The 40k Lorecast - Episode 109 - The Leagues of Votann pt 2

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

On today’s cast we continue our coverage of the Votann. Starting with the Leagues of Votann society works, between the Kin, Kindred, Guilds and more. We then dive into how the kin interact with both each other and the galaxy at large. From there we talk Hernkyn and the Leagues exploration of the Galaxy. We then jump into the military structure of the Leagues and how they go to war. And of course, we conclude with the grudges of the Votann. Because no coverage of the leagues could be complete without their books of grudges.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. On today, we'll be continuing and, you know, temporarily concluding our coverage of the leagues of Votan, with a focus more deeply on how the Votan or kin themselves function in the galaxy, as well as a little bit of some of the leagues and units themselves. As always, the 40K lore of the Morehammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern,

please follow and comment on the cast. It is, look, you know why. I don't have to tell you all why. You know why. You know why. And thank you for doing it. And those of you who haven't done it, I mean, come on, man. Come on.

That is our sales technique right there. Come on, man. Please. Speaking of please, if you like the cast and you want more of it, jump on over to our YouTube page, the 40K lore cast. There you've got old versions of the show converted for imagery, some of our Q&A sessions. We'll have another one coming up probably in November,

along with our other show, The History of 40K with myself and Brad and a guest, and then two old men on their handler, which is going to come out any time, probably in 2025. Definitely by 26. You chose the two sickest men in 40K and went. Nothing could happen bad, right? Yeah. Why wouldn't two people with health issues be able to easily produce a show for regular release. I don't know. Step it up, Brad. Seems weak. In the show notes, there's also a link to our Patreon. Massive thank you, everyone who's contributing in that. As always, the patrons helps us expand into a lot more stuff, get better equipment, get better engineers, get better everything.

It is $4.99 a month. We only have one tier that gives a show to you ad-free, both this show and the history of 40K, or 60,502 Uzbekistani Somme for our. listeners who really hate the ocean because that country is double landlocked. It is landlocked. I just want to say. And every country around it is landlocked. They don't even believe stories of water. Yeah, suck it, saltwater.

If you're afraid of the ocean, this is a place to go. Also, if you're afraid of the ocean and you love gold, great place to go because they have the largest open cast gold mine on Earth or one of them. My research isn't that good. And it's the home of Samarkand, which is not. Xanarkand. But Samarkand is one of the oldest still inhabited cities in Asia. It was actually conquered by what's his nuts. The great. The Greek one. Alexander. Well, there's two great. There's actually a bunch of greats. The Greek one. The Greek one. All right. Now we know where we are.

I don't even know where to go with this. That's perfect. You know that guy. Really? How hard was the big host talking about? I said it was not. The great. acted like it was... You also mentioned it like it was just Ted, the guy from down the street. Yeah. He might have been. He just someone wrote stories about him.

It's the same with Paul Bunyan. Not a real guy. It was Alexander the Great and Ted the totally okay. Yeah. Ted the totally... People like Ted the totally okay. He was funny. Don't be dissing Ted the totally okay.

Good guy. He was friends with Jeannie. Yeah, she's fine. She's all right. If you like this level of banter and you want more of it, join our Discord too, where Brad and I will come in there and add subtle anecdotes that don't always amount to everything. But more importantly, you can go in there and interact with all the other fans of the show and people who have similar interest to you.

We built it so that people of similar interest and similar kind of styles can find a cool place to talk about Warhammer, be it the tabletop play, the lore, the literature, the video games, whatever you want to get into. So link in the show notes, all this stuff. Let's get back to the leagues of Votan, which I'll be honest, it was much easier for me before we started doing these casts to call them Votan, but I can't call them Votan because that's just...

They're not Votan. Because they're just a machine. And that really is like, I appreciate GW's writing, but it's also really frustrating we're trying to do notes in a cast on something to figure out, well, what do I call them in each time? So let's give some props to them because we occasionally, and when I say we, I mean mostly, you throw a lot of shade.

Do you have to be writing. Yep. Several of the times. I really, really like the way they did the kindred because they actually went pretty in depth in their society because they didn't have to breckon anything, really. Yeah. There's a fresh right. This is our first complete fresh right. I think since Tao.

Because everything else had something. You know, even when they brought in jeans to their cult into the game, we'd always had jeans to their cult. Because you had the, you know, Sarge looks funny. Had stuff for a long time. They've always been in and around the game. Even custodes. When they brought custodes and we all knew what a custode was.

Votan and Tao are the only two I can think of. I mean, I guess Necron's would have been, but the Necrons entered the game in like the late 90s. Because they had the game so long and they had so much redone. Although, do fair, so did Tao. I mean, Tao were in before 2000. So I guess this really is.

Well, they did a huge, they did fresh, but then they did retcon the shit out of them. You're right. That's a fair point. It's a fair point. Because they went from the good guys to the. Yeah. And we're going to get there later this one. I think they're going to sing the new Botan.

I have a hunch. I hope not. No, but I really liked where they, I like the fact that they give us more of the society of them. Yeah. I mean, we're doing a lore cast. I'm obviously into the lore. and I liked reading about the fact of this is how things work in their society. And they were pretty in depth into this.

And it actually makes pretty good sense. Yeah, this is well written. I do think they knew there was a lot of pressure on them for the squats. And I think that GW did a good job of stepping up and saying, all right, if we're going to write the squats off completely and replace them with something, we have to do a hell of a job. And they did to their question. They really did.

So let's talk about that. Last week, we discussed the Votan cores. They create all the kin and the iron kin via cloning or manufacturing. And everything is purpose designed for a life ahead. And again, not just life ahead like tomorrow. Again, they plan hundreds, well, they plan thousands of years. For each person that is cloned, they already have the next few hundred years of where you should be and the reason that we made Ted to be what Ted is.

