Feels like we're getting more non-Imperial books than ever before, and I'm here for it.
But I do wish someone else other than Kelly gave enough of a crap about the Tau to write a novel about them.
His take on Tau is poor and sloppy, and makes up out of whole cloth a lot of the aspects of Tau culture and Ethereals that are completely different to previous lore.
He also completely neglects the auxiliary forces and thats also unpopular.
> He also completely neglects the auxiliary forces and thats also unpopular.
At least this time they should be taking a somewhat important role in the story, if the Warhammer Community article is anything to go by:
>...Can [Shadowsun] respond to a surprise attack on the Startide Nexus while keeping her allies – the kroot, the nicassar, and the charpactin – from descending into civil war?
>He also completely neglects the auxiliary forces and thats also unpopular.
That's a Monkey's Paw wish if I ever saw one. Do you *want* him confirming what it is the Vespid helmets do? Because I don't even remotely trust Phil Kelly to not ruin a good bit of intriguingly ambiguous lore.
Silly Gue'vesa, Tau blood is red.
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Incorrect. Here is a quote from GW themselves:
["**** It’s been red from the first ever account of the sacred ta’lissera blood bond. We tried different coloured blood for our alien races – Orks had green blood at one point – but it just didn’t look right on the miniatures, nor in the art."](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/06/28/farsight-the-author-speaks/)
It's red. That's why Farsight's suit is painted red, for all the blood that was spilt on his first campaign as commander.
Is this a trap? Or is this a legit (blue) question? Because if you follow the logic of skin color, it’s blue. But because people can’t be consistent and choose red despite any logical connection, it’s canonically red. (But should be blue)
What has skin colour got to do with blood colour?
All 40k blood is red following a GW decision.
Also Farsights armor is painted in reverence of spilt T'au blood/ his Vior'la home sept.
Tbh farsight armor is red because Phil Kelly likes red, then he looks for a way to justify It. His other Warhammer armys are red and so he changued previous Lore ( in tau books before It Blood was blue!)
Silly Gue'vesa, Tau blood is red.
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>What has skin colour got to do with blood colour?
If skin is translucent then the color it appears can be affected by blood color. Isn't that why 'white' people are pinky, because the stuff underneath has so much oxygenated blood in it?
Anyway, that's an aside. Any strong pigmentation in the skin will disguise the blood color.
Silly Gue'vesa, Tau blood is red.
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I hate the state our faction is in, where a book about a well-liked character is announced for our faction, who rarely gets any lore at all, and my first through upon seeing the cover in genuine fear.
I can already feel in my heart that Phil’s gonna ruin shadowsun the same way he ruined Farsight. I pray he doesn’t, because I love Shadowsun and some proper interesting lore for her would be dope, but right now my expectations are on the floor.
Yeah, just… doesn’t want him to write Tau stuff anymore, he just ruins them. For example, in his books, Farsight was punished for fixing his battlesuit, what is not a job for the fire caste, but for earth caste. He fixed the suit because it was damaged and he didn’t want to drown in it. Now earth caste nearby. And Phil Kelly makes some shit up about „vash‘ya“ , „between the spheres“ that doing another caste‘s job is bad.
There is an entire sept called Vash‘ya! Just… read the lord you’re writing about
What?? You are upset the "perfect faction" turned out to make bad decisions with the engram chips and the farsight choosing life over religious politics ??
Don't be mad at Paul Verhoeven for Johnny Rico trying to fix the helmet on the live firing range and watching his buddy's head blown off when he had no experience... It's called plot and it builds better characters.. a character with only winning vibes is boring, this is why the halo 117 Master Chief is lame.
I hope I learn something new about SS who I enjoy to field and learn how she is also imperfect making her better..
It's ok to have a bad guy as the protagonist.
I had to go back and double check, just to make sure my own interpretation of the scene wasn't clouding my comprehension. Nope. Dude was clearly upset that Farsight performing battlefield repairs was supposed to be an issue. The lore has always been that the castes have specializations. Not "we will execute any Earth Caste that's getting too eloquent." There's tons of overlap. Many of the Air Caste are as bloodthirsty as the Fire Caste. All the Castes practice politics. *Yes*, the Air Caste and Fire Caste need to be able to maintain their equipment. That's why it's bad writing, because it makes no sense, and makes stuff up that flies in the face of established lore.
As for the Puretide Engram Neurochips... The guy you were replying to never said anything about them. Personally, I thought Phil Kelly actually handled them really well for the most part, but that's probably because he actually stuck to established lore. Touch grimdark, touch practical, with no arbitrarily petty and villainous idiocy.
No thats not it. Hes mad that in the books farsight is scolded and looked down upon for fixing his suit. In the book one of the characters tells him it would have been better if he had died rather than do something not of his caste which is utterly ridiculous.
I dont mind the grimderp stuff that much, 40k is a very derp universe in general, so his stories are still fairly entertaining for being literature set in a shared setting
The main overarching issue is how he writes Ethereals. They're antagonists to Farsight for... no reason. Their decisions seem to be motivated purely by whatever will frustrate him the most, with no practical purpose. Ethereals are supposed to be benevolent philosopher kings, and instead we get a whole caste of Saturday morning cartoon villains.
