The 40k Lorecast - Episode 3 - Heresy Rises - Horus Heresy Pt1

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

At the conclusion of the Great Crusade the Emperor makes a change that will forever haunt the galaxy. Well one simple act, and not telling anyone anything ever, so maybe more than "one simple act." On this episode we will cover: Horus becoming the warmaster, the warrior lodges, the Space Marines' first experience fighting Chaos, and more.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. Hello and welcome to 40K lorecast with me, John Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. We've come a long way and finally we've reached the year 31,05. We've now spent about three hours talking about for the last 15,000 years of history. And we're going to spend three or five or more hours talking about seven years of history. So buckle up because this is about to get detailed. We're about to jump into probably the most exciting part of lore of 40K, which is the true origin story.

What the game is actually built on. Late 90s, when I first found out about 40K, I read the Horace heresy, which is the basis of the game. Everything that they did is the huge civil war that split the galaxy, broke slash made the Imperium to what it is right now, and set the stage for literally the game of four. 40K. This is what it's based off. It expands wildly from here, but this is this particular time, these events that will be going over and then next two, three, three, three, yeah. We're honestly, guys, we're just going to talk and we're going to cut them to an hour and then put the next one up. So this is going to go for a while. If it sounds like a long diatribe,

it shouldn't. This is probably the most exciting lore in the game. Well, we have the story. Yeah, it's really what is based on. And we've got to a point where the Imperium has pushed out into millions, literally millions of worlds, and they are wildly successful. I don't think we've lost, we haven't, we've lost battles, but we haven't lost any real engage. Actually, we haven't lost any battles. We've lost engagements. Yeah. And we are the dominant race in the galaxy.

The humanity has met a smattering of the, I have to quote again, what the Inquisition calls the lesser races. But we haven't really met that much resistance from anyone else. The Eldar, the space elves, broke the sky, and they are effectively fleeing and working with the, oh yeah, we lost 90% of our race. They're dealing with that. Orcs are orcs. Orcs are never going to be.

The orcs are actually where we're going to start this. True, but I'm saying the orgs are the big, orcs are a big issue, but orcs aren't typically a coordinator. issue unless a great war chief has called a walk. So that's actually where we're going to start this one. We're going to start with Ulanor, which I'm going to say right now, you can rename a planet later if you want, but it doesn't change what it was. And Ork's Stronghold. Yeah. So Orks, an important piece of the game that you're going to hear me say over and over again is orcs are never be. We'll have one to 42 episodes on Orcs. Brad wants to do Eldar forever. I want to do Orks forever. I want It works forever.

We will give it, Tao a solid 15-minute episode at some point. I'm just kidding. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It seems too. Maybe 10. Tao exists, boo. Next episode.

So we're going to start with at the end of the Great Crusade. At this stage, mankind has reconquered the galaxy. They have brought old worlds back into the fold. Millions of systems have been brought in. And there was one persistent problem. They would run into lost versions of mankind and they could conquer them.

They would run into Zeno species and they would kill them. Then there were the orcs. And the orcs actually were an issue. They get to the system and then Ulinar is one of the planets in the system. Ulinar is where the great orc sits. This is a giant orc army. And when we say giant orc army, just for record, orcs you've ever seen an ork tend to carry a pistol and a club.

That do not work unless they believe. Exactly. And it took nine primers. A hundred thousand space marines, eight million imperial army, just soldiers, thousands of starships and over a hundred walking titans to defeat these orcs. At this battle, they finally defeat the orcs at Olonar, and it becomes like this great achievement for mankind. Well, the biggest thing is, is that the orcs were kind of centralized here.

The orcs had been one of the biggest thing that was problem for the Imperium taking on the orcs was the orcs operate in war bands. they have big the biggest and the best rocks however many people he can get together with him but they're all over the place they don't really have a centralized structure because it seemed like they were always stomping out fires but another fire would show up so they were it was a big deal for them this is why they went so hard in all an honor is it was a chance to take care of this persistent problem that had been going on for literally hundreds of years Yeah, and orcs are, and for those who don't know, you don't want orcs on your planet, they are.

They ruin the property value. Yeah, severely diminished property value. Also kind of murder every tenant, every single person there. This is going to be the emperor's big push. We're going to conquer Ulinar. We're going to stamp out the orc, so he brings the full party. 14 legions are present with nine prime marks. In a legion is legitimately thousands of space marines.

an uncounted imperial guard. They effectively have the Navy with them. Each of the legions has its own Army Navy Air Force, and they are the Marines. But they have millions of guys with them. So it's not like a few guys showed up. No, like the Marines are there, but the Marines come with a posse.

It's kind of like you're talking about the 300 story. When they're like, there was only 300 guys there. like, wasn't there like thousands of other guys there? Yeah, they were there, but not really. So at the end of this, an O-AnRs got a big moment. They defeat the Orks. And now that they defeat the Orks, they actually decide to pave the planet. So they actually bring in the Admec who then destroy all the orc structures.

Pave the planet and they have a giant parade. This is the end of the Great Crusade, effectively. We have unified. This is also the beginning of what's the beginning of the end, because this set the seeds of doubt, because they have possibly the biggest uniting moment that they've had. It's literally a 200-year crusade that is now at the pinnacle. We're celebrating it. And then bad English dad says, I'm going to take off.

