Overview
T’au’s single continent has limited fertile land. Earth Caste farms work it beneath mountain chains and across a dry world whose planned cities present the empire’s preferred image of common purpose. Much of the civilisation now spread among the stars began within those constraints.
An Imperial survey once found a population too primitive to resist the conquest being prepared for it. Warp storms prevented the attack. The T’au survived their own subsequent conflicts and grew into a power capable of defending itself. Their capital remains a model for new colonies, with generations living in a world that an older empire had already decided to extinguish.
History
An Imperial survey found the T’au in M35, before they could have resisted the intended conquest. Warp storms prevented it. The arrival of the Ethereals later ended the violent Mont’au divisions, and development reached the moon Lu’val before carrying the new civilisation to other stars.
Military significance
The home sept contributes experienced Fire Caste forces and military traditions to the wider empire. Its political role and example to colonies make the planet valuable beyond the troops it raises. Descriptions of heavy protection do not provide a complete inventory of the defences.
M41 and M42 status
Capital and original homeworld of the T'au Empire.
T’au remains the capital and original home sept. Decisions made here affect communities now spread well beyond the world where their civilisation began.
Homeworld; detailed local post-Rift condition unconfirmed.
The sources continue to identify the planet as the empire’s homeworld. They do not establish a detailed account of local conditions after the Great Rift.
Timeline
Imperial explorers encounter the T'au homeworld.
Lu'val becomes the first off-world colony.
The homeworld is the centre of an interstellar empire.
Related charted locations
Administrative record
Tithe grade: Not applicable
Population: Unrecorded
Chart placement and sources
Provisional placement
The viewed sixth-edition T'au Empire map identifies the homeworld at the centre of the local sept layout.
The retained homeworld point anchors the sept group within the existing T'au region.
Sixth-edition map reproduction, predating the Great Rift. Page-up is treated as chart-up for a consistent schematic layout; the source gives no north arrow. Galactic orientation and physical scale remain unverified. Regional symbols are representative points, not measured centres or borders.
- Lexicanum — T'au (Planet) — Secondary reference
Book references indexed by this source: Codex: Tau Empire (6th Edition), p. 28; Codex: T'au Empire (10th Edition), pp. 8–9, 40; Imperial Armour Volume Three — Second Edition: The Taros Campaign, p. 12
- Codex: Tau Empire (6th edition), The Tau Empire map, PDF page 21 — publicly hosted reproduction — Secondary reference
- Battle Honours 2024, printed pages 8–9 (PDF pages 10–11) — Official source
The dossier is available offline. Reference links open external websites.
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Cartographic positions and several administrative details are intentionally approximate where published Warhammer sources conflict or provide no canonical coordinate system.