The 40k Lorecast - Episode 107 - The Squats!

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

On Today’s we begin our coverage of the Votann. By talking about the squats and not the Votann! We open with a history of the game itself, when the squats were introduced, how they existed through the early days of the game, and then how they were removed from the game. From there we jump into what was their lore in the time. From them setting the core worlds of the galaxy, their battles with the orks, and then their joining of the imperium (sort-of). We then move into the end of the squats in the universe. We close out on the 15+ years of squat rumors and hints we got from GW, until in April 2022 they returned to the game!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 Varsati and Bradchester. This guy. Perfect audio. Finally. So for this cast, we have attempted to start this cast four times? Probably something in that realm. Four times, multiple starts.

Also trying to fix my audio, which I had to download certain things. which we know how I feel about the internet. It's scary. You shouldn't go there. There's lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my. So we're going to try to power through this. And the only thing that's going to help me get through this today is the topic of our cast today, which is my people.

Yeah. As in an extinct race that no one cares about anymore. You know, that's hurtful talk, John. It's hurtful talk. And I take offense to that. All right. So today we're beginning our coverage of the least. leagues of Votan by not actually talking about them in any way, shape, or form, but instead diving

into the squats, what their lore was, where they went. Have they come back? Question mark? The goal here is to really dive into the squat lore, and then the next cast will start up with the Votan lore. And by doing it that way, we should find, let you all decide what's different, what's the same, etc. So this should be a fun one. As always, before we begin, the 40K lore cast, the weekly show and the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please continue to follow and comment on the cast. It's not really helping our algorithm. And again, we're the number one Warhammer lore cast in the world.

So that's cool. And that's because of you guys with your comments and your follows. So thank you. Also, if you like the cast, you want to hear more of Brad and I. Click on the show notes to our YouTube page, which is the 40K lore cast on YouTube. Then you'll find versions of the show converted with imagery and subtitles. The subtitles can be pretty helpful. because, oh boy, some of the stuff we say mumble out,

especially during some of the heavy wine days. It also has our live Q&A sessions and our other shows, the history of 40K with Brad and myself, and two old men on their handler, which we should be coming out any day now, as I've been saying for three months. In this show note, it's also a link to our Patreon. Big thank you all to our patrons in Patreon for contributing.

It really has increased what we've been able to do. As you can see, we're much better microphones. We're able to expand that and more stuff. It allows me to and Brad to spend more time on the cast, which means a lot to us. The way our Patreon works is there's only one tier. For $4.99 a U.S., you get the cast completely ad-free, along with our other cast, the history of 40K. But let's say you don't live in the U.S.

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That's over 300 feet, which is just excessive. Also, thanks to 20 years of Jiu-Jitsu, John Fahlo and Pocopoto-Gays. So there's that. All right. Lastly, as always, we have our Discord. Please join it. Over 10,000 members now. I had to drink something called a gonster as a result of it.

It is a wonderful place. We've got incredible resources for literature. I thought you're going to say the gonster was a result of it. wonderful thing. The gonster is one of the worst tapings for that in my life. That was that was not good. That was not good. That did not give me happiest in my stomach, my brain. No part of me enjoyed the gonstar. But I did it for the fans. So if you want to join our Discord, please do. You can get anything you really could ever want there from advice on gaming, advice on literature, questions. We even had some fun fan theory sections where people post, hey, here's what I think, for example,

the tyranids are. So links in the show notes, please join. But, But let's today dig into why Brad's back hurts, squats. It's my favorite exercise. It's why. Oh, it's because you're short. That's why because you're short. And I can do a ton of weight. If there was a minimum distance that had to go,

it would be your less favorite exercise. I'd have to jump. Yeah. So why is Brad doing cleans? Because the other guy's tall. We're going to open up today actually with. the history lesson on the squats. The squats, I think they are the most infamous army in all of 40K, which is interesting because they actually predate 40K. The first squat was released in 1987,

and his name was bonce or bonc, B-O-N-C-E. I'm going to get a lot of pronunciation rough on this one, guys. I read it as Beyonce, so you're doing better. Well, we'll go Bonsei. Bonsei was actually released before the first rogue trader was ever published. So the squats are in ancient race in 40K and in actually Even according to 40K. Yeah. For those of you who don't listen to our history of 40K show, quick rundown on what Rogue Trader is and a bunch of this stuff.

Rogue Trader, which by the way, I've been spelling Rouge in all of the notes up to this point just to annoy Brad because I know it does drive him nuts. I don't even, by the way, stopped correcting anything in the notes a long time ago, specifically because half of them at least are, you just trying to upset me, which it still does, even though I don't. Oh, yeah. All I have to do is misspell rogue and write rouge.

And then as you read the notes, you keep reading Rouge Trader and it irritates you. And that makes me happen. Every time. Yeah. But Rogue Trader was the precursor to 40K. And it was less a tabletop combat game than a tabletop RPG. For those who don't know, actually, D&D was released in 1974. He's got his first big update to AD&D.

In 81 to 85, it just was a bunch of releases in that era that actually made the game what most people kind of recognize today as D&D. D&D was incredibly popular. Well, you know, if you're a nerd, there was a bunch of other things that were more popular. But for those of us in this world, D&D was awesome. And what happened was as a result of the popularity, a lot of people try to copy it, but not copy it in the crappy IP violation sense. But in the, wow, this is so much fun. But I don't want to play an elf in a forest. I want a gun in space.

So we want to make a game that does that. So they copied off it that way. Around 1987, you get the official launch of what's called Rogue Trader. Today, we actually refer to this as 40K first edition. But it was not very simple. We shouldn't actually say that because it wasn't first edition. It was Roe Trader. I mean, it was wildly different.

I give GEO credit, there is no first edition, what I'm saying. There's a second edition. And then Road Trader is in effect the first edition. That's right. That's a better way saying. It's in effect the first edition. It's nothing like modern 40K, though. There are D6s, obviously, but also D20s, D8s, all the stuff. All the mechanics were super wonky. The truth is the only reason the addition grew is that the models were really cool and interesting. They also had, this was the release because they released Fantasy Battle and then they had ROTRater and they had the actual full-on RPG game, which was the Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy. which was one of the best art books to pick up ever.

The rules were a sketch because if you got a hangnail, you were going to die. I challenge you to play that game. They had niggling injuries, basically, like you do in Blood Bowl, which is the 40K or fantasy football game, whatever. But they had stuff that would just keep coming with you and you would get slower and slower and you would eventually just get wrecked no matter what. Fun though. Greatheart. 1993, second edition is launched. Most of the game mechanics from Rogue Trader were still there. They were tweaked up a little bit.

It was a lot. Yeah, but not, it was still, you saw the D20s though. So a D20. No, I mean, the Dice and stuff were there. It's just it became more of a tactical miniature game than before. And they added a lot more background. The race is increased. I think this is when Horace Heresy.

The Horace Heresy was predated it, but it was actually the bad next thing. The original Horace Heresy was one paragraph. It will almost a sentence, basically. What we think of as more modern 40K came around in 1998, which is when third edition was released. And from a tabletop standpoint, this is what most of us recognize. All D6, rules for terrain, sort of, a lot of the core rules we recognize today, that was 1998.

Obviously, we are now in September of 2025, games advanced. Here's the thing about squats. Squats were introduced in 1987. They were in the original rogue trader with models and rules, and they never got a codex. It wasn't until 9th edition that Votan came out, which we'll get to later, but they had, they've never gotten a codex ever. Space dwarfs were treated badly. My people were treated badly. Yes.

You're neither a space nor a dwarf, Brad. You're just short with them. Yeah. And you're, well, I guess you are grumpy. I had those two things going for you. Have you done any mining? How are you? How are you at it?

I might as well check. So the irony, though, of the squats is they actually had more models than space marines during the rogue trader era. They even had chaos squats at one point. Close to 150 models were available in their catalog. The primary sellers, though, being the squats on bike. I think you meant to say on. Trikes, thank you very much.

There are bikes and trikes. Yeah, that's true. And I will give the Votan line credit. If you look at the bikes and the trikes, and then you look at the pioneers, there's some serious homage there. 100%. But there were also- You take that back. They look terrible, right?

Like the squat tech priest looks my-ligead. The squat Terminators looked horrible. The squat with Powerax with a giant beard and a hair. You had Cyker squats. everything. The only place we saw in actual growth of squats with data sheets and rules, though, is the game called Epic, which

is now, today they call it Legionus Imperialis. They've re-released this game like four times. Epic. Epic was cool. Epics for large, huge, large-scale battles, where you include Titans. I mean, you have, Land Raiders are, what,

I think 10 millimeters. So small. The scale, you understand, we're talking about leave notice imperialis is the scale of 40K is what's called 28mm, that's its base size. Epic is six millimeters. And what Epic allows you do is have really big stuff. The squats fill into that pretty well because the squats were kind of like the orcs,

that they had these, like, special, these giant machine engines they would build and all this stuff. It was well written, but the game never really took off. It was very minimal. But, as I said, the squats never got their codex. And then in July of 2004, GW officially killed. them. And with a dear John letter. But it was

a nice dear John letter. And they Oh, whatever. He gave a Taledagan Knights. We both know this has been over for a long time. I did not know. So the reason I like the letter is the letter does call a bunch of good stuff out. They call out the fact

that the squats were not being killed off because they didn't sell because the squats did sell. They even admit the squats sold. They were killing the squats off because they weren't space dwarves. They were kind of a joke. And this was the problem. GW could not write rules for them and could not make a functioning faction for them at the time.

And so they decided it was better to kill them off than to keep making kind of silly models, for a lack of a better phrase. And we can talk more about that later. But some of these models really were more of a joke than something serious. If you actually looked at what they were, they were way too over the top and the way they were designed. And so that's what they had a lot of the rules. that the goblins have and stuff like that. Funky, funny stuff.

And we'll cover this when we begin to Votan, but the idea of space dwarves, just like fantasy dwarves, is that they're not, they're comedic, but they're serious. And that was the challenge that, you guys can read the letter, you can find it's out there, it's well written.

That was the challenge that GW found, is that dwarves are supposed to have a little bit of comedic relief, but they're supposed to be serious and strong. And the squats were much more comedic relief than anything else. And all I'm saying, because of that, I now have a line in my book of grudges,

yes, fantasy players, you know, that they let this go until 2000, it took them 20 years. Yeah. This is like a hey man, we should go back to the drawing board. We'll probably have something in the next year or two, or 20.

