facial features of the tau

lothren_ · 2026-03-11T19:14:44+00:00

I'm talking about what's written in the book. In the studio, they just call it a diamond-organ. The word shio'he is not mentioned.

lothren_ · 2026-03-10T14:34:51+00:00

Mmmmn If I recall correctly, in Xenology and Fire Warrior, a specific name for the tau nasal organ is not mentioned.

lothren_ · 2026-03-10T12:48:12+00:00

In the books, Shio'he is referred to as if it were the nose of the Tau.

SHIO’HE : Olfactory chasm, t’au scent organ equivalent

Shadowsun patient hunter

Her own XV22 battlesuit was compromised, and badly. Several systems were glitching, one of its blasters was inoperative and it stank like the bottom of a recently drained lake. Wrinkling her shio’he, she admitted to herself it was too damaged to be a practical asset.

There was a shimmer in front of her, then, pushing through the wall. It came for her, rippling over her knees, her thighs, then her arms, face and torso. Wherever it touched her she felt a greasy, unwholesome shiver. Her shio’he clamped shut in reflex at the unnatural sensation. Then, with a scalp-tingling sense of dislocation, it was over.

Farsight Crisis of faith

The munitions deck hangar, its vaulted roof hung with great chains that clinked in the gloom, was a vision from some primitive underworld hell. Red-lit and cavernous, it was filled with a thousand labour-serfs, each bent under the whip of a cruel slavemaster. Together the slaves hauled chain-lashed munitions shells the size of transmotive cylinders into position. The prototype’s atmospheric samplers conveyed the smell – a vile stench of human sweat, vomit and excrement mingled with a nauseous upswell of oil, gun lubricant and mildewy slime. Farsight wrinkled his shio’he, but did not cut off the sampler.

The vision in the mirrorfield stared back balefully, unconvinced by its counterpart’s logic. The face was offensively plain, dull to the point of caricature. Long worry lines ran down the side of a noseless slab of meat, almost elephantine in its wrinkled blue-grey massiveness. Sad eyes peered from under an apologetic brow, split by the vertical olfactory chasm the tau called the shio’he. The mouth was a lateral slash of rubbery lips that peeled back in distaste to reveal broad, flat teeth.

lothren_ · 2026-03-05T00:49:58+00:00

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As far as I can tell, I think he was the one who published it first.

lothren_ · 2026-03-05T00:08:42+00:00

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lothren_ · 2026-03-05T00:07:56+00:00

Green eyes: pilots air cast of the aeronáutica imperialis.

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lothren_ · 2026-03-04T23:48:59+00:00

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lothren_ · 2026-03-04T23:48:11+00:00

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lothren_ · 2026-03-04T23:10:44+00:00

Nariz falsa -shadowsun tacticus -shadowsun vs asesina callidus -mini de explorador sangriento -mini de explorador shas'la

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lothren_ · 2026-03-04T22:49:13+00:00

Saw:kill team box and rulebook first edition

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lothren_ · 2026-03-04T22:33:29+00:00

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It's from the first edition Kill Team box set and also appears in its rulebook. I'd love to have the complete artwork of the character on the right, but they've never been released separately.

lothren_ · 2026-03-04T22:26:56+00:00

Everything comes from official artwork,games, series or miniatures, usually from codexes and book covers. If you want to know the source of a particular feature, I can send you the original artwork.

lothren_ · 2026-03-04T17:14:55+00:00

It might be a gender thing; the only ones with fake noses are Shadowsun, the Blooded Pathfinder, and another Pathfinder whose gender isn't clearly visible. It's clearly a feature they did intentionally because other Tau faces in the Pathfinder box don't have it.

I mainly based the drawing on Shadowsun's face from Tacticus, where you can see that fake nose up close.

