The 40k Lorecast - Episode 140 - The Raven Guard pt 2 - Corax remakes the Raven Guard in his own image

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

On today’s cast we continue our coverage of the Raven Guard. With Corax arriving at his legion and having a solid WTF moment at how they behave. Then his fixing of the legion and their divorce from the Night Lords. From there we jump into their actions in the later part of the Great Crusade. And how those moments taught Corax a lot more about the galaxy and the imperium. We also jump into the special units and tech of the Raven Guard and how they use them to great success.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. I'm John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. Today we'll be continuing our coverage of the Ravenguard with the arrival of Korax into the Legion and his work to reform it in his image and their actions in the Great Crusade

right up to Istvon 5. Is this the biggest remake of a Legion or Kla? It's got to be at least close. No. No. I mean, the problem is mortarian is really, Mortarian does a ton. Yeah. So does,

Gilliman doesn't do anything. Dorn doesn't have to do anything. Sanguinius were fine. That's a couple of them. Guys just kind of just jumped in and just made a couple things and went ahead. Technically, it's actually the world eaters because he did shove spikes in their skulls.

They were already psychos, so I don't think there wasn't a culture shift. There was a culture shift and a physical shift of shoving spikes in skull. Look, the nails were fine. I'm just saying, like,

they, the Ravengard completely became a different legion. Oh, yeah, massive moral swing. I mean, it wasn't even, it was so,

maybe they did a 180 degree turn. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, not one, yeah, like, like, you know,

45. It's more like 1405. They stopped skinning people, but everything else was kind of the same. It's what I'm getting. Like,

how were you 45 on that? You're like, ah, it's barely anything. Yeah, They don't kill people and hang their skin off the back of them. Yeah. You're like, that seems like more than a casual.

With fine, 52, 52 degree. Like, we implemented casual Fridays. Exactly. Also, stop skinning people. You know. It's like, we're not wearing ties anymore. We're progressive. Potato, potato.

All right. 40K lorecast, weekly show focusing the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every money at 7 p.m. Eastern, please do his favor, follow, comment. It really does boost us and gets us to more people and makes Brad and my ego feel better. Also, link in the show notes to our YouTube channel and Brad's YouTube channel

because now he has a YouTube channel. He's had one forever, but he never used it, and now he does. I was my only subscriber. I've never done anything with it. Good job. You are your only fan. Anyway, if you like us, you would hear more of us.

You can also check out our other show, the history of 40K, where we talk about the history of the game more on the tabletop. Or if you don't like Brad's voice, but you like my voice. Or you know, you like my voice anyway. Check out retro recall where I talk about old video games. Right now we're in a run of some of the hardest games ever made, like Echo the Dolphin, the Lion King and Aladdin, figure out how that's a combo. Why is the Lion King the toughest game of the universe, by the way?

Have you played it recently? It is the monkey puzzle. No, no. I'm actually, I'm not saying, I'm not refuting you. I'm saying why is the children's game wildly tough? We cover it on the show, but they made a mistake. They try to make puzzles. They're like, well, kids just want a button mash. They don't make it easier, but it's basically to solve a puzzle. It's effectively random. That's not fun. All right. But if you want to support us, two great ways to do it. Way number one, go to our website and we have merchandise. A lot of them are actually pretty cool t-shirts. We have wine glasses. We've got pint glasses. We've got pint glasses. everything. So, yeah, check it out. Or Patreon. Patreon's a great way to support us or actually any other artists. I should promote Patreon better. It's a really good organization. But you can go to Patreon and you can give us, you know, $4.99 a month. We will give you back this show ad free, along with the history of 40K, ad free, and you get to help us do a lot more stuff. Or 4.25 euros, because we're

going back to Holland. But this time we're doing Amsterdam, because it's actually a city that I love. It is, if you haven't been to Amsterdam, go, simply put, it's amazing. It's a hub for artists and musicians for hundreds of years. So let's talk about the fact that love Amsterdam. However, if you're walking down a walkway, you have to watch out for people on bikes and motorized bikes going about 100 miles an hour. Yeah, and it's awesome. So it's one of my favorite places, like genuinely one of my favorite places. So I like it because I also like museums.

So Amsterdam has the highest concentration of museums per square mile, but not the I'm trying to win a Guinness World Record Sense. They actually have good museums. Like Reich's museum is exceptional. Van Gogh, if you like him, is good. But they actually have a Rembrandt. I like Rembrandt more than like Van Gogh. You've got Estetel, Estetriac, the foam, tons of these stuff.

It's just awesome for culture. There's a lot of shit to do. Yeah. And Brad's, you know, fear, but my joy. you can ride bikes everywhere, which is cool as hell, because they've got canals everywhere. I actually ride said bikes, and it's fantastic way to get around.

This guy rides a ton of bike. However, I wasn't prepared for those electronic bikes that haul ass. Are you sure they're also just really tall people who are really fit? They may have been. There is true. It just might have been somebody riding a bike way faster than I can ride a bike. And I was like, that is clearly. Probably more that.

It is because he can bring the seat up. you know, above the first notch. There's, I don't even understand what you're saying. There's other notches? Yeah, I really do love Amsterdam. It's also a beautiful city, but it's a Blumen Market, which is where you have all the flowers, when the tulips bloom, it's crazy.

And I know I covered this a while back. Last time I covered the Holland, but I'm doing it again. The Dutch are fun. They've got great bars, great music, great clubs. My wife and I still talk about, there's a bar there called Tales and Spirits,

if you haven't been, go. If you're anywhere near Amsterdam, go there right now. Tales and Spirits is a tiki bar. It's a pirate-themed tiki bar in Amsterdam, and it is amazing. Oh, my God. I want to shit out of this, but I've actually been there. It's absolutely incredible.

And the only downside is the Dutch language is a little bit goofy, so you've got to be careful with your pronunciations. Like, if you're trying to say, you know, fluken can kinds and bolsen, and he came out with Fluke and Heimer, it's not going to end the way you wanted to do. I've seen Euro trip. I'm not saying that. Flukenheimenheimer.

