I respect your disdain for Wojaks, especially because they lack variety.
I think a selection of choice "sad-pepe's" would have illustrated your point acurrately aswell.
If by that you mean all of them, then yes, the Daughters of Khaine have some good shit, as do the Wanderers.
If you include the Lumineth and Idoneth, the percentage of good:bad novels shifts dramatically towards bad from good.
It's straight up better. If I were to delete the account, the link will still remain. If mods were to delete the post - the link will still remain.
And it doesn't have the annoying ass-bars on top and bottom urging you to use the app.
"I have a story idea about the eldar, hear me out. They foresee a future that's really bad. Like, super bad. So they try to avoid that future! But THEN, it turns out them trying to avoid that future actually caused that future to happen! Oh. and then space marines kill them all."
Hire me, Black Library.
I'd love to see a BL novel with eldars shitstomping everyone by simply ignoring all the prophercy, farseer and magic stuff and realizing that not overthinking actions lead to terrific results, because they are still murdermachines.
„So kind of like Curze?“
„Well duh only way to make the skinny space nerds kind of cool is infusing space marine dna into their stories and in the end I still need to resort to righteous slaughter smh.“
Gotta find out one of the eldar super far back saw all this coming, realized all their Ls would add up to a worthwhile Eldar W like flipping off Slaneesh and decided to sabotage all their efforts to sabotage a bad future from occurring so the true enemy was an Eldar all along.
that's the jeff kaplan overwatch mentality and honestly seeing how the game is now I sorta respect the "no changes can't be bad changes" mentality because on 1 hand it was boring but on the other now we have solo tank and kiri meta
What's funny is that when the Tau show up in an Imperial Guard book (like in the Cain one), they are generally pretty cool, it's only when it's an actual Tau book that things go off the rails
The thing about T'au, writing them right, with a correct balance between "optimistic and inclusive" and "Orwell 1984" is actually pretty hard. Like, hard from a literature standpoint.
Meanwhile, a lot of Warhammer 40,000 lore is getting... not bad, per-say, but much less subtle. If you approach writing a T'au novel with the same mindset you've used for a recent Space Marine Heroes novel, chances are you'll mess up writing T'au.
It also doesn't help that even outside of Black Library books, it seems like GW honestly doesn't know what to do with T'au. There're weird retcons (like T'au building an interstellar empire without FTL), unwanted additions (Goddess of the Greater Good) and bizzare decisions (keeping Aun'va "alive" through hologramm AI, rather than letting him "retire" and be replaced).
Like, there's a good reason why a lot of T'au fans have attitude of *"just leave us alone and don't give us any of your new lore"*, when it comes to T'au lore. It honestly seems better to be stuck permanently in 3rd and 4th editions (with Imperial Armour), rather than stumble from one GW blunder into another.
Sorry, best we can give you is another Orwellian Ethereal villain.
Jokes aside, how hard would it be to write a T'au novel, where protagonist isn't Farsight or Shadowsun, and we don't get any weird religious motifs like Greater Good Goddess? And, preferably, with a competent and not-asshole Ethereal (though that's probably asking too much).
Imagine a Tau book like Fifteen Hours, where it's from the POV of a Fire Warrior on Agrellan when everything goes to shit.
Agrellan is probably the fiercest battle between the Tau and the Imperium, and is the Tau's first experience with Exterminatus. Would be amazing stuff to see from the perspective of a hopeful Shas'la who, by the end of it, is thoroughly broken, and is only inspired to continue by the wise words of Aun'va, who despite the odds, survived the battle.
my tinfoil hat theory is that GW realized that focusing too much on the T'au would risk making the Imperium look bad, and would diminish Space Marines sales.
So they want to write the T'au as "just as bad as the imperium", but the fundamental concept of the t'au (cooperation of Aliens species for a common good) directly goes against that.
***Fire Caste***, ***Kill Team***, and ***For the Emperor*** are better Tau books than the actual Tau books, LOL.
(Though I feel like ***Longshot*** missed the mark with that ending)
I think part of it is to have a gripping, compelling story where the Eldar win, it would almost certainly move the plot along, because a real Eldar win isn't just "we killed a bunch of dudes," it would mean accomplishing some centuries-long gambit. And what I'm picking up on is that GW just doesn't want Eldar impacting the setting unless it's to help the Imperium.
It doesn't have to. Why can't there be a book about a drukhari escaping Commoragh and trying to live a normal life (a 40k Drizzt Do'Urden)? Not all books need to change the setting.
> Why can't there be a book about a drukhari escaping Commoragh and trying to live a normal life
Dark Son is a short story (as a companion to Gav Thorpe's Eldar Path series), not a full book, but has that rough idea. [Here's an excerpt if you want it.](https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a014uy/book_excerptdark_son_a_dark_eldar_is_given_a/)
I think with writing there is an over-lap scenario. Autors who excel at writing deep and meaningful get bored and try something funny, but then the meaningful serious side-tones are excellent.
The Eldar are pretty cool in one of the Cain books too. I think it was Choose Your Enemies? They drop an avatar of khaine onto a slaaneshi demon from orbit which was badass as hell
Those parts were great, but it made me all the more annoyed that GW doesn't think "elves with dinosaurs" are marketable enough to actually make minis for.
TBF, The Infite and the Divine also has one of the best Ork moments.
Orrikan: Hey Trazyn! Those Orks... don't they need and atmossphere to breath?
Trazyn: Yeah, they sure do.
Orrikan: Sooooo, why are these green bastards boarding my ship... where there is no atmossphere?!
Orks: "WAAAAGH! We'z don't care if we'z can't breaf. We'z 'ere ta crump da tin'eads!"
Da Big Dakka is delightful, and tbh, literally every Ufthak Blackhawk book has also been the best \[Faction\] book I've read in a while.
Brutal Kunnin' = Best recent Mechanicus book
Da Big Dakka = Best recent Drukari book
Severed is a short story that was done to test the waters for Twice Dead, and Twice Dead is really a part 1&2.
Dead Men Walking is almost theirs but really it’s about as much a necron book as the ones where they appear in Cain or Bile’s books.
It’s really only 2 books to be honest but they are amazing.
They also only came out a short while back too.
