The 40k Lorecast - Episode 6 - Horus strikes at the Loyalist forces and the Loyalists begin to strike back at Horus

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

As Horus continues pushing towards Terra his forces are still waging a war of disruption against the loyalist. They can not afford to face the loyaist forces at full strength, but the loyalist begin to fight back and outwit the traitor legions. On this episode we cover: Alpha legion being sneaky, Prospero post Space Wolves, why Ultramarines hate Word Bearers, and Leman Russ doing hard core Leman Russ stuffPatreonMerchandiseDiscord 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 Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. Today we're going to continue our coverage of what I would call a diaspora of stories. You want to Google it. I'll just say, ooh, you've looked at the stories for that. So as we've been discussing how all these different stories intertwined with each other, all this is happening at the exact same time.

The challenge for Horace right now is Horace needs to go to the Sol system. and needs to kill the emperor, which is the most defended system in a galaxy, or the imperial fists were there. So now it's going to be even worse. Yeah, they took it. They spinal tapped it. They turned it to 11. Yeah. And so anyone who knows anything about warfare knows that that being the attacker is what you don't want to be. The defender always has less casualties. I made a note here about Agincour. So that's for those who really love British history. I was just going to say, I'm such a dork in history. And then I was like, I know what this

You're pushing the glasses back. So Horace, his big push at this point is to disrupt the Imperium, to make it so they can't get as many reinforcements there so that he can bring an overwhelming force and power through. He's going to take massive casualties, but he can power through all the way to his final goal, which is... And we talked about this a little bit in the last episode. The problem with Horace sending his armies to do these things is

oh yeah, his armies are now infused with not just the power of chaos, but the influence of chaos. So everybody he sends to do something, oh yeah, I don't know if you mentioned the name, chaos. That usually doesn't mean follow orders to the letter. I've been playing the game for a little bit in totality a decade plus spreads. 25. Many more than that. I don't know a single person plays.

Alpha Legion. You. We're going to have so many people hit us up on this one. Yeah. Because it's been retcon and it's never been completely don't on. The problem with it is that, well, I want to go there. But the thing with the story is, one, they've retconned it multiple times. Alferius was originally the last one to be found. And then we found out he was actually the first one to be found.

And he was always on terror, but he's a secret agent. And then he's actually a twin. Yeah. So we have Alferius and Megan. And did he turn to chaos? Did he not turn to chaos? Did one of the twins turn to chaos? And the other stayed loyal.

And the answer is yes. Yes, exactly. So we're going to have to do a quick foreshadow to a future podcast of a group called the cabal. Three will spend a lot of time with the cabal. The cabal are a, we'll dig into this later, but just notice, there is a group of people. I think it crosses species that. They're the Illuminate of 40K. of the 48 universe.

Alfarious and his twin brother ran to them randomly and were told by the cabal. Well, it's a big deal on this because they give them the outcomes of the civil war. And then they tell them to make a decision, which is the emperor will win if you help the emperor. And the Imperium will be torn asunder and it will be a never-ending civil war. nothing will ever work out. Eventually eaten by chaos. And this, by this meeting happens well before the heresy. The alfarius twins are aware.

Atheris are they make us notice. Their options are, as Brett said, the emperor wins and humanity is eaten by chaos. Or Horace wins and humanity dies. But the chaos gods can survive because they need humanity. Because as much as the other species exist, humanity is the feeder. of chaos. That's why these stories are so important with humanity. They're so interlinked. Eldar only fed one God. They fed it pretty well. But, but, that only they feed it. They made it. They made it. Orcs, I assume, are soulless.

And probably so are tyrants. Netgrads are souls. Gave their souls out. So yeah, if you're feeding on souls, he kind of got humans in Tao. And I can shit talk towel for a while, but I won't. So Elferrists and me are giving this choice. And they actually decide that what the emperor would want is chaos to die, so they should be on team kill the emperor. But they don't fully commit, though. Right. And this is where we go into, we're going to do another episode on it, because it's a big deal because the argument has always been, did they actually turn to chaos or not?

Because if they turned to chaos, they did a super shitty job about. They warn multiple systems of what Horace is doing. So the emperor, basically, Tara learns of Horace coming to Tara, way before Horace wants him to because he's literally leading a campaign of disinformation and alferius ruins it and he also ruins multiple other places he ruins supply places he destroys different planets that he shouldn't have he'll go ahead and my opinion my opinion is i think alfarious and omegan were actually in it for themselves and we've seen this done in the stories before where they were actually their viewpoint was they were trying to save mankind while also helping Horace and the emperor.

I view it as they did a system by system, conflict by conflict decision. And we'll go into one of them actually pretty shortly here with the white scars. But yeah, they start trashing from it within. Yeah, it went like, meh. But we'll get a bit deeper. But effectively, these guys are a little bit confusing because, you know, whereas we'll get into some later who really turned to chaos. Well, you also don't know which one of the brothers is in charge. In charge.

We also don't know because one of them is more chaos than the other, but you don't know which one that is. And it's kind of a confusion up until this day, to be honest with you, as far as what they're going on. One of the first things that they're sent to do is the Alpha Legion is actually one of the larger legions, too. So Horace is actually able to wield them pretty powerfully. They're the last reason to be implemented. So they've also suffered the least amount of losses. they've had the least amount of campaigns. They also are super butt-heard about that

at trying to prove themselves, which kind of goes into why they're, we want to show you we're better than everybody else kind of thing comes in. And Horace, with them, much of the night lords aside, I'm going to use the Alpha Legion to go and disrupt.

That's what their job is. And they were, the weird thing is, is that the Alpha Legion is too many places, to be honest with you. They have plot armor. They're everywhere. harassing multiple other space marine loyalist legions throughout this time,

they are literally season eight Game of Thrones jumping around the galaxy. And to what Brad and I were discussing earlier on this cast, where the warp distorts time and the Imperium is not really sure of who's on what side, the first real big blow-up with Alpha Legion is actually the Space Wolves. So the space wolves have just finished attacking Prospero. Attacking? Completely demolishing Prospero. Okay, thank you very much.

I just want to make sure the wrong of the same picture. In the books, they're licking their wounds and they're rebuilding. I'm pretty sure they were just drinking because it was the best thing they'd ever, they'd had in a while. But anyway, the Alpha Legion shows up out of nowhere and attacks. And the space wolves are brutally outnumbered. And to we're talking about not knowing friend or foe, the space wolves sent out a distress call to the nearest legion, who is the white scars. Which the actions of the white scars does not make them a friend of Lehman Ross. Also, Lehman Ross holds grudges. He might as well be a dwarf as much as he does.

