The 40k Lorecast - Episode 82 - Knights pt 2 - Discovery by the imperium and addition to the fold

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

 On today’s cast we complete our coverage of Knights in 40K. We open with the great crusade and the re-discovery of the knight worlds. We then take a quick turn to cover the titantica on mars, th...at kind of lost their mind when discovering the knight worlds. From there we talk about the knight worlds joining the imperium (really the mechanicus) and how they were folded in. We also talk about the sacristans and their role to both the knight houses, and the Mechanicum (unknown to the Knight worlds). We then talk about Knights in battle and how they are used strategically. We close with the knight worlds being pulled into the horus heresy and the fall of some houses and the creation of the Freeblades.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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Varsati and Bradchester. This guy. On today, we're going to continue our coverage of the Knights with a deeper dive into more modern night 40K. Yeah, some the Titans and a few other pieces, some of the key houses. And then their history through the Horace Heresy, aka World Destruction. Galaxy destruction?
Starting point is 00:00:42 It's mostly the worlds for the nights. But for those new to the cast, the 40K lorecast, the weekly podcast, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern time with the focus on the lower of the 40K universe. If you go to the about of our show, you will see a link to our website, the 40klorcast.com, our Patreon and our Discord. For those who have not, please follow and comment on the cast. It helps us out a ton and improves our algorithm. A lot. Yeah, we're already a top ranked podcast. Right now we're a top ranked podcast. I mean, we're in the top one percent of podcasts globally. So that's only because a lot of you have listened, commented, and followed, which is push us to more people.
Starting point is 00:01:22 So just hearty thank you. It's been really, it's a nice little pat in the back for us, more for Brad than me. His arms can't reach his back though. So, you know. Is that even close? Exactly. Brad was to pat himself in the back. He has to walk over to a wall and scratch like a bear.
Starting point is 00:01:38 That's so funny because it's through. I have scratched my back on a pole. Like yesterday. Also, if you go to our website, you can find links to our merch. and dice, our Patreon, our Discord, Brad's coaching services, Brad's other podcast, and also I love that it's Brad cheating on me. Yeah, it's Brad cheating with Alan. Yeah, it's fine.
Starting point is 00:01:59 I like Alan. It's just, it's kind of a weird thing. Teasing you. With the implied, I don't like you. I like Allen. I'm saying. You're doing a podcast with someone like, oh, and this jackass. I like Alan.
Starting point is 00:02:12 I'm almost like Alan more than you, so it works out well. And Alan and I have also both agreed that when you die, we're going to replace you. We're both going to replace you on the others podcast. I love the fact that there's so many plans of what people are doing after my imminent day. What are you doing a week from today? Well, let's not talk about that. Getting heart surgery? Okay, yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:38 People make plans when things are imminent. Me, besides my heart, my brain, and most of my entire lines. Yeah, we're not doomsday prepping or. here. We're looking out the window at Doomsday. I'm probably going maybe we should get some canned goods. According to 40K technology, I'm going to be just fine. You'll be a wonderful servitor. Actually, you'd be a terrible server.
Starting point is 00:02:59 They'd look at you like, nope, extra parts. All right. Ontoar our Discord, again, totally free because they all should be built with all of you guys in mind. It was originally meant as a way for Brad Knight to interact with you in the cast, but that was an egotistical prick move. So instead, it's been converted into something that's meant to be more. Or people just, it's ignoring us and doing its own thing. Because what it should be.
Starting point is 00:03:23 It's like, we'll make a way for everyone to interact with me because I think I'm that important. I'm not. We made a place for people who find what the subject that we're talking about, a place to find others like that, they can interact with each other, which is much more valuable. You can go there to discover better literature if you want to know more about a subject, game playing, hobbing, tons of stuff actually on. hobbying around painting. It was also just for fun memes.
Starting point is 00:03:47 But people like talking about video games, just general 40K. So if you're into this... Or interacting with me. You also can interact with Brad. Yay! If you're looking for a place to join to hop on and do more 40K, hop on, again, totally free. Links on the show notes.
Starting point is 00:04:06 Always big, big thank you. Do them backwards. I see David, Ryan, Trevor, Brian, Nick, Maisie, Ethan, Steve, Kevin Nick, damn it. What even happened there? I was trying to do him out of order and I immediately dodgeballed it. Because I was like, oh crap,
Starting point is 00:04:22 I don't know which name I said already. Dodge, dodge, dodge. This is it even close. I tried to be clever. All of the names are written out. I tried to threw them in a random order and failed miserably. Not even.
Starting point is 00:04:39 It was just awful. Anyway, without the mods who I may or may not have named all of, definitely named one of them twice, we wouldn't have a Discord because I would have just burned to the ground. You have problems. I want to, it's not I want to burn to them on.
Starting point is 00:04:52 I'm just ready to burn it. No, I think you want, you're a crazy person. No, it's just, it's, it's,
Starting point is 00:04:58 our discords are really prideful thing for me. I mean, having 7,000 active members in a Discord is cool as hell. However, when you have somebody that, you have to be ready to kill it because it's also Skynet. No, no, it's not Skynet.
Starting point is 00:05:09 It's worse than Skynet. What was it? Skynet. Just, it gets a, mind of its own. And then it's just exterminatus. Just continue. I have nothing. There we go. I'm lost now. It's fine. As always, we also discuss Brad's ability to coach you at 40K.
Starting point is 00:05:30 For those of you who want to play the game on the tabletop and looking for advice and help, Brad has over 10 years of experience coaching people in this realm and over 30 years of playing the game at actually a very high level. Even if it's for anything from small, individual. I'm going to play with my friends to team tournaments all the way up to major competitions. I mean, I'm playing Adepticon in five days. So you guys, this will be post by the time you hear this. Brad and I have been talking a lot about it. You know, this is, this is just went over all the deployments of Dom this morning. Did you? Yeah, good, good stuff. I should probably look what those deployments are. I'll be fine. Why my bother looking? Yeah. I mean, it hurts my soul.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Would you say that? desire to win this thing. I just going to play a few games. I'm going to roll metric ton of dice on an incredibly broken orc deck list. I'm going to show up in your table. If you're going to, if you're doing that, I'm showing you at your table and getting you, actually, I was going to say I was getting you wildly drunk. No. I'm doing that in Friday. I'll be way ahead of you. Let me help you out on that one. Friday, though, I don't need help. Friday when you and Kevin are playing in the Longmore doubles, please show up and make them do shots, give them drinks. That'll be frown. This is wildly after this. Yeah. I, I,
Starting point is 00:06:45 Go back in time. I'm not editing that out because you gave a bunch of people advice to get a time machine to not to kill baby Hitler, not to buy Bitcoin in 2002, but to go back to Adepticon and buy me a drink. As I was saying, about the Knights joining the Imperium of Man. So again, Brad's available for coaching, not life advice. It's not life coaching. It's just 40K coaching.
Starting point is 00:07:12 Should I have to pay people if I give him life advice? Here's some money. If you need life advice and Brad's giving you good life advice, I'm just saying things, things could be going better. Things didn't work out. All right. Now on to the cast. Knights joining the Imperium of Man.
