Warhammer 40k and the Tau are owned by Game Workshop. I don't own anything here and I make no money off the use of their intellectual property.
Speaking of not owning Warhammer I don't own even a single miniature or even played one table top game. I do love The Black Library and the books and I just eat up Gotrek and Felix novels and other Warhammer Fantasy books. 40K took a little warming up to.
I get it the whole "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war" back story but dose it have to so damn joyless. I love reading about the Skaven and even as those evil little basters have fun and dark oddball sense of humor. Reading about Space Marines I think the first modification made to them is they get a stick shoved up their ass.
Once I just want to read how an Ultramarines grab his crotch plating as a passing Sister of Battle walked by and said. "My other Bolter is bigger." (I know that massively OOC for them and the Sister of Battle would most like turn a flamer on said Ultramarine.)
If you want humanity in the future then have to go for the Tau. So here's a little human children bonding with their Tau teachers.
Finding The Way.
By Slayzer.
The sound of laughing children tickled the ears of Por'la'T'olku'Eio'Kio a female Tau of the Water Cast. She was watching the children play in the wide open green space of the Education Center. It was so nice to hear laughter from them after all then had been through. For the children under Eio'Kio care and the other water Cast teachers here were not Tau but Gue'la, human children.
The human boys played roughhousing game and girls would play games of skipping rope or make believe. All the children wore clean white uniforms marked with the water cast sigil and school medallion. The laughter of human children had the most amazing musical quality to the Tau's ears. Each of their joyous laughter was like their own divine instrument of music and Eio'kio treasured every one of her students.
These human's had been abandoned by their own people. Crammed into a barely working spacecraft and kicked off the overcrowd world they called home. It was only by luck that instead of arriving on some death world the Imperium hoped they colonize that they arrived in Tau space and by doing so became citizens of the Tau Empire.
It was not easy, almost all of the older Gue'la had rejected the Tau and The Greater Good. For their own safety the children were taken from their parents before they did anything harmful. Some fanatical humans would rather die and take their family with them rather then live in peace with the Tau.
As it usually was there was little hope for the older generation and the most merciful thing the Tau could do was keep them in single gender re-education camps. Some would come around and embrace the great good but many more would cling to their dogma until death. No, it was in the Gue'la children that hope for integration into the Tau Empire would begin.
Eio'kio sighed sadly remember those first few months. The many halls of her education center quite as a tomb. Gue'la children with their eyes and face's a kaleidoscope of colors and hues but all glaring fearfully at the soft spoken blue skinned Tau. Their nights spent silently crying for their lost parents.
But what is water if not soothing?
Eio'kio and her fellow Water Cast teachers had been trained to eased the fear of the human children with kindness, fought their ignorance with knowledge and healed their sadness with love. It was well known that separated form their parents the human children would bond with a surrogate parental figure. The Water Cast teachers took full advantage of that human need. What was unexpected was those surrogate parental feeling went both ways. To Eio'kio those were her children she saw playing. She still had the parchment that a young Gue'la girl made with a picture of a blue skinned woman and the Low Gothic word 'Mom' scrawled under it.
Sitting alone away from the other children was one of Eio'kio's most troubled son and one of her dearest. Karl was older then the other children, some thought he was too old to be taught the ways of the Greater Good. In those first dark days when the children had been ripped from their parents it was Karl who they turned to. In this big impromptu family that the the Tau and human children made he was everyone's big brother and trusted friend. He wasn't violent but he stand up to anyone who tried to hurt his extended family.
Karl once fought evenly with a Shas'saal'Ke'lshan who spoke rudely of the children not thinking that Karl had such a full grasp of Tau'sia. It was a blessing that only Karl understood what the young Fire Warrior had said or weeks of work could have been undone by a few hateful words. Even the temperate Water Cast Eio'kio wanted to strike the short sighted Fire Cast fool.
It took much of Eio'kio's skill in negotiation to talk the Fire Cast out of expelling Karl from her school. She bet on the pride of the Shas'Ke'lshan Fire Cadre. To go forward with Karl's expulsion it would be on record that one of their own was matched by a human child in a fist fight. The incident was to be overlooked by all involved of the sake of pride. Even the Fire Cast Shas'ui saw that Karl was a natural born leader and knew his warrior was in the wrong to bait a human child into a fight.
All it would be Eio'kio's job to see that those skills of Karl could be used not only to protect his fellow humans but to serve the Great Good as well.
Siting alone and far way from the other children Karl sat on a meditation stone his face troubled by something. The meditation stone he rested on was a raised white circle with a smooth flat top that one would sit one and help center oneself, the humans just called it a bench. Eio'Kio sat down next to her troubled child, careful to fold her white robe under her hooved feet as she sat down cross legged on the smooth rock.
"You know this is a meditation stone not a trouble stone?" Eio'kio said.
Karl looked away. "Sorry but I..."
Eio'kio stopped the thirteen year old human by waving one of her blue fingers. That was all the warning Karl needed and he sighed dejectedly at the reminder. This time when Karl spoke did so in the Tau's own language.
"I don't think you would understand Por'la." Karl's grasp of Tau'sia was astounding after only a few short years. He even knew that only using Eio'kio's cast and rank was a way of being distant or cold to her.
