The 40k Lorecast - Episode 68 - Space Wolves Pt 2 - Our favorite characters

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

On Today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the Space Wolves. Today’s cast is completely about the epic characters that make up the Space Wolf Lore. We open with a quick bit about the Space Wolves’ opinion on remembrancers. From there we go hard and jump through some of our personal favorites including Bjorn, Harl Greyweaver, Logan Grimnar, Ulrik the Slayer, Njal Stormcaller, the 13th great company, Ragnar Blackmane, and the one and the only (and the epic) Lukas the Trickster. 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 Barciani and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we'll conclude our coverage with the space walls with a deep dive just into the characters themselves. Booyah! For those who are new to the cast, the 40K lore cast is a weekly podcast, focusing on a massive lore of the 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time on all podcasting platforms. That's not a professional. You know, it doesn't sound professional. The fact that I didn't know what time we were released,

until we started putting this down. Put it into the podcast. I only know because I'm the one who has to put it there. But yeah. I mean, I knew what day we were. But if you would have put a gun to my head and said, when do we release the cast, I would have been like, Brad's getting shot.

Monday late. All right. So before we begin, a couple of requests from us. First, please like and comment on the podcast. It really does help the algorithm massively. Also, I enjoy reading them. So the more comments, the more enjoy my coffee in the morning. Some of you guys have some pretty good senses of humor.

Additionally, there's a Discord link that it's inside the show notes, or you can go to the 40K lorecast.com our website and find it there. You can go there. Our Discord's a fully free community for anyone who wants to kind of spend more time interacting around 40K, the game, the lore, video gaming, hobying, whatever it is. So please, if you're interested, join at the same time. We're going to keep doing this. Kevin, Maisie, Brian, Ethan, Steve, Ryan, Trevor, David. those are the mods that we have running this. It's fantastic for us to have them.

It's really made this Discord functional. We're pushing 5,000 members at time of recording. So you can imagine having 5,000 people in a giant chat text. It's probably good to have someone organized said chat text and moderate sad chat text. Also, we have channels that just pop up for specifically things that I apparently dream about. Well, and I'll be honest, one of my favorite things they do is they also get all the bots out too. because that's the number one killer of most of these platforms is you have endless bots. They're just spamming everybody.

Also, big thank you to Caleb D and the crew at Hatch Distilling. They, we had some great whiskey and bourbon from them. This stuff is delicious. And yeah, so if today's cast ends up drunk, everyone blame Caleb. She's definitely careful. Yeah, exactly. Not ours. Additionally, the 40K lore cast has our web page.

We do have merchandise there now. I haven't mentioned that in a while. We now have things like objective markers, dice, and all sorts of, of clothing, you can go there and get linked to Etsy. It's also just on Etsy. I'm not that good of a website designer. Remember the guy that bought stuff from his own website? Yeah, Brad bought stuff from it, which I told him, you know, I can just order it.

So I had to fulfill an order to Brad. John was very confused about it. I was just like literally you placed this order and then drove to my house. Yeah. I don't make great decisions all the time. That was amazing. It was the same time. Anyway, speaking of Bradden decisions,

Brad is a coach for 40K. This is what he does. I mean, the thing of Brad, just people understand, Brad spends 80 plus hours a week on Warhammer between coaching, playing, talking to us, et cetera. This is a big part of his life. And he actually still enjoys it,

which is why I strongly recommend him for coaching services. You've got someone who's not doing this begrudgingly. This is something he has a real passion about. I do get pretty excited. Yeah. And so for people who want to know, more and understand it a bit better, Brad's really your best option. He can teach you anything from a brand new player all the way to full veteran.

If you want to know more about what Brad's offering, you can go to our website, the 40KLorecast.com. You can go to the Discord and message him there. Or you can email him at Oldman Brad 40K Gmail.com. Thank you, bots. I look forward to hearing from you. So with that, let's jump into Spacewolves. Before we begin, I do want to take one to apologize to die-hard space wolf fans out there.

There's just not enough time for us to cover every space wolf hero. So we pick the ones that are our personal favorites, but that may not be your personal favorites. So if we don't cover them, one of two things will happen. Either we will never cover them, sorry, just kidding. Or more realistically, they will probably come up as we're talking about future lore. One thing that, for example, that we're going to see a lot of is a lot of characters who we've missed in other casts are going to come up as we're discussing Abidon's 13th Crusade, for example, the rise of the Yanari. I mean, there's tons of events.

We may even talk about, we may dive into some of the Tao spheres of expansion, for example, tyrannid invasions, all these things. So your character may come up there. So wait, off we go. Remembrancers. We're going to start with these because it's important for space wolves. 100% because of the fact, these were the embedded wartime journalists. Sort of.

Well, I mean, that was. Well, supposed to be what they were. That's a good way, but yeah, they were. They're technically the embedded journalists. The issue is who they work for. Yeah, they're wild propaganda pieces. They basically worked directly for the Inquisition. Yeah.

And so there was Rememancers, if you've read any of the novels, they play a big role in the novels. We haven't really touched them yet, so I want to hit them real quick here. The Remembrancer's job is just to sit there, be at the battles, and record what happens in the battle for the Imperium. These are different than like the admec records, which are the actual recordings of what happened in the battle. Because obviously every space marine helmet. The admecs are just Walter Cronkine. Yeah, this is what happened.

Yeah, for the example, like, yeah, the space marine armor, which I have complained about, but realistically, does have a, it records. All of the tanks, all those stuff record. The Imperium has a perfect recording of every single battle. They're not relying on some dude with a pen and paper. to tell them what happened to the battle. But the remembrancer's job is to take what happened to the battle

and kind of spin it into these amazing tales. They want the propaganda piece. They want the angels to be shown. And certain people were super excited to have them with them. I don't know, cough, cough, emperors children. Oh, emperors children were thrilled about this. I don't understand why there isn't three remembrances around me in all times. I want more remembrances.

And even the salamanders and Ravengard, a lot of them were like, okay, I'm part of the imperial. I mean, they're allowed to be here. They did it because they were told to and they just said, well, fine. Exactly. However, the space wolves, and they weren't the only ones, but the space wolves primarily hated the remembrancers for a number of reasons.

Well, they also, well, we'll go to the reason why they hated it, but also, spacewows are super good at getting their remembrances killed. Well, they were very good at asking remembers her to hold something and something was a grenade that had no pin in it. Like, yeah. Also, they went, you can just come with me.

Nothing shows the video better than a front line charge. Well, that was, it was fun. That was that originally Lehman got super mad about them because they were slowing him down because, all, the story's great. Originally, the first remembrances who were all assigned to the Space Wolves all just died because the Space Wolves went like, oh, is this person supposed to follow me in the battle? Yeah, okay. And they would come out of a drop pod with the Remembrance and run straight into enemy fire with, you know, Just be holding this guy, basically. Yeah, and just some person in like a t-shirt and shorts.

They had Ted who they're probably just holding in front of them like a shield. Have you seen Roverated Deadpool? That was happening. Quite a bit. You're going to regent that? Regeneration. Oh, they're not covered in armor. So they all died.

At which point, quickly. Yeah, Lehman gets yelled at and they said, look, you have to protect them. And he's saying, no. I'm trying to go fast and kill things, and this person sucks at both of those. So I don't want them. At this point,

the remembrance is, as we were discussing, just start mysteriously dying constantly. Well, also, think about this, though. The space wolves are super proud of their lore. They tell their own science. They don't need this guy telling a shitty version of my Beowulf epic poem.

Well, yeah, because you couldn't be more right. A remembranceor does not have the talent a space wolf has of telling the glory that is a space wolf. 100%. This guy's a bum. You got this hack trying to tell my story. Get out of here. What is funny is that the remembrancers also were aware that the space was didn't want them there. So the space wolves, the remembrances did all they could not to get assigned to a space wolf.

Oh, yeah. You're like, well, but I was good knowing you, Ted. You're about to die. I am going to die. There's no, like, just send the servo skull. Please just send the servo skull. There's no reason for me to be here. Now, to that end, the reason we, the reason I bring this up is we're about to talk about

space wolf characters and all of their stories and all this stuff. The space wolves did actually have their own remembrancers. You mean scalds? Yeah. Yeah. The scalds were often, they were either remembrancers who got converted by the space wolves and how to actually do the stuff. or there was someone that the space wolf just found along the way and converted over.

So as with all space wolves, they have something similar enough to what the rest of the Imperium has, but to the space wolves, it's better. And this is a big deal because the blood clause, the youth, all the, they're so, I mean, there's a reason why they have the special rule headstrong, because they're told these stories the entire time they're indoctrinated into the Legion. Yeah, and the stories are mostly true. They're embellished a little bit. They're supposed to be mostly true.