I mean, look, I'll call out what really happened. The internet kind of got, obviously was invented early this, but broad access to email came around in like the late 90s, but more so early zeros. My expectation is they were just getting inundated nonstop with emails of where are the squats, where are the squats, where are the squats? And finally were like, all right, we have to do something about this.

We can't just ignore it anymore. That's my theory. I could be wrong, but that's my theory. Now, with all that out of the way, let's dive into the actual lore that the squats had when they existed. And I'm doing it this way because I want you all to hear this. I think it's more fun to do it this way. And then when we do the Votane, let the Lister's compare and contrast the two.

So we'll start off with the squats were a subspecies of humanity that represented some of the first intergalactic settlers. When mankind first figured out how to travel beyond our solar system, so around the dawn of the golden age of technology, using really the first warp drives, these early settlers went out to the galactic core, which is just for the right of segmentum. solar on the other side of something, if you look at a map in one of the four-year maps, maelstrom. One of my favorite parts about this is where they sent them in the first place is where we don't go as much today in modern 40K as the galactic core. Yeah, because we're going to get into it because the place sucks. So there's a supermassive black hole.

You act like that's ruining property values, John. I don't understand. You can just go through that. it's not a big deal it's so close to the beach it's good yeah let's talk about the galactic core so the galactic core is 26,000 light years away there is to brad's point a super massive black hole there that has according to my research thank you google a mass of four million times i love your research jad one hand on his phone one hand on a drake going research oh i was 100% drink on whiskey while doing this. I write these things at night. But it was cool. There's a black hole there that has the density of

four million of our sons. And so that's probably not ideal. It's also a nightmarish place in density. So all of the suns are incredibly close together. The earth sits in what's called the solar neighborhood in their galaxy. In the solar neighborhood, there's 0.14 stars per cubic parsec. I don't know what a cubic parsec is, but I can do math of 0.14. But I'm going to rock that kessel run, though. Yeah. On the flip side, in the galactic core, in one parsec, there's 10 million. But I'll let you guys know, that's more.

Yeah, I believe, and I'm going to get railed on this, if I'm wrong, I believe that's a multiple of a hundred million in density. I thought you were going to try to say multiplicative when you're continuing on. No. Most worlds in the- I was excited for this, the chance. I know better. Most worlds in the galactic core are large and dense, giving them many multiples of gravity above that of Earth.

You also have numerous suns all over the place, causing gravity wells and really messing with what would be traditional navigation. And a lot of the worlds, they even write this, never experienced darkness because there's too many suns, which does two fun things. One, makes it too hot to sustain life. and two. Two is really important, which is the whole fact that, hey, there might not be water.

Yeah. Also, there's definitely a whole lot of radiation. Like a lot of. I kind of shake that off, John. Look, if you get a little SBF, 50 million, you just slather that on. You bring a couple canteens of water, and you basically work out a little bit more to counteract the gravity. That's probably five to ten times more on some of these builds. And you're fine.

Yes. You keep back like this isn't a great place. I don't know that's going to help you too much when you're talking about Wolf Reatz, blue stars. These things are going to wreck you. So not great place to me. The truth is, sidestep that.

Nothing should be here. Like, nothing should be here. But anyway. However, squouts with there. Yeah, but this is sci-fi. So all of the stuff I just told you about this area,

a lot of that's from like NASA and science, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about Warhammer 40K. And it's sci-fi. So let's enjoy it. So let's go with how the GW views the galactic core. According to GW, and this is a fun way to look at it, it's a densely packed area of worlds that are light years full of raw materials. And so the GW leaned into the fantasy dwarf trope when designing the squats, being space miners and borrowers who would go out there and

harvest these difficult worlds because they could handle the adversity and the strength. Another fun thing is the squats are both part of the Imperium and not part of the Imperium. Because the squats aren't necessarily part of the Imperium, they actually have their own calendar events. So the first mark in the calendar for the squats is what's called the Age of Founding. The Age of Founding is around M20, and this is when the first colonists arrived in the galactic core. And what they found there was the richest area in minerals in the galaxy, enough to build a civilization on. And thanks the technology they had available,

they were able to colonize the planets, sort of. And I say sort of, because this is one of the key parts in the squads come up later. Mankind could terraform, but within reason. These planets are getting, as we just said, bombarded with radiation, heat, gravity distortion. surface was never going to be livable. And I love them doing this, though, because they set it up specific. I like this writing on this.

Because of the fact that what would a dwarf do? A dwarf would dig down. Hey, the surface is messed up. There's still a bunch of mining to be done. Why don't we just live underground where the radiation's not? The squads actually used the crust of the earth as a shield against the onslaught, basically from the stars. And during this time, by the way, they weren't really squats.

They were still humans. Probably having a horrible time trying to breathe and walk around a planet with four times of gravity of Earth. They'll fix that later. During this time, though, the worlds of the galactic core became incredibly wealthy. They were trading back with the other parts of the galaxy. And this mineral wealth made them king. Yeah, I was the same. The fact that they have all of these very rare minerals,

that they have piles, Scrooge McDuck levels, piles of, make them wildly rich. And they become very technological, highly technologically advanced in, because they can afford everything. So they get everything that they can at the time. 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.

