Adeptus Ridiculous - THE IMPERIAL PALACE | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe Imperial Palace is a vast edifice that serves as both the palace of the Emperor of Mankind and the capital city of the Imperium of Man. Built across a large part of the Asian continent on Terra, the Palace is divided into the Inner and Outer Palaces. The Palace is built to truly monumental proportions: seen from orbit, it consists of connected kilometers-high monolithic and pyramidal structures, marked with landing pads and studded with defense weaponry. The palace itself is the seat of the Adeptus Terra, but is overseen by the Adeptus Custodes.Not only is the area of the Imperial Palace enormous, its macro-habs and space ports break through the atmosphere and rise into the void, and its sub-levels dig deep into Terra's holy bedrock, in some places reaching a depth of hundreds of miles below the surface. Its vaults, corridors, fastnesses, plazas, and chambers are so multitudinous that no single record remains to list them all, and the techno-urbanic serf tribes, clan holdings, and societal sub-nations that dwell within its walls could populate entire star systems.Support the show

roaming the countryside somewhere doing something. But if you enjoyed today's episode of the podcast and maybe you want to support us, head over to patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous, where you can get access to the Discord. I was about to say posters if they happen, which there will be a poster today. Stick around for more.

But yeah, head over to patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous. Foreshadowing on the poster was excellent because there is a new one. You'll learn about that at the end of the episode. Oh, it's so smooth. Yeah, yeah. It totally wasn't me just.

bumbling through the intro and accidentally saying, you know, posters if they happen, you know, because they do happen. They do happen. It happened today. But Kirioth, Kirioth, Kierieth, Kieryoth, Kieryth, Kieryth, how are you? What are we doing? What's the stitch, as the kids say? That is a phrase I'm unfamiliar with, so I'm going to assume that everything's good and say, yeah, let's go.

I've got a quote for you. Ooh, okay. I will absolutely bumble it, but let's do it. I'm not beating the cool uncle allegations, am I? I'm really not beating those, which is honestly fair. As long as you are the cool version, I think it's fine. Yeah, I mean, it could be worse. I could just be the out-of-touch uncle, which I increasingly feel like I am, but sure.

So I've got a quote for you. It's mystery in nature, obviously. And I think you're going to get this straight away. I say this every time, and I'm just setting up a failure, but we know this at this point, that's what makes it funny. The Emperor's Realm is a festering ruin of overcrowded worlds drowning in their own ignorance and fear. This quite is hardcore, by the way. It is a tumble-down ghetto that burns from end to end with the flames of war.

They do not deserve their emperor. They do not deserve us. None of that alters the fact that our duty must be done. and that was said by Telkor, a custodian guard. Okay, so it was said by a... So you're telling me it was said by a custodian. Yes. But the episode is not on the custodians.

No, this one requires a little bit of lateral thinking. Huh. So obviously, they are very not super thrilled with the state of things. So maybe... They're definitely not happy. God, I... I... Look, man, you're asking for lateral thinking from someone that barely thinks, period.

I would simply say, where do they live? The custodies. Honestly, I always thought that they were just kind of on almost this like 24-7 training arc where they're like always kind of near the emperor. Because like I know that they also do those crazy little like warrior training games. Shy is not happy. Yeah, well, size is never happy. Whatever.

That's the softest ball ever. And D.K. fumbled it. They live on Tara, right? They live with the emperor on his near his silly little throne, probably guarding him probably. And where's the throne? Where's the throne, though? That's the question. On Terra in whatever compound that they're working on?

Like the big, I look, brain not working great right now. You're shattering my faith here. That's okay. fine, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just speak. I think this is the most upset shy's ever been. Yeah, probably. We've caused headaches in the past. It's, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.

What is it? Just, just speak, speak its name. It's the imperial palace. It's just, it's just called the imperial palace. Yeah, it's, it's kind of a big deal. It's sort of where all the most important stuff on terror is, like the emperor. There's, there's no, like, spiffy, like, name. for it? It is just the Imperial Palace?

I mean, to be fair, in the context of the Imperium of Man, the Imperial Palace does sound kind of important, at least to my ears. I could be overestimating, honestly. I guess I thought it had some big, important name to it. Well, to be fair, a lot of the stuff around the Imperial Palace is named in a more impressive way than the Imperial Palaces. Like, there's a lot of very cool named stuff, but the Imperial Palace is just, it's the place. It's where you, I was going to say where you want to be.

I would argue actually most people don't want to be there. But at the same time, you do kind of, you do kind of want to be around it due to just the importance of that area. Should I still go? Last episode, Curiaf said, it's a century, a guard and decaying should assume, oh, imperial guard and not a guy guarding a thing. And that was way worse than not knowing that Emperor of Empire lives in Imperial Palace. Okay, well, all right. I mean, when you're breaking it down like that, you really, you really, you really kind of, I don't know, I don't know how to phrase this in a nice way. Making it seem like D.K. doesn't know what he's talking about. And I don't think that's fair, because I think D.K. has learned a huge amount over the years.

Yeah, shy. You're just, you're just a negative Nancy. That's okay. The chat's probably blowing up too. That's fair. Oh my God. I can't believe D.K. didn't know what they. Oh no. Wait, it's becoming too real. It's becoming too bitter and too real. We're going to be talking today about the Imperial Palace. Because it's kind of a big deal.

Also, that art is absolutely sick and I love it. It's so good. Oh, that is real. I feel like you've shown us that art before, Shai. And I feel like I have, it's very popular. I have been like, oh, yeah, that is disgustingly sick. art. That's the one. God damn. That's really cool. All right. Let's get into it. The most protected place in the Imperium by and large is the Imperial Palace. Note that I said it's the most, yeah. It's the

most protected place and not the safest place. In theory, it is the safest place in an external sense. The entirety of the soul system as it stands today is set up as a defensive network to defend any in all assaults on the Imperial Palace as a whole. And of course, that's for a very good reason, because if the golden throne falls, the entirety of humanity also falls with it. You don't... Yeah, because then you have no protection from, like, the warp, right?

And demons just have free reign to do whatever they want. It's open season on Terra and... No Astronomicon, no navigation through the war. Yeah, yep, yep, it's bad times. real bad times for the Imperium if the Golden Throne fails. It's also a terrible place in general if you're a psycher probably, because you probably don't want to be near the emperor if you're a psycher. Just getting burnt out.

Yeah. You open your eyes and immediately just ash, just all over the floor. Unless you're getting delivered to the emperor in like a chees-it box because you're just going to be the snack for the day or something. But yeah. That's the best description of that I've ever heard. Love me some cheez-its. The emperous cheeses, is there known?

And it's just psychers screaming in a box. That needs to be art, surely. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, surely. So the image of the palace itself is ingrained in most of our collective consciousness with gigantic golden walls, golden pyramids, and a dead dude sitting on a chair. But what is the imperial palace actually like? Where is it precisely on a map of modern-day earth? how big is it and how could something like this actually exist in the first place?

Get ready for a whole lot of reminders of the rule of cool as we take a deep dive into the most sacred place in the galaxy though this seems like it's ripe for an episode of MTV Cribs this feels more like an episode of Time Team Also, time team do you get Time Team in the US? I've never heard of Time Team. I got the MTV Cribs reference and now I'm hoping that I was really hoping someone would give like a tour of the Imperial Palace, maybe like a

Malkador or something. And just be like, oh, hey, welcome to my crib. Here's the kitchen. In the fridge. Of course, we got some crystal. And a cupboard full of cheeses. Not the, so the show the emperor's dead body on the throne. This is where the magic happens.

Obviously. It works. That works so well. I'm amazed. No one's done that yet. It really does. So I'm going to have to explain Time Team briefly. It's an archaeological program and it's hosted,

but this is going to be another thing that I don't know if you'll know. Do you know, Blackadder, the comedy show? No, I don't know the Count comedy show. Is that a snake? It's sort of like a sitcom. It stars the same dude who was Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson. Okay, okay. He had like a stooge, like a sidekick called,

Oh, what was his name? Oh no, Baldrick, I think his name was, who was really thick and stupid. But for some reason, the actor who played Baldrick absolutely loves Tony Robinson, that's his name. He absolutely loves archaeology. So he started a program called Time Team, where they go around the country and they uncover like Viking ruins and settlements and all sorts. So that's the reference, because otherwise, just saying that it feels more like an episode of Time Team due to the geographical horrors of terror and the palace's locational feasibility. doesn't mean anything unless you know what time team is. But I'm here to explain Possum's more, more esoteric references.

Yeah, yeah. Except for the ones that I don't get, and then it's over to you. Yeah, okay, cool. I got any weeb and common writer references? I got you. I got you. There is now, so it feels more like an episode of Time Team. And then it can't be that bad, though, right?

