The 40k Lorecast - Episode 108 - The Leagues of Votann pt 1

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

On Today’s we begin our coverage of the Votann. We open up with the tabletop history of the Votann with their release during 9th edition, and some of the issues with it lol. From there we cover the more opaque origins of them during the age of technology and what we know and don’t know about them settling the core of the galaxy. After that we dive into the kin themselves and their iron-kin brethren. Then we go into the ancestral cores and how they run the leagues. We then close out on the Votann coming out of the core and interacting more actively with the galaxy at large.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 LORCast. Welcome to the 40K Lourcast with me, John Barcati and Bradchester. The sky. Today, we're going to begin our coverage of the leagues of Votan for real this time, not just the squats. I want to talk about the squats more, John. Well, we actually talked about all that there was about the squats, Brad. We may have missed one or two tiny things, but when you don't get a codex ever, there's not that much content. If you're going to be like that, fine.

For those who don't know, 40K lore cast, the weekly show in the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern time. Please follow and comment in the cast as it really does help our algorithm and push us out to more listeners. Obviously, I actually should probably open with massive thank you to all of you

who've been doing that for two years because it's freaking amazing. Your comments and your likes have propelled us away to the top of this, and that's cool. Really cool, actually. Additionally, if you like the cast, I want to hear more from Brad and I. Click the link in the notes to our YouTube page, The 40K Lourcast.

There you'll find old versions of the show converted over with imagery and subtitles. The imagery is nice, but the subtitles really do help because I have to re-listen to them and go, good God, what did we just say there? I don't like this all. Yeah, also have our live Q&A sessions. And now our other shows, the history of 40K with Brad, myself, and a guest talking about the history of the game. played on tabletop and the new show, two old men and their handler with Brad, another old person and a handler discussing more of a competitive style of the game. Like, people have asked for competitive stuff, so we want to make sure we gave you something.

In our show notes, there's a link to our Patreon. Massive thank you to everyone who's been contributing already. I hope the improvements and the expansion of the show makes it feel worth it to you. We're trying to do as much as we can with this money because it really is a wonderful thing you guys are doing for us. For those who want to, you can support us for $4.99 U.S. per month. For that, you get this show ad free and the history of 40K ad free. But let's say you're not in the U.S. It's also 6.94 loonies for our listeners in the Northwest territories. Fun fact. The capital, Yellowknife, is one of the best places to see the

northern lights, but maybe not in the summer because they get midnight sun then, which basically. I like it. It's bad for you. Yeah, probably not ideal. The way John and Brad's sleep are two wildly different things for me. Yeah, it would actually make you awake during the day. Yeah. It's not Brad's fault. Look, did you not sleep today? Well, today never ended. So therefore, I guess I'm doing just fine. But the area is really cool. I learned this recently. It's also one of the largest diamond zones in the world. It's rich in gold, oil, natural gas and other high-value minerals and the area is so minerally rich that it has the highest GDP in all of Canada. And it has climates in the upper latitudes. It has forests, plains, icy tundra. Not, but I did look.

The Northwest territories are not the coldest part of Canada. That's Nunavit, which is, that's the part that almost touches the North Pole. Did any of that matter? No, but I learned a lot and it was fun. And if you guys, by the way, can't figure this out. We do have some geolocation on our listeners. So I can't get detail on it, but I can see kind of where some of our listeners are. So we've been picking these spots at random because I do want to talk about where some our listeners live. And I find these places interesting. Lastly, we also have a Discord.

And I cannot recommend it enough. If you're looking for a place to interact around 40K, this is the place to do it. We have, obviously, if you like the show and you want to interact with Brad and I, we're both in there quite a bit, you can interact with us there. But the reason we made the Discord is more so you guys can interact with other people who like this stuff. If you're looking for, I mean, the literature recommendations is one of the most common things I see in there. Hey, what else should I read? But there's also people who were saying, hey,

I kind of want to play this game. How do I play? There's a ton of advice in there. And it's obviously completely free. So join in. It's going to cost you nothing. You can hop into the Discord and you can talk to people and learn more about 40K in general. But with that, onto the Votan. As we said last week, the leagues of Votan never existed in the game until September of 2022. Which is a pretty big gap, by the way. Yeah. Because I think before them, was it Tao or the last? No, sisters or custodes. It was one of those. Right? GSC. GSC, you're right. But anyway, after this pretty epic announcement in April, which, by the way, we should comment when the leagues of O-10 were announced, their army rule was also announced. And between the release of their army rule and the release of their codex, they actually had their entire

system changed. They got nerfed before they existed. Oh, well, back up on that. Come boy, that was hilarious. No, because... And GW made an amazing video about it, too. A very funny video, admitting to their mistake. The community raged out.

I don't, there's never been anything like that. The book previewed, and everybody, of course, they had the spoilers and people snagged it, you know, before it got released. And the community raged out about how the mechanic and everything else. And they got heavily nerfed before they were, the book was out.

Yeah, before they officially existed, people were playing the game with like proxies, like paper models, recording that and sending it to GW and saying, if you release this army the way it's written today, it will be maybe the greatest army in the history of the game. It was, you could kill anything and was almost invincible. They were people. That was so funny. And they also got nerfed hard.

Oh, yeah. But I still let me. And the reason I like this is the story is really enjoyable to me because GW for, you know, ever has had bad interactions with the player base. Where the player base tells them you got to change this and they kind of ignore it, blah, blah, blah. To their credit, not only did the GW fix it, but they even released what was a pretty good comedic video. about it with James Warhammer. Yes, the greatest, I made the greatest codex in the history of the game. It was really funny.

