The 40k Lorecast - Episode 33 - The Gods of Chaos, who they are and where they came from

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

On today's episode we dive into the origins of the Ruinous Powers. How the warp went from a tranquil see of power to a nightmare realm that is ravaging the materium. Who's fault was it, how did it happen, why does GW do lame writing that makes no sense on this topic, and more. We then do a shallow dive into each god as we will next be doing deep dives into each of them. Finally we conclude with Chaos Undivided because why wouldn't we take some time to talk about Be'lakor?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 Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. On today's episode, we're going to dive into the chaos gods of 40K, also as the ruinous powers, how they came to be, what drives them, and kind of set us up for our deeper dives into some of the gods that we're on the following episodes. We're going to argue so much today. Yeah.

We've got some strong opinions, actually. It's not even just a fat fact is a lot of what we're going to talk about today is all of the stuff that they've never canoned or clarified, and there's a ton of conjecture online for the past 30 years about. Intentionally. Yeah. But I'm saying we're going to, we're going to try to concise that up to one podcast. Yeah, you know what I got?

A microphone. I'm going to tell the world my opinion. That's how opinions work. Look, I got an opinion and publishing and editing software. And before you, you know, I'm going to preface this with, I've been wrong. I'll be wrong again. you're listening to me today because I'm going to say what I think and a lot of people are going to go, Brad, you are so wrong. Also, you know what I do want everybody to do? Because I think this one's

going to be one of the ones that we're going to have wildly differing opinions on. I would love to have some Discord feedback on this. Yeah, please. Don't be afraid to throw it down and go, here's my 10 point essay of why you're wrong about this. Oh, yeah. Well, you will, like I've, I've said this cast numerous times. I mean, please like and subscribe. to the cast obviously, but if you don't like something or think we got something wrong, come to the Discord and let me know. People, you can just look those thoughts of ways to let us know. But if you do it on the Discord, I can actually respond to you and apologize if I'm wrong.

And we can then make changes to later cast where we'll come in and actually call out. I want to apologize. I'll just accept the fact that I'm wrong. Yeah, I'll write it out. Also, I just want to thank a bunch of you. Now I am where the Xbox listeners are from. A bunch of you have actually left me notes. I need to know this, though.

Yeah, well, they play it. They listen to our podcast while they game. Oh, hell yeah. I just had no idea. And people were like, yeah, listen, I pop it on Xbox. How are they doing that? We're both way too old to be asking questions about technology. All right.

I don't know how. Somebody needs to message me on how to do it. I kind of want to do that now. If you could also add the Google results for how to open a PDF for Brad and I, we'd be very helpful for the two of us. So we're going to do some other cast in the future on the other gods, like the Eldar gods, what the Imperium calls a living saint. It's a demon.

It's a hundred percent of demon. But it's a living saint, Brad. The emperor is being powered by the warp right now. Continue. Yeah. I wouldn't even get into that. By the way, that cast is going to be fun. Oh, the black ships cast.

Hoo! So let's start at the beginning of what is the warp. I mean, we're going to start on a contrary notion on this. All right. Let's just go in the beginning. though. The warp, when the old ones were using the warp, and this is, this may not even be the first people that use the warp. It was just the first people we know about. Right. The warp was a never-ending serene lake of power, but it's the inverse, it's the flip. It's the other side. Yeah. It's the upside. It's just the inverse of the galaxy. Exactly. Where the galaxy is material beings doing material things. The warp is emotion. It's thought, it's feeling. It's thought become manifest, though, because when you think, when you, it's not even

just think, when you feel something, it becomes reality in the warp. And the old ones were able to Zen mojo it to use the power of the warp to make the smallest splash possible. They would have been great Olympic divers. Oh, yeah, just the, right in. But they used it for what millions. of years without really doing anything to it. It wasn't until, well, I mean, Eldar ruined everything.

Cough, cough, cough, sorry. But humans did a little bit of that. Well, it depends. According to GW, humans did a lot of bit of that. Makes no sense, and we're going to get there. The one question is about the warp is kind of, it's a little bit tricky from a gameplay standpoint is Warhammer 40K exists entirely within the Milky Way galaxy.

But the warp, the immaterium, I would assume would have to extend, beyond. It's everywhere. So the problem is, is that I think that the warp, I know, but they can't write it because it becomes a challenge, but. But I think that the warp is localized also. Okay. I mean, again, we can make this up as we go along. But that's, that's my belief, though, because I think that the warp has a landscape, like space has landscape. You know what I mean? It has, even, it's the, I always have to think of it as the upside down because it's the

the flip of the galaxy, or sorry, of the universe. Yep. So the Milky Way only has, there's a warp for everywhere, but I think that the Milky Way has its warp, Alpha Centauri has this warp, because it's just far, because there's distance and all. I guess, yeah, that makes sense.

It just becomes, it's the question as to the warps. So you're saying they all have their own individual warps, they don't overlaps. Like, Nergel doesn't exist in Alpha Centauri. Or they have their own Nergel. They have their own Nergel. And maybe it doesn't exist there. Again, it was a question.

was like, I don't know how to answer this. It goes back into is there distance in the war. Yeah. And sort of, we'll get to that when we cover the chaos gods. It's like, because they do have their own realms. They have a semi-topography. Yeah. There's a map.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's a map. Don't find yourself using that map. Bad. But the warp is effectively infinite. They have said that multiple times that the warp is like the universe. It's an infinite expanse. Yeah.

Okay. So from there, we kind of go into the origin of the, the gods in the war. And so this is what Brad was talking about. The time of the war in the heaven, the warp was just this, it was a tranquil sea of power. It was this flat, just endless amounts of energy you could reach into. Because I really think that the old ones, in my mind, the old ones are, I mean, they're basically slanned, but whatever.

Yeah. But they have that monk on the mountain, the ability to be super disciplined. Because I actually think that the old ones could just throw down, Dragon King like powers, and I'm full D&D old-scrolling it on this one. But they could just, they could have hurled, for instance, in the war in heaven, I really think that they could have just went, I don't think that I want Necronterre to be here, but they would have corrupted the warp. And that's not what they do.

Oh, basically they had to fight the Necronterre in a, in a materium fashion, because if they'd use the immaterial, then they would have created. They would have, because they would have used emotion because they could have drawn on that. You don't use the fire magic in the witcher, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think that they would have wrecked the warp. I think they have to put constraints on it because they know that we will ruin this. But again, in winning this battle, we will lose the war of forever, basically, because what happened, and it's partially their fault.

It's exclusively their fault. Yeah. Exclusively their fault. It's like, they went, hey, we're losing this war. let's make the race of poets that we made into a race, into a race of OCD Psycho Warriors. Because this was the problem. If we talk about the warp, when we discuss the war in heaven,

one thing we kind of, you say, is that before the Necron tier, you know, came back at the old ones. So the Necron tier and the old ones fight, the old ones push the Necron tier back. The Necron tier become the necrons and reemerge. In that period of time, is approximately when the old ones were uplifting the Eldar. And the Eldar were being uplifted to be poets.

They were being shown how to use the warp to make a building to craft music. The warp was being used for good. To make literal music reality. Yeah, it was being used. The warp at this stage was primarily a source of good. It was being used. They were actually, they were curing disease with it. They were doing all of these things with it.

And then the Necron show up with C-Tans and it's like, hey guys, I need you to drop the clarinet. In fact, if you could use the warp to turn that clarinet into a bright lance, that would be... Well, this is why it's such a big deal and why I think that they didn't do... They do and do it justice because we're going to get into how GW has said humanity created most of the strife in the war, but Eldor... We just both don't believe that. No, because Eldar, the old ones made Eldar to be their lives to be intricately connected

to the warp. Because they legitimately started making thoughts reality. They made, they legitimately saying like Wood Elves did, if you go Elysium stuff. They sang their buildings into existence with Ray, you know, all that thing. That's all warp. And then they took that and went, hey, guys that are intimately connected to the warp. We're not going to give you any more training on how to be disciplined about this. And we need you to fight right now.

Also, is there any way you guys could throw some lightning bolts out of your eyeballs so you could kill these people? Yeah. And they're like, I play the flute and this guy bakes. You're like, stop doing all of that. All of those bakers became warp spiders. All of the guys playing the flute were dire avengers. Like, that was how fast this went. It was like basically they took the marching band that was the Eldar and broke them up by instrument and just gave them each a different gun.

