The 40k Lorecast - Episode 134 - The Siege of Vraks pt 2 - The arrival of Chaos and escalation of Vraks

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

On Today’s cast we continue our coverage of the Siege of Vraks, with the arrival of the chaos fleets to the system and the not so great (for the imperium) naval battle that commences. Which is then followed by a not so great experience for the ground forces once a bunch of chaos marines show up. But then we get to the imperium’s response so things get a little better, and we close with an epic kickassery of Space Marine action!PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K Lordcast, John Barcani and Bradchester. This guy. Today, we're going to be continuing our coverage of the story of the War of Rax with the push from the 88th, followed by the attack on chaos, followed by a new push by the 88th, and then a counterattack by chaos. It's kind of fun. You guys, we'll get there.

It's super cool. For those who don't know, I don't know how you don't. The 40K lore cast is a weekly show in the lore of Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, please continue to follow the cast and comment on it. It helps our algorithm and I enjoy the comments. They're fun to read. Additionally, it also helps push us out to other listeners. If you want and you like, you want to know more of us, check out our YouTube channel for our bi-monthly-ish Q&A sessions and some other, you know, accoutrements. That's the best we got at this point. I can get busy and your brain goes. So you know what?

It's an is accurate. I like it. It is accurate. Dead on. In addition, there's also links below to our other show, the history of 40K, where we're joined by Alan and some other guests probably in the future to discuss the history of this game on the tabletop. My other show, if you love my voice, Retro Recall, where I discuss the super fun video games of the 80s and 90s, some of them are good, some of them are missed. I really did hate that game for the record.

Really hated it. But Monkey Island, super awesome game. I love the same for the record. It's also, it's a great game. It is a super great game. But anyway, if you want to support us and help us out, there's two great ways to do it. One, link in the show note to our website. Our websites where you can find our merchandise.

You can buy that stuff. A bunch of people did and came to us at Adepticon wearing it, which was really surreal for me. Super cool. Thank you guys for doing it, but was a surreal moment. Or our Patreon. Patreon is a great way to help us out, help us expand and do more stuff. Our Patreon is really simple. $4.99 a month, you get this show and the history of 40K ad-free or 4.32 euros,

because today we're going back to one of my absolute favorite countries to go hang out in. Holland. I just like the Dutch because it's the best place for me to vacation is. They're big, just like me. They're funny, and they can drink in kickbox. I love going to Holland because it's every hotel I fit in properly. And I'll be honest, one of my concussions came from a female Dutch. kickboxer in sparring.

I miss you, Jermaine. Anyway, but today we're going to be covering maybe the most famous city on earth for killing Nazis, so can't go wrong there. The Hague, or pronounced de Hagen. And I know its real name is Gravenhag, but we're not going to get to that right now. Dutch is awesome, by the way, for those who don't know it, it's a great language. Clock, cloak, gloves, Han Shunen, which is hand shoes, hospital, Brad. You know how you say hospital in Dutch?

Zike House. sick house language is awesome even their insults are great clutzak or kutvife which we're not going I may have to do I have to censor those I don't know anyway I'm also mocking their language and I walk into kickboxing gym so I'm super hoping that Roman Decker and Rico Verhofen don't listen to this cast because I will die anyway but dead hog is a super cool city their lineage actually goes back to the Romans. They were a province of Germana inferior. Den Haag is also the birthplace of the CD. And for our listeners who don't know what a CD is, the CD was created by Phillips Research Lab. And the first CD ever pressed was, of course, Aba, the visitors in 1982. Another fun fact of

Den Haag is it's not a city. It's a village, because in Holland, you have to be grand. the right to be a city, and they never got it. So this 500,000-person place is still a village. Who knew? But yeah, Den Haagen, or Den Haag, it's hard to pronounce. That's a rough pronunciation. Has an 11-kilometer beach, which is actually really lovely in the summer. Not so much in the winter.

It is cold. And great art museum, giant public park. And I don't know if I've mentioned it enough time. Because the people are giants. It's so much fun there. Also, I'm going to keep saying the Dutch are super fun. The country gets a weird rap because people think everyone goes there for stag weekends. Screw that.

The Dutchers are great. It's one of the most fun places to go. I've been there numerous times in my life. I don't take narcotics. And I go there all the time. I've never had as much fun as I have going out in Holland. So one of my top places to vacation. Also, their team for the WTC is ridiculously tall there.

They're always the tallest team. Oh, of course. Everything about them is fun. I mean, they wear orange. That's their national color. Like, their international soccer team is safe in crossing the street in uniform at night. They're fantastic. With bright orange.

Oh, God, I can go into Edgar Davids. I can wax about my love of the Dutch for a long time. Super fun. Anyway, last, don't forget to the cast. Discord. If you, please join our Discord. We have some great channels going on in there. I think the current one for this month was,

what's wrong with Ohio? That's been a fun one. What's wrong with Toledo? Specifically, Toledo. Where I live? And nothing's been incorrect. I need all of you. It's been super fun.

Guys, come join our Discord, interact with us, ask questions. But more importantly, actually, if you're a veteran of this, of lore and of the game, also come during our Discord and help out. We have a lot of, like, newer plays. and newer people to the game and to the lore.

It's really great having a lot of the veterans come in there and help people navigate what to read, what to play, how to get into painting, how to get into a lot of this stuff. You guys have done a great job there, and it's really a great community, thanks to a lot of you. So awesome. But anyway, let's get to VRAX. So real quick, recap of where we are.

VRAX was a world of really no greatness outside the Eye of Terror. Hold on. You say no big greatness. This is one of the most stubborn worlds. Like, why did we bother? It's a toxic environment. We end up with 8 million people on it. It's next to the eye of terror.

