The 40k Lorecast - Episode 137 - The Night Lords pt2 - Konrad joins the Heresy and does both a good and terrible job at the same time

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

On today’s cast we continue our coverage of the night lords with a focus on Konrad and the night lords through the end of the great crusade and into the start of the heresy. Where Konrad proves a complete inability to make friends with any of the other Primarchs, and then proceeds to make everything way worse. Followed by him deciding the only solution to him never fixing Nostramo is to remove it from existence, and of course their weird joining of the forces at Isstvan 5 (the part where the loyalists accepted there help, just why?).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

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That's code podcast at grunns.com. Welcome to the 40K lorecast. Welcome to the 40K Lorcast. We'll be John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. Today we'll be furthering our coverage of the night lords, following mostly Conrad Curr says he gets weirder and weirder and weirder and weirder. I love everything about what you just said here. You went with further because usually we have to do like three or four takes because you say starting or concluding.

If we do a three-parter, you will. It's always, always. The middle thing. I'm like, I got nothing. There's something happening. I don't know. I'm running away. Yeah, it's fine.

But anyway, mostly will be questioning the effectiveness of the entire night lords in the Horace heresy. Because they're both really good at helping Horace out while also being terrible at helping Horace out at the exact same time. It is debatable whether or not they were beneficial to him at all. So we'll get into that. Forty-K Lourcast, weekly show in the lore of the War on the War I'm a 40K universe, releasing every money at 7 p.m. Eastern. for all of you who want to help us out, please follow and comment. It's awesome. It helps our algorithm,

and it makes me giggle reading your comments, except for the bad ones. It doesn't make me giggle too. I still, people should feel free to criticize. Lord knows I deserve it. Brad does too, but I just don't tell them about them. You also can follow us on our YouTube channel. We have a Q&A coming up soon that we haven't scheduled, but probably soon. If you like this show, we have another show called The History of 40K, which consists of Brad, myself, and Alan mostly just complaining and yelling and laughing about the old version of this game. I do need to tell people we recorded probably my favorite one last night. And I think people are either going to love or hate it because it was just three people sitting

around hanging out, talking about yes. Yeah, I had to edit that this morning. There's a certain point where like the amount of bleeps I had to put in a row for Alan was like concerned. I agree. It was great. This morning I'm like, whoa,

we were going hard. Also, if you like the sound of my voice, check out my other show, Retro Recall, where I talk about old video games and discover how hard they all were. Like,

really? Ugh. Boo. If you want to support us, two great ways to support us. One, go to our website, 40KLorcasts.com,

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$4.99 a month. You get this show and the history of $40K completely ad-free. Or still $4.99 but with delicious wine. Because we're this week going to my favorite wine country in the U.S. And it's not Napa or Sonoma because those are fine. You're not wrong. They have lovely climates and great weather. But thanks.

They should get. Absolutely. Yeah. No. No. No, I'm not Midwest. I live here now begrudgingly. I'm going to a place that actually has good wine because thanks to climate change and horrible marketing, I think that Sonoma and Napa are just too expensive for what you get. So I go south and I go to Paso. If I wear Paso, Poso Robles, lovely spot south of San Jose, south of Gilroy. And it's a cool area because where it is, these weird temperature swings, like 40. to 50 degrees, like that much. So bring a sweatshirt, by the way. And what that causes is a lot of really great flavor in the grapes.

Also means sometimes your grape's spoil. But whatever. But the region has great wine and a lot of really cool stuff to do because Moro Bay, Pismo Beach are right there. So you can get to the ocean. You've got a ton of forests all through there. I would warn you if you do want to go around to the ocean, if you see a sea lion and you're not from the area, Sea lions bite and they're big. And so it's not a bite like warning bite.

Mean is shit also. Yeah. Just like it happens like not often, but anyone in California will tell you I live there for a long time. There are stories of tourists deciding it really close to a sea lion and discovering, you know, three, four hundred pound animal with teeth deciding, no,

you're not getting this close to me and then having to run away. Be honest. I don't think I ever killed anybody, but it's not really how you want to go. It's a pretty embarrassing thing for your family. How they die. A sea lion killed them on land. On land.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't get killed by an aquatic animal on land. Anyway, but really cool spot. Los Padres National Forest. Pinnacles, Natural Forest are there. And Slow is right there too. Slow is awesome.

Really fun city. Great food, great restaurants. I can't recommend the area a lot. So basically, you got good wine. You get good food. Good hiking. You get nice beaches. Go.

All right. Lastly, Discord. Join our Discord. Super fun place. You can get in there. You can request coaching from Brad. That's always an option. You can make fun of us.

It's more of the option. You can post memes, get advice on gameplay. I especially recommend it because as we're coming up on 11th edition, two big things are going to happen. One, it'll be a really great spot

to get advice on the new edition for anyone who either is playing and wants to advise a new thing or wants to start to play. But we'll also bring it a lot of new lore. Whenever they launch a new edition, they tend to drop a lot of of books.

The campaign for the lore. It'll be fantastic. We'll be doing a lot of that. There'll be a lot of stuff in there. As of recording this, we are about to have our first Friday night fights where we do TTS games. We've already had them. What's that?