And they went, hey, I think this is going to have some serious long-lasting consequences. Like, yeah, it'll probably work itself out, right? Well, that was the whole thing is I think that the old ones did this real quick. And we're like, hey, guys, come here. We're going to teach you how to fight using the warp. Because they assume, well, once we win, we'll just fix it. We'll fix it later. And then the enslaver plague comes into play.

And the old ones all like, hey, we got to go now. Smoke bomb. Yeah, bye. Thank you your smoke bomb. And what ends up happening is that the Eldar are left just going, well, I can make anything I want with this. So I'll just go ahead and keep your. And this isn't a straight Eldar cast, but I do have to sidetrack it on why I think that the Eldar are terrible for the war. Because Eldar, and this has been multiple times they've talked about it, Eldar feel everything 100 slash a thousand times more than humans do.

Right. All emotions wise, not like pain. Yeah. But like any feeling the Eldar process this so much stronger, which is crazy, by the way, for a super, long living race. Yeah, they care more than any other race. Yes, about everything. Any tragedy is horrific for them.

Every victory is amazing. Every tragedy is the worst ever. And this takes a toll on the warp. And it takes a little bit more toll when they become psycho fish hooks and butthole guys. Yeah, they get a little bit loopy with this. Yeah. And so what ends up happening, though, with that is,

as we've discussed, the old ones disappear. the necrons disappear, the C-Tan are dead, and the Eldar are looking around at the Cork and the Jocharo. Again, we're going to cover the Jochero. I really wish the GW would do more with them. But anyway, the crook are pretty intense. Yeah, the crook just kind of F off for their part of the portion of the galaxy and have some fun wars.

But the Eldar then spends 60 million years messing with the warp. Two stories. With no, and it's actually interesting, when you read Eldar lore, it's kind of this conflict of they seem to know that they shouldn't be messing with the warp this much, but then seem to have that kind of natural urge

of like, yeah, but everything's easier if we do. Again, it's a civilization that is, I think about something and it materializes in that, was their technology. It was.

It materializes in the real world. But the Sears were pointing out that, hey, this is, this is bad. Okay, and no one cares. Sorry, John. I'm going to tell you the fact that when you think something into being is bad, you're like, cool. I'm going to keep. I'm going to keep. My hand is a pain in the ass. Yeah, I'm probably just going to go ahead and keep magicing things into being and you can go to hell. So we could all get together and magic into being an entire city in about, I don't, two and a half hours. Or we could spend a century. Lifetime. Yeah. Building it.

I'm going to go ahead and keep doing. I'm going to go with option. Option A? Option 8. I keep doing the bad magic guys. Yeah, and whatever. It's someone else's problem. I mean, it didn't come back to haunt them for a while. Go ahead and kick that can.

The reason this matters is that the warp itself feels these emotions. So what ends up happening with the piece that the Eldar either didn't understand, didn't care, whatever it is, is they were actually creating an infinity circuit for themselves. They were pulling energy out of the warp to do things. things, but as they did those things, those things created emotions, which then fed the warp. So they were actually taking the energy and feeding it back in, which in the case, it's like cold fusion is a good thing. Yeah, someone just finished fallout. But in the case of this is a bad thing because the warp doesn't just take the energy.

It shifts. But let's do this because we want to go, I'm going to steal your thunder hardcore and go into that criteria also. No, but I have to do Canon versus R. Cannon. Yeah. Because, and we're skipping around just a little bit, because G.W. Canon is when humanity came into play, which doesn't happen for 60 millionaires. Yeah. That is when the gods became up because of all the emotions of humans. But Eldar broke the sky.

Yeah. You know, let's, let's shift. on them hard here. Okay, so according to GW, I can always count on you for now. Let's do this. Okay, so according to GW. Before you should have, I am going to talk about what I'm doing right now. So I'm basically an old lady that's always cold. And even though we're on a

cast where no one can see me, we just recorded the first. The second one I said, I can't have a blanket on me that restricts my arms. So I'm trying to figure out how to cover myself while still flailing my arms around like a wild person. Brad is wearing a blanket over his chest.

He keeps pulling it up like a woman. who's ashamed of changing at the beach. That's what I keep looking across, like picking it up, picking up the blanket over top of his chest, like something of modesty. He's wearing a shirt, by the way. It's just weird,

and I'm just letting it happen because we have wine. So anyway, the issue I have with this is, according to GW, all of the chaos gods are really born primarily out of... Humanity. Well, except for the Slesh.

Not just humanity. out of the dark ages. So just for comparison, at the era of the dark ages, so pre-black plague, global population was around 350 million. There's six people compared to... 300 of the million.

The Eldar were in over a million galaxies at this point. Planets. No, star system. Star system. Sorry. Over a million star system at this point. And they were also at the height of the car,

I'm assuming they were also full on warring for shits and giggles and two-thirds of their civilization was part of a pleasure cult. Yeah, well, that was later. That was later. But I'm saying that that's still before humanity. Yeah, it's true. They were doing that for a while. That's millions of years.

The Eldar, so if I'm doing my math correctly, they're basically saying the Eldar were averaging less than 350 people per star system because humanity really had a big impact. on the warp. It's poor writing. That's all I'm going to, I'm going with. But whatever. So according to GW's viewpoint on this, the warp was mildly affected by the Eldar's existence for 60 million years. Who are intrinsically tied. And using it every single day to do all sorts of different things. The bad things too. But the wars in Europe were enough to really move the needle on this. That is the canon. My canon is that the gods, we're already there.

Yeah. This is, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to do my GW shill at the same point in time as I do my, what I actually think. What I think is that Eldar gave the psychic energy for the gods to exist. Humanity is so hardcore, so short-lived and so motioned up that we brought them into sentience. Sure. I'm just honestly just going to take what GW wrote and go ahead. it and just do it and do with what i would to me makes more cognitive sense so what i what i

believe happened was that over time the effects of not just because not just the elder you also got you've got numerous uh what was what was the alien species the dark angels were fighting oh gather the ragged so you've got ragdan you've got humanity you've got votan somewhere super psychically powerful, wildly warlike races. Warlike races. The entire, the orcs, the entire galaxy, even though you may not have, the elder had their section, but the entire galaxy is behaving in these ways that feed chaos. Corn is being fed by battle.

Which is everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Zinich is being fed by a desire to expand, grow. I mean, the necrons actually would have, the zines would have loved the necrons. I'm going to steal John's thunder on this, but this is a big, this is, this is the Barsati theory. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I didn't write that.

While the necrons were a non-warp sensing entity race, the necronteer, they still would have an effect on the warp by the fact that they were holy shit violent. The necronteer, by the way, makes humanity look like a bunch of like. The Necron tier hit all three of the original chaos gods dead on. They hit corn by being incredibly warring. They hit, they hit Nergel by being desperate to get out from underneath the plague. Their plague that infected 100% of their civilization. And Zinch.

Oh, because they were plotting and scheming against each other. They could not love technology more. They were, in my mind, actually significantly more, they should have had more of an effect on the warp than humanity did. Because they actually were doing this of humanity, but there were more of them, and they were more desperate and more depraved in their actions. They just didn't have...

wildly short-lived. Yeah. Well, we don't... The problem with that... The only short-lived necrones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They lived for 400 years versus an Eldar. True.

You know, it's like... You don't live forever. You're a bum. Yeah. Oh, how do you guys even live? You're like a mayfly. What is your purpose? So to be in line with GW...

Because you don't want to be crazy on the canon. Yeah. But also, that's... kind of how, that's how I rationalized that for me. Because I think that they, you powered up a god and then the humanity put the cherry on top

and made them push them over the edge, which maybe, that's what I that's how I feel. We can get into that in a bit where it turns out like some of the gods really get their power more from people reaching out to them in desperation. So. And I think humanity that then would have been. Because I don't think the Eldar and I don't, the Nicarant you

didn't even know about them. That's true. Yeah. And the Eldar were callous in the fact that I'm above everything. I don't need to reach out to anyone. I guess the argument could be made of the races in the galaxy. Humanity is the most likely to make deals with chaos gods. Humanity was aware and willing. That's the thing.