Starting point is 00:07:31 So after the emperor brought Tara into the compliance with his thunder warriors, he set his eyes out in the galaxy at large. And so he does is he marshals together his new space marine force and conquers Mars. I mean, he was a treat. but still. The treaty said you worship me. Yeah, well, he was ready to conquer. He just didn't need to do it.
Starting point is 00:07:52 But he ran to a problem. The emperor doesn't know where to go. I mean, he knows out, right? But where? There's a million worlds. Where should I go? You know, the stuff and the thing. Because it's been over 10,000 years since last contact with a lot of these worlds.
Starting point is 00:08:07 We had maps of them. We knew where they were there, but it's been 10,000 years. Is it still there? Is it, you know, what's there now? So the handle the situation, the emperor creates the very first warrants of trade. This creates a rogue trader class, which we covered the rogue traders before. The Rouge traders were on the move. It's a fun story in this.
Starting point is 00:08:25 I sent Brad the notes to this. So when we does, I write the notes on email and the Brad. And he goes, do you know you spelled rogue trader, rouge trader every single time, to which I said, nope. The better part is you say it so many times in this episode for whatever reason. Well, it's because I wrote it once. And then the way I have my Microsoft. you get it wrong. I'm saying you use the word rogue.
Starting point is 00:08:47 Yeah. Like you were just trying to mess with me now. Yeah. We'll go with Ruge Traders. But anyway, so he creates the first rogue traitors. And as you guys heard me to the cast, Rogue Triers are one of my favorite parts of the game. This is a genius, by the way. This is incredibly. To we task these rogue traders, which now I'm reading as Ruge Traders, thanks, Brett, with going out and exploring the galaxy and then reporting back to him and the Imperium what they find in the darkness. obviously a lot of them found death and like like almost all of them what's that oh no yeah it's just a bunch of people rushing out in the galaxy i'm going to go make a name for myself i'm going to go find my fortune
Starting point is 00:09:26 and there are warlord cykers demons eldars orcs ragdan etc waiting for them so i assume like there probably were like tens of thousands of warrants of trade that were done and like by the end of this like 10 rogue traders. What is this? Oh, no. Yeah. The first one's the bump in to the rag den must have been fun. Or just an orc. Like, oh, are they friendly, Zinos?
Starting point is 00:09:55 Beat to death with a stick. So I'm going to put in no. Yeah, exactly. Don't go to LV428 is a no. Not friendly. Not friendly. But there was one. rogue trader. The extra is a militant, rogue trader militant, which I believe means his is a warrant of
Starting point is 00:10:15 trade was for conquest named Bastian Jeffers. And Bastian Fownd does one of the most important discoveries really of this era, which is the world that is crisis, C-H-R-Y-S-I-S-I-S. The world of crisis. Now, crisis is pretty cool. It's actually the first system when you leave Seoul to the bottom left. It's like southwest of Seoul, which I just had to use the word southwest. I love that you did that because it makes my heart skip with joy. No, seven o'clock. Seven o'clock. They were at Seoul night and they left that good old seven, seven o'clock.
Starting point is 00:10:52 Screw you. I was so happy when I first read that because I'm like, oh, John just embraced it. Nope, I'm not embracing it. So yeah, at seven o'clock from Seoul is how you get crisis. So upon arriving crisis, Bastion knew he'd found a hell of a discount. So it's a human settlement. 10,000 years of darkness, they're thriving. Yeah, with advanced technology.
Starting point is 00:11:16 So upon arriving on crisis, Bastion knew he'd made a hell of a discovery. This is a human settlement that's thriving after 10,000 years in a darkness. More importantly, though, it's ripe with technology that the Imperium assume had been lost. So by adding the might of this technology to the emperor, the Imperium would flourish. so he immediately sends a message back to the imperial the imperium with an asterisk with a with a sidingstress saying hey i found this world more importantly i don't think it's the only one like this we should find more of them and the imperium went yeah you know what good point buddy let's go find all of the night worlds before it before this becomes an issue my favorite
Starting point is 00:12:03 part about this is apparently everything that's ever been done in the Imperium is somewhere in a box. You're just not sure what warehouse the box is at. Like, we have this information. Where is it? It's somewhere around here. So the Imperium immediately starts checking their old data slates for worlds that were marked as night worlds. And it just started belining to every single one of them. And by bee lining, I mean, they sent rogue traders to all of them, which... Well, they'd beeline. Yeah, they'd beeline. Some of them didn't get killed on the way.
Starting point is 00:12:41 Yeah. However, there's another group there that was much more interested in all of this. And that's the Mechanica. So we'll take a little break there and flip over to the Legio-Titanica. You mean the coolest big Knights? Yeah, this is a big... Big Knights. I may be underselling that a little bit.
Starting point is 00:13:00 Titanic? Titans are gigantic. Yes. So the original STCs that were sent out with all the colonists and were designed and created on Mars back during the age of technology. In fact, most all STCs have their roots on Mars and what later became the Mechanicum and then the Admec. The technology to create the walkers that were the Knights
Starting point is 00:13:26 were well known to the Martians of that time and actually still are even post age of strife. But in fact, actually a fine story, they kind of caused some problems for the Martians during the age of strife, but we'll get to that in a bit. Because Mars was always built to be a manufacturing hub and a science hub for Earth.
Starting point is 00:13:47 When the age of strife hit, what was so crazy about it, was that Mars, even though we can see Earth, got isolated from Earth because Earth erupted in techno-barbarian. And that wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't for the place that you were watching go boom, boom, was responsible for feeding you 100%. Yeah. Oopsies.
Starting point is 00:14:11 So all of a sudden, Mars had basically no food. It's not great. Yeah. And right afterwards, a massive civil war exploded. We covered this. So you should go listen to past. Yeah, we did cover this. And what ends up happening, unfortunately, for Mars is, yeah, they don't have enough food.
Starting point is 00:14:33 They start going to war with each other, and they blow up each other's terraformers, which weren't really terraformers as much as they were atmosphere protectors. Yeah, they did a lot of kicking each other for no, like, absolutely gain whatsoever. They were not cool. Like, hey, I'm going to break your stuff. I'm going to break your stuff. Do either one of us get anything out of this? Absolutely not.
Starting point is 00:14:59 Yeah. Useless effectively. Everyone just kind of died and got irradiated. They also lost a ton of knowledge. Oh, massive amounts. And it was during this time that, it's because of this time that the Mechanicum are so obsessed with recovering STCs. It's, I mean, they're literally trying to collect their own data. Right.
Starting point is 00:15:23 One of the big things is to talk about how bad it was. When I say they were doing stuff to spite each other, in this internal civil war, other factions were targeting to try to make them lose their attack, unbelievably spiteful. It was a real thing. We were just like, hey, we might not win this, but I'm going to blow up your library, basically.
