The 40k Lorecast - Episode 55 - The Grey Knights pt 2 - The rise of the Grey Knights

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

On today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the Grey Knights. We start off with a focus on Malcador’s secret Titan moon project and poor Garo. We then dive into the origin story of Ianus and again some Malcador. After that we jump into the specialized weaponry and armor of the Grey Knights. From there we tell some of the better stories of the Grey Knights and their feats. We end though on the greatest character of the Grey Knights (and in the top of all of the Imperium) Kaldor Draigo!!!PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're going to finish up our coverage of Grey Nights or really just start it because the last one was just all backstory. Let's say, we got nowhere on that. We mentioned Gray Nights, I think, two or three times. Also, I'm going to give John props.

John is in charge of, I mean, yes, most of the things. And I show up and go, I know a bunch. But he sent his initial draft. And I didn't even realize. how passionate you about gray nights. And it's going to carry over it today. Great. Gray nights are cool as hell because of what they are. There are also, there's some messed up bits to them.

But gray nights are super cool. Actually, kind of easy to paint, too, if you get the right spray paint. But anyway, before we begin, as always, please like and comment in the cast. We are going really rapidly right now, hashtag Space Marine 2. But anyway, it's really, the game's pretty good. If you haven't seen. You know, and I'm citing a server. I'm immediately segueing into it.

If you haven't watched the cinematic with Marnius Calgar, just deciding he's going to Yolo swag into a chaos riff while a Lord of Change is standing there, why do you not love 40K? But I will say back to the topic at hand, for those of you who are liking and commenting, it really has been incredible. As I said before, I read every single comment because I actually have to publish them. So I go through all them. I do laugh pretty hard at quite a few of them.

So thank you for leaving the comment and thank you even more for writing a funny one. Anyway, we also have a Discord, as we've said numerous times. The link is in the show notes. We made this Discord a while ago. It's now a lot larger than we thought it would be, which is great. It's designed for all of you listeners who not just are fans of our show, but are fans of lore in general. We've got channels in there discussing literature, painting, gameplay, lore, everything, even obviously video games.

If you're looking for a place just to kind of interact around 40K lore, please come in. It's completely free to join. We make $0 all of it. We love having you in. And the thing is, John, you're 100% right. It's 40K and around. Yeah. It's very around.

It's, hey, do you like sci-fi and fantasy at all? Someone's talking about something in that general. We've done a couple days on Fallout, I think. Yeah. Fallout just always comes up eventually because I have a Fallout tattoo. So, yeah, I'm a big fan. Anyway, so moving forward, though, we also, in the show notes, have a link to our Patreon. This is something that if you like the cast and you want to help us kind of do more with it, that's what the Patreon is for.

Thanks to Patreon, we've hired an audio engineer who not only edits all of our future casts, but actually also has gone through and has remastered the old ones. So for those of you who were just joining now, it used to sound a lot worse. I've gotten several emails about it. Yeah, like a lot worse. That's because of the Patreon's. We now are looking to actually expand our way into YouTube. And so that's where the next kind of chunk of Patreon money is going into is helping us get, you know, be able to do casts, edited casts and potentially even live cast on the YouTube,

along with the website. So for those of you who've contributed to the Patreon, thank you so very much. We hope that the contribution you can hear, it's the value of those of us who want to help us out more. Please do it. And for those of you who don't want to, still a free podcast. Not changing that anytime soon. So lastly, though, those of you who want to play 40K, Brad is a coach for, I finally went on 30 years of playing the game. How long has it been? It's 26. So yeah, a better part of

three decades. I've been ranked for 24 of them. Yeah, Brad been playing a lot of 40K over the years, but not just as like a hobby. As a hobby, he plays this very at a high level. So for those people who are kind of like getting into 40K and they're saying, hey, I really like this game, but I want to know more about it. Brad's available for a coach. One thing we haven't mentioned before was also available for a coach for if a group of friends are doing it. If you've just got a friend group who are trying to play 40K, Brad loves coaching. 100%. I'd love to, I like to do basically seminars, coach, just meetings basically, and we can work out of that for sure. It's a really great way. So if you've got a little hobby group that you're playing in and you guys are all saying, hey, how do we do this better?

Reach out to Brett. He's actually good at that. And if you want to reach out to him, you can email him at. Old man, Brad, 40K at gmail.com. Also, a lot of people I had to respond too late because whatever reason, I don't do technology well. And I put everyone that emailed me into spam for a little while. You guys have no idea how bad we are technology. As I said, twice, twice. I've forgotten to hit the record button on our cast. Another time I forgot to turn the microphones on, and Brad can't figure out Gmail.

So we're just rocking and rolling. I couldn't figure how anybody wasn't responding to me after I message to them. Yeah. And it's because they didn't go. Yeah. So rocking and rolling. So anyway, it's going to be more awkward. We do the Admet cast.

And we're talking about, man, we just, Braddon, I just keep praying to the machine spirit and then hoping something would work. I've done all the prayers. Exactly. Well, we've lit in the incense. Why isn't it just working? Oh, on button. Got it.

So on to the cast. So let's go. That's the Grey Nights. Gray Knight lore is very character and event focused, whereas we think about, like, you know, a chapter doing a great big thing. The Grey Nights are kind of, they're very strategic. They would deploy in small groups that take care of one encouragement, and they would disappear because they're a secret.

So we have more of a record of, like, their deeds than of their day-to-day function. We know a lot about what life on Fenris is. We know a lot about like- It's also what it is to be a space world. It is to be a salamander. Those are a big deal in tradition. Gray Knights' traditions are we don't talk about Fight Club. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, very much so. Very, very much so. So today we're going to kind of be telling the story of Grey Knights, both through some of their key members and also some of, like, the events that they've taken part of. But let's start off with kind of the beginning, which is Titan, because we forgot to mention us last time because whatever. I mean, that's where he sends them. Yeah. So every Astardis chapter has a home base. Some of them have been split in half.

Others have been ravaged by demons. some demons and and tyrants somewhere in time for 10,000 years exactly, yeah. So not always a great situation, but just like all the others, the Grey Knights have a home

and it's Titan, which is a moon of Saturn, which I do believe on an early cast, I call the moon of Jupiter. My bad. I mean, they could have just used Europa and just... Yeah, it is kind of interesting.

So Titan's kind of a cool thing. There's no explanation why Malcador picks, this moon on Saturn. But what we do know is by the time we get to modern 40K, it's both the moon on Saturn of Titan, but also a bunch of the other moons of Saturn, all get absorbed by the Ordomalia.

So this becomes, like, the hub of the Ordomalius is the moons of Saturn, which makes no sense, but okay. But the thing is, is I do want to put on this, because we talked about this in previous cast about the Imperium. When we say they take over moons, we don't mean, hey, man,

we have this little base that we launched stuff from. No, the Imperium doesn't screw around. When they decide this rock is ours, what are we doing with it? We're only doing this thing. We're putting every gun that you've ever heard of and every piece of metal on it. It is a full moon fortress. How far can we drill into this and make more stuff inside of it? We're doing that.

But I like kind of the way Titan comes into being. So Malcador decides that he's going to build this secret base on Titan. Sorry. No one can see it as usual, but I'm getting my cheek because we're going to talk about it in just a second.

But like, Malkador is a genius. Yep. But some of his plans are Dr. Evil style. They're just weird. And they're all, I mean,

but they are funny. He legitimately decides he's going to make Titans a huge moon. Yeah. It's just going to make this moon base that they're going to do everything on. He's not going to tell anybody, but he's also not going to tell, he's not not going to tell anybody.

He just has all the space truckers. Okay, yeah. So this is genuinely hilarious. So he's building this moon base on Titan, this fortress on Titan. And he does an entire servitor army, which makes sense because servitors have no mental function. We're going to cover them on ad mech. Don't worry about it.

I've already written the episodes. It's coming up soon. But the idea, which I assume, he's going to murder them all afterwards. He's got a plant. I can build the base, and no one building the base is going to know where it is.

But it's not to get stuff there. And the Imperium is nothing but a bureaucracy. So he has to figure out a way to get all of these supplies to a moon base to build a moon base. And does it the dump, an amazingly malcadori way. Yes. That's how I describe this.

I'll turn him into a verb. Malcador just puts down, hey, we're sending this, but I need 400 billion tons of steel for bathrooms. Yeah. Well, yeah, he— Somewhere else. Well, that's what's funny. He doesn't, like, go to the trouble of, like, properly laundering this, where he, like, creates, like, false bills of lading or stuff. He just tells a ship that's going from point A to point B to take.

a left turn and go to point C. Well, he just takes any giant amounts of resources, and he goes, you're going to Titan instead. The guy's like, it says that I can. He's like, I'll kill you. Yeah, I'm Malcador. Cool. I guess I'll just go here.

I guess I'll drop this thing off here and then leave and don't tell anyone about it. I genuinely believe that there were numerous, like, the ship captains who dropped stuff off on Titan, left Titan, and then were murdered. Oh, I don't think they even left Titan. I think they dropped it off. and went, oh, we're all getting shot. Damn it. As soon as this ship just cleared orbit

because they would have taken up space in the landing dock, they just, that's when the assassin pops out and just stabs him and goes on to the next one. But this is like so wildly coyote Acme roadrunner obvious.

It was just stupid. And so, of course, this doesn't work the way he thought it would. And this is going to, this story, when I say, Malcador is it? This is about to get very Malcadori. So there's a great story about this. There's an administratum scribe named Talley.

Talley. is an administrative scribe, who just keeps noticing that there's no discrepancy in the shipping, which I should have mentioned, this is all going on during the Horace heresy. So what she looks at is she sees a bunch of, like, siphoning of supplies being taken to a moon where there is no imperial presence on. And she does what most people would say, oh, my God, I've just uncovered the traitors. The traders are here. I have to go do something about this.

And they're clearly siphoning our supplies away to set up a base to stage to kill us. For a sneak attack. And so what happens next? Well, then all of a sudden, she starts getting pursued by, like, agents who are trying to kill her. Because, again, that's what Horace would do, obviously. Also, it was agents, not to be confused with assassins. Yeah, so Malcador is obviously, and I do want to call us out. Malcador is the master of assassins.

Yeah, exactly. As we said last time, he's the master of. of assassin. Assassin, this book, this would have went and credits. He could have made one comment to one Caledus and Talery would cease to exist. And the Caledus would now be Tallery, typing in the things of nothing to see here. Don't worry about it. But instead, he sends his agents. He sends Ted. Yeah, who, who are bumbling morons like any bad action film. This, this story is really cool. The agency says, I totally ruined the story. I realize this. Well, I know, but like, It is funny because the agents that get sent get thwarted by a scribe.

Yeah. Talery is just a scribe. Yeah. Like working the BMV. Yeah. Actually, I did have someone from Germany, but it's called the BMW. In Germany, it's the BMV. Yeah, you guys, Germany and Ohio.

But anyway, the whole point is, again, this is a, well, actually, but this really is, it's a movie, unfortunately, where, yeah, somehow. She has a meet cute with Garo. Yeah, yeah. The accountant is able to, like, hide from the super agents of Malcador. I mean, I've seen this movie. It has Denzel and Julia Roberts. Oh, I was going to, I actually was going to beat it down a lot more and do more Stephen Seagall. Oh, come on, man. I did Pelican Brief and you're going to go Seagull. You know what? I think it's that bad. I think the plot's that bad. I mean, I went with Pelican Brief, which is, again, old enough. Yeah, it's still not good. All right. So anyway, what is funny is that because, as with all things in GW writing, in her running from these bumbling moron agents, she runs into Garrow and tells Garrow what she's uncovered.

Immediately spills the beans too. The best part, it's... Paladin, you know. Oh, also, this is a random stranger. It's just like screwing. A random stranger who, again, at this stage is working. for Malkador. He has Malkador's single on his body. Anyway, so she tells him this, Garrow immediately goes, this makes complete sense. That is exactly what Horace would do. Let me help you. First, I'm going to kill all these agents, by the way. Let's recap, though. Garo has had some real issues getting here in the first place. Shit has been going down. He's real involved in the Horocercy right now. Yeah. And so he thinks this scribe has uncovered one of the greatest threats.

to soul. It's a plot, an internal plot. He then dispatches the people pursuing her because... Instantaneously, by the way. Not even... To be fair, these are people who couldn't catch an accountant and are now fighting a elite space brain who just goes, yeah, all of you dead. But, okay, next part of my day. So who's actually chasing you? You're like, those guys, oh, my bad.

Yes, like, and those, you know those guys, they were accidentally killed? Yeah, it's like, they're like, oh, yeah, I was going to make the reference of Overeem in a nightclub. If you guys don't know what that is, Google Alistair Overim brother nightclub, and you'll get what happens why you don't beat up

random strangers in a nightclub, his brother might show up. 270 pounds. Yeah, multi-time glory kickboxy. Yeah, it didn't end well. Anyway, so anyway, upon arriving on Titan, Garrow and Talley,

find this massive fortress monastery that's full of weapons they've never seen. technology they've never seen. They legit roll in and find the death star. Yeah, and full of, you know, servitors who can't speak, won't speak. So again, this obviously is the work of the Trader Legion. So let's go rush up to the absolute top of this building and confront whoever is in charge of it, kill him and save the empire. And again, the whole way between entrance and top of the building, Garrow is fighting for his life.

nonstop, till he gets to the top, and it's just goddamn Malcador. Who also is like, I was going to take the elevator down and talk to you, but I just didn't. By the way, Malcador is a dick about this. He immediately starts, he psychically forces them to kneel in front of him. For no real, he begins yelling at them. Garrow also never identifies himself. Garrow tries to kill him because Garrow is convinced, again, this is a super psychopor. from Horace until Malcolore finally just gets annoyed and is like, yeah, this is the most important

project in the entire galaxy. He did not know who I am. This is why you and the emperor are friends, because again, an email would have cleared this on a lot. He tells him that this moon base is going to be the bulwark for humanity against a new threat and that effectively don't worry about Horace. The loyalists are going to defeat the Trader Legion. but after that the galaxy will be forever changed.

And that's why this is so important. Which is not the end of the story, because it then gets worse. Oh, wildly worse. Malcador then makes the comment because you might be thinking, wow, Naccair is being kind of a dick right now. And I'm going to tell you. Nope. Nope.

Well, yeah, I mean, you're not. Whoa, whoa, well, yes. Yes. But wait. But wait. There's going to work. It's going to look better in hindsight because then Callery calls out Maccador and says, well, it is this secret's so valuable.

It's really worth killing me. Anyone discovers it, to which Melker's comment is, yes, quote, a hundred times over. Whoa, whoa,

whoa, not the quote. 100,000. 100,000. Right, right. It's 100,000 times. I needed you to make sure he belittled Talley's life. Yeah.

So much more. And then he, at this point, says this is so important that it's a secret that can only be held by someone who has absolute loyalty to the empire.

Sorry, the Empire. I'm going to experience Star Wars. Absolute loyalty to the emperor in which Talley says, well, I am one of those and, of course, I'll keep the secret. And Malkador looks at Garo and tells her, tells him to cut her head off. Which is crazy, by the way, because Talley gives him an impassioned speech. Yeah. And Malcador goes, oh, you're done? Cool.

Garo. Cut her head off. And Garo refuses. Well, because Garo's not a giant dick about things. And also, he's not a custod. Well, yeah. Well, the other thing is, is that they, between the two of them, they just go, hey, how about we pause for two seconds and go, hey, man, why don't you have the person that found the stuff out just to fix your shit? They don't say that. That's the best part. That would be a better story. If they'd sat there and pleaded for, here's how I can help you. Instead, Malcador goes, oh, you're not going to kill her. Fine. All right, you, Talley, you're now in charge of this. this whole moon base.

True. Make sure it works correctly and then leaves. Sorry. In my mind, that's kind of how the thinking. He was just, he was just a dick and went like, yeah,

fine, you don't have to kill her, but you're never leaving this place. You're totally dying here, by the way. And make sure that all these logistics work because you're good at that stuff. Like clearly we're doing a bad job.

Yeah. And he just leaves. Yeah. And it goes, figure it out. You're the accountant now. Also, here's my 47 illegal enterprises.

make all these legal goodbye. Yeah, bye, and by the way, good luck with all this. By the way, there is no record of Talley's existence after this story. So it's entirely possible. Like, Garrow, as soon as he left, Malcador just shot her in the head. He goes, I was just joking, guys. No, like she may have died instantly after this. We have no idea.

She never appears again. So, anyway, fast forward a little bit, by a little bit, at this point, we're talking a couple months, by the way. Horace reaches the soul system. This is where shit gets good. Come on now. This is cool. So at this point,

Malkador then takes the eight, as we talked about last time, people who were going to become Grey Knights, eight because Garrow was going to be the ninth and refused because he said, so I don't get to fight Horace? No, I'm not going. I mean, Garo's got some hint-up hostilities.

Does be fair, he's the only one who actually said no. There's a bunch of others who were part of the knight-errant and weren't part of this eight, which I'm like, yeah, I think you kind of knew some of them were not going to go. I mean, Garo's got real reasons to stay, though. There's been, he's had some shit happened to him. Yeah, he wanted to go punch Horace.

Not a good idea. But anyway, so Malthador warps them all the Titan, and then does this weird thing where Titan disappears. And it's not, depending on the edition you read, it moves around a little bit. In my opinion, in the current edition of the writing, it goes into a pocket dimension of the warp. At a different time, it was more like, it was almost like the webway it went into,

but because of the time thing. Originally, it was supposed to be moved out of time and space. So let's move now on to the first of the gray nights. So as we said, there were eight gray nights who went over there. And the cool, the part I want to talk with gray nights is, now we're going to dive into what a gray night is, because these eight set the backbone for what all would become thereafter. there. So first off, their prior lives no longer existed.

Which is, I want to back on this because Death Watch grabbed people from everywhere and made a big deal about where they were from. Yeah, you still kept your original Legion on your paltren. Gray Knights, not only do we get rid of your original Legion, not only do we get rid of like, you actually change your name and we're going to get in a second. We're going to change your gene seed. We're going to get there in a minute. But the thing is, is that you are new. Also, this process makes being a Marine look like a cake wall. We're going to dive into this for a second. So now, before we get into, let's talk about the original eight grainites. And I'm going to say this openly to all of you listening. I did a lot of research into this, and there is a lot of conflicting.

So if I say something, if we cover something shortly here and you say, hey, that's not what I remember. Drop in the Discord. I could have gotten it wrong. there's only so much lexicanum and you know reddit and whatever clicking i can do before i just go all right this is enough of consensus but it is you know all i would say is as being the old guy here eight guys did a 80s montage video oh yeah came great nights they did oh that's very much so true like 100% let's go through them so the list of the original eight is ianus is the first one who um changed his name who became yannis so ianus with an i andy yes with a jay

It's just, it's honest. It's guys. Well, he's sorry. Yeah, so we're going to cover him in a second. He's the first grandmaster of the grand knight. Also from the thousand sons. Yeah, thousands of them. The next one is.

Which means, well, I'm saying, it's a big deal because of the fact that every gray night is a cycle. Yeah. And every gray night comes from a different chapter. And a lot of them are traitorly. Yep. So we'll go through this. So the next one is Namian, who is a dark angel, who became epithemias.

You have Phelzarost, who is a knight lord who becomes Chiron. Which also, that's a doubt. grade the name. Yeah, it's fine. Tilos Rubio, who is an ultraming we talked about last time, becomes Koyos. Balsar Kulth, furry, it was a Ravenguard, becomes Ogen, Agin, whatever. Which is a name Cupgrade. Yeah. Severin, who is a Luna Wolf, becomes Ayapto, Fyodor Stromgren, guess who it's Spacewolves, becomes Yoten. Yeah, you got to say it right, Yotun. Yeah, to be honest. I love Space Wolf lore. I hate Space Wolf names.

They feel like they're trying to hard. And then the last one is Vardis Aison, who is a blood angel, becomes Sater. So each of these guys, as Brad said, were incredible psychers. And then they were also probably the eight most loyal members of the imperial. It's a big deal because these guys are told from the get-go that everything, you don't exist anymore. You don't exist, but also they were trying to change them. at a base essence level effectively. So the weird thing about this,

I kind of laugh at is that so they were teleported to Titan just before Horace enters the galaxy. And then they were just kind of told, hey, fulfill this mission for the emperor. They have, that's it. That's their entire thing. They just get sent into this pocket dimension. And it's like, all right, here's your mission.

And I'll tell you what they were sent in there within a minute. Do good. But the first thing I want to jump into is, because I just like this story. So if this doesn't seem to make a good flow sense, it's because I want to tell this story, and I wedged it in here in the middle of nowhere. Well, done, John.

The story of Iannis is amazing. And Iianus is like, it's just, this is badassery on bad assery. I think you meant to say Janus. Janus, fine. Well, no, because we start with, he was originally Ayannis. True.

So let's start with Iianus. We'll be right back after a quick break. So Iianus ends up, becomes Janus, who becomes the first grandmaster. So what would you want the first grandmaster of the Grey Knights to be? probably incredibly loyal and proving so over and over again. An insanely powerful psycher is probably good. Well, he has to also have a deep understanding of chaos because, again, your mission is to fight chaos.

And you're in charge of the people fighting chaos. You also have to be resilient against the sway of chaos. And so in this scenario, you're going to go with someone who not only you think, think is those things, but has proven he has. It has to be. And there's only one person. And we'll get to that. That's actually, we're going to do that right now.

So, turns out, as we talked about before, about 50 episodes ago, actually, which we've been doing this cast longer than I thought we would, we ever would, be honest. Thank you. Yay. Who knew? We talked about space wolves, you know, in Kistod's and Sacked Prospero. And Magnus gives himself over, and Prospero becomes this, like, shadow world as a result. So before, because it wasn't, it actually never, didn't enter the war, but it wasn't not a little.

Let's continue with the alliteration. The bigger thing on this is the primark of the Thousand Suns was shattered. Yeah, was shattered. Psychically shattered. Yeah. So his shards, we talked about last time, his shards were all over the galaxy. More on that in a second. When they sat Prospero, though, not every thousand sun was.

on Prospero. Obviously, they had fleets who were all over the place. One of them was a guy named Reville Arvita, who was this. Wow, you destroyed that. Probably what? Continue. We'll go with Arvita.

I'm not even going to tell you what the actual name is. It's in an audio book. Oh, yeah, which I didn't surprise. I didn't listen to it. All right. Anyway, I love to do that. There's nothing better than getting Brad midwine. And I make a joke, so it goes to his nose.

That burns so much. It's all right. Your head, probably hurts now anyway. On principle. So our Vita was maybe the most powerful precog outside of Aramon, or maybe even better than Aramon, in all of the thousand sons. So he's offworld when the attack happens.

And all of those and just notices that, hey, I can't hear from Prospero. Not like our communication is being jammed. It's just, it's silent. I'm a psycher. It's silent. Well, it's not even just silent. It's, I can't touch the area from where the planet. is it's a it on it's unpenetrable basically so he decides to abandon their current mission and

shoots back to prosper and teleports down the surface and which when everyone he's with gets murdered by world leaders who are hunting down all their survivors on the surface i have no i forget why but they just are uh it was well world leaders are dicks yeah that that's what it was that there's more to it than that but it really just boils down to that fair enough so we're like hey man these guys are having problems. We should kill them. You know, like, but why? We should kill them.

Just sounds fun to me. Okay. So he's on this planet by himself until the white scars arrive. As we said before, Jagadai Khan was torn as to what was, he wanted to figure out what was going on in the heresy and decided to go to Prospero with the white scars and teleports down to the surface of Prospero,

get separated, blah, blah, blah. But where this is, those who remember the story, his retune that was with him gets separated and they get overwhelmed by warped creatures and their bolters just won't kill these things because they're they're you know beings of the war and they are pseudo in the world. I was to say they're also effectively

they are pretty much. Yeah, they're in between the Materium and the Immaterial. This is the first time because we now have the I have terror and everything. You're basically, we haven't really had to deal with hey, what happens if I stand woodfoot here? one foot here. What happens? You're like, things are going to get weird for you. So as, just before they were all going to get killed, a thousand sun psycher popped up out of nowhere and just

destroyed these beings. Force lightnings happen. Yeah. That was Arvita. And he uses these powers to not to, I mean, Arvita's incredible power, by the way. So not only is he just, he kills them in this time. And then they start just wandering around the surface of Prospero where the white scars point at a demon and Arvita just kills it. And the rest of the time, that they're walking around, he's effectively popping heads. Yeah, and they're just, there's like, oh, there's another one. He's like, all right, I got it. Like, geez, can you guys do anything?

They did nothing. This fast forward a little bit. They meet back up with Jagatai. Mortarian and Jagatai get in a fight with the death shrouds. Arvita and the White Scars help actually win this battle. But then Mortarian screws them by just leaving them alone on the surface. Meanwhile, the White Scar Legion in orbit has half turned traitor. So they're trapped in the planet.

So what's Arvita? do. Turns out he's such a powerful Cyger, he teleported a Primark and his entire retune and himself onto a ship that was in orbit. Yep. Needless to say, after all this, the White Scars are big fans of Arvita.

Big, big fans. They actually beg him to join the White Scars, and he won't. He's still, it's not he's still, it's not, but he's still like this is independent cygher. Well, it also doesn't matter because, like, eight seconds later, shit goes bad for him. Yeah, well, it gets, it's so much

funnier. So then Arvita's just this level of psycher he is is nuts. So the White Scar Fleet then after they are able to fight it off. I mean, in a thing, it's going to lead into what the Green Knights are. This is going to be I promise this has

I will tie this end. But one of the reasons I think that what's about to happen to Arvita happens is because of the fact that he's never been that close to the war before. I'm super powerful. I was already powerful.

I'm probably overusing my powers. Correct. Well, he's just, I've never been touching the warp and throwing down all this. And this is why I think he's so, I mean, in those stories, he's just unlimited emperor power is just throwing out. Yeah, we're talking, we're doing Eldred Aramon. I mean, he's just like, he's wrecking things. Launching any, and it's all in a short period of time.

Usually people do psychics, I'm tired, I have to do stuff. He's ruining. That's actually good. We talked about the Thousand Sons Cass. I mean, when they're on prosper, he's fighting the demons. He's exhausted and still doing it, which as we talked before, flesh curse, this is usually what brings up the flesh curse. Your defenses are down.

Your defenses against chaos are down. And they're able to come in. But this is one of the things that ties into the Grey Nights because the Grey Nights know that this is a thing. And we're going to go into it just a little bit. But this does. Yeah, exactly. They see this, though.

And so what ends up with, so what happens next is as Arvita and the white scars are doing is he starts to feel the flesh curse eating at him. But he's able to, with this like that is keep it away. But it comes to a head because the white scars after dealing with their own little traitor legion inside need to get back to Earth. And the only way they can get back there is to kind of jump through this portal. That's going to take it back to Earth. And it's, it never really explained why this portal is different than regular warp travel. but it's basically very, the best way I understood it was a trip from where they were to Terra via the warp should have taken a month or two, and these guys did it in three days. Yep.

By taking the ultimate shortcut. We have to go through the second layer of hell. They're like, yeah, let's do it. And so they do this with our Vita guiding the ship because he's the one who says, I can see the Astronomicon. I can get us there. We can take this path. So they do. They jump.

Which at the time, we've done the case. cast on this. Yeah. They are actively trying to obfuscate the astrometer. Yeah. And so he forces them through what I assume basically went right next to the planet of chaos. I assume that that's why this route was so short. You literally rolled through and Zich was like, dude, what the, he's cooking lunch.

Yeah. Like took the top off some of the buildings. Or they're like, what the hell was that? Like, you know, just, and so they get there. As soon as they arrive in 10. The flesh curse just starts overtaking our Vita. And the white scars start calling for help and saying, hey, this guy. Well, they have no idea.

Yeah, namely Jagatai calling for help saying this guy, effectively this guy is our hero. Save him, save him, save him. And of course, Malkador is waiting. Yeah. Malcador, actually, one of Malcador's agents comes on and does more Malcador stuff where he says, don't worry. I got this.

We're going to treat him. We've got a treatment ready for him. And they just take him back. They take him away. So as with all things, Malcador, the treatment was pretty shitty. So jumping back, as we discussed before numerous times, but Magnus did nothing wrong. He did. When Magnus broke the Webway gate.

To send a message. Yeah. In the basement of Terra, he opened a portal to the immaterium. Which is bad. It's not just a port. It's not like he went, hey, portal, what's inside? No, he punched through and opened a portal to what was innumerable hordes of chaos, which had been pounding at the...

Well, that's my interpretation of it, is that he punched a hole in between the materium and the immaterial, and the hole on the immaterial side had a big terra-this-way sign. Well, they had asked in the stories, while the emperor is doing all this, the demon You know what I mean? Sensing. I have been gathering there, trying to get through. And the emperor just being like, whatever, I don't care that you're there. I got this.

And then Magnus went, I got to talk to you. And the emperor went, I do not have this. I do not have the time. Send the voicemail. He found a way to punch through voicemail and go to speaker. Yeah. He's like, hey, man. And then demons started.

Yeah. So needless to say, this portal needs closing. And Malcador had exactly the most Malcador plan for doing this. Which is, hey, man. I know you're suffering one of the top three ways to die, most painful ways to die in the known galaxy. I got you, brother. Come this way. Come this way.

And so we talked in the last one really quickly about how Malkador sent the Knights' errand out to track down a bunch of shards of Magnus to make sure chaos couldn't get them all because it was important. And they failed every time. No, they did not. There's one. Well, that's the point. No, no. That's my point. He sent them all around the galaxy to collect them. And every time they went anywhere, they failed. But there was one more that was sitting in Terra in Malcador's pocket. He had it. I was just going to say there's one. Yeah, he had it the whole time. And Malcador's plan is to bind, is it term of use shove this thing into Arvita because he thinks doing so will actually turn Arvita into this, like his own personal Magnus, effectively, that he would have control over. He's going to use him as putty to fix the hole. And then make this new, like, Malcador Magnus slave sit there and guard the gate for

eternity. That was his plan. His plan was to punish Magnus for opening the thing by taking a shard of Magnus and making a version of Magnus guard it for eternity. Not even just guarding it. You have to fight every second of every day forever. And I want to put up, Malcador in the literature referred to what he was. is going to create as an abomination that would stand against the forces of chaos.

This was a horrific plan. Malcador, of course, does it, and it just doesn't go well. I mean, Arvita, the entire room he's doing this in, the psychic energies are exploding, and Arvita is consumed by a psychic fire. But... Jaggedy Khan shows up. Yeah, Jack. Jacket Khan, who loves Arvita and was like, hey...

Well, he just... just saved him like 10 times over. Yeah, 10 times over. And he goes, what do you mean, Malkador took him? And I think Jokadai kind goes, that's not good. Yeah, it's never been good. It's never good. There's never been a good time.

He's not being taken out of dinner. This is not a steak dinner. And you know, so they're having avocado toast? Yeah, exactly. You know, you know someone. So he was like, hey, what am there to Arvito? I'm like, Malikador took him to some special place. And then Jack, I, before they got to finish the word place, when I'm on my way and

jump down there. Jagadai walks in the room and seeing just like R-Vita being ripped apart by psychic energy. It's not even just the effects of being ripped apart. He's, as usual, having something way worse, which is he's having his soul's sound on fire. And he's screaming. And Jagatai does really what actually did be fair Lehman Russell would have done in this situation. Or he just starts. And he starts breaking stuff in the room until the system stops.

Because he has no idea what Malcott does. He just starts punching everything. Yeah, just starts breaking machines. until eventually it stops, which is actually objectively hilarious because it's just, you know, Malkador is just like, come on, stop. Oh, oh, all right, fine. And at the end of it, Arvita's alive. He's just standing there.

But the shard of Magnus is still inside of him. And he is now one of the most powerful psychers in the galaxy. He's also weird. You can read into it. They never tell you exactly the Aegeus. I really think that this is part of it. of where they discovered how to make the adjacent. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think you're really right. So what's, that's what I got from this is they kind of went, oh, this guy is now resilient to chaos. How? The only part of this story that gets a little bit weird to me is we're telling the story in a chronological sense here, but just something that this appears in codexes. So at the end of this, Arvita takes on the name Janus, which is great. And then like two paragraphs later in the codex, he takes on the name.

Iannis. Because he becomes Janus after this transition. He's no longer Arvita. He becomes a knight-errant. And then, like, I don't know, two weeks later, he's teleported Titan and changes his name again. So I...

Also, he had a really tough month. Oh, it sucked. The onboard process for being the grandmaster of the Grey Knights wasn't great. This HR was, I would put, zero stars. Yeah. So he's, what I actually don't know is if, is if, if, is if he got this treatment.

But the rest of the other eight did. So that was fun. I just like that story. Now we're going to dive back into the grainites more aggressively. And what we're going to talk about now is the change from being an astardis to a granite. Kind of the difference we're doing. Now, there's two ways. These eight actually undergo a change.

And then this change becomes the way all granites are made going forward. So as we've said before, every single astardis has the gene seed that mostly don't work. Don't get me goddamn started. By the way, the very first chapter, the very first chapter of Space Marine 2, you get poisoned. It's like that fast. I haven't gotten to a part of the game where it's too dark to see yet, but I assume it's coming. Anyway, sorry, if those people are talking about, listen to the Space Marine cast, Brad discovers contradictions of literature. Four different organs.

So the challenge with the gene seed, though, is not only does it give you all these powers, but you're also genetically attached to your prime mark, both. Psychically. Yeah. And it creates a psychic bond. So probably better, given that half the founding members of the Grey Knights were from Trader to let's like clean this up a little bit. So they need to put in a new gene seat that's very powerful and endlessly loyal.