We already had them. This is our big launch tonight. Oh, we're doing it. Okay. Okay, cool. Tonight. Hooray. Awesome. I should probably be aware of that. And I wasn't. I've been busy. All right.

Anyway. Back to the cast. I will be doing that all day long, or not long. So. At least your brain's doing good today. That'll be fun. Yeah, I'm a fantastically happy about it. Nice.

All right, but let's get back into it. So, as we said earlier, Conrad was always haunted by this, like, weird, incomplete visions of his future, basically of his own death and an endless civil war between space marine legions, plus the death of most civil war between his brothers is the big thing. Yeah. I mean, it is visions he sees. But when he says his brothers, it's not the primarks. It is, it's the Astardis. When he says brothers, it doesn't mean like, oh, yeah, I see Lehman and like Sanguania's fighting. No, he sees the Astridis fighting.

Also, these visions will talk about it in a bit. We'll come back to be the straw that broke the cables back for him to fully flip out a little bit. Yeah. At first, Kerr really doesn't understand them. Because he can't, they're not complete. It's kind of like if you wake up from a really bad dream, you're trying to remember bits of it. That's the best way to explain how his visions are. They're incompletely aware of them. He's wracked by it because remember he lives through them.

Well, they become more, that's the problem is that's how he started. And then as he meets more and more people who are part of the, basically the story, then they become more vivid and he's, to Brad's point, living them. And at first, Curse tries to change them. He thinks that these are warnings of a potential future. And so he starts working to try and make them not come true, which starts making him go crazy, because no matter what he does, he keeps seeing them. And eventually he begins to have this like fatalist failure of like,

no matter what I do, I have no control of my own life. He starts, well, it is even worse, though, because he starts to basically feel like they're going to happen. So he makes certain things happen, you know, because he had a vision of it. But also, you go into the novel and stuff about it. He blames heavily the emperor for all of this. Well, he's accurate.

I mean, that one. Yeah, but I'm just, I'm not a fan of Conrad, but that one, yeah, fair enough, buddy. He's just, like, this is your fault. Basically, you made me this way, you know? So, yeah, he's, him and Mortarian are whiny. Yeah, he's super nutty. He gets weird.

And at the end of, I'm doing air quotes, end of, because it's I still don't believe he died to that stupid assassin, but whatever. He cut his head off and had his head. No. Yeah. Sasson never comes back and also the video feed cuts. But once his nuts catches up with the assassin, he has his head. Anyway.

Allegedly. Okay, fine. All right. All right, Brad Info, Worstchester. Anyway, owned by the onion now. Yeah. All right. Yes.

Well, you don't get all your news from the onion? That's silly. I do have a print subscription to the onion, by the way. I love every, I read the onion all the time. I feel like we're just being paid by them. If you'd like to support us. I will take a sponsor. I'll think it's cheap, too, sponsorship from them.

But anyway, Curse. One important thing about Curz, though, is all this stuff was going nuts. And we talked about this last week, but I want to bring it back because it's going to have a big play on today's cast. No Stromo. He never, Curz never really takes us. leadership role in anything, just for the record. It's why it when he's over is I really dislike him and I've always disliked him. He is not a leader. Now, he has no charisma. I mean, he is, he's useless. He's not a leader. He's not useless. He's useless. Because the problem with him is he

just, he refuses to take on a leadership role. And the problem, he never tells anyone kind of what to do. He just leads by example, but not in like the Lehman-Russ thing of like, follow me, guys. He just goes and does stuff and everyone goes, I guess we're supposed to do that. Not in a way to defend him on this. I think that he's wildly the worst teacher because he's a primark and he expected all of his sons to be able to do what he did because he got no primer course on anything. And they don't because they have stories where he does show people that do this and when they can't.

And no one just goes, dude, you're a primark. I can't do that. Yeah. He, because he talks down to his sons quite a bit. Right. But the problem is he never sits there and says, all right, here is my vision. He just does stuff. And they all kind of go, oh, yeah, I guess that's what we're supposed to do.

He just, you get no leadership. Like, I get it. He's got problems. But he's just a psychopath. That's the thing. He is all rage and all hate. That's what he is. Like, I actually think the galaxy would have been better off if he and Angron had switched

places. If you'd put him in Angron, Angron's spot. He would have been fine. All right. You know, put the butcher nails in there. Actually,

they wouldn't even had to. They wouldn't have had to. He would have loved it. He would have been hanging out. Like, so what do I do? Just go into that arena and kill people. Every day.

Sadness because he's totally. Well, no butcher's nails. Why? All right. Just go in that arena every day and kill them. Yeah. Uh,

cool. Meanwhile, Angron would have landed on Nostroma and be like, oh, people here are suffering. I got this. And he would have, like,

rebuilt it. Nope. Instead, though, Curz just brings horror and terror everywhere he goes, because that is core. Curz hates everyone. That is his problem. Hold on, including himself.

Not an excuse. You have to say that, though, because that's one of the essences of his character is, you're like, you can't hate me any worse than I hate me. And also he, super, again, his, his whole weird with the emperor is a huge thing. in what he does. Again, not saying it's a big reason. I'm just out there listening to the cure.

