Gai'kal Sept

The  ( Gai'kal Dialect : i/ɡaɪxæl/, Galactic Standard Tau Lexicon : /ɡaɪkɑːl/) is an isolated Tau Sept straddled far from well-charted routes upon what was once the southernmost limits of the Tau Empire. Colonised during some of the final last days of the second expansion in 710.M41, Gai'kal was forcefully segregated off from the Tau Empire in 728.M41 after it succumbed to a vicious outbreak of Rust, killing off three billion native Tau before containment and euthanisation of all infected hosts formerly eradicated the disease.

For one hundred and sixty three years the sept had willingly isolated itself from the rest of the Tau empire on the direction of the then lead Ethereal Aun'O D'yanoi Hwa'ran, remaining in embargo long after the disease was contained and eradicated, leading to the sept's native castes to develop a unique set of tactical skills, culture, philosophy and dialect. Over the course of its isolation, a dynasty of ethereals descended from Hwa'ran ruled the planet with a controlling grasp, fear-mongering the population into submission and industrial overdrive with the artificial threat of a rust epidemic re-emerging.

With economy and societal development having greatly ossified past a century of isolation, by the reign of the last of the so-called Hwa'ran dynasty, Aun'O Gai'kal Kai'ba, the native population of castes saw through the gradually thinning walls of propaganda and a poisonous and deliberately terrifying ethereal caste cult of personality. By the dusk of 890.M41, growing tremors anti-state hostility had frothed and bubbled to the point where the united Tau workers, diplomats, pilots and soldiers had given up all hope on reunification with the empire and potential disposition of the Hwa'ran elite. An initial strike of thousands of earth caste manufacturers soon spread across entire cities and continents of the planet, motivating their entire caste to leave their factories as well as the air caste to dock and abandon their crafts, the water caste to cease bureaucratic communication, and lastly the fire caste itself, once intended to police the workers back into submission, to rise up and threaten the ruling ethereal caste with resignation or death. What was once sparks of hostility effectively became a fire caste coup d'etat backed by the voice of a billion united Tau citizens, disposing a dynasty of terror with a fully democratic government, and at last reunifying the Sept with the greater Tau Empire.