Subject: Thank you!
Author:
Posted on: 2023-03-15 12:49:11 UTC
It was a ton of work! But the work wasn't just in writing the rules; a surprising amount was in getting the Codex set out so that it was a readable document and not just scraps of rules held together with duct tape. Making it look like an actual Codex would be impossible for me. Graphic design is not my passion. =]
If you've known me for a while, first of all: I'm sorry. I'm just. So sorry to have put you through that.
You'll also know that I'm a huge nerd about Warhammer 40,000, both the game and the lore surrounding it. From the epic collaborative Star Wars crossover Star Warhammer: Everyone Has A Headache to the sweeping alternate history of The Fenrykan Heresy, I've been deeply embedded in the creation of Warhams and Warhams-Adjacent Content hereabouts and I'm proud to have worked with so many people on so many wonderful stories. It's an incredible feeling. But I wanted to do something different. Something longer. Something more... crunchy.
See, I've played and theorycrafted and Math-hammered a bunch of official armies over the years to make cool things. I've got a soft sport for the Guard and the Genestealer Cultists and my first ever painted army was a force of Lost And The Damned from Codex: Eye Of Terror back when that was the Big Mega Campaign. My absolute favourites, though, which will come as no surprise to anyone who's interacted with me in the contents of Warhams at all? T'au. There is no hope in the grim darkness of the far future that compares to the hope of the Youngest. Industrious scientific pioneers who wish to innovate their way out of problems and work with a multicultural pluralistic empire are arrayed against the impenetrable misery of the endless void of the galaxy, in which lies only darkness and silence and the laughter of thirsting gods. I adore the T'au miniatures range. But one thing I would love to see more and more of? The other races in the Empire. I'd love an entire goddamn Codex of T'au Auxiliaries. Games Workshop would never, ever make one of those. I know that rationally. But I want one. I really, really want one.
Codex: T'au Auxiliaries version 1.0 is available to read in the above link. It contains:-
Full rules for playing matched play battles with the T'au Auxiliaries in Warhammer 40,000's Ninth Edition.
A list of subfactions for the army that represents the different military ethoses of the commanders under the Auxiliaries' collective banner.
A vast array of units from which to choose
A full suite of Relics and Warlord Traits to customise your force's characters.
Fully realised rules for conducting a Narrative campaign in the Crusade format.
Over one hundred and thirty pages of Lore, Crunch, and Fluff.
Hundreds Of Chompy Birb Mens!
And Much More Tee Em!
Should you not have the time, inclination, or masochistic urges to read it through in one sitting, this Codex is also available for download in delicious and satisfying PDF Flavour.
I've been working on this project for about two years, on and off. And now the 1.0 cut is finally done! It's here! I'd love to hear people's thoughts on it, and I've posted it here as a thank you to all the people in the PPC who have made me feel able to work on a project like this without feeling ashamed of my own nerdiness. I'm so grateful to be a part of this community and I'm so proud to present to you all the fruits of my labours.
Thank you.
>-=]
Like Nesh, I don't exactly know the gameplay side of 40K (I have, uh... one Chaos Marine somewhere, or did 20 years ago), but I can see this would be a very easy-to-use codex if I understood it. The layout is great, very tidy and readable. (For purely online purposes, a linked contents list to the major sections would be handy; I know there's one down in the middle but it's only for the one section.)
I mostly read the lore sections, and loved the wry humour speckled through them. The warlord so covered in medals that they're hard to hit stood out, as did the Imperial commentary on "abominable weapons", and the various nudges that maybe the T'au aren't actually sweetness and light that everybody loves - "this doctrine of the Fire Caste is well known among the auxiliaries, sometimes even by choice". (I see there's no mention of telepathic mind control in here. [Ducks])
How much of what you've written about is original? A quick look at Lexicanum shows that the Kroot are relatively well fleshed out in the canon, for instance, but it looks like the detailed variant morphs are mostly yours? How about the other auxiliaries, and things like the artefacts and vehicles?
hS
Much like with the Fenrykan Heresy, I wanted to post this here so that you specifically got to engage with it and not miss out. You always provide really valuable input. =]
Fun fact about the Kroot morphs: the only one that's original is actually the Greater Knarloc in the Lords Of War section, and that's an adaptation of the old Forge World Great Knarloc that used to be a Heavy Support unit in 8th edition. The Vultures, Stalkers, Headhunters, and suchlike all come from the 3rd edition Kroot army list from an ancient Chapter Approved article in an old issue of White Dwarf. This was shortly after the T'au were first introduced as a faction, back in the year I'm Not Old Shut Up No I'm Not.