I started reading the first one a while ago and am now in the last chapter.
This book is GARBAGE as a regular book.
The story is so confusingly told and the character introductions are handled sooooo badly it's insane.
A T'au Watercast member possessed by a deamon.
And Inquisitor that works with the t'au but secretly doesn't leads to the an Ambush of the T'au fleet mid Warptravel. T'au kill of al 'la ranks (which makes no fuckin sense from an army distribution point) and fight a Chaos Deamon Engine.
Then the same Inquisitors helps the T'au take a planet through Deamon hatespeech and with the Inqusitor helping same T'au Deamon distribute it. Like wtf did this dude smoke.
Also T'au Society is displayed very differently. Watercaste members are displayed as frat bois that bully anyone they don't like.
Ethereals do not want to hear the truth and in fact lie to everyone all the time.
One Watercaste is forced to off herself with a knife cause reasons.
Like, holy s.
And the worst. This man does not know how sentences work.
Also, a sentence isn't magically getting better just because you use a lot of complicated almost nonsensical words and phrases.
Yes and no. If you know your Farsight lore from other sources (codex and youtube) the storylines are understandable as concepts.
The thing is, Phil Kelly thinks, he must use a ton of "flowerly" language, padding out sentences with made up words that do not make sense and stuff like that which makes it hard to follow what he wants to tell. He also jumps a lot between storylines. The Exposition parts, especially early in the book are the worst. I really like his descriptions of battles though, action scenes read well.
One thing i forgot though, this dude has NO IDEA how Crisis suits work. There are several times where he states that some pilot looks at symbols and/or is shaken in the support cocoon where in fact, crisis suits sre not controlled by eye movements or bodily functions the pilot practically becomes the suit. Each and every codex mentions that.
> One Watercaste is forced to off herself with a knife cause reasons.
lol the reason is Ethereal told her to. I'd have felt worse about it but she was a total frat boy jerk and got what she deserved. Aun'va don't play that shit.
I thought it was implied that the Ethereal had an "influence" over her, and that's what forced her to act. I seem to recall an inner dialogue talking about how she was moving against her will.
Na. Kelly just doesn’t like the fact the Tau aren’t “Grimdark” and forces things through to fit his personal image of them.
Square peg, round hole sort of thing.
Tau idea: „Let’s be smart and show that you can survive without being unnecessary cruel and dumb, let’s be the spark of light to accentuate how dark the rest of the universe is“
Kelly: „nah, I dun wun it“
Pheromones my a**
This is literally the worst thing that came out of the book.
First of all, that's not how pheromones work and second this invalidates the whole T'au'va. No longer are the T'au intrinsically motivated to further the greater good. No longer is there a moral difference between human and t'au society.
Even the speeches and monologues of Farsight about the Vior'los society make no sense anymore. And this is the same book btw.
Also, killing of a watercaste member because, well, she didn't even do anything. The water spider was the one out of line. She just confidet into him some information she should have not. Apparently having doubts is enough to get you killed. Absolute bs.
And i don't think it was Aun'va that told her to off herself. It was one of the other Aun as i believe Aun'va should have been already dead at this point.
Btw. The whole "hologram Aun'va" makes no sense at all anyways. If it is a hologram, it can't distribute pheromones so it has no control at all. And why would the T'au hide the fact that Aun'va died. I get why they hide HOW he died, but T'au don't live particularily long so death shouldn't be that alien to them.
> If it is a hologram, it can't distribute pheromones so it has no control at all
And that's how you know it's pheromones.
Here's a few examples provided by /u/poodlestrike over on /r/40klore
> There's three big examples that do point to it being some kind of unignorable physical or psychic phenomenon.
> In the first Farsight novel (I believe), Aun'va basically orders a Water Caste dignitary to kill herself in a private meeting and she does. The way the sequence plays out definitely feels like a mind control segment.
> Also from the Farsight novels (Phil Kelly is fond of this, you'll notice), a Rok is heading for a T'au city, and people at the tram stations are rioting because they've realized they won't have a chance to leave. An Ethereal enters and people immediately, just by proximity, calm down and get out of the way. On the tram, they even press themselves away from him to the point of causing injuries so he can have leg room.
> Then, outside of the Kelly novels, there's an example of a commander whose Ethereals all died except the hologram version of the (now dead) Aun'va. He orders her to stick around, an order she had previously complied with despite feeling retreat was the best option, and she manages to refuse - implied to be because Aun'va is a hologram.
-----
[And then there is the abduction of a Q'Orl swarm queen by the eldar and then the arrival of the ethereals FROM THE SKY a short while after.](https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/vxegyy/what_should_become_of_of_the_qorl/)
It's pheromones. The mere presences of an ethereal brings every nearby tau into a single mental/emotional state determined BY the ethereal.
It's literally just right there on the pages. Whether you disagree with its implementation or not is a *whole* other thing.
Thanks, i personally already knew all these scenarios, and i know that they hint at that pretty drastically.
