The 40k Lorecast - Episode 21 - Abaddon pt 3 - Abaddon goes crusading.

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

On this episode we conclude (for now) our coverage of Abaddon the Despoiler. We cover Abaddon from the 1st black crusade through the conclusion of the 13th. do we cover all of the crusades? No because some of them were lame. Do we find a way to talk about Orks? You have to ask? Come join us as we round out the coverage of Abaddon the Despoiler (*spoiler alert* Cadia does not stand) *** It has been brought to our attention that we incorrectly referred to Abaddon "the Destroyer" when it should have been the "Despoiler." Rather than use AI to correct the error and re-upload we have decided to just own our mistake and let the listeners hear us be wrong, and own it. Sorry our bad on that*** PatreonMerchandiseDiscord 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. Welcome to the 40K lore cast. I mean John Barcati and Brad Chester. This guy. All right. So, episode three of Abadden. So the goal here, guys, is to bring you all up to, quote, unquote, modern 40K. The problem with Abadden is it's going to be an arbitrary stop point because every book that comes out in 40K has him.

The Don's in everything. He's in everything. So we- Don is everywhere. Brad now we're having a discussion. We decide we're going to take you right up to. kind of the start of eighth edition. I'm going to take you to boom, boom. Yeah, right about that moment and we're going to get there.

So after that, we're going to kind of maybe come back later to it, but that's our goal today. You know what? As usually, I need to talk shit about the notes. Also, I'm inching up my microphone constantly because it upsets John and it makes me happy. Yeah, Brad likes to talk. When we say talking to a microphone, brother likes talking to a microphone the way that you eat an ice cream. But this is how much we were indecisive about how far we're going to go. Because our current notes say, so we're going to go up to about, and there's a blank line underneath.

I didn't know where we were going to go. We had to decide to set lunch. Yeah. Quick recap, that is where we are at this stage. First episode, we took the origins of Abadden all the way up to the end of the Horace heresy. Second episode, as you guys heard, was we kind of took the rise of Abadden, what he does in the work to become the warmaster and lead the Black Legion. And this one, we're going to kind of take you from that era all the way up through what are basically his crusades to the modern era.

And I want to start with the fact the overriding story arc of the Don is that he is powered by chaos, but he isn't subservient to chaos. And that is the thing is he is still human, as much as a super soldier could be human. Yeah, it's actually the only reason he's as successful. he is. Well, he refuses to be a thrall to chaos. And then again, you have to go back to Horace. Horace was the Don.

Ebidon's everything. And he felt that he failed because of weakness and becoming a thrall of chaos. And he's like, I'm never going to do this. And again, I've said this before. I'm going to say it again, though. What makes him such an intriguing character is he has, he's failed. He has self-doubt and everything else.

And he refuses to just take this absolute power because he doesn't want to be absolutely controlled. Yeah, and there's a lot of great stories about this, where Abadden seems to effectively figure out that the chaos gods hate each other more than they hate anything. So he just basically puts it into bidding wars against each other for everything he wants. Oh, 100%.

Hey, I want to be stronger. Which of you, and just goes to every single God and says, well, what do you want for that? And then he goes, well, yeah, Ziench, that's a big thing. You know, Korn said all I had to do was slaughter an entire system. What do you give it to me? for. And Brad said really well in the last cast, Abadden's the most successful chaos warrior in history. Oh, like laughably, because they also give him access to their legions each time, too.

Because they go, and this is how he controls people that are physically, be a psychic, physical power, whatever, more powerful than him. He gets them under his thumb because their patrons, which they are in thrall to, He is not enthralled to. He makes a bargain and says, I need this. What are you going to give me? Kind of thing. And he gets entire armies, all this stuff.

And it's really, this is, we're starting the cast on this because it is literally the most important piece of a baton is that he is chaos undivided. Yes. It's anything other than that is adorable. And he's chaos undivided. He's not ascended. He's not a demon prince. He has not accepted everything with that.

he is still just doing, he's doing it his way. We should always play Sinatra right now on that? Yeah, exactly. He's doing the work of the chaos gods, but the key element of what I just said there is the S. It's them plural. And that keeps him from ever falling into the trap that Angron, even Mortarians,

I mean, Mortarians, terrible with it. Bortarian hates what he, no one hates Mortarian as much as Mortarian hates Mortarian. But the fact that, But they are stuck. They gave the ultimate sacrifice, and now they and their Legion. Their pawns. Yeah.

That's it. I have no control over anything. You're the most powerful pawn around, but you are still a pawn. Exactly. And he refuses. And the thing is that that is the biggest we talked about in the first episodes. Everybody that was a father figure to him, all of them betrayed him, to him, fully betrayed him. And all of them because of their weakness.

is why they fell. And I think another piece that's important here is this level of independence that Abadden has, no one has. In the 40K universe, it's really Xenos factions are the only ones that get this. No one in the Imperium has this level of kind of like autonomy effectively. Oh, Avedon does what Avedon does. And that's actually like for those who are like big chaos players,

this is cool as shit when you're playing about Aadon, Abadon, whatever. Abadon, yeah, you're able to, he's in charge. You are, you are, you know, the general for someone who is in absolute charge of what they're doing. And the thing is, is that he is a wildly great planner, but also while he's not trying to get people killed, he also holds none of these gifts as something he has to have, whether it be his personal power, whether it be the legions that he's given, whether it be demonic legions, uh, KIA, space marine legions, it doesn't matter. He holds them all as ephemeral. They're here for the thing that I have to do tomorrow. If they're gone, cool.

They're gone. That's actually a great segue, because what we're going to get into is the Long War, the Crusades. And these are actually, so the Crusades, to me, are really cool because we call them Crusades. And I laugh because GW has just shit writing sometimes. A crusade is something that usually you wage over,

basically you wage it for extremely long periods of time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But his crusades were actually missions. Well, yeah, because I'll say some of his crusades were I needed to go pick up this thing of eggs from the store. Yeah, I mean, he wanted to achieve this. And sometimes achieving is legitimate, getting an object. And other times it was, I'm going to blow this thing up so that it's not there later. next one. So I will say when we call these crusades, that was some very liberal writing on the part of GW in usage of that word, because they're not. As we're going to cover a few of them right now,

because not all of them, because there's 13 and some of them are pretty lame, which is perfectly honest. He's like, I got eggs. Yeah, exactly. I got the eggs, and I went back home and made an omelette. What a wonderful crusade of Adam. It was successful. I was successful. I also picked up some chives for additional flavor. Free range. So that's like, we'll skip some of them. Keep in mind, though, that when we call them a crusade, what they really are, were missions, because Avedon has a plan. And his plan is to conquer the galaxy.

At the core of conquering the galaxy, what he realizes fairly early is he has to take out the emperor. If he takes out the emperor, the Astronomicon crashes. But he knows that Horace made a huge mistake. It's not only... Exactly. That's my own... It's all a plan.

Everything to him is a layered plan. But the biggest mistake, one of the biggest things who was also made was attacking Soul directly because it's never, even once you kill the emperor, you've got, well,

depending on what part of the crusade, we're talking about Gilliman is alive or dead. Spoiler alert, whatever. But you've got, if he were to just to launch out of the eye of terror, take all of his forces, go to Saul, kill the emperor.

