The 40k Lorecast - Episode 4 - Heresy makes its move

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

The corruption of Chaos has begun to spread and Horus makes his move. Seeing an opportunity to significantly weaken his enemy, Horus commits the ultimate act of betrayal to his brothers. On this episode we cover: Isstvan III, Isstvan V, the flight of the Eisenstein, Magnus doing something wrong, and more.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to 40K Lourcast with me, John Barsati and of course, Brad Chester. This guy. All right. So Brad, heresy is written. Where are we today? We've got Horace, fully corrupted, determined to do anything for the greater good. He's going to do any bad act betraying his brothers is now okay.

We've got three. Horace plus three. Horace plus three. They're plotting on how they're going to get more, but they're also plotting on how they're going to get rid of anybody that's not loyal to him, specifically, in the legions. So, effectively, he only wants the people that are corrupted, but it's more the people that are only willing to do anything that their Primark says.

He wants to weed it out to have only the most fanatical because they're going to do some bad shit, and they're going to really rationalize the crap out of it. They're basically saying, well, we have to do this horrible thing. And then we're going to do the next horrible thing. And they got to have people that are willing to rationalize their terrible behaviors or in the case of the world eaters. Just tell them to do stuff because they were already going to do some terrible shit. Old eaters are going to World Eater. Yeah.

They were you, we want you to do this. Oh, that's too far. Oh, you're already doing it? Yeah. Well, do you want any direction? No, on your own. Cool. Oh, cool.

You guys are going to murder people already? Cool. So we're going to start here with Istvon 3. This is what I was just talking about. Horace has, as it, needs to purges legions. We've got a certain number of, so the one interesting thing about this is that the legions come from multiple places originally. Once the primarks were discovered and they began conquering planets,

they built their own little sections of the galaxy that their space marines would come from. But initially, a lot of them actually came from Terra. And a lot of them were actually the emperor found them, infused them with the Primarch's gene seed and then made them part of the Legion. Those soldiers are exceptionally loyal to the emperor and terror. So we got a little bit of a challenge here. So as Horace or as Folgram or Mortarian, I've gotten, as a leader, I have to get these guys out of my army.

Because if I go and say, I'm going to go attack the empire, then all of a sudden, like, the captain, one of my spaceships might not be loyal to me and he might fly this spaceship into a sun or warn dad. Or worse. Go back and warn dad or be a ship that I have to, even best case scenario, be a ship that I have to fight now. So what Horace realizes is that he's got a clever plan. He does this a lot. Really, Horace is one of the better tacticians in the stories of 40K. I think Gilliman's better, but more so his Gillman shows up to be 11. But he's also bureaucracist. Yeah, true, fair enough. What he decides to do is that this world Istvon 3, he tells everyone is in rebellion against the empire.

Which, by the way, the Istivan system is going to be bad newsbears for everyone, by the way. So, Bratley put, was Istvon 3 in rebellion to the emperor? Absolutely not. What he does is he said, we're going to attack it and then handpicks who's going down. And it is all of the, what we'll begin referring to now is the loyalists. And all the loyalists are sent down there. thing is, is that in this, though, there is members of the lodges. They go down there, and they kind of start figuring out, hey, man, everybody's been

acting real funky lately. And they start figuring out, hey, I've been really, you know, ostracized by the guys that used to be my closest of my brothers. We never had anything. We shared everything. And all of a sudden, I'm not invited. Or there was a meeting. And we enough, I didn't get to go to that one. And now I'm going on this very fishy expedition. Yeah. To go kill a populace. But they do it.

And they go down there and they slaughter the people of Istvan and kill. Because they did not have defense. There's no defenses. They didn't know they were coming. And they also were like, we didn't do anything wrong. What's happening? So they begin fighting through and

this is the moment. And now just as they win, Horace decides to eliminate all of his opposition from orbit with virus bomb. Well, he basically sends down nukes plus. The World Leader virus. It legitimately kills all organic yes on the planet. It's when you want to use the planet later and you've got terraforming so you don't care.

And you just want to make sure nobody's left there. Well, it melts all of the organic matter and turns it in methane. which it then lights on fire. And so when you get it is this thing, first, every living thing dies, and then the entire planet explodes into a ball of fire. I mean, that's not optimum. Yeah, I mean, it's efficient. But now we're in one of the cooler parts of the story,

which is, as with all good stories, the good guys have a play. And so two players here, Saul Tarvitz and... Darrow. So Tarvitz is from Emmer. Emperor's children, so Fulgroom's army. The perfectionist. How about this? The vain one.

The vain one. And Garrow is from Death Guard, so Mortarians Army. And I believe Garrow had, I believe, had, why I believe. Garrow was a loyalist, but couldn't be sent down because he had to get a cybernetic implant in his leg. And he finds out kind of by chance, to be perfectly honest. He had some pretty big plot armor in this book, actually. Garrow is cool.

Garrow. Garo is fantastic because Garo has, as well as a lot of the death guard, they have a very strict moral code of what they want to do because of the fact that Mortarian originally was, came from a planet that had tyrannical rulers. So he was very against the bully, the tyrant. So he taught his legion to be against that, which. Garo is very, very big. To be honest with you, I completely forgot his first name. I just know he's Garo. So Nathaniel Garo.

And Tarbeth, so these two actually together, they're friends. And so even though they're from different legions, but the legions used to fight together all the time. I don't know if we've done a good enough job about that. And I apologize for that. But the legions consistently were doing joint operations all the time. Well, and this was the, because there was the purpose. is why the emperor made them with different positive attributes.

So each of them excelled in different areas. It was designed not to make them all independent bodies, but actually to make it so, well, whatever we're fighting, if we have to go fight someone who's got very good defenses, we're going to bring the iron warriors. If we have someone who just has a lot of bodies we have to get through, we're bringing Angron.

But usually you wouldn't just have one. You'd have multiple. So maybe we would bring the iron warriors to break the defenses, then Angron to go through it and do the pieces. This is how these guys all. fought. The Death Guard were a really cool army because they were very controlled. They moved methodically and methodically moved forward. They would take land, conquer land. And you could imagine partnering them with some like an emperor's children who are a perfectionist that had artillery

and all these things. Or you partner them up with the blood angels, whoever, to make a combo that's combined. It's combined our forces. Unbeatable. So these two Tarvitz and Garrow discover not only kind of in a rather a whirlwind of events discover. A, chaos exists, kind of. So our prime arcs we've been worshipping have turned against the emperor. They want to kill the emperor. But before they want to kill a bunch of our brothers on a fake mission down on this planet. Well, you've got to make the emotional impact, right, though.

