The 40k Lorecast - Episode 89 - The Black Templar

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

              On Today’s cast we do a deep dive into the largest successor chapter in the game the Black Templars. We open with how the Black Templar function as a fully mobile chapter on a non-stop war footing. Their recruitment, training, and command structure. After that we go into the history of them from their early days through modern 40k. And we close focusing on Helbrecht and where the Black Templar stand today in the game.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 Barsani and Bradchester. Scott. On today's cast, we'll be talking about going on a crusade, not for the Holy Grail, but the Black Templar and their endless crusading. Don't be that. Real quick, as always, 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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So big thank, shout out to them. Solarzi. I'm doing their screen names. So some of these, I'm going to pronounce wrong. Solarsia, Solarsia, Nas, Doc, Maestro, Quiri, Kethulu, Gersbach, Nugles, and just Steve. One of them decided to make my life easier. Just Steve. Hey.

Save with me. Screen names. It's Brad. Brad. It's just Brad. All right, but on to the cast. So let's get into some Black Templar. On our last cast, we covered the second founding of the Imperial Fists with the creation

of the Black Templars. We also spent a bunch of time talking about the progenitor badass Sigismund. But today, we're talking more about the Black Templars themselves, and namely what makes them so unique in 40K. They are, I'll be straight up with everybody. I wrote this, and I started buying models because I'm now going to. to build a Black Templar army. I knew the Templar lore, but now when you read it hard, you're like, oh, I want to play Templar.

Also, the fact the Black Templars just went, all these Marines, luxury, life of nonsense. We need to be serious about this. You're like, wow, you guys are, they didn't double down. They tripled down. Yeah, the Black Templars, it's weird because usually I don't like things that are the enanthony to fun, and they definitely are. Like, no one hates fun more than the Black Templars. Heresy.

Yeah. It's just pure heresy. They are. I mean, it's basically them and the sisters have competitions for who can be the most dour. I heard someone was having some fun here. We're going to police the shit on that. Exactly. Here we come.

We do. We do. Nope. All right. But the truth about the Black Templars, actually a lot of what they do, actually all of what they do originates from Sigismund. Sigismund took a personal affront to the traitors and the heresy because he is a true believer in the emperor and the Great Crusade. Now, what's interesting here is we've also...

Go ahead. No, I just... I think it's a big deal, though, because it's not just the emperor. There's tons of people that believe in the emperor. They're fervent among their beliefs. He's a big believer on what the emperor meant, what he tries trying to do with the Great Crusade, the imperial truth.

That's what they're so... passionate about because there's tons of religious zealots that are the emperor is you know the god of mankind these guys are more crusading for what the emperor meant that what yes you're right the belief in the imperial truth is that the galaxy is there for mankind and that mankind the only way for mankind to actually survive and stand against the stars is to unite under one order which was the imperium of mankind and that anyone who doesn't believe in that is wrong. And not only they wrong, they're actually potentially harming humanity. That is not even potentially. They are harming humanity. You want to stop them. So that is where the imperial truth is. And then the wording of the

imperial truth, you know, goes a little bit goofier because you also talk about killing all Zinos and any humanity that doesn't see the light of the emperor. But, you know, this is at their core would the Black Templar believe? What they believe is that they cherish peace with all their hearts, and they don't care how many men, women, and children they have to kill to get it. Peacemaker 2 is already, season 2 is already ready to go. I'm so excited. It's going to be fantastic. The show is so messed up. It's between that and the boys, I had a lot of really bad laughs. But for Sigismund and the founding of Black Templars, they saw their potential for achieving the peace that they were Stridehart destroyed by those they called their brothers.

And so to this end, they decided that they were going to wage a new crusade. And this crusade was going to go forth and tame the galaxy just as the emperor had planned. But it's with a little bit of a twist that also destroy the heretics, which was a new thing exists before. I like this a lot because of the fact that he could have been, a lot of the, even the prime marks were hurt almost destroyed mentally after all this stuff. happen. I like the fact that he doubled down on the fact of, nope, I'm going to do something about this. And they still take the same oath to this day, all the high marshals. And I think it's a big deal because he started this. Yeah. And the oath is to prove his loyalty, never resting on the prosecution of his duties against the enemies of the emperor. That's what every high marshal has to

swear on and they go forth. And I think Brad just made a really great point there. I want to kind of double down on. Opposed the Solar Wars, a lot of the prime arcs were kind of mentally broken. and they became single-minded. We talked about that's how McDorrin got trapped from the dumbest trap ever by Petarabo because he was just so focused on it. Lehman threw himself into the eye of terror.

Korax threw himself into the eye of terror. I mean, Gilemon went hand-to-hand with Folgram for what appears to be no... He could have just blown him up with, you know, rockets and instead went hand-to-hand. They all made these mistakes. I mean, Sigismund kind of the same thing with Abidon and, you know, lesson learned.

But the difference was the black Templar seemed to be much more controlled in their rage. Because what they did was they took their rage, it took their anger, and they said, we're not going to give ground. We're not going to give up, we're not going to give an inch here. But our goal is to destroy you. And we are going to achieve that goal.

And it's focused rage is the biggest things. And this is why the Black Templars are awesome. And so for the last 10,000 years, the Black Templar had been raging this crusade. They have been active in every sector. they've fought effectively every foe humanity has. There might be a couple Xenos they missed, but all the big ones they fought.

And this is no sign of slowing down because actually in the absolute most latest lore, they've turned it up again doing 11. We'll get there at the end of the cast, guys. You also just look badass because they're just... Other models are on the board, their full black paint scheme with a white cross. I'll be honest.

So I built my Death Watch Army. And the reason I like Death Watch is they're black. I batch paint. And so when I want to build an army, I will go ahead and I'll collect like 5,000 points of an army. And I just build them. It's really nice when I just get to spray paint them and do a couple of edge highlights. It's just a lot of user than say imperial fists or the worst one I've ever had to do,

which was Thousand Sons. That actually, that harmed me trying to paint Thousand Suns, Rubik Marines. Like that was, that hurt. So anyway, it's wild because the black Templars are able to fight on all these things because they're just a fully mobile legion. It also, as of now, they're a legion. They're not a chapter. Yeah, we'll get to there later. Their current numbers get interesting.

We'll get there in a bit. Yeah. It's a fun piece. They just roll. Effectively, I'm picking a fight with anybody that doesn't have the imperial truth in mind. Oh, yeah. And in fact, sometimes they do it even in lieu of. of being told, no, we're good now by the ecclesiarchy.

But let's get, let's party. So let's talk about the black temps, exactly at Brad's point. The main piece of the Black Templars, probably the most important piece to me, is that they're a fully mobile legion. No home world. They don't even have a home base. You know, the, like, so the Imperial Fists have the phalanx floating around it. The Crimson Fist had the Ritalis tyranus until they put it on a planet and then that didn't

end well. The Black Templar don't have that. The Black Templar are completely sprang. right out throughout the galaxy. And this is because they have been on a nonstop war footing since day one. And this is something I want to spend a lot of time on because they are the only ones that do this. So it goes into what they are, though. Even the names of units and everything else, they are a crusading force.

Exactly. That's what they are. At all times. And the nice thing about their crusade is that the galaxy is kind of big. So there's no end of the crusade. you get to just keep expanding. Obviously, the entirety of the imperial forces are mobile in nature. You have a couple, I guess the planetary defense forces are not, but everything's mobile

in nature. But they all have somewhere to kind of return from. Like a guard regiment will be raised on a planet. They never return there, but that guard regiment always has the promise of settling down somewhere. The space marines have these massive ships that transfer them all around to engage. And obviously we have the Imperial Navy. But all of them have a home base.

You know, the Space Marines have their recruitment worlds, for the most part. The guardsmen, you know, they're going to either, they're going to settle somewhere. In the future, I mean, they're all going to die. But if they don't die, they'll settle somewhere. The sisters have their convents. And even the Imperial Navy, which is technically mobile, still has major space ports that they link back up and resupply. That also people, yeah, well, also the Imperial Navy calls some of these ports. as their home, period.

