Adeptus Ridiculous - TRENCH PILGRIMS | Trench Crusade Lore

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousAs the war rages against the minions of Hell, strange visions torment the faithful across the globe. Men and women touched by Heaven are granted visions and Revelations are made by the messengers of God. Sisters of the Holy Orders are marked by Stigmata and take up the sword and the cross as instructed by angels. Those who have transgressed seek to atone for their sins by taking as many followers of the Devil with them to the afterlife.So they come, the mad and the maimed, the God- touched and the guilt-ridden – all gathering around Prophets and Prophetesses, forming Trench Pilgrim Processions. These disorganised groups arm themselves and follow the prophets of the Lord unto the front lines. They fight with unrivalled zeal, hurling themselves against the Heretics, arming themselves with anything they can get their hands on from the oldest muskets to scourges and Molotov Cocktails.Support the show

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Adeptist Ridiculous podcast. My name is D.K. Diamante's, his name is Bricky. And with us today, it is Carriott. So you know it's going to be a good episode. But before we get into that, if you enjoy today's episode, and maybe you want to support us, heading over to patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous, where you can get access to the Discord, bloopers if they happen, $15 tier, gets you access to all of our posters in digital format. Also, Shai is doing these little shorts where she discusses, I don't want to say random topics,

she's been doing org stuff. She's been doing chaos entities, stuff like that. Patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous. But Bricky, Kerioth, on this most auspicious of days, we have a new poster. Are you ready? Hell yeah. Fortnite. Wait.

What? I, okay. What happened? What happened? you said, are you ready for it? And so I was going to do with the funny little German kid who was like, Fortnite unkola, yippie, as the yippie. But then like me and Kiroz respond at the same time.

So I just basically said, Fortnite. All right. Hey. Oh, no. I'm cooked. I'm so cooked. All right. What have we got here for the poster?

What's going on here? Oh, God damn it. Listen, in all fairness, I shy came to me with this idea. I did not prompt this idea. I did not tell her to do this idea. That being said, I am 100% behind the Krieg X. Umamusime ad Rick poster. What's the meme I keep seeing in my Discord?

It's like summoning the gold ship that kills you or something. Yes. Good old gold. Gold Ship, the biggest troll horse that ever existed. Is that the name of the actual horse? Oh yeah, all of the horses in Umamusime are based on real life Japanese race horses. Wait, really? Yeah, and their lore is based on what happened to actual real life horse and how good actual

real life horse was. So does that mean the goldship horse is terrible? Goldship horse was a massive troll. and it was a really intelligent horse that they thought could understand English, knew what cameras were for, and would specifically throw races because it thought it was funny.

Oh, so it's a corgi. Basically, it's a corgi horse, yeah. Okay. And that's the win animation is she runs up to you and drop kicks the hell out of you. Why does she drop kick you? Because Goldchip is a massive troll. Wait a man.

Okay, sorry, the bottom of the shoes have like a horse, like a horseshoe imprint on it? Yeah, they all do. That's actually kind of peak. That's a really good addition. It's time for you to start playing it, Brickie. No, I can't. Listen, the amount of

mid-30s white dudes playing this game is already too high. The deed is done. The joke is over. I'm busy building Gene Steeler Colts, man. I don't got the time of this. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'm so lost. I'm in this picture, and I don't. don't like it.

I'm so lost. I have no idea what the references, what the show slash game is. It's a mobile gotcha game about anime horse racing girls. Okay. You know like horse race bedding, right? Yes.

Imagine it's horse racing, but instead of horses, they're all anime girls that are based on the horses. Apparently it's good, apparently it's good and everyone seems to like it, but naturally my my personal feelings on it are holy hell no way never I won't do it

but that being said here we are regardless all right well check out the poster at orchidate.com link in the description we'll get you that poster we'll get it up

we'll get it out we'll do the whole thing yep to be fair as always regardless of the reference or you know where the initial idea came from the posters are always super high quality. So even if, you know, what one of the host doesn't know what's going on, it still

looks great. You can't, you can't argue with that, you know? It still looks fantastic. How have you avoided all the Umamusame memes, by the way, Kiri. I'm actually shocked by this, yeah. Yeah, I'm a little shocked by this. I have... I have... I have... A wife

and kids is like... I was going to say, I have two children in at school holidays. I don't have time for anything other than this and sleep. That's pretty much what I've got going on right now. Oh, you have a life. Is that what that's like? Look, I have two children obsessed with Diablo 3.

That's the only references that I know. I've got nothing beyond that, okay? Well, anyway, go check it out in the description, everybody. Get yourself your poster. Good God. Curiaf, what are you here for? That might be the most passive-aggressive way you've handed over to me yet, which I quite like.

Very British. Okay, I've got you a quote here, okay? Now, we'll see. We'll just see how it goes. I'm not giving anything away. Here's your quote. Let the trumpet sound and let the banners unfold, for it is in the violence of war

that salvation is gained. And this is from the book of divinations chapter 13. There you go. Oh Okay, wait Okay, so here's the thing Shai tells me like

Often the schedule But sometimes the schedule is just Kerioth Epp As an EP Yeah And I don't I don't actually remember What this one might be

Because So okay so here's the thing I it's it's I feel like it's almost Intentionally Vague To where I almost think This is a non-40K episode Oh, you're honing it.

That's fair. Because when you said, like, oh, for some reason I thought, like, banners unfurling, like, divinations of war, I was like, oh, maybe it's, like, a titan or a knight, because there's a lot of, like, rights and there's a lot of banners that fly on those things. So I was like, oh, maybe it's a knight. Maybe it's a tit. Maybe it's, like, the biggest, like, what are they, imprator titans and stuff? So maybe it's that. But now that you're like, ooh, it could be a Transcrucrisade episode. Book of Divination does kind of of Trench Crusade. I'm going to go with Trench Crusade, yeah.

You know what? You've nailed it. Yib-Bee! Fortnite! You've out. Yippee! Fortnite gaming! Let's go. Yes, wait, wait, so Trench Crusade, wait, how many factions do we have left? This is a book of divination, right? So is this the...

Are these... To be fair, there's still quite a few. Yes, we're going to talk about the... French Pilgrims, because we have, like, briefly touched on a few of their things in previous episodes, but we never gone into the trench pilgrims themselves, kind of looked at what makes them what they are. So that is today's episode, with, admittedly, a mild, only mild tangent at the very start, but only because I started writing the script and went, we've never talked about this lot properly. And, yeah, I'd say 92% trench pilgrims with a healthy,

8% spent on something very, very similar. So you've got it pretty much on the nose there. 8% spent on horse girl poster. Yeah. We're going to go into the deep lore of the horse girl poster. All right, new episode. Wait, hold on. The lore of the Umamu-Mu-se horses.

Yes. Don't even get me started, bro. Like, I'm deep in that shit, all right? don't even with me right now. I will. That's gonna be the next fantasy episode. It's just gonna be all horse goals. I love how people are gonna click on this episode

and they're gonna see like the trench pilgrim lore and it's like trench pilgrims, right? So it's like this trench crusade horribly dark, gross, brutal thing in the first 10 minutes of this shit is this. What's my lord talk? Want to know about gold chip? Is this, does the pilgrim sniper

are the one that blinds themselves so that God can take the bullet? Pretty much, yeah. I love that dude. Okay, cool. Yeah, he's great. Continue, Kyrioth, let's do it. Okay, so today we are talking

about the trench pilgrims. Now, we have actually talked about quite a few things related to these in other Trench Crusade videos, like covering some of it in the first episode that we did. But we've done quite a few trench crusade episodes since then

and I thought we'd use this as an opportunity to expand on a few things introduce some new stuff and like properly get lost in the grapes when it comes to lost on the grapes lost in the weeds I anyone who watched achievement hunter 10 years ago that's a reference for you apparently I don't know where that came from I'll ask Ray when the next time I got to call it I don't know where that came from When you're lost somewhere.

Yeah, it's a specific GTA let's play, and I don't know why I said that instead of what I'd written. So there you go. But yeah, there's a lot. Huge news for unemployed people in their 30s who are about to get that reference. Yeah. But yeah, there's a lot when it comes to historical references and inspirations behind everyone's favorite pointy-hatted, not cases. Not those ones. So, in the world of Trench Crusade,

You're right over there? Yeah, I'm good, I'm fine, continue. So in the world of Trench Crusade, we know that the church oversees the war against the forces in hell, both from Rome and New Antioch, directing their forces through good old military experience, sometimes forging connections with dead saints, and always helped by the Synod of Strategic Prophecy. But there is a significant force. on the side of the faithful that aren't necessarily controlled by the church itself in the form

of the trench pilgrims, which we will talk about in a moment, but we do need just a moment to talk about the Synod of Strategic Prophecy, because there's a few really fun details about the Synod of Strategic Prophecy that we haven't gone into. This feels like a good time to kind of round them out. First off, because it's only proper to go into the same amount of detail as we did for the iron sultanate, the word synod is important when it comes to this lot. So a synod is a council, which is called together to decide on something, whether it's an administrative matter, or maybe an issue of doctrine. This is where it kind of changes a lot depending on the period in history. The ultimate heresy was in 1099, which is well before the term became more generalized.

