In The Lore Explainer, we take a deep look at the lore behind our favorite games, movies, and books, and talk about the story behind them and sum up what you need to know and how you can find out more. In this article and the next, we’ll be looking at the lore behind the Damocles Gulf campaign in Warhammer 40,000.
Games Workshop waited almost a full year after Shield of Baal to release their next campaign book, putting out War Zone Damocles: Mont’ka in November 2015, but the actual story of the Damocles Gulf started nearly ten years prior, in Imperial Armour Volume 3: The Taros Campaign. In this prelude to Damocles Gulf, we’ll be looking at the Taros Campaign, the first campaign book for the T’au, and how it set the stage for later campaigns, since they all tend to take place in the same general area at the edge of the T’au Empire.
So this starts with the Taros Campaign, an Imperial Armour book released all the way back in 2005.
A Brief Primer on Imperial Armour
Games Workshop first unveiled their Forge World subcompany in 1998, under the direction of John Stallard and Paul Robins. Presumably spurred on by the limited but fervent enthusiasm for the metal Thunderhawk Gunship model they’d produced on 500 of just a year earlier. Forge World’s original directive was to create terrain kits and large scale limited edition collector models, the first and most famous of which was the 12” tall Abaddon the Despoiler statue they released early in their existence. It wasn’t long however before they were releasing special limited edition models for 40k, most notably flyers like the Chaos Hellblade and Hell Talon Bomber. These needed rules. Enter Imperial Armour.
Imperial Armour originally debuted in the Citadel Journal in 1999 as a product line of resin upgrade kits for plastic vehicles and full models. The best of these by far were the dreadnoughts and door kits they did for legion/chapter land raiders and rhinos – which are still highly sought-after today. This would later see expansion into full books with rules for using said resin models in game, collected into large hardcover volumes that covered not only rules but also detailed lore and descriptions of the vehicles. The later volumes especially are some truly stunning books that are worth having.
The Taros Campaign is the third book in the Imperial Armour series, initially released in October 2005 and covering the Taros campaign, a conflict between Imperium and T’au forces. This came with rules for T’au Forge World units, in particular some Crisis Suits and vehicles like the Tetra, Piranha, special drones and turrets, and flyers – in particular the Barracuda, Tiger Shark, Orca, and Manta, as well as the Kroot Great Knarloc and Knarloc riders. The book saw a second edition re-release in 2013 with updated datasheets for flyer and suit variants.
War Zone: Damocles vs. The Damocles Crusade
One of the most confusing elements of all of this when doing the research was separating what were essentially two different Damocles engagements: The first of these was the Damocles Crusade, which is also very unhelpfully referred to as the Damocles Gulf Crusade, took place between 742 and 745.M41, when the T’au Empire first crossed the Damocles Gulf and made contact with the Imperium (this is all covered in the original, third edition Codex: Tau, which you can find on the warhammer vault). The planets they discovered on the fringe of Imperial space were backwater, moribund worlds of superstitious and downtrodden zealots. Over time they were able to sway those people to the ideals of the water caste, conquering those worlds they could not charm into their fold.
The Imperium did not take well to this and launched a Crusade to destroy the T’au forces. With the ability to travel through the warp, the Imperium were able to easily rout the worlds claimed by the T’au and bypass the T’au fleet. The Imperium pushed deep into the T’au empire, fighting all the way to the Sept world Dal’yth, before the crusade ground to a bloody halt. The T’au forces, led by Commander Farsight, fought the Imperium to a standstill and the Imperium finally agreed to meet with water caste for peace talks. These were largely successful because of the impending arrival of Hive Fleet Behemoth, which the Imperium believed to be a larger threat, and one that would just eat the T’au.
Here’s where things get a bit wonky: after fighting to a standstill Inquisitor Grand calls for an Exterminatus of the T’au worlds, concluding the T’au were too dangerous to be allowed to exist. But somehow the T’au had impressed the Crusade’s war council enough that they thought doing an exterminatus would be “cowardly” or “dishonorable,” to the point that it paralyzed the crusade war council. This all reads a bit too “did a Tau write this” when it comes to the lore section but as with all Codex blurbs, the answer is “yeah, maybe.”
So the Imperium learned that the T’au were pretty good at shooting things and the T’au learned that the Imperium was actually really massive and the galaxy was more or less theirs. The T’au, grievously wounded by the conflict, retreated to their empire to lick their wounds. An unofficial truce was established, and that truce held more or less for two hundred and fifty years – with the Damocles Crusade passing into forgotten memory for the Imperium (but not the T’au).
War Zone: Damocles picks up those 250 years later, when the T’au had improved their ship engines and stasis technology to enable them to cross larger distances faster.
The Taros Campaign
Taros is a desert mining world in the Kayon Sector of Segmentum Ultima, and hosts a vast supply of untapped mineral resources. It notably borders the T’au Empire near the Damocles Gulf, and supplies precious metals to the Stygies VIII Forge World, making it important to the defense of the Cadian Gate. The Taros Campaign takes place in 998.M41, right as the 13th Black Crusade begins.
Treachery on Taros
As the Imperium began to ramp up defenses against Abaddon’s 13th Black Crusade, Imperial bean counters raised the planet’s production targets in order to supply the forge word Stygies VIII with necessary materials. When this happens they typically reach out to the planetary governor to check in and make sure they’re amenable to the adjustment and if they aren’t, they will be quickly replaced with someone who will acquiesce to their demands.
