Chapter 538 The Rise of the Lion King: The Titans
What are the Tau people like? Faced with this question, most humans cannot answer it. After all, for the vast majority of humans in the Empire, the perception of aliens is very stereotyped. Aliens are nothing more than evil and unreasonable. Evil aliens are determined to destroy us.
But for those who know the Tau people, all of this can be said to be completely wrong. The Tau people are not only absolutely not evil, but also not unreasonable. In fact, humans and the Tau people have many things in common. Perhaps they are the two most similar groups in the entire galaxy.
But unfortunately, in the Empire, there are not many people who really know the Tau people. Those who know a little bit will tell you that the Tau people are a group of alien races in the Far East Frontier of the Empire. Those who know a little more will tell you that they are humanoid creatures with blue skin.
But only a very small number of scholars have a real understanding of this race. Even for most scholars in the Empire, the Tau people are unfamiliar. They don't know them. After all, in this dark galaxy, there are more and more threatening alien enemies waiting for these experts to study.
This also brings up another major characteristic of the Titanium. They are kind. Yes, you heard it right, kind. It's surprising, isn't it? In this galaxy, in this galaxy now, how can such a race still survive?
It's not that humans don't want to be kind, but in this dark, war-filled universe, kindness is often equated with ignorance, and the result of ignorance is death.
And at this time, when everyone is holding a gun pointing at each other's heads, trying their best to smash the opponent's head and destroy all races that appear in front of them, there is such a civilization that knows nothing about all this and treats this galaxy with a seemingly outdated and even stupid method?
With such curiosity, Vito was fortunate to become one of the very few humans who can be said to truly understand the Titanium. Unlike most humans, Vito first learned about the Titanium during the Great Expedition.
At that time, humans were expanding their territory and recovering their territory. Fleets and scientific expedition fleets were exploring in all directions, searching for valuable planets among the stars. One of the exploration fleets from the Mechanicus crossed the Damocles Gulf in the eastern part of the Milky Way.
It was a nebula that appeared in the human vision a long time ago. As early as the Golden Age, it was already known there, but because of the huge mass of the celestial bodies there, it was filled with chaotic energy fields. Space transmission technology was ineffective here, and leaping through the physical level was dangerous, so further exploration was abandoned a long time ago.
In the Golden Age, with an enterprising spirit, the fleet of the Mechanicus overcame all difficulties and ventured through the dangerous universe of the Damocles Gulf to the quiet galaxy on the other side, and found a habitable planet similar to the earth's environment here.
The Mechanicus initially explored the planet and discovered a primitive civilization still in a barbaric state, a group of blue-skinned alien primitives. The Mechanicus originally planned to cleanse them of their race and then transform the planetary environment to make it a new home for humans to immigrate and develop, but this plan was forced to terminate with the advent of the Horus Heresy.
The Mechanicus fleet left the planet named Damocles 1, and this is the origin of the Tau people. These aliens who grew up on this primitive planet survived and thrived in the following long time. Thanks to the natural dangers of the Damocles Gulf and the remote location, the Tau people in this corner of the Milky Way did not fall into endless wars as soon as they entered the universe like humans.
They had enough time to polish their civilization, science, and civilization to be fully developed. In this safe small galaxy, the Tau people gradually developed from primitive people to a developed civilization with aerospace capabilities, and formed their own perfect caste-based society that is still difficult for humans to understand.
They formed their own social structure with five major castes, the Fire Clan as the warrior class, the Water Clan as diplomats and bureaucrats, the Earth Clan as workers and inventors, and the Air Clan who traveled in the sky and drove aircraft and spacecraft, plus the ruling class, the Ether, which is still shrouded in fog.
Humans still know very little about the history of the Tau people. What they know is also taboo, full of a lot of incomprehensible words and records.
In this society, there seems to be no poverty, no fighting, no confrontation and intrigue. Crime is also a forgotten and even difficult to understand word. The civilization of the Tau people is perfect to a puzzling degree, and all this was known to humans only during the first Damocles Gulf War.
