The 40k Lorecast - Episode 149 - Titan Legions pt 2 - Machine Spirits, Maniples, and the Heresy.

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

On Today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the Titan Legions. With a short dive into the machine spirit itself. From there we go into how the Titan legions go to war both with their Maniples as well as their support forces. Then we talk a bit more about the organization of the Legio Titanica before going over the history of them in the Heresy.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 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. With me, John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. Today, we are going to be finishing up our coverage of the Titan legions. Well, for now, with a dive into the machine spirit, the legions at war and some of their history as part of the Imperium. And a little bit not the Imperium, we'll get to it. For those who don't know, don't know how you don't, but just in case, the 40K lorecast, weekly show in the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday

at 7 p.m. Eastern, please follow and comment because I like reading the comments and all your followers make us seem more important than we really are in reality. So, thank you. I'm important. We are not. We are not in the grand scheme of things. In the grand scheme of things, the level of importance. That is also like a wild obscure Star Wars, Star Trek reference in this episode. That was a race. We are strong. And then they just started getting their ass to cake. They go, We are not strong. Yes. All right.

Links in the show notes to lots of stuff like our YouTube channel where every now and then we do Q&As. I've moved away from the bi-monthly-ish because it's just a lie at this point. So we do Q&As on occasion. You also get a link to Brad's other channel, the Brad channel, especially what's called, where he does a lot more coverage of competitive 40K. Really great. I also have a couple of rants up there too. Those will happen.

We should talk about our discipline. Yeah. Now, we should talk about the history of 40Ks where people can learn about, so everyone who's playing the game now is like, this game doesn't seem fair. You are correct, but you have no idea how unfair it could be. So check out the history of 40K to learn how unfair it used to be. You can also, if you like my voice,

check out my show Retro Recall, where I play old video games and discover if they were good or bad. Oftentimes, eh. What's the hardest game that you played so? far since you've had it out? Hardest game was Lion King. It's Lion King or Battletoads. Although I'm just getting into the FPS.

I actually, fun story. It hasn't come out yet. It's not for probably a month from the time of recording. But I went in, we were doing Quake. So I went in and actually you can still play Quake One online. Turns out those people who are playing it are still playing it online and they're still shit talking. I went into the server.

That makes me so happy. It was so, I went in like, oh, God. What's happened? They're still there. Like, what's happened since you were 13 and talking shit? Nothing. Nothing. They're all, they were just, they're waiting for me to relive that memory.

I'm assuming they're also exploding you to 30 years. Oh, it didn't go well. Some dude just flying through the sky firing a rocket at me and calling me a bitch. It was fun. But you can also support us. You can support us two ways. You can go to our website and check out our merchandise, but it's pretty nice. including the stickers.

Or you can support us on Patreon. Patreon is something I actually really do like a lot to me. I feel very strongly about. I have friends who are musicians. I have friends who are artists. Patreon is a great way to support them, especially thanks to Spotify and AI, destroying those two industries.

So you can go to Patreon and help them out. You know, also go to Patreon to help us out. Our Patreon, $4.99, gets you this show and the history of 40K ad-free, or 307.75,000, Philippine pesos. Because today, we're going to Cebu, because I went there and I like it a lot. Cebu is actually technically a collection of almost 200 islands around one big island, but great place to go because it's located kind of in the center of the archipelago.

Is it archipelago? I'm going to archipelago. There we go. The archipelago that is the Philippines. And so when you go there, the scuba diving is really good. You get a lot of coral, a lot of stuff. So clear, dude. thing. Yeah, the dynamite fishing thing is a bit about pain in the ass. That's a side note for a different day. I had a great blast. I went there and I went to Sikihor, which was really cool. Beaches are gorgeous. Local foods good. I really like the garlic rice for breakfast thing. That's just cool.

Just delicious, by the way. And then let's on. Oh, let's yawn. For those who don't know, Cebu was where the first Spanish colony in the Philippines is and anyone with the basic knowledge of history knows, that's probably not a good thing. So we'll skip past that and get to the real reason you go there. Nature. They've got a great airport, so it's easy to get in and out of. And the main city is kind of a great little hub. Like for me, it was 20 hours to get there.

So it was nice, after 20 hours, staying in a nice big, like high-rise hotel, just getting used to everything and then setting off of the coastal stuff. Because that water, as Brad said, is amazing. It's full of life. You've got some nice wrecks you can dive, but shallow enough that it's not a stupid, dangerous one. Check out Sabo. really good time. But as Brad tried to jump the shark into earlier, we also have a Discord. That's what I do. And a great place to interact with a bunch of people. Our Discord's grown.

It's, I think we're at 12,000 something strong now, which is incredible. Get in there, hang out with some people, ask a bunch of questions, talk to Brad and I. Talk to other people, more importantly. Brad and I are, you know, we're two of the 12,000. So, you know, the minority there. One, two. Talk to the other people. Yeah, talk to other people, get literature recommendations, get painting advice, get, you know, gameplay advice, or just screw around. It really is a great place. It's so much better than Reddit, and that was kind of the goal. And again, it's free because we don't charge for Discord because we're not. Anyway, for the Titans. I want to throw in, want to start with this on this because we didn't talk about this last time.

and I did a lot of looking over the names of the Titans and how they do it and stuff like that. And I didn't realize because I kind of thought they were getting like three names serial killer names. Like Billy Joe Bob is a Titan. But all the Titans, the big Titans, get two word high Gothic names. And because of their importance, they full on get like the roster of this is this registered. they basically retire their jersey when they're built, which I think is really wild. Yeah, the title,

the emperor class titans are special. And it's because it's, what's interesting is I can't find how long it takes to build them. I was looking at that too, because they all get named all of the, basically every Titan is considered, you know, christening of it.

It's a big deal for when they have these done. Right. But yeah, I couldn't find it anywhere. It just says, takes a while. That's the best I got. But one thing I did want to talk about was the machine spirit. And we've talked about it before. I felt this is probably one of the best casts to really dive a bit more into the machine spirit. Because GW does this great thing with the machine spirit that I really appreciate. They keep the machine spirit vague, not opaque, but vague.

