A Geek History of Time - Episode 384 - Tyranids vs Yuuzhan Vong part II

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

I mean, it is 2 o'clock in the fucking morning where I am. The 1848ers were so much more radical than what we're comfortable or familiar with. The layer, the layer of sarcasm involved in that entire delivery is, it's fonded. It's not even frosting. But he failed, so fuck them, buddies. Now, after World War II ended Lockley started mapping out foot trails for the newly created. Oh, God, Pembroke Shire. So Pembrokeshire.

Pembrokeshire. Okay. Pembrokeshire. Just please let me just read Latin today. We're way into the 19th century now. I'm sorry. Well, Damien, it's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning. This is a geek history of time.

Where we connect a nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California. And my... in-laws have been out of the country for the last several weeks. And most recently, they were in Morocco. And they started out in Marrakesh. They wound up spending a couple of nights crossing the desert in a touristy kind of spend time with, you know, the Bedouin kind of experience.

And then they arrived in the city of Fez. and I never got around to asking them to bring me back a souvenir from Fez because of course I'm a Doctor Who fan and the moment I found out they were going to be going to the city of Fez I was like, well, I wear a fez now, Fez is they're cool and they are now, they have left North Africa, they are now in France and I mentioned to my wife that, you know, I missed my shot to ask them to get me a fez from Fez. And completely independently of me having said anything, my mother-in-law apparently had told my wife, you know, the whole time we were in Fez, I never saw anybody wearing one.

So apparently they're not as cool as the BBC led me to believe. I've been lied to and I'm a little bitter about it. So that's what I've got. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a U.S. history teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level. I actually had a friend go to the Philippines last year, and he brought me back Manila folders, which is what I asked.

Now, what I was bummed was that he didn't bring me white folders because then people would say, well, what are those? I'd be like, those are my Manila folders. But they're white. Yes, but they're from Manila. So unfortunately, I haven't been able to close that circuit. But still, I got Manila folders from Manila. So there you go. All right.

But I actually just sent you a TikTok video, and I'm going to pause here so that you can experience it. So unlike scale of 1 to 10, how funny is that really, though? Oh. Maybe a 4? Maybe, yeah, 4. And obviously, okay, so for the audience. who didn't hear or listen to it or see it. Basically, it's a bunch of people smelling something

probably coming from the bathroom area of an airplane and they are just angry and shocked at the smell. And so you hear, Jesus Christ, what the hell is that smell? And just somebody just, you know, people like joining in and just like, Lord, have mercy, what on it? But somebody took that video and basically put a caption on it saying P-O-V when you ate eight deviled eggs and then got on an airplane, which again, still isn't that funny.

I would put it out of four, you know? Yeah. I laughed so hard at that video for literally eight minutes straight until like my sides were hurting. I got an ab workout. My kids were just like, they're looking at me like, it is not that funny. Like they were getting mad. and then they couldn't help but laugh.

And it just, oh my God, there's very few times in my life where I've laughed that hard at something. And even fewer when there's like a witness who still wants to be in the same room as me. And so like it just, oh, everyone's wrong. So that was good therapy for me last week was that video. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I have a theory that I, that I, think when when we were surrounded by you know gestures vaguely at everything yeah um dumb shit that shouldn't be funny oh yeah is is is is a huge release valve oh when i went down to visit george producer george years and years ago is i think i think he had just gotten laid off

from an online mortgage document company and you can imagine what what what what caused that layoff to happen in 2008 right yeah or 2007 whatever it was yeah so I go down there and we watched a video and it had like swanky porn music to it but it's just basically a pug humping another dog's head and then you know how dogs will sometimes walk away but they'll still have like the motion going, you know. Yeah. And we laughed probably good 10, 15 minutes at that. Yeah, now I can believe it.

Here's, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I think your theory is probably right. But, you know, the first time I used the term dictator tots to describe Julius Caesar's children, it was in front of my Latin students. And I had to sit down. I was laughing so hard. And the kids were all just like, he's turning red.

Is he okay? Like, that was like local legend at our school for a while because I was, you know, serious. But, you know, I'd hit them with puns and all kinds of shit. But like they'd never seen me laugh that hard at something. Yeah. What I love there is it encapsulates your relationship to puns so perfectly. Oh, yeah. And, and I mean, I do have to say as much as it literally hurts to say this, that is a really good.

one. Yeah, it is. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Because even thinking about you for the classroom, delivering that line makes me want to laugh. Oh, yeah.

So, yeah. Anyway, last time we talked, you basically convinced me that if the Tyrannids ever show up anywhere in reality, the whole galaxy's fucked. Yeah. Like, there's nothing like that. And then it got me thinking about, like, you. you know, what if something came from another galaxy?

And the answer is they wouldn't be able to stand up to the tyrannids. But I do want to talk about a group that came from the other galaxy. And as we talked about last time, it's the Yu-Jean Vong. Yes, sir. I'm looking forward to this. Yeah. So the Yu-Jonvong, like I said, the chosen race, the children of Yun-Joujong, they are descendants of the U-R-Joujong,

who had lived on their homeworld. Ujjong Tarr a long time ago, interestingly, in a galaxy farther, farther away. Because in Star Wars lore, they are actually beyond the crunch. They are from a different galaxy. Oh, wow. Okay. Now, the Uyjong lived in symbiosis with their living planet, which was originally a fully connected to the force relationship, which also goes to prove that the force was not endemic only to the Star Wars galaxy.

somewhere An important point Yeah Somewhere along the way that Ujong got too proud of individual glory and sought to honor themselves in a more and more

and more macab and Mamie kind of way Now eventually this desire for what they called escalation led to the Yujan vong being severed from the force by their home planet Okay because the home planet was it itself a living force sensitive organism.

Yes. Okay. Turned off all their midi-chlorians. Wow. So, okay. All right. Now, now. Like a Mormon with bad feelings.

Just turn it off. Mm-hmm. Wow. I'm going to walk right past that one. But. So you do. Try to. So, okay.

Yeah. Just on a, on a biological standpoint. Sure. So midi-chlorians are very much like the powerhouse the cell. Balancing your checkbook. Oh. Yeah, the mitochondria. Yeah.

Now, in a real world living organism, if all of your mitochondria got shut off. Right. that would that would be lethal to to the greater organism oh yeah yes you know and and I'm just wondering okay so midi-chlorians aren't exactly bitocondria because they're not they're not involved in you know the regulation of energy within within cells or within the body they're just right there to you know sense the force but if midi-chlorians are themselves you know organelles of some kind within cells cells switching them off would induce some sort of cellular level necrosis, wouldn't it?

I mean, like, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it was just, you know, me, me, you know, trying to apply. Yeah. No, you're 100% right. And this is the problem with George Lucas developing midi chlorians. Yeah. So, I mean, I think of it more as, as Gabriel Cruz once described it.

it's space Wi-Fi. And so somebody turned off the signal. Okay. All right. Fair enough. I like that. Their router doesn't work anymore. Okay.

Fair. So me saying the Midea Chlorians got turned off is me being glib. Like that's not one. Okay. Although interestingly, Vector Prime, which is the first book that had the Eugon Vong really in it, although you could argue that Crimson Empire 2 had the Euson vong in it, because they were mentioned, because, because, because. But Vector Prime is the first.

novel of the Eugen Vong in it that came out the same year that a phantom menace came out. So they're contemporaneous with each other. Okay. But they're being cut off from the living force and all that kind of stuff that that shows up much later in the books. Okay. Which means like it shows up in a time where midi-chlorians are in arguably canon. Right, right, right.

