Adeptus Ridiculous - Suffer Not The Alien to Live...Unless..? | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousToday we are going to go over something that the Imperium doesn’t like to admit to: allying with the things they hate the most. Sometimes this is due for necessity for resources, but more often than not it is an “enemy of my enemy” situation. There are many threats to the galaxy as a whole, and some are more all-consuming than others. Though there have been instances of Xenos and Humanity allying in the face of Chaos, there is no more unifying enemy than the Tyranids. So, we are going to go over some notable times where the Imperium of Man decided to see the big picture and agree to a truce with some of the most prominent xenos in the galaxy.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. Let's get into it. But first, if you like the podcast and you want to support the podcast, maybe consider heading over to patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous where you can get access to the Discord, bloopers if they happen, $15 tier get you access to all of our posters in crispy digital form.

Also, shy sort of little one-offs. I think I saw that the newest episode was the rampant. different types of drug use in 40K, which piques my interest, because God knows 40K has got some crazy stuff there. But patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous. Bricky, where's it? How's it going? Hello, it is me, Bricky. I am no longer

in my home. I am traveling once again. But this time, probably the last major bit of travel for the whole year outside of heading to San Diego for TwitchCon. But I am currently in Detroit. I am, the Poor Hammer podcast gentlemen

have told me that they're going to make their way out here and buy me something known as a conie, which I'm assuming as a hot dog. And then we're going to play magic. And that, to me,

sounds like the best time ever. We're going to buy a conie in Detroit? I guess a cony is it is it a midwest thing? I thought well so when I thought cony I was like oh yeah hot dog but I was like wait isn't Coney Island in like New York area? They told me I needed to get a Coney. Maybe it's like an ice cream cone. The logistics surrounding the Coney I care not about.

They told me they wanted to get me a Coney. I'm going to go with them to get a Coney. All right, cool. Report back to us next week and let us know how the Coney from Detroit goes. Yeah, if I, if I shit out my whole ass, then at least you know that I did it properly. Next week, Bree, like, guys, I lost 20 pounds. It's amazing. So skinny.

Damn. But I am, I am currently, you know, in a different setting or area right now. So apologies if my microphone is very different, but we shall continue in the usual. Go ahead and, of course, do your usual. Check out the great merchandise down at Orchidate. the description and also get reading on Flesh and Steel

from the Warhammer Minecraft movie. It's really good actually. It's a good book. Yeah, I'm about a couple hours in so far. It is so far very good. But that will be the book club next week because Lucius was only book version

and we made that mistake. So Flesh and Steel. Yeah, let's go. Anyway, D.K. Okay, this is a bit of a stretch, but for 1995 people like myself, this might be something that might work out. Okay, so did you play Modern Warfare 2? I have not played a military shooter, period. Okay, okay.

Then this entire tangent goes nowhere. there's a particular mission in the game that I was going to reference and try to like bring out because because I mean even people who don't like my military shooters normally played a cod back in like the late 2000s but anyway we'll have to do a different mystery quote for the time being if you're ready for it I'm hey I'm I'm I'm always ready to get a quote wrong let's go hell yeah all right do not be like the humans my lord learn from the past You will need allies if you are to prevail. Maximize the effectiveness of your alliances and turn them entirely to your advantage.

Prove yourself worthy in this and the silent king may speak to you as well in time. So this is some necrons stuff. It is definitely a necrons speaking. At least I'm making the assumption. Yeah. It's not quite about the necrons. No. because it was like Silent King

and it was like oh don't make the same mistake the humans did and it's like okay so this is probably like a Xenos thing it's not necrons maximize the effectiveness of your alliances and turn them entirely to your advantage this almost sounds a little

Votonish coded too but we literally just did a Voton thing we actually have more Voton we're going to have to do eventually because the new book is out, but eventually we'll get there. No, no, no. See, this is, this is tough because one of the missions, one of the best missions in Modern Warfare 2 that has a phenomenal soundtrack is called The Enemy of My Enemy. And I was going to try to pull some references there because that quote in its own right

is a pretty important one in this scenario. Yeah, I'm flying on empty here. so I'm just going to that's fine you want you want to give up we'll just we'll just say it's uh it's uh it's uh it's some kind of far side on clive episode i don't know i i want i want i want tau i want farcite i want the eight

i'm just i'm just going to throw that out there to to manifest it for the future no uh we are talking about something a lot more generalist a little more broad we are talking about imperial and xenos alliances the enemy of my enemy that kind of kind of thing. Oh man, I wasn't expecting such a broad topic. I was expecting it to be a little more like, it's this character. It's this faction. But yeah, no, okay. That's that that is a fitting quote then for, yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, no, definitely. So yeah, I mean, in the recent Dante episode, we went over how the blood angels got the very surprising bit of aid by the corn demons when they fought the

tyranids very much in this scenario, it was like a, hey, they don't get to kill you. Only I get to kill you kind of moment. But it's far from the first time that the Imperium has ever been helped by weird places. So what we're going to talk about today and somebody actually wanted to talk about for a bit is humanity's alliances, allying with the things they hate the most normally due to necessity. But there is more than often an enemy of my enemy type situation because there are so many threats in the galaxy. Yeah, I feel like this is going to be an Eldari heavy episode because that seems whenever I hear about like, oh, I guess we have to ally ourselves with them because it's, I was going to say, for the greater good, it's like, wow, I'm really pushing this Tao thing. But it seems like it's always like, oh, yeah, we got, well, I guess we'll work with the Eldari.