Lehman Russ is the grumpiest of the primers. Oh, one billion, pretty much. But unfortunately, he's also really cool. he's also a super badass. He's amazing, but he's a grouch. So he reaches out, and this is the first time where Alph Legion attacks the space wolves and just starts slaughtering them. The space wolves reach out, the white scars, and the white scars are watches going,

I haven't heard anything about it. Remember, the space was also don't know that they're getting attacked. It's just their brother is showing up. True, yeah, showing up. But then they do start shooting at them, which is a pretty good sign of attack. Well, I'm just saying that you get a pretty good alpha strike when you go to shake somebody's hand and then you shank them. Alpha will begin to attack the Space Wolf's fleet.

And the Space Wolf's reach out to Jagatay Khan. Help us. Help us. We're being attacked. And Jaggeda Khan saying, right, but my two brothers are fighting each other. Both of you were saying the other one's a traitor. Because Alpha Legion also say the same thing of we have to kill the Space Wolves. They're traitors to mankind. And thanks to chaos and disruption of the war, they don't know the answer.

So the White Scar is just kind of mosey. way like hey man too bad so sad dick move man yeah real dick move luckily there's another prime mark who's not going to put up with this crap however it shows up out of nowhere and russ is super not happy about this yeah of course now so it's the dark angels spoiler as the dark angels now if you're a extremely tough fighter who prides himself his ability to just kill anyone you know who you don't want showing up to help you out. The guy in the shiniest of the shiny armor. The guy that you have the since you've been born, basically, enmity of that you're trying to,

not like you want to kill him. You just want to do better than that. Your brother, the shiny brother. Yeah, the shiny super brother who can do no wrong is the one who shows up and saves your ass. And the only part that makes it worse is that the lion's a good guy. So does the lion rub it in? No, not at all. He's just cool.

Like, hey, I heard you were in trouble. Here to help out. I'm going to wipe out this Alpha Legion. And now you guys are cool or saved. Thumbs up, right? And then walks away, which makes you like, at least, the Lehman, at least gloat at me. Make me, we'll get into what Lehman does after this later.

It's actually quite hilarious. So the Alpha Legion lose, obviously, in this attack to the, the baseballs have to retreat. They don't even lose that much. They just, well, in general, once the Dark Angels show up, unless you're, trying to die, you leave. Because that's the best way. However, suck it, white scars. You know what happens next?

Oh, they are ruined. And we go to the white scar now. So this is why we're going to now segue into the story of what the white scars were up to. So the white scars, as we just discussed, just bail in the space while being attacked by Alpha Legion like it was nothing. Still a dick move. Dick move. And then all of a sudden, the Alpha Legion just appears, starts appearing around the white

scars. It might say appear around. I mean, literally surrounding them. Well, that's the best part is they don't do any. Do you have that down? Yes. They don't do anything. They don't do anything. This is the best part. They're showing up. I get again, I need to throw this up there. John takes a ton of time to really prepare for this.

And we have tons of notes. And what I do is I try to just remember instead of looking at his extensive notes, and it is amazing. But the Alpha Legion completely surrounds them. It just hangs out in space around them. It's for a while, but they also don't communicate with them. They do a complete blackout of communication, but they just hang out.

And they completely insert. And they also slowly but surely encircle the entire White Scars fleet. And you start getting closer and closer, at which point, communication comes through from Brad's buddy, Rogel Dorens. And Rogel, at this point, tells Jagged, Khan, hey, there's a heresy going on. You remember that thing that you probably could have helped people with? A bunch of legions have turned on the emperor. I need you back at Earth, right?

Meow. Like now, don't do anything else and come back to Earth. The interesting thing is if you really understand Alpha Legion, Alpha Legion are more spy masters. They're misinformation like the best. So there's no scenario where this communication from Rogel Dorn, goes through their outer fleet into the of the Alpha Legion blockade

into the White Scars without Alpha Legion being okay with that. At this point, they've surrounded the white scars and the white scars get a communication through from Rogaldorn. Laying that was happened. So at this point, the Alpha Legion attacks. The white scars are completely surrounded.

Now, I did put a note in here that Brad is laughing at where I wrote, I have the high ground Anakin. Because technically, at this, point, the White Scars should be doomed. They are surrounded by a superior fleet. There is nowhere to go. They are trapped. Now, what are the White Scars' super special ability, though, Brad? They are the masters of maneuverability. They are the fastest. They can operate the best at high speeds. And all of their ships are effectively made just like their bikes to go faster than

everybody else's. And also, just like, oh, yeah, I forgot. They're a Mongol Horde. Yeah, let's just whip that off. So they can literally shoot accurately and engage accurately at full speed. At full speed. It speeds that you shouldn't be able to do comment at. A cool element about all of the primarks is they're also tinkers. Every primark has certain things that make their Legion better at Vulcan, obviously with fire. I mean, his melton and flamers are the best. Gelleman with collecting taxes. And having the most paperwork done. Rogle Dorn on adding a second layer of leg, The Lego's the Lego Fortress. Everyone's got their thing.

But the White Scars thing is going fast. So what no one in the outside of the White Scars knows is the White Scars ships are actually a little quicker and more accurate than every other ship. So as the Alpha Legion is coming in, they just decide, eh, let's kick on our super hyper drive and watch this and just blast right through the Alphal Legion. They don't even fight them. They just do something. They just go like, yeah, we're going to go right through that. Like, yeah, you thought there was a blockade? Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, we're now on the other side of that blockade, those ships that were between. We're going to leave now, guys. So if you were wondering about where we're taking off to, it's, it's we're gone. But the interesting thing here is that, as Brad was talking about it, without, the Alpha Legion is we don't know what side they're on. The Alphaleges let this happen. They doce out through this thing and go, and the Alphalian goes. Because they could attack them at any time.

The Alphletgeon goes, oh, they got away. Yeah, so you never know what's going on with that. And as usual, because Primarks are. supremely powerful, unbelievably intelligent, the most powerful beings in the galaxy, and they make more mistakes than an after-school special. So instead of going to Earth, Con just rolls out to talk to Magnus. Yeah, because Condus decides for whatever reason that I'm just confused. I don't know what's going on. So I'm going to go call my best friend. And they were. They were best friends. Every

Prime Mark had a buddy. Some of them had more than one. Some had less than one. I'm sure Lehman and Russell, I think he had any friends. I assume he had no friends. And Conrad. But there was Lehman... There's no chance. There's no one wanted to be friends with Conrad,

and Lehman wouldn't be friends with anybody. So it's kind of the inverse of the two. But anyway, Khan decides he wants to go see Magnus. So he decides to shoot over to Prospero. Which doesn't exist. Yeah, he doesn't realize it doesn't exist. That's just kind of awkward. So he gets to Prospero. And so now we're going to dive into the White Scar story.

