Adeptus Ridiculous - DEATHWATCH: THE SHIELD THAT SLAYS | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe Deathwatch is a unique and specially trained Space Marine Chapter that dedicates its every hour to xenos hunting.Known as the Shield that Slays, they are the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, charged with protecting it in its search of information, containment, and ultimate destruction of all xeno species. Consisting of Battle-Brothers drawn from many Chapters, the Deathwatch operates from Watch Fortresses and Watch Stations across the whole of the Imperium.Support the show

to another episode of the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. As always, my name is D.K., as always, his name is Bricky, and we are going to be delving into the grim darkness that is Warhammer 40K lore. But before we do, if you enjoy today's

podcast, then you maybe want to consider supporting us, Patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous, where you can get access to the bloopers if they happen, the Discord, the $15 tier gets you access to all of our HD posters. It's a wonderful investment. Patreon.com slash adeptus, ridiculous. Bricky, tell them about

merch, the book club. Yeah, those things. Check out the merch if you want to over at Orchate.com link in the description. Grab yourself a plethora of posters, a plethora of shirts, tank tops, and so hoodies and so on and so forth. Get your hoodies. Prepare for the fall coming up soon and book club is Eisenhorn but you know none of that stuff really matters this time I'm actually going to do it do what oh never mind uh so you were trying to hit the one of the sounds the dying emoji scream you're going for it nope do you fumble it nope no nothing nothing like that wow I'm so there's a there's a picture of Harry Dubois and it says What I'm happy, I say, bitches love my mustache.

When I'm sad, I say, this time I'm actually going to do it. Oh, oh, it was, oh, it was that. Okay. Yeah, you get it now. Now I get it. I did not realize this was a disco-aliseum reference. I should have. It was not a disco-elisium reference either.

It's just a statement. It's fine. You know what? Well, you said Mr. DuBois and Harry, and that's the, it's, it's, it's, it's elizium adjacent and that's dark enough to be something that he would say. No, not even the, not even the slightest. It was a joke to begin with and then I turned it into a disco because you didn't get it originally.

Yeah, well, your mother. I'm based in disco-pilled. What are you, huh? What are you? I, hey man. Cringe. You're cringe, D.K. Are you ready for your quote?

Yes, man. Like, you needed to badger me before. You couldn't have just been like, yeah, okay. Deky, I totally see that. And then embarrass me with the... I'm gonna get embarrassed either way. All right, hold on. I need to find the Warhammer

voice effect. Let's see. All right. Am I Warhammery now? Oh, wow. Actually, yeah, you are. Actually, pretty warhammery. The Ham's. Okay, cool.

Every watch fortress is a light in the darkness, a blazing watchfire that drives back the shadows in which the Zenos lurks. Without their illumination, the emperor's world would be swalled up one by one, bound into shrouds of endless night, stitched clothes by alien claws. Inquisitor Ishmael. Um, I, I don't know what this is specifically. And, I mean, it sounds like some, Fancy Imperium tech that just maybe sort of is unpleasant to Zenos and they stay away from.

I don't know if I can really pinpoint what this is other than fancy, maybe psychery watchtower lighthouse that just beams Zenos hurting stuff. Did you take the word illumination literally enough to assume it means lighthouse? No, not like a lighthouse. Doesn't it like literally just like keep away like Xenos and it's probably like a gun turret or some nonsense? You think we're going to have an entire episode on a gun turret? Yeah. We did a whole episode on a freaking bolter.

That is so different. Also, shy, that is an excellent image. Thank you very much. She's used that like several times before in videos already. Like that's not the first time she's used that. Oh, I don't watch our content. fringe. All right.

Just tell me what it is. We're doing a Death Watch. I mean, yeah, I guess if I had used my brain at all, or there was more than one neuron rattling around in there, yeah, because it's a, yeah, they're the watch over the Zenos and they specialize in killing. Yeah, okay. That's fair. All right. Death Watch. Yeah, Death Watch.

And they're cool black and gold armor, right? Yeah, well, black and silver more so, but yes. Nice. The Death Watch. So we are talking about the Death Watch today. It is one of the only like chapter or one of the only codexes that we have not done yet. I think we're still missing Thousand Suns. I don't think I know.

And like Space Wolf's codexes. Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's right. They wouldn't have a codex, would they? So good old Good old death watch But yeah Like specifically codex

It's like a codex you can actually buy Yeah Would be a death watch Do you think the Ravengard will ever get one? Yeah one day probably Okay But yeah the death watch I won't lie

I knew very little about the death watch going in I knew they were a bunch of alien hunters I knew that they killed a lot of Zenos And they were pretty good at it And that was about where my knowledge ended. So this was a good bit of lore looking up today. And I got to say... That's about all I knew too, was that they just killed Zenos and they had cool armor.