And the Eldari, I was like, oh, I guess we'll work with the human because chaos is really screwing things up or like the orcs or the nids or something. So that's kind of what I always think of when I think of like, oh, I guess we have to work together and doing alliance for now. It's often that. In fact, back when I was like a young lad back in seventh edition Warhammer, which feels like it was a lot like, it sounds sooner than it actually is because I was like 17. That's like over a decade old. When I was playing seven. Three editions is a decade ago? I thought of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember there was a little list, and I'm sure Shy can maybe scrounge this up, if it was Possum Cam, where you were able to basically, wait, May 2014 was when 7th edition launched, Shai. Oh, no. Oh, wow. Okay. So I started it like right in the beginning then. Interesting. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

So I'm thinking now, like, he's doing the math. I guess that's why they did. They got the book then. That's why my Dairy Queen people that I worked with got the book at that time because it just came out. This makes so much sense now. Anyway, yes,

so back when there was a little chart that you could have, which was your alliances on the tabletop. Now, seventh edition was a lot more heavily narrative focused and which made playing the game absolutely awful because the rules in seventh were terrible. But it did make, it had some very cool fluff and flavor to it. And one of them was that if you, you could bring in any other faction with your faction, but they had like levels of work together,

where if you were like humans and Eldar, for example, there was certain things like, oh, you can work together amicably without like major issues. But if you were like humans and chaos demons, there was a whole like you cannot have these units even within six inches of each other or or something along those lines. Or they kill each other. Yeah, which I thought was kind of neat. Like, necrons were that way, Nids were, because I think that was back when Necrons didn't have the new lore yet, and so they were just like unthinking robots.

And then like Nids, same deal. So it was pretty neat. That's actually, I mean, that's, that's really cool. But it's also like, you know, that seems like G-dub because it's like, hey, don't just buy your human army. They can work together with the Eldar. Buy the Eldar models too. And it's like, uh, and it's just a cool narrative thing to do.

the allies matrix. Yeah, so all the ones in green are battle brothers, and that's normally like Eldar with Eldar, humans with humans. Then you have allies of convenience, which are often like Eldar in humanity or Tao and Eldar, and then you have desperate allies. And then you have come the apocalypse. Come the Apocalypse, unless it is absolutely dire. they're not working together, right?

That's fair. Notice how in come the apocalypse, it's tyrannids are nothing everywhere, everywhere but themselves. I'm actually a little shocked that the necrons have as much as they do. I didn't realize the necrons have allies and convene to tell. I could have sworn though. Maybe the new lore had already come out.

I'm not quite sure. Yeah, they are allies of, yeah. That's so strange that the necrons would be allies of convenience with chaos and tau. I mean, 40K lore is an ever-changing thing because it goes against the humanity's awful, like, stagnation type deal. It's part of the point. But I think maybe just the necrons have changed a lot since then, because this has been over a decade ago. Fair, yeah. Anyway, so a disclaimer of what an imperial alliance.

is. Now, military alliances between the Imperium and Zenos are generally forged on necessity and not out of consistency. Rogue traders get a pass. We know that, obviously. And then some inquisitors kind of do

too. But that's about the end. Also, holy crap, you're so right, shy. Tyrannids and Gene Steeler cults are allies of convenience and not full allies. Oh my God, that's great. That's so funny. Wait, wait, wait, I don't think where Gene St. Colts are on this list?

I'm pretty sure they didn't arrive yet, right? Yeah, this is a later list, I believe, when they finally came out. That's so funny and so accurate, too. For lore, that's accurate. Allies of convenience? No, they're battle brothers now. Yeah, totally, totally, forever and always. You know, besties holding hands through the tulips for sure. Drop.

But, of course, you know, most military alliances that the Imperium has with Zenos tend to end in like horrors beyond your comprehension. Example here. A great example of this is the Imperial Navy High Admiral Vordegern Henroth. So this guy, the High Admiral

was tasked to defend the Eastern Fringe. And though it's not really a fully settled part of the galaxy compared to most others, holding it is very necessary due to the massive presence of things like the Tao Empire and the Sautak dynasty. Now the Eastern Fringe was faced with a ton of problems like

high fleet. Yorming Gander started showing off. Showing off. Well, it showed off, but it showed up as well. Yeah. And Hanroth didn't have enough defensive mustard, and he needed help. So he mustered a huge fleet of Navy and Zeno ships with four different Zeno species, particularly the Vassalians and the Dinarati, who were at the time at war with one another.

