Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and welcome back to Fantasy Fireside where
we discuss bits and bobs about Warhammer Fantasy, its many factions, its many characters and
all sorts. So Colin, what are we talking about today?
What we're talking about Andy is, I want to ask you if this sounds familiar, a large powerful
nation ruled by a god-like figure who doesn't like being worshipped as a god, who has several
incredibly powerful but not quite as powerful as him children, who has a grand overarching
plan to stop chaos that he's not really told any of them about. Does any of this sound
familiar? North Korea?
Indeed we're talking about North Korea. No, the Imperium, I'm assuming you're alluring
to the Imperium. I am in fact doing that, yes. It is exactly
what I'm going for but it's not the Imperium, it is the mythical nation of Grand Cathay
which for those of you who don't know is only a slightly more original name than what they
gave Japan which is just Nippon. That's only because less people know about Cathay being
another name for China than people know about Nippon being a name for Japan.
And isn't it Indie, sort of India? They didn't even get that, it's just Ind.
Yeah they just took the letters out like, yeah fuck it, it'll be fine.
Sometimes you know the creativity is flowing, you get something just with a really unique
name sometimes, you just got to take away two letters.
But that doesn't mean Cathay's not fun to talk about. I have found that since they came
out in Total Warhammer, boy did I want to get a Cathayan army which with some teasers hopefully,
for hopefully a little bit down the line that might actually be happening.
I do find it interesting that like, what's the company that makes Total War?
Creative Assembly. Creative Assembly, like Creative Assembly
are basically entirely responsible for the lore we're about to talk about, aren't they,
more or less. It's like they've done more for Warhammer fantasy lore than Games Workshop
in the last few years in some regards.
Yeah, in fact, old Cathay lore really was, there was a little bit more than some of the
other generic like background nations, but they definitely weren't even the one with
the most, like, where would they go, like Kislev, Estalia, Tailea, Araby even, they
all definitely had more lore. Cathay was probably the Asian equivalent country with the most
lore, did not have a lot. It kind of starts and ends with they have, you
know, they had, of course, the Silk Road, still just called the Silk Road, they did
not change the name from real life to Warhammer.
That'll do, yeah.
The Dragon Emperor dropped a rock on the Ogre Kingdoms and they have strange living creatures
made of stone, as in they had, like, you know, those terracotta warriors, well, what if they
were alive and could kill you? That was kind of...
And I've seen the enormous ones in Total Warhammer, I'm like, oh, they look cool.
Yeah, that was a, I don't think they, they don't believe they were even like the big
ones yet, they just had like the terracotta warrior standard that just happened to be
living, and this was all from background, either the occasional White Dwarf book, or
not book, magazine, or the Tamurkan Thrones of Chaos, Forgeworld book, wasn't much about
them. But then we enter, I believe it was 2021 or 2022, when Total Warhammer 3 was coming
around, this, you know, the end game of the trilogy. They've got four and a half of the
new factions they want, you know, you've got, of course, got the four Chaos Gods and a demon,
for the not aligned, all the demons together, Fun Box faction. You've got Kislev, got the
Ogres. It's, you know, you kind of want someone else, though, you know, the demons are, they
don't necessarily play similarly, but they're kind of much smaller rosters than the other
factions in the game. Kislev's, Kislev's decently fleshed out, the Ogres needed some
help, but another one would be good. So, in conjunction with Games Workshop, an eighth
edition Warhammer Fantasy Army book was made for Cathay, which you don't get to see, no
one gets to see, so we know it exists, but we don't get to use those rules, which is
like in a gigantic vault with like a space marine helmet on the front, just like it's
in the vaults of Warhammer HQ somewhere. It is a little bit galling that that exists,
and it's not even a PDF for like a collector's thing somewhere. Ah, that's a shame. But Brightside,
what that did was creative assembly, as you said, went a little bit nuts, turned that
rule book into units for the game, and suddenly, without, if I'm remembering correctly, not
much ceremony, they're like, oh, hey, guys, here's the next Warhammer 3 trailer. Grand
Cathay, what are you doing here? This is a nice surprise. And so, suddenly, we have Cathay
as an actual fleshed out faction. Not as much as, you know, obviously, the Empire, who's
had 40 plus years of books devoted to them, but I think they're doing better than the
leagues. I was just about to say in comparison to the leagues, though, I'm sure they're doing
pretty good. They have multiple characters to talk about and discuss that are all in
spite of, you know, a fairly light amount of lore. I actually quite like his characters.
Hmm. So, I'm sure we'll go into them. We will. We'll start. Although it's interesting with
like creative assembly, basically, at least in terms of lore, it's kind of an unprecedented
thing to just be like, hey, we're just going to make independently this faction completely
fleshed out all of a sudden in one fell swoop. And we're not even going to make a big ceremony
about it. Just say, oh, by the way, we just revolutionized this faction. Lol. Oh, thanks,
guys. If I'm remembering correctly, in the order of like the trailers, it was the first
one with Keeslev that was just kind of like, there was three. There was one that was like
in an empire college of the Wizard of the Heavens looking at the stars to read the future.
That didn't have much. Just that was really, hey, the game's coming. Don't worry. It's
getting close. The second one was Keeslev and then the Cathayan legendary lore trailer
drop for Meowie Yang. And hey, it looks really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to get
into it. So how are we going to crack this one today? Are we going into the history of
the lands or the biggest characters? How are we going to approach this today? It is still
a fairly light amount of lore. So we'll go through the history of the nation. We'll go
through the characters, talk about, of course, Big D. It's not Big E. It's Big D. Big Dragon
Emperor. Big D. Just laying on the table like, got Big D versus Big E. But I, and of course,
you know, the Dragon Primarchs, the Dragon Children. But there is, I have a surprise
for you, Andy. They all have a mother. Big D's married. Really? He is. And he didn't
banish her to the middle of nowhere with the first Space Marine made or whatever the hell
was going on with Lee too. He had like au natural Primarch babies. Oh yeah. In a traditional
way. All of these babies were made the natural way. That poor lady. I'm hoping it was like,
are they like the same size as a Primarch? She's also got some stuff going on. Okay.
Okay. She's also not quite human. Okay. Then that's fair enough because I'm just about
to... Could you imagine giving birth to Rabute Giliman? That would be horrendous. Oh, he's
massive. Jeez. Did they say how big they were in the caps? Now that I'm actually thinking
about it, when they were like first made, were they baby sized and just got huge or
were they still proportionate? So a baby Primarch is like two feet. I know they like rapidly
grow. So they obviously age really quick. They're like baby to teenager to adult in like a year
or so. They're like pretty quick, but it's like, I assume it's going to be like, cause
you think of like normal babies when they're born, sometimes you're just like, oh, that's
a big baby. Poor mother. And like, it would be, I would assume they'd be pretty chunky
babies. Like that's not fun. Especially when you're actually having 21 all at once, if
it was the original Primarch. Like, oh, that'd be dreadful. But at least I'm guessing these
babies were born a few years apart. And so there's a bit more of a, I'm the oldest, I'm
the youngest. Ha ha. Hierarchies in our family. Assuming there's not 19.
No, there's nine, however. So there's still, I mean, like I said, these were, they were
born the normal way. So that's, that's a lot of kids.
Just had the dragon emperor like, right. First one's done. Right. I'll see you in a minute.
We're going to make them too. Okay. Yeah. Get them out there. Get them out there. We've
got to go now. Go, go, go, go. So, but, I mean, hey, it was probably more fun to make
them than it was for whatever Biggie was doing. Yeah. Malkador just ever syringe going, all
right, here we go. Where are you putting that? You don't want to know. Okay. Although if
you'd like, I guess as a secret spoiler, it's not even a spoiler because this is just a
one-off line from Nikari, you know, the keeper of secrets. Apparently they were watching
them make the dragon children. Hopefully that's just an idle total war taunt and not something
much grosser. I'm sure that would annoy the dragon emperor.
Just like a chaos demon. Like I saw you two doing it bareback. Like, Oh no, get the hell
out of my house. Shut him up. Shut him up. Kill him. Kill him now. Yeah. Yeah. But shall
we start with the history? Let's go. So for once in the realm of human nations, we actually
do go back to before the old ones. There were no humans yet, but if you might remember from
the other ones before the old ones showed up and started dicking around with the world,
there were dragons on the Warhammer world. It was a colder place. It was a, the dragons
were kind of the dominant life form. There's a lot of other races and the old ones show
up and just kind of start getting rid of things they don't like.
I'm getting dark souls flashbacks like there were dragons and then Gwyn, I mean the old
ones came in, they got rid of all the dragons. Oh no.