And they go, what are you going to do? He's just like, I'm going to do some stuff. Where, at Tara, what kind of stuff? You know, stuff. And then he effectively smoke bombs and leaves. Yeah, and he doesn't just do that. So not only does the emperor leave and not tell them where he's going, but he also... Specifically why he's going.

Yeah, or why. He just says, all right, I'm out. And the first thing he does is well received. He makes Horace the leader of the military. Makes him the war master. You are the war master. However, just the military. And this is interesting.

The emperor does something that I think my perspective is a smart move. he decides not to hand the reins of the empire over to his, what I'm going to call them, children, because they are, he instead hands the reins to mankind. And he creates a council of terror. This is going to be...

The high lords of terror have been sucky since the beginning. Thank you. I'm going on. I'm disagreeing with you. Fair enough. You know, I'm going to go with everybody listening. I could hand it over to my hyper-intelligent,

able to handle anything or I can find the most corrupt bureaucrats ever and say you need to rule my millions of systems. What bad could happen? But the flip side is one of those people that he could have handed it over to was Lorgar. I mean, another one of them was Lehman Russ who might have just all right, look, you're handing it over to Bobby G. Move on with your life. We know how this is. We may know how this works itself out. So what the emperor does is he hands it over to a group of quote-unquote mortals, because one of them was Malcador, so quote-unquote, you know, Kelbor Hall of Mars, Cassantine Valdoor, the masters of the Astronomica and the master of the telepathia, then the Adeptus Administratum, which is the laziest naming I've ever seen where we're going to go with,

we call everything Adeptus, cool, what's the one? Well, they're in charge of administration. I cannot think of a lamer title that adept this administration. But anyway, so that's what they name it. And so this is not well received by the prime marks who expected to take over. Because to be fair, they're super humans. And Brad's right. Well, it's not even that. In all the stories that put it there, the emperor has always kind of, I don't know if

he's ever just straight stated it to them, but it has always been implied, or at least from Mem inferred that they were going to rule this new imperium of man. They were going to inherit, they were going to inherit dad's business. Exactly. They were his sons. They were going to rule over his empire. And that was always what was thought, always 100%. And now they're being told, not only are they not inheriting it, but they're actually

going to have to listen to the people that they could physically crush with one hand without even thinking. Yes. Like they are, these people don't even compare with them. They're also, in their mind, smarter than these people. And, you know, it probably were. However, the emperor had a different opinion. And the reason the emperor had a slightly different opinion was because he actually just

spent a bunch of time with these guys and realized that his, while they weren't quite Thunder Warrior level of violent, they were pretty violent, man. And this is an issue. And most of them had serious flaws. and that's actually what most of the stories will get into a lot of that. The primacts are so powerful that lore-wise

in the novels and all the stories, you have to give them personal flaws or no one wants to read that story. It is, though. So you have to make things, and most of the times, Primarchs fall is because of their own personal issues, not outside sources.

It's always internal things that bring them down. And so, surprise, surprise, the prime marks are getting really upset. They're happy horace is in charge, although some of them are a little bit less happy, but the flip side, though, is that they really are sitting there saying, this, the emperor betrayed us. And so now you've got super powerful beings who are feeling a lot of emotions, and there's a mildly famous franchise that circles around what happens when you're very powerful

and you let your emotions overtake us. Yeah, may or may not involve lightsabers. But that's where we're at. And so that's kind of this moment is, this is effectively the launch point. From here, now the seeds of doubt, the seeds of corruption, the seeds of traitor now can exist because while up until this moment, with the exception of one, all of the other. We'll backtrack in a minute. Well, let's do those together.

So we've got this, the stages set for chaos. Yeah. The Lords of the Gods of the War to weasel away in because there wasn't before we had a pretty much united front. Even if we didn't have everybody completely unified, everybody had the same goal working forward. You had people with purpose. Now you had people with no real purpose. They were going to continue on because there was more, but like they don't. have an end goal because you were told you got to the end and now you're doing bonus DLC.

Well, I mean, at the same time, at the same time, I think one thing to keep in mind is that these are light years powerful beings, but they were reporting to the most powerful being in the universe. Well, there's no, there's no overseer now. So now it's gone and now I'm reporting to your brother. Eric from accounting is now telling me that this world has to pay a tax and they're not paying with it. Well, it's also both.

You have Eric from accounting that's giving you overtlying. and the guy that's in charge of carrying this out. Right. Is your literal brother, who you're cool with because he's the most charismatic guy in the family, but he's also, he's not your dad. Exactly. He's not your dad who's like the most powerful being on the planet. Let's go over a couple of flaws.

I've got to set the stage of however but on this. Chaos was there, always has been there, and the gods were being born. But the emperor in his infinite wisdom, even though he's the smartest guy in the imperial, This also occasionally makes bad decisions that are horrible, like never telling his sons about what he's doing, for one. But two, the emperor's view on chaos was, I won't let anybody know about chaos because knowing about chaos empowers chaos. So if no one knows about chaos, then they won't power up chaos. So that was his view on that. The problem is, is they didn't let others know that needed to know that chaos existed.

