The 40k Lorecast - Episode 127 - The 500 worlds pt 1 - The galaxy is a dumpster fire, so time for Ultramar to save it

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

On today’s cast we jump into the 500 worlds campaign. We open with a breakdown of the state of the galaxy in “modern” 40k. From there we jump into the background of the Imperium and the Necrons. We then go over to the set up of Ultramar and how the campaign there is to work, with a focus on Titus and his role in the campaign. We then close out on the Necrons and the C’tan shards, primarily the night bringer.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 40K lore cast with me, John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. With the close of 10th edition upon us, GW has decided once again move the narrative forward with a chunk of lore that they just drop out of nowhere. I like it. Yeah.

And since this lore is heavily revolving on Gilliman and the Ultramarines, there is no way I was going to miss out on it. Which also does again, Bobby G. going, Do as I say, not as I do, because wow, the ultramarines took the Codex of Star-Dase, put it into a T-shirt gun, and fired it into a tiered in. No, they have the Codex of Stardies. It's just over there. That's what they did with it. It's right over there.

Well, it's that thing you do, or it's, all right, it's over there. If anyone asks for it to see it, I have a copy of it. But, you know, it's over there. It's a little bit dusty. All right. So today we're going to jump into the new campaign books of 500 worlds. So it's very well written and really set the stage for the state of the galaxy as we're launching into 11th edition. Closing out Gillimus's Indominus campaign, but also launching his Indominus campaign.

It's a little all over the place. We'll get into it. But 40K lorecast, weekly show in the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please continue, comment, like, it boosts their algorithm. Number of links are in the show notes to, links to our YouTube channel for our bi-monthly Q&As and some other random stuff we dump in there. our other show, the history of 40K, where you can listen to Brad, myself, and Alan

discuss the history of this game on the tabletop. Most of it was broken. We also have links to, if you want to support us, our merchandise, which we do have, actually expanding it out, get some new objective markers coming, some new dice and some new clothing coming right down the pipe. And, of course, our Patreon.

Our Patreon is awesome. You guys have done an incredible job with it. I cannot thank you enough. It's why we have better audio. It's why it's better kind of everything. with the Patreon, very simple. $4.99 a month gets you this show and the history of 40K ad free. Or for our dolphin and crab lovers, 7.12 Australian.

Mandura. Western Australia is the place for people who like water and apparently don't we like people that much because there's about 10 people per square kilometer. Just calling it out. Fisherman's paradise with an abundance of sea life in great coastal waters. it's kind of like for the Americans, it seems like it might be the San Diego-ish of Australia. Average summer temp of 23C, so 75 degrees.

Average winter temp of 13C, 55 degrees. But they do get lightning storms, really impressive ones, like terrifyingly impressive ones. So if you don't like lightning, don't go there. Don't go there? Yeah, I'm going to stay away from the place that the storm lord throws down. Yeah, oh, yeah, I would say,

Emotech with this is when we're got to Necrons today. This is hardcore lightning storm. Pretty impressive. And they have had a couple days of like 120. So, eh, this stuff comes up. It also is kind of hard to get to. It's a really long flight.

So basically, if you're going to Perth, because that's the only reason you're going to be in Western Australia, take a drive down. Go take a look at it at Mandura. There we go. Lastly, Discord. Click into the Discord. Join our Discord. Join our Discord. 12,000 people.

have done it, so you should too. The world's worst reason ever. I don't know. Let's talk about the good things, John. We've got a great community that's really welcoming. We have tons of channels, movies, literature, lore, everything you can think of.

I mean, obviously, a lot of 40K, and we just have a lot of chance going on about kind of everything, and it's a good time. Also, memes are the best. Yeah, sorry. For the show Retro Recall, I do on Old video games. I'm doing Lemmings right now, so following is a key thing in my life. Which, by the way, Lemmings is awesome. I totally forgot how much I love that game.

Wow, Lemmings is fun. All right, but onto the cast, let's dig into this. The State of the Galaxy. So we, part of the show, we bounce around a lot and we talk about more. So before we get into the 500 world, I really need to take us all the way up to absolute modern 40K. And what's going on? Spoiler alert. It's not great. Not great. Oof. So the onset of the 41st millennia, the Milky Way is a dumpster fire full of poo. Dumpster fires are mad that you compare them to the current state of 40K.

Yeah. So let's kind of go through all of the bits. Well, let's go from kind of, well, let's start minor. Let's go with the best, the Jukari. This is the least of the problems. That's what I'm saying. We'll go low, low problems. You're like, what are the low problems?

problems. The torture guys, that's the least of your problems? Well, technically, yes. I mean, everybody's aligned under fact. He lost a little bit of glow with Yanade taking a lot of organizing the Eldar together, but not really. He's still the law in Kamara. You know, and if you've ever looked at someone that wants to take advantage of someone in their weakest points, if you want to punch down, Dracari, are your peep? And if there's ever a chance to hit a wounded dough, this is your time because, man, the galaxy is on fire, tons of places that used to be really well defended. Well, they're not anymore. And you know who loves to do raiding parties?

That'd be the Jakari. And they would love to go, hey, did you lose your fortified place that you used to defend you? Well, it sucks to be you. Yeah. Let's do some raiding. Yeah. Hope you like Kamara because I'm one-way ticket. So, yeah, but that's like one of the-

Spoiler, not going to. Yeah, one of the better parts for the Imperium is actually Drew Kari raids. They're one of the lower problems. Because actually, I would argue the bigger problem for them is the actual Eldar. Because the Eldar, I mean, it's complicated. And the reason why is because, first off, which Eldar are you dealing with? Bealtan, they're still attacking settlements all over the place because they're convinced the Eldar coming back.

Like, oh, next week, we're going to. coming back and I got to preserve this neighborhood. But then you also have Eldrad and Yvrain, who on the one hand brought Gilman back to life, but you really can never trust Eldar because they brought him back to life, but is it actually to do a good thing or to just get in the way of something so the Eldar don't die? Yeah. You know? Yeah.

