe - would it be a new ship/axe or the original.

Therefore, when the soul and body are reincarnated and reunited - are they the original, or simply a facsimile that believes it is the original. Is the resurrection real, or simply imagined...