The 40k Lorecast - Episode 129 - The 500 Worlds pt3 - Titus and Ammentar win?

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

On today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the 500 worlds campaign book with the conclusion of the events on Novamagnor as well as the events throughout Ultramar. We open with Titus and crew needed to turn their situation around quickly as they are on the verge of losing the planet. While at the same time Ammentar needs to get his Nightbringer shard and will not be denied it. Luckily they both kind of win? After that we jump into the goings on throughout the rest of Ultramar and some of our theories on what is coming next for the lore around the Necrons.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. Today, we'll be finalizing our coverage of the 500 World Campaign with a dive into the last little bit. I mean, well, yeah, for now, whatever. Who knows where GW is going to have this stuff anyway. But 40K lorecast, weekly show on the lore of the Warhammer 40K Universe,

releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please, like, comment. Mostly just comment. That's what's awesome. I enjoy reading them, and they're fun. So thank you all for doing that. It helps our algorithm, spread us to more people, and, yeah. Show notes have a lot of links in it.

First is our YouTube channel, where we have our bi-monthly-ish Q&As. We were a little late in the last one, but someone couldn't stop getting surgery. So, you know. I mean, it's not my fault. Like the Pokemon collector of back surgery. But yeah, so you got to catch them all, maybe. Exactly. But also a link to our other show.

history of 40K. And if you want to support us, a link to our merchandise and, of course, our Patreon. Our Patreon is really simple. It's how we fund a lot of our show. It's what allows us to expand areas. Some of them have failures, guys. I apologize. We had good ideas. And it turns out poor execution. But with the Patreon, $4.99 gets you this show and the history of 40K, completely ad-free, or $8.32 New Zealand dollars. Sorry in advance for how bad I'm going to these names. But New Plymouth, lazy naming mechanic there for the record, is the sunniest spot in all of New Zealand, boasting 2,592 hours of sunshine a year. So the average seven hours of sunshine a day, which is not half bad. I would kill for that living where I live currently in

Michigan. Actually kill for that. I'm jumping in on this, John, because Joe, the New Zealand dollar or kiwi got introduced July 10th, 19th. Replaceing the New Zealand pound. Strong. That's how much they hated the queen. They were like, we're just changing it to dollar. Like, that's just, that's just lazy. I like it, though.

Now, screw you guys and your stupid colonialism. I support it. I support it. All right. But New Plymouth looks at, ooh, here we go. Mount Taranaki, Taranaki, Anyway, which is a volcano that compares itself to Mount Fuji, but the surroundings way better. Mount Fuji is called those cherry blossoms.

This one actually looks pretty, and it's cool as hell. And if you like ponds, New Plymouth is for you. Because New Plymouth has a beautiful coastal path, a giant park, temperate weather, and it's situated in the region called Taranakai. So they call it the Taradice of New Zealand. Get it? Yeah. Welcome to Teradice.

Grown all you want. I've heard way worse from way shittier places. Also, boo your rugby team. Boo. I will take one. So I root for the box. So boo. Anyway. But we don't have a Discord too.

So if you want to come yell at me about that, join it. Come on to the Discord and explain to me all the reasons why I'm wrong about rooting for the spring box or whatever. I just, however I just pronounced so much of that wrong. Link in the note to the Discord. come on in, 12,000 plus people now. Great spot. Honestly, just go to ask John and Brad if you have any opinions, and I respond.

Just candidly, it's where I am. But it's also stuff for literature recommendation, gameplay, memes, general chat. It's a really great spot for people, especially who are newer to the lore or are trying to get going. We have a lot of veterans in there who are really great at sharing their experience, their knowledge. One of my favorite things people ask in there is,

hey, I read such and such, I liked it. Is there anything else like this? you will get a C of answers. And it's really a great way for you to not have to read one of the crappy Black Library books. Because, you know, out of like 450, there's some duds. But with that, onto the cast. Let's start off with Titus taking the L. At the end of our last cast, Titus and crew took a pretty big loss.

Well, the crew took a loss. The casualties were from, hey, as your name showed up in this book so far, You're probably not going to make it, buddy. Yeah, it was basically every red shirt at Ultramarine died. Phasers were not set to stun. But for a real reason, as opposed it, I like this quite a bit in the writing, because a lot of times Marines take an L just to set up a bigger victory. But this wasn't an elf just to set up a bigger victory.

It was actually part of an actual plan to figure out what the Marines actually actually knew how they would react. And I like this quite a bit in this. Yeah, you are right. So let's talk about what happened. So come on. Come on. Come on. Give it some mojo. No, it's fine. It was just, it's just the, all right, let me put it's way. The story of what happened, great. The fact that they just murdered every, they redshirted all of these space Marines are like, oh, yeah. I mean, it was nonstop rear guard action after rear guard action from space marine, something you can get named. They were just, they were even, lazy. They were like, oh, yeah, and then another squad did a rearguard action because they were like,

we're not even bothering giving him. He didn't earn a name in this story. He didn't earn a name. They did, however, have a lot of heroic rearguard actions. Yeah. I think one of the dreadnots died. It was a thing. All right. But the whole reason behind this was it was actually not pure chance that Titus and the group were overwhelmed by Amantar's forces. It was actually totally a plan by one of Amantar's leaders, Nemis, Anu, Tensei. On who tech and whatever. I'm a tech, actually. Is it under tech?

Yeah, it's auto tech. How are you? I'm 100% right. How do you know? I know things. Okay. I also, I love, you know, we're both confident people.

I just love confidence with you said, you pronounce that correctly, and I know you, and we both were guessing our pronunciation. Actually, for a change, occasionally, I do go on the internet and get the pronunciation. So if the internet says you're correct, by the

or at least Google down. Oh, good. That's what a reliable source. The internet has never been wrong, John. Not once. God, I'm actually of the age where we weren't allowed to cite the internet in college. And now it's like all you cite. Like, I remember that you couldn't cite.