This is another really kind of cool story. Please take this story in. The way I like to take this in is as 40K players were looking back in history, knowing how the game has played today. Imagine being con and these guys, just like we were talking with sanguinez earlier, you don't know chaos exists. You don't know this corruption exists. The world, your entire experience of problems are alien races,

and humans. Well, it also makes no sense because you've been hundreds of years with these guys, and they've been the most loyal. They've had your back in hundreds, if not thousands of battles. So there's

no chaos, corruption. This is unthinkable that this guy is no longer your brother. Like, what are you talking about? How could he not be? Of course he's there. So, Kahn arrives at Prospero and it just looks odd.

He can't, the surface doesn't look right, everything's wrong, and so they go to try and go down to the surface, and they can't, they can't communicate down. They can't even get, they can't land that the atmosphere, they're basically bouncing off the atmosphere, they can't put drop pods down. So he decides that the best thing to do, I don't know, Star Trek in the 70s, is to teleport down to the planet that you can't see anything into. Just blindly, just figure it out. I assume a bunch.

I know their armor's white, but I assume they had some red shirts with them just for shits and giggles. He also takes every single person that's worthwhile in the command squad. Yeah. So we're all going to go down. And they go down to the surface of Prosperor. Here we'll take a little bit of a left turn and go back to a prior episode about the warrior lodges. He's traded every single Legion with warrior lodges,

which actually on the surface are amazing. But they corrupted all of them. Do you know who really loves a good warrior lodge? The Mongols. Yeah. So for a very obvious reason, the warrior lodges are quite prevalent throughout the white scars. They are maybe one of the more infiltrated legions in the sense of the ones who are unknowing.

Obviously, the word barriers were really open to these things. But the white scar is just like, cool, we have this thing where all of us who are warriors can sit around as warriors and talk with each other. Again, as equals. As equals, yeah. So it's spread throughout. problem is the warrior lodges, even though Khan didn't know about the heresy, the lodges did. And so he's got, so Khan and his retune of leaders.

He teleports down with all of the trainers. All of these guys are down there. They're down on Earth and leaves all the traders up in his fleet sitting in his ships. We're going to get there in a minute. But you can imagine how this is maybe we've, how this story might be about to progress pretty aggressively. Things don't go great. We'll be right back after a quick break. So on the surface, Khan is met with an empty planet. The libraries are gone.

There's this hollow buildings. There's nobody there. He's wandering around a vacant world. Which is weird because at the time, this has been actually argued about. Yeah. Which is what is actually there? because he does get attacked. But what does he get attacked by?

Spirits, poltergeist, psychic entities. The problem is that Prospero is in the process of being pushed into the warp. So it is not fully in real space, material space. Without knowing, he's landed almost in the immaterial. In the material. And so that's why.

And this is why he couldn't land. This is why he couldn't get down. Because the planet he was looking at both existed and didn't exist. So you couldn't land there physically. The issue with this is that now these beings are there. And I cannot.

We're going to go with psychneuian. They're just polter guys. Yeah, thank you. Oh, it's got poultrys because this word is tough. I call it a warp hornet. It's, I mean, you're not wrong about that either. But they're basically psychic entities of some sort.

Are they warp entities? Are they the ghosts? this is where the argument goes, are they the ghosts of all the people that got killed in Prospero in psychic form? Are they basically demons of the warp but only psychic entities?

Who knows? What we do know is that bolters don't do shit to them. And so the white scars quickly discover that they're being overrun by this and begin to I'm not going to insult them by saying retreat. I'm going to say they made tactical withdrawals

back. While doing this tactical withdrawal, Cossero Khan falls down a big hole. Not like a little hole. He falls like halfway through the planet. He falls through a Acme comic, Warner Brothers hole. And just keeps on it falling, but no one's there to help him.

For a long, he falls like long enough to have a self-actualization moment. Yeah, it's the, it's a talk with himself while he's falling. That's a real thing. I'm not making that out. That's right. So he just falls and falls. And we'll get back to him. in a minute. But as a Legion are still being chased by these psychic entities, I like a good story

where just as the world's about to end, someone saves them, there is this lone thousand-son sorcerer who appears out of nowhere and just blasts these hornets. He's also pretty distraught at this point in time, because he kind of doesn't know what the hell just happened. Yeah, he, so his name is Arvada. Arvada, we don't get a full back. story and but effectively he arrives on prospero after prospero is no longer at prospero this dude has no idea what the shit just went down his whole army everyone in his company that he just by himself he also say he's a psycher so he knows that his planets moving into the war and doesn't know what the shit is going on so but he does he saves all these all the white

scars and with by just using some of the most powerful psychic you know telegraphs possible. And the white scar is immediately thank him by saying, cool. Now we've got to go find our prime mark. And he's sitting going, I'm basically half conscious right now. Can you give me, I don't know, a neutral grain bar and a Red Bowl or something? Because I'm not really ready to just go truck across the continent. It's given that all of you are useless fighting these entities.

And the only one who's going to be shooting them is me. So you want me to leave you. Jump on my back like Yoda. Jump on my back. I'm going to lead you where you. want to go and kill everything between here and there. Seriously, can I just take, I just need a 20 minute nap. Just a little power nap and we're off.

So, meanwhile, though, we'll go back to Khan. Khan has finished falling through the earth and has landed in a chamber. This story is like, I don't even know if it's can. I mean, I guess it is Kan. I guess it is in some of the books, but like, Khan, I'm full on air, again, air quotes. He meets Magnus, but he doesn't meet Magnus. He meets, like, spirit Magnus. Yeah, it's a spirit of Magnus.

And it's also like, you don't know if this is the remnants of Magnus. And because Magnus is basically pouting in the warp right now and is super sad because dad was mean to him. And the brother that he never liked just snapped his back over his name. Yeah, slaughtered him in all of his brothers. And he basically had to be cajoled into doing anything about it because he was just sitting there taking it. and Spirit Magnus may not even be conscious Magnus's spirit. It might be. It might be a memory of Magnus.

Yeah, you don't know what it is. But he does explain Spirit Magnus. I'm in the spirit world, man. Look at the size of that chicken. Yeah. Con at this point is Captain confused. I don't know what's going on. And Magnus just goes, I hear him.

He gives him 10 pages of exposition and just tells him what's happening. And Con goes, oh, shit, I should have probably listened. to Rogel Doorn and got the hell back to DeTara. So Magnus gives him all the fun details of. First off, Lehman did this, which is a dick move, but whatever. But Magnus actually does take fault. Magnus, to prove all of you wrong, Magnus admits he did something wrong. He admits this.

You can, but I guess to Brad's point, maybe it's a spirit, so whatever. I still don't think this is actually real Magnus. I think this is a portion of Magnus's subconscious. I mean, again, Primark's have, they're so powerful that they effectively can summon avatars of themselves almost. That's fair. So Magnus also does do two important things for Khan to kind of catch him up to the rest of everybody else. He explains the warp to him and tells him that the warp is this thing that they've been going through is evil. Yeah, but also, you know, this thing that I just told you was evil, I'm totally using a bunch of that power.

