The two kill teams in Kill Team: Hivestorm are more alike than either might suspect – elite airborne warriors carrying potent armour-piercing weapons with an ironclad dedication to their duty – but the Imperials could be forgiven for not knowing much about the Vespid. These insectoid aliens have been part of the T’au Empire for a long time, but mostly stayed in the background until now, which is why it’s time to catch up with where they’ve been – and why the Fire caste has chosen now to deploy them as kill teams.
Vespid Stingwings made their first appearance in the fourth edition Codex: T’au Empire back in the misty days of 2006, joining the Kroot as only the second client species to appear on the tabletop. This debut solidified them as fast and lightly armoured shock troops who could eviscerate their opponents with deadly neutron blasters, and introduced many long-standing concepts such as their reliance on the Strain Leader’s communion helm to coordinate with T’au allies.
These helms trace their origin back to the first days of the Empire’s arrival on the Vespid homeworld, where the natural aggression of the bug-like aliens combined with their trouble communicating with Water caste envoys kept both sides at arm’s length. It wasn’t until the Earth caste offered up the communion helms that Strain Leaders were able to convey their unique language – consisting of wing vibrations, pheromone secretions, and possibly even gestalt telepathy – into a form T’au envoys could understand.
It wasn’t long after that Fire caste commanders began to deploy these natural-born warriors onto the battlefield in packs of Stingwings, or Mal’kor in the T’au language, where they distinguished themselves through speed and self-reliance. The limits of the communion helms, however, meant that diversifying the Vespid doctrine was slow, and many commanders wondered quite what Stingwings could offer that Crisis Battlesuit teams could not.
When T’au strategists began to get more creative with their auxiliaries, they found that Vespid teams were capable of much more complex operations than had initially been thought, provided the Strain Leader had contact with a Fire caste advisor to convey the intricacies of their commanders’ plans. Experiments that connected a handler with the Strain Leader through a neural link proved to be a resounding success, and the presence of an MV44 Oversight Drone now enables Stingwing kill teams to last for weeks in the field when coupled with their ability to digest almost any organic matter.
Now, more requests are made for Vespid reinforcements than ever before. Advancements in neutron crystal technology have given rise to a number of impressively deadly weapons, such as grenades that emit sudden bursts of lethal radiation, which cook unfortunate foes from the inside out, and high-powered launchers to fire them from. Luckily, the Vespid are themselves immune to the radiation given off by these crystals. The deadly effects of these weapons on other organics are the main reason why only they continue to use neutron technology so far.
Despite almost complete social and cultural differences, the Fire caste deeply respect their Vespid auxiliaries, and the Shas’ui selected to guide a Stingwing team take great pride in their comrades. So remarkable are their recent successes that T’au commanders have granted them an unheard of honour – equipping squads with a weapon previously available only to their vaunted battlesuit teams – and the operatives known as Swarmguards have already put the T’au flamer to great use driving off innumerable hordes that would otherwise tax the fire rate of their neutron blasters.
As part of the T’au Empire’s efforts on Volkus, Vespid Stingwing kill teams have been deployed on critical operations, where their speed and resilience allows them to infiltrate through the curtain of air defences ringing the Massif Ballistus. Their warlike ways will be put to the test when they meet the Tempestus Aquilons in the field, but the Fire caste has every confidence that their battle-hardened auxiliaries will win the day.
Later this week we’ll have a covert look at how the Vespid work on the tabletop. Make sure to keep up to date on all of the latest intel on the new edition of Kill Team by subscribing to our newsletter.