They want, that's the whole thing. Yeah. It's like when you're talking about the trials of Hercules and all these kind of things, you want... Those aren't true. Yeah, I'm saying. God damn. In the stories of it, he knows that...

You went with, these stories are mostly true, and then went to Hercules. The stories about him, he's... He is, you know what, we're killing that. I'm just, no, that's, that there's no snare I'm editing that out. My point is that when he, when you do those, they're supposed to be outlandish, opposed to what he actually does. Yeah, whereas with the blood claws and the stories of space walls are trying to tell,

it gives them something to look up to. This tells them, this is how great you can be because other space worlds have done it. But the thing is, is that you want them to be romanticized and amazing because war is sucks. War sucks. It's also pretty boring for the most of the time. And then when it's, it's gritty, dirty, and sucky. You want a romanticize version of it to go out there and inspiring. Oh, completely.

It's not inspiring to say I was sitting in the mud. Yeah. And then shooting at a creature made of mud. Yeah. You want to. Kind of boring. Exciting. All right.

But if we're going to do exciting, we're going to jump around a little bit, all these characters, but I want to open with, we're going to open and close on my two personal favorites. So my first one, we're open with is Bjorn. Well, whoa, give him this full deal. Bjorn the fell handed. There we go. So, Bjorn is currently the oldest being in the Imperium.

He's around 11,000 years old, I think now. He's pushing into that realm. He's been around since the beginning. Yeah, because he was there in the Great Crusades. I think that puts us about 11,000 years old. He's also had a model since second edition. Which is also his original model is two inches tall. Oh, it's not that modeling for advantage.

You might get home. It's so small. Yeah. He could, his original model could ride inside a rider. Yeah. But Bjorn is awesome. And so let's talk about Bjorn for a bit. So Fenrisian native, he establishes himself very early within the spacewolves as being a really good leader.

And which for spacewool just means he was a good warrior who stood in the front. So he's no to be even tempered for a space wolf. That was, well, even tempered more, he would think for a matter of maybe, four seconds. True. I mean, he's known as being the practical guy, especially now that he's dreadnought. Yeah, he's practical for a space wolf. Yeah.

I mean, he's also been around forever, so he's just like, we don't need to do that. But so he had a couple big glow-ups. If we're talking about Bjorn, the first one of the big glow-up he had was actually during the Battle of Prospero. And during the Battle of Prospero, he's leading a pack to, again, to kill every thousand son. while he's there, one of the Skulls that's with him, which, long story short,

he actually, this Skjald was originally a Remembrancer, and Bjorn shot his shuttlecraft down. And after saying, hey, sorry about shooting your ship down because I thought it was an invader. They actually became friends.

He also hangs out with him all the time. Yeah, that's classic space. Which is kind of why we have so many Bjorn stories because he has a guy next to him. He has his own Skald, who just runs, who follows him around going like, and Bjorn's awesome.

And this is a great example of Bjorn being, awesome. While they're invading Prospero, a demon is there, and it turns his attention to Bjorn. It actually tries to possess Bjorn's friend the Skilled. So Bjorn deals with this the only way that you would handle a demon by hitting it in the face over and over again with an axe. The demon doesn't really care for this and decides to use all of its warp power to try and disintegrate Bjorn and blasts his non-ax holding arms. with a disintegration spell. Which Bjorn ignores...

Well, Bjorn feels his arm disintegrating and basically goes off with, I didn't hear no bell, and keeps hitting the demon in the face with his axe. Still got my good arm. Still got my axe arm, yo. Long enough for Constantine Valdor to show up, see it. I was just saying, he doesn't just show it by himself.

He shows him with the sisters of silence. Yeah, fine. Chops off Bjorn's arm as is disintegrating. Bjorn again couldn't care less and continues hammering the demon in a face with his with his axe, which then draws the attention of two dreadnots who are nearby. River dance on top of the space. Stomp the demon to death. Just a good story.

And yeah, that was that the Skiald wrote that one down. However, my favorite Bjorn story was involves Arvax, who's a demon king of corn. A monstrous. Yeah. This demon king, we say demon king that's demon prince, bloodthirster, it's whatever you want to call it.

There's an incursion. This is, and the first time Bjorn encounters him, they, Lehman Russ is even there. Sorry, let's sip it. Bjorn's first encounter with Arvax is on a world in rebellion.

They get, and the space wolves are sent to deal with this rebellion, and it is a full-blown corn rebellion led by a demon king. of corn. And this story is a lot of Bjorn's stories, which almost all of them are, I didn't hear no bill. Yeah. Because everyone gets killed besides Bjorn

and he's just like, yep, it's Tuesday. Don't give a shit. Let's bring. Yeah. Bjorn said everyone around him is dead. Lehman Rush shows up to go save the day and arrives just in time to see an enraged Bjorn attack a demon

demon king, which by the way, Lehman Russ just stops and goes, I'm watching this. and watches his buddy beat a demon king until a demon king runs away. That's what happened. His demon king gave up on fighting Bjorn. And the best part is Bjorn's response to this, which is he's mortified, shamed that he didn't kill him. You're like, you just stood by yourself against a wave after wave of enemies.

He's like, yeah, but he's still alive. Oh, that's good point. Yeah, he didn't just fight the demon king. He killed all of the people. every bloodletter, all of them, and then beat up the Demon King, who then retreated. But of course, after the battle, you know, they're having, they're doing a big funeral pyre, they're burning all of his dead, and Bjorn is just destitute sitting there. He's so upset.

Lehman's just looking at him like. Arvax is still alive. Yeah, Arvax still alive, whereas Lehman Russ is like, that's the greatest warrior I have. But anyway, fast forward five years, Arvax reappears. Bad decision for him? Yeah. Lehman again arrives with Bjorn and they recognize as Arvax and Lehman just turns to Bjorn and goes, all right, do your thing.

Bjorn Yolo swags himself straight through all the corn demons just slaughtering them, running as fast as he can and screaming at the demon king. They engage in battle. I mean, this is again a demon king who's now even more powerful from the last time they fought. Bjorn starts ducking his blows, climbs him. No, that's how big this is. Bjorn is a space marine. So nine feet tall, or maybe, you know, ends up jumping on this giant creature,

climbs up its body and rips its throat out with his power claw. I think you meant to say he rode house throat ripped him. After the battle, sorry, I should have mentioned, every single space Marine watches this happen. It is true. Everybody's just like, no, no, no, let him do his thing. Let him do his thing. No one help.

This is awesome. After the battle, of course, Lehman just walks over and says, yeah, you're in the honor guard now. And Bjorn becomes one of the main pieces of Lehman's honor guard, which was primarily made up, by the way, at this point, of the people that Lehman brought with him after the emperor arrived. Most of the honor guard at this stage were, the warriors who served with Lehman before the emperor had arrived.

So Bjorn being in this group is an incredible honor. It's also danger zone as we will go with when Lehman decides to Yolo swag to Horace, which, by the way, is something that Space Wolves continue to do to this day, which is just show up places in the middle of things. And I love this story about Bjorn, because this is another one of just how incredibly strong and tough he is. So Bjorn and we talked about this during the Horace episode. Lehman decided to go

stab Horace in the chest. Not to kill him but just to go stab him in the chest. On the bridge of his command. Of Horace's own ship. So it's not like he saw him somewhere and went to fight. He's like, nah, how about if I take a couple of my best buds and just show up on the bridge

of his command ship and stab him with my spear, which is exactly what he did. However, he was, when he did this, Levin was stabbing a borderline demon prince god so it didn't quite kill him and they were surrounded by the entirety of the ship yeah horace shoves his claw straight through leman and just drops him in the process that what happens when someone puts their hand from one side of your body to the other bioran sees this runs over and grabs leiman his prime mark he also body blocks everybody else yeah yeah

By the way, Lehman's maybe 50, at least 30% bigger than Bjorn. And I don't know if any of you ever tried to carry a being who's even half. Just carry your child. It's not that comfortable. Bjorn's picking up, you know, Bjorn is basically a child picking up an adult. While fighting other people. While fighting with his free hand and carries him full speed back through the ship to then teleport back out.

Yeah. It's not like they just went. We waited patiently for you to pick up your primer. Yeah. Now, they were actively trying to kill him. Yeah. So it's pretty clear at this stage, you know, Bjorn's pretty good at this. The tragic part of the Bjorn story, that was what happens next. Well, let's give him his other prop because when Lehman thinks he's going to die,

he tells, he tells Bjorn to carry on the liege. I forgot about that. He did effectively put Bjorn in charge because he thought that the horse power claw to the chest was going to end him. Right. But it didn't. So, yay. One thing that's kind of sad is that when Lehman leaves to the eye of terror to go. This wrecks Bjorn.

