Adeptus Ridiculous - The Humans Who QUIT The Imperium & Survived | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousIn this episode, Bricky, DK, and Kirioth dive into the Severan Dominate, a rare example of a faction actually managing to secede from the Imperium of Man. On paper, seceding is as easy as just quitting, but the real difficulty is keeping the secession going. Led by the "pious" Duke Severus XIII, this splinter faction has held itself together in a dangerous area of space. Believing the Periphery sub-sector was his by right, the Duke orchestrated fake supply shortages to force his citizens into desperate rebellion.To maintain his grip, the Duke formed dark pacts with a desperate Drukhari kabal known as the Children of Thorns. Throw in an unexpected Ork invasion from Waaagh! Grimtoof, and you have the recipe for the only definitively successful secessionist group in 40K history.Support the show

Welcome everyone to the Adeptist Ridiculous podcast. My name is D.K., I'm still very green at this despite over five years of doing this. Yeah, that's fair. I'm Bricky. I learned a lot about what the Dunning Kruger effect was and taught me a lot about the early days of Adeptus Ridiculous. I'm Kerry-off, and I just absolutely orgasming uncontrollably because there's a connoissellably. because there's a Commissar cane miniature. That's what a start, brother.

There is actually a new cane miniature, though. And like, we should not undersell this fact. There is a new Commissar Kane Mini and a Yergen Mini, and he looks like what I would imagine people think Yergen looks like. He looks a lot better than I thought he'd look. Caiaphas Kane looks phenomenal. Juergen almost looks too clean for how he gets described in the books. He's always described as like this stinking, sniveling pile of shit. And it's just,

he looks, he looks fine. Well, he's a, he's a blank. So everyone like kind of sees him as a shriveling, stinking pile of shit. Were you expecting him to be like covered in dirt and filth? Yes. Full wild man of the woods just like an absolute mess of a human being. I was expecting something, something that would not look unwelcome in a death garden. company. Death Guard. Or you know what I mean. I mean, well, he's a Valholland guy, right?

They're all a bit messy and stuff. First Valhallaun miniature for how many decades? I think technically the first plastic Valhallaun miniature. Like, of all time. Yeah. Yep. I mean, that regiment sadly has been disappeared by Games Workshop miniatures-wise. you've just got to wait for me to order stuff.

But now they've got one dude. It's happening. It's finally happening. Well, it's all right. The first ever named Harlequin is played in the Sisters of Battles, so, you know. Also, is it just me, or does Caius Kane almost look too much like a meme? Because, like, when you read the books, he's, like, just crippling imposter syndrome. And I don't know.

Like, he almost looks too memey. I, okay, his face is throwing me a little bit. I don't know your thoughts, because he's got the smug, like, cover art face, but I think translated into a miniature, it's a little odd looking. Yeah. That's actually the part that I was thinking. I think he looks a little stubby. I don't remember how tall cane is, but he looks kind of short, doesn't he? You think that's because he looks short or because just like it's really hard to translate a tall dude into like a mini.

it's your figure. It's, for me, it's a torso height. The torso height's, like, different. Oh, yeah, he's got a stubby torso, yeah. Yeah, and his sash-slash-belt thing is, like, higher up. It's like it's going round his stomach as opposed to round his waist. So he ends up, like... I got that grandpa syndrome.

Yeah, it looks like he's got his trousers pulled up way too high. Yeah. When, like, compared to the artwork, you've got, like, loads of these rows of gold, decoration and he's standing all tall and he's got like quite a long torso but it's really clear how long it is and then the miniature they've had to tone that down

so he looks like he's got like a sort of squat top half but to be fair the drip is immaculate remember folks it's a waistband not a belly button band it's a waistband

also I think it's also something to do with like how you portion out the model. Because if you look at like the commissar, they, he doesn't have like the actual like normal commissar. He doesn't have the big flowy part on the top half that makes him look wider, like a box.

He looks more slender. So I think it's like, remember when the custodian captain came out Karioth and everyone thought he looked like this tubby dude? And then you actually got the miniature and he actually looks pretty good. I think it was just because of like the angle or whatever it was. It was kind of weird. Yeah.

that model was, I feel like a borderline impossible to photograph in like a flattering way. Like the head-on shot that they first showed made him look like he was a squat. And that simply wasn't true. It just looked like it from that angle. Same as Sanguinius, actually. Sanguinius, the first, like photos they showed of him. He looked really weird, like really weirdly proportioned. And then more angles came out.

And it was like, oh no, this is actually sick. You've just got to get him from the right, like, right direction to show it off. See, this is like that meme of like the two people shaking their hands and it's like miniatures and e-girls realizing the importance of posing for photographs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's a good looking mini. I don't know why I'm being so hypercritical of it. Like, oh, I just remind me of K. Blah, blah, blah. It's a great looking mini. It's fine. It looks, it's cute. It's a cool little K-man.

He just looks a little short. He just looks a little stubby. Agreed. And he needs a little bit more, a little bit more like stubble color on the chin. That would do wonders for that face. It needs to be darker. Like proper five o'clock shadow stuff going on

right across the massive chin he's got. I'd agree with that. Anywho, all that aside, DK, you want to get us started? Oh, yeah. If you have enjoyed this episode or enjoy this episode, maybe you want to support us monetarily. Heading over to patreon.com slash adeptus Ridiculous where you can get access to the discord, bloops if they happen, $15 tier to get you access to all of our posters in just amazing digital form.

You should check it out, patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous. And also check out the merch. We actually have a cool sale today. Today, there is a dice sale. We are running because many of you are. We're probably going to be jumping big into 11th edition. And we have a ton of dice for sale on the website. Basically, if you buy any two products of dice, that could be two of the same, two of something different or more.

You get 15% off your order. I'm pretty sure you can actually combine that with other stuff too. But basically the goal is like, hey, if you buy two dice, then you get it off, off, your orders. So check it out. Maybe you just want to get 10 dice of some of our, um, you know, chaos god-looking ones. Maybe you want to load up on a hundred of nothing but Nurgle. Who knows? Go ahead and check it out. A link in the description or go to Orchidate.com and check out the adeptus ridiculous section. And, um, get yourself some dice. Uh, sale probably be for about next week or so. So enjoy that while you got it. Also, um, we have to read the other book club,

Carcarradons. We, we haven't mentioned it in like a month. a half. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah, we really got to do that. We really got to do that. Before that, though, so what you're saying is there is a merchandise sale. Oh, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on one more time. Merchant dice sale. Thank you. I'll be here always. Excellent deployment. Thank you. Excellent deployment. Excellent deployment. Redeploy three units. Okay. Let's make the statement that we'll get that done before the end of the month. So I actually have to start reading That is a bold statement All right

I'm just saying I gotta I gotta dust off the Kindle Now that I've moved and everything Okay First week of June How about that? Okay All right

Yeah That's slightly less bold Let's go for that Let's do that You have 20 days You'll be fine Probably Probably

Maybe With that being said Currioth Do you have wonders Of the world to show us and by wonders, I'd been crippling, disgusting death? Oh, of course. I've got a quote for D.K.

To start us off. Why do you specifically have... You could have just said, Hey, Bricky, here's a quote. You should guess it. You know things. Because you keep making me do outtros. So now it's become a retaliatory...

All right. I see how it is. All right. All right. This is not a great way to get me to stop, by the way. No, I know. This is going to be interesting. The High Lords of Terror

would bleed us dry for their purposes At the same time that they refuse to help defend us against the Xenos, the time has come to withhold our tithe so that we may use it for our defense. Now, before you guess, would you like to know the name of that person who said that quote? Because that might help of it. No. I love withhold our tithe. I'm just like, oh. Yeah, immediately.

That's how you get exterminatist or that's how you get an inquisitor to show up and start looking into why the tithe isn't coming. Definitely an Inquisitor. I don't think you get blown to bits quite yet. True. This isn't an exterminatus because they want the ties, so they're not going to blow you. Inquisitor for sure. This sounds like a corrupt planetary governor

or maybe some sort of guard regimen, some disgruntled guard regiment that I would never be able to guess anyway. Like the official name of anyway. Who's the person who said this? So this is, very close. This is Duke Severus, the 13th. that wouldn't help

shit at all yeah how did you think that was going to help oh thank God yes Duke Severance the 13th how could I forget him you may have heard it somewhere

already but you're very close with disgruntal planetary governor because today we are going to be talking about the Severin dominant and the idea of seceding from the Imperium

and if possible was titled this you can't fire me I quit So this sounds like the episode should be titled the worst idea ever So wait so this is this is genuinely just an episode on this imperial secession Yep yep Sick of the Imperium I'm off

I'm gonna make my own empire with hookahism blow and blackjack and all of that Or at least the attempted secession Attempted might be closer for a lot of them yeah Yeah now so basically the failed by everyone except Huron Blackheart, not necessarily truly, but like morally correct type situation. Yeah. This does kind of feel like a hero in Blackheart situation where it's like, well, they're not doing anything for us.

