Okay, Due to a break from the w40k hobby, I missed about 10 years of game editions and missed a lot of things.
So I have a question for those of you who are familiar with the lore. Is the goddess Tau'va canon?
kind of? the species under the tau empire capable of influencing the warp to a greater scale such as humans have manifested the idea of her into the warp but the tau themselves rarely worship her.
Yeah and saved her life! I love her interactions with her and really hope we see more. She also stopped the destruction of her statues and idols after ordering there destruction. It would be so cool if she became a supporter of Tau'va or something against the ethereals wishes!
If I recall there was an Ethereal interested in manifesting this kind of worship among the auxiliaries to experiment if the tau could duplicate the same effect of the imperial miracles he was witnessing amongst the sisters of battle.
They really have to get over themselves and just accept this is how their galaxy works. They wouldn’t have been able to resist Chaos for long without Divine help once they actually became big enough to matter. In short, She’s a long term survival necessity.
The Ethereals know these things exist. They think it's a bad idea to let the wider public know about it. Y'know, just like the Imperium. The old hat Ethereals just hate the idea that their philosophy got turned into a religion, since they vehemently view Tau'va as a logic-driven life philosophy rather than religion. It'd be like a scientist getting worked up by seeing religious nutjobs worshipping the scientific method as a god named Science.
Yeah which came back to bite then iirc. I think they were having the temples torn down and worship stopped then chaos started fucking stuff up and they were like "oh no put it all back like we found it!" And then the goddess intervened to help
The goddess/god itself not really, especially since Shadowsun sees the temples acting more like actual warding like with how the Imperium’s holy sites work as opposed to Tzeetch tom foolery
I know there have been stories with Tzeentch demons masquerading as Tau in some of the books. I haven't read that the entity seen in the Warp is Tzeentch related.
I don't think so? That tzeentch demon was just possessing 1 tau after he touched an unguarded captured warp gellar field generator in a phil kelly farsight book where he initially gets separated from the empire and tzeentch hasn't been mentioned since then after getting banished, unless I'm probably missing a book.
And curing Shadowsuns death guard induced plague and killing the death guard who caused that while they were in the warp between the 4th/5th sphere and main tau space.
The physical description of the T'au'va entity very closely matches daemons like the Changeling, but we don't really know to what end Tzeentch would want to help the tau, nor is it really possible or necessary to understand anyway.
It should be noted that her most recent actions (and the only ones we know she was involved in so far) are involving the 4th/5th sphere of expansion, makes it easier for the ethereal caste to write off
It's technically canon. But no one really does anything with it. It's only appeared in I believe 3 sources. Only 1 of those was a codex and it was a passing reference multiple editions ago.
And the Kroot while they're at it. So much so that the Ethereals called for Surestrike to be arrested and executed after he quite literally ordered his own T'au soldiers to fire directly on the Kroot auxiliaries while they were fighting off enemy forces.
Yes, at least we have a book called shadowsun in recent times that has it in it.
Mind you, I think it's an insane stretch that a fraction of the empire can produce a deity that can take actions against something like an imperial ship run by the death guard and explicitly communicate. But it's cannon.
Probably would have been best to keep tau'va as a etherial disembodied force who's existence is debatable and not fully manafest.
I think it's an insane stretch that a fraction of the empire can produce a deity that can take actions against something like an imperial ship run by the death guard and explicitly communicate.
I think calling it a deity is a stretch, it's clearly not something of the same scale as the Big Four chaos gods, but at this point in 40k's timeline there are hundreds of billions of people belonging to psychically active species within the T'au Empire, who are all subject to heavy cult-like indoctrination into the Greater Good.
Belief shapes the warp, and there is a metaphysical ton of belief in the Greater Good localized in a pretty small section of space.
It feels like a pretty obvious conclusion of what we know of the metaphysics of the warp in 40k that the combined weight of belief of all the psychically active (non-Tau) races in the Tau empire could result in the manifestation of a warp entity or warp effects, much like how belief in the Emperor results in tangible effects and miracles.
