The 40k Lorecast - Episode 87 - The Imperial Fists pt 1 - The Rise of the 7th legion.

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

On today’s cast we begin our coverage of the 7th legion the Imperial Fists. We open with their origins during the Unification Wars. From there we talk about their role in the emperor’s crusade as the ultimate conquerors. Ater that we bring Dorn into the picture and his changes to the legion. We then spend time talking about how Dorn interacts with the other Primarchs, mostly he does not get along great with them. We then jump into the siege of Terra, and Dorn being the ultimate fighter of the galaxy as he puts a beating on all comers.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 Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we'll be jumping into what might be the greatest of all the legions, according to Bradchester, the Imperial Fists. For those who are new to the cast, the 40K lore cast is a weekly podcast, focusing the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.

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Yeah, at Time of Cast. Probably when you guys are listening, this will be over 8,000 members. It's a wonderful community that we've built there. It covers everything in the game from the cast itself to 40K lore in general, literature, gameplay. The thing I like the most about it is it's full of advice. So if you're newer to 40K universe

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great job keeping the community, happy and safe. So with that, let's get into the Seventh Legion. As with all the legions, the emperor created, the Seventh Legion share a common lineage with its recruits. Sort of. It's interesting. I would actually argue the Seventh Legion end up being the most unique amongst all the legions in their recruitment because they don't actually use a region.

They just use an archetype. Yeah, I can actually. Because like the seventh. Oh, yeah. You know, I'm going to give Imperial Fist. I know that I poop on him, but if everything went down and you only could have one Legion,

if you're not choosing the ultramines, you're choosing the Imperial Fist because they have all the people that know how to do stuff. Yeah. This is basically all of the union guys that are electricians, plumbers, and everything else.

Oh, they are... These guys... They're hands down. The Ultramarines are the best Legion at running stuff. The Fists are the best Legion of kind of getting shit done. Like, it's the best way to explain it. Because there's guys who are specialized

in little things, but the Fists just in general get stuff done. So let's talk about them a little bit. So the Seventh Legion drew their recruits originally from all of Terra. It didn't matter your background. If you're a criminal, you were a noble, you were a worker, where you're from, mountains, arid waste, cities, anything. The Seventh Legion would still recruit from you because they weren't looking for an individual,

they're looking for a type. And so they ended up actually siphoning off some of the recruiting of other legions. And this is because the only thing that Seventh Legion wanted is someone who fit a couple of different pieces. They had to be tough beyond all measure. They were literally grabbing the toughest people that they could find. And they all seem to be kind of a stalwart is how they describe it. So the kind of people who don't speak very much,

but their actions show it. Boring. Yeah, I think we always hear why Brad doesn't like the imperial fists. Well, what's the fuck? Like, the level that you are a space wolf is so excessive here, where it's like... Why would I do anything? if I don't get to talk about it later.

It's silly. I want to have, I want instant gratification for my successes, and then I want to live the glory of those successes by telling you about the successes every chance I get to talk. Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

You're a space wolf, which is fine. A lot of people want to be space wolves. But the Imperial Fists, I think, they're kind of like the Dower like, I just get shit done group. And yeah, fun story, though, actually, do what we were just discussing. Lehman Rust was not a fan of the Imperial Fists.

No. He thought they were lame. Of interesting note, though, the act of becoming a member of the Seventh Legion was really no different from other legions, implantation of the gene seed, although it does say that the gene seed was more painful. I don't know that. I want to go in this.

One of the things is they have stories about this, and I don't know why they added this. I think they're just trying to really imprint the fact that these are very durable individuals. They're supposed to. These are almost like, if they're anything, their fantasy dwarves. They're just grumpy.

And they make things about this for whatever reason, and it makes no real sense. I just think that they're trying to say that they are tough. Because for whatever, they're saying, hey, our gene seed just causes pain. You're like, why? We just don't give anybody any drugs. You're like, why?

I just want to see if they're tough. Well, and it's also funny because they talk about, like, it's the most painful process of the gene seeds. I'm like, but world eaters shove but butcher's nails in people's skull. I feel like that one probably hurts more. I don't think that's part of the process. It's not supposed to be part of the process. Oh, it's right.

Yeah, the emperor did tell him to stop doing it. And Angron promptly went, no. Can't believe that guy turned to chaos. Yeah. It really is weird that the world eaters became a chaos faction. Who could see this coming? One more thing on the gene seed that's important is the imperial fists do not have the gene seed for spitting acid or the one that, like, puts was suspended animation. No one else's work, but they actually don't even have it because

Rogaldorne probably was like, why would I put something in there that doesn't work? That actually would, he would probably view that as a flaw as a structural flaw. I'm like, nope, we're not doing that one anymore. And he's the only one to figure it out. So. But. Well done. Yeah. Let's talk about where the Seventh Legion really did stand out, though. And that's where conquest, which or crusading is really what they are. All of the Emperor's legions were used to conquer and destroy an opponent. They all come in hard, they come in fast, and they overwhelm. And from there, they would kind of move quickly to reach, like, the goal is always to reach the leadership and they cut the head off the snake. That's how most of the legions

functioned. The problem is that only works when you're fighting someone who's, you have superiority to. What happens when you actually hit someone that you can't just use overwhelming force for, where you have to grind them out? And that's the seventh legion. They would dig in. Yeah, different than like Deathguard also would grind you out, but it was grind you out actually in battle. These guys, yeah, yeah. No, he dug in.

He went, they were doing World War I, let's just trench warfare. I mean, Mortarama's kind of that, but he would build fortifications. It's one of the reasons that the Apparel Fist didn't put up huge numbers because of the fact that when you needed a heavily fortified army, if you weren't sending in the Iron Warriors or Perterabo, just to be. because he was a siege master and you wanted to grind somebody out, the imperial fists were fortification masters. They would put up their own things and basically

to march their way in by having superior fortifications than yours were on your own place. Yeah, and I want to talk about this a little bit, because I actually, I think this is a really great thing with a seven legion that's really, it's different. And I think it's something that, to me, is a bit more in the realm of reality. So, like, so for example,

the presence of a massive, military force using shock and awe tactics, that'll pacify people for a little bit. But the problem is that what happens when that force leaves? This is where the... This is a huge problem in the Crusades for a while because the Marines a lot of times would leave too quickly. Yeah.

And they would just expect, well, which is now the Imperial Guard, to just take care of this. And they would be on their way. Dorn, I have to admit, that Imperial Fis as a whole, We're fantastic at trying to make sure this is an imperial planet forever. Yeah. And so what they would do is when the Seventh Legion was deployed in battle, the first thing they're going to do is once they gain good ground, they build emplacements. So this allowed their forces to be even more powerful because now they've got more powerful weapons coming in.

Then they start putting up fortresses on these hostile worlds to help improve the efficacy of local garrisons. Because what Brad was just saying, that's one of the biggest problems, is the space marines would leave. and the local population were like, yeah, we surrendered to the superhumans. You're just some guy named Ted. I can kill Ted. Watch this. However, if Ted's sitting on the top of a giant wall with a cannon, he's like, well, go away. Exactly.