But anyway. So, yeah, they get cut off. Now, many people, they cut off from the force by the living planet that they're on. Many people say it was a punishment, but I'm more of the mind that the living planet was tired of the pain that they were causing themselves and the ripples through the force that it would leave. Okay. And so as a defense mechanism, it was just like, you know what? I'm sorry, this is not working for me anymore. I think we should go no contact.

Yeah, pretty much. Okay. Fair. All right. Either way, the Eujon Vong were entirely cut off from the force through this severing. and the pain of that led them to fetishizing pain and chasing it more and more. And eventually, the Ujong turned into the Ujongvong, which was a far more violent form of their predecessors.

Okay. Now this group cut off from the force grew in its violence and supplied its own cosmology. They were descendant now, not from the planet they were on, but from the god Yun Yuzon, who had sacrificed parts of his body, body to make the universe and to make the lesser gods and to make the Eujon Vong themselves. Now, this is not that different than what do you call it, Aztec gods, right? Yeah, I was going to say there's some definite mezzo-American. Echo of Meso-American myth going on there.

Now, as an honor to that export of Parthenogenesis, the Eugenics, the Eujon Vong sacrificed their body parts to the gods. They scarred themselves. They sacrificed others. they ritualized their violence and so on. And because the lesser gods, they're called the Yun-O, had their roles to play.

Different casts of Yu-Jean Vong ended up as devotees to these gods. Okay. So because Yun Yu-Jan promised the lesser gods during what was known as the before time, he promised them that they could ascend and take his place so long as they found others to take their place. So Amway. this meant then that the eugen vong could help their gods through escalation and taking the place of their gods.

And so, like, they were at the bottom level, right? And they're like, oh, no, anything we do to elevate ourselves will make it so that we take the place of the lesser gods, who then can go and escalate and take over Yun Yun-Jon's spot. therefore us being extra violent and being power-seeking and and greedy that way is actually ordained by the gods okay okay now this set what was called the true way uh which is you know the eugen vong religious beliefs okay all right now the u and o are as follows there were two gods called the twin gods shockingly uh yun yamka is the slayer and yun harla is the trickster Okay, Gork and Mork.

Why do I know those names? Because of Warhammer 40,000. Gork is brutal but cunning, and Mork is cunning but brutal. There you go. So Yun Yomka was the god of the warrior cast, and every entreaty to him involved a death sacrifice, except for morning and evening prayers because he taught the Eugen Vong the importance of blood.

He was not one of their native gods, incidentally. he was created by the priestly class when the Yu-Jean Vong turned violent and he was also the patron of this group called the prefects. I'll get into them more later. Okay. The prefects essentially are like administrators and also the spies.

Okay. Now, Yunharla was the goddess of deception. She was mostly worshipped by the intendant class. Basically, you're bureaucrats of the Yu-Jean vong. But then also the intendants would serve as scouts and spies. Oh, I'm sorry, I misspoke. The scouts and spies come from the intendant cast.

But they served as scouts and spies and reconnaissance for the Eugon Vong. She was the innovative war strategy goddess. So you kind of have an Aries and Athena thing going, right? Okay, a little bit. She wore stolen skins, which gives her kind of shape-shifty. and on her holiday it was expected

that the Eujon Vong would play practical jokes on their leaders. Okay, interesting. Like an odd kind of Saturnalia or Boxing Day kind of thing. That, Ren, brings us to Yun Nishel.

She was the handmaiden of Yun Harla. Now, Yun Harla was the trickster goddess. Right. She tricked Yun Yuzhong into spilling the secrets of creation, which Yun Nuzhong. Michelle then gained.

And as a result, Yun Nichelle becomes known as the modeler. And she's basically the God responsible for creating the basic appearances of all living beings and arbitrating their life cycles. Yeah. That's a pretty big role to give to a lesser god.

I have to say, in a cosmology, that's an interesting set of choices. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Now, with these tools, she meant to create a peaceful existence free of pain. however, the twin gods fucked that up

by making sure that Paradise contained all the pain and suffering in it. And as such, the Eugen Vung legends did not credit Yun Nishel as a visionary. They instead condemned the god for her naivete and foolishness because the culture

was centered on pain, treachery, and suffering. So she's kind of like the misguided goddess. Okay. My word's not theirs. The beings that she had modeled were supposed to compete for the rank of godhood and the twin gods saw to that. A group of Yu-Jean Vong called the Shamed Ones actually saw her as important, given her

responsibility for appearances. Shamed ones were Yu-Jong-Vong who, and I'll get to them later, but essentially their sacrifices and their implants didn't take. Oh, okay. Yeah. So they're shamed by the gods because the gods don't accept their sacrifices. And Yun Nishel was unique amongst celestial gods in that she did not require any sacrifice from her supplicants

because she was tied to life cycle she was also the goddess of childbirth and because she determined the appearance of things and she knew the secrets of creation the Yu-Jean Vong in search of inspiration and innovation invoked her. Okay. Now the main group that worshipped of

what's her name, Yun Nichelle, I almost said Yu-Jontel, Yun-N-N-N-N-Hel, the main group that worshipped her were called the Shapercast. They were the ones that were in charge of bioplan surgery, and they were in charge of creating and maintaining Yu-Jon-Vong biotechnology, which was all of their tech. Okay. Then came the lover gods.

Yun-Sikin, T-X-I-N, and Yon-Q-A-H. Okay. tell that these gods were talked about in books that were not meant to be read out loud. So basically, if two Yu-Jean Vong had a relationship that crossed the cast lines, these were the gods that those lovers would be sacrificed to because you don't cross cast lines. Okay. You and Nishell obviously saw a common cause with these two since fucking means-making life. Right.

Their priests tended to scar and maim their bodies to resemble both gods at once. Oh, okay. So make yourself look both male and female. Then there's Yun Shuno, who is the partner, and she was the goddess of forgiveness. So you can imagine the Ujong typically had very little regard for her, but she was the only deity that shamed ones were allowed to actually address. Oh, okay. Now, with her thousand eyes, she protected the shame ones from the other deities, though less so from the Eujan Vong themselves.

Yeah. Now, while the Eujan Vang disdained her, they were cautious with their disdain because she is, after all, still a fucking God. And as such, she got all the veneration due to a god, even though they didn't like her. And she still had a place on the bridge of most ships and in most temples and so on. because you don't want to piss off a god. No, indeed. Kind of for the same reason that the Greeks didn't like Hades, but they were careful to make sure not to leave him out of, you know, temples.

Yeah. You know. Now what's interesting is that Yun Yamka was said by the Yujan Vong to be embodied in Luke Skywalker. Huh. The warrior god. Eun Harlow was said to be embodied by Jaina Skywalker. Jaina Solo. Oh, okay.

Luke's niece, Hanan, Lay's kid. Right. And Yun Shuno in Jason's solo. Okay. So Jason was the partner. Jaina was the trickster, and Luke was the warrior, according to the Eujon Vong. Hmm. So, anyway, that's their cosmology.

And if you're thinking, wow, that's pretty Mesoamerican. You're absolutely right. Yeah. The writers who came up with the Eujon Vong specifically were cribbing from Mayan and Aztec cosmology, but then they also added aspects of Dalit, Melanesian, Polynesian, Austronesian, and chalked out cultures as starting points or as models. Okay. Yeah, the wearing of skins, like immediately twigged. Yeah.