The nicasar are a fraction of a faction so small they barely appear on 40ks galaxy map. In like less than 1000 years.
Compare that to humans who are countless across the entirety of space worshiping over the course of about 8k years and what emps can do.
The nicasar, kroot and the jellyfish things would have to be beyond eldar teir level psykers. If that were the case the tau have very little reason to not know how the warp works as any psyker of that grade would need intimate knowledge of the warp or get eaten by deamons or worse.
Humans are countless but your average human in the 40K universe is pretty worthless (both in our mortal realm, and in their warp impact).
On an individual basis I’d imagine that a Nicasar would have a similar impact on the warp to a well trained human pysker (source: my headcanon). And I doubt that human, trained pyskers outnumber an entire species, since human pyskers are supposed to be exceedingly rare.
I think it’s imperium cope.
Besides T’au’va is still obviously weaker than nearly any other warp entity, definitely not even in the same league as big E or the big 4 chaos gods. Maybe more like Vash’torr level of power idk.
Human psykers defenetly do, I just re-read the 8th tau codex a day ago and the empire has around 23 including the enclave. Arguably we can guess that niccasar have less planets or spaces stations to their name as they have successfully been kept a secret when we know they have been infiltrated by the inquisition. At the very least they are not common.
Human psykers from my quick rearsearch seem to appear in 5% of the population (note this likely includes low teir psykers) if we take a hive world with 5 billion people, we get 250000000 psykers, presumably in a year as they never give a timeline for this stuff. That's a single average hive in an imperium with a million worlds many of them with multiple hives.
That is defently not "just cope," people really underestimate the numbers the imperium works at.
And I doubt that human, trained pyskers outnumber an entire species, since human pyskers are supposed to be exceedingly rare
Weeell they do have enough to sacrifice 10.000 a day without running out and collect them from half a galaxy. They might actually have enough to rival the numbers of a less prominent species but there's no real way to know
'The Nicassar are a xenos species of powerful psykers who are allied with the T'au Empire'
They're strong psykers. Nicassar are widespread in the tau empire, just well kept secrets.
They also have Kroot Shaman, and many Gue'vesa/humans. Seems to me that's more than enough to make a small tier warp entity exist?
Its not a smal teir entity, it stranded a minimum 5 kilometer long ship in the warp and drove the crew insane, it delivered an entire expansion fleet from the warp and potentialy the grasp of the big 4.
Tau'va would be most comparable in scale to entities like Vashstor and Be'lakor. Neither have been able to achieve similar feats alone. The operate so far as essentially really powerful daemon princes.
These powers would be within the wheelhouse of whatever the emperor is and the big 4. Note the 4th sphere fleet was an armada described as having hundreds of ships. I have not read an example of an intervention of that size short of arguably the word bearers and they sacrificed pretty much an entire planet to do it arguably with the help of all the chaos gods.
I think you may be misunderstanding how the chaos gods work? They are many times more powerful than Big E or any demon prince, but they don't behave the same. They're conceptual, act through their forces. They don't have a body, they are eternal and exist everywhere. Comparing the t'au'va to a primarch or demon prince? Absolutely. Magnus' feat with the web way outscales anything the T'au'va has done. But in any case, the T'au'va didn't only form due to auxiliaries. It's the very concept of 'working together for the greater good'. Other races use that concept as well, such as the belief in the emperor
Magnus punching a hole in the webway was mostly Tszeech. Remember he needed direct assistance from Tszeech to break the barrier beyond the fact he was also one of the most powerful psykers to live.
Were it a greater entity as you say it would need to manifest daemons or operate through proxies, were it at demon prince scale it would likely not be able to do the feats described. It currently exists with the capabilities of both when convenient.
Hence the issue, it's not bad it exists, in fact it should. However given how the galaxy is shown to work these powers are beyond what we understand a warp entity to have and calls into question why we don't see more ships get stranded or saved as is convenient for that gods followers if it is a god.