Yeah, I'm going to love it right now. and also tells him that Horace has been corrupted. So Khan now is being told by the person he trusts most, although it's a spirit of him, so there's all that, that Horace is corrupted, and Horace needs to effectively die. But then, for whatever reason,

Magnus then tries to convince Khan to join Horace, which Khan is not cool with and just kills the shade, and the shade explodes into a bunch of glass, blah, blah, blah, blah. It literally explodes. Yeah. While this is going on, we're going to, let's jump back into the warrior lodges in orbit. Which this part makes no sense, to be honest with you. Horace warps in, well, like the Horace's fleet warps. Yes, it's Mac, it's the Mortarians

fleet that warps. I'm saying, but Horace. Yeah, they warp in because they've been contacted by the warrior lodges and the, and Horace has responded the warrior lodges. But also, at the same time, there's a whole bunch of fighting and crazy shit going out. Yeah, so the ships are in, there's effectively a coup happening. I mean, actually, no, coup is a fun word. There's a mini civil war happening. Yeah, there's a slaughter happening. Within the white scars, where a bunch of the members of the warrior lodges who are loyal

to Horace. Because the warrior lodges are going deck to deck, killing people, and not letting anybody know if this is happening. So this is, the fleet itself is fighting. So then to make things even more fun, the, you know, Horace is fleet appears right outside all the white scar ships. But what, as the Brad's point is, but no one knows there's all this murder happening from the ships.

So a bunch of these white scar fleets sit there and ships start appearing around them, jumping out of the immaterial and standing around them. And they kind of look like they're friends, but much like with the Alpha Legion and the white scars earlier, there's no communication. Yeah, they're just sitting there. You kind of make up for yourself what's happening at this point in time, because are they waiting to see if they seize control, but they don't say.

So that's why I said. It makes a little bit of no sense because they didn't help the people on the board of the ships. They didn't hinder them. They didn't do anything. They just sat there and it's like they jumped in to see, oh, there's a fight happening? Let's go see that.

Let's just see what happened. Should we help these guys? Probably, but we're not going to. With that, though, back on the planet, the white scars and their new thousand son buddy just him, now are fighting their way back towards Jogadai Khan. And again, they kind of get overwhelmed. They only have one guy.

In my mind, so much special music shows up. You're right. They're completely surrounded. They're not ruined. And then Khan shows up, 80s music style. I'm not going to hum the theme song to Mortal Kombat, but effectively that gets played. And out of nowhere, Joggedy Khan appears and kills all of the deal. Just literally every day.

every single one of them. Because the one thing is that while the white scars were not psychic, Khan as a primark is. And the only way to kill true demons within the Imitarium is with psychic powers. So Jagged Khan and he ruins all. And he got just rush shop. Literally hair metal band from the 80s starts playing and he destroys all of them. And so at this point we're going to end up,

it's still, we're going to start being transitioning to another Legion. who has appeared. Now, out of nowhere, juggedy gone just killed a bunch of demons and pop, Mortarian appears with a bunch of his Death Shroud Terminators. Yeah, but they're all Jack at this point in time. So he makes Well, no, no, but I'm saying,

as far as Jack to him saying, he gives the worst pitch ever. Oh, Mortarian's useless here. Mortarian shows up after Conner. Worst sales pitch of all time. Yeah, but it's Mortarian. I mean, I love Mortarian, but did anyone of us think Mortarian was going to being a good salesman. No.

Mortarian tries to convince Khan because he looks at Khan as a peer. You also just are a weapon of the Imperium. You should join me over here. And you should join us and fight with Horace. Which is also 10 minutes ago, Magnus just explained how the source of all evil is what you're using and was like, no, man, like, no. Like, why would I join you? You're literally on the side of evil.

And Mortarian's like, but it'd be cool. And so, no surprise, they start fighting. Because Mortarian is the world's worst negotiation. Yeah, but Mortarian's got a process. And Mortarian's processes destroy everything. Slowly but surely. Yeah, his world of, like, let me negotiate. He, Horace got the chain.

Yeah. Horace should have probably showed up to make the, he should have closed the deal. If you got a set amount of character building points, you know, you took all of the charisma from Mortarian and gave it that a... That is a dump stand. That is a dump stand. That is a dump stand.

Yeah, Mertarian just has no purpose. His charisma is a one. How low can I set this? I'm taking it to that. I need these for other things. I need these for toughness. I'm going to maximize toughness. So these two fight,

and it becomes pretty evident quickly that Kahn's getting a little bit better of the fight. And Mortarian just says, all right, I try. and bales off world and just teleports out. Problem for con is con's just stuck on the planet. All of his ships up top, to make a Star Trek reference,

all the teleporter pads are currently being fought over by loyalists and traitors within his own legion. Well, shit. It's not going well. How about that? Luckily, there may or may not be a super powerful Thousand Sun Sorcerer. Who is armored with so much plot armor. It's, I really, like, it is kind of sad playing, you know, now we're in the 10th edition of this game.

I think Arvita should be, at least exist somewhere in the game, but he does. Wildly powerful. Yeah, but why doesn't he exist? He then uses psychic power to transport Khan himself and all of the Legion onto the bridge of the capital ship. And Khan is not super psyched about what's going down. Yeah. And proceeds to put on his boots.

of mighty ass kicking and start thunder doaming everyone that is not loyalist. Also, not real big on negotiating. Yeah. He turns this thing. And immediately at this point decides after multiple detours, maybe I should listen to Rogel Doorn. In the first place, yeah. But not completely.

He just kind of turns his leads in the direction. So he's like, I have to go back. to Tara. He did pick up like groceries. But on the way, I'm going to just... And the liquor store. Do a couple of bumpers into people who annoy me. So he decides to go back through and as he's going back towards Earth the side.

Oh, is there traders over here? I need to pause. I really think that Khan was completely ineffectual. He succeeded in every single thing he wanted to do. And all of them had almost no effect on the outcome. But they were just

all dick moves. He just just kept stopping at random places, beating up someone and leaving, and no one even knew what the hell is happening. Why are you here? Because you guys are traitor. It's like, all right, shouldn't you be back at earth? Yeah. I'm on my way. Shut up. I mean, that's really what happened. He just stops in, beats people up. They're like, what the hell, dude? Cool. Why? Like, be better. Now from there, we're going to jump to who I still believe. We do have to make a quick pause. And I know we said this a couple times during the cast so far, but I do have to stress because we started at the beginning, all. of this is happening at the exact time. These are not, this is not linear. We don't go from one to the next.

When I say one next, we are literally jumping to another side of the galaxy, starting back from where we were talking before. These are all happening right now. Like, everything is going on at the exact same time, which is very important to know because none of this works if it's in linear progression. Linear progression, you could have intervened. The idea here is this all happens everywhere, so there's no intervention. There's just, it just happens.

So we're going to jump to what is sadly maybe, for some of your opinion, my favorite space marine faction. Which is so funny because the ultra-braids. It's the ultramarines. No one has ever been set on a more glorious snipe hunt and Bobby G. And the ultra-marines are someone I enjoy, but I also own 11 armies. And they are the only, well, them in Guard are my only two Imperium Arm. And I just brought one back today. They are fantastic.

So the ultramarines, Horace knew from the onset were not turnable. Of all the people he could bring in the chaos, ultramarines and dark angels, and we'll get to Dark Angels later. I know you're all thinking it. But he thought he could never turn the Ultramarines and the Dark Angels. So he decides, screw the Ultramarines. I'm sending them on a milk run to the other side of the galaxy. With the originators of the Horace.

Yes. So he tells Bobby G that there's an Or so. Or con-confestation that he has to go deal with over on other side of the galaxy. Literally the other side. The other side. Like where is, where is it, horse is trying to go? Cool. What's the other side of the everything from that?

You're going there. And he sends them over there to kill the orcs. This is actually a big deal, though, because, and they made a thing about it in multiple books and stories, he super needed Bobby G. For all you guys that like Ultramarans, he knew. that if reboot Gileman was on Terra, he wasn't taking terror. Oh, yeah, that war was over. It's over immediately.

He just couldn't have the best technician in the galaxy. Gilliman and Doren together, it's over. You could get more, it doesn't matter how many, that's over. Yeah. So, surprise, surprise. And I also should quick mention, he does this before Istva. This is actually a, this is one of his many before moves, much like the sanguineous move. These all were done before.

So, no, so Gilman thinks it's weird that he's being asked to bring his entire legion to go fight orcs, and he has to do it with the word barriers. Which he has no connection. And doesn't really like, well, he has one connection to it. He did burn their capital city. True. Yeah. It's true.

Actually, he didn't even just do that. He did it multiple times, actually. Surprise, surprise, this is a trap. You're like, hey, man, the guy that I set fire to all the shit that he did. did the planet and he also kind of did it on several other things because they had the small and they had the small ones before the big before the big one you remember don't do that don't do that i told you not to do that and here's the consequences welcome to the ultimate of consequences so the word bearers they're not super excited really hate the ultramarines and so horace decides

my opinion here i believe horace always knew the word bearers were both a useless fighting force, in comparison to the other ones, but also completely untrustworthy, decides I'll just two birds, one stone this thing. I'll send the ultramarines over there, and I'll send the word bears that get their asses kicked by the ultramarines. So I did the little foreshadow there, but we know what's going to happen. They did start out winning hardcore. Yeah, out of nowhere, because the ultramarines are the ultimate rule followers, they believe

everyone else's rule followers. So why would someone attack me out of nowhere? So the ultramarines are engaging on golf, and the war bears arrive late, sort of, and out of nowhere just attack. And actually initially do really well. They capture ships. They start demolishing ships in orbit. They actually damage Gilliman's ships so much he actually has to retreat with his capital ship back into the warp. They are doing, in fact, one kind of cool story here is Lorgar, using.

is the, I don't know, teleprompter to call Gilliman. Oh, this is the best. He's like, gives him the housekeeping. And Gilliman answers the phone call saying, hey, what's up? Demon incursion. Yeah, and Lorgar uses us to launch a ton of demons into Gilliman's ship, uh, which Gilliman has to fight off and retreats of the word bears. Which as usual, no one talks about the fact that there's just like so many random imperial

guardsmen that run the ship. Yeah, there's a random dude. There was a dude just in the kitchen, cooking food. And imagine, like, cooking food for a space marine. It's not, you know, it is like, here's 14 pounds of meat. I don't know. He's just working his butt off. And out of nowhere, a bloodthirster appears next to him and stabs him and runs away

giggling. Like, all the Marines fight off the guys and you're like, yeah, but commsman Billy didn't really pull on this one. He just said, can someone help? Like, hey, nine, four. foot guy, can you deal with this thing here? It'd be super cool if you could reconnect my arm, which is somewhere over the other place. So the word bears are at this point just really pushing into Gilliman.

The fleet is having to retreat from orbit, leaving the planet just completely exposed, and the word bears decide we're going down to the planet to Jack these guys up. Yeah, the issue is that the ultramarines are tacticians. I mean, this is their specialty. They, the ultramarines pull off three ultra combos. That's another reference to an old game. Yeah. And Rick Roll, holy shit, beat the word bears down.

Yeah. I mean, just ruin them. There is no other. Yeah. They just crush them. They word bears are coming in. The word bears had everything. The ultramines just start noticing habits.

That's what the ultramines are very good. They notice habits. So they discover the habits within the word bears and just exploit them and counterattack. So the word bearers now start getting pushed back, then they're losing. Now, flip side to where the word bearers do here is they were doing this in twofold. One, they were trying to kill the ultramarines, but I think they realized that was never going to happen. Their real plan was to do their sorcerers. They're spelled the right.

Well, they're not as good as the Thousand Suns, but they are demon. Where they're the first devotees of Cannes. Yes, they actually are the original corrupted legion. So they are probably the best at ritual magic, which is literally what they're doing is they're doing a witchcraft and they're going to, I guess, curse the planet. And close the warp. Yep. And so what they were doing effectively was trapping the ultramarines on this far side of the galaxy to, as Brad mentioned earlier, keep them out of the fight. And they begin closing this trap around them.

But Gilliman figured that one out. So Gilliman realizes, as it's happening, goes, oh, I see what you're doing. I am kicking your ass. And you're hoping that while I'm kicking your ass, I don't notice all of your buddies closing all the doors. So Gilliman grabs his fleet, jumps out of system. And there's a side story here where we're not going to go into about he does leave quite a few of his altruits behind who are stuck fighting what remains of the word bearers. They did beat the shit up. Yeah.

Well, in subterranean, there's a whole thing in. Kalth where they're fighting. The hero of cough. It comes back post-heresy. We can't where you get more of that. They have a really bad model for him. He is terrible. We're going to jump now back to the Imperium. So Malcador

realizes that Horace is a real threat. There's also the thing that Malcador might be able to experience time different than that. Actually, we should probably mention real quick as to a squix. I know. Brad, who's Malcador? The Emperor's best bro and another perpetual.

And the second most powerful cycle in humanity? Yeah, but the big thing is in on this, because I actually, they've made reference to it a couple times that I think that he actually experiences time differently because he's so connected to the warp that he know. They never just straight out, they make references to it because he is such a powerful psycher.

