@@East_Coast_Toasty_Boy Nah, Age of Strife is when humanity's AI had a Skynet style revolt plus the increased intensity of Warp Storms from the birth of Slaanesh.
@@East_Coast_Toasty_Boy the Horus heresy was a 7 year long civil war that occurred around 2 centuries after the age of strife, the age of strife itself lasted around 5000 years, and although it's true that it hurt humans the most, the fact is that every single race that wasn't predatory got either destroyed, corrupted or became even bigger d0uches than those preying on them, so not exactly the best time for the Tau to spawn.
@@Resi1ience lore-wise they definitely hold their own simply due to the fact that all the horrors of the world are also killing each other. Tau is based. Tau is life. Tau will hold.
"Yeah those giant metal things have flesh cores fueled by rage and hate unimaginable, and have existed for thousands of years...dont get in melee range."
And whatever you do, if you ever manage to disable them, DO NOT INTERACT WITH THEM. Trust me, it’ll scar you for life. I still remember his guttural rage seething into my soul. *shudders*
This part of the lore makes me reminiscent of that time a 100 year old Lion and some Dark Age of Technology robots destroyed a space vampire older than the Eldari Race
They're a reminder of how brutal everything in 40k is, it's a galaxy where mercy is rarely a thing to consider, let alone peace or diplomacy It's a miracle they're still alive despite their beliefs
@Cappuccino_Bunny don't get it wrong, Tau are not afraid to fight and they are great at this. Its just that they are kinda insignificant in the galaxy and most other threats are way more pressing than the Tau slowly expanding into the Imperium territory
@@Cappuccino_Rabbit Their beliefs aren't that much better than the Imperium. Although the Imperium is kinda fucked up, and Chaos is obviously face-value evil, so there's not much competiton. They're still very much an expansionist empire ruled by an oppressive and rigid caste system. Like India during their golden age, kinda.
In our present day, someone as old as that dreadnought pilot would already be about nearly a thousand years old when Upper and Lower Egypt were united under the first Pharoah.
I really liked that book, another scene with a Dreadnought-to-be that was amazing, was when one of the veteran white scars was mortally wounded and the SM captain asked for the Tau to deliver the killing blow to his friend, since the White Scars hated the idea of not being able to ride free, so a Dreadnought was the worse possible fate for them, and he couldn't shoot his friend him self. A rare moment where xenos and space marine co-exist.
That fact that, in the mind of Tau Commander Bravestorm, you realize this ONE being is MILLENNLIA of times older than your entire civilization's existence, is horrifying. Horrifying in that something so OLD could even still be alive, and if not for that one moment, could continue to exist long after your own life ends.
@@WarmasterWirMustard given that those brake physics I’m not surprised they think they should be propaganda they only work because of psychic bull crap
I mean it would be pretty terrifying to just be wandering around in your mech suit and then you see something three times your size crumpled to near dust with a flesh bag barely crawling out of it. Screaming that it's going to kill you with the pain of a thousand suns and then you scan it and realize it's older than your entire species
It's always fun to me how the Tau are basically what humanity could be in another sci fi setting. A young but confident and slightly naive race that brings it's own technology to the galactic playing field and stands in defiance against the old and arrogant empires who look down at them with disgust.
Tau returning, "So yeah, that walking tank. They fused a half dead warrior into it for the last six thousand years. No I did not stutter. That individual probably killed more people then we have in our entire civilization. Think we might have made a mistake leaving home."
Yeah but if they just stayed in there corner of the galaxy and didn’t expand then I don’t think they would’ve been prepared for everything terrible at least with them trying to expand there learning what they can expect from each engagement they have with other species
A dreadnought fallen, a sister lights a candle in their name. "Rest now warrior, may the great sanguinor lead you to the Golden throne. Your duty is done, but ours is not."
The Tau are doing good that ancient veterans of the long war are dying to them. 5 Astartes can purge a planet of Imperial Guard. 5 Astartes don't have a snow ball's chance to do that to the Tau. Entire chapters of Marines have died to the Tau already.
@@imperialofficer6185 to be fair, if youve ever read about space marine anatomy when they become dreadnaughts you can understand WHY... no arms, no legs, no hip and about half of the intestines are missing... so theres no real way to move around...
@@aaabbb-zc7sx Ironically Bravestorm as a dreadnought later on is the only crisis suit (besides Farsight) with a melee weapon. The Oneger Gauntlet. A Power Fist.
It wouldn’t be long before Bravestorm would become a Dreadnought himself. The ultimate irony of the Tau learning of the “horrors” of the Imperium is how often the Tau are doing the exact same thing without realizing it.