Yeah, to go. He brings his entire honor guard except Bjorn. And the reason he does this is what Brad just mentioned because he knew Bjorn was the only member of the entire spacewolds who could lead in his stead. but like his dad, he doesn't tell it, Bjorn, that. He just leaves. So Bjorn thinks that he's been left behind because he did something. Unworthy or did something. I didn't.

Yeah. So for seven years, the space wolves go without a leader until the space wolves just realize, Lehman is not coming back. Someone's got to be in charge. And they all get together and tell Bjorn, you're in charge now. And Bjorn, it's a tough one for him because he, on the one hand, doesn't think he should be in charge because he was left behind. That means, therefore, I failed my prime mark.

I shouldn't be in charge. But he also loves- Exactly the opposite, though. Yeah, exactly. But he also loves his Legion more than anything. So when his Legion says, we will be lost without you, he has no choice but to lead. And he's a hell of a leader. So- Unfortunately, well. Yeah, it's, I mean, you went, hey, everything's looking great for the space wolves.

and... Well, he does make it like a thousand years at this point. I mean, he wasn't leading for a thousand years, though. He was leading seven years after Lehman leaves. Lehman leaves not too long after... I was to say, we have to... They mess up the time so much.

The time... The G.W. timelines. Anything that happens in between Horace Heresy and modern, it's a little bit tight. He did rock solid for a while. Yeah. But eventually, just because... I don't know the story on this.

I just know that it's written in the codex that Bjorn takes a shot from some traitors, from fighting traitors, and his body's just completely wrecked. So they put him into a venerable dreadnought, which is awesome because now he can never die. But unfortunately, it means Bjorn can't lead anymore. Which is a big thing on this,

because space marines that are entombed in a dreadnought are effectively put into stasis when it's not a time of war that they need, they need them to come out. And although in the game, we constantly have dreadnoughts everywhere, it's a big deal when you awaken a dreadnought. It is.

In the game, you also play with Drago. Drago every time. Yeah, it's like, every battle I'm in, I'm having Drago's here. Also, sangrenary guards show up every single. Yeah, exactly. All of the sanguinary guard are in every battle.

I mean, it's okay. It's just when we play on tabletop. It's not all that great. So Bjorn and, So Bjorn, first he abdicates his throne because he's in a dreadnought, and he starts being put into stasis only for when he's needed most. And let's just say when they wake Bjorn up out of stasis, it's always impressive. Well, one, Magnus decides to roll into the fang.

And they wake Bjorn. And Bjorn upon hearing that the Magnus is here, Magnus is here, is definitely slips So I don't even know what kind of boots a mighty ass kick and you put on for a dreadnought, but he definitely puts those on. Oh, and the story is hilarious. I'm skipping someone else who's involved in this story because I actually don't care for him, the Great Wolf.

Because all he did was like, I wanted to go beat up Magnus. Then he never did. And then eventually he does. Anyway, but because this story is way better. Anyway, Magnus is attacking. And as always, he's winning because the chaos, chaos always wins until they don't.

Until they don't. That's just the rule of writing. And this doesn't a knock on their writing. That's how you write antagonists and protagonists. So the battle is going on. Magnus is winning until Bjorn is awoken. Here is busy. Magnus is here, followed by where.

And so they say where the sound of a venerable drudnot at full speed occurs. Bjorn and Magnus meet in combat on a cliff because where else would they meet? Bjorn. Speaking of Jesus, I forgot it. we were going here. Yeah. Speaking of, I didn't hear no bell.

Oh, this is, this is amazing. So Bjorn starts off wrecking Magnus, because he, they threw his plasma gun on him. So he's got a plasma gun and the world's largest power claw. And starts a wrecking Magnus,

at which point Magnus gets mad. And one by one destroys each of Magnus's arms. You know, puts them off. Yeah, literally. He removes his arms. Bjorn then,

realizing the situation, decides to just say, all of the black knight in Monty Python, all right, and begins headbutting Magnus with his body to try and push him off a cliff. Which, by the way, actually works. So Bjorn jams Magnus to end of the cliff.

At this moment, the great wolf of the space wolves, arrives. He, this guy, Iron Helm, has been hunting Magnus for 500,000, 500 years, thousand years. who knows, somewhere in that realm. Not a big fan of Magnus, obviously,

and this is his chance to fight Magnus. So he then leaps in, does a superhero landing, and tackles Magnus off the cliff, leaving Bjorn staying there with his no arms. They start fighting in the air, which is pretty awesome. Oh, yeah, they fight in the air all the way down. He breaks Magnus's body, but Magnus kills him back. Yes.

We're going quick here. The book is a Battle of the Fang. If you like Space Wolves, it's kind of an... It's also a... Badass. Yeah, I think it's one of the required books if you like Space Wolfs. Bjorn also has more of a story role within the wolves that I also like a lot. So every thousand years, the Space Wolf celebrate, you know, Lehman's departure into the Eye of Terror with a giant party.

Well, this is one of my favorite things about Bjorn because Bjorn gets awoken and then sits down as a dreadnod and basically tells grandpa's stories. To the Legion. Yes. He's sitting there as a dreadnought, so he's got this super big dreadnought voice. But it's so perfect, though, because the whole idea is, the idea is we are here every thousand years, we are going to celebrate our prime mark. We could tell you the stories that have been written down about him. Or we could wake up the guy who was there who was next to him and sits there.

And the part of the story I love they describe is that this is a incredibly drunken and lively event. The second Bjorn, I don't know if he stands up, I don't know what a Dreadnought does to speak, but the second Bjorn begins, the entire hall goes silent. No one says a word because they just sit there in awe while

listening to Bjorn tell the tales of the primar. But it's going to be awesome. If you're a modern day space marine and the tails that are effectively Excalibur King Arthur tales, you know, like, is any of this rule? You're like, hey man, I was there.

This guy watched it happen. Yeah. Also, there was five guys, not three guys. It was written down, said this. No, no, no, no. He punched him, you know, with his right hand and then his left. And then he actually kicked him in the groin and the people's elbow. It was fantastic.

So that's actually a bit more on Bjorn later because he does come up in another story, but I didn't want to spoil that story. But one quick last little note on Bjorn before we move on is I just want to say thank you to every Space Wolf player who brings Bjorn on the tabletop. His models, his rules aren't always great, but there's a lot of space world players, so we'll just play them no matter what.

And I will let you know. Bjorn. I strongly appreciate you, and I do feel bad killing him. From there, let's jump into kind of just more, this day's cast is going to be more just kind of celebrating some of really great characters. And a quick one,

who I just, again, I like is Harle Grayweaver, who I just think epitomizes Space Wolves. We'll be right back after a quick break. In my professional life, one thing I know well is how challenging managing a global team can be. Just the act of creating one has been an extreme challenge over the years. Because one thing you learn quickly is a difficulty of hiring global talent and how unclear those costs can be. It looks simple at first, but then the fees start to stack up with compliance worries, contractors versus employees, and a host of other regulations.

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Get my cheat because I think my favorite thing about him. First off, I'm jumping the gun. He's a tech marine. Sorry, he's an iron priest. He's an iron priest because he's not a tech marine, which is what makes it great. So iron priests are the space wolves. Like they're their sub-tech Marines. They still have tech marines, but they have these iron priests.

He got, he joined the Death Watch to be their weapon Smith. And so we haven't done Death Watch yet, but the Death Watch have their own very special army. In fact, every Space Marine faction has their own armory, but the Death Watch Armory is probably the best. Well, he's amazing as a Smith. He's the best they've ever had. And also gives zero shits about any rule that's ever been ever. He's also, he's also an unencourigible grump.

The ad mech detest him because he makes better weaponry than they do. And then, but doesn't follow any of their rules. Absolutely. He also, no candles. Well, he gives absolutely. He won't tell them how he's doing it either. Yeah. He just makes stuff.

The things I like about him, though, is he also shit talks. other chapters. Because when you're sent to the Death Watch, it's usually, it's an honor. So when you go over there, your chapter will actually give you special chapter weaponry to take what we call relic weaponry to take with you. So you can then really better fight the Zenos and destroy them. They get there. And Greyweaver will look at it, some of them from Ravengard, and be like, what is this useless blaster you brought with you? Because like, this is our chapter relic. And it's like, that thing sucks. It's like, do you want to hand it to me?

Because I can make it suck less. Yeah, it's like, I don't know. Like, do you guys actually win any battles with your weaponry? I can't figure this out. So everyone basically hates the guy. Well, that's the fact that you want him to fix your shit, but also you're like, I really don't want this kind of shit talk me for the next two hours. But if he does, my weapon works better.

