The 40k Lorecast - Episode 142 - Space Hulks, yeah.... they can be kind of a nightmare

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

On today’s cast we jump into the massive nightmares that are Space Hulks in the 41st Millenia. What they are, where they kind of come from (technically we don’t know). We also talk about how the different parts of the imperium interact with them (from lowly scrappers trying to make a fortune, through 1st company Space Marines). And they we jump into a bit on some of the more famous Space hulks through the lore.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 40K lore cats. I meet John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. Today we'll be diving to the great mystery and joy that is spacehulks. What they are. Mystery and joy? Well, they actually, the thing is, right, here's the thing.

We only really talk about the ones that are not joy. There's a whole group of them that are totally kind of finish. It's just the ones we talk about it, the ones that are very much. Like, Nightville, that? Yeah. It's like, oh, there's a whole, it's kind of the, you know, the all. the stories of the people who went along the Oregon Trail. A bunch of them made it.

The other ones, you know, the Donner Pass had a name before. Anyway, all right. But for begin, 48K lore cast, weekly show in the lore of the war on a 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Guys, you get doing a great job of following and commenting. So I just say it really out of reflex at this point, but keep doing it. It's awesome. But I know you're all doing it.

So thank you. Check out our YouTube channels, plural now. We have one for our show and Brad has his own, both them. There are links in the show notes to it. On our channel, you'll get our bi-monthly-ish, very much so-ish Q&As along with some streaming stuff. If you let things we throw in there. And on Brad's channel, you get his competitive 40K thing. So yay, Brad made a channel. Well, you know. I had the channel. I know. Yay. The only person. I remember somebody existed that I made in a long time now. It's the only way it would be better is it would have been if, yay, Brad, remember his login. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. If I get a new computer, I'm out of luck, man. All right. But also, if you like this show and you want more coverage, check out our other show, The History of 40K, where Brad and I talk about the history of the game of 40K on the tabletop,

much more by the actual game itself. Or if you just want to hear more about me and my love of video games, check out my show Retro Recall, where I talk about video. games in the 80s and 90s. Some of them sucked. Or, that's not really, or. Additionally, if you like us, you want to help us out, two great ways to do it. One, you can go to the link to our website and check out our merchandise. Some really great stuff there. Wine, t-shirts, well, not wine, wine, wine, glasses. We should get our own. I was just about to say that. You know, it would be good. Because the problem is we can't, because if we want to, I go all boozy and it'd be

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Patreon $4.99 a month gets you this show and our other show history of 40K, completely ad-free. Or 4.29 euros, but in Berlin. Still stuck on the damn euro. Yeah, because I expect at this point it would have moved. But anyway, did you guys know Berlin has more bridges and water than Venice? It does. No one cares because it's not Venice. One of them has April.

I just call out. One has Apparel Spritz singing dudes on gondolas, cobblestone roads, and the other one is not that. But it is the capital of the Donner Kabab, which is wonderful, both sober, but more so drunk, created by Turkish immigrants. But of the things Turkish immigrants brought to Germany, chicken paparosh is my favorite one, just calling it out there. And if we're talking Berlin, cool thing about Berlin is it goes back, actually not as far as you'd think.

Actually, it only goes back to the 12th century. And that's because while Berlin has been around for a while, during the Roman era, that part of Germany, the Romans tried to occupy. They successfully did it once. And by successfully, I mean, they got there and then promptly left. Because, nope, y'all weren't cool. Uh-uh. My ancestors looked at any of you German ancestors went, nah, we out. But the 12th century really well located for trade.

and this eventually led to a ton of money coming into the area, massive economic growth, which led to the creation of the Prussian Empire. Huh, fun story. But why go to Berlin? Simple. Well, not if you're Brad. If you're Brad, you go there to die,

because the number one reason to go there is there. You go there to die. Well, if you're me, ready? Club music. Go underground, deep, heavy, bass, electronic house music. That's what I used to go to. I do not do that anymore. That's my point.

Like, you would actually die. That's my, like, oh, I suffer from heavy migraines. No, it would be not cool. That sounds, I think I might get a migraines talking about that. That's right. And their clubs are awesome. Berlin clubs are crazy. I've been to Tressor, I guess you a couple times.

Tresor was nuts. I never went to Watergate, which I guess I just found out, well, researching this, Watergate closed, which sucks. And Germans, Germany's fun to drink in. I will say the flying here. which I think I'm pronouncing right is messed up, but it's super fun. Or maybe you're going to Berlin,

the trek down your pen pal. Whatever, you know, whatever's good for you. Lastly, though, our Discord, please join our Discord. Our Discord's super fun. We've been having a lot of fun in it recently. By the time this releases,

this actually might time right with the release of 11th edition. So definitely jump in now. You'll see a lot of us talking about 11th edition in there. But if not, you don't care about playing the game on tabletop, but just want to come in there, yell at us about what we're about to do, also equally fun. If you want to come in there and just

learn more about 40K in general, get more advice, just find other people who have similar interests, do this. It is a fantastic community we've built in there, and I could not be happier with what we have going. So there you go. Discord. All right, spacehulks, quick disclaimer, before we get into this, we're going to cover Space Hulk today. There is a game called Space Hulk. Brad never discussed us before we started. Space Hulk the game was made, I think, in 1993, feels about right. The issue with that is any 40K lore from the early 90s is really, by the way, 89. Okay, so 89.

This lore kind of doesn't really count. I know. I already put a disclaimer on that for you, because I'm like. We were discussing this before we started. Brad brought up a very good point of like, hey, the Space Hulk stuff's really conflicting. So I just want to call out, for those of you who've played Space Hulk or like Space Hulk, I'll just go ahead and say it that, yeah, it's one of those games that. Yeah, it's a great game, but the lore in it, I mean, I'll just call it out. This is before GeneSport Cult existed.

