The 40k Lorecast - Episode 152 - The Tanith First and Only pt 3 - The luck of the Tanith continues, but the civil war on Verghast is forming.

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

On Today’s cast we continue our coverage of the Tanith first and only with their continued luck on Sapencia which is both a weird and hilarious story at the same time. And then again on Monthax when they get the new company of an Inquisitor. But then we move onto the world of Verghast and set up what might me the most pivotal of all the conflicts the Tanith take part if during the Sabbat world Crusades. Talking about Hive civil wars, their causes, and how the imperium deals (or does not deal) with them. And then the opening moments of the Verghast conflict.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 lorecast with me, John Barsati and Bradchester. The sky. Today, we're continuing our coverage of the Tanneth First and Only with a focus on really kind of their crazy luck that just follows them everywhere they go. Oh, bad luck. Yeah. And then setting up one of the most important conflicts that they're going to be part of the Vergasst Civil War. As always, 40KLORCLORC, weekly show, focusing the lore of the War on the 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m.

Eastern, please follow and comment because it helps the algorithm and gives you something fun to read on Tuesday mornings. That's just the truth. You can also check out the links underneath to our YouTube channel where we do Q&A's, probably this monthish, maybe. Who knows? We'll see some point soon. The worst. I bought a new dog. I bought a new dog. So I had all this extra time and then I bought a puppy. So now I have less free time. You also can follow Brad's channel where he talks more about the competitive things. You can check out our show, the history of 40K where we're going through and doing reviews of all the armies in the game and their history. Some of them, at least two of the hosts like. And then you can also check out my other show, Retro Recall, where I talk about old video games. And of course,

if you like us and you want to support us, you can do two things. You can either get our merchandise by going to our website or Patreon. Stickers. We also have sweatshirts. It'll be cold out at some point, unless you're in Australia, in which case it's, well, it's not actually ever cold in Australia. It gets really cold in Australia. No, it doesn't. Not compared to where we live, Brad. Not compared to where we live. Your dog, as you're comparing, I guess.

I'm just saying, not compared to where you live. That's a side note. Huh. Why is that? Why is there nowhere in the southern hemisphere I can think of that gets, that's as shitty as where we live? Antarctica. That's not fair. Just occurred to me.

That's not fair. Anyway. All right. But our Patreon, you can also support us be a Patreon. Patreon's are wonderful things. Patreon's a great way to support artists or really anyone who you think is doing a good job. Great thing. We have it.

You get this show and the history of 40K for $4.99 a month or still $4.99 a cent. Because I just got back from Seattle and I want to talk about it because I forgot how much I liked it out there. This is a part of the country that gets shit on a lot. And I went to college in Tacoma, which is actually, one of the worst parts of the area, and I still like it up there. I went to Puget Sound before anyone sends me notes. And I actually went there when the Tacoma aroma was a thing, and Crystal Meth was a big thing, and I still like it up there. So there you go. But let's talk about Seattle, because I'm not going to try and sell anyone in Tacoma. I know better. So if you never been to Seattle, go in the

summer, don't go in the winter. I'm not going to pretend. I can't sell it that well. It sucks in the winter. But in the summer, it's incredible. You get 14 plus hours of sunlight. It's amazing. You get views of the Mount Rainier, which is actually a volcano. You get waterfronts. The city's cool as hell. It's built on what feels like a mountainside because everywhere you go, you have to walk uphill. So maybe not ideal for bread.

I do remember you got to be sick there. Really? You like walking up hills? Peak shape. No pain. You are. You're not even peak shaped. I am a square shake.

But Seattle's actually kind of really cool history. Obviously, people know it as a birthplace of Starbucks and Amazon. It's also the birthplace of Nordstrom and Costco, the home of the world's greatest hot dog. Ooh, quick side note, just for me, stop shitting on Starbucks, everybody. I realize it's not as good coffee as a local coffee shop. But I will say, as someone old enough to remember, there was a time when all of our coffee came from diners, gas stations, and Dunkin' Donuts. Then Starbucks came along and introduced flavor to coffee.

And it was lovely. And they paved the way for all these mom and pop shops that I actually do shop at now to buy my coffee. And yeah. So, yeah, they're a behemoth. Yeah, they don't, their employees very well. But you know what? Let's at least give them the credit for creating something cool.

But, right, back to Seattle. Seattle also has a cool history. They invented the modern backpack because REI is also from there. The game Pictionary. The stadium move, the wave, and the electric bass guitar. Well, but the reason you go there, food and scenery. I was there for four days, and I spent the entire time going for hikes and eating seafood. And, ooh, the hikes are incredible.

And, ooh, the seafood is nuts. Shellfish, sushi. Oh, and also, if meat's not your thing, parts of the best vegan food in the country. Oh, the hikes are beautiful. You got pine forests. It's so there's nice little shades. If you're not really good with the sun, you don't have to put on a bunch of sunblock.

It's great. It does have some hippies that I did. You know, there was a dude walking down the street playing what turned out to be a double flute. I had to look it up later. But that was actually kind of a nice, he wasn't bothering anybody. He was just wandering down the street, adding music.

It was nice. So anyway, go there, wander around. You'll discover that it's a pretty cool place. All right. Lastly, our Discord. Join our Discord. Is it free? Our Discord is fun.

Obviously, it's free. I'm not an a . So, join our Discord. It's awesome. It's so much fun. The worst part is I used to say it. And then two people yelled at me. And now I've like quintupling down on it because I charge for my Discord.

Well, yeah, you're a dick. So anyway, our Discord is free. It's available. Join our Discord. It's fun. It's awesome. Our Discord's done an incredible job. as a whole of building itself into a great community.

