The 40k Lorecast - Episode 156 - Armageddon pt 3 – Ghaz goes all in on Hades, and Yarrick goes all in on pissing Ghaz off.

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

On today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the 2nd war of Armageddon. With the events of Hades Hive driving Ghaz crazy, including some fun response to an attempted air assault. So much so what he fails to notice the imperial forces bearing down on him. From there we cover the turning of the war in the favor of the defenders. After that we follow Ghaz and Yarrick in the actions after the war and how they lead up to the 3rd war.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallBrad ChannelOur Sponsors:* Check out Progressive: https://www.progressive.com* Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/40KLORE for a great deal: https://www.quince.com* Check out Shopify and use my code shopify.com/lore for a great deal: https://www.shopify.com* Check out TruDiagnostic and use my code 40KLORE for a great deal: https://www.trudiagnostic.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast. I'm me, John Barcadia, Bradchester. This guy. All right. Today, we're going to conclude our coverage of the Second War of Armageddon with the Battle of Hades and the Surprise on Hive Archeron, and then follow a bit more of the journey of Gaz and Yarek, post-war,

what just sets up the Third War of Armageddon, from being honest. Just the bigger war. Yeah. And then there's a fourth war. So whatever. Which is right now. Yeah, just burn the planet down, move on with your day. It's no longer even the planet anymore.

The third and the third and fourth, and we'll talk about these in later cast, but the third and fourth are like Armageddon's part of it, but it's not even that big of a part. It's like this huge ass wherever else. It's just remove the planet anyway. At a certain point, it's like, hey, keep getting hang nails. Just take the nail out. Anyway, all right. 40K lorecast, weekly show on the War of the Warhammer 40K universe,

releasing every money at 7 p.m. Eastern. Please follow, comment. It helps us out and makes us, more popular. And that makes Brad feel better about himself. So, if you'd like, also check out our other channels. We have a YouTube channel, link in the show notes, where we have a Q&A's. Brad has his channel. He talks about 40K. We've also got our other show, the history of 40K, where we talk about the game and a bit

more from the competitive standpoint, what it's been like over the eras. And most of them kind of sucked. You also have my other show, Retro Recall, where I talk about old video games. And some of them are good. Some of them are bad. that's just kind of thing about old video games. Additionally, if you like us, you want to help us out, two great ways to do it. You can go to our website and buy our merchandise, stickers, sweatshirts, it is getting cold out,

T-shirts, wine glasses, beer glasses, because it's getting cold out and that also will keep you warm, and dice for other things. Or you can support us via Patreon. Patreon is something I'm a very believer in because Patreon is great way to support artists. Artists in general are struggling right now. So cool way to help people out. Do you even don't want to support us on Patreon? Support other people on Patreon.

It's just a good thing to do at their time. Now, our Patreon, the deal week of everybody is very simple. You get this show and the history of 40K totally ad-free. And for that, you charge you $4.99 or 94.92 Zambian Quacha. Zambia? Zambia. Oh, come on. Sorry, but these are faraway places.

Zambia. know where that is. I'm just like, that is one of you're more obscure. We've been doing really kind of well-known monies for a while. It's Zambia. Nah, all right. Fine. It's the spine of Africa. When's the last time someone paid you for something in Quattra? Once last time, so I paid you for something in euros. Yesterday, actually. It was converted. Yes. Okay. So there we go. So it doesn't. really matter. It does it. It did show me the euro. I work in Swiss francs quite a bit. Don't care about the conversion rate. I know the US dollar bit. Anyway, I'm going to start making people pay me in Zambia.

There you go. Enjoy that. Enjoy your bank account. All right. Well, Zambia, for those who don't know, it's one of the top places to go to experience nature. It's where Victoria's Falls are, the Bucinca Plains, the Bangaluela wetlands, a bunch of others. It's all. also got some of the better run national parks in Africa. And on top of that, the country's really, really safe. So it kind of checks all the boxes. Right. Southern Spine of Africa, Zambia boasts a really remarkable collection of wildlife.

Elephants, lions, hippos, apes, wildebeests doesn't stop. I think they have 750 species of bird. Oh, and one of the largest bat migrations on Earth. So it got a lot of stuff. Although you can also see leopards, but then they're not at a zoo. So I don't know about my opinion of a leopard without metal between me and leopard, but do you? I don't want anything that eats things that are me without something between me. See, I go with you because I'm faster than you.

So we're fine. You're like, I just have to push Brad down just a little bit. He might not get back up. Push down. My legs are twice the length of you. It's just say like, oh, we have to run away. Brad's back there being, and by the way, if I was the leopard and you look at two of us, which one's the better snack?

I am delicious. There we go. There we go. Unless it gets to certain parts of you. It's like, oh, what happened here? I'm also full of death. Exactly. Spoiler alert.

So on that note, isn't why it's a good, funny part about that. Zambia is known for walking safaris. So if you don't hop in a Jeep and roll around, you walk everywhere. which is great because I've actually done this type of thing before. It's a really nice. A couple times when you're in a truck, you just don't really notice the stuff that's around you. You can point, oh, that plant is there.

And you go, oh, a plant. It's different when you can actually touch it, especially things like ant mounds and some of even just like remnants of animal kills, that kind of stuff. It's a lot cooler to see it when you're on foot. Other cool thing is there's a massive chunk there called the Zambezi. And the Zambizi, it's this giant river that runs through the plant. planes. And you can do this one on canoe or boat. I would vote boat because there's a ton of hippos in it. So I vote boat. But do canoe if you want to do canoe. But because of the size of

Zambezi and the importance of it, every animal has to come down to it. So you get in just be on it. You'll see the leopards. You'll see the lions, wild dogs, hippos, elephants. Everything comes down to the waterway because, you know, water equal life. Or in Brad's case, Diet Dr. Pepper equal life. There's nothing wrong with that, dude. It's like lots of people live on this stuff. But he's literally, so you guys don't know. He just held up a die, Dr. Pepper. Seriously, though, it's if you're looking to do a safari in Africa,

Zambia is one of the better countries to go. They've also got a very good tradition of preserve in the sense that you don't have to worry if you go there about, am I actually going somewhere where they're exploiting people? are they exploiting the animals? And they have a rather low tourist rate too. So there's a lot of things that kind of go right for the country. So look at you. Check out Zambisi.

