It doesn't matter what I'm gonna say for the rest of this podcast. Everyone listening is tuned out because I said Dark Souls 2 was my favorite.
Everyone's done. I could lie for the rest of this.
It's an objectionable point of view. It's like, I don't know, you're basically Hitler.
Hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to Law Crimes. And today we are back with the Beginner to Expert podcast discussing everyone's favorite 50 boys, the Steely Birds, the Blood Ravens.
We're gonna go through a lot of stuff today, including a special guest. But before we get to anything in particular, let's start off with the question of the week.
Well guys, I hope you're prepared for some spicy takes. There's a bit of a slight theme this week. I've chosen with some of these questions, so you have to let me enjoy this moment because I think one of us on this panel is certainly gonna have some hot takes.
Oh no.
The first one was by Stormy. It was hashtag Black Crusade. Abaddon is attempting to transcend time to teach Colin that he does indeed have a glorious line of spears he can use to kill Bretonian knights with.
Hmm. You know, if Abaddon could teach me the secret of that one, I might come around to him. I don't know how to properly handle them.
The next issue we have by the Wordner, the Wordner, sorry bro, I forget that wrong. Hashtag Black Crusade. It is a little known fact the primacy goal of the 12th Black Crusade was not for Abaddon to acquire the Blackstone fortresses, but to gain possession of a strong enough glue to keep his arms attached.
What is the reference for that?
It's a massive...
You can explain it, yeah.
One of his older models, I believe, I think it was resin. But either way, if it wasn't, his arms refused to stay attached to the model.
And because also prior to, you know, like the Dark Imperium, the Great Rift and all that, Abaddon had spent about 10,000 in universe years and about 20 out of universe years just failing to get past Cadia. So he was an armless failure and they made fun of him for that reason.
To be fair, I remember when I was younger, my dad used to, when he would visit the UK, bring back models and they were always the metal ones and it was so difficult. You paint the model and then all of a sudden, like a week later, arms fell off and then you cry because you haven't got any glue strong enough to keep them on the body. It was tough times, tough times. Kids these days with their models, they don't know what we had to go through.
Had to pin it with our tears.
That's the armless Abaddon lore.
The next one is by TheOzzy.
The next hashtag Black Crusade is going to be arguably the most heroic one yet. Abaddon, learning of a group of heathen worse than the demons and Dark Eldar will journey towards a mysterious manhole cover located in the planet of Scarven.
That was a long one. Reaching the cover, he and his army shall battle through the hordes of strange creatures to reach another manhole cover. Climbing through, he and his forces shall finally reach their next target after all those battles, Bretonia.
That was a long way of saying Bretonia.
I think, again, if he did that, I might come around to him.
The next one is by the Bretonia Hate by CogmoreGaming, the last one here. Hashtag Black Crusade. Abaddon's next Black Crusade will be all about going through the warp to the fantasy universe with the sole purpose of eradicating Bretonia.
There's a theme on this one.
Yeah, we have like a fairly even split of like half the time, it's people saying, Colin, you need to like helm a beginner to expert on Bretonia. And then the other half is just kill all Bretonians. It's a great, I love this community and how, how they're not very partisan.
It's like, yeah, we'll just keep it nice and even.
You genuinely spread like an actual hatred.
They just want to watch me get angry.
True, and have they done that? They've hated on Bretonia this entire time, so I guess you're in a good mood.
That brings me up. If I had to talk about them for an hour and a half, I would not be very happy.
We live in a post-Bretonia sucks video society, so you know, you have to bear that in mind.
The end times was horrid, but it got rid of Bretonia. So even the darkest of days.
Complimenting the end times. This is a spicy.
They have a few good moments, it's just overall they're the worst thing ever.
Zutelo, there is, that's not French, Zutelo, there is chaos, oh, wee wee, horses, I get.
Well, that was the questions of the week. Thank you for your answers, brothers. For the next question of the week, we have hashtag Klepto.
What would you steal from the 40k universe? Of course, make the answers spicy, make them heretical, make them maybe offend Bretonia.
We love it all. And I'll quickly pass over to Andy to help the beginner section. Andy, take it away.
Thanks very much, Hal. And without further ado, I think it's time that we announced our returning special guest on his first time on the beginner to expert podcast.
The illustrious, the lugubrious, the silver play button obtaining man himself, Dreadanon.
Yo, what's up, gamers? It's time to learn all about Blood Raven's protagonists of hit video games.
Dawn of War, Dawn of War 2 and the other one. No, that was it. Just Dawn of War 1 and 2.
No, they were in Space Marine as well. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, the end. Just the end. Yeah.
You know, I wrote that. Just those three games. And I forgot the other ones. You know, much to my shame, when I played the Space Marine game, I wasn't as into Warhammer at the time.
And I thought they were blood angels. So I'll cop to that. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, my bad.
I mean, it's kind of forgivable if you didn't know much at the time. But, you know, now you know better.
Well, we're going to learn more about them, aren't we? Now we'll see what they're true. Yes, indeed.
You're all about to get schooled. So sit down, shut up and listen to me talk about the blood.
Not angels. Raven.
Wait for a second there.
I was definitely not going to say angels. Oh, no. You just had to talk about the blood angels. Or terrors. Or Reavers or anything.
Or any of the blood guys, because these guys are unlike all the other blood guys in that they don't come from the blood angels.
As far as we know. They're not the Knights of Blood. They're not the blood angels. They're not the blood clotters. They're not the pipe-
The blood clotters?
The blood bandits. The blood banditos.
Bandaritos.
Yes, because the blood ravens, in fact, come from-
Redacted.
They are a successor chapter to-
Redacted.
Their true homeworld is-
Redacted.
So this actually makes my job super easy because there's barely any information about them, because that's their hat.
They're mysterious and unknown and they have origins in the murky parts of the galaxy.
So they're an Alpha Legion successor.
How dare you.
Slender, report this man to the Inquisition. And have his penis exploded immediately.
Oh, no. I need that.
To the ball-crushing factory with you.
Oh my god. Can't bring out cock and ball torture so early on in the podcast.
I've heard of penitent engines, but that's a bit too far, surely.
Well, hey. Now, you do know, of course, that the blood ravens know some things about various things.
Because they love their libraries and they love their librarians. They're big brained boys.
So none of you guys could join.
Hi, Trey.
Trey, we'll make Warhammer content for a living. We're not the smartest people in the room.
Yeah, I listen to audiobooks of 40k because I can't read them. I don't have the ability.
I have a history degree. They'd love me.
Well, I have a history degree too, man. Let's just stay on our station. Let's not try to rise above it.
That's why I stopped teaching.
We've all made some very bad choices or else we wouldn't be here.
Not to ruin everyone's game, but like, what did everyone do before they did Warhammer still?
Because I was an estate agent and now we do this. So this is a different kind of job to me.
Oh, I was going to teach and then I swiftly decided, wow, I hate this with a passion.
I used to work as an electro biomechanical engineer at a hospital for 10 years, but that was about it.
What are you doing here?
Got fed up of working on defibrillators and stuff.
Go make something of yourself. You still have time.
No, I refuse. I refuse. I'm here now.
Oh, fair enough. I used to be a butcher. I have a history degree, but I never did anything with that.
If you guys knew the health conditions that happened in factory slaughterhouses just would never eat meat again.
I have witnessed horrors, the likes that would make Azariah Kairos himself say, all right, guys, this is a bit too much.
We're totally down.
But you say that if you used to be a butcher, then clearly for several years you were literally making the bacon.
So can you complain?
No!
Damn.
I'll have you know I'm slightly above minimum wage.
Oh.
Talking about blood ravens, at least.
The blood ravens, the blood ravens. Oh my god.
The blood ravens. I name dropped a guy called Azariah Kairos.
And he's the man to pay attention to in the blood raven story because he's what screwed everything up.
Because, OK, there also existed a man called Azariah Vidya who is not related to Azariah Kairos very confusingly.
I think Azariah might be a title instead of a name, but I have no idea.
I probably should have looked that up before I came on a lore podcast.
But anyway, the story goes Azariah Kairos and Azariah Vidya were Galavetan trying to take on the demons of Nergal, in particular this stinky boy called Ol' Kher.
But it seems that Azariah Vidya died or something. We don't know.
But then Azariah Kairos, who was also the chapter's chief librarian, was like, I lived. I'm gonna, I'm gonna become the chapter master now.
And if you don't like it, you can take a hike.
Nobody took a hike because everyone liked him. They thought he was a hero.
Except for the man, the myth, the legend, the guy who does backflips in Terminator armor.
For Gabriel Angelos!
Space Marines.
Hmm. As best Marines, I am Gabriel Angelos.
The thing is, third game, it's like, it reminds me of a different IP. Is it League of Legends, the way he moves and everything?
He don't look like a space marine no more. He's strange.
He could fit in there to be honest.
Well, they were chasing the eSports Bucks and they failed miserably.
What third game?
We have to confront this at some point, Colin. We can't keep running from it.
I'm gonna put it all to the end because it comes at the end and I'm gonna...
Are Bloodrains really, are they the only chapter that has, like, they had a chief librarian, for people who don't know, like a Psyker as their chapter master?
So was that common in other places too? Does anyone know?
I don't think it's common.
I, off the top of my head...
Probably not unheard of. Like, you can probably find at least one example apart from them, I bet.
It's kind of cool though, isn't it?
It's not cool if he's secretly an agent of chaos.
Yeah, he was king of the nerds who read books. Boo. Boo.
Were we...
God, we're getting like out of time.
How's that glass house of yours, Andy?
I can't spell my own name. Let's move on.
You know who else couldn't spell their own name?
Margaret Thatcher. Sorry, not everything about this earlier, I'm just saying. Sorry.
Why didn't you have to go and make it political?
We were having a grand old time talking about space marines and you just had to go and reference a British politician from the 1970s?
She's already involved in 40k.
Yeah, she created it.
She created a Gazgrill magnet or a cracker.
Oh, actually, that's a misconception. That's a misconception.
I know, I know.
Actually, it was rotting.
Actually, that's an off-propeated myth.
Oh my god, my brain's gonna rot from the Thatcher memes that are gonna pop from this.
The rules of art has come to the podcast.
So Margaret Thatcher inspired Blood Ravens.
The librarians are now the chapter master in their story.
Yeah, but Gabriel Angelos was a bit, hey man, you got lost in the work for 500 years.
I think that's a bit suspicious that you came back and you're suddenly all right.
I'm raising an eyebrow at you.
Gabriel Angelos himself has a bit of a checkered past because he blew up his home world.
Because he cared.
I was wondering where you were going with that. I was like, god damn.
Because he cared.
Yeah. No, they were...
Heresy was a footsie, so he called them exterminatus upon them, which...
I personally wouldn't have done that, but maybe he's just a tougher dude than me.
So did Blood Ravens recruit from particular worlds, or were they fleet-based chapters?
They had a world and then it blew up, and then they had another world.
It didn't blow up. I think it blew up later, maybe, but I don't know.
It went through some stuff.
I don't know if it blew up, but I think a demon landed on it.
Or was that the other one?
No, Dawn of War 2 was a very bad time for the Blood Ravens.
Imagine having to fight Orcs and Eldar and Tyrande all in the same day.
And Chaos and Tal.
Chaos and Tal.
I would just have myself a little snooze after all that, but that's maybe why I'm not a Space Marine.
Just do an inventory of the corpse starch and be like, let's just wait out a few hours. It'll be fine.
Yeah. But, spoiler alert, it wasn't fine.
Because the Blood Ravens had a traitor in their midst.
Another one, if you can believe it.
As it turns out, having a bunch of librarians in your chapter means that they're kind of predisposed to getting tainted by Chaos.
Yeah, like the Thousand Sons.
Perhaps there could be a connection there! Whoa! But we're getting out of ourselves!
There was, because Gabriel Angelos' best friend Isador the Librarian, he fancied himself a bit of a hot shot.
And he tried to become a big shot demon man.
But Gabriel Angelos wasn't having any of it.
So he killed him in a quite well voice acted but partly animated cutscene.
So let's pour one out for Isador, the big traitor.
Shout out to my boy.
Which Chaos God corrupted him though? Was it all of them, or was it just one?
I think it was Korn, but it's weird because he was buddies with a sorcerer, even though Korn's not supposed to have sorcerers.
Yeah, Korn corrupted a sorcerer.
He did it twice! Azariah Kairos was also fond of Korn later on in Dawn of War 2.
They just couldn't get enough of that Korn.
For anyone who doesn't know watching this, Korn, the Chaos God of basically blood and murder, despises psychers.
So the idea he would ever want to have a psycho in his midst is...
I mean it makes sense that he's just like, hey look at this bunch of nerds, I'm gonna ruin their day.
Am I just having a one sided crush on a Chaos God?
That's pretty pathetic.
I mean, it's Slanesh, that's what Slanesh corruption is really, isn't it?
No, Slanesh loves everyone back.
In her own special way.
Yeah, to the degree where you're like, I don't want that. Take it back.
What was his name, the librarian who turned to Korn?
His name, Isidor. He has a first name too. No, he has a second name. Isidor asked for Kairos.
So he was one sided. And he signed up to only Korn. Oh dear.
And then he got quacked! Quite liberally, I think.
That is what happened. He got Gabriel Angelost.
What the fuh?
Gabriel Angelost turned around and said, it's Angelost time. And Angelost all over him.
Oh. Yuck. I don't like that. Yuck. Oh man.
So everything was gravy for the Blood Ravens for a little while. Until...
It wasn't. Because soon they would come under the command of the commander, so dunderheaded, so silly,
so incompetent that it would wipe out a third of their total strength in the acclaimed Dawn of War expansion pack, Soulstorm.
It wasn't acclaimed. That was sarcasm.
That game is only good for the big apocalypse mod. That's the only reason you own that game.
Unity and the apocalypse mods. That's what Dawn of War Soulstorm is for.
Most of the characters you follow, who was the Imperial Guard captain?
He was in Dark Crusade and he immediately dies in the beginning of Soulstorm.
No. You weren't writing this.
Just repeat what it is. Oh, go ahead, sorry.
Yeah, Gorgots, fan favorite Gorgots, shows up and he's voiced by a different actor and he sounds really bored.
Oh God.
Dawn of War has had a rough history.
I must admit, I never had the chance to play the games, but I've watched people play them and I love the videos.
Is it by 7TP? He did the Necron one with Skeletor animated into it. It's very good.
My favorite part is the blood wraiths fight the Imperial Guard.
For people who don't know, the Space Marines and Imperial Guard, there's been times where Space Marines will attack the Imperials
because it therefore conflicts with their own objectives, even though they're both of the Imperium.
Do you remember the reason, Dread, why they had to fight the Blood Ravens and the Imperial Guard in Dark Crusade?
Yes. Because the gameplay required them to.
That's the true reason. Was it their own goal?
They were trying to capture a temple or something. No, it's because the Blood Ravens had some shady goings on on the planet
and the Imperial Guard were like, don't think you guys should be doing that. Maybe we could have a little look inside that building you're occupying.
To be fair, they're already fighting like evil Blood Ravens and they're like, are you good Blood Ravens? Are you bad ones?
What do you mean? Eliphas the Inheritor?
Yeah, that guy.
He's still the best by far, best faction word bearers in that game. So much fun.
He's all like, ha ha ha. And Captain Davey and Thor is all like, no! And they go back and forth for a bit.
And then Thor gets clapped in a war too. Sorry, I exploded.
He gets freaking roasted and he gets put in a dreadnought, which I don't know, that seems like a pretty sweet deal to me, aside from all the hundreds of years of agonizing pain.
But you get to be a dreadnought, so that's pretty cool.
I wish I was a dreadnought.
Really?
You mean you're not?
No, I'm actually some guy who's not in a dreadnought.
You heard it here first, the YouTube channel is a lie. He's not a dreadnought.
He's not even angry, he's actually quite calm.
Yeah. This is stolen valor, but for a dreadnought and also for being angry. So send your hit mail to dreadnought at gmail.com.
Oh man, this is definitely a weird hashtag, hashtag stolen valor.
I came from a different kind of video.
Yeah, if I go to a Warhammer store I'll get people coming up to me filming me and going like, sir, let me see your reference number.
I'll be like, I left it in my wallet at home.
Where's your dreadnought membership card? It's in my wallet.
I don't think you're a dreadnought at all!
And then I run away and call security.
So people go around questioning, yo, why is this guy not on life support in a tomb?
This guy can breathe! Get his ass!
How did he get through the door?
Do you actually have any dreadnought miniatures? I have to ask.
I can't afford that. I can't afford any of that stuff.
What do you think I am, some kind of YouTube Warhammer 40k guy who invests in the hobby?
That's ridiculous!
Do you have any tabletop stuff?
No, I can't paint at all. I have negative artistic capabilities so I would only end up asking people to paint for me and that seems like it defeats the whole purpose.
If I were to, I would like to get myself some Imperial Knights and also a Bellacor movie because he's got a really cool model.
Actually, some Age of Sigmar stuff looks pretty cool like the Deepkin and lots of really cool models.
Oh yeah.
Now you've got Colin.
I've got him excited now.
Deepkin video.
This is the only time I will ever talk about Age of Sigmar in any capacity but yeah, the Deepkin have some pretty cool units.
I'll take it.
I can't paint so in the event that I learn how to paint I will get myself some models and paint them.
Could you melt down your silver play button and then sell the silver to buy the model?
No, you're not allowed to! It's in the guidelines, you're not allowed to do that or else they'll terminate your YouTube account.
I don't know if they would though but maybe there's some sort of chip in it.
Even if you did, it's nickel. It's not silver.
It'll probably get stolen as an artifact of the Blood Ravens from then on.
No, we have to get to that. We have to get to the Blood Ravens most nefarious, most infamous trait.
It's one of those things that I'm pretty sure was just not something the developers were thinking about.
Like it's just, oh hey, let's just put in a bunch of references to other chapters. People will like that.
They didn't think too hard about it but the way it looks is that the Blood Ravens have ransacked hundreds of other chapters,
stealing all their most important and treasured artifacts which has kind of spun into its own thing by the community.
I must admit, if there was a side story that Black Library released with a character who's supposed to have one of these artifacts
and just as a quick aside, it disappears for a few chapters, that would be so good just to tease the connection.
But they're cowards, they won't do it.
GW, I demand that you recognize the Blood Ravens' kleptomania. It's a serious problem and you have the power to bring attention to it.
In the background of every Ultramarine's book going forward, there should just be mention of a single Blood Raven taking around battlefields.
I'm going to look up how much stuff they actually have.
If you look up images, it is a lot.
What are the Blood Ravens currently up to now though in terms of the...
Well to know that, you have to play Dawn of War 3.
So moving swiftly on, for those of you who don't know, there are three games in the Dawn of War series starring the Blood Ravens.
First one, it's pretty good, pretty great, pretty great.
Second one, also pretty great, it's a bit of a different thing, it's more of an action RPG thing, but pretty great, pretty great.
And then there's Dawn of War 3.
Also known as League of Legends 40K.
Yeah, it's shit!
I think they apologized immediately after they released it, didn't they?
Which is like slapping someone and then going, I'm so sorry man, I don't know why I did that.
Thanks for buying this, but we're keeping the money.
Little did they know that would become standard practice in the games industry years later.
To release garbage in the head of their time.
Yeah.
I hate to bring it up, but Darktide...
At the time of recording, Darktide is not in a good state.
And when it released back in November, I think December, they immediately apologized for the state of the game.
So yeah, we're hoping...
As of the day of recording, they announced a co-op mode for Space Marine 2, which looks really good.
Maybe the Blood Ravens will show up in there?
Yeah, we're hoping the Blood Ravens will appear as a cameo in that game.
When I saw that reveal for the co-op, I had a twinge of fear that one of the co-op partners would be Leandros, and I was very happy to see he wasn't there.
I was like, please, please, please, please!
No Mark Strong, though, unfortunately.
Even as a side character.
He isn't cheap these days, you know?
To be fair, the guy who's doing it now is Rollo from Vikings, isn't he? The guy who played him. So that should be good.
He'll be good, he'll be fine. He'll be good.
I know, it's hard to follow up.
I think in Space Marine 3 they should get Dreadanon to play Captain Titus.
Wow, that's a good suggestion.
I think it would be better if Eliphas came back to Space Marine 3 as the main villain, and then you could voice him and do his over-the-top mustache twirling. That would be great.
I've always wanted a mustache I could twirl.
This is the game for me.
I want to play Eliphas, I've always wanted a mustache.
No, I'm currently gunning for Thanquil in Total War Warhammer.
There we go.
Wow, Colin's definitely interested now.
He brought up the Iduneth, he brought up Thanquil.
He's in all the best hits.
I will start an annoying email campaign, Creative Assembly. You will rue the day you spurned me, a mid-level YouTuber who isn't even that good. So watch your back.
They're quivering in their boots from the YouTube.
He's going to send the Blood Ravens to steal all the other voice actors.
Hashtag Dread Army. Hashtag... Kidnapping. Yeah. Hashtag Theft. Hashtag Blood Ravens. Remember the Blood Ravens, that Space Marine chapter we were supposed to do a podcast episode on?
We're just doing an intro of it, that's fine. Hashtag Dread of War.
I think Colin's got the facts in bag.
Hashtag Dread and On didn't actually do any research, so we're forced to...
From memory.
I've played the Dawn of War game, so I know what I'm talking about. Let's take a look at Steam to see when... last played... last played December 2014. Yeah. So I guess it's still pretty fresh in my head.
That shit is archiotech by this point.
Nearly a decade, wow.
Guys, what's a Blood Raven?
Oh lord.
I mean you did sum it up pretty well there.
Redacted, redacted, redacted.
Okay, anyway, so, anyway, they're, they're kleptomaniac psychics who used to serve Nergal for a bit, but now they don't anymore.
Colin, take it away!
Alright!
I mean, to be fair, not inaccurate at all.
But, let me make sure that, oh no, never mind, I was just having a bit of a useless panic attack.
Let's go to the experts of the Blood Ravens.
Experts section. I'm the expert. I am the expert. It's me time now.
If you say it enough, if I say it enough, I will get a pedigree.
I bet this nerd made notes and everything.
No.
It's appropriate for this episode, it's Blood Ravens.
The Blood Ravens stole Colin's notes, it's fine.
Yeah, I'm also going off memory.
No, no, no.
Fun times.
But, I'll start with the origins of the Blood Ravens, and then right after that the theories of their origins,
because I want to get that out of the way so it's not hanging over the rest of the video like the sword of Damocles.
Also, apologies for the construction noise in the background, if you can hear that, it did not go away.
Anyways, the Blood Ravens origins, they are a bit tricky, one could say,
because their earliest records they have only go back to the 37th millennia,
which you'll note is a couple thousand years after Space Marines had been a thing since the 31st millennia.
Now, that in itself is not super odd, you know, I mean there's plenty of chapters that have been found past the original legions,
the early Ultramarines, the other 19 that were not Ultramarines that are less important than the Ultramarines.
Plenty have come up after them.
And the issue though, is that there's references to them serving with other chapters and organizations before the 37th millennium.
But every time they try and find like the text that these references are mentioning,
it either doesn't exist, it's gone, or it's under lock and key by the Inquisition.
So every time they try and find out, hey, what were we up to before, you know, M37, they just can't.
They just can't get the information.
To make it even worse, because the whole thing is mystery, but it's actually mystery, not Alpha Legion's mystery, where they just don't tell you anything,
some of the knowledge that is known about the chapter was found on Eldar worlds in the Eye of Terror, guarded by Harlequins.
So God only knows what that was doing there, but that would imply they're far more ancient than just the 37th millennia,
which again, fair is fair, that's 4,000 years old.
But if the Harlequins are guarding something in the Eye of Terror, which is Eldar Hell, something's probably up in them.
I'm pretty confident saying that, something's probably up.
Whatever the case may be, they call this the unfounding, which I think is just cute.
We don't have a founding, we were unfounded.
Whoops.
They like kind of shift their leg in that form.