So we go back to, hey, we've had the seeds of doubt. Well, for one of his sons, Lorgar, the primark of the word bearers, this was a big deal because Lorgar was obsessed when he took over new planets, that he put up huge planetary idols, basic statues, huge places to glory for the emperor. And then he got publicly censured for it. He got put down. So the emperor said publicly chastised him for doing this. I'm not, because the emperor, again, we go back to our early episodes, the emperor wanted

to push forward an Imperium the man that was not based on religion, only science. Lorgar was setting him up worship of the emperor. Let's dive into Lorgar. I think one of the more important parts of this from a lore standpoint is the guy, because Lorgar, oddly, is kind of how this whole thing goes down. Well, he's the, he's how he was the first contact with the KS. gods that any of the named characters in the Imperium got anything. And it said, after Lorgar, and this is a ways before this.

And what happened is, Lorgar got chastised, Lorgar got told now. He got publicly put down. And after that happened, he was ashamed, upset, everything else. And the chaos gods, effectively all of them slowly whispered to Lorgar, we are actual gods. We will give you somebody. I mean, they were very subtle about it at first. But over a long period of time, they said,

we will give you a proper beings to worship. I think let's pivot and let's talk about Lorgar for it. I think Lorgar is going to be the first prime mark we should probably dive into a little bit and talk about the history of Lorgar. So as we've discussed before, Emperor had his project in the Himalayan Mountains. And out of nowhere, chaos infects these growth tanks and sends them to worlds all over the place. And each of them ends up in different levels of bad. Some are real bad. Some are kind of bad. Some are, oh boy, Lorgar is a weird one. Lorgar lands on a planet called Colchise. I'm going

with Colchise. It's not, but I'm continuing all with it. What is it? Colchis. Colchis is such a better way of saying. Anyway, Colchis. Anyway, the H is silent because English is a fun language. But it lands on Colchus. And Colchus is this like... It's a theocracy. Yeah. But it's an old... Well, they also...

Well, it's a theocracy that worships the chaos gods, but it doesn't worship the chaos gods in their name. They have effectively avatars in place of, you know, they have, yes, you were worshipping this god. You're like, yeah, but it's really bzinch. You're like, no, it's not. It's the god of the wind. you're like you're totally a zeege right there

I'm looking at it so the whole planet's ruled by these guys and so Lorgar lands he's discovered by a guy named Corferrin Corferon comes up a lot in their future and Corferon is a

outcast priest basically because he was too into the chaos gods for everyone else who was into the chaos gods because he wanted to do the actual because the other ones were being tricked by effectively because they really did think they were worshipping the wind, the sun gods.

His planet had almost, I think they wanted to mason on Egyptian, but it's a conglomeration of whatever. But it's all these older elemental type gods that were actually cast gods. But they, where they were getting actual power from was the war. Was the war. Yeah. So he raises Lorgar. And, you know, initially his version of race, of Rangor,

raising it is kind of drunk stepfather, you know, just yells at him, abuses him, kind of treat Lurgar like garbage. And then Lorgar realizes that, oh, yeah, I'm a genetically engineered giant man and goes, I'm not going to take this anymore. And so then all of a sudden, Lourke, so then Corferon gets kind of cool when Lorgar ends up supplanting him and everyone else. And Lorgar is now running the planet. But what do you think about Lorgar is one of Lorgar's powers is, I guess, a few,

Mutricite? I mean, yeah, but it's... Kind of, he saw the emperor coming and wanted to... He built shrines to the... And the thing, but he did this twice. He, that's the width... When he first meets him, the emperor comes down and destroys all his shrines. And publicly as the ultramarines just burn them down. Right.

And kind of doesn't give him or just says don't do that anymore. Doesn't really give him how, why, whatever. He's just like, hey, man, I've been doing this for the past 10 years. And he goes, yeah, I'm going to kill it all in a day. Yeah. And then they grab Lord Gar and go on the crusade. And then he still makes all of these worship worlds for the emperor. That's what he got censored for.

That's what he got chastised for. Was he, he was actually, it wasn't even for just doing that. It was for taking too long because he would raise all these basically worship words. Right. Yeah. It's instead of actually like doing what all of the other prime works are going to conquer the world, move on, he would sit there. He would establish a religion. He would educate them on the ways of the emperor.

And worship the emperor as a god. And he would do this at every planet. So he was way behind what he was supposed to be doing because he would literally wait until all of this happened and then he would move on to the next system. So there is a very solid Monty Python like Brian here where over and over again the emperor is saying, I'm not the Messiah, I'm not the Messiah, I'm not the Messiah.

And Lorgar kept going, well, only the true Messiah would deny it. It sucks. It's a little bit of that. But this all kind of leads, lead the Lorgar into eventually the emperor really does just, that's it. I've had enough. We publicly puts it down. And that's core, Kerr, you pronounce it. K-H-U-R.

Oh, no, I'm not even. I agree with Kerr. As certain point, the emperor says, that's it. I'm pissed. And he shows up to one of, like, he invites, in quotes, all of the words. all of the word bears to their favorite planet, which is Kerr, which their favorite capital, which is Kerr. And then while they're sitting there,

the ultramarines show up and burn the thing to the ground while they watch. And then the emperor appears in front of all of them and tells them all to kneel. And when the emperor tells you to kneel, it's not like one of those like, hey, you should do it because you don't want your head. Got off. No, you just kneel because he's the most powerful being in the damn.

