The 40k Lorecast - Episode 151 - The Tanith First and Only pt 2 - Voltemand, Bucephalon, Fortis Binary, and Menazoid Prime

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

On Today’s cast we continue our coverage of the Tanith first and only and their leader Ibram Gaunt. We open with them entering Voltemand and their first interaction with Commander Stern, and Gaunt promptly not making friends there. We then do a little dive into the characters that make up the core of the Ghosts in the stories. After that we move onto the events of Bucephalon and another of the many “divine” interventions therein. After that we dive hard into their meetings and interactions with Hector Drevere and Draker Flense on both Fortis Binary and of course Menazoid Prime.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallBrad ChannelOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: 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 Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. Today, we are continuing our coverage of the Tanneth First and Only with the Tanneth first and only, not making a bunch of friends. Mostly because they keep bumping into assholes who they then piss off and start blood feuds with.

But I do love that this gets really, really angry real fast. You're like, we actually saved your guys' lives. Why are you so mad at us? But. Yeah, but you made us look bad doing it. So anyway, 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 it helps the algorithm and pushes us out to more listeners. So yay on that. Also, the comments are fun. That's the other piece too. Comments are fun. We read them and they're enjoyable. Thank you. Especially when people comment like super old cast where it's like, oh yeah, I did say that two years ago. And I was wrong. Anyway. You have to use the Bradline for it. I'll be wrong.

It'll be wrong again. It's just every other than someone comes in and says, you know, it's pronounced this way. And I go, yeah, that's going to be the rest of my life. I'll be hearing that one. Hey, I'd like to say, I got defended in Discord about the fact that the Lion King is another remake of that one. Yeah, no. Links in the show notes. You have links to our YouTube channel for.

a Q and A that we probably should do at some point this month. Me. If you like this show, also link to our other show, The History of 40K, where we talk about the history of the game of Warhammer on the tabletop. We've recently been talking about chaos. Hey, yo. And if I think the sound of my voice, check me out on Retro Recall, where I talk about old video games and discover whether they still are fun or still hold up.

Spoiler alert, the N64 controller sucks. But if you want to support us and help us out. You can go to our merchandise. Go to our website. We have things like dice. We have stickers. There we go. We have stickers.

Brad's very proud of us having stickers. I know. Being there for a year. And, of course, you are our Patreon. Patreon. Patrons in general are fantastic. Great way to support people. It is one way that you can help artists out,

allow them to do their art. And it's a choice. For us, if you want to give us $4.99 a month, you can get this show and the history of 40K ad-free or 165.82 Thai bot. Cannot believe I haven't done Thailand until I was, like, oh, crap. So we're doing that right now. So sorry, by the way, not doing Thailand before this. But we're doing Surat Thani.

This is the province in southern Thailand that holds basically the deepest and happiest place in my heart. Because I really do love it. This is where Kosomoi is, Kotau, Kofangnan, some of the most. beautiful places I've been to in my life for over there. For those who don't know, Thailand's awesome. Just full stop. That's really it. I kickboxed for, I did Muay Thai for close to 10 years, and I was fortunate enough to do it at Fairtex in the U.S., which allowed me to go over to Thailand quite a bit and visit. I'm also an avid scuba diver. So this is kind of a nice one-two. This is effectively my mecca. I wake up in the morning, I go to the dock, I scuba dive, the two to three dives. Then I get back.

I grab lunch, I go to the gym, I kickbox, I get dinner, I get some beer, and I repeat. And it's kind of like heaven. Thailand's African incredible. But Suratani, though, is in the southern part. I think it's the most beautiful part. Chialan Lake is right there. That's the one people you've seen where it's the mountains coming straight down into this beautiful, like, crystally blue ocean. Kosa-Moy is an island you can get through where you basically get around by longboat while you're there, which is fun as hell.

and then you have just Kotow. And Kotow for scuba divers is heaven. It's basically perfect. It's rich in sea life. Everything's near the surface. And the water's warm enough that you can do with 3 mil. I can do a three mil shorty or I actually think I dove a couple times just board shorts. And then the best part of Thailand is the people.

Ties are some of the kindest and most welcoming people ever met in my life. Even it actually kept me kickboxing. My body did not want to keep kickboxing. But it was the Thai. who were actually teaching that kept me going back and just I wanted to spend time with them that kept me in it I know a lot of you will tell you that's the same story it's the the sport will take a lot out of you but man it's just a wonderful culture and when you go over there it's just so welcoming so if you haven't been to Thailand go and if you have been go again and if you went there and had a bad time it's because

you're in a so well uh it's sir well just calling it out Discord. Jump into our Discord. Link in the show notes. Discord's been very fun. It always is very fun. Painting competitions, lore questions, advice, people discussing how to play the game of 11th.

I'm still learning it, which is good because I have to play a bunch in the next 30 days. Also, everyone's still learning it. It is not going well. Anyway, but also some really fun stuff. We've got fan theories. We've got literature recommendations. Gaming. It's actually if you do play Space Marine too, it's a great place to find the people to play with.

We have a whole channel dedicated to that, which is cool as hell. People talking about movies, people talking about really everything. So jump on in. You're talking about the upcoming Total War, which looks insane. Yeah, that's not, let's not get too excited. I've learned my lesson over the years. You will not take my excitement away from me, John. I would be over-excited about it.

I'm just not even looking at it and going like, when it comes out, we'll find out. That's my viewpoint. Real quick, though. big thank to our whole moderator team within the Discord. They have done a really wonderful job of with this community. I know it is very hard to moderate. Anyway, back to it. The subout world crusades.

So they were looking up and then things kind of were a bit different. So War Master Slato. We end up with some conspiracies here very soon and some old technology. Yeah, we're going to have some issues. So the crusade actually is off to a pretty good start. You've got Slato is dead, unfortunately. The original Warmaster is dead, but it is still going well. Nadsie Bear is dead.

I'm going to keep calling him that forever. The forces of chaos are running away in the region for the most part, short term. There is a shit time of them, though. Yeah. Oh, yeah. By the way, this is not a small incursion. Chaos owns this part of town. And it's not a nice part of town.

