 Optimism is poison, or so the Atlesiarchy profess. It is an insipid infection, promising you all that reality cannot and will not deliver should you simply submit to the tloying tendrils of hope. No, the priests say, better to simply face facts, except one's life in place. Submit to the truth of the universe that is. Why build when one can maintain? Why attempt to change when the perfect Emperor-created society has already been rendered? Better to become of the static, to preserve, to submit, to be consumed, and then you will know no pain, merely the wonderful beauty of devotion and servitude. Only this galaxy of ours has given us precious little to find hope in. Their history has, generally speaking, lurched on from catastrophe to another. Threats from without rise more and more with each passing year, while threats from within continue to propagate like cancerous cells swarming through the bloodstream of our species. We have no alternative, because all options have been exhausted. Joining us on the one final path we have, or so most will claim, unwilling, unable to dream or hope for a better future. We are not alone in this doom. The Eldari, those perfidious and hated beings, have resigned themselves to a doom millennia made. The Greenskins, as blind idiot things though they may be, have their own blunt acceptance of the state of all things. However, recently, by imperial reckoning, the galaxy has seen the rise of a new Xenos species that seeks to challenge the future, to hold it to a higher standard, to seek better days and better years for itself. They build, they claim. They seek to discover, to learn, to adapt and develop and change. The antithesis to tradition and stability, a chaotic dive headlong into the unknown, lest they create something better. Curiosity, these things. We may consider them naive, unlearned in the true scope of the universe's hostility, unaware of the fecklessness of the confident dream and how utterly dangerous such things are. Still, they have made quite a name for themselves, and their relevance to discourse, academic, military and scientific, can unfortunately not be denied. No then, that this is a record of yet another cavalcade of Xenophore blasphemies, the sacrilegious dreamers of the galaxy's easternmost fringe. The Tao are a relatively newly contacted Xeno species, currently largely restricted to a volume of space far in the galaxy's eastern fringe. Nominally located in an axis of wild space situated between the Hadex Anomaly and the Ultramarine Sub-Realm of Ultramar, the volume is notably dense with habitable planets, but is quite isolated in stellar terms. It's proximity to the aforementioned warpstorm notwithstanding, but also lying upon the rimward side of the Damatly's Gulf. The Gulf, a vast interstellar region completely devoid of star systems or planets beyond broke stellar bodies, severed the region from the majority of the galaxy and prevented imperial exploratory teams from conducting surveillance of the worlds lying on the far side until quite late into imperial history, when resources could be allocated for such surveys. In 789 M35, upon one such world towards the centre of the volume, Mechanic and Biologist teams observed, from orbit, a primitive population of presumably sapient Xenos, a rudimentary lithic stratum of technological development. Notably, it appeared that four separate form strains of the same root Xenos ancestor had evolved, with distinct populations of plains dwelling, grassland dwelling, aerial and oceanic Xeniforms. Per standard discovery practices, the explorators logged the presence of aliens in their records for later extermination, noting a standard expected population for the world of this size and no perceived extra planetary threat to the Imperium, before moving on, unnoticed by the primitive Xenos below. Colonial cedarships, with attached military purgation elements, were dispatched, once word of the planet's habitability had reached the other side of the Gulf. But their progress was utterly scuppered by a sudden flare up of massive warp storms spilling out from the Hadex anomaly. The ships of the fleet found their path utterly barred, and as the storms dragged on for unexpectedly long amounts of time, it was whispered that the planets beyond this veil were in fact cursed, unsuitable for imperial colonization, beyond the light of, and thus redemption of, the Emperor. Ultimately, this was going to become rapidly moot, as the spiraling crisis that began with High Lord Goj van Dier's seizure of both the senatorium imperialis seats of High Ecclesiarch and Grandmaster of the Administratum led to a period of civil war and strife known in history as the Age of Strife. The conflicts that consumed the Imperium, as well as the eventual torturous rebuilding and reunification efforts, diverted the bulk of resources made available for possible colonization initiatives. Not to mention imperial attention