You don't even know why you're doing. Yeah, you just are. But this is kind of a weird thing for Lorgar, because the being that he's worshipped, because the most powerful being on Earth, just showed it was the most powerful being on Earth, but also just killed him for worshipping, and killed his favorite city and all of his citizens for worshipping it.

So now the Lorgar's new viewpoint is, rather than becoming like an atheist saying there are no gods, he goes, I just was worshipping the wrong. The wrong gods. And the chaos gods say, yep, you're right. So at this point, Corferon, you know, his dad, who has now been converted to a space marine,

we'll cover that in another episode in that one. That's why he's still alive. Yeah, and his buddy Eribus, who's, yeah, there we go. Just the word bearers are the word bears. He sucks so much. They are just the worst. But anyway, they decide the best way to help their buddy Lorgar out is to take him on a walkabout into the eye of terror. We could go really deep into this if we want, talking about how they actually had to do this while there were custodian guards surrounding him at all times because the emperor really didn't want him doing this thing.

Well, he did it anyway. Sorry. I had to look on for our notes because John put one of my favorite things, and I want to save where there you had. And then it is. They go to Katie. They go to Kenya, yeah. Which he has a parentheses, totally not going to be important again later. Kedia is the most important.

Yeah, that story will mostly be an entire cast. Yeah. What happens at Kedia. Kedia is a inflection point in the story, but we are well away from that. But this was, of course, where a lot of this started. So, Lorgaar arrives in Kadia with his dad and his buddy. And his stepdad. It's with his stepdad and his buddy.

And, I mean, just decides to have a chat with the chaos gods, who are exceptionally deceptive and Lorgar is an idiot. Yeah. And he's also all in immediately. Oh, yeah. And also completely believes this is a right. thing to do. Yeah.

Why wouldn't it be? He does not think it's a bad idea. Doesn't think it's going to have consequences later. He thinks that this is, everybody should actually be worshipping these guys. They know the answers. They can see the future. They are all powerful. And so Lorgar now has decided that the best thing to do for all of mankind is for

all of mankind to come under the influence of chaos. And how is he going to do that? And now we're going to jump back to the present. Back to the present. Back to the present. So now we've got a situation where Horace is sad. One of the things Horace is upset about is that the empire has changed. It went from an empire of conquest of kind of excitement.

He's a warrior. It's not even that, though. It went from, he was fighting. He was doing the bad things so that I'm going to go from Serenity. Yeah. I'm a terrible person, but I'm fighting for the better play. never live in that place. But Horace always thought he was going to live in this beacon of glorious everything's awesome. And when he looks back and goes, have up fighting this whole time for this

bureaucracy laden just carrying an anchor while you're swimming every bureaucracy? Because it's so wide, it's so far reaching. There's millions of world. It is literally an empire of paperwork. And he's looking at of, wait a second, this, is this really what I've been, because he believes, Horace is a real believe, most of the primaries. They all the primaries, they weren't following orders. They genuinely believed in that, 100%, that the emperor is the solution here. So now Horace is sad and all the primarks are set. This is Lorgar's moment, effectively.

So Lorgar has been setting this up for a while. He never knew how he was going to do it, but he can see the future. And so Lourgard realizes, so one thing that Lorgar started doing early on was the infiltration of these things called Warrior Lodges. And Mornival. Yeah, Mordival. Mornful. Mornval is the name of Horace's, the Luna Wives.

And he wants to infiltrate everyone's upper tier. This is where the primarks go for the only place they can go because they call it a Lodge of equals. Because everybody's of views, it's actually a great idea. It's a fantastic idea. It's literally a group of everyone is equal at this table. Everyone's idea will be taken with the same value. All of you, yeah, your rank.

And this was, I mean, there's actually a lot of history to this. There is a beauty of allowing captains and sergeants and lieutenants to speak with grunts on equal footing. So no one feels like they're offending it. So they became brothers within these lodges. And so these were technically bad. They were, you know, this was something the emperor would not have been okay with. These were things that are, there is some spirituality to them. So they did not officially exist.

You had to be, it was an invite only membership. And the people who were part of it actually even wore, they had special pins, the special coin that they actually used. They knew who was in it and who wasn't in it. And only within the lodge were you able to speak to your superiors at this point in time with no fear of what was going to happen. So he wanted to infiltrate these because he knew this is the best place. He set these up.

Yeah, well, he set these up. This was this, he brought these from his home world. This is something that Lorgar brought in and everyone thought it was great. Which it kind of was, except for when you infiltrated with chaos. Exactly. The thing was what Lorgar was really doing here. We're going to dive in this in a minute here is he was basically using as a way to see who's on what side. Like, let's get everyone in a room and we can very quickly hear people speaking.

candidly and then this way it allows me mostly arabis actually does he just suck to make a list of these are the people who it will say arabus was the one and this is the big focus arabus was the one that was assigned to horace with the little ones the sons of horace he was in their lodge but there was word bearers agents in all every lodge every lodge yeah and this their goal here is to kind of keep everyone along where we're going lorgars Gold and here is to figure out who he can turn, who he can bring to his side, and some he had to, Horace being the one he has to. There's people that you can, again, you're going to have a split.

