The 40k Lorecast - Episode 5 - The imperium is Fragmented while Chaos corrupts

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

 With the events of Istvan III & V the Heresy has entered its full swing. But before Horus can march on Terra he needs to disrupt the Loyalists to prevent quickly being over-run. To achieve this Horus sends his forces around the Galaxy to disrupt and distract the loyal chapters to help weaken Terra's overall defenses. On this episode we cover Lorgar, Vulkan being a paladin, the Night Lords' war of terror, the red thirst, 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 the 40K lore cast. Me, John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. So the Horace heresy has happened over seven years throughout the entire galaxy. Horace has now currently has the upper hand, but he's creeping closer to earth as his alleys began to fracture. At this point, the problem is the story fragments a lot. What was a linear path?

Fragments a lot? Yeah. Yeah. When John says fragment, the story explains. Oh, much better. There is, I want to say 10 actual, I'm thinking about the novels that were written. There's 10 novels that I know of like literally off the top of my head that all happen at this exact same time. I'm not talking time, space, you know, but I'm talking right now.

At the exact moment. And the exact moment, boom. There's 10 novels. There might be more that are all going on right now. And then I want to, I'm going to give it a little bit early. And a lot of the time. is we talked about the warp and the corruption of the fact that it can mess with time. Messes with when things happen.

So things are happening now that actually happened before according to the warp. It actually happened later according to the warp. So it's the downside of traveling through the warp to the other side of the galaxy is as we said on prior episodes, you might arrive before you left. So you could go fight someone, then travel after fighting them to go fight someone else and actually arrive before you fought the other guy. because it's the warp. Right. And so people don't know what, a lot of people don't know what's even happening right now.

So it's huge. And that's where, it's so what we're going to get into now is rather than try to tell this next bit as a linear event, we're just going to dig into the stories of what is happening between Horace, leaving Istvon and arriving in Saul. And it's some really amazing stories are happening in here. But the kind of overarching thing you're going to realize here, is that chaos corrupts absolutely.

Chaos can say we're all behind you, but chaos hates chaos, probably more than it hates anybody. Let's talk about just the gods themselves. You're the four gods of chaos who are working together and I'm making air quotes right now. On a podcast. Yes, because I'm an idiot. I just need to make sure that everybody knows that. But the big thing is is that while they're working together, they want the same goal, but in the end they still want to be on top.

And so they'll never wait. Yes. Slanesh and Zeech, I think especially, are not going to let Corrin win. And Corrin just doesn't like them anyway. So he doesn't want to win. There is no scenario where these chaos gods are going to high-five each other at the end and share a trophy. Right.

They're looking for how can I hamstring this guy? So at any point in time, one of them even looks like there's a moment of weakness that they can exploit. They're going to exploit it. Is that going to hurt the overall cause? Yeah, man. Like a lot. But I don't care.

That guy can't win. I mean, and I think I was kind of thinking about this a lot. And Brad, correct me here. But my viewpoint is, as much as the chaos gods hate the emperor, they hate each other just as much.

Oh, so much more. Yeah. But they're actually, that is what they are. If you remember in the war, yeah, things actually are. Your thoughts become reality.

These guys are the embodiment of what they're about. Their corruption, whatever. That is what they are. You can't get away from that. Even Nergel? He just seems... Well, Papa Nergel's doing Papa Nergles. Papa Nergling.

Papa Nergling. Papa Nergling. The thing is, is that if they don't corrupt, Horace in Vegas is right now favored, you know, he's a 1,000-1 underdog. Look it up if you're going to bet. That's a big bet to brat. So it's a big deal on that because he's way ahead. He's got one prime-arc dead, three legions. kind of don't exist. We've got 50 Ravengard. We've got nothing. We've got Horace has the support of

Mars now, which is by far not even close, the greatest manufacturing in the galaxy. He knows that he has to head to Earth. And this is a big thing in the novels that Horace realizes that there is chaos. Chaos going to do what chaos does. And he knows this. He doesn't realize just completely, but he knows that I have to end this or my force will eventually fall apart. When you're leading the forces of chaos, you're not really thinking that order is going to be the thing that happens. It's a fair point. I think that's really, the other one, too, I think that we should point out is that horse has another problem of, even though he technically has the upper hand against the Imperium in numbers,

being the attacker is never as good as being the defender. and you will lose a lot of people. Well, he knows that he's eventually going to the attrition. He's also got a misinformation campaign going on pretty hardcore. He's sending all of information. He's literally, he's doing a masterful job of it, by the way. He's sending different scenarios to all over the galaxy of misinformation of these guys are attacking here.

This is actually a lie. Nothing is happening. These guys are actually still loyal. These guys are actually the traitors. He is sending a masterful misinformation campaign, but he knows that, hey, I'm leading an army full of deceptful psychos that will stab me in the back at a moment's notice. I probably can't keep this up in a war of attrition. I will eventually lose if this has to be ground out.