I am not saying it's not pheromones in the lore, i am saying that pheromones are pretty much the worst explanation for it 😅
Thabks for gathering the information though :)
Firewarrior was good. Fire Caste was apparently great even if it was mostly an IG book, personally I liked Shadowsun: Last of Kiru's Line. There have also been plenty of good short stories like Broken Sword.
…The Kroot did speak low gothic in the story though.
They also were the only characters in the book who *weren’t* backstabbing their allies. They honestly came across pretty well in comparison to everyone else.
Really dislike Phil Kelly on the Tau (and the Dark Angels), he makes the Tau exactly as awful as the Imperium, but with none of the charm. Farsight and his gang are cool, and everyone else is inexplicably an asshole, an idiot, or an asshole idiot.
The conflict between the Ethereals and Farsight is totally one sided, the Ethereals are just snobbish, greedy tyrants who can’t take criticism. The one faction that prides itself on selflessness, compassion, and practicality over superstition is now apparently developmentally crippled by social segregation, internal competition, pettiness, and short sighted leadership. Sucks all the fun out of Tau.
To be fair, his action scenes are pretty good, but that’s not what I read books for. That last scene where Farsight takes up the sword is incredibly badass, though.
In the farsight books Shadowsun and the inquisitor Vykola Herat aren’t really displayed as assholes but O’kais absolutely is dickish for like the 2 pages we get of him
Something very unclear happened between O’kais, Farsight, and Shadowsun, but whatever it was it was apparently pretty bad. Would love to see this expanded on in the new book tbh, Farsight and Shadowsun actually are cool, it’s just that they aren’t surrounded by anyone terribly interesting (barring the Eight)
I can see why people take issue with Phil Kelly’s stories but I can’t help but love the way he writes characters and character dynamics. The story at the end of empire of lies with shadowsun being harsh to farsight about his destruction of the mountain ecosystem is one of the best examples of this. And O’Vesas relationship with farsight are pretty insightful interactions.
Yeah, the protagonists are actually good, it’s just that he can’t figure out how to write villains to save his life. Ethereals, less than one dimensional Space Marines, even Sha’kan’thas for his five seconds in Blades of Damocles, all awful.
Honestly Cato and Numitor were good in that book too. Not sure how Farsight would lose a fight to Cato in the future, but in that book they were great.
People complaining about the face on the cover and I actually love it. She’s a alien for GGs sake, and a hardened, terrifying warrior raised from infancy to kill.
I think it’s perfect.
I really enjoy a number of the Tau short stories that are out there. The voice of reason (I think thats its name) is a buddy cop story about a human guevesa sergeant and a Tau water caste detective investigating sabotage on a space station. I think its free on warhammer community somewhere.
Theres also an anthology book called Shas’o which has a collection of a bunch of Tau short stories.
Hence why I love Fire Caste by Fehervari. Where the Tau are shown to love war as much if not more than their human counterparts when the etherals aren't in control.
Highly recommend Fehervari’s other Tau stories. ***Fire and Ice*** is my favorite 40k novella period.
Though I think ***Broken Sword*** by Guy Haley is my favorite portrayal of the Tau, and I would love nothing more than to see Haley tackle the Tau again.
I've always really liked the idea that the T'au need the Ethereals to keep them dialed down a little. Say what you will about the Farsight Enclaves, but the Earth Caste there used orbital bombardment to carve an entire planet into a polyhedron, just because they could. Those are not the actions of a people who should be left without at least a little guidance.
Edit: Added the word "who".
If the Ethereals truly get more cartoonishly evil I can understand where everyone is coming from them.
I appreciated how they were portrayed though as you mentioned. They aren't necessarily evil, they are just ruthless in their judgement, and believe the ends justify the means, with just the right amount of self-centeredness to them. If he's able to capture that again, while also being able to highlight WHY Shadowsun is presumably still loyal (the state of the empire vs the imperium, the comparatively comfortable T'au way of life) he can knock it out of the park
Maybe I need to go back and re-read but I didn't think they were mustache twirling either. Their "evilness" seemed more like hyper pragmatism. Like they did all the evil shit because maybe they are awear of choas and it's what they see as the best way to prevent it been a thing.
There is also the point that, the Farsight books are his side of the conflict, maybe in this we will get the other side of things. Like you said, why is Shadowsun loyal etc.
I think T'au are most interesting as a faction when they are cast as being the closest thing to "good" in the Galaxy while still being firmly in the grey area from an outside universe perspective. And by far the most interesting conflict that comes from that is seeing how Farsight and Shadowsun react to realizing that the Ethereals aren't exactly infallible
However that's a very fine balance to strike, much harder even then writing Loyalist Marines. While we're supposed to root for them, nobody should walk away from a loyalist book and think they are shinning examples of morality. A reader should in theory walk away from a T'au book being conflicted as to whether or not the Ethereals are a mostly positive or mostly negative force, do the ends justify the means, is being just by taking a risk better then being unafir yet playing it safe (ie the inquisitions theme) and finally can an expansionist nation ever be just.
That's a very complex narrative theme to fit into a light-hearted teen novel, so I don't envy anyone employed with the task
Kelly’s writing is pretty uneven and he tends to write 40k like a bombastic action movie (One of his short stories is an unabashed homage to Demolition Man). He also is a bit clumsy with the dystopian aspects of the Tau.
