The 40k Lorecast - Episode 100 - Cypher

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

On todays cast we jump into the great enigma that is Cypher in Warhammer 40k. With a focus first on the origins of the fallen and a short detour into John complaining about Luther again. From there we go through the history of the Dark Angels interactions with Cypher as we try to unpack his true motives and true alignment in the universes. After that we then dive into our personal theories on who and what Cypher truly is.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barsati and Bradchester. On today's cast, we're going to be covering the most famous of the Dark Angels. Sorry, Samuel, Seifer. We're going to start off with a little bit of coverage of the fallen and the origins of them. And then we're going to dive pretty heavily into Seifer, who he is, how he functions in the galaxy, and whether or not he belongs in the chaos code. And I am so proud of you that only took us like 18 takes to get eight seconds into the cast.

Yeah, that's pretty much the norm of our cast. And it's usually, for this time, it wasn't me. Yay. Yeah. Also, welcome to the 100th cast, everybody. That's how much we've learned. The answer is, nothing. I've learned nothing.

I refuse to learn. No. All right. For those who don't know, the 40K lore of 4-Hammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, please follow the cast and comment on it. It boosts the hell out of our algorithm

and really push this out to a lot more listeners. helps us grow. So massive thank you to all the people have done it so far. We're currently the number one lower cast globally. And we're actually, I found out recently, the top 0.1% of podcasts, which is more of a knock on all the other podcasts than the benefit on us, if I'm being honest. Let it go. It's like more. Yeah. What are you all doing wrong that we're doing this well? Anyway, if you do like the cast, we hear more about Brad and I, click the link to our YouTube page, the 40K Lourcast. There you'll find old versions of the show converted with imagery. Our live Q&A sessions,

our other shows, the history of 40K with Brad and myself, and two old men and their handler with Brad and, well, Brad's one of the two old men. And then there's a handle. I'm so old and a man. So yes, it's accurate. You are old. Let's do a game. How many colonoscopies is Brad had in his life? I wish it was less than the model it has been. There it is. Yeah. I can at least count them on one hand. How about that? That's true. I'm just pointing out that's how old men check each other. It's not a matter if you have gray hair. That was implied. All right. In this show notes, you'll also find a link to our Patreon. Massive thank you everyone has already contributed. Our Patreon is how we are growing the show and expanding into new genres and new areas. So for those who contributed already,

thank you. For those who don't, our Patreon is available. It's $4.99 a month. And that gets you our show ad free or if you're in Uruguay, it's 199.84 pesos per month. And if you're in Uruguay, send me some steak because good God you people do meat well. And for those who don't know, Uruguay has more cows than people by a ratio of four to one. And every one of those cows is oh so delicious. Unless you're a vegan, in which case, ignore everything I just said, and you probably aren't living in Uruguay. Or if you are, you're missing out. I would say, we don't have a huge listener base. in Uruguay, but there's not that many people in Uruguay. So there's not.

If we got 30 listeners in Uruguay, more than half of them could likely be cows. That is their population. I like to think to myself that we could send them some 40K Lurcast merch and put it on the cows. You know, I'm going to make that happen. Yeah, so basically what we're discovering here is that if we do have a listener in Uruguay and you really want to just have a blow up, yeah, Brad and I'll do a lot. Awesome. Just fun for us.

Yeah. Brad also kind of speak Spanish. Okay. That's, that is also. It's a good description. You speak Spanish, but not enough to get you out of trouble, but not enough to do something of real serious. Also true.

Yeah. Yeah, I got you. Lastly, yeah, exactly. Lastly, we have a link in our show notes to our Discord page. For those who are really who like the show, kind of want to just get more interaction, more 40K, join our Discord. It's completely free because all Discord should be.

You can come in, interact with other people who are like-minded, it's a wonderful community we've built in there. I couldn't be more proud of it. I'm in there a lot. Brad's in there a lot. Great place to ask us questions. But with that, onto the Dark Angels. So before we dive too heavily into Cypher,

we need to do a quick recap on the origins of the Dark Angels with more of a focus on Caliban. I'm also going to bitch about Luther again. Because there are traditions. I'm not letting go. As soon as we said we were going to talk a little about Caliban, I said, you know what we're not going to do? We're going to talk a little bit about Calibat,

and we're going to talk a lot about how much John hates Luther. I hate Luther. Imagine. Not the way you hate the Lords of Terra. I hate Luther because it just makes no sense. And we'll get there in a minute, everybody. If you didn't listen to those casts, hold on.

But would you hate Luther as much as I hate the Lords of Terra if Luther was inside a crisis suit? It doesn't matter. Luther, my issue with Luther was when Luther and my, we'll get there. We'll get there. So let's start off with real quick. The Dark Angels, like every Legion, were made up entirely of Terran-born Space Marines.

At this point, they were known as the First Legion, but they were infused with the Gene Seed of the Primark Lionel Johnson, whose superpower was basically being stoic, grumpy, and onery. I mean... Lyons got some pretty badass superpowers. We'll hit them later because he's gotten a glow-up in his Primark Powers. They've added on extensively. Forest Walk is legit. I'm trying to figure out who had less...

medulla amblongata. Was it, was it lion? Was it? There's a reference for you. Mama's sand. Mama's, it's good they got on them teeth. They can't brush them. The movie's still really good, by the way. All right. But the reason for this cast has nothing to do with the origin of Legion, but the fact that lion was found on a planet called Caliban.

And as we talked before, the chaos gods took all of the primals. marks when they were in the gestation tubes and sent them all around the galaxy and attempt to tempt them to chaos. And Lion landed on what's called a death world, which was Calab. Well, back then, just a smitch on that. I know we say death worlds, but like, this is like the best of the death worlds. This is a forest. I mean, it's Endor, but with monsters.

It's endor. Yeah, it's not the best. You think the best of the death world? Yes. I stand by what I just said. Fine. We'll do a bonus cast. We'll rank death worlds.

A bunch of the death worlds. You just can't even breathe. They're death worlds. This is a death world that's beautiful. It just happens to have some monsters. I mean, when I say some monsters, I mean chaos beats that would kill you. You have played entirely too much Final Fantasy because you're like, oh, yeah, fighting in the forest is fun.

That's the only time people want to fight monsters in the forest is Final Fantasy because you get more AP experience. A thousand percent. You also get bonus shit. You can get Mughals too. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So back to this, the people on Caliban lived a really brutal existence.

So they lived in these settlements that dotted the forested landscape. And all their cities were walled to protect them. But like any feudal castle, food and supplies had to be gathered outside of the walls and brought in. And even like clearing the forest, this wasn't, we talk about the forest being full of monsters. It wasn't like some of the sci-fi monsters where they live in the shadows. No, these things came out of the forest and came in. Also, all of the peasants that are tending to the land and doing stuff, I think that they probably should have taught them to fight just a little bit better

because in everything that they talk about Caliban, it's, hey, we protect the peasants. You're like, yeah, after a bunch of them get killed, then you do a, then you trek into the forest and kill a token monster and come back. Let me help you up. They don't protect the peasants. They avenge them. That's how this is. There is no crime prevention occurring here.