We're paying all this shit. Fuck them. Oh, this one, well, we'll get into it. We'll get into it. It's not quite that clear cut. I'll be honest. Okay. If there's one unifying notion.

throughout the history of this podcast, it's the following. Life in the Imperium is awful. Countlessly, we've talked about all the different ways everyone comes to terms with this, but seldom do we ask, what if they just bail? During the Great Crusade, countless worlds were pulled back into the Imperium, and some of these were not by choice. However, those were humans that were rebelling against the Imperium that we know why they did it now,

but what about those who rebel against the current Imperium? We're not talking chaos uprisings or anything like that that are immediately stomped out. We're talking about secession. And on paper, seceding from something is very easy to do. You just quit, really. The real difficulty comes in the form of keeping up the secession. The Imperium has either intentionally or accidentally made it very difficult to successfully form a secession movement. Many worlds are too heavily reliant on one another resource-wise to justify it,

proximity to more aggressive imperial creed worlds makes retribution almost guaranteed, and the idea of an independent military that can stand up to the absolute tide of humans that the Imperium can throw at you is almost impossible. I'm just throwing it out there, by the way, that I feel like it is pretty much entirely on purpose. The way that the Imperium is set up to have certain planets supplying other planets and without one planet or the other planets starve, or without the mining world, the other planets have no resources. It feels too well put together to be an accident.

Oh, yeah. It definitely feels like hilariously deliberate so that they can have sort of this evil empire in this evil galaxy where if you think you're going to succeed, or secede, no, you're not. It also is too intimate. It's like a happy accident where like the Imperium is just so poorly,

managed that everything relies on everything because a planet itself might have a lot of things that it can make for itself. But like the Imperium is so much happier to just have one planet be like, all right, you're going to, this is the mining planet. You're all just going to blow your crust of bits to get the resources and the food planets over there and the gun planets over there because it's just easier to think in planets as opposed to this planet makes this many units of food, this many units of guardsmen, this many, et cetera, et cetera.

true and and shy shy does bring up a fair point where she said I don't know administratum is hilariously incompetent Imperium literally loses planets on the regular so you're right it might have just been a happy accident yeah yeah there's that's actually true one of the main plot points of the DLC and rogue trader

is there's an entire planet of imperial ties and the pyramid hasn't collected for hundreds of years and it's just rotting down there Oh, boy. All right. So happy accident it is. All right, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, you know what you swayed me. I always forget just how hilariously incompetent the administratum is. Like, they are so abundantly stupid. It's crazy. They're doing their best, but unfortunately, their best is below par.

Unfortunately, it's like, oh, don't forget to remember the ties for this one planet. and an Amistratum worker drops its parchment that states that and doesn't pick it up in time or something. And then, like, that planet dies. Yeah. I'm pretty sure there are multiple stories of things like that occurring. It's kind of insane. Oh, I bet it happens on the regular, yeah.

And they have a million planets, so it's very easy to be like, oh, yeah, we haven't collected that. Oh, damn. What happened to that? Well, it died 100 years ago. That's an entire separate type of thing. existential dread. Your entire planet dying because someone like across the galaxy dropped a scroll. I mean, the new administrator empire dropped a scroll and forgot to pick it up. Your whole planet is dead.

I mean, that's actually the plot line of Watcher in the Dark, the little audio horror novel that they made. The lady was a disgruntled administratorum employee who just like intentionally sabotaged shit because she like snapped. because she wouldn't say it and like kill the planet or something or redirected tithes and food or whatever it was. I totally forgotten about that little story. Oh, God. Anyway, we're getting off topic. But like, I think we could equally argue that it could be both A, intentional and B, accidental.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, despite all these factors making it near impossible, it has happened before, and one stands alone as the most successful. Now there's obviously going to have been loads of secessions over the history of 40K, but what there are are either woefully underreported or they haven't been written about. We can assume there are, but there's not really much in the way of a bunch of stories of, you know, successful secessions from the Imperium. So today we're going to go into some of the smaller ideas of imperial secession before diving into the real focus of the episode, which is the story and structure of the Severin Dominus, led by the pyrean. Duke Severus the 13th. The dominant has been able to hold itself together in a very dangerous area of space long enough to make a name for himself that is not only known to other local systems, but also to the Imperium itself.

So, we're going to first start with another example of secessionists. The seraphon unity is located in the Jericho-Reach and calls the planet Seraphos Secondus in the Jericho-reach home. There's not a lot known about them, except that they are a technologically advanced group of renegade humans, and they have to be. had at one point a meeting with the Tao that was infiltrated by the Death Watch. Wow. That's a lot of moving parts. The Death Watch killed the Tao representative as well as the Unicy representative, and this resulted in the unity and the Tao blaming one another for the assassination,

causing the two factions to commit to an open war against one another. So, hell yeah. Just let them take themselves out. Easy work for the Death Watch on that one. We also have rogue trader freedoms. So the coronas expanse exists beyond the calaxic sector and is for the most part a very dangerous and lightly explored region. This is where both the video game and TTRPG rogue trader take place. Due to the lawless nature of this area, some of the more ambitious rogue traders have decided to set up shop there. Some of them have their own footholds that they'd like to say is something independent, but ultimately they still heavily rely on the Imperium in certain respects.

Others have carved something substantial out, but it exists less as a unified nation, and more of a this is mine, explore it if you'd like sort of deal. Winterscale's realm is an example of one of these. A solid name, by the way, ruled by House Winterscale. This realm has carved out quite a reputation for itself and is one of the more formidable realms planet-wise. But at its core, it still remains a rogue trader dynasty. And not for nothing.

The supposed charts showing the extent of the realm are deeply inconsistent. In a sense, it's very much wild space with defined borders. Now, to get to one that is more defined and more dedicated to the secessionist cause, we need to cut deeper into the Coyaxis sector and talk about another rogue trader, which is Duke Severus I do like the name Severus. It's good, although he is making me think of Snape every time I read it, which is slack. confusing. I've been trying not to say it this whole time, but thank you for bringing it up. Someone had to do that box. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not, I'm not part of this.

I never liked Harry Potter. This is, uh, uh, uh, uh, Urah, USA, anyway. Is it really? So about a thousand or so years ago, the Angevin crusade was undertaken in the depths of the Calix's expanse. Due to the wild and untamed nature of the Collector's sector, the undertaking of this crusade was mighty. Hundreds of guard regiments, million strong, were led by Astartis, the Navy's ships were so numerous the skies were black, and the machines of the Adeptus Titanicus covered the surface of some of these worlds. But alongside these forces were some of the most ambitious rogue trader houses known to the Imperium, who had secondary motives. Their hope was to one day

rule these worlds once they were torn from the hands of the Xenos that occupied them. Their strikes in the expanse were some of the boldest, going deeper than any other forces. The most brazen and dedicated of these rogue traders was Duke Severus I. He had a warrant of trade granted to his line by the High Lords themselves, but his name in the collective sector is all but unknown, which ultimately is kind of baffling. His efforts and deeds were so ambitious and heroic that his stories should be not only celebrated in the sector, but also the Imperium as a whole. So I've got a quote for you here, D.K. It was Duke Severus who unlocked the Marcaean marches by plasma-boiling the hideous xenos-spawning

seas of Cantus extermus, breaking a deadlock that had stalled the advance of three million troops. It was even said that a mighty warp beast sailed the Duke's flagship as he closed on Gantf Magna, the creature's vast tentacles wrapping around the vessel so that when Severus ordered an emergency translation into real space,

the thing was dragged through too. Duke Severus himself hacked out a single crystalline eye, several meters in diameter, and worth the ransom of the high lords of Terra. Damn. Man's got game. Yeah.

what legend. Jesus. I love the detail of breaking a deadlock that had stalled the advance of three million troops. Like, what is he made of? Adamantium,

just like Wolverine. This can't be something more special in 40K than Adamantium, surely. There's got to be some sort of insane necron. What is it? Pylon material. He's just made of that.

It's got the necrodermis. Yeah. It's hot. all over again. Victories aside, it was the forging of the periphery that earned his true glory. During the crusade, the periphery subsector of Colaxus was something that he had tamed through a series of clashes with heretic and Xenos factions. The events of most of the battles aren't known outside of their names, which include the

scouring of Cyclopea 9, the Coulth landings, and the Ovitohol reprisals. The War of Ash apparently involved the downing of thousands of Zenos Vest, onto a world with feral humans who then killed the survivors. What a detail. Jesus. The only recorded battle was the second Battle of Culf, where Severus armies were counter-attacked by a slaverous race of Zenos that numbered in the millions. The story beats are lost to time, but allegedly the Duke himself struck down the greatest

champion of this race and successfully routed them away, resulting in the periphery being his for the taking. But, why is Deeds unknown? to those in the Colaxis sector. The answer is fairly simple. It's hubris. Severus was promised quite a bit by his warrant of trade, but in actuality, the High Lords didn't expect him to survive.

Before he received his title, he was a courtier of the senatorium, and was pretty much on the fast path to the highest of councils. His rivals were deeply uneasy with him, because they had quite a bit of evidence that he murdered his way through that path. So they worked to get him a warrant of trade, to essentially throw him into the void in the hopes he would never return, thus cutting his ambitions and his fast path to fame to an aggressive halt. I love all the back sabbing that goes on with all the high lords of terror and all the

organizational stuff of the administrator. It's so petty a lot of it. It's like, oh, that guy's got something about him. Let's make sure he dies in space just in case. Something, something, something power corrupts, something, something. Well, all those higher up, like, levels have that. Even the Inquisitors will be like, you know, this one Inquisitor is getting awful close to my level. Let's make him a rogue trader so he can't become an inquisitor and he has to go traveling and my spot is secure. And it's like, Jesus.

You care. Like, damn, y'all need to chill. I'm sure wasn't that something for the... It was in a book, I think. The Soul Drinkers Omnibus. I'm pretty sure the Inquisitor in that was like only sent because the High Inquisitor was like, there's no way this incompetent moron

will be able to affect anything. And then he actually did his job really well and ruined everything. Severus though, Severus was acutely aware of what had been done the entire time. And when he was all done carving out the periphery, he took a good look at the terms of his warrants and used it as justification to deem the region as his own.

Exempt from imperial laws whilst placing demands onto the imperial. He planned on working on building his own empire and installing himself as the ruler, an empire he earned and that he felt he deserved. In some instances, fortune tends to favour the bold, and maybe this could have worked had it not been for someone else. While Severus was conquering the periphery for his own means, a man named General Drusus was leading his armies of guardsmen through various victories for the God Emperor.

Severus would, in lieu of this, consolidate his power in the region instead, keeping his ambition selfish. General Drusus, either by the hands of agents or Severus himself, would die. And his subsequent resurrection would result in him being beatified. Drus would become the patron-stained being whatified? Beatified? Beatified? What is that?

It's when he gets recognized as a saint. Oh, really? That's like a real word. Yeah. There's a whole hierarchy of what he got to go through to get beatified. but for Drusus, he got murdered and then came back to life. So I just thought that would be general deification. That was the word I was thinking.

Deified, yeah. And so I thought I just heard it wrong, but no, I never heard that that word before. There was a small part of my brain that heard Ghiotified. And I was like, there's no way. There's no way that that's what I heard. We should just move on because there's no fucking way. Beedified is a formal declaration by the Catholic Church, recognizing a deceased person as having lived a holy life and entered heaven.

It says AI overview, so you know, grain of salt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh, interesting. Yeah, the penultimate step towards sainhood. Yep, yep. It's, oh, yeah, and deified is when you become a god. Yeah. Which is very heretical.

Just a little bit. Interesting. That's fascinating. Okay. I do find that humorous that it was post-mortem, though. And then pre-mortem, I guess. I mean, you came back to life. It was all technically post-mortem, right? After he died that one time.

I think that he's technically correct. It's all post-mortem, which is weird. Why don't you get that title, sir? Oh, post-mortem? What? Okay. He would end up, though. You'd end up the patron saint of the Claixus's sector, and severest plans of establishing his own realm would be turned to dust, because everyone that supported and believed in Drusus wouldn't pay any attention.

into Severus, and eventually he would only have one peer that he could trust, which would be another rogue trader, Sibeline Harlock. Again, great names in this story. Really good names. It's not clear what happened between them. Some believe that Harlock learned the true nature of Severus plans and denounced him, but regardless of the how and the why, Harlock would abandon Severus and he would be completely isolated. He would die in 417 M39 is a bitter and resentful man, and a few months later, the returned patron St. Drusus would die as well. Also, someone at GW is a big wee because they made a space pirate named Harlock. Like, you, man.

Yeah. Come on. I love it, but I see you. I see you. Someone definitely knew what they were doing with that. 100%. I do like that Drus has died shortly after Severus, though. It's as though he's entire. life's purpose from a certain point on was, I'm just going to fuck this guy over. I'm just going to make things really difficult for it. Oh, he's dead. Fine.

I'm happy to go now. I came back to life just to continue messing him up. He went to the funeral to check and make sure that his hater was gone. He was like, all right, cool. Peace. Oh, pull one out of Jerusalem. What a hero. Go to Drususon's funeral.

Just be like, thank God. Yeah. In case that basher comes out of the same. the grave. If he gets up, I'll be ready. Severus, though broken, did not die as the last of his line. Before he died, he would tell his life story to his son. The telling of this story, as well as the distilling of it over generations, turned it into a hateful right that was inherited by those in Severus line, twisting and turning it until it barely resembled the original truth. All his forebears would walk a path

built entirely on lies and loathing, and the resentment would only grow. In 779 M41, Duke Severus I was in power, and was the first in his line to have the same ambition as Severus I. During the past thousand years or so, the Severus line had been truly a shell of its former self, and little remained. They had some stake in the periphery, but the system had more or less moved on from them. Severus the 13th, though, would re-establish a foothold, and in seven, 99 would ascend to Lord Subsector, the Administratum Prefect of the Periphery. He was granted this title by Lord Sector Marius Hacks, who felt that this might be a bad move, but it was hard to deny the amount of work that Severus had done. Severus the 13th spent his whole life building a powerful group of allies, including the very scarce members of the Arbites. Also, a bit more conveniently, the rivals that this Severus had were non-existent.

for some reason, somehow. Yeah, somehow, some way. Potential rivals weren't snuffed out or anything, right? He's just a great guy. Well, the next sentence is the extent of his crimes would not be found until it was too late. Check and mate. Got it. He believed that the periphery was his by right,

but that the periphery's full autonomy was also something it had earned by as well. But he was smarter than just straight up seceding. If that was to happen, the governors would rise up and the Imperium would crash the party, and he also knew that if his tales of expansion and influence were known by Lord Hacks, that he would likely be snuffed out, so he kept this a secret too. But, despite his ability to build on his own, the idea of a full separate state was something he could not do by himself. He knew he needed allies to help him out, and he would pay whatever price was needed, even if it was truly a dark price. The spies he sent out to see Cade would find the perfect fit.

Any guesses on what sort of help a man such as this might recruit? Boy, you know, as soon as you were like, oh, yeah, even dark help, I was like, oh, chaos. Oh, boy. Chaos is a bound day. To be fair. Not chaos. Oh, really? You could argue that in some ways, maybe not worse, on a par.

Oh. I mean... Oh, why don't you... Sorry, go ahead. What, no, what? What? Well, I was just, there was a long pause and I was like, Kieran, why don't you just tell us?

I'm... See, the thing is, there's too many options. Think of hard. It's just, in situations like this, sometimes 40K is just two full of bastards. Well, okay, like... I get it. The evil allies, rogues.

Trigran get are like other Zenos and things. Yes. Literally any Zenos. Yeah. Depends on what. But like also, you know, sometimes the evil ally is a buddy all along.

You never know. It's just another guy. The evil allies were the friends we made along the way. Is that what I'm saying? Unfortunately in this situation, it's, it's not just another

another normal man. It's the Dracari. So that, his approach He approached a group called The Children of Thorns, which even by Dracari standards were not great

because they were made up of the dregs of Dracari society escaped slaves, disgrace nobility, champions who had been defeated they were a desperate cabal and sought whatever they could to get some aid, be it weaponry, housing, or of course, slaves, all of which could be used

to bid to regain power and footing in Comorra. Pacts were made, with the children of thorns and entire frontier worlds would be consigned to them, ensuring that when raids were conducted, reserves were always too far away to help. What a start to a secession. Yeah, immediately sign up with the Dracari. Yeah, that's a... I guess that's a power move.

A, the towel did it once and it worked out for them. It didn't. I was going to say, it didn't work out for them. In fact, I'm pretty sure they got a whole new unit out of that. Isn't that how the grotesques were created? Ooh. What are the grotes? I've never seen the grotesques or heard of them.

Oh, that's like, they're sort of, maybe it's the talos. Lumpy guys. I was really hoping you were to say they're the kind of grotesque guys. I was like, well, thanks, Karioth. I mean, that is also true. That would have been cleverer than the lumpy guys, which. Brace yourself because there's a measurement of time incoming and it's not a good one.

For over a decade, Severus and the Dark Eldar would cut through and isolate the periphery. That's a lot of people being stolen in horrible, literal torture rates. Yeah. That's bad. It's not great. It's not 6.3 million years, but it's not great. That's not great. Yeah, it's not ideal. See, I told you he was lumpy.

Look, it's absolutely lovely. I mean, all Kronos things are lumpy. So I don't mean to put you on blast here, but if I saw the grotesque, I would not immediately call it lumpy. I feel like the miniatures are a bit lumpy. Maybe maybe I'm just thinking about the weird head, like, neck, back thing they've got going on, whatever that, well, big lumpy thing is at the top. Grotesque certainly appropriate name for these things. 100% though. Ah, I found it, I think.

