The 40k Lorecast - Episode 132 - The Death Korps of Krieg - Their history, their units, and (sigh) their horses

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

On today’s cast we jump back into the Death Korps of Krieg. We start where we should with the revolution on Kreig, how it started, how Jurten turned the tide to make it a more “even” battle” and how he and his loyalists eventually won out. We then move out on to cover the Kreig themselves. From the lowly Guardsman, to the Grenadier, the Quartermaster, Commissar, and (heavy sigh) the mounted units.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 Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. Today we're covering Death Corps of a Krieg because why not, basically, because they're cool. Brad disagrees. I think they're cool. We're mostly talking about their origin story, some of their style, and obviously a certain unit that they're really well known for, that one of us is less a fan of than the other.

Settle down. We're going to have to talk about horses at some point. All right. 40K. It's going to be negative then, John. Who will be negative then? Yeah, I'm going to be super positive. There's going to be a downturn on this cast at some point.

40K lore cast, the weekly show, focusing the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please continue to follow and comment as it really aids the algorithm and helps push us up the new listeners. So big thank you for everyone who does. Awesome. If you want, there's links in the show notes. Please check out our YouTube channel for our bi-monthly Q&A.

and some of the new stuff coming out from Brad. If you also like the show, check out our other show, History of 40K, where we talk about the history of the Warhammer 40K tabletop game. And if you love the sound of my voice, check out my other show Retro Recall where I talk about video games from the 80s and 90s. Some of those graphics, by the way, are rough. Wow, like early PC CD games, their attempt at 3D. A lot of boxy things.

A lot of boxy things. Oh, and I'm going to say right now. Hard angles. The game missed sucks. still sucks. Hate that game. All right. How much of a puzzle solver?

Got it. I hate missed. Anyway, if you like us, though, and you want to support us, there's two great ways to do it. One is we do have merchandise. Link in the notes, you can buy our shirts, buy our objective markers, even our dice. Great way to help us out. Or our Patreon. Great link in the notes.

Patreon's a great way to support us. Help us expand out, get more things. Those of you who contribute, it's great. really does help move us along. Patreon simple. It's $4.99 a month. You get this show and history of the 40K ad-free. Or for $4.99, U.S., you still get it.

Because last week, we did my hometown. And fun thing about this, Brad doesn't see this part of the show notes. And this week, we're doing Toledo. And Brad is very aware of what I'm about to do. The mudheads, Tote Paco's. Come on, man. Toledo was founded in 1833 and called Frogtown because it was a marsh and full of frogs, known as the Great Black Swamp.

Wow. I have won the Frogtown. What an incredible origin story. Multiple times. Good job. And two years after it was founded, Ohio and Michigan went to war over it in the greatest who gives a shit battle of maybe all time. Ohio was victorious.

Yeah. And they kept Toledo. Congratulations, Ohio. Great job what you did with the place. We're really impressed with what you did with it. And then Michigan kept what was called the Upper Peninsula, which sits where? Basically. The bottom, the bottom of Michigan.

Good job, guys. What? Oh, Jeep's built in Toledo. They make glass there. That's why it's called a glass city. We used to make a bottle of glass. Yeah. You have frogs.

There's a zoo. Toledo Zoo is. is legit. Thank you very much. You've had a few riots. As does everybody of note. Running out of stuff pretty quick. Pretty quick. Still, Jamie Farr, we've had the mud hands.

No one's heard of that. It's a minor league baseball team. No one's proud of them. The cool thing about real cities, they have major league sports. Major league. The Toledo Rockets? Fantastic. Is that a, what's that a?

It's a college team. Roller dirty. University of Toledo Rockets. Won the Mac multiple times. Mid-American Conference. Did you? What did you win it in? Dressage?

You know what? I will not be shaved by the proud heritage of Toledo. The power, the glory. Here's what I know. A few years ago, we were on a Bradwood's live casting and a tornado hit outside of his house.

And that happened. And the only reason I know that happened, he wasn't on the news. It wasn't on the news anywhere. I don't know because it happened to Brad. A tornado hit Toledo. And I'm in Michigan. And I'm in Michigan.

And even we were like, man, no one will care. So. Heartful to Toledo. Heartful. Lastly, we have a Discord. Again, you don't like what I'm saying. Discord's there. Or if you want to join our Discord and help me make fun of Toledo,

which is a very good time. We could actually make that a channel. We have a wonderful channel in Discord that may be gone by the time this comes out of John mispronouncing things. Magnificent, by the way. A plus on the part of the moderators to put that there. I was massive fan of it. But maybe make a new one, all the things that are wrong with Toledo. But great place to come in there.

It's mostly about 40K except for this stuff. Great place to interact with Brad and myself. But more importantly, interact with people who are similar to yourself, who like Warhammer a lot, like 40K, and really wanted to kind of just learn more about it, be it playing a tabletop, meaming, just kind of whatever. But yeah, jump in. Super fun time.

But with that, The Creek. I'm sure I called them the Creek because I can't pronounce core consistently. So we're just going to go with the Creek. You were tired of me correcting you on that one. You're like, I'll call it. I want to call it corpse, Death Corps of Creek.

And it's core of Krieg. And I'm just don't feel like getting yelled at. So we're calling him the Krieg. Tada. Now, a lot of you who don't play, guard or don't play Krieg, more specifically, don't get why these guys are so popular, because

Krieg players are like orc players. They love playing Krieg. They get a huge kick out of watching all of their Krieg die, and they especially love killing your big stuff with their Krieg shovels. Well, one of my favorites is looking

over the history and the phrase that kept coming over, over and over again, is they're disturbing disregard for their own lives. Yes. Over and over. If you look at every type of history summary on it,

it's just Krieg trying to basically shovel to death, Lords of Change and not even thinking about running away. Yeah. Krieg are absolutely hilarious. I actually own a ton of Krieg. And so deal with it. I'm one of said fanboys. And the only problem with Krieg for me,

is the horse thing, which we're going to deal with later, which I own none of. The only horse I own is I own one Lord Solar, which I'm in the process of converting right now to something that doesn't have a horse on it. Same base. He's not going to be on a horse. It's objectively stupid.

The one horse he's on right now does have jets on it because it's an Artel model, but it's stupid. Just is. So we're going to do a deep dive into Creague, hope you guys enjoy the joy that is creg because like orcs they're this weird super grim dark thing that's also becomes funny it's just weird so let's get into it and start off with you know crazy oh they're out of their minds i mean there's you can actually go on reddit and people have like

creg jokes and one of them is like what what's one creaksman turns the other one and says hey do you know what sound it makes when you hit a swarm lord with a shovel and the other one says no i don't and and the Creekman runs off to go hit a swarm lord with a shovel. That's just what the Krieg do. Yeah, sorry. Let's get the Creek. Krieg was a world like any other in the Imperium. It was just a mediocre planet existing to provide for the Imperium.

It was a hive world, actually a big one. It's huge. Yeah, it was in Segmentum Tempestus, which is the undercarriage of the galaxy. I'm just going to start messing with directions, guys, at this point. Now we're going undercarriage. That's where it is. Because look, the Astronomicon doesn't work. Like, we've had numerous people pop in the Discord to tell me, like, yeah, I actually

study Celestial Navigation. This would never work. You can't, tryingly off of one point. So deal with it. Undercarriage. Billions of Imperial citizens are on this planet, is laboring away from the Imperium, and what they made is completely unknown because all of Kriegs history has been subject to Imperial purge of all records.

That's what happens when you, become disloyal to the God Emperor, though. What happens is that we don't know all of it. We just know that Krieg was decently prosperous. And it was enough to support numerous hives. This is how the planet got into the many billions. And whatever it was producing did have high value to the Imperium, as well as the Mechanicum it looks like.

And as Krieg grew, so did its wealth. And for those who you who say, as usual, it wasn't for ever, it's not like everybody got wealthy. The nobility got wealthy. And because the nobility got wealthy, they decided that maybe they were a little too big for the britches. And they started fortifying this world. Even before that, I mean, those who know Latin, Radux Malum as Cupidos is the one I'd go with. Or, you know, virtuous posthumos. we should figure it out.

If you know what that means, that's on you. But yeah, so this, Brad, right? I was going to go with more Snoop Dog and faux shizzle, my nizzle, two each his own. What? Virtuous post-Numos. It's easy. Oh, come on. That's original horace.

Ah, ha. Anyway. All right. Stop bringing this cast down, Brad. All right. So what happens is over time, the nobility begins to look at the Imperium as a parasite on their own empire. They're, instead of focusing on the incredible wealth that they're actually generating for themselves, they focus on the wealth that's going back to the Imperium.

And they begin to fortify their own planet. First, the hives, and then around the hive. I was to say, then they did around the hives. And then they went, hey, let's set up orbital defense platforms and a lot of them. And so they built this giant thing all around the planet. While this is going on, the citizenry of Krieg are completely oblivious to all of it. They just assumed everything they were doing was at the beset of the Imperium, because why wouldn't it be? Building defenses and raising troops are things the Imperium wants and needs.

And they've also been doing it for thousands of years. So yes. Yeah. So 433 of M40, things take a bit of a turn. The high autocrat. A bit of a turn? That's a little bit of a turn. I guess you're not wrong, John.

A slight deviation occurs, you know, where the high autocrat, who's the leader of the largest hive. So he then becomes the king dingling. I don't know how you might call it. And he has the full support of all the other hive leaders declares Krieg is an independent kingdom from the Imperium, immediately declares martial law on the planet, and sends out their very substantial military force to secure the planet's hives and people to their cause.

The funny thing about this is this is a massive planet. And the planetary defense force is controlled by all the rebels. And so effectively every hive falls all, whoa, whoa, whoa, all at once. Except for one, you basically went out and went, ain't going out like that and decided they had a real problem. No, with, no, the hive did fall. That's the thing. No, that hive also did fall to the traders. Yes, but no, because. No, it did. The hive fell to traders. The problem was outside that hive was Colonel Yerton, who was on patrol with his regiment that had just been formed. And he went, nope, and took that regiment and drove it into the high pharaoh grad and went,

mine and kept it. Then puts out a call to everyone on the planet saying, oh, yeah, we kept this one. So if anyone wants to be a loyalist, come hang out with the loyalists. Still, situation is kind of jacked, though, because Yerton and his regiment are holding one hive, and the rebels hold every other hive, the entire planetary defense network, and most of the food. And my favorite part, though, is Yerton calls the Imperium. And it's like, hey, bad news. The planet fell. But we've got a, we've got a foothold. Can you guys come help us out? And the Imperium checked it, looked at it and went, yeah, that's just going to be a pain of the ass.

