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Warhammer 40,000/Characters/Xeno Races


Do not ask why kill the alien?, rather ask why not?

The alien factions in Warhammer 40,000 are treated as... well, alien. Mankind had made non-aggression pacts with a number of alien races during the Age of Technology, but these were lost as part of the Age of Strife's consequences. A fundamental tenet of the Emperor's rise to power was the superiority of humans to all things alien. In the time since his rise to the Golden Throne, this has become a fundamental part of the Imperial Creed, albeit exaggerated from the Emperor's own views. A level of xenophobia which ranges from suspicion to virulent and violent hatred is cultivated in all parts of the Imperium, and "Fear the alien" and "Suffer not the alien to live" are common themes and catchphrases. The Inquisition's Ordo Xenos was specifically created to study alien races to discover weaknesses the Imperium can take advantage of, and works to crush or subvert alien influence on Imperial worlds or worlds the Imperium would like to control. They also work with the Deathwatch, a specialized division of the Space Marines consisting of Marines from many different chapters who have shown particular skill in fighting aliens.

Despite this bias, temporary alliances or truces with various xenos factions do happen on rare occasions, especially when dealing with common enemies or when the Inquisition deems it necessary to do so to further their plans. This tends to most commonly occur between the Eldar and the Imperium. There are a very small number of xenos races who have actually been embraced by the Imperium for various reasons. Rogue Traders often freely handle xenos weapons and artifacts, which would mostly likely mean a messy end for any normal Imperial citizen if discovered.

In keeping with this general theme, very few stories from the Black Library have been told from an alien perspective. A trilogy of Eldar-centered books will conclude in late 2012, and Path of the Renegade is the first in a new series of Dark Eldar-centered books. The short story collection Fear the Alien contains two stories which feature sections from the points of view of an Ork warboss and an Eldar Harlequin as well.

Tropes for the lesser alien races or aliens in general include

  • Aliens Are Bastards: A central tenet of Imperial philosophy, who are little better. A close examination of all races will leave one with the conclusion that the Imperium's belief is largely accurate.
  • Ax Crazy: Even in this universe, the Barghesi are considered so ferocious that "hyper-violent" almost always precedes a mention of their name. The only things we know about them are that they have several Space Marine chapters dedicated to fighting them, they live in the Grendel Stars, and judging by the name, they may have something to do with the legendary Barghests of North England, malevolent and gigantic spectral black dogs.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: The Jokaero are amazing artisans who have given the Imperium devices such as digital weapons, but aren't even sapient. Everything they create is done fully by instinct.
  • Captain Ersatz: The Umbra are basically smaller versions of Leliel.
  • Expy: In third edition, the Hrud are rough expies of Warhammer Fantasy Battle's Skaven, a race of rat-men. By fourth edition, they had been Retconned into creatures with large eyes and exoskeleton. They still retain the aspect of sentient vermin, closely associated with trash and decay.
  • Everything's Better with Monkeys: The Jokaero are essentially orangutans (from space!)
  • Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: The Thyrrus are a squid-like race with an unusual approach to warfare, emphasizing spectacle and huge casualties over actually winning the battle.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: It is impossible to keep a Jokaero captive or coerce it to build something for you; it'll just put together something to let it escape.
  • Humanoid Aliens: Eldar, Orks, Tau and Necrons. Lampshaded in Xenology. Of these, the Eldar and Orks were both created by the Old Ones (as were humanity), while the Necrons were intentionally styled after humanoid skeletons to put the fear of death in the younger races.
  • Humans by Any Other Name: Humans are mon-keigh[1] to the Eldar, Gue'la[2] or Gue'vesa[3] to the Tau, 'umiez or 'oomiez to the Orks, and the living to the Necrons. We're not sure what the Tyranids call us but we think it's something along the lines of "tasty".
  • Humans Through Alien Eyes:
    • The Eldar, naturally, find mon-keigh to be brutish and ignorant barbarians blundering their way through the Eldar's birthright.
    • Orks find humans to be entertaining foes (ironically enough for a lot of the reasons that humans find orks dangerous), though they don't understand how we can tell who's in charge since, with the obvious exception of the Space Marines, we're all about the same size.
  • Idiot Savant: The Jokaero. They can build almost any kind of machine, but have only animal intelligence. Due to this they are one of the only Xeno races tolerated by the Imperium.
  • Living Shadow: The Umbra's method of attack.
  • Precursors: The Old Ones, who are believed to be the creators of the Eldar, Orks, Jokaero, and other races.
  • Starfish Aliens: Plenty.
    • As an example, under a Hrud's tattered clothing they look sort of like several human spines fused to an equally bony torso. They also have in effect by default an entropic field, meaning that anything which comes in contact with them is rapidly aged.
    • There's also the Saruthi. They have an oblong, flat body suspended by multiple, multi-jointed arms joined at a single point with hands with differing numbers of extremely flexible fingers, overall following no human idea of symmetry. Their head (itself an oblong structure with no eyes or mouth and multiple nostrils placed asymmetrically around the skull) is suspended from the body on a long neck at a random point of the body. Due to a lack of most human senses, they instead sense things through a mixture of smell and taste, allowing them to milk Alien Geometries for all its worth.
    • And then you've got the Umbra, the ultimate example of this trope. It is literally a sphere that floats around and creates Living Shadows.
  • Shape Shifter: The Thexians have multiple forms, the only one mentioned being the Combat Form.

Of the countless alien races in Warhammer 40000, only six present enough of a threat to Imperial power to get their own codex. They are:

Eldar

The stars themselves once lived and died at our command, yet you still dare to oppose our will?

Eons ago, when humanity was still trying to master fire, the Eldar ruled the galaxy all but unopposed. However, at the height of their power, they grew decadent, and began amusing themselves through increasingly depraved pastimes. Their seers warned of disaster, and some began to flee for the hinterlands of their domain, but it was no use—the psychic energy produced by the sheer amount of Squick going on resulted in the creation of the Chaos god(dess) Slaanesh, whose birth gutted the Eldar empire, devoured the souls of most of their race, and left the Eye of Terror as a permanent blight upon the galaxy. Today, the Eldar are close to extinction, almost all of their gods are dead, and their leaders desperately try to cling to survival at any cost.

The Eldar who survived the Fall generally fall into four categories:

  • Craftworld Eldar—These Eldar live in vast, self-sufficient city-like starships known as Craftworlds. To avoid falling prey to the dark desires that ended their empire, these Eldar live strictly regimented and disciplined lives, focusing their attentions on one "Path" at a time, be it artisan, scholar, or warrior. They are guided by prescient Farseers who manipulate galactic events to favor their people. The general consensus is that they are a dying race, but they live in hope of somehow overcoming their decline, defeating Slaanesh, and rebuilding their Empire.
  • Dark Eldar—See their entry below.
  • "Exodites"—Eldar who foresaw the fall of their race and abandoned much of its advanced technology to live simpler lives among primitive worlds. Not a playable faction in-game, but described as maintaining trade contact with their Craftworld brethren, exchanging food for technology. Eldar who leave the craftworlds on the Path of the Outcast often end up living in Exodite communities.
  • The Harlequins—A sub-faction comprised of members of the other three; they are devotees of Cegorach, the Laughing God, who wander the galaxy as performers and warriors, recounting the traditional Eldar myths and history, as well as the story of the Fall. They also guard the secretive Black Library in the Webway, the largest collection of Eldar history and Chaos lore in the galaxy. They are fanatical enemies of Chaos, and their ultimate goal, their "Great Work", is the re-unification of the Eldar and destruction of Slaanesh. Not playable as a separate faction; but available as an elite unit for both Craftworld and Dark Eldar forces.

An arrogant race, the Eldar view all other species as inferior, and won't bat an eye at sacrificing millions of human lives to save a few hundred Eldar—indeed, catastrophic conflicts such as the Second War for Armageddon were subtly engineered by Eldar machinations. The Eldar are willing to work with other races against their old enemies the Orks, the Necrons, or Chaos, but they frequently turn on their "comrades" the minute it is advantageous to do so, and won't let a short-term alliance get in the way of their own survival. Because of this, the Eldar are despised as a capricious and fickle species, though this hatred is tempered with fear of their advanced technology and formidable psychic "witchcraft."

If the Space Marines are an army of generalists, the Eldar are an army of extreme specialists—their Aspect Warriors excel at a particular battlefield role, but need to fulfill that role in order to be useful. The Eldar also make extensive use of skimmer units such as jetbikes or grav-tanks, allowing them to swiftly bring devastating firepower to bear and outflank their opponents, while their leaders' psyker abilities can help bolster their allies and swing the battle at pivotal instances. Appropriately for their race, success with the Eldar largely depends on forming a good battle-plan and trying to predict the enemy's own...

Notable Eldar tropes include

  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Obviously. Their chainswords (like many others) are described as having monomolecular edges, and their power swords having 'micro-crystalline blades.'
  • Abnormal Ammo: Eldar weapons can fire hundreds of mono-molecular shuriken, shards of glass impregnated with virulent and painful toxins, strands of monofilament wire; or open holes that teleport spheres of enemy matter into the Warp.
  • The Aesthetics of Technology—Compare the sleek, curved profile of the Falcon grav-tank to the lumbering, smoke-belching war machines of the humans. The grav-tanks even look more like speedboats with weapons on top than they look like tanks. Dark Eldar vehicles tend to look like flying versions of ancient sailing ships, with lots of blades and spiky bits.
  • Agent Peacock: The Craftworld Eldar as a whole fit this compared to other armies in the setting. Their seers wear voluminous fur-trimmed robes with elaborate designs on them, all their units have several polished gemstones set around their body, they all possess an unearthly physical beauty and move with a near-impossible amount of grace, most of their warriors dress in bright and bold colors in a variety of hue, their vanity and skills at manipulation are both legendary, and they are without a doubt one of the "prettiest" armies that can be fielded. However, they are also one of the deadliest armies in the galaxy; see Badass and Badass Army later in this section for those details.
  • Air Jousting: Shining Spears are jetbike-mounted Aspect Warriors wielding deadly laser lances.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Howling Banshees are a shrieking, ostensibly all-female type of Aspect Warrior. However, males can technically join, but the Banshee is considered a female spirit in Eldar mythology and any male who does join adopts a female persona and female-formed armor while they wear their "war mask".
  • Badass: Plenty, of course.
    • Eldrad Ulthran, the Chief Farseer of Ulthwe Craftworld, defeated Abaddon the Despoiler in single combat, manipulated and caused the rise of an Ork Warlord responsible for the deaths of billions of humans to save a craftworld, and saved the Imperial world of Cadia by attempting to commandeer a Blackstone Fortress that was under Chaotic control. Although he succeeded, it was at the cost of his life and the death of the other Eldar who attempted to commandeer it, with Eldrad's soul being dragged into the Blackstone as a result. However, it is implied that his soul is still fighting the Blackstone. And one of his former acolytes even believes that he can win.
    • Prince Yriel, a Fleet Admiral of the Craftworld Iyanden who was exiled for being headstrong and brash in the event of a raid by Chaos Space Marines. He ended up annihilating the Chaos fleet but was scolded by his superiors for leaving the Craftworld completely defenseless. He exiled himself and became the most notorious Pirate Prince ever, after assimilating all of the other pirate factions, but made a heroic entry by returning to his Craftworld to save it from a Tyranid invasion, personally slaying the leader of the invasion by wielding a cursed artifact said to drain the wielder's soul. Now the poor guy travels around the galaxy trying to save his Craftworld from extinction. Also, he has a monocle that shoots lasers.
    • Harlequin Solitaires. Perhaps the most badass type of Harlequins, they have no souls as they are doomed to be claimed by Slaanesh at their deaths, unless Cegorach himself intervenes. Despite this, they're incredibly terrifying to psykers and ridiculously powerful combatants. Tasked with playing the role of Slaanesh in the Harlequin performances, they rarely speak—if ever—and when they do, they are said to curse those they speak to. There's a reason they guard the Black Library, and even managed to repel an attempted incursion by Ahriman of the Thousand Sons. This is magnified tenfold when Cegorach manages to steal a doomed soul of a Solitaire from Slaanesh—the Laughing God places the Solitaire's soul into a Spirit Walker (like a massively souped-up Wraithlord, which retains the Solitaire's incredible agility in life, creating a Golem-like mecha.)
    • Arguably the baddest of all is Maugan Ra, who single-handedly defended the entire planet of Stormvald from the Tyranid Hive Fleet Leviathan (that's right, the same Hive Fleet that is destroying huge areas of Orkish territory) and who recently successfully went into the Eye of Terror to save the lost Craftworld of Altansar, which was his homeworld. And probably where he founded the whole Dark Reaper aspect shrine.
    • In said scenario he cut a Tyranid bio-titan in half. With the executioner-bayonet attached to his Maugetar.
  • Becoming the Mask: Every Craftworld Eldar chooses a particular Path, adopting a vocation and mentality to go along with it. After they feel that they have learned all they can from that Path, they choose a new one, changing vocation and assuming a new mentality. In this way, not only do they learn about particular trades, but also teach themselves various traits to develop their character and establish control over their own passions. However, occasionally an Eldar may become "lost" along a particular Path, no longer able or necessarily willing to adopt a new one, becoming locked into that path for the remainder of their lives. When an Aspect Warrior becomes an Exarch, this is even referred to as being unable to separate themselves from their "war mask."
  • Berserk Button: Stole some Eldar soulstones? Broke them? All the Eldar will be very upset. The reason being that the stones contain fallen Eldar within them, and it's their only reprieve from the alternative of being consumed by Slaanesh. And soulstones can only be found on Crone Worlds—former Eldar planets that fell to Chaos, which inevitably leads to incredibly suicidal sorties or missions by Eldar forces to claim some of them.
  • BFG: Many. Dark Reaper Exarchs are particularly notable, carrying handheld Tempest Launchers that fire clusters of missiles. Most of their heavy weaponry such as D-cannons can be seen as this as well.
  • BFS:
    • The Eldar Wraithlord in the fourth edition has a huge sword. The Avatar of Khaine's blade is named "The Wailing Doom", because it 'shrieks as it tastes mortal flesh.'
    • Eldar Witchblades in general are not exactly small and are able to rip through tanks and heavily armored infantry with ease.
  • Big Good: Eldrad was this for Ulthwe.
  • Body to Jewel:
    • Eldar blood crystallizes rather than forming scabs.
    • Farseers take this in a completely different direction. As they age, their bodies begin to crystallize, eventually turning the Farseer into a statue that serves as a living node for the craftworld's Infinity Circuit.
  • Brain Uploading: The Eldar have no pleasant afterlife waiting for them; having created Slaanesh, their souls are bound to be collected by him/her/it. The best they can do is capture their souls in a Waystone for uploading into their craftworld's Infinity Circuit, which basically allows the Eldar's soul to become a part of their craftworld, allowing them to give advice to the living. While this isn't exactly a paradise, it's a heck of a lot better than being consumed by Slaanesh.
  • Breast Plate: Averted for the most part (see Form-Fitting Wardrobe below). Female farseers in Dawn of War 2 have a minor case of Bare Your Midriff, but then they also have psychic Deflector Shields.
  • Casual Interstellar Travel: Thanks to the Webway, an interdimensional Portal Network, the Eldar avoid the problems associated with Warp travel. Eldar ships also use Solar Sails to traverse space.
  • Cassandra Truth: Averted horrifically. The Eldar seers warned their people that their decadence would destroy their civilization, and were ignored. Not because the decadent Eldar did not believe the predictions, but because they didn't care.
  • The Chessmaster: Farseers in general and Eldrad Ulthran in particular.
  • Combat Clairvoyance: Eldar psykers can hold their own in close combat, as they literally know your every move. Combine with BFS or blades on a stick, usually psychically charged.
  • Craftworld Of Hats: The notable Eldar Craftworlds embody aspects of the elf racial archetype. Ulthwe places an emphasis on the Witch Species aspect of elvenkind, while the jetbike-riders of Saim-Hann epitomize the elf as a fey barbarian. Militant-minded Biel-Tan showcases the elf as a disciplined and merciless warrior, the rangers of Alaitoc are the elves as woodcrafty snipers, while Iyanden, which fields armies of constructs animated by the souls of the dead, ramps the "ancient race in decline" idea up to eleven.
  • Crapsack Craftworld: Ulthwe is known as "Ulthwe the Damned", not because it's an unpleasant place, but because it has the misfortune of being so close to the Eye of Terror.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Both the weakness and the strength of the Eldar Aspect Warriors. Eldar Aspect Warrior units are often specifically equipped and trained to fight a certain opponent. It's said that if you pit six Eldar against six Space Marines, the Space Marines will kill all but one of the Eldar units but then be completely wiped out by the last Eldar unit.
  • Crystal Spires and Togas: Life on a Craftworld. Reflected in a lot of the game artwork.
  • Dance Battler: The Harlequins are an enigmatic faction of Eldar who act as dancing entertainers, horrifyingly lethal shock troops, or both at the same time.
  • Deadly Disc: Shuriken catapults fire hundreds of small serrated ones every second.
  • Death Is Cheap: Even if an Eldar dies, they'll be fine so long as the soulstone isn't destroyed (more or less), and they can come back as a Wraithguard, a golem-esque thing that wields a cannon which operates by opening miniature black holes on the battlefield, or a Wraithlord.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Eldar shuriken weaponry, capable of firing a hundred monomolecular-edged discs in the span of a second or two. Except in this case, each "cut" can equate to severed limbs and decapitation. That's 40K for you.
    • Dire Avengers take this even further through their ability Bladestorm, which allows them to put even more shots out.
  • Defector From Decadence: The Craftworlds themselves are societies of the descendants of these, as are the Exodites' worlds, with each choosing to defect in different ways. The craftworlds rejected the decadence in favor of highly structured lifestyles; the Exodites rejected the decadence in favor of a simpler and more hard-working existence.
  • Deflector Shields: Many Eldar vehicles and some troop choices are equipped with these:
    • Wave Serpents, their transport-skimmer vehicles, are equipped with energy shielding, making them notoriously difficult to take down.
    • Dire Avengers also qualify, as some of their Exarchs are armed with Shimmershields, energy shields that protect him and his squad from melee attacks.
  • Dragons Up the Yin-Yang: The serpentine dragon is a common Eldar glyph, while the yin-yang has seen less usage in recent editions. The Eldar are also noteworthy for having a yin-yang divided into three sections, though the meaning behind it remains unexplained.
    • One common interpretation of the three section yin-yang is that it represents the three moons of the Eldar homeworld, each of which is associated with one of their deities and feature prominently in their folklore and mythology.
  • Due to the Dead: Not only is it imperative to recover the Waystones of the fallen, there is an entire Path dedicated to expressing the Craftworld's collective grief at its losses; were the others to allow themselves the full weight of sorrow, they would be paralysed in their necessary tasks.
  • Emotion Eater: The warp spiders (the small wraithbone lifeforms from which the well-known aspect shrine takes its name) are these. They act like the infinity circuit's immune system, clustering around stray emotional signals (by "melting" into the circuit and reconstituting themselves elsewhere) which get trapped in there and consuming them like a phage. In this way, they keep the infinity circuit purified, leaving the existence for the souls within one of peace and calm serenity.
  • Empathic Weapon: Usually because there's an occupied Soulstone on it somewhere containing an Eldar spirit.
    • Played straight by Asurmen, first of the Phoenix Lords and the founder of the Dire Avenger Shrine, whose diresword contains the spirit of his dead brother, Tethesis, who fell to a daemon.
  • Enemy Mine: On rare occasions, Eldar and Imperial forces have joined together to battle Chaos forces, Tyranids, and Orks. Some members of the Inquisition have also had dealings with the Eldar for various reasons.
  • Eva Fins: Present on some Eldar units, which have curved fins protruding from the back behind the shoulders, such as Guardians and Wraithlords. Certain other units have only a single fin mounted from the spine, such as Wrathguard and Eldrad Uthran.
  • The Faceless: Wraithguard and Wraithlords. Also, Harlequins, who wear a mask which can either be blank, or show their opponent their worst fears come to life!
  • Face Heel Turn: Arhra, Father of Scorpions and first Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions, is believed to have gone to the Dark Eldar. He's assumed by many to be Drazhar, the most famous and prominent of Dark Eldar Incubi. Some of the older material hints that he may have falled to Chaos as well.
  • The Fair Folk: Around 2nd Edition some players mistakenly believed that the Eldar were "good" guys. Since then, Games Workshop has taken pains to show off their callous, manipulative nature.
  • Fantastic Racism: Humanity is referred to as mon-keigh, the upstart, the hairy savage.
    • Apart from possibly the Tau, the Eldar are actually the most benevolent race to the Humans; which says more about the other races than anything else.
      • The Battle Missions book elevates this a bit more; Eldar emissaries aid Imperial scholars in solving an anomaly. More Eldar fleets/forces joining up with or aiding Imperial troops against Dark Eldar raiders, Chaos, Necrons and Orks.
      • In Eisenhorn, the titular Inquisitor is aided by Farseers in one particular mission. His teammate/protege, Gideon Ravenor, would later study Farsight under the Eldar, and his retinue members wear wraithbone talismans which he uses to psychically possess them when necessary.
  • A Farseer Did It: If the Eldar do anything which seems, either overtly or on reflection, to be perhaps against their own interests or just an inefficient way of securing those interests, then it is because a Farseer determined through precognition that was the best way to secure their future. They need not explain the complexity of their visions or their gambits to you.
  • Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Characteristic of Eldar Guardians and Aspect Warriors. Justified in that the Eldar incorporate technology into their combat armor that subtly changes its shape to conform to the wearer's body as they move. Averted though in the case of Farseers and Warlocks, who prefer elaborate robes.
  • Fragile Speedster: Many Eldar vehicles, and indeed Eldar units in general.
  • Fuuma Shuriken: The triskele is a three-bladed weapon thrown like a discus, after which it returns to its wielder's hand.
  • Generation Ships: Craftworlds, of the "no destination" variant. They're spaceborn metropoli capable of housing entire fleets.
  • Glass Cannon: Eldar units tend to be quick and powerful, but lacking in durability.
  • Golem: Wraithguard and Wraithlords are constructs "piloted" by a dead Eldar spirit housed in a Soulstone.
  • Have You Seen My God?: All but three of the Eldar Gods were wiped out by Slaanesh: Cegorach, the Laughing God who hides in the Webway, fighting from the sides; Kaela Mensha Khaine, the War God who was shattered into a billion pieces and was gathered up into the Craftworlds to serve as the Avatars of Khaine; and Isha, the Eldar Mother Goddess, who is a prisoner of Nurgle and test subject for his plagues. In what may be the only example of God Is Good in this setting, Isha whispers the cures to Nurgle's plagues when he isn't looking. The Eldar are also trying to create Ynnead, the God of Death, powered by the Craftworlds' Infinity Circuits, who will rise strong enough to defeat Slaanesh when the last Eldar dies, which will see the Eldar purified of their past sins and be reborn. In theory.
  • Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Eldar at war tend to wear uniforms with bright colors proclaiming their allegiance to their craftworld or aspect shrine. Even the ones with darker uniforms usually have bright hues to provide sharp contrast. Possibly justified by their heavy use of holofields and chameleoline when they actually get down to fighting.
    • The Harlequins go even further with this, having bright patterns on their clothes to intentionally make them more visible on stage. However, as they also incorporate a form of holographic device which scatters their image about to conceal their numbers and exact location, this might not be as much of a liability on the battlefield as it first seems.
  • Higher-Tech Species: The Eldar have been a starfaring civilization far longer than any other currently active race (with the possible exception of the Necrons) and their technology (based on a fusion of psychic powers and conventional mechanics) reflects that.
  • Hover Tanks: The Eldar are one of only two races to use these. Based around graceful, bird-like chassis, they lack the armor of land-bound tanks, but are orders of magnitude more mobile, and can bring exotic and powerful weaponry to bear swiftly and where the enemy is most vulnerable.
  • Humongous Mecha: Like all the other races, the Eldar have their own: the Phantom, whose model is over 4 feet tall, making it one of the largest models available for the game and the largest mecha produced by Forge World.[4] There are larger models (the Tau Manta being the largest).
  • Implacable Man: The Wraithguard and Wraithlords, constructs fueled by the souls of dead Eldar warriors. The latter are huge, equipped with a large array of weapons, from giant missile launchers to gigantic Wraithswords. The former are smaller versions, equipped with guns that open a rift to hell. Literally.
  • Jack of All Stats: While the Eldar are known to have a military of extreme specialists, within that context the specialization of the Dire Avengers aspect warriors is to be as flexible and adaptable in combat as possible. There are other aspect warriors types that are better at various particular tasks, but few of them can match the Dire Avengers versatility.
  • Jerkass Woobie: What with their entire race edging towards extinction, the Eldar seem pretty sympathetic. Seeing this, Games Workshop invoked several Kick the Dog moments on their part in more recent editions of the fluff to play-up their Manipulative Bastard qualities to balance out their "good-guy" image.
  • Kill It with Fire: Eldar Fire Dragon Aspect Warriors and their Storm Guardians — the Exarch of the Fire Dragons can wield 'dragon's breath' flamethrowers, while the standard troops carry fusion guns, capable of melting heavily armored tanks into piles of molten slag. The Avatar of Khaine also counts, being a huge metal giant of war that is also covered in flames. Its sword is also on fire.
  • The Library of Babel: The Black Library contains the accumulated Eldar history and Chaos lore, and is tucked away deep in the Webway, guarded by the Harlequin elite.
  • Legacy Character: The Phoenix Lords are the epitomes of the Aspect Warriors, and if slain will simply reincarnate into the next person to wear their armor. For this reason, Phoenix Lords contain the souls of untold thousands of Eldar.
    • This is true to a lesser extent of virtually all Exarchs. With their armor being a self-contained Infinity Circuit unto itself, every time an Aspect Warrior gets trapped in their path they will go to don the discarded armor of a previous Exarch, adopting that Exarch's name and merging their personality into the collective of all the armor's previous wearers. The Phoenix Lords are simply the oldest, best known, and most continuously active of the Exarchs.
  • Magitek: Most Eldar technology is based on an interaction of Psychic Powers with more conventional elements. Virtually all of their technology uses a psychic interface, and some are directly animated by the souls of the dead. The Infinity Circuit that runs through each craftworld is, in addition to a repository for the souls of the dead, a giant database that the living can psychically interface with to ask questions to seek the wisdom of the departed, or send messages to others across the craftworld, almost like a computer network.
  • Mind Hive: Eldar exarchs are not joined into the Infinity Circuit upon their death. Instead, their soul remains embedded in their armor, the entire suit functioning as a soulstone, which will be returned to the craftworld. When an aspect warrior becomes newly locked into their path, they will don the armor of a previously felled exarch, adopting that exarch's name and position, and the minds of the previous exarchs to wear the armor will combine with that of the current wearer, with the mind and personality of the first to be the most dominant. The Phoenix Lords are the oldest of the exarchs, having been killed and risen again thousands of times each, their physical bodies having been turned into a sea of energy contained within their armor. When they speak, it is with the collective voice of the souls that compose them. Interestingly enough, their first identity is overwhelmingly dominant, while "ordinary" Exarchs show more of their current wearer's personality than any other.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Each Eldar wears a Soulstone to save their spirit from Slaanesh, and they will go to great lengths to recover them for housing in their Craftworld's Infinity Circuit.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Eldar are Elves in space. And they certainly do think they're better than the rest of the galaxy.
  • Pet the Dog: Although they are very arrogant, the Eldar do seem to have a slight respect for the Tau, if the Eldar vs Tau after action reports in the campaign modes of Dawn of War are anything to go by. They mention prisoner exchanges for both sides, a rarity in the 40k universe as nearly everyone else just kills indiscriminately.
    • A quote by Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwe craftworld, regarding the Tau.

