Adeptus Ridiculous - THE BODY HORROR OF WARHAMMER 40K | Warhammer Lore

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculous"Imagine that. Your limbs removed, replaced with spark-whips and nests of claws. Eyes bored from your skull and stained glass in their places. Your heart and organs fixed with stimm injectors and neuropathic glands. And then, proud in your new body, what remains of your drooling waste of a mind will be turned to the good of the Imperium. With a word of my command, you'll willingly fling yourself into the jaws of hell, a berserk flesh-machine bound for a long, long death."Support the show

to be Adeptus Riddle this podcast. My name is D.K. Diamantis, his name is Bricky. And hello, Kariot. But before that, if you enjoy today's episode and you want to support us, heading over to patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous, where you can get access to the Discord, bloopers if they happen, $15 tier gets you access to all of our posters, crispy digital HD format.

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A god of rot, a god of change, a god of excess, perhaps a god of a rat, or perhaps even dice that have a toilet on them that are definitely not loaded. We are actually not loaded dice, but they don't sell loaded dice, but they haven't had a toilet on them because it's a very funny meme. They are all available now at Adeptus Ridiculous section of the Orchid 8 site. Link directly in description. and we're not done. We have a pack of six little guy objective markers for your playing of the game Warhammer

and also a beautiful sticker sheet of the little guys and a desk mat to go along with it. And if you think I'm done there, you are mistaken because there are two brand new shirts to go along with it. A classic simple t-shirt for the connoisseur of just. just regular normal clothing, and then the premium fancy pants ad-rick t-shirt made of the highest quality materials. This hive city has ever known. Check it all out in the description.

And get your Orchidate merch now. Wow. That's a lot of stuff. Let's go. It is a huge list of items, a ton of different dice, a ton. of different kinds of objective markers and the mats.

It is crazy, full of stuff, very excited to go with it. Literally something for everyone. If you can't find something you like out of that lot, then there's no joy. There's no joy in your life. You need to bond things. Me, when I miss a missile from on an enemy target, no joy, no joy.

I don't get it. People and some, like some people, in the audience will get it and they will either minus two me or they will plus two me. I don't know which yet. Oh, you're getting minus two regardless, even if it was good, you know. That is, hmm. Hosh. Hosh.

So, Karioth is here. Kierreoth. What are we doing today? You've finally been let free from the adeptus ridiculous walls and you're here. And what's, hey, what's the stitch? Okay. This one is a bit broad. going to give you a quote, but I'm not expecting you to fully get everything, because you'll

see, you'll see. Right. That bodes well for my already dazzling track record of quotes. Well, this might be a bit more abstract. It is. It's dazzling so far. It's maybe a bit more abstract, which might help a bit. I don't know.

We'll see. We'll see what happens. So, this specifically is addressing a Necron warrior. I'm just throwing that out there before I say what I'm going to say. And then maybe this will give you an insight as to the sort of thing that we're going to be approaching this episode. So, Altix felt a cold panic rise. Actuators spasmed as his chest began hauling for steadying breaths it could not take.

That set off the rest. Deep in the underlayers of his mind, Phantom alarm glifts began to stack faster than they could be cleared. Each one cried out, shrill and afraid that his brain was, was starved of oxygen that he could not breathe. Altix had no brain, just as he had no lungs, but knowing that did nothing at all to quell the escalating terror. Okay, I'm going to let D.K. do this because, like, we both know exactly what this is,

but I'm not quite sure what we're getting at with it. Yeah, we read the book. Like, that is, we read both books. From the, the books. And it's his little, um, I don't remember what the thing is called, but it's the, you know, I have no mouth, but I must scream type of thing, right? It's the, uh, it's the twice did King books. And it was, uh, kind of how they showed off the flare virus, uh, by making it like a panic attack that once you succumb to it, that's why you start putting flesh on you.

Yeah, because you feel like you need, you need to replace your skin. I need skin. I need skin. Give me the skin. Give me the skin. Oh, great. I've got skin. It's not real skin. And yeah, it's like, like you said, it's a massive necron panic attack. I mean, I guess the question is, are we talking about the act of biotransference, or are we literally going with, like, Lendigal, the flare virus? It's close. It's more the experience of it than the specific, like, nature of the flayer virus. We're kind of going for existential terror, body horror. It's spooky season.

So even though Warhammer 40K is almost entirely made up of nightmare fuel, we're going to look at some properly nightmare fuel things within 40K. And I figured that was a good way to start because the whole I have no mouth but like want to scream, but must scream. That's a pretty good start for really awful horror stuff. Oh, so it is just 40K body horror. It's not specifically a Neckron episode.

It's just, hey, look at all this awful body horror nightmarishly Halloween-esque 40K stuff. Yeah, we're going to go through. some like proper nightmare inducing awful because it's, I mean, you could do that any day of the week with 40K but you've got to like dredge up the specifics for spooky season, right? Cool.

I dig it. Let's do it. I'm about to say it. I mean like as far as I'm concerned, this is just like the classic. It's always terrible. Yeah. How did you manage to do research for this? Because it's basically everything is body horror

nightmare fuel. Holy. God, what has happened to me and why am I mutating extra tentacles out of my ass? Well, this is the thing. I am... You know, standard stuff. You standard everyday stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing I did was go through the channel to see what has been

covered that could fall under spooky season and found that you guys had covered a lot of the stuff that I initially thought of. So then I decided to get a bit more like granular with it and really, look for just properly awful, kind of like evocative stuff. So, I mean, we've got a choice. We've got a choice. Would you like to read about the creation of an archo-flagellant? Or do you want to hear about something called Halo devices first? Which do you fancy? Okay. I know how they create archofal glands for the most part, but I don't know anything about Halo devices, so I'm much more curious about that. I was going to say Halo devices because I've at least

heard of Arco. I keep saying Arcoflatulence. I'm so sorry. I'm not trying to make like toilet humor. But yeah, I at least know of that. Never heard of Halo devices. Okay. Let's start off with Halo devices done. Halo devices are one of my favorite, like little minor details in 40K because they are alien devices, Xenos artifacts that are discovered in the Halo stars, which is where they get their name from. And nobody knows. how they work at all. The Imperium hasn't got a clue. They've been studied, they've been looked at, they've been experimented on, and the overall consensus is, I don't know what this is and what it does is terrible, and I don't know how to replicate it, stop it, harness it

effectively. It is a properly nightmarish little creation. So you only really find halo devices on worlds that are completely barren. So just dead world. around dead stars that have gone out millennia ago. They are properly older than anything else around them, and they are usually found in kind of ruin civilizations on those worlds. Halo devices also don't have a specific, like, shape or kind of look to them. They're a bit different each time. They're quite unique from one device to the next.

but if you find one and if you integrate with one, you get some nice perks. How would you like to be basically unkillable and effectively immortal? Sound good? That sounds amazing. And I don't have to do anything with the dark gods. This sounds like the best. It's great.

But I'm sure there's a butt coming in. Also, what is that like darkest dungeon, crimson court looking ass, son of a bitch. thing over there. Oh yeah, what is that, Shai? I suspect that might be some artwork of the guy who bonded with a specific halo device called the Psycharis Worm, which we'll get onto into the moment. That's kind of a very specific device that was found. It's part of the Rogue Trader RPG, part of one of the adventure modules for that. But Halo devices, they look like small bits of kind of jewelry. They can be mistaken for that kind of thing.

maybe a bit of armor or something, and you can have either little kind of smooth, smooth talismans or really weird fossils, that kind. It's very varied what a halo device can look like, but they have a similar effect no matter what you do. They won't, and this is important, if you're a follower of chaos, if you're possessed by a demon,

if you're a psycher, you're out of luck, you are not allowed to bond with a halo device. It refuses to do something. I want to reiterate real quick. Did you say these were dark age tech or? They don't know. It's alien tech from millennia ago. It's super, super old.

