The 40k Lorecast - Episode 36 - Imperial Psychers, Black Ships, and the Astronomican

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

On today's episode we talk about pyschers in the Imperium of Mankind. How many are there (originally a lot, but that number diminishes quickly). We then take a quick dive into Navigators and Astropaths and how critical they are to the Imperium. After that we dive into the Black Ships and the incredible nightmare that they are. We then finalize with what the Imperium is really doing with all the psychers they place in the black ships. *spoiler alert* it is not festive or happy.Get the show ad free on at: patreon.com/The40kLorecastMerch available at: etsy.com/shop/The40kLorecastYoutube channel: www.youtube.com/@40KLorecastOur 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 Barasotti and Bradchester. The sky. On today's cast, we're going to discuss where all the psychers in the Imperium are. It feels like there should be a lot more of them, and they're not. Also, what are black ships? What's the astrotelopathica? And a whole lot in the Astronomicon.

It's going to get real dark, real fast. Yeah, this is not going to be one of our happier casts. Before we begin, as always, it's time for the plugs. So, here we go. Exactly. Like and subscribe, the podcast, please. Cannot harp on the Discord enough. Please join the Discord is actually quite largely.

We're over 300 members now. It's also vibrant. There's a lot of interaction. We've got lots of different channels. Oh, and every channel, too. There's so much talk in everything from Hobby to talking about the episodes, talking about future episodes to talking about literally random stuff. That's my first literal, by the way.

Nice. And we actually do use this thing. Actually, Ami's a little. literally use this thing for inspiration on an episode ideas. People have written to us. The Space Marine episode was completely one that came out of our Discord. It was not something, something that we probably would have done in our own eventually, but he got moved up the list massively by the Discord. We've got some other ones. In fact, this one also came out of it, too. This is wildly not something we were planning. Yeah. So this is fantastic. And so if you do,

if you like the, if you like the episode, you want to come in that way, please join the Discord. Do it that way. Also a Facebook page. You can reach us via. It's a great. If you want to support us, we have a Patreon. There's a link in the show notes for that, too, to help us get better microphones so I can, you know, lean away from the microphone again, better audio equipment. Let's talk about the fact that we should probably also support the thing that I do. Yeah, for those who are not aware, Brad is actually exceptionally good at Warhammer. He is, when I say actually, I mean that a bad way. He loves the lore, but Brad is a top 10 player of Warhammer every single year.

One thing that Brad does with that is he does coach. He offers coaching. It's online coaching over the phone. It's a lot of different options. And I'm going to, as everyone on this cast knows how incredibly honest I am. Brad is quite good at this. From a coaching standpoint, he has helped me out quite a few times. Even not, this isn't even full-blown coaching.

Just a, hey, I was going to run this 2,000 point list. And he's going, we'll throw those 300 points right in the garbage. and then put these 30 points in and you actually might do something with it and he's been right every single time. So even if you're just a casual player who just is getting into the game wants to have a better grasp of it,

Brad's he's available. It's not like you have to sign a six-year commitment with him. Only five-year. Exactly. Only five-year. It's a great way for people who want to play 40K and are kind of nervous about how it's played. Especially if you're nervous coming to play. I love working with people that are fairly new

to the scene, looking to go to bigger tournaments and stuff, a little preparation will lead to a ton of success. And not just success as far as I'm going to go 5 and 0. It's about having the best time you can possibly have. That's one of the biggest things is we're playing with toy soldiers. You should be having a great time. I will help you have the best time while doing the best you can do.

It's also a matter of not doing something that's going to make you auto lose five games to the exact same mistake that you then have to go home for a tournament and go, well, damn it. Yeah. So as I'm not taking something that you're not going to have fun with because you saw someone online say that this was the best. Yeah, but I don't think you've ever told someone to take a granguine squig off. Best decision I've ever made for two tournaments in a row. Because you should have taken two. There is interesting.

I would think I was thinking squigoths, but can't do that anymore. Anyway, so with that, let's jump into the episode. Hold on. Bradchester one at gmail. dot com. Oh yeah, that's how you reach him. So, all right, let's jump into the end of the cast. The origins of Cyprus and the galaxy is where we want to begin. So we actually don't know the true history of Cycles because obviously the emperor was one and he's from around 8,000 BCE. Yeah, I said BCE. That's what I'm going to say now because that's the, it's before the common era.

That's what it stands for. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, so we understand there's some random stories here there about lesser psychers, at least in humanity. Obviously, there were psychers in the Eldar. Like we, that part's down. We're talking, this is more... Humanity. Yeah, this cast is solely revolving around humanity. Let's pack this up.

Because humanity wasn't born into psychics. Eldar, crafted, molded, born into psychics. Some of the other races, the old ones, we wouldn't go into the old ones. Old ones were beyond. But a lot of the other races you talk about, the radicals, Dan, think people of that nature, where we're just born into psychics. Humanity wasn't born, psychically aware. We grew into psychically aware.

Or we were forced. Well, I'm saying that, well, it's still. There's a third option, which is it was introduced to us. Yeah, I was just going to say, I kind of think that, but continue. That's, I think, where we're going to end up back. Those are boons of you had magicians, sorcerers, cykers, wizards. And I think that these were all just people lured by boons of slimm? Yeah.

Hers of Zinich. Historically, when you read the stories, you don't really see the emperor doesn't really come into heavy power until during the Dark Age of Technology is when he starts doing some of his biggest stuff. He starts experimenting. But he was effectively dormant for, what is that, like, 25,000? More. He was, he was, he was born in 8,000, and then, dark.

Arrachia technologies. Well, you don't even know. They've read kind of that like so many times. Yeah. The emperor may or may not have been a caveman walking around. Yeah, we don't. But I'm going to go with the most, I think in the most hot, the most current books, he was born in the 8,000 BC.

But he was around for a long time. And never even anything. And effectively, he just scrapped book and kept a journal. Yeah. He just hung out. But the thing is, is he was a pre-cad. So he knew that things were going to happen. And I think he was just trying to really.

Time it. It's not even just time, and I think that he was trying to figure out his own personal power. Because he has a, he, this is a weird thing. We're not just going just in the emperor. It will be kind of in the emperor because there's a lot of things going on with this. But the emperor is a being of almost unlimited power that had to figure out how to use his unlimited power. Because the emperor wasn't born with a instruction manual. He was the greatest American hero.

You're welcome. 80s sick out. But the emperor knew he had power. He can see he has power. He has no idea how to get to that power.

And I really do think that it took a long time for him to figure out how he could make that power work. I would agree with that. Now, what ends up happening is you see in mankind during the,

it's hard to gauge. The dark gauge of technology there's not a ton of detail around this because it's It is the age of technology, then the dark age of technology, and the age of strife are all the same thing. Strive is kind of after, they overlap a bit. But the biggest thing is is that there's psychers. Yeah, well, there's psychers.

There's psychers around because he was originally created by the whole. But that's what I'm saying. So my theory on this is that what you had was, for a long time, humans were psychers. But the thing of- Very few and far between, though. Right, but there were some. The problem is that you had to learn how to be a psycher. to the point of the emperor.

And unless you're a perpetual, you've got, if you think about lifespans for a human being, they probably would do. It might take you your whole life to know the warp exists. You probably don't realize you have these powers

until maybe in your late teens, at best early 20s. These are powers that could just get you murdered. It's because people, hey, it's a witch burner. Or you just got killed. Do, by the way. The important thing about witches

is they weigh more or less than a duck. It's dumped together. Great joke. Anyway, the issue is that... Yeah, but they're innocent if they say. Exactly. I'm just saying, what else floats? Small rocks.

Sorry, if you're not aware, I'm huge Monty Python, but anyway, these psychers would have had 20 or 30 years to master a power that was inconceivable. So most psychers, in my opinion, who were born, probably just died before they could ever, manifest any semblance of real power.

Or they just got snuffed out and no one knew about it. Exactly. This changes around the birth of Zinch, because now Zinch can reach into these psychers and offer them the ability to cast spells, which would time out really well with this age of technology age of strife, where you start to see more and more psychers. And the thing is that we did lose because they gave a whole lot of, because the member of the emperor was supposed to be created by a cabal of shamans.

A chomans who. And the thing is, is that we lost our way for a while during the Dark Age of Technology, and we didn't. We lost our ability, or at least people that knew that we had the ability. Yeah, my theory on that is that because what happens is that what you also get stories of is that at the end, kind of as we're coming out of the Age of Strife, is all these stories of worlds that were, effectively sacked by a cycle. Oh, we went from zero psychers to all of the psychers.