"I have followed the myriad potential futures of the Tau with great interest. Though barely even striplings compared to us, I feel a strange protectiveness towards them. In time I believe they will exceed even our greatest feats and master the darkness within their souls."

  • Physical God: When war is near and the Craftworld hums with barely-contained battle-lust, an Exarch is chosen for a special duty. This "Young King" is sacrificed in order to awaken the Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Eldar's bloody-handed god of murder. Said Avatar is at least twelve feet tall, carrying a burning blade known as the Wailing Doom in one hand, while the other perpetually drips with gore. It's also made out of molten iron and is constantly on fire.
  • Power Crystal: Psychic Powers-enhancing technology in this setting often incorperates some kind of "mineral resonance". As the Eldar are masters of such "techno-witchery", crystals or polished stones are a recurring element among them. Either objects made of such crystals are used on their own, or crystals are incorporated into other pieces of their technology. The soulstone every Eldar wears on their person is a common example.
  • Power Fist: While not as common among the Eldar (who prefer more elegant weapons as a rule) as it is among the Imperium, the Eldar do have a few models unique to them. For example, Exarches of the Striking Scorpion aspect temple are sometimes known to use a power-fist shaped into an elaborate claw. Eldar Wraithlords have also traditionally had a pair of power-fists, but more recent models tend to favor BFSes instead.
  • Psychic Link: Usually runs through the entire Eldar army.
  • Rubber Forehead Aliens: Naturally, being Space Elves, the only thing separating them from (thin, angular) humans in terms of physical appearance is pointier ears.
  • Screaming Warrior: Howling Banshees are close-combat specialists recruited from those who seek the path of the warrior out of a desire to vent their destructive rage by screaming their anger to the world. They are trained to hone this desire, to focus their fury, and scream efficiently. They are then equipped with special masks which amplify this scream, projecting it through the warp around them, causing others nearby to be shaken and stunned by the effect of it, setting them up as easy pray for the banshees' blades.
  • Screw You, Elves: The Imperium routinely ignores the Eldar's warnings, and rather than arguing, just shoots the arrogant bastards. Sometimes this is to their detriment, but the way that the Eldar insist on wording their warnings (i.e insulting the humans more than the aliens from Plan 9 from Outer Space) also doesn't help.
  • Sealed Badass in a Can: A weird example. Eldar seal the badass inside their own heads. All Eldar undergo training into different Paths and acquire different skills during their long lives, and often they'll tie these skills to a Split Personality. This extends to combat training, so when an Eldar is called to war, they'll adopt this new personality and become the badass, then change back to their normal personality when the battle is over. When an Aspect Warrior loses the ability to change back to his/her old selves, he/she becomes an Exarch. Other paths have their own answer to the Exarch, like Farseers and Pathfinders.
  • Seer: The most treacherous path is the "Path of the Seer", where the Eldar cultivate their psychic potential. Those who walked the Path of the Warrior go onto to become Warlocks. Those who become lost on the Path become Farseers, Eldar who can see extremely far into the future and thus predict which path is best for the Eldar. Farseers thus either compose the leadership of Craftworlds, or advise those who do. Exact leadership practices vary from Craftworld to Craftworld, but Farseers are almost always party to it.
  • Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Eldar spacecraft tend toward sleek, swan-like graceful curves of an immaculate hull. Their ships are at least as old as most Imperial models, some even older, but the self-maintaining nature of the Eldar's wraithbone technology tends to keep them looking pristine even after millennia of wear and tear.
  • Sniper Rifle: The Long Rifle carried by Eldar Rangers is a misnomer, as it is a form of laser weapon, similar to the long-las used by Imperial marksmen. However, the superior focusing crystals manufactured by the Eldar allow it to maintain better penetration qualities at range and it comes equipped with a scope designed to scan and highlight weaknesses in enemy armor so that the Ranger can better take advantage of it.
  • Soul Jar: Every Eldar wears on their person a gem or polished stone known alternatively as a soulstone, spiritstone, or waystone, designed to capture their soul at the time of their death, anchoring it to the material universe and denying it to Slaanesh, who would consume it otherwise. Typically that soulstone will be brought to an Infinity Circuit, allowing the soul to join with others stored there in a sort of afterlife where the living may consult them and seek their collective knowledge.
  • Space Amish: The Exodite worlds were settled by Eldar farsighted enough to leave before The Fall. Rather than choosing the highly structured lifestyle adopted by their Craftworld cousins, they choose to forgo the technological conveniences that enabled the decadent lifestyle that lead to Slaanesh's creation. They are considered to be somewhat backward, but otherwise decent people by the craftworld Eldar, and are frequently visited by Outcasts from the path. Webway trade between them and the Craftworlds is also common; which means that when situations become dire Exodites will still field advanced Eldar weaponry. It is by choice that they live more simply otherwise.
  • Space Pirates: Not all Eldar pirates are Dark Eldar. Outcasts and simple traders from the Craftworlds are known to turn to piracy, sometimes massing into mighty Corsair Fleets; Prince Yriel above commanded one of the most successful during his exile.
  • Split Personality: Actively cultivated as Eldar travel down a Path, but sometimes they get stuck in one. Exarchs, for example, are Aspect Warriors who are unable to leave the Path of the Warrior, and take up the name of the last to wear their armor.
  • Superior Species: Eldar possess the usual racial advantages of stock fantasy elves, except their claims of superiority are somewhat undermined by the fact that they created Slaanesh through their own decadence.
  • Spock Speak: Eldar who speak Gothic do so in a very elevated, careful register; their own language is often translated the same way. This leads to a Crowning Moment of Funny in Path of the Warrior when a Striking Scorpion makes a masturbation joke without breaking this tone.
  • The Stoic: Pretty much all Eldar are this, although Not So Stoic comes into play quite frequently.
  • Taken for Granite: Farseers who happen to live long enough will see their bodies start to crystallize. If they live to "die" of old age, they effectively become a crystal statue that is physically tied to their Craftworld's Infinity Circuit.
  • Technopath: Due to most Eldar technology being constructed out of psychically-sensitive materials such as wraithbone.
  • Terraform: The ancient Eldar mastered the art of subtle terraforming. Using farseeing, they could figure out what minor elements to introduce to a world that would eventually lead to that world growing into a lush habitable planet with few dangers. This naturalistic terraforming takes eons, but the Eldar were patient. However, since the Fall, the Eldar have not had the numbers to settle these so called "Maiden" worlds, or even necessarily police them. As a result, many of those now-habitable worlds get settled by other species ignorant of their origins. The Eldar consider this no less than theft and invasion, and this is the most frequent source of conflict between the Craftworlds and the Imperium.
  • Time Abyss: Eldar live a really long time. Eldrad Ulthran reportedly warned the Imperium about Horus' treachery ten thousand years ago. He looked about fifty when he died; lifespan generally correlates with psychic potential and training, though the minimum is around a thousand years.
  • Trickster Archetype: Cegorach the Laughing God, patron of the Eldar Harlequins, is one of the few of the Eldar gods to have survived the fall. He is a trickster extrordinare, laughing at those he fools. It is said that only he knows all the secrets of the webway, which he uses to lead his enemies on wild but fruitless chases. Occasionally he may succeed in saving one of the Harlequins Solitaire's souls from damnnation to Slannesh, but this is rare as that soul belongs to Slannesh. He is rumored in Eldar myth to even have tricked one of the C'tan to eat another.
  • Unusual Weapon Mounting: Striking Scorpion Aspect Warriors have Mandiblasters, weapons that shoot needles that are superheated to conduct a highly charged laser charge. They're mounted on their helmets' cheeks.
  • Volcanic Veins: A characteristic of the Avatar of Khaine.
  • Walking the Galaxy: Eldar Rangers are those who have have tired of life on an ultra-disciplined Craftworld and taken up the Path of the Outcast, wandering from world to world. Though when their home Craftworld goes to war, Rangers will return and lend their skill as pathfinders and snipers.
  • War God: Khaine.
  • Warrior Monk: Not only are the Exarchs teachers and leaders of the Aspect Warriors, they are also the priests of Kaela Mensha Khaine. Those Eldar who join the Aspect temples do so most often to fulfill a spiritual need, to learn to confront and control the more destructive urges in their souls, making them lay-members of the temple.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The inverted case. Interestingly, various sources show that some Eldar do consider this question, but in almost all cases pragmatism wins out and when faced with the choice of saving one of their own or a number of humans, they'll pick their own kind every time.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: One of the big reason why Exarches are particularly feared by other Eldar is that, unlike many others who become trapped in their path, Exarches are not allowed to join the Infinity Circuit upon their death, lest their Blood Lust taint it. Instead, each Exarch will have their soul stored in their armor, and that soul will join with whomever takes up the armor next after their physical body dies, reincarnating in a cycle of violence until the end of time, in a bloody existence consisting of nothing but waging war and training for more for war. The only way any Exarch can escape this fate and find some measure of rest is if they are ritualistically sacrificed as The Young King to awaken the Avatar of Khaine.
  • Witch Species: Every Eldar is born with psychic potential, to the point that the Imperium even refers to them as a "witch-species". Unlike human psykers, who awaken into their power quickly (and occasionally disastrously,) Eldar unlock their power gradually, building up control and strength in a variety of disciplines, be they artist, healer, wright, or seer. Those Eldar who develop their potential along a warlike path are known for being some of the most powerful battlefield psykers in the galaxy.


Dark Eldar

Do not offer them riches, they care not for your coin. Do not offer them surrender, they care not for victory. Offer them nothing, for they come only to murder.

While most (surviving) Eldar renounced the perverse lifestyle that destroyed their empire, some unrepentant souls fled into the depths of the inter-dimensional Webway the Eldar use to traverse the galaxy. Founding the nightmare city of Commorragh, these Dark Eldar discovered that while Slaanesh was slowly consuming their souls, if they were able to feed off of other creatures' life energy, they would either slake His/Her thirst or replenish their own drained lives. As a result, the entirety of Dark Eldar "civilization" is focused on gathering souls, being pirates and raiders beyond compare. The Dark Eldar revel in violence and bloodshed, and savor the terror they create in their victims as much as they savor the taking of their victims' souls. Their every action against their enemies and victims is taken to as cruel and sadistic an extreme as they can manage, and many aspects of their lives are brutally masochistic.

There is an inherent duality to Dark Eldar society. They are monstrously proud and yet their every act is born from fear of not outpacing their damnation. They desire nothing more than mastery and dominion over others, but are all slaves to their own addiction. They possess impossibly advanced technology and have incredible personal power, and yet the gnawing hunger in their souls forever reminds them that they are but inches from annihilation.

The Dark Eldar army is best compared to a scalpel - precise and quite dangerous, but fragile. Though their weapons are powerful and often have damaging effects on enemy morale, their soldiers are frail and lightly-armored. To compensate, their army is highly mobile, featuring open-topped skimmer transports to quickly get troops exactly where needed. They are easy to play badly, but if used well, the Dark Eldar are devastating.