Now it's sort of used as a council, but beforehand it was specifically about the meetings of bishops to decide on doctrine-based issues. The term is used in the same way nowadays, bishop-wise, but it's a bit more, it's a bit more similar to like the idea of just a general governing body of a church, as opposed to a specific meeting. We did mention New Antioch. There was a synod of Antioch between 264 and 269, where some of the earliest significant councils in the Christian church, with the first one convened to deal with the teachings of the the Bishop of Antioch at the time, who is eventually deposed and his teachings were condemned, which I bring up mostly, because I think it's kind of easy to get wrapped up in the fictional

universe and forget that the whole kill the heretic and erase their teachings thing, is it's very inspired by real history. It's not a French Crusade thing, it's a people thing. Yeah. Dehumanize your enemy and remove all of their culture and art is a very, it's a very quick step, process that has been repeated often. Yeah. Also, their headquarters is sick.

It's a giant like church covered in satellite dishes. I was going to say it kind of looks sick. Like it kind of looks like it's covered in boils. Even though there's like just satellites and stuff, it kind of looks like almost a little disease when you like zoom out a little bit. Trench Crusade really does continue to rack up W's for its, uh, it's general artistic and art direction, like the general design. Like, there's a couple misses, but not many.

Oh, yeah, Tower of Babylon. No, definitely not at all. No, of course not. Not at all. Shy may have somewhat jumped ahead in the script a little bit there. With specific reference, funnily enough. There is actually something where, just a side note, right? So there'll be a good few, like, religious slash Catholic nerds listening.

My frame of reference for a lot of this stuff is Church of England based because I was brought up very, very religious in the Church of England like mass three times a week religious. I will say right now that I'm not in the same place now as I was then. However, the church that I went to as part of the Anglo-Catholic movement. So despite being Church of England, a lot of the liturgical stuff was very like Roman Catholic. so even though that wasn't necessarily the tradition that I was brought up in, a lot of it was ported over, which has brought, I think, brought me in Possum closer because we both got brought up with this stuff. And so we have our own minor therapy group going on whenever we talk about Trench Crusade, which is nice. But that's where a lot of my frame of reference comes from when looking at the stuff for Trench Crusade. So I will say, and obviously I say this, to try to be simultaneously respectful to our large variety of religious fan base of various types.

But I feel like Trench Crusade very often seems to stick with those who were raised in a far more oppressive religious household. Oh, yeah, for sure. A lot of our fans are from, like, the Midwest, you know, kind of live in more rural towns. And I know a lot of them kind of had that same type of situation and have since either, you know, reduced their level of religious fervor and or, possibly left the church entirely. But obviously all that information and knowledge is still there. And I feel like those fans specifically, if you're out there, raise your hand or something, I don't know, is something that Trench Crusade really speaks to. Because if I'm not mistaken, the creator has a somewhat similar background.

A hundred percent, yeah. There's the amount of detail and the amount of like real world religious and liturgical references, not just to kind of Christianity, but then when you look at how much effort was put into, say, the Einz Sultanate, it is very clear that the creators were brought up in a similar situation. And so those of us who were like, you know, from the age of 1 to 15, 16, were at church over and over again every week, there's just something about it that I feel like resonates quite deeply.

It's one of the reasons I like it so much, even though I'm not really part of that world anymore. There's just a kind of a weird nostalgia, but also like, I had to listen to so much of this. And it's nice that it's different, and it's being turned into something new. And yeah. So, as we know, the Synod of Strategic Prophecy is responsible for the observers,

those Star Wars recon-Droid-headed guys who can hear the voice of God, and they're responsible for the tacticians of the civil. who make it possible to commune with the Council of Saints. But they also have an army of servants and labourers known as receptors. And these poor sods, they've had their brains partially replaced with receivers attuned to the word of God. Because of course they have. So we've got a bunch...

It's so harsh. So we've got a bunch of people who willingly or unwillingly are tuned into like God FM at all times. and a temple covered in receivers. Scott FFF is great, too. That's great, dude. That's so good. Was that off the dome or? Yep.

That was good, man. Plus two. Classy. Yeah, that's, I will also give the plus two X. Yep. Very good. Can continue, sir.

So you've got this lot living in a temple covered in receivers, antennas, radio, telescopes, all to try and get some kind of intelligible answer to the prayers that they send into the firmament. Now, I've got a question. Do you think this place of worship named the temple of the word and the surrounding monasteries are somewhere, A, pretty normal, or B, very weird?

You know, color me crazy, but I'm going to guess it's a pretty weird place. I think I'm going to go with my boy D.K. on this one. Funnily enough, you did guess it. The temple of the word is in a weird place because the temple of the word is in the valley of the word. And where the valley is, is a secret. And you'd be disappointed if it was anything else. What you've got is a hidden temple deep within a remote gorge somewhere in Europe where the stones themselves amplify the echoes of God's word. And the temple looks suspiciously, as Shai pointed out, like the Tower of Babel,

which is obviously nothing to worry about. It gets better, though. There's speculation that the valley was the first place on earth where creation began. Walking into this valley makes people tremble. It makes them fall to their knees. They suddenly become super humble. And if you're in the valley,

there's the weight of an intense gaze that strips away lies and reveals your innermost thoughts and things from the depths of your soul. And it only gets worse from there, really, because if you stumble in there by accident, the temple of the word say, well, you're here now, so we're going to take half your brain away and fill you full of equipment to hear the word of God.

And now you shall stay here for the rest of the rest of the rest of the rest of the way. and now you will stay here for the rest of your life. Enjoy. Oh, so if you just happenstance upon this place, they're just like, yeah, yoink, and they just lobotomize half your brain, I don't think that's the right word, whatever, and they just take half your brain and then you just become a receiver because damn sucks to suck, loser. Yep, because you're there, and they need people to hear the voice of God. So welcome to the clock.

All right. So remind me, because I, I did not grow up religious at all. It's probably why everything went so wrong. And I am curious, I remember seeing this as a meme a while ago. It was like, was it the Tower of Babel that when this was destroyed, that's when multiple, like, languages arrived? Yes. So the idea was to build a tower all the way up to heaven to speak directly with God.

Didn't appreciate that. Hubris. The hubris of man. Yeah. So the tower was destroyed. and then no one could understand each other, and separate languages were a thing. Gotcha.

Okay, because I remember seeing an image of the tower being destroyed, and then it was done by the Duolingo owl. And, and I first, I got it, but I forgot which tower that was, and now that makes a lot of sense.

Oh, my God. Good meme, I was going to say, it's niche, but it's good. I like that a lot. It's a very specific one, but yeah,

Okay, I wasn't sure if it was the tower. Yes, thank you, Shai. He's got that Anakin killing the younglings look. It's great. Oh, my God. Sweet. Sweet. All right.

That totally won't happen in Trench Crusade, right? That's 100% not what's going to happen here, right? This is a totally normal place, normal space, right? It can never happen here. Why would you even think about it? I know. It's totally fine. So the valley is like rammed with dishes, antennaed, radio telescopes, listening posts,

anything and everything to tune into God's voice. There's different monasteries in the valley as well, each with a specialist subject like The Great Beast, sounds cool, or the woman clothed in sun, which is one of the most like foreboding things I've ever read, which is, funnily enough, a direct reference to revelations. So in Revelations 12 there's a description of a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of 12 stars. The woman gives birth to a male child and this child is threatened by a dragon.

The woman escapes after the child is taken to heaven and this results in the war in heaven. It is widely accepted that the woman clothed in sun is the Virgin Mary, while some others interpret her as the church herself. So there's all these monasteries tuning into specific. frequencies to try and learn things about specific subjects. Or, alternatively, there's some just trying to interpret the sound of angelic trumpets, which honestly sounds like the worst one. It's just going to be like listening to a bunch of Vuvu Zalers every day for decade. That sucks. No one wants that. I, uh, me looking like Dennis in, uh, the

Chardi Mcdennes always sunny episode when he knows the answer and he's like sweating and about to lose his mind when you say the words war in heaven, me not trying to talk about necrons. Yeah. Me, me, me like, like pissing and shitting myself for Perry to discuss that. Also,

woman cloaked in sun is a, is a really cool name. That's just, that's just a great title. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. The whole imagery is great.

Like cloaked in sun, the stars above her, the moon at her feet is, it goes pretty hard. Dude, do the, the Bible rocks. man, there's some cool stuff here.

I mean, Revelations has some wild stuff. Revelations is like a fever dream compared to the rest of it, to be fair. It's super interesting, but it's like, wow, what happened here? And Old Testament God had no chill. I mean, I'll be honest.

Like, Revelations was pretty good, but I got to say the Dr. Monty stuff I wasn't a big fan of, and it was just a redone of a bunch of other maps. I was a much bigger fan of the other maps in that game. Hell yeah, brother. Black Ops 3, Cod Zombies

joke. Four, four people will get it, and I want those four people to be like, yay! That's it. That's all right. I knew it was a Cod Zombies joke. I didn't know which one. It was representing that I was, this is cod zombies, and I was like, zombies, religion, clever boy. Uh-huh, he-he,

hoo-hoo. Noah Ark was cringe probably made during the writer's strike. I mean, did you ever watch the film that had, what was it, Mel Gibson, doing, being Noah? That was not, that was not a good viewing experience. Did she ever watch Eddie or Evan Almighty, the Steve Correll version of Bruce Almighty? No. The sequel. Yeah, the sequel. I don't remember it being very good, but I'm pretty sure he was Noah in that one. I'm pretty sure he got a giant arc during like a big flood. Yeah, he was essentially the new era Noah being,

Yeah, yeah, that was that one. He was the reporter from the first movie that went. Oh, oh, yeah, no, I remember I cried laughing multiple times, listening to that first time when he was going, like, everybody, that's what, like, made Steve Carrell's career, isn't it? Oh, maybe. Because it was so funny. Oh, yeah, that's true.

I didn't even know there was a sequel, let alone it was, it was Steve Carell doing the same character. That is insane. Why would you do that? Don't watch it. You're better off and not. I can't. I'll pretend it didn't happen and just go back and watch the first one again.

Reference humor is the only thing I know. But you know it well. The way to get new blood in the temple of the word is to either get people who volunteer, people who stumble into the valley without permission, at which point, you know, you're all congratulations, you're here for life. Give me half your brain. or by searching in asylums and sanitariums for people who claim to hear the voice of God. Now, this is a tricky process because of those people,

the ones you find in the places for those struggling with various issues, the success rate of finding someone who can actually be trained at the Synod is less than one in 10,000. Despite the chances being so low, they do still find people who have a legitimate gift, and because this is a grim, dark universe, certain tropes are a must. So if they find a young child who can hear the word of the Almighty,

they get to go and be trained as tacticians, the ones who age a year for every second when channeling the Council of Saints, which, you know, pretty standard, let's be honest. Yeah, tracks. Yeah, yeah, stealing children to do horrible things. That's classic. Yeah, but we were born in this type of story.

Now, before we move on from the Synod, there's two notable features that I want to highlight. The first of which is that there is a structure known as the Gate of God, a colossal tower that acts as a conduit for the Holy Words. The tower is not and probably never will be finished, as it's constantly adjusted and improved on, as the Synod attempts to receive the voice of God with complete clarity. Also, the phrase gate of God refers to the Akkadian word Babylon, which translates to Babylon. And the real-world Ishtar Gate is a pretty spot-on comparison. There are also chambers in the foundations of this tower, which are guarded by elite warriors called the Watchers, who are crowned with horns of light.

And no one knows what's behind the doors of these chambers, but there are claims that the alchemists of the iron sultanate have passed through. And there are rumours that there is just monstrous wailing going on behind the 100-ton vault doors, which sounds like Metacrised potential to me personally. It's also worth noting that the constant construction of the tower is driving a wedge between the Synod and the current War Cardinal, who compares the Gate of God with the Tower of Babel. but there are some people who think it's political posturing on his part because the synod is basically becoming an independent army outside of the control of the church. So is it some kind of like fraternious militia of sorts that he's kind of like trying to build up?

It seems like they are effectively pairing themselves away from the overall authority of the rest of the church and their army of like half-brained lobotomized receivers and observers and such are just, they're just getting bigger and bigger and more powerful, and he does not like that. He wants them to be under their control. Metacrace? So the Metacrists is effectively a clone of Jesus Christ. Yes, so the communicants, the big chunky dudes with either the giant anti-tank gun

or with the cross nailed into their face. They are people who have eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of a Metacrists, which is a clone of Jesus. Right, right, right, okay. I think we had that episode, like, actually six months ago. Oh, yeah, it was a while ago. We're going to talk about the communicants a bit more today, but, yeah, the Metacrists, we know there's at least seven of them because numbers four and seven show up in the law currently, which we will talk about a little bit. But, yeah, it would appear that the church somehow managed to clone Jesus and in an attempt to make super soldiers feed the flesh and blood to people

who volunteer to create hulking monstrosities. Because, of course, they do. I do remember the cloning of Jesus. I remember that part. Okay, cool, sick. Hell yeah. Thank you for the lesson. So, the trench pilgrims.

We're going to get back to the actual. topic of the episode, because we're good at that. Speaking of independent armies, let's actually talk about the Trench Pilgrims. So there's lots of ways to end up battling against the forces of hell and a good number of options if you want to fight the good fight, but there is one that's notable for feeling a bit, just a little bit, like divine intervention. So, D.K., could you read this for me? Of course I can. As the war rages As the war rages against the minions of hell,

Strange visions torment the faithful across the globe. Men and women touch by heaven are granted visions, and revelations are made by the messengers of God. Sisters of the Holy Order are marked by stigmata and take up sword and cross as instructed by the angels. Those who have transgressed seek to atone for their sins by taking as many followers of the devil with them to the afterlife. I mean, if there's one way to ensure that there's a steady flow of bodies to the front lines of the war between heaven, by proxy at least, and hell,

it's to fill believers with religious fervor to the extent they seek out prophets and prophetesses and march into no man's land with any weapons they can get their hands on. The requirements and criteria for these pilgrims pretty low. You can be insane, you can be racked with guilt, you can be missing an art. or you could be living as close to a normal life as is possible in this universe, and one day you'll have a vision, you'll hear a message, and you'll know that there's only one way you want to leave this mortal coil, and that's by taking out as many heretics with you as you possibly can. It doesn't matter whether you're stabbing, shooting, bludgeoning,

or throwing Molotov cocktails, you've got one job on this earth, and it's to go out fighting in the name of the Almighty. Yeah. in a world full of sinners, if you offer the reward of atonement, you get them to do almost anything. Are these trench pilgrims part of like the church faction? So a lot of these are like civilians and they just kind of like go off and do their thing. Like there are a lot of elderly, for example, because near the end of their life, they're like, well, it's time. Blaze of Glory.

It's funny you mention that because you are two paragraphs ahead of me because they're not. Wow. They're not actually sanctioned by the Holy See. They are, they're a valuable fighting force, but they're not an official part of the church's military. Instead, they get given a blessing. Then they're just left to their own devices, mostly because their own devices involve suicidal assaults

against heretic forces. So it's a case of, well, we can't necessarily control them. They're not particularly well trained, but we know that they're going to go out fighting, and they are going to go out fighting until their last breath. So we will just say, off you go, the Lord says thanks, you do you, and they'll just roam into no man's land and invariably just start killing heretics. So the church doesn't necessarily have any command over them because of the way that they're led. the prophets that are leading them,

they see visions and they see conflicts and they direct the processions towards them. And the church just kind of goes, hands off, we've blessed you. You go and do your own thing. Yeah, you wouldn't turn away a fighting force like that, right? I mean, it's, you know, if they want to go on like a suicidal last stand

against the enemies of hell, why not? As long as they don't get in your way. Yeah, I mean, like, if you have, have someone who's cool with like picking up a crappy rifle, a Bible and whatever they can find on the ground and then they shoot down two to three heretics like sick.

I mean, you know, that's free, that's free people, free meat. That's none of, that's none of your actual troops lost and potentially a lot of heretics killed. So I get it. Yeah. Pretty much, they will show up with whatever they have to hand.

They'll just, you know, they'll, they'll turn up on the front lines following some sort of prophet or prophetess using, you know, granddad's musket and a half-drunk bottle of whiskey with a burning rag in it and want to kill heretics? And so the church goes, brilliant, off you go. We're not going to deal with this because, you know, you're missing half a leg and you're clinically insane. But if you want to go and, you know, die killing heretics, that's all good by the us, you just head off over that way, wherever the prophet says,

and we'll leave you to it. In the general world of trench crusade, will we assume that the trench pilgrims are something we would call a horde army? It's fair to label them like that, yeah. I feel like

most would not end up killing anything. They would die immediately because the heretics, while also clinically insane, probably have, you know, like, have about equal shot. Oh, now to be fair, now to be fair, there's a couple of things, there's a couple of things that give the Trench Pilgrims a bit more, like, they're full of beans, they're ready to go, and they have a couple of things which help them a little bit with this.

So one of the first things that I thought when I first read through the Trench Crusade Law Primer was, okay, the Trench Pilgrims are very fun. But do they get second thoughts or like, do they get a bit anti as they get closer? Do they get afraid of death, given that they are charging at heretics, some of whom, as we've seen, have just got, you know, fetuses attached to their belt for some reason. I still don't know what the reason is. There is an answer to this. There's these guys called castigazers who have got big whips,

and their job is to instear the fear of God into the soldiers. So even if you do get a bit scared, there's that guy with the shield, with the hands nailed to it, with the big whip, to ensure that you continue feeling full of zeal and vim and vigor and the like. Okay, so in the lore of boss baby, this is a commissar. also so for some reason i thought this was like entirely like a voluntary thing right where it was like oh yeah i'm showing up uh you know my family has committed all these terrible sins i want atonement uh for for for for for god and church and whatever and then just ran off and just went cuckoo crazy i didn't realize they actually had someone that was like oh you've signed up for trench crusading

you've signed up to be a pilgrim i have this giant whip you are going to go forward with what you said you're going to go forward with like there's you don't back you're you don't back out of this. This isn't like a voluntary thing I thought it was. It's voluntary to join, but it's not voluntary to leave. Once you're in, you're in. So if you commit to charging that trench that's full of heretics and, you know, heretic adjacent, like demonish things or weird constructs, you're going to charge that trench because it's that or you get slammed with the big

whip from the dude with other people's hands nailed to his shield. Yeah, in my head, I just thought all of them had just such this crazy religious fervor that there was just no big, I guess, literal turnaround rate in the sense that they just start running away. I just thought everyone was just like, oh yeah, for God, for my sins and just plowed forward. For the most part, they do, but there's always going to be someone who's a bit, like, doubtful who kind of stumbles and goes, I'm not sure about this, and that's where the castigator comes in. Because let's face it, if you are facing a shy put in a weird

intestine demon with four wings that is like made of blood vessels and brains, you're probably going to have a moment of like, oh boy, I mean, I want to kill heretics, but what the hell is that? It's a lot easier to not think of the what the hell is that bit if there's a guy behind you absolutely whipping the shit out of you at the same time. With a shield full of hands, yeah. With a shield full of hands, yeah. So, like, the bulk of the pilgrims don't really have any military training, but, along with the castigator to kind of

