The 40k Lorecast - Episode 2- History of Mankind - The Great Crusade, the Primarch project and setting the stage for the Heresy

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

The Emperor has unified humanity at Sol, and now is ready to venture out into the stars to reclaim the galaxy. But in order to do so he will need an army of super-soldiers to pacify the lost planets and enemies of mankind. However, all does not go to plan. On this episode we cover: geneseeds, Custodian guard, the Primarch project, and much morePatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Hello and welcome to episode two of 40K lorecast with me, John Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. Today we will be covering the last of what I would call the prehistory of Warhammer 40K, so the Great Crusade. So in the last episode, we covered the modern mankind from its modern era to right around 30,000 or 30,000 and a half. And today we're going to spend the same. amount of time to talk about 500 years.

So in this one, mankind has finally turned themselves around, thanks to the emperor deciding to give the crap. And we're going to start really getting into what I would call the meat of the 40K universe. A lot of the stuff before is it's prehistory. It's the stuff

that GW has written to give us a story and to give us a background. Of how we got there. Yeah. Now we're really into the, this is the important. This is the mechanics. Yeah, this is the mechanics. To kind of catch up again, the state of the affairs as we stand today. Warp storms have finally calmed, so out of nowhere. We have travel. Yeah, we can travel. Mars is now part of the Imperium. It's allied. It's the start of the The start of the Imperium. So now mankind has limitless potential for production and engineering.

The emperor has decided that, yeah, I'm going to go reclaim that whole galaxy. But there is an unknown force out there that's waiting for them. How unknown is it really, Brad? It's pretty known. Yeah. It's true. The emperor is well aware of this. So the first thing we're going to talk about here is something that's going to become one of the more important terms in all of 40K, a gene seat.

Where we struggle with today is that mankind as it expands, humans are soft and weak. They're fine, but they're soft and weak. So you want to make a better. Yeah, comparatively to everything else waiting for the mountain, the stars, pretty squishy. And the thing is that we'll do this in other episodes because most of the other races, oh, not roast, a lot of the other races we're going to find were engineered, which is why they're significantly better than us, which is why we decided to engineer our own people.

Take that old ones. Exactly. But the biggest thing is, is the emperor needed an unstoppable army. He effectively said, I've got Titans. I've got mission. I've got spaceships. I have as soon as I start re-getting all these planets together, I have a never-ending source of regular guys.

But I cannot take the entire galaxy back with just regular guys. So he creates a super soldier that he basically to replace his berser frothing at the mouth guys that he couldn't take out in public. And he wants his new poster child. He basically wants his Captain Americans. He wants the guys that are functional that can take back, but he also wants them to be the face of the Imperium. These guys have to be the best of the best. They have to be, this is humanity.

When I'm conquering, I'm taking back humanity. I need the guy on the poster. That's what I need. So he goes back to the drawing board. He needs guys that are actual super thinkers also. We don't play this a lot in the Marines. these guys are all wildly intelligent. He needed people that could take in vast amounts of information

so that they could basically be diplomats when they have to. They can immediately assess a situation, a war situation, but also that they could immediately assess a diplomatic situation. If we're going to invade, what do we need to do to get these people? Because again, we're reclaiming the stars. We're not just killing everyone. I can't use the same methods I used on Earth, which was, I murdered everyone I saw. This isn't waving happy flags and bringing crayons and stickers.

But the issue here at the Emperor realized that he has to be able to conquer planets and then rule them. And so these people are designed to be not just rulers because we can crush you under our fist, but rulers because we can rule better than everybody else you have. Yes. And we're going to give you a better life, even though that's a huge life. later on, but at the time. Yeah, totally alive. But the intent was there.

He says, we're going to conquer the stars. We're going to show you that we're going to give you a better life. There's a reason to be part of my new Imperium of Man, which is how we got. Period. It's the new Imperium of Man. It's our new collective galaxy. And to do that, he needs, again, the poster boys, legions of these super soldiers. But he needs something to create these super soldiers from himself.

he effectively distills 20, and we lose to it. 20-ish. But yes, if you're the most powerful being in the galaxy and you're trying to make a really good soldier, why not just make it a little bit out of yourself? So now we get to take a fun journey. We covered this last time about how the emperor was just hanging out, not doing anything.

So in the middle of the age of technology, around anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000, no one knows when, the emperor decides to go on a little journey. Vision quest basically? Yeah, vision quest. And decides to go to a planet called Moloch. Again, the emperor's a dick. It's just, we're going to keep saying this, like, billions,

no, trillion, zillions of people. Quadrillion now that we're going to be able to? Maybe quadrillions of man have died because he just was like, man, not yet. So he goes this planet called Mollick. And on Mollock, he discovers a warp gate that allows him to cross into the realm of chaos. Cough, cough, cough, totally what we did. Yeah, totally.

So now you have, the chaos gods are still fairly formate and are not all powerful at this point. They exist. They've been around, except for all the time. They've been around forever. So they're beginning and end kind of thing. But they're not the gods that we know them in the current game. So you have these gods, three of it at this point, are sitting in the warp and this human being walks in. They have a long chat.

And he makes a bargain with them. No one knows the details, but we know half of it. And half of the details are the emperor knows now how to create life in his own image. And we know that the chaos gods are now very aware that this is probably going to be a problem. They knew a body. They knew he existed because he basically is a beacon in the war. Yeah, they've seen him. He literally is, that's a real thing on that.

That's why we have the astronomical now. He is a lighthouse. in the work where he walks around, you're just like, oh, that's that guy. He's just always, there he is. And then all of a sudden, that guy walked into your living room. I was like, oh, hey, guys, what's up? I have some questions.

I want you to tell me a bunch of stuff. And they're just sitting there going, all right, whatever. So this is a really important piece because now all of a sudden the emperor has the ability to create things in his own image. And this is the technology that he uses. He then starts experimenting with this technology a little bit.

The first ones he does. The Thunder Warriors. And whoopsie. Yeah. Turns out you should add a little bit of brain. So what he wanted was the ancient Greek ideal of aesthetics, power, intelligence, philosophical. What he got was. Frankenstein's monster?

No, because Frankenstein's monster is well more, way more. He was actually a lot cooler and intelligent. He was a little more chill. Like you could reason with him a little bit better. Yeah, that was an hoopsie. Yeah. So after the Thunder Warriors, he begins his first attempt, which are the custodian guard. Yes and no, because the custodians, and I know we've got the new custodians book in 40K,

but the lore for a long time was these guys were either before, during, or after. It depends on which book you pick up. But what they are is. the perfection of him trying to distill himself into physical form. And the biggest thing about this is we could make only a very limited amount of this because everyone died from doing it. Less than one in a thousand survived. It was just not even one of a thousand, but also the emperor again being kind of a dick.

He was also just throwing some of these in the garbage. He was just full spart of throwing them off the clip. Even the ones that survived, he only really wanted the best of the best of the best at that point in time. He handpicked the custodes because he wanted these basically unachievable. These were, I feel like every custod that happened was an accident, basically. You're like, I can throw this dart down through this building a mile away, catch this gust of win. Every trick shot video we've ever seen, these guys do it on the first take. That's what they can do. And they are perfect in every way. The problem that Emperor is, they're perfectly in a way they're

amazing, but he just can't make enough. In order to conquer a guy, galaxy, you need millions of people. And then just by math, yes, technically he could just sacrifice all of humanity to making these soldiers, but that's what he would have taken. And he needs those for his cannon fodder for the rest of the people. Yeah. And someone's got to, you know, someone's got a garrison those worlds. Yeah. Someone's got a form of damn fields. Like, we learned that lesson. So at this point, Emperor is a little bit stuck. So he decides to try something new. So he's done the Thunder Warrior thing. They were all psychotic. He's made the custodes. The ratio isn't good. and he comes to this kind of conclusion that he can't distill soldiers directly from him.

It's got to be like a one-off scenario. So the idea is that I'll make a bunch of things that are like me, and then I'll distill the next group from them. Can we talk about the fact that the emperor could have done this totally legit anytime? No, not even to them saying anytime, but he also, at this point, controls the entirety of the soul system, everything. He's getting right. he decides to be a bond villain go into his... And doing just Dr. Evil and Mr.

a super secret project for no reason. No one was checking. He made a super secret project. I guess chaos was. They already knew about it anyway. So he decides the problem he's got to make a version of himself, but like any all-powerful being who's got a pretty serious ego, he doesn't want to make it too much like himself.

So he decides to break himself up into 20 versions of himself. It each is supposed to, and I will talk about this when we go deep into the primarx, he's making 20, and these are going to be, they're all superhuman. They're superhumans among superhumans. But they all have a specific superpower that comes from the emperor. The emperor has all of these, by the way. He could have given everybody all 20 of these. He could be one of them, but decide to make 20.

And spread them out. So he gave each one a super bar, like a thing that they were head and shoulders above everybody else doing. And so he imbued them with not only with being perfect, hyper-intelligent. And when we talk about hyper-intelligent, like some of these are cough-crop Bobby G, supercomputers. Like, they have a next-level ability for any, everything, knowledge, learning. they can instantly process everything. And this is what he wants his super soldiers to be. But these are the 10th power of everything else.

So he makes his sons. His 20 sons, each one is imbued with a specific power. Each of them is a superhuman among superhumans by themselves. And he does this with a combination of numpel things. So obviously this DNA was also some non-human DNA in the case of space wolves. Psychic powers obviously are very powerful. of this. So the techniques obviously... And he's harnessing psychology parts into him.

It's not that he's like sprinkling magic dust into him. He's infusing cells with magic power. Effectively, it makes himself. So each of them, each prime market is they're similar but also unique. I think the goal here was for him is to create a fighting force that, you know, with different combinations could handle anything. And it could be spread out across the galaxy. And each person are more valuable than others.

So, yeah, no, but originally they were also supposed to be able to rule huge sections of the galaxy themselves. These primax were supposed to be galactic governors in addition to being great soldiers, great everything. That's why they had to be learned men. They had to be the best of everything. They had to be able to inspire. That's again why he needed the poster child. These guys need to inspire trillions of people to follow them. And as you can probably assume, something went wrong.

So one... Wait, when you're in your underground mountain lab, I say volcano lab, but he was... It was an emmalayas, but it was... Either way. It was a way cooler if it was a volcano. This was a mistake on the part of GW. It would have been massively cooler if it was a volcano. No reason for him to be there.

He could have done it in London. He could have just been like at the pounds. It's not like the chaos gods can't see into it because it's a mountain. Oh, I can't see there. It's not how the warp works. He's built this giant facility in the... the Himalayan mountains because doesn't even know he's there. Again, most powerful being on Earth that just unified the entire galaxy is everyone's favorite

thing. There's not a big spy network that was going on around him. But he builds this lab underneath a mountain and he uses something in there called a Gellerfield, which we should probably poke into now. We should probably have said last episode. This is a part that, please someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but everything I've looked into is said effectively warp travel is totally cool until the warp storms came. and the war crimes went away,

and then all of a sudden, war trouble got to be a real problem. It's like humanity became the delicacy of the chaos. Yeah, before they were traveling on through, those guys are there. No one cares. And now it's a, ooh, dinner. Geller Fields, the problem you have with demons is that demons cannot violate the vampire.

They invite a vampire in. For those of you don't know, you have to invite a vampire into your house. There you go. If you don't know that, now you do. Chaos exists in the immaterium. Humankind exists within the material. You cannot cross the immaterial to the material without a host.

And if you try to you dissentically. So a Geller field effectively creates a force field that prevents that crossover. Because what's happening a lot of times in the case of travel to the Wharf or the Emperor's Lab, you are playing in the warp now. So as soon as you open that door and open the warp, now the warp can come into you. You have given the invite. You've said, come on in. So now you have to, when you're playing, in that world put up a new field.

So Gellerfield is effectively a field that sits around you and makes the material exist within it so things cannot cross over. It's really important and it's going to come up a lot more as we talk a lot more about lore. So the Gellerfields are really critical. However, when you piss off the chaos gods, they get motivated and they decided that they see this little pet project that the emperor is working on that they showed him how to do.

So out of nowhere, it's a little bit. important about how important this product was there. This was the emperor's prime focus now. I'm going to create these 20 enemies and I'm going to go conquer the galaxy. What the emperor knew that no one else knew is he wasn't just planning on conquering the galaxy. He was planning on conquering the warp too. This was this whole thing was built around true domination of mankind. Yes. I want to dominate reality and irreality. And when you're talking about a god of chaos, what they really are finding out is, hey, what's your favorite thing? Let me come F with. And so rather than coming in and just kill them, because maybe they couldn't, no one knows,

they create a warp rift within these tanks. Within the tanks, they're growing in. And these 20 prime marks just in an instant disappear. And they're gone. One day the emperor is just hanging out. He comes downstairs and all of his kids are gone and he has no idea where they are. The emperor knows they're alive. However, all is not lost because he was able, they didn't get him early enough.

So he was still able to then get the gene seed of the gene seed. The genetic blueprint to make more of these, but make millions. So the emperor is going to make a legion. He's going to make 20 legions. 20 legions. Of super soldiers, 7 to 8 foot tall guys, superhuman, super intelligent, super fast, super strong, super everything. We will do a whole thing on Marines. They have extra organs.

They spit acid for absolutely no reason, which now. comes into play in the game. Yeah, it never comes up. They can spit acid, but we never talk with them spitting acid. But don't worry about it. Got extra lung, extra heart. They've got a little bit extra everything. And they are basically bred to be able to communicate with power armor.

A suit of super soldier armored, which gives them super bowlers. And he makes these legions before he ever finds, before he actually ever goes and looks for them, to be honest with you, a little bit of a dick move. Hey, man, I should probably go get my, the beings that I created from the essence. They're more than his kids. It's actually more than a clone, though, because he created from, I took a small piece of my soul. Should I go find them now? I got some stuff to do. I'm real busy. At this point, the emperor is creating super soldiers. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging managing a global team can be. Just the act of creating one has been an extreme challenge over the years.

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That's high p-e-b-l-a-i for a free estimate. These things are not just genetically engineered in the way that we would think of genetic engineering, where you'd sit there and say, all right, here's a new strain. Oh, because, yeah, I'll say, I apologize on that, because for everybody listening, these guys are not grown super soldiers.

They take you from your brain. And they implant organs into you. Organs. They're considered organs. And most of these people just don't make it. A lot. You're talking like weeding out about half-ish. Some legions are better than others.

And the big thing about this is they implant these organs in and they see if they take. So we have these regular people being grabbed from tons of different planets. At the time, it's all terrible. But eventually it becomes all over the place. And they train them. And they're training them. And this is a bummer for the old space brain. They don't talk about this.

While you're seeing if your organs are going to be accepted, you still got to go through a hardcore PT process. So you're like, I know you may or may not make it through the day, but you're going to need to do a five-mile run in about a thousand push-ups and pull-ups real quick. You're like, but I might die tonight. You're like, you're not going to do it while you're out of shape, though. But if you don't die tonight, hey, you know what? Two birds one stone. Exactly. Two birds one stone. So, and this is a big deal because we're making regular people into super soldiers. And we're not even making just into super soldiers. We're making them into

wildly resilient super soldiers that can be deployed on any planet in the solar system. They can immediately adapt, especially after they're put in this power armor. Treat the power armor almost zits as a second skin for you. Everything that you have readouts, they filter things out. So you are, the power armor becomes an extension of your own will. And it's a holy thing now. But at the time, it was just awesome tech. Functional technology. And so now these, this is the army he's been waiting for. And some kind of fun things about them is that they're immune to exhaustion. They're immune to poison. They can see in the dark.

In fact, a lot of basically, they clot and heal almost as they're. If you were stab them with a knife, they would just giggle. If you can even get through the skin, actually. And so if they get shot and they puncture a lung, it doesn't matter of extra lungs. So while the lung heals rather quickly, the other ones function for them. So they really are designed for drop them anywhere and they will win. They're also light years fast, not custodian fast. Light years fast, light years strong.

there's not much they can't do. They can carry giant weaponry. Like it's nothing. They can do anything. And the bigger thing is they can take in, which is almost as big as all their physical things, they can take in gigantic dumps of information. You can just give them giant amounts of information about Marshall, about the lay of the land, about who they're going to go, and they just pick all of that up.

But this stage, the emperor has perfection. He's got his army. Millions strong super soldiers and the war has settled. Mankind, it's ready to expand into the universe. At this stage, we're going to talk about the first thing he does, which is go off to find his kids. So he grabs all these legions. He knows his kids are out there somewhere.

But he also, come on. He goes about it in the world's least efficient way ever. Because he starts his quest. He actually is conquering. systems as he goes and he wants to go get his children because again his children's and we can argue this there's laura what he's going to do with them in the end but for now he wants these guys leading his crusade governing basically giant swaths of the galaxy he needs his and he needs these people to lead his legions because the emperor he's got some other stuff he'd rather be doing

Yeah, he's like any solid absentee father. He's got some other task. He's interesting. Which is way more important than you are. Yeah. So he's off to conquer it. So we're going to now, let's dig into the 20 legions and who they are. By 20, we actually mean 18.

18. Because two of them are redacted from imperial history. And were they not found? We could have some fun with this. But yeah. Did he find them and go your disappointment? I'm not even mad. I'm just disappointed.

Just literally listed as redacted. So there's actually only 18. And so we'll get into the order of discovery, but we'll run through them really quickly. And the first one is Horace, who is mediocre important. We might get into something called the Horacee later. No foreshadowing, but when your name and the word heresy are put together, never a great thing. You may have a thing, and he's in charge of the lunolves. I think I would sum up as...

I think you meant to say the Sons of Horace. Sons of Horace, that's true. That was later. First, they were the Lunarwolves. and then they became the sons of Horace. This is, I just refer to this daddy's favorite. The funny thing about it is, I'm going to go, I'm going to touch on the superpower sometimes.

Please, yeah. His superpower is charisma. He was supposed to be the face piece of the Imperium, besides the actual living angel, but we'll go into that in a minute. And Horace eventually becomes the war master. He leads the Imperium, the whole thing,

in place of the emperor while the emperor goes and does his absentee dad stuff and he and eventually we have I don't know the game setting thing that happens but he is amazing in pretty much everything and we talk about his charisma it's not just on him even his brothers all view him the same everyone who interacts them is not and when we say this charisma it's not like a magical like creepy charisma where he's tricking people to like him he is genuinely likable he is naturally empathetic he's able to find middle ground within people. So he really was, the truth is he was an amazing leader. So we're not talking about us in a negative manipulative sense.

This is a true. He's not a con man. He should have been the leader. So the next one, equal on the charisma. Lehmus last, baby. Lehman Russ. Leader of the space wolves who are space Vikings. Slash, people, space.

Slash, biker gang. So for all of Horace's charisma, Lehman, we all do character creation. when we play a video game. Some of us view charisma as a useless thing. If you're looking for someone to fight a guy in an alley, Lehman Ross is who you're called. Cranked up the strength ratio on this dude. The space wolves become the emperor's assassin.

These are the guys that do not care what bad thing you told them to go do. By assassin, we don't mean hide in the shadows. We mean assassin carrying. We mean assassin carrying sledgehammer yelling, I'm coming to kill you the entire time. Also, this guy told me to come kill you. It's not like a sneaky contract. He's showing up.

Those billboards, man. Like what's coming? He's saying three emails letting you know if he's on his way. Just showing, just letting you know. But his Legion is a bunch of bad dudes. Weirdly enough, he's not crazy charismatic, but he's super love. because the space wolves lead by example. He eventually leads a bunch of mini-leaders.

Because they rule by old Viking cold of personality. They have bands that get together. And they're all led by these larger-than-life personas. It's a bunch of baywolves, a bunch of ridiculous, powerful guys. And you only get the lead as long as you're a ridiculous, powerful guy. And I think you made a great point there. When we talk about Horace's charisma,

Horace's charisma is unique because it crossed over amongst the other. No matter what you held dear, he could relate to that. Within the individual primarks and their legions, the primark had impeccable charisma within them. Every space wolf would gladly give their life for Lehman Rus. They love him and not because he's their leader. They genuinely love him at a level that's... They wanted to embody what he was doing. Well, he was not just...

And every Legion was like this, though. It wasn't just... Every Legion has this. They were also genetically made to do that a little bit. Like, also, I have a DNA imperative to... To love you implicitly. But anyway, so that's that. The next one is the Third Legion, who are, of course, redacted.

We don't know what happened. We just know that they're not there. And the fun part about a redacted Legion is, remember when we talked about earlier, how the Emperor made all the legions back on Earth, then went to the sky to find them? that means he made hundreds of thousands of Third Legion space marines gave them power armor, painted it, did all whole thing logistics.

They gave them their own paint scheme. They gave them their own paid scheme, gave them their own ships, and then their own like servants who came with them, and they're all gone. And I don't think it would correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it was a they crashed. This was not an oopsie. This was a, yeah, nope. We go into number four, Ferris Manus, the Irony Hands. Great Legion is legions legit.