So they just grab it from the emperor himself. everyone gets the gene seat of the emper, to which I assume you're all asking the same question I have, which is why didn't they just always do that? From the beginning? Yeah. As opposed to giving them the wildly corrupted gene seed that they got for the primers? The emperor went to the whole process of making primarks,

and he could have just used himself. For the whole time? It would have been better. And they would have been more loyal. By the way, he's literally distilled version, Pyrrhus as Mung's-Spring. Yeah. There's no Horace,

heresy. You know, the big question is with the emperor's gene seeds, can they spit acid? Can granites, does their organ work, Brett? Are they immune to poison? I don't think so. They're not. They're not. So, no matter, so all I'm saying is it's not the prime mark that makes those organs not work. It's the organ that never worked in the first place. Yep. But they, well, let's go into this. They are effectively impervious to chaos because they have the emperors. again, now it's a Gius. They have the emperor's protection

and he's... Yeah, because they're getting a piece of the emperor's soul effectively inside them. And weirdly enough, he actually is impervious to chaos. Yeah, as he should be. That's probably pretty helpful. Although people who've read the end of death understand what I'm talking about... I know, but I'm just saying.

He is... I mean, he protects the galaxy. It became... It was just an idea and, well, because of the fact that the immaterial exists, and now it's reality. So let's then dive into once they've moved there. So Grey Knights obviously don't have the ability to reproduce.

So you can't build a legion of eight guys. You can make the expendables happen. Yeah. So what they did was they were these, we talked about the eight, these eight were teleported Titan, along with a few hundred thousand recruits, also known as psychically gifted children, that Brad would have used as cannon fodder to stop.

This is never going to go down. This is never. Because you have been using scouts as screens to enemy charges for 30 years. I just did it three weeks ago. Yeah, it's just, it's all you do. They died so bad. The fortress also is completely full, millions of servitors, which is important because you needed this mindless and

uncorruptible workforce to do two things. One, work is secret. Whoa, whoa, it's, I'm going to stop us on that, because it's not just. because they're mindless, uncorruptible, they're mindless, soulless beings. Yeah, very good point. So no one knows they're there and have no way into them.

They have no presence. And which is important because the Grey Knights, while uncorruptible, you wouldn't want a situation where you've got, oh, uncorruptible, you know, space marines and then. Yeah, but Ted's next to them. But 10 million servitors turn on them. And it's like, well, I just get tired at a certain point and the servitors win. Well, also, I just turn everything off.

Like, hey, I can't fight you in battle, but also I just turn the electricity off. Enjoy hanging out. Yeah. So, and we're going to, again, we're going to cover servitors very shortly when we get into Admec. So don't worry, we're going to talk about that nightmare of the field. Jesus.

Yeah. The Grey Knights also, we're going to talk about their arm minutes a second. We're outfitted with weapons and armor at this facility. The timing's here a little bit weird. I'm going to call this out. They talk about the Grey Knights having all this equipment, but then later on the Admec build a special moon for them. I don't know if that was there before.

It's what's happening for us, the chicken and the act. Yeah, I don't know. Because when Garrow was running through there, he saw all the new equipment, but then they call it out later. So if that sounds like a little bit odd, I could. It changes the codex. Exactly. So anyway, the eight founding members, they get to work immediately.

Because the truth is, they actually don't know much. They're just sent there, and they're told, you have to be a bullworking as humanity. And they don't know, well, do I have like a week, years, whatever, fine go time. The weird thing is they have a blueprint, though. They have a, this is how you're going to be incorruptible to care. Yes. Oh, yeah, all I meant was like they started on this.

Yeah, but I'm saying that's all you get. You get a, this is how you do it. Well, what's the timeline? What are we supposed to do? Yeah, figure it out, man. We'll be right back after a quick break. The first thing they set forth is weeding out the new recruits who are sent to Titan. And much like with regular space Marines, there's a process,

except this one's a lot worse. Dude. Way worse. Hold on. No one can see again, but I'm again gathering my chi. No, no, no, no. The space Marines were like,

oh, the genes didn't come in, the organs didn't work, you died, it sucked, it was some pain. No. Becoming a gray knight from the Marine was, oh, things didn't work out for you? Oh, your soul gets tortured forever and you die forever.

Well, they actually, it's worse than that because you don't get the soul torture forever. You just, they kill you. That's it. But those are your options. Oh, I see your point. Yeah. They effectively just go, hey, let's see if you can stop demons from burning you for infinity.

Also, when we kill you, there's like a 50, 50 chance that also corn took you home and made you a rug. I mean, we killed your physical body, but your soul may be like what he puts out of is welcome, Matt. Let's go through this. It's not great, dude. Let's go to the stages. So first, the Grey Nights go through,

the great night, like, neophytes, go through the same thing. Every neophyte goes through. Combat, combat, survival, combat. That's what they're given. Great. So now we know this person can fight, and we already knew they were a psycher,

but now we're going to work on your psycher abilities. You need to be, we're pushing Eldar level psychers here. They need to be able to not just use the, let's say the force. Oops. You have to not only use the warp as a, weapon, but also as a tool. So teleportation, precognition, shooting lightning out of your hands, whatever it is, all of them. But also, and at the same time, ready, are you good at offense?

The entire time you're doing this, we're going to try to destroy your soul. Yeah. Because that's all the worst part. Yes. The phrase that exists all throughout 4KK into great phrases, a moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy. That is more true with gray nights than anything else. If the chaos got a hold of the gray nights, which, by the way, we can prove later that the Adrago, they cannot. It's the best part of this. It's just a big deal on this. Yeah, they really are.

But they're, they're subjecting you to, I'm not going to, you're effectively going, you can make it through this training, or your soul can be destroyed. And that's so, I just can't upsell this enough where the, You didn't make it through training isn't a, ah, you die, that sucks. It's a, oh, you may or may not exist on any plane ever. Or you're in an eternity of nightmares. Shit's going down here, man.

And these trials they put them through to kind of verify their ability to handle the warp and handle these things are 666 rituals of detestation. is what it's called. Why they chose the mark of the beast. I have no idea. It should also be called desecration, but go ahead. It's fine. I'm just assuming it's because someone at GW listens to Slayer,

because in my mind, everyone should listen to Slayer. Good concerts. It's just a great band. Wonderful albums. Fun times. Anyway, it's only after passing all these trials that the Neophytes actually would advance to their final training, which is when they would get the gene seeds implanted of the emperor

and given a new name. Because as we said before, not only the original eight get a new name, all of them get a new name. And this is because chaos, especially Zinch, are masters of manipulation. They, if they know anything about you. Well, it's the thing. It's just like in any fantasy story, a true name means something. Yeah. So you have to, your name, your true name has to be gone.

Yep. And it is removed. And so imagine a fate. or knew who your family and friends with. They would torment you. So it's impossible. These people, they effectively cease to exist and re-exist. And it's a big deal on that.

And the thing is, is that they do have, which I just thought about the fact of on the gate, on the table versus in the lore, they have equipment. I was just to say they have help. And my brain hiccuffed. And I went, man, not on the board. No, this equipment's incredible in the lore. But I was saying the board, it's power armor. So first, we'll go with the gray knight armor, which we're aware of.

If you ever look at it, it's silver, which is actually one of the things that I didn't know it years ago, someone told me, they don't paint gray night armor silver. All Astardis armor is originally this glinting silver. They then paint it to match the Legion. So the gray knight's armor is meant to be pure. So once manufactured, they don't touch it other than to put some ruins on the inside of it. Well, they put, oh, some. They sigiled the shit out of their arms. Oh, exactly.

They're covered in this. So this way, this makes this armor effectively, not only is it impervious. So let me gather my excitement here before I get too up at a year around how much I love gray-eyed armor. So the gray night armor does not do this in the tabletop, but the lore is incredible. It is covered in runes and wards, which do multiple things. First, it actually amplifies its wearer's psychic powers. And it also makes you a bulwark against chaos. Yeah, to the point where a gray knight wearing their armor in the warp is actually immune to the powers of the war.

Yes, he's a pocket of go screw yourself. Yeah, it is amazing. Do they get any benefit to fighting beings of the warp on the tabletop? Absolutely not. There we go. They also have a random soldier. The Sisters of Silence are significantly better against the demon than the Grey Knights are who are meant to fight demons. There are, we're selling this short, though.

The armor is a, it's a goddamn dwarven, elven masterpiece from Tolkien. Every single armor should be an artifact, effectively. Same with their weapons, though. Their weapons are especially, they're all effectively a regular weapon that they then put force energy into. All of them are force weapons. Yeah. They are, I mean, they're not to make here. They're the Ghostbusters.

I'm sorry. As I was doing the writing for this. It made it so less cool. I know, but it is. They're basically carrying proton packs. I mean, now you've ruined it for me. It's like, because what they have is they've got, you know, bolters, power swords, flamers, just like every other Astardis does. But then they've got a ruin and ward all over it that just makes it anti-warp.