Starting point is 00:15:45 Yeah. And so this is why Mars is obsessed with STCs. Interestingly, though, they actually did retain a great, amount of their knowledge and how to build knights. They did lose some of it, but a lot of it. What's interesting, though, is that they used it to build, this is more the Age of Strife era, massive knights. It's hard to figure out the origins of the Titans. It's written in the book the first time the Titans come out was actually when Mars got invaded by a xenor race called a Cy Carnovara. And they're just called, they referred to, this is only in the codexes.
Starting point is 00:16:23 they're referred to as a debased cast of cabalistic heretics. That's in quotes there. That's what they called it. And the Mechanicum couldn't deal with them with their conventional weaponry. So they built Titans, which very quickly won the war, by the way. But let's talk about how big a Titan is. Because Titans are about five times the size of a normal knight. The Warlord and Warmaster Titans are less battle-reiberation.
Starting point is 00:16:53 robots and more world destroyers. These have entire, they're effective, say, walking cities. Yeah, the two things, if you want a quick comparison, you can do one of two things. You can have Google a Titan size comparison, just like 40K Titan size comparison, and you'll see a pretty good graphic.
Starting point is 00:17:11 Or if you own a knight or have a friend who has a night, put it on the ground and stand next to it. That's a Titan. That you're the Titan difference. These things are incredible. The funny story about them I do, is that the emperor when he arrived on Mars and saw them was just, was happy and a little bit concerned about them.
Starting point is 00:17:31 Why do you have these? Why does this exist? And that the Imperium military, when they started to get deployed with them, referred to them as God engines, because when they opened fire, it felt like the power of a deity was coming to bear in the battlefront. Now, I will say, we didn't discuss it that well, but we have in the past, I'm not 100% the technology for making Titans didn't come from the Void Dragon that's sitting in the middle of their planet.
Starting point is 00:17:59 It's just got to call that out. It's like Mars had a couple weird ones. You're like, how do you know how to create that? I'm also wondering now that I'm saying out loud, is that where the STCs came from? I mean, no, that was before. No, it wasn't. That Void Dragon's been on Mars forever. That's true.
Starting point is 00:18:17 I'm just, I'm thinking out loud now, but an STC and that, They think about necrone technology. I feel like there's an overlap there. I mean, Neckron technology is that. Yeah. So, all right. Way to go on our podcast.
Starting point is 00:18:33 We discovered. Nanotechnology. The STCs may be a leaveover from the necrons working with a C-TAN. So many people are going to say stuff about that. They're welcome to. Come on to the Discord and say it. I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, I'll happily admit I'm wrong.
Starting point is 00:18:48 I'm not a bad person. But anyway, the issue with the Titans, though, is that they're not all positive. And not in like the, because they're secretly working with an unclean one. It's not that. Their size is an issue. They're very, first off, they're incredibly hard to build. It's a massive tax on resources and time. Secondly, piloting them is nightmarish.
Starting point is 00:19:18 Well, it's not just a pilot. It's a full crew who also dies a lot. Well, it's a whole crew who are hardwired in along with servitors that are hardwired in. And they all have to interact with each other and share a consciousness. Again, Pacific Rim. But this also makes them really slow to move, whereas a knight has a single pilot with a single thought. They move pretty quickly. These Titans are monstrous vehicles.
Starting point is 00:19:48 But even if they did have a single pilot, they're also. just too large to move. First of all, moving them around. They're larger than a lot of ships, than most ships in the galaxy. So if you want to take them somewhere, you have to take them apart, transport them, assemble them, and then make them of use, which means you can't use them for a beachhead operation. You have to make a beachfront, land, build them up. Make things even more complicated? There's not a lot of them. Now, at the time of the heresy, and even into modern 40K, there's less than 400 of them in existence. Which is semi-crazy corner of the game because there's Titans all over the place.
Starting point is 00:20:27 Well, yeah, but the thing is Titan battles, most of them have less than five in a battle because one of them is enough. But the biggest problem... They also just instantly kill each other. The biggest problem with them, though, is that for, like, you know, World War II history buffs, the battleships that we had then, they've gone away. And that's because they just require too much protection. So in order to make, like, we'll use a World War I or World War II, World War II more so because the, well, U-boats were out and World War I still. But in order to protect a battleship, you had to basically bring a fleet around it. So you're bringing a giant fleet to surround one ship that's doing a bunch of damage.
Starting point is 00:21:10 And this is because they're still susceptible to small arms fire. MSU. Yeah, MSU units, minimums, what, actually, I know what it was sent for? Multiple scoring units. Is that what it is? I've been using that term forever, and I have no idea of this. It's a multiple scoring unit. You went straight to the words of the dark.
Starting point is 00:21:30 There it is. But what happens, where Titans actually can become really run into a problem, is that they're made to fight one main opponent, another Titan, massive fortification, and they'll blow through those. Well, the big thing is they're supposed to blow fortifications. They're supposed to destroy other. The opponent's big shit and get inside their fortress. But the problem is that the opponent deploys a ton of small, fast-moving units.
Starting point is 00:21:54 They're terrible against it. Yeah. They can whittle it down and start taking it. So what ends up happening is that, you know, they have to deploy them surrounded by Imperial Army troops or some of even space marines. 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.
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Starting point is 00:23:51 What's fun about this, though, is that even before the first nighthouses had been discovered, the Mechanicum had been exploring the galaxy. Because Mars had come out of their revolution at least a few hundred. It might have been a few thousand years before. A thousand years before. And so they began, like, searching the galaxy. because they also knew there was a bunch of stuff out there. The problem is that the Mechanicum had no navigators,
Starting point is 00:24:14 so they couldn't move very quickly. Their options were basically to go it faster than light, or do these, they did have warp drives, really short warp drive jumps. The Mechanicum had a real problem at first because they didn't have a coherent structure. So they would send these wildly inappropriate forces, either too big or too small.
Starting point is 00:24:37 They never knew what the... descend. So they constantly either had dedicated too many resources to going somewhere and because they were so slow, they ended up in the middle of nowhere, hang out, or they'd send John and Brad to go find out and we're like, there's bad stuff here, but it's just us. I guess we'll die.
Starting point is 00:24:58 Well, I mean, the fun part about the Mechanicum is that what they actually were doing is they weren't even trying to find old worlds, or if they were, they did a terrible job of it. Rather, they would look out using, I'm assuming, super telescopes and some probes, and they were searching for worlds that were heavily mineral-rich, and they just sent, they would shoot manufacturing equipment there. And they would go and make, these were the first forge worlds. They just, the idea was what Mars were is the emperor wanted to colonize the galaxy and populated with humanity. The Mechanicum just wanted more factories. They just want to make more shit.
Starting point is 00:25:36 Yeah. I want to make a big, I want to make bigger stuff. faster and more of it. Yeah. They did not shoot terraforming. Epic worlds suck. They really are. I did laugh. We did a whole cast about how bad
Starting point is 00:25:49 hive worlds were. And then we got into Forgerolds and went, yeah, actually we were wrong. There's a significant worse version. Like, why did you terraform this? Because it seemed dumb. But eventually, the emperor unifies Terra and goes to
Starting point is 00:26:04 Mars and the Treaty of Olympus is signed, which I'm going to call out now, those who listened to that cast, when I didn't know why they called it the Treaty of Olympus, a bunch of you, and by a bunch of you, I mean, hundreds of you informed me, reminded me of Olympus Mons on Mars, and that's why it was called that. So I'm happy to admit when I get stuff wrong. Take that, John. I've got that one very wrong.