And this is not even just stories, it's just period. It was a fact. They knew that there was going to be a civil war. However, he needed at least half, which they got. But you need at least half these guys, but you need certain people that come. You can't have Horace being on the other side. no one's leaving as long as Horace is there. He is the most charismatic of everyone.

That is his whole deal. He is the face guy. He's the negotiator. That is what he does. So at this stage, we've got the infiltration of Warrior Loth. Lorgar's plan is beginning. The pieces are coming in. He's got, he now has access.

He's able to see who's who. But the thing is, we still need a culmination. There's got to be something to push it over. And this is where we get to the Interax. And the Interacts are an interesting little side story. So it's a human civilization that actually was living side by side with Xenos. Because in the 31st millennia, this was kind of okay. Not really, but whatever.

And they were, we talked to a prior episode, and Brad brought up that some of these worlds that went dark were a single planet that made hubcaps. And that planet probably got killed. But there were other ones where it was actually star systems that were able to still because they were close enough with faster than light drives, they were actually able to build a mini empire. And the interacts are probably the largest one.

So it's then about 30 star systems. They were incredibly advanced because not only did they have the dark age of technology, which wasn't really a dark age. It was just an age of technology. They had that stuff. They'd also met Xenos or alien species who brought their own technology. And so they were this light years advanced civilization that when mankind I'd met, it was this really don't want to fight them because it's probably going to cost a lot of

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your team. Pebble's new standard discounted pricing is only $399 U.S. dollars per month per employee. That'll help you contain costs. Go to highpebble.aI to get a free estimate. That's high p-e-b-l.a-I for a free estimate. Corus went to meet with them. The thing that's important here, though, but the interacts knew about chaos. The interacts were very well aware of because they actually been fighting it for a long time. A long, long time, actually. Like, they knew who chaos was. They knew what chaos was, and they have technology on par.

They actually, in the stories, if you read the horace, please do. Read the horaceae's novels. But they actually have better technology. They just don't have space marine technology. They don't have genetic engineering technology. But their weaponry is actually slightly better. Yeah, actually, we'll get to what happens in those. second, but there's some really cool weapons that they kind of pull out of nowhere. While they're

there, they meet with Horace, and it's a happy meeting, and they take them a little tour of their city, and their city has a museum. And in the museum, there's some stuff from their wars with chaos, because when you defeat a dark god, it's really important to keep all his shit around. And there might be an unbelievably powerful sword from Nergel, the god of the god of of plagues and pestilence, grandfather Nergal. So out of nowhere while everyone's hanging out, there's an explosion. And it turns out that someone stole, said sword. One of the few things in the galaxy that could actually hurt a primer.

Yeah. And that's now happened. So there's now the Interax attack. And the space Marines discover that what they thought were little decorative crossbows that guys had in their things, much like what Chewbacca has, actually is pretty nasty and can shoot through power armor. And the being gregorong, they retreated. The space marines fled the system because the interacts were attacking. They fought their way out. Even though mankind conquered the galaxy, they were not necessarily the most powerful

thing. So, but they leave. No one knows what happened. To go back on that, one of the reasons that the Imperium, us, I guess, mankind keeps winning at this point in time is we just have more. We have millions of worlds so we can lose a battle. We're never going to lose the war because we are so willing to throw bodies at you that it doesn't matter. So now we're going to get to the first part of Horace's fall.

And one thing I want to circle back to is talking about mankind doesn't know chaos exists. Magic doesn't really, there's no belief in magic or any of this stuff. There's aliens. and that's about it. They believe they're aliens. They don't believe in Nergal or corn or any of these things. Because they're wrongful. Oh, God.

This is why the Emperor is so terrible at this. Emperor knows about this the entire time. He's hung out with them. Also, the reason that they weren't in Terra at birth was because of the chaos guys. So these guys don't know anything. So message comes through Davin. It's a planet.

And they have a moon. And there was a governor named Eugene Temba. and he has turned his back on the empire. So Horace, go deal with this. So Horace grabs a couple of his buddies and gets there. What's the planet look like when he lands? It is a fully nergle, again, the god of pestilence and the disease. The entire moon is that.

Yeah, sludge. It's decaying sludge. Effectively, what it actually is is dead everything, all creatures. decaying, and that is what the ground is actually made up of billions of bodies from animals to creatures to the people to everything. It is just decaying, yes. And so Horace has to go through this. And this is why I brought up the chaos thing. They've never seen this before. This isn't an alien world. It's wrong. Something is wrong. And remember, space marines are immune to toxins. And they're Even here, they're struggling.

Right. And the thing is, is also they have wildly attuned senses, and they all know something's wrong, but they don't know what. Because this is chaos. This is not, it's not natural. So the things that space marines are built to fight that they're built for is their immunity to poison, their extra lungs, they're healing, they're not meant to fight dark God power. So this planet's throwing them off a little bit.

They're actually struggling. now the zombies arrive and it is an unending plague of zombies it's not walkers yeah i was just say yeah i was saying but it's not your walking dead here's a few random zombies it is all of the zombies all of the zombies you're going out of bolters getting through them so horace decides to figure out where eugene temba is who's the governor and we're going to go confront him and maybe if we just kill him it'll solve the problem best part about this is this guy has absolutely Absolutely no bearing in history, except for the fact that he's the guy that started World War I by killing the arch dude. Yeah, basically.

So eventually they get to the ship that he's just sitting inside of it, which is also decaying. And Horace confronts him. And this is a man. This is not a prime. I'm a space moon. This is a man who moves with the speed of a prime. I was just about to say he's never met a chaos infused. anything.

Yeah. So the regular guy, but infused by the powers of chaos, so he's not prepared for what this guy does. And this guy flies. Yep. And he moves around Horace can't do anything out of nowhere during the fight. He stabs Horace. Then he is killed. He gets oblitering.

Yeah. I mean, he was always going to lose, but he did get a, he did get a nick in, which actually, he really only, really did get nicked him. I mean, in fencing, he got a point in fighting. He doesn't exist anymore. Another guy got stabbed lightly with the point of stick. But because of the fact that this is a chosen weapon of a god of pestilence. Well, that's the thing, is the blade he got stabbed with is an interesting blade. It's the one that was stolen from the Iterax. And we can now reveal Erebus. Oh, yeah, Erebus handed it to him. Erebus secretly went down to the planet, gave it to him. him. The blade corrupted this governor, and the whole thing came from this blade. So what's important

here is Horace has just been stabbed by a blade. Now, this blade's pretty cool. This blade, actually, if you speak the name of your target into the blade, it will create a poison that targets that person. And effectively can't be cured. So now you've got a primark who's the most next to the emperor, one of the most powerful beings in the universe. They've got healing rates. I mean, you can shoot him with a bolt or they couldn't care less. You should have a lascan. They couldn't care less. Whatever.

But he just got pinpricked by a blade, and he is sick, really sick. He is struggling. So they take him off world, and this is when they discover all the problems. Effectively, Horace is dying. And then with the usual setup from the bad guys making a problem that only they have the answer to, the apothecaries, which are the surgeons, I mean, they're the everythings. Yeah, they're the medics. They're the medics.

They're the medics. So Horace is going to die. He is suffering from, and he's also suffering. It's not only just a uncurable disease. It is a, hey, every nerve cell in your body is on fire. He's going to slowly, and you're going to watch effectively your favorite person ever, because you're genetically designed to be that, is currently dying the worst death you could think of.

And Erebus shows up and says, I think I have a way to cure Horace, but you're going to have to do it outside of what is normally allowed. And he tells that to his lodge, his closest advisors, the people that love him the most, and goes, I mean, guys, you shouldn't do this, because we're not allowed, but...

But if you allow us to bring Horace away from the doctors and over to our shaman... Over to our devil-worshipping... Yeah, the other shaman's totally cool. It's just a serpent lodge, whatever. Great name for a place you go to get healed. The problem is that the Luna wolves have two choices. Their choice number one is to follow the emperor's guidance and watch Horace die. To be fair, to be fair...

Everything that's going on right now that they want to do is strictly already been told that this is something you do not do. You don't ever go. Again, the emperor knows about chaos. He tells them not to go with witchcraft and sorcery and anybody that could do that is a no-no. You don't go into this. It's only about science. You cannot let these people. He knows that it's because he doesn't want chaos to get a foothold.

But again, he doesn't tell anybody. It doesn't tell them why. It just keeps doing this. So unfortunately, fortunately, whatever you want to call it, the Luna Wolds agree. And they take Horace's dying body to Davin, which is one of the moons that is under the word bears. And in Davin, take him into a serpent watch. So this is not a cleansing ritual in any way, shape, or form. This was a way for them that basically take Horace's soul out of his body and throw it into the immaterial.

so he can hang out with the chaos gods. And he has a wildly long premonition where they show him the future. And the future is the emperor, they tell him this, the emperor has went back to Tara to get all the power of the Imperium and have himself become a god to be worshipped as a god. And that is why he left all of his sons away. And effectively tells him that some of the other primarks

that he doesn't like as much, are going to also be part of that. Just straight up going, you don't really like this guy? Yeah, he's going to be the best. Yeah. So they tell him that the whole reason that his father left him is to plot against him, become a god, leave him behind, and kill him and all of his brothers. And so at this point, Horace effectively, well, what do you guys want? And the chaos gods, of course, say, well, we're just, we're going to be left alone.

we're not trying to do anything bad here. We just, the emperor is really, he's beating us up. He's doing all this stuff. If you just, we can help you. If you just overthrow him, then we can go back to our imitarium. And we could just hang out over here doing what we do. And you guys rule your kingdom. And the funny thing is, he at least has the good sense to not trust them.

But for whatever reason, he does trust the vision. So he's really worried that his thousands of space marine brothers are going to be killed. Kill. And the emperor is going to do away with them. At this stage, I'm going to, you know, I will be honest, I have a thousand sons army. I like thousand sons, but I'm going to turn on Magnus now. So Magnus tries to help. So Magnus, because he is, and we've covered Maxx a little bit, but Magnus is the psycher of all of the primaries.

And we say the cycle. Magnus is, what would you rank Magnus on most powerful psychers in the universe? I mean, he's literally top three. Because it's emperor, then you can go with like an Eldrad, though. Yes, it's probably Eldred in Melkador. Yeah. How about this? We're having a debate about the top psychers in the universe.

In the universe of he's that. Trillion of trillions. Magnus has been told over and over again. Don't do this. Stay out of the warps. Stay out of psychics. Again, no reason why, though. Yeah.

Magnus just goes, okay, and then just keeps doing it. So Magnus actually. actually senses his brother in the immaterial and goes and thinks his brother is dead. So he jumps in to see, hey, why, Horace, are you dead? And Horace are, no, I'm not dead. What's going on? I'm just hanging out with these guys. There's chaos gods.

And Magnus does try to do the right thing. Tries to tell them, no, these guys are lying. He does several times. He always. Yeah, so I'm referring to with Magnus takes a lot of L's. That's what he does. He's very good to take an L's. So he tries to.

convince him of all the lies, tries to convince him that these guys aren't telling the truth. But apparently he sucks at it. And Horace just kind of blows Magnus off. And he makes a deal with chaos. And the deal he makes with chaos is to overthrow the emperor. And in return, they will cure him because one of them did this to him. And they will support his army. And we'll get more into how they support him later.

But they do quite a bit of stuff of like shielding him via the imbatineer. Because remember, the one thing that we should probably discuss here quickly is the way that the mankind's empire functions, that travels and talks through the war. Chaos runs the war. So they can, they want to, they can use their powers to make it so that doesn't work so good. Or only works for some people and not so well for others. Horace at this point has converted. So now he wakes up. The Luna wolves are thrilled because Horace is awake and he's cured this weird demon

ritual worked, probably not going to be any problems with him. Absolutely, no implications. This is great. Thanks, Erebus. Let's all trust you more now. Even though you're the weaseliest weasel of all time. Horace is now with chaos and he has to pick who he wants to bring on board. So it goes through a long process, though. Some of them are a bit easier. I mean, I think he kind picked up Angron pretty quickly. I mean, that was a pretty, Angron already fell to chaos. He, he, He doesn't he? I don't even know if Angron still knows he thought. I still believe if Angron had gotten to Ulinar first, he would have hung out with

the orgs and been like, actually this is awesome. I'm actually just going to go be an orc now. So he's got a few others left sitting around him. Fulgrim being a big one, Mortarian, and of course, Lorgar, who already is there. Lorgas already there. And Fulgram's not actually there yet. Fulgram actually takes a long time. he actually converts fulgram in a long process where he fulgram is a really good story though because fulgram

we won't i would wait into it later but like i'll just touch on it now fulgram falls because he's the most vain of all the prime marks and legitimately doesn't really turn to chaos at first he just gets manipulated to his pride just kind of a you won't do that Yeah, well, that becomes basically how these guys mostly turn. I think Mortarian was an interesting one. Angron didn't really turn. Angron just kept being Angron, and it turned out that made him chaos. Yes.

Mortarian, he's able to bring over because Mortarian's got some issues with the Emperor as it stands. Well, he was told that, well, he had some issues, period. But, like, the big thing is Horace tells him. And again, Horace's superpower is charisma, is effectively telling any story. he wants and he convinces mortarian 100% our dad is trying to become a god and he's going to kill us and mortarian who already had some we a long story had some doubts in the first place becomes super he's also mortarian should be an honorary dwarf he already holds grudges like no one's ever yeah morterian told his dad betrayed all of mankind and mortarian just went oh not just me cool

And the Mortarian in later castorke's kind of his fall is pretty sad in my mind. Everything about Mortarian. Martyrian's fault of chaos is pretty sad. Folgram, let's spend some time on Folk. You actually do want to talk about Fulgram and his Legion. Fulgram's super power, super flaw is that he's just likes being pretty. And it's, well, he's vain, but he also wants perfection in all things. But it becomes perfection and excess.

weirdly enough there was a new chaos guy who is all about vanity and excess. So weirdly enough, he starts getting whispered. He starts getting inner circle members of his that say, why are we not doing this? Why aren't we the best? Why aren't we this? And Fulgram's fall is, he slowly just gets absorbed by Slanesh. And then he also starts to purge people around him. you're holding me back from being perfect, the best.

And so this is kind of what starts happening within these legions, but there's only a few of them at this stage. There's a few legions where chaos is really getting in. While this happening, we're going to swing back to Magnus, taking another L. No, then this is not an L. This is a capital L on the top of a casino. So for those of you who are new to Warhammer,

you will hear the phrase, Magnus did nothing wrong, Magnus did everything wrong. I am on the latter part of that. So Magnus, okay, the emperor didn't tell anybody, this is, as usual, the emperor's fault. Magnus was told one million times, do not mess a sorcery. So Magnus tries to contact his dad. Well, let's talk about what his dad's really doing. So what his dad is really doing is what end around in chaos. Yes.