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technological wealth. And they become not only wealthy, but also a highly advanced race, which is going to be very important coming up. Because the next thing that comes is what they call the age of isolation. This is when the warp storms due to the fall of the Eldar, starting golfing the galaxy. Initially, it was worse for the squats because their density of worlds met they're all pretty damn close to each other, and warp storms are bad. Yeah, which sometimes you get things like, I don't know, a storm that just sucks multiple worlds into the warp. It's a really bummer of a day when you go, hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go, and then instead it's off to the warp we go. That's a rough day. Yeah, it definitely sucked. Now, that being said, obviously all contact with

terror was severed, but not with each other because flip side of them all being close together. is that with faster than light drives, they can still get around and actually continue trading. So the squat home world had this kind of advantage because they were so close to each other that they were able to trade. Also, the worlds were initially so inhospitable that all the structures were underground,

which made them very secure and very defensive. And they're also super fortified in the first place. And they can kind of weather most anything because they fortified them for underground. Exactly. And so it's like an opportunistic pirate or some Zeno were to come by looking to steal supplies, they got wiped out real quick. So this leads a bit further into the squats, look around and realize that they're on their own.

And they end up building their own empire, which is called the Engineers Guild. Because the squads never formed a formal government. Instead, it was a trade federation. So be careful, Nabu. They're going to show up. the death call is catastrophic. Yes. All the worlds were independent from one another,

but over time they became aligned over mutual goals of trade or commerce. So for those who don't know what Comer means, I do, which is weird I can pronounce that, but can't pronounce words in English. G.W. with the Montesquieu and Thomas Payne for the win. Anyway, sorry, I like economics. It's fun. I do like this because of the fact that they became hugely successful. I'm not really sure why I put a Shatner pause in there.

They became hugely successful because of the fact that they had so many supplies that were key to technology. So they could continue to build technology, even though the fact that they were cut off from the rest of the Imperium. Because they still had all of the raw materials to continue to advance. Because a lot of these worlds, when we had all these warp storms, became cut off, it became barbaric. we went back to medieval times and stuff like this, the squats kept going. Yeah. And I think a lot of that is this, D'Homer, is what happens is the squats don't turn on each other. The thing that does come up a lot during the Dark Age of Technology, it wasn't just rogue

psychers and this kind of rising up and taking planets over. It's also just planetary governors, actually who became warlords, who became kings, conquering and killing off other planets because they didn't really have a community that they're a part of where the squats did. So as a result coming out of this, the squats are in a good spot. Another key part of this era, though, and it's not written down, but it's kind of implied, this is when the squats became the squats. Throughout other writings we've seen on Dark Age of Technology, genetic engineering and biomechanics were a commonplace thing. Because by the way, you can't evolve in like a thousand years. We don't, nothing evolves that quickly.

But the squats all of a sudden. I was supposed to say, Fabius and you're, he'll have something to say about that. You can do it unnaturally, but the way that. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you give a couple, couple specific people a thousand years. They'll get some stuff done. What would you like the people to look like? We can have ostrich feed if you want to. It's all good.

Yeah, we can make this happen. So my expectation is that during this time, the squats began messing with their genetics to actually make themselves shorter with much thicker bones, denser muscle tissue. This way they could both live underground more comfortably, but also could withstand the gravity of the worlds they were on. You are also more efficient. It just made more sense. But eventually the warp storms begin to abate, and the galactic core kind of doesn't really

resemble what was there before. Before it was a bunch of independent mining colonies who had been trading back with Terra, now there's an empire there. And the next era... It's also a society that hasn't had to conform and or interact with regular Imperium society. Yeah, and they still don't for a while, because the next age we get into is the age of trade. And this is the one that started off real well and ended kind of crappy. So after the age of isolation, the squawful. the squats enter the age of trade.

This is before the Imperium of mankind exited the age of strife, because the war storms were abating here, but were not fully abated, and mankind still had to get into the unification wars. So they hadn't even begun this. The Mechanicum may have started pushing out at this point, but they're already, they do that very hazy in lore, but the Mechanicum has at least sent out sorties all over the place,

because we get a lot of the Mechanicum and knew about this or that very early. Yeah, but we also should point out that the Mechanicum lore is about 15 to 20 years after the squat lore was written. Oh, 100%. Yeah. We're talking. So a lot of this stuff, I'll say something here about the squats. This is their lore. People would say, well, no, because, man, kind of this, that lore was written 20, 30 years after the squat lore.

I'm just trying to do pure squat lore here. So, yeah. One of my favorites about this, they start trading and they start training with, well, check all. For whatever reason, the squats just decided, hey, man, if you want to trade, we're open for business. Some of their calls were questionable. Yeah, so the two main groups they traded with were orcs and Eldar. Now, the Eldar, real good call. Orks, her.

And there's nothing written down about this, about how successful the trade was. It's just org trade's always interesting because orc technology only works for orcs. So the only thing they could trade. How many teeth do you give them for something? Well, I'm sure you think, I'm sure it was shiny thing for shiny thing. Because you probably did have orcs that had looted a blackstone fortress. And I don't know what any of this stuff is. And you had just went, you get a set of tires for it.

Yeah. They're like, oh, all right, cool. I like these tires. They're lucky. They told me they were lucky tires. The orcs will put those tires on a spaceship and actually make it faster. So to be fair, like it actually wasn't a good trade. Yeah, exactly.

