Settled in the earliest days of the First Sphere of Expansion, Dal'yth swiftly grew into the great trading heart of the T'au Empire, and it has never surrendered that distinction. Its surface swarms with the diplomats and merchants of the Water Caste in numbers no other sept can match, and their genius for negotiation has won Dal'yth an unbroken chain of favourable compacts. So renowned are its bustling markets and orbital exchanges that the world is reckoned among the Nineteen Wonders of the Empire.
Where other septs regard outsiders with wary caution, Dal'yth throws open its gates. Aliens of countless species walk its avenues, buying and selling beneath the watchful mediation of Water Caste facilitators who smooth every cultural friction into profit. It was Dal'yth's envoys who forged the enduring pact with the Demiurg of the Syrr'Tok Brotherhood, bartering for the ion technology that now arms T'au starships, battlesuits and infantry alike, a single agreement whose fruits have reshaped the whole Empire's arsenal.
Yet Dal'yth is no soft merchant-world. It gave the Fire Caste its greatest mind in Commander Puretide, the tactical genius who tutored such champions as O'Shovha, O'Shaserra and O'Kais, and when the Imperium's Damocles Gulf Crusade fell upon the sept, its defenders held with a resolve that belied their reputation for commerce. In Dal'yth the T'au show the galaxy the open hand of the Greater Good, and the closed fist that waits behind it.
T'au Empire
Order of battle
The Dal'yth Sept field the units of the T'au Empire — a detachment from the roster:
Kindred formations
Other T'au Empire formations
Bork'an SeptBork'an is the foremost seat of learning in the T'au Empire, its systems crowded with universities, laboratories and the deep-void observatories of the Earth Caste. From this scholarly sept came breakthroughs such as the stasis field and the first piloted battlesuit, and its Fire Warriors march to war bearing the finest experimental armaments the Empire can produce. Its cadres fight with cold, measured patience, trusting that a lesson learned in the laboratory will be repaid a hundredfold upon the battlefield.
Farsight EnclavesThe Farsight Enclaves are a cluster of fortress-worlds beyond the Damocles Gulf, ruled by the renegade Fire Caste hero the Imperium names Commander Farsight. Severed from the wider Empire and forbidding all Ethereals within their borders, the Enclaves keep to the old warrior traditions and trust the blade and the battlesuit above the words of any spiritual master. To the T'au they are the Forbidden Zone, a heresy that endures; to their own people they are a free realm guarded by the finest commanders alive.
Sa'cea SeptA sprawling and populous sept whose vast manufactories and shipyards keep the empire's war machine supplied.
T'au SeptThe homeworld sept and spiritual capital of the empire, birthplace of the Ethereal caste's founding vision.
Vior'la SeptA volcanic frontier sept renowned for producing the empire's most aggressive commanders and battlesuit pilots.