Come check out the latest masterpiece from Jstove. The Tau knocked on Guilliman’s door to try to convert him. That was a mistake!
Shas’o Rando– “Hello, anyone home?”
Roboute Guilliman- “Come back in about two hundred years, I’m busy rebuilding the empire my idiot stepsons have spent the last ten thousand years screwing up while I was taking a power nap.”
Shas’o Rando- “Oh, well I apologize for the inconvenience, but that’s kind of what we’re here about. Empire building. We were wondering if you’d like to join us, or you know, if you’re not interested, we’re going to annex you by force. We’d really rather not, but hey, it’s my job.”
Robby G- “Do you know who the hell I am? I’m a ten thousand year old genetic freak test tube baby with a double major in statecraft and kicking your ass.”
Shas’o Rando- “You have no idea how often I get that. Humans are obsessed with age. Everything humans do is a millennia old, or ten thousand years old, or this thing on that planet is a giant skull building from the skull age before time when humans made everything out of skulls. Honestly man, I’ve heard it all before.”
Robby G- “Who the hell are you?”
Shas’o Rando- “I’m a random Tau commander.”
Robby G- “Wait, I’ve heard about you. Are you that crappy little isolated alien race on the ass end of the eastern fringe that has no concept of warp travel and doesn’t believe demons exist despite the fact that Chaos’ massive puckered b-hole literally just ate Cadia?”
Shas’o Rando– “Where’s Cadia, and how do you decide where Galactic East is? That sounds kind of stupid. Space is three dimensional, you can’t just lay the galaxy flat on a map.”
Robby G- “Holy crap it is you. Okay wait, I apologize about earlier. I really need a breakfast burrito man, I haven’t eaten since I got up. I have some questions for you.”
Shas’o Rando- “Well if you’d like to join the Greater Good, we’ve got some pamphlets and-”
Robby G- “No, forget the sales pitch. How is it that a bunch of communist wannabe space anime nerds with no faster than light space travel capability have managed to stave off an entire chapter of Space Marines that COMPLETELY IGNORED the Codex Astartes and can throw as many marines at you as they want? I mean seriously, enlighten me, how are they screwing up? Did Dorn suddenly become a huge wuss after I left and I didn’t get the memo?”
Shas’o Rando- “Well I imagine it has a lot to do with our superior technology.”
Robby G- “Like what?”
Shas’o Rando- “Well for starters, all of our guns work. They don’t explode or malfunction, and the ones that are experimental are actually, you know, experimental. We do science.”
Robby G- “Yea sure, okay. Every tool alien race thinks they have superior technology, and then we beat their skulls in with rocks. What else you got?”
Shas’o Rando- “Well we have computers that actually work. Sophisticated artificial intelligence, combat drones even. None of our infrastructure needs, logic work, or targeting data is provided by vivisected lobotomy patients with guns welded to them, or brains in jars.”
Robby G- “That’s just stupid. Who let you into this setting? It’s a dystopian future, everyone’s supposed to be dying and everything is supposed to be powered by dead mummy people stuck in robot sarcophagi. Are you too cool to shove quadriplegic veterans into Robocop bodies to make immortal war machines or something?”
Shas’o Rando- “Immortal war machines? Tau live to be like, 34.”
Robby G- “Okay fine. What else have you got?”
Shas’o Rando- “Well, we use teamwork and synergy. Battlefield intelligence gathering. We have scouts with laser target designators that mark targets for our support assets so we can make precise surgical strikes.”
Robby G- “That’s cheating. You’re supposed to just punch stuff with giant freakin robot hands”
Shas’o Rando- “Aren’t you supposed to be one of the greatest strategic minds of your species?”
Robby G- “Chainfist wins every argument. I have never seen a chainfist lose an argument in ten thousand years.”
Shas’o Rando- “Well okay, but you know, maybe that kind of logic is why my backwoods anime commie alien species still exists while your species is locked into an ideological death spiral and a multi-front war against demons and stuff.”
Robby G- “Does the rest of the galaxy know you’re a tool? Yvraine, get in here.”
Shas’o Rando– “I’m not a tool. I’m just a young family man in a giant robot trying to make a hostile galaxy a safer place by shooting bad guys with a plasma gun that doesn’t melt.”
Robby G- “Yea, a robot you’re not even permanently plugged into. What a tool. Even the Eldar have dead people robots. Yvraine, great. You’re here. Listen I know I just woke up and this is all somehow part of the Eldar master plan or some crap, but quick question- Are these Tau guys tools?”
Yvraine- “Even as the moon waxes and wanes, and the aspect of the Aeldari is but a sliver in the sky about to blink out, and the aspect of the mon’keigh sits at it’s zenith awaiting it’s fall, the aspect of the people of the stinky fish faces rises, and yet they are still the scaley, oily, smell of the unwashed sweaty b-hole.”
Shas’o Rando- “What the hell does that even mean?”
Robby G- “That’s just how the Eldar talk. It means you’re a tool. Get the hell out.”
Yvraine- “The pot calls the kettle black, and you know, something else esoteric and pointless that sounds really fancy.”
Robby G- “Yea I get it, the circle is now complete and stuff, it used to be humanity as the new kids on the block and the Eldar were the old men. You know you don’t have to talk in riddles just because you think I won’t get it, I’m a primarch, not an idiot.”
Yvraine- “Okay I admit it. You’re actually right though, the Tau really are just a race of manga tools.”
Robby G- “See how easy that was? Common ground at last. Now maybe we can work together to fight Chaos.”
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About the Author: Jack Stover