They said a response. They told him to take care of the traitors and punish them mercilessly for being traitors. Yeah. And Yerton went, I got it. Because fun side story, because, of course,

Farrowrad wasn't just a hive. It was a, of course, top secret, admec facility, which is never good. never, ever good, ever. And this next bit, by the way, didn't occur to me how stupid it was until I was doing this research, but we're going to deal with it.

Yerton was befriending the Archmegos, who was assigned to the planet, which is weird, but I'll go with it. And the Archmegos also has a problem. Underneath Ferrograd is this admec facility that he cannot let fall to non, you know, actually believe, I was to say, he can't let fall to the traders.

He can't have voted non-Admec. Yeah. It has to be. And so he goes to Yerton and is like, hey, I'll help you kind of deal with this thing. And then what's weird about it is that facilities full of ballistic thermonuclear missiles. ICBMs. Why? The best part is the whole reason you have.

No, no. Because why? When you have this, one, it makes no sense. but also for them to be a threat to put down the populace or to not be rebellion, you would have to know that you had these. But there's secret ICBMs. These ICBMs, they have a bunch of intercontinental ballistic missiles on a planet where every continent belongs to one group.

This makes no sense. that's not how the Imperium wages war and yeah I can make the comment about Dimitri the whole point I mean Brad think

the point of a doomsday device is lost if you keep it a secret great movie by the way incredible film it was a national treasure but this whole thing

makes no sense but we'll move on to his next bit's kind of funny the rebels look at Yerton and go yeah we're taking that hive and so they begin moving to conquer it

because they have all of the advantages And now is where you put the game out, and I took offense to that. Yeah. And it is epically funny. So what happens is they're all circling in on the hive. And then there's this one holiday. And apparently you get one holiday in the Imperium, which doesn't surprise in there's

only one. And it's called the Emperor's Ascension. Of the Emperor's Ascension. Yeah. Where they eat corpse starch, turkey, ham, and I guess Wellington's probably. Always have to be corb starch. It's always corpstarch. And it's the day that they celebrate.

Horace slaying the emperor and emperor going into the throne. That's what the day is. Why do you think he'd slay the emperor? Almost slay the emperor. And Yerton decides fireworks. We should have fireworks. I do like the fact that he fired Ollie. He did the Gary Oldman with

everyone. And then just push the red button that fired missiles haphazardly everywhere on the planet. Well, yeah. Oh, I should have mentioned guys. All of this comes from Imperial Armor Book five I want to go with.

I think it's book five called Siege of Rex. Which you can look up that way. You can download these, by the way. It's really easy to find them. But yeah, in the book, it actually calls out that they just saw the missiles launch and they weren't coming

towards them. So the rebels were like, that's like, you know, missile just all went straight up and went, oh, shit. And they just begin detonating in the upper atmosphere one after another. And within moments, the entire planet is engulfed in nuclear fire. Billions die instantly. And that's just the start of the

bad day. The atmosphere collapse. Sorry, the atmosphere collapses almost right after. The entire planet goes from prosperous hive world to nuclear wasteland in an instant. And yeah, evens the odds. Because Yerton and the rebels knew what they were going to do. And they've been digging the whole way down, sealing their hive going, all right, right now we're outnumbered. What if we're not outnumbered? What if we're not outnumbered? And then we'll just, what are we going to do once we make our entire world a nuclear wasteland, put on our gas mass and dig a trench?

Because that's what happened for 500 years. Well, you're missing one of the best parts of this. Well, the best parts of this is what happens on Terra. this whole thing blows up and terror's watching and back on terror because they were trying to figure out do we have to exterminate us this planet? What do we do? And they just see this in planet, just getting gulfed in nuclear fire and go, oh, okay, cool, problem solved. And they just, they literally checked Krieg off the list of problems and went, all right, that's over there now. But yeah, Yerton decided we are taking this planet back no matter what. And

And so what I love about this, he still just love this because he's still on, hey, man, you just wrecked the planet. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're still going to declare victory soon by grinding the opponents out. Why? This is awesome. So Krieg now becomes the death core of Krieg. The planet is plunged in a nuclear winter.

All life is extinguished. There is not a blade of grass on it. The entire wasteland is just toxic clouds. This is meant to resemble EPS. So that's just what it's meant that's, it's actually a proper way to pronounce that. But anyway, Yerton and his loyalists decide we're taking this thing back piece by piece. And they start to emerge from Ferrograd. But they're prepared.

They're going to, mile by mile, take this thing back. They've got the rebreather masks that we think of Krieg with today, long coats and shovels because there's no cover anywhere, so they have to make it. And trench. Ooh. It's so insane. Well, it's also because the hives were blown up, so they don't have manufacturing. They can't make armor.

There's no access to Bainblades. There's no access to Lehman Russes, even chimeras. This is going to be done piece by piece. They have some siege artillery. That's all they're able to make. And so this becomes... It's going to be infantry fighting. By the way, in a bunch of hand-to-hand fighting, which is just so ludicrous.

Yeah. But they had an advantage. Somewhere inside Farrograd, and this may have been why the admec facility is there, is something called the V-Tai womb. And so we should talk about this for a little bit. Along with the thermonuclear weapons was this. Now. You mean the cloning facility?

Well, we don't know that that's the whole point. It's nothing's written about it. If you have a life womb, it's a cloning facility. And that's my thing. Yeah, I mean, but that's it. And there are numerous codexes on these. Well, codexes, like Imperial Arms of them. The V-Tai wounds mentioned numerous times.