All right, fine, Ted. We will pay our tithe. And so this becomes a really key thing. And so in my mind, this was why the Seventh Legion becomes effectively the emperor's favorite as part of the Congress. conquest. It's because they, all the worlds that they go to tend to stay held versus the space wolves who are going to go in there, you know, basically, yeah, I killed the king. We all left. And then like a month later, that rebelled again, they were like, oh, were we supposed to actually fortify or build something there? Why are you going to bring up old shit?

We're already on the other side of the galaxy. I'm out, guys. Again, this is a big deal, though, because the Imperial Fists don't get huge recognition on what they're doing, because they're not putting up big numbers. Because it does take time to do all the things they're doing. However, their worlds become legit. You know what I mean? They have fortified worlds. It's also a big deal. Like, a lot of these worlds are things that they just left alone.

This is a big deal when we go to the Horace heresy. They looked a lot of the Imperial Fist worlds alone because they were just too annoying. Oh, yeah. The only people who attacked Imperial Fist Worlds was Petarabo, who was just trying to prove a point. Everyone else. Everyone else, no, we're just going to take heavy losses. But there's a really good example I want to tell about the Imperial Fists for two reasons. One, it really shows kind of the stoic and deliberate nature that the Seventh Legion did it work with. And two, it all happened on Uranus. And I'm a man child. And I cannot resist the ability to just say the word Uranus over and over again. Every time we've had any story that goes to the soul. system, we go back to Uranus.

Yeah, exactly. All right, so let's enjoy this. So Uranus actually did pretty well during the age of strife. During the Golden Age of Technology, mankind built up and fortified Uranus really well. They've got, you know, yes, it's a gas. How they did this? No one knows. Yeah, it's a gas giant. So whatever, but there was, but it does have, it has satellites orbiting Uranus. This is just going to happen, guys.

I'm sorry if you don't find this joke. These jokes funny. We're doing this. During the age of strife, though, Uranus came under attack. all planets by a combination of like mutants, psychers, pirates, some other random thing, whatever GW felt like writing in 1992. But well before the unification wars concluded on Earth, the people of Uranus actually got kind of stabilized.

So the emperor comes out, goes to Mars, and just goes planet by planet. When the emperor gets to Uranus, they're actually happy to see them. And it's a local population called the Azurites, because for Azur, because it was blue, wish. And at first, all things with the Azurites go well. They accept the imperial truth. They give over citizens, technology, etc. The problem is that Uranus was very valuable within the soul system to like really do kind of almost anybody. You can't take Mars. You can't take Earth. You want to go take Uranus. Namely space pirates who just could not resist the booty available on Uranus.

So the pirates attack and a distress call goes out to the Imperium. And to combat the pirate that threat, the Emperor just sends a 7th Legion to re-fortify and repel the invaders at Uranus. So the fists entered Uranus with force and drove the pirate

fleet right up. And then they landed on the main station and then just go door-to-door killing pirates. I love everything about this. Also, quick shout-out. and prep, if you can find a old copy of Space Hulk, fantastic game. And, well, this is what it,

when I first thought of this when I was reading it, I thought Space Hulk, because that is the kind of boarding, hand-to-hand, door-to-door action that we're getting here. And so this battle is awesome, because the Seventh Legion are just ripping through it, and the pirates go to flee. And the reason the story is cool is it exposes something

about the Dark Agent technology. That's really interesting. So as the pirates flee, one of the ships turns around and fires three torpedoes at the station. Two of them get blown up, but a third one does penetrate and gets into the station. Once it penetrates, it's not a warhead. It's that it pops out and a human jumps out of it. And I think of this, if you guys have seen Secret Level, the way that the psycher, the suitcase,

that's how it is. And this human pops out. And the human just speaks one word, and the word is silence. The thing is, this human has no eyes, no fingers, no ears, and no time. hung. This is not, this is a psycher. It's actually a, this is actually a psycher weapon. And it was a curse from the age of strife. I think it was, I think it was called the maddening curse. It had some special name. And what it does is anyone who hears it, hears this word, this spell of silence, they turn into a sigh zombie, for lack of a better thing. Well, you didn't have to be there,

though. The thing is that this could work over comms. So as long as it was broadcast anywhere, this is going down. Yeah. And so there's no one better. to handle the situation in the Seventh Legion. So the Seventh Legion, know what it is. They immediately cut all comms to the station, and they actually cut all their own things. So they go to work now in pure silence. And they go through this entire station.

And so remember, this word has been uttered. So every being inside the station who hasn't, you know, effectively muted themselves and deafened themselves, it's spreading. So the fists have to fight through a station full of sigh zombies. If someone in this station gets to the MasterVox and speaks it out, you could actually take out the fleet. So what do they do?

They go on a slaughter mission through it, fight their way to the core of the station, and overload it, and basically blowing the station up, sacrificing themselves without even a second thought. And thereby the Seventh Legion saved Uranus. Oh, damn it. Whatever.

All right. So that's enough Uranus jokes. Let's talk about the. a person who would zero percent enjoy those jokes because he's the ultimate killjoy, Rogel Dorn. Roagel. Yeah. Rogel, I like, unlike Bright, I actually like Rogel, but I do admit,

Rogel is, if we take all the prime marks and list from highest to least likely to attend a comedy show, Rogel's the bottom. He would, it's, one of his monikers is the end of fun. Yeah, it's him and the lion at the bottom. I don't understand laughter. That's basically, you know, this is basically heresy.

Yeah, exactly. Angeron would want to go, but no one wants him there because it's just like, dude, I don't know, no. Oh, man, we accidentally gave you the wrong day. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it was yesterday. Next time. All right. So, Rogel Dorn, like all the primarks, Rogel disappears from his gestation tube and is warped at some random planet. And like all the primarks, except for Gilliman and Khan, the planet sucks. It's not chemos or Nusaria sucks, but it still sucks. Doren lands on an ice world called Inwit, which is probably, I think, closest to Fenris in that, like the way they describe it's a little bit annoying.

They describe it as the people of Inuit are super tough, and they're almost nomadic, and they're fighting each other for resources. So it's basically Fenris, except it doesn't have deer on it. It was horrifying. Yeah, those super dangerous deer on Fenris. Again, murder deer. And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about,

go back and listen to our Space Wolf's cast, because they did refer to the, great danger of venous being the north where they had ice trolls and like frozen beasts and deer drakes yeah drakes yeah and they list one of them as deer just calling it out deer murder deer so the planet in what is described as a world of death and cold it has a decaying sun that leaves the world in either twilight or utter darkness the surface itself is just and it's just kind of a nightmarishly viewed surface it's got mountains and valleys and planes deep crags and all of it's frozen.

