The 40k Lorecast - Episode 159 - Dante pt 3 – The Devastation of Baal, Arks of Omen, and a bit more.

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

On today’s cast we conclude our coverage of Dante. We spend most of the Episode talking about the events of the Devastation of Baal. From the opening Salvo as Dante tries to delay the incoming hive fleet, through Dante and the remaining survivors furious charge out into the Tyranid lines. We also spend some time jumping over to the moons of Baal as the Flesh Tearers and Knights of Blood make their own stand. We then cover the conclusion of the conflict with the arrival of both Guilliman and Ka’Bandha. After this we jump into the events of Dante after the war, with his elevation to Primaris Marine and his “collecting” of the Lion.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallBrad ChannelOur Sponsors:* Check out Quince and use my code 40KLORE for a great deal: https://www.quince.com* Check out Shopify and use my code shopify.com/lore for a great deal: https://www.shopify.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast. I'm me, John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. Today we're going to be closing out our coverage of Dante with a focus on devastation of Ball, his rise to the Lord's region, the Imperial Nialists, and then, of course, his just hanging out apparently with the lion for what felt like them trying to fill something in.

Hey, he does a bunch of awesome shit. He does. He's just there. The lion's doing all the work. I'm talking about the Dante doing a bunch of awesome shit in today's cast. Okay. From the devastation to continuing on. He also does again a meet and greet with a whole bunch of named characters from around the galaxy.

I mean, he's not, he's been around for a little bit. He's mildly important. He's just doing rom-com meat cutes all the time. Basically, yeah. Oh, they bumped into each other and both of them dropped their files on the ground. Oh, he's kind of sad, isn't it? Yeah. All right.

Well, for those who somehow don't know, because we're at episode 158, but the 40K lorecast is a show focusing the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern. If you guys like the show, please, you know, follow it, leave a comment. It helps us out, boost the algorithm and we get to meet more people. So that's kind of cool. In addition, a bunch of links in the show notes. You can get our YouTube channel for our Q&As, as long as some other content. You can also follow Brad's channel.

We thought it's more. We will have just had a Q&A by the time this releases. Yeah. Actually, for once you were actually correct on the timeline there. Sometimes we're like a month. head in Bradley. It's going to have a Q&A. We'll have a Q&A.

We'll have a Q&A. We'll have a broken clock's right twice a day. Exactly. Oh, we do some Q&As. We also can get a link to Brad's channel where he just talks about competitive 40K at a higher level.

And our other show, the history of 40K, where we focus on the game of Warhammer 40K on the table top. Oh, and also my show retro recall where I talk about old video games. Nothing's kind of fun. If you like the show and you want to help us out, there's two ways to do it.

You can either go to our website, which has now been updated, our newly updated website, and you can get our merchandise, stickers, sweatshirts, t-shirts, wine glasses, et cetera. Or you can support us via Patreon. Patreon's been amazing for us. Patreon's how we've expanded out a lot more stuff.

It's why the audio doesn't sound like I'm in a can screaming into the never. This is episode one is brutal. Listen to episode one before I edited it is because I have the raw audio still. It's not a happy place. But Bubbles makes almost as much noise as I. deal with my cans. Oh yeah, God, I did remember. Yeah, the amount of times, some of the time you tried to open a can off the microphone and somehow opened it directly into the microphone. And imagine you're

welcome. Or the times used to spill wine and wipe it up with your sweatshirt despite there being paper towels next to you. Yeah, there was some interesting errors early on. So I make excellent decisions all the time. All right. Speaking of excellent decisions, let's talk about if you want to support us, you get this show and the history of 40K ad free. It's $4.99 or still $4.99, but you're rooting for a team who can't beat someone whose color is maze. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This one's going to burn, Brad. So Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, it is the best city in all of Ohio. I look this up. Way to go. You're better than Akron. The buzz.

Yeah. But, all right. So Columbus is considered the best city in all of Ohio because, you know, It's great for a lot of them. It's the Hobbit, the Ohio State Buckeyes. We'll talk about that in a second. You think you don't have notes? Oh, I have notes.

I have lots of notes. But let's talk about the real. Turtle notes. Yeah. So Columbus is nice, though. It's a booming tech and medical area. So it's a really good place for people who are kind of getting started in life because it's also cheap.

So you've got low cost of living and a good job market, which is great. It also has pretty good arts and entertainment. I say pretty good. It's good. It's good. The bars are really good. The nightclubs are good. The art scene is.

good. Let's go with that. But why is it named Columbus, despite being 500 miles from the nearest ocean? I don't know. Not my thing. Although I did learn it is actually the third capital of Ohio after Chilocothe and Zanesville both failed to pan out. Can't figure out why. Chilli coffee, maybe. Sure. I wasn't even looking at the pronunciation. I could not have cared less on that one. Another fun fact about Cleveland, it is the birthplace of Wendy's, which is a burger chain that you can eat and actually know what it's doing to you because I've never had a burger that greasy in my life. It does taste good, but I've never had a burger that greasy in my life. And if you want to know just how kind of dead average Columbus is, it's also where all

the fast food chains go to test out their new menu items because they found that people who eat fast food, Columbus is the best indicator of whether or not they'll like something. So if you live in Columbus, you get to have weird things on menus at fast food restaurants. No one else does. Where to go? On the plus side, it also is the birth of Jenny's ice cream, which if you eat ice cream, try Jenny's, it's really good. It's really, really good.

And they have a cool German village for if you want, like, faux German food. Go for that. That's pretty cool. So it's not German. Like, oh, we've got a German village. Really? Just throwing out a recommendation and a snite at the same time. It's like Tex-Mex.

No one has Tex-Mex and said, well, some people do. This is good Mexican food. Those people are objectively wrong. But Tex-Mex is good. It's just bad when you call it Mexican food. That's all. But Tex-Mex is delicious. I love Tex-Mex.

That's what I'm saying. Foe German food is delicious. But it's fine. It's just not German food. But let's talk about a football team that still can't break the top five all time, despite having themselves named after a nut. A nut that, by the way, is not poisonous. It's a massive overstatement. It is only poisonous to eat like 50 of them.

No one has ever died from eating a Buckeye in the history of medical records. So you're about as poisonous as you are good at football. We were looking football. Sure. When was the last time we went undefeated? How about the last time we won a half? championship. Yeah, but undefeated, though, that's the real trick. Undefeated national championship. I feel like you... I realize, by the way, it's like 70% of our listeners have no idea what's going on here.

And the truth is, I could not care less about this. I'm from Philadelphia, so I just like to talk shit randomly about things. College football means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing, but I know it means a lot to you. So this would be fun. But we talked about Columbus. If you don't like my opinion on Columbus, join our Discord. And feel free to tell me all about it. It's a common thing that I do get when I do these from time to time. Our Discord, link in the show notes, it's not just meant for yelling at me, although it does work. A great place to request episodes, ask questions, inform me the bits that I got wrong in the episode. Work and trying, guys, do what I can. But also a good place to interact with the rest of the community, people who also like the lore and want to know more

about it. We've seen a ton of great literature recommendations in there is one of my favorite parts of it. With over 400 novels and counting, it can be difficult to navigate the Black Library of what you want to read really is a great place to go for it and get recommendations that don't come with the standard Reddit. Also, you're an idiot. Come with me if you want to live. What? Guiding them through the Black Library in the Reddit or in the Discord.