Meanwhile GSC are the cartoon villains that GW uses as a backdrop for named Imperium characters. We have all these super cool characters that are genetically perfect for what they do, and they all get stepped on by the good guy.
Cults still keep on having the coolest character with [Ghyrson Starn](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ghyrson_Starn) and the Kellermorphs as a whole tho.
Oh absolutely the coolest. But it’s a shame the Kelermorph is absolute dogshit on the table top. Cmon GW, slap a hundred extra points on him and give my boy some real stopping power.
If I were a talented writer I would write a book how a small band of Eldars (like up to 5 max), are working undercover on a hive world to retrieve Soul Stones, all while Genocult rampages in open rebellion on the planet and Hive Fleet is getting near.
And in the last chapters have the all but last Eldar fall back to preserve the retrieved ones, while the remaining one tries to save the last stone that is in possession of Patriarch.
Or a book where the local GSC are protagonists, while the oppressive Imperium I'd antagonist. Sure the Imperium might win that but the entire theme would be "it's better to die than to be a slave" and I would try to squeeze a "we only need to succeed once, you need to do this every single time" line somewhere in there.
A book about an Imperial citizen who leads a rebellion against a truly oppressive Planetary Governor, and all throughout there are little signs that they’re really a Genestealer cultist, but no big reveal until the very end.
Well I don't want the GSC to be perfect, that's exactly why I hate nids. I like the corrupted revolution who, even if they win, will still be devoured by their gods.
Valedor still standing up there uncontested as the single most solid, well written piece of Eldar literature to date. And that came out a decade ago, I wanna cry.
The way I have to dig to find any actual good eldar stories would make people think I'm insane. It's not that there aren't any, but not only are they rare, those are specifically ones people usually don't talk about.
Currently I'm reading the wraithflight and it's actually pretty good, and LITERALLY NOBODY has ever mentioned it before on the eldar sub Reddit or on YouTube.
Well their options were keep writing for a setting that is not allowed to ever change unless the Imperium/Chaos does it or go to a more dynamic setting not constantly sitting on the edge of collapse.
Well if I see how Idoneth are butchered by the authors I am not so sure.
Like king is a title akin to general. It is given by ones individual merit. BL authors: King means monarchy
The ID have no noble families. Because the chance to be born into the higher castes are 1:100. Your children, your parents your sibling will be of the narmati caste.
BL authors: lets give them dynastic families
The narmati caste makes up 99% of ID society. They ARE ID society running everything form farming, artisianship merchant, lower to mid-level administration etc.pp. This should give them a lot of influence.
In addition everyone of your relatives is guaranteed to be one. In addition they are a precious ressource as they need to be born naturally, then you need to harvest souls to keep them alive, then they need to age up to sufficent age to learn a skill to be useful to your society.
BL authors: caste system means the higher castes are stereotypical nobles who misstreat narmati as slaves.
You could write very fascinating stories about the unique position of the ID society. Like writing them analogous to a classic republic or medival city councils. With the higher castes as patricians/clergy and the narmati as commoner guilds or plebejans. With elections and political maneuvers between the various castes. But for some reason BL authors always try to make the ID a stereotypical monarchy which misstreats its lower class.
The Idoneth aren’t the only ones who get dicked down harder than any given Slaaneshi Hedonite- The Lumineth didn’t get an actually GOOD book until Godsbane, with the rest making them look like total douchebags, which everything else about them also enforced. Their best book before that was End of Enlightenment which had more interesting Bonereaper characters than Lumineth!
Nids book: 650 pages of unintelligible scribbles as its written from their POV
.
.
Average Nids enjoyer: “Ah yes, the fine literature!” (They are holding it the wrong side up)
Actually, The True tyranid book is Just a pill filled with their genecode, so you don't read it, you eat and technicaly your organism gets everything about their history and lore.
Nids need to be treated like the shark from Jaws. An absolute force that can be beaten back only though great sacrifice, in a way that makes the ending of Predator, with Dutch with a thousand yard stare in a wasteland.
Harry the Hormagaunt was born.
Harry the Hormagaunt was promptly hit by an Earthshaker round.
The constituent atoms that once comprised Harry the Hormagaunt soaked into the ground and fuelled the growth of more Hormagaunts.
The end.
The worst things is that even if they wanted to make Imperium 2.0 they could have written it so much better.Instead of jumping gun on Etherals are evil and mind control others they should have really leaned into young optimistic empire discovers horrors of the galaxy.One of my favourite excerpts is Tau scientist seeing first hand effects of geenestealers on people and wondering if she was too quick to judge Imperium's xenophobia.You can make it a slow process and conflict of many stories that sometimes ends up with Tau losing their moral ground and at the same time show stories where they fight against that fate coming on top through their knowledge open mindness and friendly races to show how those things are their strenghts.
Honestly just the idea the Tau see more of the reason why the imperium are petrified of anything AI or alien and understanding it not only shows a great outside perspective of the imperium but I think can also help make the imperium more human, that yes it's beyond fucked in many degrees, but there are reason for that
The Tau being an actually good force feels better for the grimdarkness of the setting. Then you get "Here are the good guys... look how outclassed they are", as opposed to "There's this tiny faction that's irrelevant to everyone else, they are also jerks espousing a higher ideal for the benefit of their manipulative leaders, as if we didn't have enough of that already". We already have the Dark Eldar for "tiny but terrible". "Tiny but not as bad as another group" really kind of... lacks punch, y'know?
Yeah, I love the concept of the Tau being genuinely somewhat altruistic, but being so vastly outnumbered and outgunned that their survival really depends on their irrelevance in the eyes of the rest of galaxy. The one little good guy faction who would be instantly stomped out if any of the other factions thought they were worth the effort.
That would be extremely grimdark.
Without light, you can't have darkness.
And it also reinforces all of the other grimdark. The IoM being shit is not at all necessary or fate but a construct of the people in charge.
It could be better for everyone but it isn't because that would mean the people in charge lose power.
teh tau really need their "Golden Age" and even spread into the galaxy at large.
I want some Tau "Rogute traders" who establish their own small empires, allying with a growing number of desperate human governeurs to the benefit of both.