The Eldar, I don't think the Eldar would have made, because they had their own gods. No, because they were so arrogant, though. Well, they had their own gods, but they're also a race at the height of their power. Eldor felt that why would I ever make a deal with... Well, to be fair, I mean, in that regard, we talked about really quick with Nergel. Like, if your humanity, you would make a deal with Nergel to relieve your suffering from, say, the Black Plague.

Whereas if you're the Eldar, you had Isha. So, hey, can you make me better? And Isha goes, yeah. We had, you had Isha, but also they were kind of mailing in, which is why they got defeated. We're not even going to talk about that. But that is why they got defeated because Eldar didn't worship their gods at the time at the height of their...

at the creation of Slenesh, pre Sleinesh and about to be Sleash, they were whatever. Yeah, it's going to be. To their gods. I'm just telling you guys, now the Eldar cast might be eight parts. Yeah.

I mean, there's a big thing because the Eldar, the only have caused a lot of problems. You and I both love Eldar. It's got some of the best lore in the game, and they're the oldest, and they're the oldest race in the game. It's not a good combo for two casts. Well, they're the oldest race in the game,

and they're also like, that might be our fault. Like when you're going over everything this happened in history, you're like so. We also did that. Yeah. That's our bad on that too. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging managing a global team can be.

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That's high p-e-b-l.a-i for a free estimate. Beginning of the birth of the chaos gods, what according to the GW, the canon is effectively over time, these the warp began to ripple. And so this serene lake became ripples. Those ripples became waves. As more and more emotion flooded into it, that's where you, you, these, this power starts to grow. And it begins to thirst for lack of a better phrase.

The, the war begins to want. It's deals, though. I think it's the deals that be made. Well, the deals come later. What I'm saying is initially, if it's, no, no, but I'm saying that happens. That's what I, 100%. percent believe because we the gods got powered up. Yeah.

So that they're there and they are, they are effectively infinitely powerful because they have an infinite, again, air quotes, source of energy. So they are infinitely possibly powerful. And then humanity basically put, again, put the chair on top and makes them cross. It allows them to cross. They allowed them to be fully sentient with a, in our time, sentient. They were already immensely. They were beings of, excuse me, immense knowledge and power.

But they had, for us, they didn't interact in ways we can understand until humanity went, I will give you whatever. I'll make a deal with you if you'll let me do this. They started making deals with the devil. And that's where it begins to come out. Because what happens is this thirst, what I liked is, and I forget actually where I read this, So I apologize, I should source this one. But effectively, it starts off with just kind of, you know, we'll use corn.

People wage war, they kill, there's battle lust. And that ripple is growing into a wave. But at a certain point, you know, like any wave, the wave goes down. And when the wave goes down, it kind of gets sad. And it goes down because, you know, the bloodlust has ended. So it begins to search for more bloodlust to make that wave larger and larger. And the stories you get is you get, people start getting whispers in the backs of their ears. You start getting dreams because the chaos guys. Yeah, they gain enough sentience to be

able to reach new. This is primarily humanity. Reach into humanity to start saying, hey, you should do this thing. I'm going to give you the why Zinch and corn still kind of go together because Zinch whispers all the you should get power. You should want more knowledge. You should, you should want everything your brother has, the neighboring country has, whatever. It puts all those thoughts in, and then corn gets the reality of all the things that Zinch put in. So they're both, they actually work together pretty well despite not wanting to. I know, but like they go together really well. And that's also why those two don't war as much as the others.

Don't worry, guys. we're doing some casts on them about how much some of his chaos gods hate each other. Ooh, Zinch and Nurgel. Just saying in the game, you can do corn, you can do Zinch. You should not do corn and sledge. I'm just throwing that out there. The challenge with the warp is that there is no such thing as a limitless source of power. There is.

Oh. I disagree. Right. There's a, you might be able to always draw from it, but it itself. There's a difference between limitless. And consequences. That's a better way of putting it. Yeah.

There's wild consequences. I don't, 100%. Yeah, the warp is a limitless source of power if you feed it. The problem, what I'm getting at is that if all, we'll use, man, we're jumping ahead here. We'll use the tyrantids. If the tyranids were to conquer the galaxy and eat the galaxy, there's an argument to be made the warp would disappear because there would be nothing to feed the warp anymore. I think that the warp would be different.

Necrons conquered the galaxy. It would be, but if a non-scent, it was actually more of a necrone thing, if a non-scentient creature. Non-warp type. Yeah, non-warp type. But it's more like maybe something that just doesn't, because the question, what would the tyrantids do?

The tyrants ate the entire galaxy, consumed all the biomass of the galaxy and left the galaxy. I think that the warp would be fine because the warp is infinite and everywhere. Fine. But the argument about the warp is that if you remove what feeds the warp, that's why I don't think it's limitless because if I if I remove what feeds it you know what we will just move hot for that because we have one thing we kind of want to talk about is the way

that the gods started coming into being in this last little bit of sentience I think it's interesting to talk about how they were originally affecting the mortal realms for lack of a better term for it it was these whispers and there's these things because it wasn't just that they would whisper in your mind and tell you to do something it was twofold it would whisper in your mind to tell you to do something. And then when you did that thing, it would reward it. It would get reward you. So this is why I think we pushed them over the edge. And this is because because because I think that they were in the Brad con. I think that they achieve full what they are now, our version of sentience. I think they were already powerful beings saying. But when they kept sending

out, because they're so powerful that they just do things because they are. They are. thought and feeling made manifest. They did things because that's what they do. That's it. Scorpion stabbed you while you're on the way. That's what I do, man. That's what I do. Because they did that,

but then they started getting something back from the thing that they were already just they were so powerful that they're sending that out. I think two good examples of this would be like a corn example is the first one. So a corn example is corn sees a potential champion. It was like a Genghis Khan type scenario. And whispers and,

Genghis is here to begin to begin a conquest. Genghis does this, begins a conquest. And as he wins, corn imbues him with more and more power, which makes more and more people fall behind Genghis. So it's not only is Genghis more powerful, but now he has, now his retude is growing and growing. And this is why the Zinch also, because Zinch makes him have more ability to politically be powerful in his ability. Take over an empire.

He knows over. He's lording him. He has knowledge of how. How do I make this happen? How do I make this large empire exist? Well, because Zinch keeps giving me more and more ability to manipulate my impotent. Because Zinch, and what happens is because what these chaos gods are doing, it's not just they want you to do the action.

They want people around you to do the action because the more that are doing the action, the better. They may, and they may even reward some of them a little bit, but they're going to reward you the first because they're trying to make you their champion. The other example, I was going to, you know, I couldn't figure out one for Slanesh, or like for Nurgle, for Slenish, for the safety of us keeping a good rating on this podcast, we're going to go with British baking championship. For Slanesh is the same thing where, you know, but Slanesh is as much as we talk about the pleasure cults are the easy one for Slanesh, a lot of actually early Slenish. It's success. It was success and perfection. That was the idea. It was if you want, you're a composer, you are an artist, you are a cook. I mean, I actually, the more I wrote this, the more I wrote this, the more I realized that any of you ever worked in a kitchen,

Slanesh. Yes. It really is just slanesh. It's the artist thing. It's, Slanesh is a patron of the arts. Yep. Even horse heresy, like the horse heresy novels, the big tapestry. Yes.

Really great story. But the thing is, is that you didn't turn, screw it, the emperor's children didn't get turned because they wanted to be a pleasure cold. No. They got turned because of perfection of the, the emperor's children was known for perfection. That's when they strove for. for, but in striving for perfection, you strive for excess.

Yep. And that's how they got them. And you gain vanity, which creates it. And that's what all these gods have is they also have an exploitation. Corn is exploiting fear of failure. That's what it does. Nergel exploits your fear of death. Zinch exploits your fear of unknown.

Of literally fear. Yeah, fear of fear. And Slash exploits your fear of failure. That's what these guys were. Slash's biggest one is. that you put all this effort into being perfect and you're not perfect. You're going to be chastised. You're going to be seen as lesser.

And these are just these are all such raw emotions. This is where the GW may be correct in their writing that the humanity feels these raw emotions a lot more. And given that humanity has a much shorter lifespan than an Eldar, yes, you would in theory get more stuff. The thing is that Eldar may feel it stronger, but humanity is so much more willing to make a deal. Yeah.