What? Stay with me, bro. I thought you were watching a movie or something in the background. I had no idea. Just like John talked too long, Brad got bored. I mean, that's not really that. far off. There we go. Like, okay. And, uh, all right. Well, let's get back to it. Let's get into a bad day for the blood angels.

Let's go through where the belangles are at this point. They're about to have basically the worst time since their prime arc died. But I want to talk real quick about what the setting is, because things does help. So the setting is we have ball. Ball is a single world with two moons orbiting it. Everything here sucks, by the way. On the main planet, you had the blood. Orlando's Fortress, the Arks and Jellicum, which is misspelled. Arx is misspelled. A.R. X. I just love that you put that.

It's in the notes. Missed by the way. Yeah, in the notes. Yeah, it's misspelled. Then you have your two moons, ball primus and ball succundas. So you've, I actually think these are more important to the story on this because of the fact that primus and secundas are very defensible. They become main fights on this also. Well, secundus, not so much.

Well, yeah. Sorry. Well, it does defend for a second. Yeah, ball secundice marks itself present during roll call. All three are absolute wastelands, and I mean toxic wastelands, the point that no living being can set foot on them without some sort of breathing apparatus or in the case of ball primus, you just slowly die for living there. Despite all this, though, the most powerful Space Marine Legion, or one of them, calls it home. And the people on the moons, despite it being horrible, still live there. Oh, and we should also mention that the Arks Angelicum is considered one of the best defended sites in the entire galaxy.

This is the 100%. Yeah, is where we're at. The tyrantids, though, are on their way. They just finished consuming the cryptos system where the blood angles and the necrons blew up a chunk of them, but there's still quite a lot left. And just for record, when they invaded cryptis, they blocked out the sun. There were so many of them. So there's a lot of tyrannids coming. Dante, though, does have a little bit of an advantage.

Dante did not let Cryptus fall. He went over there and actually deployed. So he's seen what the Tyrannids do. All space springs at this point are aware of the tyranids, but it's one thing to read, something to see. So he saw how powerful this fleet is. And he did a couple things. First, he starts fortifying the planets even more than before

and arming the population. And he called for eight. And the eight arrived. Well, go into this because he talked about this in the last count. He called out Freed from Select All. He sent everybody in his contacts. Even the friend that screwed you over that owes you money, your ex-girlfriend, everything else. He sent it to everyone.

The next to the United Catas chapters. He sent a galaxy-wide you up. Yeah, exactly. But not all the Blood Angels are there. This is an important piece. So Asteroff the Grimm shows up very late. And it's because he had a Blangel attachment. I was saying, hold on.

It's not like, yeah, it's not like he's hanging out. No, but this is important. Yes. Yeah. One of the biggest things in the setting, and this is why this is the everything war. It's just war. In the grim dark, there is only war because Abidon's 13th crusade is happening at the exact same time the Leviathan is pushing, making its big push.

Yeah. And this part here of it, Abidon's 13th crusade is reaching its culmination as this occurs, which is a really critical bit because Abidon is literally at Acadia, right? right now as Hively Leviathan enters ball. So things are a bit rough. Now, going back to the preparation, let's talk real quick about what's sitting at ball. So Dante returns to ball with full knowledge of what's coming.

Planets and the moons are well under fortification, but he makes a couple changes once he gets back. The first one, he starts getting all the people off the planet. Basically, if you can't hold a Las Reifle, go. And this is for two reasons. One, he knew the tyrannids are coming in hot and heavy everywhere, so he doesn't need anyone in the way. He will not have time to evacuate. He doesn't have time to do anything.

So if you're, if you can't fight, leave. But also, let's go with why, though. Because, hey, if you're a random person and you're not inflicting Cassidy's, you are becoming basically fuel for my enemy because biomass is what they go on. So I don't need a bunch of people becoming a venom cannon on a new giant tiered monster. The same time, Dante also learned something important at Cryptus, which is that the size of the high fleet is just too much. And it will overwhelm anything. So what he realizes is that the best defense is actually going to be an offense. Well, yes and no.

The best defense is a good offense. I agree, which is what he is. But he's also trying to run misdirection. So Dante starts sending out sorties. I mean, they're sorties. They're pretty big groups, attack groups. But he actually has a lot of success in just killing splinters because high fleets splinter off. They have tendrils that shoot off.

And he looks for the ones that are the least defensible or the least amount of stuff, isolate and destroy. But he also starts running attacks where he shifts the high fleet a little bit over to deal with what he's doing. he's effectively trying to stall for as much as possible because Dante knows that when everything ends up going down, we're going to take the L. But there's a shit ton of other guys in the Imperium. If I can wait and keep drawn this out, my percentage chances of living,

or at least my people living, becomes bigger and better and better, better. Now, at that ball, once by the time to have its orbit, they're pretty well reinforced. You've got 30,000 space marines and over 100 ships. We've got 21 battle barges. So they're as ready as they're going to be. Now, the high fleet does obviously arrive.

And the Blood Angels get nice little heads up on this because the shadow of the warp descends and all the psychers start going crazy. All communication blacks out. And now they know it's go time. And Dante just orders the Blue Angels to take your pound of flesh. That's effectively, that is what this is. Before this, it is funny because I have to be given old old man Brad 40K at Gmail.com because Dante knew that this was coming. So he's been spamming like my email gets spammed that I don't use anymore.

He's been spamming the Imperium because he knows that this is going to be a blackout. And he's effectively also saying, hey, man, as soon as you don't get this auto send message I'm sending, it's not because we don't need help anymore. it's because we can't send anything out. It is big because they talk about this. You know what I mean? He wants to make sure that, hey, keep sending that message. I don't care if we're not getting a response yet because as soon as they get here, we can't send any more.

And they need to know this. Exactly. But High fleet arrives. And the fleet battle doesn't really last that long. The cool part about this is that this is the first loss of a chapter occurs here. So the Angels Excelsius, they are a fleet. Well, whoa, whoa, John, they were. Well, at this point, they are a fleet-based successor chapter of the Blood Angels, and they volunteered to, because they're a fleet-based chapters to go fight the Bouchips.

They knew there's no retreat and there's no success. But their whole idea was, I mean, this is the best definition of forlorn hope that you'd ever have, but they knew they had the best chance of doing the most damage. So they took it and then that chapter no longer exists. Yeah. But they took a lot of hive ships in the bus. Yes, they did. It was an epic space battle for someone that was for sure going to get killed. Yeah, it's cool.

There's stories of effectively their ships ran out of missiles. That's how much they just were like, we don't care. Put every gun out we possibly can. There is no round two. There's no retreat. Eventually, though, it happens, as you'd expect. The entire sky above ball and its moons are covered with hive. ships and the invasion begins. However, Dante wasn't done yet. And I do like a lot of this stuff.

