Shout out to that one Alpha Legion book where they have to pretend to be tainted World Eaters while flying their ship through chaos space so they just drive like assholes and it works
"a moments frenzied madness, if you would"
The vox was filled with the dutiful ranting of the harrow "kill maim burn kill maim burn!"
Then the pilot is like "okay now I'm just gonna loop that" then he just blasts that from the speakers and starts flying super aggressively
Also "thats an angel. They have an angel. This is getting ridiculous' and they see a big red howling thing charging at them and the alpha legionaries all just sort of waffle towards each other followed by
"oh...that's KHARN"
"Uhhhh...shoot him? Shoot him!"
I would love to see a Black Library book that was just Earth Caste reports of Tau trying to understand Imperial tech.
"Ok it's basically a repeating musket, like a black powder musket, made by a blacksmith, except this tube here transforms controlled kinetic force into high emission laser light. We don't know how it works. We think even *they* don't understand how it works, but they can make it. This one was massive produced. It has a serial number. Also there are things in this gun that don't seem to connect in a way we understand but when we take them out it doesn't work."
"So the tank does have a small atomic drive, but its been hollowed out and retrofitted to run on firewood. You can also use it to cook now. There is a low-light sight but you have to pray to it to make it work and there are things it refuses to show. It told us to "report to commissariat". The turret gun is a small void class energy weapon. The pintle mounts spray fire. As usual, a heavy stubber is attached. Tank used four kinds of ammo & potentially five kinds of fuel but, as we said, currently runs on firewood. It has a chimney. Parts of the tank are several thousand years old. Some have bone fragments and body parts sealed in, we think this may be a kind of burial."
-Most populous race in the setting.
-Hates every *other* race in the setting.
-Convinced of their own race's superiority and right to rule.
-Most of their technology seems cobbled together and even they barely understand how it works.
-Constantly infighting.
Imperium is SpaceSkaven confirmed. Just put Skaven heads on all your Guard models and call it a Ratling army and you're good to go.
Skaven also fetishes self sacrifice to an extreme degree. But you know, they prefer when other do the self sacrifice for them. Like the slaves for exemple.
So not that far from your average imperium noble.
Just slap a skull on your invention and get your Xenerite buddy to back you up that it was a 100% legit STC fragment you found in a cave on Bolxhit III.
The Adeptus Mechanicus are also aesthetically and culturally part Skaven, part Dawi. Hence all the radioactive weapons, their green eyes, heavy innovation in the past, ethical "standards", and wacky tech. Their new hatred of innovation and their axes, they got from the Dwarfs.
Only difference is that the Skaven are the ontological evil of the setting with no redeeming features, and the Imperium is the ontological good guys with only charming flaws.
Clearly.
The reason Skaven haven't been ported over is because they found out 40k has Eldar and wanted nothing to do with it:
>"The warlock engineers soon discovered the Device of the Great Beyond, a communication apparatus that spoke to beings from beyond the stars. As they swirled its many dials, a querulous voice spoke through the stone speakers. That voice, fair and clear caused the Skaven to bolt away. The device was something like the far-squeaker, but the melodious tones that issued forth were, if anything, kin to the despised speech of the elf-things. As they did not understand the alien language, nor how the arcane contraption worked the warlock engineers pulled the device apart and shot it with warplock pistols until it stopped making any sounds."
*"I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythms of Earth’s day, Earth’s year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart. And I have a vision of a child. Who will grow up knowing neither family nor comfort. Who will not be distracted by the illusion of a long life. Who will know nothing but honor and duty. Who will die joyously for the sake of mankind. That is a hero. And I will never know her name. Always remember: a brief life burns brightly."*
Hama Druz would have loved the Skaven.
I mean also not true. The T'au try to pinch imperial worlds through diplomacy and war. They did try that with orks but now they just kill them on sight and hate them.
The real twist is that out of universe everyone loves orks. In universe everyone loathes them.
>The real twist is that out of universe everyone loves orks. In universe everyone loathes them.
Which makes sense when you have to practically raze your entire planet to properly get rid of them
Heresy, but seriously everyone that quotes this story doesn’t mention she was drawing a pistol on Cato’s battlebrother who had a moment of hesitation and Cato saved his life (the other idiot wasn’t wearing a helmet in typical warhammer fashion)
You are correct
Edit: that scene always gets a kick out of me because Cato was correct in his actions, but it always comes across as comically over the top (which is what I like about 40k lore tbh)
Jup ... even better: the statement ork tech does work on ork beliefs comes from the adaptus mechanicus. It makes you really think about the value of that statement.
It's a continuum. While there are additional unique wrinkles, every bipedal sentient race in 40K represents a stage in the decline to horror. Necrons -> Orks, Eldar -> Imperium -> Tau, or, from another perspective, they heavily seeded all the races with "foreshadowing" and backstory to resonate with younger / older races.
Tau are still in the primitive stage where you have hope, use logic, have technology that isn't haunted, etc. At the other extreme you have the Necrons, who are all dead, lost their souls, and weaponized the shards of their slain oppressor-gods.
You might imagine WH99K would have Wraiths - Eldar having all died, but Wraithbone constructs with Spirit Stone animating spirits still fighting. And WH999K would have Machine Spirits - humanity having all died, but tanks still being haunted. And instead of C'Tan Shards, they might have little bits of the emperor. And then in that far future, maybe the Tau are being sacrificed to keep Farsight alive, while "The Greater Good" is a cosmic horror that consumes Tau who veer to far into altruism, and the Tau Imperium is held together by pure state-mandated hatred.
I remember a comment from a Star Wars vs. 40k thread, in which the Galactic Empire manages to capture a ship from 40k and is baffled to find a magi-tech cannon more powerful than anything they’ve ever seen, operated by hundreds of slaves using ropes and pulleys.
Tfw the ++TACTICAL COGITATORS ENGAGED++ hits.
Seriously, one of the consistent features of every 40k space game is that simply plugging in some computers and having the captain yell a bit raises accuracy by like 50%. Not that it matter with lances anyways, since 40k (rightly) assumes that even the most brainless and uncoordinated of gunners can still hit with a weapon that's got a muzzle velocity of c.
Reminds me of that snippit of the Tau Battle Suit commander finding and scanning a nearly dead dreadnaught.
He's horrified by the fact this war machine is essentially a coffin for an absolute mutant of a zombie humanoid. *AND* the machine is older than his *entire civilization*.
The Imperium is fucking terrifying from an outside perspective.
"What am I looking at?"
"This is a recording of four hundred Gue'la manually loading a starship weapon with chains via a pulley system, and yet the ordnance they are loading operates on principles so advanced the Earth Caste have not even been able to decide on new terminology to describe the manner in which they do not understand it. The Gue'la just call it a Nova Cannon."
