The 40k Lorecast - Episode 23 - Rise of the imperial cults and creation of the Ecclesiarchy

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

 On this episode we cover the rise of the worship of the emperor. From thew lowly cults on random worlds through the full blown Ecclesiarchy. We also dive into the reign of blood, creation of the sisters of battle, and some fun side stories. Including a great story of the Custodes doing some pretty cool crap.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 with me, John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. All right. Rogue Traders was nice, fun, upbeat episodes. So how do we follow that up with the origins of the Inquisition and the Imperial Truth? Oh, I'm sorry. So you want to do the exact opposite of happiness and fun?

Let's just remove all fun and joy. Let's just kick some puppies. So today we're actually going to cover, when you want to talk about the Inquisition, it's hard to really do it unless you cover the rise of the Imperial. cults. So we're going to cover how the Imperium went from a purely and excessively anti-religion or

empire. It is a big deal about this because we actually cause strife. We might have pushed the Horace heresy into being by the fact that bad English dad was so against any sort of non-secular worship that he censored his

I don't know, wildly religious son. I do want to use the quote. As I'm going to take credit for this as always. John's spoiler alert. He goes, what was the origins of it? 90% corruption and 100% awful. This is the origin of the imperial cults is we're going to tell a story today.

And in every point you're going to go, yeah, I totally saw that coming. In fact, the entire story, even some of the segues will do and the side stories will do are all, oh yeah, that's totally predictable. It is boss mode, though, that pure, we're not supposed to do this. for doing this turned out to make the guy that said, don't do this into the most powerful being in the galaxy? That's true. There is, we're not going to cover this episode, but Brad brought it up.

The emperor may or may not be powered by constantly sacrificing psychers to him. It's also belief in the warp. Yeah, I believe in the warp. And that may, actually, that probably would not happen if everyone didn't think he was their god. Yep. So anyway, a little bonus teasing. for a future one. But let's start off with kind of the ordomalius. So the ordomalius are,

because GW is terrible at naming thing, the order of the religion. Well, it's the biggest thing is, is the anti, because we split up later on. We get more. We get, well, we get yes orders. Yeah, we get orders. We get a couple. We get a couple big orders, but this is the first one. And it's also the deathbed, what you're supposed to do. And then they literally used it as a game of telephone. And when I heard he said doing this, and he's literally on the throne going, that is super not even close to what I said. I mean, this is actually the timing.

Well, we'll pause on this. It is the anti-chaos. It is the, we need to fight chaos. And it gets wildly bastardized. And by the way, quick, they went like zero to 100. Oh, 100%. So the, Fordomalius comes from a very funny place in my mind. So as soon as the flight of the Eisenstein eventually gets back to Earth, thanks to Rogel Dorn, not blowing them up, although he definitely was about to.

Fine. You know what I'm going to say for this episode? If you're listening, I'm sorry about hating on Rogel Dorn. He's not the worst prime arc. He's just close. As soon as I get back, the emperor, of course, deducts instantly what's really going on. It's chaos. So he tells Malcador, all right, we have to do something. And they decide to bring the most loyal members of the Imperium, sort of. Also, the plan was also that they were going to enforce the imperial truth throughout the galaxy. But the imperial truth was wildly a lot stretched. Well, it's a lie, but it's also, it's not even the right truth. Yeah. Well, the part that's the front of us is, if he does this, at the start of the Horace heresy.

Actually, not even the start, because by the time the Eisenstein got back to Earth, Istvans are all done, horse moving towards Earth. So Malcador goes and basically, he can't go to the whole galaxy to find the most loyal people. He just grabs whoever can get to Earth

like the next couple of days. Could you swing over here real quick? Yeah, we get all the best people that are in sight of me. Yeah, so we got that. So it brings in 12 people. Four of them are, imperial lords, so just

members of the Imperium, and eight are Astardis. The imperial lords become the Inquisition, and the Astardis become the Grey Nights. Spoiler alert. They do, but we're going to get eggs down out of stuff. There's so much more that goes into that. Well, of course, yeah, I'm just doing the, we're going to skip away from them. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just, so that you know, because we're going to, I already feel that the tomatoes being thrown at me. And you forgot. I know, we're getting there. There's a lot of things that went on. Also, 10,000 years of whoopsie on Titan. But my favorite part of this, though, is that they had this meeting, like, when Forrest had entered the soul system. Yeah.

It was like, hey, this is what we're going to do. And this meeting is basically to create how we're going to fight chaos going forward. Also, they literally wrote the world's shittiest constitution. Oh, yeah. It was just bad, bad. Chaos, bad. Emperor. Yeah.

Well, it also says. that, and they do this multiple times when they do the Inquisition, because what it says on the bottom line is it has a whole bunch of other stuff, but what it says at the bottom line is you can do anything you need to do to stop out chaos. And they went, what does that mean? Well, over the next 11,000 years, that gets interpreted pretty wildly. This is the thing where it gets, I find it hilarious, but again, it's all made up story, so who cares. But effectively,

you bring these people in and you give them absolute power and absolute authority, but you do it with the existence of the emperor. You're supposed to have somebody that can veto it. Because the emperor is there. Whatever you do, he knows you do it. And he's going to stomp it out

as he thinks is crazy. Emperor and Malcador, fast forward, I don't know, two weeks. And the length of them don't exist anymore. Yeah. You can just walk in and be like, the emperor told me this. You're like, sure, maybe. You can't tell me not.

And I actually feel bad for these people because they're being set there and said, okay, the last thing they're told by the person that they're most loyal to, basically most love in the entire world is, I need you to save the galaxy for me. And I need you just to go out there and stamp out chaos. And then before they ask the follow-up question, he died. Yeah, he's not dead. But throughout history, sorry.

we're skipping ahead, but I'm still throwing it out there. Because all those people went, I am super loyal. I'm going to do this for you. And I am also going to increase my personal power by exponential number. How else can I do this thing for you? Without give myself unfettered power and authority, it would be impossible for me to follow through on your greatest wishes. And anybody that thinks that I shouldn't do this is definitely a follower of chaos. Oh, completely.

