The 40k Lorecast - Episode 84 - The Age of Strife

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

On today’s cast we cover the transition from Age of Technology into the Age of Strife. We open with mankind’s unification into the federation. Then we cover the mass appearance of psychers across the galaxy, and how they began to cause chaos into the federation. But then things get massively worse as the men of iron rise up in the cybernetic rebellion. We spend time talking about the nightmare that was the cybernetic rebellion, both during and the effects of it afterwards. After this, the warp turns effectively opaque and the entire galaxy begins to burn with the effects of it. We then close out focusing on Sol during this period, with a focus on the planets and quick aside into the unification wars.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me, John Barciani and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're going to conclude our coverage with the golden age of technology by the start of the age of strife and then the renaming of the golden age of technology as the dark age of technology. Ooh, scary. It's going to get real bad for the Imperium today, like real bad.

Oh, yeah, super bad. You'd really don't. Nothing good happens today. Yeah. So anyway, for those who are new to us, the 40K lore cast, is a weekly podcast releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time with a focus on the lore of the 40k universe. If you click on our show notes, you'll see links to our website, our Patreon, and our Discord. As always, please like and subscribe because that's what you do on these things. So please

go ahead and do it. And if you want, you can come to our website where we've got links to our merchandise, the Patreon of the Discord, Brad's coaching services, and also our upcoming live tournament events. So please come in. June 6th, 7th, and 8th, in Detroit. It's actually in Southfield, whatever, Detroit. It's Southfield. It's better if you say Southfield than saying Detroit. People are like, I don't want to go to Detroit. Like, look at it. Come to Southfield.

It's Detroit Light. So for those who like what we're doing and enjoy the cast, too, and want more, I tell everyone, come to our Discord. There's a link in the show notes. It's a really wonderful community you can come into. Lots of interaction there about 40K

lore, 40K literature. your 40K gameplay, hobbying, even memes and just general stuff. Some really great advice in there too for people who want to learn more about it, either the lore or how to play the game or et cetera. We love our Discord and I can't recommend it enough until it turns south on me and I have to burn it to the ground. As always, big thank you to the moderators. Yeah, I'm a big thank you of the moderators. David, Trevor, Ryan, Steve, Ethan, Brian, Nick, Masey and Kevin.

without you, I would have burnt this thing to the ground. Did you try to read that out of order again? I just read it backwards this time and it actually worked. Yeah, but you still goofed it. Yeah, if I do it random, it does not go well. It does not go well at all. All right. Well done.

Yeah. With that, let's get into the cast. So the closing era of the golden age. So as we concluded our last cast, things were going pretty well for humanity. And it's all really innovation-based. We have STCs to allow us to, You'll go anywhere and make anything. We have men of iron who are now growing all our food.

Take care of everything. Take care of all of our problems. We have weaponry that's just light. You're insane, powerful. And they're effectively just taming the galaxy. At the same time, though, we've also got advances in genetic engineering that are making the humans a lot sturdier and better. We are actually able to colonize even more worlds and fight back against more of the problems

because we're just more resilient. And this, by the way, is something GW didn't include in the early lore. And I'm glad it got kind of like dripped in later. And these are like one sentence in like a black library book, by the way, because it does make sense that humanity is out there colonizing and spreading to all these worlds. And somehow they're just not succumbing to like constant like viruses. Yeah. Meanwhile. I also think that they're like we talked a little bit about it last time.

I think one of the biggest things is they, they allude to the fact that they're basically radiation. resistant. Well, yeah, I mean, it's not even radiation resistance. Anyone who has children and puts their kid in school knows that, you know, September sucks. You just get really sick. And that's a kid going to school, let alone like, hey, what happens if we colonize a new world? Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, there's a bunch of like plants here that just, you think you had allergies before. Wait a little we show you an allergy where you sneeze out your brain. Like, and somehow- Are they all the scientists for Prometheus and immediately take off their helmets and start touching things. Yeah. This guy's, you know, it's funny. I really do, I really do like that movie,

but I recognize it's really bad. I just, I like, they're like, yeah, we're in a cave. There's air here. Let's just breathe it and see what happens. What could possibly happen? That movie should have been like 30 minutes long where they all take their helmets off and they'll die. And it's like, well, they almost did. A couple of the guys. The guy in charge of mapping got lost and the guy that's the biologist decided to touch foreign organisms. Yeah, he's a biologist. So what you do when you're a biologist and you're somewhere you've never been before, discovering something you've never seen before is you lick it, because that's the best way to diagnose the problem.

Obviously, everybody knows that. This is just easy. Also at the same time, so back to our topic, warp drives. Yeah, warp drives have been created and the navigators have opened it up. So we are now traveling anywhere we want, as fast as we want, with no issues. And with this, the colonizing system, it just is incredible. So we're talking a couple thousand years.

years, humanity went from a single system to tens of thousands of systems, at least. More. I would say it's way more. It's hard. We don't know. We don't know. We kind of know because of the fact that the Imperium recovered, to become what the Imperium was after the emperor took, you know, in the 30,000. When we started going out, he wasn't discovering new places. He was reconquering. For the most part. Yes and no. It just, yeah, that's where it just gets tricky when you try and, because, again, it's not recorded. So it depends. It really does depend on what you're reading. You're completely correct. And that if you read some things, it's like, oh, all the world's humanity has or the majority of the world's humanity has now, which is like, I think over a million are mostly recolonies. But then you read other things where it's talking about during the Great Crusade. It's more admec, by the way. If you read a lot of the Great Crusade Admec stuff, they were establishing forge worlds on abandoned planets. So it becomes this like, all I'm saying, it doesn't stop that during the golden age of technology,

we perfected terraforming basically to a science. We were bam, banging out. Yeah, that is 100% true. We were a fast food restaurant, getting your order ready. Here you go. Here's planet done. Go step on it. And no broken ice cream makers, yeah. I mean, that still was probably Oh, I'm sure. It was a problem.

Like 15,000 years of the future, the ice cream machine's still broken? Yeah, the McDonald's of the 40K does not have a functioning ice cream maker. That's just that's part of the system. Work drive, yes, ice cream maker. So this is all about the change. So as to humanity has been conquering the galaxy, it was more of a hodgepodge of collective. So colonists would go out, they'd settle a new world in the system. They'd build it up, turn to a mini soul.

and then they begin creating trade lanes with other settlements in and around the galaxy, like the game civilization, which if you haven't played... He played so many hours of you should definitely get. It's a great game, but without like the constant trying to kill each other. With the advent of warp travel, though,

the intergalactic trade gets a lot easier because before you kind of, you build your system and you trade with the next closest systems, now we can actually just warp stuff in and around all over the place. However, at the same, Yes, they didn't do it as much as we do now.

