The 40k Lorecast - Episode 62 - Drukhari pt 3 - Wych cults, Kabals, Mercenaries and The Arenas

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

On today's cast we conclude our coverage of the Drukhari. We open with a very deep dive into the Wych cults of the Drukhari, their organization functions and features. After this we jump over to the Covens, to talk about their origins before the fall and the incredible powers they now wield within the Dark Realm. From there we dive into our personal favorite units in the Drukhari line the mercenaries, with deep dives into the Incubi, Scourges, and amazing (while all but useless on the tabletop) Mandrakes. We then close with some coverage of the Arenas of the Drukhari and how they serve more than just the Drukhari in their purpose and affects.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're going to be wrapping up our coverage of the Jukari with a focus on some of like more of the sub factions within them. Cool parts. Yeah, some of these are actually way better. Man, drakes. As always, please like and comment on the cast.

The comments and likes really do help boost us up. We're in like the top leisure podcast in the Spotify and over six countries. Half them don't speak English. So that's kind of badass. Which is cool because we're bad at speaking English. It's impressive. Yeah, sorry, guys, in advance. It really does, when you guys do these things, it helps us broaden our audience and reach more people.

I refuse to spend money, like doing fake advertising and all this crap with us. So this is how we reach people. We're weirdly against that. Yeah. It's not even like we're not doing it. We're kind of like really against it. I'm really against people. Like, I take a lot of pride.

If you go to our, I mean, at time of recording, we have 3,000 reviews. We're 4.9 stars. Every one of those reviews is real. and that's from you all. And I just honestly, thank you for doing that because it makes me feel better that all of the achievements we have are real,

not from... Well, let's give a quick shout-out because a lot of people have done us a lot of favors on Reddit and Facebook, really pushing us out. And I do want to give a hearty thank you. That's...

Yeah, it's true. I love it. I see every now and then, I'll see someone, you know, I'll be on Reddit. I'll see someone comment, oh, the 40K Lourcast is great. And, you know, I'd call you out,

but it's just your Reddit username. So, but if you're the one who did it, thank you. Same with Facebook. We see you able to do on Facebook all the time. Thank you. It means a lot to us that, that, you know, you guys like what we're doing. So always here. We also promote our Discord because it's awesome.

This Discord was created over a year ago. It's kind of a fun place people interact with, interact. The goal originally was just to give you guys a place to talk to us and that it exploded beyond that, didn't it? Huh? It doesn't seem that long. Times meetings for me, I'm old. Yeah, it's only, we're like, this is episode 62.

So we're 10 episodes past one year. It's been great. But the, the Discord now is over actually 3,500 members at time of recording. A lot of weekly interaction. And it's turned into an incredibly positive community where you can, of course, you can still ask us questions and talk to us. We can also talk to a lot of other like-minded people and what I consider a very healthy, can't say safe space anymore, but a very healthy space. Everyone there seems to actually have everyone else's best interest at heart.

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some time talking about 40K, learning more about 40K, from anything from gameplay to lower to just memes, come join. Totally free. We get nothing out of it other than just. joy. So come on in. Also, in the show notes for the cast, you can see a couple links. One is to the Discord. Another one is to our new web page, the 40KLorecast.com, well, the new version of a ugly old web page. I told you. Purple and pink wasn't a good idea. I made it in the morning while drinking coffee on a Saturday. I probably should put more effort in. Also a link to our Patreon for those

of you who want to support us and help us out, get more equipment, more this on. the last castor, I'd me call out Brad for constantly making the noise of his soda can hitting the table. And he's now, like, overly protective as he lowers it down. It's been a big way. With my weird, shaky hands too. Yeah. I don't want this to bang on the table because John called me out for it because John has to listen to what he edits. Anyway, it's also helped us do things. Like, the patrons helped us do things like hire an audio engineer, buy new equipment,

improve sound dampening, all those things to overall make the cast sound better. So to those of you who have helped out so far, thank you for those of you who are going to help us out in future. Also, thank you. Lastly, of course, though, Brad coaches 40K. 30 years of playing over a decade of coaching experience. Anyone who's looking to play this game at kind of a higher level. And higher level can be, I'd never played it before. Yeah, so playing it once would be a higher level. Brad has coaching available for that. He does take a lot of pride in it as much as, you know, sometimes I do this and I kind of shit talk him while we're doing this. But the truth of the matter is I'm actually very proud of what he does, too.

He takes a lot of pride in it. He enjoys helping people get better at the game because he doesn't really want. His goal is to make it so that you don't have to kick yourself for making a stupid mistake and lets you actually, that way you can actually enjoy the game. With that, you can either go to our website and click a link to find him. You go to our Discord and click a link to find him. Or you can email him at Old Man Brad 40K at gmail.com. And for those of you who are writing that down,

to steal his identity, get in line. I mean, don't, there's so much, there's so much spam. All right. Anyway, back to the Jukari. And let's just dive right in. So on the last cast, we covered in depth the main faction of the Jukari, which are the cabals.

The cabals are the ruling party of the Jukari, for lack of a better phrase. But there's other key groups within the Jukari. These ones may not, like, challenge the cabals, for power, but they play a critical role in how much power those people have. And with their backing and their forces, they actually can move, can swing the tides of power. You have the power. If you have the cult and the cult and the cult, cult, cult in the coven's backing. You can go pretty far. Yeah. Exactly. So let's start with the first ones, which are the witch cults. Or as I call them,

the Cirque de Soleil of murder. I mean, you're not wrong. That's really all that they are. I mean, it's pretty goddamn cool, though. Oh, they're amazing. They're amazing. So, you know, I'm going to set this up first off with what a lot of times they look like. Because this is one of the most terrifying things in 40K.

You're in, we're 40, I don't even know the exact year anymore. We're 40 plus thousand years. We're the 41s, yeah. We're the 41's now. But you're going in with your armored. You're, you've got. your huge gun, auto targets. You've got a foot of seramite armor around you.

And then you've got a girl with a top knot, wearing a bikini and high boots, doing backflips charging at you with a what looks to be a short dagger. And you go, something is wrong now. And then you get poisoned. And then you get poisoned and stabbed. And don't understand what happened.

That has to be disheartening to the warriors in the 41st millennia. You're just standing there going, did they just not wear armor at all? Like, you're like, no, they're kind of also, they're really fast. Yeah. I mean, orcs don't wear armor either, though. Let's not, let's not underline.

Well, they think they are. That's a good point. They don't think the bullets can hit them and the bullets just don't hit them like a cartoon. Yeah. Yeah. Fair point. So which cults, they're a leaveover from the pleasure cults. So post-pleasure cult, people kind of went a couple different routes within it.

The most normal of the pleasure cults were the cabal who just kind of, who, you know, what became the capitalite warriors. These are people who enjoy inflicting pain on others, but they do it, you know, via murder, effectively. Well, it's one of the biggest things with that. It's not just that they take pleasure in the dominance over another because of their skill. Yeah. So they try to raise their skill levels to just unhurt, unworldly, their magic, basically. What the witch cults did was a little bit different.

The witch cults, their joy and their power come from the final strike. And what they love to do is actually kind of build a crescendo of movement until they deliver their final blow. And witch cults, so for example, they call it the artistic kill. What they love to do is like lots of small wounds, you know, onto somebody until at the end, they deliver the killing blow. It's because they want to savor their suffering. Yeah. But it's not even just their suffering. they want to instill despair at the fact that you're so much, there's nothing you can do, it's inevitable.

Yeah. But it's to torment their victim. And by tormenting their victim, it's at the very end they get even more release of this energy. So to Brad's point, for a fighting style, they wear skin tight clothing. It's basically, I mean, in the earlier models, there were a couple of them that were a girl in bikini with knee-high boots. and then GW realized that's a bit much. And then flipped it over. It was just basically a skin-tight clothing.

I will say there are male witches. We'll get to them in a little bit. They serve a little bit different purpose. And it first sounds kind of cool. And then you realize, no, it's actually horrible. But anyway, their whole fighting style is just speed. They... We've got to go speed and precision.

Yeah, they're in and out. They have otherworldly precision on the strikes. Yeah, the irony is the witches probably could kill their victims in a quarter of the time that it takes. takes, but they need to create the agony. It's true. Yeah, it's massively less. And they need to create the agony.

