The 40k Lorecast - Episode 144 - The Word Bearers pt 1 - The creation of the Imperial Heralds and the complete opposite thing happening on Colchis

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

On today’s cast we start our coverage of the Word Bearers. With their original founding as the Imperial Heralds and their role as the Emperor’s enforcers on the imperial truth. From there we jump over to Colchis for some fun Lorgar and Covenant action as Lorgar unites a planet into the belief in the gods. And then of course those two groups meet. We then close out with one of the most consequential characters in all of 40k Erebus.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 lorecast. Welcome to 40K lorecast with me, John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. Today we'll be starting a coverage of Brad's favorite legion. Yay. The word bears. Yay. I do like their demon-sevety stuff.

The problem with word bears is actually everything except for Lorgar is kind of cool about them. It's just that they have the worst prime arc. That's how I actually view. them. They're not as bad as the night lords and the fact that who did you choose to be part of your legion, but it's up there as far as yeah, man, went down. Yeah, don't. Yeah. Oh, they're better than the nightlords. Like the night lords, the night lords are pure evil. These guys are, they're just, we'll get into it. They're a bit weird. I'm not saying to their period, they started this pure evil. They started as a bunch of probable going to when they chose. This is setting yourself,

up for failure when you went, who's part of this legion? You're like, yeah, that's going to not work, man. Oh, not at all. Not at all. All right. 40K lore cast, a weekly show focusing the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern time. Please follow comment on the cast. I love reading the comments. There are a lot of them now, like a lot, a lot. But that's cool. It also helps our algorithm and pushes us out to more people. If you like us and want to check out more stuff, check out our YouTube channel for our buyish monthly ish Q&A issues. You can also check out our- I love the ish, by the way. And there's so much is a lot of ish there.

It is a we really want to, but there's a lot of getting around to it. If you like this show and you want to check out some more stuff, especially about Warhammer 40K on the tabletop, check out our other show, the history of 40K with we add in Brad and my friend Alan, who discuss a lot more of the history of the game of the tabletop. Alan, you just Debo Allen? What happened? What do you mean? My friend, Alan? I said, Brad and mine. I said you two.

I said, I did not. Yes, I said Brad and my... I've never been wrong. I'll never be wrong again. Oh, never mind. My go-to thing is, I've been wrong. Are we going to add ears to not working to the rest of your organs?

You're running out of functioning pieces. Ooh, I have a funny story. You might be worth nothing on the black market. Your body is worth nothing. Nope. You're going to do this. I don't know if I've ever told you this. I'm telling people because it's funny.

I have great hearing. However, since some of my last things, no, I don't have spatial hearing anymore. When I hear like a loud noise, I don't know where it's coming from. It actually screws up my video game playing because directional stuff messes up me up. This is why I love you as a friend. just to follow through what you used there. I have great something followed by but it doesn't work.

Yeah. Like, however I can hear things very well. I want that. Just not. No, you can't. Good. Like, no, you can't. What's the Zoolander's school? That's where I go to. Oh.

For kids can't read so good. If you want to support us, not that you apparently should. You can, you should. I'm hanging on by a thread. I need some Patreon money to not die. Oh, God. You can check help us out by clicking on the links.

You can either purchase our merchandise via our website or support our Patreon. If you want to support us, Patreon is $4.99 a month. You get this show and history of 40K ad free or 3.27 Guernsey pounds. Because today we're going to the Bollywock of Guernsey. a place I did not know existed until I wrote these notes. So welcome to Learning with John. Turns out during the 500 years more, French just didn't notice a bunch of islands off their coast or something. I can't figure this out.

It's like right off Le Pieu. But they're British sort of, it's a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, which sounds fancy, but it's just what Britain, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Monaco, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, and most of the world have. So the Bollywock of Guernsey is a independent, very much so-ish country in the middle of the channel that are not part of the UK, but the UK is totally responsible for all of their international stuff, including their military. So I guess quam, I don't know.

Their history is cool, though. When William invaded England in 1066, he missed these islands. So all the Normans stayed there and they got to stay British. And then later they joined the rest of the UK and became an independent-ish country. And we had some listeners there. So I know they're going to argue with me about this. And I look forward to the comments and Discord. I'm ready for it.

But fun facts about it's a pretty independent place. So Victor Hugo actually lived there during political exile. This is where he wrote Les Mis because Bali Walk is a spot that really accepts free speech. They also have one of the highest life expectancies on Earth at 82.8 years, so Brad don't move there and bring it down. Due to their topography, though, their lifestyle and a lot of very good fresh air. They live in a really good spot for good breezes. They also, really fun fact, are the site of the only ever underwater arrest where there was a poacher grabbing underwater shellfish. and he was arrested by a scuba diving police officer.

And I know it didn't happen, but I really wish he was wearing that policeman hat when he did it. It would have been a lot better. I'm sure just a regular scuba diver. But I like the idea of him wearing the big tall Bobby hat. Tell you what. All right. But lastly, as always, Discord.

Discord's a great spot for us. Please join it if you haven't. And if you have joined it, thank you. I'm loving the comments. Super fun place. We have a channel there called Ask John and Brad. I always respond. So is Brad.

So if you want to ask us stuff. Slowly. I have the world's best and worst responder because I will respond. But it'll often be, what is he talking about? Oh, yeah, Brad responded to him. Make sure you tag Brad. Spar a little bit. I also read back all the time, which is why you get responses to be way later.

Good job. Is it because of your, is this all? because of your exceptional hearing. External hearing. I'm the guy that goes, hey, guys, do you see that new movie Heat? I want to talk about it.

Nope. Some of it unrelated. The other day, I had to explain to someone the movie Cobra. Yes. That is shit. The words,

the villains are so pointless, by the way. They're like just guys. They're communist cultists. Yeah, they're just so pointless. The dude is a handbacks. Okay, actually, side note.