It was a cultural exchange, a quote, quote, with the Dark Eldar and the Tao. I believe that they provided, yeah, it was the cultural exchange and they came back with a bunch of ridiculous-looking

Bane engines. Yep, that's great. No one specified that a cultural exchange has to be nice. Okay. You know what? I just looked up the mini

and immediately I understand why you call them lumpy. The minis are very, like the muscles are very lumpy looking on like their arms and stuff. So you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and say you're right. Lumpy is a great way to describe them.

And they were the grotesques of Uri and Rackarth and had a blue-gray coloration to them. And then the Tao figured out what they were. And they were like, oh my God. What the hell did you guys do? But yeah, I love to No, thank you. So, yeah, for over a decade,

Severus, Dark Eldar, they start to isolate the periphery and the rest of the sector, one planet at a time, and one non-corrupt governor at a time, so that nobody would notice that it was being turned into a personal and isolated realm.

The visage was kept because the eight worlds closest to the Malfian border were outwardly normal, not arousing any suspicion. Meanwhile, the children of thorns prospered. It feels oddly appropriate that you read this one, Bricky. This is, you know, there's, I would say a little bit of crossover between the approaches of the nightlords and the Dracari.

Oh, there's a lot of crossover. Oh, tons of crossover. Oh, yeah. But, all right. Thousands are dragged screaming. Oh, yes, is my shit. Back to the dark sub-reality sinks of the dark city. Yet there are those who question whether the cabal's involvement.

in the wars of the spinward front might be more pernicious? Pernicious? Pernicious? I guess? Yeah, penicious. Pernicious. A lot of new words today. Some fear that the dark Eldar might be working towards another agenda entirely, one that

can only bring more doom and disaster upon the war-torn worlds of the periphery and beyond. Did you get your critical thinking out of a cracker jackbox? some fear the dark elder Eldar might be working towards another there's a clip in the emperor text of speech that I always get I always laugh at when all the random gang of

imperials work with the dark Eldar and then it's just this random dark elder guy who's like I assure you working with us the dark Eldar will not come back to bite you in any way in the future it always always comes to the forefront of my head

For anyone wondering what pernicious means, it's an adjective that means having a highly harmful, destructive, or deadly effect. It is frequently used to describe damage that happens gradually and subtly over time, often in ways that are not easily noticed. Beast. Pretty perfect. Learning! The more you know. Yeah, that's what you should do when you don't know what a word is. Look it up and figure out what it means, and then start using it in your lexicon.

I'm expecting to hear the word pernicious in the next recording now. I don't know where you'll drop it in, but I'm sure I'm sure you'll find a way. I think you're going to hear it in the next 30 minutes or so, brother. You think I'm going to wait that long? Now that Severus the 13th had his region fully carved out, his goals were close to completion, but there was one issue. The people in the periphery were humans, and being human means that you are deeply devout to the imperial creed. In order to fully secede, he would need to craft a very strong and very believing,

tale so that they would side with him while also playing into their devotion to the emperor. Originally, he had a longer-term plan for this involving almost a chess game with government officials and subversion, but a green tide of orcs really messed this approach up. While grim tooth's arrival

was a nightmare for the Duke, as this was an unexpected variable without much wiggle room. Initially, he hoped that his forces would be able to rally and do enough damage to push off the orcs. Idiot. But it's the orcs. So, no. Not even the most fortified worlds have enough stuff to deal with that nonsense half the time,

so he had to tap into some of his reserves that he had handy for the inevitable secession to help against the greenskins. But even this was not enough. He only had enough to fortify the most vital worlds or to spread himself so thin that the orcs could essentially take whatever they wanted. They just got, they're just so good at showing up at the exact wrong slash right moment. It's one of my favorite things about the orcs. Someone's planning something big, orcs. There's a power vacuum, orcs.

It doesn't matter what it is, there's always an orc. Oh, yeah, make a deal with the orcs instead of the Dracari. Easy. I would make a deal with the orcs instead of the Dracari any day of the week. Yeah. Because at least the orcs will take your stuff and then just beat you up. Yeah. You can assume that they're going to take the weapons that they take from you and use it against you.

Whereas the Drucari will have far... What the Jukari's plans are? can be endless. The orcs plans are very simple. Yeah, the orcs are much more predictable than the Drukari. And if the Dracari decide to take you prisoner, ooh. Yeah, like at least

with the or like, don't get me wrong, it's not going to be an easy trade or anything like that. They might be predictable, but it'll still be a problem. But at least predictability is helpful. Yeah, there's a big, nasty, looming, dark cloud

question mark with the Dracari. There's a little line in the first, last of us game with Bill, like the best character. He's like, you know, he's talking about the clickers and stuff. And he's like, at least they're predictable. It's the normal people that scare me. And it's kind of, well, I would never call Yuri and Rakkar normal. You know, the concept remains the same. Fair.

Very fair. Pretty much just say to the orcs, here's a ton of weapons, there's a much bigger and better fight that way. And if we give you these, you have a better time over there, that'll probably do it. They'll probably be fine.

They're already there for one thing, and you can provide it just in that direction. Just take it that way, it's fine. Finally, Severus had to concede to his advisors. He'd lost a handful of planets, and he needed outside assistance from the imperial. The guard would answer the call, but under their own authority, and not that of the Dukes, although he did ask for that authority. The guard, under the guidance of Sector Lord Hax, would subdue

world's key to the Duke's domain and would actively bring them into the imperial fold. Some believe this was evidence that Hax knew what the Duke was up to, but that's uncertain. The loss of worlds to both the Orks and the Guard meant that he had to do something desperate. He needed to strike while the iron was hot, because the minds of those in the periphery were vulnerable. Whatever he came up with it needed to be compelling, convincing, and leave no other alternative in the minds of the periphery citizens outside of secession. He began to work on a narrative about supply shortages. He would begin to redirect shipments from the most dependent worlds in the periphery, causing them to struggle, especially in the more difficult seasons. He would also begin to increase tithes

on the worlds that provided units and weapons. The increasing of the tithes was to, quote, unquote, provide soldiers for imperial levies, but in actuality, this was a way for him to build his own private armies with younger and more impressionable minds. He would tap in the Children of Thorns to cripple the workforces of some of the planets too, pushing the manufacturing and workload to the breaking point. If it's not obvious by now, by the way,

Severus the 13th, not a good guy. Not a great guy. Oh, no, what? The guy that sided with the Dukari? Straight off the bat. Yeah. The Imperium's not great, but it's not exactly our deal in the periphery. That's a proper lad, isn't he?

I think he's a swell guy. Yeah, he is cosplaying as Julius Caesar. I'm very curious about any of his buddies in the next insert 30 to 45 minutes of time. A two brigade. A two bricade. Wait, that's good. I'm writing that down. Put that on a shirt.

I'll only take some of the royalties. As soon as I add it to the soundboard. I wonder whether she'd use it. Wait, wait. Et 2 brickie on the front and on the back, just a bunch of knives. Oh, dude, that would go hard. That's actually pretty good. I'll think about it.

Hell yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What if like an E2 version like that for the podcast and the back is a bunch of like power swords and chain swords and like daggers? and stuff. Ooh, hold them. Oh, I'm brainstorming. I'm fine. All right. It's fine. All right. The merch brain is rolling. Let's go.

Yep. Unsurprisingly, all of this made the life of those in the periphery miserable. Misery would turn to unrest as worlds became burdened with famine, and labour strikes and work refusal would grind some of them to a halt. As if by clockwork, cults would begin to form preaching the evils of the Imperium of Man, and societal collapse was imminent. all the while Severus was watching each world carefully to determine which ones were closest to collapse. He needed to be 100% certain about a myriad of factors with this.

The majority of the world needed to be thoroughly disillusioned enough to take dramatic action out of legitimate desperation. If the conditions were right, Severus would come in like a miracle. He would provide deliveries and aid and not only stress that it was because of how much he cared, but also that he himself was the one doing it. In a less destitute world, the blatantness of this would be obvious and the nature of its engineering would be almost embarrassing, but the worlds were in such a bad spot that his aid was viewed as a hallmark of his personal virtue. As he dispensed aid, he would blame the High Lords of Terror for the shortages

and for the extreme tithes. Originally, he would play this in a more reluctant capacity and would remind people of the importance of the imperial cause and state that he didn't want people to lose their own personal faith in the Emperor. It's so, it's so, like, duplicitous and, like, what's the, I can't think of the word. It's, like, backstabby, but very, very well played, but it's slimy. That's it. Yeah, no, that's the one. So slimy. Again, almost naturally, the world would begin to call out the inaction of the Imperium while viewing the Duke as a force of benevolence bast in the light of the Emperor himself. The cries of secession will be viewed as.

the only reasonable solution. Ever the modest man, Severus would say that he would consider it only as a last resort, and nothing more. As the emergency supplies ran dry, he would call the governments of each of the planets together. He would pretend that each world had an opportunity to join something new, not something that he had actually been planning for decades, a federation against the imperial cause. The governments and populations felt like they're investing their lives and assets into something new and worthy that they had all worked together to create. They had a sense of ownership, which made them all the more willing to sacrifice more for the cause under the pretense that someday their children would have a greater

degree of freedom. Oh, you poor sod. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's make sure everyone has a greater degree of freedom. Hey, by the way, Archon, shake my hands. Have you met the Dracari? Oh, my goodness. You know, I can imagine a doofy planetary governor who was, like, ill-informed because he was born, not just with the silver spoon, but the whole entire, uh, the whole entire thing, a cutlery in his mouth and being like, the Imperium is so bad. And they've, and if the Imperium is out there telling you about how awful aliens are, and the Imperium sucks, maybe the aliens really aren't that bad.