So his plan is, I'm going to take out the heart of the Imperium, the Emperor. I need to conquer Terra. and that will secure my victory because if there's no overriding power, the emperor, no rule, Lords of Terra, even though he hates them completely. He even did when he was loyal, but we won't go there. But the thing is, is that he knows that if he can get there, I can actually win the long game if I cut off the head of the snake. And I think that if is a really good segue to the episode.

Because the whole point of this episode is Horace thought he could move. quickly enough to prevent this from happening. Well, stuff happened. Yeah. So it turns out, so we'll kind of, we'll start from here going into the Imperium. So just a quick, quick hitters for everybody to catch up. The Imperium itself is in complete chaos. The Horace Heresy caught everyone off guard.

So first off, no one knows who they can trust, who they can't trust. To make matters worse, Mars, their most important partner in all of this, is also in rebellions. Not only do we lose half of our fighting force, but I also lost my, my, entire, my number one manufacturing. And then for a little fun of insult to injury, warp storms are just are exploding all over the world. So communication is just a mess.

And that is, thank you, chaos, guys. Oh, intentional. Like 1,000% intentionally. From the perspective of the Imperium, it's just what is going on? We just came out of this. We're out of the age of darkness. Why is it back, basically?

Like, what, you know, at this point, there's waiting for AI to step up and start being a bigger problem. So that's where they're at. Chaos on the other side is, moving. They're now coming through, and they've got a few different processes that they're using all at the same time. So Horace is moving pretty quick towards Earth, as Brad mentioned, we got to get there before my whole force falls apart. At the same time, he does still need

some level of logistics, so he's having to, he can't just go straight towards Earth. He does have to build up enough. He needs power. He needs... Well, the biggest thing is, is also one of the biggest things is all of his factions that he has together are all doing this. in wildly disparate ways. Super by force, sometimes they're just trying to corrupt cough-cough word bears. They're just trying to make

demonic infestations happen in these planets, which actually works the opposite because you're not getting any supplies, you're just ruining a planet, but whatever, Lorgar is terrible. So.

For all of you who really like or dislike the Lorgar you're going to get some Lorgar. And then you've got, Horace is literally trying to guile deception. He's telling people, he's either converting them to his cause or just telling the planet that, hey, man, we're still loyal. You know, we're fighting these. You know, you heard about those traitors. Yeah, we're fighting them.

Yep. Because no one knows. Communication is gone. One other one that also is harming Horace here, too, which is an interesting side note is, they're not just having, we talked the last one about having to call their own legions. You go through and you say, well, some portion of my legion is still loyal to the emperor. So even though I'm the Death Guard Legion and I am now with Horace or even, that's what the I'm the sons of Horace, and I'm with Horace. Not all the more, they had to kill them off.

This is also happening planet by planet. You had planets who were actually loyal, who were half loyal to the emperor, half loyal to Horace. Crazy. The Civil War is fighting. It's just nuts. The impuged exploding. And also a lot of these planets, the civil war is terrible for both sides because no one's getting anything.

Yeah. You're like that high war that's supposed to be supplying ships and raw materials and power armor or whatever, is not really producing anything because they're in a whole fight. So the Imperium and the traders are getting nothing from these. We've all used DoorDash and seen our DoorDash driver just spinning in a circle going. Is he bringing my food? What temperatures my food coming at? These guys have it, but it's more important.

It's like it's not just the DoorDash I wanted for dinner. It's the entire food for my planet for the next three weeks might not be showing up because I'm on a different side than that planet. And I didn't know that. Is my force going to have bullets to shoot? My bolt is way better. if I have, you know. I'm not an orc.

I can't just hold a bolter and make it shoot. I actually do need ammunition. There's a big thing on this because of the fact that in the Legion themselves, there are, I mean, we want to call them kill teams almost. I mean, they stole it from that. They were killed. They were a hundred killers with the term that they've used and W's used. Also, some of these books about these guys are fantastic.

Incredible. There's some of the best stuff that's written. 40K novels are hit and miss. Almost everyone that's happening in the Horace Heresy with focus on the guys that are trying to do things inside their legion that turned are amazing. And I encourage people to go check those out. They're really, really good. Yeah.

So at that point, actually, it's a good, that's an incredibly plain point to bring up here because we're going to now dig into the individual legions. And the information that we're going to dig into here is spread across codexes, books, all this stuff. I encourage any of you, if you've got a faction you love, read everything you can about, Don't just read your current codex. Read every codex ever read. Read the old codexes.