Your dad, you just found, is on his way upstairs to shoot you. Yeah. And you're not 100% sure why, but you just found out he also did a whole bunch of bad things before he's coming upstairs to do that. This is coming. And so these two, the hero thing, and they go and they effectively take a ship. Hired a ship. I honestly, I read the book a couple times. And in my head, it kept calling the Einstein.

And then I was doing my research and realized I missed an S. It is the Eisenstein, not the Einstein. It's the Eisenstein. So they steal the Eisenstein. One thing that Horace had done, and the people down on the surface thought it was odd, was there was no communication with the spaceships. All of these soldiers fighting down on the surface, it was dead air going up. So they assumed that there was radio blockage, whatever it was.

It wasn't. It was actually Horace just wasn't telling them anything and letting them fight. Well, they were also busy murdering all the loyal ship crew, the actual regular humans, the non-marines, and they were effectively throwing these guys in a woodchepard, to be honest. But that's pretty much what was happening. So they decide, so Tarvitz and Garrow grabbed this Eisenstein and they fly out of the surface and they just broadcast the message of the open frequency because that's a thing inside by. You got a member Garvin's also down there.

Oh, yeah, we'll get the Garvin. But they're done. So they send us broadcast out there and say, hey, you're about to be attacked effectively. Take cover. Take cover. Well, you're not going to be attacked. They're virus bombing, what it's called the planet, you need to get underground. Not just underground.

You need to get underground in a shelter that can withstand a nuclear, again, nuclear blast plus one. So they fly through, this message goes out. And actually a lot of the space marines do hear it. And they do take shelter. And then the Eisenstein decides to take off and fly back there. And we're going to get back to them in a second, I promise. On the planet, though, the biggest things, because they have some. big fights down there.

They have actual chaos-infused things down there. This is why they get, what is chaos? Why am I being attacked by a tentacle monster? Because there was chaos spawn and all these. There was a bunch of slenish infused things down there from the Emperor's children. So there's a bunch of things that they're fighting and they've never seen before, which is all this chaos stuff. And also, while you're battling this thing you've never seen before,

one of your brothers goes, hey, they're virus bombing the planet. So you've got some serious, it's not a great day. It's not the best day you've ever had. Duck. So the good news is, for the good guys, is the space marines on the planet do take cover. They go, not all them, but a lot of them do. And the Eisenstein takes off towards Earth. It gets horribly beat up.

Oh, we're going to get to there. We are not, I am not going to do a cast on this and not. I mean, it's a full book. There are a whole book on it. We're going to do. The flight of the Eisenstein is a novel. A very good book at that. We're going to spend some time on this for a lot of very good reasons.

So they blow up. Then Angron. Horace realizes that his bombing campaign of his loyalist brethren doesn't go quite to plan. There's a bunch of them alive. The fact that up just a little bit, Angron was already mad because he wasn't personally allowed to kill everyone in the planet. Yeah. Angron's plan was so Horace's plan was we should preserve our soldiers. We'll trick the loyalist.

We'll go down there. They'll fight a bunch of people. They'll die during that. and then we'll bomb it. Angeron's plan was, why don't you just let me go down there and kill each of them one by one? I'll punch everybody in the face individually. Also, remember when we said Horace, brilliant tactician? No one's really ever said that about Angeron's tactician is, I am here and I'm going there,

and everything between here and there, I'm going to hit for the chainsort. This weird little moment, but this story may not seem important right now, but it speaks to kind of stuff we're going to cover later about some of the challenges that the Trader legions had. And Angron's a good example of it. So Horace's plan has gone partially to plan, but it's not all the way there. There are still loyalists who are alive on the surface. So what you would normally do in a situation is bomb it again. Wait them out. They have nowhere to go. They have nowhere to go. They have no weight up. They're in a legitimate underground bunker. So just bomb it again. Or if you're Angron, grab a bunch of legions and drop.

pods and launch yourself down there with all of your guys, the 50 companies and just go kill the survivors hand to hand. On a planet that's currently on fire. Yeah. I mean, again, if they ever make cinematics of the show, this one's got some potential for Yeah, it's going to look pretty good. CGI budget's going to be pretty high. Yeah.

But man, this is this going to be cool looking? So they launched down. And now, I mean, Angron goes, all that people follow. He's not alone in this one. And they begin fighting and killing the loyalists and the lawyers are fighting back. It effectively turns into hand-to-hand combat because, to Brad's point, the world's on fire. Like, there's no. It's on fire and everybody's, there's rubble.

It's just destroyed everything. The world's on fire. Everything's destroyed. You were literally fighting guys as you find them because you jumped over a destroyed building into a wall. Oh, there's 50 guys. standing right there. So go time. Go time. Yeah, exactly. And I think let's, one thing I thought we could cover here is a fun little side story. I think it's not important, but it's good. It's Lucius.

Also, go to Warhammer Plus. He is as a fantastic cartoon on there right now. Lucius is a fun side story and a good example of the corruption of chaos. So Lucius is a champion in Emperor's children. He's a duelist. Yeah. He's an actual, before he came completely into chaos, he was a wildly overconfident duelist that got ruined by multiple people. The reason he gets corrupted is because he suffered back-to-back losses when he hadn't been losing ever before. And they basically went, we will make it so you don't lose anymore. He was like, gone.

Done. You're like, hey, you have to stab old ladies in the face. He's like, yeah, I don't care at all. So Lucius was interesting one because he was sent down with the loyalists because he was friends with a lot of the loyalists. And Fulgroom didn't think he could trust him. And so he was sent down there to go die. And while down there, he survives a virus bomb.

Well, he also does not do good with all the people that survived. And turns. So he actually turns while he's there. And I like this story a lot because we talk about the way that these people were being corrupted. This was an individual corruption. It wasn't this thing of. There was no mind control here. Each space marine who joined the traitors, joined the traitors.

Well, also a lot of these people, Lucius included, the chaos gods are persuasive. They are insidious. They individually corrupted a lot of these people. This isn't a full grim overall plan. This is the chaos gods individually going to each person and going, what is the thing you most want? He most wanted to be the best. the best, I want to be the best hand-to-hand duelist of all time amongst all my brothers. And they went, cool, got it. I mean, he technically has never lost ever again.

The reason the Lucius story is interesting is that Lucius is standing with the loyalists, preparing for this attack by the traders. And the loyalists all of a sudden out of nowhere, Lucius explodes and attacks from the inside. So not only did they get betrayed one, But if you happen to be near Lucius, you got betrayed twice. Yeah, a real bummer. The best swordsman you know has just decided to start cutting people down. Yeah. And he just cuts and cuts and cuts.