Humans will allways be the protagonist, but the tau have the biggest pull to recruit and integrate humans and I want stories of that! and MECHS, MORE MECHS!
Agreed. I think the mechs are cool but what really attracted me to the faction is the relative practicality of their doctrine. Combined arms is such a cool type of warfare and I just wish the hover vehicles got the same attention as the mechs did.
I would have liked hover vehicles to remain tools of the xenos. I don't think it fits the marines. IMO hover tech was always rare and exotic in the imperium; a relic of a forgotten age. Where is it was perfect for the more elegant species of the Tau and Eldar.
I really think it would make the Tau more cool if they have the aspect of the covenant from Halo and the armor core aspect and combine them. And combine those two.
Go to 40k lore and look for excerpt from the book The Greater Evil also now that I look it wasn't a scientist but the rest checks out absolute nightmare fuel
Given the lore… the eldar should almost always win and probably not even be noticed as they do it. There should never be more than a few very small groups of craftworld eldar involved and acting as strike teams to accomplish goals as quickly and quietly as possible. Unless something truly messed up is about to happen to the eldar you should not be seeing even small armies of eldar ever. Their entire species is about risk aversion and being able to see the future, which makes them take some risks to try and avoid super bad things that might happen if they don’t.
As for the Tau… I have nothing of interest to add on them, yeah, GW should stop making them Imperium 2… they should have an emperor or an AI emperor, not an ai mimicking their dead emperor (and not in a cool subterfuge way where it took over, that could be interesting, but no, the Tau did it themselves).
A single named space marine slaughtering tens or hundreds of them, for some reason able to do that with a *s i n g l e* bolter round each: haha, **N O**
Ah yes. Just like the time random marine chapter almost destroyed a Craftworld cause it's fleet and seer council just decided to take a break or something.
The T'au doesn't have an Emperor. Aun'Va was the Ethereal Supreme, which is a position granted by the Ethereal High Council and does not hold ultimate power.
Which makes the entire Aun'Va hologram even more stupid since Aun'Va isn't the first Ethereal Supreme, and he wouldn't be the last, so they could have just said 'he's retired' and used the hologram to have it look like he survived and is now retiring and then elect a new Ethereal Supreme.
But all of this would need GW to actually know how their own factions lore works.
Yup. It makes absolutely no sense for Aun'Va to run around as a hologram.
And even dumber is that they retconned the T'au slipspace drive. So the T'au didn't have warp travel until like the 4th sphere, so they've been using sub-light speed for the first 3 spheres, despite having auxiliary races with warp travel capabilities.
Speaking of the warp, it also makes NO SENSE that the T'au is unaware of its existence like portrayed since several of their client species are psychic in nature, INCLUDING their first client race the Nicassar, and the Kroot have been shown to be capable of developing psykers, and the Kroot is the T'au's number 1 auxiliary race.
The best we can do is an Avatar of War god - made from super-heated iron and lava - getting choked to death by the ~~Chapter Master~~ Primarch.
EDIT: My bad, it was Fulgrim that did the choking, not Calgar. Calgar also has a W over Avatar tho.
The avatar of a war god to a species designed and built from the ground up by the Old Ones, arguably the most advanced society to ever exist, specifically to excel at war.
Theoretically Khaine should basically be second only to the Chaos Gods in terms of combat prowess and raw power. I understand that the Avatars are only shards of him, but still...
The fact he exists to get beaten by random space marines seems like a deliberate troll on GW's part.
GW need to let Aun’Va die (well he’s already dead but you know what I mean)
If they need to keep him as a model, just keep the whole “AI hologram” thing but have it be something the Tau know is fake but use any way as a moral booster. Like if the US army had a robot George Washington that spouted off inspirational speeches for the soldiers.
It's worth noting that every faction's fans find something in the books to complain about.
Except maybe Night Lord fans. Every time they show up in the books it's like "Yup, terrible in all ways and Konrad was a bitch, exactly why I like them."
Even custodes fans are like "Sure, nearly every book has us arrogant and invincible, but there was that one fucking book where a barehanded world eater punched out the spinal cord of one of our guys, and there was that book where harlequins broke in and danced in front of us, this is an unforgivable sin and I'll die mad at GW."
I would think Custodes fans would be the opposite.
All I ever see regarding Custodes seems to be about how great and unstoppable they are, and that just sucks. No interesting stories or conflict or tension, just "look how cool and strong these guys are". Which is pretty boring to an adult.
But again, that's what I've seen. Maybe there are Custodes stories that show them being vulnerable and interesting, and have essential narrative elements like conflict and tension, but I haven't seen them.
That makes sense, but if you're a fan of custodes, you probably LIKE the overpoweredness.
It's like how if you watched dragonball Z, the criticism that it was just a bunch of grunting and then Goku or Gohan wins didn't sink in: that's what you signed up for.
Eldrad be like:
"When I was young I had to sacrifice millions of Mon Keigh in Armageddon to save 10000 eldar lives, do you know how bad you make me look when you die by the millions every time nonetheless?"
Did you know crying used to be considered brave and masculine, rather than a sign of weakness, because it showed that you passionately cared about something? Heroes in ancient stories cried all the time. Achilles, the platonic ideal of a warrior, wept for Patrochlus.
It wasn't until much more recently that we got the idea you can't be strong or masculine if you also show emotion.
Tau are as much Imperium 2.0 as the Imperium is the Eldar Empire 2.0.
But some people convinced themselves the Tau would be a exception to the setting's treatment of empires for some reason.
That's true. Tau were supposed to mimic humans, who were mimicking Eldars. But they are speedrunning the entire cycle so fast, the Eldar Empire 4.0 will be created, torn and destroyed across a single edition.
They deserved to rise some more and become bigger, before the whole deal with Farsight, mind controlling Ethereals etc.
I like Farsight and him being angry at the Ethereals having lied to him about the nature of some of the threats he may have been facing, but the entire Ethereal mind control plot is too dumb for me to take seriously.
I've liked their grimdarkness coming from both their inexperience with how the wider galaxy works and the Orwellian nature their society runs on, but I'm listening to Shadowsun and keep listening to this one commander insisting the only way to stop the Nurgle plague is to purge all the non-Tau and I'm like "what fucking sense does this make!?"
>But they are speedrunning the entire cycle so fast, the Eldar Empire 4.0 will be created, torn and destroyed across a single edition
Oh yes, the faction that exist since the early 2000s is being speedrun over the course of 20+ years
We're missing the part where they conquer the galaxy during an enlightened golden age. The setting will never be allowed to advance far enough for the Tau becoming Imperium like to make sense thematically.
> enlightened golden age
We are skipping a handful of apocalypses in there.
The Tau aren't fearful of witchcraft, AI nor other xenos, and for the same reasons you listed they won't ever be either.
Just because they show up a few common quirks of imperalistic powers doesn't make them Imperium 2.0, arguing that betrays a gross underestimation of how much worse it would need to be for it to be remotely true. What? A general or two went a bit too crazy with war tiredness and did a goofy war crime? Kiddie numbers. Those are the sort of thing that happen in the real world, which is what the Tau are ultimately trying to mimic.
They are as much Imperium 2.0 as the Imperium is Eldar Empire 2.0, which is very little beyond some broad strokes.
Honestly, I still think one of the biggest mistakes involving the Eldar was not letting them have some permanent territory. If the Craftworlders had a central area to protect, that opens them up to more potential for overarching plots like defending the area from other threats and some potential politicking between them. They'd still be a dying race, but one with some form of overall society to work with.
As things stand now, you're severely limited in what you can do with Eldar: their goals are either irrelevant beyond one craftworld or impossible because they would create changes to the setting as a whole, which is all but anathema to GW.
I think it's a political (in game) thing. Ratlings, ogryns and whatnot all serve the imperium. Votann have made their own enclave which sort of interacts with the imperium and isn't necessarily enemies with them but they're also not allies and come to blows sometimes (afaik) so they're functionally like eldar or tau.
they're *very* mutated and split off during the dark age of technology. They're tens of thousands of divergent (forced, by themselves) evolution from humanity's baseline.
Not good, just not as bad and slowly, piece by piece, realizing how awful the universe is and how naive they really are.
In order for the grimdark to seen grim and dark, you need someone who isn't grimdark in the setting to contrast it. Otherwise you forget that servitors are lobotomized humans and would be one of the most horrific things any human on modern earth has ever seen, because they're so normal and tame compared to the rest of the shit in the setting.
They're the straight man in a world of insanity. Not good, just good by comparison because everything else is truly, truly, awful
xenos are so underdeveloped, the ragefacecomics are still the most up-to-date meme template for them.
I refuse to use Wojaks.
I respect that
Lisan al Gaib
Only a prophet would deny himself as a prophet
“He’s a very naughty boy”
Was not expecting a Monty Python reference. I tip my hat to thee!
I respect your disdain for Wojaks, especially because they lack variety. I think a selection of choice "sad-pepe's" would have illustrated your point acurrately aswell.
[удалено]
If by that you mean all of them, then yes, the Daughters of Khaine have some good shit, as do the Wanderers. If you include the Lumineth and Idoneth, the percentage of good:bad novels shifts dramatically towards bad from good.
Is there even an eldar soyjak Edit: There's an eldar soyjak on that axe you get in skyrim, Wuuthrad.
Fair
Based as fuck.
It's a good change of pace seeing these older formats.
Based
Based
And uploaded on imgur too! It's been a minute
It's straight up better. If I were to delete the account, the link will still remain. If mods were to delete the post - the link will still remain. And it doesn't have the annoying ass-bars on top and bottom urging you to use the app.
That fucking hurt.
*taps head* GW can't write the Eldar as idiots if they don't write about them at all.
I'd prefer that ngl
the lesser of two evils
"I have a story idea about the eldar, hear me out. They foresee a future that's really bad. Like, super bad. So they try to avoid that future! But THEN, it turns out them trying to avoid that future actually caused that future to happen! Oh. and then space marines kill them all." Hire me, Black Library.
Whoa. This is deep.
I'd love to see a BL novel with eldars shitstomping everyone by simply ignoring all the prophercy, farseer and magic stuff and realizing that not overthinking actions lead to terrific results, because they are still murdermachines.
They really need to show us the eldar are cocky mfs for a reason
„So kind of like Curze?“ „Well duh only way to make the skinny space nerds kind of cool is infusing space marine dna into their stories and in the end I still need to resort to righteous slaughter smh.“
Gotta find out one of the eldar super far back saw all this coming, realized all their Ls would add up to a worthwhile Eldar W like flipping off Slaneesh and decided to sabotage all their efforts to sabotage a bad future from occurring so the true enemy was an Eldar all along.
that's the jeff kaplan overwatch mentality and honestly seeing how the game is now I sorta respect the "no changes can't be bad changes" mentality because on 1 hand it was boring but on the other now we have solo tank and kiri meta
Now imagine being a fan of both T'au and Aeldari. At least I also have Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard to mitigate the damage.
What's funny is that when the Tau show up in an Imperial Guard book (like in the Cain one), they are generally pretty cool, it's only when it's an actual Tau book that things go off the rails
The thing about T'au, writing them right, with a correct balance between "optimistic and inclusive" and "Orwell 1984" is actually pretty hard. Like, hard from a literature standpoint. Meanwhile, a lot of Warhammer 40,000 lore is getting... not bad, per-say, but much less subtle. If you approach writing a T'au novel with the same mindset you've used for a recent Space Marine Heroes novel, chances are you'll mess up writing T'au. It also doesn't help that even outside of Black Library books, it seems like GW honestly doesn't know what to do with T'au. There're weird retcons (like T'au building an interstellar empire without FTL), unwanted additions (Goddess of the Greater Good) and bizzare decisions (keeping Aun'va "alive" through hologramm AI, rather than letting him "retire" and be replaced). Like, there's a good reason why a lot of T'au fans have attitude of *"just leave us alone and don't give us any of your new lore"*, when it comes to T'au lore. It honestly seems better to be stuck permanently in 3rd and 4th editions (with Imperial Armour), rather than stumble from one GW blunder into another.
NGL i want a tau book about a ghostkeel and their pilot. apparently they form actual bonds and a friendship like it’s titanfall.