Starting point is 00:26:27 But anyway, as part of this agreement, Mars was granted navigators by the emperor, and this allowed them to actually start traveling into the galaxy and reach a lot further things. So these forge worlds for them turned over to become outposts for them. They would use the forge worlds first as manufacturing hubs, obviously, but they also used them as a bridge point to get further to the galaxy. But that bridge point would also rearm them on the way. Yep. When Mars went into the galaxy, Mars went boom into the galaxy.
Starting point is 00:26:59 They also started grabbing everything they could. And they did everything on the DL pretty much. Edmick just kind of just does their thing a lot. Yeah. So let's talk about the Knights joining the Mechanicum at this point. So Word gets back to the Imperium of the discovery of crisis, and the Mechanicum just goes, hold on what? We've got STC drives, machine spirits, big guns, big things. Check.
Starting point is 00:27:26 We're on our way. Yeah, we're on our way now. What's fun about this, and they talk about it in the Codex, is that what actually began next was a, I think they actually referred to it as a macchiavellian campaign for control of these worlds. The Mechanicum wanted the night worlds to be under them. And a lot of the more savvy members of the Imperium were like, absolutely not. These things, nope. And because they both knew the night worlds would be massive multipliers to their forces,
Starting point is 00:27:58 and both of them didn't trust that the other one would share the technology. And all of those are correct. Hold, to be a fath, the admec from the beginning has been sketchy as yet. Well, I just do like, but they were both both, both, the mechanics. I mean, they're not wrong, either wrong. Mechanicum and the Imperium are both correct and not trust the other one with the night world. See, the admec has always been like, we're totally your ally, unless I want to do something else, and then I'll do something else.
Starting point is 00:28:24 I will say that the Mechanicum had a little bit of an advantage here. The Imperium didn't really have a chance getting the night worlds together, because it was agreed upon by the two parties that they would let each night world choose if they want to be part of like the forge worlds or part of imperium space. The Mechanicum held all of the cards there. They also said, hey, you want us to make sure your knights have all the best equipment? Or you can be part of those guys? Well, yeah, it actually was funny. So the Mechanicum come out and say, hey, we can help you repair all of your knights. We can ask you. We can actually make them better than they were than they were before. And all we ask for in return is that
Starting point is 00:29:11 you let us basically soup up your knights. That's it. There was no, there was no backwards request. It wasn't like, you know, you still, as a part of the Mechanicum, you would still, if you're part of the Forge, would still had to pay your Imperial Tithe. The Mechanicum basically offered them like, hey, we'll make everything that you care about most better. Well, what do we have to do nothing also the imperial kind of just offered protection and the night worlds were going we're completely fine yeah we've made it 10,000 years without you yeah like every single time somebody's come here we've beat the shit out of them and set the packing although I will say there was a secret trick to the mechanic on the backside which we're going to get to in a minute but in it out the gate yeah
Starting point is 00:29:55 they're they offered they took all these night worlds they actually gave them more nights because most of these worlds by the way they were having more people the no ability to have been more people than they had vehicles to drive. So the Mechanicum also said, yeah, we'll just give you all the nights you could possibly have. And the only thing the Mechanicum did want back was they didn't actually take it. They just wanted to make copies of the STCs. So all the Nighter was got to keep all their technology, but they got to share it back
Starting point is 00:30:20 to the Mechanicum. The Mechanium exploded in technology at this point. A lot of the Night Worlds didn't even realize what they had. Yeah. Because they were so locked into this. We've always had this. That's the problem. the night worlds are sitting there on team like,
Starting point is 00:30:33 oh yeah, this stuff's always been there. So at this time, the Mechanicum sent fleets, just massive fleets into the systems where the night worlds and all those surrounding. And they basically took whenever there was a night world,
Starting point is 00:30:45 they would find every planet or asteroid in the system and convert it over to a forge world. So these became forged systems. I was to say, they made everything like, hey, is that bigger than one foot across? It's going to have a factory on it.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Yeah. Now, for all those, good the Mechanicum was doing. In classic Mechanicum fashion, there was an underhanded side piece. What? I can't believe that, John. That seems very unlikely. It's not like them to do
Starting point is 00:31:13 this. So let's talk about the Sacrosan. Sacristans? Sacristans? Sacristans? Sacristan? It's a Latin word. All right. So as we discussed last week, the noble houses, they had engineers that worked in the Knights. These people did everything from replacing damaged armor to repairing
Starting point is 00:31:31 connections, changing armaments, even clean and paint them. In the nighthouses, they were called sacristens. Now, it makes no sense, obviously, that across thousands of worlds, everyone has the exact same name. Yes, it does, because they were basically given information by the machine spirits that they were already in. Yeah, it's fine. I'm actually not, there's crap.
Starting point is 00:31:56 I've crapped on GW before. I was saying, you've crapped on worse. Oh, this is, yeah, this one, this one, it would have been a lot of. a lot harder to write it. Like, at every world, they have a different name because then GW would have written out 10,000 names. It doesn't really matter. But the interesting thing is, I didn't realize this till I went to type in Sechristian into Microsoft Word. That's where I keep my, I write my notes, because I'm that old. And I didn't get the red squiggly line. So like, wait a minute, is this an actual word? So I looked it up. And it is. It's an actual name. It's the name of people,
Starting point is 00:32:27 of the people who work in a church and maintain all the sacred parts of our church, like the vestments, the vestments of vessels. It's basically their job to make sure the church service can always happen. I didn't know this crap. I love the fact that you're bringing this up. I'm like, yeah, man. Yeah, not all of us grew up in a weirdly Catholic household. Catholic school.
Starting point is 00:32:46 I know all that stuff. Oh, that's right. Friends are the Catholic school, too. Yeah. I'm like, of course, this is the thing. I know about it. I did not. I have so much knowledge that I don't want.
Starting point is 00:33:00 I actually use the best description. Catholic school. I spent 10 years in Catholic school. I have a bunch of information. I really wish wasn't taking up a space in my brain. Living rent-free. Just hanging out. This is just there.
Starting point is 00:33:13 However, I will crush any trivia that you throw on me. All right. So the sacristan's had a critical job. And so what the Mechanicum did was they offered some pretty amazing assistance here. They said to all the night worlds, well, we'll take all of your aspiring sacristans and will train them with all the knowledge of the mechanic, turning them into basically super mechanics. It's from the 30th century, let alone the 41st century,
Starting point is 00:33:38 having imperial tech, you 100% want an ad mech working on it. They are objectively the best option outside of a Joe Carrow. Joe Carrow wins. Well, the problem is though Jo Caro is also going to build, he's going to work on your technology. Then it's going to get bored, take it apart, turn into a microwave, and then take it apart again and turn into a movie theater. watch a movie, take it apart, and then make it into a walker?