The Demiurg, which are actually a version of the Voton kin, that sided with the towel. Yeah, the squats. That's where the squats went. Yeah. And then the semi-eric. Despite the size of the armada, the battle against the high fleet was devastating, and a win was barely squeezed because Pyrrhic imperial victory by the big Zenos Armada. And though the victory would not have been possible to the help of the Zenos,

the high admiral did not let the alliance sway him from a sense of duty. And in five short years after the defeat of High Fleet Yormingander, the High Admiral led his forces and completely obliterated the Simariac homeworld. Yeah, that sounds, I'm surprised it took five years. I'm surprised that wasn't just like, oh yeah, next week,

kill the Zenos. I'm shocked it took as long as it did. I mean, it was five years later, he basically committed genocide, which is like totally normal for the Imperium, but it's particularly humorous against these people because it's like, oh, thanks so much for helping us stop Highfleet,

your entire, race now shall be wiped out. Yeah. That's, I mean, what's more Imperium coded than that, though? Like, nothing. Parchment paper with, parchment paper with marching orders. The actual orders that, yeah.

Okay. Now, the first one that would be kind of fun to start with should be the necrons because they're the best faction in Warhammer. Let's go. Yeah, yeah. It's one of the more extreme examples. because it includes one of the more understated meetings of the minds. Dante and the Dark Angels were entrenched in a big battle on the hive world of Gehenna near the tail end of M-41,

and the combatants they faced were the Necrons. Now, under normal circumstances, this would likely have been a fair W for Necrons due to their unrelenting military tact, but Dante is kind of him and puts shit into a stalemate because he's Dante. Of course. Now, it lasted for several weeks, with either side not being able to overwhelm the other, until eventually one day the necronos just kind of stopped firing. They turned their backs on the blood angels and they marched away. Even as the blood angels started firing at them and knocked them down, they did not turn around.

But the shooting stopped because the reality started to set in that like, why would they, you know, give up if they were dedicated stalemates? Now, the blood angels found the answer, which was that long-range, sensors picked up the approaching the approachment of a large Tiranid fleet barely within range and somehow the necrons picked this up way sooner and in the middle of course because of course it did and in the middle of them debating as to how they could have seen such a large fleet they received a direct signal from the necrons here is the quote here the avatar regarded him with its blazing white eyes I am the judicator prime I am charged with security

hearing your cooperation. You will not resist, Dante of the blood angels. Reaching out of the table controls, Gaius warily mashed the keypad with his palm, hoping to sever the connection. It did not have any effect. Commander Dante looked back at the adjudicator. Cooperation in what, Zenos? Until mere hours ago our forces were locked in mortal combat. Now you are fled to the empty plains, awaiting our inevitable vengeance. There is no matter in which we or you will ever co-werectuary. operate. All caps. You are incorrect. Our success has already been calculated. The conflict between us was an error. Wow. That's a great. That's so necrone. That is like the most necrone-coded conversation I've ever heard. The conflict between us was an error. Granted, that also sounds

pretty ad-mecky, but they both. Yeah. Just love the all caps. You are incorrect. The Judicator revealed a fact that shocked everyone, which was that Zerick, the Silent King himself was on Gahena and wanted to meet with Dante and his advisors to discuss a counteroffensive against the Tyrannids. It's a dual narrative in the story. The necrons laid out pretty cut and dry. Tyrannids are anathema to all life. Without life, the necrons have nothing to rule over. Yeah. The Silent King is on Gahena?

Yeah. He's just chilling? He's just... came back and he was there. Oh, all right, cool. I think this was slightly before a lot of the new Silent King lore. So how much of it was 100%? I'm not sure.

Yeah, it's just wild to me that the Silent King is just chilling. And it's like, oh, yeah, by the way, he's down there. It's like, oh, really? He didn't decide to step in and mess with Dante before this. You're just chilling, watching everything go down. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's okay. Yeah. I mean, the quote literally is, the humans create, the necrons maintain, the tyranids consume. There can be no lasting symmetry. One must fall. So, you know, kill the teardinids. Yeah, for sure. Now, despite some obvious concerns about the interaction, Dante accepted the offer. The narrator of the story is Lord Onmer Kier, the traveler, you know, Mr. Anmer Kier himself, rest in peace is miniature. I'm very pissed about that. And, um, and, Erasmus Tyco.

