The 40k Lorecast - Episode 113 - Badab war pt 2 - the war breaks wide open

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

On today’s cast we finish our coverage of the Badab War. Opening with the state of the affairs with the arrival of more space marines into the region. For there we cover the failure of the parley (or was it a failure), and the increase in hostilities. After that we talk about the truth behind the size of the forces of the Astral Claws and the Tiger Claws (surprise). And then the arrival of the Carcharodons to the war and their “unique” style of war. From there we begin the linear progression of the war into the Astral Claws being all alone but still holding there own, until the loyalists come up with a “super special plan.” We the conclude with the post events of the war with the creation of the Red Corsairs from the fleeing Astral Claws, and how the imperium handles the other secessionists. 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. It's me, John Barcotti, and Bradchester. Diska. On today's cast, we're going to discuss how antibiotics work. Just kidding. Good job, Brad. I'm fine. Now.

Ish. You are so much better than you were, which sounds good, except I know how bad you were. I would have been able to do the cast. I was right. Oh, it would be great. I think we would have gotten mess. is this Brad's last cast? That would have been the reviews.

The reviews would have been I'm going to miss Brad. I mean, also depending on what time we did it, I would have been still at a room. We probably at some point should do one from the hospital because you're there, what, quarterly?

You know, I don't like the tone. The tone you're taking with me. I don't like this at all. I don't like the cut of your gib. Sir? We just hear, beep, beep. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Hold on, Brad needs a minute. Must have been talking about the lords of Tara.

Got me all fired up. Oh, yeah, we could actually hear your actual heartbeat change. All right. Anyway, today, we actually are going to discuss the closing of the Badaab War, focusing a lot on once the war broke out and a lot of the discoveries that occurred during it. For those who aren't aware, I hope you are all at this point, the 40K lore cast, the weekly show and the lore of wherever 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. If you like the cast, you want to hear more about it, click on the link. There's also a link to our YouTube page, the 40K Lourcast that has old

episodes of our show that we've done up for video, our live Q&A sessions, and our show, the history of 40K with Brad and myself and a guest. Also, little announcement, guys, I'm going to go and pull them from the prior episodes. We've had to shelve the two old men and their handler for a little bit. There were just for some health issues that were coming into play and we realized there was no way to do the show and actually have a consistent release schedule. So we're going to shelve it till probably 2026 and figure out what we want to do with it there. I apologize, we were super excited about the project, but we just realized we couldn't even produce it biweekly, and that was just going to frustrate people. So our apology.

Additionally, in the show notes, it's linked to our Patreon. Massive thank you to everyone who's contributed already. This is a evolving show, as you can probably guess, and the Patreon really helps us do a lot more with it. For those who haven't joined yet and aren't aware, our Patreon only has one tier. It gives you the show ad-free, not only the 40K lore cast, but also the history of 40K. It's $4.99 per month. Or let's say you live in a town that's protected by a fire-breathing dragon. Then it's only 4.3 euros per month. Because the town of Ghent in Belgium is genuinely gorgeous, and it's under the protection of a fire-breathing dragon. It means a statue that doesn't really breathe fire.

But it's still cool. And I also should mention I've been there in 30 years, so I'm hoping it's still pretty. TripAdvisor makes it look that way. But anyhow. Hold on. I have a dragon story for you on that. Ultimate Brad ultra-nerded up

because someone was talking about one of my friends and his wife and a group went on a trip over to Europe and said the exact first. phrase you just said of fire breathing dragon and i mistakenly super nerded out and because she made the joke of what other kind what do you i don't know why you have to say fire breathing dragon what other kinds of dragons are there and i went meow let me tell you about how the dragons there are and then after about five minutes yeah they're like yeah i was like well screw it now you know deal with that you now have that knowledge.

For those who don't know, Ghent is the home for Charles V, who has one of the most epic lower chins I've ever seen. He also married his cousin, but on the other hand,

he did rule all of mainland Europe. So there was that. Ghent also has Gravstein Castle in it, which has a really cool story because it was built in the 12th century in East Flanders. The castle was never conquered until 1949.

You might say to yourself, 1949. The war was over in 1949. That's right, because it wasn't conquered by a foreign army. It was conquered by a bunch of college students who were upset about the tax on beer increasing. So they assaulted the castle and stormed it. There was only one guard and they locked him in a closet. And then they got drunk and threw garbage at the police from the top of the castle walls. And I support this. I think that's a very funny move. Apparently to this day, on the 6th of November, get up on top of the castle wall, get really drunk and dance. around. So good for you, though, Gentes. Even for you, that was a pretty deep dive, man, into something obscure and absolutely no reason. I like, the thing is, I actually really like

Belgium for some strange reason. I've never known why. I find the Flemish to be enjoyable. Not just me. But any, last couple of little bits, Discord, we always pump our Discord. We always should pump our Discord. Link in the show notes to it. It has been, it's actually got hot again, We've really had a great time in there talking about stuff. Now we even have art in there, but a lot of good discussions about literature, about some of the topics we've been going through, some of the new books that are coming out, even some of the competitive stuff's gotten really good. So for anyone looking for a place to interact around Warhammer, please hop in our Discord. Last little pit though, I have a side project that's going to be releasing later this week. Whenever this is releasing, it'll be around the 17th or 18th of November.

It's called Retro Recall. It's a show I'm doing with Tom from Robots Radio, focusing on old gaming. We're talking about specific video games from like 1988 to 2005. Give it a listen. It should be out there. You'll find it on Spotify, YouTube. It's called Retro Recall. There you go.

Anyway, but that's enough of that stuff. I'll stop cheating on Brad now. We'll do my thing with Brad. And we'll talk about the Badaab War, which I still haven't looked up if it's Badaab or Badaab. Beda. I'm never, even when I know what it actually is pronounced as, I'm not telling you. Because I enjoy seeing it just blasted in the discord. Well, I'm hoping it's one of those ones that it's not phonetic.

It's like it's actually pronounced Badoob, John. Damn it. Where I had no chance of beginning it correctly anyway. But let's get where we left off. So we left off, the Badaab sector is turning into a full-blown civil war. We've got the Astral Clause, the Mantis. the mantis warriors, the lamentors, and now the executioners, have all declared independence from the Imperium, not seceded.

I was about to say, they didn't succeed. Which is, which apparently is different, by the way. Yeah, I mean, these guys were playing. I'd like that GW wrote a story about someone enforcing rules as written. Yeah. It's their ultimate nightmare anyway. So that's what they do. Rules is written.

We are not seceding. We're just declaring an independent kingdom within the Imperium where we are going to manage this whole maelstrom sector, and we're going to make it align with the needs of the Imperium. Problem is in doing this, they got in direct conflict with the firehawks and the Marines errant. A conflict broke out. The two were fighting, and the Marines, the firehawks had to unfortunately retreat pretty quickly because it wasn't going well for them. I feel like it wasn't going well is a wild understanding. But, John, where we left the cast last week.

Yeah, they were being pursued actively, and they were probably all going to die. Yeah. You're like, we had a couple snafews in putting the code in. You're like, no, man. The stuff was blowing out. You had to do the Bill Paxson from aliens. I don't know if you keep it scoring, man.