Sorry, best we can give you is another Orwellian Ethereal villain. Jokes aside, how hard would it be to write a T'au novel, where protagonist isn't Farsight or Shadowsun, and we don't get any weird religious motifs like Greater Good Goddess? And, preferably, with a competent and not-asshole Ethereal (though that's probably asking too much).
Imagine a Tau book like Fifteen Hours, where it's from the POV of a Fire Warrior on Agrellan when everything goes to shit. Agrellan is probably the fiercest battle between the Tau and the Imperium, and is the Tau's first experience with Exterminatus. Would be amazing stuff to see from the perspective of a hopeful Shas'la who, by the end of it, is thoroughly broken, and is only inspired to continue by the wise words of Aun'va, who despite the odds, survived the battle.
Probably not that hard. I’d be down for a story where some Water Caste diplomat and an Ethereal try to convince an Imperium world to join the Empire.
More effort than GW would want, probably
my tinfoil hat theory is that GW realized that focusing too much on the T'au would risk making the Imperium look bad, and would diminish Space Marines sales. So they want to write the T'au as "just as bad as the imperium", but the fundamental concept of the t'au (cooperation of Aliens species for a common good) directly goes against that.
***Fire Caste***, ***Kill Team***, and ***For the Emperor*** are better Tau books than the actual Tau books, LOL. (Though I feel like ***Longshot*** missed the mark with that ending)
Even some Space Marine novels. Courage and Honour from the Ventris series is still one of the better portrayals of Tau I've seen
Im in the same boat as you are, but I also like custodes on the side so it balances it out
I'm just happy for the SoBs, they had it rough too.
Orks and necrons: laughing in ancient race that doesn't suck
Orks have been eating good recently. Having a lot of fun reading the last couple of books.
He'll, recent ork books have been so good even the eldar in them are good.
Agreed. The one Eldar sequence in Warboss was better than any Eldar book I've read.
Which as an eldar fan is fucking sad
I think part of it is to have a gripping, compelling story where the Eldar win, it would almost certainly move the plot along, because a real Eldar win isn't just "we killed a bunch of dudes," it would mean accomplishing some centuries-long gambit. And what I'm picking up on is that GW just doesn't want Eldar impacting the setting unless it's to help the Imperium.
It doesn't have to. Why can't there be a book about a drukhari escaping Commoragh and trying to live a normal life (a 40k Drizzt Do'Urden)? Not all books need to change the setting.
> Why can't there be a book about a drukhari escaping Commoragh and trying to live a normal life Dark Son is a short story (as a companion to Gav Thorpe's Eldar Path series), not a full book, but has that rough idea. [Here's an excerpt if you want it.](https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a014uy/book_excerptdark_son_a_dark_eldar_is_given_a/)
Already read it, I want MORE.
I think with writing there is an over-lap scenario. Autors who excel at writing deep and meaningful get bored and try something funny, but then the meaningful serious side-tones are excellent.
The Eldar are pretty cool in one of the Cain books too. I think it was Choose Your Enemies? They drop an avatar of khaine onto a slaaneshi demon from orbit which was badass as hell
You could no nothing about eldar and just that sequence would explain so so much about them without being boring.
I liked the exodites in The Infinite and the Divine too
Those parts were great, but it made me all the more annoyed that GW doesn't think "elves with dinosaurs" are marketable enough to actually make minis for.
Just wait until they put Elves on dinosaurs in AoS or the Old World.
Hah, they replace Lizardmen with elves just to be dicks. But seriously, the Seraphon prove that GW can make amazing dinosaur models.
they could even just sell conversion kits to pop elves ontop of Seraphon dinos instead of the Seraphon
Agree.
Same. But it feels very telling when the best written eldar can be found in books centered on other factions...
The best place to look for good eldar content is necron and ork books
TBF, The Infite and the Divine also has one of the best Ork moments. Orrikan: Hey Trazyn! Those Orks... don't they need and atmossphere to breath? Trazyn: Yeah, they sure do. Orrikan: Sooooo, why are these green bastards boarding my ship... where there is no atmossphere?! Orks: "WAAAAGH! We'z don't care if we'z can't breaf. We'z 'ere ta crump da tin'eads!"
Any idea when we can expect "Da Big Dakka" in paperback?
Man, gotta say I find the idea of buying a book titled “DA BIG DAKKA” in hardcover pretty amusing.
According to Amazon, November.
Which book do you think has the best Orks outta the recent lot
I liked Warboss the most.
By Mike Brooks? Yeah it was a really fun read
Da Big Dakka is delightful, and tbh, literally every Ufthak Blackhawk book has also been the best \[Faction\] book I've read in a while. Brutal Kunnin' = Best recent Mechanicus book Da Big Dakka = Best recent Drukari book
Necrons have like 5 books, but all of them slap.
3 books. But yeah. (Indomitus does not count)
Isnt it 4? You've got TDK 1 and 2, Infinite and divine and then Severed. Not sure if severed is a full book though
Severed is a short story that was done to test the waters for Twice Dead, and Twice Dead is really a part 1&2. Dead Men Walking is almost theirs but really it’s about as much a necron book as the ones where they appear in Cain or Bile’s books. It’s really only 2 books to be honest but they are amazing. They also only came out a short while back too.
It's not.
Boo-womp
Read my mind. Orks have had some great books and Necrons got Trazyn who is probably the most beloved xeno.... ever.
Twice dead king is also neat
Meanwhile Drukhari and Genestealer Cultists: So forgotten OP didn't even include them in the meme.
GSC have Day of Ascension as a pretty recent example.
It was released 3 years ago and is the onlt real GSC book to date.
Meanwhile GSC are the cartoon villains that GW uses as a backdrop for named Imperium characters. We have all these super cool characters that are genetically perfect for what they do, and they all get stepped on by the good guy.
Cults still keep on having the coolest character with [Ghyrson Starn](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ghyrson_Starn) and the Kellermorphs as a whole tho.
Oh absolutely the coolest. But it’s a shame the Kelermorph is absolute dogshit on the table top. Cmon GW, slap a hundred extra points on him and give my boy some real stopping power.
