The 40k Lorecast - Episode 114 - Drukhari Kabals and real space raids

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

On today’s cast we talk about the Drukhari some more. Starting with the rise of the Kabals in the dark city. With a focus on their origins, how they function, how they are created, and their role in the Drukhari. After that we go into the real space raids themselves, less about the during and more the preparation that goes into them, and what is done with the bounty upon return. We then close out on the act of building your own realspace raid for the table top.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 Lordcast with me, John Barcotti and Brad Chester. This guy. In honor of John getting back into playing as Dracari, we're covering them today. Sorry, I write the podcast, so I have all the power. I do really want to talk about how this went because we're planning what we're going to cover. And I get the, all right, Brad, let's talk about what we're going to do. And I go, we should do this, this, this and this.

And John goes, cool. I want to play Dracari, get my Jerkari. get my Dracari out. So we're going to do a cabal episode. And I'm like, okay. I guess that's what we're doing. Yeah, I'm painting up my Droucari. I'm making my real space raid for some tournaments.

And so, yeah, we're going back into Droucarry because it's top of mind. Next week we'll get into more Brad stuff. Yay! So 40K lorecast, the weekly show, focus on the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please continue to follow and comment in the cast. It's really helping our algorithm, pushing us up to a lot more listeners. A lot of you've done it already.

I am enjoying the comments. They are sometimes quite funny, especially around the where in the world is the 40K Lourcast series. That seems to be a big hit. So we're going to keep doing that too. If you like the cast, you want more of Brad. Click on the show notes. You'll find links over to our YouTube page for the 40K lore cast.

There you have our Q&A sessions. Our other show, the history of 40K. Actually, some more stuff looks like upcoming, more of 2026 projects. If you're listening to this in 2026, good news. It's already there. Hazzah! Yeah, TBD. One of my favorite parts of this is our Patreon.

So for those of you who don't know, we have a Patreon. The Patreon helps us expand our show out. We have one tier and one tier only. It's $4.99 a month. That'll get you this show and the history of 40K, ad free on all podcasting platforms. But if you live in a place called the Green City and the South, sun, it would be 64.96 Kenyan shillings. They still use shillings, which is cool. Nairobi,

that's where we're going today. Nairobi is the only city in the world with a national park inside of it, which I then had to look up. And it's not really inside of it. It's kind of touching it. So technically it's inside of it. But this park is pretty big. And it also is only fenced on three sides. So anyway, but Kenya is actually pretty cool. Randomly, I actually learned rugby from man from Kenya. So that's where I first picked that game up. Kenya's cool as hell because you've got the Great Rift Valley, which is 39 million hectares in size. So that's that's not small, unless I got that math wrong. Equally possible. Lake, I did that, by the way, I did that myself. I took the dimensions of it and then put it into an online calculator. So if I just set a number

and someone out there is like, you just described the entire landmass of Asia, possible. I actually don't know what a hector is. I'm American. We measure everything in cubits. Cubits and refrigerators. Another cool thing about Kenya is the Turkana, which is the world's largest desert lake, which then made me go on a deeper dive into John information. So fun fact number two for everybody. Welcome to the world of useless knowledge. A desert lake and an oasis. What's the difference? Simple. A desert lake is water in the middle of a desert. An oasis is when said water feeds vegetation. Now you know.

Anyway. And knowing, it's half the bat. There we go. I was waiting for you to fill that in. I was like, come on. Don't leave me hanging here. It's like that cold blood, like the high five thing. Lastly, our Discord, link in the show notes, as always.

Our Discord's an incredible place to come and interact with anyone around 40K. We really do love this thing a lot. It's been an incredible boom. for us as far as being able to interact with people. I'm in there quite a bit, so is Brad. It's a great way to talk to us about shows, ask us questions, tell me the things I got wrong. They are every episode.

There will be stuff wrong in this one too, guys. I am very far from perfect. But it is an incredible resource for a lot of people, and I think it's a really healthy community. So I really invite everyone to come in there, interact, ask your questions, get your advice, and just have fun. Massive thank you to our mods. then there are not a few of them. Doc, Ars, Toba, Tyrant,

Harris Schmidt, Zemsta, J, Solarsia, Cthulhu, Query, Maestro, Steve, Gurs, Nugles, O'Wargamon, twin demies, curl, Slanesh, and Silva. You guys are doing an incredible job, and I am light, you're thankful for it because I could not have, just on a basic level, organize this thing,

let alone managed it at the level you all do. So, big thank you to you guys for doing that. With all that out of the way, real space raids, there are three ways you interact with a jerkari. One, you go to Kamara. There's so not. What? Hold on.

Let's go with, number one, you go to Kamara, the dark city. Okay, you have made bad decisions and or you're at the end of, or you're at the end of exile when you accidentally walk through a gate and got to the dark city. Sorry, Tao, stout, stout suit leader. that's what happens. Or your Jagadai Khan, just hanging out. Wronging on. But people do.

But actually, lots of people actually enter the dark city. However, I say there's two, because your second one is somehow you surprise them in space. And that doesn't happen because they make raids and they leave. The only time they ever get surprised in space is because of plot armor from other people that want to talk to Durkari. Yeah. The space one, the reason why I go to the space one is that technically a lot of the Corsair, are Dr. Kari. So that's where it's like you can't bump into them. I guess you kind of,

but those are mixed. Those are mixed fleets. They don't count. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. That was why you would bump into Drew Kari. But that's my point. You're going to see Dr. Kari in Kamara because you went to where they all live. You're going to see them in space because they're on Corsair fleets or they come to you, which is the real space rate. This is bad things. So because of Dr. Kari, for the record, makes this really clear. They're not diplomats, you know, they're not, they're not showing up. There's still a reason that their rule is called power from paid. Yes. They're not showing up to negotiate. Yeah, not a lot of emissaries coming in out of the Dracari. Like, oh, hey, we want to set up a trade with you. Well,

what's the trade about? We want to kidnap and torture all of your civilians. And you're the right imperial governor. Okay, tell me more. In my mind, I need a, I definitely need a, a Jerkari and Archon modeled up with a top hat nomenical. Let me tell you. I've got an incredible deal for you. So the real space rate is what we're going to focus on today, how they happen, where they happen, and more. But let's start actually the most important question of why do we have real space rates?