Eventually, this all results in Horace does kill the rest. He is able to convince Angron to leave. Weirdly enough, a couple rando people survive. Yeah. Because, well, one, they get buried beneath rubble and everything else. they accidentally don't kill people, but mainly because a building fell on them. And they couldn't get to them. But he bombs him again from space.

He does eventually do what he wanted to do, which is bomb them again from space. So the other thing that's kind of cool about this is that we're now talking about thousands, tens of thousands have died all at once. And a virus, no, sorry, the virus bomb billions, but actually trillions have died. The entire planet has suddenly died. What this does, which actually helps horace out, is it actually makes the warp unstable. Which they have retcon twice. I know. So I'll just go with what my favorite theory is, is what the chaos gods are helping horse out by making the warp unstable. That is not the full

canon, but it makes the most sense, is that if any time right now the emperor finds out what's actually happening, he signals the rest of his brothers, stops the corruption, stops what's happening and none of this goes down. I took it as the that level of death violence. The virus bomb is going to feed Nergal because it's played. It's both. Horn from the violence. But I'm saying my thing, my take, and you can take this anything, but that's the problem is we've had multiple stories about why. Because this is for, again, 40 years in the making of the same story that's been added on. So this is, I agree with what you just said and also what I just said.

Everyone's right. It powers them up to do what I was saying, but like the sheer body count in the first place can do all this stuff. Exactly. And I think what happens, it makes us important is that this now clouds the warp. And so this is, well, that's the biggest thing is they can't, again, if there's real communication, all of this goes down right now. Yeah.

Immediately the emperor is aware. There has been a revolution. And Horace is done. So now Horace is actually shielded. No one knows this is happening. If you want to go tell the emperor that Horace turned on him, you have to go physically tell the emperor. But you also have to find out that it's happened. Or you could try and pierce through the psychic barrier around him.

And then- Good job, Magnus. Good job, Magnus. But also, this leads us to, well, I guess we do we flight before us, the Drop Zone massacre. Yeah, because it's actually happened before. That's true, true, true. So going back to a talk about earlier with Garrow and the loyalists on the Eisenstein, now they have come out of Istvon 3 and they try sending a message to Earth and it just doesn't go anywhere. They realize pretty quickly that that's not going to work and they need to go.

They also at this point have to deal with a little problem on their ship in that they come and did this ship. But unlike Horace, they didn't do a little like stat check on every on everyone on board. say, hey, you guys are with us, right? Yeah, so about half the ship's not. So he's actually, they're on a spaceship in a war zone where everyone's pissed off and half his spaceship is traitors. So there's an issue here. They're not even, but we have backed that up.

They're traders that think that they are loyal. Yeah, it's true. So now you've got, that is this, you got to remember that's the narrative. Spy versus Spies. What's the narrative is that we are actually the ones fighting for. our fellow brothers, you were the one fighting against it. So on this ship, they get attacked by the other half of the ship effectively. Their astropath actually gets killed.

That's why they can't get back to terror. They have a whole fight and this giant fight breaks out within the ship. And I wish about this ship's not static. This ship is moving. It's moving towards a planet through atmosphere, doing all this stuff. This story where we talk about happens in, I don't know, five minutes, six minutes of absolute chaos. We'll be right back after a quick break. They battle breaks out.

I literally turned away from my microphone for this. I love that we set off a bomb on the ship. And the next line that John put up is super good idea. Always good to have your gunfight around the World Eater bombs. It's like if you want to duck for cover, nothing quite like a giant thing. a TNT to hide behind. So they're having their fight, and eventually the fight ends up in the bombing bay, because again, that's where you go to fight.

And a stray bolter bullet, again, I promise you if you read the books, most of them are good. Some of them are kind of like, come on, man, it's just lame. But anyway, all of the traders happen to be in the bomber bay, fighting the loyalists, and someone shoots the propane tank, which starts to be. whizzing sound and the one hero jumps on the airlock and hits it and closes it and everybody goes and everyone gets killed by the virus leader bomb and the ship is able to move on but we're not done yet because now they enter orbit and once they're up in orbit the terminus est battlecruiser which is typhus's ship yeah so mortarians got a right-hand man named typhus who is actually more

with Nergel than Mortarian is. Oh, so much more. Typhus was all in on this one. Typhus is... For some hundred reason, Typhus went, Lord of Decay, I'm in. Everybody else had to be tricked. He was like, this sounds great. This sounds fun. I'm just doing this now.

So they now on their, you know, I mean, again, it's not a tiny ship to Eisenstein, but compared to a battle cruiser, oh, he could dock the ship. This is a Star Destroyer versus the Millennium Falcon, but it's a slower Millennium Falcon and not as cool. But so they now come out and immediately Typhus just starts shooting at it.

And it says we're blowing this thing out of the sky. And they take catastrophic damage. They barely, they do the whole, you know, jump to warp. I don't care where. Yeah, they went in a random direction. Boom, get me into the warp. They also have no one to guide them.

They just went, we're going to go that way. Cool. And they went into the warp. They jump into the warp. They jump into the warp and they're in the warp. I mean, it's like rudderless, directionless moving. More importantly, their Gellerfield has failed. Yep.

And the emperor did not tell anyone what's in the warp. So these guys are in the warp and they're getting told where our Gellerfield is down. And they go, so, Brad, why is it bad when a Gellerfield is down? Because the demons have free raid inside your space now. It used to be your private space. is now very public space and the public is real shitty. So now we're starting to see, and this is kind of where the story gets really cool, we start getting all these things that are commonplace in what we would call 40K,

but now this is their first experience. This is the first plague Marines up here. Well, they also made, if you've ever role played or you've ever written a get a wish from a genie or anything like that, always read the find. print because while they're in the warp, they get a horrible rotting disease. And Nurgle comes in and says, I can totally help you out. And they go, I will do whatever it takes to not die from this disease. And he goes, no problem. You won't die from the disease. And they don't. The disease doesn't go away. they just don't die from it.

They horribly suffer from the disease and they continue to suffer from the disease, but they are effectively never going to die specifically from the disease, and they can pass the disease onto others. So they are this bloated, I can't even, I want to not undersell that. They are such a bloated carcass inside their armor.

Imagine a suit of, I mean, it's power armor. Yeah. But it is, you are so bloated, you are busting out. I mean, everyone's see, if you've never seen, again, if you're new to 40K, we've all seen a knight in armor. Yeah. Imagine that armor bursting from the inside with like postules coming out of it,

just purple, blue colors, everything. With such force that it's busting out of futuristic, sealed space armor. There's no in and out of anything. you're blowing that out. And by the way, you're also, the thing is super angry. So if you're not one of these things, that thing's coming to kill you. Yeah, you're not super excited that one of your guys made a deal with a chaos entity. And now you would like to die, but you can't.