We just got our asses kicked. Yeah. We're six and a half dozen of the other. So obviously, this now has come to the attention of the Lords of Terra. The Lords of Terra. ordered the Red Scorpions, Raptors, Fire Angels, and Salamanders out there. They also held the Trade Federation, like Cargotho, was totally responsible for the entire thing and said this is entirely their fault because we don't want anyone knowing that space marines

can turn against the Imperium. But the more important piece is what was going on behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, Inquis deird Jardice, oof, Frane is the last name. We're going with that one. was put in to oversee the situation. An Inquisitor Frane moved to immediately try to quell the rebellion, a combo, classic Imperium, combo of diplomacy and force.

First, he put a call out to all the space marines in the region saying, come support this, the Imperium needs you. What's interesting about that, though, and I do like this, is that he, as the inquisitorial agent, had the authority to command any part of the imperial military. including the Astardis. But what he did was he actually deferred all of his stuff through the chapter master of the Red Scorpions, who was given the title High Lord Commander in the region. And this is because, as we've said before, the space marines are part of the Imperium.

The space marines report to the Imperium. But the space marines, if they choose not to, the Imperium really doesn't want to deal with that. So they have to ask very nicely. And speaking of asking nicely, he then, very nicely asked the secessionists to stand down their hostility and submit themselves to judgment by the Inquisition, to which they said no. What? Horace heresy, no.

But again, it was that rules as written thing. Politely said no. Luft Huron, who's leading the secessionists, knew the politics, and more importantly, he knew the law. And he knew that if he surrendered to judgment, everyone's dead. Dead. Just kill all of this.

Yeah, it's immediately dead. The Chris is it always wonders why no one's ever giving up to them. Because you all die if you give up to the Inquisition. Yeah. So what he did, which was kind of clever, is he kept playing the victim. He said, I can't lay down my arms because I'm under assault. And pointing out accurately, by the way, that the firehawks had been like exterminating systems in the area. And, I mean, the firehawks were doing this because the mantis warriors did that to them.

but, you know, this is how you play a victim. So Huron is saying, look, if I try to submit, these guys are just going to kill me. So the only way I'm going to submit is if you pull all your forces out of the sector, to which the inquisition was like, yeah, we're not doing that. Now, this progresses quickly, if I'm being honest. So first and foremost, you've got the Ring of Steel, which we talked about in the last cast. Huron, when he declared his independence and stopped paying the imperial tithe, he wasn't doing it to build himself a massive palace or accumulate a lot of wealth.

He was doing it actually to increase the size of his military capabilities. So arming himself, arming the defenses of Badaab. And one of the things he did was in the actual Badaab system was built the ring of steel. And it's this collection of orbital defense and fortified naval stations, which could mount an almost insurmountable defense. I was going to say it's a huge, huge. structures out in the space. Like, they're, yeah. He's got a, the ring of steel's no joke.

Also, he wasn't just trying to build his military. He was trying to put down that sector. He was trying to completely placate all other forces. He did have, up until fairly late in this war, well, it mean, it's dependable, actually. But it appeared at least for a while that Huron's goal was to build up a military force and actually pacify the maelstrom sector. This was, again, it didn't really seem to much later. There was anything selfish in it.

And even later, he still is trying to put down any rebellions in the Maelstrom sector. He's just doing it from a different perspective. I'm going to sprinkle this in and we'll continue on. At what point in time did he actually first get contacted by chaos? And it's way before he thought it was. Yeah. Yeah. That's how all chaos is.

I'm just saying, yeah. Turn to chaos, turn to chaos well after they'd be. turn to chaos. Yeah. That's kind of the beauty of chaos. I mean, there's a point where he just renames himself and everything else. But I mean, oh yeah, but that's a lot later. No, but I think that, I actually think that early on, because he gets the whole hubris of,

I can take over this sector and everything else. These are all good things, air quotes, which I'm doing as usual, even though no one can see me, except for John. But the... It's the system. But I thought about this a lot when I went into reread the Bedab Wars and stuff like that. And I was just like, man, I feel like sometimes they do, and I encourage people to read these because they were really fun. But I think they do a really good job.

And I think the chaos gods do a great job of luring people in on their own. They give them the very subtle invite and make them make the leap into where they don't even realize, hey man, you're in. the middle of the lake. You're not, you're not, you don't have a toe in the water. You're deep in here and you never even do. You got wet. I get the very feel on this because yeah, the tone shifts at some point in time in the books, but like for a very long time, he's righteous. He wants to do these things for the Imperium. He wants to conquer for the Imperium. And then it's, it slowly shifts to, man, I'm still doing this to Imperium, but I wish I got some support. And then it's the Imperium's fault that I'm not succeeding.

There is. Yeah. There are some moments like the third year of the war where I think they start seeing like almost chaos style mutants being Yeah, no, no, I'm saying like, but I'm saying it's a little, little, and then he makes a lot of the, you see this and a lot of the villains people will cover. Go ahead.

What I was going to say, we're jumping ahead a little bit, but there actually is a point where he is fighting against chaos and the Imperium in his, in the sector. We'll get there. Right. Well, that's, I wanted to talk about it before we got into it because later on he's obviously

you want to spoil it it's just like I screed you surprise no but I want to set up the fact that he's he wear his heads at because this entire engagement started from what he thought was a very good place a very

noble place yeah I mean even at this point I still think that's the point well I'm saying in his mind I think he feels He's the wronged person. He is wrong, but he thinks... Everyone who goes to the chaos feels that way.

I would argue that at this point... A lot of people, a lot of them aren't wrong, okay? But go ahead. Yeah, so let's get into it. So effectively the problem with the Imperium has is they arrive in the sector. The Badaab, which is where they have to get to, has this ring of steel around it.

They can't even go near it. But even the sector itself is pretty well fortified. So the ring of steel is just the Badob sector. But beyond that, they have fortified. They've built up planets. And so what the Imperium does is they arrive, and the first thing they do is surround the entire, like, like subsystem for that way. Well, let me show you what the- No one's going in and out.

Let me tell you what this blockade does. Carry the one, absolutely nothing, but self-sufficient. Because the entire sub-sector is self-sufficient. They have forge worlds in there. We're going to skip this bit a little bit because the story's a little bit wild. But, yeah, the admec was still trading with them because since they were never labeled heretics, the admec, or not barred from trading with them. And Huron and the guys do have good goods to trade.

So it's this wild bit of a size story. I was going to say two points on that. One, they were so sufficient. Two, world's worst blockade because they were training with multiple other people outside of the sector. You're like, what are you even, like, are you pretending? Do I have to get like the secret and wave as I blew by you with my goods? They were doing nothing.

Once they get there, though, the Imperium decide to go for it. I'm not even sure if it's the Imperium or just the Space Marines themselves, because the problem is that where the Imperium hasn't labeled Huron and others as heretics, the space marines who've arrived have. And Space Marines hate two things more than anything. A heretic and a heretic. That's it. Zenos are an issue, but that's fine.

Heretics are what they really care about. So the imperial forces begin attacking the worlds in the sector with just impunity. They're not trying to conquer them. They're just trying to teach a lesson. And they are wiping worlds out. The problem with it, though, is that while they're wiping worlds out, they're also discovering how well defended all said worlds are. Because, yes, they're wiping a world out, but not without casualties.