It's intentionally written to not be clear as to what it is. It is what we know is there's a top secret facility within the Farrograd. And it was not built there for shits and giggles. It's likely that the Krieg, like many imperial worlds, was a golden age of technology world. that the Mechanicum discovered and went, ooh, cool things. And they've been excavating. We know the leagues of Votan, for example, during the Golden Age of Technology used cloning. So it's possible it's some sort of cloning.

But what this means is that the Krieg have a hell of a thing going for them. They have unlimited people. I love this. They have unlimited people with very limited gear. but just keep recycling those shovels and gas masks. 516 years this war wages for tunnel trenches. There's sapping, there's everything. Millions die, untold millions die.

Let's go back just a little bit because of the fact that the Kriegsman during this, all the people they're creating and stuff, they get super fervor towards atoning for the rest of the world falling, not, you know, leaving the glow of the emperor. And everybody becomes super hardcore about their loyalty to the emperor. And their willingness, this is where we get this whole willingness to die for the light of the emperor to atone for what happened on Greek. And they're super crazy about it.

I mean, super crazy about it. When they rejoin the Imperium, they had some opinions. I want to take a moment and talk about this V-Tai Woon, though, a bit more, because this is actually, it becomes a really big deal. Once they rejoin the Imperium, this becomes kind of their defining piece to what they're going to do. So it's not that well described in Krieg-Lore, but if you go into Reddit, you go into any forum Morgan Krieg. It's one of the more talked about elements of it. So I wanted to bring it up here to make sure people who are not really that into Krieg know about it. There's no real clarity

into what this thing does. All we know is it aids the birth rate of Krieg and it's viewed as an abomination by the biologists. In fact, the technology is well known. The Krieg are the only ones who are allowed to use it. And for reasons we'll kind of get into later and it's quite helpful for them and then for the Imperium. But what's it due? And for a long time, most people thought it was just cloning operation. In fact, there was actually a big period of time where people assumed every Kriegsman because they didn't take their masks off for a lot of it was a clone of Yerton himself. This is not the case, though, because now in the lore, we have Krieg taken their helmets off. Also, some Krieg are male, some Krieg are female. They have different

hair color, facial features. So it's kind of a hand of a clone. They've got like four. people that are cloning him off of. That's what I... But there's been stories of pregnant, Craig being seen. Yeah, but a clone doesn't mean you're sterile. It just means you're a clone. Yeah, that's true.

But it's to the... I don't know what book this is into, although this is a little fun side note. He was speaking with Archmago's Geel on his deathbed. And it's a cool story about... This is what I got the V-Tai womb, where he's speaking to him.

And in the book, he just mumbers a last little thing about the V-Tai womb, but you don't know what he says. and then Archmago's grill comes out and tells everyone, oh, yeah, Yerton's said to keep doing that because it's good for the Krieg. And you can't tell, like, is that what he said, or are you just an Archmegos,

which we don't really trust you? So it's also possible that Yerton was like, no, screw that thing. It's also possible if he was like bacon, cheeseberries are delicious. Yeah. No one of the, I think most of the fan theories revolve around the V-Tai wound being some sort of

IVF supercomputer where it's not cloning. It's just really improving the efficiency, which I think sounds really good at first, but I'm pretty sure. Who's carrying the babies? Yeah, any, any female listeners is going to side with me on like, this sounds horrifying because you're basically turning all the women into like incubators just for life, which is gross. So my theory is I think it's an, it's ectogenesis, which is like just a giant complex, like what you have in the matrix, where eggs are fertilized and then they just hate actually to full term. So when their birth, they're actually, this is actually what the Mechanicum does, by the way. It's why I think it's what they do, where they come out at like 20, well, not 20 years old.

There's some other rumors about Krieg being like preteen when they go to war. That's not about that. Yeah, a lot, actually. But anyway. Oh, my bad. I meant to say everything's wrong. A lot wrong with that, actually. And so the V-Tai womb is pumping out people who are, they're not, you know, just dating for nine months.

They're gestating for like, you know, 14 years or whatever. Or maybe they can accelerate it, but whatever it is. And then while they're in there. Well, they're pumping the, yeah, they're pumping knowledge into them. Exactly. And they're popping out and everything else. Exactly. So they're coming out like, you know, well, I'd say fully press.

for war, fully prepped for Krieg war. Here's a shovel. Yeah. The reason all this matters is because of what Brian was talking about, what the Krieg are like when they come out. So the creed win this war. They're zealots immediately upon popping out. They're doing something where it's just propaganda the entire time they're in.

You know what I mean? Exactly. And so the creed come out of this. They send a message to the imperial. I'm like, hey, guys, good news. We won. And the Imperium just says, all right, we're on our way. And the Imperium gets there and it's like, hey, like 500 years ago, you guys had a regiment for us.

So we're here for that regiment. And Craig went, cool, that's over there. And then there's 19 more next to it. And the Ordo, and the Ordos, whatever it is, whatever, the military Ordos went, oh, so this is a one-time thing. That's pretty impressive. Thanks, guys. And Craig went, no. we're going to keep doing this.

And the Krieg raised 10 regiments a year for the Imperium. It's so bananas. Which is why they're allowed to keep that V-tai wound, by the way. That's why they... The magistrate biologists were like,

no, this thing's an abomination. The Imperium, like, shut up. Yeah. You shut your mouth. They just don't ask. They're like, hey, we've got all these guys ready for you. on your irradiated wasteland of a world?