Yeah. Although in this case, Gwyn was a T-Rex. Naturally, the dragons were not happy that
the old ones warmed up the planet by shifting the entire thing closer to the sun. But the
lore for the T-Rex model, the Lizardman have was that it ate so many dragons so efficiently
that they had to get out of Lustria. So they couldn't really do much to stop them. Some
of them would eventually shack up with the elves as we talked about before. They had
best friends with the elves that give me an ego too if my dragon or my best friend was
a dragon. But some of them went off and did their own thing. Most important of them being
of course the dragon emperor who even at this time was probably still the most powerful
dragon, definitely by the time the old ones were done murdering a lot of them, he went
east to what would have been Cathay. Well, what would become Cathay. Eventually some
human tribes were found in the area because the old ones just kind of started plopping
down humans everywhere. So for protection they eventually came to him because he started
initially like, oh there's some barbarian, not even like hunter gatherer caveman tribes.
Let's get them as followers, they're here now, I might as well make the most of it.
And then chaos showed up and more and more started showing up and coming on in. And the
emperor realized, I can make a country out of this. There's a whole lot of people now
flocking to me because he's a big powerful dragon and dragons in Warhammer can usually
at least take on one greater demon. So and he's a very powerful one. So he starts flocking
together and eventually we start getting Cathay proper. It starts forming around him, they
start basing their culture on what he teaches them and eventually his children and wife.
And you get the initial grand nation of Cathay. And yeah, so now fantasy China does exist.
Most of the culture is based on what they were taught by the dragons, be it the dragon
emperor, his sons and daughters, his children, what have you. And they start growing and
growing eventually, of course, as China was in real life becoming the largest nation in
the Warhammer world, at least of humans. China, for those of you who don't know, has a lot
of people in it. Cathay has a lot of people in it.
Yeah. And to be fair, I think was it China was the first civilization to like propagate
reading and like, writing, so like very, very on the forefront of learning knowledge, fireworks,
gunpowder. They were ahead of their game for a long time.
Yeah. I don't know if they were the first, but they were, because a lot of different
writings just a handy skill, like a lot of different people kind of separately discovered
writing, but they were one of the first.
Yeah. I don't think it was so much they were the first to start writing. It was more that
they made a concerted effort to teach like the populace, hey, you should learn to read
and write because it's kind of good for the economy and counting grain and all this stuff.
Yeah.
You should know how to take notes because that's good for the civilization. Meanwhile,
Britain, we're all just there going, doing nothing apart from just throwing rocks at
each other, but different era, different time.
Everyone has their ups and downs. And when the real world, China's up was kind of like
2000 years straight. But ignoring real world history for a moment, this was all happening
for reference thousands of years before Sigmar. And in fact, even before the tomb kings were
the tomb kings, they were not undead yet. So Grand Cathay is a very old civilization.
Naturally, yeah, they fought against chaos, kept everything safe. In order to keep them
safe because the marauders that they faced came from the north, the dragon emperor constructed
a great bastion of Cathay. What could that be? What do you think that could be?
Hold on a second. Were any structures that we might describe as a wall erected around
this bastion?
Indeed. You could, in fact, just describe the whole bastion as a wall.
Okay. We did that games workshop. Very clever.
Although true to Warhammer fashion, right? The great wall of China in real life isn't
actually one contiguous wall. It's like a linked series of watchtowers, forts, a lot
of walls, of course, like we see the pictures, a lot of walls, but it's not one huge line
across all of China. The great bastion, I'll send you a picture, Andy. It's a very big
wall.
Wow. That is a big wall.
What's this?
What's floating rocks as well? What's going on there?
That is something that just kind of happens in Cathay.
Oh, okay. What's that about? Don't worry about it. It just happens.
My best guess has always been that the dragon emperor is so powerful with what he was doing
that sometimes some magic stuck around and made some rocks float. Failing that, someone
at Creative Assembly really loved Kung Fu Panda 3.
Oh, great movie. All the Kung Fu Pandas are great.
They were all good. I didn't see the latest one. I've heard it's not as good, but I don't
know if it's bad because it's bad or if it's bad because it's a seven out of a 10 after
some bangers, right?
Yeah. It's like that whole thing of... I even saw a video recently. It's just like this
perfect trilogy. It's just like the original Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and then it's
Kung Fu Panda and I'm like, ah, he's not wrong.
Yeah. So this wall, real good to keep chaos out. Sometimes something breaks through, but
not really even often. Usually that's really just total war hammer, if you'd like to take
that as loosely canon. For the most part, Norscan or not usually Norscan, usually like
young marauders try and break through and then they get shot. It's a big wall. You're
not getting through.
How long did it take them to figure out like, we should probably stop trying to get through
this wall after five attempts.
They're chaos raiders, so they didn't really get that down. They kind of just kept going.
One thought they were that one guy to break through the wall. As it turns out, it was
not actually... We'll get to the end times eventually because that's not really been
changed. I would quite like to see it a little bit more fleshed out, if only to know what
the dragons were doing. But it wasn't actually really chaos proper that did Cathay in.
Typical. I just kind of like the idea, to be honest, of the ogres watching the chaos
hordes charging. They're like, they're doing it again. They're just there having a snack
watching. This will be funny.
Well, that actually brings me to, I guess, the next point. When we talked about the ogres,
I did mention it. We'll mention it a bit more briefly here. But the ogres during this time,
eventually were eating the giants, eating their home out of house and home, and eventually
kind of wandered into the lands of Cathay. They found out that people taste pretty good
too. So the dragon emperor, in his relatively, to the setting, limitless power and wisdom,
just chucked a big rock onto their homeland and wiped out two-thirds of them. Which, on
the Cathayian side of things, it's a much less influential affair because most of the
ogres just kind of went away after. Not all of them. Ogres are everywhere. But at the
time, it was like, well, I dealt with the problem.
Yeah, to the ogres, it was like, this is a cataclysmic event for our culture. For the
dragon emperor, it was a Tuesday.
Yeah. For the day Big D visited your town, it was the most important thing.
He went swinging his Big D, and he was like, this is how little I care.
Yeah. So for a while, Cathay was pretty, there's still, like I said, not too much about it.
But it did develop, like I said, to resemble China, and of course under the guidance of
the dragons. Over this time, Big D would have his nine kids. There's no specific date when
this kid came here, this kid there, that kid there. But there are very much oldest and
youngest ones, and they would lead the time being revered. Which instantly, you know,
a little bit about the culture. I don't remember where I read it, but it was a great way to
put it, which is that Cathay kind of turned into what the Imperium would be if Horace
didn't have heresy all over the place.
Oh, that's nice.
Big E was able to gaslight everyone, really thinking he's not a god.
Although before we go any further, am I right in thinking though that the dragon emperor
might be the oldest character in the set, or one of the oldest characters, or at this
time the oldest active character in the setting? Because he's pre-Old Ones.
He probably is. The only thing that would make it like not him is if some of the slahn
were made by the Old Ones before they showed up on the planet. And even then, it wouldn't
be an answerable question. It would be like either some of the early slahn were older,
or the dragon emperor is still older. He's either the oldest, or he's only not the oldest
because you can't prove he is.
Either way, he's got main character syndrome. He's like, I'm in charge because I was here
first. And he's like, yeah, fair enough.
Yeah, and again, it's hard to talk down to him because if you do it, he's still a dragon.
You got dragon. So anything that tries to bother him usually just kind of dies. Although
he doesn't make himself known very often. Because at one point, he started planning,
much like the guy in space. And of course, it was a plan to get rid of these annoying
chaos things once and for all.
How'd that go?
Well the end times happened, so whatever the plan was clearly didn't work.
Bucca.
But you know, we'll get to it later, he did at least tell one of his kids about some of
it. So he does have that going for him. With that though, a little bit about the, like
I was, Imperium if Biggie didn't get stuck on a chair forever. So they don't really usually
worship gods in Cathay, right? They're not about that. But they revere the dragon emperor
as the ultimate being of whom all should aspire to, even if they know they can never be untouched.
They're not on his level. They revere his nine children as, again, not quite Biggie,
but still basically gods walking around. Granted, and you know, sure enough, as poor Carcassi
found out in Horus Rising, if you say bad things about Big D and the sons of his children
and all of that, they're probably going to beat you in the town square for saying bad
things about the not god dragon emperor. So it's, they worship them as gods, but they
don't like gods. You know, it's very much great crusade era Imperium stuff, where like,
let's be real, even ignoring, you know, Euphrates Keeler had her little shrine. It definitely,
they didn't call Biggie a god. You don't have that level of reverence for people you look
up to normally.
And to be fair to both factions, you can also point directly to them and be like, that thing
over there that's like shooting fire out of their fingertips or like is a billion foot
tall when it's seemingly immortal. It's kind of like a god, dude. I'm just saying. And
he's right there.