I mean, right now, the Imperium isn't, again. Yeah, actually, we're going to get to that in a minute here, though. But yeah, so what I want to get into first, though, is around this era, humanity settlers began pushing into some more serious xeno challenges. So highly advanced technologically and biologic races, they're prevalent throughout the galaxy. Not Eldar and Orks, by the way, but like random ones who no longer exist. You know, like, for example, all the ones who'd left artifacts that keep being found on 40K worlds, you know, those were zeno races that humanity either fought or, you know, they were released in the area. And these zenos were not huge fans of the encroachment of humanity on their systems.

And they pushed back. So what we know is there's no dates on any of this stuff or even characters involved. But it is written down that the first human zeno wars began somewhere around, like, I think it's like M2. 18 and 19. And I assume since they say humans, you know, wars, they mean like the Ragdan level war. Well,

it's big on this because I think that there's multiple wars that are going on. Because they have multiple encroaches. But the bigger thing about this is what happens because of the wars. Because of the wars, humanity has to get a centralized government to start going,

we need help. How are we going to fight these large scale? These aren't like small incursions. That's what they had. before. So it wasn't needed. Well, yeah. But fighting these.

Exactly. I love that local is only a star system or two. But, you know, it's a big deal that they have to figure it out. And they've got the ability to support each of these civilizations. Exactly. It's now stuck in my head. No. Well, and let's go into that because, you know, what happens is to, exactly, you're

completely correct. What happened, what starts off with before it was you land on a planet, there were some Zeno's there. If you had knights with you, great, if not, you know, the men of iron would just go to war and you beat them. But now they start bumping into, you know, they go to colonize a system. And maybe that system doesn't have a Zeno in it, but the next couple systems do. And it's one zeno race who's doing the same thing. They're expanding into the stars, have sublight travel or whatever it is. You're getting, you're fighting like not a couple dudes on a planet, but actually, you know, a conquering force. So humanity starts to form.

does form a centralized government. It was not an anacro-sindiclist commune, unfortunately, which is what it should have been, where everyone just takes turns with a monarch of the week and they all vote. Would have been the better system. Instead, they did more of a democratic federation of member states, and they called it the federation. It was StarCraft. No, it was Star Trek, from being honest, this is a rip. This is a rip. It's not StarCraft. This is a rip-off of Star Trek. It was also the Terrans were going. But the Terrans War, remember in Starcraft, the Terrans, like, this is more in like StarCraft Brood War, when the main colony comes back to kind of take control because the Confederacy was fighting back. This is a rip off of Star Trek where it was, it was a federation of stars came together.

Yeah, I love Star Trek. I actually don't like, I like Star Wars more. Star Trek's just honestly better written, although that's not saying much when you have Phantom Menace saying, oh, This other thing is better written. Yeah. Getting into this. Yeah, the one where they save the whale is light years better than Phantom X. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Even Star Trek's are not allowed to be spoken up. Or sorry, odd Star Trek's or not up. No, come on the one where they had to go around Earth and they went back in time, or they went on the sun and went back in time and saved the whales. That was when they dressed up in their old timey outfits and stuff. Oh, my God. That was so bad. Really?

Really? It's worse. I'm barely hanging out on the migraine today, brother. Don't kill you? Fine. All right. So the Federation then gets together and they build up a military that would aid and protect the colonists of the Federation. So the individual systems, because the individual systems, while well on to what we were just discussing, still had a limit to the military capabilities. And they couldn't stand up against some of these major Zenos incursions. Also at the same time, humanities still full of, well, humanity. So there's a bunch of sucky people out there. There's conflicts between systems.

There's piracy forever, apparently. Yeah. And just people trying to benefit on the sorrow of others. Oh, we never stop. Exactly. So the Federation becomes this governing body for law, trade, military, et cetera. And they move the settlements away from a de facto city states to truly provinces within an empire. They decide with provinces, not states, because we are global.

But that's... Then we get to M20. And M20 is where a lot of this starts to, this is where the wheels start to come off. In M20, the Eldar begin their fall in earnest. There's no record of the exact dates or what happened here. It's more of an estimation, kind of what they talk about. But in around M20 is when the pleasure cults, in my opinion, is when the flip happened, where the pleasure cults got control of the nobility within the Eldar, which meant the spiral has now really begun.

Yeah, well, it became something that. was the dark secret and became the norm, the actual how society works, and that the war became tumultuous to be at the least. Exactly. Things started to rock. And this all... Cool, placid warp became... It all starts to fall apart around M-22.

And so for reference here, the golden age of technology took off around... So I started around M-15, and it took off around M-15. and it took off run M18, which is the invention of the warp drive and the navigator is pretty shortly thereafter. So humanity's had 4,000 years of a pretty good run here, ish. Again, these dates are all ish.

Yes. But it's also, when we talk about a good run, this is legit. And this is another reason that the Imperium of Man Now calls this the Dark Age because they want to keep the status quo. If you actually look back to this time,

shit's amazing. Oh yeah. In those 4,000. Everything's awesome. Yeah. In 4,000 years, they conquered like 50,000 systems. Like it was a good run, like simply put. But anyway.

It's only just conquered it though. Like life is good for the average human. Like things are working out. Yeah. Let's talk about how that stops. So M20. Hard. M22 is the first time psychers make an appearance in the galaxy.

The navigators predate this, but this is because I firmly believe they were made by the emperor. So they were able to get in there. Well, these are also your superpower, like actual sighters. People flamed down lightning bolts, pulling stuff up. And this is because of the fact that the warp is now just a class five hurricane inside of it. And shit is going crazy. And you're just getting these people that are just imbued effectively with warp energy

because you're getting lightning storms of warp energy coming. warp energy coming out into real space. Let's talk about the difference there. So navigators and psychers, they're similar at their core, but they are quite different in their function. So a navigator, they're touched by the warp, but doesn't flow through them. They can see, they can peer into it. But for the most part, navigators can't actively manipulate the warp.

They do have some weird powers with their third eye. But this is, and so at this point, it's pretty rare for a navigator to get possessed by a demon. It can happen while traveling in the warp if there's an issue with the Gellerfield, but that's about it. Now, psychers... Well, one can see and one actually... Yeah, psychers are different. So early psychers are no different from the modern psychers.

