Who made the tau?

By Professor Tanhauser, in Deathwatch

Ok there was a nice thread that had this topic in it as a spin off, so let's give it it's own thread.

Who created the Tau?

I read the outer reach and loved it, great work. One small critique: The writer over used the word "slumber" too much. Seriously, that word and variants (slumbered, slumbering) were waay over used. There were other terms he could have thrown in, like "torpor" and "dormant" along with their tenses and variants.

Anyway, critique aside, I see that the necron regent, after having a hot mess dropped in his lap by his crippled king, looked around the galaxy and made a few guesses about things. He looked at the Tau and wondered where they came from. He suspected they were the work of one of the Old One's creations.

Since we can pretty safely assume the orks didn't make the tau :rolleyes: I'd guess that leaves the Eldar as a likely suspect. It also seems to rule out the necrons as the necron regent didn't think they were created by the necrons.

incidentally, one person thought the tau's resistance to the warp and psykers might mean they were necron, but maybe the eldar created them as weapons against chaos? The eldar have a big long hate on towards the spiky boys too, you know.

Edited by Professor Tanhauser

I've never read anything about the Tau being made by/related to any other species in the 40Kverse. So, I vote for good old-fashioned evolution .

Most things I have seen seem to point to Eldar. From the hyper-evolution and the arrival of the Ethereals from a bright light in the sky it does seem to point to another race messing with them.

Below is the last known origins story to me. Loved using Tau, great first army.a

Originally the Tau home world was full of the primitive origins of what would eventually become the Tau empire, primitive, but starting to evolve into the caste system with air being able to manage heights better, fire becoming stronger and such. An Imperial explorer fleet discovered the world and thought it ideal for colonisation. It was tagged for discovery and seeding and ships dispatched. They would have wiped the world clean for colonisation thus wiping out the species before it would even commence.

The fleet on route though got blocked as a fortuitous warp storm engulfed the entire planet by pure chance during M35 and blocked it off from the fleet for around 6000 years, destroying the fleet in the process. During that time, Tau society and physiology further evolved till you eventually got cities and feudal states. War broke out between the castes and many Tau died in brutal civil war before the fifth would emerge. The ethereal caste emerged through reasons unknown, possibly and most likely evolution and through diplomacy reason (with suggestions of a low level hypnotic or pheromones aura) convinced the other four to work towards the unified goal of The Greater Good.

Time passes, civilisation develops rapidly, now unified into one goal. Eventually the storm dissipated and suddenly primitive world becomes super advanced, annexed a bunch of worlds and now become a nuisance to the Imperium.

Just because one Necron lord doesn't know who created the Tau doesn't mean that it wasn't some other Necron. Perhaps in secret.

That said, I'm inclined to say Eldar. It's the sort of long-term plan they are so fond of.

It would yhave to be someone who could create and maintaqin severe warpstorms, the ones that protected the tau from the imperium for a few thousand years.

I disagree, I don't think it is Eldar. For most of the time since maybe around M20-M30 or something and onwards the Eldar have been in a state of decline and far too involved in their own affairs to worry about others. An Eldar would only intervene or orchestrate a scenario if it would save some of theirs. While it is true that the Tau would oppose the Imperium, be considered mostly neutral towards the Eldar and act as a buffer, I don't believe that their level of foresight would be enough to mean that this gambit would pay off. Eldar are not known for summoning warp storms, this is not something that would match their methods, no. I can see arguments for it but I don't think they would go with it.

No the more likely suggestion is that the Tau were indeed just by chance. Due to the ever changing and unstable nature of the Immaterium, warp storms can and frequently do manifest in various places within the galaxy for not necessarily any known reason whatsoever and can disappear just as often again without explanation. While there is precedent which says that powerful psychic individuals or weak minds can bring a warpstorm (see the events of Dawn of War Soulstorm, yes it was a terrible game but it had Sisters of Battle so I love it) the majority of them are usually the (un)natural currents of the warp spilling out into real space. It just so happened that this particular storm protected the Tau but it is again not unknown for entire worlds to be cut off by these storms for many years and isolated (see Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising) so that they could develop safely.

If you are therefore going to suspect anyone of "creating" the Tau, not that I'd say anyone created them at all personally and feel it was rapid evolution, their creation could be attributed to the Gods of Chaos and the powers of the warp but again even this is dubious at best.

I think someone had to at least intervene in tau evolution. The imperium disco0vered the tau as primitive, automatically marked them for extermination, sent a fleet to do it, WHAM! The fleet got caught in a warpstorm, destroyed and the storm surrounded the tau for thousands of years. Meanwhile the tau see strange lights in the sky and Poof! The ethereals appear out of nowhere and organize the tau. Oh, yeah, the tau serendipitously discover a wrecked xenos starcraft at the edge of their star system that gives them FTL travel.

Too many coincidences. Someone was up to something.