Whatever. We'll have more for you. No, no, no. They know. They fully know. They fully know about the V-Tai womb. They know. They know about it.

And it's been approved. That's the thing. It was actually approved. I thought that that was just one of those don't ask, don't tell things on that. No, no, it's a proved. It reads a lot of the histories. Yeah. V-Tai womb is an approved.

Only the Krieg are approved to have it. Because it is written as an abomination by the law. The Majos biologists. And everyone, they're like, otherwise, otherwise everyone would have it. I mean, they'd be like, we're just so we could just, because the truth is, like, if you let everyone have it, they're like, so we can just go win all of the wars now.

Like, we're just going to have a quadrillion regiments and just everywhere. And it's a, no, this thing's horrifying. It's an abomination of everything we care about. But it makes really good creak. Oh, this is. It makes really loyal guys. So yeah, and the Krieger nuts, man. And like the Krieg are, because to Brad said it really well earlier,

these guys want to redeem a planet. They're not just there to show, because when you think about Acadians, Katachans, even a lot of like Space Marines, a lot of them are trying to redeem themselves, redeem their families. You know, the dark angels are a good example of this. They're trying to show like, I am the bravest.

I am the this. Oh, yeah, Black Tombers are a great one. Krieger different. Krieger like, no, our planet is a complete and total shame. I am here to prove that my planet is more loyal to the emperor than any planet that's ever existed. And I will do that by just never wavering in my loyalty or my love for the emperor. For a second.

And also snuffing out anyone else that they think has wavering loyalty to the emperor. Yes. And so let's talk about how different they are. Because when we talked about the regiments, we'll be right back after a quick break. All the regiments are different, and some are more different than those. Like Cadians, Cadetschans. This is my favorite part about your nose. The Tokyo Drift Dudes.

I forget which ones they are. Who are the dudes that can, like, drive a Lehman Rust sideways? Is it the desert dudes? I know, but I'm not even helping you on this. I just have no idea. Tokyo Drift dudes. That's what they do. Yeah, that they also come from their underground.

Tokyo. Yeah. They're also an underground one because their planet is too irradiated or deserty. It was one of those. All those guys. They have to wash off the stuff before you can go back inside. Fair enough. But those guys are all, and they are, they do have differences.

And I'll be candid. The creed kind of check in with them. But then you have a lot of other ones that are just kind of, eh, oh, it's a regiment. Like, there's a lot of ones in the books are like, so they're just a regiment of guard. But where the creig are, is they're the siege regiment. Not like the Iron Warriors where the, because the Iron Warriors, well, they're a siege regiment, but their siege warfare is we're going to find a weakness and we're going to exploit it, then we're going to bust through the gap, and then we're going to kill everybody.

Now, the Kriegel just sit there and we're just going to fire artillery at you and just keep throwing troops at you until it's over. Just over. And, oh, God, this, I will say, doing the research for this, reading this Imperial Armor Compendium made me so angry at all the models, I've lost. The Gorgon, the Gorgon troop transport, that thing was awesome. The Gorgon troop transport, for those who don't know what it is, looks like a beach landing craft with wheels that would drive across the battlefield and just dislodge a ton of troops. The quad launcher, which was just that, that was

not fun during the days of templates. Earthshaker, which I still have two of because I've refused to get rid of them, despite them with the legends. Heavy mortar. That was. popular. Always went to legends, all of them. But anyway, Krieg's goal hammered enemy with artillery. Sorry. I'm still, give you a second. I just, all I'm thinking is like, Fast to the Furious Tokyo Drift. I, all I can imagine, I want someone to make an army of Taller ends with all of their tanks with neon lights underneath them. Just super good. Oh, just exhibited, like rides pimped.

A bunch of ride pimped That refuses to leave my head now I'm just like Taylor has just come out of the out of their caves with an army with just all glowing hot pink

just neon lights going off I need this to happen That would work Yeah but the whole purpose of the creg Is and this is how they tried letting them play with this in 10th And then they had to change the rule Because people got upset about

their army rule. Originally, it was an unlimited rule where I could hammer you into place and you couldn't move. And then competitive players got upset. Right. But anyway, it sucks. But like, per what they have, their whole thing is they'll just send bodies at you forever because everyone is not only willing, but wants to die for the emperor to show you how much

they love the emperor. Yeah. And my favorite thing about the creak is the way they'll just fire artillery at you, keep you in place, and then while that's going, the infantry just walk up. And then, by the way, sometimes the infantry get hit by the artillery, so be it. And then the artillery stops and the infantry just charge it to you. It's great. Very effective.

And let's talk about the Krieg themselves. So at their lowest level is the Kriegs guardsmen. Raise that birth to just die for the emperor. That's what they do. They do not care. But not in like a weird berserker sense in just a, oh yeah, I'm going to die on the battlefield. That's like that's going to happen. That they might be today.

Weirdly. It might not. Everybody has the whole, we've already, we're going to do this. What's. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, they're not looking to die. They just are like, yeah, okay, it's okay.

That's just part of what this is. I'm going, we're here. There's bullets everywhere. Artillery's falling. From day zero, you are told that your whole job is, your purpose in life is to die for the emperor, period. Yeah. Now, some of those.

ones who survive that will get promoted into being a grenadier. And this is the special forces of the Creek, which in most other regiments become Sions. But these are different. These are, or these guys are probably closer to Kasserkins than anything else. These are basically caserkins on this. Yeah. But it's a little bit different. The creed grenadiers, they get a more powerful lasgun called a hell gun, but more importantly, they carry grenades. Big surprise, huh? Antipersonal and anti-tank. And they're a bit more armor than regular guardsmen, not much. But the main piece about them is that they don't aerial drop. Almost all, so all Sions have aerial drop.

Cascals don't, but whatever. So they're not the airborne rangers that most Imperial Guard special forces are. Instead, they actually walk on foot with everybody else. They'll actually deploy with the other Kriegsmen and sneak up to enemy lines. And then they just use their weapons, their grenades, to blow up. the enemy. Now, a fun quirk, though, that I like a lot is they have no nobility class, which is obvious because they're all clones or whatever clones. Well, let's talk about, pause on this. There's a reason they don't have a nobility. When your original leaders were

put down with an edict of obliteration, which means that no record of them will ever be written down. Yeah, it's hard to happen. Yeah, the lineage lines kind of got ceased about 500-something years ago, didn't they? Yeah. Not a lot of us. An edict of obliteration is just a cool term also. They're like, no.

Like, we, not only do we kill you, we want to make sure that you were just erased from all known history, period. So what I love about this is that in the Imperium, all of the officers come from nobility. The Krieg don't have that. So the Krieg, their officer class, is a meritocracy. So every Krieg officer got there from being a good soldier, which is really great for the creg and a huge pain in the ass for all the non-Krieg. And I love this so much. And this is written in the Codex, by the way.

When a battle is progressing, if leaders die, the highest, the leadership will pass to the next highest in command. So in a situation where multiple regiments are fighting near each other in an engagement together, if the commander dies of a regiment, they can fall under the command of the next regiment over, meaning a Krieg commander could take charge of non-Krieg. Which here's the problem with that. Let's talk about some real, let's stage it first, because first off, the Krieg officers basically think that commissars are too soft. And these guys are letting them go. We're going to get the Krieg commissars in a minute, by the way, which are hilariously enjoyable.

Yeah. But let's just say the Krieg officer's viewpoint on the life of a Krieg is not different than their viewpoint of a non-Krieg. You're there to jam the wood chipper. It's worked before, it'll work again. And the non-Krieg regiments don't really seem to be able to grasp this strategic value of jamming the wood chipper. And quite often they have little mutinies, which then lead to little civil wars when the non-Krieg regiment kills the Krieg officer. And then the Krieg kill that regiment for killing their officer. Let's back that up.

Because this has to be one of the things that's bred into you with your being raised from your pot or whatever the hell you're being raised. Yeah. Because Creeksmen apparently are always ready for someone that's not a Creeg or Creege to revolt. Because those guys turn with a quickness. Oh, yeah. They're just monsters too, by the way. It's like instantly everybody at once turns and shoots all the rest of the guys

when they think they're going to... But this comes up a lot, by the way. It's not... It's in the codex, but it's also in a bunch of stories where this will happen, where a creak officer's like, yeah, go over the top. And a bunch of guys like, no, it's all orcs over there. Why would you do that?

No, I said, go over the top. And then they don't, or they shoot the officer and all the creak, just execute them in the trench, and then go over the top to fight the orcs. It's like a part of their day. It is definitely the full thing. There's stories where they just say, the other forces hesitated.

And they're like, That's about enough for me. You guys are cowards. But the wildest one to me, well, no, the commissars are the wildest one to me are the next wildest one to me are the medics or kind of sort of whatever we want to call them. Their actual term is quartermasters and these dudes are dark, like super dark, but like a good way, but it's also a terrible way. So the Krieg fight in nightmarish hell zones. They are not deployed to a, oh, hey, this world's a garden world. Let's preserve it.

No. The Krieg only go to toxic worlds. That's all that they go to. And so they, as a result, they recognize that they don't really have the time or the capacity to care for the severely wounded. Also, they come from a place 500 years of war where they had very limited ammunition. equipment, everything else. Lives expendable. Get out of here. But what they also recognize, which I like about this, is that they also recognize that injuries are much more significant in the areas that they're fighting. They view the soldiery to Brad's point as a commodity, as ammunition. So the quartermaster are these incredibly well-trained medical professionals. And they're skilled at identifying all manner of wounds and conditions. on the battlefront. But they're also priests of sorts,

which is, who, they're about to get dark. So what the quartermasters do is they wander around the battlefield, checking on the wounded and dying, also collecting and marking the location of supplies, so that the creek don't run low. But what they do is they'll come up on the endless amount of wounded and make a quick assessment of them. And basically, can this person be healed and brought back to fighting?

If so, they give them aid right then and there or even transport them back to be rearmed and sent back. If not, they give them their last rights and execute them on the spot. And this sounds... Yeah, it sounds messed up, but it actually is a really great concept

because if you think about it, these guys are fighting in an extremely toxic and bad area. You can't save them. What if you're fighting somewhere where there's Nergel everywhere, right? That infection is just going to take you why this person is going to

actually probably give their soul to Nurgel. Luckily, a quartermaster comes along and just executes you. You are never going to heal from this wound, ever. Put it out of the misery. It just cracks me out because I think about the family guy with the horse with the wrapping around him.