He's, Ted's poison resistant, unlike space brains. And he goes out to a place where he has to mine and or combat things where that would be. And that's the reason for his entire existence, they, one of the things that is terrifying in a human, and then the, in a Brad looking at a thing and also inspiring. High walls. It's mainly cabinets. Side story, everyone. Short bread. Bread is pretty scary right now.

Oh, screw you. So came over. We switched over by D&D to my house instead of somebody else's house. And I was getting glasses out and stuff. And I'm like, I don't know if I have enough wine glasses and shot glasses for everybody. And my buddy goes, you have an entire shelf at the top that has nothing but wine glasses and shot glasses. And I go, I'm not going to lie. I haven't seen that shelf.

well, ever really, and I don't know how those things got up there. But just so you know, you're lucky. I don't go to your house often because I would, that's all I would come to your house. I would take things and put them on those. 100% all the time. That's all I would do constantly. I have multiple bookshelves in my living room,

my living room goes to my dining room really long, whatever. I have a shotgun house. I never look on top of those because they're over my head. I would, every day I visit your house. My whole life would be up there. Yeah, just going forward. Every day I visit your house, I'm going to take one of your things and move it to a top show. Not an important thing, not like your keys.

You might as well. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you put something on top there, you might as well throw it away. Yeah. It'll be like a fork or something of that. So eventually, if you ever move your home, someone's going to go, what weird pack rack got into your house and put all this stuff up there? And you'll just curse my name and move on with your day.

So. But things that the vote had, they have complete and totally. faith in the Votan to guide what they're doing. Like, they're pretty big believers. Like, Tau was eventually the big believers, and then they became sketch believers. Votan, the kindred, believe in the Votan. Yeah, and I will say, and we covered this in the last episode, so far in the lore, and GW may recon this.

The Votan haven't done them wrong. So there is an element of it does seem to be mutual. Now, again, I will call that out. That's what these the atherials were, originally with the town. So it's this may, I can see this repcon coming, but we're not there yet. So if you're listening to this in like 2030 and you're saying, what do you mean? The votan are terrible.

We didn't know. Yeah. At this time, we don't know. All right, but let's get into the actual being a life of the kin. And so I think the main thing we want to talk about with the kin is they have one thing they're going to do in their whole lives. And that is toil. That is what they do.

They are dwarves and they are going to toil. Hi-ho, hi-ho. Yeah, that's what it says. And so I want to spend a little bit of time on the kin culture because it's this like overlapping circles is how this goes. So we start off at the lowest level, which is the kindry. Like 99.99% of all kin are part of a kindred unless they're an outcast. Yeah. Yeah, again, we talked about this a little bit in the last one.

because a kindred is, you know, a barbershop quartet or 20 million kin. All of them are considered a kindred. If you and your buddy high five each other and go mine, and that's your thing, you have now formed a kindred. Right. So that is the loosest catch-all in all the time. They explain it well, though. It's not just as simple as the people I do jiu-jitsu with were not a kindred.

And the reason the difference is that kindred, actually do seem to have bond with each other. They are usually from the same, they're all the same clone skin. They're usually from the same crucible birthing process, almost like a regiment of Gardar. They all come from one time. Yeah, I agree on that.

They will split up. It doesn't mean all of the kin birth at one time won't necessarily be one kindred, and they will merge together. That's how you get million-plus person kindred. They start off as a familial unit. And what they discuss that I like about this is that the kindred,

actually have an almost telepathic bond to each other. So when they work together, they work as a perfectly oiled machine. Oh, yeah. The synergy there is what corporate America wishes they could do with synergy because, man, they are making things happen. And they do that without really thinking in the way they talk about it. It just happens. Exactly.

And when we look at the kindred, one example I want to use about them. This also applies to the Votan in general is I think they were trying to do the nation states of Greece, the city states of ancient Greece, with some caveats. In that each of the, even the kindred themselves, this kindred that could be five people, could be a million people. They are self-governed and they actually will move themselves around amongst the leagues if they want to. But they are a self-governed, totally independent body that is with the exception of one of the leagues, more than welcome to leave and join other ones. And this is where that telepathic bond comes in. I was to say, let's talk about this for a second

because they don't make it out that they're all saints or anything. But like you hurting the league is just unheard of, basically. Right. And that's a key caveat. And it's not everybody's so altruistic they're out for it. But like for you to harm the production basically of the league is not even a thing that could happen. Exactly. And that's where I think the one big thing is we think, for those people who really do like history about ancient Greece, which I mean you and I both like a lot, those city states went to war with each other all the time. That doesn't happen here. So when I say the city states, what I mean is think of it more like when the Persians invaded Greece. When the Persian invaded Greece, multiple city states in Greece got together to go fight the Persians. That's more how these kindred work. They all work together for the overarching goal of improving the kin,

and the Iron Kin as a whole. And they will fight together and join together. But without the Trojan War, there are some stories, we'll get to them later where they do snipe at each other a little bit. But so far in the GW writing, and I believe this is going to change, and the GW writing, as it stands right now,

the kin-on-kin violence is very rare. I do believe this will change. I do believe at some point in the future, we will get another league of Votan that does not like the other leagues. for everybody else. That is, they've always done this. The Tao are going to get this probably pretty soon too.

I think that's where they were going with Farsite. Is that the one? They already did with Farsite. Yeah. And I think you'll see at some point they're going to expand out the Farsight to being much more almost anti-Tower. He's trying to, you know, save his people from the evil ethereal. And for you, Votan players and lovers, I think that this, as we get more and more

codices and more out, I think that they're going to expand the line because right now, you have small groups that go out and look for places to find resources and whatnot. And those guys, I mean, for the elder lovers, they're effectively like Rangers and stuff. They have

small groups that just go find stuff, but they have special skills. It feels that they should be a lot different on that. Yeah. In fact, let's actually talk about the leagues as opposed of the other races in the galaxy. I think, because I think it's a really cool thing. When we look at all the species,

within the 41st millennia, everyone has a purpose and a goal of sorts. For humanity, for example, is to conquer the galaxy and to eliminate chaos and also all the Xenos. And kill all Zenos while they're at it.