And what you're getting now is massive defenses coming back. and what looked like on paper to be a really easy victory for the space marines is turning into a slow slog very quickly. Because even the human defenders are putting up. And I was about to put out the fact of, yeah, exactly that. You're putting up a slow slog and you haven't actually hit the real defenses yet. And so the Imperium needs to start changing their tactics as they're getting further and further into this. because they are successfully raging at these outer worlds. But while they're doing it, the secessionists are, instead of fighting them on the outer worlds,

are now going into the inner worlds, the ones who hadn't come over to their cause, and in effect, conquering them. So while the outer worlds of the system are falling, they're not as significant as the inner worlds would be for trade and support. So as this war is progressing, Huron's actually getting stronger. I love that point on that, though, because Huron actually gains worlds that he didn't have by the Imperium trying to basically go, they're teaching you a lesson out here in these outer planets. Cool.

And he's like, well, you now have to join me or you're going, this is going to happen to you. And so a bunch of these places that have no desire to be part of him. All of a sudden are now part of, they're pulled in. Yeah. And so he actually, he's playing tower defense a lot better than they were. Yeah. And so what ended up happening is the war by 906, like a year, two years into the war, the war basically hits like a stalemate.

We're not talking World War I trench warfare stalemate, but just this level like, all right, there's really no gains. Well, I guess it is. Sorry, it is World War I trench warfare stalemate actually. This is basically 1915, like 1916, where you just can't go anywhere because any ground you gain, you lose so much in gaining it, and it's just not really worth anything. But then out of nowhere. I was just about to say we should probably point out that there's a lot of other stuff going on.

Yeah, and this becomes a problem for the Imperium. The Imperium has two things working against it as far as really dealing with Bedab War. One is they don't want to acknowledge that they have a space-spring civil war happening, but more importantly, they don't really have the resources for it. It's 906 of M-41. So tyrannids are here. Necrons are awakening. Ork, the orcs are everywhere at this stage.

You have Jukari are at one of their strongest points because we're post-vectorizing. And then you have just a normal problem of being the Imperium, which is rebellions and chaos and everything else. Well, chaos is not even the normal right now. Chaos is mid-13th crusade. Yeah. No, I think 13th is later than, I think 940 is 13th Black Crusade, but you still not. Sorry, it's coming up. Yeah, we had all the free stuff.

Yeah. Exactly. Chaos is very present. I'm saying, before the 13th Crusade, it wasn't like nothing was going down. They weren't hanging out. It was like, oh, this is lovely. They're not just like, sipping tea and enjoying themselves. And you also had a real problem with Yeldar at the time, too, because all the seers were

trying to position all their craft worlds in places to stop different chaos things. So, again, they're a problem for the imperial. Right about the time a craft world parks right outside what you're in charge of. You're like, hey, man. And decides the planet that you're on would be better if it didn't exist because it'll help against the rise of chaos. Yeah, not ideal. But then the war takes this crazy turn. Parlay.

Out of nowhere. Huron reaches out to the loyalists himself offering a temporary ceasefire and a parley. And he says, look, hey, further bloodshed is not good for any of us. us, this is all really based in a misunderstanding. Let's get together and figure it out, you know, like an adult would. And I like this story because Lord High Commander Ortiz, who's the commander of the Red Scorpion, says, absolutely, let's get this done. And Inquisitor Frane goes, are you an idiot?

Do not go there. This is 100% a terrible idea. You had so many opportunities, John, to say, it's a drop. Well, to be fair, it wasn't a trap trap. It was just a stupid idea. But the problem is space marines are going to space marines. The space marines sit there and say, this other space marine wants to have a noble conversation. We should go have a noble conversation. And in the history of 40K lore, there are no times that a traitor space marine has offered a parlay and it hasn't turned out to be a terrible idea. Maybe there's one that I'm just not thinking of, but usually it goes the way it's going. going to go. All right. Here's my thing. I'm not going to go parlay with the people in fighting against in a system called the grief system and hope that nothing bad happens. That's the best part. No, it was just the grief system. So they decided to meet on a abandoned way station orbiting a gas giant in the grief system. So it's an abandoned station and an abandoned

system orbiting an uninhabitable planet in a system named after sorrow and trouble. I just assumed an entire film crew was sitting here at the time going, no, no, no, we're not filming, we're filming just to record this. It's definitely not going to be a giant action movie in about 10 minutes here. Jesus. So the meeting opens up and it's just yelling. Huron comes in there screaming and ranting about how he and his secessionists are not traitors, they're loyalists, but they've been betrayed by the Imperium. And not the Lords of Terror themselves, but the Adeptus Administratum, which, to be fair, everyone hates the Adeptus Administratum.

So it's like blaming the healthcare industry. Oh, you know, it's insurance companies. He's just shitty, dude. But at this point in time when he said this, he does give a two-page impassioned speech that is 100% correct. Yeah. Oh, he practiced. This was PowerPointed well.

Let's call a spade a spade. And Lord, but Lord Commander Ordis. holds the line, stating that all the things you're saying, they're fine and dandy, but hostilities have to end. Huron and his allies have to lay down their arms, and they had to subject themselves for judgment. Hours go by, all this yelling, and everyone agrees, this isn't working, and they go back to their, like, chambers to rest. That's what's written. It's a stupid phrase. But anyway, you'll never guess what happened next. So out of nowhere, three unknown vessels come hurtling out of the gas giant after cutting off all communication to the platform.

The vessels then blanket the station and the imperial and secessionist fleets with just firepower. And they dock and a bunch of heretics, mutants, and chaos marines come flooding out, attacking both sides, which is important here. And I just want to take a quick note to point out in the 41st millennia, radar doesn't seem to work because this is in every GW story. Some, multiple ships can always avoid detection and wreak havoc. We had it in flight of the Eisenstein where a small ship just flew in front of a battle cruiser and went, nothing to see here, guys. And the battle cruiser went, yep, I'll just let that happen.

We have numerous times during the Horace heresy. There's stories that involved all the time. The entirety of non-stop. Yes. You know, I think there's thousands of suns and the space wolves. this year, you know, we went over to Prospero, all that kind of stuff. Every single time. Anyway, sorry, it just drives me insane.

But the big scrum breaks out, and both sides kind of, it's this weird moment where both sides come together to fight the invaders and then decide that's not cool. And they just start fighting each other. So it becomes a three-way war, where everyone's fighting two different people at the same time. during the battle chapter master sartak of the mantis warriors is killed and lord commander ortees of the red scorpions dies and cool story if you want to read it it's cool where the chief librarian of the red scorpions makes a name for himself he like musters the troops and he single-handly leads this counter-attack and grabs his chapter master and brings him back he also puts up a force shield and like throws the neos a bunch of bolts yeah this is pretty cool Oh, I should have mentioned, by the way, if you guys want to know more about this, this is not a novel. You have to get the books, two of the Imperial Armours, I think it's 9 and 10 or 8 and 9. Let's just say they're not available in print anymore.

You can't buy them in a store. But, I mean, you could, you shouldn't Google, you know, Imperial Armour Compendium 9 PDF. That would be wrong, and that would be stealing. So don't do that, because if you did it, there would not be a result. And there's no way that I currently have that up on my computer screen, but don't worry. Yeah, you should definitely do that because it would be an IP violation. So please do not Google Imperial Armor Compendium 9 PDF. Would be a mistake.