They had been layering the defenses quite a bit. Now, the next bit here before we do this, gets a little bit complicated from a narrative standpoint. And that's because the invasion of Ball Prime, Ball Secundus, and Ball, the planet all occur at the exact same time. But there's no ways back and forth also. Yeah. The books are well written. But what happens happens is it does move around a little bit. So if we're telling a cast, it put me in a boat. I don't really want to tell a story linearly because I'll be jumping from place to place to place. So I'm going to try and let you know, we're going to pick one spot, tell the story there, then go to another spot, tell the story there. Just what you guys know that in case we're trying

to follow along what's happening. This is a three front war occurring at the exact same time. Now, with that said, as the battle gets going, the first big event involves Mephistan. The chief librarian of Blood Angels, he starts to have visions. Well, hardcore visions. I'll say also never-ending visions about demons on ball. Yeah. Which is never a good thing. Yeah.

And one of the visions, a Harlequin shows up and tells him, hey, cabanda is on his way. Because it's Eldar. There was like the help, but not help. Yeah. Also, like, hey, I love when you have a vision that goes, hey, I know everything's totally going to shit. everyone you know and love might be killed. Also, your 100% extra nemesis is coming also. You're like, okay?

Anything we could do about this? Nah, see you later. This whole next bits, by the way, hilarious because Mephistan realizes that the tyrantids are too much for the blood angels, but the tyranids and a demon make it a thousand times worse. So he grabs all of his librarians and goes to a cave that's totally not full of Kyber crystals, but 100% full of Kyber crystals. Just making those lightsabers like nobody's been.

I mean, there's zero. I read the description. I'm like, I've seen this in Knights of the Old Republic. I've been in this cave. But that's a side note for a different day. There, though, him and his librarians perform this ritual where they're going to banish cabanda from the material. This is the one part that bugs me because of the fact that they go, hey, let's get all

our guys. Get all the best psychers. And apparently they also got psyched ted because they're doing this ritual. They're trying to make it so they banish Cabanda from the Materian forever, like permanently, full stop. Do not pass go. You're going straight to jail, brother. And then in the middle of it, one of the psychers gets basically lured away by the, by Cabanda.

And everything goes to shit. And you're like, hey, man, don't bring the guy that keeps getting D's on the tests. Yeah. So effectively, there's kind of banished Cabanda falls apart because Cabanda actually manifests

inside the cave. And they go with option B, which is blow up the cave and trap Cabanda in the cave. More on him in a little bit. Also, totally not going to work, but continue.

Yeah. So back on the arcs Angelicum, things are getting, they're going okay, but they're getting worse. So the Blanelianel's planet was based around using the nightmare that is Ball.

So remember, Tyrnids or an organic life form. ball just hates organic life form. It's the best way to explain these planets. They are pure toxic. So they were banking on the environment, literally the air of balls slowing the tyrant down, which it did initially. Then the type made mind just adapted.

Except for they. Yeah, they just immediately. They made gas masks. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, hey, we made it slightly uncomfortable for them. And then they fixed it immediately. Well, that's part one.

Part two, though, is one of my favorites, is that they. surround their entire fortification which is called thirst water. Thirstwater is a mimic. That's effectively what it is. It looks like water. It's a weapon from the dark age of technology that looks like water.

But if you touch it, it sucks all the moisture out of your body and desiccates you. So it's also AI water. Yeah. Oh, it's alive. And so they surround all of their fortifications with this stuff.

The next, and then next to it, they have a bunch of conscripts, people of ball with chaplains yelling at them. So, you know, they set up pretty well. One of my favorites about this is they went, hey man, when a commissar is too caring, what do you need? Yeah, a lot angels chaplain. Problem yourself.

Like, that guy's too soft on you. That guy's been shooting people in the back of the head. As I said, he's been shooting. He's been choosiesting them because he's too quick for them. That's the bigger one. He's just like, where are you going? No, thud. Oof.

So what happens is the first about 19 waves of Tienerner to the salt do fall. And the reason behind this is because stuff like that, thirst water, all this shooting, it's working. The fortress has every gun imaginable. They're also pulling out a bunch of stuff that you're not supposed to use. They're like,

oh, yeah. Hey, Dante, we're going to go to the basement and get all the stuff that we don't have. Yeah. And load it up on top. You're like, yeah,

for sure we are. 100% do that. But what I do like is eventually the tyrants kind of get sick of this crap. And they look at, first off, the thirst water. The thirst water does work in organic life forms. And there's a void shield. So they can't just come down on top of everything. They have to go from the ground and walk their way in.

And there requires going through this thirst water. So the hive mind just goes, you know what I have? Billions of life forms. So all of a sudden, tens of thousands of gaunts just start leaping into the thirst water until they fill it with dead gaunts, allowing the big stuff to walk over, namely carnifixes and exocrines and etc. And effects is and everybody else. However, the void shield does hold and they're still able to, you know, return fire and

hold them at bay for now. Meanwhile, Ball Secundus, this point basically falls. There's not much of going on there. But Ball Primus holds up. It's one of the two. Yes, it's ball promise holds up. And this is because they had a bunch of great crusade weapons there that they were like, all right, let's just, to breath the point, let's use these.

And they had two, they'll call it chapters, the flesh terrors and my favorite, the Knights of Blood. So the flesh terrors have Gabriel Seth, who are just on team. We're not going down like this. And we're going to fight. But the Knights of Blood are more fun because the Knights of Blood are an communicated successor chapter. And this is a whole part of this book, which is called The Book Bowers called DeVisation of Ball.

And the Knights of Blood become very cool, namely Jewel, their main guy. I love the fact that they're so happy to have been invited. Basically, they're like, ooh, we might all die. Hey, but we get to come back to Ball? Awesome. We're in. This sounds great.

So the Knights of Blood, for those who don't know about them, are they were a successor chapter of the Blangels. Some of the Blendell's successor chapters are more susceptible to black rage than others. others. Flesh terrors are also one of these. The blood... Flesh tears 100% also.

Yeah. The Knights of Blood, though, were extreme. And the only way the Knights of Blood were able to stop the Black Rage, taking over all of them was to start just slaughtering people and eating all their blood. So they went full-blown vampire. And the Imperium and the Blendos were like, hey, that's super not cool. So we're going to have to ask you to leave.

Q the Jordan meme. And I took offense to that. This is more like the person. who ruins the house party. I'm sorry, we need you to leave now. It wasn't one of the things you can sweep under the rug because they're like, hey, man, we were going to support you,

but it's on Channel 6 News right now, watching you do this. In addition, it also changes them physically where they all have red skin, yellow eyes, they have fangs instead of teeth. So, knights of blood are vampires. Yeah, full-blown vampires that, like, fall. I think it was in, okay, I'm going to cause out.

Now, the amount of blade ripoffs we're going to cover today bothers me. Just saying it now. Just saying it now, because you're just like in Blade, if you don't drink enough of the blood, you fall into one of the other kinds of vampires. That's what the Knights of Blood are. Again, awesome movie, but IP violation will be right back after a quick break. Now, they actually had fled the Imperium Space a long time ago. Well, hey, they were monsters.