at all branches of its government and military. In the darkness of the eastern fringe, the warp storms still raged. Time passed, records were buried in dusty archives. The Imperium forgot about the little pocket of planets that it had once been eager to purge and acquire, and beyond the tides of the warp, something was gestating. These theories have been positive for the curious and worrying pace of evolution and development that the Tao species displayed. They will be elaborated upon further, but none have been rendered any more than just that. Fruit for debate between the Mechanicus and the Ordosinos, but ultimately inconclusive. All we know in this case is the facts, largely thanks to the Tao themselves, who have been nothing if not enthusiastic in ensuring that any species they encounter is told the full tale of their species' development in exhaustive detail. As the centuries turned to millennia, the Tao developed into four distinct cultural strands nominally aligned to their four subspecies, in some cases the roles of which were reflected in their biological expressions, such as the aerial strain of the mainline species, which developed thin, membranous wings that allowed them to traverse the high peaks of the world or the plains, held aloft by warm rising air from the arid climate. Xenos of those self-same deserts, too, grew larger and stronger, developing distinctly bellicose biology to match their culture of internecine conflict. Not all, however, became so polarized. A plentiful number of the initial population developed advanced agricultural mining and construction techniques, while trade between all four subspecies was conducted by Tao of a distinctly mercantile bent, the oceanic dwellers that had not biologically adapted to their environment, but certainly learned a lot about plying the waterways of the dry world. Should the evolution of, say, wings upon the aerial Tao have been fast, it was nothing compared to the speed at which their society advanced. Technology that would have typically taken most commonly developing sapient aliens millennia to craft were developed by the Tao in centuries, sometimes decades. The first cities of the planet became templated by the agricultural societies and spread rapidly, allowing for a population boom fueled by ever more improving crop yields and domestication of native fauna. The same culture developed crude black powder weapons not two centuries after raising the first city's walls, utilizing them for defense against the plains dwellers or selling them to compliant tribes in exchange for protection against more aggressive ones. This, however, would prove to be catastrophic. The pace of technological advancement appeared to completely eclipse the general maturation of a society and akin to giving a child a laser rifle, violence became inevitable. Competition between the plains dwellers only lasted long enough for them to realize that, united, they would be a serious threat to all other Tao they shared the planet with. And the resulting wars were nothing short of apocalyptic. Other Tao found themselves impressed into the service of the various factions that arose, simply butchered for trying to prevent their rampages. Society fragile as a newborn that it was. Collapsed. Crops lay burnt in the fields or trampled by Xeno armies. Disease was spreading rampantly amongst the population and everywhere there was famine. Startlingly, it would appear that the Xenoforms would in fact do the Imperium's righteous work for us. At the pace their species was killing itself off, total extinction would merely take years. An impressive feat given their age, as many of the self-annihilated species that the Emperor's expeditions have encountered were far more mature. One must, if nothing else, admire this dedication to self-destruction, using as it did the most rudimentary of weapons. Alas, however, history took an altogether different turn. The wars were reaching their climax at the conclusion of the 37th millennium, barely a thousand years since the Imperium had first logged the species as of a stone age level of development. Per water-cast retellings, likely aggrandized by the Tau's relentless embellishment of their own histories, a pivotal moment was reached upon a mountainous plateau wherein lay the mighty fastness of the builder culture. An alliance of planes-dwellers and aerial Tau besieged it, and had done so for five planetary seasons. It was, so the Tau claim, the epitome of the worst days of this darkest of times. Great slaughter was meted out upon both sides, the savagery of the planesfolk matching the technology and stoicism of the builders, and while both sides warred, their civilians clung to life as famine and disease stalked their ranks. But these metaphorical specters were joined, seemingly by altogether different and altogether more literal figures. Strange folk were abroad, half-limpsed observing battles or