But the people of the Zenos one is tertiary. Primary, conquer land. Secondary, destroy chaos. Tertiary. If you could burn all the Zenos, dad had some issues and he kind of tossed them onto his size.

Exactly. For the tier, it's even easier. Consume the galaxy. and consume all the DNA in the galaxy to make yourself into a perfect organism. Because that's really the true thing that Tyrannage are doing. They're consuming biomass to improve themselves and perfect themselves. That's the hive mind's main goal here. The necrons is similar to humanity except they're actually just want, they want to enslave the galaxy because they do believe themselves to be the rightful rulers of the galaxy.

And also kill your next door neighbor because you want to. Oh, exactly. When I say rule the galaxy, not as necrons, as John the Necron, wants to rule the the entire galaxy. This is not... And you've got Eldar, who... They want to survive up, but they also want to... There's societies inside of Elda.

They still think that they are... Everyone should be beneath them also. They do, but I think the Drew Kari and the Eldar are the same. They're just trying to survive. The truth is, is that they know they're going to die. They are aware, and the whole Eldar writing, they've moved it around a little bit, but it is 100% the Tolkien concept of the time of the elves have passed.

Yeah, because they're going away. way to the other land. Exactly. There's still, there's still trillions of else. Oh, there's not a dying race. You're like, there's floating planets all over the place. Yeah. And we don't know how many of you are inside the dark realm. You're fine. So many. But that, but the idea of the Eldar is that they're trying to, when we talk about the in the lore, the Drukari, I guess technically the Drew Car are the ones trying to survive. The Eldar, the craft world are trying to survive. It's the same with the Harlequins, but also steer the rest of the galaxy to doing all the good stuff that they chose not to do over the course of 65 million years. Listen, guys, I know we didn't do any of this stuff.

Do what we say, not what we've done. I know we had 65 million years to do this and chose to just go the complete opposite direction. But hear me out. How about you guys all die trying to pull this thing off? Obviously, they have chaos. Chaos just wants to spread chaos because they are chaotic. Orcs. They're also primal, so.

Yeah, and both, speaking of primal, you have orcs. Orks are there for war. They have a very simple combo. They want a good fight, and if you're not a good fighter, we're going to kill you off until we find a good fighter. And then... I still think that the old ones made the orcs, and when we have a specific thing we want them to do, and as soon as we're done with that specific thing... We're wiping them out.

Yeah. No, we either going to wipe them out or we're going to put the rest of the program in. Let's call a spade a thing. And then they left. The orcs are Thunder Warriors. That, unfortunately, the experiment keep going. Like, the thing the emperor did well is space marines can't breed. So I'm assuming that the Thunder Warriors couldn't either,

because that would have been the real problem. It's all of a sudden the Thunder Warriors escape and, like, now you have an issue. But the thing with the Orch, what makes the Orcs. Do you just call the Thunder Warriors the Krogan? Yes. Yes, there we go. But I look at the, man, now I want to go, deem it. Now I want to go play Mass Effect.

You should always want to go play. I'm replaying XCOM 2 right now because it got in my head. For the 600 million. Oh, yeah, I've got 600 hours into that game. I was just about to say. I love that game. I don't know. I turn-based combat.

Just a good game. But anyway, the thing with the orcs is that the orcs exist really just for creating more and more combat. They're just looking for a fight. They don't care what is because their idea is to get the cream rises to the top. But you know what cream doesn't rise to the top? The tau. No, I don't. I'm kidding.

The tau basically exists to annoy. And I mean that actually two ways. One, in the lore, they do. They're just, the tau exists that possesses port of the galaxy and be such a pain in the ass that no one else can take control of it. And also, on the tabletop to make people like John in 2018 really sad because of shield drones. Yeah, it's been seven years. And no, I'm not over it.

But the Votan are different. The Votan are actually unique in this whole. one. They don't do any of that. The Votan are not trying to conquer the galaxy. They don't have a need for it. They don't want to conquer the other races because they don't really care. As long as you don't bother them, leave me alone. Leave me alone in my mountain. Yeah. However, if you do bother that. They will wipe you out. Yes. We will also hold on to that. And I'm going to throw it out because as usual, John won't be able to figure out how to spell it. He's going to talotomas. I want to, how to. I want to.

how many people know what that is. I like, you love to use Alana Moss. At least like five. That's the other thing. I feel like there's a lot of people out there who are just like me, are like, I don't know what he's saying. No idea what he's saying.

And we all assumed it was just a function of one of the strokes. Nope, it's Stephen Asson, Fox. Belize Book of the Fallin series. I believe you. But the whole purpose of the leagues of Votan is to just keep toiling. That's what they're going to do, which is very snow-whitey. You know, there's a lot of whistle while they work style.

But this is what they're there for. We don't even know why. And it's such, I can credit it's a very good homage to the orcs of Tolkien. The orcs and Tolkien do the same thing, where they go into mountains and they just mine for gold and mine for gold and mine for gold. For what purpose? Yeah, they're not trading it. Get more gold. Yeah.

And the thing about this is it feels like this is bred into them from the Votan because they are wildly OCD. But those are very happy to be doing this. This isn't a, like, a main thing. Oh, yeah, no, this is, this is their purpose. This way, then, fantasy dwarves. And what's interesting about the kin in general is that they have effectively conquered the core of the galaxy. And this is, as we discussed last week, thanks to the crucibles. They're genetically augmented and able to thrive in some of the most hostile environments in the galaxy.

And they call this out in the codex, that you've got never-ending sunlight. That will burn a planet to a... It's burnt off the entirety. Yeah. You've got planets with 10-time multiples of the gravity of Terra. Then you have all these stars clustered together that not only are creating light, but there's radiation coming off them, obviously, gravitational anomalies, all this stuff. And through all that, the kin have grown and the kin have thrived.