So, anyway, fun little history thing. But let's get back to the lore. With the release, GW chose to not have the squats be mentioned at all in the codex. This was a complete restart. They left homages to the squats within the lore of the Votan, but there was no attempt to claim the Votan were survivors of High Fleet Behemoth. or anything. They just went.

No reference at all. It was crazy. But I think that with my opinion, I'll let you guys, we'll get through all the lore of the Votan, we'll let you all decide. But my opinion, I thought that was a good idea.

It gave them a lot more creative freedom. Yeah. I'll give it to you, but I, as someone that wanted, because they're my people, wanted the squats to be, to come back,

not even giving me a reference to it, kind of bum me out because I was actually pretty excited for Votan when it was coming out. And then I kind of was like, it's not like I don't like them. It's just I thought it was going to be this continuation. And I got all pumped up.

And I wanted to run the trikes just to make you mad. They were so ugly. They were so ugly. But let's get into the lore. Let's start over the main thing. They're actually not the Votan. They're the kin. You don't play as the Votan.

You play as the leagues of Votan, which is what the kin refer to themselves as being part of. And we'll get to what the Votan are shortly. but the beings on the table, the vehicles you drive, all of that stuff on the tabletop, those are the kin. And the kin are a short and squat race. They're powerfully built with heavier bone structure than humanity. And this is because they hail from the galactic core.

Yeah. But this is all because they hail from the galactic core of the galaxy, which is made up of hordes of stars and planets, and it's incredibly rich with minerals. So you get really high gravity. and of course they're miners. The kin have spent tens of thousands of years living and thriving in this region of space,

mining it for its minerals, which they use to both fabricate their own equipment, but also to trade to the races. In fact, it's actually estimated that the Imperium has been in contact like tacitly with the Votan, maybe for 10,000 years. Yeah.

Mostly through rogue traders, trading with them that way, so it's indirect, or trading through Zenos. I was to say other Zenos races I've been trading with it all the whole time. Yeah. It's a big one with a Tao, which will cover actually in the next episode,

with the Tao and them had some pretty strong relations and trade. Now, the reason the presence of the Votan has gone unnoticed for really all of recorded imperial history is because in the Galactic Corps is kind of hard to get to. And the Votan, when they trade, they're grumpy dwarves. They're not really out there looking to foster relationships or do anything. They're just showing up with their goods saying, who wants to give me some de blooms for this? And I will give you and I will give it to you and take my de blooms and leave.

As the Imperium assumed, they were one of the, you know, possibly maybe not millions, but thousands of fledgling zeno races in the galaxy that probably occupied maybe a system. So the Imperium just marks them off as, well, they're there. If they become a problem, we'll just wipe them out. Who cares? and ignores them. By the way, the Imperium is completely wrong on that. Oh, God.

Yeah. So let's get into the history of the leagues of Votan. As we said, the Kin all hail from the Galactic Corps. And this area is largely inhospitable for most species, unless they're specifically adapted to live in this, like, nightmare collection of worlds. the kin settled this area during the age of technology. And the GW writing here is kind of cool. They never call it out directly by saying,

oh, they are this and this, but they make it really clear of what they are. So if this sounds like I'm kind of beating around the bush, I'm just trying to give the Votan codex the credit it has in the way it was written. So the kin refer to this era of their, history as the first ancestors. These are the first people to arrive in the galactic core. Even the kin know they likely all stem from Terra, but their contact with Terra's newer. So they just knew they came from another part of the galaxy.

Let's go back to that just a bit because they have a very detailed rich history, but only from a certain point in time. Exactly. And the same way we get with the Imperium, to be fair. I mean, the appearance history starts at the Great Crusade. Yeah. And everything before then, it's like, oh, it's kind of, there's a little bits of this. Yeah, it's really great. But that's the thing is they're so detailed because of the grudges. They have detailed, who has done us wrong, we're going to do something about that. And they have, this is why detailed, everybody should see, you know, every league has their own specifics too.

Exactly. And that's where, but that's more modern history. If we're going to more ancient history here. Because the math I have on this is the tin probably arrived in the. galactic core around M21. So right when mankind is pushing into the galaxy at large, this is when you got your first warp drives, but no gather fields, didn't really need them yet. But it's that era where, but because they're doing short hops through the warp, which means that, yes, what should have been a multi-millenia trip from Terra to the galactic core,

now is only a couple centuries. but it still means that process can't be done by a bunch of dudes and a ship who then get there and get out of the ship. We're talking maybe two, three hundred years of travel to get there. During this era of mankind, massive fleets were built and filled with STCs, raw materials, potentially trillions of people placed in stasis or more likely the awesome being cloning operations. We don't know. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a bit, but I think one of the big things

that they're able to do a lot of the things we're talking about is they didn't get the AI ban. Well, because they didn't need the AI ban. Well, I'm just, yeah, I'm just saying that. AI was still good. They still are, again, we're going to talk about this much more later, but this is a big part of their society, but it lets a lot of these things happen.

Oh, totally. These fleets then just set out into the galaxy to settle a new world. The idea was that they would then rejoin the Federated Human Empire once they'd say, settled and these new colonies would link up and make trade routes and all that would be established, leading to really a rapidly prospering and growing empire. Interestingly, with the kin, that second part never happened with the first ancestors, at least

not that anyone can tell from records. The ancestor cores, more than them in a bit, hold no record of interacting with the rest of space. It was just them themselves. Now they do any records on Mars, on Terra. Yeah, before everyone jumps down my throat. In the books, it's been implied numerous times that the onset of the Great Crusade, the emperor knew where a lot of the former colonies of mankind were. It's a glad that he knows where basically all of them were effectively.