The other one, though, I love is, remember, space wolves are very, very, very loyal to the teachings of the Imperium, there's a note written down that, you know, every single piece of Xenotech that passes through his workbench does so begrudgingly. That's written in the codex. It does so begrudgingly. Well, also because originally he, they allude to it that apparently he was just breaking. Yeah, it doesn't work anymore. Like weird, like, oops, looks like that's, I don't know what happened. 10,000 people died so we could have that relic. Oh, my bad. I tripped. Yeah, it fell. These necrons should make their things more sturdy. We saw you hit it with the axe. Nah. Wasn't me. He pulls the shaggy.

All right. But I'm a boy. Let's do Brad's favorite, Logan Grimnar. I'm going to say it out. I love his rules. I love his story. I love how he performs a table top. I love how he performs a table top. I hate his model with a absolute passion. You hate his model? I hate one of his models. I hate his model. I hate every proxy made of his model. I detest this thing with so much.

You don't hate him in Terminator Armor. When was he in Terminator Armor? He is right now. You can bring this either. Oh, you can? I didn't know that. All right, that's on me. Fine.

I don't hate his model. You hate 50% of him. I hate, yeah, I've never seen him in Terminator armor. That's why I always see people. He's dragging the axe behind. Oh, that's still the same model. Everyone I see runs him as a stupid chariot. The Santa sleigh of Horde.

Sorry, I probably should make that clear. The model for Logan Grimnar is him on a Santa sleigh being pulled by two wolves. No. No. No. But, all right, that being said, I'm going to dive into why I do like him. And so young warrior and Fenris, like anybody, he catches the eye of the wolf priests, really early.

So I like seven. Really early. Yeah, like seven years old, whatever. He's also as a child is already apparently a ninja assassin. Yeah. And so this is interesting. So this time we're talking about, for whatever reason, they lean more into the Viking thing now.

So now they have longboats. I don't want to dive into that because I'll get, I'll get, I'll get a angry. But he's part of a warrior group that uses longboats to do raiding. And at one point, they're doing a raid. And it's just, this is the kind of raid you don't do where you're out number 30 to 1. And they do it anyway. Grimnar just starts hopping ship to ship, wrecking people. And eventually, while doing this, the opposing leader that they're invading challenges Grimnar to a duel.

This leader is not a child. This is a full flow. Yeah, I was saying he just challenged a preteen to a duel. Yeah. this is a nine-year-old being challenged by Magnus for Magnuson, effectively. And Grimnar just goes, right. He just buries his axe in his head. Yeah, just kills him outright.

And the wolf priest who's watching this states that they saw the image of Lehman Rus behind Grimnar as he does this. So obviously, we're going to add him to the group. So they bring Grimnar in. And he goes through all, you know, the normal ritual, blah, blah, blah, blah. and now he gets cast out into the wilds beyond the fact. While out there, just love this story, he is very, very cold, and he sees a cave. So I'll go to this cave and I'll get sheltered there.

And he walks into the cave and it's, and he is just full of dead space wolf recruits. Because they keep doing the same thing. They'll keep going to the same cave. Yeah. And it's a giant troll. I mean, luckily it wasn't a deer. Yeah, it wasn't a deer.

If it was a deer, he would have done some serious trouble. This was just an ice troll, thank God. The ice troll attacks. Grimnar picks up just a piece of bone and starts jabbing him in the eye with this piece of bone until he kills the troll. And he proceeds to just epic beat it. It's negative a thousand. Yeah, he pox it, he shoves it in the eye and then beats it to death while screaming at it. Yeah, it doesn't stop for, I think, the better part of the night as one of them.

So we're going to go ahead and chalk that up to. passing of the ritual. And Grimnar is like, yeah, Grimnard's made a space wall. But what's notable about him is that he is prideful, he is boastful, but he's incredibly brave and fearless. He's also funny. The other thing I like a lot, too, about it. They talk about when he comes in, even like the older, the long fangs, got a kick

out of young Grimdard as a blood fan. Well, he's the best part about Grimdara is he's a great storyteller. And he motivates everyone. but he does the cunning thing where he'll tell a story that's supposed to be a fun, this story of woe, but it always has like a meaning to what we're about to do. And I just love that because he's just like, you're like, oh man, you got some learn on in the middle of that for some reason.

You're like, God damn it. He's one of the, basically, one of the best storytellers they have who's not as skilled. Over time, he rises to the ranks pretty quickly. There's lots of like little quick stories of heroism, him just demolishing or excrucari. chaos. Like there's one where his, the wool floor that he reports into is has a hell root fall on him. And he's trapped. He's dying on it. So Logan does what you should do. He runs over and with one hand picks up the hell route. And with the other hand is punching and hitting with his axe or

whatever, a bunch of chaos Marines who were next to the hellbrut thereby saving his, his lord. No surprise over time. Logan becomes a great. for the space wolves. Just in time for the first war of Armageddon. And we've covered this a little bit. We've hinted to this in the past. We're going to dive into the level of badassery that Logan is, but also like why he's a good leader, too.

He's super loyal. If you're loyal to Logan, he's loyal to you. And he's also a very clever leader. And he's not just he's loyal. It's the thing I like on it, he also brings others to his side. The way that he performs, Logan, in a lot of ways, is a perfect character because he's not only, he's a great fighter,

he's a great storyteller, but his actions tend to always come from a place of good and makes others fall behind him. So with all that, we'll kind of go through this pseudo quickly. First war of Armageddon, Angron is leading an attack. Planetary defense calls for support the space wolves arrive. Once the space wolves arrive, they realize what they're fighting. Logan, because he's the great wolf, knows about the Grey Knights.

So he calls for the Grey Knights to come and help, which, of course, they do. When they're like, the demon prince, we're on our way. Well, think about, we gotta do this. We did the cast when we talked about it. Logan rallies the populace of the world. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. These guys, this, when the Grey Nets, before the Green Knights get there, the battle has, I would call, stalemated. But the arrival of, the Grey Knights is what pushes it over. But they were getting erect, and he, these regular people were taking up arms against demons. Yeah. We talked about that cast. It's John and I ran outside with a stick and a pitch

fork to go. A Lasgan and litanies. I don't know what you're doing. I got to let my litany of don't die to a demon prince. That's a good one to recite. It's a very good one. It's probably one of the top ones. You know, the litany of bloodthirst or anyway, the end of the battle ends and there's a problem. And the Inquisition just says we have to expunge all knowledge of the great enemy and all knowledge of the Grey Knights. Logan and the wolves disagree and they're saying, well, look, you know, most of the populace actually was hold up in their hives.

They didn't see any of this stuff, which wasn't actually true. But more importantly. Well, he says he can sequester those that did, but also in their mind, these are heroes now. Well, that's the real thing. The real reason is that these are heroes. This isn't really a matter of right or whether they saw or they didn't see. These are people who saw a blood letter and charged into it. It's sort of Logan and Spacewall are concerned.

These people are amazing. What are you doing? Haizneros, who's the leader of the Inquisition, no. It's his opinion. So he starts off by ordering that the entire populace be sterilized. The problem will work itself over time. The thing about that, though, which I read it and I saw it, the first time I read I'm like, okay. And then afterwards, I realized when you sterilize someone, you don't stop their ability to tell stories.

So it's not really, like, you're not going to stop word of mouth by making it so they can't have kids. You know how you do stop them from telling stories? Load them up into ships and blow up the ships. Yeah. And so what happens is the Inquisition orders the evacuation of the planet. And their whole plan is to just blow the ships up in space. Grimnar catches onto their plan. And so what he decides to do is take his fleet, which is significantly larger, by the way, than the fleet of the Inquisition and put it in orbit kind of near where this stuff are going, saying they would never do anything. First ship of the survivors makes orbit, and the Inglution blows it up with all 400,000 people.

I was just about it say it's 400,000 people. It's not like a tiny shuttle. Oh, yeah, yeah, this wasn't a shuttle. This was everybody. So, yeah, they killed all of them. Grimnar gets pissed, obviously. and says, okay, and now tells his fleet to pin themselves as close as possible to these ships, forcing Kaisnaro's to actually shoot the space wolf.

Which he's decided was a great idea. Well, okay, Kaisnoy's is about to blow up the space wolf ships just as, because what Grimnar had a backup plan, a massive spacewold fleet translates into orbit. So now the inquisition has to back down because they're outnumbered like three to one. They were already getting there and about together. Well, they were outnumbered, but the difference is they're not only outnumbered three to one. Space Wolf ships are all combat ships. The Inquisition ships are borderline transport ships.

So this battle would have been about eight seconds. I mean, true. Yeah. Kaisnaos does not take this loss well. And so he does two things. First, he orders the entire galaxy. to blow these ships up when they get there. Because the viewpoint is the space wolves can't be with them all the time.