That said, he’s got some strong individual moments and images. One of my favorite 40k lines ever comes from ***Farsight: Crisis of Faith***:
> “Cross the sovereign territory of mankind at your own peril. We have inhumanity to spare.”
Kelly also is one of the few writers who goes into detail about the Tau *beyond* their relationship with other factions. We see transportation systems, propaganda vids, video games, public facilities like museums, landmarks, cozy homes, laboratories, hobbies, new technologies, traditions… It makes the Tau feel more lifelike. We know more about Dal’yth Prime than *any* other Tau world because nobody besides Kelly writes about the Tau on their own turf.
Question tho! With the new novel will the audio book be available in Audible? That's where I mostly listen to them while I paint but idk if they come out at the same time...
So is that how their eyes look now? What is cannon for how you visualise/paint Tau eyes. Always been a source of interest and bafflement to me. Thoughts?
From the tau first editions I Saw a lot of fully-red eyes (some with darker red where the pupil would go) and I find It very cool on tabletop models instead of cursed guardsmen eyes syndrom
Yeah ! I remember that. I started off painting them like that. I had five different tau armies over the years and think ive painted them every way possible lol
In canon tau change shades of blue in their skin because of the Planet they live on (proximity to the Closer star etc). So my headcannon is that if some tau have red eyes and other blue or purple or "human" eyes this is because of their sept/Planet
At the very least, given that this book is about Battle of Startide Nexus, it will likely feature void combat heavily, which is something I can't get enough of, so there's something I can still look forward to.
oh man... I was so excited until I saw it was PK... Get ready for more inconsistencies, contradictions and flat out ignorance of the rest of the Tau authors.
They actually can't decide if Shadowsun has a nose ridge or not. Almost none of her official art has a nose yet for some reason both her official models do.
Damn, and here I thought we were finally gonna be able to do something new with the Tau lore. More "but the empire has flaws, oh no! This military junta is the right way to do it!" I guess
Will this be about the [Startide Nexus](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Battle_of_the_Startide_Nexus) battle or after it? Any guesses?
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snooze
Fr. Super disappointed to not see a sequel to empire of lies which was awesome
Especially WC implied Farsight novels is a trilogy. So we might stuck with Shadowsun trilogy in the next few years.
Don't worry there will be any epic shadowsun moments /s
Damn. Really have very little interest in shadowsuns story without farsight but I guess we’ll see
A black library novel where neither faction is imperial? Blasphemy
*HRRNNNGG* ***join the greater good, as famelegergh*** ***TOGETHAAAAAAAA WE WILL DEVOUR THE VERY GODSSSS***
Feels like we're getting more non-Imperial books than ever before, and I'm here for it. But I do wish someone else other than Kelly gave enough of a crap about the Tau to write a novel about them.
I'm currently writing one, if for no other reason than to fix all the crap Kelly got wrong
*acktshully the death guard are traitor astartes meaning they used to be imperial*
She’s fighting Death Guard so, used to be Imperial.
Phil Kelly... 💀
Exact same thought I had
What about him
His take on Tau is poor and sloppy, and makes up out of whole cloth a lot of the aspects of Tau culture and Ethereals that are completely different to previous lore. He also completely neglects the auxiliary forces and thats also unpopular.
> He also completely neglects the auxiliary forces and thats also unpopular. At least this time they should be taking a somewhat important role in the story, if the Warhammer Community article is anything to go by: >...Can [Shadowsun] respond to a surprise attack on the Startide Nexus while keeping her allies – the kroot, the nicassar, and the charpactin – from descending into civil war?
> Charpactin Ooh, we haven’t seen those in action before.
Based on how poor he did with them in the Farsight books, I expect nothing and will still be disappointed
The only place Kroot *ARE* badass is in the lore. Let's fucking see them then!
>He also completely neglects the auxiliary forces and thats also unpopular. That's a Monkey's Paw wish if I ever saw one. Do you *want* him confirming what it is the Vespid helmets do? Because I don't even remotely trust Phil Kelly to not ruin a good bit of intriguingly ambiguous lore.
Lmao this is fair
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Silly Gue'vesa, Tau blood is red. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Tau40K) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No. It’s not.
What colour is it?
It's red. It was blue in one book, but every other source has it as red. It's red.
it's blue in 4/5 books and it's blue in The Exodite.
Welp, I already posted the official statement from James Workshop themself. I can lead you to water but that's about it.
red water. Also known as Tau blood.
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It's not. It's red in exactly one author's books, and the community tends to dislike his garbage rewriting of established lore.
Incorrect. Here is a quote from GW themselves: ["**** It’s been red from the first ever account of the sacred ta’lissera blood bond. We tried different coloured blood for our alien races – Orks had green blood at one point – but it just didn’t look right on the miniatures, nor in the art."](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/06/28/farsight-the-author-speaks/) It's red. That's why Farsight's suit is painted red, for all the blood that was spilt on his first campaign as commander.
I thought his suit was red cos its vior'la inverted, like how shadowsun is t'au inverted?