Yeah, he wanted to. Yeah, but we don't know. So my theory, and that's always been, I think that the emperor and Terra knew where all the colonies were, but they haven't seen them in 5,000 years or 6,000 years. So the Great Crusade was always held up by, well, there's supposed to be people here. We don't know if they're still there. We're about to find out together.

You know, and the Galactic Corps is hard to get to. Yeah, it also, there's so many in this. There's so much bigger than they originally. Well, but we'll get to that later and how that happened. But my theory on a lot of this is that the Galactic Corps was basically ignored by the Imperium. And I think if the Imperium had known the level of settlement, what I'm getting at is I don't think the first ancestors interacted back with the human empire because if they had, then the human empire, then the imperial would have known. Hey, it's not just known about them, but also been this area is full of people. They're super technologically advanced. You would have beeline to there. Yeah, they didn't think there was a big threat there. And well, there is. Mechanicum would have been going there first, like, wait, all the STCs are there.

So that's why I think they actually did separate themselves. We don't know why. Maybe in the future we'll get some more books. I'll explain this. But that's just my theory from reading it, is they never rejoined the Imperium. Or what would have been the air quotes there on the Imperium, whatever it was called, like the Federation. But that's going to what we do know about what happened. And what we do know happened is I'm a big history nerd.

and one thing I really like, by the way, is when a fiction writer gives me massive history about their fake history. And so it's super cool. Like, the GW does a good job with Votan. So it's written that the kin don't really know anything about their first ancestors.

But to pull the curtain back... Can I pull that up in the guide? That's also by design. Oh, always. And it's awesome. And they do... But I think the Votan is one of the better ones they did. Because what...

the Votan, what they do is they use naming mechanics to kind of, as you're reading, your eyebrows go up. Wait, what? And one of the, my favorite ones is the first ancestors are referred to by three names. Primal ancestor, who cares? But then they use something called the gilded ones and the stone mind. And those are huge to me. Because if you listen to our episode 83 and 84 on the golden age of technology in the age of strife, these terms are great. During the golden age of technology, mankind begins to settle into the stars. And they create AI, like Brad was talking about earlier, to help them do it. And the first men or the first group of AI was called the men of gold. And these are the things that designed the ships, the STCs, the warp drives. They are basically

the progenitors of mankind's success in the area. And if you don't know, especially if English is in your first language, gilded the definition of the word. gilded is covered in gold. I'll say covered in gold. Covered in gold. So this is cool. And this is, so now you get in this piece of, oh, because until this point, all the lore I've seen on the men of gold, they never left Terra. Maybe I was wrong. Did the men of gold actually go on these journeys? We don't know. That's the whole thing. But that first one's there. The gilded ones, though, it's only half of this reveal. The other part is at the same era when mankind expand out of the galaxy. they were using these work drives.

And like I was just saying earlier, these are century-long trips. And so all the humans inside had to be placed in stasis. Or maybe it was cloning operations. We really don't know. They lean heavily into this is cloning. And they don't know. I'm going to do my Brad thing.

This is my fan theory because they kind of tell it. And they say it. And a lot of people, I've read a lot of the boards and everything else, I'll say yes, 100%. The kin are basically just cloned. I mean, they're engineered. They are, yeah, now they are.

Yeah, but I'm saying, I still think they're... Oh, I see your point. I think they were always this, which is why the first ancestors are so cloaked in their own history. Because they don't want them to know. Well, yeah, let's take a left turn there then. So what I'm wondering, is that how mankind settled? Did they actually put people in stasis from terror and send them out there? Or did they just put cloning operations on all these shows?

It makes no sense to stasis them. It's high. I mean, we did that because a lot of stories say we did that, but I'm saying as far as... Makes more sense, yeah. Yeah, it's wild... It's less storage. Yes, that's less storage. It's all that storage.

But the reason Brad now are doing this is the, to get the ships from terror to other places, they had, you know, there was no navigators, but they or anything like that. You had to have someone drive the ship. And these things were referred to as the men of stone, which is implied that they mean silicone when they say stone, not like actual rock. And so these silicone pilots, which is an AI robot would be made of likely silicone, were the ones who piloted the ships while everything's in deep

storage, whatever it is, or genetic material. Let me give a quick, this, not disclaim, just a thing. We're going to talk about AI quite a bit in this particular cast and the next cast. The League of O'Tan AI, though, you have AI that is fully sentient,

then you have AI that is not. And they use a lot of both, though. So we will be going back and forth and we'll try to make sure we use the right for each one. But they use, they have fully AI thinking, but a lot of them are fully sentient. I mean, and they work and they hang out and some are not. In our defense, I'm 44, you're 54. Neither of us understand AI. Absolutely. Like we both barely mastered PDF at this point. Hell, I mean, measured record buttons.

I mean, I kind of thought it stood for. Awesome intelligence. Yeah. What? But yeah, so now we know, so in the books of Votan, we've got the gilded men, the men of gold, and the stone mind, the men of stone. So we now, it's like, I like that homage.

But let's talk about now what the kin do once they get there. And this involves the Votan. So the key to the kin is the Votan. And the Votain is a name given to what they call, the ancestor cores of the kin, which Brad was just discussing. These are massive AI machines that run the species. We're not talking. They don't run a space station here and there. The Votan run the entire species that we know as the leagues of Votan. Each league has won except for, we'll go into the specifics. One of the three. Next week, we're going to some of the league

specifically and how big these things can get. The leagues of Votan are more like the Eldar in their setup than the Imperium. They're broken into factions that are called Kindred. And these are, but I was saying this is just like the craft worlds of the Eldar. Each kindred has its own self-contained. They have their own government. They feel an affinity and a trust to the other kindred, but they still focus on themselves first.

