Remove ads

A Watsonian Discussion into the factions of Warhammer 40K

Which faction in 40K do you find interesting (characters included)

  • Imperium of Man

    Votes: 26 41.3%

  • Craftworld/ Maiden world / Non-Dark Eldar

    Votes: 20 31.7%

  • Tau

    Votes: 39 61.9%

  • Orks

    Votes: 20 31.7%

  • Tyranids

    Votes: 9 14.3%

  • Necrons

    Votes: 21 33.3%

  • Chaos

    Votes: 9 14.3%

  • Dark Eldar

    Votes: 7 11.1%
  • Total voters
    63
Eos_Astraeus

Eos_Astraeus

Location
England
I'm a fan of Warhammer 40k and enjoy the lore in the it's based on and the creative discussions around the factions within it.


Having people discuss how the factions justify themselves and the degree to which these justifications hold water given the universe they live in is always fascinating to see and take part in.

I especially enjoy looking into character motivations for each of the characters because that's were the real tragedy of 40K lies for me. People choosing to take more responsibility for the future than they can handle because in their arrogance, they refuse to work together. To swallow their prode and hatred an work towards a future that they could both be happy.

Every time the world could be saved, but isn't because someone refused to acknowledge they needed help, or chose to backstab someone when they didn't need to fueling the cycles of paranoia and betrayal.


Unfortunately, any long term discussion of 40K eventually turns into a intractable argument about Fascism, with people holding intractable views driving the discus to a heated halt, and any fans of the franchise being made feel like shit for liking it, or getting the impression that defending any of there viewpoints would make them appear as crypto fascists on this board so not worth the social cost.

As such, I wanted to start a discussion into 40K that hopefully will be an interesting insight into the universe

Views must have a basis in the current lore of a faction.

Declaring everything ever written false and presenting your view as an alternative is not acceptable.

Declaring that based on the information given by any official source, that lines up with the general behaviour of the faction elsewhere, some things are true is acceptable.


Watsonian arguments only. Discussion about how the factions line up with various movements IRL, and significant minority of people that are using it as propaganda has been done to death on this forum and will not be discussed in this thread.

E.g.

· Most rebellions against the imperium have a point, and in any contest the imperium can easily win they are the Bad guys by 40K. - Fine

· The emperor/dark angels are chaos cultists/ wants humanity to fail - Not Fine

· Elements of the imperium line up with historical regimes, and as such it should face these structural issues based on this - Fine

· Elements of the imperium lines up with fascist ideology and are being co-opted to try and spread it by a minority in the player base – not fine, start a different thread to discuss rethread well trodden road this if your wish.

As a starting point

The Emperor

Because of the way things lined up at the end of the Age of strife, there was a need for a military polity strong enough to 10 hold of the Orks, and 2) prevent the rise of major factions antithetical to human life to ensure that humanity could guarantee survival long term.

The only way humanity could hope to do this in time would be as a united front to pool resources and rediscover the Tech they'd just lost as it would take far to long to develop naturally.

They needed someone who could raise an army strong enough to hold back the darkness, and a government capable of holding all the disparate ways of life humanity had developed in the millennia since leaving Sol together.

They got the Emperor.

Due to his origins he was pretty much the only hope humanity had of making it through.

He was also a colossal ***hole. With no ability to handle peers who hadn't known him for millennia already (Malcador).

He had one job and barely squeaked by achieving the bare minimum required to say that those shamans did their job by building an Empire so big it has taken 10K years to fall, and still has a few to go.

The only shining light to his personality is that

1. He can learn humility and acknowledge mistakes by 42K and is acting as the protective presence his adherents believe him to be, because that's all he can do.

2. He sticks to his guns to the very end as even as a corpse he lives by the imperial motto "Only in Death, Does Duty End"​

The Dark Eldar

The most evil faction in 40K as the others at least have the excuse that they either can't change their ways without self-destructing or don't know how (Imperium, people still falling into Chaos, the Eldar, what the Tau are turning into), or literally can't even consider the action (people who've fully fallen into Chaos, Orks, Nids, Low level Necrons).

The interesting thing about them is the younger dark eldar. Past a certain point, the dark eldar need to sustain themselves on suffering because they've lived to long (Vect), but the younger one's can leave anytime they want, but the society they life in actively discourages this as a likable option.

They are indoctrinated from birth to view all other life as dirt, sub-eldar trash who only have value as livestock at best.

Asking one of them to leave Commorragh, is like asking a teenage in the first world to give up all his worldly possessions and become a Monk (Craftworlders), shun nearly all tech and become a commune hippie (Maiden Worlder) or join the circus (Harlequin). To them it's just not an attractive prospect.