It's kind of like the pre-cog thing where he sees what's going on. Right. So he knows that this battle happened here and then they teleported over and then, you know, again, Warp Travel, Manipulating Time happens before. He knows that that's going on, even though he's not in that. Throughout the heresy, interesting thing with Malkador that, at least I noticed, was Malcador seems to be the one leading the effort against Horace. We don't really hear the Emperor doing it. It's always Malkador. He's still doing his project, which is weird. He's got a lot of blinders on during this. The emperor, again, the overarching theme of the emperor is the emperor is a selfish

key theme here. It's like, I heard things are falling apart. Yeah, I'm building the addition on the house. Go away. Yeah, I'm busy over here. I don't know why you guys are bothering me. He would be the world's worst fireman. So, Malcador decides that Horace has to die and begin sending assassins after.

We're getting devastating. It turns out sending, and let's talk about the assassins for a minute. So there are multiple houses, what do they call it? It's just different groups of assassins. And there are Vindicare's, there's Eversaurus, this Calexas. And each of them have their own specialty, either shooting, combat, deception. They all work. And they're saying them like kind of one at a time after Horace.

They are getting Rickrook. But also, we have to pause on this because it's a big thing that we do need to talk about what Horace is, which no one knows. and even Malkaura probably doesn't know at this point in time, which Horace is fully starting to be chaos infused at this point. This isn't Horace. This is Horace 2.0. You're not trying to kill a human.

You're trying to kill a man. These are primarks or even humans. You're not trying to even kill a superhuman. You're trying to sell a superhuman infused with demons. With all four chaos gods choosing you up. Because he has made deals with all of them at this point in time. He is pinnacle of Horace at this point in time. time. So they decide,

Malcador decides, all right, one assassin time isn't enough. We're going to go throw all of them. We'll grab one from every group. Which is another big deal. There we go. Assassins just don't fail. Yeah. Oh, yes, good point. He sent one at a time because

why wouldn't I? They always kill whatever we send them to get. And it's not even close, by the way. They don't wound Horace. No, they get near it. It's like just gone. So they decide to put these assassins together. And one kind of cool footnote on this is the Imperium doesn't acknowledge assassins exist. This is one of these things in the story where like, because even the Imperium, as much as we all like the kind of shit talk them, they wanted to be the good guys. So the good guys wouldn't use evil as evil infused with name it power assassins.

I mean, if you ever want to have a fun story, read about Eversaurus. and how they make those things. That's super jacked. Yeah, it's like, whoa. You know what the Calenus. Actually, sorry, the Coluxes. The Collexis is the, the Collexisians is by the worst one. Yeah.

Whoa. No, boy, no. Yeah. Not happy place. Psychic blanks, they get tortured forever. Not cool. Yeah. So that's what these things are.

So they aren't these incredible beings and they decide to bring six of them together and go kill Horace. They've got a planet in mind. They've got a target in mind. They realize that there's a planet that Horace. liberated for the emperor called Dagonet. And Dagonet is this really impressive, I guess, hive world, I guess I would probably put it at, where it's critical.

It's got manufacturing. It's got everything you're going to need. The issue is that Dagonet went into complete rebellion during the Horace heresy because But it's another one of those half and a half of the population, which is the populace, love the emperor. But the leadership there were loyal to Horace. Horace corrupted all of the ruling class. but the people are effectively,

they were one of the planets that are already almost worshipping the emperor as a god. They love him. They love the emperor. So now you've got a full rebellion. It's a standard like French Revolution. It's bottom-up rebellion coming up. So they realize Horace is going to Dagonet. This is their chance.

Little detour here into everyone's favorite chaplain Erebus. Erebus, during all all these assassination attempts towards Horace realizes, well, why can't I play this game? Why don't we get an assassin and we'll just go kill the emperor with an assassin? And he ends up, through blind luck or whatever, getting control of a very special assassin called the Black Pariah. The Black Pariah was a specially made Collexus Assassin who was an incredible blank.

And real quick detour, a blank is someone. who not only is immune to psychic powers, but actually absorbs psychic powers. So if you put a blank next to a sorcerer, the sorcerer can't cast. Right. And because they don't exist in the war. Yeah.

So it actually draws warp energy in. So you can imagine the power one of these has. Chaos can't see them because they don't exist. So they're this insane force. And this one was made by mankind to be the most powerful assassin ever. And then falls in the hands of chaos. No one. who then infuse this blank super assassin with the powers of chaos to make what is effectively the most

powerful assassin. We'll be right back after a quick break. The assassins eventually make it planet's side. They split up to go and track down Horace. The Prius smokes two of them. Yeah, the pariah just comes out of nowhere. So now they've got a problem. They've got to kill Horace and they've got to kill this pariah.

Because the one thing about assassins is they also realize this pariah. is not there to kill assassins. Well, after this, it's kind of funny because the Vindicare is super psych, thinks he shoots Horace in the head because Horace is giving a speech. However, it's a huge setup because they kind of already knew, which they should have known because they already know assassins are on the planet. So they body double Horace. It doesn't actually work.

And the funny part about this is that they kill Horace's body double. then Horace decides to slaughter the entire planet. Yeah, he wasn't super excited that somebody shot at him, even if it wasn't him. So at this stage, the assassins have realized that their mission is a failure, and they have no chance of killing Horace. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, you're right. No chance.

Absolutely no chance whatsoever. Which is, by the way, one of the books, it's laughable. Horace catches one of the assassins, holds him down like you would, your little brother, like basically palms his head, and explains to him how pointless. it is. Also, that he knew about them. The whole time. Yeah, but he just wanted to see what they could do. And of course, at this point, Horace is fully carried into the chaos and doesn't really care that the assassin killed a bunch of people on his ship. It's just like, I kind of want to know your capabilities. Let's

see how it works out. That was so given that, they decided, all right, well, plan B, let's go kill this black pariah before it kills the emperor. So they decided to go after that. This Brad was successful. It takes one of them sacrificing themselves and then the other one's shooting him, but Vindicare does get him in the end, and he is removed. Least favorite assassin. Everyone's favorite assassin. Everyone loves a good sniper.

Does have a good hammer and boulter episode. So the funny part of this, though, is that this is where the fall of the word bears within Horace continues. Horace discovers that this black pariah thing exists. Its entire purpose was to kill the emperor. And, Greg, what was it? Horace really, really wanted to do? Kill the emperor.