This is a graph. That's what they were just trading the red paint. That's all it was. We'll trade your red paint for everything in the Blackstone Fortress. Done. I see. And they're so proud of that deal afterwards, by the way. But you have to love works.

Now, the Eldar trading is a bit more important. The Eldar at this era are a broken species. Slanesh has been born. She has consumed 90% of their race. And in effect, I believe every planet. I don't think any planet survived the birth of Slanesh. Not in the Eldar core, they haven't. You've already have the exonites.

You've got a lot of other people out. Okay, so you did have those. The Eldar core is where, you know, it's the core. It's where everything was. So the Eldar have lost everything. They also haven't invented soul stones yet. So they're also incredibly exposed. So if you think about, you spent 60 years as almost invincible.

Well, whoa, whoa. Sorry, 60, 60 million years. A million years. I mean, they're almost the same. They're just, you know, potato potato. Fair enough. Yeah. So 60 million years as invincible in all living. And now you get a hang nail and it gets infected and Slanesh gets to eat your soul. Seems worse. I'm just saying. Probably not ideal. So the Eldar desperately needed raw materials and what they had a bunch of technologies. This is a recipe for success. The Eldar and the squats become very friendly. Squatts spend time. on Eldar Croft Worlds, Eldar routinely seen wandering around squat. I mean, I'm sure ducking pretty heavily. Yeah. Well, in this, though, squats end up using a ton of Eldar technology in their basic designs. Yeah. And one of my favorite things about that is it's called out in one of the books that when the squats make contact with the Imperium, and the Imperium comes and looks at

the squat home worlds, the hydroponic plants that were, they got from the Eldar were the most efficient food source the Imperium had ever seen and actually ever do see. It's never ever been improved beyond this level. Now, that humanity contact, though I just mentioned, isn't coming for a bit because we have a middle bit we have to get to. Fun thing about orcs, they're not a monolith. You could trade with some orcs because those ones are interested in trading with you.

Others will leave you alone. But the majority of or for a good fight, baby. And that's what happens next. For the next 3,000 years, the orcs and the squads go to war with each other. Two main things matter about this era. First off, the Eldar are horrible people. Yes. Love that.

Yeah, Eldar is a faction that Brad and I love to play. Brad, because it's a turbo dork, likes being space elves because he's like I. I think you meant to say ultra turbo dork. Thank you very much. Yeah, because you love your high fantasy L. because they're all knowing and all wise. I know how much you love them. I'm not as big a fan of elves and I'm actually in all my DNA.

There is a problem that if you're not an elf, the elves don't really care about what happens to. Yeah, because I play Eldar mostly in 40K because I enjoy how they play on the tabletop. I think they're a blight on the galaxy. They are incredibly selfish and cruel, if I'm being honest. I mean, they did break the sky. Yeah. And all of their solutions since breaking the sky involved kind of re-breaking the sky.

What if we just, everyone dies? And then our one god kills the God that we made because we were all jerks. I mean, that's a really good option. It's just an elf. All their solutions involve them. So as this orc invasion began, the squads turned to their Eldar friends. Like, hey, can you help us out with this? And the Eldar returned with either straight to voicemail or a text of new phone

who this. I was more like, hey, I could, but I got to wash my hair. Yeah. I'm super busy. Super busy. I got a migraine. Actually, for you, yeah. That actually sounds like a legitimate thing. I would go with, I'm washing my hair. Actually, the funny thing is if you were to say to me, I can't have a migraine. My responsibility, you always, yes, you can. That's true. Yeah, like, whatever. I've seen you miserable. Just go. Like, you're fine. So the next 3,000 years, the squats and orcs, find. countless battles all across the squad empire. And if it ended... Which is super funny because of the fact that this actually started off as a kind of good battle,

but orcs come to where the battle is. So they just kept showing up. And a final battle occurs between Grunhug the Flair and he tried to destroy the squat homeworld. And the squats make their final stand and both sides take just catastrophic losses. but it does end the conflict. For the orcs, there was enough loss that they said, I don't want to bother with it anymore.

Yeah. Well, the orcs, Forrest Gumped and said, you know, I'm pretty tired. I'm going to go home. However, for the squats, they have lost many worlds, which were the things keeping them with their very euphoric sense of awesome, everybody's together.

We lose that because they lose a lot of their ability to make things. They also lose a lot of wrong materials. Yeah. And so in squat lore, right up through M41, because squats do exist through M41, they're still trying to reclaim and find these lost worlds because, remember, they live below ground. So it's not like you can just fly past and go, oh, hey, I can see an old settlement. You have to go down and actually look, all right, where did they dig the hole? It's like looking at necrons.

I would argue the greatest legacy of the wars with the orcs is that the squads learn to not trust anyone ever again. The squats have been trading. Oh, hardcore. Yeah. They've been trading with the orcs and got attacked. They've been trading with the Eldar and the Eldar left them alone. So the squats become a very much independent group and focus more heavily on themselves, saying, I can only trust. Phenophobic is what you're going with. Yeah, but it goes beyond that because it's not xenophobic. The squads don't want to kill off all the other zenos. That's why I don't think it's xenophobic. Like the emperor. They still have a very, well, yeah, I mean, he's the ultimate on that. They still want people to leave them alone. They do standard. worth stuff. They want, leave me alone. I'm not trying to actively stop harm you, but also go on Git. I don't need you out here. Yeah, all the squats went to is trade and then

go back to their worlds. That's it. We're not going to make alliances or any of this stuff. But that can only last so long because eventually comes the age of rediscovery, as it's called, and the age of the Imperium. So near the end of the age of war, the first parts of the Imperium begin to arrive, namely the Mechanicum, who lose their effing minds when they see what the squats have. The squats have STCs just lying around, like unused. Yeah. They're like, what? Oh, that, it's next to the toast or whatever.