Gotta, got to say, got to say, there was less than I thought there would be. Oh, no, really? That's kind of... Is their whole thing literally just, yeah, we just like killing Zenos and that's just kind of the meat and potatoes of it. end of story that's all we do that's all we want to do no no but like it's there isn't an entire massive like founding thing there's not as much as like the gray nights have this is a bit of that kind of jazz so i'll go ahead and get started into it hit me with the lore brickey hit me with that deep deep lore all right you don't need to say deep twice that's fair that was uncomfortable

actually. I am uncomfortable. Yeah. Anyway. So this was, the Death Watch was founded in one of two ways. There's a question about which one was founded because Imperial Records are often bad. Now, I will say that I kind of believe it's both. One kind of happens as an initial founding point and the other is the solidification of the founding point. But this in particular has talked.

me something very important. That is, God damn it, we really need to do a goddamn War of the Beast episode. Oh, yeah. I don't even remember what the War of the Beast is. Wait, I haven't, I know we've brought it up. I guess we haven't done an episode on it, but... Sorry, I don't mean a War of the Beast episode. I mean a War of the Beast, like, trilogy, because it's very long.

I'm assuming that's a... This is a Zenos thing, the War of the Beast, because, like I said, I know it's been mentioned. I know people have asked for it, but I... So the War of the Beast is basically a gigantic orc-wa attacking Terra. Oh. Yeah, it's like the most orc-wa of all time. And it is, yeah, there's also Ork Moons.

Oh, are those are the ones that you told me about that are, like, propelled by, like, they just slap giant rockets on the beach. back of like meteors and planets and we're just like yeah we're just going to fling this at you at mock speed no no no much worse it's like an orc death star like it's a ramshackled created physically made orc death stars uh war the beast is a time it is it is not the most well written as far as i'm concerned but it is a thing that exists okay so we need to do that at some point but today one day we're doing death watch yes So this was apparently founded during the War of the Beast.

Dealing with one, The Beast, which is like a giga-orch, bigger than Gasco and everything. Wow. Yeah, he's a big boy. That's a big orc. During that period of time, small little Astardis teams were sent out to try to deal with the Beast itself and various other high-ranking members of the Ork Horn. as we all know when the boss is killed there tends to be a power struggle and then the orcs kind of kill each other for having you know becoming the boss and so it's pretty good to take down the command of an orc structure if you can if you can because they are gigantic yeah if he's bigger than gaskell good freaking luck astardies not not just gaskell but also like all of his other like orc mecks and various things um so these were originally recruits taken from surviving members of various orc invasions. The idea is that these people have seen and survived the orc fight and they act as a shield watching over their fallen brothers that were killed by the orcs.

How many people were recruits and they were like, hey, so we know you have some experience with surviving the orcs and would you like to go and be a special orc ops? And they're just like, no? Hello? I survived once. get the out of my face I'm not doing that again

bro these are a startis that's true stardies would relish the chance to like redeem themselves after a after failing or yeah that's yeah

they want that sweet revenge right let your armor be hate as one of their main sayings so no they'd be like hey dude orcs killed all your friends you want to go do nothing but kill orcs

like yes are you a hot I guess that would be the Astardis wet dream, wouldn't it? Yeah, fair enough. You are you on ultraboofs again? You must puff, puff, puff, pass, Gilliman. Anyway, so at the time, the current Lord Commander of the Imperium, aka what Gilliman is now, was done by an Imperial Fist Chaptermaster,

a guy named Coorland, Chapter Master of Corland. And so in this time of desperation, he created these elite strike teams of surviving starities dedicated to killing orcs along with the High Lords of Terror kind of acting as like the de facto Lord of the Imperium. At the time, you know, people weren't super stoked on this whole thing because a lot of the surviving members were like from various chapters. Like, here, Blood Angel, Imperial Fifth Spacewolves, go together and kill this ork guy. And it's like, eh, it's a little weird.

And it's also not very good. it comes to the Codex of Staris that happened after the heresy. Oh, yeah, they probably, people probably would be a little suspicious of a group that's, like, formed of various different space marines that are all coming to get, yeah, I guess after, after that whole horace thing, you would be just a little suspect of a group like that. But, you know, the orcs are currently sieging Terra with Ork Death Stars, so you know, necessity breeds invention, as they say. Yes, it does. Yes, it does.

So, obviously, the War of the Beast finished. We won. Waho. Hoor! Obviously, we won because Terra is still there. I think that's the last time Vulcan has been seen. I think Vulcan died killing the Beast. Yeah. Oh, Vulcan killed. Wow, spoilers for the War of the Beast episode. Now I'm gonna know. I literally think I said that in the Vulcan episode. Yeah, but my brain doesn't remember.

that. So, you know. Vulcan suplexed the beast into a nuclear bomb. I am barely joking, says Shai. What a Vulcan thing to do. Baste? Wow. Baste and green-pilled? Yeah. Can you do, can you, Shai, in post, can you edit that Final Fantasy Six thing of Sabin

suplexing the train but put like a big like nuke in there instead of the train? You know. Someone suplexes a train? They can. In Final Fantasy 6, you fight a ghost train, and one of your characters is a martial artist that you can input commands and have him suplex stuff. And he can absolutely suplex the ghost train. What would the hell was with that part?