He's, but yeah, but you have to think you ever do it a cast on the night lords of God that occurs. I mean, that's a huge deal about what he is. He has the personality of a moldy, wet sponge. Oh my God. He really does. Because it gets

worse. The problem is like, first off, he's even, the other primarks also are like, ugh. I mean, they all, found him uncomfortable at best to be around. Like, like, Gileman just wanted nothing to do with him. Yeah. That was the best case scenario.

So funny thing about this is, let's go over his relations with people, because most of them just bailed. And they didn't have any anything. Yeah. He tried to talk to Fulgrim and Rogel Dern for a while. Oh, not Rogel. Just Fulgram. Rogel, the one looks at him like, nope. No, I'm saying, but he that he approached Rogel and Ruggles, like, absolutely not.

There's no scenario. get away from me. Yeah. Yeah. And then he did with Folgroom. But the thing is in his writings and stuff, what he talks about is he said he didn't have hatred for any of the other, of his brothers.

And then long pause, except Corex, who he hated Corex. He slugged behind a car with fish hooks in his eyes. He's like, I can't tell you enough how much I want to kill you. I mean, it is,

that part is kind of funny. But I do laugh because, like, Gilliman just hated. him though. Because Gillen was just looking and going like, so this monster tortures everyone. Like meanwhile, my Legion is just like occupying and doing everything right. Pump the break, social reads, boy, if you're going to talk about who didn't like Conrad, you're going to have to get behind in the line behind Vulcan and Rogal Doord,

who were literally posting up on their page online of the 4,000 reasons I hate Conrad and Corex. And Lehman and a lion. The thing is, they all were like, this dude sucks. And I'm saying, Volcan and Rogelik did, literally were making HR incident reports about him. They also are making him on Angron. So it'd be fair. Like, it's like they're like, Jesus Christ.

I mean, yes, they were consistent about it, by the way. The difference, though, is that there actually was some value they saw in Angron. The problem they saw with Conrad, they just didn't see value in him. because his Legion was just so awful. It was like, these guys aren't even good fighters because the way that they fought, they only fought civilians. That was the other issue with them.

Yeah. Again, so big deal. To Brad's point, one of the big issues came in the subjugation of Cartan. So the night lords are with the salamanders. And the people of Cartan are fighting against invaders like nobly. This is a, it's a system.

And they decide we're not, subjecting to the Imperium. And Vulcan and Salamander's along with the Mechanicum, and I believe there were some Titans, they're gaining ground and they're conquering key battles and they're holding them and they're doing that whole like, look, you guys should surrender. We're going to win this battle. Therefore, it's over. And then the night lords just decide, how about we make everyone surrender by just one

night going out and murdering every single person in one of the cities? And not like quietly, oh, wow, he woke up and every day. Everyone's dead, but like they took all of their bodies and cut their skin off and then displayed. There was a lot of flaying. Yeah. And immediately, by the way, the whole planet just surrenders. Everyone's like, oh, my God. Nope.

Because they went from an invader to an absolute nightmare. And they did. They surrendered immediately. Vulcan loses his. Of like, oh my God. Like, how dare you? This is. We're fighting.

against this. We are space marines. We are all of these things. How could you ever be this evil? And Curious looks back at him and just goes, no, like, this is what I meant to be. I am this. The emperor made me. This is what I'm supposed to be. Go talk to bad. And this is, yeah, I guess the reason. One of the ways I hate this is this is Calvinism. And I've always hated Calvinism. and I have to give some, I don't know who at GW has a degree in religion. I know someone does because this is the way they hit some of these ones. I know this one. This is early 20th century Calvinism like to a T, but they nail it over and over and over again with them.

And that is, that's what they keep doing. I think you made me like this. I am only doing the thing that I'm supposed to do. And the fact that I do it so well is proof that I should be doing it. That is his entire pitch. I think, I think this is the beginning of his self-profilling, self-prof-th, self-fulfilling prophecies. I can talk, I swear. Yeah.

So, but right after, not right after this, but very soon after this, he has, I think, we're the point of no return. He has a huge vision, like violent vision. He kills one of his remembrances. Yeah. Or the archivists. He did that a lot. He does somebody that's, yeah, but this is his first. This is his first.

when he doesn't kill someone that is a bad hit for he again he's yeah it's a random person near him yeah exactly he descends into a fit of rage and just kills someone who happens to be nearby yeah this is but this is where i think he throws in the towel though and he begins the self-fulfilling because he has a vision of the monster that he is going to become and because he keeps thinking his visions are just the future period full stop that he can't figure out this is i think where he just goes this is me, why am I fighting it? And I think a key difference between him and some other members of the soon-to-be heresy is Conrad didn't hate the Imperium.

Lorgar hated the Imperium. Like you have people who hated the Imperium. Mortarian hated the emperor and wanted the emperor to suffer. There are people- Lorgar loved the emperor than hated the emperor. But Lorgar hated the Imperium. Because he thought the Imperium was something it wasn't supposed to be. he wanted the Imperian to be a worship.

So he wanted these things to happen. Conrad was the inverse. Conrad actually loved the Imperium. He just thought he was the Imperium's like, I don't know, evil, whatever the hell I thought he was. He thinks he's the operative from Serenic. Yeah, so that's where he was going. I don't live in this Imperium.