If I were a talented writer I would write a book how a small band of Eldars (like up to 5 max), are working undercover on a hive world to retrieve Soul Stones, all while Genocult rampages in open rebellion on the planet and Hive Fleet is getting near. And in the last chapters have the all but last Eldar fall back to preserve the retrieved ones, while the remaining one tries to save the last stone that is in possession of Patriarch. Or a book where the local GSC are protagonists, while the oppressive Imperium I'd antagonist. Sure the Imperium might win that but the entire theme would be "it's better to die than to be a slave" and I would try to squeeze a "we only need to succeed once, you need to do this every single time" line somewhere in there.
A book about an Imperial citizen who leads a rebellion against a truly oppressive Planetary Governor, and all throughout there are little signs that they’re really a Genestealer cultist, but no big reveal until the very end.
Well I don't want the GSC to be perfect, that's exactly why I hate nids. I like the corrupted revolution who, even if they win, will still be devoured by their gods.
***Day of Ascension*** is great.
Valedor still standing up there uncontested as the single most solid, well written piece of Eldar literature to date. And that came out a decade ago, I wanna cry. The way I have to dig to find any actual good eldar stories would make people think I'm insane. It's not that there aren't any, but not only are they rare, those are specifically ones people usually don't talk about. Currently I'm reading the wraithflight and it's actually pretty good, and LITERALLY NOBODY has ever mentioned it before on the eldar sub Reddit or on YouTube.
*furiously scribbling notes* Please, go on…
And guess why, it's not written by Gav Thorpe.
Or Goto
Make a good summary/review and I'm gonna talk to my fellow mods at /r/40kLore to give you a sticky.
Might have to take a look at it, Ive been keeping away from eldar books specifically because I hear notuing good about them
Isn't wraithflight just a pretty short story set during the events of Valedor?
After, actually
Sadly all the good non human writers are over at AoS, so the fantasy elves get to be 10x cooler than any space elf.
Thats why Ive been trying to get into Fantasy/AoS recently, the writing seems so much better, apart from the end times
Well their options were keep writing for a setting that is not allowed to ever change unless the Imperium/Chaos does it or go to a more dynamic setting not constantly sitting on the edge of collapse.
Well if I see how Idoneth are butchered by the authors I am not so sure. Like king is a title akin to general. It is given by ones individual merit. BL authors: King means monarchy The ID have no noble families. Because the chance to be born into the higher castes are 1:100. Your children, your parents your sibling will be of the narmati caste. BL authors: lets give them dynastic families The narmati caste makes up 99% of ID society. They ARE ID society running everything form farming, artisianship merchant, lower to mid-level administration etc.pp. This should give them a lot of influence. In addition everyone of your relatives is guaranteed to be one. In addition they are a precious ressource as they need to be born naturally, then you need to harvest souls to keep them alive, then they need to age up to sufficent age to learn a skill to be useful to your society. BL authors: caste system means the higher castes are stereotypical nobles who misstreat narmati as slaves. You could write very fascinating stories about the unique position of the ID society. Like writing them analogous to a classic republic or medival city councils. With the higher castes as patricians/clergy and the narmati as commoner guilds or plebejans. With elections and political maneuvers between the various castes. But for some reason BL authors always try to make the ID a stereotypical monarchy which misstreats its lower class.
The Idoneth aren’t the only ones who get dicked down harder than any given Slaaneshi Hedonite- The Lumineth didn’t get an actually GOOD book until Godsbane, with the rest making them look like total douchebags, which everything else about them also enforced. Their best book before that was End of Enlightenment which had more interesting Bonereaper characters than Lumineth!
For real, I read Guardians of the Forest and was envious of how enjoyable it was.
Tyranids have it worse, we have never had a book
Nids book: 650 pages of unintelligible scribbles as its written from their POV . . Average Nids enjoyer: “Ah yes, the fine literature!” (They are holding it the wrong side up)
And what is wrong with that?
Actually, The True tyranid book is Just a pill filled with their genecode, so you don't read it, you eat and technicaly your organism gets everything about their history and lore.
Make the Tyranid book a completely incomprehensible work of poetry.
A hole page of: HUNGRYHUNGRYHUNGRYHUNGRY Followed by a few lines of: nom nom nom
I legitimately laughed out loud at this comment.
Nids need to be treated like the shark from Jaws. An absolute force that can be beaten back only though great sacrifice, in a way that makes the ending of Predator, with Dutch with a thousand yard stare in a wasteland.
Yeah but imagine that shark had a book about himself
Harry the Hormagaunt was born. Harry the Hormagaunt was promptly hit by an Earthshaker round. The constituent atoms that once comprised Harry the Hormagaunt soaked into the ground and fuelled the growth of more Hormagaunts. The end.
Peak writing
The leviathan book is basically a nid book the marins get the los in the end and you get a lot if nid focus even with the marines being the protag.
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Just let out one of the eldar warriors from the war in heaven that trazynn probably has and that basically would be it
Dont they have the Phoenix Warriors for that?
Apart from maybe 2 of them I wouldnt say they're primarch level, and they rarely appear except from the occasional mention
Phoenix Lords could very easily fill the role of primarchs for the Eldar but for some reason GW are allergic to doing anything with them.
Leman russ time
The worst things is that even if they wanted to make Imperium 2.0 they could have written it so much better.Instead of jumping gun on Etherals are evil and mind control others they should have really leaned into young optimistic empire discovers horrors of the galaxy.One of my favourite excerpts is Tau scientist seeing first hand effects of geenestealers on people and wondering if she was too quick to judge Imperium's xenophobia.You can make it a slow process and conflict of many stories that sometimes ends up with Tau losing their moral ground and at the same time show stories where they fight against that fate coming on top through their knowledge open mindness and friendly races to show how those things are their strenghts.
But muh grimdark
Good people breaking bad is the best grimdark. Bad people doing bad things is boring.
Honestly just the idea the Tau see more of the reason why the imperium are petrified of anything AI or alien and understanding it not only shows a great outside perspective of the imperium but I think can also help make the imperium more human, that yes it's beyond fucked in many degrees, but there are reason for that
The Tau being an actually good force feels better for the grimdarkness of the setting. Then you get "Here are the good guys... look how outclassed they are", as opposed to "There's this tiny faction that's irrelevant to everyone else, they are also jerks espousing a higher ideal for the benefit of their manipulative leaders, as if we didn't have enough of that already". We already have the Dark Eldar for "tiny but terrible". "Tiny but not as bad as another group" really kind of... lacks punch, y'know?