Notable Dark Eldar tropes include

  • Agony Beam - For battlefield and recreational use.
  • Alien Geometries - The twilight city of Commorragh is not actually a contiguous location, but rather a collection of smaller cities, ports, massive arenas, and various fortified niches scattered throughout the galaxy, that exist only within the Webway and are interconnected via Webway portals. This gives it a unique, non-Euclidian quality that non-Eldar would find mildly disturbing and disorienting, if not for the fact that they're generally too distracted by intense torture, painful enslavement, or being agonizingly warped into twisted monstrosities to notice.
  • Back from the Dead - In an attempt to explain how Dark Eldar maintain their numbers in the face of their Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, the fifth edition codex revealed that the Haemonculi have mastered the art of resurrecting their customers as long as any pieces of them can be found. Urien Rakarth, the oldest and looniest Haemonculus, has died hundreds of times and grown addicted to dying in new and interesting fashions.
  • Badass Jetbiker:
    • Dark Eldar on Reaver jetbikes are skilled enough to sever specific arteries during drive-by attacks with their bladed vehicles, despite being hopped-up on combat drugs.
    • While the Reavers are the actual bikers, the Hellions have the punk street-racing rebel aesthetic associated with biker gangs.
  • The Beast Master - Literally. They get three options for animal companions - a big monster, an interdimensional Hell Hound, and more birds than a Hitchcock film.
  • Better to Die Than Be Killed - Seriously. The Dark Eldar will torture you to death (very slowly), and then eat your soul. One of the their codices even had the Tagline, "Pray they don't take you alive."
  • BFS - Incubus klaives.
  • Bifurcated Weapon - The leader of an Incubi squad, called a Klaivex, has the option of replacing his klaive with a pair of demiklaives: two relatively normal-sized swords that can combine into a BFS that's even bigger than his normal BFS.
  • Big Bad - Asdrubael Vect, Supreme Lord of the Kabal of the Black Heart and de facto High Lord of Commorragh, is a good contender.
  • Blood Knight - The Incubi live only to fight and hone their martial prowess. Not money, not power, not prestige, not titles...
  • Blood Lust - Though followers of Khorne are pretty blood-crazy, the Dark Eldar are the ones who eroticize it.
  • Body Horror - The Haemonculi love to inflict this on their slaves, minions, and even patrons. Many Dark Eldar weapons are poisoned, causing agonizing pain. Even the armor used by Kabalite Warriors are put on by piercing one's skin with the plates.
  • Brains and Bondage - Dark Eldar consider the inflicting and receiving of pain to be both a science and a form of art, and will happily engage in intellectual discussions (and demonstrations) of the various ways of doing so.
  • The Brute - Grotesques. While all Dark Eldar are brutal, the Grotesques are giant, mutated, half-sapient Frankenstein's Monsters.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder - Standard Dark Eldar behavior.
  • Combat Sadomasochist - So much that the armour used by members of Kabals is attached to the Eldar by piercings, and they have a special rule called "Power From Pain."
  • The Consigliere - A Hierarch serves as this for their Archon.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death - While each and every race and faction in the game is capable of causing this, the Dark Eldar are particularly (and terrifyingly) good at it.
  • Cruel Mercy - The only time the Dark Eldar ever show mercy or generosity is because of this trope. If they ever offer to help you out of a bad situation, the odds are it is because they plan on keeping your alive for something worse to come. Their rescue of Craftworld Iyanden or military aid and "cultural exchange" with the Tau are prime examples.
  • Dark Action Girl - Lady Malys, who feels like a particularly cunning Magical Girl anime villain, and Lelith Hesperax, down to the athleticism, Stripperiffic outfit and sexy voice. Indeed, the Dark Eldar can field more female models than any army, other than the Sisters of Battle (though one could take an all female army, if you wished), and they are all dark.
  • Dark Chick: The entire race as a whole fits for the more antagonistic factions (Chaos, Orks, Necrons and Tyranids).
  • Death From Above - You're doing your business on your out of the way planet, minding your own business, and suddenly, the sky rips open. And out of these interdimensional bullet wounds, wave after wave of ships pour out. The Nightstalkers have come.
  • Designer Babies - Most Dark Eldar are grown in People Jars. Having 'trueborn' children is a luxury only afforded to the upper class. This is one of the two reasons why Dark Eldar are not only not going extinct, but are implied to actually be thriving as a race. The other being the aforementioned ability to resurrect the dead.
  • Does Not Like Shoes - Many Dark Eldar take to the battlefields of the 41st Millennium barefoot, for various reasons: the Mandrakes are living shadows, the Hellions ride flying skyboards, the Scourges have wings, Urien Rakarth and the other Haemonculi float above the battlefield on suspensors, and Lelith Hesperax is apparently just that badass.
  • The Dragon - The aptly named Dracons serve as field commanders for the Archons.
  • Emotion Eater - Mainly fear and pain.
  • Enigmatic Minion or Hidden Agenda Villain - Drazhar, in the sense that he lacks any obvious motives and desires outside of maybe being a Blood Knight. What makes him such an enigma is his lack of ambition and rumors (supported by his stats and rules) that he is a fallen Eldar Phoenix Lord. Unlike most Dark Eldar, he doesn't feel like a Complete Monster - he's just there to fight, never uttering a single word. Even his name is unknown - 'Drazhar' is simply a title. Both the Decapitator and Lelith Hesperax could also qualify - they are somewhat more scrutible than Drazhar, but they rarely talk, and simply show up in an Archon's court before a raid to join them, do their business on the field of battle, and dissapear to tend to their collections. The Decapitator in particular is collecting skulls in an effort to summon something from Beyond the Warp.
  • Evil Genius - The Haemonculi.
  • Evil Counterpart - To the other Eldar, of course.
  • Evil Overlord - Archons, the leaders of Kabals. None more so than Asdrubael Vect.
  • Eviler Than Thou - There is a short comic where a Dark Eldar Reaver ends up possessed by a Daemon. It says that it is going to use him to cause lots and lots of pain and suffering. The Dark Eldar's response? "Good".
  • The Fair Folk - The Dark Eldar's lead re-designer, Phil Kelly, intentionally invoked a fairytale feel with the Dark Eldar's weaponry and appearance, with mirrors that can be shattered to kill the people they reflect, elven wild hunts on night raids, and the witch-like Haemonculi covens taking payment in abstract concepts like your ability to laugh. The Dark Eldar are beautiful, soulless horrors.
  • Foreshadowing - The fifth edition Warhammer 40K rulebook contains a several pieces of art foreshadowing the Dark Eldar models that would appear in 2010-2011. But best of all, there is a small Easter Egg hidden in a chart detailing "Pirate Activity Based Upon Segmentae Fleet Patrol Reports": a ten year lull in installation and world attacks (978-988), followed by a massive spike in activity. Meta.
  • For the Evulz - Literally; the Dark Eldar's entire existence is based around causing pain and suffering.
    • In their newest codex, the Dark Eldar save Iyanden Craftworld from a Chaos attack that would've probably destroyed them. Why? Because the Eldar were so low on troops, they had to use Necromancy, taking the souls of the dead out of the Infinity Circuit and putting them into armor, just to survive. The Dark Eldar were so amused by this that they wanted to make sure it continued, so they saved the Eldar.
  • Flechette Storm - The standard Dark Eldar weapon fires a hail of "splinter" rounds, usually coated with toxins and venoms to paralyze their prey for easy capture.
  • Fragile Speedster - To an even greater extent than the Craftworld Eldar.
    • Glass Cannon - But damn can they hit hard, even more so with the new codex.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare - Asdrubael Vect started out as a slave, and is now Overlord of Commarragh.
  • Gladiator Games - Wyches are gladiators (or, more often, gladiatrices), lead by trainer-champions known as succubi, the greatest of which is Lady Lelith Hesperax. In an interesting twist, these gladiator games serve as both Bread and Circuses - they are sponsored by nobles to entertain and feed the lower classes, as the Dark Eldar feed on suffering and murder. Even the metaphysical scraps from a mass slaughter of pit-fighters is enough to keep the masses alive. This even extends to watching recordings of such fights, as mentioned in Lelith Hesperax's codex entry. Particularly deviant souls swap recordings of her in the arena, watching her perform her murderous art.
  • Hell Hound - Some Dark Eldar warbands are accompanied by packs of Warp Beasts, which are... vaguely hound-like.
  • Horny Devils - A race of sadomasochists including units called Incubi and Succubi, sometimes with whips. The Dark Eldar are about the third most popular Fetish Fuel faction.
  • Horror Hunger - If there is something remotely sympathetic about the Dark Eldar, it is the combination of existential dread and the gnawing hunger that drives them to devour the souls of their slaves. They are constantly weakening due to this hunger, and their souls are likened to "leaky buckets" by Phil Kelly that must be refilled with the torment of others. On the other hand, they were bastards to begin with. There's also the fact that, as the Craftworld and Exodite Eldar show, they don't have to survive on the suffering of others. They actively chose it over denying their desires.
  • Ignored Epiphany - This is the Dark Eldar's hat: being painfully aware of what led to their civilization's downfall, yet willfully continuing that very same existence, to even greater excesses.
  • Immortality Immorality: They sustain themselves longer than even other Eldar can live naturally by literally feeding on the pain, terror and misery of others.
  • It Amused Me - In the short story "The Torturer's Tale" written by Gav Thorpe, a particularly resilient human captive who had survived many tortures was brought before Asdrubael Vecht and treated to some wine. Vecht related the story of the fall of the Eldar to this human, explaining how they came to be the way they are. When the human asked why he was told this, Vecht admitted it was simply because he enjoyed telling the tale, and everyone else in his household already knew it. He also refuses to finish the story, deliberately frustrating the human's curiosity.)[5]
  • Living Shadow - The Mandrakes and Khymerae are both interdimensional beasts who melt in and out of the shadows.
  • Made a Slave - They routinely enslave humans...who usually don't last long. Part of Ciaphas Cain's background is that he was briefly a prisoner on a Dark Eldar slave ship; the experience still haunts him, although so far no details have been given.
    • Go-Go Enslavement - Games Workshop produced decorative "slave girl" models that looked like a normal woman and a Sister of Battle in Princess Leia outfits.
  • Master Swordsman - The Incubus, who can weild monstrously heavy two-handed power-swords that can cleave Terminator Marines in-twain like a cheerleader would with a light-baton.
  • Nitro Boost - On the tabletop, The Dark Eldars' Reaver jetbike has a 36" turboboost. Holy crap.
  • Our Vampires Are Different - The Dark Eldar are soul-eating creatures of the night, rejuvenating themselves on the suffering of others. Their special characters even have an aristocratic flavor.
  • Pirate - One of the reason the Eldar race as a whole has a reputation for being capricious brigands is that some Imperial officers can't tell the difference between Dark and Craftworld Eldar.
  • Pragmatic Villainy - Dark Eldar Scourges are used as message carriers between Dark Eldar who want to ensure that the message arrives safe and unread. Because of this vital role they play in Dark Eldar society, the Kabals come down hard on anyone who messes with them.
  • Private Military Contractors - When not operating as Space Pirates, the Dark Eldar have been known to hire themselves out as mercenaries to stupid, stupid clients.
  • Sky Surfing - Hellions are glaive-wielding Dark Eldar on blade-winged flying platforms.
  • Smug Snake - Most Dark Eldar fit into this category
  • Space Is an Ocean - The Dark Eldar will fly through space in what look like Chinese junks, complete with sails, some wearing only flak jackets and thongs. Metal.
  • Space Pirates - While other races, including Chaos Space Marines, humans, Orks (the Freebootaz especially,) and even other (often outcast) Eldar will engage in piracy, the Dark Eldar are an entire race of Space Pirates, and Commorragh is basically an interdimensional pirate port city. Some of their skimmers even have gangplanks.
  • Spikes of Villainy - Dark Eldar models have so many blades on them, they can be downright hazardous to handle.
  • The Starscream - Every Dark Eldar, save for Asdrubael Vecht, and only because he's at the absolute top of the power structure, and the Incubi, as they are too busy perfecting the art of swordcraft to involve themselves in Kabalite politics.
  • Stripperific - Wyches are gladiators who prefer to rely on lightning speed, superior reflexes, and combat prowess to wearing armor. Or even clothing. In fact, the Wychs' status and renown is inversely proportionate to the amount of protective gear they wear in combat; with the most skilled fighting nearly naked.
  • The Syndicate - Dark Eldar society is ruled by competing crime syndicates/pirate fleets known as Kabals. Kabalite Warriors are basically made men and women, protected by their Kabal, and Archons are basically Godfathers. It doesn't hurt that the name Commorragh is a referenced to Gomorrah, the Biblical sister city of Sodom, twisted into a pseudo-Irish homophone for the Camorra clans of Naples.
  • Time Abyss - Some of the Dark Eldar have reached truely advanced ages, only surpassed by the Necrons. The haemonculi are universally old and effectively immortal, with the "haemonculi ancients" weaving plans for millenia.
    • Asdrubael Vect claims to have witnessed the Fall of the Eldar and the birth of Slaanesh (which he survived due to being so young). That would make him around twelve thousand years old.
  • Torture Technician - Haemonculi. They don't even want information, they just want you to suffer. In one case an unfortunate captive was left as a collection of organs hanging from hooks in the Haemonculus' lab...and still very much alive.
  • The Unfavorite - The Dark Eldar went for over a decade without a new Codex. They're finally getting some love again, with new models and a new codex being released in November 2010.
    • It got so bad that there was a minor Advice Dog Memetic Mutation in the fandom trying to put a positive spin on the whole thing: "Play Dark Eldar/Safe from Updates."
  • Vice City - Commorragh, a Wretched Hive full of slave pens, torture labs, arenas for death sports, and whatever structures are appropriate for the Dark Eldar's other, worse vices.
  • Wave Motion Gun - Dark Lances, Blasters, Blast Pistols, and Void Lances are extremely powerful weapons that fire degenerate "dark light" mined from other dimensions.
  • Wicked Cultured - Dark Eldar conduct themselves with all the sophistication expected out of Eldar, but extra helpings of pain and evil.
  • Winged Humanoid - The Scourges are normal Dark Eldar who have their bodies altered to give them wings and flight capability, including painful bone hollowing procedures. They act as couriers. While it may seem like a long and painful process to go through just to become a messenger pigeon, Scourges are highly prized by kabals, cannot be killed without facing the retribution of every kabal around, and they are given access to some of the best weaponry and armor the Dark Eldar have.
  • We Will Wear Armor in the Future - Averted with the exception of the Incubi, who wear powerful and lightweight armor.
  • Witch Species—Subverted. Unlike their uncorrupted brethren, the Dark Eldar's psychic abilities as a species are severely atrophied. This is partly due to their not using those powers for millennia to avoid attracting Slaanesh's attention more directly, and because their civilization places such a high value on physical prowess.
  • Woman Scorned - Lady Aurelia Malys, the former consort of Asdrubael Vect, who banished her to the Webway for being too much of a distraction. Except that while in the Webway, she may have killed a God and replaced her heart with its own, and is now Archon of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue, which rivals the Kabal of the Black Heart in terms of power. Not one of Vect's better moves.
  • Wound That Will Not Heal - Those few who survive torture by Dark Eldar are left in constant pain from the tortures they received. "No one escapes the Dark City".
  • You Kill It, You Bought It / Klingon Promotion - The fastest way to commanding a Kabal is to kill the sitting Archon.


Orks

Orks are made fo' fightin' and winnin'! For crushin' an killin'! We iz gonna stomp them all flat an' not stop till the 'hole galaxy's green! Say it with me now! WAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!

Genetically-engineered by a long-forgotten precursor race to be the ultimate warriors, Orks exist only for battle, and they are very good at it. Their "Meks" and "Doks" have an innate understanding of mechanics and medicine respectively, while every Ork has an instinctive grasp of combat. Orks are far more numerous than humanity (a feat in and of itself), and the only reason they haven't conquered the galaxy long ago is because they will readily fight each other if no other enemy presents itself. They are tough enough to survive decapitation in time for a "body transplant," strong enough to take a Space Marine's head off, and thick as a brick. Their entire society is built around the concepts of "crude but effective" and "might is right" - though for Orks, might is pretty much all there is. Occasionally a particularly strong or charismatic "warboss" is able to unite a large force of Orks into a mighty "WAAAGH!", a combination migration, jihad, and barroom brawl that can shake the foundations of the galaxy.

Part of the Orks' success comes from their unique physiology. They have fungal/algal DNA fused with their own, explaining their green skin and robust health. They reproduce via spores, and in particular shed a large number at death, which ensures that once greenskins land on a planet, they're a problem that never goes away. Their entire race is also incredibly, latently psychic, even beyond the dangerously gifted "Weirdboyz." This gestalt psychic field explains how their junk-heap wargear manages to work, and furthermore why vehicles painted red go faster than others - the Orks think they should, so they do. If Orks have a parallel in any historical army, it is of a vast barbarian horde scouring the land in a tide of howling violence... mixed with English football hooligans. Cheerfully psychotic, the Orks are Warhammer 40000's comic relief race, which says a lot about the setting. But make no mistake; the Orks are genocidal maniacs, who will slaughter anything that isn't part of their race. They only respect strength, so non-combatants, the infirm and children of other races are considered lower than Gretchin or Snotlings.

But hey, you can be assured that the Orks don't have the patience to give you a drawn out death.

Ork tabletop armies are highly diverse, ranging from mechanized swarms of Orks riding warbikes, "trukks," or buggies, to clanking mobs of dreadnoughts and "killa kans", to "shooty" armies with looted vehicles and lots of devastating if inaccurate artillery, to the classic "green tide" of infantry that simply swamps the opposing battle-line with sheer numbers. Standard Ork soldiers are highly-effective in close combat, and so long as their numbers are sufficient, fearless to boot. There's a lot of randomness in the form of "Weirdboyz" psychic powers and the "Meks" more esoteric weapons that can either clinch a victory or make a plan fall flat on its face. Most Ork players quickly develop a sense of humor about their army, laughing when a Mekboy manages to fire himself out of his own gun, the Grot slaves are used for mine clearance, or when the looted vehicle accidentally slams into a wall instead of shooting correctly. Perhaps the best Ork strategy can be summed up in a single word: WAAAGH!!!