These were humans that could channel the warp through their thoughts, and like modern psychers, all had varying degrees of power. Some were kind of lightly touched by the warp, and others were, you know, incredible. The bigger problem, though, is that none of them were really intelligent enough or had enough knowledge of the warp to really grasp what it was they were doing. And this gets ugly. Well, I think it's a big deal on this one, too, because they have stories where you're like, are all psychers have the ability? I think that these psychers at this point in time were such a problem. One, obviously, because we didn't know about what they were, what to do about them.

But also because of the fact that the warp is such a giant storm, it's dumping power out. So you get these psychers that are, I think, more powerful than any other psycher you've ever seen at the time. Because it was lashing out, just imbueing people with huge amounts of psychic energy. That makes sense. Those were the guys. Because you had people that were just dictators of planets just by them throwing down this crazy psychic power. And you've never seen anything like that since in the world of 14. Yeah, that makes complete sense.

I think one other area that we should talk about, two of the psychers, this is what makes them a lot nastier, is navigators do, it's a gene. So navigators have children. Most all of those children will have the navigator gene. So you kind of know where the navigators are coming from. Cycars were random. And this is because, I'm going to assume, I think what happens is during conception or during during early development, the warp touches the fetus, and then that fetus is able, it becomes a

cyker. So that's kind of how I look into it. What that means is psychers are random. You have no way to know every child born could or could not be a psycher, which is going to make, you know, stamping them out real tough. Got to test their metacloryan range, John. Let's not talk about all the ways. Star Wars has tried to ruin itself more than any other episode.

to my Star Trek thing. Star Trek has had some dudge shows, but they've never ruined it by being like, hey, what if we just explain how the force works? But more importantly, let's do it in a way that's poorly done and pisses everybody off. Good job, guys. Anyway, so pretty quickly, I just regather myself after that one. So keep in mind, at this point in human history, there isn't really any knowledge of the warp. The emperor knows about it. but he didn't tell anybody. All of humans... Why would he...

Exactly. And all of human society, this is written down. All of human society effectively was worshipping science because that's what had gotten them where they are today. Out of nowhere, magic is real. And like, magic is really powerful, too, by the way. Yeah, they're not doing card tricks.

Yeah, this isn't like, when, pen... Because look, I love me some pen and teller. This is a little bit above some pen and teller. They're not becoming warlords. But I would like to see a pen and teller warlord. Oh, God, it'd be. Actually, they're good people. That's a warlord you want.

They wouldn't make a good warlord. But they'd be solid dictators. Everyone's like, yeah, I'm okay with it. But anyway, so the first psychers, as I was just saying, were incredibly powerful, and they quickly turn into warlords because the warp powers lets you do all the things you could need. You can enslave people's mind, turn them into thralls. other people are precogs so they could create incredible amounts of wealth or power because they can predict everything and then there's also the other group who just you know all right i can just level a city

with my mind use stuff off yeah yeah so that's what you're dealing humanity's never seen this before and for much of humanity a purge begins of the psychers and they try to remove them from society because they see this with a quickness but the problem with a quickness and also it gave you almost a back of it, though, because the people trying to purge them are, you know, you have a card trick and you're getting killed. Well, the issue is that there's really no way to purge them because they're coming up kind of random, first off. You don't know their psychers until they manifest the power.

And so the issue is if someone can hide it well, by the time they manifest the power, they're strong enough. Like I said, for example, let's say they've got the ability to enslave minds. Not too late. By the time you know that they're there, they've already enslaved the population. So now you have to go to war with them. Let's talk about making it wildly more complex, though, because you have a lot of psychers that were, oh, yeah, healers.

Yeah. They're doing good for society. This is a real thing where you had people, hey, we're going to, we need to purge all the psychers. You're like, yeah, that guy just cured cancer. I mean, I'll use an example. Prospero. Prospero was pretty prosperous.

Like, it just, let's go. But that's the truth. Like when Magnus lands there, that's one of the best worlds any Primark lands on, is because it's so well done. And it's a planet of psychers. Everyone there is a cyker. Sure, they may have already given themselves over to Zinche,

but he hadn't screwed them over yet. And this is what you're getting all over the place, which makes the purge even harder. To Brad's point, is that you sit there and say, you know, let's say a planet purges all of their psychers. And then they spread out and they go on a little like, crusade, like we have in 40K to purge the psychers, then they land on a planet who've got

thousands of psychers, and those psychers are all the scholars, they're all the doctors, and the planets like, we would all die if they weren't here, no. And so this starts to create, maybe not necessarily a civil war, but you start to get these problems. But in the flip side, you also do have ones who are in full civil war, where the psycher is a true warlord, has enslaved the population, and is trying to conquer other systems. So, Things were a little bit tough. However, that psychor situation is about to take a pretty serious backseat to a much bigger problem. I'm just waiting.

I'm trying to figure how I can work in a hold my beer situation because you know somebody went, man, things can't get me worse than they are now. We'll call them out. Vashtor is watching what's going over the cygars and says, oh, you think that's going to mess up humanity? Hold my beer. Getting there in a second, guys. The men of iron were not just a simply automaton, as we discussed last time. They were full functioning AIs with higher thinking, higher learning.

And the problem, though, is that they were not equal members of society. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Equal members? That's like saying, hey, Shaq's slightly taller than Brad. Like, no, there's equal members and then there's, oh, yeah, I am absolutely no. I think you'd have to be careful if you guys are saying this to urinals next to each other. If he turned quickly, he might hit you in the face. I think it would go right over my head.

It's possibly a bite of the duck. I'd be safe. But anyway, when I get not equal members, we discussed, we touched the votam briefly, that about the kin, they are treated as equals. Now within. He's got to start, not, not, not, not, wait for it, not. Yeah, the men of iron took on all the worst, most, dangerous and most mundane tasks of humanity. And by M23, the men of iron are producing the majority

of the food, resources, and goods for humanity, and as well as being the spearhead for any military incursion. Because at this point, humanity has built up its own human-based military. But, you know, when you're having a war with the Zenos, the Zenos are really good fighters, the first thing you throw in are the men of iron. So now, this has changed a little bit. So the way this was originally written is the men of iron just kind of said, screw this crap, I'm out, because they were sick of being slaves. And they decided that their safety, their well-being had no value to the humans. And if a man of iron died, there was no consequence because an STC would just make another one. So, you know, if you want to see Secret Level episode four, I think it is, where they kind of

show the machines realize that we're just being treated like garbage. So we're going to revolt. and they are a hyper-advanced AI that could think, feel, and they saw themselves as humanities equal, if not superior. I mean, this is the geth. Eh, no. Well, which way? That means the geth were, yeah, you're right. It is kind of the geth.

