The 40k Lorecast - Episode 135 - The Siege of Vraks pt 3 - The arrival of the inquisition and the final siege on Vraks

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

On Today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the Siege of Vraks, with the handing over of the conflict to the Ordo Malleus and the arrival of the Grey Knights. Then we follow Inquisitor Rex on his attempts to cleanse the surface of Vraks outside of the citadel of all Chaos forces.  From there we move onto the final siege of Vraks with the challenges therein from the citadel. The rise of Zhufor and his unifying of the defenders (sort of) to killing the imperial invaders. But we close out on the many layers of the “final” assault on Vraks. They use the word final but it lasts like 3 chapters, just saying.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 Barcati and Brad Chester. This guy. Today, we're getting to the end and finalizing our telling of the War of Rex because it's been going on for a while, a lot longer than the Imperium wanted. This is a cluster.

I mean, we're getting to the end, but like, it is a great story. Let's talk about it. Someone has put it just a little bit. It's a great story. So much stuff happens. And at the end, you get, possibly the most unfulfilling ending of all time.

Yeah, I mean, the truth is the entire story was written to sell a bunch of models that GW has since ruled are illegal. And at the time, almost every tournament ruled was illegal because, man, were they good? Yeah, true story. You're not wrong. 40K lorecasts.

Yeah, 40K lorecast, a weekly show focusing on the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please continue to follow and comment. It helps us out a lot, out of your day. So, cool. If you like us, check out our YouTube channel for our bi-monthly Q&A sessions and some other content coming soon. Also, if you like this show, check out our other show, the history of 40K, where we talk about the history of the game on the tabletop.

Things like, right now we're doing a lot of coverage of Adepticon in tournaments. It's kind of fun. If you guys never played back then, hear us talk about what it was like playing back in the day. Yay, terrain rules or lack thereof. Or, you know, son of. Or son of, you're in my voice, check out my other show Retro Recall, where I'm talking about video games from the 80s, and some of them are better than others. If you like us and you don't want to help us out, though, we have two great ways you can support us. One, buy our merchandise. A lot of people apparently did and walked up to us at Adepticon wearing it, which was super cool.

Link in the show notes to that. It was super awesome. I did love it. I was just so happy to see it. This is also something I fought for so much with you on that stuff. Yeah, I felt like, no one would want our merchandise. I was wrong. But the other way you can help us out is you can join our Patreon and just give us money.

It's a great way for us to upgrade our equipment, help us kind of go more places to do more things. So thank you all for doing that. Patreon, really simple. $4.99 a month. You get this show and history of 40K ad free or 3.95 Swiss francs. We're going there today. Fun thing about Switzerland. I know, I always knew about paleface Swiss, but recently,

Zonor? Holy is Zonar good. Oh, if you don't know who that is, oh, go to Spotify and look up Zonor, X-O-N-O-R. And or if you are Bradenip migrains, don't do that. It's heavy. Yeah, you're, it's thrash metal. Yeah. It's thrash metal. It's really, really good thrash metal. All right. But today we're going to cover the town of Thune because, honestly, why not? Thune, it's a little south and east of Bern. It's an ancient. town having first been settled in the Neolithic age, it became a part of the Roman Legion, which is where the territory got its name from, which is a Celtic phrase for a fortified town. And Thune has this kind of continued that tradition.

And today, it hosts the main military academy of Switzerland. But that's not why you go to Thune. Well, I guess if you're Swiss, you are because you have to join the military academy. So for them, that's why you go there. But for the rest of us, the reason you go there is because you like being outdoors. and doing fun stuff. This is a part of the region in Switzerland that's kind of amazing for burning energy. It sits at the base of the Alps.

So you have hiking if it's warm out or cold if you're a psychopath, skiing, insane views. But the Swiss are, by the way, also a little bit nutty when it comes to stuff, because you've got paragliding, which Interlaken's better, but Interlaken's boring. And it's close enough to Interlaken. You have river surfing. I'm one of the people who gets bored on vacations easily, so places like this are great. because I can just go off and do stuff and hike up a mountain and get one hell of a view of the sun setting over the Alps coming into the lakes. Same way Lucerne's really beautiful.

Most of Switzerland's pretty. And they have really good cheese. So there you go. It's like something from a fantasy setting. So like I was expecting you to go parasailing. Also, the Temple of Elemental Evil's entrance is actually in there. I'll be honest. It's basically the inverse of places you should go because everything you have to do in Thune involves going.

up. I am perfectly fine and I'm going to live forever. It's just, I'm just saying you're not built for going up. You're very, like I said, it's, you're good at flat, flat surfaces. Dwarves are natural sprinters, John. Yes, but not climbers. It's, well, it's just, I need so many more handholds. Anyway, lastly, as always, journal Discord, where you can come in and tell me all the things I get wrong or tell me what country to cover next, which is why we did so much. The Discord's been great recently, great place to interact, especially for those who don't know, there's a new edition coming out, 11th edition. We're seeing it starting to pop off on our Discord.

Quite a lot of people are asking a lot of questions of, hey, why? Why is it so different? A lot of actually very good advice has been going on in there. We're also seeing a lot. You're going to see with the change in the addition, a lot more lower changes, a lot of great stuff in there around that. We really do love our Discord because it's been molded very well into a great place for advice and great place for kind of knowledge gaining, which is the most important thing for me.

Yes, because if you are new to this and you kind of just want to ask some questions, get some advice on where to go, come on in. There's also is the Ask John and Brad channel. That's there. And we usually have one fun channel. This month was what's wrong with Toledo. We'll see what next month is. There was a lot wrong with Toledo. Unfortunately, I did discover a whole. It's a garbage. I did find out. Someone did post apparently it's illegal to hunt whales on Sunday in Ohio, but that turned out did not be true. That was a, that's an urban legend.

I was like, oh, that was too bad. I did not send you something specifically because I didn't want it on the discard this week. Yeah, Brad called me and said he was at lunch with a friend of his, and there was a windstorm, and the windstorm knocked down a trash can, and then it created what was in effect a garbage tornado outside of a store. and the viewpoint of everyone inside was like, yeah, that looks, that tracks for Toledo. It's not what that. I was going to take a video.