I don't know why we're doing this, but I have to go quick. So the movie is called Cobra. It comes out in 1986. It's written and stars Sylvester Stallone. And one of my favorite parts about this is he's part of the LAPD zombie squad. It's part of the LAPD that plays by their own rules and does what they need to. And I love that this is 1986. 1987, we get NWA.

1992, we get the Rodney King riots. Turns out that zombie squad thing was really accurate. And it was a horrible, horrible thing. Anyway, on to actual cast. Word bears. Hizah! Today's show is sponsored by the word irony. Irony, when you want to be right, but you find a way to be magically very, very wrong.

So, the word bears, this is a party. All legions, as we've discovered before, were created with a purpose. The emperor, I guess, was trying to, like, power. Ranger, all of his legions in the end, or for people like Brad and I, Voltron? Voltron's way better. Everyone had a purpose and they were all going to combine later to solve all of his problems by doing all these individual things. It did not work. And this one more spectacularly than all the rest. Well, the 13th worked perfectly. But outside of the 13th, every other one of his plans didn't really quite work out as planned. The 17th were made up

recruits from a very specific set. Like the precursors to the world eaters, the 17th came not from a region, but from a psychotype. I hate Carl Jung, but whatever, we can play this out. And if I have to take one more goddamn Myers-Briggs test at work, I'm going to kill somebody. I'm in my mid-40s. I'm aware of my personality type. It's really clear. I don't need to put any more of these Myers-Briggs tests.

All right. 17th Legion. 17th are funny, man. They're taken from the sons of those people that the emperor defeated. Not the ones that surrendered. I was going to say, don't do a discern. Also, they're not tribute. It is people he went.

I put the people's elbow on you, strapped in my boots and body ass kicking, and I'm taking some people with me. These are the people that the legion is made up on. Yeah. These are people who are subjugated. It's, I think, the better term for it. These are all people who said, no, I'm not going to abide by your rule and I'm going to fight you.

And these are people, the thing about this, and we didn't cover this very well in the past, during the unification wars, if you fought the emperor, he wasn't super cool about it after the fact. It was, these people would become, there'd be penance. They would spend generations doing stuff for him. There were some that he was a little bit better about because it came from very well. wealthy areas, but for the most part, it was generational debt was owed. That's where he pulled them from. And the idea is he wanted recruits who come out of this, who understood standing against me is the ultimate crime, for lack of a better phrase.

And the 17th were going to be his cudgel. Because while most... I don't have touch you. I would go with it. It's more... the emperor, the word bears right away brought heraldry about this is you. What are you possibly thinking? This is the emperor.

This is what happens. If you do anything to the emperor, immediately they were going to pop into it. They immediately became the heralds. Yeah. Well, that's what's fascinating about them. So everyone else went by a number. They're the 17th except for them.

They changed their name over to the imperial heller. Immediately. Yeah. And if you're eating or drinking right now, be careful. I don't want you to choke because the emperor knew the greatest threat to humanity was humanity itself. Not the way you might think of like humanity is going to just fight itself. It was the fact that he knew humanity was susceptible to chaos. Emperor.

Numerous enough to make a huge impact on the warp itself and change things. we were pieces to be moved by the chaos gods, effectively. There was so much raw material to work with in humanity. Well, yeah, and the problem was the emperor knew about the fall of the Eldar. And the thing to understand about this is that, so for example, the Eldar are much more psychically attuned than humanity is. The Eldar are the beacons within the warp. Humanity isn't. But the Eldar were not that big.

the Eldar occupied maybe an eighth of the galaxy. They had webbways spread all over the place, but the reason the eye of terror is where it is is because that's where the Eldar civilization was. The Eldar civilization was not as big as you'd think it would be. Humanities, the goal of the emperor, was to conquer the entire galaxy. And seated with humans everywhere.

Yeah. And so if you think about it, as this is going on, it's happened during the Dark Age of Technology, more and more psychers are occurring. So just the math game here becomes an issue for the emperor. He knows there's going to be more psychers. There's going to be more people. So yes, we might not be as psychically intuned as the elder,

but we do have psychers, which are pretty close, but our numbers are going to be astronomical. And you don't have to be a psychic effect the warp also. It's just the belief of what's going on. The bigger problem. Effectively. True. The bigger problem is humanity.

The Eldar basically immortal. So, yeah, they did go down a dark path and birth, a dark god, but took them 60 million years. Yeah. To get there. Humanity live short, very painful and violent lives. That's just what humanity is. That is right. Quickly, yeah.

Just, yeah, people make deals on the worst stuff in the old devil plot packs and stuff like that. Yeah. So they're perfect for this. So the emperor knew he had to do something about it. So what does he do about it? Great idea. He just starts yelling, hey, there are no gods very loudly. And the people didn't listen to that because they were like, yeah, okay, but like seriously, I'm going to keep doing this anyway. So he had a new plan. I'm going to enforce there are no gods. And who does he get to do this? The precursors the word bears, the 17th Legion. The 17th Legion were given the title Imperial Heralds because they were going to spread the word of the emperor. And the word of the emperor was that science is everything. There are no gods.

There is no supernatural. And to say otherwise is heresy. And yes. And they were very fervent about that. Almost like they worshipped the emperor immediately as God. And this was, by the way, these are the good old days of this you think about it. But I like to think about it as like, these are the good old days of heresy, where heresy was just simply saying, hey, I wonder if there's a God. And they were like, no, that's heresy.

Not the new ones where it's like there's actually demons. And I'm worshipping one. All right. So in many ways, the 17th Legion were a Legion of chaplains, which is ironic because they actually do become that later. Yeah. Also, what do you mean? They kind of were. They wore Black Arbor, skulls.