Actually Bravestorm requested it against the Earth Caste's protestations because it was a horrific idea and frankly they literally had no clue how to go about it and just made it up as they went. He has nothing to dull the pain as doing so will also numb his ability to piilot his suit. I think as he lay in an infirmary as a burnt husk filled with nothing but a burning hatred for revange he finally understood how that Astartes could live in such a state. (btw. Bravestorm has been defeated again since he made himself a dreadnaught? How did he survive? The marine that took him down actually thought he was already dead, that's how badly disfigured Bravestorm is.)
@@chaomatic5328 I don't know what book that event takes place in, but he appears in his new dreadnought like form in the Farsight books. They are pretty good, which naturally means that Tau players hate them lol.
@@Makorze He was defeated in the first of the Farsight books. When his battlesuit was opened the Scar Lord Space Marine assumed he was already dead that time, too, and just walked past him.
@@Makorzethat’s not a good example as he literally just played dead never mind that space marines have enhanced hearing so yeah they would know he’s breathing alright enough
The book where they encounter the DeathGuard is pretty good. There's some good segments describing how horrifying the DeathGuard are, seemingly being the same species as regular humans, but monstrous in ways that go even further beyond. As well as how their experiments in warp travel traumatise the non-psychic Tau survivors of the expedition, into distrusting and becoming genocidal against all other psychic species, after being stuck on a ship witnessing them one by one explode into daemons. (Those Tau got exiled/sent for re-education when the rescue fleet arrives, and finds them killing the other allied species.) Although the human Gue'vesa technically save the day in the end, by still having faith in the Greater Good, even despite getting turned on like this. Would be slight spoiler lore to explain how.
The crazy thing is that Bravestorm suffered enormous injuries at the end of that same war, and O'Vesa (Farsight's engineer) managed to save him by transforming his crisis suit into the tau equivalent of a dreadnought
Would it be an interesting story line to see the "good guy" Tau's corruption just by mere interaction with other races rather than GW trying to find grim aspects of the race?
This reminds me of a story during WW2 were a group of german soldiers managed to capture an american supply truck and despite the victory they were extremely demoralized after they realized that a cake made in america that was in the truck was about 3 weeks old, meaning that the US could send supplies across the Ocean in less than 3 weeks This is the same expect instead of a cake its a giant mutant death machine and instead of being 3 weeks old its 6000 years old
And the fact the US was casually spending such expensive resources on something so frivolous showed the US was entirely unaffected by the war the Germans knew it was fighting around the world all at once.
@im_aleey German logistics still relied on horse-drawn transport even at the height of their blitzkrieg campaigns, and being unable to update and anticipate for larger scale fields of battle eventually helped lead their downfall thankfully.
@@swingcity7they never faced real threats. Everyone thinks of them as more of inconvinience than a real threat, and that's the only reason they still exist.
@@samfire3067to be fair that aspect wouldn't be that impressive to him. Or at least it wouldnt be as much of a shock. O'vesa (the earth caste engineer who pilots a riptide) uses nano machines to keep him alive for longer. Granted at the moment only he uses them.
It's always interesting to see sci-fi depictions of humanity, not as a stalwart bastion of salvation in the dark, but as an eldritch difficult to understand horror. Humanity becoming something almost unrecognizable as it plunges itself into realms best left alone.
i mean it isnt humanitys fault they have to be this way and theres plenty of good guys in imperium tbh i think imperium of man can be called the good guys compared to every faction thats against them
I just love that this Tau goes from seeing the Dreadnaught as essential another enemy, to the realization that he just watch a life form that is older than his entire species’ existence.
Ironically, Bravestorm too would become a Dreadnought. He’s still alive in the current setting and way older than most Tau that isn’t Farsight. Thing is though, he is PROUD of it. Heck, he practically begged to become this way. He even makes his hologram to be of his disfigured body.
@@crustybomb115 I actually don’t know. I didn’t read much else that has him in it and even then, Farsight tends to take the spotlight What I do know is that he punches Space Marines to death
Yeah human dreadnoughts are proud of it too. That's why they became dreadnoughts, Because they believe in the righteousness of the Empire and wished to deal death to the Empire's enemies long after their biological deaths. No better way than merging with a machine to become one of the universe's deadliest weapons.
@@user-qr6eb4jg9n That’s kinda what makes Bravestorm such an oddball. Tau culture is typically very repulsed by augmentation like this, considered blasphemous even. Of course, because it’s the Farsight Enclave such norms are very often broken.
I know i might get lynched for saying this but if i had to be intered i would pick a crisis suit over a dreadnought chasis any day of the week. Granted thats mainly cause i prefer speed over armor and....well crisis suits can fly. Also onaghr gauntlet.