All right. Lastly, our Discord, great place to come and enjoy stuff. With the launch of 11th edition, it's going to be a lot more activity in there, but we're still 12,000 people, so we're a lot of activity. We do have a painting competition that I'm hoping this is releasing before it ends.

So if you, no, it is. This will release before the painting competition. It's coming right now. We have a very aggressive painting competition. You're not wrong. I was counting before the one we had. It'll be the right.

If you listen to this and going like, what? I have the model already painted. All right. But after this cast goes live, it'll be two days before. You'll have a thing. You might be a week. But yeah, that's going to go live and you're going to have a moment of like, it's not a time to golden demon something.

But it is a really great painting competition. I really encourage everyone who's always submitted and looking at them, wow. So, anyway. But with all that, let's get off to Korax. All right. We left the last cast. Korax had agreed to go with his dad and join the Imperium.

Only after he made his dad fix his home planet. Because again, if you're the youngest, you get whatever you want. And we're going to have. We didn't poke this out. It's not just that he fixed his home planet. He fixed the home planet and the moons. He fixed everything up. Oh, yes, complete top to bottom rebuild.

Yes. Like really nice. It was a really solid, like, yeah, sure, why not, buddy? Do you want the keys to the Porsche? Go for it. Enjoy yourself. Now, we're going to cover a bit more of this in detail, but there's two kind of main themes on the Ravenguard.

And they're really about special treatment. They get a lot of their own tech and their own toys. And the emperor seems to be looking to Korax a little bit differently than some of the other prime arcs, almost as if he's sort of. saw a destiny in him. I ain't going to spoiler alert this, though. GW drops this thing. Like, he was going in a really cool direction

where Corax was going to be really important. And then they went, meh, I'm going over here now. Well, let's talk about the timeline on this, too, because of the fact that Corax doesn't join the Ravenguard until after a century of crusade. We're a hundred... Century and thence. I was a hundred and

then, so it's a baker's dozen on that. So there it's, he's got, he wants to do. I know you have a gluten allergy, but you know how it baker's dozens worked, right? It's just more. It's,

you know what I'm talking about. It was a softball to make fun of your celiac. That's all that was. It's a baker's dozen. I don't know what bakers do. I can't have their food. But yeah, screw this.

Same thing that I had to happen yesterday. I started a conversation, Wanda Cheldon, that I did something dumb. And I went, John, I'm a pretty smart dude about stuff. And he goes, you really want to go there before you the next thing. I'm like, at least

let me start with something good about me. Yeah. Anyway, but let's get into Korax. So Korax gets into this legion. The things I do want to say that, I think the emperor has a plan because of the fact that the emperor's very far into his own plan. Oh, the emperor had a plan. The problem is that the emperor,

like this whole narrative just disappears on this. We'll get there. No, I'm saying, but I'm saying I think that the emperor had a plan anyways, like, for this legion, because it's the last Leisure. You know what I mean? So he has the else that he wants to do. Everybody else was doing things that have already effectively just been done.

Yeah. I still like it more that he's the youngest. And the emperor is just doing the thing you do when you have like six kids. And you're like, I like the last one a lot more. Screw it. I'm not trying anymore. Whatever you want, buddy. Whatever you want.

So, all right, let's get at this. So Korax joins the Legion. And he has this kind of what the fucking moment. And this moment comes from, they are masters of stealth like he expected. And they made quite the name for themselves. But the Zeric tribe thing that was feeding them was causing a huge issue for him. Corax is. They were psychos.

Yeah. And Corex is an independent idealist when it comes to the other prime arcs. Everyone wanted to shape their legion to match their own ideals and concepts. Not Conrad. Conrad didn't want to put any work in. The only reason, I think Conrad was just lazy, from being honest. But what happens is the new kind of guard that comes with Corex, doesn't align well with the original Terran legionaries.

And align, again, not even close. I think that what I'm talking more in all the legions. What I'm saying is more extreme. But in all the legions, you had the problem of the emperor knew the basic genetic makeup of the prime mark. But that's all he had. Remember, he didn't know where these primark, what ends up happening to the primarks is he's creating them with a special set of skills. Then chaos scatters them to the galaxy where their kind of upbringing,

changes who they are as people. So the emperor was picking parts of terror to pull people from to most match like the being that he created in the lab. Yes. And Korax is one of the more extreme examples of this, though, where Korax then takes all those and becomes Batman. And the people that the, I think the emperor was like, oh, this guy will sneak up on people and slaughter them in their sleep.

And Batman doesn't do that. And so now he's looking at all these guys the emperor made going, So you all suck. Yeah. Weird. You know, let me get back to you because none of these guys are going to be your friend because they are not cool with you. Yeah. And what happens is Corax's thing is he really doesn't like rulers who rule from, like, authority.

He wants you to have more of plurality, which the emperor is different. The emperor actually was trying to uplift humanity. I'm talking more like Lords of Terra. Corax would have killed the Lords of Terra over and over and over again. And it's a good thing he was spending in the warp the whole time. So when Korax gets and meets the 19th, he's watching them fight. He's like, this is awesome. And then they conquer.

And he goes, hold up, big pause here. What are you guys doing? That's awesome. They had a lot of collateral damage. And they had collateral damage that didn't need to be collateral damage. That's another thing they have to put in. Like, he's watching them do shit for no reason. And I think one of the big challenges we run into with him is the, when I,

when you do the writings, it reminds me a lot of 16th to 18th, up century colonialism, where as these legions go out to the galaxy and conquer, everyone, the emperor's viewpoint is, much like the throne, English throne's viewpoint, and the Spanish throne's viewpoint, all the throne's viewpoint was the entire world should bend the need of me. I am an emperor. I am basically a god. In the case of the emperor of mankind,

he can't have a dick, actually. Yeah, I was just saying, can't have a dick, but he's not wrong. He's got a point, is all we're going to get there. But what you get is some of the legions would act like the British East India Company, others would act like the Flemish and some, even the French, and the way that they would colonize. And the Zarek were one such.