It's just crime solving. Oh, yeah, those 100 peasants all got slaughtered. Cool. Well, don't worry, guys. I rode my horse into the forest and killed the thing that did it. Yeah, but they're all still. Or at least something that looks like the thing that killed you. Yeah, exactly.

This is useless. But Caliban develops into kind of a feudal type setup, not, as I complained about the nightcasts, not the real feudal setup, but the one of King Arthur. And the noble houses aren't that different in Caliban from the Imperial Knights.

We covered in episodes 81 and 82. These guys, what we were joking about, they took it up upon themselves to protect the citizenry. And it honestly is closest to what the Orch Gretchen had, the orcs are the powerhouse and the Gretchen to do all the manual labor.

Whoa, whoa. Whoa. Gritchin run orc society. Let's be honest. Yeah. I hate that. Carl Marx would agree. me here. The peasants, you know what the nobles weren't making? Food. Throwing that one out there for you, man. Like, it's cool. Yeah, you've got a horse and power armor. You're going to the forest hill a monster. Stop. When you're hungry. Stop ruining romanticized versions of history and

lore. And let's talk about the order. Great, noble, protectors of Pete, the populace. No, and I'm going to crap talk to dark angels because this is fun now. The whole purpose. No, the whole purpose of this, it's a feudal society where the nobles protect the citizenry and they get together and they rise up. Cool. Who are the best protectors of the citizenry? This group called the order that are not made up of nobles. It's made up of random volunteers. The order are awesome, by the way, guys.

The order is awesome. The order is it's made up entirely of volunteers. You can volunteer from any socioeconomic class and join. All you have to do to become part of the order is have a desire to slay the warp beasts that are, praying on the people of Caliban. It is awesome. My issue is it totally undermines the entire purpose of having nobles. But they do nothing for Calais.

At least in the night world. These guys also stop. They actually try to protect things before they happen. Because they stay outside of the walls. My whole point is in the nighthouses we talked about before in the imperial nighthouses, they actually did. The nobles would protect the citizenry. They would run out there and they would keep them safe.

And they were the best at it. In the case of Caliban, I guess they, they were doing it technically, but it felt a little bit more like some nepotism where a guy and a horse got to kill something that was already dead. Whereas the order are the ones who were out there. No, we're going to go to this section of forest and kill everything in it. The order awesome. And over time, I become correct. The order basically take over Caliban. They build a city called, ooh, Al Durek. We're going with Al Durek, where they basically govern Calibat. They're not pseudo-governed, because of the fact that they don't have a

official authority over anything. However, they're so popular with the peasants who are the majority of the people that live on Cal, that they have sway. So if you don't do, or say more so if you do something that they disapprove of, it's not going to go so well for you. Exactly. And so this is the group that ends up finding the line when he lands on Caliban. And they bring him in there. Well, let's talk about the fact. Lions, Lion doesn't get found instantaneously. Settle down, John. Let's talk about a primark that whoops some butt from day one. So the lion's in the woods for what?

I think it's 10 years. And in that time, he killed Beast innumerable. He puts the whoop. There's a term for this, Brad. It's called Tarzan. They stole this from the Tarzan novel. He was awesome. Yeah, they found him.

And he also had the band, the swinging from the trees. Yeah, that's my point. Yeah. He's swinging from the tree where Tarzan was holding the rope with his seat apparently because he was held. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's who they found.

So anyway, let's give Lyon, where props or Lion has props. He was out murdering Wartbeast from day zero. Yeah. By hand, by the way. With stick, he's sharpened. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, we're trying to go fast. But the order finds him, they bring him back in.

And the leader of the order, is this guy named Luther. And Luther decides he is, he's just a dude. Sorry, this is going to happen, everybody. So Luther looks at the lion and goes, this person's amazing, because, again, they're killing beasts in the forest solo, and they decide to go on a buddy quest together

to remove all of the beasts on Caliban. One of these two buddies is three meters tall and 500 kilograms and a pseudo-god. The other buddy is a dude named Luther. And I just, I hate this story so much because Luther tries to claim like he did half the work here. And it is the last episode, if you want to listen to 16, 17, 18,

I went into this hard. But basically, if you've never seen the movie twins with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, that is the size difference between Luther and the lion. When I think of Luther and the lion going out into the forest of fight, I think of it like when my six-year-old helps me do work around the house. Yes, he's got a tool belt on, and he's using words and holding a light that he's focusing mostly nowhere near where I'm working. And he's cute, and I love him, but he's not really helping. And the best part of this is I think Luther knew the same thing, because Luther really wasn't a big,

fan of the lion once we get a bit further into the story. I love the end of this, though, because at the end, they go through their cleansing, they're crushing the planet, they're killing everything. It's a, the crest with the Holy Grail, completely awesome. They come back and the lion is elected, and I love it our notes. We have air quotes because they don't really elect the lion. The lion just goes, hey, I'm in charge. It doesn't actually, I don't even know if he announces it. He just is. He just is in charge. Because also, hey man, it's a prime arc.

Of course he's in charge. They just killed like three million beasts. And of that three million, two million nine hundred, nine hundred nine thousand nine hundred and nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and nine hundred and nine hundred and nine hundred and nine hundred and nine hundred and one, look at, I got this one. What's the guy from scary movie? Is it doofy? Officer doofy. I'm just, thank you very much. I'm going so hard on Luther today.

But that's what we end up with. So they all come back. And everyone on the planet's like, so the God, we're going to let the God lead us, right? Everyone's like, yeah, we're going to let the God lead us. And then the Emperor shows up. After the Emperor shows up, Lion says, hey, all my buddies get to be Dark Angels now too, or First Legion, including Luther. And Luther gets the up conversion, the term I think we use a lot for, where we took someone who was way too old to be a space marine. And they made him a space marine anyway.

And correct me guys in Discord and the notes. I don't know of a single person who was converted to space marine when they were, in quotes, too old to become a space marine and did not fall to chaos. I have to look at this one now. Now I'm going to have to think about it. Because it's like Corferon, Luther, because it's all traitor legions. It's over and over again traitor legions where this dude exists. I think Erebus was one of them, too, actually, for some random reason. I'm not sure on Erebus though.

But. Bu, Erebus. Anyway. Yeah, anyway, Luther is super jealous of the lion. And at one point, he actually, it's hard. It got retcon a bit. He either tried to get the lion killed or would just get super excited seeing the lion about to get killed. But either way, the lion wasn't happy about it.

And the lion did exactly what you do when someone betrays you. He took him and sent him back to his home world to run his entire world. Yeah, with no oversight. Also, the basis of where you get all your new Marines. Yeah. Genius. No. Yeah.

I'm going to go out there and say the lion might not be. Like, it's a good thing Gilliman came back to lead in the galaxy is what I'm getting at. Because you know what Gilliman wouldn't have done? That. I mean, you're not wrong. However, if you need someone's butt kicked, the lion is. The lion is brutal. Yeah.