moving amongst crowds. Tau, like no other Tau, had seen before. Most of the primitive and superstitious rates thought them harbingers of extinction. God beings come to observe the death of the world that all were contributing to, yet none seem to have the ability to stop. One night, just such a figure presented themselves to the procedures, requesting, politely but firmly, to speak with their warlord. Quite how such a stranger was admitted to the presence of the hot-blooded planes-dwellers is unknown. The myth speaks of them possessing a quiet authority that could not be gainsaid, with authority being a difficult word to translate here from the Tau language, but I am assured, by sisters of the Ordos Dialogis, that it is the most accurate. The centuries of the camp found themselves compelled, another word that serves for the best Gothic transliteration from the Ordos Dialogis, we must make of that what will. Within the walls, a similar situation was playing out, with another stranger presenting themselves and requesting an audience with the citadel's commander. Within scant hours, the gates of the fortress of Fiotaun were opened and both sides met in an unprecedented parlay. The robed strangers revealed their visages. They were Tau, of that there was no doubt, but unlike any other the Xenos had ever encountered before. They bade both sides listen, and listen both sides did, for the strangers brought with them a new form of thinking, a new path, an alteration of cognition. The future, they claimed, lay within a world where all Tau existed in parity, acting in a grand concordance for the good of all. Their Tauva, a punchy term transliterated to Gothic as the greater good, but with specific inflections towards unity of species and purpose, indelibly linked, would not only save the race from the extinction they were barreling towards, but uplift them. Joined together, there was nothing the Tau could not achieve, or so they claimed. All the warring cultures had to do was lay down their arms, look around at the destruction they had wrought, and resolve to learn, mature, and cooperate. Against all odds and precedent it succeeded. A truce was called, one that rapidly spread planet-wide, as more of these strangers appeared before more war groups bearing the exact same message. They called themselves the ethereals, or celestials, to use an old defunct Inquisition term. Their message was identical across the globe. They would not say where they had come from, only that their Tauva, the destiny of all Tau, was all that mattered. They were servant to it, and it was the only path that was possible. Their words carried an undeniable weight, giving the Tau they encountered something that had seemingly been entirely absent from their lives. Hope and purpose, a genuine alternative that breathtakingly seemed possible. In tandem with these ethereals came the word, spread by merchants and heir messengers, of more ceasefires, of more battles averted, of more genocides halted. Possibility abounded and the Tau drank deep of its well. Within a planetary year, the wars had ended. The rebuilding was accelerating at breakneck speed. The Tauva was on the lips of all, and it was, undeniably, effective. The builder Tau, now named under the greater good as the Earthcast, constructed well-formatted, hygienic, and prosperous towns at focal points around the globe, all of which rapidly swelled into cities as the population recovered its numbers with stunning briskness. Commerce was re-established between these metropolis by the merchant Tau, now known as the Watercast, who ever more frequently took the role of ambassadors, envoys, and cultural attendants, spreading the word of the ethereals faster, and maybe even more efficiently, than the mysterious strangers had been able to on their own. The aerial Tau, coaxed finally out of their lofty crags, became the Aircast, the messengers of the world, establishing a solid global communication network, despite the species' technology level being barely above an imperial feudal world. This new Aircast, likewise, were pivotal in the spread of technologies and knowledge, all of which was now freely and eagerly shared between all members of the race, contributing to a deep acceleration in the pace of global development. Each new act of cooperation compounded with the other. The pace was exponential. Even the plains dweller Tau, the most reticent to change, were coaxed in upon seeing the works of the other castes, given new form in civilization as the warrior race of the Firecast. The armed forces of the new Tau race. That the four subspecies of the Tau race were now rendered into four species-affirming, distinct castes, is one of the mysteries of the Tau themselves, most notably the speed at which it was accomplished. It has been done elsewhere by other Xenos, less voluntarily, maybe, but with efficacy. One may bring up the aspect paths of the Eildari, specifically