Even the seas are frozen, but underneath them are a host of predatory animals that would burst through the surface and snatch you. And that was, by the way, on the good side of the planet. Because GW writes it like it doesn't rotate. I think it's just what they meant to say is it's tidily locked to the sun, which means that one side of it,

the way it revolves around the sun at the same speed it rotates, so one side of the planet never faces the sun. I guess, and I learned, by the way, in our research, Venus does that. Who knew? But apparently Venus is tidily locked to the sun. These are things I learn. Anyway, the dark side of the planet is really crappy. The dark side of the planet is kind of like Caliban, and that it's full of monsters. Although they're not warp-infused monsters. They're just monsters that live in the dark. Think what you meant to say, John, is this move planet was like pitch black. Yeah. There's a Venn diesel movie about this called pitch black, which I haven't seen in

20 years, but I don't remember it being great. Yeah. You take that back. Ridic will come after you. Yeah, Chronicles of Reddick was not good. That one. I do remember that. I remember that going, well, this isn't good. Anyway, the really important part about Inuit, though, is not the planet itself. It's the system that it's in. There's no records of it, obviously, but Inuit was a powerful system during the age of technology and just got wrecked during the age of strife. And it's wild because the system has random space stations, satellites, all scattered throughout the system. Yeah. It's crazy.

And they were all out of reach of the populace who were stuck on the planet until, of course, Rogel Doran shows up. And what's kind of weird about this is that unlike his brothers, there's no history of Rogel Doran at an early age. We know he gets adopted by some of the locals and rises up eventually to become the emperor of Inuit. And from there, Dorn improves the people and they build crafts and actually go into space. That's where he was. By the time, he's an early adult. Yeah. He's, he, they went from like, wooden ships to spaceships. So he was barely legit. Well, yeah. And it's, it's, it's kind of funny

because every other prime arc story is like, you talk about, you know, as a child, they were here's their upbringing. Dorn, there's nothing. Dorn just was there. Someone found him. They adopted him. He rose to be emperor, and then once he was emperor, he invented space travel. Is he the most successful on his original planet? Because he actually goes beyond the planet. Yelleman? Did G-Man get off the planet by the time the emperor got there? I mean, obviously took over the whole system eventually.

But Dorn actually went and started getting these space stations. He had a ton of stuff by the time the emperor shows up. You're probably right. Probably is Dorn. And the one thing that's really funny about this to me is that the technology Dorn recovers, by the way, is Astronomic. These guys,

so namely a special space station, which isn't even a space station, it's the Death Star, called the phalanx. The phalanx is this massive, it's about the size of a death star, but it's shaped like a mace, is how they describe it,

and you guys can look at Google. It's really easy to find images of. It's effectively a hive city slash forge world in space. Oh, slash. biggest freaking spaceship you've ever seen. And Dorn and his people get up to it, turn it on, and figure out how to use it. And they're just kind of wheeling around and they use this then to conquer the rest of the system. So they end up actually, Dorn, by the time the emperor arrives,

Dorn's people have actually colonized and conquered their entire system. And the part I like is that the emperor arrives with his fleet and he's greeted by Dorn on the, phalanx, which is larger than probably 40% of the emperor's fleet combined. Yeah. You're like, hey, man, what's going on? Yeah, that must have been an awkward meeting to be like, oh, hey, we're here to bring you back into imperial compliance. And if you could not shoot at us, that would be super cool.

Because I actually do think he wouldn't have killed the emperor, but it would have hurt. But anyway, they get along. Dorn, kind of like Fulgram, just immediately joins with the emperor. The emperor did, by the way, let Dorn keep his super ship. And it was like, oh, yeah, that's totally yours. But if you could, we're going back to Terra now. If you could bring that thing with you, that would be super cool. Yeah.

Keynote, though, every other prime arc when they left their home world, barring maybe, I can't think of who, anyone who didn't do this, turned their home world into their recruiting world. So from forever forward, that became the homeworld of their Legion. Doran didn't do that. Doran just, he left Inuit. Inuit's still under his protection. But the home world of the Imperial Fists is actually the phalanx.

They are the only mobile Space Marine Legion, which comes up a lot more. The Rock now. Well, that was not intentional. I mean, and that's true. The Rock still is technically Caliban. It's just not a big, it's just, you know, not all of it. They just put engines on the part that was left. Yeah.

So I like the phoenix is awesome because it's, again, it's the official homeward of the fist, if that's mobile. But it's, it's so big. One of my favorites of the stories is it's so big, it reflects light. You think it's a star. Yeah. If you look in the night's die. And it's the biggest ship that's ever been created.

And it's still around. It's been kicking ass for 11,000 years now. Oh, and it has kicked some ass. It's got several of the pew-pues on it. Yeah, it's got, and it has shut up at some key battles and done some pretty key things. Let's dive into Dorn joining his Legion. So Rogald is a horrifically cold individual. I don't know if he was written to be like a German engineer or just a really classic British officer, but it's one of those two.

He always speaks what he believes to be true with no polish or care. and he, because if he feels he's correct in what he says is true, there's nothing wrong with saying it. And for any of our German listeners who don't understand why I just made that comment about you, I've been working with Germans for over 20 years. And you guys are masters of the Ricky Bobby with all due respect statement, except you don't say with all due respect before it and just say things. And it's, it is, I just laugh half. And I've been in a lot of engineering calls where someone has said, okay, I just want to let you know.

you should with a German accent, I want to let you know that everything you just said to me was incorrect and your idea is terrible. I've had people open with that. Amazing. It's hilarious, by the way, when you're there. So anyway, can we, let's talk about this. The first meeting with the action Legion Master was just, like, I can't imagine this guy comes in and he's like, I'm in charge and we've been doing this. And here's all the things that we've done. You have to be super proud. Because here's my list of achievements. And here's all the things your Legion has done before we met you. We are loved, we are loved, but probably tell him all about Uranus and all these things.

And then Rogel literally looks at him, says, thank you. That's it. He just says thank you. And then makes him the new commander of the Inwit system. And then as he walks away from him, turns on and says, oh, by the way, I need you to get me 30 regiments of imperial fists. And then he just leaves. Pause on this, though. 30 retiments of Marines is such a wild tall order.

And door just goes, deuses, figure it out, goodbye. Also, you're not coming with the Legion. Have fun being the guy that's doing this. See you later. He just drives. He basically takes his keys, gets in his car, and drives away. Hey, man, that dude just stole my car. Mathias is his name.

I'm sure Mettea is just sitting there like, what just happened? Did I get fired or promoted? I actually don't know at this moment. Like, it's just... I kind of think I just got carjacked also. What just happened? Okay. I'll stay here.

Now that being said, with Rogel at the helm, the Imperial Fists get a lot better. He is, this guy is, he is a strategic genius. They are, they start taking land, securing new frontiers like it's nothing. And again, as we were discussing earlier, everything they do is effectively perfect. because they take a world, they fortify the world, they leave it. So they're, like, we joke, my guess is if you're looking at the statistics, I bet you, like, the space wolves are, they're like, total number of worlds conquered in a year is, like, number one.

But then if you look at, like, the five-year trend of how many of them are still in the Imperium five years later, it's not that good. Whereas the Imperial Fists, they're like, their legacy of, like, how many are still here? A hundred percent of them. Why? You're looking at Gross and Net. Yeah, exactly.