Actually, let's actually jump into the male fighters so quick, because it actually is funny. There are male members of the witch cults. This is just a fun story I like. And they're there for breeding purposes. I just want to say, yeah, sure, they're there. Yeah. But I firmly believe that, you know, they're there for breeding, which people are like,

ha, ha, it'd be pretty cool. This is 100% praying mantis style. I guarantee you they'll get murdered and tortured to death. there's a lot of male helions in the models. Yeah, with Helians and Beastmasters. Those are the two groups. You should leave. You don't want to get murders.

You get murdered. That's the whole point. Like your options are, oh, you could be, we're going to use you for breeding. Cool, what happens after? Don't worry about it. How come I never see anyone leave the concubine chamber, any male ever leave it afterwards?

Again, that's not important. You should have went. You'd see him if you went out the trash disposal. Yeah. Check the drain. Yeah, there he is. So to add the thing about the witches is the main thing for them is to instill fear and despair in their opposition. And they do this not so much by having a scary look.

Like they're not wearing like creepy masks or any of those things. They do it by just making it so your death feels inevitable but not guaranteed. So that you always keep fighting because you believe you could get them. And like so for example, they wear no armor. they're carrying a usually very some of them use whips but a lot of them carry a small blade and a pistol and even those whips by the way are designed just to me well the pistols aren't even used in like in the arenas which we're going to yeah exactly so the whole thing is is that with the witches it's it's to create this so you look at them and you think to yourself all i have to do is just hit them once

if i just hit them once then i'll win and they'll die and so you always have this piece of hope that they take away from you at the very last strike, turning your hope into despair. One other note by the witches, I like to point out, is that they're not looking for a fair fight. You know, a follower of corn,

for example, takes joy in defeating an equal or better opponent. They want the other glory for four corn. Eldar is the same way. Eldar just, you know, they want to, Eldar want the battle just over.

Their whole thing is like... They don't want to lose anybody. That's their whole thing. Yeah, let's say externally. The elder are the opposite of this, where the Eldar just don't want to die. So they're going to come in. If they see an opponent, snuff them.

That's it. We're done. The witch cults are the kind of in between the two of them. They want to extend the battle out for this fear, but they also don't want to die. So they tend to only pick opponents they can easily beat. Like a regular member of the witch cult would probably never take on a space marina in combat. Could they defeat them? Maybe.

But it's not a fight they would want because the space marine would never be a feat. you're full of them. There is exceptions of that rule on the top tops. Well, yeah, suck you about regular witch code. You're right. You go to like a really high end witch code. But again, it's because they always, the thing about witch code is they always punch down. That's the way to think about it. They always fight someone who

they know they can defeat because that creates more despair on the opponent. They don't want an opponent who thinks they have the upper hand to get excited. They want an opponent to just constantly be lashing towards them to not die. And before any of you get upset, yeah, Lilith Hesperex,

did one single hand at a chaos lord, but it's Lilith and duh. They take, they take, I think that there's sometimes, in the arena, they'll take on challenges. I think that when they go on real raids and stuff like that.

But even those challenges, it's a little bit different of a setup, but even, we talk about challenges, there are the rare ones in the arena, and where I cover the arena at the end of the cast, we'll dive more deeply into it. But in that scenario,

It's there are the who is the best like title fight, but a lot more of it is actually I am, you know, they're going to take on 20 beasts or 30 like, you know, former like colony soldiers type things. It's more, it's always designed for the witch to have the upper hand because no one's actually just talk about the arenas. You know, let's talk about the arena. It'd be easier to explain when we explain when arena is. So the arenas are one of the really key parts. and all drew Kari lore, Unar. When we talk about Yonari,

the arena are a massive part of that. They're so awesome. They are. The arena itself, it could be, you can remember, we're talking about fighting in the sky, on the ground,

everywhere. These are the Colosseum times a thousand. Yeah, and let's spend the time of that. So each cabal owns a section of the dark city, right? And one of the main things they will build in these dark cities are these giant arenas.

And this is because a cabal is neat. If a cabal wants to gain power, it's not just the killing of the other groups, but you also have to grow the size of your cabal. The more powerful, the more successful you are, the more people will join you. So they also build, as we said in the last cast, they're still Eldar.

They build artistic things. So each witch cult has an arena that they fight in, and each of these arenas are built primarily, by the cabals. They were funded by the coals. It's almost 100%. Yeah. The witches themselves become, they have patrons.

Yeah. They're funded by patrons. And then they are, well, we'll go into the covins. They're juiced up by. Yeah, they're juiced up too. Very heavily. But like, it's a big deal on this because that's just what they do. And they're, this isn't always.

But to the most part, they're semi outside of all the intrigue, unless it forwards their purposes. Very much so. So the arenas themselves, these are, you know, at their core, they were written by GW to be like the gladiatorial arenas of their Romans,

but turn up to a million. Yeah, it's so crazy. I mean, it's cartoonish. You've got spinning blades that are both fixed in place somewhere, but also ones that just jump out of nowhere. They have zero gravity well, so all of a sudden,

the combatants can find themselves either unknowingly end up in one or they can, or they can just, actually fight in zero gravity to put on a cool display. And they also have, I mean, in an arena, they will have ships. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we'll get there.

You also, you also have random beasts just. Oh, that's always, by the way. Yeah. They're just random, like, like warp beasts wandering around it. And to Brad's point, the combat's also not just on the ground. You know, they fight in the sky. They've got jet bikes. They're shooting around.

We've got helions who are sitting on freaking, like, flying hoverboards, ripping through the sky, even inside the stands, they'll actually fight inside the stands. So when you attend these events, the air becomes thick with like blood because it's coming from everywhere. Blood, the screams of those dying, there's echoes throughout. And there's something happening everywhere you look. And that's why it's such a big deal. And this is why it's a big deal for the witches to show themselves to be not just I can kill

people, cool, everybody can get. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, neat. Yeah, you have to be, your theatrical ability of killing has to be second to nut because also there's a billion different things going on. If you want to have anybody put their eyes to you, draw money to your cult. Get those people that give you money. And one of the cool things about these arenas, though, is they also echo inside them, all of the screams and the agony. And what happens is all of the, as we said before, the Drew Carrey draw power from pain. Those in the, the audience actually start gaining power. So these arenas serve a lot of purposes, not the least of which is that if you attend the arena games and your Jukari, you actually will just power up

sitting there. Well, it's not even just powering up. You don't die. Right. You don't also, yes, you're powering up, but the best thing is you're not, you're not withering away. You're also covering away. Yeah, the Solnash pole. So these arenas that. So these arenas that, thousands, millions, we don't know how many people sit there, all just sit and absorb. From some of the stories, they have to be seating a million people. Because these are otherworldly, it's just hugely big. And that this piece, though, this absorption is one of the main reasons that cabals build them, too, is for the archons. Because as we said, everyone, no matter who you are, have to take in this power from pain.

An archon is the most, I mean, I'd but say murderable. No one is more in danger in the dark city than actually an arc. I would actually argue slaves, the slaves of the Dukari are safer than the archons are. No one's actively trying to kill that. That's the thing. Every second of every day. And everyone is trying to kill it, everything every day. So the archons need a way to gain the power from pain without exposing themselves.

That's what the arenas do. They can sit in the arena. and theoretically, you know, just safely absorb all this pain. Now, there was a story that will come up later of that not going right. Great. For one of them. One of the key pieces about witches, and we hinted to it earlier, are their combat drugs. Again, one eighth edition back.

Really, one eighth edition back. Did everyone cheat with it? Yeah, they did. We both know they did. So in eighth edition, people who don't know, the end of this game, when you put your, Drew Car on the board, if you ran witches, you could either pick or roll dice for certain combat drugs. You could roll two dice or pick one.

Or pick one. Which I always picked one. Of course, because everyone picked one, because you could get the best one. Some of them were garbage. But the issue is that people wouldn't write it down and you'd notice all of a sudden their witches seem to always have the best combat drug for whatever scenario was. Yeah. So anyway.

But it was a really good thing. And it was incredibly fluffy for the rules because that's the way the, that's the way the witches are supposed to work is the witches work with the covens to figure out a way to make themselves even better. I'm going to really stress this one because we're not talking like, hey, I took some adrenaline. This guy cooked up. No, this is other, again, magic exists. These guys are effectively giving you magic powder that you take that. makes it seem that bullets are showing.

Let me say it even better. You're taking, because we talked about this with Eldar. Eldar are some of the fastest and most accurate beings in the galaxy, and they're taking these combat drugs, make them even faster and more capable. I mean, the truth is the rules on the tabletop can never do the lower justice, because in theory, a witch on a combat drug that would make them more accurate could never miss.