The fact that some of them do shows that they are capable of compassion, even if its at the "I don't want to spend every waking second of my day causing pain to others" level, and makes every one that stays in the City even more of a monster either via Cowardice or Malice.​
 
The Tau are basically the "sane person" of the setting, Imperial propaganda about them being mind-controlling losers to the contrary.
 
Stan Necrons, now and always

My good good skeleton boys are actually effective against chaos and dont afraid of anything

(and as far as imperialism goes, aren't really any worse than any other faction, up to and including the tau, and certain dynasties can be better)
 
The Tau

The imperium is the Tau's Great Crusade moment in terms of Orks.

As they become more aware of the shear scale of the opposition that they face, they've started to take more desperate measures to ensure that they survive.

Like the early Imperium, the Tau have a lofty goal to head towards, the Greater Good to which all should work towards. A galactic society that can accept all comers and work towards a better future. But as they've interacted with the wider universe, they've started to run into issues that have forces then to become more like the rest of the Galaxy.

The leadership now that the Imperium is stronger than them so they started using underhanded tactics (generate a famine by instituting a blockade, then offering relief from that famine in exchange for accepting the Tau) to poach border worlds to reinforce their empire because surely those worlds would prosper more under the Greater Good (they did because the imperium's only focus is maintain macro scale force projection, QoL doesn't register on most priority lists).

But growing awareness that they're surviving because the imperium can't be arsed rather than are incapable of destroying them is forcing them to employ more desperate tactics to increase the Empires strength and discourage the Imperium as a matter of survival.

Moreover, the leadership must be aware of how lucky (plot fait) they've been so far with events lining up to save their small empire, the leaders must realise how lucky they are to still be alive. Which can't be good for generating a feeling of security and stability in the

With the attention of the Necrons, Orks, Tyranids and now Chaos on their borders, ethics are being put even further on the backburners in pursuit of survival with underhanded tactics starting to give way to more blatantly strong man tactics to grab territory, races being declared lost causes and exterminated due to the effort required.

With what was once the last beacon of a civil society descending into the same mindset that led the Emperor to forge the Imperium. That their vision of the Galaxy is Good, and any sacrifices made to ensure it comes to pass both in terms of lives and ethics are worthwhile, the question becomes at what point will they say they've gone to far and must stop, and if that point comes before they've overstretched themselves to the point that walking back on those policies is akin to suicide.


Tau and Psykers


Another interesting development will be how the Tau will deal with psykers in their auxillary forces.

The fat that the Tau have such a weak Warp presence is likely to make them less sympathetic to psykers as they would have no frame of reference in the highest institutions of government as to how these people feel.

As the proportion of psykers in the human population increases due to lack of culling, what can a Tau human psyker expect. Unlike the Imperium, the Tau have no method of protecting/training psykers on a wide scale, and with the eyes of Chaos shifting towards the Empire, those untrained psykers will start to be a net drain to the Empire.

The question then becomes how they'll deal with it?

The Earlier Tau empire would have worked towards developing those institutions if they could, but now with resources being diverted towards survival, are they able to make the same choice?

At what point after the 87th human opens a warp rift and causes the death of an entire city do the Ethereals state that its not worth the risk and that those with powers should be removed from society for the Greater Good?

What does this mean for the long term survival of Psyker races like humanity in the Tau empire, will they be eventually forced to disappear as well?

The worst thing about it, is that unless the Tau go full sterilisation/disappearance, they would still be better than the Imperium as Psykers could at least live happily until that point.​
 
Last edited:
Honestly, I'm not sure there's anything in the lore that supports the Tau in a "struggle" for survival of any kind. They've gone through like, what, five spheres of expansion or something? They're doing fine. Not huge, but they're holding their own.
 
The problem with the Tau, is really no different from other major xeno races, is that they're pretry under represented. They got a few novels, and while I haven't read any of them personally, I've been told are not that great.

Also I get really irked how Tau "would totally get wiped out if the Imperium really tries" by the fanbase. I'm pretty sure there are less Eldar running around but despite small numbers, are still a force to be reckoned with in intergalactic politics.

I recall someone on r/40klore guesstimassing that the Tau have some two million battlesuits. Space Marines are half that number. But for some reason Space Marines are still around 10k years later?

The lore hasn't done Tau right and that's a real shame.
 
Theres also like, maybe a trillion tau or there abouts. There's a couple quadrillion Imps, which makes their heavy hitters proportionally more stretched, too.
 
The only Chaos alligned xenos I can think of are Orks employed by Chaos (Dawn of War 1, despite it's weird canon-ness) and those crocodile xenos with shotguns strapped on their chests from Gaunt.

GW could make a big ol Codex about mercenaries utilising most factions and it would sell like hotcakes. Why would an Ork and an Eldar work together? Money of course.
 