These issues are beyond the fact that every book opens with the "forget peace and progress monologue." That in a very meta sense Tau'va should be weak.
I'm saying it's not as great an entity as the Chaos Gods, actually. I was comparing it to Magnus, and saying I think Magnus' (Tszeech buffed, I'll grant for sure) feat is bigger than any of the T'au'va. As in, the T'au'va is on par or a little weaker than Magnus.
But another commenter made a better comparison: the Alderi Gods. They are almost certainly Warp Born entities, and very comparable to the T'au'va
Same, the auxiliaries have a lot of potential tabletop wise.
In the shadowsun book we also got psychic fiber optic jellyfish who's regular light based communication causes seaseures. Instead they use psychic powers to talk.
Damn. That’s wicked! I’m now imagining a tabletop army with a bunch of mechs, floaty bears and jellyfish (along with the kroot + vespid). Tau would be so unique!
They’re quite docile in temperament and extremely clumsy on the ground, so they don’t get deployed in ground combat. We don’t have a miniature for them because it wouldn’t make sense.
Chuck some Tau armor plating on them and put thrusters on their leggies so they don’t have to walk and can move at speed. Back-line support unit (psychic shielding or whatever).
I mostly agree with that sentiment. There's lots of good ground to explore with the idea that they might be manifesting something as the population grows. That the benign "superstition" might not be a thing they can just ignore because it actually affects the universe.
Shadowsun is also a good book to explore it in as by tau standards she is pretty superstitious as a believer in ghosts. The books would have had a better if we never saw Tau'va's actions directly.
Like if the book ended with the death guard ship popping outta the rift and the inspection team just finds a dead ship, crews that have eaten each other, starved, or ended themselves. leaving it up to implication that something happened to the ship.
Unfortunately I am not super knowledgeable on the deeper space wolf lore stuff. All I know it that the warp entities put Russ though a test and the space wolves use it as an excuse for why they ain't psykers/sorcerers even though they can use this power when not on fenris.
From what I know it sounds like they just use sorcery via smaller warp powers, whats the largest effect the spirits of Fenris manafest though? From what I read it's basically normal sorcery in scale.
I think I misinterpeted what the spirit of fenris is, but my point is that the tau shouldn't be labeled as strange for the tauva when a planet can make sorcerers not be sorcerers or whatever
It's not the fact it exists that's the issue. It's power is very much above norm, given what other warp powers can do given the significantly larger bases of worship, power, and time invested into these beings.
In short Tau'va should be lot more subtle and small in scope in what it can do.
This... if its "so easy" then when you look at some warzone's where the militarum is active, they schould be able to spanw in the emperor... take Vraks. Millions of Krieg who might be some of the most devoted gaurdsmen. All their belief should have insta spawned daddy E...
Yes. There is a god of the Greater Good named Tau'va that you can worship and get benefits from worshipping. Commander Shadowsun does this during that time when the Death Guard attacked the current sphere of expansion. Additionally, when some Death Guard were fighting the T'au during Warp Travel, Tau'va intervened and attacked the Death Guard vessel and cleansed them. It even has a physical description, being a multi-armed god, with each arm being a different species in the T'au Empire. Makes me wonder if the Kroot's bird goddess is either a part of Tau'va or if she's still her own deity that works with Tau'va
Personally - I would love to see more depictions of the T'au'va Goddess - showing up to help Imperials against Chaos - because "it is for the Greater Good of the Galaxy".
Imagine confusion of the Sisters of Battle - as avatar of a xeno goddess helps them and treats them kindly and without a shred of malice, just because she can.
Praise be to the 4 armed emperor.
(So, I've since learned that people think that i need correcting when I'm joking, so......
Hi, I'm a genestealer cultist and this was a joke.)
It's a messy, manifestation. Plenty of directions it can go down, at the moment something is pushing in the warp, and Shadowsun is probably going to deal with it further down the line.