Whatever, it's what I do for work. No victory, though, it really stands above their victory at Necromunda. And so... Play the game. We just have to throw that out. Because a lot of people ask us for books, for other references. Necramundas also a faster game than playing on the tape. Oh, it's a big 40 game.

Necramanda is really cool because it's 40K adjacent. You're playing in the 40K universe, but you're not doing... You're not playing all space marines, that kind of stuff. It is a very well-written game. Playing games. You're playing gangs. So let's talk about Necromanda. So Necromanda is actually a system, and it's not that far from Seoul. And they've been settled during the age of technology.

It was like, and this is kind of a really classic Great Crusade story. It's, it's a necromania is the capital of this empire. They actually spanned about six or so star systems. So not just most of the stuff the emperor, the agent would bump into, would be like one planet, maybe a system. This was six different star systems. which are not close to each other that made up this group. And the only reason they were able to do that is they actually had warp gates in each system and on most of the planets.

All right. Buckle in everyone because they wrote this kind of odd because a Webway gate gives you access to the Webway. You basically get at the, you buy a ticket, you'd grow onto the transit system. Yep. A warp gate is just a straight line, effectively tube, but it's through the warp. It's just a cut through in the warp, and it's a solid pipe that goes nowhere else. You can't access anywhere else.

It goes from here to here. But what's nice by it, it's instant, though. And the thing that we talked about warp travel before, normal warp travel is not instant. It's faster, but it's not instant. This is instant. You step into one warp gate, you step out the other side. That's the thing. So these warp gates are really, this is what allowed this empire to grow.

Now, that being said also, I should also point out that we just said, all that, and there are warp gates that go into the Imitarium because it's GW writing. And so what is a firm 100% rule will change if there's a writer who decides that that rule sucks for the story he's trying to tell. Also, why aren't we making tons of these for instantaneous travel? It would be much better. So when the first imperial ship arrives in this system, they get attacked immediately. The only message that gets back to the Imperium is via the astrophats.

and just saying there's a highly advanced, highly hostile group here, but they are human. So the next thing the Imperium does is send another envoy because we have these rogue traders. Let's just keep sending them because I don't really care about them. Exactly. So they send another envoy. And this is where it gets interesting. So the next envoy arrives, and this time they actually are greeted. And the rulers are known as the Iranians.

And they show themselves to be these cybernetically enhanced race with incredible, credible technology. And the Iranians refuse all overtures of the Imperium and instead make an offer back saying that, well, if you guys would like to be our subjects, we would accept you into our empire. The emperor declines this offer and sends the fists to handle the situation. This is... Didn't go super well for the Iranians. This is brutal. Within two months, the fist had conquered every single system and had the Iranians push down to one planet. And my favorite part of this whole story is what they do next. Rather than invade the last planet, the imperial fist bring their fleet in between the planet and the sun and block out the sun with their fleet, which is a pretty solid,

you want to surrender now. And the Iranians went, yes, we'd like to surrender now. This feels a good time to surrender. So they do. And Imperial Fist, take it. But that's not the end of the story. And not long after the world is conquered and brought into compliance, this weird hidden foe starts attacking. Effectively coming out of the warp gates, its Zenos are described as being made of darkness and lightning, just would come out and slaughter things. Ballrog? Yeah. I was just what, well, it's not just a ballrog. It's a bunch of ballrogs. It's a collection of ballrogs, just attacking out of nowhere. And so, but again, the fists are the ones who are here.

So they have fortifications, so they hold up for a bit, but they realize pretty quickly two things. One, this is definitely the Iranians move. This is something that they probably knew about this and they did something to effectively say, if you can't, if I can't have my world, you can't have my world. And the second thing the fist do is say, well, no warp gates, no ball rugs. And you're like, hey, isn't this awesome instantaneous travel? Yeah, but also it's easier than fighting these guys.

So, kaboo! So they blow up all of them. The downside of blowing them up is apparently warp gates don't like to be blown up. And so when they do it, it actually blows up a lot, most of the planets that they're on. I don't have a lot of information on this one, guys. I'm giving you what I got at a GW. So as, yeah. Well, the one thing they said about it is the explosion changed the orbit of several of these planets.

So you're just like, hey, man, it's super cold right now, mainly because we're farther away and tilted the wrong way. Oh, did they get hit? Did they get hit by a meteor, like the one guard army? Oh, God. You know what? You know that makes me mad. It's the ultimate violation of physics. Yeah, I'm aware.

It was a stupid one. But at the end of it, the Iranian system actually goes from six star systems full of planets to effectively just necromunda. That's it. They lost most the worlds. I'm sure some of them got salvaged, but the key one is, of course, necrombuda. And then necromb... Yeah, we're going to throw...

I'll throw a door under the bus for this one, though. Because he went, whoops, like, he had to give the whole, my bad for this one. He's like, we could fight that, but there was a really stiff foe where we could just kill them right now. Oh, that was a colossal collateral damage. Oh, shit.

What I like, though, about the fists, though. This is where, again, I enjoy the fists. So the fists, they finish this whole thing up, and the citizenry of Necromanda, they look at them and say, this is going to be kind of, we're going to recruit from there. Does it become an official recruiting world? But we need to have a bunch of them because they're really tough. The reason this is funny is that citizens of Necremunda hate the Imperium. They revolt regularly. That's why the game exists as it is. Necromeda constantly under civil war and revolution. Let's also throw out Nicar Munda though. Necramunda is one of, if not the most populated world.

It is the largest. It's the largest high world. The galaxy. Yeah. It's got 10. It probably has trillions of people on it. But the fists just go, yeah, these people who are rebelling against the Imperium, yeah, you know what we're looking for?

We're looking for very tough warriors who are firm in their beliefs. Problem solved. So Necramunda becomes one of the many recruiting. world's for the imperial fists. I just like that story. Well, it's funny because let's talk about Dorn. If there was ever a person that was more on the imperial truth, the emperor is correct. I'm doing exactly what his mission. Here's the mission statement from the emperor. We're doing this. What happens if there's a gray area? I don't think you, you must have

misheard me. We're doing this. Period. Period. And we talk about this a lot with the primarks and all and more tarry didn't most if you have did but most the primarks really liked the emperor and they looked to the emperor for guidance the difference was it was usually they liked the emperor dorn loved the emperor don't get me wrong but he really believed in the imperial truth more so than any of the other ones he really did believe the emperor was correct and this system was going to go which is probably why he ends up back on terror shortly thereafter the thing though is that Dorn in this belief does believe in the superiority of the imperial. And that part of that superiority is the way that we behave needs to be better than others.

This would create conflict with some other legions. And some are more obvious than others. Kind of constantly. Because again, Dorn was, there is only the letter of the law. If he was playing a game, he's playing by Raw. Rules as written. Yeah. And I think Brad talks about Vulcan being a paladin.

Dorn's not that far behind, though. Doren's just, the difference is Doren's more accepting of collateral damage than Vulcan was, but they both have the same thing of there is honor and you will have honor. Let's do this. Dorn is a knight. He's lawful, neutral. Yeah. With the emphasis on law.