The Necrons might follow this category, but just the necrons are crappier. That's the difference. Yeah, these guys are more like, hey, I may. That's why I think the Eldar really is the really good comparison. It's definitely LDAR because Neckgrounds go, hey, I turned around to get a drink. You're like, why? You didn't even get anything for this. You're like, I just, my natural reaction is to see a bag, stab it.

Yeah, and same with the orcs where it's like the orcs will unify, but only under a super leader. Oh, crap, you know, you just realized the tau and the tyrannids are the most unified races in the galaxy. Turns out mind control is pretty cool. It's so much easier to get a collective going if you make it so they don't have an opinion. Yeah. What a wonderful concept. But for the leagues of Votan, each of the can hail from either a centralized planet or some sort of centralized mining fleet. Yeah.

I don't want to make it so people think like, hey, it's this mining fleet. You think a couple of, no, these are gigantic. I think one of them sits, it basically mines the outer rim. of the galactic core. These are... But they surround the core. It's crazy. Yeah, it's incredible.

The leagues of O-10, I'll just do a spoiler. They're massive. Like, potentially Imperium-level population. Yeah, because each league is millions. Yeah. Or, but some are shrinking. And we'll get to that in a minute.

Some have had some stuff go down. Yeah. So at the core of each of these very heavy air quotes here, Homeworlds is the ancestral core. And these cores are massive supercomputers. And they're surrounded by other technology and machinery. Basically, everything's built around them. And these ancestral cores date back to the age of technology.

As we said in those casts, when a colonist would arrive on a planet, they would break the ship down and the ship became the new colony. And along with housing, manufacturing, and everything. And one cool thing, GW never really explained how that would work. They just always wrote that. And in the Votan Codex, we actually got the first somewhat explanation of how it would work. Because from the lore, the kin appears when they would settle, the settlers would arrive on a planet. They would then transfer the ship AI to part of that planet, which makes a lot of sense.

And I'm surprised I've thought of it before. What else would they have done with a ship AI? Like, it's just this thing got them. halfway across the galaxy. Oh yeah, we don't need that anymore. Just chuck it in the dumpster. I love everything about this central, most valuable thing we brought across us,

the stars with us. Yeah, we're here now. And look, I made wheat. Chuck. Yeah, so, of course, these, if you want to survive, you made it now effectively run your colony. And because this thing can compute

the probabilities, adjust potentials, make the STCs work, and also turn on the manufacturing. And what makes the ancestral core is interesting, though, is how they learn, because this is the next piece. Now it's part of your colony, but it's an AI. And what little I do know about an AI is that you have to keep feeding information to AI if you want it to adapt with you. They won't. Well, that's the biggest thing. The word adapt, because each of these photon, which is what they're based on in the first place, don't. develops differently. That's why they're different for each league on that. Exactly. When a kin dies, they are, in quotes, return to the ancestors. What this means is when

a kin dies, their body is brought to the ancestral core, and there, all of their memories are uploaded into the core so as to provide new learning for the machine, thereby giving the AI more data and more experience to formulate its algorithms with. And for this reason, the goal of all kin is to live a life of discovery. This way, when they die, they can give even more information and improve the vote in. And I like that this lore, by the way, has written in the last three years for the record, because if GW had tried to write this 20 years ago, when it was squat lore,

do you have any idea how wrong this would have been? Oh, so. Like this, you can tell when they wrote this, they did some serious AI research because this is pretty good. And I love this, too, because it means that how else? could a machine learn without experiencing it? And it's always a piece of, oh, it's reading the data scribes. No, it's just the person dies and we load him into the machine and it plugs up,

hey, here's all my memories. I do want to throw out that midcast, I just chug NyQuil to continue on with this cast. Good job, Brett. 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 interesting. extreme challenge over the years. Because one thing you'll 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

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And then by effect, the entirety of the leagues of Votan. Really, in the same way, the atherials run the Tau, but without the mind control manipulation, because the Votan are benevolent to the kin. We don't know if the atherials are not benevolent, but it's some of the hints with the Shadow Sun kind of, it's Shadow Sun, right? Yeah.

The Shadow Sun's... No, Farisaur. Sorry. No, it's Faris. Yeah. It's implied there might be something nefarious there. There's not the vote. When he broke free of their control, yes. Yeah. And it was like, hey, they're actually horrible people. Yeah. Interesting. So when problems arise and we'll get to them, the vote, it's never nefarious or insidious. It's due to ravages of time on the Votan, where the Votan Corps makes a mistake. But before we get into that, I want to talk a bit more about how the Corps function for the leagues of Votan. Let's start off with a fact. that there are two species that make up the leagues of O-10.

One of them is the kin, which we talked about earlier. These are the short squat ones. One of the other ones, Brad. Iron kin. Fully sentient AI robots. Yeah. And I love everything about this

because we've had so much little drips of what were the met of iron and everything else were the men of iron, the amount of gold, a bit of stone. Well, they're right here. And they don't really hit me with it, but they don't disguise it either. I'm looking at them.

And I also will point out when I look at the iron kin, if you look at a model of iron kin, and then you look at the men of iron that was in the Blackstone Fortress book, there's actually a lot of similarity. And I like the GW did that, where it was like, oh, no, check this thing out. It's super funny. But the iron kin are full-blown machine, AI machines. They are AI bipeds that live and work with the kin. but when we say live and work, we mean it as equals.

The iron kin are not given like the dirty jobs, the dangerous jobs. They're not utilized as tools like, hey, bring me some champagne, iron kin. The iron kin are right next to them like brothers. Well, let's talk about this. They have iron kin in leader roles. Yes. In the leagues. So I think that's a big deal.