Yeah. So, actually, throw one in. Yeah, we have five of them. Fine, go ahead. And the Imperium arrived shortly thereafter and recognized the squats as former human colonists. And given their high levels of technology, their incredible mental assets, the Imperium request that they join the Imperium. It's also big on this. Right away, though, they do have a little bit of, oh, is this going to be completely accepted?

Because you got to remember, they have SDCs, they have high tech, but they also just have Eldar tech stuffed on to the end of that SDC and stuff. Yeah, but let's talk about the more important piece. The squat said no. That's what actually happened. A resounding no. A resounding no. We're not joining you. And then the Imperium did with the Imperium likes you in those situations, which was fine.

We'll do it by force. Yeah, these submarines. Which didn't go well. And here's how well it, here's how unwell it went. Mark 2 power armor became Mark 3 power armor because of the squats. They had to reinforce the front of the armor because it couldn't handle fighting in the squat worlds. because it was so cramped, and the squat weaponry was just blasting through it.

So Mark 3 power armor is basically Mark 2 power armor with like 50% more plate in the front. In the front, because you kept getting shot while you were crawling through tunnels. Yeah. And the squats do, in the list of back when they had really good lore around them, had psychotic weaponry. I'll give them the Votan have it to a point in the current lore. Yeah, but it wasn't as cool as this. Yeah. They could break apart planets for the...

their mining so their weapons could do the same thing. And we'll get to some of the more homages to the matter that are coming later, actually killed them off. GSC ended up getting a lot of the old squat weapons, by the way. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, you're right. We're using the mining weapons and all that stuff. Yep. So eventually, these two settle in. It's never really clear how this conflict ended. It's mentioned in some of the early codexes a little bit as being a thing, but there's no oh yeah and then on this date there was a peace treaty it just eventually they joined the imperium sort of but not really squats of the imperium are interesting to me because the original squat lore went through m41 so a lot of what we're about to get into here is going to

make you turn your head and go wait what and you're correct until 2004 in which case you're Like, yeah. Are we going to, you know what, I got to get my chi together. Because the first thing the Imperium does is give the squats a classification. Feel free to say what it is. Homosapiens rotundus. Really? Really?

Which translates to. Dick move. Yeah, dick move. Spherical humans. That's what that is. Yeah. Not cool, bro. Not cool.

Yeah. I mean, homo sapium dominutum would actually have been better, I think. But upon joining the Imperium with heavy air quotes, the squads were more of an independent entity, not that dissimilar from the Mechanicum. They did provide the Imperial Tithe, both troops and supplies. They did share technology with the Imperium, mostly in the Mechanicum. I was to say, you got to air quotes that too, though, because they did, they kind of shared technology. They shared technology of the Imperium because we just mentioned, they had so many STCs. they didn't give over the STC

that made the galaxy's most powerful plasma canon. They gave over the one that made light brown toast. And the Mechanicum was still happy about the light brown toast STC drive. Man, I'd be so sad if I just got right now got the perfect toast STC. Yeah. What a bummer.

Oh, yeah, I forgot because of Ciliac. I can't eat the toast. I get the perfect toast. Exactly when I can't eat. We invented this breadmaker, And it makes the bread only the way that you like your bread, and you can just stare at it and listen to your stomach go, don't do it, Brad.

It will hurt. Full of hatred and anger right now. But in exchange for this, the squats got to keep being squats. They were not under any rule or guidance of the Imperium. They were a fully self-governed sector with no known imperial oversight. There were spies, obviously, but there was no planetary. governor, they didn't have to report to anybody.

More importantly, they don't have an imperial truth. Yeah. Well, Imperial Truth or Imperial cult, because remember, they stayed part of the Imperium for 10,000 years. So originally, they were not part of the Imperial Truth, and then later, they were

not part of the Imperial Cult. Because the Squads actually have their own religion. And in their religion, sort of a religion, they believe that the living... It's more of ancestors. Yeah, I like it. It's the idea is that your living form is the bond between your ancestors and your, I don't know, precessors, there's probably a name for yet to be born children that I can't think of off top of my head.

