The 40k Lorecast - Episode 66 - The Tau Pt 2 - How they fight, their weapons, and their key leaders.

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

On today's cast we conclude our coverage of the Tau. We start with a breakdown of their styles of battle Mont’ka, Kauyon, and of course shield drone jubilee. After that we dive into the warfare technology of drones, battle suits and weaponry. From there we go into the expansion history of the Tau with the Spheres. From there we dive into Far sight, Shadowsun, and close with Aun’va.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast, me, John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. Today's episode will conclude our coverage of Tao, so I never have to speak about them ever again. Just kidding. I just want everybody to know that we definitely had to take some time between these two episodes to let John get his chi back together. Yeah, John had some Irish coffees.

He feels better now. Tau. Anyway, kidding, guys. I don't hate them that much. I just don't like them. Yeah, 100% hates them that much. But before we begin, as we discovered a week ago, we don't tell people what our podcast is and when it comes out. So, again, the 40K lore cast is a weekly cast on 40K lore that releases every Monday at 7 p.m.ish in the Eastern because that's when we sent to Spotify, iTunes, Xbox, and others.

I don't know what time it actually arrives. On my phone, I should see it around 710. But anyway. With that, for those of you who are listening on whatever your device and your device, including the Xbox thing. If you could like and comment on it, it would really help us out a lot. It's great seeing the comments.

I said, I have to read them. For whatever reason, the metrics, though, pushes us out. It does. It moves us up in rankings quite a bit,

which the rank, again, they're not that much value, but other than people just see us. And it's kind of cool to reach further and get out there. Additionally to that, as we always point out in the show notes,

you'll see a few links. One of them is our Discord. It's totally free. Everyone's welcome to join. It is a behemoth. that candidly I would have burned to the ground rather than manage it, but Kevin, Macy, Brian,

Ethan, who spells his name wrong, Steve, Ryan, Trevor, and David have stepped up. They are the moderators for our Discord and are doing a really, really good job. I love that I can go in there and not have to deal with problems because they already dealt with them.

It's also been structured differently. It's become so much bigger than it. Bigger and better. It's easier. Yeah, better is the key thing. Bigger happens, but it's really been better. We made this as a place for people to be able to interact directly with Brad and I because it's kind of hard to do in general.

Didn't want to list our cell phone number. One of us lists us email. Good job, Brad. Nothing bad has happened because of that. But the whole idea of the Discord was originally to have a way for people to kind of interact with us, give us feedback, ask us questions, tell us what we got wrong. And then it's blossomed into a community. Right now it's over 25 channels.

devoted to everything from the cast itself, playing the game, people's favorite lore and literature. We now have a space where you post a picture of your pet, which, by the way, I look at every single one of your pets because I'm a massive pet person. 12 out of 10. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. And it's just a great place that if you're into 40K and want a place to interact, come on in,

and you don't get all the nightmares. You get some of the other spots. So links in the show notes. Lastly, though, for those of you who are, you know, this game is not just about lore, it's actually about playing the tabletop. Brad has a coaching service. You can go to our website, the 40KLorecast.com. There's some details about it there for more. But with over a decade of coaching experience and 30 years of playing the game, Brad's quite the resource in it.

And he really does do a great job of helping people not just play the game better, but understand the game better. More importantly, though, let's feed the Bron. thoughts, Brad. There are numerous, there are lots of hot singles in an area, and they need to know where to send this email to. So go ahead and send your email out. Old man, Brad, 40K at gmail.com. I cannot wait for more spam to show up. Yeah. So if you are at email 1732 GH, RIPQ2 at god knows what.com, feel free to email, Brad, whatever you're trying to sell. He'd love to know about his UPS package that's on hold. Maybe there's a few,

oh, have you won a few, like, coolers? I've got multiple the fake IRS one where I have to... Ooh,

the IRS might not be fake. Not from that email. Not from that email. IRS knows right where to find. IRS doesn't go to the other email. It goes to... That's the correct email. The correct one.

They're not trying to spam me. They're like, we know where you are. Yeah, we'll find you. All right. Let's finish off Tao. So I think after the last one, we did a good enough job of covering what the Tao are, who they are, et cetera. Let's talk about the Tao warfare, because this is a main thing about the Tao.

So the Tao mantra of war is really one of two ways, but there's a secret hidden third, if you played in certain editions. So the Tao namely preferred diplomacy over war. They do not want to exterminate something because they could add to the greater good. Well, they want to continue to grow. The thing is, is that the Tao want to grow hugely because they didn't know how small they were until they got a taste of the Imperium. Well, and one thing it's interesting is, and they don't really cover this very well on any of the lot of the races in the galaxy, but it's hard to know what the tau reproduction cycle is. So there is an element.

They've quickly populated multiple systems. They have, but is it just with them? Because I promise Vespid. We know Vespid and Kruit go fast. True. But there's a lot, there's a huge tau population on all of them. There is, and they add people. Because each one has its core, each system has its core planet, which is primarily all

tau. That's right. I bring us up because one of the things about Tao is this is why diplomacy, in my mind, was so important to them, is that they're trying to, They're trying to catch up to the Imperium, which is impossible and functionally. No, but they had no idea how big it was. That being said, though, if they do encounter someone who they realize are not going to understand the greater good, they shift very quickly to the other side.

Now, this is one of the things that change a lot. If you read early, third edition codex is, even the fourth edition, Tao was not so quick to smoke show. They've always done this. You're right. You're right. In the recent books, originally it was, if it's orcs, we smoke them. But everyone else we talk to.

Now it seems to be like there's a quick message sent, hey, do you want to learn? It's like Jehovah's Witnesses. Like, can we talk to you with the greater good? And if the answer is no. They instantly smokes you. They kick open the door and they beat you with a bat. It used to not be that, though. Yeah.

The reason this matters is that when we talk about the way the towel wage war, they don't wage war by laying a long battle by holding ground, laying siege, occupying territory. They just want to completely destroy their enemies. And they also want to get in and out. They're big about, they're huge about, they almost

they don't do pirate like Dracari style, but it's semi-close. They hit you with everything in the kitchen sink and then they just get the hell out. Right. And my issue with that is so does everybody. No, the period of them will grind you down.

No, but the Imperial Guard is because they have to grant it. What I'm getting at is that with a Tao philosophy, the military philosophy is we're going to lie in wait and then we're going to strike very suddenly and devastatingly to destroy our entire opponents so they can't fight back. Walk me through who doesn't do that except for orcs. Like what the Tao just describes our military philosophy is to have the most successful victory.

Yeah, man. So does everybody. True. They do it like a strike. I mean, the appear is completely, willing to just go, we have so many more people. Yeah, that's the difference. The Imperium can grind it, but like, walk me through the difference between the

Tao military strategy and the Eldar one. I'll pause. No, not right. There we go. That's what I thought. It's like, even the tyrannid's use the same general thing. I'm like, what is it? And then there's nothing left.

So I just, I saw it and I went, that doesn't make any sense. But back to the Tao battle. So the Tao have like two styles depending on which. of the castes is present. And they're pretty similar, but a little bit different. Between Montca and Kalyan. Crew. It's all the same concept.

Let's say what they are first, though. Because Montcah, the killing blow, while Kayan is the patient hunter. And these are... Cough, cough, the same thing. Good, didn't you? Semi. Not on the board.

I like how it was my first cough that wasn't actually a real cough. I know. We have been hacking up a little bit. Brad and I've been coughing the whole time. So, like, there we go. But it's a big thing on this. Because you have entire schools. I do this going, like, if you go really back in the...