So... Not his favorite thing. Also, Erebus is the biggest douche in the galaxy. I don't know about any other galaxy, but for sure, in the Milky Way, Aribus is trashed here. Yeah, he gets a little bit mad at Erebus. It explains to him. I want to go into this just a little bit. Because of the fact that this is about the time, the word bears fall out of favor,

because of the fact that Horace is still led by the fact that he is the good guy doing bad things to do the right thing, even though he's doing a bunch of bad things. But his overall goal, the ends justify any means, absolutely. But the word bear is, for him, they don't have honor. They're not doing it for the right reasons. Yeah. Huge air quotations, by the way. Well, the word, problem with the word bearers. The word bearers are, weirdly, they think they're the puppet master. And Horace is the puppet. Horace thinks he's the puppet master and everyone else is the puppet. And we're going to cover more in later episodes of like how far this fall between Horace and the word

bears get of, yeah. I mean, the word bears are probably closer to correct, though. Horace, they're going to defeat your father. He did you wrong. You need to show him that you are right. but not only you're not just showing him that you're right, you're showing him that you're more powerful in your righteousness. And that's why he's so angry about the assassin being said is

I don't get to basically justify all my action. Well, again, you talked about earlier, the assassins weren't even like canon for the Imperium. They were a secret piece in the Imperium because they felt this type of, the type of warfare was wrong. And so when you're then trying to say that the Imperium is wrong and that they're the evil ones, and then you do their thing,

but worse. Like way worse, but the circle back before this moment, they have now, the black pariah is dead. Horace is not. So, I mean, technically they did assassinate something.

And the black pariah was, didn't want to be the black pariah, which is another thing. The black pariah was literally a, I don't even know how to explain it on this one. It's a demonic infused assassin. We'll definitely have to do an episode on how assassinated. are made because it basically takes all the joy of making a space marine and adds completely horrific

horridious but the joy of making a space marine there this is the assassinated product of making a about assassin is borderline chaos yeah and then the black pariah is hey was chaos yeah we heard you did something that was just awful and we wanted to add to that we want we went in on this yeah we We heard it was the worst thing ever, and we were like, is it, though? We can make it just a little bit. We can make it 10% shittier. We can improve on this. So at this point, they come to the realization that the assassinations of Horace are just not going to work.

They can't use assassins on it, unless. And that first story was a set up for the second story, because the second story is a lot more funny. When, if you don't succeed at first with all your relationships, assassins. No, you do. Why don't you send the angriest of your prime marks to go deal with this with his super special spear? So assassination attempt Mark two. After attempting to assassinate Horace, they decide with a number of assassins, Malcador gets together with one of Brad's true buddies in life, Lehman. Spirit animal. So what was Lehman's viewpoint of how to handle Horace, Brad? now.

Sorry, get drunk first, then punch now. Get drunk. Punch Horace. So, well, I mean, specifically stab Horace with said spear, but that was still the plan. That's still the plan. So they decide at this point, all right, we can't kill Horace. What if we just wreck him and slow him down? So Lehman's sent over to go deal with Horace.

My God, the space wolves have such an impressive win record. and it is all in spite of their terrible tag. I love the spaces, by the way. Oh, you're incredible. But God damn, their tactics are awful. They literally just go, hey, what's your plan? We're going to bomb into the Vengev-Vos. Horace's flagship, the Vengeable Spirit.

We're going to bomb the Vengeful Spirit. And we're going to do so much damage that Lehman is going to YOLU Swagins in with a couple dudes and just go for it. Their entire plan was, we talked before. they were trying to set up in prior assassination attempts. Maybe we can draw him out here and we can do this thing here. And Liam and Russ went, oh, I know where Horace's ship is. I'll just warp.

I'll jump out of warps into that, attack the ship, me and a bunch of my buddies. With no plan of like how they're going to get out. Orr, apparently, run into the ship, fight our way through all of them, and then kill Horace. And everyone, because the problem with Lehman Russ telling this plan is you can't say, hey dude that's a stupid plan because it's worked so many times his plans are always terrible they're erigard plans i'm just going in and we're going this way and everyone went all right go that way isn't a suicide mission and so leman goes to his legion the space wolves says the space wolves brad hey a bunch

hey space wolves me your primark is going to go on a suicide mission who wants to come with me everybody did. Let's do this. This is going to work for sure. There's no, why are you calling it a suicide mission? This sounds awesome. I'm just in. I've already started panning in what the scalds are going to sing about. We're golden. Let's do this. And that's exactly what they do. They show up in system. Weirdly enough, it almost works that way. They blast into the ship. Again, this is Horace's main fleet. They didn't trick Horace into getting himself alone on a planet.

They went, where's Horace? He's with his whole fleet. Cool. Okay, so I'm going to go there. They basically slammed their fleet into the fleet to get him close enough to the vengeful spirit. And then he just punched his way through. He doesn't even teleport onto the bridge. He punches his way through the whole ship.

Just drives a ship into the other ship. gets out of said ship in the new ship and begins fighting everyone he can find in the ship, not knowing where Horace is, it's just going, well, if I just keep killing them, obviously, I'll end up in the right spot. Yeah. And also, he is, like, freaked out, though, because the whole ship is wackily corrupted. There's, like, basically tentacles shooting out. There's corrupted.

There's Skittari. There are demons. There are. Like, in the ship. It's just. And he. And again, to the people that don't really know about the warp, you're like, hey, man, what the shit is going on right now? But of course.

Right to the space wolves, their viewpoints, hey, what the shit is that? Let's see what else when we stab it. Yeah, exactly. It's cool. Next thing. So this is super weird, but yeah, I'm not going to break stride even for a moment. I'm going to continue to run this way and kill everyone. And every space wolf players listen to out is like exactly.

Yeah, it's true. This is why space wolves are awesome. Their viewpoint is I'm going from point A to point B. Everything between those two points, I'm stabbing. And I love the note of this. It is a big deal. John puts, they fought their way to, and they find out that Horace, his brother, is heavily corrupted. But that doesn't really do it justice.

Horace is infused again with all four chaos gods. He is a chaos monstrosity at this point in time. And he also emanates chaos power. He has a pulsing wave of chaos coming off of him. So Horace Horace tries to talk to Lehman Lehmann listens to him I really think that Leeman only listened to him

because he was so like stunned by... Dude, what is wrong with you? Exactly, what the shit is happening to you. He's effectively that your best friend is walked into your house with a Mike Tyson tattoo on his face and you're just just stare at it for a minute like what's happening here.