Your assertion is unfounded, Bloodravens.
I dropped, oops, I dropped all my evidence.
Do they have, what's their shout, is it to the missing or the lost Primarch, or the unknown Primarch?
One of their battle cries, and it's like for the unknown Primarch or something like that.
I did not see a battle cry about that.
I did write down a couple of their battle cries for later, but I believe, I did not see anything about them having a battle cry about the...
It might have been in the games that they reference it, not...
I remember hearing that at some point, and it's like, for the unknown Primarch, and you kind of go, oh damn, it's like you can't tell what the hell's going on.
Yeah, that very well could easily be like...
I have a theory with the whole, they don't know what their genes are, they just ask their chatmaster, like,
Dad, where do Space Marines come from?
They say, oh, they...
Ask your mother.
There wasn't a founding, we just ask your mother.
I don't have a mother.
Goodbye, son.
And that was why they got such weird origin.
The Primarch went out to get milk and cigarettes.
But because, like I said, I don't want to be having the mystery hanging over for all of those of you fans of suspense,
Sorry, I'm just going to rip the bandaid off now on the theories of their origins.
Now, the two major theories about them are that they are either from the Wordbearers or the Thousand Suns.
Who could have seen that one coming?
Just some general facts that could go either way.
The Blood Ravens destroy pretty much any sign of evidence of their origins that hint like,
Hey, this is solid proof of the Primarch, the Legion we're from.
They tend to get rid of it, which is rather suspicious because, you know, surely loyal sons of the Emperor would have no reason to do that, right?
But they do that.
A little bit suspicious, I'm not going to lie.
And the other main thing hinting, I say hinting, that they're from a traitor Legion,
is a white dwarf article about them that ends with them suggesting that their sorcerous habits imply their original Legion was not one of the loyalist ones.
Which seems pretty good confirmation.
Probably don't come from the good boys.
Hint, hint, wink, wink.
Yeah.
And they actually hail from like the Aurelia system.
It is. Subsector Aurelia.
As for-
I guess you could say all those relics of theirs are getting a bit dusty.
Screw you, Ehrman.
Ehrman alone. He's trying his best.
I think Yvrain reversing the rubric and then throwing those unrubric marines straight into the warp is the funniest thing I've ever read.
I can reverse the rubric. I'm not going to though.
He just goes, no, no, he literally dives in immediately after them.
He's not going to do anything about it. He's been trying to get in the Black Library for 10,000 years and the Clown God keeps clowning on him.
He's not going to do anything about it.
No, but let him try.
I'll let him try and then laugh when he fails, just like Zinch does.
Just to make it super obvious for like if you're a beginner to Warhammer, where it's heavily implied that the Blood Ravens, their gene seeders from the Primarch Magnus the Red slash the Thousand Sons,
which are obviously a traitor legion, which is obviously you wouldn't really allow a traitor legion gene seed to continue. That's probably why they mash up any information about any hints of their own history sort of being tied to traitor blood, shall we say.
And it's definitely even their sigil based on is it the Corvadae cult? It's like the Raven looks just like one of the cults from the Thousand Sons.
I was going to get to that. In fact, that might be related to a quote I'm going to hand you off.
Segway!
Yeah, almost though. I want to get rid of the wordbearers evidence first because it's a lot more limited, at least in my opinion.
It's more or less limited to the fact that some of the taunts of Chaos Lord Eliphas the Inheritor he makes in Dark Crusade, I believe it is, can be interpreted as wordbearers. That might be where they're from.
And there's the fact that for those of you new to Warhammer, if you have the Thousand Sons gene seed, it tends to turn you into living soup.
And the Blood Ravens are not all living soup. So it is one of pretty much the only major strike against them being Thousand Sons loyalists.
And then there's all the evidence pointing towards them being Thousand Sons loyalists, such as absolute boatload of psychers in the Blood Ravens.
They recruit from worlds with a high proportion of psychers on them.
There was a group of psychers in the Thousand Sons known as the Corvidae cult, which Corvidae is the subspecies of birds that Ravens belong to.
And one, this name's gonna give me some trouble, Revuel Arvida.
Revuel Arvida.
Hey, I got it.
Once mentioned how knowledge is power, which is one of their battle cries.
And I believe it was a Remembrancer, and I might be giving this one off to the Remembrancer to read for that reason.
Also, you have read all the Horus Heresy books, so if anyone will recognize this quote, you would.
Is this from Promius?
Probably.
It is a nice quote said by an individual during the Horus Heresy looking into the future.
Andy, would you mind reading that one out for us?
I'll give it a go.
Let's see.
Ravens, I see them too.
The Lost Sons and a Raven of Blood.
They cry out for salvation and knowledge, but it is denied.
Brother betrayed. A brother murdered.
There's a bit more of the quote before and after that, but the Ravens and a Raven of Blood, and the person is talking about the Thousand Sons.
Gee, I wonder what the connection there is.
Don't need to think about that one too much.
In fact, actually, if I remember correctly, the person who said that quote was the first Grandmaster of the Grey Knights.
Andy, can you back me up on that one? Is that a belief?
That would be Revuel Arvida, wouldn't it?
Who was the last son of Prospero.
I'm not sure if that is where the quote is from, but he was literally the only loyalist Thousand Son left.
He was basically merged with the arguably best Shard of Magnus, Malchador's experiments.
Janus.
It's all Janus I've talked about in when Magnus before in the Suit of Terror, when Magnus appears before the Emperor,
the Emperor does say to him that he basically his sons are corrupted and the current Thousand Sons in the 30k timeline.
And he basically says, join me again, you know, because Magnus has never fully fallen to chaos until the very end of the Suit of Terror.
And he essentially says, join me, but you have to let your Thousand Sons die because they've been corrupted by Zeen.
That's why when Colin said earlier, like, if you're a Thousand Sons gene seed, you basically turn to soup.
It was because Zeen corrupted their gene seed like very early on, like in secret.
And the Emperor says, I'll give you a new Legion.
And obviously, I think it's implied that people thought it might be he'll give Magnus the Grey Knights to lead.
So obviously, it could have been like he...
The blood rate.
You'll get a new chapter.
Proper.
Well, it became a chapter because of the Codex of Stardust by Yermaine Mann and Gilliman.
Yeah, it could have been like from that when maybe it was implied like, well, make you a new Legion.
And then Magnus goes, no, because I like my sons.
And then eventually turns into a demon and suddenly goes, actually, I don't really care that much about them now.
I'm a demon.
I do like... Chaos Witcheroom.
Pretty much, yeah.
I do like as well how Revuel Arvido is the only one who doesn't fall to the flesh change because he was hanging around with the White Scars
and he grew massive balls by virtue of being in proximity to them.
Like, nah, flesh change is cringe.
Nah, I'm part of the White Scars now, it's fine.
Wasn't he stuck inside his armour though?
He also learned how to roll really well.
I mean, he had to.
The man is... he was a god in the battlefield though, wasn't he?
They said like, he was like, the White Scars and the Emperor's children are fighting during the Horus Heresy
and Revuel Arvido just like straight up just like shoves them all back at one point and just looks disappointed.
And this guy shakes his head and they retreat.
And he's like the only thousand sun.
And they said, you can join us?
And he's like, nah.
Yeah, Tartagotai Usu guy was like, ah we made like a pauldron with like thousand suns heraldry and our heraldry
and you can be part of our legion.
He was like, that's very kind, but I still want to be a thousand sun even if I'm the last one and then...
Well truth was he couldn't get out of his armour.
Yeah, there was that too.
Well he was bloated up by the flesh change.
Bit fat.
He was feeling fat that weekend.
Whatever happened without that?
Hey, no body shaming on this podcast.
True, true. We don't shame no Space Marines.
Thick girthy body.
I shame Space Marines.
Oh God.
Although in the last podcast episode on the Black Legion, Hal did like start talking about the length of Abaddon's top knot
and we were like, Hal?
Hal, no.
Hey, it was pretty big.
Alright, alright, alright, alright now.
You're just being silly.
I hear three inches is huge.
Three? Damn.
I thought we were leaving three there.
I thought we were doing Dawn of War 3.
We're actually doing the number three.
There's no Dawn of War 3. There's no Half-Life 3.
Anyways, moving on.
Regardless of where that quote ultimately comes from, if I lore-crimed it or not,
that Janus fellow, I'm going to keep calling it Janus, I'm not saying Iannis, I don't care.
I call Juergen, Juergen, Juergen.
I'm not saying that either.
Iannis.
He's a, that fellow.
What's this about your Anus?
Janus, Janus the Valor.
The Anus master of the Grey Knights, who was the first Grandmaster.
He did not just die, he disappeared.
Which, given that the Grey Knights are very prone to secrecy, him disappearing and founding his own chapter of space wizards,
would rather be, that would rather line up with something the Imperium would like to keep hidden, I think.
And for the low-hanging fruit, the Thousand Suns were a chapter of red-colored space wizards.
The Blood Ravens are a chapter of red-colored space wizards.
I know that's rather low-hanging fruit.
But it's also a very obvious, easy to make comparison.
At least when they were loyalists, the Thousand Suns, they're all blue now because of the zinch, but they were red.
So, there's their traitor legion, all but stated to be backstory.
For some slightly more reliable history, they did actually exist before Dawn of War.
They were just one of those background chapters that was mentioned probably once in a paragraph,
and then we get 50 more pages of Ultramarine's lore.
I looked for days straight trying to find the Blood Ravens lore prior to this.
Could not find it. I just know they existed beforehand, and that was the end of the story.
They were one of those background chapters that doesn't matter.
But hey, then Dawn of War, and that's how we get these amazing fellows.
First off, as I just need to get out of the way now, the voice acting of Dawn of War,
the finest choice of voice acting ham you could possibly ask for.
Everyone is giving it 110% energy, 200% of the time, and it's amazing.
That's the kind of war hammer I love when everyone is screaming and shouting,
and just constant yelling about heresy in the Emperor.
That is what happens with the Blood Ravens take to the field.
It gets very loud and yelling, and then everyone just starts fighting everyone.
It is a blast.
So, for their history of the constant yelling they did,
one of the earliest campaigns that they know of, and again, that they know of very key to the Blood Ravens,
was in the Gothic sector, where Abaddon and his Black Crusades get those Blackstone fortresses,
you might notice from Battlefleet Gothic.
The Blood Ravens were around there as well, although I don't believe it was during that crusade.
They're noted as facing off against Chaos Forces and suffering immense losses,
though again, there's no solid records of this happening either.
They just know it happened, but there's no records of having it,
which is, again, more fun with the Blood Ravens.
They had some early successes, but the Chaos Forces were luring them into complacency and traps,
make the Blood Ravens think they were doing a lot better than they actually were,
and then they went through some rough times.
The chapter master of the time was Slane, defending the first company on a retreat,
which already, I think, makes them apart from other Space Marine chapters of the time,
as when Dawn of Orr is being made, Space Marines generally did not do things like retreat.
This was Older Warhammer, where retreat was a no-no word. That would get you shot.
You mean tactical redeploy?
Yes, if you tactically redeployed, you were tactically redeployed to the afterlife.
How are you going to hit them with your chainsword if you're going the opposite way?
Exactly.
You need to get closer. What are you doing?
So the Blood Ravens already kind of set themselves apart with things like retreating.
Their chief librarian, Azariah Vidya, came to hold the position of chapter master after this,
a dual role that would become tradition for the Blood Ravens.
Voice crack, okay.
With him at the helm of the Blood Ravens, they returned to war with the Renewed Spirit,
and they crushed the Chaos Forces they came into conflict with, with almost supernatural precision,
because again, he's a librarian. He is a space wizard super soldier.
So they used psychic powers to take care of the Chaos Forces.
And after this somewhat resounding victory, because again, a whole lot of them still died,
the Blood Angels, I did it. I did the thing.
You know what? It is hard, isn't it?
It's going to keep happening too.
The Blood Ravens rebuilt, and Azariah Vidya set a bit of a precedent where if they could help it,
the chief librarian would also be the chief chapter master, the chapter master.
Something, as we said, probably not completely unique to the Blood Ravens,
given that there's at least a thousand space marine chapters in the 40k galaxy,
but definitely makes them an outlier.