So the Ethereum has no idea. Oh, okay, because my first thought is immediately dark age. But it could be old ones. It could be Crohn's. We don't really know. They have no idea. But inquisters have gone to war to try and like find this stuff. and to research it, and they have, none of them got concrete answers as to what Halo devices,

like where they actually come from, or how they function. Huh. So, so you said, like, if you're a chaos follower or a psycher, they just, they just don't work on you, and it's just like, oh, yeah, it's just a ring to you that doesn't give you anything, it's just a trinket that does bleh. Yeah, they just won't bond with anyone who is involved. in chaos in any way, which is super interesting. Because it implies that when they were made,

chaos. Yeah, chaos was a thing to some extent. But now it's just a case of, if a human picks it up and it's like, I love me some zinch, they just don't, they don't get to bond with it, they don't get to pair with it, they get none of the benefits. Although on the upside, they also don't get any of the negative. I mean, if it's kind of like anti-chaise, psychory, kind of, kind of. kind of thing as well that that does kind of grab necrony with because of a black stone and that

kind of stuff um but it's it's be strange for it to have the effects it does to fleshing fleshlings because you know how the necrons we when we just talked about it they hate that stuff yeah well this is this is the thing it's it sounds very good on paper because it's it you get to be basically indestructible borderline immortal But, as I say, there are some downside. You might think twice about going for it if you know exactly what it does in the end. So you basically just have to sit there with the Halo device pressed against flesh. You just got to keep it there. And eventually over time, it will start to bond. It will start to kind of attach itself and integrate with the body of the person who has got it pressed against them. And then you enter, you enter the primary phase. And this is where things actually start to seem pretty good. Because you get rejuvenated.

You go back to being full of youth and health. If there's any sort of deformities, if there's any illnesses, mutations, medical conditions, all of that stuff, they are completely negated. If you've lost a leg, that leg will regrow. Slowly, and it's very, very uncomfortable, it hurts. But you do get that. limb back, and you get proper, like, supernatural senses. Okay.

You're borderline indestructible, because if someone does something other than, like, an incredibly grievous wound to you, you just heal it, which is pretty good. Starts out pretty good. Yeah. I mean, that does start off pretty good. This all sounds lovely. I want to know when the monkey paw is going to curl. Right.

Well, I was going to say, like, if you are, like, on. death's door, or you have like a really crippling disease that is going to kill you in like a day. It's like, well, you know what? Let me roll the dice with this thing. It'll cure me. It'll give me crazy powers. Is there going to be a downside? Of course there is.

But at least I won't be dead. Yeah. I mean, there's definite, like, there's definitely, you can see why someone would go for it, even if they'd heard horror stories. Oh, yeah. Because the initial pitch is, is pretty good. You don't heal anything that's wrong with you too. Like, yeah. Yeah, especially in the Imperium where, you know, the chances of being horribly injured or mutilated or something, you know, compared to the universe, it's pretty high.

Pretty high up there, probably. It's a big one. It's a big number, I'm sure, yeah. It does have its downsides, even initially, though, because as the body gets kind of fresher, younger, faster, the senses get better, the person that has been bummed. with, they do start to kind of lose, lose what they enjoyed out of life. Sort of the pleasures that they had, they start to fade away, they begin to sort of lose their luster a little bit. And that's not great, but it's not quite as bad as paranoia and violent mood swings.

Oh, boy. Oh, I mean, this just sounds like you're taking steroids. It's basically alien super steroids to start with. Yeah, I mean, this is just taking tricks. You know, you get stronger, you get bigger, and then next thing you know, like, next thing you know, you get massive paranoia and road rage. It's perfect. Oh, wow, yeah. Very trendy. You do start to hear weird voices that whisper to you in the dark, though, which I don't know if steroids do that, but combined with the rest of what it does, it's not ideal. It's not great. Luckily, after a while, you don't need to sleep anymore, so it's not too bad.

You just need to kind of basically go comatose for a few hours, like once a week, and you are nice and refreshed. But whilst you're in a miniature coma, you do get horrific nightmares of like alien cities, strange stars and, you know, alien landscapes. But apart from that, you're young, you're healthy, and you're prone to occasion now. busts. It's not that bad a trade to start out within the primary phase. I was going to say, in 2024, some people already have all that stuff, but without the benefit of the good health. It's true. It's sadly true. It does get worse. There is a secondary and tertiary phase. So with the secondary phase, this does take years, by the way. So it's not like overnight

you become like a roid rage lunatic. It does take a little while. But the secondary phase, after a few years, you physically start to change, but not in a good way. So the flesh around the device, it gets kind of tough and, and like, scar-like, as though it's becoming... Wait, so you have it on your body for the whole years. Like, do you just, like, tape it there? Oh, it once you've... Well, doesn't it melt? Yeah, once it's there for long enough, it melds into your flesh.

Right, right, right. How big is this thing, do we know? They can be, like, depending on what type of device it is, because there's, like, lots of different shapes. And, like, they can be jewelry or little fossils or, like, little smooth stones, or they could be a piece of armor. Like, they're very, there's a lot of variety in terms of what the outward appearance can be. But they all follow the same rule of, like, you keep it pressed against a certain part of the body for long enough. It starts to bond, you know, as long as you're not involved in chaos or a psycher. it starts to bond and then it's just attached to you.

It's like properly melded to the flesh. Okay, because I know you mentioned like jewelry and stuff like that, and that's obviously much easier to handle, but I wasn't sure if there was like, like, if it was good the size of like a football and then you just have like this goiter on your fucking body or something. I mean, it specifies like. You can so rarely use. Yeah. I mean, it specifies like armor. So you could have like just a full pardron or something. the shoulder for ages, which would be super inconvenient.

But I guess, you know, if you're really dedicated to letting alien tech bond with your human body, then, you know, it's a price to pay. You sticky tape it on there. That'd be fine after a while. And all the halib devices give you something different. So maybe having that giant paldron on there, it's like, well, I get some sort of crazy nonsense that makes it totally worth it. A super buff arm, but only on one side.

