Adeptus Ridiculous - THE WEIRDEST OFFICIAL LORE OF THE OLD 40k | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousWarhammer 40k became close to what we recognize it is today around third edition - before that, it was The Rogue Trader: Warhammer 40000, a pulp fiction mishmash of Judge Dredd, Alien, and Dune... Even more than it is today. In this episode we return to the olden days and take a look at the world of 40k where space marines all behave like Night Lords, Primarch is just a title you can be promoted to, Emperor is some normal guy who was born to human parents and was afraid of dying so he put himself into the jar,  Roboute Guilliman is a pile of dusty bones on a shelf in Macragge, Orks get laid, and Rogal Dorn poops on the floor. Left without much options we also touch on the scariest of topic all: Ian Watson.Support the show

episode of the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. My name is D.K.D. Montes. His name is Bricky. You know why you're here. And if you like why you're here and maybe you want to support that you're here, maybe head over to patreon.com slash adeptis ridiculous where you can get access to the discord, bloopers if they happen. $15 tier gets you access to all of our posters in digital form.

You should check them out. They're great. Pricky, tell them how great they are. They are so good. They're even better when they are adorned upon your wall by going to Orchidate and purchasing them down below in the description. That's good stuff. Also, read the funny Lucius book.

Maybe. We're still figuring that one out because it doesn't seem like there's an audible version. No, there doesn't seem to be. No, so we might adjust that in the future. But we don't know yet and right now because we don't understand things. Hell yeah, brother. Hell yeah. Also, by the way, oh, actually, we done intro.

What is meme? shy has told us that once we finish this intro, we have to ask her about a meme that she's supposed to send us because she's unfortunately on train right now. And I'm trying to understand what this could possibly refer to. A shy meme could be any number of like cursed things. It could. Oh my God.

Oh, wow. Oh my God. That's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. That is, that is a thumbnail of all time. For sure. Good Lord. Woof, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I love, I love this. It just says suffer. The most on-brand shy for thing to type is just suffer.

You know, D.K., I'm going to make you suffer right now. You need to guess the episode based on the fact that that's the thumbnail. Oh, isn't that, isn't that old, isn't that good old Dorn? I mean, that is indeed Dorn. Would you describe him in any other way? Um, he, he looks pissed. No, he doesn't look happy. Not that. If you had to use two words to name him, what would you name him? Unhappy.

I actually can't tell if you're unironically. Like, you don't know what this is or... So I don't think I know what the meme is. It's just... He keeps looking at me. Wow. His eyes are following me. Wait, you actually...

I don't think I know the meme. You don't know this. meme? I don't think so. It didn't immediately elicit like, oh my God, it's that meme. It was just like, oh, God, he's staring at me and he looks kind of freaky. You know, Shy makes, shy makes offhand comments about, about you being, living your own life at home by yourself, chilling just like that. I live in a bubble. I live in a comfort bubble. I must admit, like, I think we may need to rephrase a lot of that. There may be a little bit less like, oh, ha ha, D.K. doesn't go outside and a little bit more like D.K. is free from the horrors of the universe.

Because when you see this and your mind does not immediately say skibbitty doorn, like the fact that you, the fact that you didn't realize that that was skibbity dorn initially is actually like a sort of, it's like guy who went to bed in 2005 and woke up in 2010 and is like, good, I'm glad that thing happened. What do you mean recession? So as soon as you said, oh, yes, Skibbitty Dorn, it clicked, and now I see it. Initially, when she posted the thumbnail, right, I kind of just thought that, like, the bowl was just, like, power armor, like, his, just his neck, and that was just his power armor,

and he was looking at you from, like, like, it was a, it was sort of a side profile, like, a dynamic angle, and, like, the back of the toilet was just, like, his, like, I thought it was, like, was just a thing of Dorn. I didn't realize it was the skittity. It was. I thought it was just a really dynamic, weird, angled shot of just a Dorn. I didn't realize it was a Dorn themed

toilet bowl. It is, in fact, a Dorn themed toilet bowl. I'm not even going to give you a quote here because I just don't, I just don't feel like it. Hell yeah. I fully support your endeavors to not give me a quote and not feel like it. Hey, rest up, buddy. You don't have to get me a quote.

Don't you worry about brother. Get your beauty sleep, King. Oh, yeah, absolutely. For sure, for sure. I fully support you, King. So today is, um, oh God, it's a lot of things. People are going to see the thumbnail and they're going to be like, what the hell is this? And, and we're certainly not beating the, um, the overly goofy, unsurious lore, uh, allegations.

but honest to God, there's too many serious lore ones out there. So I will be happy with that mantle. This is old lore, weird, old school, OG Warhammer lore. That is most likely not canon. Some have not necessarily been forcibly uncanonized. But like, we're talking way, way back in the day. Are we talking those, like, really creepy looking minis where like Magnus isn't even in like power armor type,

uh, old? Um, not like, okay, kind of. That's at the miniatures. I'm talking to lore.

Okay. I'm talking some weird lore. Um, and so let me, okay, so, oh boy. You,

you, you know when Bricky's just like, well, oh, Oh, boy. It's going to be a humdinger, as the kids say. Okay, the fact that you say the words humdinger is actually, like, painful that you're actually saying those words. You all understand that a moment.

Okay, let me, let me, the serenity now, the serenity now, the serenity now. George's dad, for sure. Hell yeah. Well, no, no, that's more of a Kramer thing. George's dad does the serenity now. Serenity now. He's just trying to sell computers from his garage, man. Because Kramer did it too lightly and he didn't actually let it get free and then he lost his mind at the end of the episode.