They leave kind of hints here and there about what it might be, but they never confirm anything. And I love this. I like it a lot because of the fact that also you're going to look at old rules were actually better for the machine spirit. The machine spirit used to be able to fire at a different, which was a big deal because you couldn't fire it at different targets on it. The machine spirit could fire at a different target at a different ballistic skill than the rest of the crew.

Yeah, it's like having Gretchen of your works. But the thing I like about this is because one of my biggest pet peeves in everything is in within sci-fi when they tried a logic or science sci-fi. Yeah, don't get me started at it. I'm a Star Wars fan. We know where we're going. We are all Star Wars fans. And when mitochondrions were built, and I looked this up, do you know what year

mitochondorians came out, Brad? May of 1999. Tell me Star Wars didn't go down. The only upside since then was Rogue One and Mandalorian, but that's kind of been TBD to this point. And or, and or, there's season two coming out, but season two is coming out.

The problem with Star Wars is I never will say a thing in Star Wars is good until they stop making more of them. I'll give you the, like Rogue One is, yeah, Rogue One is great because they went, there's no Rogue Two. Yeah. So Rogue one, fantastic. We're good.

You know, same with a lot of the video games. Nice of the old Republic, fantastic, because they only made two of them. They could have made a third and ruined the whole thing. You know, it's just, that's kind of their M.O. But anyway, the machine spirit, GW, listened and were smart. And they've kept it as this, like, it's an AI, but not totally an AI with a very hard wink there. And the best way I can describe the machine spirit, in my opinion, is it's like they take a full-blown

AI and then they give it lead poisoning. I was just to say they poison. It's not... Like lead poisoning. It just drops the IQ. They take an AI and drop the bigger deal because the Titans are so big, they need effectively a better AI.

So the machine spirits in the Titans are significantly more than the machine spirit that's in a Land Rader. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think that in my opinion, just my opinion, what they needed to do was take this genius AI that they know,

know it would just take over and like, I'm in charge now. And yeah, men of iron. That was easy. And we're like, oh, also they'd probably win pretty hard now because a bunch of people would worship them. So yes. Oh, that's also that piece too. It would be a God, wouldn't it?

And they just load it down because it does. These giant machines, the AI has to go. It has to run these calculations. It has to adjust. Even makes emergency repairs. And it has to be able to do all these things. But for some reason, the machines. Spirits cannot do any of that without a human interface.

It's almost like it's always asking permission to do everything. Like I can run it. I feel like they really, I like the fact that I just opened that up so loud. Yeah, it was super. Look, man. Jesus Christ, we do it into the microphone next time? Dude, I was trying. I did it so far.

I did it at the maximum length of my arms. All right, so a foot and a half. I don't even know if it's that. I was going to edit it out. Now I can't because it's actually too funny to edit it. Yeah. So one of the things I like about these machine spirits is I like the fact that it was almost like scrap code in a lot of the smaller machinery. But in a Titan, they had to unleash it or at least unleash it with some permissions on it.

But Titan is just too massive and has too many systems going that we can. Yeah. Let's talk about it a little bit. Because, like, there is no machine. There's a variation to this. Because if you ask the ad mech, there is a machine spirit in a Las Reefel. And everything. There's not.

Yeah, but I'm saying you got to remember that we do all, the Imperium does all of the rights to honor the machine spirit and all of the machinery. The funny thing is we'll eventually do. We did it about travel before. but eventually we're going to do an entire episode on what goes on in the largest of the ships in the Imperium because those also have some crazy crap going on. Yeah, you probably all saw it when those of you who played Space Marine 2. You can see with where they're actually, they have the candles lit all around everything. It's like, isn't that just the computer?

Just press control, enter. Yeah. Nope. Yeah. And to be fair, if you don't press, if you don't light the candle, the control, enter will not work. Yeah. I think they did a great job of it also in Rogue Trader and the DFCs for it are fantastic

with because they have an entire life that's going on in the ship. People live, die, and generations are in that ship. But those also have monstrous machine spirits that are running these flying cities. And that's the thing. What happens is that on the, my point was like, on Las Rifle is not really a machine spirit. But as it starts get bigger and stuff that we see in the game. A rhino does have a machine spirit, but it's just minimal. It helps the pilot be able to move.

It also starts fixing the vehicle. That machine spirit does. It will to a point. But when you get up to Land Raider, Bainblade, now it starts to really kick, and then you get to the Titans, and it's even bigger. And so they get really, when we have this, they're more self-aware and they're more, I don't know if they're even more self-aware. they're just a bigger, larger, vast, or maybe just more unchained, because they have to be in charge of more stuff.

So they tap into them more. Exactly. And one of the things I like about this is they also seem to become more sentient as it gets bigger. And this could just be something, the way I kind of also see this is it might just be the more machinery that's inside something, the more machine spirit that gets combined. And so what happens is it's like the geth. you know, that just becomes more of a consciousness. Yeah, the more of you get more and more together. And so they talk about this.

So the night pilots are very aware of this. And the night pilots are known for actually struggling against it. Well, one of the problem. Well, they, I love that the night machine spirits get very, very territorial about their house honor and everything that goes along with that. If somebody wrongs them, like, you're going to have to fight that off pretty hard. if you're not going to go kill everybody to talk shit. Although randomly, an interesting thing is that actually supposedly

intentional on the part of the ad neck. There is rumor and it's written down to remember, not like, you know, I read this on Reddit rumor. It's in some of the novels. You know, just got to caveat that, that some of the machine spirits, the original machine spirits, they actually took terran animals,

like dogs, you know, lions, that kind of thing. and actually used some of their instinct and added that into the machine spirit. And the idea around this is kind of cool. They wanted the knights and these big things to behave when they're injured like a wounded beast to be actually more aggressive and fight back. And the idea is that way it'll fight through injury. It'll help the pilot fight through injury. But to Brad's point, it also has an issue of honor then became kind of a problem

where you're not actually injured, you've just been dishonored. And now you become laser focused on getting that honor back. So backfired a little bit. Now, when you get to a warhound titan, this gets to be insane. Because, you know, now we're talking not necessarily how 9,000, but more like, I don't know, this is late 90s. We're doing Bishop Ash, the Army of Darkness, Ash, by the way. Alien Ash.

