Editing Slaugth (Hektor Heresy) (section)

===Enter the Ethereals===

The first stage of his plan involved kidnapping thousands of Tau. This wasn't particularly hard to accomplish, since by this point all four major nations of the planet were infiltrated by Slaugth Intendants using their psychic powers to pass as ordinary Tau. Slaves, prisoners, vagrants, everybody who wouldn't be missed was tranquillised, shoved into slimy galleys and brought to Principal Txont's nightmarish biomanteion. No one save for the Slaugth lord himself can tell what sadistic experiments these unfortunates were subjected to, and probably for the better. He turned innumerous innocents into slobbering freaks of nature, and those who escaped this fate learned the true meaning of pain. Rumours were abound that the Principal could have finished his project in a couple of months if he didn't enjoy toying with a brand new slave race so much. Regardless, after several years of research and experiments, Txont was ready to present his creation - a new subspecies of Tau. 

His children looked surprisingly seemly for creations of a Slaugth biomancer. Not too different from the four main Tau races, they were marked with unnatural beauty, unattainable for beings born of copulation rather than grown in a vat. But what really set them apart from the normal Tau was the diamond-shaped bone crest in the middle of their foreheads. This crest served to protect the weapon with which Txont aimed to conquer T'au without a single shot, his diabolical masterpiece - the Diocetic Gland. This small organ exuded a powerful pheromone which made all Tau and, to an extent, most other sentient species docile and obedient by suppressing their individuality and critical thinking. A small band of such mutant Tau could easily take over the entire planet by simply ordering everybody to surrender and submit to their rule. But such crude interventionism went against the Principal's love for subtle manipulation. And so, instead of arming his minions and sending them to the planet below, he began training and instructing them for their upcoming mission. 

The Siege of Fio'Taun marked a pivotal point in the history of Tau. This battle was the final stage of a dastardly scheme concocted by the city's despot Fio'El Shes'kra. Months ago, he had set the events that led to the siege in motion by selling lots of rifles and even some cannons from the city arsenal to the marauding tribes of the western steppes. To make sure that Fio'Taun would come under siege, he tipped off a Wet Shroud bishop to encourage the nomads to attack the wealthy city. The despot planned to wait until the city walls are inevitably breached and use the ensuing chaos to steal the contents of the city treasury, only to blame the raiders for it. Better still, he could then ask the central government for some gold to pay the workers for rebuilding the walls - most of which would, of course, end up in his own pocket. His plan was nearly perfect and it definitely would have worked, were it not for a most unexpected intervention.

In the middle of the siege, when it seemed like the megalithic walls of the city were finally beginning to crumble, two figures clad in expensive robes walked leisurely onto the battlefield. Bullets and shurikens pierced the air around them, explosions raised fountains of dirt mere paces away from the two, heat rays focused by parabolic mirrors melted the very ground they walked on, and yet the mysterious strangers were completely unharmed, as if protected by some strange power beyond comprehension. Eventually they started drawing gazes of soldiers on both sides of the walls; even the despot found himself strangely drawn to the spectacle in front of the city gates. Meanwhile, the strangers walked up to one of the helepolises used by the besiegers and ascended to the platform on its top. None of the soldiers guarding it dared to stop them.

Once they had the full attention of every soldier on the battlefield, the two began to preach. Not in a stern, profound voice expected of a prophet; instead, they talked fast and smooth, like a pair of seasoned advertisers pitching a new project. Their words were not particularly wise or enlightening, but they were brimming with common sense and harsh materialism. The strangers said that violence was unnecessary, unless it was profitable; that in the long term, commerce was much more lucrative than war. They pointed out that by hiring the nomads to guard their settlements, the city dwellers would avoid much greater costs of constantly rebuilding ruined fortifications, and the nomads would get a steady inflow of income that would eventually exceed the sporadic spoils from their infrequent and dangerous raids. Several times they mentioned the great Bottom Line, a philosophical concept that was central to their teachings. It stated that the value of any action depended only on the profit gained as a result, and nothing else. Ideals, principles, dreams and aspirations were all illusionary and insignificant, serving only to lead astray from the path to wealth and success. 

Everybody present found the extremely materialistic philosophy of the twin preachers much to his liking. The warlike nomads were seduced by the promises of a guaranteed income, while the city dwellers enjoyed the prospects of using nomad mercenaries to do their bidding. Before the day was over, both the defenders of the city and its besiegers became the first followers of the mysterious strangers. The despot quickly calculated how much money he could make by getting close to the leaders of a promising new cult early on, so he proposed to personally help them travel across the Stoneheart Tyranny and spread their word. The next morning a caravan departed from the Fio'Taun with the two preachers at its head. When asked by their guards where they came from, the two just laughed, called themselves Ethereals and left it at that.

Fio'Taun was the first documented occasion when the Ethereals made their presence known, but many others soon followed all across the globe. Some showed up in the mountain cities of the Celestial Utopia and explained to their racist citizens that making business with the lowland dwellers is much more profitable than exterminating them. Some visited gatherings of the Wet Shroud monks and offered them to drop all pretence and embrace their role as information brokers. Wherever they went, their preachings achieved great success. Was the Diocetic Gland responsible for it, or did their teachings simply appeal to the nature of the Tau? Nobody can say for sure, not even Principal Txont. Regardless, in several years the cult of the Bottom Line managed to unite the entire planet for the first time in history. The four nations of T'au became four castes, grand empires were replaced with megacorporations led by the Ethereals. And the Ethereals secretly answered to their Slaugth Lords.