Sure did. He sure did. So we've talked about it multiple times before, but 40K now is a hell of a lot different than what it was when it came out. Yeah, I am sure. Just you can just look at the mini range and you realize there have been a lot of changes and then the lower two. Yep. Back in the late 90s. early 2000s.

Kind of, well, so there's obviously been a lot of novels and stuff to reaffirm the setting. And also back in the day, it was very much throw a bunch of stuff around seeing what stuck, because that's pretty often how a business goes. You figure out some stuff. And then you refine and you, yeah, profit. Okay.

And very, very true. And then way back when it makes sense a lot, why that was the case, because the era of the game came out was often in magazine subscriptions and catalogs, because that was what you did back then. And so a lot of the content delivery was a lot easier to justify with a lower cost of entry. So the Gothic techno-helscape of 40K that we're in now became more firmly established in third edition in 1998. That's when it kind of sort of became a bit more what we're aware of.

Now, obviously, much of the lore from the earliest editions of the game are still canon, but a hell of a lot of it is not, or it has been explicitly overwritten in a sort of form of apology from games workshop. We talked about the early corsairs, the Senses, the old tech marines with the giant wrench. And so it would be really fun to kind of look into the past shenanigans of 40K and be able to be like, hey, here are some of the really weird stuff. Unfortunately, we will not be able to get to all of the things because holy hell, it is really goofy. If anyone in our viewers has any additional weird lore, please do show. share. We would love to read about it because we're about to talk about things in a very canonized fashion. So, D.K., as I talked to you about this stuff, I'm basically going to say this

as if it was fact, when in reality, this is what it was fact 30 years ago. Ah, so we're taking the way back machine. And this is like, oh yeah, this is, this would be what an episode would be like 30 years ago. Different time, different place, different. Different. Which makes sense, right? The lore is going to be a lot different when you are writing it in 1998 and you are not a mainstream company that just released Space Marine 2 versus, you know. Absolutely. But 100% correct among every line there. So the initial game's intent was, of course, in the Rogue Trader book.

And the phrase grim darkness or grim dark was actually not in that book. The famous in the grim darkness of the far future There's Only War actually came in the second edition starter set. And while grim dark, the phrase is very much 40K nowadays. Back then, not really. Now, obviously, now it's a dark fantasy type thing. Things are very bad. Villains tend to win.

Hopelessness, big factor. Anti-Tolkin. Very much anti-Tolkin. One of the better examples is something called the Black Company, an old Glenn Cook series, which in turn inspired a lot of things, particularly berserk. Ooh,

let's go. If we're going way back, it's kind of like, oh, Star Wars certainly gave Warhammer a lot of its stuff. And then you're like, well, Dune gave Star Wars a lot of its stuff.

And you kind of go back and you go back and you go back, right? Yep. Even if loosely. But, of course, at the time, if you go back to the 40K origins, it was the heavy metal magazine,

and comics because they were often magazine focused. Oh, that makes sense. As soon as you said that, I was like, yeah, that would be, that would be an inspiration for 40K, wouldn't it? It also meant that they were more stylized, right? They were a lot more over the top with an evidence on cartoon-esque violence and very little regard to backstory. Because Canon didn't really matter. Yeah. If you're just starting out, like, you just throw, like you said, like we said, throw stuff

against the wall, see if it sticks, I'll figure out the cannon later. We got to make sure this thing is actually successful first, right? An early 40, also early 40K, which it's not actually early 40K, it's, it's Rogue Trader, but we're to call it early 40K for, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was not necessarily meant to be as a fluid with that kind of stuff. It was meant to be way more camp because it was, the game style back then was very different. It was not a tabletop war game, so to speak. It was kind of like a TTRP, or at least not necessarily.

maybe an RPG, but it was a tabletop role-playing battle game. You know, it's, for example, this was an actual line in the first edition or a segment there, which was, quote, the publishers of Warhammer 40,000, invite you to send in your own ideas for plots or subplots suitable for inclusion on these charts. If you've got a real humdinger winner of an idea, please send it in using a separate envelope for any other correspondence and enclosing a stamped S-A-E if you want your submission returning. Like, it was very much meant to get your creative juices going. And if you played back in like third edition to fifth edition or something, this was still very much more prevalent. It became

more wargamy, but often a complaint that I hear from the oldest Warhammer heads is that the game currently is too wargamy. It's not plot enough. There's not enough role playing in it. There's not enough making cool things. The boards are boring. For me, I agree, but I also very much don't. I think the game plays really, really good because I like that kind of game style, but

I do agree that it's lost a little bit of its flair. Yeah, they want that old TTRP style thing where it's more story, less like super hardcore war game. Yeah, I mean, people, it was, it was funny. It's, it's one of those things where it's like funny in hindsight. Because back in the day, I would play like seventh edition and I'd roll some scatter dice and then my terminators would scatter too far to one side of the left and they would all like teleport in a building and just die.