And so now he eventually just goes so crazy that he kind of accepts the fact that his role in the Imperium is to be part of this revolution. of the Imperium. Remember, he also, I was saying he has this vision. Remember his visions, he thinks he can't do anything about. He sees himself as this monster and just goes, well, screw it. Let's, yeah. I'll lean into this if I can't do anything about it.

I'll be the best at being the worst, effectively. The next piece that happens gets a little bit weird timeline-wise, though, because now we're going to get a few things happen back to back, and they're going to not make a lot of sense. And candidly, they just don't. So he goes, he has this, of rage and fulgram sees it and he's just freaking out and he finally confides in the fulgram of what's going on he says to fulgram yeah i can see the future which fulgram understands because sanguineus can a couple of them

have these abilities and in the future i see a civil war a civil war between all of us like the it's a forever war we are all going to be fighting forever i don't and blah blah blah blah blah and Fulgram doesn't, it just goes, oh, that's weird, and moves on, but doesn't know what to do with it. It does the really smart thing of going and telling Rogald's Dorne. Really smart thing. Yeah, smart. That's what you should do. And for people who forget, the reason the black Templars come from Imperial Fists is because

Rogel Doorn is really pro-emperor and rules. Like, Gilliman is rules in the sense of Excel spreadsheet TPS reports. Rogel Dorn is like really hardcore Imperium rules. Like the Imperium is it. I will do anything for the Imperium. He's probably your most lawful good of all of them. But he'll do horrible things as part of being lawful good, but he is there. So Fulgroom goes to him and says, hey, Conrad, you know, the guy we all hate and especially you hate,

is saying that we're all going to have a civil war and try and kill each other. And oh, and by the way, it's the emperor's fault. Dorn doesn't take that great and immediately assumes, in my opinion, that Conrad's line and is bad-mouthing the emperor. Also, pause on this. Dorn is pretty heavily not pro-Conrad.

Yeah, this is not a good start. Dorn was looking for a reason to punch Conrad. And just got given to him. even a really good reason. So Dorn goes storming off to go confront Conrad. And the reason I don't like Dorn because he could have probably stopped part of this. We could get ready for it. But Dorn then, we don't know what happens, but loses said fight to Conrad. How none of us. Conrad wins, by the way, a lot of fights he should not win. That's just kind of a theme in Conrad. Because Dorn, as we've talked numerous times on, Brad is not a fan of Dorn, but Dorn's probably the most bad.

of all of the primarks. That is an MF. Like that dude is bad. I, my opinion, I think one on one, now that's sanguine, it's Dorn or Sanguineas are probably the two top fighters. Don't you bad mouth space,

Jesus, that guy's, but that's what I'm saying. At the time of the heresy, not including demon infused, I think it probably is those are the top two fighters at that, at this time. Anyway,

Kerr's wrecks him. And part of his honor guard. Yeah, they come in there. His honor guard's lying dead. He's lying on the floor. And Curz tries to basically run away. But luckily, his Doran, the honor guard do grab him and capture curse. Because now they can capture him.

He jacks up Dorn and the honor guard next to Dorn. But the extra honor guard get him. Because the curse, I guess they say, the better part about this, I love this. Because Curz is basically like, what have I done kind of like? Yeah. And, but well, he first of him, he's super pissed because he thought he had at least some sort of confidant in Fulgram. And Fulgram immediately tells one of the people that for sure hates him something he said in confidence. And then they, he effectively lets himself be locked up.

Right. And for like two seconds, though, because he finds out. Well, it's funny. This part's hilarious because he gets locked up. And then while locked up, they're basically accusing him of being a trigger. and they use as evidence of him being a traitor, the fact that Nostromo has fallen back into being a nightmare zone. Which Codrad does not have any idea about.

How? It's his homework. I'm well aware that he should. Scanners should also work, John. Thank you very much. So Conrad's one of those people, and I know people are like this, but do you us how many unread emails he must have had at this point?

Or than old man. Brad 40K. Yeah, old man, Brad 40K at gmail.com has less unread emails than Conrad did at this stage. Like, what? So he's assumed he was Conrad Kerr's Knight Hunter at AIM dot com. Yes. So he discovers that, oh, no stramo fell back. And so he goes, what?

No stramo fell and decides, I don't like being in this prison anymore and just leaves the prison. Instantly gets out. Yeah. It cracks me because it's like you do one of the things. what was a Sin City where they got him tied up and they're just beating him and he goes, we don't think he did it. He's like, all right, cool.

And he just breaks out of his bonds and walks away. I assume that's what Conrad. Well, he also does kill a bunch of Astardis on the way out. So he's, I say this, because we're going to get back to the story a little bit, but just real quick, he just tried to kill Dorn,

did kill a bunch of Dorn's honor guard and then killed a bunch of other, I assume, Imperial Fists. Just keep that for your memory in a little bit. But he then escapes, makes a quick phone call to other night lords. Like, hey, someone come pick me up. I need a ride.