Oh, you're right when I had to write my thesis. I wasn't allowed to cite anything from the internet. I do like what I do try to. I'm that old. Sorry everybody. Sorry everybody likes Wiki. But there's a reason you can't cite Wiki. I love when somebody cites Wiki on something.

I'll just go in and change the wiki. Oh, there's nothing better when people change wikis. All right. But back to Anotech. So Anutec calculated that the humans knew about the phasing capabilities in the necrons. And she knew that they would do whatever they could do to shut down the necrons' ability to bring in reinforcements. Thus, by making it appear like the main facility was less protected, they would have no choice but to attack it. And she did by making it appear like it hadn't come online yet.

This way, they have no choice but to go and attack it, which, you know, kind of was true. I was about to say, it wasn't completely untrue. They just had a civil war with Sotak like five minutes before this. Right. And what she was doing was basically once they'd awoken or, sorry, once they'd invaded, what they did was they looked around and said, all right, we can conquer this planet. But these guys in blue armor are a problem. And the problem was that it wasn't.

that the necrons couldn't defeat the ultramarines because they could. They could just keep warping in more and more guys, or sorry, phasing in more and more necrons. But the concern they had was the ultramarines could hold out. And the longer they held out, they brought in more people. And eventually this became just an endless struggle. So the idea was, well, why don't we just trap them, kill all the ultramarines? You shouldn't know what they were called, obviously. And then we're off the races. However, with all the calculations, she forgot one thing, which is the thickness of ultramarine plot armor. Plot armor. I was just about saying that.

Plot armor is so thick. You got to give the speech about the Urquah that. Your armor is thick. Yeah. It's like fighting a land war in Asia. You just don't do these things. One of the other parts of the plan, too, was they want to win, but also they're not just in it to kill Marines. They wanted the shard of the night bringer.

That's the whole thing. They have to go get that. And so Titus succeeds. He's able to get back, and he returns to the main base, which is called obstinous baston. Obstinious Bastion, whatever. Obstinous Bastion. Whatever. And he finds, when he gets back there, the Necron's are in a full court press upon the Imperium.

Every single front, there's an attack. Locus skirmers are attack in the outlying areas. Scarabs and wraits are devastating the lower-lying settlements. Regimental soldiers. being slaughtered by Nightbringers, plural, which by the way, were described as a towering abomination with black robes and a scythe that would turn living beings to dust just with its presence. So, you know, guardsmen were doing great.

As usual, regiments were getting thrown into the wood chipper. Yep. And so Titus looks around and realizes it's untenable. And he calls for aid from Ultramar. And because they're ultramarines, he actually does get a response. The response is, yes. The fourth company comes back. He fires up, come on.

Now, there's so many references he can make. He put up the fires of Gondor. Come on. Well, no, but he doesn't, though, because the thing is the Ultraman is talking to do that. That's what, like, the other, like, lesser chapters have to do. They have to something epic. The lesser chapters. The ultramarines just put out a phone call, a text to the group chat saying, hey, can someone help me move this weekend?

And, like, four people come back with, yeah, man, I got you, because we're ultramarines. We're reliable and helpful. So I want to do something real quick on this one because this is one of the first times in the lore that I've really felt that the necrons were an actual menace. Because for the almost the entirety of the lore of 40K, necrons have always been this sinister robotic force that was doing something. But they were never. They always got defeated. Yeah. The truth is the necrons always get defeated in the law up until 500 worlds, even in the whatever, the.

one we cover it. Not Indominus. Is it Indominus? It's the Prya Nexus. Yeah. Yeah, because even the Parian Nexus area, like the Necrons were pushing back, but the Imperial Force are still doing okay there. This is the first time I can think of where the necrons really are beating up on people. But they're also using

a full force. You're feeling the force of a dynasty coming at you. Because we've had so much of the necrons just being, we're fighting amongst ourselves will occasionally beat these guys, but we don't really care because they never thought that they were a real fight on. almost.

They, you know, this is the first time that I felt the necrans were actually pushing to conquer and actually win. And I just, and it felt like, oh, this is a actual threat to the galaxy now. Completely. And now the next bit we're going to cover here, guys, just so it's, we're going to get to something where two or three things all happen at the exact same time. So it's going to sound like we're kind of time warping a little bit. It's actually, this is very well written, especially for a short story.

So while these necrons are pushing in, Titus takes a moment, actually literally meditates and decides to, not in a hippie sense, but hey, let me make sure I'm making the right decisions. He looks around, and the thing he realizes is, remember, he was Death Watch. He knows that the markings and the necrons are something was off about them. When he went into the spaceship and killed everyone there and took the shard, everyone had the markers of the Sautek Dynasty on them. But when he went into the complex to bomb it, it was different.

These guys have a different markings. The ones lying on the ground were SELTEC, but these ones are... They had three different is what they have there. And so he's noticing that they all have different markings, which is odd. That's not something in Necron's doing. They don't cross support. They don't work together at all. In addition, he started noticing some odd behaviors from them.

Necron, especially Necron warriors, are very rigid. They walk in a straight line. They fight like Revolutionary War or Civil War soldiers. shoulder to shoulder, fire all the guns, deal with it, concept. They never break formation. These ones do. They constantly actually break formation where they would run off chasing, like, random retreating soldiers, like down alleyways, that kind of stuff,

which is like just they don't do that. And Titus doesn't know about the destroyer curse, obviously, no one knows but the destroyer curse outside of the Necrons. But he under, but this is the first time where we see another race becoming aware that something's off, within the Necrons. And he begins to figure out he has to do something.

Maybe this is a way for him to exploit this. Now, on that note, back to the Necron, sorry about the Transformers jump, guys. And if you don't get that reference, congratulations, you didn't watch Transformers in the 80s and get ADHD with the rest of us.