And the, you know, direct sacrifice as part of creation of the universe. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I actually was just teaching age of discovery in my seventh graders, which meant going back a little bit to remember about the Aztecs when we talked about Mesoamerican civilizations a few weeks ago. Yeah, and their cosmology. And, you know, remember that they believed the universe required blood to fuel it.

Right. Which makes sense if you look at our bodies. Well, yeah, if you look at our bodies and if you look at one of the things that Joseph Campbell mentioned that has stuck with me. And there are lots of ways in which Campbell was more than a little bit problematic. But one of the things that you pointed out that I think is worth considering is when you look at, you know, European and Asian kind of myth cycle, Indo-European, as it were. You know, you can tell that the worldview is rooted in, you know, a specific set of continents with a specific kind of geography. Yeah.

And Mesoamerican myth is very clearly coming from a very different environment. Yes. Because they were surrounded by. constant evidence of death and decay leading to rebirth and new growth. Very true. And so the ideas and the cosmology that came out of that are, you know, rooted in the idea that in order for there to be life, there has to be death. Mm-hmm. So anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, their belief system was rigidly and painfully enforced, which was kind of the point. The Yu-Jean Vong existed entirely outside of the force, like I said, so they were not dark, as Jedi would actually note in running into them. Culturally, they worship beyond the point of fetishization, the idea of sacrifice and pain, and I cannot emphasize those two things enough. Everything came through pain. Lessons came through pain. Advancement in politics came through pain. advancement in the military came through pain. Meditation was an engagement with the pain.

All of it was pain. And it was pain was not just considered a state of living, but also a glorious goal. And since the gods had sacrificed part of themselves to create the universe, the Ejean Vong would remake their own bodies through disfiguring and scarification into a closer and closer resemblance of the gods. This didn't mean that they would scar themselves beyond function. and often implants would be attached that increased their lethality. The more elite you were, the more fucked up it would get.

For instance, some would graft organs from other creatures into their own bodies. Wow. Yeah. And others would place other creatures in their bodies that would replace their eyes and spit venom. Yeah, the body horror is real. Yeah. Yeah. And it's rooted in.

in spitting and you know bodily fluids excretion just like you noted when I was talking about tyrannid shooting weapons

yes now if the scarification didn't take which basically was down in all reality it was down to the competence of the shaper or the attitude of the shaper who is performing the operation but because of really

a zellotry being a thing if scarification or transplant or any other ceremony mutilation didn't take it was because they'd lost the favor of the gods oh wow and so you could go from being the leader of a fleet to being a shamed one oh wow think of the the revenge that some shapers would take on others and since that's a a part of of their value system. Uh-huh. Yeah. So there's this wonderful, like, it's very Roman and other cultures as well.

I had better bribe the right priests. Yeah. The thing, right? So I need to promote their brothers and I need to do this. And then when I go to them, I need to use all the words that say that this is an important battle and therefore it's going to take at least half of my forearm. and then we'll put an implant in there so that I can really honor the gods

and I'll say all the right things and perform all the right ways but also at the same time I will have made sure to include you guys in the planning and promise you parts and blah blah blah yeah

so now family mattered to the Eujon Vong in a way that's different than what we note they referred to them as the domain so your family was the domain if you just think of like clans in Roman times or just any Scots. And in addition to your domain, you also had the cast that you were a part of.

Okay. Now, Eugen von kids were raised in Kresch's. Is it Krashe or Kresh? I think either one is acceptable. So they were raised in Krasch's and they didn't know their parents until later and they were typically named by their Kreshe caretakers. twin births were considered ominous and often resulted in the one destined for greatness killing its twin interesting since they're venerating the pair of twin gods but those are super rare right and therefore oh

that's dangerous and again that's the trickster and the warrior right right uh they remember they they had a huge problem with jason and jana like they were obsessed with the two of them specifically Mm-hmm. Okay. And as you could imagine, a rigid cast system that feasted on pain was also deeply concerned with honor. Yeah, and tracks. Yeah, keeping your word mattered, but the disdain that existed between the domains didn't always mean that your relatives kept your word if you fell. So you could engage in some sort of blood feud, but then when you die, your family could be like, yeah, that was him. We're still hating you and we're still going to fuck you up.

So blood feuds, etc. So warrior culture ran deep and the warriors were totally down for individual combat regardless of the battle that was going on around them. The Eugen von thought nothing of suicide attacks, as you could imagine. And they valued aggression above all else in a fight. And here's the thing. I thought that these guys were going to wipe the map with the tyrantids until you told me about the tyrantids.

And then I was like, oh, these guys are going to be, just s'mores for the tyrannists. Yeah. Against, against any conventional kind of force, they're going to wreck face. Yes. Like, you know, previous episodes, we've, we've, you know, looked at the Fremen. They're going to, they're going to, they're going to, the Fremen are going to have a hard time. Frummer are going to have a bad time.

Yeah. And, yeah, Imperial Stormtroopers, obviously, are going to have... They had a bad time. Jedi could have a hard time with these guys. Like, these guys regularly tabled Jedi. So, okay, I got a question about that. Yeah. And I'll get to that a little bit later when I talk about their weaponry.

But go ahead and ask your question. Okay, well, my question has to do with the force. So in the last episode, I mentioned that, psychics like on the tabletop and in the lore like imperial psychers sanctioned psychers or Eldar warlocks had a hard time against tyrannids because

of the massive looming presence of the shadow and the warp and it it has effect on when you're rolling for to manifest psychic powers so did the Yu-Jean Vong

cast some kind of call it a shadow in the force that got in the way of force users around them doing things? No, not as such.

Here's what happened. If you were a Jedi going against anybody else, you would feel their presence in the force. That's part of how you were able to anticipate them and move preternaturally

and all those kinds of things. Not only are you using the force to, like amp up and power up your your own capabilities beyond human or whatever being limitations. But additionally, you were also given more of an edge due to your galactic Wi-Fi with whatever living creatures you went after. Right.

That being said, somebody could set up a sniper droid two clicks away and you would never feel its aggression. And you're easily susceptible to it as easily as I'm susceptible. to a sniper right now. Right. Right. So the connection to the force was very much about the connection to all living things. Okay.

The Eugène Vong did not have such a connection. And therefore, the Jedi, it would be like you are blindfolded in somebody else's house and playing hide and seek. Yeah. The, the, even though we as the audience don't ever perceive. the universe through the eyes of a Jedi. Right. They, they subconsciously

rely on their sense of how their opponents are moving and you know, intentions and whatever. Okay, so that, okay, that makes sense how it is like all of a sudden. Yeah. Eventually, Anakin Solo

figures out if you treat it like Daredevil would treat his radar sense and just listen for the gaps in the force. So it's not nearly as efficient, but he did figure that out. And then he used like a lambent crystal at one point. But anyway, he was special.

But he did start teaching the Jedi how to use, look for the gaps in the force instead, which is, you know, it's almost like you're looking for tuberculosis by looking for its antibodies. Right. That kind of thing. So now,

Now, because they valued aggression above all else in a fight, if you beat someone in a fight, especially over honor, or you committed so hard to victory that you died, you were ultimately sacrificing to the gods with your pain. Okay. So win-win. Now, before I get on to the physical aspects of the Ujong, I have to address their hatred of machinery.

They were fanatical to the point of rageful distraction. in their hatred of technology. Droid's were doubly so. This is because machines run on electricity of some sort. And electricity is ultimately a form of combustion, and combustion is the first abomination. All life ends, which gives life to other life. But combustion denies that cycle.