And he takes the entire legion back to Nostromo and goes, hey, guys, I'm not super happy with what's going on here. However, that doesn't really get said because what he does instead of that, I assume he just yells this in the command room of his ship. And then he decides to somehow find the hole that they covered up with a manhole from when he first got on the planet and blows the shit out of it. Yeah. So he decides that because the core of Nostromo is made of adamantium,

which I just cannot get over the stupidity of that. Just bombing it from space won't do enough. So he fires, I don't know, a photon torpedo, I don't care, made of an impossibilium into the hole that was dug when he landed on the planet into the core of the planet. So Nostromo no longer exists and blows it up. By the way, the emperor finds out about this not happy. So just keep track of this.

He has tried to kill Dorn. He has killed a bunch of Dorn's honor guard. He has killed other Astardes. He has now blown up his home planet, which was a hive world producing for the Imperium. Also, billions of people on that. Yeah. While this occurs, Istvon 3 happens. Okay?

And the call goes out of, we need help for Istvon 5. And Conrad shows up and says, oh, hey, guys, I'll help you out on Istvon 5. And everyone goes, yeah, we would love to have your assistance here. What? Nothing bad can happen from this. How? This is the thing, look, in all the writings that they did, why? Why did they do this?

Why did they have them be part of it? If you look at through the wikis and some of the books and some of the writings in the old codexes, they always say the same line, which is Conrad. became susceptible to the whispers of the warp. And you're like, bro, he's been, he's got a direct line to the war for a while. It's not even like, here's a thing. Like, he may not even been chaos, but he was traitor. That's all I'm getting it.

Like, it's entirely possible at this stage, he's not chaos. That's fine. He's not on the side of chaos. He was already traitor. And we were like, oh, hey, we're going to kill some traitors. Hey, other traitor, you want to help us kill the traitor? What are we doing? What are we doing?

Sorry, surprise, surprise is on the wrong side. We'll be right back after a quick break. Now, the battle at Ist van five is interesting. He doesn't actually do much, Estevan five, because Nightlords really don't do a lot. The only little incident is he has a little quick tiff with Korax and stops Korax from killing the Fulgram, remembering correctly. That's about it. And then he disappears for a bit.

Yeah, because he harasses Korax for a bit. Yeah. But it was more because he just doesn't like Corex than anything else. But he fails at killing Corex. But later, he's back on Istfan 5 looking around. He finds something interesting. There's this Primark, pretty big one, who'd taken a nuclear bomb to the face. Not metaphorically, he did.

Literally to the face. Yeah. Yeah, face. Then a bunch of bolters, then some chain swords, then some plasma. and kept getting back up. And so Conrad goes, well, this is just going to be fun.

Also, I don't like this guy at all. Yeah. Also, I'm a pretty big Vulcan fan. Yeah, this was not great for Vulcan. Yeah.

So Conrad decides to just grab Vulcan and take him back to his flagship for torture time. He does just like an experiment where he's like, all right, can he always come back? And just keeps killing him in more and more extreme ways. And every time Vulcan, comes back and Conrad at first is kind of interested and then he gets bored. So then he realizes

that Vulcan can't die and Conrad has this weird moment where in my opinion he takes offense to Vulcan's immortality. That's how I view it because he gets really mad about it. He gets really, really mad at all you think about it because his gift from the emperor is immortality and his gift from the emperor was I'm crazy and I do awful things. You made me a monster. It wasn't his gift from the emperor. That was what he chose to be. I'm telling you what I think he sucks.

Yeah. Come on, dog. Stay with the story. I'm not, no, he sucks. Anyway, Conrad decides that he's got this, woe is me, blah, blah, blah, and he's all butthurt. So he decides that he wants to prove something to Vulcan. And the truth about Conrad for the record is that if you voted, if all the primarks voted for their least favorite primark,

Conrad would have come in between 15 and 17 every single time. Everyone's, he's not 17. A couple times he is, but he's 15 to 17 every time. He's everyone's second, everyone's least favorite or second least favorite. Occasionally third is a couple of guys who do have two people they dislike. That's about it. Like I think Lehman, he might have been the third least favorite. I mean, Robles is always going to choose.

Yeah. What's I mean? Logan Petrovly, they're going to have their guy. Then he's coming in second. But I think Lehman would have gone like Magnus, maybe. I don't know. Actually, Conrad might have been number three, number two actually, but it doesn't matter. Anyway.

But with Vulcan in front of him, Conrad wants to prove that Vulcan is also a monster. And so he wants to torture Vulcan to prove to him that he's no. But he's no better than him. Well, that's, he actually says that. When multiple times when he's talking to him, he goes, I'm going to show that you're no better than me. If I put you in situations where you didn't get to be, I forget his exact quote, but it's basically he calls it. This is the hero. Yeah. He goes, yeah, let's see how no.

At one point in time, he says, let's see how noble your heart is. Yeah. And so what's funny about this is because the truth is Vulcan, like Conrad, found himself on a broken world. and where evil were suffering and Vulcan went, I should help them all. And he did. And Conrad went, I should kill them all. And that's why one of them is a good person.

Another one is not. So. 800. Yeah. So over and over again, he uses psychers to do this. He puts Vulcan into a coma. And Vulcan has his dreams. And in the dreams, no matter what choice he makes, the people die.