They were brutal when they would conquer. Their initial actions in combat were fine. Kill the leaders, sneak up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but it's the after effects because once we get, Purge. Yeah, they started purging any dissidents, anybody that had any opinion that wasn't exactly this. If you weren't 100% on board, they just slaughtered you. And it's not even though they've slaughtered you. They made an example of you on that. Exactly. Not only do they do those things, but they started hunting down trying to find them, which, it's the old butterfly effect. The idea is that if you believe something to be true and you actively try to pursue it, you will make it become true. So now they started creating dissidents because they were just such Dix as conquerors. Corax looks at this and it reminds him of Kievov, which he just, you know, free. Like just, just, just, just.

Yeah. And Korax was like, nope, I am not. I did not join this to be what I used to be. And so he starts to change the leadership of the 19th. And by starts to, he does it very quickly and very, very aggressively by moving everyone all over the place. Well, let's talk about this. We mentioned this before we went, we started recording.

We were talking about our pre- mojo. But Corax does... Our pre-planning is two minutes. Continue. If that. We did talk about good restaurants also. I mean, that's part of those.

But Corax did a really good job and a really bad job of this. He was trying to set examples without being the guy that's flogging his leadership, but he demoted a lot of guys, and he publicly demoted them and put them outside of positions of power

to show everybody that you can't do these terrible things. I will not stand for it. Yeah. However, he did bad stuff, well, bad decision making, in my opinion, because he sent some people, hey, you need to get the hell out of here.

And that didn't work out. Or at least like that. The example is, a good example, if you guys saw the show Band of Brothers, what they did to the guy, the guy who played Ross and Friends, it's that concept of, some of you guys are good leaders.

You are good this, but I just cannot have you. leading troops because you will do a terrible job. And so some of them, to Brad's point, were like, hey, you're now in charge of cleanup duty. You don't get to ever see a civilian, ever. You don't leave the ships. You were chief in charge of making sure the bullet paper was stopped. Yeah.

But one of the most important ones he does, we think, because it is Arcus Fall. Arcus Fall was the Shade Lord, which is the prior chapter master. Arcus had been running the 19th Legion for like multiple decades at this point. Yeah. He was born on terror. He's a Zerick tribesman and he was brutal. Corax meet him. He's what? I think he's 30 years, right? 30 plus years, right? Yeah, 30 plus years later. Corax hated him when he met him. Because Korax saw in him all the evil. Yeah, all year. But, let's see honest. But Arcus Fall was light years loyal to the emperor.

Yes. Light years loyal to emperor. There's no chaos corruption in him whatsoever. So Corex had a problem. And when he solved that by effectively, all the rogue traders on the upper part of segmentum obscureus kept just dying. Because they go up there. Smoke showing them. Yeah, because it's all bad stuff up there.

And effectively, whatever humanity is up there is also kind of bad. So he's like, cool, two birds, one stone. Arcus Fall, you go up there. And he sent Arcus Fall with a giant chunk of 19th Legionnaires to just go deal with Segmentum Obscureus. Joe. Also, remember, this is also a smaller legion to continue. Yeah, not yet. This is actually not, they become a smaller legion. No, they become super, so they become a barbershop quartet. Pretty soon. No, I was saying. There's two levels. There's still over 100,000 at this point.

So when he does this, they're not 13th Legion, but no one is. So Bresensarchists fall up there. And the reason we think this is important is this may be the origin of Carcarodons. Now, the Carcarodons do have a chimeric gene seed. So it's more. likely that this was the start of it and that they later collected more such loyalists who are either problematic loyalists or maybe even had been part of a one of the traitor legions and wanted redemption kind of like a pre-death watch type set up but the car carerodons go up there and go away because i do think he started taking in people that were all the hr problem children they were you didn't do anything wrong but you did some stuff wrong right but you're on

So segmentum obscures is not where the ghoul stars are, but your segmental obscures in the upper part of segmental obscures is ugly. That's where you get a crave, which we'll cover a little bit. You get a lot of very, very bad Xenos up there. So screw it. Go to town, guys. I do like the fact that Korax doesn't just punish and restructure things without explaining it. He did have a talk about what he expects from his Legion and from these guys. It's not like he just goes, you suck it out of here.

Yeah. He explains to kind of like be Batman. The idea is that we're going to be a force from good. We fight from the darkness. We surprise our enemies. We do all this stuff. But we're not cutthroats. We don't just exploit weakness for personal gain.

Now, fun story on that. Corex rejoins the Legion. Corex starts to reform at the 19th. And you know who took particular issue with this? Conrad. Conrack. Also, these guys insta hate each other to, Next dimensions.

It's funny because Conrad had been there for a bit at this point. And the 19th Legion and the Nightlord's whose number, I'm forgetting. Sorry, I can't remember off the top of my head with whenever they are. Eighth Leans, sorry, the Eighth Legion are kind of buddy, buddy. Like, oh, it was competitive though. Yeah. Oh, very competitive, but this a little bit of like, oh, hey, oh, you think you're sneaky. I'm sneaky or blah, blah, blah.

And then Korax comes in and goes, oh, we're not hanging out with those guys anymore. Those are not our friends. They're out of their minds. And the bigger problem is also publicly pointed it out while Codrad was around, hey man, we don't want to be like those dudes when you're like, dude, I'm in the same room as you. Like, yeah. Still get kicked out. I do think of like all those like eighth legionaires who were hanging out with 19th legionnaires,

thought they were friends and they're like, hey, I'm sorry, my girlfriend says we can't be friends anymore. That's kind of like, that's kind of how this thing went down. Because Croix came in, if I see any of you speaking to one. of them. I'm putting you on latrine duty. No. And so we'll get there later, but there's a lot of like nightlords yelling, oh, so you think you're better than me? And the Ravenguard going back with, yeah, because we are. It gets ugly. He goes, you can't talk too much shit to me. You're currently strangle a guy with his own intestines. Stop. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty bad. So what's interesting know about the Ravenguard, though, is at this time, we do discover that with, when Corex joins there,

there's something extra special by their gene seed. And it was described, I think on Reddit, someone wrote it really well, where they said the Eighth Legion fights from the Shadows. The 19th Legion are the shadows. The Legion actually blends in better and hides and disappears. They become sneakier once Korax comes in, and even harder to detect. We've talked about this in previous cast of it, though.

when people are closer to their prime arc, they basically have that psychic link. And he has that power up. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. But let's get into the how. So Khorax gets in this Legion. And so as we were saying, he makes these changes,

but he also is there to uplift it. He doesn't do what Petarabo does. We come in and then he just starts to crack in a whip on his Legion. Or actually, Angron does the same thing. So as Motarian, a lot of them do this. But Korax comes in, he does his little shift of power. But then he goes in and says, we're going to make this legion. the best legion, not 13th best, but like second best.