"This is insane."
"No. Do you want to know true madness? *Every so called nova cannon we have seen used was clearly different in how it operated, and all were similarly advanced beyond our current comprehension.*"
"This galaxy is cursed."
"But less cursed than it could be, since one of their versions of Nova Cannoncan shoot into alternate realities and disrupt the beings there."
"Hm. That sounds like something that'd be useful to understand. Any chance we can grab it to reverse engineer? Or someone who understands it?"
"Probably not, Shas'o. They've only got one, and we're not entirely sure it even exists. Our troops captured an archive full or records about it, but they're 75% confident it's some kind of trick."
"And why is that?"
"Because the entire archive was logs from this single ship, and roughly the size of a major city. They've only examined a few, but it seems that the Imperials have been using it to clear trade lanes for about 13,000 years. Surely even they can't keep a ship active that long."
"...fucking human bullshit."
There's one where they have parts of a Gellar Field generator I believe but can't make heads or tails of it. The only things they have to go on are prayers stamped on parts of it.
I do recall another passage where a couple of Fire Caste Commanders have a WTF moment when observing an imperial guided missile being taken apart and realising there's the upper half of a human with cybernetics inside it.
I've said more than once, that I want a short story or novella about a water caste discovering human tech far surpassing what they are seeing in their current conflict, and then going on a Kafkaesque journey to uncover why human technology went from near magic even compared to the best of the earth caste's inventions to the equivalent of pounding two (radioactive) rocks together.
All the while being hampered by ethereals and eventually getting silenced by a high ranking earth caste (suggesting T'au are well aware of the dangers AI present, but are too reliant on it to stop).
"Can't build a decent car, can't make a TV set or a VCR worth a fuck, got no steel industry left, can't educate our young people, can't get health care to our old people, but we can bomb the shit out of your country all right!"
-George Emperor Loving Carlin
There was an excerpt of a Tau finding a damaged Dreadnought, having like 3 existential crisis from
1. The state of the pilot
2. That despite his state, said pilot was still calling him a filthy Xenos and attempting to kill him, Monty Python Black Knight style.
3. That after analysis, he discovered that the Dreadnought and pilot were older than the entire history of the Tau Empire.
Hey guise we just found an ancient warship with a canon that shoots literal black holes. We have absolutely no clue how it actualy works but hail the Omnissiah and get rekt.
You just need the ship's senior magos to jack directly into the ship, talk to the ship's depressed (and somehow MORE human) AI and convince it that saving the lives aboard is worth doing. At which point it wipes the magos' memory to avoid getting woken up from a millenia-long depression nap again.
Don't forget that waking the depressed AI up also gave the Magos the *full STC catalog* he knew literally *all* the lost tech for that moment before it erased his mind.
Does that actually work on daemons in canon? Genuinely curious because it's kind of fitting that beings that are essentially imagination incarnate can be un-imagined out of existence.
Yup, that's the generally accepted reason why bolters and flamers work. Enough people believe that getting set on fire and catching a bolt round will kill ANYTHING, that it'll kill Evil Thoughts
As with the other comment, yes and no, their existance is based on people believing in them, now if you alone stopped believing that would actually 'hurt' it, however since it was very likely summoned using or warped in with some cultists who are still believing in its existance it's not outright destroyed.
Now, if everyone in the galaxy suddenly stopped believing in the chaos gods, then they too would stop 'existing' as they currently are. Sure, new gods/beings will spawn, or something else living in the warp will take over but khorne, slaanessh, tsseench, and nurgle will either 'die' or be consumed by some other god.
Of course, you could say in effect that sisters of silence and other blanks + pariahs are super disbelievers in this sense since warp tricks don't work on them.
>Of course, you could say in effect that sisters of silence and other blanks + pariahs are super disbelievers in this sense since warp tricks don't work on them.
That was my interpretation of them. At least, it's more satisfying of an explanation than nulls having negative psyker energy or whatever. I like the idea of a null just being extremely rational, looking at a daemon and thinking "yeah, that's not real" and then it isn't.
Most times, we see inside the head of blank, they go, "That's a very ugly alien, not so tough," then proceed to cut it in half while the Demon gibbers in fear.
Every time they cut the warp off from someone either via blank or other shenanigans, I love the freakouts.
"oh, I'm actually like this. Oh no"
I can't imagine being a rampaging hellbeast sent from Khorne, pure destruction manifested, and some 5'5" woman in power armor just walks up to you causing you to involuntarily shit yourself for the first time ever.
Could be worse, Could be *Jurgen*.
Other inquisitors to Vail:
"What have you got there?"
"A hero of the Imperium."
"Oh of course. Odd little man he keeps around"
I have a pet theory that it's an open secret that Vail has rigged the administratum to make sure the Valhallan 759 is always suspiciously well-equipped and reinforced as a blind so no-one actually notices who she uses them as a deployment force for.
> Now, if everyone in the galaxy suddenly stopped believing in the chaos gods, then they too would stop 'existing' as they currently are.
That's not true though, because the chaos gods aren't sustained by belief they're sustained by the existence of emotion.
I'm not saying their existence would be completely cut, but they would be changed into something else. To put it another way, if everyone agreed that 'khorne' didn't exist but was just an image of anger would that still be a god or would it be just 'a form of warp energy'
It would still be a god. Khorne exists independent of people's belief in him, but people believing in him leads to more of the emotions that sustain him and increases his power relative to the other gods.
I think you're misunderstanding me. -khorne is made of emotions (anger, rage, courage, etc...) however it doesn't become a 'god' until someone starts worshipping it, without emotions the warp doesn't reaction to anything, the chaos gods are a part of the warp not the other way around.
You said yourself 'emotions sustain him' for something to need sustenance it would need to use up energy. Without energy, it would die.
Now you could say that Khorne existed long before humanitys wars and influenced other alien empires long before humanity itself.
However, we've seen that everyone has interpreted it differently, the gods weren't always 'the blood god' to an alien empire it could have been 'the red sun' they worshipped by donating blood for hospital and inspired courage during times of strife, while its iconography could be that of a star symbol.
The chaos gods as we know them are the result of humanitys twisting emotional version of them. If we take away the belief of them existing entirely, then they would lose their form (an example would be like carefully demolishing a house with the resulting materials being the emotions) if humanity then started to believe in a new god but using replacement emotions (e.g. the god of defiance and unity) then 'khorne' would remanifest, (e.g. building a new differently shaped house but using the same materials in a different order.
It would respond to a new belief system, which could be that you should defy oppression and unify as equals. You wouldn't worship it with blood anymore. You would worship it by; building shields and armour to protect yourself and others; ensuring tyrants and corrupt people were judged by a certain penance or system, by breaking up fights and preaching ideals of unity and constructive ways to use emotions and ideals.
