#Military Auxiliary

[deathdealertactical]

Honoring the Civil Air Patrol: Celebrating 83 Years of Service and Dedication

As December 1 approaches, we at Death Dealer Tactical want to take a moment to honor the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) on its birthday. Established in 1941, the Civil Air Patrol is a vital organization that has played a significant role in American history and continues to serve our country in countless ways. From emergency response and search and rescue missions to aerospace education, the CAP embodies…

[vintagepromotions]

Poster showing the Women's Royal Air Force, Auxiliary and Reserve Air Forces badges of rank and distinguishing badges (c. 1950).

[nocternalrandomness]

USMC Adversary at Gila Bend

[jbk405]

I've known since I was a child that my father got his HAM radio license back when he was a kid, but I learned this past weekend at the Dayton Hamvention that he actually joined Air Force MARS (Military Affiliate Radio System) when he was still in high school as well.

That surprised me, because he's never told any stories before about wanting to join the Air Force when he was young, or any branch of the military. And he didn't, as a matter of fact. So why did he join MARS when he was still in school?

He explained that his plan was that if he was drafted into the Vietnam War, being in MARS would get him deployed as a radio operator instead of infantry.

I've known he was eligible for The Draft all my life, but learning that he actually had a plan for it even before he graduated high school is one of those Sobering Thoughts that moves it from the area of Intellectual Knowledge to Understanding. He wasn't even old enough to vote yet and he was planning for how to survive under The System.

[pocket-mobster]

i just want everyone to know that i could write an essay about the sociological significance of american combat uniforms and all its unsurprisingly weird implications. i won't because the rain is making my brain goop, but i just want everyone to know that the possibility is always on the table

[alanmalcherhistorian]

Irene Arckles: Air Transport Auxiliary Pilot during WW2.

(DB colour from original unknown B&W image) Irene Arckless was described as an ordinary working class girl determined to obtain her pilots licence who passed her flying test just before the start of the Second World War. During the war she was a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary delivering all types of aircraft from factories to operational RAF airfields throughout England.On Sunday 3 June…

[bookloversofbath]

Will Not We Fear: The Story of H.M. Submarine 'Seal' :: C. E. T. Warren & James Benson

[blueiscoool]

How Hadrian’s Wall is Revealing a Hidden Side of Roman History

A party invitation. A broken flipflop. A wig. Letters of complaint about road conditions, and an urgent request for more beer.

It sounds like the aftermath of a successful spring break, but these items are nearly 2,000 years old.

They’re just some of the finds from Hadrian’s Wall – the 73-mile stone wall built as the northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire, sealing off Britannia (modern-day England and Wales) from Caledonia (essentially today’s Scotland).

While most of us think of Pompeii and Herculaneum if we’re thinking of everyday objects preserved from ancient Rome, this outpost in the wild north of the empire is home to some of the most extraordinary finds.

“It’s a very dramatic stamp on the countryside – there’s nothing more redolent of saying you’re entering the Roman empire than seeing that structure,” says Richard Abdy, lead curator of the British Museum’s current exhibition, Legion, which spotlights the everyday life of Roman soldiers, showcasing many finds from Hadrian’s Wall in the process. A tenth of the Roman army was based in Britain, and that makes the wall a great source of military material, he says.

But it’s not all about the soldiers, as excavations are showing.

A multicultural melting pot

Hadrian, who ordered the wall to be built in 122CE after a visit to Britannia, had a different vision of empire than his predecessors, says Frances McIntosh, curator for English Heritage’s 34 sites along Hadrian’s Wall.

“All the emperors before him were about expanding the empire, but Hadrian was known as the consolidator,” she says. He relinquished some of the territory acquired by his predecessor Trajan, and “decided to set the borders” – literally, in some cases, with wooden poles at sites in Germany, or with stone in Britannia. Where those poles rotted thousands of years ago, the wall is still standing: “A great visual reminder” of the Roman empire, says McIntosh.

It’s not just a wall. There’s a castle every mile along, and turrets at every third-of-a-mile point, with ditches and banks both north and south. “You can imagine the kind of impact that would have had, not just on the landscape but on the people living in the area,” says McIntosh.

And thanks to the finds from the wall, we know a surprising amount about those people.

Although historians have long thought of army outposts as remote, male-dominant places, the excavations along the wall show that’s not the case. Not only were soldiers accompanied by their families, but civilians would settle around the settlements to do business. “ You can almost see Housesteads as a garrison town,” says McIntosh. “There were places you could go for a drink and so on.”

The Roman rule of thumb was not to post soldiers in the place they came from, because of the risk of rebellion. That meant Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural melting point, with cohorts from modern-day Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Algeria, Iraq, Syria – and more. “It was possibly more multicultural because it was a focus point,” says McIntosh, who says that the surrounding community might have included traders from across the empire.

Soldiers were split into two groups. Legionaries were Roman citizens from Italy, who had more rights than other soldiers and imported olive oil, wine and garum (a sauce made from decomposing fish).

They worked alongside auxiliaries – soldiers from conquered provinces, who had fewer rights, but could usually acquire citizenship after 25 years of service.

Soldiers carved their names and regiments on stones to show which part of the wall they built – around 50 of them are on display at Chesters fort.

But the wall shows that women and children were equally present.

McIntosh says that pottery brought to the camps – from the Low Countries and North Africa – shows that the soldiers “brought their families, who cooked in traditional style.” Archaeologists have found what seems to be an ancient tagine for North African-style cooking.

A tombstone from Arbeia fort for a woman named Regina shows she was a freed slave from southern Britain who was bought by – and married to – a Syrian soldier.

Another woman buried at Birdoswald fort was laid to rest with chainmail that appears to be from modern-day Poland. “Perhaps she married someone in the army,” says McIntosh, who calls the wall a “melting pot of people from all over the world under the banner of the army.”

“They brought their own religions, as well as worshipping Roman gods and adopting local deities,” she adds. At Carrawburgh, a temple to Mithras – an originally Persian deity – sat near a spring with a shrine to a local water spirit.

‘Wretched little Brits’

Some of the most extraordinary finds from the Roman empire are coming from one site on Hadrian’s Wall: Vindolanda. Here, archaeologists have found a wealth of organic remains because of what curator Barbara Birley calls the “unusual conditions onsite.”

At Vindolanda there are the remains of at least nine forts over 14 levels. “When the Romans would leave, they would knock down timber forts, and cover the area with turf and clay, sealing the layers underneath,” she says.

“Because it happened so many times, the bottom five or six layers are sealed in anaerobic conditions, so things don’t decay. When we get down there, we get wooden objects, textiles, anything organic.”

Vindolanda has the largest collection of Roman textiles from a single site in western Europe, as well as the largest leather collection of any site in the Roman empire – including 5,000 shoes, and even a broken leather flip-flop. “We probably had a population of 3,000 to 6,000 depending on the period, so 5,000 is a lot,” says Birley. For Abdy, the shoes evoke the conditions of the wet borderlands. “Women’s and children’s shoes are hobnailed – you needed it in the mucky frontier dirt tracks. They’re very evocative.”

There’s even a wig made from a local plant, hair moss, which is said to repel midges – the scourge of Scotland during the summer. A centurion’s helmet is also crested with hairmoss – the ancient equivalent of spraying yourself with insect repellent.

