Webcomic / EATATAU!!!

Yes, that is a Tauminator.

EATATAU!!! is a comedic and brutally grimdark webcomic by Darius "True_Darius" Craine and Legault that is most certainly not taking place inside the world of Warhammer 40,000. Many names are closely related yet different from a certain tabletop game for copyright reasons, but this rarely detracts from the enjoyment of the story, comedy or action. It is absolutely unsuitable for minors and a few pages are decidedly NSFW.

The story follows four protagonists: an Ax-Crazy Kroott named Skraat, two deeply depraved Ttau, Sha'shiva and Kor'la, and their superhuman Sergeant Rock Zael Johnson as they take on a galaxy where everything is trying to kill everything else.

As the story begins, Sha'shiva, Kor'la, and Skraat are training at a Ttau Military Academy under Johnson when two Eldar crash-land on the grounds after escaping an attacking Nyd swarm headed for their spacecraft world. The Eldar convince the Ttau to help them warn their home, and the group set out on a quest. Things get progressively darker from there.

The comic began its run September 2009 and concluded April 2019. Following its conclusion, Craine began a new totally-not-40k-based comic, In Faust, set in the Imperium Nihulus after the opening of the Great Rift in 9th ed.

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EATATAU!!! provides examples of:

• Ambiguous Gender: Darius's avatar in out-of-universe pages is a guy in one strip and a girl the next with no comment whatsoever.
• An Arm and a Leg: Kor'la gets half his body blown off while fighting the avatar of She-who-thirsts. Sha'shiva is able to stabilize him with Ttau medical gear.
• Ancestral Weapon: Midway through the battle for the Craftworld, Johnson finds a sword that belonged to Lion El'johnson himself! However, he acknowledges that it was made for a primarch, not a mere Space Marine, and contents himself with a plasma pistol instead.
• And the Adventure Continues: The Ttau end on beginning to assimilate a crapsack feral world, whereas Johnson ends on him starting to return the Sword of the Lion to his Chapter.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: The headmaster throws a party, complete with noisemakers and champagne, when Kor's group is sent on what looks like a suicide mission.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Johnson finds an Energy Blade khatar that is able to puncture the Keeper of Secret's Daemon Aura.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Seargant Johnson is given a Torso with a View by a Darklance in chapter 4. He's rebuilt by the Archon's Fleshmaster (read: Haemonculus) into a half-Druchii gladiator.
  • A battle between Eldar and Necrons is shown in a Flash Back. The Eldar lose morale due to the Necrons' ressurection special rule making fighting them pointless-the damn things shrug off getting nuked.
• BFG:
  • Johnson takes down a carnifex with something that looks like the pulse rifle equivalent of a heavy bolter (which doesn't actually have a tabletop equivalent).
  • A Druchii Scourge wields a Darklance, a dark energy beam cannon as big as he is.
  • The Crisis Suit is equipped with a rail rifle, and swaps for a pair of shiruken cannons when Sha'shiva realizes they need to conserve ammo.
• Big Bad: The Archon.
• Bittersweet Ending: The protagonists get to go home, but Kor'la was grievously injured and is on life support. The Nyds were destroyed at the Craftworld, but most of the inhabitants were either eaten or became a daemonhost.
• The Big Guy: Both Skraat and Sergeant Johnson are this.
• Black Comedy: All over the place. The very first page shows a Ttau instructor asking a Kroott to 'attack' him... with predictable results.
• Black Comedy Rape: Sha'shiva, The Great Devourer that walks among us! (She has a tendency to physically attack guys she finds hot, starting with Skraat.)
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: It happens every now and then that the cast speaks directly to the reader or converses with the narrator.
• Catching the Speedster: In the Druchii gladiatorial arena, Sergeant Johnson faced off against a Druchii who injured him fifteen times before he was able to hit her once. He only NEEDED to hit her once.
• Cerebus Syndrome: After the first chapter, the comedy starts to take a backseat to 40k's signature brand of Grimdark. The comedy does come back a little after the Gladiator Games arc, with Sha'shiva finally wanting to see Kor's "greater wood" and Selene accidentally getting into a compromising position with Johnson.
• Chainmail Bikini:
  • Standard Durchii Wych armor.
  • First Spouse Selene's outfit is a thong bikini, big, badass boots, and a fannypack. She upgrades this with hormigaunt skull bracers and helmet later.
• Chekhov's Gun: A literal one. Also referenced by name in the comments.