And it's like really funny to talk about as like a moment. Like, oh my God, they just all like, oh, the war fluctuated and they all died. Holy crap. Or like, oh, my land raider ran over like a crater and I rolled a one on it. so it like broke all of its treads and it's immobile for the rest of the game. Like that's funny now, but at the time it really sucked, man. It was not fun. If you're actually trying to play the game, that sounds like it's an absolute nightmare,

where it's just like, oh yeah, I rolled the scatter dice wrong, and now my whole, my whole squad is dead. And it's like, oh, great. Like, surely there's got to be a better balance than just like, you know, oops all dead. It's one of those story type things. It's like, oh, it's so interesting because of the story. It's like a fun creation there. And that was the point of it back then was you're like,

all right, here's your fun little miniature dudes. There's your fun and little miniature dudes. Play a story of a battle. Right? But back then, of course, it was not meant to be hyper, real grim dark. It was splatter horror movie

so gratuitous that it was like laughable and unbelievable. Obviously the tone has changed over the years to be a bit more of the dark tonality. and the science fiction edge and also because we were kind of going into like the early to mid 2000s and the edge lordy type stuff. Yeah. And that was what media liked. But for the most part, you know, you can still see some of that nowadays. Like you've got this hyper edgy over the top grim darkness in 40K, but it's also so stupid at the same time.

You kind of, like it has a, it's not visually like that anymore, but underneath you can still feel. it a tis-y bit. Yeah, I feel like you see a lot of that with like the Emperor's Children, where you just like, wow, this is so stupidly violent. And they're so stupidly hopped up and addicted to, like, drugs. And they're like, oh, I'm dying. This feels so good, kind of stuff that, yeah. Honestly, Emperor's Children has been one of my favorite releases

because they kind of feel like that old era. They're just so, so over the top. Yeah, they're weirdos. But a fun little tidbit. The name Warhammer 40K is an interesting inclusion. Warhammer has been around to the early 80s, and according to Rick Priestley, the initial idea of Rogue Trader was in 1983 as a free game to be sent out with a magazine subscription. But it was shelved because the publisher said it would have to be a fantasy thing and not sci-fi. So Warhammer Battles was pushed out instead, and Rogue Trader was shelved.

But as time went on, the Warhammer Battle second edition began to be a little bit more fleshed out. And as Rick Priestley worked on the Judge Dredd game, the more dark bathground of Warhammer mythos began to be established. And of course, we've seen that Judge Dread has obviously inspired a lot of Warhammer, clearly. And so with that, a bit more of a sci-fi. version of the universe became popular. So they made Rogue Trader a game with a more mercantile base and they fit it into the mythos to tie it to the Warhammer IP. But the new title, and this is a quote by Rick Priestley himself, a new title was needed

and some bright spark whom I shall hate for the rest of my life came up with Warhammer 40,000 because of the ensuing confusion over Warhammer Battle, Warhammer fantasy roleplay, and Warhammer 40,000. The full title is Warhammer 40,000 rogue traitor, which nearly abbreviates to Warhammer 40K or okay in conversation. I prefer Wardy thou, though, myself. Wardy thou, let's go. Henceforth, warty thou. Hell yeah.

That's so goofy. So that's a little bit of an intro into 40K and how it kind of became. I must admit, I find this to be extremely humorous. this might be a very specific audience that I'm currently pointing to right now, but if any of our viewers currently are a bit more entrepreneurial and not alpha podcast, I'm talking just like you made your own business and that kind of stuff. I feel a little bit with Orchate 8 and the merch where you start off and you kind of just throw shit at the wall and see what happens.

But then as you become a bit bigger and a bit more established, you do need to kind of carve a little bit of that old. school stuff out and then kind of be a little bit more careful and a little bit more solidified. Definitely. Definitely. You just got a you got a streamline, refine, see what works, focus on that, and then profit. If anything, I must admit, I feel like 40K is kind of still kept its, it's weirdness, which I'm really happy about. It's definitely a different kind of weirdness, but it's still like, like, you look at 40K, you compare it to like Star Wars. It's such a different world that the average person would be like, what the hell is this?

Yeah, it's very, very different. I mean, you know, you got demon Kalabas and everything, right? Yeah, that certainly is. Oh, we'll get into some stuff like that. Let's talk about the emperor. Yeah, let's talk about Big E. Old school Big E. So, Emperor, so, so, so, so, so, from here on out,

I'm going to say everything as if they are facts. Oh, all right. Because they were at the time. Okay. All right. So the emperor has always been shrouded in mystery. The only consistency about the emperor is that he was created by a bunch of British dudes in the 80s and sold in the first edition of 40K,

which was about 15 pounds at the time or about $60 today if we go for inflation. So it's about right. Just hearing the emperor was sold is wild already. In an addition, not as a character. Oh, okay. I was like, damn, they had an emperor many that you could play. Play. Okay.

Still cheaper than Donkey Kong Bonanza. As many things are. Zing. So the emperor was just a guy. He was a really powerful psychic guy, but he was a guy born to normal human parents and began to develop strange powers when he was younger. He kept this a secret for humanity and eventually revealed himself 10,000 years prior to 40K because he sensed that humanity was on the verge of a new evolution.

him and they would all become like him. But he was fearful for this because it took him 10,000 years to master his abilities, and so he knew humanity needed guidance. So he created the age of the Imperium in a time where, quote, a series of wars remembered by none save the victor and ushered in a new world for humanity. However, all this time doing this took quite a lot of toll on his body, and so he started to die. But he didn't want to do that, so he made it construction.

of a powerful advice to keep him alive to continue his custodianship over humanity. And that machine would be his tomb. The golden throne would be where he keeps himself alive barely by sacrificing hundreds of people, literally just hundreds. Just hundreds. Hey, this is already so much better for us. Of Sykers a day to keep him juice stuff.