Tyco is a funny one. He's, I don't know if he's got legend, but he was, he may not have been legend. He's this really shitty old model, but he has two models. He has Tyco the something and then Tyco the Lost,

because I think he succumbs to the black rage. And so there's the black rage version of him and the regular version of it. It's kind of wild. I don't know. It's kind of crazy. It's kind of cool that he has a black rage version, though.

That's kind of a nice little feature to add for like a blood angel. It's kind of sick. But anyway, they encounter the adjudicator and they're brought face to face with the silent king. However, the face of the silent king was not what they expect him. Remember this before that you knew what the silent king looked like? Brothers, I could scarcely put into words what I felt in that moment, what all three of us must have felt. It was not reverence or awe, I can tell you that much. It was closer to hatred, framed by a cowl of shimmering light and the traceries of his intricate

collar, Zerick heralded as the last and greatest of the silent kings, an undisputed overlord of the Necron race wore a golden mask fashioned into the likeness of our Lord Sanguineas. Oh.

Oh man, that's how he chose to meet Dante? Yeah, he, I don't, I think that it was because he was, maybe thought that that would be like a way to soothe them and like have them more interesting in cooperation but I think he maybe misread the room

yeah you could be right he's like oh no look they they don't want to see just a necrond if they see if they see Papa they'll be you're probably right and he just did it yeah what a miscalculation I remember people were upset when the Silent King Digger revealed and there was no mention to that

but honestly I think that's more of like a the time thing and it doesn't actually matter. Yeah. But, I mean, also goes the silent king looks like such a baller. So, you know,

whatever. Wow. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was pretty funny. And let's just say Dante was not happy. No way.

I know Blood Angel would be, right? Yeah. So the, the Judicator basically said the silent king will not speak, but his action of wearing a benevolent and beautiful mask of sanguinius was to honor him,

and that this meeting was to quote, unquote, honor an accord he wanted to strike with sanguinius in ages past. Oh. So the silent king has been looking to partner up with the Imperium, specifically sanguinius for a long time. Well, the silent king is 60 million years old, so I'm sure he's been around. He also's been awake the whole time.

Yeah. He's definitely been around long enough for it, but I don't know why. It just strikes me as weird that like big Necron silent king would want to work with humans in any fashion, even if it is like best boy, right? I mean, he could also be talking total shit out of his ass. Like, true. He could be 100% just lying.

True, true. It's also, it is funny. Shine makes a good point. It is very, it is good that he basically found the most reasonable space marine alive. Yeah. Don't good old Dante, Boy Scout Dante, thank God. But regardless, of course, the Necron's actions on the planet, he's, well, okay.

So Dante denied this. The judicator stated that the Silent King cannot lie, which I think is total horseshit. But, you know, I'm sure it's for the purposes of the book. I think it's not even that Zerick can't lie. I think it's just that Zerick, like, doesn't need to because he's the man. It's true. He's the big boy. What does he need to lie for?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe there is some kind of coding where he can't lie, but then the betrayal against the Caton doesn't make a lot of sense. Who cares? Whatever. Yeah. It doesn't matter.

Maybe there's something where he says he can't lie. But regardless, it's not important. What's important is that the Necron's actions were to defend the planet from the great devourer, and therefore they kind of got into conflict with the blood angels due to that. And they kind of lean into it and say that it was Dante's fault. for fighting them in the first place, but there's no way they would have known about it. So basically, the blood angels

unfortunately took out a decent chunk of the Necron's forces, and the damage they did the necrons meant that their ability to defend the planets and the tyrannids were very diminished. So the adjudicator said that the Psyllon king wanted to save this planet for the Imperium, because you need to rule over something. And I don't know if this has adjusted the lore, depending on whether they go back to the flesh and blood type thing with the tyrannids. I'm not quite sure where we are at this timeline.

But regardless, Dante basically asked why the hell the necrons care? And the necron, the judicator said, hey, we're concerned about the survival of the human race because one day these differences might be reconciled. Which I also think is total crap, but we'll see. Yeah, coming from a necrone, it's like, I don't know, man. That doesn't sound like something you'd say. And like, I feel like when a Necron says, oh, yeah, one day our differences will be settled. He means one day we'll kill all of you.

Difference settled. Or one day you will be underneath our boot heel. Yeah, something like that, definitely. Not like a peaceful coexistence. Yay! No. There's also a very important moment where they agreed to this defense. The silent king rose up from his throne, walked up to Dante, grasped his wrist in a remarkably

imperial manner, which I'm assuming is like their version of the handshake or the space marine handshake where you both grab you have his forearms. Before leaning in and whispering something into Dante's ear to which Dante nodded. What he whispered was, they are the rising storm

and you must become the shield. And it makes sense the necrons would be very anti-terranid because, you know, that's what started the wake-up process, especially the silent kings, probably very very like, yeah, you know what? Tyrannids are showing up. I'll work with anybody.

