Warhammer 40k fluff thread VI: They see me Ward'en, they haten

[DaedalusMkV]

There is one and only one thing Tau follow. The Greater Good. It dictates what you must do in life to help society - obediently follow your role. Were you born as Fire Caste? Sorry, you won't pilot any flyers, it's all Air Caste. Astrophysicist? Nope, all you will get in life is Pulse Carbine, even if you would be otherwise, say, best baker on the planet. It's not your role. Not following your role is harming Greater Good. Just like in human concept of caste Dharma, upon which GG was based.

Just look at conquered aliens - Vespids? Mind control helmets for Greater Good. These dirty humans? Sterilize for Greater Good, recruit excess to Gue'Vesa regiments, allow select few to reproduce, especially loyal units. Again, Greater Good always comes first, usually by saving precious Tau lives by driving protective screen of auxiliaries around Tau units to minimize losses in only race fully adhering to the concept.

1: This is... Not entirely correct. First, the Fire Caste does provide pilots for all atmosphere-based flyers and combat vehicles. Because if the Air Caste spend more than a few hours planetside, they get severely ill and die. The Air Caste are the spacefarers of the Tau Empire, perfectly adapted to weak artificial gravity and sterilized atmospheres. They don't do well at anything else. Also, there is way, way more variation in role than that. Experienced Fire Caste members will be assigned to Earth Caste research teams as advisors, because they have hands-on experience with how it will need to be used in the end. Fire Caste pilots and vehicle crews are given a full technical understanding of their equipment, and could perform field repairs if necessary. Yes, you can't leave your Caste, so you'll never see a Fire Caste artist outside of a retirement community, but there is always some overlap.

2: Okay, no. The Vespid mind control hats thing? At best an in-universe rumour, never stated to be true. It's one of a couple things that the Tau might, possibly, maybe be doing that's potentially really bad. On the other hand, the Vespid really do seem like the kind of species that would be all over the Tau Empire, being structured in basically the same way to begin with. The rest of it? Dawn of War, a non-canon source, and only after the planet rebelled, and no, the Tau do not work that way. The Tau do not use expendable meat-shields. If you think you do you're wrong. If Gue'vesa are deployed to a war-zone, the Commander in charge will do everything possible to preserve their lives, because the Tau canonically do not have a societal concept of cannon fodder.

Yeah, you've taken the three or four canonical "Bad things the Tau might maybe have done" and decided that their entire society is that while completely and utterly ignoring the entire rest of the canon.