You just get like a massive. I was going to say, I've got that, but I didn't need any device for it. I mean, yeah, anyway, so Halo devices. So the secondary phase. The secondary phase is where it starts to get a bit rough, because the body starts to change. You get like almost kind of like an insectoid feel to the skin, almost like a bit of an exoskeleton kind of vibe to around where the halo device is melded.

and also becoming cold. Cold is the grave, literally. But at this point, essentially, you are effectively unkillable. The person who's melded can heal from pretty much any sort of damage that's dealt to them. They are insanely fast, insanely strong, massively resilient. They don't need to eat, they don't need to sleep or drink, but they do get a bit more mad. They do sort of slip down the slide a bit more and end up developing weird addictions and just insane hungers for things that they have to indulge because if they don't, they become unstable and start getting sick. So what kind of like weird addictions are we talking about? Because

I'm trying to think, is it the is it the dark Eldar homunculi who asked for really weird abstract concepts as payment? Wow, damn, that's a deep cut. I'm surprised you got that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't think it's the homunculus. I think it's the mandrakes, but you're damn close. Yes, it was the mandrakes. You're right. Because they're like the crazy warriors. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, they want it like a whispered promise

or like the, like the, the breath of one person. They want like that kind of creepy stuff. But so when you say destabilize, how do you define that, Kuriath? What do you mean they like destabilize? More,

more sort of addictions and hungers and issues start to arise. From what I can tell, it's not something that's written about a huge amount. It's kind of one of those things where they've done a bit of detail, they've thrown it out,

and then they've never addressed it again. Classic, you know, 40K approach to sort of, fringe law where it's like here's just enough to make you super interested and now we're not going to tell you anything else. It's sort of that kind of approach. But for me, unstable, unstable just brings to mind the idea of if you're already super fast, super strong, you don't need to eat, drink or sleep. There's only like a few things that could possibly, that that could be interpreted as. And for me, that just kind of speaks of being more unpredictable and having more

violent outbursts, more mood swings, developing more things that you think you need and have to, like, physically have to indulge in, or you just end up needing more stuff on top of that. Some of the examples that are given for, like, the things that they need, addiction-wise, there's the classic. You've got to have the classic with any sort of, you know, you're descending into madness. Hunger for human flesh. Yeah, that makes sense. It's got to be up there every time.

but also things like just long periods in pitch black or basking in solar radiation. That's also a thing that's listed as like an addiction for someone who is properly merged after a few years with a halo device. So it's kind of, some of it's very like, I guess, like Route 1, it's kind of, oh, they're under the influence of something crazy. They're going to want to eat people. but then there's things like just sitting in solar radiation, which is kind of weird no matter how you slice it. Yeah, it would be. Although, hey, in 40K, there are plenty of planets that are just irradiated solar nightmares. So there are plenty of places you could just stick them.

Oh, yeah, there's so many places to choose from. You can just stick them on the Kreeg home world and just let them bask on the surface. And there you go, champ. Actually, that kind of sounds interesting because it's like they can't die. They heal from like every wound So it's interesting that they would want to just bask in like solar radiation because well shit I can I wonder what it does to them though Yeah

Like what does that physically do to you I think at that point Like you're sort of so far gone Like do you do you even know Like is there like a conscious thing of this is harming me or is it just It has to be done and then there's no further thought beyond that. I hate that in my brain as we were talking about this, walking on sunshine is just playing on repeat. Whoa.

Don't it feel good. Good. And it's like, no, it doesn't. But like, clearly it is. It actually does for them, yeah. Sir, sire, you must not use that HALA device. It'll make you want to tan. tan so strongly. Excessive tanning the whole time. You'll never stop. It'll be, it'll consume the rest of your life, which will be basically forever, apparently, at this point.

Again, there are more downsides to the secondary phase. They start to remember weird alien civilizations. They can remember languages they don't know. And they sometimes have those intersect with their own. kind of language and memories. So you start to lose yourself, like quite badly lose yourself after a few years of having a halo vice integrated.

And if they're killed and their body is not completely destroyed and the halo device is still attached to it, there is a good chance that the body will just repair itself and they will essentially come back from the dead. But when they do come back from the dead, they will be completely and utterly insane and immediately enter the tertiary phase of having a halo device bonded to them,

which is way worse. Way, way worse. Can I ask a quick question? Because you said, like, oh, yeah, if they're killed or whatever, they come back, what happens to say, like, the halo device is a ring, right? And the ring gets bonded to, like, one of their fingers. If, like, their hand gets cut off or that finger gets cut off,

did they just lose everything? or does the power stay with them regardless of if like the ring is like the the joint or whatever is attached to it gets cut? I'm afraid from what I've been able to find there's not that much detail has gone into it. But my assumption is that if like if it couldn't regrow a good chunk of a person, like if the body isn't burned to ash or completely dismembered, if there's like stuff connecting parts of the body back together, my assumption is that it could probably bring them back, but it would just take a long time.

It sounds like a Deadpool style. Yeah, yeah. I mean, especially given in the first phase after bonding, like, limbs that may have been gone for decades can grow back. It does seem kind of like the Deadpool thing of, it'll take a while, but it will happen. Right. So if you lose the body part that's been bonded, it's not like you just immediately get cut off from all your power. it just regrows? I think so.

I think that's probably what they're going for. By the time you get to the tertiary phase, which is the last of the three, there's just, there isn't really anything of the person left. There's no separation between the person that bonded with the Halo device and the device itself. They are completely altered, and it's a permanent alteration. and there's no reversing it and going back. They're still like humanoid. They're not human anymore, though,

because they have had things replaced. So the flesh is all like corpse-like. The eyes are burning. They have almost undead featured. Like, the skin is armoured, and they have a carapace that tends to grow over them. The fingers become talons made of bone, and they just turn into like grotesque.

aliens. Yikes. Oh, grotesque aliens. Pretty much. When you say aliens, do you mean like, like, the DNA of an alien is stored and I'm sure there's not an answer for this? But like, it's there somewhere and then you become a genuine Zenos or is it just like, like you are unrecognizable as a human.

You are a disgusting monster. Unrecognizable as human. The way that it's described puts me in mind of, uh, of, of, district nine, where the guy just turns into one of the, one of the prongs by the end of the film. But he, he, like, maintains his personality to some extent, whereas for their Halo devices, they are, they're just absolute insane lunatics who are borderline impossible to kill, and strong enough that they can just rip people apart, survive being in open space without a suit, and they can return from the dead if they are killed.

So the body has to be 100% destroyed, and if it doesn't, it wakes up again after like a few days with an insatiable hunger, which given that one of the earlier side effects was wants to eat human flesh, you can kind of guess, like, what they're sort of, what they've got a hankering for when they wake up from being dead. They want to go to Tara and have that all you can eat buffet.

Um, that sounds awful. That's kind of, it's a little funny in a, in a couple of ways. The main one is just the idea that like, how do we kill this man? Throw him into the sun. That is genuinely like how you would need to do it, right? Yeah. Or chuck him into like an incinerator or something. Well, one that could actually hold them because it sounds like any, um, any incinerator would

probably just, they'd just break out of or it wouldn't be hot enough. I'm crushed that Shai says, isn't that a Jojo thing, DK? And I'm mad because I, even I know that. That's the fucking dude

from part two who can't die. So they basically trap him on like a rock and then send him out into space until like, like just into nothingness. I'll be honest.

I was thinking of a different anime. It sounded very Friza-Coded to me. Sounded very Friza from DBZ-Coded to me because Friza can survive in space without a suit. And he gets hacked up a lot. And he just kind of regenerates.

And it, yeah, sorry. I was, I was deep. He's excited. Who's Frizo? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. I was literally about to explain it because I was like, hey, look, I get it. Not everybody loves anime. It's fine. It's fine. Latino, Latino fans of ours. Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me.

It was simply a joke. It's just a joke. He's kidding. We're good. We're good. We're good. I'll let me some DBZ though. Anyway, go ahead, Kiryath. We do have, we do have an example of a, of a, of a, of a, of a, of ice called the Cychorus One, which we mentioned briefly earlier.

