Tanu
Names: TanuallTanuexoticsOld Peoplethe FoeExalted OnespooksOld OnesexoticTanu peoplethe Hosttall exoticsExalteds
First appears in Book 1: The Many-Colored Land, chapter 22 (2)
Appearances
What you know
Book 1: The Many-Colored Land
- Ch 23The Tanu rule the Many-Colored Land, claiming to rule kindly, and have transformed a small corner of it; their capital is Muriah.
- Ch 24The Tanu rule over humans in the Pliocene Exile using torcs.
- Ch 25The Tanu are exiles from a distant galaxy whose women rarely bear healthy children because of particles in this planet's atmosphere.
- Ch 25The Tanu sterilize human women passing through the time-portal by reversible salpingotomy, intending them to bear Tanu children.
- Ch 27The Tanu arrived on Earth by a living Ship that died; their sun became unstable, and few conceptuses survive, so they use rama females as hosts.
- Ch 27The Tanu enslaved the ramapithecines with torc technology and welcome human time-travelers, who are genetically compatible and resistant to the radiation.
- Ch 28Use unbreakable glass instead of iron, allow humans a bronze technology, dislike water travel, and prefer the warm south.
- Ch 29Tanu are exotics who hold human time-travelers as slaves or serfs, in widely scattered settlements each with a central city and plantations.
- Ch 30Tanu rule human Exile; they breed with humans to strengthen their line against radiation and gain metapsychic genes, hoping to become operant without golden torcs.
- Ch 33The Tanu have metafunctions able to destroy minds, can hardly be killed by ordinary weapons, and control slave-cities almost perfectly.
- Ch 35The Tanu are nearly invulnerable and use torcs to enhance mental powers; folklore holds iron is deadly to the Old People.
- Ch 36The Tanu are tall, mostly blond exotics from a distant galaxy who rule Pliocene Earth like medieval barons and wear golden torcs boosting their latent powers.
- Ch 36The Tanu restore human women's fertility because their own women reproduce poorly on Earth; some women become Tanu wives, others are merely used.
- Ch 37The Tanu send amphicyon packs and human trackers after Felice, who is blamed for the massacre; they are mind-powered beings with torcs.
- Ch 38The Tanu welcome arrivals at Muriah with song, riding chaliko and using helladotheria to haul boats.
- Ch 39Exotics who enslave humans with gray and silver torcs; Tanu leaders can detect latent people like Felice as they detect Firvulag.
- Ch 39Tanu die by decapitation in ritual combat, by fire, or rarely by drowning; the very young or careless are most at risk.
- Ch 42Sire Firvulag children one time in seven on humans and one in three on their own women; their sex can eventually kill average humans.
Book 2: The Golden Torc
- Ch 1Tanu use human latents in a breeding scheme to speed their race going operant and to keep control against the Firvulag.
- Ch 2Human-Tanu hybrids were less likely to go Firvulag and more likely to be carried to term; the Tanu feel they suffer scientific languor.
- Ch 2The Tanu fled their home galaxy under duress and gained ascendancy over the Firvulag through gray human armies, human mothers, silvers, and hybrid champions.
- Ch 5Tanu women do not bear human children; human women may conceive only by Tanu males, and the offspring are exotic, with fewer Firvulag phenotypes than Tanu litters.
- Ch 5Human-Tanu matings speed Tanu evolution toward natural operancy; Prentice Brown calculated fifty generations, and Elizabeth's arrival changed the calculations dramatically.
- Ch 5No bareneck human had ever before killed a Tanu; the Great Ones mostly consider the incident a fluke.
- Ch 8The Tanu abhor water and respect only displays of power; they rule as masters over the humans in Exile.
- Ch 9The Tanu are tall, pale lowlanders of Duat who never became operant metapsychics and developed the golden torc to amplify their latent powers.
- Ch 11Tanu, called exotics, have creative and other metapsychic gifts; their highest creators can channel energy.