Okay. And as such, droids then, because their consciousness without being part of the life cycle are like quadruple insult to the gods because droids don't die and give life to other beings and they run on the emomination of combustion wow

so the Yu-Jean Vong would actually agree with the Imperium when they encountered Star Wars droid I guess so yeah but that's right yeah yeah yeah for different kind of I mean the root cause is different but they'd both be like oh fuck that thing right yeah this is not okay

and what I find funny about it is the Yu-Jean Vong would be pissed and the Imperials would be fucking terrified yeah but it would result in all of them opening fire at the same time right right now there is a wonderful

so at one point Lando developed something called the YVH the Yu-Jon-Vong hunter and it's a type of battle battle droid and because war, et cetera, et cetera, it's a pretty good droid. Well, the prototype or like one of the off the line models, I forget, again, they're droids. They have a consciousness after a fashion. And he and C3PO basically start up a conversation and develop a friendship around

perceiving their own mortality. The Eujon Vong hunter droid and C3PO are both. having discussions about existential crises. It's a fun little lark, but, okay, so their physical form, and then I'll come around and handle their weapons, their armor, and their vehicles. The Eujon Vong tend to be significantly heavier and taller than most humans. Their average lifespan is around 76 years if they're unkilled, but that's rare. Eujon Vong don't have any kidneys.

Just kind of weird. Okay. It is hard to determine their phenotype when it comes to head. head shape, ear shape, no shape, et cetera, because all the scars. Because they cut them off. Yeah. Yeah. They usually run out of hair for the same reason.

Their skin tended to be gray or yellow, and they had small blue sacks under their eyes that were considered beautiful. So the bags that we have under her eyes, imagine that they're filled with blue. Okay. Now, the Eujan Vang invaded the known galaxy in 25 ABY, and you know. know that I have a problem with that dating system because the Battle of Yavin shouldn't be the start point for everything. Yes. It should be when the emperor died, but whatever.

25 ABI is 21. ABE. Yeah, 21 ABE, yeah. Anyway, they had been sending scouting missions into the galaxy as far back as 25BY, which is three years before the Clone War started. And it's rumored that one of the reasons that Palpatine set up the Galactic Empire was because he had a vision and he saw that the only way to protect the galaxy from what he knew as the far outsiders was to set this up. And there is some meat on the bone for that because Palpatine had heard that the far outsiders fought the chis. And he convinced Thrawn to destroy outbound flight so that it didn't draw the far outsiders into this galaxy. Right.

But that's only part of the reason why he was taking over the galaxy. He was also a Sith and on and on. Yeah. But when the Eugen von came through, they came through to win. And by come through, I mean, they come through what's called The Crunch, which is, you know, we have something similar for our solar system, actually. Our sun puts out a certain amount of, like, radiation shielding. Yeah. And Voyager 2 just recently got past it.

Right. And suddenly like radiation in the galaxy went up by like 75% according to Voyager 2's measurements. So we have like a cosmic shield, which is fucking wild. So the galaxy is protected by something called the crunch, which is kind of similar. But they finally came through it. And I don't remember how wide the crunch is, but it took them years and generations of travel. Eventually, this war would cost the lives of 300 trillion beings. Wow.

Yeah. If you want, I can get into how the war went, but basically when the war ended, the galaxy was forever changed. Now, how had the Eugon Vaughn gotten so far as to actually take over Corrassan and reform much of the galaxy? It lies in their version of technology. Again, their shapers were in charge of the buildings and the biotech, right? Right. This was true everywhere from world ships to gravitational devices, like the one that killed Chewbacca,

all the way down to the Uglith maskers and the Vaundon Krab armor. Uglith Masker is basically like a second skin that makes you look like a human. Vondon crab armor is what it says on the tin. Every weapon from the smallest to the largest, no tech but biotech. Because the Ujohn Vang were the masters of all that they touched. so they bent biology to their holy purpose and thus all they did was ordained and approved of by the gods right right obviously

like you do now let's go big to little okay so we'll start talking with the ships okay the shapers have access to the eight different cortices of the shaping protocols okay so think levels of spell kind of okay now this is depending on their level expertise and their access as shapers. And in all of this, all eight of these cortices is contained the sum total of biotechnological

knowledge for the Eugen Vang. Okay. The largest piece is the Eujon Vong Khoros Strona, which is their world ship. Okay. So that's the biggest ship. It's 10 kilometers long and it's a bio ship. The whole thing is a living ship. It is armed with 100 or more.

more Yarratt core magma launchers, which do the equivalent of what an Imperial Star Destroyer heavy turbolaser battery would do. Okay. And nearly double the damage of a heavy turbo laser cannon. Okay. Okay. Though about a third of the range of the same.

So closer in, double-dating. But can't start shooting as soon. Right. So I always thought of it as like, oh, these are Spanish cannons compared to British. cannons. Yes. The Corostrona also has the same number of shorter range.

Yarrick-Core magma launchers, and they do even more heavy damage. More than double the batteries. The hull of these world ships is more than double the strength of a standard Imperial Star Destroyer, too. Okay. Because it's living coral. Right. Okay.

Now, the secret to most Eugon-Vong weapons, and I'm getting this out of the way now, is something called the Dovan Basel, BASAL These things act like miniature black hole generators that can function as very effective shields so that the hull doesn't even get touched by weaponry It just swallows your lasers It swallows your turbolasers

It swallows your torpedoes and your missiles Doven basals can also act as propulsion though boosting the speed of any ship to more than double its top speed So They'll slow down when you start shooting at them a lot because they don't want to get hit, but then when they, you know, break through, they can pour on the speed. Now, most effectively after acting as shields, these Doven basils can rip your shields off as well. Okay. Right? Because they're sucking up energy. They can extend the field of

the Doven basel to your ship and strip it of its shields, and now the damage they did that they do is even more deadly because your shields are not able to help you against them. So, So it's just fucking brutal. And the Galactic Empire figured out ways around these things, but it took a long goddamn time, and countless Jedi and regular pilots died in the process. Right. Also, the Dovan Basel is used on a large ship like this one, like the Living World Ship, the What did I? The Corso Strona. And it can act like an interdiction field.

so you can just use it to pull people out of hyperspace and keep them from escaping. So like the Doven Basel is like the main component to like four of its systems. Yeah, it kind of sounds like a Swiss Army knife. Yeah, yeah. Now the World Ship could carry a small army. Many of them carried 5,000 warriors or so,

plus their ground vehicle support along with literally hundreds of coral skippers. These are their fighter planes. World ships tended to live between 500 to 1,000 years. And one of the largest world ships was actually about 120 kilometers across. So 12 times as big as the normal world ship. Okay. So the thing that I'm thinking of in kind of comparison is in Eldar craft world.

Okay. in 40k they similarly have vast vast vast starships yeah that that's that's their home world star ships that are longer than I ever want to drive much less run yeah you know yeah yeah and this is scaled up accordingly as well and and these ships supported and suckered the troops aboard filtering into their water drugs that would give the troops a sense of purpose and belonging Oh, great. Yeah. As if the religious fanaticism wasn't enough.

Right. It's like, hey, we've got six demon bag juice. Now, after the world ships, the Yu-Jean Vong have their fleets, which accompanied the world ships, and these fleets tended to deploy in small groups of 25 to 75 vessels. You add this together. New Republic Intelligence estimated that the Yu-Jon-Vong fleet numbered close to a thousand. capital ships all told. Wolf.

And because of how the biotech work, they were typically just scaled down versions of the world ships in terms of the amount of armaments and carrying capacity. So same amount of power, just fewer of it, right? Same amount of damage dealt. They had analogs to the war ships,

the cruisers, the destroyers, the troop carriers, the frigates, the corvets, and the gunships that the New Republic had. And they had at least 15 different flagships. Oh. because flagships were part, at least in part, based on what domain.