However, they are one of the first legions. I think they actually are the First Legion to start embracing cybernetics. And when I say start embracing cybernetics, I don't mean thumb here or there. I mean like, hey, I lost a hand in battle. Let me get a replacement. It's a no, I took my hand off to get a better hand. Right. So like they have a wide spread acceptance.

of vast parts of you cybernically augmented. And this is important for the 40K universe, because again, to bring back, AI is a real fear here. So there is a very interesting balancing act occurs in the 30, 40,000 K universe of augmenting themselves with machinery, but that fine line between that and allowing machinery be to become self-aware.

So at a certain point, the question is if there's a human brain in a robot, is it the same as a robot with the brain? And this is a challenge with them. Or a spirit. So Fifth Legion is a very fun character, Fulgram. His Legion, by the way, is the Emperor's Children. He's also a supermodel of a Primar.

Yeah. This is where we turned up the looks. You know, when we all do character creation, Emperor spent some time for this one. Not only does he in the looks. He has actual psychically empowered beauty. He actually pauses other words. because he's so pretty.

He looks like a Norwegian heavy metal singer. He is driven by he turned the vanity up to to 11 years. So he needs to be acknowledged that he is awesome. Yeah. And he is completely out of his mind. Move the Sixth Legion, which is

Vulcan. Okay. This is I got to, you know, I guess he's got some time. I was just salamanded. I knew where we were going. Salimandez. One, these guys are black, and I'm not talking a black guy. I'm not talking a black. I'm talking obsidian black, nighttime

black. They come from a planet of volcanoes. Vulcan, by the way, tallest of the prime marks. He also is everything that Ferris Manus wanted to be at the forge. He is a legendary forge master. And that actually

is his superpower. He actually can make sci-fi artifacts. And fun fact, salamanders are the only good guys out of the space marines. They actually always try to help others. They are effectively paladins. If you want to argue that with me, I will literally chat with anybody about this. Salamanders are the few good guys in the universe.

Also, Vulcan, side note, perpetual. Can die. Oh, sorry, can die. Future spoilers. That fact really comes back to haunt him for a while because he is killed several of the times. Vulcan's one of the cool. Or cooler stories. I actually personally wish GDW a bit heavier.

And they're a great character. Great stories. But the thing is, he legitimately is a paladin in a group of paladins. They are all about Melton and Flamer weapons. That's their go-to as a legion. Then we go into Imperial Fists, Rogel Dorn. I hate Rogel Dorn with a passion of a thousand sons.

So imagine someone who just wants to spend their entire day building sandcastles at the beach. doesn't want to go, doesn't want to swim, doesn't want to eat, just wants to build a little. I'm going to get yelled at by guys, especially some of the DOG guys. Yes. And one of your best friends also. Yes. One of the boys. One of your best friends is obsessed with these guys. Which I

have to give him props on the fact that the dude's tough. Oh yeah. Rogaldor is incredibly tough. He's just so boring and he's always talking shit at getting wrecked by Copperturbo. But is the... What is his superpower?

He is literally unparalleled architect. He built the Imperial Fortress, and it is a marveled. Yeah, that's true. He rebuilt. He is an architect. He's got a couple other weird things. Everybody's got an extra thing that you can argue about. Yeah, we'll do some piece of those guys.

His biggest thing is that he is architect, like non-parallel. It's just fortifications are his thing. Now we're going to talk about every player in Warhammer 40Ks. Dave rehearsed. Without a doubt. If you play Warhammer 40K and someone puts Rote Gilliman down on the table, you go, that's awesome.

I'm so glad he's here. I'm incredibly overjoyed to be playing against Ultramarines at this moment in time. This is the guy that literally wrote the Codex. Yeah. The problem is he's also the guy that reminded the teacher that there was homework last night. Gilliman, oh, Gilliman.

Gilliman, to me, I find very funny. I'm going to use a WWF reference here of Roman Raines, where Gilliman was written to be this incredibly positive figure by GW that everyone should look up to. And then everyone went, nah, this guy sucks, boo. So it's this weird thing where everything you read about Gilliam, you're like, oh, that's a pretty good guy. He's strategic.

He really cares. He's thorough. He's also thoughtful, caring, self-sacrificing. And I'm just telling you to have a casual conversation with the 40K player about Gilman. Everyone hates him. It's just very funny. And his superpower is a boring superbar, though. Yeah, that's true.

He's a superpower. He's literally the world's best bureaucrat. He can compile data. But the thing is that he should be more popular, but he's literally in charge of all the paperwork in the galaxy. Yeah, he's in charge of logistics. Did you follow your TPS report? Yes. This is the guy asking you about your TPS report.

Yeah. But also, he's amazing at TPS reports. Yeah, he's also. going to grade you against his own TPS report and you're not going to win. So now we're one of the Ninth Legion, Magnus. Did nothing wrong. Magnus, the Red, is the psycher of the bunch. The open psycher of the bunch.

No, actually not psyched. I know there was someone that we'll go into, there's two more. Yeah. No, no. Space Jesus are both psychic. He is the only sorcerer. There we go. He is an actual active magic user and he has a connection and an ability to manipulate the warp, which he's kept telling by his dad not to do.

And because the emperor is a dick, he's never told why. He's not, he's like, dad, I can use these things at will. They all come naturally to me. Don't do it. But literally, I can just make things. I could make the world, the universe a better place with stop doing that. Why? Because I said, okay, cool.

Can you want to give you any reason at all? Just a mediocre reason. Nah. There's nothing bad's going to happen. from that. Nothing bad's going to happen, but just don't use it. To get into him, it would be a lot of getting into him. Yeah.

