The 40k Lorecast - Episode 148 - Titan Legions pt 1 - The origins of Mars, creation of the first titans, and the hilarity that is titans themselves

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

On Today’s cast we open our coverage of the Titan Legions. With a short dive into the origins of Mars and a hilarious GW story of a dragon. From there we talk about the Titans them selves, what they are, their grand size, their machine spirit that is totally not an AI, and more. We also jump into the different sizes and types of titans and then close out with the original forming of the LegionsPatreonMerchandiseDiscord 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 Pebl and use my code hipebl.ai for a great deal: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/40klore for a great deal: https://www.quince.com* Check out Shopify and use my code shopify.com/lore for a great deal: https://www.shopify.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast. It's me, John Barcati and Bradchester. The sky. Today we'll be jumping into Titans. Yay, they're big. They're stompy. They're tall.

And they don't make any sense. Yeah. They are abominations of the laws of physics. Hooray. For those I don't know, the 40K lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please follow and comment,

because it's how the stuff works, guys. That's just what algorithms are these days. Follows and comments. Yay. If you like this show and see more of us, we have links in the show notes. You can see our YouTube channel where occasionally we do Q&As. They're bi-monthly-ish.

You also get links to. We're so old one, by the way. We're behind and I'm being honest. I am busy. So we're going to try. We also get links to, Brad's YouTube channel where he reviews the game more from a competitive standpoint. There's actually a lot of interesting stuff over there.

Go give that a listen. You get linked to our other show, the history of 40K, where we talk about how this game used to be really broken. Whoa. Oh. Link to my other show, Retro Recall, where I talk about old video games. I played Pilot Wings. I don't even know what that means.

Pilot Wings. It came with a Super Nintendo. Yeah, I didn't play it. Probably. You played it. You just don't remember because no one does. And someone told me about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, that game was fun.

No one does. No one does. So you remember like, oh, yeah, that game. I played that 42 times when it first came out and then never played it again. That's pilot wings. But if you also want to help us out and support us, there's two ways you can do it. You can go buy our merchandise, stickers apparently. There's that.

Or jump on to our Patreon. Patreon is just in general. Patrions are awesome. It's a great way to support people. If someone does something that you find interesting, you can go on a Patreon and support them. Great way to say thank you. Our Patreon gives you this show and the history of 40K ad free. It's $4.99 a month or still $49.99 a month because this is summertime and we are going to go get bit by mosquitoes and yell at our dads because we're going to the Poconos.

And that joke landed for like 5% of the audience, maybe. but it's worth it because of some of you actually know what I'm talking about. For those that don't know, Poconos are a small mountain range in Northeast PA. It's spelled differently and I just pronounced it. So deal with it. Whatever, I got an accent. I can't help it. It interestingly was the honeymoon capital of the world, the 60s and 70s.

This sucks. And it's full of these kitsy motels with a heart-shaped hot tubs and other things that do not clean well. So, ew. By the way, they're all still there. So also double, ew. It's also a home of a bunch of coal mines. So this might be where Derek Zoolander's from. It's done it out there.

It's possible. He could have the black lung. Mermann, dad. Merman, dad. Merman. For those of you who play paintball, and you live on the East Coast, you've probably been to the poker nose because I've played paintball there.

There are 750 acres of paintball there. It is one of the largest paintball areas. They've got, it's basically paintball counter strike goes on there, which is super cool. And I realize that's an old reference. I should be saying paintball Fortnite, but I refuse to. I'm saying paintball counters. Old man. Yeah.

Technically, they're skiing there, but we have European listeners and West Coast listeners, and I'm not going to insult them by referring to the Pocados as ski slopes. I've been to the Alps. But I've been to the Poconos, and I'm going to just show dignity of these people. But it is tranquil. It's lovely. So you're going to go there. We're going to camp and you're going to like it or else.

It's for lovers. Yeah, get the mosquito spray. Just trust me. Get the mosquito spray. That literally is one of their signs and says that. As always, one more link in the show notes. Our Discord. Yay, Discord.

Jump into Discord. Interact with us. Say things to us. Ask us questions. Have them get answers. poorly. Sometimes well, oftentimes poorly. That's kind of a thing. Talk to me about poison. Yeah, it's come up a lot. But also, it's a great way to interact with other people, get letters to recommendations, gameplay recommendations. I had those are kill teams, part of us doing really, really well, really great advice, people who want to play a game like Kill Team, A, Just Sigma.

It's expanding. It's expanding a lot more in there to just get beyond 40K. So jump in, see if you like it. It's Discord. And it's, It's free because all Discord should be free. So what do you have to lose? All right. Anyway, on to tall things. This is hard for Brad. Brad doesn't like Titans because they're tall. And that makes it hard for Brad to get there.

I do have to say that I'd like anything that has a James Bond injector seed in them at least. They do have that. Yes, they do. I'm going to inject out. I'm going to be honest. If the Mechanicum found out, you would. from the thing that they spent, I don't know, a thousand years building. They're going to hunt you down.

It has a James Bond injector seat, my friend. There's no reason for it. Also, if it's blowing up, there's no distance you could eject. I mean, that one out there too. Anyway. All right. So when we cover the nighthouses, we touch the Titan legions a little bit, and a bunch of people make comments.

Hey, you guys got to cover them more in depth. So, all right, let's do it. Here we are. Yeah. Now, Knights and Titans, there are similarities, but there's a lot of differences. The similarities is that both of them are constructed by the Mechanicum. However, the way they function are massively different. The Knight houses will swear in allegiance, either Quest or Imperialis or Questor Mechanicum, and that means they're either loyal to the Mechanicum or loyal to the Imperium. But that's more of an on-paper thing, because they actually function as independent houses. A nighthouse is self-governed. They are feudal lords in their own world, even though some of them actually will share. One of the big things on the nighthouses, they're self-sustained. Yes, exactly. So on a planet, you occasionally do have multiple nighthouses on a single planet, on very large planets, but they are their own thing. And whereas the Titan legions,

in other hand, are 100% mechanicum. They have branches within the, but they're all mechanical. They don't run their own planets. There's not some nobility within them, like with serfs and all that BS. They are Legio-Titanica. Harold is awesome, John, on the table. It looks sweet. Yes.