shoe them along, they do get something called the iron a caperote, which I'm sure I'm pronouncing incorrectly, but I couldn't find a decent pronunciation guide for it, which is a helmet that appears to be pretty much exclusive to the Trench Pilgrims, both in terms of faction and in terms of named unit. It's a bit confusing because there is the faction, which is the Trench Pilgrims. Then within that faction, you've got the subheading of the Faithful, and then under the Faithful, you've got the unit, which is Trench Pilgrims, which is a specific model slash unit for the tabletop. I don't know why they did it that way. It's not massively helpful, but there you go. But the iron catarote appears on that piece of artwork, which we saw earlier. The barefooted soldier

with a big, pointy hat with a cross on it, and a rifle with a bayonet. That has a head. And helmet. This is, is this like the classic, like, your standard kind of person? Or is, are they a little bit cooler because they got the cool hat? This is your standard trench pilgrim. Damn, they got a cool hat. Yeah, they don't just get the blessing from the church. They also get this helmet, this iron caperote, which has been blessed and quite often

has some form of relic inside them. And it insulates the mind of the trench pilgrim from the psychological horror of war and allows them to face creatures from the pits of hell unflinchingly. And in the rules, that's represented by making the wearer immune to the effects of fear. So as a sort of mass-produced bit of equipment goes, it's pretty good. Yeah, that's what you want your trench programs to have, right? Because it's kind of hard to have second thoughts if you don't fear and if it sort of, you know, shields your brain.

Yep. I mean, these are ordinary men and women who are just driven to fight against. heretics through religious visions, they're not, like, conditioned or trained. So having something which actively pushes back against the horror of warfare, pretty useful. Also, shy, blasphemous, I'm pretty sure, right? Oh, is that the name of the game?

Yes, the quote-unquote Christian Dark Souls would be blasphemous, yes. Actually, hilariously, I'll send a photo at some point later, but the filmmaker guy that I'm doing, the big 40K project on. He is actually making a sisters a battle army for a tournament that I'm going to in Palm Springs this weekend. And in that in that tournament, he's, so he's doing sisters.

So he 3D print him because he loves blasphemous. He 3D printed a bunch of the pointy helmets for all of his sisters. And they look sick. Nice. They got the, they got the cool like little crown of thorns type thing around the rap. It's great. It's cool stuff. Also, good luck in Palm Springs heat, brother.

Stay on the, stay inside. Dude, I know. It's going to be like 105, which is like, it's like 40 degrees Celsius. Don't love that. I was, I was just there for a wedding and it. Great wedding. Shitty weather. Yeah.

I'll be, I'll be inside an air-conditioned room playing my Warhammer. Thank you very much. I was dying when it was 30 degrees last week. It's 20 today, which is, frankly, delightful compared to last week. 40? Hell no. Absolutely not. Just kill me now. That's Palm Springs. That's, uh, it's hot. It's hot out there. Inland California. Mm-hmm. So, as has become tradition for these Trench Crusade episodes, I of course

have gone and looked at where the inspiration for the iron caperote comes from, and you'll be amazed, amazed to learn that it's inspired by the caperote, which is a, pointed conical hat. It's pretty much what it is in real life, but made of metal and slightly, I say magical, you know what I mean? To be fair, it's a little bit more interesting than that, because this is Transcrucade, and so much of this universe is, like, heavily extrapolated from real religious or historical stuff. So we're going to go into it just a little bit. So this... Real quick, out of curiosity, because I got to ask, is the caperope where those douchebags and the white cloaks got their idea from.

Funnily enough, you have preempted the next sentence. Oh, okay. Yeah, I had a feeling. I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling, and I was like, well, those are also pointy. Yeah, unfortunately. There was a part of me that was worried that that was the direction it was going into, and, you know, yeah. Unfortunately, yes. It's history. It's been around well before they sort of co-opted it.

No, definitely. I assume they were the ones who, like, that was where they got the inspiration from. Yes, 100%. What I wrote down was that the caperote has been around for a long, long time, and while in more recent times it may have been co-opted by an organization that's the poster child for why everyone should try therapy, the inspiration is from a confraternity of penitent, of the Catholic Church and it's seen most often

in Italy, Spain and other Hispanic countries and there's a lot of fun things that tie into the Trench Crusade Pilgrims. So one of the things... A lack of a mother figure is like sent us down some dark places.

I will say Twitch has an auto mod feature which is hilarious because it will automatically block certain things. And I remember some person, they were talking about money, but also money related to D&D. And so it was like, we've held this message back for you in case you want to like say yes or

no. And I looked over it. It just said like 100 grand wizard. Oh. And it took grand wizard. And I was like, why is it block grand wizard? Like, oh, right. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm pissed about it. because Grand Wizards, a really cool name for a title. It's just those bastards they take all the cool stuff. Isn't there also a rank of like dragon or something, or am I misremembering? I'm sure there's something like that similarly, but like, ugh, I was like, I was like, sick wizards. Stop taking cool stuff and making it awful. Damn you, Hugo Boss.

Anyway, continue. So something that is kind of interesting about the origin of this piece of headwear is that the focus is on like penitence and doing penance. And it should be noted that only members of a confraternity of penance are permitted to wear a capro in solemn processions. The processions can be really, really long as well. In a more negative sense during the times of the Inquisition, those found to be heretics would wear one of them along with a San Benito, which is like a scapular but adorned with flames and devils, and be forced to go on a penance walk.

So historically, one method of performing penance was to flog yourself, with people who do that being known as flagellants, and at one point it was decided by the Pope that flagellants had to do penance only under the control of the church, which is one of the reasons that flagellants hide their faces, and that stipulation is built into the caparotes that are worn like even today. The caparote as a garment was enforced in Spain by the Holy Office of Inquisition with people who were arrested having to wear a paper caperote in public as a form of humiliation

and colours were different depending on the judgment. But a red caparote denoted someone who was going to be executed, which is, I was going to say it's a thing. fun reference. I say fun. Execution is rarely fun, but it's a fun little detail as there's a unit called the Witch Burner in Trench

Crusade. They do exactly what you think they do. And in the official artwork, he's depicted as wearing a red iron caperote. So in Trench Crusade, that's kind of switched from being someone who is due

for execution to someone doing the executing, which is is a fun little twist on it. Also, what a fucking boss. Look at that guy. Oh, yeah. It's still a... Yeah, it's still a massive symbol of death, but yeah.

I remember him because I remember making the reference, like, oh, yeah, it reminds me of the Emperor's Guard, because they're all in, like, Red Armour, too, and I'm a big dork that watches too much Star Wars. Listen, dude, and or is the best thing ever made of all time, so it's okay. Yeah. But that's like the espionage.

stuff. That's not like the silly little jet. I know. You like your lightsaber. It's fine. That being said, the Witchburner do be strutton. He's great. Yeah. Also, as Shai points out, on the tabletop, he can only

walk. He cannot run. He's banned from running. That's so funny. Well, look at him. Although... He's orim forming. If he could run, that'd be the scariest thing. Could you imagine that guy running at you? What, full sprint?

She's trying to get away. You look around and there's a dude with a punch of robes, two tilt shields and a massive red pointy hat with like a judge's wig sprinting at you, full pelt, pointing his cane at your face. I like, I would shit. I know for a fact that like he has like powerful witch burning powers and stuff.

But I immediately imagine him fight. using that cane like JP in Street Fighter 6, just like bitch slapping people with it, you know? He just walks up slowly and downsmashes someone into oblivion. Man, the Sage Jam Slam changed you, brother. I love, I love Chun Lee. I love Chun Lee. No, it's great stuff. It's great stuff. Such a good quote as well.

Salvation is not a gift. It must be paid for in the coin of agony and despair. Okay, that that's nuts. Wait, we have to ask again, what is the name of the, it's tangent of that dude, because you said coin, what's the name of that like money, the, the pimp guy? He's like covered in gold. Also, I love that like you didn't lead off with, oh yeah, that guy covered in gold, you let off with that pimp guy. Look at him. Knights of Averis.

That's it. Thank you. I mean, I mean, come on, you know he's pimping. Look, well,

probably. Yeah. That's so cool, though. It reminds me of, um, oh, the,

the Destiny 2 raid dude, these big opulent, um, yeah, callous. Yeah, yeah, the big,

uh, I mean, it's just, the big cabal guy. It's royalty colors, right? It's golden purple. So it's not like that's uniquely a calus thing.

Or it's not like uniquely a trans crusade thing, but, um, boss baby, and over here. It's tradition. Also, I love the whole golden calf thing. Worshipping from the golden calf?

Oh, it's so good. You know you made it when your puldrons is a church. Yeah. Oh, true. I didn't even zoom in to see that. Yep. Anyway, once the inquisition was got rid of, the symbol of punishment and penance that is the caperote

was kept by the Catholic Brotherhood, except instead of making them out of paper, they made out of cloth. With all of that being said, the trench pilgrims wear a symbol of penitence into battle, which is very appropriate given the history of the garment. Plus, at this point, the colours of the caperotes take on different meanings, all of which, you know, being more indicative of religious celebration instead of crimes against the church, which is what they were originally made for.

On a similar note, one of the questions that comes up a fair bit when you look at the trench pilgrim is, where are your shoes? Where are your goddamn shoes, dude? You're walking through no man's land. You're charging through trenches. You do not have a pair of boots on. What's the deal? Why would you?