That's where they come back. Exactly. All of, you know, the Black Templar are a basic perpetual motion machine of war. And that's why they call them the Crusades. And so to kind of dive into that a bit more, we're going to jump around chronologically, but it's because it actually makes more sense to tell it this way than it does to kind of actually do it in true chronologic order. It'll make sense a second, guys. But from their onset, the Black Templar didn't wage battles and engagements as other parts of the

Imperial forces did. For example, in the scouring, the legions of the Space Marines set out to destroy the remnants of the traitor legions, but they were only focused on destroying those who had gone to war with them before. That was kind of their goal. They were very single-minded purpose. I just love these guys, because as I said, we said a little bit in the Imperial Fis, because Dorn himself was, these guys took Book of Grudges to a next level. Oh, this is psych.

This is psychotic. I mean, you know, God appeared and gave them, you know, the quest. for the Holy Grail, and they all decided to go and find said Holy Grail. I mean, if you do something bad to them, this is some Talonah kind of levels. This is for my people that know Stephen Erickson. That's that kind of hatred. I will chase you to the ends of time. Yes.

Like, that's not a distance, Brad. Don't care. So the Black Templar at this time decided to wage, during the exact same era, a crusade of conquest. And this is because the Templar, were focused not just on killing their enemies, but also preventing them from rising again. Again, the space marines just wanted revenge. The space Marines were like, hey, remember space maris space marine Ted? I'm going to go stab him.

That was their goal. The Black Templar's goal was, we're going to stab Ted, and we're going to make sure there's never another Ted. And so this. But it goes farther than that, though. So psychotic. They say, I'm going to stab Ted. I'm going to make sure that there's no other Ted's. I'm going to take everything that Ted's ever owned or thought about owning and use it for my purposes now.

And I'm going to take anybody that was around Ted and make them work for me. And especially in this like around this era of like this M31 era, the Black Templars actually did a lot of good for the Imperium almost by accident. Because one of the challenges you had with all of these primarks and space means doing their revenge tour is they were just going. to whatever system they heard chaos was in and wrecking that system, then going to the next one. They weren't conquering land. They were doing it. The Black Templars were conquering. And so as the Black Templars moved left soul and spread to the galaxy. Let's talk about one of the main things they were doing. They were conquering strategic irrelevant spots to continue their crusade so that they had resources. And when we talk conquer,

a lot of the Marines, even some of my favorite Marines, do. a very bad job of setting things up. We won. Cool. I clicked the W button and moved on with my life. They wreck the place, but then they immediately built up the place and made sure everybody there was loyal and giving them strategic resources. So I like it a lot. You make a good reference on this. It was more an Alexander the great type of push where they made it so we're still getting supplies where those people are still loyal, you know, or at least the people we think are lawyer are still there. You know, and they're giving us everything that we need to, so I can keep going that.

I want to keep going north, but I need to make sure that there's supply lines. We're constantly having new stuff for us to continue to crusade indefinitely. Well, and that's why. I mean, the Alexander great is the best one I can think of it, because he went from Greece to India, you know, at a time when there were no cars. So, you know, he had to build, he had to conquer. build fortifications the entire way so we didn't get attacked from behind. That's what the Black Templars were doing.

They were spreading out from Seoul and making it so no one could jump in behind them. I mean, there's warp travel, so take that with a, I'm probably making more of an example than I am an actual functional thing, but whatever. This all changes, though, when Abidon comes out of the Eye of Terror with the First Black Crusade. This is a huge thing because this is a giant eye opener. because for the most part, everybody thought that chaos was dispersed. All the forces of chaos were just, you know,

bands of, it was, we wanted to kill them. They were a nuisance. They were a problem, but they weren't organized together to do anything relevant. Everybody thought, you know, however long it takes us to kill chaos, whatever, they're not going to be a problem.

And then Avedon became a pretty big problem. Pretty big problem. And then after that, You also got the resurgence of the Eldar who kind of got their stuff together and started getting upset. The Imperium kept taking their home worlds. The Drukhari jumping out of the warp to raid them. Orcs. We're going to be doing a lot of orcs as we talked through this.

And, I mean, it's a well, well after this, the first contact with tyrannids and maybe the Tao, who cares? Over the millennia, the Imperium itself just realized that it too was engaged in an infinite lore. And for the Black Templar, they went, not, well, we're going to win this infinite war. That was their system. So jumping ahead a bit, we're going to cover now. The next big piece of the Black Templar, kind of understand who they are, is the rise of the Ecclesiarchy. And so, whereas the Black Templar are totally okay with engaging in a 10,000-plus-year struggle against every enemy of mankind, no matter how innumeral they are, humans develop war weariness. It's just a thing.

No, when I'm playing Siv, it's crazy. Bad my guys start performing. if I stay at war. Sometimes, like, people bitch after I'm at war for, you know, 6,000 straight years. I don't know what their problem is. Exactly. So in order to combat this, the Ecclesiarchy actually copies from the Black Templar. And so the reason I'm covering this is going to make sense a second.

So rather than calling them wars, they begin calling them Crusades. And so what the reason I'm bringing this up is when we're talking about how the Black Templars are unique and that they go on Crusades, anyone who's ready. Black Library books, it'd be like, well, wait, when I read Gaunt's Ghosts, there were Crusades. When I read Kiface-Kane, there's Crusades. There's always Crusades. They're different. And so that's what I do want to make it clear. It's how they phrase these two, because they get the populace behind them, because they are crusades for the Imperium, for the Emperor. And they get people riled up, basically, like, of course I want to do this. This is bettering

mankind. I am part of mankind. And they kind of get this ever-growing crescendo wave that's just more and more people. Yeah. And the reason I want to bring us up is that there are two very different crusades. The Black Templar Crusades are truly a crusade. They are going to a place and they are going to fight until they all die or their opponents all die. Full stop. The imperial crusades are more political. There is, and we will discuss some of them later. They may say, crusade completed, whether it was completed or not. They're designed more as recruitment pushes. So, for example, when the Imperium declares a crusade, it's going to be accompanied with, you know, they're going to raise regiments, they're going to move troops around. It becomes a whole,

it's almost an industrial call. Whereas when the Black Templar declare a crusade, a bunch of Black Templar ships show up somewhere and begin crusading. That's the thing. And then the Imperium may or may not join them. The sisters like to do a lot. So the Imperium also, the rest of the Imperial, the Navy and everything else, a lot of times when they do a crusade, it is an actual like, we're going to here to do this job done kind of. Yeah. The Templars went, hey, are there still Zenos in the universe? Well, looks like we're continuing on. Exactly. And we'll get to you some good references to this in a little bit. But to kind of fill in some gaps here, I'm going to talk about the structure of the Black Templar,

because they are very different from other Space Marine legions. Wildly. Yeah. So being on a crusade for 10,000 years, we'll do this for you. To me, one of the most interesting pieces is how they do their recruitment. So no homeworld to pull from. So the Black Templars have, they still have to recruit. In fact, they're probably taking more losses than any other Legion because they're most at war.

I can't, I'm trying to think of it. anyone else fights as much as the Black Templar do? I assume not. No, the only, the people that are the most similar to this are weirdly the Death Watch. That would make sense. You're right, because the Death Watch would be constantly deploying as well. So yeah, and they actually, spoiler it guys jumping out, but guess who serves in Death Watch a lot? The Black Templars are big fans.

So the Black Templars still have to recruit. So what they do is when they conquer a world, they build a what's called a keep on that world. And it becomes that keep is a local garrison to both keep the, keep the world safe, so it gives them a place to fortify out of, but also becomes a mini recruitment center. At these fortresses, aspirants will just basically walk up to it and ask a join. This is unlike everybody else. All the other legions that, I mean, might be, I might be wrong on this, but from all the ones that we've covered so far, they have a recruitment world. They may have an event, like the blood angels do, but they are chosen by the main legion there. In this situation, people are volunteering.

Let's talk about this, though, because sorry, I'm going to give some heresy here because the Black Templar lovers are going to crush me. They have to have some sort of psychic power, because they just grab the people come to them in waves. It's crazy. Oh, I have a theory on this. My theory in this is actually, it's, I mean, it's advertising, is what I think this is. You think they just have the best propaganda? I do. But it makes sense. They just have so many people show up.