Yeah, we had Gene Steelers, because they tried to, the Gene Steels try to kill the Terminators. Yeah. So that's the game. So just calling out. So anyway, with that, we're going to cover more kind of modern information on spacehawks. But let's get into what is a spacehawk? Probably a good place to start. Yeah. Let's start with, because we're going to give the definition, which is a conglomeration of ships that slowly came together in and out of the world. Not always. Because sometimes someone has a single ship. That's the problem. It's just that's a spacehawk. But the biggest thing about most of the name space hulks and stuff like they come into the stories, they are just gigantic. They're ridiculous. I'll make it easy.

It's a big hunk of crap that floats around the galaxy. Now, I am 85% certain is something that goes in and out of the warp. The galaxy in the 41th millennia is a nightmare. Yes. Best way to explain it. After the birth of Slanesh, the border between the imiterion and the materium, finned out, which allows both of them can access to the other one much more easily.

And things can flow in and out. Yeah, I was just saying. Yeah. A lot of these, a lot of these space hooks are actually, I think, this is a brand theory, but a lot of these go in and out of the warp and are created by that. Because a lot of times they come back out and there's multiple war ships and or giant frame.

Again, the size of the ships is ridiculous. You have city much bigger than cities flying around all the time. right now. And they seem to have a purpose when they appear. Some of them appear, we'll talk more about this in death later, but some of them appear almost on a schedule. Others will appear almost like they were summoned. There is a lot going on on a space hulks. And to the point where when things act with purpose, the one thing, you know, all right, little side comment here about the warp is we, the warp is not controlled by the chaos gods. The chaos gods exist in the warp and are powered by the warp. It is entirely possible the warp itself has its own separate consciousness

because the warp does kind of do stuff, stuff that is separate from the gods of chaos. Yep. Well, if we're going to bring up when technology came in for warp drives, we got to throw out the fact that we are backwards. We are. I still love the fact that I take claim to the Imperium.

Yeah, let's... Forty-fus millennial technology is a trash fire tech-wise. You're using the remnants of stuff. Nobody knows how to fix half of the things. Yeah, the analogy I like to make about the 41st millennia

is we had a golden age of technology. So the warp drive was created around the 18th millennia. We're now on the 41st. 41st millennia technology is kind of like the 50s to today for us. Yeah, there were airplanes. Yeah, they had space travel,

but it's not what it is today. I mean, if you want a really good example, look at the, go watch Alien. And the way that the computer in Alien was working, that was their idea what the future would look like then. That and then looked down at your phone. That's your phone. Way less than your phone.

So that's kind of what happens when we talk about this. So the reason that matters, is that that's all because of one thing and one thing only. AI. And the irony of what I'm about to say is not lost on me, and it actually pains me to say this. The invention of AI happened at an unknown time during the history of mankind. Men of gold were created. These were supercomputers who were all knowing.

They created the men of stone who were an AI that could navigate ships, basically silicone, by the way, to say stone. And then they made the men of iron, who were the robot. workers who would do everything, you know, Mr. Handy. I'll also rise up and kill everybody, but yes. These things happen. A building bash store right now. He's actually on my desk.

And we'll go into a lot more detail on that in our episodes of the Dark Age of Technology, so go check those out. But what matters is humanity was able to produce insane things. And this was also before Slanesh was born. The elder were screwing up the warp, but the warp was safe. Yeah. But the biggest thing about this is,

The Eldar were actually the ones that let humanity by the fact that the Eldar at this point in time had turned in basically looking inside. They were doing their crazy fish hooks and eyeballs and everything else. The Colts were going on. But they were also not paying attention to what humanity was doing because they didn't care. But they also made the galaxy pretty safe at this point in time comparatively. Well, yeah, because if you think about the galaxy, so this is why, humanity was so powerful at this era. The reason we're talking about this guy is because a lot of these space hulks have an origin

in this era. Yeah, they're old. Yeah, but so the, we're talking about, let's say we're talk about M23, picking a random time. So we've got, there are no tyrannids. The orcs are massively in check. They're jammed into the upper right corner because the Eldar is like, no, you stay over there. We go back. We talked a little bit about this in multiple casts, the elder.

and everything else. But before the explosion of Slanesh, just ruining everything. Yeah. For the Eldar, this is still a fully functioning Webway gate. Anything that they had to respond to, they did immediately.

And they were still doing this, even though they were kind of whatever, because they hadn't been challenged in forever, ever. Yeah. The orcs are the only, really large-scale Zeno that exist, but they're jammed away.

Because tyrants aren't there. Votan are still. human. Tao don't really exist. They're still evolving. They might have evolved, but they're backwards people. Drew Kari are Eldar. Necrons are asleep. And chaos just doesn't really, like, Slenestra's even born. There's nothing there. So humanity at this time is bouncing into small random aliens. You do have the Cree, the Herod, the Slough, you've got them. And, you know, their issues, but you also have the Eldar bright-lancing them to the face if those guys get close to the Eldor.

Yeah, exactly. All those races stayed away because the Eldar were at the pinnacle of their civilization. But then all this falls apart. And we get, you know, all the pieces, Horace heresy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we get to modern 40K. So let's get into a spacehulk itself now. So what is a spacehulk? It's just a giant chunk of metal in space. That's really what it is. It can be space debris. It can be a full. spaceship. Well, it can be collections of spaceships. Some of these are so big, they talk about the fact that they have their own gravity. They're so big. They're small moons, basically.