Read the old codexes. These stories get really deep. We're trying to keep this thing from being a 450-hour podcast on just like this like three-year period of the horace heresy. So we're going to move some, we're quick on these stories and we probably will end up circling back later on them. But for now we're going, we're going to have to kind of quick hit some of them. These stories are some of the best books you're going to ever read in fantasy. So we'll start with some easy ones. Ravenguard. Brad, how are Ravenguard doing right now? Well, the fact that they can field two football

teams, actually that's a lie. They can field on the field, two football. They can feed one college football team and two, one and a half professional. Yeah, there is not a lot of Ravenguard left. Things are going bad. They are actually going directly back to talk to Malcador. And they also want to see if they can start producing more Ravenguard, like in a quickness kind of thing. And this is a side story of kind of a failed thing, but we won't even get into that one. There's some things that go badly for the Ravenguard. They take some left turns in here. But Ravengard effectively, they don't, not they don't exist, but they are not a significant

fighting force. They're an adorable group, but they're not a fighting force. And then from there, not much better. Hey, Brad, how about iron hands? Iron hands, a lot of broken rules in 40K. however, right now they're not very broken. I'm not talking late 8th edition

at the table top ironheads. I'm talking Horacee Iron Hands. So they had some real problems. When your prime art gets his head cut off, you're not going to be super great. We know effectively your father. Well, you're a person who you're psychically attached to you don't realize it.

Exactly. The guy that you are genetically bred to love and follow has his dome lopped off. you're going to have some issues, and they did. A bunch of them went pretty wacky crazy. And to be perfectly honest, and they don't completely do this, and people are going to yell at me for iron hand stuff, I really think that that's one of the main reasons that they went full on

into replacing themselves with Mac. Yeah. They got pretty emo about, they didn't get Ravenguard email. That's right, because during the pre-heresy, they were not cutting off their arms and putting robot limbs on that. That's a post house. After Ferris Manus dies, they get super crazy about that because, you know, Ferris Manus had iron hands.

He had iron hands. So it's obviously what I should do to remember my prime art. And then it became worse and worse and worse. Iron legs, torso, face. Yeah. Whatever. They can do them. Another easy, quick hit is Imperial Fists.

Luckily, didn't die at Istvon. Brad does not care for the fists because they are. Why did Rogel Dorn not dying, Estaband? Because he wasn't that. He wasn't there. He was too busy as usual, being not involved in things. Building a giant Lego fort. It is at home.

He is really good. He's as tough as shit. He has to, all you imperial fist fans, I have to give it to you. I hate Roblo Doren's so much. That dude is bonkers town tough. He's incredibly tough.

He's actually incredibly smart. But yeah, I mean, for most of the heresy, there were some engagements he had here and there, but he spent most of the heresy building up for a pretty big engagement where he does play. a rather vital role.

I mean, he does make a planet-sized fortress. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty cool. But up until that moment, he was just yelling at everybody to come home. So now we'll get into some more of the fun stories. So salamanders. My favorite. My poor boys in green. So salamanders effectively got wiped almost to a man.

Vulcan is assumed dead. He wasn't because Vulcan is a perpetual. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what being a perpetual means. Perpetual means that you cannot die. he effectively gets reborn. He's an eternal. So Highlander, without the decapitation.

Yeah, without his decapitation. Yeah. And if you haven't seen Highlander, as much as Ricky Bobby or whatever, the Taladegh that makes fun of it, it's not a shit movie. It's a fantastic film. We love Highlanders. Even the TV show. Don't know.

Let me rephrase it. I haven't watched the TV show since it was on. It might be complete shit because I would have been a teenager, but it seemed really cool at the time. So if you're going to be reborn, You don't want, I don't know, say worst case scenario, your super insane crazy Primark brother, Conrad Cruz, finds you.

Yeah. When you're, I don't know, just reborn and unconscious, and he imprisoned you, realizes that you can't be killed. And then his crazy ass in the warp, so this either happened for a few years or a few thousand years, again, because time is distorted by the, the warp, Conrad Cruz decides to kill Vulcan in every single possible way he can think of while torturing him every single day.

So perpetuals for those who are maybe not all the following, being perpetual, you are a very weird version of immortal in that you do die and then you reform. G.W. never explains how this reformation happens. Because we're getting the stories from Conrad Cruz of cutting his. head off, hanging him, ripping all of his limbs off. He disintegrates him. Conrad Cruz just goes to town on like, no, I am going to disprove this. I can totally kill Vulcan.

He effectively takes a cheese grater to it and just disintegrate him. What happens. And every time Vulcan comes back to life, I wish I could give you more details. But they don't give us. But they don't give any. We just know he's back. So at a certain point, though, to his credit, Conrad does get kind of bored and decides to go for a new route.