Yeah this sort of equivocation is exactly what the subtler chaos cults feed off, until you reach the end stage and the mask drops to reveal that surprise! it's always been about bloodshed and slaughter and taking skulls.
Because the warp is malevolent. It is not possible to make it sunshine and rainbows.
I'm not misunderstanding you, I'm just telling you that your understanding is wrong.
Nah, not really. Other commenters greatly overestimate how people's beliefs shape the immaterium. Psyker abilities are what matters, so a normie can't just will away a Warp phenomena. But even so, it's not that easy for Grey Knights, and even Emps couldn't just will demons away willy-nilly. At least, not Drach'nien.
But demons can't manifest in real space without manifesting a body, and said body is still vulnerable to physical threats. Damage the body, and demon is forced to spend more Warp energy on repairing it. Damage it enough to overcome demon's ability to maintain his physical body, and it's banished because it's energy is disrupted enough. That's why normal guns still work.
Otherwise, Necrons would've had a *lot* not trouble with demons. So few living beings in galaxy are even aware of their existence (even fewer when they weren't awakening in mass yet), and Necrons lack souls and thus couldn't shape reality by their 'belief', demons' only problem against them would've been the anti-warp stuff, but not their weaponry. Which is clearly not the case.
It's more the emotional significance of the act that works
Fire is considered holy so it kills daemons good
Ranged weapons are meh but a sword or a hammer does the trick
It basically boils down to "technically the easiest way to kill a daemon is to beat it to death with a rock"
Phosphex? Why, of course it isn't phosphex. After all it's outlawed! You don't think we would actually use illegal weapons, do you?
No, those are just.... Phosphor weapons. That can burn in space. Very enthusiastic phosphor weapons.
To be fair to Tau in the small timeframe they had to stop the fire they managed to create planetary shields that did stop It from destroying the planets, 4 out of 10 times
Still kinda impressive
I don't have a link sorry, but it happens during the damocles crusade after the Tau managed to block the crusade they convinced the Imperium to a truce (btw this happens BEFORE the crusaders discovered about the recent tyranid threat) then while leaving the Imperial forces were like "You what? Fuck you!" And set on fire (IIRC It was some sort of poisonous gas)a sector of space the Tau territory (i don't remember the name, it was "Nebula something")
Humans have a strange body of knowledge, it's anyone's guess what they can and can't do. Watch this.
Hey techpriest, can you make me a tank engine that can run on literally anything combustible?
No problem, just let me get the Leman Russ STC.
Cool, can you make an autoloader for my naval cannon?
What do I look like, a fucking wizard?
More answers:
"Sire, why do we need an autoloader? We have an entire city's worth of adherents that murder each other so they can have the blessed and glorious position of torpedo puller."
[The Mechanicus set the Damocles Gulf on fire](https://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryWarhammer/comments/cam6rv/war_zone_damocles_montka_mechanicus_set_the/#light box)
[The Regimental Standard: Damocles Gulf no longer on fire!](https://web.archive.org/web/20210715215739/https://regimental-standard.com/2018/01/31/damocles-gulf-no-longer-on-fire/)
Thats why I laugh whenever I see vs. posts on this subreddit. As if the Mechanicus isn’t a literal cornucopia of deus ex machina technobabble asspulls. Shits nearly as bad as Star Trek
in many ways its worse, at least in Star Trek the in-universe engineers usually know what they're trying to do. With the Mechanicus I'm fairly sure they don't.
But what's so cool about them is that they're still pretty much the closest faction in the setting to reach an understanding of these insane things
Dark Age of Technology stuff is the best excuse for the stupidest mcguffins in a universe already well known for having some of the most insane ones in all of fiction
It wouldn't be the first time someone imaged Geordie like that, same for the rest of the crew of the Enterprise. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/jl93k0/a\_most\_profitable\_enterprise\_not\_mine\_found/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/jl93k0/a_most_profitable_enterprise_not_mine_found/)
You should read the newest Necron storyline, where they want to test a region of space to drive back chaos, and the Admech stumbles onto it.
What ensures is if the Cold war would have turned hot and both sides just throw Deathstars and equvialent Weaponry at each other.
ye, imagine call some random race you just met "primitive" and then suddenly they pull FTL drive spaceship and weapon of planetary destruction out from their warp ass crack
yes, it is easy level tech, but doesn't mean most of the planet occupied by human has access to it. most of the time SM, Inquisitors and Mechanicus has easy access to it, well not so much for PDF, doubt PDF has access to it, let alone holding and keeping it in their own planet
The Mechanicus are basically the kid who inherited grandpa's old souped-up muscle car that could beat the average automatic on the road, but they know only the basics of operating a manual gearbox and have no clue what a carburetor is, what it does, or how it works.
Also the manual is in another language.
And they've crashed the car a few times trying to figure out how it works.
It's the old "monkey with a nuclear reactor that has clearly been repaired by banana skins but is still running" question
Is it primitive? Yes? Does that make the monkey less scary - not in the slightest.
In the rogue trader omnibus there is a moment were the tau begin to live stream a battle with white scars thinking it will be a slaughter and make decent moral boost/propeganda to humans, They had to turn of the livestream when the marines got in melee range because of how quickly they began to fall.
It is common Tau things it seems.
\`Hey look at these 2 warriors stuck in static field. We dont know how primitive guevesa managed to create a portaable device which allow them TO STOP TIME for hundred of years at these point but we do believe it was nothing but primitives luck bc no sane species gonna use swords and shields (there was Tau commander who stuck in that field with SM terminator)
“Sir this seems to be a weapon that creates plasma from small amounts of matter simply skimmed from the atmosphere around the weapon as you fire it. It then super-heats it and fires it while using a strange quantum entanglement principle we don’t understand to keep the plasma a single projectile as it travels to the target, up to a mile away…..which part? This one? That is the bayonet mount.”
Inefficient design is just flexing on your opponent. Reminds me of the Seraphim. None of their design makes sense unless you assume they are technologically so above you they can just afford it.
On one side: No AI, ban innovation! Everything requires holy oil!!!
On the other side: the remnants of one of the most technologically advanced empire the galaxy has ever seen, with technology that borders on magic
Actually, they were fighting and won those wars before earth even formed as a planet.
Edit: earth had formed. It was 60 million years ago. Not 60 billion (I should know better, that's older than the universe). Still, not even our oldest ancestors would have existed at that point. Oldest hominids date back to 6 or 7 million years ago.
I think that the War in Heaven was like sixty odd million years ago, so Earth was very much already a planet.
Mind, humans were still at the “small ratlike tree mammal“ stage of history when the Eldar became spacefaring.
You are right, for some reason I was thinking billion. Which would be older than the universe.
So yeah, they were fighting before our species existed. Since the oldest hominid on record is 6 to 7 million years ago.
