The Demiurg are a race of short semi-humanoid traders and miners allied with the Tau Empire.

They were first introduced in additional material to the Battlefleet Gothic game. It is currently unknown if the Demiurg are full members of the Tau Empire, or allies, or mercenaries. But they are involved heavily in trading and economic relations with the Tau. The Demiurg appear to have no homeworld, or at least have abandoned it in favour of spacecraft. They are known to avoid Imperial space unless invited in, making them a very uncommon sight, and are described as defensively-hostile and non-militaristic. Though the number of sightings in the Ultima Segmentum has increased over recent centuries. The Demiurg are organized into "Brotherhoods", though any further information on a Brotherhood is unknown beyond the rumours from Rogue Traders that one Brotherhood is typically present upon a Bastion Class Vessel and two to three upon on a Stronghold Class Vessel. At least two brotherhoods, the Srry'Tok and Thurm, are known to have joined the Tau Empire. The Demiurg have a high level of technology invested in their vessels as they are required to perform a number of tasks; Stronghold Class Vessels for instance are used as factories, processing units and as a base for mining fleets, while the Bastion Class Vessels are often configured for use in asteroid mining. These vessels are largely automated and use electro-magnetic fields to scoop up interstellar hydrogen, which is then compressed inside the vessel and ejected towards the rear, creating a form of ram-jet engine. The engines are relatively slow in comparison to Imperial technology, however the complex shielding the system requires and the beneficial side-effects of its use are as of yet still unfathomed by the Adeptus Mechanicus. A known tool is the Demiurg survey glass which is a penetrative visual tool used for mineral detection of up to 2km depths. From the Demiurg the Tau acquired their knowledge of Ion Cannon technology, which is now heavily used by the Tau in their armies and fleets. Furthermore, in the Tau language, the Demiurg are known as "Bentu'sin", which translates as 'wise-gifted ones'. Aside from the development of ionic weapons, the Demiurg appear to remodel a lot of their weaponry from technology already developed for use in resource gathering and manufacturing. Two examples of this on board their spacecraft are the Cutting Beam, which appears to have been adapted from high powered lasers used to mine asteroids, and automated mining machines, which, once reconfigured, are launched as attack craft against enemy ships. A pair of Demiurg commerce vessels fought along side Imperial vessels as part of the gathered armada against Hive Fleet Jormungandr in 995.M41, or so some Imperial reports claim.

Celestial phenomena Demiurg ships are totally unaffected by solar flares, gas and dust clouds and radiation bursts. Do not place blast markers in contact with them for celestial phenomena of any kind. Deployment and Scenarios Aside from the Tau, who appear to have the strongest known connection with the Demiurg, a number of races have on occassion been reported as having made contact with these aliens. Any fleet except Orks, Tyranids and Necrons can use Demiurg Bastion class vessels; they are purchased as cruisers but do not contribute to the number of ships required to gain access to battleships, grand cruisers, etc. Demiurg ships can never carry fleet commanders, use fleet commander re-rolls or be placed in squadrons with non-Demiurg vessels. Tau fleets (and other races whose fleet list specifically include the Demiurg) ignore these restrictions and should instead select Demiurg vessels using the entries given in their fleet list. Mercenaries Unless the fleet is entirely composed of Demiurg ships they are considered to be mercenaries and will not continue to fight if crippled. Crippled Demiurg ships will attempt to disengage every turn and run for the nearest point on the nearest table edge if they fail. However, if the Demiurg ship is part of a fleet fighting against Orks it will only disengage if first reduced to only having 1 or 2 Damage points remaining. DEMIURG WEAPONS Demiurg Stronghold and Bastion class vessels use the following the special rules: Cutting beam The cutting beam is a short ranged but devastating ionisation beam usually employed for gouging out recalcitrant moonlets. The cutting beam counts as a single lance but each Blast marker picked up by the Bastion in the Movement phase gives the beam the equivalent of one extra lance shot (up to a maximum of 8). Blast markers cannot be held from turn to turn

in order to power the cutting beam, any unused ones are lost. Launch bays Demiurg ordnance is reconfigured from its automated mining machines within the cavernous dorsal launch bays. Some Demiurg ships are equipped with launch bays which are also permitted to fire torpedoes. If this is the case this will be noted n the Range/Speed column of the launch bays profile. Such launch bays can be used to release either attack craft or torpedoes, but not both in the same turn. Note that Demiurg torpedoes and attack craft are not always interchangeable, so Demiurg torpedo tubes cannot be used to launch attack craft, and launch bays may only fire torpedoes if noted in the ship profile. Once a supremely rare sight, the gigantic stately commerce vessels of the Demiurg have been seen with increasing regularity in the Ultima Segmentum over recent centuries. Although known in legend among many indigenous races through the region, Demiurg vessels avoid Imperium-claimed space scrupulously unless specifically invited in. Unfortunately, less than scrupulous planetary governors have been known to employ Demiurg forces to bolster their own positions, inviting Inquisitorial censure for their truck with aliens. Fleet strategists have postulated a link between the ships and the expansion of the Tau Empire on the Eastern Fringe, citing three confirmed sightings of Tau/Demiurg or Kroot/Demiurg fleets in the region of the Damocles Gulf. Others have suggested that the nomadic movement of the mysterious Demiurg demonstrates only an opportunistic desire to capitalise on the disruption caused by the Tyranid hivefleets. DEMIURG SPECIAL RULES Demiurg stronghold and Bastion class vessels use the following the special rules: Blast Markers The curious shielding arrangement of Demiurg vessels dissipates the effects of ionised gases and repels larger obstacles in its path. As a result, any Blast marker which a Stronghold moves over is removed immediately this includes any in base contact with the stronghold at the beginning of its turn. Blast markers have no effect on the movement of the Demiurg ship. Keep markers hoovered up like this to one side so they can be used to fire a cutting beam from the prow in the shooting phase. Note that Blast markers moved over must be removed, the Demiurg player cant choose to remove some markers and leave others in place.

Demiurg Ships The type classified as Stronghold class is fairly typical of Demiurg vessels, being very large, technologically advanced and extremely well powered. Strongholds appear to act as factory/processor vessels and bases for a fleet of intersytem asteroid mining pods, haulage flyers and prospector probes (it is theorized that many of these are automated). Typically, lone strongholds have been encountered in the flare or mercurial zones of uninhabited star sytems, hanging motionless and prow-on to the star with a cloud of small craft busily hustling to and fro to exploit local resources. In most cases these ships withdraw their craft and disenage if challenged but in some instances have inexplicably turned on their attackers with surprising ferocity. It is worthy of note that every known encounter between Demiurg and Ork vessels has resulted in combat, and that renegade elements have often hired Demiurg vessels to fight as mercenaries in interplanetary and intersystem power struggles. As warships, Demiurg vessels are slow but well defended, boasting considerable firepower at close ranges and the capacity for launching mining craft reconfigured as attack craft and torpedoes. A notable trait of the Stronghold class is its employment of an array of electromagnetic fields around its prow to scoop up interstellar hydrogen. This is accelerated to the rear of the ship to provide motive power in a ram-jet effect but the complex shielding it requires evidently produces numerous other benefits. This process is little understood by the Adeptus Mechancius and they would dearly like to secure an intact Stronghold for investigation, but thus far the opportunity has eluded them.

Originally Posted by Jervis johnson I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background. First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K. No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on. Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by. Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K. In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based on the Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell... I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army. Best regards, Jervis Johnson Head Fanatic

Wargear: Aegis of Chalybs (2+ Armour Save, 5+ Invulnerable), Boltgun, Power Axe Independent Character Preferred Enemy: Orks The official Ambassador from the Chalybs Brotherhood to the Searing Dawn expedition, Bentu'Sin'El Fannor'Kir'Shasvre or the Trade Duke of his brotherhood. The Duke is the direct representative of Gnarus the Wise, the leader of the Chalybs Brotherhood. The Trade Duke grew up on the Stronghold capital chip of the Chalybs' known as Monarchia. The Duke rapidly grew to prominence, even to the head of his own organization. However, Chalybs came in contact with a pirate band of Ork's and battle broke out. The interruption would turn out to be the downfall of the Duke's own company but also the turning point in his life. For heroics in repelling the Ork raiders the Duke was awarded his cherished suit of Exo-Armour by Lord Gnarus himself. While his own organization perished and was drawn in by the vast meglacorporations of Chalybs, the Duke's own career sky rocketed. From this point Gnarus kept close tabs on him and in turn began training him in the ways of great leadership, in the end awarding him with the title of Trade Duke, his actual name being lost to history. When the Thurm Brotherhood aligned themselves with the Tau Empire, Lord Gnarus understood the importance of following suit, so they met with Tau Ethereals, one of them being Aun'O Vash'Ya, representative of the Searing Dawn Expedition. To show his compliance and full dedication to unity between their races, Gnarus dispatched the Duke to the Expedition as his representative. Fannor'Kir'Shasvre adopted the new Tau-based name to symbolize the new unity between their two people. Since that day the Duke has served beside O'Mont'Rra and his forces. Bentu'Sin'El Fannor'Kir'Shasvre wears the Aegis of Chalybs, an ancient relic of the Chalybs Brotherhood. The Aegis is an advanced set of Exo-Armour that provides the wearer with heavy protection from small arms fire as well as a minor reflector shield to protect the Duke from energized weapons. The Aegis has a boltgun built into one of its arms and a power axe in the other. The weapons have served him faithfully through many battles, both against Orks and other races in the name of the Tau and Chalybs Brotherhood.

Wargear: Ionrifles, Flak Armour, Frag Grenades One Employee can be upgraded to a procurator at 6 additional points and is equipped with a close combat weapon and a pulse pistol. Squad: A squad comprises of a procurator and four to nine employees. Preferred Enemy: Orks Demiurg forces can be used to supplement Tau forces. Generally these forces are conscripted from Demiurg Mining teams but there are a small number of dedicated Demiurg security forces. The teams of Demiurg Auxillaries comprise of a certain number of employees led by their manager known as the procurator. These auxillaries are fully functioning teams that on their ships would work together on a daily basis, so these units have perfect unity with each other and are more than capable of operating individually.

Weapons: The company van is armed with a storm bolter. The van is also a troop transport and can support up to twelve models (infantry) Transports like the company van are often used for moving personnel across the vast Demiurg spacecrafts and for transportation on planets. The hull is armoured for use in caves when mining, so as to provide protection for employees under a collapsing tunnel roof. The van is a light vehicle and a soft option when compared to the Tau Devilfish but still serves as a cheap and light transport for carrying auxillaries.