We'll get into that. We'll get into more than more than what not. So now we'll move on to another one. Sanguine. So it's going to be a love hate because he's necessary for it. He's faced Jesus. True. He is literally the martyr.

He is the perfect at everything. Sanguinus leads the blood angels become, we'll become later after he gets he's space Jesus. He is perfect at everything. He is literally a giant angel. And when I say angel, angel wings. He has wings. Yes. Angel, not like busted up wings.

He has eight wings. He is little bit... I don't know what they're for because they also have jet packs, but he's got wings. Whatever. Exactly. And he also kind of flies by saying, but... They don't actually flap. But they look cool when he explains them out. He is the ultimate.

Mary Sue, he is perfect at everything. He is the humble. His Legion loves him because he shows up and says, I hope that I'm worthy, blah, blah. His books are actually really good. He is such a ridiculously O.P. character, which is the why you don't like him. Because he is, he's so O.P.

He's an anime hero. Then we move on the 11th Legion, which is Lionel Johnson. Whoops. You're going to learn, actually, I don't like most. The Primarks, they're going to hear me going to a lot of these. I know, I love everything about the lion. Midlife Crisis Lion Love everything about him

In the beginning Lion is dour He's grim He's supposed to be An old even more He's not even a nice The Charlemagne He's an old school vile

Almost like he's Arthurian nights Yeah But with less fun Yeah that's the thing about him He's just It's just It's just so serious Like when your legions

Power In the game is called Grim Resolve They were a fantastically successful chapter. I think one of the largest chapters, if I'm not mistaken. He's a fantastic leader. He's just a bummer because he's a knight from the dark ages is what they based him. He took his vows.

That's all that matters is that we do what the emperor tells us to do, period. We go, we do our crusade. We're wildly successful in the crusade, but also you don't ask questions. You took your vow. That might also come back to bite him later. We'll talk about that. Nothing could go bad there. Then we've been going to the 12th Legion, which is Petarabo.

No foreshadowing here. We've got a guy that's the ultimate siege warfare. Weirdly enough, his least favorite brother is the guy that fortifies snakes. Like any good family, you've got two brothers, and their purpose in this world seems to be to just annoy each other. And that's what is. One of them builds a sandcastle, another one comes and kicks the wall of the sandcastle. I'm telling you on this. I'm telling this one.

because it's my favorite story because I don't think Perterabo ever went to chaos. I just think he went to whatever side, Robo Dorn wasn't all. Yeah, that's actually probably actually. Did Robo Dorn go to chaos or did he stay with the Imperian? Went to the Imperion? I'm in chaos. I'm in chaos now. He's like, we were just joking. He actually did, okay, I'm going to the other side.

I don't care. I don't care. I just need to go. Yeah, whatever side says I get to fight him is when I'm... Whatever my brother is, that's, I'm not on that team. Yeah. That's my entire purpose. Yeah. Iron Warriors, just long story short, they're really good at breaking through a wall. Yeah.

That's about it. Really good at. Depending on one edition, too. Oh, yeah. Incredible. Some editions. Then we go to actually Mortarian. Now, Mortarian, I find is fun.

A great model, though. One of the best models. Just everything about Mortarian can be really fun. Now, this guy, people love and hate him. Now, the biggest thing about Mortarian is he was dealt. He was also dealt with shitty. Yeah. If you hate Mortarian, you are wrong.

All of these, we didn't talk about this enough. All of the 20 Prague marks got shipped by chaos to different worlds. The emperor finds them in different states of time from them. So like a lot of these are all, he doesn't find any of them until they're at least adults. So they have then to live their lives on these planets. Some of them took over the whole planet. Some of them did not. Actually, all of them took over their planet except for two or men.

maybe three. So plus the redacted. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, maybe they did. But we did not. I apologize to everybody for this. We did not do it a good enough job of that.

These guys have just lived their adult lives, basically. They grew up on these planets. Mortarion's planet. Yeah, I think he got the worst hand, I think, of all of them. Because he lived on the poison planet? On the 18, we know. I think, yeah, I think he had the poison planet. There wasn't just the poison, but it was the poison planet.

The necromancers. from answers who just took joy in poisoning the planet. Because they also lived in mountains that were worse poison than down low. And so the Martarian is really a cool character. His whole thing is he's just tough. Well, he just ground down. Yeah, just he, his win was that he lost so many battles, but he just ground them down eventually and went, I'm just going to keep doing this.

Yeah. He basically was the inverse of the period of victory. single time. We're just like, oh, you're going to try and beat me? Cool. All of you're going to die in the process. And when that's over, I'm still going to win. We'll be right back after a quick break. Now we're going to get into some of the, what I would call Lamer Primarks. Lorgar first. Sorry, I was going to, I'm sorry. I accidentally was going to skip him because in my hatred of Rogal Dorn, I never acknowledged the fact that Lorgar of the word there exists. So Lorgart was always telling everybody how the emperor was a god and you should worship him,

even though the emperor was standing next to him going, I will literally punch you in the face. And he eventually got mad and he caused the entire downfall of the imperial. So then we move on to another kind of random one. How do you pronounce this? Jatte Giaci Qatte. Yeah. So it's a con. So when Gw.

had to write a prime mark, it's Genghis Khan. That's what they did. They decided to go with Genghis Khan. but on a bicycle. No, they're not a bike or they're literally a gangus con. Gangus Khan. They are a Mongolian horde and they are the, they're giving props on it.