God, those cuts were brutal. Anyway, StarSream. It's just like, if you go watch it, it's like five seconds of animation, then cut. And I realized it was just me, staring at a television going like, I mean, the ADHD, that's genetic, but man, that did, that show didn't help. That's all I'm getting. So as we talked about last time, the destroyer

curse will turn a necrone into a being just obsessed with killing, like an uncontrollable urge. But Antar and his leaders appear to be able to control it to a point where they're still able to possess modicums of strategy. And this gets explained, well in the 500 World's campaign, that he has these generals who work underneath them, for lack of a better phrase, and they're able to actually control their behavior. But it's a lot more like a Dr. Strange Love type thing, which again, if you don't get that reference, and deal with it. Sorry, it's a great movie.

Yeah, so Amatar himself is a big dude because of the fact that I think that, again, Brad fucking theory is that he, I think he might be the beginning of it. But I think that he is definitely a carrier of the destroyer curse. Oh, he is. He can put it on others, but it feels like he can give you a level of destroyer curse. That's what I'm torn on this. So the way it's almost described is similar to a Nergal plague, where Amantar moves around with this thing surrounding him.

And it will infect you. But you have to give yourself over to it is how it feels like. because they talk about this, that some beings he'll just conquer instantly, but it feels like it's the warriors who don't really have free will. But the upper beings do have some semblance of free will. Sure, but it still feels like he's giving him a different version almost, you know, because some of them go immediately, and then they kind of lets them loose like a rabbit dog.

And then there's others that are just infected, but they just feel a need and they don't really change. They just have a different. Maybe, yeah. My thinking on it was maybe the ones who are in his, is a court, maybe those were overlords that he was able to grab. That was my assumption, but I could see it also be maybe he's choosing them. I hadn't thought of it that way.

I think he's choosing it. You could totally be right. Yeah, my brain was, oh, there's the overlords, but you're right. He could just be he's actually going through like, no, I like this one here. You get a happy version. So yeah. So in effect, with Amantar, he now has, the important part of it, he has his own dynasty, like spread throughout the galaxy dynasty.

and it's ever-increasing because he's the destroyer curse. So as the destroyer curse spreads and more the tomb worlds fall to it, more join his legion. And the size and scope of this is impossible to figure out how big it is, but it's also impossible to control. So Amantar, he built almost his own trierky. The Necrons have a trierky. He basically built his own to rule it. And this one, what Brad was talking about, is the generals who work under Amantar actually keep a traditional necron title of nemesore, which is the, it's common, it's almost like general.

It's not an overlord. It's not a lord. It's a high rank. I think actually might be above overlord. Now, think about it, but whatever. Now, these ones have an important function. And the reason their function is, is that as this legion is spread throughout the galaxy, Tatar isn't gas. He can't just influence the necrons all over the place. So he has to spread himself throughout. So he has these Nemesars all over the place who are doing destroyer cult stuff here and there. That's important because these ones, in order to do this, though, they can't just be mindless thralls obsessed with killing all organic life because that's actually pretty easy to put down. They have to be able to maintain some level of lucid thought and some level of function. So the whole concept around

them, this is a big piece. Because the idea around the cursed legion up to this point within the necrons is that these are all mindless thralls. In fact, the silent king still thinks that all of the cursed legion are mindless. But we've now learned they're not. In fact, they are strategic. They do have plans. And so this actually changes. We're going to talk more about this at the end of the cast. This has a much bigger effect on what can happen with the necrons. because the silent king, for example, is banking on that I'll just wipe these guys out whenever I need to. And it's going to be a lot harder than you think. Also, again, still, him and the triarts gave the title too.

Yeah, probably. So, yeah, something's going on. There's a lot G.W. can do with this. But the reason we bring all that up is because that's kind of important what happens next. Back on Novin Magnor, after Titus and his crew leave and escape is a moment of clarity. Amantar is furious about their escape, but realizes that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme. The cursed legion is on Nova Magnor for one reason and one reason only, and that is to get the shard of a nightbringer. They succeeded in their sneak attack on the Sautak dynasty, which was called Uzmec by the Necrons.

They arrived before the tomb fully awakened, and they overwhelmed the defenders, but the overlord, whose name was Haska Tepef, Scott Deff? Hascateff, sure. You're not even trying, John. Haskathe. It is Hascatef. Whatever. Ted.

So, Overlord Ted was awoken suddenly in an emergency. And as soon as he woke up, took a look around and went, nope, grab the C-10 shard, and hit, hit the leave button on the spaceship and bailed out. successfully fled all of the chasing necrons and found out of staring right at Titus. This is one of my favorites because this guy's like, I got it. It's one of those, you know, movie scenes or whatever. When somebody's getting away, it's always one of the bad guys, you know, where they're leaving the rest of the good guys for it and then turns around and sees the alien, the mummy, the whatever, right in front of him.

That was Titus. Yeah, it's the aliens. sits up in the back seat while he's driving away. That's what this was. It's like, oh, I escaped. And Titus went, the hell you did. Boom. So Amantar now can sense that the shard is back on Nova Magnor.

Actually, he knows exactly where it is, sense it. And he has a situation. After the failure against the ultramarines, though, he needs to be better prepared this time. Against the ultramarines, to be fair, he laid a very good trap. Very, very good trap. and they still, they escaped. So he decides this time, nope, we're not even,

we're going to do surprise and overwhelming force. And he looks around, and I love this plan, by the way. He goes, because it's kind of like the Pirates of the Caribbean thing of like, I'll just go under, but on a much grander scale.

There's a, see, for a change, I'm even getting to get me mad. The usual thing that you usually complain about. Oh, this part's hilariously stupid. Yeah. All right. Let me do it and jump on it because it is funny.

So Tart discovers a fissure going, but it's through the earth, basically right up to where the admic facility is and goes, cool. And grabs, I don't know, 100,000 Necron Warriors and starts going for a walk that way. But it's too far deep for the Imperium to see it because of course it is. Just shut up. Like, just come on. And he, by the way, knew that their scanners couldn't go to the heap. How? Who knows?

Because it makes sense. It's a bunch of Marines with metal detectors walks down to the beach. They ordered it online. Which, by the way, did you, I learned this little big. Did you know in Florida, it's illegal metal detecting on the beach? I was in Florida a couple weeks ago, or at least where I was in Florida. So maybe a fancy bit. Yeah, fine, but random things you learn.

So he basically decided. to bring like over 50% of his forces to just go attack this admec facility. So this is going to work. However, his whole plan relies on them not being detected. So in order to do this, he has a cunning plan. It actually, this actually is a cunning plan. He takes Nemesar Anutec, the one who thought of the idea of the attack to attack Titus and says, hey, take care of everything else. It basically told her just attack the Imperials nonstop. Just constantly, whatever it is, just throw endless bodies at them,

no matter what, all over the place. Because what you don't want to do is all of a sudden, if you're into a sneak attack, don't just stop attacking somewhere else because then they actually might use their scanners and go, hey, I wonder if the necrons are somewhere else. I mean, we just fell for a trap 42 hours ago. Yeah, because in all fairness,

if like Titus had discovered where they were, like, all right, so do we just collapse the earth on them and then this wasn't a problem anymore? Yeah, basically. Pretty much. Yeah. But when he does this, one cool little piece is that because he grabs so many destroyer cult members together in this like, it's almost an orc waugh happens. I'm saying it's a wog. Yeah. And then what happens, there's a reason that his counsel is considered the oblivion council. Yeah. They're not exactly chill. What I like is as they go off, though, this actually has almost like a feedback effect through everybody else. And so Anotech has to actually work overdrive on herself to not fall into like the non-lucid state of the destroyer. Because she has to sit there and actually couldn't direct, I don't know, a million necrons all over the place.

And she's having to fight it because with so much like anger and hate coming out of Amentar and all the, other cursed Legion members. She's actually getting this almost like, again, Orgwa. I have to be part of this too. She's just going to rush off and murder people. Yeah, she's just like, organized the defense. She's just like, ah, I've got a stick, hit thing with stick.

So that's going to be important a little bit. But we're on the same time, back at HQ, Titus has a next move plan. And two things happen. First, he puts in a call to Archmago's oct about the weapon that they recovered in orbit and gets nothing. back. So Titus goes, cool, I'm going to go destroy that damn thing. Which should have been as Titus, start learning from some of your mistakes, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Whenever there's a weird alien artifact, fire it into space. That's what you do every time, Titus, every single time. That's the new system, full stop. But it was a good decision. However, he went down and went, oh, things are happening. How many things? All of them. Yeah, it wasn't ideal. So out of nowhere, they get attacked. This is happening at the exact same time that Amantara is heading underground and Anutec launches her thing. So there is this massive coordinated assault on basically every single front. It's supposed to be this wild attack. They're not trying to punch through. They're trying to take away the defenses from the Nightbringer shard so that they have to basically leave and defend so many different.

places. Yeah, it's effectively impossible for them to do all this stuff. So now Titus has to shift his focus from going and blowing up the shard to not having the entire planet fall. So he sends Gadriel and Mataris the south and west

to shore up the fences there and another strike force north to deal with a nightbringer which was a cool story. I like this a lot because the ultramarines do it a lot, even though occasionally they're the good guys that are willing to let you die for a cause they're very pragmatic about their defenses

and they even talk about this in this story here. Yeah, he goes, he goes, this is winnable, this is winnable, this is winnable, we're sending forces there. They kind of went, what about the other places? He goes, I just said they're not winnable. Stop asking me dumb questions.

And just went, I guess everybody dies there, deuses. Yep. Now, what I like next is a whole, there's a whole bit in the book, blah, blah, blah, blah, fight, blah, blah, blah, victory, blah, blah, blah, this. But there's an amazing, homage to an old necrone rule that I thought was awesome they dumped in here. So while fighting the

Necrons and the Nightbringer, the Ultramarines just cannot do anything to the Nightbringer. They're hitting it with everything. It's just bouncing off and slaughtering everything. But all the Necron warriors around it, they are dying. And so they call in a Stormhawk interceptors to just say, all right, let's just strafe it and see if that works. And they come through and the Stormhawks, again, do screw off nothing to the Nightbringer, but it kills almost all the warriors around it, which then all of a sudden in a blink, the Nightbringer disappears along with all the warriors,

which is a great homage back there. Was it third or fourth edition, Brad? Both. Their rule was so messed up, because what would happen is that no matter how bad you were crushing, if your force ever got down to 20%, I think it was 25, actually, when it could be 20%.

I can't remember, yeah. you're 25%. If you got down to that exact number, and it was by number of models back then, the Necron force teleported away, the entire force. You instantly were gone. So everyone else had to be tabled. You had to kill every model on the board. Necrons, you just come down to 25% of model count, not points, model count, and they would disappear. So GW just dropped that out of nowhere. Oh, yeah, by the way, that's still a thing. Oh my God, if they brought that back for 11th edition, I know so many people who would just cry.

Think about it. You'd have DBAs, Ketan, the Nightbril, the Silent King, and you'd go, yeah, I'm only targeting warriors and immortals. And your army just teleports off the board. Oh, look, I won. Anyway, but yeah, so good job, GW and put that in. Gadriel and Mataras, they secure their fronts, but really secure at best.

I mean, they are, the imperial forces are losing this back. They are beset. What I was throwing out before, though, too, which is they're beset on the fronts that are actually fightable. They've lost. The other fronts are just crushed. Yeah, 100%.

Everybody's dead. Yeah, this is brutal. So Titus is looking around and going, all right, we've got two options. Option one, full retreat exterminatus, or turn this thing back to an offensive. And he goes with option B because he's Titus. And Titus notices something.

He notes that the majority of the forces that are coming and fighting are coming out of sight Umbra, which is where the ambush had happened earlier. And he concludes that there must be dimensional portals there, bringing in the necrons, which means the necrons basically have infinite reinforceance there, and that will eventually overrun the defenders. And he also concludes that the necrons would have left the vortex bomb there and not destroyed it. And the only rational explanation for this is, I assume, ultramarine plot armor, because this is this is 100% Dr. Evil and laser sharks.