Alien Ash. I would say Alien Ash. Yeah. But the idea is a Titan, like when a preencept, probably the moderatae too, link into the machine spirit, it greets them by name. It's where, how 9,000 does. Like, hello, David. Nice to see you today.

But it's even despite its sentience there, it's still not advanced enough to do anything. So it's just like hyper-intelligent pet that sits there and goes, Hey, Brad, what are we doing today? And you're like, we're going to go over there. Same thing. We're doing every day, breaking. Taking over the world. Yeah, destroying the heretics.

Sounds awesome. Let's do this. Because the machine spirit, I like it as a pet too. Because I think of the machine spirit. I just want to do the bidding of the Princep. Whatever you want, let's go do this. This is going to be awesome. But at the same time,

The prentzap has to also kind of soothe the machine spirit. Another story I like is that, you know, obviously they have to be transported between the worlds. These can be very long journeys. And so they have to be secured because you can't disassemble a tit. I mean, you can, but you really don't want to. Because imagine if you disassemble, it would be kind of a funny invasion where you land, then you have to build a structure so you can then rebuild the time.

Titan and the end of interesting. Hey guys, hold on a second. Just hold on for like one week. We're going to build this thing and then we can kick your ass. But there's just no shooting at us for one week when we build this thing to kick your ass. Also, one of the sucky parts, one of the short stories talks about the fact that the AIs actually feel all of the time and they don't get it distorted by the warp. So regular humans are like, oh, man, it feels like we've only been gone for weeks. But it's actually been years.

The A's like, I've been counting every minute down when we've gone. Yeah. And so, yeah, they sit there and they actually talk like they're freaking out inside there. So the preenps have to like stay close to the Titan and like work with a tech priest to calm it. Get it out of its anxiety. You have to ask yourself, which by the way. How much of the rituals are actually doing something? They sound so silly because when you look down the start button for the Landrater and all that,

but you have to actually do the litanyes before. How much of this is to calm? Does it work? Is it actually working to calm them down? I just want to point out, and I know you're going to support me on this, on how much of a miss GW had here on not writing one story, not a single one where the Titan is B.A. Baracchus, and they're trying to get on a transport.

They keep having to drug it together. Drug it with some milk. I mean, how did they not do that one time? Just one time. I'm not getting on that airplane. It's okay. I understand, you know, grand blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever your name is. Would you like some of this delicious drink?

And then he just wakes up, you did it again! Would have been great. Would have been great. And if you guys don't know what that reference is, screw you for being too young. Eight. Yeah. All right.

But let's now talk about the original Titan legions and where they came from. So as you said last week, the Titan legions started with three. As the Great Crusade continued, many human colonies were discovered. some of those colonies, though, had developed their own independent worship of technology, which is kind of an implication that the cult of the Omnisiah might have its roots in the golden age of technology. Because they're very... Because of...

They were spread out through the galaxy. There was tons of these cults all over the place. So it had to be something of that danger. Yeah, because the stupid emperor, you know, punched the stupid dragon in the face and put it on stupid Mars. Like, we know what happened here. We covered that last week. that story sucked.

But as these forge worlds were discovered, they kind of joined the Imperium, but in reality, they joined the Mechanica as Forge Worlds. So they're both part of the Imperium and this independent entity because of that. And some of these forge worlds possess technology in manufacturing capabilities to produce Titans of their own. It's not clear if these got already had Titans or if they just were then like, hey, here's how you build a Titan. and they built Titans. I can't find it. I could be wrong. Feel free to go into Discord and tell me which way that is, but it felt more like they would get there and they'd say, okay, you guys can

produce Titans now. But then time becomes an issue. So either way, the ranks of the Titan legions grew. Fun story, though, as they grew, so did the internal strife. Because Titan Legions don't like, I mean, let me tell you admec doesn't like admec. We're calling a spade of spade here. Admec does not like Admec at all. They're very jealous people. Yeah, they're always trying to find secrets and keep them. Yes. And we touched us last week, but we dive in a bit more, because the legions of the Astardes and the Titan houses are very similar in that they're independent of each other. So like the legions of the Astardais, you know, they sit in this weird spot. The Astardes are under command of the emperor and surrounded by the Imperial Army.

The Titan houses are under the command of the Mechanicum and surrounded by the Force of the Mechanicum. The legions of the Astardais were competitive with one another, but it was a good competition. Some of them didn't like each other, but even though it didn't like each other, we weren't trying to kill each other until, you know, later, later totally killed each other. But initially it was just like, hey, I want to prove I'm the greatest warrior. There were a couple conflicts. Obviously, that came up. but it was mostly out of being the best warrior. And some of the conflicts would obviously come out of like, hey,

that's not how we fight. Well, they did fight pretty hard at the end of the age of strides when they were trying to take back Mars from the nonsense that was going on there. Yeah. But the difference about the top of the Astaireys, I'm saying within the Space Marine legions, like you did have some obviously. No, I was just talking about the Titans.

Titans were fighting. Oh, yeah. Way earlier. In the flip side, the Titans were just, the Mechanicum just has contempt for itself. that. The houses, the Titan houses, genuinely had contempt for the other Titan houses. They viewed each of them as being inferior to themselves, not deserving of any of the

resources they're getting, and basically trying to convince the rest of the Mechanicum to just make them the only Titan Legion. Coming out of the Age of Strife, taking back Mars was just a shit show. Because you had the remnants of the AI, you had whatever the hell, half the population became, which they kind of leave that. They're also all cloning. I mean, it is, it's not, and half them are robot people.

It's not ideal. Yeah. Mars was like a crazy place for a while. But what I like about the Mechanica then has this huge problem of these, all these Titan houses basically just want to kill each other. But making a Titan is not easy, and they have to not let them do that because it's an immediate Pyrrhic victory. It's like, okay, so there's two Titan houses fought.

All the Titans are gone. except for those two Titans that are left, this isn't really ideal for us. So what the Mechanicum starts doing is basically just starting off supplies. Because the way the Imperium functions looks like an idiocy, but it's actually clever. Because it looks like a bureaucratic nightmare, but it's genius. So what they'll do to stop rebellion is you'll have a planet that makes more than enough food to suffice the planet. and they'll make it so none of that food stays on the planet. All the food leaves the planet and the food that they eat has come from another planet.