Everyone was to kill them. But also, the Knights of Blood had attended. to still fall to the Black Rage, which meant they would oftentimes kill their brothers or anyone they were fighting next to. So they only fight solo. In fact, they swore they would never fight side by side with anyone from the Imperium

because they didn't want to be responsible for killing Imperial Forces. Now, though, they're kind of in the best place ever, because the only ones next to them are the flesh terrors who also fall to the Black Ridge all the time, and they're really surrounded by enemies. So it's like if they go into a whirlwind race, it's one of those like 90% of time you're going to hit a tyrantid because that's 90%

of what's around you. So anyway, that's that works. These two start holding out pretty well against the tyranids, but we'll get back to them in a minute because they're holding out against the tyranids. That will shift in a little bit. Also during this time, Dante does make kind of an error on the fact that the tyrantons actually start harvesting biomass in areas he didn't think they got harvested at all. They're just like, cool.

irradiated areas, good be here, taking all of it. Part of his plan is a little bit, not falling apart, but they're gaining a lot more than he thought they were going to gain from what he's giving. He thinks he's growing scorched earth, and the Tyrannins kind of went, ooh, delicious scorched earth. We love it. He also underestimated, in my opinion, the intelligence of the hive mind. That's what...

Yeah, they start adapting quickly on the tactics. That's what happens next, because the hive mind is trying to press into Arks Angelica. It's stuck. The void shield holds, the weaponry's too much. And, you know, you can't go over it. You can't go through it. They go under it. Out of nowhere, a bunch of trigons erupt inside of the Arx Angelicum. And lictors and gins and slows pop out. The reason that matters is lictors are invisible. That's their superpower. So if a lictor gets in, hunting them down, you're hunting the predator. That's what you're stuck with now. Gene sloers, in other hand, you can see them, but there's a ton of them. The lictors, head off to the power generators to go basically turn off the void shield by literally jumping into it. Well, don't forget they're also going for free XP because they're camping the neophytes that are in the sarcophics. That's the gene cellars. The lichers go off. The lichers go off to take out the power generators and also start hunting out commanders.

The gene stealers go after all of the neophytes who were just sitting in sarcophagus and kill. All of them. Camping. Camping spawn points. Yeah. Dick move, man. Dante does not care for that second move. At the exact same time, to make matters even more fun, the swarm lord appears.

And for those who just don't know, the swarm lord is a named character, sort of kind of. Yeah, I would say there's multiple swarm lords. Well, there's only one swarm lord, but there's also multiple, there's also multiple swarm lords. That's the thing. In a bathroom, the reason I say that is the difference is like Dante is Dante. Dante is only where Dante is. There is debate as to whether or not a high fleet could make multiple swarm lords in multiple places, but in a single battle, there will only ever be one swarm lord.

One swarm lords, yes, true. It's a little bit goofy because they're genetically cloning these things. But this means the Void shield is now down, a bunch of neophytes are dead. At this stage, they're down to hundreds of blood angels left. And Dante decides, all right, screw it. If we're going out, we're going out. Ain't going out like that. Oh, no, he's like, we're going out.

We're going out in a bath of glory. He just got the Eragorn speech to Theodin, and they're going to ride out. Yeah, it's also another rip-off they have here. So the first thing he does is he orders the Tower of Amareo opened. The Tower of Amoreo is a pseudo-prison that the Blangels have in the Archangelicum, where all the people who've flown to the black rage and haven't been executed yet are shoved there. This is Tasmanian devils of just violence

are sitting there. And he just goes, cool, open the gates and make sure the door's facing tyrannid. So a bunch of just absolute black rage to the end of earth warriors come flying out to the tyrannids. And these guys are just blendering. It's the thing that the sisters have with repentant engines.

Is that the ones where it's just they just send you out there like, yeah, go fight and die. That's what these guys are. By the way, sisters, 15 different units that do that because sisters are crazy. It is kind of a sister's thing. Yeah. So we have that one.

The next thing, Dante also addresses the crowd. Dude, this is awesome. Dante rolls out and first off, takes off his helmet for the first time in, well, forever. Imagine how bad that must have smelled.

Oh, he's been wearing a helmet. for a thousand years and he's been sweating and breathing in and took a thing. He takes it off of personal time. He has not brushed his teeth in a thousand years. Screw. So just, oh my God. I've smelled a hockey bag.

This is going to top that. It's all I'm getting at. All right. So I love the fact that it's not like he's wearing his armor 100% of time, but whatever. It's not chaos. So he goes out and he gives it a pretty awesome speech, man, because he basically says, hey, I'm not just going to be here. chapter master, but we're going to fight together as battle brothers for one last time.

He gives the whole, it gives the ergoat speech on it to go with the internet. Yes, he does. But I also wrote out, there's a whole part of the book devoted to how much he looks like garbage at this point. Oh, yeah. He takes off his helmet and other blood angels are taken aback by, oh, man, you look terrible. You should put that back on? It is kind of, yeah, because he looks like garbage.

Not Brad looks like garbage, but he looks like. I knew that there was no chance we were making it through without that reference. No, there's 100% there. Because it is true. His skin is scarred to hell. He is old. His hair has gone completely white. It's almost like mean how they write this in the book, by the way, because it is like,

they spent a lot of time about how much he looks like crap. Is that it being like, hey, still for 1,500 years, you look great. No, the book talks about how much he doesn't look great. Yeah, like by a lot by also. because he's also wildly older than everybody else. Also, we talked about this a little bit of the last cast. Dante is one of the busiest Marines in all of 40K because that guy goes from battle to battle to battle to battle.

There's not a lot of training, just a lot of deploying. He's always somewhere. And as they're getting ready to go out there, Dante is approached by his thrall, Arifayo. And Arifayo has been with him since, well, since Arifero, was young. He's a very old man now. And Arfeo confides in Dante. Look, there's no scenario that I'm surviving. Either that you lose, a tear and it's kill me, or even if you win, I'm really old, man. I'm going to die soon anyway. So how about you let me hook you up? I know you don't like to drink

blood, but it'd be really awesome if you did one last time. And I have a lot of comments on this, so deal with it. This is happening. So first off, he goes to him, and this is a thing. And this is a thing with blood angels. When Blahedles drink the blood of their thralls, they do actually power up. Hate this so much. Now, Arfeo says to Dante, like, look,

I know you don't want to drink blood anymore. I know you're over it, but, you know, this one time if you do it, you'll power up because, dude, you are old and you don't look good. So how about I put you up? I love the fact that he's saying this. Arifail is dying in the next 11 minutes. whether it's by the way, no reason. Or only.

No one dies of old age and next five. It's not like the hospice cares knocking the door like, hey, we're here. That's how they treat this. Literally in the book how they treat it. But I want to point two things out. One, in doing this, RFA gives so much blood that he dies, which is really weird, by the way. And two, this is literally in Blade. If you watch the movie, Blade, 1998, I went and I put.

hold the scene. Blade is like dying and he's underpowered and someone else just goes here, just drink my blood. And Blade goes, I don't drink blood. I'm not a vampire. And the other person goes, but you have to. It'll save you. And they do it. And Blade superpowers up and jacks up a bunch of vampires. This is in the movie Blade. Full rip off. Have to call it out because you can't do a blade reference and have me miss it. I've seen a lot of the movie. And also, side note, pay your taxes, everybody. Just it's important to pay your tax. It's awkward when you owe the federal government tens of millions of dollars in back taxes. That's a percentage, by the way, of income.