I'll say, yeah. And I want to point out that Gilliman and Trasian Valoris both were kind of like, yeah, you guys can leave now because they haven't really reached out to their old friends. since taking power, which tells you even they were like, look, I appreciate the help, but there's a 0% chance that doesn't come to the horrible catch. Because the Eldar are actively attacking. So I want to put the difference is the Drukari are raiding, which is if you're at a subject of the raid, it definitely sucks.

But they are rating. The Eldar are attacking. You know, there are actual space marine on Eldar conflicts routinely where the Eldar are attacking. We just covered the blood ravens last week, you know, where the Eldar kept like, oh, no, what if we blow up a couple planets? Weirdly enough, they are sometimes the allies, sometimes that you don't know. And the thing is, is that, to be fair, most Marines, for instance, most imperial period, just don't know the difference between the craft world and between the factions inside. Yeah, that's true. Your B'LTan or Sam Hyatt, I have no idea.

You know, is this a Yanari thing? You know, what are we looking at? What are they trying to do? You have no idea. And you know that I didn't know it's the hell out of the Eldar, where they're like, come on, it's really obvious. Look at me. Can you not tell my eyebrow moved up a millimeter? Obviously, I'm Sam High.

Why are you all so stupid? That's basically how this goes. But another one that's equally problematic, but used to not be, or the Votan. Leagues of Votan used to be actually a benefit for the Imperium because they were incredible at trading. They've colonized a part of the space where they had colonized a part of the space where they were getting all the best minerals. They're a great trading option, full of mercenaries, which the Imperium could use a ton of. But now they're invading Imperial space and taking Imperial planets for their own. So that sucks.

And by the way, they're super powerful. And also from a place where the Imperium didn't readily defend before. Yeah, because if it was a all of our trade came out of it. You basically got attacked from the people who were trading with you happily every day. Like, oh. And by the way, And then you discovered the guys you were treated happily every day had better weapons than you did. But speaking of things that are terrible, the Tao.

The Tao, and I'm not talking shit here, guys, the Tao are one of the biggest problems if you think about it on paper. They should be allies. There's no reason why the Tao and the Imperium should not be allies. They don't like chaos. They are, their tower under threat from Necrons and Tyrannids, and yet constant full-blown war. In fact, the Damocles Gulf Crusade was such a drain in imperial resources that it actually put the Imperium back. There is no formal relations between the two of them. And while the tower right now a bit more occupied with tyrants and necrons and orcs,

they're still planning a new sphere of expansion into the Imperium to go try and reclaim it. They're also not even winning any of those other wars. Oh, they're losing terribly. It's just like, hey, man, the sixth sphere is going to be most of a, political show, if you read the towel. It is pretty funny because you're just like, we should probably fix the rest

of the area before we do anything. They won't be missed. They won't be missed. Well, let's go. I think they're the biggest threat right now. Let's go to the big threats. I actually disagree with this one, but it's fine. Chaos. I could see that. My thing is, is that once, I think

the rift is bigger than anything else. Abedon's 13th Crusade tore through is still wrecking. It is the big bad, but the bigger thing is the eye of terror became the Rift, and I think the Rift is a larger problem than anything.

Yeah, see, I'm torn on it. On the one hand, yes, the problem was before the Eye of Terror was there, it was surrounded by Imperial Defenses. It made Chaos' incursion to the galaxy in theory hard, but never really seemed to be that hard because they did it all the damn time anyway, just calling it out. But

now Chaos has a lot more access to the galaxy, the flip side to that, though, is it's still chaos. And so the more chaos can gain, the more chaos in fights. So that's why I look at chaos as a yes. I'll give you the yes, but. But the second butt, the double butt, is the fact that because of the Rift is making it strike in places they couldn't before, it's letting chaos Colts rise up in places that they never should have been before. They're also, chaos can accidentally cause.

the downfall of the galaxy by some of the threats we're going to talk about in two seconds, more, they can basically more easily take over Imperium space because it's being weakened by that's true. And they're causing a lot more problems. But one of the bigger ones, let's get into kind of the, I call the big three. Because it said chaos is not, for chaos players and chaos fans, I'm not saying chaos is not a threat. It's just chaos always chaos is.

There's going to be, as they get more power and more access, they just turn on themselves. and so they tend to almost self-contain as a result of it, as opposed to the tyranids, who will not self-contain, they have to be contained. And High Fleet the Viathan was our start-up from 9th edition. We're in 10th edition now. It came in from effectively every direction of the Milky Way. Gilliman and crew were able to kind of nip in the bud, some of the ones coming closer to Segmentum Solar, but they are still pressing into the galaxy everywhere.

There's a reason that one of our seasons of competitive 40K was called Leviathan. Yeah, they had a very broken codex for like six months. But, which was, I mean, honestly, played into the lore correctly. The Tyrannids right now, it's funny because when Space Marine 2 came out, tyrantids actually weren't that strong in the game or even in the lore, but eh, timing's timing. But they are a ever-present threat. Gilliman is basically virus-bombing planets all around the galaxy to just starve them. So the only reason that they've been held back a little bit is all the imperial areas they come into just get virus bombed.

So the fleet's starving and they're hitting other spots. Yeah. The Ultramar, I give an ultramarines credit on this because they're one of the first. You know, it's, duh. But they've found that you don't fight strength to strength. You basically pick on the tendrils. Yeah. Cut off portions of the tyrann invasion.

And it starves. Exactly. And it starves it. Yeah. They've been kicking it. They're kicking it off. But tiernids are, I mean, you could say that they're the big bad, to be honest with you on this, because they're terrifying and they just keep getting more and more and more unless you put it completely down.

Well, and things like GSC are terrifying also. Yeah, GSC are an issue, but one way you handle tiernids is orcs because that this is where, and it's why these last three are kind of important because they kind of play into each other and also a little bit into chaos. orcs are about to kind of kind of another glow up. We know it's coming. They're spoiler guys. There's a hit 11th edition. Orcs are part of the launch package.