Of course they know. Bravestorm here waltzed up to the defeated dreadnought and casually scanned it like a QR code, instantly knowing it's age. They've felled titans and anicent Imperial warships, conquered and analysed Hiveworlds. They might not know the exact age and origins of these factions, but the Tau are plenty aware that the galaxy is full of ancient terrors.
Bravestorm is really poetic and I don't even know if it was intentional. Aside from being the first tau to discover what a Dreadnought is, he is among the first to use the Onager Gauntlet - a kind of melee anti-tank claw. Following Commander Farsight, he is critically injured in battle; he ends up entombed in his battlesuit and hooked up to life support. Now, he still serves Farsight as one of his trusted war council, and still his his iconic Gauntlet, and long after his death. In other words - the first Tau to discover a Dreadnought is also the first to, essentially, become one. With a Plasma Rifle, a flamer, and a melee gauntlet weapon, and unusually heavy armor, his loadout even seems intentionally similar to one.
This is what I love about tau. They know their new but just how new. They never had the fall like the Imperium or Aeldari or Necrons. They're so young and naive they can't wrap their brain around the grimdark around them.
It's great. They'd be the villains in nearly any other setting and a major power player, if not the most powerful. In this one, they're nearly the closest thing to Good Guys and just barely hanging on.
@thebighurt2495 more like guilded gold. Instead of having stuff having a perfect empire and having actual good intentions, it's just a thin layer of pristine, beautiful gold that's hiding the ugliness of their empire. They mine-control their own subjects or brainwash those who are not tau like humans and kroot and vespid and many others to believe in their words. And the things they can't fathom or understand are just chalked up as another species that denied the greater good. An empire of beautiful lies with ugly truth underneath.
@@kerbodynamicx472 No, they would. They see venerable Dreadnoughts as the greatest champions and teachers of a chapter, as well as a link to their history and past. They have great advice and know much and their losses always devastate a chapter like losing another high ranking officer, and routinely across all chapters, Space Marines regularly give their own lives to protect these guys. They would be pissed.
that is what is terrifying about space marines, they could be hundreds or even thousand of years old you have a super soldier created for war and hardened by war with the best gear available and with multiple life time of combat experience at this point dreadnoughts are just living archives and heavy brawn combined, wich is again, terrifying
And just like the veteran armoured knights of IRL history, they can still be killed by a single Pulse Rifle round to the head. (Or a volley to the chest) If 40k wars were written realistically, rather than by rule of cool, you'd honestly never want to send Space Marines against the Tau. The Tau are basically built to counter them, and it would be a total waste. Much better suited to try and drown the Tau in guardsmen from every angle.
@@TheManofthecross Ork "quality" isn't really a limited relic resource. Gene-seed and Astartes wargear is. My point is more that most of the specific things that makes a Space Marine strong, the Tau standard kit/doctrine is quite effective again. A bog-standard pulse rifle deployed in mass, being a serious threat to a centuries old veteran, is kinda a big deal. The same weapon vs the bigger orks, isn't nearly as effective since orks rely primarily on physical toughness and ability to shrug off injury, rather than armour. Meanwhile against the guard, all this fire power is overkill (at least against the infantry), whilst those lasguns are still plenty capable of killing Firewarriors.
@@UnknownSquidthe imperium can easily kill the tau, but it's pointless. They're useful fodder and the resource expenditure wouldn't justify the fact that you just busted your tyranid shield in the sector.
The Tau are gonna come and steal all your humans with the corrupting allure of three square meals and an air conditioned apartment. : P They're a pretty useful part of the Empire.
My favorite story with Tau. Its nice to see sometimes Humanity as ancient, horror like race wchich see other races as a little more than worms (yep Necrons are my favorite)
Dreadnoughts are so badass they've been alive for thousands of years, suffered for thousands of years, and whenever they face an enemy near death's door or is about to deliver death they always go "Kill me or i kill you!"
This book has so many good tidbits, like the guardsman who is captured by the Tau, and eventually converts to their side because of the "luxuries" he witnesses while being transported as a prisoner (the transport works, it has AC, and the water they gave him is clean).
It's weird that in Warhammer 40,000 a basically new species to the setting which is humanity, for the most part because I mean the eldar have been around for since before the Dinosaurs, is referred to as ancient. But of course the Tau is completely new
Ngl, that's why I love the Tau. I don't think they're the good guys or anything, but they're one of more reasonable faction + they're clearly the most naive one, and I love seeing them discovering the Universe and its ✨wonders✨
This is why I love the addition of the Tau to the game, it helps to reframe how messed up everything is back to relatively normal levels of morality. Without that kind of moves stories can lose the punch that they had making the audience numb.