The Imperium sent a delegation of auditors to the planet to deliver the edict and ensure compliance. At first, Taros’ planetary governor seemed very accommodating. But as the delegates toured the planet, they began to notice operations had ramped up substantially already without the Imperium’s notice. Massive strip mining operations were delivering vast piles of ore, to be carried offworld and processed elsewhere. While the planet was meeting its quotas, it was vastly overproducing – but the delegation was unable to determine for what purpose.
It turned out the T’au had already negotiated a deal with the governing elite on Taros, securing trading contracts in which they’d exchange water purification and recycling technology for ore, things which would make life easier for the social elite on the planet. Working discreetly and meeting their quotas, the Taros elite managed to keep this agreement under wraps for more than twenty years. However, while the delegation was on Taros investigating discrepancies, conflict would break out in the Denab system, and when the Imperial Navy captured a T’au transport filled with ore from Taros, the jig was up.
Rather than dispatch an assassin, the Imperium chose a more subtle approach, attempting a coup d’etat against the planetary governor and his supporters, which would include a show of force designed to deter the T’au from future attempts. That meant calling in the Adeptus Astartes, and space marines of the Avenging Sons were sent to Taros to take part in the campaign.
Not as Planned
The Imperium’s finest found themselves thoroughly outmatched in the initial conflict of the Taros campaign, dropping onto the planet to attempt to seize the Planetary Governor’s Palace only to find T’au forces already there, which would rebuff them after two days of fighting. The first Taros intervention was a costly defeat for the Imperium and the Avenging Sons took major losses in that first conflict. They did not take it well. None of them did – Imperial officials were livid, not just at the defeat but at the notion that the T’au had staked a claim to one of the Emperor’s worlds. Even though there was an increasing need to pay attention to the developing war at the Eye of Terror, Taros could not be ignored.
More forces are dispatched, including a regiment of Tallarns, more used to fighting in desert warfare. They were joined by pace marines of the Raptors chapter, whose mission was to secure a foothold on the planet’s surface for the Tallarn forces. When they arrive, they find no enemies – only quiet desert and abandoned mines and outposts. Little did they realize they were being watched by T’au Pathfinders and Stealth Suits, biding their time and waiting for their moment to strike. And strike they did – calling in raids to decimate Imperial forces from a distance on the wide open desert battlefields of Taros. They struck supply lines and convoys in raids that left Imperial tanks without the water and fuel they desperately needed. And Imperial forces quickly learned to focus on T’au scouts and Pathfinders to avoid giving away their movements.
Things would get worse in the Imperium’s next major offensive, Operation Comet. Imperial forces decided to strike at one of the planet’s main water processing plants, led by Elysian Drop Troop forces. After two days of pitched battle the plant was reduced to rubble and the Imperial forces once again defeated, and even marine and titan forces had been stopped as they discovered the newest T’au craft – Tiger Sharks – were capable of taking down Warhound Titans with their twin railguns.
After a second defeat, Imperial forces fell back to their initial landing zone and an Eversor Assassin was dispatched to execute T’au high command. This went about how you’d expect, with the Assassin dropping in and murdering the Ethereal Aun’vre and all of his bodyguards. This enraged and emboldened the Tau forces, whose cries changed from “For the Greater Good!” to “For Aun’vre” as they went on the offensive.
Tau forces chased the Imperial armies down, forcing them back to evacuation sites and offworld. By the end of the fighting, the planet was firmly in Tau hands and the guard had lost nearly five complete regiments. The T’au would increase their grip on the planet, renaming it T’ros, while the Imperium would need to find a new source of materials for Stygies VIII and would have to put off any counterattack as they’d have to focus all of their efforts on the 13th Black Crusade.
Notable Forces – Raptors and Elysian Drop Droops
If you’re wondering when and how the Raptors Chapter of Space Marines went from being colorful morons to a super tactical camo-and-bandoliers-in-olive-drab armor crew, this is the place. The Elysian Drop Troops are also introduced here alongside their then-new Forge World models, though they don’t clothe themselves in nearly as much glory.
Parallels to the Eye of Terror
When I first revisited this campaign book, I was curious to determine if the book’s story was driven or inspired by the events of the global Eye of Terror campaign, which largely saw Tau players capturing Imperial worlds and expanding the empire while the Imperium was busy fighting Abaddon’s forces on Cadia. Unfortunately, that appears to not have been the case, at least not directly – the original 2003 publish date on the first edition of the Taros Campaign suggests it was written prior to the global campaign, however, the end result is very much in line with the general outcomes of the global campaign for the faction that would emerge organically. So good job to the original author for calling that one.
Final Thoughts
This is a unique book among campaign books, in that the Imperium just eat shit almost every step of the way. Nothing they do against the T’au seems to work, save sending an Eversor Assassin to kill the Ethereal, and they lose every major conflict in the war, usually looking foolish in the process. The T’au are more than happy to sit back and wait for the Imperium to come to them and walking into a trap, then blast those forces full of holes. Most of these books tend to be very give-and-take, with wins on both sides but this reads as just an abject disaster for the Imperium at every turn – and that’s honestly refreshing to read. At the time the Taros Campaign book was written, T’au were still very new to the setting, and so the impetus was to establish them as a credible threat to the Imperium out of the gate.
Next week we’ll take a look at the actual start of War Zone: Damocles – Operation Shadowtalon/Burning Dawn and Apocalypse Warzone: Damocles, which sees T’au forces conquering the “northernmost” region of the sector and moving to conquer the hive world Agrellan.
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