The 40k Lorecast - Episode 157 - Dante pt 1 – How the lessons learned throughout his early life shaped Dante to be the leader he is today.

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

On today’s cast we begin our coverage of the Luis Dante, the oldest and most storied of all the Space Marine Chapter Masters. We open obviously with his origins on Baal Secundus and his experiences in the trials of the Blood Angels. From there we follow his path from Neophyte to sergeant, to captain, and eventually to Chapter Master of the Blood Angels. But more importantly we focus on the many lessons he learns along the journey and how they shape him into the great leader he is today.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 Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. Today, we'll be getting our coverage of the truly legendary Dante, not to be confused with the inferno guy that Brad was looking up the other day by accident when he tried to Google stuff in his phone. Look, sometimes if you're tired and you're trying to do your research,

you will not specify what you're trying to go with. Yeah. But we're going to start off with very simple. His origins is a simple boy on Balsakundis. the way to his experiences of the neophyte, the Blood Angels, and his rise to chapter master, obviously, of the Blood Angels. For those who somehow don't know, the 40K lore cast is a weekly show on the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, please follow and comment. It helps the algorithm and gives me something to do, you know,

reading comments. We also have a bunch of links in the show note you can follow to stuff like our YouTube channel for our Q&As, Brad's other YouTube channel where he does more competitive coverage, our other show, the history of 40K, and of course, my other show Retro Recall, focusing more on video games. In addition, we have only on video games. Yeah, just video games, which is fun. Well, old video games. It's the bad way of looking at it, which really, the problem is, ends up being addictive

because we'll cover them and then I'll just be like, well, I still want to play Metroid. And I'll just play Metroid for a weekend, an extra two weeks. That's fun. But if you do want to help us out, it's a great way to help us out, is you can either buy our merchandise. Go to our website. There's links there. Stickers. Stickers, sweatshirts, t-shirts, wine glasses,

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I mean, technically. I've made it. I never said we were good artists. I just said the rest. of the day I'm calling myself the artist formerly known as Brad. Yeah. God, you would listen to the weirdest stuff.

I just, it just occurred me. You probably have seen Prince in concert. 100% multiple times, by the way. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure he is. I just like, this is a lot of questions. But anyway, if you want to support us,

it's more a matter of what were you wearing at the Prince concert. It depends on what year it was and what you could I did see Prince in 1990. Yeah, that's more my point. Awesome. That's more what I was getting at. It occurred to me.

If you saw Prince in 2002, cool, you were probably dressed for 2002, which isn't that far off of 2026. But there's a decent chance. Yeah, in 1990, you would have seen Prince at the height of Prince. Ooh. And you would have seen him in Ohio. So, yeah, there was a lot of outfit going on there. You would have full head of hair, too.

Ooh. By the way, long, long hair. Yeah, there's a lot of questions here. 1990, my hair was in the middle of my back, as opposed to one centimeter from my skull. Yeah. All right. Well, with that wonderful image for everybody, let's get on to the other part of our Patreon. If you want to support us, $4.99, you can.

get this show in the history of 40K ad-free or 8.9 Caribbean guilders. Mm, guilders. Because they were doing Curacao, not just the weird blue liquor that I'm sure gives Brought a headache. Curacao is located. If you guys don't know, it's an incredible place to visit because it's in the Southern Caribbean. So it actually sits below the hurricane belt. Because of that, the island almost never gets hit, which means it's been able to, is the island been well preserved, but also the nature around it's been really well

reserved. And that's the reason you go to Curacao. Originally, Curisal was, of course, a trading hub, which makes a ton of sense because of where it is. And as a result, it's a cool blend of Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Spanish, which has created both a really fun local language, which sounds almost like pigeon more than it does anything else, but a wild cuisine that's both delicious and vibrant, which side note, that's actually kind of rare on islands. If you guys don't go to islands very much, one of the problems with islands is they're really beautiful, but the food tends to suck because they're very limited in what they're really what their cuisine can be. Curacao is a unique one. So credit to them. But the best

reason to go to Curacao is the nature. On the land, you've got native flamingos. You've also got a bunch of lizards, which are funny because you've got, the lizards will come up to you and beg you for food, which is, by the way, when iguanas do that, it's a bit rough because they're not, you know, cute. But the funny part about that is the locals also eat said iguana. So when they do that, they got to be a bit more picky. They do call them, by the way, chicken of the tree. That's the name for iguana. It depends it tastes like chicken. The real reason to go there, though, if you're someone like me, is scuba diving. It's surrounded by mushroom coral, mushroom hard coral. So figure out what that it looks like. And as a result of that, you've got a lot of really brightly colored fish.

It's the Caribbean, so you get a lot of smaller, but really brightly colored fish. A lot of sea turtles, things like seven different species of sea turtle there. And then that, of course, brings in sharks, rays, a bunch of other stuff, you know, to eat them. So it's a really nice ecosystem. And even more fun, for whatever reason, this island seemed to attract some of the world's worst boat builders, because there's a bunch of wrecks all around the island, not far off the dock. So apparently, for a period of time there, all of the people who couldn't make it as a boat builder elsewhere went to Curacao. And people at Curacao found out why this person was available, because their boats sank. But cool place to go. Only caveat I will say

is it is hard to get to. You will, looking at multiple connections getting out there. So if you're going to go, plan to go for a while because your travel there and back is going to suck. With that, though, Discord. Always fun place to interact with us. A Discord's large. A Discord is fun. It is a great place to kind of come in. Is it also free?

I was going to get there. The next part of the most important part of any Discord is that you don't charge for it. Because if Discord is not charging me, why would I charge someone else? It just feels weird. It's the same reason I discovered people charge for their YouTube channels, which I'm going to get in trouble for another time, but we're not going to do that today. I'm not a big fan of some of these things people do.

We're like, oh, hey, here's a free tool you can use. I'm going to charge people to use it. Jackass. All right. So with this, first time I'm going to start off with his Dante. So the most important thing about Dante is Dante is old. Now, again, in the lore he's old. I'm talking real world.

He is old. Dante is one of the oldest models in the game. By the way, fun fact about this, I was looking at this morning. So Dante was in the first edition of the game, which is technically the second edition. It's about how you want to look at it because you had Rogue Trader and then second edition. There was no first edition 40K. But I looked up the models available. Lehman Russ had a model.

So did Gaz and Marnius Calgar. But Marnius Calgar was sitting down with two attendants. It's a very cool model to look up. Then when you get to second edition, which is again the real first edition. And there was, Dante is one of only 20. named, about 20 named characters. Just to put that in perspective, in ninth edition,

the Ultramarines had eight. There were 20 in the entirety of second edition, and I looked them up again. I have Gaz Ragnar, Yare, Yarrick, Go Yarek, Tigerius,

Calgar, Cassius, because again, we're going to still have a lot of Ultramarans. Logan Grimnar, Karandris, RIP, Aserman, Fuegan, Malgan, Ra, Jane Tsar, Baharth, by all of them, but Jane Zarr, didn't get a new model until, like, last year. Abadon, of course, Karn, go team, Fabius Bile, which is odd, because he kind of went away for a little bit. Asriel, Ezekiel, Asmodai, because Dark Angels were really big of this period. Tycho, and then Dante.

Although, I will point out, there were other named Calfe. characters in the books, but you had to kit bash to make them. The ones I listed are ones who had sculpts. You could make someone else. I'll say this is also back when special characters weren't allowed in most games. Because read the rules. They go, I mean, what? Yeah.

Pull a second or third edition codex. You guys may not understand the rules all the way through, but pull a second or third edition codex and then look at the named character rules versus just regular like captain rules and go. So dumb. Oh, good God. Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is,

his model is one of the oldest. His model line is one of the oldest. He also has been in the lore as one of the oldest. But he is currently in the setting, the oldest living, well besides Eletron, living. When I say living, I mean,

not entombed in a dreadnought or anything else. Non-dreadnought, exactly. He is the oldest. Besides the original sanguador, that's the only. Yeah, but the sanguonor is, tricky because the single arm isn't really... Yeah, it's...

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, yes. Dante is the elder statesman of the Imperium.

Yeah. And the cool thing about Dante is his lore is really robust because if you guys didn't know this, in the second edition, the blood angels were the poster boys for the space marines. It was in the first edition, it was the imperialists. Then it became

the blood angels. And it didn't moved to ultramarines until the third edition or so. And that's actually only because, candidly, they're easier to paint. It was originally, you know, Imperial Fists, but painting yellow is hard. Then it became blood angels, but actually red is still a pretty hard color to paint. If you guys don't know that, layering red with gold, Fred doesn't realize this, but layering red with both, it has to do with where you get your pigments from. Red pigments tend to be thicker. so they tend to, they don't layer as smoothly. Blue pigments layer really well.

So that's also why GW shifted everything over to ultramarines because you could pick up a space marine box, paint them in the ultramarine color, and it was one of the least challenging ones to do out the gate. But at the same time, blues look beautiful when done well. So ultramarines are one of the unique factions in that an entry-level player can paint up ultramarines to look tabletop standard and look good,

but a golden demon level player can also paint ultramarines at a level that it will shine as well. So it has to the way blue paint works. Bring back giant banners. Damn it. Old school. There's also that. But as a result of this, the reason I give you that little history lesson there is because GW did a ton of lore writing in the 90s.

Super specific. Right. Super specific. Kind of it. And so the number one faction for space marines in the 90s were the blood angels. The only two named characters they had were Tycho, who was kind of present, is how he would refer to himself in class, and Dante, you know. Dante was the big one.

So we have a ton of information on you. Tyco did have two different profiles, though. He did. But with that, that no one took. No one took Tyco. I mean, I'll be honest. I forgot Tyco existed until I was doing the research for this cast.

And I'm letting you know and letting everybody know that there is negative chance that I'm going to be on first name basis with Dante for the rest of this class, no matter what the notes say. Why? This is fun. Because I'm not calling him my boy Lewis the rest of the way. He's Dante. Here's a fun thing. You can call him Lewis.

I'm going to call him Louis. because that's how I pronounce that. By the way, neither, neither are happening. By the way, it's the same spelling. Amanda Dante. It might even be Dr. Dante if I want to put it on there. It's Louis. Louis.

I'm about to piss off so many Boyangels players, and it's going to give me a lot of joy. So let's start with the humble beginnings. Dante was the original badass, but it's a different type of badass. Titus, I don't really like as much as Dante, because Titus is just a badass. He's always been a badass. Oh, he's been, always will be.

His whole thing is, oh, is there adversity? Watch this. And he overcomes it. The difference is with Dante, Dante's written to actually have emotions and goals. He's not just like a John Wick, which is what kind of Titus is meant to be. Well, Dante failed. I mean, Dante almost failed like several times. They had to be inspired to continue on.

and was led towards the path and told that if you persevere that you, you know, you can go on. I mean, and that's from the very beginning. Because Dante is malnourished, messed up, irradiated because ball is a shithole. Right. But the main thing about Dante, and this is what makes people like him so much, is he has much more of a traditional fantasy hero background. We has a full backstory where we actually understand his motivations. is what has shaped him as a person, all of those things. And that is stuff we don't get on someone like a Titus.

Titus is just like, hey, here's a child who was immune to fear. And I'm not trying to knock Titus, don't get the wrong way, but just Dante's, there's just so much more backstory on Dante, and it's so much more interesting to understand it. So let's talk about it. Or is he really known, Louis. So Louis was born in 442 of M40. And that's how much detail we have, by the way.