That's what they would never miss, is that you cannot roll a one effectively. These combat drugs make them faster, hit harder, actually even take more damage or just avoid more things altogether. They were incredible. And the idea of the drugs was to actually less in the arena was to make them more entertaining.

So you would actually be able to take two, like you take a witch and make her even faster to fight maybe like a big, hulking opponent so they could, you know, be stabbing them a thousand times. And take their time killing it. Mm-hmm. Well, effectively not being in danger because there's so much faster than the opponent. That's why.

But he would put on an incredible display as like the Hulk, you know, is fighting a, like, tiny little witch, but she's able to jump all over him and put in literal death by a thousand cuts. Like, that's what they were trying to do with them. So the witches are, in theory, again, not a table top. some of the most like blender level fighters. I mean, the Suckie just an eighth edition was.

Ten attacks. Was it eighth edition? Was that ninth? Both. Oh, what was it? Okay. I was fine, yeah.

Suckububis was cool. Yeah. The powers per call? Yeah. That's one time in the game that it tried to. You know what I mean? Eighth was close. Eighth did the best job of putting the Drukari on the board in my mind.

Everything else since then has been, they've struggled a little bit with kind of how to, make it worth that. And some of the earlier stuff was still like, eh, should we talk about, now, I was how it raids of ring flocks later. So one thing that we should talk about before we move on from the Witchcult is the majority of the time they spend fighting in the arenas, but not all of it. They also take part in the real space rates.

Well, they get hired for these. Sometimes. Well, yeah, true. That's the thing. So the thing is that in order for the arenas to function, they have to have people to fight. and we'll talk later into how some of them come into the play. But the real space is a key spot of this where they will just, they will take captives from real space rates.

Oftentimes, like animals, awesome, like beasts, those types of monsters. Tarynx. It's a big thing because we know what we did. We talked about this in the last cast where I had mentioned that the Bulls have to plan so well because sure, this is what your plan is. But for instance, the witches just one decided they want to show how awesome they are. the five instead of the four back whips, but also they need to capture some cool shit to fight in the arena.

So their plan might be slightly off your plan. This is the issue with the witches, though, is that to Brad's point, which is, it's not that they end up in kind of like a blood rage per se when they do some of these raids. Depending on the drug. But they don't not end up in that.

So sometimes the raids with the witches don't quite go to plan in that a bunch of witches start, I'm going to be careful how I pronounce that quickly, they start attacking, and the arc gun doesn't feel like they're following his plan, so he tells him to stop, and then the cabal needs a new arcand. Yeah.

Then a giant squad of witches. It slaughters him. Yeah, and then it's... And they're also all jacked up a mountain-doo chip. you're not stopping that so from the witches we'll jump over the covens

and we'll get back to which has been a little bit we're kind of bounced back and forth a little bit but the covens this is the remember the crazy guys we were talking about that hid from Eldar Society because they thought that fish hooks and eyeballs were

too lame these are the guys that formed the covens you took the weirdest guys doing the weirdest guys doing the weirdest this shit and went, yeah, let's turn that up to 11, bro. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Yeah, let's have some fun with them. So I'm going to talk about the Coven from a history standpoint. So the pleasure cults are forming, when they did, they didn't really know what they were doing. They discovered that there's a joy and pleasure from harming others, but it was kind of fleeting and random. But the Eldar, because of who they are, are very OCD. and once they, once they find a craft to perform, they will perfect it. Be it pottery.

How long it takes. Yeah, be it pottery or murder torture. And the challenge, though, is that they needed a place to do this kind of out of sight. So these Eldar, who later became known as a flesh crafters, not in a good way, moved into the webway. And they built these giant laboratories. like the most underground part of the dark city. Because this is, again, before they were doing this,

before the Eldar nobles were into it. So this was really as close to outlawed as you could get. So they were hidden away in these dark corners. Yeah, thousands of years. And what they did was they began to perfect torture and pain. And it was their findings on torture and pain that magnified the emotion reaction that was, that allowed it.

recipe to be spread and now that this is what converted so much of the Eldar like nobility and culture to this style. They were not wholly responsible for the fall, but they, they're, I mean, they're close. They're the reason behind it. They're like the Eldar themselves are the reason behind the fall, but without the, the fleshcrafters, they never would have. Yeah, they would have, they would have never walked away from.

They would have, they would have, they would have never reached this because they wouldn't have got the reward that they got. Yeah. And because, yeah, they may have bailed on it, effectively. Yeah, because it was these monster. that did it. So after the fall, though, the next problem comes into play because now we need soul energy from our victims. And again, you know, witch cults and cabals, they could create suffering, but they couldn't generate that much power. They couldn't create a symphony of suffering.

Yeah. These flesh crafters began working again to perfect the craft. How do we get the maximum amount of torment while basically per life. So how do we extend their lives of the victims to get a maximum output of power? And their skills, by the way, are insane. Like one of my favorite stories is there's a laboratory where there is a human whose skin, muscles, nervous system, and skeleton are in four different displays, and the person is completely alive. And they can feel it. I'm going to my favorite because I know that one.

Yeah. My favorite's the chair. A rival of the homoculus bends the skid. He's still a sentient chair, but feels all of the pain from the breaking and molding making him a chair. Yeah. He's aware of his surroundings and always in incalculable pain. And you're like, you guys have problems. Oh, they're so messed up.

If you were to walk, I mean, the other example, someone I read somewhere was, if you were to walk into the workshop of a homunculi, the screams of their victims would actually drop you. The pain and suffering that's happening in there would put most everything to their knee. Obviously, a Drukhari who walks in there suddenly powers up. Like you just start leveling up just by entering it. So for this reason, their locations and access are very clear. closely guarded secrets, you'll get to wander into a homunculus laboratory. You could, but it's going to go bad for you. Yeah, you're about to.

You were probably led there. Let's be honest. Yeah, you didn't open the wrong door. Oh, excuse me. To be fair. Yeah. You're like, wait a minute. I don't think I found this place.

I feel like I might have been allowed to leave me here. And this is why much like the witches, the covens, which the tuxemuncular are part of, they tend to be aligned with a cabal. And they trade the cabal, you know, a lot of this power, this resources, all these things. And the cabal gives them so beings a torture, obviously. And they do kind of protect them because the issue is that the, let's just say, the covers. Well, they're hated because they do bad, bad, bad shit. And they do it too do, Drew Carrey as well.

Actually, the majority of the bad things they do are two other drugs. So they've got, there's some people with some vendettos. Yeah. Also, don't go a heavy night of drinking. because you're going to end up in a bad place. So let's talk about like what a coven brings to the table. Because it's an area that like and everyone plays. So I play Droucari.

We all play Dr. Dr. Carrey differently. I actually primarily play Cabal Dr. Dr. Garry. I have some witches. I only got, I only own like 60 witches, which I know only only is like much.

But yeah, but I play mostly witches. But yeah. I don't play. I don't play a lot of coven. I don't, I have some, I have some talos, but that's about. The biggest thing with the covens, what they provide, they provide augmentation to your regular warriors. But the biggest thing is, is they provide weaponry.

Yeah. They are masters of the living flesh. And so they know how to preserve it. They know how to destroy it. As we talked last time to Brad's Great Joy, poison weapons. All the poison weapons come from the covens, but also blades, clothing. All of this is made within the covens in order to give things. Like if you look at witches, like some of like witches,

and actually especially like cabal armor, we'll have random blades on it in random places. This is from the covens to help them create even more pain while they're fighting. And the thing is, is that especially the witches' outfits, which are effectively skin-tight synth suits, basically, that even though they look like you're wearing new armor, they give you,

they put drugs into your system. They, well, all the combat drugs are made by, are made by the covens. 100% on that. And they have interactive. They're almost wearing like a black carapace as their armor.

Yeah, I mean, it's just a skin sight suit that is, of course. I think of course. I think of the sister's cast, the black carapist does nothing. Exactly. But I'm saying, they're coding with it. It does everything kind of thing. They go nuts on this stuff. I mean, then we'll go into.

Let's talk about the next one is troops. And so this is where on the tabletop, you're probably most noticeable. So they don't just just destroy life. They can kind of create it, sort of. And by create it, I mean, it's just evil versions of servants. Oh, so a lot of these people are supposed to be the guys that were like, hey, can I learn your craft? They go, no problem. And then all of a sudden you have stuff attached.