- Ch 14The Tanu overlords of Finiah fled the city before the Lowlives finished their conquest.
- Ch 20The Tanu are regarded by the expedition as slavemasters of humans.
- Ch 36The Tanu army fields gray-torc cavalry, human charioteers and five metapsychic guild battalions, commanded mentally by hybrid and gold-torc human officers.
Book 3: The Nonborn King
- Ch 1The Tanu are a tall exiled race ruling the Many-Colored Land; humans with golden tores share their metapsychic fellowship.
- Ch 14After the Flood, Tanu society is undermined; Aiken Drum leads them, and Cloud fears Firvulag domination of Europe.
- Ch 32Tanu law, an old battle-religion tenet, holds that no one imperfect in body may aspire to kingship.
Book 4: The Adversary
- Ch 5The ancestral Tanu introduced tore technology to the other Duat races.
- Ch 20Bleyn is a Tanu; he recognized that Basil quotes human poets, and Tanu overheard Basil's broadcast thoughts.
- Ch 25Tanu bodies acclimatize to altitude less readily than humans' and Tanu need less sleep; they use redaction to heal mental disorder.
Connections
- has memberLady Epone
- has memberCreynTanu overlord
- led byCreynHe is a lord who rules over Tanu subjects
- enemy ofRamapithecusTanu dominate and use them as servants and hosts
- ally ofCaptal Waldemar
- has memberBormol
- enemy ofFirvulag
- has memberLugonn
- ally ofIskender-Kernonnserved the Tanu earlier
- has memberNodonn
- has memberLord Velteyn
- includesFiniah
- includesMuriahTanu capital city
- related toFirvulagracial brothers and rivals
- led byThagdal
- has memberKernonn
- related toBredebrought them to Earth
- led byBredeguide and teacher of her people
- related toAfaliahTanu citadel
- includesBardelask
- has memberBleyn the Champion
- has memberLord Aronn
- has memberOchal the Harper
- led byAiken Drum
- related toBrede's Shiptransported them from Duat to Pliocene Earth
Key moments
- Book 1 · Ch 29Richard wakes in the caravan
Drugged and hungover, Richard wakes on a chaliko riding north toward Finiah, and Claude explains the Tanu, the guards and the fate of the missing Greenies.
- Book 1 · Ch 36Stein learns of the torc and Exile
Sukey explains the Tanu, torcs and the human situation; Stein learns his gray torc controls him and declares he will never serve the Tanu.
- Book 1 · Ch 38Arrival at Muriah
On the sixth day after leaving Castle Gateway, the travelers reach Muriah, hauled up from the salt by helladotheria and welcomed with song by the Tanu.
- Book 1 · Ch 49Fall of House Velteyn
Allied Lowlives and Firvulag surprise the Tanu cavalry with iron spears and break the defense of House Velteyn near dawn. Velteyn evacuates the Tanu civilians by roof.
- Book 2 · Ch 9Brede tells the story of the exiles
Brede recounts the origins of Tanu and Firvulag on Duat, the Ships, the Golden Age and wars, and how her prescience led her to carry the exiles to this galaxy.
- Book 2 · Ch 10Aiken aids Raimo
Raimo begs Aiken for help; Aiken eases his tormented mind, but six Tanu women arrive and carry Raimo off.
- Book 2 · Ch 36The Grand Combat begins
At sunrise the Firvulag charge and Nodonn leads the Tanu cry; the two armies clash on the White Silver Plain in the first day of the three-day battle.
- Book 4 · Ch 15Expedition buys Purtsinigelee's provisions
The Tanu-led expedition visits Purtsinigelee's cottage, pays richly in gems for his pickled slugs, and heads for the high country, leaving the family unharmed.
- Book 4 · Ch 39Brede's Ship crosses to the Milky Way
Brede's Ship made the 270-million-light-year d-jump from Duat to the Milky Way, carrying the Tanu and Firvulag, and fatally strained itself.