If you're going somewhere to fight some guys, I'm probably going to call him first. Yeah. What happens with Luther, though, is fairly interesting and very important for what we're about to get to. So Luther just hates the lion at this point. And he ends up converting Caliban to the side of the traitors in the Horace heresy. Not the side of chaos, though, the side of the traitors. This is a big difference. There's no chaos cults that I'm aware of. There's no chaos iconography that's raised. I remember that Luther is super juiced up by chaos at this point then. He is, but he doesn't convert the planet. And also, well, he doesn't compare the phantom.

Also, a bunch of the planet, we'll talk about this in a moment with the fallen. A bunch of the dark angels have absolutely no idea that they're no longer loyal to lion. They are. Yeah. They know that they're part of a rebellion or they're at least against the Imperium, but they don't, there's no knowledge of chaos anywhere within them, which is very unique. But also they were told the lion chose this also for most of them. Yeah. They are on the side of the dark.

The dark angels are fighting the good fight as far as they know. That's it. Right about this time, though, Caliban gets consumed by a warp storm and cut off from the galaxy. Remember, Caliban is right outside the eye of terror. So, like, not surprised they get eaten by a warp storm. Horace heresy concludes, and the warp storm and Calaband subsides. At this point, the lion and his legion rushed there to check on their people. Because again, this is their home planet.

As soon as they arrive in orbit, they get fired upon. And Lion takes that really well. And by taking it really well, he bombards the planet so heavily from orbit that he actually breaks the planet into pieces. And then as it breaks into pieces, he teleports down there to go and single-handedly deal with the traders. And ends up taking a 10,000-year nap as a result of it. He got softer a little bit. He did. The planet breaks apart and then the dark angels save a small piece of it.

Shove a monastery on it. To feel that you say they saved a small piece of it, it's a pretty big piece. And they don't. They don't rockets to it. Yeah. Okay. Warp engines, number one. Number two, it's compared to a planet, if the Earth broke apart and you save New Zealand,

all right, is New Zealand big? Yeah. But not compared to Earth. I mean, if I'm driving around with a piece of the planet, it deserves to be called a big piece, damn it. They call it the rock. Yeah, because it's awesome. Yeah, but neither you nor I, there's no way you or I read that for the first time

without a Scottish accent. Of course. Which is not possible. I know our age. I know we're working with this. All right, but an important piece here is as the planet was breaking apart and all of the

dark angels who were on the side of Luther disappeared. And they disappeared because the chaos gods warped them all away and the same method that they'd done the prime marks scattering them all around the galaxy. Let's be 100% accurate though. It wasn't just chaos. They scattered all of the fallen, the people that were

in other side. A lot of them were not worshipping or in even knowledge of chaos at this point. Very good point. These are not members of chaos. They just took anyone who was on the dark angels team Luther. You know, is it Twilight where they had those teams? Jacob, Pete Edward.

But they also get sent to wildly different places in the galaxy. Oh, yeah. Some end up in the war. Yeah. Some do end up in the war, but others end up on a random planet. I think the people that were already falling to chaos gets drawn into the warp. And a lot of the others get sent all over the place because one of the things the chaos gods didn't want to do is they didn't want to have the dark angels getting back. together and being a forced to stop, Horace is done.

And this leads the formation of what's called the inner circle. The Dark Angels have a huge problem. They are now a loyalist and a traitor legion, which in the eyes of the Imperium is a trace of I'm going to say, in the eyes of the Imperium, that means you are a traitor legion. You're like, but we're half and half. No, you're not. You're just trained. The Imperium rounds up into traitor.

Like I said, that's how their math works. The good news for the Dark Angels is that no one knows what happened on Caliban. except for the dark angels that were there and the traders who escaped, now known forever forward as the fallen. And the dark angels, by the way, become the unforgiven. These are two terms that they use internally. Now, luckily, the dark angels can keep a secret better than really anybody. Yeah, a thousand percent.

They've already been. And so they've back up, though, they have been doing it because they were the ones that got the jobs that no one was allowed to know about. So they're, they already had a bunch of secrets. Yeah, I don't say that. Add to the pile. They're internally in the Legion doing this already. It's just what they do.

Exactly. But they decide that no one else is going to know of the heresy within their legion. So first thing that Dark Angels do is they create what's called the inner circle. And it's what it says in the tin. It's an inner circle of Dark Angels who are privy to all the details of what happened on Caliban. And this is important because this is actually they're a minority. Well, they're a minority of the Dark Angels, but are they? Not anymore, though.

There's the inner circle and the inner slightly bigger circle and the concentric circle and the weird circle and there's a lot of circles. In the earlier codexes, it was like, oh, the inner circle was like, maybe a go. Yeah. And now you're like, it's half the Legion. Members of the inner circle serve in the Death Watch and come back. It's one of those ones where you're like, all right, this isn't that inner guys. It's, again, 50%. The inner circle realized that as long as their former brothers,

the fallen are alive, there's a chance their secret will be discovered. So they decide we're going to do what all dark angels are doing in this situation. Kill things.

So they just go out to the galaxy to hunt down and kill anyone who is a potential... I have a question for you, John. In 40K,

has anyone caused more collateral damage than dark angels hunting down the fallen? But depends. If you care about collateral damage, yes.

Otherwise, The world leaders have caused more collateral damage, which is what I'm getting. Okay. But that point is when you're not supposed to. We're saying world leaders were doing damage because that's what they're doing. Ooh, I'll give you a better question. Who's done more collateral damage? The dark angels are the grey nights.

That's also true. Green nights also paint with a big, big brush. Yeah, it's like there's a demon here. You just blow up a planet in a different system. There was a demon over here, though, so you know, oops. Anyway, the dark angels start rushing around the galaxy hunting down any dark angels. And the concern that they have to be careful of, though, is that if the Inquisition sees them do this, they'll pick up on, hey, something's going on. So they devise a pretty clever strategy.

The Dark Angels carry on as if nothing happened, and they just keep it volunteering to always go wherever the Lord's. words of Terra are saying, hey, we have an issue here. And they do this because what they do is when they deploy to an area, they then run scans in the wider area because apparently the Dark Angels librarians can sense just a hint of Dark Angel gene seed. And this allows them, and this is kind of cool, to while doing one mission actually do their mission on the side, but then when they're spread around the galaxy, no one's surprised by it. I love this, though, because this was really big in early Laura 40K. And it also is part of the game because it's for reasons that you had these small. A lot of times they had almost kill teams going down. So there's a big battle. And then all of a sudden,

Tim, Teddy, Ronnie Bobby, Ricky, and Mike all went somewhere else. And you're like, what's going on there? You're like, don't worry about it. They'll be doing a thing. And they used to do a lot more of this in the game. I actually used to really like this. Yeah, the Dark Angels have been better, have had more fun in prior editions. I also put out they also murder anyone who tries to visit Caliban. which makes me laugh because I'm convinced there's some merchant who gets every few years, someone gets the take these goods to Caliban writ. But no one's ever survived this. Maybe you will.

And they get murdered by the Dark Angels. Basically, what I view when you try to get to Caliban, you just, your ship gets boarded. You all get slaughtered and they take all the goods and they just wait for the next one to come that way. Thanks for the free stuff, yo. Yeah. All right. But let's get into Cypher now. So 580 of M31.

This is 34 years after the end of the War of the Beast. There is a Dark Angel fleet hunting down remnant orcs because, as we said, in the War of the Beast cast, the Beast is dead, but there's still quadrillions of orcs throughout the sectors. And given enough time and enough violence, anyone of the war bosses leading these could become another beast. So Imperial forces are just actively pruning orcs everywhere they can find them. Once in the system, the Dark Angels are immediately scanning for evidence of the

fallen and they get notified of something that's perfect for them. You've got a planetary rebellion on a nearby planet, but it's different than a normal one. The rebellion is over mining rights who gives the crap. But even though the planet is in rebellion, the imperial tides are being met. And Brad, what happens when you meet your imperial tides? Nobody messes with you. Nobody cares. Exactly. So you got a full revolt, but ties are being met. So the imperialism, the conflict, which brings up the radar of Darking. Hey, this is something's off here. Something's really off.

There's some warring factions down there. However, one of the factions is doing a lot better in hand-to-hand combat. Yeah, one of them has a superhero. One of them's got a full-bone super. And so they immediately detect it. Now, they do get two readouts when they scan this system. The first is a firm confirmation of fallen gene seat. there's a fallen there.

The second one is described as like a flicker. And it appears similar to when a librarian scans an area as a bit of a warp storm, like a static feedback. They ignore this. This becomes very important later. In fact, because in these searches, they were kind of like, oh, yeah, every now that we get an odd reading. Yeah, that one's actually really important.

But what mattered is to them is that there's a fallen. His name is the mauler, and he is just doing exactly that. And like I said before, the dark angels decide, hey, what do we do? Inner Circle Terminators are going to teleport assault down, murder this person, and move all in life. Well, capture this person, murder anyone near the person, and then move on the life. However, it's more of a dead or alive warrant there.

Yeah. What happens, though, interestingly, is they teleport down and a bunch of, the terminators take a bunch of fire from a duke with a pair of pistols who shoots his way out and disappears. the terminators grab the mauler and leave. It's not until they're basically out of the system that someone says, hey, how many first company terminators went down and how many came back up? And it was, yeah, why? Did a dude with two pistols just kill like six terminators?

That feels like a lot. And they begin looking back and they go and check the tape. And yeah, these are a bunch of tournaments got killed by a guy with two pistols wearing a cloak who moved at almost lightning speed, at which point that Dark Angels come to the realization that, oh, crap, we may have missed something. Oopsies. But they get back to the rock and they take the mauler there and they interrogate him.

Not in a happy way. This is not, this is not law and order interrogation. For those of you, not in the U.S., it's a mediocre show that a lot of us watch too much of. Which one of the 18 of them there is? Oh, the original. We're not watching. John Mullaney ruined SVU.

I don't think any of us could ever watch SBI after Mullaney was ripping on ice on iced tea. So you're telling me. But as they're basically torturing Mueller to death, so they, by the way, they torture him until he confesses all his sins and then they execute him. Mahler reveals the location of a number of other fallen throughout the sector. All of them we're about to cover here is covered in one, it's a PDF. I mean, it was a book, but now it's a PDF. It's called Data Slate, Cypher Lord of the Fallen, was released in 2013. We don't reference the books enough, but a lot of what we're going to do here comes out of

that one document. So go nuts, guys. Pretty good read, though. The dark, yeah, it's a very good, it's very well written, actually, is Gav Thorpe. So it is one of the, he's one of the better writers they've had. He did really good job. All right. Dark angels start pursuing these leads.

And as they move through the system, each fallen that they find leads them to another one. And then to another one. And they discover over time that these fallen are not acting alone, but with the Alpha Legion. And they also start to learn about this mysterious figure known as Cypher. At first, they thought the guy who escaped was just a random dude. We'll go get him later. No, he might be the leader of the fallen. And not just in this sector, all of the fallen.

This was 100% true in the early days, though. Cypher was the leader. Yeah. Was leading, air quotes, certain amounts of the fallen. Fallen. We're going to close this whole show, this episode out, guys, with Brad and I discussing who we think Cypher is, what we think Cypher is. And it's the time on Cypher through the additions.

But yeah, in the early editions, Cypher was chaos. Yeah, because he would show up with Fallen. You could only take him with Fallon. He came with a squad of Fallen. Yeah. Now, the issue with the Dark Angels is they can be a little OCD when it comes to a purpose. So, yeah, they decide all in their own that Cypher has to die now, by the way. Because they're actually quite afraid of them at this point,

because if someone else gets him, then their secret will be revealed. So the Dark Angels, though, what's funny is this is all going on. Remember, they were supposed to be hunting down orcs. This is all occurring while under the guise of us hunting down orcs. Which they've been doing a terrible job of right now, by the way. The opposite, they've done a great job of hunting down the orcs. The problem is the orcs are all gone now. This is the problem with Dark Angels.

The Dark Angels do a great job because they are trying to cover their tracks. But the Lords of Terrorists start asking, like, hey, didn't you kill all the orcs already? I don't have to say they didn't have any orcs and they didn't go kill the other orcs, hence the reason they said they were doing a terrible job of killing orcs. Fair enough. They were supposed to be continuing on. The orcs were like, hey, man, is that orcs right ahead of us? Yeah, we'll get to those other orcs soon. This hunt for Cypher has gone on for a couple decades.

And the Lords of Terrorists are asking questions about, hey, you're active in systems that have no works in them. These are not where we assigned you. What's going on? And then, of course, what they say is because the Lords of Terror don't think the Dark Angels are up to no good. They actually say, hey, do you need some assistance? You've been stuck there for a while. Do you want us to send some more support? I just assume it's the Han solo scene. Shooting there. Yeah, exactly. Ah, you're breaking up. I can't hear you. Crackle, crackle, hang up. Yeah. And so the dark angels can't risk the imperial forces being sent out to an area that they know are the fallen. So they have to now really intensify their hunt for a cipher. And they come to a planet called Brigia. And Brigia is just classic scenario for them. Planetary Defense Force has run, but where the dark angels realize is a fallen, cipher is also there. So brigia is not actually in. revolt against the Imperium.

It would have done better for them if they had. That is true. Yeah, because the Dark Angels decide to end Brigia. They deploy everything. First company, second company, third, fourth, I mean, everyone deploys. And the battle is just raging. And this is, it's a cool part of the book, by the way.

As they're circling in on Cypher, all of a sudden, the Alpha Legion appear and attack. This is where it gets to what is Cypher? Who is he for? What is going on? Because the Alpha Legion's there. They're not setting a trap for the Dark Angels. They move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for. They're scheming and plotting to take over.

They want to take over the sector actually here. They want to bring down this entire place. And Cypher coming here, leading him, ends up being this huge brawl where the Dark Angels actually stop what the Alpha Legion was doing and save the sector from Alpha Legion and chaos. Yes, and this is a source can come up a lot with Cypher

because exactly, the Alpha Legion had to attack the Dark Angels there not because, ha ha, you fell into our trap, but a, oh shit, you just, if you guys don't know Alpha Legion, we'll do a cast on them. Basically, you shot someone who is Alpha Legion and we're about to discover, Oh, crap, that's an Alpha Legion, and this whole thing blows up. And, yeah, the Dark Angels in hunting down Cypher, who, by the way, escapes here, completely

escapes. As always. Because of Alpha Legion Terminators, by Hine Out Seifer, they then saved the sector. So this leads us to what becomes more of, and some of this is more of a recent repcon, to be honest, a lot is this 2013 book. Up until then, Cypher, side note here, guys, up until about 2013 or so, Cypher appeared in Dark Angels' codexes. That's where he primarily was. He was in both.

He was in chaos, the chaos book, and the Dark Angel. Oh, yeah. You're right. And the question was always, what is Cypher was this? And then in 13, we got this. It's not really a retcon, but it's more of a shift. So that's what these stories come into. And the question that you end up asking yourself, is Cypher good or is Cypher bad? He's not on the side of the Imperium, but is

he good or bad? And so, we'll go through a little backstory on the name Cypher. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging, managing a global team can be. Just the act of creating one has been an extreme challenge over the years. Because one thing you learn quickly is a difficulty of hiring global talent and how unclear those costs can be. It looks simple at first, but then the fees start to stack up with compliance worries, contractors versus employees, and a host of other regulations. Pebble brings clarity with

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is only $399 US dollar. per month per employee. That'll help you contain costs. Go to high pebble.aI to get a free estimate. That's high p-e-b-l.a-i for a free estimate. On Caliban, we talk about the order. The term cipher comes from that. The line was in this. One person of the order is elected to be what's called Lord Cipher. This individual, when elected, they forsake their name, rank, and everything, and they would actually wear a cloak and they can see all their identity. And if you saw him, you're supposed to pretend you didn't know who he was. And if you've never seen the Saturday Night Live sketch of The Rock as Superman, go watch that because

that's what I want to be. God, that's fantastic, where they're all like, yeah, it's just Clark. Yeah, hello, Clark, if he takes one of those super dumps the bathroom. Yeah. Well, the thing is, the cipher that, when they give him that, he's supposed to be in charge of writing wrongs. Perfect clear. He's in charge. The idea is that cipher is more my opinion. Cipher in the Lord Cipher in the order is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter of rules and laws.

His job is to uphold all the traditions and hold them to it. The idea is to prevent someone from bastardizing them. I'll give you that. That's why I give it the right and the wrong. It's why I felt about it because he's in, he's supposed to be outside of everything. so he's never swayed by personal bias or relationship he had before. Yeah, he's supposed to be a Puritan is what he's supposed to be a Puritan of the order and the beacon for the rest of the order to work off of. I say that because this is why I think he's called Cypher,

and we'll get in a second. So after the events of Brigia, the Dark Angels follow the Trail of Cypher. He goes into the Eye of Terror. And the Dark Angels had, in doing so, by the way, review all the records. and they realize that Cypher basically is cloaking himself against their searches, like a blank. But whereas a blank doesn't appear is invisible to all psychers, Cipher is hiding himself from Dark Angels librarians.

And then they're able to follow that voice. And this is another one where you ask yourself, is Cypher good or bad? How much has he done good for the Dark Angels? Because he just lets himself be seen multiple times after this. Yeah. I think for a reason. So the next piece that goes into this is he goes into the Eye of Terror and the Dark

Angels go to pursue. As soon as the Dark Angels start going into the Eye of Terror, this massive warp storm begins. While as it begins, Cipher starts sending transmissions to the Dark Angels saying, this is a trap. Get out of here. Do not pursue me. This is a trap. And eventually that Dark Angels realize how bad the storm's game, that they're

They're about to get stuck in the warp. So the chapter master orders everyone out. Not all of them leave. He stays because one of the subchapters, whose name on Vail, I think it's the Silver Lions, I'm a soft top of my head, I'm trying to remember it, guys. They decide to say, so he goes down with them to go hunt down Seifer. Yeah, but things don't go well even with this retreat because. Yeah.

Warp. Yeah, all the darkers who leave come out. They've been in the warp for about a year or so. they come out of the Wharf, discover it's been a thousand years. And in that thousand years, the Dark Angels, because remember, their chapter masters in there. In the last thousand years, Dark Angels have tried to enter the warp and have been unable to.

So they come out and it's just, yeah, they tell a story. He went off on his own. We don't know where he is. Blah, blah, blah. Over times, the warp sort of subside, and the Dark Angels are in for a success. They go, we should probably find our chapter master and the guys that went with him.

And they go, we're going to do a really great search on the planet that is, longer there. It's gone. It's completely gone. No, not just destroyed anything. It's just gone. And immediately, yeah, just not there. And immediately after that, though, Seifers detected, I say detected, I think Seifer just lets himself be seen. He's, he's, he shoes off a flyer. I mean, I mean, let's call it one. Okay. Well, I'm just saying that Cypher's doing the Jason board where he looks into the camera and stares at it. Exactly. But what's cool about this is he's on this planet. they, of course, beeline over there.

And when they get there, the place they detected Seifer, he's standing in an old cathedral. And when they get into the cathedral, they discover that the sword of secrets and the lion's helm, the two most important relics of the dark angels that are worn by the chapter master are just sitting in this chapel. Those are the, the, the capital everything,

relics of the dark angels. And they're just sitting on a table, like, here you go, thanks. Order from Amazon. on next day delivery. There you go. Cipher then disappears for a few hundred years. No contact, whatever.

The next big thing that happens is an orc waw, and the dark angels are fighting against the orcs, against the wall, this mineral-rich portion of the galaxy. The war boss is named Zogaxe Degreate, because orcs are awesome. Dog-axe liked the shiny helmet

that was on the chapter master, and kill it. Hold, please, because this is an awesome thing, because again, you're like, Cypher ain't going out like that. So Zogax leans down to pick them up, and someone takes great offense to that, that someone being Cypher and shoots him about, I don't know, two to three million times it seems,

because he was riddled with holes in him. He blasted him through the face of the Plaza Pistol a bunch of times and kills him. Cypher then, by the way, this is a full conflict. The Dark Angels and the orcs are fighting all over place. Seifer then grabs the body of the fallen chapter master, drags it outside. Make sure they see it. I love Brad's comment of the Jason Bourne look in the camera, looks at the dark angels.

They all beeline at him and he figuratively and literally smoke bombs and disappears. Creaker's smoke bomb. Smoke bomb. Yeah. Yeah. And he disappears. But again, preserving the relics. We move again.