And close to half of that are people that are like, man, I can't wait to leave this plan. They're like, when's that going to happen? When you die, because there was just indentured workers here. So you're like, no big thing. You're like, no, this place sucks. And we're about to spend a long time pummeling people with it. Vrax was terrible. And then you get this newly elected cardinal named Zayfan who goes on a pilgrimage

throughout the whole region. And while on the pilgrimage goes, man, people really like me. People like me a lot. I should. You act like, I'm sorry, but we can't even call it up Pilgrilage. He went on a concert tour to basically going, everyone that's awesome that thinks that I'm awesome. come on over here.

And he just did that and then decided he was going to set up shop here. Yeah. And eventually he got to Vrax and stayed at Vrax. And he picked up an advisor, a deacon named Maman, who started giving him some interesting advice because Maman obviously was. I don't think I don't know how corrupted Maman was. It's hard to figure out. Well, he was evil. Go to the pages, though.

They have him whispering into the ear. Of Zayth God. Well, he is, but what I'm saying is, because the only reason why I don't know how evil Maimon is is that in the siege of Vrax, later in the siege of Rex, one of the chaos lords turns on him and actually, and Maimon obviously isn't that, let's say, supported by the chaos gods. So, sure, but like, that's more what I'm getting at. Super Eve.

This guy is one, if you're looking for, hey, how did all this come to pass? You just go, that guy right there. Yeah. I guess what I'm getting is I'm actually not sold that Maimon was an agent of chaos. I view maiman. You were. Well, hear me out. I view Maimon maybe as simply being someone who saw the Cardinal Zephan as a way to power.

Yes, and I think he was always an agent of chaos. He's just not powerful. I mean, he's still a guy that is completely led by chaos. And he steers Zafin, one. 100% of the ways of chaos. So he does. He was corrupted from the beginning. But this is where it's the whole thing if we talk about the corruption to chaos.

There's two ways you get corrupted to chaos. One is intentional. One is unintentional. One's unintentional. And there's the intentional of like, I'm aware of the chaos gods. I reach out to the chaos gods because I want the power of the chaos gods. And there's the other ones where it's like, I want better for myself in this life and my aspirations lead me down

a path where the chaos gods go, come here, buddy. Yeah. And one of the people goes, oh, I've got that sin. So, I get that, but I think that Maimon was always, whether he knew it right away, but he definitely was getting it. Yeah, that's, and that's where, I thought I'm saying, in the very first Siege of Rax, I was convinced the first book that Maimon was an agent of chaos. And then it's like the third book where you get some of the interactions with Maimon and, well, he is a cornite, the chaos lord, doesn't go great for him. Yeah, but it's pretty obvious. That's interfighting between the gods and also.

That's true. Yeah. He's a suit up cultist. You know what I mean? So, well, yeah, I'm just saying. You go, chaos lord, guy that didn't put enough upgrades. Codd. Corn.

And a guy that just put his limited upgrades into stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, this eventually leads to rebellion as we covered last week. And because of the strategic importance of racks, it's location outside of the eye of terror, the Imperium decides they're going to take it back. And they kind of, well, the irony of this is they decide.

Back in a Blink. The reason that it was so important, remember, is this was a warp travel lane. This is a dropping off point. So that's why they, the world itself kind of doesn't make any difference whatsoever. However, this really messes up the warp travel lanes, if you use this. Exactly. And the challenge they have is that they can't just bombard it from space. because, A, it's defended, and they can't exterminate it because there's just,

the world has too much value. They also think this is just a, because truthfully, it was just a rebellion. And the idea was, all right, well, we'll just go take it back. And they decide, all right, we'll just start to grind this thing out. And they have the perfect thing to grind it out. Kriegsman, the perfect thing for grinding. So toxic planet are the greatest. Yeah.

Yeah, we got millions of these guys, and they do not care. So even a little. They spend years. It takes the first two years just to get the first breach, another seven years after that to breach the second wall. But after that, nine years in and four million dead Kriegsmen. We should probably mention the four million dead Kriegsmen. Because things were not going great. At that point, though, they finally are there.

But during this time, a couple new problems have arisen. First off. It's a pretty significant problem. When you go, hey, the Alpha Legion with Lord Arcos and a full fleet of chaos come in. Well, yeah, I mean, sure. The presence of Alpha Legion is usually not ideal. If I have Blackboard and I'm listing things down in the meeting, I'm going to say that is number one on the list of, hey, this is going to be an issue. Yeah, the presence of Alpha Legion is usually bad.

Now, the good news is the Dark Angels decide to show up for like a few. minutes. Like, even drive by. Yeah. Like, all, we're here.

All right. We're out. Okay, guys, this planet sucks. Yeah. Duce is. And they did help out.

So thanks to the dark angels, they kind of get everything set up in a good spot. The, it's called the 88 siege regime. It is funny, though. Come on. Let's go back to this because the dark angels show up and put a wild

whooping on some stuff. And then just kind of go, all right. Do you guys all see how awesome? we are. Cool. See you later. And they went, good luck for this. Hey, man, we're still not in a great position. They're like, yeah, we're pretty bored with this, though.

Also, there's no falling here. They also did take some pretty heavy losses because Alpha Legion surprise attacked them because they're freaking dark angels and they're terrible. They're detecting traps. Well, yeah. They also see Caliban. Yeah. Also, when they went to the starport, they did roll into the, hey, why are we all standing on this giant,

on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is there any Legion that's fallen for traps more than Dark Angels? Just right after the horse series, just the Imperial Fist because they kept falling down. Well, there was that one time the Imperial Fist fell for it.

But I'm thinking Dark Angels, I mean, you have, I think Caliban's a bigger fall for trap. Yeah. I mean, they want. There's a lot of them, though. You could be. The reason is that those guys are so tough. I feel that they just don't care.

Yeah. We'll be fine. Like, it literally says trap. Yeah. They're like, yeah, but I don't really give it. But we're probably still going to be okay. Which, to be fair, they took a lot of casualties, but to be fair, they still won in the obvious. Oh, they always win.

It just wanted to hear like, did you guys just walk into that? Yeah. Oh, wildly so. All right. Yeah. That's fine. All right, but let's get to today's cast and the new information. So as the forces of the 88 siege regiment begin their push to break the second line,

Lord Arcos put his plan in action. And while this war outside, like the whole point of all this happening. Yeah, Lord Arcos knew he knew how to basically turn Vrax into something special. So the war outside is a meat grinder. Artillery barrages, followed by charges in the no man's land, followed by trench fighting, followed by counter charges. And then there's just all this just death. inside the confines of the citadel, you've got Lord Arcos and a bunch of chaos sorcerers. And the sorcerers.

And the sorcerers start doing spells. And what the spells are designed to do is basically channel all this death as almost like a radio message directly into the warp. Because what it does, it creates a beacon directly into it. And this, within the eye of terror, this beacon begins to hit them. Pulsing. Well, it also draws. It wasn't just a, we're here. It was almost an irresistible pull to battle.

Because, yeah, that's the thing. The war bands within the eye of terror, like Lord Arcos, he's Alpha Legion. He's not calling Alpha Legion saying, hey, guys, I got a cool thing going on, come here. He's just trying to get almost the worst of the worst to show up. And he's just making a like, hey, something kind of fun over here. So it's not like a calling of allies. It's more of a letting the worst things know there's something here. Yeah.

He said they blew out a wall in Arkham Asylum and went, hey, guys, if you want to come over here, it'd be awesome. Check this out. That's actually a very good route. That's a very, very good analogy there. I mean, for the people that showed up. Yeah. It was a motley crew. Yeah.

So what happens is all around, especially the I, of terror, but especially around the galaxy, there are these listening posts. And listening posts are designed to track ship movement. And anytime any ship moves past these listening posts, it's notified. All of a sudden, his listening posts all around the eye of terror start transmitting, hey, there's fleets moving here. And fleets that are not supposed to, the fleets that are not part of Imperium charts, so they're not merchants.

Imperial Navy immediately goes to work. They know, all right, something's happening. but the problem is space is big, which is a really dumb statement, but it's still true. So it's a giant space. They don't know where these things are going or what's happening. So the Ordomalius does what they do.

And they've got this really cool thing. They call a null ship. And null ship is a fully automized, automized, automatized, however, that's a word, ship with a single pilot. There we go, that's a list, with a single pilot who's a blank. And that blank can move through the galaxy,

he completely undetected and just flies it right into this thing and transmits back what they're seeing. And what they're seeing, this is a suicide mission, by the way, they fly into the eye of terror is, oh, crap, there's effectively a giant chaos fleet and it's going in one direction. And they knew where that direction was, and it was frax. And it's also, it's not just a lead. It's a big fleet. Well, it's an armada sort of. It's actually kind of funny what the fleet. is. So the fleet is, and we'll get to more of it later, it's really only a couple battles, big ships, and

a bunch of transports that are so full of warriors that they're basically hanging on the sides. You know what I thought? It's like a refugee ship, like going to war. Is that from Firefly, Serenity, the Reaver fleet? I felt like like that. It's just like this

motley collection of... I think we can accept Firefly took a lot of stuff from 40K. I think we all know that. Right? Like, if only they would have brought it back. So the Imperium goes to move quickly. The problem is you can't really track movement here. They know where they're going, but they don't know much about it. It's like tracking a submarine. You can only catch them at certain points. So you don't really know unless they maintain a set heading at a set speed. You don't know when they're going to arrive. At the same time, warp travel is not that

fast. The Armada knows it's going to VRAX, but they can only get there as fast as they can get there. So Rear Admiral is named Rasek. And so he's kind of nearby. So he grabs literally merchant vessels and just puts guns on them and he goes, all right, you're with me. And his plan is just try to hold out and turn them around and do what he can while waiting for more to come in. This is going to be a major naval battle. It's the best he's got. Chaos breaks in.

And it's kind of a traditional chaos breaking into the system. It's a hodgepodge. A few small ships here in there. We have different bands. And they're not, this isn't one cohesive thing led by Avedon or something. This is just, these are war bands. I'm just going to show up with my guys. And I don't care when you're where your guys show up.

I'm going to show up and do my thing. Exactly. And so Rasek doesn't really, he doesn't have a, but he doesn't have a choice. He has to engage with them. So he starts kind of doing little bits here and there until the full fleet gets it, starts, starts to arrive. And so Rasek sees the full fleet arrive. and he goes, all right, I got a plan. And the plan is basically, we're just going to hit him real hard.

It's chaos. Chaos tends to not like a big fight. So he arranges the entire fleet, basically in a line, and there's going to go forward firing every torpedo and gun they have at these guys, blast them, blast them apart, and get them to turn around and run away. Yeah, except for the fact that, as usual, the scanners weren't working, because there's a despoiler class, there's a battleship, the Anarchy's heart, which is a despoiler class can take on whole fleets by itself.

And he just didn't know that that thing was there. Well, and that's the problem because this, these things kind of come independent. These are all independent crafts. And yeah, I just, spoiler class battleship is something that it's just going to not idea. You're in charge of scouting, scanning, and you go, hey, Brad, I didn't notice this. Arranger, this thing that's bigger than anything else. I would go, one, if we get out of this, you're for sure fired. Okay, that's what.

But yes, this shows up. But now I will say, Raciak does exactly what any good Imperial Naval officer does. He doubles down and goes fine. We're shooting, shoot guns harder, you know, at the big thing. And he does get a little bit of a reprieve, though, because as he begins moving forward, two of the main cruisers that were, that chaos cruisers hold back and don't engage. So he has a chance here to actually damage this battleship,

along with some of the smaller ships around that. And the reason they held back becomes obvious. Another rear admiral named Mazur appears, basically translates into the warp right behind them. The chaos, their scanners were working and knew this was coming. Exactly. So whatever. The chaos forces, though, start beeline towards VRAX, which causes a problem for the imperial forces.

Because while they have this great wall, their whole idea was workers just going to blast them and then they'll retreat. The issue is the chaos forces kind of weren't there to do a naval battle. They were there just to get to VRAX. A lot of the people answering this call have no desire for a tactical naval battle.

I'm not even sure if their ships have guns on them without being honest. These guys want a very not tactical chain axe to the face battle. So they're running a rocket roll. And so what happens is he's moving his line of ships forward. And these ships just go, all right, flank speed toward Vrax, which means a ship that's not shooting at him goes through his line.

And he has to either chase that ship down so it doesn't get to Vrax or deal with the giant battleship that is shooting at him. And the problem is he has to go deal with the one going towards Vrax. VRAX. So his ships, his fleet starts to break apart to deal with these just individual transports that are just belining at racks. By the way, this is a wild miscalculation. We continue. Oh, it's a terrible idea. Yeah. And they start, they do start, but they do blow up a bunch of these transport ships. A couple of them, though, crash land on VRAX. Epic losses because. Yes, but this also turns the battle. So a couple of the ones they do hit successfully, blow up, but a couple of them

do land, crash land. But this is. enough to turn the battle and the battleship just starts wrecking shop. Yes. It all falls completely apart when Racy himself, his battleship, takes a torpedo to its back thrusters and just it's now, it basically doesn't move. Yeah. At which point they have to translate out, maybe they basically warp out of the system, leaving the other rear Admiral Mazur just by himself.

Who does. Super not cool because he goes, hey, remember when you made a bunch of bad decisions that led to your fleet being wrecked? And then you were like, man, things are going bad. We should get out of here. See you later, Mazur. And you went, hey man, not cool, bro. Not cool.

Well, I like what Mazur does next. As Mazur basically sits there, the anarchy's heart turns towards him and comes right at him and he just goes ramming speed and takes his ship and does rammed. The only problem with, well, what I like with is he calls ramming speed, but he does it from like 50 miles away. And so they go full speed and the battleship just goes, all right, and blows him up before he gets anywhere. If you have this on video, it's just all I can think of him was him going, not today, ramming speed. And then they just blow the ship up. Yeah.

Like, if you're going to call ramming speed, it's a great. Is it, it's, it's, it's been her. Ramming speed is Benher, right? When I'm thinking of it. You can go. It's got to be, it's got to be Benher. But anyway, but that's the, it's, you usually call for ramming. speed when you're in range to ram them.

Not, I'm going to start running at you like Monty Python, a holy grail, where he's running at, where is it where Sir Lancelot is charging across the grass? Yeah. So anyway, long story short, chaos now controls the entire system. So that's not ideal. Brave Sir Robin ran away to fight another day, yes. Yeah. Also, it's not going to get better.

Let's talk about how it feels to be. down on the planet's side. You finally are getting a foothold. You're starting to. Oh, this is so bad. You're really wrecking it. You're looking around going, guys, I know it's been a tough time. It's been years in the making.

But we finally have victory right in our grasp. And this is important yet. So as on the ground, they have the citadel surrounded. Awesome. They breached. Yeah. They hadn't breached a citadel yet. They just hadn't breached.

They reach the two fronts and they're going in the past. Yeah, so all the fronts, yeah, they're at the last front. They're ready. This is it. And remember, when there's a naval battle above, they're not radioing downs. They don't even know this is going on above them. They're just seeing like explosions in the sky, which is a like, all right, kind of whatever. And then they see a couple of ships start crash landing.

Reinforce it, probably. Yeah, whatever. And then out of, the story is in the, middle of one of the many trench attacks. It's not like it was like a major candy, but they're doing the artillery fires, guys go over the top, counterattack, blah, blah, blah. Out of nowhere, an orbital bombardment comes down on top of them. And then Dreadclaw assault pods come down. So bad part two. Oh, spoiler alert, what's inside the Dreadclaw salt pods? Berserker's

Corn Berserker's versus Krieg Guardsman I love my Creeg guardsman there's limits to what a shovel can do this are

scoring max levels of this although fun story the berserkers come blasting out and just start wrecking everyone but berserkers not the most tactically minded

So they're just cleaning up all the guardsmen in the near vicinity. But the guardsmen in the trench not there are just watching this happen going, huh? So they're all just going to stand there in the middle of no man's land, huh? They shot that they also artillery bob the ship. Yeah. So I did look at all because this whole thing happens, the drop claws come down. All the bersergers slaughter every single Kriegsman who's in no man's land all the way to,

the enemy line, but then they literally just stand there looking for someone, look across no man's land at all the Kriegsmen standing in their trench. And the creesman in the trench go, yeah, no, we're not messing with that stuff. And just open up and remove all the berserkers. But that's not really enough. This then continues and the chaos start landing more and more troops, including Titans. So the commanders have no choice. They have to shift. This is getting really bad. They go from an offense to pure defense. Okay. We didn't mention, oh, yeah, there's a third problem. Would you like to tell? Yeah. The chaos brought Titans. Oh, yeah. You know what Kriegson brought in their push to defeat Titans?

It was nothing. It was a shovel. They have no answer. They had shadow swords and stormblades, which are Bainblade variants that can pull down a Titan, but it's different. These are like, I mean, I love my Bainblade. I actually don't like Shadow Swords. It's a weird thing. I don't like them. But the issue, it's whatever. You love certain big tanks, which is so crazy.

I like the Bain Blades. And I only like the Bainblade with Flamers on it. That's my thing. It's a lot of flamers, by the way. I mean, it does pick stuff up. When Bain Blades go to work, they go to work. That's all I'm saying. When they go to work, they go to work.

But the problem of Shadow Swords and Storm Blades is that as good as they are, they actually aren't great at taking out Titans. without Titan support because Titans are much more mobile than they are and so they try to deal with these Titans and just get erected for it. No, they have

complete, they've lost complete control of the sky, be it orbit or actual just in the atmosphere. Yeah. They have no air support which is pretty big deal. Yeah, so effectively this, they now are on the back foot. The 88th siege regiment

begins retreating. They have to find a position to fortify and hold out because they're just under assault. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging managing a global team can be. Just the act of creating one has been an extreme challenge over the years because one thing you'll learn quickly is a difficulty of hiring global talent and how unclear those costs can be. It looks simple at first, but then the fees start to stack up with compliance worries, contractors versus employees and a host of other regulations. Pebble brings clarity with up front, all-in hiring costs and enables you to hire the world. Pebble is an AI-powered human resource platform

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Go to highpebble.aI to get a free estimate. That's high p-e-b-l.a-I for a free estimate. While all this goes on, back on Terra, the word has come back of what's occurred. the failure of the naval battle. Failure is mad. You just compared it to that battle. Yeah. So they also have realized the situation on VRAX is now it's untenable.

Untenable is a nice word for it. And the problem is that the strategic importance of VRAX and now a heavy presence of chaos means they can't just abandon it. Chaos now control because they can't let chaos control a world. just outside the eye of terror. This would allow them to basically come out of the eye of terror and reinforce themselves. They realized that Commander Zulki,

who was running this thing, wasn't the best choice. So he's going to get replaced. You mean Nepo baby? Got it. Continue. Yeah. And they bring in a guy named Marshall Kagori.

Marshall Kagori is old, very old, but he's a grizzled veteran who knows his stuff. Fun story, though, because Zulki came from a very, very wealthy family, he actually couldn't be punished for this failure. So instead they moved him and put him in charge of another guard army that was going to deal with orcs. Instead, they punished all his subordinates and put all of his subordinates in penal regiments fighting tyrantids, which is a death sentence, by the way. So because it sure was their fault, not because he was an idiot.

So Kigori realizes that Vrax needs a full change of style of war. We're going, we're going to move from siege to total war. So he begins petitioning other worlds to help him out, namely forge and night worlds. He needs Titans. He needs aircraft. He needs everything. He also went back to. Yeah.

He also went back to Krieg and was like, can I just have all of the regiments? And Krieg was like, yeah, sure, here you go. Are we going to a terrible place in an unwinnable war? Yes. Got it. Let me get my shovel, my mask, and let's go. those guys are so crazy it was great

they're fantastic he also went to the imperial navy and was like yeah I need a bigger navy and they were like all right go ahead now the funny part is that meanwhile back on Vrax and by the way this isn't the meanwhile like in a TV show where they're like meanwhile and they cut to something happy this is a bad cut

back on Vrax things are getting ugly because the you know Cardinal Zafan has lost control of the situation this is actually good for the imperial defenders because of the fact that chaos starts to chaos. Yes, they're being up on the imperial forces, but they're doing so in the most chaotic way possible. And occasionally, they're just fighting each other.

You know, chaos is going to chaos. Yeah, they basically do it independent of each other. Now, for one of the defenders, the 19th, they have a little problem because one of the chaos forces are a little bit stinky and pestilious. Stakey. A Nergo warband made Planet Fall, and they wanted to make their own mark. Get it? On the planet.

And they discovered that there's a giant supply on munitions on VRAX of chemical weapons, which are described as having been forbidden for thousands of years. By who? Be right. GW just does this. Like, I guess the words of terror. You're like, hey, we still use planet.

destroying missiles, but don't use Agent L. Yeah, we have virus bombs, right, but not these ones. Yeah. All right, the Nergal Warband finds them. It's called TP3, and it's an acid gas that's so potent. It can corrode armor. It can burn skin from bone instantly. Whatever.

But the Krieg, funny sorry, they fire at the creek, and the Krieger basically like, eh. Like, where it's better. Yeah, where it's really dense, it does work on them, but a lot of the spots that Krieger are kind of like, all right, like, I'm literally wearing armor for this type of stuff. Yeah. Fight harbor doesn't resist guns, but it does resist this. Yes.

But the force of Nergel do decide to just, they find this group called the 19th. And the 19th are basically trapped between the Nergel warband and a cliff. And Nergel decides this is just going to be fun. And we're unlike the forces of corn, we're going to go. slowly. And they begin this process of firing the gas at them and then moving forward with vehicles, plague marines, mutants, everything, and charging towards the creek. And an effort, because they're, you know, force of chaos, like just inflict horrors upon the creek. Yeah. But let's talk about how the creek are awesome in this one. The creig are awesome. Because they keep going,

hey, we need some artillery help. Where? Shoot at this. What is this? Exactly. where I am fire artillery, and they do this a bunch. Yeah, it's all the Creege do, because I think the Nurgle war bands were convinced that, like, oh, we're going to get the people, we'll get their souls over, because they'll be so horrified by this, that they'll do anything to give up. And the Creeger is like, Naya, we're good. I'll just keep shooting at you. And when you get really close, my buddy over there is going to shoot at both of us.

I do love that they also waited for the artillery bombardments until they were on top of them to make sure. looking at yeah they were looking yeah yeah yeah yeah the creaks the guy with the button is looking the plague marine in the eye going like boop screw you man and pop so eventually the entire 19th perish and it is mentioned in the book that nergel gets there they basically turn it into a garden of nergel where they see people like tending they turn it into a garden where the undead beings are tending it but the 19th held out for everyone was so weak just taking as many of them with them as they could. Like, all right, screw you. I'll keep blowing this up with me. But eventually

Kegori's forces do arrive in system to reinforce for X. And when they come in system, they do have an issue, though, because anarchy's heart, that giant battleship, is nowhere to be seen. Also, but hold on. They know that it's somewhere around here, but. Because chaos doesn't just leave. Because also, because their scanners only work as far as you can physically look out a window and see, apparently. They can't figure out where it is. that's got to be here somewhere well there was a lot of debris around I got nothing man

it's a guy with a pair of binoculars is the dead of the scatner I mean to be fair you and I adeptic I did have to play a game with night night fight you know who that affected you because I punch people well no also because our opponent is forfeited before I use my DACA jet which I still mad at you about excellent choice

best of the entire weekend So what happens is the imperial forces begin creeping towards Vrax because they can't see where this giant battleship is. And they find it pretty quickly. The battleship was hiding amongst the debris and comes rocketing out with two side cruisers. And, you know, blah, blah, blah, they fight. That's kind of what it is.

But this time, Kegori and his forces do what the chaos force did last time. And they just start beelining towards Vrack saying, screw you, we're going there. and leaving a couple cruisers behind to fight the battleship. The battleship doesn't know what to do. Now it's stuck with the decision. Do I blow up the ships that are going towards the planet? Or do I blow up the ships that are fighting me? And it makes the poor choice.

It tries to pursue the transports. And takes a wild amount of damage, which they should have looked from the last. All of the torpedoes basically. Yeah. And so then it takes a bunch of damage and realizes that even with it's also too slow to keep up. So these transport ships get there. It's heavily damaged and it just gives up and slugs back. Because remember, it's not an organized force.

This battleship is an independent entity in all of this. It's not actually there. It doesn't really care about the defenders on Vrax. It's not like it's supporting Lord Arcos or anyone down there. It's just there to kill stuff. And so it's kind of like, I'm out of stuff to kill. I'm going to screw off back this way now. And it leaves.

So Kagori has successfully landed now on Vrak. This is so wild, though. Because this is so beyond 40K games. He shows up with 22 Titans. Not even, sorry, it's not even 22 Titans. He shows up with 10 Revers and 12 Warhounds. Cool, Warhound, Big Titan, it's the one you see. 10 Revers are beyond what you can even take in a game of 40K?

Revers are. One of that. Yeah, Revers, 40K is played 2,000 points. A revert is 2,200 points. And it also, the city. itself. They have an entire working economy. And this river is so big. It's its

own town that runs around. It's gigantic. And the war had is also really big. And Brad and I spent six or ten minutes before the cast that I'm me trying to convince him. I think I could run one. And him getting mad at me and pointing out it has no strategic value in a game at all. Still won't one.

Anyway. But since, yeah, the thing is since the arrival of chaos in the last chunk. 88 had been losing ground all over the place. Fronts were collapsing. It was bad. Hold on. You make it sound like they were losing ground like, oh, we haven't really gained any ground. No, they were in a how can we not get

eliminated off this planet moving back? But the 88 was made up of Creek. So while yes, they were losing ground, they were not losing more round. Even though they're getting routed, every Creek's been like, we did win that one, guys, but we're going to win the next one.

Not even that. Not even that. They're just like, all right, hey, everyone died. All right. So we keep shooting, right? Well, yeah. Let's keep shooting. What else? Like, why are you giving me this update?

Yeah, like I see the enemy too. Shut up. So Kegori comes down and he decides, screw that. Not only am I going to reset the battle, I'm going to regain it. And he lands all these forces and just opens up. Massive artillery bombardress. Because he doesn't have that, like, we're going to do this. slow grinder war because the slow grinder war wasn't working. He needed a decisive action. He put on

the boots and mighty ass kicking and starts rocking like immediately. And Kigori is a very good gentleman. What he realized was the two main chaos war bands are Nergel and Korn. Neither of them have fortified any positions. Yeah, they're killing stuff. So it's actually all exposed land. So effectively, we're going to take us all back. And so he does. So massive artillery of bombardment and then a full assault with the knights and aircraft. And so no one's prepared for this. And he just, it's a blitzkriek, he does, this is traditional blitzkrieg battle, runs in full blitzkriek, and they start just making gains.

And they're significant at first. Then the defenders do get a little uppity and go, well, you brought knights in aircraft. Then we'll bring knights in aircraft. And like day two to three are pretty rough where it turns into a night fight. but the loyalist forces were better organized and better prepared for the fight. So after about a week or so, the rebels break. Bori's forces start pushing even further.

The defenders, knights, start taking too much damage. And they're actually to the point where the loyalists lost four Titans to the enemy's 12. This is significant gains happening. That's a while. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah. So now the war is, they're winning the war again.

And they push up and they get basically all the way back to where they were before chaos arrived. So here they are. They're standing outside the walls. Issue is, hold on again. Yeah, again. So we're back to the walls. Problem is pretty big walls. And there's a void shield.

So there's also void shield. There's trenches everywhere at this point in time. Yeah. So it's not ideal. So Kigori implements his next plan. And his next plan, because again, this entire siege of wrecks is based on World War I, decides sapping. We're going to start sapping. And the Kriegsman can dig tunnels too.

So they're also like Lemmings. So he sends them, it's all I ever think of when I think of sapping is I just think of lemmings. So he sends the Kriegsman to start digging tunnels. And like there's, hold on. And there's two stories in the book. One of them is the longer story. It goes so bad. You go so bad because the defenders know they're coming and they go, hey, I don't really want my wall sapped.

And they're digging a small hole. Just send the Zerkers down there and see how they work. It wasn't the wall. It wasn't the wall. So what happened was first they start digging a tunnel into where they were keeping all the munitions. Because when you have all of your trenches and whatnot, you keep your munitions below because people are firing artillery at. so it's not good if it hits the munitions. So they had this great plan.

We're going to dig a hole all the way down to munitions, and we're going to surprise attack them. And the defenders went, cool, why don't we take all the munitions out of them and just put a bunch of berserkers in it? So the Kriegsman cut a hole in a wall and go, ha, ha, we're here, and then hear the sound of chainswords and go, ah. What's not ideal? They dug holes two berserkers and just got murdered.

And so that's like the entire, by the way, it's like three pages of this. It's just that whole story to then get killed by berserker. But the other one in sector 5744 goes great. This one they think the whole. Yeah, right under the wall, pack it with all of the explosives and blow a giant hole in the wall. I love that they kept doing the same plan and going, this one's going to work, guys. Dead.

Yeah. This is dead. But eventually, but I feel like this, they blow this giant hole in the wall, which is cool, except there's one problem. The entire fortress has a wall around it, except for one spot now has a hole in it. So now both sides know what's going to happen next. Everyone's going to go at that hole. And so the 88th start pouring troops at it. Gorgon transports start going everything. And soon they get close, artillery barrages, Laskan's, heavy bolters. But they keep coming. And then they get there. And the ramp goes down. And the Kriegsman with fixed bayonet

come running out into Ogren, who were just waiting there, chemically infused and chaos corrupted Ogren. And they do this for like three days before Kigori goes, all right, this isn't going to worse. Yeah, we're losing wild amounts of forces. Because it's just a kill zone. Luckily, around the same time that Kigori was doing,

all getting the forces, he also sent out a request to, hey, does any space marine want to help us out? Because like, there's chaos here. This is wild to me because it's described as they were negotiating with space marine chapters. Like, what were the negotiating? It kind of makes sense. So the idea is that so post Horace heresy and the creation of the Codex Astardis,

which was a great idea thought up by a wonderful, the greatest of the primax. Literally never followed it even for a second continue. Because he didn't have to. Rules like this are for the lesser chapters. We've been over this. Not as I do. No, no, no. It's not,

it's not, it's for the lesser chapters. That's all it is. It's okay. It's some, not all chapters. You see the lesser chapters? Yeah.

Not all chapters are creating. Oh, why. You're, I love the, I wish I was over there. I get flamed for this every time I do it.

And I'm not going to stop. I want to push you out of your chair right now. I had a point to make, and now I'm flustered because of that nonsense state then. Anyway, Right. Post Codex of Star Days, what happens is a lot of the chapters basically wander the galaxy on ass-kicking missions, looking for Xenos, chaos, et cetera, incursions to involve themselves with because they don't interact with the Lords of Terra. They don't interact with the imperial forces. They just kind of look for things to do. They're almost like the good mercenaries or I think they're meant to be knights. They're supposed to be like, hey, this is happening, go fix it. And that is most of the stories in this word, they're just like, hey, we asked for some help.

And they were like, nah, that sounds like, hear me out. I actually, I like this because like this to me felt more like how it should function, that you have these space marine chapters who are going right in a galaxy that is at war. Everywhere the space marines go, there is a need for them. So they kind of would need to be. It's a 360, 165. Yeah, so everywhere they go, people are going to be petitioning them for, hey, I need and this happens in the Eisenhorn books where they petition them for support, right?

So that's what it is. They're moving around. He's just got this open petition. It's like the witcher. It was the negotiation thing that got me. That's fair, yeah. Like, what are you negotiating with? Like, I'm going to give you a bag of fish?

Like, what was the negotiation? Oh, yeah. It's space Marines. He's going to, he's going to negotiate. I'll let you punch a chaos guy. And they're like that's. That does sound exciting. If you said, you know, we have something else to do, I get it.

But the negotiation thing got me. But whatever. I digress. Eventually, Kagori starts just looking for, is there anybody around here we could get to come in? And the Red Scorpions went, I'm your Huckleberry and decided to rock out. And so the Red Scorpions show up. And this is pretty badass. So the Red Scorpions come in and they say, look,

this is a worthy cause for us. Chaos is there, but we do have one condition. And the condition is we're in charge of ourselves. Noah Stardace is going to be under the command of the militarom. And Gagori, being a veteran of the wars, goes, yeah, obviously. So you guys aren't going to show up if I don't agree to this? Cool.

Also, I've been doing this for a while. I've never seen the Stardace take an order from an interview of a hard guy. So I wasn't going to ask you to do that anyway. I'm not stupid. Let's get into the Red Scorpions. So Captain Aina, Aenea? That's too many vowels, guys. You can't give me four vowels in one consonant. All right? This isn't freaking wheel of fortune. I do love the fact that you put that with a question mark at the end of it. Yeah. Amia? All right. So their plan is basically, because there's not enough of them. This is a chapter. There's only a hundred of them. So they can't do much, but they're all right. We're going to help you guys capture the breach. That way, you you're in a position to win the war, it's there. So we've got this. And this is how space marines tend to interact. They can't come in and win a full war.

You know, the space wolves can because they didn't listen to Gilliman. A legion, baby. They're a full legion. Or the Black Templars who also are not. They don't follow anybody's stuff. They just show up and go over to us. And this plan is epically awesome and super space marini. Step one.

they bring their cruiser basically down in the orbit. So it's sitting pretty close to the Citadel and puts it in range of the guns. Thereby making the entire Citadel shoot up at it because they're assuming that they're about to get drop potted by the space marines. And while, but before they do this, a single Thunder Hawk took off. Hold on. I just, there's no way that I'm not calling this Thunder Hawk the Millennium Falcon because it is full of only named character. That is going down. It is a day.