I mean, that's rule number one. I am here to remove chaos. Therefore, if you don't like me, you must be for chaos. Everything's binary. Come on. This is easy. We have a bunch of people given unfettered power and no ability to check on their power, but also to give them a little bit of credit,

they don't even know how to check their own power. The person they were relying on to say, hey, am I doing a good job? Is entombed in a golden throne. The problem was this bad British dad. always gave these wild, you know, do this, because in the end, he felt that he was going to be there to say something about it. Like, I don't care if I said he's got unlimited power. Unlimited power means unlimited power until I decide it's not. One interesting thing about this is they're given this unlimited power and this unlimited everything, but it doesn't really mean much if you think

about it because it's a, it's 12, it's, you know, four people. It'll grows from there, obviously. they need some sort of mechanism they can lean on to really enforce and gain the true power. Otherwise, they're just rogue traitors. They're people moving from system to system. They have to, they have to single-handedly shoot the chaos worshipper on the head. So what they needed to do in order for them to grow is to have something they could lean back on for their power. And that's where we're going to get into next, which is the rise of the imperial cults. Because if we didn't, if the emperor hadn't, it's my opinion,

but I'm probably right. If the emperor had never become a deity to the Imperium, I don't think the Inquisition, the Ordomalius, could have wielded as much power because they're out there saying, what they're really doing is trying to stamp out chaos, but they can kind of ride the church. Well, they also put out the fact of

once he became a living, a living martyr, but they can, said that he basically just, he was living down amongst us for a short time. And the whole writ, which is still the best, is because the entirety of the religion was based on Lord Gar. What Lord Gar wrote. Yeah. But they effectively said he was, an emperor always was and always has been. He was just here for basically a small time to guide us. And now he is fighting a battle in heaven versus evil for us at all times.

I'm not making that up. That is exactly what was thrown down. This isn't like even paraphrasing. This is what they said. He is literally in the sky as a constellation, fighting the battle versus the forces of chaos. And the worst part about it is, as much as he didn't want it to be.

It ends up later on being true. Oh, I mean, my favorite part of this entire story, we're going to cover over this next. cast, maybe two casts, is the emperor spent his, you know, all of his power years stamping out exactly this thing. Oh, 100%. And he is entombed and effectively mute, but he can see everything that happens in the Imperium. So we've had to watch this happen and is probably just there just screaming in a muzzle. Like, well, he's literally, well, the emperor, we'll go into this later. This is a much different cast, because the emperor's psyche is like basically shattered after the horse thing. So he's

there in multiple forms being real pissed about like I am now exactly what I told everybody not to do and I am the focal point of it. Exactly. So let's start. Let's jump into the rise of there. They call them the imperial cults. We can call it the the god emperor, whatever you want to call it. But effectively, as we were just discussing quickly with the Inquisition of origins, there is a power vacuum. And this power vacuum is probably nowhere more apparent than the Lords of Terra. They suck so much. Because, remember, Gilliman changes them over, too, at the start of this. But that's a side note.

The Lords of Terra have no idea what to do. Everyone who was in charge, I mean, the note I made was they were all administrators. Everyone who was on the Council of Terra was there as an administrator to make sure whatever the emperor and or Malacador told them to do. They made stuff happen. Yeah, that's it. You literally gave the lords of bureaucracy and you were now all powerful throughout the galaxy. Weird shit happened.

They had no idea of what they were doing. I mean, I do love Gilliman, but he was incredibly stupid about this. Because Gilliman, don't forget, had a moment. Like me say, don't forget, you all read it. But if you haven't read it, At the, right after the emperor is in tune and Gilliman arrives, he restructures the imperial government. And instead of removing the Lords of Terra, he actually gives them more power. He has more power.

And he also gives them official more power. They had like a stamp before. Now they have a full declaration from the Lord of the Imperium, effectively. The guy that was going to run the other Imperium, if shit went around. that he now back them, and now these legendary pencil pushers are now wielding, I just got backed by effectively one of the gods of the emperor. I've got, you can't question my authority. I do whatever I want, but they don't, I mean, the emperor wasn't, I mean, he was,

let me say it differently. The emperor was a bad leader to his sons, let alone random. dude who's in charge of legitics. Well, they have no idea what he's trying to do. No. Emperor is also playing 4D chest and not letting anybody else know that he's playing. Yeah. He is, these guys just come in.

So what is, where would your focus be? It's on money and military. That's all that the Lords of Terricot gave a crap about was what's the money, what's the military. So all of the emperor's goals, like, from a civilization standpoint, throw those in the garbage. Which is weird, which is fun, fun. It's not really fun. Whoa, bad word for that one.

But a big deal about this is that it actually works in the beginning. It works and it doesn't work. It works because they had to reclaim all these planets. Yes, systems, not even planets. Whole systems have to be reclaimed. So you're basically crusade part two, but shittier. Right. And you have to go about retaking all of this stuff back.

And so war in logistics is what you're doing. The problem is that the entire time you're letting the social fabric of the Imperium is just a trash fire. Yeah. And that opens up. It's just so bad. And then they literally, again, they start pushing this almost immediately, to be honest with you. They start pushing the fact that the emperor is a god. And this already was going on very in the back.

I say low-key. It's literally trillions of people. just low key the background trillions of people had done this so yeah but let's jump into that so when we the worship of the emperor actually started well before the 31st millennia like really during the crusades it started actually before lorgar even was getting into it this was popping up places and it makes sense if you think about it like if you're on some some planet that spent the last i don't know thousand plus years fighting for survival in the dark.

The dark and someone shows up with a bunch of warships. A dude with a halo over is. He shows up in golden armor. Golden armor. And all of a sudden, all of the things that were trying to kill you are now dead. Like instantaneously, too. Like he laughably walked through 90% of them. For some weird reason, worshipping that person as a god.

Yeah. It became real quick. It's pretty easy jump. And the thing is, we talk about it. We have to go a little bit on Lorgar, though. because Lorgar did promote this. He was the biggest salesman of this. Oh, the word bearers actually,

that's the thing. The word bears took it in the world they went to and actually put churches. They put, you know, statues. They literally had giant statues. And he was also pretty hardcore about it because he's like, you worship the emperor or we murder you. So you were already like, I could worship this guy.

And he's like, a guy also has a gun bigger than my body and said we will get killed if we don't. is like, I'm pretty, I'm probably going to go there. What, what days am I supposed to show up? Oh, I'll show up on those days. When you go into the beginning, you fall into three categories where people, some people just have like reverence for him. They worshiped him as they like, as a figure, like, like, hey, this guy came in and he

saved us. I like him, you know, and so if he told him to do something, I'm going to take his word for it because the last time he came through, he really helped me out. Well, it becomes a big, and I'm going to go on, screw it. I'm just going to kind of go on a side tangent here. You can't, I can't be stopped. I'm going into fifth year of crazy. Brad's going to tangent.

That's the way it works. This is one of the biggest reasons that everything kicks so hard on the imperial cult. One, it was already low-key, again, low-key and trillions. You know how it is. Low-key trillion, no big deal. It's already happening throughout, because the galaxy is just so gigantic.

I cannot stress again how big the imperial, the Milky Way is, period, but like the Imperium side of this. Once the emperor is entombed, and Malacador's dead, and you set up the high lords of suck, who do all this, but the tale gets told, and it spreads like wildfire through the galaxy that the emperor fought the gods of chaos and triumphed for us.

He died for us, and now he is a living, living God. He's entombed on Terra. and that becomes the truth, period. Like now, now, and no one's doing anything about this because before the emperor had full doctrine of, we are not, no religion, period. Now there's no one to tell you that because that's no one's saying to not do that anymore.

Well, yeah, and I think that's where kind of this starts to grow because it was saying before, it starts off with reverence, and then it moves into just kind of reverence meets fealty because the reverence is a hey this guy asked me do something so i'll do it the next one becomes the yeah we kind of owe this person our life like like they like so whatever whatever i have to do i'll do it for him and also he did just obliterate all of my enemies and like three seconds maybe i don't want him mad at me you know but of course that leads the last one and this just takes time of religion and so this religion that breads disgusting comes they don't

these they were worshipping him when he was walking around then to Brad's point, he dies, quote unquote, ascends, and you run it, and now you've got a really good story. So they're everywhere. And it spreads fast, fast. Well, it has to because. Well, they also have to give him the counter story. There's two things that go with this. One, you have to, you don't want people to know about chaos, but you have to say what just happened.

Right. So you have to say that the emperor basically took, took on all the forces of evil and won, period. You know, he died for you. He sacrificed himself. He sacrificed himself to defeat them. There's no way he's doing that without being a supernatural. He's a godlike being. He already is, to be honest.

The difference between the emperor and the chaos gods, I mean, it's not significant. I mean, as we go on, it is not. In the 40K. We get to 40K, he is just a bird. He's basically Slenesh 2.0. Not that same realm of thing. Not Slenash, Slonash, but it's that piece of he. was birthed and he is being fed and yeah. But the thing is is that this is spreading really quick.

But the High Lords, effectively, the original origins of the Inquisition also have to figure out how are we going to control the masses? We don't have the infrastructure. We don't have the logistics. How are we doing this? Well, we're going to do it by the fact that you should be worshiping the emperor. and worshiping the emperor means that here's the things that you need to do because the emperor is your God. Yeah, and they need to keep the populate, the high loads of terror, as we said, they don't care about this. They don't know it matters. They're just happy the people have something to do that doesn't involve rebellion. So we'll start with the very first one, which is the temple of the Savior emperor.

This is kind of the most origin of it all. it was on terror. And so right after the... Big shock. Yeah, big shock. Right after their emperor dies, this thing blows up. And when we say it blows up within about a... In about 120 years.

It's like a 99% belief. Yeah. Well, to be fair, to be far, uh, demons just were here like a minute ago. You saw them. Yeah, you went. Oh, like things like hell showed up outside your door. You're like, well, that's bad. That's not.

And you're like, how? how did we not all die? Because as soon as the emperor quote unquote died, not died wherever you want to call it, all those demons disappeared. Obviously, he did it. Exactly.

What's interesting about this one, though, is that because it's on terror, it's not just that date, as Brad said, like 99% of the population follows it. But don't forget, terror is where all the ships go through. So you're now on, anyone who leaves terror

believed in this and is now telling, every single world, every ship captain, every, every, hell, every cook, every latrine guy on every ship about this thing. And there's much fervor. It is. And people are, like, at the time, it was also, you don't have the negativity and the, what the Imperium turned into, which is not great. But so you still have these people, like, from all walks of life that are like, for,

this is what happened. But the problem is is that it obviously gets stretched. You know what I mean? you get when they're telling the stories of William Wallace and Bravehart. Exactly. This is what happens on a galaxy wide setting of, yeah, let me tell you. I just heard from. And unlike Eldar, humans, like, 40, I mean, I was actually, say humans in 40K have a similar

lifespan of humans today. No, it's much shorter. But technically, in the sense of like, when we think a lot about sci-fi, we think, oh, well, in the future, people live to be 300, 400, 400 years old. No, in 40-K, they don't. I mean, the space marines can make it longer because of all the organ implants. But so when we discuss a thousand years, that's just like it is for us, a thousand years of time.

So this religion blows up. And over a thousand years, it gets real big. But it also gets pretty hardcore because I guess the Lords of Terra sucks so much. The Inquisition sucks so much. They start wielding fanatical power almost immediately. Yes. I mean, literally within the first hundred years, you just have militant factions of, hey, do you now worship the Imperial Cold, the Imperial Creed? Oh, no? Cool. I will murder everyone. They're just going to remove you and place you with things that do. These guys make the KGB seem like a cards club. They're a knitting group.

Because it's power. And that is what ends up becoming, as we discuss the transition of the of the Imperium, post, we'll call it heresy, by the best we discover, an emperor and doom into modern 40K, is the collection of power becomes doable. Because remember, as long as the emperor and Malkador, because the Nalcador, because they actually both were there, you really couldn't corrupt your way into power. He's also, Malkador was the rational person next to the emperor, Because the emperor was always looking at the end game.

And Malcador was like, hey, man, we still have to, like, give bread to people. And, like, ships have to flow. Things have to happen. And he's like, I am going to make time and space different. He's like, cool. People also need a bowl of chili tomorrow. Yes, we have some food. All right.

And so what happens is, but those guys are gone now. And there's no one overlooking over it. One thing that's also important that I think we should dive into is that, The space marines are obviously the most, they're the most powerful faction within the Imperium, but they are wrecked right now. Between fighting horse and then pursuing all of the traitor legions, rebuilding their gene seat,

they're absent for a lot of what's about to happen. They're absent for a lot of things that happens, but also the newest breeds of space marines are now indoctrinated immediately into, well, also a bunch of primax aren't around fairly soon. and there's no one to tell them not that this isn't how the truth. That's a great point because you're not born a space marine. You're born a person on a planet.

So if you're born into this, when they shove all the implant organs into you, you still have it. It's still there. You are still a worshipper of the faith of the emperor. And it's a big deal. I'm going to take the notes and I'm going to bastardize the shit out of them for everyone real quick. So it's effectively a bunch of guys grabbing power. and using this power to stamp out things, which is very easy right after the heresy

because you also got a lot of people to get on board with this. And you're like, how are people on board with this guy wildly doing power grabs? Because they effectively went, if I'm not allowed to do this, this heresy thing will happen again. And people are like, well, this suck bad. And the thing is, is that you can look at it two ways.

It's just sad, bad people grab power and are terrible to other people. But you also look at it as the Monty Python Life of Brian, which is really nice because the emperor tried to get rid of religion completely. You're not allowed to do this. I'm not the Messiah. I'm not the Messiah. And I will literally pray to you that much harder now.

I'm going to pray to you until you are. And the fact is, they literally make him a powerful warp entity. By worshipping. By worshiping him. And he's like, I am. definitely not this. And he's like, please stop. And they're like, I will pray to you twice as hard now that you said not. All this begins growing. This religion is growing. And there is in my notes here, I said the high lords of terror didn't care. But if I'm being candid, no one in power cared.

There was no one in power. In the beginning, they start very soon. Later they do. But as this is growing up, there's no one in power in the imperium who sees this as. threat because none of them know the threat of chaos. There's probably what's the great nights do. The great ice do. Let's also, let's put this car in full reverse because we're really jumping in the gun because I can't be kept on point because I'm a wild man. And the full ecclesiarchy doesn't exist right now.

No, no, no. This is still Ordo Smales. It is the fight against Cass, but you don't have, which is the biggest, actually, people argue with me on this, but the Ecclesiarchy is basically the most powerful, or at least the most populous arm eventually of the Imperium. Yeah, I would say... Because you can say that all of the regular people are underneath it. That's true. The Ecclesiarchy reaches further than anyone else. We're going to get into kind of how much power they have and how that changed very shortly. So everybody's... All the lords are letting this happen because it actually makes their power

grabs and they're doing what I'm supposed to do while I'm grabbing as much personal power as humanly possible. And when I say grabbing as much power as humanly possible, we've said this before. We talked about the Imperium. These guys are legitimately going, my closest rival, or even somebody that could be a rival, lives on this planet. I'm going to either destroy or take the planet and just do it. This could be chaos.

Yeah, this isn't power. You're talking people. people control systems. Yeah, we're not talking like this guy just like, I want Romania under my effect. He's like, I would like multiple with the soul system and everything around. They are insane power.

So what ends up happening is about over 60% of the galaxy moves into this religion. And eventually, wildly fast. Yeah. They start off fractured and the only kind of overarching belief is the emperor is a god and we shall worship him. Obviously, over.

time. Someone says, well, we should organize this. So you begin to get the start of the ecclesiarchy, which is an actual organized religion, as Brad was referring to, with set beliefs, set this. This is how the emperor, this is what the emperor was, is how we died, yada, yada, yada. And around, it takes about a millennia and a half. It's also during this period, a lot of, a lot of plants were already trash fire. Yeah. But a ton of planets got wildly specialized in this time. Yes.

And so you had nightmarish planets where, and this is like the kind of like the middle ages and stuff after the plague of Earth. You had, hey, everything sucks around me. You're like, yeah, but. At least, yeah, at least we have the. At least we have the emperor, the savior of the universe. And it's okay. We're doing this because he's going to save us all. So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I still think it's fine. All of seven, Emperor is not dead. He's aware this is happening. Yep. Watching this religion and Bish began to grow. But they become super far and super fast.

Because it's again, the masses. You're like, hey, they don't have a great fighting force. You don't have this. You're like, yeah,

but I have unlimited people that are willing to grab a stick and run because the emperor is worth everything. I will die for emperor is the best thing I could do. And I think there's no surprise to anyone that eventually the Ecclesiarchy gets large enough

that they actually become a high lord at terror. They got a seat in the high lords up there. They are now one of the most powerful organizations in the galaxy. And it becomes, it's so wild how fast this becomes, because to placate a lot of these things, you start getting temples, chapels, every single, even space marines right now, to sign this almost immediately, you get assigned everything, Imperial Guard especially. Every ship, every world has a place of worship, but it also has a administer of that worship. And a guy that's whole job is to make sure that people are worshipping.

And with consequences, if you are not. And so this then gets a lot worse because the theme and the rise of the ecclesiarchy, is power vacuum. Anytime as a power vacuum, the Ecclesiarchy seems to grow. And a great way to create a power vacuum is to have half the galaxy go to war with the orcs.

