r/Tau40K

I posted my dislike for Shadowsun the patient hunter earlier and I wanted to talk about something I loved. Elemental Council.

I love that this book shows the T'au as having rich internal lives that do struggle and aren't just drones for the empire. We see they all believe in the greater good but what that actually means to each of them varies even between etherials.

We see they aren't just mind controlled thralls. That there is cultural inertia behind why the society is the way it is. No pheromones needed.

We see them doubt and disagree but we also see them do what they believe is in the best interest of the greater good. But most importantly we see them keep their souls. Artamax was right if they had gone ahead and subjugated the planet they would have been like the imperium....but they didn't they pulled out, they proved artamax wrong and they showed just how poisoned the minds of the imperium's most loyal soldiers are. He couldn't imagine the T'au leaving the world because the imperium would sooner burn the whole thing to ash rather than allow defiance.

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Artamax also recognizes the real threat the T'au pose.

"Are you aware my battle-brothers mock the idea of your Empire clawing its way to greatness? As if all we need do is muster a fraction of our strength and crush you. As if that were so simple a task. The Imperium's blessed war machine is a diseased giant, not easily stirred. Your Empire is a dynamo of conquest. Unchallenged, you will set your ambitions on the realm of Ultramar, or even the holy sanctuary of Segmentum Solar. Your significance is not in the threat you pose today. It is in the threat you pose in ten thousand years."

I love this because it addresses a real thing a lot of the fanbase says about the Tau and it's true. If allowed to grow I do believe they could take over the galaxy just as the eldar did, just as humanity did.

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Artamax is compelling and charasmatic, framed as a horror movie monster a lot of the time...and I think he's wrong. At one point Ke pleads with him to join the T'au and he says that their rise means humanity's fall, that they are in direct opposition to one another. He's fundamentally incapable of seeing that there is a difference between the imperium and humanity or that a better way is possible. And to me that exposes the tragedy of the imperium.

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I love the conversation between Ghodh and Artamax the idea that the imperium's hatred is so vile that it it makes an opportunistic predator like the kroot into a true believer in the Tau'va is compelling.

"Ghodh glanced at the carcasses carpeting the floor. The venom of Artamax’s hatred seemed to pollute them. Before returning to t’au space, the distinction between the Imperium and the Empire had always seemed fuzzy, a swirling mist of entangled concepts. The ineffable Greater Good, forever described in metaphor, had lain beyond the grasp of Ghodh’s claws, cloaked in the same abstractions that mantled the Imperium’s Church.

But it was real. Ghodh could hardly believe it, but hearing the poison in Artamax’s words, he felt the truth in his bones. Balance existed in the universe. A balance of life and death, of dark and light, of predator and prey. For an entity such as Artamax to be so driven by hatred, a corresponding force must exist. In that moment, suffocating in Artamax’s hatred, Ghodh sensed the balance in the Empire of T’au.

Artamax’s bleak eyes gleamed with insight. ‘You adore them.’

Ghodh straightened. ‘No. I think they are right. Your Imperium rots. Sick like an old thing. Diseased like a leper. They move like light across the stars. Drifting in void for centuries, millennia, aeons. Still. The light comes. When it falls on your haunted Imperium, thank your dead Emperor they will be more merciful than you were to them. Their patience will outlast your hatred.’"

Also my God this man can write, his prose is just excellent. The two quotes I listed are some of the best GW writing I've encountered...and frankly writing in general.

The book is just amazing and I'm so happy I read it.

So I finished elemental council and like 10/10 book. My first actual Warhammer book and I loved it. Was itching for more so I decided on Shadowsun the patient hunter...and wow I thought it was just like a meme that Phil Kelly can't write. Because it's NOTICEABLY worse.

Like some of the ideas present I actually like. I like T'au'va I like the auxillary races having a profound effect on T'au culture. I like the exophobia of the 4th sphere.

But the man's prose is...just awful. The way the death guard talk is...well it's cringe there's no other word for it, it makes me cringe.