Oh, it's feeling pretty good, boss. I'm going to put a lot of weight on it. I'm good. Now, I will also mention said quartermasters also will come across non-Krieg. Yeah. Who may not understand what the quartermaster. Because the quartermaster does have, I mean, any of you who've built Krieg, no, there's a Krieg medic.

So, yeah, the quartermaster carries the bag with the red cross on it. I've got a bunch of them in my closet over there. I love what you're the nod, Krieger waving this guy down going, I've got a pretty substantial wound. I'm not, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it. Can you help me in the emperor's name? Oh, God damn it. Back. Oh my life.

Yeah. But let's get to everyone's favorite, Creed commissars. Jesus. Now, Creed commissars, first off, are not creeksmen.

That is the most important thing. A commissar is assigned to the Creek. And the commissar is, traditionally, they're to prevent a loss of morale within the Imperial Guard, spurring troops on, encouraging them with the word of the emperor,

fighting against cowardice, and fear by kind of giving them the, reminding them of the ever-glowing light of the emperor. If that doesn't work, shooting them quickly. The Krieg, though, don't really, they're on the other side of that spectrum. They're not really needing a lot of encouragement about, like, the emperor. Exactly the opposite, actually, but yeah. Yeah. And calling it Krieg brave and zealous is like calling the ocean wet.

And I realize I'm going to get some pedantic responses and discord about. well, actually, the ocean isn't wet. It's when you get in the ocean, you get wet. Fine. Go ahead. Bring it on. I'm waiting for the comments. But, you have you heard attacks.

Preemptory attacks on people say. I know what's coming. I know what's coming. When I say the ocean is wet, be able to like, actually, John, and it's fine. I'm ready for it. I love that. This is the one thing that I really like about the Creek is the fact that

nowhere else do you have where they think the commissars a bit too late. back. Like, you ramp this up, bro. What is your problem? The commissar's number one job with the creak is to rein in their zealotries. Either their desire to murder the regiment next to them for not being excited enough or the most common one when the creig need to stand still while the enemy is coming in on them.

So you can imagine like the creg has to do a famed retreat, not something they're big fans. of, or you need to hide and cover while the enemy's just slaughtering and getting really close and exposing its flank to you. You have to stay still. Or maybe there's a swarm lord there and all you have is a shovel. I need you not to run out there with said shovel and hit the swarm lord. So there are stories of commissars executing Kriegsmen who are soloing it up over the top because they have to do it. but the better part of the creg is what I like, which is the, sorry, the better part of the commissars that I like is the commissars are the ones who have to go deal with the other regiments on behalf of the creek.

Because they've learned, as Brad mentioned earlier, you can't send the creg to do this. If there's a tiff between the two of them, if you send the creak over there, there's going to be a war. I have to think to myself that the guy shows up and starts everything with a huge sigh. All right, guys. See, let's start this off. I'm sorry. And, okay, let's just talk about what's going on. And this is a classic thing.

If anyone who's read the Gaunt's ghost books knows that it's pretty routine for regiments to have issues with each other. They will actually try to kill each other. Pretty routine, a bit on small scale. The problem is with the Krieg, it can get pretty large. scale. The Krieg will just... Yeah, and they will... They're just on Tinder. They're ready to go. Yeah, and the commissar's job is to deal with this, or to lead them in the revenge assault. And so it's basically, the way I view a lot of these stories is the

Krieg have an issue with a bunch of regiments. The commissars go over, and the creg all just stand there right from to come back with a, yeah, go kill them, or... All right, guys. Yeah, but... Not today. So I said a lot of things I like about the creak. One of the things that's bad about the creed is this is mostly their fault because they around talking a mountain of shit to everybody. But not basically. They are Drax the Destroyer from freaking whatever the movie is, Guardians of the Galaxy.

They just don't realize what they're saying. They're sitting there next to some regimen was like, yeah, we barely got out of there with our lives and the Krieg are like, why? Are you cowards? That's a normal response from the creg. And so they just piss everyone off all the time. Yeah. And the department, the departmento minotorum love the creg. And they were like, well, we got to put them out there all the time. But every time we put them anywhere, they tend to kill everybody. So these poor commissars just spend all of their time smoothing this stuff over because Because, yeah, the Krieger, like, they're dicks, but they're not dicks.

They're just uncomfortable to be around. Can you just give the, the racket route? You're a bad guy, but you're not, but not bad guy. My favorite part is once a commissar served with the Krieg enough, they usually get sent to some other, like, place. Because they basically proven themselves to be, like, the greatest diplomat. Like, all right, now you're going to go over this. They just go all highly politically sensitive areas. because you can do anything if you can manage the creak.

But we're getting near the end of the cast. Let's do the part that all of you care about. All right. October 25th, 1854, the Battle of Balaclava is taking part in the Crimean War. The English and the French are at war with Russia over who cares why. I don't bother to say Baklava. Come on. Also, because it's pronounced Balaclava.

That's mostly the reason. And an obelika lava is a thing that you can own, but the police get really upset. You wear them in public, so you can't own them. Anyway, I can talk a bunch of reasons as to causes of this war. It was mostly stupid. But due to a massive miscommunication, how do I say this better? Artillery existed at this point in 1854. So did the firearm.

Most importantly, grape shot. and canister shot. Lord Cardigan, yeah, there's some great names, by the way, Balaclava and Cardigan. We're just rocking out.