So the Ravenguard, they can blend in anywhere. They can remain undetected, anything but scanners, which, as we discovered, doesn't say much. Corex, though, decided to take that and then kind of lean in on it. So the first thing he does is Kievar. Key of R, which is what he conquered before, was a forge world. Now it's deliverance is the moon. Everything's put together. And what I love this story, the adeptus Mechanicus gets there.

Just shows up en masse, by the way. Oh, yeah. And they're like, oh, my God, this is the greatest place ever. We can't wait to bring you into the fold of, ah, crap, a Primark's in charge here. So this world is a forge world with Mechanicum on it, but it's not part of the Mechanicum because of Corex, which does cause some conflicts, by the way, because there's a bunch of STC's there and the planet are like, so we don't have to give those over to the Mechanicum and Carrick's like, no. So like, cool. And so just don't. One of the best parts is

the Ravenguard get extra special tech though from the end. And this is something that Dorn gets this and Vulcan get this. I think Fulgram might have as well a little bit, but they begin making their own tech. The tech Marines start making more and more complex machinery to match the needs specifically of the Ravenguard. We cover this in the last cast with the Moratot because they made them special weapons and jump packs, but they also make this thing called the Shadowhawk. Everyone else has a Thunderhawk. The Ravenguard got a Shadowhawk, which was the Thunderhawk that was non-detectable by

scanners, which again, doesn't say much, but sounds really cool. If you don't read a lot of lore, it sounds awesome. Then you read a lot of lore and go, so basically it's a break. the Thunderhawk that just says no one in here spray painted on the outside. Yeah, and it's quieter. Yeah. The other one I love is the whisper cutter, which is an abomination of physics, which is supposed to be an open-topped flyer that uses anti-grab engines.

Why everything doesn't use these? I don't know. That's not important. And what makes it cool is like 10 space marines can ride in it and jump out of it. No one's aware of them. You're going to make me angry. You're even reading the show notes and looking this up when I was ready to go. this makes me so annoyed.

And it's not like I'm a radar expert, but why the hell would being open top make you immune to radar, man? I've owned convertibles. I'm still very visible. It's not how it works. Like, I don't have them here in Michigan, but only within California, I had it.

It was lovely. I was 40,000 years on the server, why we're using radar, but whatever. It doesn't work that way, but continue. But that was just some of it. The other thing that they did was they actually started to have. have to specialize troops along with it.

So we covered this before, Iron Hand, Spacewolds, Blood Angels, Lunal Wolves, and Death Guard. Everyone had their own specialized group, you know, like the Just Aaron, for example. They would all, there's a thousand of these for. Seminary Guard. You did everything. And for Space Wolves, the entire line. I was to say, space walls.

Yes. All. Yeah. See all. And the Raven Guard, another one. But there was something different about them. So whereas, you know, the. Spacewolds had the long fangs, which just made it was more of a veteran.

Same with the Justerran. The Justeran, they were unique, but they were kind of plucked independently. Yeah, it was just special operators, basically. Yeah, within Ravengard, you get something kind of goofy. The story on this is really cool. On Lycus, which is the Moon Corex came from, as he was doing his freedom fighter thing, he had people join him. And the ones that joined him seemed to almost absorb some of his powers.

they too were able to avoid detection when someone was looking at them. Call it by its name because it's cool. Well, no, we'll get there later. The shadow walk comes later. Yes, but it's cool. No, the shadow walk's awesome. So what happens is that these guys, when they get the gene seed implantation, actually pick up even more.

They become like corax, where they start, it's a phase shifting. And these were called the More Deffian. They became this ultimate recon for. So they were able to move and they were able to communicate in pure silence. The irony is that they made this whole thing about them, this joy toys of these guys, by the way, and then they're all dead because Corex uses them and starts to say these more deathy and all over the place because they're almost a mini-corax,

and then they all just kind of die in the service. The only question mark of them, it becomes this whole thing with more deathian. So the idea of a more deathian is they actually can almost phase in and out. and they become the super soldiers. It is possible that this gene exists and kind of sits there. There's argument. Some people have made that maybe KV. On Shrike had this because some of the stuff he pulled off when fighting the orcs.

A couple Ravenguard will get to some time of time. I believe this, though. I think that it continues on in the gene scene. This is, again, a Brad theory. But again, all of the primarks have being primaries, but they also have their specific superpower. His again, I mean, it's to the next level now. But, like, this was he could just basically,

be effectively invisible and I think he gives this to his sons. I think it is carried on in his gene seed. Some people get more of it than others. Yeah, that's fair. You even see it on the tabletop. The tabletop rules, we got asked in Discord about this,

but no, Ravengard. Eighth edition. I'm saying now. How about that? Ravenguard currently is very, it feels flavorful, very close to what they should be. Close-ish.

As much as you're going to get. Yeah, for a space marine. Faxon, you're right. The base marine factions just struggling with lore. Now, the other cool thing about this is they also get their own language. It's sign language, but it's still unique for a chapter. It's a completely silent form of communication. So then you have to use Vox to talk to each other. And it can, it's so subtle that it can be performed while completely concealed, which is cool as hell. And then the thing Brad was alluding to earlier, I want to get to now, is wraith slipping. So Korax and the more deathy and do this more of a warp level

where they basically cease to exist physically to not. non-mechanical eyes, but the rest of the Legion become masters of concealment. They can just, while wearing power armor, just disappear into the surroundings. This is where the Moratot, who obviously I love, that's how these guys will basically stand in the shadow of a hallway and no one will see the giant space marine there holding two Voltaiciles, and then just blast out and go, cool, ever the ice. This is not Canada at all, but I really think this is more of a psychic mental obfuscate power than anything is.