Which is my theory is this is more of a zeech thing, is that we had, we never, we were never at zero psychers. They just didn't know how to use their powers. And then all of us, because we're getting what we were having would be like a modern era cycle for us. With someone, if you were, if it's, if it's, it's, it's, it's, if it's, if it's, if it's, if you had a psycher, but they don't understand what the warp is, how to touch the warp. There's no education on it. How far could their powers be? David Blaine? You know what I mean?

Well, that's what you're going to. Well, think about it, though. I think that also. Zinch started off giving wild power to certain people and then realized this doesn't actually give me good long-term plans. And so Zinch figures. Because you go, hey, I just gave this guy the ability to nuke continents with lightning bolts. Well, this doesn't help me because someone just shows up and just kills that guy. Yeah.

And then he went, well, I could be very, I could be way more subtle. Mm-hmm. As he started to become more of a big chain instead of a small. And probably also had more power to infect more psychers. Right. That's why my theory is that it's always been about the same percentage. It won't be the same percentage of psychers in humanity, but Zinch made those psychers so much more powerful that the term psycher is where a lot of this comes from.

Like, we're moving from a magician to psycher. And I think that's probably what happened. And people that could actually do something with it. Yeah. And that keeps letting people touch. You got a person that could give that got very. visions here and there to a person that was controlling actual war powers. Exactly.

So this is where the growth of psychers during the age of technology, I think, really comes into place. So the age of technology is rock and rolling. Mankind is spreading throughout the galaxy. And two things happen around the same time. And for those of you who are in the Discord, no, I've already promised you all do this. We will do a cast on the men of iron. and the fall, it is just hard to find enough research.

Because we went from Age of Technology, which also is considered the dark age of technology. Because it became because the men of iron turned. At the exact same time, the warp storms exploded as Slash was getting close to birth. So the entire galaxy is now cut off. And anywhere from a single planet to maybe a system are now have no access. Also, we couldn't travel besides the warp without the men of ice. iron. And the men of iron decided that they weren't real cool with us. Yeah, they went on strike hard. So we had a huge war between that and then we have the age of

strife, which is when we were all de-separate. We were everywhere. We were cut off from each other. And this is when individual psychers became a thing because it had to. You were actually, to be fair, you had to delve into those psychic powers to live. to succeed because things started to spiral into chaos into complete. You've got multiple problems. One, the men of iron were in charge of all logistics. So there's no, which includes growing food. So you've got no food.

You've also got no protection because the galaxy was still very much so full of horrors. There are creatures coming out. I mean, the Ragdan probably were around at this time, like all these things. So you're getting attacked, you're getting, you're running out of food, you're running this. Zeech is offering these psychers incredible spells. And so now you start seeing psychers, and the psychers go multiple ways. Some of the psychers use this to kind of uplift and protect their world. Others become tyrants immediately. Yeah, become warlords, pirates, all these things. I read that Vecna was a cool dude. This is, this becomes the age, the age of technology, the age of

strife. The psychers are growing all over the place. And it is, the other side, too, though, that is important here is, and no one knows this, but the use of psychic powers, psychers have a connection to the imiterium, which is now growing, which means you give a way in. It's a connect. They keep, well, they keep giving connections. And the more connections, the more they can influence. So we went from they're throwing wild hellmeries out and giving these huge powers out, of course, because they only have limited times.

every time there's a connection, that connection never breaks. It lessens, but there's still a tendril. There's still a tendril, and you keep pushing more and more and more of these, and then the ruinous powers can make forays without people calling out. They can approach people. They can start trying to influence more and more. The biggest one is they can use you to enter the material. Yep.

And you now have, and it's interesting to me when you read the lore on the, this because we know that there were entire planets lost to demonic incursions. So in the Great Crusade, they would come across these worlds. Now, luckily, the thing is, remember, demons can't hold form. And that's the thing is a lot of times they disappear. Well, that's crazy to it because you've got to think you have a world that clearly shows that it got horribly huge battles were taking place. And you go, where the hell is all the people that were fighting?

There's skeletons. There's nothing. There's just like something bad happened here, but everyone's gone. Yeah, and it also looks like there was creatures because there's sword marks and claw marks. And you're like where there's zero dead creatures. There's nothing here. Yeah, you can, because the thing is, I mean, we all, listen, how fossils work, you can go anywhere. Things don't degrade this well, you know, unless it's just warped away.

Okay. And the thing is, is that the demons would take the world and then just be bummed because there's nothing left for them to do, and then they go away. One thing that this created, and as we've discussed in the past, is an animosity in humanity towards the psychers. Because one piece that we probably should mention here, which we didn't on us, a lot of worlds murdered their psychers as soon as they saw. Oh, like instant.

And the thing is, is that while this is wildly superstition, it also, a lot of times is for the good. It worked really well. Because you just didn't get one guy creating a big black hole in the sky that demons poured through. And that's the thing. As the Great Crusade is going through, and this is where people like Lehman-Ross and have had a lot of animosity towards them is that they kept going. The worlds that fought the Great Crusade the most were the worlds that oftentimes had psychers in them. Because those psychers were warlords.

They had incredible power and as all these things. Whereas the worlds who killed off all their psychers, but were able to survive, usually barely, welcome the Imperium with open arms. So there is, this kind of just becomes, this spreads. And over time, the viewpoint on psychers is, you know, they're- Well, it's the common denominator.

You go, hey, every time I have to fight a ridiculous battle where people I know and love die, it's because these guys are here. You get a 10 times. They're there. And even the rest of the, times too, there's a viewpoint of like, oh, yeah, they do do some good, which we're about to dive and do in a second, but there's just a lot of animosity.

But before we kind of continue down the psychor path, I do want to take a left turn a little bit into a very, one very specific variation of the psychers, because we're going to, this is a cast we're going to be telling a full cast in multiple parts because everything here interacts, but the problem is that there's not a linear way to do this. So we're going to bounce around a little bit, guys, just because it's hard. I couldn't write this in a way that was linear. So we're just going to jump into navigators from psychers. Which you have to have navigators.

We don't exist. Yeah. So navigators are a variation of a psychor, but they're different. First off, they are mutants. They have an eye and an older forehead. Well, also, they're a, well, they get a job that sucks so much because the way we treat Navigators is horrific. Well, yeah, we're going to dive into kind of why we do it that way.

But let's start with where they, what they, the navigators first appeared. We don't know when, because the truth is, someone has the third eye. You might just murder them. But anyway, you shoot them in the third eye. Somewhere around, because the, oh, yes, idiot John. Sorry, guys. All the travel dark age of technology, or age technology was FTL drives. They weren't using warp drives yet.

Yep. That warp drives come later. These beings are being born that do have a, third eye. And the third eye allows them to actually see into the warp and see distances. These guys do appear during the beginning part of the technology. Well, it's not just distance. They can see the topography of the warp. They can guide you through the, it's something you can't see at all. They can see it. And what they're able to do is, if you think about it before using warp drives, what these people could do is they could actually see distances and no one else could see.

They could see systems away if there was something there that was shining. They just, they knew about it. Surprise, surprise. They were considered useless and mutants and horrifying for a long period of time. But a certain someone named the emperor found a value in them potentially. Again, you're going to take the guy that's pre-cog. Yeah, he could be able to see this. What a navigator can do also, if you do it correctly, is you can put them on the front of a ship or in the bridge of a ship.

and they can actually help that ship navigate if you're using a warp drive where the hell you're going based on things. Which is really funny by the side story on Sikers on this. The Imperium tried to use warp drives without Gellerfields and without navigators.

Yeah, they tried. No, I'm just saying, it's not like they should do this once. They did this a bunch. They tried to YOLO swag through the warp. They were able to do it a little. They were able to do short jump. initially without navigators or Gellerfields,

because the warp wasn't that dangerous yet. And they were doing short jumps, but there are stories of like, yeah, the ship would leave, they would all die, or it would arrive, like they'd play, okay, it's a one month jump, and they'd arrive in a week. Other times they wouldn't arrive, or other times they'd arrive in the wrong system.

Or they'd arrived before? Yeah, it was a little bit of a mess. This is the crazy thing about man, is that we just kept trying for a while. You're like, we'll probably figure this out. You're like, people are dying. You're like, not everybody. Compared to the rest, compared to everything in the galaxy, except for maybe tyrannids, we breed

like guppies. Yeah. That's what this is. You're just like, we've got more guys. And some of the guys made it. Yeah. And there's a bunch of people who were on the wrong side of the emperor during the great conquest of terror.

So let's do something with them. Let's see what happens when Eric gets shot through that. It jumps through this field. But the navigator is a key. thing on the Navigors is that they were able to actually help navigate the war. One key difference between a navigator and a psycher is psychers seem to be born randomly. Navigators are a genetic trait. We don't know when it first happened. Is it possible to... Yeah, but there's great families of navigators. Yeah. And so they actually are... Well, they're actually houses. Yeah, they're affected.