Yeah. The first group that they make are racks. Rack is. They're the basics. It's a servitor. It's a bipedal being usually was actually a Drukari originally where the helmet gets, their head gets a special helmet on them that links them the homunculi. So they're completely servants of the homunculi. And then sometimes they might cut their arms off and put blades on or whips on, those

kinds of things. But the purpose of the rack is really twofold. Primarily, it's like servitor. They're just, they're there to do the bidding of the homunculi. Because the homunculi don't do manual labor. They, you know, in fact, the hemunculi actually hover. I should have mentioned that. That they actually hover around because they don't want to be bothered with walking because

it's too much work. So anything that has to be picked up, moved, anything that's done by a rack. And racks can be a whole, racks have a long history of potential sources. They can just be random thing that's turned into a rack. They can also be the breadsmen about the chair, someone that the homunculi personally disliked, and then he'll turn you into a rack to then have you just perform a painful, horrifying task, like walk across fire until you melt. Yeah.

Because that's big of board. And you can't do anything about it. Yeah, they're very similar to Admec in that regard. Just very, very similar. The only thing that's interesting about racks is that they can serve in combat, and all the homuncular units have one thing in common. They're not particularly fast. Actually, for Eldar, they're slow.

For Eldard, they're slow, but for other people, they're still pretty quick. What makes them different is that all of the augmentations, because it's mostly about combat drugs, it's flesh-cracking. They have actual, effectively. mad scientist vile packs on all of them. Yeah. Are they T4 now? They were T4s. They're the same toughest as a space marine, but they also have what's called a feel-note pain. So they actually ignore damage. And in this case, it makes sense that they have it because they

have all these drugs in there. I'm not even sure if they still have a functioning, like, you know, limbic system. So you shoot them and they may just not feel it. Their main role, though, from a combat standpoint, is usually at the end of a raid, they're used to corral victims and load them into things because it's a rack. They're kind of nasty and they're very strong and they're unpleasant. However, they're not as unpleasant as grotesque. Well, grotesques are a lot more funny. So grotesques are a faster version of Frankenstein's monster.

Fasts lately? Yeah. Just that weird? Also, note, not Frankenstein. Franksine's a doctor. And actually, if you read the book, The Doctor's the Monster, Franklin's Monster is actually not a bad thing. So, good book.

Anyway, those of you who've read it probably just cheered as I said that. Those of you haven't are like, yeah, I've heard people make this complaint before shut up. I want to hear it again. So fair enough. Grotesques are, so first, they're basically lobotomized the way servitors are. So they just obey a command. Yeah, but the next step is pretty crazy because they fill them full of growth.

They basically roined it up. Yeah, but it's roared up the same way space Marines are where it's not just like I'm stronger. I'm actually building new muscles that weren't there. They look like abomination from Marvel. Yeah. But that's, well, you don't imply IP violation on GW. My bad. They would never do such a thing.

All of these are brand new ideas. They are 100% abominations. It's just that unfortunately, you know, like, who's the guy who's the guy who wrote, Dune? He had a time machine. Anyway, he actually came to the future and saw these things and then went back to right dunes. So there's, but the thing about racks is that their skeletons are also augmented to make massively increase their size and then their limbs are replaced with like claws, guns,

blades. I mean, what we say massively? I mean, these are four to five times as big as an elder, not just straight tall, but like in mass. Yeah, I mean, they are, as by the way, they are literally larger than a custod. Ah, first of the day. Well, that was more than the table top, they're also larger than the custod. That's not saying much, as we discussed, during custod. For some reason, they're the exact same size of space marines.

They're used a little bit. Now, a grotesque's purpose is kind of a bit more. It's like the inverse of the rack. The rack's main purpose is actually to work in the laboratory and do the bidding of the homunculi. Grotes. The grotes can do that, but they're primarily used for more. Yeah, they're going to kill shit. Yeah, but they're even nashed in the wrecks.

It's not only are they incredibly tough and immune to pain, they actually heal in combat. They used to regenerate. Nothing they do any more, do they? No, they have just felt they're feeling pain. So they can just go back to their, and they have wild regeneration. I mean, if you just don't straight kill these guys,

yeah, and this is lower. It's been different in the games. Games moved around a little bit years. But like in the lore, you could, if you cut one of these guys in half and he's not wholly dead, you better not leave him alone because he'll be okay soon. Yeah, they would just reform back at like T-1,000 style and just and then come back up. So, yeah, these things are, oh, I actually don't like the model, but I love the lore on them. I didn't even know it's real model.

No one uses the real model. I was just saying, in a side story, I actually, it was in a tournament and I grabbed a guy's model and I go, what is this, a converted guy? He goes, that's the actual grotesque model. And I went, oh, I've never actually seen the actual grotesque model. The actual grotesque model is just a, it's not easy to paint, be perfectly honest. And the look is okay. And there's some, it's like beast of nirgle.

There's some amazing conversions that exist out there. Oh, yeah. But anyway, let's talk about the last and my actual favorite of all the things that the moncula make. Because of the fact. engines. Their pain engines put the sister's pain engines the shame. Well, but they're different. The sisters pain engines meant to be a punishment. This thing creates pain. And, all right. So let's have some fun with these things. It was originally made, to Brad's point, it was the ultimate torture device, but it wasn't meant, whereas the sisters pain engines to help

you repent. The Moncula was not about that. I'm bored and I don't like this person. I'm bored and I don't like this person. Anyway, I'm going to the drawing board to make, to figure out how bad I can make things suck for you. Well, and so the stories on these guys are funny, though. So what they would do originally is the homunculi would take a being, and they would just hack their arms off and their arms and legs off, and then place them in this like vessel,

almost like an iron lung type set up. And this would, this thing would just keep them alive while making them feel all the pain of having their limbs chopped off. And it was great. It was just generate. These things were just, they were like little battery packs for power from pain. They would just generate.

And you could just stand next them and they'd go. The problem is that homunculi are effectively immortal. And they, over time, would build up enough enemies that they would have so many of these sitting around. It actually started taking up too much space in the laboratory. That's a real story. They actually, they got to a bit where there are too many of these things sitting around the lab.

I also thought they were inefficient enough. Yes, I got to do something. with it. So then they decided to just, I don't know, turn them into weapons of war. So they shoved an anti-grab harness on them because they had no legs. They could fly around. And then they put a weird helmet on them the same way that the racks and the grotesques used so they could just order them. And then they put the worst parts, which are their arms, which are the siphons. This is so crazy. Yeah. They literally want to... to take all the bio.

They tierned it up here. Yeah, it's the same the tears. These siphons, they use them. They basically float over to a dead body and then suck all the juice and being out of them to bring back to the coven for testing. This is the crazy part is that they're not just, unlike the ternets who only are just taking your bodies and everything else with them. These guys will take your soul with them. Yeah. I mean, so, but with Talos, the reason I love Talos, first off, I think the model is insanely cool looking. It's a great model. They're fun to paint. They look amazing. Some of the better models I have actually have my collection.

But in the battle, the Talos will actually lead the charge because on, you know, their two hands will have anything from, you know, a chain. It's like, it's not actually a real chain vests. It's like fists with chains on it, blades, liquefire guns. they have tails that shoot everything from poison the darklands. The injector guns and everything else. They're insane. So they'll blender the opponent. But then when the battle is over, they hover back over the battlefield, just sucking up all the dead bodies to bring back. You need a lot of raw materials.

Are you going to be a homoculi? However, of all the things the homunculi do, my favorite one is the immortality that they are able to do. And this is super cool. So we talked before about the power from pain. We talked before we said like nonstop, but it is like the core thing of Drukari. So when I, Drukari is around pain and suffering,

they get faster, stronger, and more. Hamagra discovered that's actually just scratching the surface. So in each laboratory, if you walk into a Hamakia laboratory, which I strongly recommend you don't do unless you're an arc on. And even then, even then it's like, Make sure you have you have you have you paid the coven lately make sure you have bodyguards with you There's a central like workstation like a big just big table they're working on

But above it is a lot it's a bunch of tubes that just hang like comical evil science manseye Oh this is cool as hell I'll actually be honest um in rogue trader this is this is in rogue trader you don't they don't explain all this I'm saying but there is you there is a homunculus laboratory you can see So inside of all these tubes that hang over the workstation are important dead Drew Kari, who've died in battle in one way or another. Now dead, we're actually going with mostly dead. Oh, he did watch the Princess Bride. Because, you know, they do have a true love for murder.