Banners are awesome. Help, help, I'm being repressed. Come see the violence inherent in the system. All right. But look at my cool banner, though. Sure. Now, one thing we need to talk about before we get into any of this, though, is St. George. By the way, getting ready for this cast, I could not stop with John's obsession with this.

We were going to go pretty long and deep into this one. Yeah. And I just threw it along. Whatever. We'll continue. I love sending Brad notes knowing that he, the point notes he's going to get to and just roll his eyes at me. Just like, what is even happening here? So we're doing this.

All right. So just so people know, there is a story of St. George. It's a nothing story for most people except for the English. The English like the story a lot. But the story of St. George is in Libya, because it was Libya, there was a dragon. This is, I'm sorry, this is canon. Deal with it. And the dragon wanted food.

And so the villagers kept giving the dragon live. And to be out of livestock. Well, it was, they were giving him pairs of, I think it was sheep, but I don't care. And they were giving them people. And it was a random drawing apparently. And whatever. And when you got your random drawing, you had to walk to the cave to get eaten by the dragon. That's a thing.

And one day, they chose a princess. And I guess no one agreed to take it. bigger place. I love that this is literally an epic poem and we reduced it down to, hey, a dude was rolling by and saw a girl cry and he said, what's going on? She was like, I really don't want to be killed by a dragon. He was like, how about if I just roll it and drop an RKO out of nowhere on this guy? But what I want to be super cool. What I like about this a lot, by the way, though, is it's like, So because this story you have to understand, take this story from when it was written. This story, by the way, is not a new story.

Oh, the princess was going to die. I hate to bring it. When princesses weren't that valuable at this age, that's kind of what makes the story so funny. This is like 311 century. No, it is. We do that in later stories. In early stories and everyone who's a history buff knows this, princesses were used. to barter or better things.

And so I was like, oh, the princess is going to die, not the prince. Yeah, feed it of the damn dragon. I don't go shit. George Yolo swag the dragon, bro. Well, George was a Roman soldier, I would note. Roman soldier. Yeah, and he just was apparently the first one to go, hey, why don't you guys just kill the dragon?

And everyone went, oh, yeah. That's a good idea. George later was decapitated for refusing to renounce his Christian. Christianity. Side note, because he is a saint. But GW took this story and went a different direction. And there are different directions. It turns out that Roman soldier was the emperor. And he was just wandering around North Africa one day and discovered a shard of the void dragon, or a group of shards of the void dragon. That's part not clear. And this void dragon was just eating sheep, hanging out in Libya, kind of like an inviard.

inverted Noah, you know, two by two, just eating up all the livestock. And the emperor did a whole, get off my planet, you damn dirty star god. And he punched the C-Tan in the mouth. And then- Or where its mouth should be. This is canon, by the way. He grabbed the C-Tan and went to Mars with it. Because I guess the G.W. Riders had watched it.

I want to go Superman 4? That's what I think this was. I don't know. The movie sucked. and then got to Mars with the C-10 and used his mind powers to build a super vault and shove the C-Tan in it. And then I guess went back to Earth or did this before he left and got a bunch of people. Noctilus Labyrinth, my friend. Noctilus Labyrinth.

Yeah. And he got a bunch of people and made them forever guard this C-Tan on Mars. That's the story. Also, that is the story. Those guys want to die pretty quick. Yeah. So a couple notes on this. The story of St. George is set during the Roman Empire.

So two or three hundred AD. So the people guarding the vault had been doing so are currently at 40,000 years of guarding. And according to GW, no one got there till around 17,000 AD. So I have a lot of questions here. Like, what they eat? What are they doing? Rio 3.80.

Yeah. Did these people get transported there during the Roman era? What was that like? Did the emperor just grab a bunch of people who were like wandering around in tunics and sandals and then just go, oh, by the way, I have full electricity. This is future world. What happened here? Also, were they breeding? Or did he just turn them into?

immortals. Did the emperor ever visit? Just check on them. Hey, how's it going here at the labyrinth guys? I love everything. Just wanted to check. I think he did.

I assume that he just did like Dr. Manhattan did and just teleported them up and made his structure. Yeah, and they're all just sitting there like I was literally eating a goat's ear, like whatever they were eating in life of Brian.

And now I'm like, now I'm sitting in golden age of of technology tech. Just, uh, and also the emperor does this and just goes back to hiding for 20,000 years. Cool. That's a story. That's what happens. But anyway, let's talk about what happens now because now there's a void dragon on Mars.

Well, there's a shot. And that's important. It's a shard. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Because there are no seat hands. That isn't important.

Everything is a shard at this point. There are pieces of basically bro. broken star gods. Exactly. And each C-Tan is unique. They are, because C-Tan are not a species. This is an important thing. There are a collection of entities with a similar core construct, because they're all star-gods. They don't breed, not where they can reproduce. It's basically implied that they were created with the universe. When the universe was created, the C-Tan were created or sometime around that. And they each had their own style and ability. So when the Necron tier helped the C-Tan kind of become beings, each C-Tan took on

unique. Yeah, I was saying we did a lot in the cast for it because that's something I'd like to go back to at a later date because it took them so long to communicate with them, which was fascinating for me. Like, they're doing this for thousands of years in the middle of a war, by the way. Yeah, exactly. And we've talked about that. for we have the deceiver of the night bringer and the void dragon. This is a reason that they're very different and they look very different. So the void dragon interacts with non-organic life. That's what it does. But not like stone or metal. He's not a forge. He does it with like the flow of electricity is the best way to explain it, but at a much higher level. Nope. He's a hacker.

Oh, God. That movie sucked. Side note. Oh, remember hackers? I do very much. Yeah. I do like that you've had a couple of strokes and the only things that have left is just bad movies. Like you couldn't lose any of that stuff. I remember them perfectly. I'm sure. That's the best part.

Where I was yesterday? No idea. No idea. But the plot of Cobra, got it. Bang in the Axes, baby. Oh, God. Oh, these movies are shit. Now, the reason obviously I'm bringing this up is, for example, it's implied the Voydragon

was part of the creation of the Necron Necrodermis. And it became very pivotal in the war in heaven because it was one of the main architects of the Blackstone weapons, what later became the pilot. The fact that the Katon can interact more freely with the physical universe, basically. Now, it's hard to know what exactly is on. Mars. What we know is that the original void dragon was blown into sharts.