Right? Well, it is, it is the Imperian. So I think it can be that bad, and it probably is worse. Yeah, definitely. So before we get to the palace, we should do a quick overview of what terror is like in its modern era, as it's an important factor when it comes to contextualizing the imperial palace itself. Terror is a place of the utmost holy reverence. It's visited by countless pilgrims every cycle who want to take in the beauty of the cradle of humanity itself.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, for most of the most of the people, of them, this is the last trip that they will make. The volume of people who visit terror results in stampedes and crowd crushing on a fairly catastrophic scale. This is. That's so bad. This is in part due to the population density on terror. It's a mess. It's awful. I'm going to paste something in for you to read and pray that it pastes in properly. There you go. Okay. All right.

Ragnar looked down upon the strange globe beneath him. The hemisphere glittered metallic silver in the daylight. There were patches of red upon it that might have been seas of rust. The lines of the ancient continents were gone. All that was left to suggest them were vague outlines where the density of buildings became even more intense along what had once been shorelines. Now the world wore metallic armor over its intent.

entire surface, it seemed fitting somehow. Ragnar smiled. It was an astonishing feeling. The image was a familiar one. This was the birth world of humanity. It sounds badass and claustrophobic as hell, frankly.

Oh yeah, it does. It really does. I guess I never thought about just how overcrowded Terra must be. Especially when you are the central hub of the Imperium, which has how many millions of planets under its umbrella.

Oh, yeah. The imperial is so vast and it's all like, it all kind of revolves around one particular planet. Like that is the most important planet by far. It's, it's a lot. It's a lot going on. And that's where the imperial palace is and that's where the emperor of mankind's throne is. You talk about tourist hotspots.

Like, the worst. tourist hotspot as well. Like, there's no seas and it's just buildings. It sounds terrible. It sounds awful. Yeah, yeah. Kind of bad.

Kind of bad. It's stated multiple times that as far as hive worlds are concerned, terror is likely the largest by a country mile. The planet's surface is covered in like a seemingly endless sprawl of just hive city on top of hive city,

resulting in the entirety of its surface. office being occupied in some capacity. Apart from like a couple of areas, but we'll talk about that later, the oceans are gone. The majority of the mountains on the planet have been completely leveled in order to build more structures. And just due to the lack of any discernible continental structure, it's impressively hard to pinpoint just where everything is on the planet. Essentially, all your landmarks are gone.

They're missing. the whole world has just been planed flat because that's how you fit more buildings on there. I feel like there was one episode. I don't remember which one it was. And I think, I feel like Bricky and I were talking about like, oh yeah, the surface probably looks really weird and like really like lit up.

And like the first thing that came to my mind was I don't remember which prequel episode it was. But they're like bringing. Adme in on like that silver ship and I think it's Corrassant and it's just like all lights. The plan is just all lights. There's not really any continents. It's just like just like these patterns of lights everywhere. And it's just like, yep, building, building, building, building, building, building, building, building, building, building.

Power grid building, building, building, and that's kind of how I like look at Tara. You have literally jumped ahead in a script that you do not have access to. Oh, baby. You've called it. You've called it in advance. How smart and stupid all at the same time. I am peak male performance today. This is what peak male performance looks like.

And it's guessing correspond. You may not like it. You may not like it, but this is what it looks like. All right. Speaking of hard to pinpoint, one of the hardest numbers to really pinpoint is the actual population size of Terry. itself. So population numbers in over urbanised science fiction worlds is all over the place. It's bad. I mean, 40K is especially bad at numbers. Like the numbers in 40K are all over the shop. There's stuff about the siege of racks where it's like it was a devastating however many

months slash year-long war and 14 million guardsmen died. And it, there are engagements just on earth in the past. I forget which battle it is specifically, so I don't want to say, because otherwise I'll get shouted at for being historically inaccurate. But I'm pretty sure there are battles that happened in World War I or World War II, where millions of people died. And it's like, sorry, Vrax went on for how long, and they had that few casualties? Good grief. They were doing pretty well. Same thing with things like the Titans, where you look at the size of a Warhound Titan and then you look at the scales for like the Imperial Titan and the numbers vary massively for how big they are and it's just all over the place.

Same thing with planet populations like Katacham being an extremely, yeah, Battle of Stalingrad one year, three million casualties. Like, for X is it, it's a much bigger conflict and somehow the numbers, they arguably got out of it pretty light when you look at it. A lot of times it feels like those numbers are just arbitrarily thrown at the wall because they're just like, oh, that sounds like a big number. Yes, I think that's not like a problem that 40K has, but it's certainly one of the things that adds to the inconsistency of their numbers where it's like, that's big it'll do.

And it's like, is it that big? Given the scale of the universe, is it? Because I don't think it is. Given the scale of wars we have seen with man-made weapons of like the prehistoric passed compared to 40K is it really that much right yeah yeah I mean we did we had no titans

at Stalingrad so you'd think that those by themselves would be would be pretty good at causing a significant chunk even in just friendly fire but you know but yeah population numbers again bad bad in 40K very very inconsistent

but there is another example of like so in the Star Wars universe the estimated population of Kurosan is about 3 trillion people, which is actually likely a conservative number due to the existence of orbital platforms and other factors, and the terra number in 40K has ranged substantially over the years. The closest we've got is a number that comes up in two of the Watchers of the Throne books. So one of the quotes from one of those books is, I'm alone again now. Strange to say that, surrounded as I am, by the quadrillions of the throne. world and yet it is truer now than it has ever been.

Damn. That also is, that also like gives me like the interesting idea of like if you were born and raised on Tara and it's always been sort of like that, that just, you know, it's always been flat. It's always been just this quadrillion amounts of people and you've always been surrounded by that many people. It's got to be weird when you like are just alone in like a round. in like a room.

When it's just because, yeah, because like on Terra, it's got to be just the constant buzzing of the economy, the constant buzzing of like stuff happening and people talking and ships flying by. And so it's like if you get like a moment of quiet, it's probably maddening if you were raised on Tara. The sudden silence are actually being confronted with the volume of your own thoughts for a second. Yeah.

It's got to be a big feat. For those keeping a score at home, by the way, or for those who fear maths, like I do, a quadrillion is a thousand trillion or a million billion. So it's one followed by 15 zeros. It's a big fucking number. However, at least one of the trillions on Kurosan is Stellan Scarsgard. So that heavily weighs the which over-urbanized hellscape, which would rather live on scale. Like that's firmly on the side of Corrassan, right?

You've got Stell and Scarsguard there. That's worth it. A population of quadrillions in our current continental structure falls in the realm of impossible, but possibilities are endless in 40K, which sounds like a tourism motto, but it's not. So they're endless, but not in a good way. It's probably the little tagline at the end. In their infinite and accidental wisdom, games workshops, may actually be underestimating the number

due to other descriptions of the buildings on terror. We know that hive cities on terror go very, very deep. There's various explanations that describe the depths of the hives, going deep into the crust of the earth and getting close to the mantle. And if that's true, the hive cities can extend through the continental crust of some of the former continents by about 30 miles or so.

And, as we know from our episode on a hushableness, cities a while back, they extend even further into the air with some descriptions stating they go so high up that there's a thinning of oxygen in the air. Oh, wow. So some of these hive cities, like, that's, I don't know, it's just wild to think about a building that goes into the mantle of the earth, but also reaches high enough to be like, you probably need to have some sort of breathing apparatus if you live at the top of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like basically a country's worth of people almost in one city, if not an entire world's worth of people in one city just due to how far down it goes and how far up it goes. Yeah. And when you think of just how like, I don't want to say enterprising the Imperium is, you can imagine how many people they're going to try to cram into that thing too. Oh, yeah. It is probably like wall to wall. Like you probably have a little tin can for a dorm.

And it's like, you, oh, let's stuff eight people in there, right? Yeah, literally living on top of people all day, every day. So, as Shai says, average hive city in 40K is around 10 miles high, which is twice the height of Mount Everest. Jesus. That's a big building. That's a lot of bodies to stack up. And that's just the average.

That's not like the biggest one. that's just the average. And when you think about how many of them are on terror. Yeah. Oh, man. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of building. That's a lot of materials you need, too.

Oh, hell yes. There's no way they got the materials from terror. They've been shipping that stuff in for thousands of years. That's like the Dyson sphere conundrum, right? Where it's like, oh, yeah, if we could build the Dyson sphere, oh, we'd have endless energy. And it's like, well, yeah. but just the raw materials to build the Dyson sphere is like, nope. You would literally need to harvest materials from an outside source other than Earth because we just can't do it.