So the better that they go to the emperor instead of the prominent enslavers that peer, through the warp, which were warp entities that were not chaos, that were playable in early 40K, until that the humans were psychically powerful enough to evolve and withstand the dangers they face. That was the emperor. Wow, quite a bit different. No, no horacy, heresy, no sanguineous dying, no none of that, no, no, Magnus breaking the Webway project. Just, you know, Biggie was like,

oh, I sure am getting old. I don't have time to die sort of thing and making his own little golden throne. Interesting. Okay. A little different. Yeah, not quite as fleshed out, but you know, that's kind of what happens, right? There is also the shaman theory

everyone chats about. In this case, the shaman theory was a little different. It was introduced with chaos in the second edition. Basically, the shamans of ancient terror guided humanity and their innate connection to the warp. But as their significance began to fade, they kind of began to struggle reincarnation-wise and needed to act fast. So what they did, after they had survived for so long for millions of years, was to pool their energies into a single body. In their thousands, they swallowed poison and in their thousands they died, and their kind was gone from the earth.

and then thus the emperor was born. That was one of the theories of the time, right? Okay, okay. Got it. Now, there was also some other odd stuff, like during the climactic battle of the Horace heresy, which we will get it to eventually, the emperor needed to throw away his compassion

and literally take his kindness and empathy and yeat that part of himself into the warp, allowing him to murder Horace even though he got hurt pretty badly himself. Yeah, yeah. Also hearing, oh, Biggie needed to take his kindness and empathy and didn't throw it into the war. After having read, like, Master of Mankind,

it's like, yeah, didn't have much to throw, did you, buddy? No, no, he really did not, did he? Yeah, a little pinball-sized ball. I must say, I must say, that we got to get into something about some old works of fiction. We need to talk about the legendary works of Ian Watson. Ian Watson, okay. I would be positive that some of our viewers are immediately going,

oh, no. Oh, all right. So Ian Watson, it's one of the first ever novel writers for 40K, way back in the day. He has some interesting stuff later we'll talk about. But his book just titled Inquisitor, which was the first ever Warhammer 40K book published by Games Workshop, is very relevant. What isn't relevant, as Possum states here, is Ian Watson's uses of the word throbbing and gurgling so often in his books that he believes he should start charging us by the hour again. I get it. Okay.

Which is fair. Fair. Yep. So don't ask too many questions about the following sentence. The titular inquisitor in the book, Jack Draco, sneaks onto a black ship in order to gain entry to the golden throne itself to reveal to the emperor a conspiracy that was uncovered that was designed to stop the evolution of humanity. The emperor whose dialogue in the book is in all caps, just like the emperor texts a speech thing, gobbles up the memories of the inquisers' encounters and provides them. feedback as to what he thinks of humanity as a whole. He also speaks in many voices, much like the master in Fallout. Oh, boy, that sounds like, uh, that, well, that sounds like a book all right.

That, um, Inquisitor Jack Draco sneaks aboard a sister of silence black ship to gain entrance to the golden throne and just chats with the emperor. Yeah. I mean, hey, Jack Draco's a cool name anyway. That's a, that's a, that's a cool name. So you get this part that is in all caps, mind you, that says, when we confronted the corrupted Homicidal Horace who once used to

shine like the brightest star, who used to be our beloved favorite, when the fate of the galaxy hung by a thread, we were not compelled to expel all compassion, all love, all joy, those went away. How else could we have armored ourselves? Existence is torment, a torment that must nourish us.

So the idea here is that the emperor cast away all of his compassion, joy and love, into something that is known as the star child. in the realm of chaos. I know, dude. You cannot say Star Child to a Mass Effect fan and expect me not to react.

It's like it's almost just as bad. Oh man. It's like a bullet wound right to an open wound. All right. Go ahead. So the Star Child in the realm of chaos books back then is the aspect of the emperor's soul with all of those ideologies thrown into the warp. awaiting

itself to be reborn and reclaim humanity basically. So the idea is that the emperor himself on the throne is like the worst tyrannical ruler of all time and like the worst person ever because all of the good of him is yeated into the warp. Yeah, and it's waiting to be reborn for humanity

as a star child thing. Quote, only a few select individuals learn the secret of the following millennia. and they become the highly secretive brotherhood known as the Illuminati. The Illuminati await the birth of the star child and the second coming of new man.

They know that their knowledge makes them dangerous heretics in the eyes of the period. I don't care about the rest of this. You get the point. Aye, aye. Yeah, I immediately started rubbing my temples together. I, ooh, or rub. Oh, boy, that's, that's, that's a,

that's not the sentence I was expecting this morning. I just, that's not something I expected to hear with my ears today. This is like the fourth weirdest thing so far that we have going on today. Yeah. That's that's okay. So we're waiting for for the star child to give birth to the, the Illuminati are waiting for the star child.

Okay, cool. Great. What's next? So, okay. So, um, Horace heresy. The Horace heresy, right? Yeah. The reason for Horace heresy was for the,

sake of cost cutting. The Adeptus Titanicus starter box in 1988, included two different Titan legions that utilized the same molds. Therefore, there needed to be a civil war to justify why they were fighting each other. Of course. The true force of chaos taint is yet again capitalism. Capitalism strikes once again. It's so fun.

So the Horace heresy was the justifying reason for the Civil War. General Horace was one of the greatest champions of the Imperium given the title of Warmaster and was told to return to terror to claim the title. But on the way he became sick was introduced to a secret warrior lodge on Davin. All right, we're good so far. Hey. And was possessed by a demon. The possession.

Yeah, I know. Now we're out of it, right? Yeah, we're out of it. But, you know, in the books, he does seem like he gets possessed, more or less. The possession began to spread like a plague, and the demonic army began to expand. Istvon 3 revolts and he virus bombs them. And he attempts to wipe out the Eisenstein, but does not. And they are able to send a warning to the Imperium.

