Adeptus Ridiculous - AGE OF STRIFE: This Is Fine | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Check out our sponsor  - https://tabletopstronghold.com/Ridiculoushttps://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculous​Humanity was peaking during the Dark Age of Technology... until the robots revolted, the Warp storms hit, and the lights went out. Join us as we dive into the absolute dumpster fire that was the Age of Strife (Old Night), from the rise of the Men of Iron to the Techno-barbarian warlords ruling a radioactive Terra. It’s robots, demons, and anarchy, and as we discuss in the episode, it was definitely "not poggers" as the kids say.Support the show

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Adeptus Ridiculous Podcast. My name is D.K. Diamanties, his name is Bricky. You know why you're here. But before we get into all that, if you want to monetarily support the podcast and you like us, heading over to Patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous, where you get access to the discord, blooms of that happen, $15 tier, get you access to all of our posters in just the creamiest digital form ever. You should check it out.

Patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous. Bricky, take it away. I'm taking it away. Hello, everyone. If you want to grab merchandise, go ahead and check out Orcadate.com. It's down in the description, or I guess just click on the ad record one that's down listed down there. Also, this is the last major sponsor we got going on for Tabletop Stronghold. Again, make sure you give it a look.

It is Tabletopstronghold.com slash ridiculous. It is down in the description, as well as most likely the pin comments. They have some awesome stuff. I've actually had a few people reach out saying they got the stuff, the MagCase 2.0 and the competitive terrain set. And they both spoke highly of it, which makes sense considering the fact that these indeed are the things that I see everywhere, whatever I go to any kind of event that requires transporting your miniatures. It's all great stuff. They have lots of magnets, awesome kinds of weight capacity, very, very solid trays for everything that you need. flexible layouts for all of the competitive stuff you might need

any kind of terrain stuff and it is up to 40% off right now so check it out table top stronghold dot com slash ridiculous dk dk thoughts on Warhammer go thoughts on Warhammer boy it's a big crazy universe it's full of heresy full of Zenos and, um, boy, it did, I would not want to live in it.

I hate, you know, like those, those posts where someone's like, hey, would you, what would you do if you were thrown into your favorite hobbies world? And it's like, no, no. You know, I, I challenge that theory. Really? You would want to get thrown into the Warhammer universe? If I'm rich. Oh, well, yeah, sure, if you're a planetary governor, I suppose. it would be the bees knees.

Yeah, I'm about to say. I mean, I'm just thinking to myself, like, you know, there's a lot of places I'd like to be in the world of Warhammer. And most of them involve some kind of aristocracy. Yeah. Just like, just like real life. Turns out that stuff is really easy. And actually, like, it turns out having a lot of money makes your life, like, much easier.

Granted, I'm sure there's a couple people who will kill you for it. but, you know, I don't know. Yeah, but you're rich. You can just hire just an insane amount of bodyguards and, you know, it doesn't, as long as you remember to pay your tithes to the Imperium, you do whatever the hell you want. You don't even matter. That is very true.

You could have sex with a tau and you'd be fine, right? Or some Xenos, arum, and you'd be fine because you pay your ties. Nobody's going to come check. Extremely suspicious as to the first thing you said being you could have sex with Tao, but I'm just going to try to push that out of my brain at the moment. Listen, sometimes Torchstar's abs just make their way into my brain and I just, you know, so what are you going to do? I know it's only like three years old, but why does I feel like a decade old meme?

It does feel like I've been saying that for like a decade, man. I'm looking back on on that with like personal disdain. It's how sympathizing. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, shy. it's not canon. You know.

Torst our sweltering abs are not canon. Nothing we say is canon. Shocking. But, you know, I'm sure. I'm sure you may be excited for the holidays. Yes, yes, yes. December is here. Good stuff is coming along our ways.

And we don't have a particularly long episode today. But I'm sure, you know, I'm sure you've heard, though, a lovely Christmas song, Silent Night, yes? Oh, no. And at the start of a Warhammer lore episode, you just being like, so heard of Silent Night, eh? I'm just like, oh, no. I feel like in Warhammer, that takes on a menacing tone.

I mean, is there many things that don't take on a menacing tone? I mean, I guess that's fair. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but tell me, All right. Well, I do have a mystery quote for you today. I don't think you're going to get it. But I do think that there is a, am I maybe gleam you towards the direct direction, you know, silent night, old night, as they say. Quote, is it inviolable. What hell word is that? Inviable? Can you spell it and put it in chat?

Yeah, yeah. Inviolable? Inviable? Inviolable? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, inviolable. Yeah, never to be broken infringed dishonored. I've never, it almost sounds like someone like misspelled something. Inviable. I have never heard that word before, huh? I'm learning. It is an inviolable truth that humanity's ability to destroy will always outstrip its ability to create. It is our curse and our salvation combined. Our end when it comes will be writ by our own blood. hand, said to by the unspeakable king. Huh. Um.

Silent night, old night. All ain't calm and all is strife. Now, when you led with silent and I was like, oh, maybe he's going to do a sanguinala episode because like tis the season, right? Maybe, maybe it'll be a sanguinala episode. But that seems a lot more.

Hmm. I almost want to say it, it sounds kind of not maybe not ad mecky but it sounds ad mech adjacent because of the murder of stuff yeah a little bit i i got i got i got nothing okay i mean it is a little bit hard uh and that's why that's why i was like ah you probably won't get it um this is an episode on the age of strife uh silent night old night uh do you remember old night It sounds familiar, but nothing like Warhammer lore related is specifically coming to mind about Old Knight. Okay, we'll get into that. We'll get into that.