And it's awesome. And it comes in, by the way, because remember, scanners don't work. So this is a Thunderhawk that comes in low and fast because that way they can't see it

along the horizon. I guess it's probably also got the sun behind it. I mean, it's the dumbest thing, but we'll skip that. Lens flare. Lens flare.

Yeah. Yeah. So it hits. So, and the idea is as the cruiser is drawing all the attention of the defenders, this Thunder Hawk comes in super fast and then just opens the front and a single squad

jumps out into the into this breach. Yes. Because it does awesome. Yeah. And does two things. For the Star Wars people, if you've ever played that old Republic, it is when they bring the transport crash into the Jedi Temple and just have a bunch of Sith Papa. That's what I thought they were doing here.

Also, they had a better plan because on the. tabletop, this is lame because the beacon, a teleport Homer is like, eh, whatever. Oh, no, but this is, okay, we're about to as usual, talk about Terminators in a second, guys, and yeah, more Terminators. They're going to be awesome. So this part's cool as crap. These guys jump out and they have a beacon. The beacon does two things.

First off, the beacon allows the ship above to drop an orbital bombardment very close to them, but not on them, meaning every rebel defender around them just dies because they, they fire just aimed for the beacon but like you know 30 meters to the side and so this massive bombardment hits then as the defenders come out after that part two happens the which is drop in with holy aspect of well yes so because when they calibort in a beacon it is perfect they are exactly where they want to be and those stupid ogrid that were kicking everybody's butt before well they just started getting golf swing by thunderhammers. Oh, yeah.

And lightning claws. Yeah. To the next dimension as these terminators just go, yeah, man, I'm a Terminator. You're an Ogrid. Pound Sand, dude. And just start rolling through these guys. On the tabletop, which one wins?

To point per point. Just pointing out. Death Wing Terminators win. Minus one d'am. Full squad of Ogre. Deathwing Terminators would win that fight. For sure. If the Ogre have the commissar.

Still, because Death Wing Terminator's wrath of the rock, they'd be minus one to wound, minus one damage. Ogrin and minus one damage. Yeah, they got a two-ups save them. I know. I'm just saying, they're winning it. They'd also pop our- I'm just saying it's an annoying thing in the tabletop. Come on with you.

The Terminators should wreck them always and everywhere. It should not be in top. We shouldn't be discussing this. That's my point. In this story, however, the terminators, the terminators should. are just popping dandelion heads off. Oh, this is brutal. They talk about them taking thunder hammers to the chest and just flying.

And all of the chemical augmentation is doing nothing for you. And I love this because the red scorpions then lightning respond to this so that they can set up all their defensive forces. They basically put down the Devastator squads. They put the heavy. Well, at the same time, a bunch of rhinos start coming in behind. So dreadnots are running and running. you know, all the way. And I love this too, yeah, because they grabbed the breach because this,

some decrement couldn't do. And again, another unit that is near and dear to my heart that has sucked in the tabletop for multiple additions, a Devastator squads come in. And Devastator squads are space marines holding heavy weapons. And they, when they hold a position, you don't get it back. And so the rebels start coming at them. And they just like last canoning every single vehicle. Like, nope, also nope.

That one's also nope. The jump Marines, the dreadnots, and they start just clean. Oh, it's awesome. They basically just immediately push everything now. They got that initial boom, you know, we got in. Then we summoned the Terminators. Terminators push back.

And that area that they got for themselves, they just jammed full of everybody, space marine and go, we have a fortified position. We're going to wreck this shit. I love this part. This is how Marines should feel. I love it in the books on this because they just come in and they do that two or three layered offensive and just push in. And then as soon as they do this, the 88th comes pouring through.

And now the issue for the defenders is now they've lost the wall. Because now that they've got this breach, they're through it. And the defenders now have to retreat all the way back to the Citadel because they're exposed. And now that's it. We've got this. We've pushed our whole way all the way through the breach. We are now looking at our final goal. And the Red Scorpions go, they did take some serious losses.

They lost 60 Battle Brothers. They also, almost. They went into basically a kill zone and went cool. We're going to lose some guys, but it also took us about 15 minutes to clear this out. So it was, this is one of my favorite Marine fights because it wasn't just one guy holding the line or anything. It was a coordinated, multi-layered. This is how Marines fight it. It feels great.

You know, they utilize super lightning strike, heavy defenses, fast troops and dreadnots, you know, to secure the forces. They're talking about the jump troops, literally taking people out on the walls and stuff. I just, I love everything about this, but it looks really great, but things were super great. And at this point in time, we should probably set it up. Yeah. So with that, actually, we'll take a break. And the reason we're going to break there is because with the 88 C,

right at the edge of the gates, it looks like it's going to go to their side. There's actually a whole other book that we're going to get to now. And this is because the forces of chaos are not done. They've got another, I'd say trick up their sleeve. It's just another massive offensive coming back. And that's because the amount of death and destruction that's been going on here has fed the chaos gods enough that they're now able to bring something else in. The good news for the imperial forces is that they're also aware.

aware of this. And so the inquisition of the Ordo Malius are aware of it. The gray knights are coming. We're actually going to bring the Red Hunters. We're bringing a lot more to this battle. And this war is going to take its final turn of going from a, oh yeah, it's a war we should win to, all right, we should probably take care of this to finally. All right, this is actually a catastrophic problem. And that's where we're going to get to. So next week we're going to cover the end of the war. and also talk about really how this war, why this is such kind of a good homage to a lot of traditional 40K conflicts where it starts off as not that big of a deal and ends up being a huge one. So until then, yeah, because it's like this thing started off as like, all right,

there's just Krieg versus local rebels. And now we've got seven chaos war bands. You know, like we're on top of six different Astardis chapter is this thing's getting big. So until then john barsotti bradchester this guy