So that part we're still chilling on. Yeah, we're seeing more of the stuff that we know. You know, it's a little different, but it's like, uh, close enough. then of course as Von Five happens there's a big massacre and then eventually Horace was able to pass

through the fleet of the Imperium attacked the bases on Luna and in 30 days General Horus was able to land on Terra and began his great sieging of the palace of course eventually the emperor went off of the

Astronomicon interface and then attacked him in his command bunker and faced him in combat the emperor killed Horace the emperor was mortally wounded and was mortally wounded and was then put on the golden throne. Okay.

So we're mostly there, but it definitely has a little different. Yeah, there's a slight deviations, but it's like, okay, this is still more or less the warhammer that, eh, I know, sort of, basically. Right. The traitor legions and dead war, master, vans, the eye of terror, first interleegenerary war, Horace Harris has less than a decade, but you'll destroy the Imperium. About the same. About the same, sure.

This gets us into a different conversation, which is a different conversation, which is a Space Marines. DK, I'm going to keep it a buck 50 with you. Okay. Space Marines in 40K were just military cops. They were fancy, fancy military cops. They were trained very much like the Sauticar in Dune. In fact, like they were trained a lot like the Sauta car in Dune.

Ah, so this is one of those things that the inspiration for the space Marines probably came from Dune. I would say probably might be even like more, like, like too much. Probably it's not, it's like not enough. Like, yes, the answer is just yes. Oh, they just straight up ganked it from Dune. I would not be surprised that they just ganked it from Dune.

Um, the hamburger, hamburger, hamburger, hamburger cheeseburger, wopper, wopper. Yeah. With a side of fries. Eyes. Um, me eating the, hamburger hamburger wopper of the Sauticar.

You actually had that queued up on your soundboard, you son of a bit. You got to play the hands you dealt. Hell yeah, brother. Luckily for me, I took the deck. But, yeah, so they were military cops through and through

and acted basically as an example of an occupying fascist force. Lovely. They were also recruited basically from the worst of the worst. quote, driven to extremes by insanity by the colossal pressures of the hive world living, these merciless killers are usually ignored by the authorities, and they make ideal space marines.

And the whole gangs of city scum are sometimes hunted and captured for this purpose. So you basically took the worst murderers and scum and a villainy in the hive cities, and you took them and recruited them to become your space marines. I mean, if you're a Knight Lord's fan, this is all still the same, right? True, though. Night Lord's fans are like, what do you mean? This is different. This is, this is how we live on this drama.

Same, same, same, right? You're making a great point. Talking to the biggest Night Lord fan. You know what? So true, Bestie. So true. So true. Continue.

Of course, they had a plenty of different augments. and they had different branches about space marines, including various types of things like their psychosurgery. Originally, there were 12 chapters of space marines. Hilariously, the inline text says 11, but early 40K had a bunch of errors in typos. Okay, cool. I was really hoping you were big,

oh, yeah, there were typos, so that's why those two missing space marine legions are a thing because it initially got typoed and they just ran with it. But there were only 12 original chapters, so it's even worse. So you had the dark angels, the flesh eaters, the flesh terrors, the blood angels, they really like the blood people, the blood drinkers, the crimson fists, the space wolves, the ultramarines, the white scars, the iron hands, the rainbow warriors, and the silver skulls. Oh, they actually had a rainbow warriors? Apparently. Oh, someone that grew up in Hawaii, that's like, hey, hey, that would.

was the, I think it was the UH sports teams or all the Rainbow Warriors. Oh, yeah, yeah. All right. So they also had different specialties like medics, field police, chaplains, they all wear different armor, which is still kept today. The apothecaries and librarians and stuff and chaplains all look different. Like an apothecary tends to be dressed white, no matter what chapter you are. But the armor of the base marines back then were definitely more stark and noticeable.

all tend to wear the beaky armor, the Mark 6. Classic. Also, they tend to denote their, they were usually denoted by their helmet with our left paltry by patterns, rankings more reds and yellows, and with some exceptions like the Dark Angels that were jet black. Very often, space marines were able to write freely on their armor, and slogans and death threats were very prominent on their armor, including words like kill and death on their knuckles and arms.

Wow. Okay. We, yeah, it's a little, it's a little, this feels like early 2000s edge lord fiction. Absolutely. Yeah, they're the edge lord fascist police in a sense, right? That's what they're like. Writing death threats on your arm. On your head, like, they literally have like kill on their knuckles.

It's just, it's, yeah. I don't know why I was imagining the, um, you know, the guy with the lightning bolts coming out of his eyes just on their like paldron and they're just pointing to it as they look at citizens. That's pretty good. And to show a little bit of flexibility, we got to talk about chief librarian

chief librarian astropath Illian Nastase Nastase. Oh, all right. So alien space marine, Iliam comes from abnormal beginnings. He was born. born on bad-em, and his mother was a human female and father an Eldar mercenary.

After gene testing, he was taken by the government and raised separately. They found out he had potent psychic powers and was recruited to be an astrophath. And eventually worked with the astrotelopathica for a while and had some fleet service of the Dark Angels and eventually was appointed on the planet of McCrog as chief of Ultramarines interstellar communications. Wow. And he's half-Heldar, huh? He's half-Eldar.

Wow, that's, that is kind of surprising that they would let, you know, the Ultramarines. You'd think the Ultramarans would want, only human stock, only the best stock. The Codex the Starters does not support the action of having a half-eldar as are, you know? That's the old scale stuff.