I think SOMEONE did meddle with the Tau, and I'm not sure who. Chaos seems out, mostly on account of the Tau having so little a warp presence, nor knowledge of the Warp, itself. The Necrons? Why they would is a bit iffy, and they were asleep until just recently; probably too recently to fit the time-table. I favor the Eldar, but agree they likely didn't. An Old One? Maybe a survivor? Possible, but no proof. Some other race out there, that we haven't met? They introduce numerous lesser races to ally with the Tau, and then never tell us of them; why not such a race that MADE them?

As for the warp storms, I can think of at least one FFG example of them calling back a warp storm, to spite their enemies, so it could maybe be possible. Not likely, of course.

You know the thought occure3d to me that if someone made or at least altered the tau, they may have had a good reason to make them basically deaf, blind and invisible to the warp. Let me hit you with a little brainstorm I just had:

The Old Ones created the Eldar and the (kr)orks. At least some 60 or so million years ago. Now look at them. The eldar are highly warp sensitive and masters of psyker powers, and they're also a moribund, morbid, mo[pey, whiney, dying race that's fallen far from it's glory days.

The orks? They have little connection to the warp and are mostly self contained when it comes to psyker abilities, getting their psyker power mostly from the ork race itself.They're still robust, vigorous, strong, healthy and expansionist, limited only by their excessive inter cine conflict caused by their essentially anarchistic nature. Humans messed with the warp, got massively frakked. Eldar messed with the warp, got massively frakked. Orks don't mess with the warp, and are in many ways a viable, successful species. I think even an eldar once praised the orks for being a civilization free of angst, remorse, corruption, etc while the eldar wasted away, and said the eldar has no right o look down at them.

Now, given all that, if you wanted to created a successful species meant to achieve great power and not fall, what would you do? Make them basically immune to the warp, perhaps? Just might be a good idea , based on the evidence.

On the Necron theory it might not be as far fetched as you might think, what if a dynasty woke early and began working on returning Necron's to flesh bodies, the easiest method would be a direct transference of consciousness.

Problem 1. There are no bodies to transfer to in easy reach.

Problem 2. Even if you abduct humans, Necrons are arrogant int he extreme, they wont settle for returning to weaker flesh.

Problem 3. When Necron's were flesh the warp was relatively calm, chaos wasn't really a major concern for the necron's, if they returned to flesh now that could be a much larger issue.

They would need a healthy stock of compatible bodies that matched their idea of their racial identity. So they start from scratch. locate and genetically alter the proto-tau species, observe and guide, insert ethereal's as a control measure those ethereal's in turn controlled by nano scarabs, the tau under them controlled by pheromones. So now you have your perfect bodies, very little warp presence so little threat of the chaos coruption the necron;s would have observed since waking, hell they might even be compatible for transference, two new problems arise.

Problem 1. The rest of the empire is waking, once they discover you can restore flesh bodies all necrons above a certain station will want to return to flesh... one planet of these suckers ain't going to be enough

Problem 2. The transition period is going to drastically weaken the empire and a lot of its technology won;t be usable without metal bodies.

The solution? Grow the race into a mini empire with its own dependant tech hen slowly transfer the race over, halt the Imperium by creating a warp storm around the nursery planet, they have the technical know how to do it and hide it from the Imperium.

This whole Tau empire thing is a precursor to the Necron;s Flipping the switch on the Ethereal's to march the fire cast willingly into soul transference furnaces :P

An excellent theory!^^^

Too many coincidences. Someone was up to something.

In a game system where most of the ideas from the GW factory were either pulled out of their arses (with about the same level of quality as something from said region), stolen from other ideas/concepts or just fantasy into space, I'm not giving much faith to the Empire for their ability to come up with a complex and reasoned background and there are so many events in the galaxy which just happened and the only reasons anyone ever has is either "The Emperor/Chaos did it". Basically this entire galaxy is just one giant Deus Ex Machina. I'd prefer to think that coincidence is indeed the way it happened. That there is no outside intervention of greater powers and that this whole thing is a testament to the ingenuity and creativity of science and evolution to produce this superb species of xenos who have exceptional potential. I'd much prefer that theory over the idea that the entire race was biologically engineered. I mean look at Tyranids, this is a race which adapted and evolved from far out of our galaxy to become the perfect killing machines, free from intervention of these powers...

I don't believe it to be Necrons since they are just a group of machines with an "I hate anything organic because I've woken up with the mother of all hang overs". At least thats how they originally were set up and the Wardian fluff can go die in the fires of Erebus.

Eldar are too self obsessed with their own issue to pull anything like this off. Plus the Eastern Fringe is currently too far away from most of the Eldar craft worlds and only a small number of Exodite worlds are in their borders. It's far too unrealistic for my liking to even consider it plausible.

Orks we can discount because, well, they are orks.

Personally, I'm a fan of the idea that the Tau are the creation of the Old Ones, in this case, a survivor or a small group of survivors that have been in hiding for millions of years. Seeing the fatal flaws of both themselves and their creations, especially in the aftermath of the War in Heaven, it/they decide to mold the primitive Tau into a new race, technologically advanced with a strong internal and highly organized command structure, and limited connection to the warp to prevent a repeat of both their and the Eldar's mistakes. The Ethereals are their personal creation, designed to shepherd and guide their new children.