Let's just... Don't... Let's just get this over with. All right. Montca... What? Montca means I'm going to lie and wait and hide from my enemy, and when they reach a certain spot,

I'm going to attack, and the trap is sprung, and I get them. Cow Yan is the exact same thing, but with bait. But you have to be... Walk me through the difference. Tell me how that description wasn't correct. kind of that's the same thing they both

little cowardly towel hiding behind a little hiding in a bush with a rail gun by the way awesome weapon waiting and either it's

I wait till the enemy arrives or I make the crout irritate them and then while they chase the crout I then do there's no difference in these bad like it's and I get mad at

because they spend a bunch of time trying to draw these out in the codecs as you're reading about it and every time I read it I go yeah man it's the same strategy

Monka is more aggressive completely though Yeah but there's not there's not like a third one where it's like oh What if we just do over well overlapping fields of fire with artillery It does make difference when you're talking about the suit armies though So because they will Drop down on you with Montcah and go Versus waiting for the Kau Yon again guy gets chasing while he chases the crew The Valley and then dropping down it

It's the Kau Yan is Monta Kau Yon is Monta. Ka. It's just a little bit later. And I say that. Also, read the rules. They tend to be the exact same rule. Just you either get it in battle rounds one and two or three, four and five. It's the same benefit though, right? Yeah. There's a different benefit because you got lethal versus explosions. Yeah. I'll be honest. Their third methods way better of just three riptides on top of a building with 30 plus shield drones hidden from line of sight under the building and making everyone angry. You were never going to let 8th edition go. No. No. I mean, Invisible Wolves is still worse. I mean, everything at 7th edition was worse. Invisible Wolves is the worst thing I've ever heard. But it was really irritating. The 8th edition thing? It's kind of acceptable.

Because you couldn't target them. Yeah. Well, so, I'm not... Sorry. Ooh. You've got opinions. I do love how bad touched you got. by that. Yeah. So,

you know what? We talked about last time about how Vespit are useless because the whole concept of them is the drones do it better. And I have to give the talent credit on drones. Their drone technology is legit. The whole reason they can do

this Montcaa-Kalian BS is in theory, lower to tabletop, this does make some level of sense. They're better at scouting than any other army in the game. because they've got, in theory, dumb insects that they don't use, but what they really have are drones.

And their drone technology is next level. Insane. And I'll give them credit. So because just like, like, you know, your father or grandfather, the tower is super into their drones. And if you don't know why I'm making that reference, go blue, you're laughing. Just, the average drone owner is 55 years and older or male.

So the tower basically, you're dead. they've got the weird hoof feet but they actually wear new balances. For sure. With the grass stains. With the grass stains. But let's actually have my drones. As much as I might crap on them, the drones are actually one of the coolest parts of the Tao in my mind.

So we don't know when they were invented, but they are extensive throughout the empire. There's over 25 variants just that I could find. My guess is more than that. And they do, the drones do everything. There's like clerical duties, mobile aides to help people basically walk, obviously weapons of war. And I have everything too. They have drones, missile drones, gun drones.

Well, they have like literally, they've hologramed drones that let you like kind of talk to somebody. They've got, the drone technology is amazing. Guys ride them. The defensive tactical drones that they have, the recon drones, shan drones. Yeah, I mean, and they, the drones make up. The drones are probably one of the most important parts of the Tao style of war. And we'll get into the Y in a minute. But first off, let's just describe them.

So for the most part, they're one meter or less with features on it, you know, for whatever task is hand. Some are bigger, like the Ramoras are actually much larger, still a drone. But the main purpose of the drone is what I would call enhancement. Because Tao struggle pretty badly with the size of their force. next to maybe Votan, and I'm not even sure on them, they're the smallest in the galaxy. By a large, large, exponentially, actually. The tau, I mean, the math on this was a little bit trick.

I got to go to Reddit for some of this help, but the math is there. There's about 20 seps over about 100 worlds. That should put them somewhere between $100 and $200 billion. This is total population. Yeah, which is also like the number of guardsmen we lost this year. Let's say, necrombunda is 10 billion. You know, there's 32,000 hive worlds within the Imperium,

and necrombuda is a large one at 10 billion, but let's say it's 5 billion, still quite a lot. Comera has more people in it than the entirety of the Tao population. The Astromilitarum is 3 to 6 trillion people. So 1,000 to 1 versus the Tao, or 100 to 1, still. and then orcs, tyrannids. Who knows? Like the tyrantids could eat them tomorrow

and it would be like, oh, whatever. But this is why, again, it's an issue I have with Tao being, I think they're insignificant. But the flip side is the idea is that the drones are what make them significant. Because while we only have, let's say, there are 200 billion Tao.

There might be 400 billion drones. With pretty advanced tech in them too, for what they're supposed to do. And they get very specific on them. Yeah. And we can even talk about a couple of them real quick because you have obviously, you've got messenger drones

for, you know, moving video logs. The big ones, though, are like repair and manufacturing drones where they're actually building stuff for them. Well, it's big on both. I think that they're actually... I would separate these two because the repair and manufacturing are too wildly different.

Because the repair drones are pretty sophisticated drones that will instantly battle... start repairing stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mid battle,

you take a shot. The drone pops out like R2D2. We know where they stole all these ideas from. You know, they start repairing the X-wing. I mean, but instantly. And it's a big deal because they also never went through a dark age of technology

and anything else. So they're just, they're finding and utilizing every piece of tech they can get their hands on. Yeah. And that's actually talk about that because that's important. Due to the dark age of technology, the Imperium doesn't use AI. The Eldar,

due to psychic powers, don't have a need for this type of stuff. There are two people who use AI in the galaxy, and that is the Tao and now the Votan, which again, we're going to do a cast on Votan, by the way, guys, we want to wait for one more codex because one codex is just not enough. We're guessing, for lack of better for us.

But let's talk about the Tao AI. So the drones are an active AI. Each are a little bit different. It's described in the books as having the intelligence of an animal. My issue with that is, like, do they mean like... One animal. Yeah, dolphin monkey or ostrich panda. Fun note.

Did you know the ostrich is the dumbest animal? I just like the fact I want. And the panda, which doesn't surprise any of them. They're cute as hell. I love watching pandas just consistently fall down. When you ever tell us someone that pandas are one of the five dumbest animals, they go, yeah, I can see that. Just donking itself all the time.

We spend, as a species, we spend probably billions of dollars trying to make them not die out. and they're just active, they're like, whoops, there are three stooges levels of shit going on. There's no value. But anyway, back to the drones. So these drones AI, there's somewhere on this animal level of intelligence. But they're not true AI and that they're an independent body.

The AI is there more as a backup system because each has a drone controller. Correct. When it's linked, but when you lose that link, it will then... That's what it's been... Yeah, so when you're... When your drone controller is alive and giving you directions,

the drone is exactly what it's told to do. But should that link be severed, they go to some default programming. And there are, you know, a few different options for drones in general. The first and biggest one, as we were discussing, is recon. These are, you know, three, one meter, so three foot discs. That's really small. In the sky, you cannot see that. So they scout constantly.

pretty awesome maneuverability on the drones too. Oh yeah, plus camouflage technology. The towel really do in theory. I mean, they'd be up there with a lay talk in the sense of being prepared for a battle. They know who their opponents are. They know what their opponents are armed with. They know everything they need to know about their opponents.

And that's because of the drones or if they want to send their weird insect army to go make a bunch of loud noises. Well, it's a big deal because of the fact that, again, there's not that many towel. So the commanders want the perfect strike for their Mott, Ka, or Kayo? Yeah. You know who else wants the perfect strike?

Eldar, Drukari, Space Marines, Voten, GSC, Necrons, Admec, all of them, every single one of them. Except for Orks and Tyrion. Actually, hell, Tyrnots probably do. Oh, world leaders. World leaders probably don't care that much about the exact perfect strike. But I feel like everyone, you know who does? Abadden. Pretty good.

I feel like, yeah, just throwing it out there. Like, it's like, this is, I know the TAL players are hating this, but I'm just being honest, all the stuff they talk about, the TAL's method of, of combat is to try and kill their opponent while not dying. Like, that's basically what they keep saying. They're pretty awesome with the recon drones. Yeah, they are, but I'm just, I'll give them, they're better at it, but their goals are same.