That's the old stuff. Sorry, that's the new stuff. That's the new stuff. That's right. This is the old stuff. Right, right. I'm still two 2025 coded. So also, this is another humorous type of deal.

The chapter founders and primarks were more just like fancy Marine commanders. For example, Commander Lehman Russ was in the founding of the space, we'll play a particular function of, or a particular part of their functions. But then some people like, you know, The founder of the Ultramarines, Rabutee Gilliman, had long since died, and his bones now lie in the reclusium on McCrague. How I long for the old days. Primark was very often sign that you would rise through the ranks to maybe get. A side captain on the field, better armor and better battles, you know?

Oh, so in this day and age, if you were like a space marine and you did enough noble things, you could eventually become a primark. It was what you're saying. Yeah, because a primark was not. not like the gene enhanced son of the emperor. It was just a, I guess I would call it a chapter master at this point. Man, old heads must think that's so weird to see like what it became. I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess it's just bizarre though. Because like if you were into Warhammer when it came out in like 80s and 90s, there's the

assumption you're probably in like your 20s at the time. Let's just say you were 20. That means you're like in your like late 50s or 60s now. you know like that that's a whole different world that is probably but I I respect the people that are like still in their 50, 60 me like no this is what I like of course I like playing tabletops why not I'm getting I was about to say getting near retirement age and I'm like remember what the time is anyway but yeah I respect it I respect that yeah it's it's its own very interesting

situation. So let's get into the dedicated tribute of Skibbitty Dorn. Oh, yes, indeed. Let's skibbitty Dorn. Hell yeah, brother. So, this is a separate segment due to the nature of the content and due to the literal GW response and the fear it brings us is what is posted here. What?

As mentioned earlier, Ian Watson was literally the first ever author to publish 40K novels under the Games Workshop banner. Ian Watson is a very prolific and at sometimes fairly problematic and strange fiction writer. And he was selected to provide some more edge to the settings. However, unlike the Games Workshop of now, the oversight of the novels was not super prominent. It was a little bit of like, hey, we're not really trying to tie this all in.

It's more just, it makes some stories in the settings. Pawsam makes a statement here that says, kind of like the original Star Wars extended universe, which can range from direct continuations to the books about a pile of Palpatine clones and then Chubaca getting hit by a moon. Yeah, I was going to say that that does sound about right, because from one, I didn't read a lot of the books,

but people would always be like, oh, yeah, there was this one Sith that could like force drain a planet from a galaxy away. And I was like, well, that sounds ridiculous. That, what, what? What? What? There's some weird stuff there.

Yeah, definitely. So the content that Ian Watson made was very over the top. A lot of it is very sexually focused. But other stuff were just straight up incomprehensibly weird. And no book emphasizes this more than the book titled Space Marine. Huh. Just Space Marine, huh? Space Marine.

So Space Marine was published as the third ever Games Workshop novel in 1993. or Game a Sponshot 40K novel, that is. And this is the rare instance of GW, explicitly stating that this is not canon, and borderline apologizing for its content. Here is a direct quote from the Black Library e-book page for the novel. Believe us when we tell you that Space Marine

is quite unlike any other Warhammer 40K novel you have ever read. First published in 1993, though completed some years earlier, earlier, at a time when the background into the Warhammer 40,000 universe was still in a state of flux and not yet fully coalesced. You'll find such wonders as squats. Zich worshipping squats at that, alongside space marines controlling titans, space marines with las guns, the pain glove, and more than a small amount of toilet humor. Oh, and a zote. How could we forget the zote?

Although the temptation was great to rewrite significant portions of this book to make conform to current background, as a curiosity piece, a historical, snapshot of the Warhammer 40,000 universe circa the early 1990s, this book is invaluable. It also serves as a shining example of what can happen when a respected genre author at the height of his powers is let loose on an established shared universe.

Just don't try to fit it in with the modern Warhammer 40,000 timeline. End quote. Wow. You're right. That is basically just them being like, sorry, it's just the time period. And you know, not. canon. Like that's

wow. It is very bizarre, but it is interesting. So this novel focuses on three young recruits for the Imperial Fist that were once a gang on Necromanda and it goes through their whole history of the Imperial Fists, but particularly

it includes a very specific ritual that was exclusive to the Imperial Fists and a bit of an extreme version of the old Feast of Maladiction by the Dark Angels. The ritual itself begins as most do. Cutting off your toes

and putting them in a chalice that once was drunk from by Rogal Dorm. The toes, along with a good amount of blood and a bunch of liquid referred to as a hot amber. Okay.

Bear grills looking at the camera. They froth and turn into some sort of bubbling substance that is then drinking by the reclusiarch of the imperial fists. after taking the sip, he says to the recruits something, something, something in Latin, he sang out. And after you return from your first expedition as scouts, he promised other secretions

from your body will be blent into the same chalice of the primark, which was once his very drinking cup during your induction in the third degree of the brotherhood, though that in itself will only be the superficial, whatever, of the third degree ceremony. The adamantium floor down there was the. describe with a maze of tiny colored channels that bootsteps would never be able to wear away. In a pattern suggestive of a cosmic map and along all of those channels were spaced little indentations the depth of a fist's thumbprint. Each recess named with a room. At one end of the seemingly arcane map or game board, an enormous placrystal bowl held thousands of what at first sight appeared to be bloodshot ocreas eyeballs.