the craft-worlding Asuryani, but such practices were adopted post the species' downfall millennia ago. A reaction to the apocalypse, not an attempt to advert it. It was at the end of millions of years of societal development, not just after the species had stopped bashing stone tools together. To unify a feuding collection of disparate cultures into a global community before even the discovery of electricity. It is curious. Curious and worrying. Unsurprisingly, the seemingly voluntary planetary unity allowed for a period of explosive development and progress. The Tau Va was both achievement and goal, simultaneously. It was a state that the race had gained through struggle and hardship, and by conquering the demons of their own worst natures. But it was also a lofty utopia that must constantly be striven for, lest the gains of the past be lost to the darkness that waited in the eaves for strife and discord to return. The Tau were a perfect society, yet must constantly seek to embody that perfection. A permanent revolution, so to speak. It served quite effectively to motivate the society. The results brooked no argument because they literally spoke for themselves. Utopia was here, and it was being iterated upon with every passing day. The minds of the Tau were expanding to new possibilities. Just as soon as perfection had been achieved, new realms, new paths opened up to make it better. Within scant centuries, the first crude rockets were lifted off from the surface of the Xeno homeworld. Robust earthcast technology wedded to pioneering aircast pilotry. From there, it was only a short hop to the first orbital communes, and the colonizations of the planet's nearest moons. Orbital dockyards were next, constructed from minerals mined from nearby asteroids, leading to larger, space-built colony ships that established Tau outposts on every nearby planetoid. Astronavigation was made possible by spaceporn telescopes, revealing to the aliens their place within the galaxy, and their good fortune in lying in the middle of a super-dense cluster of stars. Prominent earthcast scientists raised the issue of supernovae and coronal mass ejections, as posing severe dangers to the species. With so many stars in so small a volume, the danger was there. Anyone could go nova and obliterate all of the work that the Tauva had achieved. This was seized upon, necessarily, as the reasoning for the massive colonial drive that followed, plunging into nearby star systems. Barely a thousand years since the species had first unified, the Tau were now establishing colony after colony in different solar systems. The first faster-than-light drive technologies were created to boost this effort, utilising a strained, side-long dimension of unfathomable energy only recently discovered. We of the Enlightened Imperium of Man will of course understand that this is the Imaterium, the warp, the world behind the world, and that we have been utilising it for transportation since before most records upon it were penned. The Tau, limited in both their knowledge of the realm and lacking entirely a psychic gene, were constrained to small-scale warp dives. Their scientists believing that sustained attempts to travel long distance would lead to the destruction and loss of too many ships. To a species that prioritised the lives of its members above expediency, the decision was an easy one. Not to mention, the nearness of their neighbouring systems allowed for such warp dives to still render colonial efforts quite successful. Such exploration, naturally, brought the Tau into contact with other Xenos. In keeping with their spirits of parity and comity, such encounters were welcomed by the Tau as opportunities to forge new compacts, not reacting to the discovery of alien life with horror or existential dread, but with joy at their being other sentient life in the universe to bring word of their utopia to. Their optimism was often not shared. Several of these encounters led to massive losses of life and material with the initial expeditions when newly encountered Xenos, as humanity learned tens of millennia ago, reacted with violent hostility to these intruders. The green skins were apparently a particularly hard lesson in the nature of this galaxy of ours, as numerous attempts to bring them into some form of proper communication resulted in hilariously predictable disaster. Oddly, this was not always the case, as most any Imperial servant who has undertaken research, or worse, has had actual contact with the Tau who will no doubt be aware. Despite initial setbacks, diplomatic channels were indeed opened with numerous alien races found within the Tau's local cluster, which led to the establishment of accords, and disgustingly, integration of these species as client races of the Tau themselves. Through granting of technology, medicine, or simply offering protection, minor Xeno species were enveigled into the