Adeptus Ridiculous - TAU: Are They Really THAT Bad? | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

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the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. I'm one of your host, D.K. Diamanties, and here at the Adeptus Ridiculous, we give you a crash course on the crazy that is Warhammer 40K. I'm a bit of a novice. Bricky is a near lifelong Warhammer fan, and today's episode, I have no idea what's going on. It's all been kept a secret for me, but before we get into that, every episode, I feel like we have to give an enormous shout out to all of our patrons over at Patreon. dot com slash adeptus ridiculous because you keep crushing these goddamn goals. We annihilated you annihilated the $5,000 tier on Patreon.

So the anime cut will indeed be released, but we'll talk about that later. If you enjoy today's podcast, please be sure to head on over to patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous and support the podcast. And thank you so much for the support. Now, I'm told that Bricky has a big announcement to make. Well, there are three things we need to discuss. One, we need to get into the topic of the day, which I will still keep from you for a little bit. Two, naturally, similar to the Addemptus Mechanicus episode where we reacted to the original Doge Van Dyer episode.

We are going to be doing the same for this episode. So if you're curious, if we are going to also be doing a reaction to, the anime cut of Doge Van Dyer, which Shai has kept hidden from us as well. There will be one at the end of this episode, so do stay tuned. But more importantly, we got merch.

Oh shit! It's finally here! Let's go! I know! It's finally fucking here! Let's go! I mean, it's just the one. It's just the one.

It is a plain old white t-shirt with a, with a pocket design and a big old back design, but it's got a depth ridiculous on it. It's design. I fucking love the design. It's like plain black ink. It's not fading. It's run all by your boy because I have like a literal, like a literal printer where I put shirts on,

like a direct to garment printer and everything. It's a whole thing. It's simple. It's 25 bucks. It sizes from small to triple XL. There's even a women's cut as well. That's a little bit, you know, a little more tighter around the shoulders and all that stuff. Whole thing.

And you can find it in the description of the video. Or if you'd like, you can also check out technically the, technically the link is Orchidate.com slash collections slash, that's ridiculous. But my merchandise site is called Orchidate.com. But if you, there's a content creator section on tab. And if you click on that, you'll see us in big, big letters, Adeptus Ridiculous with an awesome banner that Shai has made. Let me show you this banner that she had done.

Oh, wait, there it is. Look at it. Oh, that's so cool. Oh, it's by 10.0. There's a little neck rod in the bottom left. Oh, my God. When you told me you had an announcement, I was like, oh, it's just going to be the theme for the day.

It's just going to be the topic. And he'll probably be like, oh, anime kind of. right, bop, bop, bop, bop. This is so cool. I haven't seen the shirt. I have no idea what it looks like, but I am so ready to buy like 12 of them. Oh, shit.

Oh, yeah, I haven't shown you. Here you go. Here you go, buddy. Everyday apparel for me. Every day apparel. There you go. That's so. I know, right.

Spicy. The back was so good. I love it. With the exclamation question marked? I love it. I love it. That's great. That's great.

you're gonna love it. You're gonna love it. So anyway, of course, obviously, I am U.S.-based. So shipping to the U.S. is easy. Shipping internationally is also something I can easily do. There's a good chance I go to your area. Obviously, international shipping can be sometimes a little expensive. But overall, all I really want is to get it out there, get it available. I don't know how much stock I have.

So hopefully go quick on that, because I honestly don't know how many shirts I have for that. one. So I, because honestly, like, for, obviously, I do my own merchandise stuff. And, you know, it goes here and there, but I have no idea considering how fast they have blasted these Patreon goals if they'll just be like, like, hound it. So, you know, like, that, no, Sean makes a good point. We can't be less reliable than games workshop. We'll at least be more reliable on that. We won't have any scalpers. We're not going to have all that bullshit. I, I did learn with, um, what was it? It was this giant demon thing. I forget what its name is. Started with a B.

Belacore. Belacore. I did learn how unreliable the supply is with games workshop and all about like the scalpers and stuff. Because apparently sometimes it's really hard to get them. They sell out quick. We were talking about this on Shai's Archroom. I don't know why they just don't scale it up every time. Like, oh, everybody bought this real quick. Maybe next time we'll do 50 more. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. But yeah, I don't get it. It's not important. It's probably fine. We're going to be more reliable than GW.

That's all that matters. Let's go. And speaking of the Doge Van Dyer anime cut, our topic is the Tao. Oh shit. We're doing the Tao today. We're doing the Tao. It's the anime cut. We have to do the Weep Faction.

That's true. If we're talking anime, the Tao, the Macross Robotech ripoffs, I'm so excited because I know nothing about the Tao. I know everybody hates the Tao and legit, I'm kind of hoping that today's episode is like oh hey, I don't actually hate the Tao. They've got cool lore.

Maybe I'm a Tao fan. Listen, man, I'm going to give them more respect than Luton did. So as far as I'm concerned, we got this. No, it's... Okay, so I am, I will be a completely admit I am not the biggest fan of the Tao either.

After reading through their lore, I'm still not the biggest fan of the towel. They are a combination, they are both worse and better than you expect. They're not that bad. Their lore's not terrible. It's perfectly fine. It's perfectly serviceable, but it's also still not quite enough for me to really get into it. It could be because they're a very recent faction, or it could be because they just haven't had the development of like, you know, you're, go back to night lords or ad meck or something like that, right? And they definitely have a different vibe going on.

Overall, they're not bad. They are certainly not bad. And there is definitely something to be said for people who like this kind of, of kind of storytelling and this kind of faction. I myself am not as big into it, but there are some things reading

through it. It's not terrible. Long story short, oh no, you haven't played a halo, right? Well, I played Halo 1. I played Halo 2, and I played like, I played through like maybe a quarter or like a half of Halo 3. Okay, okay.

Do you know what the covenant are then? Yes. Vaguely. Oh my God. All right. Let's, D.K., if you're going to be a boomer, like, you have to understand Halo. Like, that's like, that, that bridges the gap between the boomer millennial generation.

Well, it's just, you got to understand. Like, I, I'm not a boomer when it comes to, like, looter shooters. Like, the, the first looter shooter that I really got into, was like Borderlands 1. That's like where my shooty bang bangs like start. That's like 2009. That's not even that long ago.