Yeah. Like they talk about it. They have waves. The populace immediately wants to be part of this. Right. So my theory on this, and it's, you know, it's based actually on good amount of fact, the Black Templars are the most famous legion to the Imperial. If you think of it, if you're an Imperial citizen, the Ecclesiarchy kind of runs everything.

If they're going to put stuff on the news, who goes on the news more than the Black Templars. That's true. It's a black Templars in the guard. Those are the two people who were going to be on the news all the time. Anyone can be a guardsman. So you want to be a black Templar. On top of that, every one of the worlds that they have their keeps on is a world that the black Templars conquered. So yes, some of them may have been conquered against their will. But for a lot of them, it's not. A lot of them, these are worlds that were under attack by chaos, by Zenos. They had like a rogue cyker who's running them. And the black Templars are the ones who showed up and killed. killed them all and saved the local people. So there's always, I mean, they're heroes slash gods to the local populace. So of course, everyone's going to volunteer to be one. That was always my theory. And so they just get, but they do. They get hordes of volunteers.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. Like, they have, a lot of their stories are almost as soon as they take over the planet. They just have Disney World lines of people getting ready to go in. But what's cool about that, they actually, but they don't accept a lot. So it's written in, so I, that's the Black Templar are a little bit trickier to write about. They've only had three codexes, well, two was a third coming.

I was saying, they've had two. There's, no, there's not. Well, they've had two because they had, they had the ninth edition codex. And then they had, no, I'm just saying, but they, the ones out yet. Yeah. They had a white, they had two different white dwarf farted. But they've had their own novels, and they are major players. And a lot of like, when they do novels about conflicts, they are in major.

players. That's how we know them more. But what's cool about this? Let's go into the, I just, the way that they do it, it doesn't make a little sense, though, because they basically say they barely take anybody out of this. I think that they basically take these people and then weed them down after. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because all of these guys, they, they accept five recruits a year kind of thing. But I think that there was a couple hundred and they, through testing and everything else got weeded down to five. It's not like they just chose five. Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, and Mike and said, you know, you're in there. Yeah, the truth is, this is the classic GW math. I mean, even if there are a thousand black Templar worlds, they can't go off five recruits because only

one of those five will survive. So they would give them a thousand space marines a year, which is a lot, except for the fact that they're engaged in conflict every minute of every day, everywhere. So they're losing more than that. They would actually become an extent. League. Also because they send out their neophytes. These are people that just aren't even done. Well, yeah. Let's actually get to the neophytes. So just to kind of

clean this up a little, just real quick. Yeah, so the chapter keeps accept volunteers effectively. The volunteers come in and the blood angels we see in this, there's some trials by combat. It's like everything happens and then they decide yes, these people can make it and they give them the

gene seed right there in the chapter keep. From the chapter keep, though, is where this gets goofy. Once they've gotten about 20, once a keep has about 20 or so of these, which, you know, they're called neophytes. Because the term, neophyte, for those who didn't listen to earlier casts, that's the term for somebody who's an aspiring space marine. They've had the gene seeds put into them.

They've had initial training, but they haven't been, they haven't finalized their training. At that stage. It has the trials. I mean, every, every Marine chapter has its own trials to be a full-fledged Marine. Yeah. Some of them are weird. Just candidly. Some of them are weird. Some of them are super weird. So these neophytes, so they take like the 20 of them or so, and they just pack them on a ship and send them to a crusade. They just, that's it. Like, yeah, you are going, you are going to land, get off the plane, and combat is tomorrow. The neophytes, once they arrive, they're assigned to what's called an initiate, which is their term for space marine or within the Black Templars. And this is what I love. by the Black Templars. The initiate, each neophyte gets assigned to one initiate, and vice versa. The initiate is then provides one-on-one instruction and mentorship, both in training on the battlefield, but also in everything else, as they're deployed together.

They fight side by side. Well, they don't just fight side by side, but they give them exactly what it means to be a Black Templar, also what it really means for the Imperial Truth, what we're trying to do. This is why we're... doing it. But also these guys are funny. One of my favorite things about this, and when I was kind of excited to do the Black Templar part of the cast, is on the board,

they do these things. In the game, they have these mixed squads, and they really, the lore really take shape on the board. When you play Black Templars, your squads are 50-50. Half of them are

initiates. Half of them are neophytes. That is just the way it's written. And the rules have changed a little bit. I'm interested to see what they do in 10th edition with it, but that's how they're designed. The cool thing about this is the initiate decides when the neophytes ready to be promoted. So where I love this is that the black Templars are trained not by a master or a chaplain or some president. They're trained by other, by the soldier next of them. So if you've read or watched all quiet in the Western Front, you get what I'm referring to. it makes much better soldiers.

So fun story, though, on the neophytes. And this is a fun story about GW having to sell models. Hold on. Hold, please. Boo. So this is funny. Continue. Because the neophytes are deployed with the squads, the Black Templars don't have scouts.

Because normally the scouts, as I've teased Brad for before, because Brad likes to use scouts to screen out opponents, are child soldiers used by the space marines and that Brad sacrifices as cannon fodder. The Black Templar don't do this, except they kind of do now. So in the lore, there are no scouts. But in the books, in the codexes,

sometimes the neophytes will take on the role of a scout marine. And how this manifests itself is that if you play Black Templars, you can run space marine scouts that are Black Templar even though there are no scouts in Black Templar. It's the same with heavy weapons squads. Yeah, Black Templar or a melee army, they're not supposed to have heavy weapons. But if you want to run a Devastator squad or an eradicator squad, I mean, you can. You're just not supposed to.

Yeah, but no psychers. No cykers. You cannot want psychers. Yeah. I'll get to them in a minute. There's more differences in the way they structure, though, beyond just a neophyte So another thing I love, they don't have sergeants. Every squad, usually when you play space marines, one of your, one member of your squad is a sergeant.

And if you're someone like me, you always forget which one it is. And then you actually pull the wrong model. I'm a master of that. And you no longer have their special weapon. Yeah, I have been doing that for 20 years. So just the way I like to play this. And this is. You also consistently put him in the middle.

And that's for no reason. I have no idea. This is why I think I want to play Black Templars. The sergeant problem goes away for me. The reason they don't have sergeants is because the Black Templars just promote anyone who stands out into the next tier up. So instead, all top-performing initiates who would normally become a sergeant actually form a different squad called Sword Brethren. Space Marines, regular Space Marines kind of have this in Space Marine veteran squads. But the Swar brethren are an elite.

They're only within Black Templar. And they're honestly, they're just cooler than a regular Space Marine sergeant. Sorry, just trying to call it out. Nordbrother are badass, by the way. Well, that's a thing, too. And they are pretty badass in the game, too. But they have a wild way because they don't promote these guys and then, you know, do a ceremony or go back to anywhere because they're losing people kind of left and right because they're fighting the way that they fight does just kind of lead to casualties.

You're right up on top of people. So they do field promotions to different styles right away. Well, yeah. And the sword brethren are the ones. So what Brad's discussing is perfect here, perfect transition. The sword brethren actually become the marshal. So should the marshal die in the crusade,

a sword brethren steps up into that role. And, you know, this is, we're talking when we say crusades, again, these guys aren't running downhill on opponents. They're a black Templar crusade might involve a craft world. It might, you know, it could easily involve the beginnings of an oraclea, or a full-blown orquah.

They lose people, but the crusade must go on. And so the crusade, and what I love about this, the Sword Brethren, is when a Sword Brethren needs to get promoted, they've kept the old tradition of the imperial fists with the Templar, in which all the Sword Brethren who want to take up the mantle of Marshall enter a 1V-1 tournament, not to the death. I'm just about to say, that's a big deal. Yeah.

If you remember Sigisman, Not to the depth. Not to the depth. There's no value. There's no reason to kill a brother over an honor duel. And so at the end of it, whoever wins this 1V1 tournament is the new marshal. I don't think anyone else does this,

although I want to believe the space wolves would. But I could see. Have a couple different things about that. They do contests, but they're not even just straight contests or combat. The space wolves, I'm sure the space wolves do this, but I don't think it's like to get promoted.

I think it's just Saturday is tournament day. Yeah. They do a lot of. Yeah. Yep. But so that's also segues, I want to do a marshal. And I want to get into what marshals are because marshals have the same general title, but a very different function. So a marshal is at its core, a captain.