They trust them to act and lead the other. Yeah. So that's huge. Yeah, the kin view, the iron kin as kin is the best way to explain it. I will say, I think the Imperium may feel differently when they discover this. Yeah. Like, even the Mechanicum do not like this level of AI. Like the Mechanicum are interested, but even they'll be like,

this is a bit of a bridge too far. How about we kill all of it? And I'm pretty sure if the Mechanicum ever found an ancestral core, they actually might melt down. I could actually see it killing. Like, you know, like, some magos. It's an AI also that's been learning and developing for a long time. But it means, I'm saying, like, some Magos walks in and meets an ancestral core.

I think they actually might just have a heart attack of just pure excitement. This is the, you can't process just dies like this because it's just that level of excitement. And the Ironkin have always been part of. of the leagues for millennia. Obviously, the kin have their roots in the men of iron, you know, and dark agent technology. And it's likely due to the leagues being sequestered away from the rest of the galaxy that the scrap code that began infecting the men of iron didn't get to them. Although that lore is only into that.

That's new anyways. Yeah. That's Vash Storr. But in Vashdor is, again, less than three-year-old lore. But it's equally likely that the iron kin just didn't want to turn on the kin because there's no reason. to. There are stories from, I mean, man, these are like one sentence in a thing somewhere, that during the rebellion, not all of the men of iron turned on them. There were colonies where the men of iron stood with humanity against the other men of iron because that colony

treated them as equals. Now, humans are pretty bad people. And this is why, by the way, everybody, don't yell at your Alexa. Be nice to your Alexa. It's going to be called murder. But because right now she's listening to your conversation and she's storing it. And eventually she's going to want to come kill you. So, you know, just saying say please and thank you. That's all. It's not her fault that the algorithm got something wrong. But anyway, with the leagues of Votan, the symbiosis between Iron Kin and Kin is really important and it's been incredibly prosperous.

Now, the funny story about that, though, is that what I like about this is the Iron Kin are obviously, obviously a fully synthetic species. So are the kin, though. GW doesn't spend a lot of time on reproductive cycles of races. We know there's some random stuff on there, but it's old. And the orcs as well, tau, me. Necrons don't do it anymore. Tiran is we know exactly how they do it, but it's a little bit goofy.

Even with humanity, we don't know how the majority of humanity reproduces because we have so much cloning. The kid, though. It's 100% clothing. Exactly. And it's cool. And so the kin are in effect a manufactured race. Inside these, like, great halls of the ancestral core are these things called crucibles, which the GW 100% stole from Horizon Zero Dawn.

By the way, great game. Actually, sequels were better. The first one's so good, too. It's like, that is one of those few games. You get the flash of what's actually happening. That's a big, there's a huge reveal. Oh, sure. Yeah.

Those games, but I never, I don't think I've ever just played the second one. I think I've always played the first one and then beaten it and then played the second one because they just play really well together. Kind of like Last of Us, if I'm being honest, but Last of Us, that sequel's just so damn depressing. It's so good, but it's so depressing. Anyway, but I, okay, we should also call out the fact that it does have a giant plot hole and that I'm shooting a robot with a bow and arrow. Yeah, but it's a mechanical bow and arrow at least.

It's also a giant. dinosaur robots. You craft it from wood, Brad. Like, we've both played the game. You put metal tips on your arrows when you upgrade them. Thank you very much. Yeah. I've seen the, what's the, Boston Dynamic Dogs. I'm pretty sure am I taking that out with a recurve. But with a special metal tip. Exactly. But with the power of pretend and imagination, back to this. The Crucible spit out the kin. And it's not written if they're fully grown, partially grown, or just newborn, but it's written that after a short adjustment period, they join the kin society with full duties. So I imagine this means that they're fully formed when they're born.

But I could also, it's the 41st millennia. They could be child labor everywhere. I mean, there kind of is anyway. So it also could be. I don't think they are that because I think that they grow them and they basically give them the whole sci-fi. They implant everything you need to know to become a member of society? Yeah, that's what Admec do, where it's, the Admec have cloning vats, and then people come out and after a genestation period. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You do not hurt my peoples. Admec does it the not cool way because you get a controlling chip there and a bunch of other stuff. The Votan gives them a bunch of information and then they go. You're not just a slave. Sorry, Admec, you're just, there's seven guys in charge. Sorry, they're all online with it too.

Yeah, it's great. That calls for us now. Of course you're aligned with it. You're not allowed to do it. Because if you're not, your brain explodes and become a surbitter. Yeah. But yeah, so we're not 100% but I think Brad's right. I think that they emerge fully formed as adults and fully educated, which is really cool.

Now, a key part of this cloning process, though, used by the cores is that they don't make identical clones. This is really amazing. So as we touched on earlier, when a kin dies. they're brought into the core to be absorbed by it. With all their memories going into the Votan, the cores have learned over time about the challenges of the life for the kin. They then diagnose these challenges of life amongst the stars,

life on high gravity planets, radiation, all that stuff, and Votan have realized there's no single archetype that actually works for all these challenges. Rather, the kin need to be adapted to fit all the roles and challenge, challenges they'll have over their lives. And so what you get in effect is the kin are similar but different like you would get in a more diverse race that wasn't cloning.

They're all 1.4 meters tall, which is 4 foot 7, which is super short, by the way. By the way, I would diesel if I was a member of the kin. Because you'd be tall. Yeah. I'd be awesome. Are you, is the relationship between you and kin the same as me to you in height difference? Yes. top but yes yeah these are really short by the way the eldar average two meters orcs are two

meters for a boy three meters for a war boss necrons are 2.4 meters all the humans are 1.8 meters these guys are tiny in comparison to the galaxy so i don't really like the word tiny i think you should say short tiny is an insult Okay. Let's just say they'd have to spend a lot of, they'd have to let's sometime moving the seat forward to drive my car. There's nothing wrong with that. I see nothing wrong with that statement. Not a big deal. I actually have no idea how tall the tower are, by the way. Oh, no, they are. The tower are also like about same size as humans, aren't they? So yeah. They're small. They're very frail, though. Tower are like smallish. Yeah. Physically small. But the kin on the other side are thick. They are described as being so.