Funnly enough, it's penance again. Sort of. That's one aspect of it. I was going to say, that's sort of like the pain that you have to go through. That's sort of like your penance that you have to like suffer. Yes. Yeah.

It's this thing of like, showing humility before God, the symbolic aspect of leaving behind worldly concerns, the list kind of goes on. Why every church leader on this podcast mandates no shoes. Oh, no. That's a damn good point, actually. Hold on.

It's a point, anyway. Going on pilgrimages with no shoes is quite an old custom. I say quite old. It's very old. For example, there's a town in the UK called Walsingham that has a number of different shrines and churches, two of which are the basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham and Walsingham Priory. The basilica is the last wayside chapel on the pilgrimage route to the Priory, and that basilica has become known as the Slipper Chapel, as that's the place where pilgrims would stop and remove their shoes before walking the final mile into Walsingham barefoot. that's something that's been happening since the 14th century and I saw that happen every year for 10 years between the ages of 5 and 15

which is how I know about it that wasn't even a Wikipedia thing that is just something I saw on the regular so it's it's a regular thing and it's been going back you know hundreds upon hundreds of years there's also barefoot pilgrimages in Ireland as well and as Shire has put in 1904 illustration of a medieval Spanish penicent, flagellant, no shoes.

Yeah, yeah, too true. Your regular trench pilgrim might be full of beans and round to go. Furnished with an anti-hell helmet, their granddad's musket in one hand. Stop, stop, stop. What? Okay, full of beans, you said it twice now,

I can't let it continue. Is that like, does that mean, Like, insane, like crazy. Like, excited. Like, just ready for action. Excited? Full of beans means excited? Yeah, like, you're well-fed.

You're ready to go. Yeah, you're like, you're ready to, you just, you want to get in there. Mm-hmm. You're nourish, you're well-fed, you're full beans, ready to go. Let's get this shit going, right? At least that's how I always perceived it. Okay, okay. Just...

I didn't think this was going to be the... the thing that caused everything to cry to a halt. I just, the first time, I thought you meant like full of beans, like you lost your marbles, like you're, you've gone crazy,

like you're, you're full of beans. And now I'm, I heard it twice and I had to, I had to ask. I have my answer now. We may continue. He's juiced up on the sauce,

man. Yeah, he's got, he's full of gamer juice. Yeah, you hate gamer juice, okay. Okay, very, very well.

I will continue. Or I agree. My apologies. So, you know, they want in. They want to fight heretics. But despite them being excited and protected, they're just as likely to get killed as anyone else. Luckily, for some of them, death is not the end.

because the seventh metacrist will sometimes decide that a fallen pilgrim, he's got the worth to be given a second chance. So he gets brought back as a martyr penitent. Now, these warriors are described as being halfway between heaven and earth, and they get to fight all over again, except this time round they feel no pain. It doesn't matter if they're getting shot or stabbed, does nothing to them pain-wise. I did note, as I was writing this episode, that it doesn't say anything about them healing from disastrous wounds or being impervious to damage.

It's just that they don't feel pain. So that sounds fun. I don't know. So it's not necessarily immortality that they're given. They're just doped up on pseudo-anesthesia, so they just don't feel themselves dying. They still are bleeding out, they still suffer crazy injuries. It's just they don't feel it and they can go just maniacal cuckoo crazy. Pretty much.

I mean, it seems like they can have horrendous, awful wounds that would render them non-functional eventually. But they don't feel it, so it's fine. Oh, it's this creepy guy. Yeah, I remember this image. Enough shots to the leg will make your leg fall off. And then you'll be like, why is running so hard? But yeah, no, that makes sense. Dude's missing half of his fucking stomach.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Like, one more shot to the torso from the right caliber gun. And that guy is doing a full black knight and just trying to bite people's ankles. And he just doesn't feel it too. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Or he just does the classic zombie thing where it's a torso that's just like clawing around at the ground and just like, you know, trying to get you.

Oh, God. Munchin. Yeah. But it's in the name of the Lord, so it's fine. That's how this works, all right? Of course. Of course. Shy, what the fuck is this?

That's, uh, oh. What that is how? This is the first image that comes up when you Google Martyr Penitententon on Trench Crusade Reddit. What is going on with this community? Is that true? It's not even, the thighs are, it's as calves. Everything is, I'm more upset that their angles are wrong.

I was going to stay like, spots. Yeah. That is not the midriff, no matter how you slice it. These logistics are off, trench crusade community. They're off. Oh, God, yeah, you're not wrong. That is, that is, why? What the hell?

Well, let's move on, shall we? Yeah, that's, uh... I feel like let's move on has been the ongoing phrase this entire episode. You're not wrong. Need its own TV tropes page. Oh, let's move on. Something worse. Oh, who's called us that?

Oh, it's definitely mine, but you did post that. So, like, this is partially your fault, shy. Yeah, that one's on you, shy. Yeah. We definitely need to move on before someone gets taken up for the, end of the episode. Yeah, let's move on. Let's move on.

The Trench Pilgrims themselves are all around great, but they don't just come in the pointy hat, no shoes variety. Oh, no. There's any number of different Trench Pilgrim processions, and we're going to talk about a couple of the more notable ones, starting with the procession of the sacred affliction, who take the whole self-flagellation thing to a whole new level by, deliberately going out and contracting leprosy, which is passed down from the founder of the procession and which they consider a holy disease.

Now, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm sorry. I had to cut you off, but leprosy, holy disease, let's move on. Let's move on. All right, yeah, you know what, true and fair, Ricky. Let's move right along. I was lost unliked by that, but yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I just, all right.

Well, you know, for those not familiar, leprosy is what is generally referred to as not a good time. It's a bacterial disease that affects skin, respiratory tract, eyes and nerves. On the one hand, the nerve damage can lead to a lack of ability to feel pain, which in a fight is, I guess, kind of beneficial. but on the other hand, it can lead to losing your extremities through repeated injury or just not noticing wounds, which isn't ideal. Plus, you know, things like your eyesight going to hell and muscle weakness aren't exactly conducive to a long career in the trenches. Also, leprosy on the whole, very avoidable and preventable.

It takes a lot for it to spread from person to person, and the pathogenicity of it is really low. Over 90% of people exposed to it won't contract it, and symptoms can take decades to appear. It's very common in ancient history due to it being common around those with other skin ailments or in rather unfortunate poverty-stricken areas, but it wouldn't spread to, you know,

richer, more wealthy people for those reasons which explains some of the things were about to talk about. Plus, if listening to this you're like, oh dear God, I'm not scared of leprosy, which I wasn't before, there's a vast drop in cases. So there was around a million new cases every year in the early 90s. Now we're down to a quarter of a million annually, and that's everywhere.

So it's not as big a problem as it used to be. Oh my God, shy. I hate that I look over when that popped up in the Discord. I don't like it. Don't be a coward, shy.

Screenshot that and put it in the episode. I was about to read it. No, I don't want to read it. She has to put it out there. She has to atone. The court of public opinion opens now. Become a trench pilgrim shy, atone for your sin.

Become a trench pilgrim spit, no. So, leprosy shows up in the Bible a fair bit in both the New and Old Testament, often portrayed as a curse, a divine punishment, or as a source of uncleanness. And a lot of the treatment of those with leprosy was derived from the kind of awful way in which it was described biblically. I mean, it was used as a symbol of Jesus' compassion and love for others that he cured people of leprosy at a time where sufferers were effectively outcast from society as a whole and forced to live apart.

Another note, too, is that leprosy in many respects seems to have been a bit of a catch-all when it comes to similar ailments at the time. The generalisation helped when it came to emphasising a point, especially utilising the most extreme form. as the name for it. Now, the term leper isn't really acceptable these days, as it was part of the language used to ensure that sufferers were ostracized and isolated from the general population,

but historically, there were what are known as leper colonies, which are exactly what they sound like, and later in the Middle Ages, leper houses became the preferred way to deal with those suffering from the disease. That went on for ages, by the way. The usage of quarantine locations with the awful term leper colony was used well into the 1900s and even up to the 80s specifically, which is wild when you consider that modern medicine has made the usage of those places completely archaic because they can be treated.

But there are still some that exist to this day in other countries. Which, that blows my mind. It makes me sad at the same time. Is this axe that Chai posted something that they use on the regular? Because the axe blade having that specific scripture on it kind of goes hard. I'm not going to lie. That is insane. I don't think I've seen that art before.

Like that. So I'll read it out loud. So this is a picture of an axe. And it has, for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is a dissoner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Oh my God.

Literally called leopard acts. Oh my God. It's so cool. To have that written on the axe is like, oh, nice, nice. Once again, all the art goes hard. It just does. Yep. It's full of beans.

It is full of beans. I don't want to be full of beans anymore, man. I'm so tired of beans. It certainly come up twice, there's a problem. Okay. That's the third time. That's the third time.

That's thrice. I didn't say that time. I was going to say it doesn't count, but that I mean, no, we're going to move on. I'm going to mention, let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. I'm going to mention this, because if I don't, there will be a good chunk of comments demanding to know why we didn't talk about this person. So one notable man

affected by leprosy in the real world was King Baldwin IV, who lived during the 12th century and was a crusader king who ruled over Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185, which given the time period is pretty impressive. He also died, aged between 23 and 24. That dude packed a lot into a short life, especially for back in the day. Like, that is ridiculous. I don't mean to boss, baby, but is there any chance that the Kingdom of Heaven King was based on him? Because I believe he also had that, but he's got this really sick mass. Same King.