They carried Croziuses. They're just chaplains. There's a bunch of them. It's funny. So the reason I say this, we're going to get more to that at the end of this cast. They wore the equipment of a chaplain. Later, they become chaplain. That's the difference here.

We're going to get there later. But for now, yeah, the Imperial Heralds, their helmet was a skull helmet, and they wore all black armor and they carried a giant mace. Well, let's back up just a smidge on this because of the fact. Let's talk about 40K as a whole real quick and how this goes into it. So 40K is supposed to be in Inquisition Age, you know, where we're smashing out heresy. We've lost knowledge. And the word bears were the people that really push this.

They are the people that caused the Horace heresy. This is them. They started out as the Inquisition. They're going around burning heretical knowledge, anything that was considered not the imperial truth. That's how they started. This is before Lorgar gets there. Yeah.

They were going door to door, birded the books, killing people for their beliefs. They were going to libraries and checking every book. They were taking out buildings. If you had, like, you know, the wrong mural on it, entire towns, whatever it was. They started on Terra. And as the crusade began, they began doing this kind of everywhere. And I kind of like the story of how they would handle the crusade. Because we said the beginning of the crusade, the rogue traders all went out first.

They marked all the planet. So they knew where to go. The first Legion was like, hey, bad Zeno thing, go there. You know, 13th Legion, these guys are kind of agreeable, so maybe don't just blow their planet up. Throw it out there. But the 17th were the tricky ones. The 17th were the ones who were, it's like a, they'd be good for the 13th, but there's a lot of worship there. And so they would send the 17th.

And the first thing that would happen is a single chaplain would go down and would meet with the leader. And they would sit there and they would basically give a lecture on the emperor and how they're wrong about all this worship stuff. Let me pause on this because this would go better if they didn't start most of their negotiations with. You're stupid. Everything you know is stupid. And here's what you should do about it. That's all they started. They talk about their writings quite a bit.

Oh, yeah. Unbelievably super insulting. Yeah. They're not trying to they're not trying to convince you. that this is better. They're just telling you how dumb and wrong you are. And then, well, even if you don't agree with me, we'll just kill you if you don't agree with me.

Yeah, they also did have 100,000 space marines in orbit. I mean, the might makes right. Come on. Now, my argument is very, very good. I did like this because they would sit there and they would just say to them, this is the deal, agree with us, the emperor is there or else. And what would happen a lot of times is they would just attack the herald who was sitting there. And the herald would just kill a bunch of people, die in the process.

And then the next thing that happened was a full of Starte's invasion. But they would invade, basically treating them like heretics. To Brad's point earlier, the way that the Inquisition would invade in modern 40K, just going, you people aren't worth it. We are going to exterminate everyone here. we're going to, and while we're coming through looking for any evidence of worship, destroy that true brutality, absolute, like forcing them to bend the knee and devastate them. This planet after planet, and they were hunting down.

It's so funny because instead of the First Legion, the Dark Angels, who would exterminate people and get rid of all traces of them, the word bears were doing this, well, the Imperial Heralds of the time were doing this, but they were making it so they were, exterminating any signs and history of idols relics, everything they had from before, they would get rid of all of that. They were crazy about it, too. They would hunt it down. Yep.

And so they would exterminate out as planet after planet this way. But to Brad's point, it wasn't a full, it wasn't a full exterminatist, like virus bomb exterminatus. It was just going through and getting, all right, take that building down, burn that library, then bring in the settlers type set up. But this continues for about 60 years. Lorgar is one of the later discoveries until they get a primark. And they're going to take a left turn after the discovery of the primark. But we have to now go over to, I'm going to pronounce this Colchise.

It could be Colchis. I'm going Colchis. I will say caucus. But continue with it. But one of my favorite. It's not Colchis, is it? Precisis. I mean, just an Italian.

I don't know. Coz-ice. One of my favorite things about this episode is I knew when I would get the notes that you were going to spend an overt amount of time on the orbit of the planet. Because it's wrong. Because also how they define the weak and everything. The Hobbit thing. Yeah. This is something that should have been one sentence, and I knew for sure it was going to be, you did not disappoint.

Yeah. I was so happy. Let's party. So, sitting on the upper sinistral side of the galaxy from Seoul is, I'm going cold cheese. Screw everybody. Coal cheese is a massive world. Three times a size of Terra in a slow orbit. So it's a little bit smaller than Uranus.

Yeah, I looked that up this morning. It's important. It is important. We should just start. So that's it. I'm not going to use northeast, southwest, and every planet I'm going to use the scale of Uranus. That is the new thing going forward.

Deal with it. It also has a really slow rotation. A single day takes 170.4 hours, which means the planet would be in a free thought pattern. Because if solstice is split, that means you'd have 85 hours of. of pure darkness, which would cause a massive cooling point killing off all life. And if you don't believe me, 536A.D. fog. Just Google that. You'll know what I'm talking about.

And that was a volcano did that. And that was just a fog. So, 36 degree Fahrenheit drop. Fog. Fogh. But anyway, the people of Colchie smooth. How do they break up their days, though? To the people of Colchis, this was not a death sentence, but it's an annoyance.

And apparently because their watches didn't work well. So they had to figure out what to do about a day that was too long. So they decided to do the Hobbit thing. And not joking, this is what they did. Because 170 hour day is broken into seven parts because that's 170 divided by seven is 24.3. So we get dawn a day, morning day, long noon, postnoon, duskeeve, cold fall and high night. lame in other words

they had seven days of the week inside of a day who gives a crap why write this I mean this is the thing also here's the best part of all they wrote this whole thing like yeah they had to adjust for having a weird

timetable because the sun's moving around and their day is really long and I remember reading this going like okay well whatever and then you know I remembered space travel's a thing You know what they don't have in space travel? Day, night, orbit, anything. But you know what they do?

