Aun’Va

Aun’Va is the Ethereal Supreme, the paramount spiritual and political ruler of the T’au Empire during the forty-first millennium. As head of the Ethereal caste, he stands above the Fire, Water, Air and Earth castes, and his authority rests on the caste’s long-established role as the T’au’s arbiters and unifiers rather than on force of arms. He is associated with the T’au homeworld and the central councils of the Empire, and he is the figure through whom the doctrine of the Greater Good is most directly expressed.

Aun’Va’s rule coincides with the Third Sphere Expansion and the events surrounding the Damocles Gulf Crusade at the close of the forty-first millennium, when the Empire pressed into Imperial space and clashed with the Astra Militarum, the Adeptus Astartes and other Imperial forces. His name is closely linked with the estrangement of Commander Farsight, the Fire Caste leader of the Vior’la sept, who came to distrust the Ethereal leadership and withdrew to found his own enclaves. Accounts of Aun’Va’s methods, including the degree to which the Ethereal caste influences lesser castes through command and persuasion, differ in emphasis, and later tradition treats him as both a unifying figure and a concealed source of discord within the Empire.

Aun’Va’s standing is that of the central authority against which the other leaders of the T’au are measured, among them Farsight, Commander Shadowsun and the Ethereal Aun’Shi. His fate in the current era is not settled on this page and is recorded here as unknown pending confirmation against on-site timeline entries; the Empire’s map anchor is the T’au homeworld, and the Ethereal Supreme is the timeline hook for the Empire’s expansion in the late forty-first millennium.