What the hell was with that part in Final Fantasy 7 where you were in like the ghost train yard? That was such a random part. Yeah, it kind of was. Wasn't it? That was in the remake, right? Yeah. But the horse dude was kind of cool. Anyway.

Oh my God, shy. He is at, what? There's so much art. There's so much art of Sabin's suplexing trains because it is such an iconic thing to do in that game. Wait, is it because you have like an attack that that often is a suplex and the train is acting as an enemy so he suplexes the train? Yes, exactly. That's amazing. It's the old sprite thing.

So it's like, yeah. Yeah. It's one of the most iconic things you can do in that game is suplex a train. Okay, that's wonderful. I love it. It's great. Anyway, so War the Beast is over. And at the time, we had the Inquisition.

But the Inquisition was kind of just like an old-school inquisition, pretty generally made to deal with demons. Because at this time, the Grey Knights were around and murdering demons and stuff. But that was their main schick past that. This is kind of where it says that there were two ways the Death Watch founded. I kind of believe both where the initial start was this war, the beast part. And then after that, there was a conclave of Inquisitor Lords, known as the, oh boy, apocryphon conclave of Orphite 4. Okay, okay, okay.

The whole idea was to formulate a major strategy to deal with the Xenos threats that assailed mankind. They, inquisitors are pretty often psychers. That's just kind of a really often big trait of them. Yeah. And they assume that the Zenos would, well, they kind of, one, maybe scribe the future, did a little Eldar stuff. But also they sat around for many years and debated back and forth, back and forth on the idea of dealing with Zenos. Some believe that every single trace of alien life should be purged from the galaxy. Others were like, hey, craft world Eldar aren't great, but they're not like the worst.

Yeah, I was going to say, the Imperium has benefited so much from, like, Eldar help in their history that it's like, really? Y'all want to erase every trace of Eldar and Zenos existence? Like, you have benefited from their help on a plethora of occasions. maybe make an exception. There was also the new young upstarts, the Tao, you know. Well, actually, I don't know if we found the Tao yet at this point in time. Yeah, because this is still early Warhammer lore, right? Yeah, like post-heresy, but not that far.

So, but some also spoke of kind of seeing the future, and they were like, godlike beings slumbering before the birth of mankind, reawakening. reawakening to enslave the galaxy and death from in the invasion of Xenos from other galaxies so you know obviously Crohn's and Nids Yeah yeah and shy She hit us with the

Even I've seen this quote rolling around Where it's like oh we kill Zenos because they're all dangerous And want to kill humans My brother in Christ That's because you killed all the friendly ones It's like someone mentioned the same thing About the Las Gun Is like the Las Gun is one

the most powerful weapons devised, but in Warhammer, it's kind of bad. A flashlight. And that's because, yeah, that's because it's, it was extremely effective at murdering the other 99% of Zenos. Tough shit, guards, men, you're fighting that last one percent. Yeah, it was super efficient. And then, yeah, that last one percent is a little, little, little harder to kill. So, with this fear, some inquisitors, particularly Puritan ones,

kind of took this not well because Puritan inquisitors are like even thinking that mankind, the greatest thing in the world and the galaxy could ever fall to Zenos is heresy. While they were there and being annoying, they were mostly shut down and the inquisition was split into two arms.

The Ordo Amalius, demons, Grey Knights, and the Ordo Zenos now looking to get their own major militant arm being the say it, D.K. No. The death watch.

The death watch. Also, the, the Puritans are such extremists that even suggesting that you would need to make a death watch was considered like heretical to them because how dare you suggest that the emperor, the empire would ever fall to anyone? Like, they were that extreme. Puritans are often like sit on your hands and do nothing because the emperor watches over us type people. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

Remember the planet that refused to fight the nids because suggesting that Zenos would ever attack them was heresy? Yeah, that's just crazy. That's wild. Dude, religion, religion will do some things to you if you are that devout. Yeah, I was going to say, like extremists, I guess, are never the most irrational. people, are they? No, that's why they are called extremists. Extremists, yeah, they kind of ruin everything.

So, therefore, we have the foundation of the Death Watch. And I also believe the Inquisition would, with time, break into more and more factions later on. We had a whole episode on Inquisitorial factions. Once the Sisters of Battle come around, a few thousand years later, you'll have your Ordo Hereticus, most likely.