With that note, I always finish off with our Discord. Join our Discord. Link in the show notes. Fun, enjoyable. Ask us questions. Get an answer within 48-ish hours. It's either you get an answer within 30 minutes or a day and a half. Depends on how busy I am at work or where level of dark hole breads in.

that day. What level is that? It's Brad's migraine. Is it a one immediate response? Is that a 10? Couple days. I do. You know what? I'm throwing this out to everybody on this. We record the history of 40K with pajamas and John and myself and multiple times now. This is when your friends, who are your real friends, just call you out. We've had a couple different times now when we go to cast and I show up for the video and everyone goes, Nope. Nope. Hang up.

I mean, I actually don't have a disconnect button on Bradd those. I would just hang him up. Nope. You're only able to speak to us right now. Like, you have to go away. But outside of that, though, if you don't want to talk to us,

there's a lot of other people there to talk to. Learn about lore, talk about books, especially the books. The thing to remember about 40K lore is there's over 400 Black Library novels. People will claim they've read them all. They haven't. They just haven't.

And even if they have, they don't have, call of all of them. So one of the challenges you do have is if there's a subject matter that you like, finding people who can really give you advice on this book's good, that book's good, or if you just want to learn more about it, go this route, can be challenging. And the best place to find that is forums. And your forum options usually are Reddit. So I, please, we've done a really good job there. We've got a great literature forum. Just even if you want to come in say, hey, I really like the white scars, even though nothing's been written about them in a while.

Can you help me learn more about the white scars? Yes, here are some books where they appear. They're all in the heresy. So, but with that, let's get into Second World Armageddon. Quick just reminder to everybody, for anyone who's a big fan of this war, this does get recond a little bit. So we've said it every cast, just really quickly want to point out it has been recond a few times because this lore dates back to 1992. So if we say something and you're like, hey, I don't remember that being the case. It might be because I pulled it out of the epic rulebook, which was written in 1996, just calling it out right now. So before we begin, that's really good artwork, by the way.

Yeah, that's cool. And like the models were hilarious. Before it began, Brad brought up a really good point before the cast started that last week, we were talking about hell's reaching, kind of glossed over. We sold them shorts. No, they're fine. We didn't sell them short, but we skipped over the end a bit of it kind of quickly. So to remind everyone, Hell's Reach was, it's actually technical.

It's actually west of Hades. We're on a planet so I can use Northeast Southwest. It is west of Hades. We can always use it. No, we can't. It doesn't make sense. No, no, no, John. We shouldn't.

We can all day long. Yeah, instead, I'm just going to use random ones. It's just as accurate. Well, let's talk about Hell's Reach. Because I got pretty psyched about it because I didn't think we did injustice because of the fact that effectively they got the rally speech from Yark and basically were using all the tactics he was using. They pulled their biker gangs out of the, you know, the bottom of the hives. They were doing basically, they, he just sent them the playbook.

And the orcs were actually bouncing off, hell's reach, for quite a bit with some of the orcs in the stories going, maybe we should just go somewhere else and just beat them off because these guys aren't fighting right, basically. And then they got the great idea. Well, how about if we just take all of our weird boys together and just mind war, everybody inside Hell's Reach? And they went, that sounds awesome. And the people in Hells Reach are like, there's nothing you can do. We are behind our fortified walls. We're winning this.

And then all of them pooped their pants and just sat there and stared at walls because they got exploded by all of the weird. And then they put up less of a defense because if you stare at nothing while you pooped your pants, you have a harder time fighting back. It's kind of hilarious because they were just, we're winning. We've got this. I mean, they were suicide bombing the orcs. The point the orcs were like, should we even bother with this anymore? You know, maybe these guys are too tough and the weird boys went, we're just going to lobotomize all of them from afar. And they're like, oh, try that one.

And they did it in the whole city stopped fighting. The or just walked in there and just were bonging heads. Like, yeah. Our port now. They were putting up a wild defense. I think it was equal to the 80s defense, you know, at the time. Because they were just totally, again, they were, hey, bad, can I borrow your homework real quick? Yeah, but change a little bit.

And they just crossed out Yorick and put Ted at the top of the playbook. And they were, again, they were winning on that. And well, then they weren't. Yeah. But with that, though, we should jump. back over to the part I think most of you are here for. Gaz. Hades and Gaz.

So, gas. Gas is the biggest, the smartest, and the meanest orc to ever live. At least if you ask him. Brutal butt-cutting? And his plan of conquering Armageddon was going really well. He'd outsmarted all of the humans there by attacking less as a standard orc mob and more an orc army.

Pump the brakes, big dog. Yeah. It's organized by orc standards. This wasn't like a tactical ninja strike. This is orcs. Doing orky stuff, but doing it better than normal. More orky.

It's the whole thing of, I play a lot of orcs and I annoy Brad when I play my orcs because he wants me to play them very tactically and I just refuse to. I will use little bits of tactics. I will use little bits of tactics, but I just feel like as an orc player, if I play very tactically, I'm not doing an honor

to the orcs. So I play gas level tactics. Brad plays kind of sad tactics where his orcs hide. They do. You hide your orcs. They're like, they actually, and they wait for the most opportune mode to spring a trap. I refuse to do that. You just use the same argument and thing that Ellen does. He goes, you turn every army you play. into Eldar. Yeah. No matter who they are. The irony is I turn to every army I play into orcs,

which doesn't go well sometimes. Like sometimes it's like, oh, I just got tabled. Huh. Turns out whatever. Probably should have hit. Yeah, screw that crap. I'm not a coward. But Gaz agrees with me.

Gas is also not super happy. He sent over someone to take care of this and in taking care of it, got his head chopped off. Not super excited. Also, this is where it gets full org because at this point, Gaz is kicking the shit out of the entire planet, except for right here. Yeah, he's winning everywhere. Everything is going well. He's knocking all the hives down.

He can legitimately just leave this alone. Yeah. But the problem with Ugelhardt having his head chopped off and the human shoe chopped his head off holding up the power claw. Now there's also the legend of this one guy over at Hades. Don't put him down on this. It's not like he's holding it up. He had it grafted to his own busted arm. And so the issue he's starting to run into is the terms of, yeah, gas is the greatest.

But what about this hume? So flip side is Yorik knows the best solution here is to frustrate orcs. That's how you beat orcs because orcs like a good fight. If you hit him with brute force, they hit him. hit back with more brute force. But if you trick them and trap them, then they get sloppy, which is what his hive was doing. And also they'll react to it because they get pins because you're not giving them a proper fight. Yeah. So what Yark was doing a lot of us, he would do these lightning strikes that were often by what's like suicide charges into them. Then they retreat back through

minefields and kill zones. And the orcs always followed and always got blown up. And this works really well against a regular war boss. Unless, though, you get a war boss who understands tactics with a K. So I keep switching between Bruttle and Cunning for Brutal because those are enhancements for orcs, but also how they describe the orcs. Tactics. Yeah. So Gazz decides to take over and he breaks out his own cunning assaults. He decides, I can do my own faints and lightning assaults. I'm going to trick the Imperial defenders into doing what I want them to do. Unfortunately, this fails miserably out the game because Yardt looks at it and goes, no. Yeah. Sorry. No. None of these things are happening, but they describe it as gas making faints and

doing all this. And Yarek saying absolutely no one's allowed to move unless I tell them they're allowed to move any gauge. But in my mind, it's just a bunch of guys doing karate kattas out in front of the walls waiting for someone to fight them. I view it as a bunch of orcs running up holding a sign, not a trap. And they just, because they're also, because by the way, if you guys haven't seen people, this is how you model orcs. The people will do this. There was a guy, it's a very famous one, where he bought a land raider, cut it up and attached the pieces to the orcs. The orcs could make like a shell like the Roman turtle. And it says, Landrader, no orcs inside on the outside of it's one of the best models I've ever seen in my life. And it breaks up into orc boys. I've never seen something

that's cool in my life. And I love him for making it. But that's how I view it. But to Brad's point, yeah, Yark went, no, no one go out there. So this pisses Gaz off. So Gaz goes, all right, watch this then. And Gas goes, I'm showing up. So then Gaz starts attacking with them, charging in the front into the lines. This does cause some problems because gas, just starts slaughtering everyone outside the wall. And the orcs start now advancing into the hive. They basically conquer the outer hive. And Yark can't do anything about that because when Gaz is around,

the orcs around him are better, just like in the game. So he can fight the orcs little bits here and there. But Gaz is also too cunning and too tactical to fall for his tricks. This is also a big deal in this because Gaz starts to realize which normal orcs would have never noticed that when he's sending in all the Burnabamas and all of his planes, that, hey, these are not getting instantly blown up

like they usually do. Which I love the tactic of, eh, it'll probably work sometime. But they were actually getting actually good success and he realized, oh, I can do more of this because they're not able to stop it. Yeah, so this is one of my absolute favorite things of all the stories.

So Gaz is watching these anti-air defenses not be all that great. So he goes, all right, what if I break out the cunningest plan? And because he realizes that you have a big wall in front of you. And he can't go under it. He can't go through it, but he can go over it. And I know a few of you get that reference and they're mad at me for doing it. And I'm sorry, but deal with it. We're all parents moving on your day.

So Gaz goes, Operation Market Garden times a million. he takes his whole air force and turns it into just drop ships. And Yark and them are sitting there. They look out and the sky in front of them goes black because it's just orc planes plus their exhaust. And Gass's plan was I'll just fly over it and I'll drop all of the commandos out on the top. And we're going to work our way down and just open the door. And it's led by. I was just want to say, you have to give.

who's leading this Blood Axe Cabana? Well, the way, it loves me some blood axes. I love the fact that he has the most ridiculous name since Monty Python names. Yeah, it's Blood X. The Blood X general is named Strattorghum. Because it's not, of course it is. Because he's got tactics.

Yeah. And the idea was the commandos will fight their way through the walls and get it and open it. So just turning this into a two-front war for them. Yarrick, though, decides I'm not going down like that. And he looks up and he realizes that the aircraft bearing down on the hive, he doesn't have enough anti-aircraft to stop it. Or does he?

Because Yarek realizes these planes are doing blue angel formation. They're freaking wingtip to wing tip. And he doesn't have a lot of anti-aircraft guns, but he does have a bunch of basilists. So he has the basilists rotate all their barrels up and just start shooting into the sky. I just love that he's shooting artillery in the general direction of planes. And this is good and bad because on the plus side, it does start blasting the planes out of the sky.

On the downside, basilists aren't armed with D weapons. So what goes up is coming down. And so all of these planes are into V1, V2 rockets and start landing all over the planet. It does kill a lot of the commandos, but not all of them. And so thousands. A crap ton of their infantry also. because it's still exploding planes, raining down from the sky.

The next part, though, is even more effed up because thousands of these commandos do land, and they start making their way down from the upper spires. And they immediately, because commandos are very sneaky, so they go into the tunnels, because they know it tunnels and air ducts. That way the humans can't find them. And they're going to find a way.

Yarrick, though, had a plan for this. So Yarek goes and gets a rag-tag fighting force. Again, the thing about commandos, remember, orcs are powered by belief. And despite being... There's a lot of purple on the commandos. Thank you very much, sir. Yes. Orcs believe something it will come true.

Ork commandos believe they're hard to see. Therefore, despite the fact that they're probably eight feet tall and 500 pounds, you actually can't see them. They actually are very, very sneaky. It's not like a guy holding a mask in front of them like Thor, where he puts the veil over his face in whatever, whichever of the, is it Ragnarok with that movie, I think?