That did have something a bit different to it, because it could be kind of linked to the warp and was able to reanimate the dead into what's called warp puppets. it was also distinctly intelligent, like, in its own right. It is literally, like, it looked kind of like a brass maggot, and it caused extreme, severe, awful issues. For a start, murdered a navigator by clawing its way through his third eye. So that was bad. Oh, yikes. Because it went through the third eye, it could link to the warp,

which then meant that the navigator, had a bunch of horrific power and weird dark alien desires, and the navigator just murdered all the people on the ship that he was on by venting it to space. Like, the Cychorus One isn't necessarily a typical Halo device in terms of how its powers are described. It seems to be far more, like, far more intelligent and just a bit more extreme. But then again, the Cyclerus one,

is part of an adventure for Rogue Trader, the RPG. So it's kind of like, it's sort of a character in and of its own right, in a way. Wait, so this is like a halo device that is a sentient worm? It's a little brass maggot looking thing. So it's still a device.

It's still kind of, it's still something that can be bonded with and can be kind of used like the halo devices can. But it also definitely seems to have a mind of its own. It was fine as soon as the navigator touched it. As soon as he touched it, it was game over for a lot of people. Ew.

I mean, I like them. They're great. They're awful. They're properly nightmarish. And they have that nice, they do have like the monkeys' poor thing of, well, you could be incredibly fast. You could heal from damage. You can have all your issues cured. But you will eventually turn into some sort of alien monster.

that can tear people in half and then eat them and you will be insane at the same time. So swings and roundabouts, as existential terror goes, pretty good though, because I'd imagine most people would start out thinking this is pretty good and then eventually they would just erode away

into something nightmarish and horrific. A fair or monster that eats people, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just basic animal instincts, yeah. I love how when we started this, it's just like, yeah, they're like get the interest to eat people and we're like, well, that's not too abstract. That's fine.

You know, it's just like, oh, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's eating human flesh, right? It's like the most common trope out there when it comes to 48-case stuff. Well, just sci-fi stuff in general, too. That seems like it's, I was like, oh, that's the spooky side effect we give to some thing. Yeah. Okay. We're going to go to something a little more abstract in a second.

But before we do, I would like you to read something out for me, D.K. Oh, I get to read it. Let's go. Yes. So this is the creation process of archoflagellulants. Now, the archo-flagellants, if you're not familiar, they are part of the Sisters of Battle Army. And they are, they're basically people who have had a bunch of implants rammed into them, including on their arms. So they have flails and, I think they're sort. was involved in some of them as well, Bricky. I can't remember exactly what weapon profiles

have got, but generally, yeah, if you, as the master of all things, sisters of battle, normally they have Arco Flales and that is the weapon they're equipped with and is the only weapon that they're equipped with in terms of the miniatures and in the game. But I believe in canon lore, you can basically put whatever the goddamn hell you want on those arms. And, like, you know, you can really just go, go to town. But I would say 90% of the time, if not more it is the argo flails because they are the arco flageolids yes yeah and these are people

that done goofed up right these aren't just like oh yeah you just kind of make one because oh I feel like serving the sisters these are people that done goofed oh dk you you you serve some child you don't have to goof to become an arco flagellant you could be a very good person

and become an arco flagellular because you stole bread and someone reported you oh fair yeah Okay. I mean, it is 40K. The most unrealistic part of Lays Mizorab was that Hugh Jackman did not become an arco flagellant. Oh, man.

I like Les Mis too. That movie is awful. Oh, man. I remember the movie being, Kiroeth, I'm going to have to yell at you for that horrible, horrible. What is that? Why is it done that?

That's called an epic embed fail, and I'm going to laugh at you. The user. The user. Shai, please post the image of Ryan Gosseling eating cereal. Oh, wow. That, yeah, that expands sideways a lot. Do you have a better version of that? Yeah, hang on a second.

Thank you, shy. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. My other option, which I just tried, is that. Why is that an image? Whoa! Why does nothing?

Why does nothing copy paste properly? I'm going to teach you an awesome thing. When you need a copy paste, Instead of doing control V, do control shift V. Oh, wow. Copy it and then paste it by doing Control Shift V instead. Hey. That is how you, that is how you are able to have it automatically format to whatever thing you're currently doing.

Looks like Shaz got you covered anyway. If you've ever, yeah, if you've ever been on like the Wikipedia or something and you've downloaded that stuff. And it's like, oh, it formats all weird. Or like, it has like a black outline or something. You shift V, and that's how you automatically format it into whatever you're supposed to have it in. It's great for Google Docs. Also, holy wall of text. I'm reading all of this.

Yep. All right. Here we go. Oh, my God. That's so long. Wait, he's actually reading this whole thing. We can stop at some point. I just really wanted to read at least a good chunk of it because it's horrendous.

Okay. All right. All right. All right. All right. Here we go. D.K., you and I can ping pong each paragraph. Okay. Piazo-edged bonesaws

extruded from the arms of the throne and sliced through his wrist with ultra-rapid precision. Blood jetted explosively, but even as the agony cut through his diminishing chemical haze, cauterizing heat was brought to bear, sealing the stumps with a single pulse of agonizing heat. As horrifying as the removal of his hands had been, It was nothing compared to what came next.

Clicking machines with caliper hands like the nightmarish claws of a demented toy maker began stripping the skin, muscle, and nerve tissue from his forearms all the way to the elbow. Surgical flesh weavers layered replacement nerve strands over the reinforced bone and grafted fiber bundle muscles in place of the discarded organic tissue. his chest heaved and his limbs thrashed against the restraints. They simply tightened in response. He couldn't move. He could only watch as his entire body was paired back and remade.

Sealed caskets rotated up from the floor and opened with pneumatic hisses of condensing air. The monotonous streams of binaic nonsense the tech priests were chanting faltered fractionally as the caskets opened to reveal the weapons within. such awesome tools of destruction required reverence. Go ahead, Bricky. I was supposed to say, like, I mean, we went through three paragraphs there, and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to arrive. It's okay. It just looked like, yeah, that's fair.

That's fair. It's fine. It's fine. Through a haze of tears and hate, he watched two of the machine priests step forward and attached the devices to his arms, using implanted bolt drivers, neural shears, flesh grafts, and sacred unguents.

He felt every insertion. Every bolt driving down into bone and every screaming horror of exposed nerves being spliced together. A burst of power surged through him and telescoping carbon steel electroflails twitched and danced as ancient barely understood circuitry meshed with his crude organic functionality. The gurney tip backwards and the drills, excising machines and clamps went to work on his skull. Trepaning picks bored through bone and the clicking mechanized hands inserted neural control implants before finally removing the upper dome of his skull. He felt the lid of bone creaking upwards and the horror of his mind being exposed was almost too much to bear. Sacred arrangements of sacred oil were dripping into his brain cavity with each anointing accompanied by the 16 names of the binary. saints spinning

orbs with mechanical blade limbs as thin as spider legs clicked into place before him, whirring with demented glee. No, no, no, no, no, not my dash. The whirring orb stabbed forwards and plucked out his eyes.

He then repeats, he then just repeats, this is not my body like 19 times. I don't want to read the whole thing. Fair, fair, fair. D.K, you can continue to read the excruciating things. Oh, sick. A horror is beyond my comprehension.

Yeah. Delicate clams kept his optic nerves taught as complex target arrays, broad spectrum threat analyzers, and visiocognitive orbs were attached in place of his eyes and implanted into his skull. A cranial cowl that was part devotional feed, part cortical inhibitor and part death mask

was slotted home, lowered over his slack features, and wired to the frontal lobes of what remained of his brain as hymnals blared from unseen augmitters. Like the grinning skull faceplates of the chaplains of the adeptus astardis, it was the rictus agony of the emperor, and all those whose doomed fate it was to look upon him would know that he had been punished by an agency beyond that of mere men.