Let's say he pulls that off. Everyone's dead right afterwards. because the remaining forces slaughter him. So instead, he makes a systematic plan to begin pulling down the defenses of the area, rip the Imperium down from its core. I mean, maybe even rip the galaxy and a half. It would help if you could actually just cut the galaxy in half.

I wonder if that's going to be anything. To get there. But let's jump into the first black critique. Actually, I like the story a lot. So about 1,000 years post Horace. Yeah, but it's not 500 years. This is a big deal, though, because at this point in time, because they still use the emperor's way of dealing with chaos, which is, don't admit it exists, kill everyone that saw it. This amount of time, chaos is almost the boogeyman for most of the galaxy.

There's still parts where they're active. But there's a lot of the galaxy that just is. Well, because even if they were when they were active, it was a rating party. It was like Drew Curry. They'd come out of nowhere, or you get like that. cultist uprising. It was minimal. And the imperial could just, between Inquisition, Grey Knights, sisters, et cetera, they just stamp it out and it would go away. And the thing is, is that he comes back and they're like, and he comes back in force.

Oh, he explodes out of the eye of terror. This is a large, this is a, it's actually the first chaos, active legion to come out since that time. Effectively, the eye of terror has always been there. and they know it's there. They know chaos is in there, but it's a little raiding party, so we give the shit. A armada comes out of this thing

and just starts burning the galaxy around it. And the thing is, is I want to go into, because everybody, there has been some retcons, but this I do not think is a retcon, because what I thought he did in the first crusade is he just wanted to see

how the Imperium reacted. Yeah. He just, I mean, he literally went out because he attacked everywhere. Yeah. If you're trying to win, his plan made no sense. What he was trying to do is go, what happens when I go to this segmentum, this segmentum, this segmentum, and he went, okay, cool. And then they left.

Yeah. They literally just. Well, he went and grabbed this. We'll get to the second one. Well, I'm saying, well, sorry. Yeah. But in their eyes, he just left. You're right.

The standpoint of the Imperium, he comes out. He attacks like crazy, burns it. I mean, you can tell, when you read through the first crusade, you can kind of see, I think there's a few. things going on all at once. One was you have to what you said. He's trying to kind of test like, what are the defenses? I haven't seen these guys in 500 years of their time, warp time,

who knows how long that is. It's either 5,000 years or two minutes. Yeah, six weeks, whatever. You know, it's like, but he wants to test them. He also needs to keep his allies. Because the thing that Abidon's been doing really well is he's been getting these, what I would call fully fallen legions.

Slanesh being the big one, Emperor's Children, being the big one to kind of back him because they're massive legions. So of course, they're wildly big at the time. If you recall, we talked about that last, Slanesh was fairly untouched at this time. And they didn't start to separate until much later. Exactly. And so he's coming out.

So they're just, they're doing slave raids. The corn guys are killing people. The Nurgles just doing Nurgle stuff and Zinges. Nurgles actually at its lowest power level right now. Oh, you're right. Yeah, it's right at this point. Because he hasn't pushed the plagues out into the galaxy as well.

I forgot about that. from a timing standpoint. But yeah, they literally just, they come out of this, out of the eye attack and just wreck the galaxy. Just wreck it.

One thing that caught the Imperium so brutally off guard with this crusade is that in all of their prior experiences, what you would do is chaos would attack. You basically, so as the Imperium shitty,

you let the world burn. You wouldn't, you wouldn't even throw defenses really at it. You just surround it. And then once, chaos kind of finished attacking and there was no defense they always just turned on

themselves because all of a sudden they become and you can think of this way like you go to a planet and it's emperor's children it's maybe thousand sons you're night lord you got it whatever it's going to be they'll fight they'll fight each other

well they're all there for slaves they're all there to take people back they'll also because they're gods hate each other yeah they'll all fight each other and also once the fighting subsides, you also lose the demonic incursions. Because once you lose the power from that, the demons start to not be able

to continue to be in the imperial, the real world. So like, you basically lose for a, especially a demonic incursion. You have to, it has to be a snowball or it goes away. So effectively, if you just cord it off the area, they burn themselves.

It'll just be gone by itself. And so that's how the Imperium always acted. It was kind of their trick that they were doing in these worlds. That didn't happen here. Well, because also Avedad had used his job fare to fill a lot of roles because, oh, yeah, if you don't recall, Avedon went on a head-lopping off tour. I mean, I'm joking, but I'm not joking. He just killed by decapitation almost all of the people leading because he thought that they were

shitty leaders. Yeah. And he got new leaders. And he basically let them see him lopping off the dome of the last guy. And he goes, well, Phil, you're now in charge because Ted, I thought didn't do a good job. Not going to say I'm going to do anything to you. I'm just saying Ted didn't do a good job. Good job. So next time, maybe listen to Avedon's plan. Yeah. And so that's, this caught the Imperium really off guard. This was got, this was the first time since Horace that they actually had to fight.

an organized force that kept fighting. It organized force that kept fighting with a real plan, not just berserkers crazies. Yeah, we grabbed a bunch of locals, like this brother's saying, we raided the gap, took all the employees and went back to the I have terror. No, we burned, we took out the defenses. Now we're actually, and then we started reinforcing our position. And also stealing all of your resources. Hey, this is now my factories.

These are now my spaceports. Exactly. And so this became, so the Imperium over the course of the first crusade had to all of, just launch all of their forces back at Abidon. And by all the forces, this includes Titan legions, by the way. I mean, they went. Once they figured out what was happening, they were going on. Because, oh, when we probably should have mentioned, we forgot it, that the Lords of Terror were, of Terra were useless at this stage. This is probably one of their worst stages. I mean, you know what, I'm not being getting to that. We'll do an entire cast. I hate the Lords of Terror. With a passion.

When we talk about all the problems of the Lords of Terra, this post-horis heresy era is maybe the worst version of themselves. Because as we said, they are still infighting right now. Well, because this was, to my mind, one of the worst ones because they've had 500 years of no emperor. And they've done nothing. And they've just been for the whole time. They've agreed on literally nothing for 500 years. Yeah.

They've actually, they set the, they made it worse. Ooh, I got to get my cheat again. I'm trying to mojo up. They literally did more to separate and put the Imperium into its own, they almost dark age of technology, the Imperium. And so they had, this was, Abadden's first crusade should have been pretty quick. He should have come out of the Eye of Terror. The Imperium should have seen it.

He was literally getting launched over. Yes. And instead they just kind of were like, oh, maybe someone should do something. Yeah. I really think that they got to the... Abedon's first crusade was the first season of the Abedon show was so successful. He's like, I didn't write his second season. Yeah, like, wait.

So I actually, I think Abidon in this grade got so far ahead of his plans that he was like, should we just go back? Like, this feels... I personally, he probably thought it was a trap. Like, why is there no defense? Like no one is doing anything to me. Who's coming for me because there's nothing. Like this has to be them trying to get me to over extend.

But nope, they just sucked. I will say, Abadon did have a plan, though. And his plan was really actually kind of genius. It was actually for power. This is his first personal power grab. Yeah. As we just discussed with the way he works with the gods, he knows you can't go to a God and ask for power.

It's impossible because, you'll have to become a thrall. So what does he do? He just feeds the gods. And the way this was written from the way I was reading out of the codex was basically that the gods, if you give them enough of what they want, so you create enough death for corn, enough kind of decay for Durgel, whatever the hell Slanesh wants.

And we all know, I just don't want to say it on a PG podcast. And then even for Zines, just fear and confusion for Zinch, they seem to almost get drunk. And this is literally, actually, this is big because this is knowledge. He was trying to figure out what their plans were. It's all knowledge. It's not. And what happens is they get a little bit drunk from all this stuff.

And so you can get them to give you information. They would never give you otherwise. You know, it's funny they say that. I never even really thought about it as much. But the chaos gods are giddy teenagers sometimes because they get excited, because they are, in essence, an idea. They're not. they're not adults. They only are in. They operate always on.

There's one thing that makes me happy and you give me that thing. I will do that thing right now. And as much as possible as I can. Abedon realized that these chaos gods had secrets and he wanted their secrets. So he does. He effectively feeds the chaos gods with a ton of their utmost desire, which is always just bad things. And he wanted to get the coolest part of his model, but we'll continue on. Yeah, yeah. So, they didn't foreshadow, because that's all we do in this podcast. But we're not... It still is the coolest part of this model.

It is. And we're not shitty about our foreshadowing. We cover it in the same episode. I've never foreshadowed anyone to see you next week and see what happens. We'll get there today. 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.

because one thing you learn quickly is a difficulty of hiring global talent and how unclear those costs can be. It looks simple at first, but then the fees start to stack up with compliance worries, contractors versus employees, and a host of other regulations. Pebble brings clarity with upfront, all-in hiring costs and enables you to hire the world. Pebble is an AI-powered human resource platform built for founders, HR leaders, and operators who are hiring and support. teams around the world. Pebble helps you hire, pay, and manage talent in over 185 countries with fast onboarding that could be done in minutes. Instead of juggling separate tools for contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance, Pebble brings everything together with built-in compliance and local expertise to support you. This is especially helpful if you're managing teams internationally

or planning to grow. The fastest growing companies in the world use Pebble to stay organized and reduced risk and founders use it to scale faster without feeling like they need to become HR compliance experts. Bottom line, it simplifies global people operation so you can spend more time growing the business and supporting your team. Pebble's new standard discounted pricing is only $399 US dollars per month per employee. That'll help you contain costs. Go to highpebble.a to get a free estimate. That's high p.ebl.a.i for a free. estimate. There was a hidden world within the eye of terror called Erlon.

Or Erlon? Yeah, Hurlorn. The biggest thing about this is this is a little bit of a fantasy sci-fi trope because there's just a place where you could go and they have all the artifacts. The Hannevecta's there. Everything's there.

Yeah, it's the British Museum. Yes, it is. Some of the best name I've ever seen is like name something that about the British Museum that's confusing. It's like because none of this stuff is British. It is other people's stuff. Yeah. So Erlon is a hidden world in the middle of the Eye of Terror, which is technically the

immaterium, where the chaos gods store their favorite toys. And the thing is, is that this is one of those things that is, they've done it different in a couple of stories, but this planet is effectively, you can never find it if you want to find it unless someone lets you find. Yeah, it's one of those dumb tropes. But whatever. It's like I show GW enough. Well, I'll let this one go because this is kind of a D&D trope, I mean, it is, though.

It was one of those things. It's the unfindable thing unless you succeed in the five quest that will allow you to find out where it exists. Exactly. And he finds it. But the story's cool as shit. No, the story is fantastic because, no, this is another thing. It makes it complex because to get through this, I'm going to get excited here for a minute. Just deal with it.

So he has to. to literally go through the trials effectively, which is he has to fight. He has to fight through things that he's not sure he can actually defeat. Because like once he gets in there, he kind of goes, oh, shit, there's more to this than I thought. You don't land to the planet and pick the crap up. You land on the planet on the outside the labyrinth. And we say labyrinth. We don't mean like, ooh, it's a corn maze. It's also a planet maze, but it's also not a planet maze because it's again in the warp. So it's bigger than the planet and smaller than everything. You have no idea. It's gigantic. So he has to go through this labyrinth. He has to get through, but he has to

do all these trials. He has to fight. He has to physically defeat things that might not be able to. And one of the stories with it is when he does this is he's fighting things that he was like, oh, shit, can I actually do this? This is a little bit more. But then he also has to go through all these mental trials. Mental trials. And that, well, that is actually one of them is there, one of the things about the physical things is to get you to self-doubt because you immediately go into mental trials right after

and they want you to be at your lowest. Oh shit, can I now defeat the next thing? I'm doubting myself. And then boom, you're slammed with all these mental temptations but also they're trying to dominate him. This is the gods, I think, really thought that we're going to give you this gift. I'm definitely doing air quotes.

we're going to give you this gift and you're like, yeah, we're going to 100% break him. He'll have to ask for our help. We will make him our thrall during this process. And he also, I forgot to mention. Dubborn son of him. Also, yeah, I was to say, his best trait is Abidon is like, I'm going to do this thing. But you could go through the door, Abidon. I said I'm going through the wall.

Yeah. But there's a door right there. Nope. Nope. Yeah. I already committed. We're doing this. I forgot to mention he rolls down there solo.

All that stuff is by himself. Oh, yeah, it's completely solo. He's by himself, fighting his way. And when we say fighting our way through a labyrinth, we're not talking like dark souls type type thing where it's just, ooh, the next boss is harder. These are real trials where in this president, I got to fight.

Then I have to avoid temptation. Then I have to solve a regular. They're literally trying to psychically dominate him at every turn. He's effectively fighting. I mean, it's not, he doesn't fight all four chaos gods in it, but in some ways he kind of does though yeah but the best thing about it is it not even when he's fighting they're trying to psychically he's basically battling for his soul this entire time but he pulls it off he actually guessed the middle of it and this part's a little bit dumb

but the the outcome's amazing um he sees like there's a basically a void in the middle so he's already in the imitium is a void the middle of it And it's just imagine kind of almost a crack in the universe. He goes into a black hole. He just puts his arm. He sees a very small black hole and goes, I'll put my arm in that. And he just pulls out. And then reaches around inside of a hole.

And I realize some of you were laughing right now, and you should be. This is a very funny reference. But he's reaching around the hole until he feels something hard. And then pull, and then out pulls, to Brad's credit, the coolest sword and all. It's awesome. Yeah. It also has a world-dominating demon inside of it. Yeah, so he pulls out.

Who also was a trap. Because this world-dominating demon inside the sword is supposed to immediately dominate Abidon's mind. And no. And Abidon's like, no, I ain't going out like that. I don't give too fucks about this thing. And so I'm going to let Brad pronounce it. Oh, it's, I've ruined this since. I've been, I've been literally trying to say this word for 25 years now,

because I literally read Index Codex. Sorry, Codex KS is one of my first things, and I screwed it up that. But his sort is Drakian. Draknian. And this is a sort. And this thing, by the way,

please phonetically put in and or link us in the Discord or Facebook what the act, because both of us know. By the way, we kind of didn't look this up specifically so we could have a thing. More fun. And I also look forward to all of you trying to spell Drak. Niamian.

because accents also matter. He spinal taps himself with his sword. He does turn it up to 11. He is literally, this thing hits another one of the swords. While the sword is amazing in the game, in the lore, is way better. Holy shit. This is one of those areas where the lore and the game cannot overlap.

If you were to write rules for Dracnian. No, he's basically, he pulled out Stormbring. You basically be going through like Abadden attacks and that thing's auto dead. And also it killed his soul. Yeah, you didn't roll any dice. Yeah, that just happens. That just happens. He swung in your general direction.

Yeah, I got close to you with this sword. You automatically lose. But in lore, this sword's so cool. This is a big deal too because a lot of people meet him later on, a lot of people that have won against Avedon didn't know that he's been juiced up. Yeah. And then they end up having... He is, I mean, the notes that I put here is that he's now really probably more powerful

than corrupted Horace and with none of the loss of his soul. So he has, he's got the power of... Up and down. I would go back and forth on that because Avedon waxes and wanes depending on how many gifts he receives per person. Yeah, I just think at this stage, Abidon one-on-one, there's nothing in the universe that's going to take him one on them. Oh, you're going to have so many gifts.

people are going to lose their mind. I don't care. I'm from a lore standpoint. From a gameplay standpoint, yeah, I saw him that at Grots one time. But that's fine. What I'm saying,

from a lore standpoint, they wrote this to be, he is probably on par or a little bit above Horace in power. But that doesn't matter because his soul is not corrupted, which actually makes him more powerful noise

because it's powerful. Because his free will. Yeah, he had no, free will. So this actually would put Apodon as one of the most powerful beings

in the galaxy at this stage from this sword. So we're going to call, I think, so long story short, first Black Crusade, A1 success. A1 success. Also, the Imperium about this time, because, of course, as during the story, as soon as he grabs a sword,

everyone finally shows up and does something about it. Yeah, they show up and they attack and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he, as Brad said earlier, they just bail out. The, once Abedon, they forced it up that. He goes, I'm pretty tired now. He was already back in the war doing this. So the rest of his forces were like, all right, I guess we're done here. And so the Imperium, just I like thinking about these things from the Imperium standpoint.

This giant invading army comes out of the eye of terror. And we're going to engage. We're going to fight them. And they just retreat back into the eye of terror. They're also in the middle of beating the shit out of you. Yeah. And they're wildly winning at this point. And they just bail.

And so now. The Imperium's got a bit of a problem of like, oh, shit, this part of the galaxy is kind of a big threat. We should do something about it. They basically made this the DMZ. Yeah. But the opposite. Instead of the DML, this is the capital MZ. They went, we need to make sure that these guys can't come through that, you know, the hole in the sky.

That's a problem. And we're going to foreshadow really. quickly here, too. There's a system with a, with a planet. Cough Cof Cofcadia. Right out that's named Cadia. And they do we want to get into the... We'll get through a second. Okay. We'll get through it a second.

Effectively, we'll get to Cady right in a second, but before it's Cady, we should just effectively point out. The Imperium realizes that this is not the last time this is going to come, the eye of terror is going to be a problem. So why don't we just put all of our military? And

they start fortify. I mean, it's comical. They do it like anime, Bugs Bunny, where they just go, well, why don't we just make everything that floats in as a rock, just put a gun on it, aim at the eye of terror. I mean, we're going to do a front of the sense, we're going to do a cast in the future or the different types of worlds that exist within the Imperium. But when your world's called a fortress world, it's not subtle. Well, the thing is, is about a

fortress world is one of the biggest things to say is your world no longer has anything else. They strip your world for, they literally pimp your ride. Yeah. They, they, if your world had water,

no, it doesn't. We don't care about the water. We'll be anything here. We're going to get guns and people to work. Yeah, we need guns and we need walls. Yeah.

That's it. And so they build a fortress world. And we probably should dive in to Cadya right now. Because Cadia is going to come up when you, if you talk about Abidon, you're going to talk about. Well, the thing is with Cadia,

do we want to immediately talk about? about the pilots. Well, let's get to kind of the history of Katie, I think it's going to do. So, Cadia, like a lot of the key worlds in 40K, was renamed. So, Katie had a different name before. And...

Well, Cadia wasn't exactly... This is one of those... One, let's just talk about the Lorgar thing on the side. Because literally, the entirety of the Imperium's religion is written by their devil, which is Lorgar, who initiated all of the Horacea. Yeah. And Lorgar, as we covered prior, got slapped by the emperor.

And when that happened, if you guys remember it from our cast, or if you didn't listen to the cast, whatever. You should. Yeah. But if you haven't. It's a pretty cool episode. Lorgar was upset and decided that he needed to go find out what the, is there a God, effectively?

Am I worshipping it? What is the truth, basically? And he ended up after kind of a little walkabout, he ended up on a planet that spoke a similar language to his planet and had this deep worship of the chaos gods. After experiencing time on that planet, he basically gained what he called the truth. This is it. He became the prophet of the chaos gods. The first human prophet. The first human prophet.

Right. And when he left that planet, he wanted to keep it a secret. So he bombed it from space and wiped it out. You can't figure out why I'm telling you that story. It's on you. That's Cadia. So that is this planet that the Imperium arrives to after the first Black Crusade and resettles it. Well, this place is super convenient.

And for you guard a way to settle it here. Cadia becomes, you know what, screwed, I'm going to give the Cadia people props. Yeah. Cadia becomes a planet of if you're a regular human, you better be a badass. Alcadia is hardcore. Like these people are the grittiest of grittiest dudes of all time. Because shit is always going down. Because even when there's not a crusade, stuff flies out of the broken sky and messes with you.

Yeah, I mean, like, you are the first nice house outside the bad neighborhood. Yes. Like, am I tired neighborhood? I mean, the worst neighborhood. Yeah. The challenge is that we're not. done talking about Canadian history, though.

Because we just did a little bit of history. Well, Katie also has a 65 million years ago history. Yes. Which, by the way, is a big deal for Kadia because Necrons were there.

Let's foreshadow a little bit because it's always fun. Canada was also a key world for the necrons against the old ones. Because necrons just made technology that foiled

the warp. Mm-hmm. which is how advanced they were. Also, when we do talk about neck rounds, we're going to talk about how ridiculous they are in the game and how they should be. But their technology, even though they don't utilize or access at all, the warp,

they just sined up anti-warp stuff. And this is going to be the standard part of a podcast where I go on my talk shoot on GW writing tangent. So according to the books, and this is the lore, all over Cadia, there are thousands of pylons, which is effectively a super tall pyramid, which is a super tall, narrow pyramid, all over Cady.

And that's just something people are kind of cool with. They didn't even bother. Yeah, they didn't bother. Now, they try to figure out what they are, but I remember when I first got into Warhammer and learning about the pylons, I thought, oh, there's like three or four of them. It's like this thing, like you go to Egypt,

there's a few pyramids, but it's not all of, like you go to Cairo, There's no pyramids in color. It's just there's an area where it's a few pyramids. No, they're freaking everywhere. The entire planet is covered in these giant black obsidian pylons that are hundreds of feet tall. And they also always point towards the eye of terror. Yeah, they all point out of terror and they just exist there.

And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Like, I just can't get over that. And I'm sorry, but I can't. They also have them at more places than just Cadia. Yeah, they're all of the, but Cedia has so many of them. We'll kind of dive into those. It is a point, good point. We haven't known one of the good points here is we definitely had to say this.

The necrons have not awakened yet. Yeah, this is pre-necrums. This is pre-necron. This is pre-necron. So to their credit, they don't know what these things are for. There's these giant pylons. And there are some cool stories about, like, the ad mech obviously see these and get just incredibly excited about it. And they can't do anything with it.