Which, you know, because that's the militant arm of the Inquisition is the order hereticus. Sure, sure. But, so therefore, the Death Watch hell point, remember when I said we had Space Marines, and then we had Super Space Marines, which were Grey Knights, and then we had Super, Super Space Marines,

which were Death Watch, or which were custodians. Yeah. Death Watch are the in-between of Grey Knights and regular Marines. So they're Super Space Marines. But they're not super. They're not like custodian-level space Marines. They're super space marines.

Then you've got super psycher space marines. Then you've got super duper space marines, which are custodians. Hooie, what a tier list. So they're better than your average space marine. For every 100 Marines, there's one death watch. For every thousand Marines, there's one gray night, that kind of thing. Oh, one death watch is worth a thousand, or a hundred space marines? Not worth.

There is probably one. They're rare. Oh, oh, okay. So one in every 100 space marines is going to be a death watch. Also, no. It's a figure of speech. Just like, it's a figure of speech. Just like for every 100 space marines, one space marine is good enough to join the Death Watch.

Is a veteran enough to join the Death Watch? The best, the brightest. One in a hundred. I'm just taking your phrasing too literal. Okay, got you. That's okay. Warhammer does literal pretty, pretty rough. Yeah, I mean, I took the quote.

talked about a man sublexia train. I took the quote too literally. I took this part too literally. Apparently, I am Drax today where it's just too literal and I'm not getting metaphors.

They would not fly over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch them, right? That's me today, apparently. In fairness, out of this many Adep's ridiculous episodes, I have trained you to not take,

to take things very literally in Warhammer to show that subtlety is for, losers. Well, hey, your train's paid off because, man, I am on the literal train today. And although I'm getting suplexed, huh? I'm getting...

Eh, eh, anyway. So, it is built up. The Death Watch is built up of the best and brightest of the various chapters. Space Marine chapters are fully aware of the Death Watch, unlike the Grey Knights. While the Death Watch are still really secretive, they are not as secretive. And so if a Marine in particular, give me a chapter. The Blood Angels. Okay, the Blood Angels.

If a Marine and the Blood Angels really excels in just the slaughter of Zenos, it's just really damn good at murdering aliens and has that hate in your heart. Then three members of the chapter will end up judging them. You will have the captain for skill and combat, the apothecary for general physical ability, and the chaplain for strength of character and soul. And with the three of these people's approvals, they will then go to the chapter master

and ask if they will, or bequest, consult, consult the chapter master for approval on this kind of thing. Okay. And if the chapter master gives you with, Yeah, and the chapter master gives you a thumbs up, then bada bing, bada boom, they will be sent off to the Death Watch. I'm pretty sure the Battle Brother can deny if they wanted to, but they often don't. I was going to ask, does anybody ever deny that? Like, would anybody ever, would any Space Ring deny the honor of being a Death Watch because they're just like, well, but I, I love my chapter mate so much.

I just can't imagine leaving them, even for the honor of the Death Watch or something. Does that happen often? Does it ever happen? Has it ever happened? I don't know. I would be positive that it has happened. I would also be positive that it does not happen much. Yes, probably very, very rare. Yeah. And obviously, they're still like, oh, sworn to their chapter. Very often when you join the Death Watch, it's still Chapter 1st, Death Watch second. But the more time you spend in the Death Watch, you kind of, that kind of flips. Oh, so, so when you join the Death Watch,

you don't just immediately get shipped off to like a death watch base or something? No, you do. Oh, okay. You're taking it too literally again. Damn it! All right. It's that kind of day. I'm sorry, all right?

It's just, apparently it's a very literal day for me. Literally, it is a day. It felt so good putting all my metaphors in this script and here I am. And of course, today is the day I take things too literally and just ruin your in the fair. So their armor is painted. God damn it. Okay.

So after this, they say yes. They're like, cool, yeah, I'm going. And there's often a ceremony held for their brother because remember this is like a veteran of the chapter. This is an honor, right? This is a big time.

So, of course. Yeah, it's a big honor, but also they have spent a ton of time murdering Zenos. They've had a bunch of campaigns. You know, this is, this is a long term veteran of this chapter. They're good at their job. Very good.

So a ceremony is held. The ultramarines have one where they all gather and wish them the best before they bore the Thunderhawk. The dark angels go to them and they're like, if you say a goddamn word. Yeah. You keep your goddamn mouth shut.

You hear me. Oh, we're so happy. before you, they hug, leaning close. You shut the cup, don't say anything. That's only like a mild exaggeration. Their ceremony is one of secrecy. Of course, they're the dark angels. Everything is a secret with them.