I think they phase shift into the warp. Okay. Either way, it's a cyber power effectively. That's because you can pick them up on mechanical stuff, but you just can't. It's like in Last of Us, if the zombies are moving around and use duck, that zombies don't see you. Does it make sense? No. Is the game fun?

Yeah. It's a game sad. Yeah. This is the first one significantly better than the second one. Yeah. See, I don't see the history. I think the game plays better than the second one, but the story the second one. It hurts, man.

Damn hurts. All right. All right. We'll be right back after a quick break. Great Crusade. So by the time Corax joins the Great Crusade, as we said earlier, it'd been a century and a quarter. So Corex just discovered in 922 of M30. The Great Crusade began in 798.

If I'm not mistaken, the Horacee's five years after this. So he's not around for a while. As a result, though, kind of what we'd call the easy part of the conquest is over. The Rogue Trader fleets have basically mapped out as much of the galaxy as they can map out, except for the spots that keep getting blown up in. And so all of the human colonies that were found that would have peacefully come over, the 13th Legion had already visited, and they'd already done it. So what's left is worlds that are resisting compliance or those that accept it and then revolt

right afterwards. So Korax is coming into the Great Crusade at kind of a weird time. And this is going to test a lot of his actions and his, morality. This will be giving a lot of morally questionable places to go to. And he's also, he's getting favorable treatment because he's the youngest, but he's also going into places that are giving the most glory, because a lot of times it's cleanup and fixing problems. Yeah. So one of the early ones that he gets tested on is Karinae. Karinae is a system that was a compliance mission taken on by the Ravenguard and the Nightlords. So yeah, this isn't going to go well.

The system is made up of a bunch of small satellites with many hive worlds on them. They call it the thousand moons of Karinae, but it doesn't mean there were a thousand. It's just, it's a terminology. The challenge the imperial forces had was this collection of moons was really vast and powerful. So if you try to attack it all at once, it could repel you. So instead, they decide, well, what if we just island hopped? They just stole this again from World War II. Flat of World War II stuff comes up here.

And they said, all right, because the kingdom of Karinai wasn't, really a kingdom. It was more like a feudal setup where each moon was its own fiefdom. So Corex just goes, screw it, start at the left, and we just go all the way to the right and starts conquering them one at a time. And he's bringing a, now let's talk about it. This is a big force. With him and the night lords, which is probably perfect for both of them. Well, it's also a huge amount of imperial. You got a bunch of guard here too. I feel bad for the guard. It doesn't go great for the guard. No, I'm just saying the huge force of.

And so what they're doing is they're just basically because they're so stealthy, no one knows they're there until they attacks. They basically sneak up on a moon and then just hammer it. And that moon can call for support, but all the other moons around it go, dude, by the time I get there, that battle's over,

so whatever. And he's just conquering them one after another after another until he gets to the moon called Zenith 312. Zena 312. It just cracks me up because every time you have a problem, in a lot of these, you know, places that have been out of compliance for a long time. Everything goes well. And then you go, what the hell were they doing during the Dark Age of Technology, the Age of Strife?

Because they always have what the shit weapons. And we're about to go into that because it's another one of those. So on this moon, from the, to Brad's point, from the Golden Age or Dark Age of Technology, was the Anamaphage. And Anamaphage, there's more than one of these. These come up every so often. These are a weapon. It's a psychological weapon that just basically turns all people and mindless beasts. And one on Zanith was very powerful.

So Corex's Legion are attacking. And the arch-comptroller, and I do love it's the arch-comptroller, by the way. That makes me laugh every time. I don't know why. Unleashes this animophage. It has no effect on the Astardes, but the enemy troops and the Imperial Army runs over them. They had brought 60,000 of those. Yes.

So, yes. And it basically turns everyone there to 28 days later style zombies, where they're just attacking everything. And they're fast. These aren't Poxwalkers, man. This is ugly. Hold on. I'm going to do more Firefly stuff.

The Revers. Yeah, we get it. You should watch it. Everyone's watched it. There's four episodes. It's easy to watch all of it. 13. Thank you very much.

Continue. In one movie. In a movie. one day. Anyway, so while this is happening, the Ravenguard have to basically kill everybody. The troops they came there with, the enemy troops, because they're just mindless zombies. Corex, though, discovers that the archcomptroller escaped during this. In fact, he used this weapon to give himself an escape. Corax loses his mind, this idea that this person would sacrifice his own people and others just to save himself.

So Corex decides, I'm going to make this guy pay. I want to make this guy pay bad. So tracks him down and the guy has moved to a, it's an outpost that's just kind of revolving around the sun. And Corex, this is where Corex becomes a little bit dark. He sends his moratots onto the platform, but with a very clear direction, they're to kill everyone but the Archimtrak. The Archimple. And then there to disable, like, I don't know if it was the engines or whatever, basically

kept it from floating into the sun, then they blew up every single escape shuttle except for one, and the one they all got into and left. So they basically destroyed all the escape shuttles and left this comptroller on this station by himself as it began a descending orbit into a sun. And Corex turns on the Vox, doesn't really say anything and just listens to this guy as he's screaming, cursing at Corex, and then eventually pleading for his life. And Corex listens until the stationery melts in the sun killing the comptroller. And then he's like, all right, that was fun and goes back to the battle. The problem, though, this is where kind of a lesson learned for Corex is he does this

because he's just overwhelmed with rage. But while he did this, he'd effectively pulled the entire Ravenguard out of the conflict, which allowed for all of the other moons within here to re-fortify. Because the nightlords had been there, by the way, which is, we'll get to them more in a second. but this then makes the rest of the conflict harder. This is another one of those. Conrad and him don't get along. Yeah.

Fun story. This is where they first really heavily turned on each other. During all this conflict, we've covered Conrad in the past. Conrad actually has a big issue with his Legion. Conrad discovers that on one of the planets, a bunch of night lords were just torturing and killing people for just sport. Sport.

Like absolutely no other reason. Yeah. Yeah. The planet had surrendered. they were in compliance. They've been doing nothing wrong because remember the night lords torture you before you become compliant.

Once you become compliant, like, okay, cool, they're on our team. It was the Zarek who are torturing post. So Conrad discovers that his legion is just hunting people and it's going to give for sport. So then he goes down there and personally kills all of them.