The people always die. The story changes. but Vulcan continues to try to do the right thing. He does and does us. And eventually Conrad just gets infuriated and gives up. And then he just gets pissed off. Next part of this is weird, where Petarabo built a super labyrinth on Conrad's ship.

Why did he build it? I don't know. When did he build it? I don't care. But he's got this super labyrinth. And it's designed to be impossible to solve because. So just assume that Conrad, Mini Conrad, and Scott all left Vulcan by himself. We could kill him right now.

But no, we're going to put his hammer that has a trans teleport device. They didn't know that. They didn't know it had the trans. They just said, we're going to put your hammer in the middle of this room. and you're going to be the other side of the maze, and you're going to basically be stuck here for eternity trying to get to your hammer. And Vulcan went, okay.

And then it also took a minute and a half. You just walked through the maze and went to his hammer, at which point Conrad jumps and goes, ah, and runs over to kill Vulcan again, in which point Vulcan does two things, flips the switch on the bottom of the hammer and flips his middle finger up at Conrad and just teleports out.

Which would have been way cooler if his button wasn't apparently a joke button and put him in the upper atmosphere of McCrack. Like he was, every part of this was good, except he was off by enough to burn up on reentry. The part of this part that I find funny, and this is not canon and not in the story, but the bit of this I would have found hilarious is if somehow Horace had known

Conrad had Vulcan. and like that scene where like the phone rings. And it's, yeah, hey, what's up, Horace? Yeah, I just want to see what's going on with Vulcan. Like, oh, Vulcan. Yeah. It's going great. Everything's great, you know.

I want to come interrogate him. Yeah, it's not a good time. It's not a good time. He's sleeping. Horace, I'm this close to breaking him. I don't want to have you interrupt. Yeah, you guys, I wouldn't be it. Oh, you're breaking up.

Bye. Click. That's how, I assume no one knew we had Vulcan because it would be a lot funnier if they'd all thought he had Vulcan. And we're golden, guys, don't worry. Conrad's got Vulcan, so we've got him captured. We can use him for information later. Maybe we'll use the chaos.

God's going to submit information out of it. Don't worry about it. Oh, you lost him. Cool. Well, where is he? You don't know. You're useless. So, speaking of useless,

Horace, around the same time, decides that he needs to figure out what to do with Terra. And the siege of Terra itself is going to be a problem. So the Alpha Legion, he knows like their skills in a straight siege are pointless. That's not where Alpha Legion is good. Alpha Legion are sneaky. And so Nightlords are kind of similar. Horace realizes that using the nightlords in the siege of Terra directly is just, it won't,

it'll do nothing. So he wants to use them to weaken the Imperium. This will help make his final siege better. And his first idea with them was a good idea on. paper but proof showed the fact that even horace didn't understand how useless the nightlords are so god settle down i'm right no they did a lot they no they took the dark angels on a journey no no no no that's part two part one is useless part one is when he sends them out to no straw we're gonna talk about conrad going down to mccrag and randomly murder festing people we'll see and also because of sotha is how they

We'll get there. We'll get there. My argument, I think the night lords are actually why Horace lost. But, anyway, so the first thing he does is kind of funny. The Nostromo sector, despite Nostromo being gone, that whole sector still is all hive worlds. And it's very, very mineral rich. So Horace says, perfect. You guys are from there. Go out there. Flip them to my cause. So I get some supplies and the Imperium doesn't. Pretty easy. No problem, right? Absolutely no problem. Conrad and then go out there. As soon as they arrive in the sector, Conrad the nightlords discovered, once again, the whole section is warlords. It wasn't just no stramo. And it's all a kingpin style characters.

And Conrad goes, this is out of line. We should do something about these kingpins. And I think the idea was more of like a robocop style of you go in there and let's, you know, let's get rid of Dick Jones. But instead of Robocop, we get Ed 209. If you don't get those references, sorry, that movie's actually awesome. As soon as they arrive there, they just go, put down the weapon. You have 30 seconds to comply.

As soon as they get to the Nostromo sector, the entire night lords break up and start conquering different hives, and they all do it the same way, killing everyone in the hive who's in any way, shape, or form associated with the kingpins and the crime families, which consists of the majority of the hives. So they sort of pacify the sector for Horace, and they turn the sector to Horace, but they maybe reduce the population by 70%. Meaning that this was not super excited. Yeah. The production just disappears.

And they come back to Horace like, look what I did. We did just like you asked. And the example is it's like a dog bringing you a dead squirrel. Like the tails wagon. They're real proud of themselves. And you have to go, awesome. Let's know. And so Horace just looks at this and goes, cool.

So I can't even rely on you guys to secure your, own section. However, the next part is kind of fantastic. So the next thing they do is he goes, all right, still have another problem, the first Legion.

So there are two major legions that Horace is terrified of. It's the first Legion and the 13th, right? Ultramers are 13th, right? Yes. Cool. Thank you. And they cannot have those guys get back to terror.

So Horace obviously sends the word bearers out to deal with the ultramarines, and he sends the night lords out to deal with the dark angels. But he has to do it carefully, because if the night lords attack the dark angels, that's very quick. It'll be, okay, we attacked, and the dark angels go, all right, and problem solved. Like it'll be a quick clap and the night lords are all gone. So instead, he sends the night lords out to the third. thramas sector to just be terrorists, not to conquer world.