And what this does is it makes it so in order for that planet to go into rebellion, you know because they stop shipping food off planet. This is what happened in the Bedab Wars. When Huron stopped letting the supplies go, they knew there was a problem right away. They didn't do anything about it, but they knew there was a problem right away. So this is a very clever trick the Imperium has always had to kind of know when rebellion is. And also, you need a wild amount of resources to make a Titan itself. Exactly.

So the Mechanicum starts doing this. The mechanism is basically goes, look, you guys can obviously make these things, but we're just going to give you people because we have all the cloning. And we're going to stop having ships show up with supplies. So good luck building something with dirt. and this way, they stop shooting each other. So then it becomes more of a shadow war. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Until I was to say, I did what I did before Horace came to town. Yeah, Horace makes it less shadowy. Now, with that, before we get into this, I do with how the legions go to war, because when they do go to war, it's super cool. So the Legion structure is a little bit different than everything else in the imperial. First off, at the head of every legion is a tech priest, which, duh, they're branched the Mechanicum.

So all their deployments, all their actions, they're determined by a Magi of the Forge World they're attached to, who then reports back to and is beholden to the Tech Priests of Mars, duh, obviously. But when they go to war, the Mechanicum function just like the Space Marine. This is wild because... so you can tell them to do something, but they still have to just agree to do something. Now, you can't, you can ask them to do. Well, you can basically pull out your contract and say on blind B slide 8, it says you're supposed to do this,

but they still just have to agree to show up or they can. Yeah. And a lot of times in the stories, they just won't, which I think is crazy. They are, the Titan legions operate as almost independence. You have to solicit them, for lack of a better phrase. The only people who can requisition a Titan, at least in modern 40K, are the Inquisition. And that's just because they are genuinely doing things in theory for the survival of the Imperium.

A lot of debate about that. A lot of debate about that. But in theory, it's for the survival of the Imperium. So they operate as this independent force on the battlefield. When the Titans fight, though, as a result of this, they fight in their own little groups. Sort of kind of. I have to say that because, like...

They fight menopause. Writing, yeah, well, the issues the writers may decide they fight solo. That is true. I was just about to say. There's multiple times. Well, Titans either show up in fives or one. Yeah. So if we're playing the game, Titan,

There's a way they show up. If we're writing a black library novel, there's another way they'll show up. That's just kind of the truth of this when we talk about lore. But let's take the game Titanic, Titanicus or whatever the hell it's called. I got that wrong. I really just now. But let's go down. So the first thing to do is to Brad says they're called mannipoles, which is Latin for handful. So they got this one right. Good job, guys. Handful five. I like it. Good job, GW. You got your Latin right this time. Now, apparently, by the way, they also say that it's a magic number and then I went to look it up. It's not. So that's also weird. Well, it said it's like, oh, they operate in manifolds because number five has special values. I was like, oh, what's the number five mean? I'm looking it up and I couldn't find it. Claude couldn't find it and Gemini couldn't find it.

So I'm out. So here's one of my favorite things about Titan legions showing up places because, depending on the story, it's a lot different. You can either set down a Titan and it goes and it has this epic fight. And sometimes you've had big chaos on Imperial, Titan on Titan stuff. But the way that the Titan legions like to fight is they find somebody that broke their ankle and they beat them up in an alley because the Titan legions like to show up with such overpowering firepower so that none of the Titans have any danger of getting hurt. Oh, it's awful. So these mannipples that show up basically come in, they are, by the way, they are set. There's a bunch of set ones like three warhounds and two reavers, one warbringer, two warhounds, two reavers, et cetera. And they have names, mandatum, ruptura, canis, otcus, there's all these different things. And to Brad's point, it's based on what the enemies are present. So basically, are we fighting an enemy that has no titans? Cool. We're bringing, you know, beat stick punch down. Are we fighting an enemy that has

some titans? Cool, we're bringing all warbringers because we're going to make sure those titans are gone immediately. Are there going to be shadow swords? We're bringing warhounds to get around them on the side and shoot them from the side. Boom, boom, boom. They always plan ahead to Brad's point to never lose a titan.

Yeah. But at the same time, they do have a little bit of a problem. Because they're this auxiliary force where they don't take orders from the Imperial military, well, that goes both ways. So if they won't listen to Imperial Military, then the Imperial Guard aren't going to listen to them either. So they have an exposure.

Okay. You know, as we all saw with ATSTs in the E-Lox. Or some 47s flying around with some tow cables, you know. Yeah, the AT-A-T against a rope. A-Rope. Deploy the harpoon. Why did that work? Also, screw this.

I'm going on a Brad Rat. Titans, and in the 40K game right now, Knights should never bus be Knights or Titans. There should be a crap ton of guys with Heraldry, but specifically to keep shit from their legs. That's how they fight. That's how they go in lore. It's not just big guys and nothing. I feel like I should be allowed to have a precision. I feel like when I play my orcs, I should have the right to hit a Titan in the ankle and make it fall over.

I feel like I should. Especially as orcs. I should get that. Because they legitimately have a crap ton of guys. Explain. That are there. Explain to me why. Explain to me why my Gretchen shouldn't be able to trip a night. Because there's a whole bunch of guardsmen that are stopping that from happening.

No. That's the whole point of being. No. It would be lower accurate. Tan Gretchen. Just chew it. Chew it on the cables. No.

It's not that. No, they'll just bring a rope. 10. Exactly what. 10 Gretchen would 100% trip a night. I'm very confident in this. We'll be right back after a quick break. But anyway, the danger to a Titan is the preenp itself.

Because the entire Titan is controlled by a single person. That person dies. It ceases to function. And the enemies who are former Imperium all know that. A lot of the Zenos know that. And so a void shield's powerful, but, you know, there's no Galen Erso who they're working against the Titan legions, designed the exhaust ports under the Titans, so you can fire a proton torpedo down. Oh, was it? Was it a proton torpedo down? It's a while since I watched it. It's been a while.

