The 40k Lorecast - Episode 95 - The War of the Beast pt4

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

On today’s cast we close out our coverage of the war of the beast. We start with what becomes the final invasion of Ullanor and the slaying of the beast (for real this time). But after that we jump into the post effects of the war of the beast, starting with Vangoich killing all the lords of Terra. After that we talk about the corruption of a space marine chapter and their fall to chaos as a backdrop to the war of the beast. We then close out with how the war of the beast affected the imperial citizens, the organization of the lords of terra, the space marines, and the inquisition. We then close talking about how it affected the orks!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 with me, John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're going to conclude our coverage of the War of the Beast, but more importantly, we're going to cover the effects of the War of the Beast on the Galaxy at large. Pretty big. Yeah, it's mildly influential moment. It's not Horace Heresy, but it's not far.

Actually, what do you think? War of the Beast, Horace Heresy, Fall of Cadia, which is the most influential. One, two, three. Heresy's one. Horacee is still one. The War of the Beast is bigger than Fallacian. Okay, there we go. It just...

Because it's structured the Imperium again. That's true. You know what I mean? We had two back-to-back restructuring of how the Imperium works. That's fair. Because Fallacadia is like, and chaos. I'm sorry. Well, Fallacias is a big deal, but it's just part of the war.

It's a super big part of the war, but it doesn't functionally structure. It doesn't have structural changes to how the Imperium actually works. That's fair. Because as always, the 40K lore cast, the weekly show, focus on the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday. at 7 p.m. Please follow and comment in the cast if you like what we're doing. If you don't, don't. I mean, that's fine. I appreciate it. But if you do like what we're doing, it really does help our algorithm out a lot and pushes out to more listeners. It's a massive thank you, by the way.

I've been telling you everyone to do this for, you know, what to be 90-something episodes. And I forgot to say, hey, guys, thank you for making us the number one lore cast on Warhammer. We've been, we've been that, by the way, for a long time. And I just kept forgetting the thank you all. So there we go. Thanks. It really is your guys' comments and your follows. It was moved us up the charts. Only took us a year to tell you thanks. Good job, guys. You know, it's... When I say guys, I mean this guy. Yeah, there it is. If you like the cast, you want to hear more about Brad. I click on the show notes. You can find our YouTube page with the 40K lore cast. There, you'll find old versions of the show converted to imagery with subtitles, our live Q&A sessions, and now our two other

shows, the history of 40K with myself, Brad, and a guest, and two old men in their handler. with Brad, Brian Horton, and David Zuber talking more competitive 40K. I'm not welcome in those conversations because Brad knows what I do in competitive situations of Warhammer. Makes me hang out. Yeah. In the show notes, you'll also find a link to our Patreon. Thank you to everyone who's contributed already. I hope the improvements you're seeing in this show and now our expansion to YouTube have made it feel worth it.

For those of you who want to support us and get our show ad-free, just go to Patreon. and for $4.99 per month, U.S. dollars, or 0.014 Cougarans a month. All right, throwing it out there. It's available. Lastly, as always, our Discord, linked in the show notes. If you like this show and you like what we're doing and you want to interact more about it or you have questions and you want to just find more like-minded individuals, come on in, join our Discord.

Lur, literature, video games, gameplay, everything is all there. And massive thank you to the moderators because they're, doing it a hell of a job, keeping it organized and keeping it easy to navigate. But with that, and keeping it not on fire. Not yet. All right, let's get to the recap. So that's what, let's get the meat and potatoes a show. So three episodes, here we are. Humanity, despite having no prime marks left, the emperor entombed in the golden throne and being run by the most feckless group of individuals, the Lords of Terra, was doing great. It was all prospering and growing, all thanks to Rabute Giliman. It was, deal.

You got very fancy on that, full name. There we go. Because his first name, I wanted to call him Robert every time I see it for no good reason. And that's said by someone with a hard-to-pronounce last name. So it's shame. Anyway, massive orc invasion occurs, flips all of this on its head. The orc invasion pushes all the way to literally the skies above Terra, where the Imperium is saved by the combined actions of the Imperial Fist's successor chapters, the Inquisition, and the Assassins. From there, they discovered the source of the...

invasion is the planet Ulinor, which was the site of the last battle of the Great Crusade, in which the Ork Menace was thought to be put down for good by Horace, the Primarks, even the emberra. It was not. Later on, the Primark Vulcan reappears in the galaxy and helps lead the force of Ulnar to destroy the orc leader of the beast. After taking catastrophic losses, including Vulcan dying, to kill the beast, they think they've won.

Upon returning to terror, they discover they have not. and they have to go back again. The second time they go back with the new elite space marine force of the Death Watch and a new unique weapon, using the pariah powers the Sisters of Silence to create

an anti-Wa weapon. It works, except that it totally doesn't. Well, no, it does work. It does work. And then they discover that there's more than one beast, in which case, Corland, the Lord Commander of the Imperium, dies in this moment, and the Imperium.

has to retreat again back to Terra. So that's where we are. So once again, we're starting an episode back on Terra. I swear to God, if you say Prime Work again, though, we're ending this. Prime work's going to come up later in the cast, deal with it. I already know. I know. Spoiler alert for me. I've read it. Brad has read the notes.

Brad does. We do our homework for this cast after all. All right. So once again, we're back on Terra. The Imperial forces have come back with her tail kind of between their leg. after an invasion of O'Lonore that did not go to plan. This time around, though, it's way worse. The Lords of Terra are effectively collapsing on themselves. They're turning into anarchy because none of them knew how to lead in any way. Well, let's pause on this because for most of the time, before they realized how bad it was,

the Lords of Terror are scheming against each other. Yes. Trying to chop each other at the knees. We didn't talk about this enough in the last. last episode, even during this, they kind of start still try to position themselves to come out as the big gain. Like, my opponents are going to lose this much. They're still doing that to a lesser extent.

It's because to your defense, they are useless. And the problem with the Lords of Terra is that they assume every time these invasions go out to Ulnar, that it's going to be a massive success and that the imperial forces are coming back with the problem solved. and they're all scheming to find ways to make it so that when that praise begins flowing, it flows to them. And then what happens is they come back saying, oh, yeah, we went all over to Ulnar. We did not succeed.

And these guys who've been sitting there saying they've got the parade ready to go. What is the cartoon where they're tamping down the parade? It's probably. It's one of the Bugs Bunny ones. I was thinking it was the Despicable Mees where the Minions are ready to go. No, not yet. That's kind of. They also have that one to speakable Meets.

But that's what it feels like where they're like, oh, yeah, I am the greatest. Oh, no, I actually had nothing to do with this. And that combo, it begins to just descend the entire Imperium down, because these are, like, or not the leaders of the Imperium. Things then get worse, though, because there's now a full court press put on the Imperium by the New Beast. Systems all across Segmentum Solar come under brutal assault by orc forces. Billions, trillions, quadillions of orcs are now descending.

into the sector. And the Lords of Terra make all of this worse. They don't know how to respond. And so the head of the Imperial Navy successfully gets the entire solar naval fleet destroyed by misdeploying it and placing it right in the middle of multiple org assaults. Now, these guys are so bad. Luckily, the space marines had their own ideas. So after Corlin's death, the chapter master of the. Fist's exemplar because surprise, surprise, the fist's exemplar is the one who's going to step up. Anyway, his name is Maximus Thane. I just wanted to sound, I do you're going to say this.