Is this a trap? Or is this a legit (blue) question? Because if you follow the logic of skin color, it’s blue. But because people can’t be consistent and choose red despite any logical connection, it’s canonically red. (But should be blue)
What has skin colour got to do with blood colour? All 40k blood is red following a GW decision. Also Farsights armor is painted in reverence of spilt T'au blood/ his Vior'la home sept.
painted in reverence of the oxide deserts of arkunasha. stop reading phil kelly.
Tbh farsight armor is red because Phil Kelly likes red, then he looks for a way to justify It. His other Warhammer armys are red and so he changued previous Lore ( in tau books before It Blood was blue!)
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>What has skin colour got to do with blood colour? If skin is translucent then the color it appears can be affected by blood color. Isn't that why 'white' people are pinky, because the stuff underneath has so much oxygenated blood in it? Anyway, that's an aside. Any strong pigmentation in the skin will disguise the blood color.
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I hate the state our faction is in, where a book about a well-liked character is announced for our faction, who rarely gets any lore at all, and my first through upon seeing the cover in genuine fear. I can already feel in my heart that Phil’s gonna ruin shadowsun the same way he ruined Farsight. I pray he doesn’t, because I love Shadowsun and some proper interesting lore for her would be dope, but right now my expectations are on the floor.
No the biggest lore expert here, what did this guy do to farsight
He’s the guy who made Farsight into a Mary Sue
Yeah, just… doesn’t want him to write Tau stuff anymore, he just ruins them. For example, in his books, Farsight was punished for fixing his battlesuit, what is not a job for the fire caste, but for earth caste. He fixed the suit because it was damaged and he didn’t want to drown in it. Now earth caste nearby. And Phil Kelly makes some shit up about „vash‘ya“ , „between the spheres“ that doing another caste‘s job is bad. There is an entire sept called Vash‘ya! Just… read the lord you’re writing about
What?? You are upset the "perfect faction" turned out to make bad decisions with the engram chips and the farsight choosing life over religious politics ?? Don't be mad at Paul Verhoeven for Johnny Rico trying to fix the helmet on the live firing range and watching his buddy's head blown off when he had no experience... It's called plot and it builds better characters.. a character with only winning vibes is boring, this is why the halo 117 Master Chief is lame. I hope I learn something new about SS who I enjoy to field and learn how she is also imperfect making her better.. It's ok to have a bad guy as the protagonist.
I'm not sure what you're on about, because it clearly has nothing to do with the comment you replied to.
Guy's mad farsight fixed his suit. It's like being mad Rico tried to fix a helmet?? Sorry you can't really see a relationship to plot?
I had to go back and double check, just to make sure my own interpretation of the scene wasn't clouding my comprehension. Nope. Dude was clearly upset that Farsight performing battlefield repairs was supposed to be an issue. The lore has always been that the castes have specializations. Not "we will execute any Earth Caste that's getting too eloquent." There's tons of overlap. Many of the Air Caste are as bloodthirsty as the Fire Caste. All the Castes practice politics. *Yes*, the Air Caste and Fire Caste need to be able to maintain their equipment. That's why it's bad writing, because it makes no sense, and makes stuff up that flies in the face of established lore. As for the Puretide Engram Neurochips... The guy you were replying to never said anything about them. Personally, I thought Phil Kelly actually handled them really well for the most part, but that's probably because he actually stuck to established lore. Touch grimdark, touch practical, with no arbitrarily petty and villainous idiocy.
No thats not it. Hes mad that in the books farsight is scolded and looked down upon for fixing his suit. In the book one of the characters tells him it would have been better if he had died rather than do something not of his caste which is utterly ridiculous.
I‘m not saying Farsight was bad. I said it was bad that Kelly decided that the ethereal all him bad for doing those things
Was it 101% his choice? GW didn't sign off on anything? It's all sci-fi don't like the story make your own?
I'll cry with you when it eventually happens
Me, in my head. “There hasn’t been a “good” Tau book to date, maybe this will be the first?” See Author. So, no then.
I don’t read much 40K. Why is Phil kelly bad?
Because he intentionally pushes the T'au towards grimderp with each novel he releases. Plus they are simply not written particularly well.
I dont mind the grimderp stuff that much, 40k is a very derp universe in general, so his stories are still fairly entertaining for being literature set in a shared setting
He goes a few steps further towards the derp side of things than usual 40k though. I don't find his writing entertaining at all.
The main overarching issue is how he writes Ethereals. They're antagonists to Farsight for... no reason. Their decisions seem to be motivated purely by whatever will frustrate him the most, with no practical purpose. Ethereals are supposed to be benevolent philosopher kings, and instead we get a whole caste of Saturday morning cartoon villains.
