T'au Empire Part 1 - The Lore (Warhammer 40,000 Codex Review, 8th Edition)

The Tau (or T'au now) Empire has been in a very interesting place over the last few years. On the one hand it kick-started its presence in the Sixth Edition with one of the best codices ever written, fixed many things and then made it feel like an Empire. Then it got lumbered with a Tau vs Imperial storyline which started extremely well and went to hell (see War Zones Damocles: Kauyon and Mont'ka for the full opinion on that). With Farsight's entire story being botched and the Aun Cast devolving into an "We're Evil, We're So Evil! 1984! 1984! 1984" edgelord element which relied on the reader accepting a truckload of industrial grade cow manure to work.

Since that point the Tau Empire has been stuck in something of a holding pattern, locked out of key events and with its progress stymied by a gigantic wall of fire and Chaos wrecking the galaxy. Still, they're back now, but the question is if this latest codex's lore can fix things. The past few from other armies have been genuinely great and have actively ditched the vast majority of their worst problems, but many of those have been Imperial. The xenos books tend to be a wild card like no other.

So, let's get this show on the road and see what went right and wrong here.

The Good

Full forewarning before we get underway, this review will be calling the T'au the Tau. It's for the same reason the Aeldari are referred to as the Craftworld Eldar and the Astra Militarum are referred to as the Imperial Guard. It's not that the change is especially bad in any way, but after seventeen years of calling them the Tau, it's mostly what I am sticking to.

So, perhaps the single biggest thing this book gets right from the start is its attempts to treat the Tau Empire as an Empire. You have likely seen the same criticism brought up on here more than a few times before, but all too often codices treat any race as a singular army with a nation attached. It's understandable why, given how many factions are quite literally that, especially in the case of the Adeptus Astartes. However, the Tau Empire, Eldar of all forms, and even the Necrons are more than this, and any emphasis on culture or diversity is always welcome.

The opening quickly and succinctly covers the basics, with the Tau Empire's nature, goals and the mysterious arrival of the Ethereals among the warring tribes. It then moves onto how they united their species with this message, and the initial problems while traversing the stars, including the issues in claiming their first few worlds. It's brief but structured in a way that gives you the impression of a summerised history, and it actively avoids offering anything which might tie this down to a smaller scale action. You know the sort of thing, where it seems that four or five people do everything and the rest are just there to carry out orders. As a result, even in the brief statements it makes, the Empire always retains a sense of real scale and immensity.

Even when it does move on to using the likes of Shadowsun, Farsight and Aun'va, it never overplays their presence. It always makes it clear that they were massively important to multiple victories, it was always in the sense that they were part of a bigger army. Farsight in particular is repeatedly cited to be a brilliant strategist and key to multiple victory over Ork Waaaghs! but it doesn't stop and start with his role in things. This is worthy of praise as the book's style manages to accomplish this while still making them prominent, and without oversaturating the book with minor figures. In fact, there's rarely anyone besides them involved, and yet it still is written in such a way to avoid the usual pitfall.

Curiously, a few particular characters even gain moments which further cements their role within history. Aun'va is the most obvious among these, as the Empire's history notes that he was key to convincing the council to launch efforts to retake their colonies following the Damocles Gulf Crusade. In fact, it plays up this angle as him preventing the Tau Empire from falling back in on itself, with the following "After their long retreat across the Damocles Gulf, and their first-hand experience with the formidable forces of the Imperium, many of the T'au were filled with self-doubt. This was not a race that had tasted defeat before, in any of their prolonged endeavours. Aun'Va argued that without action, cracks would form in the foundation of their carefully orchestrated beliefs - and this must not come to pass. Sensing the truth of this, the ancient Ethereal nodded, leaving the details to Aun'Va to organise."

While the book does focus on a more duplicitous and manipulative edge behind him, the Aun'Va we have here is a far cry from the tantrum throwing, sulking figure Mont'Ka depicted him as. Rather than being a caricature of the Big Brother-style Ethereals, he seems like a true believer who is willing to get his hands dirty for the greater good. In many ways, this is infinitely more effective for both future stories and in reflection on his actions. Any fall might be less down to the Ethereals being outright evil than their personal desires to let the end justify the means, and too many compromises piling up atop of one another.