Well, there's... Well, to be... To be, again, I think they're more like a guild, though. They operate. almost like the doom guilds. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. They are technically nobles, but they have insane levels of power. But the mutation they have, if you, you see images of them, it's usually just a human with a third eye,

but when you read the lore, it's much worse than that. Some of them are horrifyingly mutated. Well, a lot of them are... Emperor and dude mutated. That's one of the biggest things, and we'll talk about how we treat the navigators because they get put in the basement quite a bit.

But they don't need them to be able to be even exist. Because they'll take someone that would die if you left them alone, and they just stuff them in a jar and put them in the basement. And now they're the Navigator. One of my favorite stories about Navigators is that the emperor hates them. He probably still does, but whatever. One of the big things, he only allowed their existence because he wanted to finish his Webway project.

And as soon as the webber project was over, there were apparently, going to the lore, standing words, to kill them all. Like, it was going to be the custodes. We all know who was going to be in charge. The custodos of the dark angels. Yeah. Well, this is true. This is doubtless.

Like, we know, we know who we's going to use for this. Just go murder all them. And then the Webway thing didn't quite work out. So now we still have them. But yeah, these are, when we use the term mutant, they are well beyond the, what we would call the appetizing view. viewpoint of mutant. Well, the thing is, let's go into this, because there was wild mutations amongst

cykers. Yeah. And when I say mutations, I don't mean a third eye. This guy was a little bit taller than everybody. I mean, hey, man, this guy's half chicken, half giraffe. Yeah. And you're like, that seems bad. Yeah.

It was real bad. Those ones would just be, they get cold from the public. But navigators, because of their value, get protected. Now, if you're going to navigate, one way that really helps you navigate is to have points to navigate. I'll be honest, guys. There's a pretty big one right now. In writing this, I lost 30 minutes of my life to this because when I first read it when I read it the first time, it made no damn sense to me. So I'm going to explain.

So you're all going to sit through a John explanation of you might not care, but I lost a bunch of my time to do it. It doesn't make sense unless the emperor knew he was going to get smoked. Well, so, okay, so the emperor decided. in order to navigate the warp, we need to have a key beacon. And so we have a lighthouse in the warp. This way you can kind of navigate your way around the warp based on one point. And so that is going to be holy terra. Yeah.

And this one point, if we put enough psychic, because what happens is what navigators really can see within the warp is chunks of high levels of primarily of psychic energy. And the idea was we're going to give them a center point to navigate off of now. Also, whoopsie. Well, people who have any semblance of how to navigate, you know, in the woods or at sea, every time I'm talking about, you can't use one point. You have to triangulate. It's called triangulate because try. There's three.

So, anyway, effectively, what this is designed to do is give one fixed point, and then you use two what are somewhat variable points, and that's how you jump around the galaxy. the navigators actually navigate via warp storms and what's going to later to be called the Astronomicon. This doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm quite annoyed by it. I was hoping that...

I mean, the Astronomicon's basic, biggest claim to fame is the fact that it gives the Tarynx a good spot to go to. Well, yeah, we'll get there. Actually, later on next episode, spoiler alert. But yeah, the Astronomicon, this way the emperor decide to build a giant long-sort. The emperor decides to build a giant lighthouse

that all of his navigators and all of his ships so that he can launch the Great Crusade. This is the last major construction done on Terra before the Great Crusade begins. The challenge that the Emperor really had to overcome was he needed a beacon that was so powerful and so strong

that it could go anywhere. And so he brings him the admec and he builds a giant structure that focuses psychic energy and magnifies it. In the shape of a throne? It's around a throne. It's just on top of a throne.

It's totally that. I know. It's not the best thing. The problem is, is that here I'm going to go, I'm going to sideline us real quick, which is, did the emperor always know that he was going to be struck down? Because this makes way more sense. No.

Then why? Well, the why is because he needed to reach a massive distance. I get it, but like if you go, hey, what would be the best way to make this work if I was throttled to the goal? And this is where the Astronomicon becomes interesting. So the Astronomicon, the emperor basically can project his essence to it. And then that fuels it and the light just shines brighter. During the Great Crusade, as some of you already forgot, but he wasn't on terror.

Right. He actually could power the Astronomicon from across the gas. for a period of time by just giving a portion of his essence over to it. And this is a big deal in this, because Bad English Dad, he's multitasking a lot during the Great Crusades. He's doing, the emperor's doing great works. He's also doing a bunch of dick shit, but he also, again, could have taken five minutes, and a lot of this would have not been a big deal. One problem is that the entirety of the Imperium's ability to travel is the Astronomicon. Without the Astronomicon, the navigators have no fixed point of reference.

All the ships in the entire galaxy are wandering aimlessly or trying to use an FTL drive. An FTL drive is great when you're going one or two light-use. It's not great when you're going a thousand light-use. Well, it's also a big deal because of the fact that all the emperor, all the The Emperor's plans are pretty goddamn emperor-specific because all of the Emperor's plans say, I have to be doing this or everything falls apart. In this case, and the issue, this all kind of comes to a head at Ulanor, where the emperor is leading the charge on the orcs of Illinois,

and a big mec grabs him and almost crushes him. Luckily, Horace jumps in and killed. it. At this moment, the emperor seems to, from a, you know, he doesn't admit it, seems to have that moment of recognizing his own mortality. And suddenly

he's a perpetual. Right, but he is, there's questions on him being a perpetual is what I'm getting. Well, it's also the fact that he's also has a shit ton of stuff that he's like. Well, he's perpetual, but how long does it take a perpetual to come back to life? Yeah, the true story. That's the thing. So if all of

a sudden, fine, the Big Mac kills him, but the emperor's gone for 10 years. Well, it's also the fact that he has, there's a bunch of stuff that he's so powerful he's doing in the background. He's legitimately doing the Astromonicon as his breathing exercises as he's doing everything else. Exactly. So this is the true, my opinion, the true reason the emperor hands the reins over the Horace and go back to Terra is that realization that if, something goes wrong and I'm caught out here unaware, my entire empire crumbles. So he decides to go back to what is effectively the safest place. Which could have been stopped by you just talking to like four people in an email. Tell eight people what you were doing. Yeah. Other than more people than

Malkador. Let's just put it that way. Who's also like Dick Cheney. The other problem that was starting to occur, though, is as the emperor, to Brad's point, is doing 50 tasks all at once, he's not able to power the Astronomicon with enough energy to really keep it as bright and shine. As it needs to be. Because the brighter, because basically the Astronomicon determines how far mankind can go.

If they can see it, you can go there. If it's too faded, you can't go there. And he wants the whole Milky Way. We'll be right back after a quick break. Exactly. So what's the best, way to feed that Astronomicon? You add more energy.

It's like anything. If you have a light bulb that's kind of dim, you just add, you add more electricity. Well, how do you add energy on that? Well, what if there was a bunch of other psychers who could help out? Well, here's the thing, John, if you're a psycher that's not as powerful as the emperor and you try to add your psychic energy to the Astronomicon, what happens to you almost instant. The thing is, we talk about the Emperor's Webway Project. He actually began this. We're not sure if it's before the Great Crusade or rightly, but it's pretty early in the process,

the Webway Project. Well, it might actually have been like way before. Yeah, it's hard to gauge it exactly when the Webway Project was, but his plan was always to not use the Astronomicon. It was eventually to basically not even have, effectively not even have ships, just use Webway Gates to get everywhere, like the Eldar do, you know, although they don't, but it's a side. However, the Ant Bird was not, even for being a perpetual, he's not the most patient person. Which is, well, the Thimper is wildly patient, but he's super impatient. Every time he puts an idea into, once his plans a go, his plan is full go. No, no breaks.

So they decide to add to the, what we were made earlier, the Astronomicon needs to be brighter. And it's actually, it's hard to get. Does the Astronomicon need to be brighter? or is the emperor need to focus with energy elsewhere so it needs to be supplanted in the Astronomicon? No one really knows. But they decide that they're going to let's, we're going to allow, big air quotes here, guys,

allow other psychers. The biggest of air quotes. The biggest of air quotes of the allow here. They're going to allow a bunch of other psychers to be hooked into the Astronomicon to project their psychic power, to aid the emperor's psychic power. Let's be honest, to be fair, this is a bigger deal early on.

The Imperium's smaller. The emperor is not known as a god, so people aren't willing to just jump off buildings to kill themselves for him. This is when he's just the leader of the Imperian. Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit very shortly about where they were actually getting these psychers from. This wasn't religious fervor. This is, hey, originally, you should reply to my. ad for great opportunity on Terra. Yeah, this is the original, like, catfished into a, like, sex trafficking.