I'm looking at him. Especially because like the dragon emperor, he is, it's easier to
like say object, he's not a god because he was a dragon hanging around. But other dragons
at Warhammer can't just magically summon up a giant like mile thick wall across a nation.
So you gotta wonder.
And he was also around practically from their perspective since the dawn of time.
And yeah, as far as they're concerned, he's been here forever. It was an, although there
are, there is, again, there's a fun line from one of the children. We'll get to them. Yuan
Bo, who says, of course we look down on gods that are based in destructive and humanity
clearly wants to be ruled. Why else would they conjure up these gods to rule them? Which
leads into the next bit about Cathayian culture. Very orderly, very much about, you know, yin
yang, harmony and all that stuff to the point that it's a game mechanic in a total war.
Everything needs to be in place. You know, all the Feng Shui needs to align and everything
like that. There's a, it was more so an old lore. I haven't seen it as much, but there,
you know, there was the elements, right? You know, what a wind, fire, water and wood, wood
being, you know, depending on like some old ways to look at the elements. Wood is an element.
Everything needs to line up nice. Everything needs to be harmonious and all of that, you
know, it's a very orderly nation.
This, this, this, um, infantry division sparks joy. This one is not pulling their weight.
This one is very much not sparking joy. Exactly. Um, over this time, he would also have some
kids and at one point get married to the moon Empress. The moon Empress is not just a fancy
name because she's a shape shifter from the moon, the last of her race. Where did that
come from? Where did they go? I don't know. This is again, some of this was, I imagine
how a lot of early Warhammer was like the horse heresy before it was developed where
a line just gets thrown out. And I was like, what do you mean by what? What? It's the,
it's the clone wars effect where original star Wars movie, Ben Kenobi is like, ah, the
clone wars on the clone wars. Oh, it's a big thing. Now we have, what does that mean? I
guess we'll make a whole movie and spin offs just about that. Yeah. Cool. All right. Still
waiting on some stuff for that. Uh, but yeah, she was a, she was a shape shifting being
from the moon. Um, what exactly that entails don't quite know, but she's a, the dragon
emperor found her pretty harmonious, I guess. And, uh, they made BABY. Um, the emperor just
went that wizardess came from the moon and he was smitten. He's like, I, okay, I'm interested.
They, uh, they got to doing and from that nine kids, uh, although a little, little bit
of history still left to go. Cause, uh, there are still more comparisons to be made. They
ruled directly over Cathay. Not, you know, obviously not the only people. There's also,
of course, the army of bureaucrats below them, but they were still the direct rulers of Cathay
from in the Imperial calendar, negative 1800 IC to 1999 IC, a nice clean 4,000 year ruling,
which was mostly okay. It was mostly solid. Uh, you know, even with big D leading them,
there's ups and downs, but every now and again, you know, things would get bad. Things get
better. Yeah. You know, standard nation stuff, no nations at the top of the game all the
time. Right. Eventually, uh, 1999 big D and big E leave, uh, to go work on that project
a little bit more hands on. They, uh, they entrust Cathay, uh, well kind of more softly
in trust because from my understanding of what happened, they just kind of upsticks
and left one day like Sigmar did. It was just like, and we're gone. Good luck everyone.
They were just a bit worried about Y2K. They're like, ah, school the blocks are going to reset.
We've got to get out of here quickly. Ah, but, uh, so it's got like the soft, you know,
like big E and trusting horse and the primers to take, take care of things. Uh, although
a little, a little bit less solid, I guess, uh, cause again, it does appear to me like
they just kind of left. Uh, but with that, uh, again, you know, the children are leading,
it's up to them. You know, they've, uh, they're going to do what they're going to do and,
uh, they don't do so good, uh, to the point that for the next few hundred years, kind
of, uh, just like kind of during, and then a little bit after while the emperor, the
empire is going through the age of three emperors, Cathay goes through what is known as the time
of darkness and disharmony, which was mini Horace heresy. None of his kids felt, well,
okay, we'll get to that again. None of the kids in charge of Cathay felt a chaos. They're
all still hanging around. They've still got the right sibling rivalry thing that gets
a little bit more violent than it usually does. They got that down pat still. So when
big D's absence, they declare, I should be in charge. No, I should be in charge. I want
to be in charge. So Cathay kind of starts infighting massively. Um, it's vastly destructive.
The only reason they're not overtaken by chaos is again, you know, big wall and whenever
chaos shows up, they just like, all right, pause for a moment. Everyone, we need to deal
with this. They shoot the chaos invaders and they're like, okay, back to killing each other.
I imagine if you've ever seen like half memes because they're kind of just screenshots of
historical records where it's like minor skirmish on the Chinese border, 30 million dead. I
imagine that's kind of what was going on. Cause again, it is fantasy China. It has a
very large amount of people in it. It eventually got to the point that, uh, any of you ever,
do you know journey to the West vaguely? Um, I, I know of it in like a, I've heard of it
since, but not much. Do you know who's, do you know Sun Wukong at least as a vague figure?
Uh, slightly again, not by any stretch where I could be saying much about it. Well, do
you know who Goku is? Cause if you do, congratulations, you know, Sun Wukong. Uh, Sun Wukong.
Wukong Goku, who I don't believe he has a name in Warhammer, but he's the monkey king.
So it's Sun Wukong. Eventually at this point, he just takes the throne of Cathay because
they were so disunited and not working with each other that the monkey man just kind of
wanted it up and took control. And, uh, it was really not great. Uh, it kept getting
divided like more and more. There was a separated, uh, Cathay was really not looking good. This
was, uh, I think like closest thing to real China. Cause there was always parallels in
Warhammer fantasy. Like the three kingdoms period. Oh yeah. I love dynasty warriors myself.
Yeah. Great game. Uh, how many times are we going to make this game? About 50. Nice. We'll
do it until people stop buying it and no one stopped buying it. So, and, uh, the monkey
king for reasons that I will admit are beyond my comprehension installs a skaven to be his
chief advisor and starts trade with the skaven. No, don't ask. Don't ask. I don't know why
he did that. Okay. And eventually, uh, a couple, like at least a hundred years after that, there's
about a hundred years where Cathay is ruled by the monkey man. Big D and you know, his
wife, the dragon, emperor show back up or moon. They're like, what the hell are you
all doing? What is this? We've just been on a lovely honeymoon, a late honeymoon because
we had to get the babies done first and we come back and you've left the house in an
absolute tip. What is going on? Why are there fires everywhere? Who have, who have you killed?
So and so supposed to be here. These, this is a big pile of bodies over there. What's
going on? I know he was just like a mortal dude, but I quite liked him and now he's dead.
Uh, yeah. And, uh, he kind of sorts things back together and that around gets to the
point where modern war hammer fantasy begins. Uh, there is around this time, which are presumably
existing to give us rebel enemies to fight. Uh, here's another just exact term from Chinese
history. Eventually some people did rebel against the dragon emperor, against the mandate
of heaven, which is again, just Chinese history. And we get to about modern war hammer fantasy.
Uh, although it is occurring to me as I look through the notes, I did skip one thing. Uh,
they traded a lot with the tomb Kings a bit. They gave the tomb Kings firearms, which is
in one telling of the story because fun fact, Andy, the origin of the vampires is possibly
the most retcon story in all of war hammer period because Vlad's had about 50 different
names and, uh, might've gone to Cathay. We don't know because GW flip-flopped every day
flip-flop during the same edition. Sometimes I'm getting emperor flashbacks again with
that in mind. Like, Oh, he was all these people doing history. Hmm. It's great. Uh, but they,
yes, they did trade with the priest cakes as they were at the time, but even gave them
guns. Uh, and in exchange Neferrata gave some of them vampirism and they went back to Cathay,
which was never much expounded upon even a newer lore. Although there is a minor vampire
faction in Cathay. You fight his total war hammer and, uh, Vlad might've been an advisor
to the dragon emperor for a bit. Vladdy daddy Von Karstarn. To be honest, I'm just imagining
the dragon emperor with his super natural like smell. It's the first vampires like walking
to say, do you guys smell that? What is that? What is that? There's something going on.