assimilation of the burgeoning Tau Empire. Imperial Xenobiologists have, since contact, catalogued a dizzying array of alien filth, fighting, trading, exploring, or simply existing alongside the Tau. The Crute, the Vespid, the Nicosaur, the Greete, the Ranghon, the Poctrune, the Nagi, the Galk, the Demiurg, the Moralians, the Geatrix, the Charpactin. The list of infamy stretches even longer than this. Whatever threat the Tau pose to the Imperium themselves, the danger of this horrid Xenos union, where all the skills and qualities of each species are utilized for the betterment of the Tau Empire, an undeniably effective debute, is quite staggering. Not all values displayed by these client species are loved by their new partners. The cannibalistic tendencies of the Crute, for instance, an integral part of their twisted biology, is apparently actively suppressed knowledge within Tau borders, at least if the reactions of watercast diplomats when questioned about it are anything to go by. Concerning biology, a large degree of imperial knowledge of the Tau species, specifically the ethereal caste, comes from the work of Majos biologist, Charles Darvis, seconded from the Mechanicus to the service of the now disavowed radical Ordo Xenos Inquisitor, Ralei. Since both Darvis and Ralei were lost in the destruction of their research outpost during an Ordo Xenos investigation into their activities there, the findings remained within sequestered Ordo Xenos archives that your humble servant has since been granted access to. Please bear in mind that while these are some of the most up-to-date biological reports one has access to, they do remain several centuries old. The subject of the dissection in question was a deceased female ethereal who died of asphyxiation from cyanide intake. The death happened during the subject's sleep cycle, allowing for the body to be examined free of any obvious trauma. Compared to a lot of human form-aping Xenos species, the Tau bear a notably disturbing resemblance to the human baseline. The endoskeletal system is human analogous in its robustness, notably more so in firecast specimens, notably less so in aircast ones. The lack of a bone marrow equivalent to suggest any immune system functions are conducted sub-dermally, but the autopsy was not able to fully support this. The subject's skull is formed of a growth plate that knits together with age, encasing the brain within a fluidic membrane. The skull's olfactory region revealed a highly complex set of receptors and neural connectors, indicating an extremely sensitive sense of smell. In the case of the ethereal, this cavity also contained an odd diamond-shaped organ that expresses itself through the dermis around the skull to become visible on the body itself. More on that later, as no other form of Tau possesses this, and its exact purpose is while unknown to Imperial science deeply speculated upon. The ocular organs of this particular subject are shared across all studied Tau specimens, with a forward-facing field of vision of approximately 185 degrees, indicating a mammal analog, a common predatory ancestor. The amount of rods per eye are, however, notably fewer than humans, leading to the conclusion that the Tau's ancestor species, up to their present evolutionary state, have relied upon scent as more important for survival than sight, something that the Tau'd present lightly utilized technology to overcome. The cavity of the body shows a fairly xenotypical arrangement of analog organs fulfilling similar purposes to the human baseline ones, with indications of a vestigial secondary stomach of a much more complex variety than humanity's most pronounced evolutionary throwback, the appendix. The dermis of the subject is a monotonal blue-grey, and bears a highly efficient perspiration system typical of creatures evolving in arid climates. What is most noteworthy about this subject is perhaps the incongruous state of certain aspects of its biology in comparison with one another. While most of the Tau body is in line with what can be expected of an evolved sapient species, certain aspects appear to lag behind. The hoofed legs of the species, quite distinct from other humanoids, have extremely sensitive padded elements that are more in common with other hoofed ungulates of much less evolved states. Similarly, while the human appendix has been retained in an entirely vestigial state, the Tau's secondary stomach is also much closer to an evolutionary primitive state than would be expected of such a creature. Ultimately, this leads to speculation that the Tau experienced evolutionary growth spurts of rapid and sustained development that was far from uniform, causing certain aspects of their biology to fall behind but be simultaneously retained, however superfluous they may have become. Such an asymmetrical biological development is mirrored in their social and cultural advancement. As I stated earlier, what species do we yet know that developed into a fully unified and global society before the discovery of the motive force? The rise from simple mammal analogues to fully fledged star-faring sapiens took 6,000 years. 