You look at space marine armies, it's the same. It's in rank, it's the same as a captain. But in function, it's massively different because of, One word. And that word is autonomy. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's autonomy, but also he's expected to build fortresses and make new place, new recruitment centers effectively and continue effectively giving them supply lines as they

continue and push their crusade. So this guy has a ton of stuff on his plate besides being the war leader. You know what I mean? You have to go, hey, man, here's the plans for the. these 14 buildings and how are we getting all our supplies? How, you know, he's a, he has to be a logistics master also effectively. Exactly. And that's what makes the marshal so cool because the marshal is going to be often on the other side of the galaxy from what's called the high marshal.

So to Brad's point, this person's in charge of all their own recruitment. That is not something a captain normally is dealing with. The captain, you know, will ask for it, but they're not in charge of actually organizing their own logistics for recruitment. He's also going to be in charge of his own fleet. He's going to be, like, everything is there. The marshals are this, because the way it's set up is, and we'll explain why in a minute, each Black Templar Crusade is almost an independent army.

So that's what makes- I think they're basically chapter masters. Yeah, they are. Exactly. They're a captain, but they're truly a chapter master. And because this is partly because we'll jump into this now is some of the size differences we're talking about. Because the Black Templars, they're decentralized, but they're still somewhat centralized.

The closest example I have for you is Death Watch. The Death Watch are spread all around the galaxy, independent bodies doing stuff. They still report back their information, but they act and they go. So the Marshal is probably yet closest to a Death Watch Cap. Watchmaster. Watchmaster. Watchmaster, yeah. But let's go into the High Marshal.

And the High Marshal is cool. It's a weird one. The High Marshal is really no different from a Chapter Master. They all the stuff's the same. you know, they interact, they have direct interaction with their legions, they speak back with terror, all that stuff. However, the high marshal of the Black Templar has one more important task, and that is to keep the Inquisition as far away from them as they possibly can. Not in the same way that the dark angels are, but to the same effect because they don't want

to get destroyed. To be... Well, it's a little bit easier now because of the fact that when Bobby came back, he effectively threw out the Codex Astardis. Yeah. But the Codex Astardis says a chapter must number 1,000 or less full-fledged space Marines. That doesn't count that basically would be the Neophytes and everything else. But it's a thousand active members. And the Black Templars are wildly more than that. Black Templars are estimated to be at least 6,000.

And this is the way, the reason it's more. They're not counting all the Neophytes and stuff. Of course, yeah. Oh, no. That's like just the Space Marines. This is because they're spread out throughout the galaxy. So it's impossible for the Imperium to keep track of their size because you would literally be taking like year-long journeys from one spot of the galaxy to the other to count them.

So there's no way to do it. The only person who knows the true number is the high marshal. And he is not letting anyone know this for good reasons. Because just for reference, at 6,000 space marines, they're probably, the Black Templar are probably as large, if not larger than the space wolves and Dark Angels who are not Codex compliant. They never broke their legions up. That is insane. I still think it's way more than that, to be honest with you, because I would say it's double and triple, because you got to remember like in the original, you know, the original legions we're fighting with

just south of 100,000. And they're running around with what they think is about 6,000, but they don't count any. You have to immediately double it because they don't count any of the neophytes. But they also don't count all of the support guys that could or could not be Marines that go along with this. You know? My favorite part of this is that the Black Templars are a sub-faction that's at least five times larger, probably 10 to 20 times larger than its founding chapter. That's your story.

Yeah. Just calling it out. The Black Templar. So the Black Templar. You know, we talked up, I joke in the sisters cast that it's so easy to make sisters. We should just use only sisters because we have millions of them, apparently, and we can't make that many space marines. Well, you can make a bunch of Black Templars, so let's just do that and reconquer the galaxy. So many.

Yeah. I mean, it'll be the least fun galaxy on Earth because it's going to be run by Black Templar and the Sisters of Battle. Not exactly a half. It's not going to be a lot of high flutin party times. The next group I want to talk about within the Black Templar dates back to Sigism. And that's the Emperor's Champion. They continue to that to this day. Yeah.

The Emperor's Champion is maybe the most important member in a crusade. And this is because the Emperor's Champion is in effect a super soldier within the Black Templar. They are imbued with the power of the Emperor. And I always like to, I'll explain this and I'll dive into my opinion on it. So the way an Emperor's Champion is created is that all Black Templar in the eve of a battle, meditate and think about, you know, prepare for what's coming ahead. Every now and then, one of them will feel like the touch of the emperor. Basically, in their meditation, they'll have the emperor will come speak to them.

They then get up and they go see their chaplain and tell the chaplain, here's what happened. And here's my vision. And if the chaplain agrees that this is a true vision, then they get to don a special weaponry. It's the armor of faith and the black sword. And they're going to leave the chapter. Which are the weaponry. Yep. And that is the weaponry, the symbol.

symbolic weaponry of the emperor's champion. And this is more, when we say this, this kind of stuff always, I think sometimes sounds like, oh, okay, so some guy claims he had a division, blah, blah, blah. This is real. We talked about this in the sisters a lot more. There is, like, the emperor does actually reach out and have an effect in the 41st millennia. He is not, like, he's entombed, but he's not dead. He is able to reach out.

He's able to make contact. He has, he does turn the tides of battle. All of the... He's been powering up for 11,000 years. Powering up, they've been shoving power into him. I mean... No, I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that all the prayers and everything else

become reality because the warp exists. That's true. The warp entity of the emperor. Emper is on the golden throne. The shadow of the emperor and the warp is a big old shadow. You know, he's casty and far. And so, yeah, these emperors champions really are imbued, and they fight with the power of Sigismund.

And the important thing about this is, like, when we talked about the Blood Angels, where the Black Rage overcomes them, so the idea is on the battle, they're going to actually go first in the battle, but they're going to die that day, and we'll have another one, and we'll get some more in the next battle.

This is the opposite here. Yeah, an emperors champion could serve for decades as the head of the thing. And when that Emperor's champion dies in combat, it's viewed as a very bad omen for what's to come, because it means that the emperor's, the emperor's light is no longer upon the crusade. And in battle, by the way, on the tabletop,

these guys are good. In the lore, these guys are insane. Well, because they instantly go, they're basically, they are crusader. They're cavaliers, if you're doing D&D. They call out the largest foes from the opposing side.

They're fighting giant monsters, huge behemoth. There's a story of one. Take out a defiler. Yeah. If you don't know what defiler is Google 40K defiler and know one of these guys took that down with a power sword. Like, this is not, these guys do not screw around. One key part, though, about the Black Templars of what they don't have and is a funny piece of the story.

They don't have librarians. At all. Well, but they don't have them, but we'll get to them in a second. The Black Templars, they do this because they believe. the powers of the warp corrupt. Most of their crusades are dealing with beings who've been corrupted by the warp, chaos, Eldar, imperial colonies, and revolt, etc. So they have no psychers in their army, with a few exceptions. And I like the exceptions. Because we have to get places. Well, I like the exceptions because the first one is so astrophats and navigators. They don't consider them

psychers. And I've had this debate with people before. people view, it's like, it's hypocritical where it's like, oh, no psychers, but those ones are okay. But they're not. They don't manipulate the warp. Exactly. Into the worm. They can see it. They're basically, they're actually really good. I've always, to be fair, I've always wondered why they didn't use these guys in other roles, basically as detectors. If you have this guy rolling with you, they would see other psychers. You could immediately put some justice on those guys.

Probably because they're all kind of insane. Yeah, that's also true. I mean, so you constantly, so you constantly see waking nightmares everywhere you go, blah, blah, blah, get over it. We've got to go through a walk through this busy crowds. You can tell me who in here's a psycher, or just fall into a ball in the ground screaming and crying.

Okay, cool, you're going to do that. All right, never mind. We'll try again. So, yeah, so astropats and navigators are okay. The other group that's totally okay with them are the gray nights. And this is, again, this is not hypocritical. This is because the Black Templar know what the Grey Knights are. The Grey Knights are imbued with the Emperor's jean seat.

