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Author Topic: little bit o' tau goodness  (Read 1918 times)

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Offline Arkion

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little bit o' tau goodness
« on: January 24, 2009, 03:13:48 AM »
INTRO
So I wrote a little prose piece about a unit of Tau pathfinders.  This is the introduction.  If people leave comments, I'll post more of it.


At dawn they were seven.

   The one who led them, Bright Star in his mother tongue, wore the loss of the three they had lost openly, like an invisible medallion.  His face, once youthful and serene, had begun to show signs of age: tiny crow’s feet near his eyes, and a slight down-turn to the corners of his mouth.

   Not that the warriors under his command felt they had time to discover these changes: they were at war, in the most tribal, traditional sense.  They fought for their clan’s resources, so that they might be preserved from the invading heathens who lay claim to their home.  They had time only to breathe, to bleed, and to kill.

   These seven, these Fire Warriors, were the hope of Tau, they told themselves.  These seven would set the world to rights.

   Bright Star motioned his second, Walks Impatiently, to take a look across what the invaders’ called Anacosta Ravine.  Walks Impatiently did, taking the binoculars from his leader with a quickness that other cultures would have considered rude.  He saw what his leader had seen: a brilliant red outcrop of stone, jutting high above a flat land which crumbled quickly into a serene and dreamy place.

   The valley was full of color – brilliant greens of all shades, intermingled with white and pink and saffron, broken strangely by outcroppings of gigantic brown mushrooms with colorful tops – some black, some white with yellow spots, some amber with red spots.


   “Does it not remind you of the forests of Au’Temba?” Bright Star asked.  “Do you remember how they set up those rope traps to use against us?”

   “I do,” Walks Impatiently said.

   “We might catch a few of them that way.  We will not kill them all, obviously, but we would damage their morale.”

   “A decent thought, Captain.”

   “But,” Bright Star said with concern, “We do not have enough men to crate a proper canvas.”

   “We do not.  We need to signal our desire to the Cadre, and they send us reinforcements.”  The disdain was clear in Walks Impatiently’s voice.

   “Which would not come.  Yet we can do more with traps than you give us credit.  Speak your mind.  I value your advice. I do not know how best to proceed.”

   Surprised by his commander’s candor, Walks Impatiently gave the matter more thought.

   If the seven could find a series of animal paths which were obvious, the gue’la war machine would doubtless find them, too.  Simple traps could be manufactured there with a reasonable expectation of success.  However, the gue’la had pathfinders; doubtless some of their traps would be disarmed, but that process would slow the whole. It was, after all, these seven’s order to harass the war machine as it trundled on toward Can’aa, by any means necessary. 

   The architects of Can’Aa had seen war on the horizon and made very strong precautions against aerial or orbital siegecraft.  Can’Aa was flanked by the ocean on one side and lay amid the vast untamed wildness of the Valleys of Wondrous Life, which spread for hundreds of miles in all other directions.  These Valleys, though indeed a wonder, were also where this worlds’ most dangerous organics dwelt: toxic ants, aggressive stinging insects, packs of wild felids and a slew of microbial deaths.

   Even so, the Empire was taking no chances.  The enemy had surprised them on Va’Aa’Tu, clearing vast swaths of jungle to take the Tau Empire’s research outpost.  And they had murdered those scientists as if they had been hated foes, and not the quiet scholars they doubtless were.  The enemy had proven its intent and would, without the presence of the Empire’s pathfinders, march through the Valley to Can’aa.

   So said high command.

   “Traps, I think, are out.  We should only prepare them as afterthoughts.  Our first goal should be to infiltrate along that ridge—“ he pointed to an outcropping of gargantuan white mushrooms— “And use our signal jammer.”

   “You think to use it so soon?  I would wait until they’re close, so it catches them by surprise.”

   “If, sir, we set up the signal jammer and they are able to trace
its origins, and we trap the area surrounding it, our traps will be that much more successful. Don’t you think?”

   Bright Star nodded.  He was taken by a complex wash of emotion: elation that a superior plan had been conceived, but irritation that it had not been his own. 

   He said, “Good.  But I question your choice of location.  Why not the red butte?  Surely the gue’la see it as well as we do.  Do you not believe they would choose to use it as a visual landmark as well as we?”

   “Aye, sir, but I believe that is where they will set up their base before plowing through the valley.  They believe in fighting war with imagery.  If they can make it known to us that they have captured a landmark, they will.”

   Bright Star smiled.  He wondered, as he often did, why Walks Impatiently had not been made shas’ui when Snowcap passed on.  He supposed it had been a mistake and nothing more: a clerical error on the part of the Cadre.  Yet still the order had been clear and irrefutable: Bright Star was in command of this squadron of pathfinders, and he would lead them until such a time as he was no longer fit.

   As the pathfinders moved to reconnoiter with their fellows, Bright Star was stuck by a moment of creativity.  Filing it in his mind for later use, he silently vowed he would make a priority of capturing the enemy’s grenades.

Offline Myen'Tal

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Re: little bit o' tau goodness
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2009, 09:27:06 PM »
Cool story, Arkion, I like what you're doing with the pictures. I'm interested to see where this goes next.
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Offline Anomander

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Re: little bit o' tau goodness
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2009, 12:55:34 AM »
i really love the story as well, cant wait for the next installment.

Offline Arkion

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Re: little bit o' tau goodness
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2009, 12:59:29 AM »
Thanks guys.  I'm playing with the prose a little to make the cadence reflect the tau thought process; hopefully it's not coming off as heavy handed or archaic.

The five who waited were clearly fatigued.  The constant rain, coupled with the recent loss of their fellows weighed heavily upon them.  As Bright Star and Walks Impatiently returned, all who heard them drew their pulse carbines and aimed them at those who approached, waiting for their helmets’ HUD to confirm a friendly or a hostile target.

   After such formalities, when they were assembled, Bright Star gave a series of vocal commands which his helmet obeyed, linking to the others’ helms and showing all the pathfinders what he had just seen himself.  The red butte and the fungal outcropping, now named Base-2 and Objective, respectively, appeared to everyone.  An audio log began recording as Bright Star spoke.

   “Base-2 suspected hostile.  Surrender we shall save for the Objective.  We move.”

   Someone in high command thought it had been hilarious to code-name the signal jammer “Surrender.”  The seven thought otherwise.

   Without another word the pathfinders went deeper still into the Valley of Wondrous Life.

   All that day, travel was arduous.  Day was a brief event on Vul’Alum; nights were brief also.  This planet’s rotation was swift indeed!

The Cadre had sent Bright Star information, which he reviewed during the group’s next rest:

   The gue’la were fighting to exterminate the Empire off this planet.  Good to know; nothing new, but a re-enforcement of old motivations. 

The number of troops estimated planetside was roughly twenty thousand humans, with a smattering of genetically enhanced super soldiers, or astartes.

   Again, nothing particularly new.  Bright Star had never come into conflict with an astartes before, but he knew they were tough, very dangerous at close range. Their weaknesses were in their long range weaponry and their arrogance: they put great faith in the superiority of their body armor.

   “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he thought.

   An estimated hundred or so of those, with vehicles, plus the twenty thousand regular gue’la, also with vehicles.  Most of the twenty thousand came from a place called Catachan which, apparently, meant they were quite at home in dangerous forests.  The super soldiers were called the Iron Lords, and that was all the Cadre knew of them. 

   There was also an awkward yet terrible biped-machine that the gue’la fashioned after their animals: warhound titan, in their tongue.

   The odds-makers had the Cadre heavily outnumbered, but were still confident of a victory for the Empire. Bright Star hoped Can’Aa was worth it.

Offline RAVEN KRW

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Re: little bit o' tau goodness
« Reply #4 on: February 2, 2009, 06:53:46 AM »
I rather found myself engrossed in reading this. Your discription is pot on and the atmosphere you set works really well with the plot outline. Well written buddy.

Offline Fasor'ith

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Re: little bit o' tau goodness
« Reply #5 on: November 5, 2012, 08:11:07 AM »
I've bookmarked this and waiting for an update. So rare is it to find tau fiction from a tau perspective with this clearly unhuman mindset. Keep it coming.
Thanx - Fasor'ith

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