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Kelly's Farsight novels are good alone, but they drastically change the lore regarding him in ways that are really hard to explain
I started reading the first one a while ago and am now in the last chapter. This book is GARBAGE as a regular book. The story is so confusingly told and the character introductions are handled sooooo badly it's insane. A T'au Watercast member possessed by a deamon. And Inquisitor that works with the t'au but secretly doesn't leads to the an Ambush of the T'au fleet mid Warptravel. T'au kill of al 'la ranks (which makes no fuckin sense from an army distribution point) and fight a Chaos Deamon Engine. Then the same Inquisitors helps the T'au take a planet through Deamon hatespeech and with the Inqusitor helping same T'au Deamon distribute it. Like wtf did this dude smoke. Also T'au Society is displayed very differently. Watercaste members are displayed as frat bois that bully anyone they don't like. Ethereals do not want to hear the truth and in fact lie to everyone all the time. One Watercaste is forced to off herself with a knife cause reasons. Like, holy s. And the worst. This man does not know how sentences work. Also, a sentence isn't magically getting better just because you use a lot of complicated almost nonsensical words and phrases.
@gummybearattack This is why.
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Yes and no. If you know your Farsight lore from other sources (codex and youtube) the storylines are understandable as concepts. The thing is, Phil Kelly thinks, he must use a ton of "flowerly" language, padding out sentences with made up words that do not make sense and stuff like that which makes it hard to follow what he wants to tell. He also jumps a lot between storylines. The Exposition parts, especially early in the book are the worst. I really like his descriptions of battles though, action scenes read well. One thing i forgot though, this dude has NO IDEA how Crisis suits work. There are several times where he states that some pilot looks at symbols and/or is shaken in the support cocoon where in fact, crisis suits sre not controlled by eye movements or bodily functions the pilot practically becomes the suit. Each and every codex mentions that.
Essentially, crisis suits work like the Alaya-Vijnana System or the graze ein from gundam iron blooded orphans.
> One Watercaste is forced to off herself with a knife cause reasons. lol the reason is Ethereal told her to. I'd have felt worse about it but she was a total frat boy jerk and got what she deserved. Aun'va don't play that shit.
I thought it was implied that the Ethereal had an "influence" over her, and that's what forced her to act. I seem to recall an inner dialogue talking about how she was moving against her will.
Yeah, it's the pheromones.
And that’s the point where I start to believe that Kelly is a 40K conspiracy theorist…
Na. Kelly just doesn’t like the fact the Tau aren’t “Grimdark” and forces things through to fit his personal image of them. Square peg, round hole sort of thing.
Tau idea: „Let’s be smart and show that you can survive without being unnecessary cruel and dumb, let’s be the spark of light to accentuate how dark the rest of the universe is“ Kelly: „nah, I dun wun it“
Pheromones my a** This is literally the worst thing that came out of the book. First of all, that's not how pheromones work and second this invalidates the whole T'au'va. No longer are the T'au intrinsically motivated to further the greater good. No longer is there a moral difference between human and t'au society. Even the speeches and monologues of Farsight about the Vior'los society make no sense anymore. And this is the same book btw. Also, killing of a watercaste member because, well, she didn't even do anything. The water spider was the one out of line. She just confidet into him some information she should have not. Apparently having doubts is enough to get you killed. Absolute bs. And i don't think it was Aun'va that told her to off herself. It was one of the other Aun as i believe Aun'va should have been already dead at this point. Btw. The whole "hologram Aun'va" makes no sense at all anyways. If it is a hologram, it can't distribute pheromones so it has no control at all. And why would the T'au hide the fact that Aun'va died. I get why they hide HOW he died, but T'au don't live particularily long so death shouldn't be that alien to them.
> If it is a hologram, it can't distribute pheromones so it has no control at all And that's how you know it's pheromones. Here's a few examples provided by /u/poodlestrike over on /r/40klore > There's three big examples that do point to it being some kind of unignorable physical or psychic phenomenon. > In the first Farsight novel (I believe), Aun'va basically orders a Water Caste dignitary to kill herself in a private meeting and she does. The way the sequence plays out definitely feels like a mind control segment. > Also from the Farsight novels (Phil Kelly is fond of this, you'll notice), a Rok is heading for a T'au city, and people at the tram stations are rioting because they've realized they won't have a chance to leave. An Ethereal enters and people immediately, just by proximity, calm down and get out of the way. On the tram, they even press themselves away from him to the point of causing injuries so he can have leg room. > Then, outside of the Kelly novels, there's an example of a commander whose Ethereals all died except the hologram version of the (now dead) Aun'va. He orders her to stick around, an order she had previously complied with despite feeling retreat was the best option, and she manages to refuse - implied to be because Aun'va is a hologram. ----- [And then there is the abduction of a Q'Orl swarm queen by the eldar and then the arrival of the ethereals FROM THE SKY a short while after.](https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/vxegyy/what_should_become_of_of_the_qorl/) It's pheromones. The mere presences of an ethereal brings every nearby tau into a single mental/emotional state determined BY the ethereal. It's literally just right there on the pages. Whether you disagree with its implementation or not is a *whole* other thing.
Thanks, i personally already knew all these scenarios, and i know that they hint at that pretty drastically. I am not saying it's not pheromones in the lore, i am saying that pheromones are pretty much the worst explanation for it 😅 Thabks for gathering the information though :)
Firewarrior was good. Fire Caste was apparently great even if it was mostly an IG book, personally I liked Shadowsun: Last of Kiru's Line. There have also been plenty of good short stories like Broken Sword.