I think he's good. I'm sorry. I think he's more neutral good than law. I think if we're going to do it. But he's definitely not neutral good. Well, yeah. He's still super lawful. It's,

it's, he's so crazy. He's by the book, always. He is, but I just, I push him more into lawful good

because he really is following the rules. He's a lawful good fanatic then, because he will do terrible stuff if you have broken the law and he still thinks he's right. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Yeah. There's some peacemaker going on here. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter how many people. people have to kill to get peace. So a good example of this conflict.

The first major one I like is the Estrani campaign. So the Estrani were this highly advanced society that had a heap of golden age of technology relics. So they send Dorn and the fists and Ferris and the iron hands to go conquer the planet. On the way, though, the Mechanicum get involved. And the Mechanicum give a separate order. And it goes to the Iron Hands saying, actually, We want this technology and we don't really want these people. So if you could genocide the entire planet, that'd be super cool.

It's specific, though. This is why they also kind of go that they knew something was shady because it wasn't, you know, virus blow up the planet. It was kill all the people, specifically all of the people. Dorn gets there and there's no reason to do this. We can just conquer the planet. These people, they're going to follow the imperial truth. What's the issue?

Ferris Manus just goes, yeah, they said kill them, so I'm going to go do that now and just starts killing them. Dorn then ends up moving his legion in between the populace and the iron hands. And these two are about to be, this isn't just like when I say come to blows. This isn't Dorn and Ferris are going to fight. We're going to have two entire legions of 100,000 potential space marines going to war. By the way, in front of the populace who just got conquered. So that must have been a wild experience. I've been like, so we surrendered and now they're going to kill each other?

Like, did we surrender wrong? Again, imagine if you're hearing some of the rest of this. Yeah. You start cheering pretty heavily for the fists. So they're going to do a duel? I kind of want the guy to win that says he's not going to kill all of us. But this is a really cool story. It sets up, well, a few different things.

But it sets up how the imperial fists feel about themselves. So Dorn and Ferris agree. that basically agree to disagree, but they have to come to an agreement. So they sit there and say, all right, we're going to put our champions up. I send my champion, you send your champion, whichever champion wins, we'll do what that primark says. Sorry I had hands fans, but you guys send Thos and the Fiss sends Sigismund, who is top ten coolest dudes in all of stories.

Sigismund is, I was about to say he's the best non-primark fighter, but I would put money on him over Lorgar. Yeah. That's what we have. So they have this duel, and the duel is important because of what comes out of it. So Sigismund just beats the piss out of Thos pretty quickly and is just wrecking him. But Thos won't yield. He keeps knocking him down and saying yield and Thos won't yield.

He won't yield over and over again. You know, he's playing the whole, I didn't hear no bell. We all heard the bell. So eventually Theris Manus gets up and walks over and gets in between, to them. And he turns to Sigismund and says, are you not willing to kill him? He won't yield. Why won't you kill him? And Sigismund responds, saying, I'm not going to kill a fellow Astardis

or something as petty as an honor duel. And Ferris looks at that and just takes in and turns to Thos and says, you yield. And he honors the wishes of Dorn and follows his thing. This, I think, is an important story because this is a good example of what the fists were. Sigismund could have easily just murdered Foss, like it was nothing, but he wouldn't do it. because that's not in teachings of the imperial truth. This is my brother.

Even though, you know, we're not that close related, he's still my brother. I'm not killing him over an honored duel. Now, that's a fun, that's the happy story. Let's get him to Dorn and some of the other primarks that he doesn't get along well with. We'll be right back after a quick break. Dorn, let's talk. Well, let's just preface this with, because Dorn has the most unfiltered of unfilterness, the people that don't like him,

there's a lot of people that didn't get along and the brothers, the primarks. However, the people that don't like Dorn hate Dorn. One of them really hates him. Perderabo was willing to join chaos just to fight Dorn. So let's talk about this.

Amongst the brothers, Dorn's always a bit at odds. He's not crazy like Angron or Kurs, and he's not weird like Morty and Magnus. He was just kind of off-posed. same what the lion was, like most of what I call the normals within the primarks, the lion wasn't that popular, and now that it was Dorn. He's not a psychopath, but he's just...

He's also not much for talk when you guys are going out to eat. Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of like canon conflicts on this and it depends on the folks of the book you're reading, but Rogels referred to in a lot of occasions as the greatest tactician of the primarks. is really well liked. His battle plans and battle acumen are borderline perfect. But the funny story is he's also known to hold grudges. He was a grouch. And so if he didn't like you, he would hold it forever. And he could be...

Again, dwarf. He has a dwarven book of grudges. And his grudges were bananas nitpicky. if you didn't do exactly what he thought you were supposed to do, and these were, they went from big things to unbelievably small things. Dorn had no levels of annoyance. He just was or was not annoyed about something. But let's talk about Dorn's biggest, his biggest fan first. Everyone respects Dorn's ability and his strategic capabilities. Even Horace at one point remarked that he hoped to never assail an imperial fist fortress

because he claimed in doing so the battle would last for eternity. The greatest defense against the greatest attack. And yes, seven years after he says this, that's exactly what happens. So whatever. But there's one primark who really didn't care for this, and that's Petarabo of the Iron Warriors. And that's because they're the Legion of Siege warfare. They were convinced there was no fortification. that they couldn't break.

And basically from the day they met, Pederabo didn't like Dorn. And Dorn, to his credit, Dorn didn't really care for him very much either. Because I think you did have the guy who kicks down sandcastles and the guy who builds sandcastles didn't really want to hang out. So one day, what happens is the emperor comes and informs Dorn

that he needs him to come back to Terra to construct the fortifications for the imperial palace. And I forget which Primark says it, but one of them asks Dorn in passing effectively, do you think your fortifications could stand up against the Iron Warriors? And Dorn does the German engineer and goes, yeah, and walks away. No other word just says, yeah, and believes. Paterabo loses his mind.

Oh, he goes psychotic. I mean, to the point where his own legion were actually scared and confused because he's just screaming vitriol about how much Dorn sucks. Dorn, he's undermining humanity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to be fair, we'll cover when we do an Iron Warriors episode. Pederabo had some anger issues. Not anger on level anger issues, but he had some anger issues. Petroabo from that day forward begins searching for every way he can find to show his superiority to Dorn.

Spoiler alert, we're going to get there pretty quick. But this rivalry was real, though. Dorn and Pederabo really did not like each other. All right. Now, there's another rivalry, though, that I did want to talk about with Dorn. Didn't really like a lot of his brothers anyway. Lehman, he thought was too brash. Korvax's style, he thought was unreliable. Angron's too aggressive. He also, but his two biggest issues, as far as outside of Petarabo being kind of, you know, screw you for being my opposite, were Alferius and curse. Alferius. If we're two wildly different things, though,

I want to start with. Alfarius wasn't about how he approached. warfare. It was the fact that Alfarious kind of thought that the imperial truth was like the pirate code. It was more of a suggestion. But he talked about it a lot. And he would, I'm not talking, he would have a tiny conversation. Alfarious was willing to sit down with you and tell you his interpretation of the imperial truth. Yeah. And, but also he did have some issues how Altharius would fight battles. And we can talk about it. I mean, so Alferius, the issue is with Alpharius and the Alpha Legion is that they have a very unique way of fighting. They are the, like we talk about how everyone's the Ravenguard are masters of stealth, not like Alpha Legion are.