So if any of these ships that I've marked appear in, you don't say a word, just blow it up right away. Well, then Logan has the space wolves escort these ships. Exactly. So the NIST becomes the game. And Kaiseros is now incredibly. Oh, he's enraged. And the thing is, is that this is one of the things I like about Logan being practical

until it's time for shit to go down. Because he could have just went, I'm real tired of this shit. I'm just going to kill. Basically, Logan kept giving the Inquisition a chance and the Grey Nights a chance to change their mind. Where this all starts to fall apart is the current Grandmaster is named Joros of the Grey Nights. He aligned with Kaisneros that the Space Wolves basically should know their place. That was the phrase they used, which is not a good line to use with Space Wolves. They don't like being told to know their place.

And the two of them decide that they need to bring Grimnar to heal. Yeah, with some super bullshit cowardy treachery. Yeah. Oh, this is lame as shit. As you guys can't tell, Brad does take these stories very seriously. I'm angry about this. So what they do is there's a cat and mouse game happening all over the place. And they say to Grimnar, look, we want to have.

We need to clear this up. This is, this shouldn't be happening. We're both members of the Imperium. We need to basically clear it. We're wasting forces. You know, it's things that you're using your forces. to escort these ships so they could be fighting in places that we need you. Yeah, let's get together and settle our distances,

and settle our differences. They set time and place, Grimnar appears. The second he translates into orbit, his four escort ships are blown up instantly with everyone on board dying, and his ship is crippled. Flagship, yes. Joros and Kaisneros then invite Grimnar on their,

onto their ship to discuss the terms of his surrender. Such a terrible decision, by the way. Oh, they felt good, you. Grimard agrees and he teleports onto the bridge with three dudes, I believe it was, yeah, with three, with three Wolfgard onto the bridge. Juros and Kaisnars began talking at, talking, and Grimnar just doesn't want to hear it. Who's responsible? Start screaming at his top of his lungs. Who is responsible for breaking the, no, sorry, for violating the oath of armistice?

And after he yells for about 10 minutes, nonstop, Juros just says, shut up. It was me. As soon as he finishes the sound E of that me, he's dead because Grimnard moves at a speed. No one knew he could move at. Also, no one has ever ran sprinted in Terminator armor before this. Yeah, I forgot that he was in full Terminator armor. At full speed goes across and cuts him in half with his axe. Which, by the way, as the Inquisitor, once you see the Grey Knight Grandmaster get Darth Mould, you decide I should probably start talking again.

Kaisenow, it's interesting. Because Kaisenonis at this point, I think his thought was, okay, you got it out of your system, but seriously, you need to surrender now because we're going to kill you. While he's doing this, the other by like is the Grey Knights have Justicar's on the bridge who start casting a spell to prevent what they know the space walls will do, which is, teleport back to their ship, forgetting that there's three Wolfguard there, and those three Wolfguard just shoot them all. It just kills all of them, and they just teleport off. And then shit went real down because Logan Grimnar went, oh, that's how it is. I'm going to Kaiser Zosay the Grey Knights of the Inquisition and just starts to just wreck them.

Yeah, he begins, he begins wherever Grey Knights appear, the Space Wolves attack. wherever Inquisition appear, they attack. This is turning into a full-blown civil war. So Kaisneros decides there's only one way to solve that. And that is to go attack the Fang. So they do. They arrive at the Fang suddenly and with an overwhelming force and begin demanding that the space wolves on their home planet,

on their temple at their home planet, surrender to the Inquisition. Also, they wake up Bjorn. Yeah. So they begin demanding to speak to whoever is in charge. Grimnar is not there. Everyone's off planet. So the people at the thing go, all right, we'll just wake up Bjorn. Yeah, by default.

If some shit's going down, we just wake up here. Yeah. The sign on the door says, if you're not sure, just get Bjorn. Break glass in case of emergency. You break the glass and pull the button and Bjorn wakes up. And Bjorn just goes, what? Kais Nauros explains the situation to Bjorn. and that, you know, he'll leave as long as the space wolves declare fealty to the Inquisition and the Imperium and vow to never disobey them again.

Bjorn points out that it's a kind of a weird negotiation when there's a fleet of ships pointing bombs at him. By the way, super chill about it too. Like, hey, this seems kind of trash. You sure? You guys sure about this? And, of course, in classic spacebowl fashion, right at this moment, Logan. And the entirety of the Legion. appear in fleet and just open fire.

No negotiations needed. You shouldn't be here. Also, I heard that you broke into my house and started messing with my family. Yeah. No. Logan, of course, drives his ship right into the heart of the battle until he can teleport under the bridge, walks up Tychaisneros and cuts his head off. So good.

Yeah. At which point Logan turns to go and effectively destroy the Inquisition and gets a Vox message from Bjorn saying, all right. Bjorn's totally me chill. Yeah. Okay. We're good now. Let's calm it down. And yeah, Bjorn talks Grimnar down and they agreed. Which is a big deal, by the way. He doesn't like straight. Yeah. Grimnar's not exactly looking for crowdsourcing what he's going to do. I'm not ready to go, and Bjorn just gets in his ear and calms up. And I'll be honest, I mean, Bjorn is the most respected spacewolf. So when he speaks, you're going to listen. And he does calm what was a blood-raged space wolf down into like, all right, we'll let him leave. And this does.

I mean, it effectively saves the Legion. But forever, the space wolves really don't do well with the Inquisition. And it's mutual. The Grey Knights aren't huge fans of being around the Space Wolves. They're okay now. To be fair. Spaces have never been pretty big on anyone telling them what they're supposed to do. Oh, of course.

I mean, this was, this is fine. But it saves the Legion. That wasn't the last of Grimnar's stories. So he's this incredible leader. There's a planet called Placia. It was like there was a heretical uprising. This is why I love Lorgan so much. He goes there, takes personal command of the regiments,

and stops an exterminate. say he tells them to stop that their plan was just to blow up the plan. Yeah. So this planet is in full rebellion. The viewpoint of the Imperium is we're just going to blow the planet up. And Logan goes, nah, I got this. He jumps there and just takes control of the regiment. Says, no, we got this.

Guys, watch this. He also goes door to door. Well, he grabs the regiment and then goes door to door and kills all the heretics, saving, and this is massive. This was a hive world. It was a major manufacturing hive world. Billions. He saved billions of lives.

and he saved a lot of the, a lot of Imperium manufacturing because they would have lost it all. Oh, this is a key point. The other one I do like a lot, though, is just, I don't even know where this was, is there, there's a space Hulk full of aliens. Doesn't even say which ones,

just full of aliens. Logan goes there, jumps in with his crew, and while they're running through the spacehulk, he falls through a hole in the floor. Oh, like floors and floors. Yeah,

just goes, disappears, and he's gone. Three days later, he walks, he just walks into where all the space wolves are, completely covered in an alien blood and just smiling. Just like, hey, what's going on, guys? Yeah, that was one of the best days. I took a vacate. Yeah.

Another one I like is Planet Vara. There's a planetary governor who'd fall into chaos. Grimnar, while in the presence of the governor, realizes this, and just reaches over and pulls his head off of his shoulders. Oh, you forgot. Before he does this, the planetary governor was starting to talk shit. Yeah. And he doesn't say anything. He just pops his head off.

He also jacked up the tau really well. The Tao, so the Tao attacked this orbital shipyard. And it damaged basically one of the Space Wolf ships there. Logan personally led the counterattack and made sure that every single Tao. We killed every. Died. Every single Tao was dead. Yeah.

Full stop. Yeah. Like, hey, no. No touchy-touchy our boats. There's just endless stories of Logan. He is this incredible badass. He's also 700 years old, which is, I think, the longest serving leader. Yeah, that's Logan Grimnar.

He's awesome. He's a motherfucker. Please only run him in Terminator armor. Don't do the Santa Slay with the wolves. He's got a badass ability, though, for one turn. He makes everybody lose his shit. I completely understand why I ever. one, the rules are why you run the dumb chariot. My point is, is that just strategically,

nothing is easier to kill than two wolves pulling a sleigh with you on the back. Like, it's just, oh, okay. So there's no, like, look out, sir doesn't apply because I can see him. Let's talk about, if you felt Logan is an old guy, want to talk about an old curmudgeon? Oh, Ulrich? Ulrich, the slayer. Ulrich the Slayer. So Ulrich the Slayer is one of the most famous wolf priests, actually probably in history. And I like him a lot because he's, because Ulrich's this super badass who becomes a wolf priest later.