And real space raids occur because of the fall of the Eldar. And this is, I'm going to be on some of this stuff we're going to cover here. I have to kind of infer because it's not written out that clearly. but in effect. But it is a survival. Yeah. So go ahead. Yeah, but what I'm saying is like the origins of it is a little bit goofy.

Because what you have is Slinash was born because of just the decadence of the Eldar. And when she did this, she in effect cursed the Eldar. We've covered the fall enough times. I'm not going to, I think it was like seven casts. We've ended up talking about the fall at some point. So there's now, well, there were three. There's now four ways that the Eldar deal with Slenesh being alive. Slanesh is eating their souls.

For Kraft World Eldar, they wear a soul stone within their armor. And the stone protects their soul from Slenesh grabbing it. And both while they're walking around, but also when they die, the stone absorbs their soul. So Slenish can't get it unless she gets the stone and breaks it. They put it in the infinity circuit and then they can do stuff with it. Yeah. Yeah. The next group is, if you're a harlequin, they still have their god.

Kegarak, Segurak, I always get this wrong. How about you to skip that and go with? The laughing God, my friend, the laughing God. No, I'm going to go with Cheshirek. I'm going to should get it wrong each time. It's not even close. Really? Look, my last name is Barcati.

You have people in my life who've called me Biscotti. Like somehow I'm some barren and some great cookie fortune. I don't know, but it comes up all the time. So I'm allowed to mispronounce chegarak. Hegarek. We'll go for it. But whenever an Eldard, whenever Harlequin dies, Kegarack, whatever it is, will actually steal the soul away.

from Slanesh before she can grab it. And then I guess resurrects them. That part I'm never that clear on. But anyway. It actually is really funny, though, because the god specifically does that to mess with Slanesh. Oh,

there's a middle finger as he goes past. There's a reason it's the laughing God. Yeah. Oh, he's just, nope. Yeah. Yeah, he's giving him the one bird salute as well he grabs the soul. The newer one is you're not because that,

obviously, years of your lore now. And we actually just stop the lore, too. The lore hasn't continued, so. Yeah, well, I'm sure maybe. 11th edition will be here eventually. For them, when they die, their soul goes to Yenit, not the Slanesh.

So still lose your soul, but it goes to the God you like, not the God you don't like. And that's a key difference. I just imagine the two gods sitting at like the family feud thing where they're both trying to hit the button. Now, the last group is the Drukari, and they have a really unique one. And I'll be honest, it's an odd one because it doesn't really line up that much into the lore, but it is a key part of the lore.

And so what I mean by that is I don't fully understand how this functions. So we cover the Drukari a lot. Death is really common for the Drucari. They are not the dying race the craft world are. We don't really know how they're doing it if it's cloning all that. But there are a lot of Jukari. being made consistent. Well, throw it out there again.

The dark city isn't just a city. It is the infinite amount of webway space with billions slash trillions of Dracari in there along with a lot of other people. Yeah, I'm also going to call that out. We always say, oh, the webway is infinite, but you have to build stuff in the webway. Yeah.

You have to disrupt the webway. So I'm always... Settle down, party pooper. It's an infinite amount of awesome webway, cool Dracari space. Yeah. It's an infinite amount of space that's also limited, but not limited.

It really depends on the writer. That's the better way of explaining it. All I'm saying is the dark city kind of works like sex panthery, because 60% of the time, it works every time. But because of what happened with the Slenash, because of the fact that they're not in real space, but not in warp space, they are effectively withering, but very slowly while they're in, but very quickly when they go into real space. And they effectively,

Again, power from pain. They need to basically power up, and they need to do that by other people's suffering. Yeah, I referred to Slinesh, her effect on the Jukary as being a D&D death curse, but it's on your soul, not in your body. So every week of every day. Really cool adventure, the death curse is a really. You go down to Chult. You go down to the S-Rox tomb, Assyric by it, sorry.

I think I just goof that. I just brutalized the name. I don't even know what we're talking about, but I'll add in my own one. Ars Rock. The Rock. Anyway. The rock. But yeah, you're 100% right.

I just want to go into what it was because there, it's very slow while they're in the dark city, while they're in the webway. But it's super juices up when they leave. And this is why they don't just stay out. But there's a key piece. So this is what makes it weird. So Slanesh is able to pull from their soul in this death curse. but as your soul gets pulled out, so does your energy level, your strength,

you actually get weaker, slower, all those things. But like an energy bar in a video game, you can also bring it up. So think of it less as a soul and more as a soul meter is how I look at it, right? Oh, 100%. Every minute of every day. But you can overcap it then,

because the bar actually can go way beyond, because it's not just a set bar. And this is where I, the comparison, because I have the show Retro Recall, I'm doing a lot of old gaming. So now I'm replaying Zelda. I'm replaying these old games. And what this reminds me of is in Zelda, when you find the little hearts, you actually, it's not that it refills your meter. It actually makes your meter larger. Yeah.

This, they can't really explain how this happened, but it appears that something occurred with the birth of Slimesh that made their souls different. And the reason I go this way is that during the fall, the Eldar were doing all this decadence. And they were obviously taking a lot of joy in it. But I don't think it sounds from reading the books, like it wasn't just they were taking joy, they were taking power out of it. This was actually giving them sustenance. But the people who were part of that fall all still died. So the inference I have to make here is that before the fall, they were getting juiced up

and powered from the pain and the suffer. But after the fall, once Lanesh's death curse came on them, and I talked about it's a little bit of Dracari episode, I feel like it kind of broke the walls. And so instead of it being something that would fill you up to being, to being satisfied and full, it now became almost like an unquenching thirst, like we were just discussing where now, instead of me taking that heart and it giving me full HP, it actually takes my HP and adds 25%. And each time, 25%, 25%, 25%. So I now, in the case of like a vect, can be born.