Or is it two blades? I'm not a witch. I'm your wife. Sorry, literally watched it last night, and it's so good. Every time I watch Princess Bride, I'm just a happier person. Anyway. So the homunculi have discovered, side note there, that with enough pain and suffering and energy,

Jukari can be brought back to life. Cool thing on this, it's not just brought back to life. It's actually reformed. They can actually regenerate back to their original form. Yeah, because someone watched Fifth Element. Look, this is going to go all movies here. I haven't done, I don't know where we're going to drop in a Monty Python, but I guarantee you it's coming.

So, yeah. Well, let's talk about this because if you have a homoculae in your service, you're immortal no you will you legitimately buy a contract with them that they can reform me now some of these immaculay have done that without the archons express written permission it's yeah i mean my guess is once the archon's dead it's probably over but it's more that piece of if i'm an arcane and like my my lead succubus dies in battle against another another army's bring him back yeah i'll bring her back or if I do have a good general. Now, you know, Drew Carrey are pretty mean about losing,

but the idea is that you can bring back key members, and here we go. So this is like, this is such a powerhouse and leads us into kind of, I think, is one of the most important parts of understanding Drew Carrey is the last thing that Covens do, which is manage the cloning operations. Well, without them,

we would probably just, Dracari would not have enough people to do all these wars. And this is an interesting one. And again, I am open about getting things wrong, but I am not aware of it ever being mentioned that the Eldar,

how the Eldar are, if they are even starting to start producing. I'm talking about the real elder. I'm not sure if Kraft World Eldar are still reproducing. I mean, excellent words are. Okay, so that's about it. But the craft worlds? Yeah, they have children.

So I guess so I guess it's possible. So with Drew Kari, they actually have a full-blown operation, which is why the Jew Kari are potentially, people have made comments are maybe more Drew Kari than there are imperial citizens, which I disagree with. There are more than there are TOW. That's not saying much. There's not a lot of TAL.

I love the end of put the dig in. Yeah, but it's not me shit talking to Tao, which is true. That's what we'll cover in the Taucast. There's not a lot of Tau. There are more Drew Kari than there are Tau. I mean, there's probably more orcs than Drew Kari, but maybe. I mean, that's what I'm saying. There's that many of them.

So the Drucari, just quick side note here, do two things. They're either, they do have a traditional method, like normal birth, although they're not mammals, my how the case how they're not animals, how they're actually sure. They're born the regular way are called Drew Carrey Trueborn. Have you ever seen? And it's a big deal because they are considered an uppercase. Yeah, sure. Well, they consider themselves that.

Well, they get better equipment. How about that? Yeah. Yeah. But that, well, not until this edition. No, they got it before. Not me. Trueborn and we're allowed to get more special weapons.

When? In which editions? All of them. Not eighth. Not seventh. That's I'm telling you. It's trueborn bounce in and out of the in and out of the. I was just a bit of it.

Yeah. Yeah. My point is they don't, True. They weren't in a lot of the game. They didn't exist. Yeah. When they're in the game,

they're better. But when they're, I think it was ninth edition is where you, that's where you had the stupid, the stupid boats of dark lances. We're all, right. You go,

oh, the dark lance. I don't know any of those. But the vast majority of Drew Kari are that grown underneath, yeah, the city by the homunculi. And this is why, again, the Drew Kari are technically a thriving race. They're not a dying race. It's so funny because they're technically thriving, but they're also technically withering. They're having their souls eaten.

But if you think what the idea is that the craft world Eldar are every minute of every day. They are reducing in total number because. they don't have a way to quickly replicate. Because I guess the same way that the craft world didn't share the spirit stones with the Dracari. The Drukari didn't share back the whole cloning operation thing, which would be pretty helpful for the Eldar. Basically, as long as there are enough souls that they can capture and torture, the Drucari expand infinitely. Yeah, you can cause enough suffering. Because then you can feed all the souls, the Dracari, because the Webway itself is infinite too.

so there's no limitation how many in them there can be. The real question, and this is a thing that they don't really answer in the law, is how fast is the withering in real space? Yeah, you're right. They never. You're right. We have no idea. I mean, it's obviously pretty quick because they do not spend time.

Yeah, they do not spend time. Because in my, it's here, we're going to what, you know, in one of the spins, here's the Bradlar. I think it's so fast, which. is I can't imagine that they wouldn't conquer and cause suffering in the real space if they could. Oh, you're right. Yeah, because there's no reason why they wouldn't build a torture factor in real space. Right.

But the fact they don't is because it means that they couldn't get enough energy out of the torture factory. Right. They would be, they'd have a hard time just remaining status quo. Yeah. Also, I do think that Slanesh knows where they are, too, the other piece, too, is that even if she's not. Will you show up on the radar immediately? Yeah, she'd just like get them. And now there's, oh, good.

you know, we're on doing. Which is also my second question on that. I'm going to throw this out to everybody listening. As far as you, 40K lore officinados, could Slanesh be due to her connection, not only know where they are, but show up? Because you have to be, you know, summoned in. What do you mean? The Dark Eldar in the game always, even fantasy and this have a stronger connection with their cults of Slanesh and stuff like that. Yeah.

Would she be able to be pulled into not her, the guy? specifically. Oh, yeah, I think about the gods, but the demons. No, the just demons. That's just something to be the thought of. Fair enough. I will say that there is a question I do have of. If the covens are in charge of growing all of the vat, Drew Carrey,

how many of them just don't make it to the official count? Oh, yeah. Because now they're wrecks and grotesques and body parts for, for... Well, the covens are wildly, extremely powerful. And I do think that they are the real power behind a lot of this, that the cabal smashes down frequently. Oh, yeah. I'm sure the cabals are routinely having to cull the hoard around the covens

because they would get, I mean, a homunculi with a very large force of grotesques and pain engines would be a big problem. Yeah. You need to set them up quite frequently. And they have in some of the stories, where they just put them in harm's way and or just smoke-fest them.

Now, that was fun, but we're going to talk about the thing Brad and I actually liked the most. Whoop? Yeah. So inside of Kamara, there are, we've got the cabals,

the witches, and the covens. Those are like your main factions, but there's a whole other section of, you know, Drew Kari. I'm not doing beast men, by the way. They're just about, okay, oh, they're considered cults.

Well, yeah, they're part of the witch cults. They're these guys who have beast men. No, you know what? Let's have some fun. Before we get into this. The Beastmasters? No. Razor Wings Flux.

Oh, Jesus. I just want people to know how big of a problem they were. Drew Kari are, hold in my mind, the greatest broken army ever. Because, and Brad's got a good story on this in the beginning of eighth edition. So there's something called Beast Men that exists within Drew Kari. And the Beast Men are in charge of what are just, you know, random animals, for lack of a better phrase. Just they're monsters, basically. And one of them were ravens.

Yeah, but mutated crazy ravens. Each model, this is fun. This is because we're both going to enjoy this. Let me set up, let me set this up and you tell a story. So these are, one of them was called a razor wing flock. And it was a pack of birds that had four wounds. I think there were T3 and they could have an involunt. And in the early part of eighth edition,

there was no limit on how many of a, unit you could take. So you just took all of them. And I believe with the Razor Wing flocks, you could have over a hundred. Oh, that was more than that. It was a hundred and 150 of these four wound model, four wound models.

They did almost no damage. They did no damage, but you literally could not kill them. And people would run them as an army and just put them on the table and say, okay, you go. And that was the entire game. It's so crazy. We had a game.

This is when they first came out. It was at the World Championships for teams. And we had America versus France. And our guy had brought Razor Wing flocks. And the other guy had brought demons, the smallest demons, brims, which also cost it almost no points. And across from each other was effectively 800 wounds of just these two things. And it was so pointless for them to fight each other

that they had run their armies to within an inch of each other. and then just didn't fight because it would take too much time to roll dice that were meaningless. So they did the other stuff that was in the Army. They moved, they moved the models around and the game ended. Yeah. Yeah. It was dumb. And they, yeah, not too many months later, they made a rule change.

Yeah. Still. It wasn't exactly the best. I think I've got, I only have like 15 basic base of ring flux, I think. You get so many more. Yeah. Let's go to the cool people. Let's go with fun parts.

So let's start with with the ones who. are probably the most badass. Actually, I would argue this is the least cool of the three. So let's start with the Incubi. We'll be right back after a quick break. Incubi are the mercenary fighters. They, well, let's just be honest who they are. This is the corrupted striking scorpion shrine.