We just got to kill us some nids. Eventually, after the alliance was forged and they did all the fighting, they basically, of course, use their fighting against, you know, all the tyranids. And then eventually after they deal with the tyranids, they're going to murder the Silent King.

You know, so all that kind of stuff. Now, they combined force, the necrans and the blood angels were able to wipe out the tyrannids with relative ease, but as the battle drew to a close, closed, Dante, the others realized that the necrons had straight up vanished. The alliance was needed.

The necrons were suspicious of the humans, obviously, and they bailed the moment it was clear to do so. And Gahena was saved for the Imperium. Okay, sure. Smart move by the necrons, though. Like, they both sides probably saw the writing on the wall, so smart move by the necrons. So, I mean, that's one of the more weird necron ones. I know there are very few, if any, like, alliances with the necrons, because most necrons just want to eradicate human life.

And then the only ones that you can negotiate with are often the nobles. But then the nobles are people like Trazen, Imatech. Like, good luck. Yeah. Like, I mean, you can negotiate with them, but it probably won't work. I mean, even if you negotiate with treason, he's still going to probably kill you. He's just going to have some fun while he doesn't or push you in his balls. Yeah.

Yeah, I was going to say, you're either getting killed or you're getting frozen forever in all time. and he can just stare at you in his little zoo, so you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. The next one we got is the Eldar. Now, the El-Nar is a bit of a weird one. Now, their history with the Imperium is one of the more long-standing ones,

and that relationship is very convoluted. The Eldar, of course, find themselves to be superior to humanity in every single way, and the disdain is apparent in any quote of the Eldar talking down to humans. Yeah, considering they always

call them Monkei, right? I mean... I mean, they just always are hoity-toity about it. Yeah. But I mean, so are the Imperium. So, like, whatever. But the Eldar are obviously far more pragmatic than most species in the galaxy. In fact, out of all the species in the galaxy, I would argue that the Eldar are maybe top three of like the most understandable actions, like not completely backwards. At least the craft worlders, that is. Yeah, that your kari are

You have to be Because if your entire race was the most powerful in the galaxy And was eradicated by the own actions of your species They're a little bit You know, they're extremely Puritan and stuff Because they're scared of falling down the hole But you know Yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah I mean the biggest example of working with the Eldar Is the most obvious one It's Bobby G coming back Mm-hmm That one is really really like to the meme. I'm not going to say the meme.

I mean, now that I know the meme, the meme is less funny to me. The Yvrain Gilliman memes are a lot less funny. Now that I know that it was like them. One line. One line. Yeah. It's nothing else.

It's like it's one line of like, all right, well, I hope we don't kill each other again. Canonically, they have a child together though. So yeah. I hate you.

So. Now, obviously, post-revival, that shows a good example of their allieship, or post-revival, a very good example of their allieship was when Mortarium decided it was time to use the hand of darkness to unleash a horrible amount of plagues on Ultramar. Now, Gilemon and good old Tigarius, Tegyrius is the fancy librarian for, they sought out Eldrad Othron regarding that manner. is kind of the boy when it comes to the Eldar like Sears. He's one of their most powerful psychers. Yeah. The name sounds very familiar, so. Yeah, Eldrad's kind of the guy.

He's pretty cool. Now, for those who may not recall, the homeworld of the Death Guard is the plague planet known as Munificence. But prior to the Death Guard's claiming of the planet, it was known as Alithara. Alitha. Alitha was a really beautiful planet that was under Eldar control, but the fall scoured life on it and it was pulled into the eye of terror. Now the planet is shaped to look like barbarous because of course. And it's home to the whispering tower where the hand of darkness is kept and the only way to reach it is through the Garden of Nergel, which is very hard. have we talked about what the hand of darkness specifically is obviously it is a not happy fun tool for

humanity but have we talked about it because I'm not immediately recalling what exactly it is and what exactly it does other than maybe just spreading the gift of Nergel it's basically like old school very very very powerful Xenos weapon okay the heart of darkness was used by Avedon for a bit. It was used by Mortarian. Yeah, he usually took control of the Blackstone Fortress. So it's like crazy, powerful

McGuffin for the most part. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So anyway, and he, of course, used it to release a bunch of plagues on Ultramar. That's that whole point. It's not important. Basically, very bad weapon, very scary. Gotcha, okay.

Now, reaching the planet and the tower was not an option for Gilliman and the Ultramarines. So he needed a bit of a mystical form of help. So after speaking with Eldrad, he responded by sending Yvrain to go retrieve the artifact. And after passing through the average trials of temptation at the Black Library, Yovraine was able to pass through the garden with her allies and was able to sneak into the tower to claim the ham before escaping. The hand was then delivered to Eldrad, and the Eldrad then used a trusted Harlequin messengers to bring it to Gilliman himself.