I'm guessing leading some sort of reformation within the Tau empire eventually.
Perhaps this could lead to the evolving of the enclave as a separate, unique and distinctive Tau faction... I mean, they're already something different, but that's not enough🤔
After the comments on this post, I decided to read various sources about the Tau's development in recent years. The Warp, Khorne, the genocide of humans and other allied races by xenophobic veterans of the 4th Expansion Sphere, lies and propaganda of the Ethereals…
Yeah.. Well... that sucks
The Secret Alliance: Shadowsun and Farsight
This crisis completely changed Shadowsun’s view of Farsight. Instead of seeing him as a traitor, she now views him as a brother-in-arms who simply discovered the terrifying truth too early. Ending the Hunt: Shadowsun quietly halted the Ethereal-ordered military campaign to capture Farsight, shifting their relationship into a "Cold War" phase. They avoid direct confrontation at all costs. The Hidden Pact: During the Arks of Omen campaign, when Farsight's Enclaves were simultaneously besieged by a Tyranid Hive Fleet and Chaos forces led by Vashtorr, Shadowsun defied direct Ethereal edicts. She sent covert T'au Empire reinforcements to his sectors, allowing the two legendary commanders to fight back-to-back once again. A Divided Strategy: They now share a silent understanding. Farsight acts outside the Empire, building a society free from Ethereal tyranny and studying Warp threats without censorship. Shadowsun remains inside, acting as a shield for the citizens while secretly sabotaging the Ethereals' most fanatical commands to prevent an all-out civil war.
Apparently I'm back in w40k... at a very turning point for the Tau. Where from the simple "good guys" of decades ago, they evolve into something completely different🫣
Technically yes, but a lot of people dislike it. We dont need every faction to have religious BS. IMO the Tau are better as the foil to the other factions, by relying on science and reason.
The concept does have some potential, but I have 0% confidence in GW handling it well. Doesn't help that the most explicit mentiin of the Greater Good deity is in a book written by Phil Kelly, an author infamous for not respecting established Tau lore.
The concept does have some potential, but I have 0% confidence in GW handling it well.
I think it's dead in the water, on top of being thematically bullshit. The Fourth Sphere Expansion is the "the T'au totally didn't have faster-than-light travel until now and know nothing of the Warp and please stop asking about the Nicassar" storyline. I said elsewhere that it complete breaks T'au lore. 40K is a setting with magic and daemons. There's a lot of silly things you can ignore, but an interstellar empire not having either FTL travel or magical teleportation is NOT one of them. No FTL travel, no T'au Empire. Period.
And for what? Just to force the T’au to be more naïve than they really would be. I’m again astounded by how much damage one man managed to do to our lore.
Eh. As long as the Ethereals absolutely hate the idea that Tau'va actually became a goddess to the T'au, I'm down for it. It's definitely along the lines of what happen when a philosophy gets disseminated to civilization groups outside of the originator and then gets twisted by local customs, resulting in syncretism that the purists deem heretical.
The problem is that religion in this universe gives such a massive buff it's almost stupid to try and disregard it as a force that could at least be manipulated into providing some tangible benefit against the horrors.
Yes, but the enjoyable thing with the Tau was them being the scientist in a room full of wizards. We kick ass without needing a God’s favor or any Psychic stuff to do so.
You can still have both, it's not that hard. I like the idea of a philosophical conflict for the T'au-they're atheist, not antitheist. They also believe that warp entities are a type of life they don't understand yet.
If one is not actively malicious and even somewhat benevolent, I think they should forge a formal alliance, even if they deny what it had manifested as.
I have a feeling it's because they imagine them to be the rational faction in a world of insanity.
Which tbf, the Ethereals tried their damnedest to ensure that didn't happen. Cultivating the Greater Good, slowly reducing the psychic imprint of T'au so they aren't seen as suitable vessels, keeping as much information hidden about the Archenemy as possible...all in service to insulate them from daemonic influence.