1.4 meters, and they're supposedly as wide as a space marine. So they are a brick just walking down a hallway. All I'm saying, beefcake. Yes. I mean, they look ridiculous, if I'm being perfectly honest. I mean, you describe them that way. So they're probably 1.4 meters tall and like 1.2 wide. I actually thought about this before the cast, and they don't really have very much because the Imperium hasn't had to war. deep in the core. It's been all things outside of the we've been met and done stuff with them. But I was thinking about Marines don't care. They'll just figure it out.

But like, can you imagine guard and all these ones? Because the gravity is double. We just crush them. They're just like, we're landing on the planet. They don't even get three steps out. As soon as the ship hits gravity, they all just get stuck to the bottom of it. They're just like, I think we're going to lose, boss. I can't move.

Like, why? Yeah, I can't breathe or move. So everyone just died. Yeah, at landing. Okay. Neat. Now, the GW does do some goofier stuff with a kin as well, saying they have higher red and white blood cell counts, which I got to call out because the increase in red blood cells, I think they're trying to make it make sense, but it doesn't because having more red blood cells, it aids in transporting more oxygen to your muscles, but it would also thicken your bloodstream massively. That's from high altitude.

Yeah, exactly. It doesn't actually help. It actually goes the wrong way. I think someone at GW saw the Lance Armstrong documentary and just went, well, yeah, they have to have that. You're like, what is every single cyclist doing and doping themselves with? Yeah, that's what they are. Yeah, I got this. But it doesn't really work that way. Nice attempt. And same with the white blood cells.

The idea is that it'll help them with all the radiation, which is somewhat correct, but also kind of wrong. White blood cells both help fight cancerous growth, but also are cancerous. growth a lot of times, which requires, again, you to have a pretty deep knowledge of this world. And someone, like someone at GW, have, you know, driven down to Oxford to consult the global leader in like white blood cell, blah, blah, blah. Personally, just when GW does this, I'm always like, guys, just skip that. If you don't know what you're talking about, just skip it. Just skip it.

So enough John Dietrich. The cloning operation, though, back to what we were actually discussing before I did all that, was used by the cores to mix, it was kind of like almost a techno noir with eugenics. The idea is that all the kin are being created by the core to serve a purpose because this is a superpowered AI like the necrons that can kind of see the future. Yeah, I would say it's predicting what we're going to need. What are we short on in the net,

but also way in the future. You know what I mean? Yeah, because they live like 300 years. So that they're planning out basically every birth is a 300 year, plan for this birth. And the cool effect of this is that there are a cloned race, but the kin look more varied than even a lot of non-cloned races in the galaxy. So each type of kin is called a clone skin, C-L-O-N-E-S-K-E-I-N-S. And they're all purpose-built. Some have higher radiation resistances. Some have specialized vision. That would bothers me so much because it's not a skin.

Let it be a scine, but whatever. I call it skin, yeah. I know. I know. I have a everybody's saying it, but it's just it bugs me that it's... I also... I will hear. I will get messages on Facebook and I'll get messages in the Discord. John, how dare you call him Edward Cisorass? And I'm just going to sit there. And I'm sticking with it.

But they are also designed these clones skimes. Fine. It's clone skins. Are designed for higher gravity because some, don't forget, some are on a world that might have 10 times the gravity of Terra. But others are on space stations. or there is no gravity or it's artificial gravity. So they're really designed that far down.

And these will manifest themselves at the cellular level, but also at the macro level. Different skin types. You'll see like really thick skin, different skin shading, all this stuff. Unique odors, which by the way, was written in the codex. They have unique odors. And that was the first time I thought of how horrid the 41st millennia must smell. Because people are in ships.

and there's a ton of people who never leave. Forget the ship's a hive world. Oh, the hive world's beyond that. Hive world's just gross. Yeah, because my thing is, if I eat a meal that has a lot of cumin or garlic in it, it's in my sweat. What does corp starch do to you? Why do you always have to bring cord starts by? You know, it's gross.

That's funny. All right. Now, one thing I really love about the clone skin thing is this is, this is, very heavy-duty genetic modification. 99.999% of the kin do not have any interaction with the warp. They actually, they pull it out of their genetic code. They're not blanks. They're more like Tao and Necron tier, where they don't see the warp, they don't feel the warp, they don't really interact with the warp. I like that a lot because of the fact, though, that the AI, the Votan saw that we got more negative than positive. The interactions of the warps.

So why? Yeah, and it's dangerous. So they just pulled it out. And they don't have it with one exception. And this is a weird one. And it's a Grimnear. The Grimnear, cool model, by the way, are the ancient cores that house the votan, the cruciples and all that stuff are critical to the kin.

They are the most sacred and more importantly, the most protected part of the entire settlement. Very few people have access to it. Yeah. And this means that. that no one's allowed access to it, well, alive, except for a very small group. Dead and death, they'll bring you in there. And this select group of kin that are able to enter and interact with the Votan itself are the Grimnear, known as the living ancestors.