That definitely is the kind of thing that makes you stand out.
And then we get to don a war proper, which is, whew, fun times.
Before we do that though, their battle cry, I mentioned part of it earlier, but Hal,
would you mind reading out their full battle cry? It's not very long. It's a battle cry.
Of course.
Knowledge is power. Guard it well.
That's pretty much it, yeah.
I gotta say, it's not my first choice for a battle cry,
but I do think it is infinitely better than that one Andy broke out for the Dark Angels,
which just straight up sounded like a Dawn of War menu quote.
It was word salad. That is not a battle cry.
I think it's an inverse on the Thousand Suns one, isn't it?
The only sin is ignorance. The only power is knowledge.
There's another connection for you.
It does remind me of Meditores as well.
The mental is mental one.
That's something like knowing it's after battle.
That's just G.I. Joe.
Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't find it, but it's very similar, and they're my favorite chapter, and it's silly.
They start getting into like, I think therefore I am at this point, it's gonna get even more.
It's not going back on itself.
But now we come to Dawn of War one.
That's why they're all psychers, because all their battle cries are very wordy, because they're librarians.
You know that image of the guy going, where do you work out, and then the other guy says, at the library, and he has a giant head?
I found it. It's knowledge is half the battle.
That is just G.I. Joe.
It is just G.I. Joe, and it's great.
I love when Warhammer's goofy like that.
But, uh, Dawn of War- oh yeah, speaking of orcs, they're coming up.
Dawn of War one, we come to the planet of Tartarus.
Which, gee, that's not foreshadowing what this planet is holding or anything. Tartarus.
It's got a demon on it!
Correct!
It just reminds me of Halo, though. It just reminds me of Halo.
Oh, God. Oh, I love-
Whereas Warhammer writers are like, yo, I heard you guys like myth, and they rub their hands together.
I want some myth for you, and they open up their little jacket, and you have to look at it like, myth, myth, myth.
You want some Greek? I got some Roman here. You want some Persian?
We're gonna name every member of the Dark Angels after Judeo-Christian history.
Yeah, okay, we've got Belial, Azrael, Gabriel.
Where's Chris Jericho, the Dark Angel, at this point?
So then we've got Gabriel Angelos, very on the nose. The angel angel himself.
The Brutes would probably do quite well with Corridor ship, wouldn't you say so, Andy?
If it weren't for the Great Journey taking up their religious aspects.
Give them better helmets than those little plates that you can just pop off.
Oh, yeah.
But we come Tartarus. The Blood Raven's third company, led by Captain Gabriel Angelos,
makes planet fall and begins fighting the orcs on the planet.
Because, again, that's 40k, that's Warhammer settings.
There is a planet, orcs just will eventually show up there if you wait long enough.
But quickly into the battle they realize it's all a cover by the Alpha Legion,
which I think it's cool that it's the Alpha Legion actually doing it.
I don't like them, but I do like when they're actually doing something and it's explained, which is what happens here.
They're pretty weird in the Dawn of War games, aren't they? Because they're kind of...
They're not very Alpha Legion-y, almost.
I think some of that is because there's only so much you can do with an RTS, especially an older one like that,
to make them sneaky. Also, stealth in Dawn of War is an absolute nightmare.
I'll cover when we get to...
That's just funny to make your units invisible.
Yeah, we'll get to Cyrus later.
But as they're led, the Alpha Legion is led by Chaos Lord Baal and his sorcerer, Sindri.
Also, not terribly important, but the orc warboss leading the attack is named Orcamongus.
Yo.
That was brilliant.
I love Orcamongus.
I just love the idea of, like, when the Wars of Armageddon, the Steel Legion's like,
how many orcs? Like, I don't know. It's Orcamongus. Hey! Nice one.
And then there's the flying boom side effects.
I was like, this is even before the era of, like, my name is Hugh. Hugh what? Hugh-mongus.
This is even before that old reference.
And then shortly into the invasion as they're mopping up some orcs, an Inquisitor shows up and says that
everyone needs to get the hell off this planet because a warp storm is brewing, and no one wants to be around for that.
And very interesting for an Inquisitor, his name is Toth, he criticizes Angelos for being too into purging
chaos since his planet was exterminatist for chaos incursions before, which, out of everything you'd expect
to hear out of Inquisitor's mouth, you would not expect it to be you are looking for heresy where there definitely is none.
That doesn't sound right, but it's what happened.
It's like I'm imagining you're too good at your job. Yeah, it's like, what is going on here?
But... Damn it, you're a loose cannon, but you get results.
And that's why you're fired. That's why we gotta get you off this planet.
Hand in your badge and your gun. And your other gun.
They also find out that the Eldar are around on the planet as well, led by one farseer, Makka, of Craftworld Beeltaan,
and they're investigating chaos and ritual sites and all that fun stuff.
Craftworld Beeltaan, like the dried meat. Beeltaan.
No, Beeltaan, like the Irish holiday. Gotta wrap the culture here.
Indeed. There's a lot of... The Eldar Irish?
I love it when fantasy authors tag our stuff.
Yeah, there's actually a decent amount of stuff. Isn't Saimhan the reverse of something?
That's not how you pronounce it.
Well, no, I'm saying it like the Warhammer, with Craftworld Saimhan.
Yeah, I know. They don't say it right, neither. They don't say nothing right.
Don't blame me for...
It's not the right boat straight. How do you say it?
It's Beeltaan and Saumann.
Oh. Oh.
Thank you, GW, for butchering the thing you stole.
You will be sued by the nation, the proud nation of Ireland,
and all of our many lawyers, trained in tax haven martial arts.
GW is basically like a... At the end of the day, it's like a bunch of British authors going,
Mmm, that's a nice mythology you got there. Saimhan's not incorporated into their multi-million dollar...
I've brought it up, but Eldar, they just ripped it straight out of Tolkien.
It even means people of the stars.
But yeah, so the Eldar are there too.
And of course, that leads to conflict, although at least in this one, I don't think the Eldar were...
They kind of deserved it, I'll admit.
It's always the Eldar's fault.
I disagree with that one, and I'm moving on.
Angelos tells the librarian with them, Isidor Acius, to destroy the artifacts of chaos they found.
But Acius is being tempted by Sindri the entire time,
and Acius damages the Bloodraven transports that were going to transport people to do their jobs,
in order to give him more time to research the artifacts before he had to destroy them.
You cause a delay in the train, you get more time to spend screwing around with the forbidden stuff.
It's funny, because you can see Sindri in the cutscenes.
He's got that poor Halo 3 active camouflage, where you're not really camouflaged at all.
You just kind of look vaguely transparent.
He just sits there like, ooh, you need to research the artifacts. I'm spooky and evil.
It's very goofy, very hammy, but very fun.
I like the idea of him going one side to the other, whispering in each ear,
shouldn't do it, it's bad for you, and then trotting to the other side,
do it, do it, I am chaos, do it.
Gabriel Angelos then tracks down the Eldar.
A big old battle ensues, because it's an RTS game, and those are very fun to play.
And Farseer Maka, after the Space Marines beat them,
tells them that the Alpha Legion are there to find an artifact that will doom the world.
She also says that that Inquisitor is up to some no-good stuff and is hiding things.
As using the Warp Storm as an excuse to get the Blood Ravens off the planet.
Which is true, but not in the way you might think.
We're not M. Night Shyamalan-ing it for once with the Inquisition.
Everyone makes up... Oh, no, I skipped a bit, pardon me.
Everyone makes out what?
I said up, not out. But following the Eldar's hints,
Angelos and his company go to the ruins of an Imperial Temple,
fight some more Chaos Forces, and when the Inquisitor shows back up,
Angelos finally is like, alright, listen, I know what Alien told it,
but it kind of lines up with what I was thinking, that you're hiding some stuff.
What are you hiding? And the Inquisitor comes clean,
which again, very out of pocket for an Inquisitor to just be honest about what's happening over once.
At least one that isn't Amberly Vale talking to Cain.
As it turns out, the plot choice isn't the Inquisitor is actually evil the whole time
and serving Chaos or some crap like that.
Tartarus actually houses an artifact known as the Maledictum,
which Dawn of War games just are the most 40k thing to ever 40k.
Which itself also houses a powerful demon who is summoning the Warp Storm to prevent people from escaping,
so he can get out of his little prison.
He can't get out, but he can still affect the world,
but he'd rather not be locked up in jail, which I can't blame him for.
I'm sending you to space jail! No!
The Inquisitor and Gabriel Angelos, they make up and they assault the Alpha Legion once more,
with Bale and his forces being left to rot by Sindri.
You gotta say it, you gotta say it, you gotta say it.
SINDRI!
I don't remember the exact intonation he uses, but yeah, he lets out a nice...
The voice actor for Bale does an impeccable job,
that's the most frustrated shout I've ever heard.
He's immaculate!
That's like you need to lure the airport and there's a blackout.
You would think the voice actor himself was betrayed by Sindri, he does a fantastic job with it.
He puts his heart and soul into it.
Did he do like a Khan from Stutter?
Yeah, it was that, just with a wizard.
I think it was the damn video, the guy didn't make it to the toilet in time,
and then he just like, it makes you fall on the floor like you died, and it just like has...
You know, the awful sound wave.
I can't describe it because obviously it's a bit too much.
The incredibly vivid sound wave, I don't know why he's shouting himself.
Good lord.
Oh no.
I'm at the light full notes.
I don't even know what to do with that one.
That same passion is in this Sindri.
After Sindri gets killed, the other shoe drops and Isidor fully joins chaos in Sindri.
Yoinks the male addictum and teleports away with Sindri.
Isidor then gets, I don't think it was quite fully betrayed,
but he also gets left to die by Sindri because he's a chaos, they're all evil,
this is how they just work, this is how they do things.
And Isidor is killed by Angelos while he begs for forgiveness,
as our lovely guest Dreadedon said, in a very well voice acted,
very horribly animated like early 2000s RTS cutscene.
They tried their best.
They did try.
They did their best.
I cannot lie, they tried.
I might wonder if it would be better if they didn't try.
It's like watching a Shakespeare play where it's like
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, but they're like sock puppets.
They're still giving it their all, but they're just like,
Bop bop bop bop bop.
Yeah, that's Patrick Stewart's voice, but Kermit the Frog is the one whose voice is coming out of.
Well, last for Yurik, I knew him.
The Blood Ravens rush to Sindri to finally finish this mess,
but then Sindri sacrifices himself to some of the Demon Prince,
and then the Blood Ravens and surviving Eldar clown on the Demon Prince
and his forces pretty hard, because again, this is an RTS game.
Your guys are probably going to win.
The Jojo, do you mean where they're just kicking him and kicking him as a team?
Not far off.
The male addictum gets destroyed.
The Eldar say don't destroy it so they can lock him up again,
but the male addictum is destroyed.
The Demon Prince is roaming free.
He's kind of injured and not doing great, but he's free and he's a demon.
So, not a Demon Prince, pardon me.
He's still a demon though, so death is temporary,
which is why the Eldar wanted to not destroy it so they could lock him up again.
And he taunts Angelos, saying he'll come for the Ravens later.
Angelos being the space marine-iest space marine to ever space marine,
just says, I know you now, I will kill you later.
And I don't think he ever actually comes back into Dawn of War, if I'm being honest.
No, he does! He does!
Oh, God.
It just takes like ten years.
Oh, I'd lore cry.
It was like, not only in Dawn of War 2, but in the expansion pack,
in the second expansion pack for Dawn of War 2.
That took a really long time for them to do it, but they got there.
He was all care?
No, no, no, that's Chaos Rising, this was Retribution.
The Maledictum Demon comes back, and Ybril Angelos faces him dying.
I gather perhaps that this expansion didn't sell very well.
I didn't finish that expansion, I only started it, but I never...
Oh, jeez.
I lore-cried a bit.
It was the epic conclusion to the Dawn of War saga.
You know?
The end.
Then Dawn of War what? The number we don't perceive?
Yeah, the Dawn of War biology.
But moving on, we get to Winter Assaults, because that is the end of Dawn of War, the main game.