And the thing is, he's, so we'll go into it. I just love the fact that he just keeps his teachings going. He's got so many pupils. He does. But, okay, so first off, before we're talking to Ulrich as the wolf priest, I want to tell you a couple of quick stories of like Ulrich the badass fighter. So the first war of Armageddon, he was there. And he single-handedly killed three corn berserkers. And he did it with such flair and power that Angron saw it, looked at him, and smiled.

Gave him a thumbs up. Well done. Yeah. So there's that one. That's pretty cool. My other one that I like a lot, though, was there was a homunculi who raided Fenris and took some aspirants that were his aspirants. as a wolf priest. Yeah, pause on this one because I love about this, space wolves hold a grudge.

Like, you don't do some shit to space wolves. Oh, yeah. And then go, wonder if anything's going to happen for this. Orrick just took forever to track this guy down. We don't know how. To him. Yeah, all we, the story consists of three parts. Part one, a homunculi leads a raid and captures some aspirants.

Part two, Ulrich goes to find. the homunculi. Part three, the homunculi's head is on a spike in the fang. That's it. Parts one, two, and three concluded. But yeah, Ulrich is this incredible talent, though, for finding recruits. His, his, the people he pulls from Fenris have the highest success rate, not only in converting to space wolves, but actually as space wolf fighters. His, the people he chooses just, just, usually are great warriors end up being great warriors over and over and over again. So he is viewed as this incredible asset to them. I will say there is some, some people may or may not know.

There's some challenging conflict in the, in the lore around him in the sense, like, it was one point stated that he was the one that selected Logan Grimnar, but he's too, he's older than Grimnar, but he's not old enough to have actually done that. So I've seen it written, I just wanted to call it out real quick, that I've seen people say, oh, he's actually the wolf priest who selected Logan Grimnar, but I've also seen in other areas that he's not. So just calling it out. So people don't think I like the idea that he is though. Yeah. Because he's, that's he's calling. Yeah. He be he finds greatness. It's, I mean, I'm a big fan. Y'all storm caller. Another one that just funny. We covered a while ago the space wolves

hate psychers because they were at the council of Nakey basically saying we should exterminate all psychers, but they have their own psychers. Sorry, Aramon. Yeah. your boy from the space wolves didn't treat you, right? He didn't. So the space wolves call their, they don't call their psychers librarians. They call them ruin priests. And it's a good thing they didn't get rid of all of them

because they happen to have one of the most powerful cygars in the entire galaxy is a space wolf. Runecaster. Yeah, find ruin castor. So Nyal, who later gets named Stormcaller, can I tell you that story right now? He can do some stuff. So, you know, born on Fenris, raised in combat.

his ascension moment is actually kind of funny. He, another one of the people fighting on longboats in a naval battle was leaping from boat to boat killing everybody and eventually just ran into a spear. That's the best way to explain it. So he falls overboard. It's so like he ran, he ran into a spear to the chest. Yeah. Oh, yeah, to the chest.

It wasn't like he took, he took the arm. It wasn't like my bicep got stabbed. So while he's lying in the water over. born drowning and dying, the wolf priests kind of rush in and pick him up and bring him back to the fang to bring him all the way back to health to then set him off a set of challenges, which is kind of a messed up thing to do. Like, you're dead. Now you're not dead.

But you might be. And now we're going to go shove you out in the cold with no clothes on to see if you'll die. Figure it out. Yeah. But anyway, he's got some pretty cool stories. The first one is a place called Gorswitz. which I'm sure is a lovely place. I want a video of this because some of these things that the psychers do

is what looks so visually stunning if it's animated. Just let's talk about it. So there's a bloodthurster there and the bloodthirster tears his mentor at the time apart in combat. Y'all doesn't care much for that and summons all of the psychic power and rips the bloodthor apart. He casts epic lightning bolt on the bloodthirster and blows it up. And blows it up. And then proceeds to just cast ice storm and ruin everybody.

Yeah, they cast ice storm on all the demons around it who basically freeze in place and the rest of spaceholes kill them all. Yeah, just walk up and go, oh, dink. So when it comes to the naming mechanics, pretty easy to go, Hey, that guy's going to be called Stormcaller from now on, right? Yeah. Yeah. It sticks.

Yeah. His other interesting piece in the lore, though, was he had this vision of the All-Father returning to save Fenris. And everyone got super excited about it, including Space Wolf players when this happened. That's fine. I'm doing this just to annoy Brad. Because everyone thought it meant Lehman Ross is coming back. Should have came back because the 13th War Legion was already coming back.

Yeah. It was Gilliman. It was Gilliman coming back and bringing the Primaris reinforcements. When the Wolfen and the 13th company came back. Which, oh, crap. We never touched on the ultimate founding. All right, let's do it real quick. Sorry, guys.

We didn't do it last time. We probably should have started with this. All right. So the Fenris genetics are a complication. The space wolves all come from Fenris. The reason behind that is because of the Canix-Hex gene seed. If you put the Canis-Hex gene seed, as we discussed last time, and anyone who's not from Fenris, it just doesn't work out.

And it never worked out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. when Gilman does his second founding of the Primaris, it's done just like the start of the Great Crusade. All of the primaris are made back on Mars, right? I think it was Mars. They're made back there. So millions of them are created. And they're created with the leftover gene seeds of all the legions.

Also, the wolves did not agree to this, by the way. But continue. They agreed later. Anyway. They so did not. I know. But we'll get that the second. But so as Gillum is doing this, you can't make a Primaris Marine and then later make him a space wolf.

He is a space wolf marine. There's a bunch of stories about how all of these people in this second founding, all of the people from whatever legion they were, even if they didn't know it, we'll always kind of find each other and fight together because that thing was still there. What's interesting about this is that the space wolves never succeeded in pulling this off. This is the first time that anyone was able to be created from the space wolf genetics who didn't, who wasn't from Fenris. And it did not go well. Yeah. And yeah, let's just say they showed up with a bunch of space wolves to the, who were not born on Fenris to the space wolf saying, hey guys, good news. We found all these people.

These had not been through any of their rituals, hadn't been through the blooding, hadn't been even the gates of Morricay. None of this stuff. So needless to say, they weren't that into it. Yeah, but not that into it. Wild understatement. Gilliman knows this, though, and he actually showed up himself with them and walked into the fang and explained what's going on, blah, blah, blah, and just said, look, if you guys don't want them, that's fine.

They can be their own successor chapter somewhere else. He didn't even finish that sentence before. This is basically, okay. We'll do that. But Grimnar, realizing that this is a force that he needs, agrees to bring them in. But he makes them all kind of take a full demotion down to Blood Claw or Grey Hunter and start from there. Some of these guys, I might have been in hundreds of battles this point. And Logan was like, yeah, no, you have to learn our rituals.

Yeah, I had to bring them up because that's there. We didn't cover it last time. We just talked about new additions to the Space Wolf. Let's talk about some old editions who are now new editions of the Space Wolves, the 13th Great Company. We'll be right back after a quick break. This was one of the cooler things that GW's added in. So the 13th company.

These were most of almost all of them, no, actually, sorry, all of them were the ones who had been with Lehman. The longest. Yeah. Since, you know, since Fenris. So these were all up converted space marines. A lot of them obviously died as part of that process, but this 13th great company would always accompany Ross ever where he went,

including obviously into the eye of terror. And the big thing about them is these were all adults originally. They got changed. Some of them, I think the youngest was still late teen. Yeah, I mean, they were still warriors. And the wolf, the curse of the wolf in appeared with them. So a lot of these guys. Very soon.

Yeah. These guys would turn into where. in the middle of battle. That's what it was. The curse the wolf and you turn into a werewolf. Which is got to be terrifying. A werewolf that's wearing power armor. Yeah. During the burning of Prospero, the entirety of the 13th Great Company disappeared into the warp. And it was claimed at the time that they were, they vowed to destroy the enemy of the emperor and they were going to follow them. So if the, if the enemies of the emperor going to the warp, they're going into the warp. They're gone. 10,000 years or 11,000 years.

years, they disappear, until Ragnar Blackmayne, getting at him in a minute, discovered that they actually all still lived. Well, a chunk of them still lived. Within the eye of, because what happened was with the eye of terror turning into the rift, the access from the materium to the immaterial became easier. We saw this happen. Same with Drago reappeared. The creation of the rift, anyone lost to the immaterial now was a-dragal.

Yeah, the return of the fallen. Yeah, the fallen bunch of these guys all start popping back out. And as Ragnar tells everyone about this, the space wolves are super excited because this is an omen. Russ is supposed to come back. Yep. This is one of the main omens of Russ coming back is the return of the 13th grade company. Now, I should point out, the 13th gray company are all werewolves now. And so the Inquisition is not a huge fan.