The first woman to write in Latin

One of the most famous finds is the trove of wooden writing tablets – the largest found anywhere.

“They give a snapshot of what life was actually like,” says Birley. “We understand so much more from written correspondence than from ‘stuff,’ and, archaeologically, it’s the stuff that usually survives – things like metals and ceramics.

“These were written in ink, not on a wax stylus tablet, and we believe they were used for what we’d put in emails: ‘The roads are awful,’ ‘The soldiers need more beer.’ Everyday business.”

The tablets – or “personal letters” as Birley describes them – were found on the site of a bonfire when the ninth cohort of Batavians (in the modern-day Netherlands) were told to move on.

“They had a huge bonfire and lots of letters were chucked in the fire. Some have been singed – we think it may have rained,” she says. One of them calls the locals “Britunculi” – “wretched little Brits.” Another talks about an outbreak of pinkeye. One claims that the roads are too bad to send wagons; another laments that the soldiers have run out of beer.

Among the 1,700 letters are 20 that mention a woman called Sulpicia Lepidina. She was the wife of the commander of the garrison, and seems to have played a crucial role. There’s a letter to her from another woman, Paterna, agreeing to send her two medicines, one a fever cure.

Birley says it’s similar to today. “If you’re a group of moms, still today we say, ‘Do you have the Calpol?’ It’s very human.” For Abdy, it’s a sign that women were traders. “She’s clearly flogging her medicines,” he says. “It’s really great stuff.”

Another tablet is an invite from Claudia Severa, the wife of another commander at a nearby camp. It’s an invitation to a birthday party. Under the formal invitation, presumably written by a scribe, is a scrawl in another hand: “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul.”

Presumably written by Claudia herself, it is thought to be the earliest example of a woman’s handwriting in Latin.

Without the organic finds – the shoes and the letters that indisputably belonged to women, unlike jewellery or weaving equipment – it’s difficult to prove conclusively that women lived in significant numbers. Vindolanda “illustrate the missing gaps,” says Abdy. For Birley, they prove that women were as crucial a part of army communities as men. “Before the Lepidina tablets were found we didn’t really understand the interactions between the soldiers and their wives,” she says. Another tablet is written by what is thought to be a Spanish standard-bearer’s common-law wife, ordering military equipment for her partner.

“The Vindolanda collection is showing that there weren’t just camp followers and prostitutes; women were part of everyday life, and contributing to the military community in many ways,” says Birley.

Abdy says that Hadrian’s Wall is interesting because the resident women span “all classes of society,” from Regina – the dead freedwoman, who would have been “bottom of the heap” – to the trader Paterna and the noblewoman Lepidina.

And of course, there’s the wall itself.

“In the Netherlands and Germany the finds are often stunning and better preserved – you go to museums and are bowled over. But in terms of structural remains, Hadrian’s Wall must be among the best,” says McIntosh, modestly, of her site.

Abdy agrees: “I can’t think of many symbols so redolent of imperial will than that wall.”

By Julia Buckley.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall is an impressive masterpiece of military engineering built along steep ups and downs that cross space and history between England and Scotland.

The old wall, sculpted for almost 2000 years by wind and rain, climbs over hills, immerses itself in a moor to suddenly resurface among the blades of light of a wood, a karst presence that seems to absorb the energy of landscape to challenge its gravity and logic in a rollercoaster of harsh ups and downs that cross space and history.

Hadrian's Wall is no longer England but it is not yet Scotland, even if the land to the north seems wilder.

But perhaps it is just a state of mind of those who look at it, subtly altered by the emotion of treading the same stones on which the Roman legionaries walked.

In reality, unlike what many believe, the Wall is within English territory, even if it has helped define the borders of the two countries since the emperor from whom it takes its name ordered its construction in 122 AD to "separate the Romans from the barbarians," the hostile tribes of the Picts who populated today's Scotland, a tough nut to crack even for the Roman legions.

To build it in just six years, about fifteen thousand men were employed, three legions that faced the challenges of a terrain carefully chosen to exploit its advantages.

The result is an impressive masterpiece of military engineering, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987, stretching from one coast of England to the other for eighty Roman miles, about one hundred and seventeen kilometers from Solway Firth to the west and Wallsend to the east.

It is one of the many place names linked to its existence and then extending southwards with ports and coastal fortifications.

For nearly three centuries, Hadrian's Wall was northernmost and most fortified boundary of the Roman limes, a gigantic defensive system that stretched for over five thousand kilometres — from the Atlantic coast of Great Britain to the Black Sea across Europe — then continuing through present-day Middle East to Red Sea and from there cutting across North Africa to the Atlantic.

The 117km long (80 Roman miles) Hadrian's Wall was punctuated by 14 main forts, 80 minor ones and 2 watchtowers every third of a mile.

In addition to the actual wall, mainly made of stone, about 5m high and up to 3m thick, becoming six metres thick in the earthen sections, the Wall was reinforced by a ditch bristling with pointed stakes, a military road that connected the forts and allowed any point to be reached quickly and by a deep embankment, the Vallum.

The forts, rectangular in plan, varied in size according to the importance of the garrison, a pattern repeated with slight differences along the entire limes that protected the borders of the empire.

A moat and a wall punctuated by towers protected the perimeter and each side had a gate protected by two massive towers.

Inside were the headquarters — the praetorium where the praefectus castrorum reside; barracks; a hospital; warehouses and latrines, generally under the walls, while the bathrooms were outside the fortifications.

In granary, food supplies were stored to face the harsh winters or possible sieges.

In the Vicus, the civilian settlement, lived the families of the soldiers, often auxiliaries who officially could not marry.

In these villages that grew spontaneously around the forts, merchants, artisans and prostitutes also lived, attracted by the soldiers' wages.

There were also temples dedicated to Roman, local and even oriental deities that reflected the different religions of soldiers from all over the empire because Romans were very tolerant as long as the social order and the emperor were not questioned.

🎥: © pindropandhop via IG

[sforzesco]

BROTHERS

The river Weser ran between the Roman and Cheruscan forces. Arminius came to the bank and halted with his fellow chieftains:— "Had the Caesar come?" he inquired.​ On receiving the reply that he was in presence, he asked to be allowed to speak with his brother. That brother, Flavus by name, was serving in the army, a conspicuous figure both from his loyalty and from the loss of an eye through a wound received some few years before during Tiberius' term of command. Leave was granted, and Stertinius took him down to the river. Walking forward, he was greeted by Arminius; who, dismissing his own escort, demanded that the archers posted along our side of the stream should be also withdrawn. When these had retired, he asked his brother, whence the disfigurement of his face? On being told the place and battle, he inquired what reward he had received. Flavus mentioned his increased pay, the chain, the crown, and other military decorations; Arminius scoffed at the cheap rewards of servitude.