Yeah, I, I could see that happening. Like, you know, you know, like, flat, like, flat earthers? like the earth being flat doesn't really matter as much. It's more about like if they're right about that, then they can be right about all the other stuff that the government's lying to you about. Kind of like that. But if the world wasn't flat,

how could I see the horizon? Anyway, sorry, go ahead. Zero dawn? No, no, not zero dawn. Great game. It's okay. Any time I hear like stuff about flat earth, I just remember.

mini-minute man's comment about you don't have to invent things to get mad at the government for you can just be mad at the actual government for what they're actually doing so true besties so true so there was a legitimacy in severus leadership of the peripheries worlds and the full assets of the imperium came with that this legitimacy allowed him to limit the communications as well as bottleneck the trade assuring that items and information were only able to arrive on world he wanted them to arrive on.

This came with a replacement of a significant number of folks who still remained loyal to the Imperium. Ultimately, he was able to retain a lot of the pre-existing structures that the Imperium had set up to assure their absolute control and used them to his advantage, but he needed to convince everyone else that this wasn't really the case. Severus would craft a series of texts and documents and laws that would continue to grant the citizens a sense of power,

sense being the key word, as there was never any doubt that he was taking all this power for himself. Ultimately, as you can see with everything we've talked about before, he is more of a despot than most of the high lords themselves in every way, but the people below him were unable to see it. Creating and sustaining the image of grandeur is a fundamental tenant of his government. Now, we do need to take a quick step back, because there was a whole war going on. So all of this came about in the midst of a wild. as well as engagement from the Imperium at the behest of the Sector Lord.

This shift to secession happened in the middle of these conflicts, and Hax would turn the guard against the Duke because of the audacity. However, it was very difficult for them to deal with the Severin dominant due to the Orks, who, let's be honest, didn't really care about the diplomacy aspect of all this. They just wanted to fight people. Classic, classic. Yeah. The Duke knew what the Orks were all about,

and his efforts to control the region were complemented by his ability. to reroute orc attacks back to the Imperium directly. Specifically, targets the Imperium could not afford to lose. In his eyes, any Imperial fighting an

orc was not a danger to his dominance. It's not enough that he's slimy. He's also smart, and that makes it so much worse for everyone else around him. He's not wrong, and that's the problem.

To say that Severus the 13th was terrified of the guard is an understatement. The assets of the Imperium are virtually incomprehensible, and he knows he's got no hope of defeating them head on. Instead, he wanted to make the prospect of defeating him ineffective in a financial and resource manner. To do this, he needed to sustain and to continue the distractions to the point where the Imperium may ultimately redeploy their forces elsewhere to win more winnable locations. Of course, this is really a pipe dream, as one can only redirect orc so many times, especially since it does. does run the risk of the ork straight up turning about face and going after the Dominant instead.

But he's holding and actively recruiting. So recruitment for the Severin Dominant would begin with the worlds in the region based on the idea that he was a truly caring leader and that the High Lords were far too distant to be effective. The government would be based off hope and loyalty. That hope and loyalty, only one of those worlds has any place in 40K. and I love the idea of trying to recruit people on the basis of hope when there's an orc invasion actively happening. Lovely stuff.

Probably the best way to instill hope is like, oh, there might be a wah happening, but I can save you. You can get protection from me. Follow me and you might survive this thing. Otherwise, good luck with the green tide coming your way. 100%. The acceptance of these two things would also be an acceptance of inevitably. war. But war meant that they were fighting for what was right, especially if the end goal of war was utopia. He would make promises that were, more or less, impossible to fulfill. The core

premise was that all worlds would be made prosperous beyond imagination. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Jesus. This dude has no idea what he's doing. I think he does. I think he knows he's just a lot. out of his... Yeah, I was going to say he knows exactly what he's doing. It's just awful.

He knows that part, sure. But like, I don't think he understand... Like, no, okay. He does, but he doesn't. Like, what else is... He knows this is going to go poorly, unless he's just got insane delusions of grandeur. Which probably does.

He might. I feel like he's... I feel like the foundation of his personality is probably delusions of grandeur if he's been told the... family story that's been twisted over the course of like 300, like however many generations, and all of them are repeating the idea that all of this

should have been ours. It should have been. Our great, great, great, great grandfather set all this up. This should belong to me. He's just the first one to act on it. He's got to have something going on in a sort of sociopath sense, more than anything else, to actually go for it.

I think he just doesn't understand what he's getting into. I guess maybe he does think this would work against other random Imperials, but not this shit. Maybe he is actually hopeful. Maybe this will all work out in the end. It's probably the worst thing to be in 40K is hopeful. Also, Shai said he's lying out of his ass and putting various Zenos factions versus Imperium to make them lose hold on the sector. The issue is that he might, you know, get fucked over by the Zenos if they actually lose control. and leave.

He's, you know, on the road to receiving a beating from any number of Zenos and Imperium-based people at this point, isn't it? What a great spot to be in. So the prosperous world's thing would be achieved through archaeotechnology that would provide bountiful foods and creature comforts unknown to the citizens at large. If all went well, the necessity of military service would likely be. be reduced too. All of this sounded magnificent and was far more than agreeable as a promise to get people to join up. Even when the Duke said that all this luxury was only achievable through a total

victory, it was accepted blindly and through surprise gifts and bounties. The bounties being, of course, the reserves he had bottlenecked long before the revolution. This would give the illusion that he was even more true to his word than he'd led on, and even as these supplies would eventually run thin, the world governments would view him as honourable. Now, as far as knowledge is concerned regarding the actions of the Duke, it's exceptionally limited. Only the closest and most trusted associates of his are aware of what's going on, and even those associated know nothing about his dealings with the Dracari. But in the end, few would believe either of these things as truth at this point, as those in the periphery are so deeply devoted to him. Hell, even

cults began to appear with the view that the Duke was a prophet to the Emperor himself. As mentioned, before, devotion to the emperor is essential to most human populations, and the Severin Dominate is no exception, despite the Duke's presence. The High Lords and the Dominant have been supplanted with Severus, allowing him to stand as a leader while retaining the belief in the master of mankind. They preach that the High Lords are the ones who are traitors, and Severus is the true and rightful leader. The Imperium's suppression of this is held up as evidence of Severus's creed, and this evidence can't be denied. all the offerings of the Duke

No, no, no, no, no. I kept that silence for a good reason there, Kyriot. Don't you be moving on ahead? I apologize. I get, so, so I want to return to my prior statement of, oh, so he's, he's insane. I think that's fair. Yeah, yeah, all right.

This is one of those things that always seems to happen. it's like so often people rebel against the compirium, compirium, uh, people rebel against the imperium for rightful, intelligent and understandable reasons. And then the guy who rebels against them is like, I'm going to become God.

And you're like, all right, sweet dude. God damn it. Not everyone is as, um, well, not everyone is as quote, level headed as, uh, Mr. Huron Blackheart. Mm-hmm. A lot of hubris.

Also, fun fact, the orc invasion is called Waugh Grimtooth and led by this handsome fellow Warboss Grimtooth. The Waugh Grimtooth led by Warboss Grimtooth, holy. Say it ain't so. Oh, look at all those skulls he's got, though. He's got an Imperial Guard up there. It's a black space marine helmet. Is that... Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Some Eldar, some... bumped into a, that's a chaos space marine helmet. It's got the little thing on the top. Yeah. He's got two Dracari, so that's nice. Yeah, a human and he's got some Eldari skulls. He's got some Tao skulls. Yeah, I was going to say, that's got to either be Death Watcher at Chaos Space Marine

helmet, right? Yeah, he's been around. It won. That's a very cool portrait. I like that. So, all of the offerings of the Duke have been remarkable, but they come at a cost. As mentioned before, besides luxuries, the Duke has offered freedoms to the people in the periphery that are virtually unknown in the Imperium outside of members in the higher echelons

of society. The Duke's offerings of freedom has had a mixed response. Some believe this to be truly enticing while others find this to be fucking terrifying. The normal person doesn't really understand how dangerous these freedoms can become. It's a great notion, but due to the hard-lined and aggressive nature of existence as a human in these times, those freed from the shackles of a heavily regimented and organized life can cause them to go a bit wild and potentially expose them to things like the ruinous powers. There they are. There's chaos. We knew they'd show up eventually. Every time. Every time. The other pressing issue is the idea of control. There is a concern from some of the higher rungs that perhaps the Duke doesn't really want to surrender his own authority

over the periphery. In fact, virtually every decision has come from him and him alone, and it's intended that he keeps it this way. On worlds where elections may matter, he makes sure they're rigged. On worlds where decisions are made through a mandate that's either military or hereditary-based, these mandates need to pass by the Duke first and their respective worlds second. He is certain to maintain the illusions of freedom and control, but none have been implemented yet, and they likely never will be. And part of this has to do with that war on all sides.