I love it. This is like something I would choose as one of my main characters. You would. This is exactly, you know what? That's right. This is exactly, I'm not going to like, I play almost every RPG I have. When I have to name a character, he's named Bob. Like I'm saying 99% of the time, I name it Bob.

I name it Bob, or if I'm running it as a female character, I'll run it as Bobette. I think the last of my beat, Fallout 4, it was a woman named Bob. It was, no, it was some, I made some female version of Bob. So yeah, but you would go Maximus Thane. Maximus Thane. God. It's so weird about your Napoleon complex. Anyway.

I googled it early. I said, this is how I'm living my life. All right. I'm going to make me be in short of everyone else's problem. Accurate. Well, everyone else except for the architects who have to design doorways. They love you. It's like, yeah.

This building has a low ceiling. It does? Cool. I didn't notice. It's nice. I can change a light bulb without needing a ladder. Let's talk about why Maximus was pretty boss. Yeah, so Maximus Thane is a very, he's awesome.

So Maximus Thane, sits down and he reviews the actions. He looks back and says, okay, what did we do? And more importantly, what went wrong? And he realized the number one mistake Coralyn made was working with the Lords of Terror. He just immediately goes, yeah, they're useless and decides, I want nothing to do with them. And I'm not even going to involve the main thing I'm going to do. And so what he-

That's thing that he did to start. Yeah. And he sees that, like, when he looks over immediately and realizes that they're not just incompetent, but they're actively impeding the success of the Imperium. Yeah. Don't get them involved. They're actually a negative. I'd rather play a man down than have you in. Yeah.

So what he does, the first thing he does is, what Maximus Dayn realizes that this is going to have to be a space marine problem. And I will say if you're reading 40K books, whenever the space marines decides something's a space marine problem, it means this time it's going to work. Just 100% of that. So Thain begins his actions. The first thing he does is he has to do something about the fact that there are no more imperial fists.

With Corlin dying, Corland was the last imperial fist in the galaxy. So technically they are an extinct species. In the time since Artemendum, which is when all the imperial fists died in our first cast, and the second invasion of Ulnar, which was in our last cast, there have been no new imperial fists created, not even a neophyte. So he orders all successor chapters of the Fist to provide battle brothers for their progenity, for their progeny Legion. And so soon a thousand space marines are assembled and they all have their armor repainted yellow and black. Thane then leaves himself as chaptermaster of the fist exemplar and takes up the title of chaptermaster of the imperial fists.

And the next move. It's also pretty cool. Well, I like what he does. I like and hate what he does. because they parade out to just give a big middle finger of the Lords of Terra. Necessary? Probably not. But after that... It was a good move because what he did was that the imperial... There's an irony to this.

So it'll get to some of the irony later. But the imperial fists had been since the end of the heresy. They've been the defenders of terror. And so what he did was he paraded himself and his new fists all through terror, showing we are here. And what this did was it helped halt the anarchy that was descending all throughout Terra and the system because the people looked up and said, oh, our protectors are actually still here. However, the Lords of Terra took it a very different way. And they recognized, yeah. And I took offense to that. Yes. But I think the bigger thing that he did, this was,

you might say that for the populace, this is a big deal because it did quell a lot of things. Yeah. But the bigger thing that he immediately did, and I like this quite a bit, because looking through the actions of everything that's happened so far, he immediately picks up on the fact which everyone should, because Marines are very unbelievably intelligent. He goes, these are the people that I can work with. He goes, Van Gorovich, Fabricator Kubik, Wyneland, the Sisters of Silence, Veritas. They basically goes, these are all the people that don't have their heads and their butts, and we can get stuff done and not only sets up alliances with them, but cuts everybody out, doesn't even let them know what he's doing anymore.

Like, you can't mess this up if I don't let you know we're doing anything. Yeah. And then he actually does even better. He then uses them, namely the Inquisitors between, it's, we even wasn't as powerful. It's point, but Veritas still very powerful. And Kubik and Van Gorich, obviously, to go influence the other Lords of Terror whose help he needs. namely the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Guard. So if they just go to,

the Vangorican team go to them and say, hey, we're going back to Ulanor. And by we, I mean you and all your forces. Let's go. And they head out. And this timing is critical because the orcs, the thing does this pretty quick. It is getting close.

The invasion towards Terra is happening. The orcs are pushing and they're pushing. What's funny about this, little side story that happens during this is during one of the raids where the orcs are pushing into the segmentum solar, the head of the ecclesiarchy was on a planet that got overrun. And as he was dying, he then sends out a Vox message to the entire Imperium saying, the orcs are actually our saviors. And as a result, a bunch of worlds who then report to the ecclesiarchy decide, oh, we shouldn't

resist the orcs, we should embrace the orcs. The orcs then took their sticks and murdered everyone on those planets. So, do not run away. We are your friends. But this becomes, this is why Thane has having to move so fast, because stuff like that's happening. We are seeing, it's not just like the resistance of humanity was starting to break, which is, I mean, that's the game. So for the third invasion, Thane again decides to take tried and true tactics and improve them. This time, as we said in the last cast, the GW likes throwing things at things. That's a key part of Black Library and Codex reading.

And the last time, they threw Darylix spacecraft. That worked okay. But this time, they decided to step it up, and they decide to use the architect, the orchrics against them. Big old rocks. Yes. Because this time, I'm not, basically, I'm not getting caught in a trap. So he grabs asteroids and begins firing asteroids at Ollonore, which I assume was similar to the opening of Starship Troopers, right? And they're watching the expanse. I'm going to go with

Starship Troopers. One of them had Denise Richards in it. The other one didn't. I mean, yes. Calling it out. Anyway, like that movie came out when I was in that height of puberty. Well, let's talk about the apparently to beat the orcs. You got to think like to work because they start throwing all these asteroids in, but one is a super sneaky asteroid. Yeah, so this was funny. So the space marines are dropping these asteroids all over Ulinar. It's working. The shield has fallen.

There are now asteroids crashing in a settlement. And then this one kind of shiny asteroid lands right outside of Gorka Grad, and it's not a real asteroid. Surprise, out pop all the space marines, because they turned it into their own. own attack moon. And it does. It actually wrecks the city. And these guys all come rushing out of it, drop pod. Because to be fair, space marines do love a good drop pot assault. I mean, the rules having a, every time the rules let us have it, it totally breaks the game, makes it incredibly unfunned and unplayable. But in the lore, it's awesome. Oh, no, the plot. Also, let's talk about something that they also brought, which for two, three books at this point in time, they just forgot existed.

man, we're in a fight for our lives, a fight for the state, the state of the imperium. Oh, yeah, we should probably bring the largest spaceship that we have. The phalanx comes back. Where was this for the longest time? I don't know. Getting detailed. They were getting, you're right, because they put some new rims on it. When the Orcahastak movement is above terror, the phalanxes, you're right, getting a paint job. So anyway, yeah, so they decide this time to bring the Death Star. Maybe that'll help. And they just drop it right in orbit. And that helps, obviously.