So, oh, okay. Yeah, the ship Legacy of Torment was Shedatow Shai's flagship during the Battle of Ithor, and it was over 8,000 meters long. Just to give you an idea, a standard Star Destroyer is 1,000 meters long. Right. A victory class is 800 meters long, so 10 times that, right? the executor was 5,000 meters long. So nearly double.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The standard, I apologize. The standard Imperial Star Destroyer was 1,600 meters long. Okay. So this is five times as big.

Okay, only. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that means that Vader's was, yeah, probably three. three-fifths as big as this. Yeah. It had over 120 plasma projectors, like I mentioned above, and the same kind of hull and

shielding, 216 corals scuppers, 30 troop transports, and over 2,000 crew. And many of those had a yamasque, which is a war coordinator. And basically, these were giant brains with thousands of tentacles, and they were considered the physical form of Yun Yamka, the war god. okay all right yeah okay

so it's a giant brain with tentacles yes when we say giant how big are we talking about really fucking big like stories high okay

yeah is it a a a a is it a a Eujon

Vong brain that is that big meaning like no structurally is it the same It is another creature that has been bred for this. Okay. Okay.

So it is, it is in fact an engineered thing. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It's basically a battle analysis computer, but in biotech form, that uses empathy and manipulating gravitational waves. Okay. Got it.

These are what coordinated all the ships from the capital ships all the way down to the coral skippers, which the Yamask considered all of its children. So you can imagine how hard it worked to keep them all safe. Okay. So it's coordinating all of these ships. Number one, right there, gigantic brain with tentacles, there's a parallel to tarrinids there. Yeah. And the hive fleets.

Yep. But what occurs to me, the question I have is, so it's, you say it's coordinating all of the other ships. the coral skippers are starfighters, essentially. Yes. They have pilots. Yes. So how much control does the pilot have and how much control does the battle computer have?

Well, funny that you would ask that. You're anticipating my next step. So here's what would happen. The Yamask would be in constant communication with the high-ranking Ujon-Vong commanders, as well as the YAMASC keepers. To keep the fully formed adult YAMASC company, slaves would be put into their vats with them,

to massage their tentacles and stimulate the YAMISC. Okay. In turn, the YAMSK would then manipulate and control the slaves in its vat, and then the commander would commune with the YAMSk by physically touching its thick blue vein that ran between its eyes, allowing greater cohesion of the war strategy being implemented. And thus any battle in space would likely be added by the yamask. And if it was disrupted or otherwise killed,

which means you've got to find the yamask first and then figure out what it does and then how it does it and then how to thwart it. Only then would the enemy of the Ejean vong notice that the coral skippers and the other ships started acting less coordinated and less efficiently. Hmm. Huh. Okay. So. Yeah. So it's it's communicating. It's doing all of this communicating because they're cut off from the force. Mm-hmm. And when we see or hear any kind of telepathy or any kind of, you know, long distance empathy or anything like that, and it's almost always in the Star Wars universe through the force. Sure.

so like the commander putting his hand on the big blue vein right what's phrasing but and and like I can see how okay well that's that's like a direct neural link through touch I can understand like kind of here is the battle plan that I have created now you are going to help me enact it right yeah but then how is without the force is the yamsk using like space pheromones or no it's gravitational waves okay so it is it is literally steering yes okay and and projected empathy of some sort okay yeah all right yeah now there's also mini yamsks so that's fun and those get used on an infantry level by commando units of the ujon vong but now we're going to keep going down the list Starfighter scale because you wanted to know about these. The Eugen Vong don't seem to have much in the way of intermediate cap ships other than what I listed above. So it's just basically bigger and smaller versions of what we see. But the coral skippers are worth discussing.

Now, Coral skipper, also known as a Yorick Coral Skipper or a Yorick Et, is a biomechanical starfighter capable of tremendous damage. they're usually about 13 meters long and they can operate at comparable but slightly slower speeds than the X-wing their engine is a Dovan Basel and so is their shielding like I'd said Now remember the Doven Basel is a creature So that means so far for this craft to work

You need two creatures Plus the pilot Okay Lando Cairozin once said Quote as beautiful Starfighter design as my scientists have seen fast and can snap turn with an A-wing and with more firepower than almost anything that size we can put up. Okay.

Now, the pilot didn't so much fly as he did ride the ship in the same way that Tuscan Raiders rode a Banta. Okay. And the pilot would put on something called a cognition hood. And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a brain link to the ship that allows the pilot to learn from the ship's experiences and share his own. and while they're extremely short range, because it's based on touch, coral skippers can then receive signals from the yamask. And so all of them are acting in concert,

and it becomes, I almost want to say, like a hive or a swarm, but it reminds me of like swallows are flying. Right. Also, coral skippers can eat nearby rocks and meteors and asteroids in order to refuel themselves. Okay, this makes sense. Now, as to their weaponry, a Coral Skipper, has two direct weapons and uses the Doven Basel

that would be grafted to the ships to make the enemy ships more vulnerable to those weapons. The Doven Basel would strip the shields away and sometimes hold the ship in place via switching from being a shield stripper and a shield itself to being a tractor beam. and then the Yorat Coral would fire Yeret Core,

which is the magma launcher of the coral skipper. Okay. And those would be able to just eat right into the enemy Starfighter at a damage yield approximate to a proton torpedo. Okay. Additionally, it also had two rock spitter plasma projectors that were firelinked,

that were about 120% as strong as an X-Wing's laser cannons. Okay. And a coral skipper had better sensors, but they were at shorter range, and likely because there was less need for autonomy with the Yamask in the field. Right.

To give you an idea as to how effective a squadron of coral skippers is, when there was a full squadron of mixed republic pilots called Kipp's Dozen, which was actually 14 people. Now, Kip Duron was a very important Jedi, and he became quite the Jedi warrior.

Right. He led a group called, Kip's dozen, which was 14. And it was a squadron of normal coral skippers that took out all but two of them. Oh, wow. And all of them died except for Kip and Miko. They got away. This was a squadron that literally had two Jedi in the hottest new X-wing, three regular

X-Wings, two Z-95 headhunters, three A-wings and four B-wings. And within a matter of minutes, they were all gone. Wow. Now, they were grown. They were not built. Right. And they were grafted. And then that took about the same amount of time as the production of an X-wing.

Okay. Now, another weapon that they had was something called the Grutchen. Grutchen were bugs that the Eugen Vogue would deploy that would secrete acids through their mandibles and their claws, strong enough to eat into a starship's hull. Oh, wow. Okay. Now moving down to the land and sea vehicles, it's basically going to be more of the same. There's the thrall herder, which controlled something called the Chaz Rock Slaves. This was a lizard-like species who were used as expendable troops with a pair of dome-like calcifications protruding from their forehead, which was essentially meant to inhibit their autonomy.

So think like calcified, grown restraining bolts for, droids, but for people. Yeah. Okay. I was going to say it sounds like a droid restraint bolt. Yeah. Okay. And that inhibited their autonomy and allowed the Eugen Vong masters to control them. And this was done by the thrall herder, which was a giant beetle-looking thing that's about nine and a half meters long and had thousands of little feet. Yeah. It was also equipped with the Dovan basal, as well as two plasma cannons, roughly equivalent to the imperial strength of an Imperial Walker's blasts.