And I'm going to- Or you're the predecessor of them? Yeah, I guess you're, I don't know, I'm going to get this in Discord. Thank you. Thank you in advance, everybody. I appreciate it. So a squat, and this is important because the way squat society worked was you perform an action to gain honor. And then in death, you join your ancestors.

and their actions and your actions and all that honor are bestowed upon your offspring, who then take on after that. And you got to open up the book of grudges because you are tirelessly, tirelessly, I can't talk, tirelessly trying to redeem and revenge any blights besmirch to your honor that are on there. You are focused on that. Yeah. And there is a reason that current Votan had a grudge system.

for what they did. Yeah, you're going to see some of those of you who already know the Votan lore very well are probably catching some of the stuff that became an homage to the Votan later. What I like about this is, but at this era, this whole, it wasn't really the grudges. It was more your honor was more similar to me to what space wolves are in the sense that it's like, I want everyone to know of my epic deeds and my epic abilities and all of this stuff and all of my, obviously, space walls don't have offspring, but in the

of the squats, all of my offspring will then sing the praises of their ancestors, but how great they were. This is that. But they're, I think they're singing, yeah, but also I think that they're thinking more about the fact of that guy 200 years ago did something to us, and then we brained his offspring. And now it is gone. There's definitely also that. Now, upon joining the Imperium, obviously, the squats would end up joining the Imperial Guard. And they were a very highly valued asset of war, just like the ratlings and the ogren. Well, actually, the ratlings are trickier or one. Actually, I'm being honest, the ratlings aren't as appreciated by the other imperial guardsmen, but the ogren are. It's scary in here. So it took me a second. But what

is it happening, unfortunately, the squads is this part of their lore of them joining the Imperial Guard and being an asset to the Imperial military is kind of what did them in from GW having to write them out of the game because they had to give them models. And what they gave them were squats on bikes. Trikes. This, yeah, this didn't. These things kind of looked cool. So the models were called the RT 305.

And that's because it was the rogue trader and the code was 305 that you used to buy them. They had regular bikes like space marines and orcs have, but they also had a trike with a dude in the back with an assault cannon. they had the really long wheelbases. Remember the handle bars are way up. They had monkey bars on them. It was great. Ape hangers. They had ape hangers. They had an extra long wheelbases. They looked kind of dumb. And the idea was that they would use their fast bikes to assist in battle and they'd go around their giant war machines, which were never made. I was saying, they never got a model. Yeah. And then. Yeah, they did reference their giant war.

machines all the time and had zero models. Well, they were, they were in epic. So they did have them in epic, but they never had to be 40K. Yeah. What I think also did them in was the Terminator armor, which looks less like a Terminator and Violet from Willie Wonka after she has the blueberry pie. Yeah, she definitely had to be squeezed. These things, they were heinous.

They were, if you haven't seen them, look them up there, a bulbous model that looked like you took, I think, A snowman with guns is probably the closest I'd say to it. They were bad. I love the bikes, but the Terminator armor was dumb. It's just dumb. It was just, it was two circles. They had a head, a middle, and two feet at the end.

Yeah, it were incredibly poorly done. Now, I will say on the, they also had chaos to deal with, which is kind of funny. One of the coolest parts of the line of this era was the chaos squats, which were regular squats. unfortunately not with black goatees, which would have been way better. They just gave them horns on their helmets, but I wished instead they just didn't taking the entire squat line

and just given them all a goate because that would have been the way to do it. In fantasy at the time, they had Chaos Wars and regular Branex Wars. And what I did like, though, is that the chaos squats are ones who had joined the Imperium and then during the Horace heresy

had sided with Horace. It was really cool. I mean, some of the backstory here is incredible that the squats had their own civil war during the Horace heresy. At the conclusion of the Horace heresy, those squats also fled into the eye of terror with the rest of the traders to be granted the gifts of chaos and then turned into chaos squat wars. If they would only bring them back, chaos would be great in 40K. Oh, yeah.

It would be super cool. And everybody, I just want to throw this out there because I've seen a ton of the comments. I also agree they should bring Skaven into 40K. It'd be hard to do. But yeah, it'd be fun. It'd be hard to do. Yes. All right.

But as we said before, these models and some of this stuff, this was just chaotic. By the time GW writing had the squats all the way up to the 41st millennia, it is anarchistic. We've got chaos squats. We have squats in Terminator armor, but there's no place for the squats in Terminator Armor to be because they're not Space Marines. So this actually makes sense to even have them. you've got the biker squats who don't make any sense. It's a whole mess. And GW decides just it's time we're going to take them out of the game.

And what they did was they have two choices. One, pretend they never exist. And the other option is from a punk band I like called The Vandals. They have a great song called My Girlfriend's Dead. And the song goes, I once had a girlfriend, but one day she left me. And everywhere I went, people would ask me where she was. I didn't want to talk about her, but people always ask about her. So I told them all, she's dead.

That's basically what the GW did. You sent me the notes. I really thought you were going to try to sing the vandal sign. I would play it. I do not have a voice for singing. I barely have a voice for singing. So that's what they did. At some point, in M-41,

Terned High Feet Behemoth is entering the galaxy. And for whatever reason, one of the main splinters of the tendril bear down directly on the core of the galaxy, and they hit the squats with full force. And the squats were able to defeat the tyranids, but at the cost of their homeworld and their surrounding system. And what was left was a broken species.

They have no home worlds, no centralized government, and they became a minor race in the galaxy. Get it? The Imperium, seeing them broken and weak, seized on the opportunity. and annexed what was left of their civilization. And they become the quarians, basically, because they just go out into space. Well, because the Imperium wiped them out. Yeah, I'm just saying they become this,

they become this war ban wandering about. I think less quarians, though, because when I think of the quarians, they have a main fleet. Right. They don't. They're just separate. They're everywhere.