• Children Are Innocent: Johnson adopts the baby Druchii the Archon tried to feed to a pack of wolves. The little guy genuinely seems to love Johnson back, making sure to keep Johnson's Thunder Hammer (almost as big as he is) after the Ttauminator gets blown up so his ersatz father isn't unarmed.
• Cigar Chomper: Johnson is often depicted smoking a cigar in the early strips, in a Mythology Gag to some of 40k's Early-Installment Weirdness (Space Marines were sometimes depicted with cigars sticking out of their facemasks). He can probably be assumed to have run out right around the time he dies, though.
• Comically Missing the Point: Scraat mentions offhandedly that the Eldar have "hot chocolate cream and jam sandwiches" in their survival rations. Kor'la is more concerned with getting his hands on one than helping the survivors.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: If Sha'shiva were a male, she'd be in jail several times over. Judjing by the screaming durung the act and the babbling about Slaanesh after, it's exactly as traumatic as you'd think.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Selene, much to Sha'shiva's confusion.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Sha'shiva. So far she did it with or had interest in: A Kroot, a Eldar, a Human, a Durchii beast and a female Durchii. Until Kor'la enters badass territory she had actually no interest in other T'tau.
• Fastball Special: Scraat beans a Keeper of Secrets (a slaaneshi Greater Daemon that looks like a 50 foot tall hooker) with a Daemonette to make it leave Sha'shiva alone.
• The Final Temptation: Upon finding the Sword of the Lion, Lucypher (the old man) tells Johnson that he could take up the sword and lead such a mighty crusade that he'd become a Lord of Terra. Johnson acknowledges that the sword was meant for a primarch, and he has no right to wield it. Lucypher reveals that this was a Secret Test of Character and leads him to the armor and weapons Lucypher wielded in life.
• From a Single Cell: Lillith the Wych can regrow her body "as long as even the smallest fragment remains." Sha'shiva gets around this by vapourizing her entirely.
• Full-Frontal Assault:
  • Due to various cases of Clothing Damage, among other things, Johnson has a tendency to kick a lot of ass while butt-ass-nekkid.
  • In the epilogue arc, the party are attacked in their hotel room. Sha'shiva didn't wear a shirt to bed and is full-frontal topless when she shoots back.
• Genki Girl: The Archon's ex, Selene, is an adorably hyper Blood Knight who joins the group for a lark. In stark contrast to her dourly sadistic fellows. It helps that she's basically a Cheerful Child by Drukharii reckoning, not even having reached her one thousandth summer.
• Gladiator Games: The Dark Eldar have these. Of course, they're more akin to a slaughterfest.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Parodied mercilessly.
  • Every time Sha is about to jump the bones of somebody or something, we see her shoulder devil casually kill her shoulder angel.
  • Kor's angel tries to talk it out with both their devils first. Then he just takes out a BFG and headshots them both.
  • Both Sha'shiva's angel and devil are absolutely gobsmacked by the size of Selene (the Archon's ex-wife)'s bazongas.
• Heel Realization: Sergeant Johnson defected to the Ttau from the Space Marines' Angels of Death unit after being sentenced to death for treason for disobeying orders he felt were unjust and dishonorable. His execution by firing squad was inadvertently interrupted by a Ttau in a battlesuit who blew away the executioner. Having nowhere else to go, Johnson joined the Ttau and is now an instructor at their Military Academy.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • The new Archon has a device that causes these.
  • In a flashback, an eldar guardian gives up the fight at the sight of a squad of Necron warriors getting back up after being nuked.
• I Do Not Own: Parodied by a sidebar on the website containing a Long List of things that Games Workshop doesn't own, including the terms "eldar", "space marine", and anything the authors fiddled with the spelling of.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Skraat, being a Kroott, gains new powers by eating the corpses of his enemies.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Unavoidable when your faction of allegiance is the Ttau Empire. Most prominent when Kor'la sends a small army of Mandrakes an SMS (Superior Missile Shower.) or Smart Missile System, take your pick. The trope is also referenced by name in the author's notes.
• Mighty Glacier: When Sergeant Johnson got forced to compete in Dark Eldar gladiatorial games, his first opponent ran circles around him and tore him up pretty good, hitting him fifteen times in the time it took hit her once. But he only NEEDED to hit her once.
• Mini-Mecha:
  • The "Ttauminator" is Seargent Johnson's Terminator armorsuit upgraded with some Ttau goodies, such as a missile pod usually mounted on Sky Ray missile artillery tanks in place of the Cyclone launcher.