I've found incredible advice there for reading, for painting, actually. I've actually picked up paint tips passively. I haven't told anybody about seeing people talking about stuff. Like, oh, that's a really good. That's a good idea. And I've picked up painting tips there. Some great literature recommendations, especially some of the newer books that come out. You really aren't going to get good reviews of a lot of these books.

Your two options are going to be Reddit or our Discord. So it's a really cool thing for a lot of people. who want to keep up on the lore coming there. But there we go. All right. So let's get back into Gaunt. So Gaunt and the Taneth are in kind of a weird spot. They are part of a bunch of victories all around the Sub-Out World Crusade, which

makes them really popular with, like, Macaroff. But as you move further down, they're not as popular as you would think, mostly because it's a fictional character and they have to make up a story. Also because the people that are trying to get glory and not have their glory usurped by a bunch of lowborn. And yes, Brad, are you doing air quotes in an audio only cast? A hundred percent is what I do. But people are trying to steal. We just talked about that last cast, which is other, the larger, the bigger dog commanders are trying to effectively steal glory.

And they're mad when they don't get the glory because the renown of. the ghosts is getting better and better. Yeah, and what ends up happening is that as a result, the Tanneth end up in kind of a bit of a weird spot because also don't forget, some of their biggest achievements end up being redacted, like, you know, stopping the men of iron from coming back. Like, no one realizes that they just saved the entire galaxy.

Yeah, exactly. So they also save the galaxy. Well, no one's going to know about that. In fact, a lot of the stuff that they do doesn't get full, reported it out. So while we know, as the reader of the books, I'm just imagining a report coming out that's just all black redacted with like four names. The 10th first and only still alive. But it's 42 pages. Yeah. And that's all you get. Yeah. So that's where they're situated. They've got a bunch of people who keep seeing them get sent to all these new

places because while they're redacted, the upper echelons know how successful they are. But again, do your point like the Mordians, the Volpeen, they're looking and going like, why are these forest folk being treated like us? And they start getting a little bit upset. It is also, they have a little bit of animosity, don't trust everybody. And it's well deserved. Three of their first five engagements are them getting sent to die. Not to succeed to die purposely.

They are a distraction carnifex. Yes. Well, you're like, hey, these guys see. Without the carnifex, actually. The Tanneth seemed very standoffish. You're like, yeah, no shit, man. People keep trying to kill us a lot that are on our side. And what ends up happening, though, is that they are this backcountry woodsman,

but they keep showing that they're successful. And one of the issues with them, though, is that they do always get lucky. Now, again, the truth is it's a, there's no better way for it. It's just a trope because these are, there are 15 books. So of course we keep getting lucky. This is GW writing. It's this actually all writing. That's what makes stories good.

That's why we like reading a story, a story where they just keep winning from page one through page 500 isn't that exciting of a book. Whatever. But let's talk about some more times where they get kind of cool lucky. And we'll start with Sapensia, because Sapensia is actually a hilariously fun story. And for everybody that wants us to tell where, this is from Ghostmaker. And a bunch of short stories inside. All right.

So Nadze Bear, which people all seem to be really enjoying, I call him this, was defeated. And that was initially really good for the Imperium. Nadsie Bear was a very powerful chaos leader, and he commended a massive force. And as part of this, he just basically forced a bunch of war bands to bend the knee to him. So when he was defeated, they all splintered and fractured. And this is why McAroff initially went all in on hunting them down, killing as many as he could, because he knew they were at their weakest at this point. And so he had to strike now.

Because the thing McGrath realized is that once Naze Bear, was gone, a lot of his former lieutenants would rise up to take his place, and some of them would gain enough power and renown to actually become potentially even more powerful than Naze Bear was. And that's one of the stories of today, which is Sholin Scara. Scara was the leader of the kith, and they were hardcore corn, but really basal level. When you look at corn, corn worshippers come on a bit of a spectrum. you've got some of them are actually really good conquest. Like if you think of Gangus Khan,

Genghis Khan would have been corn because he conquered all of Asia and part of Europe. But you also, yeah, but you also get other ones, which is what the kith were, which were just, we like killing things. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, in ritual style too. Yeah, blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne. That is the kith. They are really, they're basically like berserk.

And this constant cycle of murder, torture, death. That's really all they did. And Skara and the Kith had been carving the just bloody path across the Sabat worlds. And they eventually encountered this hive world of Sapentia. And Sapensia was an ocean world. That was also a hive world. I don't know. I just assumed it was where Obi-Wan goes to get the clones.

Yeah. They describe it as the main high. which is where Scarra was, was built on top of a group of submarine mountains. So just a giant hive with a bunch of little beach around it. So obviously we're discussing Normandy. That's kind of what this was.

For me, it felt more like a bunch of floating cities almost that were super massive. Yeah, but it's really hard. Because they're still supermass. They're almost continents. They were so big. But I don't think they are in this case. that's the problem because in this one, because of the way the story goes, it doesn't feel like

it's that large. That's what that's, they just have a bunch of islands. There is a bunch of islands. It feels like it's just one big hive in this case. It's, the story's weird, but we got to it. Because I mean, they talk about the different islands because they, when they first do their invasion, they go to Osprey Island. And they, yeah.

That's where they have all the problems with. Also, it's going to fire me up when you're like, oh, no, the basilic pieces hit water. And somehow now it's ruined. You're like, No, I refuse to believe that. I mean, it sank. No, but they couldn't use it after they got it back. They had, it got wet.