So it could be Gaz is back again. But Gaz, we know he's reforming. He's getting his waab back up and ring. Armageddon's probably about to have his 87th invasion at this point. That's not going to go well for them. For the org fans, I still love the fact that Gaz's two works taped together with duct tape. Yeah. And?

about that. Well, one of the orcs is gas. The other one is might. The other one actually might be multiple orcs taped together with Gas's head taped on top. I was to say, it's the hub. He might, the monstrosity.

Yeah. Is Gaz Voltron? Yes. Oh, that'd be a good kit bash. Anyway, but the orcs are looking for a scrap anywhere they can find one. So what's happening is for the Imperium, as these fires are happening all over the place, you do have orc invasions everywhere. So we talk about the orcs largely with like the War of Armageddon, with Gaz.

We like to talk about orcs with stuff like the War of the Beast, et cetera. But, you know, last week we were talking about Blood Ravens and how there was just these random orcs on attacking. That's also happening throughout the galaxy. Random orc war bands are causing problems. And they don't get snuffed out easily. Yeah. I was to say one of the big things is,

Like we were talking with Tricari, Dracari raid and leave. Orks, you have to put down completely. Yeah. Or it just festers and grows and grows and grows. So you have to get rid of them because they, if you leave them alone too long, they'll just be like bigger and bigger problem.

If you knock them down, I don't, I hate to quote Chumba Wamba here, but they will get back up again, you know? It knocked out, but I get out. I mean, you could say that ain't nothing going to hold them down. But it is like dirty saying that. I know, that didn't feel good.

I'll be honest. That one didn't feel good. But that is what orcs do. You push orcs down and they come back up, which is a huge issue for the galaxy. Orkis never beaten. Yeah. It's, man. The Chumbo one, I think it might be better.

But let's get to. The next one, though, is that's a bit. The second largest threat, though, is actually from within. And that is the actual citizens of the Imperium. Rebellion and piracy. A canist thing in the GSEC thing. not, though, no, because it's not. I know it is, but it... I want to separate them out from it. It's hard, though, because you're getting more of this, because you're getting more opportunities,

you're getting more compliance. See, this is where I'm, I'm intentionally trying to separate these two out. I want to separate them because you're always going to have, we've got Red Corsair piracy. We know that's there. We've got Rift Rebellion. That's going to be there where inquisitors are coming in there and finding out that governors are actually agents of Slenesh. That's going to happen. But you're also just getting straight up. The more war and the more you turn the mechanisms and make the life of the sizzling shitty, the more rebellion you're going to do. I'll give you. Watch some of the stuff on Warhammer Plus. Every single video is if you watch actual commonplace in the imperial. It's a regular person in the Imperium. Exactly. So bad. Yeah. And that's

where it's the whole thing about this is you get a lot of these. rebellions, a lot of these, and some of them are just, something of just subtle. Some of them are just like, all right, guy just stops paying Imperial Tide to see what happens. Some of them are more extreme, but like we're going to form our independence. Piracy is the same thing. It's really easy to be a pirate in 40K right now because, oh, a shipping vessel went missing. Yeah, and? Like, it's not hard.

Well, it's also a big thing. Let's go again, why it sucks to be just part of a, if you're regular people and the period, because piracy is a big thing, because if something gets pirated and you bitch about it, you could be censored or killed yourself for not taking care of your, why did you let that vessel get pirated? Exactly. We're going to punish you for this. You're like, we're just not going to tell them. I don't need a chapter of Marines killing everyone because we didn't hit quota.

This rebellion and piracy one is important, especially for some stuff we're going to talk about in this cast today, because what happens is these two things make the segmentums and the systems less functional. Because even if you do get a world that's producing really, really well, getting the bits off that world into other worlds to then turn into other goods is a challenge within the Imperium right now. And that needs to get fixed. To piggyback on that, one of the other big things about that is a lot of these worlds, we talked a lot about previous casts, rely on... ships coming in to give them all their necessary goods because all they have, they just make Lehman Rust tanks and they need water and food and whatever else, which also makes the black market bananas, by the way, but that's a different cast.

So, but everything kind of sucks. Let's be honest, it really, really sucks. 40K is, whew. Yeah. But we're doing 500 worlds and anyone who's seen any reveals on it, no. There's one faction we even talked about, and it's the main faction. Necrons. Robots.

Now, back in episodes 101 to 103, we jumped into Pariah Nexus. So we're going to do kind of a quick recap to get into the meat of it so we can get into why this is going to come up in the 500 World's campaign. Necrons have been awakening in the kind of small piecemeal status from everything's about M30. Very small around M30, but, you know, we've all read Infinite and Divine. If you haven't, go read it. It's awesome. But it's very small.

When they were waking up, it's mostly as a function of calamity or invasion. And the later, that invasion bit became a lot more common as the millennia went by. Because we don't know when, but at some point during this period, the admec became aware of Necron Tomb Worlds. And if you're the Admec and you find this massive, incredibly technologically advanced race, slumbering an underground tomb that they could just raid and pillage. pillage. Admec are the people in the horror movie that are consistently going, we should split up. That is

the admec. So the admec have spent thousands of years raiding Necron tomb worlds. And they were really good at it for a while because they actually memorized and planned out the method necrons would defend themselves. You know what? Really think in my mind,

this is lame, but this is how I've always remembered it. The admec were like bank robbers that knew exactly how long the cops were going to take and how when they got the silent alarm and everything else. That's how they were. And then Edmack have been super willing to let other people deal with their mess. Because they're like, did we awaken these guys?

Yeah, but it takes this amount of time before so we can steal stuff and then get the hell out of here. And the ad mech, they had a really good run of this. I mean, they were stealing technology. They were selling weaponry, power supplies. We don't know how much they got out of this, but it was probably quite a lot. You're welcome, Skatari. Yeah. Oh, yeah, they did really well.

But then M-41 came around. M-41 is when the Necron slumber was set to end. Of course, they nailed this pretty close, by the way. Tomb worlds now stop being awoken by a geologic event or an invasion, which is kind of haphazard. It was more designed to wake up what you need to and deal with it. Instead, planned awakenings. So now you're getting lords, overlords coming in,

the entirety of the warrior class are now, are awakening. The dynasties are coming unlocked, and the ad back are getting Chuck Norris kicked instead of being. And it's hilarious because it's a great scene of the book where the ad mech have to go to Gilliman and be like, so, hey, we need your help with this Zeno race. And Gilliman and Aldenbier and were like, okay, well, how many of them are there?

And it's like quadrillions. You know, the most there are? Yeah. That kind of amount. That many. They're also more advanced than we are. And we've also known about them for 10,000 years and didn't tell it. Also, we could have totally done something about this way before.

Yeah, we just didn't want to tell you guys because we've been stealing. Cool. Pretty much. Yeah. Gillum is the pivot because all of a sudden, the tyrannid invasion is no longer the greatest threat. It's now the Nekron invasion. Well, let's talk about why, though. Because it's underneath him.

The Nacron invasion, yes, is right. Hey, where are they invading from? Right there. When I say right there, just look out the window. That's where they're coming in. They're coming up. Yeah. He gave the, I couldn't use this information yesterday.

Yeah. I mean, should we make a tremors reference? All right. I was going with wedding singer, but. Oh, come on. I'm going with tremors. Way better. It's just a very strangely entertaining film.

All right. But let's get to the 500 world. So Gilliman, now he's trying to take control of the impeachment. And the first thing he does is triage. There's just not enough forces to fight all the battles. And so he has to make a bunch of tough choices to solidify the Imperium, kind of claw it back from the brink. Luckily, he had some experience from this.

Because as far as he was concerned, he was doing this 200 years ago. Because Fulgram stabbed him, and he's been asleep since he got stabbed by Fulgram. So when Fulgum stabbed him, he was still running the, let's bring the Imperium back from the Horacey thing. he woke up and went, oh, so basically you guys just stopped exactly where I was when I died. Fine. Back at it. And Gilliman...

Which means everything worse, but continue. Yeah, he was so mad. I mean, he's so... Gilliman is furious for the record, by the way, that how little was done in his absence. But... How backwards we are. Yeah. So one of the first things Gilliman does is focus on resources and resource management.

because the Imperium is a thirsty beast when it comes to resources. And you try to keep them as centralized as possible, but goods still have to travel. And even if it's only a system or two, it's still enough to be interrupted. So Gilliman goes about, starts fortifying and securing all the most important and most critical shipping routes. What this does, it actually slows down the movement of goods, but it makes it so the reliability of those goods coming goes up massively, which is he did this actually during the horse heresy too. I just want to say this is another reason why I love G man. He's a genius, but he also went, hey, you're on a fringe world. You're going to have to figure it out for a little bit. I got some, I got to do some other stuff. So he starts doing this, but the same time,

Gilman also needs to build a backbone for the Imperium to build off of. And the challenge is, we talk about Segmentum Solar. Segmentum Solar obviously is the most important part of the Imperium. it's almost all settled, but a lot of its noble worlds, what I would call them. These are, they're a little bit hoity-toity. There's night worlds in there, cardinal worlds, administratum worlds, et cetera. Segmentum Solar's purpose is to run the galaxy, not necessarily provide for it. But more importantly, segmentum solar is like the last bastion of the Imperium of Humanity. So if you just concentrate everything there, you have no fallback point.

It's just we're all here. and then we die. So you actually kind of want to take the fight to the enemy. And kind of actually went as close to them as you possibly can. So he needed a place that he could take the fight to the enemy, far enough away from segmentum solar that he also could fall back to, and he decided to pick a place that he grew up. Now, I will say one thing about Gilliman,

that said a bunch times before, he doesn't do things in error, and this is no different. Let me do a side, though, real quick, for everybody. Because a lot of times we talk about a system of planet where Primax's from. Ultramar isn't even one system. It's almost its full sector, basically. Yeah. Ultramar consists of many systems and huge amounts of worlds.

Ultramar isn't a small place. It isn't, hey, this is the home world of blah, blah, blah. No, Ultramar is a full, multi-system small empire. You got to remember that during the Horace heresy, this was going to be where we base the new Imperium off of when we make our comeback. And then he went, oh, the Emperor's not dead yet. We got to get back. And yeah, Gillen picking Ultramar is, again, it's not him being a homer. This actually makes complete sense.

We'll be right back after a quick break. And the reason he picks Ultramar is not because he's a homer. Gillen picks Ultramar because it's the right call. And I say that not because I'm an Ultramarian fan. it's because of what Ultramar is. Partly it is. No, but it's true, though. That's not about Ultramar.

Ultramar is the most highly functioning group of systems in the entire Imperium. Yeah, that's my point. So Dark Age and Technology, most of the galaxy suffers massively. The Emperor goes out in the Great Crusade and most of what he finds is devastation and destruction. What worlds did survive at Dark Age were largely isolated, barely able to survive.

And the few that did, they thrived a little bit. But then Ultramar is a whole different world. Ultramar is a segmentum that actually thrived through the Dark Age of technology. It is funny because of the fact that joining the Imperium actually might be the worst thing that happened. It is the worst thing that happened to Ultramar. The worst thing that ever happened to Ultramar was joining the Imperium. They had not, all of their bad history happened after joining. the Imperium. Yeah, it sucks for Ultramar. Yeah, that's why Gillen picks it. It's the most productive

part of the galaxy. They have been invaded so many times, yet it's still the most productive parts of the galaxy. It's one of the most fortified parts of the galaxy. And Ultramar sits in a very advantageous place. It sits in the Ultima sector, which is to the right of soul. In fact, it sits really far from Seoul. It's almost on the Eastern French. Closer to everything else. Yeah. And this is also why High Fleet Behemoth hit it when it did. Ultramar is actually closer to the Tao Empire and the Votan Empire than it is to Seoul, meaning it's pretty, but also means that you can launch stuff out of there and hit your enemies quickly if your enemies of the Tao, which they are.