They are wildly the best people on any sort of if they're mounted on anything. It doesn't matter what futuristic version of it it is. They are the best act. Like one of those horses on a stick, the horse heads on a stick. Doesn't matter. They'd still be amazing. It'd still be incredibly fast.

It'd be the best you've ever seen that. And the thing is that's their stick is there. they can basically use both hands, both feet, and drive with their knee and maybe their nose. They're super good at anything much. None of you can see the death staring at growing bright right now. This is incredibly lame. Yeah.

Unfortunately, we're going to move on to the 16th Legion, which is Conrad. No, you are getting it fortunately. Because if you haven't read his book, it is fantastic. The books are great. It's just, this is, are you playing long ago? Have Night Lords ever been good? No.

They are perfect. randomly given the most useless traits, just every time. An insane planet, basically a prison planet, ruled by psychos. And he became a hunter in the dark. Like when I say hunter, he hunted down crime lords as super badman if he had real problems. Yeah, Batman was superpowers. Well, Batman was superpowers also with a lot of mental health issues. because he hears voices.

He also sees the future. Conrad Cruz gets his own legion, which he populates with murderers from a prison. Cruz also read his book. He has a fantastic book where he's caught and basically escapes and does Alien and 40K. And he is full crazy.

He is, wow. It would be way cooler if the nine-foot-dull, tall guy with superpowers wasn't completely off the deep. Then we go into the 17th Legion. So this is going to be... It's the Red Angel. And Angon's actually a really cool story

because he's actually... This is actually one of the better writings I think GW did of... Maybe actually he might be... I think he's actually the best written Primark. Because it is someone who's born of compassion, born of normal... His superpower is literally...

He is the empath of the primaries. He feels... everything. He knows other people. He can immediately understand. And unfortunately, he gets down on the gladiator planet. And he's tortured into insanity. Yeah. And he's put, literally put nails into his cerebral cortex, which make it so he is full of rage all the time and has no epiphany. I would say Angron's really, I think, if you're, if you like a well-written story, if you like really good in-depth character studies. Angron's incredible.

The stories of Angron really are great. You have nothing but empathy for him, despite him being, his actions being terrible. He's his own worst enemy on the fact that everything's against him. He almost succeeds, and then he does that time until he does it now. Chaos,

he does that, where he almost achieves his goals, and then he does it. Then we go into the 18th Legion. Corex. Corex, who is literally a ninja. Yeah. His entire Legion is Ninja.

So he's literally, he makes his Legion into super stealthy forward operators. He could infiltrate things that shouldn't normally be infiltrate because everyone was taught at an early right away becoming Legion how to basically forward deploy even your heavy kind of things so they could take people by surprise. Then we'll move into 19th region, also redacted. So the last one is the kind of fun one. You mean the last one slash first one? Yeah, so the 20th Legion, Alferius Omagon.

But he also has a twin brother. But he also has a twin, but it's actually two identical twins, Alferius and Amagon, that only they know exists. And only they know that there's two of them. Which would have been really weird on some of these capital shifts where one of them just, what, hiding behind a curtain. Because he's also nine feet tall. 500 pound guy.

Yeah. They were the Alpha Legion. And they're also the first Legion and the last Legion. Yeah. Because in the redone lore, Alfarious was actually still on Terra. Yeah, so he went looking for him all through the galaxy, and he was back at home. We've all done. We've all looked for our car keys.

Because he snuck into other legions, a regular soldier, again, even though he's a head taller than everybody else. That one guy. That story's real weird, but you don't know whether or not he was a good guy or a bad guy. That's our 20 legions. And if that was quick for you, don't worry, we're going to do some deep dive. But this now leads into, now the Great Crusade can begin. And with the Great Crusade is, Emperor grabs all of his legions, all of these people, and we are going to go re-part one, reunify.

He sends everybody all over. Because remember, the galaxy is such a wildly huge place. I feel like people don't understand how big the Milky Way is. And what's happened is the Emperor now, after taking his sweet time, has decided he wants to reunify. mankind. So we're going out there to reclaim worlds. And step one is, of course, reclaim the world. Now that he has these giant arms. And by reclaim, it means we're going to show up and we're going to say, hey, we are humanity. You are humanity. We are now the Imperium of Mankind.

Not even a question first. You are part of the Imperium of Mankind. How would you like to go about this? Step one is us informing you're part of it. Step two is your choice of response. You can disagree with that, at which point you're going to introduce to the space marines. And so remember, while the technology may exist at some of these, Brad mentioned really well before, that some of these solar systems actually were self-sufficient during the Dark Age of Technology. They actually have all the STC drives. They are walking around with incredible technology, but they don't have space marines. And they also don't have the sheer numbers.

because we didn't do a good enough job. We just talked about it. We sent these legions of space Marines. Oh, yeah. Their accompanying host is billions of regular dudes with tanks. We basically sent the Navy, the Air Force, and the Army. Oh, yeah. Also, we have the numbers on everyone.

So not only do we have super soldiers that are better than everybody else's, but also if you want to get into a long, drawn-out war, we'll just go ahead and bomb you until you just die. We're going to show up and we're taking this world. Yeah. And also, we'll just keep doing this forever. We will throw an endless supply of bodies if we need to. They're going to be called brought into what they refer to as imperial compliance.

