Rise of the Tau
is a Warhammer 40,000 fanfic. Centuries into the future of the 40k setting Daelo Codian, an Ultramarines Chaplain, awakens from stasis only to find the Tau have conquered most of the galaxy and that the Imperium has been pushed back into the solar system. As Codian travels towards Terra to aid in its defense he discovers even darker secrets about the history of every race in the galaxy.
Rise of the Tau is notable for providing an answer for nearly every 40k conspiracy theory and for its breathtaking scale of battles.
A redditor made a PDF of the full story, which can be found here
Rise of the Tau provides examples of:
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: This happens to the Emperor once he is freed from the Golden Throne.
- Broken Ace: The Eldar created the Tau to be the "perfect" race. Too bad the C'tan had predicted the Eldar would do this all along, and quickly manipulated the Tau from their semi-benevolent canon selves into monsters that all other 40k factions sans the 'Nids and 'Crons united against.
- Came Back Wrong: The Tau manage to revive Guilliman as their puppet. It turns out that its actually Omegon, and his memories were sealed by Alpharius. The real Guilliman later appears and defeats his brother who has his memories restored and the Tau indoctrination removed by Magnus.
- Death Equals Redemption: For Luther. For Horus too; his wraith commands the Legion of the Damned.
- Enemy Mine: The Forces of Chaos, the Orks, the Eldar, the Imperium, Farsight's Tau rebels and more fight as one in the final battle against the Tau Empire. In the end, all the gods in the Warp work together to destroy the Deceiver.
- Fate Worse than Death: The Deceiver is torn apart by Ynnead, the Emperor, the Gods of Chaos, and just about every deity that exists in the Warp.
- Fratricide: Slaanesh; she was meant to shift the balance between the C'tan and the Old Ones, but destroyed her kin and joined the Chaos Powers instead. Ynnead and the ascended Emperor would later replace her.
- Good All Along: Magnus kept a part of his self untouched by Chaos so when the Emperor ascended he was able to reverse Magnus' daemonic ascension and allow him to reunite the Primarchs for the battle against the Tau and the C'tan. To an extent, the Orks as well. Gork and Mork (both of whom are Old Ones) later reveal that the Orks were deliberately made into barbarians after the War in Heaven to ensure their survival.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Deceiver; his attempt to claim the Golden Throne only traps him to be torn apart by the gods.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Codian later finds himself in the Ethereals' residential area. He proceeds to kill them all to avenge all that the Tau had killed.
- Sibling Rivalry: The true reason the Eldar look down on the humans is because they're the Eldar's younger sister species.
- Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The numbers of the Tau warmachine. To produce such amounts of material, the Tau would need a merchant fleet several times larger than their actual fleets.
