Aun'Va

Among the Ethereal caste, whose members already command a reverence the other castes rarely question, Aun'Va occupies a position apart even from his peers. Ancient by T'au standards and kept alive through means the empire guards as a closely held secret, he has personally overseen the Tau'va's expansion across more sept worlds and military campaigns than any other living Ethereal, and his counsel is treated by the Fire, Earth, Water, and Air castes alike as close to infallible.

Aun'Va rarely walks a battlefield himself, yet his presence transforms any campaign he attends into something approaching a holy crusade in the eyes of the warriors fighting under him. Fire Warriors who serve near him have been known to fight with an intensity that surprises even veteran commanders, a devotion the Ethereal caste's critics attribute to subtle biochemical or psychological influence the Ethereals have never openly acknowledged, and one the T'au themselves would likely never think to question in the first place.

As the empire's expansion has accelerated and its wars grown costlier, Aun'Va's guidance has increasingly shaped not just individual campaigns but the very direction of T'au civilization, from the integration of newly conquered client species to the doctrine governing contact with the older, stranger powers the empire has begun to encounter at its ever-widening borders. He remains, for most T'au citizens, the clearest living embodiment of everything the Greater Good is meant to be.