Yeah, it was too wet. Yeah, because they made of candles, apparently. Just like, it's the, we're 42,000 in the future. You're like, nope, water can't possibly, nothing. That water was salty. All right. So, yeah, the plan was, especially for the main height, was to do an orbital invasion onto this very small beach that surrounds the high. blow the walls up and reclaim the hive.

And the defenders inside the hive felt differently about this plan. And I took offense to that. Yeah. So as the drop ships start to arrive, a combo of return fire from the hive city. And apparently the kickback, air quotes there, that's what they wrote, from the ocean created havoc on the drop pods. Apparently in the year 41,000, our drop ships can't handle landing on an ocean. This was the thing they wrote.

Also, somehow, not that they just crashed. They dumped, quote, from the book, dumped their cargo into the bay. Yeah. Specifically, the Bay of Bolano. Yeah. As they approached the city, they just went, meh. And they decided just to dump stuff. And what happens is for those who aren't aware, the density of water is one gram per cubic

centimeters. So that's, if you have higher density than that, you sink. And a basilisk has higher density than one gram per cubic centimeter. And all of them began sinking. All of the tanks, everything. So this invasion wasn't going well to start with, including a lot of the more heavily armored guardsmen, because they're basically being drowned by their own forests by being dumped in the ocean. The Tanneth, though, not heavily armored. So they all swam the shore. Because, you know, and they come from a backwards planet, so they also can swim. I do like the fact that they were having trouble doing all this, but one of the ships crash landed and makes a breach in the walls. Oh, yeah. This is the dumbest thing. Yeah. They're on the beach. How are we going to get through the

wall and a ship crash into the wall? We're talking about luck. It's like, oh, I just imagine the guy's saying that as he says it right behind him. Yeah. Like, we should do that. But the kith did see that and then went kind of sealed it up. But then Domew, who's one of the Tanneth, had a prior injury and was given a bionic eye with X-ray vision. It hurt me to say that. It hurt me to say that. And with his X-ray vision, he looks cool.

He saw, he does, but no one has X-ray vision. It's just not a thing. He does. I work for a company that makes X-rays. Are you trying to tell me that we have warp travel and you're worried about X-ray vision? You know what? Pooh on you, John. If he had warp site, it makes sense.

But to have an X-ray, you have to have, you fire electrons that have a sensor on the other side. That's how X-ray-Rae-E-knowing. He always says it's on the other side. What I do for a living and lecture on it. But anyway, side note for a different day, side-out for a different day. How about this? His eye is magic and cool. And also drawing.

of this character. We've talked about this before. I'm totally fine with he had a magic eye that let him see. I wouldn't push back at all. It's like, okay, that's fine. He had warps-sight. The artwork for this guy looks super cool, though, because it's a super sinister-ass red extra.

Oh, yeah. Exactly. Just say he has a magic eye. I'm fine. That's all I need. Let it go. It's metacleriums. That's all it is.

But anyway, so he does, they then do the whole movie trope of climbing through the air ducts because they find this tube. And they go through this because, you know, making no noise, no one knows they're there. And this is, man, I'm not even getting, you know, I was going to do a diatribe into that, I'm not doing it. So Catherine, who's another paniff, and it leads a small fire team through the tunnel and they bring explosives with them. And their goal was, we're going to get another side of the wall and we'll blow a hole in the wall and all other forces can come through. A plus plan. The great luck of the emperor, though, helps them out even better because they get caught. and when they get, well, not caught, they get found out.

And they go run away from the kid who are chasing them. And while they're running away, it's a massively outnumbering force to chase them. So they decide, we're just going to blow up this basically manufacturerum, and we'll bring it right down on the enemy. And that way, that'll buy us some time, and we can figure something else out. So they do that. And they bring this whole big tower down, and it works. The enemy stops chasing.

Don't forget about poor Sergeant Gorley. goarly died earlier i was saying gorely read it back to look you gotta give the guy a little credit because goarly went all right guys we got to get this fire team we're gonna get into this tunnel we're gonna do all the

things and eight seconds later he realized he's wearing a red shirt and gets yeah gorely put on the red shirt and said but i'll cover the rear and yeah he did he sealed it with himself he gets exploded yeah but i like this story likes

because it's a stupid story, but it's very funny. So, Catherine and crew, after bringing down the manufacturerum, start wandering around the city trying to find something else. And they notice something kind of odd. Namely, there's no more defenders. Like, no one, we got caught earlier and we seem to not be getting caught again. Like, that scene in Shrek, where they're wandering through and there's just no one there. Welcome to do luck, what a perfect place. Like that level of thing. And it's really empty. And eventually they learn why.

They come up across the main square. And inside the main square, Scara has decided to go full Jim Jones. He has, Scarra has decided. He has... He's drinking the Kool-Aid, but really bad Kool-Aid with a knife.

With knives. Well, yeah. They are making sacrifices to corn because when they bring down this tower, they decided that this must be this gigantic force that there's no way they would be able to repel them. And they want to make sure they go out in their own terms, blood for the blood, God, don't be taking captive.

You know, this is what we're doing. And the guys are like, there's 10 of us. Yeah, Skara has decided that he is, because he's currently like 30 and O is what this is for corn. And he knows if the Imperium is inside the city, he's going to lose. So rather than go 30 and 1, he's saying, I'm not going to give the Imperium the victory. We're going to do a great big corn thing. We're all going to kill ourselves.

and Korns me waiting for us on the other side. So Kaffin and the crew just kind of sit there calmly and watch and just let the numbers of living Kith diminished to a point where they're like, I will just capture the rest of them. And then rush over there and capture, including Skara alive, who I'm assuming that this, by the way, is an homage. I think it's Leo Major Zwoll and then, or there's a Canadian guy. I think it's Francis Pagan, Pekan, Humbow. He's got a

Paganhambao's name. I'll get it. Someone comment, other comment or post in Discord, but I think that's who this is referring to. Because these were snipers who basically captured a massive number of Germans because they assumed that they were outnumbered. And in fact, it was just one dude who's like, I hope reinforcements come because if they figure this out. I have so many prisoners. Yeah.