Starting point is 00:34:03 He's like, what happened to our gun? Oh, it makes popcorn. But it's going to do all that while a person's inside of it because it's a chokero. You guys like, the person will survive, but it would be very confused. Like, I was a microwave for a period of time. I don't understand what just happened. So every time a forge world would, a ship would dock on the planet, they would do exchange of supplies. It would take a bunch of the aspiring sacristans with them. And a decade, decade or so later, the Sacristans would return fully trained.
Starting point is 00:34:32 And they would do some really impressive work. I mean, these new ones, the Knights functioned better than ever. They're faster, stronger. The weaponries are better. Everything is there because the Sacrastans are taught all the best knowledge of technology in the galaxy, specifically the Knights. Yeah, you know what? They didn't read the terms and conditions. You shouldn't scroll down and click except.
Starting point is 00:34:57 You, yeah. I mean, you're making the South Park, you know, what's it called human, human centipede reference. But the truth is, the Mechanicum didn't make terms and conditions. They just did things. So during the decade-long training, these sacristans were implanted with Mechanicum tech, you know, which is not a good thing, and then indoctrinated as cult members. So they very quickly were spies to the Mechanicum and then a whole lot more, which is this is the cool. part to me. Over time, the sacristans begin to speak with one voice with each other, whereas, like, you know, the nobles used to be able to just to order them around and the sacral... Now the seconds are pushing back. Again, not one, all of them at once. And if you don't know the song, Solidarity Forever by Pete Seeger, I'm humming that in my brain while I was writing these notes.
Starting point is 00:35:49 Let the meat cake. Well, I just... So it's not long before the nobility and upsets. sacrificing a lot of their power to the sacristan's in this sense of just control of the government. And this is a really clever maneuver by the Mechanicum to now be able to control the night worlds via these vassals because without the sacristan, the nobles can't use their knives. Not of their stuff works. Yeah, just turn off all of your stuff. So they had to capitulate. And so the sacrosans on all of those worlds start taking up a seat on the council or the court,
Starting point is 00:36:25 whatever the governing body was. They didn't get enough power, though, to actually rule it, but they got enough voice to at least influence the council. But even more nefarious by the Mechanicum is they were also trained how to interact with nobility, to play on their needs and their desires. It wasn't even trained. They downloaded exactly what the response is.
Starting point is 00:36:50 There's a chip in their brain that probably goes back to Monk. Because, now, I will say, this isn't all negative, though. When we say Mechanicum did this, it's not because of the Mechanicum, well, Mechanicum are evil, but this isn't the whole reason. They are evil. Yeah, huh? But this wasn't a nefarious purpose. One of the big problems with the night worlds is the side effect where all of them are extremely
Starting point is 00:37:15 obsessed with honor and highly competitive. This meant means that if a night world knew the, there was a battle to be had, they would often run to it. A lot of them is creating either losing or at best pulling off a Pyrrhic victory. And so the mechanic, I'm using the sacristanes to control them and basically get them to influence the council to stop them just rushing off to war at the first slight. Well, the big thing of this is, though, is not everybody joined the mechanic. Because to go along with what you're saying here, one of the big things is that,
Starting point is 00:37:53 there is a holy crusade to take back the galaxy for humanity. And these are people that are governed. They're fully moved by honor and the ability to show other people. I'm the most honor. And also, I mean, they spent 10,000 years in the war. You know who doesn't look very human? The Mechanicum. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:15 You know who does the emperor. Yeah. So a lot of them did join the emperor, although I will admit most of them still did get second. So to this to Brad's point there, yeah, we're siding with the emperor. We're, you know, I'm honor bound, but I'm also still got the same guys influencing my counsel. I mean, 200%. I'm just saying that they, it wasn't real hard to get them going into the crusade.
Starting point is 00:38:41 With this now happening and the knights joining the Imperium, the vast majority joined the Mechanicum. And so whether you're, whether you, you were aligned to the Imperium directly and the Mechanic went directly. It was basically the same function. So the first thing that happened is each of them was given a grade. And the grade was based on how many knights they could field into combat. And they're all Latinus, Secondus, Maximus, Primus, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:39:06 Going to get ready for this show, I did not know that the Imperium had this many knights. Yeah, this was a surprise. This is crazy. Yeah. So what they found was, and so now they have, they do and don't have a lot in a sense that the numbers of nights they have is probably in the thousands in total. But these are, but one night is equal to like, I don't know, 10 million guardsmen. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, but like some of the houses have up to 600. Yeah. I mean, most, that was so far beyond what I thought. That's true. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:39:38 me too. Actually, I just, I saw a number. I had to check two codexes. I'm like, that right. And what I will say is that, yeah, most of the, the average was 200 nights on to a house, which is a lot. Now, They couldn't always deploy 200 at one time. They might only have 200, but still. Well, think about a 40K battle. You can fit two big guys and six little guys or 13 little guys. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:04 And these guys had hundreds. Right. That's crazy for me. It's just so many. That's like you talk about how they would be used, though. What's interesting is that primarily the knights were still under, in combat, they would still get aligned most closely with the Mechanicum. We'll dive more to the Imperium in a second.
Starting point is 00:40:21 But as we said before, the Mechanicum goes to war with their Titans, and they had an issue. The Titans were great against fortification of their Titans, but against smaller and scattered forces, they could just get, you know, but say weight of dice. It wasn't even just that they get, one of the things that was the biggest about this is, they weren't even just getting taken down. They were just really ineffective versus scattering. Like, if you just put mass nonsense around them, they were just really shitty at dealing with your mass nonsense. They're slow and their guns, you know, shoot in one area and blow up that area.
Starting point is 00:40:56 Right. Then they have to rearm and go somewhere else. So the Mechanicum started, you know, they've been using Imperial Army and Space Marines, but it's just these are two different in a fight. The speed with which a Titan can move, even though it's a slow walker, each steps like a mile. So the troops and the tanks have to just hustle to get there. And so how do you battle playing with a God machine and then surrounded by random dudes on foot? They need something in between.
Starting point is 00:41:21 And this is where the knights really came into play. First off, you know, the knights would be used just to walk alongside the Titans as an escort. So the Titans can focus on the big stuff and the knights would focus on some of the smaller stuff. And they could take out small mobile platforms, you know, troops who are repositioning like a heavy Lascanon in Pop Moth. The next one, and this is an odd one, this again, this out of the codex is they would use them for scouting. I have to assume when they wrote this, they meant not like a knight sneaking through a forest because it's just like, oh, it's a very sneaky night
Starting point is 00:41:57 where just it's walk up in the position where every single enemy goes, hey, there's a giant robot coming this way. Let's shoot it. No, no, no, no, very sneaky. You can't see me. I think it was more like they would send them out to spring the traps where the enemies who were hiding.