Like, why would they get rid of the vortex bomb? Of course they wouldn't. The thing that could undermine their entire plan is probably sitting right there. I guarantee you next to all of the teleportation, which, by the way, is exactly where it was. It is. Exactly where it was. Yeah, this wasn't like, you read it. And I'll be honest, I groaned out loud when I read that.

Like, oh, come on. Let me tell you why I groaned out loud, because remember when they couldn't, find the cataclysmic giant rift of fissure in the planet with a half million necrown warriors and all their forces moving on, they immediately used their scanners and found a bomb. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There it is.

It's right there. They haven't disassembled it. But again, Titus determines the best course of action is to deploy to this site obscurum, terrible name, which is somehow connected to site. through an underground tunnel, which, to Brad's point, they discovered. And we'll just fight our way there, secure the vortex bomb, blow it up, and save the planet. Problem solved. So he grabs Gadriel and the second company, and they head out the site obscurus.

They do this lightning hawk thunder strike. Thunderhawk assault, baby. Blah, blah, blah, which actually is cool. Thunderhawks are awesome. Also, I want this in a future game because it does. sound and look badass. But they come jumping out of the airplane. Yes.

They come. Yeah, literally. Jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. It comes in at like full speed. The front bay opens and the plane just stops. They come rocketing out like change sort of blazing and start cutting down necrons. Yeah, it's bad ass.

It looks super awesome. Oh, yeah. And then they start fighting their way into the tomb complex. We'll be right back after a quick break. While this is happening, though, Archmagos Ock. is losing his mind because the necrons, when they put a satan away, the password is not one, two, three, four, five, like on Brad's luggage. Come on.

I think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think you're going way too long on that. My password clearly would be one, two, three, four. That's too many numbers. I'll go to two. Who's going to guess it? One, two. They won't get that.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. The cages that they built for the Cetans were high. complex and well beyond the capabilities of admec maggos. So, Ocht is basically staring at his god locked in the cage and he cannot figure out the key. Luckily, by this time, he's basically just slamming it on the ground. Yeah, like more.

The files are in the computer. And so he's obsessed with opening this. But what happens at his mind starts to go around this. time. And he's getting reports coming in from the rest of the planet saying, but back it up. His mind's not going because he's off. He's getting dominated by the Catan. Yeah. It's hard to figure. It's weird. He's getting dominated by the Catan, but not in a way where he actually can help the Catan. It's just kind of almost shutting him down because he's getting mass effect style. It's basically Reaper. Yeah. I mean. Well, but the Reapers would control you and make you do

stuff. He's actually more just... Yeah, but they weaken you first before they can take control. Yeah, fair point. Yeah, fair point. Yeah, he's just, he's just love. That's what I think's happening to him. He's just losing his mental defenses. And what I like about this is what happens next. Apparently, the ad mecs do have scanners that work. And so he gets a bunch of calls coming and saying, hey, there's like a million necrons walking towards us underground. Should we do something about that? And his response is just No response. Doesn't tell Imperial defenders, doesn't even increase his defenses. He just hangs out, which really sucks the planetary defense force because Amantar his force show up hard. Mostly to the dismay of the planetary defense force. To be fair.

They didn't, they died so fast, they didn't have time to be dismayed. What's funny about this is like Amantar's force was so big. They could have gone a frontal assault and ripped through these people. and they said they came from underneath, like, and behind. This blew for them. Because he pops up, starts attacking. They, of course, call for support. Titus is over on site, obscuraous with all of them. The Imperial Fleet is, of course, suffering communication issues.

No explanation. Just, you know, it's just atmospheric interference. Clouds. Yeah, of course there is. 41st millennia. Ah, it's cloudy today. and we can't get a message through. It's cloudy.

It's really cloudy. Night fight is right. Night fight's still the best. Guys, although I do like, by the way, that at Adepticon, we're going to have night fight. You and I are playing. It's in the...

It's actually in the packet for doubles. In the pack of a doubles is night fight. Night fights back. It's game three. Yeah, I say we just bring an all-mele army just so we don't have to deal with night fight. Screw it. I told you.

I need dinosaurs. Yeah, all night fight. All right. So because the whole defense now falls to planetary governor and her forces. And what happens next makes me really happy and really sad. And I'll explain in a minute. So the admec facility is near to fall. So Governor Gallo decides to lead the defense herself.

And she brings with her her very own Bainblade. And this is like my favorite thing, by the way, in all of the Imperial Guard. Like the actual Bainblade, by the way. Not the Bainhammer, not the Bain Sword, the Dune Hammer, the Bainblade, which, by the way, should only have flamers. The heavy bolters are stupid.

How are you so pinkies out on which is the good super heavy tanks? Because I can be. Jesus. The Bain... Look, it's fine. Look, the Banehammer has its place. The Bain sword has its place. The Doomhammer is cool as hell.

Don't get me wrong. But the Bainblame. It's just, that's your bread and butter right there. You're nice. Go ahead. It's beautiful. It's got, but again, you got to put the flamers on it because it's, God, that's, it is fun to play with. Just it sucks in the tabletop.

Anyway, looks awesome. What's funny is that, yeah, so she comes out with this bane blade, and the bane blade goes burr into the necrons and just, actually single-handedly shuts down the events. the entire necrons, a million necrons just go, yeah, we got nothing. That's a bane blade. Which, by the way, is what a bane blade should be able to do. It's awesome.

And it's just rocking and rolling and having a grand old time. However, yeah, Amantar. He probably should have shot the guy in charge. Yeah, so Amantar then drops in, literally drops in from above into the middle of the imperial forces, like a blender. And it starts shredding every,

muddy. And unfortunately, the people inside the Bainblade did not include a commissar. So they didn't think to just fire on Amantar anyway because they were worried they might kill the fellow guardsmen, which by the way, I'm pretty sure is in the Imperial Primer you'd get killed for. Not the shooting the Imperial Guardsman, the not shooting the guardsman to kill the bad guy. I'm pretty sure that actually gets you death in the Imperial Primer. Well, you know what did get everybody death. the scorepec lord that burled into the Bainblade and went, hey, are any of you guardsmen able to take me on mono-a-mano in melee combat? By the way, the answer was no.