Detailed schematics of the body, plans of the men before him sprang up on the inner surfaces of his eyes, complete with endurable stresses, violation tolerances, and a hundred other measures of how they could be ripped into screaming ruin. Should I continue or should you? You know, I'll go ahead. Why not? Okay, okay.

The work continued for another hour. Agony upon agony, horror upon horror, until there was little sign that a human being had once sat in the throne gurney. Throne gurney. Eish, yeah. The mortal meat of Lucas Kroll had been scraped away and replaced with an instrument of death and annihilation. Only Abraham remained, and even he was a ravaged shell,

cored out by the same processes that had made sport of this man's flesh. Yet, even as his consciousness wept and wished for extinction, he felt the soaring ecstasy of having the power of life and death. For all intents and purposes, he was no longer human. His body enhanced to lethal levels of killing power and stripped back to the most basic psychological functions. Lucas Kroll had effectively ceased to exist and in his place sat something else. Something altogether more dangerous and more appalling. It is done, said the point effect with a solemn nod, stepping forwards and dipping his fingers in an inkworm, a sanctified pigment that a genuflecting tech priest held out

before him. He drew four parallel lines of crimson down the skull mask. You can do the rest. In Thor's blood are ye anointed. In Thor's blood shall ye awaken, said the pontifex. Reveulates of pain slid down the mask like tears of blood, dripping onto a chest that now bulged with cardiopulmonary enhancers, adrenal slammers, and dormant steroidal compounds. Spinal implants snaked down his back in a chain of injectors

and stim reservoirs on his shoulders, gave him a hulking over-mussel proportion to his upper body. He was a killer now, a render of flesh, a weapon, and an act of retribution all in one. Got to be honest,

the anesthesia, and the anesthesia budget cuts have been hit in a real hard game. Oh my God. Yeah, that's a little, just a smidger body horror, I think. It's one of my favorite things that I've read related to 40K,

honestly. That's from Lords of Mars. And I like it a lot because there's a lot of, there is a lot of, like, body horror in 40K, but a lot of it is abstract, and it's all contained in, like,

miniature form. So, like, you see the death guard, and you know that on some level having a giant mouth in your stomach is probably not great. No matter how much you love Nurgle, it's probably not the best thing that's ever happened to you. And there's got to be some discomfort there. But it's not all that often that something is gone into with that level of very specific and very evocative detail. And when you think about the fact that that's the experience of one guy, one. Yeah.

If that's what every archo-flagellant goes through every time someone is converted into one, that is a horrific amount of human suffering for essentially no reason. Like there's no way the Imperium doesn't have the technology to knock someone out for that, but they don't because it's a punishment. It's supposed to be horrendous. And so you get to experience all of it. I very much remember when New Year and D.K. talked about servitors.

I was about to say that, yep. Yep, there was the very, very, very rough, like, literal, like, meatpacking line of people who would just walk up. Yep. And, you know. From flesh and steel, which I actually put in the list of things. But I figured you probably covered that at some point. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, people being scanned and then a trap door opens. And every time the trapdoor opens, there's a stench of. like rotting meat and the sound of grinding things that like if you don't meet the criteria you get dropped below the assembly line and literally just ground into paste right there and then it's horrific it's great yeah the one that was oh go ahead no go ahead do you care oh i was just going to say this is like this is the kind of stuff when it's like people like oh yeah the demon kilbasa is like the most craziest thing in 40k it's so gross and it's like like, brother, do you know what the Imperium does on a day-to-day basis to make servitors,

to make these Arco-whatevers? I'm going to say flatulins because I'm stupid. Like, it's so gnarly. And not only is it gnarly, it is on a mass scale everyday commonplace. And it's like, to me, this stuff is so much worse than the demon calabba. I remember in that excerpt specifically, there's this. one like all the stuff like the grinding and stuff is all terrible but I remember near the end they had this part where they put rubber

garments on all of them that were really saggy because they were one size and then there was a force shrink to then suck it onto them like a metal cuff and a shock collar which was obviously a horrific process but then they would walk on a floor

that was buzzing with electricity and it would make them shriek with every step and the person in Flesh and Steel asked what was that for? And they just answered a follicular inhibitor to stop their hair from growing. And I'm just like, they spare

no expense. And it's like, why would you bother like knocking them out or giving them a pain suppressant? They're going to become servitors anyway. Who cares? It doesn't matter. Yeah, it's kind of weird because it adjusts how I think we as people

visualize these horrible things. Like the demon kill is one of the most known heinous things out there. But the reason is because it covers a lot of really, like, things that in our modern culture are generally a bit more taboo, uh, which is like,

like pregnancy, bird or like shit like that. That's like, it just is naturally a bit gross when it's ever like forced and all like. It's just, it's just worse in the brain. Yeah. Um,

but then you see them literally have like a, like a billions of people. conveyor belt line to make like slaves. Yeah. You know. Yeah. It's awful. It's also, I think as well, like the, if you're just getting into 40K,

I think it's easy to fall into the, well, chaos are awful, so of course this is awful. If you skip over certain things, and if you don't properly look into things and don't, like, really kind of look into what the Imperium does on a daily basis, it's easy to look at the Imperium,

and go, well, they're fighting for humanity, therefore, what they're doing can't be as bad. Whereas actually, it's like, well, no, the scale of human suffering is just as bad except the, you know, chaos is doing it because horrible chaos gods. The Imperium is doing it because efficiency. It's just easier to have people feel every second of horrific pain as they are being altered beyond recognition. than it is to, you know, make it easy for them. So they just don't do that, which is a level of, like, casual evil that in some ways is, like, a bit harder to wrap your head around. Yeah, because the only thing the Imperium has more than anything else is people.

Yeah. It's the most disposable resource by a country mile. Oh, yeah. Someone, I don't know what it was. It may have even been like a damn Reddit comment. And it's almost embarrassing, because I, to say that out loud. but it was in that excerpt from flesh and steel because I haven't read flesh and steel

so I think I saw it from like a 40K lore excerpt or something and someone made something they said like humanity eats up itself for survival like a starving person gnawing off their own fingers for hunger and I was like that's pretty good that's about how it's about how to describe it by the way corpse starch

yes yeah those fingers by the way. Maybe it was somebody else's fingers. Yeah. Funnily enough, there is something else that I have on my list that I'll just mention quickly because we're talking about servitors because of, you know, the whole like, the human cost of the Imperium. So there's a place called Sigma Pavonis, which is in Ultima Segmentum,

and it is a major, like major facility for Imperial Guard where guardsmen rest, if they are affected by, you know, illness or, injury or like PTSD, they rest there until they are fit for juicy or they're sent home. Sigma Provonis is also a major manufacturer of combat servitors. Just throwing it out there. Oh, no. Oh, that would, dude, that's a killer writing prompt. The recovery, like, rehab world of the Imperium that is very evidently a secret hidden

like servitor complex or something like that. Yeah, don't worry, guys. Are you suffering from that war you were just in? You just can't get over. Don't worry, we're going to send you to the vacation planet. Everything will be fine. And, oh, brother.

Oh, no. That's a killer prompt. It really is, yeah. Literally and figuratively. I want that book. I want that book now. Yes. In some guard regiments,

going siggy is a colloquialism. Jesus. For mental illness. resulting from combat fatigue or some other factor. Some other factor in 40K. Jesus. Yeah, yeah, oh boy. All right.