Okay. If the thrall herder was destroyed, the Chazrock were no longer under its control, and they basically would just scatter. Okay. There's also something called a Rackamot, which is best described by Anakin Solo's girlfriend, as, quote, a six-legged armored monster the size of a crate dragon with plating a foot thick and a plasma cannons and Dovan basils implanted along its spine. Those massive projecting plates along its back act as cooling veins for its overheated biology. and it has a control room and troop compartment in its belly, which somehow doesn't seem to gross me out anymore. My capacity for horror has been overloaded,

and I can't be. And she was like 14 when she was saying this. Oh, lovely. Yeah, no, I can't. I'm beyond being squicked by any of this anymore. Yeah, it's like what else you got? Now the skin of these things was scales of, of blue-green mixed with dark orange and silver reminiscent of a coral skipper along its head and spine.

20 meters in length, it had six enormous legs and projected micro-black holes via its doven basals and also firing its two-yard corals up to two kilometers away. These were also transports for more Chaz Rock in that they were made to grip its thick outer scaly skin until they could drop into battle zones. Oh, wow. Okay. In order to defeat one, Luke Skywalker himself manipulated the force to get the singularity to swallow the Rackamot instead of protect it. He was so drained afterwards that he collapsed. Now, another one was destroyed by my boy Wedge and Tilly's and six other X-Wings firing at it,

plus a hidden cache of explosives. And basically, Wedge also found a way to get a coral skipper to think that it was doing a suicide run into a Republic vehicle. which didn't give the Rackamot time to defend itself against a friendly. Okay. So, like, these vehicles are fucking insane. Did I mention that they also bioengineered a reptilian hunting dog-like creature called Abyssop? No. Yeah.

You had not mentioned that. These are excellent hunters about the same strength as a nexus. Remember the one that scratched Padme's back? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But they had a stronger bite than that. motherfucker and a stronger claw attack.

They also have an aquatic creature called Adora Mu, which is incredibly resistant to any kind of energy attacks, including lightsabers, and they have regenerative capabilities. Oh my God. Yeah. Did I mention that they cross-bred

varnskers and biceps so that they could use those to hunt Jedi? Oh, Jesus. They combine the force detection ability of the Vornskir from, you remember the Thrawn trilogy. up to 100 meters away with the already deadly teeth and claws, and added on the Warnskir's stunning tail as well.

So that's rad and awful. Wow. Yeah. So now we're finally down to the infantry. Okay. So like you said, if you got large blasts of things, I dare say the only way that they would have a chance is if they'd turn their Doven basels. And those might be pretty effective, actually.

But also Dovan basels can be overloaded. Yeah. And yeah, it's like we have blood to spare, you know. Now, basic Ujjon vong soldiers had something called Vanden crab armor. They had an amphistaff, a Kofi, C-O-U-F-E-E-E. The officers had something called a Sisy. And they had blast bugs, razor blades, razor bugs, snap bugs, plasma eels. And not every Ujon-Vong had all of these,

but most of the time you could expect to run into an amphistaff wielding Ujon Vong possibly who also had a coo fee and at least some razor bugs if not also blast bugs Okay Now the warrior himself In terms of West End games Right

Because I found a conversion chart The standard character class attribute spread is 18 dice Ujohn Vong warriors get 20 Oh shit So similar to Noghri Ujong warriors average out to about 1.9 meters tall

So, you know, 30 centimeters, actually 1.9. No, that's one meter and nine centimeters, right? One meter and 90. 90. Okay, yeah. So they're about 30 centimeters shorter than Chewbacca. Yeah. On average.

Now, there's strength topped out at your average Wookie strength. Okay. So not the strongest Wookie, but the average Wookie. although they had a lot more dexterity and more perceptive capabilities than most species. This is a literally bred for war warrior but that's not particularly special

amongst sci-fi warriors that we run into. The armor that the Ejean Vong warrior would wear might be kind of special though. It was called Vondon Scare-Kyrrhic or Vondon crab armor. This armor, when compared to Bessgar, leaves Bessgar in the fucking dust. Hmm.

Now, it doesn't allow for the mobility that Besscar allows for, but it does protect as well against physical damage and twice as well against energy damage. And it's even more resistant to lightsaber damage than Besscar is. And this is due to the fact that Vaughan and Crab Armour's power gland, which gives it an energy field that almost entirely disrupts energy weapons, is so damned active. Also, the armor is regenerative in nature because it's crab-based.

So that's horrible. Okay. Yeah. The armor provides its wear with shoulder to toe protection, adds to their strength in any kind of melee attack, and has claws on the shoulders, elbows, knees, wrists, legs, and anywhere else the warrior has convinced his armor to grow it because the armor is alive and he controls it. This could also include the helmet that goes along with the armor.

Wow. Yeah. The Vaundon crab armor is also missing in the force, so no help there. You can't even use telekinesis directly against them because you can't grab on to anything. Now, you could hurl things at them in the force. You could, like, rip up the ground that they're standing on. Right.

But you can't levitate a Yujan Vuong or him by his armor. Right. The only vulnerability of this armor is the armpit, which are the gills. Okay. The wand and crab armor and also the neck. if you can get to it. And if you happen to fight one of these Eugon Vaughan vong on the authoritarian homeworld, then the Bafor trees have a pollen that will cause a fatal allergic reaction in the armor,

which would then suffocate the wearer. Oh, all right. It swells in both directions. There we go. Now, onto their weapons. The amphistaff is probably the most popular. It's about two and a half kilograms worth of bioengineered serpent, venom-spitting, anti-personnel weapon that obeys the commands of its user instantly.

Okay. It's about 1.3 meters long. It had four different forms. There was the whip, the whip spear, the two-headed spear, and the staff. So just so you know how fucking deadly these things are, they were fully organic and engineered to lethal perfection. Amphistaffs grew in trios from leathery polyps, reaching out and snatching whatever prey could be found. and redirecting it into the polyp's ground mouth, and then feeding all four entities simultaneously.

Now, eventually the amphistamps would lengthen to about two to three meters, which would be too large for the polyp to support, which meant that it was time to break off and escape from their breeding glaw. A breeding glaw is like their cranesh. And then they would slither into the wilderness, leaving the polyp to die. Now, amphistaffs saw an infrared light, and they were durable and cunning predators.

The serpent's body had a power gland in it that would emit electrical impulses that reorganize their creature's semi-crystalline cell structure to adapt to the surroundings or to defend themselves against other predators. Okay. This field extended about a millimeter from the emphystaff's body, and it created a razor-thin-edge is capable of slashing through prey. The only creature the Eugen Vang engineered that rivaled the emphistaff in rigidity was the vaundon crab armor. and eventually amphistaffes would morph into polyps to continue their species reproduction. So if a warrior wants an amphistaff, he's going to have to capture it

as it leaves its polyp. Otherwise, it's too late. It's kind of like if you keep pulling the flowers off of basil plants, your basil will continue to grow leaves and not die. Right. Right.

Now, once it's captured by the Eugon vong warrior, the amphistaff and the warrior were bound together, and the amphistaff would loyally serve, of its new master in battle. And by basic small hand movements, you can imagine like just twisting your hand a little way or putting the pressure.

It practiced over a lifetime the warrior could coax the amphistaff to turn into one of its four forms. Now, the whip spear form sounds obvious, right? It can do as much damage as the strongest wookie, wielding a rick knife. Okay. In whip spear form, it could entangle you and or cut the shit out of you.