Winter Assaults is... the Necrons are now waking up on a different planet, Loran V.
And to be honest with you, the plot of this is not super heavy,
at least in terms of the overall, honestly, what happens, there's not too much to it.
There is a damaged Imperator Titan that everyone wants to use as a weapon,
the Necrons keep waking up, and by the end of it most of them are up,
and then whichever faction you're controlling gets the Imperator Titan's weapon battery online,
and you kill a whole bunch of Necrons.
The cannon... what's up?
Darkruise Raiders, How I Fell in Love with Warhammer.
This is Winter Assault.
Oh, fuck.
Sorry, 2020.
You got a win, you got a win, we're not there yet.
Sorry.
A weird tangent.
By all means.
Looking at the Dawn of War games, all the expansions have really cool names like Dark, Couchade, and so on,
Winter Assault, like it's snowing and we're having a fight, what is that?
Well that's the whole theme of it, it's all snowy.
To be fair, it also has the single most iconic photo of the Imperial Guard as its cover art,
the dude in the snow with the lasgun slung over his shoulders.
Yeah, but it's wild.
It's an assault in the winter.
Yeah, what else do you need?
It's very to the point.
I don't know, I just think it's a bit of a letdown considering all the other expansion titles are quite grand,
and like, oh, that's quite heavy hitting, I do it of war, Soulstorm, Dark, Couchade, Winter.
Winter Assault is a heavy hitter, so if you play it, you'll be like, oh, okay.
It's a heavy hitter, this one.
It's a really good one.
Yeah.
But yeah, the candidacy of this game, like I said, the Imperial Guard and Eldar endings,
it is a mix of those two victory endings, what ended up happening,
so the Eldar retrieved the Soul Stone of the Farseer Taldir, who comes down with a bad case of being dead,
and the Imperial Guard wins, and the Necrons are all deaded, and it's great for everyone.
Honestly, though, this one isn't super important, at least to me, to the overall importance of the Blood Ravens.
That being said, the Necrons in this game, properly horrifying,
because this is towards the end of the old Necrons, where they just hated life and wanted everything to die
before the Mat Ward actually gave them character.
That's right, I'm defending.
I kind of miss them both.
I like the new Necrons, but there's just something about the old ones.
They definitely have an appeal.
It's like, I like Trazin too much, alright? I'll just be honest.
Yeah, that's fair.
He was probably the real Primarch of the Blood Ravens.
His stealing habits.
Oh no.
Poor one out from my homies, the Priahs.
Yeah, that is a shame they had to go.
Rip in non-canon.
And of course, in Winter Assault, Warboss Gorgut shows up, who is just a very fun orc.
He is fun. He's, again, the orkiest orc ever.
He's orkier than Thorgazgul, he's very fun.
And he also has a lieutenant.
Anyone want to guess what the name of his orc lieutenant is?
Orc-y McOrcface?
Orc-enormous?
No.
Stupid.
Go for it.
What?
Because Gorgut says he has a plan, it's called Plan Stupid, named after the orc he's making fun of.
And the orc takes it as a compliment.
Oh man.
I love Warhammer as portrayed by Dawn of War so much.
We get to Dark Crusade next, the next expansion for Dawn of War.
And again, this is a sandbox takeover the world game, it does not matter too much.
The Eldar break their alliance they'd formed with the guard during Winter Assault.
Whichever faction you pick to play in the game takes over the planet Elorn.
The tower here now and the dude from Fire Warriors is leading them so they kill a whole lot of people.
Eliphas the inheritor shows up, he's the leader of the Chaos Forces.
And I'm only bothering to mention him because he shows up later.
That's my favorite one.
Oh he sounds very cool, he is the word bearer, he's awesome.
You can ascend into a demon prince as well, it's so cool.
It's just as it stands in this game, the plot of the game is whoever wins takes over Elorn.
It's kind of of minimal importance.
What's the name of the planet again?
Elorn.
Elorn? I thought it was something else.
I think Soulstorm is when Carava shows up.
It's Elorn 5.
Doesn't it begin with something with D for the Dark Crusade planet?
That's Carava.
D'Avalon? Cronos?
Yep.
Well, which one's Cronos?
Is that the recruitment world?
No, I think that's the one with... isn't that Dark Crusade? They're fighting for the world of Cronos?
Uh oh.
I have to get the booming introduction lore.
Oh god, it is Cronos.
Oh god, I'm lore-criming all over the place.
It is Cronos in Dark Crusade.
Thank you everyone for catching that.
Wow, I am lore-criming the Blood Ravens all over the place.
Like I said, it really doesn't matter. It's a planet they're all fighting on.
It just needs to be there for the game to happen.
It doesn't come up again.
But yeah.
Dark Crusade is over now. It's very fun.
I know I'm being very quick with it.
Dark Crusade is probably my favorite of the original Dawn of War unmodded, that is.
It's awesome.
It's just the plot of it is take over the world.
I think most people, most Warhammer fans would have probably...
A lot of people I think came into the hobby through that game.
Winter Assault was more...
Yeah, I did.
Dark Crusade was like, you didn't have to follow any kind of big story art to get into it.
It was a really good way to enter the setting and be like, oh what the hell, there's space marines.
You didn't have to know anything about Warhammer to say that game.
It's a whole lot of fun set dressing that really gets you into the setting.
The story is more or less a non-entity.
Yeah, nothing really big happens.
We get to Soulstorm now though, and is everyone ready for the lightning round of Soulstorm?
Go to the car of a system.
There's a warp storm happening because an Imperial Guard psyker heard the whispers in the warp and decided to listen to them.
Which is not great.
Everyone's fighting each other.
The Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle are here now.
For the love of God, everyone's used to settle down for five minutes.
They won't because Soulstorm is again just clusterfuck.
The Necrons are on one of the planets.
There's a tomb world there waking up.
The Eldar show up to fight the Necrons.
Chaos is here because of the warp storm.
Gorr gets his back because he's the most marketable character in here.
The Imperial factions are all calling each other heretics and shooting each other because this is the 40th K to ever 40K.
The Dark Eldar are just here to kidnap people.
That is their only reason for showing up.
They just want more slaves.
The Tau are trying to annex the system because clearly that's worth the effort of this just absolute mess.
And the whole thing canonically ends with Gorgots beating everyone else up and using it as a staging ground for his waa.
And the Blood Ravens getting absolutely mulched during the course of the Soulstorm campaign.
Eesh.
Good old Indrik Boreal.
The greatest space...the space marine of all time.
One of the space marines of all time.
One of the space marines.
Easily one of the space marines of all time.
What were they thinking?
I'm glad they were thinking it.
It's bad, but it's what you're saying early, it's goofy bad.
Like I'd laugh every time he talks.
And then we get to Dawn of War 2 because Soulstorm all you need to know for the Blood Ravens in that one is that...
Wait, we're really seeing that through Soulstorm?
Look, it's literally that is pretty much all it amounts to.
The Blood Ravens go there to fight to try and quell the mess.
Except it's a mess that every faction in the game but the Tirendas is a part of.
And then they get the hell beat out of them.
And then they leave and the orcs are the canonical winners of Soulstorm.
That is genuinely all you need to know about Soulstorm.
Pardon me for all the three Soulstorm fans of you that don't just have the game because of the ultimate apocalypse mod.
Dawn of War 2 now.
And yeah, the format changes a bit for Dawn of War, but this is still when the games were good.
The Blood Ravens return to their home system.
Subsector Aurelia to rebuild since all that caravan nonsense, like I said, was very damaging to them.
Guess what though? The entire system is plagued with orcs.
Because they're orcs.
How did that happen?
You are Force Commander.
What in the chances?
But yeah, Force Commander you, Blood Raven Man extraordinaire.
He never gets a name, he's just the player character.
The closest thing to the protagonist, I guess.
They call him the Quiet type.
Not even that. He's just like, he's there for it.
He's an active spectator because he doesn't say or do it.
He doesn't say anything, he just kills aliens.
You and your battle brother, Sergeant Tarkus, fight the orcs and to rescue your captain, Davian Thule.
Good guy, Davian Thule.
The previous protagonist of Dark Crusade, for those who haven't played the games.
Indeed.
You'll find Sermeldar towards the tail end of the mission, who are revealed to be stirring the orcs up into a frenzy for some reason.
Well, the reason will be revealed.
Turns out they were doing this by disguising themselves as orcs.
Anyone feel free to take a guess how that one would work?
I'm just imagining, you know those inflatable sumo suits you can get?
It's just green and it's got teeth on it.
You're like, yeah, I was an orc.
Just imagining an Eldar pretending to put on the accent would be amazing.
You see, it was working until the Orc Mech, the most in-charge Orc Mech of the mall, saw through their clever ruse with a cybernetic eye.
And again, no, I don't know how that works.
He just did. He's an orc.
Analyzing. Das well an orc-y.
That's not proper orc-y.
You then kill more orcs, kill a whole load of Eldar, who say that it was just that you were using the orcs to fight off a potentially greater threat.
Of course, the Eldar don't say what it is because these are the Eldar.
That word required explaining themselves, and that is the biggest taboo in Eldar culture, is explaining yourself to the lesser races.
First rule of Eldar, don't talk about Eldar stuff.
Yeah, pretty much.
Second rule, follow the first rule.
And then the Blood Ravens just kind of shrug and get back to killing orcs.
For some reason, though, the scout leader known as Cyrus, who is that man I was talking about with the broken stealth in Dawn of War, you can pretty much solo the game with him if you kid him out right.
He brings up how the astropaths are, for some reason, going on about a shadow in the warp.
Something that they're concerned about, the astropath, for some reason.
That's surely not relevant, though. We gotta kill more orcs, right?
Steve Blum must be wrong.
For showing!
Just like the idea of all the astropaths having a look at the warp and then just like, Aaron, Aaron, what is that?
I don't know.
Steve, do you know what that is? I don't know.
Mom, dad, the Wi-Fi is not working.
Yeah, yeah, just like smacking it.
We tried turning it off and on, like, no, it's still there. What is that?
No, I'm a human being. If you turn me off, I die.
That's the hell of a sentence.
Turns out, though, it was relevant because that shadow in the warp is the Tyranids, for those of you not familiar with the Tyranids.
That's what happens when the hivemind starts showing up. It blocks out warp communication.
So the big bad guys of Dark... I almost called it Dark Souls 2.
Of Dawn of War.
Blood Angels? So the Blood Angels are facing Dark Souls 2?
Dark Souls 2 is the best Dark Souls moving on.
That's what happens when the Tyranids show up. They block out warp travel and communication.
Dark Souls 2 is the best one.
No, it's not.
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
That's not true!
You can't just go around saying things like that.
You know, it goes to the father of the first sin. I think this was the first sin.
Calling Dark Souls 2 the best Dark Souls.
I enjoy Dark Souls 2, but it ain't Dark Souls 1.
And it ain't Dark Souls 3.
Dark Souls 3 is just Dark Souls 1's greatest hits.
Yeah, and it's better than 2.
It's better than Dark Souls 2, which is Dark Souls 1's worst hits.
Dark Souls 2 had the best magic in the entire Souls trilogy, it had the best PvP.
It tried something new and it didn't just wallow in Dark Souls 1.
To be fair, it had Peter Serafinowicz in it as patron, that was cool.
And Majula is the comfiest hub area in any video game ever.
Yeah, yeah.
Name Sorye Povsky.
It's fine.
It doesn't matter what I'm gonna say for the rest of this podcast.
Everyone listening is tuned out because I said Dark Souls 2 was my favorite.
Everyone's done. I could lie for the rest of this.
From an objectionable point of view, it's like, I don't know, you're basically Hitler.
Oh my god.
No, it's a good 2.
Yeah, god, I thought you were giving me crap for Thatcher earlier, but that was trojan.
It's like if he would have said that Skyward Sword is the best Zelda game.
Like, no, no, no, no.
I've never played Skyward Sword.
Yeah, I have strong opinions on this.
I've only played Breath of the Wild and Spirit Tracks.
That's such a ranting combination.
Look, Spirit Tracks was on my DS as a kid.
I like the new ones, and Trains.