And the thing, it's made up of five sectors. And I want to point out, that's not five systems, five sectors. Yeah. It's big. Ultramar is just big. Yeah. What interesting, too, is we say 500 worlds. The 500 worlds is an old definition for it.

When the emperor got there, it was 500 settled. worlds. This has shifted around a little bit because there's been a lot of invasions in the last 10,000 years. There may not be 500 worlds. There might be more than 500 worlds. It's kind of hard to tell because it's been a little bit much there, but we call it the 500 worlds because that was the old term for it. Now, a region this large can't be governed by a single entity. So it's actually split into four slash five sectors. It's a little bit weird how this is done. Each sector of the four sectors is run by what's called a tetrarch. And this is a term, for those who may recognize it, it's a Latin term.

It's from Rome. G.W. Stoll that's the Deus Lydian, Diocladian, split the Roman Empire up because it got too large. And he actually split it in two. Two Augustini ruled, one east, one west. Then he had two Khazars who were deputies underneath them. So all four of them became the tetrarch. And the idea was that with this many people ruling it,

they actually can handle all the functioning of the empire. He was wrong, the empire still fell, but that's a side note for a different day. So when GW... The side fell significantly earlier than the other, but continue. Yeah. Mistakes were made. But anyway, GW, when they were writing Ultramar, they wanted to keep a similar concept.

And I'll be honest, this is a way better term for what they really are, which is feudal lords or warlords. It's actually what they really are, being honest. They're warlords. It is more. because of the fact that they're in charge of the sector, but they're really more in charge of defending the sector. Yeah.

Because it's constant war, that's your main job. Yeah, they're warlords. It just would have been awkward to call them warlords. Because when we think warlord, we think bad thing. Because traditionally, it's pretty much a bad thing. There's not a lot of benevolent warlords in history. So I do like that he's coming back and G-Band's putting everything back into. This is how we're doing it.

And he does drop, and I have to give this, they do a good job sometimes in the books of this, which is he is a little snarky about this, because he's like, yeah, we're going to do this. You know, like we were doing before. Because they stopped this. The Tetrarch thing went away when he got stabbed by Folgram. They stopped doing this. So he wakes up and goes, guys, what the F? All right.

But all right, so remember my perfect idea that was working perfectly every single. single time. So we're going to go do that again now, right? And everyone went, yeah, sorry about that, our bad. But, hey, hold on, John. What I want to talk about is let's talk about who's in charge of the northeast, south, and west. So unfortunately, I had to do it. Oh, this. Victory is mine. This broke me. So Brad has obviously read the show notes. So they broke up the realms for the Tetrax to rule. And I have to name them now. And unfortunately, I have to do them with navigation. Yeah, navigational directions.

I don't have a way out of this. So know how much I hate that I have to do this. First one is Konor. It's in the north. It's ruled by Agamemann. By the way, he's going to be Agamemnon. It's Agamemnon. Sorry.

That's not his real. I apologize. Yeah. Brad and I both, we both, we are sorry, Ultraman fans. It's Agamemnon. I cannot not read that when I see it. So I know it's AGE, E, M-M-A-N. That's not how you say. It's not how you spell Agamemnon, but it's Agamemnon.

Yep. Yeah, he's captain of the first company. Then the south, you have Andermung. That's Captain Porton, who's actually not an ultramarine. He's the head of one of those successors called the Genesis chapter, which is not the band, but would have been a lot funnier if they'd named him, uh, what's the, what's the- Invisible Touch? No, what's the lead singer? Phil Collins. Bill Collins. It would have been way better if it was Captain Collins, the Genesis chapter. I'm just saying, G.W. misses these things, and I don't even like Genesis,

but that would have been a good pun. This is how old I am I can name every person in Genesis. I'm not surprised. All right. The East, you have Vespater, which is governed by Captain Felix of the 11th company. And then Protost of the West is governed by Captain Balthus, who's another successor chapter with a way cooler name called the Doom Eagles. Doom Eagles.

Which is a really good name for like a fighter wing. There is a fifth sector. But it's just, well, the FECD sense. Yeah, the fifth sector is, yeah, Calgar runs McCrack because no, we're not messing around with this bit. And then all of them report to Gilliman. And this makes sense because each of them, even though they're space marines, they're very, these are ultra elite space marines. It's only so much data in thinking they can do. Gilliman can do all of it.

But that's the idea. It breaks apart this way. Now, another key part about this whole region is that Ultramar and the ultramarines are beat. Up. Ultramar is the most profitable and most stable region in the empire outside of Seoul. And that is in spite of the efforts of chaos and Xenos for the last 10,000 years over and over and over. Why is this? Well, because as Brad loves to say, there is nothing thicker in 40K than the plot armor of the ultramarines. Nothing. They have been almost wiped out.

Let's have fun. Let's go through. The original attack by the word bears should have killed everybody there. They effectively blew up a planet while they were on it. They got wrecked during War of the Beast. Then we took some time off. First tyrannic invasion. There's an iron warriors.

You know what the tier dids were. And they just got slammed into. There was an iron warriors invasion that actually took out a chunk of planets. The plague wars, invasion of Kohn or. Effectively over, by the way. There's still plague forces out there. Oh, yeah. Invasion of Kone.

That one actually did get snuffed. The Black Legion is still there because when they resurrected Gileman. And then... He came in in Matt. That is one of my favorites, by the way, for anti-Utramarians. Because Abidon heard that they were about the Res G-Man. And he went, yeah, cancel my calendar. I've got stuff to do.

I'm going there now. And it didn't go well for him, though. I will say that much. It's like, no. It did not. Also, there's so many... Also, Mortarian went there, too. Yeah.

