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Vespid is the homeworld of the Vespids, the intelligent, insectoid aliens who are loyal members of the T'au Empire. Vespid is located three light years to the galactic south of the T'au's D'yanoi Sept.

The planet Vespid is a gas giant with dark violet-hued skies, afflicted with continuous and violent storms. The Vespid race lives in the higher atmospheric regions where the storms are less intense.

Most of Vespid, like the majority of gas giants in the galaxy, is uninhabitable. This environment would appear an unlikely crucible for any form of life, let alone a sentient species, but the Vespid are far from conventional in their biology.

The upper layers of the planet's atmosphere are host to many thousands of floating islands of rock, kept aloft by lighter-than-air gas trapped within. The islands are flat-topped and become narrower towards the base, giving them the appearance of vast, floating stalactites.

It is within this thin atmospheric band that life, against all odds, has evolved. The planet is now home to an incredible variety of lifeforms, many of which compete with the Vespid for these floating islands, while others scrape out an existence at higher and lower levels of the gas giant's atmosphere.

The Vespids make their homes within these floating structures, using their diamond-hard claws to hollow them out like termite mounds to create their residential hives. Because the floating islands are so large and extend so deeply into the atmosphere, the air pressure varies significantly between topmost and bottommost levels.

The lower levels are host to all manner of exotic and unique types of crystal, which only the larger female Vespids have the constitution to reach and harvest. These crystals are the basis of the species' technology, one type of which is used in the construction of the deadly Neutron Blaster utilised by the race's Stingwing warriors in battle.

Though the Vespid have long hollowed out these islands to form their living spaces, their now advanced technology allows some Vespid to live both higher and lower within the atmosphere than the habitable zone.

Sources[]

  • Codex: Tau Empire (4th Edition)
  • Deathwatch: Mark of the Xenos (RPG), pp. 26-27
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