It's not that. These guys actually do disappear. And so the problem is that they're in the air ducts, and they're very dangerous. Yarrick goes to the maintenance workers of the hive and says, hey, you guys know these tunnels. I need you to help me go in there and kill the orcs. Yeah, hold please, because you're acting like it's just fill the custodian that happens to work on the fourth floor of your building.

No, it's not. It is, but it's not. All of these ducks are just poison awful. Everybody that works there has basically huge levels of resistance to everything. They also know them in and out. But they're also like wild drug addicts just not die from being in there. Your first part of there was wild. They don't have resistance to anything.

They're all, they're all methods. I mean, they have resistance to meth because they take a lot. They don't have resistance to meth. They take a lot of meth. You don't get a resistance to meth. You just take a lot of meth. That's not how meth works. Not like, oh, yeah, I've been on meth for six or seven years.

Now immune to the effects of it. No, man, you have no teeth. Like, I can see it and scabs everywhere. Yeah, these guys are on Imperial Crystal meth. I don't know, chasing the Malkador. The Emperor's Crystal. The Malkins. I don't really do this call.

So, but Yarek just goes, cool, these guys are cranked to the nines. Give them all knives and pistols, literally, knives and pistols. And these are humans and explosives. But it's mostly knives and pistols. It's my favorite part. And these are humans who have been working in poison ducks. These aren't catachans, is what I'm getting at. And they go in with knives and pistols and Yarek into deal with orc commandos.

and what happens later is all the commandos are dead. Every single one of them. Methed up workers. And also they talk about, they just keep blowing up the tunnels because they know wherever all the junctions. This is why those of us who've lived in major cities understand meth person with a knife, you just give them a lot of space. Because apparently they can take out an orc.

Who knew? And I mean, it's an enclosed space. I will say that's the absolute nightmare of fighting someone on meth is like they're fully cranked on meth. They're holding a knife and we're in an enclosed space. That's not going to go well. So this fails. Gaz is screaming mad, losing his mind mad.

So Gaz goes, that's it. I'm just going to blow the hive up. And he brings gargants out a bunch of them. Basically on team, F your walls. Watch this. And he starts marching the gargant. against towards it, only to discover that Yarek had another trick up in the sleeve. Yarrick had been storing a bunch of anti-Titan weaponry.

And around the exact same time, the volcanic activity of the planet was kicking up really bad, blacking out the sky. It was love that it's also the season for this, though. When you have a season of what the crap was happening to your world, that's still one of my favorites. You're like, what? It's the season of this. Why do you people live here? This place sucks. And as this is happening, Yarrick leads again, suicide charges out of the walls to just blow up the walkers before they can get close to the wall. And Gaz just loses it. And to his credit, though, Gaz labels Yarek what's called a Grod, which is an orc word for antagonist. He becomes

Gaz's Cobra commander, Mumrah, Dr. Claw, Crang, whatever you want to go with. I really identify with Mumrah. The ever-living. You are not. No. Hey, he also has a pyramid that he doesn't go outside of very often. That's true, but he's ever living. You're the ever dying.

Six of one, half dozen another, baby. Similar heart rate. With all that, Gaz is just kind of starting to fall apart, though, because he's got this now faded enemy that he's destined to fight forever. While this is occurring, though, Gaz is losing focus.

And he's sent the rest of his forces out to conquer Armageddon. And they are being successful because the defenders elsewhere are falling apart. They don't trashed. Yeah. And besides it, Hades, once Hell's Reach goes down with the psychic attack, absolutely everywhere else is getting Rickrolled across the planet. And the next major hive to go down is going to be Akron. And Akron is in the middle of Armageddon Secundus.

It's very landlocked. It's dead center. It's Tartarus is the southernmost, but Akron is the kind of the main one. And Akron is the one that they've been sending a lot of the same. civilians to because of its location. So anyone that they could get out has gone there. It's just really, if this falls, this is the end of the planet. And Gaz is sending a force there, Genghis Khan style. Just remove it. I don't care about this place. I want it burnt to the ground. This is not a conquer. Yeah, the other, there was no more surrendering or negotiating or anything else. This is burn it down. I'm going to finish up with Hades. Make sure.

that thing doesn't exist. So the orcs form outside this just sea of green and mech as far as anyone can see. And as they go to attack, a meteor swarm actually comes out of the sky and starts blowing up their lines. But wait, it wasn't meteors. Yeah. It was actually drop pods from the blood angels. And. Commander Dante.

And it, blood angels and salamanders. and absolutely no one else. Yes, there was. I remember anyone being here. Oh, it begins with a U and ends with a tromarine. There was like six ultramarines. They sent one squad. There was so no ultra marines.

It was 70% blood angels, 25, 29. Can you do it? Can you spend counter assault without you? No, you can't. So you got to bring the ultramarines. So they were there. They got to be there. If there's going to be a major victory for the Imperium, we know who has to be there.

Otherwise, it's just not really possible. They had one ultramarine that photo bombed everybody. What's up, dudes? Are we winning? You were instrumental into this attack. I was originally going to write a whole big thing. about the great events of the Ultramarines here. But I realized I actually, the level of hate mail I would get would be problematic.

So I will admit, yeah, the Ultramarines were present. This was Dante. Kind of, present. They were present. They actually were, the Salameters, they were about tied. But anyway, the most important part here is, I mean, the Salameters had less guys there. The salamator, I'm going to give credit to my boys to Salamanderers, but Dante wrecked. And we'll get into that in just a second.

I'm sure the salamanders were there to burn innocent civilians for no reason, as per their tradition. I'm just saying the orcs natural enemy heavy flavors showed up en masse. We'll be right back after a quick break. Yeah. So Dante was one of the ones who saw the alerts coming in, both from the satellites, got that got wrecked by from World Killer, but also from the request from Yarek. Dante saw, oh, crap, where's Armageddon? Oh, crap. it's that close to Seoul, we're on our way. And he grabbed the salamanders and, of course, the ultramarines,

because he needed support to make this thing actually functional. And they rushed over there. And this plan went perfectly. Dante hits the backside of it like a monster. The orcs were running forward as the Blangels land behind them. I mean, I think that, and this goes with Dante quite a bit in his stories, because Conte's, he's definitely got the wallet that says bad motherfucker got it. Dante put his boots and mighty ass kicking on and pump them up to maximum levels because shows up ready to kick ass and take names. Oh, it is brutality.