Well, what if I'm, maybe if I make Boak and kill himself. Because you got a member of the nightlords are all about, well, one, they're a bunch of psychocerial killers, but their whole thing, their schick is they are all about psychological terror, making you to be, he actually, one of their powers is legitimately to make people die from being so afraid. Minus one to your leadership. It's been so valuable. Yeah, it's terrible in the game. Yes. Thousand percent. Sorry, Nightlord Fath, we all know it's the worst thing.

And it has been forever. They, for a little while, could make people not fall back, though, which is kind of cool. But basically, he wanted to get Vulcan to die of sadness. They just kill himself, maybe? Maybe a perpetual could kill themselves. Yeah. So he just gives him all these crazy, weird. It's super weird.

Dreams, basically. Yeah. The term I think of it is, is he mindthrulled him because he got to come from D&D. So he mindthrothed him and made him. He made him dream dreams where he had his impossible task. And just as he was about to achieve his impossible task, he would fail. But because, as Brad's point out, Vulcan's a paladin. He loves people.

So what Conrad would do is make sure that whenever Vulcan fail with his dreams. Yes, somebody else suffered. Not here. Vulcan was fine. And then he was to break Vulcan. He started to make it so that Vulcan didn't suffer. Somebody else always suffered for every time that he would not get out. And it's game of thrill.

when he was trying to escape. He would constantly give him chances that weren't really chances of, we're about to escape, here's your best friend helping you, and in the end, your best friend dies. Yeah, your best friend dies. And again, this is Groundhog Day about it

because again, we're in the warp. So this either happened for a few years or, I don't know, a few thousand years. In millennia? We don't know, because again, the warp, warp, warps, and whatever. You know, screw it, I'm going with it. The warp warps.

and time is completely dilated so you don't know what's going on. He finally gives in the evil guy monologue. Of course. And says, you can do this and puts him in a maze. Oh, sorry, a Perterabo maze. We should, but let's start with this maze because this maze is kind of funny. So Conrad at some point, I don't know when, goes to his buddy Petterabo and says, hey, I need you to build this impossible maze for me.

You know, this is a labyrinth with a minotaur. there's a lot of this stuff we're going to go through here does have reflections of Greek mythology if you have an issue with that what do you mean you said kind of it is literally one for one but so this is exactly what Shakespeare did the problem is that Greek mythology has Greek mythology had a lot of stories that we know here about the ones that we all hear about are the ones that were really good so and when someone steals it don't get upset this is literally the Mediterranean Labyrinth is wildly the Minatian Lama very much so but it's built by Petarabo. And so Petroabo builds this impossible laver that no one could ever solve.

And what's Vulcan do, right? He immediately saw it. You know why? Because Dorn didn't build it. If Rogel Dorn had built it, he 100% wouldn't have found it. And Penhammer to say that, because that would have pissed Petterabo all. Yes, the guy that completely went the chaos just to spite his brother. The thing is, is that one of the things he didn't know, he puts Vulcan's Warhammer, which Vulcan makes, if you're a D&D guy, he makes artifacts. He just makes unbelievably powerful, wild, O.P. shit, don't let your characters get a hold of them, kind of artifacts.

And his hammers in the middle, and it was kind of a cherry on the top. I'll give you your hammer if you fight, you beat this, you know, impossible thing. Because he thinks that, well, if he gets the hammer, who gives a shit? I'm just going to kill him tomorrow. He's the middle of a labyrinth holding a hammer. I'll just kill him. But Vulcan has a, of course,

O.P. teleportation across the galaxy mechanic inside his hammer. Which I'm going to shit on right now. Because the whole point of this is that Vulcan is the greatest forge master in the world. He makes incredible things. He builds a warhammer.

Hides a special teleportation. They can take him anywhere in the universe with the most powerful thing ever. Where does he land when he presses this button? Does he land, you know, if he land on a nice little beach somewhere? Look, man. Vulcan's one of my favorites.

don't shit on him, but also the answer to the question is, the upper atmosphere of McCrague and he falls to the planet like a smoking hosk because he had wings like sanguinius, right? So if he lands upper atmosphere, you can fly, right? That's why you would teleport to the upper atmosphere because you have wings and can fly. Nine foot tall obsidian man that fell to the planet in a smoking husk. And burnt up on re-entry. So I just want to reiterate this whole story here.

It's a very good book and you should read it. But the story is Vulcan takes all of the abuse, dies over and over and comes back, takes the mental abuse. He is also crazy at this time. He's great. Then he solves the most unsolvable maze ever. And his reward is to teleport himself like Rick and Morty style, you know, into the upper atmosphere and has to fall to earth and burn up.

It burns with crisp. And I'm going to be candid. That's where the story of Vulcan kind of ends. Well, until they find it. I mean, he's full on insane. Yeah, pre-heresy. I mean, like at this story, the heresy. So that's just the story of Vulcan.

It's just giving it to you. It's actually a very fun book to read. But for those of you following along, yeah, the summary is not as great as a story. I love Vulcan, but Conrad Cruz is the best for pure nutty. He's the Joker, basically. Let's just jump in Night Lord. So like I said earlier, this isn't a linear story. We're going to jump around a little bit.

Try to tell a bit of the story here, but we're going to type a lot of individual stories. We'll be right back after a quick break. Don't you wish everything was more rewarding? With Raccutin, almost everything is. You can earn cash back on those new shoes you've been wanting. You can save on the next trip you book. You can cash in on groceries. Just join.

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So let's do nightlords. Nightlords are... Let's just know who the nightlords are. again for a refresher of everybody. Nightlords, what is their special thing? They are crazy. His special thing is he can see into the future. Sort of. Well, he can, but he's also insane. Yeah. So, big problem. And he's also was sent to a crazy planet with only psycho-serio killers. And he's called the Nighthunter because, oh yeah, he was basically murder Batman for a long time. He's evil Batman. That's a good

looking like evil Batman. That's nothing that works. Yeah. And the thing is that he populates his legion with people from prison planet of killers. So a crazy guy is leading crazy guys. Oh yeah, that we gave superpowers to. Yeah, super powered crazy guys. So if you really couldn't figure what happened here, you take a legion who's made up

of murderers and thieves. I mean, I think the note was pirates effectively. They're kind of like pirates. But super awful, the bad. The bad guy. The pirates that usually the main character kills and then they go find some other pirates. Yeah, this isn't the pirates of the Caribbean. This is real pirates.

And the issue that you uncover pretty quickly here is that when you take these people from an organization, they were under the Imperium, under the emperor, they kind of had some behavior. Like, hey, let's behave, let's do this. But now they were sent out to the eastern fringe. Oh, the shackles are off now. You were supposed to, you have this code of contact, and you would be punished for not performing this. And, oh, yeah, let's back this up a little bit.

When the night lords were still loyalists, they got censored multiple times for being psychopaths. And then you went, oh, there's no consequences to us being psychopaths. And then Horace gives them a job, make the dark angels come this way. Yeah. And instead, he kind of, I mean, he accidentally does this. But what he does is just go terrorize a bunch of systems.

Yeah. Until the dark angels show up. Right. And the thing is that, well, you have to also go to this thing. During the entire of this fight or this time, so they can fight, Conrad Cruz is still thinks he's in the right because he's so crazy. Yeah. Well, so an interesting story is not Conrad Cruz.

That is important is when Brad was talking about how Conrad Cruz can see the future. One problem with Conrad Cruz is he sees the future, but he sees a fractured future. Conrad Cruz sees the death of himself and his Legion. He knows that he will die and his Legion will die. But the problem is it's one of those, it's a bad dream where he can't see any detail. He just knows that they are doing. Yeah, he poorly extrapolates what he thinks out of that. He definitely needs the shamans to help him out with his visions.

And he has none of that. And he just decides that my father betrays me. It's his fault. He could have stopped this from happening, but he decided not to because he knows the emperor also has precog. And he feels that if I can see this, my dad could definitely have done something about it. Right. Which you probably could.

Let's call the emperor a secret. He could. So two things are happening at this time. So night lords are out on the eastern fringe. They're terrorizing planets. But then they run into a little bit of a problem terrorizing planets. not all of the night lords are from nostromo no stromo no stromo is a you know surprise surprise when gw had to name a planet evil they went with something that sounded the vampire lord planet

no strato so it's no stramo anyway their legions made up of this weird dichotomy of murderers pirates and all the people they brought from soul soul they basically brought the guys that the emperor but this is your legion. And then Conrad Cruz went, yeah, I'm going to make these new guys from all the murderers. And let's just put these guys together. Nothing could go wrong.

Yeah. So surprise, surprise. They also, because the wheels are off, start murdering each other. So the night lords are in this like this spiral of just, we're going to kill random citizens, we're going to kill random space marines, and we're going to randomly kill each other.

Oh, and they wildly split up. Yeah. This isn't even made up. You have to actually read a lot of the Kodak stuff on this. It's fantastic. Well, a lot of the thing is, is during this time, the night lords kind of don't become a legion at this point in time because they splinter. Yeah.

And just everybody does their own shit. And they also fight each other at the same time. And the dark angels kind of don't realize this. They're like, oh, they plan bad. You're like, no, these guys are psychos and they went everywhere. I actually was thinking the more I've read more and more I read about it, the more I think of Drew Carrey. Yeah, kind of.