Yeah. So when we covered the Eldar, we talked about Aspect shrines and how Eldar follow a path. And the path helps them not fall to the old days of the fall. And each of these paths had a patriarch matriarch who invented it and led the followers. And each of them, you know, were, you know, this is Jane Tsar, this is Ashrman, these are all these groups. One of them, though, fell to the temptations of Slanesh and had to be killed, sort of. Well, left. Yeah, well, that's a thing.

Originally thought he was dead. Ar-H-R-H-R-A, I can't pronounce that. I'm sorry. Ara. It's a cool story. It becomes Jazar, which isn't actually a name. It's a title. It's a title.

It's a title. Yeah. So, A-R-A-founded, so the original striking of scorpions would just hide in shadows and leap out and kill things. They were night lords. They were just, there were dark murderers, whatever you want to call them. And I'm not going to spend all the time on the mystery of what happened to him. he becomes, to Brad's point, Drizar.

And Drizar shows up at this aspect shrine and just says zero words and just starts smoking everybody. Yeah. And takes control of the shrine. And the incubi are, they're supposed to be almost samurai. Yeah, but the incubi are unique because they're the only aspect warriors of the Drukari. Yes. And they are. And it's strict melee.

Yeah, all melee. And they are the greatest melee. force probably in the galaxy. And one of the things, these aren't the guys that turn against you. Incubi. Yeah, well, we'll get to them in a second. So the Incubi, let's talk about, like, I just want to first talk about, like, what takes to be an incubi because it's kind of cool.

So I love the Incubi story because the way you become an Incubi is they control giant sections of the city. And so the Incubi are, everyone wants to be an incubi by everybody. Let me say it better. People who want to be an incubi have to enter the section of the city. And in order to do that, it's a rip-off of the running man, which again, if you haven't seen, go see it. It has Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Brown, and Jesse the Body Ventura, and it's actually a very good film. You know, I'm so happy that you threw that in, because in the notes, he did not save the body.

And I was going to put that. It's implied. I don't have to type out that much. It is, you can't type Jesse Ventura and not say the body. Which by the way, wasn't even that good of a body. Like if we're being, like a lot of the 80s wrestlers, I'm like, he actually wasn't that jacked, guys. He was, he was fit, you know, but it wasn't that impressive. Anyway, all these initiatives are playing the running man, where all they need to kill an incubi.

If they can kill an incubi, then they can be invited into the shrine. become an incubi. But the incubi have a similar goal of kill all the initiates. And the incubi have the luxury of being an incubi. Also being an incubi armor. Yeah. So what happens is when initiate then kills an incubi and they then take their armor and then they're initiated.

What's interesting about this is that when you read that, I go, well, wait a minute, how many incubi are there? Because is it a fixed amount or do they actually then go back to the cup and clone them? That's what I'm saying. Like a lot of them, and resurrect them. They field a lot of Incubi in the stories and everything. Yeah. And almost every Archon worth his salt has an Incubi retinue all the time.

Always. Yeah. So, like, I, you know, is there a thousand? Is there a billion? I do have no idea. Is there a limited number? So I actually have no idea. But I like the story of that once you've done, once you've killed Incuby,

which might be, by the way, bare handed, but you probably just have a sword or something because it's still a dark, everything in the dark city is. You also have to add whaters yourself. Is there like 50 initiatives that try to take on the one guy and they finally get him? And then they have to kill each other.

Right. Oh, for sure. Yeah, exactly. No, you're not doing this. What's great, though, is that once they become an incubi, it actually gets even crazier. Because then they just, it's just nonstop combat and practice,

combat and practice. That's all we do. Until they get to the last piece, which is they have to go kill an aspect Warrior and take their soul stone, which is just messed up, by the way. So they just basically had to leave, go back into real space, find an aspect warrior, kill it, take it soulstone, and then they put the soul stone into their helmet, which is a torture device for the soul stone.

So every incubi is wearing a helmet that in the helmet has an Eldar soul in it that is being tortured by the helmet. Which is why their helmet is called a tormentor helmet. This is, oh, they're so messed up. Oh, yeah, they're also just dicks. Oh, you're horrifying things. But that being said, I mean, they can, again, lore is a little bit difficult, but incubi, like,

which cults are afraid of the incubi? Like, everyone's afraid of the incubi. Well, they also just don't have a real, they're not really doing this for the money. They're not, what are you guys just doing? Yeah, they're just, well, they are they're hired off as mercenaries but not really clear what they get paid with right they they are loyal the thing that's my thing yeah they're they they're the one thing that doesn't

turn it that's why they always hire incubi retinus because they are the best way to protect you because you the problem with comera is basically like no one in comera is loyal if you think about it like if you want to hire a bodyguard it's like great what are the odds that this bodyguard's actually going to protect me and not murder me you know, pretty low. But the Incubi have built a reputation of being the actual bodyguards. And as Brad said earlier, all of the Archons surround themselves with Incubi because this way they can walk anywhere outside of harm. I mean, it didn't work great for all of them.

But anyway, a band of Incubi can just instant kill that they see. If you want, you know, the witch cult attack, they're all dead. you know, or if you're in real space, space marines, they will blender space marines. And again, on the tabletop, still the ninth they were better. They're still good. Yeah, but it was ninth when Drazar gave like full re-rolls to all of them. And it was just like, oh, so just don't go near those.

Yeah, you're auto dead. And they should be. Because the lore-wise, they're super crazy in the lore, because they're just these almost nightmares. We'll get into the real nightmares in the man. But they're so skilled and you can't buy them off. you don't know what you know, I have no idea what they want.

I might not sure if they even speak. That's the thing. Well, that's the thing is like, Drizar does not. He's also, there's a reason he doesn't. But,

but this is just a, all they do is train, train, kill, and get new contracts. Yeah, repeat. Right.

And it's just scary. Yeah. But they also, they're not just for defense, they're also for offense. So the same reason they'll also be hired to go kill problematic enemies. It's on a race.

If you've got a real, like, again, space marines, if you're doing a raid and there's going to be space marines there, you're probably going to bring in Kibai. Because the incubi will slaughter them. Sorry, wolves. They will. They'll rip through anything. And this is why, first of all, I love them.

And on the tabletop, as we were just saying, they actually are one of the few ones that will do this on occasion. Rule-wise, yeah, they've been a nightmare. Yeah, actually, as truly, as much as I pine for eighth, They weren't that good in eighth. They're still good. Not like eighth, though. No, they weren't insane.

They could come out of a radar, go like 30 inches. Right. And they just get out and they just kill everything they touch. Yeah, which is what they're supposed to do. It's accurate. Yes. Nobody's super excited to see Incubi show up. Yeah, it's really great.

Now, from the Incuby, we'll move into what I would call, you know, number three. Number two, most awesome are scourges. For a couple reasons. One, aesthetically. super cool. The wings are awesome. The model looks great. Everything about the angulation on them. They're beautiful models. And, you know, they bounce in and out of value on the tabletop. They're kind of good again now. They're really good right now because they can shoot and scoot so they can move behind them.

And the carry heavy weapons too. Well, that's what they're known for. And they carry all shredders. Well, I really like this unit just because all they are is mobile firepower that hires out that, literally goes, sorry, it goes to the highest bidder. Yeah, these are another big heavy-duty mercenaries. They are having interesting history in them. They're actually made by the flesh crafters, but they're not made by the flesh crafters,

like they're not captured. They actually choose to be. Well, this is an augmentation. Yeah, it's a pretty aggressive one because they have wings. Yeah. I mean, like these are Eldar with wings, carrying heavy weapons. And they have their own little mini-society within Kamara.

They live in like the spires above the city. So if you're wandering through like common, again, highly recommend don't visit there. But you'll just get these like shadows that fly over top. Those are oftentimes scourges. So as we said before, all of the dark city is built on backstabbing and murder. And this makes, it's interesting problems creates this communication. How do you send a communique as an arc on to your, to your generals.

Because if it gets intercepted, now your enemies can use it against you. So they actually use messenger pigeons effectively, but they're scourges. And they just bring, they bring letters to each other, telling them what to do, which has two pieces of value for the scourges.

One makes them incredibly valuable to the archons, but also makes no one want to mess with them. Because the concern of them is, since they're seeing carrying messages, is if you were to kill a scourge, then the scourges might never want to work with you, which means now you can't communicate. It's double.