Well, most of them are in that room. So, yeah, let's talk about there's three categories that they effectively fall into. I'm kind of wedging them into those categories, but just to make it easier for everyone to follow. Category number one is an actual original ship, like the phalanx, a blackstone fortress. These are massive ships that are more like, you. mobile star fortresses than ships. Most of all of them are built during golden age of technology. Couple of them will predate that. And then some sort of tragedy happened and they're abandoned, sort of, and they're floating in out of the immaterial. All right. These, but they are one ship, they're one thing and it originally existed. The second one is what Brad has been mentioning.

These are what I would call a ship graveyard, in which case a single ship or a few abandoned ship have been pulled together by gravity or the warp and smash. This is where I think that most of the, the vast majority. Yeah, the mass of the majority are warped. The ones that are basically, as you call, ship graveyards are pulled together. But I think that most of these have had some sort of warp touch to make this happen. Well, yeah, what happens is a lot of times, and we'll touch on it more later, is a ship will basically be moseying along on it on its happy way.

and then a space Hulk will translate into them. Yeah. Like that, and you are now part of it. Like someone teleports into you. Well, now you're part of it. The third one,

which is an orc thing only, is space trash. And one of my favorite ones. It's just a giant thing of space trash that the orcs are able to ride because they're orcs. Nah, that's orcs.

Now, all of them have very similar characteristics. First off, they all have some form of atmosphere. The orc one, it's a little bit goofy, but it does have an atmosphere. Even though it's not sealed. Yeah, exactly, but it does have it. Another one is that they can all translate in and out of the warp. We don't, they all have warp drives. We think it's not really that clear, but they all go in and out of the warp. Some of them, you know, do it pretty regularly. some of them do it very unroutinely.

And this just kind of... And some have been used by people to do stuff. Yeah. Quick little detour here. One of the key pieces of Space Hulk's that I want to talk about is scrapping. So if you think about it, building a thing from scratch is hard. All right? So it's kind of nice to, if you've got...

Guys, I have any experience building homes? If you build a home from scratch, it's nice because you get to customize the whole thing. I've done it, I put a 20-foot island in a house one time. It's really cool, great kitchen, all that stuff. But it takes a while, and it's pain in the ass. So it's a lot easier is to take pre-built stuff and put it together. So, same thing is true with, you know, a galaxy. Why take giant chunks of adamantium or copper, which I assume they still have copper, and build it from a scratch where you could just rip some old converters or replicators or plasma cores out of...

Guns, warp cores, anything else. So when we talk about these space hulks, the one thing that's really going to be important here is we're going to talk about how they're all nightmare zones. You're going to ask yourself, well, they just blow them all up. That's why. Because as easy as it would be to just blow up every vacant ship in the entire galaxy, they're too valuable. Cash money, Benjamin, baby. Exactly, because it's the 41st millennia. So for tens of millennia prior, there had been quite an industry around salvage and scrap. We've, like, we've actually never, I don't know much about the currency in the 41st millennia. It's mentioned randomly, but they don't, there's no actual, like, real.

clarity around it. There's a lot of trade, though, that goes on, especially when you get up the edges and you actually trade with alien races. Well, there has to... Also, we're not going to talk about the line that we have in the notes. Which one? Oh, Brad lives in Ohio. So he's all about the value of a catalytic converter. I did wrote that, didn't I? About trade. I mean, what is it going rate currently? I've never liked you. I mean, you're even in Toledo.

I assume it's just, I'm just listed somewhere near your house, like current current settlement converter price. But it is true. The issue is that I would, I think the best way to look at the 41st millennia is Mesopotamia, where everyone's functioning in an open market, which is, you know, it's actually, it's a nightmare to actually work in, but it makes sense because it's more of an agricultural-based economy. So, you know, Pythagorean Brotherhood,

you guys know what those are? If you don't, it's fine. So the whole concept in the 41st millennia is we have to have a massive trade economy. We talked about this before. The Votan or the leagues are coming out and trading. Everyone's trading. So it's a whole trade-based economy.

So scrapping is huge. Like I said, there's a lot of catalytic converters being sold in the Ohio section. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ohio bad, John, Ohio. Ohio bad, accurate. I'm sorry.

I sent you a video today of a fist fight at a kindergarten graduation. Where was it, Brad? Totally thought it was no big deal. It's Toledo. That's the reason I didn't show you the tornado of garbage video. But one of the big things on this is, we already talked about the fact that we can't make the technology from back in the day. so that the salvagers, a lot of times you can't figure out how to fix your ship. You have to get a new piece from that ship.

And that's a big deal with a lot of these. You're going to figure that there's road traders that have, again, we talk to the road traders aren't just some rogue traders are one ship with a plucky band of adventures. And then there's road traders that have fleets. And there's scavenger fleets that this is what they do. It's kind of funny because we talked about the night lords. we actually covered this where a very happy go lucky crew of salvagers found a derelict spaceship and they were going to make their fortune. And instead they got murdered by Conrad.

And it's one of those things I like, though, because it's such a trope in sci-fi, but it's one of those tropes that we keep doing over and over again because we actually know it's true. We know this is exactly what would happen. If you had an entire galaxy going on, of course there would be people who would be going after, broken down ships or abandoned ships to salvage them for goods to go sell. There is no question that would happen. So that's how we get to where we are today. Now, the funny thing about this is that sometimes in the 41st millennia, you get lucky and unlucky. And even in the lucky, you can get unlucky because sometimes you're lucky is you find an

STC. But that STC could even be unlucky because you can find a good STC, in which case you're dead. Because the ad back have showed up going, have we told you all about how we're taking this and killing you? What I do find funny, though, is that 99.99% of the space stuff out there is safe. It's just we're going to talk about the little section here that's not. Like the space hulks, if you actually think about it, if you just were to pull up on the side of a space hulk, rip a little bit off and leave, you're probably fine. It's if you go exploring the inside of them that it's going to get bad. Set up shop, yes. Right.