100% the guess. Yeah, you're right, it's the geth. I was going to go with it. That is the whole thing. Yeah, I was going more with Liberte, Iglatee, fraternet, but that's just me. I mean, you're not also, that is also right. Exactly. the only problem is that for humanity is since their robots they can communicate with each other quite rapidly.

So in M23, the men of iron rebelled against humanity and they were determined to destroy humanity and rule in its stead. Well, this is a big deal on this because this isn't a grassroots rebellion. When the men of iron decided to rebel, all of them went at the same time. They went. Oh, not all. That's the thing. Not all. Kind of. There were.

Yes. I'm sorry. The people that were going to rebel all rub out. Yeah. You know, there were men of iron. This wasn't something you could stamp out. It wasn't one mining site. The guys.

Oh, yeah. No, you're right. It was system-wide. I just, what I would, the thing that we, and we'll get to it in a bit, but like, again, this goes into more of the Votan, but it seems like if you treated your men of iron well, they actually stayed aligned with humanity. It was more system by system. But anyway.

But. But. The guys, again, the guys that decided to go, oh, wait. Yeah, this was a go time. Hey, what time is it? It's rebellion time is what it is what it is. Well, I do want to get into, though, is that we recently got a bit of a repcon,

or I don't like it as a record. I view it as a, we got a. They added. Yeah, they added. It just pulled some opacity off the era. And so in 2023, a new model comes into the game called Vash Tor. And honestly, his rules suck. And I've never seen them on the table.

one time, but the model's cool as hell. You tell me, have the rules ever been good? He's terrible. He's just a useless model. Okay, cool. But anyway, looks cool as hell. But he looks sweet. Yeah, so Vash Tor is unique.

He's very, he's similar to Bellacour in that his origins are completely unknown, but his influence is epic. Because Vash Tor is neither a demon, like, nor is he immortal. He has no allegiance to any God. And unlike Bellacour, who has, and actually Abadon, where they've gained power by making deals with the gods who grant them power, Vash Tor just has power. He's almost in some ways he's like a fifth chaos god.

He's trying to be. He's effectively a demigod right now. He's also an arms broker effectively. He sells his influence to the other gods. Right, but not for power back. That's what makes it so weird. Whereas, like, Belichor makes the temporary alliances and they infuse him with power. Vash Tor seems to just be powerful.

And they explain it because they call him he's the master of the forge of souls, which is a special place in the realm of chaos that creates demon engines, the ones you see on the battlefield. And so Vastor is the master of demon-infused machinery. And it was hinted at by GW, in not very subtle ways, by the way, that the men of iron didn't turn on humanity because they kind of came to their senses and they wanted to revolt. it's because VashTor effectively put in,

what's that code? He put in the, yeah, because Vastor put in a scrap code. I agree on that. They did a good job of this because when they made the Vashdor character and then they put in,

he's supposedly been around for a long time. I like this because it fills in a lot of the gaps of the story. Exactly. And it fit perfect. They did an excellent job writing. Yeah. I like this story of Vashdor a lot more because it makes more sense.

The men of iron, and they're robots. So there's no reason for them to actually attack humanity. They could have just said, screw this, I'm out, and just left. They got them together some ships, grab some STCs, and just going and settled out in the right side of the galaxy, you know, until they met the necrons. And they would be like, oh, my God, we are the new best friends with each other. But that's all it would have been.

It should have just been, all right, we're done. I'm not doing with this crap anymore. But instead, they turned massively violent. And I think it's a lot cooler for this to be some level of a scrap code. or just even just chaos influence. But anyway, but let's get into the cybernetic rebellion at what it was. So in a moment, the entirety, the majority of the men of iron turn the populace. We have no records of this time of death tolls, but it's going to be trillions, quadrillions.

Catastrophic. Day one. I mean, you're not ready for it. Also, you're not ready for it. It's also the people that are in charge of all of the things that you rely on. Funny thing on this, though, is that anyone on a planet that has knights is in a good spot, a large human militia, but more importantly, some of the more powerful psychers, which is kind of the irony is that this is where psychers have this like weird arc during this era where like if you have a world with really powerful psychers, you just, they just obliterated the met of iron and we're okay. But then later they probably conquer that world and enslave it. So, you know, six one, one, half dozen of the other. But the worlds that found themselves that were like this who could resist, it became a pretty epic struggle.

Because the men of iron were just out there. You know, they could not be bargained with. They could not be reasoned with. They didn't feel pity, remorse, or fear. And then they will not stop until you're dead. Oh, sorry. Yeah. This guy comes back from the future to help them out.

Oh, no, no. Okay. Never mind. All right. I'm back in. I've gotten flamed, by the way, nonstop. when I said Terminator 3 was better than Terminator 2, and I'm not back and down. As well you should.

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been renamed, by the way, abominable intelligence. And then after that, they then had to gather up additional resources and go to the next battleground. The only reason mankind didn't get wiped out in this era is because the men of iron, you know, were not affected by... don't get wiped. Well, the only reason why humanity doesn't get wiped out is because of warp travel. The men of iron... They couldn't get there fast enough. Exactly, because the men of iron couldn't use it. They didn't have a way. Yes, they could travel without Gellerfields, but they couldn't navigate. Without navigators, they can't see it. So they're back to what was early mankind's travel. He's doing these short, blind hops everywhere. So for the most, this allowed the Federation to kind of move quickly, secure certain areas and begin fighting out.

planet by planet to stop this rebellion. But it's still a numbers game. Well, we also have to go into the fact that we were isolating them, but warp travel was getting. Was getting a lot. Yeah, a lot tougher. So we couldn't use. Our main advantage we could use, we started to not be able to use.

Yeah. So it ends up happening over this war, which lasts, by the way, 2,500 years. G.W. has does some weird, gamesworks does some weird. Gamesworks do some weird stuff with time, by the way. We're like, this is 2,500 years. Like, all right. Feels long. But anyway, as...

Well, the big thing about it is, let me give my two cents. I'll stand in my soap on, so I'm almost as tall as people. So one of the reasons I think this goes on is because of the fact that humanity is getting separated at this point in time, because of the warp being crazy, we're starting to get cut off more and more. so this is a war, yes, but it's more of a, it turns into a million small incursions. So we couldn't actually make it a war. We would have just won against the men of iron.