Each ball commemorated the initiation of a group of ex-cadets. Throughout the eons, each being a nugget of the liquid amber and blood drunk from Rogel Doran's own chalice by the Recleasiac of whichever epoch, and defecated by him subsequently in this shape. The Inquisition has found the poop drawer. What the fuck is going on? Good old Rogel Dorn. put your toes in a glass with your blood and your piss, drink that shit up and shit it out in your honor. Okie-doke.

Um, all righty. I, I, I don't, I don't. I agree. I don't either. I don't know what you want me to say at this. I don't, I don't know what the people expect me to, I have no words. This is a, this is a, I have no words moment because I just, Boy, that sure was a thing that is happening, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, holy shit. Pea, blood and toes take a perfectly spherical poop. Okay. No wonder the imperial fists get a lot of shit. But now you understand the reason for our skibbity door and thumbnail. I sure do. Lovely, good stuff.

Thank you, Ian. He just pops up out of the skibbitty toilet and just spits it out too and just, there's your orb. Thank you, thank you, Ian Watson for your contributions to our lore. Yeah, that's, that is, that is wild. Like, oof. So, interestingly enough, obviously the, the Inquisition of the rogue traders were a little different at the time. Inquisitors were described as, re-roaming troubleshooters bound by no laws or authority.

One of the best inquisitors were good old Obi-Wan Sherlock Closau. Really? Yes, he is ready for deployment, and I quote, looks like he has a lot to say about the all-female-led Ghostbusters movie. Oh, no. Oh, no. All right. They have boundless authority armed to the teeth. You know, conversion fields, stasis fields. They got fancy stuff made by monkeys named the Jokero,

types of weird grenades, scanners, and so on. You, of course, have your rogue traders, which are licensed explorers from the priesthood of Terra. They tend to be all kinds of different types of people. I was to be surprised the rogue trader is not that much different. So they're about the same. Yeah, probably makes sense considering that rogue traitor was the first thing that came out, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I will say there is also some other weird stuff. Like there is the enslavers, of course, but the most dangerous threat is something called an astral hound, which is a gigantic, shadowy hound that will find a cyker, bite them, paralyze them, and then drag them back into the warp. Oh. So you got warp attack dogs.

Okay. That's, hey, that sounds kind of cool, actually. an astral hound that just like sniffs you out because you're a psycher and just drags you into the void. That's kind of cool. I don't, I don't hate that. They brought back Kerenach, my boy. But there's also orcs, of course.

Of course. Now, the orcs are in a constant state of civil war that we're okay with. The smaller breed of orc is, of course, the Gretchen. Still chilling. Gretions are a bit more statistic. Sorry, not, well, I guess that too, but sadistic and more tactical. They love the taste of human flesh. But I will say both the orcs and the Gretchen actually end up eating normal food and don't gain sustenance through the sun via photosynthesis, much like mushrooms do.

That being said, because orcs and Gretchen are of the same breed, that means they can interbreed? Oh. So there's that. All right. That probably produces some weird offspring, but hey, sure, whatever. I see here they're often known for some flair in their battle gear. Gretchen's, quote, Gretchen's wear what they can find, steal or fabricate from their fallen comrades slash enemies. They present little uniformity even less than the orcs.

Scalping is common. Teeth necklaces are prized, and the sexual organs of some aliens also hold a particular fascination for these creatures. clothing is generally drab, often brown and always dirty. Insert, my mental health is deteriorating Hatsunemiku give here. Well, I mean, aside from the, you know, taking of the sexual reproductive organs, it's still... I mean, even that's probably fairly on track for like an or a Gretchen. Like, you could see an ork doing these things. So it's not that much of a like, oh my God, I'm taking...

severe psychic mental damage. It's like, ah, this is still orc adjacent. Yeah. Yeah. Cope? A little cope, I guess. Yeah, probably a little cope on my part, but like, you know, it's... It's all right.

I mean... Tell me more, Ricky. Orcs would also make something called tin boys, which were robots designed to look like exaggerated versions of their enemies. like Space Marines, Eldar, and squats, and they moved in a hyper-exaggerated manner, which the orcs think is hilarious. There's also the Brain Boys,

which were supposed to be a subspecies of the orcs may or may not have been snotlings, and they believed it was believed that Brain Boys created the Orks and the Gretchen's as a militant mutant mutant to serve the basic duties, but the brain boys may have died from a plague, or they saw their potential fates, and, you know, the orcs eventually matured enough

and beat the shit out of them. Yeah. Classic. All very plausible. There's, of course, the tyrannids. For the most part, Tyrannids and gene stealers are about what you would expect. Weird, six-spinly limbs, lots of web dependages,

big high fleet ships. We're chilling on that kind of stuff. That's all very fine. Their technology is all biological. So things like communicators are a place with talking orifices. They are known to wear armor, or at least a minimum, a harness with pouches to carry their equipment. decorative belts.

All of these are grown from biomatter. Though Tyrannids can communicate with each other in the high mind sense, they require an eternal race to act as diplomats to other species. Fortunately, they have something called the Zotes.

So the Zotes have a adaptive mind that is highly advanced in a short amount of time and are bioengineered by the Tyrannids thousands of years ago, which allows them to learn languages at a very fast rate. This with the natural charisma and calm of a zoat makes it so that they are a diplomat for the tyranids.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Sure. You know, they need someone to talk. That's the mouthpiece. You know, because who's going to talk for the bugs? They kind of, it's important because the tyrants make at least some attempt to negotiate kind of like in a Borg sense before they do a planetary consumption. in a way.