I think the age of strife is something that is particularly interesting because it is a very important section of 40K lore that is not particularly expanded on very much and also has a lot of stories that could be. discussed during it. One of the biggest parts of it, however, is the fact that it leads up to the Great Crusade. And it also, you know, it was, well, I'll tell you why I've started for a while, but it's actually something that I personally have been confused by often. I have had a very hard time nailing down the age of strife in past episodes and things like that. So it's actually not only good for yourself, but good for me, that we're able to kind of sit down and really go through this one in particular because this is a very, a very weird, very under-discussed area, which some people like Chai mentioned really like that,

that's kind of mysterious and weird and not fully discussed, but it's interesting. And so we're going to be talking about that. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Age of Strife is everything is, everybody's cut off from Tara. Everybody kind of has to sort of survive on their own. Good luck if you're one of the, you know, Imperium planets that's like way out all by yourself type of area, right? Yeah.

Yes. The couple thousand years of everything being screwed over. So yeah. Now, so imagine being on a world that was very much specialized to do one thing, right? Let's say you were growing plants or producing livestock or like, like munitions, stuff like that. Your planet's job is to do that one job and nothing else, right? Yep. And so in order for your planet to get that job done effectively,

other resources that allow for basic quality of life are brought in separately. You know, your world is entirely specific to one exact exports and nothing more. So if you are on a planet that's really damn good at harvesting adamantium and, you know, there doesn't have any water on it. Well, then you get water brought in and poured it, right? Mm-hmm. Yep. Now, now things kind of sucked on that planet for a bit because,

all the robots you had tried to kill you, you know, and you're still trying to pick up the pieces and live in the new normal. But then the lights completely go out, the supply ships stop appearing, and the export ships get destroyed in orbit. Communications go down, and your little world is just there, in the void,

surrounded by darkness. I specifically remember stuff like this happening when we did the squats episode, because that's essentially what happens to their home planet is they have to like kind of survive now that they've been cut off even though they're in like the galactic core and it's like yeah it's not a great time so you don't love that.

People of course start to get really scared and they start lashing out and they can do so because the forces of the military haven't been seen because they also have been cut off by whatever is happening off world. The fear expands more and more as the silence goes on for months to years to decades to centuries and the once

glorious union you were a part of on a galactic scale has completely collapsed. And that is what happens in the darkness of old night. Yay. Yay, old night. So the age of strife was a really significant time during the history of humanity, where it was on the heels of dramatic changes and tragedies that they had to face only a few years prior. This combined with powers beyond their control, resulted in an isolationist age that tore humanity to the core, and has long-standing repercussions to this day. So, you know, nice casual bit of misery porn for today. Hope your height for it.

Yeah. Hooray. What were we saying at the, what was it that? What's the last episode we did where you were like, oh, yeah, my life is just so great and I'm so privileged that my fiction has to be just overwhelmingly depressing so I can feel sad things for it change. Somewhat. It was, let me find the, yeah, yeah, I mean, I have, I'm a very happy.

guy. I have a very happy life. And so I like depressing media to go across with it. But, um, hell yeah. It was, no, it was the most evil, evil Twitch comment I have ever seen that says local Orange County white boy with a loving family desperate to feel negative emotions. That is just well done. Just golf clapping it up for that. Crushing, man. Crushing. Crushing. I don't know if I, did I, like, right? that's you got it you can live in the good life brother i i'm happy for it i i is the benefit of great parents hell yeah and and that's that uh anywho all that aside yes so so old night uh and the end of the the dark age of technology slash the um uh the great age technology i don't

the golden the golden age i'm sorry i don't know what my brain my brain farted right there um the golden age technology because, you know, it's dark age to some golden age to others. Oh, yeah. So in order to talk about Old Knight, we got to do a very quick TLDR on the Dark Age technology. And so humanity, by all accounts, was peak right before the end of the Dark Age. Colonization across the galaxy was very successful, thanks to the invention of the standard template construct library or the STCs. This combined with AI in the form of fully self-ware machines used for both war and general labor,

allowed for swift victory in the face of war and even swifter conquest of worlds in the form of terraforming and habitation. Three major things marks the end of the Dark Age technology or the Golden Age technology and serve as the primary reasons for the Age of strife. Now, this is off script, but I do want to mention it. A lot of people may not understand why it's called the Dark Age and the Golden Age. basically, right, this is way before anything of the classic Warhammer happened before the emperor showed himself. Yeah. And it is the idea that we were in, there's not a lot in gnome, but the assumption is that humanity is in like Star Trek era. Maybe even more powerful than that.

Yeah. In a lunacy level of power because of like classic sci-fi. Yeah. Isn't it like they're so advanced and they're so strong that like if the age of strife and everything never happened and we still had all the like golden dark age tech, the Imperium would conquer the galaxy like no problem. Like nothing would be able to stand up to it. It's generally considered something of that nature. Like again, this is a lot of theory. So you can't really take this on face value.

But there's a lot of folks that are like, yeah, I mean, we were equivalent to like necrime. in power. Yeah. But with our population. Yeah, with the millions and millions and yeah. Every single faction, every single faction of Warhammer is all about degradation, or at least mostly are about degradation. And so, yeah, this is the height of the Imperium.

Also, did you want to read that quote that try to post it? It might actually be pretty handy. Let's do it. Fools have asked, why did the dark age of technology end in the fall of humanity? and other fools have answered back folly or pride or the worship of progress as if these things alone had any meaning. The answer, as the wise know, is simple.

