Vespid

The Vespid are an insectoid xenos species native to the crystalline colonies orbiting gas giants at the fringe of T'au space. Winged and chitinous, they dwell within vast hive-crystals, and their natural language of clicks and modulated tones lies utterly beyond human or T'au comprehension. Only through the neutron-tipped communion helms devised by the Earth Caste can the Vespid understand their allies at all.

The Vespid serve the T'au Empire as Stingwings, elite skirmishers who fall upon foes from above and shred armour with their neutron blasters. Their loyalty, however, is a matter of quiet dispute. Some scholars whisper that the translation-helms do more than translate: that they subtly reshape Vespid thought, binding the strain-leaders to the Greater Good whether they willed it or not.

Remote and inscrutable, the Vespid remain among the least understood of the T'au auxiliaries. They fight with alien grace, swarming through broken terrain and open sky where slower soldiers cannot follow. What they think of the empire that harnesses them, or of the helms clamped about their throats, no outsider can say. They click and they kill, and the Greater Good spreads a little further on their iridescent wings.