That grenade is going to hurt real bad. As soon as they realize, I'm hanging by myself. Yeah. It's like, but that's what I think that's what. this was meant to be an homage to, but Catherine does. They take the entire city with eight guys. So with that one, we move on to another. Give the things. I love to give the, you got to give the full beat down on it because. Oh, this was they were going to, they were all scheduled to be executed. And Gaunt says, hey, Catherine, you have the honors of executing this guy. You know,

you did all you came in he led this group and he goes nah i think it would be way worse for him to just be taken prisoner and have to live with the fact that he lost and he sucks basically yeah to which scara does lose his shit about yeah because scara it starts begging to be killed yeah hand him over the inquisition which he does escape and then get recaptured later different story different day but let's talk more about luck of a tanith because there's official And there's redacted history. And this is another one that's going to get a little bit of both because we have, we're going to have the Tanneth, we're going to have the Inquisition, we're going to have

a whole bunch of stuff. This is a fun story. We'll be right back after a quick break. So, members of Colonel Strom and his Volpeen Blue Bloods, they keep finding themselves deployed around the Tanneth. And after enough kind of mutual deployments together, the Volpeen officers start getting really unhappy with the Tanneth, especially. due to one incident where they lose a ton of money to the Tanneth, gambling and a game of chance.

And the game is basically it's got a little box and they put a bug in the box and what hole is the bug going to come out of in the box? And the Tanneth managed to win this every single time when the pot gets to its absolute largest. I love everything about this because they're like, we've lost so many times in a row. witchcraft. Yes, witchcraft. Absolutely witchcraft.

So what they do is they call the English, they tell on them and they call the inquisition. This is so lame, by the way. Middle Ages England. Yes, it is until, until you just tweak it a little bit and add a little bit of Monty Python to it and it gets very, very funny.

Because along comes Inquisitor Lilith and I'm not doing her last name, that's impossible. And she has her scale and there's a duck on one side of the scale. And she's ready to weigh them again, the duck. And she does actually her full investigation, discovers a tanneth actually aren't witches. The whole story is very, very funny. I'm not going to spoil it because it's just a good story. But effectively, the tanneth do way more than a duck. That's what you guys need to know for the story.

But she's now along for the rod. I was just what to say. She just now is part of the crew just rolling around. And so any good black library book, if an inquisitor shows up, story's about to get good. So, or terrible. Well, it's always the story's going to get. The story will get good. Yeah. Something bad's going to happen for someone else. Yeah.

And so we're off to the world of Monthox. So this is large chaos force of the planet. And they're being sent there to cleanse this chaos force off the planet. The problem is that when the imperial force arrives, they situate in the planet, they get ready. They notice the chaos force just is kind of going off to the left. Not away from them, not into them, just off to the left and into the jungle. And Imperium knows that when the chaos doesn't really wander. So when they go somewhere, there's something there.

So they go, well, into the jungle we go. And everyone goes into the jungle. I'd sing the story from the jungle book, but I actually don't know that song because I haven't seen that since I was a very young child. Well, can we sing at least bare necessities? I couldn't feel the song. The simple better necessities. There we go.

I knew it was there. I just couldn't. I don't like Disney. I'm doing the Disney dance. Come on, Blue. Let's do it. There we go. Their viewpoint is the worst case now is a dangerous artifact there.

Best case scenario, they're trying to get around our defenses some weird way. But either way, kill the chaos. As soon as the Imperium catches up to the chaos forces there, a giant lightning happens, but like force lightning. I was just saying, it's not like. No, no, lightning in the sky. It's the emperors casting death on all of us kind of misleading. Yeah, not Toledo in August, like an actual.

This one's bad. And then right afterwards, hallucinations begin for the Taneth and the Volpeen independent of each other. For the Taneth, it starts subtle. They start smelling the trees of Taneth. They start hearing birds and forest creatures. From Tanth. Exactly. It gets so strong as they get more and more into the forest. They start reimagining the forest as their home, the forest from home.

And eventually they come upon the governor's palace of Taneth. And it's under assault from chaos forces. So they rushed to this governor's palace to defend it from the chaos forces. At the same time, the Volpa... Is it Volpone or Volpone? Volpone? Okay, the Volpene could spell Volpone. And I haven't read forever.

I could be completely wrong. We do have a topic comments telling us how to spend, you know, do Mikoff. I just, this was one of the ones I did on audiobook. And I'm like, in my head, I could have sworn the audiobook was the Volpeen. But when I read it's Volpone. But let's do Volpeen. So the Volpeen are also there. They, though, are transported to an even crazier place.

They're all transported to this world coast Ignax Magier. And Ignax-Mayer was a planet is actually the greatest and most famous defeat of the Volpeen. It's a battle, it's lived in infamy through all of their history. It's like one of the worst defeats they've ever had. They've been trying to redeem themselves. Well, now they're in it. So these two forces are now fighting due to hallucinations. The Taneth are protecting Taneth.

And the Volpeen are effectively protecting or reclaiming their honor. And the reason why is, of course, Eldar. the Eldar are there. Monfax was a webway gate and it was an unsecure webway gate because I guess the Eldar can almost just leave the keys around. You know, it was,

they left a key in the rock, but they forgot to like turn the rock over. They do a lot in these stories, by the way. They do this a lot. Eldor leave the screen door open kind of a lot. Yeah. And not in good neighborhoods too. It's one of those things like

it's not gated communities. And the Eldar had gone there to seal it. because this gate, I guess, was a direct shot into a craft world. So, you know, not something you want chaos having access to. And the Eldar before they could close it, we're getting overrun by the chaos forces. So the Farseer just does what it can do best. Lightning Storm and let's use humans as cannon fodder. I'll get it right for the game.