Also, it could sink you, in a bite into you and inject its paralytic toxins that would wear you down to nothing in less than 30 seconds. If it sprayed your eyes as far as 20 meters away, you were blind until you got it treated. Okay. In whip form, same amount of damage, same venom-spitting capabilities, and same entangling capabilities. As a two-headed spear, it was even more deadly because it was strong as the strongest lightsaber in its ability to do piercing or slashing damage. which also gave it extra help in parrying any melee attack of any kind, including lightsavers.

Okay. Also, it could be hurled and bury its poisonous head into the target at quite a range. Okay. And then if it switched into being a staff, it would do less damage, but it was even more durable because density is a thing. Right. So they would usually turn it into a staff to fight lightsabers and any other melee weapons. And by the way, it also had a power gland, like I said,

so it could parry away a lightsaber attacks forever. And plenty of Jedi learned very quickly that the amphistaff could switch to a whip immediately and wrap itself around the lightsaber that the Jedi thought had blocked the quarterstaff and bite them in the face. Wow. Okay.

Now, the only way to kill the amphistaff was to either sever its head or beat it to death. So good fucking luck. Yeah. Now, all the other listed melee weapons are similar enough that I don't really need to belabor the point that much other than to point out some minor differences. So the Cofi is like an amphistaff, but it's dagger.

Okay. So, yeah, same versatility, same venom, just smaller. And the Sasi was the baton that was used as like a rank baton for the war masters. And that was about three quarters of a meter long, and it had the same basic forms and abilities. Okay. Now, they, again, Eugon Vong, they value up-close, combat, so you're not going to see that much in terms of range. Everything has distance weapons is going to be short range, either hurling range or hurling

with a little extra flying range. So, razor bugs, thud bugs, blast bugs, all the rest were basically max range of 130 meters, effective range of 60 meters. Okay. Which is still pretty fucking far. Yeah. So these were basically all sorts of thrown beetles that did different kinds of halacious damaged by a warrior as they closed in on you.

So it's when you talked about throwing beetles that bore into you. I was like, oh, no kidding. Funny, that. Yeah. Now, the cool thing about these, since they are alive and they listen to their masters, they'll circle back if the warrior missed. Shit. So...

Great. Yeah. So they would be thrown, and then their wings would take over, and they could reach speeds of up to 150 kilometers per hour. So if you ran into a specialized Eugen Vong, he might carry a tube called a thud bug launcher. And yes, other bug launchers existed too. Blast bugs would kill you outright with their explosive capabilities unless you were armored up, in which case it would still likely breach your armor and burn the living shit out of you.

They also had snap bugs, which were kind of like flashy bangs, which the Eujan Vong were all but immune to. Now, any of these bugs could be integrated into the warrior. chest and body, so he could just have it climb into his armor. And that doesn't mean he has to be wearing armor to do this either. They could just attach into his chest because, oh, that's just pain. Right, right. Now, Razor Bugs had the added annoyance of repeatedly attacking you until their warrior summoned them back.

So you could just get a cloud of Razor beetles capable of eating through many kinds of armor, and they're just going to swarm you. According to Jana Solo, Jana Solo, right? The one who rescues the galaxy from her brother about 16 years later. Jana Solo, the daughter

of Han Solo, the, yeah. She said, quote, one razor bug is a nuisance. Three might leave you scarred. Five will flay you alive. Yeah. That is a hell of a curve

being told to us by a Jedi. Yeah. There's also something called a plasma eel, and it's basically Amphistaff turned grenade. So it could be used as a thrown weapon, and the tail would basically exert a plasma vent, giving them greater thrust so that when they threw, they would throw faster, and then when they hit, they would ignite the plasma at the front that made the eel hit with the strength of a thermal detonator.

Oh, my God. Yeah, which is way more than a simple grenade. Right, yeah. And then as I'd spoken about this earlier, I wanted to circle back around to something called the Plarian Bowl. So the Plurian Bowl, B-O-L, is a venom spitter that often took the place of somebody's eyeball. So it's one of those sacrifices you give to the gods. And the damage it caused was reversible, but only with an antidote. So this is a spy's weapon.

And it could shoot the venom about 10 meters max. so it's very much the ninja powder of the Eujon Vong, but far more deadly, of course. And all you had to do is twitch the eyelid, and the plerian bowl would obey and dilate its pupil and spit out its venom. Okay. So that's all the weapons, basically.

That's the fanaticism and the warrior culture that loves pain, all the organic shit at their disposal. They would equal and best the Jedi on the regular. Yeah. And those were just their normal guys. Yeah. By the way, Dave Filoni and Pablo Hidalgo shared plans to include the Ujong in the Clone Wars cartoon. And they shared those plans at Celebration 2015.

I know because I was there when it happened. And I want to show you these pictures. So I'm going to pause it real quick. So it took longer than I wanted it to. But you could see that they actually, this was part of the lost Clone Wars episodes, essentially. that they had drawn up concept art with, along with like, Boba Fett as a young man, shooting it out with Cadd Bain and a whole bunch of other stuff. What's your name? Assange Ventris with like blonde hair.

Quinlan Vos was going to have more of a thing because, you know, this is, Disney had already, by 2015, had bought the property. Right. But they hadn't quite like put the kibosh on a lot of things, so they're letting some things continue to go, right? But anyway, you saw the Ujon vong there. So that was part of the plan. And I heard Faloni and Hidalgo talk about it while I was sitting there taking very blurry pictures. Nice. Yeah.

Anyway, so that's the Ujong now. Okay. I dare say the Dovan basils will be a problem for a bit. But again, those get overloaded over time. And so if you just throw enough tier and adapt them, they're not going to win. Yeah, and what I noticed, so as you were talking about, you know, they're getting down, especially getting down to the infantry level, but at all levels, they are really, really, really, very well defended against energy weapons. Yes. Which in the Star Wars universe is really a big deal.

Yeah. And I will say I'd be interested in how that would translate on the tabletop with Battlefleet Gothic. Certainly against an imperial fleet

they're going to they're going to do pretty well because that's you know plasma plasma cannons and lances which are basically gigantic, you know, basically superheated beams of plasma. Right.

And so that's going to be a thing. The scale of 40K is such that the Doven basils are going to get shorted out pretty fast. Yeah. And I think that's their only hope, really. I mean, they're going to hit offensively pretty well for a bit. But again, I think they're going to end up getting. Yeah, and well, and against tyrannids, and this is the thing, against tyrannids, I noticed that, okay, you know, it's, it's, you know, very good protection against physical attacks, but like, you know, it completely disrupts energy attacks. So, all right.

So if I'm a Republican trooper with a blaster, I'm fucked. Yeah. If I'm a termagant with a death spitter, I probably. probably got a better shot. Yeah. You know, and if I'm a hormagant, who is one of a horde of hormagons, I've got a pretty good chance of getting my claws into that armor. And I mean, each individual warrior is going to, you know, mow face.

Right. against, you know, hormagons or termagants. But eventually they're, they're just going to get, they're just going to get overwhelmed. Yeah. And the other thing I was thinking of was,

you know, against, against Astartis, against space marines. Space Marines are bigger than them by a couple of, a few centimeters, you know,

space marine and armor is two point something meters. and space marines don't generally carry energy weapons. Like in the 40K universe, you know, if a space marine is a sergeant, maybe he has a plasma pistol, but most of the time they're carrying bolt weapons. So that's going to be, that's a whole other mashup. But against the Tyrannids, the numbers game is going to be where it happens. And we get into what I find entertaining. In previous episodes, you've talked about, well, now we've got to talk about the trolley problem, right?

