# The Greater Good?



## D-A-C (Sep 21, 2010)

Hey guys.

My nephew has decided to collect the Tau, and after initially laughing at such a poor decision, I'm finding that they are actually pretty cool, in terms of their fluff, and are cool on the tabletop as well.

But anyway, my question is this: *What to you think of the Greater Good?*

Is it a naive view of the universe by a young race, or is it something more sinister?

I'm thinking it could be along the lines of an _Earth: Final Conflict_ type scenario (there is a good Stargate Episode about this as well) whereby a seemingly 'too good to be true' alien race ... actually turns out to be too good to be true.

I just think that there is more to the Etherals than perhaps meets the eye, and that they are using the Tau, Kroot, Vespids etc for their own purposes.

Do you think in the darkness of the future, something as 'goody goody' as the Greater Good can be taken at face value?

Plus any other opinions or observations about the Tau would be welcome as I'm still trying to learn all their fluff.


(As a side note, there is a great story in the Dark Eldar Codex about a Haemoculi who seemingly helps the Tau against the Tyranids, only to demand a ransom in return. 

I also think the names of all the Crises Suits are cool, so I cannot wait to see how they will be treated in their upcoming Codex.)


----------



## Giant Fossil Penguin (Apr 11, 2009)

I think, true to 40k, it's yes, no and maybe. And spooorngy.
From outside, it must look naive, specially to the 'elder' races who will have seen their share of so-called alliances end in betrayl; you can only suck it up so many times before such circumstances become a race to see who can betray whom first, once the maximum benefit has been squeezed out of course.
From inside, I'm sure that the Ethereals are very happy to find those willing to die in the Tau's stead. If they can't/won't die, then they probably would have to bring _something_ useful to the party. We don't know how many races have not been offered the benefit of the Greater Good because they aren't useful enough, with the Tau able to mould whatever story they need to ascribe such horridness to stupidity on the part of those now dead, or a horrible, horrible misunderstanding should anybody want to look into it. Not that I imagine that a free press would be much of a feature of Tau.
And spooorny- the hints from _Xenology_, be they real or faked, could point to the Tau not being their own master, maybe something they don't know themselves. The Ethereals, the strangely sped-up evolution of the Tau from mere beasts to sentient beings; very, very 40k!

GFP


----------



## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

Whenever I hear tha phrase I can't help thinking of Hot Fuzz.

I admitt that the fluff is pretty cool I'm just dissappointed by the look of the models but that's just me.


----------



## forkmaster (Jan 2, 2010)

I think after being a Tau collector and reading much of their fluff, I think of them as highly naiv and arrogant. They are humble and let other races join their cause, but when they have gotten something into their minds example "This planet now belongs to the Tau!" nothing can persuade them otherwise. But even though they are young and newly fresh, dont underestimate them just yet.


----------



## Zerodyme619 (Jul 1, 2011)

I too think, that the Etherals are using this philosphy to make the rest of the Tau follow their preety sellfish ambitions. And the rest of the Tau aren't necessarily naive, but respect and obidience to the Etherals is very heavily rooted in their culture, so it is hard fot them to see the greater picture...


----------



## C'Tan Chimera (Aug 16, 2008)

Perhaps the Tau Ethereals have something sinister going on behind them? Perhaps. 

But when it boils down to things, the Tau are still the closest thing 40k has to a race of good guys, and that's enough for me. Even if the Ethereals are using some form of manipulation on the Tau- hasn't it so far resulted in some very good results for them? Before they were a primitive and divided race fighting mindlessly, and now they're united. It gave them a cause, a reason for unity, and ambition. 

They are very naive, yes- hopelessly, even? Maybe. With Farsight as an example, it really is a question of whether or not the Tau will bend to adapt to the 40k universe's innate cruelty or actually overcome it. When the other 'good guys' are a bunch of brainwashed, super human 8 foot tall warriors bisecting everything that doesn't also show mindless loyalty towards a corpse or fickle space elves who would let thousands die just to save one of their own, the Tau are the only race even close to being sympathetic in the end.

I don't consider them 'heroes' or 'good guys'- the Tau are in the moral grey zone, where there's some uncertainty. Frankly, I like it that way. Which direction will they go? Who knows? That adds a lot of fun to it. Personally I do like to have mine lean towards the good side, but still do some questionable things. If the Tau were any straight up 'super duper good guy' race, they'd just be a bunch of blue mary sues in space. 

So I think of them as the uncertain underdog. The idea of a race that has good intentions but some questionable approaches to it really appeals to me, so if the next update turns them into a straight up Orwellian style pile of steaming grimderp I'm gonna go take my ball and go home.


----------



## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

D-A-C said:


> But anyway, my question is this: *What to you think of the Greater Good?*












Obvious Xeno bullshit. Heck, dont look and they will eat your babies!


----------



## Words_of_Truth (Sep 20, 2007)

Afaik the Tau Ethereals are basically controling the tau by use of a pheromones which is why when their Ethereal they go nuts because they don't know what's going on except that they are going to die 

Kroot are possibly open to this as well which is how they can control them. The vespids might be controlled by technology that their leaders wear to communicate with others.

It also explains why commander farsight decided to pack up and not return to the Tau because he finally had a mind of his own.

