And there's a lot of them.

There's A LOT of them.

And many, many, many, many, many, many many, many, many more are coming. With their mass being within not that many orders of magnitude from the mass of THE GALAXY ITSELF.

The only thing keeping them in check is their attitude towards sentience. They treat cunning as just another weapon alongside claws and acid sacs. For them, Intelligence really is a stat on par with Strength and Agility and Endurance. And largely, they see the intelligence of species in the Galaxy as something to destroy by subverting it against itself. The hybrids of Genestealer Cults are innovative, insidious and capable of independent action, but upon the arrival of the main fleet, they are devoured, reduced to plain biomass and DNA for splicing, the Hive Mind seeing no better use for them and their minds and ideas.

If this attitude was ever to change, Tyranids would become fucking unstoppable. They would breed themselves into superintellegences - and even given 40K's universal slow takeoff, with their resources for growing brains they would outsmart everyone. They are currently limited to organic matter, but they would devour planets and stars whole. They would be perfectly capable of designing and deploying customized nanotechnological bioweapons. They would get good enough at Warp navigation to achieve reliable time travel.

Yeah. Good luck with dealing with that.

Can we get their claws the FUCK off the +4SD intelligence genetic material, please?

Given the possibility of that, in addition to their already insane advantages, Tyranids, before the arrival of dath ilan, were the second most probable canditate to break the stalemate and win the Galaxy for themselves.

Some would, perhaps, be surprised to learn which faction have held the first place.

A comparatively tiny nation, the Tau have grown from fire and wheel to an FTL-capable unified multisystem space empire in 6000 years. It took humankind twice as long, and they had the secret assitance of the Emperor and of a caged minor god of technology.

Unlike humans, the industrious, brilliant and hopeful race of Tau have made all of their progress on their own, with no backing from any deity or demideity whatsoever.

It was no different for... Humans... and Eldar... and most of such restless and ambitious species... of this Galaxy... 

You know me too well, you slimy apathy ball you.

Tau would be grateful for any help they may or may not have recieved!

The Tau Empire is a largely peaceful yet expansionist state with an internally ranked caste system, a dedicated leader caste the highest ranked members of which form a ruling council, a semi-planned economy, and a state ideology of the Greater Good.

Multiple castes capable of interbreeding aren't a sustainable thing unless conscious effort is applied to create and sustain them. Which it was! Unlike certain other species, early in their history, the Tau have looked at the workings of inheritance and thought: "How can we do better?" The modern castes of Tau are the reuslts of intentional eugenics aimed at specialization, which, to the shock of many, doesn't actually require any violence to achieve. Inter-caste relationships that involve reproduction are shunned and disincentivized for undermining the efforts of careful selection. But you wouldn’t, like, get executed for it or anything.

The early history of Tau featured endless inter-clan and inter-caste conflicts and wars, until the caste of Etherials was designed by a benevolent conspiracy of researchers from different clans. They were bred, with the use of the revolutionary technique of gamete selection, for charisma, leadership qualities, and wisdom.

As per their design, they have quickly unified the Tau species and took leadership over it. 

The Etherials have pheromone glands that they use to mind-control other Tau! That is the secret foundation of their entire heretical ideal of "Greater Good"! 

Eh. Kinda-sorta?

The Etherials were bred for charisma. They look as good to the eyes of Tau as movie stars look to the eyes of Earthlings. To the ears of Tau, they have speaking skills of Hitler and Martin Luther King combined. And yes, their smell to some extent calms the Tau down and makes them a bit more agreeable.

None of this is a secret, actually. The Tau do have statistics that show it and even selection documentation that details it. This is a part of their intended function - to lead others - and is completely in the open.

Yes, it's hard for a random Tau to refuse a request made by an Etherial.

But the Imperium should really look at themselves before pointing fingers. How easy was it for a random human to refuse a request from the Emperor, with his own superhuman looks and charisma that were also psychically enhanced? 

And his Primarchs? When a single Primarch defected during the Heresy, almost all of their troops have followed them as well. That's not nearly true for Etherials!

And in the current Imperium, good looks and speaking skills remain the instruments of the ruling class! Who, unlike Etherials, largely use their power for their own personal benefit. Etherials are very much on watch for abusing their power, in addition to having been selected for wisdom.

If you wanted to be consistent about it, you would consider basic politeness to be a form of mind control. If you wanted to be consistent about it, you would have people make faces less appealing with makeup so as not to cloud the judgement of others. If you wanted to be consistent about it, your rhetoric specialists would consider applying their skills comparable to using a gun.

But that's ridiculous; no one does that!