No one for, no one. And I don't want this to be the B. Oh, I would have posted it. I would have posted a YouTube channel. Are you kidding me? I would have put it everywhere. But the problem is everyone had been like, oh, my God, where is that? And they were, and he said, oh, it was in Toledo.

And they were like, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Fair enough. All right. But let's get to Rex. So where were we? The 88th. Hold on. because I want to get the positive mojo going because the 88th everything looked great.

They finally pushed in. They're like, we got this. We're taking the whole thing. I mean, there's a little problem with roaming Nergel and, you know, some Titans and stuff. But like, I mean, that's no big deal. We'll probably handle that by the weekend. And then, well, no. Yeah, there's some other stuff going on.

So they're settled pretty well. They're sitting kind of outside the Citadel. But back on Terra, this debate is going on. And it's been going on for a while. They're 13 years into what's supposed to be a 12-year war. And the gains that they're making are almost being countered by the losses. They are at final gates. Harsh.

These are. Yeah. And I like it because they also call out that no one's even sure how many, well, it's creaks, by the way, how many creaks are dead. Is it six million? Is it eight million? No, it's really sure. because they keep making more creeks,

but there's a lot dead. And the problem is now chaos. Space Marines are present. But what's... It will not just present. They are in force. We have the Alpha Legion kind of showing up and dabbling dabbling.

Now we have multiple gods. Chaos incursions are now happening here, which is a big... But what's also occurring is rival factions back on Terra are starting to rise up about who's best suited or who's, you know, deserves to handle the final portion of the battle.

It could be the glory. It's a little bit of convoluted stuff. Some of this is glory. Some of this is just old rivalries. It's also who's in charge. They're taking a big stand on. I should be running this. Everybody agrees that it should be dealt with.

No one agrees who's supposed to be running. And one of the main ones is Ordo Hereticus, who feel quite strongly about this. because don't forget, it was one of their own who started it. So their viewpoint is we should be allowed to finish it. Because sisters of battle, or sisters, if they were battle, but whatever, sisters were taken prisoner and in theory killed. A lot of them are taken prisoner. It was like 12. It's a lot for sisters.

Really? Our sisters cast. How many sisters are there in the galaxy, Brad? Well, it's a lot of prisoners taken. I didn't say a lot of prisoners, sisters killed. That happens all the time. Yeah, I'm going to say there's like seven quadrillion sisters in the galaxy. They could just conquer the galaxy with them.

But the issue is, yeah, the Ordo Hereticists are going like, yeah, our guy started this. We want to be the ones who, you know, finish it. The old, I brought you into this world. I'll take you out of it. That was where they were coming from. At the same time, yeah, the adeptus had been Estrada, have been wading to war. Their viewpoint is like, hey, we've been doing it the whole time. why is anyone else getting involved?

This has been our war. Screw you. The best counter for this, which is what the Ornus Malius eventually says, is, yeah, you've been in charge for 13 years. How's it going? Which is... They're getting there.

Which is very... Getting there. Yeah. The big one, though, is Ordomalius. So Ordomalius, and this guy's inquisitor named Hector Rex shows up. And Hector Rex is a very well-seasoned, very experienced member of the Ordomalius. and he had been consulting with a warpseer who had read,

ugh, the tarot cards. That's how they wrote it in the book. I didn't even want to put in our notes. No, tarot cards. I'm positive on this one because this is the dumb thing. He reads the tarot cards, and Frax is going to fall to chaos. If something wasn't done, we have to send the malles. Yeah, man, I could have done a Google search on this.

Hey, I just Googled, will this planet fall to chaos if there's a crap ton of chaos on it? no one does anything about it. It's not even a, this isn't even a hay Siri. It's more like, there's a bunch of demons there. Yeah. What happens if we don't do anything about it? It'll be, it'll get worse. Yeah. It'll, it'll, okay. Weird. It's going to fall. No, it's a tarot card reading. He figured it out. You're like, no, man, there's chaos there. If you don't do anything about chaos, it will fall to chaos. It's like, it's like a doctor you go to. You've got a wound that's oozing pus. You should take antibiotics. How did you know that? It's more like you have a nail in your head.

We should take the nail out. Good God. But anyway, so Hector Rex goes to this conclave of Scaris and says to them, hey, I want you to grant me the right to take over Vrax. And he brings with him this, you know, seer. And they do because they do effectively realize this is a big deal. If this world, because the seer tells them,

if this world isn't handled correctly, it will turn into a demon world, meaning there will be a demon world just outside the eye of terror, allowing for a staging point for all future Black Crusades. So we're going to call that one bad. That's a bad thing. Yes. Yeah. So Inquisers granted this.

Meanwhile, back on Vrax, inquisitor Kegori has no idea about any of this. He just gets a note saying, hey, you've got a visitor, and it's the Inquisition. So he takes the meeting because he's not an idiot. He just go, I've got time next week on Thursday. He's like, yeah, it looks like I've got some time right now. Yeah. Let's hang out. And he comes in and he meets and QuizDor Rex who goes, yeah, I'm taking over.

And not like soon, like right now. And he does explain to Kegori. I mean, he's not a jerk in this meeting. He explains to him that the people of Vrax are basically giving themselves over to the gods of chaos. A massive way to. It's not like there's a couple hidden cults. No. just the population is just full on.

Yeah, because so far on the surface, they have been, there have been some demonic fights, like when they were going into the Death Guard attack. It was a death guard. I guess it was just the forces of internal. Yeah. But the issue is that what's really going is inside the Citadel,

what Rex knows is there's legitimate demons just walking around in there. And that's not going to be ideal. So Kegori goes, Yeah, all right. Have at it and leaves, which is probably great for him because it's like, look, this isn't going to go well. No. Now, around the same time, everything on Vrax is getting weird. Like the storm's getting really intense.

I love that you put weird here. You're like, you're underselling it so long. All right. I do like because they talk about, and this is the order that they write it in the book. It's like things are getting weird. So the storm's getting more intense. All right. I mean, I live in the Midwest now.

That happens. Describe it as just wild. lightning storms demolishing stuff. It's not like, ooh, it was rainy. I've been in monsoon season. That's what I'm saying. I've been through a monsoon season. But the next one's big.

The dead start rising up. All right, we're going to call that one big. That's probably important. But I like the last one. There's a second sun. Yeah. Also, seems bigger than all of those. Also, that's not really say weird.

I would say, oh, what's happening? So Inquisitor, Rex, though, had a plan, and it was quite shiny. He brought the gray nights with him and the Red Hunters. So he brought all of the Astartees who are meant to do this stuff. And he also, though, before he went there, wasn't done. He knew there was a problem. So he'd sent out another note to basically a bunch of people saying, hey, dark angels and red

scorpions, you guys went, you guys would take a round two at this? This is still my favorite part of this, because he sends a note out with the, I'm not mad, but it's, I always find it a little, I find a little odd that you would leave when the fighting wasn't done. I'm not even mad about it. I'm just, oh, you see, you took it that way. I took it more as like, I thought you guys weren't a bunch of pussies and wanted to finish the fight.

That's more, to me, that's more what he wrote was it was like, oh, I, I didn't realize that the dark angels were just, were weak sauce. Either way, I, I was bail on a fight. Yeah, I thought he was shaming. to go back. Like, hey, man, I don't know if, like, maybe your scanners were off, but there was a crap ton of fighting still happening when you left. I just assumed that maybe you pulled a hammy or something, and you couldn't fight for. He says that, no doubt. Now, on VRAX, though, that he gets there, he's got to do something.

And first thing he does is he shifts all the command to Inquisitors. He brought 38 Inquisitors which is a banana's amount of Inquisitors. It's so many Inquisitors, by the way. Like, I actually, can't fit that many in my, what is the army I'm not allowed to, you won't let me run anymore? My imperial agents. My imperial agents are me. The big test is also technically illegal run 38. But anyway, but he brings 38 of them.

And this is actually, by the way, a good thing. This is not one of these things. We talk about the Inquisition. It's always like, oh, they did this thing. And a lot of people would be like, oh, is that a mean thing? No, this is smart because he's about to go engage pretty heavily with the forces of chaos. The creed don't know anything about this. So you might as well have the person leading it be kind of an expert in that.

So now all the creed companies are being led by an inquisitor. This is really smart. This increases their odds of victory. The second thing he does is he looks at and goes, so we've got the citadel surrounded, right? Yeah, check. Right. But if I look over to the right a little bit, what's going on over there?

Oh, that's just a roaming section of chaos, titans and Nergal war bands. and they're just behind us. Oh, yeah. Also, there's a full garden of Nergel. Yeah, and that's just behind. So we're going to attack and just behind us is all that. Yeah. What could happen?

Yeah. No, that's a no. So he decides to just go, before we do the Citadel thing, we're going to go to that thing and makes a new plan. And the plan, of course, involves artillery. Now, little problem with this plan. It starts off like all artillery plans, because again, this whole thing's World War I.

We're going to have this great creeping bombardment. We're going to bomb the hell out of Nergel. And we're going to sneak up behind them. And we're going to come into them. And the Nergel, they bombard Nergel, and Nergo goes, all right, cool. They bombard back with poison. Well, and also Nergel poison.

Gross. Corroti. that was on the planet that Nergled and enhanced. So it was not ideal. So this whole plan of, we're going to bomb them and then we're going to charge into them kind of falls apart because, you know, they can't. It's poison.

But, creak throwing, creak masks. Well, it wasn't even poison. It was poison with acid effectively. You couldn't even get through it. You just went, oh, the infantry just die when they move into it. Yeah. But what I did like is they then go, all right, bring the armor. So they bring in the tanks and they start going in.

And as they get in, they discover that just for shits and giggles, Nergel had raised all of the dead. Yep. Like both sides, by the way. Krieg were now driving over former Krieg with their tanks. And so there's like tens or hundreds of thousands of zombies. They're just having to go through. That's point in time.

Yeah. So followed by plague Marines, followed by beasts of Nergel, followed by chaos spawn. And there's a whole like multiple paragraphs in the book about the death riders of Krieg being helpful here. And I'm not going to talk about that because I hate horses. You know what? I will talk about that. They're useful.

You know what forces turn the tide and started to harass the positions of the Nergal forces and made it so that they didn't get surrounded. They just said it was covered in poison that was ascetic. And somehow what? The horses ran too fast. I'm just saying. I knew he said it, but the book said, Hi-ho, Silver, away. The poison won't be an issue this time?

No, full stop. The death of the Idies of Krieg were victorious and vital to this operation, John. No, they weren't. No, they were because they ran a scabby Therax, the great unclean one. Yeah, I mean, scabby basically had something to say about it, but he's also. Yeah, that was, it was going great until scabby Therick showed up and was giggling at them. Well, he was also giggling at the tanks because he was soccer tossing tanks. It was true.

Yeah, he was throwing tanks into tanks, which was awesome. But then the Grey Knights took offense to that and decided to show up and go, yeah, no. And the Grey Knights just warped in around Scabby Therax. And while he was giggling away, they just banished him to the warp and were like, all right. And grab the Krieg and like, now go keep killing demons back at it. It was a very enjoyable moment. So, yeah, the Inquisitor Rex, though, this is successful. He now has effectively controlled everything on the planet except for the Citadel.

And this kind of looked good from the outside. Meanwhile, because we're going to do the Transformers hard cut to the inside, something kind of fun has occurred on the inside. This means chaos being chaos and fighting. Awesome. This is a fun one. So on the inside, you've got a bunch of different chaos war bands. And some of them are Corn War bands. And this is written before we ever had Angron.

This is written before Angren had come back and reunified the world leaders. So this is a really cool time for corn. So for people who played back in this edition, you would add like Corn War bands to your chaos forces. That's the way it worked in this era. So this makes more sense if you think about it from that perspective of it wouldn't be like, oh, the world eaters are there. There kind of were no world eaters at this stage in the lore, in effect. Like they existed, but it was all war bands, right? So one of the war bands here of corn was led by a guy named Lord Zufor.

And Zufar came to Brax to slaughter and to kill. And with the forces surrounded, you know, in the Citadel, a lot of the war bands were, like, piecing out and running away. Zufor didn't think that was cool. So he does what any Lord of Corn would do. He starts challenging all the chaos lords one by one to a fight. And he started with... And he put on, I can only imagine, we're bedazzled boots of mighty ass kicking because he's...

Oh, yeah. Thunder doming people. Oh, the first one he goes to is the head of the berserkers, who's named Scalus. Thrax and beats the piss out of him and then goes, all right. Then he goes over to another one and tells them, actually that one he didn't conquer. He tells them, hey, cool, if you guys join me, I'll help you summon a bloodthirster. And they were like, all right, we'll join you. Yeah.

But what I like about Zufor, Zufor, he's clever. First thing he does is he unifies every single corn war band behind him. And then he goes to the non-corn war bands and goes, so here's the deal. all of the corn war bands are behind me and we are all currently sitting in an enclosed space. So with not a lot to do. So I've got some ideas on how things should go around here. I think you should be on listen to Zoo 14. You don't have to, but again, enclosed space and all of the Corn War bands are with me.

One person didn't bend the knee though. And it cracks me up on it because the Alpha Legion in Arcos, he was like, yeah, well, I'm not going to do what you say, but I'm going to do what Alpha Legion does and have an overly complicated plot to weave in something. Well, Zufor goes to Arcos and goes, you know the deal. It's, you know, chain axe or bend the knee. And Arcos goes, option three. Yeah.

And Zerfur goes, I'm listening. And Argos, here's the deal. you really want to kill that Zafan guy, right? And Zoufro goes, I do. I do want to kill him. That would make me really happy. And Arcos goes, cool. You can't get in there.

His doors are very locked and they'll take you a while. But they'll let me in. So I'll make you a deal. You, I don't bend the knee and you don't chop my head off. And I kind of just go and leave and do whatever I want to do. And I'll unlock the door and let you go do whatever you want to Zayfan. And Zufor goes, all right, deal. I love the knock on the door.

Who is it? definitely not a guy wanting to let a bunch of berserkers inside here. Oh, cool. As long as it's not that, come on in. Yeah, it opens the door. Well, actually, not only that. They open the door. And as the door opens, a bunch of the Alpha Legion who were inside killed a bunch of

a bunch of the bodyguards too, because that's what Alpha Legion would do, of course. And Zoo Forger comes barreling in. He doesn't kill Zayfan, though. He just takes him prisoner because he tells Zayfan, you're the last person I'm going to kill. That was actually his words to Zayfan. and puts him in a dungeon, but he does track down Mayman and crushes his skull with his hand.

Yeah, by the way, he deserved it. That guy was, he's basically warmed him. Yeah, that's fine. He just is. So now we jump back to the outside. We'll be right back after a quick break. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress affects far more than our bank accounts.

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Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com. That's better, help.com. Back on the outside, Inquisitor Rex is ready to go. The final assault. Yeah, but this one's going to take a while. So we're going to, I'm going to capture. the Citadel, and I've got this really aggressive plan. I'm going to bombard it with

enough artillery that it just overloads the void shields. We're not going complicated at this point. The issue is that they only go down for a little bit, and then so once they go in, you have to kind of run in, obviously, with the Krieg. Lighten strike. Yeah, and then some drop pods with red hunters,

and then we're going to, you know, find the generators and blow them up. The problem, though, is just as he's about to do this, he gets him, very fun, I don't telegram. He gets, probably not the singing kind. He gets red tape is what it gets.

It's great. Hey, he gets a note. Do we get more bureaucracy, put in here? It's worse than bureaucracy. It's actually kind of funny. So what he gets is he gets a note. And the note says the 88 siege army is to withdraw from the front line. Dozens

other regiments are being transported off world to other sectors because the war on VRAX is going so well that they don't need. It's such a large force there. A small force could take care of all of this. And Inquis de Rex knows what this is. This is the other ordos.

Just screwing with him. They didn't want him to get the glory of this success. So they decided to hamper him massively. So even if he does succeed, basically the two points either make him fail, then they'll take over and win. Or make it so if he does succeed, it's almost a Pyrrhic level of victory. So he doesn't get any actual glory for it. And to his credit, Rex does try and, like, he actually petitions the Lords of Terra himself.

And, yeah, that fails. Not only does it fail, but actually his emissaries that he sends the Lords of Terra after petitioning Lord Terra all get assassinated. So he realizes pretty quickly, all right, I got to do this the hard way. But, you know, enemies still surrounded. I still do have the Red Hatcher. For the last 13 years. And the gray, yeah, and the Grey Knights. and a good amount of creek.

He was able to keep a good chunk of the creek, but not all of it. The problem, though, is that this whole plan he had to blow up the void shield, go into all this stuff, is the citadel was surrounded by a bunch of natural, like, kind of gullies and ravines, which makes a ton of kill zones everywhere. In fact, it's said that some of the ravines are so high,

you actually couldn't go in there with armor. You had to go in on foot. You know what it looks like in the pictures, though. It looks like the fortress of the Thundercat. That's exactly what it looks like. It actually does. The first of the Thundercats. That is the depressing part.

You look at it and go, really? Way to go. For a company so litigious on IP violation, just saying. I thought I saw Liono peeking out of a window. Exactly. It's like, what was the Thundercat who was the engineer? I'll never remember that. Panthero?

Was it? Good job. It's lucky. I'm older than me. This is how you can remember this crap. Thunder. Catercats. Oh.

It was not a good cartoon. It was fantastic. But it was not. All right. But they decide to still go with the original plan. We're just going to overwhelm them. We're going to hit him with everything.

Because under Rex's idea was, these guys probably don't have much left in them. We've whittled them down. We'll just overwhelm them. The defenses will fall. It's still chaos. They'll just, they'll do what chaos does. Well, also what chaos does a lot,

especially if you're Alva Legion, they planned for all of this because remember your super fast lightning assault well you instead had to deal with random bureaucracy for a while so you didn't do your super fast lightning assault you talked about your super fast lightning assault for a while

yeah and so what happens is they go and they try and do it they bombard they do all this stuff the issue is the kill zones are just too extreme as they push in the all of the forces get bogged down even the drop pot assault from the Red Hunters. They time it wrong, basically. The infantry are not able to get in position to support them.

So they just drop in with no support and a bunch of Alpha Legion, in this case, looking down of them going, well, that wasn't even hard, heavy bultors. And problem solved. So just the case after a week. Hold on. Just in case you're wondering, though, a ton of Craigsmen are dying here. Just the case you were like, hey, man, are we still just throwing Kriegsmen? He's been into a woodchew constantly never-ending.

Oh, yeah, that's the whole time. That's happening. Don't worry about it. So this goes on for a week. And after a week, Rex goes, all right, this is going to work. He pulls back. All right, we're going to try this again. The next attempt, he decides maybe we do this more step by step.

He decides to move from a breach in Cluey or to more of a breach and hold. How about we just kind of take pieces of it and work from there? And he decides we're going to target one of the main gates. and I'm just going to bomb it until it doesn't exist anymore, and then I'll use that rubble as a fortified position to stage the next assault through, which, by the way, doesn't make a lot of sense, but whatever, we're going to go with it.

And he decides to bring his Titans into the fray this time, because, spoiler alert, the defenders don't have any Titans. Should have been done this in the first round? Exactly. I was just going there. I'm like, remember the time you had Titans? You should have, right about the time you're killing another million or so, Kriegsman, and then you bring the Titans in,

someone had to go, I'm pretty loyal, man. Yeah. So the first one, the first one brought the Titans, it would seem better. Yeah, first one was, hey, infantry, keep running at it endlessly after a week. Ah, it didn't work. The second one, how about we just shoot at it with our big guns? And then we move the Titans up. And then when the enemy brings in armor, the Titans blow up the armor, then the infantry goes and holds the position.

Yeah. And that's exactly what they did. Yeah. Success. So now they've got, now they've actually got their first little beach. of, okay, we've got this. And at the same time, he gets a phone call. It's the Red Scorpions.

They've been shamed into coming back. And they decide, all right, fine, we're back. We'll finish what we started. And they come in and tell them, all right, what do you need us to do? And the Rex says, I got a great idea for you. We need you to do a bunch of lightning assaults all over the place. Because the problem is that the defenders are too quick for us. effectively, the Rex's forces are creak.

So they're still human speed. The defenders are demons and chaos marines. They're just too quick. So wherever he gets in, the counterattack comes in too fast. So he wants to have the Red Scorpions help him do something where they can take something and then move at Space Marine speed. This way they can actually hold it. But he needs to spread them out a little bit.

So the Red Scorpions are going to come in elsewhere. They're coming from the East and the South. South with some support from the creek because we're always going to sacrifice Creek. So come on, though. We have to give so many props on this because this is like cradies, 80s action movies style and how they roll in. This is the most space marini stupid but awesome. It was so awesome. It is awesome and dumb at the exact same time.

So we'll talk about what they do and I'll shit on it in a second. It was red scorpions. You can shit on it. I'm talking about what they do. A bunch of Vanguard vets with jumpback assaults, jump out of a Thunderhawk, which is basically moving at max speed. And I'm assuming everybody did either a superhero landing

or kick somebody while they were flying out of it and did a pose, like shot somebody while punching another guy. And it was fantastic. Yeah, the gates have guns on them, by the way. It's like, oh, look, the guy's jumping out of the ship. Boop, bo, boom, bo,

bo, bo, I thought you didn't like the plot, the expendables, because this is exactly, I didn't. The movie was terrible. Stallone jumped out of a Thunderhog. Look, I'm just going to say it. I don't like really any Stallone movies. With the exception of demolition man,

and only the non, like, fighting parts of it, the whole three shells. Like, and Taco Bell, Taco, no, Rocky's terrible. Taco Bell winning the, the, crack cocaine. Look, the entire, the best part of Demolition Man is the whole thing where Taco Bell wins, the fast food wars. That's the whole thing. It's the, that entire element is the only element of Demogement I like. The rest of it's garbage.

The three shells thing, I still do that to Friends Lakewood my house. I'll hide the toilet paper and put three shells. in the bathroom to this day. Still funny. Anyway. But I'm about the over the top, you turn the head on backwards. Yeah, but oh God, he still owns sucks. Anyway, but they jump out of the airplane and land. But at the same time, at the other gate, they decide Land Rader party because this was

also an era, but Land Riders were still halfway good in the game and just drive landers and rhinos straight at it and go, all right, how many guns you got? Not enough. and just pin the defenders between these two assaults. And while they're doing this, Rex is elsewhere. By the way, leading from the front, he and the Krieg, the Red Hunters, and the Grey Nights hit the main gate. And this fight is awesome.

They hit the main gate. So the Red Scorpions are elsewhere. They're drawing the forces. They're jumping out of airplanes. They're using this stuff. The main gate's a lot funnier because they basically get to it. they blow it open, a bunch of Krieg run through, and the gate opens and demons of corn come pouring out the other side.

And it's also blood letters, flesh hounds. My favorite one is possessed. Yes, brass scorpions come out. And I just love the imagery of a bunch of Kriegsmen running in. And you know they don't run out. It's just a bunch of blood and a brass scorpion coming through. But at which point the gray night is just kind of like, do shorthyons. shoulders shrug and go, all right, and just wander into the demons and just,

you have to ask you so if the brass scorpion pauses for a moment and goes, seriously, dude, stop hitting me with a shovel. What is even happening right now? Why are you doing this? This is, like, do I still get points for killing you when it's this easy? But what happens next is tough for me. All right, while this is this fight the main gate is going on, all these demons of corner going. There's a reason all these demons of corner there. A meteor lands in the middle of it. And by meteor, it's not a meteor. It's a bloodthirster named Angareth. This pause on this. This model is so awesome.