Yes, it's not great. But it's the original. It's the future version. So what happened is what the Astronomicon actually was doing is they built 10,000 seats inside the Astronomicon. And again, when I say seat, it wasn't a seat. It was a place a human body could be placed. You get snuffed so fast.

Well, no, you make it, I think the math I have is about 10 days. It's pretty quick, man. Ten days. Yeah, if you're a withering husk. It's 10 days of all of your psychic energy, soul and being, being sucked out into the great machine. Oops. The emperor actually, though, really to give him some credit here, was heavily against this idea. this was Malkador's idea, not the emperor's idea.

Again, Melcador, as much as the emperor does some bad shit. Malador was evil. Yes, Malkador always goes, what's the easiest, shittiest way to achieve what I need to achieve? The emperor had a love for mankind and wanted to further mankind. Did he do it wrong a lot of times? Yeah, most time, actually. But Malkador, I actually don't know what Malkuror's motivation was. He was best friends with the emperor, and he also wanted the, I really think,

He was so practical. But his practicality was almost always evil. Nakador was rough. Because he wants to do, he, again, this is a great plan if you have absolutely no ethos. Yeah. And I think what's going to end up happening here is the emperor's plan was, all right, we'll sacrifice, you know, probably a couple million people. I mean, the emperor doesn't really care about people dying that much.

But I'll sacrifice a few of them because the Webway project will be up and running and then we're golden. Then fast forward, Magnus breaks the Webway project. Which wasn't going to work. Fulken already said that. It was never going to work in the first place. But then Magnus breaks it. And then the emperors entombed in said Golden Throne. And having to use what makes us worse, the Emperor is having to use his psychic powers to keep the Webway closed. Yeah, because they opened a permanent opening into the inventory. Into the inventory. It was not, it was definitely not the Webway. They go, hey man, I know you

just almost died in all dimensions and your soul got ripped apart, your psyche got shattered. But we have a serious problem in the basement. Also, we really need the lighthouse to work. So if you could take care of all of those right now. At all times. Forever. Every day. Oh, just letting you know that the ruinous powers are going to attack you at all times. And later we're going to discuss, does the Astronomicon actually just power the lighthouse or does it feed the emperor? It 100% feeds Amber. It's fine.

So he's getting power level 10,000. From there, the next one that we kind of want to move into from the psychers are astropaths. And again, I'm sorry, guys, this feels a little bit disjointed. It's all going to start to make sense pretty soon. These are all kind of independent pieces. I wasn't sure the best way to do them. The astropaths are navigators. They're different.

No, I'm saying. Not that they're different. Which is more valuable? Or are they just equal? They both have to be. The astrapath. I think. Because communication is just more important.

Yeah. It's really that piece of like the difference is. So, okay, we'll talk about astropathism. We'll discuss, we'll debate some of that minute. So an astrapath, as we said, a psycher can see through the warp. They can see, but they can't like see, they don't take in the warp. They can just see points in the warp. They can see warps storms.

They're literally. There's helmsman. Yeah, that's what they can see. The astrapath actually can communicate to other astrophats in the warp. That's what makes after that. So if you think about it, if you are 10,000 light years away from someone, you want to send a message, even at a hundred times a speed of light. So it takes 10 years to get them. You can't have it.

We need to talk now. Yeah. Astropaths can actually speak now. Can we talk about how they actually speak? No, they sing into the warp and they sing it back. We're not talking about it. It's just, I don't feel like dealing with that crap right now. If you're into it. It's super goofy.

It is actually pretty cool, but it's 15 minutes of your life. Some of the stories are cool. No. Yeah, we're both on team. No. So the astrapaths, what they allow to do is actual full communication. So astrapads are probably the most, one of the most prevalent psychers in the service of the imperial. One of the bigger things is, this is why they're so common, because an astrapath can be what's considered a fairly low power.

Yes. Yeah. And the astrophats, but they have to be everywhere. So astrophats are on every ship. And we say every ship, I don't mean every Imperial Navy ship. I mean, you know, Eisenhorn has an astrapath with him. Every single, you know. Eisenhorn has a lot of guys that die instantly.

Plurals, actually, with the bad. Eisenhorn goes through a lot of astrophats. People die on that ship quite a. Yeah. But every single, all the road traders would have an astrapath with him. Because if you don't have an astrapath, you can't, you can't even a distress signal. because this is how everyone communicates. If you're sitting there trying to use Morse code,

the thing is is that space is just ridiculously bad. And that's why the only way to do, you'd be sending a message, again, if they're using the speed of light, it could be a month for it's received. Right. So every single ship has an astropath.

Also, every planet has to have astropads on it. Multiple. At multiple levels. You know, you have shortwave communication, obviously, you don't have cell phones,

but have communication within a plan. But if that planet has talked to a ship, why have multiple modes of communication if you choose astropaths? So they are everywhere. And this is the psycher that is the most used, but also the most accepted. Now, they are still, the sigars aren't treated well, by the way, unless you have power where you can make people accept the fact that you're going to nuke them. But as far as like you just let someone know you're a psycher, people aren't kind to you. And astrapaz people just kind of, they weren't kind of, they were accepted. There was something that was just, okay, yeah, we have to have that.

And we'll talk more about what they look like later because it's actually a function of how they're created. So that kind of brings us to the term sanctioned Psyker. This is why at this point, this is hard to make a bit more linear sense. The Imperium of mankind has a massive distrust towards psychers. So they decide. Well, they pause. They should. Oh, it's correct.

This is based on reality. I mean, the truth is, I think the numbers. You had, like, basically what accounts for evil wizards murdering people and or a guy that tried to show you a card trick, and everyone died because demonic incursion. I would argue a psycher left around versus nine or ten times will turn to chaos. Yeah, just bad shit happens. It would become chaos. Yeah, he won't mean to because if you, people don't know how to control it.

So they just go, I tried to, I tried to make my little card trick. I try to guess your card and make something on fire, and then 47 bloodthirsters showed up, and you're like, that is not what I was hoping. That wasn't the goal, because don't forget, I mean, two of the, you know, Zinch and Slanesh are hunting down psychers to invest them. I think Nurgle gives that much of a crap, and Korn is hunting them down a different way. Right.

They should all die. They remind me of Zich. But this is over time. So the Imperium decides to create, I mean, effectively creates a sanction versus unsanction. siker. And a sanctioned siker is any siker the Imperium has put through its education program, cough-cough re-education, and an unsanctioned cyker is all the others. Which can be shot on site, by the way. Yes. The Inquisition has the right to murder.

Just you having the power and not having like the associate tattoo or job title, you're dead now. Yeah, you need to be scanned immediately or somebody's going to be shooting at you. So to kind of break down the types of sanctioned psychers, we've talked about a few of them. If you were not going to touch on here, you'll figure out why in a second. Astropaths, navigators, then what are called primaris psychers, which we're going to cover, some inquisitors, librarians, and technically gray nights, but no one. Well, librarians are the psychers from the space space. Primaries are psychers that aren't space.

When we say librarians, I didn't, I didn't mean the people, you know, working the Dewey Decimal system down the corner. But there's a difference between librarians and primary psychers, because primary psychers are all psychers that do our psychic powers that aren't in power. Yeah, that aren't also a space marine and gut 19 organs, a lot of which that don't work. That don't stop you from getting poisoned. It's important to not get poisoned. You wouldn't want to get poisoned. That'd be embarrassing. So the act of sanctioning a psycher is done by who else than the deptus telepathica. They oversee all the segers and the, Hyperium. They recruit is a term here with an extremely use of airbrush. This is a weird,

minstorian, by the way. Because of the fact that most everybody in the adeptus telepathica is not a cyker. And they have a bias towards psychers. And a lot of them hate psychers. And they're in charge of all the psychers. I'll go ahead and say like, psychers are not that far off a subclass of species. Oh, it's, they're 100% of subclass. Actually, it's, as I was to say, there are like a really messed up version of slave with the exception of a few. You know, obviously librarian, psychers, gray nights, inquisitors. It's a weird. The way that they keep-

Cycars are really weird because the vast majority of them are, they're not even part. They don't even see them. They keep them in the horrific nightmare levels of, like, the navigators, for instance, we're going to get that more. But navigators and astropaths are often kept in just all. awful, like just, again, love crafty and torture methods. And the, if your navigator or psych or like astrobatth dies and you have a backup,

see, Eisenhorn, you don't really care. It's like, all right, let's get another one. You don't even let people know, by the way. Yeah, they don't matter. Now, again, if you're middle of traveling in the warp, as we discussed with Slanesh and all your navigators die, that's a bad day. You're also going to die, but actually a much worse death than they did. So on to where we're going with this, which is, hey, what happened?

What's up with all the psychers? So one thing that kind of want to make sure it's clear is there are a ton of psychers being born every day. In millions of worlds. Yeah, millions of worlds. There's probably billions of these beings that are coming into existence. So how do you handle that? Well, a very, two things. One, the black ships, which we get to in a second, and two, the imperial tithe.

And the imperial tithe does not, isn't one thing. Let's go over this real quick. Because of the fact that the imperial tithe does not mean that every planet gives two ducats and a bushel of corn. You give something specific to the imperium based on what your planet produces. Sort of. So you do, but you also always give two things. True. You always give X amount of sikers. Yeah. Cycars and soldiers. Those are the two things. So as a-

Seikers kind of just, or soldiers kind of goes without. Yeah, soldiers were kind of a given. Every imperial governor is in charge of monitoring psychers. Are they good at this? No, most of them are shit at it. But they use the adeptus Arbites, whoever it is, and they kind of collect any and all psychers that are through, that exist. And every 100 years-ish, a fleet of ships will arrive in orbit. Well,

it depends on the planet, too, because some planets are known to produce psychers, so they show up more often. It's, you're expected a visit every hundred years. That's kind of the way to...

And you're not super excited about this. Yeah, this is a terrifying visit, because you're giving your tithe of soldiers, you're giving your resources. Those could be almost, I mean, daily, weekly, monthly, those are going.

But every, like, 100 years or shows, So a bunch of all black ships will appear in orbit. They let's know you're coming. And they are here to collect your psykers. And you better have them because they came a long way on a really rough journey to get them. And they're going to come down to the planet and they're going to pick up all of the psychers that you have gathered for them. And these black ships might be the most nightmarish thing in the Imperium. for the actually almost everyone involved with them yes these things oh like honestly as i was

writing someone notes i kept going ugh oh so imperium psykers they're also this incredible resource because as we discussed all they can do navigation communication but also just being able to fight back against chaos you need them to do all these things however they are also it's almost like handling a live nuclear weapon. It's such a big thing. You need it. It's a great source of power. It's a great weapon.

What's the chemical people take when you have heart issues that when we were kids if you shook it would explode? Nitro. Yeah. I have it. Nitro glycery. I can go into my car and show you. So for those of us who are older,

nitroglycery was this thing where it's like it was this great like trope in sci-fi where it's like if it shook, it would explode and blow a building up. But it also saves my life. You also give it to people with heart conditions and they're totally fine. So anyway. It's a big deal on this because it's a source of power.

It's a power. It is a weapon. But the thing is that it's also hated because these psychers have done a bunch of terrible shit. Oh, yeah. But unfortunately, we've done so much more terrible shit back to them. Like, wow, that shit to them. Yeah, but most of them aren't aware of it. So that makes it okay.

No, I'm just saying. Horrible acts of terror, you know, terror. Yeah, but they don't know. We're about to get into some of the worst of them that we do. So the Imperium kills Cycars on site unless they're part of the Imperium, in which case they're pressed into service. The Adeptus Asthmaelopathica's job is to convert these, what I call wild psychers that are being picked up on the planets into full psychers.

But the Adeptus Telepathica only does this in one place, and that's on Terra. And there's a reason for that. Cycres are really dangerous. So if you're going to bring a bunch of psychers to one place, you need to do it in the most controlled and protected environment possible. You can't just have like fringe worlds going, I mean. It's hope for the best. Well, we'll do a Star Wars reference here.

It's like how many times does some Jedi try to teach a new Padawan and then like, and I made a Sith. Yeah. Again. Why won't we learn? that's effectively the story here. And also I'm probably going to take him to where the custod's are. Yeah, it's probably better to be like,

hey, where are the custodes and the Grey Knights closest? Okay, yeah, that'll work. So one of the bigger problems, though, is with this is that this is what we took, these are called black ships. Cycars, as we've said, are not only sensed by the warp, but they can actually be viewed through the warp. Navigators can see these beacon, a big beacon of energy, the Astronomicon,

is a beacon of segment. But there's also a lens into the material, the material plane. So we're going to, so we land on an imperial planet. We pick up 30,000 psychers of varying age and power. You might as well have lit all of the flares. The beacons of Gondor have been lit. Then we're going to put them on a ship. That ship holds more than that.

So we had these ships, these black ships moving around the galaxy, full of cykers. Wait for it. moving through the warp. Moving to the warp, too. Yeah, that's the better way of putting it. They can explode with power. They can straight up explode. And they can also be, they can explode into, hey, I'm now a door.

Or I'm a bloodthor. Yeah. Or both, to be honest, right here. It's not a great scenario. Like, there's a lot of bad options. When you go into the drop-down menu, not a great amount of, I get a cookie. Yeah. And so the Imperium, but surprise, surprise, has a plan for this.

And it's, as always, horrific in nature. Exactly. It's like, oh, hey, we have a crew. It's really dangerous this ship. What should we do about it? I don't know, abject violence and oppression. All right, that's a go. You mean standard Imperium tactics?

Exactly. So in order to handle these things, the black ships are layered with multiple defenses against this. The first is the most common one, which is a Geller Field. Let's talk about it again, because we've had people talk about where we use a term and we don't use it for 11 episodes. Come on. You should be listening to all our episodes back to back to back. Every week. I realize we recorded all of these, everything you've ever listened to in one weekend. Brad and I was just sitting asleep.

But a Geller Field is effectively force fields versus magic. It's force fields versus the Imitarium. It is a barrier between the physical universe and the imaterium. And it is the thing that effectively creates a bubble around a ship while it's traveling in the immaterial. When you're in the war, because you are now in the imitarium, as we've learned during some service of the horse heresy, the demons can just walk in. And they're like, all right, I'm here now. This is about to get horrible. A Gellerfield prevents that. A Gellerfield also can prevent. a demon from jumping into a being inside the ship who could, you know, like a cycler could manifest in this. The Gellertrude prevents that transmission. The black ships, though,

take this to a different level. So first off, their external Gellerfield not only blocks this, but also they have it turned on the inside and blocks what we just discussed, the light of all these psychers coming out. So these black ships actually appear as black. In the war. They're not black ships because they spray painted them black. These are black ships because they just appear as nothing. You don't know that there. And so they layered their Geller fields.

First, the Geller Field in the outside, obviously to protect it at a higher level than anything else. But also individual Geller Fields all throughout the ship, isolating the psychers, isolating the crew, isolating everyone so that even if anything goes wrong, the whole ship doesn't go down to it. Which is a big deal. We'll talk about the first layer of many bad things that's happening, these psychers. These psychers all have a connection to the warp, and it's on 24-7, and then you just got to cut off. So, one, it feels like you now have lost the ability to see, to hear. And we, we, like, I'm part of it.

You know, I'm in charge of the Imperium. But the Imperium doesn't exactly give these guys a pamphlet that this is going to happen. So this is the first of several bad things that's about to happen to them. Yeah, they go into a shoot. That's actually a great point, because they've probably been hearing voices of the work. There have been things, it might just be static, but there's been noise, and suddenly the static's over. You're in a ship, and that's going to be unnerving. One important piece to this, though, that we need to dive into is it's not just demons that are trying to get access to these things.

the tyrannids are naturally hunting down psychic beacons. The Eldar, we don't know what the Eldar would do if they found the black ships, but it might not be good, but they can also see these things pretty well. One of the bigger ones is chaos, primarily Abadon. He just wants these psychers. Well, if he can destroy these, he can destroy the ship. He either destroys them. Yeah, he knows that they're super important, but also it's a resource.

Yeah, and this is a resource that you could either capture for yourself or destroy and impede the growth of the Imperium. Both are things we saw through all of his crusades, not all of his crusades, but through a number of his crusades were things he was trying to do. So, but let's dive into how much worse this gets. It's so bad. We'll be right back after a quick break. So the other problem that you run into with a psycher is they can, cast powers. So how do you stop someone from casting powers? Well, let's just make it so that they can't focus on anything ever. What's the best way to do that? Oh, amongst our weaponry,

amongst our diverse elements of the Spanish Inquisition is... Yeah, we're going to start phase one of the horrible things. They have countercygers who are throughout the ship. And what these countercykers are doing is they're just constantly reaching into them. They use them called an occluding sphere. The including fear reaches into the minds of all these prisoners and just basically makes it so that it interrupts their thoughts. You know, it's the old interrupting cow. They set a speaker on their head and turn it to 11 with metal.

It's not even, that's another thing that they do. The loud noises comes later. You're jumping. You're jumping. This is just a, if you're a random person speaking to, you real quickly and then disappearing. So you can never even have a thought or a moment to yourself. This person is kind of interrupting you.

So they never get any semblance of thought, understanding. Next thing is Brad's genuine nightmare. These, all the cells are almost pitch black, but not pitch black enough. It's that, is that, it's that level of darkness where you can kind of see but can't. But randomly, all the lights flash, like a flash bang. Just not a timed thing, like when you have a broken light in the corner of the room. This is like Migraineville population you. Yeah, this is basically designed for just drop them.

So this is, again, designed to interrupt thoughts. So you're sitting there, you're in the darkness. Your eyes can't focus because it's not black enough that you give up. There's always enough light that you can kind of want to see something. And then you're focusing on. Yeah. And then blam a light you're blinded for like four or five seconds. and you're back into it.

Just again, to never allow you to think. Of course, though, that's not enough for the senses. So we've done the inside of your brain. We've done your eyes. Well, let's also jack up your ears. They just, it's just loud noise.

It's not even just, it is noise. I mean, it's just construction site. It's just random shit. It's a piece of, if it ever lives. It's a pot's banging. That's a great description. Anyone's ever lived next to a construction site that's working.

It's not a rhythm. mixed sound. It's just constant different noises doing noise. And so you, again, you can never focus. The worst part about this is that these journeys

are months or years on. Yeah, if you got picked up first, also think back about this for the cycle. Every minute of every hour of every day. You also have no idea why you're going anywhere. You were just told, hey man, you're going. Do, holy

Tara, you're going to see. Maybe. Or maybe it's just like, hey, we're sending you somewhere. But I'm saying you could pump people up. You're going, you're going to meet the emperor. I'm going to meet God. Awesome. Awesome. And then you walk in and go, this is the worst. And I mean, some, it's definitely. These are mostly this are going to be quite young, by the way, because any psycher who's older has been executed. Yeah, this is children basically. Mostly children. Yeah. There's a lot of this. We're like much. like Brad's sacrificing of children to the orcs through screening with the scout marines. Again, I didn't even know a scout marines where children don't are doing research.

Or at least teenagers. Thank you very much. Fine. But these are all very, very young individuals who are, and they live this nightmare forever. But it has to feel like forever, too, because you have no concept of time. Yeah. This is because, again, every second of a bit of your day. Forgot to mention that most of these, it's not even some.

of these people are broken. They are completely insane by the time they get to tear. Yeah. Well, we're going to get into what they're just, they're husks of people. So the other piece is this, the black ships, though, are incredibly crucial. And so the crews of the ships are also really important, are also very different. So first off, you know, the bridge and navigation are full of psychers. They have to be. You know, your astropats or navigators have to be there. They actually sit on a very unique version of Gellerfield because, again, these guys have to be able to see out of the ship. So they actually have a Gellerfield underneath them on the bridge that protects them, just their own Gellarfield from them from the crew. Because imagine if any of the crew

could focus for a second, they're going to, their mind's going to try and reach to the closest cycle, which would be an astropath or a navigator. And boom, now you've got a chain reaction out. So they actually sit on top of this thing. And this crew, as we talked about, if you listened to our last episode, where the Slenish, there's a Slenish team that can actually reach into astropaths, and the danger is they could kind of, you know, they explode into a demon and slaughter the crew. Well, in a post on this, one of the reasons it's so, why they, what they do is puts them at super risk. While this is the Imperium's version of, we're going to get, we're going to make it safe. this also makes it so it's super dangerous because a psycher is at his most powerful when he's at his most desperate,

as most emotional. That's when he will make the deal. Right. Exactly. So these crew, what I want to point out there is that this crew, these astropazs and these navigators, there's military personnel on the deck with them. In a lot of them. Yeah.

Because the thing is, as we said before, if, one of the navigators or one of the astropaths does decide to burst into being a demon suddenly, you need to kill that demon before the other astrophats die because you don't want to be on a black ship

wandering aimlessly in the void. That is probably the worst scenario. There's layers of people that are supposed to kill other guys too. There's a lineup of people with guns, with guns pointed in another guy's head. Yeah, everything is set

for just this is going to work. So the thing about black ships, though, is there are actually not much more there's a giant freighter. It was funny, I was right, I was actually thinking about the movie Alien, whereas it's just a giant ship. It's like 12 people on it.

So there is just not, it's a pretty skeleton crew outside of, that monitor it, because all of the technology is built to just keep these people in their pens. But you do every now and then have to, so you're not like, it's not like, it's not to kind of polish the decks,

do all this stuff. So there is a crew that's wandering around. You have your chefs. You're going to have your maintenance personally. You're going to have all these guys. These are all specially recruited because they're all blanks. I was to say, you're just grabbing all of the blanks. And by the way, there's just not that many blanks.

Yeah, blanks, there's a lot more psychers than blanks. 100%. So in a blank, for those of you who aren't aware, a blank is someone who doesn't, how do it says? He's just unconnected to the warps. Yeah, they don't exist within the warp effectively. And they actually... There's also levels to blanks because they're immune to psychic corruption.

They're immune to psychic. If you're trying to manipulate them, you could use psychic powers as then I could just take a piece of rock and launch it at your face. Yeah. Yeah. A blank has the work just doesn't affect them is the best way to kind of look at it. And so what makes them great, obviously, is that this has a few different effects. One, it means that a psycher can't, you know, manipulate them. Well, they can't overpriced them.

power of their mind. You couldn't come in and say, hey, open this cell door. They just won't do it. You know, like we've all seen Star Wars. So we don't know. The other one, too, though, is that they're also can't be viewed. So a lot of really powerful psychic entities don't actually view through their eyes. They view through the warp. They see things that way. They don't see blanks. They're actually not aware of their presence. There's whole sisters that don't even see at all. Yeah, we're about to get into how beneficial this is. So having a crew that's able to do this, That means if you have a psych or sitting in a cell under this level of torture, they won't actually know that the guy mopping the floor who the site could use to manifest their way out

because they're in a blank can't, they don't know they're there. And even if they did know they were there, they couldn't reach into their mind to use them. This also, you know, one little thing about them too, they also can somewhat resist. So it's not just the maintenance crew, but even a lot of soldiers that are there will be blanks. Because they also can resist some psychic powers. They're not immune to like smites. This is pretty crazy, though, because this is like some of the 80s action movies where the random janitors, the baddest dude around. Yeah.

Because the janitors are kind of the baddest dudes around because these dudes have all went through intensive training. Well, they're all combat trained. Right. Well, they're combat trained. They're chaos-resistant trained. I really don't want to make this reference, but it's the only one I can make. You're going to under siege of this? Yeah.

We're going to have to have you seen the same boat there. We're both like, oh, God, this is Stephen Seagull and Under Siege. But it's, even Seagull sucks so much now. But it's a big thing because this is the craziest thing because random guys are badasses on the ships. If a psychor were to escape their pen, you wouldn't like the guy again mopping the floor outside. Who ruin you. Like it's nothing. Yeah.

It's going to take them down. throw him back in the pen, shut the door, and go back to mopping, and maybe not even start sweating. Yeah. Like, these guys are cool as hell. The other key one that's there, though, is the Adeptus Telepathica are all over this ship. And what they're doing is they're wandering the ship marking down all of the prisoners. Here's their level of, basically seeing, with all the torture that they're doing to them, how well are they resisting the torture?

because that's a good gauge of their level of psychic powers. It's also, to be fair, to be honest on it, while these methods are just nightmare level, they do get to see how these people would deal with the ruinous powers trying to manipulate them, trying to assault them, because the ruinous powers don't just throw lighting bolts at you. They try to tear your mind apart. None of the stuff that they're doing to these psychers,

just because they're evil and enjoy torture. This is just, they're just bad at thinking up clever ideas that don't involve torture. Except for the fact of 90% of this ship becomes people that are bleeding out of their eyeballs and drooling. Yeah. And then they have 10% left. They're like, we've got a lot of people that'll all work out.

So, yeah. You get this and they start basically going, that guy would be good for this. Yeah, Prisoner 177.8. grade grade B is giving a grade B a grade C a grade D and this will help because once they get back to Earth they're going to get kind of shuffled out of this thing and and moves into different areas now the ship is actually the this is what I'm interesting I read this three times so I maybe I could still be wrong but I'm 85% I'm right of this

the black ships are actually run by the Inquisition that's actually that is who oversees that is that is their primary the people with the most power on the ship, the people who are in charge of are actually the Inquisition. Well, it's the end all, because there could only be a few agents of the Inquisition that are around. This is the reason I said that there's a guy with a gun holding a gun to the guy with a gun. The last guy with the Conquestion. He's supposed to kill everyone. And the reason this, and this actually does make sense, because if you think about the Adeptus telepathica, even though it's president, they don't like Sykers, their job is to deliver Sykers to terror. They,

They may view something as not as significant as the Inquisition. The Inquisition, because the Inquisition who's there are the most extreme members of the Order of Malius. They see anything they don't like that prisoner is getting ejected into space. Yep. You know, we're not messing up. Yeah. They're going to shoot them twice and also ejecting them. And then shoot a bomb at them.