And they've done so largely because they've been unmolested by the other species of the galaxy. Humanity entering the galactic core is basically impossible. They regular people would just die. Yeah. You could land at the ship the second the planet's gravity kicks in. You're all sucked to the bottom and crushed and all your bones are crushed. Maybe the Skatari. Maybe.

There's no reason. Yeah. But there's no reason to take it because you have no, there's nothing there for you. It's seen with the Eldar. It's not settle it. The Eldar probably have technology to handle it to a point, but they're still not. Why? Yeah, exactly. The only species that the Votan actually have a history with traditionally has been the orcs.

And this is because, as we've discussed, if the orcs believe that they can handle a ten-time multiple of gravity, they can handle a ten-time multiple of gravity. And the orcs are, and this again, homage to the squats. There is stories of the orcs and the votan having significant battles with each other, one of which actually lasted 500 years were the great orc, warlord Morbock. Yeah. And ended with every single orc within the galactic core being killed. they hunted every single one down. Yeah, because they put a grudge of token on them and went. We'll cover later, but yeah, honestly, that mechanic was better than the new one sucks.

All right. A thousand percent. In more recent times, obviously, chaos have shown up. They don't show up that often, though, because they've kind of find it. Every time the chaos shows up in the galactic core, it doesn't go well for them. They get their ass kick. They also get nothing to win. They didn't win anything.

That's the point. Even if chaos does where, they're like, well, this place sucks. Yeah. We should go. And also, it's a race that's not touched by the warps. It's not as much value for it. Same with the chaos fighting the tau. There's just not as much value in it because you can't really convert them over the way you can with humanity and Eldar.

And most recently, we've seen tyrants. There has been only been a couple offenses of the tyrants into this area because I actually think this may change. But as of right now, the way the gravity and some of the challenges work in that part of the galaxy, it's just not that appealing to Tyrons that are still a biomass handling. I mean, yes, they can adapt quickly. It's also where the fleets are going. Yeah. This is out of the way.

Yeah. So then this leaves a question with them possessing the galactic core, why do we now see them in the galaxy? And they're pushing out. Exactly. And this is just to gather resources and build. That's it. That's what they do.

They harvest and they build. Now, going back to the kindred, each of the kindred is part of a larger organization known as a league. And the leagues are, in effect, military trading and business alliances. Originally, the leagues were just large kindreds. Millions or more of kin who possessed an ancestral core. That was it. So they could replicate and make more of them. But over time, the mercantile nature of the kin turned these leagues and there's something much more interesting. Because the Votan cores are not just, well, the way to look at it, this is where I think the

lore may change. As of right now, the Votan cores are not selfish supercomputers where they're trying to make. They're benevolent. Yeah, because they're not just trying to make those that kind of worship them or work under them successful. The Votan cores, though I don't believe they communicate with each other, want the kin to survive. And so they're all working towards that. So as a society, everything built around them, their entire infrastructure is built for their success, as opposed to like humanity, where in theory they are, but everyone's trying to one up each other.

Yeah, because everyone's looking for maybe self-grandizement, it's probably the proper term there. But over time, these kindreds created by the cores began to collaborate with kindred created by other corps. Alliances start forming. Originally, they were military. You know, we've all played... I don't say they're almost all military.

Because we've all played civilization, defensive acts. It's one of the first things you do non-aggression. They didn't need that. And defensive pacts. And they were originally all defensive acts. As soon as they started pushing out more and more, they did need the defensive packs because no one was around to fight them. Exactly.

But over time, this becomes mercantile. This becomes, hey, let's trade with each other. I'm mining this resource over here. I've got a ton of it. You're over there. Why don't we put in straight up trading alliances? and then those begin to grow. And these, we don't know when this started, by the way,

but they are massive now. And it's a key note that even amongst the leagues of Votan, so a league of Votan can be trillions of kin. But the leagues themselves trade with the other leagues. So even though they're disparate, the code actually wanted to have options for you, they're still all overarching, just like we have with the Imperium.

technically guard space marines sisters they're all together it's just thanks to seventh and eighth edition we're not allowed to have them be all together in the board anymore because that ruined all the fun i do like the fact that they don't really and i like the fact that they don't specifically talk about it it feels like some people are in a league but not in a league because they're in essence they're still kin they're still kin at the end of the day And a lot of people that operate the spot between two leagues are just kind of like, well, I feel like they have a jersey that has both sides on it. Well, the thing about is you do change leagues.

There's one league and we'll cover them later. You don't, but it's pretty common. The leagues are almost have like recruitment posters out. It's hiring free agents all the time. I was saying, I do. They're recruiting, but it felt more like whatever was more convenient for you. Yeah. Hey, if I spend a lot of time in this league's.

area, fine, I'm your league because it's just more convenient for me to continue to work if I only have your league around me. It felt like there wasn't a huge amount of no one cared. You're like, yeah, you're part of us now. Whatever. Yeah, because there are ties that to be paid and this kind of thing that moves around. But it's really, I think the homage here is a mixture again, fantasy dwarves, obviously. But we're also thinking about some of like when, you know, you're settling, we'll do the Americas because actually that was still bloody. I want to think of one where someone went somewhere and settled it and didn't slaughter everybody,

but that's literally never happened. So we'll just move on their day from that one. But the idea was people would come to the U.S. and they wanted to work, and you want to work in railroads. You want to work in the mines. You want to work here. And it was that concept of what they're kind of going with. These guys are coming out there saying, hey, me and my crew of 10, 100, whatever it is,

we're here to work this mine and we're going to mine for, because it's 40K, adamantium. And, yep, get in there. And they join the league that has an admonetium. Adamanteum mine that they want to go work in. As opposed to I'm a minor, why don't you go send me to somewhere to work? There's much more, you know. They choose.

Yeah, exactly. They choose what they want to do. But on that note, though, let's talk about the life of the leagues of Votan. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging managing a global team can be. Just the act of creating one has been an extreme challenge over the years. Because one thing you learn quickly is a difficult. of hiring global talent and how unclear those costs can be. It looks simple at first,

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Find new sources of materials, secure these assets, extract the assets, and make goods. That's it. And they do that on repeat forever. And at their most basic, the leagues are on an endless quest for resources. It's like we said. They're fantasy dwarves.