So that actually kind of dovetails nicely into what, I mean, it could be combat fatigue or it could be some other factor. There is something that we need to talk about in terms of just nightmare fuel for 40K, which is part of the word bearer's omnibus. Now, I'll be honest. I'll hold my hands up. I didn't have time to read the word bearer's omnibus again.

I know. You're really slacking, brother. I'm really slacking. The last one, you read eight books for us, brother? What happened? It's only three as well.

I just didn't have time. I was at a wedding and stuff. I just didn't have the time to do it. But I also read that about four times. So as soon as I mean, Shai, we're talking about the topic for this week, I immediately was like,

I've got at least one. one very horrible thing that we could talk about, which is the... Real quick, sorry, the word bear is omnibus. I think Luton spoke highly of this one. Or maybe it was you. You were Luton. And it may have been both of you, but like, is this the one where in like the first chapter, the main character who's in a dark apostle kills like his superior to take his position?

Oh, yeah. Oh, there's a lot of that. That's great. That's lovely. Yeah. So the writer knows exactly what they're up to. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, it's... Hang on. Yeah, Anthony Reynolds. I was going to say Alistair Reynolds, but that's a different writer of sci-fi stuff.

But yeah, he's great. Like, the books are really, really good. He also does the thing of, in 40K, there's always a bigger fish. So, no matter how strong and powerful someone is, there's always someone else who is just capable of wiping them out, like then nothing. that comes into play in a very cool way in that series multiple times it's not a spoiler it's just kind of how the universe works so um but in the word bearer of us in the first book there is the construction of something which i'm gonna i'm gonna just type it out and i'm gonna i'm gonna say it out loud and you can tell me whether you think i've got this close the Gehrmanet

Yeah Yeah That's what I would have gone for Gehrmanet Yeah Yeah Okay It's a gigantic

colossal tower Aspire That is built To channel warp energy Now the important thing to note In terms of

how this is built Is it's It's built Using blocks As you would With any other Tower

Totally fine totally normal, but the thing that keeps all the blocks together. What are the blocks made out of Karyoth? What are they? Oh, no. It's blood mortar. And it's made from the people of the world that they just conquered. And the way they build the tower is effectively to convert a good number of the population to paste

so that they can use them as literal, like, cement and mortar between the blocks themselves. But they also build it using 100. percent slave labor. Oh yeah. The ones that don't get immediately turned into purei are effectively converted, like forced, converted to chaos. Because in a similar theme to the halo device thing, they have their foreheads like sliced, the skin is lifted, a chaos symbol is placed against the skull, and then the skin is sewn back in place. However, I really, I really love how you said, like, luckily you were selling a gluten-free fucking sangle. 100% slave labor, let's go.

This shit's organic. Stamped out on the side of the box, everyone. Now double the fiber. I've missed my calling. If I can sell slave labor, surely you can sell anything. I mean, to be fair, that tower is 100% organic, if anyone was concerned. Oh, I mean, the very mortar itself, 100% organic matter. It's sustainable.

It's recyclable. It also, like, it breaks. Yeah, 100% green energy. It's biodegradable for sure. 100% soil in green energy. Like you. You lost DK. Yeah, it's gone.

So, yeah, the Gahamanet is. built essentially from people and part of the deal is that the slaves working on it are forcibly converted to chaos. They have chaos sigils placed under the skin of the forehead. They have propaganda in languages they don't understand blasted at them just 24-7. They don't get rest.

They don't get anything. They just build the tower. The ones who die, it doesn't really matter because the ones who die in the tower, most of the time they will die on the blocks that they are currently placing, which means that another block is going to land real soon.

And they get turned into border anyway. Yeah. Yep. A little great wall China there kind of thing. It's rough. Like the first book, especially of that omnibus, I think there's a really good job of just showcasing how 100% awful

and hopeless it is to be on a world conquered by chaos, especially the word bearers. The forced indoctrination is, I guess, I mean, you could kind of say it's like an interesting mirror of the, of the Imperium, where it's just the propaganda is coming from the other side. You don't really have a choice but to listen to it. It's there 100% of the time, except, of course, in the case of chaos, eventually you end up so corrupted, so angry, and frustrated and exhausted that the device under the skin, the constant blaring of propaganda from weird demon creatures floating around screaming at you, there is a point where one of the slaves goes to war against the Imperium.

The Imperium tries to take the world back. And one of the characters who has been building this gigantic tower to funnel warp energy, act as a magnet for demons of the warp, actually takes up arms against the Imperium that they previously were an enforcer for and that's like how effective and completely all-consuming chaos turns out to be if there is no way of escaping it.

It's really well done. It's honestly worth a read, those books or a listen, depending. I hear those books are very, very good. But obviously, you see the title and the front page of it, and you see torment a word bearer's short story. And this dude is just made of spikes. And you're like, hmm. She was.

I wonder what kind of ride this is going to be. Yeah. Yeah. There's a healthy amount of backstabbing and just general, I don't know, like bitchiness, which I guess the wordbearers become known for up to a certain point. I mean, good old lion son of the forest, right? They killed the entire population of the world. They were on, not the lion, obviously, the chaos faction. And then took their bones and turned them into like a small moon that orbited the world.

And in order to try to like restrain the lion, they tied him up in chains built from the iron in the blood of the world's populace. Yep, they sure did. So, like, they... Oh, geez. Chaos. They get busy. They get busy. You scamps.

You lovable scamps. I totally forgot about that part from Lion's Son of the Forest. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, that's like the least weird thing going on. The most weird thing is the main villain's face was constantly on fire. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a constant chaos fire. Yeah. Good stuff. Boy, those word bears get down to some really weird shit. Holy. People say that the Empress children are the freaks of like the just the chaos side of 40K. I still think it's the word bearers. I still think it's them. I think they're the, they are the real wrongans out of all of them. Well, because they're always doing this stuff with like crazy sigils, summoning crazy warp spawns, summoning demons, building towers made out of people. Yeah, you know, I'm kind of with you now. I definitely think the word bears are.

or the freaky weirdos for sure. Like, Empress children, weird, but Big Brothers got something to say about that. Like, God damn. There's also, like, the Empress Children, there is a specific kind of calling to it in a weird way. They want excess. They're kind of driven to seek out the most extreme things. The word bearers, they're chaos and divided. They could go any way they like, but they go for the most, like, weird.

esoteric nonsense that could possibly be come up with and they're like, that's what we're doing. We're building the tower out of people. Everyone else can get lost. It's like, but why, though? That's what we're doing. We're building the tower out of people.

Everyone else get lost. They do it for the love of the game. I mean, the emperor's children definitely do it for the love of the game. True, true. That's true. That's true. They 100% do it with the love of the game. You're right. right, you're right. It's just, you know, it's all depends on the kind of love of the game.

Okay, we'll do. I'm sorry, it's just the way you said that. Yeah, we're the ones building the tower out of people. It's just, I don't know, it's like such a, it reminds me of like a salmonella YouTube video thing. It's like, hey, guys, that sounds really cool. What if we tried it on people? That's a reference neither of you might get, but someone else will get it. That's okay. I didn't get it, but it sounded funny when you said it. That's the key of comedy, my friends. That's what makes the difference. Okay, there's quite a few other things, but we'll just finish on two things, just two quick things, because, I mean, this could go on a while. There's quite a lot of quite good, specific nightmare fueling 40K, but some of it could get quite complicated if we go into it.