Alpha Legion, Alpha Legion is that scene in Terminator 2, which is not a good movie, where he takes over the mother. And it's that level. That's what Alpha Legion does. Yeah. You got killed by the guy that hands you your coffee every day. You're like, oh, come on. But it has to say he doesn't have an issue with the things he does. Sorry, like I was saying, he didn't have when he was doing individual stuff. They didn't care what the Alpha Legion was doing. Rogel had an issue with the Alphal, specifically Alfarious.

He had an issue with him because he had a plan and Alpharius didn't follow his plan at all. Well, and let's take into this one. That's one's a fun story. So there's something called the World Prince campaign. And the World Prince campaign was a world that had a prince. That's really what it's called, guys. Sorry about that. The fists get there.

So the fists are sent over there with Alpha Legion. The fists arrive and they don't see any Alpha Legion. And they just go, whatever, and they get after it. And this world is pretty well equipped and they're well armed. One day, the Alpha Legion do kind of appear in orbit, but they deploy no soldiers. Suddenly, one day, a bunch of uprisings, though. So the fists are fighting through this. planet, then out of nowhere, the entire planet catches fire.

There's uprisings all over the place. And then in one night, the entire, like every single member of the rolling family, except for the king, is just dead, to which the monarch immediately surrenders to Dorn, assuming Dorn did this. Dorn is pissed. He doesn't like this style of warfare. And he doesn't like it because, and I think he's correct here, it emboldens rebellion at the later date.

He doesn't want to be seen as a tyrant. And so he's upset about this, and he goes and sees Alfarious. We haven't covered Alfarious yet. Alfarious, they all look the same. The entire Legion looks the exact same. So he walks in to go yell at Altharius, and he's greeted by three men who all look about the same. Therius looks at Dornan says,

I waged war in the way the emperor created me. The emperor created me and my legion, this is what we're good at. This is how we're going to fight. and he begins basically talking crap to Dorn and his style of fighting. At which point, Dorn does the most Dorn thing possible. He pulls out what is effectively a PowerPoint presentation

and goes through... I love that he has this with him, by the way. Here's my laptop. And I'm not joking about it. He actually does. He brings up the entirety of the Alpha Legion battle plan and just goes point by point on here's how I think it sucks and it doesn't work.

and then he leaves, leaving a copy behind for Alfaris to read later, and just moves on with his day. So he had this ready. Yeah, yeah. That's the best part. He already had a PowerPoint presentation with copies about, here's the things that suck about your style of battle.

Here's what you should be doing. And I'm just going to leave this with you with some recommendations. And I'm going to get back with you with a plan, a three month, a six month, and a year. Yeah. Don't worry. If you want, I'll mentor you. Like, it was,

Brutal. And I'm sure after he left Al Ferris and looked at, well, and Omogong was probably, you know, as usual, hiding behind a pillar somewhere, nine foot tall prime mark. What do you do when one of the other primarks pips you? Yeah.

Like, am I on probation right now? Like what would just happen? But that disagreement was on tactics. Wait till we cover Dorn and Kurz. So. Well, when you go with the guy that believes completely in the imperial truth.

And this is the way you're supposed to do things. And then... Psychopath. Crazy Batman. Yeah. It's pure psychopath time. So, okay, let's dig into it. So, Kerr's real quick, hit her on Curz.

Curz is able to see the future, not well. He just, that's the best way to explain it. He can see it, sort of. One of his key visions is of the Horace heresy itself. And he takes this story, he tells it. to only a few of the primarks, Dorn not being one of them, but Fulgrim being one of them. And Fulgrim being, since it's a group of brothers,

just starts telling everybody about it anyway. So Fulgram tells Dorn about Curze's weird visions. That was a little bit of a dick move, by the way. Oh, yeah. Oh, hey, here's my super secret. Yeah, cool. Anyway, I'm going to go tell this guy. Let me tell Dorn.

Yeah. He should probably be cool with it. Dorn will be awesome. So the two, so randomly, because apparently the emperor is an idiot, and he decided to have the imperial fists, and the night lords attack the same planet. The planet is called Shirout, or Sharot, Shrew, one of them.

It's a world that was bitterly resisting imperial compliance. And the act of trying to bring them in was requiring months of work from the fists, the night lords, and the emperor's children, and a mass of the imperial army. And as always, as this conflict's going, if it involves night lords, the nightlords start sneaking off at night to skin the population. Dorn doesn't think that's cool because again, these murders have no strategic value

and they're actually just hardening the defenses because they're actually completely against. They are having the opposite of that. They're making people fight against you that could have already been imperial citizens. Because they don't want to surrender because they don't want to surrender, because they're being skinned alive

because they're being skinned alive by the people they're trying to surrender to. Usually not a good thing. So Dorn goes in. He confronts, Kerr with this and Kerr just blows him off. And then Dorn accuses Kurz of being a traitor and says, you know, that's it. And he reveals to him what Folgram told him. And he said, I know you have this vision of the future of the Harris and stuff. Of course you see that because you're the reason behind it.

You know, that's effectively what he says to him. And Curse loses his mind at this accusation, which doesn't say much because his mind wasn't much there to start with. And he actually attacks Dorn. This is the only L I can think of Dorn taking until post-heresy. And I'll give this to Kurt. One, Curz is pretty sneaky. And one of the biggest things is him and Do you, I think Doren thinks they're having a debate, you know, about this. And he's just not ready to be attacked. Yeah.

And then- Curse just rail on him. Well, Curz just launches out of him. Yeah, the debate they have involves Curz's lightning claw in Dorn's face. And it doesn't go great for Dorn's face. But it does make a bunch of noise. And so all of a sudden, Dorn's guards, or his, you know, is actually called the Templar, burst into the room.

And they see Curz on top of Dorn, who's unconscious on the floor with lightning claw damage to his face. And they somehow arrest Kurs, whatever, and throw him in jail. And they bring the other, and they involve the other prime arcs about what are we going to do? Because the thing about the Templar is, you know, these are his personal guard, but they really probably can't just kill the prime. of another Legion without a few other people kind of giving it some A-O-Ks. To give my boy Curtis some props on this, I think he just let himself get arrested because

what he did was immediately murder those guys and leave. Yeah, that's the part that's funny. They have a, like, Folgroom and Dorn. I think it might have been someone, I think it may have called somebody had a debate about what to do with it. And then they marched down into the cell to go deal with him. And the cell's empty and every guard anywhere near the cell is dead. what's interesting is also the nightlords are gone.

Curz's point grabs his entire legion and goes into the warp with them. This is before the heresy. Cool little story. Anyway, though, let's get to where Dorn really parties. Dorn in the heresy. Dorn is told, return to Terra. I need you to build, you know, the ultimate fort. And he's like, cool, I'm on my way.