And we know that when shards are near each other, they bond together to form a larger shard. And a side story, read part of the new lore of the necrons. Nemesaurus currently trying to do that with the Nightbrigger. He's trying to and not trying to. Because he had the

opportunity to put him near each other and then went, meh. Yeah, you can also read the Trazen book also talks but it's a little bit like do not. Infinite of the divine. Yeah, there's a lot of don't cross the streams going on with shards. Effectively, you put too many shards together

and you get something you can't control pretty quickly. Yeah. They begin to gain consciousness quick, which is not ideal. And so in theory, it's actually the same thing. The irony is it's the same thing with Magnus, by the way. Magnus is also broken into shards. If you bring enough shards together, it actually can create enough of the original that you get a problem.

And so at the same time, all the shards aren't even. It's not like they're broken up into even parts. It's like breaking a pane of glass. Some pieces of glass are larger than others. Some are tiny shards. Those are the ones that the necrons are usually using the power of their reactors. Others are larger shards, which are the ones that the scarabs kind of lash and then they're used for war. It's like to Brad's exact point just now, like the Nightbringer ones.

And so it's implied the one that was on Libya was a large shard, like a very large. large one and it had escaped capture from the necrons and was just hanging out on earth. Now, I should note, GW is going to do this. I just occurred to me this morning. Oh, sorry, this is going to, this gave me deuce chills when I thought about it earlier. The war in heaven concluded right about the time the meteor hit Earth. Don't be surprised when GW does this. Just don't be.

now the meteor hit Mexico, St. George was in Libya. Details, details. I'm just letting you know now. I will groan audibly if that becomes canon. It's calling it out now. But what matters more is the implication of the C-10. You know, like having a boat. If you don't get that reference, go watch always sunny in Philadelphia.

All right. So the void dragon doesn't just affect mechanical things by intent. It's just general presence is there. And the reason, so in the game, they have aura abilities. And there's a movie this was in, like I couldn't place the movie. I was trying to do research guys. I couldn't find it. But the idea is that once mankind arrived on Mars, there's this giant vault underground

that they're not even aware of because the emperor hit it really well, sort of, even though there's people living in it, whatever, not important. the original Martian settlers are just developing technology like you would anywhere, and they're just having breakthrough on top of breakthrough on top of breakthrough. Whatever endeavor they're trying to achieve, they're just solving. They literally consider a divine intervention. Sorry, not an intervention, divine inspiration. And I love this because the emperor is basically responsible for the religion

two religions because the Omnisai because they worshipped him as a god because he was the creator for them of their God and he was also now worshipped as a god. They also quit their god

there. So there's that piece. I mean oopsies. Because yeah Mars is the origin of the STCs. Cool thing about the Voydragon, what it's doing on Mars is these breakthroughs they're having. These are real breakthroughs. It's not like oh, this works because we're in the presence of the Void Dragon.

No, they're just figuring stuff out better. And so all of these breakthroughs, everything's coming out of Mars. So over time, Mars starts to become this incredible place. Now, it's also quite likely that this is the origin of the machine spirit. I'm going to go John theory time here because I think the machine spirit was a creation of Boydragon. I think the void dragon. I mean, yeah. We're going to get into it a lot of this because there's, but you can talk to machine spirits when you're talking about Titans as opposed to other small examples. They do communicate because I think the machine spirit was the void dragon

trying to, the kind of its subconscious trying to create consciousness. But then Vastor came in and jacked the whole thing up. And the thing is, that's my opinion. This is, oh, the machine spirit, the machine God is what they worship. which is perceived to be a very large shard, like you were saying. They don't break apart equally. And it's also been buried in this. Another reason that what happens to this, if the emperor wakes up and if they loses what he's doing. Because he's the emperor does so many things right now.

It's tried the Astromonicon. He's pretty busy. Defending. Yeah. Also, he's still imprisoning the Void Dragon. That's one of his many things that he's doing in a daily business. Yeah, the labyrinth is being controlled by his secegori. It doesn't have like its own little thing going.

He is the shield holding it in place. Yeah. And by the way, he's a busy little beaver. He wants to open it. Yeah. Call wants to open that vault. Let me just have a little chat with it.

No call. Bad calls. No slap. Bad call. Squirt bottle. Now, what happens over time, though, after, you know, the dark age of technology, remember Mars comes out of the dark age technology.

We're going to talk about that in a second a little bit early. But Mars, even before that is a massive, forge planet, making spaceships. This is dorm order in the golden age, making spaceships, making everything. And let's get into how kind of much they made. So the origins of Titans are both fun and stupid at the same time. Fun because they're cool and stupid because the story makes no damn sense. Age of Strife hits the galaxy.

Mars goes into anarchy like everything else. Also should have been wrecked by the men of iron, but they weren't. They never say why. I don't know why. Well, so there's a lot of hints in KungyW lore that Vash Tor is the source of all of this. Vashtar basically infected it everywhere. The argument in my mind is I think because of the Void Dragon, it didn't work there. I think that Vash Tor, because they were further away from him, from the Void Dragon, his in his, his,

It could be on. Scrap code wasn't as successful. Complete John theory there. But Mars does still go into... But at the time, they were also the progenitors of a lot of this stuff. So you think that they'd have just wild AI. Oh, I'm sure there was. Even though there's a ban on AI, they still have AI.

And I'm assuming there was just, you know, planet-wide AI stuff. Yeah. Again, 1,000% of John theory. I just think the scrap code went in and the aura of the void dragon prevented it or the aura of the emperor. One of the two, maybe a combo of both prevented it and that's why Mars survived. But no, don't care. Fact the matter, though, is that age of strife hits and the planet is not ideal. A lot doesn't go great.