We'll be right back after a quick break. It's just, if you attempt to get, we will put orcs in every episode if I can. It's just, it wasn't intentional, but now it's going to be a game I'm going to play. The War of the Beast occurs. And for those who remember our cast, or I didn't see the cast,

the War of the Beast is such a large war that terror was actually under threat of an orc invasion. And it's also everywhere. Yeah. The entire Imperium is turned on to full military mode to get this, to stop this. It is the greatest military threat since the heresy. And the host, the only thing that didn't happen, they were able to recover from a significantly faster just because of the fact that it wasn't. corrupted. It was just true. The orcs were just beating things up and destroying them. They weren't going also Nurtle Malibus here. Exactly. And so this is, this all goes, but the end of the

War of the Beast, the space marines are wrecked. The entire Imperium is wrecked. And you have an issue where now what do we do? And one thing we should we should touch on, we touched on Dexter and is scouring up, I think, but we should touch on again now. One of the reasons the emperor didn't hand the reins to the primarks is that space marines are a military force. They were never supposed to be in charge. Right. There's also an argument to be said that he may or may not have been planning to not be

super cool with him after the Crusades were done. He has a little bit of a history of doing that. He likes a good Thunder Warrior purge. Quick spoiler alert, the current lord commander of the Imperium is a former imperial fist named Maximus Thane. it's not Gilliman. If you want to know why, ask Folgram. Well, there's a snaky guy with several arms.

It's tough to block all those swords. Yeah, and a really nasty sword. So the head of the imperial military is a former imperial fist who decides, the space marines need to rebuild. We don't have time for really any of the rest of logistics bullshit. We're just going to focus on rebuilding ourselves. Which is a big deal on this. And he wasn't wrong.

How he goes about it's wrong. How it's probably bad. He does something stupid, but his idea was good. His idea was good because of the fact of, hey, man, this can happen. We have other enemies. Again, what happens if our brothers come back out of the war and do things? They were not ready for anything right now. And so he decides to pull the entire space marine and military away from Tara to go

fight the threats before they can get big. Good idea. Let's not let any more waz happen, right? But someone's got to be in charge of Tara. And he has a buddy. And his buddy is, I mean, if you want to trust someone, the guy you should trust is the guy who's the grandmaster of the auto assassins. You know, the guys that are literally blanks can turn into anything they want, are infiltrating everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Just also above all laws. Yeah.

Oh, I forgot to mention that. The assassins also are just like, hey, once I get my assignment, I, it doesn't matter how you do it. It doesn't matter. I'm not doing this. So all of a sudden, Terra is being overseen by the head of the assassins. Dracon Vorgo. Dracan Vangorovich. Yeah, Dracon van Gorovich.

Sure, because he has to be Russian. Van Gorich, but where. Van Gorich pretty quickly realized the high Lawrence of Terra. Wait, he's not wrong. He's completely right. They're self-indulgent. They're useless. They're corrupt. They're serving their value. They're hurting the

Imperium. And they newsflash 10,000 straight years. Yeah. Do a shitty job. Yeah, it changes. So he's got kind of, you know, you look at the situation where the people who are in charge are terrible.

What do you do? Do you write a memo to your buddy? strongly worded memo to your buddy over in the Imperial Fiss saying, hey, do you think about us? Do you put up billboards and maybe advertise and the citizen Rita? Hey, let's rise up and get rid of them. Vote them out of office. Let's get them out of office. Or do you murder all of them in the night?

All of them, too. All of them, yeah. Well, they didn't just murder all them. They also murdered all of them and their support staff. Yeah. In one day, then Gorridge kills every High Lord of Terra, everyone associated those High Lords of Terra, and then puts new High Lords of Terra in. and I do like this part of the story. He does all this takes over for 100 years.

No one even knows, basically. People are just like, oh, okay. And this story gets kind of, this is actually more than the story gets a little bit badass. Eventually, the imperial fists come wandering back to Terra and go, hey, where are the people who were in charge when we left? And Gorich is, oh, I killed all of them. And I'm in charge now.

Should I? I'll give it backwards. Rogel Dorn at least trained his boys because they take on all the Oh, it's amazing. There is no solution but they killed Van Gorge. 200 Imperial Fists take on over 100

Eversore assassins, just Eversors. Not to imagine everyone else who was in there. Also, the fact is, it's not 200, like, neophyte Imperial Fist. They brought the first company basically. They went A-game. And they fight their way through, I don't know. Like, if you think about a Calexas temple or a Vindicare temple, like, of all the temples you could go into that are assassin,

Eversore is the one. Not my favorite. Oh, God. The hand-to-hand guys that also make you insane. They make you insane jump out of nowhere or faster than actually space marines. Yeah, those ones. So they actually do have to go through all this. And the final story is Maximus does, he shoots a point blank in the head.

Point blank, it shoots Van Gogh in the face with a bolter. And if he doesn't know what a bolter is, it's not a small pistol. Yeah. It is several of the cows. So why do we do this random story about this, about the assassins, killing off the Lords of Taram on a cast about the Imperial Colts? It's a power vacuum. It's a massive power vacuum.

But it's also another, the equivalent. Ecclesiarchy was already pretty stonks. Yeah. And they become, they powered up. They took some PEDs after this. Exactly. And so now, you had to figure out, well, how are we fixing this? And you went, and the Ecclesiarchy was like, we can make this good, which they weren't wrong.

They were able to distract the population. So no one noticed that we just had multiple changes in leadership in a period of about 100-something years. and did all the assassins just die? We're supposed to know about the assassins? I'm not really following this, but this got weird. Because the one thing that the Imperium really tries to avoid is conflict on Terra. That's a bad thing for the Imperial. Conflict on random world, you know, 148Q, who cares?

But Terra seems to be the place we don't want to happen. But it's terrorism, but it's also the fact that everything goes back to Terra and they are all powerful because that's the seat of the God Emperor. Exactly. And so that's... Nothing can happen there. Duh. Our deity lives there.

So super power vacuum occurs. Encclesiarchy steps up. We'll smooth it over. Don't worry about it. I got this. But in doing so, you kind of owe us a favor. And that favor is going to be

if you look the other way while we continue to grow and grow and gain power and gain influence. And by the way, if we ask you to do something, you're going to need to do it. This also, it gets pretty weird at this point in time, too, because this is when we really got Dark Ages. Yeah.

Because we, except for Mars, even some on Mars, they were losing the ability to use technology during these first three thousand years. Oh, I forgot about that. Because of the fact that you were a heretic if you just didn't believe in the divine might of the emperor. So they were just losing technology because you said prayers and did incense and

those push start. There's an entire, I can't even remember what codex it is. It's a long story where they explain all the rights and then you push the start button on the land reader. That's what you do. You required two priests, incense, blessings, and then you push the red money. Press the button that says go. Yeah.