Cypher is gone. And this time even longer. This is about 175. years past this time. And the Dark Angels discover a very weird problem. One of their recruiting worlds has fallen to rebellion. Never a good thing, by the way. But the rebellion is primarily in the noble class, actually almost exclusively in the noble classes who are taking some issue with imperial tides. Cipher has been there, they discover, but Cipher has been in the, they call the feral part, the part of the world where the peasants live.

And he's been training the peasants not to be rebels, but to make sure that when the dark angels do their recruitment, that more of the peasants are selected for dark angel recruitment. He actually keeps the dark angels jade seed pure by having actual dark angels that are going to be honor bound to dark angels become the dark angel. And then again, poof, gone. Yeah. And so this rebellion happens, the Dark Angels, because the truth is when you're, if you have a recruiting where it goes to rebellion, a lot of times you need to purge your Legion of them because there tends to be corruption in there. Cipher, by acting in this way, prevented that corruption from affecting the Dark Angel's Legion.

These are kind of quick hitters. It's easier to do it this way. The next big chunk, 250 more years go by. And now we're in Segmentum Pacificus, the left side of the galaxy. This is on the other side of the galaxy. Another rebellion where successionists are declaring an independence from the Lords of Terra. The dark angels are sent out there and they see telltale signals of fallen and Seifer. And they chase him. They begin chasing Seifer through the system. But as they chase him, each planet they get to, they discover the rebellion was being led by a member of the fallen. and they have to stop chasing Seifer, kill this fallen off,

and then they begin chasing him again. Again, I haven't got the biggest thing yet. I'm doing one. The biggest thing about this is each one of those fallen has taken a key position of power, so they have to stop and get rid of them because it's not just a fallen who, obviously they want to capture or kill, but this is also somebody that is a key members of parliament have been in front of. Yeah, and these guys, these fallen are all.

oftentimes, they're not necessarily planetary governors, but they're going to be like key members. They're either going to lead the planetary defense force. They're close to top of the planetary defense force. All of this thing and they're influencing it. And the dark angels are just trying to kill Seifer. They're going planet by planet, connect to the dots and just keep killing all the fallen. At the end of it, Cypher again disappears, but the rebellions also stopped because all of the people who are fermenting the rebellion have now been killed. Again, the dark angels save a second. And it's a huge deal on this because of the fact that this was a key logistics part and it would have actually possibly crippled the sector. Exactly.

Now, about 40 years after that, though, Seifer takes a turn that's a bit more heretical. And the next one is what's called the Red Heresy in 290 of M36. So I want to point out, Cypher was on Caliban when it was destroyed in M30 or M30. or M31, one of those two. So we're 5,000 years, still alive. Or is he? We'll get there. In 290 of M36, this rebellion overtakes hundreds of worlds.

Billions of workers declare the corpse emperor of false god, and they declare a worship for the old gods. This leads to a 20-year rebellion where the locals kill every member of the administratum, the ecclesiarchy, anyone else there. the silver skulls are deployed, who are a ultramarine successor, are deployed to deal with it. And as soon as they get there, get their butts just kicked. They arrive.

Just wrecked. Yeah. And they call back for support and the Dark Angels come in. The Dark Angels arrive, I will note, a little bit oddly quickly. Like they call for support. And they're going, oh, yeah, yeah, we're here. It's like, didn't you have to come through the warp? Yeah, we took a shortcut.

Also, they're less than helpful. Kind of. Yeah, it's kind of funny. The Dark Eagles arrive. This is where the story is hilarious. They arrive. Save the Silver Skulls. Push the front line of the opposition back.

Silver Sol's got a beachhead. And then just start like heading off. They just wander away. Yeah, just wander away. The Silver Skull is like, we're still fighting over here. And they're like, yeah, yeah, we'll be there. You guys. Yeah.

As far as getting a good Yelp review, the Silver Skulls are not giving one to the Dark Ages on this because they took wild casualties because they were. went, you guys ready to charge? And then they went, guys, guys, yeah. The Dark Angels, they realized later that Dark Angels took a right turn and just chased one dude who they note was in Powerhammer across the planet while the Silver Skulls got just, they ended up winning, but getting wrecked. And the important part of this story is the Silver Skulls file a complaint against the

dark angels with the Lords of Terror. because that's also a thing. There is a complaint department within the Imperial HR. And if you think, I'm not going to record that. You're out of your minds. So next, Cypher, again, escapes there, as he always does, 800 years go by. And the next one's kind of funny. The Dark Angels actually don't discover Cypher this time.

They discover the actions of Cyp. There is a pirate smuggler fleet that gets big enough, the Dark Angels have to go destroy it. They do their usual thing of capturing all the leaders. and then heavy air quotes here, interrogating them. And while in Terry, and they tell this story.

And the story that they say is that, you know, we didn't really want to be doing the stuff we got caught doing. But this random dude showed up and called for parley. We had to give him parlay. Let's talk about the fact

that there wasn't a lot of parlay. He said there was going to be some parley. And he was like, well, what actually I'm going to do is I'm going to challenge your leaders for control of the fleet and proceeded to, to individually duel them to death

and said, I'm the captain now. Yeah. And he takes over this entire pirate smuggler fleet, takes him out to an area called the Black Gulfs, and they raid all the mines there, steal a bunch of materials, and then he pieces out

and leaves these guys to the Dark Angels. Yeah. It's like he basically knows that eventually the Dark Angels are going to get there. It just goes, by the way, they never say what the hell they were mining the stuff for, because he just leaves. Hey, hope it works out for you

with the Dark Angels. They're very considerate. One of my favorite ones, though, is next. So, 1,500 years passed now. So we get to 665 of M38. Cipher pseudo appears again. He appears, but Dark Angels don't catch him.

He senses somehow the inquisitions on his trail. So Seifer hunts down. This is one of my favorites on this, because he's being chased by the inquisition, he finds the guy that's trailing him, kills him, takes his place, and then proceeds to scour the databases of all of the information that they had collected on him

as this guy. It's fantastic. And it gets better because then he uses this guy's inquisitorial power to collapse a hive world called Septus 7, which was actually part. part of an Alpha Legion plot to take over an entire sector. By the way, the Alpha Legion, not huge fans of Syracers. There's not a lot of pro-Syfer guys on that. He's getting very few votes. Yeah, and this is where Seifer becomes a bit more interesting because he starts to appear more and more with the forces of chaos.

Initially, giving the outward appearance of being more aligned with him because he is a fallen. But in truth, his allegiance doesn't seem to be to chaos. It's much more chaotic to say the law. least. Like, for example, he leads a raid on a hive world named Voss Prime. And Voss is one of the top hive world producers of high-end military goods in the galaxy. This is such a good. So he's basically leading the bank robbery with the Joker. So they go down with Black Legion Terminators. They break into the fall. They get the STCs, which were the entire reason they're there. And then the STCs don't actually get back to the Black Legion. And you don't know where the STCs went. Because

the Terminators didn't get back to the Black Legion. He was, he jumps into the bus and drives away. Yeah. Yeah. Sefer is seen throughout this whole era like conforming with traitor legions, but primarily he's interacting with Fallen and building up his forces there. And this is a lines more, you know, maybe sixth edition, fifth, sixth edition, Dark Angels, where to Brad's point, he would lead the fallen.