The Kroot are mostly adapted from old Geedubs stuff. This is not the case for almost every other client race in the faction, because Games Workshop kind of decided to ignore the T'au Empire's pluralistic approach in favour of designing more big shooty jetpack robots. I've invented basically everything about the units for those races, simply because they never come up! That all said, every alien species that makes an appearance in the army list has appeared somewhere in an official Games Workshop product before, even if they were just a fleeting reference in a bit of wargear backstory. I've expanded on them out of necessity but I have included zero original species. That was a point of principle; I've seen a few fandexes for the Auxiliaries floating around, and rather than explore and fill out the client races that already exist, they just went full Original Character Donut Steel instead, and I was left entirely unfulfilled. =]
Finally, thank you for your kind comment about the wry remarks in the lore snippets. My personal favourite is the name of one of the Warlord Traits, "Coalition of the Mostly Willing". I do intend on adding lore paragraphs to each unit listing and having that as the 1.1 PDF release, so watch this space. =]
I'm not acquainted with the crunchy side of 40k, or really much of the lore beyond the Horus Heresy. Anything else I know, it's because I picked it up from from Phobos or the PPC. (And I count TTS as from the PPC, because Thoth got me watching that.)
So, when I had the opportunity to take a look at this a while back, I did. I admit I didn't read it all the way at the time, but I enjoyed the parts I did read, because they're packed full of juicy flavor. I will definitely be going in for another look.
Especially since Phobos is reading a T'au book right now, and it'll be fun to compare notes with him. ^_^
~Neshomeh
Yeah, turns out just sending people a link to a Google Doc and going "HERE IS THING! READ THING! DO NOW! DOOOOOO!" is not the best mechanism for acquiring feedback. =]
I'm really glad you're gonna be dipping into it again. I admit to not having written much lore for the Codex, as I was more focused on getting it to be a usable gaming book; I do, however, intend to backfill the lore in later, once I've done some more reading and I've got more time to do it properly. There's a reason this Codex is 1.0, after all.
Which book's Phobos reading, if you don't mind my asking? I don't own very many BL books, because... well, because poor, but I'm eager to find out what he thinks about my sweet blue angel children who have done nothing wrong. =]
They're fine. They don't feel as alien as some of the other races. They sometimes feel like a Gundam script got bitten by a radioactive Warhammer. That's not to say they are bad, just incongruent with the tone of much of the universe. That's why I like the choice of the Scar Lords as the antagonists in the book I'm reading. It draws a lot of attention to the tonal dissonance.
I've encountered them a couple of times in various novels, but I'm currently reading my first Tau-centric novel: Farsight - Crisis of Faith. I like the character of Commander Farsight. He's smart enough to see through the Tau propaganda machine, but too much of a good soldier to say anything against it.
In any other series, I would say the Tau are definitely headed for a civil war between the castes. However, the existential threat posed by the Imperium, and eventually by Chaos (when the Tau finally figure out what that is), will likely keep them together. The interesting thing about a potential civil war would be that the Fire (warrior) caste would likely be on the more just side, with the Water (scholars, ambassadors, merchants) caste opposing them, which usually isn't the way these things go. Air (pilots) and Earth (engineers and laborers) could split over this schism. The Ethereal caste (leaders) would absolutely use the Water caste as a meat shield.
If I've learned one thing in this book, it is don't trust the Ethereals. When they say something is for the Greater Good, the list of beings that encompasses is very small and almost purely Ethereal. I'm also becoming suspicious that potentially they are psykers, and they have decided the rest of the Tau don't need to know what that is.