And 600 of his mounted dragoons decided to charge the Russian lines. Every single one of them died. To a man. That was 1854. That was before the invention of the cartridge, before gas and spring-driven firearms, before rockets,

laser targeting. I can keep going. Now, 38,000 years in the future, we have Volkite, bolters, and you're going, just letting you know. So, horses, death core of Krieg are known for their Death Rider mounts, the legendary Krieg steed. Also, remember, there are robot, like full mechanical steeds at this point in time. Equally stupid. I don't. I'm going to...

Decided to not have those. I am going to read this. I copied it verbatim out of the codex so I could read it to you all now. A, oh, God, this is, this sucks. The Death Rider Mount is a highly adapted form of the original Terran horse. Why? Why? Okay.

This animal. Legendary Krieg stallions. This animal is now the product of extreme genetic engineering tailored for strength, endurance and aggression, with numerous additional biocculpted organs that allow them to survive on the most polluted

and toxic battlefields unscathed. You know what else can do that? A chimera. That grown... Probably spit acid, though. That grown on Krieg under the auspices of the Adetis Mechanicus, the animals are further augmented

with subdermal, organic armor, osmotic lungs, and fully integrated drug injection system rigged with a potent mixture of stimulants, pain blockers, and palletives. You know what a leman rust doesn't have inside of it? Pain blockers. It doesn't come up. The end result is the Krieg Steed is capable of incredible levels of endurance and environmental tolerance.

tolerance, environmental tolerance. The Krieg Steed is also a weapon in its own right. With its chemically enhanced aggression, centers triggered at the writer's command, and virtually impossible to incapacitate short of massive bodily trauma. You know what? I'm stopping to here, John, because I think you were grown in a vat of hater aid because you've got to love this stuff and embrace the crazy guys riding psycho horses into battle.

We had horses in World War I, Brad. And you know what else we got? Later in part of World War I? Tanks. Tanks. Guess which one was more effective? I just want to point out, I'd look this up. Land speeders move at 350 kilometers an hour and have armor on them.

And don't poop. throwing it out there. They also have guns on them. There's just a thousand reasons why these things are light years pointless and stupid. They're slow. You're completely exposed when you're on top of it. What flavor of hater aid do you drink? I understand it's a cool model, but like honestly, guys, Mel Gibson killed horses in two

different movies. Braveheart, which is an overrated but okay movie. and the Patriot, which is a colossal piece of shit. Braveheart's good. It's just, it's fine. But the Patriot is hot garbage. Both times he killed the horse with a stick. One of them was the American flag.

Holy God, that movie's bad, by the way. Oh, my God. The Patriots terrible. But horses, no. They have so many of them, too. If you're ready, you know you've got multiple units of horses. I don't own a single one. And don't you're wrong.

They actually, the aesthetics on them, they look great. The modeling GW did in making them, they look great. And they look great ever since even the resin nightmares of them. They look good. The rules are actually good. I just cannot get over. It's a horse on a battlefield. And by the way, the Krieg only deployed the battlefields with no cover.

How do you get a horse out of a trench? You jump over it, bro. So they have to run from the... You're going to see this thing coming. I'm just saying, charge of the light brigade. You can look it up. It didn't go well. It really didn't go well.

If you had been... If you had been... It would have gone equally bad. Running into Grape shot is not ideal. So not just charge the cannons is all I'm saying. Yeah, you probably shouldn't charge the cannons. You coach people on how to keep their... Like canovers.

Yeah, on how to keep their... tanks hidden from Las Canons. Horsey. Horsey. It's a horse. Black Stallion would wreck this. Anyway. Silver?

I'm trying to think of famous horses. Seabiscuit. I don't. I mean, there's a button. What's the, what's, is it, is, what's the movie where the horse dies in the mud? I've never seen that by it. I know it traumatized your generation. Oh, that was a good one.

Whatever is. But the famous. Mr. Ed? Yeah. They used peanut butter. That movie's shit was weird. That's what it was. It was peanut butter.

I put peanut butter with gum. That's what made him do that weird thing his face. That's the only known about famous Mr. Red. All right. But that's enough Krieg for now because we're going to talk a lot of creak. Because next week, we're going to talk about what made me actually fall in love with the Krieg originally, which is one of the word for it. Yeah, one of the greatest.

I mean, God, the Imperial ARA books were just incredible. We're doing The Siege of Rex, which spanned three Imperial Armor Books, and this battle gets epic. It introduces amazing units. Almost all of them have gone to legends by now. Whatever. They were a little bit O.P. Whatever. It's a really cool story because it reminds me a lot of Eisenhorn in the sense that it kind of shows how bad things just get within the imperium.

So it just gets out of hand. and what starts off, a lot of times it's kind of well-meaning, just ends up nightmarish and exploitation, et cetera, et cetera. It's a really great story. Yeah, it's a really great story. So we're going to begin the coverage of Siege of Rax next week. It's going to be one to three episodes. It covers three books.

It might be three episodes. It might only be two. The first book is, the first one's a lot more detailed. So, yeah, it also makes me happy because I don't have to do a black library because some of the black libraries suck. And probably even better for all of them. you, you can actually read this. I'm not covering a Black Library book where it's actually kind of hard to get a hold of.

This one's just simple yo-ho, yo-ho, you know, you can, uh, ha-ha, download these ones and get it for yourself. So until then, John Barsati, Bradchester, the sky. See you guys next week.