Yeah. Yeah. I love Dyson spheres. They're really interesting. Yeah. They're so good. But like the size of hive cities and such, like in conjunction with like archaic environmental controls that have probably been in place on terror. since before the whole techno-barbarian era,

and the consistent import of goods and water makes those numbers a bit more reasonable, but in like a dystopian sense. It's quite clear that the number quadrillions is used as a bit more of a reference to ants. There's countless entomological references to how the number of ants on Earth is in the vicinity of quadrillions.

So using that number on the population is a reference to the ant-like existence of the humans that live in these sprawling hives on terror itself. Essentially, an uncountable population just squashed in, literally across the almost borderline the entire surface of the planet. Yeah, terror is more or less just a big ant hill, isn't it? Just a big ant colony, just on a galactic scale. It's so awful to think about being in that situation.

chicken chicken population over the years years 2018 global population 25 billion yeah that's a decent amount of chickens yeah

that's I a part of me would have assumed that that was less or it would have been like I figured it would have been a lot more than that for some reason just because they

they could still take us in a fight with that with those numbers we just slaughter so many of them like Yeah, I don't know. I guess for some reason I thought it would be more.

25 billion is a lot of chicken. A lot of chicken. Where's that anime? Where the chickens rebel. That's got to be a thing, right? Someone's got to have made that. That time I was reborn as a chicken to lead the over, to lead the rebellion on our human overlords, yeah.

Lead to poultry rebellion against humanity. Scott be in Isakai. Of course. It has to be a reborn as a thing. thing, right? I've seen the injustice through new eyes, and I will, I have vowed to take control. I will stand for this injustice no longer. Yeah, it's just chicken, Ron.

That's fair. We do already have it on a smaller scale. I'm trying to remember, does the woman get turned into a pie at the end? It's been a while since I've seen that, well. I don't know whether I've made that up or whether that's something that actually happens or whether I just felt like she deserved it. I don't know if this is heretical to our viewers, but I've never seen Chicken Run. You've never seen Chishol?

It's actually pretty good. It looks fine. Yeah, because it's fine. We're going to move on. Yeah, we're a little off the rails. True, true, true, true. As subtitled, a sincere preemptive hate letter about geography, which is one of my favorite possum subtitle so far. This may come is an absolute surprise to you.

the geography of the Imperial Palace may be, at points, fairly inaccurate. You're shocked. Yeah, well, I mean, when, you know, although I feel like 40K probably gets a lot of liberties for that, because they literally have technology that terraforms planets and changes the very makeup of the, like, the surface or the landers and stuff. So I feel like we give them a little pass if it's not the most, 100% geographically accurate shit, right? If they always get everything wrong, we can't be too mad at them.

That's, I feel like that sums it quite well, 40K, honestly. Yeah, it does. But Games Workshop, they may have been a bit too ambitious regarding the expanse of the palace, and they may have been a bit more hyperbolic than they needed to be. There are plenty of maps online that show the layout of the palace as it may be in the real world, and some of them really nail one major aspect.

of the Imperial Palace itself, the absolute astronomical size of it. So regardless of the source, the Imperial Palace is consistently stated to be continental in size and is one of two objects on Holy Terror that are visible from orbit. The other one being your mother.

That's kind of... It's continental-sized? Yes, yes. that's so shy's put in it's what the Imperial Palace would look like in real life. It's comically large. It's insane.

So I guess it's the Imperial Palace so it should be comically like large because that is, again, the hub of the Imperium. That is the most important structure in the Imperium. But I guess I was just, I don't know what I was expecting it to be, but it wasn't that.

It wasn't that size. That's crazy. Oh, it's, it's like inconceivably big. It's just, it's just so big you can't comprehend that like... That's what she said. Sorry, I had to do it. I'm so sorry. Sorry for interrupting you.

I'm so sorry. I could not. You can't, you can't sigh at the other being your mother joke. And then to her, that's what she said within like two minutes. That's not how that works. There's double standards going on there that have to be called out. I'm so sorry for for interrupting you with that. that. Oh God. So, as we can see, absolutely massive, which is also what she said, etc. However,

these maps like neglect some of the confirmed geography mentioned in the canon that's relevant to the real world locations, kind of brought up for the palace itself. However, the rule of cool dictates why these locations are picked, and there is a very easy out when it comes to locational discrepancies somewhere in the vicinity of 28,000 years of unmarked Earth history that could have resulted in a change of the geographical landscape of the planet, marked with a massive nuclear horror in the form of the techno-barbarian era, there's a whole load of opportunities to explain why the landscape doesn't actually match up in a way that's implied in the law that can kind of get Games Workshop out of the corner that they put

themselves in for their initial like rule of cool compromise from the original concept you can sort of make a any large compound it really is it's a massive every time I look at it I'm like that doesn't seem right but

a lot of it is from Games Workshop's own descriptions so you may just I like does it have like I just I just It's just so... It's too big.

It's too big. I just... Like, does it have, like, walls around it? Like, and are the walls? Like, like... Like, I just... So many questions, I can't formulate any of them. You're going on ahead again.

Yeah, we're going to talk about the walls. Am I really? It's got walls, yeah. Jesus. I'm peak performance. This is what it looks like, gentlemen. You just skipping ahead. I'm just going to shut up and let you talk. You just... You talk now.

Well, you may be asking yourself, oh, no, it's one of these. Kiryoth, you dashing cavalier, what is this original concept you speak of? Well, I don't know if that's, I think that's an improvement on Gallant Steed. I think it is. I'm being ridden somewhere. Whereas at least if I'm a cavalier, I'm doing the riding. Yeah, you're doing the cavaliering, yeah. Also what she said.

In the 90s, the original Games Workshop pitch. at least in the stores was that the golden throne was located in Nottingham, which is obviously a cheeky reference to it being the headquarters of Games Workshop. That, funnily enough, has been abandoned in favour of what's known now. I think they should have kept it, honestly. I do, actually. It should be a cheeky little like, this is where we are. So obviously, this is the hub of everything.

Yeah, should have kept it as Nottingham. Would have been way funnier. We do have a little bit of, information on like the real world locations for the palace. So there's an excerpt for, I can't remember which book this is from, but it's from Zephen is talking. So Zephan's focus drifted with uneasy wonder as he ventured through the labyrinth beneath the vast stone statues of humanity's first false gods. Over bridge spanned chasms that cradled the bones of long dead settlements. As he traversed under the wide stone archbridge, he saw the cold, sunless remains of an entire city.

Even from his maddening altitude above the grave city, he sensed movement inside the black eyes of glassless windows, the ghosts of a distant past, staring up in hollow and sullen silence at the passing of their descendants and inheritors. What was this place when it stood in the sun? He wasn't certain whether he thought the words or whispered them aloud until he received an answer. Kathmandau, a voice murmured across the vox. Zephen didn't tear his eyes from the dead city 500 metres below. Impossibly there was wind here, a soft breeze that tasted of dust. Di Clesian, he voxed back?

You asked what this place once was. It was the city Kathmandau, capital of the nation, Sagamatha, also called Nepal. It was once the roof of the world. That's very poetic, and now it lies dead, part of the palace's foundations remaining only in name in the precincts above. So there's like an actual bit of real world geography going on as to like where the Imperial Palace is in the form of Kathmandu or the Himalayan Mountains nearby. Yeah.

Love that wind that tastes like dust. Oh yeah. But it's probably dust just a sign the thousand suns nearby, isn't it? Oh, or they just got killed nearby. So we can kind of like pinpoint major references. the real world that we have when it comes to the geography of the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace on Terra and the Himalasia or Himalayan Mountains are intertwined. The mountains themselves served as the base of operations for the Emperor during the unification wars because the thinner

atmosphere prevented obstruction from the techno-barbarian warlords, allowing the Emperor to build his army in solitude. The entirety of the Himalasian mountain range still exists today due to the fact that the mountains themselves were hollowed out and are full of laboratories and other facilities that are meant to be left alone, which by itself, mad statement. Oh yeah, we just hollowed out all the mountains, make a bit more space. Obviously, we need a little more space for our laboratories and for us to do our experiments. So just, you know, just pop a little cork in there and just let all the stuff fizz out. We're good. The scale of it is what gets me every time with 40K. It's always mad. It's always just mad.

Like, Shai keeps posting these pictures of just how big the Imperial Palace would be over like real world scale and it's just, it's so silly. It's unbelievably comically large. Yeah, the brain doesn't accept it, does it? It really doesn't.

It's just like, no, it's too much. No. I just, I, even with a million planets, I'm not sure how you have the materials to build that palace. That's crazy. It's so crazy. grind. Slaves.

It's just, it's 40K. That's, they probably did. It's like, oh, we're just going to use the servitors for it. What's the servitor podcast? Don't, don't ask. That's true. They also had like 10,000 years. Also, it could have been aliens.

