The 40k Lorecast - Episode 77 - Harlequins pt 2 - Harlequins moving the storyline along

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

On today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the Harlequins. Today we focus more on how their interact with the 40K universe lore. We open with, of course, the Black Library and how it steers all of the actions of the Harlequins. From there wego into their reemergence in the galaxy and how they interact with the beings of the galaxy. From there we talk about their presence in the Dark City and their role in the resurrection of Vect. We then close with their alliance with Eldrad and the brining of Ynnead to (semi) consciousness. 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 40K lore cast with me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we'll be continuing our coverage of the Harlequins with a focus on how they're used to shape the lore of the 40K universe. Which is pretty cool. Yeah. Before we begin, 40K lore cast is a weekly podcast devoted to the lore of Warhammer 40K universe,

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Yeah, 4. I don't. I think we're solid. Look, I'm aware, we're a B. This is not an A plus podcast. Give us a B. I'll give us an A plus for effort. Yeah, you know what? They don't actually give A pluses for effort.

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At some point, it's possible there may become a new channel under the legend of Brad, called the reality of Brad. It's just all a collection of photos of Brad, not doing great. Anyway, on that note, as always, special thank you to Kevin, Nick, Masey, Brian, Ethan, Steve, Ryan, Trevor, and David for monitoring the Discord. As I said last week, and I'll say again, I would burn this thing to the ground if you weren't here. Like, just, nope. Yeah, my Discord is not becoming 4chan. Goodbye.

Oh, God. Just candidly, nope. I would burn that thing. Oh, yeah. When I said burn to the ground, by the way, I don't mean just delete it. I mean, I would find whatever server it was stored on and go in there with a lighter and actually literally burn the server. I'd get arrested for that.

And it's probably also in some random country, but that's fine. It's not important. The details aren't. Get a Jan Silent Bobbitt. Yeah. It's such a movie's not even that good, but that end is hilarious. All right. Lastly, if you go to our website, you can learn more about Brad's coaching.

services with decades of experience, both in playing and coaching, well, not decades of coaching, but decade plus. But most importantly, with winning the game, Brad is a quintessential resource for people who are trying to get better at the game. I bring up the winning thing because at the end of the day with coaching, you're getting coach to be better at the game. Brad is a perennial winner in 40K, and he's not the smartest person I've met by a long stretch of an imagination. You know, unhurtful talk. So this is this is not. This is not. Not like, oh, really? Yeah, well, I'm just saying you're not some savant of 40K.

You actually do know how the game's played. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I just go, I just walk up the tabletop and then just everything goes black and then I win. You're like, he's an idiot and he can show you how to win if you're not an idiot. Just saying, like it's not. The game is complicated. Don't get me wrong. But if this guy can master it. Anywhere.

Yeah, you should probably ask him how. Thanks. That's a plus plus for me. You put that on your website. Jesus. I guess a moron. He can clearly show you how to do it. He clearly show you how to do this.

Don't worry. Captain Dumm-Dumb can show everyone else how to be good at Dum-Dum game. Captain Dum-Dum and the wine. Good times. So if you want to know more about that, you can go to 40KLORCast.com or our Discord and you can reach out to Brad directly.

So with that, onto the cast. Last cast, we finished up talking about the Harlequins, what is a Harlequin and how they function. Now we're going to spend today talking about the role the Harlequins play within the lore of 40K. And the cool thing, we'll start with something called the Black Library. Well, what? I'm setting this up.

All right, we're setting this up. The Black Library is such a big deal. For one, the Black Library is the name that G.W. gives to all of their books which is actually an example of a failure of Lord a Tabletop because I've read the Black Library books. They're not as interesting as the Black Library. But I'm saying. The Black Library is important. The Black Library in the game is the eternal repository of all knowledge, the Eldar accumulated over 60 million years.

It's also got a novel. It's important enough to say that this is what they consider every book that they put out is under the Black Library. Yeah, no, it's actually a really cool idea. It's not like this is this random obscure fact. Nope, this is a big deal. And let's talk about the black librarian. So as we were saying, so Eldor were the most dominant race in the galaxy

for 60 plus million years. And so along the way, they kind of learn a lot of stuff and they find some cool stuff. And if you were British or written by the British, what would you do with any and all knowledge and artifacts that you find in your comings and goings of the world? Simple.

You take every single one, them and claim them as your own, and that because you don't want the other people to harm the artifacts or harm themselves with the knowledge of the artifacts. You keep them away. Yeah, you got to keep them away. We're going to hold these here in our British Museum because we don't want you guys doing bad things with it. And then you can just talk Aramon with it.

Yeah. I will say the British Museum is an awesome place, though. Like it's, it is, is it all stolen? Yeah, but it's also really convenient to go to one place and see everything. One tiny island took stuff from all over the world. Yeah. The Louvre is still one of my favorites. So you go to the Louvre and Hamerabi's Code is there.