6,000? The Imperium is almost twice as old as their entire species aloha, and we have evidence to point to humanity's existence as intelligent life as being at least 200,000 years old. I am fully aware of the Imperium's issues with, well, up-to-date timely and accurate communication of information, but we turn our backs for a few scant millennia and suddenly a major space-faring power has unified a dozen other Xenos races under its banner? The galaxy is a large place, yes. Strange and terrible occurrences are common, but the rise of these Tao absolutely beggars belief. No, one suspects that something more is at play here. I cannot imagine what. What we do know is that the evidence of their uncanny development is writ large, not only in their history, but in their very forms. Genetic pliability is not unknown within the foulness of alien genome forms. We need only cast our eye to the tyrannids to see the hideous possibilities of controlled, directed evolutionary development. Even our own imperial bioscience is unrivaled. Masterful are we at splicing and weaving the genetics of bio-alchemy. But with these Tao, the space of time allotted, the nature of their evolution, little makes much in the way of sense. Species adapt to environmental conditions, that is the cornerstone of evolution. But in the few millennia of time between the wars of the pre-Tauva days to their establishment of off-world colonies, the aircast began to completely lose their winged aspect and instead developed into tall, brittle-boned, thinned forms, all the better to cope with life in zero-to-low gravity and virals. There does not seem to be anything in the way of a sustained, deliberate effort to achieve this. The Tao have displayed no great skill or indeed interest in the progression of genetic sciences, favoring instead development of mechanical and technological devices to enhance their biology. They merely adapted to the new environmental changes in the comparative blink of an eye. While all Tao began their genetic divergence millennia ago, the caste system has seemingly caused this to become more pronounced. The aircast are the most notable examples, yes, but even the disparity in form between firecast and earthcast, with the former having larger and more robust bodies while the latter slightly larger cranial membranes. It's highly pronounced. Then indeed we have the ethereals and their curious vestigial diamond organ. Magesh Darvas was unable to ascertain its purpose, noting that it did, however, contain ultra-dense hormonal fluids within overpoweringly pungent scent. The organ, in place of the usual Tao forehead cleft, connected to the tissue of the brain via ganglia, which Darvas also noted, contained certain polyps structures that are resonant with life forms known to communicate via pheromonal systems. Given the previously mentioned ultra-sensitivity of the Tao species across all caste forms to scent, it is possible that some form of evolutionary method of scent communication is on display here. But whether this takes place between within the ethereal caste alone or between all Tao, we do not yet know. Inquisitor Raleigh, Darvas's patron within the Ordos, was enthusiastic in leaping to the conclusion that this organ represents the root of the Tao's ideological development. Their grand unification at a state of development when other species would still be caving each other's brain pans in with bones. He proposed that the appearance of scent polyps and the guiding role the ethereals have played and continue to play within Tao society, all taken into consideration with the race's use of scent oversight, leads to the inevitable conclusion that the ethereal caste, unbeknownst to their fellow Tao, exert a pheromonal control over the race, that the unification of the greater good is a pleasant face concealing the dark truth, that one small group of Tao is puppeting the rest through biological manipulation. Should one remove the ethereals for a sustained amount of time, social cohesion amongst the Tao would fundamentally break down, and they would return to a state of anarchy since before the ethereals had uplifted them. Inquisitor's theory has gained stock amongst some Ordosenos members, and I have heard certain wings of the Mechanicus biologis. I am no alien hunter nor alien disector, merely a chronicler of words and years, but I cannot help but feel that this is too blunt or simple an explanation of the unique level of cohesion within Tao society. The means are clearly not psychic. Psychic control is something that we hideously know exists and have dealt with many, many a time, but the Tao possess no psychic gene, and despite the evolutionary rapidity, are in no way seeming to