Yeah, a few do stay in the Imperial Guard, but they end up dying off because there's only, Although squads did live for 300-something years. I forgot to throw that in here. That was in the lore. But for the most part, the squats in the lore become a, oh, yeah, you'll see a few here and there. They might be serving on a merchant spaceship. A lot of them are working with crews on planets doing mining, what they're best at.

The squads die out of the game right around fourth edition in 2004. And the books released after that point, there's no reference to them whatsoever or very minimal. until 2012. Yeah, until 2012. So eight years later, in the sixth edition codex, they just mentioned the squats, stating the squats are an abhuman race recognized by the Imperium as members of the Imperium. This is a minimal nothing thing and people got really excited about the eminent release of the squats. Everybody did think that squats were coming back. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, they were a decade. So we'll get there. And then they did a, now I'm going to let you do this because this one gets Brad Heated. Because they did a momentary retcon in Battlefleet Gothic, which was lame. I'm sorry, but the Demirege was lame. No, the Demirege were cool. The Demirege were super cool in the lore. Fine.

But they weren't with, I'm sorry, it was lame in what they were trying to do with the Redcon. If they were just, go ahead. Let me defend GW in this situation. GW's problem is that they always wanted to bring the squats back, and they never could figure out how to do it. And there were a lot of little attempts where you could see it would appear in a writing here or there. Oh, maybe the squats are back. And everyone's like, oh, the squads are back.

The squads are back. And they kept trying different methods. The Demiurg or Demiurg, yeah, we go to Demiurg, were one of them. So Battlefleet Gothic, tabletop space combat game, it's good. It's not great. The video game's good, but candidly, I would just play X-Wing if I wanted to play a intergalactic space battle game. It's better. So in the lore of Battlefleet Gothic, there's a race called the Demiurk, and they're a nomadic race of traders and miners.

And they had these incredibly powerful ships. I actually don't think they're, I don't believe they were a playable race. They would come into an area and they would mine basically a planet all the way off, and then would come and then would go sell all those pieces to everybody. They've been spotted trading with a tau quite a bit, which comes into lore later. They also would engage with rogue traders who would not tell the imperial and they're trading with them because the Demurek were very much so Zenos. Eventually, though, we started taking description of the Demiurk, which is short, stocky, and they're dwarves.

And a lot of it. They basically go, hey, what do they look like? I'm going to describe them to you, but what I'm going to skip ahead to is say, they look like dwarfs. Yeah. And so people immediately call this out. They're going to GW, hey, are these the squats? And GW, to their credit, just kept quiet.

They didn't have a cunning plan yet, but they knew that this was a way for them to keep the door open to doing something in the future. Fast forward a little bit. With the launch of Votan, it was officially changed. The Demi-Yorg were a splinter of the Votan. I'm not going to dive into that right now. We'll do that next week. But that retcon, for the record,

wasn't that clean. It wasn't square peg round hole retcon, but it definitely wasn't a square peg and a square hole. There's a lot of cannon conflict that comes out of that. Luckily, not a lot of he'll play Battlefield Gothic, so who knew? Now, we're going to jump ahead a little bit further now. 2017, GW re-releases the game Necromunda. That's a really fun game. If you guys like skirmish battles with really cool models, it's all aliens and ab humans as members of different crime syndicates trying to get control of the bottom floor of Necromunda High of City. Now, in 2018, out of nowhere, Necromanda added two models. Well, not at the same time.

One than the other. I'll say. Grendel Grindlesen and Ragnar Gunstein. These names are terrible, but that's a side note. Everyone, they sell out on release, by the way, and you could not get them. They sold out in release. GW made more. Those sold out.

These were the hottest selling model for like a couple of years. You could not find it. And again, the internet went, squats will be out next week. It'll be right there. Stay ready. Every three to four months, someone told everyone on the internet that they have a cousin's friend's uncle's brother who works at GW and is confirmed as squats are coming out later this year.

And they did that for four years until April 1, first. First, 2022. And this actually, I still remember this because it wasn't that long ago. It was quite funny. On April Fool's Day, GW announces that the squats are coming back as a fully playable faction. And everyone got really pissed off because they were like, stop messing with us. That's not funny.

This is all I ever wanted giving my squats back. And on April 2nd, GW dropped the hammer with videos, high-res photos, and everything. This was no joke. squats are back, sort of, because they're actually, they're actually the Votan and their lore doesn't line up very well. But that's not important. But that's the break, guys. This is what I wanted to get through today.

I wanted to get through what are the squats, who are the squats, what was the squat lore? Because trying to do them in Votan the same time is kind of impossible because it would be too confusing to follow it all. So the idea is, you know where the squats are. The squats were humans who had settled the core of the galaxy, got isolated for a little bit, changed the genetics a little bit, and then joined the Imperium. A little bit. Just a little bit.

Then they joined the Imperium and were part of the Imperium until the Tyrannids ate them all. That's what you have to remember for next week. Because next week, we're going to get into the Votan. And thankfully, we have two codexes, a novel, and a couple white dwarves to actually get pretty deep into Votan lore. Now, I'm going to give GW a lot of credit. I think they did a good job of taking the good parts of the squats and bring that into Votan and then just pretending the bad parts never existed, which is going to annoy a lot of players who love the squats and read the squats, but I think for newer players, gets them out of some

of the bind that was the squats. So that's my opinion. I'll let you all have your opinion once we cover the Votan next week. This has been John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys then.