So let's go for two just nice examples of just awful suffering for no reason. other than chaos or cruelty. We'll start with cruelty. I'm sure, I'm sure you already know about this because I'm sure Brickie will have brought it up, but it would be remiss of us not to point out that there is a place that the night lords have, which is carpeted with faces known as the screaming gallery.

The screaming gallery, I was going to say, yep. We can't, I mean, you gotta talk about it. I'm very aware, very aware of the screaming gallery. You can't do a spooky, a spooky October episode without mentioning the screaming gallery because, holy God, that's awful. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's true. I really enjoy the, the mister servitors to constantly wet the eyes of everyone on the screaming calorie in order to,

I'll make sure that they don't run out of like tears and like, you know, they don't die. Yeah. It's so. It's so. Excessively awful. The night lords were just like walk into the room and just like crunch on the faces of people beneath their their boots. It's like it's so like it's the worst thing you've ever heard in your life, which makes it farcical and it becomes funny. Yeah.

It kind of does. Yeah. Like also. What the hell? walking through it to then get to where Nighthunter is sitting on a throne made of human bones. It's kind of like, okay. Oh, so wait, so the throne of human bones wasn't enough. We needed the screaming faces on the way in.

Okay, cool. We definitely needed more suffering. That's 100% what we're after here. I mean, where else would the Nighthunter chill? Right? Like, that's... I mean, the do. did make like

a flesh sculpture of the emperor that he can yell at. Yep. Oh, he sure did. He sure did. He's just like, damn it, dad, I've, let me tell you, I got some, I got some words for you. Doesn't he yell at the thing

like bully in the buff too? Like, it's not even like he's just like full arm or he's just out there naked yelling at a statue of dad. Like, why? Oh yeah, that's right. Talos walked down. in the central hallway, boots thumping on the black stone, while the floor either side of the walkway rippled intense with the pliancy of human expression, eyes, noses, teeth, and tongues, poking from open mouths. The ground itself was a carpet of faces, flesh crafted together, kept alive by grotesque, baroque blood filters and organ simulator engines beneath the floor.

As an impothecary, Talos knew the machinery. well. He was one of the few charged to maintain the foul ambience with the screaming gallery. Robed servitors monotas for the duty spray, gentle bursts of water vapor into the blinking eyes blanketing the floor, keeping them

moist. See, I'm sorry, I'm not Andrew Wincott. I cannot say this in his deep drawl. But, God damn. Yep. Yep. Absolutely awful.

It would suck to be in the screaming gallery, but imagine being like the carpet on the screaming gallery and everybody's just like stepping on your face constantly. Like at least if you're on the ceiling, you get like a nice view and nobody bothers you. Or if you're on like the sidewall. But like, man, everybody's like a starty is just crunching on your face too. It's like, man. I don't know why I immediately went this way. But as you said, at least if you're on the ceiling, I thought you can spit on them as they walk past. Yeah, it's good.

And I don't know why I thought that. Yeah. So, you know, but those are the cushy spots in the screaming gallery. You know, I was thinking to myself, like, you know, I wouldn't do that. Well, at first I thought, like, maybe I would do that because, like, it can't get any worse. But it definitely can get worse. They'll find it away, dude. You know the night lords.

It can get way worse, dude. They will find a way to make it worse. Like, they will make it their mission to make it worse. Yep. It can always get worse. If you're alive, even if it seems bad in the scream, Gallery, there's something worse, way worse. Oh, it's so good.

Awful, but good. So the other thing, just to kind of round things out a little bit, because I think there's, that we've had like body horror, like a couple of good body horror examples, especially, especially the screaming gallery, which I actually think on balance might be slightly worse than the creation of an archo-flagellant, but just because of how, I don't know,

like, at least with the archa flageant, you become an unthinking killing machine, with the screaming gallery, you're just there. And that, that sucks. That's hardcore. Halo device, again, you lose yourself. You're not really a person anymore. Like, you lose what makes you you at some point,

which is, again, horrific, but I don't know, the faces thing, not a fan. Yeah, with those other two, the suffering eventually ends. And with the screaming gallery, it's like, this is night lord stuff. They want your suffering to really last. And they kind of want to savor that shit. Yeah, it's kind of like the difference to it.

Yeah. Like, hey, are we, you know, are we horrible people for the fun and the suffering? Or are we horrible people for like brutal and like brutal efficiency of industry? And the, the Imperium, well, they don't definitely make people suffer. But like, I think the reasons are different. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, 100%. So we'll finish on a nice bit of,

I feel like it's more kind of an existential horror than body horror, which is the existence of the ornery, I hate that word, because it's borderline impossible to say, of the hollow worlds. So the celestial orrary is a necron device that is colossal in scale and allows all sorts of time-space shenanigans. The aurory is something.

that is connected to just the hollow worlds, and it's a device that is connected to a series of Dyson spheres, where you can go from one world to the other using archways in a central mechanism. So far so good, you can go from one world to the other, almost instantly, very necron-coded, very kind of time-space shenanigans going on. However, there is an issue with the orrary,

which is that if a representation of one of the worlds within the mechanism is destroyed, the world itself also implodes killing everybody on it. Ah, okay, because I always thought the celestial oratory originally was just a giant star map and they push the button, the star blows up. Yes, so there's, the celestial orrary is like a huge,

it's like a huge device that covers a significant chunk of the galaxy, but the aurary is like a smaller kind of condensed version of it where it is a series of worlds that look normal, they're actually Dyson spheres, and if they're settled, great, they can support life, that's all good, but if someone within the mechanism itself, say, collides with one of the representations of one of the worlds, if the representation is destroyed, the world is also destroyed. So you could have an entire planet's worth of imperial citizens, just minding their own business, a fight breaks out in the mechanism itself, someone collides with it, the world folds in on itself,

and billions of lives are lost instantly with no one knowing how or why it happened, which is pretty bad. It's pretty awful. So we're in like pure existential, not existential horror, but we're in like cosmos of the galaxy horror. Yeah, I guess it's more cosmic horror. Just the idea that your entire world could just collapse in on itself, implode, and

because everyone's got. Two necrons are, like, bickering, which they tend to do a lot of. Yeah. Or a space marine gets, like, booted, staggers backwards, elbows, the representation of your world, your world simply ceases to exist in a catastrophic fashion.

It's funny, too, because, like, the how is crazy. Because, like, it's like, oh, your world is now teleported 90 million years back in time in which, like, the universe never existed and therefore you cease to be. Like, like, you can, you can think of it in things of that nature. You can get that far if you want to because they're the necronis. Yeah. Could be, could be smashed just by blunt impacts, at which point the world breaks apart in real time with you on it and you're gone. Someone could hold it and move it out of the solar system and just put it into. space where there's no sun, there's nothing, and everyone slowly freezes to death. Like, the options are, there's so many ways to die in horrific fashion, all because a group of

people. Bob spilled coffee on the orerie. Yeah. You know, someone you've never met who is more ancient than you can possibly conceive, built the thing you're standing on, and something went wrong. And now that's it. everything you know is gone. It's cool, but it's also really chilling.