It's because finally, humanity had the arts at their disposal to make their dreams a reality and the dreams of humanity have ever been the darkest things in all creation. God. Damn. It's a pretty hard quote.

I actually like it a lot. That's a great quote. What's that from? It sounds like it's from like a Magos or like some kind of inquisitor of sorts. Definitely. But anyway, by the suppressed work of the techno archaeologist Sinesius Thorne, the suppressed work. But yes. So very much often it's meant and described in like that kind of way where it's the golden age technology because it was the height of humanity.

but it's the dark age technology because of not only what occurred, but because invention of that kind of sort is heresy for Admec and you know how it goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, notable dark age creations, the warp drive, the standard template construct, navigators, the golden throne, artificial intelligence, plastial, all kinds of things. I mean, very often, whenever you see some random character with an insane weapon, In Warhammer, in the Imperium, that is, it's some relic from the dark age. Mm-hmm.

Like, and back then, wasn't it like, what did we say, like knights or, we're like, oh, yeah, there's just, you know, like, construction mobiles. Yeah. Or, uh, whatever, yeah. Knights were, um, like, farming equipment. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Using a knight for farming. So, yeah, archaeotech. Yeah, archaeotech.

Basically, archaeotech is anything of that nature. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm pretty sure even, uh, in the guard, like, Lord Solar Leontas has a pistol called like Soul's Righteous Gaze. And it's just this insanely powerful pistol because it was in the vault somewhere way back and went, you know? Anyway, or that aside. So the first big issue of the three things that marked the age of strife were the machines.

Once the custodians of humanity, the conflict that occurred as a result of the cybernetic revolt. Now, worthy of its own episode, which it really is, the revolt result, sorry, the revolt resulted in an almost galaxy-wide conflict against the extremely powerful machines of humanity that was at such a big scale, the intervention from non-humans was most likely needed to ensure a victory. Even though the machines were quelled, the damage was irreversible. The thinking machines did a number on the population of humanity and the pure might they showed made humanity very fearful of technology as a whole. Pockets of humanity would either stop using it outright, therefore forgetting a lot of it, or they would actively. destroy it in favor of an agrarian life.

That guy there is a man of iron. Yep, the men of iron. Yeah, from the Blackstone Fortress area, I do believe. And there's still that one floating around, trying to convince everyone that he's not an AI at all, totally, just normal, normal robot here. Everybody, don't worry about it. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, he looks tough and he's got good minigons, so it's good stuff. Hell yeah. So obviously humanity was all sorts of messed up from that. And then the second main reason, which was the warp storms that were caused by the Eldari. We know what they were up to and we know they were making a new god in the process. One thing that I have often confused and been wrong about before is that you assume that the birth of Sla-Nesh is what causes the warp storms and that is not true. It is the birth of Sle-Nesh that solves the warp storms.

It's almost like popping a Zit. It's everything gets all roiling, roiling, roiling, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And then Sle-Nesh bursts out, kills all the Eldar, and then things calm again. I got that confused and I'm pretty sure I've told you the wrong thing in the past. I got them reversed. Oh, okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, because I always thought that, too. I always thought it was the birth of Slinish that caused the age of strife and cut him.

everybody off. So. Yeah, no, I got it backwards. It was their, their hedonism, all of their crazy galaxy-wide shenanigans that was building up the warp storms. That's true. Arriving is what calmed it. Right. Um, like you said, like, is it everything just, yeah, just pops.

Mm-hmm. So the disturbances caused the massive spread of warp storms across the galaxy. And this caused humanity to have a really bad time connecting to each other as obviously communications and travel is done by the warp. animosity was high, and now that aid wasn't easy to come by, much of humanity was left to its own devices while they had to work and repair themselves from the Galactic Wide War, which is pretty hard when you're afraid to use the computer and you can't really call tech support. And Cox communication can't hold up during a galactic sex storm, bringing people closer my ass. Thank you, Possum, real and true. It is very true, yeah.

Oof. Now, this was inflamed even more by the final main cause of old night, the sudden rise of Cycars. Now, yeah, psychers began to show up quite a bit near the end of the dark age. And prior to the technological collapse, Cycars were handled actually pretty well on some more advanced worlds, especially. But as humanity started to revert, a lot of people became. you know, more wary of psychers.

And warp shenanigans also had a pretty bad impact to psychers as a whole, which are kind of lightning rods for demonic incursions. Yeah. And so there's a combination of like, hey, technology tried to kill us, so we had to kill it. And also, the devil is real and can burst out of people like the Kool-Aid man, really did a number on pockets of humanity. Yeah, I was going to say It's not a great time for

For humanity It's man, you either got to use the technology That you're horribly scared of Because you know That's what caused a lot of this mess Or you have to literally deal with like Oh yeah, we'll use a psycher And oops, he went a little crazy

And now demons are everywhere Like yeah, I imagine It's a little tough It's really hard to understate How monumentally bad this was like in a few short generations or whatever or however long this time frame was Skynet happened

the devil is real and he came out of Jim like it's very bad Jim was complaining about a headache and then started screaming and where did all these bloodthusters come from yeah also you're out of food yeah you've been out of food for a while it's I cannot undersell it

so Who? You want to read, Bush, I wrote. Sure. I really like how Luton described it. A lot of advanced cosmopolitan worlds accepted cykers and used their powers, and a lot of Backwater's worlds murdered their sikers and witch hunts like the barbarians that they are. But when Old Knight rolled in with warp storms, all these accepting worlds got overwhelmed by demons as their psychers became doors to hell and redneck worlds where all the cykers got murdered were fine.

