The 40k Lorecast - Episode 57 - Ad Mech pt 2 - Growth of the Adeptus Mechanicus and their function within the Imperium

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

On Today’s cast we finish up our coverage of the Adeptus Mechanicus. We start with what the machine spirit is (our bad on missing that on the last cast). We then dive into the growth of the value and thus the power of the Adeptus Mechanics within the Imperium, followed by a dive into the nightmare that is a forge world. After that we jump into the nightmare beings that are the Skitarii and Kataphrons. We then go into the tech priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus with all their variations. We then close on our favorite part of the Adeptus Mechanics, their incredible relationship with the inquisition.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecalltOur 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. It's me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. I have to edit that out. On today's cast, we're going to dive further into the admec. Today we're going to focus more on them like post-heresy, where they are now, how they got there,

and some of their really fun little nightmares that they're committing on a daily basis. Living nightmast, just horrifying group of people. Before we begin, massive thank you to all of you for the light. in the comments. Please keep it up. We had a nice little bump there where we're actually in the top 100 podcasts of all podcasts. No podcast 31. Yeah. I mean, this is nuts. And this is some of these countries, English isn't their first language. So we have nothing but a thank you to all of you for doing this. It really does help us out. And we get to laugh as we get ranked above people that we have no

business being ranked above at all. Yeah. And I just dream that they we're dreaming that they ask us to be on their podcast. Oh, I'm, no, that's because you're, you actually have goals for yourself. My, my dream and like, is more,

I just want them firing some like, some like product manager who's just like, how is the Warhammer 40Cath? Oh, so who are they? Yeah, yeah, because these are,

we're ahead of casts right now that have producers. Yeah, you're like, what kind of studio are they operating out of? Yeah, it's like, ooh,

it does involve wine and Brad's sitting in my desk chair. You put it down, though. I did, yeah, you can touch the ground again. Yeah, that's funny.

With that note, though, thank you all. If you do like the cast and you're enjoying it, please also join our Discord. Massive shout out to Kevin. We recently had a, his name's Kevin. I'm not going to give his last name out of courtesy to him. Savage Doc. Yeah, Savage Doc came through and helped us redo our Discord. So we've had this Discord forever.

It was free before. It's still free now. I'm not changing. It actually is organized now. We're over 2,000 members, actually 2100 members at time of recording. It is much better organized now. It's way cleaner. So for those of you who maybe don't know what we're talking about,

we have a Discord for this cast that we made. Discord is a really great website that allows for people to interact and talk with each other. If you're interested in Warhammer Gaming, Warhammer lore, Warhammer Literature, Painting, Hobbying, we have all of that in there. Getting started in 40K? Yeah, getting started in 40K. Completely free. Come join.

And thanks to Kevin, it's actually clean and organized before. I personally really like Discord. I use Reddit for a lot of things, but Discord's a much better conversation location. It's why it's called Dispos. Because there's no up votes and down votes. You're just in there. It's a community.

So it's a great place for anyone looking for just a place to interact on Warhammer lore. We're trying to build this thing out as a really great place for all of you. We want to be a community. We want to be a positive community. We want people to come in and have a good time. Yeah. And it's also meant to be a community. not Bradden me in there.

You'll see we are in there, we are interacting, but you're going to get more interaction from the other members because that's the goal of this community. So basically, for all of you who are already there, thank you.

For all of you who are about to join, welcome. And all of you who don't want to join, cool also, like, do you? And I look forward to being tagged in so many poison things. Yeah, I'm making a T-shirt. So next piece is a Patreon,

on a link in our show notes. Anyone who's been listening to us for a while, Some of you were new listeners, you don't realize this. But our audio was hot garbage for a while there. Thanks to a Patreon and people contributing, we've now bought new microphones. We've got some new editing software. We actually hired an audio engineer to clean up our cast. This is thanks to all of you.

So we have a Patreon. If you like what we're doing and you want to help us out, it really does help. All the money goes right back into the cast, allows us to expand out a lot of things we're looking to do. Stuff like, you know, opening a merchandise website, which we're looking, opening a new website, opening YouTube, all these things. It just helps us kind of cover those costs. So thank you. But lastly, we would spend a bunch of time here talking about how Brad is a coach of 40K,

but don't have to anymore because we have a website now. We got a website and we have Discord tickets. Yeah, you can go to Discord. But we should do it properly. So Brad is a coach of Warhammer 40K. If you're, you know, he's been playing the game for almost 30 years, very successfully. But more importantly, he's been a coach. coach for most of that time.

He knows how to help how to introduce people to the game and actual, more importantly, improve your play within the game. Brad, under, he's played with or against effectively every game, every game. No, you have played with or against every other game. At routine levels, too, not like, oh, one time in 2016, I played Dark Angels against Dark Angels. Like, no, he, like, this is, Brad, I've actually played every faction at some point. You probably have, you also play this game, what, 20 hours?

a week. Yeah. So it's like, that's what they do. So he knows it really well. Brad has a coaching service available. As much as I know some of the older listeners are getting mad that we're not going to do this anymore, we're not going to yell his email address anymore. Good God, dude. Because you can go to the 40KLorecast.com. We have a new web page there with coaching. You can contact Brad. Or you can go to the Discord. And I would actually prefer join the Discord. It's a great community. and it's also the easiest way that I get. As Brad's close friend, I've had some drinks today. I'm going to say this openly.

Whatever he says he prefers, do the opposite. I've never liked you. We were walking, and I told John a story, and I went, this is going to sound bad. I go, nah, you're a huge dick. Not to you, yeah. It's no big deal. So anyway, back to the ad mech.

After last cast, I realized we just skipped something, and we should have done that one. So are we doing it now? The Machine Spirit. So I think we should open with machine spirit because we should have covered it last time. Yeah, but it's weird because the machine spirit is a catch-all in the game. It is. It's not, and it's very different in the lore and literature of it.

True. That's very true. So, but let's start with what the machine spirit is. So the machine spirit, I always say, I'm going to tell you from my perspective. When I first heard about the machine spirit, it felt like this stupid thing. Like, oh, these morons are, you know, don't understand the technology. Well, because it kind of is on some things, though. Right.

Because of the fact that it's such a, everything that's dealing with the technology in the Imperium is layered upon layer with this religious psychology. And you, and then you go, my favorite, we talked about it before, which is the, you go into the land reader and you do the 20 different rights and read the prayer and press the on button. And yes, but the machine spirit is a thing. thing, yeah. And so the analogy I used here is like the admec and the Imperium really don't understand the technology. So it must be the machine spirit. Kind of the same way that Brando is what plants crave. And if you don't understand that, you'll figure it out pretty quick. But then you know who you're voting for this. Exactly. Yeah. It's what plants crave.

Duh. Obviously. That being said, though, when you spend more time in the lore, like obviously we have to, I always remind people as it's done. as the machine spirit sounds, this is also, demons exist, you know, warp entities exist. In chaos, the machine spirit

is actually the spirit of a demon trapped within. So the argument is, I would argue that the machine spirit is not this, like,

mythic being. I think it's real. And the way I defend that is, quick caveat, I am not an electrical engineer. so feel free to tell me how much this I get wrong. But effectively, most softwares today, to my understanding, have a base code, Java,

Python, C++, you must still be right. I'm going to get wrecked for this. I'm going to get something wrong. I mean, it's okay. Luckily, there's not a lot of computer programmers who play 40K. I just feel like you're about to explain flat earth on a bunch of other things to be. I am about to get ruined, but I'll take it. Look, man, I'll take my beating.

But all my point is that we've got a lot of base code. codes today, Java, Python, C++ is gone now, but these ones exist. So 30 years, 30,000 years in the future, you know, what if there's an AI base code? That's how you start all your programming. It was kind of my idea, not like men of iron AI, but more like Alexa AI. I'm going to actually back you up on this one. And here's why. Because of the fact that the Imperium in, okay, it's not even the Imperium, before they were in the Imperial, humanity used a common source, the STCs and things of that. nature, were a, everything used the same.

Well, yeah, and that's my idea. My idea is that we have, we know about the STCs now, what about the precursor to the STC? Why would I code from scratch when I have a base code? So all I'm saying is- And everybody has to use the same code because we're a galaxy wide. Remember, ancient technology, they were using instant technology. Exactly.

Communication. They needed everything to be the same. And that's my idea. My opinion on the machine spirit is I think that it's actually. a kind of almost a base code. I like from Alexa AI, where it's not a full, Alexa's not an AI,

but it's this base level that exists within the machinery. And, you know, it's just kind of like, oh yeah, when you go to make a piece of equipment, this is the first piece of code you put in there. That ends up becoming the machine spirit.

So that being said, for those of you who actually know what the hell I'm talking about, because I don't, Discord is the best place to tell me, dear God, John, why would you say, When you start bashing, John, please tag me. Oh, yeah, tag both of us because Bradman will enjoy this.

So anyway, the other justification I'll make on the machine spirit is that, you know, aliens can't interact with it. So we see this over and over again. The machine spirit only is not something that the Eldar have tried to interact with it. They can't. Yeah, but they also think that we're using rocks and slingshots. Right. But all I'm saying is that that does make it to seem more than. just, oh, I'm doing a bunch of rights and pressing the on button because the LR abuse was just press

the on button and look at us like we're morons. They actually can't make some of this technology work. That being said, waiting on leagues of Votan. They need to get it. The book's coming up. Hold on. As usual, getting my tree together. Yep.

I'm skipping over it because I want to say a bunch about Votan because it's left out. The Votan or the other question mark, for those who don't know, we'll cover the Votan in the future. but there is an element, Votan R human. Well, we're going to cover Votan until we had a Votan codex out, though. Yeah, we might do it. We might do a double take. You're probably right. You're going to try to put it out before Tau?

I don't think so, John. I'm doing Tau. Like, for all of the record, we're doing Tau. And one of two things is going to happen. I'm going to be proven right. Or I'm going to build a Tau Army, TBD. I'm going to make the Tau our most exciting episode. It probably will be, but I just, I have it.

That's like, I have it. That's like I have an entire Inquisition Army because I just enjoyed our Inquisition cast and I went. That is 100% true. Yeah. I just want everybody to know. We talked about, yeah, I'm going to go to the Discord again because you go, hey, should we give shoutouts? Yes, we will try to do that more often. Because, yes, we've had half of our shows are because people asked us to do that.

We just did that. Yeah. Because we don't, we had the Horace heresy and then question mark. Yeah. What's the order we should do? Yeah. And the best is we did that cast and then John just sent me a message of I'm painting up my 2000 point force. What? 2000.

Brett's 4,000 points. Yeah, it's true. I'm just saying. Well, you made an army of 2,000. Yeah, I think I have 2,000 points of Arbytes. Top jail. Yeah. Yeah.

The judge dread is going to, I mean, I'm going to lose terrible on the tabletop, but it's going to look. The games you're going to win. You're going to make people so sad. Oh, it's going to be horrible. But in the, as usual, Brad, never staying. on topic if John doesn't make me. The big thing is, like, we really, really appreciate that, and I want more of that, because that's where we go.

Oh, it's fun as hell. Because we also, I have 47 ideas. We went to lunch today, and I said, we should do these 42 things. And he went, no, we can't do any of that right now. Are we talking to a 11-year-old with ADHD? And we do them all at 50 times speed. Anyway, back to what we're talking about. Machine Spirit.

So let's actually, now that we kind of talk about, But is it a real thing? Yes, it is. So what does it do? The machine spirit, what it does actually varies by the size of the construct because the machine spurts exist

from small computers all the way up through Titans. Anyone who played a rogue trader, there's like times with the machine spurts just in like a computer. The machine spirit effectively just kind of aids function and process. So in smaller equipment,

it's a diagnostic tool, for lack of a better phrase. Then in Ceres, they can sing to it and they communicate with it. and they basically ask the machine spirit to aid it with repair. So it'd be like, for me, I work in dental. So a CMC machine that's like miscutting, it's erroring. Instead of going into and actually adjusting the cam,

you just pray to it and the machine spirit would actually go through and fix it for you. It's a big deal on this because the machine spirit also deals a lot with targeting. Yeah. But the military on the other end of the spectrum is a titan. And again, we've said before about responding. When we talk about a Titan, this is not an imperial knight. This is like a city that walks around. It's eight or nine times that size.

There are people, it's a, I mean, the best example from modern times is an aircraft carrier. It's that level of people on it in size. Because it has, it exists. It also exists independently. Yeah, we're going to have to do a cast on that, aren't we? It is wild. The abomination of physics that Titans are. Yeah, because also they're basically walking cities with their own eco.

and economic systems. It walks. Why wouldn't it be on treads if you take a leg out, the whole thing falls over? My engineer friends that are 40K guys get so angry about it.

I don't, yeah, they don't, actually, I know at least seven friends of mine who play 40K, who are engineers and will not play nights on that principle alone.

They're like, put it on tracks. And there's no sense. Yeah. They all see a bane blade and go, yes. This makes sense.

When they look at an imperial night and go, no, like just a revert Titan. Yeah. But your Bainblade can't kick you. That's fair. But so on a Titan, the machine spirit actually kind of runs it. Like there's a big crew obviously, but the machine spirit actually connects and creates the interconnectivity. And the machine spirit allows it to actually move at full speed. So it ends up being almost an autopilot. So with your inside of a Titan and your end,

it's actually, sometimes will react faster than the crew will react. It'll be the machine spirit. Because it calculates. It does targeting calculations. Yeah, but I think my favorite example is the land raider. Because the land raiders were like maybe the most extreme. So it's the most extreme example because the land raider of all the things when we talk on machine spirit on the tabletop, the land raider is the one that actually exists. It used to be able to fire an extra weapon.

Yeah, it also used to be good in the tabletop. I mean, firing an extra lasque. I know. I just, I'm still standing by. The land raider to me is one of the most like, iconic elements of the entire game, and it sucks. It bothers me that it sucks. But anyway, so every Landrader has a very powerful machine spirit.

And there's a number of stories where the entire crew on the Landrader gets killed. And it just, in the Landryor, it just keeps fighting the enemies. Like, not like, and once they're fighting, I don't mean like, it just keeps driving forward and shooting a gun forward. No, it's picking new targets and killing them. And running over people. And then all of a sudden, like, someone walks up to the crew at the, after the battle is over, like, hey, thank you, Landrader for winning this battle, and everyone

inside is dead. So for the ad mech, though, the machine spirit means more than anything. That's proof. It's not proof. It's proof that there is a machine god. Now, this also is a hit and miss for them, because the problem for the ad mech is it also creates an issue. While the machine spirit proves the existence of the omnisiah, the ad mech also worship the machine god and they constantly get reinforcement from its existence which makes them want to do more to show his loyalty so this we're going to cover this a bit more later does create some challenges because if you believe the emperor is the machine god which not all of them do which the well not just them it's also more the imperium the ad mech are very motivated the existence of the machine god because they get the

most evidence that the machine god exists the ecclesiarchy doesn't always view the emperor as the machine god. But they're still pretty happy that you worship him. They are. Let's just say there's a viewpoint of... Yeah, well, you're not doing it right. How about that? Yeah, the admec is viewed as very loyal worshippers of the Amnessiah.

But if you don't think the Amnissiah is the emperor, and you think the emperor is the only God, the Amnesiah thing's a little bit of a problem. Eh, it'll probably work out because the Admex's in charge of a couple things. Yeah, the Admec get left alone. So let's talk about... Like, why? Well, John, what are the reasons the Admec gets left alone?

The Admec wouldn't exist without... So the Imperium would not exist. So as in the last cast, post-heresy, the Mechanicum are reformed as the Adeptus Mechanicus. And despite more than half of them and their forge roles turning to traitor, they were given actually more power

and more autonomy in the new Imperium. And they also absorb the traders into their midst. That's not important. Like a lot of them. Like a lot, lot of them. To be fair. To be fair.

Your opinion. Because the ad mech, there's no evidence amongst the admec of who is traitor and who wasn't traitor. A lot of the admecas trade. I mean, there's dark mechanics right now that actually left. Yeah. And went basically with a bunch of the legions and when someone went back to the eye terror, they still exist. Dark mechanic is.

I'm just making the joke that the truth is, yeah, the ad mechurch. basically just absorb a ton of these guys. But I'm saying, 50% of the traders just went back the next day. We're like, hey, Tim, you're like, weren't you trying to kill me yesterday? Yeah, but I got a shift now. Yeah, exactly. I get to work, so we're good, right? Yeah, like, you're going to have to deal with this, man, because we're working the same machine for the next 12 hours.

And the reason for this, though, is the Imperium post-Heresy has a greater need than they're for it. So they need weapons of war because they went from fighting a, couple Zenos to now Zenos and they have their force and traders well that's a lie we quartered it I'll do the math correctly yeah because we halved half the legions turn trainer which took half the guard with them and everything else but then also in killing each other they have that yes you're down 75 percent also incredible levels of damage so we need weapons of war Well, now.

Well, let's go with it even then because we have the things got nothing but worse in the next 10,000 years. But at this point in time, we have all of the Zenos problems that we already had. And we have the guys that we just defeated. I'm doing wild air quotes because. Brad's just gesturing like crazy right now. I just let it happen. But also, it's not like they went, hey, we're defeated. We're never coming back.

They actively said, we're going to kill you. you as soon as we possibly can. So you're like, we should probably fix this. Also, I forgot to mention, we just ruined like, I don't know, somewhere between five and five thousand planets that you got to go fix. And we're going to cover in a few casts, uh, the Drew Kari also start to arrive at this point. Yeah.

Like also because they went, remember when they used to defend this place? Nobody showed up. It's going to get real weird for the populace. So, yeah. We have a weapon. of war, they also need now planet crackers in order to get resources. They have to terraform new settlements. We need manufacturing for all these hive cities, ships to move stuff around. I mean, basically 90% of this functionality is coming from the admec. So when they ask for something, everyone just

kind of goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, basically. Just do stuff. Yeah, it's effectively what ends up occurring is the ad mech have this end up getting this incredible autonomy just to do whatever they want. And to Brad's point, were they traders to the imperial? Yeah, a lot of them were. Well, pause on that, though, because they're not supposed to have this autonomy. The autonomy happens. Remember, they're supposed to have less autonomy. That's why they became the ad me. But because of the fact that we went, we need you to do these 500 things. They go, if you don't mess with me, I will do this. They got more autonomy.

They went from the ad mech to being a lord of terror. Yes, but I'm saying. Their own branch that reports to only reports to said Lord of Terra. Yeah, but they were supposed to be reigned in. That was originally the thought after all this happened. And they rained them in by basically completely leaving them along. Exactly. You're reigned in.

And not only are we going to leave you alone, we're actually going to write down in our bylaws, that you're going to be more left alone. So hope you learned your lesson. In the bylaws, you go, if you guys do something bad, you have to police yourself. You guys are in charge of you. Don't mess that up. If you commit a crime, you should definitely prosecute yourself. But it actually gets worse than that because the headmec now take this autonomy and they begin to forge, get it, their own mini-imperium.

They start settling worlds in mass. You don't just settle roads. They take over words. Well, this gets worse. You act like they settled the world like, hey, this is a nice place with nobody here. No, they showed up and went, hey, man, this is our stuff now. And people are like, I live here. You're like, oh, you mean you work here for me.

Yeah, you work here for me. By the way, you do report to that big container over there. We're going to augment you a little bit. Yeah, I was going to say, you're going to get some stuff. Am I going to get, oh, am I going to get new work gloves? Yeah. Yes. I mean, they'll be attached to the cans that we cut off.

Exactly. So one area before we kind of dive forward is forge world, hive world. Because actually really doesn't matter for Admec. Because the Admec, what they do is when an admec settles a world, it's called a forge world. We talked in our casts about, you know, hive worlds, you know, what hive worlds are. So hive worlds produce the most common products for the Imperium. They're incredibly, there's a lot more of them. So a hive world's going to produce things like Lasguns.

Actually, Lehman Rust tanks, interestingly, a flack armor, ammunition, but all the other Also, like, they're going to convert the raw materials from agriwolds. They are more diverse, though. The hive worlds a lot of times make multiple products. Yeah. Forge worlds do not. Yeah. The hive worlds produce the most commonly, like, a hive world's going to make t-shirts and socks.

Forge worlds, on the other hand, make melty guns, power swords, power armor, bane blades, starships, titans, warp drives. They're also very specific. Yeah, that's all that they produce. But the truth is, like, where the way I look at it is a hive world, the hive worlds handle the day-to-day function of the imperium. That's what they produce. The forge worlds are why you can have a day-to-day function.

The weapons of war, yeah, the weapons of war they make are. Also, there's a lot, to be fair, there's a lot of hive worlds. There's not a lot of forge worlds. Yeah, but it is growing is the problem. I mean, yes. I mean, there's a lot. The issue is effectively the forge worlds were always a key piece. But again, they made specialized weaponry.

As the galaxy becomes more inflamed, these forge worlds become more and more important. This is kind of how the admec gains so much power. Because remember, like up until the heresy, the only real threats to the Imperium were a couple random Xenos here and there. And like, like, light traitors. It was like, okay, this. Then we get to the heresy and even post-heresy, we still don't recognize that, the traitors were chaos. This all shifts around M32, because in M32, the War of the Beast explodes. And the Imperium is hit with a Zeno invasion. They've never been hit with before.

And the War of the Beast was only put down because of the weaponry of the Admec. This then, of course, so they beat that, they beat that. But it's still, the orcs don't go away. You then get the Drukari raids begin, followed by the very beginning of the necrons, which they kind of don't know about. They just know that some shit is happening. Because in the beginning, remember, the neckgrounds would show up and do stuff and then just leave. Yeah. And they, because of their technology.

Or they would wipe a planet out completely. They would either, but I'm saying, even when they lost, though, they took all their shit with them. Yeah. Because they teleported everything away. That's true. But then you get the tears. So you just go, hey, what happened? You're like, I don't know, man.

They're just gone. We still don't know about the Votan, the Votan, or friend or foe. Yeah, there's Tau, but whatever. It's like the Tao are doing a thing in an area. Tau weren't even there yet. No, I'm saying eventually. I'm saying it's not only a forge world problem, is what I'm saying, Tao are.

Maybe the shield drones are. Tau shield drones versus Leviathan dreadnought. Only people that played in like eighth edition, understand how much. Yeah, and again, for those of you who you were like, I like Tau, I actually don't mind Tao. I hate Ath Edition Tau. That's all this is.

Everyone hates eighth edition. Yeah, I hate the Atherton Tau. So this begins to push the Imperium a little bit. The reason the forge world, with all these problems become important is that up until this point, the Imperium has operated on the old adage, just jam the wood chipper. With bodies.

That's what it was. The wood chipper has gotten so big. Now they actually can't jam with bodies anymore. So now we need technology. And the only place to get better weaponry. Yeah. And that's only coming from the ad mech, which means the ad mech now start to get even more autonomy.

Which, okay, we've talked about it. We did a whole cast in Hive Worlds. A Hive World is a vacation spot compared to a forge world. Oh, yeah, Forge Worlds are absolute nightmare zones. So we need to spend some time now in Forge Worlds and about how much of a nightmare they are. We'll be right back after a quick break. So I want to just, before we dive into them, let's focus on the phrase, the flesh is weak. Anyone who plays the game, if you don't play AdMEC or you play the games, you've heard this phrase, the flesh is weak.

this was because the admec had always been a big fan of augmentation when they were the mechanic them they were pulling off you know arms eyes etc but post you know heresy they are especially post war of the beast yeah they needed more yeah we moved to a point where like if you look at a tech priest they're less than 10% organic matter everything becomes their general grievous. Yeah. Now that's, but what's interesting about this is all these augmentations prior to this were done by choice. It was, I'm a tech priest. I want to interact better with technology. Therefore, I want to remove as much flesh from my body and turn it into technology so I can better interact with technology. And this is where it becomes a nightmare. And this is why I thought it was really

important to focus on this. Because ADMEC got carded blood. Lanchon, just do what you need to do. As long as you're putting out this, we don't want to know what you're doing. The Imperium's rule is very simple. If you meet the imperial like tithes, we don't care how you meet them. And just meet them. And what John was saying earlier about them starting to take over worlds to make forge worlds, they were just taking populaces and, again, augmenting full, full quotes.

But terrible, like nightmare. You get armed. They just chop off your arms and make it so that you, I'll feed you through a tube and you're better on the, the line, the assembly line with this. And you're like, I don't want any of this. They go, well, we're just going to put this chip in you now where you can't talk back. Here's the why it's such a nightmare.

Because they can at least have the decency to basically lobotomize these people, but they don't bother. They can't be bothered with the step. They just put an inhibitor chip that may. makes it so you can't stop doing what they tell you to do, but you're fully aware of the fact that you half the time can't control your body. And oh, yeah, you can't do normal shit because you now have two prongs that fit into the assembly line that you work on.

And you're like, we'll also just make it so they work. I don't know, like 20 hours at a time. Will it totally kill this person? I mean, yeah, eventually. but we'll just put a bunch of drugs in. Are the drugs going to cause massive pain and problems? Oh, yeah, but we'll get maximum efficiency. And then we'll just do this to another guy and we'll actually use the arms that we had on this guy and put him on another guy.

Oh, yeah. Does he know what's happening? Oh, yeah. We keep them aware the whole time. You're like, why? Because we're dicks. That's the only reason I can give you. The FMEC is just dicks.

They could just- horrifying. I mean, let's, yes, let's not. You're just trapped in your body. Let's dive into this. So we covered hive worlds, different plants, and we kind of skipped over forge worlds. And the reason is it was intentional, and I knew this was coming. Living in a hive world might be better.

It's a tough. It's wildly better. It's tough call. It sucks. It sucks. It depends where you are. So hive worlds are, you know, you've got, because the admec run a tight ship. The hive worlds, you've got roaming murder gangs.

You know, this you do. I'm just saying. Planetary governors. Admec's worlds, like, no joke, the entire world will be toxic or radiated. It'll be every time. I have a necrumanda army. I'll join a biker gang. Yeah, they don't, like, there's no OSHA.

Like, and for those who don't know what OSHA is, occupational, safety. And so it's the safety, guys. The term I used for them is Admec uses the Ivan Drago mantra. If they die, they die. They die. That's their viewpoint of their workers. So which means that, as Brad was saying, like, you know, if you, they augment everyone. So those of us who played Space Marine, too, you'll notice that, like, some of the workers

have plugs in their heads and their bodies. This is so they can be plugged into technology. They didn't ask for that. That was something Admec just put in them. And not a lot of anesthesia and rest period. No, they're drilling holes in your head. They're like, hold still. No problem.

If you weren't going to hold still, we're just going to pin you to the ground. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And so the ad mech at this stage, though, start to discover the value. One thing that comes out of the forge worlds and this worker force in the forge worlds is ADMEC start to see all the value of doing these kind of what I would call more mild modifications to people and see what they can do. And they can actually not only use these modifications for labor and for production, but for combat.

And they start creating effectively weapons of war built off of humans. And yeah, we're about to do Scatari and Catafrons. And we... Holy God, Skatari. So let's dive into the Skatari. And the Skatari are... So what they are is the main infantry arm of the Admec. By the way, we see the infantry arm, the non-infantry arm of the Admec are Titans.

So a pretty big gap here. We're going from individual dude with rifle. all the way up to walking city. And the interesting about Skatari is actually we don't fully know their original formation. We know they came out some point. You know, I'm going to give another one. This is one of the times when I actually like the bluriness of it because AdMAC are pretty damn secretive about what they do. So there shouldn't be a record in the base.

Yeah, this is the first time we made is Skatari. The Skatari kind of appears. They're present during the heresy era, but they really blow up post-heresy. And this is mostly because prior to this, the ad mech, remember, this is important thing. Under the Mechanicum, they relied on the Imperium of Mankind to protect them. So the Mechanicum were just there for creating technology. That's all that they did. Now they have all this new autonomy.

They have to actually conquer worlds. They have to do a bunch of things all in their own. Well, they also got fairly wrecked, dependent on who wanted them to be on their side. Yeah. So this is a, I kind of don't want that to happen again. Yeah, they learned a key lesson that, you know, we need to have our own military. So the Scatari become this massive force within them. And so what is a Scatari?

So all Scatari were originally humans. It's not entirely clear where they come from. We know some of the things that, you know, some are just born. I don't know how admirable. have kids, but apparently they're born and they volunteer. Let's be honest. They're background. I don't know why we're touching on this.

Yeah. Every other thousand, you know, and then they're all that grown. Yeah, exactly. They're all that grown or there's a special version that are captured, lobotomized, and brought into service. We're going to get to that specific group on them. Again, I'm putting the lobotomized in quotes because you're not. You're still unfortunately weird because ad meck are dick.

Yeah, so one thing we should point out, when we use the word lobotomized, there's the true version of lobotomized where we're actually basically severing your higher process and the rest of your body. What the ad mech do is they sever your higher process from any influence on the function of your body, which is so dark and so wrong. Yes, you were prisoner in your own body. It's crazy dark. So this is why this Katari have more of a human shape. But when you actually look at the model itself, they're much more, you know, machine. They're almost all machine. Yeah, their whole body's replaced with bionics. They both, you know, actual limbs and whatnot replaced eyes, but also they even have their brains adjusted.

So a couple of key highlights, which I like is random. I don't know, this is a really weird one-two combo. They have their eyelids removed. Which also why? Right, but then they replace their whole eyes with cybernetic goggles. Yeah, because you can't, you have the still. You just did this first step and you're like. Like to be a dick. Again, to be a, you still need to protect the eyes.

And then I put goggles over to you. I'm like, just so you replaced the eyes with goggles. Yeah. But before we did that, we cut their eyelids off. Again, what does that function? Help? Nothing. The goggles they put in then are designed to be like a space marine helmet. So they, you know, could have done that and still had eyelids. Yeah. But endless information, no, because, you know. I mean, apparently the goggles also have a shit ton of vizine in them. Yep. Although,

Brian, do you think they can see in the dark? Do you think night fights a thing for Admec? Are there probably a lot? This actually, weirdly enough, makes me wildly more angry than poison does. Yeah.

Because, again, we're 2024, and I can't fight in the dark. I can wildly see it the dark. Like, you know, like, so 38,000 years from now,

night is a problem. It's hard to see in the dark. I don't need to set up. The next one they do is, really weird. They actually, so when we did the space marine episode, talking about how they put in like an extra lung that had some oxygen in it to help them survive when there's poison in the air, that it probably doesn't work. Well, the adamec did a weird one. They actually put a chunk of poisoned gas inside all of them that is nourishing. I had to read this seven times, if I'm being honest.

This makes zero sense. Yeah, apparently because the Skatari come from an irradiated world or a toxic world. But they all don't. But they all do. If they're, if it's a scotauri, they all come. That's true. True, true. They're official scintari. And so to make them feel better in combat, they have a little, like, they take a hit of, like, incredibly toxic air and it makes them feel better.

You like, hey, man, crystal meth, just like home. Yeah, but no, crystal meth, at least, at least the Germans conquered France on that drug. Like, you know, these guys are actually are just getting, like, Chernobyl. It's not as fun. Well, let's talk about the next happy thing that happens to them. Of the mini lobotomy with neuralink. So what they do now is they give them a nice full lobotomy, but they put a neuralink in their brain.

Good job, Elon Musk. And it makes them fearless on the battlefront, not the tabletop. Their leadership's so bad on the tabletop. Yet they're... They can't, they physically can't run away unless the tech priest wants to. Yeah, that's the thing. This is, this, this, this design to make them function the way Tyrannids do. They actually create a hive mind based around the tech priest where the Skatari are interacting with

the hive priest at full speed with full control. So they are completely fearless. They move seamlessly. And apparently whoever writes the codex for Admec wasn't aware of that this is also the same book. You know, I'm going to get soapbox incoming, everyone. On the tabletop, ad mech should have to have characters with all their units, period. Yeah, I agree.

They don't operate. They don't send out a bunch of these gung-ho guys. This isn't Gant's ghosts. I mean, I guess one tech priest could probably, you're right, you would need to have, if you have Skittari, you'd have to have a tech priest somewhere. You should have to have within a certain range. But if the tech priest were to die, they should be uses. Same with the tyrantus. You're right.

The admection had the same thing that's, have the same, somebody's sign apps rule. 100%. This is how they work. You don't get a choice. It's not like they're, they asked if you, hey, who wants to be chipped here, raise your hand. My admec armies, I don't own one, but that is, players like, well, my admec army are just, they're independent. Yeah. No, yeah.

So, by the way, that was all the good part of being a Skittari, because now it gets a lot worse. But wait. There's more. All the body modification and like loss of control, that was the good part. Here's the fun part. A lot of their weapons are radiation-based. Now, I have no idea how this works, like how you shoot a radiation gun, and I don't feel like having the aneurysm to try and not understand it. They also don't contain it at all.

Yeah, but the part that's kind of, so I'm not going to explain to you how shooting someone with radiation would work. I mean, yes, they'll get cancer, but they're not going to die now. You're like, hey, you're going to die. Well, you know, sometime in the future. I've got a gun that shoots radiation. You have a knife. I mean, let you say, we're both going to die. One of us is going to die a lot quicker.

And I'm like, that's all I'm saying. I'm going to go home and tell my family that I'm going to die. Exactly. Although you will be glowing, like a ghoul from fallout. Maybe I won't. Maybe I just became a goal. But the funny. part about these radiation guns is they're not there's no lead in them so the scotari who are carrying them

are just carrying a cancer machine with them so it also does kill them routinely so that's like you know that's actually still pretty good i'm still i'm still scotari infantry my weapon is killing me but what if like you're in the scotari and they say well we need someone to drive the truck which i'm going to save all the admec players and not talk about hover not hover so fun part is like you If you need a pilot for the Skatari, it's not good. Well, you know, you know how like sometimes you get in like a rental car or maybe the car that you own and the seat's not that comfortable and you kind of don't like it?

Well, luckily the Skittari have an idea for you. They'll just cut off every one of your limbs and just make you the seat. Yeah, they plug you in. Yeah, you are now part of the vehicle and you will be with this vehicle until it dies. You are the Thomas, the tank engine of the Imperial. Also, I hope you're comfortable where you're sitting right now, because you're sitting there, oh, forever. Yeah.

But it's okay. Could still be worse. Because we mentioned earlier that some of the Skatari are not born or bred or volunteered to be Skatari. There's other ones that were effectively victims of an Admec incursion or wronged the admec in some way. And these ones. I hope for myself as tribute. These ones. So what they do is first they hack off all your limbs and replace them with like cyber.

magnetic pointy limbs, your brain is lobotomized down to where you have no control over your body, but you have awareness. And then they, with the new chips, they plug in your brain. They just fill your body and your soul with rage and hate. So it's almost like shaking a soda can as much as you can. And they're kept in these, the way you're supposed to is you keep them in transports and closed transports. And then the door bursts open and they didn't run out to kill. Well, these are called Russ Stalkers.

If you guys don't know what I'm talking about. These are Skittari Russ Stalkers and infiltrators. And that's why they're super fast on the board. This is actually something that, let's go GW props. They got 100% right because they have pluses to advance. They have pluses to charge. They can advance in charge. They are wild.

They're super too fast. Yeah. And everything they do, by the way, we'll kill them. Oh, yeah. They just die. Well, they're supposed to because, well, they're in punishment. They're supposed to die. But they rush out of the place as just absolute murder machines.

We do Drew Kari, we'll talk about. I do want to touch on the fact that also, not of the murder machines also, but they get the chip programmed in. They try to murder other HQs, which are the people in the man. They're supposed to go on their suicide mission effectively. To kill the most important thing. Yeah. If you have a big hat. This is one of the few, even 10th edition admec have struggled, but Rustalkers.

I think they did a really good job flavor-wise with Rustlers. GW, good job. Yeah, model looks good, unit plays, et cetera. Now, we're going to do sisters in our next up-and-coming cast, and you guys, I'll let you decide this or Penitent Engine, which is the more messed-up version. But I'm going to tell you guys my thoughts, sisters are the most horror. They're just, it's a horror. For those who've forgotten, we're doing ad-mec, sisters, then drew,

I, good luck. I still think even, we're going to do Jacari, you're going to be like, that's messed up, and I still think the sisters are worse. Yeah, sisters are much. Well, they're just doing it. Because they're self-righteous about it, too. That's the thing they get. Durkari know they're evil.

Sisters are we're the good. Well, sisters are like, this person deserves this. Actually, they're kind of the same. We'll get into it. Yeah. Actually, all three of them, they all view the person to do this too is the same. So, but anyway, there is another branch within the admec soldiery, though, which are called the catafron.

I like... These guys are awesome, actually. I love the model catafron. I wish they were good in the tabletop because they've just sucked. They're just overpointed. They've happened. Always happened.

Yeah, yeah. So they always have. When have they not been overpointed? No, they're so expensive. So the cataphrons are much less mentally aware in the Skittari. They're more close to their servitors. And so they're used for a lot more of a devious end.

So the catafron begins their life as a just a normal human being, living their life. and at some point, we've all had bad days. Everyone's had a bad day. No one's had, I became a catafront that day. Also, let's talk about Imperium Justice. Ready? John committed a crime.

Oh, man, John's going to get a horrible punishment, probably way too much punishment. And then the ad mec scoops up everyone that lived in that city and also makes them part of this. You're like, but I've never even met John, Well, you should have probably stopped him from committing that crime. I don't even know who he is or where he lives. Well, he lives close enough to you where you're now going with us.

Yeah, let's dive it. So this is a fun one. Effectively, at some point, set individual makes a mistake and crosses one of the many wings of the imperial. You could be a true criminal, murderer, smuggler, all of these. True. They do send prisoners, but also exactly what I was saying. They also could have, like, there's also the undesirables where it's like, hey, I try to

organize a labor movement to revolt against this. We shouldn't be working 20-hour days in poison. And even then, there's also still the ones who were just like made, who looked in the directly into the eyes of the planetary governor. And or, again, you were near the guy that we were picking up. And so these guys. Remember, the Imperium's all about numbers. Hey, we're here to pick up prisoners.

Yeah, but we actually need a thousand. There's only 200 prisoners. Let's grab these 800 people. The first 800 you see. The guy working at the gap going, but I'm... No. No. I just got off lunch.

No. So these people in this, this is in the codex why I'm going to do this. They then, the R-bites are sent after them. And the R-bites just beat them within an inch of their lives. They also don't tell them why they're beating them. The R-bites are the Brute Squad, which if you don't know, reference, I'm on the Brute Squad. You are the Brut Squad.

Maybe the best movie ever made. Also, if you don't like that movie, you know. No one does the movie. They just haven't seen it. So the Arbytes beat these people with an inch of their lives. And then they're shipped off to a forge roll, at which point their life gets worse. So first off, these ones are actually fully lobotomized. They lose all consciousness whatsoever as opposed to and get a mind control shift.

So I think that this is better. They just, oh no, it's better for the individual. It's just so much. I know, but like the Skittari thing is such a nightmare because you are fully aware of what's going on and you are a passenger in your own body. But in this one, they're taking your body and just turning it into a machine. I at least don't know. That's how. I guess that's true.

Yeah. How about this? I at least kind of died. I don't get to go, hey, am I fully aware? Oh, for some unknown reason, you all. also let me feel pain. Yeah. Why?

That's a fair point. Like, why? You didn't have to do this. You could have turned this off, man. Yeah. You just decided to let me not be in charge of my own body, but still feel all the pain. Why? This, by the way, easily remedy.

But you decided, eh. Yeah, catarvons just messed up things. They do is they then, they then cut their bodies in half and cut their arms off. And I assume. They strap you into an ATV. They never talk about what they do with those parts. Of course, it's Corpstarch, right? Oh, yeah, you ate up for lunch.

Yeah, it becomes scorch. The torso-ish bit is then encased in armor and then jammed on top of some tracks and a giant gun is attached to them. You were welded into an ATV. Cataphrons become just the suicide squad of the admec. They just send them out on their tracks with their giant armor and guns.

But you know what you do get, though? one of the coolest guns in the game. Which one? The breacher gun. Oh, the breacher gun. Oh, dude. Both of them are awesome. Yeah, the breaches.

I mean, God, I love the breaches. They're so good. They're so wildly overcast. They're so good. I don't know where to put this in, and this is a personal thing of mine. Castellan robots. Robots in disguise. They're awesome.

I realize this is going to feel like a weird, like you guys had like a, like, it's It's not like we did a weird edit in this. No, this is literally the order I'm doing this in. I don't have a good place to talk about Castellin robots in this cast. And so I'm just going to do it now because they're one of my favorite parts of the entire Admec army, aesthetically. Also, Warimer Plus has a really cool thing on them. I love Castellan robots. They look cool.

Their lore is cool. They look like Iron Giant. Yeah. So first off about Castellon robots. is they're one of the most secretive parts of the entire admec weaponry. They've had them forever, too. That's right. They're a minimum 10,000 years old, and everyone knows they're even older.

The belief is they actually predate the Imperium. So they have never made a single one. Every castellon robot you ever see was found by the admec. The only thing the admec knows that they currently have a way to control them. For those who haven't seen them, just look them up, but they're effectively a bipedal robot that looks like a 1950 side. That also fires a billion shots. Or punches with the power of a thousand songs. Yeah. But they are. I like the punching thing we do a lot in the Imperium. The gun that they

have is... Eighth edition combat, they were insane. Eighth edition, they could fire twice when they locked in. It locked in double. 36 shots, a guy? You know what I mean? It was crazy. I left. I have his love of them. I don't own an ad back on me. I had to play against this and watch a third of my arm. I don't even like Admec. Let's be honest. I don't, the admec's one of my least favorites. I love Castell and robots.

They're cool. Because they look amazing. But the best part to me about them is like, we don't know what they are. So the ad me won't let anyone anywhere near them when they're anywhere. They just deploy them when they have to and they get them the hell out of it. They also semi don't know why they can control them. Let's be honest with that too. I'm not 100% that they can.

Because the truth of matter is that, you know, they don't necessarily resemble the men of iron, but they don't not resemble the moniker. Like the whole thing, according to the admec lore, you know, oh, the castlein robots, there's a tech priest who interface with them. They do whatever he says. But these things predate tech priests. It will also, the tech priest and the ad mech will lose engagements to make sure they don't lose castle robots.

Yeah. And they will also, if the castle robot falls, they pick up every single piece. Like, there is no evidence. I'm saying. I firmly believe that the castling robots are met of iron. I really, or a variation therein, I think it's minimum full AI could be worse. And the ad mech are like, look, they shoot better than anything. Because on the tabletop, right now we're just talking they were good.

In the lore, if castling robots are deployed, it's an auto win. Like it's just, yeah. Winnie, and it always shows up as multiples of them and just murder. Yeah, they are so awesome. But, you know, we've talked about this guitari, the cataphrons and these ones. What about like the regular admec? Wait for it. I don't want everyone.

Also gets worse. No, that's what I'm saying. I don't want everybody to think, hey, John, Brad, you guys only talked about these really offshoe, the extremes. No, no, no. Everything else in ad mech is a nightmare. Yeah. So let's dive into what regular admec are. So first, we'll talk with the tech priests.

We'll be right back after a quick break. So what is a tech priest? You hear the term a lot. Again, this is more for those of you who played like Space Marine 2 or New Order of the game. Like, yeah, what is this tech priest? So the tech priest handles kind of almost every role. They weaponry design, weaponry maintenance, ship maintenance, vehicle maintenance, armories. Like, you know, if you're playing Space Marine 2, your weapons from an admec tech priest.

This is because a tech priest is effectively a living computer. Anything that they've augmented themselves. so much, they are a machine. Those who properly read your guardsman manual, remember, like, for example, you are never allowed to touch, talk to, or interact with a tech priest, or you will be shot.

Key piece. The tech priests share a similar, the tech priests all look kind of the same way, which is they're more machine than man. Well, there's, like, hold on. Yeah. I'm chained it up again.

There's a big difference in this because tech priests, every single piece of enhancement has been their decision. And it augments what they're trying to do. They are for them. They're trying to become the pinnacle of performance of what they're trying to do. But the stories that are kind of funny where it's like, you know, they'll have a hand. They'll be doing something. They'll break a nail. And their solution is to remove the whole hand.

Yeah. It's like, never let that happen again. they stub a toe. No it's easier. No more toes. Remember, we talked about this in the last cast. Almost every loss the ad mac has ever taken

and I just did air quotes and looked John in the eye for my air quotes. Every loss that they've ever taken is always the flesh is weak. What could I... I need to lose this. My hands sucked. My eye sucked. These are the reasons we didn't

get a complete victory in this last engagement is because whatever flesh I had failed me and I need to get that fixed and some of the changes make actually a lot of sense

so they'll usually change their hands out and their arms out for you know a hand that's basically got a multi-tool built into it they'll add mechotanerites which we'll talk about in a little bit the models eyes and faces no no that's a big thing we got to talk about the faces though because the faces

are a thing look up a huge failure and you could see it in the admec line of models Yeah. For those of you who are building an admec army, lead belcher, you're going to be buying a lot of lead. Yeah. I mean, well, the biggest thing is, is that the, if you look at the models themselves, almost all of the faces are completely augmented. Yeah. Because it doesn't work for what they want to do. Why have a mouth and vocal cords when you have a Voxcaster? I can now, I can now speak not only to a machinery, but I can transmit massive distances. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm supposed to remember, I'm a tech priest. I'm in charge of.

20, 30, 40, 50. How many? I have people that are completely under my control, and then I need to communicate with all the size. Yeah, you also have, the mechotendrites are the other big one. So these are actually, it's Dr. Octopus. I know where they got the idea from.

Let's me call it. It's a good villain. It's a great villain, but again, I mean, it's Dr. Octopus. They gave them Dr. Octopus arms. They have these extra limbs that allow them to interact with more and more things. I mean, why have eight, why have two arms, you can have eight. They'll even add a special mechatondriot. We can carry,

You can put like a plasma cannon arm. Let's talk about this because this is another thing that's not allowed by the Imperium, which 100% is allowed by the Imperium because they just turn a blind eye to it. You can't operate eight arms without AI, which... That's not important. They 100% have AI programming in them. One of the ones I did laugh at, though, was autosangination. So it's when they have their blood and heart and lungs replaced the pump for a specific...

It's a synthetic fluid. and they never talk about what it does. What it does, yeah. Like, because you don't need red blood cells anymore because there's no flesh. Because they refer to it as it helps, it helps them heal wounds and better defense against toxins.

To what? Yeah. Again, Jenner-Rame's heart. You know what, let's protect Brad here. I get Brad a lot of crap that I can poison a space marine. You can also poison a tech priest. With what?

I know. So, to be fair, that one's actually. They rubbed some poison. into the heart that's in the middle of them. Also poison necrons, which you're just like... Oh, God, I forgot about that. Yeah, Neckron. Maybe I just try to not.

Yeah, Necron warriors. You can shoot Neckon warriors with poison weapons. They still wounds on it too. Because... Also anti-infantry. Yeah. That's that thing. So, yeah, I can't figure that one out.

The one I do like, and we'll get to these guys a second, is what's called the elect two, which is just a fun word, where they actually put circuitry inside of their skin. They can touch machinery and interact with it directly. Well, this is, and when we talk about touch, I mean, he's not plugging in. I'm talking like you can touch. Lay hands. Yeah, exactly.

You can lay hands on a vehicle. And one, you understand everything that's going on in the vehicle because you have an immediate connection. And an immediate, this isn't one of the stories, actually. It's a short, I'm not even going to get it. I have to look at it. Which one? Second. No, no, but just check my microphone.

One of the. the things is they have a short story about this where one of the tech Marines just touches a land raider and it gets an immediate transfer of all its knowledge and they basically do a back and forth where you instant no and that's all it takes just lay hands and that that's the elect too now this transition one important thing about the tech priests is that these transitions they do continue over time so the older a tech priest the more augmentation so much like the elder the tech priests also lean into their augmentation based on purpose for the admex. If you're transmitting and cataloging data, you'll have an overpowered boxcaster.

If you're working with Titans, you get a special interface. They call it a mind impulse unit. You can actually interact better with the machine spirit. If you're in charge of capturing data and information on the field, but a little mini science kit built in, or like you're leading, like, Skittari or catafrons, they're just going to put every single gun that ever exists on you. Yep.

And also like the Eldar, the longer you survive, the longer you live, you actually may end up branching into other areas and becoming even more knowledgeable. You do get more weird, but you get more knowledgeable and become more weird. Wildly more weird. We're going to talk about, I mean, this is a highlight of years. Yeah, so let's talk some highlights about some tech priests. So one of the ones I like a lot of Electro Priests, again, I don't know how to Admec, but I like playing Admec. Electro Priests have in, is it, ninth edition where they were just, The ninth edition, they were just disgusting and 10th edition.

You know what? I gave GW props earlier. Screw you, Gdb on this. Why did you rule it? They were, yeah, they're useless now. They're pointless. They were so awesome. The ninth edition, they were.

Because Electro Priest. They were good in 8th and 9th. They were amazing in 9th. 9th, 8th, they were good. So Electro Priests, we talked about it. We'll have the electives inside them. The elect priests are the ones who get all of the electives and basically a generator on top of it. they can effectively power a land raider

by putting their hand on it. And the thing is, is that they focus these on either melee squads or shooting squads, which they would fire off all this energy. But they're not supposed to be, though. The thing is what they're supposed to be, that's what this makes them so cool.

What they're supposed to be is like they'll work in like a power plant. And because they have all this power, they can actually effectively control the reactor and control reaction times with their bodies. Yeah, but what they do with them is send them out. Yeah, but yeah,

if you want to send them out into combat, they're a... So if you don't send them in the... If you take them out of the reactor and don't send them out of the combat, they will actually explode. Yeah, they actually end up randomly exploding, which is hilarious.

Another one that's really common, you see them in the tabletop or Cybernetica Datasmiths, which don't really belong to the tabletop. That's a side note. No, they have battle meditation, though. It's a stretch. I'm just saying,

I mean, as far as the Star Wars fans, they know what battle limitations. Yeah, but it's a stretch. But it is what they do. Yeah. It makes more sense. I actually disagree with you on this, because I think that the Cyberdict Data Smiths, because they're supposed to be in charge of blocks of Skittari, basically. No, I thought that's not that's, but the data smits, the data smits in charge of the robots and the vehicles.

They're in charge of the whole thing is my whole thing. Well, it's all my, so my issue with Cyberdetic Data Smith is in the, The lore, a cybernetic of Datasmith, could literally walk up to a Bainblade? They just got taken out and turn it back on. Yeah. And now they don't do that. Yeah, no, you're 100% right on that, but they also, they interact with everyone. They should be basically running the battlefield.

They're generals. Yeah, and that's why I just don't think they should be in the game. They also cost 30 points. That's why. One of my favorites, though, are Roon Priests. So Room Priests are another one of my favorites, and it's because they're just the super scientists of the Admec. They're called Room Priest because they actually have ruins, Karlfeld, all over their

body, but they're, they're carvered by so they can better interact with all things mechanical. It's, they're known more for like, you know, chanting and doing all this garbage. But what they really do is diagnose problems. Like, is there, is something broken? We're going to, we're going to, I mean, interface with it and scour literally the entire knowledge banks of the admec to solve it. They're modeled it correctly, by the way. They should have satellite dishes on their head, basically. Oh, yeah.

But they're cool as hell, because they also analyze enemy. Weaponry devices. They're the reason why, like... Well, let's talk about one of the low-key things that they do. We didn't really hit on this. Roonpiece are supposed to pocket any Zeno's technology and not tell anybody about. Yeah, that's their true goal in the battlefield. They send Roon priests out with the soldiers, as if they were in command of the soldiers.

They're not. Their job is after, like, we'll use... I'm going to give Tau credit here. let's say the admec fight tau and defeat tau. The Rune Priest job is to pick up the tau plasma and shove it in its pocket for anyone sees they didn't because they're going to look at it later. Same thing with Tyrannies. The Rune Priest are like ripping the arm off a tyrannid warrior to take it back.

It's like, all right, let's go do research of this. The Rune Priests are cool as hell because they're just like, nah, I'm researching all of this. In the movies, they will, in the 80s movies, they're the CIA guy that's, he's there, but he has, he has alternative motives. Yeah, he's the one roping off the area. Yeah, we're grabbing all of this now. Rune priests are cool as hell because that, because, again, on the tabletop, I don't care. But in the lore, the run priests are what are advancing.

They're wildly lame on the table table top. But they're amazing in law. Because to be, to be fab, they're the people that are pushing forward this because AdMEC is the only arm of the Imperium that's not afraid to use. And I say use, learn from Zeno's technology. The ADMEC leadership is built purely out of, there is no nepotism. There is only kind of earned advancement. If you are a good tech priest and your successful tech priest, you will advance and you advance

all your way up, which is why the admec arguably are the most functioning version of any government within the Imperium, because everyone has earned their position. No one, them may be custodes. It's like a couple of space. Some, actually, space marines probably too. They really do fall into that category of like, if you're a space marine captain, you are a hell of a soldier. Yes. You know, it's same.

If you are, if you're the head of the custod's, dear God, you know, it's all these things. So the ad mech are not like a lot of like the other parts of the Imperium work. Let's be honest. You're talking about guard, but continue. Well, I'm talking about guard. You're in a playable faction. I'm talking about guard. If I'm talking about the Imperium in general, I'm talking about all of it.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. And so as a tech priest's advance, they then move up a tier. So once you've gone from priesthood, you then move up to like Majos, Lodgis, artisans. So one of my favorite parts of the Admec is the Admec and the Inquisition. And I wanted to kind of end our cast talking about this great nightmare. Can we talk about the fact that who's probably killed the most inquisitive? Oh, it's the admec.

I mean, for sure. By a wide margin. So, so many accidents that have happened. Well, it's actually, it's really funny because, as we said, there's an ad mech who's a lord of terror. Okay. So he has full autonomy and authority. But the ad mech do not follow the imperial creed.

At all. Yeah. They have no, no, no, no, no, no, no, iconography to the emperor. They worship the, the, the, the Ecclesiarchy has no play, has no presence on forge worlds. You said a lot of good things. Also, they embraced Zenos so much. Oh, yeah. They love Zeno technology.

Love it. They find it, it's mine. They fight over it. They also fight over corrupted technology. That's true. The thing that can be yelling, I am corn, and they'll go, what? It's ours. There's so many corrupted,

demon engines that they're studying trying to go, we should use this. And also we talked about it earlier, they also will just murder imperial citizens because they discover that there's a hive world sitting on top of an STC drive. And the ad mech just go, all right, let's just remove the hive world. We've got red weapons. Yeah, from space. So it's a pretty consistent problem where they just keep murdering. Also, did stroll back just a smidge?

Remember, AI is punishable by death, period. You use full AI, not augmented. Use full AI. It is a shoot on site, especially for the Inquisition. Boom. Yeah. Well, you know it's not AI or maybe is AI? What's sitting in the Noctus Labyrinth on Mars?

Well, I guess that's not AI. So let's just go through. From the Inquisition standpoint, we've got a group of people who don't worship the emperor. openly worship another god of the emperor, hoard xenotechnology, murder the Imperium, also hoard, you know, chaos in technology.

Oh, wait, though, there's one more thing. And by the way, the high level of Inquisition knows about this. There is a labyrinth on the surface of Mars. It's called a labyrinth because it's got a weird look. It's a honeycomb. It's a honeycomb, but it looks like it was like, Sorry, it was made by, I'm doing air quotes here, volcanic activity, because it's made of stone.

It's not made of... So not. Yeah, but it's not elaborate. It's not made of, like, metal and walls. It's the actual thing. And there's passages, and inside it, it's rumored that the passages inside of it are so toxic and irradiated, that you would actually melt your skin if you walked into them. Except for the fact that they're actually delightful.

Yeah, they're actually perfectly safe and there's no problem in it. The admec and a few members of the Inquisition actually, actually know what's inside of it. They also go down there a lot. Yeah. It's a C-TAN. It is a full-blown. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Pause on this because people don't. Oh, no, we're going to do. No, but I'm saying, let's, but we have to do the, we have to point out everybody that plays 40K, you are used to playing with a shard, a broken, tiny piece. Yeah. A minuscule fortune. This one is called Maglodroth, and it's a void dragon. that is somehow...

Now, fun story, we don't know how it got there. The rumor is at one point the emperor went to Mars, probably during one of the many times he wasn't being helpful to humanity, and imprisoned, said Void Dragon inside of course. He said nothing about it because he's a dick.

Yeah, just jammed it there. Just bad dad. Yeah. This void dragon inside of Mars carries all of the knowledge of the necrons and the necrontier. And every now and then, the ad mec wander down there and siphon some more knowledge out of it. They basically poke him with a stick.

Yeah, and say, hey, make me a new gun, giant dragon thing. Again, which is crazy because I'm going to the game, the thing that costs in a 2,000 point game costs 300 of your points and will kill things is a fleck of skin. Of this monstrosity, yeah. Yeah, that's, that is what's killing your, the thing that you're super mad about that you couldn't kill in the game is a tiny little piece of this. And I just really like this because we're talking about a planet that's one ring away from Terra. Yeah. Has a being in it that

could eat the sun in a second. That is what they used to do. And it's just trapped inside of a labyrinth probably maybe. And the most, it's full of technology and the most unreliable people with said technology, the ones in charge of it. The guys that are definitely splitting up in a horror movie and looking for the killer. Yeah. For sure. Are in charge of it. And my favorite part is, you know who knows it's there?

The Inquisition. Yeah. And just don't know what to do about it. And so what they do about it is the Inquisition recognize. It's nothing. Well, no, they do something because with the- I mean, it's effectively not. So this is a thing.

I like the Inquisition more than Brad does. Yes. I enjoy the Inquisition. I don't think they're good people, but I enjoy them. I like Eisenhorn and the rest of the Inquisition. So what the Inquisition realized, they've got a huge problem. If they were to just do what they want to do, which is kill every member of the Admec, the Imperium would collapse on itself.

They need the Admec. They would also release this. Yeah. And it's still sole system doesn't exist. That thing would get released. Also, I don't think they could win a war. I don't think you could actually win a war against the Admec. Well, they would blow up the soul system.

They'd love every planet. I'm saying. even if the Voydragon before it decides to discover the sun, they would just blow everything out. So the Inquisition's goal is to kind of just bother the AdMEC and kind of deflect them from their worst things. So the first thing the Inquisition wants to do is kind of infiltrate the knowledge banks of the AdMack

just to know what are these guys up to? And let's stop them before they do something really stupid. They do a great job on this, but they also have stories and they try to actually intradate the adMAC and they do such a bad job. Oh, no, but that's the fun part. The English and their goal is, let's learn what the ad mech is up to. And the term of it is they kind of prune the most dangerous paths.

But they also have guys that do the Bishemi. Hello fellow high school students. Yeah, hello fellow ad mech. I also, like, he's wearing, he's wearing a mask. He bought the Halloween store. It's so bad. I also am robot. It's nice having, it is delicious having, you know.

Beepoo, beep, boop, robot stuff. You're like, no. man like and they go yeah that's that's another dude by the way another dude from the inquisition but by the way the both parties know that they're doing this is old school yeah this shadow so yeah so let's dive into that so it becomes a shadow work because the problem is as much as the inquisition is like we know what the ad meck are really up to the ad mec secretly heavily the admec are fully aware the inquisitions looking at them like yeah they also the admec made so this is where it's funny all of the technology that the Inquisition is using to spy on the admec was made by the admec.

So they just give them false supermate. It's just like such a spy on spy. Wow, I'm going way old on that. Spy versus Spy. Yeah, that's a mad magazine. Mad magazine. Yeah, that's, we're in the 90s, Brad. Yeah, that's actually, I think that might be 80s, actually.

You're right started in the 80s, but it was there in the 90s. So this ends up being actually quite fun. The part of this is really funny is that this shadow war, not ever. one's aware of it, though. So the upper echelons of the admec and the upper echelons of the inquisition, both are perfectly aware that the shadow war is going on. Fine. But the lower tier people don't. And what ends up happening eventually, some inquisitor either gets too close and gets wiped out by the admec. It's something they wiped out. They wipe out everybody that he worked with to make sure that nobody else finds out about it. Or the inquisitor knows this is coming and

wipes out a key piece of the admec who are doing some like research in the zina technology, which then results in a counterattack from the other side, which all suddenly ends with everyone being dead because the head of the ad mech and the head of the inquisition just went, just called each other on the phone and we're like, yeah, kill them. And they just wiped it literally out like, all right. Like, by the way, my bad on this. Yeah, sorry.

I didn't let Eric know before he got two part of the pipe. We know we're only supposed to go so far either way. Sorry about that. Like, ugh. And this happens, by the way, all the time. Planets, ships, all in just disappear because a conflict breaks out between the two of them. And the issue is, like, if the regular members of the Inquisition knew how bad the admec were, they might do something about it. Oh, snuff.

Or, hold on. Hold on the next week. Sisters. Imagine if the sisters, if the Sororanus found out some of the stuff. Sisters would wreck them. Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe someone mentions the Logan Grimnar, what the admex doing. Yeah.

He's on his way. I think the sister's the bigger problem. Yes, sisters were. Or they're also crazy. Or the Grey Knights, actually, no, because the Green Knights at least are more like, whatever. You could explain to the Grey Knights. Hey, it's okay because the sisters are like, I don't care if the Galaxy burns.

They're heretics. We're doing this. Gray Knights still have pragmatism where they want to achieve a goal. Sisters don't care. If you kill this, we're going to lose. No, heretics can't be alive. I will laugh, though. Let's do some fun ones, though.

One of the things I'll do a lot about the admec is that they will do anything for technology. Anything. And there are some really funny stories about this. I love that you said really funny stories. They're all horrific. And also, by the way, again, the Inquisition, what we're talking about? We're totally right. So, completely right.

These guys are idiots. So there was a, there was a planet that the ad mech realized had a bunch of technology they wanted. But it was in conflict. So what they decided to do was they created an orc wa on the planet. Because if the orcs were fighting, they wouldn't pay attention to this like random part of the time. They just wanted to go to a temple.

Yeah. They wanted to go to a temple. And they started an ork wa on the other side of the planet. So they were able to get it. killed the planet, by the way. Also, the system. It took three centuries to put down the orgwa that the admec started all so they could just loot some catacombs.

They basically found a PlayStation 1 game, blew into it and went, oh, sweet, Dragon Warrior 3 then moved on. Another one was like the ad mech. There were three STCs on a planet. They get there, discover that the necrons are there, eight-year war. with the Ekrons, but they did, they succeeded. The three STCs were a self-heating crockpot, a way to make an auto quill,

but also they did find a bolt round that melts salmonite as if it was wax. Yeah, well, let's talk about the auto-quil. Yeah. Because people will know what it is. It is legitimately a scribe program that will just auto-dictate what you're saying. Yeah.

My favorite one, though, and I don't know which book this is out of, is a planet called Hydro Cordatus. This is how messed up the admec are. There was ancient technology there that was incredibly forbidden. So they got a bunch of guardsmen to dig it up for them.

And so the guardsmen are digging it up. They don't know what it is, but they're told, hey, this planet's really dangerous. It's a radio. So we're going to get you some anti-radiation pills so that you don't succumb to the radiation. Foreshadowing, it was not. Yeah.

The, oh, God. They were actually a slow-acting poison that they were giving them because in this way, they would never live long enough to tell anyone and the next group would come in and they would call it all radiation poisoning. So they poisoned tens of thousands of them. Also, phase three of Space Marine, too. Yeah, you're getting to space. If you guys are playing space, I don't want to ruin it because the game's only at time

of recording the game's barely a month and a half old. All right. This happens. Oh, yeah. This is a key part of it. you'll discover the ad mech are happy to embrace some pretty aggressive uh no technology aggressive losses yeah that being said with ad mech i also wanted we just talked about how bad they are that you know well you know what the evil i'm jumping on my soapbox there for this

the reason that the imperium puts up with their shit is oh i'm sorry who produces the best way Yeah, and that's the thing. I feel bad. I feel like we just spent like 30 or 40 minutes talking about how the ad mech are terrible. We need to also point out that the entire Imperium would have fallen to any one of the enemies, even the Tao, honestly, if it wasn't for the admec. But in the sense that the Tao, if the Imperium didn't have the admec, tau weaponry would have just wrecked them. Oh, 100%. There's nothing. There's nothing left. The Imperium does not exist off the admec. So as bad as the admec are in a sense of that, yeah, they are. lobotomizing people and like radiating worlds and doing horrible things but they're keeping you in the best tech that you have when we the imperium wins that's a same way we're humans it's right but the imperium wins battles and wars because of the admec the

imperium is able to actually resupply it's like the i laugh at the same admec ships that land on your planet and irradiate it for an stc drive are the ships that thanks them other plants get goods because all the warp drives. And as much of the forge worlds are nightmares, they are so damn efficient. Yeah, I mean, that nightmare true, but if you're not on that forge world and, like, the orcs invade, the reason the space marines can push the orcs back is the act. Why do we have a billion melter guns? Well, because this is happening.

Well, it's because you played space walls, jackass. Those were last cannons. Now, it was Meltas. Was it Meltas? I had 28 miltas in that gun in that army. And 35 Thunderhammers. For those of you who are new to the game and you're playing Space Wolves. And you know, why aren't they very good?

Brad, Brad, Brad's why? You're welcome. Brad ruined that army. I crush that. So, yeah, I just, as bad as I think the ad mech are, from a, I mean, the ethic standpoint, they're also maybe the most important faction in the Imperium. Period. It's, yeah.

I mean, don't belittle my Arbytes. You can believe it. They're so pointless. They're fun of paint. Sure. I mean, you go ad back, supply everything, so they're probably the most important. I'm not going to belittle the Marines because... Of course, yeah.

The Imperium doesn't exist without Marines. It just doesn't. I actually... I will get grief. I think Guard. I think Guard are more important than Marines. Guard are more important with making the Imperium exist after the fight. the fight the Marine.

It was like 100,000 Marines. And they kick the shit out of people. Just make more guard. That's why I don't play guard. When we get into the sisters cast, I'll make my point a lot clear. The fact that turns out you actually don't need a black carapist for power armor.

The custodes already said that. I know, but custodes are also genetically enhanced. These ones are just... Genetically enhanced is mad that you compared it. That's true. What did you say? Like, I'm no custode. Yeah.

So those of you who like Edmack, as you can probably know, we're wrapping up now and you're saying, well, what about call? What about these guys? We're going to get into call. And because he's a pseudo heretic. He's a heretic. But we're going to get to his rise. We're going to do a deeper dive later into the 13th Black Crusade. And so that's why you're going to hear, sometimes we would cover those characters here. It's like 30 minutes on call minimum. Yeah, but it's also, I could do 30 minutes on call and Bobby G's interactions. Exactly. So we're going to... Not even the characters themselves. Yeah, we're going to push them out to another cast online. We can dive in that one. So if you're kind of hoping for that here, sorry.

Next week, though, we're going to dive into a faction that I have a love-hate relationship with, which is the adeptus sororitus. Mostly goes, I love them as a faction. I find incredible plot holes in their lore, and you're going to hear about it. What? Yeah. So... Short up. Until then, this has been John Barcati and Bradchester.

This guy. See you next. week.