I love Trains as a kid. You do not want to get me started on this, alright?
That's a great defense. I love Trains.
The Warhammer thing should have been very well foreseen when I was a kid because I loved model Trains.
40k needs more Trains is what you're saying.
Yes, it does. The Squats need to bring back their Trains.
The Hammer fantasy has more Trains.
Train full of Orcs.
Yes. Anyway, Tyranids.
Tyranids who agree with me that Dark Souls 2 is the best.
Thule gets poisoned by a Tyranid warrior.
Tyranids would agree with that because they don't have any Brins.
I walked into that one.
Anyway, Dawn of War 2.
Thule gets poisoned by a Tyranid warrior, but they just shove him in a dreadnought after they cure the poison.
So Thule is not out of it yet.
During the process of this...or pardon me.
The Blood Ravens get to work at developing the counter poison to the Tyranids.
Which I think is quite cool.
Farsight also does that.
Hal, I know you are saying you're quite familiar with that, I'm sure.
There's nothing I do not know about Farsight currently.
I'm recording.
So far, it's the Blood Ravens and the Tyranids who have been smart enough to do that.
During the process of this, and a lot of the mission, a lot of Dawn of War from here on out, is getting...Dawn of War 2, pardon me.
Is getting the poison and all the preparations ready to take care of the Tyranid fleet.
And so you do so.
And as you finish the process, you get ready to mass produce and deploy all the poison.
The Hivemind itself psychically assaults the Blood Ravens.
Cutting your forces off your singular ship.
From reinforcements, but it does take a lot out of the Hive fleet.
So it has to stop and just focus on feeding for a bit.
Not just overrunning the world before it feeds.
It's a snack break.
Indeed.
And while the Tyranids are feeding and the feeding tendrils are coming down on the world.
You, Force Commander, and all your wonderful Blood Ravens friends.
Employ the poison into the Tyranid feeding tendrils, which poisons the Hive fleet.
Because when you eat poison, you die.
I would not recommend.
Fun fact.
Which dooms the Hive fleet.
But your own forces are under intense assault from Tyranids on all sides.
And it looked like the Blood Ravens, at least your company, probably wasn't going to make it.
But then, just as it's about to end with, and then everyone died.
Gabriel Angelos is back, baby.
And he saves everyone alongside the Blood Ravens first company with...
So green.
Steel, Steel Rain, the Codex Astatis names this maneuver, Stale Rain.
Oh man.
That game is so, it's so quotable.
Can I make a side note about our boy Gabriel?
Of course.
In the second and third game, he reminds me of Chip Hazzard from Toy Soldiers.
Damn.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
No.
I think it's the hair.
Yeah, he's like this evil marine toy character from this animated film from what, the 2000s?
He looks just like Gabriel.
Anyway, I'm sorry, I had to mention it, it was bugging me.
I'm just glad Hal also didn't get the reference, because otherwise I would have just got made fun of again.
I got the reference, I think it's one of the few things I haven't seen.
I love you.
And like Colton, who hasn't watched even The Godfather.
Thank you Hal, for slipping that one in.
Yep.
And before we end on the main game of Dawn of Orr, it's of note that this is where the meme about the Bloodravens stealing all their stuff comes from.
That being said, it's only half, it's only like half a meme, because I know like the fan base does what it always does and blows it up.
If you look at the descriptions for the items they have, some of them really imply that the devs kind of knew what they were doing.
These were not just given to them.
Some highlights, I know Andy you have a few, once I say these if you've got any favorites of yourselves.
Some of the ones I quite like are a Sacred Blood Angels Flamer, that it is unknown how the Blood Angels got it.
An Inquisitorial Plasma Gun, also unknown how they got it.
And a Custodes Bolt Gun, which that one's really interesting, because unless I'm really messing something up.
Custodes equipment is all bio-coded to the one who's wielding it.
Yep.
And the Bloodravens just have it and use it no problem.
Colin, it was given to them as a gift, consensually with full notes.
With the hand attached.
Doesn't that Argo Tal steal a Custodian's weapon in his book, the First Heretic, and he's just like, yoink, and he does some weird chaos stuff to unlock it.
He has to corrupt the weapon so that it will activate.
You have to put work into it, you can't just steal it, and it works.
I love the idea though, it's just like a thumbprint, so you just cut the Custodian's hand off and you just unlock, got it, done.
He cuts the Custodian's hand off, cuts his own hand off, and then grafts the Custodian's hand to it so we can use the thing.
Or takes his eyes out and is like, eye scan, done, alright, put them back in my pocket.
If you really want a theorycraft, that could be some proof that it was Janus who founded the Bloodravens.
I mean, hey, you're wondering where a Custodian's gun came from.
If anyone would have had access to it that it wasn't a Custodian, it would probably be the first Supreme Grandmaster of the Grey Knights.
So there's, again, that is, I'm theorycrafting, not fact, not necessarily canon.
Or the developers just wanted to put something cool in.
Listen, it's more fun when we...
lie to ourselves.
I'm not lying, some of these things are blatantly like, they did not just get this.
Some of them are almost blatantly like all but said, this was stolen.
Andy, do you have any highlights you'd like to...
Yes, I do.
So we've got some stuff that's just kind of more generic, like they've got an axe from the Iron Snakes.
They've got...
There's a... if you're going to bring up the big one from perhaps a Legion.
I'll bring him up last, shall we say.
They've got things like the Judgment of the Khan, which is a power axe from the White Scars.
They've got an Alpha rifle from the Alpha Legion.
They've got some interesting stuff like the Cruelty of Jephros, which is from a Corrupted Crimson Fist.
They've got Ulric the Slayer's weapon.
They've got Xavir, the Chaplain from the Salamanders.
They've got his Melter Gun for some reason.
They've got the wings of Shrike from the Raven Guard.
They've possibly got a Heavenfall blade from the Dark Angels called Azrael's Second, which is like,
oh, where did you get that from?
They've got Scarbrand's Dreadmawl.
There's also one particular weapon beyond anything else of any calibre.
Did you want to reveal what this one was?
I've got one thing to add on in.
Ragnar Blackmane, was it they either offered to make him a weapon or give him a weapon?
And he went, nah, bro. He said no.
Yeah, they give him a weapon. He's like, no, it's fine. You keep it.
It's like a scurrying way, like you're trying to peddle stolen goods.
That would be the perfect theft to steal the Space Wolves weapon and pretend like,
look, a gift, a perfect recreation of the thing you have and the Space Wolves being stupid, arrogant Space Wolves go,
nothing compared to what we have.
They've even got Manias Kalgar's Bolter called the Heavy Bolter of the Ancient.
It's like, where are you getting these things from? Geez.
They were gifts, man. Come on. It says it right there. Why would they lie?
It says gift back. See? Just says gift.
Should I get to the big one now?
Yeah, go for it.
They somehow stole Forgebreaker.
Which if people don't know what you say that is.
That is the weapon that Fulgrim, a Primarch, himself crafted.
And then give it to Ferris and then was stolen by Horus, which was then gifted to Pertorabo, which he used.
He's quite attached to it. So like, how did he get that from Pertorabo?
Who's a demon prince in the warp.
I like the idea though that Pertorabo woke up one day on his demon world and he's like,
I wonder what terrible things I'm going to do today. And he kind of gets up his bed and he's just like, hammer?
Yo Dread, next meme video is literally Pertorabo missing his Forgebreaker and a Blood Raven.
Where's the hammer? Drake, where's the hammer?
Panicking a bit.
Well it's right there.
So yeah, that one, they definitely stole that one.
The thing is, who the hell uses it in the game? Surely it's two hands.
That comes into play in Chaos Rising, so I will get to that.
Speaking of though, it's time for Chaos Rising because we've just cleaned up the Tyranids.
This one is, as you can probably guess, all about Chaos Rising.
Fun fact, surprise I know.
Better than Winter Assault, but yeah.
It starts with the Blood Ravens responding to a distress signal.
Turns out it's a trap by Traitor Guard forces, but it's just the Traitor Guard so they all get mulched.
Then they rescue the Librarian Jonas who is under attack by Mor Eldar.
Because again, it's a strategy game, we need all the factions to fight each other so they're here again.
The Planetary Governor in the Aurelian Sector, one of the planets, requests some aid.
And my brain just blue-screened, pardon me.
They request some aid because the orcs are looting the area again because there's been a whole lot of fighting here and the orcs love their loot.
So the Blood Ravens then go to fight some orcs.
While they're fighting the orcs, the Black Legion shows up, led by Eliphas the Inheritor.
He's back!
They thought he died in Dark Crusade, he didn't, he was too marketable.
Although...
I think it's like the Chaos Gods just keep resurrecting him, like, try again, try again, and then they're like, if you fail again, we are not putting you in prison.
He's got a little bit of thank-all energy to him, where he's kind of failing, but he's failing successfully in a way.
I like the idea that they were just going, he's funny. I want to see him die again, it would be funny.
I mean, for their own amusement, is that a valid reason for the Chaos Gods to do anything as any?
So, that's happening.
But alongside some Imperial Guard allies, for once they're not shooting each other in the face, them and the Blood Ravens,
the Chaos Forces and some summoned demons are assaulted and defeated, their temple completely destroyed.
There is a Baneblade involved in this that you have to run away from in the game, it's very harrowing,
because you do not have a Baneblade, you are just some Space Marines on foot, and I know Space Marines are powerful.
It does have a funny name.
I think it, is it Beanblade?
Baneblade, Baneblade, let it rip.
I think it's called Beanblade.
No, it's...
It's not called Beanblade.
I'm checking this.
It's a Baneblade.
No, you mean...
It's definitely not called Beanblade.
You know, it is not the Beanblade.
Beans, for sure.
That's gonna be Heinz Nix's mascot, the Beanblade.
The Beanblade.
It is a really cool...
It is a cool set piece though, because the whole time, like, you're running from the Baneblade,
and, you know, it's shooting at you,
and that's not great,
as you have to just keep running from it and fighting the forces in your way.
If a Beanblade was shooting at me, I would just do a backflip, slide under it, and then end it.
Are you gonna talk about Dawn of War III, or are we sort of all...
I'm going to very briefly cover it.
Okay.
That's what it deserves.
I force myself to cover the End Times, I'll force myself to cover Dawn of War III.
That one's much more palatable, because I can ignore Dawn of War III.
I can't ignore the End Times.
But while Andy's looking up the mysteries of the Beanblade,
the Chaos Lord of the Black Legion, who's leading the forces, isn't actually Eliphas.
He's like a lieutenant.
The guy in charge is named Arragast the Pillager.
He shows up to taunt you, because he's a Chaos Lord.
That's kind of what they do, they love their evil monologues.
And fast forward a bit, you know, they go to...
They realize, now we have to deal with him.
In the meantime, they notice some Eldar are poking around some ancient ruins,
so they kill them.
I don't think the Eldar are even doing anything,
like seeding the orcs into rebelling.
Not rebelling, but getting all uppity.
It's kind of like, Eldar murder on behalf of the Blood Ravens.
At this point, they've probably killed more than Slamash.
And then following that, even more of those chaotic fellows are killed,
for the chief librarian and chapter master of the Blood Ravens,
one Azariah Kairis, recalls all Blood Raven forces to their fleet,
and confines them to it until further notice.
Now, uh...
I wonder why he did that.
Interesting, yes.
Important note about him, as Dreadanon covered in the beginner section.
About 500 years prior to the games, he heroically fought against a great unclean one,
named Ukaer. U-Kair. I don't know how to say it. U-L-K-A-I-R.
But he was lost in the warp during this battle.
Before he just showed up back up one day, and took command of the Fifth Company,
and eventually became chapter master.
He just... he's like, I'm back. I'm in charge now.
And everyone was like, oh my god.
Guess who's back.
Wow, he's so cool.
He's like, oh my god, this legendary space marine hero is back.
Welcome, please come back.
Unfortunately for Mr. Kairos, because at the start of this,
he wasn't corrupted, he was genuinely just fighting a Nurgle demon,
as he's supposed to do. Good on him.
But unfortunately for him, he is neither Kaldor Drago,
Gatric Gurnason, nor a Chameleon.
So he was corrupted to the side of Chaos due to the time in the warp.
No one's gonna call...
It is called Beanblade.
It is not called Beanblade.
No one's gonna...
It is not called Beanblade.
It is a special thing for blood.
It says, heading due south, the Orcs found these particular guardsmen
possessed of Potent Firepower, a Baneblade by the name of Beanblade.
It's in the game.
As in Laser Pool.
I don't believe you.
Well, maybe they named it Beanblade, but it's not called...
Yeah, they named it Beanblade, yeah.
I can accept they called it that.
I thought you were saying, like, it's called the Beanblade.
Like, no, it is not.
I'm sure one of the guards says, let's use Beanblade.
You're like, it's called Beanblade. That's cute.
Shout out to the clip of being made of this with a Baneblade with Heinz on it.
A can of Heinz.
Okay, I've Google-quote-searched Beanblade and there are no hits apart from...
Dekalb's Captain Blood Flag's Wiki page.
It's in the game. It's in the cutscene.
No, I don't believe you. I don't believe you.
Just because you don't want it to be...
What do you mean? Knowledge is power.
You don't want it well.
Oh, but yeah, so he's corrupted.
Oh, Beanblade! Beanblade with an M.
With an M, yeah.
I also heard Bean.
Shoot a beam.
I also heard Bean the entire time.
I thought it was a beam.
Oh, no, it was a beam.
Bean is just the joke of it.
Bean.
Okay, that was a miscommunication. I would like to unreservedly apologize to Andy for my comments.
I just like how the Miss Ed Rahimson had us all like,
It's not called this!
And I was wondering why everyone was so riled up and I was like, it is!
Now it makes sense.
I thought you were talking about legumes.
You know?
Not beans.
Coffee beans at him, yeah.
Okay, misunderstanding, let's move on.
Misunderstanding indeed.
Back to the Ravens.
Despite, you know, so yeah, Kyra, I called Kyra,
he's been corrupted ever since it came back and was slowly turning members of the chapter to chaos.
Despite their reluctance, the loyal Ravens, which is, you know, yourselves,
the people you're controlling in the game,
follow his orders as he is still the chapter master and they don't know he's evil yet.
And the chapter instead deals with a space hulk filled with Tyranids that has warped into the system.
Again, RTS game, they put the Tyranids in the base game, by God, they're gonna use them.
And this is, oh, pardon me, skipped over a bit.
They also end up defeating Eregast after they fight him.
And Eregast goes, LFS, I need you to teleport me away from the Blood Ravens.
And then LFS says, no, I will not be doing that.
And then he doesn't and leaves him to die.
Classic LFS.
Very funny.
Turns out that whole inheritor part of his title,
it's not like you inherit something, you know, from the deceased.
You make them deceased and then take it.
It's how he likes to inherit.
Actively inheritor.
He's in like the Horus Heresy series very briefly, isn't he?
Like very briefly.
I think he is because he is, I'm pretty sure it's briefly mentioned in the game.
Like he's old.
Like LFS isn't just like a, he showed up one day, we invented him.
I guess they did invent him for Dona Horda.
They take the piss out of him because they're like,
I think he basically becomes the de facto leader of a chapter in the Legion during the Horus Heresy.
And they're like, oh, you didn't earn that.
You just like inherited the company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's how he got his name.
You inherited it.
But either way, LFS is, I like to imagine that Aragast is one of the people making fun of him.
And he's like, all right, this is what you get for bullying me in middle school.
But that aside, it's time for the Blood Ravens to get to some investigating.
And some messages are sent out by someone within the chapter,
but they can't quite decipher them and they get to more investigating.
And they become aware of treachery within their ranks.
And actually, it's really cool because this actually ties into the equipment selection of the game.
As a forge breaker, as for who wields it, you can give it to a couple different people.
Lord only knows how they hold it.
I know you can't equip it to them if they have Terminator armor equipped.
You had, it's one or the other.
And the way it works is all this equipment, because there's plenty of other chaos equipment, tainted equipment they can get.
It adds to their corruption score and slowly over the course, you can get more and more corrupted, which is not great.
They discover through a chapter or through a good lord, through a chapter.
The way they find out is towards the end of the game, the squad mate who has the highest corruption score is revealed as the traitor,
the not loyalist, the one who's been working with Kyris. And it's, so you kill him.
If you don't have any corruption score, by the way, it is a tech marine who was revealed to be a traitor named Martellus.
And then you find out that Kyris is evil through killing that guy.
He tells that he's like, well, if I'm going down, might as well lore dump on you.
So now you know Kyris is the fool.
They go to Captain Diomedes and explain that, hey, we've all been played for fools.
We have to deal with this. Kyris declares all of those people, you and Diomedes and everyone, the real traitors.
And it's time for a nice, good old fashioned Blood Angel Civil War.
And this all ends up with that demon.
Wait, Blood Angels?
I, god damn.
Game keeps happening.
Blood Raven Civil War. All right, look, I bet name your things better, GW.
It's like the whole world eaters, word bearers thing where you say, oh, I love the world bearers.
I thought they were called the world bearers for so long and then I was finished.
Except now Blood is how both of them start and they have like the A.
Anyway, Blood Ravens Civil War happens.
And in all of this, Ukaer ends up being freed.
The Blood Ravens seal him away once again, unlike the first demon they dealt with.
Ukaer does not get away.
Eliphas escapes into the warp because this time Relic isn't wasting the character.
He also ascends to Demon Princehood and then just he's like, I'm out.
And although Kyris was defeated, he's not gone.
And I did also mention again, yeah, Forgebreaker.
I just double down on that.
I can't believe they found that.
Retribution, the next DLC, the last one for Dawn of War 2, is dealing with Kyris once and for all and an Inquisitor's Behest.
And the story for this one is once again rather simple like the other some of the Dawn of War 1 expansions.
You pick any of the factions to deal with him, you know, Eldar, Orcs, what have you.
And the way it works is you fight one of your nemesis factions at the beginning of the game.
So like the Eldar and the Orcs will fight each other.
The Marines and Chaos Marines fight each other.
And you win.
And then you speak to the Inquisitor and it's up to you to deal with Kyris because the Inquisition has caught wind of the mess that is the Aurelian sector.
And they're just going to blow it to high hell.
It's exterminatus for every one time.
Unless you can deal with it in a timely enough manner.
And that's what the game is all about.
So over the course of Retribution, you deal with Kyris.
And of note is that the canning ending of this cannon ending of the game is once again a mixture of the Eldar endings and Space Marine endings.
Which is cool that the Eldar are at least allowed to technically win in their own way, kind of.
There's another awesome Orc introduced named Captain Bloodflag who straight up wears a pirate hat with a skull and crossbones on it.
And Hal voiced him in my Orctober video.
Oh yeah. He's very fun.
And Kyris ascends to become a Demon Prince of Khorne despite Khorne hating psykers.
Although with that being said, if you listen to his speech, good lord, is he again the finest voice acting hand.
He is putting his all into this.
Like you know the Horus heresy trailer where Horus is like, if I cannot save it, let the galaxy burn.
Even if it takes the last drop of my blood.
Oh yeah. This is good.
It's good. But when he says, you know, let the galaxy burn, it's all very low energy and low.
He's like, I don't want to have to do this. I'm pretending I have the moral high ground.
But when Kyris says it, he's owning up to it.
I am a bad guy. I am serving demons and I am in it to win it.
He's like, let that galaxy burn.
He genuinely sounds like a crazy person and it's the best thing in the world.
Like just look up, either pause it or when you're done listening to the podcast, look up the Azariah Kyris speech.
He is he loves life more than anything in that moment because he's about to end a whole lot of life.
Because the exterminatus is just to get him to ascend to demon princehood.
Because although Korn doesn't like psychers, he likes blood and exterminatus is a whole lot of blood.
So yeah, that's one hell of a sacrifice.
So the exterminatus, however, ends up being delayed.
Kyris ascends to princehood, but he is defeated and banished.
And the blood ravens are bloodied, but they come out victorious.
Once again, it is not like the technical canon ending to Dawn of War 1 with Soulstorm
where the blood ravens kind of get the crap kicked out of them.
They're victorious. They're hurt. They're bruised, but they've won.
I do like how there's several endings though.
And there's like one where you can play as Captain Bloodflag and he just blows up his head.
And then he's like, I like the Inquisitor's hat and just nicks it.
And that was what it was all about.
He was so real for that.
He's an orc. I don't care about your exterminatus stuff. I see that hat. I want that hat.
And he gets it. Only in the orc ending though, which is unfortunately non-canon.
We do briefly get to the Space Marine game though. They show up.
They help Captain Titus, the second greatest Space Marine to ever live out towards the end of the game.
The best one is Malem Kato. Malem Kato? Malem Kato, however you say it, from Boltgunn,
who is a Black Templar who got lost and accidentally painted his armor blue.
Although the Black Templars make a very brief appearance in Space Marine as well.
They do. Oh, hey. Yeah, that's right.
They're just with the Inquisitor lights.
They don't say anything though.
No. But they're there.
Towards the end of the game when Captain Titus is going to defeat the big old Chaos Sorcerer,
who is also funnily enough a Chaos Sorcerer with help from Khorne demons,
Relic seems to really like having sorcerers aligned with Khorne for some reason.
As Captain Titus is going to help him, the Bloodravens show up to give him a hand
because the rest of the Ultramarines are busy complaining about the Codex Astartes in this game.
So the Bro-Blood-Ain-Ahhhhhhhhh, I caught it!
The Bro-Blood-Ravens showed up and helped him out.
And of note is that they have a different battle cry now.
They changed it after retribution from Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well,
to None Shall Find Us Wanting, which is a much better battle cry, I have to say.
I do like how Titus, when he speaks to the first one, is just like, ah, your deeds in the Aurelion Sector are legendary.
Like, oh, they're friends. That's nice.
It's cool. That's also the nicest opinion anyone has of the Bloodravens that isn't a part of them,
because some of those item descriptions kind of imply the Bloodravens are pariahs.
Captain Titus, bro that he is, big fans of him.
He knows Bloodravens can throw down when it counts, because Captain Titus is the coolest.
He was like, I've got to get up to that place. I don't care who's going to give me...
Oh, these guys. Oh yeah, you're great. Let's keep going.
He wouldn't have minded who it was. Space Wolves, yeah.
Oh yes, I too enjoy Mjod.
Let's go to the end of the game.
Let's go fight the guy now. I'd like this game to be over. I hate it here.
But now, unfortunately, it's time for Dawn of War 3.
No one likes this game. No one likes League of 40 Hammer, so I'll keep it short.
The whole game revolves around fighting for a weapon known as the Spear of Kain,
because before it was Chaos doing all the bad stuff.
It was then the Necrons waking up, and then it was Tyranids and Chaos again.
Now it's time for some Ancient Eldar stuff to finally shine, which if nothing else,
I appreciate someone in a Warhammer production finally acknowledge the Eldar had a bunch of super weapons lying around.
Thank you. And if I can thank Dawn of War for that, it's the music, which admittedly the music is really good for 3,
and that plot piece. So they're trying to get the Spear of Kain, which presumably belonged to Kain,
and I at least personally think it might have been one of those 100 Blades Vol Forge for them,
although I don't believe that's ever stated. The fake one.
This thing is said to be very powerful, so this might have been the real one.
But thankfully, to save us from the fact that this is Dawn of War 3, Gorgoth is back!
He's made his return! He's back to be the most entertaining thing about this game! He's back!
So is Farseer Maka, who's also back and is depicted exactly as fan art of her depicted her as,
which is interesting because she never took off her helmet in the first Dawn of War,
which has led people to believe that either someone who made fan art for her got lucky and got a job in the Dawn of War 3 development team,
or the Dawn of War development team was looking for references and thought that was canon.
Just neat little thing.
Maybe they realized the game was going to tank and they tried to put some fan service in it at the last minute.
That also might have been a bad life.
Actually, I have a potentially controversial opinion about Dawn of War 3.
Oh?
The voice acting sucks.
Okay.
I'll bet it.
I don't know if that's controversial because I've seen a couple of people say, well at least the voice acting is good,
but everyone sounds really bored and there are videos on YouTube comparing the same units in 1, 2, and 3.
And in 1 and 2 they sound like they're having the time of their lives and then in 3, I don't know, it sounds like...
The Space Marines sound like bored squaddies in Afghanistan.
It's like, the Marine squad here, yeah.
Oh, it's just terrible.
It became maybe a little bit more high quality professional,
but that means it lost all of the fun and the charm of the first two Dawn of Wars.
Yeah, no one's yelling anymore.
Yeah, no one's ever like,
My Emperor!
Space Marines attack!
And everyone's just excited to be there.
No one's excited to be in Dawn of War 3.
Even the people in Dawn of War 3 don't seem interested.
The voice acting is so bad.
They're just slaughtering, they are having so much fun and you're like, oh, they're having a great time slaughtering the enemies of the Imperium.
Good on the Space Marines.
And then you get to freeing it.
I've definitely watched the video that Dread's referencing where they compare the two and it's like,
It's so milk toast and dull and it's like, oh, there's no charm in it.
Maybe professionally it's a little bit higher quality, but it's not fun anymore when that's what we're here for.
I'm not here for The Last of Us, it's all depressing and grim.
It's like, no, I'm here to watch these Space Crusaders scream.
Can't Gabriel Angelos do a jumping forward roll in the third game?
Yeah, in Terminator armor.
Exactly, like, the ship has sailed, make it silly, make it fun.
It's like, yeah, you can't have a back flipping demigod.
How will they appeal to eSports commentators?
That might be it, like that's my conspiracy theory.
They didn't want the characters like speaking over like the eSports commentators
because they thought it was going to be a big eSports hit.
That's my conspiracy theory and I'm sticking to it.
Well, it's like a, when did that game come out?
Like 10, not 10 years ago, maybe 10 years ago.
6 years ago I think.
Mayor G sponsors Dawn of War 3.
Yeah.
Good Lord.
And then you play it and it's just bad StarCraft.
It has no full StarCraft but awful.
Yeah.
But.
The fact that we thought it was going to take off is embarrassing and shameful.
Shameful.
Oh wow, strong opinions.
And even the plot of it is, everyone's racing for the spear of Cain.
It's even like, the other plots of the game, they were all contravences to get you to fight all the cool factions they put in.
It doesn't even feel like they were trying for Dawn of War 3.
It's like everyone's fighting for the spear of Cain.
Go beat up the Eldar, now beat up the Orcs, now you're the Orcs, beat up the Eldar, now you're the Eldar, beat up the Marines.
Because you notice it had the same plot again where like the ending was basically, oh are demons being released?
Like a big demon.
Yeah, I was going to say, it turns out there's a prophecy that the Eldar have about the spear of Cain united.
What they thought it was, was it would unite all of the Eldar craft worlds and bring them into a new age of glory.
But it turns out the real prophecy, and there was this demon known as the Storm Prince.
Well you didn't know he was a demon, they thought the Storm Prince was some Eldar to unite them when he had the spear.
Turns out it was a demon who was released, the Storm Prince.
And everyone being united was actually the Orcs, the Eldar, and the Space Marines, the Blood Ravens, to fight the Storm Prince.
So at the end of the game they all come together, beat the hell out of the Storm Prince,
and in a very un-40k move everyone decides to just go their separate ways and kind of forget about the whole affair.
Except for Gorgots who hangs-
Just walk away.
Pretty much.
Except for Gorgots who hangs back after everyone else leaves and then nicks the spear of Cain because he's an Orc.
Also of note is that Gorgots is no longer a war boss, he's at the start of the game serving another one.
Although that one I don't find as egregious because he's an Orc, it can be easily explained away as he didn't feel like being in charge anymore for the moment,
and Gorgots does what Gorgots wants.
Jain's czar was also there, left no impact.
Thank you for coming, Jain's czar.
And yeah, thank you Dawn of War for- I can't even summon up Vitriol to talk about this game after long enough, I just feel-
It killed the Dawn of War series, which was really upset.
Which is impressive in a really bad way.
Oh also, speaking of just copy and pasting from Dawn of War earlier, the Necrons were teased at the end of the game,
but then the game flopped and they stopped developing anything for it, so that went nowhere.
And then Meedam Necrons went back to bed.
They just made it equal size for it, didn't they?
I like the idea that Empires IV was alright.
Yeah, Age of- yeah.
And after Dawn of War III, alright might as well have been a 10 out of 10.
But thankfully, thankfully I don't need to end the Blood Ravens talk on Dawn of War III.
Because the last bit of information about them actually comes from Dark Imperium and the somewhat modern 40k timeline.
So hey, that's something.
The Blood Ravens, although the Blood Ravens would probably rather this lore not exist,
because they're on the wrong side of the Great Rift.
There's the side for those of you unfamiliar with Warhammer, the Great Rift, the big ol' chaos storm that tore the galaxy in half.
There's the half that the Astronomicon is on, which is the Emperor lighting the warp up for Imperial ships to travel.
And then there's the half that he's not on, and it's real dark and hard to do anything in there,
because warp travel is really hard when you don't have the Lighthouse.
They're on the bad side, the dark side, and the Aurelion subsector was absolutely rampant with chaos incursions.
And there were some signs that Ulcair was going to reawaken from his prison.
The Great Unclean One was coming back for round two, or at least trying.
I guess it would have been round three, actually. Pardon me.
Thankfully... Oh, what's up?
Sorry, I just made a weird connection with the Great Rift to the Berlin Wall.
Don't mind me.
You're on the wrong side of the wall, bro.
The rise of communism then, technically, rather than the fall of it.
Whoa. More crimes goes political. Not political.
Oh no.
I was just like, oh, you don't want to be on the east side. Oh yeah, I get the reference. Very good.
But despite them being only at half strength after Dawn of War bad and all that fun times,
they heroically, the Blood Ravens, threw themselves into the fray to defend their home sector,
both out of heroism and because they're kind of out of recruiting worlds, if this thing goes.
But thankfully, the custodians show up, as they did to almost every other chapter, except the Lamenters, rest in piss,
and gave them the secret of the Primaris Marines, as well as a whole bunch of Primaris reinforcements.
So now they're half and half Primaris Marines and firstborn Marines, and they're back at it again.
Gabriel Angelos is now the chapter master as of Dawn of War III, and he's leading the charge now.
He's not just a captain, he's back flipping across the galaxy in his Terminator armor.
Fleeing from battle to battle.
Yep. And he's with his massive Thunder Hammer, and he's being the best.
And also, we were talking about it earlier, when they looked at the genes he the custodians gave them,
they went, right, time to not let this secret out again, whatever they found, and they kept their origin secret once again.
And that is the Blood Rape, although there's one more thing I need to bring up, and I will show this in the edit.
I'm going to send this image file into the general thing now, because this, I think even more so than Forgebreaker,
is the most impressive thing they've ever stolen,
and perhaps the only good thing to come out of Dawn of War III aside from the music.
They stole a Wraith Lord.
Oh my. What?
Yo. What is that?
That's a Wraith Lord.
What do you mean, it's got the color scheme and like, it's got their logo on it and everything.
For reference, a Wraith Lord isn't just like a dreadnought where you can kill the guy inside and then if you really want just take it.
There's a ghost in there, like that is an Eldar in there. You can't take the Eldar out of the Wraith Lord.
If you do, you just kill the Wraith Lord.
And...
You wouldn't steal a ghost.
I don't know, but I just saw that screenshot and I'm like, I don't know how they managed it, but they stole a Wraith Lord.
That is nice.
Utter, like heresy to the utter.
To be honest, I think the logical, next when they revive the Dawn of War games and they go, Dawn of War IV,
the only way they continue the Bloodraven story is they go, okay, we've given you Primaris,
we're back up to full strength.
And they're like, okay, guys, it's all going to be swell from here.
And then all of a sudden the sky darkens and ships descend and they're all in the heraldry of the Iron Warriors and Pertorabo descends and goes,
where's my hammer?
And that'd be the perfect way to kick off a new game.
It's very cool, but...
And give the Iron Warriors some...
A complete waste of a demon Primaris.
And have the craft world come up, have Ulthwee come up like, hey, you stole our Wraith Lord, we need that back.
What do you mean you stole our Wraith Lord?
And then Gorgoth comes in with his like...
The Spear of Kain.
Yeah, he's just like, I've got this too, and they're like, oh no, not this again.
And yeah, it all combines.
Well, Dawn of War IV is basically every faction coming...
Just make it Dark Crusade again and just make it a complete mess of a war zone where everyone is there killing everyone else.
And make them yell again. Please, I beg of you, make everyone yell again.
Yes, we need the yelling.
I hired Dredanov, I heard he's pretty good at yelling.
Yeah, you should hire Dredanov for Dawn of IV.
He yells raining willowmen pretty, pretty hard, if I do say so myself.
That's... yeah.
That being said, that's the Blood Ravens?
That's just about the Blood Ravens.
As of modern times, that's like I said, with the Dark Imperium, that's kind of what they're up to.
I assume they still have that Wraith Lord in a shed somewhere alongside half of every other chapter's artifacts they've ever accumulated just in some sheds.
They're probably not even on one of their like, flagships, it's just somewhere.
It's also poorly labeled as well.
I just like the idea of them all in a big pile, like not even organized, just like, oh, another thing, and they just chuck it on the pile.
Get them a goblin.
It's how they arm their aspirants once they're ready to become full space warriors.
They're just like, go grab some from the shed.
We've got to do like a joint operation with the Space Wolves.
Neophyte, Calderus, you go through and just root for like that thing we have that's theirs for like negotiations.
Okay, and he's just there sifting through.
The real question is who can steal more, Shrazen the Infinite or the entire Blood Ravens chapter?
Blood Ravens or the Minotaurs?
I don't think the Minotaurs is stealing because stealing implies it was stealthily taken.
And more like repo, they knock on your door and they go, you have something the High Lords want.
The Blood Ravens are, I almost called them the Blood Lords, I don't know where I got that one from.
The Blood Ravens are like the Skyrim stealth build, you are suddenly naked because the Dragonborn has pickpocketed the clothes off your back.
The Minotaurs... it's just a hate crime.
They have to paralyze hell on your body and then nick everything while you can't move.
And then beat you up just for good measure.
Well, with that being said...
I hope people enjoyed learning about the sneaky slash mysterious boys of the Blood Ravens.
Thank you for this lore crime filled episode.
Many flubs as I kept calling them the Blood Angels.
What was not a flub is that Dark Souls 2 is the best Dark Souls game.
That one was not a flub, that one is simple fact.
Yeah, yeah.
Colin was later executed by Fire Expo.
Dark Souls 3 is overrated, it may have the best gameplay with the swordplay, but everything else is vastly overrated.
Oh, it's good.
But with that heresy aside, and also thanks very much, Red and On, for once again joining us on lore crimes.
Thank you again for having me.
I'm sorry I wasn't as prepared as perhaps I should have been, but I think it led to lots of fun shouting, so swings and roundabouts.
It's Blood Ravens, it doesn't matter.
If there's any chapter to have fun with it like that, it's the Ravens by far.
Because again, like I've really been trying to emphasize, they're my favorite way to look at 40k because it's over the top, it's goofy and fun.
It's these cracked out maniacs screaming for the Emperor and then three minutes uninterrupted of just...
AHHHHH!
It's just fun.
Yeah, like...
The Blood Ravens are just fun.
They're not... are they like the deepest most emotional characters in 40k? Not by a long shot.
But they're fun.
Dawn of War 3 notwithstanding.
And you can play them as well.
And you can play them without needing to take out a loan.
With that being said though, thank you everyone for listening.
We hope you enjoyed this one.
As much as it was, you know, half jokes, half informative.
But you probably walk away with hopefully a decent understanding of the beloved Blood Ravens.
I almost did the flood myself.
It's hard.
It's an epidemic.
It's a bit hard, it's in my head now.
With that being said though, thank you all for listening and we will catch you all on the next one.
Peace.
Take care everyone.
Goodbye everybody.
Who's gonna say it?
I love you.
There it is.
Bye.