But after that, their armor is then, before they board and leave, their armor is painted jet black as a kind of like martyr. Like they are out there to most likely die to the Xenos in this hard, so you know as the long vigil

and in this the long watch. They're just like their watch has ended. Yeah. And so they are painted jet black as like this kind of martyrdom type thing to the Zenos. And they're sent over. Oh, I'm not sure why,

but I just assume that they would get like new armor. But I guess once you're a space ring, you're kind of, well, no, they can take off their armor, I suppose. But yeah, yeah, I don't know why I thought that like they would get new like special death watch seramite.

Yeah, I guess you can just paint the damn thing black and there you go. The, I mean, I'm sure you know, they might swap their armor at some point, but Oh sure. For the most part, they're paying back.

They probably have like the servants, like change it, repair it, so on and so forth. But, you know. Shai said they also honored their chapters on their shoulders. Do they just keep the symbol there? Or, because it looks like in that picture, they literally just didn't paint

his shoulder and his arm. No, so that picture you can't see. So Death Watch have... We'll talk about this a little bit later. Oh, okay. We'll explain the difference a bit more, but... Yeah, I just thought that was like a, you know, a Grey Knight shoulder or something,

and that's why it looked silver and not painted on that side. Well, gray nights don't go to the Death Watch. That's true. Because Grey Knights are there to fight demons. Yeah, I just figured that was a silver arm from something. someone anyway. Doesn't matter. Continue. Sorry. Didn't need to derail. The train. The derail the train with a suplex. So they go off to something known as a watch fortress. Watch fortress? I think it's

called watch fortress. Oh man. This is really going back. That quote isn't it? This is really hitting that quote hard now. So watch fortresses are basically various super duper hidden well, fortresses in tons of different areas, random planets, orbital battle stations, all in other segments of the cementum solar and other areas of the galaxy. And they kind of operate from this fortress and deal with whatever is their main issue there. Like, for example, Talasa Prime is the headcores and primary training world of them, which is often dealing with things like Tyrannins. The Eye of Damocles is dealing with the Tao Empire for the most part.

And so on and so forth. Okay. Okay. So they're specifically stationed in areas to deal with a specific Xenos threat. Yeah, basically. Okay. And then once they're there, they are trained, of course, rigorously, give them in tip-top shape, even if they weren't already in tip-top shape.

Yeah, I was going to say their veterans. space marines, how much more in shape could they get? Well, you know, you gotta fight the alien. True. And then they are hit with a lot of psycho indoctrination. But this is a different kind of indoctrination. More of a, all right, you've killed a lot of aliens, that's cool. Let us teach you everything that we know about the alien now.

And also, by the way, let us teach you everything we know about these other 1,000 alien species that we also know about. Well, that doesn't sound like psycho-indictrination. That just sounds like valuable information for the faction that is specifically built to kill Xenos. Okay. Maybe I'm a little, this is actually the funny part. Maybe you should have taken it more literally. This is literally them like implanting. They're implanting the information into their brain like physically.

Oh, I thought. They just had like classroom, like, lectures about Zenos and stuff. I was like, oh, well, that seems valuable. I didn't know they were taking a capsule and just shoving it in your brain to literally give you all the information you need. Is that what they're doing? All right, battle brothers. Who can tell me what the dominatrix does? They're all holding up there.

Ooh, ooh, me. But, yeah, there's that's awesome image. I love this image. this is the various other Zeno species that we've never heard of or ever seen in the galaxy. None of them have been mentioned? If you are looking,

okay, maybe the one on the right hand side looks a little bit like the sloth. But besides that, every single one of these alien species is never talked about. These are entirely for world building. And this is a great example of like, yeah, it's a great.

great example of, hey, by the way, don't forget, a million worlds for the Imperium only. Only. Oh, man, I can't stop looking at this. I want to know what those, like, those orb guys on the left are all about. Right. There's a human there, too. Yeah, and he's just screaming in agony, as well he should. And they've got those weird dangly arms.

The top right one looks like something straight out of chaos. That looks like a chaos, I don't know, dreadnought or, not a dreadnought, but it looks like a Mad Max, dude. It almost, yeah, yeah, I like the, I like the bottom left guy. He looks like the shark laser in like Austin Powers or something. He looks like something that's already in Warhammer, though. True, true. The bottom one looks like a chaos spawn.

Absolutely. The one on, the one that's just straight up on the right kind of looks also kind of familiar. It almost looks like a mushroom. Looks like something that nitty. Yeah. I thought it was the sloth that we talked about in the Alfarious episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Creepy worm dudes, because they had some constructs like that.

Mm-hmm. But I don't know. But yeah, I mean, like, you have a thousand other alien species out there. Just, it just happens that the big bad ones are the ones you play on the tabletop. But there are uncounted other Xenos races out there. And, you know, God knows what they're. they do. Yeah. Well, the Death Watch have an idea. Maybe. Exactly. Yeah. So once you got your psycho indoctrination, you learn everything you got to learn. Your rank is then removed and you are

assigned to a kill team. A kill team is a group of brothers up to 10 people and all from separate chapters. So this is where the fun part of the Death Watch comes in where you're like, I love all these chapters. I can't pick a good one. Well, why not all of them? Just go death watch. For example, if you were to scroll up and look at that codex cover with all of the red on it, if you were to look at the individual space marines, bottom left, see a hood and a plasma pistol. Oh, yeah, that's a dark angel. Top, uh, top middle.