Let's be honest. They still are. And I like the fact that they kept this. Couldn't be happy they did. This is because the truth is fantasy dwarves are awesome. And so it was a good decision to kind of go to. Fantasy. People are the best.

Me. No. Yeah. There's no noms in a brand campaign. No. Really? Yeah, but you allow rogues. Yeah.

I did see a meme the other day. It's a D&D campaign where the paladin is in the party, but it's only there because it's a probation officer for the rogue. I like that idea a lot. But with the Votan, the thing about them is that, if remember, they have almost impossible levels of manufacturing capabilities. The Votan core itself is a superpowered AI that is better than anything that exists probably in the galaxy. They've got STCs and the ability to make more STCs, which is something that they don't really talk about enough, which I think is they mention the books. Like that seems amazing.

And so they can do things no one else can do. Like for example, they can break down planets, systems, even stars into raw materials. and then they create equipment with it and supplies. And yeah, vote. So this is their purpose. So let's spend a little bit of time on those three pieces again. Find new stuff, secure the stuff, manufacture the stuff. Make stuff out of stuff.

Yeah. And we'll start with the first group, which is the Harne King. Or Harnekind, man, guys, I'm sorry. These ones, they're just throwing random vowels at me. So I'm going to go with that however I feel like it. These are the prospectors of the kin. And in the lore, they're fascinating. On the tabletop, they're just cannon fodder and boring AF, as far as I'm concerned.

I've never seen anyone use the heart and kin for anything other than, oh, yeah, I'm going to be a roadblock for your charging, or I'm going to go secure this random objective in your backfield. Not a fan. But you step away from the Yeagers. The Yeagers, sir. To truth is, if you're playing Votan and their Yeagers are live at the end of the game, you lost that game.

Probably. They can be in their cool new scout vehicles. I saw the rules. I'm good. They're fine. Scout moving vehicle, really? This terrain goes nowhere. Bring back proper fly keyword.

Sure. But as long as we have this BS fly carrier we have today, they're useless. You know what? Screw that. I'm telling the story as part of this. So John sends me a picture of a game he played. and he's about to play in a tournament, but they were both going to.

And he's like, got all these guys here, and they're right behind a wall, and they're all vehicles, and vehicles can't go through walls. And I'm like, what are you doing, man? How are you even moving? Like, you've just trapped yourself. He's like, what are you talking about?

I'm just going to fly over the wall. I'm like, you can't. They were copters. They can fly. I didn't realize that my orcs helicopters didn't have the ability to fly. I mean, you're not wrong. Or behind a wall.

Well, you have to fly over the wall. Really. A small wall, too, by the way. Yeah, really. I have to fly. By the way, that rule was never a rule until very recently. And I'm still not, I'm starting over it. But let's get back on the Harkenken.

The Harndkin's job is to go out and find new lands for the leak. And these lands could be inside or outside the Galactic Corps. Inside the Galactic Corps, they're looking for lost really Votan and Votan, like the cores. because worlds and systems where kindred, even leagues, once lived, but war, celestial event, whatever. I just want to say celestial events are way more common. Yeah, and so they're all wiped out. But the goal is, yes, obviously, all of the kin there are dead.

But the Votan core might not be. And also the materials are still going to be there. So they're always searching for these within the core. But the bigger one kind of from a lore standpoint, because the Botan are going to newer the game, is what they do outside of the Galactic Corps. And three main focuses. They're finding worlds, stars, and debris fields that are rich with minerals. When they find them, they'll signal back to the rest of the league and say, hey, and they mark it.

Come here. They're pathfinders. Exactly. They just are. The next thing they'll do, though, which is equally important, is probably where the demurig and those ones came from, is trade. Much of the galaxy outside of the core is occupied. And so the Harnkin are looking to see if they can make relations established with some of these, usually Xenos species, on some of these worlds. And they can be multifaceted.

It could just be simply trading where they say, hey, these guys over here, in this case, actually with a tau, have some pretty good technology. We can trade back and forth. Easy, you know, we'll stop off every couple years, fill up our, you know, empty the hold, fill it up with their stuff and head on. sometimes they're actually making a partner for mining rights where they're going to sit there and say, hey, you've got this asteroid belt over there that's just there. How about we just go and collect it and we'll give you a percentage of it? The thing is that the leagues have the kin in themselves are very open-minded when you're looking at trading with Zenos and other people for tech.

Yeah. Oh, very much of care. Exactly. It's trade. And the third thing that they're going to focus on is actually just mapping the galaxy. This is a big thing. for them is that their goal is to mark out and say, hey, this is here, that's there. Because there's also the other option they have of if trade goes south or they say no,

they're marking how valuable an area is because the vote in the leagues might just come take it. They are, by the way, kind of the vogans from hedgehogs Guide's Guide to the Galaxy in some ways, not completely, but there's moments here where I'm like, okay, you know, like, I see where you got this. just calling it out. The Harnkin are viewed internally by the other kin as this cool combo of awe and sorrow, but both in a good way. Yeah, I was just to say, because the regular kin want to be around other kin. They don't want to go. So this is seen as you're doing the Lord's work, good job, but also I would never want you. Exactly. They need these guys. These guys are doing them incredible service by going out into the galaxy and fighting new worlds in the conquer.

They are improving the kin. They're also coming back with information for when they're, when they die, to be loaded into Votan cores to improve the cores. But yeah, these are home bodies, you know, it's, again, fantasy dwarves. They don't want to go outside. The big sky above them is scary. They don't want to be out there. And so these guys are. Everybody I know and care about is right here. Why would I want to go anywhere else? Exactly. Seems dumb. Now, because of that, though, But as we just said, because they're viewed with awe, they're also really well equipped. The Harnkin technically are the best equipped parts of the entire leagues of Votap. They do a bad job of this in the game.