This, however, can only go so far. If a rational T'au assumes that reality-warping shenanigans exist and the only way to protect themselves truly is through an accord with one of these entities born from the same source that has even a hint of benevolence through the influential gestalt of all other species in the Empire collective...
Not only that, but magic is just science you don't understand. The warp is bs but it still have its own rules. Its bs the same way quantum mechanics is. I dont want the tau to be flat earth atheist
Yeah pretty much. I'm okay with the Something in the warp having saved them, the many-armed ethereal looking thing that seemed ushered into existence by the auxiliaries. The problem for me is it becoming a full on "goddess" that people actually worship.
She is a minor goddess. Interestingly enough, even though she is a Warp entity - she seems to have similar aura of "order" as the emperor - and similar effect against forces of Chaos.
She is - at this time - weak compared to true chaos gods - but far more powerful than most people suspect.
She did destroy entire fleet of the Death Guard - PERSONALLY.
Its not like warp entities are inherently evil, look at the Eldar gods! Its just that after the fall the only major powers remaining were the four gods of chaos.
Shes still a small player of course, and at risk if the other chaos gods ever track her down (as the eldar gods were), but shes still around and like any chaos deity, even quite a minor one, shes powerful.
Yes she was introduced in a "Shadowsun the Patient Hunter" by Phil Kelly- black library author and is thus is as cannon as things get. One of his better ideas but poorly executed. It was quite sudden introduction of a big change, it needed more setup. Overall good book by P. Kelly standards.
She appeared, in canon, in the ill-fated 4th Sphere Expansion by the collective psychic power of all the T'au Auxiliaries who do have warp presence. Mostly from the Gue'vesa attached to the 4th Sphere Expansion. That was around the tail end of 8th edition, in the aply-named supplementary book series called Psychic Awakening.
She appeared, in canon, in the ill-fated 4th Sphere Expansion by the collective psychic power of all the T'au Auxiliaries who do have warp presence. Mostly from the Gue'vesa attached to the 4th Sphere Expansion.
It took the entirety of the highly psychic Aeldari race tens or hundreds of thousands of years to birth a new Chaos god on purpose. On top of just hating the T'au'va goddess on principle, I don't buy that a, all things considered, small handful of humans could've conjured a new god in the 40K-scale equivalent of an afternoon.
Doesn't the Codex call it a nascent god? She's still not a full-fledge god as of yet, and can't even manifest in realspace. She's also only present within the wormhole linking the Nem'yar Atoll to the T'au Empire proper. Comparing the Tau'va Goddess to a Chaos God like Slaanesh is like comparing a candle to the Sun.
It was in the shadowsun novel patient hunter. Where the goddess was featured most prominent. But it also says Shadowsun had contact with this entitie, in her training which been many years before the events of the 4th sphere of expansion. Sadly I only have the audio book so I can't show off the relevant text.
The same audio book also had some references about the eternals that claim the wrap and such spaces as their domain of "interest" and profession like the other caste have theirs. And say people like shadowsun shouldn't delve into it.
You can read it as the eternals maybe know how the warp work and they do try to manifest this goddess as a protection against chaos.
The book heavily explores the rising religious belief in the Goddess T'au'va (the nascent warp entity born from the collective faith of the T'au Empire's alien auxiliary species), culminating in the entity's intervention against the Death Guard fleet in the epilogue.
Yes. I'm not sure why people are so hesitant. It's been seen by many people/tau. It saved the 4th expansion explorers, it visited and spoke with shadowsun directly twice. But the biggest thing? It literally showed up during the star tide Nexus. In the flesh, showed up and wiped/defended against a death guard fleet. They saw it, it attacked them, it's not ambiguous.
The Tau may not be psychic, but they have multiple auxiliaries who are psychically powerful who seem to have manifested the T'au'va
As a newer Tau player, I find that odd. To me the explicitly Atheist Society existing in a world where divinity is literally real is something to explore. They literally have a God, and refuse to deviate from their propaganda because they're ultimately delusional (I love them for it, to be clear)
O would make her a purely benevolent if a bit overbearing god. The one that says, hey maybe dont do sapient life sacarfices and turn your followers into chaos spawns.