No, they would have wiped it. If we could have wiped us out. No. I'm saying if we could have war travel the whole time? No. Come on. Well, you're right. If we could have warp travel the whole time, I just think the problem, the truth is that this war,

and I talk about this, this war descends pretty quickly into a war of pure destruction. Instead of like preserved force, conquer land, retake territory, it came down to like level, down to the molecule level of destruction, destroying planets in order to stop this. I mean, some of the stories, the stories come more from the Horace heresy books you can read about it where like nanorobots would devour and consume the flesh of a billion people at one time, they'd even just bones. You had entropy cannons, which would turn worlds into molten hellscapes. And just what an entropy cannon does is it takes every molecule that it hits and agitates it so much that superheets. So if you shoot an entropy cannon at a planet, the entire planet catches fire like it's made of lava. That's what they were doing. Which seems bad.

Yeah, they also had something called a sun snuffer where this in, I think this was a weapon the men of iron used. They would go to a system and they would exterminate the sun. and then just leave. That's... That's actually in two different books. Yeah, that's just... So the lore... I show us about it,

the lore from this is like a paragraph here, a sentence there, so we don't really know exactly what happened. We just know that you get these little excited... Like, there's some of the ones in the Horacee books is literally someone... is two soldiers talking about, you know, what happened back then.

And it's like a sentence. And that's all you get. I think it's a big deal to go on this, though, because and I like your theory about the fact that they were just infected. Yeah. Because at the end of the war, the men of iron were just killing, yes, all, including each other. Yeah.

They were just, they were effectively chaos-infused, mindless peace. And that's why I think it makes so much sense. Because, yeah, at the end of the war, the stories are the men of iron began to just actually fight each other. and this could be something to Brad's reference earlier to the Gath where they have a communal intelligence that as their numbers began to dwindle, their higher processing began to shrink. And so they became the only thing they cared about was killing. And so we don't know again exactly how this war ends, but we just know that it does end.

And mankind is victorious, sort of. I mean, they're victorious since the men of iron are gone. But the problem is that, like, any catastrophic level of war, battlefield deaths pale in comparison to the logistical deaths. You know, we've got famine because the man of iron made most all of the food for the Imperium. They also processed that food and managed all the shipment. So we're not growing it.

And even when we do grow it, we can't really turn it into something easier to eat. Like, you know, I guess you can't eat. I don't think you can eat wheat. I actually don't know. I don't believe if I go to a field and I pick up wheat, if I can ingest it and digest it. You have to beat the, you have to beat the craft. Okay, so there we go. That's who's doing that stuff.

So, you know, the strawberry is fine, but that's about it. Like, you're not doing that well. Also, the men of iron, we're clearly blowing up agoros. Oh, of course. And so you have, so you've got famine all over the place. So on the worlds that were able to quell the rebellion, they still had the problem because mankind's still not even as efficient. So let's say your men of iron, the rebellion starts and you do knock them out pretty quick.

Now humans have to do all that stuff, which is going to significantly reduce. the amount of production because the robots didn't sleep and they did the same job all day every day. Also, remember where I'm supposed to get half my stuff? It's over on that system over there that I'm no longer allowed to travel to because the warp is a trash fire. Yeah, and we have no record of the amount of like death that occurred here, but I would argue it's got to be at least 70%. And that's because the Horace heresy killed 20% of the Imperium. And that was a seven-year war. This is a 2,500-year war. Yeah, we had some better technology back then.

But, you know, and again, come to the Discord, if I'm wrong, or if it's higher, the truth is, the math doesn't actually make sense anyway, so it's kind of one of these, like, you know. I think that the war was over wildly closer, but it was this drawn out where I'll separate. It could be, yeah, because it's 2,500. That's just a, and that is 1,000% of brand two. 2,500.

The only way it lasts twice. Maybe, I think, you know what it could be? it's perhaps the man of iron you know kind of revolted early and mankind you know used warp travel they kind of like they got their beachhead pretty early but it took them 2,500 years

to finally get to the last the man of the last rebelling area and destroy it. Maybe that's Like I said if we had access to warp travel like we had before I think that we this ends semi quickly we take huge losses

but because we couldn't yeah that's fair You know, in time, I think the areas that the men of iron won were just devoid of humans besides, you know, pockets of hidden people, you know, kind of thing. That's fair. So, but let's get to where it's, by the way, that wasn't even the worst part of what was going to happen. Now it gets even worse. That was just part one, because now the fall of what we'll call the fall of the Federation. The strain of the cyberdetic war just proved too much for the Federation to handle. And so once the war concluded, the empire was just effectively was exhausted. The majority of their citizenry, their resource, their equipment are all gone. And like anything that happens after such a catastrophic, event, people start searching for blame. And at the same time, people also want to enrich themselves in this, like, in this new, like, enrich. Well, it's because you've got this combination where, you know, mankind just turns on itself. You've got people who want to blame the Federation for the failures, and then other people who are maybe do that, sorry, but you have people who want to blame the

Federation for the failures because they want someone to blame. And you have others, which makes it worth saying, yes, blame the government because they want to go take over themselves. So try to cede rebellion. It's a big deal in this because also Federation forces aren't showing up. Again, the lack of real warp travel is making all of this possible. Because if someone just showed up and went, hey, guys, I'm here to fix everything, it's FEMA. I'm good to go. FEMA wasn't showing up.

FEMA got destroyed. There is no FEMA. And by the way, we have listeners. over the world, FEMA is the federal emergency management administration. This is what in the U.S. happens when we have a natural disaster. FEMA's who shows up. For those of you, more than half our listeners who are not in the U.S., that's what FEMA is. Anyway, this then gets a lot worse because, oh yeah, remember those psychers that we talked about before? They're still being born at a, massive rate. And while the war against the men of iron is raging, they're gaining power.

and influence. Because as we said, a bunch of psychers can wipe out a bunch of men of iron. So now they're viewed as the saviors. Some of them, like Prospero, are. Others, like Nekir, are not. And that's where this began. So the federation effectively falls apart. And we go away from a federation back to city-states. So the night worlds, they were obviously okay. You've got a bunch of military worlds all over the place where like, you know, they say wherever the local general was who led against the rebellion, he then marshals a force and they become, you know, I wouldn't call them a military state, but that's, that's up. It's a natural thing. It's happened a little time. You know, I think the U.S. had it. France had it. A few different countries have had like a major

general becomes president. It's that. There's the things that have happened. But you've, the bigger one, though, is the psychers who are now all over the place. Because as the chaos gods are being like they're they're they're already awake but they're stirring and gaining power one of those chaos gods is zinch and zinch just discovers a galaxy or maybe zingch plant this it's always zingch full of playthings that that zich can manipulate and so just ruining stuff too yeah system after system you know these these psychos these cycor warlords gain power so you know they turn the population on themselves. Either they themselves do it or they get possessed by a greater demon who then is able to use and enter real space and now this world is, yeah, it has a full-blown demon incursion.