Because Eldar, in their unlimited vanity, yes, they broke the sky and they made Slaneh. We'll talk about that in a minute. But you can't offer them a deal when they go, I'll just make reality what I wanted to be. Yeah. My guess is, Zinch, I do think, probably had some effect into Eldar. The more, Zinch and the Black Library is. Because they were conniving on each on each other. Because Zich has his own version of the Black Library, is why I'm saying.

It's like they kind of lined up really well. but the rest of them, you know, like, again, Nergel and Isha negates Nurgal. Slanesh, okay, I move for that. Slenesh, obviously, was a big piece of a... Slenish, okay, but outside of Slenesh, I would do Slenish, then Zinesh, probably distant then cornedurgle as far as... Well, Kane is just corn. Well, that's my point, because they had their own versions of it, is why...

They had their own versions of each god. It didn't matter for them. They had their own thing, which... Except the laughing god. do another. It's going to be a really fun cast. We'll have to be cast just on Eldar gods. They're just...

Navigads, boss mobile, continue. Anyway. But the biggest thing is, is that the gods are effectively getting what they want from humans more than they've ever gotten from anyone.

And this is creating an exponential growth of the warp. Under the Eldar, it was kind of a nice linear nightmare line and now it is straight up. Mean Lord, Let's get your stonks meme out for me, because that's what's happening.

I was going to be old and do inflation in Greece in 2008. Stonks is where we want to go, John. Where we should go. Yeah, stonks is much better. You know, who's got their pulse on what's hip, the 52-year-old man? By the way, by the time, half the people listen to this, I'll be 53. Me as well. We're both.

I mean, I'll be 43. I won't be. I was what I'm saying. We're a decade apart. Unless they're listening to this 10 years from now. Maybe. Maybe. Who knows?

Hopefully, actually. Yeah, it'd be great. It'd be awesome, too, because I'd be alive. Yes. Well. Well. I mean, digitally. I love that you're like, whoa, slow your roll back.

Let's not, uh, let's not plan that far out for you right now. All right. I would probably go, are you going to get home today? Yeah, let's focus on episode 200, not, not episode 2,000. I'm just what I'm getting you know like I love you to death buddy but oh you know Vegas doesn't have you living that long yeah the odds are not great on yeah I mean I'm ex-executive 62 yes yeah 72 anyway so this takes us to the the immaterial effectively this is before Slanesh kind of bursts into its own version of reality so slenish does set

this is before slash yes but the god's God's take form. God's take form. Gods have their realms. Slanesh pisses off pretty much everybody, except for Nurgle who just doesn't care. Yeah, Nurgle thinks Sleash is cute. Yeah, because Slenesh changes the topography of the war. Well, yeah, but let's go pre-Slenish. So pre-Slenesh, these gods all burst. And the order is corn comes first, followed by Zich, and then Nurgle, which I still think it should have been corn-Nergle Zich. That's just me personally because I think Nergel had a lot more of...

I mean, if you're talking about humanity having a problem, the black plague was... Yeah, I think plague, pestilence, rebirth is more common than knowledge, but... I wasn't looking for hidden knowledge while I was dying. Yeah, but whatever, I'll let them do their thing. They wrote it, not me. So they burst, and now they now take form.

So all of a sudden, like, we can actually describe what corn looks like. Zing is a tricky one, and we'll get to that later, what Nergel looks like. By the way, it's a great unclean one. Just the biggest great unclean one you've ever seen. I mean, you're trying to say what Zinch looks like? You mean, the Lord of Change doesn't maintain a static...

If it's some reason, it's got a weird form. Doesn't maintain a static form? Yeah, I would slap you from here. But also, the warp actually now takes form. The warp fraction, even though it's infinite, we do get regions within the warp that have shape, function, buildings, et cetera. Which are also always shifting and changing. Yeah.

There is, it's, and then eventually Slonnesian joins the party, which the other gods, by the way, wrecks everything. Super not happy about. And each of these regions that they've got are there to serve their purpose. They've got servants. They've got entertainment. They actually wage war against each other.

It's pretty cool. But they don't just wage war in the physical sense. They don't wage war as, I'm going to hit you with my sword, you know. They wage war. And it's like the devil on that. They wage war on a emotional for your soul. Well, no, but they actually wage war in the war.

No, what I'm saying. They do invade. But I'm saying there are even invasions on that are a lot of times on, in another emotional thing where they're trying to convince and make people do things. Because again, thought is manifest. Emotion is manifest in the world. So it's not just, I will punch you.

It's I will unmake you. I will basically, corrupt Nurgel. Nergel just tries to corrupt realms sometimes. Yeah, he gets bored. Yeah. He just goes, oh, yeah, I lost every fight we've ever had. Also, everyone that fought me is sick now.

So I mean, that's a real thing. See, everybody just realized we're a half hour into the cast. Maybe we should describe the four gods. If you're going to be nitpicking about stuff, John. Fine. So there are four gods. I get to talk about the explosion of the warp then. Fine.

There's technically a fifth, which we're not going to cover because it just got red conned out of the game. And also, there's possibly a sixth stamper. But, and also you can talk about the tag. In the new book, yeah, that's that would. There's also a Tao God, possibly. There's not a Tao God. You just hate Tao so much. There's not a Tao God.

No, there's nothing could love the Tao. That's political talk. So hurtful. But first off, Slash, before we go into describing him. Of course. Slenish explodes because Eldar have issues. Yep. Slaneh is the bane of the Eldar.

Slanesh, screw everybody on this, Slanesh is an Eldar god, period. It might not be a good Eldar God, but it is an Eldar god. What? Where do Eldar souls go when they die? They do, but I don't think, I would argue with you here because

Isha's still alive and Isha can't touch humanity. And Slenish can touch humanity. That's the only reason I'd argue with you. And that one is that Slenish is. I'm going to talk about the gods now. You know what? I'll let Discord tell me about what my thoughts. Please, yeah.

We actually, please give your opinion here because I think people think about that. That's kind of where I'm drawing the line is I think that the elder gods, there are, there's a couple random stories of them touching humanity, but for the most part, they don't, but the chaos gods do.

They touch. I mean, they touch. And Slanesh does a lot of touching. Yes, it's, it's, it's, touchy. But let's talk about the chaos. So corn is the god of war. Yeah, God of war. The easiest,

to understand the easiest to go. Yeah, but when we say war, though, it's like, it's not just war. It's, and it's, it's violence, it's brutality, but with, but also strategy. It is corn. No, scorn does not like strategy. Corn likes bloodshed, my friend. Well, I'm sorry, maybe strategy is wrong word. Conquest is actually probably the better one.

Yeah, he's the god of, it's not strategy. He hates strategy. He likes conquest. He likes victory. It's not even just he likes victory. Corn likes the fight. Corn likes war. Because think about it, when you summon blood for the blood God doesn't mean your enemy's blood.

Blood for the blood God means anyone's blood. And on that note, corn doesn't like, like, what we call defenseless slaughter. He likes, he wants real war. So we're going to talk about Slanesh. Reason corn hates Slanesh is we talked about at the siege of terror when the emperor's children just effed off and went to go just raid the gap and murder everybody. that is not corn just sees that as like you're just attacking innocent civilians who are unarmed not because they're innocent but because they're unarmed it's not like cowards corn corn wants the

fight in the fight for for the fight in fact corn actually might reward you more if you fought and got killed in the fight he's more likely that to raise you give you more power so you can try it again his is if you at least me if you're a person who gets in a bar fight with, say, 10 other people. I love that you're putting at me. I mean, it's been like 30 years as you did this. But, like, you know, 80s were a hell of a time. I love that 30 years doesn't actually put me in the 80s.

I know, it was in 90s. I just, it's when you're, oh, a fun side note. It was at Costco earlier today. I was buying something. And the person had this, they saw me. They put in a birth date and I was buying wine, right? And the birthday they put in was 1999. And it bothered me that,

1999, like, oh yeah, at 1999, you can buy alcohol. The level of difference between that date and the date I was born hurt myself. You know, I'm adding to this because screw it, you can edit out if you want, but I think people like this story. I was just at a tournament and there was three people at the table and the waitress asked for IDs and I looked at her like with a quizzical look and she goes, well, not you. There we go. That's a real story that just happened.

She's like, no, well, obviously. Obviously not you. You're fine. So, yeah, so Zich is the god of knowledge, sort of. So it is the god of knowledge, but it's actually also the god of deception as a result of it. The best thought about Zich for me is Zinch overlaps with corn so well. Yeah. Because he's the one driving these battles, these conquests, because you want power, you want knowledge. You'll get that by doing this.

Yeah. How am I going to go about this? Zinch, I would argue, Zinch makes more wars happen than corn makes. Oh, very much so. Corn makes conquests. Zinch makes wars. The galaxy shifts because of Zinch. Yes.

Corn just, corn planets shift because that's how I would describe it, too. Zich is also, is a trickster. It seems to just like to mess with things for the sake of messing with them to this point. Carvis and our Zinch cast, no one's really sure what Zinche's play is because it's so heavily layered with deception and deception and deception. But also Zich may not even know. Yeah, but also Zinch is planning for forever. Yeah.

So you're like, hey, it looks like Zinch took a big L. You're like, well, not really because a hundred thousand years from now, Zich's plan is going to improve Frisch. And you're like, what does that have to do with me? You're like, oh, God, no, nothing. Nothing. Yeah, this is just Zing's dude. You're like, I'm, I live forever.

Why would I give any shits about what happened today? Nergel is the next one. Papa Nergel. Grandfather's actually my favorite. Of the, of the chaos gods, Zinj and Nergel, I kind of bounce between which one I like the most, depending on the stories. I enjoy Nergel because Nergel is entropy.

Nergel is, so he's known as the god of plague and decay, but he's more than that. Nergel is also the god of rebirth, because what Nergel knows is everything, effectively, if you break down chemistry to its lowest level, there are a set amount of atoms available in the universe. They are ever expanding. They come back as something else. Yeah, there's a set number.

So in order to make something new, something has to be broken down. That is what Nergel does. And so Nergel is inevitable, is the term that we use for Nergel a lot. Nergel's viewpoint is, is it a little bit gross? Yeah, he's pretty smelly. It's pretty smelly. If you've ever had, if you've ever eaten bad oysters, Nergel.

After I ruined stuff, well, I mean, something will grow out of that. Yeah, exactly. Like, Nergel, like, if you get violent diarrhea, know somewhere that violent diarrhea, those carbons are going to get broken down and it's going to be turned into something. Like that's down the line. Well, that's what Nergel does. I mean, Nergel doesn't do like the, like, oh, yeah,

there's a happy, happy, you know. No. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of fiber bowel movement. That's not Nergel. Nurgle's team, like. I mean, the destroyer box is just that. Yeah, Nergles, you know, grip the side of the side of the, that porcelain throne and let it rip.

That's a Nergel maneuver right there. We'll be right back after a quick break. But Nergel is really cool because he, Nergel plays of all of them. He actually plays the longest game. Whereas, you know, we talk about Zien, she's trying to do all these trickster things. Nergel's just inevitable.

And that's what makes Nergel kind of fun. And his followers all know it. And he kind of also doesn't give a shit. No, Nergel's the least shit giving of all of them. Actually, it's the happiest of all of them, too. And Father Nergel. Yeah, Gravlerler goes, Nergel. knows.

Also, beast of nurgles, all they want to do is play. That is true. We'll talk about beast nuggle. I mean, you might die because of it. I actually wrote no time. You 100% will die because of it. Yeah. But they do want to play.

The Nurgle armies, especially the demon army, I think is the most fun. And we're going to talk about this in that cast, but spoil pox scrivener. You know, it's just fun. Slimex. It's slime X. I honestly just like, I just like nerglings. He's riding a snail. Nurglings.

Nurglings. I just like nerglings. Yeah, why can't they take an objective? Because they're untrustworthy. Yeah. That was their old special rule. Yeah. And they got rid of it.

Because they ruined shit. Yeah. So the last one, though, is, of course, is Slanesh. So Slanesh is the god of, it's really the god of, they call it the god of excess. But Brad said it really well earlier, and I'm going to go back to that. It's the god of perfection. Because in the pursuit of perfection, you will get excess. That's really, I think you said, that's a really good way.

He's literally a Patreon of the arts. And that is literally where I actually was correct for a change when I said literally. But he is. It always goes bad in the end. But in the beginning, your boons from Slanesh make you a better artist, musician, whatever your artist and skills are, Mason. You get your boons from Slenash and they do make you better. And in the end, the floor is going to always fall out. It's a same.

Read every single story about doing a deal with the devil. there you go that's slanesh yeah monkey paw deal with devil they're all the same it's all slenish but slanesh what slanesh does is slesh feeds off of your desire for perfection like it is just you need it and that's why he grew so fast them because it was the easiest oh very much so the easiest now as we've discussed all them one thing to note and we've been hinting at it but let's dive at it more into is these gods hate each other i can't some more than others but i can't put enough eight on the hate. Oh, my God. It's a hate. And it's so capitalized. And this is why also chaos hasn't just wrecked shop through the galaxy. Because every single time that Brad worshipping corn and John worshipping zinch and we're about

to raid the final floor of the main boss. We immediately attack each other. You're like, we're about to win. We're about to make the final level, beat the final boss. This is not shared glory. Yeah. You're not sharing. Never.

Ever, ever, ever. And this is referred to in the K and the warp as the great game. They are constantly trying to. Now, the truth is, when you read about the great game, it sounds like they're trying to kill each other. But it's not really likely that these guys can even kill each other. It's more they're just trying to undermine each other and create embarrassing. And it's almost like a joker thing. when he's like, I don't want to kill you.

Because I think that if any of the gods could actually kill the other god, they would be, whoa, whoa, whoa, then I couldn't battle against you. Why would I want to do that? Why would I bother with that? That's crazy talk. But that's a talk for a different day on that. Yeah. The one exception of this, though, was the Horace heresy. There's been fantasy players.

Come on now. We had an archaunt. This is a 40K lore cast. Yeah, fine. Not the Warhammer fantasy lorecast. which, spoiler alert, the game died. The unique exception was the Horace heresy. And this is only because, as we discussed,

the emperor at one point with Malcador did a little walkabout into the... I mean, the emperor is a dick. Got from the chaos gods the secrets of how to make the prime marks, told them he'd do something in return, did not do it, and the chaos gods went. By the way, super did not do it. Super did not do it. The emperor went, hey man, can I have this knowledge?

and they're like, for this knowledge, you have to do A through Z. And the emperor went, I will 100% do every one of these. And then immediately left. The KastCouts went, I don't think he's going to do anything. He's not going to back. He's not going to back. I feel like he's not even going to start with A. And he did not.

He did zero. In fact, now to the emperor not do the things that he's doing. Oh, he started doing the opposite. Yeah, he took the, yeah, he actually took everything they asked for and made a plan to counter A through Z. Every single one of them. The emperor went to the chaos gods and made that deal with them to make them more powerful than ever before. It's kind of like the hint we've gotten from the lore and instead endeavored to make them no longer exist.

Had a long plan of this, which he probably could have told his sons. We won't get into that. It would have been nice. I mean, just. British Dad should have probably just talked for eight seconds about it. We wouldn't have had. Tell Malcador and don't kill him. Who knows?

Anyway. So these guys, Chaos gods did align for a little bit. and this is how they were able to be so successful in the early parts of the Horace heresy. Horace was not corrupted by a chaos god. He's corrupted by all the chaos guys. Now, different prime marks not as successful. And as we kind of saw over time, we, this, that fracture started to fall apart. And where did it fall apart?

At the moment of glory. Exactly. As we got closer and closer to an actual victory. At the actual time of Horace was about to win. And the gods went, I don't care. I want all of my guys to win. And then they lost. And as soon as, remember, as soon as Horace is gone, there was zero.

They went from zero to here, or hero to zero actually on that because as soon as Horace is gone, it's almost a shock wave. They're instantly back to no. Well, I mean, immediately, yeah, all of the, the trailer, the trade was all turned on each other as soon as Horace is gone. instantly. Done. And we're attacking, killing each other. With no care for the fact that you guys are still fighting these guys, don't care. Oh, yeah.

They were attacking. I mean, it was actually funny. There were Chaos legions. I mean, Trader became chaos. We're attacking each other in front of loyalist legions. Who are we even shooting at? It's a scene of Monty Python and Life of Brian where all the rebels are going to the Romans are standing there watching them all stab each other.

Like, I guess I'll just. I guess I'll just arrest Brian. I mean, it's a big deal on that. And the thing is that that's why. And it's the same thing, you know, evil corrupts. And that's why evil hasn't won is because evil always turns out of itself. But the thing is, is that has been the case. So.