You got you can't communicate and or, I don't know, you killed one of Vex's messengers, and then Vec just decides that your entire existence family and everything you've ever talked to doesn't exist. Exactly, yeah. So the scourges also get this really nice piece

where they're almost an untouchable within Comra. The next thing about them, though, is that they're also incredible, warriors because they carry mostly heavy weapons and they can fly. In the very first episode, for example, we talked about the salamanders attacking the dark city. The number one reason that they pulled out and left was the scourges. Yeah, because they hit him with 50 dark lenses.

Yeah, like immediately. Consistently, couldn't fear where these things were coming from. These beings were just appearing, shooting dark lances at them. And a salamander just got, yeah, just, the time just went, all right, we've bombed the city enough. Peace out. that's, I mean, and that's where I actually, I'll be on the tabletop.

That's one like the scourges, play against them can kind of suck. I'll be perfectly honest. Yes, but they really do. They're fairly lower, good. Oh,

they're not the lower, because the truth is they're also still incredibly fragile on the tabletop. Oh, yeah. You give them a mean look. You're dead. Yeah, the whole squad's dead.

Yeah. You had a pistol. Yeah. It's like Indiana Jones style where he lines them all up and goes through all of them. But that's, That being said with the scourges, there's still one more piece of the dark scene. We're going to talk about my favorite people. If you don't know about mandrakes, you're about to learn about them and you're going to go, want to go paint them.

The good news is they have new models. The old models are also cool. There's nothing better than mandrakes. So first off, what is a mandrake? It's the coolest model of the game. That's what Mandrake is. Whoa, back it up and go, what is this in lore? because in a city of demons or devils, basically,

with the worst people ever, they're the boogeyman of the devils. Every resident of the dark realm is afraid of the mandrakes. Every resident of real space who's interacted with mandrakes or is aware of their existence is also afraid of mandrakes. So, Mandrakes, first off, no one knows where they come from. They appear to be a combination of Eldar demons, and the warp itself.

They also get some, they're crazy. You can't candy man them up and just make them appear, basically. Yeah, they are. Well, yeah, so the other term is their darkness given form. You know, are they the ultimate fallen Eldar? No one knows. All we know is they seem to be a manifestation of all of the Eldar.

And, oh. It's an evil of the Eldar, though. That's true. Yeah. And. Because they, they're half in the warp. Half not. They are Eldar, but also...

But they're also not. They're basically a dark shadow of Eldon. This is why they're so cool. They suck so much the tabletop and it's so... Yeah, I mean, they're forward to playing. They're used not, at least, though. They're forward to playing. So bad.

But they were the worst thing in the Dark Eldar Codex for 20 plus years. And in the lore, they're the most powerful thing in the... They're... They give other Dark Eldar nightmares about them. About what they couldn't do. So let's talk what they are. So Mandrakes, they literally... We say they live in the shadows.

We don't mean like, ooh, it's a, you know, a forgotten being that tries to hide. No, they actually live inside the shadows. They can traverse the galaxy through shadow. Yep. So if you're an imperial colony and you built your, you know, the way the hive cities are built, you know, they have lots of shadows. Mandrakes will just appear through the shadows. And they look badass.

It also don't have rhyme nor reason. a lot of times for why they're there. Yeah, and we'll talk more about what their appearance feels like in a second. But their description, and you can paint, and I have their pants away. So they have, like, jet black skin with some, like, dark green runes. Or if you're colorblind, like black, they're jet black. Never liked you.

Like, what do you mean there's runes for those ruins? Really? The white hair, though, is awesome. And the white hair, what the white hair does is in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, you'd be a really good painting again this, but in the lore, the white hair, it's not that it's actually white. It's more just like, it's like a shimmer. And so it creates, like, just almost a little bit of contrast as they move around. On the tabletop, they kind of like like children of the corn a little bit, so it doesn't work as well. But there's that. The next piece I like about them is that they carry these, like, jewel-encrusted swords that are actually, again, cover. covered in runes, and these swords are impossibly sharp. But the two best parts about them is, first off, they look like they're wearing, well, it looks like a smock or a garment they're wearing of rags. Oh, you mean the don't look at this very close?

So you're going to have nightmares about it? It's made of the flayed skins of anyone who's ever betrayed them. Because that's what the, Mandrakes are, by the way you mentioned, they're an independent force, a completely independent force within, within Comra. So they're wearing the clothes made from anyone who ever betrayed them. And the other part is one of their hands can actually shoot out energy that will kill or admit them freeze an enemy in place. It's not the best gun in the game, but it does devastating wounds, which is good.

Which is. Yeah. It should do way more than that. Again, in the lore, if you anger the mandrakes, they will hunt you for, forever until you die. And the only way you know they're coming, by the way, is all of a sudden the air around you gets very, very cold. And then out of the shadows pops, mandrax.

The good and the bad for the Drukari, and it's good and bad depending on what they're looking for. Mandrakes are the greatest hunters in the galaxy. You cannot hide from them unless you want to just place yourself in somewhere that has no shadows. That's the only way to avoid mandrakes. If there is shadow, they can appear.

The problem, again, for the Trucari, as I said, is a good and a bad is if they want to kill something that you want dead, awesome. They want to kill you less awesome. But also dead. Yeah. I mean, there are stories that's happening to Archons where Mandrakes join a real space raid. And the archons, like, great, I'm glad you guys are here. This is awesome. And then the Mandrax kill that, that Archon.

Well, almost always the Mandrakes have their own reason to join. which might have absolutely nothing to do. And this is again why it's a problem leading these raids because, oh yeah, I've got three different factions plus all these independents. And every time I have my perfect plan, did everybody just do whatever the hell they wanted again? My favorite part that about the Mandrakes is that if they do kill an Arkhan

do something, no one does anything about it. Yeah, they just let them. And that includes, by the way, Vect. Vect was killed by Mandrax. He was resurrected and did nothing about it. Because why? Well, no, it's because that's in the lore,

it's the concern is the belief is because Vect knew that you couldn't, you can't beat the man. Because what are you going to do? Lead a charge into the shadows. Like, how do you go kill? I mean, it's literally living in the shadows. I will tilt versus windmills all day long. You can't stop me.

I don't know if you realize. I have a Don Quixote painting down here. I didn't even realize that. That's a Don Quixote. That's a painting for Don Quixote. But yeah, I love Mandrakes. I've only got 15 of them. And I would, I would love Mandrakes.

I would run 30 of them happily if they didn't. They're not in those sets. They're just, they're four deployers now. They're finally okay. No. Look, man, they were ha, ha, ha, laughable funny. should kill they should be borderline incubi may yes i agree however it's just nice that they're not bad it's fine but they should have jumped they they were like bananas terrible they should be upy

downy they should have all the things i mean every every additional additions they're no but everything about their lore makes their their rules not line up i mean you're you're not wrong oh they're amazing oh all right but anyway before we close this out, I want to jump back because we've covered enough of these things. Now it's easier for us to kind of close out a bit more about the arenas that the witches are in. Because we touched on it earlier, but you need to kind of understand all the players that exist within Jukari to really get a deeper understanding of the arenas. And they did a good job with this because just like a lot of the Roman society, the arena, is the center of a lot of things that come.

It's the only place that people come together. Yeah. And so the arena, the games themselves, are crazy. So, because it's much more than witches fighting each other or captured slaves. It includes mandrakes, not often, but they can be there, incubi, scourges, Cavalites, and everything else from the galaxy. Reber jacksbacks, hellions, every monster. Any warrior, unfortunately, multiple Marines have been thrown into the arena.

And what's cool about the arena, though, is that it's not, though, just captured. So the thing is we talk a lot about, like, what people think about the arena is if you read the codexes, a lot of times, like, it's the original bit will say one thing that you read the stories and you find out more later that the arenas, you first think, okay, so the witch cults are fighting in the arenas against, like, the captured slates. They've captured some space marines. They've captured some guardsmen. It's not even that odd, no. For the most part, the arenas are actually people signing up to fight in them. And I want to talk about the why there is pretty cool. If you're Drew Kari, the Y is the power from the pain.

You can go in there and you're fighting. You are dead center in an arena, killing a witch or even sometimes when you be witches fighting, you might be fighting something else. You get a chance to kill and do all these things. And as Brad was saying, when you do that in real space, you actually are losing part of your soul while you're doing it. But if you do it in the arena, the power-ups better. And anybody's allowed to fight in this.