And then it goes. But if you do it, not in that order. Correct. That it's, you are a paratig and what to shoot you in the head. But also more and more, besides losing technology, which we did,

we're also, the ecclesiarchy is tendrils in everywhere now. They are in every, because it's a real thing. If you just dig or there's a religious guy that's in charge of your shift

to make sure people aren't talking bad about the ever. You have to, We have to sing songs of the emperor while digging your world. It's crazy time how big this is getting. And it got big. But I say fast, this is over. We're talking about 2,000 years.

But there's a huge history here. There's 2,000 years, and I don't know the number of people. We're talking, there are over a million worlds. That's the thing to remember. There's over a million worlds in the Imperium. And when we say grow, we're talking about going from something like, you know, every city and town had some sort of church. is where it's where it starts at.

To then, that church becomes a cathedral. And also, by the way, every ship has one. So every ship has one. Period. Until eventually you actually get Shrine Worlds. And Shrine Worlds are crazy because they're not, well, they became places of teaching and where you would get, you know, new preachers, new chaplains, even, you know, I mean. But you would also get, this is Mecca.

This is where people would travel from the galaxy to go to these places. The strong worlds were places that a quote unquote miracle happened. So it's not really clear what those can be. Most of them usually consist of someone fighting an epic battle they were overnumbered in. So basically every GW book, the entirety of Black Library. But anyway, I'll agree for that. Someone's, I'll get a negative comment. I actually like Black Library, but there is certain tropes they use a lot.

these worlds become so big that people begin moving to them. There are stories of worlds collapsing because of this, because so many pilgrims come to it, they actually were out of food. Oh, they don't have the resource, the infrastructure or logistics to care for any of these people. And so these shrine worlds open up everywhere. And the shrine world's time out really well to actually help create something the ecclesiarchy needed, which is a sub-government of their own.

They needed, you know, the ecclesiarchy did not want to be beholden to the Lords of Terra and the rules of Terra. So they start making their own organization. These shrine worlds become their little seats of powers where they're cardinals. They also are gathering their own forces. Oh, yeah. Like, this is already happening. It becomes a big deal.

you know, and very soon, and I say very soon, I mean, a few thousand years. As this ecclesiarchy grows, the regional, they begin their own, now you've got effectively two governments running the imperial. We've got the ecclesiarchy, who are the religious, and the high lords of Tara, who are the true authoritarian. And they both suck so much. Like, it is, as an imperial citizen, you're in a bad spot. Because not only do they both have a lot of arbitrary rules you have to follow. They both instill their own tax code that you have to pay into. It is not, whoa, whoa, whoa.

John made it sound like it was just annoying taxes like we have right now. Taxes weren't just taxes. Taxes weren't monies. Taxes were people, resources. This was a currency. This was, yeah. Like, we needed water, so we just took all the lakes on your planet. Like stuff that.

That's a real thing. Yeah, that is a real thing of them sucking all the water off the planet because they had to go somewhere and they needed water. Yeah, they just stopped and you were just like, sorry about your shitty dead planet later. Like, this is a real thing. And so this obviously leads into some kind of problems. Despite all this that's going on, we're seeing there actually pops out of nowhere, a new religion. that's a in this was and this i'm foreshadowing here because it's going to be really important later but a new religion pops up called the confederation of light confederation of light change is

it starts off as a nothing story it's one planet worshipping the emperor but in a positive sense not in this like you need to give your life for the emperor if it's more like the emperor was a good person we should strive to be good people blah blah blah blah blah blah law. Unless you're Zenos, then we should shoot you. Oh, I totally shoot the Cinos in the face. What's funny about the Confederacy of Light, the story of the Confederacy of Light is you discover the incredible power of the Ecclesiarchy. Because the Ecclesiarchy, it turns out this has been happening the whole time, but

they would just infiltrate their religion and just turn them and say, like, you know, either kill them or you could kill them or convince them they go the other way. The Confederacy of Light, bringing it to that in a second, doesn't quite go the way that they'd hope it would. Except for the fact that they just shit got crazy. Yeah. This takes us pretty far. We got into 36 millennium, 5G, 5,000 years after the emperor gets entombed on the golden throne.

Things got pretty crazy because we have what became the age of aposting. And I'm pretty sure I just butchered that, but that's okay. the we heavy the epirium heavy handed it i mean have they ever yeah light touched anything the imperium did what they always do exactly it actually go into this this this is what i'll give you this and i'll because i'm going to take it off the rails i'm going to let you streamline it's just a little bit yeah so the confederacy of light what ends up happening with the confederacy of light is really an eye-opening experience for the administrative of the imperium how much power the ecclesiarchy has so the ecclesiarchy he first tries to, you know, infiltrate the Confederacy of Light.

Can't do it. They sent assassins to go kill the head of the Confederacy of Light. And he ends up converting them all to his, to his cause. And so they get fed up and they order the Imperial Guard to the planet. And to bomb them and remove the Confederacy of Light. This is not, I mean, yes, they have a seat in the High Lords of Terror, but they're not, they don't run the Imperial. they just wiped out a planet because they didn't agree with them.

That's not ideal. Also, not just didn't agree with them. Wasn't grabbing power. Wasn't doing anything. Yeah. And they were just living there and they went and wrecked them. So this becomes a huge problem for the administrative. And they realize it's time to do something about the ecclesiarchy.

They realized the best, but the problem they're going to run into, is the Ecclesiarchy still has the entire citizenry behind them. So how do you kill someone or take over something that's incredibly popular? You make it kind of feckless. So they decide, what if we just made it so everyone who's in charge of the Ecclesiarchy is kind of an idiot? True story. Which they do. Because that probably made sense at the time.

They basically ran a dirty campaign. Yeah, to make them all useless. This ends with an error they call the reign of blood. Not rain in blood for all of us Slayer fans out there. But the reign of blood. He literally, instantly, kills the Ecclesiarchies seat on the High Ler Zatera and just doesn't kill it and, like, say it's no more. Killed him and just said it's mine. Yeah.

His name is Gorge Vandir. And he is, he's, I do like this, that this great evil character was the head of the administratum. He's just the top nerd. Again, he is a pencil pusher. He's a top pencil pusher. He basically went, I have absolutely no ability to enforce anything. I need an army. Well, these guys have an army.

I'll just make it my army. And so he comes in, kills all the heads of the ecclesarchy, takes it over, also does some pretty cool stuff to the admission telepathicum, but that's a side note. and takes complete control of these two groups, which is going to lead us to another very fun origin story here. Also a super badass story later on. Oh, that story is going to, it's going to get really cool pretty soon. He found out that there was an all-female warrior group on some world.

And Brad is already seeing my notes of my getting mad at GW again, because it's not even like they tried to not steal the store of the Valkyries. It was a hundred percent. They just went, let's just copy and paste this. That's going to save us some writing. Why not? So he goes and takes this all-female fighting force and renames them the brides of the emperor. And they are his own personal military and bodyguards.

And if you're saying, well, hey, isn't there in 40K in all-female fighting force, You may have figured out where this is going to go, but don't worry, the journey is even better the destination. So the brides become his personal bodyguards. Yeah. And he literally buys off and or kills off everyone. Like he becomes the, at one point in time, he's just the most powerful person of the guys. Yeah.

Single-handedly. Because he just has everybody murdered. and he's telling his brides of the emperor, the Valkyries, that all of the, I forgot to mention, he effectively tells them that he can communicate with the emperor. Yes. And he is giving them holy missions because they are zealots like no one's ever been a zealot. They are hardcore for the emperor.

They worship as the emperor. And so anything he tells them, because he is the prophet of the emperor, He can speak with the emperor. He knows what the emperor wants. So anything that he says to do, that is their direct connection to the emperor. And they start ruining people. And a couple, we've skipped some elements of this story because I just found them kind of

boring and I knew I could cover them in about 30 seconds by doing this. At one point, the Ecclesiarchy left Terra. It was actually stationed off of Terra. Van derr moves it back to Terra. So it is back on Terra becomes the largest church. And that's going to get important for a minute. But we have to jump now to something we talked about earlier and get back into it. Where are the space marines and the ad me?

Or the custodes, those are a thing. At the time, they were still not allowed to leave terror. Right. The custodes are all stuck around the emperor. The space marines are out there rebuilding their factions, fighting, you know, fighting Zenos and issues. And Admec are just doing admec stuff. But give you space marines the props, though. Everything that's going on now doesn't actually affect what they're doing.

So why would I give a shit? You know, you guys are squabbling again. This has happened several times. There's a reason why he's only allowed to have a girl fighting for us, by the way. Because, yeah. Because there was another group of people that had taken the Ecclesiarchy and used it. And so they weren't allowed to have a standing army of men. Of men.

But didn't say women. We didn't say women. Exactly. But that's the thing. The space Marines are now dealing with a lot of different things, chaos incursions. We're into Black Crusades now. So we've got Black Crusades. I believe the first tyrann have hit the Ebit of the galaxy, balls around 36.

Yeah. You've got serious stuff going on. The Imperium has like, we are fighting for the fate of the Imperium. And you get these calls of the Lords of Terror fighting over stuff again. And they're just like, I genuinely don't care. means nothing to me. Am I, are we still getting logistics and resources?

Like, I don't care if Ted, Phil, or anyone else is in charge. I don't care. The other thing, too, is as powerful as the high loads of terror

and Van Dier and all these guys were, they didn't want to mess with the Space Marines. So the Space Marines had their own sections of the galaxy, depending what chapter you were. You know, you have a different part of the galaxy. You didn't mess with those. And also,

when they, when they asked for something, which the Space Marines don't really ask, they just tell you that they need I need this here now. You just send it to them and they just kind of leave you alone because they are fighting in all of the hot zones. They don't need to.

They're not coming back to the core, which by the way is for them perfectly fine. Nobody's invading there, right? Cool. I don't need to be here. There's not a threat there, but we think there might be a wa-forming over in this northern, northwestern part of the galaxy. So we're going to go up there. They just don't care about inner conflict.

And the thing is, is that the Marines, except for my salamanders are kind of dicks. Yeah. Like, you're like, hey, man, a couple worlds got killed. They're like, cool. I mean, was it by an external force? No. They'll figure it out.

Again. Call me when it's dark elder. Yeah, exactly. Is it someone that I have to fight? You know what I mean? No, it's just us beating each other up again. Cool. We're terrible to each other.

Move on. I'm probably going to put the show notes today's cast brought to you by foreshadowing. Everything we've been doing comes back around. So, as we've seen, said before, the Ecclesiarchy used the Astromilitarum to wipe out the Confederacy of Light, except they didn't. There was still some left. And as, especially once someone is bad as Van Dier gets in power, the Confederacy of Light explodes up again. At a nowhere. And there was actually one leader named Sebastian Thor. His name does matter because, again, this whole episode is about

foreshadowing. This is so boss mode of what happens. Oh, this is cool as shit. This is great. Sebastian Thor just keeps gaining more and more and more power. He literally goes on what would be network TV and goes, this dude's a douche and I'll punch him in the face if I see him. Like, across the galaxy, he's on the news going,

you should bring your weak shit. And so Van Dier, of course, tries to have him killed. and just keeps failing every time. Well, then every time he fails, he again has a broadcast of this. I forget what he calls him, actually. He calls him a false something. I don't remember. I apologize everyone.

But there's an actual term. It's a big thing on this because he starts getting more and more people to combat his forces. Because he is wildly corrupt, by the way. This guy literally made Caligula look like he was a normal, dude living his life. And so when Sebastian Thor starts, effectively says, I'm going to go take this guy on.

Out of nowhere, the Admec and the space marines say, yeah, we're actually with this guy. This guy's affected. Well, the thing is he started being so corrupt that his corruption started messing with supply lines and stuff

because he was doing dumb shit. And that's when you get people to notice you. You're like, hey, man, you can do weird shit as long as it doesn't affect the day-to-day life of people that are doing the real fighting. And then you're like, hey, man, we didn't get our stuff because this dude's doing weird nero-collegular things. Like, hey, man, no.