And the Scorpec Lord also asked everyone in the Bainblade because he killed everyone in the Bainblade. But I do like the last thing the Imperial Defenders did was Governor Gallo then took out her sword and led a final charge into the Necron Warriors. Which did nothing. Yeah. By the way, that's all it. That's all it is.

They don't even describe what happens next. They just go, the last thing she did was took out her sword in charge. And there's no words after that. They just, the story just moves on. Because it was that ineffective. All right. So the necrons get to the admec facility, which is locked.

But they had three doomsday arcs, so it stopped being locked. Yeah. Doomsday arcs versus door seats back. Yeah. It's like, oh, look, it's. open now. And then when they get inside, there's a bunch of Skatari defenders that Amintar just goes, yeah, that's cute. Nope. Slaughterers all of them. Fines Ocht staying next to Cetam chart. And Ocht is like, looks at Amantar. This is so sad because he could have actually unlocked it because he was planning on

anyways. Oct begs Amantar to unlock the shards so he can see his God. He just wants to lay. He knows he's going to die. Doesn't care. I just want to see it once. And Amanty tire goes, sure, man, I'm going to do that for you. Absolutely not. He did not say any of those things. He instantly killed him. It kills Oct, and then opens the shard. And then...

First, I'll say, first kills... Yeah, no. Then opens the shard and then teleports away. And literally, literally, leaves no from Magnor. Just, I'm gone. Grab's a shard and disappears. Which is, which a lot of you're like, well, what about Titus? This is kind of weird.

This all is happening at the exact same time. Time, yeah. So meanwhile, because again, like I said, Transformers the TV show, which if you haven't seen, eh, I mean, it was good. This is a big deal. Usually in the books and the stories, you get losses for the Imperium.

This wasn't a loss. This was just a Necron slaughter fest. Yeah. Oh, the necrons, they got there. But over on-site Umbra, Titus and his force finally make it all the way back to the Great Hall where they got defeated before. And now Anutec, the woman we were talking about before, had been so focused on this mix of offense on the planet,

she actually hadn't really defended herself. She had a very small defensive force in the area because all the necrons who were coming in, she was throwing at the Imperials. It's basically once the Tech Marine started, like, turning on the vortex bomb that she didn't disassemble behind her, that she's like, oh, crap. And she immediately breaks focus and attacks Titus and his crew.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Ultramians get up her hand. Blah, blah, blah. Necrons got upper hand. Blah, blah, blah. Gadriel almost dies, but then Titus jumps in and fights Anotech. Blah, blah, blah. In my mind, he did like a backflip and all kinds of stuff because he does fight through

and he jumps over a bunch of people to do it. To go and do this. And the whole thing is Anotech is that Anotech gets overcome by the destroyer curse while fighting. So then she becomes sloppy. And because she's sloppy, Titus shoves the chainsword through her body. And then she teleports the way to go heal somewhere else. So then Titus and his crew flip the switch in the vortex bomb, which explodes or implodes.

So vortex bombs basically make the warp occur and then remove the warp. So it makes the materium become the immaterial and then removes the imaterium from the materialium. They're really cool. And hopefully for 11th edition, they'll bring back the greatest rule and mission. Oh, it'd be so good. Stop attacks are coming back. Oh, so no. No.

Nothing good for knights. Knights don't deserve nice things. All right, but Titus and his crew then flee. This blows up the main site and all the Necron reinforcements are gone. At the same time, Amantar is also gone. So the Imperial Forces do reclaim Nova Magnor, sort of. I mean, yeah, hold on. They do reclaim it.

It's just... Sure. It's... The it. Yeah, it's the it wasn't what they started with. It's more like, oh, great. I'm like, you just gave back, you went to... Yeah.

Team America World Police and went, you're welcome, France. When they saved Paris. Save Paris. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about when they go, we've got Nova Mager back. You're like, kind of. But, yeah, so... I'll be honest, when I got to the end of this book, it's kind of anticlimactic because Titus and Amantar both win. Amantar got his Nightbringer shard.

Which is already wanted in the first place. Titus does secure Nova Magnor, what's left of it. But it's still a functioning planet. It's not like the whole, it got destroyed. He also got Idaris, what was left of that. And all for Ultramar, some significant losses, but he got them. Now, but that's it. That's kind of the whole thing.

There is some other stuff, though, that we probably should touch on really quick, because there's about eight other pages in like 16 paragraphs, what the other Tetrarchs were doing. And it's, it is, I like it, because it's, as you guys know, listen to show for a while, I like the Codex lore, almost more than like the Black Library stuff, because I find it fun to read. And so, well, we just touch on the other Tetrarchs real quick, because there's not much to do. And these are fun tidbits. And we'll start with, it, well, this is, to be fair, this actually is the most important of the fronts. It's because it's got all the important

shit. Oh, the first one? All the important planets. Yeah. Kornor. Yeah, so we'll start with Kornor, which is Agamemnon, which I'm not even going to apologize for anymore. We're just going to keep calling him that. Yeah, 100%. That's it. So Kornor is the north of Ultramar. And this was destined to be the most successful

for two reasons. One, Agamemnon is the captain of the first company. And this region has the highest percentage of imperial held planets. These are planets. They were under duress from a combo of heretics and orcs. Like there's actually an orc pirate kingdom in the middle of it called stomping grounds. Good job, works.

Stomping, by the way, P-I-N. No-G-N. There we go. Yeah. And Agamemnon. Grounds with a Z. Oh, yeah, with a Z. Yeah.

And Agamemnon does, all right, I have a plan. So there's a bunch of orc pirates and there's a bunch of heretics. Cool. Full court press. And just decides to go bring his entire chapter and all their forces and just start at one side and just go to the other at full speed. And he quells all of it. It's awesome. Well, and I love this. They give it the least amount of words, the press in the books.