And I think from the end of the Horace heresy, the God's power explodes. And because. Oh, bonkers. I mean, because as I was shit talking earlier, the Eldar had conquered the galaxy and that wasn't enough to really move the gods but one small planet in the middle of the Milky Way a corner of the Milky Way with 350 million people birthed three chaos gods take that one planet and make it millions because the Imperium's in over a million systems so now it's millions the population we talked about on hive cities which are also weird yeah wildly more populist than the Eldar. Yeah, this is... I mean, a thousand, it could be...

I don't even know the number of this. It's probably a million times more. I mean, the truth is that you're looking at the... If a hive... Because they were a low birth rate civilization. Well, Hive City can have 20 billion people in a single hive. So a planet could have a hundred billion. I mean, Eldar's planet, like any LDAR planet was a joke compared to Ohio.

I mean, the humanity and every one of these souls does reach into the warp in one way or another. So by... And so many of them are willing to make a deal at a moment's notice. And so this is where kind of... Which Eldar never went. Right. And so this is why at the, you know, we're right now we're at the 42nd millennium. The gods are actually more powerful than they've ever been in history. Well, also the Don did make that. Yeah. And then Abadon. He did, have it make Walmarted up the Imperium. He did help it out a little bit because... He cut the Galaxy and he said helped it out a little bit. Like he was a greeter.

No, he caught the galaxy in half. And spilled the immaterial into the meteorium. The kioskodron, the sky. Chaos gods at this stage are more powerful than they've ever been and have more access to the material than they've ever had. Yeah, you're like, hey, I'd like to go over there. You're like, you'll have to go through the warp. Why?

Because the dude broke the sky for the second time. Well, yeah, the first one was kind of a little, if we're being honest, the elder didn't really break the sky that badly when you compare it. They put a hole in the sky. They put a hole in the sky. By putting a slice all the way down. All the way down. So I was going to say, he cut the galaxy in half. Yeah.

One of them like, you poked a hole in it. Oh, we should plug the hole. It's tough. Yeah, well, they could have plugged the hole. Yeah, they mean the Necron's had a plan. There was a plan to plug the hole. No, no. This is an abandoned ship.

Like, so from here, in the next few casts we're going to get into, we're going to do two casts doing the four gods, splitting them up two and two. But what we wanted to do is spend some time on kind of generic forces of chaos because one of the things that, there's certain things that all the chaos gods haven't in common. So we wanted to dive a little bit into that. Yeah, it's cultists. I mean, it's, think it's that. Well, we have to talk about. Let me check the notes. Yeah, it's just cultists.

Well, we have to talk. It's cultists and demons. Well, but we have to talk about cultists and why. because everybody goes, why would you ever follow a dark eye? You know why you're going to follow a dark eye? Because the Imperium is hell. We already did casts on this. It sucks.

It just sucks so much. Every part of life in the Imperium is hell. You're like, why are you a cultist? Because yes, that's why I'm a cultist. Someone offered me anything. You're like, hey, man, I was going to make your date not putting nails into your eyeballs. You're like, yeah, I'd like to not do that. You're like, you could probably lose your soul.

You're like, yeah, I don't care at all right now. Yeah, I mean, so, but we'll go back to the, like, cultists actually are interesting. There's cultists predate Horace heresy. Yes. So the cultists have been around, and the, we don't have an, the imperial history doesn't give us enough detail on this, but what we do know is that a lot of the worlds that were discovered during the Great Crusade. We're corrupted. We're corrupted.

Like planet wide. Although interestingly, none of them knew the God that they were worshipping. Like Colchise is one of these. whatever Katie, it was called originally. They all, they just worshipped a chaos guy and weren't sure what it was. And it's because this was a nightmare. Well, the thing is, is that right after the Dark Age of Technology, which was literally the Golden Age of Gaming Game of Game.

Well, it was the Golden Age until... Yes, but... It was this nice little inflection point of... I mean, it was a long time. I am sure Skynet was awesome up until it wasn't. True. But, I mean, Skynet would bend after they clicked it on, but whatever. Yeah, true.

But like those eight seconds. We're going to defeat the Russians. Oh, it's us. Okay, we're over. Fine. So, but the thing is, is that we had these disconnected planets. Remember, the Imperium has worlds that aren't self-sufficient. Yep.

If you're in a non-self-sufficient word and all of a sudden you are cut off because. Exactly. So you start worshipping whoever will help you out. And that's what happened on it. all not a, it's not like a world here and there. There was thousands, more tens of thousands of worlds. This is, we talk about the Great Crusade and especially we did the cast on Dark Angels about the First Legion. Sometimes they had to eliminate an entire planet every single living species.

Why? Because they were all. All chaos. Yeah, they're all corrupted chaos. And a lot of those people didn't even know they were corrupted by chaos. They just knew that I'm doing what we have to do because everybody was going to die. Because I've been working, I've been doing this. We've been doing it for a thousand years.

Or more. Can you think, remember, we've had what would, where was the dark age of technology? It's a vague time. It's a vague timeline. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it could be tens of thousands of years somewhere in there. You were completely cut off. In the 42nd millennia, though, there's even more of this.

And it's just. Yeah, it's because the Imperium's a trash fire. Yeah. I mean, this is why Bobby G. woke back up and went, come on, man. Jesus, guys, all right, fine. I'm going to remake the Imperium for the second time. When Glover just shows up with the pizzas and goes, come on. What's going on?

So when you're seeing what happens in the 42nd millennia is exactly this. The mankind, a chaos cultist, they came actually usually from not even a bad place. It's just someone gets a little bit of joy from doing something. And it's actually a chaos guy. And they tell everyone else, hey, I started doing this thing. Maybe you should all do it with me too. And we're all, and we're happy. It starts off like a badminton club or whatever it's going to be.

And eventually, they're carving symbols in their chest. But let's go on that, though, because that's the thing is just like people go, wow, how would, I've had a lot of people actually talk about this because I'm willing to start a nerd conversation up in a moment's notes, by the way. But I've talked about this and they go, how would everybody ever go into a chaos cult? You know what's going to happen? No, you don't. No. One, the Imperium puts down any knowledge of chaos.

Yeah, no one's aware of this exists. Also, they're not coming up to you with your worshiping a chaos, God. They're saying, I can make your life slightly less awful. Let's go back to something we talked about maybe 20 minutes ago, where the chaos gods are infusing a person. So, Zinch, Nergel, Slenash, corn. They're infusing a person. They're infusing a leader with greater power. So you're looking, it could be something as simple as like, you know, you want to rise up against, you know, you're in an underside, an under hive, right?

You want to rise up. Well, this one gang seems to win all their battles. I'm going to go join them. I don't realize they're a corn, you know, war band because they don't know they're a corn war band yet. Most of it, most of the time in the Imperium, you find out so far. down the road what is actually happening that it's wildly too late because all you were trying to do is go everything sucks can it suck less not can it not suck just can it suck a little bit less because the imperium is again a nightmare sorry imperium friends but like it is a nightmare no one

wants to be an imperial well for the for the regular people when you're a super soldier shit's on point But like if you're Brad in the 42nd millennium, stuff's not great. Stuff's really not great. It's a, and this is where like these gods would be. And so kind of just go through the corruptions that you'd have. Nergel, you're going to get plagues. People go to Nurgel to get relief from the plague, how he gives the relief, or not even just relief.

I don't want, this is the mistake ever. Mortarian made this mistake. Yeah. I don't want to die. And Nergel goes, finger guns. Got it. You won't die. Damn it.

You're like, so I'm still horribly injured. You're like, yeah, but you won't die. You're like, I should have read the fine. I should have definitely not just click, yes. I mean, a corn war band is easy. Zinch's the same thing. If you're an inventor, you're an artist, you're just trying to break through.

Zich will do it. And now you join this cult of people who all worship Zich. And you did again. And all of you were producing. Well, you're producing the best art, the best music, anyone's ever seen. Because it's literally magically infused. I lost because my art wasn't magic.

And we'll get into later some of stuff Slanesh does there, which is actually kind of cool. Like I get a kick out. I mean, your painting's probably always going to win when it's interactive with your audience. And you're like, I lost why. My painting wasn't magic. But even Zich, Zich is one of my favorites where people are just trying to gain a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of this. I'm trying to invent something. I mean, it's all politicians.