So that's how little he paid taxes. I love that you made for everybody trying to figure out what the hell he's talking about. The actor Wesley Snipes said some tax issues. And that's where we're going. No, no, no, no. He didn't have some tax issues. He had all of the tax issues. Some tax issues is, oh, yeah, you know, they caught me.

me. No, Wesleyan just went, yeah, I'm a multi-million dollar actor. And would you pay taxes that last year? Oh, I didn't. Will you do it this year? No, I don't feel like it. And eventually the IRS went, hey, um, guy on billboards all over the place. We noticed you haven't filed taxes in a while. Are we missing something? To which Wesley's life went, oops. Anyway, the Dante turns it up to 11. Yeah. So, yeah. We also then randomly get a, two towers reference because at first light we're going to look to the east and charge out. They do that too. This is all just rip, rip, rip, rip, rip.

But anyway, they come blasting out of the Ark's Angelica. And the GW decides to just add even more plot armor. So Dante is coming out searching for the swarm lord, but he's getting overwhelmed. The Bulli Angels don't know what to do. There's too many tyrannies. And yes, I'll find the swarm lord and kill him. And then, because why not, a group of space marines encased and fire appear all over the battlefield? Legion of the Damned.

Yeah, the Legion of the Damned start just wrecking. I do like, laugh at it initially. Dante goes, do I have to kill these things? Because they do look a lot like demons. And then goes, ah, they're killing Tyrannids. They're probably a-okay. We'll let these guys go. He also looks up right to the sky and there's the sanguador with its sword,

basically pointing swarm lords over here, right here, just right here. Just go over here. So you're going to sadness on this. So Dante, they fight through. They basically phalanxed it up with Dante leading the point of the phalanx. And Dante gets into an epic battle with the swarm lord who's just monstrous. He's towering over. It is, it's the most predictable battle.

So guess what happens? Dante on the storm, start fighting. Gee, I wonder what will occur. Well, Dante get the upper hand? He does. Yeah, he uses his plasma pistol and blows off one of the swarm lord's arms. And then the swarm lord jams a sword in him. No, Dante shoots the swarm lord in the face, point blank with his plasma pistol.

After, though. After, how does he do it? That's the whole thing. Yes, if Dante just jumped up and did like a kickflip, you know, like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 style and then shot him in the face. No, he gets stabbed in, of course, one of his two hearts, which lets him get close up for the swarm lord to then, shoot. There actually is a whole thing.

First, he takes one of the earlier in the battle. Yeah. And then he talks shit while being stabbed and blasts it in the face with a plasma system. Which is why it's awesome. Because he basically talks like, this is nothing. Merely a flesh wound. It just soldiers through again, the Swarboard, which is wildly bigger than him. This might be the ninth book, by the way, where I've had to read about a warrior

getting stabbed in one of his two hearts. Using that to get closer to the enemy and then killing the enemy. No, this is a big deal because of the fact that, well, for one, he killed. Technically, I'm doing air quotes. Of course, no one can see me. He kills Dante. Well, yes, mostly dead. Two blaze.

There's a whole two blaze part that will occur here. But there's a big difference between dead and mostly dead and all the way dead. You've got to rummage around in Dante's pockets for loose change. No, but the thing is, is he, Dante knew. that this was the prophecy, and he is fully willing to take one for the teen. The reason behind him is not to save the blood ages. Yeah, if I can kill the swarm,

Lloyd, this will sever the connection and the Ethereum's fighting will start to fall apart and gives us a chance to get an upper hand. Now, while this is occurring at basically the exact same moment, Abidon is dropping his Blackstone Fortress Arcadia because it just wasn't working, and so he went with Option B. I don't know, crash the stupid thing into the planet.

see what happens. And it works, destroying all of the blackstone on Kadia, and suddenly the eye of terror becomes a rift, the rift, riffing across the galaxy. And because of where ball is, that rip goes right basically above ball. Ball doesn't get encompassed by the rift. It's just above the rift, but it's close up. They can all see it happen. As this occurs, this is also what helps with the killing of the swarm lord, this causes disarray within the hive fleet. Because the hive fleet creates a blank in the galaxy of warp, sort of. This is pure warp just runs into it. And this actually overloads the hive fleet.

The high fleet doesn't know what to do and loses connection all over the place. I love this level of petty because your boy, Kabanda, worshipper of cord, big dog of corn, goes, look, guys, nobody gets to kill blood angels to the man, unless it's me. I'm going to kill you so that I can kill them later. Actually says that. He calls it out. So Cabanda appears now all of a sudden on ballprint and starts, now, him and his retinue of all of corn, start just killing everything they can find.

Primarily tyranids, but not really upset if he happens to pick up a few blood angels in the process. Yeah, they're just killing, yes. And he's just going on this little slaughter train. This is the moon where the flesh tears the knights of blood are. And the knights of blood flesh tears look at this going, well, things are worse now. We were barely holding out against the tyrannids. And now it looks like the entirety of the army of corn is also tearing towards us. And they give, so I do love this guy a lot.

So the chapter master of knights of blood, the centaur jewel, turns to Gabriel Seth and gives him the whole, hey, you should run. I'll cover you. And because his whole viewpoint is my chapter is, but he gives a really good speech with it. He says to Gabriel Seth, look, my chapter fell to the black rage. And we never recovered from it. And we spent all of our times doing the worst possible things in order to fight the black rage. It also don't be us. Yeah, don't be like me.

And he turns to us also at the same time, like, but this fight that's occurring now, we have no chance. Let me and my guys fall to the black rage. You all leave. And that way, anyone we kill is a bad guy. Problem solved, right? I love the fact that they do the Hulk on it. He's like, what is your secret?

I'm always angry. I'm always angry. It just turns around. It just the whole chapter just kind of simultaneously loses its shit. Yeah. It just goes buck wild. As it's going, Cabanda reaches out to Jewel. Basically starts no shit talking him for what it is.

It's like, look, you basically are a corn demon. How about you come over to my side? And Jewel goes, no, you suck. And runs over to punch him in the face. Which doesn't go great, by the way. I mean, Gabriel- No, he gets the same treatment that juggernaut gave Deadpool. It's not great.

Exactly. It ends it. But as this has happened. and in Gabriel Seth, what's left of the flesh terror, is the glee club that is them, and a few civilians go to leave the planet. And this next scene in the book is really cool. And I do like it for really one main reason.

So as they're leaving the planet, they get caught in a massive warp storm. Because tyrannids plus cabanda, plus the rift, there's kind of a little bit of a warp storm stuff all over the place. And they're moving through this warp storm. The ship is getting ripped apart. And then suddenly the warp storm stops. and in front of Gabriel Seth is the largest imperial fleet ever.

He's ever seen by a wide margin. And that's because you can't spell plot armor without Robote Gilliam. Without Bobby G. I mean, you can, but you guys get. You just, you give the same speech, their armor is thick. Yeah. And the show notes literally said, yay, the heroes of the Imperium are here. Because that's what's going to occur in there.