So that was like a classic. You know, a little bit of help there from Yvrain and Eldrad and the folks. And it's good that they got the hand of darkness away from chaos, because, you know, that's not great. Yes. Yes, very true. There's another more military-focused example, which took place in the Valdor system with high-fleet Leviatham. In this one, it was being guarded by a very aggressive and exceptionally xenophobic, Crimson exceptionally xenophobic when talking about Imperium, hilarious. The Crimson Castellans.

but they can only do so much between the five worlds in the system, and so one by one they fall to the tyrannids, and what remains is this world of Ector, which serves as their recruiting world. However, the population on this planet is not only getting assistance from the space marines, since it's become known that Doom was coming for the sector, an organization appeared in the hive city

that was handing out supplies and little placards, and these placards had a phrase that said, The hand protects. It says, the hand shows us the way, the way to weather the storm, the storm that approaches. Oh, no. Virgil. Virgil.

Yes. We have no creed, no message of disobedience. We desire only safety and safety the hand may provide. Now, of course, this sounds like massive heresy, obviously. And one of the Crimson Castle and Battle Brothers encounters a law enforcement officer on the high world about it. And the lawman states they're not concerned about them at all. The lawman believes that it is the doing of some guilt-riddled spire lord or something. The hand's actions benefiting the sick and the orphan is of exceptional help. The space marine is not satisfied

with this one bit. And he becomes a bit obsessed finding out what the hand is. And he is there to figure out what to do with the impending invasion, but he's now assuming that the hand is something to do with the tyrannids as well. So, Yoth returns to his brothers to prepare for the attack because the tyrantid time is arriving. And eventually, the tyranids do arrive, and they are blindsided by a lictor,

which proves to be barely easy, thanks to the assistance of a member of the hand. This member's name is Assyrian, the dispossessed, which is an Eldar. The hand itself is short for the hand of Azerman, the phoenix lord of the dire avengers got you so they're lending a helping hand good for them i fully thought it would be a g s c type thing but i was wrong yeah for a second i did too because it

just seemed very like uh nids are showing up weird hand thing hand of the emperor type thing yep yep yep many handed emperor i kind of thought that's the direction it was going to now of course the space marine here responds in extremely hostile manner, but things aren't getting any better. And so they had to face the facts, they need help, and they could not save the planet for the humans alone. So they accepted the help of the hand and the Eldar as a whole. Humorously enough, during the heat of combat, this Space Marine Yoth and the Eldar Assyrian fought side by side. The Eldar held out his hand to be pulled up, but the Space Marine instincts kicked in, and he pointed his gun directly at him,

but he couldn't pull the trigger. And so there was a little, like, they had a little type of thing where the space marine stared down and was like, God, I fucking hate this thing so goddamn much. But also you saved my life twice.

So, huh. I guess I have to. Yeah, and the Eldar was like, huh, shit. Maybe there's a little bit of honor left in, you humans. I'm sure that lasted, right? All that honor for it.

I'm sure it lasted after the tyrannins were gone, right? Totally. Oh, totally. Or at minimum, he just leaves. Yeah. It feels like like a buddy cop where I don't know, I don't know about how much this book goes in the depth and how good this book is.

If it's worth a ream. But it immediately sounds like the racist cop that gets, has like his new partner is like, I don't know, like a black man or Asian man or some kind of ethnicity that they're racist towards. And it's just like they learn. into like kind of begrudgingly enjoy each other's company. I don't know, man.

Yeah, it's probably very similar. Sure. Sure. I don't know why I'm going to Detroit become human with Clancy Brown and Connor. Oh, yes, because they do kind of have to learn to like each other. And depending on the choices you pick, you can kind of become friends. And I play through, they never became friends. They just hated each other the whole way through.

That's so depressing because that's, easily the best part of that entire game is making them friends because the other rest of the game hits you over the head with the racial signal. When I opened that game and I was like, it's a David Cage game. I'm like, okay. And then within 30 minutes, my Andrew was on the back of the bus. I was like, holy shit, David Cage. But guys, it's not political.

The game, it's not. Come on. Come on. There's no message. Guys, it's just a game. It's just a game. I don't think you said that. I'm pretty sure he was honest about that part.

It was just the fact that I was hit over the head with a sledgehammer about it. 30 minutes, David Cage. You couldn't have done the back of the bus at least an hour. Hour in or something. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Good Lord. Anyway, next up, speaking of segregation, we have the Tao.