Anyway, Huron escapes and leads back. And this inquisitor, so it ends. And what's interesting is that post-Inquisitor Frane has to figure out what just happened. Because it's a little bit odd. We saw that his viewpoint is, first, First, He decides this is all because forces of chaos and because there are enemies of the Imperium want this war to continue. So therefore, they probably were lying in wait in an effort to prevent any sort of peace

treaty. You know, we've seen that in movies a lot of times. But then, Frayne starts to realize that doesn't really make a lot of sense. And he looks at a really key detail there, which is that maybe Huron did all this, because the chapter master of the mantis warriors was there. no apparent reason, and he died. The chapter masters of the lamentors and the executioners were not there. So why the mantis warriors? And the reason why is because the mantis warriors were part of the original secession. They agreed we want to pacify maelstrom. We want to do all these things.

But the mantis warriors were also sitting there saying, well, I'm actually fighting now, not against the enemies of the Imperium within the maelstrom. I'm fighting against other Astardis. and this is not cool man but if huron which is what he does by the way tells the mantis warriors hey your chapter master died because the inquisition are behind the chaos attack which by the way something equation would 100% do for the record the englishman has no problem steering chaos to go kill enemies of the imperial no issue whatsoever let's say they've done it before they'll probably do it again exactly and so what refrain realizes that This was all a ploy by Huron.

He needed the Mantis Warriors to align with him much better than they were. So his opinion was that Huron was behind the chaos attack. He left the head of the Mantis Warriors available. Therefore, the head of Mantis Warriors dies, and now the Mantis Warriors are perfectly aligned with Huron to help continue fighting this war. So from there, we now have a problem. And the problem we have is this war is about to get a lot worse. the Imperium goes through,

they select a new, what happens is the Imperial forces go through, they lost their Lord High Commander, they make a new one. There's a whole bit in there about the Firehawks being upset. It wasn't one of their guys.

The Firehawks could not have one of their guys take it on because the Firehawks do Votan level grudges. You don't want that in your Lord High Commander. So the next one is also a Red Scorpion. It's not really important, but it's there.

The big, piece that's important next is the failure of the parlay means they need more troops. The Imperium realizes this is going to be a war. They're not going to be able to negotiate their way through it, and they don't have enough stuff. So they bring in two more groups. The Nova Marines, an ultramarines successor, and the Sons of Medusa, who are an iron hand successor and a very cool paint scheme. I think actually sons of Medusa are cooler than iron hands. But anyway, the new Lord High Commander is a guy named Karib Kohn. There's no

I-N-N-N. It is not easy for me to pronounce that. Kohn deployed. Doing so well today, buddy. Oh, it's rough, man. Some of these ones. It's weird. The Eldar casts are easier. The Imperium casts are what ripped my brain to shreds of these things. So

anywho, new Lord High Commander decides, all right, we're going to just squeeze them. We're going to isolate the defenders. We're going to basically start conquesting their forces and try to whittle them down. Because in his opinion, look, it's seven chapters on our side to four chapters on their side. So we've got them outnumbered. We should have them outnumbered. Except, and we'll get to that in a second. Except it doesn't. Yeah. The Imperium's new plan is in effect, F it we ball. They begin

attacking all the defenses of the secessionists everywhere. And it goes, As you'd expect. Hold on. Because this is... I'm going to get my cheat together on this one. This is so stupid. Instead of putting on their boots of mighty ass kicking, they put on their hats of mighty dumb.

Because this is such a terrible plan. They spread out and attack all of the defenses at once. I have a great analogy for this. It's like, you know, how the juggernaut puts his head down and runs through a bunch of walls? That's what they were doing, except they weren't the juggernaut. They were just running headfirst into walls.

But it wasn't even like they were just... Screw this wall. I coach this game. Attack and destroy a flank. They just kind of went, how about if we just throw our forces willy-nilly at all of their defenses? Because we're going to destroy them all.

They actually do exactly what I do when I play on tabletop if I want to annoy you about what I just did. Just piss me. For those who don't know, Brad loves to coach me, and he'll give me some really good advice, and I will look him dead in the eye and say,

I'm not going to do any of that. I'm going to go do it my way. And then if my way works, I have to watch Sad Brad. So dumb. My pure... The dice will just take care of you. But anyway...

So ridiculous. We'll be right back after a quick break. What happens next is important, though, because this whole reason that they were doing this style we'll just attack them all over the place and do all these things, is because they felt they had this seven to four advantage. What happens is the death tolls start to mount. The secessionists keep holding out, namely the Astral Clause.

And the Imperium, they have records. They know they're killing these guys. And they just, but they still, they keep coming, keep coming. And this is where this whole war flips from pseudo-civil war to crusade, basically. One of the apothecaries of the Astro Clause is been captured and he's being interrogated. And I will say when we say interrogated, we're not doing good cop, bad cop, we're doing Cisneros and Torquamata at the exact same time. And this Astroclothicary admits he's not an Astro Claw. He's a tiger claw.

This is my little history of 40K fun note here. The story of the War of Badaab is 300 pages in Imperial. armor 9 and 10, okay? But it actually first appears in a book called the Warhammer 40K compendium, which was released in 1989. So Rogue Trader. We're not even, this is before second edition. So at this point, Warhammer was a D20, D6, D10, D12 game. It was also after Brett had graduated high school. Two story. Yep. And I, you know what, I'm going to stand at the defense of this because John's notes say Every Rose has

its thorn was garbage my Fred. I will defend poison in all the hairbands. No, this is terrible. So this is the same year that gave us every rose has its thorn. Blame it on the rain straight up and tell me if you love me. I don't know. There's just

Carl Abdul. Blame it on the rate was Millie Vanilli. Gar. So instead we're going to use the lore from the Imperial Imperial Imperial Armour. Oh, tell me the 2010 one. 2010. Tick-Tock, which is a song apparently. OMG, no ID. What's my name from Eminem? I've heard of that song.

I can actually quote music I like, but I'm going to skip that. All right, that was also mostly. It's in general. The music's usually just... But anyway, Tiger Clause. Tiger Clause are a successor of the Astro Clause. In 280 of M40, the entire chapter disappears into the warp. They don't say why. They just... They're all gone. and the Imperium marks them as a lost chapter. Apparently, they reemerged 680, so a little over, right about 400 years later,

a single-strike cruiser reappears in the materium with about 100 Marines on it, and they thought they'd only been gone for a couple months. So really solid Event Horizon type scenario here without the holding of the eyeballs thing. Their captain at the time, the story is, went back to 10. to ask for their gene seed. So he's like, hey, we're here. We are still loyal. We want to rebuild our chapter.

He never got there. What did happen was Huron found them, and he began folding them into his own legion, taking in, adding the tiger claws into his astral claws. Not, and when I say forwarding the minute, I don't mean he would put the tiger clause as one, like, chapter within his chapter. He did, he actually would take one, one tire claw and put it with a squad over there. another one with a squatter that actually spread them all the way out. And you know what?

Pause on this. Because we're talking about the intergalactic bad ideas that have been happening. This what is so crazy because you just took the entire crew from Event High Rise and it just went, you'll guys no problem. You guys look well balanced. I'll just put one of you everywhere and see what happens. These guys just put 400 years of the warp. let's just nobody even ask him any questions sling them back into service

don't even follow up and see if anything's happening this may sound like a joke that's exactly what happens yeah and this is all coming from the guy who on numerous cast tried to defend warrior lodges to me Royal Lodges are great nothing but success

Kobe swoosh nothing but net baby Oh, God. Yeah, so this becomes a bit of an issue. Huron and the tire claws are spreading and dispersed in the Legion all around. And what was clever about this is it makes it hard to keep track of the size of the Legion. So by spreading them around, and don't forget, they're at war, this has a bit of a black Templar-esque effect to it, where we don't know how many black Templars there are. We're pretty sure it's over 100,000 and making them the last.

largest legion in the entire galaxy, and they're not a legion, they're a chapter. So, oopsies. That's what occurs here. And at the same time, though, the tiger claws and the astro claws are replicating quickly. They are doing as much marine gene seed of what we call it. Shenanigans. Yeah. And so what happens is this large, the astro claws end up sitting around 3,500 Marines.

which is three and a half full chapters. So this whole seven to four advantage that the Imperium thought they had was actually a seven to seven tie. And when you're talking about warfare, the defenders almost always have the advantage. So if you're even... Be technical, it's more of...