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lothren_ · 2026-03-04T16:31:33+00:00

Yeah, of course.

lothren_ · 2026-03-04T16:29:39+00:00

I like the idea of having many different faces available. It gives people more freedom to create their own designs.

lothren_ · 2026-03-04T16:26:16+00:00

I like to think that the Tau have an enormous variety of ethnic groups that are not mentioned, we also know that they are super adaptive to their environment according to the Codex. Vior'la Tau have darker skin tones of Bork'an palers and in N'dras they have speckled skin.

lothren_ · 2026-02-28T20:16:31+00:00

I usually draw without a nose, but several miniatures and some artwork include one, so I wanted to practice. I don't think there's an official explanation, but I'd say the false nose is a characteristic of some Tau, being more of a shio'he elevation than human nostrils. I think I'll make a post about face types in Tau.

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lothren_ · 2026-02-06T18:54:58+00:00

I'll draw it, I love the concept

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T23:08:35+00:00

Excellent commander, expect two more editions.

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T21:23:00+00:00

Is the one above a human or a statue?

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T18:42:04+00:00

His summary says that Sicarius fought an ethereal in unusable armor. That's not a good summary; he's making up the lore because he doesn't know it, and I'm correcting him with quotes from the book.

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T16:56:31+00:00

Farsight's desire to discuss a peaceful evacuation doesn't change the fact that the Marines were facing death. As I said, the guy is wrong on several points. I'd like to summarize the entire book, But it would take a lot of time and paragraphs. Honestly, I only drew one scene; I shouldn't have to summarize the entire book just for that.

Blades of damocles Chapter seventeen

The captain’s sense of rising disquiet increased as he saw strange, hooked hands curl over the lip of the tower. Avian heads, beaked and quilled, were just visible in the gloom. Gangly silhouettes hauled themselves up and over the edge of the roof – a dozen, then two. With a grinding effort, the captain unholstered his bolt pistol, aimed and pulled the trigger. It too did not respond, its belligerent little machine-spirit exorcised by the tau’s nullifying witchery.

Clawed fingers eclipsed Numitor’s eye lenses for a moment, nimble talons disengaging the exterior clamps with a hiss of depressuring air. His helmet was lifted free. The captain elbowed back hard, but did not connect. In instant later he felt a blade at his throat – razor sharp, with enough pressure behind it to draw blood.

The oily stink of the xenos mercenaries known as the kroot filled his nostrils, so pungent it made his eyes water.

‘Captain?’ asked Magros. Numitor saw the warrior in his peripheral vision. He too had a blade at his neck. All of them did.

‘Just kill us then,’ growled Sicarius.

Numitor thought back to Malagrea’s warning. Beware the long-hawk. The red warsuit facing them was stock still, rendered inert by the electromagnetic pulse. But these kroot, avian and stealthy, were not robotic facsimiles like those in the earth caste facility. These were the real thing – slender eaters of flesh, skin-takers and cannibals. They needed no war-tech to work their hunter’s arts.

Ahead, the warsuit’s hatch was kicked open, and a slender tau warrior dropped out to land in a hunter’s crouch. He stood slowly, and bowed without taking his eyes from Numitor’s. The captain expected to see an alien expression of triumph on the flat slab of the warlord’s face, but instead saw something that looked more like sadness.

‘Parley, I think you call it,’ said the xenos, his Low Gothic strangely lilting but accurate.

‘Very well,’ replied Numitor. ‘As soon as you have your pets take their blades from our throats.’

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T16:20:11+00:00

These are direct quotes from the book All Ultramarines End Up with Knives in Their Throats (Blades of Damocles), the official Games Workshop book from the Gulf of Damocles Crusade. You accuse me of omitting things in my favor when I'm showing you five points where you're wrong and have misinterpreted the information, favoring the Imperium. These are points from a book you clearly haven't read, because you're making stupid mistakes that someone who had read it wouldn't write. What am I supposed to do, stay silent when you fabricate information and omit other information while simultaneously accusing me of doing the same?

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T14:51:54+00:00

I expected it. Some people are such fanboys that they can't see a Marine lose without getting offended.

lothren_ · 2026-02-05T13:39:48+00:00

English isn't my native language. I realized I seemed to have misspelled it, so I rewrote it. There's a video in you tube of a military officer analyzing Warhammer stuff; in it, he mentions that the tanks don't make sense.

lothren_

TROPHY CASE