I don't think that was here. Yeah, it's just that piece of like also you guys were never there. Like how did you get this is what I'm getting at? Clearly they were. Well, it's a piece of like it's not at least the British Museum comes from British colonies mostly. Hamerabai's code. France was never in the Fertile Crescent. They just bought it on eBay.

I don't know. I'm going to start a line. What do you think about the big glass thing in front of the Louvre? Tell me in the comments. You mean the glass pyramid on top of the Loub? It's not in front of it. It's on top of it. It's right when you go.

You have to go the stairs and then you're up. Yeah, but it's above. Well, actually, the Louvre is the whole thing. But, yeah, I see your point. Yeah. It's pretty. Who cares? It's France.

I've been there. It's France. Paris is pretty. Like or hate the French, I don't care. Paris is really pretty. The food's good. So whatever. So in the last cast, we talked about how the Harlequins function,

and now we're talking about more about how they're moving the plot along. And namely, it's because just when things look their bleakest, as GW loves to do, something will then change everything for the better. And a lot of these changes in the most recent portion of the GW plot arc have been Harlequins because of the Black Library. And what makes the Black Library so important is the size of it is so astronomic. And it's not just a collection. When we've heard of the Black Library, it's not a library.

It's a collection of everything. Artifacts, knowledge, even things that people in the Black Library don't know what they are. Well, think about the idea. When we say artifacts, we don't just mean like relics of old. We mean powerful. Well, a couple things in the Black Library. for example, is a literal account of the birth of each of the chaos gods, how they were formed, when they were formed, also, you know, what ruins were present, what powers were present.

Where this becomes more important is also technically includes knowledge of how to end them. And they also track the waxing and waning of their power. Yeah. They know that certain things make them more powerful. Yeah. And this is where it's interesting. So in the Black Library, the knowledge dugs exist of how to kill a chaos god. But the same knowledge to kill the chaos God is the knowledge to create a chaos god.

And this is the conundrum of the Black Library. Because all the information of the Black Library is just that. It's just information. So what actions you do with it can change the course of the galaxy. And we talked about Kegarak. This is his thing. He follows, he's just there for fate. And under his watchful eye, whatever you want to call it,

is the power to actually end or save the galaxy, but it's the same book. So depending on who gets access to it, determines everything. And he's kind of okay with either. Yeah. So the other fun ones in the Black Library, by the way, we should mention that is the actual origins of the emperor of mankind, when he was born and every action he took,

mostly was in action. Detailed breakdowns of the war in heaven. Which is a big deal. Yeah, this is the big one because in the Black Library is what happened to the old ones. The books of Magnus and Lorgar, not copies, the original. Now, these are cool stories, too,

because they stole both of these. Yeah, from Magnus. Right in front of them, too. Magnus and Lorgar finished writing the book in pen, and then some Harlequin went. Peace out, bye, got this. They're like, what the hell just happened? What was that little thing that just took my, give me my book back.

All they do is the sling ring. Yeah. Just grabbed them. What? Why? They also do know what happened with a crook. There is, there is, of how the orcs became what they are today. So the Harlequins and Kagorak are the protectors of the library and its knowledge.

And this is one of the main reasons. when the harlequins appear and begin their plays, everyone listens. They know that the harlequins are speaking absolute truth. I mean, it may not always come true, but if they're saying, even if their otherlings are saying, hey, this is a future. It means that as of right now, this is the future. Could be changed, but you have to make changes to make it happen. The problem, though, is that not all that know of the existence of the Black Library seek

its knowledge for the benefit of the galaxy. Yeah. Because innumeral humans have tried to come in just to get a fraction of the knowledge and have been repelled. But the bigger threat that's come up more recently has been Zinche and Slanesh. Corn doesn't care. And now it is Nergel, by the way. Both them are like, whatever. Let's go to one thing on that.

Because one of the biggest things is they also have a host of true names. That's true. They can banish a demon. instantly by just uttering its true name and they've got all of them. Yeah. But there's a serious list, which would be gigantic for...

What's interesting to me is the two gods who care, Slanesh and Zin. Slanesh, really, it's not that she doesn't care that much about the library. She doesn't find it. She just wanted to put a grenade in a tube that eats there. Because she has an endless thirst for the souls of the Eldar.

And there's also an Eldar God hanging out there. So, let's just say she would, she would like to get access to the black library, but the real one are Zinch and Aramon, who ironically are actually diametrically opposed in their desire, but perfectly aligned on the mission.

Zinch wants to gain access to the Black Library because it actually contains information that Zinch doesn't want to get out, namely how to defeat chaos, Zinch's weaknesses, and Zinch's plans. And things that have worked against it. Yeah. Aramon, on our hand,

wants access to the Black Library, for those exact reasons to use them against Zich. Because as we covered in the Armin cast, Armin hates Zich. Hates Zing and wants to destroy Zich. Replaced Zich with himself, but he wants to destroy Zich. The good news is for the galaxy,

the Black Library, is impenetrable. We have to throw it out there. I can never say Black Library without talking about some of the Roadrunner coyote shit that the that they do to Aramond. It's just brutal. It's like, oh, hey, the door is right here.