Because every time you try to, you can't break them, if you try to send a server, they just overloads. I was to say any machinery that used against it just blew up. Yeah. So they are there. But I guess Cadia's position in the universe made it better. So are we going to get back to Cadia? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to say, yeah, yeah, that's probably going to happen. So from here, we foreshadow it earlier. For anyone who don't know, anyone doesn't know, there are only 13 crusades so far. And the thing is, one got him a sword and also tested the testing. Yeah. Because he wanted to see, is the Imperium still a real thing? Right.

To be honest with you, because at that point, he doesn't actually know. He doesn't know if the Imperium just collapsed. He's been gone, you know. And again, just don't forget. He's rather persona non grata from the Imperium. So peeking your head out of the Eye of Terror, you don't do that without. He's also pretty well known. It's not like he just goes to the mall and just hangs out.

He's going to water, like, oh, you know, the Steve Bouchemi meme of like, hello, other Imperium members. Like, I, uh, what, what's up with the emperor today? How is he, how is he doing? Could you give me some, I don't know, maybe schematics? Anyone have a map of where Gilliman and the lion are right now? I just kind of would like to know. Just, just wondering, just curious.

So Crusades 2 through 12 are pretty quick. They're not, because they're, all of them have missions. They want to weaken certain, they either want to get. something or they want to weaken something. They were all done with a goal. Abadden again. He's got one purpose. I am going to reclaim the galaxy for me and my brethren. I cannot do that if the Imperium exists. The Imperium has me outnumbered, has me out equipped, has me out logistics. So I have to do these crusades, they're not their missions, to kind of pull a down piece by piece and weaken it so I can crush it. So that ends up being the

purpose of this. That being said, I would genuinely get bored covering all of these, these 10 Crusades. So we kind of picked a few that are fun. I mean, the fourth crusade is badass. That's what I'm saying. So we're just going to skip two and three. Because it's also like full on video game style. Yeah. Because the Don goes down to the Canadian gate himself. Yes. And it's made, the Canadian gate is at made of Adamantium. Because the. The Wolverine Comet came out well before 40K was written and why invent a new material when I have one that everyone already knows exists. Duh.

Yeah. So there's a gate made of adamantium. Again, it's made of Wolverine. And he full on animates it. Oh, yeah. He does it. He kills it with one swing. But before, and Brad's not given this story enough credit.

The entire of the Black Legion is bouncing off of this. Gate. True story. He's a giggle guard above it are shooting down and giggling. Like, ha, ha, you can't get in here. Monty Python. He literally shows up Fist of the North Star. Yeah, exactly. And just, don't be, actually sums up exactly like Fist of the North Star.

By the way, watch the movie. It's fantastic on it. He basically does what happens in it. He sends his forces, they all get killed, and then he just shows up and goes, what if I just hit this thing with my sword and splits this unsplittable gate in half? In a half. Yeah. Needless to say.

say everyone in that fortress dies. Morale went down quickly. Yeah, it didn't go well. I mean, I wish I laughed. I mean, this is a weird thing to laugh at, but these guys are sitting above the gate, just kind of giggling and shooting down, like ha, ha, ha, we're picking up like twigs.

And the gate explodes. And it's like, well, guess we're effed. Yeah. So those guys are probably pretty pissed. I call dibs on, I call dibs on losing the Black Legion, not Emperor's children. I'm going to shoot myself on the way down.

So that one's the success. We'll be right back after a quick break. The next one I like is the seventh crusade, also known as Go After Yourself Blood Angels. Which is funny because like sometimes, and then you know what? I gave him credit and I've said that they didn't retcon as much stuff as people think they read count,

especially with Don. But with this one. This one got redcon. I mean, he literally just goes, hey, look at Elvis. and sneaks a gigantic force out of the eye. Oh, this is hilarious. Yeah.

So Abadden, as we've said, the Imperium knows only one place Abadden can come out of, and that is the Eye of Terror. So they've built their entire fortress around it, and somehow Abadden's able to do the, oh, my God, look at that, and sneak out of it, not by himself. Yeah, he doesn't sound like a ship came out. Yeah. It's like ships get out of there all the time because it's a large area.

Right. But like he does... It's not a fleet. Yeah, he comes out with a giant fleet. And then just skips past the defenders. Doesn't go anywhere particularly of value, actually. He just turns of bounces all over the universe, creating conflict. Again, sometimes you have to kind of, when you're writing a timeline, you have to kind of fill bits in.

So this one, the Seventh Crusade, we first start reading, it starts off pretty lame, where it's like Abadens snuck out of the eye of terror and then kind of waged a shell. a shadow war all over the place. Well, it's again where he's testing, this time he's testing, to be honest with you, he's testing the logistics. Because he causes problems in a bunch of areas

and just kind of goes, how long is the police response time here? But then he found McCann, Macan, Macon, whatever. Yeah, when he, sorry, sorry, Blood Angels players, but this does not

go well for you guys. You get wrecked. So on McCann, the Black Legion bumps into the Blood Angels. And we say the Blood Angels, it's not a scouting party. It's the Blood Angels effectively. And the Black Legion wrecks them. They get Chuck Norris kicks. Now, to the Blood Angels credit, they're not ready for Cass.

Because I don't think that a lot of these legions even knew that Cass kind of was still around. I think they thought they were defeated. Yeah. They were never coming back. It's been forever since they came out. they're gone. I mean, a lot of Marines that were, there's not even that many that are alive

that still encounter. That's true, but the blood angels found out pretty quick that the Black Legend are back. I mean, I love that we're going to piss us so many Blood Angels players. Because the end of the story is actually wildly heroic. And

let me read the notes. Let me read the notes. A single character let a lightning ready to turn the tide of the battle. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, blah. That's what GW does. The Blaners are being wrecked, but luckily, one great hero led us, a lightning assault that somehow confused the enemy up,

that they just stop punching us in the face over and over again. Blood Angels players, we will be doing a Blood Angels. We'll do one. And actually don't have, you're not Tao. I don't have actually a hatred of you. But this story, I was like, basically the Blood Angel, the Black Legend was wrecking the Bull Angels all throughout an entire planet and one dude and 20 guys,

the like attack that block and joint and ran away. Like, no. But that's what happened because I don't write the stories. That being said, the blood angels, it took them centuries to get back from this. They got ruined by this. They had to their recruiting world window overdrive. Again, to their credit, they were kind of just there and going, hey, guys, the other day I was at the mall in, holy shit, are we being invaded?

What's happening? Oh, God, it's all of them. Yeah. Yeah, how many? Yes, all of them. Any of you who listen to our podcast know that I'm probably at some point, if I'm going to pick something to talk about, it's going to be the orcs. So you give me an opinion to talk about orcs?

I'm going to talk about orcs. This one's actually hilarious. It's the 11th crusade, which is pure damascery on the part of Avedon. Well, I think he was like, hey, what will happen if we mess with the orcs? And the answer was, shit might go bad. Well, no, that's the thing. That's what happened. His idea was, what if I could navigate my way through the warp?

Instead of using a regular navigator, what if I just strap a demon into the navigator's seat? Won't that go great? It did not. It did not. He got dropped in front of a walk. Like, legitimately. Like, right in front of it. And, holy crap of the orcs wreck his shit.

They never talk about what they were actually. trying to achieve in the 11th Crusade. The 11th Crusade was he strapped the demon into the Navigator. Yeah, but they were supposed to be doing something that didn't happen at all. I can promise you this one did not. If you're looking at ranking good,

like in order of like how well they, the Crusades did, the 11th is last. Yeah, it's last. Why orcs? Yeah. But to be fair, if you drop your fleet in front of a log, there's not a lot of situations. If you drop it in front of a wog, that you didn't know existed. It's also going to be not the greatest.