And the Black Templars are... That is their genes seat. Yeah, are kind of a fan of the Emperor. Okay, you are literally a child of the being I care about most. And in history, no Grey Knight has ever fallen to corruption. The Black Templars say, we can trust you with your powers. And so they actually will regularly deploy with the Grey Knights to fight chaos. And the Black Templar are overjoyed to have them at their side.

And I guarantee you the Grey Knights are super happy to have the Black Templar at their side. Does that mean I can run a Black Templar and Grey Knight Army, Brad? Possibly. You know, you definitely could run a Death Watch with a crap ton of Black Templars shoulder pads. Yeah, I should do. Because they send a bananas amount of. I do have that. This is the funny part of the Cycars.

So the one problem that all the Black Templars have, remember, the Black Templars, when we say they don't like psychers, we don't mean, hey, it's written down you can't have psychers. Like, you know, shoot those guys in the face. Yeah, yeah. This isn't one of those things like, oh, yeah, yeah, if someone else is watching, don't do it. But, you know, they're kind of good guys, right? No, this is, I hate them. My soul hates them. And then you join the Death Watch and you have to hang out with them. Because the Death Watch use librarians. And I just... All the time. Yeah. And this makes me laugh because I keep. thinking about like some scene where like there's a librarian from like you know the ultramarines or wherever it is it just wakes up in the middle of the night and the black temple are just above him holding a sword like just what what like i was like i could just see them constantly trying to kill i baked a cake for you you should eat it nobody else eat this cake yeah you should eat this

what's the uh what's the scene in super troopers not that coffee that was that was for rabbit Yeah, just nonstop. It doesn't matter, but it's a funny story. But let's now dive into the history of the Black Templars, which is where they really stand up. We'll be right back after a quick break. So we're going to go back all the way to the beginning. The imperial fists are broken up.

And right, basically, day of second founding, Sigisman goes, all right, we're going to a crusade. Everybody, let's go. Yeah. And they head out. Let's do this. Yeah, we're doing this. And they head out to the Donatello system. them, which I assume it was purple.

Come on, it's a good one. That's a good. That was deep. All right. The black Templars go out there to deal with the nightlords. And they actually successfully corner the night lords out there and kill every single one. Full stop. They are, the system is liberated from chaos.

Next, the black Templars are crusading, and they have to go to Acadia because Abidon has appeared. this one doesn't go great. Well, it's weird. It doesn't go great, but it actually is fantastic. But it also gets one of the biggest shit talk lines of all time. Oh, this is amazing. Yeah, so Sigismund goes because Abidon's there.

And Sigismund and Abadon finally have their duel. And Sigismund really wants to kill Abadon. And Abidon actually doesn't really care that much about Sigismund for being honest. He's going to kill him because he's imperial. But the hate here is much more one side than the other. Well, yeah, I was saying it's a really one side. Well, we talked about it last one, but Avedon, I mean, Sigismid does run him through, but Abidon is juiced up by chaos, doesn't die.

He doesn't just run him through. He also stabs him through the chest to the other side. Oh, Abidon has a permanent scar from being stabbed by Sigismund. Abidon also did have the talents of Horace, though, And Sigismund didn't have a good defense to that. But this gives me so much joy on this because Sigismund gets cut down by the Talons of Horace. But as he's about to die, basically does full eye contact with Abadon. And tells him, you will die as your weakling father died, soulless, honorless, weeping and ashamed.

And he's just like, hey, man, too soon to live too much, bro. And then, by the way, he died. And Abidon, to Adidon's credit, Abidon then took his body and then carved, like, carved the message in it and the sword and sent it back to Tara. So this did go both ways. This, though. Both of them went, yeah, Abidon's always been pretty hardcore as far as that. We went over that.

There was never a time when he was a chill guy. No, no. But this launches the Black Templar. The death of Sigismund is not taken as a, oh, no, we failed. What are we doing? It actually invigorates the chapter to be more anti-chaust, to believe in themselves more because the fact that these guys would come out of the eye of terror do this much damage tells us that we are on the righteous path to destroy them.

But double down. Also, remember, and anyone that stands with. them or could be possibly be corrupted by them. Exactly. The next big piece of Black Templar, we're actually going to skip over, and that's the War of the Beast. That's because we actually have a cast coming up

in a few weeks, guys, where we're going to get into the War of the Beast. Rather than just do it here, we're going to go hard into War of the Beast. Instead, we're going to jump a bit further into something called the Howling. And this is the first crusade where the Black Templars really got to be

the Black Templars. now. And I like this because on the table, this is a big thing because the vow is an actual, they're effectively casting a spell, even though they're not psychers. They get powered up by this. And on the tabletop, it's awesome because you have to choose a vow per battle when you fight with your black

Templar. Let's jump into this. The Emperor's Champion, who we discussed earlier, leads the chapter in the vow before the battle. And to Brad's point, it's a sacred, litany, just like the one of the guardsmen's do. And you could say, well, does this one actually work? The guardsmen ones work. How many times have you guys played against an Imperial Guard player who says his litany's?

Because I'm just saying, if they do... He would. If they do, you're probably losing. They're just letting you know. Best weapons in the galaxy. Exactly. So the Black Templar ones, to Brad's point, they work on a tabletop, and they actually, this is one of the best parts of Lord of Tabletop I've seen in Space Marines.

So the vows are, is accept any challenge no matter the odds. This has always, so, again, we have three, they've only had rules three times, guys. So this always has given a boost to hand-to-hand combat damage, either increasing damage, increasing armor penetration. It's one of those two. But it makes it so you can fight through an enemy, do more damage to your enemy. The next one is uphold the honor of the emperor, which makes them immune to fear and more resistant to damage. So either feel no pain. They have very involuntary.

Yeah. Yeah. I like the next two, though, because they're specific to what they're fighting. You like the next two because there's only two of who ever seen anyone playing on a tabletop. They used, the people have done uphold the out of the app pair of the first codex. I guess you haven't fighting the first one. More recently, it's always, it has always been this next one or the last one if you're playing against psychers. So the first one is suffer, not the unclean to live.

Awesome. Great name. And this makes the Templar a lot more lethal in hand-to-hand combat. So the difference is, where the first one did more damage, these ones, they hit Morris. Now they have sustained in 10th edition. We'll see what we get in the codex. But they, they wall up into you. And I can tell you in ninth edition, when someone was running suffer not the unclean to live and they charged you, it sucked. Well, if you're running a specific army, though, you know what? You really don't like to see

when you're running up your Sikers? Or the witch, destroy the witch, man. I'm not going to be honest. I miss this part of the game. I miss on the, tabletop having auto wins. So there was a period of time in ninth edition when Thousand Sons were really good, really, really, really good unless they played Black Templar. And Black Templar would run, abhor the witch, destroy the witch. And they would basically shrug off all the psychic damage.

You've got a four-up feel no pain. And I was going to plus the damage, I want to say, too. It was horrifying. I think right now, right now if you run this, I think you get, oh, it's anti-psycher lethal, anti-psycher 4 plus. So again, you play into an army that's all psykers, you auto wound them on a 4 every time.

Yeah. I like this a lot because you can, I want them to be more specific. They did a little bit better. Right now they're fine in 10th, but like in 9th, these were very specific. I want that back. 100%.

I like the flavor of it. I want that back. And it made your army, it made a big deal. this is a huge ceremony that takes place. These guys do this and psych up specifically to defeat what in their holy crusade, we are going to beat this and they actually get power from the emperor. That's right.

And they actually get power. That last bit's to keep it. They get power from the emperor because what we're talking about here is the Calexy heresy, which was a wild story. So this is the result. There's one alien cyborg cyker because GW, when they decide to make something, they go hog wild in the late 80s references. So cyborg, psycher, probably also mutant from outer space.

There we go. Yeah, check every box. And the name was cacodominus, because why not? Cacodominus was such a powerful cyker that he was able to control 1,300 planetary systems. Which is bananas. Which means, yeah, that's like, this is what the emperor used to do when he would walk around. I mean, not emperor could go further, but this is. is big. And again, because

I'm me and I have Google, when I wrote this thing, I decided to look this up. The average distance between the star system in the Milky Way is five light years. So if you're talking 1,300 planetary systems, we're looking at probably close to a thousand light year span.