You can go right through and he opens the door and falls out of the webway. That's what he does. That is what they do. They say, here's the door into the black library. Armin runs over, throws open the door, steps into the black library and finds himself on the moon. It's just like, yeah. And the door closes behind it with a, you know, FU, and then the door behind him shuts. Like, that's, yeah.

Try again. Should we make the reference to it? But that's just an American thing. So let's talk about why the Black Library is so hard to get to. First off, it's completely inside the Webway, but not like Comra, where it's a large structure with multiple access ports in and out. The Black Library is in a hidden pocket

of a hidden pocket of a hidden pocket in the Webway. There is no access. The only way to the Black Library is a Harlequin has to basically grab you by the, a scruff of the neck and drag you the whole way there. There is no map. It's impossible. Well, let's go into the thing about that also.

Even if you get a harlequin to drag you by the scruff of the neck, the Webway has to agree that they want you that. And not only a WebA, because the Black Library is in the Webway, it's kind of alive. It has sentience. It will attack. So you're having to fight the Harlequins and the space that you're standing in, which is not real space. Yeah.

It will just close down sections of the webway. Go, yeah, no, no thank you. Yeah, effectively, like, even the normal webway, if a non-elder enters it, it's almost like the webway treats like a bacteria just starts attacking it. And the webway begins, like, it'll warp and distort and basically try to expel the intruders on its own. The Black Library's one, though, takes that a bit further.

And it's a, let's just say, you're not getting in without, The Black Library has also put people in their own pocket dimension. Yeah. So figure that out. Good luck. Like, where am I? Nothing knows. Nowhere.

Yeah. The interesting thing in the Black Library, though, is it does occasionally allow people to have access to it. And it's a very small fraction of information is granted. And it's a very, my sense, I mean, like, they get to read one sentence of one book, but that sentence is enough to change the course of history. And I also should point out that getting access to Black Library would require going through like every Harlequin and Solitaire that has ever existed and an Eldar God. So basically, unless you are a chaos god, you're not getting in.

It seems hard. Yeah. I'd say the difficulty level is probably good. Yeah. But let's talk now about when the Harlequins kind of first moved the story along with their arrival in the galaxy. This is actually a while ago. So the harlequins were known only to the Eldar. No one in the rest of the galaxy had any knowledge of their existence.

And prior to the fall, the Eldar were the most powerful race in the galaxy. So they had no need for allies. And for a while, before the fall, before we led into the death cults and all that, for millions of years, Eldar were wild air quotes. The good guys, if you were another Eldar. Eldar didn't really have any fighting amongst other Eldar. No. They were shitty to not Eldar.

Well, and that's why. And so no one has any record. I mean, the truth, like, all the records humanity has of the Eldar have been told to them by the Eldar post fall. Because what happens is the Eldar met humanity and went, well, you guys are going to make this all a lot worse. So let's give you a bunch of information of stuff not to do. And then humanity correctly called them out on, didn't you do every single one of these things you're telling us not to do? Raise your hand if you created a dark god. Yeah.

All right, fine. Yeah, fine. We did that, but no more talking, Eldar. So what happens, it's interesting to me, is that after the fall, the Eldar split into fragments. And they're not even aware of who and what survived. Because as we said, like 90 plus percent of the Eldar were consumed by Slenash, along with almost all their gods. And it was instant. Yeah.

I want to make sure everybody realized this in the fall. This wasn't like Slenish hunted. down. No, Slenesh broke the sky in its birth and killed 90% of the elder race, which was trillions of Eldar. And so post fall, the Eldar trying to figure out who's alive, who's not. The craft worlds began making contact with each other, obviously. They were aware the Drukari, because the Drigari at this point still hadn't come out of the web way. The Dracari were in Kamara. suddenly an M33 around, so this is about 3,000 years after the fall,

the Ulth Way were under attack by Slanesh demons. They had been on some planet doing something, who cares? And a bunch of slush demons just appeared to me out of attacking. Instantly out of a Webway portal, a horde of harlequin's burst out, kill all the demons, and then they dropped their calling card. Induced out. This is the first time the Harley. So this was massive because for the Eldar,

they now know the harlequins are alive, which then begins the question, which they didn't know. Well, and it's also means, wait, is Kegarak alive? Because,

you know, we're 3,000 years post. They're aware all their gods are dead. I mean, they didn't, not all it turns out. In Eldar, I've been doing full,

at this point in time, survival mode. Yeah. Not even just planning mode. Figure it out who the hell is even left. Yeah. This is a, so this is a massive change for the heart,

for the elder arc, because now they know some of us did survive. they can't contact the Harlequins, but they begin the process of trying to, namely Eldred. A couple thousand years later, the same thing happens in the Dark City. As Drabolvect gets a visit from the veiled path, the Harlequins, an alliance has made, no one knows the terms, but after which the Harlequins became a common sight of Dark City. Again, hands off. Exactly.