It's a 7.5 to 7. Yes, true. It's a 7.5 to 7 and the 7.5 are heavily fortified making this whole thing a rough. So now, the Inquisition discovers this and everything flips on its head. This is now heresy. Good news about heresy is when you find heresy, a lot more forces can be deployed because this is no longer misunderstanding. Hats go on backwards. Things start going down. Oh yeah. This is the, when you're playing

video games, this is the lean forward moment with playing the video game like that we're doing this. Inquisitor Frane puts out the call and says, we need more. What happens is, importantly is who shows up to this call. The first one, and guys, I promise we're going to do a cast on them, because I will be probably upcoming fairly soon, is the Minotars. And the Minotars are, oof, the minotars are people you don't want showing up. So the anti-space Marines, Space Marines. Yeah, the Minutars are super cool, and we're going to do a cast them because they're super cool. They are a fully fleet-based Space Marine Legion. They have no founding chapter. They have no founding date. because they don't have those because it's so locked away that even the Inquisition doesn't know who these guys are. And by the way, and we said locked away, I mean the actual locked away, not the usual GW locked away.

It's an incredible secret. But here's 42 pages on the secret, fully detailing all of it. We actually don't know them. It's also one of the cool mystery chapters. And they don't suffer any fools. They're not talkers either. No, they wage a brutal style of warfare. They are, they're effectively the First Legion.

If you really want to dive into what they are, they are the modern 40K version of where the dark angels originally were, which makes sense when you realize that they may have a direct tie to the Lords of Terror. They 100% have a direct tie to the Lords of Terror. We don't know how the tie works. Sure. They did. Yeah.

Which means I don't like them that much. What happens next is the Minotars decide to treat the secessionists the way Vesuvius treated the people of Pompeii. This was so... Made the soil fertile. Yeah, it's a great wine country. It is some amazing wine right now, but that's the side note. But they come hurtling into the system, calling ahead to the Imperial Force saying,

who's ass do we kick first? And that's what they do. I will say some of the asses they kicked were totally independent worlds who were just between where the Minotars were and where the Minotars were going. If you've never seen the family guy Roadhouse... Roadhouse. That's kind of how the men tars. Just yelling roadhouse and running through a system.

It is brutal, by the way. They come in, they hit some secessionist holdings, just full-blown exterminating the planets. Under the guise of the concern that heresy had spread, they label every world in the Bedab sector as heretical and just start going, well, they're all heretics, so I can kill them. This is why we're eventually going to do a cast on them

because I was doing research with these guys. just the other day because I knew we were going to bring them up. And this isn't like the time they did this. This is their just modus operandi. This is just what they knew. They weren't caught in a bad day. This was literally they're like, this was how. They flipped open the manual and went, all right, page one looks like collateral damage.

Is that the whole page one? Yeah, just kill everybody, man. It's all good. Kill everything. To the point where other chapters have. have always steered clear of the Minotars because they know when they get going, they'll just blow your ship up, too, if you're in the way. So what ends up happening is Commander Cullen had to put the Minutars in the southern bit

or the bottom bit, as I like to call it, and just say, hey, guys, go ham down there because I can't have you near the rest of the forces because you keep taking out loyalists while you're at it. And so the Minotars are just having the time of their lives, just going nuts. And then they run into the executioners. And the executioners have a very similar style. They like hardcore melee combat. They're both effectively black Templar in the way that they want to wage war.

Like, if you hit me, I hit you. Like, it's the old, is it Don, no, it's Don Fry versus, I forget the guy's name. The greatest fight of all time. That's what these two end up doing. For those you don't want to talk about, if you've ever seen Looney Tunes when a fight breaks out, They're just a big dust cloud. Dust cloud and whirlwind. Yeah.

The Minotas and executioners just start doing that to each other. While this is going on, though, this level of conflict in a sector starts bringing attention. The first one it brings is orcs. So out of nowhere, an orc invasion occurs also in the sector. Not even organized, just all over the place. Let's clip that again, because we really glossed over that with a quickness. A year passes in this funny. Yeah.

There. Yeah. So it's not like these guys didn't show up and like we had a Donnybrook and everything was done. No, this is a year of aggression, like hardcore aggression. And so the orcs, it's like good fighting over here and they show up to both fight and to loot. They're two favorite things. More importantly, and this is what's interesting, chaos. So any level of conflict will draw the attention to the dark gods.

Suddenly within the secessionist rebellion, this wasn't on the external. inside the secession held territories, you start seeing heretics. And this is, I find it, I think this is really fascinating because as we said, later, I'll admit it, Huron becomes Huron Blockhart. He becomes a chaos lord later. But we don't know when that happens. And what's interesting is that these chaos forces appear and they begin attacking Huron's forces.

So it's this question of, was he at chaos this point? Most likely this is chaos trying to move him over to them, like, all right, We went wink-wink, nudge, nudge. Now let's shove them off the cliff and let's get going. But this whole conflict now becomes, like all GW conflicts, multifaceted multi-party. Now, all of this gets a lot nastier in 908 of M-41. So this is the third year of the conflict.

The Lamenters chapter are basically preparing themselves for an attack on imperial forces. The Minotars find out about it and attack the fleet, themselves. And it basically, a day of fighting, nonstop fighting, the Minotars subdue the lamenters. They accept their surrender of the 100 left. They didn't start at that. Which I'm still actually surprised that the Minutars had prisoners in the first place, but continue. That's a fair point. And they put them back and they say, okay, you guys will be judged when the war is over, which we'll get to later. One of the cool things they did was as they captured people, they didn't judge them at that moment in time. They were like, all right, let's just see, let's get to the absolute bottom of what's going on.

We're probably going to execute all of you, but let's just make sure. Now, with the, this, though, is big, though, because now they are down a chapter. And the loss of one of their allies, the secessionists start to go on the back foot. They have to move into more of a guerrilla tactic-style war because they have to whittle away at the Imperium now. Yeah. Yoron. I'll see. Yorod starts to get pretty down and dirty.

And he starts, this is where he becomes more evidently cases. He also starts erding his name of the tyrant of Badaab in this. Because anybody that isn't with him or even mentions like two guys in a coffee shop say we might not support this war. He just starts blowing everybody up because he goes, I don't want, he does scorched Earth, but scorched Earth with full planets. Yeah. And this becomes a huge issue for all the planets there. you have Huron saying you're going to submit to me. And if you don't submit to me, I'm going to burn your planet to the ground.

And they go, maybe the Imperium will come save us, but the issue is the Imperium is also burning planets out there. To the ground. Yeah. And all this comes. So a good example of this is the world of Galen. And this world had done nothing wrong. It just happened to be in between these two forces.