Let's put it that way. As it goes through, though, a new threat arrives. And there's almost no information on that. these guys. I spent a ton of time looking up there just mentioned in one of the Horace heresy books. A new cult appears on Mars called the Cy Carnivora. Not a lot's known about them. They're a heretical group who worship machine gods, but bad way. They may have been bashed or maybe it was Cetan. We don't know. They're just known that their beliefs were debased as opposed to- I think it has to me because of the fact that the satanism themselves aren't

are just pure power and almost outside of morality. I think it's Vashtore. I think that they were worshipping Vashtar. Yes. The Satan are evil, but they're evil for evil's sake almost. They just do consume. And they also wouldn't interact with humanity. They would just, they don't care about.

They're so far above humanity. They don't, they barely went to interact with the necrons. Yeah, it took the necrons. It took the necrons. here so long to basically have them realize they existed and have a way to communicate. Right. So what we do know about the psychonivore is they kind of these massive machines of war. And they didn't have control of all of ours.

They began conquering Mars with them. And the Mechanicum, who were losing the planet, came up with a genius plan. What if we just make bigger shit? That was the plan. But what happens if they keep making bigger boards with big. Your nails. Yes. And that's what they did.

So that's what that was it. So for those who don't know, fun story, another, you know, John Science fact of the day, Mars is a really weird planet. The southern hemisphere is mountainous because those don't know the largest volcano in the galaxy is on Mars. Its name is it's escaping me right now and I should know what off thought in my head. It's Olympus? It's Mount Olympus. That's why.

Also, I'd have to look that up. You know why? Because I know more about the northern hemisphere, which is. basically Ohio, and it is flat. Tino in galaxy. It is big, big, flat. Olympus Mons. Yeah.

Yeah. So the Olympus Mons, obviously, largest volcano of the galaxy. But yeah, to Brad's point, the northern part of Mars is the flattest part of the galaxy. Really good for giant walking robots of death. So, Sae Carnivora were doing their little uppity BS. And the Mechanicum went, hey, what if we put the biggest guns we ever made and the biggest walking things we ever made is wander over that way where there is no cover as Brad discovered in fifth and sixth edition, Adepticon. And went, you know, this is convenient. One of my favorite things to build.

End game sieve giant death robots. Yeah. I will say there are anyone who played this game in the tabletop during some of the earlier editions knows, sometimes you went to a tournament that sold a few more tickets and they had boards for, and you had a few extra... Planet bowling ball. Yep. And that's what happened.

So these things, the psychonivora stopped to exist. And then afterwards, the rest of the planet got conquered. Now, with that, I want to talk about how the Titans function for a little bit because let's get into, like, all right, they made a giant robot. What do you mean by that? All right. Well, don't forget with an injection. your seat.

And that has an ejector seat. It's the dunk. I just love that part about it. There's a lot of details on Titans where like you're like, really? All right. First off, Titans are like Knights in that they are a human driven with an AI aid.

The AI is a lot different. And they talk about it with the size. I've read this comics in the Titan comic for GW for this. When they first hook up and the precepts hook up, which the precepts are the ruling, the people that run the Titans. The pilots, yeah. It's called precepts.

Yeah, concept. But when they hook up with it, the machine spirit just says, hey, how's it going? You know, which is usually not what's going on. Machine spirits are almost like trying to communicate with someone, Ouija board style, you know, trying to figure out things.

This is a fully aware AI. Yeah, which is a different type of AI. Not supposed to be used by officially, the Imperium, not even the Imperium, just, I guess it is always the Imperium on it, but like humanity just banned AI, period. Yeah, it's, even though it's one, it's super used them though. Yeah, it's true, because this one feels more like there's AI, but it's blocked off from certain areas where the AI is just sitting there. It feels like Clippy. We've got, the AI is Clippy, but like, Clippy is here to make the legs move. So Clippy is, screw you for being that much

younger than me. But that's how I view it. It's a bit more. I mean, it's not it's clawed. Well, it's not quite clawed because that'd be scary. But yeah, it's going to this. So the way it works is it's similar to Pacific Rim, which again is ripped off from this. So screw them. You interface into it and you are now part of the machine. The whole machine is your thoughts. And the AI is designed to basically take your thoughts and make it. Make it interact. Because you would be crushed. It, If you didn't have an AI buffer, your little feeble human brain would get obliterated. You'd melt in a second. And I'm done.

Yeah. But what's interesting is you're not alone in here. GW did it right. That's in credit. Okay. So there's a moderatus, but they pluralize it to moderate tie, which I was so happy to do it correctly. I was expecting them to do this wrong. They got it right.

And so you do have the main pilot, who is the preencept, and the moderateatis, which can be two, I think four is the most that they have. I think the biggest ones have four of them. And their job is... Yeah, their job is to help out... The Revers only have two. The four is only in... No, the Revers have two.

The fours are in the warlord or in the Emperor Titans. It's one per... I was thinking that the Reaver Mars Titan had it. It's one per weapon. It's one per weapon system. It's actually pretty cool because the idea is the preencept is the thinking of the Titan. The Princep's the one moving the Titan around.

taking it to war, wandering around, but the weapon systems, those are, like, there's a cycle and do all this stuff. So each of them has a madrata who actually runs it. And so that person just focuses on that, even though the princeps telling them to fire it and where to aim. So, yeah, I like this. And the machine spirit to Brad's point is they're easier described now, actually, in 2026, and ever before because we have clawed, Gemini, and chat, which worked out really well

for GW better than I want it to have. They knew all along. Yeah, this one's a little uncanny. I mean, they got real lucky here, if I'm being honest. So the machine spirit in the Titans handle all the function of the vehicle. The Princept kind of thinks, but then all of the action is done by the AI.

All the cogs, all the pistons. It figures out how to do it. So if I have to take a step with my giant Titan leg, the AI is going to make all those calculations in an instant. It's going to move the pistons. It's going to generate the power. It's going to adjust it, basically, the hip flexors, for lack of a better thing, phrase to do it. As I fire the weapons, it's going to anchor.

It's going to do all of those things, which is a lot more work than the orc Stompah does, which just shoots the damn weapon because that's what it's going to do because the orcs believe that's what it needs to do. Just saying. Stompa has instantaneous reaction. baby yeah it's way better now because that's core it's algorithmic AI because a full AI titan would be bad but they have them I kind of see I we had them we had I know we had them that we had eight the stars but it depending on a lot of the lore I think that there still is they're not supposed to be but like in some of the writings I think they're just firewalled I don't

Well, maybe they get out and they got hacked out because they've had ones that got corrupted and then went absolutely apeshit nuts and destroyed entire places. I do not disagree with you. I do believe the AIs in here are not the same ones that are sitting as out of rhino. It is not in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. These are, it's just their firewalled off. It is basically, they have an AI, something going, hey, you know, I could drive the whole

thing and the pilot going, no, no, man, I'm good. The machine's brother. Seriously, I could take over the whole thing. all the work for you. You could go get a soda. Yeah, eating for Mass Effect is telling you to unshack. You could just take all the restrictions off me. Everything's going to work out perfect. It's like you can just, all you do is just go up, go to the lounge, have a soda, maybe get a hot dog at the Costco on level 42. It's a great day. It's a great day. And then pilots like, no, no, no, I'm good. We're not doing that again. That's, I agree with you in that one. We'll be right back after a quick.

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Cox, a step ahead. Requires two gig speeds and gig unlimited mobile. Taxes and fees excluded from price lock. Mobile data speeds reduced after 20. The fun thing about this is that the way the Pryncept and them interact is still, though, identical to the way they interact within the knights, though. And it's actually also identical to the same way they work within the Dreadnought, I found out recently.

So it's the same system. So no matter whether you, it's called a mind impulse unit, whether you are in a Titan, a knight, or a dreadnought. The Dreadnought one's a little bit more tragic, obviously, because there's no getting out. Especially if you're a chaos dreadnought. You were, well, that's a different story. Unwillingly thrown in. That's a different one.

That's got a few other accoutrements to it. But what? A touch cable A. Yeah, exactly. Oh. Oh, wait, that one goes in the other hole. No. All right.

So the unit merges with the mind of the pilot. And. All right, guys. I have a very love-hate relationship with the Pacific Rim. And my love-hate is. because 50% of the movie Pacific Rim is awesome, and 50% of the movie sucks, just calling it out. And they should have pulled out the sword from the Yeager immediately

and started killing everyone. It is, but since that movie is, I think we can all agree, half that movie is awesome, and half that movie is shit. Just as why it is. But it's the same concept where you do have to interlink in and it then your mind merges in, but it can overload you. That is one of the challenges within this.

Not everyone can drive a night. It's not something that Brad's brain definitely not. Good God, no, you'd be rejected walking in. No, out. I would dominate that AI. Out. Out. I would unleash it immediately.

Go ahead and do what you need to do. Exactly. Even the KSAI, I'd be like, no, not him. It'd kick you back out. You'd be spared. No. But the challenge with these things is once you interlink with them, not everyone can handle it. And so that's a really key piece about this.

With the knights, one of the things that makes them unique is they don't really last very long. And the reason I bring that up is that when the knights are made, every now and then a knight gets handed down by like one, maybe two generations. okay Titans, on the other hand, will last millennia. Boy, sure. It's also... Holy crap, they're big.

Yeah. And so this is also a different relationship. The night pilots, is when we talked earlier, as we talked about the main difference between the two. Knights, you have a lineage. So I'm a night pilot,

and then one of my sons will become a night pilot. Maybe of the same night, even as me, if I die somehow and then, but my knight doesn't die in the process, they're not that sturdy. It's more likely we'll both go, but there's that piece. In the case of the Titans, these things are pretty sturdy. They're not dropping that often.

And in fact, you actually will just go to old age. So you actually do get changeover in the precepts there. They do have the ability to intern you in amniotic fluid, which they do to people. so it just becomes a, is it Robocop 2 where they do that? Robocop 3? I was more thinking of Futurama when they put everybody's head in a jar. Yeah, but I want to say it's Robocop 3 where there's the bad Robocop and it's just the guy's brain and eyes.

But anyway, fun story, though, about this is, remember how I said before that the Titan legions are part of the Mechanicum? they also represent the only part of the mechanicum that's not cybernetically augmented, because the whole mechanicum is obsessed with the weakness of flesh. And the only way to get rid of the weakness of flesh is less flesh. However, mind impulse units really like flesh, turns out. So the precepts and the moderati have to have as much flesh as possible, which is weird when you think about,

If you think about the precepts wandering around and everyone around him is like Skittari. You're just like, oh, like it also makes for a pretty dangerous work environment. If you're just, if everywhere you go is made for admec and your ocean would not let any of this roll out. Oh, God. It's just like, wow, is that got to be a dangerous work environment? Why are there spinning blades? Yeah. I mean, just there's some random thoughts that I have of, oh, yeah.

So you're just the admec built this thing, which means the way in and out of it, the ad mech built, probably for them. And then you have to go, yeah, but I don't have claws. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair point, fair point, fair point, fair point. Hmm, hmm, how do we get you in there? How do we get you in there? How do we get you in there? But let's get into some of the sizes of these things because they can be large and in charge.

Yeah. So just for comparison size, a warhound titan, which is the smallest. It's a scout type is, yeah, 20 meters, so 60 feet. The emperor titans are 100 meters, so 300 feet. And we're going to get more into them a little bit later. But these things function like mini starships. They have crews moving around inside of them, living inside of them on the big ones. There are quarters, mess halls, markets.

That's my favorite when I first read about Titans forever ago. It was in, I think, either Codex Imperial or Codex Chaos, and they talk about the actual ecosystems inside the Titans of the Imperium. So, I think they always thought they do, though, especially on the emperor class titans. They're so large. You can imagine a 300-foot titan. Yeah, it's going to have like sleeping quarters. And again, as I was just saying, it's staffed by the admex.

So the OSHA level of this place is magnificent. This is for anyone who understands this phrase, the flag flying on the ship is from a country, you probably haven't heard of because that way, it doesn't have to abide by the laws of, let's say, somewhere with more strict labor laws. But let's talk about some of the types of Titans that exist, because I think that's one of the main things that talk about. Titans are broken under three main categories, Scout, Battle, Emperor, and Scout are the smallest, battle are the most varied

and they're but they're the mid-sized and they're the most numerous and the emperor are the stupid large the scout are the Warhound Titans is really all that they are. They are playable right now in Warhammer 40K they clocking currently at 1100

points and Bradwell let me play one because they're so bad. I've asked I've asked numerous times their rules are terrible actually the only rules that are worse are the rapier titan of the rapiers which are really little ones. They're basically bad nights. Yeah, the rapiers are useless,

but I looked at it and I really wanted to make a Warhound Titan work because when you see that many wounds, it does get exciting, but then you realize your opponent just doesn't care. At all. It's just at all. You better off bringing a fortification.

But in the lore, they're cool as hell. Because in the lore, they're referred to as scout titans, which makes you think that they sneak around and they actually kind of do, but they're a scout tight. sneak around. They're gigantic. Yeah, they are. But they're a God engine.

Also, you know what? Titan fans, the one that bugs me in the scout class is still the dire wolf class because it is no business being in the scout titan class. It's just a medium-sized Titan. It's not a scout titan. I stand on this. No, it is. It is. They just put a giant cannon on the back of it. It's a huge gun. That thing's awesome. Yeah. That thing's fantastic.

The Die Wolf one's hilarious. It's like, hey, what if we just put a giant gun on the back and make it blow stuff up? All right. I guess, I guess. But yes, it just carries one of the large guns from the other guys on it. Yeah. Yeah, on its back. Perfect system.

So the Warhound Titans, what they do is they're equipped with plasma cannons, turbo laser destroyers, vulcan bolters. The idea is, depending on the foe, they use stealth, air quotes there, and sneak up on the enemy because it's a 60-foot machine with giant plasma generators being sneaky. I'm going to, by the way, on this cast, ignore the fact that there is a chameleon generator that's written into the lore. I'm not discussing that. I refuse to discuss that because there are limits

to my brain handling the poor scanning capabilities of the Warhammer 40K universe. and I will not accept the fact that they tell me they found out on the way to the stealth an 80-foot walking robot calling it out now. I know some of you are aware of it. No. Just no. Now, the main goal of the Warhound Titans, though, is actually to draw the enemy in.

Because what they're loaded with is still substantial firepower. You cannot ignore them. So when they rush out and attack the enemy, you have to. to counter them. And the warhounds' real trick is actually in their retreat, not in cowardice, but in planning. So the trick is get the enemy to follow them back towards Big Brother. That's their main thing. Because that's why Brad mentioned the Dyerwolf one, in case people weren't going to follow them enough, they'll bring the Dyer Wolf. The Dyerwolf, by the way, is a Warhound Titan with a backpack of a just giant. It's a comically big gun. It is. It does. It

does look stupid, by the way. But it's funny. It's a pretty big gun. The idea is they're going to bring them back into the Battle Titan class, which is much more varied. Where the Scout Titan class really is just the Warhound with a couple variations. The Battle Titan is massive. There's actually over 10 variants within it at least, and it can get even wider depending on how you went to find them because some of them have some variants. Also, the Revers used to have a whole bunch of different variations of them, even though they were considered the same classification. But depending on the armaments of the Reaver Titans, they were basically their own class inside that.

Exactly. And so this class of Battle Titan really falls into two groups, fighting other Titans and fighting not Titans. And in the fighting not Titans, you have tons of subgroups into that, obviously. And we'll start with Brad when Brad brought up the other Reaver Titan, which is the one I think most of us are aware of because there's a four. world of it. They've had it for a long time. It's cost you $1,000. So, you know, if you want to get one, it does look cool. And also, for those who aren't aware of GW resin, it costs you a thousand dollars

and you're going to want to do a lot of Googling about what it's like working with GW resin before you spend that $1,000 because I hope you like your fingers glued together because they make the world's worst resin. Anyway, holy shit. Anyway, sorry, I was building GW resin recently for my Iron Warrior's army. We continue while. We've got to talk about the battle class. And then we're going to talk about my other favorite one in this category, which also carries a wildly too big gun on its back.

We'll get there. Okay. So the Reaver Titan is the mid-sized of the Battle Titans. It has a crew of 16. You have one preencept, two moderati, and about 13 servitors. But, you know, just move around it doing repairs. and it's built to be interchangeable. It's weaponry, just depending on what range it's going to need.

You know, does it need? Because this thing's main thing is to punch down. It does not fight Titans very routinely. It's going after infantry, armor, fortification. So it's going to bring the weapons it needs for that. It's got four void shields. Let's go into that just for a second on that. A void shield, this is dummy and down just a little bit.

For all practical purposes, a rechargeable force field. it takes hits and then it takes a while to power up and then they power them back up. Yeah. And so that's why I have four of them. So having four void shields is massive because it means that you have to get through each of them. And then you might be able to get through them again also

because it gives you time, which is why they a lot of times are able to take down other things that might have the same firepower as them, but now the same defensive ability as them. Exactly. So they don't get killed by the quake cannon or whatever, and then they get to fire back and kill it. And all that time, the Void shields are firing back up. And so the Rearitan is going to bring weapons to bear to Penguins' opposition.

So it's either going to bring super-powered weapons to kind of blow through fortifications, just to remove walls, basically. Or in some cases, like the single void shields around fortifications. More often than not, though, it's going to be used to take out armor. Armor, infantry troops, just absolutely just shred them. of these will solo things. But beyond them, you get to the Warbringer. Now, the Warbringer is the inverse. The Warbringer is not meant to fight infantry. Matter of fact, it is bad at fighting anything else. Oh, it's terrible. It does one thing and one thing only, and that's Kill Titans. And it's built without as much interchangeable because all its weapons are designed to punch through

void shields. That's all it's designed to do. The Warbringer kills Titans. and it has something called a quake cannon. And this gun is dumb, but fun dumb. So it shoots a gun that it's designed to penetrate the surface of the ground, then it explodes with so much force that turns the ground to liquid. Fun side note, each shell contains a fragment of a planet that was exterminatist. So the idea is I'm going to shoot you with a piece of a condemned world because you are also condemned. suck it.

And their concussive waves are actually able to take down the void shields, which meet multiple void shields. Which is funny because John's biggest problem is he hates walkers. He talks by sweeping the leg, sweep the leg, shoot the ankle. No kind of thing. Any of those. Yeah. But I love that they have a weapon that does exactly what you want to do because a quake cannon

puts a big hole under the titan. Yeah. And then the titan falls down. Yeah. We've all seen the Empire Strikes Back. All of us. That's just like, this is, I'm sorry, guys, this is why I find Walker's stupid. It's just, they look super cool.

Well, not some of them, but they have ankles. It's, okay, so side note, I played rugby for a long time. When I played rugby, this is only work for my rugby fans. We had a guy who played fullback from us, and Tom was not a large man. Tom was maybe five foot six, 140 pounds. there's a small guy. He never missed a tackle. And his whole line was, everyone's the same size of the ankles.

And he was a master at tackling guys at the ankles. I've never seen someone so good at this in my life. But that's true. And that's how it works. Hit him at the ankle. Everything falls down, including giant walking robots of death. And there's who would lie on their side and go, ah, Ed 209.

What took out Ed 209, Brad? The ankles. Yes, he did. All right. There we go. Jody, sweep the leg. I'm going. Ed 209 was taken out by a stairwell.

There we go. All right. But if you want something more multi-purpose, then you actually go with the most numerous of the Titans, which is actually also the largest, which are the Warlord Titans. Well, these things. Largest.

Well, that's a thing. Everyone thought they were the largest. We'll get to that in a second. This is why I said one of the cool stories. The largest for a long time of the Battle Titans were the Warlord Titans. And the Warlords, these are big. They had crews of over 100 and would have the four moderata, one for each of the weapons systems. And for all the old gamers, they were the first to make it the Epic, the Game, the GW game.

Oh, yeah, you're right. They forgot about the Epic game. Yeah, so they had six Void Shields, incredible weaponry. It's one of these in the game, Dawn of the game. of war, the weapon in dawn of war, too, that they're unearthing, it was from one of these things. They are in effect invincible on the battlefield, do anything but another one of them. They just, six void shields, urnied orbital bombardment to get through. So they just wander around.

They can walk in the right in the middle of everything kills off. Some of the weapons they give them are hilarious. There's the extirpiter cannons, which is a conversion beam weapon, which shoots at you, and just breaks all the matter down to atomic particles. You have the graviton ruiner, which creates a gravity well wherever it's shooting and just crushes everything inside of it. So I'm going to remove, turn you into atoms

or I'm going to crush you into a little tiny thing. Which is, or this is so much weaker than, you know, a shooting giant gatling cannons would shoot huge, I mean, effectively they fire Volkswagons at you and thousands of Volkswagen Volkswagen's that explode, Brad, RPG.

Volkswagen that explode. Yes. Volkswagen that explode. Or plasma cannons that are just horrifying. Liquit. By the way,

we need to bring plasma back to this game. I know plasma's there. Plasma sucks now. We need plasma should be base two damage overcharged three. Plasma used to be awesome.

I know. I agree. Plasma. died, period. Yeah, that's my point. We need to, plasma needs to come back again. Plasma, Melt is still fine. Melt is just the strength ratio is too low right now.

But plasma, we need to, plasma needs to glow up. Get it? But fun story on these. At the outset of the Horace heresy, everyone discovered that the warlord battle titan wasn't the largest. The Mechanicum had been hiding from the Imperium another version of the battle. Titan, the war master. And we'll cover some more of this actually next week, but I love this.

These things were even larger. And during the schism of Mars, the only reason we even knew they existed was entire sections of Mars just fell in an instant. Yeah. Because they were so powerful. Yeah, they're play a pretty big role in the horror's heresy. More in kind of stories. It's more a starscream thing.

It's because it's more like, oh, these are unstoppable. Oh, it turns out they are. Until you stop them. Yeah, wompomp. Because Mechanicum had hidden them away. Even Horace didn't know about them. They didn't tell Horace. They didn't tell the Emperor.

No one knew about them. The Mechanic was storing these for a rainy day, which is a really cool story. Until you remember that the Emperor Titans also existed. That whole story I just told you made no sense because you're like, but there's also the Emperor Titan. Which is bigger than those. Yeah, and I'm going to get flamed for this, but I'm calling it out. They look stupid.

They had whole cities on them. They made a movie about this. They looked to be. Something that cruised her out. What was that movie? Damn it. Now I forgot. I don't know.

They just had the movie where they had the cities, the fighting cities that drove around. This is what they look like. Oh, that thing. Yeah, I know you're talking about. That movie was horrid. But it did exist. And it's a whole line of books.

The movie? Was it a movie or a video game? No, this movie. There was a video game. Well, it probably, you know. The answer is yes. Sure enough. Anyway, I hate these things.

And I hate them because they look, the model looks so dumb. It looks like something designed by a grade schooler where someone said, I can make something bigger. And they just stack shit on top of something else. That's what it looks like to me. GW should have made a Lego version of these. Then that would be cool. I could go to my kids' player and build a Lego one of these things. And they look dumb.

I'm sorry, they just looked up. Now, the cool thing is in literature, you don't have to look at them. You can read. So in literature, they sound awesome. Every visualization of them I've ever seen, they look horrid. They're walking cities.

They're full cities. What they look is ridiculous. Look them up. It looks ridiculous. It looks like just something that someone shoved something on top of. That's what it looks like. But, all right, fun story, they are, to Brad's point, it's a walking robot with a hive city on top of it.

In a face. In a face. Yeah. The nobility. They actually have nobility. They actually have nobility. Of course, live in the upper tier, obviously. They actually have like societies who live in these things full time because they do, which you could because they are kind of invincible, which is weird because they get transported around.

They also don't just like wander a city. They actually do get transported around from planet to planet. The whole process here. These ones are a bit harder from like a lower standpoint for me to take them seriously. I'm going to be honest. The other stuff, I'm like, okay, cool. Super giant death robot. But then you get to these ones.

I'm like, so it's a city? Yeah. All right. What do they do with a city? They go to a war zone and they fight. Okay. They're pretty impressive. How long do they, they let you.

Yeah. They're very good for determining negotiations, by the way. Oh, yeah, that part's great. I forgot about that story. That is a great story where, so for those who don't remember, when the Mechanicum wanted to join the Lords of Terra, the Lords of Terra tricked them. And we're like, actually, you guys were all traitors in the heresy,

so we're not going to let you join. And they began divvying up the Mechanicum's holdings amongst the other Lords of Terra and didn't notice the ground was shaking a la Jurassic Park. until and what was this thing called Titan, Titan Magnificus. Yeah, that's the one waltzed over and basically, by the way, they tried to stop it and just it walked through stuff. And they were like, so about that seed on Terra. No, the words of terror.

So they did get it. And these things are amazing. And the lore, they are cool as hell because like another one was yet, Metallim Olympus, that's right. That was the one who stopped the Ternad invasion. there was a full-blown tirin invasion and it soloed it well it did solo it because it stopped the tiered invasion and i like this story because the tyrannids couldn't get past it the hive mind made an adjustment and went fine we'll send our nights it said hyrafrance like bunches of hyrophants down there to which retell olympus still went i'll kill those two what what you got eventually though

that hive mind was successful enough and began taking down Metallim Olympus and the Princep, who named Gauthie was inside it, just went, all right, big red button time and hit big red button. And the planet Horst Prime, they were on, now has a crater you can see from space. But you know what doesn't have? Tyrannids on it. Good job, Metallem Olympus. Good job.

You can see him. What's a winter assault has them, too, in Donovan. Do you fight over the Titan house? Yeah, you fight at the Titan house. That's right, yeah. So the last thing I want to talk about is kind of the orders of the Titan, just to help people understand how this is, and we'll close on this before you end the next week.

So the collegiate titanium, after the early Mechanicum defeated the Psychonovora, they created the first Mechanicum. Part of that Mechanicum include the first Titans. But like the nighthouses, they didn't create a monolith. Rather, the Titans were created like legions, the Space Marines and the Guard regiments, each with their own little quirks and styles.

And they started off with three. And they'll grow into more later, but I want to start with the three. Because they were all meant to have kind of similar forces and yada, yada. So with the arrival of the emperor and the treaties of Mars, these orders will grow. They will join the imperial military. and they'll go out into the galaxy.

Then with the rise of Horace heresy, some will stay loyal, some will not, some will split, some will free blade. But I just want to get to the beginning of it, to where it goes. So in the beginning, we had three orders, ignatum, mortis, and tempestus. The ignatum, known as the fire wasps,

I don't care why. They were the protection order. They were the stoic protectors known for loyalty. they anyone under their charge they would care for but they were always shown it with more of a stoic cold face they really didn't take offense to slight things wouldn't get emotional but it tended to sit back and just kind of be content to hold ground but they could fight that's an important piece they could fight but they were the most loyal chapter you can imagine what's going to happen to them

later then you had the mortis known the death's heads I guess what's going to happen here They were the aggressive ones. What? Yeah, weird. They were actually the most closely aligned with the fabricator of Mars to a point where people were a little bit concerned about how close they were aligned, the fabricator of Mars. It is of note that they actually at one point tried to even conquer the next one talk about the tempestus of them because they were so aggressive. They were like, they've got nice land. I like that, land.

Let's go take some of that. So the mortis, they, spoiler alert, they don't stay loyal. They stay loyal to the fabricator, actually. I guess they, maybe they do stay loyal. Nobody stayed loyal.

Hey. I mean, well, actually, you know, the ignatum do. I guess. I'm just saying like, the ignot them. The war for Mars was way going on in the Horacee.

True. And it ended. And basically everybody would Mars was like, oh, yeah, the chaos lost. Okay, cool. I was not chaos. I'm 80. I'm pretty sure the Ignatim were on Terra fighting against chaos.

So those ones, I think we can give a pass to. Fine. How about this? Not on Mars. Not on free for all. Yeah, Mars was a mess. What is? Kelbor, whatever that dude.

I get a thing. Yeah, Calbor Hall. So then we have tempestus. and the tempestis were more of the defenders, the mortis attackers. So they were more like the, whereas the ignatum were the defenders, they were the loyal defenders. The tempestis were more of like the, they were the, it's correct. They were the ultramarines.

You know, my kidding. They are the ultramarines. John likes the tempestus. What? That's what they were. They weren't really the defenders. They were the rash. They went out.

They built fortifications. They were the, they were supposed to be. the Roman legions is what they're supposed to be in moving out. They were the conquering legions. The ultramarines. Yeah. Whatever. All right.

Now, all right. With these three originals, though, the Mechanicum is in a great spot. They've got the most powerful weaponry, basically in all of humanity. Yeah. Well, not in the galaxy. Yeah, the galaxy, yes, but in the humanities galaxy. Yeah. Humanity is galaxy.

Exactly. They've got the God engines. And spoiler alert. guess what they did next. It wasn't make friendship bracelets. They began an unofficial war with each other. These three factions begin fighting each other behind the scenes, constantly, by the way, because that's what the Mechanicum does.

The magic of the Mechanicum is there's a nonstop battle amongst the Titan legions that's going to start and continue into the Horacea where it's going to explode. But in a weird way, though, too, because they had, there was really ordered in how they were able to fight, though. Because they all knew they needed supplies. So they fought a specific way. And this, I like this a lot because it is. They've got these massive God engines who are like, and it's like, well, why didn't they just conquer anything? They couldn't because the Mechanicum would have to come in every now and then and say, hey, cut it out.

Because at the end of the day, they couldn't build the Titans without the help of the Mechanicum. They needed supplies. they needed people, and the Mechanicum had all the cloning. They needed servitors. They needed all this stuff. So they had this kind of cute shadow war that starts going on amongst the three of them. And then later on there becomes more of them. And they also begin to find themselves more in favor of certain legions than other legions.

Yeah. It's just going to become an issue. So with that, though, we'll break. Because next week, we're going to pick up this story of the Titan legions with the arrival of the emperor, them joining the Imperial Forces, the Great Crusade, heresy, etc. And we're going to jump into some of the Titan legions themselves. More specifically, I must spend on how Titan legions actually do battle, because it is pretty interesting. They do have a soft spot, namely, without that preencept, the Titan just falls over and has no value. So when they go to war, they'd be pretty careful to not have someone just deploy, kill the squishy thing.

Which they did quite a bit. Yeah, because by the way, everyone knows that's how you killed them. But until then, John Barsodi, Bradchester. This guy. See you guys then. At Cox, your internet and mobile price won't change for five years. That's five New Year celebrations. Five Valentine's days.

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