Hykal94 said:
The only Chaos alligned xenos I can think of are Orks employed by Chaos (Dawn of War 1, despite it's weird canon-ness) and those crocodile xenos with shotguns strapped on their chests from Gaunt.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Loxatl they're called-I've actually used them in my 40k RPG campaigns a fair amount-they're a favorite, if only for the fact that as mercenaries they're pretty easy to slot into a lot of situations (Ironically, working for the Tau in my current campaign).


There's also the Saruthi-weird Crab alien things with space bending tech in the first Eisenhorn book for Chaos Xenos. I think they were undivided?
 
Last edited:
The tau are interesting to me because they are a foil and contrast to the imperium in many ways. Where the imperium is a huge albeit largely decentralised empire , the tau are much smaller albeit highly centralised.

The imperium has more advanced technology in some respects but has mostly stagnated while the tau are less advanced in some areas (weapons not withstanding) but are steadily advancing. The imperium's philosophies are a sort of cynical determined nihilism (we might not make it but we won't go down easy) while the tau are still hopeful (mostly out of ignorance but I think they would still hold on to this trait ).


Finally ironically enough they are also the type of society the emperor wanted to shape humanity into ; no religion (Greater Good is more of an ideology, similar to the truth ) , holding science as absolute and having a goal of galactic domination. Hell you can even make the argument that the Ethereals are an entire species of mini xeno emperors.

Hykal94 said:
The problem with the Tau, is really no different from other major xeno races, is that they're pretry under represented. They got a few novels, and while I haven't read any of them personally, I've been told are not that great.

Also I get really irked how Tau "would totally get wiped out if the Imperium really tries" by the fanbase. I'm pretty sure there are less Eldar running around but despite small numbers, are still a force to be reckoned with in intergalactic politics.

I recall someone on r/40klore guesstimassing that the Tau have some two million battlesuits. Space Marines are half that number. But for some reason Space Marines are still around 10k years later?

The lore hasn't done Tau right and that's a real shame.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The key here I think is that the tau can concentrate more troops in the battlefield thanks to the empire's small size and the fact remains that they are less affected by warp storms and anomalies than the IOM so their supply lines have the benefit of being more reliable.

Adding to this is the difference in quality of the rank and file. A tau fire caste is an augmented super solider (by our standards) trained from birth to wage war. While many IG regiments are better, they are also rare and more widespread so your average guardsmen is a conscript who might barely know how to hold a gun. All these taken together you can argue the Tau have a decent chance at holding out (their only chance at true victory is out enduring the imperium until the emperor dies or something)
 
I don't know how or when how these came about, but a lot of arguments against the Tau are complete bullshit.

1. They're too shooty! - So are Guard and Space Marines I don't hear people bitching about that either.

2. They're too small! - So are Eldar, if anything there are a lot less Eldar what with a few Craftworlds floating around but the Tau Empire is a legitimate empire.

3. Their inability to Warpdrive hinders them - Well it didn't hinder DAoT humans much early on sure, but this can be a boon because worlds are better defender, better invested, whereas the Imperium has hundreds of 'useless' planets.

4. They're too noblebright! - You got an empire where people are (mostly) treated equally, who are very technologically advance, who can field a mighty army of good quality. The fact these funky blue xenos can exist makes literally every other faction sans Orks and Nids more tragic.

5. They're commies - THEY HAVE A FUCKING MERCHANT CASTE

The fact they're noblebright makes 40k a grimdarker setting. It makes 40k a more interesting setting.
 
Hykal94 said:
I don't know how or when how these came about, but a lot of arguments against the Tau are complete bullshit.

1. They're too shooty! - So are Guard and Space Marines I don't hear people bitching about that either.

2. They're too small! - So are Eldar, if anything there are a lot less Eldar what with a few Craftworlds floating around but the Tau Empire is a legitimate empire.

3. Their inability to Warpdrive hinders them - Well it didn't hinder DAoT humans much early on sure, but this can be a boon because worlds are better defender, better invested, whereas the Imperium has hundreds of 'useless' planets.

4. They're too noblebright! - You got an empire where people are (mostly) treated equally, who are very technologically advance, who can field a mighty army of good quality. The fact these funky blue xenos can exist makes literally every other faction sans Orks and Nids more tragic.