You know what drones they have, which are a real big deal? Gun drones. Yeah, we'll do gun drones. So every TAL vehicle gets to shoot more than it should, because, Because it's got these gun drones on it. Even some of the battlesuits do too, right? I don't. They come with him.

I don't play town. I think that was obvious. You can assign, obviously. You can assign drones with them, people. Yeah. And so these drones will have extra guns on them that actually interact with a pilot, giving them these, basically an AI weapon. And they used to be able to just separate and go on their own merry way.

Yeah. So I like the idea of this in their gun drones because they're, they supplement the fighting for Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. The idea is that, you know, what's the, is it the, what's the space marine floating tank with a billion guns on it? Or poster executioner. It just makes, like, how many pilots are in that thing? A lot. They've got gunners for every, every gun.

That's my point. He's kind of weird. Where the town have similar output, but just with one guy in there and an AI taking care of the rest. Yeah, well, it's AI. They have AI targeting and gunning. It makes more sense. The next one, though, is, I would say, battlefield assistance, which is everyone's second least favorite drone, the marker drone.

Hells yeah. These things are, conceptually, these make a lot of sense, and then the rules writers have jacked them up pretty bad. The idea of the marker drone is just like exists in modern warfare. You put a laser mark on something, the missile knows, and the missile lands on it. Basic concept, that's all the marker drones for. The idea of this is that the vehicle can send the marker drones out, they add accuracy and then you hit harder.

Airverse cannons. This is ninth edition complaints. Only at the beginning. They were so ridiculous at the beginning. Yeah. So what ended up happening with this unfortunately from a rules writing standpoint was this,

they would allow someone to shoot something they couldn't see with perfect accuracy. Four year olds. Yeah. 18 D6 shots from out of line of sight. Ignoring cover.

Ignoring cover. cover hitting on a three I believe with full re-rolls plus one to AP because you'd be in Mottka yeah it was busted yeah the worst thing

sorry GSC your codex came out directly before oh yeah GSC was made point they actually this is a funny story GAS G's GILER cult got a codex that was everyone was reading it with horror

like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen like they were going to absolutely be a terror on the tabletop and kill everyone. Three weeks later, less than, than a Tau Kodex came out that made the GSC Army unplayable. Genuinely

unplayable. Pick it up. There's no, if I bring two crisis squads with error bursts in it, your GSC army doesn't exist. You just deleted them. Yeah. That was funny. I do like this though. I like the idea

of this. I hate an indirect in the game. But the lure on it's fantastic. It makes complete sense. Exactly. The, the The battle suits are hiding behind a wall. They can shoot up through the ceiling. And you have legitimately AI guided. Yeah. You send a drone to sneak around and mark the enemy for him so they can, like to the patient hunter,

to hide and wait and then just attack suddenly with perfect accuracy. From out of anywhere like that. It makes complete sense. Just, oh my God, in the tabletop. And the amount of, it's also the amount of shots was oppressive. 18D6 from one squad. Let's talk about drones that keep you alive. obviously I've been complaining about shield drones a lot let's do this I hate them I hate them I hate

shield drones are badass shield drones I hate them on the table I know I know you hate them in the door I hate them in the house I hate them with a mouse I hate every single thing about shield drones I hate there's no part of shield drones that I like I love them in the lore no they don't make sense in the lore okay because they get in the way they it's a force shield nothing works that nothing moves that fast I don't know I've seen a lot of Star Wars. Light sabers are blocking that stuff all the time. So let's do this.

A shield drone from description sounds like, oh, so it's like a mobile force field that protects things. Yeah, that would make total sense. You have a shield drone nearby? You can invulnerable save because it gives you a little bit of protection. No. A shield drone is a drone that suicides itself into a gunshot. Sometimes it doesn't suicide.

It just sometimes lives. We're going to get there. Oh, we're going to get there. but we're talking about the 41st millennia where people are shooting light at each other so this apparently and I'm going to explain why this is so stupid I shoot a Las Canon

which is firing the speed of light at you the Tao drone therefore moves faster than the speed of light to get in between that shot and you hold on I'm not done yet John all shield drones are Jedi hold on it gets worse the Tao, as of the 41st millennia,

don't have faster than light drives. That is also true. Technically, the shield drone moves faster than anything in the Tao Army fleet, anything. It just has to anticipate the shot. You can't anticipate light. Obviously, the shield drone can. Oh, because it's a Jedi.

Yeah. I'm just, like, if it's sure, shooting a missile, fine. I'm okay with it. I'm having Sniggs write down Jedi names on all of the shield drones first time. You're about to have your shot stopped by Mace Windu, the shield drone.

Yeah, an Eldar Brightlance somehow can be intercepted by a shield drone. This is so annoying. And then for those of you who don't know what happened in eighth edition. In eighth edition, these things were prevalent.

And the reason I hate them so much is they just made a mistake on the rules. That's all I can explain it. The way it would work is I would roll a dice to see if I could hit you. Then I would roll a dice to see if I would successfully get through your armor and wound you. Then you would roll a dice to see if your subsystems protected you from that attack. Then you would roll another dice to see on a two out of six, two, three, four, five, or six to see if it hit the shield drone instead, which okay, that's the shield drone supposed to be four.

Let me get there. That the shield drone is supposed to be a, it got in the way. I didn't like the first part of this, but it gets worse. Then, sometimes you could also roll one more time. And on a one in three chance, the shield drone that just took a lascan to the face would go, actually I'm good and wouldn't die. No, the sucky part is when you got hit with a volcano cannon. Yeah.

And your 15 to 20 damage became one. And then a 5 plus your shield drone fell no pain and was fine. Yeah. A volcano lance shoots a beam of light that could in theory cut through a spaceship. Oh, easily. But a-you're harnessing the sun. But a less than one-meter-wide drone got in. between it and the

and the volcano shook it off and all the extra damage went shoulder shrug I hated this rule at the time

I hate everything about this it also sucked because they had 20 of them 20 oh with each guy okay there you go

I was I was saying no I mean those blobs that were there was it Brian was his name the guy who wore the sweater vests I think he brought

like 60 to one of that it was so nuts it was something like where he was like, oh, these things just can't die. So, all right, rant over. Let's spend some time on just IP violation things now. Battlesuits. Gundams?

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that stuff it upset i think there was a good population that felt it was a cash grab i'm not one of them and i complain about enough stuff on the towel so i'm not going to complain about this and i like suits quite a bit i think they look cool What I'm saying is that for people who don't know, this is an area of people do complain about a lot, but because I'm not one of those people, I'm not going to complain on their behalf. I just go with, I don't care.

Well, let's talk about the fact of the manner of the suits, though, because effectively all Tao are in a battlesuit. Yeah, every single town. It just depends on how big of a battle suit you're in. Yep. And the battlesuits, we talked before about Tao technology are amazing. They use this thing called a neurolink.

Every battle suit is linked to its wearer by neurolink. So where there's embedding in the skull of its wearer a piece that interacts with a suit they're wearing. So instead of a giant carapus organ that kills the user half time that they put it in there, the town just went with, hey, let's do this. And it works instantaneously every time. And perfectly. So maybe that's what the sisters of battle that we're doing with her power armor. I'm just not telling anybody.

You're not telling anybody like, oh, we mastered this technology. Look, the space marines are really into their black carapists. Let's just not tell them that we don't need that anymore. You do you. You do you. Y'all feel free to have an organ that can reject and you all die. We'll just put this thing in our head and everything works perfectly. One of the biggest things about it, though, is the Tao effectively almost use it as a second set of skin.

Yeah, well, it becomes their body. It moves with them. Why it carries no strength, I don't know. Well, it's wild, though, because the suits, and this is, some of the writing is really, really good on this. because Tao as they get farther into battles, they raise up in ranks, they will get the larger, more powerful suits.

Some people stay with the same suit forever, like stealth team sometimes. By the way, it's not hard to write good stuff on this when it's already all been pre-written for you by like all of Robotech. But I like the idea of this brain interface having to be,

it's a big deal when they change suits, you know, style of suit. Because this is, become your second body, you know, your second skin. It is. And I like, I mean, they do write this out. Again, it's all this crap is so stolen. I'm sorry, it just is.