I like this, though, for his tactic-wise, because it is usually just crazy, but he breaks the Legion up to make it so there's a problem somewhere around the sector all the time. Yeah, there's a problem with this idea. The idea is, on paper, kind of good. The idea is we're going to go out there, we're going to just do horrifying things, spread all over the place, and the dark angels are going to show up, which they do, and they're going to have to go world by world stamping us out. Pretty easy.

The nightlords will then run away and harass them some more, and they'll just pin them down and get them stuck over there. Nice idea, and they do this. They're flaying people alive. They're causing violent revolutions. They're getting the populations to turn on themselves. Quintessential night lord behavior. The problem, though, is Conrad is losing his mind.

the closer and closer we're getting to the culmination point of the heresy, the more violent and powerful his visions are getting. And Conrad is now to the point where he's almost becoming incapacitated. He's lying within his own ship, blocked away. I mean, the night lords are affected, like the example is like the Minotaur, the original Minotaur, where the nightlords are actually bringing captives and just giving them to him. And he's just slowly torturing them within his own ship to keep him occupied.

But he's, he's completely locked away at this point in time. And so he's doing this, you know, again, Brad's favorite character. I like Bobby G. Brad likes this guy. God. Just throwing out there. Gilliman. I like the guy who does TPS reports and conquers worlds with diplomacy.

Brad likes the guy who pulls fingernails out. All right. The problem is that as Conrad is seven, his legion is fracturing. So they're doing all this terrorism out there. Behind the scenes, his Legion has now two kind of bifurcated pieces. You have the Terran born group of it, the original Ninth Lords. These guys are there to still believe in glory and themselves. They don't like this hyper-violent version of the nightlords who are just slow. They're Drew Kari. It's just a serious, by the way, because you're saying that the psychos from Terra aren't psycho enough for what's going on here.

Yeah, well, they're watching is going on like, you guys are out of your minds because they, it makes sense though, because they still came up with the other legions. Yes, they come from the horrifying underground prisons of Terra, but they still stood next to the First Legion, the Third Legion, the 18th Legion. They still stood next to them at some point and viewed them as equals. Now, so they want to be treated as equals to them. The new recruits who came from Nostromo, which can no longer exist, are lunatics. These are people who are like, you know, drinking the blood of their victims and going, yeah, no. But those ones are looking at the original eighth going, you guys are weak and we hate you too.

So the two of them start to, that kind of not get along and start to separate. And since Conrad again is locked away, there's no one to do anything. The challenge is that the one group, the group from Nostromo, see an opportunity. They think, well, when Horace wins, this is great. We're going to get to have our little section of the galaxy, and we can just torture everyone forever, basically building Kamara within the galaxy. And they decide that this other group isn't really good for them. And the original eighth think the new group's not good for them.

So as this battles waging in the thramas sector, they secretly start to undermine each other, not actively attacking each other, but undermining it, not providing support and not providing warnings. So as the dark angels start arriving, the dark angels start kind of speeding up, for lack of a better phrase, their successes, until it starts compounding to the point where the night Lord's lose control. And the Dark Angels now take control of the sector. And the nightlords have to flee because they just, there's no support coming everywhere. And the nightlords grab the fleet and start to run away. And they do actually eventually just leave the sector. The lion, to say the lion was

pissed off about what the nightlords did is like saying that the sun is an above average temperature. But you got to remember also that soon the 9-hunter pops out and effectively just keeps sending lion. I don't know. Oh, no, that's later. Because I'm saying it's very soon, though. Oh, yeah. You go into grumpy lion and then you go into, I keep getting an email every day about how much of a trash fighter the lion is and how he's hit and run again. Yeah.

So what I like about this is at one point, Conrad deploys a beacon that transmits an invitation to parlay with the lion on the world called Zagula Saguay, whatever. Yeah. Skip the fact that this takes a long time. Well, let's go. Let's back up just a little bit. So this is taking, this is why I said, you'll probably do, no, it's years. Maybe. It's hardly, it's Horace's time timelines.

Yeah. But it's supposed to be like two, it's two or three years after the dropside massacre. Oh, that this happens because they're doing a hit and run battle. He's like, they're not. Oh, you're right. But he's doing what they, what Horace wants them to do. Because he's basically pissing off the lion so much that the lion's like, I'm killing this guy. Yeah.

It doesn't make the lion wants it. And so I laugh because Conrad's whole idea is like, I'm going to make you come meet with me. And I'm going to get in your head. And I'm going to convince you that, you know, you should. shouldn't even be fighting for the emperor because I'm going to watch this. I'm going to believe that he's going to talk the lion into just, you're right, man, we shouldn't be fighting. Everything's cool.

You're not crazy at all. Yeah, this was in effect a flat earther talking to a NASA scientist. That's what this was. Explain to how flat earth worked. That's what this was about to be. So Conrad gets there and the lion just goes, what? And Conrad launches into his pitch of, uselessness and pretty quickly realizes he's got nothing and goes.