Yes. It's so bad. Ultramar has been wrecked. But every time the ultramarines deal with it and then rebuild. And so what happens is a lot of their worlds have been lost permanently to destruction of imperial forces. But Ultramar continues. As a worlds are lost, new worlds are colonized. As Astardis die, new recruits are found.

But what matters... How do you miss the chance from secret level? But yet, Elstrom lives. Elstrom lives. That basically is what's going on here. But what matters most for this campaign that launch here is for the majority of the forces of Ultramar are not Ultramaris. They're humans. These are regular militarum and Imperial Navy.

I'm going to throw just a tiny of me to shame. I like it quite a bit because I still think this is how they should do it. I'm also sitting in my Warrior Lodges, but Giliman, his part of the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Navy. and the Imperial Guard this with him, I would say that these guys are more loyal to Ultramar than they are. Oh, they are, yeah, that is an important piece. It is. That's a big piece.

They are Ultramar people first. Their astromilitarium regiments are from Ultramar planets. Their Imperial Navy is all built in Ultramar and, you know, crude by people from Ultramar. So this is a, the forces of Ultramar are almost an independent place if it wasn't that Gilliman is part of the Imperium. But if he wanted to not be, it would not be in an instant. Yeah. It's not very codex of Starty's following.

I'll admit that. I'll admit that. But again, he doesn't have to follow the book. He wrote it. That's how cults work. Anyway. That comments that get me in some trouble. So, all right.

Let's talk about our boy. Everybody knows and loves Titus. He's a fantastic video game character. Gilliman tax his old friend. Also, this is the kind of task that you give to somebody you hate, by the way. His old friend who he's never met. I will be honest. Okay, we're going to cover a lot of Titus the next couple episodes.

Titus got wedged into this thing into a gap that did not exist. I'm going to be candid. They had this whole thing with the Tetrarchs all ruling these areas. And Space Marine II sold just a little bit too well. And Games Workshop went, what are we going to do? We can't just have Titus hanging out somewhere. I got an idea. And I actually like the idea, but this makes...

It's super cool. It's super cool. He just got put on the world's toughest pip of all time. Yeah. And went, hey, man, to show that you're good, why don't you recapture the 500 worlds? Which one of them? Yeah.

All of them. It's worse than that. So what Gilman's plan is for Ultramar. He doesn't have to recapture them. He just gets the worst part of the recapturing of them. So Gilliman's plan is a two-pronged approach. First is grow all the worlds inside of it. Titus has been brought back and he's made him master of the watch,

putting him in charge of fortifying and securing Ultramar. Now, this will get to his role in a second because his role is hilariously difficult. The role of the Tetrarchs is to go through and deal with this constant problem the Imperium has. If you look at the Imperium over the last 10,000 years, they probably have as many or a little bit more worlds than they did at the start of the Horace Heresy. Okay. But there might be only 10% of them are the same worlds that were there at a horse heresy. so many worlds just change over from invasion and all this stuff. Rebellion, invasion, getting exterminatist. They also trade hands, you know, your trading cards of who took it over, chaos, necrons,

or invasion, but, you know, it keeps changing. We settled it again. Okay, guys, nothing could probably happen this time. So there's never like a real net positive you're getting out of this. So the challenge is that it almost purec in all your victories. Gilman is like, no, we're going to. done with that. All the Tetrarchs, you are going to launch your campaign. First, you're going to fortify all your worlds. We're not losing any more worlds. Then you're going to go start occupying and taking worlds from the surrounding systems so that you're going to make Ultramar bigger. We're going to go from 500 worlds to like 700 worlds. Okay. And you're going to expand out. Some of these worlds, by the way, will be peaceful acquisition. We'll get to that in a minute. Others, not so much.

Not so peaceful. Titus's role was, all right, he's basically I don't have a better term for this that would work for Americans, but rugby fullback or soccer fullback, his job is to just, yeah, it's just to go, oh, yeah, center field. I don't watch baseball. So, fine, fair enough. But his, yeah, his job is to go. Soccer, he's the center fielder. No, he's not midfield.

Because midfield's different. This is more like, because his role is defense. All about this. Yeah. Yeah, true. How about this? He's following the ball. Yeah.

Yeah. So with Titus's job is he's been given the strike cruiser, the righteous fury, and it's full support fleet, which is. is rough and his little retinue who get to in a second. And his job is to go out there and just deal with it effectively. Anyone runs into problems, you deal with it. This is why it's such a whack. Again, he's on a PIP that he can't fix.

He, ready, all the other Tetrax are doing their thing. He said, fix anything that they're having an issue with. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I will say his crew is interesting to me. So some of these people, you all know, Gadriel, he's. back who's been promoted to an ancient. All right, so he's there. Also, Mataras, the guy who recruited

Titus, who he saved from taking a orbital strike to the face and secret level. He's there. But then we get new people. We get Commodore Gia Silva, who leads the Navis Imperial Fleet for Titus. And the one thing I do like about him is he actually leads a battleship called the Magnificence Enthroned. Good naming. Good naming. Although I will say G.W. should have gone with, this would have been the perfect chance for Bodie McBoatface. They could have been, our British listeners know what I'm getting at there. It would have been epic and they could have done it and that would have been great. But Commodore Silva has a larger ship than Titus and a larger fleet, which makes sense

because the Imperial Navy does have the largest ships, with a couple exceptions of, you know, whatever, the thing that imperial fists have, that thing's that special. He also has Amelia Minervis, who I enjoy. She runs to what we were talking about, the McCrack Defense Oggzilla, which is basically, she's one of the leaders of the McCrack regimens. She got a crapsont of guardsman, is what she has. The one that's interesting, because this is in the book, they listing out all the people that are with him, they name his astropheth,

Dynel Cornelius. I don't know why. I'm assuming this is either an over-attention to detail or a foreshadow. It's one of those two. I think it's a fortune. Come on. It's got to be a for. There's no reason to name it.