Now, let's talk about why Spacehulks are that way. Because again, on the outside, just a giant abandoned hunk of scrap that gets pretty old. And the reason Space Hulks are an issue is the warp. Hold on. that you were halfway to say, do spacehulks be what they do. I love everything about that. Continual.

But let's talk about spacehulks and the warp. So again, to my knowledge, most all space hulks travel within the warp, which makes a lot of sense narratively because they're meant to resemble kind of ghost ships. I think the idea of the space hulks is that this is much like we have or had, No, we still do have, who am I kidding? We still have ghost ships where the entire crew has died and the ship is just moving around until eventually it crashes into something.

And it makes sense that the warp would take part in this because gravity is a thing. I realize GW sometimes seems to forget this, like celestial navigation, making sensors work, the fact that they made a faction called the white scars. There's just things they forget. But if a shift were just a drift in the galaxy, it would eventually get pulled into a system and be stuck there, right? And then crash, and then eventually would probably crash into a planet. It's hard to kind of just get left in the middle of nowhere. I still think that the war makes a lot of these spaceholds happen. It does.

You're 100% correct there. And so what happens is that what we see more in the stories is these giant ships will appear suddenly. And they tend to appear near a civilized war. world, but they're not there for very long. And they disappear again, back into the warp. And what makes them enter and exit the warp is unknown. We believe they all have warp drives, but we don't know. Like, and there's, a lot of them are technically abandoned. So even if it has a warp drive, who's activating it? Some of them appear once every 700 a year and then disappear after seven days. I think we know who's doing that one. Some appear in the exact same spot. And, and then disappear. And

some appear all over the place. And a bunch of them have been taken over too. A bunch of you, like multiples are used by chaos chapters. It's like where they're... Oh, yeah. It's a really common thing for chaos chapters to be like, hey, this is our new fortress. Yep, this is where we do stuff.

And orcs are known to cool. These are awesome. Oh, yeah. These things turn into hobo trains pretty quickly. I mean, that is the only thing about them. It's Zenos, but it's primarily... Well, it's not the thought. It is.

It's orcs. jeans Steelers, Sla, there's quite a few, and chaos. They love a good free ride. Exactly. It's like where we go on. Yeah, going anywhere but here. Yeah, there's a lot of that. And so that's where the space hulks, it's why they matter a lot.

What's fun about them, though, is that space hulks are also incredibly interesting to the Mechanica because they tend to have a lot of cool technology. From a way bad to the old age. Yeah. So let's get into a spacehulk, why they get explored and who explores them. And this is actually one of my favorite parts of space hulks because we've been hinting at this for a little bit and now let's get into it. All right. Who explores a spacehulk?

Well, it falls into kind of a few options based around who finds it first. Because the first group is going to be salvagers every time. I was just safe. Salvagers are always going to be around. And the thing is, like John had said earlier, which is sometimes you go, oh, cool, we're going to take these pieces. We're going to make a bunch of money off this. And then other times, I think it's when you just get too greedy. And they go in and you find out that, oh, no, this is just full of gene stealers or the, what is it?

The blood drinkers and some other guys just went in and tried to kill every gene stealer. But like you could just find shitty, shitty places in there. I got a huge kick at it because that's the whole problem with this first group. So the issue with the first group is the first group are just the sci-fi horror movie group because they're not supposed to do this. It's not really clear. Even in the Conrad book, if the salvagers, is that a legal enterprise? I'm actually not sure if they're licensed by the rogue traders can do it.

But outside of rogue traders, are you allowed to do this? So the reason that comes up is they go to a ship, they find a ship, they break in. they break into the ship and then best-fueled scenario. Yeah, no one else is there. Sometimes there's orcs in there. You're all dead. That's fine. Other times there's jeans dealers in there.

And now you're spreading the jeansler infection back to the entire galaxy. And then you wish to you died. Yeah. Well, you're fine. The Imperium wished you died because you're about to go spread the entirety back to everyone. So that's that group. And so again, we're not really sure if they're allowed to. be doing this, but they're doing it.

The next group, we know are allowed to do it. And this one's actually kind of the better group. And this is the rogue traders because we come, you've got to road traders a long time ago. Rogue traders are almost a sub-imperium. I'm still pointing this out. You just do this to piss me off. And somebody cast, it's still rouge.

Oh, yeah. Someone I type it. This is more fun for me. I'm always going to do rouge traders. I'm well aware. continue I enjoy I don't even correct it anymore in the notes I just let it go it's just enjoyable by the way I don't even the notes I said to you and I even look at those you can correct them all you want I never even reviewed them I keep my I look at the original copy the John notes

I love that I do edit these all the time I'm super glad that I never and I've never reviewed I make notes and stuff on them I've never reviewed them one time I go off the I dislike you so much right now. 142 episodes, and you just figured that one out. Anyway, I'm quick. Guys, smart. We'll be right back after a quick break. The ruse traders operate as a second Imperium.

They are beholden to the Imperium, but they have a ton of autonomy. This is important. Gilliman loves these people for this reason, and Gilliman is always correct. So therefore, you know. you do have to, if the galaxy is so big, you can't have people that have to wait

for a okay. So these people have to be able to make decisions. Yes, they're 100% correct on it. And they also... Because it's an element's idea. Sure.