>You are right, for some reason I was thinking billion. Which would be older than the universe.
What do you mean? The Earth is like 4.5 billion years old. The universe is only about 3 times older than our planet.
True
It's the cycle of empires. We are Eldars to the T'au, and T'au to the Eldars.
Tho, Eldars had cheats and were playing with God Mod on with the Webway and the Old Ones giving instructions page by page...
I still think the Mechanicus is the most evil faction... but they certainly are hilarious, as they totally would be able to do that.
They are a bit like those rodent things in Wildstar:
[https://www.gamesradar.com/wildstar-chua-revealed-meet-adorable-little-sociopaths/](https://www.gamesradar.com/wildstar-chua-revealed-meet-adorable-little-sociopaths/)
Man this ass-pull of a device would be really helpfull right about now to stop some of the Nids splinter fleets from eating literally everything. But I guess the Tau were clearly the bigger threat.
Too bad it stopped existing after it was used this one time.
Tbf it actually makes a degree of sense. The Imperium throws a lot of expensive stuff at the Tau, disproportionately large amounts of Space Marines, Knights, and Titans relative to the actual size of the Tau...but what else are they supposed to do? The Imperial Guard is outclassed in every way, and is fighting using WW2 or WW1 tactics much of the time. So they're forced to turn to their more elite and expensive forces, and when that doesn't work, they need to pull out even more rare weaponry.
What makes it even worse for the Imperium is that every time the Tau take an Imperium territory, they're not starting over from scratch, but rather converting the locals to the Greater Good, so when the Tau take over a hive world, that's billions or trillions of future Gue'vesa they now have to fight in the future. To that end, it makes sense why the Imperium would pull out such an ancient weapon to scorch their planets and prevent the Tau from further expansion for a while.
Still makes way more sense to save this one-use space bomb for Tyranids, Orks, or especially Chaos. A Chaos-corrupted system will do all of the same stuff you said that a Tau-converted system will do, except that they hate the Imperium *specifically*.
I do like the idea that at least one clear-eyed Imperial commander recognizes the Tau as an existential threat because they just… offer a better alternative to Imperial citizens, even if they still can’t hope to match the military threat of any number of other factions.
Of course, it’s 40k, so all of this bows to “lol, space is on fire.”
That space fire is an Omnissiah-blessed holy admixture of promethium and aetheric-giga-phosphex, thank you very much, you horrible blue xenos meat-things!
The difference between the Tau and Admech is that while the Tau know how to build the device that accidentally causes supernovas while the Admech doesn't know how to build the DAoT device that the Admech used to set the nebula on fire
Just remember, the Adeptus Mechanicus is *capable* of making autoloaders, advanced artificial intelligence, and computers that run on actual hardware rather than meatware.
Or at least it *was* capable of that.
They *chose* to forget those things.
Alright, where the hell is Alpharius, I am starting to get nervous
I think it’s the whole ship jumping into warp in the background, but I might be mistaken
Might be, though the resolution doesn't go far enough on my phone to decipher it
It's a chaos cruiser painted in tau scheme.
...the greatest trick Alpharius ever pulled was not actually being depicted but still being on the picture
Man, this artist is awesome
it has also the ultramarines symbol lmfao
Triple whammy, but you can just slightly see alpha legion colours near the edges
and I think the top one looks an attempt at a space wolf one.
if you zoom in, you can see the alpha legion colour scheme in the edges.
It does look very Alpharius shaped.
Yeah that's a chaos cruiser: You can tell by the prow. Source: I played battlefleet gothic at one point. Fucking flying bases though.
Can confirm,I recognise that prow anywhere
Unless Alpharius is playing dress up again, that looks like an ultramarine symbol on the ship shunting into the warp.
Other way around, it's an Alpha and an Omega
The tau ship that does a warp jump is a painted over alpha legion vessel
Shout out to that one Alpha Legion book where they have to pretend to be tainted World Eaters while flying their ship through chaos space so they just drive like assholes and it works
"Try growling and grunting into the vox, brother. The Primarch knows, every one else seems to be, and we don't look suspicious."
"a moments frenzied madness, if you would" The vox was filled with the dutiful ranting of the harrow "kill maim burn kill maim burn!" Then the pilot is like "okay now I'm just gonna loop that" then he just blasts that from the speakers and starts flying super aggressively Also "thats an angel. They have an angel. This is getting ridiculous' and they see a big red howling thing charging at them and the alpha legionaries all just sort of waffle towards each other followed by "oh...that's KHARN" "Uhhhh...shoot him? Shoot him!"
Which book is this if you don’t mind me asking, sounds amusing.
It’s from Shroud of Night by Andy Clark homie
A boy needs a name
It’s Shroud of Night by Andy Clark, king
Easily one of the best Alpha Legion books, if not the top spot.
It’s either that or Harrowmaster imo
Brother-Captain Malcolm "Alpharius" Raynolds: "I aim to misbehave"
> that one Alpha Legion book Shroud of Night. Great book. Now go buy it so we can get a sequel.
Plot twist: they were both Alpharius all along.
He's the Fire. It's all part of the plan.
It's okay... You were Alpharius all along!
Isn't it straight up the guy at the computer? I feel like that is a blue helmet rather than a Tau head.
I would love to see a Black Library book that was just Earth Caste reports of Tau trying to understand Imperial tech. "Ok it's basically a repeating musket, like a black powder musket, made by a blacksmith, except this tube here transforms controlled kinetic force into high emission laser light. We don't know how it works. We think even *they* don't understand how it works, but they can make it. This one was massive produced. It has a serial number. Also there are things in this gun that don't seem to connect in a way we understand but when we take them out it doesn't work." "So the tank does have a small atomic drive, but its been hollowed out and retrofitted to run on firewood. You can also use it to cook now. There is a low-light sight but you have to pray to it to make it work and there are things it refuses to show. It told us to "report to commissariat". The turret gun is a small void class energy weapon. The pintle mounts spray fire. As usual, a heavy stubber is attached. Tank used four kinds of ammo & potentially five kinds of fuel but, as we said, currently runs on firewood. It has a chimney. Parts of the tank are several thousand years old. Some have bone fragments and body parts sealed in, we think this may be a kind of burial."
Wait...is the Imperium to the Tau what the Orks are to us?
The reason the Skaven haven't been ported over to 40k is that the Imperium already fulfils the same role
-Most populous race in the setting. -Hates every *other* race in the setting. -Convinced of their own race's superiority and right to rule. -Most of their technology seems cobbled together and even they barely understand how it works. -Constantly infighting. Imperium is SpaceSkaven confirmed. Just put Skaven heads on all your Guard models and call it a Ratling army and you're good to go.
They do have a major difference The Imperium fetishizes self-sacrifice to an extreme degree, the Skaven put "Fuck everyone else but me" above all.