You have to name it an astropath. Those guys either just straight die or you're like, this guy's going to be a demon later. Cool. Got it. Yeah. And then the last one they have is important. Lucia Vesta. Lucia Vesta, her role is diplomatic because not all the worlds in Ultramar need to actually have war brought to their shores.

Some of them just are, they're basically part of the Imperium. but not part of Ultramore. Why she's one of the most important people? Because when you were making Titus's sheet, you didn't put a whole lot of points into charisma and diplomacy. Yeah. Somebody else has to happen. Someone's got to go talk to the imperial governors

who's not just going to cleave him in half with a chainsword. And Titus was going to do that. So her job is to go talk to them and say, hey, see that big angry person behind me? You're going to talk to one of the two of us, and this could go really well or whatever he's going to do. So Titus and his crew, but their job now is to just deploy wherever the Tetrarchs run into problems.

If they hit an issue, he's going to go. And he's going to hit one. Oh, boy, because the task ahead is rough. Ultramar is a mess. We have plague war planets that have Nergles curse on them. So these are demon worlds inside of Ultramar that can't be ignored because their corruption could spread to other worlds and can't be reclaimed because Nergel's curse. So they have to be destroyed if you can or quarantined. That sucks.

We have worlds that have fallen to chaos like 11 times. So that sucks. They also have fortified. Let's talk about the fact that they're not just rebellions. They have giant fortified planets that have orbital defenses around them. And they have no desire to be back in the fold. The problem is some of these worlds, though, like one of them is the Sikar system is incredibly wealthy. It's got all the natural resources.

You have to reclaim it. And it's going to be a fight. You also have worlds and still have tyrants on them, a bunch of them, just all over them. And these are usually, by the way, agri worlds. So agri worlds with lictors on them. Agri worlds with warriors, gaunts. You have to go down there and find them and kill them because they're just going to terrorize the local population.

For the most part, you know, the predatory plants aren't there, but that's the thing. And then, yeah, orcs. You've also got orc planets all throughout Ultramar because where there's a fight, there's an orc. And there's always an ork. Then we have your standard pirates. just floating around.

And, you know, just your regular old planets of, hey, I just don't really want to be part of the Imperium. Let's talk about this. Also, we kind of glossed over at the pirate forces. Some of these pirate lords are wildly powerful. They're small warlords unto themselves. It's not like it's a gun- and around with the Millennium Falcon, like, you know, harassing people.

Yeah, this is more Blackbeard. Well, he wasn't real, but still the concept of Blackbeard. This is, it's fun. Yeah. I should go dread pirate Roberts. But anyway, yeah, this is serious. These are fleets. These are giant fleets doing this stuff.

And then, yeah, it's just a whole system's kind of a mess. So Gilliman's also making this a little bit worse because he's also, in effect, increasing the imperial tithe for all of Ultramar. Because he's not pulling a Huron. Because he's not going to pull a Huron. He can't just take the tie. that's coming in Ultramar and put it into Ultramar. The tithe has to go back to the Imperium,

but Ultramar has to build up. So we have to basically increase the tithe, more troops, more supplies, more everything, reducing the wealth and reducing the power of a lot of these planetary governors, something that they're not going to like. So Gileman's almost pushing Ultramar further into rebellion, which puts even more pressure on the Tetrarchs to do more stuff

and then Titus to party around and deal with it. But all of this is going on. Gilliman's aware of all this. All this stuff we've talked about up to this point, every single member of Gilliman and his crew around him were ready for. But there's another problem that's about to pop, and that's the necrons. I love the fact that you righted the ship for like eight seconds. And you're like, I think we got this, guys.

It's a super problem. But we're treading water. we got everything go over, we're about to go forward, and then there's neckrobs. Yeah, so I want to, we're going to be setting up the next episode of the next, like maybe five or 10 minutes. So the onset of the 500 World's campaign was going well. And no surprise, the leadership of a primark and a bunch of the top captains of the, you know, ultramarines were able to write it. World conquest begins. And standard protocol at this point is to use rogue traders. They bring in rogue traders as we brought up before.

The scanning doesn't really work, like long-range scanning doesn't work in the 41st millennia. So the rogue traders... There's no reason whatsoever, but continue. Well, for plot devices, that's the reason. And so they send the rogue traders out to all these systems to basically figure, hey, what is there? Let us know and give us information back. The rogue traders go out, and they go system by system scanning the planets, giving details. I need to give one thing to people that are long-term listeners, because

In the show notes, on purpose, John has kept every single rogue trader as Rouge trader just to piss me off. Every time. Every single time. So when Brad has to read the notes, because the thing is, and he will read it, Rouge, every single time. Every time. Yeah. These are the little things I get to do in my life to give myself the joys that I deserve in this world. It doesn't, it harms, well, it harms you, but it doesn't.

Our listeners don't get into it. There's nothing bad happens to them, but just Brad, who's had a stroke, has to ask himself, am I having another one? Why can't I read this word correctly? Obviously, he meant to say rogue, but I keep hearing rouge. No. Rouge every time.

Every time. But so one of the areas that a rogue trader gets to is the Odrya system, sitting on the eastern side. Eastern. Yeah, of Ultramar. The rogue traders were actually surprised what they found. when they got there. They found a robust agri-world that's still reeling from the tyranids, but hadn't been changed that much. Hive fleet had been blunted, but the plant life had been changed

over. The tyranids there, but it's a pretty good planet. There's a feral world, which has no immediate value, but it could be colonized later, but the big one is a frontier world. And this is a world that, it's interesting actually was still giving tithes back to the Imperium, but just they had lost contact with it. And the road traders actually marked it as a pre-hundreder. hive world, meaning that the potential was so great that it could be turned into one of the major resources for the ultramarines. And this world is called Nova Magnor. And it's the first major site of conflict of the 500 worlds.