I'll be honest, I wanted to get the exact number, but I haven't taken calculus in a little over 20 years, and I just couldn't do it. I tried, guys. So if someone's jumping in Discord and tell me what the actual distance, would be at a 1300 system gap in the galaxy, I actually would love to know.

You even send me a direct message. I just, I tried doing that math and got very ashamed. But anyway, the Imperium knew where Kakodamus was, but they couldn't get there. Because traveling through like all these light years to the home planet of like the most powerful cycle in the galaxy and killing him wasn't a possibility.

Unless, a poor, the witch, destroy the witch. They took some serious casualties, but they also effectively just shook off his psychic attacks. Yeah, well, he couldn't dominate them.

That was the big thing. What his big power was, he would psychically, he'd turn him into a thrall, and the Black Templars couldn't be thralled. And so they fought their whole way there, and his skull now sits in one of the ships, and one of the Black Templar ships.

Now, the funny story of this, is that, well, sorry, two things. One, let me say that. Other Imperial legions had tried this and failed. Now, we should note that this was an M-34, so the Sisters of Silence weren't really a fighting force. They probably could have been equally useful here just throw a bunch of blanks at them

and let's see what happens. Also, they did kind of have some collateral damage here. Yeah, the funny note is that when they killed Kakadamus, his brain effectively exploded in the warp and created such a blinding flash that it blocked out the Astronomicon for some period of time. They don't tell how long, but they do tell, they do say millions of ships crashed because of this. Like, it probably cost billions of lives killing him.

So, you know. Whoops. Whoops. Yeah. Then we move into about M35. And M35 is when the Black Templar begin shifting to being a bit more of a religious. force. Well, it's also because they shift to be more

of a religious force and have a religious focus on it. But I also think that's because the Imperium itself becomes more focused on the ecclesiarchy and they keep filling their ranks with more and more of these very religious

I mean, the Imperium is just run by the ecclesiac. And I will say this, Black Templar fans make it upset about this. I'm actually not sure if the Black Templar necessarily actually shifted anything in this period, or just the Imperium shifted their propaganda machine to be more aligned with the Black Templars. It may be the Black Templars went through no change at this moment between this.

The Black Templars of M41 might be identical to Black Templars of M31. But the way that the Imperium describes them or interacts with them may have shifted. But a couple of key incidents happen to kind of lead into this. The first one is what's called the Barbarous Incursion, which is purged from Imperial Records. all that we know about it is that the Black Templars and the Grey Knights fought some demons and they won and wiped

an entire demon and courage now. But you're not allowed to talk and to let people know that chaos exists. Yeah, because again, this is before, in modern 40K people know chaos exists. Well, you have to because they broke the sky. It's kind of there. Yeah. And M34, they didn't. So that's why it's an early redacted

piece. But what's important about the redacted is that usually, at this era, as we discussed in the first War of Armageddon, the Inquisition would then wipe out anyone who saw this. Not the Black Templars. Everyone who, they all fought the demons. I went, okay, I'll just keep stabbing demons, though. Are there more demons? Where else can we go to stab?

Where else can we go to stab demons? I'm in. And the Grey Knights are probably like, these guys are A-OK. Where things get spice here is in the wars of apostasy. So this is Goge Van Deer. So Goge Van Deer rises the power, takes over the Ecclesiarchy, brings his sisters of battle. Yeah, and creates a civil war within the Imperium. Which gets so messy that the Black Templars go, hey, man, what is going on here?

You have to be messing shit up a lot. Well, and Goge messed up real bad. This story's funny to me, because to Brad's point, message are coming out to everyone saying, hey, there's something wrong back at terror, like really wrong. And so the Black Templars go, fine, and they head back to terror. Like, what's going on here? And as they get back into this, it's actually when they get into the system, even on terror yet, into the system, they go to stop off at one of their keeps to kind of just say high and high five each other, I guess. And they get there and the keep has been destroyed from an orbital bombardment, ordered by Ghosh.

And at that point, the Black Templars got on the radio. I was saying, hold on. You had just a time to do the meme on it. And they took that personally. Yeah, they took that very personally. And yeah, the Black Templar put in the call of, hey, there's this guy on Terra and he needs his ass kicked real bad. Let's go. And so the Black Templars come en masse to Terra along with obviously the Imperial Fists and a few others.

They end up, they're the ones who sieged the fortress on Terra. Unfortunately, they didn't get the ability to kill Goge because Goge is killed by the sisters after they met the emperor. And found out exactly that he was not for the emperor. And they said, we took that personally. It did some terrible things to coach. But a couple of key pieces that come out of this moment, though. So Goge obviously is dead. There's a reformation within the church of the Ecclesarchy.

A couple of big pieces. First, the black Templars get their new best friend, the sisters. These two are, this is peanut butter and jelly or whatever you guys eat, not in the U.S. Hem and cheese. There we go. But perfect. In addition, the ecclesiarchy begins to become much more established at this point as a positive force in the galaxy. And with the new imperial creed, they begin utilizing the Black Templar as an example of the success of the power of the Emperor.

This is also kind of why I think that there's wildly more Black Templars than that 6,000 and everything else. Because the Black Templars become the poster children for what's going on. You know what I mean? So they get pushed. I think they also, and it doesn't show up as much on the board in 40K, but when you read the books and stuff, Black Templars show up with a giant amount of auxiliary everything else. Sisters, you know, whew.

Yeah, and I view this era. I mean, it's weird my brain is, but I go to like the 1940s newsreels. I can't do the voice guys, but like that kind of reel of like the Black Templar. I've conquered that. Salarza system. And you see a bunch of black Templar

holding people's heads up and smiling for the camera. To me, that's what the Ecclesiarchs are doing with them. Because to be fair, that's exactly what the black Templar are doing. They're not smiling, but they're totally just chopping heads off

of heretics and holding it up and saying, oh, look, this one's also not a heretic anymore. Next problem. These two are perfect for each other. But, and I will again, I want to defend the Black Templars here. They're not true allies

with the Ecclesiarch. Oh, God, no. Because they're not run at all by the ecclesiary. They answer, hold on, let me look in the mirror real quick. That's who I answer to. Cool, let's keep going. And it has come back for the poor ecclesiarchy. They've gotten bitten a few times in the butt by this.

They have. My viewpoint is the Black Templar view of the Ecclesiarchy more. It's the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The ecclesiarchy is nice, but I don't report to you. And also, I don't trust you. And there's actually been some funny one to Bradson. point. One of the ones I liked was the Benedictine War. And the Benedictine War was a conflict where it was a crusade into the Benedictine system, which is where a bunch of Eldar were.

I believe there was Exodites. I'm not 100 percent. I'm pretty sure it was an exodite system. And the Black Templar, along with the sisters of battle, Imperial Guard, Imperial Navy, and a bunch more deploy out there. And the war's a grinder. They're just, it's massive casualties on both sides. And about halfway into the war, the Ecclesiarchy just says, we did it, guys. you know, we've achieved our goal. The emperor is proud of us. Everyone can go home. Nice job.

And the Templar looked around and went, yeah, I can still see Eldar. So, and the, Nah, ain't going out like that. And the Ecclesa is, no, it clearly comes back like,

no, it's okay. You know, you know, and this is one of those, basically didn't command them to stop, but they said, no, the crusades over.

And the Black Templar went like, hell it is. And the Black Templar said a strongly worded email that the Templars immediately did not open. Yeah. And then the Black Templar proceeded to kill every Eldar in the entire system and declare their own victory at the end of it. Yeah.

I like that story. But this era, one of my favorite parts of this is also a great disappointment of my own. So this era of the Black Templar gives me my favorite model in the entire game. and its rules have always been bad. I mean, 20 years probably. No, it has not. It holds more guys. It's still.

Landrador Crusaders used to be boss mode. Hurricane boulders? When? Name the addition. Fifth? There we go. Okay. So, fine.

A decade and a half. You step away from the Landrainer Crusader. I love the Landresterer Crusader. All right, so let's get into this. So the Templars are crusading. They've hit a hive world and it's a rebel. It's a human world in rebellion. And they've gotten pretty far, but they've reached the final hive.