But I still, this is the most important part for the rest of the Imperium. It's not the coolest for the story because it's not the cool fighting. But you have to take this place. This is where all of the most populous planets that agro worlds, high world, There is a bunch of stuff that has to be taken. If you lost the rest of the fronts but kept this one, you still could fight. Yeah. This one is the most important.

So that part goes great. Yay, Agamemnon. The opposite side of this, though, is the Andermung Front, which is Captain Porton of the Genesis chapter. He has Lieutenant's Rutherford, Banks, and Phil Collins. So the Andermunk Front is tricky because the warp down there is just rough. So this is how they describe it, is a warp travel just not very reliable. So Porton can't do a full court press because all the forces would arrive at different times.

So he has to go through like much more meticulously and one at a time. He also has to reinforce areas because once you leave an area, it's hard to get back to it. So you have to really have complete victories, then fully secure it, and then move on. So Porton's been moving much more slowly, but he has been moving methodically throughout the sector. Yeah. And his biggest problem is pirates. His own, well, it's pirates, but also the fact that the people there don't want to be part of. Yeah. I just saved you. No, you didn't. I don't want to be saved. So I'm good.

This is a real problem. Yeah, it's funny. So he's got these two things. He's got orc freebooters and pirates. But the other one is, yeah, all the planetary governors are like, oh, no. But it's actually fun. The story is very funny in there because what they keep dealing with is, you know, You show up as ultramarines on a planet. The planetary governor really doesn't want to say no because, you know, the whole dying thing. So what they do instead, the story is the local leaders would just put the delegations in waiting rooms with no food and just kept saying, hey, we're running five minutes late and for like days. And delegates would leave until the ultramians would like, all right, well, we'll just send them with food. And so over time, Phil Collins and crew are bringing the worlds into the fold, but it's challenging.

These worlds are resisting, not like actively resisting. They're just not actively complying, is how I would describe it. So it's kind of a cool one. Then you go to the east with Captain Felix, who's basically, whereas Phil Collins and crew are dealing, I should call it that, because if you name of the Genesis chapter, I'm just going to do Phil Collins. dealing with it. But, you know, just sorry. But they're dealing with like kind of pirates and some resistance.

Like, hey, it's a pain of the ass. This is crazy from him. Captain Felix is on the other side of it. Like, oh, no, I'm actually at war. Holy crap. Yes. Yes. Yeah, this is called the Vespitor fraud.

This is Necrom, Deathguard, Genius of Loos, and Leagues of Votan are all here. The League is here, too. Yeah. Also, just letting you get to. know, everyone is fighting everyone. Yeah. And looking for the opportunity for anybody that helps in any fight to attack them as soon as that happens. So Felix decides through the Agamemnon thing.

It just goes, all right, let's just full court press, you know, mass strike, hardened fast everybody. And at first, he's having a good amount of success. But, you know, this is the early stages is what they basically refer to it. It's like the first like few worlds he goes into. No problem. Everyone's in full retreat. but he hasn't gotten to the rougher parts yet,

like the worlds where you have Necron-flayed ones fighting Poxwalkers. That's not ideal. What do you do with that world? You just go, let's just blow this place up. Yeah, just move on. This neighborhood's value has went so down. You also have Votan, which makes sense

because of where Ultramar is. Votan have now arrived, and they're basically stealing the resources from some of the planets. It's what they're doing. It's Votan pirates. They're not pirates, but they're referring them as if they're pirates have come in, like, oh, there's a bunch of resources on that planet.

Yeah. I'm going to take those now. No. Like, yeah, watch me. And because Votan, when they come in, coming in, force, so you have to fight Votan. And, of course, there's jeans dealers, because there's always jeans dealers. And the last one is the Doom Eagles, which is the Western region. This is Captain Balthus.

Just, I don't like the team. That's sorry. Doom Eagles is just a dumb name. I'm sorry. He's the same problem with Phil Collins has. the region is just problematic, but it's always problematic. The difference is like this region, it seems to always just fall apart. So worlds will go to compliance, and then they fall out of compliance.

Yeah. And yet, all the explorers who go there, they go missing. And to the point where, like, even just the level of uprisings, there's just a cause there. This is not normal, anti-imperial. And, okay, I'm jumping on this because he just, chooses out of the options you could have chose, the ultramarines do such a great job of we're going to bolster the life. We're going to make you safe. We're going to get a successor chapter. And instead, he's like, I will beat you with a stick until you're happy. You're like, but you had

so many great options. He's like, yeah, I got this stick, though, that I'm going to hit you with until you tell me that you're super happy to be hit with the stick. He goes with the age old. The beatings will continue until morale improves. What? That is his actual plan here. And just just forcing compliance in the region with just absolute might of the Imperium, just devastating worlds, killing imperial governors, basically saying, you think other stuff scary, there's nothing scarier than an angry space marine, which, you know, honestly isn't that. Kind of work, except for he used the, I got mind control over Debo. Yeah.

Because as soon as they leave, they talk again. But the real problem with the region is the region is full of heretics and it's full of Drukari activity. So that's one of the, it's just this whole region's a mess. So he's getting pulled around. Now, that being said, though, with all that, the Tetrarchs are all doing pretty well.

Protas and Andermonfronts are moving more slowly than Vespitoran-Kroner, but they're doing well. Titus is really the only one who actually had a bad time. And so overall, 500 rolls campaign is going pretty well. Gilliman's plan of expanding Ultramar and improving the resources for the Imperium, I wouldn't go it A plus, but pretty good.

And so it's great. But what about the necrons? And this is a bit more interesting than me. And we're going to spend some time on this real quick. The Silent King is unfortunately pretty busy right now. Amantar was successful in getting another Nightbringer shard. But this time, he attacked a Sautek tomb world. And a major tomb world.

That was of great significance to the Sautac dynasty. Also, it's a big deal because the other necrons now found out. that he could force destroyer curse on people because when he captured people, he was using his cryptex to infect them, not just from his aura and him personally, but he was turning people over. And this is terrifying to the people that are sentient, the overlords and everything else, that, oh, this could be a real problem for me. Because before, the destroyer curse is this thing that happens to lesser beings and whatnot and probably won't get around to me.