So they land the backside of this and just start wrecking forward. And at the same time, because of what they do, the orcs, the rear of the orcs is where all their artillery is. So they take out the artillery, meaning that the defenders in Akron no longer have big guns hitting the wall. So now they can come out of shelter and start firing, trapping the orcs between heavy gunfire from the walls of Acheron and a charging, we'll go with motivated blood angel force, air quotes there. There was a lot of guys that succumbed to the black rage that day. It was, yeah, this is insane. They also, by the way, should mention, brought the steel

Legion with them. So the drop pods hit first, but there's more is going to come down later. It's initially a drop pot of salt of blood angels, salamanders, and of course, ultramarines, because someone has to- -motivated. Someone has a direct traffic. Dante, I'm just thinking about how Dante's rolling. Oh, my God, please stop. But I'm assuming that Dante's given their speech of, hey, Stee Legion, they're like, well, we're kind of doing this here in an engagement. He's like, yeah, your home world's currently being pummeled by orcs.

And they went, ooh, let's get to go in. Let's get going now. So this, the war of Akron ends very quickly. It's just, this is over. Then the space marines continue bringing down more and more people and starts spreading out of everywhere. This is the part where the Steel Legion land and they are pissed. And so the Steel Legion just starts rolling over their old planet, just wrecking

orcs anywhere and everywhere. But I should point something out here. This is a space marine force of three chapters and Steel Legion. You're looking at, I mean, the Space Marine Force. are in the thousands, not even. The Steel Legion, probably in May, it's, again, tens of thousands, there's millions of orcs on this planet. This should have just been a counterattack followed by the orcs going cute, backhand,

go away. Actually, it should have been. But the orgs were suffering from their own success at this point in time. Because they've been wrecking so hard that it was individual clans effectively mopping up and fighting over who gets to steal the shiny things, all over the place. And that's all my point is that what this should have been, Dante and team show up,

they win at Hive Akron, and then they look up, kind of like the end of Return of the King, where then all of the forces of Mordor walk out and go, oh, yeah, there's also all them. This isn't going to end well. That's how it should have gone. but because Gaz was so distracted by Hades,

and because to your point, that allowed all the Ork clans to break up, it became more of a mop-up operation for the imperial forces, and they were able to separate the snake bites from the bad moons, from the evil sons, and fight them individually, never fighting all of them at once,

which would have just been awful. They also, because no one was paying attention, gained orbital supremacy. So there's all their ships are up there. So there's also orbital bombarding. bombarding everyone that they need to. And this is all made possible by Yark. It's Yark because Gaz wouldn't have let this happen,

except he no longer gives a shit about what's happening on Armageddon. He cares about Hades. Actually, he doesn't even care about Hades. He cares about choking Yark out. That's what he cares about. Now, as this is going on, though, Gaz is finally getting some success. He has been focusing only on Hades and Yarek.

And the truth of matter is that he still is going to overwhelm him. He's going to win. Yeah. They're inside the city. He's destroyed effectively the outer walls. He's now working on the inner walls. And they are backs to the wall losing. Yeah.

I mean, for those who don't know the phrase. Well, because Yarrick's whole thing has all. always been time. The old phrase, Tempest Fujit, et nequam, Rivetra. Come on.

How do you not know Latin? Anyway. Why? Why would I know the dead language? Tempest, come, I'm not,

I wasn't asking, I wasn't ordering a sandwich. It's just, these are important quotes. All right. Anyway, the flip side is, the city's lost.

Basically, the only part of the city that Yarek still has is the underhive, which the irony of is hilarious that all of the people from the upper hive are now in the under hive being saved by the people of the under hive from the orc menace. I'm just assuming someone from the upper city just looks down and goes, oh, this place is terrible. It's just finally.

You guys live down here and there's a bunch of under hive gangers like saving his life from orcs going, yeah, thanks, by the way. but just before Gaz can really strike his final blow, Dante and them arrive. Now, Gaz looks around and realizes, ah, I should have been paying attention. So he leaves. Effectively. Also, I do love the fact that he 100% forest dumps them. Well, guys, I'm pretty tired now.

I'm going to go home. Well, he does this really great thing. He organizes, well, organizes, air-court, orders this massive counterattack all over the planet, which just kind of does back foot the Imperial Defenders. And then him and the leaders go into his Space Hulk and just blink out of the system and disappear. Well, you remember, he also tells people, I'm going to get more orcs. Deuces, figure it out, you'll be fine. And this does actually, some of the works are smartly going to the jungle.

We'll get them a second. But the disappearance of gas has an immediate effect. First off, this warp storm stops completely. So now all the Imperial Defenders. The focus of the log, it just took off. off. Yeah. So all the Imperial Defenders start pouring in because there was basically a traffic jam trying to come into the system because there's a warp storm. The system lifts and all the guys go, we, and they're all just, you clear that bit of traffic. They go, I'm in. So the orcs on the planet, to Brad's point, they're just told, hey, make this place suck for a while. So they do. And most of the smart ones go to the equatorial jungle because even the Imperial Defenders can't get into that. The other ones find themselves staying in the middle of a plane surrounded by. by really upset Imperial defenders, including us squats, by the way,

in the original writing, the squads showed up with their trains. They're in story for every day. Commander Dante declares himself Commander of the Planet's forces. And does his best act of the entire war? Well, second best, the best act of the whole war was the drop pot of salt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is the second thing that was good here. The first one... The second best, no, the second best one, is the funnier one where he charges von Straub, with a bunch of things. Everything. Yeah.