Fair enough. And so, yeah, long story short, the 11th crusade, orcs are better. I just did Wog Tactics interview last night, by the way, for everybody. Be Black Crusade. This is the current timeline. Let's, yeah, let's jump in. Well, actually, it's not even the current timeline. It's the past.

So this is, I actually had to look this up. So for, this is going to be a tough one. So when we get into 13th Black Crusade, one of the biggest challenges is that, We're at right around 40 minutes into this podcast, and we can't spend the next four hours or, no, forget four, 50-some hours talking about the Black Crusade. It should happen. So the Black Crusade in the game.

Is the culmination of all of the Crusades? But the 13th Black Crusade in the game was a little less than five years. That's about the, from its very early start to, you know, its culmination. Was it right about five years? Yeah. however in this game timeline of real to our time. It was 17. Yeah.

Yes. So this is the 13th Black Crusade. And I have notes here because what's going to, the reason I'm doing this little side note here for everybody is that we're going to have to skip a lot of stuff here because, just because we're going to focus on Abadon in the 13th. It was literally third edition to eighth edition. Yeah. Slash ninth edition.

This was. So the 13th Black. For those who, oh, sorry, yeah, for the Black Crusade, those who are saying,

in, during the, quote, in quotes, we got the Drukari, the Necrons, the Tao,

ad mech, thousand sons, death guard, world eaters, these are codexes that were launched. Blood angels, death watch,

dark angels, a couple different times, black Templars, gray knights, and knights, all were released during the 13th Black Crusade.

And also have stories that involved the 13th Black Crusade. Some of these guys got multiple codexes in this period of time. So for those of you, you're like, oh, they're coming to 30th Black Crusade, we could make a podcast on the 13th Black Crusade

and do years. So for anyone who's like, hey, you skipped something, we know. But what we decide to focus on here is the Abadon story primarily. Yeah, like just what he did, not everything that's happening. Yeah.

So it's a big deal. He wants to, I mean, one we already talked about, he needs to kick out the emperor because no emperor means no astronomical, which means no travel. Yeah. For the Imperium. And he needs to effectively start isolating and picking apart flanks of the Imperium. Right. And the best way to do that, I mean, you can always break the. sky.

Let's just break the sky. I think the note I made here is Katie a Mustang. Oh, did I skip that? My bad. Well, so Abidon hasn't been like super, he's been decently successful, but he's still, Katie is a thorn

in his side. Oh, yeah. Holy shit, Avedon shows up with, hey man, why don't we just make our ships bigger, like how much bigger? How about like we'd like make planets seem small? Or, and more importantly, how about I invade with

everything in the eye of terror. Everything. Yeah, but also, again, he came out with ships with guns that just were supposed to blow up planets. Yeah. When Blackstone Fortresses are the small things that you're bringing?

Yeah, this was in invasion of invasions. Some cool piece about this. When we say he brought everybody, he literally brought everybody. He got, he killed all of Angron's champions. about olivang well he does he does a bunch of pre-quest yeah did he he he kills olivangas champions he he gives um portarian the hand of darkness i should probably read the notes he does a bunch of weird shit with fulgram uh yeah and i couldn't that the zin stories are just confusing

they're supposed to be the zing stories are time travel stories unfortunately they're a little bit weird but he does he he goes back and forth and he he legitimately does it's not considered time travel what it is because it's warp time yeah and just And so this is where, like, so he gets, for those people who played during this edition, this is why you were able to actually align random forces. It had some downsides in the later part of the addition of Taunar. But anyway, of Taunar, sorry, of Taldar. But what you were able to do is the idea here at this point was that chaos was a truly unified force.

You were having, you know, noise Marines were fighting next to playing Marines, next to Legion air, is this was a true fighting force. He came out. The goal here that he had was to break Cadya. And he crushes Cadia. We should probably jump now from our earlier foreshadow to foreshadow part two of the Cadium pylons. Well, he, Necron,

Necron, Abidon basically gets, one of the Zeech gifts he gets, is knowledge. And he finds out what these pylons are, what they're made of, what their actual true purpose is, which is effectively to keep chaos out, keep the warp out of the inventory. Yeah. And the story I was reading about,

that's kind of, I mean, the inference I made on the story here is that every time Abidon came out of the eye of terror with his forces, he always bounced when he hit Kadia. And the reason he bounced is, is because Kavia was immune to the warp. All of his powers just would dissipate.

So he became much more one-on-one there. And with the imperial defenses, again, it's an imperial fortress world. It's probably designed by Rogel Dorne. This is not something you're going to break easily. Now, imagine you go in there at 100% power and you land at 50% power. It's just going to wreck you. Now. And so these pylons did that.

No one knew this. These were just, even the Imperium were just like, We're just super lucky. This is his gift. He gets the knowledge of what the hell this is. And one of the quests was he went and got Blackstone. Yeah. And what happens is,

Katie is not only is it making them bounce when they attack, but the eye of terror, as we discussed, this comes from the birth of Slanesh. Slanesh, this is the creation of a chaos god. This is the ultimate kind of merging of the material and the immaterial. function. If you guys go, go Google a map of this era. It's not that big. And the reason why is

Katie, these, the, the, this thing could have, what should have been, should have been growing the entire time. Yeah, was held in check by Katie. And Abidon knows that and decides, it's a lot easier to invade a galaxy if I have more than one way in. How about, how about I destroy it? Yeah, let's just remove it. And so the note I, I add to here is a bad decided to use option B for this place. And the B stands for Blackstone Fortress. And these are the weirdest combo of tech and warp because Blackstone suppresses warp,

but somehow he has it cybernetically. The note I made here is I tell everyone, just Google this because I can't describe it. These ships are actually super cool looking. The visuals of the ships are amazing. Yeah, they're giant, wacky space stations. Yeah. They look super cool.

Google, I don't want to spend 20 minutes trying to explain something where you can... But they do. Blackstone Fortress are awesome. Yeah, they're super cool. Also, Eldred had to be a retcon. Yeah. Good game, too, but we'll get to that in another cast. So, yes.

It's also the best. If you're going to buy a box and you get one for the old boxes on eBay, the Blackstone Blackreach box. Oh, yeah. The Black Beach was great. It was fantastic. So much stuff for the price. Mm-hmm. So the final story of Blackstone Fortresses are,

Everyone's aware of them. The Imperium finds them all the time. And they just turn them into space stations. They just don't really know what they are. They don't know the significance. It's like if you literally went, hey, I found a nuclear missile. I put some wheels on it and I put an engine

and I just drive it around because I don't know what else. Or a megatruck scrub jet. True. I think that's literally what an orc would do like, this is my new ride. Yeah. What happens you crash it? I won't know.

Yeah. This is my, I was waiting to this part because this is probably my favorite part of the notes. Abedon wanted them for themselves. He tracked down six of them. Eldar felt differently. Yeah. As much as the Imperium might not know what Blackstone Fortresses are,

the Eldar very much so knew what these things were. The guys that literally fought a race-ending war with them. With them, yeah. Because what Blackstone Fortresses really are, they're made by the old ones. These were, these were, they were the, they never make it clear. But my impression is that these were spaceships, the old ones, used during the war in heaven. Yeah.