It's like Toledo. But the... The new warlord is, at least on the outset, the guy for the job. Now, Macaroth has been an interesting war master. He is kind of all or nothing in campaigns. And one of the things that makes him so successful is he's very firm in his commitment to his plans. This is something that undermines a lot of Imperial Guard commanders. When you read through the lore, read through the history, a lot of them tend to grasp defeat

from the jaws of victory because they become tepid at a certain point in their plans. And they just take too long. So the plans take out too long to develop. They're understaffed. This is what we saw. Well, they stopped getting support. We talked a lot about it. In the fact that where the Imperium thinks is important is often real waxing and waning

on stuff, especially if you started getting some victories, they'll take away a lot of your forces so they can be used somewhere else. Yeah, because they just assume, hey, you're good to go. Exactly. Macaroth, what he does is he just goes all in on everything. And I use the term all in because he's also a degenerate gambler. He's known for this, like a horribly degenerate gambler. And what's interesting is that this gambling style actually works for him quite a bit.

He just gambles that the enemy will just break if he throws all these forces at it. And he commits even more forces to the gap. So there can't even be a counter. attack because there's just too many dudes there to even counterattack into. It does crack me up that the guy that hasn't looked at his whole card is just all in, doubling down on his bet for just getting that inside straight in the river. Yeah. It's like this will work out.

And oftentimes his gambols do pay off because he's playing against chaos. And chaos will usually fold under overwhelming force because his chaos, they like to let traps. They don't, they're not meant to do a big frontal assault. Unfortunately for Macaroth, and this will come up later, when it doesn't work out, it is catastrophic losses. Catastrophic losses because chaos is ready for him. Now, the challenges that are about to face the Sabat Crusade, though, are actually not chaos oriented. They're more guard oriented. And it's the fact that- A lot of squabbling.

From day one also, by the way. Well, I mean, forget day one from like 30, from like, when did the emperor go into the throne? Yeah, true. Yeah, it's like, it's for at this point, 30,000, 10,000 years. 10,000 years. This way, this is more closer to 12. But yeah, we have. Yeah, so there's some issues here.

And so the challenge obvious is the personalities. We've got, and we talked about us a little bit last time, but it's going to come up a lot more today. So I want to make sure we strive on this again. the guard is made up of an almost infinite number of individuals and regiments. And they all come in two forms, those striving for glory and those trying to hold on to their glory. That's it. I'm 100% pointing out the fact that he has to make big things. In the notes, we talk about the fact that he's gambling on was the commander that was sent in a genius, or did he just get lucky?

and he's actually a moron. The best part about moron is it's misspelled in the notes. And there's something about the irony of that that makes me so happy. Eh, it's a thing. I read that last time. I type fast. Sorry, this morning, whenever that's. I type fast.

Early in the morning. You read it at a point when the rest of the world was asleep. Yeah, that's true. Brett, like I say, you work a graveyard shift, but you also work a day shift because you just, just, or don't sleep. It's healthy. No way that's... The doctor keeps telling me, sleep less, drink more.

It's going great. Yeah. So the problem really for Macoroff is that, is that some of these commanders just got lucky and he's going to put them in charge of something and this guy might just be an idiot and he's going to get everyone killed or maybe he's a chaos corrupted traitor. Spoiler alert. There's a big foreshadow there. I know everybody. I'm trying to do these notes in a way that those of us who've read the Gaunt's ghost books, can enjoy them but those of us who haven't read them can still read them later and worry i've already leaned into the fact that i'm going to spoil the shit out of stuff yeah i i i will super excited about yeah later in the cast we are going to spoil one of the episodes pretty badly i will give you guys

a big spoiler alert of when that's coming so just heads up on that one now no no it's not bad this one so you know as soon as i start ranting i'm going to talk about things And then I'll just edit you out. Anyway, problem. One of us has control. So one of the best parts about the Gaunt's Ghost books and one of the reasons I know I love them, a lot of people do love them, is this next bit. Is the fact that they really do cover this infighting kind of the truth of the war and the way the Imperial Guard interacts? Because a lot of the other.

That's the whole point, though. The life in the war. I mean, it's the life of the soldier. It's what I mean in the war. Exactly. I am not a big Imperial Guard fan, but I love these books because... Oh, you love a good Bainblade.

Don't shut up. Yeah. I like... I love the fact that they get into what's happening in these guys, the lives of everything, what's happening with these guys? They keep making it out of Death Store.

They come out, but it's not just about the wins and losses. It's how everything's going about it. The actual battles are kind of the boring, part, to be perfectly honest, it's everything else that's going on. That's more exactly. Because a lot of the Black Library books, it's just a novel about a campaign. You have a protagonist, you have an antagonist, the antagonist almost wins, but then the protagonist grasps the victory. And this happens in Gant's Ghost. I mean, there are a couple of Gant's Ghost novels where there are some fights that are kind of like,

yeah, no, they should have lost that. Cough, cough, cough, fighting demons, cough. But it's the backdrop. It is, to Brad's point. Strong. Yeah. But you've got to. But you've got. these books are amazing because you have this massive crusade going on. And within this crusade, there's all these small wars that make up the campaign. And the wars are not just with the enemy, but with each other. Wars of honor, wars of pride. These make sense. You take billions of people, shove them into a war where survival is a fraction of a fraction of a percentage. You are not going to survive this. They're all just killing machines. And they start kind of getting a little bit uppity with each other. And you have some vendettas. And you have some

blood feuds and you have some blood oaths. And that's what makes these books so great. So if people want to know why people like these books, if you haven't read them, this is wise. Because the setting is better than most of the other books, with the exception of maybe the Horace heresies. It is funny on this. I like these books quite a lot. And you make a disclaimer of, you know, us grabbing all this information together. I will also goof them up because I, as usual, try to go from my really lockstrapped memory and rock it out. Yeah. And so the last little disclaimer before we begin this bit here is I did what I could to do this in chronological order. So there are a lot of books who make up the Gonsko series.

And they are not actually written in a chronological order. They jump within the books. So I went to Reddit. I went to Lexa Kan. I went to other websites to try and do this in chronological order. So we're not going to cover them actually in book order. We're going to cover them in actual year by year chronological order. I may get some of it wrong.

I tried. That's all I'm going to say. So if I get some of this wrong and people like, hey, you missed this, I tried. So also with that. Well, I would to do a recommendation on this, though, because I, I love the, the Gonskhost books are very good. But I like, if you go into some of the anthologies that they wrote around this, I actually, I really, I love anthology pieces. They have the anthology short story pieces that are on this. I would recommend this.

I'm just given my. Yeah, I will say. The Gonsk Ghost books get a little long in the tooth by the end. Because there are 15 ends. That's why. At a certain point, you're like, but the early ones are exceptional. The early ones are very, very good. That's why I also do the early ones and then do the anthology pieces.

That's, I would agree. I agree completely. So let's get in this. So after the events on Blackshard, the Tanith were sent to the world of Voltaimont. And this is a world in chaos rebellion. Again, cultists, not space marines and demons. The Tanith are sent there to support a siege that's, already underway. And there's a commander there named Stern. And Stern has been trying to breach

the capital of Volta's city for a while, and he's been repelled. And he's now fallen very far behind schedule. The bigger part is he's not on schedule. He's supposed to have... Very far behind schedule. And Makarov is sending these Tanneth there, not as a support and more as a, here, hurry up. You need to get going. Now, Commander. Stern's important because he is in charge of what's called the Royal Volpo. Volpoen. It's pronounced Volpoen. I haven't read this in a long time.

I think it's a Vulpine Regiment. The Volpeen are known as the Blue Bloods. They're kind of like the Cadians. This is a planet that's been producing regiments for forever. And they're very good. They make exceptional soldiers. They are famous soldiers. They are known for being good tactician.

very loyal, all this stuff. So to be a commander of them is important. Well, also, one of the biggest things about him not have taken this so far is the initial, what he was assigned, was considered basically overkill. He has the artillery units. He has huge amounts of forces. He's supposed to be done done, not because they were expecting too much, but they thought they gave, effectively, they thought they gave him too many forces to do what they.

Well, yeah, he's, and again, he's the commander of the Vulpene. He should be able to figure this out. He also had, to Brad's point, the Ketsock 17th, the Ketsock are a regiment. It's a plant that basically specializes a mobile artillery. So he's got basilisks. He's got everything he needs. Stern takes a look at Tanneth and just saw the word expendable written across their foreheads and goes, cool. I need a breach.

Go get me a breach. And because of Tanneth, I know for stealth, just go do this thing. And Gaunt was not oblivious to the fact that Stern was not showing him a ton of respect, but it's a commanding officer, so deal with it. The ghosts go off to do what they do best. They start scouting and moving ahead, looking for stuff. And as they do this, a very important event occurs. The Ketsock 17th, the mobile artillery, were moving to reposition.

And as they were moving, they moved right into a chaos ambush. I mean, right, right? They were standing on the X. There was a piano on a rope right over top of them. It wasn't great. Yeah. And basilisks, for those of you who haven't seen the basilisk, they're not great at taking fire because of the whole backside of it having no armor on it and being a dude standing on like a platform.

Loading artillery shells into it. Yeah. Not ideal. But the problem is the chaos ambush was also inside of a Tanneth ambush. So the X had a bigger X. And so the Taneth actually I wish there was even one more. I want to do Russian dolls.

He's thinking, yeah. So what happens is the Taneth jump. Effectively, the Ketsock just hear gunfire and the Taneth have just killed all the chaos and just pop out and go, hey, you guys should be more careful. There's a bunch of bad guys up here. Watch it.

And the Ketsock commander, who's there, remembers this as, oh, that was pretty cool of you. Thank you. Anyway, the Tanith. head off into the city and they decide a two-pronged attack on the city. One of them is the main gate. The idea was, we'll hit the main gate and that'll pull the defenders away from the main gate. And then the, sorry, the defenders did not listen to Robert Downey because they have. Well, this whole story is hilarious because, yeah, they go for the main gate. We're going to basically

distract the main gate with an attack on the main gate. But then we're going to sneak over this other spot over here that's kind of like almost like a corner. And we're going to blow this off. And that way, while all the defenders are defending the main gate, we'll make this breach over here. But the problem is the defenders here were like Vassini. So he knows that I know that he knows. Yeah. I obviously don't need to defend the main gate. Yeah, because you would know that I would know that it's like a land war in Asia.

Okay. So what ends up happening is the ones attacking basically the side, we're into incredible defenses. but the main gate's basically unprotected. And they blow it up and just walk through. Blow the main gate yet and walk through. Taking the city. And so Stern looks like an idiot because the Taneth, who are a scouting regiment, just opened the main gate and are seizing the capital.

So Stern immediately orders the Taneth to pull back so his Volpeen can take the city, which, to be fair, is the right call. The Taneth are wearing camo cloaks and the Volpeen are fully armored. There are still chaos forces in there. But as a Taneth come back, they start getting artillery fire. And the artillery fire is friendly fire. They're saying the most casualties they've taken since the first time they showed up. Yeah.

And they realize it's friendly fire. Yeah. Basically, gone is not super excited about this. and rolls up on the Ketsock 17th and proceeds to drop an RKO out of nowhere on him and just obliterate this guy. He knocks the commander out and then walks away because the commander just fired on his troops.

He then arrives back in the command, you know, center tent. It's bigger than a tent, less than a fortress. And Stern is there. And as Gant gets in there, he realizes that the Ketsock fired on him because Stern told him to because Gaunt complains to Stern. And Stern says, well, you know, in war, you get confused to where, who's an enemy, who's not an enemy? So we were just, you know, artillery has to cover a return. But then Gaunt realizes what Stern's real goal was. Stern knew that once the reports of all of this had happened, it would show that he was a failure

because the actions of Gaunt and the Tanneth broke the siege. No matter what, that was going to get reported back. And the glory of the day, even though the Volpeen technically took the city, the glory of the day was going to go to the Tannin. He had to get rid of that. Because he's going to court marshal. He said, Stern wants to court marshal because he's going, he hit another officer. That way, it's the report's going to have him being dishonored. And during this, a basilisk crashes through the gates. Yeah. The commander of the 17th up. Yeah. jumps off. And, and. And, tells in front of everybody, Lord Stern, I need to show you that there's been a miscommunication.

I actually tripped and fell off the tank. It definitely wasn't gone hitting me. There's no, none of that happened. And he tells it to in front of everybody in the main command. Also, while the barrel of his basilisk is pointing at the main command center. There's two pieces to this story. And so Gaunt, Stern, let's look at Gaunt and goes, guess I didn't do it. And Gaunt is relieved, and the Tanneth get a massive glow up out of this.

Stern is obviously furious. He does not look good. This is a massive embarrassment for him. But this is one of many enemies that Gaunt is starting to racking up quickly. So after this, they moved to a world called Caligula, because apparently they would name a Caligula. Why? I don't know. It's a party planet. I mean, yeah, they don't even trying. Sometimes the naming mechanics are just complete phoned in. All right. It's a hive world because

of course Caligula is a hive world and has gone to chaos because of course the Caligula hive world has gone to chaos. It's like, thanks, guys. That was all implied in the name. Move on your day. All right. Macaroff went hard on this world and he went hard on it because he had to bring it back in line for his campaign. Remember, we've covered this before. Warp travel is faster than light travel, but it's not instant, or even really that fast. Sometimes it is. Yeah, true.

The issue is that the way I like to always describe it, when people, I talk to people about Warhammer Universe, it's kind of like moving in the galaxies, like the 16th century in the globe. You can move goods around, but it does take a while. So what you want to have, if you're a war master's, you want to establish supplies and manufacturing within your war zone. That way you can actually resupply and rearm. That's why the Taneth regiment was raised from a world that was in the Sabat worlds. Just makes more sense, right?

Caligula is one such world, massive hive world, great for manufacturing. And the Taneth are one of the ones who were chosen for the assault on Caligula, which doesn't go great. because again, Caligula. Actually, it was catastrophically bad. So the initial landing is made, and that one's kind of okay. They get scattered because partway through a sucking storm erupts. You made it sound like it was catastrophic bad, but it wasn't that bad.

But yes, it was because the second landing was worse. Let's compare them. The first one, as they're landing, the psychic storm starts. So all the ships get scattered. The second part of the landing hits the sucking storm, So they're all just gone. Let's also do the second. And the third landing doesn't get to start.

I'll say, you talk about psychic storms and things in the warp. This is more like uncontrollable force lightning everywhere. Yeah, we say a psychic storm, it's not a like, hey, it's a turbulent landing. It's a force field. It's basically a force once you try to go through, you die. That's the better way of thinking about it. So the Tanneth are on the surface and immediately come under attack by chaos forces. So they pretty quickly have a realization that.

They can't hold out here. This is a hive world. There are billions of enemies here. So they need to go find the source of the psychic storm and stop that. Which good news, they do. Bad news. It's a demon, which is pretty hardcore punching up for the Tanneth. Like cultists, fine.

We did actually have one of them, did kill a dreadnought, but it was a very injured dreadnought. And he kind of used the planet. self to kill the dreadnought. So, ma, man, man, man,

man, uh, demon, no. Like, despite what we can do in the tabletop, there is,

we're doing more seventh edition. There is no, sixes don't always hit the wound. You know, so demons are, demons are, yeah, no.

And the ghosts are pretty separate. So gaunt is, doesn't even even part of this process. So it's actually the second in command, Corbeck is the one who finds it even with a small collection of gons. Corbeck. Torbeck does some pretty quick math in his head. He looks at his guns.

He looks at the demon. And he goes, that's not going to work. But he remembers something. There are ships that are up above. And a psychic storm could stop a landing craft. But how about a macro cannon shell? Let's find out. So he uses a calm tower and radios the coordinates of the demon to a ship in orbit.

And the hive city loses a few city blocks. Yeah. But also a demon. Yeah. It also lost a lot of peeps. They were super okay with some collateral damage that day. Yeah, a section of the hive disappeared, but so did the demon and the psychic storm, allowing the forces to actually land.

And Caligula is conquered, air quotes here. Because the imperial forces, while they're able to secure the planet, do run into a problem. Demon's gone, so force of chaos are there. But the thing about chaos forces is, they're not really going to surrender, right? You're not going to say, oh, hello, Mr. Inquisitor. My name's Gerald, and I was a chaos cultist. Sorry about that.

You know, it's not really, I'm ready to convert back. You're like, no, no, I've seen the pendant engines. I know what happens. So the issue is that you have to go find every cultist and kill all of them. And they know that too. So it's not very long before you start having terrorism. And the main spot of terrorism that starts happening is they have to move convoyes all around the hives to move food, move people, move this stuff. And they start, when I say getting blown up, it's like one or two convoys.

Entire convoys are getting wiped out. Yeah, they were also dropping. It's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Yeah. Yeah. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. So super jacked up. Now, what do they do about it?

Gaunt is told, hey, solve this. You guys are sneaky. go do this. And they pretty clearly realized this is an inside job. They use brag because everyone thinks brag stupid. So that's why they use brag to go in there. We'll talk about these guys in a second, everybody. They use brag to go in there. And one of the pilots just assumes Bragg's an idiot. It starts radioing the chaos guys. Like, oh, hey, here we come. And brag beats the crap out of that guy. And then they tracked down the cultists and bring a thing as marauder bombers to just wipe out the chaos forces. So once again, saves.

the day. Actually, you know what? We should take a moment here. Let's take a quick aside and talk about the Tanneth and Gaunt because I do want to mention some of the main characters that make up Gaunt's ghosts, mostly because y'all are going to paint the models, and so I'll tell you who they all are real quick, because they're going to come up more to do the stories. We'll be right back after a quick break. So, as we said before, Gaunt is not from the planet, so that the Taneth, but all the rest of them are from Tanith. And, you know, first and only. Yeah, the first only.

So the first thing Gaunt does once he gets control is he promotes two of the Taneth to commanders. And it's Korbeck and Braun. And he does this actually interestingly because they're the first two who confront him. About abandoning Taneth. Yeah. And so he actually, he respects them quite a bit for being, he realizes, okay. The rest of this regiment seems to look to the two of you. So you're also in charge now.

Congratulations. So let's talk about Corbick first. Corbick was a member of the Tanneth Militia. He was very charismatic. And his narrative role is bastard son coming into his own. He was born out of wedlock to a simple laborer. He's kind of got meant that get it. If you guys Game of Thrones, he's John Snow.

I don't know which book came first. so I don't know where the IP violation here is. He's brave without bravado. He does things. And when he does these really brave things, he thinks nothing of them. But he's always trying to do the right thing. Yeah.

But when he does it, he doesn't think of it as, I'm an example setter. He just goes, yeah, of course I did that. That's what needed to get done. Now, from the onset, Corbeck and Gaunt get along pretty well. Corbeck sees and Gaunt a leader who also

just wants to do the right thing in a galaxy of wrong. And they actually bond. Yes. I was to say, not the same thing happened with Ron. Ron's the inverse. So Ron, who also gets promoted by Gaunt, hates Gaunt. He also told him he hated him when he promoted him. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. That was pretty fun. I mean, he does kind of the life of Brian. Or how much do you hate the Romans? A lot. That's his viewpoint of Gaunt. And in fact, the first mission they were ever on together, we talked about last cast, he tried to kill Gaunt because when he set all the explosives, he punched Gaunt and tried to knock him unconscious, but grossly underestimated how well Gaunt could take a punch. And Gaunt did not underestimate how well Ron could take a punch.

and God actually knocked him that unconscious and carried him out. And then carried him out, yes. Yeah. Which, by the way, neither told anybody about nor punished Ron for. He let him keep his rank and everything. So interesting little fact about God. He seems to respect Ron's attempt at murder. So whatever.

Well, there's a bunch of stuff with Ron that they kind of... Ron is very, very useful. Ron has... He's also sketchy as... Shit. Yeah. So the rumors around Ron are that he, so he comes from a wealthy family, but he's like third, it's like a third son. So he has no chance within the family. And he may or may not have killed somebody. The Arbides are definitely, let's say were, because all the Arbides on Tannet, they're also dead, were aware of Ron, whether it was they were hunting him down for a murder or just criminal. We don't know. But the thing, Ron... Throughout the books, Ron continually is the guy that can get them stuff. Yeah.

Doesn't matter what the stuff is. He kind of always has, I know a guy that knows the guy that can get some things. And that's outside of Tannen. That continues on in the novels. He just... Ron is... He's a master of working with the underground, air quotes there. And what happens is, and Ron is always meant to be this mix of...

benefit and challenges. So this working with the underground will sometimes be a good thing. It's actually always a good thing because it times out really well. It'll sometimes cause a mild, you know, irritant for them, but for the most part, but when he really needs something, he'll come through. That's kind of wrong. Then you have M-Call. M-Call. M-call. M-call. Yeah, it's the problem is you put the letter M and the letter K with no vowel in between. I'm going M. Cole. Em Cole is just, he's the stealthy guy. He's the stealthiest of the stealthiest.

That's what he is. You say he's the stealthy guy is like saying he's the corax of, yeah, I mean, that's a thing. Em call disappears. That's what he can do. So of anybody. He sneaks up on other Tanneth guys all the time. He sneaks up on assassins.

I mean, that's the thing. He disappears. Em call has, and we can, I might as mention here, The Tanneth do seem to have some supernatural levels of powers. M-Call is one of the ones where it's like, it's pushing it to the point where I will use the term Korax. He does seem to be able to disappear from sight and stayed obscured at a level that's too far. Yeah. Gaunt's a big fan of M-Col, by the way.

He also shows up. A lot of times they just yell his name out and he's like, yeah, what's going on? I've been here the whole time kind of thing. Yeah. He's very enjoyable. Then we have Bragg. Bragg is a catachan. He's a giant guy.

He's kind of fun because he's the only one who can actually hold and fire a heavy boulter. But they do that not because... I was just about to say he also never hits anything. Well, they give him the heavy boulter because he has no aim. And the idea is just here's the spray and prey weapon because if we give you the lasgun, you're going to hit anything. But you give you this thing. you might hit something. But Bragg is meant to be a mix of comedic and heroic.

He's fessic, if you get from Princess Bride. That's what he is. He's not as big as Under the Giant, but he is fessic. He's not dumb. He's just simple. And he's really happy with just, he wants to be around his friends. That's all he wants. But he has physical power.

Bragg is, in a lot of stories, Bragg will show up when there's a fight. And whoever they're fighting, if it's like hand-to-hand goes, I'm done now. This is about to hurt really bad, so I'm going to go ahead and leave. Because he's a half-Ogrin, basically. Yeah, he is a monster of a man. But he is, he's not stupid.

He's just more calm. But my favorite of them all is Larkin. And that's because I think, Psycho. Well, it's because I think Larkin actually is the one who's most affected by whatever war powers are affecting the ghosts. it's Larkin. Because he goes nuts.

He's the crazy Irish guy from Braveheart. He's just a nutball. Yeah, he's out of his mind. So he's the sniper. He's the oldest member of all of them. He was just a hunter on Tanneth. And then he enlisted because he suffers from delusions, migraines, fits of rage. He's basically possessed by the good spirits of Tanneth.

And he can barely hold on to his own mental fact. half the time, but he's almost always a benefit to the ghosts. He can, but he just basically performs miracles, like a better phrase, all the time with his rifle, able to see he sees through illusions, and we're going to talk about him quite a bit. There are others, but those are the guys you paint, so they are covered, and they're going to come up a little bit, and I talk about Larkin, so let's talk about Busefalon. Busefalon's annoying because it was listed as the most honorable of the Sabat world. And I don't love GW writing sometimes. Busephalon was ruled by 32 merchant families, all of which were supposedly supremely loyal to the Imperium.

And they had a strict code of conduct and civet pride. And so Bucephalon was heralded as an example of what a planet should be, as opposed to, you know, hive worlds in the subat region, which basically were like, look, this pre-imposed chaos corrupt. were kind of the same. You know, it's, yeah. So at the onset of the crusades, Slado had marked Busefalon as a key world for liberation. And, you know, so. Also, don't destroy it.

It's very, it's going to be beneficial for us to get it. Yeah, it's really critical. The problem is that Bucephalan had been conquered by a chaos demagogue named Nocad the blighted. Also is Nocad the Smiling. I was going to say, in my mind, he was known as No Kid the Blighted, and he was trying to, one of the guys that tries to make their own nickname, I feel like that's him. Yeah. Well, I like his No Cat that's smiling.

And I'm always smiling. He is always grinning because he's this giant man. He's two meters tall. And he had conquered Bucephalon, slaughtered all the nobles families. Like she had crucified them on their own banners outside of the city walls and built this massive chaos fortress. So Makarov gets there and is this incredibly fortified planet, but he has to take it because like his predecessor, he also recognized the significance of the planet. The morale that would happen if he destroyed it to both his army but also to the region, he just couldn't afford. So he did

do something, but he also didn't really want to get bogged down. So he does an invasion. And it goes kind of the plan. It's just a stalemate. There's just, it's way too, there's too many forces there. So he goes to the Tanneth. And he orders the Tanneth. I want you to deploy down behind enemy lines. Do Tanneth stuff.

Yeah. Go find Nocad and kill him. So the Tanneth do this. They deploy down. And as soon as they get down there, Larkin starts having issue. Losing his mind. He's freaking out. He's hallucinating shit.

He's having a bunch of visions over and over and over again on it. And they're just dragging him along, basically. Yeah. And the thing is is that Nokia basically discovers the Tannath and starts to attack. And Larkin just freaks out. But he freaks out in a weird way, which is why I think that Gaunt just didn't shoot him. Yeah. Because the TANF do successfully get inside the city.

But the Nokai finds them. And they begin attacking. And they are over. They're on the wrong side of the wall. all of the rest of the forces are on the other side of the wall and then they're just surrounded by chaos forces. And then Larkin just runs away. And Gant sees him run away but doesn't shoot him,

which probably, you know, which ends up being a good call. But Larkin runs into a cathedral for Sabat. Soat. And then I love that this statue comes alive and tells Larkin that there's a perfect perch on the top of the chapel that he could see and take care of,

of No-Kan from that perch. And so he does exactly that. Yeah. Climbs the top of the cathedral, looks out, and there's No-Cad preaching. Because remember, he's like, it's this chaos. So he's empowering everybody through him. N-Kad is, obviously, he's corn. He is a corn demagogue.

And he is empowering his forces through him. He's just, you know, speaking the word of corn. And he takes a Lasz rifle right through the head. I was to say, after he had no head, he did less preaching. Yes. And immediately all the chaos, all the forces and power of corn flowing stopped. And the entirety of the battle turns. The Tanneth first and only have turned the battle.

Busephalon falls for the Imperium. And this is basically a little moment of divine intervention. Once again, the renowned of, of Tanith is growing. All right. Fortis binary is a hive world in the Sabat worlds. And it was marked for conquest as its resources were, air quotes, necessary for the continuation of the campaign.

And for this, Warmaster McAroft placed Lord General militant Hector Drevere in charge of the campaign. Yes. Now, Dreveer is a very important character. because he's this highly ambitious man. In fact, he wanted to be the war master before Slato became the war master. When Slato died, he wanted to be the war master

before Makarov got it. Actually, it's not one. He felt he deserved both of them. And when Slato was killed, he felt that obviously there's no chance now in his mind. And it went to Makarov. And so Draver becomes obsessed with getting this next appointment.

And so he tries to achieve this kind of weirdly, mutually exclusive goal. He wants to have for himself great military success while having Makarov have great military failure, his boss. Not really ideal. Now, he also has in his inner circle, or he's in the inner circle of, an inquisitor by the name of Helding. So at this moment, I have the little break.

if you haven't read Taneth First and Only and you want to read Tanith First and Only stop listening to us now because we are going to ruin the end of Tanith First and Only.

Full stop. This is the entirety of the biggest part of that. This is the most exciting part of that entire book. We're not going to cover every bit of you can still read it,

but I'm just like, you know, we're going to cover the big reveal. There it is. All right. You've been warned. Heldane. by the way. Yeah, Heldane the Inquisitor had done what a lot of Inquisitor has done.

He had fallen to chaos without realizing he'd fall into chaos. This thirst for pursuit of knowledge is all encompassing for an inquisitor. And there is only one force in the galaxy that can grant this level of knowledge. And it does it at a price. On the world of Fortis binary, the ghosts are deployed under the command of Trevier. But they weren't alone on the planet. there were also the Janteen patricians on the world who were led by a man named Colonel Dracar Flens who is the son of Aldo Dresius the guy Gaunt had killed for leaving his

fellow to die and in doing so had ruined Flens his entire life. He had ruined Flens's life. I mean, because he stripped Flens of all of his noble titles of no, Gant doesn't know this because Flens had changed his identity because Flens' father's real name was Aldo Dersius. But Flens took on a new name and had elevated themselves. So God has no idea who this guy is. The problem, though, is that the Jantin patricians are a very famous regiment. And Flens had been a very successful leader.

He'd gotten very close to Hector Javier. So now these two are pretty close. There is a massive chaos force on the planet of Fortis Binary. and Fland's had this great idea about what do about this force. Send the Tanneth first and only to charge their lines, and that'll get the chaos forces to come out, and then me and my very well win the day. Exactly.

And Javier says that's a great idea. But Dravier knows you can't just send one regiment into the lines alone because it's too obvious that's just a suicide attack. The Tanneth would know the suicide attack, but more importantly, the enemy would know it's a suicide attack. And they wouldn't counterattack because they'd be like, yeah, we're not getting drawn to this dumbass. So they're joined by the Vitrian Dragoons, who side note, why can't we have these models? Oh, they look so cool.

Yeah. So the Vitry and Dragoons, like they, it would be a nightmare to paint. Well, maybe contrast wouldn't make it easier. But they wear, yeah, they were dragon scale armor. They look awesome. Glimmer. Yeah. Yeah, I think actually with the contrast, these could look, it could be an easy paint.

Oh, they look way better. All right. But the vitreans are this highly honor-bound society. Deeply lower the Imperium, very strong soldiers, you know, kind of like you guys probably guess what's going to happen here. The initial assault and the chaos lines goes as expected. Territory the shit out of them. And they go and they scatter. They disperse them, but Gaunt basically gets, grabs all of his guys and starts saving

the dragoons. who are super excited about that. Yeah, because the tanith are able to use their camel cloaks to move around and they're able to find the vitriens and save them, say, hey, come with us. Another thing, the biggest thing, they find this underground train line. And they're like, well, really can't be. Also, nobody knows about it. So it's basically wildly unguarded.

For the beginning. It's very, for them, I'm saying. I mean, I just want to point out, when we talk about, you know, poor plot devices, there, it's a trench war campaign, and they find just like a random hatch that they open up and go, oh, look, if we go down this hatch, there's an old abandoned train line here

that no one seems to know about, and we can just wander through it. And eventually they do come upon about 200 of the enemy cultists and a pair of iron warriors. So there's a fight at the end. Hold on. Also, a massive model. Yeah, and then they get there.

The big piece of this is there's a giant monolith at the end of it. And the monolith is, there's a chaos, like, kind of a ritual being done around this monolith. And it's one of seven. Get it? Seven? All right. Now, the key thing about this is the Tanith always have its little bits of divine intervention. 20 years prior to this on the world of Darandara, there's a rogue psycher. And this is a rogue psycher that tells Gaunt about his father's betrayal, but also says the following. to him, says, there will be seven stones of power. Cut them and you will be free. Do not kill them. But first you must find your ghosts and then finally the warp knows you, Ibram. So he remembers this

and realizes that blowing up the monolith bad, I have to interrupt the ritual. So instead he just turns the monolith. They grab it and they rotate it, which severs the ritual. It affects all of the other monoliths, which then effectively turns off the warp to all the cultists. It's weird, though, because they go from this super juiced up. I don't know, it's like if you hit the adrenaline that had the after adrenaline dump, because everybody becomes lethargic. It's haste. It's after haste.

He cast haste and he interrupted. Yeah. Everybody's lethargic. Yeah, so they all just come straight down. And so the enemy just is kind of useless at this point. Then God does find something he can blow up. They find the giant ammo dump in the dead center of the complex, which is where the ammo dump should be for the record.

And they go, well, we're blowing this thing up. So they do. And they effectively blow the center out of the entire complex. So Gaunt and the dragoons on their suicide charge effectively conquer this entire facility. This annoys me so much as the Fleds gets super many. All of the patricians, come super angry. You're furious about this.

You're like, screw you, dude. You sent us to die. You're mad that we succeed. Well, it's not made of them. It's not made better by the fact that, you know, Javier also does kind of talk a little bit of crap to flanks about this, about like, I thought you got, you said these guys were idiots. I mean, these are backwood farmers just did what you couldn't do.

and they took almost no casualties. What's going on? So after the events of Fortis binary, the Tanith, the Gentine patricians, the vitreans, and some other are sent to menzanoid epsilon, which is interesting. Menzinoid epsilon is a converted chaos shrine world. So goodbye, that has to go full destroy. The weird thing is that Dravere, who's the one who sends them there, doesn't want to blow it up from orbit, which is what you should do to a chaos shrine world. Instead, we're going to conquer.

You're like, yeah, this has no strategic value. We can legitimately just make it so no one could leave from orbit. And we're just blow it up. It's a blow it up later. Any of these things. Yeah. It's not even on a warp route. It's not a hive world. It's just like, we'll get to it later. You can send the Imperial Navy on their way somewhere else. Hey, just blow that up. you get a free minute. Drevere is insistent that we're going to this world. And this is because, thanks to Inquisitor Heldane, he knows there's an artifact there that will allow him to usurp Makaroff.

The problem with a rogue inquisitor, like Heldane, is that he's not technically rogue yet. Rogue inquisitors are like bank robbers. He hasn't committed the crime yet. till you robbed the bank. Hell Dane's got the gun. He's in the bank, but he's still in line waiting to talk to the teller. That's kind of where it's at. You know who wouldn't have let this shit go down? Some Dark Angels interrogator chaplains. Wouldn't have had to wait for any of this. Yeah. But that's the issue. So the military intelligence is aware that Hel Dane's up to something

and Hel Dane's a problem. But they can't initiate anything because he actually hasn't done anything yet. He's just acting in a way that's bad. So they needed someone to do something because it still is the Inquisition. So they go to Gaunt and they reach out to Gaunt and they say, hey, basically whatever is on Menzinoid needs to make sure it gets destroyed. Not it doesn't leave menzoid. It gets destroyed. And it tells that they were correct.

I want to point out this book, by the way, was written in 1999. So stuff we're going to reveal here, 1999. That predates. So this, we're in second edition 40K when they wrote this. Okay. So the fun side story, read the book if you want more about this, but the trip to Menzinoid Prime is a delight because basically the Jantene patricians and the Tanneth are on the same ship and start trying to kill each other. It ends up with actually, and the ship cat that at one point goes, I don't just lock the door, let him beat the crap out of each other. I don't care. Just leave my ship

alone. We're still doing to where we need to get. Yeah. Although there is one bit I do need to talk about because this does actually, this did drive me nuts when I read it. So at some point, this is 1999. There's an assassin sent after Gaunt, and it's a sci assassin because it's a regular person who someone then uses a psychic influence to take over because that way they don't know that they're an assassin. Yeah, they made sure you candidate. No, some mentoring candidate, it's the naked gun, Brad. This is literally the naked gun, all right?

This is how they tried to kill the queen in the naked gun. But luckily, Enrique Palazzo was there and was able to save the queen. from, is it, Richie Jackson? Is that who was trying to kill the queen? Reggie Jackson. He was Ritch Jackson. Because Reggie Jackson was totally going to kill the queen with the pistol. The thing on the third base.

I've seen this movie a lot of times, by the way. Yeah, this was the plot to the naked gun. There we go. Had to get that off my chest real quick. And yeah, again, Enrique Palazzo. All right. Anyway, Gaunt realizes that whatever is going on a men'senoid prime is pretty significant and it's very complicated. So he needs to go and make some allies and get prepared.

So he does. He brings all the paneth together and effectively says, when we get down there, the shit's going to get real. They arrive on the planet. And effectively, it is the most, hey, don't go here. Of all, hey, don't go here's. There is one giant chaos structure that is, let's see the power. And surrounded by tall, they can't tell if there's stone or metal pillars,

all over the place. And Javier looks at this and goes, cool. Deploy forces, go forward, and I am actually going to even lead it with my super Leviathan battle tank thing. And they do that. And as soon as they start going forward, all of the towers activate

and form a super force field, disintegrating anything that's in between them and trapping anything that's on the inside of them, including Javier. who dies. We didn't really pull the fact out. Before this happens, they had, Dan, Gond had found out about his plot. Yeah. So, yeah, Gaunt knew all about what was really going on. Yeah, I mean, and Gaunt had deployed first. Yeah, because Gaon and the guys find out that Javier is full on going to try to supplement Macarath. You know what I mean? Yeah, he's going to try and

kill Macarath, and he's going to do it with whatever is on this planet. So Gaunt knows he has to find it first. What's fun is gone also when they got down there, the first, the Tanneth looked up at these pillars and went, these are just, these are a no. And put explosives, like, let's just not have these around and put explosives on them. So when their towers went to activate, they blew them up. So the Tanneth were actually safe when they activated. Because the other problem is once the towers activated, all the chaos forces that were hiding there stopped hiding because everyone was basically trapped inside these little pens of force field and couldn't go anywhere. And we're getting just mortared to the end of the earth and shot at.

So the Tanneth start moving forward because they go, we have to go find what's at the core of this thing and see what we can do. The other problem, though, is that while Javier was planning on using Menzinoid to usurp macaroff, also the patricians were planning on attacking the Tremors. the Taneth from the back, using all of this to kill. They're going to blame it on the chaos forces. But the dragoons, the victory dragoons, who had been super tight because of the whole, hey, thanks for saving our life thing, were pretty pumped.

And they had been watching these guys and radioed in a message to gone as boys. Yes, the story is really fun. So what happens is this whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket. Drevere is killed. He's dead. There was chaos forces. attacking everywhere. Gant and the Tanneth are trying to fight their way to whatever this thing is that's at the core of it. While they're going, they get a radio message. It was a code word,

which I'm forgetting right now. And the code word basically warned him, they're coming for you. Yeah, the patricians are coming for you. It was definitely not the safe word from Euro Trip. And the patricians are coming for you. What this does is this way, Gaunt knows they're coming. And Gaunt then sends a second signal out, which lets the dragoons know. The dragoons know, oh, this is what's happening. So as the patricians basically assume that they're going to catch the Taneth from behind and just slaughter them.

Instead, they catch a Taneth who are actually fortified and are ready for them and begin mortaring them and shooting back at them. So the patricians get upset. and they end up doing a bayonet charge into the tanness lines up a hill, losing a ton of soldiers in those problems. By the way, again, I was, while chaos is fighting by the way. So I point out, chaos is watching all this happen going like,

I just shoot both of them. I don't. I don't know. Like this is like, yeah, but this is fine with us. But the goons show up and just wreck face the patricians. Because the patricians, yeah, the patricians basically reach the tanneth line. the patricians are wearing armor. They are wearing, it's not space marine armor, but they are much more armored.

And just in time, as they reached the 10th line, the dragoons basically pop out behind them, going, so what's you guys up to and kill every single patrician. So all the patricians are dead. Now, this frees up Gaunt to keep moving forward in the menzinoid Epsilon Prime. And he discovers what it is. And what it is is an STC. And STCs, by the way, are not... It's a pretty good SDC, by the way.

We also need to set the table for it. STCs are not a USB drive. SDCs are full manufactorums. And this is a giant one. And it's an ancient one. It is a 20,000 year old one because it makes men of iron.

That's what this is. This is why Heldane and Javier wanted it. This is the ultimate weapon in the galaxy. With this, this is a weapon that did wipe out humanity or almost without humanity, but the idea they had was if we can turn this thing around, it could wipe out all the enemies of humanity.

Except for the fact that it's wildly corrupted by chaos right now. It has been sitting yet. It has basically been sitting inside of a chaos shrine for a thousand years. And it's also been sitting for 20,000 years, untouched. And I don't like doing all the M-night Shamaun plot twists that occur here. but if you read the book, you know, I'm talking about because we don't actually know who the secret agent is, but there's a secret agent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's also, let's also throw on Ron becomes a lot more cool with Gone because before this, he gets basically abducted, I guess, by Heldane in wildly tortured. And Gaunt and his boys broke him out from that before this happened.

Yes. But what ends up happening is Heldane is still alive because he actually did get shot in the face by large. Arkin earlier. And Heldane tries to kill Gaunt via a puppet that he'd planted next to Gond, but that puppet gets shot in the face and then that feedback gets into Heldain, which actually kills Heldain. But more importantly, is the STC. Gant looks at this thing and just goes, nope. Like this is, this is a giant pile of noke. All of this is nope. It is heavily corrupted. I can see it from here. So he blows it up. And when he blows it up because truth is, look, best case scenario, the Admet get a hold of this thing,

and they destroy the galaxy with it. Worst case, you know, chaos gets a hold of it and actually just conquer the galaxy with it. So he blows it up. I love both. I don't want to skip the one. It's a little bit of, again, a book, spoiler on it. Ron got saved by God. And then Ron shot the, the assassin is the one that shoots the assassin in the face.

And so basically, they get the whole, we're bonded for life for. forever now, we know we're both to each other. At the time, it was, thank you very much. Yeah, the problem is Ron also will try to kill him again later. Well, I'm saying, but as of right this second, yeah, right now he's cool with him

and then we'll later be like, I'm just saying. Well, God saved his life. Ron effectively saved God's life right now. Yeah, I mean, that's true. They're kind of cool at this point, but just kind of. But yeah, with the destruction of the STC, it turns out all those pillars were attached to it as well. All the pillars then turn off and

they actually are collapsing down. So all the chaos forces in them, that's awkward. And now the forces of the Imperium are able to reconvene. They turn the tide of the battle and the imperialian were able to conquer this nothing pointless world. That's, and that's the end of it. So that's the end of this story for now. We'll break here. Next week, we're going to do more inquiries. and more Imperial Guard backstabing because the Sabat crusades, it continues, starts to get a lot worse. They have to push into the core worlds. And Gaunt is going to start to become a lot more powerful because he and Macaroth are going to start to get to know each other pretty well. Yeah.

And the tan ethic starts pulling off a bit more and more of the impossible. There is a little bit of jumping the shark. I'm going to warn you guys now. I probably will complain a little bit next week. about some of the battles that the gods, ghost pull off. But that's me. But he is going to be a living, I think he's a living saint, so I guess it's okay, he does it.

Anyway, until then, John Barsati, Bradchester. This guy. See you guys on.