It's been a while. But smaller arms can physically get inside a Void shield, is what I'm getting at. Meltemines can be deployed or special forces. So these Titans are big. You actually can physically just climb them. This is things you can do. And they just go murder the Prince. or deploy a poison, you know, something Brad loves. Which is again, why there's a whole bunch of bros around this. In this case, they do. And it's called the Securitari. It feels like I'll be honest, that name felt phoned in.

The Securitari. Sure, but I like this at least. I would like this ball in the game, though. When we play, you should have to have this. I don't know why I'm so cool about this. It just bugs me. Because in all of the lore, there's so many infantry that their whole point is stop this or not happening. I will say in Horace heresy, you kind of do. So if you want to bring a

Titan in Horace Heresy, you can't bring just a Titan. You have to bring a Titan with an Admec army and you have to bring it with a bunch of troops. Exactly. So it is in Horace heresy to play a Titan. It actually works. You can't bring a revert because the point still don't work, but at least they wrote the rules correctly for it. Side note. Let's talk about the securitari. The secure Atari are, to Brad's point, the infantry cohort that serves alongside the Titan, which, and they're a lot more than like a regular troop.

What I like about these guys is they are specially designed to fight with Titans. Because fun story about Titans. They're rather disruptive to everything around them. Yeah, they'll just kill people by the stepping. Or neck near them. Well, just being present. So they produce deafening levels of sound, just moving, let alone when their weapons fire. Which, by the way, there are stories of when their weapons fire, the heat coming off of them can melt your flesh.

So you have to be fully covered or else it will just, you die being present. while their guns fired. Also, void shields aren't exactly super exciting to be around, by the way. Void shields are great for the thing on the inside of the void shield. You're on the outside of the void shield, not ideal. So everything around them, because remember, enemies are shooting at the Titan. You are near the Titan. Bad.

So in order to fight alongside them, you have to be specially equipped. and the secure Atari are similar to the skittari and that they are custom made. So talk a couple of cool things about them. First off, they are only equipped for light and heavy infantry. They have no weapons to handle armor or anything like that because they're standing next to a freaking titan. You know, doesn't come up a lot. The Titans got the plasma gun. We're good.

You don't need me to take out the tank. They are also very melee focused. Because again, anything at range, look up, there's a Titan. We're not really concerned about the ranged combat right now. The thing standing, you know, 20 meters above me, it's got that covered. Well, I love that they have two basic things that they're supposed to do. One, keep shit off us. Two, I love the fact that they're effectively the people on the battlefield that are stabbing people to make sure that they're dead.

They're in charge of picking up the remnants. Just in case anyone's pretending to be dead, they poke them with a very sharp stick. Yeah. They're very fun. Also, I love that these are people. They're 85% robot. It's just these guys are. Oh, yeah.

The Skittari look at them and go, Jesus, guys, really? Yeah. These are all mechanical because you can't be there without having wild augmentation. One of their coolest things, though, is that. this thing called the chiroptus, chiroptaris field generator. So this is, this thing's amazing. So it's a force field

that creates a mini force field around the bear. But if it's around other chiroptus forceful generators, it builds a network and actually expands its power exponentially. So a single securitari with the force field

would like barely stop a las rifle, but a squad of them could shrug off heavy bolters and even larger squad can short off volcano lances, which works. We think about it, because there might be like a hundred of these dudes standing beneath a Titan that's getting, you know, anti-Titan weapons fired at it. Well, that hundred, that the way that this, this field generator would work, will actually when the munition hits the void generator and explodes off the Titan and then shatters down on top of them, their field generator then protects them from that.

So it's this kind of really cool weapon that I'm glad they don't put in the game for ad met because I feel that rule would get broken as shit real quick and I'd hate playing against it. Just calling it out. That would be. I love it. Also, this is another one of the people that are using all of the forbidden technology also. These guys have so many age of strife, age of technology weapons. Oh, this, that field generator comes from. Yeah, exactly.

I'm just saying everything that they're using also. So, like, does Katari get away with a lot of the rad ammunition and all that kind of stuff? But these guys have 100% stuff that you're not supposed to have. It's so funny. Yeah. But again, all these guys really do is they just basically go and look for. Did anyone set a trap? Cool.

Stab them. Yeah. And then let the titan. Is there infantry in the way also? Again, stab them. Yeah. They also will work to when the enemy scatters. So when the Titan works, starts blowing stuff up and the infantry that's running your work.

Their job was to go hunt and kill all them down because the Titans' guns are too big. So it's all right, we'll get them. Don't worry about it. The other one, too, that they do is they also will forward deploy. So before the Titan kind of arrives from orbit, the secure Atari will go and actually secure the landing zone. Because that's when the Titan is most at risk is when it's being brought down from orbit. Because just screw it, shoot the landing craft.

Yeah, I mean, they're basically also forming Voltron. at the time too. Yeah. I do love that they both. They do take a while. They basically bolt on weapons and shit. All the auxiliary weapons get put on as they're going to war. Yeah.

And the thing too is about about them is also they take a lot of power up. And so the voyage shields won't be active when it's in a ship. So it has to land, be deployed. Sometimes they'll actually, I think a lot of it actually will do the weapons inside the ship because they actually have the lifts inside the ship to do it. But the problem is once it comes out of the ship, you have to power the whole thing on so that all the voyage jilt at the cycle, it's massively exposed at that moment. So their job is to basically make sure nothing touches it.

So yeah, with the Securitari, the Titan legions can now operate as an independent body at war. And there is one more piece, though, to them. If the battle gets big enough, the Titan legions will reach out to one more friend, and that is the nighthouses. They still won't reach out to the Imperium. They'll just reach out because why bother? They will call the nighthouses. And this is usually when the warhounds are too slow. It's most common is when they're invading somewhere that has stuff like basically knights,

which are a knight is not a match for a Titan, but a group of knights are. A group of knights can pull down because they are small. And they are compared to a lightning fast. Especially lightning fast. Especially some of the chassis are wild fast. And some of them are the melee knights, for example, really good to stab in that ankle. What's the Forge World one that I always see in tournaments, whatever, that's a stupid thing, Lancer? Lancer.