He definitely cast Eldridge Storm. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that thing was, we're ninth edition. Is it ninth edition of? Ninth, it was ninth edition. Night edition was the one where you cast and with people like, so this is going to, yeah. Yeah.

Night edition was one where it came out and we all read that and were like, so this rule was going to be gone. And it was. Yeah, it was like, you could drop it multiple times for each farceer. Yeah, multiple times for each farceeer you had, you could move up and get better range. That thing wasn't fun. I think it was fantastic. Yeah.

But here's the fun thing about this. The 10th and the Volpone or Volpeen were successful. They turned back the K. Chaos Force. And it was cool for the Taneth, they're great because they actually got to feel redemption. They fought for Taneth. They felt, because all of them remember had abandoned Tanith. They didn't mean to. They were ordered into a troop transport. They didn't know what was going on. But they've always felt if only we'd had a chance to defend our homeworld. And this was great. This was a chance for a lot of the members of the Tanith to not feel as much hatred towards Gaunt because they did finally get a chance to redeem themselves. It's kind of lame, if I'm being honest, it's one of the more lamer endings of the gaunt books.

The funny thing is that the, well, the farseer gets smoked, but he does accomplish his goal because they do close this portal, which led directly to the craft. Thanks to a huge traitor, massive trader. So Inquisitor Lilith,

who is of Ordo Zinos and has been obsessed with the Eldar, apparently the whole time, and spent her whole career studying Eldar. I also did a check on this, the way so the movie Avatar came out nine years after this book. So this is just a rip off of dances with wolves. So she decides to just go full-blown join the Eldar. So she uses her psychic powers to close the Webway and her and the Eldar go into the webway and she goes

and hangs out in the craft world. It would say in a craft world. Well, yeah, she was in the craft for about 11 minutes and then they probably shot an aspect warrior. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. All I know is traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor. Then you meet a striking scorpion and they're like, no. Yeah. She would have gotten there and be like, I close your webway for you. And they'll look at her like, there's zero percent chance. Just so.

Also, what's the atmosphere inside of a craft world? Just throwing that one out there too. We never addressed that very much in this game about like how everything seems to be very breathable. Like the necrons makes sense. They can go anywhere. Works. You know, go anywhere.

It's straight up Star Trek style. Every place is awesome. No need to ever. Yeah, exactly. It's true. T-shirt and a high pair of boots, bro. It's all you need. The problem is I refuse to do Star Trek.

I'm only doing Galaxy Quest from now on. Everything is Galaxy Quest. The Crushers. Why? Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. Why are they saying that? Oh, such a great movie. All right.

But we're not going to take a bit of a left turn and talk a bit more about the galaxy at large. Because we've been talking a lot of. about guard regiments and how they take umbrage with each other. And we just set something really big up here, which is Vergas. You know, the guard regiments, they have jealous. They have jealousy. Someone has a victory. Everyone gets upset.

They backstab each other. One of my favorite Gaunt's Ghost books is Necropolis. And it's because it shows us that the hive worlds suck at a different level than I ever even imagined. So these grudges will exist even. within the hives. And so, because the Imperium. Also, going back to what we said a couple times and some of the other cast of chaos and stuff,

once you realize how an imperial hive world works, you go, how is everybody not turning to chaos and other forces? Oh, God, yeah. You give somebody any option whatsoever. They're like, it's so much better than this. Yeah. The Imperium cares about one thing and one thing only. The spice will flow because we've torn up before.

to rip off of Dune. It's fine. And in a fair, GW did this a bunch of stuff. Everyone rips everything up. The Lion King, as Brad discovered, is a rip off of Hamlet. Hamlet. I already knew, but I thought Lion King was the better. Fine.

Do you know what Hamlets I rip off of? I'm a big fan. With Hamlets a rip off of the Legend of Amleth? It's one of my favorite ones. Legend of Amlet. It's a Dana. All right, fine. Everyone's got to learn today.

Legend of Amlet. This camp recently I was talking about someone. about this recently. Legend of Amleth, it's an old Danish story. You have two brothers that are appointed by the king to rule different lands. One marries the king's daughter. He has a son named Amleth. That's the other one. So Amleth, his uncle, kills his dad. Amleth knows this and then pretends to go crazy so that, you know, his uncle doesn't then murder him too. You mean King Lerick? Yeah, so he then leaves. There's even a Rosencrantz and Guilden's term, the story, by the way, the trick of hard. The only main difference is,

is the ending to the legend of Amleth is way cooler than the ending of Hamlet. Because the ending of the legend of Amlet is Amleth fights his uncle inside of a building that he set on fire, kills his uncle and becomes the new king. It's such a better ending. But then also fights in an... He also was the king of England at one point. Yeah. And then he basically goes out in a blaze of glory in epic combat too. Yeah.

But he also doesn't die. at the end and kills his uncle, redeems himself, takes over the entire kingdom. And he's also, this is why I love is a Danish story. At the same time, is a king of a small portion of England, because it's a 1,200s in England was not that valuable. But that's a legend of Ameth. Look it up. It's very fun. But what matters about this is hive cities. Hive cities, we cover them a bit. They have a tithe system. Everything in the galaxy has a tithe system. And the tithe gets met, everyone's happy because whatever, right? But if someone on the planet thinks they should be in charge, right? And they want to take charge, there are three things that will affect that. First,

can they keep the tithe going or increase it? Second, would the Inquisition consider what they're trying to do to be chaos? Yeah. And third, are there any friends that they're about to usurp who have, you know, powerful? Powerful. Powerful friends. And it's a very, very, very. Can you call someone? If I do this, is there anybody bigger than me you can call? Exactly. So in other words, am I about to usurp someone who's friends with the Lord of Terror? Anyway.