Well, because he calls the arrest. Assassination, dereliction of duty, both these he did cowardice, check, embezzlement of imperial funds, probably, and a bunch of other ones. But von Straub,

and this will come up in a later cast, escapes. He actually grows a pair, shoots a bunch of people, and then flees on a land speeder, which they later find crash in the middle of the desert, but nobody.

Deal with him another time. Dante, also relieves Yarrick of command, but in a good way, not in the like, you're bad at this, more than they, hey, man, you look tired. Also, how are you still alive? Yeah. Would you like to sit down? And Yarrick goes, yeah, yeah.

And for Yarrick, this is a nice thing to do because he can finally take a rest because the ultramarines are there. And so the planet's in good hands, not the hands. Look, okay, let's call us out. There's three chapters there. One of them drinks the blood of people. The other one burns random children to death. And the third one is the ultramarines.

Sure. We're all saved by the fact that the ultra-marine sent down a barbershop quartet. Which will run the planet better than the entire blood, blood angel chapter. It's a successor chapter that's drinking the blood. Yeah. Dante. Dante. Dante.

Whatever. There we go. We've both read the book. If that's only a ritual, all right. We've both read it. If you're going to try to use facts and logic against me, I don't really know what I'm going to do with this. We've both read it. All right.

Meanwhile, other side of the galaxy, Gaz is having some problems. He's mostly, he's got some headaches. Bad headaches, like really throbbing headaches. And it's causing some issues. having left the planet Armageddon, Mad Dock is trying to work on him to fix the headaches, and Mad Dock is actually manipulating him again because he's back. Remember Mad Dock got pushed away for Macari, but now, because Mad Dox, I want to put the Adamontines thing on his skull, gas goes to Mad Dock, hey, make my brain not hurt so bad.

So Mad Dock's there, and he goes manipulating him. And this is because Mad Dock was always determined to be a super war boss, but he does, can't be because he doesn't develop into a super war boss. You'll never lead the orcs unless you are the biggest. You also have to be the strongest and get to be the smartest, but if you're not the biggest, no one cares. Jazz is the biggest. So his whole plan is to kind of be, what's the guy in Twin Towers who is manipulating the king?

Worm tooth. Worm tooth. Thank you. He's trying to be worm top. That's really what his goal is here. So Mad Dock gets Gass to start formulating the next invasion of Armageddon. And Gaz starts telling you, yeah, I'm going back to Armageddon. You know, the first one was the test run.

We can go back there. And the other sub bosses are like, yeah, let's go back. I mean, it was a good fight. But to do this, they need more forces. So they have to make a stop. And they go to the world of Golgatha. Kind of sort of, because this is actually, this drove me nuts in writing the notes by the way, because early 90s, it's a squats world.

Well, this actually, the order of operation here shifted, and it was driving me absolutely insane, by the way, because I have early 90s literature. It actually wasn't the first stop initially. It was the second stop. Then it became the first stops. This just pissed me off. But originally, yeah, this was a squat planet that actually became a fight that they fought on. Later, it's just an imperial world that they conquer.

GW changed it. I'm just calling it out, but it annoyed me. Fine. But while there, McCari comes back. And so Gratznik is trying to get Gas to be his puppet. Macari, though, doesn't like this, because McCari had shared the vision with gas of Gas conquering the galaxy, not just one world. So McCarrey confronts gas.

This is one of the, this is, by the way, is in, for just to people to know that this is in the Gaz novel and this whole scene is hilarious. I'm trying to try and not spoil it. But I'm just getting, you know, we're going to give the Brad version. Because in my mind, this is like Le Fu singing the song to Gestad

about basically how awesome he is when he's down in the dumps. Yeah, this whole bit percent. This bit's hilarious. Yeah. He's just telling him no one bites like gas. No one fights like gas. It's just doing

in a wrestling match, no one bites like Gaz. And it does work. So Gaz eventually goes, you're right. I am. But it takes a weird turn. So Gaz looks at McCarrey and says, you're right. I am the best. And it's shameful that any orc would have to take counsel from a grot, even if that grot is right.

In fact, and Gaz is not just an orc. He's Gaz school mag unrock. Throcka. He wouldn't even take counsel from Mork and Argork. In fact, he doesn't even need the orcs. And he tells McCari, and you are going to go tell them that. I don't need you, but also, go do this. Sort of. What he says is that he doesn't need the gods. And he wants McCari to tell them that. So he kills McCari. So McCari can go tell them that, crushing his head in the spot. And then he gets off to lead the law again. This novel, is hilarious by the Third War of Armageddon is even more entertaining about this with Macari. So we'll get to that. We cover the third war. Also, he's killed Macari, but then McCarry's just back again.

It gets to be very entertaining because Carrey-Gas relationship is epic. And the fact they took my Macari away for 11th edition. Yes, the model's been broke. Yes, I have glued that flag on 25 times. And it looks like garbage now, but I don't care. 10 times as big as the model. I know, but I liked my Macari. All right, but back to Golgatha.

Reinvigorated gas, he's set to work. He's gathered a ton of org. Just his, basically the thing about Gaz is because now he believes in himself, he becomes a beacon again. So orcs start flooding to Golgatha. It's not just, you know, like he conquered Golgather and there were orcs there. He is now a beacon. And he's also one of the beacons is he meets the great mech-orke-boy orcometes. I like this name.

I like this name. It's just so ridiculous. It's very orgy. I just, but it's so ridiculous. Orchamese is the best. I was like, really, Orchamides is the worst?

Yes, Orchimedes is the best. Now, Orchimedes is really important because Orchimedes takes a standard orc teleporter and makes it more teleporty. And this is going to be very important later. Because Armageddon is going to know about the incoming threat. But thanks to Ork Amides, now we can teleport. And not just an or... Whoa. I was to say, they didn't just teleport a squad. They teleported an Ork Army onto the planet.