I mean, that's how they built the pyramids. So I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, don't come at me. Do not. It wasn't aliens, all right? It also wasn't Atlantians. it wasn't some sort of ancient civilization. They just knew how to lift big rocks or shove big rocks up shallow inclines. It's not difficult.

I don't know why I felt the need to go into that. I think it's because it annoys me enough that I get recommended conspiracy videos on YouTube every other month and I have to block them all at a second time. That's probably why. Fair. That's fair. It's a podcast about fiction, not facts. So let's not talk about boring, realistic stuff like ancient aeneas building pyramid.

it's fair, fair, let's... Look, do your own research. No, I hate it. I can't even do it as a joke. The other major factor is that the Imperial Palace itself sits close to what was once Kathmandu. And Kathmandu fits the bill for the emperor and his rule of call because of its history. It's one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on the planet and is an epicent of historic arts and culture. Now in the quote above, it stated their passing through Kathmandu while transversing towards the palace. In some sources, you can see it placed point for point on top of it,

and in others it's around that area, but you're never going to find consistency. And there probably will never be consistency as to where it's actually placed on a real world map. Yeah. Just little hints, vague hints. Yeah. Just enough to get you interested,

and then they refuse to elaborate further, as is their method for a lot of how they do. fun story stuff. Yeah, you kind of have to, but yeah, I get it. So in a final bit before we get to the palace itself, we need to talk about the Astronomicon. Despite its direct connection to the Golden Throne, it's not one and the same,

and they are not designed to be near one another. The Astronomicon is housed in the Forbidden Fortress in a hollowed out mountain within the Himalasian mountain range, and it's intentionally not close to the actual throne itself, but due to both the throne and the Astroenian, Astronomicon being part of the Himalasian mountain range, they're connected in like a continent-wide sense. It's implied that it may be Mount Everest, but that would contradict some of the law stating that it's far away from the throne. So if the throne was where Kathmandu was,

Everest would actually be far closer than they say it is. In theory, you know, the size of the imperial palace being continent-sized, we can kind of assume the imperial palace could either stretch in one of two directions. You've got the first one most likely is it's stretching outward from Kathmandu northward from the Tibetan plains to Mongolia, covering most of my pronunciation is going to be terrible. I apologize to those affected, basically anyone with ears. So Xinjiang and King Hai, which would make sense when it comes to the palace itself being surrounded by mountains in some capacity. But obviously there's a slight problem with this in that Kathmandu is in a bit of a bowl on the other side of Mount Everest and Manuslu,

so there would have to be some form of extensive terraforming without touching the mountains to justify that positioning. And the second would be in the opposite direction, cutting through India and Bangladesh and essentially building upward continental mass to Sri Lanka. However, due to the structure of some of the officially released maps, that seems less likely due to the way the mountain, seemingly wrap around in the opposite direction. I will say, going through this again, a lot of this feels like either someone in Games Workshop didn't bother to do maps properly or they just went, yeah, that's close enough,

that'll be fine. People don't need to know the details. It's just, yeah, it is about there. Yeah, sure. That's fine. I mean, the mountain seems to go the wrong way, but whatever. It's not a problem. That sort of attitude, I don't know, feels somewhat prevalent this time round.

or it's just like one of those things they need to figure out some sort of terraforming thing where it doesn't touch the mountains and she'd be like yeah that's what it was yeah they're a highly advanced technological society

of course that's what they did that thing that you just said that we didn't think about of course that's what they did no one's going to look at this in any close detail little did they know however many years

later a possum rears his head. No, I will discover the secrets. But again, the law is like widely inaccurate when it comes to this, so you just sort of have to reach some mental compromises to make it work. The written work and the maps contradict one another without some heavy alterations, and even the written works themselves are a bit all over the shot.

So, for example, in Watches of the Throne, a character standing in the Sanatorium building is able to, to see buildings, notably Lionsgate, Tower of Hedgeman and Sanctum Imperialis in a fairly close succession, which in actuality aren't really that close to one another in a visual sense. So there's a few compromises that needs to be made here and there when it comes to juxtaposing the Imperial Palace on our real world. And trust me, you can try your damned hardest to juxtapose it and do it yourself based off of the maps and references and all that fun stuff for hours on end while screaming at God while running off of three coffees and no lunch. Not that

Parsons would know what that's like. No way. Not at all. Not them. No. No. He wouldn't know. Very, very specific. So yeah, totally something that they probably just made up, right? Definitely. In the end, it can only like do so much with a connection to the real world with something as big as this. Corners will always be cut here and there. So there's no real reason to dwell on it. It doesn't really matter in the end if it doesn't 100% line up. And it's 100% not lining up. Like if that makes it literally unwatchable, a bad times for you.

Yeah. Condolences. 40K might not be the thing you're looking for. If you're looking for consistency across books. When it comes to geography, characterization, story quality, dialogue quality, a lot of stuff can be a bit hit and miss. Let's be honest. We love it.

But, you know, they also say mushrooms photosynthesize, although that is true. So, to be fair. Oh, totally. 100 million percent. You're so right, King. We know this. We know it. I don't know why it just hit me.

Like, just because, like, this is the first time I'm really seeing the scale of the Imperial Palace, but now I'm just like, wow. Because I'm assuming the Siege of Terra, they're storming the Imperial Palace. It's like, oh, storming the Imperial Palace is. a much bigger ordeal than I had first given it credit for. And it's like, oh, I, I see, because like, before I was like, oh, yeah, they're just, they're, they're going to storm the, the emperor. And there's, like, maybe like a normal sized palace or castle or something.

And they're all kind of storming it and whatever. And it's like, oh, you know, you just have like the guard, the space marines, the custodians guarding it. But now it's just like, oh, oh, now I get it. Now I get why the siege of Tara was such a big thing and why it lasted so long. And the fact that chaos got as far as they, or I guess the horace got as far as he did, is like, wow. Oh, yeah. Like, it's, you kind of envision it as storming a building.

There's like attacking, maybe a very big castle, but still just a very big castle. It's, it's the equivalent of storming a continent. Yeah. And it's like a continental invasion. Yeah. Basically, so it's, it's almost like someone going, yeah. And then they just, they invaded America. It's like, oh, okay.

What do you mean? How? What do you mean? Have you seen how big that is? What are you talking about? Where's the front door of invasion to America? They went across the drawbridge and they invaded America. It's like, what's that mean?

Oh, my God. Your compound is America? Yes. It's wild how big they've made it. Like, ultimately. If you kind of take the square mileage of the entire Himalayan mountain range, along with King High Tibet, Shanzhang, and, like, all of those together, the size of the palace, it's in the vicinity of like 1.8 million square miles.

Like, even if you're being generous, that is insane for what is ostensibly treated as a structure. It's the palace. It's like 1.8 million square miles. And it's like, yeah, that's where the emperor lives. What? The scale just keeps throwing me for a loop at just how insanely, impossibly large this palace is. It keeps hitting me in waves throughout the episode of like, oh, wow.

And sudden realizations of, oh, oh, oh, the siege of terror. Oh. And yeah. Yeah, it's like you get used to it. And then you just get reminded again of what it actually is versus. what it sounds like, because it sounds like a big building, and what it is is a continent.

It's just like, the two don't normally slot together like that. So, the Imperial Palace, like, again, exceptionally big. Consistently, you see the description of road paths, other aspects being referred to in miles or kilometres.

Its construction overseen famously, not by Peter Turbo, took hundreds of years to complete. The boundaries of the Palace are marked by walls. The walls are utterly gigantic. In some places, the height of these walls exceed 1,100 meters. So for context, the tallest building in the world currently is the Birch Kalifa, which is 828 meters tall. So again, the scale is unimaginable. It's just, it's too much.

I like how you said the height of the tallest building And my only true reaction was just Oh Yeah Those are big walls And like I guess it has to be Because it's the imperial palace and everything But geez

It's just the scale is so off It's so off Like that picture The view from the walls I mean It's just insane It's just like looking down on...

You could say to me, oh, well, they're looking down from a space station and I'd be like, yeah, cool. But no, it's just the wall. It's just the wall. Look at how small angron. Tiny.

Looks like a little baby. I can pick him up with my little finger. Another context, by the way, since Americans will literally do anything to avoid the metric system is that the Navy pier in Chicago is about a thousand meters long and

especially for you D.K. 1,100 meters is about 20 times the height of Wall Maria in Attack on Titan. So you've got a good reference point there. I mean that's wow, that is actually like a really big wall.

The walls of Attack on Titan seem like insanely big. And then it's like, oh yeah, it's 20 times the height. It was Spoiler alert, the walls in attack on Titan have Titans in them. Collarsals, aren't they? Am I remembering that right? Yeah.

And it's twice that? 20 times that. Oh, oh. Yeah, no, not twice. I thought you said twice for some of a, oh, oh, all right. So basically take a colossal and then stack him up 20 times, and you've got the height of a wall around the Imperial Palace. That's so stupid.

typically large. This is something about like it's like it's getting silly. It's very fun but it also feels a little silly. And don't forget, this is not just around the imperial palace or like where the emperor's throne

is, this is around the whole continental sized palace, right? This is the outer perimeter of the continent has these over 20 story tall wall marias. Yep. Yep, it's making the iron wall of, like, the iron sultanate in the Trench Crusade seem positively sensible.

Like, it makes that seem incredibly realistic by contrast. Yeah, it's how cute fence you've got there. Have you considered looking at... That's a wall built by God to keep hell out. Look at their cute playpen. Oh, God. Jesus. Thickness-wise as well, the walls are estimated to be 30 metres wide, which for real-world comparison is the length of the blue whale.

So pretty thick. There's some chunky walls, all right. They've got multiple layers. Housed between the walls are barracks, trains, hangers. People live full lives and die within the boundaries of these walls. There are like heavily armed defensive towers located. every 100 meters along the walls. The main section of this wall is known as the eternity wall,

and I'm assuming it for good reason. Probably because if you stand at the base of it and look up, it just looks like it goes into space and continues on forever. I was going to say, if you're at the base, if you're at the bottom, you probably cannot see the top or even close. You probably can't even see the halfway mark. It's probably just there's clouds. Yeah.

There's just clouds in the way. Yeah. Clouds have formed in front of it and behind it. They're permanently damp from all the condensation of just clouds colliding with the top of the wall and then just trickling down. Notice the cloud layer. Oh, wow. That's so ridiculous. That's absolutely.

It's so stupid. I love it, but it's like good grief. I love that it goes into the into the, into the stratosphere, into the mesosphere, and just a little bit above that with the core. Yeah, yeah, in subtle of it. That's crazy. God, I just, I just, it's, it's, that's, that's, that is so 40K though. That is such a 40K piece of art and such 40K scale. Too big for, for conventional, for conventional use.

Everything's got to be turned up to 11. and then like maybe another 10% on top of that. Otherwise, what's the point? And then just keep turning the dial until it spins off the damn oven. Yeah. We've got notable guard regiments that are dedicated to the walls of the Imperial Palace. We've got the Lucifer Blacks and the Palatine Sentinels. So these guardsmen are essentially the Praetorian Guard of the Astromilitarum.

The Palatine Sentinels are robed in white with gold, while the Lucifer blacks tend to be like donned in black and gold. And as they're tasked with holding the walls, they are both armed with some of the most advanced weaponry you can find in the Imperium. And in some cases, they will also be sent out as agents by the custodies themselves. So they are pretty hardcore, as you would need to be,

to be in charge of the defense of the Imperial Palace on terror. Yeah, you want the baddest guys on the on duty to guard Terra, or the Imperial Palace, yeah. The walls of the palace are marked notably by like major gates as opposed to other major structures. So the major gates include the Helios gate, the Idicus gate and the Kashito gate. There was another gate of note, which was the Annapurna Gate, but that was disassembled by Rogeldawn as a mean to consolidate entries during the siege of terror. One of the more interesting things about the outside of the palace walls is that there's actual unoccupied space there. So there are laws that were written to prevent the construction of buildings too close to the walls.

That seems to be a multifaceted thing. Obviously, structures close to the palace walls would mean there's a bigger risk of ease of access for nefarious actors if they decide to attack. Abertone is notably good at parkour. That really got me. This goes in hand with the second aspect due to the mountains that are a bit further out from the palace wall. the open fields around the palace allows for a much easier time shooting downward on any forces that may be attempting to raid the palace. So unless places to hide combined with a natural gully makes it super defensible. There's just nowhere that you can go to get away from defensive fire.

I love that shy posted a map and it's just called the Mercury Exultant Kill Zone. Nice. That is a great name. Nice, because that's what it is. Like, if you're looking down from the walls, there's no place to hide. You aren't absolutely going to get gunned down and destroyed. You have no shot if you're coming from there. It is aptly named.

Let's talk about the outer palace. Okay. The outer palace, exceptionally urbanized area within the safety of the walls. So in some ways, it might be more urbanized than the rest of terror itself. And that's where the work of the Imperium is done en masse, is it's the centralized hub of the administration and the home of the high lords of terror, although their work does take them within the inner palace to the great chamber. Due to its direct connection to the administratum itself, the primary responsibility of inner defence is conducted by the Adeptus Arbetees. Again,

the custodians are busy within the inner palace, so the protection of all the government buildings, it's up to those guys. And they are very active. The vast majority of the citizens within the Outer Palace are just clamoring for jobs within the administratum in the hopes that it will help them make an upward step out of their miserable lives in the deep slums of terror and violent riots within the employment lines is exceptionally common. That sounds about right for 40K. Yep. Pretty standard. Everyday stuff. Yeah, I was going to say, no need to elaborate. I can already picture it. Yep, yep, yep, yep. One of the most important fixtures in the Outer Palace is the Lionsgate Spaceport, which is the most significant transportation facility on Terra, it expands into the upper

atmosphere and has an immense number of docking yards. Contained with it are space elevators that can go so high they can receive and dock a Gloriana class battleship. As for actual numbers size-wise, the numbers thrown around in the first wall. If there to be believed, the Lionsgate Spaceport is somewhere in the vicinity of 47 miles tall, which atmospherically puts it in the mesosphere higher up than where weather balloons go. And it's also described as half as wide as it is tall, which, again, taking it seriously, puts it just about 23 miles wide. Oh, that is, that's 40K scale, everyone.

We love it. Again, it's just inconceivable. connected to the line. Connected to this is the lion's gate, which serves as a major gate at least the inner palace, but it's also surrounded by more gates as a means of defence. So you've got the anterior gate that separates the anterior region of the outer palace with the lion's gate. The colossi gate, great name, guards the lion's gate from the north, and is complemented by the Aurum guard, the Marmacks, and the Orum Bar.

and the main highway that brings you from the Lionsgate to the inner palace is the Via Principer, and you'll also find the Grand Processional of the Eternal's within sight of the Lionsgate. That is a 300-meter-wide causeway that's used for military parades, including Titans and other massive armaments. Well, I guess if you're going to have parades that feature Titans and stuff, you've got to have a big gate, right? You kind of got to have an obsessively large way for them to get through. I just love it.

If we're going to have a parade, we might as well have one that has Titans, right? Of course. We definitely want to show those off. We want to get them out as often as possible. Man, every time I think of like a parade or like a military exercise in 40K, I imagine like it's that picture with like a big like titan with, like, Titan with the Citadel on its back and all of the banners and lots of little Titans walking with it. And that's that's the one shot.

That's the exact picture I imagine. And to get that, yeah. I love that picture because it really highlights just how insane and stupid the guns are on those Titans. Absolutely. You could house like a small town's population in the barrels of that gun. And then they'd be perfectly comfortable. I mean, look at this state.

Oh, my God. It's so, it's so overblown in the best way. Yeah, that's just so crazy. It's crazy that the, what's the large titan's name again? Is it the emperor class or something? The Imperial Titan. Imperator. It's a giganto one.

I love how that thing's upper buildings are just about as high as the the walls. Yeah. Yeah. Which is insane to think about that it's that inconceivably big and the guns are like that size on it. Those things are so insane. What's that what's that mean?

If you won't go to church, church will come to you. Is that hell? Yeah. You don't want that church showing up at your door. Oh, I've gone to talk to you about, please don't, please leave, please stop. that thing shows up right in front of your face do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior sure yes I'll sit here and you can just

shout at me so loud my house blows away that's totally fine the cathedral with guns knocked at your door so outside of the Lionsgate and the spaceport there are there's like other noticeable structures and places within the outer palace there's the petitioner's city

which is the home of the administratum and the city of sight is the central hub for the adeptus Astra Telepathica within the city of site you'll find the obsidian keep which is their dedicated headquarters

again solid name and the conduit which is the central communication hub the thing is this is where it's like the Imperial Palace is a very normal name but then within those

you've got the city of sight the obsidian keep The conduit, petitioner's city. That by itself has named locations, including the crow's court, the petitioner's arch, and the temple of woe? It sounds awesome. Don't want to have to go to an afternoon in the temple of woe. I don't want to want to. This sounds a great place for parties.

Sounds brilliant. Sounds a great place to wake up after a hangover. It's like, oh, what a party. Where am I? The temple. of woe, yeah, that tracks. Yeah, that's a... The fortress of the

Lord Commander Militin of the Imperial Guard is also located in the Outer Palace and it's a remarkably sturdy structure designed to be like a field bunker. So it's built to withstand orbital bombardment and other attacks as well. And the 8th edition Codex of the Custodes actually provides a map

that points out certain areas and regions within the Outer Palace that are like major sprawls as well, including the sprawl Magnifican, the Victoris Absolute, and the Nexus Administrator. Again, great names. On the very edge of the Outer Palace

is the Vigilarsum orbital battery, which you can probably guess what that does. It charges things with its big battery, right? It just charges a big Game Boy. Oh, no. The ultimate... The ultimate power. power bank.

Exactly. Your phone will never run out with the vigilarsum orbital battery. So you're all stupid. We're also going to be... That's going to become a T-shirt by the end of this. There's also the avenue of sacrifice, which is where the noble houses of terror go to present their infants to the custodies in the hopes that they're, they'll be accepted into the ranks,

which is, I really like that. I like that. There's a whole, there's like a specific, a specific location, the avenue of sacrifice. It's just, it's all containing the name, gives it like great ceremony and stuff.

Love that. Hell yeah. There are a couple of structures mentioned that were likely a part of the Outer Palace that aren't explicitly stated as being there. There's the Stereran Vigil, which is a gigantic tower, that apparently goes so high,

that you need a rebreather to ascend it, and the Heliocygon Tower, which is another massive tower, that served as both an observational terrace and a hub for missile launches to intercept incoming attacks. And you've also got the Avenue of Eternal Remembrance, which is an over 60 mile long causeway that was built using the remains of the Chaos Titans that were involved in the siege.

It was built in honour of Sanguinius And it leads directly to the eternity gate That's pretty cool I do like that A 60 mile long road built using You know enemy titans Endymie Titans yeah Badass absolutely amazing

We also got the inner palace And the inner palace Bit of a different atmosphere Within the inner palace walls So it's separated by the endometus bastelon formerly the ultimate wall and the ultimate gate. The ultimate gate feels like one of the laziest names they've ever given to anything, but okay. Especially when you've got temples of woe, avenues of remembrance, and oh, what's that wall?

That's just the ultimate one. Really? Yeah. And the Starrarum Vigil. What's that? That's the Starrarum Vigil. Oh, what's that over there? Oh, well, that would be the vigil-artan orbital battery.

Next to it, you've got the sprawl Magnificant. Oh, and what's that over there? That's the ultimate gate. Oh, okay. A bit of a letdown, yeah. That is a, that is a 459 on a Friday name, if ever I've heard one. Yeah, totally. Guys, we got a clock out, but we need one more name.

Ultimate game, ultimate wall. Done. Let's go. Yeah. It's a pub. Yeah, let's go. Totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. Funnily enough, the inner palace holds some of the most significant buildings and relics within the Imperium.

As mentioned earlier, the great chamber of the Sanatorium Imperialis is here, which is a massive parliamentary building where the High Lords meet. And there's three other major structures of note, which include the Chamber of Heroes, the Tower of Heroes, and the Tower of Hegemon. Now, Shai's put a map in. I want to quickly look.

I'm assuming the Tower of Heroes is connected to the Chamber of Heroes. Or is that a dual naming policy for things on the opposite side? I don't know. But again... Also, Shai, are these official from my... like codex or something because like they're really good like these are really really nice like depictions of the imperial palace and like the border with like the burning towers and and everything looks really really good like i don't know where these came from but they're so cool yeah

oh blackstone prison you don't want to go there no i don't i assume you don't want to go to any imperial prison you're not going to get treated well Or you're just going to, oh, yeah, we didn't, we didn't try you, but you're a servitor now. It turns out who's innocent, but no one cared, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, we couldn't process it in time, so. No one cared because we also turned his family into servitors for being related to. Fair, very imperium-coded. Ah, yeah, they are, they are official.

I thought, like, there are things where I've seen them before, but never known where they came from. They're really good, those maps. They look great. Agreed. The Chamber of Heroes houses the Gothic monolith. That was my first band name. A monument which was placed there after the Gothic War. That's not true, but I wish it was. The Tower of Heroes houses the Bell of Lost Souls, which is rung whenever a great hero of the Imperium falls, which means it is ringing constantly, I assume, and people living near it are absolutely sick of the noise. I was going to say with the scope of the Imperium, that is a never-ending bell ringing, right? I'm guessing it's just 24-7. There's some poor sod pulling on the rope down at the bottom of the tower.

Like, please, can I have a day off? It's been 55 years, and I'm 55 years old, and I've been doing this since the day I was born. Please let me rest. The Tower of Hedgeman is the command center of the adeptus custodies. So it serves as the host for all their data feed, security systems, all the monitors installed for the entirety of the Imperial Palace. It also serves as the home for the custodies serves, and it also has a separate annex entirely encased in Blackstone used as a prison for Cycas. There's another notable custodies section in the inner palace, which is the sanctum of a thousand eyes, again hardcore, which serves as the bastion of the dread host custodies. It's an incredibly illuminated bastion, so much so that legend states that the structures in the battlements themselves,

perceive the disloyalty of anyone that enters. Wow. You better be. That's a lie. Yeah, you better be pure of heart as you're holding in there. Even a speck of disloyalty in your heart because, oh, man, you unwittingly turned my best friend into a servitor, and I feel a little disloyalty over that's like the I sees. If you've ever hit your hand with a hammer in the servitoral factory and gone, ah, for emperor's sake, you can't go near there. That's it. They'll know. They'll know you said it and then you're in real trouble.

Oh, yeah. The Imperial Fists have got two relics in the inner palace that are considered to be holy. There's the column of glory. That's what she said. Hey! Which is a half kilometer high column embedded with the armour of Imperial Fists who gave their lives during the heresy. And the pillar of bone, which is also what, no, which is the final reference. of their former fortress monastery. And, of course, there's the Bab Bastion within the inner palace, which formerly served as Rogal Dawn's Command Center.

But that kind of fell apart, which we'll get into that and a few other lost places in a bit. Previously, we've talked about the dark cells, which host all the true horrors of the Imperium. This is located here too. Another notable location is the Library Sanctus, which is the hub of some of the darkest knowledge of the Imperium, including information on the men of iron,

and the true nature of the Imga Monolith. I've never heard of that before. The Inga Monolith? What's the Imga Monolith? I know about the men of iron, but I don't know about the... We've talked about it or something, isn't it? And then it's going to be like, oh, we should know this.

Eh, I don't think anybody ever says that to me. Oh, do you can't... Well, no, I guess they say that to me a lot. I was going to say, I'm pretty sure they say that to you every single week, don't they? You should know this. I was going to say, I think we went over that at the beginning of the episode, right? compound, D.K., it's a power. The voice is getting worse every time as well.

Mysterious Necron construct located in the Attila system of the Ultimicamentum. Oh, okay, interesting. Well, now I want to go away and look at that. But I won't. finish doing this first. Yeah, fair, fair. There are a few other places that, though not explicitly stated as being in the inner palace, are very likely within the inner palace.

So there's the Hall of Glories, which served as the War Council Chamber for Rogaldorn on the eve of the Battle of Terror. All the above aside, the most predominant fixture is the Eternity Gate, and everything tied directly into it. The Eternity Gate is a massive gate made out of Adamantium, protected further by reinforced Delphic battlement and features the two other guardians of the emperor

besides the custodies themselves. There are two Ligio Ignatum Titans that stand in eternal vigil on either side of the gate. And leading up to the gate are great halls primarily known as the Hall of Heroes

with banners of every Loyalist Guard regiment and Space Marine chapter and the lead up to the gate is known as the Grand Processional. that is absolutely insane. That artwork is crazy. Yeah. I mean, considering Warhound Titans on either side of that gate.

Yeah. And then you've got all of that up the top. That's got to be the easiest job ever, right? Because there's nobody that's going to be trying anything. I mean, right, with those two just, like, even if those two weren't at the bitch, like, look, like, I don't, how do you even open that gate? you gotta be really got to be really on your A game you need to have

the amount of power needed to just open the gate even if it's just you push a button and the gate opens like oh my God yeah that's got it's got to be a lot of like

I don't know generators going to achieve that also like when you look at the size of when we you know that it's Warhound Titans but then look at the just the size of the room yeah the carvings

the color The scale is, is, is, is, and then you look at like just the normal people that are walking, like, up the stairs. Like, this is a, I just, I, it's so larger than life. Yeah. I mean, that is like existential dread, the root. Yeah. You'd get in there and just, and just immediately feel like the smallest thing in the universe and just be like, I, what's the point? I felt like if I walked in, if I was walking up the stairs, it would be like, it's like almost inconceive, but also I feel like I'd just be like completely awestruck.