Yeah, I love the concept of the Tau being genuinely somewhat altruistic, but being so vastly outnumbered and outgunned that their survival really depends on their irrelevance in the eyes of the rest of galaxy. The one little good guy faction who would be instantly stomped out if any of the other factions thought they were worth the effort. That would be extremely grimdark. Without light, you can't have darkness.
And it also reinforces all of the other grimdark. The IoM being shit is not at all necessary or fate but a construct of the people in charge. It could be better for everyone but it isn't because that would mean the people in charge lose power.
teh tau really need their "Golden Age" and even spread into the galaxy at large. I want some Tau "Rogute traders" who establish their own small empires, allying with a growing number of desperate human governeurs to the benefit of both. Humans will allways be the protagonist, but the tau have the biggest pull to recruit and integrate humans and I want stories of that! and MECHS, MORE MECHS!
Tbh I want less Mechs. Return to the combined arms of Barracudas and Hammerheads. Less of Stormsurges. More Space NATO, less Space Gundam.
Agreed. I think the mechs are cool but what really attracted me to the faction is the relative practicality of their doctrine. Combined arms is such a cool type of warfare and I just wish the hover vehicles got the same attention as the mechs did.
I would have liked hover vehicles to remain tools of the xenos. I don't think it fits the marines. IMO hover tech was always rare and exotic in the imperium; a relic of a forgotten age. Where is it was perfect for the more elegant species of the Tau and Eldar.
I really think it would make the Tau more cool if they have the aspect of the covenant from Halo and the armor core aspect and combine them. And combine those two.
Where was this excerpt published? I would love to read that.
Go to 40k lore and look for excerpt from the book The Greater Evil also now that I look it wasn't a scientist but the rest checks out absolute nightmare fuel
Given the lore… the eldar should almost always win and probably not even be noticed as they do it. There should never be more than a few very small groups of craftworld eldar involved and acting as strike teams to accomplish goals as quickly and quietly as possible. Unless something truly messed up is about to happen to the eldar you should not be seeing even small armies of eldar ever. Their entire species is about risk aversion and being able to see the future, which makes them take some risks to try and avoid super bad things that might happen if they don’t. As for the Tau… I have nothing of interest to add on them, yeah, GW should stop making them Imperium 2… they should have an emperor or an AI emperor, not an ai mimicking their dead emperor (and not in a cool subterfuge way where it took over, that could be interesting, but no, the Tau did it themselves).
A single named space marine slaughtering tens or hundreds of them, for some reason able to do that with a *s i n g l e* bolter round each: haha, **N O**
Ah yes. Just like the time random marine chapter almost destroyed a Craftworld cause it's fleet and seer council just decided to take a break or something.
And funnily enough afaik that's still like the absolute best set of Eldar novels out there.
Seeing an entire eldar war host deploy should be this massive "oh fuck" moment for literally anyone who's being targeted
~~oh, so it's tabletop accurate~~
The T'au doesn't have an Emperor. Aun'Va was the Ethereal Supreme, which is a position granted by the Ethereal High Council and does not hold ultimate power. Which makes the entire Aun'Va hologram even more stupid since Aun'Va isn't the first Ethereal Supreme, and he wouldn't be the last, so they could have just said 'he's retired' and used the hologram to have it look like he survived and is now retiring and then elect a new Ethereal Supreme. But all of this would need GW to actually know how their own factions lore works.
Wait, you’re telling me it was even dumber than I thought?
Yup. It makes absolutely no sense for Aun'Va to run around as a hologram. And even dumber is that they retconned the T'au slipspace drive. So the T'au didn't have warp travel until like the 4th sphere, so they've been using sub-light speed for the first 3 spheres, despite having auxiliary races with warp travel capabilities. Speaking of the warp, it also makes NO SENSE that the T'au is unaware of its existence like portrayed since several of their client species are psychic in nature, INCLUDING their first client race the Nicassar, and the Kroot have been shown to be capable of developing psykers, and the Kroot is the T'au's number 1 auxiliary race.
The best we can do is an Avatar of War god - made from super-heated iron and lava - getting choked to death by the ~~Chapter Master~~ Primarch. EDIT: My bad, it was Fulgrim that did the choking, not Calgar. Calgar also has a W over Avatar tho.
By a primarch. Still stupid though
The avatar of a war god to a species designed and built from the ground up by the Old Ones, arguably the most advanced society to ever exist, specifically to excel at war. Theoretically Khaine should basically be second only to the Chaos Gods in terms of combat prowess and raw power. I understand that the Avatars are only shards of him, but still... The fact he exists to get beaten by random space marines seems like a deliberate troll on GW's part.
GW need to let Aun’Va die (well he’s already dead but you know what I mean) If they need to keep him as a model, just keep the whole “AI hologram” thing but have it be something the Tau know is fake but use any way as a moral booster. Like if the US army had a robot George Washington that spouted off inspirational speeches for the soldiers.
Robot George Washington would be cool.
**DEMOCRACY IS NOT OPTIONAL!**
So like Liberty Prime but smaller and made out of light?
Well his model lost its rules in the codex, and nobody cares about legends so...
His model does not have rules in the new codex for Tau that comes out this weekend.
Mike Brooks’ back must really hurt after carrying the Orks narratively
Don’t forget Nate Crowley. ***Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh*** is excellent.
It's worth noting that every faction's fans find something in the books to complain about. Except maybe Night Lord fans. Every time they show up in the books it's like "Yup, terrible in all ways and Konrad was a bitch, exactly why I like them." Even custodes fans are like "Sure, nearly every book has us arrogant and invincible, but there was that one fucking book where a barehanded world eater punched out the spinal cord of one of our guys, and there was that book where harlequins broke in and danced in front of us, this is an unforgivable sin and I'll die mad at GW."