So the forces of Ultramar, go. Again, Titus goes, man, this is awesome. You know, in my first couple days in my new role, I got this new world. We're going to be producing everything. The only thing that would suck is if, I don't know, maybe. if it was an actual tomb world. Yep, which is exactly what it is. And not only is it a tomb world, it's a

tomb world with a shard of the nightbringer on it. And this is... Which, for everyone, if you're looking to not have to fight a shard of a Catan, this is the one you don't want to fight. Yeah. So we're going to close out with a little common on some tomb worlds. So not all

tomb worlds are equal. This is an important point about necrons, because they're not a monolith. Get it? In all seriousness, not all tomb worlds carry the same value and importance. There are tears to it. So first off, all tomb worlds belong to a dynasty. Some dynasties are large. Some dynasties are small.

And the plan in the Great Awakening was for all the tomb worlds to awaken together. And this happened close-ish. I mean, look, for 60 million-year nap, they were close. They were pretty close. 10,000 years is nothing. Yeah. And the idea is once a tomb world would awaken, it would be connecting with all the other tomb worlds, namely those of the same dynasty.

and then head out in the galaxy. Some two worlds were of greatest significance and others. They were all meant to be self-sufficient so they could kill whatever the Xenos were present because their logic had calculated the Eldar, the quirk would have fallen by now, which, accurate. They missed humans. That was their big calculation they were wrong on,

and also they missed how the Eldar would fall. But some worlds had more artifacts on them than others. Nova Magnor was one. Now, we have talked a little about C-Tans, because they're going to come up a lot in the next couple of episodes. At the conclusion of the war of heaven, the necrons hurled themselves at the sea dance. They wanted to kill the star god that had tricked them and enslaved them. In their fighting, they discovered that often it was impossible to kill the being of pure energy.

Some they destroyed, but others were just too powerful. The ones who were too powerful, they had to break them apart into shards. And imprison the shards. Exactly. I have no idea how this works. or even would pretend to, but the necrons were able to blast apart these C-Tans, making them into these little fragments, and then containing them. And these C-Tan shards are insanely powerful.

They could actually power the massive tomb worlds, because they're reactors. And some of the coolest vehicles in 40K. Yeah. There's also one on Mars, just say. There's one on Mars. Locked the way in a vault that the Mechanicum cannot open, thankfully, because the Emperor got there first, built it, and sealed it. and knew what this was, but there's hinted evidence that almost all the creations of mankind

from the age of technology came from this because avoid dragon actually is technology. In my mind, there's a button and it's like Guardians 2 when he's Rockets trying to tell not to push the one red button and he just keeps immediately pushing it. I feel that that was the ad mech with the emperor and he's like, all right, you guys aren't interested with this. And also, I know people ask, well, you guys, to do a cast on the Dragon on Mars. Guys, it's a 15-minute cast. We'll do it at some point, but there's just not that much on it. It's just very well. It's hinted constantly in books, but no one's ever drawn it out. So you have to kind of just infer it. But since the awakening of the Necrons, another power

of the C-Tan shards has been utilized. It's an offensive one. If the shards are removed from their shackles, they basically manifest as a version of its former self. Nowhere near as powerful. and they're actually still controlled by the cryptex, sort of, at this point, which makes sense, because a C-Tan's a god. So this is not as powerful as a god. You mean the guys that eight stars? Yeah. Yeah. And so while they're still, you know, shells of their former selves, they're pretty rough.

Now, each C-Tan shard has powers, but some of them are more than others, and one of the worst ones is the Nightbringer. And the Nightbringer comes from one of the worst. You can go with maybe the deceiver because he did the whole thing. As far as, if Nightbringer or, I think the burning one's also really rough, they haven't put him in the game yet. There's a couple. The Nightbray is so crazy though. Because like during the war in heaven, or I guess after, it was actually. It was during the War of Heaven.

Because they turned on the Catan in the middle of the fight against the Eldar. Yeah. So during the War in Heaven, the Nightbringers, so all the Sea Tan, are different. They're not, you know, they're not a species. Well, they're a species, but sort of. They're all independent. The Nightbringer is pure evil and destruction. In fact, the Eldar's love mythology about the Nightbringer. It had basically no intention in strategy and warfare. It just wanted death. The more it killed, the more it hungered for more killing. It's like Darth Niles. Yeah, or Slanesh, actually. I mean, it began just feeding. And so what happens is the Nightbringer,

actually at one point during the war in heaven became so problematic that it actually started attacking the other Catan defeat on them, which was kind of good for the Necron's for a little bit there, because he was actually killing other Catans, but also made

it kind of hard because he was feeding on them and growing in power. So this one sucked. They did eventually break it apart and shatter him into pieces, but a shard of the Nightbringer is pure death. They've been encountered a few times, and every time they get encountered, it's super, super,

bad. They can pull entire army down by themselves. In the game, you don't want to fight the nightbringer. It's pretty badass. Well, it depends. Right now, you don't. Like, right now, go back seven months. Did you care if someone put a nightbring on the table? No. It's still annoying, but right now, right now, it's horrible. This is what's on Nova Macs. This is what's on Nova Magner. Now, the reason this matters is, and we're going to get to this, we're going to break here. And next week, we're into how serious Nova Magner gets, because this is going to escalate like the fight in Anchorman. Is this?

Well, let's talk about Amantar, who's going, hey, man, you know what to be awesome? If I grabbed all of the shards of the Nightbrager, what if we brought the Nightbringer back to God's status? Yeah, let's not do that. So we're going to have necrons, we're going to have tyrannids, we're going to have ultramarines, we're going to have Titus. This whole thing is going to blow up because we've actually, with Amantar, we're adding someone new to the necrons and actually adding a new plot to the necron forces that's creating an internal challenge for the necrons, which is going to be super cool.

So next week we're going to dive basically into more of a linear, here's the battle, here's how it's going in, and this could be interesting. So, by way, with that, John Barsati, Bradchester, this guy. See you guys then.