Everyone else we talk about was born at some point, 4-4-2. Because GW, this is not going to actually write. Let's talk about how that is, though, for everybody that doesn't know the exact imperial timeline. He's over 1,500 years old right now in the current timeline. I want to just stress how actual old, you know, and how long he's been around in the game. To be fair, this was also written when the timeline was a thousand years, you know, earlier. So he's aged with the game. game. That's what's so cool about this. Yes. I mean, it's actually kind of like the game made him

old. Like, oh yeah, Dante's still alive, by the way. Doesn't it like a thousand years older now? Yeah, apparently is. The better part, it will talk about this a bit, screw it. I'm skipping just a bit because one of my favorite things about Dante is. And I would use this way more often than he does in the books of I've been ruling. I've been the chapter master of the blood angels longer than anyone you know has been alive. Yeah, no one has, there's no one alive who remembers anyone being in charge of boy angels other than Dante. So Louis was born on Ball Secundus. And for those who don't remember, Ball Secundus just got wrecked during the age of strife. Both Ball, Primus, and Secundus were wonderful worlds. And then the Age of Strife happened. And they had nuclear war,

and they suck. Their giant irradiated wastelands. And unfortunately, when Sanguinius met the emperor, He didn't ask the emperor to fix them, like like Korax did. And so they just, because he didn't, he thought that was rude, apparently. So they still really suck. As opposed to, again, Korax who just went, hey, I'm not going to join your legion unless you fix my planet. And the emperor went, oh, yeah, we got a whole crew for that. We'll be there on Tuesday. Don't worry about it.

So, Louis was born to a family of salt scavengers because apparently someone at GW had just watched Gandhi when this book came out. And they're a nomadic tribe on ball. And they lived heavy air quotes there in the remains of the oceans there. Because again, G.W. likes to write things where all the oceans get evaporated from a planet. And somehow the plant doesn't collapse on itself. Not my circus, not my monkey. But just going to go with, doesn't make a lot of sense.

Now, Louis family had for generations been harvesting the salt. So they go into the salt flats of where the ocean used to be, and they gather up the salt on a planet that has no water. Apparently, the salts, that's what people want to pay for. It's like the inverse of water world. It's just crazy. It's like the inverse of water world, although that movie was terrible. Now, they would then travel between the few, like, fixed settlements on Ball Secundus, and then they would sell the salt. And so this life sucked.

Life expectancy was around 40 years, a little less than. And that's because you have all the wonderful things like radiation, starvation, scorpions, and raiders. So, this sucks. To make matters even more fun, Louis' mom died when he was very young, giving stillbirth to his brother, because, again, sad backstories are critical to any hero novel if you're writing a true fantasy hero novel. So Louis there, all he has is his dead and nomadic tribe. But this whole time, he keeps seeing suffering. Everywhere around here, he sees suffering and he hates it. He really hates it.

He thinks the galaxy should be a better place. But also, I love the fact that this about it from an early age, which is why he becomes a badass, because he doesn't just go, I want to get out of here. He actually is first in his stories are, I want to make a difference for everybody else to make this suck less. Yeah. I do love that if things are sucked so much that he was like,

I'm not going to make it perfect. I just want things to suck less. Yeah, I will call this out and sorry in advance Blangel fans, Dante kicks a ton of ass. Dante's a great person, but he doesn't really improve the lives of any citizen that I'm aware of outside of not having them get. He's improved so many.

Yes, I was just going to go there. He stopped so many citizens from getting wrecked. When he gives the metro man, you're welcome, I love you, random citizen. So he's, that's all this is. He's no John Cena is all I'm getting at here. Okay? Like, let's just get, he's like wearing the bloody animals habitat for humanity. All right.

It is a, I came here. Fine. Yeah. And also devastation of ball. You know what didn't happen? the civilians doing great. Armageddon civilians. Yeah, I mean, we kind of. He ups the civilians a bit.

By showing up, just. He beats his shit out of some works. He does, but I'm just going. Then stay afterwards like, hey, guys, I see you're all living in these horrible hives. Let me make your life better for you. He's like, peace out. And then left.

Again, he's no John Sina. Now, thing for Louis is that he is on Balsacundus, which means that if he wants to make a difference, he can take part in the Angels Fall trials. And that allows you to become a Space Marine. And that way he lets you become an aspirate.

It lets you be considered to be a Space Marine. It's a way to become a Space Marine. I'm just saying this is a bold thing when he's like, hey, I'm going to go through almost certain death to become eligible to have almost

certain death as an aspirant. You're like, things aren't going great for you to go, I'm going to try this. I'm going for the long walk here. Now, what I do like about this a lot is in this writing, they actually then take this story of him wanting to become a blood angel and they added a bunch of personal strife to it, which is cool. Because again, so many of these stories are just like, oh, so and so was born on this planet and then became a space marine. He did really well in the trials. With Dante, we go all the way back to even before the trials. So he mentions this to his father. Hey,

I want to go be one of these super emperor's angels. And Louis' dad says, no. Like, I don't want you doing that. But not, I mean, he forbids him, but not forbids him in a jackass sense. Yeah, because he will he knows that no matter what, either my son dies in these terrible rituals or he succeeds. And I still never see him ever again because he gets taken in aspirin. And if he becomes a Marine, he's not coming back. Yeah, which is sad.

his dad's all alone. He knows he will just die completely. Louis is the last thing he has. And it does suck. And also, his dad also is right. Louis's not Carl Lewis. There's a reference for you, Brad. This is a,

I don't even think that's an old one. Who? I'm about the long, I'm about the long jump on you. To do it decathlon. Yeah. But yeah, he is a starved boy who is probably also irradiated. This is not,

he's not built for this. But Louis had a mission and he was going for it. Now, real quick, before we touch this recruitment practice of blood angels, because it's been a while since we covered them, so we don't understand it. There's two difference. Yeah, there's two planets. Ball Primus ritual combat.