And so now that thing is fighting you. So Garrow and the other loyalists are stuck on this ship. fighting possessed space marines, and they're losing. The space marines... It's a big thing on this. You have a good note on this, but I want to throw out. They eventually realize that if they stay in the warp anymore, they have no chance. Because the warp is actually fueling more and more and making them actually more powerful.

So Garrow then realizes his only chance is to leave, is to come out. So they just drop out of the warp. but they're also in the middle of nowhere. Middle of nowhere. With a busted ship and a bunch of effectively zombified, the name of Zombofied. They're just non-dying play. These are guys.

Invincible, effectively, yeah. Invincible death warriors. They were literally, in the books, they're just putting unbelievable amounts of boulder shots into people's faces and everything else. And they're just not caring. Whatever. But luckily, as soon as they dropped out of the warp,

they're able to kill them. Once they get out of the war, Nurgle's power is not strong enough. And now they become like just diseased plague, disease space marines. And they're able to kill them. They kill them. But they're still, as Brad just said, kind of in the middle and nowhere. With a broken ship. The broken ship.

And Garrow again, actually, we should circle back on this. We've talked about this before. The prime arch tribunal, even a regular space marine, is a genius. They are tactically geniuses. They're able to diagnose situations. and come up with solutions. That's what makes them so powerful. It's not that they're just bigger and stronger and fast than everybody else.

They're smarter than everybody. Well, they can also take in more information than a normal person. Like by 100 times, you can give them orbital relay information, everything that's happening on the planet, everything else, and they boom, right? Just like... Regular space ring. Not a prime market, regular space ring. So Garrow realizes that they can't go back into the warp, obviously.

There are thousands of light years from where they need to be. They have no communication. What are we going to do? So he decides to blow up one of his warp drives. Just overloads it, kicks out of the ship, and it blows up. Because a blowing up warp drive, everyone can see. The entire universe can see. And Brad's favorite Primark is watching and Rogel Dorn.

And he does exactly what you expect them to do. Be a dick. We're trying to warn you of something happening. we barely made it out alive. We're fighting for our lives the whole time. What's Rogel Doran do? Nah, I don't really believe you. What if I just throw you all in prison?

So Rogel without even letting you tell your story. Rogel just grabs the whole ship, throws them on the brig of his ship, blows up the Eisenstein, so that thing's gone, and jumps up. I forgot about that. Steaks just blows it up. It's like, no, that thing's gone.

and jumps, but he won't take them back to Earth to see the emperor. He takes them to Luna, which we all know, it's the moon. But it's a giant fortress on Luna. It takes them there. And then gets super butt hurt when he's told that his brother is all turned on the emperor. I mean, Brad loves Rogel. So I'll let Brad discuss how cool Rogel was at this. He legitimately had every single information.

Also, all of the information is on the show. ship. You could have said, hey, what happened? These supercomputers that are literally sentient, basically, could have told you everything. Instead, you're going to have me verbally tell you a story that you could have confirmed instantaneously. Oh, look, there's the video footage of the Plague Marine. Also, you could have sent a message to the emperor so long ago if you would have just paid any attention. Luckily, eventually, Rogel does come around. and decides to go tell the emperor, who believes him instantly.

Because of, you know, the overwhelming evidence. And again, the basically futuristic black box on the plane, which says it confirms every single thing we've said. You could have just looked at that, you know, instantaneously, but sorry, Imperial Fiss fans. I hate Rogel Darts so much. Now, the cool thing is we're going to stop talking about Garrow now, but don't worry, he comes back up later.

For a lot, actually. A lot. So, like, these guys, the reason we, like, we did a sidetrack there into somebody, and now we're not going to talk about him for a little bit, but don't worry, he's coming back hard in the near future. So Horace now, we're going to jump back to Horace. So Istvon 3 is concluded he's purged his Legion. He's purged the world leaders are purged. Yeah, the world leaders, there's no purging of world.

They killed the one guy. Exactly. There was Eric, who was like, hey, guys, I'm not really into this. and they were like, no. So, Eric's gone, but the rest of them are all there. Emperor's children have been purged and Deathguard been purged. So he has himself, he has effectively, and of course, Lorgar. So Lord Gar was pre-perged.

The word bearers were. The word bears. Yeah, we're pre-prits. So he has five legions that are ready to go. They're rocking and rolling. We can do this. Now, he needs some more. And he's got to kind of now make a tactical decision.

Who does he go and reach out to? about, hey, want to go help me kill our dad? And a couple of them, I think, are hard-nosed. The blood angels are literally led by space Jesus. So they're probably not going to go anywhere. The ultramarines are led by the ultimate bureaucrat who would literally bore you into telling you that you're not going. He would also confuse you because he would make it you believe that you were wrong the entire time.

You can talk about it. So those two are right out. And not another one, which is always kind of funny. Like the lion's whoopsie. Lion is totally loyal. 100% loyal here. Lion, and he thinks everybody else is good. Actually, everybody else with him is good.

Things at home don't go well. His adopted dad, Luther, yikes. Oh, we're going to get there. We'll get there. But Horace makes this call. Blood angels, Ultramarines, dark angels. No way. No way.

They're not getting them. And then makes some pretty easy calls. He goes, does the Legion led by the psycho killer that drafted only prison sociopath murderers is going to turn to chaos? Good call. They weirdly were super okay with it. Yeah. Big shock.

The, he got my favorite turn, Pertharabo of the Iron Warriors, who hates Rogaldorn so much. Which he realized he couldn't turn. So we should mention Rogel Dorn. and Khan were too close to Earth, so he had no way to contact him. So he had to go. I give Roguel Dorn a lot of shit.

Rugal wouldn't have turned. But Rogal Dorn is literally the paladin. That guy is like firmly. His intelligence is four, but he has maxed all his other stats. Also, he's kind of a badass also. So if you're not going to get Rogel Dorn, you automatically get Perida Rada Raba.

Well, let's be honest. One is a siege master, and what is a fortification it master and one talks so much shit to the other one. So Perjuraba went which side's Rogelon almost effectively to his face. It's like, you can try to attack me right now. I'll just run away. But like if he's on the other side, I'm in.

And then of course, Alpha Legion, who are. Well, that's that one's hard though. Because talk about Redcon, holy shit. Yeah. Alferius has a twin brother. one of them is still alive and you can argue with me about it because there's been four different stories and there is a particular canon no one knew they they had that they're identical twins so you don't know which at this point no one knows that there's two of them but they also we don't

even know from a story standpoint who said what to who like we don't know who one of them supposedly was loyal and one of them was not so right now alpha legion comes over iron warriors and night The Thousand Sons, and we're going to get to them in a second, they came over in a bit of a weird way. But he's got these guys. The challenge, Paul, Horace has. They came over in a weird way after Levin Russ Bain Magnus over his knee. They came over in the sense that, like, the thousand sons weren't necessarily, and we'll get, we're going to tell that story in a second, guys. So hold on.

We'll feed you. But the issue right now that he does have is he's got Ravenguard, Salamanders, Ironhands, and Spacewolds. Spacewolves, Levin was never coming up. No. And I think, I don't believe he was getting... Salamander's never, you're never going to get Vulcan. Vulcan is the only good guy in the entirety of Empire. And Korax is, actually, we're going to go over how much a badass Korax is pretty shortly. He's an invisible ninja assassin. It's also a Damon Primark, but he... Kind of one of the coolest acts of betrayal that he also, that Horace does is Mars.

We discussed before one of the only ways that meant that the emperor was able to stretch into the Great Crusade was the deal he made with Mars. He goes to Maris. He goes to Maris. He goes to Maris. Mars is this planet that's actually really a factor. It is a planet factory. It's a planet factory. It makes... And they worship the things they make, basically. They make spaceships.

They make weapons. They make everything. Yeah. The adaptive mechanic is Mars. Yeah. And so the emperor makes a deal with them. The deal he makes with them is if you provide my army, my, my army, my empire with equipment and all this stuff, I will help find you more technology.

They'll give you technology. And so that is their deal. Horace knows of this deal. But what Horace also knows is that the emperor is lying. That the emperor knows how dangerous some of this technology is and won't give it all. Because he was alive during that time. And he's also a deck. Yeah, exactly.

So Horace knows this. And so what Horace realizes that he could get, if he got Mars on his side, now he has all the weapons, which is a good, when you're waging war, pretty good to have weapons. Seems strong to have them. Yeah, it feels strong. Like, if I have all the weapons and my opponent has pointy sticks, C. Conquistadors. Didn't work out well. Horace does this trick where he reaches out to Kelbor, who's one of his Admec liaisons,

and he sends him back to Mars and tells him, and with a gift, it's an STC. He presents it to Fabricator of Mars and says... STC is the device back from the old times that could effectively create anything. And this is the thing Admec care about more than anything. Yes. These are what they want. It again is the holy grail. They only want STCs. And so for Horace to just have one creates a bit of a problem.

Because the deal the emperor made with Admec was that they got all of these. So why does Horace have we never gotten any? Yeah. And Horace makes a deal with them and says, look, the emperor's been lying to you. Just like he's this same way he's committed to everybody, he's been lying to you. I will give you this STC and I will give you more of them. Not only that, but I'll also remove the emperor's restriction of using AI. Which they are huge.

By the way, they worship that. So, needless to say, Mars goes, yep, we're in. And the emperor loses a planet in his own solar system and maybe the most important production facility in the world. Oh, like laughably. So now, though, the emperor knows, he knows it's been betrayed and emperor's going to react. luckily for Horace, at this stage, Lorgar is still somewhat useful. Well, I do like our line here.

So he knows he's been found out. Horace knows he has to get rid of some people fast. Or he's not going to be, because he needs to push now. Yeah. Because he's no time. Yeah. Well, he also doesn't know. We have, again, millions of worlds.

I know how many space Marines I have. I don't know how many worlds I'm going to have. have. I might just lose to, like right now, if you play Imperial Guard, I might lose to the endless hordes of guards. Yes. So he has to go, and he has to go to Tara, and he has to do it now. How is he going to go about doing that? He needs to lose some space marines that aren't with him. And he lays traps. He lays about, actually, he lays double-digit traps. Like there's book-wise. It's constant traps, actually. But it's all, the thing is, is that Horace actually lays

double-digit giant schemes that all go at the same time. He makes Kaiser Soze look like he's not in March. Like, just all of, there's multiple novels. We are that we saw. Refer to Kaiser Sosei. You're welcome. That was a great movie when I was in high school, right? All of you, all of you in high school?

Oh, your parents hadn't met yet. Awesome. He sets up trap after trap after trap. And all of these are set to literally go off at the same time. Because again, we still have communications problems. But people don't know why we, right now, we have no idea why we have communications problems. And then we're about to have what's known as the drop site massacre. Yeah.

So before the dropside massacre is Istvon 5. So we were on Istvon 3 last time. Word has gotten out. Horace has turned against the emperor. And word goes to all the primarks, go kill Horace. In secret, though, right before, as this is all happening right before, it's not clear in a timeline. but Lorgar brings Alfarious, Petarabo, and Conrad Prunes onto his ship and explains to them what Horace is doing. Horace is turning on the emperor.

To save them. To save them. And they are all given the sales pitch. As we discussed, like, Petterabo just went, where's Rogel Dohrin? It's with the emperor. Cool. I'm with you. Conrad Kerr's a psychopath who goes, so you want me to murder people?

Yeah. I was going to do that anyway. And Alfarious just kind of so's. Sure, maybe? And we don't know if he really, if he had fingers crossed, what he did. It gets a little bit this. But effectively, Emperor doesn't deserve their loyalty.

Empire is built in deceit. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they agree to turn traitor. But no one knows this. So as far as the Imperium is concerned, our traitor legions are Luna Wolves, who have now changed their names to the sons of Horace, death guard, emperor's children,

and of course the word bears. They know this. And world leaders. And the world leaders. So now the salamanders, the iron hands, and the raven guard are coming in to attack. Oh, these guys are all hanging out on a planet. Let's go down to that planet. They're weirdly standing on this X.

There's this X thing with a big like welcoming parade for us to attack. Definitely not a trap. They were supposed to basically vanguard push. And then they were going to be supported by. other brothers. And one of the big, the reason it actually made a little bit of sense is one of their brothers was the Iron Warriors, who are siege masters. So, hey, you give me some space and I will set up and I will take down all their defenses. You go over there first. So they do. This is going to hurt Brad, I'm sure, because he really loves himself some salamanders. But the salamanders is a flat line like

nobody's business. So they all land. and they just start tearing through. I mean, this is, the difference is, is, with the exception of the world leaders, there is anger in the salamanders and the Iron Hands and the Ravengar. There was genuine anger, which is one of the reasons why it actually makes sense that they felt of this, because they felt so betrayed that they're beyond logic. They are trying, they are basically striking out in vengeance. And they're angry because they're actual brothers.

have betrayed them. Yeah, and killed them. I mean, not just betrayed. Remember, they're not getting a notification that Horace says he's against the emperor. They find out the Horace killed his own soldiers, his own gene seed.