Yes, it does. As Cabanda is finishing it off ball prime, Gilman and his forces arrived on ball and just killed every tyranny there. So for the record, it was technically the ultramarines that won the devastation of ball. It's more if you're going to go for a pure body count, I actually think Cabanda and the demons. It's one of those like who won it. It's that piece of who got the last punch. It was an ultramarine. The battle might have been over.

You got that describes perfectly the Ultramarines. Kills stealing, son of a binges. Just kill stealing. Yeah, but you're nabbed loot. As soon as the loot drops, you're nabbing it, leaving. Yep. And so who's got all the loot and all the XP? That's the Ultramarines.

Now, back to Dante, because we should talk about this. While this is- In his cast, yeah. Yeah. Dante has the Deadpool 2 scene where he's dead and is super happy about being dead. He actually meets sanguinius. And sanguinius says to him and I. He also thinks, well, Paul's on this because this is a big scene on this, because he legitimately thinks he has finally found also his purpose. Hey, man, I've been leading the blood angels for so long.

I've pushed them to certain places. You know, I am complete. You know, it also, I've had to push the stone up the mountain every single day for forever. I can now be good. Yeah. So what I actually was able to find the actual text and I copied it over because I think it's really well done. So sanguinius looks to him and says, my son, my greatest son, you have suffered greatly for mankind's sake. You have won your rest a thousand times and rarely has one man given so much. Louis of all secundus, you have been my life. Of course it was. And I would give you any reward.

I would take you to my side. I would free you from strife and I would release you from pain. So Dante goes, yes. Super suddenly. However, but he didn't hear the, but. Yes. Dante response is, yes, I have served so long, grant me the freedom of death. And Sanguania looks at him and says, I cannot. I regret that I can do none of those things.

I need you, Dante. Your suffering is not done. Literally uses the word suffering. And Sanguias grips Dante's face in both hands and basically floods him with energy to the point where all of a sudden Dante can hear the shouts of space marines again. You know, and Dante then screams out, please know, my lord, I have done enough. Please let me rest.

The better line, strength thrown from the prime mark, driving out death's comfort and replacing it with pain. Yeah, Dante returns to life screaming for the mercy of death. That's also not the worst part. Although this next bit gets a little bit ruined. The next thing Dante sees is his. father. And what should be a much more heart-wrenching scene, but unfortunately, they have him refer to his father as DA, which just like in The Hobbit ruins everything when someone calls their

father. I'm sorry, maybe in England that works, but in most of the world, when someone calls their father, da, it just doesn't have a ring of compassion. I'm sorry. Call him dad. Just say, dad. Da, it's a line that can never be delivered with any actual. emotion or attachment calling it out. But Dante speaks to his father for the first time telling him, look at me, I've become an angel. Aren't I amazing? And then the vision shifts. It's not his dad. It's an apothecary. Yeah. However, the what the F train is not done yet because now he's going to be to dummy God. The next thing Dante does is Gilliman, who's been mostly dead for 8,000 years, is standing in front of him.

And this scene again, because Gilliman's awesome, is a cool scene because Dante kneels immediately. Donnie's also, because after all of this stuff that he did, he actually goes, I apologize for failing to protect bald. You're like, even though this is like

Herculean task type shit. And Gilliman immediately tells him, get up, number one, you do not need to kneel in front of me before you did. And gives Dante all the credit for the victory at Ball, pointing out that the only thing his Legion did when they arrived there was did cleanup work. If it wasn't for Dante would have fallen. So there's nothing for you

to kneel about, nothing to apologize about. And I will notice Gillman makes no mention of the Banda whatsoever. And the fact that it's a giant, yeah, Mount of Skulls. Yeah. Over a Ball Pramus, there's a giant, not just a mountain of skull. It's a mountain of skulls in the shape of cabanda. But, you know, we're going to let that one go. Gilliman then brings even, well, a combo news. First is good news because the next thing Dante notices is that there's a bunch of blood angels standing around Gilliman who are way larger than they should be. Yeah. Yeah. They're all juiced up. Yeah. And also, is anybody tested these guys for PEDs? Yeah. Their armor is all shiny going like, so, hey,

what's up with these guys? And the good news is called in. It's like, oh, yeah. I made new space marines. And cool, good news is they're immune to the red thirst for black rage. Your boy makes a bunch of promises. The Lemon Law should have been, in fact, here. Yeah. Because these guys do not perform exactly as planned. They do not.

But what is cool about this is Dante looks at this and does kind of go, well, there's like 50 blood angels left and the genusos killed all the neophytes. And you're offering me a few thousand new guys, a few hundred, but thousands would spread throughout all the successor chapters. All right, cool. Let's bring these guys in. And he ended up doing, I don't really want to dive too much into this,

but he actually does do a lot of good stuff for the Primaris Marines because he's the one. He gives them their rights. So when you join the Blood Angels, the last thing you do is you get your little blood pendant. He personally gives it to these Primaris Marines. He brings them in.

A lot of the other chapters, when the Primaris Marines came in, like the Space Wolves are a good example of this. They were like, cool. You can be part of us, but you're going to be part of us over there in your own group. You don't get taken in. Whereas in the Blood Angels, you would, in theory, we couldn't do some tabletop, you would have firstborn with Primaris serving the same squad together.

That was the way that they wrote it up. And Dante does take the just across the Rubicon and becomes Primaris himself. So we'll talk about that in a bit. Yeah, not for a bit. So the next thing is though, Gilliman does not. I'm saying, we're just talking about the embrace stuff. Oh, of course, yeah. Dante's full in on primaries.

One of the few people that immediately is full on primaries. That's my point I want to make on that. That's fair. Yeah. Now, Gilliman also does bring some, I mean, he thinks it's good news,

but to Dante, this is horrible news. So, I love that. These are all happening back to back to back to back. Yeah. Dante thought he was embracing. He's finally relieved.

Dante thought he was happily dead. And now he is. And then he comes back. He's like, all right, I guess I'll go back to doing everything I have to do. And it's. terrible, but I guess I'll keep

soldiering on. And Gilman goes, wait a second. We lost a lot of people. We haven't hired anybody. We're giving all of their jobs to you and a new title. Yeah. Because the riffs out here and it's hard for me to get back and forth because traveling

through the warp is not great right now because I don't know, traffic jam at 5 o'clock. But he says, not in Toledo. You're not. Yep. Yeah, that's true. You now are promoted. to warden of Imperium Nylis, you know all those other things you were doing?

Keep doing those. But also, you're now in charge of everything from here. Effectively, Gilliman is going to go run the Imperium on the underside of the Rift. Now, which is, when we say cuts the galaxy in half, the Rift, it's not really half. It's more like a two-thirds to one-third. But the upper third, the one that also includes the ghoul stars,

most of the Ementum Pacific, obscureus, not obscure, segment him, the big one to the right. It's all the worst bits. It's not the good part. It's where we have a lot of trash. He gave him the worst neighborhood. It's like, hey, I'm going to keep running.