Notable Ork tropes include

  • Alien Kudzu—Orks are more than just a single species, they are an invasive ecosystem unto themselves. Thanks to their spore-based reproductive process, every type of greenskin sub-species from Orks to gretchen to squigs to snotlings tend to breed wherever Orks make planetfall. This makes completely routing out an Ork invasion of a planet a very difficult task, as Ork remains and habitats must be meticulously purged to prevent regrowth, and any previously invaded planet must exercise careful military patrols to prevent any feral Ork populations from growing to a threatening size. Given enough Orks and enough time, an entire planet will eventually be "orkiformed" into an Ork-based ecology, though this thankfully only happens on planets which have been Ork-dominated for generations.
    • The Department Munitorium, ever pragmatic, actually considers a planet that has repelled an Ork invasion something of a boon to its Imperial Guard recruitment tithes, as the planetary defense forces stationed there are necessarily disciplined and methodical, and such regiments often have already been "blooded" in combat against feral Orks.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority / Authority Equals Asskicking—Wholly justified for the Orks, since their very biology ensures that not only do the biggest ones tend to seize power, but those in power naturally grow bigger. An Ork Warboss can be 12 feet tall or bigger, all of it sociopathic muscle.
  • A-Team Firing -- Orks have the lowest Ballistic Skill in the game, so statistically only one in three shots fired will actually hit the target. This can lead to a lot of friendly fire incidents, as Orks seem to think "If I hit it, it must be an enemy."
  • Attack! Attack! Attack!—The Orks are basically an entire race of Leeroy Jenkins...except for the Blood Axez, who, having experienced the most human contact of any of the clanz, have successfully grasped the concept that "If we runs for it, it don't count as losing, cuz we can also come back for anuvver go, see?"
  • Axe Crazy—The Orks are famous for their Choppas, which are huge cleavers, axes, or chainsaws capable of carving through even Space Marine armor.
  • Badass Biker—Ork Warbikers in general, and Wazdakka Gutsmek in particular. He once killed a Warlord Titan by driving off a cliff, punching through its void shields, crash-landing in the thing's head, and slaughtering the crew. Did I mention he did this while on fire? He has the crew's (still flaming) skulls as trophies.
  • Bald of Evil—No Orks have natural hair. They use hair squigs to mimic locks of it though.
  • Baleful Polymorph—The slightly less than sane wierdboyz can turn people (and other orks for that matter) into squigs, red, round creatures that are made of fungus, muscle and loads of teeth. In game play, Old Zogwort can turn enemy HQ choices into Squigs.
  • Big Bad -- Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka is one of the main contenders for the title.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology—Along with the Bizarre Alien Reproduction noted below, the same spores that grow garden-variety Orks also produce a wide range of creatures, depending on natural conditions and Ork populations—including, but not limited to: barely-sentient Snotlings; small but vicious Gretchin and Grots, who take care of many of the mundane support tasks; as well as many different types of animal-like beasts such as the numerous variants of Squigs, and enormous quadrapedal, dinosaur-esque Squiggoths and Giant Squiggoths.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction—Orks reproduce by giving off spores, which happen naturally throughout their life, and a great deal more are released upon death. These spores will take root in the ground and grow into other greenskin creatures, in time. The conditions responsible for the growth will affect the exact creature and how long it takes to gestate. Smaller creatures like Snotlings and Gretchin will tend to arise more often in areas with poor ground fertility, while more fertile areas will give rise to Orks.
  • Bling of War:
    • The Bad Moon clan in particular is famous for being a bunch of "flash gitz".
    • Freebooter Kaptin Badrukk has armour made out of solid gold, made from the golden melted-down teeth of his enemies.
  • Blood Knight—To the extent that Orks denied a proppa scrap develop huge paunches and weak muscles.
  • Bloody Hilarious—The Orks' sense of humor tends to run toward this, much to the disadvantage of anyone they happen to fight, capture, or simply be larger than.
  • Blue and Orange Morality—Orks give little thought to philosophical questions of morality, but if they did, "propa' orky values" would be something along the lines of it is good for the big and strong to rule the small and weak, and that the height of excellence is to seek and win fights. And... that is about the extent of it. Orks are pretty straightforward about such things.
  • Boisterous Bruiser—This is generally the way Orks act around each other. To anyone else they might seem more like a Boisterous Berserker. The few Orks who are less inclined to such activity tend to be seen as a bit odd by other Orks, and often become kommandos.
  • The Brute—Pretty much the entire race as a whole, in terms of overall disposition.
  • Butt Monkey—Grots, played for laughs.
  • Chaotic Stupid—Orks are not very high up on the intelligence ladder, and are best described as having a sort of "low cunning". Only Ogryns are less intelligent than Orks. That being said, Ciaphas Cain notes in Death or Glory that it's not wise to underestimate them.

I've got to know a great deal more about these creatures over the last century or so [...] and one thing I've seen time and again is that dismissing them as simple, unreasoning brutes is a fast route to the graveyard (or more likely their stomachs).

  • Characterization Marches On—Orks from earlier editions had a more "regimented" appearance, with identical equipment of clear formal manufacture. This was thanks to the limitations of pewter casting and plastic molding that Games Workshop had access to at the time. As their techniques got better (driven forward by Gaiden Games like Gorkamorka) the Orks got more customized appearances and Art Evolution pushed them into more of a Mad Max or "junkyard dog-cobbled together-gang of barbarian brutes" look.
  • Clan of Hats—The Orks divide themselves into six major Clans (mainly as another excuse to scrap with each other), all Color Coded for Your Convenience. The Goffs (black) are the 'ardest Orks around and no-nonsense about fighting, the Bad Moons (lurid yellow) are all rich and flashy gits with big guns, the Evil Sunz (red) are obsessed with speed and racing around on bikes and 'buggies, the Snakebites (brown) are traditionalists who prefer medieval-era weaponry and cavalry charges, the Deathskulls (blue) are expert looters known for practicing their art in the middle of battles, and finally the Blood Axes have been culturally contaminated by the stinkin' 'oomies and use proper "tactics" and wear camouflage instead of proper clan colors...for a given definition of "camouflage", anyway.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe—The secret to Ork technology is their racial gestalt psychic field.
  • Colony Drop—Orks combine this with It's Raining Orks: "Roks" are simply asteroids or meteors hollowed out into space-borne fortresses, which are then dropped on planetary targets as a form of simultaneous attack and troop deployment.
  • Confusion Fu
  • Conspicuous Consumption: The Bad Moon clan is full of Orks who like to bling out their guns to show off their wealth.
  • Cool but Stupid—A lot of the Orks' more unconventional tactics like purple painted kommandos or bizarre ramshackle Military Mashup Machines fit this. The Orks will often do something just because it sounds like it might be fun, rather than it being effective, even if doing so would be borderline suicidal. Such things often work about as well as one might expect. However, they do work on occasion, and when they do their success tends to be spectacular, in part because of Clap Your Hands If You Believe, but also because no opposing force would expect an opponent to do something so obviously crazy.
  • Dark Messiah—Ghazghkull is this to the Orks, claiming to be in direct communion with Gork and Mork. Nobody can tell if it is an hallucination or the result of his latent psyker powers awakening.
  • Dumb Muscle—Pretty much all Boyz.
  • Enemy Civil War—The constant status of Ork society, luckily for the rest of the galaxy.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good—In an Obliviously Evil, Blue and Orange Morality type of way. Orks have difficulty with the concept that any sentient being might not enjoy going to war for its own sake. This leads to them regarding races like humans as being "friendly" because they are so good at making military fortresses for Orks to come and knock over. The idea that such fortresses are designed to deter Orks from invading and that the humans might not appreciate a good scrap over it never really enters the Orks' consideration. To the Ork mind, the only reason for a military build-up is a challenge for one's rivals to come over for a good scrap.
  • Evil Overlord—Your average Warboss is this.
  • Failure Is the Only Option -- Inverted, as the Orks believe there are only three outcomes for a fight: if they win, they won; if they die then they die fighting so it doesn't count; and if they retreat they know that they can always come back for another good fight, which is always fun.
  • Fearless Fool—Any Ork becomes this when surrounded by other Orks. Orks naturally gravitate toward each other, and enough of them together puts them into a kind of herd mentality where concepts like self-preservation and awareness of danger become practically irrelevant. This is one of the reasons why a big mob of boyz is so inclined to use Hollywood Tactics, and thanks to their Super Toughness, it works.
  • Fictionary—Orks have their own spoken language, though in the same manner that Orks loot manufactured components from other races, so to do they loot words. The end result is that a lot of Ork words are actually "loan words" from languages like Imperial Gothic. For example, "shoota" is the Ork word for any type of firearm, and "choppa" is the Ork word for any type of edged weapon. They also have their own system of writing, which takes the form of ideogramic characters.
  • For the Lulz -- Orks will slaughter millions because they find it very fun. Although, they aren't really enjoying killing for sadistic reasons, they just want to fight stuff and cause a ruckus for the heck of it.
  • Friendly Enemy—The Orks do not have a concept of "friend," the closest they get is "favorite enemy." Warlord Ghazghkull famously let his nemesis Commissar Yarrick go (after a spot of light torture) just to ensure their next fight would be entertaining.
  • Funetik Aksent—Spelled with Xtreme Kool Letterz, and typically including English slang such as "git" or "gob".
  • Funny Money—Orks use Teef (specifically Ork tusks, as human or groot teeth are too weedy) as currency, which ensures that a community always has enough "coinage" to keep its economy afloat. Orks shed teeth over time, so they have a constant income. The Bad Moons clan is wealthy since their teeth grow faster than other Orks', but this isn't seen as an unfair advantage since any Ork 'ard enough can just bash 'em and steal their teeth. Hoarding is impossible because Ork teef naturally fall out over time to make room for new ones, and removed teef gradually degrade, preventing inflation. This keeps the Ork economy running, and means that the only way to afford something expensive is to be 'ard enough to bash other Orks in the face and take their teef.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Mekboys instinctively know how to build mechanical objects, from gunz to Gargants.
  • Giant Mook—Averted; the bigger an Ork is, the higher up it is in the hierarchy.
  • God Is Chaotic Evil—The Orks have two deities, Gork and Mork. One is cunningly brutal, and will bash you when you aren't looking, while the other is brutally cunning, and will bash you really hard even if you are. Which is which is another excuse for the Orks to fight each other.
  • Gun Accessories—Most Ork guns are cobbled together from the pieces of other machinery, but some Orks don't know when to stop adding pieces. Such "flash gitz" (most famously the Bad Moons clan) are fond of "snazzing up" their guns by adding accessory after accessory to the frame. Such things do not necessarily make them any better shots, but it certainly makes the wielder feel a lot more clever while shooting them.
  • Harmful Healing—Ork "Doktors" (otherwise known as "Painboys" or just "Doks") have a delightful tendency to "eksperiment on da subjekts" when they are given their "anastetiks" (i.e. knocked out with a hammer). To quote the book "An unfortunate ork who goes to the Dok to have his toothache fixed might wake up with a set of lungs that allows him to breathe water instead!!"
  • Highly-Visible Ninja—This happens when Blood Axes, and Kommandos in general, attempt to be sneaky. Being Orks, they still manage to sneak up on people, though it's as much because almost nobody believes Orks would ever try to be sneaky as because of Clap Your Hands If You Believe.
  • The Horde—A WAAAGH is basically this, with elements of mass migration/holy war/pub crawl with a little genocide thrown in for good measure.
  • Humongous Mecha—Ork Gargants, which are walking shrines to the Ork Gods Gork and Mork. They are build in their image, striding across the landscape, stompin' anything which gets in their way, and making a glorious ruckus while they do it.
  • Hollywood Cyborg—Even if an Ork gets his limbs blown off, or even takes injuries that would be fatal to other aliens, a Mad Dok can simply graft some cybernetic limbs to him so he can get back to fighting.
  • Hollywood Tactics—Notable in that they make it work. If you field the right army roster you can actually make it work on the tabletop.
  • Idiot Ball: Being who they are, it's hard to see when they don't pick it up. Often subverted, however, by the Blood Axes, who being contaminated by non-orky tactics, will occasionally retreat to gather intel. This is the primary reason that they are both treated with derision by other Orks and the main source of Warbosses.
  • I Have Many Names: Some Orks take on nicknames referring to particularly remarkable feats or defeated enemies like Daemonkilla or Deffscreama.
  • Improvised Weapon—Anything an Ork builds is basically scrap metal welded and bolted together. And it works.
  • Insane Ork Logic -- Everything the Orks think. And it works, largely because...
  • It Runs on Nonsensoleum—Or more specifically, Waaagh! energy.
  • Language Equals Thought—The Orks have no word for "equal", and as previously stated the closest they come to the concept of "friend" is "favorite enemy." Also note that the universal battlecry of all Orks is a corruption of the word "war".
  • Large and In Charge—Thanks to the psychic energy produced by a Waagh!, Ork Warbosses become larger and stronger the longer they lead a Warband. Ghazghkull Thraka is estimated at about six meters.[6] This mentality often gives them trouble when fighting humans, as except for the Space Marines, they all look the same size.
    • This problem is slightly averted when dealing with Imperial Guard: the ones with the fancy hats (Commissars) are in charge, and their hats are often looted as symbols of authority.
  • Laughably Evil: Even though they're homicidal killing machines, Orks are hilarious.
  • Law of Chromatic Superiority—Red wunz go fasta, yellow makes More Dakka, blue is lucky, black is dead'ard, and orange/purple is sneaky (have you ever seen a purple or orange-painted ork? No? Then they must invisible!).
  • Lower Class Lout—The parts of the Orkish character that aren't standard fantasy-setting Orcs (or ancient Irish Celts) are based on yobbish British youth culture of The Eighties (when 40k was first published): Football Hooligans, skinheads, boy racers and thugs in general. One of their rules updates was titled 'Ere We Go, a common chant in orkish mobs and football audiences.
  • Lukk Nounverba—Mostly nicknames, but sometimes their first/only name as well.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane—While there is certainly a strong element of Clap Your Hands If You Believe to Ork technology, exactly how much of it is due to the subtle influence of their racial psychic field and how much is due to the way their beliefs shape their actions is left vague. For example, Orks absolutely believe that vehicles painted red go faster, and generally Ork vehicles painted red do. However, it is unknown how much of this is due to the Orks willing red vehicles to go faster and the psychic field manifesting their will, and how much of it is because an Ork mekboy is more likely to lavish time and attention to properly tricking out and fine-tuning the engine of a red vehicle simply because that vehicle is red and everyone knows they should go faster.
  • Made a Slave—They routinely enslave humans.
  • Mad Scientist—Ork Painboys and Meks, who also suffer from Science-Related Memetic Disorder.
  • Might Makes Right—The Orks' ultimate philosophy. If an Ork wants something from someone smaller than him, he feels he has every right to take it. If it resists, he has every right to smash its face (and might do so just for fun even if it doesn't resist.) When Orks of similar size quarel over something, they just fight it out, with the winner getting a tiny bit bigger than the loser. The biggest Ork calls the shots, and anyone who questions him gets made an example of.
  • Mini-Mecha:
    • Deff Dreads serve as the ramshackle counterparts to the Imperium's Dreadnoughts.
    • Killa Kans are slightly smaller, being designed for Gretchin pilots.
  • Mono-Gender Monsters—Orks sprout from spores, and as such are technically without gender. They're universally referred to as "boyz," though.
  • More Dakka—The Trope Namers. Given their sub-par ballistic skill, it is the only way for them to have reasonable odds of hitting a target at range.
  • My Brain Is Big—Ork Weirdboyz' brains swell to abnormal size with the power of the Waaagh, to the point that the top portion of their skull needs to be removed to relieve the pressure.
  • Nothing but Skulls—Though the real prize for an Ork's "pointy stick" is a collection of Space Marine helmets.
  • Obliviously Evil—Orks don't hate you. They're butchering your family and shelling your home because war is what they're made for, and the only thing they understand. Also, they're bored.
  • Omnicidal Maniac—Every Ork wants to kill off all non-Ork life, partly because they view them as inferior, but mainly because it would be fun.
  • Our Orcs Are Different—Starting with the spelling.
  • Our Goblins Are Wickeder—Gretchin are a punier breed commonly used as slave labor, emergency rations, mine clearance, cover, rocket guidance systems, ammunition, and in desperate times, as actual infantry. They are smarter than the Orks, so they need plenty of "encouragement" to fulfill these roles, usually a Runtherd's whip or "Grot-Prod." Snotlings are even smaller, and probably not even sentient. Collectively, they're known as "Grots".
  • The Pig Pen—Orks care for little beyond making war, and hygiene is rarely a consideration. Given their particular biology, living in filth does not carry the same health risks that it would among humans (and to some degree encourages growth.) The official Citadel tank painting guide recommends that painters add lots of weathering to Ork vehicles, since they rarely bother to clean them.
  • Plant Aliens—Some ancient Precursors fused a strand of algal DNA to the Orks' double helix, which is responsible for their genetic memory, powerful physiology, and green skin tone.
  • Plucky Comic Relief—Or the closest the setting has to it, which is not a good sign.
  • Powa Klaw—A common weapon among larger Orks is a power-fist shaped into a crude metal "klaw" so large a smaller Ork would be unable to wield it. Some of them are simply strapped to the arm, but others are installed in place of the Ork's forearm as a "bionik" enhancement.
    • Imperial Commissar Yarrick famously has an Ork-made power klaw which he took as a trophy from the battlefield and used to replace his own lost arm. While unusual and extremely unwieldy for small Ork, let alone a "'hummie runt," to use, it has proven an exceptionally effective psychological weapon, furthering Yarrick's feared reputation among the Orks.
  • Power Incontinence—Wyrdboyz have to be isolated from the rest of the tribe, lest they soak up too much Waaagh! energy and cause a few 'eadbangers.
  • Primal Stance—With arms larger than a man's thighs, a hunched posture, and sloped forehead, Orks resemble hairless green gorillas. Some of the fluff even lampshades this, saying that a typical Ork is about the height of a man, and would be taller if they ever stood up straight.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy—They follow the letter of the trope, if not the spirit.
  • Psycho for Hire—Orks will occasionally hire themselves out as mercenaries to various factions, including Imperial nobles and even Inquisitors who want some sort of Plausible Deniability if a rival is removed.
  • Psychopathic Manchild—The life of an Ork is made up of fighting, tearing around at stupidly high speeds on bikes, trukks, ramshackle flyers, or unguided rockets, drinking, and more fighting. Why? Because it's fun.
  • Pyromaniac—Burna Boyz, Skorcha drivers, and especially the Arch-Arsonist of Charadon.
  • Rebellious Spirit—Inverted. Ork "Yoofs" who have yet to find their place in the tribe may get tired of being told to do whatever they want and run off to join the Stormboyz, Orks obsessed with military discipline, uniforms, marching, and flying around on crude Jet Packs. (Naturally, this discipline lasts approximately until they get a good look at the enemy.)
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning—And they glow, too.
  • Retcon—Originally the Precursors who created the Orks and Gretchin were supposed to be none other than the Snotlings, who started off as superintelligent, created the Orks as heavy labor, and slowly devolved into semisentience, eventually becoming their creations' slaves. Later, it was Retconned that the Old Ones who had also created the Eldar created the Orks for fighting the Necrons.
    • The latest Ork codex mentioned both origins, and basically gave the Shrug of God over which, if either, was true. Over 60 million years it could be both.
    • There was once a time when older Orks would feel an instinctive urge to "go lookin' for somefing," wander off to a secluded area, develop sexual characteristics, breed, and bring home a young Ork in a pouch. Fortunately the "spore aliens" reproductive strategy was devised before the concept of female Orks caused too much mental trauma.
  • Roar Dakka—In the video games, Orks tend to compete with their guns to see who can make the most noise.
  • Screaming Warrior—Orks like noise, the louder the better, and when going into combat will contribute as much to the noise with their own lungs as possible. It is not for nothing that a charging green horde is always proceeded by their Battle Cry of "WAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!"
  • The Scrounger: Orks as a species are famed for their ability to scrounge useful bits of technology out of anything, to the extent that some even consider it boardering on the supernatural. Lootas are particularly enthuastic and good at this, aggressively finding and nicking the bits a mekboy is most likely to find useful, and getting rewarded with some of the best guns in return.
  • Social Darwinist: The Orks entire heirarchy is based on who is the toughest warrior.
  • Silly Reason for War—Orks do not need a reason to fight, but having a context for it makes it more fun because they get to form into big mobz, paint themselves team colors, rally behind big impressive banners, and charge against the gits that are on the other side of the issue, regardless of what that issue actually is.[7] As a result, Orks will go to war at the drop of a hat for the seemingly most arbitrary and absurd reasons.
    • In Gorkamorka, a major civil war was started because of arguments about whether the titular gargant-spaceship-thing resembled Gork or Mork more. It only ended when it was renamed Gorkamorka and an official stance that it could be either was taken.
  • Smart As They Need to Be—Orks tend to have a simple manner and a straightforwardly aggressive mentality. This is easy to mistake for stupidity by those who do not know better. Orks are simply interested in having the most fun fight possible, so if straight Hollywood Tactics will give them that, that is what they will do. However, if the foe proves clever enough that such tactics would only result in a Curb Stomp Loss for the Orks (which is no fun,) they will come up with "brutal cunning" devious alternative tactics that come as a surprise to enemies expecting "mere" simple-minded aggressors.
  • Space Pirate—Freebooterz, Orks who have seperated from their clans to travel the stars and raid starships. Many of them even have the hats!
  • Stronger with Age—Ork physiology causes them to get bigger, stronger, and smarter the longer they live and the more fights they win.
  • Stuff Blowing Up—Orks love explosions, and will use explosives as much for the big fun blast as its possible effectiveness. Even kommandos, who normally favor more subtly as a rule, like a good blast now and then, and will often use their stealth abilities to set hidden explosive booby traps, or sneak in close to an enemy strongpoint and use demolition charges to blow open a breach for the rest of the horde to pour into.
  • Super Toughness—A characteristic of the Orks, and one of the factors why they display a willingness to charge through a hail of bullets to reach melee range, or strap themselves to rocket packs which are as likely to blow them up as they are to carry them to the enemy. Any wound which does not kill an Ork outright will just make it more belligerent, and even the most serious of wounds can be healed from in a few days.
  • Talking with Signs—A recourse for any gretchin who have spent too long manning Ork Big Gunz, which like all Ork firearms are engineered to make as much noise as possible. Since they don't have access to Hammerspace, it doesn't work very well because they're limited to the few signs they can carry around.
  • Tele Frag—The dread Shokk Attak Gun, which fires Snotlings through the Warp so that they materialize inside the targeted unit.
  • The Usual Adversaries: Formerly named Goddamn Orks.
  • War Is Glorious
  • We Can Rebuild Him—Maddoks and Mekboys can take Orks that have taken massive amounts of damage and cyberneticallly enhance them. Ghazghkull Thraka had part of his skull blown off, but it was replaced with adamantium.
  • What a Piece of Junk!—The usual state of vehicles, ships, and weapons of Ork manufacture, considering that they are often cobbled together from parts scavenged by others, or using parts of very quick and crude manufacture by the Orks themselves, and are rarely kept in good condition. However, thanks to Clap Your Hands If You Believe, they tend to work a lot better than their engineering has any logical right to.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It—Since Orks only respect brute force, the only way to take over a warband is to prove you're the 'ardest boy in it. These contests are occasionally determined through 'eadbutting contests (except the ones settled by snipping off someone's head with a power claw). This makes Ghazghkull Thraka's adamantium skull all the more useful. A knockout is usually sufficient, but it's a lot funnier when someone dies.
  • Zerg Rush: One of the ways the Orks became so numerous and one of their methods for defeating their enemies, thanks to their method of reproduction.


The Tau Empire

A thousand fibres connect each of us with our fellow Tau and along those fibres our deeds run as causes which come back to us as effects. Everything we must do must be in furtherance of the Greater Good, lest we return to the Mont'au, the Terror.

A young, dynamic, and somewhat naive race, the Tau have come a long way very quickly. A few thousand years ago they were a bunch of primitives who had just discovered fire, and were targeted for extermination by the Imperium - but a miraculous warp storm destroyed the fleet sent to their homeworld, and the Imperium lost interest. Within scant centuries, they had discovered firearms, evolved into distinct subraces, and were proceeding to destroy each other, until a cadre of mysterious strangers convinced the various Tau to work together for the benefit of all. Now the warriors of the Fire Caste, pilots of the Air Caste, artisans of the Earth Caste, and diplomats of the Water Caste serve the philosophy of the Greater Good, under the wise and watchful eyes of the Ethereal Caste.

The Tau are known for two things: their advanced technology, and their Greater Good. The Tau have embraced technology in a way the Adeptus Mechanicus deems blasphemous, and even their basic infantry are armed with energy weapons the envy of Imperial soldiers, while their elite warriors wear flying battlesuits that can lay waste to entire squads, but it is the philosophy of the Greater Good that is the Tau's most dangerous creation, as they actively try to recruit other races into their empire. The barbaric Kroot, a species of bird-like aliens that seek evolutionary upgrades by feeding on their enemies, were an early success, while recently the insectoid Vespid have been brought into the fold as well. Many humans also fall prey to the promises of Tau technology and a society less transparently brutal than the Imperium. This leads many to label the Tau the "good guys" of Warhammer 40,000, which is true to some extent - the Tau will at least offer you a chance to surrender before dragging you into the fold by force, and will only put you into concentration camps if it's for the Greater Good. Throw in the fact that the Ethereals are suspected of Mind Control as well as the notion of a race rigidly divided into castes, and you have a classic Straw Dystopia.

The tabletop Tau army is perhaps the shootiest in the game - basic Tau firearms outclass the equivalents of most other races in terms of power and range and are capable of shredding light vehicles, while their heavy weapons make mockeries of enemy armor. Tau battlesuits can also be customized to deal devastating ranged damage to a specific type of unit, and are mobile enough to make hit and run attacks. On the downside, the Tau are simply pathetic in close combat, and have no dedicated assault units besides Kroot kindreds. Success with the Tau means learning how to make the elements of your army work in harmony - using the Kroot to shore up your flanks, drawing the enemy into a killing zone with a unit of Pathfinders, or having your Drones pin down attackers before they can reach your lines, and remember, if you bring along an Ethereal, keep him alive.