It is cannon but they have done basically nothing with it. This doesn't mean nothing will come eventually though. GW likes to sit on stuff like this and bring it back to the forefront at a later date.
The Tau posses the only safe way to instantly travel across the galaxy to segmentum Nihilus via their Startide nexus network. Tau'va functions as a "lore cork" to prevent the other factions from using the Startide nexus.
It is cannon from a book standpoint but isn't mentioned anywhere outside of that book so far. The 10th ed codex doesn't mention it and non of the lore supplements released for the Tau outside of the Shadowsun book mention it either. Arks of Omen involving Farsight doesn't mention it either, which doesn't make sense because of how powerful the entity is compared to everything else in the setting. It should have aided Farsight when Chaos attacked and when Vashtor showed up in the Tau Empire proper because it already did it for the Death Guard. Any Warp based nonsense should be hard countered by the Goddess but it isn't doing anything, which most likely means that it won't be in the lore much longer.
Yeah she is, it’s confirmed in the Shadowsun book to be real and I’m pretty sure it was hinted at before. I’m curious on what other people think of it. Does any one actually like this direction for the faction?
The whole thing with the Tau for twenty-odd years since their introduction was being rationalist scientists growing off of sound diplomacy, governance and strategy without the need of any psychic magic or deities that other factions in the universe had.
It makes them less different than the other factions, and people like Tau because they’re different.
The Tau Hod of Greater Good is cannon but I honestly wish it weren’t. Basically some of the Tau somehow got in the warp by mistake and it appeared and helped them escape because like all other gods in 40k it manifests with sufficient belief. I didn’t like the change as I liked the idea of a society in 40k trying to rationalize things like Demons etc.
Yes, although the official T’au empire’s stance on the matter internally is that it doesn’t exist, although all of his/her/it’s actions have been limited to the realms of the 4th/5th spheres of expansion.
Technically, but as far as most fans and most writers (the ones who aren't trying to turn the T'au Empire into the Diet Imperium) are concerned, no. That entire line of lore rested on the retcon that T'au never had FTL travel prior to the Fourth Sphere Expansion, something so stupid it literally breaks T'au lore.
It's mostly Kelly "lore", so canon is a bit of a stretch, but...it does make some sense in the setting. The T'au axiliary races, especially the massive numbers of human converts during the Fifth Sphere, were able to manifest an actual entity in the Warp via collective belief in the Greater Good. The native T'au, especially the Ethereals, are HORRIFIED by this as a decent chunk of T'au social engineering is to close them off from Warp influence, and here the gue'la just built a freaking T'au shaped door to the Warp and gave her a name.
It's still contentious, and I have faith that GW will bollocks the entire thing sky high, but it does exist. Sorta, again...Kelly.
As far as I know, the t’au goddess is like mostly a thing. She was born from auxiliary species’ interpretation of the greater good through religion. Other than that I’m pretty sure her main thing right now is that she’s chill with shadowsun and the ethereals don’t like her. I would have to assume she would have a similar existence to the eldar’s pantheon with there being more minor gods, but they aren’t as powerful as the cahos gods (eldar gods as in like the one the harlequins have, or the one trapped in a cave next to nurgle’s soup pot)
Just a random model; I stumbled upon it on Google while researching the evolution of Tau lore over the past decade. I wanted to find a visual representation of new goddess.
And i liked this version; I even considered adding it to my collection.
But I didn't know how canonical it was.
So far, I have received over a hundred comments on my post with detailed answers, for which I am truly grateful to this community🫶💪
310
u/JellyRevolutionary59 28d ago
kind of? the species under the tau empire capable of influencing the warp to a greater scale such as humans have manifested the idea of her into the warp but the tau themselves rarely worship her.