And if a Tau wants to put plugs into their olfactory organ, and look away from the charming Etherial faces, and doubt and overanalyze their words on sheer basis of their speaking skills, well, that would be weird, and probably not very conductive to the Greater Good. But you wouldn’t, like, get executed for it or anything.

Etherials exist for a reason, and them stopping a miserable and wasteful war was a plentyful proof for that. The aspects of the philosophy of the Greater Good do have mathematical formalizations, unlike the aspects of certain other philosophies. Not everyone can be a mathematician or a philosopher, however, and not every mathematician or philosopher can maintain integrity when faced with the struggles of the Universe. Etherials are there to do it for you - and specialization is the basis of achieving the Greater Good. Etherials, as far as the Tau are concerned, provide a useful and necessary service.

But if you want to argue with an Etherial about the Greater Good or it's implementation by the Tau Empire, you're welcome! To convince you and to consider your notes is a core part of their function, and you certainly wouldn't get executed for it.

Yes, we're really proud of the whole "not executing people for no reason" thing.

The Tau Empire aren't committed pacifists. They badly want to settle conflicts without the use of violence, but they, by the standards of their philosophy of the Greater Good, consider their rule to be better than the rule of most other states, and routinely conquer worlds as a civilizing mission. They just don't slaughter the populations of others for no reason. 

The Tau Empire aren't committed voluntarists. Shunning and ostracism aren't their only punishments. They have prisons, and programs of forced reeducation, occasionally with use of medical assitance. They just don't turn people into tortured servitors and mindless flagellants, or Chaos Spawns and Plaguebearers, or pain-slaves.

The Tau Empire aren't committed individualists. You are expected to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others should the need arise, and if you are creating an exception in it's standardized system, the problem is overwhelmingly likely to be resolved on your end. They just don't burn you for having different beliefs than everyone else or shoot you simply to motivate others.

The Tau Empire aren't committed egalitarians. It's hard to get an out-of-caste job, and harder still to earn enough respect to break the expecations of others. There are currently only two non-Tau individuals in the whole of Tau Empire to have "Aun" as the first syllable of their name. And Tau have, after considerable amount of very bloody failures, completely given up on Orks and Dark Eldar. It's just that achieving even the lowliest leadership position isn't possible at all for any outsider in any other big faction, except for, ironically, the Dark Eldar.

In a better world, the Tau Empire would be considered somewhere between distasteful and villainous.

In this world, they are the foremost keepers of deeper sociological and strategic truths than those written by the bloodied hands of the Chaos Gods upon the canvas of people's hopes and dreams.

The Tau are naturally very insensetive to Warp, and lack psykers in their own ranks. (They do have some Gue'vesa ones, but not enough for widespread training and experimentation.) However, they do possess somewhat advanced technology that is fueled, for once, by actual, living, healthy science and engineering that are completely understood by their practitioners. Their method of FTL travel is comparatively slow, but safe, and requires no witchcraft of any sort. Their technological prowess grows every passing year.

In general, they use a lot of automation. Having no readily avialable separate solution for FTL messaging, they use automated messenger ships. Much of their labor is automated, because exhaustion is contrary to the Greater Good, and efficiency is conductive to it. Much of their military consists of drones, because they, like the Eldar, do actually want to minimize causalities among their forces, but unlike the Eldar, who contuine to personally fight in melee because the Eldar, Tau take the obvious and reasonable approaches to it. Nearly exclusive use of long-range combat and heavy emphasis on combined arms and psychological warfare also greatly reduce the causalities.

The Tau Empire actively trades with nearby friendly worlds for goods, mercenaeries, services and technology, and when those worlds - such as the worlds of the Kroot - staunchly refuse to be welcomed into the fold, they refrain from their forceful annexation in an attempt to build up general goodwill.

And though they remain relatively small, inexperienced, and weak, they readily annex the worlds that are willing, or the worlds that are hostile (whose rank and file population generally, but not always, is willing to be annexed) and with each new planet that joins, they gain more resources, more technology, more understanding of the world, and more kinds of citizens with their own strengths.

They adapt, decide, and improve much faster than any other faction, needing months where other need decades despite their slow travel times. They have, for their relative naivete, the best epistemology, the most sober and pragmatic view of reality. They welcome and offer alliances and help rather than refuse them out of pride. They are ready to make sacrifices, but always think and weigh options and payoffs carefully before doing so. And unlike most others, who are trying to survive or fight, the Tau are trying to win.

And that is why the Tau Empire was the likeliest candidate to win.

And these are the main factions of the Galaxy.

There are thousands of smaller races, too weak to be a consideration but often possessing unique advantages no one else has, because global market isn't a thing and information dissemination networks aren't a thing and systematic search for knowledge is only barely a thing.

And, perhaps more importantly, there are

many organizations,