In a lot of ways, they turn to the Droucarry where we all agree we like killing things, right? Yeah, let's high five and go do that. But when we're finished doing that, kind of might want to stab you too. Like I'm not over it in this moment. You also killed three more people than me, and I don't want that to happen anymore. So I'm going to stab you. But the little note I wrote myself here is, mess with the bull, get the horns. And the dark angels decide, nah, we're not putting up with this shit.

and the dark angels attack. I mean, okay, one, the lion has a pretty goddamn, when you get into championship fights, the lion's doing all right. Yeah, I mean, if we're going to rank out ability to fight and we're going to do Dark Angels versus Nightlords, and a stand-up fight, Brad, are we going to 10 to 1 odds, 20-to-1 odds?

Where are we going on this one? I don't think they're accepting your bet at that. Yeah, it's just that piece of, if you're betting on Night Lords, someone's assuming that the fight might be rigged. And that's the only reason you would do that. Or you're the dumbest person and we shouldn't take your money. Because when the Dark Angels decide that they want to fight, it's just an ass kicking.

But we don't make sure if this fight even more fun. Conrad actually engages. Conrad decides that he wants to go fight the lion. Which is so about, oh God, during this fight, Conrad does double evil guy monologue. Yeah. And you're like, what is he trying to accomplish with this? And the answer is, I don't know. Yeah. Was he trying to be loyal? Was he trying to be awful? Was he trying to taunt him? Because he does all of these. Yeah, if we're going to rank the primarks, so the 18 prime marks on their ability to turn to chaos, I'm going to go with the lion is in one to three somewhere. I mean, he's, yeah. It's him and him and Gilliman, I think, are one and two. Rogal Dorn might go three, Sanguania's is right there too.

But that's what I'm. So you're never going to convince him. And also, the guy whose whole thing is murdering random citizens for fun isn't quite speaking the same language. With the guy that is all about the law. Yeah. He's effectively a night from the round table. And you're like, hey, I know that your whole world is upholding the law and protecting

citizenry. But what if you hang out with me and we just go murder random people for notice? I'm going to go to the D&D people. Yeah. The line is lawful neutral with lawful being in bold, capitalized lawful. Yeah. And then neutral. Yeah.

And Conrad Cruz may not be chaotic evil, but the chaotic is a big piece of this. He's at best chaotic neutral. One of the best things is he is so confident in this fight, though, one of the best lines is he says, well, this is not how I die. So he's like, doesn't care. He's like, I can't possibly do that. That was an opinion I had. I actually did do think that what Conrad was really doing was he's had these dreams of the death of himself and his Legion. I think he was trying to prove them wrong.

I think he was trying to prove them wrong by saying, look, I'm going to go pick a fight. I can't win. That no one thinks I can win. But my visions don't have me dying to the dark angels. So he actually envisioned him up dying to an assassin. And he knew that's how he was going to die. So I think he was engaging these guys to try and change fate. It's a very good story.

He is desperate for that. That is one of the overriding things about Conrad. While he thinks his fate is inevitable, he desperately wants to change his fate at the same time. Any story we ever read about fate, I don't want to accept that my path is predetermined. I want to, no, watch this. And you get desperate enough. You actually are happy to die to prove that it wasn't predetermined. That's my opinion of why he's engaging.

That might be the thing. Tell you the truth, I never thought about with this. kind of thought he was just thinking that he can die because of this but i love your thinking on that of well if i do die screw you i died as a way that i wasn't supposed to i died under my choice not your choice yeah the weavers of fate eventually they keep fighting um and conrad suddenly in the fight disappears and where does he disappear to he's actually hiding in the dark angels flagship murdering random people inside of that, this is what he does.

Such a good story. This is one, I just began, I didn't want to spend a half hour going through and effectively reading you all a book on a podcast. This is one of the better books in the Horace Heresy. Please go read it.

Is this that we'll go from there. But we'll catch more up with Conrad later in the story, but for now, all you have those things about Conrad was, him and his Legion decided to fight the Dark Angels. They raised a war of terror out in the eastern fringe. Well, the problem is, is they also, will it go back into why they were going to lose.

The night lords are fighting on 10, 15 fronts. Yeah. To be perfect. I mean, that isn't an exaggeration. I think Horace threw them out there because he didn't want them. Yeah, I think he thinks that they're unruly and they're no. So I'll throw them out there. The dark angels are actually fighting one piece of the night lords, one piece of the night lords,

and the night lords are punching citizens in the face on multiple planets. They are all over the, they are in multiple systems at this point in time. They're spread out way too much. And again, my opinion, you're all welcome to think differently. But my opinion, I think Horace was sacrificed in the night lords to slow down the dark angel. They could never actually engage against the dark angels, but maybe they could keep the dark angels away from Earth. But the lion would be honor bound to go clean them off each system. They ran and it would take him a long time.

Yeah, because the nightlords are going to go all over the place. Yep. So we'll get more into the story of Conrad Cruz. so we'll now jump over to the Blood Angels, who we actually haven't really talked about on our cast yet. So let's talk about Blood Angels. So Blood Angels have a very important faction, even at this stage.