  • Sha' and Kol spend some time crammed into one Crisis Suit, which has a surprisingly roomy cockpit.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much:
  • Seargeant Johnson, a Renegade Space Marine who is a defector to the Ttau Empire. While he has turned his back on the Imperium, he has not forsaken his humanity. The Greater Good resonates with his ideals of courage and honour just as deeply as, if not more than, the Imperial Creed.
  • Selene is a cheerful, bouncy, fun-loving Durchii who doesn't belittle aliens out of hand, a stark contrast to her jaded, dour, scheming, smug fellows. As mentioned elsewhere, she's a Cheerful Child by their reckoning.
• Named Weapons: The Archons champion wields a Darklance named "Soulsplitter."
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Kor'la reprograms a scout drone to be noisy and chatty. It starts singing a song about Noah's Ark (The animals went in two-by-two/ the cat, the dog, and the kangaroo...). Ttau don't have that story.
• Rape as Drama: Implied, but always prevented, fortunately.
• Really 700 Years Old: Most of the Durchii are AT LEAST 1,000 years old. The sole exception is Selene, who was born ON the planet they crash landed on. She's slightly less than 1,000 years old.
• The Reveal: The dhrukarii child is inhabited by a Shard of Ynnead (the Eldar's new god), who was also Lucypher.
• Robot Antenna: Invoked. Kor's hearing aid (and indeed, all ttau comm gear) looks like this. He's deaf as a rock without it.
• Rule 34: Some of the side comics are straight-up pornographic. Darius even does a breast cancer fundraiser every year by selling a pinup nude poster of the female cast, "Ocboober".
• Rule 63:
  • From the art gallery portion of the site, this◊ gender-flipped picture of Sha'shiva (red hair) and Kor'la (white hair).
  • Darius Craine draws themself as both a guy and a girl in out-of-universe pages, switching between the two without explanation.
• Rule of Sexy: The comic in general adheres to this, but Selene virtually embodies this trope.
• Running Gag:
  • Selene latching onto Johnson's face.
  • In the Spacecraftworld arc, everyone accidentally calls a Howling Banshee exarch some casual synonymn for "a man" (dude, guy, etc), which makes her want to kill them.
• Sickly Green Glow: The bootleg Necrons shown in a flashback. This extends even to their lord's Speech Bubbles.
• Starfish Alien: The not-Tyranid.
• Summon Bigger Fish: The Eldar summon an Avatar of Khaine to deal with the Nyds. However, some bright spark uses Selene (a dark eldar) as the sacrifice, allowing Slaanesh to manifest on the craftworld.
• Swallowed Whole: Narrowly averted when Scraat is almost eaten by a Mawloc.
• Taking the Bullet: Well, an energy blast of some kind, but Johnson isn't above doing this, even for a filthy alien he just met.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted, not once, but twice.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In one of the omakes, Sha'shiva bangs a Slaaneshi daemon into dematerializing.
• Uriah Gambit: The Academy Headmaster has it in for our band of heroes, and decides to pit them against a Greater Good-forsaken Carnifex (a Tyranid attack beast roughly analogous to a tank, and looks like a Giant Enemy Crab designed by Khorne on an especially bad day) as their first excersize. If not for Johnson and his BFG, they'd be paste.
• Weaponized Teleportation: Par for the course when one of the characters is a Warp Spider.
• Wham Episode: The climax, wherein Selene is sacrificed to summon the Avatar of Khaine, who, due to being summoned by either a Dark eldar or an unwilling sacrifice, is overtaken by a Keeper of Secrets, resulting in a daemonic incursion into the craftworld. After the incursion is fought off, the Shard of Ynnead inhabiting the child reveals itself and devours the Keeper.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: The Druchii baby somehow knew that plugging Johnson's helmet into an imperial cogitator would summon the Angels of Death, and that he should do this right before the cadre enters the webway gate so the Space Marines will kill the druchii who tried to kill him, while missing their real target: Johnson himself.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Seargant Johnson adopted a baby druchii that the Archon tried to feed to a pack of wolf-like aliens. He's also considered Traitoris Maximus for refusing to massacre some heretic kids (forgot the Imperium's just the least-evil faction instead of the heroes, did you?).
• Writing Around Trademarks: The world is pretty obviously Warhammer 40,000 but any name that is Games Workshop copyright gets extra letters added on. The copyright sidebar pointedly notes that "Eldar" and "Space Marine" are not GW trademarks, despite what they claim ("eldar" is owned by the J. R. R. Tolkien estate, and "Space Marine" is not trademarkable).

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