Figure it out. And they don't have dawn a day, morn day, in the middle of a spaceship. They just go with at 6 a.m. in Seoul, that's what time it is now. Move on with your day. Every planet in the entire Imperium would have this problem, unless some, somehow all of them have the exact same rotation of speed as Earth. And this is so poorly written. If I would actually, I would end this rant if I wasn't going to go into my own rant about the covenant in about five minutes.

All right. But skipping past that's massive collection of incorrect, Colchise is best described as a ruined planet. The world was arid, and it had these settlements spread around it. And additionally, in orbit around it, is a bunch of derelict spacecraft, just kind of floating there. The thing is, Iran-Colkiss, there's enough derelict spacecraft to make it a point. It's not like there's three ships up there. There's something went down in the history of this. And they're significant enough where they bring it up quite a bit, to be honest with you.

Like, there's a lot of crap up. It didn't go well. And it's what we've learned, kind of learn more as time goes on with more novels. The truth on, you can call it Colchis, I'll call it Colchis. And one of us will be right. Colchise was a highly successful, prosperous world during the golden age of technology. And during the dark age of technology, it didn't do great. In fact, it did pretty badly.

We get to talk about fetal societies, which is one of your favorites. This one actually they did correctly, though. So this is the thing. Okay, I have to even credit. usually when GW refers to a world as being a feudal world, they just are not even in the ballpark. This one, they nailed because it's, you know, it's spread across. You have a, it's all broken up into what are basically city states that have their own regions that they rule in. Each of them has a high powered ruler who control their areas, but and below them, the citizenry,

it sucks being them. And they have slaves and indentured servants. Check, check, check. That's futile. Well, hold on. Yes. Yes. You're selling you short on this. The majority of the citizens are slaves in his century service. Check, check, check. That's feudalism. And then there's a hidden secret superclass called the covenant in this situation who rule over it. It was a monarchy before.

Now we have, well, actually, 1100. We're kind of pushing this one too. Or actually more once. This ends up being a city state, but we're ruled by a theocracy. Yeah, which is technically the Church of England. But that's a side note for a different day. But now we get into the covenant. The covenant was a religion on Colchise that rose up as the dark age of technology

kind of befell the galaxy. Nothing's known exactly about what happened in Colchise at that time, but we can infer a lot. And by a lot, I mean a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. The covenant talks about a divine leader who would come to lead them one day, and the divine leader would bring with them great power and knowledge and would uplift the people. I mean, by the way, this is the best prophecy ever because it totally comes to me. Yeah. Although there is a variation.

So there's, this is, it gets a little bit tricky because there's levels to this. Because the covenant also was, Lorgar is going to shift this to be much more aggressive on an individual. Some of them were more polytheistic. So like we talked about this great leader coming. Screw this. This is where Brad's going to rant on this. You get polytheists take specifically to the number four. Well, it wasn't.

But that's the thing. The thing is like this is where it does move around. But there is a number four in this. The challenge is like their religion is both monolateralism, but it's also probably, is it I think it's cathenothism is the other one where you do have, you either have, it's all, either is the religion one where there's one supreme and you've got multiples underneath it or is it one where depending on what region you are, that one's more important.

It's like how Roman, it's, I don't know which one is. If it's Catino or monolatruism, it's going to fall into one of those categories. But it doesn't really matter because here's where the fun part is. It's because we're going to have the pilgrimage a little bit later. Well, actually,

some of the pilgrimage now. The pilgrimage is the part that Brad wants to get to, which is wild. And this is we're going to cover in our next cast. Oh, is that a cool story? Boom. The pilgrimage is a story. which makes a lot of sense later.

Sorry, guys, but it'll make more sense later. In it, four prophets took a long journey to seek the knowledge of the gods, and they brought it back to Colchis. And this knowledge became the basis for the covenant, and this helped deliver Colchis from the darkness. The names of those prophets are a bit of a key. So we've got Cain, K-H-A-A-N-E, T-Z-N-E, T-N-E-E. E-E-Z-E-N, S-L-A-N-A-T, and Narrag, N-A-R-A-G.

Corin-Z-Z-S-E-S-E-E-E-S-E-E-E-N-A-R-A-G. I love this because they literally went, hey, bad, let me see your homework, just make it look a little bit different, and then you just scratched out the name and wrote your name at the top. That is what's going on here. They didn't even try to hide this. Also, when they have the four prophets, they went to the four chaos gods. Yes. It is, they were, and we're going to cover, this makes a lot more sense.

I just don't want to dive into a weird thing. It'll make more sense later, but our next cast, Lorgar kind of goes on this. Well, he goes on this pilgrimage, and he's going to make a ton of sense. There's this, these novels, by the way, if you want to get a good understanding of kind of what happened with the emperor and the Primark project and a ton of stuff, the Lorgar novel is the best ones for it. They really do. They get really in depth of this. They clear a lot of stuff up. Yeah, those books are really good.

And for that. So we'll name them as we go through them. But another key element of the covenant is that it is in constant internal conflict with itself. Yeah, because it's four chaos gods. Well, yes and no. It's why I say it's kind of tricky. It's the four chaos gods, but I think of it less as like the gods fighting with each other. I think it more like Catholic Church, 11th the 13th century or maybe like 16th 17th.

1113th. It's more 11th 13th. I was saying, but the thing is, is that the answer is yes, but I think that's because there's internal fighting because, again, the gods themselves fight consistently, constantly. Yes, yeah, I view it less as, I just don't, I don't think the people really were actually that religious. That's why I actually think of it more as 16th, 17th. I view it more. The thing is, people were trying to get out of the mud, so you were trying to get power and not be an indentured servant. Exactly.