What's going on? And then he's just like, Oh, vampires now I deal with this shit. Oh
God. But were they like aggressive? I assume they couldn't be aggressive towards Cathay
cause it's like, what are you going to do? It's super duper powerful. Yeah. This was,
um, even an older lore before there was new stuff about like the dragons. Vlad was more
just still an advisor. And when they discovered he was a vampire, he did pretty quickly high
till it out of there. Yeah. But he again, direct advisor to the dragon emperor. So he
definitely, he, he definitely found a pretty high station for a little bit. Then he turned
into a pirate, but this, uh, this isn't about Vlad. We don't need to worry about that right
now. Good old Vlad dad. Uh, daddy, daddy meeting another daddy. Yeah. Uh, with that though,
a lot of the other history we can kind of talk about as we go through the dragons. So
like I said, dragon children, all born naturally sons, uh, child, you know, dragon emperor
and moon empress. And much like the prime marks more or less demigod children's of the
dragon emperor who rule Cathay, uh, both directly indirectly, uh, depends on the role. Uh, and
when he's not around, they're his voice. When he is around, they help him with what he needs.
So let's go through them. Where is the first one? Where have you gone notes? Uh, right.
Uh, we'll get through, cause two of them are just totally unknown. We'll go through them
first. One of them is, one of them is nothing. I'm just going to love with you. One of them
is completely, it starts and ends with, we don't know about them. Oh, they have their
own lost prime mark. I see. Indeed. Two is too many. We'll have one. You know, half as
many kids, you only get one lost prime arc. Yeah. Another one is mostly unknown. However,
there was a, you know how like, like dragons in China tend to, they don't really, uh, they're
like more serpentine. Uh, they don't have like the arms and legs. They're just kind
of like big snakes in a way. Yeah. Uh, that is largely what the Cathay and dragons look
like when they're in dragon form. Uh, with that being said, though we don't know either
of the unnamed dragons, Archeon in his quest to become the ever chosen of chaos slaughtered
a chaos dragon who is described as being serpentine in nature. And the name of it was Yen-ya Long.
So I'm thinking one of those Cathayan dragons, one of the two missing ones might've got lost
in the chaos sauce and got butchered by Archeon. It's another feather in his bow of like people
saying, Oh, he's cooler than, than Abaddon. Cause he gets more done. He killed a whole
ass dragon. That's pretty impressive. Yeah. It was a semi divine whatever's going on there
dragon. Uh, it's that's again, that's not confirmed. It's just the only thing really
we have to go off of is that it was a serpentine dragon as opposed to normally. And it had
an Asian sounding name. So it could be connections there. I mean, where else is it going to,
going to, going to come from in Warhammer fantasy? Like Bretonia? Doubt it. Probably not. Um,
so with, uh, with that we come to, uh, the actually known siblings. Uh, so first one,
uh, Shen Tzu fantasy Vulcan. She's described as the bringer of light and hope all of her
siblings. Yeah. Uh, big D has daughters too. Uh, again, it was biological. There was no
genetic stuff going on. Indeed. Uh, she was her bringer of light and hope. She's all about
bringing harmony and everything to her. The point that in total war, the, if you do bother
to some reason, still play the, uh, the more narrative campaign, which by the way, as a
side note, don't do that. Just play immortal empires. Uh, you are looking for her. That
is the whole point. They, they want her back really bad so that the whole country can be
at peace again. Uh, cause without her Feng Shui is off. This is a problem because one
day she seems to have just walked into Norske and vanished. Don't know where she went. They
really want her. Uh, they still have rough hope that she's alive, but like the MacGuffin
God of the total war campaign, the God, the bear God of Kieslev, Erson says he witnessed
her fate, which is pointedly not him saying she, he knew where she was. He witnessed her
fate. So as long as they don't have to get the artifacts of, uh, of she soon just be
like, right, we've got to go find her. We've got to get these specific items left behind
by, I mean, um, the dragon lady and then we'll find her and it'll be good. Like they don't
have anything to go off. I'm assuming they just like, Oh, we'll just find her eventually.
So yeah. So there's a, there's three possibilities I have in my head for what, uh, what happened
to her. Cause you know, she, she was the nice one who kept everyone, you know, stable and
happy as a family. She had to go naturally. We need the war game to be a war game, get
the hell out lady. And, uh, then so yeah, three options. One, she's dead. Two, she's
still missing and they're saving her for a DLC for total war. Or three, because the dragon
Archeon ripped off had three heads. There was some weird chaos, human centipede, dragon
centipede stuff going on. Her siblings, no less. That's even worse. Yeah. So again, not
at all confirmed. I'm just trying to give some options as to where did she wander off
to? Again, most likely is probably you walked into Norsca lady. There's a lot of scary things
up there and did you bring your winter gear? Yeah. Depending on when you did that, that
includes Archeon. So good luck. Not good. The next, the next one is Shiama. She is confirmed
dead. She was, she was the firstborn child of the emperor and empress and she was slain
before any of the others were born. So they only know so much about her. She does still
kind of quietly help. Cause I think it's kind of like you get powerful enough and death
isn't quite as important because she's apparently sleeping underneath the, it's called the dragon
river. Not the most creative of names, but it is fitting. I will give it that there's
a dragon under it. She's doing the dragon sleep under the dragon lake in dragon mile
beneath dragon mountain. She's got an order of monks dedicated to her warrior monks and
she helps guide the dead Cathayans to the underworld. So she's dead, but she's still,
she's still helping out. And I'm sure the God of the dead more appreciates the help. He's
pretty overworked. Is, is there any risk that she could run into Nagash or is that like,
throughout most of the lore? Probably not. Cause when the Gash was defeated, he, it depends
on which floor you go with. He was either so weakened by the fell blade. He couldn't
do much in death or every time he died, all of the souls, the people he killed would gang
up on him, beat the snot out of them. So during that time, probably not. When the end times
come around again, there was a, the end times for Cathay has still not been elaborated on
too much. There's a non-zero chance that she got eaten by Nagash much like the God of the
dead. Cause that's the thing is like, whenever you mentioned death and Warhammer fantasy,
I think of hope. What's his face himself? Just like, I love death. That's my thing.
He's probably involved somehow, somehow. Usually is if you go back far enough, no direct mention
of him that I found. So, but I'm assuming, I'm assuming in the end time since the Gash
took control of the entire wind of death and then ate the God of the dead, probably not
looking good for her. I'm just, I'm just going to say it. You know, it was probably damage.
Yeah. Yeah. It was, uh, she's probably not doing so hot right now. Yeah. Uh, but with
her, we now finally get one who's actually around and doing things. Meow. She's the oldest
now that she almost death, uh, which is she the one in the trailer? Cause I remember there's
a trailer where there's a lady, she jumps and she turns into the dragon. Oh, that's
cool. That's her. She's a, as the oldest, she is the strongest remaining. Although there's
an asterisk on that that we need to get to. Uh, she might not be, uh, because there is
a short story. There is actually a fun short story about Cathay where one of the other
ones throws his weight around a bit, but again, we'll get to that. She is at least in, I don't
know, her own words, the strongest. Uh, she's daddy's favorite. She's a daddy's girl and
her charge is the Northern provinces of Cathay. Cathay is divided, you know, in Northeast,
Southwest, Central, uh, again, very, I don't know, China. And, uh, if you'd like me to
be mean, I can help if, uh, wonder if she's daddy's favorite because the first daughter
and firstborn died and big D wanted a replacement. Uh, but that is just some Freudian analysis
from someone who's took in one site class at his life. So feel free to make of that
family situation what you will. She doesn't hate her dad. So she's at least got that above,
you know, like Horace or something. Uh, she is, and you know, to give her some credit
again, she's a, still a dragon, one of the dragon siblings, which since I realized I
haven't talked about it much, the, uh, dragons of Cathay can take out a human form at will
when they want to, you know, when they want to make friends and look nice, they can cast
magic a bit better when they're a human, but sometimes, and you know, it helps them blend
in. They're still very clearly not human. Uh, you know, what, if you look close, at
least they got some funky eyes, like glowing bright white or whatever color, uh, but it
blends them in. But then when it's time to throw down, like you saw in the trailer, they
jump off a wall and turn into a dragon. Yeah. I'm just wondering what was the mechanics
of, you know, whenever you get a character that transformed from a humanoid thing to
a beast or whatever, it's like, what happens to the clothes? Are they like just magic clothes
that just like, I can turn back and forth and back and forth and I'm just wearing the
stuff or is it part of their skin or is it like what's going on there? That's very strange.