All of the night lords that were doing that. And then goes, you know what? I don't want the other legions to know about this because I kind of have a bad reputation already and then just decides to bomb where the entire cities. The problem is that Hanrad does an orbital bombardment of a city. Korak sees this and goes, hey, what's going on there? Assuming initially that there's a reason behind it, that, oh, there must be a basically,

why did you have to kill the civilians? Then he gets there, looks around and goes, oh, you're an asshole. And the two of them get into it, actually. They're about to come to blows until one of Conrad's main sergeants convinced him to walk away. Yeah, Seveton. It's Seventon to walk away, and Corex does. But they don't like each other very much after this. Now, that's him kind of learning, maybe control my anger.

The next one lesson he has to learn is more about the Imperium itself. And this is the Indra Sole. And I like this campaign a lot because it has one of my favorite Zinos in it, The Crave. So Great Crusade is nearing its completion. Most of the worlds that are now not in compliant are the outer edge of the galaxy. So interestingly enough, up in segmentum obscureous, they run into a problem. Rogue traders find this section of, it's basically a system that used to be human colonists, but there's nothing there now.

They're just a giant spire of death. It's a structure. It's miles thick spanning from the surface going up into space above it. And it's because the crave got there. And the crave are cool as hell, if you like D&D vampires, because that's what they are. It's incredible. Really powerful and really crazy. Also, they're buildings.

D&D vampires. I mean, this is not close. Yeah. Like, they just ripped this straight out. They're tall. The space submarine big. It's not something's going to be even bigger. Have bat wings, a bat face, and consume the souls and energy of human beings,

to power themselves up. Yeah, vampire. And they make these Gothic wild structures. Yeah. And the Crave are horrifying. And the Imperium, what's interesting about this, knows about this. The Crave, by the way, actually must have mentioned,

predate the Eldar. They've been part in the galaxy forever, and no one's able to snuff them out. So they get there. And Corex has a moral dilemma, because the Imperium knows very much so about the Craves. This isn't looking at an LV-420. situation. They know what's going on here. And all of his advisors tell him, look, the crave,

they've killed these people effectively already. And the crave had no joke. Back up a little bit. They're not a fun. Even slave, they basically made the people thralls to them. And so that, yeah. And so what happens is they're telling Corex, look, we just release a nerve agent into this place, kill everybody, and then we'll come colonize it later. Let's just do that. And Corax disagrees because he wants to save the people there. And now he's going to, he's going to lead from the front. He also brings the Therion cohort with them, which is the, this poor regiment that got assigned to them. These guys could go through some rough stuff. Yeah, I was just to say.

Well, it sucks because you think about this way. Like, you're an imperial, this is imperial army in this point. You're an imperial army regiment. And you're assigned to the most stealthy of all the space marines. But you're not stealthy. At all. They do anything. It's just you.

Yeah. The Ravenguard do sell me. Everyone books on, hey, who just slapped me? And the fair end cohorts are just standing going, you're the one who hit me. Like, it wasn't me, but all right, let's go. And they just get clapped over and over again. And while the Ravengard are sitting in the shadows going, man, that was right in the face. That probably hurt.

I like a lot of Corex's decisions, but trying to save these people was bad. It was horrible. So what they do is they deploy in secrecy and start making their way through the spot. They hit basically dead center of the spire. And along the way, they discover a couple things. First off, the human populace are basically cattle. They're all kept in pens, and the crave, when they awaken, just come and feed on them. And every time they feed on them, they get bigger and stronger, by the way.

So these are giant crave. They've had control of this area for probably millennia, if not more. Eventually, the Ravenguard get to what they're looking for, which is because the crave are a knockoff vampire. They're all asleep. They all sleep under the special, like, it's not a casket, but it might as well be. It is. It might as well be in a coffee. Exactly. And so they have to kill them. Now, Corex here does bring in something special. They're called the deliverers, which are his version of Just Starring. These are terminators that do work. Serious work, actually. But they are, by the way, not stealthy. This is the only part of his entire legion that's not stealthy. When the deliverers come in, you're aware of it. They're probably closest to the Red Brethren from the Carcarodons. But because of their sneakiness, they were able to catch the craze.

kind of off guard. They hit them, they bring in the deliverers, and they start just wrecking the crave. It's actually only a couple hours of firefight before every single crave is dead, and the population is freed. So, correct.

Hold, please. Population freed, huge asteris. One, no, no, the population was freed. Sure. Heart two is where this gets on. Well, also, even though they were freed, these were the shady, hey, man, this guy's been feeding on me,

and my soul, I got about 10% soul left, and I'm pretty messed up. They were, I'm doing air quotes right now, freed, even without this next unbelievably sucky part that happened. Because afterwards, Corax is like, go team, we freed everybody. And the ad mech showed up went, oh man, these guys are all corrupted.

They can't be trusted. Let's just make every single person a servitor, which is a fate wildly worse than death. That's the irony is that Corex could have deployed a nerve agent and killed all of them in an instant. And instead, most of them are going to live for thousands upon thousands of years as a thervitor. Which sucks. Like so much. Yeah.

Now, we do get a happier story after this, which is Istvon Part 1. Istavat? Well, this part. Istvon Part 1 is a good story. It's true. Sorry. The compliance of Istavad. Yes.

Part two is not ideal. Part one's just fine. So let's get into part one. Part one. So Istvon was a massive system, multiple worlds, and they had thrived through the dark age of technology. And so because of that, it was labeled as neat to be brought into compliance. It could not just be destroyed. These people had to come over.

What no one knew was that they were also Sleneshwar. worshippers. It wasn't hardcore Slenash worship, but they were Slenash worshippers. So when they meet the first kind of people of the Great Crusade, they're told about the imperial truth. And they all were like, yeah, no, because this is the same as Colchis, which is where Lorgar comes from, super hardcore religious group who were really happy worshipping the chaos gods. But Colchis had a primark on it. So they kind of had to join the Imperium. These ones are like, it's fun. Nah, I'm good. And so they say, no. And they, by the way, because they'd survive the dark age of technology, this is not a backwards planet. The issue is that they need these planets to come in. So they look around and they say,

all right, Ravenguard, you bring this into compliance because not being as world leaders, not going to use night lords, not going to use imperial fists, iron warriors, or space wolves. People who were going to wreck the place. No, we, yeah. No one who's on team burn it all down.