Notable Tau tropes include

  • Action Girl - Commander Shadowsun, the supreme commander of the Fire Caste who led several successful raids on a Tyranid splinter fleet, eventually destroying it without losing a single ship.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Manta fits this, though it would be more accurate to equate it with an Airborne Amphibious Assault Carrier, since its primary function is to transport large groups of ground forces from orbit to the surface and from one surface zone to another. It is capable of transporting an entire hunter cadre (which equates to an entire tabletop Tau force deployment) and, given jetpack battlesuits and grav-tank mounted infantry, can actually deploy its entire force with one low-speed pass without ever landing. It is in the same mass category as an Imperial titan, though its primary role is the transportation and long-range fire support of Tau ground forces, rather than being used for direct combat.
    • A Manta's max carrying capacity is 188 infantry. You can then swap up to 140 of these for tanks, battlesuits, drones, turrets...
  • Alien Blood - Due to high levels of cobalt, Tau blood is blue, and according to at least one inquisitor, smells awful.
  • Alien Hair - The Tau only grow hair in a single lock at the back of their head, which they typically let grow shoulder length on Fire Warriors and sometimes longer in other castes, typically resembling a top-knot. Some human gue'vessa'la shave their heads except for a spot in the back in imitation of this. The Kroot on the other hand are more dissimilar to humans in that they have long quills growing out of the back of their heads, as well as many smaller quills growing about their bodies. These quills are actually sense organs, air vibrating against them providing the Kroot their sense of hearing in the same manner that ears provide humans a sense of hearing.
  • Aliens Speaking Gothic - Tau education involves implanting didactic modules (microchips containing databases of factual information) into the brains of Tau infants and children, and these include language data. Therefore, almost all Tau can understand and speak languages they might be expected to encounter, including Imperial Gothic. However, while those modules can give information they cannot impart actual skill, which still requires practice. So unlike Translator Microbes, any Tau who does not have reason to practice those languages will speak them haltingly and with a heavy accent and may miss a lot of nuance when listening to other languages spoken. Because of this, Tau almost always defer to the Water Caste, who does practice speaking and interpreting alien languages, if they are to communicate with aliens. Whether or not a given Tau chooses to speak an alien language is another matter, and how pervasive this is can be subject to Depending on the Writer. Members of castes other than the Water caste tend to defer to dedicated translators when dealing with aliens. After all, that is not their area. And when a Water Caste member is not present, they still defer to another present if that person is willing to speak. The only times they will actually speak with aliens is when no other translator is available.
    • Inquisitor Oriel once warned the guardsmen he was traveling with on a Tau ship (while disguised as a diplomatic delegation) to watch what they said around the Tau. Even though the only Tau to have spoken to them directly was a Water Caste interpreter, he knew psychically that the other Tau around them understood far more of what they said than they let on. He even speculated that they might be doing so deliberately as a means of getting the humans to let their guard down and say something that the Tau could later use as leverage against them in negotiations.
  • The Alliance - They're the only ones that actually bother to get (and keep) allies, whereas the others would either wipe everything else out, or still have internal problems to sort out (often times, it's both). Amongst their allies are the barbaric, bird-like Kroot; the insectoid Vespid, who may or may not be mind controlled; the squid-like, space-faring Nicassar, who make up most of the Tau Navy; the dwarf-resembling Demiurg merchants and traders; and the reptilian, Trandoshan-reminding Tarellian mercenaries, who hate the Imperium.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population - The Kroot are commonly depicted in official artwork with dull green skin similar to Orks, but there canonically exist a variety of other skin tones including red and black. Coloration is usually divided up by kindred, but even the same kindred can change skin color over the course of a few generations depending on what they have been eating.[8]
  • Ambition Is Evil - A core Tau value, though that only applies to personal ambition. Ambition on an empire-wide scale in following the Greater Good is considered a virtue.
  • Ancient Astronauts - The Tau actually were visited by a spacefaring non-indigenous species when they were living as hunter-gatherers: humanity. Though in defiance of this trope, the Tau seem not to regard them with any particular awe. Considering that humans were planning on "sterilizing" T'au and colonizing the planet for themselves, they might also count as Abusive Precursors. Apparently the Tau's breakthrough into Faster-Than-Light Travel came about when they discovered the ruins of an alien spaceship on one of the other planets in their home system. It is not recorded if this ship was human or otherwise but given the human visitation of their system, it certainly seems probable.
  • Animesque - The battlesuits are a dead giveaway.
  • Apologetic Attacker - In most cases, though if the Ethereal is dead or the Fire Caste's blood is up, they can be just as fierce as the other races.
  • Arranged Marriage - While the Tau have no direct analogue to human marriages (the closest they come to is the Bonding Ceremony which involves a mix-gender group of several partners and is a non-sexual agápe relationship) they do have arranged breeding, with breeding couples being summoned by a "Procreation Committee" to spend a day together attempting to conceive, after which they go their separate ways. All child-rearing is done in educational/nursing facilities by professional instructors of the matching caste. However, it is not unusual for a parent to take an interest in their offspring's development and occasionally visit them, though the onus of rasing the child is on the instructors rather than the parent, and the Tau's society places more importance on chosen family via the Ta'lissera rather than blood relation.
  • Ascetic Aesthetic - Common to Tau vehicles, ships, and structures. They prefer their constructions to be ergonomic and functional, with every component designed to fit perfectly with every other component, such that it forms one common whole. Living spaces do occasionally have frescoes on the walls and floors, with abstract labyrinth-like patterns, though the colors are so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable unless one focuses directly on it, the intention being that it serves as a meditation aid. The Fire Caste in particular is known for its austere sense of aesthetics, and this is reflected in the visual simplicity of their military structures.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority - While their Fantastic Caste System determines a Tau's limitations on vocation, their Fantastic Ranking System is entirely meritocratic. Everyone begins life at the lowest ranks and is given a chance to ascend to a higher rank once every four T'au years of their adult life. This promotion is based entirely on how good a given Tau is at doing their job, and for those in the Fire Caste in particular, being good at their job means being an excellent soldier and leader.
  • Attack Drone - Unlike the Imperium, the Tau make extensive use of artificial intelligences as worker or battlefield drones, and have so far avoided the robot rebellion problem.
  • Badass Normal: OK, so they aren't normal humans like the other Badass Normal Badass Army in Warhammer 40,000, the Imperial Guard. The Tau are, however, aliens who are physically weaker than humans and have no psykers. All the Tau have at their disposal to fight the hordes of superpowered and supernatural beings that threaten the empire, is their formidable technology and their allies.
  • Bee People - The Vespid, an insect-like race who evolved on Floating Continents in a gas giant, with their social structure centered around hive-families called strains, are one of the newer additions to the Tau Empire. Initial communication proved difficult, but once translation devices were built to breach the language barrier, the Vespid joined the Tau eagerly, as the Greater Good already meshed well with the Vespid's own values of hive-over-individual, island-over-hive, and species-over-island.
  • Beginner's Luck - La'Kais, protagonist of the game Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior manages to take on and defeat both Imperial and Chaos forces by himself, up to taking down a Lord of Change on his first day of live combat, with some help from both Tau and Ultramarine forces with Chaos. Unfortunately after that he was hit with a bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was mentally broken by the experience, though it's suggested he'll get better. (He doesn't. The book also reveals that Khorne was helping him)
  • Benevolent-ish Alien Invasion - Compared to standard Imperial procedure, re-education camps and status as an underclass of society isn't so bad.
  • BFG - The basic Pulse Rifle can knock a Space Marine on his back, while a Rail Rifle can punch a hole in him.
  • Big Good - High Ethereal Aun'va, Master of the Undying Spirit and Aun'o of the Tau Empire.
  • Blade on a Stick - Two examples:
    • Ethereals sometimes wield an Honor Blade, a staff with a pair of Absurdly Sharp Blades at either end. An Ethereal trained in its use is said to be able to spin the staff around so fast as to make the blades on the ends almost invisible. The Honor Blade is primarily used to settle disputes between Ethereals in stylized, bloodless duels, where the sharpness of the blades is used to highlight an Ethereals' restraint and self-control, rather than intent to kill. However, when someone who has no regard for the Greater Good draws near an Ethereal, said restraint need not apply.
    • The Kroot use long rifles with a pair of scythe-like bayonets at either end. The Kroot use these both as a rifle, and as their primary melee weapon, harkening back to their ancient bladed fighting staves before they adopted firearms. The weapon's great length, combined with the Kroot's own taut, whip-like muscles, allow it to strike with great force when swung in wide arcs.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good - A literal case for those conquered by the Tau who resist the idea of the Greater Good (though the Tau prefer not to think of it as "brainwashing".) They have no prisons, any disruptive social deviancy is considered to be a psychological issue on the part of the deviant, and correctional institutions are more like a mental hospital and educational facility than a lockup. Any concentration camps they establish are holding areas to protect those who reject the Greater Good from themselves until they can be properly re-educated.
  • Cannibal Tribe - The Kroot draw heavily on this trope for their imagery. They consider eating the flesh of another creature a way of showing respect for that creature's strength. Inevitably though, sentient creatures are what they considered the strongest. Their culture revolves around finding strong creatures to eat, which is what drives much of their mercenary aspirations. If it puts up a good fight, it will make a good meal, and that makes the Kroot stronger.
  • Compelling Voice - Any orders given by an Ethereal are obeyed without question. The Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition are very interested in this ability...
  • Creative Sterility - A characteristic of the Kroot. Though not unintelligent, the Kroot's lack of creativity is what kept their technology at a crude black-powder level for a long period of time, and they were unlikely to go any further than that on their own. That was all changed when Orks invaded their homeworld, and the Kroot's own inate ability to absorb and incorporate genetic information from what (or whom) they eat allowed them to take advantage of the Orkish Genetic Memory and gain spacefaring technology. In fact, the creative portions of their brains are literally smaller and less developed than the logical-rational parts. In humans, this would be the equivelant of having a smaller right brain than a left brain.
  • Crew of One - Many of the Tau's vehicles have crews much smaller than those used by some other galactic civilizations, thanks to their extensive use of simple artificial intelligence and automation to take the load off the crew. Even in cases where a Tau vehicle has a nominally larger crew, this is mostly for the sake of redundancy in case some members become incapacitated, and to keep any one crew from having to divide their attention between too many areas. For example, the Hammerhead Gunship has a crew of three, but the "glass cockpit" of each of the crew's stations allows any one of them to take over the task of any other if necessary, and it could theoretically be operated by a single crewmember tabbing between control screens.
  • Crippling Overspecialization - The basic weapon of the Tau line infantry is powerful enough that even Space Marines are cautious about trying to soak its fire up, and the Tau's anti-vehicle weapons render enemy armor laughable. However, the Tau's poor reflexes compared to other races leave them at a huge disadvantage in a close-quarters battle. They make heavy use of Kroot auxiliaries to try and make up this difference, but the Kroot's skills are primarily in assaulting from ambush rather than taking the fight to the enemy. As a result, the Tau have few options when there is a military need to swiftly storm and overrun.
    • Kroot who eat too much of a certain creature are locked into an evolutionary dead-end. For example, eating quadrupeds over other animals results in the Kroot lineage permanently becoming Kroot Hounds.
    • Commander Shadowsun, having been created for the Cities of Death supplement, is frighteningly effective in urban combat but becomes a massive liability when the unwise player attempts to use her in any other environment.
  • Crystal Spires and Togas - Tau cities are noticeably cleaner than most Imperial settlements.
  • Dark Messiah - Ethereals.
  • Dark and Troubled Past - As stated in the quotation, a race-wide example: the Mont'au, which does in fact mean "The Terror."
  • Deflector Shields - The Tau possess energy shield technology, which in contrast to the "Void Shields" of the Imperium (which absorb incoming fire or stop it dead) are genuine "deflector" shields because that is what they do, deflect incoming fire away from the object being protected. This has the disadvantage of not necessarily protecting against every incoming attack but has the advantage of not being subject to overloads and powerdowns. This is represented as an invulnerable save in game mechanics, as the incoming fire is either deflected completely away or manages to get through and score a hit. Also notable is that Tau often put these shields on sacrificial drones which are designed to bodyguard living Tau by throwing themselves into the path of oncoming fire and counting on their shields to protect their assigned Tau.
  • Defensive Feint Trap - One of the core branches of Tau tactical doctrine, called "kuyon" in their language which translates roughly as "patient hunter." It focuses on using a "lure" (either a seemingly isolated and vulnerable unit or objective or in some cases the lack of forces) to draw the enemy into the Tau's considerable crossfire.
  • Ditto Aliens - Humans often have trouble telling one Tau apart from another, or even telling which Tau are male or female. The Tau often have similar sentiments about humans.
  • Does Not Like Shoes - Tau feet end in hooves, which gives them less impetus than races like humans to wear shoes, so generally they go barehoofed, including their line Fire Warriors. Battlesuits do have covered feet, but that is only because they enclose everything. The Kroot and Vespid have bird-like and insect-like feet respectively, and also go bareclawed, but that is an extension of neither race wearing cloths beyond a few small items.
  • Drop Ship—The Orca Dropship[9] is the first vehicle in the setting to be refered to as a "drop ship". Unlike the Thunderhawk Gunship used by the Space Marines, the Orca is purely a transportation craft rather than a multi-mission transport and strike craft, and is only armed for surpressing a landing zone and point defense. It is capable of transporting two Fire Warrior teams, two Crisis Battlesuit teams, and a squadren of Gun Drones.
  • Easy Evangelism - Played straight when the Ethereals first revealed themselves to the rest of Tau society. They ended a long and bloody siege simply by telling each side to work together, and within a matter of months had the rest of T'au coming together for the Greater Good. However, this is also Handwaved by the Ethereals use of a Compelling Voice. This trope is averted though with their attempts to evangelize the Greater Good outside their species. Some do convert, setting aside their own ambitions in exchange for the protection of the Tau and the benefits and comforts of their technology, but many more do not, particularly as it is understandably difficult to overcome literally thousands of years of institutionalized Fantastic Racism if nothing else. Tau-sympathizers versus Throne-loyalists is a common source of civil divide on Imperial worlds which border the Tau Empire, and is understandably seen as a "moral threat" by Imperial authorities.
  • Empire with a Dark Secret - Propaganda aside, there are strong hints that Ethereals use pheromones to demand the unquestioning obedience of the other Tau. They still avert the Straw Hypocrite characterisation that usually comes with this; the Ethereals, like their followers, absolutely believe in the Greater Good of group over self, community over group, planet over community, and race/alliance over planet. Even the renegade Farsight agrees in principle—he just disagrees, sometimes lethally, on how to achieve it.
  • Exotic Equipment - Male Kroot's sexual organs are the pores on their hands, female Kroot's sexual organs are the pores on their backs. Mating to them looks like a back massage. They also have no dedicated urinal or rectal orifaces, any indigestible components (which are very few to them) are regurgitated up through the mouth. This also serves as a birth canal.
  • Fantastic Caste System - The four main castes are part Hindu Varnas, part Four-Temperament Ensemble and part Elemental Theme Naming: the Earth Caste are manual labourers and artisans, the Air Caste are Ace Pilots, the Water Caste are bureaucrats, politicians and diplomats, and the Fire Caste make up the military - the final, ruling caste are the Ethereals.
  • Fashionable Asymmetry - Tau infantry typically have enclosed helmets with an optics cluster offset from the central vertical axis, and broad pauldrons, but only on their left shoulder. According to the Games Workshop concept artist who designed the Tau, the offset optics was to make them appear more "alien" than would otherwise be suggested by their human-like frames, and the pauldrons were inspired by Japanese ashigaru foot soldiers, but were only placed on the shoulder that faces the enemy when aiming a rifle in order to make the influence more subtle.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel - Notable in that they use a different mechanism for achieving it than most other races. Other races tend to have ships fully enter the warp, travel to another system, then exit the warp. The Tau use the "stutter drive" type, entering the warp for only an instant and exiting some distance away. This brief jump is only short range (by interstellar standards) but their drives make many of them very rapidly. This has been likened to holding a buoyant ball under water and letting it spring out, or skipping a stone across a surface. The net effect is much slower interstellar travel than other methods, but also much safer and more reliable travel.
  • Feathered Fiend - Though they have quills instead of feathers, the Kroot are descended from alien avians, and retain their ancestors' beaks and light bones.
  • The Federation - Still imperialist, but quite a bit less evil than the other factions.
  • Fictionary - One of the better realized examples in the series. Tau words tend to be composed of smaller particle words combined to make up a more complex concept (much like many real world languages) with each particle separated by apostrophes. As many particles are reused between words, many patterns become evident when studying many of the words in the fluff, which can sometimes lead to understanding a few nuances on their use.[10]
  • Flechette Storm - A minor example. Tau vehicles occasionally mount a proximity defense system that bursts out a brief storm of flechettes when an enemy attempts to strike or climb onto a vehicle at close range. This system is appropriately named "Flechette Launchers".
  • Flat Earth Atheist - The Tau have next to no Warp signature and don't use it for travel, and are therefore doubtful of the existence of "daemons."
  • Four-Fingered Hands - And hooves, and unique teeth. Imperial propaganda states that the Tau are descended from grazing bovines.
  • Full-Frontal Assault - Kroot's sexual organs are the pores in their skin, so they feel little modesty about the bareness of their bodies, and since the small quills scattered about their flesh are sense organs, they prefer to have them exposed to better feel and smell their environment. If they wear anything, it is usually light and utilitarian, such as belts and pouches for carrying things, or something small and ceremonial like a head dress or necklace.
  • Gatling Good - The burst cannon is a variation of the pulse rifle technology with twice the barrels, set up to rotate as it fires, mounted extensively on Tau vehicles and battlesuits as their standard anti-infantry and point defense weapons.
  • Gender Is No Object - Neither the Tau nor the Kroot have any division of gender in any particular social roles, including military. It is hard enough for most races to tell the difference between the Tau sexes, as they have little sexual dimorphism beyond their primary sexual characteristics, and the Kroot have even less than that.
  • Glamour - Ethereals are seen this way by other Tau, positively radiating control and wisdom as beacons of hope and the justness of Greater Good. Humans seem them as just another one of the xenos. A Tau of any other caste who spends enough of their life around Ethereals can learn to "tune-out" the awe those Ethereals project, but will still obey any command they are given.
  • The Greys - Though a bit taller.
  • Happiness in Slavery - Used in two seperate ways:
    • Other species who are absorbed into the Tau Empire are treated magnanimously whether they allow themselves to be subsumed into the empire voluntarily or through conquest. A resistant power will usually have its military partially disarmed so it must rely on the Tau for protection, and will have to prove itself trustworthy before being allowed to build it back up. The Tau help their conquests to rebuild and elevate their standards of living above that they had before. Their existance is generally quite comfortable, but despite that they have still lost their sovereignty to the Tau.
    • The other Tau castes themselves to the Etheral caste. The Ethereals have the absolute loyalty of the other castes, and those other castes see the Ethereals as being messianic figures who hold wisdom that is unquestionable. With the noteworthy exception of the Farsight Enclaves, they are more than happy to serve.
  • Heroic BSOD - The death of an Ethereal is devastating to Tau morale. If one is killed, the Fire Caste may panic and attempt an organized retreat...
  • Higher-Tech Species -- Played with, in that the Tau have a lower maximum tech level than races like humans (especially as it concerns applications of the Warp such as long range Faster-Than-Light Travel or Teleporters and Transporters) but what technology they do have they understand very well and can manufacture easily. This means that when going up against a Schizo-Tech foe such as the Imperium, the Tau will not equal their most impressive weapons, but their more common weapons will easily outmatch that of the Imperium. For example, plasma guns are rare weapons among the Imperials, being almost a Lost Technology, while similar weapons are standard issue among Tau infantry.
  • Hollywood Atheist - To the point of Scary Dogmatic Aliens.
  • Hover Tanks - One of the only two races (and 3 factions) to regularly use them. Characterized by sloping forward hulls and swiveling engine nacelles, Tau tanks lack the speed of Eldar tanks but are better armored. They have the Devilfish for infantry transport, the Hammerhead Gunship for hunting armor, and the Skyray for missile defense against aerial threats.
  • Honor Before Reason - Inverted (at least compared to some other in-universe examples) in that they consider the trope to be, well, dishonorable. They regard a Last Stand as the result of an incompetent commander. Any Tau military strategy inevitably involves extensive contingency plans for falling back and rallying. Some of their military philosophies even exploit this to lure enemies into traps when they think to press their advantage.
  • Hot-Blooded - The Vior'la sept, which directly translates to "Hot Blooded".
  • Humongous Mecha - Averted, despite their anime-influences the Tau have no giant robots, understandably considering such things to be impractical from an engineering and technological standpoint. They do use some war machines in the same mass class as titans in the form of Manta Destroyers, but these are small atmospheric-capable starships rather than mechs. However, they are arguably the widest users of Mini-Mecha in the setting, with large numbers of battlesuits to support their infantry.
  • I Have Many Names - Tau names begin with the caste and rank, their sept of origin, and their personal name. As they advance in their careers, they will be given additional honorific names of their notable accomplishments or traits that have come to define them. While their full name is only used in very formal situations, their caste and rank followed by their personal name is considered the polite shorthand way to address a Tau.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills - One of the uses of Tau markerlights is to feed targeting data to other Tau units, where HUD projections, target movement prediction routines, and aim-correction computers can allow the firer to use their weapons with startling accuracy. This makes units with large numbers of marklights such as Pathfinder squads a priority target for the Tau's enemies, as they are a force-multiplier for the rest of the Tau army.
  • Invisibility Cloak—Tau Stealthsuits are one of the smaller varieties of battlesuit, fitting as Powered Armor, and equipped with an active camouflage device. Stealth team commanders are chosen from veteran Fire Warriors who show great personal initiative and are usually employed as irregulars, being given independent deployments with a broad set of operational parameters. Such missions are usually things like observing the enemy from hiding, attacking targets of opportunity, and disrupting the enemy's rear operations. When more regular Tau forces move to engage, the stealth teams will usually position themselves to assist before resuming their mission.
  • It's Raining Tau: Any Tau unit equipped with a jetpack (which includes most battlesuits) is capable of using it to do a high-altitude deep strike insertion, deploying from Mantas or Orcas (or Tigersharks in the case of drones) and using their jetpacks to arrest their fall.
  • Laser Sight - Tau make extensive use of "markerlights" that improve other units' chances to hit an enemy target, or to guide seeker missiles.
  • Law of Inverse Recoil - Used in an interesting way. Tau pulse weapons, owing to the fact that their rounds are extremely low mass (though high velocity) have almost no recoil. This tends to surprise professional human soldiers who manage to get their hands on one in the field, after seeing the effect those pulse weapons have on targets. The Burst Cannon, owing to its rate of fire, does have a noticeable muzzle-climb, but it is slight enough that vehicles' and battlesuits' firing computers automatically adjust aim to compensate for it, and even an infantry unit can (theoretically) manage it with a good grip.
  • Lego Genetics - Kroot are able to instinctively select DNA sequences from the prey they eat and add them to their own, so that a Kroot kindred that fights Orks for a few generation will develop a green coloration and heavy musculature (indeed, the Kroot only managed to leave their homeworld after eating some Orks and gaining the ability to instinctively build spaceships). After a messy past incident, the Tau make sure the Kroot don't eat anything Chaos-related, and Kroot leaders also make sure they don't eat any Tyranids, although since apparently Genestealer hybrids taste absolutely vile this is a frivolous law except in emergencies.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again - Good luck getting any Tau from the official septs to say anything about the Farsight Enclaves. While not exactly a cover-up (Commander Farsight was too big a hero in the Tau media to outright deny) the idea that there is a rogue Tau state outside the benevolent guidance of the Etheral Caste is something Tau do not like to even think about, let alone speak on. Indeed, most of the Imperium's intelligence on Farsight comes via a Rogue Trader who in turn got it from a too drunk Water Caste merchant.
  • Lightning Bruiser - Tau XV8 Crisis Battlesuits are large, strong, tough enough to resist lots of small arms fire, and can mount a diverse array of weaponry and combat support systems. But also thanks to good strength-to-weight ratios of their materials, neural interfaces, piloting-assist artificial intellignece, and a small counter gravity generator, they are quite nimble. Add to that a Jet Pack which allows them to navigate battlefields at speed via a series of powered leaps, and the only thing that keeps them from being complete Game Breakers is that they are terrible when swarmed in close combat.
  • Macross Missile Massacre - Tau battlesuits and vehicles often have multiple firing missile systems, such as the missile pod or smart missile system, both of which output several small missiles at once. The missile pod tends to be a more simply-guided direct-fire variation, while the smart missile system is capable of navigating its missiles around blocking terrain.
  • Made a Slave - Though they do not call it that, one of the darker sides to the Tau's philosophy is that everyone must serve the Greater Good eventually, whether willing or not. Some of the fluff suggests that those who resist the Tau and do not accept the Greater Good after surrendering are put into single-sex concentration camps to be re-educated. Those who do eventually accept are given more comfortable accommodations and allowed more agency to further the Greater Good. Those who do not accept are put to labor for the Greater Good, with the hope that their labors will teach them something about working not for the self but for the many. That said, the Tau make sure all their prisoner's basic needs are met, do not engage in unnecessary torture, sacrifice, arbitrary executions, or work the prisoners to death, which puts them above a lot of the other users of this trope in this setting.
  • Magnetic Weapons - The Tau mount railguns on their XV88 Broadside Battlesuits and Hammerhead Gunships.
    • This is the Tau's signature for weaponry. Even their pulse rifles are technically coilguns, albeit ones that cause their physical ammunition to break down into an energy state while in transit down the barrel. They are only distinguished from "plasma guns" (when the term is used in the rest of the setting) in that the ammunition being excited to a plasma happens in the weapon itself, rather than in a reactor that "bottles" it for later discharge.
  • Meat Versus Veggies
  • Mecha Expansion Pack: The Crisis and Broadside battlesuits have a common chassis, simplifying their logistics somewhat as they share parts. Both models (though the Crisis suits moreso) have universal hardpoints designed to accommodate a wide variety of weapons and combat support systems, allowing the suits to be configured for different mission types and to counter a variety of different threats.
  • Mind Over Manners: Something that the Ethereals regularly engage in. Though they can give a command to any other Tau and will be obeyed without question, they generally prefer to explain their orders when they can, occasionally using koans or trick debates to allow other Tau to reach the conclusion they already had in mind. This is done because the Ethereals' Compelling Voice only works if other Tau are close enough to smell them, and since Ethereals cannot be everywhere at once, they have gradually cultivated Tau culture to obey them even without compulsion.
  • Mini-Mecha: Any Tau battlesuit with an "8" in the first digit of its designation will classify as this.
  • Missile Lock On—Tau seeker missiles are very fast, have great endurance, and their programmable warheads allow them to serve in both an anti-air and anti-armor capacity, but they require a lock-on from a Markerlight designating their target before they will fire. The usual usage of this trope is subverted though, as seeker missiles fly so quickly that all but the most attentive pilots will not even realize they have been locked onto before they have time to attempt a High-Speed Missile Dodge.
  • Naive Newcomer - Though reality is beginning to sink in.
  • Nakama - Fire Warrior squads sometimes undergo a ritualistic blood-mingling ceremony, which translates into improved morale on the tabletop.
  • The Needs of the Many - The Greater Good is, as far as it's been explained, a sort of patriotic utilitarianism; rather than literally counting who will benefit, it demands that the Tau choose to benefit the largest idea of "us" possible.
  • Neural Implanting - A part of the Tau's education system, and a way in which they manage to cram enough learning into their relatively short lives to keep their technology advancing at the rate it is. "Didactic modules" are implanted in Tau at various states of maturity beginning as infants with others implanted at various stages. The limitation is that these modules can only impart factual data, and the access speed of them is generally slower than something learned organically. Thus, Tau education supplements these with lots of drilling and practice of the information most pertinent to each Tau's particular caste (Fire caste members train with weapons, Water caste members train in speaking languages, Earth caste members train operating and maintaining equipment, Air caste members train in flight simulators, etc.)
  • Noble Savage - The Kroot are seen as this within the Tau Empire, where the Por'hui media portray them as a race of Proud Warriors with respectable combat skills, and evidence that even primitive races can find a place in the Greater Good. For their part, the Kroot find this concept quaintly amusing at best, not giving much care to what others think of them, and happy to just go along with it as long as the Tau provide them opportunities to grow stronger. And, to be fair, there's more than a little truth to the propaganda.
  • The Noseless - The Tau are almost Rubber Forehead Aliens, except that their nose is concave instead of convex as it is in humans, as a single slit running up and down the center of their face from above the mouth to well past the eyes. There is some variation in it though. For example, the Etheral caste is distinguished by a diamond-shaped crest of bone in the center of their slit. Commander Shadowsun has a slit that parts halfway up into a Y-shape, though it is unknown if this is characteristic of all female Tau.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat - Inverted with the Water Caste. Their role as bureaucrats is to make the other castes function more comfortably and efficiently. As a rule, they are very good at this job too.
  • One Steve Limit - Averted. There are at least three, possibly four, different distinct characters in the fluff all named "Kais". One from the Tau codex, one from a novel, and one or two from Video Games, all refering to different characters. "Kais" means "skillful" in Tau, and is presumalby a common given name among them.
  • Our Souls Are Different - Tau, like all sentients, have a presence in the warp. However, that presence is duller and dimmer than that of humans, and orders of magnitude less than that of Eldar. This has the effect of giving them some degree of natural resistance (though not necessarily immunity) to daemonic influence. This is also the reason why no psykers have ever been born to the Tau, their connection with the warp is too weak for such powers to manifest among them.
  • Power Incontinence - A flaw of the Kroot is that their ability to incorporate genetic material from creatures that they eat can only be controlled by making dietary choices, and not all choices are good ones. For example, a kindred that eats only dim-witted herbivores will find itself able to digest plant matter they could not before, but will also become more dim-witted themselves. This is a major reason for the Kroot's eating of sentients: it allows them to maintain their intelligence. The role of the Shapers in Kroot society is to understand what would be most advantageous to eat, and to direct their kindreds' diets to those.
  • Private Military Contractors - The Kroot aren't actually all that interested in the Greater Good (or rather take its doctrine of selflessness only up to the level of their own race rather than the empire as a whole), and will hire themselves off as mercenaries on the side.
  • Propaganda Machine - The Tau Por'hui media is composed of Water Caste members who have the job of reporting on empire-wide events and evangelizing the Tau Empire with transmissions outside their own borders. While they do not fabricate information, they do only give it selectively to put the most optimistic spin on it. While the Tau Empire itself is very stable and prosperous, the reason for this lying by omission is to keep the population from realizing just how unlikely they are to reach their goal of uniting the galaxy under the Greater Good, given the Tau's slow FTL travel, lack of super-luminal communication, and the fact that most of the galaxy is simply not interested in joining.
  • The Quisling - Gue'Vesa, humans who fight for the Tau Empire for various reasons. Anghkor Prok could also count for the Kroot, having sworn them into alliance with the Tau and therefore having enough prestige to command Tau troops, though the kroot don't really mind working for Tau most of the time.
  • Realpolitik - Characteristic of Tau / Imperium relations:
    • For example, in the wake of the Damocles Crusade, many Imperial worlds were stripped of their defenders in order to make a stand at Macragge against Hive Fleet Behemoth. The Tau expanded their empire in the wake of the Imperial muster, going into now defenseless systems and offering to protect them in exchange for annexation rights. Those who would not accept the deal were simply curb stomped as most of their defenses were already removed. The Tau defend their aggressive actions by saying that if they had not "expanded defensive interests" to those Imperial worlds than other, less benevolent powers would have taken them anyway before the Imperium could build its forces back up to keep them.
    • While the Imperium of course wants to be rid of the Tau eventually, they generally refrain from taking direct offensive action against them, except to try and liberate Imperial worlds that the Tau have annexed, preferring instead a policy of trying to contain the Tau Empire's expansion. This is in part because of the huge drain of military resources that would be required to completely rout the Tau, but it also is because the Tau Empire functions as a bulwark against Tyranid hive fleets, Orks, and other local powers around the Eastern Fringe where the Imperium's power is limited. As long as the Tau Empire exists, it will distract other potential threats away from Imperial worlds, and the Imperium is only too happy to let that happen.
  • Revenge Before Reason - If an Etheral is killed while in a theater of war, the other Tau present typically go through several stages. First they fall back in a panic, then go into stunned inactivity while they try to come to grips with what happened, then gradually try to return to their duties by numbly going through the motions, which eventually gives way to a cold anger over what was done. An opposing force had better press its advantage during this time, because at the end of this period the Tau drop their normal policies of allowing a retreating enemy to withdraw or accepting their surrender, and their new objective becomes to kill as many of the foe as they can.
  • Roboteching - The Tau's seeker missles function like this. A unit somewhere on the battlefield requests a seeker missile launch via a markerlight, the missile launches off its mounting on a nearby vehicle, shoots up into the air (regardless of original orientation) then cruises along until it can fly straight into the target.
    • Likewise, the Tau's smart missile systems, which fire a salvo of several missiles at once. These missiles are small, low velocity, short range, and have a very modest payload, but are self-guided and capable of nimbly weaving around blocking terrain to seek their targets, making them ideal for clearing out infantry hiding in heavy cover that would otherwise protect them from the Tau's more typical high power, long range weaponry.
  • Romanticized Abuse - The Dark Eldar lust to inflict pain on others the way other species lust for their own physical desires. Their behavior in this regard is every bit as fetishistic as it is terrible.
  • Scary Dogmatic Aliens - There is a good reason why they are sometimes referred to as "Blue Space Communists."
  • Schizo-Tech - Averted with the Tau themselves, but present with the Kroot and many other, less technologically advanced, societies inducted into the Tau Empire. For example, the Kroot, being not particularly creative, had a very slow pace of technological advancement, and their technology was jumped ahead when the Orks invaded their homeworld and the Kroot absorbed their Genetic Memory of how to build more technologically advanced devices. Couple this with technology granted to the Kroot as payment for services rendered, and Kroot societies are free mixes of advanced technology with traditional Kroot tribal crafts. For a battlefield example, the iconic Kroot rifle is a breach-loading longarm that also functions as a double-ended Blade on a Stick, yet it fires very advanced munitions provided to the Kroot by the Tau to give it a deceptively high stopping-power per shot.
  • Shiny-Looking Spaceships - Notable in contrast to the Imperium, which has very old space ships with baroque hulls that make them resemble space cathedrals. The 13th Penal Legion's Lt. Kage once noted to himself how odd he felt the interior of a Tau ship was, finding the cleanliness and quietness of the ship's interior to be rather unnerving in contrast to the well-lived-in state of most Imperial ships. Justified by the fact that most Tau ships are almost brand new by the standards of the setting, and have not had much opportunity to build up a history of wear-and-repair like their counterparts among other species. As well, the Tau's continued technological advancement inverts the series' usual rule of thumb that older technology is better technology, so ships that get too out of date are either refurbished with updated technology or retired and replaced with newer classes of ship.
  • Short-Range Long-Range Weapon -- Concessions to the scale of the tabletop aside, the Tau try to avert this as much as possible, as they fare poorly if they are not given the opportunity to line up a good shot. To facilitate this, the small circular device near the tip of the barrel on most pulse weapons is actually a gyroscope housing that is part of a fire-by-wire system which automatically corrects for shaking hands and gravity to keep the barrel level and on target even at extreme range, so that a firer need not close the distance to ensure an accurate shot.
  • Shout-Out—The Battlesuits, unsurprisingly, contain many nods to the Gundam series in their designs.
  • Sniper Rifle—The Tau Rail Rifle is a misnomer, as railguns do not use rifling, but it does fit a marksmen's niche. Earlier Flawed Prototype models were subject to occasional unexpected capacitor discharge, potentially injuring or killing the wielder, but the Earth Caste eventually ironed out that glitch. For safety reasons, most of those rifles were mounted on special weapon drones instead of carried by infantry. Even though they are safer now than they were before, the practice of mostly using drones to carry and fire them seems to have stuck.
  • Space Amish - Again, obviously not the Tau themselves, but their kroot allies. After consuming ork Mekboyz and gaining their gene-coded technical knowledge, the kroot entered a period of rapid technological development and expansion that almost got them all killed off by an ork fleet. Anghkor Prok, critical of a culture that led them into war before failing to defend them, has led the kroot in looking to the past and living in a more "traditional" society.
  • Space Romans - The Tau culture is a pastiche of various Eastern philosophies and civilizations.
    • While its Eastern influences are the most obvious, an important but often overlooked inspiration for the Tau is that of The British Empire IN SPACE! A small "island" nation which expands outward, claiming territory, absorbing indigenous populations as best they can, laying down infrastructure and spreading their culture where ever they go, and having an influence far in excess of their own modest numbers.
  • Starfish Language - The Vespid are so different from other races in their mentality and the manner in which they communicate that communication is only possible through the use of a special "communion helm" translation device built by the Tau and worn by strain leaders. The Vespid joined the Tau Empire eagerly after communication was established, and there is some speculation that this might have been because the helmets do more than facilitate communication, but nothing has been confirmed...
  • Stealth Pun - Tau call humans "Gue'la". This is awfully similar to the Cantonese insult "gweilo" for Westerners when pronounced just right, as Dawn of War players discovered.
    • The first digit in a Tau battlesuit's designation is its size class, ranging from one for form-fitting Powered Armor to eight for Mini-Mecha. This is in keeping with the Tau's base-eight counting system, as Tau have Four-Fingered Hands. However, Forge World makes a line of questionably-canon battlesuits which are slightly larger than that and are designated with a nine. Which means that when expressed in a base-eight system, those battlesuit's sizes are taken Up to Eleven.
    • It's also worth noting that the way the Tau army functions is a bit of a stealth pun. In order for the army to be anywhere near effective, all the units must work together in perfect harmony. In order to succeed, your units have to work towards the greater good.
  • Take Over The Galaxy - This is the Tau's ultimate goal, fueled by Utopia Justifies the Means. The Greater Good demands that all eventually work together toward purposes larger than themselves, and this drives the Tau expansion and imperialism. They would rather have other galactic powers submit to the Greater Good voluntarily, but those who cannot or will not accept it are obstacles to be removed.[11]
  • Tranquil Fury - Killing an Ethereal typically causes the other Tau to go into shock. Once they get over that, however, they will hunt you down.
  • Unskilled but Strong - Tau battlesuits range in size from Powered Armor to Mini-Mecha and are as strong and tough as you would expect such combat systems to be. However, their operators are very poor at close range fighting, and will often find themselves outmaneuvered and taken down by weaker foes.
  • Unstoppable Rage - Any Tau who manages to withstand the Heroic BSOD of the death of their Ethereal becomes a truely terrifying force of plasma-spewing death.
  • Veganopia - It is stated by at least one Inquisitor that Tau apparently do not eat meat. However, it is stated elsewhere that the Fire Caste still engage in ceremonial game hunts. It appears that the Fire Caste is the only Tau caste which does eat meat, and even then only in a ritual manner. All other Tau dishes depicted in fiction have been of the non-meat variety, though starfish and other sea creatures have appeared.
  • We Have Reserves -- Averted Trope, in that the Tau do not have an enormous recruitable population or the economy-of-scale production abilities of powers like the Imperium, but they do have a universally effecient and high-tech industry. This informs their strategic doctrine, with their forces being almost entirely mechanized and committed to mobile warfare. Since they cannot hold down large areas of terrain, their forces are swiftly re-deployed from one battlezone to the next, moving to counter enemy advances or hit them where they are vulnerable. Further, if a battle is going poorly, Tau forces will do a Tactical Withdrawal rather than lose a signifigant amount of personnel, so that the survivors can be redeployed to hit a more vulnerable flank.[12]
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist - Unique in the setting in that the "well-intentioned" and "extremist" parts are roughly balanced.
  • We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future - Strongly Averted Trope. Tau industry and vessels are all highly automated, and even the lower ranks of the Earth caste, the ostensible laborers of their society, are more like equipment operators, often directing small teams of utility drones who do the actual labor.
  • We Will Wear Armor in the Future—Tau metallurgy is capable of easily mass-producing a "nano-crystalline compound" called Fio'tak which is similar to ceramite used in armor by the Imperium, but is considerably lighter. This is what allows Tau to make tanks light enough to hover, and battlesuits light enough to nimbly Jet Pack around. This also allows them to ensure that even their infantry has fair protection against small arms without slowing them down with excessive weight.