And they're, I'm saying there's such a paradox, though, because they're made of a non-warp and metal, but they're controlled by psychic powers. Yeah, but they don't diminish the warp at all. Right. Why it's weird, because Blackstone should go one where it's. That's what's saying. It suppresses it, but it doesn't suppress it at all. I'm really terrified. So GW is going to discover the podcast and is fine that I just.

this shit talk, everything. And all of a sudden, I'll sign it for events in BCP and just not be invited anymore. But it's his shit writing, guys. Anyway, he does eventually pull off two of them. One of them becomes his flagship. He needs it the will of eternity. And he does legend, by the way, read these stories. Oh, this is the beauty of having 17 years of the game devoted to it, the writing's fantastic.

And the books are good. Just the Codex stories. Codex stories are amazing. The Blackstone Forge, there's actually a lot of videos on this, too. People do a lot of the artwork and do it. You can just YouTube it. I mean, don't leave us yet, but. Yeah.

But it's pretty high, damn awesome. And this is just the kind of, while this is all going on, because 17 years of the game, the orcs are sensing something. So they're getting uppity. This is the first from the cow. break into the system. The Tao, well, they start, they do their phase four? Sure.

I don't even know why. Who cares? But the Tao basically start their last big push. So you've got, and you've got two sections of town. Now you've got the Farsite and Claves, and then you've got Shadow Sun and the rest of the Tao doing their next push. Dracari start just getting rowdy. Yeah, blaring out of the way.

The Dracari are just taking advantage of the fact that people are not paying attention. They're like, well, we can fight as unfair as we usually fight, but even better. We should grab lots of people. The two big ones, though, are... They're not two big ones. They're a huge one. Yeah, you're right. These are kind of game-changing ones are the necrons.

The necrons start rising and start reclaiming entire sectoms of the galaxy. Like, hey, this is our shit. Give it back. And also, a lot of these worlds, oh, yeah, the necrons are buried deep within the core of the worlds and just pop up and you're just standing there at your job going, well, this is pretty awful. Yeah, there's a monolith coming out of the ground and these robots are coming out. Oh, God, we're all dead. Okay, cool. Yeah. The other one is now the tyrannid timeline's always a little bit tricky because it's been retcon. I think several times. Yeah, I mean, I personally, I can be wrong.

I think the tyrannid time has been retcon more than any. This is, I think that you're really pushing into Leviathan almost right now. It's, We're before this, I guess. No, this is this to be pre-Leviathan. Because they're going to get the first, they're going to be hit because they accelerate after. Yeah, because the Leviathan is actually coming towards the souls second. Right.

That's where they're going. So they're coming from the bottom, but there's two big waves of TNivations. Yep. And then you've got this, I guess you could call it the third, which is the Kronos, which is the one that just becomes anti-WIC. Exactly. So effectively, this is, this actually is good writing. GW was pretty time wrote the galaxy on fire.

Oh, the galaxy is a trash fire. It is a nightmare. You are, there is nothing but. Yeah, if you were Imperium, you just got two end bosses showed up at the same time. And the ultimate optional boss,

which is chaos, which is you have to do after you complete the game once, this is when you fight it. They're just decided to make their big push. And oh, yeah, you still have orcs and Tao and Jakari. and Crawford are still the enemy to the Imperium, even though they're trying to fight chaos.

Yeah, there's a weird part of the story where they align, and I'm not even to cover that. So we'll get then to what actually happens. And kind of this is the final assault. This is what's going to bring us from where we were to the modern era of 40K. And this is a baden, we're going for it.

I am coming out of the I of Terra. The Imperium knew he was coming. They're actually, all the stories, do show. Typhus was doing his thing. There's enough stuff coming out of the eye terror. This is where we go, if you want to be, because I said at the beginning, mortarian, or, blah, grandfather Nergel was at his lowest at the beginning we were talking about. Grandfather Nergel is at his most powerful right now because they have the plague that's ravaging huge areas of the galaxy. Yep. And it is wrecking shit. And so they know they're supposed to be

geared up. This is one of those things where you think. you're ready and then you just realize you're woefully unprepared because they think that they're getting the crusades and the fights they've gotten before but this is Abidon's end game so he shows up with everyone

like literally everyone and they are I mean and this is again we have to it's so hard to cover all this night lords are running I love that you put night lords were night lorning which means that they're just causing shit. You're just just creating havoc. There are plagues everywhere. And they also sent the forces of Nergal are actually by themselves. Yeah, they're elsewhere in the galaxy,

great problems. So to draw forces there. You've also, as we said, the Xenosa arises. So if you're in the Imperium, you're losing sectors to Necrons, who again, aren't invading. They're coming up out of the actual planets. You can't even stop them coming in. Yeah, they're just there. I believe ball has the ball burned well before this point. But the tyranny is. The tyrannid invasion is very apparent. Well, the tyrantons are ramping it up. Because the tyrantons have been fought back several times now. But the tyranins are now basically doing what tyrantz do, which is adapting and coming back much stronger.

And so Abadden comes out. And this is the moment. He is there and he, this is it. Kadia is going to fall. Kedia doesn't fall. Kedia gets ruined. Now, one person, we can't talk about the fall of Kadia. without talking about.

And I didn't realize, I'll be honest, I didn't know his full name was Lord Kestellan, Urcacar, E. Creed. By the way, if you're going to name someone, why have the random initial amongst four other words? I mean, Lord Kestellon is a title. I know, but Ersaccar Eager, just Edward. We know you're British. We know his name's Edward.

Like, it's you. You know it's Eunice. It's not you. It's Edward. It's got to be Edward. They're British. Creed's a badass. Creed's amazing.

And, like, Creed is. is through those of you who don't play Imperial Guard, when they finally killed off Creed, spoiler alert, and actually really obsessed a lot of guard players because he was such an amazing character. And he's been there since the beginning. And Creed's cool. I'm going to quick hit Creed.

Creed is a, it was a lowborn who was found after one of the chaos invasions of Katie. He was born on Canada, who rises through the ranks by just being, the best fighter and all of the astramalotomy. He's also just like wildly, the guy that like, that ends up being the guy that's alive after everybody dies. Yeah.

Several times. And he's incredible because he is, he's not only is he an incredibly tough soldier. He's a master technetician. Love doing traps, all this stuff. There's no one better to be in charge of Kadia than Creed. And Creed does push back of Adon's forces quite a few times. You're going to get people that they're going to say solar mechanics.

Curius is going to show up and slap you. It's fine. Creed's cool. Whatever. Now he has his daughter. I know one. However, this is my least favorite part of your notes. But it's true.

This is what he did. Oh, that's why. Sorry. I forgot why Brad's upset. Yeah, we're getting a part of my notes. And I know my Brad's upset. So Avedon comes out with his Blackstone Fortress and all of his forces. And he's going to go, his plan is to basically take all the Blackstone Fortress's

guns. and just blow up Katie. Also, the Blackstone Fortress, again, are like, they went, the Death Star, cool. We're going to mount that gun as one of our guns. Yeah. However, and Brad, what are my notes say? Boo. My buddies, the imperial fist had other ideas.

They did. There's another super, super spaceship in the galaxy called the phalanx. I mean, I have to admit the phalanx is bad. The phalanx is, as we've discussed, prior there was an era called the dark age of technology, which is all forbidden knowledge, everything should be burned. Unless you find the largest starship in the galaxy. It's wildly the biggest thing.