Can someone do something about this? The part of this that gets really cool that I laugh is Van Dier sees the space marines I've turned on him, the admin turned on him, and says, well, screw you, come get me. And actually tells his forces to go attack the space marines, to which they promptly do not do because that is that seems bad. But they still are willing to keep them away. Yeah. So they still

and they control terror. So now we're going to get to a pretty what I think is a solidly badass story. What do you think, Brad? This is so awesome. So again, the brides and the emperor of the actors, again, are wildly. They are

so hardcore. They told other zealots. You guys are pretty lacks about your beliefs. Your love of the emperor is adorable. Watch this. So they're also getting special powers. Sorry, Emperor. They worship you so much of the warp that they are actually getting superpowers from worshiping you. And I can only imagine that he's like, this is not happening. Stop, stop, stop it. So space breeze approached custodes and while what's going to happen, the custodes,

the custodes basically boss-moded, as they always do. Sorry, guys. Custodes are amazing. Let's siphon to them a little bit because it's kind of a cool set. The custodes are not only have they not left Earth, the custodes exist entirely within the temple, the temple around the emperor. Which, by the way, isn't like a 50 by 50 building. Yeah, it's...

It's the United States. It's a percentage of the planet. And that's where these guys, so the custodes are all sitting there. They actually don't know what goes on outside their walls. All they care about is Emperor Safe, Emperor Safe. That's all their directives is. They get a message from the Space Marines saying,

hey, we've got a problem on Terra. Well, it's not even just a problem. I think the bigger turning point is they get told also that this guy has been saying that he's been communicating with the Emperor. And they go, no, it has not. No, it is not. Like, nope. Nope.

He is, I'm going to look at my, my slate of people that are going to talk to the emperor. Zero? Cool. Not that guy. And so the custodes decide, what we've got a plan. And their plan is simply,

we're going to go turn the brides of the emperor around, and then the space man you can go kill his van der. But it's also a buck wild, ballsy plan. They're like, what's your plan? We'll just teleport in the middle of his forces and just figure it out. And have a chat.

Yeah. like, let's just do this. And they do that. They do that. And what the they explain to the brides of the emperor that Van Deer is a false prophet. And they're like, we will fight you.

And the custodes gave them the thing, too. They're like, we will just ruin you guys. And they're like, again, custodes make space marines look like little kids. Custodian. Custodes. Oh, God. Yeah. So they.

Not in the game. They're useless. But in them saying in the stories, they were like just like one guy is like swathing through like sauron through Marines. Yeah. But these guys, they literally come up and they just tell them, come with us. We will, we'll take you to your God. And they take their leader and personally goes to the golden throne. And we don't know what happens after that.

But she communicates with, she goes to the throne. communicates with the emperor, whatever was said, because again, the emperor is a shattered psyche that is literally, to the emperor's credit, he's powering up Yu-Gi-o style during it, but he's also, he's got a busy day. He's running the Astromicon and fighting against all chaos incursion because we had some stuff in the basement that was kind of unresolved. And he's kind of doing the thing that originally was not a thing, and he's kind of fighting a war against chaos personally. So he's got a busy day every day.

So whatever part of his psyche talked to her, she comes out and wow, she is not so mad. Yeah, like, so mad. She, you know, I'm just going to go with my white, she was playing somewhere over, she went 10 points

in rage. She was not, not, not happy. And she, they don't even just kill him. They ruin that guy. She goes into the Roan Chamber of Vandir and just murders just rips him to shreds. Yeah, like, wow, wow. And that is where the sisters of battle come from.

Yep. That's them. It's actually really bad ass. They completely reformed it. And these are the most fervent, loyal sisters. Sisters legitimately get, again, they get powers. They are effectively powered by their deity. Their faith in the emperor actually increases their toughness, they're safe.

They actually become, in times can become immortal. They have saints. Yeah. That are, sorry everyone. They're totally demons. They're totally demons. They're totally demons. But whatever.

They're emperor demons. They're emperor demons. But they're powered by war powers because the, this is still the best because, you know, he's getting, it's easier to fight chaos because he's not. now powered completely by their prayers because of warp energy. So the emperor became exactly what he told everybody not to do, and he's wildly more powerful. He created a big back loop by accident, and now he's...

He's one of the burgeoning chaos guys. Yeah. From here, the rest of the story is pretty quick. Sebastian Thor obviously has won. So now that he has won, he ascends the power, actually does reform the church, back to fully worshipping the god emperor. When we,

he reforms the church to make it better. He doesn't make it great, but it's better than it was. It's better, but it becomes weirdly enough stricter. Yeah. Which leads us to penitent engines and things.

Exactly. Things got real grim after, but they were just like, we will weed out heretics harder than we were before. So even though he's fixing things, it also, as usual, led to things getting even shinier. Yeah.

So the sisters of battle become the military wing of this church. And the church becomes much more structured and organized. What this also does, though, is it creates the Ordo Malius, which is how we started this cast, which is the Inquisition. This is going to, this gives them the power to become what we, the modern version of the equation of the Equivision is. they needed all of this strife because what the Inquisition was originally focused on was simply the eradication of chaos. And as we said, there was no direction there.

They were just trying to kind of find chaos. You also didn't even know what it was. Like a lot of people didn't even know what it was. Exactly. Now they become the eradication of people like Van Dier. Who are not technically chaos. But they are considered their heretics. Exactly. And so now we're getting more into that.

So from that point, I think we're going to stop here. And next week, we'll dive into the actual inquis, all the layers of the Inquisition and how they begin to function. Ordo Zenos. Order Zenos, order Malice, and kind of get more to that. With that, though, again, join our Discord. Please come to our web page, the 40KLorecast.com. The Discord is growing quite rapidly. And Discord is growing rapidly.

We are in our page infancy. We'll have so much more stuff. Yep. To be honest with you, week by week, it will change quite a bit. Oh, yeah. I'm editing the pages basically almost every single week. So, but with that, we will see you guys next week. Thank you again for listening. Have a great day.