Yeah, I mean, you basically had all of the backwater people be like, God, kill these people, they're awful. And then they did, oh, I mean, they were fine with that. They definitely weren't fine with the other stuff, but, you know. Yeah. Yeah, with all those warbsters going around, I imagine any psycher that was alive was probably just absolutely not having a great time. And we're just opening demon portals left and right. And, yeah. So in almost no time at all, all the remarkable explorers.

of the void had been brought into submission. And this would be an M25. And it would take 5,000 years for Sla-Desh to be born and the age of strife to end. 5,000 years. Thousand years of dealing with that shit.

Oh. So first thing first, we're going to cover the impact of old night in an outward galactic manner and eventually bring everything back to see what was going on in Terra. Now, I really should note the 5,000 years thing, you know, because obviously, like, the galactic wide creation of a sex god, you know, it's more than sex, but whatever, it does not happen overnight. And like, we should really hammer him 5,000 years.

Yeah, 5,000 years of debauchery and, like, there is no, the fact that humanity is alive at all is, shocking. You know, that's true that humanity survived the age of strife at all is pretty shocking, considering like the amount of psychers there are the fact that you're completely cut off from like necessary resources. Like sure, there's some planets that can self-sustain, but the fact that humanity doesn't just fucking die out from being completely isolated by warped storms is actually quite impressive. It's just, I mean, you know, human resilience. But, you know, Also, it makes sense why all of these areas would end up becoming these weird, confusing planets where long traditions and strange stuff. I mean, 5,000 years, because a couple hundred years is bad, but 5,000 means that, yeah, you can forget all the tech.

All the tech will die off. There's no way to repair it. There's no way to use it. There's no way to understand it. There's, you're going to get different cultures. I mean, I mean, shit. What was the difference in even the way a human looked in our 5,000 years, right? Yeah.

Like, it is, it is substantial. So, anyway, so the age of strife, far from terror, far from terror. Though it is no longer explicitly stated as canon lore in the leagues of photon, the old lore of the squads likely has some shades of consistent truth here and there. For example, the old squads called this period of time the age of isolation. And that's when the planets they had became known as their home worlds. Sorry, that's when the planets they had originally been known as home worlds couldn't return to terror. And they had to rely on their fellow squats to stay united.

Now, we know the kin in the leagues were freshly settling the Galactic Corps at the time of the age of strife. But it's not really explicitly stated that the reason they stayed there is due to the warp storms. as we said before, they became a bit more insulated due to the harsh borders of space they inhabit him. And it was likely a bit more simple for them. It was difficult to leave the core in the first place. So when it became impossible, they kind of had a bit of a, oh, no, anyways. Yeah, it was hard for us to leave anyway, whatever.

We'll just go back to business. Yeah, I mean, the glad to core is insane. And so, you know, the, oh, no, anyways mentality had them establish a firmer foothold because they had the ability to make what they needed to make there in the core. And especially since they did not have some long-standing issues with the cybernetic revolt like everyone else did. Now, the isolation that humanity had resulted in the, sorry, the isolation that humanity had resulted in the evolution of various strands of humanity in an abhuman sense. Now, we have the abhuman episode, so you can check that one out for the viewers.

But for our conversation, two main things were shown here, polar opposites being the ratlings and the ogre. The rattlings developed on agro-worlds, but ones that were uniquely spared from infighting or external conflict. And they grew up in a world that was protective in its overabundance. But instead of going overboard and excess, they became more skittish and adapted to survive and thrive in what many contemporary folks would call incredible excess. Now, the Ogren had the opposite. They developed on former prison worlds that had harsher environments that turned them into gigantic monstrosities hardened to handle the most extreme world. worlds because again, 5,000 years. Yeah.

Now, imperial propaganda would dictate the history of most of the abhumans that were spawned during the age of strife. And as far as imperial citizens are concerned, their abominations and subhuman. But there's plenty of evidence that some worlds that devolved into an abhuman state did ban together during this time. For a note, the Kivor Enclavium, or Enclavium, I guess, was a group of multiple ad-human worlds that were unified and were unfortunately brought

into compliance by the combined forces of the Imperial Fists and the Death Guard. Yeah. Very great crusade. Yippy, yippy. Yeah. I think old squat lore also had something similar like, oh yeah, the squats are short and stubby because, well, they're

stuck on a planet that has ridiculous gravity on it. So after a while, you just kind of, you just kind of get a little squish. Yeah, you're squatted. Mm-hmm. Now, the existence of something like the Kivore Enclavium brings up one very important thing, which is even though it was very, very difficult, travel between worlds was still somewhat possible in a very limited sense. And some would form these really nice mini empires that would be fun to reconquer after the storms chilled out a bit.

Now, a vast majority of them will be lost time because Big E wanted the number. to be kept up and the stories didn't matter so much, like the Eresci and technocracy. But the most notable pre-crucissade empire that formed during the age of strife is of, you know, the Interex, of course. Oh, yes. The Interex were a highly advanced form of humanity, both in society and genetics. They were taller than the average human. Their biology included bat-like ears and allowed them to communicate without the use of

normal human language. They had met the Eldar and got a bit of a bit of a problem. primer on chaos. And this helped them sustain through the terrorists of old night with some degree of resilience. They were able to tame technology to their needs and continue to advance while the majority of humanity was regressing. They focused on defense and combat, developed mobile fighting platforms that were

like little centaurs. They had fancy bows and mawlers. And, you know, unlike the rest of humanity, they didn't use things like servitors. They had drones, some events, AI. Subjugation. They did subjugation of combatants. But most of the time they would let them join to help them advance. And nothing ever bad would happen to them at all in the first Horacee book.