I'll go run the suburbs. You handled downtown and the part of downtown that no one goes to. In my mind, however, Bobby G. gave him the Mufasa speech to Simba. It goes, everything the eye can see. Yeah, that's yours. And what about the nice bit over there that can only develop? No.

That's my. I got that. You're going to handle this bit. Dude, it's just all cracked ends. Well, yeah. But they're your cracked ends. Dante goes, I guess I'm accepting this, but. So he does this, Gilman leaves, gives him all the blood angels, but that's part. The next part of the story, we now move into another book.

Now, Dante and Mephistan have to go on their little adventure. It's not really much of an adventure. So Dante and Mephistan's fun, though. It's cool. So what happens is Dante sets out to. rebuild everything above the rift. And yes, Gilliman gave him a bunch of reinforcements, but there's still not enough. And the one thing...

Point out to people, though. So why it's so hard is because a lot of times you're like, hey, when we're rebuilding, we're using what's left and things got destroyed, the people got killed. The Ternids take everything. It's biomass. They leave a blank rock. So there's no, they don't have anything to rebuild off of. Right.

So these places are gone, which is a big deal. because tier dids steal every chance you have of retaking your old places. There's just no place to retake. So what's going to happen next is Dante realizes there are probably some spread out settlements, spread out this here and there. Let's go grab them. Because the one thing Taryn just don't do is they don't eat ships. So one of his first task is to go and actually find effectively abandoned spacecraft and start

bringing them in. So on one of his, we'll call it routine, air quotes here, journeys, they've got a whole flotilla and they're coming back. And while they're almost back to ball, one of the navigators, it's a cool scene in this basically just... It is a cool scene. I'm jumping in on this because

what's up with the fact that the astropass of the navigators and stuff? No one's ever around these guys. They're supposed to be heavily monitored into the stories. It's always, yeah, whatever. They'll probably be fine. You're like, these guys get infected by chaos

on the regular. What else is if I'm not mistaken, and I think it was a glass of wine that he was being offered, and he fell to that, which then allowed not just Slanesh to manifest, Chiris to manifest inside of him. So this ship

immediately falls to chaos, which means everyone has to drop out of warp travel to do this. Mephistan and Dante launch into the ship to go be like, all right, let's go clean this stuff up. Now, Chiris, real quick, to those who don't know, Kairis is a very, very, very old.

greater demon. Chiris and Cabando were the two who originally tempted Sanguinius. After Cabando was killed, Chiris was actually the one offering to Sanguinius the ability to get rid of the red thirst in exchange for coming over and joining chaos, which is when Apothecali and Romeroz jumped into the portal instead of it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Dante Mepistin fight the ship and they come upon Chiris, who has turned the entire crew of this ship into a pillar of flesh and not in a good way. No, is there ever a good way to become a... I don't know, but I want to make sure it was clear that he did it in the way that's not

the good way. It's very much of a bad way. It's very uncomfortable. Yes. In the back of a Volkswagen? Yes. Chiris makes the offer. It says, join Slanesh and become her greatest champion. And I will cure the red thirst and the black rage.

Dante holds up double middle finger of like the hell of government. Doesn't even pause, by the way. Yeah. This is such a good scene, though, because Gyrus goes, wasn't talking to you. Get out of the way. Yeah, I was talking about the guy behind you, though, that's super psycher. Because Mephistan's been struggling for a while now. He's basically put in right on the edge of the Black Rage.

He's been seeing visions. All this stuff is messing him up. But Mephistan looks at that and goes, yeah, I might be messed up, but no one's this messed up. Nope. And so Mephistan and Don. Your dealing is terrible, too. I have to give this to the right. You're like, they're like, I could do this.

You're like, yeah, man, this is the shittiest offer ever. No. What was the universe where Mephistan and Dante were going to turn on the Imperium? Like, why don't bother? But anyway, they're supposed to get super mad about it too. Like, I gave you a great deal. You're like, no, man. That was not a good deal.

Also, you're a demon of Slanesh. You can do better. When corner Nurgle demons don't give up great offers, you're like, nah, kind of tracks. But like, you're a demon in Slenish. This is kind of like your only thing. And you offered up like, I'll cure something that you kind of mediocre care about because you've been dealing with it for a thousand years and you're kind of used to it. Me.

So they do this, but in the process of banishing. Well, they do it. They did a full banishment. There's a massive psychic backlash. As that occurs, four primaris Marines fall to the black rage, showing Dante that the black rage is not a gene flaw. It's something deeper, which means it's a psychic link. Yeah. Which is also why we still get death company.

Primaris Marines. Tadda. There it is. Now, two more important things happen. First off, Mephistan is really struggling post this. And they're going to have to kill him because normally when a blood angel falls to the black rage, whatever, black rage, you go death company, we'll go ahead. You do one more battle.

When it's the most powerful psycher potentially in the history of the chapter, you just bolt her back of skull because you do not want that person attacking. Lashing out every. where you're like, hey, man, we were all eating lunch and Mephistan decided to lose his shit on us. Mephistan goes to Dante and says, kill me. I need you to kill me. I'm going to get worth. And Dante does the cartoon thing of hitting him in the head hard with a hammer and knocking him unconscious, which again, it's not how concussions work.

It's calling it out there. You'll get knocked unconscious and then wake up a few hours later. You wake up immediately with a headache. So, side note, different day. Or you're out for a much longer time. And you don't, may or may not wake up. Exactly. No one has a concussion.

You'll get a concussion and then fall asleep from it. You get a brain bleed that you then stay asleep for him. But it's not like, yeah, he knocked me unconscious. And I woke up a couple hours later, feeling refreshed. No, if you don't wake up right away, they think you're the hospital because you're about to die. By the way. And someone that's had that. Yeah.

But no one hits you in the head. I didn't. That was, by the way, hold on. That was your body doing it to itself. What a point out, you did not get a concussion from like, Ryan was in a fight. something hit him with a hammer. Brad's own body went, yeah, it's been enough. Like, we're good now. The brain, no. So different note. I got judo topped by my own body. Yeah, your body just went, nah, I'm out. So the next thing, though, what happens is Cuvo, who's an emissary from call arrives and has an alternative.

They could add the gene seed of the primaris to existing Marines. They've been doing this a little bit here and there. And that would actually potentially help Mephistan up. And says, Mephisto's going to die anyway. And despite it has a 60% survival rate, side note, 60% survival rate, I've never read one story of someone on the 40% side. Dude, it's like Sex Panthers, 60% of the time. Yes. I'm just saying GW would be nice. They had, oh, yeah, this guy did cross the Ubercom and died. Huh, okay, this one.

Because I can't name a single time it's happened. They keep telling you it happens all the time, but then they kind of brush it out of the rug. That prints just a statistic. What happened to Ted? That's what I'm to Ted. Damn it, Ted. Yes, Space Marine Ted. So Mephistan goes through and it actually works really well.

Not only does it actually heal him, make him bigger and stronger, which I'll be honest, Donne looks like he goes, well, it's kind of nice. But it also helps Mephistan regain his powers, and he's no longer succumbing to the Black Rage. I do love this the next part so much. What? Dante just decides to go do it because he's like, Dante decides to go do it. And he's like, look, well, again, I was saying before, he wants to embrace it.