That's the one where the main settlement is. Neat for them. The Ball Secundus, which is where the most of the people live, you have to travel to the main spot Angel Fall. You got to go on a vision quest, baby. Yeah. Vision quest. And some people are closer to this spot than others.

Louis was not close to it. So you have to get to Angels Fall, which is where Sanguinius was found as a child. Because this is the spot where the Blendos built a palace of challenge where the aspirants then fight each other to whatever. Anyway. But there's really rail line there. This is a big deal because he has effectively, if you bring up the map, it just has a bunch of skulls and dragons over the saltways. Just basically don't go through here. And he's, Dante is going to just hoof it through the no man's land.

Well, no man's land of no water and angry rad scorpions. And I will say, I like this writing because one of the things I hate more than anything is the phrase, you know, blah, blah, blah is half mental. It's not. It's 99% genetics and 1% drive. Rudy, movie Rudy, it's cute. he played three plays a kickoff an incomplete pass and then they let him get a sack on the last play of a game that did not matter no actually it might be 95 percent you know jx 5 percent drive because hey brett um j marcus russell how'd that work out for you guys i never want to talk to you ever again so maybe ruin the one percent metal yeah he really did that was amazing all right but the point i'm trying to to make care is that a malnourished child running through the desert went exactly the way you should expect.

He got tired, then he got thirsty, and then he almost died because he was no chance that he was going to make it. But the cool thing about Dante is he was always chosen to be the leader of angels. 100%. He's the chosen. He's chosen by the spirit of sanguineas, which would be the sanguador and stuff. I love everything about this because every time he failed Okay, let me pull it back Every time he could have failed It's not like they made it so he succeeded They gave him the ability, the drive

They gave him a little knowledge They led him to somewhere that he could see They never basically picked him up They just went if you if you pick yourself up Well, we'll go through the examples. Let's, okay, fine.

He's lying in the middle of deserts, dying of thirst. And, well, it's written as the sanguanor appears. I want to point out, this is a child on Ball Secundus. There's no way he knows the sanguador is.

What he sees is a giant golden angel. Angel. Yeah, and goes, and beckoning to him, and he goes, yeah, might as well follow this. It's definitely better than what I'm coming. He was also, again,

he goes into the thing. He was ready to give up, basically, and he sees this angel, and it leads him on, and he finds water. Yeah, we finds a corpse that was mummified that probably had been killed by Rad Scorpion, but they still had water on. So he drinks the water and continues on his trip. You know, again, but notice he doesn't tell anyone about this golden angel thing, like, because it's like, yeah, probably keep that one to myself.

He gets the trials, and to be fair, he's pretty average at the trials. He, they say he doesn't really stand out. He just survives, basically, is the biggest thing. He's basically a happy medium. Now, at the trial is an important character. If you guys want to read the book, the book is easy to look up. It's called Dante. There you go.

And the main chaplain looking over it is Malafale. And the chaplains are there to test the resolve of the aspirants really to the highest degree. They do things like a nine-day trek through the desert with no pause and no rest. Then they have to sit absolutely still for three days and meditate. If you fall asleep. Not fall asleep. Yeah. Now, I will say this is another one where, to Brad's point, the sanguador appears as one,

because Dante or Louis is sitting there. You have to fall asleep. Dante. And the sanguanor appears and jolts him back awake so he doesn't, you know, fall asleep. So I don't know. Let's just like giving him a choice as much as, hey, we're going to need you in like 300 years. So don't fall asleep right now. Where Louis shines, though.

is when they start breaking them up into squads. And they do war games with these children. And they notice that Louis has a real knack for tactics in battle. Also keeping his squad alive. Yes. His squad is a very high survival rate. He has him fight much better together. During these trials, though, he befriends another aspirant named Florian.

Florian actually comes from similar background, a horrible part of Balsakundas, but Florian is, his goal is to become a space maker's fluorine is dying. He is riddled with cancer, and the only way he will survive will be to get, you know, the gene seed implantation, which would actually cure him, by the way.

That's going to become important because while they're going through all the tests, Louie notices something, and he just sees there's children dying as part of these tests. He's like, why? No one did anything wrong. These are not evil people. We're just killing people for what? These are citizens of Ball.

What's the goal here? And he starts getting upset about it, watching it happen. And eventually, though, this becomes a really great scene because... I love that. You know what? This is one of the best scenes in the book. I didn't know if you were going to poo poo on this. No, no.

This is one of the best scenes in the book. This is one of the best scenes in the book. I mean, I love how they're going to get up. sick. Yeah, because Dante gets into a fight with another aspirin named Florian, and Florian is getting raffle stomped by Dante. Yeah. And basically, he just wrecks him, gets him on the floor, and Big M. Lafahal, effectively is like, finish him mortal combat style. And Dante's like, no. By the way, not basically. That's literally what's written in the book. I mean, that is when he's like, yeah, it's true. Yeah, he'll finish him.

Yeah. But yeah, we won't do it. And he won't let it go, too. He's like, you have to finish him. And he starts ranting about if you don't finish him,

you're throwing away, you're basically your entire future. You will not become a space marine, everything. And Dante just steps back and tells him, no, man. He helped me as part of what we had done before, killing him as a betrayal

of the trusted brotherhood that we have together. It's treachery. and effectively starts dressing down the captain. You know what I mean? Yeah, it just tells him, yeah, it just says, this is ridiculous. No, I will not. This is against what you've taught us through these trials in the first place,

what it means to be a bloody job Marine. Yeah, and so the culmination line in it is Malafel turns to Lewis and says, you are giving up on all the glory and power by not following through with this. And Louis turns back and says, I didn't come here for glory and power. I came here to serve and I'll have no part in this evil. At that point, Malafel stops yelling, and him stands up straight and says,

congratulations, you've passed. And because this test was called the test of Horace. And the whole, it's called the test of Horace. And it's because of betrayal. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the whole idea here was that Horace betrayed his brothers

in a quest for glory and power. And the most important thing for a space marine is that you need loyalty above all else. And so the idea was that this was a test to see Will Louis just turn on anyone else just so he could become a space marine? It turns out he wouldn't. By the way, read the book and what happens to Florian? It's not ideal. Now, I was just to say, or don't because it's nothing good. But he's like, there is some cool stuff in Florian, though, because he does have some really cool words.