How many people know about the Ori's existence exactly? Because that's got to be a pretty well-kept secret and a pretty heavily guarded secret, considering, wow, that's very important tech. To be honest, I have no idea. This is from the tyrant of the hollow world, and the hollow world is like a little system in and of itself surrounding a sun,

which is, I think, technically a sun. It's all kind of caught up in, like, is it the Red Corsairs? Huron Blackheart. Yeah, Red Corses is. Oh, Huron, yeah, that's Red Corses. Yeah. Being kind of fought by space wolves and all sorts

and discovering that the hollow worlds are, in fact, just a series of Dyson spheres, and you can just go from one to the other via archways in a central mechanism. And it's like, they are capable of supporting life. It's all good. But you touch one of those worlds,

you break one of those worlds within the mechanism, the real one goes as well, and it's game over for everybody on there. Lovely. Lovely. So if someone destroyed the aurari, it's all gone. Pretty much.

Yeah. Lovely. Everyone's dead, and they don't know why or how. Because things older than they can comprehend built it before they were born by

like to the tune of hundreds of thousands of years sucks to be you before your race was born they were yeah yeah I love the fact that like um that despite all of this

kind of stuff you can um what is it like it's even with that this is the case like if you live a hundred years like you will miss this by generations, right? So while it is terrifying, you probably won't happen

to you, you know, you'll probably move right through it, but at the same time, oh man, it could though. They could. And like, that's like that same sort of like dread of like, oh yeah, there are gene stealers all over the place, but you're probably going to miss it because like the gene stealer cult uprising

doesn't happen for another like, you know, 2,000 years. And it's like, yeah, you might skip right over it. Or you might be one of the radio unfortunate sods who fall in with the gene steal of cult and then at the last minute are allowed to realize Yeah.

Yeah. You know, with body horror, I'm surprised we didn't get more tearing it stuff actually. I don't think we know enough about that. I mean, there's some awful body horror stuff, but it's not like a body horror. It's like, it's a parasite.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, pukes on your face, your face melts. Or like, you get shot with a bunch of bugs that eat you it from the inside out. It's not like you're going to get turned into a tyrannid outside of like the Gene Steeler cult or something. That's true. That's true. I will say there was a neat,

a neat little bit that I do remember as well from that same flesh and steel. Not flesh. No, it was from Master of Mankind. In Master of Mankind, do you remember Alpha Row? They were like the fancy Mechanicus that was like got eaten by Draknean and was out of it. They was like, somehow the lobotomized woman's very last thoughts had been of her human life and the weeping children that had been pulled from her hands as she was hauled away screaming on her way to processing.

Alpha Row 25 discard the data as irrelevant, a teetiously emotional misfiring of a dying, imperfect biological engine. It's so cold. It's just like, unimportant. Move on. Yeah. Yeah. Awful. I will say the one prime example of body horror that Games Workshop has made model-wise

sadly isn't 40K related which makes me upset. I don't think you can take it in 40K but this remains the pinnacle and I will love it forever. Can you take it 40K? The Infernal and Rapturous, yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Okay. That is a great one. That is fair.

That one is a great example people always use and I will never get tired of seeing that many. It's so good. so good. Yeah. I'm trying to remember there was one, there was a necromunda model that did. Yes, the Mowstring coalescence.

It was this thing. Oh yeah, with the guy that's all hanging down and he's got like stuff grown out of it. Yeah, I love that guy. I think he's shown that to me. That's another one that never gets old.

That's like, and he's just looking at you with that thing. Oh, that's so grim. Yeah. So. Grimm. Yep.

That is very dead space-coded, Shai, you're right. It is very dead space-coded, but God, that's great, though. Love it. Yeah,

I mean, it is basically dead. I mean, yeah, I mean, necromorphs are just body horror at the end of the day, right?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Love me some dead space. Hell yeah. So, yeah. I mean,

you're right. I don't really, I don't really have anything against that. Yeah. That just made me sad for a minute. I was like... Sorry. Whenever I think of Dead Space, I'm just like, man,

dead space, it's fine. It just ends after Dead Space too, it's fine. Actually, I do agree with Shy a little bit. I think it's like mid. I don't think it's like terrible. I consider it like mid. I think it's one of those games that suffers from like, maybe it's not a bad game. It's just a bad

dead space game. That, I think that might be where I'm at, where I think it's actually it's, it's a good game. It's just not as good. as the other as the other two which when you think

about how good the others were it kind of makes it feel worse than it is but it's actually not like bad bad it's just well this isn't as

it isn't getting me as much as the others yeah yeah I mean it's like action horror instead of like horror because Dead Space One is still the best in my opinion I really like

Dead Space 2 Dead Space 2 got me like many times I see I hate jump scares so Dead Space 2 was not my thing. Oh, gotcha. See, I'm the exact opposite. I love jump scares because I love that like sudden, like, sort of like adrenaline rush. That's sort of fight or flight feeling.

I like getting hit with that. So the jump scares kind of did it for me. Oh, no, I want like long, atmospheric, weird, like creep. I've been told I need to play Amnesia the bunker. I hear it's like the best horror game in the last decade. Oh, I've seen a couple people play it. It seems all right. But I guess because specifically I want the.

jump scares, it didn't quite do it for me. I'm the same. I want like, I want to be, not like made to jump, I just want to feel nervous and anxious for a solid three to four hours at a time. That's, that's why I'm after.

I have not played Stillwakes the Deep. I hear it's this amazing, like, extreme, I hear it's extremely Scottish. Oh, yes, it's very Scottish. Yeah, you, yeah, definitely. I mean, that sold me immediately. It's a pretty short game too. You could knock it out like that.

Apparently it's like a bit of like a Lovecraftian Cthuloo-ish oil rig type thing. Yep. But apparently the thing, the evil thing is like everyone is extremely Scottish. So I think it calls you like, it's just like yells at you with a thick accent or something. I don't know.

I got to give it a shot. I mean, that sounds fantastic to be honest. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I got to check that one out. Anyway, um, happy Halloween, everyone. Oh yeah. I hate Halloween. Yeah, you're like the worst.

Yeah. I'm really glad me to sort of scary, horror-themed episode to round out this big season there. The scariest thing that happened right now is D.K.'s opinion on Halloween.

Yo, let's go shy. I'm going to be getting a candy corn and I'm myself. Let's fucking go. Really? Yeah, of course. It's like fine. It's just sugar. It's not even fine. I don't know what candy corn is because I live in, in, like, the old world.

It's like sugar-covered wax. Like, imagine trying to eat a candle. I would make fun of- I would make fun of you, but I feel like ever since I had my Danish exchange student, I just see him like, mm, delicious. And it's like salted black licorish. And I'm like, you, like, you insane people. You crazed

crazed individuals Fair enough I need to go to Copenhagen So I can hang out with him and he can take me to the local pubs Because I know those Danes they fucking drink He was 17 when he came down here And I was like I was like of drinking age And he just drank me under the table like three times over

So yeah that's I mean Europe as a whole Just a sort of sort of collective group, you start when you're about 12, and then by the time you hit 17, you're absolutely golden. It's great. You can just go for days if you need to. What a world. I mean, the drinking age being 21 is stupid. It should be lowered, but, you know. What are you going to do? Nothing. I can't. They're never going to vote on that. Run for president. Let's go. Oh, God. Oh, yeah, I'll take the Mr. Beast method where I'll just be kind and both parties

will be thought of like he's a 12 year old running for class presidents hell yeah like it's that like it's that easy how it's so naive this has been one hell of an outro folks hell yeah I love I love body horror

remove my skin let's go baby I'm gonna gonna go trick or treating as a servitor oh boy my skin and oh let's see you next week

DK hates Halloween