Oh, I guess no Vulcan either because he probably would have slaughtered the civilians. Oh, my God. One time. One time.

Yeah, big time. So, Corax, they go to him and say, we need you to do this. Bring these guys into compliance. And it makes sense

for this to go to the Ravenguard because they're very good at just cutting the head off the snake. So Korax, though, does make a little bit of a mistake. He is,

that the people of Istvon want to join the Imperium. It's the leadership that's holding them back. Yeah, it is not. Yeah. So Korax and his Legion do what they do best. They sneak into the system undetected, not saying much, and they launch this massive onslaught on the seats of power under Istvan. And initially it goes great.

They very quickly overwhelmed these guys, killed the heads of the military and the government. All the infrastructure is gone. But they kind of do that with the whole they'll greet us as liberal. They did not. And the people went, screw you, and they counterattack. And the Ravenguard, they were able to retrieve this surprised Corex, because he was expecting people just to be like, okay, yeah, leaders are gone, we'll do this. So now he's a new plan. And this goes back to what we discussed last week, where the emperor kind of likes lessons being learned by his prime marks. And the lesson, again, for Corex is, sometimes you have to kill a lot of innocence. to save even more innocence. The greater good, again, of hot fuzz, not the hot fuzz greater good. It's a very important distinction.

The Kourax realizes that he needs to really kind of beat these guys into submission. So what he does is he's able to use a bunch of faints and tactics to get the military to kind centralize in one main area. And this is his first attempt. It's called the Red Arth Valley. And within the Redarth Valley, most of the military, of Istvon was congregating to fight back against the Ravenguard. And then he orbital bombards that thing into oblivion.

And they're all dead. And he basically removes the military strength of Istvon 3. But again, the resistance continues. He cannot get them to do this. So Korak slept with only one choice. He just bombs the capital city. Yeah. Yeah.

Full show of power. And he comes in and devastates, kills millions with an orbital bombardment. At which point, the people will Levisstvon go, Okay, message received. Message received. We're good now. We're going to go ahead and join this Imperial Compliance thing because we see if we don't, it's going to get a lot worse.

Fun story, though, for Corex to learn. Now, let's talk about a very odd thing next. As we're getting closer and closer to what's going to become the heresy, the warrior lodges are growing. Now, we've covered the warrior lodges. We've talked about in a while. Brad thinks they're a good idea despite not being able to point to any reason why they were totally good idea they got corrupted they were not they were a terrible idea from

the onset there's a reason no military in the history of militaries has ever done this you don't do this they're designed for insubordination just called them insubordination logic king arthur had it with his round table of equal knights oh really was he real you don't know that sonic the hedgehog probably had it too what else we got sonic probably made it work also no it didn't it doesn't work it doesn't work It doesn't work. Anyway. So the warrior lodges, for those who don't know, these were things created by the Luna Wolves,

but more pushed by Arabis and the roadbearers. Again, Brad thinks that's a good idea. And the idea is that... I think that was the good idea, damn it. It's a place where any soldier could speak their mind as equals and say what was going on. I love that idea. Yeah, it's not.

It's a terrible idea because what happens is it's a place for a bunch of soldiers to complain and speak to, to their captains and leadership as an equal, and all it does is formant insubordination. Inside, that's why you don't do these things. Well, you're so much hater, aide. Because I've read the Horace heresy. It's mostly the whole reading the books thing where you're like, oh, that's how that ends?

Cool. I feel like I'm on kind of a factual journey here of how this thing works. It's self out. I looked at it. Something wildly different. Yeah, you read the books and then went, nah, I see how this could work. I mean, it failed miserably, horribly, terribly.

But anyway, so within these warrior lodges, what happens is they become insubordination machines. It's a place that what ends up happening is members of legions complain about their leadership to other legions. It's one thing if the warrior lodges were within a legion. I will give you that. If it was, if the warrior lodges of Ravenguard were only Ravenguard, it would make some sense.

But the problem is the Raven Guard members, the Warrior Lodge will sit with members of the wordvairs of Horace. So now you're getting cross complaints. And so the real reason behind these things was so that Arabis and them could figure out who was going more loyal to Horace and who wouldn't be to help them start picking

their legionnaires for their future revolution. That's why it's such a bad idea. Within the Legion, honestly, I could see the Ultramarines doing this it being fine because it's the ultramarines. They know how to do this. Same with the space wolves could have this. A lot of legions could have this,

but it has to be centralized within your legion. Anyway, so this is going to be an issue for Corex because a lot of the original 19th Legion members from Terra all join the warrior lodges. They love these warrior lodges. These are people who, they don't come from deliverance. These are people who are much more interested in conquest, power, all that stuff.

So that's the backstory. Now we're getting to Gate 42. Aikom Sothos cluster. So it's a group of worlds that was brought into compliance by Horace in the early days of the Great Crusade. Okay. But in the absence of Horace, the xenores of parasites that grow inside of your own eye. Gross. Gross.

You know what would be good for that, Brad? Put into fear drops in. I do like how they're described because they start controlling stuff with the alien Gestalt cabal. Yeah. So the entire system goes into the rebellion. And Horace loses his mind. And it's like, no, I am not having one.

Because Horace isn't corrupt yet. I'm not having one of my biggest achievements go the way of the dodo. And so he orders everyone. Come with me, we'll get them. So he brings the Ravenguard, the Iron Warriors, and the space wolves with his Luna wolves to go and take back the system. They do, the initial battles are great. They conquer a ton of stuff on the outside and start moving their way towards a

centralized portion. But when they get to the central and Horace has a final attack plan, it's a pretty well fortified area. So what he wants to do is, he's like, hey, we're going to basically, on three, we're all going to attack, but from different sides. So north, east, south and west. And Korax took offense to that. Right, because Korax is looking, going, hey, like, I'm the sneaky chapter. I can just go and I can set you guys up. And Horace, like, no, you're going to do a full frontal assault into a well-defended area. And Korak's like, yeah, why? With Perterabo in the background going, coward. Oh, yeah.