That'd be ridiculous. They were never featured in a book at all. It's just a footnote on humanity and they're all. They're still there. They didn't get completely wiped out. No genocide in 40K at all. Love those interricks. Yeah, nothing ever bad happens to the interricks.

No, fuck you, Arabis, you son of a bitch, you stole that thing and you know it. Arab Arabis, a piece of shit, asshole. Fucking son of a bitch. And also, you know, the whole taking over planets and, you know, imperialism thing. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Funny man steal funny life.

He he ha ha. Funny knife, yeah. Funny knife, yeah. Funny knife, ha ha. Damn you, Arabis. Damn you Arabis. But anyway, we'll get more into the following guys in the future series, but the Arranius continuity were another small empire of humanity that was able to thrive during the age of strife.

They were able to remain unified due to a series of warp gates that connected the worlds together. And the continuity was ruled by the techno nobility of iron lords. They carved out about six or so worlds in their name, which is pretty cool. One of these worlds was inhabited by a race known as the Episcans, but it was a pretty good place to set up shop regardless of the Zenos. So the continuity did so anyways during the age of strife. They turned it actually into a massive manufacturing world that served as their capital named Aranius, Aranius, I guess. And the world would eventually suffer attacks through the warp gates, and only the capital would remain, which is hysterical because that capital would eventually be known as its more modern name being Necromunda. Aha.

Let's go. Hey, I know that name. I'm soy jacking my brains out. Mm-hmm. His brains are out. No, we do have specific pinpoints for the collapse of every single world. Sorry, look, we definitely don't have that. We do not have specific pinpoint for the collapse of every single world during old night.

We're very aware of the end results. The development of the feudal night worlds, of course. But for example, the most universal side effect of these worlds is them being not connected and therefore often dying. The worlds that were selected as settlements during the long marries. were done very strategically. They were a bit more on the outskirts, so as not be involved in direct conflict with anything more going on inward and they could be preserved.

The power of the suits and those who were able to control them were responsible for the custodianship of these worlds to begin with. So as they became more isolated, they were inevitably viewed as powerful leaders. Plus, even prior to their landing on the world, the Long March's colony ships were very much insular communities to begin with. So the rungs of leaders were formed even before they were. landed. Cool.

Now, if you have the further soul system, of course, and the actual soul system ourselves, we are hit with a bit more of a scattered history, except for the area around Saturn. We do know of two specific cultures around Saturn that existed during that time. And the first were known as the ringers. Give you 20 bucks on where they were from. I don't know. What planet in this whole spread ring, eh? well I'm talking about Saturn so

I'm being slightly sarcastic I know but we got three planets with rings man well yeah but usually when you when you think of like plants you think the rings of Saturn you don't think like the rings of Jupiter or like the rings of Neptune what rings of Jupiter yeah Jupiter has a

Neptune has a couple rings what does Jupiter I'm pretty sure Jupiter has like really like thin rings doesn't it? Oh okay yes I guess I guess, okay, yes, the very faint ones. Okay, I guess I was like... They're not like, it's not something you would classify Jupiter for.

Jupiter is the storm. Yes. Saturn is the rings. But Jupiter does have like really thin rings. My hands are up. My hands are up. I was specifically referring to Neptune and Uranus. But, uh, but you know what?

That's, that's more than fine. I, I actually, I won't lie. I might be being a little pedantic right now. Well, I learned something today. I did not know Jupiter had rings. Oh, okay. Hell yeah. I genuinely did not know that.

I mean, obviously the rings of Saturn is the first thing I think about. But I did not know Jupiter had rings. Also, that image is sick, shy. Oh, hell yeah. Those like old school, like, looking posters, maps are always so. That's really, really cool. I'd hang in my room. Same.

But, of course, they were the ringers, and they, for the most part, all we know about them is that they existed until the point where they didn't exist anymore, thanks to the crusade. And more prominent fastly humanity around Saturn during the Age of Strife were the Saturnine Ordo, which was a highly militant regime, and during this time, based on Saturn's moons. A discipline that was fully matched by the might of their void armor and the strength of their fleet, which was the Saturnine fleet. they would entrench themselves pretty heavily until they eventually incorporation into the Imperial Army Hell yeah mistaken a lot of

I hear Saturn 9 a lot when it comes to various weaponry and stuff like that which makes sense I usually hear it with the Saturn 9 is it the armor that's the big chunky armor with the big shoulder plates and stuff I think it's yeah Saturn night Oh I thought it was Saturn 9 No you're right it is Saturn 9

I'm thinking of something else. You're right, yes. The really big, big shoulder pads of the Saturday. Yeah, those chunky boys. Yeah, they are, can I be honest, those new minis are sick. They look really cool. Yeah, they do look pretty dope, actually.

They are a big goofy. They showed it off with a great paint job, too. Yeah, they are a bit goofy. Mm-hmm. But I do like them. Agreed. They look cool. Now, of course, there was Mars.