They do a terrible job of this in the game. But the Harnken are supposed to have... These guys should have all the best weaponry, defensive armor, vehicles. Everything they should have is cutting edge. And it's not. But it's hard to do. Again, it's... Yeah, but it's trying to balance the game.

But in the lore, they do. In the lore, they have the fastest. ships, the stealthiest ships, they got them the best weaponry. The stupid thing in the game, the pan spectral scanner, that's on everything. The pan spectral scanner in the lore can actually scan an entire planet from orbit, mark the entire sort of all the way down to the core, marking all the minerals, everything available. It doesn't just, you know.

Ignore cover? Ignore cover. Ooh. Thanks. He still hit on Forbes, by the way. Anyway. Now, interesting thing about the Harnkin is that they probably are what all the other species in the galaxy thought the entirety of the leagues of O-10 were, because they're the traitors. They're the ones who would meet with people. So everyone assumed that the Harnkin they were meeting with constituted basically the entire species. Because they still would move in flotillas. You'd meet a few Harnken, but for example, if you made a deal with them to go harvest your asteroid belt, then they would bring in the rest of the fleet. And we'll talk about some of those fleets in a little bit. But then that you would see, oh, it's this massive mining operation.

But you assume that was it. Okay, this is all of them. All right. Neat. Good for them. Except for the Eldar, who always, by the way, love me some Eldar, but also they know all of the truths and just don't give them to anybody else. Oh, yeah.

All the Harlequin saw these things. They called them the Halosie agents. All the Harlequin saw us, oh, it's those guys. Yeah, yeah. That's in, that's, you know, they pull up their dewy. decimal catalog. And we're like, oh, yeah, go to

Section 483, take a right turn, go 11 miles, and you'll find the books there on the left-hand side that gives every minute of their existence. Cool, who do?

The next bit on the leagues is this is where the Vogons come in. If an area is marked by the Harnkins as valuable the leagues, and it's valuable enough, they will show up. And if it's abandoned,

cool. You also see that they're going to show up. Six guys with picks show up. No. Yeah. They show up in mass with everything. Because sometimes the thing that gets marked by the Harnkin

is being high value is a sun. And you could probably trade with someone, hey, we're going to take apart this asteroid belt, or we're going to take that planet over there and break it down to small pieces. And we'll give you 15%. That's a good deal. I wasn't doing anything with it.

I'll take my 15%. But when they come and say, hey, we're going to go make your sun not exist anymore. that feels like a no. And so that's where sometimes they bring the heat. But before we get to the heat, I do want to talk about the mining itself, because this is another key unit in the game, especially now because they got a hell of a blow-up. Scythonian mining guilds.

Yes. Or Cheetonian, I am going to get wrecked on these episodes, by the way, in Discord. I'm just aware of it. I'm standing by Cizzer-Ass, but man, these ones I'm going to get just demolished. I know it's coming. I'm assuming that what's going to happen. You know what, everyone? Just said John an audible.

Oh, no, I've got it. And just tell him to listen. Oh, these are the audible tokens? Nah, it's fun. Enjoy making it up as I go along. All right. Now, let's go with the Scythonian Mining Guilds. The Mining Guilds are a little bit goofy.

So they are quintessential dwarf iconography within the leagues, full stop. They are specialized clone Skines, I'm going with skins, that have the most dense, kind of just bodies. Their skin is denser, their bones are denser, their muscles are denser. And this is because they have to be able to weather high gravity, but also extreme exposure and vacuum of space. They have to do all of that.

Throwback, their mules from dark sun camping. Wow, it's a old. That is. You're welcome. Jesus Christ. So the Sothonian miners are specialized because they can break down anything into raw materials. And on a quick side note, they are one of the few kindred that will actually leave the league and go out in their own. So when Brad was, we talked about this earlier, that some of the guys kind of float independent, they're the most independent.

And what they'll do is them in like a small group of their kin will just, they'll appear on like human worlds and be like, hey, we're going to go mine this. mountain over here and the humans like again give us a percentage and they just go do it they're almost this like mercenary miner that goes around the galaxy looking for stuff which is pretty cool and then they again and i don't forget the kin like this when people do this because it means they then these sittonians now gain more knowledge more experience because now they're going to work with seeing how the elder are extract minerals how humanity extracts minerals how the tau extract minerals and then they'll come back with that knowledge and get plugged into the computer and as they die.

Pretty cool. But we hinted at it, and now let's dive into it. What happens if the system they go to is occupied and isn't a big fan of letting the leagues of Votan just do what they want with it? War. War never changes. The Votan cores are highly analytical,

and so are the kin. So they would never target like Terra or Acadia or an Eldar craft or even exodite world for harvest. That would not work for them. The losses would be too catastrophic. But random human colony, an orc world, or just a world controlled by some small zeno. If they do this a lot like the Eldar,

in the fact that they surgically attack an area and just destroy it so that they don't take it. Yeah, you say surgically, in the sense of they're going to pick it, but they don't come in when a surgical strike. They come in hot and heavy with everything. Elves come in fast and hot and go. They come in with a dwarven hammer and stay.

Yeah, yeah. But they do make it so. There is no resistance. They just come in and flatline. Yeah, we hinted, actually, I think we talked about the last episode, that there's been a lot of people who've entered the Galactic Corps and disappeared. And everyone assumed it was because the Galactic Corps is dangerous. Yeah, it's more they bumped into the Votan and were like, nope.

They don't talk about it a lot in the codex, but it feels like the Votan might not be super big on prisoners. Yeah, I'm not aware of any ever. Letting people escape. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, hey, we got into a battle, and then there wasn't people there. Yeah. They're like, did they escape?