Yeah. That thing could poke some ankles. It's got a shield, baby. Yeah, that's going to poke some ankles. So what they'll do is they will actually bring Imperial Knights with them or Chaos Knights too, in the case of the other side, to add extra protection when the secure Atari aren't quite big enough and the war hounds are too big. So one more piece I kind of want to shove in here is, I know what to shove this. I love that you should shove in here. Yeah, let's just jam this in.

I had a janis and there's nowhere to put it. I need to talk real quick about the divisions within the Titan legions. So we just spent a bunch of time there talking about what is technically the divisio militaris. That's the fighting part of the Titan legions. But there are three other divisions that make up the Titan legions. So that one we've covered Militaris. Duh, we know what that does. Then there's the Divisio Mandati. Okay, I'm going to throw this out there because this is the one in stories and reading and stuff.

And I don't know maybe because they do it different in some of the novels. It feels like this is just the Imperial Navy, but not it's. This one changes. So the Divisio Mandati has, there's pre-heresy, post-heresy Mandati. So pre-heresy, the Mandati's job has always been to move the Titans around. Pre-heresy, they were the Imperial Navy. They would actually move, they were the ships, they would move the Titans around all over the place. Post-heresy, the Mandati became the people.

buying the tickets for them. They basically became the travel agents. Yeah, it just, this is I said in the reading, it just didn't make as much sense to me because I've read a lot of the novels where the Imperial Navy just picks up Titans and they just go.

That's because you're reading later. So that is post-heresy. Pre-heresy, the Mandati, so pre-heresy, they would actually run their own navies. There was the same thing. So everyone, the same thing, It used to be, it was the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy were one.

It was just the Imperial Military. And then post-Heresy, they split them. So the Guard has the bomberide. Right. And that way they get secured. They realized that letting the Titans drive themselves around the galaxy kind of sucked for a bunch of planets because Horace's Titans kept showing up on planets going, hey, how'd you guys like to join Horace? No. Let's call.

Check this out. Yeah. Check out what happens next. So post-heresy, the Mandati just would, are basically saying, hey, can you give our Titan a ride, please? So they became kind of not useless, but they're more just an administrative thing, post-herit. Yeah, that's where I was confused about just because getting ready for this and just like the different novels and stuff like that. They just talk about just grabbing these guys and going. You're like, they write that these still exist, but it felt like they kind of.

It didn't. I felt like it was, what's his face that he took his stapler? He didn't really have a job. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we fixed the glitch. The next one is the crazy one. The Divisio Telepathica,

who have an origin that's completely shrouded in mystery. They're only mentioned in a couple short stories and I'm not even all that sure if GW's that committed to them. But the idea of these is terrifying. Hey, let's jam a psycher in a tight. and see what happens. Yeah. Oh, we're also going to shove a bunch of dark age of technology tech in that thing.

So it shoots psychic weapons out. Force weapons, basically. Yeah, by the way, that's different than a Saikano. I wouldn't look this up. Sycanons shoot bullets that are infused with anti-psycher bullets. And ruins on them. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, no, no, no, no.

This is full-blown force weapons. So this is basically firing smite out of a gun. these things are unpleasant. Fair and balanced. Yeah, they're incredibly secretive. We're not even sure if they still exist. They were around in the heresy. There's some questions that they're still around.

The Grey Knights totally still had them. They're 100% still around. Who am I kidding? But the Inquisition would love these things. But then we get to my personal favorite, the DeVizio Investigatus. Which, by the way, it makes no sense. There may make no sense for what they do.

I don't care. I don't care. They're my favorite thing. Fine. I love them. I love them. Their name makes no sense. Oh, their name is stupid. And I love them for absolutely no actual lore reason, but because of my own head cannon.

This is only because in the lore, every time, every time, the Mechanicum try to play with big stuff, it always goes badly. Every single time. These guys are Dragon Lance Gnomes. just blowing shit up. That's all that they do. Exactly. These guys, their job is to make new experimental weapons for emperor class titans. And I can tell you with certainty, there are entire worlds that no longer exist because of these guys.

Don't cross the streams. Yeah. Oh, it's they don't, because I guarantee you, they don't can wire gauge in an amperage. That's just one of them. They are, I think they are the most fear. part of the collegiate titanica, but in a sense of we just don't want them anywhere near us. They're on a planet and anyone who knows what they are just leave said planet. The Inquisition makes sure no one from the Inquisition is on a planet that they're on because

they don't want to lose them. But if they're not going to like someone, they will send them to a planet that these guys are wrong. Because they're mad scientists with fusion reactors. They're mad scientists, but they're the bad kind who are. always get it wrong. I can't think of the cartoon, but there's, there is a cartoon that's just going to exist. Yeah, me. These are dragon lands gnomes. Just, yeah, it's just absolutely fantastic. They can't get anything right. But with that, let's do kind of a quick history of the Titan legions

and imperial history. So after the emperor unifies Terra, his first stop is Mars. As we'd established, He'd been there 15 or so thousand years before the ancestors, the current people in Mars had gotten there. And thanks to his sucking power, is basically knew everything that was going on up there the whole time. So he goes up there, projects himself as the machine god, and making a bunch of equipment on Mars react to his presence, which when I read it, it made me think of like turn of the century magician. Like, you know, part of trick. That's all I see it. Yeah, he came up. The most powerful slaker of the galaxy.

did four card tricks. Yeah. Is this your card? Oh my God. How did he do that? That's, I know it's not what he did. He is the one true guy. That is just a thousand percent how I see it.

Just him doing, he pulled a rabbit out of a hat and blew everyone's mind. Although the story is Calabor Hall did see through it. Calibor Hall was like, yeah, that he just, he kicked the machine and it flickered. He fonsie, that was his thing. Yeah, it's like, what the hell? But no matter what. the Treaty of Olympus is signed and the Mechanicum joins the Imperium and with them came the Titans. And the Emperor goes out into the galaxy.