Almost no one remembered the aliens in the Mechanicus's exploration report, but Vito remembered them. Fortunately, he lived long enough, and this also shocked him more than others. He was surprised that the last time he knew about this civilization, they were still a group of primitive people who hunted with stones, and the next time, they had become a civilized country with advanced technology.
When thinking of the human empire that has been declining for thousands of years, there is an inexplicable feeling of regret, but this did not affect Vito and the subsequent wars and conflicts between the two races.
You see, the expansion method of the Tau people is very unique. Due to the lack of subspace navigation technology, the Tau people's spacecraft can only fly slowly at sublight speeds, which leads to the very slow expansion of the Tau people and the slow population growth, which makes the Tau people unable to discover, annex and occupy alien planets like humans.
No, on the contrary, the Tau people implement an alliance expansion policy. Simply put, they establish friendly diplomatic relations with alien races along the way, and through trade, cultural output and economic cooperation, they finally persuade the other party to join the Tau people's alliance, accept the leadership of the Ether, and follow the "Greater Good".
The Greater Good is the root of the civilization of the Tau people. Everything they have comes from the Greater Good, but for humans, it is a difficult concept to understand.
But perhaps it is precisely because of this misunderstanding that the conflict between the two races eventually occurred. After a long time, the Tau people finally flew over the vast space of Damocles and arrived at the main body of this galaxy. They encountered humans, to be precise, the human colonies on the eastern border of the empire.
The Tau people did not understand the concept of the huge human empire. They mistakenly regarded it as their own small empire. Therefore, as always, through trade, cooperation and cultural output, the Tau people gradually infiltrated the eastern border and tried to persuade the humans there to join the Greater Good, which undoubtedly stirred up a hornet's nest.
Separatism is the most intolerable behavior of the Empire. Once this news came out, it immediately received an explosive reaction, especially because it was related to an unknown alien. The Ultramarine immediately organized a punitive expedition. A large army composed of the Imperial Astra Military, the Navy, the Astartes, and the Mechanicus, led by the Inquisition, went to the Far East to punish the separatists.
And Vito was among them at that time. This was his first contact with the Tau people. Out of curiosity about the race in his memory, he persuaded the Inquisition, well, actually ordered it, and he served as the leader of the Inquisition team and led the Ultramarine Expeditionary Force to the Far East, where he eventually clashed with the Tau people.
This was the first Human-Tau War, or as the Astra Militarum called it, the Battle of Damocles. After all, compared to wars with most empires, even small-scale local wars, the scale of the war with the Tau can only be called a battle.
The Punitive Army crushed the local separatists who were loyal to the Tau, and then instantly defeated the Tau's marginal colonies, massacred the residents there, and destroyed the Tau fleet that came to support. It was a short but impressive battle.
Although the human empire's army defeated the Tau with its huge military strength and powerful combat power, the opponent's weapons also caused a lot of losses to humans. Their pulse weapons, magnetic levitation weapons, and advanced combat uniforms all left a deep impression on Vito.
Afterwards, the Punishment Army recovered all the star regions in the Far East and eliminated all resistance from the Separatists. After orderly suppression and advancement, the Tau people were driven back to the other side of the Damocles Gulf. In the expeditionary force, the radical faction of the Alien Inquisition suggested to pursue the victory and completely eradicate the alien threat.
This suggestion was supported by the Space Marines, but the Space Marines, out of respect for Vito, did not go beyond him and directly choose to attack. They came to Vito and asked for his approval at the meeting. In the end, driven by curiosity, Vito wanted to know how far the Tau people had developed, so he agreed to pursue.
In the end, the huge Punishment Army crossed the natural barrier of the Damocles Gulf, and after spending several months, it arrived on the opposite side of the star cluster and invaded the home galaxy of the Tau people. After defeating the navy that came to intercept the Tau people, the Punishment Army killed their home world, that is, the gate of the core colony.
The Tau put up a more intense resistance here than before. Although their navy was defeated by the battle-hardened Imperial Navy, which was more powerful than them, they put up a tenacious resistance. The advanced fleet weapons of the Tau caused heavy losses to the Imperial Navy at a long distance, and finally relied on the Space Marines to board the ship to put an end to it.
Afterwards, the Imperial Punishment Army boarded the world that was called "Ismenon" by the Tau. The iron torrent of the Astra Militarum, the God Machine of the Mechanicus, and a full 500 Space Marines launched a thunderstorm-like attack. In the early stage, they did instantly defeat the Tau and advance towards their planetary capital.
But soon, the Empire discovered the problem. As they advanced along the developed transportation roads on the surface of the planet, their troops advanced very quickly, but they were gradually divided by the Tau. The Tau troops showed amazing mobility and excellent long-range firepower, gradually luring and dividing the Punishment Army's troops.
The Astra Militarum was caught in a guerrilla war with the Tau infantry, the Tau vassal armies that appeared and disappeared in the jungle, and the Klints, while the Mechanicum's God Machines were dragged down by the Tau's aerial fighters, and the powerful companies of Space Marines were caught in a fierce battle with the Tau's battle suits.
In the end, the commanders of the Punitive Army realized that they had greatly underestimated the Tau's determination to defend their home world and their war capabilities. The radical representatives of the Inquisition suggested that the planet be exterminated immediately, and then evacuated the Damocles Gulf before the Tau reinforcements arrived, in order to fight again in the future.
But this means that they must give up all the imperial forces on the planet, and both mortals and Astartes will become victims. Finally, after a fierce argument, Vito rejected this proposal and went to the ground in person to reunify the command system in a short time. Then, the Tau people saw the talent of the most outstanding commander of mankind.
Vito reassembled the huge army of the Empire, relying on the heavy artillery of the Astra Militarum to continuously bomb the flanks of the Tau people, and finally defeated the flank of the Tau people. The Space Marines took the lead under the command and broke through the Tau people's front line. With the assistance of the Astra Militarum that arrived later, they made a major breakthrough in just one afternoon.
The Punishment Army rushed into the human city of the Tau people, where they fought a series of bloody battles with the Tau people, but in the end, the war did not decide the outcome, one reason was that the Punishment Army's troops had long been exhausted. In this war, they really underestimated the enemy.
Another reason was that the Tyranids had already invaded the Milky Way, sweeping across the Ultramarine and heading for Macragge. The order from the Ultramarine Command required all expeditionary forces outside to abandon all ongoing wars and battles and immediately turn back to support the Ultramarine.
Countless wars and battles were abandoned at that time, and the huge Emperor's army was assembled again, and the Punishment Army was also one of them. After a brief negotiation, the Tau people agreed to a temporary ceasefire, and the Punishment Army immediately withdrew from the home world and the home system of the Tau people. After that, Vito went to Macragge. I think you know the story afterwards.
That was Vito's first contact with the Tau people. He also participated in the second Damocles War. That time, Vito led the Imperial Army to fight against the Tau people again, and that time, he encountered an outstanding war master he admired, the visionary general of the Tau people.
The two fought an epic war. Under their command, millions of humans and tens of millions of Tau coalition forces fought fiercely in Damocles Gulf for several years, and that time, a record was set.
In that long tug-of-war, it was the first time that Vito did not win the war in the end. He did not lose, but he did not win either. The same was true for the Tau people. It was the first time that Farsight was defeated. As a result, both commanders left a deep impression on each other. Vito later heard that Farsight broke away from the Tau Empire and established an independent country in a region of Damocles Gulf, but that was a story for another time.
And now, this is Vito coming back here again after several centuries, Damocles Gulf, the border between the Tau and humans.
"Has it changed a lot here? Compared to that time." Celestine asked in the cabin, and Vito smiled and looked out the window. The Imperial transport fleet above the orbit of the planet Tyrell Monda had a line of signs on their hulls, the Second Valhalla Army.
Vito looked at the Imperial support fleet that had already arrived, and at the end of the star field in the distance, the Tau fleet flashing around the distant planet and smiled, "It seems, it's not that big."