Okay. Same King. It's been so long since I've seen Kingdom of Heaven. I wasn't sure if that was actually his name or if it was just a obvious, depiction of him, but okay, cool, cool. Yeah, he gets, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so cool. This has got really don't know. What absolutely iconic character design.

I don't know how historically accurate it is. I also don't care because look at it. It's crazy. It's so good. Oh, it's the meme guy. Oh, yeah. It sounds like the old blah, blah, blah, blah, speaking, right? Yep, that's the one.

That's right. That is the meme. I totally forgot. him. Yep, that's the halt, halt, actual knower of Warhammer lore. Bricky is talking. I love that that

that was your recognition of it. Yeah, I haven't seen this film before. I haven't seen this movie. Honestly, you should watch it, though. It is genuinely a really great movie. It is, it is really great. Like Shia said, it is an underrated movie. Directors is the way to go.

Yeah, it's good. All right, all right, I'll get around to it. I just love that whole exchange there. All of that ending with, oh, the meme guy is, oh, love it. So the procession of the sacred affliction are all about leprosy, can't get enough of a disease that everyone else would prefer to never experience. They have a particular love of close quarters combat, and they have a habit of decorating their armor with eye-com.

and shields covered in depictions of the saints. It's not just a case of wanting to get some drip on the go. The icons and shields might not look that protective, but they can withstand bullets. You can unload a machine gun on one of them, and the chances are they just won't get hurt because these depictions they've painted on deflect the bullets as they hit them.

Another fun thing about... It's all goofy, but it's pretty sick. I don't want a boss baby it, but it feels a little orky, but I'm not going to, I don't like it. I'm not going to boss baby it. I'm except for just saying it. You got to accept a boss baby sometime. I don't want it. I don't want a boss baby it.

Now everyone's done it this episode. We've all boss babyed something. Well done, yeah, yeah, we've all done it. It's the modern disease. Anyway, another fun thing about this lot is that. they carry millstones with them, either tied to their backs or across their chests. Millstones are typically used for crushing or grinding wheat or grains. So, if you had to hazard a guess, why do you think people would be carrying millstones into no man's land?

To grind up the heretics? That's all I got. As like a weapon? Not a bad guess, but you're focusing more on the purpose and less on the weight. It's to tie them around the necks of sinners, weighing them down, so that they can drown them in the filthy puddles of mud and blood, in the crater-filled nightmare that is no mansland. Not a foal in sight, just people living in the moment.

Not a phone in sight. Okay, so this is the drowning of the witch by putting this stuff around the ankles, but instead it's trench water in the middle of awful. Hells case. Yeah, yeah. It's, funnily enough, under the Bible reference, the millstone, not the phones thing. Thanks for clearing that. I don't know why I bothers to clarify that.

Oh, yeah, no, it was crazy that on the third day Jesus came out and said, do you guys not have phones? Yeah. Anybody got a quarter I need to call dad. Yeah. It's such a good, when I say it's such a good unit name, the heavy leper.

It's just a really jacked dude with a millstone tied to his chest. What the hell? Okay. This is another Bible reference, and it's mentioned in the book of Matthew chapter 18 verse 6

regardless of which version you're looking at the gist of it is whoever causes one of these little ones that believe in me to stumble it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea so presumably the founder of the procession

of sacred affliction must have read that verse and just like latched onto it Like properly, properly attached, like a celebrity, where the question will pass, latching onto religion. Or perhaps someone latching on to a millstone into the sea. All that. There's also a thing in Revelations as well, where in Revelations 1821, there is a reference to a mighty angel casting a great millstone into the sea and destroying Babylon. on. So you're full up on references on millstones to murder people. Here, I thought I was the reference person today.

Granted, I mean, French Crusade is literally all the Bible and, I mean, it's fairness. I would argue that. So it was supposed to war hammer, but you know. Trench Crusade is like Bible reference the game. I think it's fair to say. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair.

It will be kind of sick, though. Yeah, the Arcus Garden, it's just a little, like, it's like twisted the Bible, the game. Yeah, it is. I think that's one of the main reasons I like it so much. We're going to talk about the war pilgrimage of St. Methodius now, because this lot are, like, weirdly law-heavy, compared to a lot of the stuff we've talked about when it comes to units of the Transc Crusade, which I know that sounds weird because,

there's a lot of stuff behind these things, but these episodes have ended up taking a bit more of a real-world slant because so much of the World of Trench Crusade is directly inspired by or simply mirroring things that actually exist, or, you know, things that would have existed if things hadn't changed due to the ultimate heresy. Which means that although your generic trench pilgrim is interesting and fun, he's more interesting and fun because there's a lot of real stuff behind him

that's been translated into a nightmare world where you know some poor sod can suddenly start having religious visions and then end up throttling a man who's looked into hell and thought yes please and it turns out they're fighting in a big hole caused by an artillery shell that had the church approved Latin for fuck you and the actual pit you called out of inscribed all over it. That was probably fired by a canon that has a priest issuing coordinates provided by the echoes of the predictions made by a clone of Jesus, who is the only clone of Jesus, that could talk without bleeding out of his eyes, or something like that.

A lot of it is historical and based around real religion, but then transplanted into a nightmare world of, frankly, insane nonsense. Let's move on. In the case of the procession of St. Methodius, we actually get a good chunk of information as to the construction of the Shrine Anchor Act, which is that big diesel-powered, definitely not Dreadnought that the Trench Pilgrims have access to,

because it was their original home that produced those machines. So the pilgrimages of St. Methodius, they are the direct result of the destruction of the greater Moravian monastery of Velaerad, from which a single monk of the Order of St. Methodius escaped. The rest of the brotherhood of St. Methodius were killed by a squadron of death commandos, but this one survivor managed to bring with him the books of that saint. Now, with the loss of the workshops and libraries of Vellarad,

the general belief was that the ability to create new anchorites was lost, as most assumed that whatever secrets went into their construction, must have been destroyed along with everything else. Added to which, the church weren't really that interested in continuing making the anchorites, there'd been advances in armouring technology elsewhere, so it's like, why bother with these? We have better stuff that we could be making. This single surviving monk, I love that, the anchorite, I've just seen the picture.

I was about to say, until I saw the picture, I was looking at the mini, I was like, what is that around its waste? because on the mini it kind of sort of looks like cloth and in the full picture it's oh it's a it's a lamb and I'm like yeah the imagery got it got it okay cool so this single surviving monk

he still had knowledge of how to craft these things his name was Akakios and he decided to flee to the Eccratia of Hellas and start a new monastery on the slopes of Mount Athos which is a real place which even today is referred to as Holy Mountain in some Orthodox traditions, and it still has a monastic community. In Trench Crusade, there were already monastic communities living at Mount Athos,

and some of them decided to join Akkios in his new monastery, which became heavily fortified in a bid to protect the knowledge of modifying the designs of their patron saint Methodius. So Akkaios became the first ever war prophet of the old. order. And so there's now a steady march of war pilgrimages to the front lines. And there is no other trench pilgrim procession that has anywhere near the access to anchorites or their wider array of weapons and equipment. So these war pilgrimages can take two shrine anchorites rather than one, and those anchorites can be equipped with weapons that they otherwise wouldn't be

able to wield on the tabletop. How cool does that look? Oh, my God. That's so good. That is a dope era. Also, did I just zone out? Are these essentially piloted on the inside by like a priest or something, or are they their own, like, actual living entities or...

They're piloted by a monk or a pilgrim who stays in there until they die. As you do in trench pilgrims. Yay. Murder buckets. Yippee. That is what it is. It is a big murder bucket. You murder and then you get murdered eventually, I suppose.

Yeah. That looks so good. I want to live there. How do I... well, become a monk. I'm not doing that. But that looks great. It does. I'd be worried about any earthquake ever, though. Fine. I mean...

I'll give me that. Come on, man. We're used to it. Earthquakes are nothing to us anymore. True, but I'm also not literally living on the edge of a cliff. Aren't we all... Howard? Aren't we all, in a sense, living on an edge of a metaphorical cliff? Yeah, that's a literal edge of a cliff, though.

There's nothing That's not a metaphor You know what You got a great point Never mind Thank you Oh my God It's not all upsides

Not living on the edge of a metaphorical Or literal cliff Being part of the followers of St. Methodius Not all Hang in a second Oh I forgot on that quote. Bricky, do you want to read that out just because it's incredible?

Yeah, of course. The grotesque amalgamation of suffering and devotion instills fear in the heart of the heretic as the anchorite a malevolent weapon draped in holy iconography and weeping gore emerges to unleash a symphony of slaughter where the wretched union of man and machine heralds the demise of all who oppose the almighty. That rocks. Good description. Pretty good.

It's pretty good. Oh. So they do get two of them, which is good, but, but there are downsides. They do not like communicants, the followers of St. Methodius. They think they're heretical, and they also don't approve of the use of martyrdom devices, which are basically just bombs. strapped to prisoners, as they view that as essentially being suicide with extra steps, which, you know, God generally, not a big fan of that.

Yeah, that's fair, actually. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but yeah. So that means that on the tabletop, they don't get access to communicants in any way, and their ecclesiastic prisoners can't be fitted with martyrdom devices. So rather than them running in with a shell strapped to their, back and going boom. Instead, they run in and try to punch Heretics to death with their bare fists, which goes about as well as you'd expect, because look at the state of them. How is that guy doing anything without that shell attached to the back of him?