Yeah. I mean he literally was, he looks like the transformation to abomination basically from Marvel. You're just like hey man it took me a second to go what the shit is going on with you he lets him give his whole speech and then finishes his speech by going yeah but I really

doesn't even think he had listened to the speech I really think it took him a second to go dude you're super weird right now because Lehman Ross is not known to be the you know and screw the novel because they make him out to be clever Lehman Ross to me and will always be the dude that punches

first ask questions later 100% that's his legion their whole purpose is this. And to give him credit, he is never, forever, rever, ever, ever going to win. Horace is on all of them. He tested positive for yes, check on. Oh, yeah. This is a battle. And Lehman knew this. Lehman knew he couldn't kill Horace. Lehman was literally here just to stab Horace. And you can take this from two different perspectives. You can a perspective of clever Lehman, where he just, he knows if he can

wound Horace, maybe he can help him and blah, blah, blah. or my viewpoint where he just wanted to stab horace. I'm just going to punch my way through you. And he just was like, I'm just going to fight my through everything and stab you. Giving the space with people props, Lehman Ross did effectively start in the aft of the ship. Yeah. And fought to the bridge. Yeah.

Beat the shit out of everyone. Demons, corrupted space marines. Did not matter. Didn't matter. I'm going through all of you. He was just trying to check how many, like, different things he could. kill on his way there. He was on a, he had a quest in Workraft and basically he was like, I need to make sure I kill one of everything. Doing this. But at this point, Horace now is

not going to have any more of this. They are fighting. And Horace, I'm sorry, gouges. Yeah. So effectively gouges Lehman Russ while Lehman stabs him with his spear of Russ. The cool thing about the spear of Russ is spear of Russ is spear of Russ is is one of the more powerful. It's an artifact of holy power. I don't even know what to say what. And this suddenly pulls all of the chaos corruption out of Horace. And Lehman is looking at his original brother and gives him a chance.

However, Horace is already rationalized why he is right. Yeah. Now, again, I think this goes back to way, we did this two casse ago, when Horace has already rationalized all bad behavior, not just because he's chaos and corrupt. Everything that he was, he already knew. He saw the visions of the future. He knew he had to do terrible, terrible things, but he has already convinced himself that he is in the right. Then he obviously accepts a bunch of corrupted gifts to make him living embodiment of chaos. But Horace has already, internally already accepted the fact that,

I am right. I've rationalized any, literally any behaviors that happen from now till I accomplish my goal. Anything I do is I am the right person in this argument. Exactly. Horace, when given a chance by Russ to stop his rebellion, says no. And it gives a reason, though. That's when Russ and everybody, I mean, the readers know that Horace will never stop because uncorrupted Horace still believes now that he is in the right of this decision to stop the emperor who he now thinks is going to destroy mankind and he is already convinced and the only person that he needs to convince himself. Yep.

That he is right. And then to give more space wolf props, he drops the people's elbow on Lehman. Oh yeah. And a bunch of space wolves who know for sure they are going to get wrecked. Body block. Just drop him. And this is, I mean, this is one of the coolest stories. We're talking about, because we talk about a lot of how much the Legion members love their Primark.

I don't think any of them love their, their Primark. No one likes the Primac as much as leaving us. And so here we are. Horace is about to kill Lehman Russ. Horace is a monstrosity of power. Because he also juices, but he effectively walks back and powers back up. And what they do as a result is his, his, his, Because once he basically pulls the spear out, he infuses him.

The chaos all comes back in. Yeah. And the space wolves just jump on him, for lack of it, just literally body blocking. They pile up. They knock Horace to the ground with so many bodies while. And they get. Pull Lehman Russ back through the ship, fighting this. And there are space wealth or spacebole just sacrificing themselves so that they're

Leiman doesn't die. They are literally jumping into the wood chipper because maybe the next person that jumps into the wood chipper stalls the wood chipper. Stalls the wood chipper. And they do this. And eventually they do get Lehman back. He's drug back to his ship. He does escape back.

Now, this sad part of this is between this, Prospero, the attack by Alpha Legion, the space wolves are pretty jacked up now. They're less than 25% of their original fighting force. Also, in their escape, they end up going. into roll the dice into the warp. They literally set the course to not here. That is the plug-in course to somewhere that isn't right now here. And then they jump super far away, unfortunately.

The only advantage out of this is that Horace is actually pretty badly wounded at this stage. He never gets unwounded from this. He carries this. So what happens after this stage is Horace, is now severely wounded. And we'll keep this as a bit more linear. The challenge is, much like what happened, you know, before, Horace now is, again, comatose into dying so, well, what worked last time?

Let's go talk to the chaos gods. Let's talk to the chaos gods. And again, they throw Horace's soul into the imitarium. This is where Horace becomes less horace and more just puppet for the chaos. He makes it, he has to make a new deal with the chaos got. The shitty, shitty, shitty deal. His first deal was the, you get a free try. Free trial.

Come on in, why don't you work with us? We'll help you a little bit. This one, Horace gave him his soul and his legion over to the chaos. He's full puppet style on this. This is where Horace becomes not Horace. Up until right now, Horace is still Horace. Horace is still possibly redeemable. Even though Horace has rationalized all of his behavior, he's still

Horace, he actually still thinks he is doing the right. I'm going to do a bunch of bad acts, but I'm still doing the right thing. Once he does this, this is the actual true failing of Horace. Horace finally goes, this is where Horace does wrong. I mean, he does wrong or whatever. Well, Horace to this point, he gives himself over. Up until this point, Horace felt he had control. Horace believed that he was leading it and the chaos gods were his allies. At this, this stage. At this point, he still think they're not even allies. He thinks he's using Cass. Yeah. And then at this stage, he actually does give himself over to them so that to achieve this vulnerable. This is the weak moment of Horace. This is where Horace loses control of himself

and becomes a puppet of the chaos. God's affected. All right. Well, this feels here a really good point to break right here. So let's recap. So so far, traders have thrust themselves into a spread of attacks all over the loyalist forces. The loyalists are actually largely winning the skirmishes. I mean, Dark Angels are doing fine. Blood angels are doing pretty well. But they are battered and they are bruised. Well, I'm going to go back on it. John says this and goes, they're kind of doing well.

The problem is they are winning 90% of the fights. The 10% of the fights that they don't win are holy crap slaughterfest stuff. Yeah. When they lose, they lose this. bad bad like chaos is losing by a point or two it went to a judge's decision when chaos wins it is a first round knockout everyone's dead and also they punch the guy in the court like there are no raven guard right yeah i'm just saying that a bunch of guys kind of hanging out like hey remember everyone else yeah so on our next episode we're going to focus on the last of these stories of corruption

and with the theme that we're trying to tell you all here is this idea that chaos to brad's point They're winning the key things, but they're starting to fray. The edges of chaos are starting to fray where they just, if they were organized, you got this. And they're just starting to fall apart. And our last little bit piece here is going to dive more heavily into how that goes. Once again, this is John Barzotti and Bradchester. This guy. Please, we now have a Discord.

We'd love you guys to join it. It's in the show notes. We also have a Facebook page. Please join, communicate with us. We want to hear what you guys want to know. We want to hear all the things we got wrong, primarily all the things that Brad got wrong. And so we can then post it all to see. But join us, converse with us.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a great night.