You know, how many for this versus that? And I'm imagining a group of Yu-Jean vong warriors fighting a carnifex because they're hyper-aggressive, right? And they want to, you know, a thousand percent commitment, right? So kill the big ones is a rule. Right. If we assume that they are able to run fast enough on the charge, cut their way through a wave of hormagons, and they make it to the perimeter around a carnifax.

You know, now we have this chitinous beast that actually, aesthetically, they're looking at like, oh, well, this doesn't look too different from, you know, our pets back home. Right. But, you know, how effective is an amphistaff going to be against the leg joints of a carnifex? Is my question. Yeah.

You know, and the, the, or, you know, with their, with the other capabilities they have, if they can drop, you know, elite, you know, elite, you know, whatever their best warriors are, you know, near a hive tyrant, then, you know, it turns into a fight of their best warriors against a hive tyrant and perhaps his tyrant guard. And, you know, they're going to do better there because of their individual prowess. Right. Rather than against the horde.

You know, so now the story, the narrative that I'm envisioning is, okay, our two fleets have now made contact. And we have our gigantic, you know, world ship that has made, you know, contact with the hive fleet. And both sides are instinctively aggressive. Right. So there's not going to be any fancy maneuver. It's just going to be get them. Get them. Right.

Well, yeah. The Vaughn going, oh, by the way, they hate when you call them the vong because it separates them from their gods. Oh. So that became part of psychological warfare. But they're going to be like, okay, glory for my domain. Here I go. Yeah. You know, and everybody else is going to be racing for the same.

Yeah. And so, you know, the hive mind. and the interaction of the hive mind with their, what's the giant brain battle computer thing? Oh yeah, the Yomka? The Yomka. The Yamsk. I'm sorry.

Jemask. Yeah, it's the physical embodiment of what they think Yomka looks like. Right. So the interaction of, you know, the hive mind, the psychic shadow, you know, how, how. how would that interact with the yarmac? Would it interact with the yarmic? Since the yarmic, as you said, is operating through, you know, gravitational waves,

like what portion of it is, you know, physical steering and what portion of it is empathy? Mm-hmm. And like the shadow and the warp is going to have an impact on the empathy. Oh, yeah. but how much of one is it going to have? And yeah, it becomes an interesting, it becomes another question of like, okay, well, what happens when a blaster hits a shield?

Is it the same as when a laser hits a shield? It's like, well, okay, you know, how does this operate? Right. Because psychic powers in 40K all operate through the warp, which is kind of 4.4. 40K's version of hyperspace, but in 40K it's hell. And see, part of me thinks that like the Doven Basel, just like parking, a world ship there and the Doven Basel do its interdiction thing. Yeah.

Is going to destroy any and all access to the warp. Yeah, it could. Because it's just going to black hole the shit out of it, which I, you know, it's one of those. I don't, I don't think once they've landed that the Tyrannids could be defeated, they could be held back. maybe they could be defeated if a if one of the the main world ships goes up to wherever the warp is yeah and just interdicts it because then you're choking them off yeah and that would you know yeah that could be that could be a way to a way to a way to win yeah it's like you know the equivalent of doing an EMP.

Yeah. You know, at the power station. Yeah. That's a good analogy. The thing I'm picturing is all of the escorts from the tyrannid fleet doing what tyrannid escorts do, which is immediately running into, in game rules, running into ramming speed.

Right. And, and, you know, tyrannid ships have. claws and tentacles and all kind of they're giant space bugs and again throw enough of those and you will overwhelm the Doven basal shields yeah so the first three waves

will get absorbed again it's not that they're I mean they are just as strong against physical attacks as Baskar it's just they're twice as strong as Baskar is against energy attacks which is right wild but so good luck hurting them physically and same thing with the hulls on these ships.

But that being said, you don't have to do it on the first three punches. It's that you were just raining rabbit punches down on them the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. So I think overall, the hoard wins. Yes.

Individually, I think there's a lot of room for some, some Jeune Vaughon Vaughn to gain. glory. Oh, quite so, yes. You know, the survivors are going to be telling stories of their valor against the monstrous, you know, tyrannid beasts for, you know. Well, and they'll be telling stories of each other's glory. Because there was a Jedi who stood on a bridge and held back a whole bunch of the Yu-Jean vong. Yeah. So that, I forget, who could escape. And he just opened himself up fully to the force.

And he said, you know, I am Ganner. And this is my bridge and you will not cross it. And this is a real like Horatio at the bridge moment, right? Yeah. Horatio Cochvis. And there were piles of Eujon Vong bodies around his corpse by the time he died. The Yuzon Vong turned him into a legend. They talk about the Ganner.

They don't care if you fought against them or not. If you showed that kind of like aggression. and a thousand percent commitment. Yeah. They honored that on some level. So, yeah, like going for the glory

and everybody around you, your name is going to become a household name. Yeah. You know, and you know that. Yeah. So, yeah. But yeah, there you go. Yeah.

So Tyrannid's one. Yep. So eventually. Yeah. Yeah. So after after enough waves of bugs. Yeah, pretty much. That's that, yeah.

And again, the Eugen-Vong, they had their little slaves with the, the calcified domes, but. Yeah. Those, those were never much of a factor. They were much more for the psychological impact than anything else. And, and in the same way that Rippers work on the tabletop for, uh, for 40K, those lizard people were kind of the same thing. It's like, well, okay, look, you know we're coming, but they're going to jog your sword arm and get in your way

and we're ordering them to try to kill you. So you're going to have to fight them or not. If you choose not to, they're going to drag some of you down. If you choose to do it, then you're letting us get closer, you know, until we're in bug throwing range. You know, it's like which, which shitty choice are you going to take? Oh, yeah. You know, it's the same thing.

Absolutely. So, all right. So what are you going to recommend for folks? I am once again going to recommend the war against the Chitor by David Gerald. because again, it's thematically very appropriate, and it is a very, very good science fiction series. So, yeah, David Gerald, G-E-R-R-O-L-D, War Against the Chitor. It's there's at least five or six novels.

So, yeah, I very highly recommend that, and what about you? I'm going to go ahead and recommend the first book of the Ejean Von der Levant. series, see if it doesn't hook you. It's called Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore, who I think wrote a bunch of fantasy novels. Mm-hmm. He did. And yeah, it's, um, see if that hooks you. Um, it's, I find it compelling enough. Uh, and if, if that gets you going, then you keep reading and you can read, uh, the second book of that duology, uh, which is called onslaught, and then you can go to ruin and then, and then, and then, and 19 books later, you'll know what I'm talking about. Okay, so this just goes to show that Star Wars novels do have their own version of the Horace Heresy series.

Yes, yes. So, cool. Well, let's see, where can people find us? We can be found on our website at waba, wauba, waba, waba, dot geekhistorytime.com. And we can also be found on YouTube at geek history time. and you're listening to us. So you have found us somewhere, and that's probably either on the Apple podcast app,

on the Amazon podcast app, or on Spotify. Wherever it is that you have found us, please take a moment to subscribe and give us the five-star review that you know we've earned. And where can you be found, sir? Let's see. July 3rd, August 7th. I don't think this will release by the time

the July 3rd shows. So August 3rd. 7th, September 4th, October 2nd, November 6th. All of those at the Sacramento Comedy Spot. Myself and Justine and Emily, Mark's coming back for one of those. Nice. And we are doing capital punishment for now into our 11th year. So come on down and watch us spin that wheel and come enjoy. You owe it to yourself to come and see what everybody loves.

So yeah, capital punishment. go to satcomedy spot.com, go to the calendar section, and find capital punishment on there. Get you tickets and come on down. Very cool. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blaylock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s.