-Phobos
For a very long period of time, there was a prevailing fan theory that the Ethereals weren't just psykers, but were psykers created as the result of genetic meddling by the Eldar of the Craftworlds, in a kind of history-rhymes version of the space elves's own creation myth as servants of the Old Ones. However... they're not. Tau'faan barely have a presence in the Warp, and this includes the Ethereals; they have been subject to rigorous testing in that regard... by the Drukhari witch cults, who instead found that the actual method of control was great for making into combat drugs. I'll spare you the details. =]
But yeah, the modern canon leans heavily on the idea of the Ethereals actually exercising control via the medium of some kind of alien pheromone, which from this old fan's perspective is something of a cop-out. It feels to me like a ham-fisted way to try and deal with the unbelievable whining about the T'au's existence as "not fitting the established setting" that started from their introduction in Two Thousand And No I'm Still Young Shut Your Whole Entire Up, which -- as someone who was there even on the periphery of it -- was as loud and intolerable as... well, as everything else screamy, loud and intolerable in the Warhammer 40,000 fandom.
Speaking solely for myself: I think the T'au absolutely do fit the setting both as they are and as they were. They're actually one of the last bits of genuine political satire in the game, with all their NATOspeak weapon designations and bloodless naming conventions about warfare being broad satires of the neoliberal order prosecuting an illegal war in Afghanistan and later Iraq. It's not a grenade launcher, for example, it's an Airburst Fragmentation Projector. More centrally to my thesis, however, they're also a powerful contrast within the grim darkness of the far future, because they were (at the time of their inception) extremely naive about the nature of the universe of which they were a part and acted like capital-S Science! could fix everything. That was the central irony; they were symbolic of the wondrous technology and fundamental hope for the future that fascist humanity had spent ten thousand years stamping out wherever it could, only survivng through their own unbelievably rapid technological development and sheer blind luck. Making the Ethereal caste pheromone-controlling versions of Fu Manchu and cranking up the re-education camps idea is both a little too rooted in Sinophobia and "yellow peril" ideas for my tastes and also, in my opinion, was something that was both unnecessary and clashed on a fundamental level with the satire they were trying to make. It undercuts the fundamental naivete of a faction if their leaders are secretly a bunch of scheming egomaniacs twisting society for their own ends.
At least, that's my take as a long-term fan of, and there's really no getting around it at this point, twenty goddamn years Jesus Christ help I have fallen and I cannot get up
=]
It's Farsight something or other. Looks like there are a couple of them, and I'm not sure which one he's on.
He mentioned the Scar Lords Space Marine chapter, which sounds just incredibly messed up and makes the T'au look very good by comparison! {= D Apparently there's a saying that "the Emperor judges you not by your medals, but by your scars," and these dudes decided to take it literally—not only do they prevent their wounds from fully healing, they allow themselves to be horrifically disfigured. Also they have a ship called Scabbard of Flesh. Which. Um. Well, Phobos speculates they might be descended from the Emperor's Children. {X D
He also mentioned a bit where one of the T'au touches a broken Gellar drive (having never seen one before and not knowing better), and basically gets Black Oil'd by demons. Whoops.
I don't think he's quite convinced they're all sweetness and light, I'm afraid. Apparently their caste rigidity is pretty extreme; like, if you're a scribe (i.e. not a mechanic) and you dare to take an interest in the mechanical data pad or whatever that you're scribing on, you can get beat up for not staying in your lane? And then there's that whole fifth caste nobody talks about. Pretty shady!
~Neshomeh
Phil Kelly is pretty much the only game in town right now when it comes to the creation and exploration of T'au lore and stories. However, he seems to delight in retconning stuff that had already been established for no reason (it seems) other than "he didn't know about it or forgot it existed". The "T'au blood is red" thing was a meme for a bit precisely because of the Farsight books. Not my favourite. But then, I've not read the Farsight series in a while, so Phobos is one up on me there. =]
I barely know what this is, but you must have put a whopping amount of work into it. Nerdiness is not a thing to be ashamed of.
It was a ton of work! But the work wasn't just in writing the rules; a surprising amount was in getting the Codex set out so that it was a readable document and not just scraps of rules held together with duct tape. Making it look like an actual Codex would be impossible for me. Graphic design is not my passion. =]