Now, Mars had a very bad time during old night, but they showed a hell of a lot more ambition than Terridan. Now, during the dark age, Mars and Earth coexisted pretty well, and they had developed into this proto form of a hive world. And of course, the Age of Stripes Warped Storms put a major end to this. And even their closest ally was unable to reach them. It was also really busy during that time, so saving Mars wasn't really on the list. But early on, there was still some of the time. attempts to control the soul system by both Mars and Earth, but then the storms got really bad, and Terra would go completely silent.

Mars was able to be settled pre-age of strife, thanks to the atmospheric shields in place. They gave it a livable atmosphere, but the warp storms knocked those out. And then Mars was exposed to giant amounts of radiation, and so the population had to flee underground into the bunkers for survival. Of course, not all of the Martians were able to escape to the bunkers of safety, and the ones that roamed the surface were either killed by the radiation outright or the rogue AI constructs that roamed the surface. Now, those that would survive would mutate and evolve into rogue bands of cannibals

and attempt to conquer the planet's surface, notably a band known as the Cy Carnivora. The Martians underground would reunite under their worship of the machine. as we know, and they would take their own form of a general culture and become the cult mechanicus. They were able to rebound and take out the hostels on the planet and eventually before the rise of Terra, they would then unify Mars, which would have the cult of Mars become a whole thing. They would begin their missions to re-expand through the void, build new worlds, get it, and then, of course, hunting down and reclaiming old technology. man the amount of deaths that radiation related stuff has caused in 40k is paramount it's crazy how many worlds just get oh yeah it was just washed with radiation because that's 40k and everybody on the surface died you know you know i have a i have a question i'm learning a lot today you know i'm learning a lot today i have i'm curious radiation radiation radiation

Radioactive materials. Mm-hmm. Are those exclusively man-made? I don't think so. I think isn't plutonium, like, relatively natural... I don't want to say naturally occurring, but, like, it's like a mineral that, like, you can farm that naturally occurs, right? Shy? Yes, no, maybe.

I remember, because I know, like, every element on the periodic table of elements past a certain point is radioactive because it can't handle its size, right? Oh, space is full of radiation that's emitted by stars and space gases and nebulas, etc. Yes, no, for space I totally, for space shit, I know about that. I'm referring to particularly the rocks.

Let's see, oh, okay, natural resource. Well, this is Google's AI, which I don't trust, but radon, radon gas from the soil, radioactive elements from the Earth's crust. Okay. Okay. I guess I was a little bit curious if the level of the sheer volume of radiation needed for like powering things like nuclear planets and stuff could only be relied on manmade situations.

Or if it's, you know, where that stuff is found from. I don't remember very much about radiation. It's something that I only know of as bad and, you know, pinging you with a bunch of electrons and causing your life to go to shit. Yeah. I'm, this is a learning. day for me. I'm asking all the stupid questions so I can

get my stuff rolling. Turns out Jupiter has rings. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah, with radio activity. I remember we did an episode on like the Demon Corps a while back and man, reading stories on what radiation poisoning does to you is just

awful. Oh, I know. It's horrific. That's the one thing I do know. You essentially just get broken down at a molecular level and you just fall apart. And It's just like, oh, that is the one thing I do know is about radiation poisoning, and that stuff is, oh, it's horaceous. It is, yeah, it's wolf. But, anywho, all that aside.

Now, Tara, things on Tara were, as they say, not poggers. Nope. Not poggers. The culture on the planet would hold on for dear life in the early part of the age of strife. but the collapse of the society was very inevitable. It would become a wasteland of mutants and psychers, and they would run reckless and free, and the rise of the techno-barbarians would cause Terra to fully collapse into isolated anarchy.

Now, techno-barbarians were your run-of-the-mill mad-mack style warlords, but they were clad in a form of proto-power armor from long wars past. And as mentioned in the power armor episodes, the modern equivalent of power armor was very much based on the ancient war. year from the dark age technology one way or another. And the Tendal Barbarians were the ones rocking it in the desert wastes. It is literally

Mad Max and this is where you get a lot of that really old school John Blanche artwork that is pretty pretty killer, yeah. It's great stuff. Oh yeah, that's sick. Yeah, it is classic Mad Max.

Aaron's. But from there, one of the earliest and most notable warlords was the unspeakable king, which is who the quote was in the beginning. He was operating as early as M27, and he was able to conquer huge swaths of the globe. And that was due to the hollow ones at his side, which is more or less the sisters of silence kind of at the time. Legend states that the unspeakable king was likely a null himself. and his most prominent foothold was Albio,

which is where the real world British Isles are. Okay, okay. Now, we might as well rip the Band-Aid off here. It was talked about a lot in the episode about the Imperial Palace, but the geography of Terra is a bit of a mess, and it's pretty convoluted. Mm-hmm.

For example, the book, the Outcast Dem mentions Albion, and it also seems to be covering the British Isles in some way. But it's not the same as Albaea. They could be the same thing with different names or they aren't. We don't know. So let's go through some of the funny areas and the techno-barbarian leaders in a row because these are explicitly confirmed in the texts while others have names identical to real world locations or historic locations. Obviously, this isn't the entire world, as there's a lot of geography that isn't mentioned. And a lot of the lore that's around for places on old terra, it's predominantly locations where.