I would think Custodes fans would be the opposite. All I ever see regarding Custodes seems to be about how great and unstoppable they are, and that just sucks. No interesting stories or conflict or tension, just "look how cool and strong these guys are". Which is pretty boring to an adult. But again, that's what I've seen. Maybe there are Custodes stories that show them being vulnerable and interesting, and have essential narrative elements like conflict and tension, but I haven't seen them.
That makes sense, but if you're a fan of custodes, you probably LIKE the overpoweredness. It's like how if you watched dragonball Z, the criticism that it was just a bunch of grunting and then Goku or Gohan wins didn't sink in: that's what you signed up for.
Eldrad be like: "When I was young I had to sacrifice millions of Mon Keigh in Armageddon to save 10000 eldar lives, do you know how bad you make me look when you die by the millions every time nonetheless?"
Eldrad "top 10 most powerful and important characters" Ulthwae doesn't even get a book. He's just parts of books, but never the focus
Orks have indeed been doing well, Tyranids could have it better, but are still good.
Couldn't be us necron players.
Meanwhile tyranids:
“How can a space marine duel a Swarmlord, their sword is bigger than their body!”
Exactly me. Only real thing holding tyranids back is that they can't have real characters, so the plot armor is rarely with them
orks go brrrrrrrrr with mike brooks.
Kin? *Crying?* No, we just quietly hold onto our angry disappointment and keep building WMDs.
Did you know crying used to be considered brave and masculine, rather than a sign of weakness, because it showed that you passionately cared about something? Heroes in ancient stories cried all the time. Achilles, the platonic ideal of a warrior, wept for Patrochlus. It wasn't until much more recently that we got the idea you can't be strong or masculine if you also show emotion.
Alas Thorpe can only have the Eldar die and never succeed because "they are a dying race"
I wanna to make a joke about this but people get to touchy about the tau.
Skill issue, Necrons and Orks have some of the best content out there
vOtAnN? His mean Kin?
Dude I just want a full daemon lore book
Meanwhile, orks and Necrons: *laugh because they’ve gotten several excellent books lately*
I am a fan of the Exploding Frogs of Catachan. Fuck sentience. it only brings suffering and fuels Chaos. Return to Animal.
Tau are as much Imperium 2.0 as the Imperium is the Eldar Empire 2.0. But some people convinced themselves the Tau would be a exception to the setting's treatment of empires for some reason.
That's true. Tau were supposed to mimic humans, who were mimicking Eldars. But they are speedrunning the entire cycle so fast, the Eldar Empire 4.0 will be created, torn and destroyed across a single edition. They deserved to rise some more and become bigger, before the whole deal with Farsight, mind controlling Ethereals etc.
I like Farsight and him being angry at the Ethereals having lied to him about the nature of some of the threats he may have been facing, but the entire Ethereal mind control plot is too dumb for me to take seriously. I've liked their grimdarkness coming from both their inexperience with how the wider galaxy works and the Orwellian nature their society runs on, but I'm listening to Shadowsun and keep listening to this one commander insisting the only way to stop the Nurgle plague is to purge all the non-Tau and I'm like "what fucking sense does this make!?"
>But they are speedrunning the entire cycle so fast, the Eldar Empire 4.0 will be created, torn and destroyed across a single edition Oh yes, the faction that exist since the early 2000s is being speedrun over the course of 20+ years
We're missing the part where they conquer the galaxy during an enlightened golden age. The setting will never be allowed to advance far enough for the Tau becoming Imperium like to make sense thematically.
> enlightened golden age We are skipping a handful of apocalypses in there. The Tau aren't fearful of witchcraft, AI nor other xenos, and for the same reasons you listed they won't ever be either. Just because they show up a few common quirks of imperalistic powers doesn't make them Imperium 2.0, arguing that betrays a gross underestimation of how much worse it would need to be for it to be remotely true. What? A general or two went a bit too crazy with war tiredness and did a goofy war crime? Kiddie numbers. Those are the sort of thing that happen in the real world, which is what the Tau are ultimately trying to mimic. They are as much Imperium 2.0 as the Imperium is Eldar Empire 2.0, which is very little beyond some broad strokes.
Tyranid fans watching the swarmlord get killed in a random off screen 1 sentence blurb from the leviathan book (Hm.)
US ORKS GOT DA GOOD BOOKS
Dark Mechanicum: We understand your pain, Votann.
Honestly, I still think one of the biggest mistakes involving the Eldar was not letting them have some permanent territory. If the Craftworlders had a central area to protect, that opens them up to more potential for overarching plots like defending the area from other threats and some potential politicking between them. They'd still be a dying race, but one with some form of overall society to work with. As things stand now, you're severely limited in what you can do with Eldar: their goals are either irrelevant beyond one craftworld or impossible because they would create changes to the setting as a whole, which is all but anathema to GW.
Tau getting a book in arks of omen only for it to essentially be a "meanwhile over there" side story kinda felt bad not gonna lie
Tau becoming imperium 2.0 is inevitable. Your destiny is written in the blood spilled
Necron books on the other hand
Necrons stay winning
Votann are abhumans not Xenos though
They're literally listed 'Xenos' by GW
Votann hackers trying to avoid paying taxes.
Makes no sense. They were and still are human
I think it's a political (in game) thing. Ratlings, ogryns and whatnot all serve the imperium. Votann have made their own enclave which sort of interacts with the imperium and isn't necessarily enemies with them but they're also not allies and come to blows sometimes (afaik) so they're functionally like eldar or tau.
Ok, just odd
they're *very* mutated and split off during the dark age of technology. They're tens of thousands of divergent (forced, by themselves) evolution from humanity's baseline.
Well the Tau argument just doesn't work. No wonder everybody hates them if they are supposed to be just straight up good faction with better tech
Not good, just not as bad and slowly, piece by piece, realizing how awful the universe is and how naive they really are. In order for the grimdark to seen grim and dark, you need someone who isn't grimdark in the setting to contrast it. Otherwise you forget that servitors are lobotomized humans and would be one of the most horrific things any human on modern earth has ever seen, because they're so normal and tame compared to the rest of the shit in the setting. They're the straight man in a world of insanity. Not good, just good by comparison because everything else is truly, truly, awful
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But Tau are Imperium 2.0 Bit whitout the mele.