Modern Warfare 2 came out the same year. I know. That's why like when you're like, oh, halo from back in like Xbox OG days, I'm like, uh, what? If you want me in video games,

you've got to go into like JRPs and webe shit, dude. Oh, well, good thing we're talking about the towel then. Uh-huh. Anyway, okay, so fuck, there goes my understanding. entire example.

Okay, so the covenant, right? The covenant, aliens. Aliens led by a group of aliens that are the main, the main top dogs, the prophets, right? The profit of truth, profit of regret. Right? Led by them with a whole bunch of subservient, like, races all working together as like one big homogenous alien group. That's the Tao Empire.

The Tao Empire is the ethereal, which we'll talk about, that run. the entirety of the Tao Empire. And then you have the Tao, which are your usual, like, grayish blue-skinned guys without the nose, the little fish. The regular people, the Tao, which imagine like the elites of Halo. And then they also have many other subservient races. There's the Crout, there's the Vespids. There's all these kinds of, like, other races.

So in a sense, they are a majority, the usual Tao race, which is the blue guy. in women that you always see. But there also are a bunch of under and like subservient, may as subservient, like a homogenous group of other races that are used for various different types of things. That is the Tao. It's how I like to think of them of as the Covenant

because they have a very similar vibe. So if we go history-wise, the Tao Empire, 6,000 years ago, 35th millennia. So about, you know, a couple thousand years after the Horacee and everything, everything. There was an ad mech explorer fleet. It was checking out different areas of the galaxy, right? And they saw the Tao, and they saw the Tao homeworld of Tao, you know, this is obvious.

And at the time, they were like a primitive people. They barely even figured out fire. Like they were super, super stone age, right? And so they kind of just were like, whatever, not important to us, you know, who gives this shit, right? And they left. Now, I don't remember if this is still canon. This may have been removed. But originally, I remember that they were going to keep an eye on them, but that was about it. And there was a gigantic warp storm that cut off that whole area of space for like 6,000 years. Was that the Slanesh thing that caused the warp storm or is this a completely unrelated thing? Unrelated, specifically in the Tao area.

And then after 6,000 years, the warp storms decided. and then they looked back and it was like looking behind you and then looking for it and looking behind you again and then there's like four guys behind you with like guns

like then they became this like super advanced civilization they blinked and they're like oh my God they're space fearing how did that happen so quickly like so the main thing is that far back in the Tao history

right back when they were primitive warring culture they were very much a warring culture tribes, the usual kind of thing. And there was this specific thing called the Battle for the Fortress City of Fulton, Fjotan. They always have names like this, like Fjotan and Sasea and Baulton and et cetera. Now, this is when the quote-unquote ethereals, which I posted a picture of as the second image, were first ever seen. Now, for a while, there was the people in this fortress city, and then there were the Tau Plains warriors.

And they tried to negotiate a little bit, but the Tau warriors were. like, nah, we're going to destroy your whole city. Fuck you. So for five years, the siege took place, which is hilarious because five years is like nothing in four hammered time. But for five years, five years, this was a big siege. And it wasn't until starvation and disease started to really take its toll on the people in the city.

When two very mysterious Tao appeared, one of them went from the area of the actual city and just kind of walked their way into the camp of the invading Tao. And like having this like authority that no one really felt like they could resist. They were worried, but like they were just kind of let them, let them through. And the Plains Warriors also had a person just kind of walk up to the gates of the city and just enter. And after some time, the gates of the city opened. And both groups started to persuade and parlay with each other.

And eventually those two people were known as the ethereal's. And they spoke of peace, the importance of understanding of something they call the greater good, which you're going to hear a fuckload of. Okay, okay. The greater good is kind of their like mentality, their state religion, like their creed. It's a simple principle that all sentient beings should strive to ensure the greater good for the greatest number of beings in the galaxy. We all come together.

We all work together for the greater good of everybody. Huh. You know, in a Warhammer 40K universe, this is very unheard of. Very few people are just like, yo, peace for everybody. Let's try and get everybody under the same banner. Well, happy, happy, joy, joy, and good feelings. Be well, John Spartan. That usually is just like, hey, let's all come

together and fucking torture the rest of the galaxy for our benefit and just go on a mass genocide raid. So this is very, where did these ethereal come from exactly? Did they just show up or? So it's not quite understood that these are the first times the ethereal were ever like, documented as ever being a thing. Now, they look like tau. Ethereals look just like tau.

But they've got this little, like, diamondy thing. in their forehead. It's a little bit hard to describe. We'll talk a little bit more about it. We'll talk about the casts. But they have this little like diamondy thing in their forehead. And originally, and this is the thing. Like originally that piece like happy go look.

Well, let me finish the Tao history real quick. And then we'll talk about that more. Anyway, that's how with everyone talking about this idea of the greater good, peace and harmony. a truce was reached between the warring nations and eventually ethereal started popping up across the entire planet with the same idea of harmony and the entire planet united

and the entire planet ceased to have any war for like ever and this is why they developed fucking massively the entire planet was united science military everything all developed

simultaneously and extremely rapidly. And then they expanded extremely rapidly. And then they got spacefaring extremely rapidly. And they would go to other planets and other civilizations and be like, hey, they either colonized them, conquered them, or persuaded them to join into the greater good, to be a part of the greater good. And so these people like the crutes and the Vespids and all, these were other races that said, hey, we want to believe in the betterment of all.

Will you join us in that quest? and they were like, fuck yeah. Oh, that's actually kind of interesting. Like, from the perspective of, like, how did they advance so fast? It's like, well, because they stopped concerning themselves with, like, civil war. And, like, the whole planet is united. And if everybody's striving to just better, like, like, if planet Earth stopped warring and we all just came together under one umbrella,

we could probably advance pretty quickly, too. Yeah. So. Yeah, I would hope. hope instead of war, you know, we're trying to just advance. So there's not just like two or three ethereal. There's a lot of ethereal because you said ethereal were popping up everywhere. It's not like there's just three ethereal and they're just sort of like the kings or whatever.

Yes, that's basically the thing is there's actually quite a few. There's not as many as the Tao guys themselves, of course. Right, yeah, yeah. They're like leaders. And the thing, and this is something that I'm, kind of, I've glossed over a little bit. But the problem is, shy, slice. Yeah, give it a try, humans.

Instead of scalping 40K managers, try finding a job, better mankind. We're getting into TNG territory, right? Yeah, well, that's actually the interesting thing, because TNG is like, yeah, because TNG is not, it's not Deep Space Nine, it's not this current generation of Trash Star Trek. Like that is everyone is happy Everyone like there's no poverty There's no famine There's nothing

Right because it's a perfect world where the conflict comes From either interpersonal conflicts or like prime directive You know like figuring out like here's a moral Yeah moral ethical dilemma The Tao are kind of in a similar situation Where their rapid expansion into the galaxy Is entirely for the hope of bettering everyone else They have

many times gone to human planets and been like, yo, join the greater good. And some of them have. Really? Humans have joined the Tau banner. Some people have. They're called G-V-V-S-A. And they, yeah, G-U-E-A-V-E-S-A, G-V-E-S-A.

This is an apostrophe. Everything in this fucking army has an apostrophe. Did you know T-A-U-U-T-A-U? Oh, I thought it was T A apostrophe U. I thought that was Tau. Okay. I knew there was an apostrophe in there somewhere. I mean, like, it's interesting

because sometimes the people of the humans that went with it are either like defectors who really hated what the imperial had to do. Or sometimes, and they're fully incorporated in their own manner. The thing is, though, at the end of the day, obviously this is like, like, I don't think you could be more heretical than that.

Yeah, probably. not. That in their own right is like holy shit. But at the time there's a lot of just like far fringe imperial worlds that they don't want to have to deal with and they're like hey you are literally welcome with us. You don't need to go fight chaos and shit like

you don't need to do the imperial tie like you are welcome and they're like yeah all right. Now unfortunately it's got a little too happy for people. I was gonna say like this seems way too happy for 40K. And, like, so far to me, the Tao seemed like, the Tao seemed like the good guys.

Like, they don't want war. They want peace. They want happiness for everyone. So there's a couple things that I steered away from this. So this is the problem with the Tao, is that the Tao kind of have, this is, it's games workshops fault. There is a bit of, like, knee-jerk reaction to some of the Tao stuff. When the Tao came out, they wanted the good guys. W wanted the good guys.

And because they wanted the good guys, they made a do nothing wrong faction like the Tao Empire. And that did not sit well with people because we were like, how dare they don't commit genocide? That's like the point. Fuck you. And so obvious... Yeah, I wanted to kill things

and large swathes of them of said things. So they kind of... I don't know if I'd say the word recone, but it's the idea that they kind of learned more about the Tao nomenclature. and the assumption is that the ethereal themselves that have a little diamond in their forehead, right?

They're either very mildly psychic or they give off these like pheromones or these like kind of like, I don't know, pheromones like a cent. I don't really know exactly how to describe it, but... Sure. Something along those lines, right? They give off these kinds of pheromones

and because of that, it sways the minds of those around them. So the concept is that the atherials aren't just doing it because they want to be the goody, good two shoes. There's a possibility that they're actually, in a sense, kind of brainwashing lesser civilizations and brainwashing their own into following them. Because these are the leaders. The ethereal are indeed the number one, like, highest rank people. They are the governors. They are the leaders. They are political and religious leaders.

So it's kind of got this like Like the prophets in Halo You know Fire the Ring and the great journey And in reality They're manipulative pieces of shit Yep And they're gonna cause the end of the fucking galaxy

Or the end of the universe Um Man I actually kind of liked it better When they were just the good guys Um I thought it was like I think it's kind of interesting In like a Warhammer 40K

universe that there's just this faction that's like, hey, we just want to make everything better for everyone. I don't like the idea that they're like brainwashing people with their psychic pheromones. I liked it better when they were just, let's make peace everybody. Yeah, it's one of things where I feel like they, GW had players who wanted to shit talk tau and they couldn't find any good shit-talking options besides weeb. And so they had to find like a, you, you communist brainwashing bitches. Oh, no. So it's weird because, like, personally, I prefer, I prefer the idea of that, but I like it,

maybe less on the pheromone side. I like the idea of these people are just abusive political leaders. And they, they just, they found a way to take over the entire system. society and make it belong only to the ethereal. That being said, they are still significantly better than every other race in Warhammer. They still do accept younger races. They still do attempt to try to like, like, they literally have moments or times where they're fighting the humans and they were like, you can still believe in your emperor.

That's fine. We don't care. Like, believe what you want to believe. You can still join the greater good. Oh, really? So if you were in the Imperium and you're like, eh, peace sounds great, but listen, like, I'm an emperor worshipping Humi, they're okay. They don't really give a shit what you believe in as long as you're like, yeah, I'm Tao. Yeah, like, so long as you as you work, well, as long as you dedicate yourself to the Tao Empire and to the concept of the greater good, you can worship what you want to worship. We can believe what you want to believe. Sounds like a good deal Like it kind of does

Doesn't it? Yeah, it sounds like a really like in 40K Why wouldn't you want to be part of the Tao? Well, because you don't want to be brainwashed Well, yeah I guess when when you bring in the idea That they're using pheromones and brainwashing But if that wasn't the case

It's like why wouldn't everybody just join the Tao In the 40K universe The Tao do have this Well, I mean it's very very obvious The Tao declare a large amount of their like their what would be called their basis

or like their ideas from from Eastern culture I mean besides just the gigantic fucking Weebo-Mex it's quite obvious they do have a very a very Eastern style to them

sometimes a little bit too much I don't know exactly the term for it but it's like I forget the exact term it's not like culture of procreation it's none of that crap but it's like a no not racist

shy it definitely it definitely is this thing where I feel like they're using it improperly and I'm not I'm not like in Eastern I'm not like Asian or anything like that

so I guess I can't really talk too much about it but I would have liked if they went more into like the feudal like if they're going like more feudal Japan like like give them a whole bunch of like internal conflict with

like major families or seps that are constantly at each other's throats and like it's always like a fight for the political power and you know they they have this like sense of honor and stuff sure but it's not like the similar sense of honor that other people have and it's definitely it's definitely a weird thing where it's like I don't know if you're gonna go the eastern route maybe like don't half ass it that makes any sense yeah you go feudal japan though you go you go bloody that was not a happy fun time if you were like a warlord in Japan you were like I don't know how they slept ever

without getting their throat slit yeah exactly with the amount of people that would try and kill you and take your seat like it and it wasn't even like your enemies it's like your fucking brother would do it to you your son would try that shit and it's like yeah yeah it was I don't know it's certainly DK, tell your listeners that you're half Japanese

unless you're canceled. I am half Japanese. I have, I have, oh, everybody knows like, surely everybody knows about Oda Nobunaga, right? Oh, I'm hoping they do. It's a fucking interesting time. You know, Japan is badass. Yeah, there's a Netflix special on that shit.

It's like a docu series where they literally go over like, this is off topic. But yeah, they go from like Oda Nobunaga up until like fucking modern times. It's an interesting bloody time indeed. It's definitely like, I've always loved feudal Japan stuff. That's the thing is like I hate anime and all like the current Japanese culture a ton. Or not like media, but like the culture itself I think is super fucking interesting.

Old, old, like I loved Sekito. I loved the game. And it's like when I played that, I was like, oh, this is exactly what I was hoping for. And then like, hey, you're going to play Code Vane? Like, nope. That's the other side I don't like. I like, oh, yeah, yeah, shy. I loved Ghost of Sushima.

I thought it was great. Ghost of Sushima was fantastic. Did you play it on Kurosawa mode, though? I did not. Well, a little bit, but I couldn't do the whole game with it. It's too beautiful to play in all black and white. It is. It's fucking gorgeous.

I love, I love that kind of stuff, which is why I'm a little bit sad that people seem to relegate very often to the Tao giant mecksuits. And it seems like I wish the characters had a little bit more of that, like, I don't know, that fueled Japan vibe. But at the same time, I guess I get why because the Tao don't do melee. They do guns. That's one of the few things I know about the Tao is, I don't know if it was you,

lootin, or somebody else completely that I heard it from, where it's like, if you see the Tao, they're probably not winning because they want to do everything from a I told you that. They want to snip you. Oh, it was you? Okay, cool, cool. Yes, yes. If the tower are visible, they're losing

because they have insane range and, like, just laughably accurate stuff from super far away. And so if you can see the tau, they're having a bad time. But, like, for example, here's a couple images I wanted to show you. Well, like, this kind of goes more

into the Eastern vibe, which, like, I kind of don't, like, the guy on the bottom, it looks like he's in like a spring roll and he has like a jar of sock. I think that might be like fan art, but it's very, it's like, I don't mind that stuff. I think it's decent, but then you get a little bit too hard into the, into the mecks and stuff. I was going to say, like, as far as like just the armor on these guys is concerned, it looks really cool.

It's not bad. No, I actually think the infantry stuff that Tao have look a lot cooler and are more interesting than the battlesuit stuff. The problem is that in the game, battlesuits tend to be the only way to play them. Um, yeah, they have like the samurai shoulder too The really big Samarai shoulder like that's cool I do like that stuff It's just

But then they're like millions of battlesuits It reminds me of um Did you ever play Red Alert? Like Command and Conquer Red Alert Nope, never did. Ah damn The third Red Alert game added the Empire The Rising Sun

And they have a very similar vibe They have like giant Odiemex and shit and with like eye lasers and crap. Oh, snap. It's pretty neat. The only sad or humorous part is that every single fucking time you see Tao artwork anywhere, they're always losing. Oh, poor Tao.

Well, I guess they kind of have to be because, you know, if you're that close to a Tao and you see it, chances are they're getting fucked. Oh, boy, they're really getting screwed there. Jesus. It's just kind of sad because so often, only. thing that you can see is them just getting fucking annihilated. And it's just like, oh no,

there they go again. Mama that goes that man. So if you're a Tao fan, like, you, it's, it's tough. It sounds like it's kind of tough to be a Tao fan, because every time you see official artwork,

your guys getting fucked. Yeah, it's one of those weird things where, like, you already kind of, I do feel a little bit bad for Tao players. because we haven't finished talking about the fucking army yet. Let me keep talking about the army real quick because we haven't even finished about the actual organization and stuff

because we're getting too off topic with like the meta of Tao and not talking about the Tao. Anyway, the society itself is divided to things called castes and each cast is based in like an elemental thing. So you have the fire cast which is the military ground forces the earth cast are engineers, laborer, scientists,

the water cast are diplomats, administrators, bureaucrats. The aircasts are pilots and officers of the Navy. And then there's the ethereal cast, which is the political reverent. We talk about the atherals already. So when they're split up into these different kinds of casts, you know, you can, it's kind of cool because you can kind of pay them that way.

Because you have like the Navy, the Navy, the Navy, the diplomats, the engineers. and under that you have these different kinds of sub-factions, like the crout, for instance. The crutes are a tribal group. They're known as kind. They're tribes known as kindreds. And they also have like a shaper of there. They look like a little like weird-looking chicken things.

They're a little bit tougher, though. They live in like warm climates. They construct like giant houses of trees, like tree houses and stuff through like dead wood. They are also one of things that they, consume a lot. They're like carnivorous, I think. They eat a lot of flak. They're like Woolkees. Yeah, they're like Woolkees, basically.

They look pretty cool, actually. They're not bad. They're generally used as like shock troops because they're tougher and they're a little bit more melee oriented, hence the little stabby bit at the end of the gun. Yeah, yeah. They are, they're also a little weird. For some reason, people really like to talk about the Tao and sex, probably because of that Eastern vibe.

Because I keep drawing them all anime-like. apparently shy apparently shy says they have sex by rubbing shoulders and quote and quote I am not joking the crout the crout that is the crout so you know if you if you were to give a crude like a shoulder

massage oh yeah you're jerking him off that's how it goes thanks for clearing that oh god give a pat on the shoulder you know it's like hey good job they're like oh shy remind me if this is it is it actually

legitimately canon that how women prefer human men? Is that, is that can't? I thought I remember hearing that. Oh. I don't know it's a meme. Thank Christ. Okay, good.

I thought they said that in a book or something. And I thought that's why people said that and I got really scared. So how exactly would a crout in a human male? No, no, no, no, no, no. The meme, the meme was that.

Tau women, Tau women, not crew Tau women Because of course Because of course Because Eastern Because anime Because it has to be lewd

Because Tau probably have the most porn drawn Of them Of any character There goes shy posting weird fucking shit I don't even get that Why is that funny It's a fucking anime girl

I think in that anime She tries very very very very hard to show her affection to that dude and that dude's just not having it. Oh, good. What a fucking Chad. All right.

What else do we got here? Vespids. Insectoid race on a gas giant, which is pretty cool. They have Vespet Warriors, which are known as stingwings, and they're kind of like flying,

they're like flying insect troops. They're probably like the drones from Halo, going back to the Covenant. They have like Koolowel little neutron blasters, they fly in there, they buzz around, I shoot shit. Oh, they're pretty, they're, they are, if they weren't so terrible in the tabletop, they would be. Oh, no.

But we don't need to worry about them, luckily, for us. Nope, nope, nope, no, yeah, don't worry about that. Fitting name, though, Vespids, insects, that makes sense. Yeah, Vespis is a good one. They have a lot of other species as well. I already mentioned the humans, the Gwavessa. There's the Nicosar, which is a psychic ursine race. The Demiur, which is a humanoid mining.

species, the Terrellians, which are like dog mercenaries, or dog-like aliens that work as mercenaries. There's like frog creatures. There's, what's the Morellian? Argylleries to employ death sworn to the Tao. The race greater good, like, there's so much of this other, like, like, oh my, the Nagy are a race of highly intelligent worms, the mind control abilities. Like, it's actually pretty fucking cool. Like, this kind of gives me mass effect vibes, a whole culture with, like, all the

all these different kinds of fucking races and stuff. And almost all of these are not seen in the tabletop or talked about. It's mainly just crude and vespins. Crute vespins, tau, ethereal. That's it. It's a little bit of like lacking flavor. Yeah, that's such a shame because the whole point of the tau is like they have so many different like races under their banner because they're like, we want peace.

Everybody join the tau. Hooray. And it's like all I really knew about the tower, like the blue dudes and, the mechs where it's like man they should really add a lot more variety to like what tau minis there are and add like a bunch of like you know vespids and worms and uh you know you said the demiurg which is what the squads became yeah yeah it makes it makes sense now in the tower the main antagonists in excom oh no um but honestly there are a lot of this kind of like

extra stuff that they could add into it that really gives a little bit more flavor and fluff to it. I mentioned the Atherials obviously, which is, you know, that's like the, that's where they try to get the grim dark stuff. Though I should mention, because there's lots of different kinds of tau seps. And a sept is a solar system that the tau area resides in. And that's kind of the similar thing to the different kinds of like regiments or sisters' orders and stuff, or Necron dynasties. The sept is like, when you play the game, you can like align yourself with a sept. Like it sounds like a forge world. And so there's the tau sept, which is the source of the Tao.

There's like Sasea or like Borkon and like all these different kinds of seps. One of them, though, that I do want to talk about is the far side enclaves. Because I have to mention the far side enclaves. The far side command. Okay, so if you had to choose legitimately, who are the good guys in 40K? This is probably your closest bet Um, okay Farsight commander

Farsight is kind of a Chad He uses a gigantic sword In battle with his Um, with his suit, which is unlike Tao Um, he actually has melee combat, he runs in there and beats the shit out stuff. Basically, the Farcite enclaves are a bunch of

really heavily fortified Tao worlds that are completely independent and broke off from the Tao Empire. Oh. They saw what was going on with the Tao Empire. They kind of, I think they kind of got wind of the whole ethereal thing. And they were like, this ain't fucking right. This ain't okay.

Like, you're doing this whole, hey, it's for the greater good. But in reality, it's either for the greater good or be demolished. Like, join the greater good or enjoy being a smoking crater. Right. Or it'll conquer you and destroy everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't really have a choice in the matter.

It's kind of similar to the emperor's greater. crusade where he's like, be part of the Imperium. It's like, no, be part of my boot heel. Fair enough. Shai makes a statement where she's, I'm glad she's helping me with this because for some reason the wiki is really scarce on details. But they said that they, she thinks they're ethereal got killed off and they were like, wait a minute, my brain works again. Oh, really? So when...

That's a thought at least. Okay. I was going to say, so when GW was like, oh, yeah, we'll make this pheromone brainwashing. We'll also make a sect that got away from their ethereals or their ethereals got killed to show that, yeah, it's brainwashing. And look, we're over here and we're different. And my brain works. And the ethereals are being douchebags. Yeah, like they still obviously can understand the concept of harmony between races and all.

But they're broken off because they're like, this is forced, this is forced harmony. This is unacceptable. And what's nice about them is that like it also kind of shows the Tao do have that vibe because they try to write Commander Farsight who is basically a war hero as like a cowardly deserter or just trying, like they were trying to rewrite him in history. Yeah. Though a lot of people do have support for Farsight because they're starting to realize this kind of issue. And so he is leading this whole separate sub-faction of the enclaves,

which actually are dressed in like bright, or like a deep crimson red armor, which makes them look actually pretty fucking cool. I really, really like the way the Farsite Island Clans look. They're probably the best color scheme of all of the, of all the Tau. I think Shai posted a picture. They do look really, really neat.

Ooh, they do. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, dude. Oh, and so the Farsight are kind of like the ideal Tao. Like if the brainwashing didn't exist, I assume, because they want it to be like, join us, peace, but it's your choice. We're not going to like brainwash you because we got brainwashed. We don't like it. And we don't want to do that to anybody.

Or they're just kind of off in their own little space just like brooding over stuff. Yeah, they're off trying to do their own thing. We're trying to expand. They're trying to still serve their own purpose. But they're like, okay, we're not interested in being a part of this, this. crazed organization, these people, because they are not, well, like, good. They're bad. They're taking control of our minds. This is our actual idea. Right. They actually do have some pretty cool fucking people. They have a particular thing called the eight, which is actually one of my

favorite things in the Tao Codex. They suck. They're terrible. But I really, really like it. Basically, the eight, and you can run it, but it's the main governing body of the Farsight enclave's, and it's eight separate battle suits for eight separate named characters, like a commando squad. And they're all in their own different kinds of battlesuits, and they all work together. Like there's Commander Farsight, Commander Bravestorm, Honor Shassevere Ovesa, Commander Brightsword, Commander Chavastas, Obletai, Arakhan, and Torch Star. And they're a whole bunch of like their own battlesuit.

suited up separate name characters with their own cool ideas and it's actually it's actually really fucking cool like yeah it's basically like seven samurai but obviously eight but like Torchstar for instance is the

youngest of the group and she has an affinity with like fire and loves to like have she's like double flamethrowers and she's supposed to have like fire tattoos all across her body and shit and like Commander Brave Storm has a special, a really special, um, battle suit with, has this one punching weapon called the

Onager gauntlet. But it's like, it's like strength a million and like a damage a million, but it's like one punch and you get, you get one chance. I mean, if you're gonna an anime, so you're what you're telling me is he's one punch, man. Is what's your, what's your, what's, what's, that's, what you're going for, right? Shut up! A weapons! You're a way.

Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. Is that a picture of their mecks that Shai just posted? Yep. Is that what they actually look like? Those are the eights. They're pretty cool. The eight are actually pretty cool.

I got to. I'm becoming a fan of these guys. Like this, this sounds like that anime stuff that I'm like, ooh, it's the anime stuff that I don't hate. Yeah, the Far side enclaves are the Tao army for people who don't like Tao.

Honestly, they're like, If you're kind of like, uh, Tao, Tao, Laura, it was kind of things.

Like, no, I want to play as the guys who broke off. I want to play as the defectors. I want to play as the underdogs. I want to play as the actual good guys. You probably would take Farsite Enclave.

Yeah. Seeing all this stuff, I'm like, yo, maybe I should look into some Farsight minis, though. They would not be bad. Painting up the 8 is actually pretty cool.

And also, there's, a very like back and forth thing with another named character in the town known as commander shadow some shy i'm going to ask you to please be civil here oh that's straight and whatever you post you post it you you'd be smart with this one be safe about it chai we don't want to get ultra canceled here all right no no demonetizations yes let's not let's not do that Commander Shadow Sun is like a major player in the normal Tao. She was, she's commander of the Tao firecasts, like some of their military campaigns and stuff. She's got like tons of nicknames. She's spearhead of the greater Goom, true disciple of Commander Peerty, the heroine of the third sphere expansion.

She has all these fucking names, but she's like a really, really powerful and intelligent commander. And if I'm not mistaken, she fucking hates Commander Farsight. The two of them, like, would gladly just, just going to her throats at any possible time. Um, she's actually pretty chad. Not going to lie, uh, she's pretty cool. She's got a lot of really awesome, um, like, abilities and she's, like, overall, she's actually pretty neato. Uh, but she's also like a total bitch. So there's also that part.

I was going to say, shy posted a picture of her and she looks really cool. She does. She actually got a new mini recently. Oh. Yeah. Let me see if I can find it. I'm sure Shai can get it. Yeah, yeah.

Her old miniature looked like really bad. But they got a new one, and it actually looks pretty cool. It actually looks really, really cool. I like a lot of the more character-based stuff. Well, Farsight's a pretty old model. He needs to be changed. But she actually has quite. quite an impressive design to her.

And she's pretty cool. The only problem is that naturally, by being Commander Shadow Son, you being a female towel named character, there's a reason I told Shy to be civil. Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of Rule 34 stuff on her, isn't there? Yes, there is. But like the official art for her, she's fucking metal.

Oh, shit. Like, she's fucking cool, man. Like, no, no meme. That mini is really dope. Should I pose a picture that looks fucking sick? It's really dope. There are certainly fine parts of the Tao. We give them a lot of shit because they go too hard into the weave stuff.

They go a little too hard into that. And they definitely don't, they definitely don't fit in terms of like, like, uh, visual design. You know, you have like the every, every vehicle looks like a church style of the Imperium or like the body whore mechanicus. And then you have like gundams. It definitely does not really fit. It's weird. Yeah. I mean, the closest they are like is Craft World Eldar, I guess, which.

Oh, yeah, yeah, because they have the, they have those really lanky sort of mech robots, right? Yeah, they have the pinball heads and stuff. Mm-hmm. But even then, that they're a little bit more like smooth because they're Eldar. whereas the towel, they definitely do feel like they don't fit in the aesthetic thing. But truth be told us, or truth be told, oh yeah, they also have a lot of AI. They have a fuckload of drones. They have so many drones.

So the Imperium really doesn't like them. The Imperium probably work with, well, besides the Craft World Eldar, the Imperium probably work with the Tao the most. They kill them more than they work with them. but they do have occasional diplomatic backs and forth with them. I think they work with a Kraft World Eldar probably the most because they, a craft world Eldar are pretty scary. And a lot of times they're like, we're both trying to get this thing.

Oh my God, there's a million tyrantids here. It's like, hey, let's get rid of them together. Similar thing with the Tao. But, yeah. The drones and the millions of drones they have is also an annoyance in the tabletop because the drones do that thing where they like jump in front of a gunshot

or like a rocket. And they take the hit. So they can be little shields. Yeah, it's called savior protocols. It basically made the Tao the most unfun army to fight for a good while because what they would do is they would stick on the, they have these three mechs called Rip Tides

and they're fucking huge. And what they would do is take those guys with gigantic, like, fuck off guns and then surround them in drones. And then they were unkillable and were able to kill you to like a massive margin. Wow. Yeah, we got to talk a little bit about their battlesuits, though. Because battlesuits are kind of a pretty big part of their lore.

The battlesuits scale up in various different ways. Shaya posted a wonderful picture of them. So you start off with your Tao warrior, which is obviously in the bottom left. And then you've got the stealth battle suit, which is, well, it's what we expect. Because this is like full sci-fi shit. Like a stealth battle suit will literally have a like cloaking field. Like they will turn invisible. It'll look completely invisible.

And it'll like decloak, like mass spec style. That seems like it'd be a pain in the ass in the tabletop. Something that could just. Eh, they're just minus one to hit. No one really cares. Oh, oh, well, that's a shame. It's a little fortunate. But it's smaller, it's light.

They generally operate. It's like lone wolves, covert stuff. There's tons of battlesuits. They always start off with like XV something. XV8, XV25, XV22. There's like the XV25 is a stealth suit used by the Earthcast, currently being phased out and used for the firecast. There's the XV46 Vanguard Void battle suit to explore spacehulks.

The XV8 Crisis Battlesuit is a personal favorite. it's a little smaller I think it's the yellow one and it's just it's a lot smaller and it's got like a I think you can actually turn them into like bodyguards kind of they look I think they're more like titans

maybe like small titans in like Titanfall um there's my the XV 88 broadside now the broadsides are for fucking big dick motherfuckers all right

the broad sides are cool okay the the the XV8 The XV 88 Broadside Normally carries a gigantic heavy rail gun Or they carries more missiles than you can possibly count Oh They're actually really cool looking

They like Hulk around this gigantic rail gun and they just like blast everything to bits I mean if you're gonna be an anime mech you have to fire just an insane amount of missiles That's that's a pre-reck Oh yeah Either you can I either set these guys up for one of two different variations. Either the one that Shy posted, which is the giant railgun, or nothing but missiles. And they just never-ending missiles.

And it's pretty cool. I think the XV-88 is probably my favorite. They're a little stocky, but it's because they have to carry around a gun the size of a semi-truck. Yeah. I like that the missile one is in the color scheme of heavy arms custom. He's a, he's a Gundam that just, he just, he just shoots missiles. And all of his arms are Gatling guns. That's just all he does.

He just fires munitions all day long. Man, I miss Armored Corps. Oh, I do too. I played Armored Corps for answers a lot. I don't think I did that. I played Armored Corps like two and three. Oh, I didn't. Oh, those were good.

Oh, there's also another battle suit I really like is known as the XV-86 Cold Star. the Cold Star battle suit is one that like commanders tend to carry around or they tend to use them they're extraordinarily fast and they're able to like zip around the ballot I think they have like a 20 inch movement but like okay so

a guardsman moves six a Marine moves six a tank moves 12 a dark Eldar Skimmercraft moves 16 this thing moves like 20 this thing just like fucking flies across the map.

I think if you use the Cold Star, you're an absolute big dick guy, just like the XV-88, because normally using the Cold Star is you fly it up right next to your opponents, like captain or leader, and you just fucking torch them, and then you just die,

because, you know, you're surrounded, but it's just so cool. So do they, I must, do these robots, do they, or battlesuits, I suppose, do they cost them? lot then? Because I mean, they're giant fucking mecks. I'm sure that you can't just have a

Tau fleet that's just like, yeah, I have 6,000 mex and it's only 1,200 points. Oh, oh, you mean on the tabletop? It depends. Like, XV8s and broadsides and stuff can go between like, you know, 50 points, 100 points depending. Rip tides are pretty expensive. They normally run you like 300 something if you take one. And then you got like

the big ones, like the Tau-Nar supremacy armor. and there's a picture of that guy right there. That thing is just enormous. And that thing, I don't know how much it costs, but it costs a lot. It has triple-barreled pulse ordinance multi-drivers and heavy rail cannons.

It's a bunch of shit, right? Oh, there is the storm surge, which is actually one of their Lords of War. I like the storm surge. I think it looks fucking cool. It's a little boxy, but the storm surge is, definitely expensive, but it's got a lot of missiles and a giant shoulder gun of doom.

I can see how that, you know, it's all missiles. It looks so fucking derpy. It looks boxy and silly, yes, I know. It's so dirty. I kind of love it. I really like it because it has like 9 million missiles. It's kind of cool. It does.

I actually like the Storm Search. It's so derpy. There's like the Yavara Battlesuit, which is like this giant flamethrower one. There's the hazard battle shoots, which obviously what they are. There's the Riptide, which we've discussed. The Riptide is

probably the main most iconic one. It's gigantic. It's got a bunch of guns. It's got a big shield. Very, very powerful. Yeah, there's a lot of options when it comes to these different kinds of battlesuits. I really like the Ghost Kiel Battlesuit personally. I think the ghost keel looks really cool.

They tend to like, they tend to fashion it to look a lot like Titanfall. I guess they keep doing Titanfall kit ashes with the ghost keel. It's kind of like a sort of like a big stealth version. I like that one. Right. There's a lot of, there's some cool suits. Like I said, my problem is that they feel like they're too heavy on suits. Yeah. But even so, it's like they don't look, they don't look bad. Some of them, I think like when you get too many of them, they can end up becoming a bit of a problem. But like, that's the thing is that If I never seen the Riptide in my life, I'll be okay

Because Riptides have like destroyed the game Well, not anymore, but they did for a while But like Ghost Kiel, Storm Surges, Broad Sides, They're pretty cool, but no one really runs them as much And that makes me sad. Did the, um, did the Riptides get like hella nerfed or something? And that's why they're no problem anymore Just TOW, just TOWS suck ass right now.

So, okay, so if we're talking about the tabletop, Every time on the tabletop, Tao are, if not the worst, the worst, like, the worst faction in the game. They are arguably the worst

faction in the game next to like, maybe Gene Steeler Coults or something. Ouch. They're fucking terrible. The main issue is that they, the game swapped from kill everything

to take objectives and hold them. And Tao are terrible in melee. They never melee ever. And they're, they don't have a lot of like forward, like they have lots of range, which makes it, harder for them to do close range.

Hold an objective, yeah. Yeah. So it's common, it's just mainly like a meta thing, because they can still kill. They just can't kill hard enough, and other codexes are making them, are making them feel worse and worse, the longer it takes for them to get a new one. Right. Right. So. Oof.

Poor Tau players. Yeah, like, I got no issue with Tau, or Tau players, you know, I didn't want to, like, I hate fighting the fucking triple rip. They call it Triptide. Uh, the triple riptide with a whole bunch of, uh, drones. but you get like a good old a good old tower army right you get yourself some infantry you get some drones

you get some uh some like uh transports they're called like devil fish and hammerheads and you get me one riptide a couple broad sides you know maybe some crew auxiliary like that's a cool army that's badass but no one really does that they do they do trip tides or stuff like that and like ah yeah you know I I think I think I have shifted

not hating the Tao. Have you? Yeah, I think this episode has shifted me to not hating the Tao. Like, I used to hate the Tao because I look at it and I'm like, oh my God, you're trying way too hard to be Robotech and Macross. And now, like, seeing the wide variety of, like, other mecks that they have and, like, the far side and, like, their lore is pretty cool that, like, there's a sect of them trying to be good guys.

There's a sect of them that's like, oh, we're going to brainwash you, even though I kind of prefer if they were just a good... It's kind of cool, actually. I don't hate this. They are... Like I said, they are both better and worse than expected. They are better than you think, but they're still not quite the level of everything else.

You know, they still have a little bit of growing up to do, in my opinion. So how new are they exactly? Like, when did the Tao, like, burst get into Warhammer? Like, because they're the most recent, right? I think so. I mean, they're not the most recent codex per se, but like the newer ones have been like admech codex. I mean, they already existed, but you know,

I don't actually really know. I thought Tao came out on like fifth edition? Okay. And it's what, eighth edition now or something? Ninth. Ninth, gotcha. Okay, here we go. Tau are a playable race in the second expansion pack,

Dark Crusade released October 2006. Oh, that is 15th. years? Yeah. Third edition. Third edition. That's one. Oh, okay.

The book was, oh, here we go. The Codex Tao is an expansion book was published for the first time in 2001, actually. Okay. So, I mean, that's,

oh my gosh, it's 20 years. Holy shit. Oh, let's not talk about that. Let's not do that. No. Let's not go down that room. Oh, my God.

How about any other topic? Apparently in the timeline, they've known them for, About 300 years, the Imperium are aware of them for like 300 years. Besides the original 6,000 years ago, notice. Yeah. Even in Warhammer, that's fairly recent. They're the upstart.

They're the new kid on the block. Mm-hmm. And, I mean, they're, they are fine. They're not as fleshed, but. I think I might look into some of those Farsight. I might look into some of the eight minis and be like, hey. Hey. You guys are cool.

You guys are anime as fuck. Like if your minis look dope, like maybe. Hey, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to grab some of those guys to paint up, try out. There's literally no issue with that. Yeah, I don't like the tabletop. I don't care if they suck. Yeah, exactly.

And honestly, the only reason they suck is because they don't have the next codex out. The moment they get that, they'll probably be good again. Oh, let's go. So honestly, like, yeah, if you want to grab something like that, there's really, there's no stopping you, there's no reason not to. I have no issue with people collecting tau. I have no issue of people who like Tao. I'll still give them some shit because it's fun for me and you get a deal with it.

But besides that, yeah. Yeah, I might be a Farisite fan. All right. Good. I mean, that's the good Tao, you know? That's the real Tao. Yeah. And you get to have a do with the big sword.

Tao is what they are. Most people think Farsight is cool and they just think Tau themselves are a little bit like Yeah I'm definitely in that In that category for sure So with that I don't know if there's anything else I need to talk about

I think I've hit most of the points To the Tau fans I hope I did okay Obviously you know I'm not the biggest fan of Tau But I did my best to give him a fair A fair go Yeah I think it was a fair be fair.

It wasn't like you were just here like, oh, the Tao did this and fuck him because I hate him and they're stupid. That was a fair episode. And like, you made a Farsite fan out of me. So. Isn't that true? True. Shall we, shall we get to the real, the real episode now?

Let's, let's get, let's get to it. Let's get to the star attraction. The reason, this is why you did Tao, right? Because they're anime, they're weave. Yep. This is the way. This is the way. Oh.

All right. Let me make a watch together. I was going to say, are we going to do a three, two, one hit play, or? Oh, God, what is this title? Doge Van Dyer's Feetzar Adventure? Ew. Ew.

I hate it. I hate it. Why? Why does it have to be a Feetzar? Ew. Because it's Doge Van Dyer. Alright, here's the link. Here's the link.

Fucking hell. I don't want to do this anymore. All right, I'm playing it. Here we go. You ready? I am ready. Roll that beautiful bean footage. Oh.

No, I hate the missing things. Oh, the voice. Ah. I'm putting volume at 5%. Max the volume. I can't. I can't. It's so high.

It's so high. It hurts. Oh, woo, woo, whoa. Why have you ruined like my favorite part of Warhammer? It's like my favorite piece of lore. This is your fault. You know, it's our patrons' fault. No!

Oh no! No! You did not! Are you fucking, are you shitting me? Are you shitting me? Are you actually shitting me? Are you actually shitting me? That's it.

I'm gonna have to become a game dev. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, because the only, the only fucking, the only fucking thing of people seeing one of the coolest moments in all of 40K, the Alicia Dominica fucking, like, like, confrontation is now, the only thing they can find for that topic is that, is that This fucking video. I need to make a game or a movie or something so I can purge the search history. I'm okay. Are you?

Are you okay? I'm not. That was great. So, Bricky, what? Yeah, what, yeah, what's up? Um. So, what are we doing next time? You know, I can't technically fire shy.

It's her baby. You can't fire her. I would like, we don't have an HR rep or a union. Yeah, it's true. You got, you know, you just have to deal with it. I'm going to go, I'm going to go play Star Do Valley. Something that won't hurt me

That was great Come on The only Ultra anime Millie The only The only good part Is the fucking The fucking

The world Effect at the end That part Caught me off guard That one wasn't that bad That's all I'm giving you If you're gonna Joja you have to Zawado

right you have to and of course it's as he's pushing the wiki feet the wiki feet yeah that that's that's fine it's fine oh i can't believe you did that i can't believe you's a world yeah good work uh noddle noodle i i never learned how to pronounce your name but that shit is so cash dude um it genuinely looks like just ripped right out of the pages of jojo so great work and and wow brickie Thanks for helping make this a reality and turning your most treasured moment in Warhammer 40K into a big giant anime feet meme. Really? Buy our merch. Buy our merch.

Buy our merch so I can, you know, so we can be okay. Buy our merch. You want to do an official outro or are you too scarred for that? Fuck this man. You know what, at 6,000 patrons will make Doge Van Dyer merch. Oh. There you go. There you go.

6K. You know, I was going to say there are some places that will do custom order plushies. Goodbye.