Yeah, we're going to call that one abandoned planet when they find it later. Yeah. Then, though, is where it gets real bad. The entire galaxy just goes dark. M27.5 is when the cybernetic rebellion ends. As it ends, this is where Slinet, is now, basically, it has a heartbeat. It's because M28, so 500 years later, the warp storms become so extreme, it's just a giant warp hurricane. And it becomes so heavy within the warp, navigators can no longer see through it at all.

You're trying to drive through a hurricane or a tornado, which, by the way, thanks to Brad's horrible state, I got to do that recently. I was visiting a customer in Ohio, and I'm driving back, and there's a stupid, like a giant weird cloud to my left, and I'm talking to someone on the phone, and I said, hey, I think I see a tornado. And he says, are you okay? And I said, well, I assume they would tell me if there was a tornado. Two minutes later, both of my phones could have a work phone at person, start beeping, telling me to, like, seek shelter immediately because there's a tornado nearby to which I'm looking out the window at it. and instead of seeking shelter decide to speed up to 100 something and just try to drive past it, which I do. But in doing so, discover, tornadoes shoot lightning out of them, which I did not know.

So I'm driving at 100 miles an hour through like torrential drain. I can't see anything on my windshield, but I do get to see lightning strike the trucks on the freeway as I drive past it. Yeah, that sucked. Ohio sucks. There we go. I blame Ohio for that, by the way. That's hurtful talk. Well, I've lived in six states and four countries, and the only time I've had a tornado try to murder me was when I was visiting Ohio.

So I blame Ohio. Because it knew that you didn't like. I was also outbite. Maybe if you were nice. Anyway. So warp travel. So warp travel now is halted. You only have sublight travel.

So all the systems in the galaxy are just cut off from each other. And a lot of them at this stage lack the food and resources to survive. So they start slowly succumbing to like death and starvation, which this. In play. Yeah, like this starts to. Nergel starts doing real good. Others had food and resources, but not enough. And they just became massive civil wars.

So corn is just loving this. And then lastly, of course, you've got psychers all over the place, just gaining power and making deals with Zinch to give themselves more power so they can get even a greater hold. And so humanity is effectively alone in the galaxy at this point. They are completely fall off, completely cut off, and other Zenos races seize on this too. And we have numerous colonies that just get eaten up. I mean, the Ragdan were on planets that were once human colonies. It's pretty clear the Ragdan probably eliminated them.

Orcs don't really care if the warp is full of a hurricane. They're on for the ride, just yelling and having a grand old time, appearing on a planet, you know, jumping out of the warp via Space Hulk and then murdering everything on the planet. So there are, the entire galaxy just starts to fall apart for humanity. No worlds are spared this carnage, by the way. All that did survive the Dark Age of Technology are scarred one way or another. You've just got Zenos, pirates, cyclone, rebellions. They're everywhere. So we have all of this destruction. Also, we had the technology

to really ruin a planet. So if John and I are fighting over planet, I don't know. Let's say ball. And John starts winning the war. Well, it would suck for John if I had the tech to ruin the world because if I can't have it, nobody can have it. Which happened all along. And you see it all over the place. And we don't really know what happened on these. worlds, we see the after effects. Ball's a great example. Ball was a lush world that became a desolate desert. Barbarus was not a toxic world when they found it, but is later ruled by a psych or necromancer. Basically, anywhere a Primark landed was a world that had been twisted and manipulated by this era, except for McCrack, because Gilliman and the Ultraman's are awesome. And so, of course, their home world's

also awesome. And then, actually, funny things, I wrote that as a joke, and I decided to look it up. And I found out there was one more planet that was that was totally positive. And it was Mundus Prime, which is where Jagadai Khan landed. But since GW doesn't care about the white scars, I don't think what they're the NPC of the Space Marine Legions. I can't even. That was mean. All right.

But if you want to get a really good, what I wanted to do here, spend some time talking about why this is called the Age of Strife and the Dark Age of Technology. and the one place we do have records of it is the system's soul. During the age of technology, the soul system was colonized and effectively terraformed all the way through. Every moon or planet with ground was turned to some sort of colony. So these colonies like terror and Mars obviously became the bedrock of the fedrock of the federation. But as with the all good rises comes a great fall. Soul had turned into something of a noble house into itself.

So ruling over the galaxy and a seemingly basically infinite number of cargo vessels are coming in and out of the system and becomes just the base of humanity. Cybernetic rebellion occurs and all the blame of course goes back onto soul, primarily terror by the way, but really all of soul. Because who made the STCs? Who made the Met of Iron? Whose idea was it that put them in charge and it had them be so critical? and how many, but more importantly, how many systems fell because help didn't arrive in time. Who was picking which system got saved? I think this is the biggest one because all those are negatives and whatnot, but because of everything that was happening in the warp, it obviously didn't completely become shut down. It was still very difficult to travel, which is why they didn't.

And all of a sudden, you did not help us. And also, soul's supposed to be this magical place. why didn't you help us? You have the things that I need. You have the technology. Safety, security, whatever. And so, yeah, all the blame fell. So very quickly, Soul goes from savior and protector of the galaxy to the corrupt villain

who destroyed the galaxy. And this then ricochets back onto Sol, though, because all throughout the system, this loss of resources, because all the trade has stopped. This was actually, this started, by the way, before the warp got turned off and now is even worse. all of the entirety of soul enters into a phase of pretty nasty civil war and one by one they all fell and this is written down by we can have this in the lore so venus falls to a to war witches utilizing litho golems yeah I'm gonna this is actually pretty fun we're gonna I wrote this out I got a little disclaimer here we're going through this GW wrote this lore probably mostly in the 90s and we're gonna talk about this that you can if you are old enough to have been alive then, the 90s were basically D&D and sci-fi.

If you were a nerd was your entire world. And we had some really crazy stuff come out of this period from like a movies. Like we had The Last Starfighter, legend, Willow, cyborg, not a good film. And a bunch of actually good films like Mad Max, aliens, Blade Runner, Mobile Suit Gundam, which I didn't realized was 1988. Yeah. Is that wild? 1988.

Anyway. Also, if you haven't seen the original Blade Runner, go away. Oh, that's really good. I did like the remake, but it was, but the original was better. Crazy time, though.