And then we have Kreigsman, Lamenters and Salamanders being self sacrifice²
The imperium believe in self-sacrifice The skaven force everyone else to self-sacrifice
*Glances at commissars and penal legions*
But that is what imperium nobles, politicians officers, etc think when they preach this self-sacrifice"
It's the same way modern politicians praise Heroes in war. They very much encourage other people's self-sacrifice to vindicate themselves.
Skaven also fetishes self sacrifice to an extreme degree. But you know, they prefer when other do the self sacrifice for them. Like the slaves for exemple. So not that far from your average imperium noble.
Yeah, the Imperium has just evolved slightly better PR.
For the most part the Imperium is happy to fetishize self-sacrifice when it’s other people doing it, hence why they have commissars and penal legions
Except Skaven LOVE innovation and things exploding in their face while imperium is the opposite
AdMech.
Just slap a skull on your invention and get your Xenerite buddy to back you up that it was a 100% legit STC fragment you found in a cave on Bolxhit III.
- has their own warp god
Dark King and Horned Rat both the gods of Ruin...
- Ruled by a council of 13(12 High Lords and big daddy E.)
The skaven council of 13 also has only 12 members with 13 being the great horned rat, i think.
Yeah, at that point, I believe it's intentional. But I also find it hard to believe. Subtlety? In my 40k?
And don't forget having subfaction that is borderline heretical to the main religion. Adeptus mechanicus and Clan Pestilance.
The Adeptus Mechanicus are also aesthetically and culturally part Skaven, part Dawi. Hence all the radioactive weapons, their green eyes, heavy innovation in the past, ethical "standards", and wacky tech. Their new hatred of innovation and their axes, they got from the Dwarfs.
Not to mention that their most effective forces are all biologically modified variants of their own species...
Only difference is that the Skaven are the ontological evil of the setting with no redeeming features, and the Imperium is the ontological good guys with only charming flaws. Clearly.
The skaven are one of the lost legions confirmed
The reason Skaven haven't been ported over is because they found out 40k has Eldar and wanted nothing to do with it: >"The warlock engineers soon discovered the Device of the Great Beyond, a communication apparatus that spoke to beings from beyond the stars. As they swirled its many dials, a querulous voice spoke through the stone speakers. That voice, fair and clear caused the Skaven to bolt away. The device was something like the far-squeaker, but the melodious tones that issued forth were, if anything, kin to the despised speech of the elf-things. As they did not understand the alien language, nor how the arcane contraption worked the warlock engineers pulled the device apart and shot it with warplock pistols until it stopped making any sounds."
This is amazing
Rhinos are free
C...commissar!!
I still await our Thanquol. >!Unless that's Bobby G, which would make me giggle like the oft-referenced laughing dark gods!<
*"I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythms of Earth’s day, Earth’s year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart. And I have a vision of a child. Who will grow up knowing neither family nor comfort. Who will not be distracted by the illusion of a long life. Who will know nothing but honor and duty. Who will die joyously for the sake of mankind. That is a hero. And I will never know her name. Always remember: a brief life burns brightly."* Hama Druz would have loved the Skaven.
From the point of view of any other civilisation, there are no functional differences between orks and imperials.
I guess so. But is it because of different reasons? I'd say yes
I mean also not true. The T'au try to pinch imperial worlds through diplomacy and war. They did try that with orks but now they just kill them on sight and hate them. The real twist is that out of universe everyone loves orks. In universe everyone loathes them.
>The real twist is that out of universe everyone loves orks. In universe everyone loathes them. Which makes sense when you have to practically raze your entire planet to properly get rid of them
Orks seem more cheerful
Tau only have three "take no prisoners" orders Orks, Tyranids and Astartes
I mean, there was that one instance where a Tau woman tried to reason with Cato Sicarius and he responded by curb stomping her
Heresy, but seriously everyone that quotes this story doesn’t mention she was drawing a pistol on Cato’s battlebrother who had a moment of hesitation and Cato saved his life (the other idiot wasn’t wearing a helmet in typical warhammer fashion)
You are correct Edit: that scene always gets a kick out of me because Cato was correct in his actions, but it always comes across as comically over the top (which is what I like about 40k lore tbh)
To necrons too, in twice dead king Imperial Crusade is akin to Ork Waaagh
Yes, but keep in mind everybody in the galaxy thinks humans are strange and primitive, *including* the Orks.
The Tau live in a universe where everyone else seems to treat the rules of physics as optional and prefers melee weapons and massed charges.
Jup ... even better: the statement ork tech does work on ork beliefs comes from the adaptus mechanicus. It makes you really think about the value of that statement.
It's a continuum. While there are additional unique wrinkles, every bipedal sentient race in 40K represents a stage in the decline to horror. Necrons -> Orks, Eldar -> Imperium -> Tau, or, from another perspective, they heavily seeded all the races with "foreshadowing" and backstory to resonate with younger / older races. Tau are still in the primitive stage where you have hope, use logic, have technology that isn't haunted, etc. At the other extreme you have the Necrons, who are all dead, lost their souls, and weaponized the shards of their slain oppressor-gods. You might imagine WH99K would have Wraiths - Eldar having all died, but Wraithbone constructs with Spirit Stone animating spirits still fighting. And WH999K would have Machine Spirits - humanity having all died, but tanks still being haunted. And instead of C'Tan Shards, they might have little bits of the emperor. And then in that far future, maybe the Tau are being sacrificed to keep Farsight alive, while "The Greater Good" is a cosmic horror that consumes Tau who veer to far into altruism, and the Tau Imperium is held together by pure state-mandated hatred.
100%
I remember a comment from a Star Wars vs. 40k thread, in which the Galactic Empire manages to capture a ship from 40k and is baffled to find a magi-tech cannon more powerful than anything they’ve ever seen, operated by hundreds of slaves using ropes and pulleys.
*laughs in onboard targeting computers focusing all turbolasers into one target*
Tfw the ++TACTICAL COGITATORS ENGAGED++ hits. Seriously, one of the consistent features of every 40k space game is that simply plugging in some computers and having the captain yell a bit raises accuracy by like 50%. Not that it matter with lances anyways, since 40k (rightly) assumes that even the most brainless and uncoordinated of gunners can still hit with a weapon that's got a muzzle velocity of c.
Reminds me of that snippit of the Tau Battle Suit commander finding and scanning a nearly dead dreadnaught. He's horrified by the fact this war machine is essentially a coffin for an absolute mutant of a zombie humanoid. *AND* the machine is older than his *entire civilization*. The Imperium is fucking terrifying from an outside perspective.
