The The’Orem Sept is what I call my original Tau army. How did I come up with the Sept name? Well, my gamer ID is sometimes Theorem. So chuck an apostrophe in there and you’ve got yourself a Tau word!

When I started this army, my first army, I want to develop my own characters, story and colour scheme rather than take something from the existing lore. I tried a camouflage pattern at first and then a few combinations of green armour (because it’s my favourite colour) but failed to find something I was happy with. White did interest me but was far too daunting to paint as a new hobbyist. I do really like the Farsight Enclaves paint scheme, but I liked Shadowsun better. I finally settled on blue. Specifically I went for a light, sky-blueish primary colour, because I hadn’t seen any light blue Tau in the local seen with a grey as the secondary colour. Some of the full army was shown in this post.

Here are some examples of the scheme across the army.

I liked the white colour for characters and Shas’ui/vre, though I didn’t realise at the time that that was supposed to be your sept colour. Still, the white looks better than a purple would have.

So the lore for my Sept was that it was launched in the Third Sphere of Expansion toward the cardinal south-west of the Tau empire. There home system of planets were mostly cold, arctic type worlds with ample resources for mining and pushing deeper into unexplored space. Orks were encountered in large numbers and acted as the primary force of resistance as their expansion fleet settled more planets. Due to the harsh, cold conditions of their Sept worlds the earth caste of the The’Orem Sept developed new and advanced terraforming technology. This was further adapted to a quick acting, freak weather event generator. First deployed against an imperium stronghold; the Shas’O used several of the devices to creature blanketing snow storms that dulled the imperium sensors and allowed stealth teams to infiltrate the fortress and wreak havoc on it’s defenses, allowing the larger army to storm the fortress relatively unscathed. From that conflict that commander found his second name, Snowveil.

For a time the Sept consolidated its newfound territory of systems. They received reinforcements in equipment and personnel. Most notably were the receipt of the new XV104 Riptide and XV95 Ghostkeel battle suits. The new weapons urged an assault onto a neighboring system, just a short jump from the outer branches of the growing The’Orem Sept worlds. Immediately upon entering the system the Tau found the space littered with debris and derelict ships. Ork and Imperium wrecks bumped off their ship’s shielding. It was fortunate that the fighting seemed to have already ended because the sheer number of ship wreckages would have found the already underclasses Tau ships out numbered 30:1.

Nevertheless the headstrong The’Orem fleet pushed into the system. The core world was still the scene of a war between the Orks and the beleaguered Imperial Guard. The fighting was centred around an impressively large structure, the likes of which had not been seen before on Tau records.

The structure was actually a fortress monastery of an named chapter of Space Marines. Warp Storms further out of the system had prevented communications from reaching the larger Imperium. The Imperial Guard and Space Marines had been fighting against constant attack of Orks for dozens of decades, but were now near their death. The Tau blasted the remaining Ork ships in orbit and begun landing their fire caste armies to clear the remaining Orks and Humans before setting down pre-fabricated structures for a new base. Diplomacy was attempted with the humans but given their history alliances with Xenos were not exactly in their nature.

The fresh forces of the The’Orem sept were able to rout the remaining human and Ork forces and began planet fall en masse. Many cycles passed on this newly captured world.

Without warning, Ork Roks appeared in system, devasting the expansion fleet and began to overwhelm the ground forces, though the many strongholds were able to stand firm for a time. Though the initial attack cause heavy losses on the orbiting fleet, the Tau regroup and begun a series of engagements to draw the Orks away from the planet in different directions. This slowed the ground assault but also enabled the Tau to pick off smaller forces at range. The strategy was going well, until another unwelcome guest arrived.

An Imperium fleet answering the distress signals from the now extinct Space Marine chapter jumped into the system after being lost in the warp for an unknown period of time. The Tau, hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched by the Imperium fleet and still struggling against the Ork fleet pulled as many resources, personnel and equipment from the core planet before they were forced to disengage. The sky burned with exploding ships and lance weapons as the retreat was coordinated.

Many heroes were made and died on those days of the evacuation. The final stages of the evacuation saw the last tau settlement under heavy assault from Ork ground attack and the looming prows of imperium cruisers readying their drop ships. Half of a hunter cadre acted as a sacrificial blockade while the remaining ships fled. The half-cadre, led my Shas’O L’va saw their mission completed as their own bodies were cleaved by choppas and power klaws. The last Tau seen fighting on the surface were an XV8 crisis team, falling back through abandoned structues as Orks pursued and Guardsmen landed.