It's kind of like that joke, that joke of like, what happens to the Hulk when he goes
Hulk? And then he gets really big and his trousers never shred, like, how? How does
that work? Yeah. Uh, don't know if that was answered. I'm going to go magic clothes, uh,
cause they're all wizards, but whatever you'd like to assume, if you really- I've got the
finest magic tailor in all the worlds. Yeah. Um, they, uh, yeah. So she is in charge of
the great bastions defense. She's got a very stressful job, you know, it's, it's constantly
under, under siege basically. It wavers back and forth between what strength of, you know,
chaos invaders are showing up, but it's chaos to the North chaos rate. Raiders always want
to prove they're worthy of becoming a warrior proper and then a demon Prince. So, you know,
it's, it's a very violent theater of war and she commands me, chaos is the only game in
town. Everyone else has sense not to invade. Everyone else has the sense not to invade
or it is just too far away to do it. So it's kind of just a lot of demons, particularly
a demons of zinch because zinch has a strong presence in Cathay. They call them Chi and
Chi in some places. He's actually officially worshiped. Uh, they usually, the dragons don't
really like that. Uh, so they squash it when they can, but it doesn't stop people. Well,
never stop people in the other Warhammer places from worshiping a chaos God. So just them
scape. Those are my worshipers. Go away. Piss off. They're mine. I need that worship more
than you do. Go away. Yeah. She's a meowing though. She's very haughty and aloof. She
is not a joyful person. Uh, she's, you, you probably would not want to be stuck in like
a car ride with her. It would not be, it would be very awkward the whole way through. Yeah.
Lots of excuse me, princess. All that kind of stuff. Which, you know, again, I will be
kind of nice to her given her job. You know, if she fails once, then it's time for chaos
marauders to pour into the country. That would probably make me a pretty stressed out, not
very happy person to, you know, it's comes with the job, right? Uh, she's, but yeah,
she's, she's in charge of that. She's a not got the best relations with her siblings because
she's happy to let you know she's daddy's favorite. Uh, and, but she's got the power
to back it up. And if nothing else, it took until the end times for Kathy to fall and,
you know, get really invaded by chaos. Right? So if nothing else, she does her job. Well,
you can give her that much. Uh, you know, if you want to be generous, uh, sleigh girl
boss, you know what you're about. If you don't want to be generous, please shut the fuck
up and just go back to defending the wall. You arrogant piece of shit. Uh, next one and
a couple of the first three are going to be, uh, legendary Lords by the way, in total Warhammer.
So if you own that game, you can play as three of them. Xiao Ming, he is a, in charge of
the Western provinces of Cathay and for a variety of reasons, both to his own inclinations,
his own personality and the region he rules because it's the region where the silk road
goes through. He's the one who interacts with normal people the most. Uh, so he's a, he's
an interesting guy. Uh, he's probably, he's my second favorite. The next one's my favorite,
but he's, he's, he's a close second. Okay. He's very down to earth. Like where the other
ones are very much like very open about the fact they're above and beyond the average
zone. If you need to find Xiao Ming 50, 50 shot, if it's not an active combat zone, you
could find them at a bar, just drinking, having fun with his troops. Little, little bit of
Lehman Russin, a little bit of that just kind of sprinkled in there where he like, he likes
his drink. He likes hanging out. He likes sleeping around because the dragon children,
they, they have children with more beings. I was just going to say they're E. Tyrion
Lannister energy from this guy, from what I can tell. Yeah. Which has a little side note
makes a, they're called dragon blooded Shugangons. They can't turn into dragons, but they're
still stronger than you. Okay. Got that, got that secret sauce in their bloodline. Like,
yeah, there's a, there's a little bit of dragon in there so they can cast some magic naturally
and probably rip you in half. So, uh, most of them come from him. Let's put it that way.
Are you one of mine? Ah, of course you are. Good lad. And then you go have a drink with
dad and then it's a good time. You tell your stories to dad and he goes, Oh, everyone knows
I'm the favorite. You know, my sister, Oh, look at me. I'm the best mom daddy's girl,
but actually everyone loves me because I'm a drinking buddy. Um, and he's actually just
such a cheerful and like friendly guy that it extends to not only non-dragons, but non-Cathans
and non-humans as well. Uh, do you remember Grease's gold tooth that I was gonna say,
it's this man, the Grease's guy. Yep. It was a, it was them talking to each other and relating
over dad problems that the, uh, some more proper, like actual tolling and trade routes
were set up through the ogres lands instead of just arming a caravan to the teeth and
hoping the ogres don't eat it. Uh, there actually seemed to be pals. Uh, they even, uh, they
made a joke that, uh, well, he made a joke that I'm glad we can, uh, bond over our issues
with our fathers. Although I don't think I could eat mine. He's a bit too big.
Not with that attitude. Go, go have it. And, uh, if you follow both the total war hammer
immortal empires trailer and meme cannon, him and Gelt are best friends, which actually
can be an event in total war hammer. You can get a bonus to relation with him if you're
playing as gelt. Oh, that's nice. Uh, yep. They're both lower of metal wizards. Uh,
Zhao is a dragon ruler of an empire. Gelt is supreme. They're, they're bros. They're
real bros. Uh, yeah. Uh, now you might be wondering what's the other shoe gonna drop
and it drops in the form that he's amongst his siblings. They consider these habits of
his very eccentric, right? Because, you know, they're the ruling dragons that are supposed
to be, you have a little bit more class, right? Don't just spend your time drinking and having
sex with the first person to walk near you. Yeah. Stop working up in hay bales in like,
in like the barn next door to the pub with like the girl from the tavern and going, where
am I? What happened? Like, yeah, that's very uncouth. You're a royal bloodline fella. Be
more kingly. Yeah. Uh, so they consider him eccentric for that. The other eccentricity
comes from that he's, he's really big into alchemy, which by itself, you know, fine.
Nothing wrong with that. It's alchemy and it's a fantasy setting. So it's a pretty productive
thing to pursue. The problem is, Andy, I'm, uh, I'm going to send you another image. Do
you see that gem on his hat? Let's have a look. Uh, yes. It was, uh, in an interview
with one of the creative assembly guys who was kind of heading the, you know, redesign
of Cathay and everything. Someone asked us the, Hey, is that Jade or is that a warpstone?
And the guy did not answer the question. Oh, uh, there's occasional voice lines where he
mentions he hears some voices. And even if that on his head isn't warpstone, warpstone
is one of the chief ingredients he messes with. And much of Western Cathay is known
as the warpstone desert. Oh, so he's not in a great environment for his sanity. He's not
using great materials for his sanity. It's, it's not great. He's full of warpstone the
way we are full of microplastic plastics. That's how it is. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's,
that's what he is. And you know, I'm, I'm just going to say it. I think I'll take the microplastics
compared to that. It's, it's led to him being like one of the most, one of the more isolated
of the siblings, not even because like they dislike him because he's an asshole. It's
equal parts, you know, a little bit of classism and equal parts. You have warpstone on your
head. You are not well. Uh, the next one we're going to talk about in particular, doesn't
like them because he thinks because Joe was doing things that were not sanctioned by the
dragon emperor and he's not a fan of that. Nope. Uh, although again, for what it's worth,
uh, Volkmar the Grim, who was just a dude, the cult, the Pope of the cult of Sigmar has
a warpstone eagle bolt to do his chest. Never once showed signs of chaos corruption. Not
even like, not even a hint that there's like, he hears voices when no one's looking or he's
secretly doing rich. He's just built different. So
All looks at him and goes, skill issue. Yeah. So probably fine. Makes him a little bit insane.
But you know, again, Hey, Luther Harkon hears voices all the time. He's the greatest admiral
to ever exist. So, Hey, maybe a little bit of crazy helps you out. Yeah. It's, it's,
it's, it's, uh, it gives you a bit of individuality. Makes you a little bit different. That's all.
It's fine. It's fine. It's like a little bit of spice. Yeah. Um, he, uh, he's also, he's
a mama's boy to Xiao Ming's daddy's girl. Uh, he's the moon emperor's favorite. Her
support is part of the reason he doesn't really face any consequences for rampant warpstone
usage. Uh, so yeah. Uh, and then, uh, I did, uh, I did have some comparisons by then. I
had these wrote down and I forgot to really go through the, the Primarchs. He's kind of
like, I couldn't really give him a closest one. Uh, he's because he's got like a little
Lehman Russ is like drinking party attitude, but I think he's also like as a whole closer
to Magnus because he's doing some experimentation with stuff that he probably shouldn't be.
He said, unlike Magnus, multiple people have told him, Hey man, warpstone's bad. Don't
do that.
His dad's like biggest bestest. I'm sure he hasn't done that. He hasn't shown up and like
annihilated the project. Big D was working on. Uh, but it's still like, what are you
doing there, bud? What's going on?
Why is this part of the city on fire? Come on, tell me you can tell me, come on. I won't
be that mad. Calm down.
And we get to the next one now and he's easily my favorite. You want boat. He rules the central
provinces and he's the administrator of the realm. Uh, as you can guess from that, one
of the biggest, his closest equivalent, he's Gilliman, right? He's the administrator. He's
the bureaucrat. Uh, the central provinces, he rules them. He's kept them pretty safe.
Like it, you know, there's, you can probably find beastman there, but I'm not going to
hold that against him. If there's H, if there's more than one tree per 10 square miles, there's
beastman. That's just how Warhammer fantasy works.