So when they get to Golgotha, they're part of Golgotha, they are doing this. It's fun. So once they're gas, they've set to work. They start building up a bigger and bigger forces, more and more technology. However, there's a little bit of a problem. Well, short term. Yarek, didn't really like retirement much. And after a couple months, he decided to unretire himself. And really with one purpose in mind, I'm going to kill that Gaz guy.

And he went to the Imperium and said, I'm going to kill that Gaz guy. And the Imperium went, yeah, it's probably good. All right. Yeah, that's probably good idea. Yeah, that's a fair point. So he begins searching the galaxy for gas.

Thing about an invasion of orcs, especially unlike Golgha is, Gaz wasn't being sneaky. He basically did it yelling, I'm Gaz, I'm here, I'm invading the place. Yeah, we'll talk about who's not also sneaky. Yarrick went from doing his defense with his infantry, this and that,

and decided that he was going to take squadrons of super heavy tanks with his, by the way, personal bane blade. I love everything about having a personal blame ban. The fortress of arrogance. You don't collect. guard. Yeah. My Bainblade is a Fortress of Arrogance. If you don't have a Fortress of Arrogance,

why are you even playing guard? Also, that's the most crazy name since my buddy Biggest Dickus. Fortress of Arrogance is fantastic. It is, the only problem is that it should have a three-up involved. But I'm digressing. Now, the only issue with this is Geyarik went there to kill Gaz, and he wasn't really looking around very much. And he probably should have checked about how many orcs were on the planet he was attacking. So Yarakis forces go down there and they attack Gaz and the goffs. And basically as soon as the battle starts, you know, Admiral Akbar shows up and yells, it's a trap.

Because as he moves in, the evil sons show up. And when I say the evil sons, I don't mean a couple of them. It was actually listed as another wah, a wah of evil sons show up. up and just start ripping his super heavies apart because they were only six on penetration shots. Also, let's talk about at the time, they talk about they're outmaneuvering the super heavy tanks by casually moving around because the super heavy tanks move at the speed of smell. You're not fast. Yeah.

And they also had all of them. At the same time in orbit, I guess they didn't scan behind the moon because they didn't scan behind the moon because Gaz's personal space Hulk comes sneaking around the side of the moon. Death Star. I don't know. And it blows up the entire fleet in orbit. So Yarrick is on the planet. There is no one in the sky anymore.

And he is absolutely just getting surrounded by this. And the final stages of this, and the story does change a little bit. From my knowledge, Yarrick dies. He's actually, the last thing he sees is a orc battle for. running him over. But side note, give me my stupid battle fortresses back, GW. It was one of the best parts of the game as an orc player. I want my battle fortress back. Yes, it didn't technically have a model. It was a kit batch. It was some of the best kit batches in the game. Orc battle fortresses. Bring the rule back. Bring it back now. It's awesome. Everyone wins. Well, not people who don't play orcs,

but everyone who plays or it's wins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is not. understand why they were banned from every single tournament. But for the few tournaments they weren't banned from, it was a super awesome time. If you guys don't want to talk about, look up orc battle fortresses. The rule on it was basically you took anything else and turned it into an orc giant tank. People would combine multiple baneblades into one. And that was an orc battle fortress. It was fun. This game used to be more fun. But anyway, So last thing Yarek sees is the battle fortress running him over. And then he wakes up because he's back alive.

And he's inside Gaza's Space Hulk. Hey, he's one of the few people that had the Bell of Lost Souls ring for him on terror. Yep, that's true. A few times now. Also, Kuyves has added a few times, hasn't he? Well, Typhus figure can never die. Yeah. So Yarik awakens and he's inside Gaza's Space Hulk.

He's got no power claw and his laser beam eye is missing. And he's in chains above a pit. And he looks up and Gaz is looking at him and Gaz smiles. And as Yerick begins to tell Gaz to go F himself in Ork, by the way, the chines release and Garrett plummets into a pit. And the pit's full of squigs. So Yarrick looks around. And he decides, all right, I got a plan. And he starts killing squigs.

And then if you guys don't know what squigs look like, they've got this big spine, the back, a couple spines the back of them. He then starts building, remember, he has one hand. He starts with one hand building a ladder out of squig spines. And then, while it's big enough, it climbs out of the pit. And as he climbs up out of the pit, Gaz is standing there, laughing. And then grabs Yarik and throws him in with all the human slaves that are on the spacehawk. Because orcs don't do manual labor. That's a grot job.

And grots don't do manual labor if there's slaves are able to do it. So the space hulk is full of human. and slaves working on repairs, that kind of stuff. And as you can imagine, immediately, Yarrick goes, we're revolting. And all the humans go, fine. They know how this is going to go. Like, they want to be free. And Yarek's a good orator, but this is just going to piss off the orcs.

And that's going to hurt, like real bad hurt too. So Yarrick gets a plan. And the plan is, let's map out the Space Hulk. Because we're going to figure out a way. And they all start making a map. and look at the map, and Yarek decides, I know the best place to do our rebellion, we're going to target this one area, this is this giant room shaped like an orc skull, and we'll go there because that skull's probably like a temple to gork and mork,

and that's where Gaz will be, and we'll go there and we'll kill Gaz, and therefore we'll win, and all the humans go, right. But after we kill him, there's still a few men. million orcs on this thing. What happens to us? And, you know, it goes, oh yeah, we all die then, but we killed Gaz. And they'll go, cool. Counterproposal, we go to the other part of the map where there's that shuttle that is a

human shuttle. And we take that and we leave. And we go to, you know, Tara or somewhere nice and tell them about this while that's coming. Thought option B. Yarek views this. plan is lame and stupid, but eventually does agree that his original plan is not the best. Rebellion time. They find the ammo dump, which, to be fair, the orcs would never guard an

ammo dump. It's an orc thing. They would put all the rockets in a pile and with like other things. This makes sense. And they blow it up. And all the orcs are running all over the place. The humans begin their escape. And they run to the flight deck. And they get there and they find the Imperial shuttle. Because remember, they couldn't like hop on a burn Obama. They only if they can fly is something that's made for humans. And they get there. And unfortunately, one of the orcmex is working on it. Working on it air quotes, he's converting the shuttle into being more orky, which means it no longer is sealed to the vacuum of space or can be used by humans. So back to plan A, kill gas.