So this whole thing gets going. And to Brad's point, literally, Petirabo starts just shit talking. Oh, so you're afraid of battle. You're a weak, all this stuff. And so Corex doesn't care for that. So Lehman Russ has to get involved and be like, look, Horace is in charge, man. This is after he became the war master. Like, just do what he says.

And this ends up working out really well for the Ravenguard in a weird way. So Korax, by the way, does not agree with this plan. He says it's stupid. But as he gets back up, and so it's basically complaining to his Legion about like, yeah, apparently we're going to do some stupid full frontal assault, blah, blah, blah. A bunch of the 19th Legion members from Tara

start going, yeah, that sounds like an awesome idea. I want to show I'm just as good as a warrior as these stupid lunew wolves. And so Korax does the whole... I love that he fall. They fall into clearing his legion of people that would have fallen to chaos. He takes basically everyone who is in the warrior lodges

and just puts them on the front line, goes, you guys said you wanted to do this. And they have had it. And they all die. They get slaughtered. Like 30, 40,000 of them just get slaughtered. This whole thing is terrifying. And he loses.

Doesn't even know it, but he lost anybody that could have left your chaos. Yeah. So timing of this is great. Corex is. But they become at this point one of the smallest legions. They go down below. 80,000 at this point.

But all the problem guys are gone, so that's cool. Now, there's one more very fun story we have to get to. And this is, all right, I will admit it again. I hate weeks. Why do you hate the bit so much? Because they're supposed to be a sneaky legion, and now your face is a foot longer that's supposed to be. I just see them banging the beak on things while they're trying to sneak around.

That's why it doesn't make sense. But people love beaks. by beaks and mass. So whatever. We do. And that's fine. Honestly, I could see why you think they'd look cool. I don't agree.

But I'm also building an entire army right now of Mark 2 armor. So whatever. I'm my own me. As we're getting into the latter part of the Great Crusade, the Mechanicum is always trying to improve weaponry. And they'd been on the Mark 4 armor for a while, but the Mechanicum didn't like it. Their viewpoint was this Mark 4 armor is good, but we want to make something better. And the first change they make is what if we put beaks on the helmets?

No idea why. Don't care. Move on. The next one they wanted to do, though, was they wanted to actually lighten the armor up. Their idea is... Which is not popular, by the way. But their idea, though, was clever. Their idea was basically, look, the starys are killing machines.

Why are we slowing them down? If we speed them up, they become more lethal. And a more lethal of startase is probably more valuable than a more sturdy one. So this is like in modern 40K table. up, Drew Kari versus Acustads. I play Jukari. Anyway, the idea was these guys will make them fast, they'll kill everything.

They roll the Mark 5 out, and to breathpoint, everyone hates it. Vulcan and Petterobos specifically, or like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I'm not putting this crap on. But the mechanic, I'm standing their ground. They say, no, we know what we're doing. This is good armor, and you should use it.

And after a lot of argument, they decide, we'll do a test to prove its point. Petarabo kind of undermines everyone here, but it ends up not mattering, but we'll skip that in a second. The idea, Petarabo's idea is, we'll tell you what,

give it to the Ravenguard and let them go do some campaign in it. Because his idea was basically, the Ravenguard will do this, they'll fail, and as they fail, they'll call for support and those of us

and the regular army will show up and save them. And wreck them, yeah. Yeah, and he picks an even better target. He says, you know what, and go to the Scallad sector.

And the Scallon sector is full of hell down. It's an Eldar section. So Eldar at this point are a huge problem. They're probably one of the biggest problems of Space Marines because the Eldar are too quick for them. Spoiler alert. I guess that one's going to work out.

And their weaponry is really good. Because the Eldar were more lethal than the Space Marines were. So this is perfect. Ravenguard are going to go up there. They're going to run the problems. They're going to have a bunch of heavy losses. They're going to call for support. We'll go in there and the Mechanica and will shut the hell up.

Except the complete opposite happens. The Raven Guard are now lighter. They're faster. And they start out striking and fading the Eldar. You got to think that they also, the Eldar, were completely unprepared for it because they haven't met anybody that's moved like this. Because the Eldar used to Space Marines. Eldar learn.

And they were like, okay, these guys are going to show up, you know, bring in the shining spears. We got this. But now all of a sudden, these super sneaky ones are even quicker. And they start wrecking the Eldar. Recking the Eldar so badly that the Eldar retreat completely. from the systems. The goal of this was simply, can the Ravenguard defeat the Eldar in some battles, right? And if that, if they do that, then the armor is good. The Ravenguard don't do that. They don't conquer the entire sector in this new armor, at which point the mechanic

just goes, so put us up in the production now, right, guys? And poor Petterabo and everyone else go, all right, fine. Now, none of that really matters, though, because as this has, happens and we get our stupid beaks and all this stuff. The imperial commander Vardis Prahl, who's the ruler of the Istfan systems, has rebelled. He was using, so remember I said before they were Slyneesh worshippers? Well, he had his war singers who were psychers. He killed all the imperial defenders there and turned the system traitor. The emperor discovers this and immediately puts a call to Horace saying, get over to

Which is an ill-time call. Oh, he was like two hours too late on this call. Yeah, Horace just came back from the corrupt stabbing by the Nurgel. Yeah. The Nurgel's from the inside the lodge, you got stab with the Nurgel sword. Yeah. He's, Horace has just given himself over to chaos and gets the call saying, hey, go to this system because there's chaos there and go destroy it.

And Horace says, on my way, dad. No problem. There will be absolutely no issues. whatsoever here. Yep. And with that, we're going to break because next week we're going to get into the Horace heresy and the after effects on the Ravenguard. Corax losing his whole legion, a couple times actually, and kind of Corex then leaving. And then what's the Ravenguard have gotten up to since then? I enjoyed this whole part of Corex, this next bit that they do because Ravenguard and the Horace heresy become kind of a cool narrative trick. We'll talk about that next week.

But we want to stop there because the next bit's going to go pretty hard and fast. And we'll go well. But yeah. Until then, John Barsati, Bradchester. This guy.