But the way that they interact with the suit, it's not just that the suit feels them, but they actually can feel the suit itself. So like they feel, they feel it walking on the ground. They feel the impact of that. When the weapons fire, they feel the kick.

They even feel like, they talk about they even feel pain when the suit gets damaged. Not like heavy pain, just enough that they know that there is pain. Yeah, they get to the sense of what happened to the suit. Exactly. Which is a big deal on now.

Like I said, it's a big deal when they change suits. People go up. Totally. And then the suits themselves, to Brad's point earlier, really do advance. They've got, you know, basic things like, you know, they've guns, they have flight, they have camouflage. There's neuralink's really important because these suits for like a regular soldier is just a suit. It, you know, it's got, you know, two arms, two legs, and I'm holding a gun.

but when you get a bit bigger, now the suit has a camouflage feature that has to be turned on and off. You can fly. You've got extra arms. Multiple guns. Multiple arms. And so over time,

the Tao soldier has to kind of get used to this style. Unlike Imperial, but unlike Imperial Knights, which we'll cover in a future episode, the Tao also, these suits become somewhat interchangeable for them. So an Imperial Knight will, once you link to a knight, That's it.

You don't, you don't then jump to another one next week. You know, it's more like, I guess, Pacific Rim in that regard. Yeah, whereas the TOW, it's just, yeah, I have my neural link. I turn on Bluetooth pairing. But this is, for me, one of the things, and we'll go, we're going to talk right now more about the suits. But one of the things that's wild for me is the TOW's technology is advancing so quickly that they can't even keep up with putting new stuff. There's tons of people, like in the game,

you have all the prototypes. You'll read about the thing. They have better stuff. They just can't manufacture it fast enough because they keep coming up with newer and better and newer and better. All the time. Yeah.

And I do like where the towel do this. So like a fire warrior, for example, which is, you know, their warrior class, they start with basic armor effectively. And then after four years of, service, they can do what's called a trial by fire ritual. I have no idea what that is. I have no idea what encompasses

when I say I don't know what it is. If they do that, then they can become a battle suit pilot. They, and with Brad mentioned earlier, from that point on, as they are more successful in battle, they can either choose to stay with their current battle suit or upgrade to the next

one, the next one, the next one. What this does for Tao is it means that their most expensive and best equipment is only being used by someone who's proven themselves time and time again. Superior experience war-hardened veterans. And we'll cover this when we get to the Imperial Knights cast, but this is one of the big knocks on the Imperial Knights, is that because you have to link to the knight, the person using the knight gets experience, but only with that night.

So you may fight a Titan. Well, Titans have more than one crew. But you might fight... But you would fight an Imperial Knight. You could, in theory, fight an Imperial Knight who's never been in combat before. Whereas a town... Is it Townar? Is that the big one?

The Supremacy suit. Yeah, you fight that. The guy in a supremacy suit, you're his like 900th battle. Yeah. So theoretically, the supremacy suit probably should, on average, rompill stomp an Imperial Knight because the pilot's just so much better. He's been fantastic. Again, super, yeah, again, all credit word tower good, that's cool as hell.

Now, let's spend a little bit time on the suits themselves and some of like, you know, how they're used. The biggest one to me are the stealth battle suits because, as we said before, the tower giant cowards. So. These guys are forward deployers with top of the line, stealth technology, dispersion fields, They've got a excellent movement. No, Centurion Dreadnought. Yeah. Sneak, very sneaky.

Very sneaky. Yeah, the stealth suits are actually, they're really cool. So the idea is that the stealth suit actually doesn't just make you camouflage because don't forget, very few things in 40K actually use their eyes to see you. It'll actually camouflage electronically. Now, small flaw in this logic, how do you camouflage against warp site when you're, when you don't, when you're in a non-exhawness? warp entity. Well, you think you can.

Maybe if I just sit here very, very still, I won't see me. But, you know, that's one of those ones where I'm nitpicking you can poison necrons, there's night fighting for space marines, whatever. That's fine. If stealth suits can not be seen by demons of corn.

In the stealth suits have a fairly impressive amount of weaponry in their the smallest of the battle suits. I mean, obviously fire warriors are in armor. Right, but the They're not a battle suit. They're meant to be the smallest, and they serve a massive purpose in the tabletop.

Also, if you want to check them out, watch the Exodite on Warhead. Oh, yeah. You're right. It's a very good. It's a stealth team. It's a stealth team. All right. Let's get my PTSD out of the ground out of the way in these next couple.

The Crisis Battlesuit. Oh. It's the most common. It's the most common. It also comes with the most, the widest array of possible weapons. Not anymore. Oh, that's. Not anymore.

I know how upset TOW players were when Tenth Edition Codex came out because they had to really break their models. But still, I mean, even in Loran on the table, they at least have the most option of them. They do. And just for people what I'm talking about. So the Tau crisis suits for a long time, basically you had three weapon systems you could put on in any combination whatsoever.

So people would build them with like the three best systems. But when you buy these. models, they would come with one of each. So if you just bought a pack of three, you could give each of those three one of each battle system. People would spend extra money, they use 3D printers, whatever it was, and they would make them with three of the top one. And GW realized that wasn't a good thing. And so the latest codex for the first time in the history of the towel, they made that not doable. And so a lot of players who put a lot of time and effort into building and painting their models had to break them. So the crisis suits though are they're probably the most famous looking

of all of them. They're also the most common for time. Yeah they're used because they can they can be adapted. The beauty of the crisis suit is that it's an I like the term crisis. They basically create a crisis. They're not used for crisis. They rapid insertion them. They can show up. They're very fast. They can they can jump down. And their weapon systems. It's not just the weapons but also there's other systems like targeting systems, drone control. all this stuff come in there so that when they're deployed, they're deployed for maximum efficiency. And I think that the crisis suit still probably has the most customizable ability with the commanders and stuff like that. I'll give the Tao credit here. The way the Tao wage war is meant to be one of like we're going to, I know my opponent.

And instead of making nothing in the Tao army is meant to be a take all comers. Everything is meant to be specifically targeted and then we're going to use these specific pieces in combat. But let's talk about the real one. The big boys? Screw riptides. Screw riptides. Screw riptides. They're big.

They have a very big gun. They're hard to kill. And they were the bait of my existence for years. But they do look awesome. I think it's one of the top two best looking models in the thing. If you don't know what they look like, did you play Robotech or Rifts? Because Tau. Yeah.

Tau have some models for you, and GW has some explaining to do in court. You got some explaining to do. I mean, the storm surge and the town are also look amazing, but... Those are so huge. Yeah. But the Riptide is... The Riptide's iconic four, Tau. Yeah.

I'd say crisis suits are the... Crisis suits are the meat and potatoes. The riptide is, you know, the kud... It's the flash. Yeah, it's just, it's like the riptides. And they've actually had really great rules on their guns that have made a lot of sense. The Riptide comes in. The idea of the Riptide is, the crisis suits kind of come in in mass. The Riptide's come in like more selectively. And they come from the, the rear. They're

firing and moving opposite. Yeah. And they have giant guns. They're very quick. I mean, the Riptide is borderline an LDAR weapon. Yeah. I mean, kind of. Do you have this with you? They can move, they can move that fast. They hit that hard. Yeah. I like Reptive. And it's a big thing. And then you've got the broadsides. Yeah, which is the same thing, which is a heavier walker. Yeah. it's a kind of a smaller version of the riptide almost to be honest with it I hate both of them well it's it's using their heaviest weaponry though you know I mean with heavy rail rifles it is yeah I mean

all right let's let's spend on them talking about the stumbling one thing on tau I really do like which is their tech their tech's awesome they're just nothing so we said before like the Tao were like often caught trading with other civilizations it's not for food yeah because I'm assuming the humans and Tao have different digestive systems. Probably. Like, I don't know what the tau eat, but it's probably not corpstarch.