Like yeah, I'd feel very small, but it's like, whoa. Like I can't even see the top of the gate. Let alone. Yeah, that's true. But it would, it would really kind of highlight just how, just how important everything around you is. Yeah. Everything in there would just seem like the most important thing in the universe just for the sake of the scale of it. Because why would it be this big if it wasn't?

Yeah. Crazy. There's a lot of gold, too, for that door. Oh, God, yeah. That's an entire planet's worth of gold that is just to look, like, there to look impressive, pretty much. I was going to say several planets worth of gold probably. Yeah. You're probably right.

We can't talk about the Imperial Palace though without talking about the dead guy's chair. So the Sanctum Imperium is lovingly described. The Sanctum Imperium is at the heart of the inner palace and obviously is the eternal home of the Emperor of Mankind. The centralised area of the sanctum is known as the Hall of Windows and it branches off into various other halls. The Hall of Victories is something discussed more in depth in the Magador episode, but it serves as a kind of beholden. my stuff hall for the history of mankind. Another interesting one is the Hall of Leng, and that served as the residence of the Emperor himself

and was the home of both a personal library and a dimensional distortion where the Emperor was able to explore the angles of space and time itself. That or a carbon monoxide leak. Jury's out, could be either. But the main feature is the Imperial Dungeon, which serves as the home for the Golden Throne as well as the Aereopia Junction

which has an incredible array of mechanisms that allow the throne to function and I've never been able to say that word properly Aureopia I always get it wrong I close. I think I was I reckon I was close enough for that one I will accept no criticism for that I didn't even bad an eye I was like oh yeah you said it right sure sure

that's probably correct oh it's so good as well Oh yeah I I don't know what I was expecting the throne to look like I guess I always just I always assumed it was just kind of a like a big actual like gold and like like like a throne you know well there's that iconic piece of art where it's just like a wizened half rotted corpse on a throne with a bunch of cable sticking out of it which I think is still my favorite one it doesn't it doesn't like necessarily serve the the scale of the imperium or of like the importance of the throne itself.

But in terms of how gnarly it is, and in terms of like the idea of this, like essentially dead dude just trapped in this one place being kept barely hanging on for eternity, it's very, very good. Yeah, but like this art has him like a top up pyramid and it's like, whoa. That, honestly, it's, I almost don't like that one

because like it reads very thousand sons to me. Maybe that's just because I'm thousand sons pilled and it's like, oh yeah, Egyptian coated because it kind of looks like a pyramid. And so my brain is very one track right now. But it kind of like, it almost looks too, two pyramid coated. That piece does anyway. He also looks like he's massive.

Yeah. In that art. Like he is beyond dreadnought sized. Like that's got to be borderline. What, like if those are people on this. depths. Is that what? Close to, close to maybe not Imperial Knight, but not that far off. It's absolutely gigantic. I really like that one, Shai, actually. If that's the, yeah, that's really nice. That's more along the lines of what I was expecting. Like, when I think of, like, Biggie

and, like, what it looks like walking up to his, like, what's left of him anyway, I kind of do imagine something along those lines. This is another thing where it's like the inconsistency is crazy. There's, you know, there is official art of the emperor on the golden throne. And none of it really matches each other. It's just varying degrees of his a bunch of steps and a big throne. And then everything else could be totally different. Like where the cables are situated, how he looks.

Like it's all, it's all very open to interpretation. But I guess in a way, I don't know. Having said that in a critical way, I kind of like it because part of the whole thing with the emperor was that no one really saw him. Like, he, he, he wasn't really one dude, was he? He never really presented himself as one dude to everybody. Yeah. For some reason, also, like, whenever I think of, like, Big E and, like, what's left of him, like, I know there's all this art, but there's a part of me that always kind of imagined. Have you ever seen the movie Akira?

This is going to be kind of a weeb reference. Yes. You know, when they go into, like, that. subterranean area and they all got to bundle up and like this oh yeah we're finally going to see akira and it's just like it's just vials and big jars that are just filled with like these small remnants of what's left of what they experimented on with akira and i'm always just like that i i always kind of felt like that's very big e-coded where it's like there's not a whole lot left a lot of mythology to it oh they were so powerful they were so strong and it's like oh this is all

that's left of him right a lot of it is like with the emperor like maybe just illusion it's just he's made to look grand and imposing and as though he's actually controlling things whereas really there's not much left and it's almost like when you've got like open casket funerals and someone is made to look as good as they can look and there's a whole art to it but at the end of the day there's not actually that much of them left Mm-hmm. Exactly. Oh, look at that.

The oldest one, John Blanche himself, said that this emperor is fake and the real one is hidden in the lab and Golden Throne is Morvalized Support System that looks like this. Oh, that's great. Wow, that is very good. That is so John Blanche.

Well, of course it's John Blanchecoded his goddamn art. But that's so classic 40K. I do kind of love that, actually. Yeah. It's very great. rim, very morbid, very just on the nose. I do kind of love that. There's no, there's no, like, there's no honor or glory to it.

I think that's what I like about that one and the one where it's like the, the wise and the skeleton on the throne. You're missing, you're missing all of the grandiose side of things. It's, it's just, like, cold, horrible eternity. Whereas with some of the other ones, it's like, look at this godlike figure seated upon their god. Godlike throne. And then with those two, it's just, this sucks. This is fucking awful. And it's never going to end.

It's like, this is your eternity, biggie. Yeah, I think that's probably why I like those so much. They're just horrible. Yeah. Okay. Instead of ending it here, it'll be interesting to end things with the things that have either changed in the Imperial Palace or the things that have been destroyed. Because there's been quite a lot of changes, especially since the... the Horus Heresy. So the Horus Heresy, funnily enough, undid quite a, quite a few things that the

emperor had in mind when it came to the palace and the surrounding area. The emperor had grand plans for the natural aspect of the world around and within the palace, be it hubris or actual well-thought-out planning. The emperor wanted to reintroduce water and animals to the palace area. Famously, he had gardens. So there's the inner gardens of the sanctum imperialis. But those plans were neglected in favor of war-based preparations, and they never got a look in after the war because there were bigger things to worry about than getting some trees and a few deer in. It's a cool idea, though, to actually bring a touch of, like, Earth and humanity back to, like, just, you know, just constant industrial grind of tears.

It's like, oh, there is actually still some of Earth, foliage, nature. that's being brought back. That is kind of a neat idea to have in just the biggest industrial hub that's ever existed that's grind the rest of the earth into like cement and concrete and buildings. I do like that idea. A bit of nature amongst all of the concrete when there's no other nature on the planet basically. No water, no trees, no greenery. Maybe a little bit here and there, but like it's just strictly ornamental and it's like one tree for every two. hive cities or whatever, actually having something natural. It's like such a show of strength as well, an influence.

Look what we can have in this industrial hellscape. Yeah. In the outer palace, the Palatine Ark was the home of high-ranking administratum officials. However, after suffering major attached on the death guard during the siege, the area was turned into a toxic wasteland. You're shocked, I can tell, now referred to. as Poxville, which, what a name. Outside of the Lionsgate spaceport stood the namesake of the spaceport,

two gigantic ornate lion statues. They were removed by Rogeldawn to make way for more armaments for the palace. And another thing that was removed by Rogel Dawn was the orbital plates that once surrounded terror. So the plates served as floating cities around the planet, which allowed the more even spread of the population. However, Dorn just assumed that these would be extremely easy targets for Horace and could result in the immediate collapse and destruction of massive swathes of the population. So they were disassembled quite rapidly.

That is such a good bit of art showing that in the background. Yeah, it really is. Also, again, just the scale is just insane. I'm like, I've seen pictures like this before, but and every time it's just like, God, it is, it is just such a, it's, I don't even have the words to describe what, it's, it's just crazy. It's just insane. How, how wide scale this place is. Yeah. I mean, you think about the chances of one of those just being dropped out of orbit straight down onto the planet. Yeah, he predicted Cadia, pretty much. Yeah, essentially, because that's what would have happened. It'd essentially be like a blackstone, well, not quite a blackstone fortress, but it'd be pretty devastating to have that taken over and just collapsed onto your, you know, city.

And with multiple of them as well. Oh, bad. Bad times. Yeah. In the inner palace, you got the Principa Collegiate, which was a data archive that allowed for the re-educating of ambassadors from worlds that were brought into the fold during the Crusoe. aid. So outside of re-education, it was also an exceptionally well-kept library with information of the entire history of terror. However, that was torn to shreds by the Empress Children. Another inner palace location that was left derelict was the shrouds, which served as the

office for the assassinorum until Dawn showed up one day and revealed Malcador as the master of assassins in a Scooby-Doo-like fashion. I vaguely remember us talking about that at some point. I don't remember when, but that sounds very familiar. Excellent mental image. Pulling the hood back. It was you all along. It's been downcador all along.