This is, this time is arguably one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy since the war in heaven. Because the Eldar, once again, were never that numerous. They didn't need to be. There weren't that big, because the Eldar snuffed things before they were problems. The Elder never really were that big, comparatively. So you're talking about 20 legions of 100,000 plus space marines, three Titan legions that start growing as they find more worlds, trillions of soldiers riding in spaceships, a ton of them too. And then as they're going out, they keep finding worlds they're amenable to their causes.

And so a lot of times, like in the case of the 13th Legion, especially, they would leave planets with more than they entered the planet with. So this is a astronomically large fighting force. And the Titan Legion start benefiting massively. Those first three legions, tempestus, mortis, and ignatum that we started with, start growing massively. We get legio outax who are made up of only scout titans for some weird reason. Legio Volpa, who are close quarters fighting.

This is also a big deal because when we start reclaiming the worlds, I do still love the fact that I, after all this time, always still say we, with the Imperium. Yeah. I'm definitely part of the Imperium. We're reclaiming forge worlds that have been gone for thousands of years.

And this exponentially increases our ability to continue this fight. That's what the Crusade was so successful as we were getting more more stuff. Yeah, because exactly. They're going to planets who are like, yeah, we'll join your cause. And by the way, we've got more weapons than you had.

Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. This is fun stuff. STCs, yeah. But yeah. these new legions yeah so legio volpa which i that one does annoy me because they were known for close quarters fighting with a titan no just now no exactly yeah liegeo atarus who were technically

traders that then became loyalists because they were traders against kelbor hall and then he became a traitor so they became loyalists cool story fun story you guys should read them the uh legio Furian. Yeah, who went chaos before going chaos was cool. Yeah. Also, this is another one of the guys where I love the original story because they were apparently putting wild chaos arcane markings on them before, like just in the open, by the way, just like it.

Before Lorgar was doing. Yeah. You're just like, hey guys. How's it going? You're like, I feel that looks creepy as shit. Like nothing bad's going. on here, guys. Absolutely nothing. You guys don't carve things into the skulls of your servitors? Is that because you're dorks? Nerds. But as a great crusade goes on, this kind of

buddy system starts to develop. So different parts, the Imperial Military Machine kind of finds that they get along better with other parts. And we see this with Astardius chapters, starting with some of the primarks, Horace and Sanguinius, Fulgram and Ferris. Magnus and some guy named Khan. I can't find any references to him recently. There was a guy named Khan at one point. Jagatai white scars. I just can't, I looked them up.

There's nothing recent. But anyway, I actually did get signal like this. I haven't told you this one. I want people about this. I got set because we were making fun. And one of my buddies sent me just Jagged I Khan and just sent little clips of Speed Racer. It was just like, that's what he's doing. He's just in the dark city.

But even on the Legion side, Spacewolves and Dark Angels, obviously there's a competition, but it actually was a positive combination, and they did like each other. Lunar Wolves, Emperor's children, love fighting with each other. Nightlords and Deathguard actually were the only ones who, Deathguard are the only ones who liked the Night Lords, which tracks. It tracks, sadly. But the same came true with the Titan Legions. As the Crusade continued, certain Titan legions found themselves in more.

aligned with certain starvades. This becomes a bigger problem post Ulunor, though. So the emperor hands the reins to Horace, and the Titan legions look to the new war master. And Horace, well before any problems. He's been loved himself some Titan legions. Yeah, he was maintaining a great relationship with all of the Titan legions.

Yeah. And also, why wouldn't you? And you go, hey, you know what it would be awesome? him if I could just blow up anything I want. Yeah, and I want to make it clear. He wasn't doing this with any ill intention. This was, he was just a strategic, we're going to say, all right, I was about saying he's a strategic genius.

You're not a strategic genius. We can go, hey, what's the God machine do? Kind of blows everything up. I'm going to go make sure they like me. I do. Strategic genius. This is off the thing, but what made us think of horror seriously. Small aside, one of my favorite comments in the last couple of weeks in the last couple of

weeks in Discord was still, why did they have to get past Pluto when they were invading? It's so far away, you could just miss it. The more of all point is why I explained it. I know, but it was just funny. I went on the read it. He was impassioned about it, too. But so Horace made a real point of treating the Titan leaders very well, rewarding them with technology, keeping their casualties very low,

making sure he never sent them into an engagement that they could actually basically have significant losses in and all this stuff. What made at the same time for the Imperium is the Legio Mortis, who we talked about last week. The Legio Mortis are extremely loyal to the fabricator of Mars. To a fault,

they viewed the Mechanicum as independent of the Imperium. Their viewpoint was the Treaty of Olympus made them allies. Not servants. Not servants, exactly. And so they weren't alone in this belief amongst Titan legions. And the issue for the Imperium is the Legium Bordis' forge world was on Mars. So when the Horace heresy began, they were ground zero. And side note, they didn't like the other two legions who were on Mars.

So this is a recipe for bed. So to this end, the events of Davin, Horace knows what now knows what to do with the mechanic. He reached out to Calibor Hall and Calibor agrees to back Horace in secret. Calibor then goes to Leggio Mortis and gets them on his side, which was not hard because they were already on his side. He gives them access to the Warmaster Titans that no one knows exists. I still think it's so hilarious. you're like, how? These are so big, dude.

You could accidentally know about this secret. I don't write this crap. Like, don't look at me. Yeah, it's somehow they hid a bunch of giant robots. Anyway. So on Mars, Kelbar does have to work really fast because he has a big problem. Terror is pretty close. So any semblance of a protracted conflict, he auto loses because the force of the

Imperium just immediately deploy there and wreck his little rebellion. So he has to get total control of the planet and his defenses. So the Legion of Mortis come into play. The Legionoros fire out very quickly with a brutal surprise attack on the Ligio Tempestus, who were both unprepared for an attack and unprepared for what was attacking them because they just got wrecked by these war matters. Well, they also, they're using Titan killers against. Titans. Yeah. It's so bad the Legio Tempestos actually split. Some of them join the traitors as come over to their

side, but there are a few who do survive and post-heresy bring the Legion back a little bit who survive. But with the Titans and the regular Skittari, Kelbor Hall secures Mars before Terric can intervene and why Dorn can't do it. But this is just the tip of the ice, are the Titans and the Heresy. Because now out in Istvan, there's other Titan agents have joined. So if you've read the books, which I assume so you have. If you hadn't, you read them, they're good. The loyalist half of the traitor legions are deployed in Istvan 3.