And so he's built this massive section of the fallen. But I want to do what I spend a bit more. time on him pissing off Alpha Legion. Because it is really funny. However, the best part about this is we had to narrow this down because every time Alpha Legion shows up and SIFRA has anything to do with it, he's just giving a quick screw you to him, which makes me... It is epic.

It is epic. So 518 of M39. It's 100 worlds on the edge of the veiled region go into rebellion. This was an Alpha Legion plan. That was planned over a millennia within the eye of terror. This is the long con coming to fruition. Everything's going right for the Alpha Legion. And Seifer may or may not decide to screw it up.

Cipher just shows up on each of the hundred worlds in sequence to bring the Dark Angels there. Every single one is so fantastic. Yeah. And the Dark Angels keep arriving just as the Chaos cultists are trying to get to the end of their ceremony. and a dark angel's wall looking for a cipher, look down and see the cultists go, oh yeah, blow them up, blows them up real quick and move on to the next world.

The entire thing, the thousand year plan by Alpha Legion just goes up, it goes off with a fizzle. It's like a firework. You buy it like a grocery store. He's just, I love that he's,

he goes to each planet and basically spray paints. Cipher is here and waits for them to get there. And then goes to the next plan. As we've got, gotten into what we call modern 40K though. Cipher has become much more a hero, I think. It's like ancillary hero for the Imperium. And the first example I'll use is this planet's called I'madis. So this is 976 of M41. This is effectively just about modern 40K. The dark angels arrive and this planet

Amadeus was under attack by chaos and the dark angels are sent to save it. The dark angels arrive. there is one person left in the defense force who has held out against chaos. Everyone else has died. So Seifer was there with him. And Seifer told him, it helps, don't tell anyone else here. So the dude says, okay, he has been promoted a bunch of times. And where this comes to fruition is hilarious. He's at what's described in the book as a social function with a Dark Angels company master.

And I just want to point something out. is that? Yeah, there is nothing less enjoyable than spending with a Dark Angel. There's no party. I genuinely believe, yes, you don't want the World Eaters at your party, but they might be fun. If I'm being honest, there is a 0% chance of the Dark Angels being fun. The Ultramarines, I could see being like accountants who get too drunk, it's kind of a bit of

a wild party. The Dark Angels would just be boring in the corner, brooding. this social function, this guy decides to tell people. And I love everything about setting this up because, one, he wasn't there by himself. Oh, where was he? Who was he with? Oh, the guy they've been trying to track down forever. He doesn't know this, but also, why would you tell the grimest most tactured guy that

looks like he would, the best part about this party would be killing someone, which ends up being him? because for some unknown reason, he tells him all about what Safer did and how he is fighting next to him the whole time. And the company master just decides that the colonel's a heretic and shoots him in the face.

Yeah, it was executed right there. At the party. Yeah, at the party. Which is again, why you don't invite to Archangels to the party? That's the kind of, they're not fun. Fast forward a little bit, and let's get all to modern 40K.

995 of M4.1. So effectively just shy of modern in 14 K. Kadia hasn't fallen yet, but we're that close to this. Mysterious voice starts broadcasting all over the place and is saying to the downtrodden workers and the laborers of the Imperium to throw off their shackles and resist. Key peace, because this is not what the emperor wanted for them. He's instead, he's calling himself the voice of the emperor, hundreds of worlds fall to rebellion, namely against him in a storm.

The first thing that the Lord of Tara do about this is weirdly send to the Ascentra. And the officio assassinor and go out after him, all of them die. One of them gets a little bit close and is able to report back that the voice of the emperor is a robed hooded figure in power armor with two pistols and a phased sword. The next group who encounter them are the Black Templar, and we cover this in our Black Templar cast. Actually, sorry, not in the Black, we cover this in our Crusade cast, where the Black Templars were hunting down the voice of the emperor.

And when they got to a planet that he was broadcasting from, they found that dark angels were also there. They also found a bunch of plants that had been exterminatists from space. But side note, in the process of trying to grab the voice of the emperor, they did capture him and bring him back to their ship, at which point the dark angels informed them that they would like the prisoners sent over to them. And they informed them while powering up the weapons of their ship.

They made a very courteous ask, and while they were pointing huge volcano lances at them. Yeah. What happens next is important. They do transfer the prisoner over. It is Cypher. Not only does Cypher escape, but both ships disappear. All of the Black Templar ships disappear and the Dark Angel ships don't reappear. If I'm reading the novel correctly.

Yeah. Yes, no. Continue on with it. He gets away heist style. Yeah, cyber skips. And the Black Templar, by the way, file another claim. So we have the Silver Skulls and the Black Templar telling the Imperium, hey, to sum me up with the Dark Angels. Now, let's get to the last piece of the Cypher lore.

This is the most recent bit of Cypher lore, and I want to get to this so we can cover the last part of our cast. Everything we said there was through about 2013. In 2017, we get the first. big storyline progression at a GW. This is a almost 20 years. This is gigantic. It's the first time they've actually pushed the storyline forward in GW books because of the fact you were allowed to write anything before this time.

You could change things. You could actually retcon things, but you weren't allowed to write anything beyond this point in time. And this is when they started pushing the story forward. It's also when the game started getting cool again because this is the beginning. we have eighth edition. Yep. This is a very big move in the part of GW,

a very good move part of GW. So Gilliman is resurrected. He stabilizes McCrack and he decides he's going to have a chat with the emperor. And he goes back towards Terra. While doing this, he gets stuck in his journey. He and his, ooh, we're going with this word again. Retune. Yeah, we're so close.

Redmond. I have no idea which one of this is, retinue. He and his retinue are trapped in the warp by Cairo's fate lever. and they actually are captured by the red corsairs and placed in prison within a blackstone fortress. We're going to cover this in the future cast, guys. But anyway, while they're there, Cipher, some fallen angels and a shadow seer appear.

And Cipher makes an offer to Gillum. And he says, I will free you and your friends on one condition. You take me back to Tara with you, and I get to speak to the emperor. I think this is a giant turning point in how you look at Cypher, because when Seifer gives this option to Gilliman, Gilliman doesn't like just, oh, no, this is our only option. He actually eyes Seifer up and decides he should be able to, if the Emperor sees fit.

Does he? Let's get to what happens now, and we can debate this. So Seifer helps Gilman escape. Seifer actually fights next to Gilliman when they get to Luna and they're under attack by Magnus. They get all the way to Terra, at which point Gilliman has Cypher arrested by the person. You're not wrong, but the whole point in the book, he says he judges him when he sees him and stuff. But the part I want to get to is what happens next for Cypher, which is cool.

So Cypher is now imprisoned in the Imperial Palace. And you know who finds out about this? The Dark Angels. And decide this is basically worst-case scenario. Our secret is now like seven floors below the Lords of Terror. You know? Not great. Yeah.

