Chapter 102 The T'au Heresy (1) (Bonus)

“It’s too much, I can’t take it! Stop, please, I’m going to overflow…”

“Traveler, shouldn’t we pause for a second? Let the T’au’va catch her breath.” (TL/N: ( ˶°ㅁ°) !!)

After capturing Goddess T’au’va, Vane whipped up a Psychic Amplifier by hand. He strapped the Goddess down and started pumping her full of raw Warp energy, turbocharging the evolution of the Greater Good’s followers.

Goddess T’au’va bloated up like a water balloon, practically turning into the Chonky Goddess T’au’va.

Even Big E, who usually took a hardline, no-nonsense stance on anything involving the Warp, winced a little at the sight of her.

Vane turned to Big E and wagged a single finger back and forth in his face.

“Big E, oh Big E. I’ve gotta call you out on this one.”

“How can the glorious Master of Mankind be this soft-hearted?”

“Those who achieve greatness don’t sweat the small stuff. Crank it up! Pump it in!”

Vane tweaked the dial, jacking up the output power and making Goddess T’au’va groan and whimper even louder.

Watching this unfold, Big E took a moment of silence for the four Ruinous Powers in the Warp.

The Traveler was even more ruthless than he was. If the four Chaos Gods ever fell into this guy’s hands, Big E dreaded to think what would happen to them.

A miniature Void Dragon clung to Big E’s shoulder, keeping its mouth firmly shut. Thank god I surrendered when I did, it thought, counting its lucky stars.

As Vane relentlessly tuned and modified Goddess T’au’va, the mortal followers of the Greater Good began to feel the side effects.

—

The Kel’Tyr world was the closest planet to the Startide Nexus. It was the crown jewel of the T’au Empire’s Fourth Sphere of Expansion and now served as the vanguard outpost for the Fifth Sphere fleet.

During the Third Sphere Expansion, the T’au and humanity had clashed brutally in the Damocles Gulf. Right at the tipping point of the war, the Imperium of Man was forced to pull back due to simultaneous Chaos and Tyranid invasions.

Before bailing out, the Adeptus Mechanicus ignited the nebular storms of Damocles, completely cutting off contact between the T’au Empire and the Imperium. The T’au warships couldn’t punch through the terrifying barrier, leaving them boxed in.

Meanwhile, Hive Fleet Gorgon’s invasion left the eastern fringe of the galaxy dead quiet, and to the west sat the territory of the Necron Sautekh Dynasty—a powerhouse the T’au couldn’t dream of beating.

Desperate to keep expanding, the T’au Ethereal Council rolled the dice. They activated the experimental AL-38 Slipstream module. Reverse-engineered from Imperial Warp engines, this tech promised to let T’au ships move at mind-blowing speeds.

Instead, the half-baked tech triggered an absolute disaster, ripping the veil between reality and the Warp apart to create the Startide Nexus.

The Fourth Sphere fleet was chucked right into the Warp without a shred of protection. Normally, this would’ve been a total wipe, turning the fleet into an all-you-can-eat buffet for Warp entities.

But then, Goddess T’au’va showed up. She bailed them out and dumped them right into the Chalnath Expanse, deep within Imperial territory. Later on, after digging in, the Fourth Sphere survivors used the resulting wormhole to ping the home empire and reestablish contact.

Upon hearing that the Fourth Sphere had survived and a stable wormhole existed, the Ethereal Council immediately woke Commander Shadowsun from cryo-sleep. They named the legendary Fire Caste hero the Supreme Commander of the Fifth Sphere Expansion, tasking her with pushing into the Chalnath Expanse to spread the light of the Greater Good.

After dragging her fleet through the Startide Nexus, Shadowsun set up shop on Kel’Tyr to push outwards and preach their philosophy.

Not long ago, a local Ecclesiarchy world had flat-out refused to join the T’au Empire. Shadowsun didn’t hesitate; she ordered the local Imperial defenders and religious zealots wiped off the map, successfully claiming the planet.

The human psykers she was currently consulting had been rescued from that very same world.

Right before dying, the Sisters of Battle guarding those psykers had screamed a warning. They told the T’au not to release the imprisoned cultists of the Changer of Ways, calling them the enemies of all civilization.

Naturally, Shadowsun didn’t give a damn about the ravings of religious fanatics. As far as she was concerned, these psykers were just oppressed victims of religious intolerance. The Imperium was barbaric as always, violently persecuting anyone who didn’t share their exact beliefs.

In the name of the Greater Good, Shadowsun freed the Imperial-persecuted psykers. She even had her smooth-talking Water Caste diplomats guide them toward embracing the T’au philosophy.

Judging by how these psykers behaved afterward, the rehabilitation program had gone swimmingly. They genuinely seemed to buy into the Greater Good. Sure, they occasionally mumbled crazy nonsense like “Blessings of the Nine Paths” or “Ninefold Wisdom,” but other than that, everything was perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, the Earth Caste scientists’ plans had totally flopped. Their tech couldn’t stop the local colonists from having horrific nightmares.

