Damocles Gulf Crusade - T'au and Humanity: Exactly when the T'au Empire and the Imperium of Man first made contact with one another is unknown, for each was slow to recognise the nature of the other. For the T'au's part, it was fringe, dissident or overtly Renegade elements of Humanity that they first encountered, in the form of free captains and pirates across the coreward borders of the region called the Damocles Gulf in the Eastern Fringe to the galactic east of Terra.The initial contacts ranged from friendly negotiations and trade to outright hostility. It was some time before the T'au Water Caste diplomats understood the fact that the Humans they had encountered were merely the forgotten outcasts of an incomprehensibly vast interstellar empire that stretched across the entirety of the Milky Way Galaxy.This empire was so vast that any overt aggression on the T'au's part might lead to the outright destruction of their nascent empire and the extinction of their species. Though many of the more passionate leaders of the T'au Fire Caste called for a war of conquest against the Imperium, the Ethereals issued their instructions for the integration of the Imperium of Man into the T'au Empire.The Water Caste were to align themselves with nearby dissident Human factions and over the course of several solar decades of patient negotiations insinuate themselves into the courts of several dozen Imperial Commanders (planetary governors).The influence of the T'au thus spread further and more rapidly into the Imperium than any amount of military conquest could have taken it, until a swathe of Human worlds were trading with the T'au Empire in preference to the Imperium's own merchant trade cartels and Rogue Traders.Alien goods and technology flowed through the markets of these border worlds in blatant contradiction of the laws of the Imperium. The second phase of the Ethereals' instructions were thus ready to be initiated.Upon a score of Imperial worlds, Water Caste envoys whispered long-rehearsed words into willing ears. The seeds of rebellion had long been cultivated by the T'au and now bore traitorous fruit as each Imperial governor declared themselves free of the shackles of the Imperium's rule.In the ensuing power vacuum, the T'au Empire expanded, claiming for themselves those Human worlds that later came to be known as the Farsight Enclaves.The Imperium's response was unusually swift but characteristically brutal. War was declared and the Damocles Gulf Crusade was launched by the Ultima Segmentum Command, involving units of the Astra Militarum, the Imperial Navy and several Chapters of Space Marines.Within a short period of time, the T'au's influence was pushed back across the Damocles Gulf, but only at great cost to the human armies. In time, the momentum of the Imperium' armies was spent and more pressing concerns, such as the first Tyranid invasion of the galaxy, called for their more immediate deployment.An uneasy peace ultimately descended across the war-torn border sectors of the Imperium and the T'au Empire. The Imperium had demonstrated but the smallest fraction of its size and power, yet the T'au had gained invaluable insight into its methods, strategies and tactics.More importantly, the T'au had learned that those Humans who were disenfranchised or rejected by the Imperium could be manipulated. Surely, the T'au Ethereals reasoned, no matter its size, no power so given to devouring its own people could ultimately stand before the manifest destiny of the T'au to expand the Greater Good across the galaxy.