Because the thing is the covenant word is unofficial ruling class in the planet. So a lot of people aspired for the key roles in the covenant because this is not a democracy. This is a meritocracy. So if you show leadership in power, people follow you. The more people that follow you, the more leadership, the more power you get. But it also means as you try to make that rise, more criticism, more threats. And so now we're going to talk about Corferra. Corferra.

We'll be right back after a quick blow. League. Like a lot of people in Colchis, Corferrin was an orphan. That's a common theme here. Now, raised in an orphanage, he joins the covenant as a priest. For Farron did not read this stuff and think, all right, I'm going to go preach and get rich. He believed. He saw the chaos gods are real. He didn't realize they were chaos, but the gods are real. And one thing that began to annoy him was that the people of Colchis were religious, but not that religious. Oh, I like the term, though, that they used on this, because they were like, the priests were out converting people and asking them to be worshippers of the gods. And Corferra goes, I don't really understand why you're asking.

And yes, I'm doing air quotes and no one can see me because that's what I do. But he was like, why are we giving them a choice? It's just, this is treason to the way of our way of life. We should be putting the beat down on anybody that doesn't. His viewpoint was that apostasy was tantam out to Tristan. That was his viewpoint. And he was fervent. Now, the covenant decided that he's weird.

And so there's, because this is a threat to them. They are trying to make money off of the populace. They don't want to be mean to the populace. So he wants to be mean to the populace. So what they do is they kick him out in the desert to live with all the other weirdos. Problem with that. Yeah, you're like, you should stop exiling and start killing because, well, he gets all the exiles together. That's the thing.

You put a bunch of weirdos out in the desert. All the weirdos get together. And it wasn't too long before Corferrin was leading all of the weirdos. It's quite likely Zeech did this, by the way. And it also could be, I mean, he's, he's super powered with his oratory skills. He has sorcerer ways. So he's either doing zing or he's doing like, big slown ashore. Weirdly enough, corn actually has power over the sway of people.

If you're rallying them for war. But he wasn't. He was rallying them for the revolution. So this was my assumption. But I mean, all the gods were working together here because they knew it was coming. Lorgar. Like every prime. mark, Lorgar was sent across the galaxy by chaos gods, or was it them? And we're going to cover that

next cast. It may actually may not have actually been the chaos gods. Different story, different day. Arriving on cold cheese as an infant, Lorgar was discovered by nomadic people called the decline. Great no-effect song. Last song they ever played, and I was actually there when they played it. But their leader of the decline is a guy named Fan Morgal. And Morgal sees this infant, Lorgar, and knew it was special. So he's when he named him Lorgar, which is called rain collar. And after about two weeks, Lorgar is the size of a small child, which again, I brought up before, where is this food coming from? I love these people are like nomadic and they, same thing happened with sanguineous. Oh, we're nomadic. We're barely scraping by. But we've found this being that's tripling in size

by the day. I know what an elephant. thousand calories a day. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what baby elephant eats and these are growing faster than that. Blue whales. What is this coming from? But anyway, the nomadic decline run into Corferon, his people. And Corferon sees Lorgar and basically recognizes the power him immediately.

And Corferon is not talking to Lorgar. Sorry. This is where you get that Corferon's kind of a dick because he immediately goes, yeah, like super mega. I love that he goes, hey, you know what? I see this guy a way that I can get power and get my way and goes, do I tell these people that I want to take the kid, convince him? Because he does convince him to rock. And that he's like, yeah, I don't want anybody to know about this. So I'm just going to murder all of them immediately for kind of no reason. There is no clear reason why he does this. But yeah, he has his fault. Corfarin has his followers

murder the entire decline and burrow them in the desert. And him and Lurgaard leave. Now, this is a key thing, but I just hinted out there, but I want to drive this home. Almost every other Primark who was found, the person who found them saw greatness in the Primark and wanted to aid the Primark in their ascension so that the Primark could then uplift the entire society. Sanguineus, Corax, Fulgram, Gilliman, obviously. Magnus, they all saw something in this, where they were going to use this person to help all society.

Corferon closer to the Nusarians who were like, all right, we're just going to use this thing. In Lorgar, there was a tool. So he begins to abuse Lorgar really badly. They do call out he does it physically. Physically, mentally, but I were abused to accept that. For like the first month and then you went, yeah, man, if you touch me again, I'll bathe you. But he does. But that's the thing.

They call it, oh, he abuses Lorgar. That just doesn't work. Lorgar is still a primark. We make fun of him a lot as far as primarks go, but I can tell you a prime bar. Yes, Corifarin could punch Lorgar in the face, and Lorgar might not notice. It's not, it's very hard to abuse a primark. But he is definitely mentally abusing him. Oh, very much so.

Good God. But this whole time is abusing him. Lorgar is reading and reading and reading. And my opinion is that I think Lorgar puts up with all the abuse because Lorgar actually realizes that Corferin was right. Corferin is correct about all of these teachings. The gods are real. There is something there. And what he realizes is that, yes, it's a polytheism, but there is a single entity that binds them all together. So I guess it was Hino Theeism, but that's not important. So, spoiler alert, by the way, he's kind of right because the writings that he's reading

are old. So when these pilgrims had come to Colchis, this is during the dark age. So this is after the emperor had visited the chaos gods and left for timing this out about right. The chaos gods believed at that time that the emperor was going to be the fifth and most powerful chaos god this isn't malice we'll do malice at a different time but the emperor betrayed them between those two periods of time so the writings lorgar's reading is the belief that a fifth chaos god is going to come and unite all of them and basically destroy the galaxy what's the guy in that's sigmar that predates sigmar that destroy the galaxy archaeon thank you that's what that was the

idea is i think the emperor was supposed to be arcane but then did So Lorgar is, it's the first person to ever read these texts and fully comprehend them. So he's dead right. Corferron, though, because he's kind of a whiny little bitch, didn't agree with this. Kind of. Yeah. And he starts, but the problem for Keraferrin, he starts losing the argument of Lurgar because he's nowhere near his intelligence, Lurgar. Again, Lorgar's a prime arc.

