Commander Farsight - Adapt and Destroy: The bitter war upon Dal'yth was characterised not by martial prowess alone, but by a hectic race for information. The two stellar empires fought not only to defeat their foes but to understand their weaknesses. The Imperium changed its tactics after the Battle of Via'mesh'la, where outgunned Imperial Guard regiments successfully charged a T'au gunline and, despite sustaining heavy casualties, won a bloody victory purely with bayonets and boots. Since that day, the Imperial invaders drove in to engage the T'au at close quarters wherever they could.For his part, O'Shovah studied the Imperium's forces relentlessly. He endlessly adapted stratagies, counterstrategies and target priorities, distributing Drone-borne guider programs to all of his commanders. The Imperium took its own tactical manual, the Codex Astartes, and applied its principles to whatever the T'au threw at them. The Hammers of Dorn Chapter were especially efficient at codifying T'au threats and responding in force, for they lived every word of the Codex and never deviated from its teachings, no matter the cost. Farsight took a great interest in the patterns that emerged during the Imperial war effort, making extensive notes and even refining prototype simulations as the war unfolded. He noted that the Imperial armies appeared to value armour above all else, and so he pioneered the deadly Sunforge pattern of Battlesuit armament as a counter. This allowed Crisis Teams to drop down from Manta destroyers onto their vehicular prey, cripple them at close range with blasts from their dual Fusion Blasters, and then boost off into the skies once more to be picked up by the Mantas on the return run. Meanwhile, O'Shaserra took her Stealth Cadres to the dark side of Dal'yth, constantly moving in rotation with the system's sun so that every raid she performed was under cover of darkness. Farsight monitored her progress not through open communication, but by the trail of smoking wrecks she left in her wake.Despite their best efforts, the forces Farsight and O'Shaserra had at their command could not be everywhere at once. The Imperium was a powerful foe indeed, and unlike the barbarous Ork race, it appeared to have a strategy worked out for every combat environment and tactic the T'au could engineer. In defiance of the Fire Caste's spirited defence, the Imperium had gradually, but irresistibly, overtaken several of the planet's cities, slaughtering any T'au within and fortifying the war-torn structures. The Ethereals in overall command of the war effort could not countenance such losses. Ever more extreme measures were taken to stall the Imperial advance whilst reinforcements were brought in from the other worlds in the Sept, and beyond, yet on the field of battle, far more drastic measures were being taken.To Farsight's quiet horror, experimental neurochip prototypes containing the recorded strategies of Commander Puretide were surgically installed in the minds of Cadre Fireblades and Battlesuit T'au Commanders, allowing them to function as military leaders that thought alike and could adapt to any situation. That was the theory, at least -- though the so-called Swords of Puretide enjoyed great success against the rank and file, when the forces of the Imperium brought forth strange, gaunt psykers who reduced battlesuits to ruin with gestures of their wizened hands, the implanted leaders had none of their own previous learnings to draw upon and faltered badly; the confusion cost hundreds of lives as the minds of their leaders struggled to respond to this new threat.