In the end I believe while on the surface they seem to be for the greater good, its only really for the greater good of the tau race. Heck in one of the Dawn of War games, the humans they ended up subjugating after winning the war ended up dying out because the Tau made them sterile (like the SG1 episode)


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Words_of_Truth said:


> In the end I believe while on the surface they seem to be for the greater good, its only really for the greater good of the tau race. Heck in one of the Dawn of War games, the humans they ended up subjugating after winning the war ended up dying out because the Tau made them sterile (like the SG1 episode)


And those humans fought back vs. the human planets in Tau control that willingly joined are booming.


----------



## Words_of_Truth (Sep 20, 2007)

Still, the Humans became part of the Tau, there was no need to make them sterile unless they had ulterior motives.


----------



## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Asses. 

Thou luckily they lost according to canon lore, and the Blood Ravens won.


----------



## Smokes (Nov 27, 2009)

There is a quote somewhere in the Deathwatch books that pretty much sums up what I think of the Tau. They are a arrogant and misguided race that foolishly clings on to a space hippie system of belief which is in fact basically even more arrogant slavery. The Tau are like the annoying little new kid that's jumping up and down waving his arms around like an idiot just to get some attention. I just can't take them seriously with the way the Tau warriors even look...


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Words_of_Truth said:


> Still, the Humans became part of the Tau, there was no need to make them sterile unless they had ulterior motives.


The tau showed a hell lot of mercy compared to what an imperial force would do, they would gun down every single last Tau man, woman, and child vs Tau chemical sterilize all of the Humans.


----------



## C'Tan Chimera (Aug 16, 2008)

Smokes said:


> There is a quote somewhere in the Deathwatch books that pretty much sums up what I think of the Tau. They are a arrogant and misguided race that foolishly clings on to a space hippie system of belief which is in fact basically even more arrogant slavery. The Tau are like the annoying little new kid that's jumping up and down waving his arms around like an idiot just to get some attention. I just can't take them seriously with the way the Tau warriors even look...


You do realize you're talking about taking races 'seriously' when the races are:

- Space Elves in every color of the rainbow. 
-Orks that talk like Liverpool hooligans and anything they think becomes true. 
-Emo Space Elves in BDSM.
-catholic space nazis nuns who's popularity comes from having breasts
-Egyptian Space Terminators without Arnold in sight to help them be cool. 
-A bunch of beefy space knight monks in bright colorful armor who waddle into battle in the name of 'da emprah' and are the bestest of the bestest because their milkshake brings all of the money to GW's yard
- And their evil counter parts that got horns slapped on them because you can't have knights without bad knights so knights in space obviously need bad space knights who suck because the good guys can save the day as Team Chaos goes blasting off again
- Space G.I Joes who's sole mission in life is to kill more of their own men then the enemy until the beefy space monk knights can come along to take all credit as they continue to mindlessly die in the same of some sad, stupid religion
- Spin-offs of H.R Giger Aliens without all the phallic imagery and more Nomnom for the sake of nomnom 
- Blue space Gandhis with mechs imported directly from Japanese anime so GW could draw in the weaboo demographic of all the nerds out there.


So as you can see, it's all so easy to throw your feces at another race's fluff when the 'seriousness' of the franchise is as 3 dimensional as a cardboard cut out of Rambo strangling a cyborg shark. Now go do it elsewhere please-I'd like to have a single engaging topic about an army I like without it just becoming a roast thread.


----------



## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Someone's upset not everyone thinks the loltau are awesome...


----------



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Malus Darkblade said:


> Someone's upset not everyone thinks the loltau are awesome...


Someone upset that someone made fun of horny Space knights.


----------



## Moonschwine (Jun 13, 2011)

I find the Tau philosophy one of those classic attempts to justify brutal and genocidal actions under a Benevolent Ideal. Theirs loads of Earth's own historical examples of this but I don't want to mention a particular one cause this thread appears to be derailing anyway 

Anyway for my chipping on the subject, the Greater Good - It probably started off with the best intentions. Unite the people and bring the Caste system together. Uniting a people is always going to be a nigh-impossible task unless some kind of honey-dipped ideal is presented to rally around. In a way it works perfectly, it keeps people united, and the Ideal as a whole is far more resilient than it's component parts - you can't ever destroy the idea of the Greater Good. 

Inevitably as the Tau expand out they like so many others just lost sight of what the whole thing was about. It always starts small and snowballs; One day some garrisson commander makes a tough decision: he cuts rations to prisoners to keep his troops well supplied - for the greater good. The next minute he's signing the effective death warrant of a planet as they sterilize a population to have it die out almost unperceived over many generations? - yeah its for the greater good. Finally he's so indoctrinated he doesn't even blink when he's ordered to let thousands of warriors die in a fight command already knew was lost - Greater Good and all.

For the pheromone thing - I can see it adding a dark intent to the Ethereal's. Though I do like to believe that they really do believe in their ideals so deeply that it's more an evolutionary/mutation thing to allow them to naturally become the leaders of the Tau race rather than squabbling like orks or political brokering like in the Imperium. 

One of the things that always jumps to my mind is the Harm Principle by John Stuart Mills - that (in its simplest terms) the best action is the one that causes the most benefits and least harm to the people. If you have a look at critiques of this you can see the flaws of such thinking and largely apply them to the Greater Good.


----------