This is a new wave. This is make us better. It'll make us easy. He also gives the whole thing to himself and the people. Yes, this makes us better at protecting the Imperium doing our job. I'm definitely going to do it. I love that he gets there and has it all done. It effectively goes, hey, man, I was busted up for centuries and I could have had this done.

Yeah. There's a lot of line in that. It's like, yeah, it turns out it didn't have to fight with a. bad back the last few hundred years. That's in one of the books. It's a great scene. But so now he is Primaris. The next piece takes us to arcs of omen

in which Dante hears these rumors of this mysterious kind of chaos murderer. And they go to go try and find him. And so the first thing they come upon is a chaos ship called the night terror. On it, all the heretics are dead, slaughtered with a sword, but there's bits

of plant life also on top of them, like leaves and branches and shit. And Dante's librarians start searching for a trace of what's doing this. And they keep hearing, but all they can get to is stories of that whenever monsters or chaos, whatever it is, are about to kill innocence, a giant hooded figure, giant being a key thing here with a big gold shield appears from a forest. By the way, the forest also wasn't there. The forest will appear inside of a spaceship. Kills them all and disappears. So Dante catches up with the lion.

That's what happens. It's the lion. Obviously, he has come back. There's no story of them meeting. I read this five different times. Like, where do these two meet? They don't meet. He goes searching for the lion.

And the next thing we have is the lion is on the ship doing sparring with a bunch of blood angels, not going great for the blood angels, I might add. And everyone laughing, basically watching going like, well, that dude's mean. And in a mood, I will put out, in a mood, he's definitely a grouch. the backdrop of this although is Dante grabs the lion. Hey, don't forget, who's he come back with? Well, a bunch of you hate. The fallen.

The risen. The risen. I don't care. I'm not even addressing this. The next piece of this is this is also the series that gave us Vash Tor and the return of Vangron. So Dante is about to finish meeting all of the newest models in the game. Vash Tor had built Demon Caliban.

That's what I'll call it. It's called the world was called Wormwood, which is, again, suck at IP violations. And it's bizarre, it's a bizarre O'Callaband. Yeah, yeah, that's a better way of putting it. And he trapped a bunch of dark angels and fallen there. Basically, a bunch of dark angels went to Wormwood to kill the fallen. And then while there, both them got surrounded by chaos. Asriel is one of them.

And the story is actually quite funny because Asriel is fighting the fallen. They're being attacked now by Abidon, the world eaters and all this stuff. and Dante just voxes down to both sides going, hey, just to let you guys know, I'm here to help, I think, because you both look like loyalists fighting each other. And your dad's here, and he wants to have a chat. And he wants to talk.

You're in trouble. Which the response is, can we talk to him, please? And Dante goes, Dante goes back to grab the lion and discovers the lion's not there anymore. He goes, I don't have him here, but I assume you guys should look around because I'm assuming he's down by you, which is what happened. So Dante, though at the same time, can't just hang out. He sees the world

leaders. And more importantly, he sees Angron. This is Angron's first appearance in the galaxy since Armageddon. So that's not ideal. And he goes, let's go do this. And this really amazing thing happens. Dante attacks Angron with his sanguinary lords. Let's talk about why this happens. Dante attacks Angron. in the lion's book, not his own book. Because normally, this is a guy who's beaten Cabanda, Scarbrand, and the Swarmord, and the Swarm Lord in one-on-one combat.

He's killed over a million orcs. He's done hilarious things to the Tao. Dante and his... Engron, yeah, Ingron RKO's all the sanguinary guard instantly. Yeah, and then just explodes Dante. Yeah, I love it, because Dante launches at him, jetpack fury, and also it's his primaris Dante.

So it's the biggest and strongest Dante of all time. Fires at Angron. Angron just parries his strike, grabs him, and slams him into the stairs, just breaking him, and then comes wandering over to kill him. And as he goes to kill him,

the lion appears and the lion defeats Angron. Give him his props. The lion takes his shield and crushes Angron's skull against the stone wall. There's that. The part of this I do like, though, is that they then escape. They don't conquer this world. They flee. While fleeing, Dante is sad,

though. And he's sad because he's now met a bunch of ultramarines who have Gilemon. Now he's watching these dark angels just, you know, busy cry with joy. The lion is back. But Dante knows that's something his legion can never have. Sanguineas is dead and is never coming back. And he actually is saddened by like, oh, we will never have this joy. But with that, though, that gets us to the end. of our coverage of Dante. Dante, you know, 1,500 years old. He is the most known person in the Imperium that people have met. Obviously, the emperor is the most known part of the Imperium, but you don't get to hang out with him. People have met him. And he's carried innumeral monikers over this. He is commander Dante. He's Lord Regent of Imperium Nihilus. He's Lord of the

host. He's Lord of the Angels. He's Lord of Ball. He's Bringer of Seguinus's Light. Bane of demons, the last archangel, the golden warrior, and the death that soars. Sores. No one calls him Louis anymore, though. People should still call him Louis. I'm going to hit you. Literally no character has been more active post-heresy in the Imperium than Dante. Gaunt has a lot more books, but keep my gaunt was only alive for like a couple decades.

And at the time we are in the lore, Gaunt is dead, I assume. They haven't killed him off yet, but he'd be a thousand years old. I was saying he'd be, because he's, we're back in 200, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, he's pushing a thousand at this point.

I don't think he's alive. That's my overall. They haven't called it out officially, but. So with that, though, we'll call this the end of the Dante coverage. But it's a really good segue, because we're going to go from the most famous person in all of post-heresy to the least. We're doing the white scars. Hooray! White Scars! We're going to talk a lot about Horace Heresy

and then have a like five-minute episode of the after. I'd like you guys to know that I was as shocked as you are about hearing that we're going to do the White Skars. Because I decided it 10 minutes before the cast and was like, you know what? Yeah, that's why. I thought I'd put in the notes yet. So we're going to go and do the White Scars,

who they are, where they came from, and L.O.L.M. Post-Heresy. I mean, they technically... And why does your chapter master not on a bike. So stupid. Oh, we could probably spend some time on that. He's very fast.

No, he's not. It's genuinely he's not. This is no. You're all mounted army and our chapter master. And our dude, who's apparently gets motion sickness, so he can't hide a motorcycle. His bikes at the impound lot and he hasn't got his check yet to get it out.

I am going to call this out now and I'll open next week with this. We are going to be doing a very deep dive into the end of death. So when we cover the white scars, we're going to cover their origins, then through the heresy, then we're going to stop abruptly at the start of the invasion of Seoul and pick them up again post heresy because we're going to do a very heavy dive into the end of death. And so, and why do it twice? It's not like I've been pushing for this for months now, but not when you've got scars. No, you have not. You have not one time mentioned the white scars to me. And just like GW.

You and GW both have not mentioned the white scars. I still don't want to talk about the white I want to talk about the end of death. I want to talk about the end of death. There's so many cool things that happen. All right. But until then, John Barcati,

Bradchester, this guy. See you guys next week.