Uh, but in the lower, at least pretty safe place. Uh, and as far as most people know,
he is, he is just that he's Chinese Gilliman. He's an amazing bureaucrat. Uh, he does what
he does very well. He's kept the country running smoothly for thousands of years. He's a, he's
a pretty trustworthy or reliable guy. It doesn't make too many waves. And for that reason,
he's like the least disliked out of the rest of the siblings. Aside from maybe one will
get to, I like to make fun of her because she's a boy. She's a character. She's a piece
of work. Yeah. Uh, but she's, she's like, well, no aside from, pardon me. I was thinking
to someone, aside from that Shenzu lady we were talking about earlier, she's gone though
and probably isn't coming back. So since that he takes her place as the most likable one.
And again, as far as most people know, that is kind of just what he is. He's an administrator.
He does what he does. Still a dragon children. So, you know, you know, logically the average
get the, and he can kick ass, but he spends most of his time in human form. He's a pretty,
uh, not Xiao Ming levels of find them at the bar celebrating with the troops after the
last battle, but he's a pretty cordial guy. Talks to mortals without too much of looking
down at him, works with them frequently. He's the administrator, all that stuff. Uh, he's
very, very, you know, easy going, all things considered again, keeps telling Xiao Ming,
please turn down the Lincoln park and stop using warpstone, which is handily ignored.
But I don't think there's any real enmity there, at least from on Xiao Ming's part.
Yuan Bo is probably not very happy. He just sounds very reliable. Like I'll get the job
done. You can count on me. I'll meet the lads for one drink after the work shift. Just be
like, just so I'm there. I'll listen to their problems. And yeah, seems, seems like a good
guy.
And uh, you should only half believe that reputation because he has a reputation as
the one of, if not the weakest of the dragging siblings, which he plays up and helps spread
as the other Primarch he takes after is Lehman Russ, because what is his other title is none
other than the emperor's executioner.
As the bureaucrat, he has all the paperwork. He knows where everyone is. He knows when
things aren't going as they should be. So when he pays a visit, you better have a good
explanation for why things aren't going together very well.
He's quite literally judge, jury and executioner.
He is, he is the Punisher. That is if you've not played Marvel arrivals, when Punisher uses
his ult, that's verbatim what he yells. I know that's obviously something before the
Punisher, but you hear judge, jury executioner and then bullets start flying. He doesn't
use you on boat, doesn't use guns, but it's usually going to have the same result of where'd
my head go?
He starts screaming, just like, you know what? I loved it. I loved it. Go mental. Like in
that courtroom scene in the Punisher. I killed all those people. I killed all those people.
It was great. I'll do it again. Like, bow, to that, to that.
He's also, because he doesn't have enough responsibilities, this poor overworked Gilam
and Lehman Russ equivalent, we're also throwing in Corvus Corax because he's also the emperor's
spy master. He helps, this is more of the moon empresses thing, because he gifted her
what are known as onyx crow men, which are giant bird people that can turn into normal
crows, I believe, to go around and spy on the realm. And between that, he has your taxes,
so he's got all your paperwork. He has the crows to spy on you at any moment and they
can talk to him just fine. And he's very powerful. So if there's like anything in Cathay that
isn't like, either can't be taken on with an army or an army's not the best solution,
you're probably getting a visit from either scary bird people or the scarier dragon person.
Yeah, you're going to be visited by the cafe equivalent of the FBI, IRS, CIA, all the acronyms
at your doorstep. Yeah, he's not going to be happy. And he, he
does his job well. Let's just say that. He's also, though he's not the favorite of the
dragon siblings, he is the one trusted with the most knowledge of his father's plan. The
full, the full thing, at least to us, maybe you on bow knows the full deal, we don't.
But a lot of it involves hijacking the wizard, the lizard men's geomantic web they use to
align all the stuff and the, you know, the magics of the world and stuff. Big D's got
an interest in that. So when total warhammer, his job is to go to lustria and get that web
aligned to Big D's whims. Almost like a webway project.
Indeed. It could perhaps be something like that. We don't know, but there are parallels.
It could also just, you know, it's a little bit of revenge too, because the lizard men
are the response, are the ones who's, whose creators warmed the planet up by shifting
the whole thing closer to the sun. Could just be that he could find other ways to get his
plan completed, but those lizards killed all my dragon friends, so you know what? I'm taking
their shit. He's also, he's a very, as for as him, he's a Stoic fellow, like I said,
soft spoken, but you know, he'll get, he'll get, he'll get the job done. He actually has
a short story written about him called the master of the meteor wind, where he deals
with the changeling who's pretending to be Miao Ying, his sister. He gives a pretty good
showing of it. And if I remember correctly, the reason that he does not, he's tipped off
to the fact that it's the changeling, does not have pinky out when he pours the tea.
Change thing, you should have known. Etiquette, proper etiquette.
He's also a, he's the guy who had that quote about mortals seeking to be controlled for
why else would you conjure up the chaos gods, which is at least admittedly in fantasy, not
where the chaos gods come from, but can't blame them, I guess, for not knowing the complete
and utter truth of the universe and the chaos gods. So it's not the worst assumption to
make. He's not wrong about, he's not right about where they came from, but in 40K, that
opinion would be spot on because we have birthdays for the chaos gods. Just in fantasy, they
have a, it's not quite as correct. Yeah. He also, he's very hard to like, psych out, right?
Like he's the coolest, most collected guy on the planet. Unless you are the monkey king.
The monkey king is the only person who can piss off Yuan Bo reliably, which means I don't
know if it's like proper Sun Wukong, because in Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is a smarmy
little bastard. Or if he's going the other way, monkeys can might piss you off and just
flinging his poop at him. Never confirmed. Think what you might like. Everyone's got
a line. You don't cross even him. Yeah. His line might be getting poop thrown at him.
So you know what? I hope he never goes to Stirland. I had to get that in. Sorry. He's
also for the end, you know, the less little bit about him in spite of, you know, being,
you know, kind of like Gilman, he does have a little bit of a sense of humor, a little
bit of sass in him. At the end of that short story, Meow-ing eventually comes back and she's,
you know, all blustery about like, Oh, you entered my lands without my permission. How
dare you? And he just says, Oh, I'm sure you can forgive me in the same way that I'm sure
our father will forgive you for letting your lands go to complete shit while you were galvanting
off doing whatever. And then she just, he goes, she just goes real quiet. And he's like,
yes, I'm sure a very generous donation to, to, you know, to the bureaucracy would smooth
things over very well with dad. And then verbatim, he just turns to look at her grins. He goes,
after all, you are his favorite. Oh, oh, sassy boy, sassy boy. He's got, he's got some sass.
He's a, and though he doesn't make it known often, cause he's both spy master, might be
propaganda master and is the bureaucrat master. Don't mess with them. Cause he's probably
going to kill you. And I want a mini of him so bad. If slash when Cathay comes out as
an army, I goodbye all of my money. Uh, with that, there are two more dragon siblings.
One of them, both of them are pretty quick to go through. Okay. The last, the second
to last is lead out. He's the fire dragon commands the Southern provinces. Don't know
too much about them. We do know he has a temper, which fitting for the fire dragon, you know,
I'd say that lines up right. He constantly has to deal with the invasions from the Asian
countries we don't get to know about, you know, in Koresh, the monkey King. And he's
a, he's pretty jealous of a meow yin because he's like, I have to, I have to deal with
the Southern borders and there's weird chaos, snake men, beast men down there and the monkey
King and end where they have a hunt, like a thousand living gods. I have to deal with
that all the time. You just have to deal with the morons and big armor that's spiky. I have
to deal with all this, but I don't get any of the credit. He's, he's, he's got a bit
of a chip on his shoulder over that one. A bit of a perturabo complex. It sounds like,
we're like, Oh, master of war. Oh, whinging and moaning all the time. Fiery temper. Yeah.
He's a, which again, he's not one of the, he's not the maybe one who fell to chaos.
So he, he's still loyal. He's just, he's just grumpy, which I guess is still pretty perturabo
or dawn to be fair. Like dawn has a temper as well when he's a bit, but at least with
him, he's got the support. If you were just building walls and staving off all these things
like, Oh, no one gives me any respect. Yeah. Probably Dorn and or perturabo would be the
ones for him. And then the last one, Yin Yin. She's the ruler of the Eastern provinces and
the grand Admiral of Cathay's Navy. At one point with how the lauret cons worked because
the dragon Emperor used to be more of a position. Like it was an, you were an Emperor. Then
there was just the dragon Emperor. At one point when she was leading a fleet, she was
mistaken for the dragon Emperor, big dragon lady, you know, maybe Emperor is just like
a ceremonial title, kind of like how brotherhood is steel. There's still girls in it. But you
know, that was with the red cons and stuff. It wasn't, it was at one point, the Emperor
leading a big old fleet. Now it was her. She much like, you know, a lot of real Chinese
history, the rest of the dragon siblings, they're pretty inward looking. They don't
seek to, you know, go out and make a name. They're not about to make a name for themselves.