You know what he does have, though, a bunch of insults that he knows will make the lion man. Yeah. And then it's it with your mama's so fat jokes. Yeah. So then GW does the thing I hate that GW does. They come the blows and Conrad is about to win the fight, which again, no, Conrad versus the lion. Hold on. You have to give credit to the little man.

He did start the, he did start it by slapping. Oh yeah. Conrad does bitch slap it. Effectively. Like, yeah. And but whatever. They get into this and I hate this story so much because somehow.

Slice his throat, baby. Yeah. Conrad's able to slice the throat of the lion. How? But whatever. And just before. He's now sacked Rogel Doran and the lion. And the lion.

Yeah. In ninja combat, baby. Yeah. And just before he's able to like kill the lion a bunch of. And then one of those dastardly dark angels stabbed Conrad in the back. Yeah. Who? Anyway. And then the two. But then my favorite thing that happens in all these books is so then one of them stabs him in the back and like bad stads in the back. Not like flesh wound like rams a power sword into his spine. And then they separate. And everyone looks at it. and they all just leave. Like that's it.

The fight just ends. Oh, hold up, guys. Like, what they call time out? And then everyone leads and goes back to their fleets. Also, we're going to be ahead a little bit here at a second, but it is funny between this fight and the very next fight they're going to have because apparently the lion psyched up because the next fight does not go great for Conrad. Yeah.

Oh, the next fight's brutality. What is the seven-figure death punch? Okay. The next one is much more accurate. The 11th. The next, yeah. The next lore fight is much more lore accurate. But anyway, after this not so great meeting,

the night lords decide this whole thramus area sucks hard and we got to get out of you. So they veil. And because the dark angels are pretty mean and they're really stabby. So they decide, let's just go back and see what Horace is up to. So they begin, you know, they translate and start moving back. They gather the entire fleet at one of the Mornival points to leave. And as they're about to leave, the entirety of the Dark Angel's fleet arrives in orbit. It does not hail them.

Just comes in shooting. Bart's blowing up ships. And the lion is like my head of this going just kill everyone. Everyone. I want all of them gone. And so he's probably, man, imagine the lion, but then grumpy lion because he just had his throat cut. Yeah. A really angry lion.

From what he considers the most annoying of the primaries. And at this point in imperial history, it's, I don't know who is the larger fleet, but the two largest fleets in the galaxy are the ultramarines and the Dark Angels. And it might be the Dark Angels is the largest fleet in the galaxy. So not a great setup for the Night Lords. So of course, the Night Lords just go, nope, and start running away.

And this is just an ass kicking. It's basically whatever ship is close. to the Dark Angels stops existing. And then whatever ship is next closest stops existing. It's just one of those things. It's like the inverse of the space invader. And they're going to run away. And as they're about to run away,

Conrad comes out of one of his like states. Remember, he'd been stabbed in the back with a power sword and goes, no, turn it around. We're taking it to the Dark Angels. Specifically to the flagship. Yeah. We're going after the invincible reason.

And he decides to charge into the heart of the Dark Angels fleet. And all the night lords have to go, not all them, some of them on the edge go, screw you, dude, and bail. But the majority of the fleet goes, all right, and they go in, I guess we're going for it. And as they get closer and closer to it, it's, what's the plan, boss? And Conra goes, we're doing a boarding action. into the invincible reason where the lion is and the death wing knights.

Don't forget, I'm only taking my honor guard. You guys figure it out now that I'm- And so Conrad and his honor guard do a full boarding action into the invincible reason where the lion is standing and death wing nights. it doesn't go great. The entirety of the boarding action barring one person, and it's a key one, die pretty quickly. Conrad does disappear, though,

into the invincible reason, and the entirety of the night lord fleet that attacked the Dark Angels are destroyed. With that, though, we're going to break, because next week we're going to pick up the journey with Conrad again. Because next week is where, in my opinion, the night lords ruined everything for the Horacee for Horace. They save the Imperium.

Because between what they're going to do in Sotha and Conrad's effect on Imperium Chakundas. Well, when he sits, we'll talk about it. When you talk a lot of shit and effectively he does again the evil villain monologue, which they go, oh, we can still save the Imperium. we need to leave now. And he's like, no, you should stay. He also helps them on Davin. That's the thing. He basically makes it so that, spoiler it for next week, but you all know the story anyway.

He's the reason Sanguineas and the Blood Angels are on Terra. He's also the reason that they made it go towards Tara. Yeah, he does. He tells the he ever still alive. Yeah, he's an idiot. So is he a genius. Yeah. I mean, again, it works out fine.

It's just one of those, whatever. To be fair, it's one of those ones like, I like, I like. Say, to be fair. I like the story around Conrad. I just hate him and his story. Really? No. So much.

Oh, God. Because it's not even like, the whole thing about him is, it's not even like wicked where it's, well, he's really bad, but we're going to turn around, I think. Again, my entire knowledge of wicked comes from robot, Star Wars 3. I've never seen Wicked, but if I'm not mistaken, that's meant to be a rip off of Wicked,

and I've seen that a bunch of times because that was quite funny. But Wicked, I'm just like, you know, I never liked Wizard of Oz, so I'm not wasting my time on this. I have better things to watch.

But anyway, next week, we'll do that. So until then, John Barsati, Bradchester, the sky. See you guys then.