So, like, for example, like the nemesis weapons, which is just a code for power, for grey knight power sword, power hammer, power halberd, whatever it is. But the wards on it make it so when you hit something that has chaos in it, it just blows them up. I mean, for me, it's divine smiting stuff with patterns. Yeah, but not, again, on the tabletop, like even mildly. you should be able to define smite. You should get an extra die of damage.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, they should have, especially if they should have melta. It should be into, plus into demons, yeah. You should be a melta weapon. Yeah, I agree. A thousand percent.

Because it literally hits you with, I guess not divine because that would be a D&D type thing, but like it hits you with force, power of the, you know, anti-war. One of the ones I do like, I'll just touch off one of these a little. bit is the scy cannon, which is a bolt gun. But the gun itself has runes on it to make it more powerful against psychers. And then every single bolt that it shoots, and this is an automatic weapon,

by the way, has a silver tip on it that's inscribed with anti-demon symbols, which I assume is just a middle finger. It has legitimately magic signals. Which I'm pretty... Preservators are really busy, which correct me if I'm wrong here. Isn't that how the, but... Blade worked. Oh, 100%. So they are, yeah, it's blade. Yeah, and they've got a bunch of whistlers that are servitors. Which, look, is Wesley Snipes good at paying taxes? No, no, he is not good at paying taxes. He could at playing a daywalker? Hell of yeah. These were incredible. Oh, oh. Anyway, so that was just a fun thing. Now I want to jump a bit more into kind of the history of Grey Knights. So now let's kind of jump back into Grey Knights in,

you know, 40K lore. Malkador's spell that he cast that puts Titan into the warp. Titan emerges. It's within a couple years because when Titan emerges, Gilman is still on Terra. Yes.

But no one knows. It's so weird because, and this is why it's been written multiple times. Yeah. The time difference here, depending on who it's coming from, is a couple of years, thousands of years.

It depends on who. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, which story you're reading on. It's which story, but also certain people just got left behind. Yeah. What is humorous and terrifying about this is that when they do reemerge, as we said, eight space marines and a few hundred thousand recruits went in, a thousand gray nights come out, which means they've got a borderline...

99% killing. Yeah, this is borderline custode level turnover rate on from, you know, recruit to space marines. Also, again, custodes died. Great knights go, oh, man, I hope your soul works out. Yeah. And it is, this one's interesting because it's not really clear who in the Imperium fully knows what's going on. We know that, you know, they become part of the Inquisition, but even this is a little bit secretive as to how much, how much of the Inquisition is aware of them. because Janus was given full autonomy.

He's got his own forge world making him weapons. He has his own fleet of ships. He can use the, and he's basically told, find warp problems, remove warp problems. Gilliman went, I'm going to write the Codex Astardis.

Are you guys going to pay attention to this? Well, I don't think Gilliman knew they existed. That's the thing. That's the thing. That's the thing. When he writes the Codex Astardis, they're gone.

still. It depends on the addition. That's the problem because there's additions where they are back. Anyway, this whole part... Either way, he doesn't write it for that. Yeah, and this is, to be candid, this is, I think... I don't think this is a flaw in GW writing. I like it when G.W. does the, like, well, there wouldn't be imperial records of this, so why should...

It's supposed to be mysterious, just like we talked about the assassins. And, like, the tyranids, where we don't know the tyrant's motives, right? Because we can't... And I don't want to know them. Oh, yeah, don't write me a, like, black... library book, the perspective of a lictor. You know? I want to, I like the fact that we have

no idea where this is from, where it's shrouded in secrecy because they were shrouded in secrecy. One thing, though, that is interesting is that they did emerge after the second founding. This is Gilliman's work. And the second, second founding is

when Gillen broke up the legions and said, look, we can't have full legions. Now you're going to have chapters. It makes it small. It makes it so that it's harder for something like a horace heresy to take place. So the Grey Knights end up because they come out of this. There's only a thousand of them. The part of this that is humorous, though, is that the Grey Knights, because again,

the Imperium is a bureaucracy, are still added into the records at Adeptus Territ in existence, but it's done in secrecy. You guys can't see me doing air quotes because I don't know what this meant. Like, is it that old ink you and I used to buy where you'd write a message and your friend would go over it. This is my favorite thing. Because they say, it's done secrecy.

And the scribe went, sure. And then typed it in. Like, do I? And just, he just, and he just,

and he literally put asterix and went secret. And then just push, enter. And so there's, yeah, there's just a list of everybody. And gray nights are there,

and it just has a thing that says secret. Thanks to it. They were also labeled as the 66th, six, of the space marines, despite there being only 400 chapters. Yep.

Because again, everyone should listen to Slayer. These are just facts. So, over the next 1,500 or so years, the Grey Knights and Inquisition, they waved a complete shadow war. Like, no one's even aware. There's no one who's aware of anything that's going on. There's, we'll do more about this, but there's, they're not as big of a dick as the Inquisition, but they're pretty close.

No, no. I said they're not as big. That's true. I mean, the problem is that they would... They at least have heroic stories. The Inquisition's almost always... Well, because the Inquishish is the heroic story is sending the Grey Knights. Yeah, true.

Although the problem is the Inquisition also sends the Grey Knights after the fact. So where this becomes dark is the Grey Knights jump all around the galaxy to fight demonic incursions. And they put them down. and then right after they're down, the local populace walks over to high five of them. They kill the whole populace. Yeah, no one has more collateral damage. That's what I said.

The Inquisition is the only person that has more. And when it's happening, because they bomb planets. Well, that's true. Yeah. The Grey Knights become effectively a myth, but not in a good way, like a horror myth. Because what you get is, you know,

people will see, it's more an ominous. They'll see a gray fleet. on the edge of a world that experiences in heavy air quotes here a natural disaster, because that's what it would be labeled as. Other times, people arrive on a planet, calling that's been like well, that somehow is built by humans,

but there's not a human to be found anywhere, and they'll find, like, paintings on walls of silver men stabbing, like, creatures. Hold on, let me give it. We haven't given one yet. To be fair, they're shitty at this. They never, ever, ever, ever,

kill everyone. They always miss. They always miss someone. A shit ton. Yeah. It was not even someone. There's not like one guy. They miss in time. People just go, I'm just going to go underground and like they'll never their big asses will never find me. And they don't. And they just go,

whatever. We killed most of them deuses and just move on with their lives. Like if we don't feel good about this planet, we'll just have an inquisitor virus on the planet. What we'll do now is try to not have Brad shaking his chair for the next five or ten minutes what we go through this.

Okay. The secrets of the Grey Nights were actually kept from everybody, by the way. So we talk about the bits. Not only is it the citizens of the imperial, but even the Astardis aren't aware that there are, that there's another chapter of Astardis. Yes and no, kind of. Yeah. Well, no, it was.

Yeah. It goes the other way, which we'll get to an event. Let's talk about the good they did before we talk about the- I was just said, certain primarks have things because the primarks have their own spies It's quite likely Gilliman knew about it. He knows about everything. Yes, that's why. But there's a lot of other ones, I'm not sure.

But let's dive into, we're going to take a left turn on Grey Knights being horrible people in a minute. But I want to open up with some of the good things they did because some of them are actually pretty cool. They rock sometimes. Yeah, so we'll start with... They're paladins, but they're paladins of vengeance. Yeah.

So one of the ones I liked is there's a demon named Zorgar the Cru, which is actually a pretty good naming mechanic. The Grey Knights go there and to kill him. And because Zorgar has got, he's got a cult spread across multiple worlds. I mean, I'm probably going to go kill someone that's name is Zorgar, the cruel. So, but the problem is that they kill Zorgar, and the second they kill him, he reincarnates in the body of one of his followers. The Grey Knights spend 12 years killing Zorgar over close to a thousand times until they finally get to the last cultist that he's on. and they kill him and that cultist and remove him.

I like that because that's how this is, the grenades are determined. When they're coming for you, this was off over a thousand times, over hundreds of worlds. They chased down Zorgard of the cruel until they were convinced he was all the way gone. We'll be right back after a quick break.

Another one that's a little bit more traditional for them is, there's an agri world where a demon has possessed an overseer, for lack of a better friend of the agri-world, kill him and discovers that the overseer was putting in chaos taint into corpse starch, which doesn't think it would be that hard to do. Yeah, but also he was sending it everywhere. Yeah.

Because agri-worlds, again, this isn't like a farm that makes some wheat. This is a planet that has been terraformed to make something. So then the grey nights do what grey nights do in this situation. They kill him, and they get. go in exterminatus every planet that received a shipment. They don't, it's not they kill the planet. They go, I guess we'll kill everywhere that ever got touched by it. Yeah.

What? So like one guy got a freaking protein bar on the planet. You're like, some guy in the administrative got asked, hey, we need to know every shipping route that left this planet in the last like five years. It's okay. And then he's probably dead because what he handed over every one of those planets. this no longer exists. Back to more of a badass story,

is a guy named Captain Edion, Eidion. Brother, brother, Captain Eidion, who was set up, and this story's awesome. This is why I really do like, between this and Drago is why I love Grey Nights. Edion is sent to go kill it a demon infect, which I actually don't know what that is, so sorry. But anyway, he chases them into the bottom of the galaxy

known as the veiled region, because I'm not saying South anymore. It's the bottom. Edion goes down there to kill his name, and just communication stops. They never hear from again. And the Grey Knights go, oh, okay, he must have failed and he's dead. No.

He gets place to the table. You know what? I'm going to give a couple people that we'll have so few people. He Talana Mosses this. That would be from Stephen Erickson's Malaysian. You're so excited about something I just, I know what you were talking about. I know, but it's people that know. There's going to be very few people that know what I'm talking about.

The people that know I'm talking about are going to be super long. It's like doing this cast in Latin next. how small an audience we can get down to. I'm trying to really focus down. Congratulations. We haven't hit everybody that I want to. Good God. Today's cast is going to be an Aramaic.

All right. Fine. It's a whole race of people that went, we're going to make ourselves basically undead so that we can forever try to kill you. And this is what he does. Well, he's, no, he doesn't turn it. I'm saying, but he just goes,

I'm doing this. You went here? Oh, you think I won't follow you? Nope. I'll do this forever. So we're going to fast, well, I guess we're going to basically fast forward 2,000 years. Eidion reappears in the galaxy because it turns out he chased this demon effects into a pocket dimension of the warp, killed it hundreds upon hundreds of times.

So over 2,000 years, he just kept chasing the demon effects and stabbing it. And then when it get back up, he stabbed it. Because as we said before, if you're in the warp and you try to kill. like a demon prince in the warp, the gods of chaos can just revive you. Immediately. And Evian and the Grinnetz just kept killing this team like so many times that the gods of chaos just gave up and said,

fine, it's dead now. He legitimately groundhog dated until they were just like, okay, you completed the day. Good God. And he warps back into reality. But upon reaching reality, you know, their bodies age, instantly. They went from zero to 2000

in one day. Yeah, in one day. And so all Edion and then realized they're dying. So what does he do? He sends a message to Titan. Mission accomplished. That's all he sends. And they get this and they go, oh, so that is a hero of heroes. That's also a big dick move. Yeah. But unfortunately, for them, we're now going to jump into a story that's going to make Brad really happy.

And the Grey Knights really, because truthfully, people keep begging for space. Well, so we need to do them, but I just, I need all the codexes first. So let's do this. War of Armageddon, as we said before, there is a Angron attacks Armageddon. First war. This is the very first one. Well, not the first one because Olinor came first. But anyway, I'm just saying this.

If you're talking about the Armageddon's. Why would you live on the planet? Armageddon. Anyway. Nothing has ever happened, Gettney. It's just never good. So anyway,

Gray Knights and World Eaters are engaging on this battle. The citizens of Armageddon are incredibly tough. They hold up. But the space wolves get brought into this battle

because they happen to be nearby when the distress call comes out. So space wolves are fighting and the Grey Knights appear, who the space wolves do not know exists, by the way. They all fight together and they push back

and actually defeat the forces of chaos. This is a big deal because it's not they just fought together. The forces of Armageddon, the regular people are heroically making last stands just against. Against Angron. Yeah, I mean, we're not talking. Literally demons of corn. They weren't fighting cultists.

They were fighting berserkers, Angron, you know. Just full on demons. They're fighting the forces of corn. Blood letters, the thing. The thing. And they're holding, and it's literally just people. And so it ends. And what ends up happening is the space wolves are doing what they always do post-battle.

Let's have a big feast and let's all high-five to it because how awesome they are. And they look over and the Grey Knights just start executing civilians. And it's like, no. So they have an argument. This is argument one. At which point the Grey Knights go, the Grey Knights and the Inquisition start having a conversation with the space wolves about, well, look, we can't let them know about it. And the space wolves are saying, what are their heroes in the Imperium.

So they settle on this plan. Let's back up on this. Spaces are huge about honoring heroes, the saga. Yeah, these are incredible members of the Empire. Well, their whole thing is, their stories are told by their skulls. They have their histories. What ends up happening next is not ideal. deal. While they're having this conversation, some of the people of Armageddon realize they're about

to all get murdered. Because they told them. Yeah, because they're going and then start hopping on ships to jump off world. As their ships get into orbit, the Grey Knights attack and blow the ships up. To which the space wolves don't think this is cool at all. Well, specifically, the space was but led by, we'll get to him in a second. That's saying. This gets a lot uglier. So immediately the space wolf fleet moves over into the gray, towards the gray nights. And the gray nights say, don't worry, let's parlay and let's have a chat.

As soon as the greenite fleet gets closer, as soon as the spacewulf feat gets closer, the gray nights open fire and actually blow up four of the space wolf ships and encircle the rest. And now say, we will accept your surrender. you great nights of this, but they're lucky because the space was go, explain what the shit is going on. Well, yeah, this is the best part, I think, of all of this. So it needs to say, you just fought next to the space wolves. You just killed a bunch of heroes, the space wolves think. Sorry, you just killed a bunch of

people the space wolves things are heroes. And then you just killed the space wolves. And now you're effectively telling the space wolves, because what the Inquisition would do here, we will now accept your surrender. The part of this story I was holding back, because I think it's a fun one to drop now, is the space walls are being led here by Logan Grimnar. Yeah, he's not super excited about what just went down. Logan Grimnar carries a grudge better than just cares. Yeah, better than feeling you understated that one a small. Logan Grimnar is Lehman Russ part. Yeah. Yeah. Just calling him what it is. So what's his, what's his move? By the way, this is such a huge. This is such a big, deep move.

Logan, I firmly believe whoever was in the head of the Grey Knights, who, by the way, was the Grand Master Grenadets, didn't know who Logan Grimdar was because he tells him, come to him the bridge and we will discuss this. So Logan accepts his offer and teleports to his bridge. And I laugh at this because I'm convinced there was some member of the Inquisition who's hearing this communication happen and hears the head of, the Grey Knights saying, come on to the bridge, we'll discuss it.

And then here's Logan Grimnar's voice saying, I'm on my way. And he'd be showing, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because Logan. He shows up with his personal retinue. Yeah. And immediately, you know, he's there to surrender. Joros, who is on this ship, who is the current grandmaster of the Grey Knights, is just, is staying there.

And Logan, he starts screaming at him. who the F attacked my fleet and just won't listen to a word. He just keeps screaming it till Euros says, I ordered it. And then Euros discovers what a power axe feels like. Grimnar literally cuts Euros in half with a power axe, teleports back to his ship, and boogies out a system. Which then gets worse for the Grey Knights. Yeah, because he takes it as a personal offense and goes, yeah, hey, if you have something on your calendar, cancel it.

You know what we're doing? We're killing the shit out of these dudes and silver armor. Logan then begins taking his fleet and jumping all around the place, looking for gray night ships and blows them up. We're going to get more into this, into the, end of the space world cast, but I just want to put out this. He does give an impassioned speech, though, before he kills everybody on the fact that the people of Armageddon were heroes and how dare they basically. But I do. It's a cool story. Read it.

I do like that Logan Grimnar, took a power axe and killed Euros with it on Euros's own ship. Yeah. And then he also, he also did the Achilles and gave the, is there no one else? And everybody's like, and everybody's like, dude, I got, I'm really busy right now. I would fight you, but I have some stuff to do. The lack of no eye contact he got after doing that is remarkable. It's like, I don't even know who that guy was. And this is, I like this story because this effect actually how the Grey Nights function going

forward. And I do believe this is because at this point, the Grey Nights were this incredibly powered chapter that could do whatever it wanted. It would just exterminate us people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There were bullies, though. They weren't. And then they fought someone who could hit back. And the space wolves, this war between,

it became a civil war between the two of them. But I think this was better for the Grey Nights because the Grey Nights eventually decided to be better because of it. Exactly. This changed the Grey Nights. They actually looked back on it. Their behaviors post-Armageddon were much more not just into destroying the force of chaos,

which is never going to change, but also to preserving the Imperium. Well, they were, they went from, Just I kill chaos to, I protect the Imperium by killing chaos. And that's a big difference. It's a massive difference. Because exactly that. They were more inquisition, I think, up until Armageddon.

100%. But I also think that that's the problem is they didn't have the leadership. The leadership was the Inquisition. The Inquisition is a bunch of assholes. I'm sorry, we already did the cast about it. Go back. They're dicks. Yeah.

And the thing is, they were led by dicks. you're led by dicks and you end up being a bully. Yeah. You're going to be a bully, man. And that's the thing is that they finally went, oh, we met real heroes. Maybe we should be heroes also. Yeah. So after giving you the fun story that's crapping on them,

let's give the greatest story that exists for the Great Knights, which is Drago. Drago, my man. Also, watch that on YouTube. It's amazing. Yeah. Also, sorry for people who play them on the tabletop. Yeah, compared to him.

Oh, my God. This is. Is he the most? In the Imperium, I think you would be. I think, I think we've talked. I mean, Lord and Table Thore. We've talked about this before as far as like the Terminators, all the stuff. Terminators and custodes are.

But Drago's the worst because Drago is. And, okay, no, let's do a story. We'll let you guys decide should this, should this character even have a model in the game before we care? I'm going to do it in Discord. So let's start to Drago. So Drago's first claim to fame was just while he was about. battle brother, he was fighting a demon prince named Imcar the Reborn, which... Who was legit?

Yeah, yeah, but also the second part, yeah, he's going to come up again. You don't really get the reborn monarchy. Yeah, so as just the battlebar, he just banishes him. This is, and that's the first mention of Drago. Drago, though, later becomes grandmaster because of Moritarian. And this is the, this is, we're going to tell your story now where you're like, wow, Drago's a badass. Nope, wait until part two.

This is, this is adorable. Yeah, this is him stretching out. Yeah. So Drago, Mortarian, the Death Guard have returned to the galaxy. They're fighting an era called the Karonvin, I don't care, sector. And the Greymaster of the Grey Knights, at the time named Gerotan, Geron, Geroniton, in secret, is massing a bunch of Grey Nights to go undo this invasion by the Death Guard and, of course, by Nurgel. They hide, they wait for the perfect moment. and in that battle, Mortarian just kills him.

Just something put, just kills him. And the Grey Knights have to retreat. He rocks him, by the way. It's a bad, it's like, it is this whole thing. I lack of, you're reading it, like, oh, they've masked in secret for a surprise attack and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the next line is, and Mortarian kills him. The Grey Knights retreat, and Drago is now elevated to Supreme Commander of the Grey Knights. But the way that the Grey Knights do it, he's actually transferred.

When you become the Supreme Commander, they transfer knowledge to you. And so Drago gets all of the knowledge of Gerrana Titan. Are we not going to talk about this at all? Because this is one billion percent stolen technology from Phoenix Lord armor. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, it's the same thing that things are too. Oh, completely do it.

Yeah, it's not even close. Like, this is lazy writing. But what happens is he learns the original name of Mortarian, the one that the emperor had for him when he was in the VAT. Not because Mortarian was, that's the name Nicar gave him. So the next time they go to fight, Drago basically runs up to Mortarian and uses his sucking powers to blast what they call about kind of like a hole in Mortarian. He does a full banishment on it. And then speaks his name into Mortarian, which drops Mortarian to the ground.

At which point, Drago walks over to the corpse of Mortarian, pulls his heart out of his chest, demon heart, and carves the name Geronatan in his still beating heart, which causes Mortarian that, of course, to die and warp back in, but there's now a scar on his heart forever that Drago put there. And that's not the badass story of Drago. Also true. Next, we're going to jump ahead,

and Drago, Emcar, the Reborn, has been reborn. What? I know. How'd that ever happen? Crazy talk. And Drago again kills him. But in killing him, he kills, M-Car was leading a demonic ritual to create a giant portal of the immaterial.

As Drago and the grays undo it, he basically, literally, Ingar grabs Drago and just throws him into the immaterial. He curses him. Yeah. He curses him and throws him in the inventory. He curses him. it's actually a pretty complex curse. It's like, because he's allowed to come back.

There's a, as all devil curses. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff. There's a bunch of stiff. Honestly. It's supposed to be a quick thing that happened, but it's also like a weird, long devil contract because Drago's allowed to come back when there's still demons in the immaterial, but when the last demons killed, he has to go back to the immaterial. Yeah, I don't care about that.

What I care about what Drago does. So Drago effectively gets thrown into the immaterial. is stuck there and has it basically has goes on a I'm going to kick ass and chew bubble gum and you know what they don't make in the warp bubble gum so and I love this is his first thought he goes let me open up a gate gate won't open well bunch of you guys are going to get your ass is and he goes to every single realm of chaos and just puts a beating down to their home part he goes to the realm of corn. There's a bloodthorster named Carvoth and just grabs, kills him, mono, a mono, grabs his battle axe, walks down to like the magma, melts the battle axe because I forgot to mention that

he broke, that Drago broke his sword earlier and makes himself a new sword. Yeah. Out of a bloodthirster's battle axe. And random lava in the realm of corn is like, I'll be right back. and then walks over the mountain, which we've discussed before, are meant to be impenetable, just walks the mountain,

ends up in Nurgel's Garden, which he looks around and just goes, all right, lights the whole thing on fire. You're not selling it enough. Drago gets infuriated by the corruption of Nurgel, and his fury at the corruption sets fire to Nurgel's garden. The fire is so large that the entirety of the

realm of chaos can smell the burning of Nurgel's garden. He then wanders over to Slanesh, in which case, Slanesh sends his six best demonettes to tempt the Drago with, you know, power, glory, riches, all normal things. All six are dead and had their bodies scattered across the plains of Slanesh by Drago. He doesn't write, he doesn't write go-f yourself, Slenash, but he kind of. But he kind of does.

He poses all of them. Yeah. And the last one he does is he wanders into the realm of Zinch in which he's a Lord of Change starts offering him all these things. I can get you back into the Materium. Just listen to me. And while he's talking, Drago just goes, no, and pulls a wall down on it. It's better. Because the Lord of change tries to corrupt the same way I can bring you back and everything.

Drago goes, let me think about that for a minute. Or I can just topple this mountain on your face. And I'm just going to roll out. Also, doesn't effectively, he's dead but not dead. He leaves him under a mountain of rubble and just goes, deuce. You're out. And this is the best part. After doing this, like, Torre de ass kick, the beings of the warp just kind of accept

Drago's there and don't make eye contact and avoid him, except for the occasional corn, which is fine. Because they have to. Yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to be the greatest champion. And everyone goes, yeah, man, have fun. And then just gets... Everybody else just legit leaves him a lot. Yeah, Rago wanders the warp.

And with demons running out of the way, just for unknown thousands of years. Which then leads to the part of I actually find even better. So KDIA falls and the rift goes across the galaxy, at which point Drago discovers he can actually walk out of the Imitarium now. But he still has that curse on him. So Drago just starts appearing randomly whenever the Grey Knights are fighting and in trouble. Drago will just appear and win the battle for them. And it'll beat the shit out of everybody and they just take off.

Yeah. But then he has to go back. And the reason I like the story is that Drago lives in the immaterium and is still the Grandmaster of the Grey Knights. And they have not appointed a new Grandmaster. They're not replacing him because the version they get of him is like this, I don't think it gets better than this. the gods of chaos are afraid of our grandmaster. They're trying to figure out how we can break it. Can we just get this guy gone?

Yeah, they want, I guarantee you the gods of chaos are working over time to undo the curse. They can, if they may reborn M-Karn again to say, hey, fix this. We can't have a nice time. I'm trying to sit on my porch, look off on my garden or whatever I've got in front of me and enjoy my day. And Drago's coming. and we all have to go inside and shut the doors like an old Western, you know, where the criminals wandering into town. So need is to say, on the tabletop, Drago has a two-up save.

Two-up-thru-up. Two-up-thru-up. That's it. He's fine. He might be the worst from the Lord of the table. He should single-handed bellicor. Yeah, but he also should cost 2,000 points. Oh, yeah, just like, yeah, the,

That's the flip side. That's probably why he's not. So anyway, it's kind of a cliffhanging to drop you guys in, but that's kind of, when I think about Grey Knights, this is how I think about them. I think about it from the standpoint of like, they've got the army of the demons, them and the spaceos didn't get along,

but Drago's amazing. I hope you guys, this was enough to kind of cover it for you. On the next cast, we're going to start something new. We've been asked for a lot of times about sisters and Admac and Drew Carr and all this. And I realized that the three darkest factions in the entire game,

name or Admec sisters, Droucari. So we're just going to do them back to back to back. So the next cast, we're going to start with Admec and discuss kind of this is what admec are and let you guys decide, are they the worst things to mortal life? And then we'll do Drucari or sisters and then the other one and you can decide which is the worst. I guess we're just going to never have fun again. Yes, it's going to be.

You can have some fun with them a little bit, but not really. I mean, things are bad. It's real bad. They're horrid. But anyway, this has been. John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys next week.