Oh, okay. Nice segue. Of a caste system. Yeah. So obviously, Allying with the Zenos is often considered to be no-win suicidal scenario. And we all know there's one colonel who has made his life work to win these impossible scenarios, which is Colonel Schaefer of the last chancers,

the coolest goddamn dude of all time. Yeah, the last chancers are such a cool name, too. I mean, it's just, I love the picture of that dude with like the giant cigar. So in many of his missions, Schaefer's task is to assassinate, or sorry, in one of his many missions, my apologies. His task is to assassinate a very prominent Tao commander named Brightsword, who has gone renegade. To do this, the last chance has to have to work with some members of the Tao,

and this is approved to be pretty agreeable to both sides, because it's a renegade Tao commander. Certain members of the Watercasts believe that the Brightsort's ideology but the Tau Empire and the Imperium at risk of a full-scale war, but they also did not want to act on their own, as this would be its own political chaos internally if the water cast members had killed the Brightsword themselves. So they basically were like,

hey, the last chancellors were going to pose as imperial diplomats and are brought into Brightsorts cadre, courtesy of their close-knit working with those who wanted him dead, and they were able to complete the mission and get him killed. But like with most last chance for missions, virtually everyone died except for a couple and Schaefer had to rebuild from scratch. Yeah, as you do. Now, the Imperial works with Tao a few other times as well. At the end of M-41, they were attacking the world of Quadravidia when a Sir Caiaphas-Cain arrived as reinforcements.

I was going to say, we read a book about that, right? We did kind of read a little bit about that. And that was, of course, eventually the Tyrannists decided to show up in this situation. And so they fought the Tyrannids as a common enemy there, unrelated to the book we read. Yeah, yeah. A more controversial example, All Hollow, the home world of the Angels of Absolution. Can you guess which Space Marine chapter that is, the Angels of Absolution? The Angels of Absolution?

That kind of sounds dark angely to me. because, you know, they're... Very proud of you, D.K. They are dark angels. Thank you. There was that pause. I was like, wait, it's not? I was like, is it blood angels?

No, it's, I mean, absolution, you know? But they were impacted by a pretty nasty Zinchian plague that was impacting the Promethean mining world of Tao sympathizers. So the nature of the problem is saying that substantially impact both the Tao and the optics surrounding the angels of Absolution. So the Dark Angels intervene and meet with the Tao in secret because they have reason to believe that the plague was started by a member of the fallen.

So they strike a deal. The Dark Angels will wipe out the psychically impacted Tao sympathizers on the mining world, and the Tao will take care of the Angels of Absolution and their home world. So the Dark Angels successfully wipe out the Promethean world's inhabitants, and the Tao deploy Shaso Kais, the command suit-clad Tao,

from the Dawn of War Dark Crusade game, who has a very similar name to the protagonist of Fire Warrior, who can pull what is described as a Doom Guy maneuver and took out quite a few Angels of Absolution before vanishing. The plague was stopped, and the alliance between the Dark Angels and the Tao remains a relative secret. Yeah, I imagine the Dark Angel would also want to keep that pretty close to their chest,

that they were allying with Zenos. It's like, us? No, never. Keep it a secret. We'll find you. And then, of course, we have the orcs. I guess that's true. There probably have been a couple of unions with the orcs, haven't there?

One of the most unlikely of alliances on the list, the Imperium and the Orcs. This incident took place on the planet of Cavern Tertius, where the guard, led by Lord General Militant Nestor Pyrus of the Golden Eighth. Could you have a longer title? I mean, you can. Let me introduce to my voice, Cetra. Yeah, oh no, Cetra, three hours later. They found themselves in a decade-long trench conflict with the orcs that had ground to, you guessed it, a stalemate, and stop me if you've heard this one before, the conflict between the two factions were thrown into disarray when it confirmed confirmation of the tyranids were inbound to Catherine Tertius.

See, what we're missing in this, the tyrannid are really uniting force. So the tyrannet are really, the tyrannet are really, the, the, the true good guys in the universe. They just bring everybody together. So true, bestie. As this was a risk to the planet, general pirates requested a ceasefire being with the war boss named Colonel Tacticus with K's, of course.

The enemy of my enemy conversation occurred, and the war boss agreed on a ceasefire was for the better. This was met with skepticism, of course, including by a man in the name of Colonel Focus, P-H-O-C-U-S-U-S. but time was short and you'd act fast. So the first act of the treaty was the deployment of the orcs to assist the evacuation of the imperial civilians.

And this was complete. The bugs arrived. And despite anything you could have possibly imagined, the orcs and the humans actually worked perfectly well together. Here's a long quote. Such strange synergies had boiled up over several fronts. At Thar's bluff, the enemy's grotesque living artillery had been swarmed by Zeno's slave creatures, erupting from tunnels as a line of imperial armor had advanced as a distraction.

Time and time again, human precision and Xenos ferocity were being boiled up into a bruise stronger than it had any right to be. As the two forces had realized this, their long-term enmity had begun to express itself as brash competition. Where humans held trenches next to the Zenos, kill tall, tall, wooden boards. While in Fergal's womb, where the alien's exotic artillery had been pooled with imperial batteries, the bombardees, the bombardees, were engaged in constant one-upmanship over the reload speed and accuracy and even the volume of their guns. As far as Nestor was concerned, this was to be encouraged, and it gave his troops to do other than imagine death beneath a swarm of writhing nightmares. Huh. That's kind of interesting.