“Maybe Commander Surestrike was right,” Shadowsun’s adjutant spoke up. “There’s some kind of evil force in that dimension. It’s polluting the Greater Good and infecting the citizens of the Empire.”

Commander Surestrike’s full name was Shas’O Ko’vash Vash’ya T’au’n J’karra. He had been the leading commander of the Fourth Sphere fleet. For whatever reason, his fleet had massacred all their auxiliary troops, including the Kroot who had been allied with the T’au for centuries.

Surestrike had even mouthed off to Ethereal Aun’Laduring a briefing when the expeditionary force finally hit the Chalnath Expanse. Because of that stunt, he was stripped of his rank and shipped back to T’au.

In the T’au Empire, questioning an Ethereal was the ultimate taboo. Anyone who tried it, no matter their status, simply vanished. The only ones who survived were those who bailed out of the Empire entirely, hiding away in distant enclaves.

“Drop it. We don’t talk about the Commander,” Shadowsun told her adjutant. “He completely violated the core tenets of the Greater Good. Wiping out the auxiliaries was unacceptable. And crossing an Ethereal? That’s crossing a line you just don’t cross.”

“So what’s the play here? If this keeps up, the entire Fifth Sphere is going to collapse.”

“If the Earth Caste can’t fix this, we’ll just have to borrow some wisdom from the other races.”

Shadowsun ordered her people to bring in the human psykers to get some answers.

When the Fire Warriors escorted the psykers into the sleek, high-tech strategy room, the humans looked visibly wrecked. The increasingly violent Warp storms were hammering their nerves and souls, leaving them completely drained.

“It’s the power of the Warp,” the elderly psyker explained, answering Shadowsun’s questions. “Your tech is useless against it. Only an ironclad mind and fearless willpower can hold it back.”

“Mental willpower, huh?” Shadowsun pondered.

Maybe that’s why the Imperium is so obsessed with superstitious rituals and blind faith, she mused. Maybe they use that stuff to buff their citizens’ resistance against this Chaos.

“Can you give me the rundown on this ‘Warp’ you keep mentioning? What exactly is in there?”

The psykers stared at Shadowsun like she had two heads. Lately, they had kept a pretty low profile around all this flashy T’au tech. But Shadowsun’s question made them realize something huge: this newborn race knew absolutely squat about Chaos.

She’s actually clueless enough to ask us about Warp entities?

Praise the Changer of Ways. Praise the Ninefold Path.

She’s such a massive sucker. It would be an absolute crime not to play her like a fiddle.

“Most of the entities in the Warp are hostile, but a rare few actually harbor goodwill toward living things in reality,” the old psyker said smoothly. “Take your Goddess T’au’va, for instance. Because of her, you’ve been able to camp out near the rift without catching the worst of the Warp’s bad vibes.”

“But now, she’s hit a snag. She’s been abducted by some incredibly powerful, malicious entities. Without her covering your backs, things went downhill fast.”

The old psyker ambled over to the strategy room window, pointing out into the void at a massive, hexagonal node facility ringing the Startide Nexus. Inside its framework flickered the wormhole born from the Fourth Sphere disaster, a direct lifeline back to the T’au homeworlds.

“Right now, you need to pack up and get as far away from that rift as possible. You also need to purge any of your people suffering from chronic nightmares so the Warp entities can’t use them as conduits.”

Shadowsun shut his advice down immediately.

The Startide Nexus was the absolute linchpin of the Fifth Expansion. If they dropped their guard and it closed up, the expeditionary force would be stranded in the Chalnath Expanse forever. And as for purging people just for having bad dreams? That flew right in the face of the Greater Good.

“If you won’t do that, your only other option is to either rescue Goddess T’au’va or find another benevolent Warp entity to team up with.”

“Ally with a Warp entity?” That actually sounds doable, Shadowsun thought.

The Greater Good was all about resolving things peacefully whenever possible. When taking over Imperial worlds, the vanguard always sent in the diplomats first. Only when talking failed did they call in the big guns. In Shadowsun’s mind, allying with a Warp entity wasn’t much different from teaming up with the Kroot or the Vespid. These guys just happened to live in a different dimension.

“I’ll need to give this some serious thought,” Shadowsun replied. She liked the old psyker’s idea, but being the cautious commander she was, she wasn’t going to pull the trigger until she’d verified the intel from multiple angles.

“Take all the time you need,” the old psyker nodded. “If you decide to go that route, I can make an introduction.”

“The Changer of Ways, a resident of the Warp, is a benevolent and generous being. He’s totally dedicated to sheltering seekers of truth. A civilization like the T’au Empire—one that values truth, knowledge, and spreading reason across the galaxy—would definitely earn His favor.”