The problem is, as soon as he goes and starts heading back, this is right about the time Horace turns. It's like almost dead exact moment. So as they're going back, the warp storms explode. And they get massively delayed, which ends up being really fortuitous for them, because as they're going back, there's this massive flash in the warp that they head over to. And that flash was the Eisenstein. The Eisenstein blew up, we can listen to our cast on it, blew up their warp drive,

which made a giant beacon and they arrive. Dorn gets there. The people on the Eisenstein tell him what happened and immediately goes, screw that, screw all of you. There's no way that's true. And he's furious, by the way. And they also doesn't, I'm going to get my cheat together. This is a cast about him and his Legion.

They had footage of everything that happened. And Dorn refuses to look at it because he just can't believe that his brothers would do this. Yeah. But he does. eventually realizes it's true, and now he just beelines even faster back to Terra to go tell the emperor of it. So his defense of Terra, he knows they need to do two things to defend terror. First, fortify the whole system in a layering setup. This way, you're just taking as many pounds of flesh out of the enemy as they're coming in so that they get weakened.

Well, let's go on this, though, because we're talking about the defense of Terra. The defense of Tara isn't him making Terra super fortified. He starts at the very edge of the soul system. Yep. And all the fortifications, all the defensive satellites, every moon, he puts minefields floating in there. He just makes it so if you get to Tara, you're taking huge losses just on your way here.

Yeah. He's not even trying to protect all those other areas. He just wants you to lose ships, men, resources. And this is because he knew if he could create a protracted siege, the problem is that Horace's forces could only, they couldn't fortify behind them. And the call has gone out. So the space wolves, the dark angels, the ultramarines, the blood angels, they're all on their way. And so, but Doran doesn't know, by the way, how fast horse is going to show up.

Is he going to be here tomorrow? Is he going to be here in seven years? It was seven years. This whole system's designed not so much. to stop you at any point, but to make each step more and more taxing upon you. The second thing Dorn does is disrupt the flow of supplies into the traders. So he has to destroy any supply lines, any planets, any, anything. So those are his two goals.

He does a great job on the first one. He puts a gun on everything. I mean, like to Brad's point, like the outer rim by Pluto looked like a kid's cartoon drawing where you draw a gun with a gun on it. and a gun on it. What was the fifth element? Like the gun in the fifth element? Yeah, that's basically what the whole system looks like.

He then shuts down all the warp gates, including the one inside Uranus, so nothing could jump into the galaxy. You had to come in the slow way. Sorry, guys, I'm 43 years old, and Uranus jokes aren't going to stop. And I know it's pronounced Uranus. And honestly, no, it's not. It's pronounced Uranus. You can tell me, no, it's pronounced Uranus.

Yeah, is it? Just saying. So the second part, though, of Dorn trying to effectively neuter the traitor legions was more complicated. Primarily because Mars, Mars turns traitor and the majority of Mars turned traitor. Dorn, this causes a problem for him because he does have the fleet. The problem for Dorn with Mars is he's got the fleet to destroy it. He just blow Mars up. But he is not planning.

He needs all the shit there. Let's be honest. He needs that. He's planning to win this war. At the end of the war, he's going to reconquer. Mars, so we really can't afford to lose Mars. So he has to do two things. First, he just surrounds it so nothing can do anything.

And second, he sends everyone's favorite Sigismund to go, hey, can you just go grab some crap from there? And Sigismund basically does a raid on Mars. And it's, by the way, I'm not giving the story justice because it's a really cool story. But Sigismund goes over there and just grabs a ton of weapons, armor, all this stuff that A lot of it ends up being vital to the defense of terror. He also kills so many. That's what I'm saying.

The Sigismund books, if you're a Black Templar fan, you probably already read them. If you're not, still read them. Sigismund is awesome. He's just awesome. Full stop. Dorn next has to disrupt the forces, though, that are outside of Seoul. And so what he does is effectively make some examples of some systems. Dorn decided to make it really clear.

you are with the emperor or you are with Horace. And if you're with Horace, you'd better hope Horace is fortifying your world. Because if he doesn't, I'm going to wipe it from existence. And he does that. He's not retaking them. He just blows them up. Yeah. I mean, he actually ends up becoming a protracted war.

But the Imperial Fists are who destroys, well, actually, the Dark Angel is the ones who finally kill Scythonia, which is the home world of Horace. But the Imperial Fists go to Sothonia. They intentionally, we don't talk about it very much, during the Horace heresy, the every single home world, I believe it's every single home world of a trader, Primark, gets destroyed. They make it really clear.

I'm trying to think of anyone that's skipped. Pretty sure they're all gone. Anyway, so now, we've let Brad pass. We're pretty far into this cast now, and Brad hasn't had to say really nice things about Rogel Doorn.

Unfortunately, he's going to have to now, because now we're going to discuss Rogel Doorn and the boots of mighty ass kicking. Oh, damn it. It's just true. So, I mean, Dorn, yeah. Dorn slaps. Dorn slept.

The thing about Rhegold Dorn is Dorn is not a lead from behind general. You've got Vulcan, Leman, Lyon, Senguinius. They love to lead their troops in battle. Dorn trusts his commanders, but if he feels the enemy's too strong, he takes that burden on his shoulders and just shows up. And I'll tell you what, when you read the stories of Dorn, the boots of mighty ass kicking probably are yellow. with black trim because this man wears them. So we'll start with Pluto. And Pluto is a really cool Alpha Legion story.

So Doran, as we said, had shut off all travel into the system. If you want to get into Seoul, you're coming through a warp gate that either is, but it might be a closed warp gate or if you land there, there is a giant battalion waiting for you. So the Alph Legion had to get in. So what they do is kind of super badass. they take a bunch of ships from outside of the system, face them, turn on their engines,

and then turn their engines off once they've got momentum and then put the whole ships in stasis. So for one year, these ships just drift through the darkness of space. And remember, space is big. You're not going to be able to see even a cruiser. You will not see it. And so they eventually drift in. Once they get within close to Pluto,

they turn the ships on and begin their attack and they attack all the satellites. The goal that the Alpha Legion had was twofold. It wasn't actually to destroy them. It was to disrupt it because there was communication on Pluto and all this stuff. Alfarious himself is leading the troops

on this invasion. And they pretty quickly overwhelmed the defenders. Dorn knows that Pluto's it's not critical to the defense of soul, but it can't go down this quickly. And this is again, why I like the stories of Dorn.

His problem is that he's sitting on the phalanx, which is basically orbiting Terra. Yes. And that Dord says, I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Yes. Yeah. And decides to slingshot himself using,

yeah, there's a pure, fast, and furious. Also, with the phalanx, which is effectively a moon. Yeah, yeah. He uses gravity wells and slingshots himself across the galaxy, basically arriving in like an hour. hour and a half from a distance that I think was 2.66 billion miles he does in like, I don't know, 45 seconds, lands and then immediately teleports himself down into the heart of the battle,

where Alfarious is kind of going to town on some of his own legion that are there. Dorn sees Alfarious. Alfarious sees Dorn. Back it up just to say. It's not like they instantly started to fight. Dorn comes down with his honor guard and puts a epic ass kicking on everybody within 100 yards of him. Just slantaneously. Yeah.