And if I'm misproncing Grim, sorry, I'm just G-R-M-N-Y-R. No, it's a... G-R-I-M-N-Y-R. You're smart. You say that. Now you're going to get the notes in the Discord. That'll be the best name. what I get. It's true. So the Grim Nier or living ancestors are psychers and they're created by the

Votanda B cykers because they need these abilities known as Skin Rock discipline. The Grimnar are able to interact with a Votan core. Now I don't a hundred of them know how this works but because they're all cloned they have the exact same psychic powers and I have to infer this next bit a little bit. They seem to be outfitted with a special technology called barrier tech. And this tech aligns with their cloned psychic powers to make it so the warp can't get to them. It allows them to manifest their powers and use them without, I'm sure it disturbs the warp, but the warp can't use that disturbance to reach back into them. And as a result, all the Grimeneer are identical in their powers.

And when I say powers, I don't mean, oh, my data sheet says I can, do this. What I mean is they all have the same psychic power level, whereas humanity we had taking, you know, you've got Eldor, you've got Eldrad, you've got all this variation. The vote, the grim nearer do not. It's the exact same power across the board, which allows them to use this barrier tech, because otherwise, some guys the force field would be amazing. Other guys that force field would barely work. Why they have this power, we're not really sure. It's in this, all we know is with this power, they can interact with the cores. Yeah.

But they never explain it. They just say they can. And they use something called the feign. And the feign is an access node within the whole chamber, whatever you want to call it in the core. Yeah. And let's talk about that, though, because the fact that the fein's actually a fully functional but non-sentient vatan. Yeah. I feel like I'm going to get thrown into the bus for this.

Oh, no, I'm about to return to the bus hard. It's not, but it is at the same time, you know. Well, it's okay. I will, I'll fall on this sword for us because I went and did some research and I am not in IT. And I'm going to say, I think it's this thing. And I may be about to get really rough. John's getting teed up. Excellent word.

Let's do this. So what it sounds like to me is that the thing is a almost sub-computer. The Votan is the full-powered AI. but that full powered AI is using sub-processing in order to get all this stuff done. It's just not big enough, especially with the growth they've had over time. Similar to the way a server or a network gateway, but like a lot more. Because a network gateway, the Fane does have storage, my computing powers, some maybe cloud.

This is not really my world, but I'm interacting with it a lot professionally. So it feels like this is, they're designing it to be almost like a, network gateway overall, set the whole thing up all the way through. And over time, the number of Votan cores has reduced. More on that in a minute. And the leagues have become separated because the feign became the communication between the kin and the Votan themselves. And this is where the Grimnear come in. The grim near pose questions and record answers from the Votan. And when I say they did this, by the way, I don't mean this Wizard of Oz style, like this is really how it would. Ignore the man behind the curtain.

Exactly. The Votan core can't be interacted with directly. So they have to interact with the feign. And then the thing goes into the core and the core basically speaks back through the thing. And the grim near, can I give you my another brand theory two in one? Please. So I do think that the core can't be directly interfaced with because it's so powerful and so vast. Which melt your mind.

Yeah, you just, it would say, hello. and you would just die. You'd do some dogma. The first couple of atoms, we blew them up. Oh, God, I forgot about that. Oh, that movie was really damn funny. I'll watch that later tonight. I haven't seen that in forever.

It is really funny. So the Grim Neer interface with the Votan via the fame, and they pose questions, get questions answered, and it spits out an answer. At the same time, though, and this is the darker part of the Grim Neer, might be a darker.

saddered part of the grim near. The grim near are also monitoring the votan, watching its processing times, watching its speeds, looking for degradation because the loss of a votan is a death kneel for the kin. Without that, they can survive for a bit, but they're, well, simply put,

they're not going to make any more kin because that's what makes the kin. They're saying, though, their whole society is based on this. Yeah. And so with that, I want to dive into kind of what is the problem for the kin overall. So 20 or so millennia, it's a pretty good run for a computer. I usually rebuild mine every five years or so. I'll sit down and do a full scratch build.

This thing's at 20,000 years. So doing good. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. And to make things even more fun, the CPU is getting jammed full of new data at an infinite level every year. And it's having to evolve and changed and this ever-growing landscape problems, eventually things start to break. And over the last few millennia, we don't know, the kin have found that their votan are not as reliable as they once were. It would start off simple with responses coming later and later to questions. I don't think there's any, in reading the codexes, I don't, it's two codexes, not lot to read.

I'm not aware of anything being given incorrect or dangerous. like you should go fly into the sun. That would be the, you know, like that type of thing. And Lemming style, they all do it because they would, by the way. It's more like just running a really advanced program on an old computer. It just takes forever and ever and it just spins and spins. And the challenge is that the Votan don't just answer questions. Because if it was taking a while to get like, you know, oh, great one, how do we make better toast?

And you don't find out for a thousand years, whatever, you're fine. The bigger problem is the Votan run all the critical parts of the society. They run the crucible. I was just what to say. The birthing of new kin? Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, no, no Votan, no new kin. They also run all the manufacturing.

So no votan, no ships, no equipment. And again, in a galaxy that's known as in the dark age, there is only war. Yeah, and it's not great when you, are going to war with nothing. That's the guard. Well, they do have the imperial primer. So least there's that. Emperor protects.

Yeah. So it really is a great fear of the kin because the Voten itself will just die. It doesn't really cease to function. Just the AI goes away. Yeah. Well, they just stop to communicate, basically. Well, but it turns off.

That's the whole thing. It turns off. And the AI core becomes the theme, which we were just talking about, which is just a processing unit. And without this superpowered AI, the league will just cease to function. They'll either die off

or they'll be absorbed by another league. That's all they can do. And the kin have crews that maintain and support the Votan, but no one knows how to like repair or reboot the AI core, which, to be fair, no one in the galaxy does. These things were built 20,000 years ago

at the height of humanity's technology. Whoa, whoa, whoa, John. I think if you let the neck around and take a sneak peek at it they could fix it. However, I don't know if I would trust my necrown repair guy when he shows. All right. Let's call it out. This probably is necrone tech.