But at the same time, as Drabovete's power began to grow. pretty massive. Exponentially, yes. Another key one, though, was actually an exudite world. And we don't get to play ex-dites in the game because we can't have fun things. Playing them for Adepticant. Yep.

So the very edge of the galaxy, there's an elder exodite were being persecuted, basically, by a chaos warband devoted to Nergel. Out of nowhere, the skies opened, and Harlequins withdrew Kari witch cult came pouring out. No one had ever seen this. No one had ever seen this, but also it's the full Witchcote, which is a huge deal.

Exactly. And so they fought together, defeated the chaos forces, and returned back. So not a raid. Normally when WitchCult arrived, the WitchCult came and fought, took no slaves. And left, yeah. It did no pain from suffering. Nothing Drew Carrey related. They just saved an Elder Exodite world.

This is massive. It starts happening all around the galaxy, not commonly, but, you know, a key. where the Harlequins are showing up with Drew Kari, with Eldar, and everyone begins trying to figure out what their motivation is. And the truth is that their focus is to return the galaxy from destruction. I will say one funny note on them is Admec. So they're not big fans. Admec and Harlequins don't get along very well. Any of you played Space Marine 2, know the admec have a tendency to play with artifacts and open and,

play with any artifact they find, no matter how heretical it might be, or how many warning ruins were placed on it in every language possible. The ad mech will still go, yeah, but I'm just going to open this anyway. So a pretty common story throughout Harlequin history is a group of Imperial forces are excavating some ancient site when they're just suddenly attacked by Harlequin forces, kills them down to a man. And it's done to prevent the Imperial forces from just unleashing a new chaos god, basically. But let's talk about this for just a second on a side note.

Why are there, it's not even Pandora's Boxes, it's Pandora's Boxes XL Plus family size. Yeah, the question is, so the Harlequins are aware of where every Pandora's Box is in the galaxy. And at no point has anyone said, we should pick those things up and destroy them. Or just take them in the Black Library. Just put them somewhere else. They're always just sitting there on a rock with like a message that says don't open. Yeah.

You're like, but it's right there. It's right there. Yeah, don't open this. I mean, to be fair, to defend the Eldar there, the Eldar, if it says don't open it, the Eldar go, yeah, okay, we shouldn't open that. That is true. The elder, like, yeah, that makes sense. They wrote, don't open this.

And I'm going to go ahead and not open it. I'm going to touch it with a stick. Yeah, what if I poke it? I got idea. What if we open it really quickly? Then it won't be dangerous, right? It happens a lot. Yeah.

And they're always terrible. They're all of these. You know, although fights are you nowhere, there are never any of those Pandora's boxes? Tao Worlds. Because you know why? There's nothing of value in that part of the galaxy.

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Go to highpebble.a.ai to get a free estimate. That's high p-e-b-l.a-I for a free estimate. What's fun about them, though, is that no one also knows the motivation behind a harlequin interaction until much later. So the harlequins might appear suddenly between the forces of chaos and another foe. They'll help the other foe defeat the forces of chaos and then kill that foe. Routinely. And it's because the harlequins are trying to push forward some sort of narrative in these things. And always kill chaos first, but also make sure that.

the narrative gets, get to move forward. And a lot of times, all they want to do is kill a potential great leader of chaos. And this is because in my mind, the harlequins are focused on, you know, moving the path forward of the galaxy to success. And usually they don't need to do massive amounts of damage to do that. They don't have to go and wipe out like an entire system. they just have to wipe out the 100 people who are going to upend that system. They also do other things too because there's also stories where they attack an imperial outpost just so the Imperium fortifies the position that Chaos is going to attack later on.

Well, actually, I'll give you a really good one. This is one I liked a lot. I think this is 9th edition Codex. So the hive fleet was threatening an imperialist and agri world. So it's not a large, highly, a small head fleet. for no reason the harlequins appear in force and destroy. I mean, it's actually a really cool battle. They go through when they kill off all the commanders in the high fleet.

So all the high tyrants, they all just, they kill them first, which then turns, effectively turns off the synapse, and then they just mop up the rest of them. And then as they're leaving the planet, they take a little detour and blow up all the terraformers on the planet, turning the agri world into a death world. At this point, the hive fleet leaves, because there's no. no value. The biosphere is collapsing, so there's nothing for them to eat there. And all the people there die. But the reason they did that was because one of the key webway gates of the, in the area was there, and the Eldar didn't want the tyranids present on one of their

webway gates. It's going to be a bummer if you're an imperial citizen. You're like, oh, we're saved. Oh, this sucks. Yeah, this is like, as you're blowing up a terraformer apparently does, it's not a quick process for the planet to fall apart. That's kind of what I took from that one. other times though their motivations are a lot less clear this one's funny so they the harlequins for no apparent reason attacked an imperial defense force and just all i did was even fight the world these blew up all the defenses and left and then a necron dynasty fleet arrives in orbit like two weeks later no one knows why because apparently in order to help the galaxy the necrons had to conquer that world well the big thing is sometimes they're just

just alerting. Yep. So like, hey, we know if we chash this, that you'll start fortifying this. Yeah. Or we, the necrons will do a better job of fighting off what's coming than you will. Let's, to be fair, but not wrong. Necrons are just better at fighting chaos, pylons, everything else. Again, they thought they could just close the riff with tech.

Yeah, we'll just close it. Like, oh, this chaos keeps coming. All right, I'll put this big black pyramid up. Yeah. And then they'll just go away. Yeah. They just put the bug zapper light out. Yeah, exactly.

Problems solved. The way down to the harlequins, though, as far as moving the lore, is I like to use it as like putting a rock in a river. If I go to a river and I drop a rock in the river, it doesn't appear to do much. But as I keep adding more rocks and more rocks and more rocks, I will eventually divert the flow just a little bit. And over time, by diverting that flow, a small amount is catastrophic. You can change it.

You can change the entire landscape with that. And that's what kind of what takes us into Harlequin's in the 41st millennia. So one thing, they call us this, one thing they've done a really bad job of, and I'm sorry, is discussing what chaos has been doing over the last 10,000 years. Mostly how much it's grown. So the time of the Great Crusade, the gods of chaos were all powerful beings. But they had, it was a fraction of the power that they have now. the events of the Horace heresy

was an incredible boon to their power. So it's about two and a half trillion dead. By the way, that's what GW says. It's way more than that when you actually do the math of like, well, there's planets with one trillion people on it. And we're fighting over millions of worlds. Yeah.

Well, I think the Necromondo world might have a trillion people on it. So it's like, yeah, it's a lot more than that. This blew up Nergel and corn. So all that death, they start doing well. But then the recovery of the Horace heresies, a massive boost for Zinche and Slanesh,

because Slanesh had the emperor's children, don't forget, which were the largest and most powerful legion of the time. So she's getting powered up as they're just doing their stuff. And then Zinch is just able to, by the way, the whole galaxy sucks.

How would you like to have impossible knowledge or information or any of those things? Or just being lifted outside of your terrible, terrible existence. And that was just the Horrible. Horus Heresy. So over the next 10,000 years, you've got Abidon's Crusade, Destroyer Plagues, imperial cults, hive cities. The Imitarium has been getting fed for the last 10,000 years, with just absolute raw power, and the gods are just juicing. The thing is, is after the Horace we still grew wildly larger in population of humans who are wildly wrecking.

They're really good at feeding chaos. Yes. And so one of my biggest complaints of the 40K universe and lore is that there are no good factions. Everyone's bad. There were for a little bit. Yeah. Your least favorite facts. But I still think there is, though.

And I think it's the Harlequins. It's also probably one of the ways I like them so much because everyone else is selfish or mysterious. Like the Tao were almost good, but then they made the Ethereum, the whole thing with the ethereals. So they're bad. But I'm going to go out in the limb. I think the Harlequins, they're super mysterious, but I think that they're good. I think the Harlequins genuinely are trying to, because their motivation, the Eldar are

motivated to save the Eldar race. The Drew Harrier motivates other. The craft worlds now are super cool and honorable if you're Eldar. The problem is, is they will do bad shit for you. But it also, my thing is the Eldar to me, and we'll get to the Yanari another time, but the Eldar to me are in it to save the Eldar. Whereas the Harlequins don't care if all of the Eldar die so long as chaos is gone. Correct.

And that's why I think... I'll give you that. I think the Harlequins are the only good guys in the 40K galaxy. And on the tabletop. Can you get back my old rules? Yeah, they were broken. And it sucked to play against them. But they earned it.

They're the good guys. So as a timeline has crept closer to M41, the, the, plot the 40K universe has become more focused on chaos than ever. And this is Tyrannid invasion, Necron tumult, orc, wah. The forces of the living are being, like, stretched really, really thin. And this opened the door for a greater chaos incursion to the galaxy. And what you saw is, as we got into M41, more and more worlds going dark, not just from like slaughter of the population from invasion,

but also rituals from within. chaos cults are rising up. The chaos gods are powering up. Well, the Imperium became a shittier and shittier place to live because it was so built on war economy. But if you're part of the cog where we talked about,

we did the whole cast on Imperial Worlds and how much of a nightmare they are, yeah, man, it's pretty easy to go to chaos and you're like, this is the worst. At the same time as this was going on, though, on Exudite worlds, Comera, Craftworlds, the numbers of Harlequins being seen and performing started going up exponentially. Oh, it's crazy.

They just started, we went from seeing Harlequins. Oh, they're here. Once every hundred years to like, it's every day. Yeah. You're like, I saw a Harlequin. You're like, cool. I also saw Bigfoot. Yeah, exactly.

Now it's like, oh, I saw Harlequin. Yeah, I can't do. He's right there. Yeah. He's got a sheet that says, I'll be here tomorrow, three. And the reason behind this is that within the black. library there is a tome called the crystal tomb it's the most sacred tome in the whole library it's it's an ancient book that's bound shut with chains

of light that's what they wrote yeah i'm gonna read it i was just supposed to say you're not wrong this tome though is interesting because it's not ancient knowledge but future knowledge so as the events of the galaxy have unfolded to make the fate of the galaxy more believable whatever you want to call it like like more concrete more and more of these chains fall off until finally it happened. And the last chain fell off and the book opened and the custodians of the Black Library were able to read it. So let's talk about this tome of knowledge. And more importantly, let's talk about, this is hard to bounce, Rana Dandra.

So as the crystal tomb opens, it reveals that Rana Dandra is not the only path to ending chaos. Rana Dondra, for those who didn't listen to the Eldar cast or have forgotten it, is an Eldar myth. about the future. Rana Dondra is the entirety of the galaxy goes to battle. It's Ragnarok. Yeah, with chaos. It's Ragnarok. And in the end, everyone in the galaxy dies,

but in their death, they bring the imitarium with them, and they do a full reset of the galaxy, also known as Age of Sigma. Yep. That's what they did. However, when the crystal tomb opened, it showed an alternative path. And this path is believed to be written by Kegarak himself,

shows that the Eldar actually can't. triumph over Slanesh. So the Eldar can rise up and killing one god, they will then move on to the other one. So in this story, Kegarak and Slanesh will engage in conflict, not a direct battle, just conflict. Kegarak will trick Slanesh into expanding all of her energies into accidentally saving and restoring the Eldar. So Kegarak doesn't slay Slaneh. Kegarak has Slanesh slay herself and by accident saving the Eldar.

I didn't even know. It was just slaying her specifically, but he was stealing the power of all the Eldar souls back. Yeah. Which would... Bring the Eldar back to the galaxy. They don't say whether it just kills Slemash, but it's depowers Slemish by stealing all her power. Yeah.

All the stolen souls, which are her power. And so the Harlequins don't really know how to make these events come to pass, but they don't understand, effectively, they don't have the full roadmap, but every time an event comes to pass that's on the roadmap, they are aware. what they're now doing. They're now doing all they can to move this process along.

So in order to do this, Kegraak will need an Eldar united and more powerful than ever. So we're going to do two stories that are actually out of order, but it'll make sense why in the end, because I don't like how GW wrote it. So just candidly. So around 99, 99, 99 of M41, Gamora is on fire. The Yanari. This is super, super close to current. Yeah, this is basically current.

Yeah. The Unari are rising within the dark realm, and it's created a civil war. Ashtraal Vex's power was being challenged for the first time because this new faction, the unari, we're gaining recruits. And usually, anything that happens, not usually, always, anything that happens in the dark realm is that the approval of that. If Vec didn't say yes, it doesn't happen. This is not happening.

more and more Jukari are leaving and joining your brain and our followers. So to stop this, Vect launches a shadow war against your reign and our followers. That's always worked for him in the past. Vec never does direct conflict. He has eligible to do his bidding. This way, he can always claim victory, but never has to take responsibility for failure. So really good deal if you can get it, by the way. But it didn't work.

every shadow campaign fails, and actually it leads them more and more recruits going to the Anari. To make matters worse for Vect, the events that led to the rise of Yvrain had created a portal to the Imitarium within the dark city, creating the first ever demonic invasion in the city.

So Vect now has to use his forces. Remember, he's in charge of Ghamra. So he has to use his forces to fight the demons of chaos like the gate on Terra, thanks Magnus. I wonder if he did this one too. Still Magnus's fault.

But it couldn't, this could not be closed, just like the gate on Terra. It could not be closed, just contained. So for the first time, in 5,000 years, Vect's rule looks weakened. Not weak, but weakened.

At a nowhere, Mandrakes attack, Vects specifically, and cut him down to pieces. And when I say pieces, Remember we said before, the homunculi can take a small piece of a Drukari and regenerate it back to full. The Mandrakes used their dark energy to make sure that nothing was left of Vect. Even more so, because that's what I love about Vect.

Vect over the years, he'd like cut pieces, I think it's fingers off and spread his fingers and all these little piece of his body all around into hidden areas all around. Just in case someone did kill him and destroy his body. his homunculi could go and pick up one of these pieces and growing back from his pinky finger. The mandrakes found all of those and destroyed them all. So Vect was dead. I should have said that with a lot more energy, by the way. I realized that.

Sorry, guys. But yeah, Vect is dead now. His death and everyone... It's dead. It's fine. There's a shockwave across the city. Stop going ahead. He's Azarevict, yo.

I know. And this, but this, of course, leads to a full civil war within Gomera because everybody's been waiting for dad well yeah in the dark realm nature abhors a vacuum just like a dog dogs also have poor vacuums if you're not aware the cats do too i just don't want a cat i assume they do but before the civil war was to begin the harlequin the mask of the veiled path arrived. And they're going to hold a massive wake for the fallen archon of Vect. This was meant to honor Vect, as well as set the stage for a new leader to emerge amongst the Droucari. So they have at this great arena called the Nexus and all the Droucarry who can't attend attend. It's all the nobility. Everyone is there.

Because some who were loyal to Vect are kind of sad, others came just to just a little laugh at his death. But I think the vast majority were just there to see, well, who's taking control? What would happen? Yeah. What's going to go down? The performance is moving. And as it reaches its giant crescendo, the air in the entire arena changes. And it's a powerful hallucinogen has been released.

At the same time, all the exits disappear. Not are blocked. Yeah, I was just going. Disappeared. They're gone. The doors disappear. You also couldn't fly away because it was a dome. It was a dome.

And so at this moment, the harlequins of the veiled path explode into the crowd to start slaughtering everyone, which is the cursed blade and homunculize the prophets of flesh. And of course, wars of the cabal, the black heart also appears. Which is vexed. Yeah, vex cabal. And just slaughter all of the attendees. As the place is getting just basically filled with blood,

a giant column of dark energy rises up from the middle. And on top of that column is Adra. Osdrabel Vect. Just call him Vect. He's Vect. Yeah, I'll stop him trying. It's not even getting close. I think it's worse each time.

I probably am. You're going to be like Anthony Becht. Eric. Eric. Eric, the Vect. So anyway, so Vect is reincarnated, resurrected. I don't know which one it is. And he reclaims his throne to dark city.

The prophets of flesh then go and pick up all of the dead loyalists. to Vect and resurrect all them. And then Vect goes on a revenge tour of the rest of the dark city, killing anyone and everyone who just so much as smiled at his death. Yeah, he goes on the, he does a, he definitely Kaiser Sozzi's stuff. He's like, I heard you weren't sad that I died. But what's interesting about this is that Vec no longer refers to himself as Vect. He refers to himself as a dark muse.

and a dark muse is an Eldar god for the Jukari. This is, the dark muse, it doesn't really fully fit in Eldar mythology, but it is in between, probably in between a Eldar god and an Eldar, like, supreme leader. This is also why he doesn't have a model right now because of these effects. Well, it's, but he is a primer. That's the best, the best analogy I can make to him is that, this point, he becomes a primal. He's so bananas, badass at this point. Yeah. But what's crazy is that the Harlequins disappear back in the Webway. And no one knows what the deal is with them.

I think that they orchestrated this to get Vect on board with if, no, well, if we need to unify. Also, if we need your forces to unify, because remember, he wasn't okay with all this stuff going on. But he's still not okay. I mean, the thing is post of this, he's still okay with yes and no it mean it's it's a big it's a big it's a big it's a big no he kind of just yes and no he's actively trying to kill every member of the yunari at this moment in the current one for a minute it didn't look like okay so yeah there's there is something there's some deal he's made with the harlequin's and kegrague he has a end times deal i could see that that's just that is a brad theory now as we said before i'm telling you two stories out of order and there's

the reason I'll do this. So as we said before, the Harlequins appear all around Eldar civilizations, dark cities, craft worlds, exodites, Corsair fleets. And when they're there, they perform their plays displaying both the history of the Eldar as well as the fates of the future. But randomly, a new play emerges from nowhere. And this new play has a character, the god of death you need. No one knows who this God of death you need is, but the Harlequins are talking about it. So time to pay attention. The cool thing about it is even in the play,

they're not clear intentionally. Is you need a savior? Is she a liar? Or is she a useless distraction? I think it's a big deal because who plays you need, though? This is why it's so good. Exactly. And Twilight is the journey of what you're supposed to

understand and make your decision is played by the Twilight players. So you were supposed to figure out what this means. Yep. And so the Harlequins are performing these plays in mass all over the Eldar Empire, especially in the craft worlds. And these performances were of such high interest to the Eldar and the craft worlds that drew incredible crowds, basically occupying the entire attention of entire fleets of ships while these events were going on, which is a great distraction for what's going on. Because now we're going to go even further back to M31 when I don't know how you're born as an Eldar, but little Eldred of Uthron is a little baby elder.

I don't know what the baby Eldor looks like. This is Brett's favorite person. I do love it. That's just my favorite character. By far, it's not even close. So Eldrad ends up being the most powerful psycher in the entire Eldar race. He's in the current 40K lore, maybe the most powerful psycher in the galaxy. He also, besides Zinch, has his hands in the most cookie jars of what has happened in the galaxy.

But what's cool about him is he's kind of like an Indiana Jones. Oh, he's putting on the hat, for sure. He puts on the hat because, yeah, he's a historian, he's a cyker, and he's just going on little adventures to learn more and more and more. All the time. It's still doing that, actually. Yeah, and El-Drad's big thing was once he became a farseer, his focus was on unraveling the mysteries of the galaxy. primarily helping to save the Eldar from their current path of very slow extinction. At some point, we don't know when during this process,

Eldred noticed a very strange sound coming from inside the infinity circuits. It was a deep heartbeat, like that of like a slumbering dragon that was sitting inside of the infinity circuits. And it's unknown if he actually ever went all the way to the Black Library, but it's 100% likely that he went to a black library. They don't completely go there, but he came away with knowledge that's only in the black library. Yeah, it's only the black library

about how to create a god. Yep. And thanks to, you know, a now discontinued elect Knight Spear. Ooh, G.W. pouring one out for both him and Carondris. Yeah. I mean, Carondris, at least, was an old model.

Knight's Pier wasn't an old model. It looked good. It was well-posed. Like, Carandris' model looked like crap. That helmet was done. 25 years old. Yeah, but Elyx's not. I know.

It might even be plastic. No, I think it was still resin. But still. Let's not get crazy. Yeah. Anyway, Elyc Night Spear takes Eldred to a moon. And the moon is covered in white sand. That turns out not to be sand, but actually the remains of millions of dead Eldar.

Yeah. That's, that dusted by the birth of slash. Yeah. But not like they've been cremated. It's their psychic entities because, you know, where Magnus got shattered, cane got shattered. This is tiny, minuscule shards of the psychic entities of dead Eldar that occurred when Slanesh was born. Because this moon is just on the outside of the eye of terror because everything is just in the outside of the eye of terror in 40K, Lori. Of course.

So it creates what looks to be a sea of shimmering crystals that is full of sucking energy. So Eldred knew that this moon could be used. is a catalyst to birth a new god he should have pump enough energy into it so back to the harlequins L-Dread partners with the mask of the midnight sorrow to do something and the something was this as the harlequins were performing these plays and all the craft worlds L-Drad was able to then use the distraction to reach into the infinity circuits and link them together this is crazy dangerous by the way this is a terrible idea yes this is I'm a here huge Eldrad fan, but this was like,

bro, what are you doing? Eldraig created a link between the infinity circuits of craft worlds. These are, again, cross-galaxy craft worlds. And creates a link. This link could allow Slanesh into the infinity circuits. Which is the only thing keeping all Eldar souls from

the delicious dinner table of Slash. Yeah. Luckily, Eldrad and just like Giliman, never makes a mistake. He doesn't. It's not my fault. Gilliman's always right. It just is. So supported by his harlequin allies,

Eldred begins the ritual on the moon. We cover this in the Eldar cast briefly. It went a little awry. And by a little awry, I mean, for some stupid reason, they pissed off a bunch of Death Watch, who showed up and blew the whole ritual up, which is crazy.

These guys just show up and you're like, we're totally helping you or they're about to. Yeah, they're about to help. But they also just blew up a planet for no reason. So the ritual ends. There are some bad things that did happen. Yeah. This create, the ritual gets obviously cut a little bit short by the Death Watch,

but it does still wake the God of Death. It just doesn't infuse her with enough power to gain full sentience and power yet. And if you're wondering why we're going to break right there, it's because you don't play Eldar. Gathering store books for the wind. Yeah. We're going to take up, we're going to stop right here. because next week we're going to pick up exactly at this point and tell the story of the Yanari.

You know what the best part about this is? I don't think we've ever had a cliffhanger before. Yeah. And it's because I haven't started even writing it yet. So I should probably get to that. I don't know if this is going to be one or two casts, candidly, guys, but it will be at least a few casts on the Yanari. We owe for a while. One of us has read this series of books several times.

Yeah. It's very convoluted this story. It's going to cross over into multiple factions, which is why I think a lot of you will enjoy it a lot because this is where we'll talk about call a little bit of talk about a lot of these people. Talk about Gilliman. You're welcome. I'm always talking about Gilliman. Gilliman is just going to fit into random stuff. We're going to do a cast on World Ears.

Oh, they cast true resurrection. Thank you very much. Yeah. So we hope, you know, you guys have enjoyed this Harlequin coverage. And they will play a major role in like a lot of the episodes we have coming forward because anytime we talk about the plot of 40K, we're going to be doing a lot of harlequin stuff. But we hope you guys enjoyed this cast. And until next week, this has been John Barcati and Bradchester. Disca.