And they cannot get in there because there's just hordes of soldiers and the fortifications they can't get in through. The transports that they had just wouldn't work. The rhinos and the Razorbacks were too lightly armored. And the land raiders that they were using just didn't have enough capacity. So even though if they could get somewhere, only a few troops could then get out until. Take those last cannons off. You got so much more room. Yeah.

Oh, for activities. Exactly. So much more room for activities. So the Land Raider Crusader, Crusader, which again is my favorite model in the game. Well, yeah, it probably isn't the entire game, actually. It's just awesome. It's got about 50% more capacity, although not under current roles. Now it has like two more. Yeah, who cares? Who cares? How did it hold more in ninth edition? People got bigger, man. They've been just eating more.

She's just like America. I know. People get larger. We have to O-Zempec our space marines. So anyway, the Landruder Crusader, they take all the Las Canons off, which, by the way, were never that helpful to start with, and they just slap Storm Bolters and assault cannons onto it. The thing looks awesome. And then they, well, this works. And they just start driving these things into the walls, would crash through. The ramp would open an entire squad of Black Templar would rush out while all the guns.

shot everything. Yeah, they just put suppressing fire. It's a pressing fire. That shows great. And this is, I love this model. It's one of my favorite things in the game, and the Black Templars invented it. So there you go.

This gets us up to about M40. And by the time we- You're going to make me sad here, but I already know we agreed on it. The Black Templar established themselves as like the stalwart defenders of humanity. Chaos, Zenos, internal strife. Nothing is,

safe from the enduring might and the conviction of the Black Templars. And so the best example for that is going to be Hellbrick. We're going to skip Grimaldus guys because when we cover the Wars of Armageddon, he's going to be in basically every 10 minutes. So we'll just cover him there. But Helbrick... Fine. I know you love...

Helbrick is... I like both of them, but I mean, Grimald is such a badass. But could we tell the Grimaldus story without just having to tell all of the story of No, we'd have to do another cast. That's why. Because it's like all the stuff he does in Armageddon. I think there's a shrine to him on Armageddon still. Like, yeah, Grimald is rocks, but I just, I got to give too much backstory.

Hellbrecht effectively is the Dragon Reborn. He's, he is Sigismund. He's just, he does everything. He's so hardcore, but he's not blind. The guy's a tactical monster, and he's a badass. Yeah. And he also has one name. I tried looking it up.

I can't find any other name. It's just Helbrook. You don't need it. Yeah. Anyway. So Helbrecht rises to the ranks of the Black Templars very quickly because him and Sigismund, to his second coming of Sigismund. In combat, he's described as a brutal fighter.

And the term they use, I like, is his tactical acumen and his pure savagery when fighting, when fighting was everyone like, oh, good God. he's here, and as a general, he's even better. We'll talk about a little bit. He's this amazing space tactician, much so that when he arrives in Armageddon, which we'll get there a little bit, the entire Imperial Navy and other space marine legions said, oh, yeah, no, he's in charge of the battle plan here. Like, this dude is one of the smartest in the entire galaxy.

He's also fervent his beliefs in his mission, but also not inflexible. He does understand the goals of the Imperium are more important than anything else. And this, again, is a reflection on Sigismund. Sigismund had that same moment when he went to Mars, and had to leave Mars because it was better to leave Mars with the supplies than to kill the heretics that he really wanted to kill. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.

Let's do Helbrick. So Helbrick takes control of Black Templars in 9-89 of M-41. So he's been in charge for less than a thousand years now. His predecessor, Marshall Cordell, was killed by a chaos champion. That night, the marshals had to hold a vote, and Helbrick won. Which took 11 seconds. Yeah, yeah. Helbrick won the vote the way a dictator wins the vote in their country.

It's like, yeah. Actually, he was unanimous. He's like, hey, man, you got 180 votes of 120 people that cast votes. Yeah, yeah. Hellbrecht is there was no question. And the first thing he does is he goes to exterminate a species known

as the Zen Ark. This is his first thing. I'm doing a crusade. What's the biggest badass out there that we need to go kill? These things over there called the Zen Ark. All right. Watch this. And he launches himself out there. What I like about the Zenark is that just what they are. They're this

weird, like lightning-powered creature that have the best batteries in the galaxy. So he effectively invaded and stole technology of Tesla. Like Tesla Motors was just hanging out, and here comes Hellbrecht screaming and left with the battery technology. I like the next thing he does, though. That was funny. But like he goes into the area basically known for the ghoul stars.

And why I like this is because of the fact that we talked about this in forever ago cast. Episode 72. I looked it up. Yeah. Yeah. But like, it's a big deal because most imperial generals and everything else didn't bother going there because they thought it would be too hard and they would get not enough benefit for it.

And he just took, he just took that as, I'm going to do that. Yeah. Watch me basically. Hold my beer. And that's Helbert. Helbert was like, everyone says this is impossible. No, it's not. And so he goes to the ghoul stars.

with what's called the Scythorphines. And the Scythorphians were this, like, really crazy race. And they were attacking shipping vessels. They were raiding surrounding systems. And they were just slaughtering anyone who tried to enter the system. And to Brad's point, everyone else in the Pyramus decided, well, we'll put kind of a blockade up around them and hope they don't spread. And Helberg went, no, they all die. Those are enemies of the emperor.

They need to die. And he went there and actually scoured. the system of them to, and just to reflect back until he got to their home worlds, which he found were vacant. And so the belief that they were gone. They were gone or were they gone? And Hellbrook was about, yeah, Helbrook was about to just go, all right, I'll find where you are and kill you. Doesn't matter where when he gets the call. And the call is, Gaz has reappeared. And this is now for Armageddon. Yeah, the third war of Armageddon. So Gaz has already established himself. within the Imperium as not good thing for Imperium.

And Helbrecht rushes over and arrives basically just as Gaz is making planet fall on Armageddon. As we mentioned earlier, this part of the story is cool because Helbrecht arrives and takes complete control of the battle in space. The Black Templarships, the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Fists, there are a couple other legions who were there. He's fully in charge. And his battle plan is perfect. Pretty quickly, he actually eliminates.

all of the orc vessels in orbit, just basically muting any reinforcements or offense on the ground. He then sends two full crusading forces down to the surface to wipe out the orcs. What happens next, that was actually just kind of funny because Gaz gets bored of the fight and teleports away,

because we will eventually get a fourth war of Armageddon. Helbrecht vows, I'm going to kill this guy. And he's screaming, I'm going to kill. Helbrick, he hears an echo. And the echo is someone else saying, I'm going to kill Gaz. And he looks over at this man holding with an orc power claw for a hand and goes, I think, I think I made a friend. Hold on. Regular human, though, because Commissar Yerick is just a dude. Just a dude with a power claw.

And they just kind of keep looking at each other going, well, I like you. And Hellbrecht grabs Commissar Yerick, throws him onto his ship, and the two of them go hunting Gaz together. Imagine the happiness on that ship. That is the worst. Oh, God, that's the worst ship ever. These are, like, I love the stories of Yarek, but like commissars in general. Gaunt is the only commissar that's actually someone you're like, oh, I kind of like that one. Every other commissar in a story is a psychopath.

And so now you have the two maybe biggest, like, aggressive psychopaths in the galaxy standing on a bridge. There are zero games of cards being played on that bridge. Zero games. It's probably not a board game night, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah, there's no settlers of Catan being rocked out. This is all serious. Unfortunately for Hellbrecht, though, the next piece of his legacy is a loss.

So he is, while hunting for Gaz, a Necron Tomb World erupts in part of the galaxy. And by erupts, I mean, it was bad. The thing is, I actually think this is, just like on the game when you're playing 40K, he meets something he's never met before. So he's not sure how they're supposed to fight against it. He also doesn't know how serious it is. And it was a real deal because these guys, the necrons show up. He didn't know exactly what they were.

Also, Imitek, the Stormlord was there. Yeah, that's the big one here. The big dog, yeah. The Imperium had encountered necrons before, but it was more like freshly awakening tomb worlds and they were smaller. Emotech, the Stormlord, is the head of the Sautek Dynasty, which is the most powerful of all the Necron Tomb Worlds. And it was, I believe, fully awakened at this point.