And they do this kind of, this actually, I did like this book. I liked the writing here. Sometimes I like crap on it. I like this writing. So the dark angels have to sneak in. They have to go kill Cipher.

And what they do is they have to just, they go in and they disable. Say, to get the Cipher, they have to disable the cells. But in disabling the cells, Cipher escapes. Yeah.

So that, yeah, they disable the dark cell, I think what it was called those holding Cipher. Cipher senses that, this and then use it to escape. Also, you know who's not super awesome with the fact that they just shut

down a bunch of cells? The custodes. Yeah, and so that's why I love this. So Seifer escapes and he's got two problems now. Problem one, the Dark Angel still one dead. Problem two, now the custodes are also trying to cover for them. So Cypher is now a mistake for the Dark Angels. No one can know about the fallen.

And the custodes, who is no one can ever escape from us. You forgot the third one. The Inquisition, who's not super excited that he acted like he was a member of the Inquisition. Oh, there's also that one, too, yeah. Cipher and Modern Era, I think, is the most wanted member of the galaxy who's not an official leader of D. That's like 100%.

Or maybe it's. And that right there is where I actually want to jump into Cipher, more Brad and I discussing Cipher. And so where this is interesting to me is Cipher, the question of them was simply, put, is Cypher chaos? We'll start there because he was for a long time. He had a chaos data sheet. In 10th edition, he still has a chaos data sheet. It's always had a dark angel's data sheet. Also, he gets to talk to the emperor. That's true. But the question is, is Cypher a actual member of chaos or is Cypher something else? I think he's something else. Let me ask you a few

questions here. Question number one, is there one, is there one cipher or more than one cipher? That one, I don't know. I've heard this a lot, and I debate on it quite a bit. The thing is, I think that Seifer might be a weird type of perpetual or he continues on the work of because he actually acts like if Knights of Republic, he's, he's revving. Yeah, I would say there's kind of, I think there's three ways this goes. Way number one is Seifer has been alive for 11,000 years. Way number two, Seifer is Dread Pirate Roberts. where there's been numerous cyphers,

and each of these cyphers, that's why, by the way, guys in the cast, I kept explaining the gaps between them and how much time there was. It was to point out that perhaps we've had numerous ciphers popping through and they're different fallen stepping. Somebody takes up the mantle of the dread pirate Roberts

or is it would be the mantle of cipher, which also would explain his very erratic behavior. Well, the other one, too, is he is a warp being. Because the first one is he's, yeah, he's been alive this long, but the third one is he's actually is a being of the warp that was formulated, much like the watchers of the dark. I think the watchers are the dark are good nerglings.

He also, in my mind, could be, this is what I probably lean mostly into. I think Seifer might actually be a warp entity that has been manifested as a result of the fall of Caliban. You have all the emotion and then the order, because the order were pretty closely aligned with the... All right, I forgot what are the good nerglings called? have for other name. Watchers in the dark.

Yeah. With the Watchers of the dark, I think it's possible that Seifer actually, is that? Because he smoke bombs. He's... Sipher just disappeared. He 100% is a powerful psycher, but it's one of the... Is he?

That's what I'm saying. I want to set this up a little bit. I think he's a powerful psycher in the fact that he's innately using powers of the warp like a warp entity. So it makes more sense on that. He's not an actual psycher. He's just innately using the warp. Exactly.

And that's where to me, and again, this is pure John theory, but that's where I see Cypher. I think of Cyp as being this actual being that is not a human, that is not even a space marine, but it manifests as one. Like we learn with the primarks. The primarks aren't actually, they're warp entities in case, and like a sausage, basically, of humanity. You're meant to say like a Terminator, a T-800 with a flesh covering.

No. No. It's so much cooler saying it that way. I like sausage. I like warp sausage. All the primarks are warp sausage. That's what they really are. It's like, I think the warp, shove it inside of it and then add a case. I don't know if you're a warp entity thing. I don't know if I feel about that because of the fact that for so long in the additions,

third, fourth, fifth, he was this enigmatic, is he good, is he bad? But he also has a data sheet in both codices. What is he doing? I always thought that he was leading the Imperium not to fall. I think that he wasn't for the Imperium, but he also wants the Imperium to exist. We love our D&D references.

I think is he chaotic good? Who gets, because he's associated with the fallen, gets labeled as chaotic neutral. Probably. And he won't. I think he doesn't. I think, here, I'll give you my full mojo of what I think about Seifer.

I think that Seifer actually believed in the fact that there was problems in how everything was going with the crusade, everything turned out. But he still believes in humanity, you know what I mean? That the fact that he wants the Imperium is humanity. So he wasn't want that to fall,

but he doesn't believe that they're doing it right. So he doesn't want to be part of the machine, but he also doesn't want the machine to fail because then humanity fails. There's too many threats against humanity. Yeah, because when I was doing the research for the show, I use Lexicanum, guys, no mystery there. It's a very great way to figure out, oh, yeah, what do I have to go reread?

And in Lexicanon, they describe cipher the way I like a lot, where they say, everywhere a cipher goes, destruction follows, but it's almost never by cipher. It's usually the dark angels showing up and doing it. And so this is my point where I think he's chaotic good. He seems to be trying to either, to both help the dark angels and help the Imperium, not the Lords of Terra Imperium, but the Imperium itself quite frequently. I think he wants to save humanity, humans. That's true.

The things that he does aren't really pro-imperium. They're anti-tons of humans getting killed. Every time he goes somewhere, he stops rebellions. He stops the forces of chaos. He stops, I mean, he stops necron. He stops all kinds of others. Unfortunately, the dark angels get involved. The collateral's brutal.

The collateral is brutal. But it is. It seems like it almost feels like, or another angle of it's maybe he's kind of the guardian angel in a messed up way of the dark angels, where he's drawing them all around the galaxy to do good for the galaxy. Whether they want to or not. And I like. Oh, they do not want to. But I like that quite a bit. He's forcing them in chasing him to do acts of good.

Yeah. Yeah. I like that quite a bit. All right. Let's close on that one. I think we've reached consensus on Cipher. So next week, we're going to, we've done now a bunch. We've done some Imperium.

We've done some trader. We've done loyalists. We owe Zeno something. And again, I'm going back to some early casts where people said, tell us more about something. And I said, I'm totally going to do that. And then a year and a half went by. So next week, we're going to go back to the Necrons.

And we're going to focus on the Silent King, his return to the galaxy, what that's done in changing the necrons, what's that done in changing the galaxy itself, some of the stories about him. And I'm going to find a way, guys, I promise to wedge Trajan into this one. You're welcome, everyone. Yeah, this was Brad's idea.

He was dead, and he was dead. He was dead right when he said it, and it got in my head, and I just had to figure out how to do it. So, yeah. So next week, Silent King, could be one episode, could be two. I haven't written a single word of it yet,

so we're going to find out once that begins. But until then, this has been John Barsati and Brad Chester. See you guys next week.