I mean, they took zero casualties and were just throwing guys in the wood shipper. They were killing other guys so fast. But eventually Dorn comes upon Alfarious and he does. I'm going to do a reference in the 90s here. He then reaches down to the boots of mighty ass kicking. and gives them a little pump. Remember those shoes, Brad? Yes.

Yeah, I do. Little pump. And the two of them have what is somewhat of a protracted fight, but not much of a one. Dorn gets the upper hand because he is a much better fighter. I mean, I'm sorry.

And he's much more emotionally invested in it. And my favorite, the way this story ends is Alferius goes to stab Dorn with his spear. Dorn grabs the spear with one hand. And with this other hand, has his chain sword and cuts off both of Alfarious's hands, then takes said spear, stubs the spear into Alfarious, and then takes said chain sword and cleaves it through his skull.

Alfarious is dead. A begon actually can sense the death of his brother, but it has, but the sort of's funny. It's Omogon somewhere else. And then gets a note from Horace saying, hey, I want to talk to Alfarious. And O'Ma God just goes, oh, all right, here I go, and wanders off. But that's not the end of the Dorn fight. The next one's even creepier to me, because Erebus pulls off this dark ritual and allows all the traitor forces to jump the galaxy and land in Luna. Dorn, sensing that the moon's going to fail, launches the phalanx over there.

But again, the traders have a trap. And this trap is they turn a remembrance or named Al-a-ton into a warp gate, or sorry, into a chaos gate. And Al-a-ton is on the phalanx when this happens. who I think is a greater deemer of corn, the demon of corn, I'm not 100%. He's a greater demon of emotions. I'm not 100%. When I look him up,

the models I see, he's red, so I assume he's corn. That's that. But anyway, because there's a warp gate there, all the demons are immortal, including Samus. So every time you kill Samus, he gets back up.

Dorn didn't seem to care about that and decides just to keep killing Samus over and over and over again. Again, greater demon, Primark. I don't care. He's just thunder doming everyone here. Luckily, another fist sacrifices himself to close the gate, at which point Dorn kills Seamus for good.

And Doren's still not done. Because now he has to go down to the walls of Terra. And he does spend most of the battle on the siege of Terra, like organizing it. He's the one sitting at the giant board, moving the pieces around, telling people where to go, telling Jagatai Khan over and over again, just stand on the stupid wall,

don't leave the stupid wall and Jagatai Khan going, I heard you, rev, rev, rev, rev engine, leave wall. And a couple of key parts that are very funny. One is, and I think, again, my opinion, Dorn did this on purpose.

Dorn knew Pederabo would be part of the siege. And he knew Pederabo was convinced that Dorn's not as smart and great as everyone makes him out to be. So what Dorn does is he builds below the Saturnine Gate a small kind of crack in the foundation,

that if you blew up, would bring the entire gate down. It's probably no bigger than a wop rat. Petarabo takes this bait and does a full-scale assault on the Saturnine gate while teleporting down a secret group, including Abidon, to go in and take advantage of the obvious flaw

that Dorn would have left there because Dorn's an idiot. Dorn's not an idiot. Nathaniel Garrow and Gero, and Gavro Loke were waiting there. Locke and Garo were sitting there with a platoon of Marines. And just slaughtered them. And so they all land and they get absolutely wrecked, to which Petarabo realizes he just fell for a trap from Dorn.

This was, as we covered in the last cast or two casts ago, this is the same time, this is the one that Fulgram's also fighting. So as Dorn is doing this and just kind of basically laughing at Petterabo's failure, Fulgram arrives and is at the Saturnon Gate. and Fulgram ends up fighting Sigismund. And Dorn kind of loves Sigismund and runs over there. And these two now have a battle. Dorn, regular Primark, versus Fulgram.

He's not in serpent form, but still demon. I was supposed to say, he's in human form. He's in human form, but he's still there. And it says, I mean, the difference is Fulgram is instant healing. Every wound Dorn puts on him. Dorn doesn't have that ability, but that's okay because Fulgram's not wounding him. I was going to say, well, Dorn also fights sword and board. He's the ultimate tank.

That's true, yeah. So, he's using, he put, he was popping all his cool downs. He was just taking no damage here. It was brutality of a fight. Well, the biggest thing, and we didn't talk about it a lot in the Fulgram cast, is the entire time, Dorn isn't just talking shit. He's literally reciting the imperial code to him. Yeah. While they're fighting.

Yeah. Dorn's awesome. This is great. There's also a quick side. One that I also like is during at some point during the battle here, and we'll cover this more when we do the World Eaters, Karn, it gets into a fight with Sigismund. And the two of them are having it. And Karn almost gets the better of Sigisman until Dorn arrives. Dorn literally backhands Karn into another dimension. He hits him so hard that he actually flies across and hits a wall and is lying there dying and has to be recovered by his own legion. Just a little extra Dorn with one hand. I mean, again, that's just a space marine he had to fight. But when we say Dorn can fight, Dorn can fight. So obviously, the emperor teleports under the vengeful spirit. Dorn goes to, everyone goes to. And this story in the book is really long and not actually that.

It's a kind of boring a F, if I'm being honest. But a couple key little bits of it. Dorn gets teleported into a pocket dimension of just an endless desert. And he walks for what's described as centuries. This is also a retcon, by the way. I know. I like the original more, but that's fine. The only part of the story that I thought was funny is that corn is in this dimension

with him. And corn basically takes all of his memories out of him and just to try and bring him down to being nothing. And corn just won't stop talking to him. But Doren's just uncorruptible. Corn gets bored and just gives up on it. And eventually Dorn's able to escape. at which point he finds

Kazin Valdoir and the custodes who are fighting Abidon and yeah, guess what happens that battle? No, Dorn's there. Abidon gets his butt kicked. They rush in, but unfortunately Dorn, they all arrive just in time for the emperor

to kill Horace but collapse. The story I like about this is that as we get to the end of this cast, the assault and soul was three months long. That's how long it took from the first arrival in Pluto all the way there. Dorn in those three months fights and kills a primark,

fights and kills a greater demon, organizes all the defenses, fights another primac, all this stuff. He actually never slept or took a break in that entire time. So at the end of this whole thing, and he's there as the emperor's loaded in the golden throne, Dorn kind of collapses.

Not like he's going to die collapses, but he just sits down for the first time. has to figure out what is what's now what comes next that's where we're going to break here because that's what we're going to get into in our next cast is the imperial fists after the horace heresy some of the focus on their one one of their successor chapters spoiler guys it's the crimson vists because we're going to give the black templar their own cast just coming shortly after that but we hope unlike brad you guys enjoyed this cast on roguldorn and his awesomeness Until then, this has been John Barsati and Brad Chester.

This guy. See you next week.