Also, it's one of the first three novels, I would say the Gansko's books are very, very good, especially in the beginning. I think that Cropolis gives you one of the best views of the Imperium. I wouldn't just straight of start with it. Ghostmaker's really good. To be honest, I'm getting into Gantz. You read the first one. Ghostmaker has a bunch of short stories. It's really nice.

You really couldn't read Necropolis if you haven't read the first two God's books because it just wouldn't make some of the later. It's I'm saying. But get into this book though. This is one of, I like to spend a little. There's books that I, you know, I listen to and I read and read everything. And there's books that I spend a lot of time with. Necropolis is one that I spent a lot of time with because it has a lot of views on the Imperium. It also has a lot of views in the lower set of the game world. this novel makes sense.

They don't make any, you know, you don't have to have wild luck or weird things happening. No, this novel is just good and cool. So what happens with this one, we learn in Necropolis is that within the hive planets, what was certainly hides go to war with each other all the time. And so every planet, as we've covered,

has a planetary defense force, also as a PDF, not just the thing that Brad typed in the Facebook. how do I open? And the PDFs will vary in size. Some are militias, lasguns, some defensive platforms, and others have full-blown regiments or larger. Infantry, siege armor, et cetera, et cetera. These guys can go to war with each other.

Hive cities usually have that size. So a hive city will have its own full-blown military that can invade. And the hives on occasion will use them against each other because, much like the movie Highlander, there can be only one. The Imperium functions in very, very opaque capitalism. And what I mean by that is we know they have a currency. We know it exists because they mention it on occasion. All the time. What is it? Yeah, but we don't know anything about it, which makes sense. In a galaxy spanning empire, you're going to have lots of stuff. We have the official imperial currency, imperial credits. Great generic phrase. No one cares. Then you have local currency.

on planets. Because most people never leave the planet, generation never leave the planet, except for Guard, and the Guard have their own currency. So it gets really simple. Which I also love because then you go into other people, like the Inquisition

of the Space Marines, who go, yeah, I was going to give you money, but I'm not. I'm just going to take whatever the hell I want. Yeah, that's mine now. Yeah. I really thought you were going to buy it. I did.

I bought it for nothing. Actually, I bought it for your life. Yeah, I bought it for my, edict says that's mine now. And so what happens is the real way it works is trade. The imperial is not a supreme communist dictatorship. You know, the government controls all forms of commerce and trade because that's, by the way, what communism is. Stop calling everything communism you don't like. It's, you know, unless it controls all forms of manufacturing, housing, and commerce. Anyway, the imperial is more of a social market economy. But I'm not going to end up

right now. Outside of the time. There is military and war economy also. Well, yeah, but the idea around this is that a hive planet is a very lucrative thing. They produce a lot and therefore they trade a lot. But that trade comes into a central point. The reason I'm bringing all this up, all that trade comes into a central point. So one hive is going to usually control the levers of manufacturing and trade on a planet. Who makes what?

where the off-world resources go and where the money flows. Thus, civil war. As you can imagine, because everyone gets not, it doesn't get distributed equally. And so one such civil war had occurred on the planet of Vergas, 90 years prior to the outbreak of the suburb. Hive. Yeah, Verun Hive and the Farozoika Hive had a bitter civil war in which Verenheim was victorious barely. But in the 90 years since, diplomatic relations had normalized. The two, they'd gotten along pretty well. Verenheim had shared the resources. Because again, the whole thing, like Verenheim, because they're in control,

decide where the off-world resources come into. So then they would decide how much would go to Farozoica and how much would go to them. So how much Farozoca could actually produce, et cetera, et cetera. And so the two hives actually had good trade, good relations, all this stuff. You know, they set this up because of the fact that eventually we're going to get, obviously, bad stuff's going to happen. It's a book. Right.

But I love the fact that he just refuses to believe this in the beginning. They're like, they're going. Oh, yeah, it's hilarious. Like, why would they come here? Yeah, but so what ends up happening is just like on Sapensia, Vergas got a visit from chaos. And in this case, it's a number. of Naze Bears lieutenants. This is a guy named Asfidel. Asphodel is basically the Mechanicum's least favorite person. They hate this guy, but it's all jealous hate. Asvadel had overseen all of

Nazi bears armored equipment, not tanks and transports, but like he's just a tinkerer. This guy would make, it's hard to exactly explain it properly, but he just made horrible creations. He was He does it out of nowhere. He's like trashed a man from the state. Yeah. He just, yeah. They don't even know how he's making him.

He just is. Yeah. And so the best way I kind of look at him is we cover this in the past. There are four chaos gods. And then there's Vash Tor who's not a chaos god, but is also kind of a chaos god. He's on the cusp. Yeah. Asphodel definitely had contact or had some sort of link to Vash Tor, which makes sense because

this book was written before they added Vastor of the lore. So we're going to add that in there too. He had no training with the Mechanicum, no training with a Dark Mechanicum. But he just continuously made these creations of war. And he just mastered Dark Technology. The Mechanicum really, like, really hates it, by the way, because they were like this stuff, because he made awesome stuff. This is just pure jealousy. But Asphidal had secretly alive.