Also, the books are well worth reading because there is a bunch of chapters which are dedicated to how badass the primax. Oh, yeah. I mean, the Korax is being king of fight. Well, Korax is doing stuff, but Vulcan is literally being

a giant with a hammer. Just sledge hammering space marines. He looks like sauron at the beginning. He's just knocking, leaves guys. And so they are just ripping through the traitor legions. And as they're doing this,

Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, and the Nightloir. The reinforcements. The reinforcements have landed. So now they've fought, the traders have actually started retreating. And we've now, is the Ergal depression.

We had secured it. Cool. Our buddies are here. Go get him, Iron Warriors. And what happens next, Brad? Shit goes down. One, Vulcan catches a nuke to the face. It was cool. By the way, I'm not actually

like ha ha, ha, funny. I'm not making fun. He literally takes a nuke, ground zero to his head. It disappears. Now the attack, comes from the new traders are attacking. And then, of course, the old traders come just hurtling towards them. So now they're trapped.

You've got the loyalists. They're between, they could not be in a worse position. They are actually, to quote Star Wars, they have the low ground, not the high ground. They're being shot down on by siege masters. And again, certain part, because they're pretty spread apart. I know this sounds like one big, like, tight battle. But it's planet wide, which is, again, why Volus. and took a nuke.

Yeah. A legitimate new. He was over there. Yeah. Also, they were kind of like, we won't, we don't want to deal with him. Let's hit it with a nuke. This is the big thing, though. We have to go on this.

The world word, sorry, were there so many people with similar names. The word bear, Lord Garz, the guy that initially started this, shows up with his legion, but his legion has secretly been just accepting demons. Demons into them. Into them.

So they are the first possessed Marines, which they are Marines, but they have demons' souls inside them, which makes them faster, stronger, able to cut through armor like butter, basically. With their hands, they are, they're called a Galvork. It's the term that they use for them. And they are just lightning fast and they start ripping through the space marines. However, they're not Primark Fest. and ninja warrior. Ninja warrior primarx.

The primarch of the Ravenguard effectively starts doing killer combos and just begins just slaughtering them. So again, back to the wall, it's time to fight. And Korax just starts slaughtering these, what we're supposed to be perfect soldiers. Wave after waving them too. Like it's nothing. And then, Lord.

And that's the only way to probably pronounce his name, by the way, is Lurgar gets upset that his possessed brothers are getting killed and decides to jump in and fight. Sorry, Word Bear fans. But Kourke's beats him down like a red and a step shot. It just explodes in. Korex has been fighting for like 22 hours at this point. It's fighting demon-infused space marines kills them. A Primark shows up and he just beats him silly like it's nothing. He does a Hulk on Loki on it.

It isn't a close fight. He pummles him. Pummles him. Only to be saved by Kourax's weird vampire cousin, Conrad Cruz jumps in. Even though he's a super weirdo, the Knight Hunter is a badass. Oh, he can fight. Oh, he can fight. He's just super weird.

Yeah, it's like, Chris, well, I mean, my people always always thought he was kind of goths, whereas like, Curz is actually a vampire. Yeah. He's like, super weird. Yeah, I'm actually there. Also, read his book.

It's fantastic. Oh, it's great. It's alien in 40K. So, Curse jumps in and then at this point, Korox has to. Okay, we got to back up a little bit here. The gene seat basically is what makes Marines. And they have to,

it's an actual gland in the Marines that they make other Marines from. And he's worried that I will not have a Legion. I want to have a chapter. I want to have a, I want to have a, A barbershop quartet at the end of this. Yeah. Me and everyone I care about is about to die.

Yeah. So he grabs some bros and literally gets out of here. And we're talking, I can't even remember what the number is. I think it's like 50 or something. Yeah, it's tiny. So he then runs away, so to speak. But again, when we say runs away, he runs away on the planet that's surrounded by his enemies and are hunting to kill him.

At the same time that this is all going down for the other. Marines who are stuck out there, Mortarian, Angron, and Horace end up planet side. And they brought some Titans with them. And the thing is, is like, while this is all going on, a ton of people don't, still don't know what the hell's happening. Yeah. Because they think they're supposed to be battling X and Y, Z, and Alpha have all shown up. And they don't know who's supposed to be fighting, who, who's elite who's fighting with me who's not there's actually tons of parts of the story where these guys because they communications were jammed and they're running back to iron warriors going

hey these bubble we got attacked by so and so they're like man that's a bummer and then they get shot in the face just like oh man this is the worst way ever to die so i like calling out some of the firsts that happened here and so we got a cool first here and the first is the death of a primark what's not even the death of prime it's the death of it's the death of it's the death of a primac with a hand of his best friend. So I'll let Brad spend some time here, explaining the friendship between Ferris. Ferris Manus and Fulgram were legitimately, like, tighter than anybody else.

They were the best of friends. They were, they did things together. Ferris Manus made Fulgram's weapons as this is my finest crass machine. The, this is one of the best. weirdly enough, the prime mark of the iron hands has iron hands. Every now and then you just have you, but he's a forge master. I mean, not as good as spoken. But I have some favorites here, everyone.

It's fine. So these guys are Titus of Titus. They've been, I'm pretty sure they've been on more engagements and worlds together than any of the other primaries. They fought side by side for 500 years. And Fulgram has now went to chaos. And Farris Manus actually, before this, is told that Fulgram went to chaos and refuses to believe it.

They got told by Eldra. But there's no chance. Like, there's no chance my best friend and my brother would turn to chaos. It cannot, no, you know, you're saying the sky is pink, you know, I mean, up is down, down is up, not a chance. They meet on the field of battle and Ferris won't fight him at first, like actually won't. And then you get to the point where he realizes that his brother is actually fall into chaos and Fulgrim's trying to turn him at this point in time. And Ferris Manus has none of it. He's still trying to like process.

They're both trying to turn each other. Right. It's just unfortunately one of them is more turned than the other. Let's put it that way. I mean, the fulgram's gone at this point. Well, yeah, the fulgum's gone and Ferris doesn't want to fight and wants Fulgram to come back. I mean, it's actually really sad. You know what I mean?

It's a pretty hardcore thing in the book. And they eventually get to the point where I, Fulgram's just, if you're, it basically, he does the star, wars, you know, you're either with me or against me. You either join or I'm going to kill you. And then takes the blades that Ferris created for him, like his personalized weapons that Ferris Man is made for Folgram. And so they begin fighting in Folgram. Ferris beats Folgram.

Oh, he's dominating. He just beat him, but he cannot kill him. And he's got multiple. He misses two different kill shots. He can't do it. Because he talks to him. He literally, he gives. him the... What are you doing, man? Come on, man. What do you do? We're best friends.

Well, he gets the kill shot effectively while he's talking. And then Fulgram at this time is actually has two blades. One is the one Ferris gave him. Which he's been fighting with the whole time. But also has a demon blade. That he doesn't know is a demon blade, but it's totally good. When we say demon blade, it is legitimately a weapon that has a warp entity, a demon, a greater demon inside of a powerful entity. So it is. is a plus plus plus. It's a plus five weapon. It's plus five, Vorpal sword. Yeah. And so he's a verbal sword because that's what it does.

The sword itself cuts off Ferris's head. Well, actually guides his hand. Yeah, guides his hand in. That's when he begins to be overpowered by it. And in the book, he even talks about, like, Folgram tries to stop it. Fulgram doesn't want to kill him, but the blade goes, no. Fulgram is fully convinced to chaos, but he also doesn't want to kill, again, his best friend. And the blade just, the blade also takes him over, but,

the best part about the blade is you don't know, because they allude to it in the book, but there's a chance that Fulgram might see that he's wrong right now. And they basically seal the deal of him going to chaos. I mean, he is Cass, but they seal the deal that he can't, he has no redemption art by the sword taking his arm over and literally cutting off Farris Manus's head. And then at this moment, Farritt Fulgram is somewhat apoplectic about killing his brother. which then allows the demon to possess his body, although it's a weird possession.

It's not like, well, there's lots of possessions that are come up. This was less of a possession and more of an imprisonment. Folgram was inside. The sword. Yeah, Fulgram was inside, but the demon now possessed Fulgroom.

Even though Fulgum said I was totally in charge of the entire time. The fulgram marks get a little bit weird, then you turn them to a snake spoiler. But anyway, so now we'll go back to Chorax. And because this is kind of a, this is, we talk about how not all the legions get destroyed. So Korak said his buddy is in the Raven Guard. They're hiding.

And when you run away, you know who likes chasing people who run away. Shut and this psycho. And Gron. The guy that's in charge of ads. Yeah. So don't, no boss battles, just ad kills. Now, and I'll be honest, if I was fleeing an army, the army with the nails and their skulls who were carrying chains stores chasing me, seems a lot more intimidating than a lot of the other

ones. Yeah, like they're probably not going to give up. I mean, they also, they looked at their calendar and they said, it looks like it's open except for murder. Yeah, we're partying. So Korak's and the Ravenguard are fleeing. They're being chased and Angron gets them cornered eventually.

And they're ready to do this. And out of nowhere, because they're Ravenguard and they are sneaky. Oh, well, that is a big thing. The Ravenguards full ability is they are stealth masters. They are for deploying. They're sitting next to you in the guard post going, I wonder if anybody's going

to attack guys. So these guys are stealth masters. So they are leading them on a merry chase. Also, they are outnumbered yes to 50 at this time. And Gregory killed them. But luckily, one of their captains who came from their homeworld to help out appears out of nowhere, Ravengard, and bombs a bunch of the world eaters, dropped. Effectively does a drive by and they all jump on a ship and piece out off world. So Corex is, but Corex is very hurt at this point and he's got like 11 friends. Yeah.

So it's like there's not a lot of left, but they're now off world. He's still not doing as bad as Vulcan did. Vulcan went, hey, I wonder if they've got something they can make more guys on of Terra. Yeah. You know, remember when we took a nuke to the face? Yeah, it was sucking.

Kind of all of me. So at this point, Horace is celebrating. Three of the lawyers, legal legal legal legions are effectively destroyed. They, in Korax is wounded. Ferris Manus is dead. And they believe Vulcan is dead. So he's killed two of the three primarks. They actually, that's a big thing on that.

They don't actually know that he's eternal at this point. No one does. I don't actually think he knows this point. The emperor knew. The emperor knows. The emperor knows. And so they effectively think they killed two out of three prime arcs and they've eliminated three legions.

Legions. And very minimal losses. I mean, the number is, they very, around a lot because this is a part of the history that's obviously not recorded because you don't write down your losses. But the expectation is that there's less than 100,000, they took less than 100,000 losses, whereas these three leagues are gone. So this is a great thing. But now we're going to jump over to Magnus, what Brad was saying earlier, Torres launches all these traps at the same time. This way, this is done to just confuse and- We just want to communication either. Yeah, because anytime, if

anybody found out Estefan happened, Prospero happened, they would go, oh no, and be prepared for, so he has them all happen at the same time. So at the same time of this, we go to the Kof Kovkhov stolen Egyptian world of Prospero. And we come down and Lehman Russ has been told to burn this place to the ground. Well, the Lehman was told, go grab Magnus and bring him back. That's true. My bad. He was told by the emperor to go grab your brother and bring him back here. Horace said, no, he is really offended the emperor.

You need to murder Magnus and set the planet on fire. You need to murder Magnus and everyone around him. And so Lehman totally in on this one. Also, it doesn't even like Magnus. Just start with. Magnus needs to be an ally for Horace or did not exist. Winman either way. So Lehman's on his way.

So what happens is, though, the space wolves arrive at Prospero to attack. And the Magnus goes, hey, guys, I know you're here to grab me. I'm ready to go face my judgment. And Liam Rush just goes, nah, I'm killing everybody. Well, he actually makes an impassioned speech with logic and sense. And so, yeah, like, I'm still going to wreck you, bro. Yeah, we're doing this. And so.

It's like, I don't know what this whole talkie, talking. We need to move this one along. Yeah, I brought my whole army with me and we're going to kind of wipe out your army. And he doesn't just end the thousand sons. He goes buck wild. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he has the thousand, he has the space wolves go, yeah, if you live on Prospero, you're gone, you know.

One interesting thing I thought about this is that the thousands are the only psycher army at this stage. Only one of the cyber heavy army. Lehman is not. So he does plan ahead. And he brings sisters of silence with him because they're blanks, which we'll get into later, but they bring in the ability to stop psychic powers.

And also brought custodes with him. Because why not? Why not? Because when you're going to win, why win by 50 when you can win by a hundred and 50? This thousands have never had a chance here. I mean, they never had a chance. But it's not helped by the fact that Magnus is just,

kind of why. He goes full emo. Yeah. Well, he fights. Magnus eventually, you can only be passive for so long and the thousands begin to fight back. They do fight back. They fight back with psychic power. They do all this stuff, but they're losing. And Magnus tells...