Exactly. And the issue, though, is that he's losing the argument. Back it up, too. Not only is he losing arguments, because one of us is a primark genius. Yeah. Also, he looks like a primark. So he just looks like a god. I mean, we make one of Lorgar a lot because of the primarks, he's low.

But of a person, again, going back to my hatred of Luther, I'm still picking Lorgar in that fight. You know? It's just one of those things where you're like having an argument. You're like, I'm going to go with the god. You're having an argument versus Ted and Hercules. I'm going to go with the demigod over here. He looks right. How about that?

Yeah. And he also seems to be more eloquent than you are. So over time, though, the other followers are Corferrin. They're hearing these arguments and they're all going, yeah, Lord God actually seems to be making much better points. And also, you know, Brad's point, one of them looks like a god. one day there's a big disagreement between the two of them and Corferron just gets mad

and tells his followers to go beat Lorgar and the followers go no and they attack Corferon they'll be a full mutiny in the bounty but while they go

to overthrow him Lorgar just kills them I was gonna grow roll rumble I just starts dropping elbows on everybody which to be fair Corferon was a lot

cooler to him after he saved his life but not super cool, just moved into big, shitty psychological manipulation on him. Yeah. Now, time passes and Lorgard,

the legend of Lorgard grows. His little merry band of preachers starts to reach more and more influence. And eventually some of the main cities start to find out about him. And he begins to, people actually start leaving the cities to Jodagh. People are doing pilgrimages to find him specifically.

So he takes up its mantle of leader and he does this cool thing because Lorgar, Lorgar, Brad, was better than Conrad. He starts freeing people. He begins attacking settlements and freeing the slaves there, not just pulling people's skin off for no apparent reason. You know, he does this cool stuff. He becomes a liberator of the masses until eventually the covenant. It's the breaker of chains. Yeah. Well, it worked, didn't it?

So eventually the covenant takes notice. And them, being of pretty high intelligence, realized that it's either we admit Lorgar into the fold or we're going to, you know. We all get killed. Let's be honest. And Corferon this whole time has moved himself into the title of Archdeacon of Lorgar, aka right-hand guy. Lord Guard joins the Covenant and eventually becomes the leader.

It's not an official thing because they don't have a formal leadership, which is a popularity contest. You know, instantaneously, he gets a lot of guys that are like, who the hell's this guy? Why is he have power? Also, these guys aren't true believers in what's going on. Exactly. They are using the Covenants. Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

These are charlatans over and over and over again in the car. And they're kind of watching because it's funny. As Lorgar gains power, like I said, it's not a official political thing. So as more and more people worship Lorgar, that means more and more the money goes to Lorgar. More and more the influence goes to Lorgar. So these other leaders who are just there to get rich are now seeing their revenue drop. And they're getting mad. And they're looking for an opportunity.

And the opportunity, well, we're going to say it presents itself. Doesn't end well, but it's funny. So, Lourgar, like a lot of the other primarks, was having visions. And his vision is a god, clad in bronze armor, coming to Colchise. And next to him is a giant Cyclops, which also, side note, why is Magnus a cyclops not a pirate? It would have been so much better. Ar, I be Magnus the Red, ye world is here for the Imperium, surrender, you walk the plank. That would have been so much better.

You know I'm right, too. Come on. You love yourself some free Buddhas. Yes, I do. It would have been. Imagine the thousand sons instead of, or the psycher pirates. That's a much better army. That's a much better army. Anyway.

Side note for the day. Lorgar begins preaching, though, because of this, the coming of the great God to Colchis, but not coming one day. Like, he's coming next week, guys. And so all the prophecies are about to come true, which is a real negative on tithing. All of a sudden, money just to dry up even more. So the members of the covenant declare Lorgar a heretic, saying he's not preaching the correct teaches the covenant.

And they say, someone should arrest him. And they go to do that. Doesn't end. Also, bad decision. So they just effectively start. a holy war because they say that he's a heretic and this is ridiculous and lorgar proceeds to just go on a world tour of ass kicking city to city yeah so the thing um what i would say about this is the holy war it's called a schism war and my issue with a lot of this is we talk about lorgar through

this as being this like preacher lorgar is still hyperviolet so he's not this like Yes, Corferon was being mean to him. Yes, Corferon was beating him up. But through all this, Lorgar still is a war prime mark. And Lorgar leads his forces on a city-by-city tour of just conquering. And he does this system, though, a special way. He walks up to each city and he stands outside and gives a speech. I'm assuming to say anything style, are we doing this?

Absolutely not. Yes, it is. It's Lord humongous from the road warrior with his microphone. It's not as long. Nobody gets alive. No. No, I'm doing this as say anything. He's a, he's out with a boom box.

It worked on Diane. Yeah, it worked on Diane. It's working on the people. But it actually does. He starts off on Verid, like Peter Gabriel. Yeah. But I do like the first one he does it do is funny. He goes to Veridesh and he gets his whole speech.

versus the capital. And all of a sudden, the gates open, the people carry out all the dead corpses of the leaders of the covenant there. And he goes, all right, that one worked. And so for the next six years, this war continues until they get to the last one, which is, ooh, Garavarala. And again, we're going to have a fun little John comment in a second year. But Garavarala is not just, it's not a capital, but it's a really powerful feudal state.