Also, they have to make a lot of decisions. God damn it. That, like, literally broke my head for just a second. I had a full trade of thought that exploded

because he's always right. But the road traders are looking for, again, valuable things, but you can really, really make some loot off this, but you can also find things that are really important for the

Imperium. I mean, again, STCs, but also old weapons arrays, better warp drives and things of that nature. The Admec has made a living off-finding old stuff like this and converting it into weapons that they use. When you look at an

ad-mec army, it has all kinds of weaponry that no one else has. Right. And what makes the rogue traders so critical in this, though, is that they're allowed to scrap, number one. Number two, they have their own militaries. The scrappers probably shouldn't touch a spacehulk. They're going to, because humanity's going to humanity, and they're going to look for the wealthiest than they can possibly do. A bunch of guys with pistols hoping for the best. But the rogue traders actually have full-blown militaries. And so for them, when they deploy, their idea is, we can actually

take whatever's in here and whatever problems come up, I'll be okay. See game Blackstone Fortress. Anyway, the idea there is that when they run into problems, they can do it. But the other advantage they have, though, is it because they have the writ of the emperor behind them, if they hit one and there is a big problem, they can call the Imperium and not have an awkward. So why were you in a 20,000-year-old vessel? Exactly. Hey, oopsie, can you send group three? And group three is space marine admec. I love, there's so many good stories that have spacehulks in them. And they do first company Terminators, incursions all the time at these bad boys.

Yeah. And it's pretty awesome. Come on. It is. No, these stories are all awesome. And in every one of them, you want to build a bunch of terminators. And then you look up the rules and go, yeah, never mind. But.

We're going to cover one later, guys, that's going to, that is depressing when you play terminaries on the board. I mean, it's super fun. I do like the stories about, but the thing is that they go in to clear it out. And these aren't easy missions. I mean, this is, hey, we have to clear this planet out. Yeah, that's true. And this actually is key things. That first group goes in, the scrappers, they're going in kind of illegally doing their own thing.

Group number two, the rogue traders are really the main ones. they're going to explore, they're going to market if it's a problem. Group three, which is the space marines or the ad mech, they don't go into, I mean, they're going to explore in air quotes, but they know there's a problem. They're going to cleanse with their exploration. They're going in it, especially, I'd say the space Marines, they're not bringing Terminators to explore. AdMack is doing a little bit of exploratory stuff.

The space Marines. Behind the terminator. Sure. That's what I'm saying. I'll just say it. They go in looking for stuff. The space means aren't mainly there to murder all the bad stuff. The way it works is the term meters are like 100 meters down the hallway,

sloshing the ad mecker behind you going, oh, this looks interesting. You know, do you guys see this over here in the wall? Pretty cool thing, huh? Gunfire. But let's talk about why all this occurs and what you're going to find. So you go to Space Hulk, what are you going to find? Well, if you're lucky, nothing.

You're going to find something eventually, but initially you're going to find a lot of dead bodies probably. If you're lucky, just, you know, a failed mutiny, emergency decompression, a warp jump. Gellerfield didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're lucky, it's one of the pieces like Gellerfield didn't work. And it's been back in reality for a while.

So whatever happened couldn't manifest itself in reality very long. So you just there kind of like event horizon, but without what's is not still in there. So, you know, happy scrapping. Yay. Pretty easy. If you're less lucky. pirates because you're not the only one doing this scrapping. Also, there's a level to pirates.

There's Captain Jack Sparrow pirates and the Dracari rating party. It gets worse. Because you're going to have like, you've got pirates, basically other scrappers, then you've got corsairs, then you've got Drucari, and then you've got what I just finished building earlier today. Huron. Here on Black.

Then you have Huron Blackheart. The Red Corsairs show up. Bad news bears. Yeah. Come around a corner and Huron standing there going, ah, well, all right, never mind. Today's a bad day. He's well adjusted with his band of Masters of the Maelstrom. You also could run into some really small Zenos, which, by small, I don't mean small.

It's less known. The Crave. Not ideal. An insect with a metal carapist and sharp arms, because we know. No, that'll be there somewhere. A hundred BW's favorite thing. You've got the slaw. You've got, there's a ton of these types of things.

And it gets a lot worse. You've also just got orcs. And by orcs, you're going to have levels to orcs. You might find a ton of orcs. You might find a few orcs. If you're a human, doesn't really matter how many orcs you find. Yeah. Or you could find gene stealers who will sit dormant until someone shows up there.

The thing about the GSO is you won't find the jeans Steelers. That's your fun part of the G's Steelers. Yeah, you just wake up all of a sudden and go, okay, I guess it's time to leave. And then you go back to your colony and make a lot of children and they're all Gien Steelers. You've also got potential to bump into, we mentioned Huron, but you also could, if your timing's really bad, remember the thing I mentioned earlier about the Gellerfield not working? like come around a little bit of a corner to find a happy old bloodthurster. Not going to go well.

So these things kind of suck, but that's just what they are. So now I dive into, let's talk about some of the ships themselves and some examples of them in the lore. So the first one I want to talk about is kind of the least common, which is the original ships. These are individual ships that are just astronomically large. It's just a space Hulk. All of them are from an unknown origin date, and that's because it's from before the Imperium. Yeah, it's crew is long since dead and reclaimed by the warp.

They're all super dangerous. I mean, holy crap, super dangerous. Because they're never, ever, ever empty. And they're almost always heavily chaos-infused. So a good example of this, we covered in our Blood Ravens cast, the Judgment of Carion. So that was in Dawn of War II.