Starting point is 00:42:13 They'd send the night out, the knights out, to spring the traps so that the Titans and the knights could then just eliminate whatever was there. This way, like, you build a super trap for a Titan. Now you're just fighting a night. You're going to blow that knight up, but you're going to die a horrible death as a result of it, and that knight's worth less to the Imperian
Starting point is 00:42:30 than the Titan was, obviously. But the third and most important one of the Knights was actually flank protection. They would deploy them wide out into the flanks, and as the Titans would advance, they could then use the knights to either swing around and come in behind, or they could just kind of keep enemies at bay who are trying to get in behind the Titans.
Starting point is 00:42:51 And all of these, you know, work perfectly, by the way, for the Knight Pilots. So this was basically a match made in heaven. They're out there fighting the good fight against the enemies. They're protecting the Titans. More importantly, they're defending them versus cowards that wouldn't fight in a fair fight. Exactly. And so they're going out there. And the pilots of the Knights are just loving this because they're engaging in glorious combat.
Starting point is 00:43:16 showing off their skills and kind of making a name for themselves. And, you know, the Mechanicum, by the way, took good care of the night worlds who are with them. They gave them so many resources to the point where a lot of these feudal lords were massively more powerful and wealthier than planetary governors. But unlike the planetary governors, they were, these are warrior kings. So even though they're incredibly wealthy, they weren't as susceptible to, corruption. Actually, I will say in writing that these episodes, I realized, night worlds are actually pretty good places to be. They're legit. It's maybe the best place to be. I told you. Fudal's in forever.
Starting point is 00:44:01 Nope. You know what? You live in Toledo. There's no one to go about up. I will be the Lord of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio. Oh, my... Your little weird inlet that you live on that looks at power plant. Yeah. Go for it, guys. We'll be right back after a quick break. Now, for the non-mechanicum aligned knights,
Starting point is 00:44:25 they took on a bit more of an inverse role. As opposed to being the support, they actually were the hammer. So the Titans are deployed and the knights run alongside them. But the ones in the imperial worlds, more often than not, they were the Titan. And they were supported by infant. tree and armor, even space marines.
Starting point is 00:44:45 These battles were obviously different. This is something where you're not fighting someone who's got heavy fortifications that required to be blown through. But yeah, just kind of a cool little side note. They can be, though, because some of the big knights pack a real punch. Compared to a warlord, Titan. Well, I'm saying, compared to a predator tank or something. Yeah, the predator auto cannon doesn't quite hold up against the volcano lands.
Starting point is 00:45:10 Right. I'm just saying, you're like, what did you shoot? No, it's not there anymore. Who cares? But again, at the time of, you know, the Great Crusade, the vast majority were aligned with the Mechanicum. This does change in what we're about to get into, which is the Horace heresy. Like all parts of the Imperium, the Nighthouses were heavily affected by the Horace heresy. Them and the Titan legions, actually, to be fair. So at the outbreak of the heresy, the nighthouses just got ripped apart by competing
Starting point is 00:45:38 loyalties. Horace and his legions converted most of their supply system. to their cause. So if you were attached to death guard, you end up all the death guard plants joined with it. And the Mechanicum split in about a 60-40 rate. You know, as we saw talked about before, the Mechanicum became the Dark Mechanicum. About 60% of Mars, the Mechanicum, went to Horace. Also an underused faction. Dark Mechanicum? Oh, very much so. The Nighthouses, though, were always independent bodies. So while they were loyal to the Mechanicum, or loyal to the Imperium, or some cases even loyal to what became a traitor, they never, it wasn't a fealty. They would fall, it was up to them to choose where they were going to go.
Starting point is 00:46:24 And yeah, a bunch did choose Horace. And their reasons were all over the place. There were a lot of them. It was actually honor. They agreed with Horace that the emperor had betrayed honor. And so it was more honorable to go and kill the emperor for betraying honor. Others were aligned with the Mechanicum and, you know, and again, agreed to the Mechanic. and that the emperor had betrayed the mechanicum, and therefore they should do that.
Starting point is 00:46:47 And then if you want to have a fun one, read the book, Vengeful Spirit, and you can hear about a night world that gets corrupted by Slanesh. That also did happen quite a bit. It's a cool book also. It involves Mortarian turning Gulgar into the life eater virus. Yep. That book's got some, like, whoa. Some not great stuff happens.
Starting point is 00:47:06 Yeah. So as the war gets going, Horace and the loyalists both have the power of knights at their side, because This is critical. There's a lot of siege warfare happening. I mean, to be fair, it's almost, I can't say almost all. It's a lot, a lot, a lot. Because each side is trying to take away the ability for the other side to make war. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:29 And knights and titans serve both as fortifications and fortification destroyers. So the challenge is, for example, if you can deploy Titans against the heavily fortified world, they'll blow through the fortifications. Yep. But if the fortified world has titans of their own or knights of their own, they can blow up the titans. So this became, it just, you know, again, it was an arms race. And for this reason, like, the night worlds were less sparred by the Horace heresy conflict than really any other worlds. Agri worlds, high worlds, all them.
Starting point is 00:48:01 They were attacked by Horace and his legion if they made logistical sense, either to supply him or to critically affect the supplies of his enemies. But a small agri world in a system went through the Horace heresy effectively untouched unless, you know, a psycher having to be born there and, you know, whatever. Maybe I didn't smoke them. But that's what that was the issue. Because in that world's posed this immediate threat, Horace had to deal with them. And so in this way, Horace's goal was to kind of basically make them either, A, hold their forces back to protect their home planet, therefore keep. them from the final assault or it's two things they would either hold their forces so they couldn't stop them from assaulty terra or he wanted him on their side so that he could assault
Starting point is 00:48:52 Tara and because of this the night worlds got wrecked oh they got demolished outside of space marines they probably had to have finished the war with the most sides just said neither one of us can you know if i can't have it no one can yeah and when i say highest number of casualties is there. What I mean is not like number, obviously imperial citizens died more than anybody else, but like percentages wise. The, the space marine legions were down like, well, if you, if you factor in all the 50% that just left, there was less than 20% in the space marines in the end of the war. Knights, I think, were even worse than that because the battles were epic. One of the biggest ones, Beta Garmon. On Beta Garmin, you saw, it's the largest Titan fight in history. The book, I think is Age of Darkness is what,
Starting point is 00:49:39 And in this battle, you know, primarks are there. Horace is there. Actually, Jagad I Khan is there randomly. It's because it's a Horace heresy and the white scars matter in the Horace heresy. For some reason. I mean, in this, though, Horace is coming. Doran's trying to do his whole defense thing. And they had all of their, the largest titans in the galaxy were at this battle.
Starting point is 00:50:01 Well, and that was, again, it was clever move by Dorn because Dorn didn't want the God machines fighting on soul or even in soul, let alone Terra. Because if their reactor blows up, it could take the planet. Right. So he put them all in this planet Beta Garma, my system Beta Garmin, just outside of Seoul. And Horace showed up and they had Titan fight. And at the end of the Titan fight, all the Titans were destroyed, basically. What's what happens when you shoot? Beams of death.
Starting point is 00:50:31 Yeah, from a military standpoint, it was the second largest battle of the heresy outside of Terra, from the size and scope of the war. There's so much destruction, because one of the biggest things about the Titans is while they have defenses, they punch so much harder than they can take, all of them. Yeah. Because of the just ridiculousness of the war.
Starting point is 00:50:52 The weapons are just childish and also just shoot the leg and the whole thing is useless. I mean, also, yes. But I want to focus on two other things that are court occurred during the heresy. Besides the fact that you missed the chance to say sweep the leg, Johnny?
Starting point is 00:51:05 No can defend. No can defend. That was great. I'll tell you, the movie's terrible. It's not good. It's not good. There are some movies in the 80s that are incredible. Goonies, absolutely incredible movie, right?
Starting point is 00:51:21 Karate Kid is not one of those movies. For everyone's knowledge, Brad just did the crane pose. That's right. But he did it from a chair because I don't think he could balance on one leg, put both his hands above his head, and actually hold that pose and not fall over. You don't know that. Yeah, but your neurologist does. I'm a time traveler.
Starting point is 00:51:43 I'm a time traveler. All right. So the first thing I'm going to focus on is actually another battle that occurred near the end. Wildly less cool battle. But it speaks to modern 40K nights. I mean, yes. It's actually it is more of a 40K battle. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:52:01 That was. All right. So as we discussed before, the Knights world of. crisis was discovered. And it's just outside of soul. So crisis was heavily reinforced and built up as a feudal world. And then the knights there took on a new name. It was the name crass. I guess it was the name of the family that had been there. So the knights of house crass spread out throughout the galaxy because they were the first one to be fortified. As I said before, you know, the mechanical was just pumping. Just chucking nights out.
Starting point is 00:52:33 Yeah. And so these guys just got loaded up with, you know, with everything like one. This is like America. a World War II style. Exactly. They were just pumping these out. And so the Knights of House Crass spread throughout the entire galaxy to go and, you know, fight for the Imperium. As Horace starts moving towards closer and closer to Saul, the Knights of House Crass assumed their homeworld would be safe because it's just, it's basically next to Seoul. So they assume Dorn and the defenders wouldn't let the traders get close or the traders would just ignore it on their way to This is said in that story, by the way. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:11 That's an actual quote from it. Surely the forces of Doran wouldn't let. Wouldn't let the knights of house crass down. Yeah, they totally did. They left no one there. And Horace got close to it, but did realize this world was full of knights, and he was so close to Seoul. He didn't want to take any time. Horace at this stage is also important to note.
Starting point is 00:53:34 I think he accepted that he was not going to conquer the. the galaxy after killing the emperor. He realized because he'd stopped focusing on logistics. He just wanted to get to sold before Lehman, Lyman and Gilliman did. At the end of this, I don't think, I think that Horace was brilliant and had a great plan. And at the end, he was too fully corrupted. Because if they go into, if you read the books at the end of the Morris heresy,
Starting point is 00:53:58 Horace is just mad. Yeah. Horace is, and he's broken too. Yeah. He's, but I'm saying he's just. Oh, you mean mad? Like, he's gone crazy. He's insane.
Starting point is 00:54:08 Same. No, he isn't, you're, yeah. And so, so I think that, like, this doesn't even matter. He had a great plan. Horse is amazing. Yeah, but by the time they got to soul. Right. I don't think he cares.
Starting point is 00:54:18 He's just coming to kill the other. And to show him he's better. So he sees crisis and what he's worried about with the crisis is that crisis will kind of chase him and, and so he to protect his flank. So he just virus bombs the planet into oblivion. Which is never good. Yeah. So after the heresy, the Knights of Housecrass returned home to find a
Starting point is 00:54:38 it a wasteland. And they all take up one thing, and that is revenge. They, because they failed. The number one goal of these nobles is to protect their subjects. That's their only thing they're supposed to do. It's only they did. And they failed miserably. Their subjects were slaughtered, and they were nowhere to be hurt seen. I mean, I guess they were slaughtered, but more so they were boiled. Boiled and burnt to death and then exploded. So it didn't go great. and the monsters inside out and it exploded. I mean, that seems bad. Just saying.
Starting point is 00:55:13 So as a result, the Knights of House Crass vowed at the end of heresy to snuff out chaos anytime it's detected. And this is interesting whether or not it made tactical sense. Because 10,000 years after this, Knights of House Crass are still looking for a fight with chaos. There's tons of stories of like chaos will appear and Knights of House Crass just deploy. And they don't care.
Starting point is 00:55:37 There's rush the vows on just to destroy chaos because that's all they want to do. But they're not the coolest part that came out of the Horace heresy. The coolest part to me are the FreeBlades, which used to, are they still a faction? We're not going to get into that. Is it eighth or ninth when they were good? Ninth, eighth and ninth? I just love Freeblade. So in the last cast, piloting a night, we talked about piloting a night is a different experience.
Starting point is 00:56:03 The pilots basically get to kind of leave reality. and they sit in their throne mechanicum and just get to do what they love to do. The return of warp travel and join the Imperium, some of the pilots of the knights just decided they didn't want to...
Starting point is 00:56:21 They got lost on the way home. Well, they just decided... Yeah, because it sucks comparatively. Yeah, they didn't want to do it. So they decided just to go out and wage war and gain glory all on their own, and they were known as free blades. So these knights would, to their credit,
Starting point is 00:56:35 they would give up their family names and leave their houses and all their legacies. And they would just go off. Some did it just because they were bored. Others did it because there was some sort of like penance or disgrace that they felt. No, doesn't matter if it's a real one. It could just be one that it was whatever. They didn't want to be there in the first place.
Starting point is 00:56:51 Yeah. And during the Horace heresy, these free blades were even more common because a house would declare for Horace and the individuals would say, yeah, I'm out. No. And they grabbed their night and F off. And what was cool about this is that when they would do this, They wouldn't just go solo, by the way. They would actually go and, you know,
Starting point is 00:57:11 and grab all of their retinue. Retinue. Their whole retinue with them, you know, and they get a spaceship. And they would just go into the galaxy solo to fight. And there's like a lot of people that come. You know, it's not you're in a night with two guys. Well, yeah, it's you, your knight, your sacristan, your crew,
Starting point is 00:57:32 the ship that's transporting you're on. So they're kind of like rogue traders, but a knight, and I'm doing all if I can not to make Don Quixote references here because they weren't fighting, like, random windmills. Tilting at them, thank you very much. Yeah, but if you do read Don Quixote. Which you should. Which you should.
Starting point is 00:57:50 It's so good. It's the paintings there. I have a Don Quixote painting. It's right. I have a Don Quixote painting in my basement. I like Don Quixote a lot. So what's crazy about the free blades is they just appear randomly in a battle to aid imperial forces and then leave. like a, basically like a lone space wolf, just wandering the galaxy.
Starting point is 00:58:08 Loan wolf. Yeah, a lone wolf. Well, just looking for problems and then just kicking ass. And if you don't know the song, Big Bear, he's, you know, big and tough, big bear. You don't take no go. Super troopers. It's just super troopers. Littering end.