And it's a powerful feudal state. Why? Because it has some dark age of technology. Ooh, what's it got? Oh, it's got a really special weapon. What could that weapon be? It makes storms. It just made rain.

It wasn't even clear. It was a storm generator. That's right. If you're going to attack Gai'arilla, you're going to have to go through a storm in the 30th millennia, a thing we can get through in the, the second millennia. But luckily, Lorgar was there and he parted the storms, so no one got wet. I don't, I had no idea. It's, we first, really, like, it's a storm generator. And I was thinking,

like, yeah, like, our military can drive through a storm today. Like, like, how bad is this wind supposed to be? It's really gusty. Do you know what an M1A1 Abrams weighs? It can handle gusty. Like, there's also lightning. Yeah. Also can handle that. I don't think it's that big of a deal. Anyway, schism war ends, but the death toll is just beginning. Like any protracted war, we're going to go with, I was going to call it one thing, but I'd have to call it a different thing.

Yitzchovincina is what I'm going to go with. Yitz chowenshinna. I was going to rock out with Stalin. you go out with Mao. Apparently, they had to get rid of some people that were true believers. And when I say some people, I mean, one third of the population. Yeah, that's why it's yes, show's in China. It's I think how you pronounce this.

Effectively, it's claimed that after the war, one third of the population decided to turn against Lorgar, just like Trotsky and Kamiyev and Zenoiv did. Within, yeah, no comment. They just happened to do it at that moment. And all of Lorgar's followers went city to city on a murder spree. Pretty big murder spree. Yeah, it was fun. But within a year of this happening, a ship arrives. And outwalks the emperor and Magnus.

I be here. Sorry, that's my new thing with him. Immediately, Lorgar knows his vision has come true. As at all the people, the God has come. to liberate them. And they start to have this giant feast multi-month long. The emperor begins saying, I'm not the Messiah. And the people of Colchis immediately say, well, we say you are and we should know because we've followed a few. Like we've been watching Life of Brian for a while here. So we know what's this. This is off the Holy Guard. No, follow the sandal. The sandal of truth.

It's like I can quote this movie a lot. Is only he who is it that without? All right. All right. But the emperor had brought with him the Imperial Heralds, and he just basically giz him to Lorgar and says, all right, go crusade. Now, this is usually the part in the cast where we start talking about Lorgar, the Great Crusade, but we can't because we have another character to get to. So, time, time, both.

Pause on one second, though. I do want to stress how, Lord Gar's already been pushing this whole, we're about to get the Savior, everything else, the one true God. It shows up. The emperor says no, and everybody,

I can't stress enough how much they ignore that and go, excellent. That is definitely what the God is the true God would say. This lore was written well after the life of Brian came out. Watch that scene, read this lore,

and you realize they took that scene and made it. serious. Yeah. That's all that day. 100%. The emperor is routinely saying, stop worshiping me. I'm over this now.

Can we please get on with it? And they are, I am affected by a bald patch. It does not stop. It is all, it magical. But on cold chiefs, there's this young boy in a nothing city. And he just wants nothing really for himself, but to kind of just be a dick. So this young boy, just all he was. wants to do is kind of be mean. So one of his favorite pastimes is to catch desert scorpions

and pull their legs off them while they're alive. And he likes, does this because it's a thrill. Because if he, if the tail stings him, he'll die. So he has to do this without getting stung. That's it. He has no aspirations, no achievements. He's destined for nothing. And his parents know it. They basically yell at him every day about being a failure. And they tell him, why don't you be like something? And they tell him he should be like the village hero, which is, is a little small child named Arabis. Arabis is basically perfect in every way. He's studious.

He's committed. He'd been accepted into the cloister to go be a priest for the covenant of Colchis. In fact, he even been invited to go to the city of Veradesh. And so he was so committed to the cause that young Arabis had even started tattooing a lot of the covenant all over his face. And so this young boy, seeing the way everyone looked at Aribis, you know, knew what to do. And so what he does is he murders. We want to do. Yeah.

And with, hey, man, you know, what's easy to not see? Your facial features if you have your face tattooed with scripture. Yeah. So he goes, he murders Arabis in an alley, buries the body. And then uses, I mean, it's not a marker, but copies of tattoos all over his face and steals the clothes and then leaves the city and becomes Arabis. So now we have Arabis 2.0. Arabis 2.0 eventually takes a little bit of detour, but arrives in the main city.

And he's just there to do be a charlatan. He's excited. I'm going to go get rich. I'm going to get the wealth and the power. This is going to rock. And he kind of settles into this life of a charlatan. That's his whole plan. But in order to do that, he has to go to the church and read.

What happens is while he's doing this, he starts reading the text. And it doesn't take long before Arabis starts to. to actually see some truths in there. He sees the truth of the word. Yeah. He begins to kind of see not just a place for himself within Colchis, but a place for himself within the galaxy. And he understands more about the four ruinous powers.

And to my knowledge, I think he's the first person to actually understand that there are four ruinous powers. So as Corfarin understood there was a high, higher power, but I don't think he grasped the fore. Arabis starts even conversing with them to a point. Yeah, I was to say he had knowledge right away, which is, again, Zeech type long-term planning of what is our grand plan to do this?

And they started here. Yeah. I mean, they started with the emperor. The emperor gave him the finger and said, exactly, yeah. Get your, they tried a few spots, but Aribus was the first one that seems to really stick. Yeah. And what they get with him, one of the more famous scenes for him is he's, you know, getting more and more comfortable, for like of a better phrase, for the chaos gods. And Amir is broken and it's broken into four quadrants.