Speaking of Mont'Ka, we have good news on that front as well folks. More or less every downright stupid stunt or downright bad moment of storytelling is quickly swept under the rug and the codex does its damnest to ignore them. For example, the events surrounding the Second Agrellan Campaign are addressed, but it neatly avoids going into too many details over it:

"So thick and fast came the victories for the T'au that many Fire caste strategies believed the war to be won, and the Imperium of Man to be in full retreat. These naive hopes were dashed with the emergence of an enormous Imperial battle fleet in orbit above Mu'gulath Bay. Humanity had come to either reclaim their lost world or see it burnt to ashes.

The battle that followed was a brutal grinder the likes of which the T'au had never experienced before. There seemed no limit to the manpower and armoured assets of the Imperium. Fire caste defenders fought until their last breath in the name of the Greater Good, yet even Commander Shadowsun's flawless Kauyon could not hold back the Imperium's ferocity. It was then, when all hope seemed lost, that red-armoured figures dropped from the skies into the heart of the Imperial formations, blasting the enemy into atoms with close-range barrages of searing energy. The pariah Commander Farsight had come to aid his people.

The rebel Farsight's noble intervention prevented the complete obliteration of the T'au forces on Mu'gulath Bay, but the Imperium of Mankind simply would not accept defeat at the hand of an upstart xenos empire. The humans deployed nightmarish assassins to hunt down the T'au high command, hoping to cut the head from their foes. In a further act of retaliation, agents of the Adeptus Mechanicus utilised bizarre acheotech to set light to Mu'gulath Bay, an unnatural fire that would spread across the entire Damocles Gulf. The dream of the nascent sept world ended in flames. With this atrocity, the Third Sphere Expansion came to a half. Shadowsun and the remnants of her coalition force retreated from Mu'gulath Bay, and began the long hard work of consolidating their significant gains elsewhere."

I know that's much longer than the quotes we usually offer but it needed to be made clear: In three paragraphs this codex managed to execute a more coherent, cohesive and respectful story than someone with an entire book. While it was often joked that certain writers (and they know who they are) would use criticisms as suggestions for their next works, this shows that someone on the writing team was listening. They're not ejecting the events wholesale, but they are doing their damnedest to fix the inherent stupidity within those stories.

The culture of the Tau Empire is also something the book sets time aside for, as we have a two page spread discussing its linguistics and alphabet. While this is something the codices have always utilised, a few new segments have been added or refined to better build upon this quality of the race. It's important to retain this as, above all else, these details can often help to make a species seem all the more alien. It's part of why the Third Edition Codex: Eldar's closing report on their language and connotations often left an impression on players. Well, those who bothered to read it.

Speaking of culture, the emphasis placed on integrating alien races over the Tau Empire simply dominating them is welcome. While it does not wholly oppose the concept of cultural destruction, there isn't the same emphasis placed on Tau visuals, ideals and concepts completely overriding all that the species had before. In fact, due to how the Kroot are depicted, it offers an example completely contrary to that fact. It's a more nuanced element that the book desperately needed, and it subverts an irritating quality all too many authors have stuck with. Something where they will claim the Tau Empire arrives, erases any remnant of an inducted world's culture, supplants it with everything Tau from names to their history, and regards anything which doesn't adhere to this as backward and wrong.

More importantly, the book does advance the timeline forward, but it uses it to refine a number of points. The old idea behind the Tau Empire, and one of the most engaging concepts, was how truly "good" they actually were. Even at their best, there were plenty of moral grey areas and moments of very questionable actions. This was often compounded further by moments from their timeline - such as a mysterious disease wiping out the first friendly race the Tau Empire encountered, leaving their strategically valuable worlds open for settlement. There are shades of this always present, and the inner darkness of the tau species is something that is core to a future storyline.

The big push forward here to get the Tau Empire involved with ongoing events is the Fourth and Fifth Sphere Expansions. Following the Imperium's literal firewall to keep them out, the Empire began looking into various ways to get around the obstacle and initiate another expansion. In this case, the Empire investigated the use of Warp Drives and their potential with tau ships. Despite a lack of Navigators, they managed to perform several effective tests, and eventually attempted to launch a massed fleet. This, unfortunately, all went to hell. Quite literally. While individuals or even small groups were effective in making brief jumps, an entire fleet, unfortunately, caused a few problems. Cue the jaws of hell itself opening up, as the fleet is catapulted into seeming oblivion.