Not in a crappy way. He actually said some really cool stuff to Louis at the time, and it's interesting. But from there, he's taken to the fortress monster of Blood Angels and begins the process of conversion to space marine, which could have gone better for him. Plus side, the gene seeds take. And now he gets to be called Dante, so I'll stop calling him Louis for the rest of the cast, which I'm sure. Thank God. Insane. The downside.

Oh, let me psych up for what I have to explain happens next, because this part's. Well, he goes, first off, they make them drink from the chalice, the blood chalice on this. And, well, we have to take a year off. Well, then we first mean to talk about this was written at a time. So Twilight wasn't out yet. So I guess vampires were all D&D and Bram Stoker. So not got goth and cool and like hanging out in high school. But this has kind of been ruined because of that.

So, yeah, they have to drink the. synthesized blood of sanguinius, which then kicks the gene seat into high gear and gives them all blonde hair, which is weird. And it puts them in a coma. And so for this coma, what happens is you go in the coma and then seven dwarves that take care of you and watch over you and do a handsome prince comes along and kisses you and wakes you up. Sorry. Right. Is that not the system? Is that not the one?

All right, fine. It's actually dumber than that. They put you in a coffin. they jam you inside a sarcophagus and just leave you in there for a year because, you know, nightmare. Yes, but also his was longer than others. Yeah, and the whole time he's in there. You grow larger, your hair changes color, the organs rearrange themselves to where they're supposed to be. Again, it still makes no goddamn sense.

While you're in there, though, one of three things usually happens. One, you sleep the whole time, Van Winkle style. so that's cool. Two, you go crazy and you die. Or three, and no one else has done this, but the Dante option. Yeah. Which also is nice compared to a lot of them because usually you go through multiple surgical procedures, the blood angels just slam it all together and go, have some night night time as opposed to some torture time, which is what usually happens to you as a

Marine. Yeah. Well, Donka spends a year inside of his sarcophagus. screaming. He just, he has a year-long night terror where he screams out. Primark names, dark god names, and the names of banished demons. I'll say banished demons that why they did not snuff him during all of this. I cannot figure out, but they chose not to. Basically, whilst it's going on, the priests that blames are placing bets on how many days

post-process before he goes black rage. there's like there's a full on the Super Bowl squares that that is basically what we're at you know for Dante. They're definitely playing corners on that. Yeah. The best part about this is he does a year of this. Dante gets off the sarcophagus and he's as cool as the other side of the pillow.

What's up guys? What did I miss? And they're all just looking at him like this is nope. Nope. Lose the zero. Get with the hero baby. That's there we go. Yeah. He was all ready for some vanilla.

ice. But yeah, so he's going to be the chosen one, apparently. Now, from there, Dante has survived the gene seed implantation. He hasn't fallen to the black rage, although I still thinks he's going to. Because it is, it doesn't give him a little problem at first because there was two camps on this with everybody, especially the chaplain's whatnot, which was, is this the chosen of sanguinius or is he going to fall terribly? And they were pretty split in the beginning. I mean, yeah, there was a lot of. Everybody's all team Dante now.

But when he first came out, it was pretty split in what was going to happen with him. Exactly. And so they were kind of like, let's put him somewhere where we can keep an eye on him. Basically, let's put him somewhere where there's a boulter behind him. At all times.

Yeah, at all times. We'll be right back after a quick break. Dante's first thing, though, is he's sent to go fight orcs because he's a scout, obviously, with the blood angels. And if I'm being honest, if you're going to take blood angels, neophytes, orcs is a good place to put him. Combat good. Orcs like combat.

And if you black rage, it's orcs. No blood, no foul. So they're out there. They're on the world of Rora, which is in the Unimori system. And Dante realizes part way through that he's being tested by his sergeant. Not in a bad way, but in the like, I think this. kids ready for promotion. So let's give them a chance.

And the sergeant Galilian believes Dante is going to make a good officer one day. And he gives Dante an opportunity. Sort of. Well, I was to say, sort of. It's kind of an opportunity. It's an opportunity to not die. Well, yeah. So Dante leading his squad of neophytes had accidentally tipped off the orcs as to where

their base was, not the full base, but a smaller base was. And so the sergeant went to him and said, you made the mess? Clean up the mess. What are we going to do? And Dante, though, does. He sits down and he devises basically a perfect tactical escape plan. Let's them break the squad free of the York attack. They take no casualties and they're able to rejoin the main base.

But what's important about this is Dante learns a really good lesson. What he learns is that he will make mistakes. They show this really well in the thing in the books. because he talks through this. You know, he's going to make mistakes. He's not perfect, but he should always strive to be perfect. That's one of the key things that I really think that they wrote. Because he always is going to need to fix it.