But now they're on Ulanor and the fists are making their determined run. This is it. We're going to end the orcs once and for all. You know, it's next shot working. Thane and basically every named character from every single book up into this point is there. And I mean that. Veritas is there. Wienand is there.

Kubik is there. Every one that they've ever mentioned who hasn't died in a prior book, is in this. And it's like a hundred pages of what we call bolter porn. If you guys don't know what that is, that just means it's whatever GW just wants to write about a space marine jumping over a rock, firing a bolter into something and then doing a second somersault into kicking something. It's just, it's not badly written. If you're into it, it's awesome. But it's effectively when I read it, it makes me think of Batman from the 60s where it's every time a space marine does some. Yeah, kapow, boom. Where, although I guess to be fair, there's no scene.

where the space marines have a surf competition against the joker. It's not that bad. Bat shark repellent. Oh, yeah, bat shark repellent. That show is terrible. Anyway, who... This is effectively the defense of the White City from Return of the Kings. Everybody that is anybody is here.

Yeah. And ready to rock also. To their credit, they are kicking the crap out of everybody during this fight. They are. And they in his forces. this is the one that goes well because in traditional writing, like the third time's the charm. So, famous forces their drive right to the heart of Gorkagrod, and thanks to two prior visits, they knew exactly where they needed to go.

So that's pretty helpful. But in order to perform their anti-Wa trick, they had to combine some captured orccykers with pariah powers of the Sisters of Silence. Not surprising, as the battle progresses, the orc cykers start dying until they reach the inner sanctum with only one orc-s-sika remaining because, ooh, drama. Anyway. Upon arriving at the heart of the temple, though, they do come face-to-face with a great beast again.

Great beast again. Thane and crew engage it in combat, but Thane knows he can't kill it. There's no scenario that even he, who's, I mean, actually, to be fair, I say even he, he's a space marine. He's nine feet tall, maybe, probably closer to eight. he's big but he's fighting a 30 foot tall orc in an armor this isn't going to go well whoa whoa whoa my friend mega armor so at selvin short they're just fighting to buy time and blah blah blah blah dodge and attack blah blah blah blah blah jump away blah blah blah grenade and all

is while the sisters perform the maneuver and they pull it off this time because of course they do the sisters pull off the maneuver and this anti wa energy flows right back through the orcs. It's so powerful that the beast's head explodes. Sorry, I just, in my mind, it's hard for me not to go to have the beast realize. Am I being kinded right now? Yes. So you guys could do something else. Yeah.

And so this time, though, the beast is dead for good. The Imperium is still in danger because unlike Return of the Jedi, the orcs didn't just shrug their shoulders and go home. Hey, this is a really weird, by the way. And Star Wars, where the emperor dies and they're like, all right, I guess this, we don't need the fleet. Although, I guess, technically, episode seven proves that, yeah, they did figure that out. Yeah, it's still one of my favorites, a family guy did it with the, well, we just killed them. We still have a number of five to one.

No, you don't understand. We lost the emperors. The death turns up. But we have so many ships. I already told you. We lost. I guess. Luckily, the Orkston subscribed to that method.

And so while they lost the beast and a lot of the power going through them, they still do rampage throughout the galaxy. A lot of them do end up disappearing from Ulanor, though. I should mention that as soon as the beast goes, you do see a fracturing of forces and all the battles going on around the galaxy because the beast was using his psychic power to drive them forward. And so orcs, as we've said before, tend to fight in large packs. And so if orcs are findings of outnumbered or if it's not really a fight they care about, they'll just leave. And so that tends to happen, like segmentum solar, for example, where the defenses are really, really strong. They kind of bail, for lack of a better phrase. The funny thing about this is, yes, they cut off the head of the snake.

Things are going good for the Imperium, but also they're not because they were being pushed forward. They were fighting in a way that was, you can understand, you know, what they were, they had a goal they were trying to go. after the Beast is dead, the orcs just keep rampaging, but rampaging, roll the dice and see where it goes kind of way. And it's actually a little bit harder for the forces of the Imperium to deal with because they're just now all over the place. Are they going to destroy the Imperium? No, but they're pretty, they're not great for the Imperium,

and they're having a hard time rooting them out, actually. Yeah, and so this becomes Thane's new job. With the Beast slain, Thane and his forces went back to Terrible. And the first thing they organize is a mass of crusades, plural. Because remember, these are fists they crusade to clear out the orc infestations all around the galaxy. Because as we were just saying, thousands of systems are actively fighting the orcs. And they're fighting them larger with imperial forces like planetary defense forces. There might be a guard regiment here and there.

But this is not suitable for pushing back on orcs, who are two to three times the size of an average man. And let's also talk about this. because of all the things that they were actively trying to do, the beast had them hitting the logistic chains. Yes. Agro worlds, hive world, anybody that's wrecking the chain of feeding the empire is a big thing that they're doing right now. So I got my big thing out early too.

So, but they are all in places they need them not to be. Yeah. So it's very, again, and there are a lot of them. So they have to do multiple crusades and multiple sectors to figure out how we get this back and how we stop this from. Because as they can look at, what I don't want is the 67th Beast to show up or Beast Jr. to show up. They need to clear this out while they can before it becomes a bigger problem. Exactly.

Because the bigger, the orc conflict gets, the more orcs it get there, the more powerful it becomes. You could run through the segment. In the Brad's point, they're in really not great spots. for the Imperium. But the orc threat is, of course, the least of the problems for Thain. That is once again about to be the Lords of Terra. He sucks so much.

So Thane's first action upon getting back, seeing what he has to do, is to increase the size of space marines. In almost 2,000 years since the end of the Horace heresy, the Space Marine legions have really spread across the galaxy, kind of doing their own thing.

It's like they basically, they're all hipsters. They're in their little section. They've got, really good coffee, really good avocado toast, but we really haven't, they're not part of society at large. They're just doing their own thing.

I just like making these references because it bothers Brad massively what I do it. Avocado toast. It's the Space Wolves. The Space Wolves are just mastering avocado toast at this point. We're at a Golden Girls T-shirt over top of your power. Which I'm going to go ahead and call it out.

It's of the things hipsters are responsible for. Avocado toast, I like the least. It's not that good. It's fine. But what they've done with coffee, beer, whiskey, like distilleries, go hipsters go. Anyway. So while it's a random tangent from John, while these space marine chapters have been keeping kind of tacit contact with one another, they're effectively just a horde of independent chapters doing their own thing.

And Thane realizes that after the events of Ulanor, the Imperium needs the space marines more than ever. So he calls for a new space marine founding to begin, and hundreds of new chapters are formed as gene seed stocks are released. And this leads to almost an exponential growth of the number of space Marines in the galaxy. The idea, Thane's idea was I'm going to rim the galaxy, the Imperium, the realm of the Imperium with space marines. And this way, there will never be another War of the Beast. And anything that does come up, we can snuff it out quickly

because we're not going to be relying on the stupid Lords of Terror. We're going to do it ourselves. The things that's also, he made it so that they were doing more joint ventures. Because I mean, I talked a little bit about last episode, a lot of the Marine chapters were just kind of yolo soloing it all the time. They were just

only doing their thing. Death Watch helps with this a lot. We did go back to 70-71 because they start putting beacons all up over the entire galaxy to get rapid response teams. It does, but the more important is to what, it's like what Brad was just saying, the individual chapters might talk to each other, but the problem with space marines is that if you've got a chapter, it's at most 1,000 Marines, but some of them might only be a couple hundred, which actually is not enough to stop an orc what's going to be coming later.

They're going to run over instantly. So having more of them and in constant communication means they can have more joint attacks, more joint forces. And this timing's really fortuitous because... Oh, yeah. I want to jump all over this. Because, well, you're like, why would it be fortuitous that we just got run over and so many things got killed? And, oh, yeah, they made it to soul twice. Why this is such a huge, great thing for them is they realize the weakness of the defenses

of the Imperium. They realize the weaknesses of the way we can defend it. across the galaxy. We were very slow to react. And why this is our fortuitous is because this is thousands of years before the necrons or the Ternids. Chaos had not made their big pushes yet. At this point in time, chaos hadn't been seen in forever. So this is, it was early enough to change the entire way that we defend, patrol, and

respond to threats to the Imperium. and also we realize that if you see a Lord of Terry, you should just punch him in the throat and move on with your life. What? You're so right on the timing being so fortuitous because if this was, hell, if this was modern day 40K, well, the game would be over because everything's dead

because they have the worst response. We didn't have enough Marines. We didn't have enough Marines available to inner, help, like do inner chapter support. Support, sorry. But yeah, this is such a big deal because if this was any other, if this was even 2,000 years later, when we started getting Abidon's big pushes, we didn't want to run through them. The orcs, the War of the Beast is massive, but it's still orcs. It's not, the orcs weren't as organized. I mean, let's really talk about this because it's worked still a few thousand years, actually many thousands of years, like seven thousand years, I think at this point before the necrons and tyrantids emerge. But chaos is lurking. They're about. There's already been one Black Crusade. That was the one that killed Sigismund, but there's a much bigger one coming.

And because of this, the next time when chaos begins their incursion, we're also about to see the Eldar reappear. As they go to do this, there are literally tens of thousands more space marines than there would have been otherwise. Because the Imperium was in... Did you just beat me to literally? Yeah, we can't have you have all the literallys. So the...

Now the next... That is literally not true. So the next thing that Thane does is actually ironic because of earlier. He then decides that the imperial fists are no longer going to be the defense force of terror. After parading across Thera saying, hey, we're here to be your defense force again. They went, actually, no, we're not, we're leaving. And this doesn't surprise me because Stain wasn't an imperial fist. He was a fist exemplar.

And so he came from one of the chapters that was on Constant Crusade. So he might have just gotten bored. I don't know what it is, but as the new leader of the imperial fists, He decided his legacy is not to stand back, but to go forward and conquer the galaxy for humanity. So he declares that the fists are no longer going to garrison the soul and would instead join the rest of their brothers in taming the stars for humanity. And this 100% comes back to bite him in the ass. What?

Because let's talk about the fact that marines are fantastic conquerors. And then 11 seconds later, they're like, what are you going to do to afford to fire? this and they're like, what? Why are you going to bring up old shit? Yeah. I'm going to the next fight. Yeah. So, and Balthow, to his credit, Thain figures that out because he says, look, the space Marines are going to conquer the stars, but we're going to kind of afterwards leave. And I get it. If you're a super soldier wearing super armor, you don't want to sit there and have build a farm. You know what I mean? Someone else can do that thing after we're gone. And so Thane just directs the Imperial Guard, the Navy, the administraud, and the merchant fleets and more to go

and effectively follow us. I'm going out, we're going to go conquer the stars, and then after we kind of jack these planets up, we need you guys to fix them and make them habitable. However, the last thing he does is he realizes that someone back on Seoul, actually back on Terra, more specifically, has to follow through on all the stuff he wants done. And he looks around at all the people and says to himself,

Ah, I have the perfect person. Van Gorich, the head of the assassins. I'm going to ask. Level headed, good to go, probably, you're really good at building and resupplying. Yeah. So he leaves the head of the assassins with a very specific command. It is, here are the things I need done.

Make sure the Lords of Tara do it. That's it. That's all he tells him. He leaves. And Van Gorich steps into this new role and begins trying to figure out what's the best way for me to do, what's best for the Imperium. And in Van Gogor's defense,

he really was in the onset, very aligned with what Thane wanted and agreed with Thain. We'll be right back after a quick break. He begins, though, pretty quickly coming to the conclusion that the Lords of Terror are irredeemable. He is a true spy master.

He figures out what everyone's up to and discovers it's all a lot worse than he thought, especially Kubik. Because all the other Lords of Terror, I just try to enrich themselves. They're like, oh, cool, that war's over. I like to go be very wealthy now.

I'm going to go ahead and do that, maybe kill some rivals. But the one he can't figure out is Kubik, who's the head of the admec. Kubic has been kind of weird this whole time because he supports them on other engagements, but he just keeps to himself, and Van Gorich couldn't quite figure out

what he was up to. But with the War of the Beast finally concluded, Van Gorich doesn't have to also work about org invasions and is able to really dive more deeply into this and discovers the admec are a nightmare sea for him. Kubik. It's so many mad scientist laboratories. Yes.

Going on with absolutely no care for anything. So what Van Gogorges discovers is that after the defeat of the beast at Ulunur, Thane ordered that Ulinar be exterminatist. It had to be, and the admec agreed to do it. And what the admec agreed to do was use the new teleportation technology to warp Ullinor into a sun. Because Thane's viewpoint, and he's correct, is it even, we already scoured the surface of Ullano, the emperor, and the emperor did that with Horace. And the orcs still came back there. This planet needs not exist anymore.

So the planet has disappeared. Air quotes. Air quotes, yeah. Well, no, no. The planet did disappear. It did not go into a sun. Cubic and the Admec, after the failings of the attack moon sitting above Terra, figure out how to teleport something.

And they decide that they need more time to pull apart all the Ork technology. And they teleport Ullanor to a system in the upper right corner of Segmentum Solar. Because Admec going to Admec. Yep. And they needed. and this way, their idea was, we'll put it in an unsettled system. No one will know, and then we'll just go there,

and we get it all the time in the world to take apart all the technology. The problem with the admec and everybody else is, no one really knows what everybody else is up to. The reason this system hadn't been settled by humanity was not that there was something wrong with it. It was in the queue. And in fact, there were colony ships

already heading to this system. Which kind of noticed a planet, showing up. They got there and there was this perfect planet there. So Kubik and the abic did actually have enough time to rip all the technology out of it, but the human settlers do arrive, not that much a few hundred years later and fully colonized Ulinar. Getting back to what that one's going to be called in a little bit. Van Goguric sees this treachery. It's still alien plant. What's it? What's 486? LV40s. LV40s. LV40s. 86. Van Gorgic, disguised. covers this whole thing and loses his mind. But he decides he has to act, not just against

Kubik, but against all of them. I was to say, he doesn't say I'm going to act against Kubik. He goes, hey, man, have you ever seen The Godfather? Because I think what I'm going to do is take care of everyone. Who's everyone? I said everyone. Yeah, this is literally, whoever wrote this had just watched The Godfather or just it was their favorite movie because it's the exact same scene. Immediately throughout all of terror, every single Lord of Terror either is dies or capitulates to what's about to happen. And Coombe actually, no, he did.

That's right. No, that's not true. He did kill all of them. That's right. They all of them. Yes, some of them died. Some of them he put assassins who then took their plays like Weekend and Bernie style. Right.

Yeah. He weakened at Bernie. They're all dead. Yeah. I was like, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, no, everyone dies. It's just a couple of them. They put the Mission Impossible face on and pretend that they were in. No, we're not doing Mission Impossible.

We're doing Weekend at Bernies. We're both old enough. We're doing Weekend at Bernies. They both, come on. Like, no, I'm not giving it. This is way more fun. So every one of these assassinations goes off without a hitch except for Kubick. Because Kubick, because of where he is and him being also the head of the ad makes it much harder.

So Kubik basically is tracked down, though, by Van Gogorik and a few assassins. Van Gogurik tells Kubik to hand over all of the knowledge to him, the master of the assassins. He gives him a choice, and he says to him, if you don't give your information to me, I'm going to infect you with a virus that's going to spread to all of the admec, and it's going to effectively destroy the admec. If you do, I'll just kill you and you'll be okay. afterwards. Kubik decides, nope, and just kills himself right then and there before anyone can act. The good news for the admec is this prevents Van Gogh from getting control of the admec because his

support it takes over. The bad news is he's the only one that really knows the true fate of Ulanor at this stage. And so it's lost to the Imperium that, hey, Ulanor is actually sitting in segmentum solar. And we'll cover that in a little bit about how that settlement goes. But the funnier part about this is as Van Gogorix doing all this, his thing's aware of it. Thane and the Inquisition are both. I would say, and the Inquisition.

Yeah, are both well aware that the head of the assassins just murdered every single Lord of Terra and are now weakened at Bernie a bunch of them. But in classic Imperium fashion, they looked at it and said, well, what's Van Goguric up to? And well, he's doing everything you told him to do. And in fact, we're running more efficiently than we were before. And everyone went, I really feel that this actually sets the table for how the Imperium now works for the last 9,000 years, which is you can do crazy shit as long as you meet all quotas and don't ruffle any feathers. You're like, is that guy supposed to be in charge? No.

Are all the buses running on time or all the shipments getting there? Yeah. Whatever. Net positive. However, over time, and they don't really explain why this happens, by the way, it just does. Van Gogorik's mind starts to go. And he starts to become very paranoid, very jealous. And his assassins stop going after people who are resisting the goals of the Imperium.

and they're just getting anyone who, Van Gogor, you know, I think this was meant to be more like Stalin is I think who they were trying to make this after. Is it Stalin took power at the death of Lenin? And then started erasing people from actual portraits, yes. Which, by the way, if you've seen the movie Death of Stalin, go watch it, it's quite funny. It's very, very, very well.

Anytime Steve Bouchemi is in a movie about the worst part of Russian history, it's probably going to be good. The part where they talk about the picture is so good. He's like, there was another dude in that picture. No, he wasn't. No, there wasn't. No, there wasn't. Movies really good.

But anyway, this continues unabated until Thane as Imperial Fists return back to the system. And when they get back to the soul system, they discover that the Imperium has shifted. What was originally Van Gogoric moving and actually improving anything, it's now moving back towards disarray. And so Thane demands Van Gogorich account for all of his actions. affect what is going on here. And Van Gorich basically goes and runs away. And he runs to the Eversort Temple that's in the North Pole, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, because GW writing, of course, it would be in the North Pole.

Bannislaus, man. And Thane has to go do something about it because he did start this. Also, this is some crazy kill-bill stuff because in the writing, everyone dies. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan. So this one, all power through this. So the imperial fist with Thane invade the Eversore temple. And again, Eversores are not a fun fight. At the end of this, every single space marine except for Thane is dead.

Every Eversore, with the exception of course, Isad Wire is dead, and Van Gorg. So Thane is standing in front of Van Gorg and he has the greatest assassin in history to his side. And then E said that this moment basically breaks the shackles of control that Vangorik had. Overman says, peace out and leaves. And Thane shoots Vangorik dead. Yep. It's a terrible writing. I'm just going to say it.

But this does effectively now. That is, from the book's standpoint, the end of the War of the Beast. However, a cooler stuff happens after the War of the Beast. Yeah. That's because you had all of these proxies. which were just Vangoris's fingermen, basically all his puppets, are all there. And Thane has to take care of all this. And, well, Thane can't.

Well, Thane can't. That becomes a problem. So as we just said, Thane arrived back on Terra, and everyone he arrived with is dead. So it's just him. And now he's still has. He's killed Vangoric. But the Lords of Terra, who are the puppets of Vangoric, are all still very much so there. So Thane has to get out of town quickly before they murder him because he would have gotten

murder. They could have sent the assassins after him. He would have died. And... Well, it's only assassins. They're out there, too. Yeah. So you still do have... You're like, if this is supposed to be Ted, but it's actually in a sense. Yeah. So all the Eversors are gone, but that still means the vindicaries. We still have Venoms at this point. Caliqsi. They're all there. The Caledus, the face changers were all there. Yeah. So he bails, and while he's gone, for the next almost 20 years, Terra falls into anarchy. It's a complete mass. All the Lords of Terra, which begin infighting.

it's getting worse and worse. It's actually saved by the ultramarines because who else would do it, by the way? Of course it's the ultramarines. Also, they go into full cleanup mode of... This part's awesome. So the ultramarines show up with effectively every single successor chapter, which is now the effect of a full legion arrives in orbit above Terra. And they just say, hey, all of you are going to...

stop infighting, or I'm going to personally declare you as heretics, and we're going to invade and slaughter you. And the backstabbing stops. With a quickness. Pretty sudden, they all go, okay, I'm going to go ahead and leave now, if that's okay with you, maybe. And new lords of terror and a new council of terror are elected. At the same time, I should point out, the custodes did nothing. Absolutely nothing. This whole time, the custodes have also been on Terra, every now and then lifting up a blind,

looking out the window and going, they're not touched at the temple, and put the blind back down, and went back to Garden the Temple. This is finally a really big thing on this, though. Yes. Actually, this might be the biggest thing that came out of them is when they reform the council,

they make a spot for the customs. Exactly. Which is gigantic. because, oh yeah, remember the fact that soul's supposed to be this unassailable? No one could come even close to Tara. Well, people have been just showing up on Terra. And they effectively said, hey, custodes, it's not just the palace that you have to protect. Everything about the soul system.

I got to caveat this a little bit. So let's go with a positive. And we'll get the negative. The positive is, yes, they add a seat on the Lords of Tara for the custodes, which means the custodes, who, by the way, are smarter than space marines. So now we do have someone on the Council of Terra who is genius. The only thing smarter than a custod is a primark. And one of those primarks is Angron. But you do have to me to Angron. One of those primarks is more terrian, who I love. But this in theory would then involves the custodes in the defense

of Terra and makes it better. However, I do have to foreshy a little bit. When Goge rises to power, the custodes have gone back to hiding and doing absolutely nothing. This is a good idea, though. You get to modern 40K, which does have the custodos taking an active role in the defense. Right, but that's still post-sisters of battle. That's what I'm saying. It's like, it's a weird writing mechanic because we have this story where the custodes rejoin the lords of Terra. I was like, the custodes join the lords of terror. Oh, cool. So the custodes are involved. Yeah, but nah. They don't make a lot of meetings.

Yeah, I'm going to throw up to one of my favorite sayings from Australia. Yeah, no, yeah. That's kind of what happens here. But that's not the only effect of the War of the Beast. The next one is more on what it proved, which is the Lords of Terra could not be trusted. Because they are a pile of proof. Yes. And each Lords of Terra then actually goes the wrong way.

here and begin to do an even bigger job of solidifying their power. Because after seeing what happened with Van Gorich, they begin to actually work even more to insulate themselves and protect themselves because they don't want to get murdered by the head of the assassins again. So they then start scheming to protect themselves even better than before, which is kind of how Goge ends up rising the power much later. It's because of this type of insulation. that happens amongst Lords of Terra, they're no longer working with each other at all. So I would actually argue that post this, the imperial leadership is more fractured than it was even before.

I agree with that because we actually continue to get that. This is why I think it has such rippling effect, because this is how we get each branch of the Imperium being their own thing. And the only thing that even keeps them together is the unbelievable layers of bureaucracy that form around keeping these different branches even connected at all. Exactly. So from there, I want to talk about the effects on the space marines. There's a couple that come out of this, one of which we haven't touched on it all.

So you guys can get a fun, long story told short. So we'll start off with, obviously, the new Legion of the Death Watch. The creation of the Death Watch is a massive boon for the Space Marine factions because we covered it as we covered in those episodes. First off, it takes a ton of responsibility and logistical challenges away from the Space Marine chapters. because they're broken up by the second founding. They were still designed as a catch-all. Every space-marine chapter was meant to be kind of self-sufficient. They can take on all-comers, whereas the Death Watch were specific.

They were made specifically to handle Zeno threats and specifically made to do small incursions. This is something that the Space Marines couldn't do. Also, I would argue, and we see this in the game, Space Marine, too. The effect of serving the Death Watch, significantly improves the space marines. They become better soldiers because they begin cross-training. They get better knowledge.

The Death Watch makes the Space Marines better. Yeah, and that's a huge thing, the way the Space Marines operate now, because every time they get a Death Watch back, they are required to just, they expect them to give out. As soon as Billy gets back from the Death Watch, you're supposed to be giving all of that new knowledge that knows new tactics, the new weaponry, the new whatever into your...

Well, not all the new weaponry. Don't forget some of it. Sorry. It's a big... My bad. Not all of the weapon. You're talking to your... The Inquisitor or your chaplain.

You're like, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen any of this. But, but yeah, all the tactics and the things that they're supposed to give... It makes the chapter stronger. It makes... And they keep doing that. And they keep giving their best of the best back. And then when they come back, they, again, rising tides, raises all ships.

So the Marines actually... just become a better fighting forces just by having this. Another big one that happens is the increase in the size, sorry, the increase in the number of space marines. Thane orders this new founding. And whereas the prior foundings had expanded the other chapters, the fourth founding really wasn't as much an expansion of chapters. It did exist.

But the biggest piece that happened was kind of a refilling of the troop numbers. Because as the relative piece had spread throughout the galaxy that happened right before the War of the Beast. There wasn't, the recruitment levels weren't as aggressive. What you saw, as we've talked about in a lot of our space marine casts, the space marines would only choose a few people to become, to be allowed through the process. And I would argue at times, looking at you, space wolves, they became a little bit too selective. And they would only take the absolute perfect and best.

And what was happening was that resulted in their number is not really increasing. Between Stain's direction, but also just, just the knowledge that hit all of the chapters of what happened to War of the Beast, it became more apparent that they needed numbers. And so the size of the Space Marines went up. And this is also because with the War of the Beast, this is the first time Humanities fought something that could really wreck a regular human. They realized, hey, we need more super soldiers.

The Imperial Navy and the Imperial Guard just will not be able to handle some of these things. Or if they do, we're going to lose millions of them at a time. And this poses, and this timing, is really good because in less than 50 years. So the War of the Beast ends right about 550 of M32. Abidon's almost 632. Yeah. So yeah, right there.

So within 50 years, Abadon launches the Second Black Crusade, which would have honestly wrecked the Imperium if the War of the Beast hadn't happened. 100%. But they were not ready for it. We were infighting. We were actively trying to stop each other to get personal gain for sure. Now, one side story that occurs in all the War of the Beast, and people who've read the books,

they've probably been upset that we haven't covered it. So, of course, I'm covering it now, is a really great story about a chapter falling to chaos. And I wanted to cover this here, because we get a lot of questions in the Discord about, like, how does chaos get more numbers? And this is actually how they do it. They convince chapters to fall to chaos.

And so we're going to tell a quick story. It looks like we'll tell a long story quick. while the War of the Beast is occurring, there's a very strange alliance that occurs. Orcs were all over the galaxy. And in one area, this great Ork Wa actually found itself attacking Iron Warriors, who again, Trader Legion. The Iron Warriors got overrun, and they had to retreat from the orcs. And they eventually found themselves in a situation where they had orcs attacking them on one side

and black Templar attacking at another and then Imperial Fists coming in. And the Iron Warriors looked around and said, look, can we get a truce guy's to the Imperial Fist successors and actually the Black Templars, but side note there, because they knew if they all fought each other, the orcs would kill them all. And so they agree not to align, but to stop shooting at each other initially. And it helps that they're actually able to repel the orcs. but as this war the beast is going on, the orcs conflict continues to grow and grow and grow until the iron warriors and the imperial fists

find themselves basically back to back firing at the orcs. And for the first time ever... It's a cool story in this because a lot of this is written from the POV of a warsman. Yeah. And what ends up happening, I do like this story because I should have mentioned. remember the iron warriors are not a corrupted legion the way the death guard the emperor's children the world leaders the love of god all are so they look they look like space marines the iron warriors

despite being traitor still they don't have a large number of possessed in their army so if you're a space marine and you're and you see the iron warriors they look like you they might still have the beak armor but that's about the only thing so this is also thousands of the years before all of the demonic engines start. Exactly. So the Iron Warriors look like just a regular chapter, but they are, in theory, traitor. And I see, in theory is the part that begins to infect it. And this conflict, by the way, is on the far side of the galaxy.