And Yarrick gets everyone super excited. All right, we're going to go and kill guys. And before they do this, the most important piece, all of the other rebels change. And they put on all of the red shirts because I don't think any of them survive this. Yarrick and crew begin this incredible rush towards the temple. And as they go. Well, by the way, there apparently is a bunch of orcs, which is the entire way that say, blow shit up. Because they are activating stuff the whole way of this process.

Blowing stuff up. And all suicide activations, by the way, it is, when I say everyone dies, it's basically, he starts running and all people around him just keep jumping on the attacking orc as they go through. Well, there goes Ted. Like, you know, they're all just named guy and then they're numbered. I don't even have a name. Exactly. Guy one is dead. All right, guy two, get him.

All right, guy two. A bunch of guy 47. Got him. They get to the great orc head. And unfortunately, it's not a temple. It's just the bridge of the ship. And it was like three mecks sitting there looking at Yarek. What do you want?

Yarek looks around pretty disappointed and goes, you know what? Somewhere on this ship is Gaz. so if there's no ship, there's no gas. So then that Brad's point, he just starts flipping switches, like all over the place. And I love this story because if you guys know anything about orc power supplies,

they're kind of fun. An orc power supply is technically infinite in that if you want more power out of it, just ask for it and it will give it to you. But it will explode. Like orcs are the origin of the hazardous test. That is the most orc thing there is. Most orc weapons

throughout the game have blown up the vehicle that shot them. Plasma's adorable. Orc weapons are much better. So he starts to... Yeah, so Yarrick just starts turning everything on knowing it'll overload the reactor. And it does. Eventually, the reactors being

exploding and Yarrick stands on the bridge and he watches as this giant fireball comes to consume it. He does like either at 80s or 90s, like action a hero and just pulls out his arms, just ready, commending his soul to the emperor. Yeah. Well, he does.

He says a prayer to the emperor, giving my soul to the emperor. Basically, I'm so proud of me. I am so proud of me. And then he wakes up again. And it wasn't a dream, by the way, that this thing did happen. And now, whoa, don't go with he wakes up. He wakes up with all of his biotics and everything else. This is awesome.

Reattached. Yeah. He wakes up. He's got his laser eye and his claws. He's in a cell. But the door is unlocked. So walks over the door, he unlocks the door. He steps out and there are thousands upon thousands of orcs looking at him.

Cheering is on. Well, there's a silence. There's a gap. He looks at them. They look at him. And then they start cheering. And he's just like, oh, come on. And then they part to give him a path through.

He has to walk through these dorks who are legitimately screaming and yelling cheering him on until he eventually gets to this shuttle bay where Gaz is standing. Also, they remade the shuttle for him. Yes. Gas is standing. And I love it. Yark's like, I have to fight gas. I'm going to get wrecked.

But no, Yark literally gets told, I'm assuming he gets patted on his head and goes, good enemies are hard to fight. Yeah. Good enemies is art to find is what Gazz says. And then goes, go back to armed. Armageddon and get ready for me because I'm expecting a proper fight when I return. I just sense Yark on his way. The Yark just gets us, all right.

So to be fair, Yark does go back to Armageddon with a like, oh, this is about to suck, guys. I have some serious bad news. But we obviously will stop there because that is the end of the Second War of Armageddon. Gaz hasn't died yet. Yark has died three times. I was just to say, Yark has been going. a couple of times. Yeah.

By the way, all of them in the books and stuff, you never know how he just is. Yeah. And I'll bring this up again. We get the third war of Armageddon later. We have McCarrey has died two times. Yarrick has died two times. This is going to get really enjoyable.

And it's going to continue. This is basically a theme. Next week, though, we're going to shift over to a cast. I promised one of our listeners like a year ago and just forgot. It's more of this cast reminded me of it. Yeah. So we're going to dive in. who actually one of the original heroes of the Imperium,

someone who's been there since the inception. I'd look up if he's actually the first character model, but he's going to be up there. Dante, Dante got his first model. And they're Dante. Yeah, he got his first model in 1997, so he's a second edition, which means it is one of the first codexes,

although he randomly got a miniature in 2021 and then 2023, which was an odd thing to do and mean to people who collected the models. So it was one of the ones where you had to actually get to because they resized the shit out of them. Yeah, I know. And the new one, but he was primarist in 2021, wasn't he? I don't remember. I think it was primary.

You know, we'll discover. Everybody across the rubble, we're talking about it. Yeah, but the cool thing about Donne is, he just chose to cross the Rubicon for that. He just got primary stuff. Yeah, but we're going to cover a lot of Dante. Dante goes back a ways. I do hate the hair thing. I don't like people without helmets, but that's a thing.

It's just. I love me. Why would you wear a helmet? How was anybody going to see your sweet braids or your? tats, bro. He doesn't have braids. He just has blonde hair and laurels. I use that thing because I talk about my space wolves on it.

But yes, I know. I realize the space wolves makes a little bit of sense because they're just weird. But the rest of them, like, no. No, you know who wears a helmet? Ultramarines. That's why. Bobby G. doesn't wear one.

He doesn't need to. It's a primark. The primark's going to pass to. The primark's going to pass. That's a different scenario. The rest of them, like, I know Calgar doesn't, but my Calgar did. So anyway, but I digress. Next week, Dante, we're going to spend, I don't know if it's one or two casts, probably two casts on Dante.

He is an incredibly old character. He's also incredibly old. So it's kind of a nice one-two combo there talking about where his origins are in the lore. And we're going to try and sprinkle in a bit more of a history of 40K talking about how he's affected the lore because the blood angels at one point were the main chapter of the game. And now it is the ultramarines. It's just something we joke about a lot. But when Dante was part of the lore, the primary. chapter was the blood angels and so we can talk about how that's shifted over time

tyrannids etc but until then john barsotti bradchester this guy see you guys then