Their prime arc is Sanguineus, who as we discussed for, has wings. He's an angel. He's space Jesus. But that's not how he flies. He flies by psychic powers. Yeah, it's okay, but he does have wings. The wings are just to look cool.

Now imagine Vulcan had had those wings. maybe he wouldn't have burnt up on re-entering. Maybe if he needed psychic powers to fly, he would have done that's all. Maybe he wasn't a giant heavy thing falling. Nine foot tall meteor. But I digress. The blood angels have a secret. Well, let's be honest, all of the chapters have some flaw in their genome that was implemented

by chaos when they took the primarks and scattered them across the galaxy. The blood angels have the red thirst, which is effectively... They have a need to consume blood. I mean, I really wish it was cooler than that, but that's... I mean, they have an entire subchapter now called the... Yeah. The flesh... The flesh tears.

Yeah, so flesh terrors. But the issue is... But yeah, they are space vampires. But they're on the good guy side. That's important to point out. Like, whereas the night lords were space vampires more on the D&D side. These guys are more space vampires in the twilight sense of the space vampire. I'm going to make that reference just to annoy all of you.

When he says all of you, one of those all of you is me. I just lost every Blood Angel podcast listener. That one statement. It's a big deal on this. I mean, here's the deal. Horace has some serious insider information on almost everyone because Horace has the ultimate smoking gun because the cast gods are just infalling him, feeding him everything he needs to know.

They know everyone's dirty secret and legitimately know everyone's dirty secret. But yeah, let's talk about the red thirst of it. So the red thirst, everyone has a flaw in the genome. The problem with the red thirst is that these are space marines. These are supposed to be the upholders of civilization, the upholders of the Imperium. And every now and then, because it's not constant. It's not like a true D&D vamp, but can we live off of life? Well, it's also a lot of times in combat.

So you get into combat situations. And unfortunately, you have people that are about to high five them. And oh, yeah, you killed townsfolk Billy because you were hungry. Hungry. For no reason. So, and Sanguineus knows this. Sanguance obviously is very well over it. And he is terrified of this because he knows he's supposed to be the good guy.

And I can't be the good guy when my soldiers every now. It's not just the good guy. He is the capitals good guy. This is literally the face of the imperial. I probably at this point should admit to everybody that I have an ultramarine army, so I am partial to Gilliman. But he's not, though. He's not the good guy.

He just don't like him. G-Man is the good guy. Yes, but I'm saying as far as, like, people knowing, this is the guy that's on the posters. Yeah, it's true. At this point in time, San Guineas is literally the poster child for space marines. And just to, again, lose every blood angel listener. Yeah, Twilight.

Oh, my God. He's got abs. He's got the long hair. Yeah. Yeah. He's a twilight. Twilight poster. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, cool. I thought this was going to be a successful podcast.

I guess we're just going to lose this. Luckily, the Blade Angels are only one of the most popular factions. I apologize. I will apologize to all of you individually who I know who play Blood Angels for this comment. Sorry, Lyle. That was my first thought, actually. All right. So anyway, Horace decides to seize on this. Horace knows that Sanguinius needs to cleanse this from his Legion. And Horace knows us before Istvan 5.

And what Horace's biggest pieces, as we talked about earlier, was he has to go through the soul system. And the sole system, it's not just earth that's fortified. The entire system is fortified. Oh, the system is literally trying to get to earth to get to the emperor is going to result in incredible amounts of death just as it is. If there are loyal legions present, he probably loses from a war of attrition. So he sends, this is one his thing, he sends people to far fringes and then sends people out there to slow them down.

As we were done with nightlords, nightlords were out there to slow dark angels down so they couldn't get back to our own way. He sends that his worst versus their best. He said it, just to make sure they don't get back there. Now, with the blood angels, he did an interesting thing. Rather than send his own legions after the blood angels, he sent them somewhere special, into the Cygnus system, which, and told me if you go to the Cygnus system, is in rebellion. I usually go out there and put it down.

But what was a Cigna system? I guess it was technically in rebellion, but what was rebelling, Brad? Demons, baby. Also, if you haven't read these books, I know we've said this a couple times now, but this is one of my favorites. Yeah, Cobbonda.

Cabanda? I was literally going to call him Big K because I ruined the name every time. Fair enough, yeah. I like Big K. Big K words. This becomes a forever villain of the Blood Angels, by the way.

Just for sure. But, yeah, it's fair. It's, yeah, we should talk about it. But man, this is some awesome fights. So the blood angels arrive in a system. And to again point out, they're not aware of chaos. You know, they arrive there and this is an entire system that has been devised, devote themselves to the chaos gods and a mix of gods.

You've got Slanesh. I actually not sure have to Nurgel were there. You have Slenesh, Korn, and Zing. I know we're all there. I can't remember if Korn if Nurgel was there. I don't think Nurg was there. The biggest thing is that it's a main thing. mainly corn infestation.

It's primarily a corn. They're all there. And so they arrive and this, they never fought this enemy before. But the thing of the blood angels is they like a good fight. Well, this is a legit fight. Also, you have one of the, I can't remember, it's supposed to be eight, I guess, greater bloodthesters, which is Cabanda on that. And he rocks out sanguine.

We haven't talked about what a bloodthorster is yet. Let's take a little side detour. I mean, okay. Cool. Have you seen Lord of the Rings? To the Bull Rock. The Bloodthirster, aka the Ballrog, which, sorry, Tolkien, we're going to steal so much stuff over you for the course of time. This is what you get for writing the greatest stories.

Also, sorry for being such a great writer, actually. This is your fault. You wrote the greatest fantasy novels in history, so we're going to steal. A Bloodthurster is effectively the Ballarat is an embodiment of primal rage and martial prowess. bloodthusters are always terrifying. Oh, shit, a bloodthurster showed up. This is a holy crap. This is the best of the best of the best of the best bloodthirster.

He has now showed up. Also, Sanctuania doesn't even know these things exist. So out of nowhere, you've come to a planet that you thought was full of people. And there's a, what, 20, 30 foot demon with wings carrying giant acts. In front of a legion of demons. It's demons, everything with pointy sticks, and it is, and San Guineas has just gone, team, nah, and they decide to fight hard. Well, a metric ton of Blood Angels falls and effectively plot ups Sanctuos.

That's the only way I can say it. Yeah, Sanguini falls unconscious, because as we, this is before, it's not just that these guys are psych, they have connections. the entire legion is psychically connected to their prime mark. So both feel both ways. The primark is wounded or injured the entire legion and not just local. You know, we're talking galactical, we'll feel it. And vice versa, as Breggles and Big K, Big K to start slaughtering blood angels.

And Sanguinias actually falls unconscious from the sadness of the death. And well, he gets golf swing by Big K also at that point. Yeah, it does take a little bit of a hit. Yeah. And so he falls down unconscious. This then triggers something in the blood angels. Which is the beginning of the black rage. There's some stuff that happens.

It gets worse. That we had to edit out in the beginning because Brad may have jumped the gun. But the black rage, this is the first episode, basically, of the black rage. The blood angels devolve into effectively mindless killers, devoid of anything but the urge to murder the people that ruin their primark. And luckily, the things in front of them are all demons. So it's kind of a cool move. They succeed.

They actually take this entire demon army, including Big K, and just slaughter them and push them back into the immaterial. At the end of it, you know, sanguinius wakes back up. Well, they're also just standing in front of, again, Space Dad. Yeah. And they're ashamed of their actions because they were. mindless killers. And we're doing a bit of a foreshadow to later on this, but this is the first time the blood angels realized this, this is where what Sangrenia's thought was a issue with them trying

to drink blood is actually a lot worse. They are, wildly worse. They are mindless killing machines a la thunder warriors. Yep. And this is a big thing. This is their future. This is, is this what my inevitable downfall is, and all of the blood angels have to deal with, I might lose myself, which is a big deal. Those of us that have some issues with being able to have cognitive problems know that that's a real fear. Yeah, it's not really an ideal. So this is, phase, we're going to move away from the blood angels, but this is a really important foreshadow. The blood angels have also, Horace is becoming a huge dick of this. Yeah, Horth did all this on purpose. Horace knew exactly what would happen by doing this.

But he did think that they were going to get ruined by it, though. He thought they was going to be worse. He thought they were going to actually lose more and their mutation would make it so they were functionally not able to fight in a organized tactical way. Luckily, the blood rage didn't result in having a lot of casualties. So the blind angels are at this point largely intact fighting force. that are now moving back towards Earth, super pissed off, but also a little bit ashamed. I feel like this is a good place for us to break, as many of our next stories we're going to cover are quite interconnected. So let's talk about what Horace has achieved and has not achieved. Vulcan is dead, sort of again.

Well, he has died a bunch of times. Conrad is out there as creating a bunch of issues to the dark angels, and they keep slapping him for it. But they are kind of stuck on the side of the galaxies. and the Blood Angels, Horace was hoping to completely undermine, and now they're actually mostly fine and even better at fighting and super pissed off at Horace. So there's that. From here, we're going to jump to our next episode where we'll be covering more of these skirmishes going on to the lawyers and the traders to really help start setting us up for

the final invasion of Seoul. Thank you again for listening. Please go to our site. We now have a Facebook page and a Discord channel. We'd love for you guys to join so you can give us your opinions. Let us know what we got wrong. Let us know what we got right. I'm John Barsai.

This is Brad Chester. Scott. And thank you for listening to the 40K Lourcast.