Who knows? By the way, the tau are known for trading weaponry. That's what you do with the Tao. It's because their weaponry is, them in like dark Eldar, probably the Votan now, are the most advanced technology

in the galaxy. Yes. And in a lot of the, well, we talked about it a little bit in the Eldar cast, the Eldar weaponry is more advanced. but a lot of it worked in concert with Psyche.

That's my point. The Eldar technology, to me, is not as impressive because they've got an extra boost to it. Whereas Votan, Drukari, and Tao can't. So to me, that weaponry is a lot better. Main one, there's so many obvious. You've got the anti-grab technology that allows their vehicles.

The thing about, we talk about Tao anti-Grav that I like pointing out is it's not just that they can make a flying tank because people can make a flying tank that can fire a gun that should be on a spaceship with accuracy. Yeah, they do bring the big guns and they mount them on several different types

of chassis too. So it's fairly impressive on that. And one of the things on the Tao technology is, as a will, I'll just go in contrast with the Imperium technology, is all their stuff safe? The Imperium is just super okay with you overloading things and just blowing yourself up.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Tau plasma does this really cool thing called work. Yeah. I mean, Tau plasma is probably one of the most famous ones in it because Tau plasma, you just sit there and everyone else has plasma that will overheat on occasion and blow up the user, sometimes other people near it. Nope.

Tau plasma just works. And Tau plasma also works at multiple levels. When we talk about Tau plasma, for example, imperial plasma is a very large gun. You've got plasma guns and plasma cannons, and they're both big, giant backpacks. The Tao, their fire warriors,

who are effectively guardsmen, carry a plasma gun. That's, it's a pulse ravel. A pulse rebel. It's pulses of plasma. And they, their plasma technology is late years ahead. Yeah. Their ion technology is the next one.

Although, note in that in a second. So ions is when they just used magnets to shoot compacted ionized particles at something. This is technology that primarily is used. The Imperium uses on knights and on starships. Oh, say on ships. The Tal use it on walkers. Yeah, I'll say on tiny. Although, interestingly, in the last, I mean, this is very new.

The Black Library book that came out, I mean, with like less than a month ago, I think it was like in September or October. they point out that the Tao got this technology from the Votan which is... That is very new though. Very new. So the Tau have been using ion technology

for seven editions now. Exactly. And now with like a less than a month from time of recording it was like oh by the way they got all that from the Votan. So eh, just pointing out. But I have to call it out because I do know it. But the Tau also do use my

from sci-fi standpoint, my favorite gun that exists. which is a railgun. Why? Because I played battle tech, you know, and Mech Warrior. Railguns, I love rail guns. I will never not love rail guns. My favorite's just, I don't know why. Everyone's got their thing.

My sci-fi thing's always been rail guns. And the Tao not only have awesome railguns, but it actually is a railgun, as opposed to the weird gouse that the, that the Nekron's use, which is not gouse at all. This is an actual railgun. And it does damage. Yeah.

Although, just do know for those of you who ran hammerheads with railguns and missed. Whoopsie. The tears of your sadness, they warm my soul. Cover that in a second. The Tau Railgun is, so a railgun throws on a, RELG uses Magnus to shoot basically a super heavy slug at incredible speed at something. And the slug can either be a solid piece that will just blow through something. or can be an explosive tip.

And to GW's credit in 9th edition, they made these things amazing. They did gigantic damage. Yeah. In 9th edition, which is the edition prior to this, they had what I believe are the perfect rules. If you had one,

if you successfully rolled to hit your opponent and to wound it, that was the end. Yeah, there was no saves. We went right to damage. And the damage it did could one shot a tank off the board, which is exactly what a railgun could do. Now, the fun part was they also could re-roll this if they missed.

This is why I'm going to, Brad knows why I'm laughing at this. If you're a towel set. Yeah, you could re-roll this. And to my great joy, all you had to do was on a one out of six, roll a two, three, four, five, or six. And I played against people who would somehow roll a one twice in a row. they were so sad and I would just laugh you were so sad for them

I can I'm not gonna waste that time here but I had a guy literally lose a game because of it because he did that and left stuff out there and then the counter explosion

I did back with my fire prisms took out half his army anyway let's go into the expansion yeah let's go into like true tau well we're going to do trow talent trow tau yeah

let's go into tau history how now trow tau Sorry. All right. So let's talk about the Tao expansion. So as we said, the Tao were the most advanced race in the galaxy, but that's everything but space travel. They could do plasma, gauss, AI, anti-grav, rail. But they actually struggled even to get anywhere much closer than sublight.

They couldn't even get the sublight speed initially. They just had giant ships. There was just big ships that took forever. So they have what's their experience. expansion, it takes place in spheres. They do spheres of expansion, which are effectively... There's a word neither that was can pronounce on camera, into a microphone, by the way. Sphere?

Schreeder? Yeah, yeah. Because I think we both had sphere and sphere each. Yeah, so each expansion is called a sphere. The reason why is because they actually go out in a spherical pattern. They're not, you know, they're trying to, it's the tau. They want to expand, almost evenly. Yeah, they want to expand evenly.

of their biggest things about their military and everything, they want to make sure that they can't get logistics disrupted. They don't want things behind them effectively. And to that point, as we just said, they never mastered high-speed space travel. So they kind of need to have the logistics. It's easier to expand almost linearly out in even pattern because it's, that way, all of your logistics are kind of pre-taking care of. So the first sphere of expansion was 1,500 years and started an M-37. and ended near the end of M38 and was a massive success. Oh, it's huge.

This is the one where they got the Crout, the Nicosar, the Thraxians. Well, I also think this is one of the biggest things because this was such a huge success. I think it pushed the Tao more for the greater good. Obviously, we're so successful. Everything's working out perfectly. Our worldview is the way.

Exactly. And they also, the big one here is that they actually wiped out the orcs who were in the sector during this period of time. So at the end of this, the Tao genuinely felt the galaxy was just for their taking and they're ready for it. So they set the Earthcast to work to create a new spaceship engine. And this one was able to get them to not quite light speed, but just sublight speed travel. Again, they could use shield drones, apparently.

They're faster. And 200 years after the end of the first sphere, the second sphere began. This one lasts actually almost twice as long at 2,500 years. This is the majority of Tao. Yeah. And it just ends in M41. And much like the first sphere, it started off to incredible success. They tamed the Vespids, thanks to the Atherials.

They, their encounters with the orcs continued to be in a good situation for them. And then they actually ran its really great race called humanity. who, you know, were in the perfect partner for them for spreading the greater good. Well, which is a big deal because they met humanity before they met the imperial. Well, they didn't know what it was. They traded with humans for a long time. Oh, I probably mean, it might have been. Hundreds of years.

Yeah, hundreds could even be a thousand years where the Tao met these. These are fringe colonies of the Imperium. These, I mean, at this far out, the Astronomicon is not even that bright anymore. That's how far away from terror this is. And over time, though, the ethereal's made a mistake. And the mistake the ethereal's made was they began trading with humanity. And the ethereal's felt, well, these people are in struggle. We should bring them into our fold.

And the ethereal's reached out to the humanity and explained to the water cast it, but it was the ethereal's. It's a big deal because they told these fringe colonies that are probably getting literally, or no imperial aid because again they're fringe colonies and they're like we can help you out and those people were like awesome yeah i i love help and so they came over and they left the imperium for the greater good fun story on the imperium the imperium the imperium doesn't care yeah the imperium's viewpoint on a fringe colony trading with zenos for technology is like hey don't do that but whatever that colony leaving the Imperium to join the Xenos forces is called a crusade.

There's some heresy of muck here. Yeah. So the Imperium discovers this. They don't say a word. They just begin the Damocles Crusade. And the Imperium sends at least, this is what I was counting, seven regiments, one of which was a Cadian regiment,

which is no joke. They did not, you don't send Cadians unless you're really preparing for war, 10 space marine chapters, multiple battle cruisers, and just a ton of support. And the Imperium wrecks the Tao initially. Bad, bad too.