On the surface, the fight was like fake foe. And they had a support element of the legio mortis, the legio-a-Dax, the legio-Volpa titans. This is because their void shields would make them immune to the life-eof-eaters. virus. So as the world gets bombarded from orbit with this life eater virus and catches fire and everything's burning up, the Titans are just kind of hanging out and they begin gunning down any of the surviving Astardis. It's kind of the cool scene of the book, by the way. Then on Istvon 5, there's even more Titans playing this role, bringing again God-engine level destruction down. So the Imperium is aware it's not just Horace that's turned on them, but also.

of the Mechanicum. However, the Mechanicum's nature, it creates a bit of an issue here. As we were saying earlier in this cast and the last cast, the Mechanicum is kind of made up a bunch of independent parts. Not all of the houses, or not all of the forge worlds declare with Mars. Quite a few stay with the Imperion, because a lot of them do think the Emperor is the Amrasei. And this sets up a whole bunch of cool novels that you should all go read. But what I want to talk about here is kind of an interesting little problem that pops up as we move through the heresy. Dorn notices something. Dorn's got a problem. And the problem he's got is that if Horace gets to Terra with God agents, well, their whole point is to break defenses. Well, he knows what

Horace would do. If Horace is smart, Horace will hold back his Titans until he gets to Terra, and he will deploy them on Terra. Dorn can defend Terra from Titans. He knows how to do it, but the collateral will be insane because it's just going to be basically engines firing against shields and then him firing, who knows what back at them. I love what he throws out because it's an obvious, like you shouldn't do this. So Doren just goes effectively, hey man, you know what to be super cool? If we had a giant robot fight,

what do you think? There's no reason to go there, by the way. Oh, there's a total reason to go there. I am a huge fan of Godzilla and so in the right with a GW. Yes. That's all this is. This is 100% like, hey man,

you want to see giant robots fight? How about a ton of them in one spot, in a royal rumble, basically. This entire story makes kind of no sense when you think about it, but it's also super awesome.

So we're going to cover it real quick. Beta Garmon is a system that sits within segmentum solar and it holds one of the most stable warp routes out of the soul system. So this is astronomically strategically important. During the heresy,

it had stayed loyal, but then fell into civil war, Alpha Legion. It was Alpha Legion. And then gets invaded by Emperor's children. Dorn then sends what's left of the salamanders and a whole bunch of Titans there to retake it. And it's a ploy. And when I say a whole bunch of Titans,

I mean way too many Titans. Yes. Because Dorn does this. And then Dorn does reinforcing it. And he does this because he believes Horace and Petarabo will do something stupid. They could go around the system to invade Seoul. But Dorn knew that Petarabo would want to test himself against Dorn before the invasion of Seoul.

And so Dorn just overloads this planet with defenses and titans. And because he does that, Horace has to do the same. And the ensuing conflict... could have just blown up the ships and drove away. But continue. But we wouldn't have Pacific Rim happening on a massive scale. No, this is the Psalm is what this is, but it's Titans. The casualties at Beta Garmin are larger than the prior five years of the entire Horace heresy combined.

And the Titan battle is referred to as Titan death because the amount of Titans that die here, it never recovers, which, by the way, Dorn was totally okay with. In fact, he wanted this more than anything. Sanguinius was also there. Again, he hasn't come up recently. We'll find out. We'll see what happens. They were also both there.

But the reason that matters is modern 40K. When we get to modern 40K, there actually aren't that many Titans. This is why. So we get the end of the heresy. There are Titans at the Siege of Terror, and we will cover that when we go through the end of death novels. But post-heresy, Titans are hard to make. We've lost a lot of STCs.

We've lost a lot of forgeholds. We've lost a lot of stuff. We actually, in the year 41,000, or it's almost at 42,000. We are in 42,000. We are 42,000, 42,000. The Imperium is less capable than it was in the year of third. 30,000. So these Titans, some of them just can't be made anymore. At the same time, the Imperium is also a little less inclined to make them because they saw what happens when

Titans turn on themselves. So we went from what was potentially tens of thousands of Titans to barely hundreds at this stage. It's hard to get actual numbers on it, but Titans are a lot smaller in number now. Now, they're still good, and this is one Titan can swing an entire battle. Campaign, probably. Yeah, exactly. And the Imperium needs to have Titans because the traders still have a few. But this is why in modern 40K, we don't really see a lot of them, although there are some funny, my funny Tao story, because I have to do this aside, there is a story about the Tao learning about Titans from one of the traders who's like, who are doing the greater good? And they go, That's just stupid.

No one would make anything that big. You're out of your mind. And then a Titan appears in one of their battles and just wrecks all their storm surges. And they go, oh, the Imperium's weird. But this is also, the reason I bring this up, I wanted to kind of touch in that battle is that is why in modern 40K, we really don't see them very much. If you read the stories, a lot of the more modern novels, you don't hear a lot of Titans. even when we covered the siege of racks. There were some Titans that were involved in Vrax,

but it actually wasn't that many. Whereas if you read some of the Horace heresy novels, it'll be like, oh, yeah, they deployed like 100 Titans to do a battle. Siege of Rax are like a dozen, not even. That's why. By the way, that's that. That's Titans. With that, though, I think we nailed it.

Maybe. I'm sure. I'll get complaints. That's fine. But next week, we're going to take a little. little bit of a break and move into something. Another big fan request. The 10th first and only. We haven't covered Guard in a long time. And I've actually, since we covered Guard, I actually played Guard, I think for a full year and didn't talk about them, which felt weird. So I want

to talk about Guard some more. And this is a great way to do it because those novels are awesome. Two story. Heads up. If you haven't read the novels, we're going to spoil it. some of my advantage of events. Yeah. I was like, I was starting to write the show notes and I'm like, well, if you haven't read these, I'm kind of going to ruin them. So sorry in advance, but also if you, you know, they've been out. No, guys.

They're good. They've been out for like a decade. So more. Yeah. So just calling that one out. But until then, John Barcotti, Bradchester. This guy. See you guys then.

I'm going to