where the imperial palace is nowadays, right? Hell yeah. So the Archimened empire was a mystical empire based in Persia. Africa, A-F-R-I-K, is Africa. And there are two confirmed large factions within Africa, the ruby dynasty of Adegi, the strongest foothold in East Africa. And northern Africa was known as the Nordafric Conclave, and home of Zozyr,

which is a walled sanctuary of lush oases, Oasis, Oasis, whatever. Okay. Akkad was ruled by the Great King and is located in Central Asia. Oh, geez. Boecia was a nation that would eventually be ruled by King Cadmus and the Yselti family,

and it's about where Greece is. The Caucasus wastes are in the Caucasus. So Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and their ruler was known as the ethnarch, which would be a power, and the ethnarchy would be a powerful holdout during old night, thanks to them having power fuel generators. Salonia takes the name from Sri Lanka and the former name of Ceylon,

Sileum. Europa is Europe. Huge surprise on that one. Frank is likely France. Sun Merica is obviously South Africa and the nation of Hebrassel was held firmly by various warlords, including Dalmat, Kin, you know, Hebraso, Brazil. Ind is a subcontinent of India. Founded by the priest king Mao Dsen, the Mao Dsen Confederacy was based in the Nordic countries,

and they would operate alongside the Scandinavian, Scandinavian, you know, techno-barbarians. America is America. And despite it being a wasteland, it had quite a bit of power, courtesy of the families that held a foothold there with immense wealth. Damn, we living in Merca. Ah, yeah, Merca. Old Muscovy is likely a reference to the medieval principality of Moscow. The Pan Pacific Empire, which was a particularly gigantic empire located around the Pacific Ocean. Sumatura is Sumatra.

The caterpillar cities of Taiga are likely a reference to the series of northern lands across the top of the globe in reference to the snow forest biome of the world. The Ural Mountains were controlled by the... The Terawak clam. Ursch was a nation state that contained the majority of Russia as well as Central Asia. And lastly, the Indodnissik block was a collection of nation states in Indonesia, which if you, there's a fan-made map of it currently in the techno-barbarian states in pre-unification Terra. And as you can see, it looks fucking weird. Yeah, it sure does.

uh shy just posted that and i was like whoa that's super weird that's that is yeah it's not great being on terror right now this this looks like it sucks like obviously the map looks weird but it's like there's no water i'm assuming the great ocean is like

actually water and maybe you could get some melted ice from the poles but who mama that's a that is a wasteland. It's ironic because you can see the great ocean all the way on the side, kind of where you would see Hawaii and those kinds of areas. But everything else is just the wastes, which actually means that it does allow them to slice up the map like this,

because if it's the waste, it's just goddamn nothing, you know? There's nothing, yeah. Oh, man, that sucks. That sucks. Also, you know, these are the techno-barbarian states, so obviously they wouldn't control the same kind of land that we would have now. True, true. Also, like, the only green that's around is in pseudo-Brazil.

It's the only greenery, that everything else is just brown. There's some green up in, kind of like in the Balkan area. Oh, yeah, I guess so. The ethnarchy and over by the caucus wastes. and there's a little bit over in Erlaatlan and the Saragorn Conclave Yeah

But it's mostly Brazil Gee that's so crazy looking Actually that's not even green That looks like water actually instead Oh is it? So you might be right It might be the jungles of Brazil That might be the only green I see on here

Everything else seems to be mostly water It's crazy It's not a great place to be in, yeah Nope, would not want to be here at this time Nope So we can assume that obviously most of these were the product of the Age of Strife itself, as most of them were directly mentioned during the Unification Wars.

But of course, we don't really know how countries and continents were split up during the years leading to the Age of Strife, but the structure of these nations implied that there were ways the various warlords and Technobarbarians carved out the surface as things collapsed. We also don't know exactly what happened that resulted in the rise, the Technobarbarians, on the surface. We know that the early years of the Age of Strife had Earth and Mars, at least a 10,000, to work together to retain control of whatever they could, but then radio silence. Yeah, that's how it's good.

Yeah. Now, we could probably guess that it was just a slow burn that resulted in everything capsizing all at once. Humanity had spread itself pretty far, but all the planets were still pretty reliant on one another, and Earth was likely the most reliant on others as resources and data was brought to it regularly because Earth was probably mined and taken out the most. Yeah. Now, with Earth being cut off, you know, well, yeah, the resources ran very dry.

And the fear of it being the end times kind of made a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, after Mars was claimed, the priests did make their way to see what happened to Tara in the middle of all of this, what was going on. And they saw the firsthand horrors on the surface and the anarchy, which made the priests of Mars freaked out. And they said, screw this. We're going back to Mars. We're going to work on exploration. and expansion instead. We're going back in our bunker.

Screw that. It is real shenanigans. It's crazy because whenever I think of terror, it's all just like, oh, yeah. As far as Warhammer and the Imperium, Terra is like the center of humanity, the center of the universe. They've got all the stuff.

They've got all the, and just that there was a time where it was like, oh yeah, it was just techno-barbarian desert, wasteland mad max. It's just like, I don't know why, but that's like the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around is that Tara is just a wasteland and it's like, damn,

I was like golden throne, space marines, cities that go reaching into the sky and just excess and it's just like, nope, they got like nothing. Then absolutely zip zilch. Yeah.

Now, of course, had it not been for the rise, well, sorry, the Mars priests, right? They basically thought that their form, moralized and earth were doomed to this level of self-annihilation. And so if it had not been for the rise of the emperor, even with, you know, like that would basically be the case.

They would just all waste land, kill each other. And so once the emperor did arise on Terra, things started to, you know, clean up a bit. But even with his rise and the unification of humanity being reassured, the scars of the age of strife is still a permanent scar etched in the souls of every human. You know, the galactic destiny that was held by most of humanity was shattered. And the thing that made it even worse was the fact that this destruction was brought upon themselves, generally by themselves. Obviously, the Eldar Warpstorm stuff is a real kick in the teeth, no doubt.