Necrons

That we, in our arrogance, believed that Humankind was first among the races of this galaxy will be exposed as folly of the worst kind upon the awakening of these ancient beings. Any hopes, dreams or promises of salvation are naught but dust in the wind.

In the galaxy's distant past, before humanity, before the Eldar, there was a race known as the Necrontyr that clung to life on a bleak world under a hostile sun. Their bodies wracked with sickness, their lifespans shortened by radiation and plasma storms, they developed advanced technology to try and compensate, but to no avail. The Necrontyr eventually encountered the Old Ones, an enlightened and long-lived species, and in a fit of jealousy the Necrontyr declared war. They soon realized they had no hope of success, until they discovered powerful energy beings lurking within their star. A bargain was struck: the Necrontyr would provide these C'Tan with bodies made of the living metal the Necrontyr used for their spacecraft, and in return, the C'Tan would grant the Necrontyr immortality. Unfortunately, the C'Tan used the same living metal to seal the Necrontyr's souls inside skeletal constructs, turning the race into undying slaves that would help the C'Tan harvest all life from the galaxy. Thus the Necrons were born and the C'Tan and Necrons had their terrible revenge on the Old Ones. The moment victory was theirs however, the Necrons turned on their C'Tan masters in retribution for their soulless imprisonment, shattering the Star Gods into mere fragments of their former power. However with everything that was spent fighting the Old Ones and the C'Tan the Necrons had no choice but to enter a deep sleep until such a time where they could rebuild their forces and the dynasties of the Necrontyr could rule the galaxy one more. For millions of years the Necrons have slumbered, waiting out their old enemies... and now they are waking up into a galaxy teeming with new life forms. They do not like what they see.

The Necrons strike from tomb worlds scattered across the galaxy, each containing complexes of countless inert Necron warriors. Once they awaken, or are disturbed by foolish trespassers, they set about harvesting and cleansing their surroundings of all life, down to the bacteria if necessary. Their grasp of technology surpasses even the Eldar, and the Necrons are able to teleport seemingly at will. Their weapons are hideously effective, using Gauss technology that strips a target's molecules apart one layer at a time, while the living metal that forms their bodies can regenerate from just about any injury.

The Necrons are a frightening force on the tabletop. Their basic Warrior units are comparable to Space Marine Scouts, but have better shooting skills and a 33% chance of standing back up from attacks that ought to kill them. Throw in weaponry capable of blowing holes in a Land Raider and elite assault units, and you have a formidable foe indeed. The only good news for the Necrons' opponents is that their units are relatively slow and cumbersome in close combat, and cost enough points to ensure the Necrons will never outnumber their enemy... or at least, that was the case prior to their latest Codex...

Notable Necron tropes include

  • Ancient Egypt: In terms of comparison to Warhammer Fantasy armies, Necrons are quite similar to the Tomb Kings, taking a lot of their inspiration from Ancient Egypt IN SPACE!
    • Oddly enough, there was already a Tomb Kings expy in 40K, the Thousand Sons Legion of the Chaos Space Marines. So now there have two armies of mindless pseudo-Egyptian automatons betrayed by a trickster god out there. Changes in lore brought by the 5th Edition Codex bring them thematically even more in line with Ancient Egypt: Phaerons lead sector-wide "dynasties", subordinate Overlords and Lords scheme and plot against each other (and their ruler!), and many Tomb Worlds pursue their own agendas. All this amid the general goal of rebuilding the sundered Necrontyr Empire.
  • Affably Evil: The recent White Dwarf Battle Report of the Fifth Edition Codex has retconned the Necrons (the Lords, at any rate) as cultured and genteel beings who are prone to holding civil, if not downright jovial conversations of articulate vocabulary, full of dry wit and sophisticated humor. Trazyn the Infinite is more or less Doctor Doom as a space robot.
  • Anti-Magic: The Necrons have special technology which can dampen the effects of the warp. The Necron Pylons on the Imperial world of Cadia keep the warp storms at bay, even though it's practically in the Eye Of Terror.
  • Armor Is Useless:
    • Gauss weapons have a one in six chance to inflict a glancing hit on anything,.[13]
    • Scarabs, as well as anything else that has the Entropic Strike ability, can literally dissolve a tank into nothing.
  • As Long as There Is Evil: The Warp is anathema to the Necrons, but they realize that if they wipe out all other intelligent life, it won't be a problem any more. More immediately, they have several technologies (such as Necron Pylons) that can dampen its influence in an area.
    • An alternate portrayal is their plan is a grand version of the Necron Pylon technology which will effectively sever the bonds between the two dimensions. This will, however, have the side effect of tearing out the souls of every living creature in existence and leaving their bodies as technically alive gibbering zombies.
  • Arch Enemy: The Eldar (namely craftworld Alaitoc), and the Tyranids.
  • Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Ghost Ark. Look at it!
  • Big Bad: The C'Tan used to be a contender for the top spot. Following the release of the 5th Edition Codex, Szarekh the Silent King or Imotekh the Storm Lord look to be the Necrons' nomination for the Big Bad spot.
  • Came Back Wrong: Each time a Necron "dies" and is repaired/regenerated, its life essence is damaged in the process. The basic Warriors who have regenerated hundreds of times are mindless constructs, but Necron Lords who manage to stave off death retain their personalities... though the ones that have died a few times tend to suffer from delusions of grandeur and other madness.
  • Clarke's Third Law: As machines with program-emulations of their former living selves, Necrons can't access the Warp and so can't use the Psychic Powers of other races. However, they are masters of ultra-advanced science, and so they can mimic through technology what many other races must do through sorcery. Their equivalents of the psyker units, the Cryptek, specialise in various schools of ultra-tech that vary from controlling raw plasma to manipulating time to attacking peoples' minds.
  • Collector of the Strange: Trazyn the Infinite has gained an odd collection over the centuries, including the wraithbone choir of Altansar and the preserved head of Sebastian Thor.
  • Cosmic Horror: The C'Tan, particularly the totally mad Outsider.
  • Creepy Monotone: Necron Lords, on the rare occasions they decide to speak.
  • Characterization Marches On: Their new fluff gives them a lot more depth.
  • Dem Bones: Thematically the Necrons share much in common with the Undead, only, y'know, robots.
  • Deflector Shields: Their vehicles use "Quantum Shielding," which greatly increase the staying power of their vehicles until they take a penetrating hit.
  • Determinator: In one sense, the Necrons are determined to either harvest or purge all life in the galaxy, and will wade through firefights to do so without flinching. In another sense, the standard Necron form is a walking Homage to The Terminator.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The C'Tan shards can be defeated with enough firepower. The latest fluff has the Necrons doing this to the C'tan in the past.
  • Disintegrator Ray: Gauss weaponry, more or less.
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: Hard subversion with the Nightbringer, who actually caused sentient life to fear death, and was the insperation for the Grim Reaper. Fridge Logic applies when one remembers that other Earth societies have different incarnations of Death, but the subversion stands.
  • Emotion Eater: The C'Tan, mainly on gibbering terror.
    • Their big favorite, though, is "Life Force"; the bio-electricity of most living beings. Of course, to a being that used to suck the nuclear reactions from the hearts of stars, one human being (or whatever) isn't even an appetiser...
  • Even Evil Has Standards: The 5th Edition Necron codex establishes that:
    • Even other Necrons are a bit creeped out by the Flayed Ones' behavior, and the nihilistic worldview of the Destroyers.
    • The Deathmarks (Necron Sniper-assassins) are supposed to be deployed only against dishonorable and cowardly opponents, and their use is completely forbidden against other necrons. However, against non-Necrons, most Overlords operate on a policy of "not Honorable until proven otherwise," and as the codex points out, an honorable corpse is still a corpse.
  • Evil Overlord: Necron Overlords.
  • Expy: The entire race is one of a certain Austrian-American Governor's most famous role, right down to his Catch Phrase as their signature racial power.
  • Foreshadowing: A battle report on the December 2010 issue of White Dwarf featured a generic Necron Lord named Imotekh the Storm Lord. And in the 5th Edition Codex next year...
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: Invoked as a problem some players have with them; it's really hard to come up with a cool background story when everyone is just a mindless killbot.
    • The 5th edition rulebook does improve this somewhat. It establishes that Necron Lords retain more of their original organic personality than their servants (though some of them Came Out of Stasis Wrong,) and that each Necron Lord has a specific function in their Tomb Complexes to fulfill (even if that function no longer applies, such as gathering raw materials for a manufacturing center that no longer exists.) This gives Necron players a lot more hooks for theming their army around the quirks of their Lord and carrying out a particular area of responsibility.
  • Giant Spider:
    • Tomb Spyders, floating spider-like robots that perform repairs.
    • Scarabs, tiny robot spiders that swarm over enemies and take them apart at the molecular level.
  • Glass Cannon: Necron tanks are only tough due to their shields; without them they're almost as fragile as Dark Eldar tanks. The Monolith averts this though.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: See Sickly Green Glow. It is customary for Necron players to paint their models' eyes with vibrant green paint.
  • Grim Reaper: The C'Tan known as the Nightbringer is obsessed with causing dread and death. In his heyday, he traumatized intelligent life so badly that conceptions of death as a scythe-wielding reaper are the result of racial memory,[14] along with all things' fear of death...except the Orks.
  • Healing Factor: The rule that lets Necrons get back up from mortal blows is appropriately enough called "We'll Be Back."
  • Higher-Tech Species: With things such as their inertialess drives, flayer weapons, and potentially planet-sized stasis-tombs, they are clear examples.
  • Homage: It's clear someone watched The Terminator before coming up with the Necrons, but a particular unit inverts one of the movie's scenes. Instead of a metal form bursting out of flesh, Necrons known as Flayed Ones actually harvest enemy units' skin and drape the bloody strips of flesh on their metal bodies, as an extra intimidation factor.
  • Implacable Man: Necrons narrowly beat out Space Marines, Orks, and Imperial Guard commanders as 40K's embodiment of this trope.
  • Intangible Man: Wraiths are special Necron units resembling flying torsos with extended, serpentine spinal columns, that are able to "phase out" from the physical world in order to avoid incoming fire or glide through terrain.
  • It Got Worse: The Necrons with tabletop rules are garrisons and raiders for the most part. The Fifth Edition Space Marine and Grey Knights codexes mention battles with Necron weapons originally mistaken for planets which were only defeated with the loss of entire Chapters. According to the new Necron codex, what has awakened so far is just a taste of their power; depending on how many survived there may be more Necron tomb worlds than worlds in the Imperium.
  • Large Ham: Some of the Necron Lords.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Necron fast attack units, and especially their fleets. Considering the amount of things that can deep strike, teleportation shenanigans and the new superfast jets thay have, Necrons might just be the fastest slow faction in 40K.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: Nemesor Zahndrek is one of the finest strategists and brilliant military minds the Necrons have in existance. Unfortunately, his mind was damaged by the long sleep and he still thinks he's flesh and blood and fighting the wars of ages past. He still feels compelled by long discarded articles of war to take prisoners, so it falls to his adjutant and bodyguard Obyron to ensure that the prisoners were "killed while trying to escape."
  • Master Swordsman: Obyron.
  • The Monolith: A weaponized variant that helps teleport in more Necrons.
  • Nanomachines
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: As of Fifth edition, Necron destroyers reacted... badly to being forced into metal shells.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: It's somewhat unclear whether or not the Necrons' goal is to harvest life in the galaxy, or just kill everything. The Fifth Edition codex pretty much retconned out the harvesting part. Except for Trazyn the Infinite, and introduced variations so that it depends on the Tomb World. Most would rather find a way to get their souls back, the easiest being find a lifeform and transfer their minds to it. Except for Destroyers, who hate everything, and want to kill anything!
  • Order Versus Chaos: Their first codex portrayed Necrons as essentially the "anti-Chaos" faction; slaves to gods that were born of the Materium, devoid of any emotions, disciplined and methodical as only immortal robots could be, feeding on Life Force (bio-energy) instead of souls, and homogenous to the point that there was no such thing as individuality. The Necrons were also, as is standard for this trope, portrayed as the bitterest enemies of Chaos (partly because warp energy was the only power that could actually destroy a C'tan), even plotting to seal away the two dimensions altogether (which would have ripped the souls out of all life everywhere in the universe).
    • This theme was abandoned with the second codex for 5th edition 40K, when they confronted the fact that these very traits that emphasized them as the Order to oppose Chaos made them... well, bland and extremely difficult to characterise meaningfully.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guys: Follow a very strict code of honor...too bad the question of which non-necrons it applies to is usually left to the Overlord in charge.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The personalities of the two currently playable C'Tan. The Deciever loves to screw with other beings in several different ways; the Nightbringer just wants to kill lots and lots of people. The Deceiver has actually screwed the Nightbringer over several times, first convincing it to eat other C'tan so that it would have less competition, and then telling the Old Ones where its tomb world was at the end of the War in Heaven.
  • Robot War: Usually brutally short ones, too.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Necron tomb worlds. The Adeptus Mechanicus has a notoriously poor record with uncovering them, becoming enamored of all the shiny technology, waking the Necrons up, and dying horribly.
    • Of particular note is the C'Tan known as the Void Dragon, a master of machinery and technology. It is heavily implied that the "Machine God" the Adeptus Mechanicus has been worshiping for millennia is actually the Void Dragon, entombed deep within the labyrinths of Mars. Sort of. The Emperor massively Out-Gambitted him and more or less ensured the actual Cult Of The Dragon will always be a tiny minority.
    • The least-known C'Tan, the Outsider, is currently imprisoned within a Dyson Sphere. The experience, combined with the fact that the other C'Tan it consumed are still awake inside of it, has driven it completely insane.
    • In the new Codex the awakened Necrons are trying to reawaken the rest of the Tomb Worlds. Although many have been lost to attack or celestial phenomena, there are still believed to be millions lying dormant.
  • Sickly Green Glow: Gauss-based technology and whatever "embalming" techniques went into making the Necrons are described as emitting a "corpse-light."
  • Sinister Scythe: The Nightbringer has one. Also, many elite Necron units are armed with Warscythes, one of the most powerful close combat weapons in the game.
  • Shock and Awe: As the page sates, the aptly named "Tesla" weapons.
  • Skele-Bot 9000: The Necons are Robotic Skeletons.
  • The Slow Walk: The Necrons have been waiting millions of years. They don't need to rush.
  • Story and Gameplay Segregation: Prior to the 5th Edition Codex, Necron armies reduced to 25% or less of their original numbers 'phase out', ensuring an automatic loss for Necron players. With the new book this is no longer the case, but in the background this still happens to heavily-damaged Necrons.
  • Stripped to the Bone: Gauss weapons are very, very nasty.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The C'Tan.
  • This Is Your Brain on Evil: One of the C'tan's curses has manifest in the form of virus, which causes Necrons to go insane and become Flayed Ones.
  • Time Abyss: The Necrons were active about 60 million years ago.
  • The Trickster: The C'Tan known as the Deceiver. Hobbies include playing Xanatos Speed Chess and competing with the Eldar and Tzeentch for the title of "most manipulative bastard in 40K."
    • A few things being attributed to more than one in the fluff doesn't help. For instance, the Laughing God is credited with the Outsider's cannibalism (and resulting madness), while the Deceiver pulled the exact same trick on the Nightbringer.
  • Touch of Death: Nothing a C'Tan knocks down is getting back up again.
  • Unwilling Roboticisation: Not all of the Necrontyr were on board with the whole "give up your body" thing. They weren't given a choice.
  • Vestigial Empire: And they aren't happy about it. At all.
  • Villain Exit Stage Left: Prior to the 5th Edition Codex, this was a unique feature and Achilles' Heel of the Necrons. When their original numbers are reduced to 25%, the rest of the army will vanish, including corpses.
  • Was Once a Man: Played with. The novel Fall of Damnos depicts the Flayed Ones' [15] as an obsessive drive to reclaim the sensation of having a flesh-and-blood body.