So he's landing into something where all of your, to Brad's point, all of the prior information on this is like, oh, they're necrons. All right, no, Bolter's work, you know, type thing. Here's what you do. Watch out. They can teleport. Here's some tricks. And he's hitting the strongest version of them with probably the best

Farron that they have until the Silent King returns. And it doesn't go great. The Crusade is just, they're ground to a halt pretty quickly. Hellbrecht is not cool with that and discovers where Emotech is and teleports himself to Emotech to fight him. And again, as I said before, Helbrecht can throw down. Helbrecht and Emotech are going at it. And Helbrecht is honestly scoring 20 hits to one on Emotene.

Just letting you know, if you fought this on the board, Hellbreak would stuff Emotech into a wood chipper. What? Oh, yeah. The current Emotech rules are terrible. Yeah. He would just be terrible. Some moat.

Yeah, I don't think I've seen him on the board since eighth. He gives a CP. Yeah. I haven't seen him on the board since eighth edition. There we go. But Emotech, but what I like by the story is that Hellberg is, like, wrecking him. but Emotech's necrodermis is one of the most advanced the entire galaxy, and he's healing instantly to all of it until Hellbrock literally just gets tired from all the fighting,

and Emotech knocks him down. But Emotech stands above him, raises his axe, and doesn't kill him. He just cuts off his right hand and says... Well, he respected his fight. Yeah, exactly. And said... Now, this is one of my favorites with Hellbrack. So, because he has his first, basically his first L.

And you're like, that's really, the first loss is how you judge a character of someone. Yeah. Hellbrecht decides he suffered an L and he was going to go on a five-year crusade of penance to atone for his defeat. What the hell does that mean? Yes. Yes. Thank you. It says in the codex.

It goes on a five-year penance. So was he not in charge? Was he doing the stuff he was doing anyway? I don't know what that looks like. But apparently he spent five years really sad and really, I assume, still stabbing a bunch of stuff. Like nonstop stabbing. Yeah. But what's funny and lame, but it's funny, is he eventually goes back to, you know, H.Q, which is the family.

Which, again, there are, he has more people under his command than the entirety of the imperial. fist by a power of at least six, probably a lot more than that. Yeah. And he goes and he preys by his primark's hand. And then he looks down at his cybernetic hand and has a moment, kind of like in Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker is looking at his father and his cybernetic hand and realizing that this isn't a loss. This actually makes me closer to my primordial father, Rogel Dorm.

even though Dorn didn't have a cyber game. Yeah, I know. He should have gone hung up with the Ferris Manus Memorial. They're like, oh, same same, right? But anyway, so Helbrecht decides, all right, I'm back now. And he goes specifically to go find Emotech again. And this is a great story because they do. He tracks down Emotech's fleet and they attack and they corner them.

And again, Helbrick teleports on. And this time, Helbrick's. actually puts a beating on Emotech. I don't know if he got a better sword or what he did. They don't explain it. The first time, every time he hit Emotech, Emotech's necrodermas healed. The second time, I guess it didn't. I really have no idea how this worked differently. But anyway. Imotech does tell him that they're one in one. And then smoke bombs, it rolls out.

Yeah, because he really says losing and just goes, he congratulates someone a great fight. And he gives him, you have won this round. But I'm going over here and teleports. away, at which point Helbrecht loses his mind with anger because he does not want to be denied this victory. Well, let's talk about what happens, though. So Helbrecht is super bent out of shape that this just happened. And then he finds out Abidon just destroyed Cania. Also, forces of Gaskell start coming in, and he knows that.

So he's basically losing his mind because he's like, I'm killing him. Let's take, wait a second, I got to go kill Abadon. Hold on a second. Somebody said something about Gaz being over on the west side of town. Where the hell am I going? But also, and to make matters worse, with the rift forming, a bunch of Black Templar Crusades went dark. So he's getting, all these missions coming in at once.

And Hellbrecht is kind of like torn as to where do I go? And luckily for him, the greatest of the Primax arrives, Gilliman. And I'm not kidding, because I really do like Gilliman this much. Gilliman arrives to come to Hellbrock for two reasons. He came to Hellbrook directly in person. First, to ask him to accept the new Primaris Marines. And second, to help him secure the galaxy.

The funny part about this story is that Helbrecht is sitting there to Brad's point. Gaz is back. Emotech just got away. Abadon's back. I have stuff to do. Oh, shit, Gilliman's here. Codex Astardis. Yeah, it's just a weird thing.

following the good existence. Oh, no. And so they meet, and Hellbrecht is expecting Gilman to make a comment about it. And Gilman just kind of looks around the ship and sees way too many space marines and goes, right, anyway, do you want more space marines? Yeah, exactly. I've got bigger space Marines. That was Gilliman's pitch.

Instead of saying, you have too many, he's like, hey, you have a lot, I'd like to give you thousands more. You okay with that? And this is funny because, of course, the flip side is, Gilliman's concern that given how proud and how almost psychotic and fanatic the Black Templars were, that they wouldn't accept these new space marines, Helbrick was like, so more people to do stabbing. I like that. That works for me.

He effectively, he goes, get in the car, idiot. Exactly. We're doing this. The second thing Gilliman does is amazing because Gilliman also says to Helbrick, look, I know you have these people you want to go get. But the Imperium needs you. We've got, and he just basically shows him that the Imperium's effectively on fire. We've got tyrannid invasions, chaos pouring through the rifts, worlds are in rebellion, Necron Tomb Worlds, Drukari raids, and this says to him, look, the Imperium needs you.

We can't control this. He goes, hey, what's a problem is, is the stuff in the red? And he's like, everything's red. He's like, that's kind of where I'm getting at here. I will point out he didn't mention the towel. Just saying, he didn't mention the town. Oh, but then that why? because this is around the same time the Tao event horizon to half their army because they

tried to do warp travel without Gellerfields. And yeah, Hellbrecht actually accepts this and says, you know what, you're right. The Imperium needs me. The Imperium needs us. We will stand with you. We will. And so he does back to back. He takes all the Primaris Marines and does a cool thing with them, by the way. Other legions, when they made Primaris Marines, made their own sections of their chapter that were Primaris Marines. Hellbrecht doesn't. Hellbrook just spreads them out. He basically says, all right, I've got 10,000 space.

All over the place. I've got 10,000 space Marines. I have 1,000 Primaris Marines or more. All right, one in 10, go. And spreads them around, showing a full acceptance of the Primaris Marines. He's the only, this is the only chapter, I believe, except for the ultramarines that do this full bore. Everyone's in.

And the next thing he does is he then grabs a bunch of sword brethren and just says, you're a marshal, you're a marshal, you're a marshal, you're a marshal, you're a marshal, you're a Marshall, Gilliman's got a place for you to go, go, and just sends them out into the galaxy. And they do. The Black Templar in current lore are clawing back parts of the galaxy to save the Imperium. Whoa, whoa. You know, just leave a little bit of information out there. You might want to mention that he also crossed the Maviton himself.

He became a Primaris Marine. Oh, no. And I don't understand. Okay. I have, actually, I like the Primaris line. I think it looks better. I think they're aesthetically better looking and they're easy. to build. Sorry, calling it out. But everyone else has a story of how they became a primaris

Marine. Helbrick just does, which I'm assuming was probably him looking around going, hey, I'm not the tallest person on my ship anymore. Hall, fix that. And they just, you know, very angrily walked into a primaris marion and walked out of the chamber and went, all right, back to the crusade. There's no evidence on it. So, right, that's kind of that for Black Templars, guys. I mean, And there's a lot more because the Black Templars play a massive role in lore. But I think that should be good enough for everyone here to kind of help you understand what the Black Templars are, why they're cool, why the people who love them really do love them and probably should.

So I hope you guys enjoyed that. Next week, we're going to shift away from what I would consider a narrative to more of an informative cast. We're going to talk about space travel in the 41st millennia, how it functions, things like the Imperial Navy, trade routes. the void-borne, et cetera. The goal here is to kind of be somewhat informative. It'll help us set up some of our future stuff we want to do

because the travel around the galaxy is kind of a key part when we start talking about some of the major conflicts that exist and how things move around and et cetera, et cetera. So until then, this has been John Barsati and Bradchester. See you guys next week.