Doing that, though, actually almost was a bad idea because they were originally, they weren't super psyched up. As soon as they started using the heresy powers, because the space wolves are no bueno about sorcery. They basically enraised all the

Berserle- Not a librarian heavy army. All the berserkers hit the rage button and double their attacks. They all come in hard. Magnus realizes what's going to happen. He goes to Aramon, who comes up much more later, and says grab everybody, go into the temples and hide the temples. I'm going to go deal with this. And he goes out and meets Lehman-Russ in combat. Now, in a sparring session, Lehman Russ would beat the living piss out of Magnus. Which he does. Which would.

In an actual fight where Magnus doesn't really want to fight, and Lehman Russ is juice to the nines, this is a... Ruins his soul. Literally lifts him in the air and breaks his back over his knee. And then as Magnus

is lying there with a broken spine, Lehman comes to kill him. And as he kills him, Magnus decides to join zinch. We decided to join zines and basically time doesn't operate the same way in the warp. So Magnus, in the actual, in the time of the killing stroke, has a long conversation with Zinch about what's going to happen to my sons, what's going to happen to my planet and everything else. And he says, no problem, I will take care of that. And Prospero, a version of Prospera, I guess,

gets teleported into the warp, the eye, the eye of terror, the go-between between the warp and the real world. So you have Prospero just chilling out in the eye of terror now. And as with all deals you make with demon princes, didn't go well. Zinche said the truth that they all would not die, but their souls of the entire Thousand-Sung Army and everyone on Prospero, Braspero, now belong to Zich. Well, that was, we'll go into the Aramon on that.

The ruby damnation was a whoopsie. There's also that piece. Magnus, the same time with his broken back and everything else, also he sells himself out and becomes the second. Demon Prince. To be the fall to become a demon prince. So now, he's on the traitor side. Horace now, we're at next steps.

Brings in his buddies. So he's got World Eaters. There's nine and nine now. Yeah, nine and nine, sort of. Yeah, I was saying you've got nine and, well, the thing is, is that to be, to be fair, the traitor legions lost, there's nine legions. And while, yes, they slaughtered three of them of the others, their legions aren't doing great either because they purged themselves half of each of their legions.

Yeah. So yes, they have the advantage, but they also have point five, point, point five kind of thing coming in because they decimated 50, 60% of their own guys. And so at this point, Horace has to decide what the next move is. And the next move is twofold. One, get to Earth. Because as Brad mentioned earlier, we know how many worlds are in the Imperium. We don't know how many of them are going to side with each one.

And logistics are a real thing. You don't have a ton of time to wage these wars before you run out of problems. Yep. You run out of food. you run out of vehicles, you run out of every bullets, everything else. Exactly. And the sit and time is the longer you do it, the longer and the emperor can bring everyone together and have overwhelming force.

So what he decides is, I'm sending five of you, sort of. I mean, I'm going to send five of you to Mars. The sort of is we're going to cover later as far as how it gets there. And then the other remaining four are going to wage where effectively terror campaigns throughout, throughout. We're going to just disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. We're going to try to disrupt logistics. we're going to try to get people to come, which actually doesn't work out even

in the ballpark, but it's fine. Some of this makes sense, Iron Warriors, hey, go attack the fists. I think they're going to do that, whether you told them to or not. Night lords go harass people. They might have been doing that. Go find random planets and kill people on it for fun. All right. You mean, the ones were Tuesday? You're the ones we're already on? Or some two ones? And then the Alpha Legion is kind of, we got to spend a lot of time on them because

it really, this is where Brad's commenter about Alpha Legion. We don't really fully grasp what was going. What wasn't going on with them, but we'll cover it. They either did terrible or they were still loyal. So that's, but as we're coming to the end of the end of this episode, let's just

make sure everyone's following along at home. So Horace, the Trader Legions have Horace, the Luna wolves, Fulgrim, who is now a demon, the emperor's children, Magnus, who's also a demon with his thousand sons, Petarabo and his Iron Warriors. We have to go with Magnus real quick. Magnus currently doesn't have a full Real Legion, and we'll go into more in the next episode. Yeah, Mortarian with his death guard, Lorgar with his word bears, Angron the World Leaders, Conrad Cruz and the Nightlords,

and Alfarious Plus with Alpha Legion. He also has Mars and also, all for chaos gods. Which means that he has, effectively, you can make demonic incursions from the warp as long as you're doing whatever their thing is. Yep. So he has the warp on his side, actually, on top. Another one, he also has the warp on his side. People can't travel.

Yeah. The Imperian has Rogel Dorn, who's at full strength. Jagadi Khan, who's at full strength? Well, the biggest thing is Rogel Dorn being in the Terra. Yep. You have your literal fortification master. at your fortification. At the place that the enemy's coming.

And also, Tara is a planet-sized fortification. Also the Himalayans. Yeah. Lehman Russ, he's on his way back after wrecking Magnus. So Lehman Russ is also mostly full strength. Then you technically have the salamanders. We think the Primark is dead. We don't know how many are left.

Gilliman on the Ultraman, who's I think might be the largest of the army. by far, but he's also wildly far away because Horace sent him. We're going to cover some of this stuff in the front of you. Horace literally sent people that he, the people that he couldn't kill, and then he couldn't turn, he said, hey, will you go get the snarf on the other side of the universe? And they were like, that sounds weird, but whatever. You're in charge. We'll go there.

Ferris Manus is dead. The iron hands are desicest. There's a few left. And then Corax is heavily wounded. And the Ravengard are a glee club right now. There's barely anybody else. They also do have the Adeptus custodis, though, and they have a sister of silence, and the most powerful being in the galaxy.

Like laughably by far. Yeah, by far. So that's kind of where we're at. So as a conclusion, you know, at this stage, the traders have the upper hand. They outnumber the space marines, and they're on the offensive. They've got powerful allies. And one of the biggest things they had going for them is that they're singular in purpose right now. They just want to go conquer.

Whereas the Imperium has to govern and defend itself and kill its traders, which is stretching them a lot thinner. And so our next episode we're going to cover some of the really cool side stories of the journey to the gates of Terra by the traitorous legions. For those who are new to this, this whole area has 30, 40 books. Damn it covering this. So what ends up happening is the first chunk we've covered here is fairly linear. What we're going to end in now is kind of these more non-linear stories. If all this then kind of happens in the same time, because we're talking about a seven-year period.

But the universe is three dimensions. So things are happening all over the universe. At the same time. Once again, I'm John Barcii. This is Brad Chester. And thank you for listening to the 40K Lourcast.