You can see a do with yellow on his shoulder and a big shield. That's the imperial fist. There's a black templar on the bottom right. There's a blood angel in the middle. I'm not saying anything about his faction, but isn't that an ultramarine front and center with the thing on his? Top left? Kind of.

Yeah, he's got the kind of, I don't know if that's an iron halo, but he's got no helmet and he's pointing his bolt around. I can see like kind of the little horseshoe logo on his, yeah. That'd be an ultramarine. It looks like probably a space wolf in the bottom middle. You can see it has like a fur pelt behind his head, and he's got a mustache.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I'm going to assume the left of the ultramarine. It looks like a aggressor, but I'm assuming it's a salamander because it's got a flamethrower. Ah, good, good, yep. He will go with that. And then there's like a phobos guy

with the white skull grill on the right-hand side in the background. I'm kind of assuming it's Raven Garden. Fair. So, yeah. All types. That's kind of like a fun little like wears, well.

I don't want to say where's Walda, but it's kind of, you know, it's kind of fun to, like, look through these pictures and be like, oh, what faction are you? What chapter are you? You know, oh, look, there's the Blood Angels thing. Oh, look, there's a pelt. You must be this. And that's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. Also, do, is it ever a case where, like, they'll put people from the same chapter in a thing? Or do they specifically be like, yeah, no, you're never going to be paired up with one of your old battle brothers. I mean, I don't know. It's rare because it's rare that you get a lot of people that join the Death Watch from the same. chapter like within a time frame. Yeah. But often I think they like to put various chapters in it because you can mix a ton of special skills. And often there's this sort of bonding through war because when they join these kill teams,

there's actually quite a lot of rivalries that happen. You know, there's a lot of various chapters. They do not like each other. Yeah. But they all hate Zenos. And often through the fires of war. war itself, they will end up becoming friends, comrades, and become really effective. And, you know, it's good to have various skills.

The blood angel will most likely tear shit apart in melee way better than an Imperial Fistmite. But when it's like, oh, God, we're surrounded. We need to hold a position. The Imperial Fist guy is like, oh, yeah, it's my time. Fortify, baby. So, yeah, it's good to have the variousness. And so, as you can tell, one shoulder pad is always of their chapter. And the other is the silver of the Death Watch, their seal, and the skull.

Ah, so that's, okay, gotcha. That's where that came from. Got it. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah, that's where the Silver is. Okay. Oh. So one thing is kind of fascinating about the Death Watch that people don't often know is that they're not very Puritan.

Yeah, I guess so. There are a lot like the Grey Knights where despite parts of the Inquisition, maybe not agreeing, necessity requires, like necessity trumps their emotion and hate. Well, there's still plenty of hate, but. It's 40K. There's hate is in premium. We have a surplus of hate. Now, the Death, specifically the Death Watch like to not just murder Zenos,

but they have a whole bunch of studying them. Sometimes Xenos are just like not that violent, and they just leave them alone. And they just kind of keep an eye. Oh, so yeah, the Puritans probably would hate that because they'd be like, what are you doing? Don't leave it alone. Burn it to burn it to ash.

Kill it. Don't study it. We don't study these things. Yeah, I can see that. I can do the Puritans being a little pissed off about that. They also very often observe and, and like do the acquisition of devices, artifacts, other tech from aliens. Oh, they're already studying alien tech.

Oh, yes. And they give it to the ad mech to like study, learn, discover, see what you can figure out from this. Ah, yeah. The Puritans would be very unhappy about that. Yeah. Yeah. So often actually, sometimes they'll even use the weapons against the aliens. Oh, yeah.

Now we're going pretty hard, right? I was going to say, aren't we bordering on heresy here using alien tech and learning from it and using alien weapons? Aren't we heading in to Nye Heretical territory for the Imperium? Well, if you remember in a certain assassin book, what does a callous assassin have on her wrist? Oh, yeah, she has the, um, um, um, um, I know you know what it is. I know it is. I know it is. Yeah.

It's just, you know. You know. Yeah, it's a living metal necron phase blade. Yeah. Was that? Does you not? No, that's what it is. I just,

I thought it had like a fancy name. Like a. Okay. Oh. Yeah, I don't know. Specifically. Like a, I don't know. I thought it had some weird, quirky name or something instead of just, yeah, it's a

necrot. thermos living blade. Okay, well, you know what? Imperial agents, Codex, data sheets, Caldus assassin, melee weapons,

phase sword. Yeah, no, I'm not saying you're wrong. I just, in my head, I had some elegant,

well, I forgot what it was called also, so, okay, cool. But, yes,

the, it is a phase sword. And then, yeah, there's a death watch guy in the cover with a Xenoph phase blade, which is pretty evidently necrons.