begin to express one. The renegade Tao commander, Farsight, Oh Showa, is key amongst the pheromone block's arguments, for his breakaway enclaves from the greater empire are unique, and seemingly precipitated by the death of his expedition's ethereal. The block argues that with the death of the ethereal, the chemical control over Farsight's ideology was broken, the horrid truth of the greater good was finally revealed, and all this caused him to flee the empire with those still loyal to his banner. When pressed upon the matter, the watercast propagandists, usually forthcoming about all aspects of the empire, will grow completely silent. Farsight is persona non grata, as far as the Tao are concerned, despite his continued existence and his continued support, nominally speaking, for the Tao Empire's endeavors. While a curiosity in his own right, and the subject of a record yet to be penned, Farsight is one instance in six thousand years of Tao history, meaning one must stack the numerical odds of ethereal loss upon the battlefield, or unexpected death, simply speaking, versus the sheer number of them in existence at any one time, and come to the conclusion that the Imperium simply lacks evidence to support this. I am not precisely trying to argue against the theory, as it is one that is certainly compelling for a number of reasons, not least because it offers a substantial explanation for the rapidity and robustness of the Tao's unification. I merely do not believe the jumping to such a satisfying conclusion is within the Imperium's best interests. We are an ideologically monocreed people, the same as they are, and while, yes, they are alien-filled, peddling, a hilariously naive view of the galaxy and its myriad of horrors, their dedication to parity and equality, liberty, I believe the ancient term is, possesses plenty of attraction in its own right. We of the Emperor to grant us our meaning in this world, our purpose, to be our shield, our sword, our god. They have created this melange with an enthusiasm and optimism, and however blasphemous it may be, it has been effective. One suspects an invisible hand at play here, however, one similar to that which hath wrought so many of the Xeniforms that plague our galaxy with their perfidiousness. If acolytes have browsed my previous Xenobiologist records, you will know that the hand of a deliberate creator lies prominent upon the frames of the Eildari and the Orc, theories further backed up by evidence redolent in the tales of the ancient war in heaven between the progenitor species and the necronteer. Could this self-same hand be at play here, dancing in the space between Tau DNA strands? Unlikely. That progenitor race is long, long and impossibly long dead, vanished. The Tau are the youngest race we yet know to slip the bounds of their own planet, younger even than the Emperor's internment in the throne of Terra. Does something else work here? Something lurking out of sight. Its work barely visible, maddening, frustrating, elusive. We simply do not know. The Tau ultimately pose more questions than they answer. How did they evolve so quickly? How could such evolutionary rapidity be mirrored in their technological progression and ideological development? Why is it so fast? You have simply not garnered enough in the way of experience, evidence or time to grasp these issues. The Tau meanwhile simply accelerate, barreling forwards into the unknown of the future, possessed with such apparently ironclad optimism that if reports are to be believed, they have finally breached the cordons of their naturally imposed empire sphere to establish outposts and seps in reaches of the galaxy, once completely beyond their grasp. Some within imperial high command would consider them a minor threat compared to the rampaging foulness of the greenskins or the high fleets or the necrons. One must caution these assured types. We know so little of the Tau that we underestimate them to our gravest peril. In the blink of one of the imperial eagle's eyes they have gone from lithic to space faring. They have inflicted grievous losses upon the imperium's armed forces time and time again, and yes, while they are contained, the speed of their technological development rivals that of the tyrannids with their biology. Their danger cannot be denied. I am simply stating the obvious here. I hate them as much as I hate any alien. But we must not be so blinkered and complacent as to assume that their naivety will be their undoing. In subsequent records, primarily concerning the wars of the Damatlys Gulf itself, I will elaborate further upon such matters, but for now I must rest. There is only so much discourse upon the stain of the alien I can stomach. Until that time, Ave Imperator, Gloria, and Excelsis, Terra. Thank you very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com slash Oculus imperia. 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