Just in case. Yeah. They are, because these ships represent one of the greatest resources of the Imperium, but also one of the greatest threats. We're probably, you know, hitting this too many times. But if for whatever reason, a black ship were to turn to chaos. That's bad news bears. This is a death ship of incredible power.

So the Inquisition is there to make sure that that doesn't happen. Also, it can easily be corrupted because, oh, yeah, you've been torturing these people for sometimes a year or two. Yeah, they're not. They're pretty not big. No one's got the foam finger that says Imperium's number one at this point in time. Now, post, this is kind of a cool one because I'll not sure a lot of you know this. Post 13th Black Crusade, where Baden split the sky, the black ships' travel patterns have changed a lot. It used to be they could actually put enough blanks on them.

They could move in silence throughout the galaxy. And they just avoid the eye of terror. Well, now that it's a rift, a Voltron rift across the middle of it. So the black ships used to actually move kind of almost quietly throughout the galaxy, collecting and moving and moving. Because chaos now has so much more access and also the tyrantids are so much more heavily there, they've turned up the black ships. They actually move a lot quicker, which makes them more visible.

In order to do that, they had to arm them better. And they've armed them with what is the greatest anti-sense. Sisters of Silence. The Sisters of Silence. And the Sisters of Silence, I didn't even realize this, existed and then disappeared for 10,000 years within the lore. The Sisters of Silence are, and there's not a lot of detail on them yet. I do have the Costodes book in my other room, which haven't read it yet.

Apparently is a key piece of it. The Sisters of Silence, they are all blanks. They fight at a similar level, a custode. They also have different focuses of that. And they also have levels of they can make, they're not just blanks.

They emanate blank. Yeah, they can suck energy out. Yeah. These are great because if you think about why they're there, what is the, there's not really, they could handle an external threat. But if

the black ships are under attack by, say, a chaos, this fleet, they can call an Imperial Navy, and they'll be there pretty quick. These guys, the way that they're moving to the galaxy, they don't move with a retune of support vehicles, but they're always on a path that the Imperial Navy's aware of, so they can get there almost instantly. The bigger danger is an attack from within. Something jumps in.

And what works better than that? Well, you have a demon. As we said, they tend to see through the warp. The Sisters of Silence can bounce demons is the fantastic part. They can bounce even, or if a demon can't see it, says, of silence a lot of time. So you jump in. Well, they can, Sisters of Silence by themselves in the stories sometimes

stop demonic incursions because they stop the opening, basically. They plug the damn. They just walk, well, because they're emitting such blank, which is a weird way to say. They're emitting such a level of null. Basically, null field. They're emitting a null field. They just walk near whatever, wherever this gateway is

and the gateway can't hold, you can't hold form anymore and collapses. Yeah, it's crazy. Sisters of Silence are wackly power. Talking about things that don't translate into the game. Oh, yeah, they're uselessly. No, they're better now.

Well, yeah, because now. But I'm saying they were. But, man, they are in stories, in in lore, which we're doing, a lower cast. In the lore, they are wildly useful and so powerful. I have something to do with this cast.

I think that characters like that, is the same with rogue traders, is in this one. Joe Caro, let's keep me of Joe Caro. I think it's because they're not interesting as like a battalion.

Yeah. Interesting as an individual. Right. Because one sister can do so much cool stuff that it's like, can one sister fight off 20 orcs?

No. So in the tabletop, it just doesn't really work. Yeah, it's true. I mean, you're like, you've got all these mystical abilities. You're like,

yeah, five dudes just beat you up. Yeah. Or like an elder artist, sorry, but I got a bright lance and that, and she doesn't exist anymore. Right. But if you're talking about

something like where you're doing like a Blackstone Fortress type game. More of an RPG setting. They're amazing because they bring. And they're must-have. Yeah, they bring this incredible sense of powers. And so that's why they're on these ships because you don't need a lot of them. You have just enough. And it makes it so that if you try to infiltrate the ship, you've got this incredible warrior

moving throughout it that's probably built to fight you specifically. So, anyway, that's the sisters. eventually these black ships do get back to Terra. With a gigantic ship of now crazy people. Oh, just crazy wrecked people. And as we said, the Adeptus Telepathica has been giving everyone grades, marking it all down. So what they're going to do is they're going to offload the ship

and they're just going to send you off into whatever area they think you belong. So you are... The people that are still cognizant of thought. Yeah. get sorted out. Now, unfortunately, unfortunately, the people that are still with it are pretty easily manipulated because you can say, would you like that not to happen again? And you're like, yeah, whatever you say I have to do, I'm going to do that so you don't put me in another dark cell where I get tortured, you know, all day 24-7 for a year or two. That seems better. That seems better.

That seems better than where we were. So they're going to think I'm, they're going to send them off. And they're going to go either if they're kind of, if they fit the, my guess is for the, but my, they don't explain this clearly. But my assumption is to become a space marine librarian, my guess is you also probably had some markings down from the imperial governor, like, oh, by the way, this kid can fight. So space marine librarian. If you're not that and you're really intelligent, but you really have it all together,

the Inquisition will probably take you then. You can go to your conclusion. You can go primary psycher, which is the guard used them as everything from shields to bombs effectively. I mark down navigators here, although navigators mostly are coming from terrorists. I'm not 100% on this. I just couldn't. Well, the ships do grab navigators, but they kind of grab them as part of what they grabbed as they towed the net.

Yeah, it's just that piece of navigators because it's a genetic thing. I don't know how many they're bringing in. But there are some who just, you know, one is aware of, which is the, the Grey Knights also. So as we talked about the Space Marine librarians, the ones who come out of this and are just like, yeah, the dude comes out and he's literally sitting. He's floating above his cot staring at you pissed off. You're like, hey, by the way, I like the muffins. I wasn't a big fan of the bacon.

It's just, just like this was nothing. We're probably going to mark Lou Kang as the guy there. Yeah, that guy's going, yeah, you're going over to, to, to meet the gray nights. Oh my God, what is that creature? Yeah. Please get away from us. We don't all want to die.

But most of these guys, to be perfect, to be foul, let's be honest. These guys are getting rubber-stamped astrophath. Like, it's going out of style. Yeah, it's all astrophath. Or you get the honor. Yeah, you get the other one. So the ones who really did struggle through this get to go somewhere else. Now, also, all the crazy people do get plugged into this, too.

Oh, no, that's what I'm saying. A lot of, if you got broken and you're just a drooling person, well, you get the, we've got a purpose. Hey, was the last year or two, too much for your mind to handle? Well, we've got another prize for you. Yep. So the first thing that we're going to do, now we're going to talk about something called soul binding in a second here. Now, as we were saying before, if you come out of this thing and you're in your show like it was nothing, you're a gray night.

If you're doing pretty well, you're going to go space marine, librarian. or you're going to go Inquisition, if you're not one of them, and this does include primaris psychers, and you're going to now be put into it. Because they have, all those three have their own training regimes that they do. So they'll teach you how to use your powers.

The Imperium has a cheat code for making it so their psychers don't explode into demons. Well, and it's called soulbinding. Well, yeah, but it's also, it's not really a soul bind. It's the emperor. his will is bonkersville better than yours is. I'm going to make a movie reference now, and I'm going to tell you, if you don't know this reference,

go fix it. So in the Princess Bride, Wesley is strapped down to a machine and that's going to suck his life force out. And they can go anywhere from a one to a ten. Soul binding works this similar way. What a soul binding is is they strap you into a machine. and they force a portion of the emperor's psyche into you. And what this does is it purges your soul of any chaos corruption.

But it's not like a cools process. In theory, it also makes you more aligned with the imperial. I think you meant to say malleable. Yeah. Because the emperor, a tiny portion of the emperor, because he's so wildly powerful. The emperor means... He shatters your will.

Well, the emperor used, this is the same force the emperor used to make Horace no longer exist. Yeah. He puts a drop of that and it accidentally almost shatters your mind. It definitely shatters your will.

And the reason I made the Princess Bride reference is depending on what your task is going to be for the Imperium, they turn this machine up or down. True. You get either a drop or you get several drops. If you're going to be a primarist, psycher, you get probably a one to three somewhere in that realm.

If you're going to be an astropath, you're more on like the three to seven, because they are, it does somewhat lobotomize you too. And they don't care. Oh, not at all. That's the thing. We go back to the astropath, though. The astroph, this is another reason why they're so unbelievably insane, terrible to the astrophath, they don't care at this point in time.

The primary psycher has to be, oh, he has to be able to do shit. Yeah. A astropath, if you broke this dude. And say the things that they're told to say. Correct. If this dude's just sitting shitty his pants, like laying there, you're like, it seems like a great astrapath. In fact, a lot of the astrapaths are physically broken by this process.

Think about half the astrophath that they've used with Eisenhorn. He has those guys tied up in the basement, basically. They don't move at all. If you've ever seen an astrapath model, they look horrified. Yeah. They're just broken, like most of the time they just have them jammed in shit. Well, they have to be massively physically augmented because usually this price, and the reason why is this soul binding.

So if you want to know why an astrophat looks the way it does, it's because the soul binding process when shoved through them, but even primary psychers usually have some level cyber augmentation, it will turn off some of your organs. It will, it will, limbs will make us. Wait, it's also because of the fact when they're putting part of the emperor's juice into you, it's like if I said, hey man, can I have an aspirin? some are between one and 100 million milligrams.

They don't know how much they're giving. How can I have an aspirin? And like, no, how about we hit you with a taser? What kind of taser? Like, I'm going to go to the transformer. The one that makes all the ticking noises. I'm going to do it until the battery dies. Let's see what happens.

So, yeah, they effectively die to a point from this, but are purged. And to defend the Imperium in this one, remember, an astrapath that turns the chaos super bad. So they have to make sure. It just is awful. Yeah. Now, there is one more level to the soul bind, which is a seven to ten. This is bringing us full circle back to the Astronomicon. As we said before, we have to have bodies in the Astronomicon.

And depending on how you read the lore... Got to power up the emperor. How you read the lore, these people are all willing... They write it as they're all willing... willing servants who were excited to be part of this project for the emperor. However, they've all been through the most extreme version of soul binding. So I'm kind of concerned about... They already broke them on the black ship.

It's like this definition of consent is pretty loose is what I'm getting now. Yeah, when I have a guy that's drooling, we're giving me the thousand miles stare. You're like, he seems super willing. Russian KGB, like, what's it called? Confessions are probably more realistic than something. some of these, like, I cannot wait to go into this room. So these are the people that are strapped into the Astronomicon. This is such a bad way to go.

Yeah. So let's go through where the emperor is. Emperor is now dying. When Horace hit him with all the powers of chaos, it took a chunk of the emperor's soul. It didn't just take his soul. It shattered the emperor. Yeah. The emperor's soul didn't get destroyed.

The emperor's soul got broken. And so he is... He's also... Emperor was multitasking before. Holy shit, the emperor's multitasking now because there's a... Effectively, there's a bunch of emperor. They shoved him into the golden throne, sealed it. He had his last words, which were misinterpreted.

And now the emperor inside this golden throne, his shattered psyche is powering an astronomeric on, keeping... Well, I'm going to start saying the... webway gate. It's in quotes here. It actually was never a webway gate. It's the gate to the emitterium. That's sitting in the bottom of that's open. He's got a gate in the, he's got a open gate the imperium in the basement. He's shielding terror from chaos incursions. He's fighting active battles with chaos gods. And he and he's sitting because he's sitting in between the material and the immaterial. Yeah, he's being attacked by everything. Everything from a nergling through Nurgel, you know, are trying to mess with them.

So this is a bit of a drain. And you forgot also powering the Astromanica. Yeah. So he needs a little bit of, what he could use is a couple monster energy drinks here and there. Or a thousand souls a day. Well, it's 10,000 psychers are strapped into this machine where in the center of it is a giant ball that is just sucking their life force and energy out of them. and then transmitting that energy into the Astronomicon. It just chooses the Golden Throneon.

Yeah. Because it's not the Astronomicon, because the Emperor's totally powering up. The Astronomicon is connected to the Golden Throne. So it's going into the Astronomicon. I'm just not sure if it's going out. And for those of them are going to want to say that this is not what's powering up, 100% also true. He's getting powered up because he's basically being worshipped as a God. It doesn't be worshipped as a God.

There's a lot of... Which is powering into the... warp, which is juice. But to Brad's point, the Astronomicon has 10,000 of these psychers strapped into it. Every day, a thousand of them die. So that's why I say the average about 10 days. They die. And they die.

It's not just the like, ooh, and I'm going to fall over. They just, it's a withering husk disappears. They just suck everything out of them. And this telepathicus moves quick. One guy runs in, grabs it on hooks the dead corpse, which I'm assuming looks, like a dehydrated mummy, pulls them out and then shoves the next one in. Yep.

And they are, because it's fine, they write this. And again, maybe I'm wrong here. And if any of you work for GW, tell me where I'm wrong here. But they write it like they're worshipping.

I just don't believe that. I think they're also, you can remember with them doing this quickly, there's a shit ton of psychers watching the worst way to die ever and going, wow, that's what I'm, skewed up to be.

Are they, though, actually, I like that more of a, they're just in another room. And it just, there's just a room. The Imperium is such dicks that I just assume. They're just like, why, why bother having them in another room? That would take longer. So this is the true reason

for the black ships. When we discuss what the black ships do, it's these guys, I mean, you could probably recruit astropats from being honest. You could lie to them and get them. This is the, one I think this is why we have black ships is because we need to actually go much deeper into it. You need black ships also because, again, you have to do all your sanctioning of psychers on Terra,

but the reason for the tithe and all this stuff is we're at this point. So let's just do some quick math here. So there are three, so a thousand psychers a day die to this thing. There are 365 days in a year, and we are at year 11,000. of this. So it is 4 billion cykers to date have died

in the Astronomicon. And that doesn't count all of the people. 4 billion 15 million in case any of you did the math yourselves. 4 billion 15 million. You got to remember that's the people that made it. The suck fest that is a black ship, a lot of people die.

I'm just thinking the Astronomicon has itself consumed. My bad. Billion souls. Yeah. The black ship has cruised in that many, but also not a lot of people make this, this journey, especially if you were, you were the first stop.

Probably, I mean, quintilian, I mean, the number of dead psychers from this is impossible. And this is why psychers turn to cast. Yeah, it's actually the more, maybe these castes, like, yeah, you know what, actually, I get it. Like, the allure

of one of the gods seems... Before Zines could just give him, here's a vision of your future. All right, fair enough. What do you want Zee? Yeah, like, I'm cool. I'm in. I'm a big zine worshiper now. Yeah, what do you need? But doing a cult? What's my today? People are like, you're going to eventually die a horrible death. You're like, yeah, but I won't die that death.

Yeah, this has got to be better than that. Yeah, you can't tell me something worse than what. Which is why the Imperium's a nightmare. So with that, kind of, we'll just conclude from there. I think that's a good enough coverage of this for people. If you have more questions, ask us in Discord. This is by far the darkest cast we've ever done. Yeah.

I'm just like, as we're going, I'm like, wow, everything we said was awful. So next week, join us for the Adeptus Seal Clubbing. Really? Which would still be happier than this one. Yeah, it's actually, by the way, I wrote that as a joke like, the Debtest Seal Clubbing, Adeptist puppy kicking. And it's like, yeah, actually, they might have those. So actually, next week we're going to talk about one of,

of the probably most significant downsides of all these psychers, a certain invasion that has begun of the tyranids. You're going to have to call the exterminators in. Yeah. This is going to be a multi-part. I'm trying to tell the story a little bit differently than we've done other Zenos in the past. Obviously, we're going to give you the lore of tyranids, but we want to kind of talk more from a timeline standpoint.

Tyrannids are the greatest threat to the galaxy, and we want to kind of spend some time talking about. And they're a main threat, the main push right now to the current timeline of the game, they are the primary antagonist. Yeah, and I also think Tyrannids, and again, I could be corrected here, but I believe they're the only race in the galaxy

that every other race is concerned with. Yes. It is, including chaos. Chaos is also very good. Yeah, Sabaton's not super excited. The Tyrannids are going because he was doing pretty goddamn wrong. And the Tyrannids also can disrupt his plans, The chaos gods themselves don't, they get nothing out of them.

They keep killing their people. Obviously, the necrons, tau, whatever. Well, they would eat a Tao and then they'd make a Tyrannid Tao, which would be not that scary. You're eventually going to be in the same. I actually had to write this on Discord, and I'll say it again here. I actually don't hate Tao. I just, the joke started and I've kind of been running with it. You're just going to meet all the Tao players, editor?

It's actually, I have no issue with talent. I just enjoy the jokes. But anyway, with that, this has been John Barcati and Bradchester. We'll see you guys next week.