They now began to argue from their opposite points of view. Flavus insisted on "Roman greatness, the power of the Caesar; the heavy penalties for the vanquished; the mercy always waiting for him who submitted himself. Even Arminius' wife and child were not treated as enemies." His brother urged "the sacred call of their country; their ancestral liberty; the gods of their German hearths; and their mother, who prayed, with himself, that he would not choose the title of renegade and traitor to his kindred, to the kindred of his wife, to the whole of his race in fact, before that of their liberator." From this point they drifted, little by little, into recriminations; and not even the intervening river would have prevented a duel, had not Stertinius run up and laid a restraining hand on Flavus, who in the fullness of his anger was calling for his weapons and his horse. On the other side Arminius was visible, shouting threats and challenging to battle: for he kept interjecting much in Latin, as he had seen service in the Roman camp as a captain of native auxiliaries.

Tacitus Annals 2.10-11

there's a lot going on in there! Arminius switching to Latin is a detail that always makes me feel a deep kind of sadness, especially with how it's preceded by mention of their mother. I wonder what she thought of what became of her sons, on opposite sides of everything but still, inescapably, brothers. even when they want to kill each other. there sure are a lot of fucked up and unhappy brothers around. and Arminius asking about Flavus' injury............I also had a whole thing typed out about the horror of imperialism and colonization and the trauma of assimilation but I think this sets the tone better

Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, Adrian Murdoch

and also this, just for fun

(ibid)

this post is already a mile long, so lets add another mile to it: a little scene at the start of their conversation! tfw you go in for a hug and your younger brother who also ended up being taller starts roasting your hair style

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app⭐ko-fi

[lady-menrva]

I've never really cared for Bianca either way. I didn't get why people liked her enough to defend her so much or disliked her to unfathomable extents. But, come to think of it, her character writing is...well, problematic. The narrative tries to give her the "parentification" card but fails on account of elementary logic and common sense :

● Lotus Hotel and Casino : Honestly, the whole "she raised Nico for 70 years" is pure tripe. It is implied that the hotel panders to all your needs. Food, shelter, entertainment. You name it, you have it. It's basically diet elysium. She really didn't have to do any fending for Nico. They were both likely caught in the trap of games and luxury. Parentified? More like having the time of her life along with Nico.

(excerpt from The lightning thief)

● Westover Hall: In this scenario, things become more complicated. But basic sense suggests that they had different dorms, being two grades apart and of different genders. There's a 10 to 1 chance Nico had a dorm mother, teachers and other authorities to look out for him. Sure Bianca might have had to spend some time with him, but that really isn't the same as parenting. Besides, they were probably busy with school work, and other extra-curricular activities. Moreover, it's a military school, so I doubt they could just frolic about with each other 24/7.

Given everything, the parentification argument falls apart for sure. Which brings us to a rather concerning, yet obvious conclusion: Bianca's just a satellite, auxiliary character for Nico's development.

Closing thoughts: This just one of the countless instances where logic and sense were sidelined, and a female character was used as a plot device.

[elderscrollsconceptart]

How does Ulfric expect to "take the fight to the Thalmor" when he basically needs the Dragonborn to win his war against a *single* legion of Imperial auxiliaries?

Even High Rock is leaving Ulfric on read. I assume most other nations would be similarly disinterested. Presumably Ulfrics greatest hope is to lead an alliance of nations (along with The Empire?) against the Thalmor.

IMO the free nations of Tamriel are waaaayyy too divided and mutually hostile to somehow unite with enough force to defeat the Aldmeri Dominion.

Cyrodiil: hates Ulfric (duh). High Rock: aloof and loyal to Cyrodil. Morrowind: hates and distrusts all outsiders and foreign powers, especially post-Oblivion. Black Marsh: pretty much the same as Morrowind and possibly even worse. All that leaves is Hammerfell and even they have lingering issues with internal political stability. The others could perhaps be convinced, but I'm not sure how or why they would risk joining Ulfrics alliance unless the Thalmor were actively attempting to invade those nations.

IMO the best best beeesst hope Ulfric has is a potential alliance with Hammerfell against the Thalmor.

"That alliance could win since Hammerfell alone fought the Thalmor to a standstill!" Yes maybe! But Ulfrics war would have to be an offensive war. Hammerfell fought defensively in friendly territory. Offensive wars are by nature far more costly for the attacking force and the alliance would have to remove the Thalmor from any territory on mainland Tamriel *at minimum* for a meaningful victory.

"Kill elves in big heroric battles" isn't a plan. Removing Thalmor puppet governments and liberating occupied territory is. The hypothetical alliance would have to enter hostile territory and attempt to liberate Valenwood and Elsweyr. I'm sure there's anti-Thalmor factions in those places that would help as best they can, but the victory would have to be won via outright military means.

All in all, even a revived and unified Mede empire would have rough odds against the Thalmor. Im not sure what Ulfric expects his path to victory to be.

Perhaps he's more inspired than i give him credit for, or perhaps his confidence is all a naïve delusion on his part. I'm biased but I suspect it's the latter.

[blurredcolour]

What If We Just Fall?

Oh my goodness @supervalcsi this has been the hardest secret to keep! 'Tis I, your summer exchange gift writer! Thank you for all your hard work as the moderator of HBO War Daily, we deeply appreciate you!! It's been a pleasure getting to know you and I hope you enjoy your summer as well as this lovely interlude with sweet Rosie!!!

Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal x ATA!Female Reader

Flying with the Air Transport Auxiliary has taught you many lessons – including the importance of guarding your heart carefully. It seems fate, however, has much more to teach you when you are forced to make an emergency landing in East Anglia.

Warnings: Language, Era Typical Sexism, Fear, Crying, Kissing, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Rating - T.

Author's note: No descriptions of reader other than the fact that she is not British. This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal by the actors in the Apple TV+ series. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within.

Word Count: 5729

-------------------------

October 1944

Meeting a man like Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal was not something you had expected when you volunteered for the Air Transport Auxiliary. In fact, you were not even supposed to land at Thorpe Abbotts Airfield until fate, or more accurately faulty wiring, intervened. Ferrying a Wellington bomber from its repair depot back to the RAF in Norfolk for use in their nighttime bombing runs, you were piloting the five-man aircraft alone – standard practice in the ATA. There was no radio, no navigator, and most definitely no guns. You were a civilian non-combatant and if any Luftwaffe fighter pilots happened to get onto your tail, you simply had to outfly them.

This was not your first Wellington, not by a long stretch, and while you preferred Spitfires for their speed and manoeuverability, these mid-sized bombers were usually fairly docile once they got off the ground. This particular aircraft, however, had been displaying a bad attitude from the moment it took to the air. How it had passed quality control inspection was beyond you. The wonders the mechanics were able to work in short turn arounds were usually feats of precision and skill, but almost immediately you noticed the rudder seemed reluctant to obey your steering commands.

A cascade of instrumentation issues followed before the left engine quit. There was a reason, however, that the ‘Wimpy’ as it was affectionately called by the boys who took the aircraft into combat, was still relied upon by the RAF despite the arrival of four-engine heavies like the Halifax and Lancaster. The Wellington could take a great deal of punishment; lose great chunks of its aluminium and linen airframe, be down one engine, and still get the crew to its destination. It was this reputation you were banking on as you pressed forward to your assigned airfield, hoping the ground crew there would treat this plane better than whomever had done it such a disservice at the repair depot.

You were, by your best guess of the landscape and quick glance at your maps, roughly twenty minutes out when the right engine began to choke and sputter.

“Shit.” You hissed under your breath, pleased no one could overhear you, and dropped your altitude to scan for a safe place to land.

During your pre-flight preparations, you had noted this area was dotted with American airfields as well as RAF; surely you could find a stretch of tarmac to keep both you and this precious piece of war material in one piece. The telltale ‘V’ of concrete, surrounded by still-lush grass waving in the autumn breeze, could not have come into view at a better time. Exhaling in relief as the indicator lights confirmed the wheels had descended at your command, you checked visually that the left was down and had to trust the right and rear were also – with no co-pilot to look for you, there was most definitely no way you could release the yoke and glance out the window yourself.

Hoping the allies would recognize you for a friendly, you lined up to make your landing, the right engine quitting on you as you decreased your speed. Holding your eyes open wide with focus, you leaned forward in your seat, gripping the yoke almost painfully, willing the aircraft to stay aloft to meet the first few inches of runway. The silence in the cockpit was agonizing, a tense ringing in your ears replacing the normal, companionable thrum of the engines, sweat stinging at your eyes and prickling in your armpits. Seconds drew out into hours until at last your tires – all three of them – bumped down to land on the runway.

With a sigh of relief, you quickly pulled up on the flaps, frowning deeply as, with no engines to throw into reverse, the large object in motion seemed reluctant to come to a stop. Mortifyingly, you overshot the end of the runway, skidding to a halt some one hundred meters in the grass like a wet-behind-the-ears trainee, and yet…and yet both you and the plane that you had been charged with delivering were still in one piece. Not at all where you were intended to be, but landed safely, for now.

The sound of several vehicles approaching from down the runway refocused your attention and you pulled off your leather flying helmet, smoothing your hair before gathering your things into your flight bag. Climbing from the dead aircraft, you were greeted by a host of astonished male faces.

“Jesus Christ, she’s a dame!” One of the younger men exclaimed, not so quietly, from the back of the crowd and you did your best to keep a straight face.

“I’m so sorry to intrude on your airfield, gentlemen, ran into a little trouble during my flight. I appreciated the safe place to land.”

Several eyebrows shot up at your distinct lack of British accent, at least one astute gaze dropping to the gold wire weave badge bearing the name of your home country just below your shoulders.

“Well, we’re just glad you’re alright, ma’am. We got very nervous when we couldn’t raise you on the radio.” The owner of said astute, piercing blue gaze spoke, a hint of…New York, was it?...colouring his tone.

“Ah, of course, we aren’t connected to radio in the Air Transport Auxiliary, sorry for the confusion that must have caused.” Stepping forward you offered your hand as you introduced yourself. “Second Officer, ATA.”

“Robert Rosental, Major, United States Army Air Force. What happened up there?”

It took a moment to register that he had asked you a question, the feel of his palm pressing against yours as he shook your hand in greeting more than a little distracting. Inhaling sharply, you turned back to look at the troublesome aircraft.

“Rudder was slow to respond, then I started losing my instruments one-by-one before the left engine cut out. I was hoping to make it on the right, but when it started to go, I knew I had no choice to put it down as soon as possible.”

“You flew that all by yourself?” Another member of the crowd piped up and you nodded patiently.

“Standard practice in the ATA, just me.”

“Maybe that was the real problem.” It was hard to tell where exactly the snide comment, spoken under some ignorant boy’s breath, had originated from.

You noted a flash of anger in Major Rosenthal’s eyes before he started to scan the crowd for the source of it, but this sort of response was something you had certainly encountered before.

“I’m sorry I didn’t quite catch that, could whoever said that please repeat it? I’d really appreciate the opportunity to improve on the over seven hundred ferry flights I’ve made since 1941, including one hundred with this very type of plane, so please, speak up.” A sort of stunned silence overtook the group, several of the men wearing bemused smiles, others a look of shock, while the rest shuffled their feet awkwardly in the grass. “Hn. My loss, I suppose.”

“I’m assuming you’re a long ways from where you ought to be?” Major Rosenthal chimed in, the luscious thatch of hair of his upper lip highlighting the way his mouth hitched up at the corner in amusement.

“You would be correct, Major, might I impose upon you for the use of a telephone?”

Some directions were shouted to tow your aircraft to a spare hardstand as it seemed there were replacements planes of their own expected in a few hours and you turned to address the same man Rosenthal was giving orders to – Lemmons, you believed.

“Please be careful, its not a metal skin, it’s linen.”

The look of shock on the boy’s cherubic face framed by copious curls spilling from beneath his knit cap finally broke your control, a small grin sneaking onto your lips as Major Rosenthal led you over to his jeep. Unclipping your parachute from your waist, you tossed it and your flight bag into the back, sliding into your passenger’s seat and finally feeling the ability to relax somewhat.

“Over seven hundred flights?” He glanced at you as he drove, and you nodded softly.

“There are a lot of planes needing to be moved around this island.”

“And here I thought my boys had it rough needing to hit thirty…” He shook his head, driving past the control toward a sea of the all-too-familiar Nissen huts that populated every airfield you had ever visited.

“Ferry flights and combat missions are in no way comparable, Major, the worst thing I face up there is usually English weather.”

The pair of you shared a laugh as he pulled up in front of a long row of buildings. “My CO will want to talk with you, unexpected guest and all.”

“Of course, caused quite the ruckus didn’t I.” You laughed ruefully, sliding from the jeep to collect your gear, startled as he beat you to it.

“Follow me.” He nodded warmly, holding open the door to lead you inside.

After a brief meeting with a very busy Colonel Jeffrey where he put ‘Rosie’ at your disposal, you were ushered into an empty office to use the telephone and contact your superiors. Providing a detailed report of your flight, you were instructed to sit tight pending further directions – most likely an RAF repair crew would be dispatched to try and get the plane operational, but they were also loathe to keep you grounded and out of the rotation for too long. Providing them with Jeffrey’s secretary’s number as the point of contact, you stepped out of the office to find Major Rosenthal waiting patiently in the hallway.

“You must be starving…”

“I would not say no to some food, by any means.” You smirked and followed him back out to the jeep for the short drive to the officer’s mess. “You sure its alright for me to eat in here? RAF doesn’t usually…”

“I insist.” He nodded and opened the door for you once more.

With a grateful nod, you stepped into the space flooded with natural light where row on row of tables covered in crisp white linens stood empty. Given that it was an odd hour for a meal, somewhere between breakfast and lunch, it was no surprise that you were practically alone in there. A server in a white coat quickly approached and Major Rosenthal looked to you to place your order from the choices on offer before requesting just a coffee for himself, pulling out a chair for you to sit before setting your kit in the empty chair beside you.

“This is really quite civilized, thank you again. I apologize that I’m not really dressed for the occasion…”

He chuckled warmly and shook his head. “You look prettier than me after I fly, though I’m quite confident you start out that way, too.” He winked and you smiled shyly, busying yourself with laying your napkin across your lap.

Major Rosenthal was not the first handsome airman to cross your path in your line of work, there had been countless men who had either jeered or flattered you. But after opening your heart to several early on and promptly losing them to a ruthless enemy, you had learned better than to let yourself fall for such girlish stupidity again.

“Having a second breakfast Rosie? Oh…oh I’m sorry I didn’t see you were entertaining…”

“No apologies Croz, one of the lovely ladies of the Air Transport Auxiliary dropped in for a visit.” He grinned and introduced you properly to his friend and Group Navigator Harry Crosby who was apparently only finishing his breakfast now.

“A pleasure, well I’ll leave you two to it. Make sure Rosie tells you about his love of jazz.” His knowing grin at his friend drew an exasperated exhale from Rosenthal, but before he could protest, the server was returning with food and hot beverages that were fit to make your mouth water and Crosby had disappeared.

“I don’t think I realized quite how hungry I was…” You murmured, fixing your drink to your liking before seizing your utensils to dive in.

“Well then, please, enjoy.” He leaned back, cradling his cup in his hands to allow you to enjoy your meal.

After a few bites, once you were feeling somewhat less ravenous, you tilted your head. “Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman?”

He raised an eyebrow slowly before huffing an incredulous laugh. “Artie Shaw, if I must.”

You nodded thoughtfully as you took a deep sip of your beverage.

“What other planes have you flown in your seven hundred ferry flights?” He parried with a question of his own.

“Oh, all sorts - Tiger Moths, Hurricanes, Mosquitos, Spitfires.”

He nodded thoughtfully, smoothing the edge of his moustache with his forefinger. “Favorite plane to fly?” He inquired.

“To fly? Spitfire, without a doubt.” You answered easily, licking a bit of food from your upper lip. “That plane knows what I want it to do before I even think it. Landing however…one the test pilots famously said, ‘she’s a lady in the air but a bi–’” you quickly cut yourself off with a rueful twist of your lips “she’s something else ‘on the ground.’” You finished the quote with more appropriate language inserted.

Rosenthal’s eyes danced with mirth as he enjoyed a hearty laugh at that and you could not help but notice the reddish hue to the whiskers on his upper lip, highlighted by the sunlight streaming in the windows. You wondered if that was where he had gotten the nickname ‘Rosie.’ Jarring yourself from such dangerous thoughts, you quickly turned back to your meal and peppered him with more questions about American jazz greats, enjoying the way he enthusiastically and engagingly spoke about the various band leaders he preferred and why before turning back to you with further questions about your service in the ATA and life before that. Conversation came dangerously easy between the two of you, an undeniable overlap of interests and motivation to contribute.

You were admittedly attracted to the man as well, but for the sake of your sanity, that was something you were going to have to set aside for as long as he continued his brave yet perilous missions over enemy territory. The mess gradually began to fill as true lunch time arrived, your meal and his coffee long finished, and you were about to get up and find somewhere else to wait out the repair crew when one of the servers approached with a message that they had already arrived and were looking for you.

A short drive to the hardstand revealed the four RAF men hard at work on the Wellington under the curious eye of Lemmons and others who were occasionally drifting by.

“When I get my hands on whatever git did this to this poor Wimpy…” You could hear the threats and grumblings emanating from inside the fuselage and pressed your lips together, hoping it was the previous repairperson they had it out for and not you.

“Gentlemen?” You popped your head into the bomber and were greeted by several flustered men.

“Ah there you are Ma’am, how on earth did you keep this lobotomized plane in the air for so long?!”

“Well you know, a good old Wimpy can always get you home…or at least a friendly field.”

“We’ve got…a good few hours ahead of us but then I think you’ll be able to finish the last leg of the journey.”

“Thank you very much, I’m sorry to take you away from your more pressing work. Can I get you anything?”

“Crew Chief Lemmons has been very helpful, Ma’am, but thank you.”

You offered the young man a smile of thanks over your shoulder before shuffling over to set your belongings on the grass. The afternoon was fair, the weather still warm, so you figured it was as good a place as any to wait it out. To your surprise and pleasure, Rosenthal settled onto the ground beside you, picking up your conversation right where you left off as you listened to the men work through the thin skin of the aircraft, watching the sun make its way to the western sky to sink toward the horizon.

“You know, Major, you really ought to come visit London some time. We may not have Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman live in concert but there’s still a great deal of jazz to be enjoyed.”

“Please, you can call me Rosie if you’d like.” He smiled softly and you nodded in response, not wanting to have been so bold without his permission. “You stationed that close that you can just pop into the jazz clubs?”

You nodded quickly. “White Waltham, near Windsor Castle. Very short train ride. Used to fly with the Spitfire girls out of Southampton but I wanted a chance to fly the twin engines…maybe even someday I’ll get inside a Halifax or a Lanc…but that was definitely not going to happen in a ferry pool right next to the Spitfire factory flying only short-range flights.”

“These four engine beasts are definitely a whole other ball game,” He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder towards a B-17 looming behind him, dwarfing the Wellington with is height and breadth “would you still be alone?”

“ATA sends a flight engineer on four engine flights, but no co-pilot.”

He nodded thoughtfully, looking about to add something when the RAF repair crew suddenly emerged, grinning in satisfaction.

“Should be all set Ma’am, care to give it a whirl?”

Nodding quickly, you looked to your companion softly. “Thank you very much for an unexpectedly pleasant standby, Rosie.”

“My pleasure.” He responded with a grin, sliding to his feet and holding out his hand to pull you to yours.

Clipping your parachute in place on the back of your thighs, you slid on your helmet before climbing into the aircraft to try starting the engines. Running through an extended pre-flight check with one of the maintenance crew, they cleared you for take off, Rosie waving to you before driving off in the direction of the control tower. Beginning to taxi out, you could not help the grin as he returned to guide you down the runway, pulling off into the grass and waving once again from where he stood in the driver’s seat of his jeep.

Opening the cockpit window you shouted down to him, “See you in London, Rosie!” before taking off to the sound of his laughter.

To your delight, Rosie heeded your suggestion and made the trip to London – several times in fact, over the course of the winter, otherwise keeping in touch with you via letter. Despite the logical, cautious part of your brain demanding that you keep your feelings for him at bay, feelings that constantly threatened to swell and overwhelm you with each passing meeting and letter, you still found yourself constantly fretting for his safety. Awaiting his next contact, the next proof of life, with bated breath and firmly denied distraction whenever a friend or colleague would tease you about it.

How utterly rude it was of fate to throw such a perfect specimen in your path. Particularly one that could so very easily be taken away with the same rapidity. For not only was he breathtakingly handsome, but his understated confidence and capability in all things so far encountered simply made you yearn to discover his more hidden talents. To have survived so long in an occupation where the life expectancy was six-weeks, just forty-two days, and then sign up for a second tour after meeting his mission quota – yes, he’d had luck on his side thus far, but you had seen luck abandon far too many in the last few years.

The driving pace of your own worked helped distract you, undertaking training in the four engine Halifax bomber in December before the calendar turned to January 1945, and then onto February. Your commanding officer soon indicated you had nearly accumulated enough hours to begin flying Lancasters – much to your delight and eager anticipation. The pace of the production and demand on the frontlines required more ferry pilots for the British answer to the B-17 and you were more than ready to meet the challenge head on.

Not far into the month, however, you found yourself stranded near Diss on a weather delay, unable to fly back to White Waltham. With no trains until the next morning, you decided to hitch a ride to Thorpe Abbotts to take Rosie up on his standing offer to ‘drop by anytime.’ What greeted you, however, was a very concerned looking Crosby and no Rosie in sight. Sitting you down in the same spare office you had used to call in your emergency landing last October, the obviously under-slept man seemed to be having some difficulty getting down to the point.

“Major Crosby, I can assure you I am no stranger to the variety of outcomes of aerial combat, would you mind telling me as much as you are able before you asphyxiate from lack of oxygen?” You coaxed firmly, quite certain he had not taken a breath in over a minute as he paced anxiously in front of you.

His head jerked up at the sound of your voice and he nodded once before sinking heavily into the chair opposite you before taking a deep breath, to your minor relief, and beginning to speak.

“Rosie went up on a mission on the 3rd and we’ve had no news of him since he dropped out of formation.”

Your spine went completely rigid, snapping you almost painfully upright in your chair as you nodded in a cool, detached manner at the news. This. This was precisely the reason why you had been guarding your heart and fighting your feelings and putting every moment of wonderment and each smile of adoration you felt for the man in a small internal box for safe keeping. Because this very situation had seemed so very inevitable.

So why did it still hurt so damn much.

“No news is, is usually good news in these cases but it takes a while for us to hear…. well anything.”

You gulped once, twice in rapid succession as you nodded again before clearing your throat forcefully. “Well, Major, I have to go but,” grabbing a piece of paper from the desk, you scrawled the contact number for Ferry Pool No. 1, rapidly blinking as your eyes threatened to cloud over with tears “will you call if you hear anything? That you can share of course.”

“Of course I will, did you need a ride somewhere?”

You shook your head almost violently, looking forward to the walk to the pub in Diss, a good roadside cry would fix everything surely, before you had to show your face in public. Practically dashing out of there and off the base, you barely made it out of earshot of the gatehouse before your tears bubbled over. Fine lot of good all your cautious and careful planning had done you – you had been half a person in Rosie’s presence only to have the very emotions you willfully denied snap back at you tenfold now that he might very well be…and you never once got to see how his eyes might light up if you had told him how you really felt. Feel.

All the logic in the world could not save you now as you blindly sobbed your way towards town, stubbornly wiping at your nose with your handkerchief. If you had really lost him, a very real possibility that twisted your gut painfully and drew an extremely dramatic series of hitching sobs from your breast, he had deserved better. He had deserved to know that he was cherished and admired rather than just a friend to you, and on that front, you had failed so miserably you just might never forgive yourself.

The weeks of watchful waiting were long and painful. No news came, no messages awaited you at Pool Headquarters, no gossip on the bases you visited. Until the morning of the 26th when, to your great relief, and amusement, you learned that the man was alive and well, enjoying a hero’s stay in Moscow, of all places. The newspaper article quoting the absurd volume of vodka he had endured consuming brought a long-absent smile to your face and lightness to your chest, the news beating Major Crosby’s phone call by, at most, thirty minutes. All as you were on your way with your flight engineer to your first routine Lancaster ferry flight.

Climbing into the cockpit, you took the brief moment of solitude to close your eyes, inhaling deeply as you whispered words of gratitude to whatever higher entities had clearly been watching over him. Perhaps luck was never going to run out for Robert Rosenthal. Clearly you were a fool for thinking that was the eventuality here.

“Ma’am?” The timid voice of your flight engineer, Naylor – though everyone called him Tiny Tim for the young man hardly ever spoke above a whisper, pierced through your thoughts and you jolted back to reality quickly, offering him a reassuring smile.

“Let’s pop over to Wales and deliver this bird, shall we?” You did your best to display nothing but confidence in the task before you.

He smiled back with a nod, just as eager as you to get this great beast of a plane into the air. To say that heavies became the primary planes on your delivery roster would have been an overstatement, but they were most definitely a constant. As was the ever-present thought that someday soon you would find yourself face-to-face with Rosie once again and just how to handle that day of reckoning was certainly something you found impossible to decide upon.

Should you confess and apologize on sight? Wait for a few weeks for him to settle back into life on base before unloading your feelings onto him? Or continue on as you had before? The way your stomach plummeted like a wounded bird at the last option was a clear illustration of how impossible it would be to pretend you simply regarded him as a friend. But there was a growing fear as well. For all of your focus on concealing and compartmentalizing your own feelings, you had not once allowed yourself to consider how he might feel for you. Aside from some flattering comments that may have been construed as flirtatious, he had never displayed anything but the highest calibre of warmth and social graces towards you. But you found yourself constantly pondering just how Rosie might react to a confession of what had flickered into an irrepressible blaze in your chest.

In the end, you spent more time sitting with those concerns than those for his very well being, the unseasonable warmth of February continuing on into March, with more sunny days than you had grown accustomed to after living in England for so long. April was only a few days away on the calendar when your next ferry run took to you St. Mawgan to deliver a Lancaster to the RAF Overseas Aircraft Despatch Unit. Where exactly the aircraft’s journey would end was a point of mystery and you were admittedly envious of the pilot who would sit in the lefthand seat next and take it beyond the relative safety of England’s shores – territory that was strictly off limits to you as both a civilian and especially as a woman.

Parting with your flight Engineer Martens in the all-female WAAF mess, the girl avidly ensconced in a conversation comparing beaus with the girls stationed in Cornwall, you headed back out to pick up a damaged Spitfire that had just arrived from France, desperately in need of a visit to the repair depot. In the process of inspecting the aircraft, to ensure you knew precisely what damage you would be needing to overcome, a remarkably familiar voice broke through your concentration.

“She certainly still looks like a lady on the ground…rather mistreated, but definitely a lady nonetheless.”

Straightening and turning far too quickly, you cracked your head on the underside of the fuselage, earning a look of sympathy as his hands cupped your shoulders to pull you closer, out of danger of inflicting further harm to yourself.

“Rosie…” You whispered, staring at him, unable to stop your fingers from reaching out to brush his cheek, to confirm he was real.

The muscles of his face crinkled beneath your touch as he broke out into a smile, an expression you immediately echoed despite the unbidden prick of tears in the corners of your eyes.

“Hi there.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed sharply, face growing slightly solemn as he lay his hand atop yours, pressing your palm fully against his warm skin. “I’ve been a complete fool, and I’m not sure if you can forgive me.” You tilted your head, brows furrowing in bewilderment. “The world out there is dead set on tearing itself apart and I…” His tongue darted out to wet his lips nervously, an emotion you were quite confident you had never seen overcome him before. “The entire time I was struggling to get back here just to tell you. To tell you how much I care for you. You are much more than just a friend to me, and I was an idiot to think I was okay with putting this off until the war was over.”

Eyes widening as the man seemed to be stealing the very thoughts from your head and putting them into words before you even had the chance, you sniffled playful and wiped at a stray tear that had managed to sneak down your cheek. “Don’t you go taking all the credit now, Robert.” You chided warmly, earning a stunned look from him in return. “It has taken two complete fools to deny what we’ve become, wouldn’t you say?”

Huffing a soft laugh, Rosie conceded your point with a nod as he grasped the unbuckled ends of your leather flying helmet, tugging your face closer. “I love you, you incredible woman.”

Taking a notably shaky inhale, you nodded quickly, a few more tears spilling over. “I love you, too, Rosie.” You struggled to speak around the knot of emotions in your throat, fully intending to reciprocate with some sweet term of endearment, not quite certain you could manage.

Mercifully, his lips had the grace to press against yours and save you from trying to say anything more. Grasping the fleece collar of his bomber jacket, you pressed closer in the shadow of the plane you ought to be inspecting, but the Spitfire was doing a fine job of shielding you from prying eyes and five more minutes in the arms of the man you loved – yes, it was love – and had been separated from could easily be made up courtesy of the stiff tail wind you expected on your flight to Southampton.

The rasp of his facial hair made you shiver at the slightly ticklish sensation as he maintained a firm grip on your straps, delivering kiss after kiss as if to make up for lost time. An uncontrollable grin stretched across your lips, making it nearly impossible for him to continue and so he shifted to focus on erasing any trace of tears from your cheeks, only encouraging your grin to curl wider until you were simultaneously giggling and trembling at the feel of his moustache against your jaw.

“Someday, we’ll have a lot more time, and I’m going to spend every second of it kissing you…” His eyes were filled with a fiery intensity that made it awfully difficult to draw breath and you shifted forward to press your lips to his flushed cheek in turn.

“I’m going to hold you to that, Robert Rosenthal.” You nodded firmly as you pulled back, arching sharply as his hands slid to rest against your shoulder blades, his mouth landing on yours fiercely.

“First Officer, are you quite ready?!” The shrill bark of an encroaching member of St. Mawgan’s ground crew wrenched the pair of you apart as effectively as a physical intervention, a shared look of reluctance passing between you as you quickly straightened your clothing.

You noticed his eyes flick to your shoulders to admire your new rank badges.

“You’ve been busy.” He murmured and you smiled with quiet pride.

“Fly Lancasters now, too.” You nodded and pointed over his shoulder to the plane you had flown in that morning before turning to address your intruder as he called your name once more. “Nearly ready, thank you so much for your patience!” You poured on the sweetness in your tone, noting the way Rosie’s eyes narrowed slightly as they returned to your face.

Biting back a giggle you blew him a kiss before emerging around the nose to greet the harried RAF man. “Major Rosenthal of the USAAF has never seen a Spitfire before, he asked me to show him around.”

“Thank you again for your indulgence, Ma’am, they are definitely fine planes. But I will let you get on with it.” Rosie played his part admirably, the set of the intruder’s shoulders easing somewhat.

“Yes, yes, well we need you out of here in five.” He turned to look at the clipboard in his hand and your gaze met Rosie’s once more.

“It was my pleasure, Major. I’d best be off.”

“Of course.” He nodded firmly, eyes remaining locked on yours as he mouthed ‘love you’ making your heart lurch erratically for a few beats as you mouthed it back. “Safe flight.” You spoke aloud.

“You as well.”

Noting the RAF man was once again paying attention to his surroundings, you turned to finish your quick once over of the plane before stepping up onto the wing and slotting into the narrow cockpit before pulling the side flap closed and starting the engine. Once the coast was clear, you blew one last kiss to Rosie, laughing brightly as he made quite a show of catching it and tucking it into his pocket.

“Until next time!” He shouted and you nodded brightly, pulling the canopy closed.

Because there most definitely would be a next time for you and your man of endless luck, and that was something that you no longer wished to deny.

-------------------------

Masters of the Air Masterlist

Postscript - thank you ever so much to @precious-little-scoundrel for proofreading this for me!!

[opencommunion]

"Rather than a mark of technological genius and innovation, as 'Israel' positions itself as the world’s 'tech hub,' its reliance on AI technology marked a significant step in deploying military technology in warfare where the ends justify means, and expediency must counteract rapidly declining labor intensive potential. Israel’s rapid reliance on AI technology doesn’t demonstrate innovative prowess as it is a crutch to fill in the gaps for a massively absent skilled - and willed - fighting force. The 'TikTok Army' attempted to compensate for its hodgepodge of forced conscripts, who clearly have no will to fight - with just pushes of a button. 

Similar to how the US ushered in the 4th industrial revolution to accelerate production output and surplus value at the expense of labor, the Israeli entity is expediting these aims onto the battlefield in the absence of a real fighting force. ... As the US seeks to have artificial intelligence comprise over 90% of internet content by the next year, pioneering on deep fake technology and expanding its weaponization of social media and Google as auxiliary police apparatuses, Israel, having found itself without a fighting force, an army of a well-equipped air force with no ground game or fighters, seeks to perfect the use of Artificial Intelligence in warfare this time around."

[sallymander40k]

Why The Tau Were Never 'Too Good' For 40k

The Tau were added midway through Warhammer 40,000's 3rd edition, though according to some records the idea had been floating around since Laserburn. In the twenty years since their introduction to the 41st millennium, the Tau have remained one of the most consistently reviled and hated aspect of 40k lore, with all complaints around them boiling down to one core issue: they're too good for 40k. By that, people mean that they are too morally good to fit within the grimdark narrative of the 41st millennium. This has always been the primary complaint levied at them, since they were first introduced in 2001. And GW has seemingly agreed with them, and spent the last 20 years trying to inject grimdarkness into the Tau Empire.

The first attempt to grimdarkify the Tau came very early on, with the Tau campaign in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

It's explained how in the decade following Tau victory on Kronus the remaining human population was subjugated, oppressed, forced to give up their culture, and eventually simply sterilized and allowed to die off naturally to create a Tau and Kroot ethnostate on Kronus. It explains this over images of prisoners of war being fed to Krootox in prison camps and humans huddling together in slums.

This is obviously a departure from the image of the Tau as it was established in Codex: Tau (3rd Edition), as that codex makes explicit mention of the Tau trading and making alliances with frontier human colonies. This is also a departure from... common sense. Why exactly would the Tau accept Kroot, Vespid, Nicassar, Demiurg, Tarellians and many others into their ranks but then arbitrarily draw the line at humans?

This would become a pattern that I like to call "The Grimderp Tau Cycle." It's not exactly a stretch to say that the Tau are easily the most morally good society in the 41st millennium. Their tolerance toward other species alone makes them head and shoulders above almost any other species in the galaxy. So to remind people that there are no good guys in the 41st millennium and that this is a very serious and grimdark setting that you need to take seriously because there are no good guys or whatever, GW will occasionally have the Tau commit a completely out of character, random, and nonsensical atrocity. This was also seen at the end of In Harmony Restored, the short story that came out alongside 8th edition's Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good.

For context, In Harmony Restored is a short story about a group of Gue'vesa soldiers (human auxiliary troops fighting in the Tau military) performing a desperate defensive rearguard action to halt an Imperial advance long enough for Tau reinforcements to come and smash the delayed invasion force. The Gue'vesa are able to do this, though at great sacrifice to themselves, and then when the reinforcing army does arrive and makes quick work of the Imperial army they then continue on to butcher the Gue'vesa soldiers who performed this valiant holding action for... Seemingly no reason? Assuming the Tau forces thought they were more Astra Militarum soldiers, the Gue'vesa step out of cover pleading for mercy, only to be gunned down. With one of the Gue'vesa at the end noting that the language one of the Battlesuit pilots is using is very reminiscent of the way the Imperium talks about those they've labeled undesirables.

The message here is clear: these humans betrayed the Imperium in order to escape from the Imperium's genocidal regime... Only to end up in the equally merciless clutches of an equally ruthless oppressor. But, from a lore standpoint, that defeats the entire purpose of the Tau. It makes them wholly indistinct and, frankly, boring. But that doesn't even scratch the surface of how stupid this is, because it has clearly been stated in the past that the Tau do not hold bigotries toward client species on the basis of their faiths. And that makes sense.

Not only does this contradict previous lore, not only does it render the Tau a boring palette swapped version of the Imperium, it also just defies practical sense. If you're a race like the Tau, who expand primarily through ingratiating yourself with other races and convincing them to join your collective, you'd naturally want as few barriers between potential client races and joining as possible. No human colony is going to voluntarily join the Greater Good if the Tau's version of the Greater Good happens to require that the human population of that planet lose all sense of their heritage and culture through forced reeducation and the abandonment of their faith, and in the long term for that human population to slowly go extinct through gradual forced sterilization and confinement to ghettos and slums.

It's deeply stupid, lazy writing on the part of GW to repair the image of the Tau in the eyes of a fandom who accused the faction of being "too good." Except, uhm, here's the thing: the Tau were never too good to begin with. Lets rewind back to 3rd Edition's Tau Codex, our first introduction to the Tau in the 40k universe. From the very beginning it was very clear that the Utopian idealism of the Tau Empire held beneath the surface a significantly more sinister and malevolent nature, and it all roots from the mysterious and enigmatic fifth caste of Tau Society: the Ethereals.

In 3rd Edition, the Ethereals are spoken of more like mythological beings than the slightly mundane way they exist in modern 40k. All we know about them out of this book is that they are the autocratic leaders of the Tau Empire who inspire radical devotion among the Tau, though are rarely seen or heard from. They reorganized Tau society with pursuit of the Greater Good in mind first. But the specifics of what that means matters a lot. Tau are born into a caste that roughly determines, from birth, what role in society that person will fulfill. Those born into a caste are not allowed to have children with members of other castes, are not allowed to take up any job or position that contradicts the societal purpose of their caste, and generally lack self-determination in regards to things like career choice.

so, bam, the setup for Tau as a flawed and morally ambiguous faction are already present. They're a faction who fight for a better future, for a galaxy where all can exist in harmony with one another, so long as that harmony is kosher by the standards of the Ethereal caste. In that sense they're somewhat similar to the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A multispecies interstellar collective who seek to create a galaxy harmoniously unified... in service to the Founders. Just taken from this vision of the Tau Empire, they're already an autocratic dictatorship who fight in the name of an ideology that declares itself to be for the greater good of all who ascribe to it while also relying on the assumption that the tyrannical power of the Ethereals must inherently be for the Greater Good. I reject the idea that the Tau were ever "too good" for 40k. Rather that they were written with a realistic level of nuance, with an understanding that dictatorships are built upon cognitive dissonance, not on perfectly consistent virtues.

TL;DR THEY'RE NOT FUCKING COMMUNISTS, THEY LITERALLY HAVE A CASTE SYSTEM, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

[shattered-eagle]

Shattered Eagle RO Descriptions

Hi all, I got some questions on what the ROs look like and their personalities, so I thought I'd share what I had in mind while writing. All of the ROs are some shade of bisexual, if I hadn't noted that already.

Empress Julia Vitallia Hevernica: The Empress of Iudia is a forty-eight year old woman of average height, with a pale complexion and dark black hair on a slow but steady journey to silver. She has gray eyes which tend to bore icily into whoever she happens to be speaking with. Even as Empress, she has remained active from many years of military campaigning, with a fit and athletic physique. She tends to wear her hair short, barely reaching past her ears.

She is known to be cruel to her enemies, ruling through fear of her merciless wrath. Nevertheless, as a savvy politician, she takes care to project an image of harsh, yet fair, justice at her hand, if dealt with in good faith.

In her most personal relationships, Julia can often be more distant than she intends, as she seeks out understanding and care from her loved ones, despite her cold exterior. She is well known to be estranged from her husband.

Legate Antonius Lethungius/Amalrik Wulfhid: The general of the barbarian auxiliaries is a tall, clean shaven, forty year old man with a great blonde mane of hair. His once youthful good looks have, however, been marred by the scars of countless bloody wars. He has bright green eyes, flecked with a faint gold. A formidable foe in battle, he bears a strong and stout frame.

The Legate is half of 'civilized Iudia' and half of 'barbarous Gruthungia,' and everything from what clothes he wears to what accent he speaks with may change by the audience he finds himself in front of.

As a result, it is difficult to tell whether he is a a fierce, unbowed barbarian warrior, or a obedient, dutiful son of the Empire, an ambiguity is he seems content to maintain.

Ever careful about who he lets get too close, the Legate has been known to be somewhat aloof, trying to steer clear from personal relationships, supposedly out of his sense of obligation to his soldiers and their needs. His resultant lack of experience is then a source of embarrassment, though he does not let others know this readily.

Consul Consentia Plinia Dorcia: An older woman of fifty-fouryears old with a fair complexion, Consentia nevertheless has features that have aged as well as a fine vintage. Her dark brown hair, once near matching her brown eyes, has long since turned grey, however, reaching down a few inches past her shoulders.

Refusing the indulgences that many of the matrician class enjoy, Consentia is healthy and fit for her age, considering the long hours of work she tirelessly puts herself through for the business of the Senate.

Carrying elegance with her every step, she is well known to be polite and courteous to all in search of a new, more republican form of government, though she reserves ire for the 'barbarians' she views as emblematic of Iudia's decline. She is also a skilled orator, giving rousing speeches filled with carefully crafted rhetoric.

In her personal relationships, the Consul has been widowed for many years, having eschewed remarriage. Some whisper she has taken on a paramour or two in the past decades, though few socialites are brave enough to do more than speculate on the matter.

Tribune Ceto Vera: The Tribune is a thirty-eight year old woman with shoulder-length brown hair, an olive complexion and hazel eyes. Her features are calloused and weathered from her upbringing in the harsh streets of the slums of Kyro, an attribute most expressed in her scandalously low-class accent, a trait which she proudly bears even amongst the highest of matricians.

Though she stands rather short, Ceto carries a lean frame, her quick reflexes lending her a vicious talent with a dagger.

Despite her brusque demeanor and crude humor with the ladies of Kyro, however, she carries a talent for rousing the passions of the dispossessed and the discontented, using her criminal empire to generously reward those lending a voice to her populist cause, and ruthlessly make examples out of those who would refuse.

Ceto's personal life is shrouded from the knowledge of most, for all her shameless comments and advances she does not speak much on her past relationships. Nor of how she came to rise to power in the streets, both mysteries being either a source of regret or resentment for her.

Prince Darius of Pharia: Darius is a thirty-three year old man, standing at an average height, with black curly hair, a rich brown complexion, and a short and well groomed beard. In public, he bedecks himself in silks, radiant colors, and copious amounts of fine jewelry.

Trained as a warrior as any Prince should be, he is most skilled in the Pharian repeating crossbow, a curious invention that few Iudians have ever wielded.

Despite his status as a foreign hostage, the man has a charming, almost obsequious manner about him, inviting many dignitaries and notables of the capital for tea and idle talk at his embassy, which supposedly functions as his cage.

Darius often speaks of himself as an open book, and has carried on more than a few flings during his time in Iudia, though none have stuck around very long in the Prince's company.