And in fixing it, he's figuring out how he can be better. And if he's always becoming better, he can strive to be perfect. And he's completely nonpluss by the fact that he made some mistakes. So the next version of Dante, though, we want to talk about is when it draws a lot of parallels to sanguineas. you guys have read end of death, especially sanguineas and end of death, there's a lot of compassion. This is on the world of Ereus 5. It's like the pacification of Ereus 5. Arreus 5 had a request for aid to the Imperium to deal with a Zeno threat. Now, the request for aid is kind of funny because the alien in question are the already, who are not a threat. What had happened was

the super not a threat. Yeah. The colony in question had been destroyed. by Civil War, chaos, no one knows, but people were all dead. And the are ready are a peaceful Zeno species that had, they're barely armed and they're barely armored. And they unfortunately had come upon the ruined colony

and we're just scavenging it. The blood angels don't know this. They just show up and they see Zeno and go. And they are punting these guys. Yeah. Who are defending themselves with twizzle straws.

and capes. Like, what the hell is happening? They're not even shooting back. And the blood angels are just going hand on them. But in this story, Dante is introduced to two things. A, that compassion has no place in the armies of the Imperium, and two, the red thirst. So the first thing that occurs is during the pacification, Dante and his squad come upon a group of the already, who were just no match for them. but there's really just slaughtering these things.

His battle brother, Arvin, loses control of himself. And he actually starts punching Dante at one point. And because Dante tries to intervene because Arvin's just hacking away at a dead corpse. Like, what are you doing, man? And this is at first, I think it's the black rage, but it's not. It's the red thirst. And all this slaughter, because there wasn't really a fight, it was just a slaughter, had triggered something animalistic in Arvin.

And I really do hate, by the way, the red thirst, just for the record, guys. I'm sorry, GW, it's because now we get in this weird, werewolf vampire thing. All right. So, no, God, this really does. It hurts me to talk about this. In order to pacify the red thirst, you have to drink blood. Does that sound stupid? Don't worry.

It's going to get dumber. Because all of the blood angels apparently have retractable. fangs. So in order to stop the red thirst from... This is only successor chapters nowadays. It's not all of them. No. This is canon.

This is in the book. I know. It's back then, but yes. Back then, the book came out in like 16. Yeah, it's back then. Back in the day. This is recent. I hate this so much.

But, okay, so the red thirst is overtaking Arvin. And the only way to stop it is they actually take his helmet off. And then they grab some of the blood from the dead already and just start force feeding it to Arvin, which then he drinks through his fangs. Boo. Boo. Hey, they like actually do something that we never bring up anymore, which is gaining the memories of the people that you eat. It's because Dante takes part in this as well. And as Dante takes part in this, he discovers pretty quickly that they already are completely harmless.

In fact, they have no interest in conflict whatsoever, and he realizes that he's just been killing a peaceful species that he could have just said, hey, can you guys leave? Now, quick note about the red thirst. The red thirst is supposed to hold the black rage at bay. So the idea is that if you routinely drink blood, you will then keep the black rage from taking over. So in order to do this, the blood is. the blood angels have serfs who then donate blood that they mix with wine. This story is so bad that they call crash and they carry it around with them and they just randomly take swigs of blood wine.

Look, they have their thralls just like any good vampire has. Yeah, I hate this writing. I will point out the flesh terrors or a successor chapter. They have a different method. Yes, they do. So do the blooded drinker's successor chapter? Not long after this, though, Dante then gets to learn all about the black rage. So he's learned about the red thirst.

That thing kind of sucks. Now we're going to go black rage. This is on the world of Tobias Halt. This story is actually super cool. This is so down. It's a super cool thing. You get mad about some names and think they're lame. This is just a guy.

Like, this might as well be the. world of Tim Smith. Yeah. I don't know why this bothered me so much, but Tobias Hall, Esquire. He's just an accountant. Yeah, you're right. It is kind of a weird name for a planet. Like, oh yeah, this is the world of Tobias

Halt. Okay. Now, the world of Tobias Halt is a hive world. It comes under assault by a chaos warband called the Purge, which are hardcore Nurkle, by the way. I love them because their battle cry is all life is worthless. And

And if you want to paint death guard and you don't want to do a traditional deathguard paint scheme, look at these guys. It's still green, but it's green and black. I didn't look really cool. It's sitting for a different day. What matters, though, is the purge fight dirty. They use biologic and chemical warfare primarily because it's Nergel. Just trying to spread the play.

Yeah. As much suffering as possible because the more people suffer, the more likely they'll give themselves over to Nurgel to not die. To be comforted by. grandfather Nurgel. Get it right. Exactly. Now, Dante here has these like back-to-back experiences. First, he watches his brother Laziel

fall of the black rage literally in front of them. Dante's just watching Lazale. And Lazale, it's a really great scene of the book because as he's talking to Lazile, he can hear the black rage overcome him. Because what the black rage is, is to remind people, the black rage

is the, it came from the death of Sanguineas. Yeah, the, a blithe. Everybody has to 100% of the time live the last moments of sanguinius. Yeah, they channel the memories of sanguineas into them. So Lazio all of a sudden doesn't see himself on Tobias Halt, but on Terra, fighting Horace. And unfortunately, he doesn't perceive one of the members of the Purge as Horace,

but actually is one of his battle brothers as Horace. This is back when on the table top, If you ran death company, they could actually attack allies. That rule should come back, by the way. The death company are kind of O-P sometimes. So they have to put Lazile down before he slaughters the rest of the blood angels. But this is just part one of the problems for Dante on this world. Because later on, we're trying to get the purge off the planet.

And the purge use a lot of subterfuge to take out this one factory called a Hollywell Hive. Hollywell hive, yeah. Yeah, I was about saying Honeywell knows, Hollywell hive. And Dante was protecting this with his squad, and he fails. And this fury of him failing sets him off. And he goes into a massive sea of anger. And he does solo six chaos space marines,

basically plays marins. Yeah. However, he does not stop there because he gets pretty raged out and decides to keep on killing much to the sadness of the random workers of Hollywood High factories. He goes, for those of us at the age to watch Looney Tunes, he goes full-blown Tasmanian devil. And it's just ricocheting around this place, killing people. And then he starts eating them because again, boo. But so the red, because it's overtaken by the red thirst at this point.

