Or possibly T’au.

This week sees the re-release of my Last Chancers novel Kill Team as part of the Tales of the Greater Good e-bundle available from Black Library. It seemed a perfect opportunity to reveal a little bit about how the T’au (I’ll stick with the updated spelling) came into being, and my part of it.

Before They Were Famous

As I’ve mentioned in some interviews, the genesis of the T’au philosophy and society pre-dates my employment at Games Workshop (and their official inception) by about a decade. Inspired by the Eldar article in White Dwarf 127 as an impressionable teen I embarked upon a personal project to emulate that wonderfulness, complete with Jes Goodwin-alike concept sketches, background and army list.

The species I invented were called the Shishell (or more specifically the Shissellian League) and were Lizardmen In Space, like Eldar were Elves In Space. The visuals were nothing like the T’au ended up, but a fundamental part of the background I created was the idea that their society was based around five castes – Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and a fifth called Spirit. The Shishell had psykers ruling over them, whereas the T’au most definitely do not.

Here’s One I Made Earlier

Wind forward to 1999/2000 and I’ve been in the Games Workshop Design Studio for six or seven years. The word from on high (known to most of us as Rick Priestley) was that instead of a reiteration of Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 for a September big box release, GW was going to put the same effort and resource of a new edition into creating a brand new army.

Games Development was tasked with pitching ideas for what they might be. Turning Necrons into a full army was one. That happened later. There was a race of Ultron-inspired sleek robots based on the throwaway reference to the C’tan. They appeared in a different fashion with the Necrons. We also had the Kroot, a single sketch among an alien ‘Usual Suspects’ style line up from Dave Gallagher in Warhammer 40,000 Third Edition. They were pitched as an entire race of mercenaries. They ended up being part of the T’au release. Then there was the Squats re-launch as Demiurgs. After a while they made a cameo appearance in the Battlefleet Gothic system.

And with them were the Tao (later Tau, now T’au) based on the underlying concept of the five elements I had originally come up with for the Shishell. I had kept my hand-typed reams of background and pencil sketches and persuaded the rest of the team that it was worth a punt, marrying some of the background to the idea of a more modern army, mecha-themed force (as opposed to the far more organic anime influence in the Eldar designs).

The Best Laid Plans…

Between that very exciting concept process and the start of work, two things happened to change the course of history. Well, three, I suppose.

Firstly, Games Workshop acquired the license for The Lord of the Rings based on the new films by Peter Jackson. The Fellowship of the Ring became the big Christmas release.

Secondly, Tuomas Pirinen, who had headed up the Warhammer games development effort through the creation of Warhammer Sixth edition, left to work on video games.

Which led to the third thing, the split of Games Development into three teams (until then we had, in theory, floated between different games systems as needed). Andy Chambers became 40K Overfiend. Alessio Cavatore was LOTR Ringbearer. I took the title of Warhammer Loremaster.

Which meant it fell to Andy C, Pete Haines, Andy Hoare and others to actually realise the T’au into its first launch Codex. And a rather splendid job they did of it, I think.

Enter the Last Chancers

But I wasn’t done there, thanks to my freelance work with the Black Library. A follow-up to 13th Legion was on the cards and BL were keen to get some action with this new alien race involved. Having been intimately related to the development of the T’au I was ideally placed to exploit this and so pitched a novel that set the Last Chancers against the warriors of the Greater Good.

It was particularly entertaining to get under the skin of the T’au and, through the eyes of Imperial Guardsman Kage, look at how the superstitious, unreasoning minds of the Imperium would see the technology-embracing, progressive ideals of the T’au. Heresy, obviously.

It was also at this time that I had recently finished work on the Inquisitor game, and the introduction of Deathwatch Space Marines, and so the opportunity to play around with new aliens and a specially-created breed for alien-hunting Space Marine made the plot obvious – an assassination mission!

All-in-all I am really pleased with the way Kill Team dealt with the T’au, showing up some of the failings of Imperial orthodoxy, but ensuring that these Greater Do-Gooders were not quite as shiny and nice as some might think. As a novel it probably works the best of the trilogy and I would say has been the most-mentioned in terms of influencing people and as an enjoyable read.

It also contains two of my all-time favourites scenes. The first is a Mos Eisley cantina-style alien bar that inevitably becomes a classic pub brawl. The second is what I refer to as the ‘Infamous Kroot Barbecue’ scene, that had editor Lindsey Priestley aghast.

So, why not check it out on your e-reader and read a bit of authentic Games Workshop history.

The Tales of the Greater Good eBundle contains the following titles:

Gav Thorpe (Kill Team)

Phil Kelly (Space Marine Battles: Blades of Damocles, Farsight, Blood Oath)

Peter Fehervari (Fire Caste, A Sanctuary of Worms, Out Caste, Fire and Ice)

Braden Campbell (Aun’shi, Commander Shadow, Shadowsun: The Last of Kiru’s Line)

Andy Smillie (Kau’yon, The Tau’va)

Simon Spurrier (Fire Warrior)

Guy Haley (Broken Sword)

Ben Counter (Black Leviathan)

Josh Reynolds (Hunter’s Snare)

Andy Chambers (The Arkunasha War)

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