They're not a huge fan, but also the Space Wharf. have been pretty don't tell anybody. Yeah, no one knows about this. So what happened, what I love about this is the space wolves, once they discover these guys are back, begin just scouring the Imperial on a news network, whatever you'd want to call it, for any citing of them. And if they, if they even a hint that they're there, the space wills jump over there to grab them and bring them back to the fact.

Which is funny because they're exactly the opposite of what the acquisition thinks they are. Yeah. Because these guys are effectively just immune to chaos. Well, 10,000 years in the warp, you're either, you either are chaos or you're immune to chaos. Yeah, I mean, and these guys are just, you can't corrupt them because they don't have, because of the curse of the wolf in, now they don't really have the same wants that you could lure you in. And they're in, they may be the most loyal parts. Oh, there's some nuts. Yeah.

Do they have models not? They had rules in the seventh. They have way of rules in the 10th. Okay. I don't play baseballs. Actually, you know, from, we told that. story so we can tell a story of Ragnar. Oh, he's such a badass.

I like Ragnar. He's not my favorite. We'll get to my favorite shortly. But Ragnar, again, born on Fenris, raised in combat. His, I do like his or his story, though. So his village is attacked by a rival clan. Ragnar, I mean, again, this is, he's like a nine-year-old, rushes to the defense and burst into a blood rage as he just slaughters all of the enemies around him.

But he wasn't able to save his own. family. His father gets killed by another eight year old. Pretty much the same time. Eight year old at the exact same time. Ragnar, of course, finds the person who just killed his father and tries to do the Ningo Montoya of it. And I don't like this part, but the rest of story is good. They both stab each other at the exact same time in combat. Rocky, too. Oh, God, it's just, sorry, I don't like that part. But while they're there dying, the wolf priests grabbed them and bring them back to the fang again to bring them back to life and then throw them out there.

While they're lying there in bed, this is the funnier part. They're both lying in the infirmary recovering. And Ragnar tells the guy's name is Strybjorn, I am going to kill you. Like, I'm going to you. A lot too. Yeah. And he means it so much that when he's placed in the gates of Morikai, they can't, he gives the rune priest a bit of a confusion because there's just this incredible anger and rage inside of

him and they think it's him becoming corrupted by corn. He's like, no, I just want to kill him. He wants to kill that guy over there. And so they went, eh, they're probably fine. The Wolf Priest said, news something funny. They then, of course, shoved the two of them out the door in the middle of nowhere. And they become all the movie Step Brothers. They become best friends.

Do we just become best friends? Yeah, you should karate in the basement. They make a band together, bunk beds. Boats and hose. Yeah. But more importantly, they slaughter Thousand Sons. So nothing will give you camaraderie among space wolves like killing thousand sons. Stryborn and Ragnar are out in the middle of the wilderness.

And I'm assuming walking through the woods punching each other because that's how I view this until they bounce up. They stumble upon a thousand sun's secret vase. Which why do the thousand sons have secret bases everywhere? Well, it's one of it's, so this is the one time we're mentioning. this, but it comes up constantly in SpaceWool Floor, where someone on Fenris discovers a Thousand Sun's, like, cult or secret dance. They're really bad about this. All the time.

The Space Wholes do a, I'm sorry, you do a terrible job of keeping track of what's on your planet, because it's constantly Thousand Suns. Like, all the time. Yeah. But anyway, the two of them join up and just beat the crap out of the inventors. Invaders. By the way, I want to point out, when you're put outside in the wilderness like this, you don't have a weapon. So they found a thousand sun base, and these two just Yolo swagged a bunch of thousand sons warriors. Also, suck a thousand sons. We don't need weapons to beat the cram out of you.

Now, they also banished the sorcerer who was leading them back into the war. And the sorcerer's name is Maddox, which I'm going to mention him because he's going to come up a lot. Ragnar does not like Maddox. Now, Ragnar's story takes kind of a, a nether. negative turn on the planet Garm. So Garm is a world who is named after one of Russ's, like, best friends, whatever you want to call it, closest allies. Because Garum sacrificed himself to save Russ from an attack by Magnus. For this, Russ personally built a shrine there. And this is where his spear of Russ was placed.

So, of course, the Thousand Suns love attacking Garb. It's like their favorite place. All the time. Just nonstop. So while fighting the resistance on Garm, Ragnar chased a thousand-son's sorcerer, who, of course, turned out to be... The same one from before.

Turned out to be Maddox into the temple that holds the spear. Now, the level of failure battle plan here, I'm not going to dive into, but Maddox is inside the temple, casting a big spell to open a portal to the imitarium so that Magnus could walk into... With a horde of demons. With all of them.

Ragnar knows there's nothing you can do other than pick up Russ's spear and throw it at the portal, which will, of course, close it, but it loses the spear. So good news is because they win the battle. With the portal closed, it will be closed, the rest of the space wolves are able to mop up the invasion. And if Magnus, to be fair, to be fair, say if Magnus had succeeded in coming through here, There were so many space wolves engaged in this battle, it might have actually demolished the Legion. And Logan is down with this action.

And Logan Grimnard is totally... But not everybody's down with this, because they did just take their most sacred relic and just threw it into the inventory. Well, not to the end of the... He took their most sacred relic and threw it to the thousand sons. Yeah. Like, oh, hey, here's this thing.

The only... The last remaining thing we have of our prime mark, you just threw... To our ancient enemy. Yeah. So this creates a problem because people, to Brad's point, wanted Ragnar banished and a lot of wanted him executed for it. Yeah.

Again, you just took the most sacred relic and threw it into the immaterial. You might as well have just handed it to Magnus. Which you did do, by the way. Sure. Logan decides the only way to save Ragnar, who he likes lies, is to send him to terror to be a bodyguard for one of the navigator houses. This next big just gets weird. Because he goes on a side quest with some dark angels that track down some fallen.

It's well written, but it's just one of those like... It has nothing to do with anything. You finish reading and you go, that was cool. Why did any of that happen? And it's like... You're like, oh, and back to the main plot. Because I promised a 2,000 page, a 2,000 word book. And I only...

And I had 480 words. So fill it in. So anyway, fast forward, the story does take a nice turn where Maddox is, of course, the one behind the whole plot to with the fallen and blah, blah, blah. I do love the note on this. You know, Maddox gets the spear, probably because Ragnar threw it at him. Yeah, Maddox is in possession of the spear of Russ. He's going to use the spear of Russ to do a major ritual to bring an end to the space wolves.

That's what it wrote, to bring an end of the space wolves. Ragnar feels differently, and he decides to grab said Sparckxiefts. spear and shove it into Maddox. All the way through him. Maddox dies. I mean, that happens when someone shows the spear of Russ. Unless you're a new Star Wars. Then if he gets stabbed through the middle of you, it doesn't do anything.

That's fair. Yeah. Anyway, Ragnar now at the same time of doing this, discovers the 13th great company. So Ragnar reappears to the space wolves carrying the spear of russ. and leading the 13th company. So we're going to go with the people who wanted him executed and kicked out. They're okay with him now. Yeah, he slightly redeemed himself to the rest of those people.

Yeah. But again, as with all Space Wolf stories, he's not done yet. Fast forward even further. But wait. There's more. Yeah. And Ragnar is brought back into the Legion. I want to say this because this is one of the first when you start to get Ragnar. Ragnar is a great warrior and he does great in duels and things of that nature.

But the biggest thing about Ragnar, Ragnar is so wild and he's such a crazy character and he gets so many people behind him, especially his band that goes with him. Because Ragnar is lightning fast and he takes on, there's nobody that takes on ads like Ragnar takes on ads. He takes on wildly outnumbered and he's so good at putting down the nonsense basically. So, yeah, and a good example of that was when he engaged the war boss Borzog Khan. So Borzog Khan had just finished wrecking a bunch of white scars and was actually causing a bunch of damage all through this little, this sector. Ragnar is a blood clot at this point. Him and his, and his group. It's just he's in, he's with a unit of blood clas.

Yeah, he's with a unit of blood clas. And but also, it's not just the blood clas. There's more than just a blood clause there are just getting wrecked by this war boss. Ragnar decides, I'm not having that, and rushes over and gets into a duel with a orc war boss. After he deletes everybody that's in between them. Yeah, in between them. And then hacks the war boss to pieces and is standing there victorious.

Every other member of the space wolves that was there is dead. The reason that matters is Ragnar then is elevated because of how brave he was and how incredible he was in combat. He is elevated to Wolfgard. skips Gray Hunter. This is a big deal. One of only a few people. Yeah.

Gray Hunter is supposed to be where you spend most of your life. Yeah. Less than five space wolves have ever had done that. His next big one, though, is equally funny. He encounters a chaos champion named Gorok's Blood Fist. Spoiler alert. Corn. Yeah.