Like the first couple planets. And to be fair, the Tao think what they're interacting with initially is the Imperium. They have no concept of how big this thing is and what it could bring to bear. The Imperium just exterminatuses these planets to nothing. Well, it reclaimed some. It flatline. Well, it reclaimed them and executed every single human on them. True.

They did put some to the torch. Yeah, I mean, like that, it, they either exterminatist it by actually bombarding it from space till it was an ashen rock or individually exterminated to every single thing on the planet. But either way, there was, there was, there was, there, There was an elbow room left over afterwards. And, well, this left everybody in a weird thing. So the Tao originally had no idea that Big Brother lived there. So the Imperium came in, Dick swinging, and just smoke fest in them. But the Imperium also didn't know what they were dealing with either because they had only hit fringe resistance at first.

Well, and that's what happened. To Brad's really right. The Imperium got way too confident. And they then went, okay, these guys, the Tao, have nothing on us. Let's go take them out. And they push in, and they push instead of out of a, because the first few worlds they hit were former imperial worlds. They then went to a planet or a system called Dalith, D-A-L-Y-T-H. So we go with Daleth.

They went into Daleth, Dalith, whatever. Dalith was a Tao world. The Tao had colonized it a long time ago. This is a big deal. Yeah. It's like us. Don't touch the boats. Don't touch the actual Tao worlds.

Yeah. And they get to Talith and immediately the war grinds to a halt. Just in the initial engagement for capital ships. I think one or two chapters got wiped out. They were not ready for what the Tao was bringing back. They were Voltroning ships. Yes. And this war eventually devolved.

into a ground war. And the Tao begin using tactics that the Imperium's not used to, which is effectively every city, the Tao can't hold it. The Imperium just blasts through them. But everything that's not a city, everywhere where there's cover, the Tao battle suits are just a nightmare for the- Just showing up, hitting, leaving. Also, the Kruit become this thing.

And this war drags on for months and only concludes because the High Fleet behemoth enters the galaxy. It's not here, it's a little bit further. Yeah, but they also got the note from home that you're redeployed. Yeah, you're redeployed. Stop screwing around with whatever you're doing. Yep. And the Imperium negotiates a ceasefire with the Tao, which they do, and they leave.

Both sides lost and won. That's why it's an interesting one. For the Imperium, they won by taking back the worlds and body check in the Tao. The Tao win by actually holding their own and defeating the Imperium, but also lose because they discover that their plans,

all the plans they had for the galaxy are gone now. They cannot defeat the Imperium. They also, they start gearing up, though. This is a big deal too, because I actually think that the Tao War Machine would have slowed down if they wouldn't have half this back. No, the Tao, they're still just too small.

No, but I'm saying it, they, for Tao, for the size of their, I think that their military would have been a shadow of what it is right now if they wouldn't have had this happen. Oh, yeah. It did speed them up. Because they knew that, oh, we need real shit. You have to think that up until this point, Tao's undefeated and everybody they met.

Yeah. Well, and let's spend on why that is. Because the thing about Tao is technology is great, but technology without tactics and leaderships, has no value. And the real reason that the Imperium Groundedua halt at Dalaith, or Dalith, whatever, is Commander Puritide. Commander Puritide's a boss. Commander Puritide is probably, no, he probably, is the greatest tactical mastermind

that Tao have ever had. We'll be right back after a quick break. He got his chops destroying orcs, just absolutely, like almost no casualty fighting orcs. he's he actually took over the defense of Dahleth and he's the reason why the Imperium just couldn't function because he was so good tactically because as we said the Tao were probably outnumbered in this battle 10 to 1 yeah except for the fact that they had Hannibal yeah just just leading the way and the Imperium didn't really know how to handle this now the reason that Puritide so important is kind of is more his legacy so

what he does is great but his legacy is where the Tao kind of, Tau's story gets a bit more interesting. As we said before, Tao don't live very long. And they're also not a very sturdy creature. Somehow, they don't explain how there's a sentence in a book.

There seems to be some sort of raider battle where he gets injured, like mortally wounded, basically. The atherials freak out when they see this because they realize their best commander is going to die. This is awesome what they did, though, because they effectively matriol.

breaks him. Well, it's awesome and it's not awesome. So yeah, I think it's pretty cool. Part one's awesome. Part two doesn't hold up to math. But part one, yeah, Brad's right. Part one, they hook him into a machine and they just transfer his conscious into a chip, puretide chip. Which is, you know, in the gameplay is a puretide engram chip. It's me you can give your commander to make your commander better. It's because they're putting this engram trip of puretide's thoughts into the commander. At the same time, though, the ethereal's weren't sure if this would work. And they decided, well, we have to preserve his leaders. And they realized, like we said, that Tao don't live very long.

So all of the people who learned from puritite would be dead within 100 years. So they decide there's three of them. Farsight, Shadow San, and Caius. I'm not saying their real names. Not. And they take two of them, and they shove them in stasis. which is Caius and Shadows. They do a weird like vampire type thing.

This is an underworld almost where they rotate through who's effectively out. Yeah. And this is the issue I have with this is can't. It's just the math and this doesn't work because Shadow Sun gets involved with a bunch of battles where it looks like she might be out for like 15, 20 years at a time. And then they, then she went back into stasis and like, right, but there's still, it's still a running clock guys. Like you don't get it reset each time you go into stays. Yeah, Shadow Sun's been in a lot.

Yeah, Shadow Sun's probably like 180 years old. She's dead, but she's not, you know. Kais are thing. Pure Tide, different stories are. There's a reason why Farsight's still. Yeah, Farisite's fine. Yeah, Farisite's fine. So, actually, you know what, let's do Farsight now.

Let's have some fun because let's just dive into. I love me some Farsight. Yeah, so the third sphere of expansion is kind of the part where the animals in the farm realized that they would have better under Farmer Jones. Sorry, wrong story. It's an allegorical novella about Stalinism. Thanks, Archer. This shows so good.

Spoiler alert. It sucks! It was so funny. Oh, it's so funny. Anyway, the third sphere is where the wheels are to come off the Tau Empire. The second sphere has just ended. They've realized that they're now, what they thought was a conquerable galaxy.

They're starting by the way. Not just conquerable. They thought they were inevitable. They were Thanos sitting it up here. To be fair, as you'd like to say. To be fair. The tau are in the bottom right corner of the galaxy, like all the way to the edge.

Hold on. Eastern Fridge. They're southeast of the center, whatever. So the bottom right portion of the galaxy, and their portion of the galaxy, more of what they touched was the dark space of the universe and the galaxy. So they don't realize how far this thing stretches to the left.

So as they, and the now, the Tao just discovered that. Because in there like trading with the Imperium and with some of the worlds they conquered, they got star maps. And that's when they discovered, oh. And we move at sublight speed. So this is basically impossible. Yeah. But as we said before, the ethereal's are much more of,

a propaganda style leadership and they don't want the regular towel to feel that way. So they immediately decide before anyone can figure out that this is kind of a losing battle for us, let's do another sphere. And they decide to make it even a bigger deal. They're going to bring Commander Farsight, who is Puritide's number one commander. And his wallet says bad motherfucker on it. Yeah. Oh, Farsight can fight.

And so the idea was we're going to go. reestablish ourselves as the greatest in the galaxy. And Commander Farsight's going to help us do that. And by the way, this writing on Farsight is very good. Very, very, very good. So we're going to, if you want to know more about it, there's books, numerous books on it. Just the sixth edition bit was cool as hell anyway. Those are codex supplements.

Well, this is that. Farsight had wild success. Yeah. Foresight goes up. He goes north. from Tao but what he's supposed to remember is supposed to be a sphere of expansions

the idea was the theories would mark we want you to go this far up this far left this far right this far south he just went straight and he went straight for a smart reason he went up beat the orcs and then notices that what their maps showed was an asteroid belt

on the outskirts was actually an orc fleet because as we think of orcs like to inhabit you know space hulks And he said, I'm kicking the shit out of that. Yeah, and the ethereal said, no, you're not, get back here. And he didn't, which is the first time.

Well, he's also the farthest any commander has been away, the distance he's traveled. Right. And so he attacks the orcs. And, you know, as a case of every G.W. story, there's a lot of success and there's a stalemate. And then he goes and meditates for a while, aka the Rocky Four montage. And then he comes back and puts his boots a mighty ass kicking on. And just says, I mean, it decides, well, what if we just burn the orcs from space? Yeah.

He starts ruining the orcs. Which, by the way, they're a fungus. Yeah, this always works. And the orcs just start getting wrecked and wrecked and wrecked. And he pushes and he pushes and he pushes until he reaches a planet called Mollok, which is different than Mollek. So this one's M-O-L-C-H. M-O-L-E-C-H is the one the emperor went to to talk to the chaos gods.

I had to call that, it took me a second when I read it. I was like, wait, is the same spot? No. Moloch, though, this Moloch also has deep roots of chaos. It's known as having a bunch of faceless statues all over it that predate the Imperium. So the reason this matters is, while fighting the orcs,

a giant disc appears in the sky, which then cuts the sky open. and demons of corn descend on Farsight and his army. The Tao win this, but two big things come out of it. First off, every ethereal, that was a chaperone with them, all died. All died. Which is really, really important.

The other one that's really important for Farsight is in one of the battles, he's fighting in like an old building, and he picks up a blade that's lying on the ground and uses it to kill the demons. obviously he didn't leave that blade there the town didn't put the blade there corn dead which is weird because it's still probably a crone blade

which is a he basically picked up Stormbringer yeah he Farsight now has a blade that sucks the life force from me if you've read the books they're amazing Elric's amazing yeah we'll get into that a second

there's a reason why he's still alive what happens next for puritide though is real what happens next for Farsight, though, is really important. There are no ethereal within light years of him. And his brain just starts to work differently. He's getting notes from the ethereal

telling him to do something, and he's just going, no, Farsight's really far from even a single ethereal, let alone the main atherials. Right, 100%. And the issue is that their affect on him is gone.

And he begins to notice it. because they start giving him commands to do things. And the ethereal don't talk to the Tao in a very nice way. It's extreme authority because they can mind control you. So they're speaking to Farsite kind of a dick way. And Farsite's reaction is, yeah, no, I'm not doing that. This then leads to a crisis of faith moment for him, where he starts to realize that he always,

listen to the Aetherials, even when he shouldn't have. Well, this is why I love the Farsight, though, because Farsight after having this come to Jesus moment, decides, well, if I go back, what are my options? Do I lead a rebellion? He's like, everyone knows, because of the teaching of their history, I don't want to shatter, because no matter what he thinks of the Atherials, that's still ingrained in him. Well, because he knows, yeah, and this is where Far, his biggest problem is that. is that he realizes that the aetherials are bad. He realizes that they're manipulating the tau

and controlling the Tao to their own ends. Oftentimes making the Tao do things that are not good for the Tao. But historically, they saved the Tao. And if you take the way, because it's also not just the Tao, the crude, the Vespid. I mean, the ethereals are the very critical glue

holding their entire empire together. And Farsite is very pro-tow. Yep. Above everything else. Which is, he's a compelling character. At the same time, he also has that realization of like, what the hell did I just go to war with? And begins to realize that the atherials were pushing him less to not pursue the orcs and more to not be on Moloch, which made him then realize they know something. The ethereal are aware of stuff that they're not telling.

us. And so Farsite initially builds up a little army. This is called this is what we hear of the Farsite enclave. He fortifies this region of space and aims some of his fortifications back towards Tau space, making it very clear that this is an

independent part of the Tao Empire. No one has ever done this. He then decides to go on his own little walkabout to discover more about what's really going on in the galaxy. Well, what the truth? He wanted to actually

the truth of what is happening in the galaxy. Yeah. Because to be honest, they didn't know shit about shit. Yeah. Now, the leader of the Tao is with your old name,

Anva, we're going to get to a little bit. Anva's not furious anymore. He's still mad, just not quite him. I was saying, his projection? Enva declares Farsight a traitor

to the greater good. Fun story, though, about this is that I think Onva's viewpoint was, this will work itself out because Farsight will be dead in 15, 20 years. I'll deal with it then. But as Brad mentioned earlier, the blade that Farside picked up was a demon blade. He's willing Starbair.

Yeah. He's sucking souls. Well, not anymore, though. That's the funny thing about this. So this blade, it's a blade of corn. And what it does is every time you kill someone with it, it sucks their life essence out of them and puts it into you. to this point Farsight is now

thousands of years old in the current form because he was wielded this blade now he actually does at a certain point abandon the blade and goes on a walk about again.

He's just weird because in the lore he doesn't have it anymore and then in the game he has it again well he wouldn't acknowledge the fact that why he's still alive

yes okay you know what and that could be wrong about this I was reading into this quite a bit and it's where I got confused So the story is that at some point he just puts the blade down and walks away from it. So I took that to be all the life essence that was put into him is just there now.

So basically, which makes it the greatest blade ever. You should run there, you know, kill a bunch of fools and then just throw it away before corn can take you over and live forever. It's like all win, no downside. Pretty much. Yeah. But in the game, he still has it. I don't know what they're trying to do with that. So to be perfectly honest with you.

to be fair And they'll be honest That's kind of it Like there's more on Farsight But there's more books about it Where he keeps trying to uncover The secrets of the universe And he never does

Farsight books are good No they're good But at a certain point You're kind of like oh So does he ever discover What the ethereals are? Nope Nope

Does he discover what chaos is Not really No But does he randomly show up When the town need him most And fight With huge forces Yeah

Oh yeah He's actually got a shit ton of... Oh, he's got a massive force, and he's... Well, he's got a massive force which is primarily suits, though. That's why they fight like that. Yeah, and incredibly loyal to the town. Like, as much as he doesn't care much for the ethereal's, he cares the Tao massively.

The tower in danger, he will arrive. Yep. And the thing is, is that he's got a elite fighting force, because these are all veterans of many a war. But the third sphere of expansion began, with Farsight. With him leaving, Anva then decides,

well, I'm not going to take a loss on my sphere, of my sphere, and he orders that Shadow Sun be woken up from Stasis. Shadow Sun, this is annoying, because in my mind,

so, Farsite is Mokka, Shadow Sun is Kowan. Luckily, as we said before, they're the same thing. But the big thing about this is Shadow Sun becomes the poster child

for the top. Yeah. Completely. They're just every, everywhere you go, there's posters Shadow Sun. Yeah, of Shadow Sun.

And Shadow Sun can fight. I'm not, I'm not belittling Shadow Sun. Shadow Sun's problem, though, is that she was woken up at a very bad time for the galaxy. Because this is,

we're getting very close to the end of the 41st millennia. So Ork Wurbanes are now orkwals. You've got Tyrannids, incursions are now high fleets. Necron tomb worlds are awakening everywhere. And more importantly, humanity is not done with Tao.

They had to leave for a bit, but they're still coming back. So Shadow Sun's able to have a lot of successes during this third sphere, but she's still not able to get any real success. Namely, you know, she also has a pretty big loss in that. the leader of Tao dying, which five minutes will be there in five minutes, I promise. The Tao peeps don't know that. Yeah. Well, I guess they do.

Oh, no, you tell you. I mean, the Tao fans, yeah. No, the Tao fans know that. I'm saying the Tao. The Tao are aware of this. Yeah. And the problem for Shadow Sun, though, is right at the end of the third sphere, a callidus assassin sneaks onto her ship and mortally wounds her.