No way. The thing with, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, green lightning and has very obvious, like, runes and sigils on it. That's necron, you say? Hey, you've been taking shit too literally today. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't be sassin. Okay, fine. Okay, fine. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. There's actually this, I've never seen this image before. But, but, There's this dope image of the Death Watch fighting the Eldar. I think I may have epic embed. Oh, no, there it goes.

No, it just takes time. But they got an Avatar cane up there on a big old throne. There's some autarks. I've never seen this before, but they were taken from tons of chapters. That is such a cool piece of art. Oh, my God. Also, that Avatar of Korn is about to absolutely slaughter that dude in the Cape. like,

Avatar of what now? Corn? I said. Nope. I said, yep. Cain. It's not.

Cain? Cain. There you go. Avatar of Corn was the storm of iron gal. Yeah. It's been a great day for me on this episode. I am just getting everything right. I mean,

wow. It's just a real tour to force today. You guys make fun of me plenty. And it's time for, it's time for a little back and forth now. Oh, no, I don't know, no, no, no. It's a one-way street, Bricky. There's no, there's no going.

This is a one-way street. Okay. Well, regardless. So, Death Watch, obviously, you know, kill the alien, murdered the alien. Yeah. But, Pat. Oh, dear. What the?

Oh, oh, so this is what, Shai was mentioned. the, there's no official description of what the shoulder pad says in high Gothic. So this is what someone came up with as a fan version, but is not currently canon. Though it certainly would fit in a canon to hate Zenos, to the mark of Zenos is to be impure, abhorred, reviled, hunted, etc. There is a good, there is a good quote, which is, um, oh crap, where is it? It's like, it's something about murdering Zeno, so you know you love it. There it is.

Nope. That's the wrong one. There it is. He who allows the alien to live shares its crime of existence. Oh. I love that. Oh, man. What a great death watch quote.

What a great death watch quote. Suffer not the alien to live is their battle cry? Oh, yeah. That's the thing. Oh, that's great. Very on the nose, very on brand, but still two thumbs up. I, you know, there is few worlds, or few like universes in the world that have such a power where the words, the words crime of existence are so utilized. Yep.

Damn. It's wonderful. Damn. I love it. Let's go. Anyway. So other than that, though, the rest of the Death Watch, as far as how they operate, is all kind of like a side deal. We could do a whole episode on Death Watch War Gear and the stuff they carry because, oh, my God, the amount of things that they have on their arsenals.

Well, I mean, they kind of have to, right? Because they're dealing with the Zenos. And the Zenos is, like, the biggest threat in the galaxy. So they've got to be kidded out with, like. Would you say the Zenos are the biggest threat? Or would you say chaos? I mean... The Nids are currently kind of the thing right now.

Yeah, the nids kind of are a big problem. I guess, well... I mean, I guess everything is a problem, right? What would you say is like the priority right now? Like, the nids are a problem, but isn't... I mean, Abby is still off doing some not great things with... Our forge buddy. What's his name again?

How dare you? How dare you? The one you made a shirt for! How? Well, I was legally distinct. Oh, that's right. Bastor. Bash Tor.

It's a day, okay? It's a day. I am so unfathomably upset. I don't blame you, all right? But still, Abby's off doing that shenanigans. and who knows what they're up to. But, I mean, currently, like, they're just off preparing for some big oof. But right, all right, it's fine.

They're both equally pretty terrifying. But no, Shai, I have not noted Kill Ships yet. Did you want to cover that in this episode? We are 46 or so minutes in. So, I mean, Kale Ships. Is that something I should be taking literally? Here, go ahead, read it, read it for yourself. Kill ships are unique weapon relics used by the Death Watch.

They are actually automated drone ships guided by the most sophisticated of war spirits, designed with a singular task of conducting exterminatous operations in the most extreme of circumstances on worlds that are believed to be completely lost to the Imperium. I love the fact that we have, that we have drone. bombings, but for the planets. I mean, I'm glad that it's that, because as soon as I saw kill ships, I was like, oh no, please don't tell me, it's just a ship that they just go, like, it's going to go as fast as possible, and then just rams into anything that's Zenos and just,

that's an orc thing. True, that would be more of an orc thing, but I mean, it's called a kill ship. It does what it's supposed to do, so good for them. They drone strike the Zenos. But other than, I mean, I suppose we could do another episode on all of the various war gear because crazy enough, you look at the Death Watch minis. They're, the Death Watch minis are a bit old. They're a bit old. And so they're kind of have like the stubby look.