Did you take a prisoner? Yeah. Now, any, let's not talk about that. Any time that we're going to get into the military capabilities of someone in 40K lore, we have to call something out that GW writing. always does. If you're reading a book about the thing that you like, the thing that you like is the most powerful thing in the entire galaxy. In the galaxy. Every time this is what you want to get a debate into which is the best space marine faction. It's impossible because if I'm reading the

ultramarine book and you're reading the salamander book, they say the same things. It just is what it is. The best. Yeah. Now I will also admit the next piece of the Votan lore feels very similar to the Eldar lore. There is some not full copy paste going on here, but it's not massively different. No, because they basically said the regular populace is always

trained for one. So guardians. Yep. Well, that's what the Earth can. Yeah, let's start there. So basic soldiers are... Hurtkin warriors are guardians. Yeah, they're they are people with day jobs. And actually, the bestest example for them, and again, I can only speak to the U.S.

Actually, no, I think all the worlds have this. We have reservists in the U.S. And the reservists are fully trained soldiers. They're just not as heavily trained as the full-time soldiers because they have day jobs. But they are trained. They perform their day job. But they also attend regular military drills and training. What makes them interesting in the lore standpoint is in the book,

it calls out that the hearthkin are more capable than any other average military species in the galaxy. But then in that same codex, they hit on fours, which means that in Laura versus Tabletop, they are guardsmen, but also Laura versus Tabletop. They're supposed to be 1.4 meters tall, and I have... They're all taller than your guardsmen. Yeah, which, so just, it's fine. Things don't always translate perfectly. But the Harthkin, like reservists, are treated like elite soldiery from tactics perspective. They're not cannon fodder.

They're not Brad's child soldiers. It's just so hurtful. In reality, I think that the Harkin are probably more closer in action description to Sions and sisters, not repentia, but just basic sisters. Because they do wear power armor. They carry bolters and elite weapons, which is not saying much when the Votan are the most militarily advanced and best forage workers in the galaxy saying, Oh yeah, our average soldiers have great weapons. They should have, they originally had, the fact that they used to have minus 1 AP on void armor stuff,

yeah. It's just hard to balance them because they should, their regular guys should just have elite armor. Yeah, I mean, I always fall in this category. You can't balance 40K against the lore. It's just impossible. I know, I know. But I mean, I brought a custod army.

You brought three custodes. Yeah, and I'm going to win. I guess that's just how this goes. Like, it's fine. But beyond that, you have this kind of goofy in-between sections. So you have the Harnkin, who are your standard warriors. And then you have the brokir.

The brokir are not technically soldiers. They're engineers. They make all the weaponry. They maintain all the weaponry. They do all the stuff. But they're, yeah, everybody said, they're tech priests. But they're also a bit beyond tech priests. Because the brokir, Thunderkin, are combat engineers who then deploy with the kindred.

And they bring the one. I love that unit so much. Yeah. They're so good. They bring, yeah, whatever. They bring really cool weapons, though. They bring the big dog weapons. Yeah.

Well, they bring the weapons that they can't trust the rest of the leagues to use because they're like, look, this thing's got like seven buttons. I'm not letting you mess with this thing. It's a really valuable technology. Yeah. I mean, you're talking, well, the bolt cannons aren't, but the graviton guns and the conversion beamers are insane. Remember conversion beamers at release?

And then they had to change that goal pretty quick. Oh, yeah, they were so ridiculous. It was like, yeah, that's never seen a table top of ever. It hits everything in the line and it had sustained hits and explosions. Yeah, for some reason they had to rewrite that rule. But beyond those two, though, they do have their full-time soldiery called the hearth guard, because they guard the hearth. Boo.

Anyway, the hearth guard are the special forces, but like Space Marine Terminator style of the league. They are given a special exo armor that turns them into walking tanks. Basically, they're Space Marine Terminators, but they're better on the tabletop. In the lore, they're not. In the lore, I would actually say Space Marine Terminators are better than Harthgard, but on the tabletop, you see Harthgard. So we're going to go ahead and call that out. And it's because in the lore, the Harthgard are actually,

maybe best example is the Just Aaron. of they come head first into combat and wreck stuff. So that's... Sometimes you have to have a teleport crest. Yeah. When would you not have a teleport crest? When you really enjoy walking slowly? Yeah.

It's like when you're just bad at the game, there's no reason not to have the teleport. Because the other one's useless. So I'm just saying, oh, this one guy gets an inval. The whole unit? No, just this one guy. Yeah, I'll take deep strike. Thanks.

So the hard guard and the heart can, are the standard military members of the league. But there are also some non-standard members that will join. And let's take a moment how this works. So the Harthgar and the Harthgard are meant more for the league itself localized areas under attack. So they're going to, they're defensive. Now, if we're talking about something much bigger than that, like an actual war or a big enough enemies coming in for defensive, then they organize something.

You have to make an oath ban. Yep. So the oath ban comes. comes next. And this is where multiple groups all come together. So now we've got the Harnkin, the Harthguard, now the Scythonians. To be fair, you also, they get quite literal. You swear an oath to get this thing done. And that's where you get the grudges and everything else. If you've got something that has to be done, you get everybody together to make sure it happens. And this is where the tabletop, the calls come into play. So the calls are the generals of the league.

leagues of O-10. And the calls are well above a space marine captain, by the way, as far as knowledge, experience, all that stuff. Well, maybe not experienced because space marines are always fighting. No, but I like these guys, like quite a bit because they're not just for their tactical acumen. They're known for that, but also in the fact that they're going to do whatever it takes to win with the least amount of kin being injured, killed, hurt. Exactly. So they actually want very level-headed, how are we going to get this done? Yeah.

Even though that the guys are, we're going to kill them to the man because we have a grudge against them. And this is a little bit of the conflict and the lore, in my opinion, because humanity just throws bodies at things because we've got endless bodies. But so do the leagues. And so this idea that the leagues are playing this all, we're doing very strategic battle and blah, blah, blah. There's an element. I'm like, but then why? There's trillions of them. And it's fine.