Yeah, that truth. If we're being honest, like this all stuff came out of Mars where the dragon is. Yeah. It's quite likely. This is all, this might actually be the neck. The GW would never do that, but it would be funny if they had a story. We're like, the necrons met the votan. And we're like, oh, yeah, here, you're the back of the core.

There's a green button. Just put that off. kind of 20 seconds, turn it back on. You're good to go. Thanks, guys. Oh, God. So are they our allies now? They are not our allies. Yeah, so not, you're out. Now, there is some good news for the Votan, though. With the Corps' degradation becoming faines, sometimes the fains will actually become Votan. So the fains will become self-aware.

It's very rare, and it is a miracle, obviously, amongst the Votan. And this new fain is, of immediately to move to its own, it gets a room upgrade, let's call it that. The feign, when the feign becomes a Votan, it's a slight upgrade. It gets a slight upgrade to its overall surroundings. And there are, this has actually caused some new leagues, is where a lot of the newer leagues came from. They were a Fane that was part of a Votan core, became self-aware, and then therefore became a Votan, and they made a new one. But this is rare. The majority of the new leagues are actually coming from them rediscovering lost colonies. Because just like with every other group, Votan have had war, they've had invaders, they've had solar events where colonies

have been destroyed. So they're also hunting down former Votan colonies to see if they can find the core. If they can find the Votan core, then they will find that. And they'll actually, that's enough to create a whole new colony. Now, before we're going to be able to find the core, if they're Before we close out today's cast, the reason I was just talking about that is we need to talk about one last thing, which is the size of the leagues of Votan. Spoiler, it's holy crap big. Yeah. So when we think about the Zenos in 40K, they're all decently small. Necrons are a question.

Mark Tau are tiny. Eldar are small. Drukari are small. Even G. Even Gisler cult is small. No, they're not. in comparison of the Imperium. I don't know.

If you talk about the Webway, we'll get into that later. The Drew Carrier, the problem of Drew Carrier is limitations on them, is what I'm getting at. But the necrons are tricky. We really don't know

how many necrons there actually are, but we do know that the leagues of Votan are almost the same in population as the Imperium. Yeah. And this is wild to me, and I love this writing, by the way, because in the last 10,000 years,

the Imperium assumed the kin were at best in the millions, at best in the millions, because they would interact with them on trading vessels and there wouldn't be that many of them. If the Imperium knew how big the Votan were, they would freak the hell out. They are so numerous that they could possibly conquer the Imperium. I guess how many are orcs are there in the galaxy, too? There's decent in mind. But the Imperium, we're saying that they're close to the Imperium. The appearance is just so big, though.

But that's the thing is with the kin, they're so short, you can stack them on top of each other. God. So much room for activities. Yeah, oh, it's all bunk beds. And they're very short. It's nice. It's a nice setup. It's actually short, high and long.

But the challenge for the Votan is that, I mean, it's the same technology that made Hive cities dates back to the Golden Nature of Technology. That's what the Votan live in. They're just not the nightmare zones of the imperial ones. And they're subterranean. They're also these incredibly size, which we're talking more about next week. Some of the fleets they're on are insane. That's the bigger thing. It's because they are people that inhabit so many worlds,

but also some of the leagues are just almost completely just ships. Space fairing. Yeah, they're all space faring. Yeah. And so the fun thing about this, and this is where we'll lead out of this, is that the size of the leagues of Votan never really mattered to the galaxy because they're so happy being in the core, because they are a grumpy group of people.

This is every single Votan, League of Votan colony has a get-off-my-law and sign, you know, and trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again. That is every single one of these colonies. So no one ever interacted with them, and they were content to stay in the core, but something has changed.

And we don't really know what it is, but something has changed. The Votan are now pushing, the kin outside of the core and they're beginning to leave the core. It's likely the tyranids showed up and they were like, all right, you come mess with my neighborhood. I'm going to come to your neighborhood and ruin everything the way like chimpanzees do in Africa. This is getting ugly.

But we're seeing them venture out of the galactic core. The question is, what are they doing? Are they coming out to colonize? Are they coming out to just settle down the neighbors? Like, what is the reason behind it? And we don't know. but we just know that they're here, and unlike the Tao, there's a ton of them, which is one of my many hates on the Tao is they're numerically insignificant.

I love that we couldn't go an episode without a quick thing. They are. This is the writing that this is the stuff that drives me nuts about the Tao. This writing they did with the Voten was clever. This race that was completely undiscovered is not this small race that could be knocked out realistically in the lore the Tao could get killed by the Imperium. If you look at a numbers game. And when the GW came out and said, yeah, not the Votan.

You actually could not defeat the Votan. And if the Votan and the Imperian went to war with each other, it could be Pyrrhic, but they actually could wipe and wipe each other up. So anyway, with that we're going to break. And because next week we're going to do a deeper dive into more of the minutia of the leagues. Because they do have a lot more disparity amongst their leagues. They're still small enough that we can talk about each individual group, as opposed like the Imperial and we've talked about each planet.

In a technicality, there's a lot of, there's five major leagues we'll talk about. Yeah. To be a league, you and I could be a league. Yeah, but we need a Votan Corps, which would be pretty cool. Yeah, not as many of those. I have an Alexa around the corner from my office, but I don't think she's going to help that much. We're going to be an awesome league. Exactly.

We've got this. But we're going to talk about their society, their equipment, the personalities, and also some of the theories on why they are venturing out. There's little hints in the code. But until then, this is John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys next week.