The Tau are basically an answer to "but what if a reasonable space empire was thrown into 40k?" The mind control theory is almost certainly Imperial propaganda and the Tau are pretty stable.
The real 40k goodness of the Tau is showing that a reasonable levelheaded empire would naively stumble into the 40k universe and realize that while the major players are all batshit insane they came to be that way because the setting is basically custom built to do that. The fourth expansion and the Tau's first real experience with the horrors of Warp travel are a good example: the Tau that survived had to be sequestered off by the larger empire because they were systematically slaughtering any auxillary races that were even remotely Warp-attuned because they had watched those same races get possessed and turn into literal hellspawn and try to kill them.
They also use the Warp, but they skim along it instead of diving fully in like the Imperium does. Because Tau themselves are just shy of blanks in terms of psychic potential this works out just fine for them without Gellar fields keeping the daemons at bay, but it is a lot slower than traditional Warp travel.
The Tau are basically an answer to "but what if a reasonable space empire was thrown into 40k?" The mind control theory is almost certainly Imperial propaganda and the Tau are pretty stable.
The real 40k goodness of the Tau is showing that a reasonable levelheaded empire would naively stumble into the 40k universe and realize that while the major players are all batshit insane they came to be that way because the setting is basically custom built to do that. The fourth expansion and the Tau's first real experience with the horrors of Warp travel are a good example: the Tau that survived had to be sequestered off by the larger empire because they were systematically slaughtering any auxillary races that were even remotely Warp-attuned because they had watched those same races get possessed and turn into literal hellspawn and try to kill them.
The only links I could find to answer the question of how the Tau travel from star to star without the Warp were :sus: . Could you fill me in there?
They also use the Warp, but they skim along it instead of diving fully in like the Imperium does. Because Tau themselves are just shy of blanks in terms of psychic potential this works out just fine for them without Gellar fields keeping the daemons at bay, but it is a lot slower than traditional Warp travel.
:the-more-you-know:
Useless 40k knowledge is one of my many useless skills :im-doing-my-part: