The 40k Lorecast - Episode 136 - The Night Lords pt1 - The creation of the 8th legion and Konrad's arrival and rise on Nostramo

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

On Today’s cast we begin our coverage of the Night Lords with of course their formation under the emperor (it is awful). We then talk a bit about how the emperor used them as the 8th legion (also awful). But then we jump in Konrad Kurze (not Konrad Cruze) and his arrival on Nostramo and rise to power (?) there. Then we talk about the legion forming under Konrad and how they adjusted to his new leadership and evolved as a legion into being even more terror based.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallBrad ChannelOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Hims and use my code hims.com/40KLORE for a great deal: https://www.hims.com* Check out Pebl and use my code hipebl.ai for a great deal: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Progressive: https://www.progressive.com* Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/40klore for a great deal: https://www.quince.com* Check out Shopify and use my code shopify.com/lore for a great deal: https://www.shopify.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. Today, we're beginning our coverage of Night Lords, which mostly meets Brad and I arguing about Conrad Kurs. 100%. Because that's, we were doing it before we even started, because I have strong opinions, Brett has strong opinions, and I'm usually right. So that's how it's going to go.

You only have, you only say you're right because you edit. Yeah. I become default by default. That's how this works. It's called power. Anyway, 40K, 40K lorecast, weekly show in the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please follow, comment on the cast.

It does help us out a lot. And I enjoy your guys' comments. They make me giggle. So I appreciate that. If you like it, you want to check out some other stuff. Check out our YouTube for a bi-monthly-ish. It's always is-Q-Q-N-A's. We have another one coming up that Brad and I probably should schedule.

If you like this show, check out our other show, The History of 40K, or we talk about the history of the game of Warhammer 40K, primarily on the tabletop, but also do some gaming, et cetera. Or if you just don't like Brad's voice but love my voice, check out my other show, Retro Recall. Not a real thing. Not a real thing. But yeah, check out my other show Retro Recall where I cover video games from the 80s and 90s.

Some of them are good. Some of them are bad. Hey, Brad, remember Echo the Dolphin? I do. That game was not that. I just played it for two minutes and all the horrible memories came back of just challenge and struggle. It's got a cool cover. And also with echoing to pop it up.

Also, why? Why? Why is the Lion King and Aladdin two of the hardest games ever made? Because that period of time, they said, figure it out or don't. We don't care. Yeah, anyway. Grab yourself a game genie and move on. Exactly.

Dear God. All right. Anyway, but more importantly, if you do want help us out, we do have two great ways you can help us out and help us continue to kind of expand our show and do more cool stuff because we have a really big expansion coming really for Brad on YouTube. He's got a bunch of his own stuff coming out for YouTube, which will be really great. Ooh, I forgot. Brad, we've been getting a lot of requests recently.

And we forgot to tell everyone, if you play Warhammer 40K and you want coaching, Brad actually is a Warhammer 40K coach. We've forgotten to promote that for a while. And there's two ways you can get coaching from Brad. One, the modern way, you can join our Discord. And you can go there and request it. But the email address is dead, Brad. It's long gone.

There's no getting it back. For old time's sake, if someone wanted to email you and not have you respond, obviously. Oh, man, Brad 40K at gmail.com. He does still check it on occasion. Yes. That is a way to do it. But beyond that, we also do have two other ways you can help us out. You can go to our website, 40KLORCast.com, link in the show notes, and you can buy merchandise.

We have sweatshirt, stickers, a bunch of cool stuff, or our Patreon. Patreon's how we've done most of our expansion. It's how we've been able to do some YouTube stuff. We've got some new software that allows us to do some cool stuff on YouTube. Our Patreon's very simple. $4.99 a month. You get this show and history of 40K completely ad-free, or 230.88 Mauritian rupees. Mauritia, which I may be mispronouncing, by the way.

You go to that one up there. It's a really cool example of a paradise and why Europeans in the 16th and 17th century sucked. Just east of Madagascar, Mauritius, Mauritius, Mauritius. Yeah, Mauritinus is a paradise and hardcore paradise. It's got sand dunes that are seven different colors that never blend, which is kind of cool. it has an underwater waterfall. I mean, not really, but it looks like that. It has just beaches upon beaches.

The ocean around it is surrounded by a reef, so sharks can't even get in, so you can swim like with reckless abandon. The only problem is it is hard to get there. So when you're talking about the Indian Ocean, the problem with the Indian Ocean is it's one of the few places that does have a lot of predatory fish. and if you want to swim around the top and splash around our willy-nilly style,

it's one of the places you can get bit. Like the Caribbean, you're mostly okay. Most places in the world, most places you can, you're good, but like certain parts of like Western Australia, South Africa, this is one of those spots where like swims. I'm just assuming your reckless abandoned swimming. It's just you, it's more something. It's punching the water over.

It's more like I can, I'll tell you a story another time. about when I was in Fiji swimming and like seeing a bunch of tiger sharks and then later seeing guys surfing going well that's not a great combo but back to Mauritius Mauritinus was actually interesting thing about it it was never settled until the 15th century Arab sailors discovered it but they never settled it but my favorite thing is it was colonized by the Dutch first then the French and then the British which if you know anything about history that's not a great combo fun piece though is that the Dutch colonized it and had to abandon it because the monkeys there made it so they couldn't turn a profit.

They kept stealing everything and breaking everything they built. So every time they tried to do anything, they failed. So go capuchin monkeys. But the island's probably most famous for the dodo bird. That's where it was, which, to be fair, was an unintelligent, flightless bird that got haunted to extinction. Look, there's better examples of mankind doing horrible things. Cool thing, though, is the island ended up being, well, modern cool thing, horrible history thing, is it's a blending pot.

The island, it's got a cool cultural fascination because it was a staging point for the slave trade for both African and Asian slaves, or is the Brits like to call them indentured servants, heavy air quotes there? But there's a real cool legacy there of fusion. So it's a nice culture, both food and kind of society. So yeah, if you can handle the extremely long flight, unless you're in Africa, it's actually, pretty close from there. Great place. Check it out. Cool beaches, fun time. There you go. And Discord. We always finish up by our Discord. You can go to our Discord to get coaching from Brad. If you don't want to email him and not get a response, I think you can also. You can also go to all the tickets right after we finish. Yeah, you can also go to Discord to probably have a lot of comments about all, if you're a fan of Night Lords, about all this stuff, I'm about to do for two casts. But more importantly, you can come to our Discord and meet other people who really do like Warhammer 40K.

People who like the lore, like the books with 11th edition launching people are looking for advice on that. Really great place to interact. Good community. We got a lot of books. We got a lot of books. What books to read. Just basically everybody that's in the hobby that has interests, common interests. And we have a lot of different channels that change also.

But with that, let's get into Brad's weird obsession with child murder. You have issues. So since we started this podcast, Brad isn't bothering me nonstop about how we want to talk about night lords. Specifically, Conrad. Yes. It's all big. Now, he likes a salamanders because they're the good guys and he loves Conrad who murders children. I can't figure this out.

You got to have a dichotomy. I'm an eclectic man in my likes. Yeah, Conrad's a bad person. Like, really bad person. And a crazy person. Yeah, good. Great. way to go two for two on that.

I like Gilemon. Anyway. Eighth Legion. Yeah, I know, but no, he doesn't do. Murder children with his hands. I like specifically with his hands. You're like, he's not a lot of bombs. Oh, Gilliman's killed a lot of children.

I'm not saying he hasn't, but he doesn't look them in the eye, revel in it. But like all legions, Eighth Legion were created by the Emperor with a purpose in mind. and like all the legions, except for the 13th, that purpose was messed up because some legions are more perfect than others. Also, before they got Conrad with the knight honor, well, we're going to go into this in a second, but man, the emperor basically had a bored up of what he wanted to do with the legions. And who?

The 8th Legion was like horribly punish anybody that affronted you. He didn't do anything that helped the. crusade in this beginning. They were just there to, my God, did you say some bad about the emperor? Well, the eighth wants to talk to you and everyone that's ever known you. The Kaiser Soze, multiple lines. Let's talk about it. Okay. Yeah, you're your Kaiser Soze. It's a hundred percent fits. Does not. It does. How are the Kaiser Soce somebody? Because Kaiser Soze, if he didn't like you, you confronted to Kaiser Sose. He would, he goes down it.

He would kill your family, your friends, anyone that owed you money. He would basically kill everything that had anything to do with you. And this is what the Eighth Legion did to people. No, that's what the Raven. That's what the Raven Guard did. What this Legion did was they took you outside and cut your skin off and hung it from the rafters. They also killed everybody that did you. This is Vladra Kool.

They did exactly what I just said with a bonus step. thank you very much. I was like, this is Vlad Drakuh. This is a little, a lot nasty stuff. But they still just did what I said. We're getting into it in a few

with the old Crimson boys. Because did they exist anymore? Nope. Did they get made an example of? Yep. Was it subtle? Nope. Yeah.

All right, but let's get into it. So the emperor, when he did this, he would draw recruits from different areas. And the emperor, Malcador and Valdor, and whatever that's scientist, was called had this plan. Yeah. I let you blow over her every time.

Well, because he was a stupid name. Her name was, she didn't exist in the lore. And then they added her later, and her name was Astardis. And I just refused to accept this because it was lazy writing. Herda. But Herda Astardis. E-R-D-A. Erda Astardis.

Nope. Nope. All right. But what they decided was somehow the gene seeds would work better. if the people had a certain background. And I'll be honest, it didn't occur to me till just now how little sense that made but were 130th castes in,

so I'm just going with it. And not talking enough crap on this thing. Letting it go. But all the legions, the 8th came from a bad place. Arguably, they came from the worst place. And not really an argument. They just did. Two worst places.

Well, the worst. No, I'm saying. The 8th Legion. No, I'm saying the 8th Legion. I'm saying where they drew. And then the night lord's. doubled down on it. I was saying, exactly.

Later, they doubled down. But initially, the original eight came from the worst one. Of all the spots on terror, they were the worst. And then they found an even suckier place and made that their recruiting world. What I like about this is we've talked a lot before and we make jokes about Emperor and Maguador being dicks. And we don't drive the point home hard enough. It's not that they're selfish, they are.

Or that they're callous, they are. Or that they're evil. They are. it's the level they take those two. It's well beyond any semblance of like, it's not even end justifies the mean stuff. They were just maxing those. Yeah.

Because the whole thing were like, they had the world eaters where they had a legion devoted to the mindless slaughter of any enemies in the emperor. And that was drawn from anyone who failed the Astardis HR exam. Those guys were taken and they had to make a, You had the first legion where it's like, hey, go commit genocide, just somewhere in the galaxy and just be quietly. Those guys were taken. We needed another group of terror.

And by the way, we haven't done Ravengard yet, which is going to be our next one. Spoiler alert. We're going to do Ravengard after this one. Ravengard also come from a horrible place. Remember that when they were doing the night lords, they were trying to find people to fill out the terror Legion. Yes. It wasn't like, hey, these guys are going to do this.

No, he called it the Terror Legion. He did. And so what did they do? Well, simple. They saw the movie escape from New York and copied that. Fantastic, by the way. It actually is. This one I do like, the sequel, Escape from LA is not very good, but the finale of Captain

Ron is amazing. And I'm not dropping that. Captain Ron is the finale of the Escape from New York series. That's just what it is. Everyone has to accept that. and we'll move on with our days. But GW ripped off the skate from New York 100%. That's what this is.

Just they put it underground, all right? So after the unification war is on terror, the emperor decided to build a super prison. And building cells is complicated and guards are expensive. So screw that. And decided that there's a bunch of under cities. Yeah. Stuff to do.

Well, no, it's not that he had stuff to do. It's not that he had stuff to do in places. to go. He just decided that cells and guards were too nice and went how about instead? He was too busy building his underground lava layer

of a cave. There's also that too. So instead, he decides to just use the underground that had basically been collapsed of cities under terror. So I guess this is also a little bit running man, which is arguably, by the way, Schwarzenegger's best film of the 80s

of actual good film. of quality. Commando is his best film, but as far as like, oh, the movies he made in the 80s that you watch and like, oh, does this actually have like purpose? Yeah, running man's really good. But underneath all of like these cities is what we call prison sinks, which were nightmare zones. They were described as having no light at all, which makes no sense because humans aren't smegal. So we're going to move on from that. And in this cast, we're going to accept the fact there was probably just low light. I would say no natural light. So they were on a ground basically. Yeah, that's what we're going to have. They're right at having no light. It's like that's not, that's just not going to work. Everybody's did the Vin Diesel treatment on their eyes. Yeah, they also did that.

There was a little bit of Chronicles of Riddick here, but Chronicles of Riddick came out after this. So I was like, I just want to make sure I referenced all this stuff that GW could have stolen from. But anyone who wronged the Imperium were sent down to these hells just to die, like Dr. Evil style, but they actually died. Like there were no laser sharks, but they would go down there like, yeah, they would come out of it. And because the entire area is just roving gangs. There are no resources. What is down there you have to steal and kill for. I'm assuming everyone was cannibals.

You know, that type of setup. But not everyone who lived down there had been sent there because people are going to people. Children are born within the prison sinks. And these children were brutal. They were raised by the murder gangs to become the greatest killers in the prison sinks. They could move with absolute silent,

they would slaughter their victims. They were basically the boogeymen of the prison sakes. So, of course, the emperor went down there and kidnapped them and turned them into Space Marines. Duh. They were great killers. They're doing the good world. Good call.

Yeah, good God. So this becomes the Bates of the Eighth Legion. The next bit here, I also have to address. Makes no sense because they would adjust immediately once they get the genes. So apparently, everyone being born down there, they evolved. in one generation, and so that their eyes don't work very well, and they can't really see it in

sunlight, so their eyes hurt. So they're like Frankenstein monster, like mur, fire bad, but that's, by the way, in the books, all of the members of the night lords, they don't like being in sunlight because it hurts their eyes, because in one generation, their eyes evolved. Let it go, dog, let it go. Hold on now. Let's talk about why the emperor needs a legion of your child murder soldiers. Of these child murder soldiers? Yeah, because he needed... DeMond to send a message.

A real message. You have to think also we've had multiple legions now that are trying to send a message. And this message was, don't talk shit. Because there's people that revolted and you sent the world leaders to send a message. The Epper set the original night lords

to stop people that were basically doing the most tiny of gruelters. grievances have to it. So challenge effectively the emperor had is most of Terra for, you know, millennia now are like their viewpoint is like warlords come, warlords go. Yeah. Sometimes people have won before, but yeah, the emperor, they've won. The emperor is another warlord. So their viewpoint is like, yeah, I've been the knee to this guy, but I'm just going to keep doing my thing over here. And because they assume someone's going to kill him and then they just go back to what they're doing before. Others bend the knee and try to kill the emperor. There's lots of different.

levels to these people. And so the problem the emperor has is you can't just keep reconquering them over and over again because eventually it just gets boring and you run out of space. So he needed to to Brad's point send a message and there's levels of message sending. To be honest, there's no reason for any of this, but we'll go through one because why not? Because all they do with, by the way, all these guys is just another example. So Crimson Walkers. Crimson Walkers are in effect psionic-powered homunculi necromancers is the best way to explain. Well, they were trying to keep everything of it. They were trying to keep all the mojo alive from before,

before the unification came. So they're trying to do... Well, it's... When you say mojo, let's go... What the mojo was, they were homunculine necromancers. Yeah, that wanted to do their whole warlord thing. I called it mojo. You call it necromanic, horrific studies.

Yeah, what these guys were doing is they were using... It's not... written those powers of the war, but it's kind of implied to merge bodies together to make super mutants that were kind of made of dead bodies. And yeah, the emperor knew that that was bad because he knew that that was probably coming from at least one, if not two gods, gods the emperor had spoken to directly, like, you know, a millennia or so ago. So when the emperor had encountered the Crimson Walkers during the Unification Wars, he was like, yeah, those all die now.

I mean, but a couple of them escaped. We're called the forbidden ways of the old knight with you at the point. So he just, he wasn't exactly a big fan of this. Yeah, but a couple of the guys escaped and were taken in by warlords who had bent the knee because their viewpoint was, yeah, these guys are pretty powerful. And when this new king warlord goes away, I like having me some Crimson Walkers around. Eventually, the emperor discovers one of the big groups. And they'd actually, they'd gotten a little uppity.

And they'd built quite a lot of these super mutants. Juiced up guys, basically. Dead guys. And the emperor decides send that Eighth Legion. So they do. And they decide to kill the Crimson Walkers and anyone and everyone associated with them. Because Emperor wants to send a message because he doesn't want to have to come back here. One of the biggest things about this, and it makes sense in a terrible way.

The emperor doesn't want to have to keep reconquering like we just. just said, the emperor wants to move forward. He wants to push the crusades. So he wants to drop the, I don't want to have to come back here message. And he does because the Eid Legion comes in and kills everyone. And I mean everyone. I'm pretty sure they killed. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Everyone comes in and kills everyone. Let's go through the stages of this. Because, like, everyone, like, oh, the Legion comes in and. kills everyone, not narrowing it down. I was getting up down. The ultramarines did that too. Let's go through what they do. First off, they attack at night. Ooh, spooky. But they actually somehow block out the what's left of the light at night. And this, the crimson, these guys are for whatever reason. They're in the Pacific, where the Pacific used to be. And they've built their entire cities on cliff edges from, I guess,

maybe where the Mariana Trench was, because don't forget, there is no oceans anymore. Because we fight it down, whatever. Yeah, by the way, it doesn't work like that. The Earth would have collapsed. Side note,

but the entire civilization lives in these cities that are basically one main city that's built into a cliff edge. So the attack comes from above. All this bombardment from above comes in, followed by an oil,

like they describe it's a chemical rain comes down from above. But then, the nightlords come from below on jet packs and shoot up. So as soon as they land, the Crensen hunters send out their mutants. And the mutants of walkers

send out their mutants. And the mutants come rushing out and they're known. They have like voxes for faces. It's this whole thing. And just get slaughtered. Yeah. To be honest, they look like grots, which I do think they had technology from that. It's possible. I mean, they just get

demolished. They just smoke, but they start again, they have to make him example. They get smoked, but not smoke. Because when it's smoked, they don't get killed quickly. They get largely disabled. And the night boards begin, they basically using their lightning claws, like, chop their legs off, so that they're lying there. And then they drag them alive to the edge of the cliff and then throw them into the chasm in full view of everyone. And they continue this process until eventually basically all of the warriors are gone. And then the night lords leave.

And then as they leave, they detonate the explosives that they'd been planting underneath the entire civilization, forcing the entire city to fall into the abyss. What? Because that's what they do. You did skip apart because they did murder a bunch of civilians before they'd set off the explosives. Oh, yeah, while they were doing it. Because, well, anyone who was outside.

Yeah. They made it a point. You're right. Any civilian who tried to flee, they would slaughter them. So that way it kept all the civilians in the city. They corralled everybody inside and they killed them in such a way that no one else wanted to flee because it was they were doing that. That's one of the big things is they were sending the terror message of you can't go anywhere. There's nothing you can do.

Just accept it. Move on. And, well, that happened. So there was a lot of fighting. behind Mary and Ted, who were the two people that cleaned the bad night, they got pretty wrecked when they tried to make a break for it. The 8th Legion then from there on, they take a little bit of a part within the earliest stages of the Great Crusade, not much.

They're kind of a side part. They get utilized a lot more in the way that the world leaders were originally used. They're not used as a full Legion. They're used in pieces here and there. Horace has had some use for them here and there. They also punch out quite a bit. Yeah, it was just kind of these little bits of thing. But they weren't actually, this level of terror doesn't happen that much until after Conrad joins.

And so let's talk about Conrad because this story sucks. It is awesome. I think you meant to see. You've been really messing your words up here. It's awful. We'll be right back after a quick break. All right. So, Galaxy sucks.

No Stromo. No Stromo really sucks. No stramo is a hive world that exists. on the very edge of the Ultima segmentum, about 2 o'clock to the extreme, from the extreme center of the galaxy. I love you refused to east, north, southwest. I'm going to keep finding different ways to do it.

But actually, Google different ways to tell direction so I could do 2 o'clock. It's out on the starboard side, as far as the starboard, well, it bow starboard of the galaxy. But Nostromo sucks, like real sucks. It sits on the edge of the ghoul stars. So this is, which is by the way, not named that because they're fun. And Nostromo survives the dark.

Age of Technology, but not in a good way. It's part of a group of systems that had managed to maintain travel all through the dark age, like McCrack, but did the opposite with it. Well, in Nostromo. Well, let's talk about this, because first off, they have your favorite thing that's all over the entire galaxy, apparently. They mine adamantium for one. This is stupid part number one.

How do they, why are they able to mine adamantium, Brad? Because they're awesome. No, because their entire planet is made of Adamantium. I know. So that makes no sense. The planet is Wolverine. Yeah, the planet's Wolverine. They decide the ruling class, which is effectively crazy crime lords effect.

How do you mine the hardest thing? It makes no sense, but whatever. Look, they mined it with super adamantium. That's all I have to say. Adamantium plus. But they make the entire planet into a mine slash forge slash smelting place. And it completely devastates the atmosphere. There is zero light that can come.

Natural light can come through. It is just dark clouds. Not a help by the fact that the planet orbits a dying sun. So it sucks. They do the opposite of what they did in McCrack, though. Because on McCrack, they had a similar thing. McCrigg had a bunch of very wealthy planets. They were able to use it.

They were able to build an economy. There was trade. And it was a rising tide. I mean, there were some people who got screwed up in McCrug. There's no question there. I had to bring your ultramarines into the cast about the world. Yeah, I'm going to. But on Nostromo, of course, there's just a nobility class who go, yeah, that's all mine.

And what happens is the nobility on Nostromo would decide, well, I don't want to get stabbed in the back by, you know, this whole working class. So, you know, what we're going to do. We're going to turn everything into basically a nightmare zone by allowing gangs of New York. Yeah. That's what it is. They put the populace down in crazy ways. They're just terrorizing. They make examples.

It becomes cabals. It becomes cabals. Yeah, they become their crime lords. They're 40K crime lords, which are cabals. They become oligarchs, basically. They're crime. They rule. And there's multiple hive cities on the.

this planet. So they're huge. The populace here is gigantic. And they want to keep them down. And they do that by being just the worst. They do crazy things to the populace. And anytime there's even a hint of rebellion, they just... Everyone dies. Yeah, but that's what's saying it's gangs in New York. That's what this is. I also do like that the populace also evolved to have bleach white skin. They're all heavily albinode, which I guess could happen. It wouldn't in a thousand years. It would not. But my favorite one is they don't have irises in their eyes.

Their eyes are all black. That's just not how that works. That's just not how that works. Imagine if they had an iris, you would just get, somebody would light a candle and your face would blow it. Their whole idea is like, oh, they don't have irises. And this is like, I understand what they were getting at. There's not a lot of light there.

So you wouldn't need an iris. Except you still do. Your iris does move. even in low light. That's not how it goddamn works. Just why? Why? There's no reason to even put this in.

It's just so objectively wrong, so quickly. There's no need for this. I, come on. Come on. Say things like they don't have hair. Okay. Why not? Every single member has alopecia.

Okay. It's such a random. But it's like, I feel I wish you did. It should break for a drug ad right here. Yeah. I don't, whatever. Oh.

But as we said before, the chaos gods, when they kidnapped all the primarks, they wanted to tempt them to fall to chaos in one way or another. Some of them, they tempted with, like, grandeur. So sanguineas, Dorn, and Gilemon, they tempted with, hey, you are a great leader. And the idea is when you meet the emperor, he's really not. So why don't you be in charge? I guess, you know, the horace to appoint. others, it was more nobility, it's like Vulcan and Rust.

The idea was to show them the flaws of the emperor. Hey, you're a better human being than he is. And, you know, although apparently some of them, they just decided we don't have a great plan. Most all. Yeah, they just, let's throw you into nightmare world. I said, I named five. We don't, two of them are redacted. We'll go with Alferius's question mark. So we'll go with, you know, something that eight.

The remaining 12 bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. things and Kurs got bad thing. Yeah, I mean, come on. The Nurt is like he's arguably the worst place. It's him. What we do Pederabo is that interesting. I will, Petarabo's ones really messed up, man.

Also nice, but like the Night Hunter. First off, he apparently either had his pod float on molten lava or he did the breaststroke. So I'm going to, I'm going to jump on. on this now. I actually don't think Curz's one is as bad as Petarabo or as, damn it, Angron. I just think Curz

is a crappy person. And I just didn't step up. Like, other ones just stepped up. Curz was like, whatever. It takes over the planet. Yeah, but it didn't fix it. Anyway, so Curz's pod hits Nostromo like a meteor.

It's going so hot and so fast that it actually pierces through the core of adamantium, of course. And the locals find a hole going through the core of the planet and go, that's not good. Probably not good. And just cover it over with dirt. They just put a manhole cover over it. Yes, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is. Which means that so he, no one saves him. And he must have somehow crawled his way back up, which means he may have at one point been in the molten core of the planet just swimming around. We don't know. He's the only one that didn't get adopted taken in by anybody.

He gets to a group. It's just Conrad by himself. Yep. Just hanging out. So he kind of calls into the lower levels of it. And this is terrible what's freaking awful for him. But it's also super awful for anyone around him. Because, and I'm not going to let you get a row away for this.

He immediately has this. He's a psycho. Don't get me wrong. But he also has this weird warp. justice thing. So when he sees people do something wrong, he goes bananas overboard. Like, it doesn't matter if it was g-walking. You're skipping a step. He first murdered a bunch of people when he came up in the lower levels. That's the first thing he does. Not because they did anything wrong because he's a

psychopath. Yeah, I didn't see. Step one was start killing people. I said, then later he starts justifying his murder through that guy looked at me funny. That is not the only way. It is not just stuff that happens to him. It's not the only way, but it is one of them. Yes, it is. But he starts legitimately going, you're committing crimes. I'm ending those crimes.

Yeah. So it could be minor. Spider-Man style, where he'd like capture them and hand them over to the police? I mean, not exactly. No, not really, huh? With more, was it more? It was more like he peeled. all your skin off and hung you somewhere.

And hung the skin up. He hung you up and basically would let you see your skin. That's actually something he did quite a bit. Yeah. So what happens is he starts doing this, which then brings the attention on Mad Max Fury Road style,

or I guess it's more the professional, decide to go try and put this down. And within a year, there is no crime and no stronger. I was just about to say, you have to, well, he started with his hive, his Hype City first.

So they start sending people after him. And he does the world's wildest game of hide and see, cat and mouse, and just starts sending back everybody they sent to kill him. And he sends them back to the people that paid for them. And then starts working his ways up of, hey, if you commit a crime, I'm going to do some wild event horizon to you. And it's not going to be great.

Yeah. So within a year, there's no crime on Nostromo. So at this point, people like Brad are like, wow, Conrad's awesome. Here's the problem. He doesn't actually fix Nostromo. He just makes the crime go away. He's elected the de facto dictator. He's nicknamed the knight haunter. He's the de facto ruler because he's the monarch, the king. He actually became the king. But he's not in charge. No, he just, well, he finds out, oh, yeah, they've got to. a bunch of books and iPads, and I'm going to learn everything about everything. And he kind of ignores everyone unless someone tells him someone committed a crime. And then instead of getting, he made no police and did anything. Did nothing. I mean, this is.

He goes to wherever he was told the crime is and just wrecks those people and goes, if anyone else commits a crime. Also, what is he doing to these people that worldwide? You're like, you're in New York and you hear about somebody in Bangladesh that did something. And you're like, yeah, man, I'm just not going to commit crimes because I don't want that to happen to me. I get a massive kick out of this because people are like, oh, he's like, Batman. He's like the Punisher. No, he's carnage or Bain.

Maybe Venom, early Venom, early Venom. Yeah, before he gets control of it. Yeah, that's what they say. It's like someone did something. I'm going to pull them limb from limb. Oh, but like he does. Lim from limb is nothing. Hold on.

I'm going to get the Bonnie Python. We haven't had a reference there yet. Luxury. Luxury. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. It is, but I get a kick out of this because what's funny to me about it is like he doesn't do anything to help the play.

He sits there. He eliminates all crime. Something no other Primark does, by the way. All of the Primark still had crime on their planet. He's the only one to eliminate crime, but every other product, or not every, most other Primark's,

and then I improved manufacturing. I put in a police system. There was a functioning government. He didn't do any of that. He just was, they talked about the fact that he had Primark wisdom and he solved some problems, but then he would immediately go murder something.

His vengeance was wild. But again, he's still a Primark. He's still, a genius, even though he's bananas nuts. All I'm saying is that what happens to Ostromo later, it's like weird. So there was no infrastructure? Anyway.

He did learn a lot, though. He did. So let's talk about one of the other problems of Curse is he's nuts. Nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts. And he's nuts because he's... Roll it back, John. Oh, the reasons he's nuts? Well, he started out nuts because he's a broken precog.

And no one taught him. Also, he lived in a lightless world by himself going on murder hobo spree. What I'm saying, it's an combo. You didn't have anybody to guide him on this to show him anything. But no one went any right from wrong or anything else. He had no group to have a, he just didn't care for others because he never had anyone around. That will mess you up. Also, he started off, oh yeah, I'm already crazy.

let's add all these other things. Hey, were you by, was any other of the Primark's 100% alone? You will get messed up, man. Like, that happens to regular people, let alone, superpowered crazy. But he wasn't alone. He wasn't alone later. He chose to stay alone. No, he was old.

I said he started alone. Then he stated. So did Mortarian. Yeah, Mortarian found his prok also. Yeah. And they did it. It was legit. And then Mortarian met people and went, I should talk to them.

Yeah. Even though I'm terrifying looking. Just calling it out. Calling it out. Conrad, though, the real problem Conrad, though, is that he was nuts, is that he, there's a pre-coc. Conrad was a precoc. He could see the future, but not correctly. Well, he could see, he couldn't see all of it.

He saw a very small piece of it. It's like if your TV was broken, and all you could see was like the upper right corner of it. Yeah. So he had these, like, he gets powerful flashes, too. He doesn't get the, I mean, he's doing the Jedi meditation stuff, you know what I mean, and figuring it out. He'd be walking down the street and he gets effectively a seizure. Something I know. Yeah.

But, and then he goes into. Some of you're good at at this point. Yeah. Out of the best. But he would get these horrific. You think he was having blood clots? Yeah. Cruz, they talk about it because he talks about it in his novel and other things.

He would get these just flashes, he got visions that were terrifying. And that's how he saw things. And it was the future, but it was also a broken vision of awful every time he had a vision. So the main thing about Kurz's visions, though, is they are brutally powerful.

Like when they hit, it's not, when we talk about pre-cog, it's not like he kind of sees something and he thinks about it, it wakes up in a dream. It's more like he's having night terrors, but he's awake. They flash into his brain

and they overwhelm him. And he feels like he experiences. That's the big thing for him. Yeah. He doesn't get just a vision. He gets a, yeah. I live through this. Yeah.

And he goes into fits of rage as a result of them because the pain and the suffering is all real, which doesn't help him make friends. Um, just kind of, he's weird. I have to, I mean, I like it, but he's, he's weird as shit. Like everyone that meets him goes. Every, yeah. I would like to never, ever see him ever again. Every image of him is like, oh. Oh.

Yeah. Well, every prime mark that meet him goes, yeah, let's never talk to him again. Cool. Yeah. Are we all in agreement that we don't want to. By the way, not help by the fact that every time he meets a primark, he sees their death. Yes. Or their fault of chaos.

And text them about it. Not every time. He doesn't tell all of them, by the way. A couple of them, he does. And then he stops doing it because they get really mad. Because they keep going, hey, man, is there any way you could not ever come around? Not do that. It's weird.

But yeah, although the interesting one is his fulgrams is actually one of the more interesting ones. His vision of fulgrum is the most opaque of all of them. But some of them are just like, oh, yeah, I know exactly how you die. So kind of cool. Well, also, remember I tell you, he lives through them. He also sees his own death. Over and over. And over.

Although what actually happens is, well, actually, he sees his own death later, though. He doesn't see until the emperor arrives. And that's what's funny about this. is that his precarge is influenced by the stuff around him and what's occurring. Also, he is, it's horrible. He's so nuts. That's why I think he's interesting, though, because he's a crazy villain. But also, Epper, being a douche as usual, hey, my son, you are clearly broken.

I can definitely help. I am the most powerful psycho in the galaxy, but instead... Ah, that's, dude, the emperor's arrival in Ostromo is hilarious in so many levels. So first off, Nostromo has had a very long prophecy about the arrival of a glowing golden man being the doom of their planet. So anyway, one day a glowing golden man arrives. Remember how we've always talked about how when the emperor arrives, he likes to appear in the way that he thinks people would most want to see him. Except for these guys who he literally goes, you have been prophesized. This has been a prophecy for so long that basically I would show up in with my most common visage.

And instead of doing that, F you, how about I show up as a blinding ball of eating? Yeah, I show up to a group of people who have no irises, still not cool with that, by the way, but have no ability to see bright lights. And he shows up like the brightest LED ever made and blinds everyone who sees him, he first time's walking and just starts wandering down as this like, I don't know, sun walking down the street. I love this too, because he goes on a chill walk through the marketplace. It's just a walk.

I assume with a bunch of custodes so the light can reflect off them. So it's like bouncing around and just blinding even more people because he's just a dick. And he looks through it everybody. Eventually Conrad comes walking up. And the emperor, the whole quote here is hilarious. He goes, be at peace, Conrad Kurz. I have arrived. I intend to take you home.