Imperial compliance is this, I do like when I do air quotes while talking to a microphone that no one can see. So in air quotes, imperial compliance, which means they are now part of the Imperium. They are now, they're in the logistical empire. It also be, it becomes, let's, let's, let's, let's go into that because I, imperial compliance. Imperial compliance means that you're a part of the Empire, the Imperium of mankind, but it also means that you, and immediately, and we're talking like immediately, hey man, everything's on fire. And you immediately get signed, assign a just array of bureaucrats that inform you what you now have to tally to the Imperium because you are now part of the Imperium of mankind and we will expect this immediately.

So you should put up. Rain or hubcaps you are going to produce. I know we sent all your stuff on fire, but you should put those fires out because there's a guy showing up tomorrow. With a truck. Yeah. If the truck's pulling into the loading bay tomorrow, you better fill the damage. Yeah, figure it out.

One important foreshadow at this point is that the emperor makes sure that any world he arrives at. If they are religious, he removes that. A religion. All of it. Anyone, I mean, he doesn't remove it. It is banned in anyone who worship his dead. And he also sets all of those buildings on fire. He cleanses all of them by fire.

And his war on religion is very both important from a foreshadow and insanely ironic from a foreshadow. He actually has like his idea. is terrible and good at the same time. What he thinks he's trying to do is not have people be corrupted to worshiping chaos. What he's doing is setting the stage for people

to worship chaos. Like any good fall. So at the same time, though, he should mention that new worlds are also found as we're coming through. Now, if I found some of them may have been settled and everyone died, whatever. Also, new worlds that the humans didn't find that were

other races. Probably Eldar. Yeah. Because we should, oh, that's a great point. The Eldar are gone now. The explosions happen. So the Eldar. People started taking up. Yeah. So now they are also finding Eldar worlds where before, the thing about the Eldar,

it's a fun little of the side note is that if you, in the age of technology, happen to stumble onto an Eldar world, you would stumble onto it for maybe a quarter of a second because after that, you're dead. They were, the Eldar were that powerful that if mankind were to approach an Eldar planet, mankind wouldn't reach back and say, hey, we were into a problem here. They would just not exist there anymore. Yeah. And the thing is, the elder were so far away at the time that they didn't consider, even though our galaxy spanning empire, they didn't care. They were so vain, so sure of their superiority. They just didn't care.

Another thing that was coming up that's interesting here is the existence of what we call ab humans. And ab humans is a really nice word for mutants. What's going on is thousands of years with lots of radiation, lots of other things. things, toxins, all this stuff. Worlds where other races are that we didn't bother to know what's going on, we got absorbed by, oh, yeah. This is one of those more interesting ones because effectively it went the way you'd think it

would go. Are they really useful? And we'll call them the other part of the human empire. Are they not really useful? Heretics. Heretic burn them, kill them off. Which then, of course, led to the first kind of real mention in the history of Zenos. So we're

talking about now true alien species, not a mutant, a true alien species. And so this all kind of culminates at the end of the Great Crusade, which is the battle for Erlinar, which I love, because 100,000 of his space marines, 8 million imperial guards, hundreds of Titans, and by Titans are the walking robots of cities, so over 600 starships to attack one planet full of orcs. I just love everything about it. By the way, I want you guys to know

that John has an old capitals put, Don't worry Oak France, they came back later, and Ork has never beaten with about 14 exclamation points. Because orcs are never beaten. So they waged this giant war on one planet to fight the orcs. They technically win. And at the end of this is probably the big, is what sets up the next big shift.

the emperor says he hands the reins the entire military to Horace. He loves Horace. Horace is his favorite son. Everything's going to Horace. And everyone, by the way, it was cool with this. Again, not one of the normal thing where a father says, this is my favorite kid. And the rest of the kids go, what the hell, dad?

Everybody went, yeah, we already knew. Yeah, we all love him too. This is awesome. Yeah, make him in charge. Definitely don't do, you know, Conrad Cruz. Like, we're all the team not Conrad. Because he's peeling the skin up. You're like, man, please stop.

Not here. You're so weird, dude. Just no one likes you. Come on. What's doing that in public? So now Horace is now the war master. He is the head on Imperiums. And the emperor just says, hey, I got a thing I got to do.

And him and his best bud, head back to earth. Which also, again, he doesn't say what the thing. Just tells everyone, hey, I got to go do a thing. I got to leave. like any solid psychopath and just leaves. So that's it. So now he is gone and all the space marine leaves are looking around going,

so what do we do now? Well, this actually go well for... Oh, we'll get to the next episode. So that's the end of this one. So now to conclude, mankind has come out of the darkness. Again, the emperor has done all of this. He has created super soldiers.

He's now created the army with which mankind can conquer the galaxy. The next few episodes we're going to do is going to be what's called the Horace Heresy. It is maybe the, I don't know if it's the most important in 40K, but it sets the game. It sets the game. This is it. I got into the game 25 years ago, and I got into it because of the basis of the game, which was the horace heresy, the writings of it, all their fiction of it. Great stories, everyone.

Fantastic. We get them shit sometimes, but like, it's some really great worldsmanship. This is one of the best stories in sci-fi as far as I'm concerned. We're now about to get into the real meat and potatoes were warmer 40K. These first episodes were designed to give everyone a background. Someone who's newer to the game is able to come in and say, oh, okay, that's what's going on. The next bits we're going to get into, we're going to do very deep dives. Please thank you for listening.

Can subscribe, iTunes, Spotify, however you're following us. Thank you. We appreciate it. And yeah, we'll see you in the next episode.