#being founded by a bunch of british nerds that hated Margaret Thatcher's guts!

[moociaoafterdark]

The Ethereals can't exactly ask Big E how that went because... well.

And Horus doesn't count. He, like Fulgrim, had to be turned by the power of the Evil Swords™

If there's anyone the Ethereals should ask - it's Lorgar and Ere... Sorry, Por'El E'bus.

What's the deal between Farsight and the Ethereals?

In the initial lore (from older codexes), it was fairly simple; Farsight saw the merit of engaging in values and tactics that were at odds with the tenets of the Greater Good espoused by the Ethereals, particularly inter-caste knowledge sharing and melee combat specialisation. Things that would allow the soldiery, and thus the wider T'au Empire, to be more warlike and defend/expand borders.

This came to a head on the planet Arthas Moloch, where a war with Orks saw the Ethereals under Farsight's protection killed, implicitly in part due to the squabbling between Farsight and said Ethereals. After this war (during which Farsight found the Dawn Blade and fucked up a lot of Orks) he ended up breaking off from the T'au Empire with those loyal to his views to form the Farsight Enclaves; a more militarily focused take on the base Empire.

Overall, it was a decent look at how authoritarian/inflexible thinking and doctrines could create schisms, even in the milder cultures of 40k.

The Kelly era T'au, of course, added to this in a Kelly-esque fashion. It wasn't JUST that the Ethereals didn't like Farsight's views, but ALSO they were hiding info about CHAOS and DAEMONS from the T'au and doing EVIL MIND CONTROL on the T'au and it wasn't just Orks that showed up on Arthas Moloch but DAEMONS that the T'au weren't prepared for because of the aforementioned EVIL MIND CONTROL and DAEMONS killed the Ethereals and Farsight killed them back with the Dawn Blade. After that he confirms his suspicions about the EVIL MIND CONTROL and, when faced with the choice of revealing the EVIL MIND CONTROL to the entire T'au Empire and destroying it all (because the Empire is held together by EVIL MIND CONTROL) or walking away with his loyalists, he chooses to walk away. Because he cares about the T'au as a whole and is BIG HERO. Not one of those ethereals and their EVIL MIND CONTROL.

E V I L M I N D C O N T R O L

Fuck knows how it'll go if Van Nguyen and his actually good T'au writing are allowed to touch Farsight.