That's the biggest thing. You can be a nothing in society. And you can fight your way up. Now, the cooler one to me, though, is the people, is the non-Dru-Kari who are choosing to fight. And this comes from a very simple thing of going back to the pirate thing. The pirates, the Drukari, are capturing slaves to bring back. But they're also capturing other things.

like spaceships, weapons, resources. So the Drukari are one of, if not the, wealthiest races in the entire galaxy. And they've got to what do? All of these things have no intrinsic value to the Drucari, but they have extrinsic value. Other people want them. Very, very much so.

And the cabals use this for a few different things. They use this money to pay off individuals within colonies like lower defenses. They pay off ship captains to lead people into raids. They also will hire mercenaries to create like off-world diversions so they can have their raids. This is one of the biggest things that they do because they give also what the big thing about this.

The DeCari pay so up 10, 50, 100 times. The going rate. The going rates. Who cares? Let's them say it. They just, they give no shits about it. So they're just like, here's a pile of. stuff. Yeah. I have, I have a billion imperial credits. Well, what do you want by with that? I don't know.

How about a sandwich? I don't care. Like, it's just that piece of like, it cares. Yeah. And so one of the big things they do with this money is they put on the kumate. It's what it basically is. And inside these arenas, they hire people to come and fight in the arena. And they did this because one of the problems that Drew Kari ran into is some of two things. One, some of their pit, fighters got to be too powerful where you're talking especially with succubus you get succubi who are just so strong that the only people they can defeat are other equally strong succubi it's not you just sacrificing good warriors we could be especially the one of the most famous lilyth who didn't take drugs because she was thinking she was going to take things to slow her down because she was so

much better than everybody else the problem lilith fights an equal succubus all you do doing now is losing a good succulent. And so this becomes kind of issue. So, but they couldn't cap, but anyone that the Drew Carrey could capture, obviously isn't a good enough warrior because they would have died. They wouldn't have killed in the way. So what do we do?

Simple. We'll put out, you know, an ad in the, basically in the galaxy. I never get this, though, in the lore because they never really say how they met these people. Like, are you on the deep web,

the dark web? I just, honestly, I just view it as, it's probably ads. There's probably like, You're watching, you know, you're on your imperial spaceship and you're talking, you're watching your commercial for corpse starch or whatever it is.

Which, oh, I have to call that out real quick. One of the guys in the Discord asked a question about the space marine ability when they're eating a dead body and getting all their memories. What happens if they eat like a corpstarch sandwich? Do they just get the memories? It's every bite, just the memory of a bunch of people. And that was an amazing take. And good job, buddy.

Anyway, but yeah, they're running ads. and so people sign up. So Vect realizes. I can only imagine this is that terrible link that you get. You're like, I'm going to follow that. This looks like malware for sure. But honestly, no, let's talk this out. Because, I mean, it's not in the lore, but we can have fun with this.

People also go to attend the arena. Yeah. I think it's televised. It probably is. There's so many independent. Yeah. It's got it. I think people watching, it's like when ultimate.

Fighting Championship came out because I'm old enough for this. It was on VHS, you know? I'm sure ultimate fighting means, I think, 1995, 94, somewhere in that realm. Ultimate Fighting Championship 1 comes out. Like, you know, you're borrowing the VHS tape from your buddies. That's what this was. And then people were like, I want to go fight the guy in the silly in the uniform. You know, like, who's this?

What's a ghee? I don't care. And, man, all I'm to say is Keith Hackney. Don't fight Keith Hackney. A friend of mine described, Keith Hackney is someone you don't want to fight in the backseat of a Buick. Anyway, but that's what it was. So they put out these ads, in my opinion, all over the galaxy.

And the galaxy is full of independent operators. Like Eldar, we talked about. They become the corsairs, which are effectively pilots. You know, the Imperium's got nonstop people, not just the rogue traders, and people trying to make their fortune elsewhere. even I firmly believe there's Tao who were like, yeah, I'm done with this greater good thing and bailed. Right? So they're all floating all around there.

Or my personal favorite, is there anything in the galaxy you can think of that likes to fight and shiny, cool things? Or, or. There are numerous free Buddhas who show up and fight in the arena over the years because it's the greatest thing ever. I'm surprised Gaz hasn't appeared in the arena. I don't think they'd let him. Oh, they totally let him. They just wouldn't fight him. They'd be like, yeah, that's Gaz and that's like not,

and then him fighting a bunch of not Drew Carrey. Also, you'd just be like, oh, I accidentally made a walk happen. Sorry. Yeah, exactly. Can we teleport him out? And so these, the arena fights get to be incredible. Because as Brad was saying, the Dr. Dr. Carrey don't care about the wealth.

They could have like, hey, I've got this. I have a space marine starship. I don't really, I don't want to do anything with it. Has anyone won it? And it's like... It's legitimately sitting in the backyard, mint condition, and someone's like, I want it. All right, just go in this arena and kill all of those people,

and you can have it. Be fun. Yeah. And you get a spaceship. Yeah. You're like, what? And by the way, the Drew Kari do hold their word. If you come and you fight in the arena and you don't die,

they don't like, then stab you in the back on your way out because they think is they want you to come back. They want more people to do this. So granted safe passage in and out. But the part I... like a lot more. It's not just people coming to fight. It's also people coming to watch. And there are numerous stories of rogue traders being in the audience. Well, the best part is is they want something and it might not be credits or anything. You didn't give money to get in here. Right.

You probably did something horrible. You probably bought some people that are going to have some terrible things happen to them. There are rumors of members of the Inquisition attending these. So how the hell did they get there? Yeah. Probably not, probably not Ordo Xenos, to be, if I'm being honest. I mean, they are tracking down leads. Yeah, it's Ordomalius going into this thing and being like,

eh, I'm just not going to tell the guys in Ordo Zinos I was here. Yeah, that seems bad. Yeah. And these battles within the arena get epic. As we were just talking about, you know, people, individual fighters coming in, but it's not just, just an individual fighter or a few fighters, you will have full-blown tens of thousands of combatants waging a like a campaign inside of these. That's how big these arenas are. Because they have

what is effectively reality changing engines. They have the hollow deck. Yeah. In a million seating stadium. And I love this concept too of like of the battles again like it I've been to the Coliseum. So if you haven't go, it's kind of cool. but the base of the Coliseum is not that big. So you're not just sitting there watching from the stands. These fights actually enter into the stands. So they'll be not just up close and high. They'll actually be next to you in fighting with War Walkers, tanks.

There'll be Titans will be fighting within this thing. But because of the way, as Brad's saying, it's, you know, reality altering effectively. You're also safe. I can sit there in the arena while two Titans blasts. they each other with thermal lances, I'm good. And I just get to enjoy it and laugh. The best part, though, of the arenas are when the arena enters any sort of story within the GW arc. Because every single time it gets awesome.

And I'm just going to kind of drop it there at Yonari. True. You've rain. You've rain. Also, Anne Vec, don't forget. There's two because it's also, that's the, both of those are arena events and they're amazing. And we're going to get to them in the future and we kind of dive into that. But with that, we're going to do, it's going to feel like a sudden stop, but just because we got excited and then we kind of ran out of show notes.

But I think this has been enough Drew Kari for now. As you guys can tell, this is one thing we are a bit more passionate about. So we get really excited. We didn't really touch on the characters very much. That's because most of the Drew Kari. characters come up pretty heavily in the Unari timeline. It's easier to tell the story that way. Otherwise, we end up telling like a piece of the Unari and having to stop. So I'd rather just, just run three, probably a three episode cast on Yanari and just kind of knock it all out.

So with that, we're going to end this. Next week, we're going to do a two part, start the two part cast. It's a listener request called Where Are They Now for the Primarks? I'm just sad. I thought we were just going to do only 80s rock bands. Oh, no. I, I, I, I, I, I want to have a happy cast. I actually think talking about Lorgar is a happier story than what happened to an 80s one-hit wonder. Flock of Siegles, baby. Oh, you had a moment. And I ran.

Was that their song? I had no idea. Okay. So anyway, next week, two-part cast will probably be the loyalists and then the traders. Spogelioris is dead. So that one, I'll save you guys that one ahead of time. And then after that, we're going to do what is currently the most. listener requested, Tao.

So we're doing Tao in December. It's common. I promised you all I'd do it. It will be anywhere between 10 minutes and two casts. TBD. Will there be a diatribe about shield drones? Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

John does not like shield drones. It's just, it's all PTSD. But anyway, until then, this has been John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. Enjoy your week. Thank you.