That was a Space Hulk with a single ship. But it's called the Judgment of Caron. That was the one that went in and out of the warp. Yeah, it's the one that's in the Orillia sector. Exactly. And it had chaos on it, but it also had Genealors and orcs, just in random spots.

That's a really good example of these, and demons. Depending on what part of the ship you were in, it had random hitchhack. These are huge. Yeah. Yeah. Another one I like, though, is the unholy harbinger, which, believe it or not, it's part of a chaos fleet.

What? With a name like that. This one, though, I like, because I just call it the chaos party van. The Black Legion, the Death Guard, the anointers of blood, and others have just kind of grab the keys from time to time and just gone on a road trip. Because what it does is this thing just appears where there's conflict. and other things kind of show up around it. It's so many millennia old.

It's origins well before recorded history and just appears in a system. Either it appears and then a chaos fleet appears with it or a chaos fleet appears and then it appears. But either way, it's whichever order happens, it then comes in. They grab a bunch of slaves and then it leaves. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You said a bunch of slaves like it was a busy Tuesday. they take everyone that lives in certain systems and take all of them. This isn't like, who everybody that was at the mall got taken. You're like, no, everybody that was on any of these planets could stay in. But it's like us, the thing with the Unholy Harbinger is it just keeps showing up. It was, it showed up Acadia. It shows at random spots. And it really is.

It's just like a party van where it's like, oh, yeah, the keys are on the dresser. If you guys ever need it, just go grab it. And a bunch of chaos goes, yeah, we're going and doing an only harbourn journey to go do stuff. Another, probably the most famous, though, of all of these, the two biggest is going to be the devourer of stars, which is the first war of Armageddon. That's the one that where Angron was hanging out in the warp, just going, if only I had a ship, I could just go do something cool. And then it appeared in with a big sign that just said, get in losers. And so Angron and then everyone jumped in. And forget World Killer, which is the, with the orcs just went.

Let's drive this in. That's different, because that's a different Hulk. This one, because the thing is, the sin of damnation was an actual ship. That's true. Yeah. Word killer was just. Oh, no, sorry, I'm mixing up. So the devour of Stars with the ship.

The most famous, though, the one you think of Word Killer, that's an oracle, that's a hunk of garbage. The most famous one, though, of all of them is sin of damnation. because sin of damnation is spacehulk. So that is, this is the biggest one. Yeah. So in this one, oh my God. So the sin of damnation, just people, this is, I'll give it all the story on the game

because the game is super cool, super fun. 994 of M40, the sin of damnation appears and blood angels leading a boarding action against it. They get rebuffed because, oh, they get rough. Described as an infinite number of Gs to us. Yeah, well, they got killed. and the angels got killed down to 50 guys that escaped.

Yeah, and they were the Black Angels. And then it actually translates back out of reality afterwards. And the Blood Angels don't really go down like that. Yeah, they're going out like that. Yeah. 600 or so years later, in 589 of M41, this is in the Dan Nation returns the galaxy. And the Blood Angels go, nope.

First company with Captain Michaelis. Rafael. Yeah. Yeah. This is the worst naming. Oh, Oh. No,

was it second captain Leonardo Donatellis? We're just going, you know, with Sergeant's, what was the rat called? Why can't I think of it? Oh, God. I was splinter? It was splinter? No, Shredder was a bad guy. Shredder's the bad guy.

Splinter was there. Like I said, we're the perfect age to know this. Why couldn't we both think of that instant? Oh, anyway. So this part, this part's going to hurt, guys. This part's going to hurt. So they successfully cleanse the sin of damnation of 40,000 jeans. 80, 80 Terminators killed 40,000 gene stealers?

100. 100. It was a company. Okay. For the entire first company, would you be 100, terms? Sure. Yeah. How about this?

Not 40,000. If you gave me 40,000 jeans dealers in the game and I took Judd's 100 Terminators, I would put. Put those guys in a small box and roast them with marshmallows like a s'mores. I did the math. So a hundred Terminators is at most 3,600 points. 20,000 jeans dealers is 200,000. 40,000 terminate gene dealers.

20,000 jeans dealers is 280,000 points. Like, so it's half a million, it's over half a million points versus 30,000. 3600. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and admit that on the tabletop, it's possible that Terminators don't hold up. All right. Still a cool story, man. These guys went,

we're getting out vengeance. I'm assuming that they put on like Terminator boots of mighty ass kicking for this one. They were like, remember what happened? Pepperidge Farmers are members. And so do we. Let's do this. But let's get into the next group of Spacehawks, which is what I call the amalgam kind.

This is the ones where it's not a single vessel. but a collection of vessels. These are the most interesting, the most written about, kind of the most common. These ones happen. It's mostly believed where it's either a ship

translates out of the warp on top of another ship, two ships translate into the warp together, that kind of combo. It's basically they're merging together, but it's with warp translations. They kind of become one.

I think a lot of times this happens in the warp. That's just the Brad theory, though. Most of these, are just went in and out of the warp and whatever entity decided that they wanted these things to exist. And what's interesting about it, though, is it seems, though, is that to reinforce Brad's theory, it doesn't happen one time. A lot of these space hulks has happened multiple times, almost like, you know, the thing's Pac-Man, where it's trying to acquire more and more ships, where it's doing, it's pouncing on stuff. Yeah, it is big, space is big.

These things are just not running into each other all the time. You could float around forever and hit absolutely nothing. And these spacehulks have multiple ships jammed together, and there's a lot of them. And that's what makes these ships so interesting, though, is because of that, they also, by the way, break apart. So they become their named ships, or named Spacehulks, but they also shift in change over time.