It's actually not. To be fair, what Zich really is, it's psychers. It's a psycher who's got some sucking powers. Yeah, but I'm saying from the regular folk, he has every politician in his bad. Oh, he does. Zinch, we're going to cover. I need knowledge and power. We're going to cover Zinch a little bit, but Zich just teaser for that episode,

because it's actually the next episode we're going to do. Zinch has, represents the least amount of cults. in the Imperium, and he's the most feared by the Imperium. Because he has all the leaders. Yeah. And psychers. Yeah. It's like, oh, what are the two worst things?

Them. So that's the cultists, obviously. The other commonality throughout are, of course, demons. We're talking about, you know, chaos gods. We're probably going to have to talk about demons. Demons fall into kind of three categories, lesser, greater, and prints. And that's what they are. Yes, but you can't even do on those.

order because like the greater the greater demons would be mad that you just compare them to demon princes demon princes are more powerful and very demons sometimes i know it's this demon princes are demon princes are people that have been elevated demon prince greater demons are the most manifest of the wheel of the god sort of a changeling is a lesser demon i say the changeling only one of them is a lesser demon true And he's more powerful than... I'm just saying that... We're going to cover it. Don't worry, guys.

That was a weird little... Named greater demons are going to be like, hey, you just said a demon prince. When you talk to... Yeah. Belichor... When Rodigus shows up, he's like, who's the demon prince

that said was talking shit basically? Yeah. Fair. Fair. The... Scarbrand. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Scarbrand would probably have an opinion. Well, all the Scarbrandt versus Ang... I mean, they probably wouldn't debate it out. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of hitting. Yeah, I don't think a lot of like, I have this PowerPoint. Can I walk you through my essay? Don't worry, don't worry. I cited my sources.

Source number one is chainsword. Source number two is axed. All right, so we'll start with kind of demons in their forms. Demons at their core exist to serve the chaos gods. They are, they're a manifestation of. of will by the chaos God. And they are formless until they have to do a function. And then they gain.

And then they gain. That is a thing. That is a real thing, though, because they do not, lesser demons are nothing until they have to be something. And so the lowest form of these ones, we'll kind of go in order of basically size. We're just going to do size because power varies. As Brett now we're just kind of messing around with, the power of these guys swings around a lot because you get some small guys who are light years power.

and some big guys who are just pointless. So the smallest are demonic beasts. Dogs, horses, bulls, mantras, you know, whatever it is, whatever the God wants to manifest as an animal that just kind of does its will. And these are getting the way kind of people. They have no real, I guess it's intelligence. I mean, it's just, it is what it is. They're just, they are bound by will, but they kind of act on.

whatever. The most basal desire that that God has. Yeah, exactly. You know, with the exception of nerglings who are a little bit weird, because nerglings are... Yeah, well, nerglings have... Nurglings are a giant,

higher form because nerglings are awesome. Well, nerglings are many, many, many, many nergles. Yeah, that's all it is the smallest version of a nurse. They have free will, because they do whatever nergling's do what nergling's going to do. Right, but do they have free will or do they just have

untrustworthy is all I have to say. I always say they have poor impulse control, but they have one impulse that is to do nergling things. Yeah, they're basically gremlins. Yeah, they're, nerglings are awesome. They really are awesome. Even the model's cool. Yeah. So the beasts of chaos and nerglings, they're just the basal level.

The next one are the lesser demons. And these have the most popular. Yeah. This is the majority of it. But it's also the base. It's what the gods are known for. Yeah. You're talking about your blood letters.

Blood letters, screamers. Muslimist. Walkers. I mean, it's just, you're talking about your plague bears, your blood letters, your damanats,

you know, your horrors, the, the, in 40K, the battle line guys. Exactly. These are the,

the things that are most populous, and they are the soldiers there. And they are dumped out in what could be infinite numbers. If you could, if you could project

the emotion enough, they will never stop coming. They will. Exactly. If you could give enough battle, you could have a never-ending surge of bloodletters. The problem is, is that you can only fight for so long.

Yeah, eventually everything dies. It doesn't have a kind of a basic level of intelligence, although this does shift a lot. The problem with lesser demons is there are a couple lesser demons who are incredibly powerful. The thing is that if you give a named, because we're going to do that a lot of, actually named.

Yes. Named ones are. Named ones leading other ones can make this have way more tactics, way more. And I could be wrong on this. But if I'm not mistaken, I don't think you graduate up. I don't think you start as a beast of chaos and then become a lesser demon and then become a greater demon. I think it's the God manifests them individually with different levels of power.

I think they grow inside of that, though. But what I'm getting as I think that you don't have like It's not like demons and deity Exactly yeah they don't grow they just they are You don't go from larvae to lesser to greater When a great and unclean one is just something that NERGEL creates from its core And since the real time of great and clean ones

We'll jump to greater demons Greater demons are Greater than lesser That's kind of lesser Well that's you know what I'm gonna end the cast with that That is all the knowledge you need That's about it they are they are a larger version of a demon who are more impuged.

Well, they are not larger. That is a wild understatement. My bicycle is slightly smaller than a Sherman tank. Yeah. Both provide transportation. That is the same analogy that you just gave me. Fair. Greater demons are massively powerful, and they're also massively intelligent.

Yeah. sources of their God's power. And they actually can act in as the God. They act independently. They can, they can start system-wide, multi-system-wide, wars and curses.

Lords of change are known for, actually more often than not when we see a Zinch infection or a chaos called, it's actually not from Zinch. It's from a Lord of Change. Yeah. You know, the same with like,

great and clean ones. They're, scheming. They're there. Shit is going down. When you actually see these guys, shit has hit the fan. They don't show up by themselves.

Oh, they're showing up with an entire army ahead of them. Because they also have to have, again, four demons to be made manifest. You have to have an overabundance of their emotion, their feeling, their war, the lust, their excess, the whatever it is, you have to have a shit ton of it to have these guys show up,

which is a big deal on that. They're really, and what they are, what's interesting about them is that when you kind of start reading more and more of the lore around them, you'll discover that they end up actually becoming the hand of the God. More often, but they're basically, but they're a manifestation of the God, though, they rarely go against the God's will. They really can't because of the fact that they're made up of the essence of that. Scarbrand's the only one, because he got, he got Jack by Zing. Yeah, and then punched corn. And now he's just... I mean, sometimes you've got to get thrown for eight days and then your wings get ripped off.

Exactly. Because Zinche told you you could definitely take corn on, which was basically like an infant attacking a titan, but whatever. The last one is a little bit, and Brad, Brad hinted on it really well earlier, demon princes, who are both more powerful and less powerful than greater demons depending on the moment. I mean, this is such a wild scale. Yeah. Because you have demon prince Ted who beat up five guardsmen. Yeah, and he's a demon prince.

And then you have Mortarian. Yeah. Those are not the same. Again, meme lords, give me this the one. These are not the same. He's not the same. You're right. Mortarian versus a great unclean one.

I think Mortarian kills it. A great unclean one versus a demon prince of Nurigl just giggles. He's not even sure. He accidentally goes, oh, I'm sorry. Were you, I thought you were just, you were talking to me? Yeah, I just. I'm so sorry, I accidentally killed you. Yeah, I just moved on my day.

Yeah, like my bad. I was reaching for my coffee and I punched a hole through your face. The only thing makes demon prince is important is that a lot of demon princes are one of the few pieces of chaos that can manifest easily inside the material because a lot of them. Because they're mortal before. Because they were mortal before. Because of that, they serve a really key role for the chaos gods. They have connection. They are like the eye of terror before it was the rift, I guess, of terror.

But no one ever talked about that. But I don't know what we call it anymore. It's just the rift. But the thing is, is that demon princes are staging points for incursions because they exist in both. Right. Because they have one foot in, one foot out. And they are a lot of times more important to the gods than the greater demons. actually, they're always actually more important.

They're more important because they can do that one piece. Because they're key, they're key pieces. It allows them to actually, whereas the greater demons allow them to affect the materium, the deference allow them to enter it, which is more important. 100%. The last little kind of piece on them that we should talk about is they are all immortal. When you give your soul to a chaos god, you become effectively immortal. That soul always belongs to that God.