Only one third of the The’Orem expansion fleet made it back to the core Sept worlds. It wasn’t until the Damocles Gulf burned that further reinforcements could be brought to the lost system to reclaim it. What they found was all of their work undone. The Imperium fleet had conducted devastating, world ending strikes upon the planets and moons of that world. The system was deemed off-limits. A listening post was established should danger approach the The’Orem sept, and the reclamation fleet retreated back to safe territory.

The listening post detected an anomaly after the reclamation fleet had departed. At first thought an error, a scout ship found something they did not expect. The crisis team, last seen on the core world, had somehow survived and drifted toward the listening post aboard a stolen Imperium shuttle. The crisis team, known as the 3 Demons of Eskalla Prime to the humans, were honoured and rewarded for their sacrifice, tenacity and resourcefulness.

The The’Orem Sept was later part of the failed 4th Sphere of Expansion. Some of their fire caste survived and were discovered along with the rest of the Tau forces on the other side of the Startide Nexus. The Sept now directs a significant proportion of it’s armies and resources into defending the 5th Sphere of Expansion.

That is all of the back story that I have on my Sept so far. It’s basic but I think it fits into the universe nicely. The The’Orem Sept does have a few notable characters. Most of which I have models for. Some others have found their own stories through multitudes of games. We have;

Shas’O Snowveil. A bit about him mentioned above, he is my counts as Shadowsun.

Shas’O Coldstar. In 7th edition he worked as my Buffmander though sometimes I ran him with plasmas and dropped him in with crisis teams. The thing I’m a little miffed about is I called him Coldstar prior to the XV86 being released, but oh well. Ever since I made this counts as Onager gauntlet I can’t resist taking it. He’s more than pulled his weight. One memorable game was when he was tarpitted by 40 Orks and it took 6+ fight phases to bring him down.

Shas’O Sureblade. My counts as Farsight. I’m just really proud of my paintwork on this model. It was a time when I felt my painting skills took a big leap and I still think he holds up pretty well today. I wanted something to further increase the dynamism of his base, so I added a White Scar being kneed in the head for good measure.

Pa’Dre. There is no story behind this guy, just my Ork buddy Lemonskull always wanted to give him a sunbrero.

Aun’Aloh (Coldwind). Similar to Sureblade, this model was my first attempt at a face and some free hand. Really pleased with how he turned out.

Commander Occasionally Hits. If there is one thing my Longstrike is known for its rolling 1s. Though I enjoy him, he has always been an under performed for me.

Shas’vre Southpaw. So named because I glued his feet on backwards.

Shas’vre Ce’Ru the Immortal. This riptide has been an MVP in so many games I can’t even count. For whatever reason he always seems to make an absolutely ridiculous number of invulnerable and FNP rolls. The day that he earned his name was during a doubles tournament. I was playing with Lemonskull and his Ork army. On this one particular game Lemonskull got absolutely annihilated by this double Imperial Guard army. Lemonskull was running a lot of vehicles and walkers and the match up was just bad for us. It took only to turn 3 for the other team to kill everything on the table. Everything except for Ce’Ru. He was deflecting battle cannons, plasma cannons, wyverns, lasguns, deathstrike, punisher cannons. You name it, he took it. On turn 5 he had just 1 wound left. On that turn they took 150 shots at him with all kinds of weapons and the 2+/5++ and 5+ FNP saw him through and the game ended on turn 5. No only is he an absolute tank but he has killed his fair share of models in close combat. I have a list of his close combat achievements somewhere but what comes to mind are; archon, warboss, deffdread, Talos pain engine, 20 Deathmarks, Lucas the Trickster and Dante. All in all, Ce’Ru is an absolute beast.

Shas’vre A’Xur. Look, he’s got a giant spear, whats not to like?

Unamed XV9. This model is NOT painted by me. My brother got it commissioned for me for Christmas a while back. The studio responsible was Blue Table Painting and I think they did a really great job. I wanted him to have a cloak or cape of some kind and they really delivered.

The 3 Demons I plan on making out of the new XV8 kit. They will have separate load outs and should have some heavy conversion work, heavy battle damage and individual paint schemes. The original idea for them came from the idea of doing a team up to represent me and two of my friends that I usually play video games with that aren’t involved in Warhammer. That’s where I decided to make a proper back story of where these three pilots came from. I’d like to write a short story about their survival on Eskalla and I intend on making a special rule set for them. When I get going on this I’ll track their progress through a project blog.

My The’Orem has a few models that need finishing but it’s almost a completed project. To finish it off I’d like to write some Sept rules for friendly games and of course the 3 demon XV8s.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my home brew Sept!