"What are we doing here if not to learn from one another? Words exist so that we my communicate how we feel to each other and if you believe that I can't understand your feelings then I have not been doing my job."
Karl was silent for several long moments. Then slowly he pulled out an old book he had been hiding. It was a book of the Imperial Creed that Karl was allowed to keep it as something to comfort him. Some of the water cast teachers said that the book should be taken for him. Eio'kio believed that instead of forcefully taking their faith that the Gue'la children would give up the hateful dogma on their own. With trembling hands Karl handed the book over to Eio'kio like she knew one day he would.
Eio'kio had studied much of the Imperial Creed and writing of the Ecclesiarchy. Before they even taught their children to think or reason the Gue'la taught them to hate. It was something that always saddened Eio'kio but made her that much more determined to enlighten them.
"Do you think the Emperor hate's me?" Karl asked getting distraught again.
Eio'kio smiled kindly. Her first thought was how could a dieing old man thousands of light years away even know about him? She knew better then to fight faith with reason and instead tried to help Karl with his inner struggle.
"Let me ask you something, Why do you think the Emperor hates you?"
"Every night I read the litanies of the Emperor and pray to him for strength but the Ecclesiarchy writings tell me to hate the alien. I don't hate you and don't want to hate you." Karl looked up at Eio'kio his green human eyes brimming with emotion. "I like it here with you and the other Tau but that makes me a traitor to my race."
Eio'kio hugged her troubled Gue'la son and held him tight. "I so happy to hear that you like it here Karl and I know saying that wasn't easy for you. You and the other children are as precious to me and the other teachers here as if you were all our own sons and daughters. Now why do you pray for strength every night?"
"Because I have to be strong for the other kids here."
"You want to protect them, right? That was why you fought with that Fire Warrior not because he was an alien but because he spoke ill of your friends. You fought to protect the honor of your friends, I don't know what the Emperor would say but I know what you did was very Tau like."
Karl pulled away for the hug slightly looking more confused then before. "I was acting like a Tau when I was fighting? I don't think that's right, I could never see you in a fight Eio'kio."
"You don't think I would fight for you or the other children?"
"No, Eio'kio is so smart I'm sure you'd use your words and not your fist to resolve any propblems."
Eio'kio smiled kindly and the human's high praise of her. "If only the universe would let it be so. When I said you were like a Tau It wasn't the act of fighting but the reasons why you were fighting that made you Tau like. To stand up for others and put yourself at risk for their sake is very much the spirit of the Tau."
"You're talking about the Tau'va your way of The Greater Good."
"Yes. Even the Fire Warrior's Shas'ui could see the spirit of the Tau'va in your actions while his own Warrior forgot his place and was in the wrong. As long as you walk that path of inner peace and strength then The Greater Good and the Tau will walk with you." Eio'kio gave Karl back his book of the Imperial Creed.
Karl held his book to his chest and looked out at his adopted brothers and sisters. "I still need to be stronger."
"To fight?"
"No, I want to protect them and Eio'kio and this place also." Karl said blushing a bit as Eio'kio played with his hair.
"You want to protect this school?"
"Not the building but this feeling I have here. This feeling that tells me I belong and that this is home." Karl stood up and spreed his arm open to the sky and the Tau city beyond. "No matter what the Emperor says I can't help but feel like I belong here. I sometime feel like this is my home now. Is it okay for me to feel like this."
"That feeling is the Tau'va as well."
Karl looked crest fallen for a moment. "I don't think I'm ready to embrace the Great Good just yet."
"Why's that Karl?"
"I like you and the other Tau here but..."
"Yes?"
"... The Kroot still scare me a little."
Eio'kio waved Karl over and leaned in close to whisper a secret to him. "Don't worry about that. The Kroot still scare me a little too."
With that Eio'kio sent Karl off to play with the other children. His doubts and worries abated and he had taken his first steps towards The Greater Good. Karl even forgot his book but Eio'kio would make sure to give it back to him. After all one day Karl, like the rest of the Gue'la across the galaxy, would give up their Emperor for the Greater Good.
For Eio'kio that was her own role in The Greater Good but the satisfaction of fulling that role paled compared to the love she had for her human children.
-End-
Por'la'T'olku'Eio'Kio as my grasp of Tau'sia her name broken down as something like (Water Cast) (Rank of La) (Born on the Sept of T'olku) and her personal name is (Tall Tree) and I hope I got that right.
So anyway I love the Tau and they are the lesser of all the evils in the 40k world. So for all the race ruled by Monolithic, Plutocratic, Despotic or just bat shit crazy leaders. I'll happily cheer the authoritarian regime with a odd Buddhist leaning that is the Tau Empire.
I was imagine what it would be like for a Human to live and then embrace the Tau. What kind of things would he need to over come and how would that Tau react to him. I don't think it would be one sided and that humans who embrace the Greater Good would change the Tau in little ways.
I don't know if I'll do much more Warhammer fiction. After all what's the point when The Black Library and Games Workshop dose it so much better they any of us could.
Still tell me what you thought but I don't want to hear about how the "The Tau Suck!" or that I've been brainwashed by them.
-FOR THE GREATER GOOD!