And this alliance, what happens, they begin fighting together with Iron Warriors and the successor chapter begin fighting together. And the successor chapter is ironically the fist exemplar, which is where Thane came from, by the way. So it's an important one. And as this conflict goes, Zerberian, I can't pronounce this correctly, Zerberin, who's the leader of this fifth exemplar, becomes closely aligned with a warsmith, warsmith's what he really is, Calcor, who is the head of the Iron Warriors here. And they begin fighting side by side and succeeding. And Zerbin fails to really see the heresy in Calcutor. What he sees as a fellow soldier who just wants to do what's best for his soldiers.

Well, it also, each time that he does something that could be considered heretical, he does it while they're winning a battle against the Oars. And so that's what happened is all of the things Calcador does that are, in theory, bad, are for the, they not only save Calcutor's troops, but also Zerberin's troops. And there are iron warriors sacrificing themselves to save, Fist's exemplar. And this begins to make Calcutor question the truth of the heresy. And it's not because he's being manipulated by chaos, because he actually wasn't, well, he may have been a little bit here, but he really was him just watching the actions of someone he was told is the most evil creature on

earth. This is again when why did you keep letting chaos be a secret to most everyone, including most Marines? Because if he knew about this, Well, spotted some of these things. Exactly, because some of the things that Zerberin missed were the cultists and some of the dark arts being performed because he didn't know what they were. There were people following them who did have marks on their skin, but he didn't know what they meant. They were doing these rituals, which he doesn't know that the warp exists. So Calcutor just thinks, oh, yeah, they're just praying and it's working out. Cool.

That's convenient. But eventually this story has to come to a sad conclusion. And the sad conclusion happens after the beast ends. And the Black Templar arrive. And the Black Templar pulls Zerbun aside. You know the guy you've been talking to is a traitor, right? I kind of need you to go kill him now. Or I'm going to kill you because I'm assuming you're with him.

The Black Templar give him two choices. Kill Calcador or we will purge you. And Zerberin takes option three. He pledges his loyalty to Calcutor, and he and what's left of his troops become traitors. And they effectively, I believe they joined the Iron Legion, the Iron Warriors at this point. This is the first recorded time since the Horace heresy of a chapter falling to chaos. And I like this story because this is what ends up happening more and more as we go through. Because as Brad was saying before, we don't, the space marines don't.

the space marines don't really know about chaos. They don't understand. They just think these guys, it was a revolution. And this isn't, like, well, we're Americans, we'll use civil war. This isn't like a soldier from the south with a soldier from the north, who both were just poor people who ended up joining forces. Now they were shooting each other for no reason. No, one of these people has the power of the dark gods flowing through them.

And maybe you should tell someone that. Yep. From there, I want to talk more about the effect of the War of the Beast on the Imperial Citizens. And this is one of the biggest ones, post-war of the Beast, because it changes how the Imperium functions. As we said before, the Imperium was always a massive propaganda machine. It has been since the pre-Great Crusade.

This is... Yes, but... No. Hold the phone, my friend. Because we had propaganda in lowercase. which after the War of the Beast, the propaganda became all caps. Yes. And also how they went about it.

And they also made it so that if you are not one of us, you as an imperial citizen shouldn't just tell on them. You should be shooting people in the streets kind of thing. Yeah. This is the truth. Everyone needs to do this. The propaganda was, they turned that to 11. Yeah. And so the Imperium needs the imperial citizenry to fall in line.

and so they're looking for better ways to do this. And after the success of the proletarian crusade, where they convinced tens of millions of them to go grab a kitchen knife and try to fight nork with it, they go, oh, this seems to work really well. And the power struggle that's going on with the Lords of Terra,

after the death of Van Gorich, the Ecclesiarchy starts to come out pretty far ahead. Because the other Lords of Terra could wield economic or military power, the Ecclesiarchy realized they could wield the power of populism. And within it probably, it's, I would say, the power of belief. Yes. You know, it's so powerful.

But they have the numbers. And that's what the game they begin to play. And so the ecclesiarchy leans in hard on this. Let's get as many people aligned with the emperor is the God. And I am the voice of that God as possible. And this actually, to be fair, I can't do it. I just, there I go. It's cracks when I try it.

Thank you. this actually is quite beneficial for the Imperium in the short term because at the end of the War of the Beast, chaos is about to reappear. I know we say it's so crazy on that. It's short term. It works for like thousands of years. Yeah, exactly. A couple thousand years short term. I know.

It's just like short term. It's pretty long. It actually technically is still working. But yeah, what they're able to do is because the Imperium member, they can't tell the Imperial citizens about chaos, as we've been. discovered. We'll cover the First War of Armageddon at some point. But what they do is they align the Imperium behind the golden light of the emperor, which helps them convince people to hunt down people who are doing heretical actions, corruption, and all that kind of stuff. They don't have to tell them that these people are actually agents of the dark gods. They just say, this person's not doing

what the emperor tells you do. Let us know. It does also set up Gojhe Van der Lear coming up later, but for now, short term, it's pretty good. It's also really, really good for the Inquisition. Hold on. It's so funny because you have it as the Inquisition got split into Oros Malius, which was the Antichas. And what we just formed, which was the Orosenos, which is the anti-aliant, because we have an alien, a Xenos threat that was worth doing. But they didn't go, hey, you guys. go here, you guys go here. No, they went, let's double and or, I think it got way bigger than double it.

That's what I think. It's so. They split in the sense that before there's one head of the inquisition, now there were two heads of the inquisition who immediately recruited enough people to fill out entire inquisitions below them. And the ordo, it was crazy. And the Ordo Malius have the Grey Knights already. The Ordo Xenos now get the death watch. This is massive growth. And this is, Also, again, kind of beneficial for the Imperium because the xeno infestations grow quite quickly and there's about to be a lot more of them. And so thankfully, the Death Watch come into play because you're about to get Eldar coming back into the galaxy here, but they're about to realign.

Right about now, as, I can't pronounce this first, I'm saying, Vect. Vect comes back. As durable Vect. Vect has now taken control of Kama and soon enough to see more raids. So thankfully, we've got the death. watch who are now here. The Tao are still not important at this stage. Some things don't change. But one of the greatest lasting legacies, though, beyond all of this, is Ulanor itself. So Ulanor, the new system that it has teleported into is the system called Armageddon.

Ulinar becomes the main planet within Armageddon. Now, the admec had successfully stripped the planet of technology, but they didn't strip it of resources. So as these colonists arrive... It's a giant planet. So these colonists arrive in a system, and there's effectively a bonus planet there. And this bonus plant is larger than every other planet and is actually not that far off terraform,

because don't forget, they already, the Imperium already colonized it at the end of the Great Crusade, and they terraformed it then. The orcs did some damage, but the orcs didn't turn it into an irradiated wave, So they come in there, which ironically, of course, they turn into a hive roll, which makes it in a radiated wasteland, but that's not important for now. The Imperium turns this planet into Armageddon, is what they name it, because it was still a little bit rough, thanks to all the orc technology. There was some weird stuff that happened there, but it was a massive planet.

And congratulations, Imperium. You just put the greatest orc beacon in the entire galaxy in the same system. or the same segment, as the same segment as soul. So they draw, and man does Armageddon do it, draws all the worst parts of the enemies of the Imperium, effectively right into segmentum solar. But I'm not going to finish this cast without talking about the orcs. So let's talk about what is the best part of the entire game, the orcs.

Now, Give the other thing for the crook to me. Because this is a big thing online. This is. And so whether it's or crook that did the board. And it's not. It is an orc. And so the reason why people get confused by this is they should.

Honestly, I was too. It was corrected. There was a random book that gave me the information on this. So you have a giant orc who's very smart and has incredible psychic powers. And so most people think that the beast was a quark. And that if you just, if an orc gets enough power going through it, the orc will turn into a crook. And we're actually helped.

It's a later book, and I forget the name of it, but there was an El Farseer who actually explained humanity, no, the beast was amazing, but he was nothing compared to a crook. The crook were larger, smarter, way more powerful. The beast was really nothing more than a very powerful war boss. Specifically, psychically powerful. Yes. The crook were a almost perfect race. The truth is the beast is not that far off from Gavis.

They're pretty similar, the beast in Gaskell. So just for people who are wondering, I will try and find the book and leave it in the show notes somewhere, but it was an Eldar, if you don't just Google it and people have it all over Reddit, but there was an Eldar Farsir who gave them this story, which does help feed the narrative that Gork and Mork, in my mind, were more likely the last two crook. That's what I think Gork and Mork really were. They were the final crooks, and then they died, however, and it became that. But remember we talked about the prime orcs on the last one?

It's so bad. You know what? Hold on. I'm getting my tree together. I'm actually focusing. I'm meditating. I'm floating right now. You know what?

I'm going to ignore that you said primarks again. And I'm going to talk about the founder. They could be the founders of the org clans. And the org clans are cool as how. Orclans are awesome. Yeah. The bad moons, shooty orcs. Blood axes, sneaky orcs, evil sons, paint things red.

because red goes fast. Everyone knows that. Deskos, the luckiest orcs, who also love looting things, and they don't do enough of it in the current game. I'm not going to go there. Snake bites, you say of the spiritual ones,

but these are the guys that want, that think that new fangled technology is making us soft. Yeah. Then you got the goffs, which is the current default for orcs, because that's where Gans goes from. I struggle with snake bites,

candidly, because I don't know where they fit in. Like, I said, bad moons, shoot. Blood axes, sneak. Evil suns go fast. Death skulls, sneak. Goths, hit thing hard.

What do the snake bites do that's different than any of those? They're squigs. Okay, so hit things hard. Yeah, but I'm saying they should, in my mind, a snake bites army should be just shockful. Yeah, just, beast boys, beast boys, beast boys, it should be that and just squigriders and people be. I guess it works. I just, I'm always, I just always have that. They're the one to me that doesn't quite fit in.

It's just that's my favorite just because I love the idea of these idiots going, these guys are using that new fangled stuff and they're not tough enough, you know, and they're just riding Beeson. I mean, you know, we both, I'm a golf player. That's what I've, that's just. I mean, what you're missing is a good cavalry charge though. No, no. A good charge.

I am still proud that I played in a major. I played seven games. and never one time shot a gun because I played melee orcs. And I did have 150 of them, which helps. But anyway, the reason we brought those six up is, as you remember, the beast had the seven banners with all the seven statues. That's what he does. He actually founded these six or clans.

And these clans being founded create a massive problem for the galaxy. Because before this, all the orcs were, They were all orcs. Every orc group was just operated like orcs. Now you have specialized orcs. And these specialized orcs start creating a lot of problems all around the galaxy. Especially the death skulls, from being us. The death skulls are a huge problem because...

Because they want to snag technology. Yeah, because they're always stank of technology. And then the evil suns showing up and just overrunning your planet with whatever. They're buggies, et cetera. Your blood axes were actually... Looted vehicles, maybe. Blood axes are all over the galaxy appearing, basically sneaking onto space stations and murdering people, and then it's fun. The bad moons, you just don't want to deal with bad moons showing up, plus when it hits sucks.

And then the goffs become there. The gots are a little bit of a problem, and then Gascoal occurs. And the gots become a real big problem. A lot of a bit of a problem. And this is the things that before the War of the Beast came around, orcs were just meandering about. Yeah. And then from this point in history, the orcs become a regular Wog occurrence. A bunch of works get together, enough get together, wog happens, you have to deal with it.

But it keeps going over and over and over again. Yeah. And this is, and this becomes just the routine of the galaxy. There are now going to be almost endless wogs that the Imperium now having learned their lesson knows they have to go deal with. They can't wait for them to burn out because I don't think you guys have been very early on we discussed. this, it used to be when an orc wall was forming, this is back when the Eldar still existed before the fall. The Eldar would see it happening and go, nope, and would just snuff it out. And also instantly snuff it out. The log wasn't even a log. It was a wad.

They might have started drawing the A and then boom, the Eldar are there. Now this becomes the Imperium's thing. And the Imperium, this becomes, it eats up a lot of the Imperium. It eats up a lot of the Death Watch, but also the Death Watch can't even handle a wall. So a lot of times the Death Watch have to handle the wall, and they have to go and get the support of the space marines in the form of a crusade. And the reason I say that last is that this is the end of this episode. So we're going to call this. I think it's good enough coverage. And the reason I brought up crusade is, in our next episode, I want to spend some time talking about the crusades, what they are, how they form, who's in charge of them, missions, et cetera, because it's something that we bring

up a lot. And then from there, it makes it easier to tell some more of the stories. Once you conversation what a crusade really is because they're more aligned with some of the crusades of the Middle Ages, but with all GW writing, it's in line with what the crusades were written to be, not what they actually were. Oh, my God. Quit ruining stuff. No, it's fun. John reads a lot, John reads a lot of history. Deal with it. That'll be next week, but I hope you guys enjoyed this coverage of the War of the Beast. We hope for those of you who've never read it, this was good information. We hope for those of you who have read it,

You still felt we did enough justice and covered a lot of the key parts. I'm sure we did not. I'm going to get grief in Discord, which is fair. I always take it and try to improve next time. But until next week, this has been John Barsati and Bradchester. Take care.