The Space Marine Legions were fighting the secessionist on this planet a number of times throughout the war. The planet was strategically valuable. It wasn't so much a resource thing. It was just a base of operations, et cetera. And so the populace itself were just like, F this noise. And they were nomadic. Just they bailed on all the cities and just kind of wandering around to just try to avoid the space marines.

The sons of Medusa are said, all right, go to this planet and claim it for the Imperium once and for all. And the sons of Medusa just decide, no problem, boss, I got this. But let's give it what it's going on. Let's talk about what they were actually saying. said to do. Get the planet back into compliance. Basically, get everybody back in the Imperium. How do they think the best way to do this? Let's lead a stealth murder campaign across the entire planet. You used the word stealth. They were jumping down in, what jumping? They were using drop pods to go down there. And then wandering around with chain swords, just killing everybody.

It was stealthy for the Marines. But they were just showing up places. I mean, remember, you're wandering through a plane doing a whole lot of nothing with your group of people. But the part I find funny about this is the final outcome then is they subjugate the planet and then they turn the entire planet into a penal colony. And they're saying everyone on this planet and all of your offspring forever are just going to work for the Imperium in this penal colony because your planet was kind of near. the secessionists. And if that sounds bad, wait for it. It gets weird.

Hold on the way, there's more. Oh, it's so much worse. That's, then we get to M. Sorry, then we get to 910 of M41, in which case a fleet arrives on the edge of the conflict using, and this is what they say, an ancient but still valid imperial code.

They are there to offer support and aid the imperial forces. It's the Carcarodons. which means things are about to suck for the secessionists. And not just suck, but it's going to suck. And it's going to be real up close and personal when it sucks, because that's what the Carcaryon's do. And what I like, though, of this bit is that the Force Commander Tiberis presents himself

to Inquisitor Frayne with these writs and titles showing that, look, we have a right to fight with the Imperium. And Frayne is looking at these things showing like, hey, man, the signature on this, I've heard of this guy, because I read about him in a book. book because he's been dead for 5,000 years. Like, I, but it's legitimate to the point where I could actually imagine Frane just think, hey, can I keep this for a minute? Because this is actually kind of a cool artifact.

Frane then presents the Carcadon's to Cullen, the High Commander, and he vouches for him, saying, look, all their paperwork checks out, they're good. And Cullen's like, all right, well, thanks for the assist. But I've never even heard of you guys before. So I'm going to have you go over there. and by over there he means mantis warriors. And the mantis warriors are very good at guerrilla warfare. And they've been making Badaab into this horrible killing field.

Every chapter enters the Mantis Warrior section, get pinned down and take massive losses to really no gain. And he goes, cool, just you, because remember, the Caradon's look weird. They've got black eyes. They don't really speak in a whisper. it's like, look, you guys give me the willies, for lack of a better phrase, you go deal with this crap. And if you all die, I don't really care.

I love this planning, though. So the Manus Warriors are fighting this total guerrilla warfare. You can't pin them down because they just don't try to hold any ground. But anybody tries to take their crown, they kill them, and then they leave. And they're not fortified. They're not making defenses. The Carcadons go, I got a great plan, boss. What we're going to do is murder everything.

everybody take slaves and just draw the Manus Warriors out by just being the damn worst ever. Yeah. Sorry, guys. The space sharks are so awful. Yeah, they effectively do a chaos-style invasion where they go and say every world here, we're just going to either everyone on this world dies or is our slave now. And they do this one towards the Mantis Warriors are like, screw this crap, we're putting this down. but the problem for the Mantis Warriors

is that they're nowhere near full strength and the Carcaryodons are at absolute full strength. So the Mantis Warriors go into this rapid strike and fade but the Carcarodons do too and it's pretty quickly before the Carcarodons just turn the tide and effectively they don't wipe out the mantis warriors

but they bring their numbers down so low that the Mantis Warriors no longer matter for the rest of the war. And so the Mantis Warriors are now out and the Carcarodons then get deployed to the Bedab sector and again, just here, go ravage worlds over there. And the irony is that this whole thing they just did here where they were wiping out worlds and taking slaves

is not the thing they're most known for from this conflict. We'll get to that. Look, man, they didn't want to pull a hammy before they really got to the atrocities. Oh, God. So the next big part of the war is on the world of Sharprius, Sheprius, whatever. It's a feral world that, orbits a binary star, which means it's two stars, and this doesn't work, by the way, but as far as being habitable, because this is just all gravity challenges.

But the salamanders approach a secessionist world, and they find it's just a nightmare. Right above the world is this weird hodgepodge-style fleet that's just scavenging vessels and building this thing up. On the world below, they can, in this case, their scanners worked because they always work or don't work. There's no middle ground, by the way. And they can either scan all the way back to Tara or can't see 10 feet. Got it. Yeah, exactly. Well, why would we have windows? It worked against the Geff. But they scan down and the feral people of the world are being outfitted for war. Not like, hey, I gave them a point to your spear.

They're getting injections. They are turning into super warriors. And so they make a call out. and the salamanders and the minotars attack this world because they recognize this is basically chaos. As soon as they get down there, they learn the hard way that those feral warriors that they're sawing being done up are done up a lot more than they thought. Effectively pseudo-space marine level, I would put them maybe almost thunder warrior-esque. And they're not just going to melee, they're also good at ranged combat because the astro claws were hidden in the area and training them. So this great attack what they thought was going to wipe out this problematic world turns on its head. And the militaries and the salamanders are like on the back foot, for lack of a better phrase.

Eventually, the minotars and the salamanders get to the central part, though. They take massive losses and they get into the central complex. Once they break into the central complex, that's where they discover the truth, really kind of deprecrued. gravity that the Astro Clause had come down to. In this, they find a toned stolen gene seat taken from the Imperial Space Marine. So they were stealing the gene seed from salamanders, from Minotards, from all of them. And they'd made a laboratory, and they're effectively creating pseudo-space marines with prisoners. Yeah, they're doing these amalgamation, these abominations of space marine and anything I can get

my hands on and genetically slap in with, they don't really go into it, but there's no way this isn't wild sorcery also going into this. For sure. It's horrifying. And so they grab what they can here and they leave. It's not even wild sorcery. It's a huge heresy, too. This gets everybody fired up.

I'm not, to be it, I'm not really clear if they actually defeated the forces and Shepras or if they left. That was a part when I read it, not 100% on. But all I know is they take it and they leave. they make the translation to warp. While in the warp, the salamander ship itself runs into a really bad warp storm and gets stuck. So they have to translate back out of the warp. This is 100% chaos guide, not cool, man, not cool.

Because they get a warp storm that goes, you guys need to get off the expressway right now. And what's outside the expressway, John? Oh, the Astro Clause and the executioner fleets. Just standing there waiting for him. Yeah, and just look up and go, oh. Not cool, dude. Not cool. What happens next is the executioners actually get to the ship first.

They board it. And the executioners take the ship, and they tell us salamanders, they offer them a deal. They say, we're going to offer you what's called the rights of surrender. Under this, we will take you out of the war zone. but if we do this, you have to agree to no longer fight in this war. You're not going to surrender to us. You're just going to leave. That's the old, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

The salamanders accept this. But while they start moving that way out of nowhere, the Astro Clause attack the vessel and actually come into the vessel and they start looting for gene seed, like for the reason we described. The executioners are watching us saying, hey, these. guys just offered the right to attack them. This is huge. So now the executioners attack the astral claws and they start having this big fight

inside of it, which I do find kind of funny. These two are fighting and it's that scene in the movie where like the two bad guys are fighting and the good guys just go, so do we just sneak out now? Yeah. And that's what, and the settlement is effectively just saying out. Nothing to see here is just going to walk away slowly.

Yeah. They're just like, all right. And then they actually escape. But this is going to matter more later. When the salamanders get back to the Imperium, they tell them all the stuff they just discovered with the stolen gene seed, all these things. But more importantly, they tell them, hey, the executioners are not heretics. The executioners offered us the rights of surrender, and they honored it. And they fought with their allies to defend us with this. That's going to come up later.

But let's get back to the secessionists. now there's it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it is it is it is it's just it's yeah it is it is it also it also i love that here on blackheart puts out a message to the entire system lord humongous from road warrior style oh this is great nobody escapes alive i promised you yes he his whole recorded message comes out claiming the astral clause are no longer the subject of the imperium of mankind this is now there's they are now truly seceding. They are independent. They are full-blown heretics.

And then he moves to enact this brutal campaign of control, telling the Astral Clause pacify every single world. And the stories here are gross, where the Astroclos enact rules where if a citizen of one of the world's looks a space marine in the eye, they will be blinded. If they do, they're basically, they're torturing them. There's people up on heads on spikes, all that stuff. Now, the issue with that, though, is that as angry as he is, the Imperium are furious now,

because now they know they are fighting chaos. And it's one of their own became chaos. Because the thing is, the people who turned to chaos 10,000 years ago, obviously they want to kill them. But someone turned to chaos last week, this even almost, you're almost more angry about that. So they decide, all right, we're going. The first place they target is Piraeus, which is the world on the edge of the system. It's heavily fortified. But it gives the Imperium a route into the Badaab sector.

Because I think it had to do with it's got a really nice, like warp jump is right there. There's a kind of a clean path. I was supposed to say they make it a point. Because as usual, these planets aren't stationary. So you always wonder about, we had to go this certain way. You're like, this is orbiting a sun. man, there's a lot of space. But yeah, the whole point of it was there was supposed to be a nice warp, jump, exit.

So the Imperium brings a full six companies to this battle. They warp in and they just go after it. They attack the world. Once they hit the world, though, because it's going pretty well. And then they hit get a little closer and a little bit closer. And then the Astro Clause launched their counterattack. Because the defenses they have were almost too much for the Imperial Naval Forces. like the defensive force field.

So they had to use a space marine assault on the planet to actually get anywhere. Once they get there, that's when the hidden orbital guns, because again, scanning from space didn't work. Like, only six pages for it being perfect, by the way. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, everything's going perfect. Also, these guns are hidden, but they're explained to just be gigantic. So, like, scanning the planet could have been Ted looking at. out when, hey man, there's a gun right there. Oh, there's another one right there.

It's another one right there. You're like, man, I'm so glad we have Ted looking out the window as opposed to our high-tech scanners. And at the same time, while this conflict now explodes on the planet, Huron appears

behind everybody. Huron, his whole fleet, warp in on the backside because, again, GW writing. And so now this whole big battle blows out, And if you want to read this, guys, it's like 20 pages. It is well written, but it's 20 pages of just... It's fun.

It's actually really fun. It is very fun, but I can't tell it as well as it's written. But the part that matters is that Huron and Cologne for no reason. So that the two heads of the two armies somehow end up fighting each other. At no point did Napoleon fight any, any leader of the Prussians, the English, or anyone hand-to-hand. He was always in the back. That's what you do. But now, these guys went up front and Colin and Huron get into a fight.

At one point, Huron, I believe, to the power clause, Colin, Colin barely survives and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then they go their separate lives. Huron goes back to the Bedab sector and Colin has to lick his wounds and get the imperial forces ready to go. Sort of. Because the challenge that happens now is as this war has progressed, they've successfully whittled down the secessionists from four to one. The secessionists are holding a very small sector. It's just the Badaab sector. And they've proven that the secessionists are actually heretics.

So everything here checks a box of go time. But the problem is that this is the exact same moment that the rest of the imperialists. really catches fire. There are no reinforcements left. And so they are told basically figure it out. Yeah. And go deal with this. And so the Astral Clause at the same time also realize this is the end, guys. But we can take a bunch of them with us. And they start fortifying Badaab even further and further. Now we're at that moment where you have to do something. They can't just surround them. They've got to go kill Huron. He is a heretic. And I hate the writing that occurs next with a passion of a thousand sons.

They're going to go attack a dab and they realize they have to get rid of the ring of steel. And the ring of steel is an impenetrable fortress that no one could ever get past except bad guys have to bad guy. And Huron is convinced that someone's going to betray him. And the entirety of the ring of steel, I guess, is controlled by one. I don't know. Okay. I like this story quite a bit, but I do hate this part because the entirety of the Ring of Steel is effectively on one TV remote control. I don't even know if it's TV remote control.

It might be on like your fob for your car. That was my fault. It was one Blackberry. Yeah. He's ready to go. And the guy with the Blackberry is just sitting on, not on a planet, but actually on one of the stations that are part of the Ring of Steel. But the issue is it's a very well-defended ring of steel. I really hate this part of the story.

I'm sorry, guys. It's a really well-defended ring of steel. And if we try to bring an imperial forest there, it'll kill us. So what do we do? I've got it. The firehawks have a star fortress called the Raptorus Rex, which is actually kind of a cool name. The Raptorus Rex, it's not quite as big as the phalanx, but it's one of those type things. It comes from the golden age of technology that was recovered, yada, yada.

So the ad mech take a piece of a star and link it to the back of it, I guess, on a chain. And the Raptorus Rex goes hurtling into the system and then takes a sharp left turn, but the fast and furious style and throws a star fragment at the space station, which destroys the space station, kills the dude on it. Also, why is he there? Yeah, holding the blackberry. Be anywhere, literally anywhere else, man. You're like, man, if only that guy was just not there and he was on a couch somewhere else.

Watching that. He could be watching that on a com going, oh, man, just see what happened to that fortress? Oh, man, that was crazy. Yeah, guess I'm going to blow it up, pressing three buttons and success. But that's how this thing goes. So the Ring of Steel, which we were like, this is maybe, I don't think it's about two or three, hundred pages of story, this whole story takes up. And that period of time, the impenetrability of the ring of steel is brought up at least 30 times. And yeah, it's not impenetrable at all.

Apparently someone hit the off button and went womp, womp. Sometimes all you're going to do is you're going to drive your car while it's on a parachute and, you know, you just do your thing. Well, how did they make seven of those movies? There's so many more. They're so bad. Yeah. They're so bad. All right. But let's get to the fall of Badaab. So the fall of Badaab is, again, well written, cool stories. If you really like, face-string conflict, read them. As I said, don't get them for free, guys.

That would be the wrong thing to do. And you should not do those things because they are under intellectual property protections. So please don't download them for free. In me. I know. Now, the next part of the story is the invasion of Badaad itself. And I do really want to focus on one main part of it, which is the Carcara Dons. Because, oh, this story is awesome.

But Dab has a bunch of defenses anywhere, and those defenses require energy. And mostly energy in imperial colonies comes from large reactors built near the cores of the planet. They use the energy from the core to power them. I don't think it's steam power, but it might be, for all I know. And the Carcarodons are told by Lord Commander Colin to attack the planet's infrastructure so as to prevent the people of Badaab from formatting any form of counterattack. That was his big feat. I feel that there was...

Yeah. Sorry. I just, in my mind, he was telling this. He's like, I don't want them to be able to get a kind of formatting any sort of counterattack. And then he had two more pages of battle plan. And the Carcaryodds walked out right after he said that. It went, got it and left. And he was like, but wait, this is how we're going to do it.

And they went, nah, we got it. Because if we just take all of it out, they won't be able to do that, right? Colin said, I want you to disable their infrastructure so they can't mount a counterattack. And they went, cool, so remove the infrastructure completely. And by infrastructure, I mean a lot more. So let's get into, this part is kind of funny. So this epic battle is going on, which you guys should read. We're talking about you've got Titans, you've got Dreadnots,

you've got everything, fighting on the surface, massive pitched battles everywhere. And the Carcarodons just infiltrate the hive cities and just go basement floor button on the elevator. Go down there and go, let's just keep going down from here. Oh, they do this video game style. It's so cool, though, because they're like, all you have to do is disable all of the reactors. And they just go, click, click, click, click. It just go. And also, you're going to be a bummer if you're just working down on the hive city and

platoons of Marines start running at. You're like, I'm on shift eight. What, man. Yeah, I'm on swing shift this week. What's happening? Oh, no. And the caranauts are doing stuff. Hey, if you do that, it's going to make the reactor blow up.

And they're looking and going, yeah, I know, I'm a space marine. So they're just effectively switching all of the reactors in the planet to overload. Meanwhile, this epic battle is happening above them in which at one point Huron, now calling himself Huron the Blackheart, takes a melta to the, I would say face, but it's like the whole half his body. This gets melted. And while they're fighting, though, the entire planet starts groaning and moving around. and all the people on the planet, and it's just breaking apart, because all of those reactors,

the Carcarodons had hit, start overreacting and ripping the planet from the inside out. Where's Superman from? What's the planet? Crypton. Think of it. Crypton.

Oh, it is Krypton. Yeah. Yeah. This is effectively the fall of Krypton. That now occurs. And the best part of Martin's, yes, they kill a little bit of collateral damage, but it's so best up because they do make it a point. we forgot to say that when we were first doing it.

They're just cutting down all the workers to make sure that they don't fix what they're below over. Oh, yeah, they also killed everybody. And so the Caradon's, by the way, have finished their task and all have already left the planet. Now all the space marines, the traders, even the residents are just beelining for ships to get all the planet. Because, again, it's prepton. It's falling apart. But they also didn't tell anybody, oh, they told no, and they're doing this. So what I love about this is like the whole planet just implodes like trillions, quadruins of people die.

You lose dozens, if not more of space marines, tens of thousands of imperial troops, Titans, all this stuff's gone. And the Inquisitions sitting there after the battle and the Carcherodon just come wandering under the bridge like, oh, hey, what's up, guys? And they're looking and going, just pointing out the window, like, what did you do? And the Carcaryodons look the inclusion dead in the eye and go, so we did that thing where we were fighting by your side. And we need to resupply. So is it cool if we just go kidnap a bunch of people? Because those writs I gave you earlier said we could.

Also, when I say to tell the people, I mean millions. And I just believe that there's a window behind him while he's doing it. And the window behind it, you just see the planet breaking apart. And so they were. They actually, they were granted. all right, go do your red tie. They gave them some of the mantis warrior worlds. Go nuts.

And they went out there, raided them, and then just left the entire system. But that takes us to the final bit, which is the aftermath of the war. Don't skip your best line of the entire cast. In the notes we have, they leave the planet, the system, likely to the joy of all around. That's true. Yeah, the Carcaryodon leaving was definitely, everyone was like, oh, thank God. Nobody had a tear in the world. their eye, we'll miss you.

I could see someone turn to the Minotars, but like, no, I'm glad you guys are here. Like, after the Caradon's left. You know, I had a chance to compare, and you guys are totally normal. But yeah, let's get to the aftermath of the war, because that's one of the more important piece. So after the war is over, the Imperium holds all the legions accountable. The Astro Clause are branded Heretic, and they're to be hunted down without mercy.

The Mantis Warriors were placed on a penitent crusade to regain their honor, which they are still in the middle of. So by what we were, have we crossed M-42 yet? Are we still 9-99? Wait, we're in 42. Yeah, we're in 42 now. And they are still on this crusade. The Lamenters were also placed on a penitent crusade,

but their crusade took them into high fleet cracking. And they survived, but they're down to less than 300 Marines. That technically meant that their crusade was over, but the belief that the Lamenters will not make it. There's just too few, and they've lost so much gene seed that they will eventually die off. The exception is the executioners, which is actually pretty cool. As we mentioned before, the executioners fought to defend the salamanders when the Astro Clause attacked.

And so whereas the Mantis Warriors and Lamenters, as part of their Panentan Crusade, they lost all their world. So all of their recruiting worlds were all gone. The executioners were also put on a penitin crusade, but their worlds were held in trust by the Salamander. Yeah, because they're G's and they vouch for them during the tribunal. Exactly. And that's cool. So what happens is, and they have actually now finished their panting crusade. And the worlds that they held before have been returned to them by the salamanders.

So the executioners are now starting to quote unquote thrive. But the most important one is Huron himself. Huron survived, taking a melta to himself. And he actually healed up in three days. fully. And the reason he did that is because Huron is a chaos lord now. Full blown, he is 100% chaos. But he's odd because he's not focused on taking out the Imperium. He still wants to conquer Maelstrom. And he's doing it for him. Because he's also, he's chaos undivided. So he's just doing it for chaos. The love of the game. Yeah. And so him and what's left for the Astro,

Clause form a new chapter called the Red Corsairs, which is Chaos Space Marine Pirates. I do. I'm sure one of these armies, by the way, these ones are... But what I love about him is that him and his band of merry men are roaming

around Maelstrom, praying on vessels and conquering worlds. But if a space marine can be a full chapter down to a single space... So he's picked up to chaos? Yeah, he... He doesn't...

He definitely has a direct line because he shows up when someone's, whether it's a someone, a platoon, a lead, or whatever, as soon as someone's about to fall to chaos, weirdly, hereon will, hey, man, what's going on? I heard you needed a ride. Yeah. But it's cool. But that's why the Red Corsairs are this really like hodgepodge. It's a true pirate fleet of anyone who will.

once the join is welcome to join. And I'm a huge fan. So it's cool. And by the way, the fleet is massive. It's actually one of the largest forces in chaos. They did capture Gilliman for a bit. But anyway, but with that, I think that's where I want to end. I think that's a good coverage of the Badaab War. I hope this was fun for all of you. We've been doing a lot of human and centric, even the Votan are human. So next week, we're going to do something more Zenos-related. The problem is I haven't even started writing next week's episode yet. So I don't know what it's going to be. We have talked about it. I think we're going to go Drew Carrey, but I don't want to commit all the way because the way I am is I'll start writing something and I will left turn out of nowhere on Brad.

So we'll write it. So I don't really know what we're covering next week, but we will be there. Now that makes Brad happier than doing a bunch of research on something and then having John tell me that I wrote 13 sentences on that and went somewhere completely different. Left turn. Yeah, I'm very good at left turn midway through my notes. But more importantly, with that, we hope you all enjoyed this. Arsati, Brad Chester. This guy.

See you all next week.