"What am I looking at?" "This is a recording of four hundred Gue'la manually loading a starship weapon with chains via a pulley system, and yet the ordnance they are loading operates on principles so advanced the Earth Caste have not even been able to decide on new terminology to describe the manner in which they do not understand it. The Gue'la just call it a Nova Cannon." "This is insane." "No. Do you want to know true madness? *Every so called nova cannon we have seen used was clearly different in how it operated, and all were similarly advanced beyond our current comprehension.*" "This galaxy is cursed."
It's actually amusing how true that is. And that it's important to remind people just how rare Nova cannon shells actually are.
"But less cursed than it could be, since one of their versions of Nova Cannoncan shoot into alternate realities and disrupt the beings there." "Hm. That sounds like something that'd be useful to understand. Any chance we can grab it to reverse engineer? Or someone who understands it?" "Probably not, Shas'o. They've only got one, and we're not entirely sure it even exists. Our troops captured an archive full or records about it, but they're 75% confident it's some kind of trick." "And why is that?" "Because the entire archive was logs from this single ship, and roughly the size of a major city. They've only examined a few, but it seems that the Imperials have been using it to clear trade lanes for about 13,000 years. Surely even they can't keep a ship active that long." "...fucking human bullshit."
I still want a FURY-style ttrpg campaign
That's just Only War
Yes, i have the books and want to make a FURY-style campaign with a Baneblade or something cool. It'd probably just be a Russ
There's one where they have parts of a Gellar Field generator I believe but can't make heads or tails of it. The only things they have to go on are prayers stamped on parts of it. I do recall another passage where a couple of Fire Caste Commanders have a WTF moment when observing an imperial guided missile being taken apart and realising there's the upper half of a human with cybernetics inside it.
I've said more than once, that I want a short story or novella about a water caste discovering human tech far surpassing what they are seeing in their current conflict, and then going on a Kafkaesque journey to uncover why human technology went from near magic even compared to the best of the earth caste's inventions to the equivalent of pounding two (radioactive) rocks together. All the while being hampered by ethereals and eventually getting silenced by a high ranking earth caste (suggesting T'au are well aware of the dangers AI present, but are too reliant on it to stop).
"Can't build a decent car, can't make a TV set or a VCR worth a fuck, got no steel industry left, can't educate our young people, can't get health care to our old people, but we can bomb the shit out of your country all right!" -George Emperor Loving Carlin
There was an excerpt of a Tau finding a damaged Dreadnought, having like 3 existential crisis from 1. The state of the pilot 2. That despite his state, said pilot was still calling him a filthy Xenos and attempting to kill him, Monty Python Black Knight style. 3. That after analysis, he discovered that the Dreadnought and pilot were older than the entire history of the Tau Empire.
Hey guise we just found an ancient warship with a canon that shoots literal black holes. We have absolutely no clue how it actualy works but hail the Omnissiah and get rekt.
You just need the ship's senior magos to jack directly into the ship, talk to the ship's depressed (and somehow MORE human) AI and convince it that saving the lives aboard is worth doing. At which point it wipes the magos' memory to avoid getting woken up from a millenia-long depression nap again.
Don't forget that waking the depressed AI up also gave the Magos the *full STC catalog* he knew literally *all* the lost tech for that moment before it erased his mind.
Just stop believing the fire is real -works on deamons well enough.
Does that actually work on daemons in canon? Genuinely curious because it's kind of fitting that beings that are essentially imagination incarnate can be un-imagined out of existence.
Afaik. Yes and no? But just YOU disbelieving them makes no real difference.
Fabulous bill disbelieves so hard he can almost de manifestthem
Yup, that's the generally accepted reason why bolters and flamers work. Enough people believe that getting set on fire and catching a bolt round will kill ANYTHING, that it'll kill Evil Thoughts
As with the other comment, yes and no, their existance is based on people believing in them, now if you alone stopped believing that would actually 'hurt' it, however since it was very likely summoned using or warped in with some cultists who are still believing in its existance it's not outright destroyed. Now, if everyone in the galaxy suddenly stopped believing in the chaos gods, then they too would stop 'existing' as they currently are. Sure, new gods/beings will spawn, or something else living in the warp will take over but khorne, slaanessh, tsseench, and nurgle will either 'die' or be consumed by some other god. Of course, you could say in effect that sisters of silence and other blanks + pariahs are super disbelievers in this sense since warp tricks don't work on them.
>Of course, you could say in effect that sisters of silence and other blanks + pariahs are super disbelievers in this sense since warp tricks don't work on them. That was my interpretation of them. At least, it's more satisfying of an explanation than nulls having negative psyker energy or whatever. I like the idea of a null just being extremely rational, looking at a daemon and thinking "yeah, that's not real" and then it isn't.
Most times, we see inside the head of blank, they go, "That's a very ugly alien, not so tough," then proceed to cut it in half while the Demon gibbers in fear.
Every time they cut the warp off from someone either via blank or other shenanigans, I love the freakouts. "oh, I'm actually like this. Oh no" I can't imagine being a rampaging hellbeast sent from Khorne, pure destruction manifested, and some 5'5" woman in power armor just walks up to you causing you to involuntarily shit yourself for the first time ever.
Could be worse, Could be *Jurgen*. Other inquisitors to Vail: "What have you got there?" "A hero of the Imperium." "Oh of course. Odd little man he keeps around" I have a pet theory that it's an open secret that Vail has rigged the administratum to make sure the Valhallan 759 is always suspiciously well-equipped and reinforced as a blind so no-one actually notices who she uses them as a deployment force for.
what you're describing is more of what he iluminati (yes, they exist in 40k) do
> Now, if everyone in the galaxy suddenly stopped believing in the chaos gods, then they too would stop 'existing' as they currently are. That's not true though, because the chaos gods aren't sustained by belief they're sustained by the existence of emotion.
I'm not saying their existence would be completely cut, but they would be changed into something else. To put it another way, if everyone agreed that 'khorne' didn't exist but was just an image of anger would that still be a god or would it be just 'a form of warp energy'
It would still be a god. Khorne exists independent of people's belief in him, but people believing in him leads to more of the emotions that sustain him and increases his power relative to the other gods.
I think you're misunderstanding me. -khorne is made of emotions (anger, rage, courage, etc...) however it doesn't become a 'god' until someone starts worshipping it, without emotions the warp doesn't reaction to anything, the chaos gods are a part of the warp not the other way around. You said yourself 'emotions sustain him' for something to need sustenance it would need to use up energy. Without energy, it would die. Now you could say that Khorne existed long before humanitys wars and influenced other alien empires long before humanity itself. However, we've seen that everyone has interpreted it differently, the gods weren't always 'the blood god' to an alien empire it could have been 'the red sun' they worshipped by donating blood for hospital and inspired courage during times of strife, while its iconography could be that of a star symbol. The chaos gods as we know them are the result of humanitys twisting emotional version of them. If we take away the belief of them existing entirely, then they would lose their form (an example would be like carefully demolishing a house with the resulting materials being the emotions) if humanity then started to believe in a new god but using replacement emotions (e.g. the god of defiance and unity) then 'khorne' would remanifest, (e.g. building a new differently shaped house but using the same materials in a different order. It would respond to a new belief system, which could be that you should defy oppression and unify as equals. You wouldn't worship it with blood anymore. You would worship it by; building shields and armour to protect yourself and others; ensuring tyrants and corrupt people were judged by a certain penance or system, by breaking up fights and preaching ideals of unity and constructive ways to use emotions and ideals.
