kroot
Welcome to the Krootiest website in the galaxy filled with the Krootiest things.
The Kroot are their own race but are part of the Tau race, a race that fight for peace. The Kroot lived a tribal existence on their homeworld of Pech, which is located to the galactic north-east of the Tau homeworld.
At some point in their history, Pech was visited by an OrkRok. The survivors were faced by a warrior race with a 'taste for flesh', and subsequently wiped out. As Ork knowledge is encoded in their DNA (see Ork biology), the Kroot were quickly able to mimic aspects of Ork technology within a few generations.
Over the next thousand years, Pech's primary continent became host to at least five Kroot 'hive cities', each containing millions of Kroot. Farming and mining became commonplace during a time known as the 'Kroot Expansionist Phase'. The Kroot were able to construct crude Warp-capable vessels, known as warspheres. With these, the Kroot were able to colonize numerous worlds.
During this time, the Kroot encountered the Orks again, but in this instance the Orks had the advantage. Untried leaders and untested tactics resulted in a string of defeats for the Kroot, as they were forced off their newly-claimed worlds. The Kroot were forced to fight a guerrilla war on their own worlds, and many Kindreds who escaped the initial slaughter became mercenaries for other races to survive. The Orks were able to invade Pech, and at one point less than 50,000 Kroot remained.
During this time of crisis, the Tau first encountered the Kroot while exploring their region of space; first their dead bodies on a world razed by the Orks, then when two Kroot Warpsheres unintentionally led an Ork fleet into the midst of a Tau Colonization Fleet. Soon after meeting the Kroot, the commander of the Colonization Fleet learned that another Ork fleet was entering the system. He ordered the fleet's colonist passengers and attendant Hunter Cadres to the surface, scuttled the vessels that could not land on the surface, and ordered his fastest ships to alert the Tau Empire. It was several Tau years before reinforcements could arrive, and during that time the fleet's Fire Warriors learned to work together with the primitive Kroot, with battlefield tactics becoming increasingly integrated. When reinforcements finally arrived to destroy the Orks in that system, the Fire Warriors pledged to help liberate the Kroot's worlds from the Orks, a process that lasted for many more years and resulted in the incorporation of the Kroot into the fledgling Tau Empire.
After Pech was freed from Ork influence, the Kroot mercenaries who had escaped the war advocated a return to the time before the incursion. However, those who had fought the Orks on the Kroot's worlds did not wish to rebuild a society which had led them to war, but ill-prepared them for it. Led by the legendary shaper Anghkor Prok, these Kroot wanted to revert further, to a point before the first Ork Rok had landed on Pech. A compromise was reached, with the traditional ways respected on Pech and the other Kroot worlds, while Kindreds traveled to serve as mercenaries to the Tau and other races, returning periodically to pass on newly-acquired genetic material to future generations.
In the 41st millennium, Pech is a wild and untamed world; the hive cities reclaimed by the forest. Contact between the Kroot and the Imperium was first made during the Damocles Gulf Crusade, with the Kroot heavily damaging an Imperial Guard regiment before they were reinforced by the Scythes of the Emperor. Later contact between the Imperium and the Kroot has been made, with several worlds bordering Tau space recruiting Kroot mercenary forces to supplement their own.
The most common venue in which the Kroot are encountered are the Tau Hunter Cadres, where they serve as auxiliaries. They are the most common non-Tau in the Tau military, and are an almost completely self-sufficient addition to any Cadre. Kroot Kindreds are naturally skilled at field craft and infiltration, and are often used as scouts.
However, while the treaty which resulted in the inclusion of the Kroot into the Tau Empire, one of its conditions was that not all Kroot mercenaries were to be seconded to the Hunter Cadres, as to do so would result in a stagnation of Kroot evolution. Mercenary armies are often dispatched from the Kroot worlds, and fight alongside many forces in the local region of the galaxy, including the Imperial Guard, the Eldar, and even the Orks.
As the less-developed section of the Kroot brain is also the section responsible for ingenuity and imagination, Kroot tactics are relatively stagnant. Their style of warfare is dependent on their skill and viciousness in close combat, drawn from their fast reflexes and strong musculature. Their skills lie in tracking and guerrilla warfare, and the Kroot Kindreds are reliant on technologically advanced employers to supply and equip them in sieges and drawn-out campaigns.