Orderline Godlike in power, which is why I like he's not in the game anymore. I don't think Vecs should have ever been a model in the game. I own one. Boom. Because, well, he should have been. He's an awesome. The problem is, right. So we've recorded a cast talking about sixth edition, going into seventh edition,

40K for the history of 40K talking to forge world models. Vect is the definition of what should have been a forge world model of like, well, what is he? Well, he's only T3. How many wounds is he? Four. What else is he? He has a one up and vulnerable. You mean a two-up.

I mean, he did get smoked by mandrakes, so there is that. Yeah. And then what happened? Well, he didn't do anything to the mandrax. He didn't want him to show up every time he went to the bathroom. He got smoked by mandrakes and then. Oh, he ignored it. Right back to him.

Yeah, he just came right back to like a hundred clothes of himself. And he also got mad about the people that made that happen. So he killed all of them instantly. There we go. That's what I'm saying. That doesn't belong in the game. It's like, he's, oh, yeah. Yeah, so who's here? Vex here. Oh, so you win. Yeah. Oh, let's get myself in trouble.

I think Vect beats the crap out of a bunch of customs. Yeah, great. And the thing is, you got to look at some of these. And I think that they get like very small residual. They power up and then it goes down and then they stay a little bit more. So you went from 100% to 125 and then it goes back down. But then you're still at 101. And then the next time you torture, you're at 125, but you go down to 102. You know what I mean? and so on, so forth. What happens is you do get to a point. This is, again, why it's not, it's hard to do linear stuff in 40K lore

because it doesn't make a lot of sense. The best example I have for Jukari is when we talk about what, not in the tabletop, but what Lilith is in the lore. Lilith is that end of game Final Fantasy where you are grinding and you found like the weapon that removes the damage cap, that removes the HP cap.

And now you're just wrecking shock. You just get a hitter with, Knights of the Roundtable? Yeah, night to the round table or celestial weapons if you're doing Final Fantasy 10. Like, that's where the Jukari get to. So what makes them so cool is that in the lore, the most powerful Jukari are pushing into Eldar God,

like level of power. And it's, but it's only comes from this power from pain, which is what we should be talking about now. It all comes from their ability to inflict suffering and actually fear, et cetera, in them. The new mechanic for them in 11th edition, sorry, in 10th edition makes complete sense. It actually is a very, very, these pain tokens. I love the concept of pain token.

Just think every time you kill something, you get another pain token. Or if you fail a morale test. Right. Yeah. It is pain in the ass. Right. It is. But the thing is in lore, it's very nice because I'll go with my semi-counter Bradtheory on when it happened.

With the fall, I think that they weren't really powering up. They were just enjoying themselves. And they got psychic. pleasure from it and then it became an actual need. And that's what I agree with you completely. I don't think it was something where they were powering up just because of the way the fall went and some of the nobility post fall weren't that powerful. So they should have been like vectors now.

And the thing is, this is, and Garcari are such douches about stuff that this is a bad thing that they effectively turned into their good thing. Hey, you are cursed forever to be slowly dying and only the suffering of us. others keeps you alive and they're like, I'm okay with it. I'll just power up on it. And I'll get a lot of suffering.

Yeah, exactly. And you get really powerful. Why are you asking? I think you just answered my question. Which, again, is why I get annoyed by my Dr. Carrey in the tabletop. From a competitive standpoint, I think they're well written. I think their rules are well balanced. But from a lore standpoint, really, my Dr. Carrey or T3? All of them? like feel like again Lilith should be a bit better I'm willing to give you

what's his nuts you're in I don't care about it well it's hard for it's wildly hard to do it and in the lore they are they're kind of all over the place to be perfectly honest with you as far as their power levels because sometimes the regular guys are getting smoked and the top top guys are

untouchable so you're like yeah and it's not like they're really sharing after they do a real space raid it's not like Vec goes around and evenly distributes out all of the people they took. Yeah, he's not like, all right, guys, everybody's getting one guy and you're going to spend two hours. We're going to do this real even, right? Everybody's going to get their fair share.

No, not even remotely. It's all murder. All right, but let's actually take, that's a good kind of transition to the cabals. So I think this is me, and I don't care if you played Juqqqqqa and disagree with me, I think the cabals are the best part of Jukeh. The cults are fast and fun. The cults are fast and fun, but they're not as cool. The cabals are really fun for me. And the covens, I know people love playing Coven.

It's just tanky, which I find boring. But that's, again, not against you. I also own 11 armies. So if I want to play a tanky army, I own multiple tanky armies. One of them literally has tanks in it. So that's kind of my, man. Let's talk about a cabals. Cabals have their roots in the original culture of the Eldar.

By the way, no explanations ever given for this, because apparently the Eldar just had a nobility class. No idea how you attain it, what they were, they function. Or how it's based. It's not, they never talk about whether it's family based, whether it's what. You're just the head of your particular, it's almost, screw it, I'm going to go into it because that's how it now works is these are all crime families, kind of, their nobility is more.

Now they are. That's what I put, now they are. But when it was Eldar, it's just, the thing is, Eldar also technically immortal. So it was also this weird thing where all right, if I was,

if I'm Eldar nobility and then I die and reincarnate or get my soul recycled, like how does this? Yeah. But it's also, these are all the problem I have,

let me give a two second Brad ran here. Eldar nobility. Before the fall, they were using psychic powers to make reality happen. Who gave a shit? Whose ability was? I thought.

things into reality. It's cool, man. It's one of these things that every time I read, I go, hey, wait a minute, just every single time, but whatever, it existed. So eventually, because there were nobles, these nobles fell into the depravity. And this is what really led to the fall pretty heavily because originally the pleasure cults were in the lower levels. It was just people doing kind of dirty stuff in alleys.

And once the nobility found out the joy. it actually became effectively part of Eldar culture. Now, what creates the piece for the Drew Khari is that some of the nobles wanted to do even more. Because the Eldar could do stuff in the cities, but they were like, also, what are they doing back there, though? If you're like, hey, man, I'm going to Tuesday fish hooks and p. And you're like, that's super tame for me. What kind of opening the Hellraiser box did you need to make it so that this is a little bit more exciting for you?

Yeah. So let's talk about Comra then. So Comra has always existed. And the reason why is the Eldar culture is built on the Webway. Now, they use the Webway. This is their primary mode of transport. I might say primary. I mean like 95%.

The only time you're not using the Webway is where you're going to a World doesn't have a Webway on it to go build a Webway on it to go build a Webway all. on that world. That was effectively how it worked. So this massive logistical center for trade and transport is built. And the importance of the Webway is massive because it therefore exists outside the bounds of normal Eldar society. And Eldar rules and governance. Well, in a weird way, this is one of these fun things we always, if you know history, this crap never works. The idea being it will have this independent place because none of us, we don't want anyone to have rule over it. If any Eldar family or nobility, however the hell this crap worked, got control of the Webway, they would effectively rule the entire Eldar civilization. So the idea was the Webway is its own

independent trading port. Tortuga? Yeah, but Tortuga was a pirate comedy. This is more, oh, God, there is one, and someone will jump in on notes, but there's been a couple of these over time where they're like this no this place is totally independent and then the people running it becomes super corrupt it because it's just a trading port and it's a horrible horrible horrible place i was going to say hong kong it's not technically true but i'm a era where hung well hong kong got like that for a period of time there was it was someone the british east india is india trade company utilized anyway but things didn't do well what happens is some of this nobility that are doing horrible things in real space, start building like their vacation homes in Kamara and eventually moved everybody into their whole, blow your nose. You're fine. Just a nose is running.

Eventually they move everything into Kamara. The irony is that by doing this, they actually survived. So think of it this way. Not everyone, but the vast majority of Eldar culture is doing depressive. The most depraved group, though, felt they couldn't do what they really wanted to do in real space. So they moved into Comera to do it. That's who survived the birth of Slanesh. So they got the A, survived.

B, we're told, hey, by doing this, that's why you survived. So we're not setting ourselves up for a wonderful, happy place. I'm all in on torture, baby. Torture depravity. Don't need to see my hold cards. Let's just rock it. Yeah, basically, if you were in Kamara at the birth of Slenesh, you were like, wow, what happened out there? All this.

That sucks for them. You also had to feel pretty bad right away, though. You're like, hey, man, I don't feel super great. Yeah, that part came later. Or they were middle of torturing. Hey, this is getting better than ever before. Yeah, that's true. That's more likely what happened.

I can run faster, jump higher. Let's keep going. I don't know what's going on, but this stuff is. awesome. It's like finding out your pre-workout actually just anabolic steroids. Like, it's anabolic steroids and cocaine. Yeah. Turns out. Yeah. I guess new PR every day. So over time, though, the cabals do start to come out of this. And let's talk about how that goes. The nobility of the dark city had always been militaristic since their creation. If you're building a city that's based on murder and torture, you don't have great neighbors, simply put, so you need to add some extra security.

And by extra security, an entire army at your back. And there's not a lot of lore from this time, but it's implied the first few hundred years post fall of Kamara. There was a settling out period. Heavy air quotes there, in which case the noble family started killing each other. I was just a settling out period of wild murder in the... streets just holy crap had a little it was just you know settling out we just got to let's get ourselves into a rhythm guys and by written to get us there let's murder 30% of the population and just see what that new rhythm feels like it's not even they murdered it's part of the population they also went hey let's break

the web way to restrict where people can go but what's important about this is that when during this settling out period. It kind of ended with almost, Brad mentioned Tortuga earlier. Really good reference. You end up in the situation where everyone around me is a murdering criminal. Do you honest with you, it's not a it's Tortuga. We'll go to D&D again. It's Benzo Rencent. It's the drowsity. Yeah. For law, it's law city. You know what I mean? The challenge you began to run into in the dark realm,

though, was over time, they started running out of people to kidnap and torture. You need it's power from pain, but it's also survival from pain. The first few hundred years, there's a ton of other families I can go kill, random citizens, all this stuff. On the other side of real space, all the webways are gone. But not all the vast majority. The high of terror is now there. Right.

Let's also talk about why, because that you made a great point of when you raided another big family, you would have lost resources. You weak and everybody else looks to go, I'm going to attack you. Why would I go ahead and try to collect bodies from people that are fighting back when I can just go. And this is how the real space raids really began is, well, I can just go here and I won't lose anybody. I won't get weak at all. I lose no warriors because I go down to an agro world. I go down to random outpost and I slice everybody up and I take them home and you're going to wish that you didn't get captured because, well, magic exists here. So yeah. And what ends up happening is the key part of this is that horror culture, much like Eldar culture, how

no monetary currency to speak of, right? The only currency that exists within Droucari is survival from the death case. We'll be right back after a quick break. So what you need to do is if I'm a noble family, I need to not only feed myself the pleasure from pain, I have to feed all of my subordinates this. And what I was just talking about before with the challenge you run into is that within the dark realm, within 100 years or 200 years, there's no one left to harvest. They're either fully well armed or if they've survived this long, they're really good at surviving and fighting. So you can't go.

So what do they do? They then start peeking out of the webways that they could activate. They were out that didn't take you into the eye of terror. Guarantee you, there were quite a few bad jumps initially. Oh, hundreds. And I'm dead. You're like, walk down in Slinesh, which is, like, hey. You went, hey, where's this door go?

Oh, man. Yeah. There's just a whole section of comrades. is with just a nope, just written on the outside of the webway. Try the next one, guys. This is a no-go or tricking your friends to go through it. But they did find on quite a few worlds that they were occupied. Occupied by a species, by the way, that had no concept of the webway.

Webway portals. And you get really lucky, don't even know about the Eldar. So these be calm because that means, don't forget, the Eldar are a superior species in the galaxy. They are faster, smarter, and more technologics. advance in anyone else in the galaxy, barring the necrons, but they weren't awake yet. So we're going with that. So they begin praying on any civilization they can find. This is the origin of the real space rates. These are super small scale. You go and grab a few dozen people and go back because they didn't really have it structured yet. Well, and you had to remember that they have

to give enough for all your subordinates. So this isn't go grab 10 people for me to feed on. you have to give something to everybody. And you also have to figure it out because you got to keep enough. You have to give everybody enough to keep them alive and well and happy so they don't just revolt and or join someone else. But also you don't want to get enough people that they're more powerful than you. And they beat the crap. Well, that's about to become a bigger problem.

What we're discussing there is the early raids. What you just described is the much nastier part, which is post vect. Yep. Vect, we've covered him. Brad likes him more than I do. I find him fine. I love him. But, all right.

I'm doing for everybody. Asdrable, as double. Eric. Eric Vect is, was born a slave. Keep it consistent. Just call him Ted.

Ted. Ted. Ted. I think Theodore Vect would work. He is a ruler. Theodore Vect here. Again, Monaco, Top Hat, definitely walking.

And I'll see, the amount he's been cloned. It's like Theodore Vect to the 400th at this point. But anyway, Vect was born a slave within the dark city. He's one of the many horrifying lower-level Densians. He creates a crime gang. He rises to power and it culminates with him ruling all of the Djukari and Kamra.

Not via election, by the way. By the way, listen to our cast on this because he does a end of godfather take care of everyone at the same time. Yeah. It was cool as shit. So what happens is he then effectively wipes out the nobility class. He murders most of them. In a day. Yeah, but he doesn't kill all of them.

What he says is you rule by might and by right. And so what happens is the entirety of the Drukari culture shifts over to this. And that's like Vec basically says like your birthright is as valuable as a Prussian frank. Like full style. I don't care about that. You want to be in charge? Earn it. So the nobility take on these new titles, by the way, of Trueborn Droucari, which have gone having rules to not having rules to having rules to never having rules again, it looks like.

And also pinkies out. Oh, yeah. But a trueborn Jew carri just I want to cover real quick for everybody. A true born Jukari is just a member of the former Eldar nobility who is still alive. These are a 11,000 year old. It's natural born Eldar, basically. Not clone. But I don't think there is any more natural birth occurring is what I'm getting at.

No, that's what I'm saying. Those are what they are. If you had a trueborn Dr. Kari, that's 11,000 years old at least. He should probably be better than weapons skill four. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, you think so? Do you think weapons skill four should be better than that?

Maybe, maybe they've been working the jab for 11,000 years. It's probably a goddamn good jab. Or maybe, you know, what, oh, that's right. We did have, we had Trueborn. Was it in 90th? Trueborn, where they hit on twos? Yep. Oh, that was bad.

Yeah, no one liked that. No one liked that army. I watched you play that army. I watched you win a tournament with that army. You're welcome. Yeah. It was awesome. It's good.

It made sense lore-wise. Just oopsies on the rule writing. So cabals, I want to dive into now. The creation of the cabals comes out of this. You have some of the nobility were able to hold on to their power and they converted their noble house into a cabal, but a lot of others rose up from the, from the start to the bottom. Now we're here.

Got a hate Drake. Anyway. But that's where. That's how they came into being. Now, the way cabals are described can either be very lazy or very good. The lazy way of describing them is calling them a crime syndicate or a crime organization. They're not. I think there's a hierarchy, but that's about it.

They're super complex and very creative. I think of the cabals more as British colonies during the rule of the British Empire. So each cabal has autonomy over themselves. and their region, and they can do carte blanche in that area. But they still behold. I was going to say, I was going to say, one of the things why it's a little bit of both, they're so big that they can't be considered just a crime family because of the fact that these, they supply everything.

They do everything. Every cabal is completely self-contained. It doesn't need anyone else. Yeah. However, Theodore Vect is going to get, he is in church. That's full stop. Or you can try to not, but, and it's similar to the Imperium in that regard. In the Imperium, if your tithes are flowing, the Imperium leaves you alone.

In Kamara, as long as you show fealty to Vect and you follow what Vect is telling you to do, you're fine. You are welcome to challenge him, and many have tried. They're all dead. Now, what I like is the way a cabal grows, though. So if you want to challenge Vect, you can't, but you have to. grow. The way it works is Decht rules Comra with a true iron fist. It's

not that Comra's peaceful and orderly. It's the opposite. It's just that Comra follows the rules that puts down, which is might is real. Every night, yeah, every single night, Comra is filled with the screams of people dying. The city is almost at war with

itself. Rivals are killing each other for power, control, and looking to advance themselves, or weaken their enemies so as to advance themselves. And the first true cabal that came out of this was Vex. It was personal of all the Black. Cabal the Blacker. Yeah.

It was made up of all lowborn criminals and that Vect then kind of brought them together. They also were incredible at espionage, infiltration, et cetera. And when Vect exploded, he wiped everybody out and created almost a power vacuum that he then just stepped into and took control over. Now, this concept that he then did was he looked around and said, well, how did I achieve this? And I achieved this because I wanted more than other people wanted. And that became the structure of the cabals within Kamra. To this end, anyone can create a cabal. You don't need permission to create a cabal. One thing about the cabals when they start, is they're like gangs. This can be just a couple, Drew Kari, or it could be a

multi-billion member cabal, like Blackheart, is it Poison Tongue? What's the other really big? Poison Tongue. Poison Tongue's huge story. And so the whole city is in this like survival of the fittest style, much like movie Escape from New York, which if you haven't seen, that's on you because Kurt Russell with an eyepatch is a gem. And even better if you see Captain Ron. Don't, that was fantastic. Well, because Captain Ron, if you think about it, it's the third part in the Snake Pliskin trilogy, because he goes escape from New York, then he has escape L.A., and then he does escape to the Caribbean,

which apparently is quite nice. God. Also, escape from L.A. is terrible. It's not that good. Escape from New York is not that good either. He has to break it to you. But you know what is good? You get away from that.

Snake Pliskey doesn't take that. You know, it's really good, though? Captain Ron. Captain Ron is fantastic. When he keeps switching the iPatch from eye on. Exactly. Exactly. That movie's quite good. It's so stupid. Kurt Russell. Anyway, so back to the cast. All cabals start off as small organizations. Groups of warriors from like the lost echelons of the dark city, banning together. But they'll have the same high goal. They want to be Vect. Most of them die, if I'm being honest, because they don't really see.