And they have to shove her back into stasis to help her heal. So Shadow Sun comes in midway through the, the third sphere and then finishes the third sphere back in stasis because she got wrecked. Not because she's bad. I want to make that clear. It's not because she's like an ineffective leader. She just came in at the worst

possible time. Well, the worst possible time is probably the fourth sphere. Well, the fourth sphere is just funny. I mean, the fourth sphere lasted about eight seconds. Yeah. So the fourth sphere of expansion, the tau are upset. Sorry, the Tao. The atherials

are upset. That the Tao expansion just cannot, is not moving at the speed and rate it needs to. So they tell the Earth cast to make a warp drive. I'm assuming they got some of this technology from mankind and they just basically went to copy it. But again, the Tao have no navigators.

No Gellerfields. So they don't know what any of this stuff is. And if you've ever seen the movie Event Horizon, that's what happens next. To a lot of Tao, by the way. Yeah, but not to one ship to an entire fleet. So the Tao take, they build up this giant fleet.

where they're going to go into the stars with and conquer language. Also, this, this Tau Fleet had so many prototype weapons. Yeah. All their new ship. This was going to be game change. And they all get there and they all flip the switch on. And what happens is instead of them moving into the warp, all the drives interact with each other, overload it and actually create a rift in the material where all those ships used to be.

And they're all sucked into the immaterial. And it's not good. Yeah, that's the end of the fourth sphere. Yeah. Yeah. You got to hope that a lot of them do a Drago. Can you imagine just Tao just fighting forever and they in Peter? Well, they kind of do.

I mean, that's the thing. So the next one from that would be the fifth sphere. I decided we're not going to cover that here. And the reason why is to cover the fifth sphere of the Tao, we need to give you a lot more stories of what's going on elsewhere. So for those who are kind of newer to the cast, for those been listening for a while, our plan has always been, we're going to cover all.

the codexes effectively. And then we want to shift over and start telling the stories of some of, like, of some of the editions. And this. The seventh edition, gathering storm. The Dominus Crusade. All these things. Even some of the fifth and fourth edition stories lines.

They're just, they're easier because, you know, like a good story writer, they're going to, they weave in and out multiple races. So if we do a cast just on town, but this story is going to involve orks, mankind, Eldar, all that stuff. So we're going to stop after the fourth sphere and we'll cover the fifth sphere later. But we should finish with, is it Onva? Anva.

Anva. Because the story of Anva is both critical to the current version of the Tao, but also is much more eye-opening into the situation of the Atherials. Anva is powerful. Insane powerful. So Anva is the head ethereal who is, if there's the head of the town. So Anva is the unquestionable leader of the town.

He even had a model for a little bit. Still has. Shouldn't. You can't touch it. I mean, there's two guys that protect the projector. So Anva took over from On Way. This is during the 44th millennia. Anva's main thing he was known for was that he always got his way.

But more importantly, it's because he never had to correct anybody. Everyone whenever they were in his presence would always propose and suggest whatever it was that Anva wanted. So he came off as this incredibly benevolent leader because every time you ask him for everything, he always said yes. It was odd, though, that people would actually go to meet with him to propose one thing and then when standing in front of him would propose a different one. No one to blame but yourself, though. Farsight specifically had memories of interactions with Anvaa that he thought were horrifying because to that end he went to meet with Anva with one plan in mind and then suddenly would just say something totally different. So Anva obviously has, it was mind control better than anyone, basically projection level mind control.

The problem with Anva is his ideas were largely garbage. He was not, he was not a good leader. I think that he believed in the greater good as far as they were. I think he believed in Tao supremacy, superiority. Yeah, but I mean, it's... When you believe you're just going to win? He does, but in the same way the World War I generals did. You know, that's what I'm saying.

Like, yes, he believed in it, but there was no reason to believe in it. No, I'm not saying it's correct. He put the Tao into battles that were just slothed. You know, or aggressive. There was no chance for them to win these ones. And in my mind, he moved the towel backwards. The problem, though, is that despite this, no one in the towel can say anything. Because, first off, everyone, all the ideas weren't technically his.

Yeah, they also spin a wild web of propaganda about how all of these things are actually good. Yeah, they're all good. and he ends up elevating himself almost like deity within the town, which creates a lot of problems, because you've got an incredibly ineffective leader who's effectively a deity within there, and he's so high up that the idea of not having him becomes a danger. Don't worry, though.

The Imperium took care of things for you. Yeah, the Imperium saw this one pretty quick. It's called a Collexus. So in 999 of M41, which, by the way, is when everything happens. into this game. Yep. The Imperium

and the Tower at war. There's the closing days of the war, Envae decides that he's going to go boost the troop morale by going to the forefront of the battle to better assist Shadow Sun there. This is right about the same time

a Caladius takes out Shadow Sun. The Imperium discover that Enva is on planet somewhere. And let's just say, that became goal number one. Priority target one. When the absolute leader of your enemy is, for whatever stupid reason on a planet that you're engaged on,

you kind of shift. It shift a battle strategy. And the Clexus is fantastic because they can phase. Yeah, I love this story. So the Ophysio Assassinarum sends a Calexus after Enva. Now, for those who don't know, we've covered them before, but we'll give it real quick.

the Calexas are nasty because they actually phase in and out of reality so they can walk through walls. Anva is in a bunker deep in the planet. But again, the Tau don't work with the warp or really understand the warp. So they've built this thing, this bunker to repel any and all enemy coming down the hallway. The Calexas coming in and out of the walls, phasing into reality, slaughtering all the TOW there. because don't forget, the Tao suck at hand-to-hand combat. And the Colaxis does not. No.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Eventually, the Colexis gets into the room with Envaa, and all that is written about it is that Onva's death was neither swift nor merciful. Yeah, that was probably not great. Yeah. Supreme Leader is, so for the town now, the Supreme Leader is dead at the hands of the Imperium. there's a potential for the entire Tao Empire to collapse. So they decide the best solution is to make a hologram of Onva

and load his essence into a computer programming, make a digital copy-up. And then he has two guards. Well, in Lohr, he's got more. Yeah. That basically keep everyone away from him. Yeah, it's funny because they make those new rules pass on Envaa. Yeah, you can never be around. him without his honor guard next to him.

You never let a touch on Vah. And the hard part about this is I can't tell if it's just a hologram, like if this is a Wizard of Oz thing, or is it sentient? I'm not, well, they said they alluded to essence. So I have to believe that it's AI sentient. That's because we know with puretide, we know with puretide, we know with puretide, we know with puritide, they loaded his brain and his thinking into an

ingram chip. Why couldn't they do that with Anvah? In which case, technically he still is the leader and is still envaa. But then the more important piece was, would he still carry his ability to dominate people's minds? Right. Because the

ethereal's habit, I'm interested in what they do more with this, if G.W does anything with it. I think that the Farsite subplot could be could be really fleshed out. I would like to. It's a weird thing where, you know,

it probably wouldn't be good for the game if they did it, but I would like them to flesh out and actually explain what the ethereal's are. More from a story standpoint, you could ask them where then, where then, you know, Farsight leads a rebellion

because they discover what the therals are. There's a lot of fun you could have with this, but it would also check with it. He has a shit ton of like Earthcast and stuff with him too. Yeah. Well, because people are flocking to him because truthfully, if you can get away from the influence of the ethereals,

and you can think for yourself, you realize that Farsight's actually the most successful. And that's why I want to be. By hands down, I'm not close. But anyway, I think that's probably enough, Tao. I love that you're, that's just enough. That's enough. That's, you know what, we've covered enough.

We'll do more later. No, I'm kidding. I do hope for those of you who like Tao, this did a good amount of justice. And for the rest of us, this is least informative. that's all I can give you. Next week, we're going to keep celebrating the holidays by doing things that listeners have requested, and we're going to do Space Wolves.

Oh! Yep, there it goes. I was literally about to make the comment. Prepare to hear Brad's voice crack over and over as he does a Rick Flair woo. And there's no chance that I'm ever going to even pretend. It's Space Woofs. It's Space Wooves.

Always. Always in forever. For those just, all right, fun stuff. side note on this. Brad broke this army. True story. Yeah, true story. This army got a worse codex because of Brad. And what he did with him. So it's probably a two-part cast on Space Wolves. Until then, this has been John Barcati and Brad Chester. This guy. Take care.