He is effectively trying to duplicate what the elves did, which is create a way to travel that bypasses the warp, which basically goes into, we said it, I think, in episode two, it's like stranger things. It's the upside down. It's the world between worlds. He's trying to make a Webway gate is what it's called, or not even just, it's a Webway network. Network.

Of gates. Tunnels through the imiterium that the imiterium doesn't know exist. It allows them to kind of move quickly. quickly throughout. And so he is effectively making a super highway through the war. So this is a super tricky, unbelievably important, but unbelievably dangerous thing. Chaos does not. Yes. And they are, they are definitely protesting this pipeline. They are looking to blow. Oh, yeah. So they're looking for any opportunity, but they are literally standing next to what he's doing and waiting for any tiny breach in this.

We talked before about Gellerfields. He has surrounded his project with Geller Fields. Nothing is coming in. The emperor against bottom of the Himalayan Mountains. He could have done this on the plains of the Serengeti. It wouldn't matter. But he wants to be in a mountain fortress

like Dr. Evil, so that's where he wants to do. So he's in a Dr. Evil fortress working on this thing. And it's surrounded by these fields that keeps psychic energy out. Magnus discovers He wants to do the right thing.

And in the... His brothers are turning to chaos. Worst way ever, instead of just sending a message, which actually he got a guy pretty quickly, he says, I have to tell him right now. And the best way to tell him is to use my sorcery powers, which are empowered by the warp, to tell dad. Well, in doing this, because he's crazy powerful,

he punches a hole through his defenses and literally lets a demonic infestation in a giant incursion happen. in the middle of his dad's work. And the emperor is also not exactly super excited that he was working effectively underwater and his son pickaxed the two. And literal demons begin pouring into the capital. But not just a couple guys went in through this thing. All of them.

They've been massing everywhere around here because they can't get in. And they're just, there's armies. like infinite hordes of demons sitting here going, you guys ready? Yeah, we've got 46 million lines of us ready to go. And so now, instead of the cool little workbench, he's got in the basement working on his new thing, now he has to commit soldiers and troops to fighting the demons,

which, by the way, he's told everyone don't actually exist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This sucks. And Emperor doesn't really listen to what Magnus's saying. saying because he's too busy yelling at him. And eventually, we'll cover this a little bit later. He decides to send the space wolves and the sisters of silence and the custodes to go deal with the situation that is kind of does.

Because he sends at the force, but Horace actually finds out that this is, that happened from the chaos gods. So Horace contacts Lehman Russ, the primark of the space wolves and just says, you need to go. Where's the farthest place I can possibly have you away from? from what I'm going to do, over here. Exactly. Why don't you go over there? And you also, instead of like doing what dad said, which was, you know, grab magnets and bring him back,

let's just kill him. Yeah, no, you need to exterminate. Well, actually, he burns prosperity on ground. Yeah, yeah. So this is, you know, and we're going to cover Magnus's next couple of big losses and the coming episodes, but they're coming up. So that's kind of, but that's also what Brad would just talk about there is important. This is also a big inflection point for Horace.

Horace now is committed to the revolution. Well, this is the thing that Horace is an arch here because he was a, I can't say on winning Palm because he's got so many times he could turn back. Yeah. So he's, it's a tragic story, but it's also a, hey man, here's these 15 different, you could have got off the bad guy expressway at these 15 exits and you decided not. Sped up. Yeah.

So you were prideful. You also were convinced that you are better. than the emperor in ruling. You will make the Imperium better. And the entire time he's being infused with power. So not only am I, I agree with you guys, I am going to be better,

but also I'm clearly stronger, faster. I have new powers. Of course this is the right decision. And he effectively does what most tyrants do in books and real life. Says, I'm going to have to do bad things, but it's for it's for the greater good now he's on the path he's made his decision i'm going to i'm going to

i'm going to go my dad i'm going to earth we're overthrowing this empire but he's still not ready to go yet he's got he's doesn't have enough of his brothers he's got a couple of his brothers on his side but the other problem he has is that even within his own legions his legion in the other leaders it's well it's all the legions he's gotten so far this is a big thing because they do it everybody that is corrupted is told in different, he convinces him in different ways. It's the same message worded differently, which is you got to get everybody on board and wink, wink. If they're not on board, you got to do something about that. So Horace then realizes that it's on him to do this something.

And what he's going to have to do to make this revolution work is yes, if everyone unified, I've got to purge legions. He's going to have to go through it, figure out who's loyal, who's not loyal. This goes back to the warrior lodges. Thanks to the warrior lodges, they know. They actually do have, they've got their list of loyal, not loyal, question mark. Oh, poor Garvin. Yeah.

Oh, go on why. We're going to cover flight of ease in steam. We'll get in emunciations later. And the best way to do it is going to be to let a trap. Because Horace loves a good trap. That's what he kind of see throughout a lot of this stuff. He makes a bad decision. He is wildly, the tactical brilliant.

In every story we hear about Horace, he's an incredible tactician. And so he decides that he's going to set a trap. At that point, we're going to conclude this episode because the next one is going to be the opening of the rebellion. At this point, Magnus knows, Horace knows, but not a lot of other people know. And he's about to make sure everyone knows. Once again, I am John Barcidi. This is Bradchester. This guy.

Thank you for listening, and we look forward to you joining us on our next cast.