Because as they translate in and out of the warp, they'll add new pieces, but also pieces will get broken off or shot off, which we also will cover on in a second. This makes them become really interesting, and we'll call them targets of opportunity because it's very hard to explore them and understand them because as you try to, they keep changing. All of a sudden, oh, hey, we know our way around New York City. Well, cool, New York City just added, I don't know, Cleveland. Well, they wouldn't do that. They know better. I think wouldn't do that.

And it also goes straight into the atmosphere. Yeah. But let's talk about them actually. These are the ones that have the most stories around them. So I just wanted to jump right into a bunch of these. First and foremost, let's talk about the Spirit of Eternity. So the Spirit of Eternity is a really cool. It's a great novel.

You can all read it and you should go and you all should. It was, it's got an AI on it. And it's a leaveover from the dark age of technology where it was a space. Hulk that had translated around it. And it's infested with gene stealers, so it'd been marked for destruction by the Imperium because it was spreading the taint of a gene stealer. But before the blood drinkers, who are the good guys, can't figure that one out, and the Nova Marines could blow it up, the Admeca rod, because the idea was, hey, that thing's

full of jeans, so just shoot out of the sky. The admec arrive, and we're like, no, there's something really impressive inside it, cough, cough, AI. So we need you to go cleanse it. And I'm not going to spoil the novel as they go to cleanse it. But long story short, do you want a really good Black Library book about it kind of covers some of the technology from the Golden Age? It's pretty special. Yeah.

Another one I like is the unseen, which is an Alpha Legion space Hulk, which is a really cool just Alpha Legion story because it's not actually a space Hulk. It's an Alpha Legion space station. Yeah. Space Station that they made. to look like a spacehulk. It's the most Alpha Legion thing ever. I know. Like, it's super modernized.

It's got a training sport. Yeah. It's so much. Alpha Legion took one of their ships and then just stole Tao and Eldar and Ork ships and welded them to one of their ships. They're like, oh, no, it's a Space Hulk. And pretended it, they call it the unseen. And it made it their own personal tortuga.

The idea is that all. chaos forces are welcome there. But no one can control it, even though the Alpha Legion 100% control it. Yeah. And it's this meeting point, trading port and all this other stuff for the forces of chaos. But it's

it looks like from the outside, oh, check out this, you know, amazing Space Hulk, but you get really close. Like, hey, these welded edges, like everything else is warped together. This is clean. So it's kind of like almost like a Scooby-Doo mystery where you're like,

I've taken the mask off. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Mr. Jenkins. And then there's Mortis Stool, which, all right. Give it its right name, death from beyond the horizon. Yeah, none of you read this novel because. Yeah.

You know how I know that? Because it's not a novel. Ha ha. Anyway, Mortis Thule. This is actually one of the. cooler ones that's been written. Mortarstool is a massive space. This is from Citadel General.

Yes, this is RPG. This is the Death Watch. This is when Mortor's... This original is from the Citadel General. You can play the thing. Yeah. Yeah, this is when GW tried to step into making a D&D out of their own game.

And the cool thing about that is really good lore. Game was, man. But really good lore. So this is one of the cooler ones to me, when I understand, Space Hulk's, just go read this. It's fun. So the mortar stool dates back well into the golden age of technology. What's creepy about it is there's actually an iconography. That's a hard word for me,

guys, sorry, on a world in the Jericho sector dating back to M18, depicting a giant ship that is the mortar stool appearing and then beings falling down from. from the sky and killing the local populace. So those things been around for a bit. By the way, that world settled by humanity. Go team. And the mortar stool keeps showing up. So that's not ideal.

Not often, just a few times a century. Enough that the Imperium can resettle the planet. Now, its size and its shape are always in flux because in its journeys and the warp, it keeps adding pieces to itself. Because like us, It's what's inside that counts, right, Brad? Oh, God.

All the who's in the Whoville. And the Grinch's heart grew three times. Oh, Jesus that day. So eventually, Morda Stool comes the attention of the Inquisition, specifically Ordo Zinos, who assigned that watch. Just go deal with this thing. It's interesting story in that. It's a reason why it's because the Jericho Reach,

High Fleet, Dagon, was close to it. And when they were concerned about was basically, if the Hive Fleet gets to the mortar stool, they would infect it. They don't know where this thing is going, but it would become this just launching point for gene stores all over the galaxy. So this thing, nope, go cleanse it, and we're going to go destroy this. So the death watch go in. And the story's cool. Because it's layers. They get in there.

It's somewhat expected. There's Corsair pirates in there searching for valuable goods. And there's jeans stealers in there. Yeah, there's some gene stealers. But then it gets get weird. First, people start showing up also. Yeah. So you start getting Eldar and Ork ships start beginning to make up more and more of the inside of it.

So it's been merging with a lot more Ork and Eldar craft, an older Ork and Eldar craft. Then they get attacked by what are called Holgast. Holgasts are a stupid, stupid, stupid thing that GW makes up where apparently humanity can, by being in space for a short period of time. They're just Revers, dude. I know. It's just it drives me nuts because they're like, oh, and then it's people that have, I don't know, mutated. We don't. From the effects of the void. That's actually what they say. I know.

Ooh. Anyway. So human-sized feral beasts, they have claws and teeth. Just why? Anyway, things then get funny, though, because they do bump into the ship called the emperor's gaze somehow get stuck in there, where it was these guys were just, it was, there's a merchant vessel with. hanging out and who luckily did have, for us like had a Geller Field, they got translated into became part of the mortar stool. Can't get out or leave or do it.