And while he's doing this, Sanguonore appears again. and knocks him unconscious. That's what the sang one is, just drops him. I love that they save one guy. Do they? Oh, no, no, no, no. I go, first off, he waits until there's only one guy left. And that guy's like, oh, my God, everyone I've ever done is dead.

I guess I'm the last person in this horror movie. Oh, no, it's a Stephen King book. And it looks like we followed the sole survivor. And by the way, sorry, not soul survivor. Soul survivor slash witness to what just happened. Dante's squad comes wandering in. And Dante has killed all of the Plague Marines. He's also killed and eaten a bunch of the civilians.

And there's one dude. All of the civilians. And apparently, by the way, the year 40,000, no CCTV, no flock cameras. So that's a good thing. There's a good thing. But they look around, look at the one dude and go, so we have to have a quick conversation. That conversation is going to involve you not being alive anymore. So they kill him and destroy the evidence that way.

There we go. Dante, though, comes out of this and he's furious at himself, obviously. And so he decides to swear off drinking blood ever again. He is never going to take part in the red thirst. and that's as a key thing for him that's going to come up more in our next cast on him but no one else has really done this up until this point

so he just straight up cold turkey goes no I'm good no more blood Dante's pretty badass about a lot of things because he's the first to do a lot of these type things and proving that you can he leaves a charge which is why he's such a cool character

because again no one else like the difference when I talk about Dante I like him so much is that they will do this for a lot of other characters in 40k, but with Dante, we get a backstory on the why. Other people will just get the, oh, he doesn't take part in drinking of the blood, red thirst. Why?

Oh, this one instant happened. In the case of Dante, we get a lot of backstory, which is really cool. All right. Not long after this, Dante gets a promotion. And this time, it's to captain of the fifth company of Blood Angels, although he gets it kind of the way that you'd expect it to happen. He wasn't the captain of the fifth company. He was a sergeant within the fifth company, leading a squad that they called squad Dante. They're sent on the pacification of Moss, which is a, it's a planet that had fallen to piracy.

So Tortuga, except Eldar Tortuga. Because the Eldar, it was run by an Eldar Gorsair named Heleneyth. And he declared that this planet was free space. Or any pirate of any race were welcomed. there. I'll be honest, when you read this book, you kind of are on the side of Heleneath initially, where you're like, so basically the Imperium, just slaughtering anyone who's not human in this area. And this one dude's like, hey, if you've got a spaceship and you want to hang out here, I'm cool. You kind of end up on his side. But side note, different day.

Fifth company are sent there to go kill Heleneyath. And they go to the main city, which is the Adryas Freeport. unfortunately for the blood angels or fortunately depending on how you want to view it because this is how Dante becomes the captain but by the way we'll be a recurring theme on every Dante advancement is how did you get your your advancement

well everyone's dead okay I guess I'm the next in line exactly congratulations year up pirates dens tend to be pretty well defended Like pirate layers aren't really... So many traps. Yeah, they're now this haphazard thing. Let's just wander in there.

So it didn't go great. And in fact, Captain Averness, who is the captain of the company, does. And the siege, it goes actually pretty badly. But Dante is the last one standing. And now he also, although he's not just the last one saying. He also leaves the counter assault. So the Blaineville's attack... Pretty well.

Yeah, the captain. and is killed. A bunch of Balangels die. And Dante just grabs whoever's around him and goes, all right, follow me. And leads. And they actually end up destroying the city, basically, although Hellenite does escape. It's a cool scene. Forget that he tried to lure him in. Well, Helen, yeah, did try to convert Dante to chaos.

And Dante went, yeah, good to hear, Chup. Yeah, I'm killing you for sure now. Yeah. I was going to anyways, but now I really am going to kill you. Yeah, but he does actually escape. Helen still escapes anyway. It's one of those words where things were, like, is he tempting in the chaos or is he just trying to escape? Yeah, he does talk a bunch of shit in the way out, though.

I was going to say he does talk a wild amount of shit while we're doing this. But at the end of this, though, Captain is dead. Dante is, as a sergeant, he would be one of the sergeants, who is one of the next in line. But he had in the battle really shown off the best. He's the one who took the mantle of leadership. and the battle succeeded because of him. So it's pretty easy one of like, all right, you're in charge now.

And in the book, Dante, there's actually a cool seat of how this process goes of what it's like the promotion ceremony of being a captain. Read if you want. But he becomes a captain, and he's going to hold this title for about 150 years.

Actually, let's take a little moment here because the next bit we're going to get into is big, just because Brad touched us the beginning of the cast. I want to kind of, as we're getting near the end of the cast, talk about time. line here. So Dante became a space marine 467 of M40. He became a captain in 753, so 300 years of service.

And the next thing we're going to talk about is in 900 of M40. 90 to 999, actually. I'm not even sure exactly when it is. So if we go with the earliest 500 years of service, he's going to be working to be talking about when we get to the next bit here. And that's after. he was born. So he has been a space marine for a while. You know, just going out there. Several of the years. Several of the years. And as I said, he's not running the

habitat for humanity of the blood angels. He's actually full-blown fighting through all of this. So Dante's pretty badass. But let's get to the Kaleas subsector, which is our next and final stop on our journey today before we get to have the cast. The Kaleas subsector

went full rebellion against the Imperium. And it was a heresy rebellion. So, of course, call goes out. We need assistance from his base marines. And the first one to arrive are the angel Numinos. And they are a blood angel successor chapter that actually had kind of a cool story because they are a legitimate successor, but they were never a second founding. Because in fact, they were a function of there was a legitimate chapter called the blood eagles, who then had a civil war inside of the not a heresy. war, just their own little civil war, and now you have the Angels Numinos and the Red Seroths.