Starting point is 00:58:25 Littering end. I stole to this day, every time I see a police car pull a semi-truck over on the side of the road, I go bunty soap. Back fast. So there have been thousands, likely more, of these free blades through the millennia. And there's tons of stories of them during the Horace heresy showing up, but more so post-heresy, just arriving randomly in a battle and the free blades themselves just turning the tide. This has turned them into a pseudo-folk hero, arriving just to the nick at the time.
Starting point is 00:59:01 And then just walking off into the sunset, basically. And so the citizens view these free blades with, like, joy and awe because they're almost, they're kind of like an example of the emperor. And these cool stories of like a fallen freeblade on a planet will get turned into a like sacred site. They also join a lot of other just fights. They'll just fight on the Imperium side. You see a lot of sisters, Imperial Guard. And then suddenly a freeblade just appear. And especially with sisters are good example.
Starting point is 00:59:33 but guard as well. What happened is that Freeblade starts to represent the emperor because it's the emperor intervening on their behalf by sending this God machine to save them. But let's go into Knights. Current. Yeah. So we discussed between the Free Blades and houses like housecraft.
Starting point is 00:59:57 Right after the Horace heresy, all the knights joined Team Lehman Russ. Yeah, they didn't, no one equipped a shovel. Everyone put more guns on. Gilliman did not have a lot of knights around him when he was, when he was writing the Codex Astardis and read and saying, well, let's focus on logistics again, big shut up nerd to him from the nighthouses as they all came rocketing into the galaxy.
Starting point is 01:00:24 They didn't matter how far they had to go. They were chasing down all chaos. They were going to scour the taint from the galaxy. And they did that for a couple thousand years, by the way, which I actually would argue was really great for the imperial. Because the forces of chaos are out there. Having to run away from Lehman Rus and the lion and them is one thing, but they were still a pretty beat-up force. Adding the knights to that force and some Titan legions made it a lot nastier of like, oh, crap. And so the knights in these space marines are chased down chaos.
Starting point is 01:01:03 This allowed at least the core of the Imperium to start to rebuild and reform, especially the Mechanicum, because the Mechanicum had to purge from its ranks all there was the Dark Mechanic. So I want to tell you right now, as usual, something you can't see is I rolled my eyes pretty hard. Purge the ranks of the Dark Mechanicum by what going, hey, raise your hand if you're part of the dark imperium. Nobody raised their hand. I guess everybody's not a heretic. I don't think they went that far. I think they just... Because a bunch of people raised their hands. That's why, but you put your hand down. A bunch of people would have totally raised their hands. No one's working besides you on the nighttime shift. I think they just sent out a memo saying all of you agree you weren't part of the dark
Starting point is 01:01:51 mechanicum, right? Yeah. And there's no way to actually reply. Yes or no. Non-reply email. It's not a replyable email. I just want, I just want, I just want to say, state for the record, I'm really happy that none of you are part of the Dark Britannicum. That's the email that got sent out. You wrote that and I was just like, yeah, they really purged their foes forces of the Dark Empire. But anyway, as the scouring turned into this war with no end, a lot of the night worlds began to focus back on being night worlds again. And they knew they had challenges, just like, you know, logistics and all those things. So they began to rebuild their forces. And just as all the
Starting point is 01:02:30 things in the Imperium since the Emperor and Bobby G. went down. It had gotten a lot worse within the night worlds. The good news is the knights were pretty well attuned to this. And so the galaxy around them, come on now. To be to be fair, nights already went through this. Night worlds. Exactly. And so the night worlds, as the rest of the galaxy is kind of burning, the night worlds are holding or holding steady, especially as some of the nights are coming back. Because it's said, you know, it's only for a couple thousand years. The knights are returning back to their home worlds, and the home worlds are holding on, but right about this point, Gilman gets taken out by Fulgram. Now you're going to start down this whole path of the rise of the ecclesiarchy,
Starting point is 01:03:12 gaug, all that stuff. The night worlds, when they need to kind of turn inward, do a very, very good job of turning inward. And so the noble houses begin to protect all the people and save them. So now, at the 41st millennia, the night worlds are once again one of the key parts of the imperial. All of those night worlds went back to hundreds of knights again. Yeah. And so they're massive forces. So now, as we talked about a couple episodes again, the return of Gilliman, one interesting thing about knights is that they're a massive feature for the Imperium to be able to kind
Starting point is 01:03:52 of fight back into the primaries. That's why they brought back to Lance formations. Yeah. which was a big deal with knights coming out. Now, I will admit that may have felt rushed the last few minutes of this. It wasn't. It's just kind of the way night lore is written. It's very anticlimactic.
Starting point is 01:04:11 The knights have a lot of stuff pre, you know, in the age of technology. Then they have a good amount of stuff kind of going into the Great Crusade and into the Horace heresy. But post-heresy, there's not that much because- They're going to show up a lot. Well, because they haven't changed a lot. The whole thing is all the night culture that exists post-horse heresy. It's the same night culture that exists pre-heresy.
Starting point is 01:04:34 So that's why, for those who are listening, that was kind of a quick ending. That's why. It's just the night lore is night origins, night culture, and then the night vehicles themselves. Which is cool, though, because they are just maintaining the traditions that they've had now for what, 20,000 years? Exactly. And that's what makes them fun. But that's where they are now. So next week, we're going to take a bit of a left turn.
Starting point is 01:04:56 and actually I think we're going to do, let's do the Dark Age of Technology and Dark Aege of Strife. This, talking about this has been fun, and Brad has to get some, I actually was going to do, what I want to do is go from here to Lords of Terra. But Brad's having, yeah, Brad's having a, I will literally be right out of surgery
Starting point is 01:05:19 and you're going to try to maybe do Lords of Terra. That's why. Brad was literally going to have a procedure on his heart, not a subtle one on like a on a Tuesday. And then on Friday, I was going to talk about Lords of Terror for three hours. You will actually kill me. I would die during our street.
Starting point is 01:05:35 We're going to do something fun. And we're going to talk about the age of technology and the age of strife, men of iron, all that stuff. So Brad doesn't have to get his- Terra. I'm mad now. He's mad now.
Starting point is 01:05:45 That worked. They worked really well. I'm actually angry. Brad, I just ruined Brad's day by talking about something we're not going to do. I have to drive home from your house and think about the Lord's of Terra. I'm going to be pissed the whole time. Yeah, I'm going to get,
Starting point is 01:05:56 caught in traffic for sure. That is the Lords of Terra had work. Oh, the Lords of Terror are going to have you get caught in traffic. The Lords of Terror do not, they do not care about. Is it the 96? I actually don't know where I live. I don't know any. 275 to 75.
Starting point is 01:06:11 Fine. Yeah. It's not the 101 or the 280. Those are my freeways for 20 years. I had the 101, the 280, and the 87. Now I've got this stuff. And I had I 95 for a bit, but I never had to get on it because I was in the city. It just was, it was present.
Starting point is 01:06:25 It's only a foul. and miles from anywhere. I have no idea where I am. But anyway, with that, this has been John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. I'll see you guys next week.

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