I was trying to figure out whether I want him to be Trashcan Man or McGiver. Because he keeps using, like. He's basically evil MacGyver. It is for evil A-team? Yeah. Also, you just, hey, I got a blowtorch, some gum and three straws. Let's do this. Exactly.

So Asvital had secretly landed on Vargasst, and he snuck into Farozoika. No one knows how long he'd been there. Couldn't have been that long because of, you know, we know when Bellhurst fell down. But while he was there, he basically achieved a revolt. And he turned the hive to chaos. And by turn the hive to chaos. I don't mean like a couple upper levels yet. Because sometimes, and we learn some Eisenhorn novels a lot.

You will have stuff for like the upper levels of it are chaos. Then all the people down below are just like whatever. They have no idea. They're toiling away. They don't care because they go, who's in charge? Does this change anything about my 16 hour workday? No. Then good.

Exactly. Yeah, I'm still just toiling away. No, Farozoika was like Vrax, where 100% of the people are, chaos. Asphedal turned this hive into an army and something the people of Verenheim had no idea about. Because Verenheim is aware that this about World Crusade is going on. They've been hearing messages telling them, hey, you have to divert your supplies over here. This is, you know, this is where this is coming in from. You know, your transport routes are changing, blah, blah, blah. And their hive leader, a guy named Salvador Sondor, is, he's just kind of comfortable with it.

So he's sitting, he's actually linked into like some chamber where just his brain runs the hive. I mean, he's basically running the planet, though, at that point. Yeah. And it's just, it's fine. He just, he's doing all this stuff running because whatever. The war's out there. My planet's extra important. No issue.

But then there starts being these reports of gunfire on the edge of the hive. And by gunfire, I don't mean like, a couple people have shot each other. A mortar just landed and hit the wall and blew up a chunk of the wall. And he responds back with this is dissidents trying to create havoc within the city walls. He refuses to mobilize. He doesn't even put up the shields. He puts through. Yeah, because it starts happening.

Because his viewpoint, people are saying, hey, the Farozoicans are attacking us. He's like, no, they're not. They're our allies. We get along great with the Farahzoicans. Despite the fact that Farahzoicans haven't spoken to him, like, a month or months. I forget how long. It's been a while. They hadn't had any communication with the Verrazorgans in a while. But whatever. And he yet won't raise the void shield, won't do anything. And this artillery barrage starts to become more apparent from small little bits to actually,

hey, we're under attack. But he's not alone. Luckily for the people there, sort of unlucky. Because there's a reason why this guy gets. so psyched up right away. You got Thomas R. Pious Cowell, who is, I'm destined to be a great leader and do all these things. And he's currently sitting in this position as random political post, go stand here and do nothing. And he hates everything about this. He's a huge douche.

Pious Cowell, it's that standard trope of he, I am the, in his opinion, the world's greatest, the galaxy's greatest commander. And I have been set on desk duty on some backwater planet. And I just need a way to get back into the crusade. And as soon as Sanders does nothing, he's like, now's my chance to shine and says, I've got authority. I'm taking control of the defenses. Yes.

And pious, because he is a commissar, he's a lot of dude. This takes complete control of the armor division and leads a charge out of the gates and rushes out to go meet the attacking Farozoikens. Because his plan is the Farozoican is a smaller hive than Varenhive. Veren hive is, they defeat them 90 years earlier. The Veren hive military is about half a million in strength. So we're going to go out there, whatever these Farozoicans are up to, we're going to rush out there with our military. we're going to clap him in the mouth, and we're going to just let the,

and we're going to end this thing right now. He rushed up the gate to people of Varenheimer cheering because they're seeing their military rush out there to go defeat their old enemy, or really not as much enemy. It's more like a sporting enemy. Like, you know, same way I don't think Dallas Cowboys, like, yeah, get him, but, you know, whatever type setup.

And Kamisar Pius is out there, and he's rolling in his tank, he's getting closer, and he notices something kind of odd. The closer he gets the enemy, line, they don't change formation. Like at all, he's charging in an attack formation and they're just spread wide. And they don't move.

They stay wide. He gets closer and they stay wide. And he discovers why pretty quick. And that's because he's with, you know, his armor formation. And he gets closer and discovers that there are millions. Millions. Also, it's pretty impressive that they rallied the entire high. Yeah. He assumed he was attacking tens of thousands of troops, and he was charging in with his armor to go defeat them.

Instead, he was charging into millions of troops that also had armor that had, you know, artillery. Start the ends, Jacques. Start the engines. He, him and his tank brigade get wrecked because it just, he's effectively, it's like charging in like, Gettysburg or revolutionary war style. He's charging into just a field of fire. And I will have to caveat this a little bit. Pious is a commissar. Commissars do not flee in fear. So what happens next is not pious running away because he's a coward. He is not. Pious gets there and discovers that they are about to be attacked by millions of attackers. And the high, he just left assumed it was tens of thousands.

So they're off by, you know, a couple zeros. So he turns around and rushes back. Yeah. So he rushes back to the hive to go tell them. So he's not a, I ran away in fear. It is a, oh, crap, they don't know what's coming. So he rushes back in a full retreat. And also tells them all, as soon as your tanks are inside the walls, shut the gates.

Yeah. By the way, there's a crap ton of people outside of the hive's walls. We should mention that real quick. Yeah, hives, the way they're built is you've got a wall, very tall, very strong wall, things can't shoot through. And that's not necessarily the edge of where people live. And a bunch that live on the other side of the wall. And Pius, as he's coming back with his tanks, sees all these people who are also like, oh, we should get out of here, want to get back through said open gate, and decides that these people don't really have a lot of strategic value

and tells his tanks to hurry up and ends up running over a few hundred people and killing them all with his tank. And then slamming the doors down before they can get in. Yeah. Dude's a dick. But by the way, fun story.

Now, he does get the title, the people's hero because he went out and fought and came back and told him the truth, but by the people in the inside of the wall. The ones of the outside of the wall probably wouldn't have called him that, but they're all dead.

You know, that's how the things work. The people's champ is out there. Yeah. Yeah, the people on the outside of the wall would have had a different opinion of his name. But he did technically save the hive because if he hadn't done what he did, there was a million. They would have been swamped. Yeah. So Pius gets back within the gate. The void shield is now activated and the bombardment has begun. But they look at a big problem.

There's millions of attackers on the outside, about half a million on the inside. That's not a good situations, so what do they do? So they send out a request for aid. Varen Hive says, hey, we're under attack. We don't know what to do. Can someone help us? And they do two messages go out. One goes that to the other hives on the planet. And Yannick is one of them in Northern Collective. And more on them at a second. The other one goes to the crusade itself, say, hey, we need some help here. they get very lucky here because no one on Varenhive, by the way, knows this is a chaos attack. They just think this is another, this is a civil war. Yeah, they find out pretty quick here.

It's not much of a surprise once all this shit goes down. They're going to learn it's pretty quick. So Makaroth happens to have troops moving through the region anyway. He gets the report and Makaroth knows that a hive planet like Vergas going into full civil war in the middle of his crusades, ideal. He did not have this happen. Yeah, so he needs those supplies. So he diverts a small portion of his forces to the planet to basically figure out, you know, figure this out. And you guys can guess who it is, the Tanneth.

But not just the Tannet. It's also-Armidian and the Volemian and the General Sturm is, of course, there. Upon making planet fall, though, everything gets a lot worse. So High Master Sondar is all but useless. The biggest problem, by the way, I should mention is when there's, sent there, Macroft just sends them there, but with no directive of authority. So Sturm arrives, everyone arrives. As soon as they get there, they run into a couple big issues.

I'm going to get my chi together for this one. Politicians start doing politician shit to start with. You're like, you know that you're basically going to make it so people die right now with what you're doing. Oh, Brad, Brad's going to have a lot of Lords of Terror moments during this. but the first of it's so annoying it goes on for multiple chapters of this where these guys are like you got to tell me that i'm awesome or i won't let you save my life you're like what is even happening here right now man like what is wrong with you you're a pretty pretty princess

now can i go ahead and save your life yeah now can we actually do military actions fine i'll let you i'll let you fire the guns at the enemy oh my god it's so annoying when they get there gone and actually to his credit, Sturm and them, all of them realized pretty quickly this is chaos, because the size of the Farozoican force is just too large. There's no way an entire hive would empty and join a war unless there was chaos. And the Farozoican... I mean, you have full-on people. They're also super-siked up to run and die. People are just charging and get obliterated. Yeah. This is a genocide. They are there to commit genocide, and that means the arch enemy. it's also, you know, obvious

the Farozoicans have been this way for a while and they've producing been nothing but engines of war. One thing we should go in this, they talk about it in the book is the Ferris Hawkins have been dark on communications with the other hive worlds for a little while now because

all they're doing is making engines of war and nothing else and they weren't doing any of the things that were supposed to do and they haven't been communicating with the other hives. So they've been making Lasguns, armor, siege, And then more stuff we'll cover in the next episode, really creepy, cool stuff. So Gaunt and leaders know this is not a regional conflict.

This is actually, we are at now a new and emerging front within the Subot Crusades. Then part two happens. And part two happens because Hive Yannick did not get their voyage showed up in time. And they took a bunch of nuclear weapons to the dome. So one of the number one allies of Verenheim no longer exists. They just got nuked into oblivion. And the Northern Collective also, they're small. They can't do anything.

So it is now Verenheim against the Farozoicans and their imperial reinforcements against a massive chaos force. And to make things even better, as Brad was just alluding to, we don't know who's in charge because we've got Sondar, who's technically running. the hive. So the largest force available is a planetary defense force who report to the

imperial governor will call him, which is Sondar. Then we've got the Volpein who report to Stern. Then we've got the Tanneth who report to Gaunt. Then you've got the armor who report to forget the guy's name. It's a mess. So they're

all sitting there trying to figure out how to do this. All of the guys from Varun hive are like the diet coke of the Lords of Terra. They suck so much. They just have less power. They're just trash fires. It is.

Yeah. I get so mad at this part in the book because you're just like, why are you so terrible that you're, I'm willing to die unless you give me a gold star and say that I'm in charge. You're like, what is happening right now? You will die. And that's a pretty good foreshadow for why we're going to break here to next week. So next week, we're going to listen to Brad lose his freaking mind. I'm mad right now when we're not even doing it.

I think the way I rank out the Gonskhost books, I think the very first book with the Met of Iron reveal is one of the coolest reveals. The second book, I think, had one of the worst reveals, but had some of the best kind of backstories. It was one of the best. Because they had multiple stories. Yeah, really great. This book, I think, is the best top-the-bottom story.

I think this one tells. the story. And so that's why it's self-contained. If you know, if you at least know who Gantz, if you knew anything about Gant's Ghost, you can just go into this book. Yeah. And this whole story is awesome. It's really cool. It's like a mini siege of racks all over again. And I just really love the way the story progresses and the kind of the outcome. I hate the guys, but like the political intrigue is real and strong. Yeah. It's just, it's just irritating because the guys suck so much. Yeah. But it also does. It's a real big springboard for the later parts of some of the other stuff and the you say it. So, anyway, with that, John Barsati, Bradchester.

This guy. See you guys next week.