It's just one of those areas. I'm like, it's just, anyway. But now, there is one level above this, though, above the oath ban. We should talk about real quickly the botanic council. So if a conflict gets so big that we actually are now going to bring in the entirety of the league into it, then you bring in the botanic council. And this is made up of the forge master, the Lord Grimeneer, the chief strategist. There's a clever name.

The L.GW's ringing out of ideas. The evaluation monitor. that person sounds fun at a party and then of course so that so you brought in HR but Lamer yeah yeah and then of course the high call when enacted a botanic council will actually organize a massive oath ban that could be the entire league could even involve multiple leagues by negotiating with other leagues and this is this mobilizes everyone to deal with something this tends to happen when grudges get big and Let's talk about the real fun part here.

We're talking about the Votan at war. Grudges. So, yes, the mechanic was awesome. Yes, the mechanic is gone. It wasn't a pain in the ass to keep track of. Yeah, but the new one's lame. I'm just going to say it. The new one's lame.

I liked it before. Which is also so dwarven. It's so great. You killed one of my units. Now you die for that. I mean, it was the Iningo Montoya of 40K. It was amazing. The leagues at their core are the grumpy downstairs neighbors.

the galaxy. They want to do their thing and be left alone by everyone else. They'll trade with you, but they don't want to make a chit chat during. They hate you, and they're only here because they have to be. They are, that's the, that is the leagues of O-10 in a nutshell. That's why they're enjoying it. Get off my lawn. Your music's too loud. Yeah. But they are also exceptionally tough. If they need to bring their forces to bear, they will bring them to the bear, and they will do it in this very strategic battle enough to claim what they want, but also to dissuade an attacker from trying to claim it back from them. Now, the issue that the leagues have is what to do with a foe that goes beyond kind of this bit, where they either don't learn their lesson or they're

doing stuff like Droucari style where it's, oh, you need to all never exist ever again. Or effectively... I don't... That is the thing. I don't know if... the kin know that the dark city exists because I feel like they would have invaded it. Oh, that's 100%. That's, they would totally show up in commoner if they could. It'd be like, yeah, all of you die now. The main thing for them candidly is if someone does something like what the Drukari do, they don't like, same with chaos, they don't like what they do. But the bigger one is if you destroy a Votan core, you are dead.

And so then they declare a grudge. And when a grudge is declared, the kin that declare it will form a grudge band. And this grudge band, not garage band, grudge band, could be anything from like two people who are mad at the trader. And they're like, okay, this guy, you know, gave me a sack of rocks, not a sack of gold. So I'm going to declare a grudge on him and I'm going to go kill him and his whole family. That could be a five-man group. or it can be in the case of orcs, we're going to go eliminate everything.

And what they become is a vigilante mob, for lack of a better... You're going to try to rock the Swedish word for this? Oh, yeah, regulators, bald nobbers, or Sogieless Kunta. What's up now, Brad? I got that totally wrong, by the way, Swedes, I apologize. I'm like...

That was so... It's someone that has a lot of Swedish friends. That was impressively bad. Yeah, so... Les Kuntta. I don't have to make words this long. They're like the Germans. I don't need this many letters together.

Just put two words. It's easier. I don't have to take as big of a breath before speaking. Anyway. Should it just be the boom shock of luck again. Got it. When the grudge band is formed, they decide these kids in their loud music and becky clothes need a solid

whoopin. And this is not a warning sign whoopin, if I'm being honest. these guys are They're warning is death. Yeah. Yeah. Now,

they're like, we wanted them not do it anymore. We figured the best way to make them not do it anymore is they just don't exist anymore. One thing I like about the grudge bands, though, is that it's formed of volunteers,

but all the kin are telepathically linked to each other. So it just can be that movie scene. We need volunteers and everyone raises their hand at once. Like, all right, let's go. Now, once a grudge is declared,

the grudge will not conclude until the enemy or whatever the target of the grudge is completely annihilated. I love everything about this. There's just like, there's three guys left. Cool, we're still mobilizing this army to find them and kill them. And they did this because we talked about orcs before. It was a 500-year war.

And it all happened because the orc war boss Morbach attacked a league hold. And while attacking the hold, they broke into the core and destroyed the Votan Corps. This is a slight that could not be forgiven. And for 500 years, all, not maybe all, but a large percentage of the Votan joined this grudge until every single orc within the galactic core was killed. Oopsies by the part of the orcs. Again, it's a lot of us. Yeah. Probably.

I will say, my opinion, the grudge system, I think, is going to be an issue coming forward. because the history of the leagues, they have been within the Galactic Corps, which means they've dealt with orcs, a couple small incursions here and there. One challenge they're going to have is they're going to declare, right now some of the grudges they're having is like maybe a guard regiment, a couple imperial plants, what have you. But for example, if they declare a grudge against the space wolves, yeah, they might have to follow them across the galaxy. And the level of reinforcements coming to support the space wolves, they could find themselves

in a never-ending war of me. mutual destruction. That's kind of how I see the grudges becoming an issue for them, because now they're out. All right. So with the grudges, actually, this is a good place to break, because next episode, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about, next episode, I want to dive into the actual leagues themselves. As we discussed before on the Eldar, for example, the different craft roles of the Eldar really are quite different. Same with Drew Kari. And I think that the writers for of O-10 leaned more into Eldar Drew Kari than they did like sisters, for example. And so we've got with the Amir conglomerate, the Greater Thurian League, the URSR, you've got some

pretty cool stuff there. And this lets Braden, I kind of wax it more poetically around it. So we'll just call. And there's a lot of theories about it, too, so I really want to talk about it. That sounds great. And so I think let's just cut it here. And then next week, so surprise everybody. We actually, this was supposed to be one episode.

We're going to split one into two and add more stuff. Hey. So you have four episodes out of us, one on squats and three on the voten. That's something. So there. Next week, we will dive into them, also some of the characters of the votan and probably a little bit of Brad and I theorizing of where the votan are going to go in the future. But with that, John Barsati, Bradchester. This guy.

See you all next week.