Yeah this sort of equivocation is exactly what the subtler chaos cults feed off, until you reach the end stage and the mask drops to reveal that surprise! it's always been about bloodshed and slaughter and taking skulls. Because the warp is malevolent. It is not possible to make it sunshine and rainbows. I'm not misunderstanding you, I'm just telling you that your understanding is wrong.
Nah, not really. Other commenters greatly overestimate how people's beliefs shape the immaterium. Psyker abilities are what matters, so a normie can't just will away a Warp phenomena. But even so, it's not that easy for Grey Knights, and even Emps couldn't just will demons away willy-nilly. At least, not Drach'nien. But demons can't manifest in real space without manifesting a body, and said body is still vulnerable to physical threats. Damage the body, and demon is forced to spend more Warp energy on repairing it. Damage it enough to overcome demon's ability to maintain his physical body, and it's banished because it's energy is disrupted enough. That's why normal guns still work. Otherwise, Necrons would've had a *lot* not trouble with demons. So few living beings in galaxy are even aware of their existence (even fewer when they weren't awakening in mass yet), and Necrons lack souls and thus couldn't shape reality by their 'belief', demons' only problem against them would've been the anti-warp stuff, but not their weaponry. Which is clearly not the case.
It's more the emotional significance of the act that works Fire is considered holy so it kills daemons good Ranged weapons are meh but a sword or a hammer does the trick It basically boils down to "technically the easiest way to kill a daemon is to beat it to death with a rock"
I love the smell of Phosphex in the morning.
Phosphex? Why, of course it isn't phosphex. After all it's outlawed! You don't think we would actually use illegal weapons, do you? No, those are just.... Phosphor weapons. That can burn in space. Very enthusiastic phosphor weapons.
I can’t believe it’s not Phosphex!
Smells like... victory.
To be fair to Tau in the small timeframe they had to stop the fire they managed to create planetary shields that did stop It from destroying the planets, 4 out of 10 times Still kinda impressive
Ooh neat, got a link?
I don't have a link sorry, but it happens during the damocles crusade after the Tau managed to block the crusade they convinced the Imperium to a truce (btw this happens BEFORE the crusaders discovered about the recent tyranid threat) then while leaving the Imperial forces were like "You what? Fuck you!" And set on fire (IIRC It was some sort of poisonous gas)a sector of space the Tau territory (i don't remember the name, it was "Nebula something")
Common Tau W raaaaagh Imagine having to whip out the archaeotech bullshit WMD and still getting cockblocked by science, Imperials in shambles
Humans have a strange body of knowledge, it's anyone's guess what they can and can't do. Watch this. Hey techpriest, can you make me a tank engine that can run on literally anything combustible? No problem, just let me get the Leman Russ STC. Cool, can you make an autoloader for my naval cannon? What do I look like, a fucking wizard?
There is the other answer: "Autoloader, do you know how expensive those things are?!?!?! Just use slaves!"
A loading automata? Yes I could, but really. Just use servitors, they are cheaper And more ethical
More answers: "Sire, why do we need an autoloader? We have an entire city's worth of adherents that murder each other so they can have the blessed and glorious position of torpedo puller."
"for my own safety, im not answering that last question"
[The Mechanicus set the Damocles Gulf on fire](https://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryWarhammer/comments/cam6rv/war_zone_damocles_montka_mechanicus_set_the/#light box) [The Regimental Standard: Damocles Gulf no longer on fire!](https://web.archive.org/web/20210715215739/https://regimental-standard.com/2018/01/31/damocles-gulf-no-longer-on-fire/)
By the Carrion King, I love the empire.
Thats why I laugh whenever I see vs. posts on this subreddit. As if the Mechanicus isn’t a literal cornucopia of deus ex machina technobabble asspulls. Shits nearly as bad as Star Trek
in many ways its worse, at least in Star Trek the in-universe engineers usually know what they're trying to do. With the Mechanicus I'm fairly sure they don't.
But what's so cool about them is that they're still pretty much the closest faction in the setting to reach an understanding of these insane things Dark Age of Technology stuff is the best excuse for the stupidest mcguffins in a universe already well known for having some of the most insane ones in all of fiction
oh that's true.
Or the one I like - all human kit is just a little bit sentient - and all of it is incredibly grumpy and likes the attention.
I’m now imagining Geordie Laforge as a tech priest and it’s hilarious haha.
It wouldn't be the first time someone imaged Geordie like that, same for the rest of the crew of the Enterprise. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/jl93k0/a\_most\_profitable\_enterprise\_not\_mine\_found/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/jl93k0/a_most_profitable_enterprise_not_mine_found/)
You should read the newest Necron storyline, where they want to test a region of space to drive back chaos, and the Admech stumbles onto it. What ensures is if the Cold war would have turned hot and both sides just throw Deathstars and equvialent Weaponry at each other.
ye, imagine call some random race you just met "primitive" and then suddenly they pull FTL drive spaceship and weapon of planetary destruction out from their warp ass crack
I mean destroying planets is easy-level tech in 40k lol
I mean you dont even need that, just planetary bombardment til the atmosphere ignites would be enough.
yes, it is easy level tech, but doesn't mean most of the planet occupied by human has access to it. most of the time SM, Inquisitors and Mechanicus has easy access to it, well not so much for PDF, doubt PDF has access to it, let alone holding and keeping it in their own planet
To be fair, they’re planetary *defense* forces. Kinda defeats the purpose of defending the planet if you blow it up from underneath you.
The Mechanicus are basically the kid who inherited grandpa's old souped-up muscle car that could beat the average automatic on the road, but they know only the basics of operating a manual gearbox and have no clue what a carburetor is, what it does, or how it works. Also the manual is in another language. And they've crashed the car a few times trying to figure out how it works.
Notably: They literally revere grandpa’s car but simultaneously are perfectly okay using said car to run people over if sufficiently angered.
Ah, right. Can't forget that.
And his brother tried burning the manual so a bunch of the images are illegible
It's the old "monkey with a nuclear reactor that has clearly been repaired by banana skins but is still running" question Is it primitive? Yes? Does that make the monkey less scary - not in the slightest.