It is a huge. Oh, it's an amazing model. Yes. Oh, also costed 888 points. Did it really? Yeah. They did all of them. Scabby was 777. He was 888. He was awesome. Also one of the first demons to have a two upsaved. Angrath lands. He first see this is picks up a tank and throws it at the gray nights. He then like he cuts another land raider in half with his sword and starts just ripping gray nights apart. Just shredding everything because this is an error. I don't forget bloodthusters in the lore are like terminators in the lore. They're badass. And he just and this is the number one.

Heavyweight champ of bloodthasters. Yeah. And he's just going... A monster. And he's wrecking his shot to the point where he's actually basically killing all of the Grey Nights. Until he gets to Artus, who is like, I think the brother Captain Artus, runs forward to meet him. And Angrath is just throwing everything he has at him. And Artus is blocking it.

And he uses his psychic powers to reduce the beast. And Angrath just gets angrier. and busts him and kills him. So Brother Captain Artus no longer exists because Angrath got angry at Arthus trying to use psychic powers on him, which is accurate for demons of corn. Well, they're also used to have,

remember even in the game, the Grey Knights had abilities to lessen the power of demons. Yeah, but unfortunately. Maledictions. Yeah. Unfortunately, though, that whole thing I set up bloodthurs

and the lore being cool, They also sometimes become super uncool and lame, and that's what's going to happen right now. Ah. After a bloodthirster kills a bunch of grey knights, rips apart with its hands, a few tanks, Inquisitor Rex in his power armor squares up on it. And Rex has a super power sword. A holy sword. It's called that. And he severes the bloodthirsters connection to the warp.

He should have got off swung into another dimension. It does the whole, he stabs him in the chest while the blood there's just a backhanding him. And, yeah, banishes Angrath back door. I'm not even honoring this whole fight with the story because it's just so stupid. It's so annoying. It's because the thing about Inquisters is inquisers, yes, they are very, very sickly powerful. They're wearing power armor. It's a psychically powered sister of battle.

And the brother captain of the Grey Knights just got wrecked by this thing. And he's like, I got it because my sword is special. Shut up. Anyway. It just is what it is. But good news is, the Citadel is breached because the demon is banished. The battle is all but one. So now who's going to show up?

The Dark Angels, it's time at the very end of the party, basically. Well, the Asian Fabsolution showed up. Well, it's still a Dark Angels because it's fun. It is because the Dark Angels were on Katie at this point. So the Dark Angels got the message. They were on Acadia going like, yeah, we really can't leave this place, guys. But we'll send the angels of absolution, which, and they mostly, but they had a condition. And the condition was, we still want that Lord Arcos guy and we're taking him back to the rock for interrogation.

Hold on. We'll share all the evasion. Oh, they promised the equation. We will share all of our information we gather. Yeah. Bullshit. Bullshit. And this was a non-negotiable thing.

So Rex debates it and goes, well, look, I kind of wanted this. too, but you are space marines. Fine, go ahead. And the Angels of Absolution brought the heat, though. I mean, they turned this final assault to an 11 because the Citadel has no void shield anymore, so it couldn't stop a bombardment

or a drop pot of salt, but what it had inside of it was just nightmare. They created a war brief. They just have. Yeah. It's a full-on, more than a portal. This is not a portal. This is a full-on, you have a

wreak in reality. Well, that's the thing. To people who maybe don't understand, demons can't walk around the materium without a connection to the warp unless you build something really significant. And that's what happened inside the Citadel. So normally, when a demon is kind of present,

it's not present for very long. It has to have either a ritual or something holding it there. You have to kill it. A ton of killing for corn, tons of plates, escalants for Nergel. you know, unbelievable sensations and excess going on for Slamash, you know. Right. But this one was so extreme that they're just wandering around fully connected.

You're effectively in the warp when you were inside the cells. It's not only a nightmare fuel, by the way. Yeah. And they're full power too. So this is not an ideal spot. This final assault's going to be tough. Themes of absolution were like, yeah, we really don't care. And they decide to just go, all right, we're coming in hot.

At the same time, Hades' breaching drills came in from the bottom to come in the other way, bringing regular infantry and armor columns are coming in from elsewhere. Land Raiders, they decide basically on one, two, three, go lethal weapon style. They hit every single piece of this from above, from below, and from the sides. But I want to start with the Angels of Absolution because it is hilarious. It's also the dark angels come across pretty. badass in this one. Oh, this is great. So they come in there to grab the Alpha Legion. Because remember last time they were there, Lord Arcos surprised Asrael and almost killed him. Except the, what,

interrogator chaplain? Yeah, Balfigor. Guess who's back? That's who came with the Angels of Absolution. Also, he's fairly motivated. Yeah, he's in a bit of a mood. So he came there to big. basically just get Lord Arcos. And we learned something. It turns out that when you take a Crozius to the face, followed by the top of your skull, it's not ideal. And Lord Arcos didn't do well. This is not the main event that you wanted because this fight was over so fast.

He showed up and waited, hey, it's Arcos. Bam, bam. Dahn. You're like, man, we paid for this? Yes. I think it's like two sentences in the end. entire thing of like he walks in lord no coast yeah lord no goes i think he may have killed a different guy and belfiger's runs over to him crozius and then turns the medic and says don't let him die

where i'm going to interrogate him and then meanwhile the rest of the angels of absolution are doing the same thing of like non-mortally wounding a bunch of alpha legion guys and then they just grab them and bail meanwhile in orbit remember that giant battleship that was there last from last time. The Anarchy site? Yeah, the Angels of Absolution, I guess knew it was connected to Alpha Legion, and they thought that wasn't cool.

So while all this is going on on the surface, they decided to go hunt that thing down to because they knew Lord Arcos would try to use it to escape. So they brought with them their own battleship called the Libertory delictium, which sounds like a dessert. They brought the Bible.

Donush. Yeah. And this time, they decide to use the chaos's inability to use scanners, because that is just the theme of all space battles and all of 40K, scanners don't work. They put a bunch of scouting craft out to start searching for the Anarchy's Heart. And apparently they use the old Mongol trade of, oh, no, we're running away because you guys are going to cut us out.

We led you into the main forest. Yeah, and the second the Anarchy's heart powers up, the Delictium goes flank speed. into it. And again, much like the battle between Belfigor and Lord Arcos, it's not a long battle. The DeLictum just goes, cool, all guns fire and blows the thing to smithering. So anarchy's heart just stopped. Does they just not put their shields on? Because they get immediately wrecked. Yeah. And I did like that on the surface, the whole goal of the Eagles of Absolution was to collect

as many prisoners as possible for interrogation. This was not the case in orbit. It was blow this thing up, make sure it never exists again. Yeah. So the anarchies. his heart ceases to exist. And now the Eames of Absolution go, all right, we're done now. Don't worry, we're totally going to send you the tape of the recording. Any day now. It's coming. Just, it's, uh, yeah, my, you didn't get my email?

It's an attachment. Yeah, it's in the mail. I swear. Oh, yeah. Check with UPS. The tracking number is one, two, three. Yeah. All right.

In another part of this, though, the one I like a lot more, is the creak, because, of course, it's the creak, bust through the floor. So they brought Hades drills, which is something we used to all have in the game. They were super fun. It was a transport that you could actually drill through the ground deep strike with. And they were fun. I mean, they weren't as good as, what was it? What's the space marine drill that I still have like two of?

Alan has like 11 of them. He's got 11 of everything. I know. Those things were great. But anyway, the Haiti's pretty sure it was still cool. So the thing about the citadel is like most imperial fortresses, the majority of it actually sits below ground. So rather than go in from the top and try to fight your way down where it's defended, they were like, well, just go into the bottom.

Because also that's where all the power supplies and the controls the shield sit. Except for the fact that it's full-on event horizon. It is the war down there. Yeah, that's the best part. So the Cree tunnel in come popping out. There are no defenses down here, by the way. There's no fortified positions. There's no troops.

There's no pillboxes. There's just demons. everywhere. And so the Krieg, get out, look around at just endless demons and go all right, shovel and grenade time and just begin working their way through it going, you know,

boot-do-do-do-do-to-do-Creeg style. And I couldn't have been happier. Because it's Krieg. It's just Krieg doing creak things of, oh, I've emerged into a realm of nightmares. Nah, whatever. You're like, cool.

No big deal. I didn't even notice, actually. Yeah, what day is it Wednesday? I guess that's what Wednesday is next. Elsewhere you have Zufor. Zufor is losing his mind. I love everything about this, though. He wants direct people, and obviously losing is not on the table for him.

And Corrin's happy because blood's being exploded, but he's not real big on the loss. Zufor says, well, I could just rock out, you know, and get out of here through this portal. However, he does the, I'm going to make a really current reference. So just like in heat with Robert De Niro, he could get away. But instead, he goes to kill Waingro. Wow. But he could have left. But instead, he's like, I got, I got something I want to do, which is have a quick talk to Zayfan with.

you know that was totally spot on with what happened here. Come on. Give me my heat mojo. It's like 20 years ago. It's probably more. It's significantly more, I think. Oh, God. Was heat in the 90s?

I don't know. Might have been. 1995. I only reference current movies. 30, 31 years, Brad. 31 years. Good job. Oh, I didn't mean to spoil.

I didn't mean to spoil heat for anybody. Oh, yeah, sorry. Sorry, spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. I have to go back and edit that. Anyway, so Zufor goes and grabs Zhafan

and just basically drags him into the dungeon where there's a bunch of sorcerers of Nurgle just doing whatever and throws him into the middle of them, who all look at him and go, cool. And they convert him. into a chaos spawn. Ultimate phase.

Just in time for the Grey Knights to show up. And the Grey Knights do what they do to the chaos spawn. They kill it and banish it into the warp, meaning Zayfan doesn't die. Zayfan gets converted to a chaos spawn. She's tormenting you forever. And yeah, it goes to the warp to be tormented for all eternity. Yeah. Anyway, Zufor also runs away and gets.

back to the war. With this, the forces of Inquisites just pour through the Citadel. They are going to kill everything. But one more thing happens, which is just classic horrible 40K. They come upon a very weird find. There are six prisoners that they find that are just super messed up. And it's the Sisters of the Argent Shrout that Zephan imprisoned. But 18 years earlier. Set it up, though. The sisters of the Arjun Shroud, to give sisters credit, have been being tormented by the forces of chaos, actually been thrown into hell. They are effectively living in hell for at least 12 of the 18 years.

And they've been fighting with the power of the emperor subsiding them. And you think, man, is he, is in prison? Hector Rex going to say, hold on. Is Hector Ress going to say you're the power of the emperor's to stay? Hold on. Hold on. Hold up. They are pretty messed up. They are blind. They are crazy.

They cannot recognize anything. They can barely speak. So they are, like you say, they're holding up. They're not like, oh, hey, guys, nice to see you. We've been barely holding out. They're just mumbling piles of nothing. Possessed by chaos. I mean, that's a pretty good.

There is that. Yeah, because their faith did save them, but not from the Inquisition. Also, does he put them out of their misery? Does he go, I will give you a clean death for everything that they had? Nah. No, he captures them and transports them to an inquisition prison. To interrogate them. Come on.

By the way, when I say inquisition prison, I'm not making up a, oh, that's kind of what John said. That's what it says in the book. He in prison, he takes them out of the one prison and puts them in the Inquisition prison so that, quote, they can be interrogated so that they can figure out anything that they might know about the forces of chaos. Maybe they'll kill them later. Who knows? Awesome. What a wonderful galaxy. But the final one happens. The final siege happens when Rex and the Grey Knights enter the inner keep. And this is an issue because this inner keep is a warp portal. It's a full rift that you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It just is a zoo four at his men.

They had escaped. But while they went out, a bunch of chaos came in. Are you going to give? his full name because I'm so excited for this one. Oh, yeah. Of course. O'Raca Warfim, the demon prince of corn. Yeah. Arraca warfee. I think you meant to say O'Raca as Barama male.

Yeah, okay, fine. Anyway, I just skip that one. You just skip that one. You're not giving that 14-syllable one a chance. Yeah, we're good. So it's funny. They come, so a couple little notes here that are funny.

Rex basically says to everybody, everyone who's not a gray night kind of screw off. We have to destroy this portal because this portal will always create a link between the immaterial and the material. And if we don't close it, this world will always be at risk for chaos accessing the world.

This world 100% sits within the Rift today. Is this the fall of Cadia? 100% this world is in the warp right now. By the way, but whatever. Deep in the room. Yeah.

Dead center too. Like, woof, bad, but not important. So he only brings the gray nights. They do the whole, like,

actually kick in the door, and there's this demon prince there with a bunch of pieces of corn, and the following story just sucks. So, blah, brother, it's a GW.

It's a GW. All right, Captain Stern is there. So it's just a GW fight. Blah, blah, blah. Stern and the demon prince start fighting. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

The demon prince gets the upper hand. Blah, blah, blah. Demon Prince is about to kill Stern. Blah, blah, blah, blah. A bunch of other Grey Knights see this. And intervene. Blah, blah, blah. As a demon prince is distracted,

Stern stabs it with his sword. And demon prince gets eliminated. It's just, it's one of the GW always does this in their writing. We're like, oh, they're fighting. Is he going to win? now he's going to lose. But the last second, his friends save him. Yay.

The cool part of this, though, is I do like the fact that because the Grey Knights have force weapons, which are specifically designed to fight things from the war. And it does make sense that they sent everybody away. Not in 10th edition. They didn't. No, not in the night. There was a time where, like, for those who don't know when you play the tabletop, there was a time where if you play demons and you're playing a tournament,

like, who am I playing next? Grey Knights. All right. Well, I'm losing that one. So where can I get lunch? Because this is going to be a quick game. Let me roll my leadership check after I hit you with that force weapon. It looks like your guy is gone.

Yeah. Yeah. This is like, so what happened? That scout banished you to the warp. Cool. Cool. But I have scabby pherax. Not anymore.

Now you don't. Yeah, now you don't. Get your own show. Yeah, it was actually a better. It was a better era. But all right. But with all this, the war on Vrax has ended. Inquisitor Rex and his army.

they purge the surface of every last rebel, demon, heretic, everything. And this 12-year campaign has ended. It only took 18 years, which, to be fair, is not bad for an Imperium campaign. 18 years on a 12-year plan, we're going to call that not. That's not that far outside of the realm, is what I'm getting at. But the question is, what do they do with the planet? This thing had been deemed too valuable for exterminatus. But now it's 18 years of four.

Yeah. Do not be extremely honest. And Chrysner Rex looks around and just goes, this world is unsavable. In fact, the system is unsavable. His viewpoint is that the taint of chaos is so strong that even to colonize it is a risk. Basically, what they should have done with Armageddon but refused to do is this thing. So they decide that everyone who fought there, they get moved to other combat zones because This isn't, by the way, like the first war of Armageddon where if you've seen a demon, we've

to execute you. This is, we're far enough into the lore where it's like, oh, yeah, there's demons everywhere. We'll send them over there to fight more demons. Who cares? And Vrax just gets turned in. They basically turn the whole system to almost a listening post of like, all right, we still have it. They're quarantined the whole thing, basically.

They set up all. But they have a listening post there, be like, we're going to quarantine it, but also in in case the demons pop up, we're going to do this. And that becomes the story of Vrax effectively. It's after 18 years of warfare. 18 years of conflict. They go, oh, yeah, we could just blown it up at the onset. The very, the first time when Zayfan went, I'm at a rebellion.

They could have just had one Imperial Cruiser, like, come by, like drop something off and then leave. I'm like, all right, that's not an issue. But, you know, 10 million dead Kriegsmen later, here we are. And I like this story because it may seem anticlimactic, but that is kind of what 40K is. it is a galaxy at war and a lot of the war is kind of pointless. This, you know, Vrex. You get it on. Yeah.

That's what I was saying to the beginning, we have all of this and you go, what did we accomplish in the end? Nothing. Like less than nothing, actually. Yeah. And so Vrax is really great because, again, it obviously is an homage to World War I. But the idea is this piece of it. It's this massive conflict.

Tons and tons of bloodshed. And it was completely avoidable and unnecessary. Yeah. We could have just bought it. That's Rex. See later. Yeah. So with that, we're done with Rex now.

That was fun for me. And we're going to go stuff that Brad wants to talk about. Yeah. Next week, because Brad is a massive fan of child murder, we're going to go on to... Don't night lord shame me, John. Don't nightlord shave me. Yeah. Fun story.

We're going to cover Conrad Kurz, who in our first like seven episodes, we referred to as Conrad Cruz. And the thing is, I can't even edit it out. So I still, to this day, get message with people saying, hey, you guys know you mispronounce his name. And I have to go, yeah, I do. And that's on the internet forever. Awesome. I also did that for about 30 some years.

I'm actually debating just doing our next episode just doing Contraud Cruz the whole time. It'll just cause problems. Until we did that episode, I was calling him Cruz for. That's why I called him Cruz. Because you called him Cruz. And I'm like, I'll just follow. I don't know. Brad reads the books more than I do.

I figured you were right. Turns out, by the way, that was the episode where I learned to double check Brad. I've been wrong. I'll be wrong again. That is my go-to motto. Yeah. So next week, we're going to cover Night Lords finally. I was going to do Iron Warriors, everybody, but I'm waiting on Iron Warriors because

GW is dropping a lot of Iron Warriors stuff right now. And I'm building an Iron Warriors army. They're going to be pretty big into the 11th edition, Lars. Yeah. And honestly, I'm building an Iron Warriors Army. So since I'm building the Army, I'm kind of going to wait a little bit more while I get that done. But yeah, until then.

John Barsotti, Brad Chester. This guy. See you guys next week.