He looks in the mirror and he sees himself in the four quadrants broken up. And he realizes that the four gods have been there the whole time for him. They've been the ones guiding him, laying this path out for him. He is to be their champion. Arabis also during this time comes to learn all the truths of the galaxy because he is sworn in allegiance to the chaos gods he is going to serve them

he is going to be their champion in the mortal realms so he knows about the emperor and so for also we're going to get into the Lorgar and as much as I dislike Largar and I hate Aribus for causing things but I hate Erebus in a good way you know when you hate a good villain because Arabis is wild

evil and manipulating and effective from the beginning. Very much so. And so Erebus sees this and then around the same time, Lorgar comes into the picture. And Erebus sees this and goes, yep. And he works himself into Lorgar's good graces. And he becomes one of Erebus, he becomes one of Lorgar's key confidence. When the emperor arrives, Erebus looks at the emperor and he knows this is. is my enemy. And he knows his entire purpose is going to be to kill this man and overthrow him so the

chaos can reign supreme. So from there, we're going to move ahead a little bit. The Great Crusade goes to begin. And as the word bearers make ready to leave Colchis, they do what everyone does. They convert the locals to space marines unless they're old. Well, well, hump the brakes, Johnny boy. No. You act like they were putting out some pamphlets. in the mail. You can show up to my rally with a, I'm, I'm playing some acoustic guitar. Yeah. And you know, no.

No, so much no. Yeah. What they did was they grabbed a absolute mass of the people, which means the legist starts shifting pretty quickly to being a little bit believers in God. Just a little bit. Yeah. Just a tad. But one of my favorites is Corferon is one of the like, oh, yeah.

you're grossly too old be a space marine, but we've got a ton of deca trend and peptides. So here you go. Juice you up. Erebus though does get the organs. Arabist is an actual space marine. And what I like, though, is the emperor does. He just drops the space marines off with Lurang says, hey, have that it. Go stamp out heresy.

Here's a short pamphlet on my belief structure. Which Lorgard does not read. Also, Biggie, it is epic wisdom. By the way, one of the most powerful, the most intelligent, Big A shows up on this planet. They wildly worship him as a God to his face. See, he is the one true God. He goes, eh, don't do that. I'm sure that's not going to happen.

It immediately leaves. Yeah. And he's like, hey, you guys want to do, right? So the word bearers begin this crusade of converting worlds to the worship of the emperor, just immediately. And they find, but it's weird how they do with them. Because what's funny is they actually are finding worlds that are worshipping the chaos gods and destroying all of the chaos gods that are making them put stuff up about the emperor. And while this is happening, Lorgar's doing this other. So this is why this legion is really important because the legacy of this legion is incredible.

Here are there two big legacies. The first one's cool for us who model. and second one's much bigger. The first one is he makes a new class of warrior. His viewpoint is if I'm going to put a city to the torch, that is a ceremonial thing. This is not something done. A secret thing. We should do it right.

Yeah. And the person who should be in charge of that is not a regular soldier. It's someone who has utmost standing in purpose. So we talked about earlier, you know, the guys who looked like chaplains, they become actual chaplains. the Black Armour skull at Crozias. He's every play that they're taking with doing all this, I'm going to put two things together here, which he's making gigantic.

He's putting up St. Peter's Basilica everywhere they go. They're making giant monuments. The emperor, they're also doing it super slow. That's going to come back to haunt them, maybe haunt the Imperium, because the plan comes into play. But he goes about making these, effectively shrine worlds before there were shrine worlds to the emperor everywhere they go. And also, Lord, I love this part because they still use it.

Yeah. Just real quick, on the chaplains, the thing about the chaplain, this is really important. So he creates these chaplains who are like the kind of ultimate believers in the emperor and the lead chaplain is Erebus. The reason this matters is the chaplain, this thing gets spread to the other legions because the chaplains being these ultimate kind of believers, the emperor, the other legions adhere to this. This is one of the ways he will spread later into other legions with warrior lodges. More on that next cast.

But the same time, Lorgar begins to work on his masterpiece. Lorgar. Opus. Yeah. Believes in the emperor as a god. He saw the emperor as actually more than a god. He saw as a god who was going to deliver the universe from darkness. And he wanted everyone to understand that.

And he does this weird thing where he grabs a quill and he wrote this thing. It's the year 30,000. So does Apple not have a monopoly anymore? The person on an iPad? I assume they still did. But anyway, he pens the lectic, leitio divinatus. Divinatiotis. And this is his proof.

The emperor is a divine being and deserves the worship of all. Fun story on this book. It still exists. It's the basis for the equivalent. Ecclesiarchy. Yeah. It is there. It is the Bible of the current,

the only reason why I believe it may have actually been written with ink is because then you could white out the author. That is true. Because it is also known as, it is unknown. They don't even put an author on it. Yeah. Author unknown. It is just a divine writing.

The Lorgar penned all of the beliefs of the current ecclesiarchy of the, the, the word of the emperor. Yeah. That is 100% him. The emperor should have snuffed out three prime marks, not two. Just saying it. I mean, none of this comes back to Haunin. Yeah.

But that's where we're going to break today because of the next cast, things get real spicy with Lorgar, Arabis, and Corferon. Because each starts to follow their own path, but they begin to utilize each other. And eventually they kind of all align suddenly. It's really, I, the word bear lore is really fascinating. It's messed up, but it is really fascinating because of the convolution within it. But I also like it because it's actually fairly linear.

Like some of the other ones we've covered like Alpha Legion. I also talk about the- Magnus, it's hard to follow. I do love the fact that Arabis' plans might not have worked except for the emperor, really solidifying it. But we'll get that next time. Oh, yeah. The emperor is a huge buddy here.

But also Magnus screws up, too, by the way. Magnus has it. Magnus has multiple easy opportunities to just stop all this and happening and just goes, nah. Maher. Right. But until next week, John Barsati, Bradchester. This guy. See you guys then.