I mean, it's a huge boon and a huge suck. Yeah. Because, well, you're immortal. For those of us that are trying to stay alive, that sounds awesome. Yeah, this isn't immortal like a vampire or, you know, it's a. So I have to do your bidding at all times and sometimes your bidding sucks. And every time I die quotation marks, I come right back to you and immediately have to go do whatever the hell you wanted to do. incarnated immortality. You're not immune to harm. You're not immune to death. You just die. And your soul is

owned by the God who then just remanifest you to do the thing you're supposed to do in the first place. Sometimes that thing sucks. Yeah. The actually most of the thing time. Ever. Yeah. And ever, ever, ever, ever. Yeah. So this is a weird deal. The last one, let's just let's just also touch on because if we're going to cover the four gods individually, I want to spend a little bit of time just briefly on chaos undivided. Chaos undivided so weird, though. Yeah, because it's a really, it's, because the reason I'm going to do this is because I don't want to throw people

the wrong direction. I don't want people thinking that chaos is only one of four choices. There is another choice, and that choice is chaos undivided, where multiple forces of chaos get together and fight together for a common goal, like horse heresy. But the thing is, it's not just. Chaos undivided isn't, I appreciate all the gods. Sometimes it's, I don't care about any of the gods. I'm just touched by chaos and now I need power.

And then there's others that don't know any better and just there. They just know chaos exists. They haven't given themselves over to an individual god. And then there's, I don't know, Perterabo who when I don't even care about chaos, but I just wanted to kill Rogodorn. Yeah. And apparently I'm here. here now, so how's this work?

And or people like, I'm crazy, like Conrad Cruz and the Night Lords, which like, I was real busy being a serial killer. Are you going to be, let me be better at doing that? Conrad's interesting because Conrad really is Slanesh and Korn. Yeah. He wants to be the best night murderer. I mean, he's also Zeech. Oh, it's also Zich.

Because he can see into the future. Yeah. I don't think he's got a nergle. He doesn't want to. I mean, he's real jacked up. He could just be accidentally by neural. That's true, yeah. But it's that piece of it.

So Chaos Undivided is Abidon's Black Legion, obviously. That's Chaos Undivided. But there's another one who is very prevalent if you play the tabletop and the models fricking incredible. It's Bancorsville. And that's Bellicor. Belichor, first off, if you've never seen the Bellin Prince. Yeah, it was the first demon prince is actually one of the oldest models in the game.

It's one of the few models that actually crossed. us over into fantasy and 40K. Similar lore, by the way. He's the first demon prince in both. But if I'm correct me if I'm wrong here, he's in 40K, he's in Sigma, and he was in fantasy. Yes. I don't, there's only a few that actually have that, that have that distinction.

And he has almost the same lore in everything. Yeah. So Bellacour is the first ever demon prince. No one knows where he came from. Even the Black Library of the Eldar have no idea where Belichor came from. there just are whispers in the galaxy. Well, he's also forced semi to be the gatekeeper for the new chosen. Yes.

Which he hates with a passion of a thousand sons. One of my favorite stories, and this is fantasy. But Archeon was going through his trials. Abidon did a very similar thing. And Bellicor was forced to go, here's your booed. I hope you die. I hope you die. Like tomorrow.

If it's not today, I hope it's tomorrow. Yeah, Belichor's name, and I want to do more on Belichor, but it's just not as much we can do yet. There's more, because there's a demon codex coming eventually, that'll give us a bit more on him. But Belichor...

He's fantastic. He's the most... He is, for those who know and are aware of the forces of chaos, Bellacor is the most feared element of chaos. He's also a master manipulator. That's why. Because he is. So Bellicor, we talked about Abidon's ability to manipulate the dark gods in which

Abidon's able to get these boons from the dark gods. And Abidon is juiced up. And he's got all the powers. Abidon's been doing that for 10,000 years. It's been in the warp, but 10,000 years. So Belichor's been doing that for. Yeah, since the warps started. Yeah.

Who knows? Belichor has endless amounts of. You don't even know what he is. Yeah. Like his original, whatever he was. No one knows. No one knows. He's just a giant.

You know, it's true that he was a necronteer. Maybe he's a C-Tan. Who knows? That's a, that's a, Bellacore is incredible. But what's kind of, what he does really well is so that Belichor is, will wage wars with multiple factions of chaos at his side.

He's one of the few who's been able to pull this off. And he really, one of the best parts about him when he does this is Belichor isn't trying to get momentary glory. Belichor has plans upon plans. And that's why Belichor is so, interesting to me. Same reason Abidon's interesting to me, because

he's not looking for... Well, they're the same in that regard. Belichor, Abedon is trying to break the Imperium and conquer the Imperium and tear it down. Belichor is trying to conquer the galaxy for the forces of chaos, which is, but

it's interesting because both of them would happily kill all four chaos gods, if given the opportunity. Oh, in a second. They have no loyalty to those given... Which is why they probably will never win because at a moment of they think that any of them have weakness that they could kill him yeah they would kill them oh yeah corn is very aware of what bellicor is trying to do i mean just like no like i'm going to hit you with a hammer yeah i will supplant you at a moment's notice but bellicor

when bellicor shows up what makes him so terrifying is that bellicor will not show up with one set of demons he sets up with all of them he can even show with multiple he's the only time from a lore standpoint that on a tabletop, you would see competing greater demons. Yep. The only scenario is if Belichor is present because he is powerful enough to actually bring them all together. And it's because he has convinced the chaos gods behind them

that he is going to win this battle. For them. Yeah, for them. And they would rather share the glory of a victory than have no glory of individual defeats. So Bellacour, this is Chaos Undivided. You see Bellacore, that's who he. is. Belicor is chaos undivided. Yeah.

Abidon is Abedon. Belichor is chaos. Well, yeah, Belichor is chaos and divided. My point is that Abidon with the Black Legion, the Black Legion is. Yeah. But I'm saying. Yeah. But I'm saying, Abadon is... I see your point. Yeah. Abidon is more his personality. Belichor embodies chaos undivided. Because he's also sold out. We're into chaos. What is cool about Belichor's? Bellacor is the only one. Yeah. There is no, there's no, there's, there's there are no lesser demons of chaos undivided. There's no. In a lot of the stories, you can look into, there's also some cool fan faction, but whatever.

Right. Bellacruz also made that a thing because he's pretty jealous about that. So he kind of, he's incredibly jealous. He shows up and you're like, hey, I was worshiping chaos undivided. He's like, well, not now. Yeah, not how I was. So you can either die. Yeah, you should die.

You're just going to die. Let me look down my list of options. Oh, it's just die. Yeah, cool. All right, well. You can spam A, because that's the only button you're going to be able to. So from there, we're going to kind of come to the end of this episode. On our next episode, we're going to dive into the first of our two chaos gods,

which is going to be corn and zinch. And we're doing this because we decided to pick the gods who hated each other the least and kind of start that way. So corn and zinch hate each other the least. From there, the one after that will go Nergles-Lanesh. And we're going to dive a bit more into the gods themselves, you know, their lucky numbers, so to speak. Well, they're followers.

their followers. Because they have some great followers, though. Yeah. And some really, actually also where their home, like what their home world looks like or whatever, they're, we're talking about what their portion of the warp looks like and how it manifests. Their realms. Thank you very much.

And most importantly, how they interact with the Imperium and what the Imperium's viewpoint of each of them is. Because it is kind of a cool, it's like corn and the Imperium aren't necessarily always at odds. there's a lot of there's some moments there's some people that think they're very loyal to the emperor that are hardcore corn worshippers but

the emperor and the Imperium are kind of like so they just keep winning yeah all right like we'll deal with it later heresy's only heresy if you suck exactly with that though please again as we said in the beginning like and subscribe join the Discord the links obviously in the show notes it's growing rapidly we really

do I love the interaction we're getting out of this. It is, it warms Bradden my heart every time someone says something nice about us because we're both, you know, old people who just want a gentle touch every now and then. Tell me, I'm still alive. Please just, just a soft tap on the shoulder. I want to be relevant. But more importantly, really is great for us to kind of hear from you all. It does help us steer the cast. One of the challenges you have in a 40K lore cast is there is few hundreds of thousands of hours of content we could do. And it's nice to just to have people say, hey, I really want to know more about this

because it then sends us off onto a weird tangent that we then get to enjoy. True story. But with that, this is John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys next week.