Ty Finocchiaro - Renegade Enclave: After pouring over all the background material, I'm pretty convinced that O'shovah has become tainted in some fashion. I'm not speaking in the sense of Chaos corruption, though. The Tau seem to manifest zero psyker-like abilities and thus are safe from the ravages of the Warp. So, I'm not implying that O'shovah is all tentacled, full of teeth, and coursing with barely contained energies. Nah, that doesn't seem like his style. Instead, I believe he has been subtly seduced or unwittingly chosen to fall in league with a much older, eldritch power...

Arthas-Moloch seems to be the key to the whole mystery. It was on this dead Artifact World that all his Ethereals died in an unknown fashion, and it was there that he found the Dawn Blade — an alien artifact that flickers with unknown energies. Once you do the math, it's pretty clear to me that O'shovah is now a tool of the Necrontyr. I chose to model him and his followers as such.

Think about it: Farsight is cut off from the Tau Empire and in desperate need of basic materials and supplies for his forces. So, he recalls Arthas-Moloch, discovers a new power source, redesigns his weapons, tanks, and battlesuits to accept the power source, and presto — Farsight becomes tainted by the power found in the machines of the Necrontyr.

With this insane (but possible!) theory in mind, I set out to build some Necron/Tau hybrid Battlesuits and weaponry. For the most part, I used existing Tau bitz (especially the new Special Issue weapons...) integrated with green glowy rods. A simple glowy rod bit protruding from a Plasma Rifle evokes the Necron influence nicely. To reflect some of the more-elaborate materials O'shovah has stooped to using, I incorporated Wraith carapaces into each of the battlesuits. They fit in place really nice and drive home the whole Necron thing.

I tried to add blades to some of the weapons and make Shield Generators standard on each of the battlesuits to represent the close-combat tactics encouraged by Commander Farsight. For the Shield and Gun Drones, I combined some Scarab heads and Wraith arms to represent O'shovah's new vision for the Tau. All in all, it was fun to sit back, theorize, and then build some unique models. Maybe there's a shadowy corner of the Warhammer 40,000 universe where you could try something like these conversions with your gaming group?

Just a quick note on modeling this theme: if one were to try this project, the green glowy bits would obviously have to be added after painting was complete!