Tyranids

We must scour them from the stars before they do the same to us.

An extragalactic swarm of aliens that doesn't just overrun worlds, but consumes everything on them right down to the bedrock, including the oceans and air. Tyranids are more of a virus than a species, as they instinctively scan the DNA of what they eat and apply useful evolutionary upgrades to their swarms, ensuring that they only grow more deadly with each victory. Everything they use, from ranged weapons to spaceships, are symbiotic organisms, to the extent that it can be hard to tell where a Tyranid "gun" ends and the creature carrying it begins.

Though the individual creatures in the Hive Fleets are little more than beasts, Tyranids are controlled via synapse creatures by the race's Hive Mind, which is extremely intelligent. While the classic Tyranid strategy is to overwhelm their foes with weight of numbers, the swarms have also been seen to ambush armored columns in narrow passages that turned tanks into helpless sitting targets, employ burrowing organisms to launch surprise attacks behind enemy lines, or use winged creatures to sow discord and confusion. Of particular note are the specialized Tyranids known as Genestealers, who implant their DNA in victims that turns their children into hybrid creatures, who will eventually form a cult on their homeworld that undermine's the planet's defenses while psychically summoning the swarm. Three Hive Fleets have been encountered thus far: Hive Fleet Behemoth nearly overran the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge and killed their entire 1st Company, Hive Fleet Kraken all but wiped out the Eldar of craftworld Iyanden, and Hive Fleet Leviathan is currently rampaging through an Ork empire... and these are likely just the vanguard of more Tyranid swarms still en route to the galaxy. The optimistic take on the Tyranids is that they are moving on our galaxy after cleansing one or more other galaxies of life. The pessimistic take is that they are running from something worse.

The tabletop Tyranid army is a mix of swarms of highly-expendable critters able to swamp even Imperial Guard or Ork forces, backed-up by lumbering monstrous creatures capable of tossing tanks around with their tusks or blowing up heads with psychic powers. They also contain units of specialist creatures able to infiltrate or move quickly in order to keep the enemy occupied in close combat while the rest of the army closes in, and the biomorph system allows units to be upgraded to deal with specific targets rather effectively. The Tyranids' two main weaknesses are comparatively few ranged units, as well as the reliance on a few synapse creatures to keep the swarm together. The latter is offset by the fact that the presense of said creatures makes the rest of the army fearless, and the former rarely comes into play as the standard Tyranid strategy is to roll over the enemy like a tsunami.

Notable Tyranid tropes include

  • Alien Kudzu - As a Tyranid invasion of a world ramps up, self-replicating organisms are landed on a planet to begin initial biomass consumption, and to pump out both smaller scale creatures for scouting and undermining defenses, and to help render the rest of the world's biomass into a more easily edible form.
  • Apocalypse How - Every planet they conquer gets a Class 6, and unless some way is found to break the Hive Mind, the entire Milky Way will be getting a Class X-3.
  • Art Evolution - Compared the Tyranid models from 2nd Edition with the ones from later editions. Earlier Tyranids had more biological variety too, until their redesign gave the race a more unified look, such as adding boney ridged creasts on almost every head.
  • Big Bad - That Hive Mind connection as a whole is the one causing all these problems with the Tyranids, who collectively comprise the Hive Mind as a whole. Major representatives are Synapse creatures like Hive Tyrants, but those are simply cells in the overall brain of the Hive Mind in general. The Imperium hopes to find something that directly controls the overall Hive Mind, so they can kill it and stop the Tyranids for good.
  • Blade Below the Shoulder - Type 3 for some Tyranid melee units, which have their arms below the elbow replaced with long scythe-like talons, tapering down to a monomolecular edge like most of the blades in this setting. Note that older editions also had some units in which a bone-like blade was simply gripped in hand in the manner of a sword (and the Swarmlord special character still does this) but Art Evolution has merged most of these weapons into their wielder, putting them into this trope.
  • Brain Food - Any Tyranid creature with lamprey-like feeder tendrils in place of a mouth will be likely to eat brains. Lictors in particular are known for doing this, as it allows them to sift though a consumed organism's memories for information. This is part of a Lictor's role as a vanguard organism, helping the Hive Fleet gain intelligence on what worlds would be good targets for consumption and what kind of defenses to expect.
  • Breath Weapon - Some critters can make bio-plasma attacks, vomiting up a blast of white-hot energy accompanied by a piercing screech.
  • Bug War - If your Tyranid problem has gotten beyond the Genestealer Cult stage, you're pretty much screwed.
  • Bullet Seed - A near-literal case with many of the more rapid-firing Living Weapons wielded by some Tyranid organisms. Except that the "seeds" are things like tiny beetles which bore into flesh, or little worms which secrete acid and melt themselves into a target.
  • Chest Blaster - An option for some offensive biomorphs. Tyranid models will occasionally mount flesh-hooks or devourers underneath some folds on their underside between their forelimbs.
  • Combat Tentacles - Ranging from lash whips and flesh hooks on the battlefield creatures to tentacles on spaceships for boarding actions.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything? - Tyranid ranged weapons feature a lot of sphincters and muscle spasms ejecting spurts of hot liquids.
  • Everything's Better with Dinosaurs - The big ones are often described as dinosaurs.
  • Evil Evolves - Characteristic of the Tyranids is that they evolve and adapt to overcome stubborn resistance. Some of these adaptations are taken from consuming worlds, where the Norn Queens in the fleet sift through the collected genetic data looking for useful characteristics to incorporate into future generations. Others are adaptations that occur in the field, allowing the swarm to overcome specific difficulties by targeted mutation. Such evolution, though, inevitably tends to result in some Necessary Drawback weakening them in one regard while it strengthens them in another. As the smaller creatures have a much shorter lifecycle and gestation time, a hive fleet that is heavily adapting will tend to be composed of a greater proportion of smaller units, leaving a shortage of synapse creatures. This can become a potential weak link in their force structure, which is why not all hive fleets take that approach.
  • Expy - Though by and large the entire race is one of the Arachnids from Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, many have argued that the Genestealers are one of the Xenomorph designed by H. R. Giger.
  • Extreme Omnivore - The Hive Fleets leave nothing but lifeless, airless rocks in their wake.
  • Face Full of Alien Wingwong - Genestealers reproduce via the "Genestealer's Kiss", an injection of their genetic material into a target via a long, diamond-hard "tongue." Depending on which bit of fluff you read, this is either via a literal, face-biting parody of a kiss, or a slightly less Squicky injection into the torso, under the ribcage. The Ciaphas Cain novels use the latter method.
  • Fragile Speedster - Hormagaunts are a Tyranid species meant to swamp the enemy in close combat, and to accomplish that they are bred to be very, very fast and agile. However, they are also quite frail, which is why the Tyranids send them in great numbers at once...
  • Healing Factor - Rapid regeneration was introduced by the unique Carnifex named "Old One Eye," and is now a standard upgrade for most Tyranid organisms.
  • Hive Mind - Chief Librarian Tigurius of the Ultramarines has made psychic contact with it, and could only describe "an immortal hunger."
    • And he's the lucky one, as every other psyker who tried to make contact either went insane or died. It's theorized you'd need a human psyker on the same level as the Emperor.
  • Hive Queen - Synapse creatures, though only the rarely seen Norn Queens are female. Probably.
  • Hollywood Tactics - Averted.
  • Horde of Alien Locusts - After the invasion, they even "recycle" their own soldiers, living and dead.
  • Hypnotic Eyes - A characteristic of genestealers is an ability to pacify potential prey by maintaining eye contact and moving slowly, though how much use this gets is heavily Dependent On The Writer.
  • It's Raining Tyranids
    • Tyranids typically arrive on a planet's surface via "mycetic spores" dropped from space, especially the larger creatures which take more time to mature. Smaller one's are typically born "in the field" via the consumption of the local environment.
    • Tyranid Gargoyles are variations on the gaunt genus with wings to carry them aloft. Their role is to swoop down on enemies from above and keep them occupied while larger creature's move into position. When Gargoyles have to move long distances, they will accompany a larger, dragon-like, Tyranid flier called a Harridan, clinging to its underside to save on their own energy.
  • The Juggernaut - This is the function of the Tyranid Carnifex unit. It acts as a line breaker, plodding forward implacably as attacks waste themselves against its exceptionally dense carapace, cutting down or bowling over anything that stands in its path like a living battering-ram.
  • Large and In Charge - Larger Tyranid organisms are more likely to be the synapse creatures directing the swarm, leading to the Imperium's official policy on combating them: shoot the big ones.
  • Living Ship - The Hive Fleets, complete with disturbingly fleshy interiors.
  • Living Weapon:
    • The Tyranid units themselves are these, as they are explicitly bred as living combat tools.
    • To a more specific degree, the weapons used by smaller Tyranid units symbiotically bond with their wielders into a single organism.
  • Master Swordsman: Hive Tyrants, of swords made out of razor-sharp-bone with a psychic brain at its base yes, but still swordsmen nevertheless. The Swarmlord cranks this up to absolutely ludicrous degrees, weilding FOUR such swords at the same-time, and so blindingly fast with them that a virtually impenetrable wall-of-blades is what your sword will clash into if you try to fight it hand-to-claw.
  • Mook Maker - Tyranid hive ships, for starters, making every smaller creature and even other hive ships themselves. Below that, Tyranids seed invaded worlds with brood nests, which consume the local resources brought to them and churn out smaller creatures on-site, allowing them to change their force composition in the field. And taking this one step further, some Tyranid creatures themselves are walking (or crawling or slithering) Mook Makers themselves, such as the Tervigon, which spawns Termagaunts from various womb-pustules on its belly while on the battlefield.
  • More Teeth Than the Osmond Family - Though some critters mix things up with feeder tendrils.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous - All the Tyranids are evolutions from a basic six-limbed shape, and most use all of them, except for some like the serpentine Raveners and the winged Gargoyle who have a pair of vestigial legs.
  • My Brain Is Big - Zoanthropes have always had huge heads, the better to channel psychic power. Models from earlier editions had torsos, arms, and legs, and would stand and walk on the ground. Art Evolution has pushed later models into being little besides a brain, with a long, snake-like body to house its brainstem. It now uses its psychic power to levitate over the battlefield, rather than walk.
  • Organic Technology - It's interesting looking back over the model range to see how what once were distinct weapons became fused to their wielders.
  • Planet Eater - They consume entire biospheres, leaving only an airless, infertile sphere of bedrock behind.
  • Power Floats - Zoanthropes do not even have legs, they just hover along via psychic levitation.
  • Psychic Static - One of the most dangerous aspects of the Tyranids is how the Hive Mind casts a "shadow in the Warp" ahead of it, which is strong enough to overwhelm any psykers on a planet targeted by the Hive Fleets. This is very bad news, since psykers are required for astropathic communication and navigation, which means when the 'nids are on their way, there's no chance of sending a call for help, and no way for it to arrive.
  • Puppeteer Parasite - The little-known ripper genus variant the Cortex Leech. It's a small, fast-moving creature which leaps up to a victim's face, then extends flexible antenna into the victim's mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. These feelers burrow into the brain, and turn the victim into a drooling puppet of the Hive Mind.
  • Reincarnation - As of 5th edition, Hive Tyrants are unique in that they have distinct consciousnesses and personalities, which help them be more effective "generals." As part of the Hive Mind they can never be killed, meaning that if you destroy a Hive Tyrant in one battle, the next time you meet he'll remember your tricks, and he'll be pissed. The new special character The Swarmlord is believed to have involved in every major Tyranid conquest in their history in this way.
    • The Swarmlord is a special character when compared to the other Hive Tyrants in the fact it is uniquely separate from the Hive Mind. Think of it as a very dangerous second opinion brought in only when the Hive Mind's usual tactics does not work on the foe it is currently fighting.
  • Sand Worm: The Tyranids have something close, in the form of the Mawloc, a worm-like Tyranid with six powerful burrowing limbs alongside a long, chitin-plated serpentine body ending in a wicked earwig-like tail. Much like the classic trope inspiration, they are almost entirely blind and rely on sensation of vibration through the ground. Even a person standing stock still can be detected by a Mawloc, if their terrified heart is beating loud enough...
  • Spikes of Villainy / The Spiny - Tyranid creatures are almost universally covered in chitinous spikes and sharp edges. As one Games Workshop player once said in a battle report:

You can talk all you want about strategy and unit choice, but when it comes down to it, all Tyranid tactics end up as "spiky death".

  • Tentacle Rope - Tyranid flesh-hooks are a variation of these, except instead of lashing around a foe, they dig a boney meat-hook into them. They also function as a Grappling Hook Launcher for scaling obstructions.
  • 2-D Space - Averted with Hive Fleet Leviathan. The Imperium was perplexed by Tyranid attacks taking place far behind the "front line" at the galactic "east," until they realized that the Hive Fleet had flanked the galaxy and was attacking "upward" from "underneath" it.
  • Tunnel King - The Tyranid Ravenor is a slithering creature capable of tunneling under the surface to bypass static defenses and literally undermine entrenched positions. For high value and seriously hardened targets, groups of Ravenors will often be lead by a Trygon, their far-larger bio-titan cousin.
  • Tyranoform - The effect Tyranids have on planets they invade, pre-consumption, involves some rather unpleasant alterations to the existing biosphere. This serves to "tenderize" the planet, making the biomass easier to process and consume when the hive fleet moves in after the defenses have been neutralized.
  • We Have Reserves - ... that outnumber the stars.
  • Zerg Rush


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  1. ↑ "Upstarts"
  2. ↑ the standard term
  3. ↑ humans who have embraced the Greater Good
  4. ↑ a brand of gaming miniature, not the AdMech forge worlds
  5. ↑ (When he dismissed the human, he added that the wine they both drank was indigestible to humans and produced excruciating stomach cramps in them.
  6. ↑ that's just shy of 20' for the metrically-impaired folks out there
  7. ↑ Which of their two gods is Gork and which is Mork is a common example.
  8. ↑ It can be speculated that the dull green skin commonly shown might be due to the Kroot homeworld of Pech being subject to an Ork invasion centuries ago and the current population having to fight off (and feed off) those Ork's feral descendants, adopting their skin color in the process.
  9. ↑ (A Canon Immigrant from Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior)
  10. ↑ For example, the Tau word "Mont'ka" is given the translation "Killing blow" and refers to the strategy of concentrating force on a target's most critical places. Likewise, the Tau word "Mont'au" is given the translation "The Terror" and refers to the period before the Ethereals brought the Tau'va, when Tau would slay one another. The Tau word "Mont'yr" is translated as "Blooded", refering to one who has seen battle. The particle "Mont" is part of each of these words, and from that we can infer that it is a core part of Tau words with connotations of death and fear.
  11. ↑ It is worth contrasting this with the Imperium, who also hold a manifest destiny of dominating the stars. But unlike the Tau, their leadership generally understands that as laudable an ideal of purging other powers from the galaxy is, it is impractical and unachievable, and generally content themselves with being a far-reaching galactic superpower. The Tau's ideal of uniting the galaxy when they are such a relatively small empire, have no faster-than-light communications other than messenger ships, slow FTL travel that limits even those, and are unified by a philosophy which depends on the adherance of each member and only grows more diverse and potentially conflicted as they expand, is all played to underscore their naïvity.
  12. ↑ Incidentally, while this means that the average Fire Warrior is less likely to be committed to a near-suicidal action than the average Imperial Guardsman, they will almost certainly see more total deployments with greater frequency, meaning their odds of surviving an entire campaign are not necessarily much better.
  13. ↑ although the 5th Edition ruleset makes this ability considerably less deadly, though still useful, by allowing them to "stunlock" vehicles until heavier weapons can be brought to bear
  14. ↑ (which leads to a fair bit of Fridge Logic, given that not all human cultures have a concept of a reaper, but there you go)
  15. ↑ namely, flaying their victims and wearing their skins
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