He's not. Oh, yeah, I was going to say, like, that's, essentially, that's all they can do. Like, they're completely shackled. Like, you can, I guess you could maybe bludgeon someone with the wood shackles on your arm, but like, I don't know what the prisoners are supposed to do other than just be cannon fodder, distraction, decoy. These are sinners and heretics suspected, and as such, they need to assume. Oh, man, I... Sinners and heretics, allegedly. Allegedly, yeah, like, that just fired off in my brain.

I was like, oh, boy, this is... Don't boss baby it, but, oh, boy, that's all too familiar. It's not great. There is a line in the law primary. It talks about if they survive. If they survive, look at the position they're in. Which mean if they survive. Yeah. Like, I mean, honestly, with the anchor rights, they actually have a chance of surviving. I guess, because they don't have the bomb. Like, geez, that's wicked. mate if you get out of that with that strapped to your back running face first into a hail of enemy gunfire and you make it out alive you deserve to be made some sort of like high-ranking angel because holy shit what a legend how do you even manage it well i do like the bomb guys so they are they i was going to say they're really cool in the context of the universe yes yes not the I wouldn't implement them today, you know, but, you know, in Trench Prusade, they're pretty rad. So...

How could you say something so controversial, you're so brave, period? So, interestingly, the Trench Pilgrims of the War Pilgrimage of St. Methodius, they can't be resurrected as martyr penitence either. Though the special rule saying that doesn't give an explanation. There's a couple of possible reasons for that, one being that their trench pilgrims are better trained, disciplined, more organised, and as such they may simply be more prepared for death and are more prepared to take their place in heaven.

Alternatively, since they have a problem with communicants, it may simply be that they refuse the blessings of the 7th Metacrise, since resurrection is specifically called out as being caused by that 7th Metacrifice. as we discussed earlier. So interestingly, another procession which we'll talk about in a moment has the same limitation on their trench pilgrims and their special rule explicitly says

they reject the doctrine of the Metacrists. Their dead pilgrims cannot be resurrected as martyr penitents. So either they are actively refusing to be resurrected or the Seventh Metacrist is actively choosing not to resurrect those trench pilgrims who don't accept that doctrine. Either way, they're not having it. Traditionally, the stigmatic nuns,

they go into battle with a bit of armour. Like, they leave themselves exposed because when the stigmatic nuns get injured, they get stronger, which is part of the blessing of the Fourth Metacrast. So they want to be unarmoured as much as possible, because every time they get hurt,

they get stronger and they can do more damage. But for whatever reason, and there isn't a real reason given within the law of the pilgrimages of St. Methodius, they don't like that. So the nuns have to wear standard armour, which covers all of them. Which means they're like harder to injure, which means they don't get as powerful when they are hurt. I don't know why that is. It doesn't say. Apparently they're big fans of covering up.

So, yeah. Metal Gear Solid 5-ass explanation there. No, no, no, no, they have to be naked. They get stronger when they're injured. They have to be naked. I swear, they breathe through their skin. Hello, this is shy interjecting. I am cutting out literally eight fucking minutes of discussion

about female characters with their tits out to spare you scum the loss of brain cells. You're fucking welcome. The only person here who actually has any authority on this, though, is you, Kyrioth, because you have a wife. Unfortunately, me and D.K. have never seen a woman. And therefore, we can't actually have a genuine opinion on this. So let's take the five-minute segment of us talking about why women should wear more clothes. And let's move on.

Yeah, no, he's right On all accounts, yeah, no, he's right. Oh, my God. Okay. You killed him, Ricky. You've killed Kariya. Yep, that really got me. Okay, we're going to talk about the cavalcade of the 10th plague.

Sounds fun, right? What a segue. I don't know how to move on from that. So, we do need to talk about the communicants before we finish. But there is another procession that I want to mention first, not least because it's directly related to said communicants. So the cavalcade of the 10th plague is a trench pilgrim procession that places a lot of stock in the story of the 10 plagues of Egypt, which, to be fair, not everyone will know this, so if you need a refresher, this was when God inflicted 10

different plagues on the Egyptians to force the Pharaoh at the time to release the Israelites from slavery. So, first up, number one, the River Nile turned to blood. Number two was a metric shit ton of frogs. Number three was an infestation of gnats. Then at four, we had a plague of wild animals all flies, kind of unclear as to a witch. For the fifth one, there's pestilence, which caused the mass death of livestock. Sixth was boils. Nice. Seventh was thunderstorms and hail.

The eighth one was swarms of locusts, at which point, it feels like it really ramps up to, like, I don't know, like cosmic horrors. territory, because you go from number eight, locusts, the 10th plague was three days of total darkness. And when I say total darkness, I mean total. In Exodus, it's black, yeah. Oh, yeah, it states no one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. And part of the description is exceptionally terrifying because it states that it was darkness that can be felt

Oh All right, it's pretty sick I'm getting a little night lords coated here feeling here right now I like this one I like this one I imagine the number of existential crises going on during that 72 hours

as people can't move, see, like they can feel the dark for three days solid and this is after all the other plagues Yeah, this is after being infested with frogs and gnats and thunderstorms and boils and now there's darkness you can feel. And it's like, I am going insane. I have lost it. It's so, it's over, dude. I am. When, when, okay, if the Israelites are free, can I go with them? Because this sucks. This flat out sucks. I don't like it. So those are the first nine. And then we get to the 10th plague, which was the death.

of every firstborn son in Egypt, which also extended to cattle as well, by the way, as if, you know, the cows haven't gone through enough at this stage, given that they're just animals. Like, they had to deal with all the other shit as well. They're not making decisions, are they? So there is a quote from the Bible about midnight. I will go throughout Egypt.

Every firstborn son in Egypt will die. There will be a loud wailing throughout Egypt, worse than there has ever been or will ever be again. Now, before this final plague, God tells Moses to tell the Israelites to put a mark over their doors using lamb's blood, so that when the angel of death makes his rounds, like some kind of awful Santa Claus,

he'll know not to leave a grizzly gift. And now, you know what the 10th plague is. So you have the context for their ritual of sacrificing lambs before battle and anointing themselves with the blood in order to ward off the wrath of God. The other possessions, like the other possessions, might have zeal, they might be raring to go, but this lot have a healthy fear of the Lord.

So they draw holy symbols with the blood of lambs on their bodies and armour, and then they march into battle, having a nice sing-along of some hymns, knowing that the lamb's blood will keep them safe. Yep, and I'm assuming that's why the anchor right has the literal dead lamb hanging from its waist.

It's the... Yes, you can... The anchorite can buy a sacrificial lamb, which makes them a bit sturdier, and this procession can also buy sacrificial lambs on every model. Yeah. Oh, sorry, you say buy, like,

buy it as like a thing in the game. Yes. I'm assuming the anchorite does not need to go out with coin and purchase its lamb. Gotcha. Okay, understood. While the anointing with Lamb's blood is directly linked to that 10th plague, there's something else to consider is that Lamb of God is a title for Jesus Christ. So there's like a double meaning going on there, where it's not just the symbolism of repeating that ritual,

but also invoking the mercy of Christ himself, as you would if you were saying the Agnus Day during Mass, while the host and wine is being prepared for communion, which is Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. There's also a reference in Revelations. I say a reference. Revelations is full of references to the Lamb, specifically a lion-like lamb that is slain but still standing, which is a reference to the resilience of the followers of God against the terrors of the end times, as well as

the literal return of Christ. With all that in mind, the cavalcade of the 10th plague also have a healthy dislike of communicants. They are very traditional in their reading of the Holy text and reject the doctrines of the Metacrists. Communicants for them are creatures born from sin, and so rather than use them as other processions would, they instead steal them from other processions and force them to fight for them as a form of penance. Specifically, in their rules, it states that it's difficult for the cavalcade to both acquire and indoctrinate the communicants. So it's not just a case of like half inch and one in the night. They also apparently convinced the communicant that they're actually heretical and born of sin and need to atone for it,

which is way worse somehow. It's not great being a communicant, is it? Like these trench pilgrims are all mostly, it seems like a lot of them are convinced that the communicant is just a heretical thing that shouldn't exist and they need to either not use it, convert it, or... I mean, is, like, the creation of a person based on the blood of a cloned version of Jesus, not heresy to the nth degree, in a sense? I mean, yeah, I guess it kind of is, isn't it? Like, that is, it doesn't get a whole... Like, that's got to be some kind of, like, blasphemous act to deal 13 damage to all creatures

type shit. Like, I don't know. It just seems a little, a little much. But you've just rolled that off. It's crazy. It's definitely a point of contention, which I guess is very on point and thematic for just a game where religion is the inspiration, because there's so many things that different branches of the exact same religion have, like, disagreements over.

where it's like, no, no, this is fine. No, it's not. Yes, it is, no, it's not. We're going to finish up talking about communicants. They've come up a few times. So they come in a variety of flavours, from big lad with a cross-nail to his face to a big lad with an even bigger gun,

though it's the only suit we've really got outside of Paladins, which are their own thing. But they're generally a lot bigger and stronger than your average nutter with a crucifix and a musket, and they heal from wounds at a miraculous speed. So the ones with the crosses nailed to their faces, they're not just doing that for the sake of it. They can see more clearly when they're blind,

because of course they can. And as we've talked about before, the communicants are the result of the experimentation of the Mendelist Order of Monks, which we can obviously assume was founded by Gregor Mendel, who was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Catholic priest, and founder of the modern science of genetics. Again, someone else who packed a lot in.