But anyway, it's kind of a cool thing. They're one of the successors there. Now, the Angels Numinos get there, and they discover pretty quickly, that the heresy is a lot worse than they thought. And they get routed. Okay, so then they put out. Bad, bad. Yeah, we need help. So the Blue Angels initially send three companies to the region. And one of the obviously is Dante with the fifth company. And it's around this time that the extent of the invasion becomes more apparent. Because when we talk about chaos rebellions, more often than not, it's just chaos cultists. There'll be a few like chaos space marines who appear here and there, maybe small squads.

They're leading, they're rallying, they're directing shit. But this is not. This is not. All kinds of power armor is showing up. Yeah. So now we have to bring the. wamp. So as usual, the blood angels actually send the rest of the chapter now. So the blood angels show up in force here. So the three companies just weren't enough. So now you have a ton of

blood angels there. And this is enough. They also are bringing in numerous elements of Imperial Guard, Imperial Navy, and the conflict begins to kind of settle and start to turn to the side of the Imperium. And we've mentioned before, space marines don't usually do protracted fights. They come do a couple key bits of a conflict, and they leave. It's up to the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy, and I guess the sisters, actually, are being honest, to do the protracted campaigns. Like, all right, you guys are going to go fight here for 500 years.

Cool. We have a lot more of you. Space Marines, yeah, are a scalpel. Yeah, exactly. I love everything that what happens here, because this is awesome for Dante, but it also shows kind of where chaos is for this. because they get ready to leave and they're effectively limping away.

And the Black Legion translates in, effectively on top of them. Right on top of them. Right next to them. And they go, not today, but also they see an opportunity. Hey, man, this is at the time, probably the most famous chapter. Yeah. We're going to smoke show these guys. Yeah, the Black Legion saw an opportunity to destroy a first founding chapter.

And they took it. full-blown. I mean, remember, space marines are still, they're adept. So when they are translating out, they're still ready for war, but you're not as ready as the Black Legion were coming in, who are like, we're dropping on top of you. And this is a three-day battle of extreme close combat, where we're talking raiding parties, everything. And this battle is not about anything other than their survival of the blamble. Dante pumps his boots of mighty ass kicking to next level, though. Because him and his, him and his specific group he was rolling with,

scuttled multiple chaos ships during this, which is just, yeah, it's so badass. This battle up until ball, which will cover on the time, is one of the bigger battles because also remember those Angels Numinos I mentioned earlier, they had already left. And when they heard this, they turned around and came back. and almost depleted themselves completely to try and save what was left of the blood angels. Yeah.

This battle is just going. Yeah. Yeah, he's like, hey, I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum and I'm all out of bubble gum. But yeah, he is bouncing ship to ship all this stuff. And at the end of it, the Black Legion Armada is defeated. But the problem is the Black Legion Armada came there on kind of a suicide mission. They were like, we don't care if we die. we're taking out a first founding chapter.

And they almost did because there's only 200 blood angels remaining at this point. And there's zero people in charge left. Whoa, there's one. Sans Dante. Yeah, there is one. Sands Dante. Yeah. They went, hey, we've got a captain.

Who's the next best guy? The cook. Yeah. And not under siege cook. Exactly. By the way, he's a horrible human being. Just absolute horrible human being. So I want to point out, I made the reference,

but I accept the effect that Stephen Seagall is one of the worst human beings on the planet. Just going to admit that right now. But anyway, they all end up back on ball, and the sanguinary priest and the chaplains just come together and they decide, well, this is obviously who our next chapter master is going to be. And it's Dante.

Also, but he had earned it. Yeah, I was just about to say this. Yes, there's nobody else around, but also there's nobody else around because the baddest dude in our chapter has been single-handedly wreck-facing everything. Yeah. And directing perfect assaults all over the place. And also, again, cool as a cucumber. Just whatever, man. Hey, we're about to have imminent death.

You're like, good to hear. I'll figure it out what's going on. But one of my favorite parts, though, is, and this is again why I like Dante, the chaplains and the priests are aware of some of the proclivities that Dante has, two things like, you know, compassion, which are not high on the list of chaplains, especially of any chapter. I mean, I think he has been told multiple times. been told, but also in his contemplations when he sits and does his meditations,

that there is no place for mercy. Yeah. I'm actually trying to figure out who is less, will say, aligned with mercy, a blood angels chaplain or dark angels chaplain? Oh, an inquisitor chaplain. Those guys are like, I heard you talk about mercy. I know you said you were against it, but you said the words out loud. So just Jesus.

But anyway, he does get promoted. And obviously, and he's going to lead this for the next, you know, forever. And we're going to pause there until next week. Because next week, our coverage of Dante is going to take actually a much more hilarious turn. In that, the legend of Dante is what we get to cover a lot more next week. because there's a combo here. There are things that we know Dante did, Armageddon, for example. And there's also things that were told Dante did, like carving scar brand in tune,

which Dante may or may not have actually done. Single-handedly having a chat with the silent king. Yeah. That one actually, I think, may have happened. But this is what we did happen. It's in one of the books. But this is what makes the Dante stuff really great. people who don't understand, like, we wanted to do, the way I wanted to write this out was the first cast was, all right, let's get us factually up to chapter master Dante.

Because once you get the chapter master Dante, it gets wild. I don't know, because I kind of feel like he's doing the William Money thing where they go, I thought you were doing this. He's like, I remember it being five demon princes, not four. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's, well, Paul Bunyan for the Americans. That's kind of what he's supposed to be. I don't know who the British equivalent is, unfortunately. And I know GW would have been a British equivalent, but it's really great.

So next week, we're going to spend a lot of this, like, here are the stories? Are they true? Who knows? Are they at least partially true? Maybe. But Dante turns into a bad ass. And so we'll be doing a lot of that next week. Till then, though, John Barcotti, Bradchester.

The guy. See you guys then.