Commander Farsight

Commander Farsight, properly Shas’O Vior’la Shovah Kais Mont’yr and also called O’Shovah, is the T’au commander who leads the Farsight Enclaves. He belongs to the Fire caste, the T’au warrior caste, and has lived for at least three centuries, far beyond the normal T’au lifespan. The Enclaves are a T’au polity that seceded from the T’au Empire and admit no Ethereals, the members of its ruling caste. Within the Empire he is called the Great Traitor and He who Renounced the Greater Good. His bond-mates (ta’lissera) include O’Shaserra, Commander Shadowsun, and Kais.

Farsight was born on Vior’la in about the 700s.M41 and trained at the sept’s Fire Warrior academy in the war simulations of the Mont’yr Battle Dome; he later regarded Vior’los as his homeworld. As a young Fire Warrior named Shoh he served in the Veil War against the Arachen in the Western Veil. Promoted to battlesuit pilot after a Trial by Fire, he led the team that assassinated the Arachen Trinity during Commander Dawnstone’s final offensive and lost most of his left leg. He then became a disciple of Commander Puretide, alongside Kais and Shaserra, training on Dal’yth and surviving the conditions of Mount Kan’ji. He won his name in the Arkunasha War against Waaagh! Dok. Accounts differ on whether that war came before or after the Damocles Crusade, and on its course: one describes a decisive defence, another a long campaign that included a defeat at Ghoul’s Gorge, an evacuation ordered by the Ethereals and a return a year later. He recorded his study of Ork behaviour in the Book of the Beast.

In the Damocles Crusade of 742–745.M41 he led Mont’ka cadres, forces trained in the T’au doctrine of the decisive strike. He was nearly killed fighting the Ultramarines Cato Sicarius and Jorus Numitor, inflicted a humiliation on the Scar Lords on Dal’yth, and studied the tactics of the Hammers of Dorn in order to counter them. The Scar Lords later attacked Vior’los. One account dates the Battle of Vior’los to 745.M41, at the close of the crusade, and another to the Farsight Expedition; in both, the Ethereals abandoned the world, and Farsight freed it with a few followers and destroyed the Chapter. In the Farsight Expedition of about the 750s.M41 he reclaimed worlds lost during the crusade, disobeyed the Ethereal Council by turning on a large Ork fleet, and fought the Warboss Grog Ironteef on Atari Vo, Tinek’la, Salash’hei, Lub’grahl and Vior’los before killing him in single combat. On Arthas Moloch daemons emerged from a portal at the Great Star Dais and killed the Ethereals accompanying his army. Farsight closed the portal with the Dawn Blade, an alien sword he found there and has carried since.

The battle convinced Farsight that the Ethereals concealed knowledge of such powers. He refused the order to return to the T’au Empire and consolidated his conquests into the Farsight Enclaves, established by 760.M41. Soon afterwards he left their government to six of his closest advisers and went into exile in the wastes of Vior’los, leaving his battlesuit and the Dawn Blade behind. In 997.M41 a Tyranid fleet invaded the Enclaves; accounts name Hive Fleet Kraken or a tendril of Hive Fleet Gorgon. Farsight returned to lead the defence, at the head of eighty Crisis battlesuit teams in one account. Another records that he was gravely wounded, rescued by Torchstar, betrayed to the Ethereals, sentenced to Malk’la, a ritual punishment, aboard the Hand of Aun’Va, and released after winning a duel before Aun’Va with the aid of the Ethereal Aun’shi. In 998.M41, having mastered Puretide’s teaching, he concluded that the Damocles Crusade had been a Kauyon, an ambush on a strategic scale, staged by Aun’va and the Ethereals, and kept the conclusion to himself.

In the Second Agrellan Campaign of 999.M41 Farsight led a Mont’ka assault on Agrellan alongside Shadowsun, survived an assassination attempt, and left before the battle ended; ordered to capture him, Shadowsun warned him in advance. In the War of Dakka he fought Grog’s successor, the Warboss Nazdreg Ug Urdgrub, with a new doctrine, the Way of the Short Blade, and ended the war by landing on Dregrokk and defeating Nazdreg aboard the battlefortress Gitcrusha. The arrival of the Chaos host of the Daemon Prince Ughalax drew him back to Arthas Moloch during the Arks of Omen campaign. There Commander Brightsword was killed; Farsight activated the Dais portal with enemy blood, was briefly overcome by bloodlust, and led the withdrawal, later returning to find the Dais inactive. He is also recorded as defending the T’au-aligned world of Etorras against Black Templars under Castellan Draco.

Farsight leads the Eight, a council of senior commanders and honour guard that includes an AI-crewed Broadside battlesuit, Ob’lotai; a warrior sealed permanently in his suit, Bravestorm; and the Earth caste engineer O’Vesa. He pilots a modified battlesuit, is regarded as the master of the Mont’ka, and, unlike most T’au, holds close combat to be a vital part of war. The Enclaves govern each world through a locally elected council and use the reversed colours of the Vior’la sept.

Though born on Vior’la, Lexicanum records that Farsight regards Vior’los, capital of the Farsight Enclaves, as his homeworld; the Enclaves are also known to the T’au Empire as the Forbidden Zone. His self-imposed exile in the wastes of Vior’los, leaving battlesuit and Dawn Blade with O’Vesa, is recorded as having spared him from the corruption of the Chaos Gods Khorne and Tzeentch that had begun to take hold on Arthas Moloch.

After the Second Agrellan Campaign he set course for T’lasa to aid that world against Hive Fleet Leviathan. Despite that aid, the Ethereal Council ordered Shadowsun to capture him; she warned him in secret so that he might escape. In 999.M41 the Knights of Blood Chapter attacked Lub’grahl and killed nearly a thousand Earth caste scientists before Farsight’s fleet arrived and his forces destroyed them, in the first recorded use of Riptide battlesuits in the Enclaves.

He pilots a modified XV86 Crisis battlesuit with an advanced Hazard Suite developed during the Arkunasha War and armed with a plasma rifle, and since Arthas Moloch he has carried the Dawn Blade, an alien sword whose chronophagic alloys are said to add a slain foe’s remaining lifespan to the wielder’s—the secret of his longevity, unknown to him in full. On the map his career is bound to Vior’la, Vior’los and the Enclave worlds of the Damocles Gulf; on the timeline, to the Damocles Crusade, the Farsight Expedition, the break with the Ethereals, and the later wars of the Enclaves through the Arks of Omen.