Yeah. That sure is a lot. Makes you wonder what you've done with your time, doesn't it? I got to be honest. I think my ancestors are not looking kindly on me as I sit here in this podcast, making boss baby references. Yeah, you know, we'll deal with that existential crisis later. Let's move on, eh? While there isn't much actual information about the Metacrifice, it's again safe to assume that the Mendelist order is responsible for the production of those clones of Jesus Christ. And it's by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a Metacrrist that someone becomes a communicant.

I can't say that this is exactly how it works in real life, but the overall structure when it comes to the Eucharist in real life is the same. So during the sacrament of Holy Communion, a priest blesses bread, usually a wafer, and wine, and those who join in that sacrament by eating the bread and drinking the wine are called communicants. I'm assuming that this is intentional on the part of the Transcrucée team, but the transformation of the communicants is really interesting as someone who grew up with this stuff because when it comes to the Holy Communion or the Eucharist, there's something called transubstantiation, which I'm not going to be able to read out loud again without screwing it up, so look forward to that.

Anyway, transubstantiation in the Catholic Church, at least, is the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of the blood of Christ. And that occurs during the Eucharistic prayer, which I was going to put in here to read out, but I'd forgotten how long it is. But if you've been around Christianity in some form or another,

you've probably at some point heard the words, take this all of you and eat it for this is my body, which will be given up for you. even I've heard that one before yeah yeah it's it's it gets out there um this transubstantiation this change is brought on by the word of christ and by the action of the holy spirit and what it means is that when you receive holy communion you are receiving the body and blood of christ you are not receiving a wafer and wine despite the fact that the characteristics of those items are visually and taste-wise the same. There is a real presence of Christ within those items. So what we have in

Trench Crusade is the apparently unequivocal body and blood of Jesus Christ delivered not from him directly but from a clone of him. That body and blood in turn causes a form of transubstantiation in the communicant that's participated in this very grim Eucharist. So instead of the bread and wine changing, the person who has consumed it changes, which, in my opinion, is very cool. No, that is actually kind of sick. I mean, in a sense, you're drinking the blood and the whole thing, bread and wine of the false Jesus, the Metacrist, right? Yeah.

And so it has... Copy, not real, yeah. This is of the seventh Metacrist, you said, right? it doesn't actually state like which metacrist it is that they eat or drink the blood and and body of it's just a metacrist interesting i was kind of curious if there was like certain metacrists have particular effects yeah so like uh depending on like which one i don't know as shy said there's there's the third and the seventh yeah third not fourth um so we've only got two like confirmed but the fact that there's a seventh and a third speaks to the fact that we've probably got at least seven going on,

there's nothing that says how many are still alive, or what state they're in, or what blessings they impart outside of the seventh raising trench pilgrims from the dead and making them kind of halfway between earth and heaven, and the third allowing the stigmatic nuns to gain. strength as they get more injured. I don't have that quote on me, Shai, so if you want to put that in? Go on, D.K., go for it. All right.

The Metacrists did cut its flesh and gave it to the disciples. Its ruined mouth could not form the words, but its grunted noises that the Mendelus monk translated as, take, eat, this is my body. And the Metacrifice did leak blood from its eyes and mouth, which the Mendelus monk caught in a chalice, Once again, translating the Metacrace's painful noises, drink ye all of it. Yeah, that's kind of a twisted sort of version of... It's so good.

What a... I don't know why, but like reading that and like thinking about that is like just chillingly hearting. Yeah, it's great. I love it. Yeah, that's... So yeah, that's how you become a communicant. I mean, communicant is also like, they haven't made that word up if you have... if you participate in the Eucharist, you are a communicant. So if you have the body and blood of Christ,

if you have the wafer and the wine, then you are kind of noted down as a communican. I think I mentioned it in the first episode we did where when I was a kid, one of my jobs at church was to count the number of people who went up and had the bread, had the wine, and they were noted down specifically as being a certain number of communicants.

So that word is again just straight out of everyday life in the church. It's just way, way worse in French Crusade. Yeah, way more graphic, way more chilling, way more... Ooh, yeah. Yeah, it's great. So in a kind of like sweet but horrifying way, some of the communicants that are made out of this process come out with like a childlike or,

innocent mind and they're just not capable of hurting people so they're just horrible giant lovely children who don't want to be involved in the war at all

in a less sweet way some of them are just filled to the brim with existential dread and they curl up in a ball and cry and that's it that's it for them that's all they will do for the round of their lives

it's not plain sailing when it comes to creating communicants. It's an unstable mess. And a bit like kind of, a bit like Captain America, at least in the MCU, I'm not sure about the comics. The personality and the history of the volunteer plays a big part in how functional that communicant will be once the process is done. So two out of three communicants end up being unsuitable when it comes to serving the church. Whether it's some kind of fatal flaw or deformity, mental or physical, they're just not good for it. Possum has pointed out that

it's kind of half-stated that the communicants that the trench pilgrims get, some of them are these failed ones. So, oh, really? They're not necessarily getting the cream of the crop. They're getting some of the more limited versions of these.

I mean, a perfect one would be appell, then, would it not? I guess so, yeah. because those are the ones who are like most in tune or received the purest version of Jesus's flesh and blood, so. Right. But yeah, the ones that

aren't up to anything, the Mendelist order, they have a nice retirement plan for them. Obviously, because it's French Crusade. God, do they like harvest their brains too and turn them into static radio tower? No, no, that would be really harsh. They just lock them in tombs that are soundproofed

so that they can scream all day without disturbing anyone and eventually die of malnutritional old age. Right. Love that. Sick. The words red out of my mouth. There we go. I'm going to read this one.

many of such failed communicants are immured in tombs that know no sound there to waste away their agonizing years in torment away from the prying eyes that might incur criticism of the hardworking Mendelist Brotherhood we don't want anyone judging where our tax got dollars are going so also they spend them down there they're doing their best all right they're doing their best they've made some lads they might not all be, you know, cream of the crop, but you can't criticize them, especially if you don't know that those things happen. Dr. Halsey

looking ass shit there. I think that about wraps it up for the Trench Pilgrims. Yeah? Yep. Love it. I mean, it's only a two-hour record

based off a single unit, which is why I started out with when I started writing this script. So I think we're good. You see, this is the thing. Like, if you were to start being like, all right, Bricky, talk to me about all the episodes of SpongeBob, because that was my childhood. This would be the same time.

And for you, this, you've got the IRL lore of being raised extremely, um, is Catholic, right? Yeah, Anglo Catholic. I mean, just saying that by itself is like a whole thing, because there's Church of England, there's Roman Catholic, then there's Anglo-Catholic, then there's Anglo-Catholic, which is Church of England, but using the liturgical stuff from the Roman Catholic Church. Like, no one should need to have to say that out loud, or want to, or know the distinction, because who cares? And yet, for a good chunk of my childhood, there we go.

You know, I'm kind of on the side of hell a little bit. I'm moving towards the hell side of things. I mean, after like 15 years of going to mass three times a week, I'm not that far off agreeing with hell myself. Is there a neutral middle ground where I don't have to be either? It's called that your kids make their own mind up when they're eight and then leave them the fuck alone. That's what it's called. I mean, that's a fine one. I was kind of considering the iron salt in it, but that works too. Yeah.

The iron solstinence. The iron solstin seem to be the most well established people here. The most well-used it out of old. Yeah. It seemed like they're at least somewhat okay comparatively.

Damn. Not a high bar, but very true. Yeah, they at least seem the most sane and their dudes look the most like not horribly irrevocably messed up. And they got a cool wall. And they got a cool wall with cool

statues. They do have a cool wall. riddles. They got riddles. Yeah, yeah, there's no getting through that. Hell can't get through. It never has, never will. I think I'd rather be there. Look, you haven't really lived until at Christmas, you've been to, because it happens to fall on a Sunday, you've been to 8.15 mass, then 10.15 mass,

then you've done the carol service at 5pm, and then you've done midnight mass, and then you've gone back the next day for the first mass of the new year. where you've done five services in 24 hours as a 10-year-old. All right? You just haven't. I am so happy I was instead given a PlayStation 2 and got Lego racers. True.

I'm so happy my religious upbringing was my parents having me say grace and a prayer before Ben until I was about nine in which they said, Yeah, honestly, like, you don't got to do it if you don't want to. But on the other hand, now I can look at Trench Crusade and relive past trauma. So that's nice. Honestly, this is just exposure therapy, man. Yeah, pretty much. Hell yeah. Is there any particular, like, Word of God quote you want to, we can end this with?

Oh, God. I don't know. Any final statement. for the episode of your old church trauma that you want to bring up. And by the way, the wafers tasted like shit. They didn't even taste bad. They just didn't taste of anything,

which seems like a metaphor, but it's not. D.K., do you got anything? I was going to say, yeah, but the wafers tasted like nothing. Like,

just kind of, you know, I got nothing. I went to a Baptist academy in eighth grade. and that's about it. So great episode, Kyrie. I would say at the end of doing the Eucharist, if there was wine left over,

if you were a server at the time, so you had to help the priest with all the stuff that happened behind the altar, one of your jobs would be to consume the leftover, like communion. So as a, like, 12 to 13 year old, there was a couple of days where I got really drunk because attendance was low,

and I was drinking essentially two full glasses of wine. It's still alcoholic. It's still got alcohol in it. All right. I should mind. I might become religious now. Free wine!