And kind of looks at him and goes, that's not my name, father. My people gave me a name. I will bear it until my dying day. And I know full well what you intend for me. And then that and he leaves with the emperor. Which is code for like, yeah, I know you. And because at this point he had his vision that the emperor's going to kill him. So great.

Awesome. What a great. And immediately he was supposed to be an instrument of terror. And then he felt like this is just his destiny because this is what he did on his home planet. And this is what apparently he was doing forever. Yeah. What's interesting about this, well, interesting air quotes, Conrad is handed over to Fulgroom. Because at this point, Fulgram's one of the emperor's favorites.

Don't forget. This is when they are emperor's children, obviously. Fulgram's basically perfect. Yeah, I was to say they're going for full perfection. And he hands him over to Fulgram to teach him. The ways of the Imperium. Warfare. But not just warfare, it's just how the Imperium works.

Because Fulgram's a learned scholar of this. Also, his planet rate is fantastic at this point in time, too. Oh, very much. So he pulls back into. Yeah. So he gives him over to him and says basically learn all about everything, the culture, the history of the Imperium, but how we do warfare, but also how the crusade works. We conquer worlds.

We make them. I'm doing huge air quotes, by the way, here. Make them better and put them a line. That part, I don't think Conrad picked up on, I'll be honest. Absolutely not. You totally missed it. But I'll see, he doesn't need it. He could have skipped it.

The emperor, if he had a bunch of modules that he was supposed to complete, he would have been told by the emperor, you can skip those and move on. Oh, yeah, the HR training platform wasn't. No, he was like, he just leans over and goes, that's cool. You can skip that one. I'm not going to be using you in any of those ways. What's interesting is that Conrad at this time was really interested in reading all he could about terror, culture, the history of terror. And my opinion on that is because he was trying to figure out his visions.

He's trying to understand what are my vision. Remember, they are not complete. He's getting pieces of this and that. So he's trying to piece together what he's seeing. So he's really obsessed about reading about terror, all while Folgram's like, this is how war goes. And Conrad's like, yeah, okay, I generally don't care. Like, I'm going to do it my way. And eventually Conrad is handed to the Eighth Legion.

And that is both good and bad because what he does with them, who boy, Conrad decides to just mold the Legion to make them all the Knight Haunter he was on Nostromo. Yeah. Focusing really not on defeating the enemy, but setting an example. And I want to make this very different from World War. Eaters. The world eaters, because we talked about it. Everything's like, we're going to set an example. The world eaters were butchers. The world eaters descend on a planet, slaughter everything, and leave. Yeah, they made a pile of bodies to turn it into a ramp to run up the ramp and kill things.

Because that was funny. Yeah, that's what they do. But they are chain axe party time. That is world eaters. The night lords are terror. They are so much worse. for a populace. Oh, 100%. Because they don't care about the war leaders were going against the people that would actually

fight against them. They're trying to topple the Lord. They're trying to kill the army. The Nine Lords would show up and one of my favorites, this is more when they turned to cast, but they still did this when they were loyal, was they would tell you.

They would have, project all over the planet, screaming and everything else and telling you all the, were going to do to you, and then they would come down and flee people alive and paled on spikes. But there's some... To the populace, not just the fighting forces. Yeah, if you want to read the Carcaryodon novel, the first Carcaryodon novels are very good

coverage of modern nightlords. I'm jumping, obviously, into chaos nightlords, but it's a very good coverage of modern nightlords, but which also plays this era. But the main difference, I would say, between world leaders and nightlords is world leaders will kill the civilian population, but they kill the civilian population because the militaries are hiding behind a wall. And they start killing that civilian population to then get the convince them to come out of the wall and fight them. The night lords, even if the military population is outside the wall, are still going to kill the civilians. They're going to target

the civilians that they're going intentionally go after them. Because what the nightlords actually are trying to do is get a lot of times the civilian public should rise up against the leadership of because they're more afraid of the night lords than the military leaders usually are this actually so badly their their numbers actually suffered wildly and during the reunicative crusade because of the fact that it took them longer to conquer a lot of worlds because the population was like yeah man screw this or we're going to get burned skinned alive and paled we got i guess we fight we can't win but screw this because that's the thing that when it worked it worked the populace would rise up and kill the leaders but when it doesn't work now it's a the whole pop is now a militia we're not this is a nightmare

zone the same time conrad also did some weird stuff like he told them to make their armor more scary and so the two things that i don't like about night lords like really don't like I'll say there's only two things. No. No, because from a night lord, this is from usually I like how units are modeled in 40K. I don't like beaks, but I don't hate beaks. Some people are beak, some people are not

beak, I'm not beak. Anyway, one, why their jump packs have bat wings. Don't like it. Look stupid. Calling it out. The other one, though, is they paint scary stuff on their armor. That's candid. They paint like what?

A ghost? Like what are they painting on their armor? Ooh, we're spooky. I don't understand like how that works. Like, yeah. Like you are a eight foot, nine foot in power armor, right? With a power claw and a bolter. But I'm going to make it scary by what?

I painted a mural on the front of me. I hired Banksy. You know, what is it I did here to make this a scarier thing than what you already are? That's more my issue with it. Oh, we have scary murals. If I see a night lord, I'm dying. I don't need it to have a scary mural on your chest plate. That's all.

Let me call in it out. Well, let's talk about the new recruits. And I want to talk a little bit about. Yeah, let's close out how he did on his world. So let's close out with the, this isn't the, well, actually, this is the fall of the refall of Nostrombo. It's not the destruction of Nostromo, the refall of Nostromo because he, he, he, he, didn't do a good job.

So I have to agree, I'm going to lean into this one for you. I'm to try to defend him because you're so anti. But when the Knight Hunter left, he had left zero government, anything. It was just, I'm scary and crazy and shit. And I'm assuming that as soon as he walked into the ship with the emperor and started flying away, he wasn't even out of sight yet. And the rest of the crime lords went. So like, like it was before, right guys?

And they went, yeah, for sure. We're going back to the pile, right? Yep, back to the pile. 100%. And things became instant. I really do think that they probably could still see the ship flying away. They're like, oh, so you guys are going to suffer pretty badly because of this. Yeah.

And the thing was is the night lords, this was their recruiting world. So they sit there watching this world just descend into absolute. nightmare hell. These, it is pure, and it's actually worse than it was before because all the crime lords are like, they're looking for vengeance. They're all climbing over each other, but they're also trying to send a message of, hey, screw this. We'll provide warriors, but yeah, we're, you guys are going to have some problems.

In effect, what happens is, but the night lords who are left behind due to the recruiting, much like you had, is it, are they wolf priest? Is that what's called for the space wolves? Yeah. Everyone has this, but they tend to be the most like, they're almost like chaplains. These guys tend to be a bit loopier. So the ones who are left behind to do the recruiting,

they're not left behind to run the planet. They're just going, oh, I guess this is what those drama was supposed to be like. They just don't even care. They also kind of think it's a good thing because they give you more psychopaths to recruit because of what's happening. Also, wild foreshadding, eventually the night. comes back and has something to say.

He disag, yeah, he's not a big fan of how this goes. But what happens is the night lords, you have the original Eighth Legion who he had converted over. When Conrad leaves, he actually does grab a bunch with him and goes, yeah, I don't know, grab all of those children, turn them into space marines, I don't care. They come with him as an initial chunk. But then, to Brad's point, as soon as he leaves,

the planet starts to descend. And now the recruits over time start getting pulled from, because they are all children, from the up and coming child murder section of. And it's so much worse than it was before. So these guys are way worse than the originals. And they keep, and they're pushing this, by the way. Even before they fell to chaos. I never thought that the night lords fell to chaos.

I think that the night lords took an adjacent step to chaos. They're just like, which side? Oh, yeah, so keep doing the things we were doing. Got it. They were doing the things they were always doing, and we're getting care packages from chaos all of a sudden. That's how it basically worked out. But what ends up happening, though, is this new,

the reason this matters is you've got this new group of recruits who start to fill out their ranks, and they are nuts. Because the thing about the gene seed is, we can put the gene seed in you, and the gene seed will, it'll change your makeup of your body, it'll change your mind. These are crazy people.

And what happens is the Legion starts to become more and more violent. When Conrad first joins the Legion and he brings his knight haunter stuff, the idea to Brad's point is, I will bring exceptional violence and exceptional things to anyone who wrongs me or wrongs the emperor. But it was within somewhat reason. These people who start joining are just sociopaths. They just, they want their, the difference is they're looking for a reason. They're doing the say something, do something, beg you.

And they start exterminatizing planets over and over and over again. They start slaughtering entire pipelines for what seems to be no real reason. Let's talk about this and we'll end with this point on this, which is Conrad Starr has always been a little bit away. He was never, Conrad was never a people person. Right. But he always kept himself apart from his Legion. And he starts to really look down upon these extra crazy.

He's crazy, but these guys are extra crazy. Like, yeah, that's how he feels. But he also feels there beneath him. Because he's like, I showed everybody what I could do.

I did all these things. You're just a nothing to me. And he says this to them a lot, actually. And what happens is, And the Legion doesn't, he's not a leader. And so the Legion doesn't really understand what they do. So what happens is what we actually sort of mentioned too is that the other problem with this is, the Legion is trying to basically get in his good graces.

And they see when he does go with them places. They see the violence in the way he does. And they go, okay, that's the way to do it. And then they try to kind of copy him. And that's what starts compounding this because the truth is, he is nuts. Conrad, if Conrad, if Conrad, saw vids of what he did, he would hate Conrad. So that's the problem is that they're then copying him.

I actually do. That's the thing, though. Conrad does hate Conrad. That's true. Yeah, he does hate Conrad. That is true. So this becomes the, we're setting the Legion up now for a pretty aggressive fall and not the chaos fall. That's going to happen no matter what, an internal fall. Because we're actually in the next episode, we're going to get into the night lord's have almost like three falls all back to back to back. There's the fall of obviously to chaos, but they actually have an internal fall to the point where in modern 40K, they're one of the smallest chaos legions.

And the reason for that is much like the world eaters where they're going to splinter, they splinter much worse than the world eaters do, because they also really like each other. Hummeled as part of Horace's plan. Part of potentially Kurz's plan, if I'm being honest. And they're not, yeah, they're not ever really able to recover. They've got some of the salamator. Remember, the Nighthunter just keeps showing up places to talk. And it's always terrible for his legion. Yeah.

He's like, hey, man, what are you guys going to do about this? I'm like, we're going to beat the crap out of your guys. And he's like, oh, no, that'd be terrible. Then he leaves. Yeah. So in the next episode, we're going to get into the fall of Conrad, the full mental fall of Conrad, the entering of the Horacee. And depending on time, what happens then post.

Heresy, which is actually not a lot. Post-heresy, they're one of the chapters. They're not white scars, but they're one of the chapters who post-heresy, they just show up places, cause problems, and disappear. There are a lot of special people's stories. Yeah, exactly. They're not white scars level in that.

They're in the Lord quite a bit. They're always someone else's story. Oh, I mean, they're the Carcherodon novel. They are primary in the Carcarydon novel. They do a lot of stuff, but they're just not, oh, they're not major. But With that, until next week, John Barcati, Bradchester.

Disca. See you guys then.