They're worried about internal affairs. Yin Yin, she wants to get out there, show everyone
the true might of Grand Cathay. She's about getting out there, expanding, setting new
routes up, all that kind of stuff. So as the grand Admiral, her favorite way of doing this
was to get big old fleets together and go out and sail and conquer. She's not good at
it. The country of Nippon is still independent. So if she's ever looked that way, didn't work.
And a couple times she invaded Lustria. During one of those invasions, you know, I will,
I will give her credit. She put together like a massive fleet, like stretching across the
horizon, right? Real show in the might of Cathay. Good stuff. A couple of slain mage
priests, you know, the, you know, the fat frogs that are the most powerful wizards ever
looked out across the horizon, saw the encroaching line, the armada coming through and decided,
I'm not a fan of that. So they drowned the entire thing with a tidal wave. Only Yin
Yin and one other dude survived who got stuck on Cathay and had to make his way, or got
stuck in Lustria, had to make his way back home. She's a, and I believe that's, that's
like, that's happened like twice.
Well, is it a case of she's actually, but she's just biting off more than she can chew.
Like, that's an opponent that like no one's going to be, or is it just, she's not good
at a job because...
It's not been expanded very much upon. She is like, has been described as like a little
bit too hotheaded, a little bit too throwing yourself into the fray. So again, she is still
a dragon sibling. So in the one V one, she can turn into a dragon and devour you. But
at least how I've taken the implication is that a little bit of both, sure. Losing to
a slan isn't like, that's understandable. They can just decide there's a mountain range
now, or funny enough, a tidal wave. Did not seem to come very well prepared for what she
knew would probably be a very tough challenge.
And is she the youngest sibling? Is that what it is? Like, oh, youngest sibling. I've got
to prove myself.
She's one of the younger ones. Definitely. I'm not sure if she's like, just flat out
the youngest, but she's definitely one of the youngest. Yeah, she's tried conquering
Araby. No, she has fought the dark elves, which a little bit more successful. The dark
elves don't raid Cathay as often. So she's at least doing decently defending Cathay.
Every time she gets expansionist though, she wants to get out there and make a name.
For Cathay, a lot of Cathayans tend to drown. So, eh.
What a shame. You can't expand. You're supposed to be in this one space on the map like every
other faction. There's no expansion allowed. This is Total Warhammer. At least unless you're
playing the game.
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So those are the, those are the dragons. Then just a little bit more
we'll wrap up on just a little bit of like what Cathay brings, will hopefully one day
bring to the table. So it is, it has some of the finest troops, at least basic troops
in the Warhammer world, which is at least in Total Warhammer reflected because at like,
I think with just like a level one barracks building, you can already recruit some troops
that have like almost dwarf level of armor, hit pretty damn strong. They have a pretty
thriving industry, both for, you know, boring non-war stuff. And of course they've, for
example, there's the city of Nangau, which is if a Forge world was just one city, a lot
of smoke, whole lot of industry war machines pumping out constantly. It's just, I mean,
it's called the city of smoke, never fall into invaders. It produces endless amounts
of like war machines, weapons, armor, mundane stuff. That is very much a militarized state.
Not all of it again, like the central province is pretty peaceful. You're allowed to focus
on you can, you can build the economy since he's got the peaceful place, but it is also
still very powerful when it takes the field. It does have some problems, of course, you
know, they're definitely, you know, very arrogant to what extent that's earned. Feel free to
decide to yourselves. They believe they have the finest of anything in the, like the finest
weapons and armor in the land, which I'm sure the dwarfs would certainly take, take some
offense to, but there's minimal, there's fairly minimal interaction with the, like the dwarfs
so far between them and Cathay. So we don't know yet, but I imagine if, you know, one
of them told that to a dwarf, we have the finest metal and everything in the arm and
whatever there'd be some grudging. The northern most provinces are of course boarded by the
great Bastion, which is big wall. You're not getting through. There's a lot of different,
like there's a, in the center of Cathay, that's where a lot of those floating islands are.
Some of this is going off like the total war hammer map, stuff like that. There's also,
there's a, they've, there's got like, they've got observatories where they train astromant
weapons because that's, astromantcers are officially sanctioned by the dragon emperor.
It is, he's a big fan of the school of magic, the wind of the heavens. Unofficially, there's
also a lot of gold alchemists going around because Xiaoming lets other people under him
also get a little bit wacky with the science projects.
Does he have a similar thing with the emperor way? He loves gold.
It's more jade because it's, you know, China. So it's not as much gold, but it's still like
the same obsession with the green rock.
Yeah. I got the green rock. No, not that one. The other one.
Yeah. There's a, yeah, there are a lot, like there are a lot of cities with like one sentence
of lore. For example, there's a city in the home to jade blooded sorcerers. We're called
Wen Chang, Wen Chang saying these, I'm probably going to butcher some of them. My bad.
Weijin is the capital city that mortals are allowed to enter. Not too much about it. Above
that is the celestial city, which it's in the clouds. It's the home of the dragon siblings.
It's just a big old city in the clouds. I imagine the forbidden city, but it flies.
In the West, the place that anyone who isn't Cathay in would most likely go to was called
Shang Yang, which is where the Silk Road ends and the Imperials, the Thailans, the Stallions,
what country have you? They've all got ambassadors there with Cathay. It also surely draws a
whole lot of wizards and other less sanctioned sorts. It's a little bit of a, little bit
of a corrupt place. Not again, Xiaoming is the guy there. Not political corruption, more
of like you, please take the warpstone away, sir.
Yeah, we'll be right on that. Come here. Give me that. Give me that. Oh, it's Jade. Jade,
just put on the docket. Shipment of Jade. There we go. Pleasure doing business with
you.
And it's a, it's a, and a, oh, I guess one more thing. It is, like I said, arrogant people.
They have an ambassador to the Empire in Altdorf. She does not speak Reichspiel very well, you
know, their language, not because she can't learn it. She doesn't care to very much.
Oh yeah. Better than Warhammer racism coming in. They're very haughty people. And yeah,
as for their armies, you've got vast lines of well-equipped infantrymen and, you know,
be they sword and shield or spearmen, very good crossbows, even if they're not, you know,
probably not quite as good as the dwarfs, better than the Empire, which, you know, kind
of fitting because real world China invented gunpowder. So sure enough, they've got like
plenty of different firearms. They've got not quite rifles, I don't think, but they're
definitely more accurate than just a volley of muskets. They've got good artillery. They've
got flame artillery. Do you know those like, like the lanterns that are like country, like
they release into the air and they're like glowing orange. What if they made it a hundred
times as big and put a gun on it? They have a lot of those. And of course, you did mention
them. They have the, those terracotta statue guys, one of whom, Se Tang the Watcher, one
of the coolest things I've seen. Look at this man. Look, construct. Oh yeah. That's pretty
cool. Big bow, big bow, big flaming wings. And remember he's about 50 feet tall and on
fire and made out of rock. So if you think archery is all he's got, you're going to get
squashed. He's a, and that is largely, oh my God, while I was looking up an image of him,
someone made a almost one-to-one of him on Hero Forge where you can make your own minis.
That's really cool. Side, side track there. I just saw that. That is cool as hell. But
yeah, he's a, that's most of Cathay. Like I said, a lot of it is pretty still fairly
light. There's a lot of like one sentence descriptions of like this city is about this.
That city is about that. But I really do like what they've done with Cathay. It's like I
said before, if slash when, hopefully when, with the little teaser they did in LVO with
just had a screenshot of some forest and mountains that are a one V one for one of a piece of
Cathay and artwork. If you zoom into the right spot, hopefully we'll get an army. So more
lore would also be good, but you know what? Even if it's just minis, I'd be pretty content.
It's, it's, they'd be mad not to surely like, Oh, what a whole brand new army of something
that's already quite well liked in, in total Warhammer with a bunch of people who would
be like one wanting to have one for ages. And also a bunch of people will just go, Oh,
this is neat. This is new. I want that. Like they'd be mad not to make an army of Cathay
models. Cause like, there's only a few factions that don't have representation on the, on
the tabletop and cafe's such an oversight. Like just the stone Golem things alone. I'm
like, I bought that. That looks freaking cool. Big bow or a big sword or whatever. That'd
be awesome. Just put it on the table. Like, Oh, here's my arm. And it's just like, I brought
this and it's like, like a joy toy style size. Like that'd be quite funny. It's crushing
all your enemies on your enemy teams. A tabletop game. Yeah. Especially if they could nail
the transformation mechanics. Like, all right, I'm going to kill your decently tough general.
He's a dragon. Now this got a lot harder.
Yeah. Like I guess they would make like the humanoid versions of the dragon princes and
princesses, I suppose, because they're a bit more one, because there's like, yeah, yes.
So easy to produce. And also there's like a bit of a chance for the artists to have
some like Blair with their different armor and weapons and stuff. But it'd be cool if
they had like one or two that they also were like, here's an ascended version. Here's a
big spirally swoopy boopy one. Although I'm sure it'd be really easy to hit if it's like,
Oh, this tall archers hit it anywhere on the map. Yeah. Fire away. Oh, I guess for, you
know, this is a warhammer fantasy video, isn't it? That was all in the same way. Don't they?
Yeah. So the end times really quickly, they were like, there was still the end times for
total war hammer was even out and well before the third one gave them the glow up. So the
end times come and the chaos dwarfs en masse assault the great bastion and turn it into
a fortress. They, they take it. Resistance at first fails because there's a whole lot
of zinch worshipers in the court, the dragon emperor, but eventually big D comes down,
whips the forces into shape and then start, he starts pushing back against the chaos dwarfs.
Then the skaven start assassinating all their officials, which slows things down again,
but it's still big D. He leads his troops into the skaven like Warren's in the under
empire of Cathay and clears Cathay of skaven, which he does good. Nice. He also, he keeps
pushing back. Chaos can't get to his capital. Just unable to like that even with the cast
dwarfs, the war engines and the millions of marauders can't get through dragon. Emperor's
holding the line and it's almost looking like Cathay's kind of cooking. What's this is pretty
good. And then Grimgor Ironhide with every orc ever, because they're all in one army
now and every ogre ever, because he took all of those with him to show up, destroy the
great bastion who in fact, after they took it over the first time, they let the chaos
dwarfs re fortify it for a good fight. And then they burned it down again. Doesn't stop
clears out the rest of Cathay. The dragon emperor leads whoever's left in a big fleet
that carries them off to who knows where. And then the world blew up. There is a brief
moment they lost everything. Yep. So, you know, bright side. At the end of the day,
chaos still didn't win in the east. It was Gork and Mork. Small con relation to the Cathayans
are all dead. But it's like, oh, at least we didn't die to chaos. That would have been
embarrassing. Your souls aren't getting chaos corrupted. You just got murdered by Grimgor
Ironhide. Yeah, there's a like I said, because this it was like almost 10 years after the
end times, most of the Cathayan lore came out. The new stuff anyway, don't really know
what happened to the dragon siblings. A couple guesses. Yuan Bo when he was sticking around
with the warpstone probably blew up when magic started running rampant. I'm assuming Yin
Yin just drowns somewhere. She did actually she's so arrogant that she thinks she thinks
these high elf dragon ships are named after her. Oh, no, they're not. They're named after
their dragons, which you want my best guess for her. She sailed the oath one to show those
damn prissy elves who's boss and then Taryn and Malekith started duking it out and she
got caught in the crossfire. That's what I like to assume happened to her in the end
times. Yao Ying, pick your pick your flavor. Did she get killed by chaos dwarfs when they
showed up or did she get Grimgård? Both are equally valid and gruesome. Yeah, again, like
a Shiama probably got nagashed. There's a they haven't shown up in Age of Sigmar. So
I'm going to make some assumptions and say that they were not clean faiths. No. And to
be fair, I assume from GW standpoint, they were like, here's this faction we don't do
anything with at the time. We're not going to do a refresh in Age of Sigmar. We'll just
let them be spirited away from Warhammer never to be seen again. And we'll just never mention
them in Age of Sigmar. Like, that's what I think they're doing. That's the that's the
precedent they've set right now. I like to see some miniatures in the old times, but
like, will it carry over to Age of Sigmar? I doubt it. But maybe we'll see how I guess
we see how well the sales do if they make the new army. I doubt it'll like, completely
come over to AOS. But I mean, that being said, if we get a really cool fantasy army out of
it, I'd still be pretty content. Especially with like the art the the the sculptors for
GW on like the fantasy Age of Sigmar side, getting them to sink their teeth into cafe,
like, hey, go nuts. Here's the template with what Warhammer's done. They could make some
cool stuff with that. They can do some stuff and all of the all of the fantasy minis that
are new with the old world like the the new Tomb King or the the big dragon, the new like
Ungermiron Fist, the dwarf, that new Empire general. They've all been pretty great looking.
So I'm hoping that when Cathay's come out, it'll be a totally new army as far as models
and quite frankly, rules go. So if it does come out and I'm hoping again with that teaser
that it's a when it comes out, not an if. I'm looking forward to what they're going
to produce, especially because boy Medieval Trident is really cool and I would love to
see an army of it. Yeah, it'd be good. Is there anything else to talk about then? I
was safe unless there's any other questions that is a that's about Cathay. Wow. Well,
again, I suppose it's just a case of I don't really have much to add. It's just they they'd
be insane not to make a new model range. It seems like they are from what you said about
like, I think I know the image you're talking about where it's like a teaser that they are
going to do that. And it's like the old the old world, if anything, is a way for GW to
try new stuff, experiment and go back to what the fans want. So there's no reason not to
do Cathay. Yeah, I assume they're pretty much spent for like Total War DLC and game stuff,
although maybe a new legendary Lord here and there or doubtful. Total Warhammer still got
some time and they did make a couple other dragon siblings that are still alive and around.
So I'm hoping we'll get at least one legendary Lord, although I kind of want the monkey guy.
I kind of want him before any other dragons. I like the monkey man. But yeah, so there's
I did just for the sake of there it is. That's the image. Kind of blurry, but oh, yeah, you
can see where they line up one to one. And I did again. Yeah, I saw that at LVO. I saw
that image. Yeah, that's definitely from there. Yeah. So real soft confirmation because it's
unnamed and it's just a screenshot of a mountain. But it's also that mountain. Yeah, from that
one thing that's all about Cathay with no other factions presently. It's got to be actually.
And it'd be good. It'd be nice to see. But I guess if that's all that we can talk about
with Cathay, we hope you guys enjoyed our chat about them. Very cool faction. Not very much
in terms of lore until quite recently, very recently in terms of lore, considering how
old the franchises are. And also, I guess, let us know in the comments if you have any
other factions you want us to talk about. I'm assuming if they say like Araby or or Nippon,
we're going to go, um, 10 minute long video. There's not much to talk about them. If if
you want one of those, it would that would have to be like a combined minor human nations
one. Kislev. Yeah, probably could stretch that like Cathay. That could probably be another
one on its own. But if you want like Araby, Astalia, Tylea, we got to lump some folk together.
Yeah, we're not doing bespoke episodes. But again, there's all to be fair, quite a few
factions we still not talked about in the round, like they're still like wood elves.
There's technically we haven't talked about the Tomb Kings yet, or or Nagash and his stuff
we have talked about on the podcast, but not fancy fireside. There's still factions we've
yet to talk about. So please let us know in the comments about which ones you'd like to
have us chat about. And before we go is if if someone's curious about Cathay in specific,
I assume just say go play Total Warhammer free. That's probably the best way to experience
them. Yeah, that's a that's a pretty good one. Your is also like I said, it's the I
think the Master of the Meteor Wind. That's a that's a fun short story about Cathay about
Yuan Bo in particular. I'd recommend you read that. It's a I mean, it's like 30 pages, reading
like 15 minutes. Good book. Good, good little story. Yeah, go play Total Warhammer. That's
where again, a lot of this is coming from. And there is also some in the old world, core
rules does talk a little bit about the dragons and then there. And if you if we raise enough
money for law crimes, we will covertly plan a mission to break into the vaults of GW to
find that original rule book. And then we will publish it on the internet for free.
But we will need to get some like night vision goggles, we do get a helicopter or the essentials
we'll need for it. We do have to get the we do got to get the heist equipment going, you
know, that that doesn't just come out. The big underground drill that goes into the burrows
into the side of the building and then goes up. Dr. Robotnik style like we need some equipment.
But if we can, we'll get our hands on that original. Like, what would you call like resource
that original like blueprint for the faction? Because I'm sure there's some fun stuff in
that. Oh, yeah, I want to see. But other than that, we hope you enjoyed today's video. Let
us know what you want us to cover in the future. We also have another project that we're working
on, but we won't mention it just yet. Similar to fancy fireside. And yeah, other than that,
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. And we'll catch you later. Bye, everyone. Take care,
everyone.