So external diplomacy from the Severin Domina is the same philosophy that the Duke used in the founding of it in the first place. Every single measure and action is focused on the stalling of an advance through deception. No promise is too extreme and no lie is too horrific. Morality is of little concern at this point as the Severin dominant tries to hold claim to its worlds. So much like building your own small empire against the largest human empire of all time through constant lying, backstabbing,

having your own citizens whisked away by torture aliens. It's almost like that's not a great recipe for long-term longevity or something. I don't know. Also, I love the wording of on worlds where elections may matter. Yeah, I guess that's true.

You know, on the planets that actually have lawful elections that they follow, we're going to rig those two. And it's like, oh, just, great, great, love it. Is nothing sacred severing? No.

Sacred, I don't even know the meaning of the word. Declaring a secession is ultimately super easy. Sustaining it is a war in itself, and the dominant is looking for additional ways to utilize the worlds that are already under their stewardship. Building infrastructure on a barren world, believe it or not, takes more time than the Duke has, and due to the limited number of worlds, potential recruits are ultimately limited.

The worlds held by the Severin Dominate are ultimately very useful to him. He has a few planets under his belt, including a hive world, and the population of the entire Dominant is likely somewhere in the billions, though no cohesive number is given. The capital world of the dominant is Caracalia, but the ownership of Forthden and Stilinthia are some of the most significant boosters they have. Forthden is an agri-world that is notable for having a very average to mild climate and notably doesn't have any seasonal variations

allowing for the growing season on the world to exist all year round. This is just an aside. I would love a scientist. I don't know what sort of scientist you'd need to be to take a look at some of the worlds of 40K and be like, this place, like a world that is completely temperate, for farming all the time with no variation, is that a thing that can happen?

I don't know. I would like to know, but I have no idea. Hello, I'm from California. Hello, I'm from California too. I'm more from California than D.K. Hey, what do you mean by that? What do you mean you're more from California than me? I've lived here my whole life.

I'm older than you, and I've also lived here most of my life. How many years were you in Hawaii? Five. Hmm. And I miss it every day. It was definitely not that shy, but shit. Yeah, I guarantee it wasn't that. Yeah, read the room, buddy.

Can we appreciate the fact that the closest place towards that star on the top left is just called deluge? deluge, yeah. I guess you'd have to be delusional to live there. Because it's a death. Kill him. I misread the legend for a second. I was like, that's a penal world. Jesus.

I mean, even for that designation, that's rough. No, death world makes far more sense. Okay. Where was I? There we go. So, Forthon, the California of the periphery, in the recorded history of the planet, only two cataclysmic storms have ever occurred on the surface of the world,

and they were both coastal storms. Every day here is like a day in late spring, and the temperature variations only occur geographically, so colder more north, hotter down south, etc. It's almost suspicious how perfect this world is when it comes to its crop growth and yield, to the point where prior to the secession, the admec believed that this world may be the example

of some arcane technology at work. Fourthon is the primary food supplier to the severing dominant and the loss of it would likely shatter the empire. Wow. All the eggs in one basket and only slightly metaphorically on that one. The second world, Stilinthia, is a mining world. It's unable to serve any other purpose than to be mined as it cannot sustain food or anything else.

The amount of raw materials on the world are almost enough to fulfil the needs of the factories controlled by the dominant. It's a dangerous and hazardous world where, as you can probably guess, life is barely a step above servitude. It's believed that this is the most valuable world in the Dominus itself because it is the only means for the Empire to sustain itself at its ongoing war efforts outside of trade. Which, believe it or not, still happens to an extent. At least two rogue trader dynasties, either desperate or daring or maybe both, have decided to work very openly with the dominant. They're not providing military support, but they have an extensive trade relationship

and haul cargo from the dominant to other systems in the Claxis sector. The limitation when it comes to military aids means that they're not technically providing weapons, but the steady flow of imperial manufactured goods gives the dominant at least a short-term solution to material scarcity, even though it's not sustainable considering the Duke's long-term plans. That is some potentially fatal bravery on the part of those two rogue trader families, of all the people to continue working with. This guy does not seem like the one, you know? Did you just make that, shy?

I think she did, and I'm just like, that's great. Yeah, yeah, capital, severin dominant, or capital. Don't worry, we're safe. You got to put that in the episode, shy. People have to be able to see that. I hadn't even noticed the glory to biggest severest dickers. I was just caught on the arrows. Another thing that the dominant has is access to a warp conduit.

Now, this might seem a bit strange, considering the whole Lord Sector hacks knowing that the Duke's seceded thing, but many think that the dominant having access to this is evidence that they actually have the upper hand. It seems fairly evident that the Lord Sector's ego is preventing him from alerting the Imperium to how extensive this problem is,

because ultimately, if he sounds the alarm bells too loud and suggests it too big of a problem, then the Imperium will not only arrive in full force, but they will likely steamroll him as well. We'll get to the Imperium's thought on this whole thing in a bit, but judging by the Dominant's ability to access the War Conduant that goes to the Scara's sector, it's clear that Hax is a bit in over his head. The Duke has sent out exploratory groups deep into uncharted space to see if other resources can be found, but nothing has been yielded quite yet.

The Dominant has access to Tom Boy Girlfriends. Oh, sign me up For the cause, for the Whatever, whatever their call is? For the military. For the military. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rig the elections.

Dark Eldar supremacy, I guess. Whatever. The Roman cosplay is kind of cool, though, I won't lie. Yeah, it is actually. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Trade, however, is not a permanent solution. The real permanent solution would be to do more expansion,

but fighting is making this increasingly different. The Duke has started to transplant experts from certain manufacturing worlds to others under their control to see if planets can likely serve some sort of dual purpose, with supplying the dominant, and the lack of dedicated ADMEC presence makes consistent manufacturing a bit tricky. Many of the ADMEC who are in the systems pieced out when the Duke announced secession, and in an attempt to fill the gap, the Duke has worked with his advisors to find replacement ADMEC who are a bit on the outs with the Imperium as well. generally this means they're accidentally finding a bunch of mad scientists

who will only help if it means they can keep up their strange experiments ultimately the best offence for them is a good defence and the population of the severin dominant are ready and willing to fight to the death for their perceived independence I bet you get some right wrong and tech priests if you can only get the ones that don't care about the fact that you've seceded from the Imperium So what are the ones who are like Oh go ahead go ahead

You're just going to get the ones who are like, well, I've ran out of space to put extra limbs on me, so now I just have this train of random unfortunates that I do it to. You're going to get that type, aren't you? You're not going to get the good ones. Such a great phrase, perceived independent. It's like, ooh, that sucks. That's not good. That's bad.

So why is this our search in general? Well, because clearly they're doing a great job with it. Look at all those hands. Yeah. Oh, boy, that's such a cool picture, though. I would love for that to be a mini with all the eyes and all the glowy bits. That's class. I like that.

So the soldiers in the Dominant are similar to those in the guard, which, again, isn't a huge surprise. Many of the training techniques of the Dominus are the result of defectors who had studied the tacticaler imperialists prior to, seceding and much like the guard, the training and techniques when it comes to regiments of soldiers varies from world to world. Training has helped thanks in part to the way the Duke handled the departmento minotaurum, stressing that supplies were needed for training independently prior to the full secession. The largest changes between the soldiers of the Dominant and the Imperial Guard come in two major camps, core expectations and adequate supplies. Due to smaller numbers, there's an expectation that the soldiers of the Dominant are to assume other responsibilities at the

drop of a hat, meaning that the soldiers need to be trained in a multitude of ways to maximise their efficiency. Also, regarding supplies, the lack of lasguns and the ability to maintain traditional imperial production means that most of them carry auto guns and shotguns. It's a lot easier to mass-produce these without tech priests. This doesn't mean they don't have lasguns, they're just not as common. But they're also generally taken from fallen adversaries at any opportunity they can get them and the Aquila is notably scratched off or defaced when used by a dominant soldier. I was just thinking it'd probably be quite easy to do a bit of dominant Imperial Guard army, but if most of them have got also guns, maybe not.

Might be a bit trickier. Another issue that is faced with the Dominance forces has to do with the enemy they face. The organisational background of some of the more experienced soldiers comes from their own personal indoctrination within the Imperium, and despite their training to cut down the heretic at all costs, they're now using that training to cut down fellow soldiers. Depending on the rank and situation, the rationalisation of this can be exceptionally difficult. Due to their short existence as an empire, the chain of command hasn't really been fleshed out as efficiently as the Imperial Guard, and there are notable instances of favouritism. Surely not. The commanders seldom get their rank through merit

and are instead a result of a long domestic line, and instead of being willing to die for their soldiers at a moment's notice, they often flee when things get out of hand, not necessarily out of cowardice, but out of fear of the Duke's retribution to their family line. Oh, that somehow makes it worse. It secedes the Imperium to act like the Imperium, a tale is all this time.

Yeah. On the more advanced and violent side, of things, the shock troopers of the Dominant are similar to the Storm Troopers of the Imperium. They're very rare as the Dominant doesn't wish to waste their combat talent and abilities. The loss of one is a severe blow to the Empire, so they are only deployed when victory is almost completely assured. They are more indoctrinated to the beliefs of the Duke and are willing to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of the Dominant. Their presence is a notable sign of the strength of the Duke, and you tend to see them protecting officers of high

rank. Now, the most notable individual in a regiment of guardsmen is of course a commissar, but due to the nature of a commissar being deeply dedicated to the Imperium in an unwavering fashion, none exist in the Severin Dominant, as their unwillingness to be swayed to support the Duke resulted in their complete execution. The Duke was acutely aware with the commissariat and their impact that they had on the forces of the military of the Imperium, and felt that this was necessary to have in the Severin Domina in some way, but with a lack of resources and a lack of scholar, it was a tricky thing to work out on his end, especially when the fear of losing soldiers philosophically was terrifying to him. He would need to design a new program with

protocols so that they became a practical reflection of his ideologies. I mean, he is mad, but he is thinking it through in a, this can't possibly end well, but I've got an idea sort of way. He's gone too deep. I think he's just gone too far, you know? Yeah, properly off the deep end. The Duke was directly involved with the selection of candidates who were well-suited and receptive to his ideologies. Over years, he would mould them into what he felt

were the perfect political officers, and the end result were the ducal legates. They served as a physical manifestation of the beliefs he had chosen to espouse to his followers. They're charged with making sure that all soldiers are not only familiar with the cause of the dominant, but also adhere to it. Each of the dukele legates follow the following core pillars of belief. So the first is independence. Every world in the dominus is working for the same goal,

and that in order to achieve it, they all have to work together, even the most lowly of peasants. The second is justice. Not everyone is capable of contributing to the same degree. They are expected to put in their best effort nonetheless. If their best effort is not, their best effort. Their fitness for duty is reassessed or punished. The idea of this guy being all up on justice is hilarious. The third, which is even better, is honesty. Oh, right. Okay. All right. Tell me about it. Yeah, yeah. What is it? Rules for the, not for me? Yeah. Something, something every accusation is an admission or something. etc.

Also, they got them backwards-ass legs, what the hell? I like how you, well, I guess that is

the most focal point is those backward-ass legs. And them chicken legs. Yeah, they do. It's more efficient that way. It's better for running, I guess.

Is that true? I don't know, but it sounds good. It doesn't, it doesn't sound true, but I'm willing to allow it. Well, then prove me wrong. Until you can tell me why I'm wrong, I'm right.

I'd make a great dominant. Wait, what can be proven without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence, D.K. Or accused or whatever. No, uh, your honor, I said, no, uh. He's got me. I'll tell you what. You have your legs replaced with, with backwards ass chicken legs. and then we'll have a race

and we'll see who wins and then that will settle the argument forever. Easy. Well, I know that already. Don't like amputees occasionally get like the backwards kind of boundy leg

and it makes them actually move pretty quick. Well, you know, despite having a missing leg. Shai agrees with me. You know I'm right. I must be right. Shai's agreeing with me. That never happens.

AI, AI overview spotted. Quick, shy. Crop the picture. a little bit, just scrap it a little bit. I got it off Wikipedia. So the Ducal Leggis expect citizens to be accountable and truthful in all

matters. They are to report anyone who is acting at odds with the goals of the dominant, and those who are not honest in the belief of independence, may be candidates for re-education. Oh boy, this is, oh boy. It's giving Soviet Russia.

I was going to say, we're We've seen this in the real world, and it's awful. Oh, yeah, that's not great. So this lot primarily are supposed to be approachable and focus foremost on dialogue. I mean, yeah, it's also... Oh, yeah, they're just the Imperium. Yeah. But under the surface, they are as ruthless as the Imperium's commissars

and serve as the judge, jury, and executioner. They will ask probing questions in order to direct local governance and will act more direct if need be. Some will take advantage of this by fabricating crimes to remove those they dislike. Oh, classic. Feels like home, isn't it, this place? It just feels like the Imperium.

And they're good at their jobs, so good that they're branching out per the desire of the Duke himself. Not only is he making sure that there's at least one Duke or Legate Academy on each of the worlds of the dominant, he wants to make them a household name. So, here go, D.K.

Lovely. Initially, the Duke of Legates worked to motivate soldiers within the Severin dominant armies. As that strategy soon proved successful, the Duke chose to expand its scope. Over the past few months, more and more Dukele Legates have accepted roles

at many levels of the Severin dominant, including supervisory roles within organizations that only have a peripheral association with the military. The uniforms of the Legates and their calm authority had become an everyday sight for many Severin dominant citizens. Yippie. It's not great.

It's not a great sign for the freedom. Now, to answer the question at the front of mind regarding this whole thing, what does the Imperium think about all of this? Their thought process on it is a bit like this. The Severin dominant only exists in the head of Severus and the hearts of those who follow him and keep the border strong. In the eyes of the Imperium,

it's nothing more than a bunch of rebel worlds that are dominated by an arrogant fool who rules even more foolish traitors. In fact, reports about it have been fringe at best, so even though there's been some degree of interaction with them and knowledge of their existence, it's not really been followed up on or investigated further. This is, like, all of this effort and all of this work

for the Imperium to just be like, oh, that dickhead, and his idiot, followers, sure. Yeah, imagine being such a, like, because he is just so in his head, egotistical, hubris, like, oh, I'm really sticking it to the man. And the man is just like,

who? Oh, the crazy guy. Yeah, we don't care. They're dumb or something. I don't know. We've got bigger fish to fry. Whatever. Like, that's crazy. Doing a vast amount of work

to try and, like stabilize and grow his empire which is on the verge of collapse the entire time again just Imperium 2.0 but smaller but like all because it's rightfully his and he doesn't like the Imperium and he's really like this is mine and the Imperium just don't seem to care at all

they hit him with the Cona McGregor who the fuck is that guy Jesus I mean, why would they bother? It's true, yeah. He's going to sink his own shit immediately. He aligned with the Dracari, and he thought it was a good idea, and he's just doing, yeah, I guess they don't need to lift a finger. He's going to, at some point, something's going to blow all his shit up, right?

Well, we're going to get on to that in a moment. I mean, this is as close as the Imperium has gotten to actually acknowledging the existence of the Severin Dominate. And to be fair, this could be for a bunch of reasons. the most likely reason is that they view the idea of acknowledging it as validating it. And if something is validated as a threat, it can be viewed by some kind of teetering towards a session to lean into it as something semi-viable. Also, it's a risk to the imperial creed as a whole, and its existence is almost a sign of weakness. It's also not really clear whether Lord Sector Hacks is aware that the Imperium knows. It's hard to assume otherwise, as there is an Imperium Guard presence in the sector, that has active

engaged with them multiple times. The guardsmen who fight them refer to them as dominance and nothing more and they handle them like they would any other traitor foe that they encounter. Even the troops are just like yeah, those guys. Whatever.

All that hard work and it's just meh. Just shoot them like you would anyone else. It's all the same really. It doesn't make much of a difference. They do look good. I mean, that guy doesn't look good because, you know, he's missing an eye, and it's very recent.

But, you know, it's... The eye might still be in there. It's just a patch over it. It's true. You might get out of it. The other idea is that the Severin Dominance existence is actually somewhat helpful. The bottlenecking and rooting of the orcs in the periphery is, in a sense, keeping the brunt of the orc-invading fleet from actually fully engaging with the Imperium head-on.

And even despite the rousing, the Severin-dominant is still fighting the orcs' head on as well. It's so far away from terror that it's also just kind of difficult to maintain a war effort there compared to every other front. As far as terror is concerned, the traitors are busy fighting a multi-frontal war with no end. Or, should we say, was fighting a multi-front war with no end? You may have noticed that the years that have been mentioned so far are before a very specific event, and that specific event may well have done the work for the Imperium anyway. Oh, no. Abidon has some...

Oh, dear. The, uh, you... Yep, the biggest thing that has occurred since the founding of the Severin Dominant is the formation of the Great Rift. Position-wise, if you're looking at a map of the galaxy, the Galaxia sector is behind the eye of terror and a bit to the left.