5. They're commies - THEY HAVE A FUCKING MERCHANT CASTE

The fact they're noblebright makes 40k a grimdarker setting. It makes 40k a more interesting setting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Funny thing is : The tau are pretty much a typical human faction in a space opera . The technological innovative and hyper expanding species that unites and leads a dozen others aganist a dogmatic evil galactic empire , using their determination, technology and relying on sound tactics. It may be that some of those who hate them so much are just angry they are taking humanity's "hat" or because they make the imperium look bad in comparison (even if you take the whole sterilisation camps thing at face value)
 
I want to know more about the Tau from the nitty gritty of how the Tau Empire works. How people work, live, how their military operates, how they organize their political system, how the castes interact with eachother. How the Greater Good is achieved on the materiel granular level. Because the thing the Tau has that makes them distinct is that they are a newly emerging technological race who are building their civilization from the ground up in a harsh universe.

All the other factions have some element of their social organization being handled to them or it being irrelevant. The Imperium persists purely by massive ntsitutional inertial and throwing bodies and resources at problems. The Elder are prepackaged with an ancient society. The Orks do it by instinct. Chaos doesn't give a shit. But the Tau have to roll up their sleeves and build a galactic civilization.

It would probably do more to make them more interesting to people outside being the Least Bad Guys, and give a specific focus to how they're handled in flavour text.
 
I actually find the Orks the most interesting race, in that they are the only truly happy faction in the entire setting. They have a society that is stable, self correcting, and yet still promotes growth. They carry with them their own hardy ecosystem that can be established nearly everywhere and provides everything they need. Ironically, despite the setting, they are one of the few races in fiction that can be truly considered a utopia, at least from their perspective.
 
I have no idea how people got the idea that Tau are communist. They are pretty obviously based on some sort of confucian thing right?
 
Jane Dough said:
I have no idea how people got the idea that Tau are communist. They are pretty obviously based on some sort of confucian thing right?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They're India's caste system with a hint of Plato's Republic, with the usual human diplomacy of the likes of Star Trek. Also mechas.*

People back then when they were introduced see them with their Greater Good, screech "reeeee communism" and it kinda stuck.

*I don't know enough about mecha anime to know which anime they're inspired from but they ain't no Gundam that's for sure.
 
Hykal94 said:
They're India's caste system with a hint of Plato's Republic, with the usual human diplomacy of the likes of Star Trek. Also mechas.*

People back then when they were introduced see them with their Greater Good, screech "reeeee communism" and it kinda stuck.

*I don't know enough about mecha anime to know which anime they're inspired from but they ain't no Gundam that's for sure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They honestly remind me more of Gears from Heavy Gear:


Which themselves, I believe, drew on stuff like Patlabor and Appleseed:





And also generally the anime mecha aesthetic of the late 80s/early 90s.

EDIT: Crisis Suit for comparison.


EDIT 2: I honestly think they get called "anime" because they're much sleeker than the Imperium suits and much more agile, even when compared to the Eldar war walkers, etc. Also there's definitely some aesthetic resemblance.
 
Last edited:
"Let's discuss this piece of art... without bringing up inextricable aspects like its inspirations, messages and themes."

Okay. Umm... The Tau are still the least bad, probably? Apparently they tie people's tubes when they join now, despite supposedly being a multicultural empire, which makes no sense. Tau worlds are still definitely the least bad place to live, and any contributions a single person could make to change anything are rendered meaningless by the sheer scale of the setting. The Tau will die because this is a universe where being smart just gets you killed faster, but until that happens they're the one okay place for humans to live.

I dunno, I guess everyone else is just so shitty that it's hard to care about them anymore.
 
Last edited:
SeptimusMagisto said:
Nonhuman species are seriously underrepresented within the forces of Chaos. You would expect to see a lot more Chaotic xenos than you actually do.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Theoretical: Chaos is Chaos but odds are that the Heretic Astartes and their ilk are just as xenophobic as their Loyalist counterparts. Or, the xenos that worship Chaos are more far-flung, isolated, or don't leave Eye-space that often.

Practical: A lot of the Chaos-worshipping xenos races may have been annihilated during the Great Crusade

On the subject of the Tau there are some interesting parallels between them and the Imperium going on right now. Aun'va is dead, but somewhat lives on in the form of an AI (similar to the Emperor upon the Golden Throne), Farsight has put himself into exile since the knowledge of the Warp, demons, and Chaos threatens to destabilize and ruin the rational, almost Imperial Truth-esque 'Mind Science' propaganda as they start to expand deeper into the galaxy (similar to the Great Crusade).

My tinfoil-hat theory is that Farsight's Dawn Blade is the last of the Croneswords Yvraine needs to awaken Ynnead. What with the fact that demons are afraid of it and actively avoid it, and killing living things with it extends the bearer's life which is what has allowed Farsight to live for so long. All of these things seem to be in line with what the Croneswords are since they are reported to give the wielder dominion over life and death if they're in the right hands. Plus given the relative isolation of the Tau and their lack of major involvement with the current Chaos vs. Imperium narrative it'd be a rather interesting way to involve them.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top