Where the story picks up is following a surprising revelation. A wormhole has emerged within the Empire's space, in an area forgotten to them, with a friendly broadcast coming through. It's the missing expedition, decades after their departure. Some apparently survived and managed to regroup on the other side of this anomaly, creating a patchwork network of vessels. The Tau Empire fortifies the other side and begins initiating a new crusade.

That's the brief version and - as with past reviews - i'm avoiding the full one because it's well told. The Tau Empire's ambition is shown to work against it, resulting in the disaster of the Fourth Expansion. They did run every test they could, a few engineers did voice concerns, but the Ethereals overruled it as the the codex reveals that the Tau Empire needs to expand. It has almost a pathological drive to keep going forward, and cannot remain focused inward, which is a flaw as much as it is a strength. Equally, the Empire is more than a little dubious of the news that there are survivors, and it takes definitive physical proof to finally convince them to send an expedition to the other side.

Better yet, the final segment of this new timeline establishes several new points quite quickly and cleanly. The first is that the massive fortification - the Startide Nexus - is to be used as a jumping point to launch new expeditions through this wormhole. It's heavily fortified, protected and well armoured, but it's effectively the Empire's version of Cadia. The more interesting point is just what happened to the Fourth Sphere Expedition. The tau on the other side are extremely vague when it comes to just what took place, and what they witnessed. While the basic details reflect a difficult path through the Warp, the book notes the lack of xenos auxiliaries among them and the fact that they have picked up some very xenophobic tendencies in the time that they were gone. They are bent less on unity and building strength than they are extermination and conquest.

What's interesting about this - aside from the obvious hints which will likely lead into a campaign - is how this works around a subject the codex itself brings up. The Fire Caste are having difficulty keeping up with patrols, and generally maintaining the Empire's military. As a result, they are having to rely more and more on auxiliary troops from other species and garrisons defending their own worlds. The Fourth Expedition's own tendencies combined with potential risks of the wormhole, has left them using only tau troops in their new battles. As such, this does address the point that alien species might arise in the future for more units, but at the same time it provides a halfway decent excuse as to why they might not show up in future battles.

The absolute last moment of the book, shown in the timeline, heralds something massive. With little forewarning or even an indication that they are aware of this assault, a massive Death Guard fleet emerges from the wormhole. The Tau Empire is soon pitted into one of the single most desperate battles of its existence, as it tries to hold the line against this new foe, ending on a cliffhanger. It's an engaging way to keep the audience interested and, combined with the above points, leaves an obvious plot element for future stories to work off of. Rather than simply piling them on like there is no tomorrow with the End Times event problems of previous Editions, this is clearly designed to lead on to something. So, it means we hopefully have something huge on the horizon.

The Bad

Perhaps the single most obvious problem from the start is how it treats the other races which join the Empire. Now, the work-around it brought up is a work of genius and the notes added to focus on their presence do work. However, rather than having a fully listed page or even a section devoted to them, small bits are just noted in the history. As such, they're crammed into a larger story, and are pushed out of the limelight in favour of the tau themselves. This is a problem as it feels as if the book is only doing the bare minimum with them at the moment, despite the potential behind their ideas. Even old hands like the Demiurg and Vespid get little to no attention, and it seems as if the codex doesn't quite know what to do with them. While it is laudable that the writers remembered that the book has multiple psychic races (and thus dropped the Ethereal's "There is no Warp, there are no psykers!" nonsense) it wastes what could be their greatest benefit.

It's especially problematic as, at many points, the codex tries to play up the more naive or clueless qualities of the tau on a larger scale. Things like Warp drives, how large the galaxy is, or even the risks of Warp travel are elements core to the story and it hinges on them knowing nothing of what is a basic detail for leaders of every other faction in the setting. It's an obvious angle to work with, and for the most part a good one, but it does nothing to address the fact multiple human worlds, several trading races and minor species experienced with the wider galaxy have thrown in their lot with them. Even just a minor note here and there or a few acknowledgements might help, but there's nothing here to actually address this point.