I could get in the middle of this fight, all of a sudden I'm effectively a drone slave to the destroyer curse. And that's a big deal. And what you have now is that up until this point, Amantar has gone largely ignored by the Silent King. Nothing goes unnoticed by a Silent King, but they take priority.

Now, the Silent King is a little bit jammed up right now. He is stuck in the Prya Nexus. He's pinned between the encroaching forces of Gilliman and a civil war with the South Tech Dynast. he's an emotech, but Southern Dynasty just had some little bit of an issue here, right? Silent King needs to secure that sector and his forces so he can move forward in the galaxy, but this creates a bit of a plot challenge, more for the game. Now, this is why I'm excited about this.

For a decade or so, GW has been giving the Necrons a glow-up, starting about the Eighth Edition Codex, where they went from mindless murder robots that wanted to extinguish all life to a complex Xenos. species with like disparate goals, abilities, et cetera. And at that time, I think it was an eighth-th-ditching codex, but it might have been the ninth-th-diction codex. They basically implied that the necrons are massively more numerous than originally hinted, kind of like with a votan recently where they're like, oh, by the way, there's more votan than that remembers the imperial. Like, wait, what? That's a thing? All right, cool. And so it's implied in the writings, it may even been overtly,

I can't remember, that if the necrons fully awakened, they actually could overtake the because they would outnumber humanity, but they would outgun humanity by a wide margin. Then, unfortunately, the Silent King comes back, and it's M42, and that just happened. Like, the necrons are awakening in mass right now. So GW is in a bit of a bind. GW has the necrons fully awakening, so are they going to conquer the galaxy? And now, it's what I'm excited about, they've added a wrinkle. And the wrinkle is Imotech and Amantar.

a massive potential civil war within the necrons that could engulf them and kind of prevent their rise to power. So this is going to, I want to kind of discuss. It's such a big deal on that because Imotech straight up backstabbed the Silent King because he waited until... I mean, it was a front stab, if I'm being honest. It wasn't even et tu Brute because there was no one else. It was just Brutee, what the... True. I mean, but it is a big deal because he decided, hey, I noticed that you were fully.

involved in combat, okay, here it comes. Yeah, I'm going to come attack you. And so this actually gets, to me, this is really cool because it does. It helps. I like seeing, GW does a really good thing in their writing on occasion. They do not like to retcon. We talked about this before. They go out of their way to not retcon.

And sometimes they do a better job than others. But this is one scenario where I'm really happy. They were heading down a path where they were going to put themselves in this tough bind of, okay, the necrons are fully awakening. Okay, so they win. Now we've got this destroyer curse. Destroyer curse means that now the NECrons have to fight that, and this emotech split also is there.

This also potentially sets us up for the Tyrannins. Because one of the complaints I have is we get towards the end of 10th edition. So I don't know when you're listening to this, but if you're listening to this, you know, in before middle of 2026. June, June 2026. Yeah, I'm still accurate. But if it's after June 2026, sorry. But what I like about this is that I've been.

struggling in that, I feel like we're getting to a point of like almost Warhammer fantasy, where the galaxy's just kind of done. You've got the Rift has split the galaxy in half, which I think was too much. There's tyrannids engulfing the entire galaxy,

which I again, I think is too much. They did one thing. They stopped the one tendril coming towards Seoul. Sure. But then they, and then what's the, was there, Crittman shoved the orcs into the other one. there's some real tyrannid problems

that we just kind of story-wise went we'll figure that out later you're like you guys said they were about to collapse the galaxy exactly

and also the necrons are about to collapse the galaxy and the rift has split the galaxy in half and well Amazon's still pushing

pretty hard by the way yeah and that's what this all comes into so it's kind of what I'm hoping the necrons actually to me I mean man

I am going to be so wrong on this but the necrons to me give GW a great plot out. First off, the NECrons have the Blackstone. So they actually can close the Rift, or maybe not close it, at least

shrink the Rift. They need to control the Rift. The Rift was a cool thing of Kian's starting to win and push their... But we both agree. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. The writing of it was a mistake because it's like, so there's a giant hole into the METI. I think they

always had the NECRons. We're going to shut that. Remember, they write away had that little blurb of the necrons trying to, saying that they could just close the rift. Yes, but that's what has to happen. So the necrons have the ability to close the rift. Also, the necrons, fan theory, the tyrantids are the old ones. So necrans and old ones, that's a fun fight, put those two into each other, kind of brings that one down.

The necrons start to solve a lot of the problems for the galaxy. They can blunt the tyrannins force, and they can blunt the chaos problem. and then we get back to the galaxy isn't just collapsing. Exactly. And at the same time, while they do those two blunts, they take massive losses, which brings them down to away from a race that just easily conquers the galaxy and becomes. So this is my hope. I don't know if GW listens to this. I do have, I have geolocation on people who listen to this cast.

I can't see down to that close, but there's listeners in Nottingham. But anyway. Ha ha ha. So, but with that, that's the end. to kind of our coverage of 500 worlds for now. Next week, we're going to finally do something that I've been getting, I've been getting yelled at on Discord to do for a while. Come on, Brad, get excited.

The Queen of Slime. They're big. They're bronze and you really don't want them showing up. The Minotars. We're going to cover the Space Marine faction that Brad probably likes, I don't think you like them the least. It's a weird scenario. I think you like the Minotar faction a lot.

Minotaur faction. Yeah. A lot. It's just we, us doing this as a doing a cast on that means I have to go in to people, specifically the Lords of Terra, that I hate. And

that's who made these guys happen. So we have to spend a bunch of time on that as opposed to just going Minotars do cool stuff. Maybe we'll just do the first episode only on Lords of Terra. Just a whole episode on like. I will punch you. We both, though.

Like, honestly, at this point, you just hurt yourself. I mean, I did leave the house for my first time yesterday and instantaneously fell out of a cart. Yeah. So. I like my odds. But, all right. With that, John Barcati, Bradchester. This guy.

See you guys next week.