And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids and your dog. And your handlebar mustache. So early we also mentioned the Bab Bastion. that fell to the sons of Horus, also derelict. However, despite this, there is one little bit of it that was protected. So there is the garden-like sanctuary of Satya, which is its oldest part. It's one of the areas that the emperor explicitly demanded was remained, like, just don't touch it. Do not touch this during the fortification of the palace.

So there was that area, there was also the Hall of Victories, and the Great Chamber of the Senatorum Imperialis. those spots Rogaldorn was not allowed to alter when he was reinforcing the planet ready for the invasion of the traitor forces. Okay, okay. And there's also the Cushmenden Archive, which was a library and a museum of relics and histories from worlds that did not survive the old night.

And it was a hub of the histories of extinct branches of humanity. That as well was completely destroyed by the siege, plus the hanging gardens of the Catabat Terrace were also destroyed and it's safe to assume that the open-air garden that was known as Sigelite's retreat is probably abandoned as well. Yeah, probably. And there's still more. Looking at that picture shy posted with the orbital plate,

I wonder how long that took to like disassemble. Because we kind of glossed over that but it's like, oh yeah, he very quickly disassembled. them. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's another, like, that's another, like, that's another, like, continental-sized plate up there. I feel like, were they towed out of orbit into space and then dismantled? For some reason, I've, that's, I've got that in my head, but I don't know if that's correct or whether I've just imagined that. It's true. With, with enough slaves and servitors, anything is possible. True. I guess, yeah. It's just one of the, it's just one of the

those things where it's like, oh, yeah, the traitors are coming. The traitors are coming. And Dorn's like, oh, wow, those plates up there could be a thing. Let me just go real quick, just, you know, unbuild it. Like, it's Legos. It's like, that would take like a lifetime. But how? Exactly, right?

It's crazy. But I could see if they were just like, oh, yeah, let's just like space tow them out with like a battle barge. Like several battle barges and we'll just tow them, you know, to a safe distance away. and then honestly, once it's evacuated, you could probably just blow it out of the air. Just use your bomb arges and just blow that thing sky high.

Set off a bunch of nukes on board, get rid of it. Or cover it in guns. Yeah. That's what I'd do. But I'm not Rogal Dawn. The Sanctum Imperialis also home to loads of abandoned or destroyed locations.

So the status of the inner gardens are unknown, probably abandoned. The Great Observatory, a huge dome, made out of marble adorned with the images of long-forgotten astronomers, that served as a way to observe distant galaxies. That was also shattered during the siege. And lastly, we have the villas by the lake, which was a gigantic subterranean cavern that held a massive lake. And around a circular plaza were 20 villas, which was where the primarks were to be raised by the emperor. But they got

scattered and so it's been abandoned for a long, long time. Bad for the Imperium, good for my, the Primarchs go to summer camp fan fiction. Yeah, I was going to say, so that's been abandoned just forever. Like, I'm assuming what, it got built before Biggie's big plans for it. He was planning to raise them there and then it was just like, yeah, this is never getting used because they got immediately scattered. Yeah. And presumably like not destroyed, just left, which in a way is way sadder. Yeah, because all the things you hope that the prime marks

would have become is there. And it's like, oh yeah, by the way. You've got this lasting reminder of what should have been and what he really wanted and it never came to pass. Weirdly, actually, I say not weirdly, probably just a case of them being quite consistent in their writing and their characterization.

It's fun that there's that parallel between the emperor and Gilemon, because in the unremembered empire, in that book, when Gilliman is talking to, was it the lion he was showing the room to, or Sanguinius? Or was it both? I can't remember. But, like, Gilliman had a room built on Ultramar where it was just a big roundtable, and there were 20 chairs so that when everything was done and when the crusade was over, there would be a place for the primarks to sit and discuss the matters of the Imperium. And there were chairs for all

of them, including the two who were lost. And each chair had like the banner of their legion draped over it with like blank banners on the ones that had gone missing or had been destroyed. I think, I think they had the banners as well. But it was one of those. was sort of really nice things of, oh yeah, some of them really were looking to a future of peace and prosperity. And even if it was only Gilliman who really thought they'd get there, he actually really thought they'd get there.

And there would be a point where they'd actually be able to interact as not conquerors but statesmen. And the fact that the emperor had the villas by the lake where he wanted to raise them, that's a fun little parallel. Yeah, yeah. I mean, pre-heresy, I could see how Gilliman would have that, right? Because pre-heresy, they were all pretty tight-knit battle brothers. Obviously, post-heresy, that is an absolutely stupid thing to build, right? But like, pre-heresy, it's like, you know, I get it. I could see specifically like Gilliman, I could see building something like that and not, and it not being too far-fetched. It's like, oh, yeah, we finally conquered everything. Now let's all sit down with a nice cup of cocoa and figure out where we go from here. It's got a nice, like, air of optimism about it, which is very at odds with how everything went, because it all was horrible. It all fell apart.

I still think it fell apart because, like, Horace was just crushed by the weight of being Warmaster and needing to feel like he was, every step had to be perfect. If you ever made a mistake, nope, no, you didn't. No, you can't. You can't make mistakes. I feel like if Horace wasn't turned Warmaster, everything would have turned out a lot different. The pressure of being told to usher in all of humanity into the Imperium while also being told except if it's not quite the right type of humanity, even if they're peaceful, we should kill them all. Yeah.

That's a lot of moral quandary to deal with. Yeah. If even Horace couldn't carry that burden, I don't think anybody should have really been Warmaster. He carried it about as well as you could have, and it still broke him. All around a bad time. Yeah. But that is the Imperial Palace. It's massive.

It's comedically large. And it's full of, full of tragedy, the crushed masses of people desperate to get a job that means they no longer live in the same room as 90 other people at any given time. And isn't that like the perfect way to describe just, it is the perfect like depiction of the Imperium? Because that's just what it is, right?

Oh yeah, 100%. Possibly large. They're miserable. It's a miserable industrial empire, but it literally will keep churning. It will churn you into dust. It will use your bones as part of the cog and your blood as a way to lube the cogs. And it's like, yep, that's the Imperium. And it's full of dark secrets and forgotten technologies and things that were built in the hope of a bright and grand future that never came to pass.

Ah, 40K. Yay! We love you. And speaking of dark futures where there's no hope left, what's this week's poster, Shy? That wasn't a good, that wasn't a good segue. There was something in there that I was going for, and I just couldn't quite maneuver it in a way that made sense.

Speaking of things that are inconceivably well crafted, shy, what's the poster? Speaking of building an empire on the bones of. of your followers. What's this week's poster? Oh, no. Imagine if it was just a bright, cheery poster. It was just like sunshine, rainbows and, you know.

Just says be positive on it and that's the whole thing. Except it's be positive and it's just like it's, it's the blood being drained from someone in the big me. Wait, he's be positive. You're almost correct. Well, I know what the poster is. So you're not,

there it is. There's a new poster. It is, it is shy just hang in there, baby. Hang in there. And, um, oh, I'm loving the born in time for Gathrimmon.

Yes, dude, there are so many cool little references on this poster. Even though, even though shy is as usual looking, absolutely, you know, tired out of her mind. She's got a smoke. She's got the booze very classically.

But there's just so many references to. Yeah, that's great. I was telling shy, I thought this was going to be a very well-doing poster just because there's so many, like, cool little references just all over, whether it's the in time for Gathriman, the Doge Van Dyer, our faces on the dartboard,

You know, I think it's a pretty great poster. I'm not sure when it's going to be up, but in the description there is a link to the store. I think it's shop.orgate 8.com. I know we've been saying orchid8.com. It probably redirects there anyway. But be sure to check the description for the link. And it's a great poster.

I think it's lovely. I love all the little references in it. Shai looks about as fatigued as I usually think she does. Shai said also Kyriev is not on this. but I have a Kiriath theme sticker coming soon. Let's go! Oh, awesome. I'll be honest.

I was just happy with the boarding time for Gath Rimen because that's one of my... I still occasionally remember that and it makes me laugh every time I do. Boyin in time for Gathe. Man, honestly, if only we could actually make that a sticker. Oh, man, can you look like... Oh, that'd be so good.

If we could actually make... Anyway, but yeah, that's the poster. You should check it out. Any parting words, Karioth? Anything else we need to hit up shy, by the way, before we close it out? Don't move to the Imperial Palace on Terror. That's pretty much it. And buy the poster.

Those two things. Hell yeah. And hey, while you're over at the shop, don't just buy the poster. Buy some dice. Buy a sweatshirt. Buy an objective marker. Buy a hoodie. Buy a sticker.

Buy all the things. We love capitalism. See you next week, everyone. Thank you.