The Warp itself is a difficult subject here, as the codex stakes a step forward in avoiding the willing censorship of past books, but just as quickly takes another step back. Both in Black Library's works and beyond it, the Tau Empire has had multiple skirmishes with Chaos factions. Nothing major to be sure, usually a single individual or rogue element, but it's enough to give them some groundwork to know of it. Even if you ignore that however, even if you pretend that no one they have inducted into the Empire has even the most basic knowledge of it, other works have shown how the Tau Empire reacts to it. The Fall of Medusa V had studying the Warp as their entire objective, delving into it and analysing it. The result was something which scared the hell out of them. Equally, the first bit of fiction the army ever received - Fire Warrior - had the tau viewing Chaos as a physical manifestation of the Mont'au, the terror. It's frustrating to see that every existing plot keeps resorting to this willing blindness on their part, without taking advantage of how things may have developed even over their short existence.

Speaking of development, the roles of certain Castes are questionable here. The Ethereals are the big one here, as they have more than a few cold and calculating qualities added onto them. While a number can be easily accepted thanks to being stuck in difficult positions, others are less reliable. The big one is how the book keeps trying to insinuate that they are manipulating events from behind the scenes and altering qualities for their own benefit. While Aun'Va is one of the better examples of how this can be used to give the Tau Empire a darker edge, others still lean too much toward the idea that the Ethereals are simply using others for their own benefit. This is especially evident when their introduction page effectively ends with the note "All members of the Greater Good live and die by their command!"

This is nothing compared with what was done to the Fire Caste, however. The thing about the Fire Caste is that they are highly disciplined and controlled. This has been repeatedly made clear from the very start, both in this edition and others. In fact, one of the best parts of the Sixth Edition codex stemmed from what they were doing while the tau were attempting to leave their world. The entire force was effectively commanded to form a martial system of extreme control and focus to prevent them from becoming a loose cannon. Well, that has been ignored and cannons have become loose. In every depiction, at every moment, they are depicted more or less as a dog on a chain. Something to be let loose by the Ethereals and annihilate all in their path, unless ordered not to.

The idea that the Fire Caste are such a possible threat is almost certainly something the book is trying to use for its survivors of the Fourth Sphere Expansion. However, the fact it has tossed such an interesting element out the window, and watered down their role to such a degree, is still disheartening. It's only made worse when you consider how easy it would have been to write off many other elements as the result of Chaotic influence or whatnot. Instead, it seems to be presenting the Fire Caste as a whole as mindless thugs; the sort who will turn utterly xenocidal if left unattended for just a short period of time.

These might be a relatively small number of problems, but many of them specifically hinge on the story going forward. As such, they are likely to become greater flaws as time goes by. 

The Artwork

This is a very rare thing indeed, as it's one of the few times where re-using older artwork isn't too much of an issue. It's not simply the fact that there's a good balance between new and old, but also the updates to the old work surprisingly well. For example, there's a famous image of Tau civilians being evacuated while they are under Imperial attack. This was first made in their initial codex back in 2001 and it had a very distinctly sketchy style. Other efforts were made in books to colourise and adapt those pieces for the more modern books, but it never fully worked. For the most part they seemed to apply colour to them and a few shades, but did the bare minimum. Here though? It seems quite natural.

You can quickly see that tones, shades and details have been used in many areas to benefit the enhanced artwork. There's more solid definition to their faces in order to best benefit the new layer of colour, and the presence of the new elements grants greater texture than what we had before. It's not perfect, as some of the background elements have not been able to completely overcome the inherent sketchiness of the style, but it's infinitely better than previous efforts.

The rest of the artwork is fairly good across the board. While it certainly re-uses things from past books, there's more stylistic consistency to it, and many of the works opt for more dynamic shots than we are used to. The new ones in particular offer a great variety of pieces, with a massive cityscape image of fortifications being a personal favourite.

The Verdict

Codex: Tau Empire is more hit than miss thankfully, and it does a vast amount to improve upon its Seventh Edition incarnation. The use of older elements has helped to improve the book's quality, while largely ditching the previous story which kept screaming Ethereal betrayal(!!!) is only a move for the better. With that being said, it stumbles at a few specific points, and it's more of a few steps back in the right direction than a single massive leap.

Still, with all that being said, it does still serve as a solid introduction to the army as a whole and shows great potential for future stories. As such, it's by no means a disaster but it's not exactly going to knock Codex: Adeptus Custodes off of its plinth any time soon.