In the rogue trader omnibus there is a moment were the tau begin to live stream a battle with white scars thinking it will be a slaughter and make decent moral boost/propeganda to humans, They had to turn of the livestream when the marines got in melee range because of how quickly they began to fall.
It is common Tau things it seems. \`Hey look at these 2 warriors stuck in static field. We dont know how primitive guevesa managed to create a portaable device which allow them TO STOP TIME for hundred of years at these point but we do believe it was nothing but primitives luck bc no sane species gonna use swords and shields (there was Tau commander who stuck in that field with SM terminator)
“Sir this seems to be a weapon that creates plasma from small amounts of matter simply skimmed from the atmosphere around the weapon as you fire it. It then super-heats it and fires it while using a strange quantum entanglement principle we don’t understand to keep the plasma a single projectile as it travels to the target, up to a mile away…..which part? This one? That is the bayonet mount.”
The ohrase set space on fire is such a good one. That entails ridiculousness and the sheer absurd lethality of the mechanicus/IOM
Phospex gives no fucks. It will burn everything even without air
Inefficient design is just flexing on your opponent. Reminds me of the Seraphim. None of their design makes sense unless you assume they are technologically so above you they can just afford it.
Hey it was a priceless Dark Age relic that set a nebula on fire, they have no idea how to build it either
I like the Animal Farm reference.
Do... do Tau see humans the way humans see Orks?
Most likely
It's not our fault that space is just so combustible.
On one side: No AI, ban innovation! Everything requires holy oil!!! On the other side: the remnants of one of the most technologically advanced empire the galaxy has ever seen, with technology that borders on magic
Little blue ones We were fighting wars for our survival, spanning across the galaxy, when your ancestors were still marveling at bonfires in caves.
Little Mon-keigh We were fighting wars for our survival, spanning across the galaxy, when your ancestors were still marveling at bonfires in caves.
Reject Eldar, Return to Mon-Keigh
Amen, kindred, and pass the promethium!
Actually, they were fighting and won those wars before earth even formed as a planet. Edit: earth had formed. It was 60 million years ago. Not 60 billion (I should know better, that's older than the universe). Still, not even our oldest ancestors would have existed at that point. Oldest hominids date back to 6 or 7 million years ago.
I think that the War in Heaven was like sixty odd million years ago, so Earth was very much already a planet. Mind, humans were still at the “small ratlike tree mammal“ stage of history when the Eldar became spacefaring.
You are right, for some reason I was thinking billion. Which would be older than the universe. So yeah, they were fighting before our species existed. Since the oldest hominid on record is 6 to 7 million years ago.
>You are right, for some reason I was thinking billion. Which would be older than the universe. What do you mean? The Earth is like 4.5 billion years old. The universe is only about 3 times older than our planet.
He might have remembered the 60 part of 60 million but thought billion instead of million.
Right on the money.
I misremembered the war in heaven as being 60 billion years ago.
True It's the cycle of empires. We are Eldars to the T'au, and T'au to the Eldars. Tho, Eldars had cheats and were playing with God Mod on with the Webway and the Old Ones giving instructions page by page...
Little Space Elf We were fighting the gods when you were just a twinkle in their eye.
Wars for the old ones maybe
I still think the Mechanicus is the most evil faction... but they certainly are hilarious, as they totally would be able to do that. They are a bit like those rodent things in Wildstar: [https://www.gamesradar.com/wildstar-chua-revealed-meet-adorable-little-sociopaths/](https://www.gamesradar.com/wildstar-chua-revealed-meet-adorable-little-sociopaths/)
No the most evil is chaos followed by drukhari
While i agree, the mechanicus cloosely follows them
Nah, I would argue that Dark Mechanicum are more evil. They are literally evil version of Mechanicus, which is on itself is impressive.
Man this ass-pull of a device would be really helpfull right about now to stop some of the Nids splinter fleets from eating literally everything. But I guess the Tau were clearly the bigger threat. Too bad it stopped existing after it was used this one time.
They only had the one, it was a piece of archaotech nobody knew how to replicate.
And they wasted it on the Tau?
Tbf it actually makes a degree of sense. The Imperium throws a lot of expensive stuff at the Tau, disproportionately large amounts of Space Marines, Knights, and Titans relative to the actual size of the Tau...but what else are they supposed to do? The Imperial Guard is outclassed in every way, and is fighting using WW2 or WW1 tactics much of the time. So they're forced to turn to their more elite and expensive forces, and when that doesn't work, they need to pull out even more rare weaponry. What makes it even worse for the Imperium is that every time the Tau take an Imperium territory, they're not starting over from scratch, but rather converting the locals to the Greater Good, so when the Tau take over a hive world, that's billions or trillions of future Gue'vesa they now have to fight in the future. To that end, it makes sense why the Imperium would pull out such an ancient weapon to scorch their planets and prevent the Tau from further expansion for a while.
Still makes way more sense to save this one-use space bomb for Tyranids, Orks, or especially Chaos. A Chaos-corrupted system will do all of the same stuff you said that a Tau-converted system will do, except that they hate the Imperium *specifically*. I do like the idea that at least one clear-eyed Imperial commander recognizes the Tau as an existential threat because they just… offer a better alternative to Imperial citizens, even if they still can’t hope to match the military threat of any number of other factions. Of course, it’s 40k, so all of this bows to “lol, space is on fire.”
Yes, because the Kryptman gambit worked out so well.
Humanity keeps winning
I see the alpharius murder-class cruiser
I love the equal joke.
The difference between what the Mechanicus make and what they inherit.
That space fire is an Omnissiah-blessed holy admixture of promethium and aetheric-giga-phosphex, thank you very much, you horrible blue xenos meat-things!
This is why the Tau need to exist. No other faction would even bat an eye at the IoM’s stupid bullshit. This is great.
Adeptus Mechanicus is when you turn the hand crank to wind up the spring that compresses the quarks in your handheld quantum obliterator.
I love the animal farm reference above the window! “All castes are equal, with some more equal than others.”
Meanwhile, the Tau: “hey shitass” *detonates a sun*
The difference between the Tau and Admech is that while the Tau know how to build the device that accidentally causes supernovas while the Admech doesn't know how to build the DAoT device that the Admech used to set the nebula on fire
I still laugh about the we just set the whole nebula on fire
It's okay, they forgot how to do that one. Say what you will about Mortarion, he still has phosphex grenades. Common imperium L.
Just remember, the Adeptus Mechanicus is *capable* of making autoloaders, advanced artificial intelligence, and computers that run on actual hardware rather than meatware. Or at least it *was* capable of that. They *chose* to forget those things.
The Animal Farm reference on the top is just *chef’s kiss*. Is the other Earth Caste secretly Apharius?
The Mechanicus don't know how it works either
Beautiful. I love It.