"more human" give them time.they are still a young race and they haven't dealt with events like the horus heresy or the age of strife.once their species is on the verge of collapsing like humanity was,they'll realise that survival is more important than "morals"
An ambitious and militaristic expansionist empire, with a "join us or else" policy, rigid caste system where roughly 25% of the population are born into the military and serve until death. And they're the closest thing the setting has to the "good guys". : P
Not any other sci-fi setting. Their stance on imperialism and other races is nearly identical to Halo’s covenant; ie “join us or die”, which the Covenant did several times The Tau are identical to the Romulans from ST. Imperial expansionists, militarists, service til death, etc. The Tau are the bad guys from other sci-fi settings. Everyone else in 40k is just that much worse
@@CMTechnica Well not quite. It's not "Join us or die", it's "Join us or we'll make you." And they'll take the route that results in the least violence if possible, since their end goal is of course a well integrated new member of the Empire, so causing excessive destruction is counterproductive for them. They're also plenty open to diplomatic allegiances, if absorbing another empire isn't feasible.
There are several books focused on the Tau, written from their perspective. Although it's worth noting that against the Imperium at least, it's nearly always the Tau being the conquerors, not the other way around. Their empire has expanded substantially over the course of their lore, with the Imperium losing dozens of planets to them. ( Most people who don't read the actual lore first hand, and rely 100% on inaccurate memes and youtube shorts for their lore, don't seem to understand this...) There's also a game yes, but don't play that. xD
@@UnknownSquid imma be honest bro, i like the lore i read key books and love every Necron book/where the Necrons play a vital role but i aint got no time for 40 Horus Heresy books or 50 other books hahah. I get it the lore is wide and deep but if you are not fully committed then its just not possible. I like these shorts yeah but i mainly watch the longer lore focused vides as an audio book.
@@morpheus2615 I don't blame you with the Horus Heresy stuff. There's so much of it, and whilst I'm sure many of the stories are good, there's a limit of how much overly poetic Space Marine/Primarch glorification I can care for. ^ ^; Am generally far more interested in either the Xeno focused books, or current timeline events. Also unlike lore vids on the Tau, you can generally trust people to report accurately on the Astartes, Primarchs and historic details. If you want Tau lore though, you really have to go to the source. So much of the stuff on them around RU-vid is just atrociously biased and misleading.
When people say that the Tau don’t fit, this is why they’re needed. You need that outside perspective that looks in and has to come to terms with the staggering horror that is 40k.
Technically they sort of knew this, even before their first war with Humanity, though used it to their advantage. It's strongly implied in the Farsight books, that the Damocles Crusade was actually a trap, where the Ethereals realised the Imperium vastly overshadowed them, and thus carefully engineered the conflict in advance to ensure the Imperium would be over confident and under-commit. They denied any military action on the Imperial side of the gulf, deliberately acting weak and pacifist, whilst maximising diplomatic/trade disruption, so as to bait the Imperial reaction. Meanwhile Tau forces were gathered on the Tau side of the gulf, which wouldn't be known until the crusade fleet had already crossed. The resulting unexpected loss for the Imperium discouraged further efforts, and gave the Tau time to adapt. Regular troops and even high level commanders weren't informed of what was coming, in order to maintain the deception. Hence all the "shock" and surprise on the front lines when the Imperials did show up.
Tau learning Humanity is so old. They remember when the Tau were just Fish. Literal Fish. Yet, humanity forgot about them. You know. A Warp Storm happened. The Warp saved the Tau to become this toddler empire.
@@kylemulholland Tau are xeno within a universe with fucked up shit. And expect Terran biology to magically answer the question of a species that evolved vastly different from those created on Terra. They are fish people. Even if their world is dry now. A million years ago, it was VASTLY different. Heck, if it wasn't for the Warp Storm, The Imperium would have killed off the species that became the Tau and humans would have lived on it.
What I love about the Tau is that they represent modern-day humans. Imagine being a settler, traveling out into space to colonize new worlds. Only to walk into a galactic Lovecraftian nightmare minefield. Where the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know shit. Where every new discovery only reveals more monsters, you were better off not knowing about. Then to top it all off you discover your future selves. The backward and broken race that is humanity in 40k IS the Tau's future.
let's imagine about what kind of pain that poor guy in the mech had in these last 6000 years. heavy implanted with cybernetic augments and all kind of toxic chemical in order to make him always angry, flood with hatred to point that this poor guy no longer has any sanity nor humanity left. to serve the long death emperor who never give a sh*t about him at all.
one thing I've learned about Warhammer is that no matter how deep and primordial the pain and decay inflicted upon you might be, you usually feel all of it and suffer somewhat consciously to make things epic bad.