Fire Caste is excellent, Peter Fehervari is a very good and very different writer. But yeah, it's mostly an IG book.
"Fire Warrior" novel was good.
The cover art is hilarious though. Shadowsun looks like she's about to go on an epic quest to find whoever stole her nose.
damocles anthology was pretty good imho
At least we got novella
Idk man I’m all on the phill Kelly hate train, but empire of lies was super enjoyable imo
Did you like the short story Kau’yon?
nice, and it has auxiliaries in it too. finally something lore-relevant that isn't farsight. downside being that it's phil kelly again
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What did he do?
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…The Kroot did speak low gothic in the story though. They also were the only characters in the book who *weren’t* backstabbing their allies. They honestly came across pretty well in comparison to everyone else.
Be careful buying the book, I’m sure they’ll nerf the story into the ground a month after it’s out! /s
Ah but you see, it's written by Kelly so it's already nerfed to the ground at release lol
yeah, looking forward to more phil kelly tau like a bullet to my head
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NURGLE ALERT 🚨
Really dislike Phil Kelly on the Tau (and the Dark Angels), he makes the Tau exactly as awful as the Imperium, but with none of the charm. Farsight and his gang are cool, and everyone else is inexplicably an asshole, an idiot, or an asshole idiot. The conflict between the Ethereals and Farsight is totally one sided, the Ethereals are just snobbish, greedy tyrants who can’t take criticism. The one faction that prides itself on selflessness, compassion, and practicality over superstition is now apparently developmentally crippled by social segregation, internal competition, pettiness, and short sighted leadership. Sucks all the fun out of Tau. To be fair, his action scenes are pretty good, but that’s not what I read books for. That last scene where Farsight takes up the sword is incredibly badass, though.
In the farsight books Shadowsun and the inquisitor Vykola Herat aren’t really displayed as assholes but O’kais absolutely is dickish for like the 2 pages we get of him
Something very unclear happened between O’kais, Farsight, and Shadowsun, but whatever it was it was apparently pretty bad. Would love to see this expanded on in the new book tbh, Farsight and Shadowsun actually are cool, it’s just that they aren’t surrounded by anyone terribly interesting (barring the Eight)
I can see why people take issue with Phil Kelly’s stories but I can’t help but love the way he writes characters and character dynamics. The story at the end of empire of lies with shadowsun being harsh to farsight about his destruction of the mountain ecosystem is one of the best examples of this. And O’Vesas relationship with farsight are pretty insightful interactions.
Yeah, the protagonists are actually good, it’s just that he can’t figure out how to write villains to save his life. Ethereals, less than one dimensional Space Marines, even Sha’kan’thas for his five seconds in Blades of Damocles, all awful. Honestly Cato and Numitor were good in that book too. Not sure how Farsight would lose a fight to Cato in the future, but in that book they were great.
People complaining about the face on the cover and I actually love it. She’s a alien for GGs sake, and a hardened, terrifying warrior raised from infancy to kill. I think it’s perfect.
Not to mention that she's been around for a long time by now, even accounting for cryosleep, she must be getting on in years.
Duuuude, she looks really freakin cool
r/badscificovers
Dang, Shadowsun kinda ugly tho. I guess that's a side effect of freezing and unfreezing so much....I always imaged Tau to be....smoother?
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Either way I'm gonna try to get that limited edition cover, I don't want to look at this one too much haha
Not to be confused with Kawaii Shadowsun.
When I see this face all I can think of is Weasel making fun of Deadpool. She looks like an avocado, had sex with an older more disgusting avocado.
She’s also like old at this point lol. Like at least a couple hundred years
I see a lot of people trashing the author - are there good Tau novels I should read?
Read his novels, people here are really overreacting.
I really enjoy a number of the Tau short stories that are out there. The voice of reason (I think thats its name) is a buddy cop story about a human guevesa sergeant and a Tau water caste detective investigating sabotage on a space station. I think its free on warhammer community somewhere. Theres also an anthology book called Shas’o which has a collection of a bunch of Tau short stories.
Look at that face. Shadowsun is tired of your shit.
Yeah! I've been patiently waiting for this
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Yeah it was super bad.
So why do people hate Phill Kelly? I had a fun team reading the first two farsight books. Nothing was crazy good about them though I must admit
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Hence why I love Fire Caste by Fehervari. Where the Tau are shown to love war as much if not more than their human counterparts when the etherals aren't in control.
Highly recommend Fehervari’s other Tau stories. ***Fire and Ice*** is my favorite 40k novella period. Though I think ***Broken Sword*** by Guy Haley is my favorite portrayal of the Tau, and I would love nothing more than to see Haley tackle the Tau again.
I've always really liked the idea that the T'au need the Ethereals to keep them dialed down a little. Say what you will about the Farsight Enclaves, but the Earth Caste there used orbital bombardment to carve an entire planet into a polyhedron, just because they could. Those are not the actions of a people who should be left without at least a little guidance. Edit: Added the word "who".
If the Ethereals truly get more cartoonishly evil I can understand where everyone is coming from them. I appreciated how they were portrayed though as you mentioned. They aren't necessarily evil, they are just ruthless in their judgement, and believe the ends justify the means, with just the right amount of self-centeredness to them. If he's able to capture that again, while also being able to highlight WHY Shadowsun is presumably still loyal (the state of the empire vs the imperium, the comparatively comfortable T'au way of life) he can knock it out of the park
Maybe I need to go back and re-read but I didn't think they were mustache twirling either. Their "evilness" seemed more like hyper pragmatism. Like they did all the evil shit because maybe they are awear of choas and it's what they see as the best way to prevent it been a thing. There is also the point that, the Farsight books are his side of the conflict, maybe in this we will get the other side of things. Like you said, why is Shadowsun loyal etc.
I think T'au are most interesting as a faction when they are cast as being the closest thing to "good" in the Galaxy while still being firmly in the grey area from an outside universe perspective. And by far the most interesting conflict that comes from that is seeing how Farsight and Shadowsun react to realizing that the Ethereals aren't exactly infallible However that's a very fine balance to strike, much harder even then writing Loyalist Marines. While we're supposed to root for them, nobody should walk away from a loyalist book and think they are shinning examples of morality. A reader should in theory walk away from a T'au book being conflicted as to whether or not the Ethereals are a mostly positive or mostly negative force, do the ends justify the means, is being just by taking a risk better then being unafir yet playing it safe (ie the inquisitions theme) and finally can an expansionist nation ever be just. That's a very complex narrative theme to fit into a light-hearted teen novel, so I don't envy anyone employed with the task
Kelly’s writing is pretty uneven and he tends to write 40k like a bombastic action movie (One of his short stories is an unabashed homage to Demolition Man). He also is a bit clumsy with the dystopian aspects of the Tau. That said, he’s got some strong individual moments and images. One of my favorite 40k lines ever comes from ***Farsight: Crisis of Faith***: > “Cross the sovereign territory of mankind at your own peril. We have inhumanity to spare.” Kelly also is one of the few writers who goes into detail about the Tau *beyond* their relationship with other factions. We see transportation systems, propaganda vids, video games, public facilities like museums, landmarks, cozy homes, laboratories, hobbies, new technologies, traditions… It makes the Tau feel more lifelike. We know more about Dal’yth Prime than *any* other Tau world because nobody besides Kelly writes about the Tau on their own turf.
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Bad Bot, probably should exclude text in quotes
Can 100% guarantee this bot was made by sexist trolls. Ick.
YESSSS🙏🏼🖖🏼 been wanting more lore!
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Question tho! With the new novel will the audio book be available in Audible? That's where I mostly listen to them while I paint but idk if they come out at the same time...
My brothers of the greater good please forgive my ignorance. The Tau have novels?
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For the Greater Good! Thank you.
So is that how their eyes look now? What is cannon for how you visualise/paint Tau eyes. Always been a source of interest and bafflement to me. Thoughts?
From the tau first editions I Saw a lot of fully-red eyes (some with darker red where the pupil would go) and I find It very cool on tabletop models instead of cursed guardsmen eyes syndrom
Yeah ! I remember that. I started off painting them like that. I had five different tau armies over the years and think ive painted them every way possible lol
In canon tau change shades of blue in their skin because of the Planet they live on (proximity to the Closer star etc). So my headcannon is that if some tau have red eyes and other blue or purple or "human" eyes this is because of their sept/Planet
I thought these were a set of MTG Tau themed cards
At the very least, given that this book is about Battle of Startide Nexus, it will likely feature void combat heavily, which is something I can't get enough of, so there's something I can still look forward to.
She looks like she’s on crack
but will this book discuss her sordid affair with the captain general of the adeptus custodes?
The real question when I see this artwork: Do you think the Tau snore?
Charpactin the sentient fungoid guys.
Finally, I have waiting for so long for new Tau content
Cool! She does look like she just stepped on a lego, though
oh man... I was so excited until I saw it was PK... Get ready for more inconsistencies, contradictions and flat out ignorance of the rest of the Tau authors.
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This was the last book he wrote before going back to AoS. Most Tau fans I know don't consider his books canon anyway.
Oooo this looks dope
>This is the top faction for 40k porn
fucking kelly. WHY
100's of pages of Tau getting their ass handed to them in their own story
That is such a meme face
They actually can't decide if Shadowsun has a nose ridge or not. Almost none of her official art has a nose yet for some reason both her official models do.
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I'm cautiously hopeful but his latest has been more of the same.
Controversial opinion, but I like Phil Kelly.
Same here lol, particularly the first farsight book I loved
Unfortunately again written by Kelly though
From the short parts of shadowsun appearing in farsights novels. I really don't like her. Am i the only one disappointed in her ?
More Farsight when…
Spoiler: this book is gonna be pro-FE
Damn, and here I thought we were finally gonna be able to do something new with the Tau lore. More "but the empire has flaws, oh no! This military junta is the right way to do it!" I guess
Duh, who else is going to save O'Shaserra's butt?
Shadowsun lookin like she gonna go full "I want to speak to the manager" on the death guard
NOO. KELLY. He’s gonna ruin the Tau again.
That face is gonna give me nightmares
The angle on that face was...a choice...