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View Full Version : What's with the fish names?


JxKxR
03-24-2011, 04:01 PM
Does anyone know why all the Tau tanks are named after fish? They are supposed to have come from the dessert right? I haven't ever read anything about them being in the water.
Lucidum
03-24-2011, 05:48 PM
Yeah, no, the names are "officially" supposed to be the Imperial Designation for those vehicles I think. The Tau homeworld is decidedly a desert world. I suppose the semi-nautical theme of the Tau arsenal (even the broadside battlesuit- as "broadside" is a navy term for firing a row of cannons aboard a ship) is because their high-tech look seems sleek and water-bound. Their tanks have a somewhat fishlike, organic-flowing nature to their design.
Kawauso
03-24-2011, 08:09 PM
I agree with Lucidum.

Though, to be fair, there is a story in the Space Wolves codex about the Tau being discovered colonizing an Imperial planet with cities built underwater, and there's a big underwater battle where the Space Wolves employ Land Raiders and Terminators (because they can withstand the pressure) on the sea floor against Battlesuits and the like.
Xenith
03-25-2011, 02:52 AM
Because they are the 40k FishMen. And the above reasons. Maybe because Japan is a maritime nation, also.
sneaky pete
03-26-2011, 09:38 AM
It also doesn't quite make sense since it is the air caste which pilot the vehicles and the water caste are the politicians/trade representatives...


...but as said above by Lucidum...the names are Imperial designations...
Denzark
03-26-2011, 11:02 AM
Does anyone know why all the Tau tanks are named after fish? They are supposed to have come from the dessert right? I haven't ever read anything about them being in the water.

Surely they would be better named after Ice cream, or a particularly vicious gateaux?
Grailkeeper
03-26-2011, 01:43 PM
Surely they would be better named after Ice cream, or a particularly vicious gateaux?


It came straight out of the black forest sarge, then it fired its magnum and creamed us.
Xenith
03-26-2011, 02:46 PM
It came straight out of the black forest sarge, then it fired its magnum and creamed us.

I screamed and ran to blerone.
JamesP
04-08-2011, 06:55 AM
As Lucidum said, they're the Imperial Designations.

As for why they are all fish, I think the authors intended for the names to be a 40K version of NATO reporting names for Soviet equipment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_reporting_name , when analysts just picked a theme (bombers will all be named with something beginning with B, fighters with something beginning with F) and ran with it.

I can easily imagine some drone in the Administratum being told by the Explorators that they've discovered a new, hig-tech alien race and they need something to call the flying tanks which have been blowing up their vehicles with some heretical technology called 'railguns'. And the Admin. drone says "today's theme is fish."

Logically this means that one day Forgeworld could produce a Tau tank called the Goldfish but there you go.