Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25618639-20150220210346/@comment-6078851-20150228160602

while i can't direct you to the specific page it was this wiki where i read about the previous human empire having some form of a hostile-less alliance with the eldar (or maybe just a non-aggression treaty), and this wiki that mentions humans betrayed that alliance. i havn't come across anything that states the nature of the betrayal, but stealing tech from the eldar wouldn't surprise me: the eldar in their superiority wouldn't want lesser species to achieve comparable tech and they would probably demand that any eldar tech an ally-species gets their hands on be returned. but humans, being humans, don't let something like a treaty get in the way of things they want, and as long as they could reach a battlefield where eldar forces died in abundance they could scavenge plenty. the eldar discovering this and being refused their demand, or outright lied to, would probably end such an alliance.

as for 'blind' warp travel - the reason for short 'dips' is to keep a relative bearing each time they drop out into realspace - the warp is analagous to an ocean, it has currents and tides, shallows and deeps, and very short trips only enter the shallows where the risk of being lost, while still a risk, is minimal. this is how warp travel was initially used as long trips through warpspace, which have to use the deeps of the warp, almost always ended with the ships being lost.

the tau indeed have no psykers, their species as a whole barely has a warp presence, but i thought they did have ftl. they have no access to warp travel but they cover a fair size of space (not compared to any other species but in terms of the actual realspace distances their empire spans) and they have pretty good travel times between worlds. i havn't yet read the new tau codex but i thought they would have to have ftl capabilities - if they can't use the warp and didn't have ftl surely they wouldn't have spread as far as they have as quickly as they have, no?