The Rift, of course, cuts across the galaxy, but in the opposite direction. Technically, the positioning of the sector is not any more cut off. from the Imperium as a whole than it was before the opening of the Rift, but the geographic closeness to the Eye of Terror makes it a prime candidate for warp-fuckery, with a capital W and a capital F,

which they were already dealing with a bit beforehand. The dealings with the Dracari were very well established as an early way for the Duke to gain power, but these deal didn't stop when power was gained, and breaking a deal with the Dracari is difficult without facing severe consequences. Their attacks and rage remained consistent, So.

Yeah. You know, breaking, breaking deals with your car. Yeah, yeah, it's a little tough. It's a little tough. Also, did the jerkari want to bail because there was more warp fuckery in the area, like when that happened? Because, you know,

they don't much like warp shenanigans, right? Well, this lot are the down and outs. I guess that's true. They're the, like, the dregs and the previous slaves, so they're still content, or they, at least, as far as we know, was still content. Yeah, it's not like they...

It's not like they can go back to Kamara, right? Because they're literally just outcasts. They've not got much to lose. Yeah. They just, they got to keep at it. And they did. Just carried on raiding once the Duke succeeded. And even when he asked them not to,

and even when attempting to curb the raids by giving them free real estate. And by that, I mean the Severin dominant would leave imperial prisoners of war on a planet, and the Dracari would pick them up, DoorDash style. It wasn't nearly enough. The Jacari fly up and just

shove their phone in front of the people waiting for their pickup order. That's the artwork we need, actually, by the way. Any one listening? Our Khan just holding their phone up, daring dead-eyed at like in the people with like on the phone it just says like 10 guardsmen

20 to like 200 civilians. It's holding the Door Dash bag and everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to say a big sack with the tourtash logo on it. Wait, no, no, the Raider. The Dracari Raider has like the DoorDash symbol on the side.

His armor is just all all orange and on his helmet is just the big D for DoorDash. Yeah. Ju-Kari DoorDash. It's the meme I didn't know I need it until today. Oh, wait, excellent. Okay, guys. A reference for the Calixus sector.

All right, we have, you are here and the fuck zone next door. Yeah, that sucks. Also, yeah, that's, I didn't actually realize they were that far to the east. Or sorry, west. Yeah, they're way out there. That's tough to, you're right, that's tough to handle even pre-Great Rift. Like, normally you're pretty alone out there. Now you're super alone and you've got a, oh boy, that's, yeah, that's rough.

That's not good. This problem will solve itself. Actually solves itself. Actually, yeah. Yeah. Can I request that we get more, more maps from now on? Because I've been loving, I've been loving the shy maps. Honestly, I really, I really like the maps.

I really like 40K maps. I feel like people don't realize that very often, because in sci-fi universes, you always talk about like fashion and like travel and all that kind of thing. And you always assume that people can just kind of go anywhere wherever you want. But because 40K is like a much more, this is like a C, it's a fantasy type world, you can look at a map and be like, yeah, you're over. there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's hard to deal with, like, very evidently. I think it adds a lot of, um, context.

Because if you were to be like, yeah, you know, this place, this, uh, little planet in our story takes place in the Neo-Gedon, Neo-Jedon sector. And you're like, where is that? And it's on the map. It's right below Shiro fuck. And you're like, oh, yeah, over there. I'm imagining things are really bad. Yeah, absolutely horrible. if you're an imperial world there. Well, the dominant doesn't just have to deal with Dracari,

obviously. There's also chaos, of course. Specifically, specifically the best boys, D.K. The best boys? The thousand sons. Let's go! Sectoth, the false whisperer, solid name.

They showed up and started to attack and just wander around doing whatever they like. So between orcs, Dracari, now thousand sons, the Imperium, the Severus dominant is not potentially having a good time. In fact, the lack of information about that sector post-rift implies that it may have truly fallen either via unrelenting orcs or to chaos as a whole. Now, there is a meta reason for this, which is that the RPG that all this comes from has unfortunately ceased production and support. So Only War is a TTRPG from Fantasy Flight, unlike all their other games, including Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy, Deathwatch and Black Crusade, it's compatible with the mechanic-wise.

Rogue Trader was given a big boost thanks to the video game that it was based off of it, and the upcoming Dark Heresy game is likely going to do the same for that TTRPG too. The other games, including Only War, are currently sitting in a limbo state, with their last books being released roughly in 2014, and since the focus has shifted to Cubicle 7, the creators of wrath and glory, it's likely that we'll have to wait for a potential Only War video game to get a true resolution to the only definitively reported on, at least, successful secessionist group in 40K history.

If you really want to call that successful, I mean, I guess they did, and are we really calling that a success? I mean, it's lasted sort of for a bit. Yeah? The only one more successful, arguably, is your on Blackheart, but there's an awful lot of chaos-backed nonsense going on with that that it could, you know, make it fall more heavily into this was a sort of chaos uprising as opposed to a, I don't like it here,

I'm taking my planets and leaving. Taxes are dumb, yeah. Yeah, but it's successful, yes. But perhaps not long. You know? Are we calling the ones who defected a Tao successful secession, or is it more Tao victories? Oh, that's Tao victories.

Because those are the, that's the Guvessa. Is that the one? Correct. Yeah. Let's go. He does remember things. I mean, so just so I can be 100% sure, the fate is unknown. The fate is unknown.

So it could still be going. No, yeah, I don't know about that one. I don't know about that one. I can also sprout wings and fly out the fucking window, but. Yeah, let's not, let's not pretend here. Yeah. They're gone. It's probably dead and buried from, you know, war on a thousand fronts.

And also if one particularly enterprising invader decides to get rid of that agri-world, everyone's dead from starvation. But, you know, could still be eking out, could still be... I am positive that is where Per Trobo is starting as Infinite Citadel. It's around the eye of terror. I do not think there is much left there. Or if there is, if there is, it will be mentioned under the brink. boot heel footnote of the new mini or something. Yeah.

That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just say I have, um, I have low faith. Yeah. I have high faith that you're right. And I, at this point, I'm still convinced that the word to describe Severus the 13th was indeed slimy.

So true. I think he's a, you know, can I use a different one that's more, more apt for his culture? And by that, I mean, British culture. I think he's a proper fucking belland is what he is. Oh, he's a fucking belland? Hell yeah, dude. I just want to call him a bellet because I was going to say it's a bunch of bollocks, but he's a, he's a fucking bellet. He's a dummy.

Hell yeah. I mean, you're not wrong. He secedes from the Imperium Becomes a version of the Imperium You, okay, I learned it from you You Shai says I have little faith because It's no Vrax

This guy bullshitted his way to Control over a sector And survives because Imperium doesn't care enough Yeah, you know I'll give him a little bit of credit The Archduke of Vrax Sure, whatever his name was Sure did a pretty decent job

For a while Mm-hmm I see, this is the other thing. You know, since Pertrabo is doing the whole the whole Infinite Citadel thing, the Imperium's got that to worry about. So they probably care even less than they did. They don't seem to have really given a shit to begin.

I'm not by saying. They didn't care in the beginning, and they're carrying a shitload less now. Yeah. Just like, ah, Per Trab will probably deal with them one way or another. It's fine. Whatever. Yes, hello? Yes. Yes. there's a there's a rebelling planet oh damn we got to deal with that they made a

deal with the droucari nevermind it oh yeah that problem will deal with itself yep crazy goofy is goof goof goofy is goof goof is goof goof is goof you know that was good stuff that was good stuff i do like the the immediate moronic nature of the story. It's very, it's very humorous to me that they were so immediate.

Like, oh, they rebel for all the right reasons. As fortunately, the guy who leads it is a huge piece of shit. Yeah. Who could have, who could have seen it coming

in a universe like 40K? There was no foreshadowing to this. No. If your, if your, if your story, of providing your people with peace and prosperity begins with. So first, right, I contacted the alien torture slavers.

And I was like, can you please attack the people I'm going to bring freedom to? You know, minute one, you know it's going to be awful. So. Yeah. Well, with that being said, uh, any, let's everyone let's go around and take bets on what happened overall. My bet is that they're all dead. D.K.? Yeah, you know, well, you know what?

I'll say they're not all dead. I'll say they've been indoctrinated into chaos. They've been converted into some sort of, maybe like a big chaos spawned flesh blob that will eventually die. Curiaf, wow. That was a jump right at the end of the giant chaos board. I'm going to, you know what, I think, yes, he's a horrible sadistic scheming murderer who works with the worst of Zenos to get what he wants

and is inarguably just as bad as the Imperium. But I think there's cunning there, and I reckon that most of it, most of them are dead. But he's holding on and there's like, he's maybe got like a couple of worlds still going, but time is running out. Time is running out and he's probably going to get flayed alive. That's what I reckon. Yeah, well, all good options.

All good options. And shy, thoughts on the matter? Orcs kill everyone, then get bored and leave. The Great Rift hits the remaining planets and kills all the Jukari and the chaos rift opens and a single nerdling falls out and farts. Fantastic. Roll the clip.

Let's get the. a fuck out of here.