So there is still a little tend to that. It's not just the unknowable hive mind of pure death that it is currently. Right. So the Zode is like Lekutus. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

I'm pulling back my memories of Star Trek. You got this. I believe in you. Was Lacutis? Oh, God damn it. I hate that. Was that Picard's alter ego? that is that is Picard when he gets assimilated by the Borg

to basically act as their mouthpiece Yes because it was like the big end of season like oh my god Picard no he's being assimilated And then like the big like season cliffhanger was like You know Riker and the Enterprise are staring down the Borg and Picard And like no we can save him and Riker's like no he's gone And he's like oh fire on the Borg ship And then it just cuts to black and it's like oh my God is Riker gonna kill

Picard? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, I mean, the Zotes were like bred to be negotiators. Like, that was their concept. Now they're their own like subspecies and it's a whole thing. Okay, cool, cool.

The gene stealers themselves, along with a lot of other stuff, are one of the more dangerous monsters. They come from the cursed moon of Yimgarl and have spread through the galaxy like a leech-like vampiric monster that reproduces through an planted egg that bursts out of the host's chest. Icky. And also just alien, like literally just alien. Yeah.

So a little different, a little different than how they are now. Because now it's like, well, you just don't know. And then you just kind of eventually it takes over. And then you don't get rid of it until, you know, you're dropping into the soup. There's also other kinds of gene stealers. You can have crossbreeds, like wolf gene stealers and razor wing gene stealers. they're a whole different world very alienesque also i was going to ask i i thought the tyranids and the jeans dealers were a relatively recent thing i mean in terms of like gw timeline i thought

they were somewhat recent right like when did they first come out so different kind of timeline Tyrannids have been around forever. They were a race for all the time. However, Tyrannids in the world of 40K are like in the last couple hundred years, I think. Okay. Maybe a couple thousand.

Basically, I think they are the most recent race discovered, basically. So like they're recent in that sense, but they're not, no, they've been around forever. Oh, okay.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. So I don't really have a whole lot else past that Because a lot of the other factions were around Or just didn't exist Truth be told this entire episode Was just a reason to get us to talk about Skibbidi Dorn Yeah, that's wild

That whole like, oh yeah Just put your toes blood piss into a jar We're gonna drink it And then we're gonna shit out this orb thing And it's like you what? What? What? What? What? Huh? There's also a lot more of other weird stuff like the Star Child shit from the Emperor that could still be like a thing

you know it's not necessarily anything that's kind of going with the idea okay well I don't know to our viewers we have not read the end in the death if the end and the death is something that tells us that like that is not a thing then okay never mind but the Star Child is a thing maybe still

could be they could find a way to write it in But to end this, I think this might be interesting. So obviously, this is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg when it comes to old 40K lore. Sure. Which is why we're like, hey, I mean, we're an hour in almost and I'm happy to have the viewers send us whatever they like. However, though the first edition of the, uh, lacks the major grim darkness line, it does have its own version of it, which is rather fascinating. Because you'll, you'll hear this and you'll be like, oh, this sounds familiar. but then you'll realize that it's like, it's not.

So, quote, For more than a hundred centuries, the emperor has sat immobile on the golden throne of earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies.

He is a rotting carcass, writhing invisibly with power from the dark age of technology. He is the carrion lord of the Imperium, to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, and for whom blood is drunk, and flesh eat him, human blood and flesh, the stuff of which the Imperium is made. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions, it is to live in the cruelest

and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of these times. It is a universe you can live today if you dare, for this is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. If you want to take part in the adventure, then prepare yourself now. Forget the power of technology, science, and common humanity, forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter

and the laughter of thirsting gods. But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed. Oh, that last line goes kind of hard, though. It's kind of a... It's weird because you can see the little mixtures.

Yeah, you can... It does. You're right. It sounds like very familiar. And it's like, oh, yeah, they just kind of like streamlined this bit. It's, I also like that last line, like the universe is big. You will not be missed. It's like, ouch. It's commonly used one. Yeah, definitely. Obviously, before it was very, very similar, but just not quite the same. You know, it's a lot of it is still very, very much there, but they've, they've redefined the setting now. Definitely. You can, you can tell how. much they have worked on streamlining and refining it since this old lore for sure. Like we said at the beginning, a lot of just throw it against the wall, see what sticks,

and then they saw what stuck, and they were like, all right, let's go with this. I think it's important to get a little bit of a history lesson sometimes. Because one, it explains why everyone has different ideas about stuff, because they were probably all right at some point in time. Fair, yep. Which is its own. as that we're around for it, probably still, yep. Yeah, it's its Owen situation there at that point. But past that, I mean, I don't know.

It's like, it's, it's, it's very, very, very weird, but it is endearing. Yeah, it's, it survived all that. It went through its trials and tribulations, found its spot, leaned into that spot, and here we are today. Oh, and those, those were certainly trials and those were certainly tribulations. Yeah. So much to the point that the, I mean, you know, you think about a foot fetish and then you got a Rogel Dorn drinking the blood of toes and shitting it in little circles and that, that right there, that was canon at the time. Oh, gee, why would G.W. need to put that little starting blurb on it now, right? Why? What? What? No. What is nothing wrong with that, right? So when are you starting your Imperial Fist Army?

Now that you know that little bit of lore, right? My new chapter. The poop shitters. The toe drinking poop shitters, let's go. Detachment rule. The blood of toes. If your opponent walks up barefoot or in sandals, you automatically win the game. Oh, no.

Yep, that's your detachment, all right. Good shit. All right, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memorandum. Lane. Let us know if you have anything else neat. And if you don't, that's okay. Bye.

Bye.