This thing, my description of it is it's bigger than a Death Star, but it's built like a Gothic cathedral. Yep. And it has, oh, it's got some guns on it. It also looks cool as shit. It looks cool as shit. And again, Google it. It's called the phalanx.

just type it P-H-A-L-A-N-X, 40-K. You'll see some... I'll say, definitely put 40K, are you going to be looking at a lot of Greek formations? Yeah, otherwise, why is they telling me to look at guys holding spears? No, different phalanx. Now, to make Brad happy again... Yay!

The way this works is Blackstone Fortress comes out, and who decides to go in? Yolo Swaggids, Space Wolves, go, what would be the best way to handle this? punch people inside the Blackstone Fortress. Let's go into the Blackstone Fortress and turn its shields off. You're like, what's our plan to get out? That's a stupid question.

Shut up. Punch everyone. Shut up, nerd. We're doing this. What are you a dork? We're doing this. And they do. They actually fight their way through the Blackstone Fortress to, I guess,

the big on-off switch in the middle of it. I mean, whatever, Obi-1 did it. I know. I was just going to say there's definitely no handrails. Yeah, there's no handrails. OSHA is so bummed about all these shifts. Exactly. They turn off the shields.

As soon they turn off the shields, the phalanx. Just goes, buck wild. I'm ripping this thing to shreds. And Abadden's ship just takes a beating. This is also an epic, but we're not doing this justice. There is shit going down right now. This is, to be fair, this is the culmination of everything. It's more, and it is maybe the most important battle of the 40K.

History. Besides the assault on terror, this is, this is the, I mean, this is a huge battle. I mean, the difference is the assault on terror, there's a lot more involved here. I mean, the difference with the two of them is at this moment, almost the entire galaxy is involved in this one battle. I think that there's more. There are necrons on Acadia trying to activate the pylons. I am given, I basically, you guys read the books. I'm not doing, I'm not going this deep. Yeah, there's, there's just so much happening right now. Yeah, there's Elder here. Yeah, the Eldar are fighting next to Manfreds right here right now.

Necrons are on the planet with the Imperium trying to activate the pylon. It is, you are on ticking, ticking bomb. The clock is running down quick and everyone's trying to save the day. It's a really cool story. From a badness perspective, he's on his big, big ship. His shields get turned off by Team Jackass. You know, Go wolves. Team Jackass.

Go wolves. And then the biggest starship anyone's ever seen, just like blasting holes in his favorite ship. And, but again, a badden doesn't lose. He has a plan. And my plan is to destroy Cadia. And if you mess with my plan A, my plan B, which was Blackstone Fortress, now becomes plan B.

Is it going to go big or go home? I am going to shove my Blackstone Fortress into Cadia. And a fairly brisk rate of speed. Yes. he accelerates to warp speed, you know. He definitely goes plaid. Yeah. And launches himself into Acadia, which breaks the planet.

And what, well, what's on the planet? Well, what was on the planet? True story. Pilots. Also, other, in the best part about this is, and this is why I think he starts winning the day. He was going to win the day anyways. He had such a huge force.

But I don't think that the rest, and no one else knows the significance besides the necrons of the pile. Well, I keep having to backtrack this. Eldred, the necrons. It depends which book you read at which time. True story. But for the most part, no one understands how important KD was. I would say 99.99.99% of galaxy just is like, oh, it's just a convenience.

Because once these pylons are gone, it is go time for the eye of terror. Because the eye of terror goes, I'd like to be way bigger. This would be awesome. You call it the eye of terror because it was kind of shaped like an eye. It was a, it was a rift. Yeah, somewhat oblonged circle and one side of the galaxy that over the coming months stretches completely across the galaxy. It literally cuts the galaxy in half. It is a, it is now a huge eye.

but it becomes a long it's a big eye and it's struck to me Google it and it structures all the way across the galaxy splitting it in half and this is really critical for one simple reason Abadon is waging his wars

out of the war and now he went from a small place. He's literally going from a door to an infinite amount of places he could come he can show up anywhere now basically which

are no impis. So now there's no imperial fortress holding him at bay. He can show up and he has literally, you go, hey, where's he going to start his attack? You go from one side of the galaxy of the other, because that's how big the rift is. It goes, cuts it in half. It's such a big deal on it. And so from there, this was the point we decided we were going to kind of cut the story, which takes us right to, is this the start of eighth edition?

Start of eighth edition. This is where we start doing arcs and everything else. Yeah, and so we get Primaris Space Marines, which people are going to be hit and miss on it. They hear me say that word. But this is where, this takes us the way I'd call almost the modern version of 40K, mostly because it was 17 years of the game. This is the first, this is actually,

for people that are like in the, that are big in the lore, myself included, obviously, this is very exciting because this is the first time in almost 20 years that we move. the storyline for... Yeah, we actually should point out, this all happened in the year 40,999,99.

Yep. We are now technically playing Warhammer 41K. Yep. The new edition has moved us through, but we're not renaming, because that's just dumb. And the thing about this, this is just exciting

because we finally push the storyline forward. And to give GW props, they're doing a great job of moving the storyline. Yeah, they're actually doing it much more aggressively now, and we're getting plays. since we're not just stuck in the endless thing. So just to kind of recap the last three episodes,

we started with Abadden was born, just a son of a warlord. In a shitty planet? A shitty planet rose up the ranks of the most powerful, right there was the most powerful legion in the Imperium, is at the right hand as that legion in a bunch of those turn chaos, lose, loses his way completely. Like his will to live, not even just, he's not of his will to live, it's his direction of life.

He's, he has no rudder. Then in our second cast, we just, we covered how he then found himself, reinvigorated himself, and created a new legion out of it. That's when he became Abadon. Yeah. And now we're showing how what he then, how he shaped the universe was from here. At this point, it was his universe to shape, and he did. He shaped the universe, who, and broke it in half. So I hope you guys enjoyed that.

Hope it was easy enough to follow. After some, it's been kind of, I will call it a little, it's not dark, dark, but a little bit dark. We're going to have fun the next one. We're going to do Rogue Traders because Brad and I have been discussing. We don't want to just be telling you guys stories because you can just buy a book and read a damn book. Rootraders are going to be fun. I'm looking forward to this episode, quite a bit. We're going to do a bit more kind of quit.

We're also going to argue a bunch. I was looking at these notes. I was last night where I was getting ready for this. And I went, I don't believe in that. Yeah, we're going to have fun with it. So again, new websites up, the 40KLorecast.com. We're going to be adding more stuff to it. As always, please like and subscribe to this, especially on Spotify and iTunes.

It does help us quite a bit. We now have the Discord, which is gaining a bit more traction, more people are interacting there. You're going to see us putting some more stuff up there in the coming future. And for those of you who love my incredible ability to audio edit, we have actually added a Patreon. We do want to upgrade from our current system of two microphones I bought on Amazon in my basement to something that maybe has audio editing capabilities. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Two dope brothers in a microphone is what I like.

Yeah, it's nice. No. So anyway, we have those things up. All the links are in the show notes, but please come through. The most important piece is the interaction. We do want you guys interacting with us. The Discord seems to be the most popular of these. It really does help a lot if you, for a future, because we're planning a lot of the future based on a lot of everybody asking us things, to be honest with you. With all that, this is John Barsadie and Brad Chester. This guy. Thanks for listening. See you next week.