Darkstrider

Darkstrider, born Sub-Commander El’Myamoto, is a T’au Pathfinder who has twice refused promotion to battlesuit rank. Of the T’au sept, he passed the Trials by Fire that mark a Pathfinder’s formal accession, and was twice offered advancement into battlesuit service — once in connection with a Stealth cadre — and twice declined it. His stated reasoning holds that Pathfinders die where their deaths serve a purpose, while battlesuits are too often lost in the wrong places; the T’au Empire’s command structure, built on specialisation in service of the Greater Good, has generally accommodated the choice, though not without friction from officers who expect obedience to run alongside skill.

His record spans several of the Empire’s formative and contested campaigns. On Dal’yth he destroyed a set of Necron mechanisms whose purpose is not recorded in surviving accounts. On Nep’tan he hunted down a tri-headed beast that had eluded earlier T’au patrols. He earned the name Darkstrider during the Wars of Confederation, the T’au Empire’s early campaigns to unite the septs, by infiltrating Ork encampments and designating the components of their Gargants with markerlights so that T’au strike forces could destroy them from range. Later, amid the fighting at Mu’gulath Bay, he broke from protocol to pursue an Imperial Vindicare assassin operating against T’au forces, judging that the assassin would not wait for him to file a report through proper channels.

Darkstrider’s conduct divides opinion within the T’au command hierarchy. Some officers classify his repeated refusals and departures from procedure as insubordination, while Commander Shadowsun, among his more prominent contemporaries, regards his independence as an asset worth preserving. The Ethereals who oversee the Greater Good find his methods troublesome even as they accept their results, and within the T’au sept he remains a figure whose loyalty is unquestioned even where his obedience is not. As of the present era he is recorded as active, his missions continuing to be described as consistently hazardous, and consistently survived.