But the gigantic mechanical Civil War apocalypse was not very helpful either. No, they both definitely had heavy. factors and why this all happened. And God, what a fall from grace, though. To go from like dark age of technology to techno-barbarian is racy. Yeah, I'd even get big E and his big techno-barbarian get up, which is pretty cool looking.

Hell yeah. The old art. Now, of course, with this, there was comfort in the unification of humanity and some of the fears were banished, but the violent and very closed mind of humanity in the modern era is a result of Old Knight, whether they choose to admit it or not. The effects of Old Knight are long lasting for modern day 40K. AI is outlawed. There's an extreme distrust of advanced technology.

Cycars are treated poorly and distrusted in all kinds of ways, as well as anything different. And all Xenos and aliens, I mean, they didn't know as Eldor at the time, but like, They were often attacked by aliens during the age of strife, whether it was like all kinds of whatever it could have been. And so that distrust grew heavily. Just, you know, being beaten when they're down over and over again is the justification for the immense xenophobia and witch hunting of the Imperium. Yeah. And it really sticks in your mind. Yeah.

Yeah, it's one of those interesting things where, like, yeah, obviously the Imperium is an awful hell. of, you know, a lack of any kind of tolerance, understanding, or technology. But, no, they do give you a reason for it. They give you like a, hey, this is why they're this way. Here is what led to these beliefs, which is important. Yeah, we hate you because you beat us when we were literally at our worst. Yeah. And also, we hate technology because it turned on us.

And also the site, Satan is real and it came out of gym. You can understand why they feel that way. It might be a little extreme, but like it is deeply rooted in their history. And yeah, you get it. No, I got this one little bity quote if you'd like to read it. Sure. The age of strife even scarred the galaxy itself. Countless worlds were reduced to inimical inomical wastelands or overrun by dangerous.

living weapons. Others were left haunted by the cyclopean ruins of lost endeavor, vast halos of decaying orbital machinery, looming spires crackling with strange energies, echoing tech vaults still concealed deadly threats behind bulkheads buried in the dust of ages. Every time the Imperium discovers another such remnant of its former glory, it is but another reminder of the hubris that damned humanity and the dangers of daring to hope in such a dark and terrible age. Daring to hope. Yeah. How dare you hope?

It's a really good one. It's a really good one. Foof. I really do enjoy the idea that like, yeah, they reached too far. Oh, yeah. You flew too close to the sun. Your wings burned off. And I really like that. Possum be like, yeah, I can use the word hostile, but fuck these nerds, inimical. Possum is just like, he's just, he's just flexing on us a little bit.

Like, I know these uneducated nerds won't know this. It's a really fascinating situation because I think old knights and everything of that nature is really interesting. Because, yeah, it was brought on by humanity in a lot of ways and their own. their own self-insert, but it's also kind of just a shit gig in general. You know, obviously the Eldar issue was a really

big one and caused a lot of issues regarding it and it was the seed for a lot of the problems that began occurring with humanity. Oh yeah, for sure. Damn.

This is where Bricky's Eldar hate comes from, obviously, because they ruined everything, right? No, yeah, of course, of course. It has nothing to do with the tabletop and getting absolutely shlaughtered by them, right? I like, I liked a lot of the, I like a lot of the old night stuff. I feel like you could do small short stories in there, but I do think it should remain mostly, mostly quiet, yeah, mostly mysterious. I think for the most part, it's important to have that level of intrigue.

because it also if you make sure it's a lot more if you make sure it's a hell of a lot more uncertain it creates a world where you can basically do whatever the hell you want oh yeah for sure here's this fancy new architect munitions type thing or architect gun what is it god if I know it's from the old world it shoots a dying sun screw you man sound like something the Eldar would have this gun shoots dying sun that just collapses

on itself and just black holes and it's like, what? That sounds more like a necrone thing. That does kind of sound like a necrone thing, doesn't it? Yeah. Most Warhammer, a lot of Warhammer stories are born because of some weird dark age thing that does crazy stuff. I mean, hell, the first book of Gaunt's ghosts is them returning on a man of iron machine

that ended up being chaos corrupted. Yeah, because they're in like the factory, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one. Yeah, crazy. Anyway, that's the age of strife. Hell yeah. Pretty integral part of the Warhammer world, a very important part of where humanity, honestly, would argue the entire reason for humanity's backwards thinking. Yeah, it is the foundation of why the Imperium is the way that it is.

Yeah, it's, it is a major, I mean, obviously there's other bits and pieces with it. I mean, a lot of the superstition and problems with the Imperium also come from the heresy. Sure. You know, the overwhelming amount of religious beliefs and things like that come from the martyr of the emperor. Sure. But a lot of the general distrust of technology and things of that nature. Yeah, that's great crusade and, uh, yeah. It's interesting stuff.

I said, remember the dark age tech human spaceship, the teleports enemy ship back in time for one nanosecond so it overlaps on itself and gets atomized. Humanity was pretty crazy. Yeah, humanity had some stuff back in the day. Holy. Very well. Anyway, that's the age of strife. That's old night, silent night. Happy December.

Merry soon to be Christmas. Merry soon to be Christmas. Next week we have, if I'm not. I'm mistaken the anniversary episode, right, Shai? Hey, I have no idea what it's going to be. Everybody else apparently knows. I am just sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for destruction. Five years.

Five years of this shit.