I can totally see that. Like the orcs firing a bunch of guns and killing tiradids and then the humans doing the same, then keeping kill tallies on a big board, between, you know, very nicely written out the, you know, sergeant of, you know, platoon fifth, and then the boys. The boys. Yeah, the one-upsmanship actually, like, makes sense as to why they would actually weirdly synergize and work well together and actually drive each other to, like, try harder. It actually does kind of make sense, doesn't it? It is. So both sides found the battle quite amusing

And the orcs view the humans With a sense of kind of curiosity and confusion Especially when the guardsmen began to loosen up around the orcs a little bit The humans, however, looked at the orcs with a dual sense of amusement and frustration They viewed their battlefield whimsy as funny But it felt like it was a bit of a mockery for what the imperial was trained to do I'm pretty sure these are the blood axes as well And so because their name is Colonel Tacticus

Which is the most blood axe name on the planet besides the general, which I forgot about the general, yeah. The general. The orcs treated the battle with a sense of fun and sport while the guardsmen were trained to treat war as life or death. So there was quite a lot of digest, but it was actually doing pretty good for the most part. The orcs rushed into a reactor, overloaded it, detonate everything with a six-mile radius, led to the orcs and guardsmen cheering together. The tyrants were defeated, and it was the perfect alliance until it wasn't.

Yeah, because once the tyranids are gone, the orcs still won't a good grumpy, mate. So due to the intensity of the battle, the general collapsed and fell off the side of his tank due to the sheer exhaustion. But when he woke up, he heard the sounds of tyrannid skulls being stabbed in the distance. When he realized that the battle was over, he also realized one more crucial thing. His hands were tied behind his back. Kneeling besides him was Tacticus. and he asked the general if he was going to ask what happened and confirmed that the battle was over

and also confirmed that it was the tyrannage that knocked him off of the tank and not the orcs. He then asked what happened next and the quote goes, to his astonishment, Tacticus looked almost sheepish, like a vast child caught red-handed in an act of minor theft.

Well, I betrayed you, of course. The charge with the tanks, it was, you know, a trick. We held back and we got you. there was an awkward silence and the Zenos grumble before continuing. You didn't think, question mark. No, said Nestor trying to hide the lie. I had planned the same.

It was an excellent campaign still. It was an excellent campaign, yes, Tacticus. Tacticus then brought in Colonel Focus, who was also bound, and said he would be keeping Focus because he found him to be useful. He then said to Focus, please tell the general the big imperial rule about, negotiating with Zenos, to which Focus simply said, don't. Tacticus then handed Focus his saber and told Focus to teach the general his lesson.

Oh. Oh, wow. He basically was like, all right, kill the general. Look what you happened. Oh, damn. Oh, Shai said Colonel Tacticus was in Gaz's book by Nate Crowley. He replaced the genius general stratagem. after the latter's unfortunate death that he orchestrated.

And when Gaz was uniting the clans, Tacticus was the one who just straight up surrendered without a fight. Fantastic. Absolutely cinema. Absolutely cinema. But that's what I've got for general human alliances. Now, in fairness, there is plenty of other examples. And we would love to hear if there are any ones that the comment section would like to mention.

because there are a ton of one-offs like this. And a very important one that we did not talk about was Voton-related stuff because there very much are Voton alliances with humans, but due to the new amount of the faction, there's not a lot to gleam. So we kind of have to hold off on that one. Basically, if you read about it in the codex

of the Voton or the first book, that's all that there is. all you need. That felt like a good little like here's one with like every faction except you know the nids and chaos because you know why. Why would we?

Even even the chaos happened once you know with the Dante one. Oh yeah yeah yeah with Dante getting the aid from yep yeah we already talked about that. Yeah yeah so yeah I feel like that was a good little little little primer of a lot of the examples of it

happening so yeah that was good. Little primer, a little easy one while I'm out here traveling. Yeah, hell yeah. And some good little bits there. So hell yeah. Hell yeah, brother. But besides that, yeah, that's what we got. We're, I'm going to go, I'm going to go to, I'm going to go create some of my own

Imperial alliances out here in Detroit. So, you got plenty of Zenos to pick from. Pray for me. We got, uh, plenty of Zenos to pick from them. In Detroit? Which what are we bringing in? Are we bringing in? Which faction would be best to siege Detroit?

Oh, man. I don't know. I'm not exactly sure why, but I feel like necrose. Or necrone. Necron. Necron. Oh, man. God, I'm so warframe-pilled.

It's crazy. Man said necrose. Jeez. To end the episode, can you give me a sentence? about an orc having his first cony dog? Oh, it's a lot of beans and cheese on that coney. I am going to be sitting for days and I'm going to love it. Fucking fantastic.

See you all next week, boys and girls. Bye.