Yeah, they're part of these. Instantly die. Yeah. They all ran to their Gellerfield and hung out next to the Gellerfield. They've been eating mushrooms, which I assume means they were eating orcs. That's what they said. They've been eating green mushrooms, quote, green mushrooms and during like the water that drips off the hull to keep themselves alive.

So yeah, that's a thing. And then the Death Watch kept on moving, but as they're moving, it gets really creepy. Because as they're moving, the ship starts getting older and older to the point where it's actually well beyond humanity and the quality of the technology that they start to uncover is so high that it's actually now under an Omega Vault Decree level of seal. But that's not all that they found.

They didn't just find technology. They found Xenos. Terrible Zenos. So as they're going through, they found fleshy archways that were kind of all over the place. And they didn't know what they were. And it turns out those fleshy archways used to be psychers because there were enslavers on this ship. This is one of the few times that we've actually had confirmation of enslavers in the 41st millennia. Death Watch had to fight the inslavers.

enslavers. And inslavers actually were in the middle of fighting gene stealers because the cool thing about enslavers is that enslavers can, can't enthrall the full gene stealer, but they can enthrall the lower gene stealer. It's a whole complicated thing, but it's pretty cool. Read the book or then whatever it is the RPG. But yeah, that's cool. Let's finish up with orcs. Why not? Yeah, 11th edition. Armageddon number three. So, yeah. let's start with, I guess I'm going to number four, but still, let's talk orc hulks. So many, all right ones. These are technically space hulks in that they are hulky and they're in the space.

Well said, sir, well said. Look, I mean, orcs, I've always, my fairly way to describe orcs is they're up Peter Pan because if they just got to believe something, it comes true. So they can ride a collect. of space garbage anywhere they want. And that's exactly what they do. These or space hulks are just trash that they're riding in space. They are unsealed the vacuum of space, but they have atmosphere.

They have no Gellerfield, but demons can't get in. They're not welded together, but they stay attached. And if one of these things shows up in your system, you are. Oh, my God. first one we talk about is it has a normal name alveus alpha alpha sextus this was a giant hulk of scrap that's all it was that appeared above a little planet on the port side of segmentum solar and 941 of m41 and this planet used to be called ulnar and some idiot renamed it armageddon and that scrap in orbit had a bunch of works on it including one

very specific one named Gazgole Mag Oroch Thracca who felt that that world needed a crumping. Fun story, Alveus Alpha Alpha Sextus no longer exists because Gaz landed it on the planet. I love that you've said landed.

Yeah, like they came the Space Hulk was a leaf on the wind. He landed it. The Space Hulk is now touching the land. It is landed. I would say crashed, grounded, maybe any of those words. All of those are, those are versions of land. Of landed. It's all a question of how

aggressively you wish to land. If you want to be kind of a little bitch, you can come in at like a normal speed, or you can do it orc style. Full speed. Yeah. Fun thing about Gaz, though, is gas is both brutal and cunning. And so what'll work once

will always work twice. So after the events of Armageddon 2, he needed another giant Hulk garbage. Which is way better named Orkwise. Yeah, because this time, well, he went and found one called World Killer, W-U-R-L-D, K-I-L-L-L-A.

And the problem he had that was he found it. And it was controlled by a bloodthirster and a bunch of demon buddies with an active work brift in the middle of it. In the middle of it that was open, darted by a bloodthirster. Yes. And Gaz went, good to hear. It's mine now. And then kills the bloodthirster.

That guy. Yeah. And then head butts the warp rift till it closes, drives word killer back to Armaged. That is a real. thing, by the way. He specifically state that he headbutted a warp riff closed. How do you do that? No idea,

but Gaz did it? Yeah. And then my favorite part, he then took it back to Armageddon, crashed it into Armageddon, and began looking for Yarrick. Like, I know you're here. I know you're here. Where is Yarrick? Yeah. And I'm pretty sure

we haven't gotten to the events of Armageddon for yet. But if Gaz doesn't crash a giant hunger garbage into Armageddon, I will be furious at GW, objectively furious. I'm still just excited that Yarek exists because the orcs want him to exist, but continue. Yeah. It's the, oh, God. Also, nice try, GW.

We're going to make a new Yerick model. I already have one. Good attempt. There's no way. The new one's cool looking. Don't get me wrong. But I have the original one, and I have a magnet on my Bainblade that he goes on to. click, he rides the Bainblade.

That's what Yarek does. All right, but with that, I think that's enough kind of fun coverage. It's never enough. Ah, space hulks are good. We'll do more space hulks because they're going to come up and more. Next week, we're going to jump around a little bit back into more hardcore lore with, but we're going to do a tale that GW forgot. Not white scars because, you know, that's just too much.

Honestly, that joke wouldn't be funny if we actually covered them. It's more funny. That's like, that's fine. We're going to do another one. In fact, one that I, that actually I enjoy more. Because it's a chapter that GW wrote. And in my opinion, suddenly went, oh, crap. Let's never talk about them again because we accidentally wrote the most powerful thing in all of 40K.

You know who's really bummed about this? My boy Brandon, who converted all of his Marines to be Legion of the Damned. Yeah, we're doing Legion of the Damned. One of the better books in sixth edition, they had some busted S rules. Yeah, Legion of the Dam. They do actually date from before Sixth Edition, and they ceased to exist after sixth edition very suddenly.

And it's one of my favorite things that on basically every cast when G.W. announces anything. You get a bunch of people asking, are you a new Legion of the Damned? And GW just ignores the question every single time. Like, they don't even respond. People have been asking, we're asking about squats forever, and there'd be something of, like, occasionally responsive, we're working on something.

Leisure the damned. It gets... And we'll discuss why. So, until then, John Barsati, Bradchester, this guy. See you guys next week.