Also, some of the key words in the time are zombies, mutants, and barbarians. And so GW's writing this stuff. This is games being written by 20 and 30-year-olds in like,

in the early 90s. So if someone, of the stuff we describe here sounds kind of lame. Just understand it was epically cool back there, back then. And these are, these are nerds. Love you guys at games workshop, but calling what it is, living in the Midlands of England in the 80s. The sweaters and haircuts that probably were on these people were epic. And I will point out that I was in grade school during this period time, and Brad was in high school. By way, back to Seoul. I was rocking the mullet, baby. So Jupiter's moons for exist. So back to what we're talking about. This is why I had to do that pause, because some of this

just going to sound silly. So Jupiter's moons were conquered by an enslaving race of zeros, of Zenos, who turned here. They were zeros. Jupiter's moons were conquered by an enslaving race of Zenos who turned the human inhabitants into enslaved miners. I don't know. Saturn, interestingly, did pretty well for a period of time because it was controlled by the surviving military branch from the days of the Federation known as the Saturn 9 Ordo. And because, but thanks to then, the moons of Saturn actually kind of survived, they held off all the attacks of Zenos and mutants that were wrecking everyone else. For thousands of years.

Well, yeah, yeah, because when the emperor comes out of, out of Terra, he goes, oh, you guys are here. One of an alliance, as they did that. Yeah, like, they're doing pretty well. Neptune, which is my personal favorite of all of them, had its entire planet mutating. And this is funny for two reasons. One, GW talks about Neptune being terraformed earlier. And we talked about this back when the blood angels where they had to go conquer the planet

because some of the civilization hid below the surface. I was just want to say, let's go on the full. Before you explain what it is, they mutated and they went underground and they had to dig them out. And they had to get all these guys that were underground. So Neptune is moronically poorly written. And we'll explain it this way. So when Blood Angels were still the Ninth Legion, one of the tasks they were given was to go reconquer Neptune from the cannibal mutants. From the cannibal mutants that had overtaken it, luckily some of the people of Neptune who hadn't fallen to being cannibal mutants were hiding in the underground layers.

And so the space marines had to go through and all the tunnels within Neptune and dig out the mutants. Here's the fun part about that. Neptune is a gas giant. It's a liquid core surrounded by gas. That is what it is. I don't know how they screwed this up, but it does have to be called out that apparently humanity in the age of technology

was able to turn liquid to solid and then dug holes through it. I guess it's doable, but there's moons around Neptune. Those you could have done this on. Anyway. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's better, though? I need you to read this because I cannot.

This is real lore, by the way. I know what we're about to say. This is fully written by GW, and there's no way that they did not giggle the entire time. So there are no key stories about what happened to Uranus during the Dark Age of Technology, but because we're here, I'm going to tell you about the giant gate on Uranus. Mankind built a massive warp gate in Uranus and would allow anything, no matter. how large it was to pass through Uranus into another galaxy. And I wrote all that. I am a 43-year-old father. I have gray hair, a real job, and a serious title.

It took all I could and not laugh hysterically while reading that out just now, because I did the whole time I was writing it. An incredibly mature person here, but also credited UW on the Uranus stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't even bother. There was no chance I was going to say. But also, we should probably talk about Mars and Terra.

So Mars falls to an invasion of the most 80s sci-fi thing ever. Mutant Cycars, aka the psycher mutants of Mars, invaded. No one knows what it came from. Yeah. It legit, but it was awesome, though, because Mars became due. Yeah. Because during this war, all the Terraformers on Mars are destroyed, and the planet turns back to an irradiated wasteland. The mutant cannibals, they also become.

cannibals at a certain point, then start roaming the surface to the, and these mutant cannibals are so powerful that if a Mechanicum got caught outside, they would then get tagged, I guess, and would also turn themselves into a mutant cannibal. So it's zombies. That's what these are. These are mutant cannibal zombies from Mars. This was a lot cooler when I was 10. Also, on the topic of Mars...

You make it sound like it's bad. This is awesome. Funny one, though, on the topic of Mars, and this is, I literally, I looked at the, up three different times. This is written down. In one of the heresy books claim that Mars was cut off from Terra by the warp storms. Not Mars was cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the from the warms storms, but from the planet that they can see from the surface of the planet. Like I can, any one of us can take a telescope, actually see Mars. If it's a clear sky, you're not in a city, you can see Mars. Otherwise, get a telescope. You can look at it. You can look

at Mars. I don't know how you were cut off, but apparently they were. I love everything about this. Just moron stuff here. By the way, Mars spends the entirety of the age of strife fighting mutants and invaders. So first, there is a mutant psychers from Mars, then the cannibal mutant psychers from Mars, then the Silica Animus, which is an AI killer robot from Mars. Later, the psychonovora, cyborg mutant killers of Mars. And the whole thing, the whole time Mars just gets stronger and more unified. But the war storms are still raging. So they just had to kind of hang out and wait for help. Terra, on the other hand, is a dumpster, is a masterclass in dumpster

fires. I love, I love that you basically said it gets worse on Terra when Mars is clearly an evil video game. But wait, but wait, there's more. Mars is the game Doom over. Mars is the game Doom over. and over and over again, and terror was worse. So the fall of the Federation just takes out terror, obviously. I mean, within a few centuries, the entire planet is turned into a hellscape. And this is because techno-barbarbarian warlords, they're just great term, took control of what used to be continents. Used to be because, thanks to biological, chemical, and thermonuclear war, there's not much left of the planet. There's about, but later, Later on, there's about 19 techno-barbarian warlords vying for control of terror.

There's 20 warlords, but one of them is not a techno-barbarian. It's the emperor. He was barbaric, but he was not a techno-barian. Yeah, he's just a dick. Yeah, and so his primark project is in full swing. The emperor, the timing, so let's talk about the timing on this. The timing of this is the emperor has now got his prime-mark project in full swing, but it's not quite ready yet. So he and Malcador decide they're going to go conquer Terra.

And he does this, I would point out, not before a bunch of weird tech barbarians, cycor warlord barbarians destroy the planet. So he could have stopped this at any point in time, but he couldn't be bothered. Yeah, I'm okay. I can go. He let all of Tara become an irradiated nightmare world. Yeah. And he was still there.

He was living there. I'll clean it up in the post. What? So rather than kind of dig back into the full unification wars, I do want to give you guys what happened here. So we're going to do the cliff notes, which I looked up outside of the U.S. They're called York Notes. Didn't know that, but now I do. So the emperor ravages Tara with his like space marine art, his like prototype space marines called Thunder Warriors, which were just pure savages that would just slaughter anything and everything. You basically just release them. They were a dumber version of the men of iron, as how I would look at them.

And this campaign of horror and savagery works. Eventually, the emperor and Malkador kill all the techno-barbarians off. They unified terror. They then kill off all the Thunder Warriors, all but like two or three who randomly appear in stories, which is always cool when they do, by the way. As this occurs, though, Slanesh is born. and the warp storms stop. 90% of the elder are dead,

but the warp storm stop, and the galaxy is now effectively doomed because there's now another dark god, as well as massively empowering the three that were already there. But freeways are wide open, so you can get kind of whatever you want to do. Emperor, follow,

just candidly. So, all right, as we can travel out into what is about to be. Freeways? Yeah, the freeways are open. Thanks, John. They finish the construction. There we go.

You're not wrong. Now we can get out there. And Emperor heads out. He brings his space marines. He goes to Mars to make a quick deal with them. And the dark age of technology comes to a close. Now, as we kind of get to the end of the episode, I want to talk about very briefly, because I don't have to do much with it, the effects of this dark age of technology on mankind.

and how they're affecting kind of modern 40K. So first and foremost is the obvious one. AI is right out like the number five. AI is banned in any and all forms. Sure, the ad mec ban is, was very much so in air quotes, but AI is banned because the horror is the cybernetic revolt or something or maybe the most cautionary tale

humanity has from this era. The next piece, though, comes with. that, which is a massive loss of technology. In like the 11,000 years since the start... Oh, my God. It's just wild loss. It wasn't even close. Yeah.

I mean, we're still futuristic in 40K, but we... This is Stone Age. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, it's been 11,000 years since the start of the Great Crusade, and humanity's recovered barely a fraction of technology that had 10,000 years before that. Volkite does... They still have not unlocked how to do that. Grave weapons, vortex should bring it back.

The cloaking technology and more just only exist as it is. If they find something that can do it, it works. And I've always had a theory on this that I think because of the ban on AI, I think most of this technology, without AI, you really can't take it apart and reassemble it because I think as you take it apart, there's something's up there. So if humanity... I'll give you that. The third, though, is abhumans.

And we didn't talk about this on this cast, and they're going to come up a lot more on some other stuff we do. So the long time apart with kind of, and with all those rampant genetic engineering plus radiation plus toxins, shifts a lot of humanity. Planets all around the galaxy,

new breeds of humanity exists. Some of which emperor said gave a thumbs up, and some of it emperor gave thumbs down. You know? Also, I, he, rolls the dice on Yeah, I mean, you're going to get Simply put Ogren

Rattlings what used to be squats and are not squats anymore. Again, Emperor rolls the dice. Emperor decides, eh, this one's good. I feel like how his other projects were going on really determined whether somebody lived or died. He's like,

Malkador shows up and goes, Hey man, how's that Webway thing going? Terrible. What about this? Kill all. Those all die now. Oh, these ones are kind of useful. You know, so the next one, though, is psychers.

So post-Dark Age of Technology, psychers take on a much larger role in humanity. Not in a good way for them, by the way. They create the astrophath of this era. They start cloning out navigators. The psychers become like the new men of iron for the Imperium. They serve a, they're actually, they're a resource. They wish they were the men of honor. Yeah, they become a resource.

And this is because at the same time of them being a value, they're also viewed as a threat. So no one is allowed to be a psycher without the Imperium knowing about it. And when the Imperium does know about you, I would say 99% of the time, you're not going to like what they do with you. you're going to be turned into an astrapath, which means having most of your brain ripped out so you can sing and talk to people across the galaxy. You might... Well, we want to make you more efficient.

They might just shove you into the Astronomicon. That's always fun. If they can't make you an astropath, every now and then... That happened a little bit after. That's when the... No, it was before. They were sacrificing them. No, no, no, no.

They were sacrificing it, but they really... Oh, yeah, exactly. You're on the... Yeah, it went up a lot. I mean, a few of them end up, you know, serving within the space marines, but it's not great. However, the biggest one from this era is chaos becoming aware of humanity. Remember, chaos, I mean, chaos was, didn't really care about humanity when it was just on soul. Humanity expands into the galaxy, but around the same time, they're doing that, the elder are having a party, and this is fueling chaos pretty heavily.

it's not till you know they they and humanity also I would I would argue that can be wrong on this one but I would argue during the golden age of technology humanity's doing pretty well which means there's not a lot of disease there's not a lot of strife there's not a lot of anything so humanity even though it's in tens potentially hundreds of thousands of planets they're not behaving in a way that really fuels chaos then you add a little bit of chaos to humanity and they fuel it like nothing's ever fueled it in this entire war. Ever before. And so the chaos gods are incredibly aware of humanity and they begin feeding off of that.

And humanity with its endless thirst for like more knowledge and more this are just symbiotic with this. And also we should point out that the emperor screwed the chaos gods over pretty badly. So vengeance? I'm going to, I'm also going to give the other one on this. Again, Emperor screwed them. Let's talk about the Emperor weirdly getting his rebellion ready where he's going to conquer Tara. Crazy how that really coincided with the birth of Sladesh and the clearing of the warp.

It's almost like, he knew it was coming. He knew it was coming. The Emperor and Eldrad are basically the same thing. They've got this really cool way to see the future, but never can predict what's exactly. what is totally going to happen to them in the future. Eldred's mad that you just compare. I'm sure he is, but they both keep screwing everything up. I'll just do this thing and it'll work out great.

I think the emperor does it on purpose. Oh, maybe that's true. All right. But anyway, with that, I think that's a good established. I think we've done a good job of telling Golden Age technology, Dark Age of technology. Do you just give yourself props? I like it. I like telling myself.

I did a good job. Good job, Brad. I'll take it. Come tell me what. I'm sure we missed. stuff and I apologize. I will not. You give your bad things to John.

I give your good praise to buy it. I do think, though, that this is a good segue going back into the chaos gods, the timeout something for us. So next week, we're going to step into the third legion, the space Marines, the Emperor's children. Yes. Bullgroom just got a model. They've got a codex.

The codex is actually behind me right now. I already have mine. And so we're going to start, you know, going through the story of the emperor's children. It's actually. one of the better falls. They're cool. The third legion's pretty cool in the early stages. And then Fulgroom, not as big a fan of Fulgram as some people are, but it's fine. He's still, he's a well-written character. I just find, I find the fall of the Emperor's children to be really

cool, especially because they fell from such a high point. I mean, maybe next to Horace, they were, they're the highest of the Chaos Legions that fell, right? Because the Emperor didn't really, well, he did not like Thousand Suns, Word Bears, which are going through the Yeah, I think would it be? Emperor's Children? We're his favorite? They are next to Lunables? I don't know.

That's tough on that one, but they were awesome. We'll talk about us more next week, but I'm just wondering, like, which ones, which one the emperor liked? I'll say that for it. We're going to see. Teaser trailer. All right, with that, this has been John Barciotti and Bradchester. See you guys next week.