He does get challenged quite frequently. Vecke puts down threats a lot. But in some of the those threats he actually absorbs them in. Hey, you didn't actually, it didn't work, but, you know, I'm going to keep you alive because you actually had promise. You got moxie kid. Yeah, because that's the thing. Every single, the truth is, every Drew Carrey, man, the Eldar are elitists. They don't see a difference between themselves and vect. They see no reason why they shouldn't be vect. It really, it's them and the necrons of a tour, you're like, you guys are on your freaking minds. But So they're always trying to move their way up. And this is what creates this, like, kind of churning of cabals.

You've got, when we read the books and you read your codex, you've got your main cabals. But there is a consistent, like, churn of new cabals coming up, coming up, coming up. And the trick to this is gaining power and influence. So most cabals have their origins, except for like the feud who came from nobility, in like almost what I'd call a sub-cabal. Just backstabbing within the inner-sit. The trick to it is you can actually grow your cabal to what Brad was just talking about by being aligned with a bigger cabal, Black Harbour human, unofficially.

Most of the cabals have their origins and what I would call a sub-cabal. And this is because there's all this backstabbing within the dark city. But you have to be careful with your backstabbing, because if you upset the wrong group, you could find yourself at outright war. And the thing about outright war in the dark cities, you will both die because you're going to fight each other. And once the battle's finished, other people are going to come in and finish you both off. So if you really want to eliminate a rival, you need to get someone else to do it for you.

And best way to do that is either to get the Mandrakes to do it, which is going to cost you a lot. Or you get a sub-kabal, these like small five, ten groups. These fledgling cabals are always looking for a way to impress, for lack of a better phrase. So they'll do stuff for VAC, they'll do stuff for anybody. The example I put a lot of times they won't know who they're doing their work for. So if you ever seen Lockstock and do smoking barrels, and if you haven't, go watch it now. Turn us off. That's better than we are.

But that's one of the themes in that. Snatch actually a little bit as well too. Or usual suspects, you're working for Kaiser Zose. Yeah, no. Yes. Two movies that are light years more entertaining than that movie. I will set fire to your office. You step away from Kaiser Zose.

You are not going to tell me usual suspects is more entertaining or enjoyable. Favorite movie. Lockstock. Doesn't mean you're right. I've been wrong and I will be wrong again, sir. I'm not saying it's a bad movie. I'm just saying pure entertainment value. But anyway, should a fledgling cabal in this system

without having success, their numbers will swell. Just how Vect was born a slave in the Dark City, millions, maybe trillions more are. and they're looking for a way to improve their lot in life. And so what they're always looking for is how do I join another group or make my own group to then grow? Now, as I said, most of them end up dead if they're lucky. If they're unlucky, a coven gets hold of them. And I love, but one of my favorites is with the cabal structure is you have to either overplay your powers so that people don't mess with you or you have to act small and draw in.

because there's that weird walking the knife's edge of, hey, these guys look like a threat. We got to end them. And they're gone. Right. And so this is really, but that's why one thing about the cabals is they're really, really, really good at espionage and subterfuge.

The ones who were successful, the rest of them all die off. Because to Brad's exact point there, that's the trick. You have to grow yourself, but not let anyone know how powerful you are until you're powerful enough to fight anyone off. So there's that middle ground of just pure danger.

Oh, yeah. There's a, oh, no, I'm in danger. Yes. One other piece about the cabals that becomes an issue for them to what we're discussing here is there seems to be a limited amount of power available within the dark city. And what I mean by that is it's not a firm thing, but it appears that like in order for one cabal to come up, another cabal has to come down.

It's not that there's a fixed amount, but it's kind of a fixed amount, all right? As a result, yeah, as a result, cabals aren't really happy to attack other cabals, but they have to. And the reason why is that I have to attack the other cabal in order to gain power and move them out. But once I attack the other cabal, everyone knows that I'm willing to attack cabals. and they are also a cabal and don't want that to happen. And it's basically Highlander. That's what this is.

This is stolen from Highlander. You know, in Highlander, if someone starts chopping off other Highlander heads, everyone knows that's a bad Highlander. You shouldn't be around him. And I don't know how else to explain this. Well, actually, there was a thousand better examples I could use to explain this than Highlander,

but I just want to take a moment to remind everybody that in the movie Highlander, Sean Connery was playing a Spaniard and he made zero, zero effort to do anything involving Spain. He actually sounds more Scottish in this movie than he does in The Rock. Anyway. You know what? Step away from that because he was the best Russian submarine commander with Scottish.

Oh, you're right. That's the other one. Yeah. In which movie did Sean Connery make less of a. an effort, hunt for Red October or Highlander of to not be Scottish. Jesus, man. Very proud Scotsman. Yeah, it's more this piece of, look, you're an actor and a good actor.

I know he can do an accent. He just chose not to. That's amazing. Ugh. Anyway, good balls. I love everywhere where this cast has gone today. We do old movie references. All right. So as a result of this, most of the fighting within the dark cities actually done by the lower level cabals. The ones that are so small, the larger cabals don't really care. And they fight amongst themselves and occasionally pick at the larger cabals. The idea here for the successful cabals is I'm not going to outright chop the head off my opponent. Because as we discussed also during the Drukhari cast, that opponent probably has covens that are supporting them so they can regenerate. So it's actually really hard to kill the leader. I need to slowly

wither away their power so that they become weak enough that not only I, but everyone praise on them at once. And they just disappear. Right. And like a feeding thing. You take away logistics and resources. That's what you're doing. That's the main thing. In order to do this, you need allies. And to get these allies, you're going to get mercenaries or other cabals. And that's going to cost resources. So how do you get those resources? Now get into the real space rate. Because at its core, this is the most important. part of the Droucari's lore from a tabletop to lore perspective. Why are the Jukari even in the game?

Real Space Raids. So the real space raid is when Jukari used the Webway to jump into real space. Once they're there, it's just a full-blown assault and slaughter and capture. That's what they're trying to do, and they disappear back into the Webway. The goal is to use the raid as a boost to those raiding, and also to bring supplies to strengthen their position back in the dark realm. But during the raid, sometimes the raid will continue longer than normal because during the raid, the Dracari are getting faster, stronger, more agile, more precise, because they're powering

up from all the pain and suffering that they're doing. And they actually have weaponry and war gear that's designed to heighten the fear and the tear and the dying suffering from everybody that they're fighting. They have tons of stuff that's not supposed to kill, but incapacitate and cause you pain as you're going to further power them up. And this in lore and tabletop works very well with that because you power up during the fight. You come in fast and furious, but like you really rock and roll once it starts going because

then they've got some great story. excuse me, they've got some great stories of this in a lot of the short stories with Dracari raids where they show up and then as the raid goes on, you can't even see their movements anymore. They're so quick going on. Yeah. And what I want to talk about the way the raids would go down. Just give me some examples is, Pari really are trying to harm and create fear. So they'll sit there. They use poison rounds, by the way, and they'll sit there and just plink at people and let it, because it's not just the person that they hit with poison whose, you know, insides are turning to fire and melting, who's screaming that's giving them joy,

but it's also the people around that person panicking and getting scared also feeds them. So they have to, it's multiple layers of horror is what they're doing. Others just go super fast, lopping heads off. The goal here is to get this thing almost into a fervor where the sounds of people screaming is louder. than the weapons and the jet technology that they're using. Because it is all about panic devastation. And I do want to call something out here. This is different than like a world eater,

Empress, Children, Night Lord, or Chaos attack. Those ones also violent, high level of suffering. I mean, it sucks. Don't get me wrong. But the way the Drew Kari do it is much more amplified. Like a night lord raid is designed. It's an art form, my friend. An art form.

They're all art forms, though. It's just different, but with different goals. Like a night lords, they love to create enough, like, havoc and problems that the people actually turn on themselves. Yeah, they've had whole populace just kill each other. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they want. The Carcadons are still lawful good, or chaotic good. There's never been something you've been more wrong about than that.

Oh, I'm thinking so much grief than that. I don't care. The world eaters also, a lot of slaughter, but it's blood for the blood god. They're looking, they're not always looking for combat. per se, but it's not just a wholesale slaughter. They're looking to actually create fights. Even the emperor's children, as decadent as the Slanesh are, it's still different. They're very close, though.

But it's different. There's why Slenish cults happen in Dracari, because they want to do stuff. They come from the same, it's the same origin of the story. But they are different in the way that the Drukari power up. The Slenish similar, but they're, they're, The difference is that the Slenesh you cults also, they're more just pure capture because don't get the slenish need to get you back into the dark, back into the warp. So, well, let's, one quick, we've talked about it in our Jukari cast, which is a lot of times

when you have rail space raids, you have coalitions because everybody, you're trying to convince all your, basically your biggest enemies to show up with you so that if anybody takes a loss, everybody takes a loss, even though it never happens that way. But that's what you're trying to do. That's a good point. So let's talk about the planning phase of Jukari, because the Jukari have a huge problem. In the lore and on the tabletop, they are a glass cannon.

They are built for speed and power. So everything that they do is designed to go fast and hit hard. The thing is that when you're maximizing damage and speed, you don't maximize armor. It's not even just that. also have to be able to experience the pain and suffering so they can't be in a big armored shell. But because you're maximizing your ability for me to hear your screams, you're like, hey, man, is Brad just hanging his head out of an open top vehicle?

Yeah, it maximizes his enjoyment of screams. It also maximizes my chance that I'm going to get shot in the face. This is a problem. And so what happens for the Drucari is they can't withstand a counter-attacks. heck, in effect. And this isn't the lore, also on the tabletop. I've experienced what happens when your witches bounce. It's not fun. They just stand there and go. So we're all dead now. As a result, they have to do two things to make themselves successful. First, their style of warfare, and we discover this in the Drew Carrey cast. It's layering levels of attack designed

to, you know, the ravagers and the raiders come in, taking out in placements, venoms and helians start terrorizing the outlying forces, then witches, incubi, cabalites, all. all to send, Coven members may join in on this. It's designed to be, but this layered attack of removing key installations as they go do. But they also need to have planning. And we're going to get into that in a second. And that's because in the dark realm, there's nothing more valuable than the slaves

brought back in a real space raid. You bring back a good real space raid can actually elevate a cabal like many times. Because, as we said, the only. currency that exists in Kamara is slaves, pain, and torture. So if I've got a bunch of them, I can then barter those for alliances or more importantly mercenaries. Incubi, for example, if I'm an archon and I want to move around the dark city safely, having a cordary, coderay, whatever that word is, of incubi around me, make me effectively invincible. But those Zincubai aren't doing that because I have a good personality.

They're doing it for a reason. So I have to form these alliances. Now, when we talk about these alliances, one of the big alliances you can do is a real space raid alliance. So I'm getting some of the larger cabals don't have to do this, but most cabals are going to need to bring people with them. And they can be with other cabals, so your rivals. It can be with witch cults who may, who actually may, by the way, be associated with

your rival, but they're witch calls. And covens, might have scourges, mandrakes, if you really want to party and bring in demons who are not demons, but are totally demons. All of them want to come in. So I got it. I've set my raid up. Now, what's going to happen is, I can't just say, hey, I'm going a real space raid. Do you want to come? Because the flip side is, well, if your real space raid sucks, I die. So I don't want to do that. So they need to actually show why is this real space raid going to be successful. And this is where Jukari, to me, gets super cool. The Jukari plan these things out meticulously. They're still Eldar. So it can be something as simple as, oh, I picked up a rumor from a Coursair Fleet about this unprotected settlement or a

slavery torturing is just will say anything and they'll tell you about a settlement or planet that's totally exposed. They also will do stuff with they'll actually implant, I don't know, it's hard to, they just say implanting things in people to turn them into thralls. It's not really clear how that works. Yeah, they have like mind control. Those are like a Covent thing on that. But they basically bring back information and or turn off the shields or whatever, you know. Yeah, they'll send, they'll take a person who they've captured and they'll implant this in their skull and then send out this, the necrons do this too. But it's in the infinitely divine. Trazen does this. And they'll send you back out to your city. And then while there, you'll just wander over

to the Forrestfield button and turn it off or the radar button and turn it off. Now, knowing they could do that, this is what they then go to their potential allies for and say, look, this is our plan, this is where we're going, here are the defenses, here's how many people are there, here's what I think will be great. So then we go into the real space rate. Phase one's pretty simple. The raid happens. They go out there, they do their things.

Can we have that again? Tata! It's a raid. The raid occurs. There is slaughter. Everyone on the raid is just having a grand old time. They are loaded up. There's so much power that's come in from all this pain.

They are having a plus five star good time. But then they get back into the dark city, which is phase two, which I find more interesting. Let me set this up real quick. It's one of the things we did talk about, which is phase two is probably the bigger, phase because phase two, you have to be ready for everyone to jump you as soon as you come back into the dark city, as soon as you enter back in a camera. So this is why some of the deals you made before going to real space raid weren't actually people to come with you.

It was for people to be there for you when you get back. So basically a large portion of the real space raid bounty is spoken for. You either have it for alliances on the raid. So, hey, this coven comes with you, so they're taking 10% or it could be for people who are protecting you back at home. It also can just be for to feed your own people. You have to fill your holds of your cabal. You have to give them over to the witch cults, et cetera. So all this is designed is spoken for. But you also do usually have a chunk that you save for bartering. And this is buying new services from covens to ensure the longevity of Narcon. Trading with Corsairs for more

equipment or information. You might be a gift to a witch cult to strengthen your alliance with them. Mandrakes, this is one way you can get Mandrakes on your side, a very, very good ally, useless model in the game. The other one, too, that they'll do with some of this is actually give them as tribute to another cabal to gain favor. You wouldn't go to a block card if you want, but it's probably a little bit too far above your pay grade. But the idea being is the way to gain favor and say, look, this is how good we are at Real Space Rating. Can we join you? Can we merge together, et cetera? Can you give me more jobs, basically?

I will do things. 100%. Because the real goal of the real space raid itself is never actually the raid. It's what the raid can do for the cabal. Everything else doesn't really matter. The gain you get in power from that is, as we discovered, is fleeting. So even though I got super powered up on this raid, I'm now going to lose power. So how does this raid make it so that I maintain more power going forward?

that's that. So that's a real space rate. The last thing I want to talk about, though, before we finish, is because I'm in the middle of this right now, is the cabals themselves. And one of my favorite reasons to play Drew Kari, because we never touched us last time, is they're one of the few factions

that you can really do whatever you want with and it still stays lower central. 100% low-centric. Yeah. I am, as I said before, I own a lot of armies. And almost all of the armies I own, are a homebrew. My Eldar are their own craft world. They're black and red. My tyranids are black and silver

for their high fleet. My guard are kind of a camo style, but it's a combined regiment. I've got Cadians, Kriegsmen, general regiments all built into there. My votan or Santa Claus themed, which was not intentional. It just, that's what happens when you batch paint with Rackarth flesh and Mephistan red. I do love the fact that you made Santa Claus on all your guys with long beards I was, I think 60 models in, I'd done the Rackarth on all of them, and I was going through the Mephistan and looked down like, why do these look familiar? And then it occurred to me, I'd just made Santa, I'd made 45 Santa Claus's. I didn't feel like stripping them. So screw it.

So now every model I have is Santa Claus is what it is. My harlequins are a checkered pattern. They're similar to veiled path, but it's a little bit different. My or my Orkazm Army, as I said before, really the only armies I have that are traditionally painted are in peasant. Aerial agents, my death watch, but they've got custom. Kind. I just want to say, not really. Yeah.

My thousand sons, my demons, and my death guard. Those are all traditional. But the reason I say that is that with my Drukari, I have this like hodgepodge of Dracari. Everything is painted differently. And it's one of the few armies, guard works this way, but where you can do that and it looks cool. Because it's supposed to be that way because you're bringing in, you're bringing in witch

Colts. You're bringing in covens. You're bringing in all your cabal and your cabal might have sub-caballs. So on the board, it should look like you've, you're basically just full of mercenaries that have been paid to fight for you. For those of you who build and paint armies, the coolest part about Jukari's, you can take a Jukari army and have different bases. You can have different paint schemes, different everything all throughout. And it actually makes sense. Like, you could, if you, if I'm running, I'm going to run a list in, in January of 26 at the Glass. city. Good event. I'll be there. I'll bring my Jukari. My witch cults that I'm bringing to that will actually be different. My two different witch cults will look very different from each

other. My warriors will look different from each other. Even the ships themselves are all a little bit different. I love that about them. It looks cool. It looks like, oh, this is a real space raid because all these people came together, Kari came together to take part in this raid. So for those of you who are looking for an army to build out and paint, I always recommend Jukari. They're a very army to play. Yeah, they're fun. They're horrible, horrible human creatures in the lore. Oh, God. Oh, God. But that's that. But with that, let's take a break. We spent a lot of time talking about Dracari and how they prey on settlements. So we might as well talk about someone who has a history of standing up to Dracari. Most- A noble man. He's no gilliman. Yeah, we're going to do this.

We're doing salamanders. Salamanders. Salamanders were a long time coming. The reason that we waited so long for everyone to know is that we were waiting on GW to expand their lore. They did release a Vulcan model. Yeah, the wrong one. Also, none of you guys said how disappointed Brad wasn't that.

It was remarkable. Brad was hyped, thinking that he was getting a Vulcan model. Salamanders were getting a book. It was even worse because they did the release and everybody sent me, Do you see the new Vulcan? I'm like, oh, man, it's going to be awesome. And I don't even remember where I was, but I was driving and I came back. And I got so excited to check it out.

It's just a new Vulcan Heston model. It was Ted. Yeah, it was Ted. That's what you got. You were expecting, yeah, you're expecting the largest, most strongest and in your mind, noblest primark. And instead you got Ted, the salamander. He was going to be awesome.

Yeah. God. Anyway, they still hope for Dorn. Maybe we'll get Dorn. You know, don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby? Oh, God. It's nothing I want more. Given what they just did, Calgar, imagine they had a Dorn model.

You'd have to play it at every tournament. He's so busted. All right. But anyway, with that, this John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. See you all next week.