So those are the updated ones right there. These are the updated ones. These look better. Oh, yeah, those look fine. Yeah. This is a singular kill team, I believe. that is, and like a watchmaster and apothecary, that they updated.

But the old ones do look kind of funky. They look kind of, kind of lanky and short, like the old Marines tend to do, tend to look. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that they have specific death watch minis. I kind of figured it would just be one of those things where it's like, oh yeah, you buy space Marines and then you buy a death watch conversion kit. And then you just plaster on the arm and paint them black. So besides the one shy posted,

I believe that is literally what you do, yes. Okay. So they don't, okay. Oh, I was right, hooray. Oh, here we go. Like, here's some of the older ones. Like, they're not bad, but you can kind of tell, like,

the torsos are a little thin. They're a little, they're a little stubier looking. Yeah. Kind of the sign. Kind of the sign. I just, I don't know what it is about, like, 40K minis, but I just do not like the way

the unhelmeted Marines look. Look, it's just nine times out of ten, I'm just like, yo, just put the helmet on them. They look. That's such a fine detail to paint, too, that it's like, you got to really have those crazy, like, doctor magnifying glasses on to get in there and do it right. And it's, you just keep the helmet on. It's a pretty cold take. Many people do not like painting heads. Yeah, like I said, you need such a small, fine brush, and it's just, yeah, I can't imagine that's a fun thing that anybody like.

doing. But the minis themselves, like, there are a couple other pretty cool minis that go along with it. Particularly, they have a flyer that is super goddamn dope. It is known as the Corvus Black Star. Ooh, that name. I'm assuming Corvus, like, Corex? I spelled that way, but I don't think it's related to them. Actually, it could be.

I'm 100%. Does it look like a raven? No, it does not. It does not. It does not. Very cool, though. That is super dope. That's one of the better looking flyers I've seen in 40K for sure.

So the Corvus Black Star is a combination of a transport and gun platform. As you can tell from, it has some last cannons, a giant rack of missile launchers on the side. And, you know, just generally transports people in there. It's very sleek. It kind of gives me like stealth bomber vibes. I was about to say that. It's like if you put like a storage container inside of a stealth bomber, it would be like this.

Or it would look like that anyway. Yeah. Pretty much. It's, well, yeah, it's a little thick. It's not very like stealth bomber thin. Yeah, but it's got the same vibes. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's pretty fun. It's a fun like kind of mini for the most part. And that's one of their major other. dedicated minis outside of the kill teams specifically. Because you've got like, you basically got all kinds of various kill teams that you can run. And they all have fancy names like Fortis kill team, endometer kill team, proteus kill team. And basically just depends on what armor you're running. Like the indometer kill team is basically all gravis units.

Right. Which is like the big chunky armor. And then, uh, and proteus kill team, I believe is, um, I think it's the one that has the one that's shy posted. Kiltim Cassius is something. But then, of course, at the end, there's the watchmaster. And the watchmaster is like your main captain person. And they,

So that's the only, like, dedicated, like, death watch vehicle? Other than that, it's just like, oh, yeah, you can run baneblades with them, but you just paint it different. They don't have any. Well, a bane blade is a guard unit. Well, whatever. You get the idea, though. A land raider or something.

You land raider or something, you just paint it like black and gold or black and silver and they don't have anything else that's like specific to them. That seems weird to me. I mean, not really, because they're not really a specific, a specific faction. They're a collaboration of small strike forces. It just seems like they'd want like the, they'd want specially kidded out stuff and like they'd want their, I don't know. I mean, they do especially shit out stuff. Okay. This is why we need to do the second episode and all their war gear, because they have a.

lot of wacky weapons, swords, all kinds of things like that. Ah, okay. But not so much in terms of the vehicles. And like, you know, think about gray knights don't have a whole wasp, fancy, fancy stuff either. They're just a bunch of teleporting Marines. True. True, I guess.

Sure. They have like the Dread Knight. And that's about it. Everything else is the same. Yeah. So we're going to do a second episode on these guys, right? Yeah, most likely. If anything, just the wacky, Wahoo world of Death Watch war gear.

And then we'll talk maybe about the structure. Yeah. Who's their chapter master? So I, so they have a thing called a watch commander. That's their main guy. Yeah. Who's that? He's got to be a badass, right?

If you're, if you're like the head, well, as close to a head honcho for the death watch as you can get, you've got to be quite the spice marine. I don't actually know who the watch. Watch Commander is. We can talk about that next episode. I know there is a... I was going to say that's probably something for a separate episode, but I was just like, that guy's got to be a little bit crazy. Hell yeah.

Hell yeah, brother. All right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, we're going to end the episode. Take a train and suplexes. I'm going to take the train and drop the elbow. The queen.

Oh, yeah. The queen. Oh yeah I take a tyrannid dominatrix And I suplex