This blood fist kills Ragnar's wolf lord, who he's fighting under in single combat. and Ragnar just He tightens the laces Yeah, he leans down, tightens the laces of his boots of mighty ass kicking and kills the chaos champion. One of my favorite parts

of our Ragnar is he does seagull it up quite a bit because they're not epic fights. He just smoke fest this guy. He runs over and just beats him to death. Yeah, like you're like and the bite starts

and he's dead. Oh, okay, that's that. And of course all the baseballs went, well, our wolf lord is dead. I feel like this guy might be a good candidate. And he now is a Wolf Lord. He's the youngest person to ever achieve the title of Wolf Lord.

That includes Grimnar. He's also a banana's hothead, which is fantastic. Oh, yeah. He doesn't, he's a little crazy. His greatest achievement, though, was actually against Goss. Gossel. So M-42, so we're in, like, modern era. Gauz has opened a great riff.

His armies are attacking all over the Imperium. And Ragnar and his company, decide to track gas down and there's an imperial city called Kronger and the two of them get in an epic battle. So the Brad's point, like this is full-blown gas in like

gas is probably two to three or the three to four times the size of Raggar. It's the middle of the biggest wog there ever has been. Besides the one of the biggest wogs there's ever been. So Gaz and Ragnar start dueling and two

to Gaz's credit, he just grabs Ragnar one point with his power claw and starts crushing him. He breaks his neck. One of his arms gets severed by one of the claws, and Gaz just starts shoving his, his claws into Ragnar's body. He's just closing his grip on him. Ragnar then, as he's screaming out, raises his remaining arm with a sword and cuts Gaz's head off. gas drops him Ragnar is brought back

to the apothecaries and the comment is even entoming him into a dreadnought couldn't save him from his injuries so they have to cross the Rubicon Primaris

which I have to ask a question about because Space Marine 2 is the Titus I'm still confused how shoving a couple new organs in you instantly makes you come back makes you come back also why are they doing this all the time

yeah why do they even why are there any new dreadnots? Yeah. That's just, it's, it's, you're saying the body was too broken

to be put in a dreadnought, but we'll put three new organs in you and you just regenerate an arm. I think they just put his head on top of a new body. Yeah, I think, he just duct taped his head up there. It's just new people.

That's what they're doing. You're like, yeah, it's Dragnar part two. Because speaking of head on new body, gas, because don't worry, work players,

I got you. Yeah. Gas is not dead. Gas is, well, gas is dead, but luckily a random grot found his head. And it actually did duct tape it on. Walked over to Mad Doc Grotsnick who went to legends.

So lame. Yeah. And Mad Doc Grotsnick sewed it on, soed it back onto the body. Yeah. He duct tape his head back on his body. Yeah. And they believe that that was fine.

So it worked. So it worked. Ragnar, of course, after recovering, goes back to go basically collect his trophy of dead gas and discovers he's still alive. Ragner is not happy about it. No. All right, but let's close this out with a bang. And bang by bang, I mean, my actual favorite character of all. This is surprising that you're so into Lucas the Trickster?

Lucas the Trickster is because his stories are funny. I like it. My thing is that 40K is grim dark. It's incredibly grim dark. Actually, my only complaint about the secret level thing is it just, it just felt sad and everything. To me, a lot of the stuff we do around 40K is sad.

Lucas the trickster is comedic relief. Well, he's awesome. He's still basically a blood claw because he will never not be a blood clod. Because he's always in trouble. Lucas is incredible. He's the definition of chaotic good because he takes, he's got, he's pure mischief, but always with good intentions. But yeah, to Brad's point, he's the oldest blood claw among the Legion in the history of the Legion

because no one will promote him because he's such a pain in the ass. He does also have the best artifact, but... Yeah, he also might be one of the best fighters in the entire Legion. So he's only been vested in combat one time, and it was by Drew Kari, who actually survived, but because his backup heart kicked in, which they then kept, by the way. So he will get there later.

One of the things I like about him, he had a fight, he lost the fight, they took one of his hearts. Just know that for later. But he, he, He is this incredible fighter in hand-to-hand combat, but not like Lucius the Eternal. It's because he's the galaxy's greatest shit-talker.

Also, he apparently has the ability to speak every and all languages. But only instantly. Only what he's talking shit. Yep. So what he does is he just mouths off that you nonstop while in combat with you until the rage bubbles up. and then you make a mistake and he kills you. He also uses this ability to create incredible victories

while avoiding conflict. And this is why I love him. So the first one I like was a planet called Pollux Tertius. It was an orc invasion. And he is with the company that arrives. And the Wolf Lord in charge doesn't want Lucas anywhere. The Wolf Lord in charge hates Lucas's face. Yeah.

and refuses to put him in any situation where he could gain, garner any glory whatsoever. Because he doesn't want to be responsible. What if what if the trickster went down there and did enough good deeds, he would get promoted, not on my watch? So what he does is while all the space wolves are gearing up to invade the planet, he shoves Lucas on a random like orbital station and tells him you're there for support. Lucas wanders over to the Vox station that's on there and taps into the Ork Communications.

And starts individually messaging the other war bosses talking shit from the other war bosses. He just because he's talking shit in orc. So they assume it has to be someone else. So from this station, he creates a civil war on the planet amongst all the orcs, to which when the space was finally attack, there's only a few orgs left

because they were just the clans just attacked each other. So not only does Lucas save the day, but he also robs the wolf lord of any glory because it's a useless battle that they take on. Another time, Lucas is, again, on the wrong side of a wolf lord, there's a massive orc invasion threatening a planet

because there's an orc boss there with like stompas, gargance, all that stuff. Lucas is sent with his blood claws to just be nowhere near the battle. His entire role is just don't be anywhere near the battle. And so he goes, but he realizes the terraformed planet. So he goes to the North Pole where the main terraformer is and finds the thermostat and just turns it all the way down. It turns it to frozen.

Yeah. This freezes the orcs because all their machines stop working. And again, the space wills mop up, but to no glory because they were beating. frozen machinery, but I'm going to do my favorite story, which is a very, very drunk, Lucas the trickster. So while the rest of the Legion was kind of off-system doing their work, which happens a lot, by the way, with the Space Wolves, the fan gets attacked a lot when everyone's not there. But anyway, a word bearer's fleet.

Well, it's a word bear. It's not a league. A word bear's ship and more arrive in orbit. And its leader named Mo Frank, Voxes down to the. the wolves explaining how I'm going to kill you all. He gives the villain monologue speech. And then, well, the speech is because the speech is like, I'm a master of combat. I've bested numerous space marines before you.

And I'm going to, I'm going to, and if you don't surrender to me, I'm going to bomb, I'm going to bomb the fang from orbit. And then Lucas immediately, I don't even know, as usual, Lucas wanders into wherever the hell he wants to want. Well, Lucas, he was there just very, and he was drinking. It was incredibly intoxicated. He just gets out and sends a message back, say it, you've never won any fights.

Your little sister beat you in combat. Like you're a joke. Like you're a word bearer. Like we all know you guys can't fight, blah, blah, blah. And until this chaos lord just gets furious and just says time and place. And Lucas goes, okay, and sends him coordinates. And then wanders back and continues drinking

while the entire Legion just is staring at. I'm like, what are you doing? Lucas drinks so much that he then decides to lie down. And everyone is saying, what are you doing? Get up. We have a battle to say. And Lucas goes, oh, no, no. I sent him to this part of Fenris where it looks like it's land,

but it's actually incredibly thin ice. And so the chaos lord lands with a ton of chaos Marines, and they all drowned. That's his story. Oh, sorry, one more thing on him. As we said before, Lucas was bested in combat by a Droucarie. So he has a hole, you know, in his inside of him where his second heart would be. So he had someone put a stasis grenade there.

And it's there so that whenever someone does kill him, the grenade will go off. And it will preserve him and the person who beats him in stasis for all to see. Also, I love the fact that he's got this. You're like, we could give you another heart. nah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't need that. I'm a big fan of his. So we're going to end there. I think, I'm hoping that was a good enough.

I liked it. Multi-cast for all you. I hope you guys liked it. I love that I just tried to pat myself in the back. I can't because my arms are too short. But I hope you guys all liked it. It was enjoyable for us. Next week, we're going to do a one-off.

And this is something we're going to talk about just the game of 40K. And some of the times where the rules have been especially broken, cough cough virus grenade and flying circus and a bunch of other ones. Anyway, it'll be fun for me, maybe for Brad. Bless for Brad because he actually did all the things we're talking about. So it's more of a walk of shame for him. But this will be good. I have played every broken army.

Exactly. But we hope you guys enjoyed this. And we'll see you next week. It's been John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy.