Transcript
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Back to what we were doing already.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And you know what else is back to what we were doing already?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there everybody, welcome back to Pixel, my name is Kevin, with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: And on today's show we're gonna continue through Fire Warrior, a Warhammer 40K story based on the video game Fire Warrior written by Simon Spurrier, set in the Warhammer 40K universe.
Speaker: Warhammer, Fire Warrior, Warhammer Warrior.
Speaker: Is that anything?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: War, warrior.
Speaker: Oh, I tried to make war and war.
Speaker: I'm an idiot.
Speaker: You tried to make war and warrior like into a, into warhammer.
Speaker: I tried to combine warhammer and warrior and I was like, oh, that's already.
Speaker: No, you would have to be a warhammer.
Speaker: A war, ah, see?
Speaker: You're better at this.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Warhammier.
Speaker: That's the pig version of the 40K universe.
Speaker: Warhammier.
Speaker: Warhammier.
Speaker: You know how there's like spider pig across Spider-Verse?
Speaker: In Spider-Pig's universe, it's Warhammier.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: 40,000 feral hogs running across my lawn.
Speaker: Now that is a...
Speaker: That's a deep Twitter cut right there.
Speaker: That's one from the vaults.
Speaker: From the vaults.
Speaker: And I'll look it up and it's like, every time I'm thinking like, yeah, that thing happened years ago.
Speaker: And I'll look it up and it's like a month ago.
Speaker: Anytime I think a reference is old for some reason, it's just been, you know, 40,000 cycles have happened in between then and now.
Speaker: That's how fast it moves these days.
Speaker: Is 40,000 just one of those numbers that people use because they don't feel like counting?
Speaker: You know, those old like, you know, back in Norse times, it was like the nine realms because nine was such a big number that they were like, fuck it.
Speaker: There's nine of them.
Speaker: There's nine of them.
Speaker: That's how many there are.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Or seven or whatever.
Speaker: You know, one of those ancient numbers where it was just a stand-in for uncountable.
Speaker: Unbelievably vast.
Speaker: Too much, in fact.
Speaker: Too much.
Speaker: Too many people.
Speaker: Too many realms.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: Now, I'm going to... We're going to find out in this episode, ladies and gentlemen, why it's usually Kevin who walks us through these.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Because I have volunteered to do it.
Speaker: Because you may have noticed...
Speaker: That there is all of my shit is gone.
Speaker: Kevin, did you know what's that?
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: I just noticed that.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why is that?
Speaker: Why is all of your shit gone from your office?
Speaker: Well, that's because we're converting my office into a nursery.
Speaker: Because my wife and I are having a babby.
Speaker: A babby?
Speaker: A babby.
Speaker: We're having a babby in December.
Speaker: And we kept it from all of you because we hate you.
Speaker: We hate you.
Speaker: We hate you.
Speaker: No, it's not on social media by now.
Speaker: You guys probably, this is old news, but Kevin has very kindly chosen to take over for some paternity leave for me starting the beginning of 2024.
Speaker: And we're going to have some guests on and everything like that.
Speaker: And actually next year, we're going to start with us,
Speaker: going back and forth on, on taking the rotation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Uh, on, on who leads with these things.
Speaker: And, and, uh, we're starting with this one cause Kevin's been working his tail off, uh, making sure that all of, all of, uh, the first quarter basically have 2024 is, is looking bright and shiny in my absence.
Speaker: Uh, and so, uh, I, I foolishly volunteered to, uh, take the lead on this one.
Speaker: Oh yeah, I can,
Speaker: I can do it.
Speaker: How hard is it?
Speaker: I can do this.
Speaker: How hard can it be?
Speaker: It's not great.
Speaker: That was actually in the process.
Speaker: It's no joke.
Speaker: I texted Kevin.
Speaker: I said, you know, next year, how about we cycle, we'll alternate, we'll
Speaker: because I never fully realized how much goddamn work Kevin puts into, uh, uh, I already, I already knew how much work Kevin put into editing these things and, and like all the, the, the fucking like behind the scene shit and the blog and the, I, I knew all of that, but then I was like, Oh yeah, of course I'll, I'll take the lead on this one.
Speaker: And I, and I looked at chapter three, uh, uh, which I had already read and I went, Oh no, I don't speak English anymore.
Speaker: How did this happen?
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So we're going to go through this carefully.
Speaker: But the fact of the matter is, it's three chapters and it goes back and forth a lot as we've seen.
Speaker: And the good news is that there are, based on what we talked about in the first section, a lot of the same twists.
Speaker: We're gonna meet somebody very intimately for about five seconds and they're going to die.
Speaker: They're going to die.
Speaker: We're going to even know, learn like the reason why they joined the, the like Guardius Militarum or whatever the fuck.
Speaker: Whatever, it's just fake Latin words.
Speaker: Imperial guard at this point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wish it was that.
Speaker: Guardius Militarum.
Speaker: Guardius Militarum.
Speaker: It's just like.
Speaker: I don't speak Latin.
Speaker: Just think about it.
Speaker: Just be like, well, what would the Imperial Dog Walker be?
Speaker: And it's Adeptus Caninicus or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's actually, that's probably not that far off by it.
Speaker: You're probably not that far off.
Speaker: I mean, you got the Canis part right.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Adeptus Canis.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mechanicus Militarum.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: War dogs.
Speaker: Of the Yorkshire Legion.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's all these toy poodles and shit.
Speaker: It's just little Yorkies in space armor.
Speaker: And a tiny ultramarine armor.
Speaker: And a tiny dog servo skull.
Speaker: Just checking everything out.
Speaker: Just floating around behind them, you know.
Speaker: Oh, I love that.
Speaker: That was the emperor's dog.
Speaker: That was the god emperor's dog.
Speaker: People don't know this.
Speaker: It's like the deep darkness of the lore, but god emperor, I mean, he's been alive for so long.
Speaker: Do you know how many dogs he's had in his life?
Speaker: So many.
Speaker: So many.
Speaker: There's actually a planet dedicated to his dogs.
Speaker: It's just his dog funeral home.
Speaker: There's just servitors floating around, tending to making sure everything is dusted and all that stuff.
Speaker: See, I could be a Warhammer 40K author.
Speaker: You got this.
Speaker: I could do the, you know that Magic the Gathering pack that was just like joke cards?
Speaker: I could do the Warhammer 40K version of that.
Speaker: Oh, that would be good.
Speaker: I would love to see that.
Speaker: That'll be good.
Speaker: Written by some, it's kind of like, it's kind of like those memes that you see where it's like asking someone who's never played Mega Man to name all the Mega Man bosses and stuff.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The robot masters.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We really ought to do that again.
Speaker: Yeah, just throw some Warhammer 40K in front of me and I'll be like, you know what?
Speaker: I got it.
Speaker: I can work some fake Latin out into this one.
Speaker: Yeah, it's all that.
Speaker: It's actually hilarious talking about Latin.
Speaker: I recently had an interview that I did with a creator.
Speaker: Go check out my show on the Onyx Path Publishing Meet Your Makers.
Speaker: I interviewed...
Speaker: Michele, who is an Italian game designer who I've worked with before, and I double-checked the pronunciation of his name because it's spelled Michelle.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I was like, well, I know that's not right.
Speaker: So I said, is it Michele?
Speaker: And he said, yeah, it's Michele, and Masala is the last name, and I'm thinking Marsala.
Speaker: Marsala.
Speaker: Yeah, and I said, I'm upset.
Speaker: And he said, you know, it's funny because...
Speaker: I said, I said, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I'm sure I'm not the only person to, to fuck that up.
Speaker: And he said, no, but you know, it's funny because, uh,
Speaker: You English speakers, it's so, he said, I find that you're so uncomfortable speaking with an Italian accent.
Speaker: And I said, well, it's because you guys actually, the language is music.
Speaker: Like you actually sound a little bit like the stereotype that people make of it, where it's like, it's lilting and notes and that kind of thing.
Speaker: It is that on a certain level.
Speaker: I just insulted all of our Italian listeners.
Speaker: All of the Italians.
Speaker: And I said, well, I said, yeah, I said, you'll forgive me.
Speaker: I, I, where I, my, my language comes from is all grunts and guttural shit.
Speaker: And he says, very matter of factly, he said, well, my people were founding Rome and your people were the barbarians at the gate.
Speaker: And I looked at him and I said, you're goddamn right we were.
Speaker: Oh, God, that's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, you are correct.
Speaker: I'm not kidding.
Speaker: I don't take that as the slightest.
Speaker: Just paint me up and whoa, I'm there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So let's start it out.
Speaker: Chapter three starts out.
Speaker: I think this is a really interesting opening.
Speaker: We get we're back to Governor Severus, who is sitting in his pompous plush cabin thinking about basically what brought him there, like the tip offs he's received and knowing the tower coming and and everything like that.
Speaker: And basically we're getting a very.
Speaker: kind of a look into something else that's going to happen.
Speaker: Because basically up until this point, we've been led to believe that he's just this shitty, selfish.
Speaker: Yeah, just a blundering diplomat, you know?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: That's about it.
Speaker: But now we're starting to get the impression that something darker is amiss.
Speaker: Darkness.
Speaker: The darkness.
Speaker: And we get a tiny voice in his mind, words hissing like blistering flesh, whispered, soon.
Speaker: And I went, oh, chaos.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know where this is going.
Speaker: There's only one direction that this can go.
Speaker: It's the Imperium.
Speaker: So where are we going to go with the opposite of the Imperium, basically?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, any I basically any 40 K game that I've ever played that starts with one enemy that isn't chaos always ends with chaos.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, the the the first Space Marine game started the same way.
Speaker: It started you fighting orcs.
Speaker: with the Imperial Guard, and then suddenly Chaos shows up.
Speaker: And the next Space Marine game is Tyranid-centric, and so I have to believe that at the second act, Chaos shows up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's just... It's good to keep things varied, I suppose.
Speaker: And by the way, that's supposed to release this year still.
Speaker: I don't think we have... That's what they said.
Speaker: Do we not... We don't have an official date, just late 2023, and we're in late 2023, so...
Speaker: If you say so, guys.
Speaker: The only thing I'll say is that the only game I, well, really the only Warhammer 40K game I've played that immediately was chaos right off the bat was Boltgun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that made sense because it was trying to be doomed.
Speaker: So let's just start with a satanic.
Speaker: Let's just start right now with the satanic bit, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That made perfect sense.
Speaker: I do hope if they do an expansion for that, that we get some works or something, because that seems to me the most obvious next one.
Speaker: Maybe some nids would be fun.
Speaker: I'm a nid player for anyone who hasn't already figured it out.
Speaker: Uh, okay.
Speaker: At this point, we are back to the Tao who are still, uh, going to war basically.
Speaker: Uh, let me see.
Speaker: Is this the part where I'm already, I'm just asking Kevin for his help, even though I'm the one to take the lead.
Speaker: Um, is this basically where, have we gotten to the point where they're circling the blade, uh,
Speaker: Or is that later on?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They are, like, they are, well, not quite yet.
Speaker: I believe they're just like, this is the part where they find out that the Enduring Blade is trying to board them.
Speaker: That's right, yes, yes.
Speaker: So they're- Because two things happen in this chapter.
Speaker: One, they're boarded, and then they do a retaliatory boarding or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, they get boarded by the Imperium, but they start to pretty quickly realize that they have bitten off more than they can chew, that the Imperium is kind of fucked.
Speaker: They're dead in the water on a certain level.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I forget what-
Speaker: Yeah, they're just outmaneuvered, outgunned.
Speaker: And what they have to do is do a, yeah, they got to do the old switcheroo and reverse port on the Imperial vessel, which doesn't take it seriously.
Speaker: At all until it's right at these great little transcriptions of the Imperial officers arguing amongst themselves about what to do next.
Speaker: And finally, it's only at the very last second that they're like, oh shit tower on their way.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a lot of this, so there's a lot of scenes in here with Lakai's basically just doing his murder simulator stuff where he is just killing the absolute shit out of groups of Gwela soldiers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, it's, there's a lot of like, um,
Speaker: There's a lot of back and forth, as you said, between the Imperium officers.
Speaker: And eventually, yeah, Lakai's is... Lakai's, as the main character of the video game, does his best to force the Imperium soldiers back, which it doesn't seem like there was a...
Speaker: I don't think there was a big, there wasn't a big space marine presence on the boarding party, it didn't look like.
Speaker: No, no, it was, that was, they did, we do get to, well, is it on the Blade where the raptors show up?
Speaker: No, the raptors show up.
Speaker: That scene was a,
Speaker: So what happens there?
Speaker: What happens with the raptors?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So we, it's, it's kind of hilarious.
Speaker: We have about five, we've got a little squad of raptors and the raptors are a small sub chapter of, uh, crap.
Speaker: I forget the name of the original chapter, but the original chapter is very sneaky and self oriented, which is hilarious when you consider these are living tanks.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's super funny.
Speaker: And, uh, and at this point, oh yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: our hero, our protagonist, has boarded the Imperial vessel, and he's literally pulling a xenomorph.
Speaker: He is crawling through the ventilation systems and sneaking around, and he sees he's basically above where...
Speaker: the Raptor Marines are.
Speaker: And it's hilarious because it is just the wafer, the little charm that his dad gave him falls out of his uniform and clanks on the, uh,
Speaker: the shoot enough that the Marines just hose the ceiling, just like, just like Eddie's, and he's got to scramble and run and back off.
Speaker: And you've got, and I got to tell you, we talked about this with his fight with the single Marine in the last section.
Speaker: This book does a great job of making a space, space Marines seem kind of incompetent.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Point to a point that I questioned it to be completely honest.
Speaker: The space Marines in this book are just a little, there were a little too much like the characters from, oh fuck, what's that movie?
Speaker: Final Destination.
Speaker: So somebody always told me that the people, the kids in Final Destination were basically water balloons filled with blood.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Where it's just like, you know, they get killed in these grotesque ways, but when they die, it's just blood and guts everywhere.
Speaker: And that's basically what's happening with the space marines in this section of the book, is that every time Lakai kills one, it's just like...
Speaker: The shell of their armor cracked open and their blood and guts spilled out onto the deck of the ship and like the head fell off and the body didn't realize the head fell off and is trying to pick up the blood and guts, but the head is falling off.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: They're water balloons filled with ragu.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's, it's pretty fucking gross.
Speaker: And, and there, and I, I, I said this in the last episode, uh, and, and I, I'm sure there's something to this decision, but they do feel a little better than orcs at times.
Speaker: They're very barbaric.
Speaker: They're very, which I'm sure is how the towel would see them.
Speaker: But every story you've ever read with space Marines is there.
Speaker: They're tactical geniuses.
Speaker: You know, they're, they're,
Speaker: They're not just meat, you know, but okay, fuck it, whatever, you know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We've got these guys.
Speaker: And Kais is like slowly picking them off to the point where finally, I think we're down to like three.
Speaker: He like picks off two of them or something, and then we're down to three.
Speaker: And we get it from the space marine's point of view, and they see this little...
Speaker: this little buzzy thing, this little robot glowing thing.
Speaker: Oh my God, that's amazing.
Speaker: Coming towards them.
Speaker: And he's like trying to shoot it out of the sky and it's going way too fast for him to do it.
Speaker: And I think at the end, he like kind of, he goes to grab it.
Speaker: And so he could crush it.
Speaker: And the narrator points out that he absolutely would have crushed it if it weren't for the fact that that's exactly the moment that it fucking explodes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Kai's basically, you know, shoot like drops a tiny little, you know, drone into into into the the the
Speaker: the hallway and just like pilots it, like buzzes around until it absolutely detonates and kills a bunch of space Marines, which is amazing.
Speaker: Just ends them.
Speaker: And it's once again to what Kevin was saying, it's just a room filled with gore.
Speaker: And I do think it's funny that this happens a lot in this book where Kais sees this just bloodbath and he points out.
Speaker: That, man, if this was, if that was real looking blood, I'd feel sick because Taoist blood is like cyan, light blue colored.
Speaker: So like all this red crimson gore just looks silly to him.
Speaker: It doesn't look quite the same.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, oh, lucky.
Speaker: So this is, so, and right now we're kind of combining chapters three and four, which is chapter, yeah.
Speaker: So chapter three is,
Speaker: The Imperium gets onto the Tala ship, the tower repel them.
Speaker: Chapter four is Lakai's goes onto the Imperium ship and starts killing the shit out of them.
Speaker: Just executing everybody.
Speaker: Right before though, right before he gets to this moment where he kills the rest of the raptors, he finds a random room where everything is, I have it highlighted here.
Speaker: A thin strand of redness parted company with the ceiling and fell a syrupy teardrop that patterned lightly against the slick grill decking.
Speaker: He couldn't guess how many Gwela had been there originally.
Speaker: The shreds of clothing and weaponry lying embedded amongst the pulped meat and was silent testament to their multiplicity.
Speaker: A dozen different articles of fabric and leather lying shredded within the gore.
Speaker: It was as if the chamber had decompressed suddenly, hurling the flesh from its helpless inhabitants across the floor and walls and ceiling.
Speaker: Anonymous strands of gore dappled the interior, slug-like lumps of tissue and muscle that slithered glutinously with the pull of gravity, flopping obscenely to the deck to vent their liquid cargo into the gullies on either side.
Speaker: Clumps of hair broke up the light-catching wetness,
Speaker: Half-sliced skulls stared in mute horror, eyeballs plucked and dangling, tongues bitten and lacerated in grisly astonishment.
Speaker: An arm, messily dissected at the elbow, grasped uselessly at the air, three fingers shredded to a pulp.
Speaker: A pink foot flopped from a fleshy stalactite above Kai's head with a wet slurp and a squelch.
Speaker: It's so gross.
Speaker: It's just so gross.
Speaker: So this is basically what he finds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just walking around the ship and Lekias is like,
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Cause he's like, we didn't do that.
Speaker: That does, that's not the kind of shit Tao would do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's so he's there and he sees all this and then all the other Tao Shazlas, which are basically like privates in the Tao army, like catch up to Lakai's and see the room and they have to take off their helmets because they start vomiting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When they see this room.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And it's another hint that we're getting that something's amiss, that something's wrong that isn't just the cow and the Imperium here.
Speaker: There's something wrong here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And all this time, every time we get cutbacks to Severus being like...
Speaker: Yeah, we do get that a lot.
Speaker: We get a lot of little moments from Severus where he's just marveling at his own evil.
Speaker: It's fucking hilarious.
Speaker: I swear he has a curled mustache that he's playing with.
Speaker: It's that level of villain.
Speaker: Which is another kind of trope within 40K, if you read enough 40K.
Speaker: It's like, the guy who always betrays you is the fucking governor of the planet or the mayor or whoever's in charge of the human leadership.
Speaker: It's always the politician, and he always is wrangling with some Zeno or some demonic force or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, and during all of this, too, is... So there's, like, a couple point-of-view characters that we keep rotating between.
Speaker: We got Kai's.
Speaker: We got Severus occasionally.
Speaker: We got... Do you recall what the name of the Ultramarine captain is?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I was just looking at... Now, that guy is kind of interesting, and even he is kind of a...
Speaker: Kind of a chat of a dope of a man.
Speaker: Where did he go?
Speaker: I've got it right here.
Speaker: Ardeus.
Speaker: Ardeus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ardeus and the librarian of the ultramarine chapter that he is the captain of.
Speaker: I forget his name.
Speaker: I think it's something like Delphonicus or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It sounds like the producer of like 80s hip hop.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's Del the Funky Homo Sapienist.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, they're, uh, so all this time, like the, the ultra Marines are like, we have to go get, we have to go kill.
Speaker: We have to go fight these towel.
Speaker: We have to, and, uh, the librarian is like, no, you have to stay here.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because he's seen some kind of vision, uh, where he feels like the, the, the Marines will be needed after, uh,
Speaker: this fight wears itself out.
Speaker: That something worse is coming than the Zeno threat.
Speaker: And the Ultramarines, Ardias is kind of suspicious of him.
Speaker: Uh, not because he, you know, it's, it's, it's weird.
Speaker: It's this part's weirdly written again too, for, uh, because he points out that the Ultramarines, the, the codex, uh, of the space Marines that the Ultramarines kind of hold dear, uh,
Speaker: kind of has a shaky relationship with its psychers, with its librarians.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I don't know how, I'm not a big Ultramarines guy, so maybe I'm off the mark here, but that seems weird to me, because at this point, if you read me Horace Heresy, Psykers and stuff are very sus, and there's a whole thing, but you get to a point where most chapters are pretty cool with them, even the Space Wolves who have their own thing, but it's totally Psykers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And yeah, and so he's like,
Speaker: desperately trying to get everyone to stick around and to not, uh, uh, you know, pile into the fight, let those, let the Raptors, you know, go and all that stuff.
Speaker: Let them, cause these Raptors have volunteered like very quickly.
Speaker: They got super excited about like the opportunity to get in there and kick some ass.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, let them go.
Speaker: We, we're going to be needed later.
Speaker: And that is not playing ball with how the Ultramarines want to do it.
Speaker: Cause they, they, they've got, you know, right.
Speaker: They've got a real, real sense of honor.
Speaker: And frankly, they got a little bloodlust going there.
Speaker: They're ready to get in there and kick some ass too.
Speaker: They're horny for killing, you know, which, you know, that's whenever you hear somebody say bloodlust, that's all that means is horny for killing.
Speaker: Just instead of Astroglide, you use blood.
Speaker: It's very, it's not effective.
Speaker: Just don't do it.
Speaker: Just don't do it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Don't think about it.
Speaker: Just don't do it.
Speaker: Not going to take that conversation in any other direction.
Speaker: No, that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.
Speaker: We do get some sections here in Chapter 3 from the point of view of the naval officers.
Speaker: And I always like these sections because if you play 40K, whether in the video game world or in the tabletop world, Space Marines are ubiquitous.
Speaker: Everyone has Space Marines.
Speaker: It's not a question of whether or not you play space Marines.
Speaker: It's, it's which chapter do you play?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, so it's nice to be reminded you've get these space Marines making their way onto the bridge and naval officers are there who've only ever heard of space Marines who have only ever like hurt.
Speaker: Cause they only show up when like shit is really, really bad.
Speaker: And, uh, so you get a really cool opportunity to see the all, um,
Speaker: because they are, that's, that's Adeptus Astartes.
Speaker: They are angels to these people.
Speaker: They are a thousand feet tall and a thousand feet wide and they have no necks and they're, you know, the necks are gone.
Speaker: They actually remove them in, uh, when they're like trying to, uh, to upgrade them for space marine duty.
Speaker: Yeah, you convert the neck into that second heart we talked about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's just take that.
Speaker: Pulsating neck.
Speaker: Neck meat.
Speaker: Yeah, neck meat.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: So you get a lot of that, and I think that's really cool.
Speaker: I thought that was really neat.
Speaker: And that's when you get the raptors kind of rushing in to go and kick some ass and end up getting blown to kingdom come by a little drone bomb, which hadn't been mentioned before, by the way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's another piece of the arsenal that... I don't know.
Speaker: Do you remember...
Speaker: I don't remember in any of the playthroughs I watched.
Speaker: Do you remember if that was a weapon you could use?
Speaker: I mean, I only watched the one and kind of skimmed through it.
Speaker: So no, I don't recall that being a weapon.
Speaker: But I mean, it's cool.
Speaker: It's neat.
Speaker: I don't know how practical it is.
Speaker: And I'm not sure why the Imperium wouldn't have those just like floating around all the time in all places, you know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just like, why not now?
Speaker: And of course we do get, we do get a little taste, uh, near the end of this section of like, why that kind of shit doesn't fly with some, um, uh, uh, space Marine chapters.
Speaker: And it's because they're stupid.
Speaker: And, uh, it's, I had a friend once who was like, why do
Speaker: It's the future.
Speaker: And these guys are going into war.
Speaker: They don't have camouflage or anything.
Speaker: They're wearing like bright red armor.
Speaker: Some of them wear bright yellow armor.
Speaker: Like they are so...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Easy to see.
Speaker: There's no tactics to it.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, they've done a pretty good job of basically making the lore that the space marines are like, no, we don't hide.
Speaker: Except for a couple of chapters.
Speaker: They're like, we're right here.
Speaker: We're not afraid of you.
Speaker: It's honor.
Speaker: They're big on honor for some reason.
Speaker: Honor in genocide.
Speaker: That is their like...
Speaker: That is their basic, you know, their thing.
Speaker: That's their fetish.
Speaker: Honor and genocide.
Speaker: I mean, that's kind of, I can't believe there hasn't been a book called that.
Speaker: Honor and genocide.
Speaker: Honor and genocide.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or Xeno side.
Speaker: Well, that actually, yeah, that would have to be, that would be more, uh, yeah, more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we do get, uh, a section here where, uh, the, uh, um, space Marines come in and just obliterate everybody, uh, in a tau, uh, uh,
Speaker: the, the, one of the, one of the bridge sections of their ship, I want to say, and are trying to, uh, interrogate them to find the ethereal.
Speaker: Cause the whole point is they're, they're trying to find that ethereal, get it back.
Speaker: Um, so, and we do get, we get another cool moment where like, and this is, this is, and this is a nice juxtapose to the way that like human, uh, officers react to the space Marines.
Speaker: This, this, this,
Speaker: just worker on board this deck is getting threatened by the space marines.
Speaker: And he says, I'm not afraid of you, Gwela.
Speaker: You know, just they have this kind of inner peace with their roles.
Speaker: At least some of them do.
Speaker: And that's kind of what we're getting into with the theme of the Tau here.
Speaker: That they're trying to make everybody into a cog.
Speaker: And you've got people like our protagonists who cannot...
Speaker: who is naturally bucking against that.
Speaker: And then you've got people who like when faced with certain death are kind of at peace with their role and like, yeah, I'm not afraid of you.
Speaker: I'm not, you know, I'm not really worried about this.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's pretty cool.
Speaker: It's pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: And I guess this is the chapter four.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's when Kais is killing raptors with the bombs and all that stuff.
Speaker: Kais is killing raptors.
Speaker: And Delphonicus is like, hey, stay here.
Speaker: Yes, that's right.
Speaker: I see the masked terror and it's going to, you need to be here for it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And like.
Speaker: Oh, oh, one little thing.
Speaker: Not little, but kind of a funny detail.
Speaker: At the end of chapter three, after the, after he's, after the,
Speaker: After Kai's last firefight, basically, a bolter shell hits him in the helmet, but does not explode.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It lodges itself in his head, like just this one in a billion odds thing of this bolter shell just sitting in his helmet, but not exploding.
Speaker: It should have taken his head and probably, let's face it, his upper torso with him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's this, it's, and it's, and I loved this detail because to me this felt like, oh, we're building legend here.
Speaker: You know, that's a detail that grunts are going to talk about and whisper about and everything like that.
Speaker: I really like that.
Speaker: Even when they did hit him, it wouldn't kill him or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: These fake...
Speaker: They never do explain to us, like a deck, is that like 90 minutes or something like that?
Speaker: So a deck is, yeah, it is.
Speaker: They measure, their basic unit is 90 minutes instead of...
Speaker: They explained at one point that it's 90 minutes instead of an hour is how their basic unit works.
Speaker: And there's also Tau Sears or Tau Sears.
Speaker: So I was- And was that like, that was like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's a year.
Speaker: Tau Sear is a year, I think.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So there's a funny aside where I'm listening to the book.
Speaker: There's no audio book version of this, but I found out that if you have it on Kindle, you can force Alexa to read it to you.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: So I was like having Alexa read it to me and...
Speaker: Some funny pronunciations.
Speaker: The funniest one was the Towsier became Tossers.
Speaker: Five Tossers from... Thank you, Alexa.
Speaker: Thank you, Alexa.
Speaker: You remain the best part of this whole process.
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: Yeah, so...
Speaker: Yeah, they do talk about the deck at one point, I think in another chapter.
Speaker: They've been using it all the time, and it's explained once in chapter five that it's 90 minutes.
Speaker: Okay, that makes sense then, because I don't remember where I got it in my head.
Speaker: That was how it was supposed to work, but it is.
Speaker: Also, we get, throughout this chapter, chapter four, we get...
Speaker: Kai's reuniting with a bunch of grunts, basically.
Speaker: For a while, this is before he goes off and murders some raptors.
Speaker: I really jumped ahead with that one.
Speaker: I liked that section.
Speaker: It's a good section.
Speaker: And this is the scene that Kevin was talking about where he finds the room filled with just gore.
Speaker: The gore room.
Speaker: The gore room of gore.
Speaker: Which, if you don't have a gore room, what are you doing?
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: This is just the first gore room that he finds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, that's, that's how fancy this ship is.
Speaker: The ship has multiple gore rooms.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and, and it's just, and you do get these moments where he's, Kais is already, it's hilarious.
Speaker: Cause it's, I don't know how long it's been since this book started, but it couldn't be more than days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and Kais is so jaded and he has gone full 50 yard stare.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just full metal jacket.
Speaker: Like, well,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only.
Speaker: So the hilarious thing is there's a there's an aside in I think it's in the next chapter, but it's it's amazing.
Speaker: It just ties into this bit because before this, his only job.
Speaker: Like he was in training and then the way the book starts, it makes it seem like he was in training and then he deployed here.
Speaker: And we're like, no, before this, his job was he was just a guard.
Speaker: Like he would do guard duty for things and he had discharged his weapon once.
Speaker: And that was to kill an animal that was like, that was like brutally murdering a merchant or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that ended up being a shit show, didn't it?
Speaker: And that was its own shit show because it was like some tribal chief's favorite dog or whatever.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: It was like his dog or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they were pissed off about that.
Speaker: So he has gone like from like sweet, sweet summer child with daddy issues.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To like Gomer pile, like full metal jacket in the bathroom.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: In a matter of days.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which is silly, but you know what?
Speaker: for the purposes of this book, it makes sense.
Speaker: With the volume of shit that he goes through, it makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: And so he's killing the raptors.
Speaker: There's...
Speaker: he basically kills everything on the ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At this point, he overloads an engine or something at some point and like just fucking annihilates everybody.
Speaker: Like the, the, the, the ship is dead in the water at this point.
Speaker: There's nothing, there's nothing to do.
Speaker: And, um, my favorite moment in this chapter, um,
Speaker: So there's basic, so there's, there's nothing left.
Speaker: The massed horror comes for Delphonicus.
Speaker: Oh, is this his, his, his scene?
Speaker: I love this scene.
Speaker: The massed horror comes for the librarian and the captain of the ultramarines.
Speaker: And basically we still don't know what it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Except,
Speaker: Everybody, almost like half of the Ultramarines get killed in like an instant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we find out that Severus basically did this on purpose.
Speaker: We get some interstitials from Severus.
Speaker: We're like, oh, yeah, well, the guy did.
Speaker: He did his duty.
Speaker: He kept the Ultramarines in one place and now they're just sitting ducks.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And while all this is happening, we've got the Kais running through the labyrinth of the guts of this ship and that kind of thing.
Speaker: It's the gameplay.
Speaker: It's the gameplay.
Speaker: It's the gameplay.
Speaker: He finds a melt gun, which... Yeah, he finds a melt-a-gun, yes.
Speaker: Melt-a-gun, which was one of my favorite guns in Boltgun.
Speaker: Boltgun?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it did like it ran out of fuel very fast, but the amount of damage output it did.
Speaker: So what a Melt-A-Gun is, it basically just shoots out.
Speaker: It's not a flamethrower.
Speaker: It shoots out a column of superheated air.
Speaker: It's like a microwave from hell.
Speaker: It's like the microwave from hell.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he finds it.
Speaker: He's like, it talks about how Lakai's is like, Lakai's found the Meltagon in a cathedral on the ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is, which is such a, that's again, that's the video game moment.
Speaker: You just show him like, oh, it was another, it was another gory scene in a cathedral.
Speaker: He finds the melt gun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, he's like, well, he's like playing with all the buttons and he's like, well, the only button I need to know is how does it fire?
Speaker: Um, which is just an amazing little, you know, that's a great line.
Speaker: Um, and he's, um,
Speaker: He uses this.
Speaker: He gets to the bridge of the Enduring Blade.
Speaker: He's taken out the engines.
Speaker: He gets to the bridge.
Speaker: And the only person missing from the bridge is the Admiral.
Speaker: So he opens the door and he just fires the Melt-A-Gun.
Speaker: And we get so many wonderful descriptions of people melting in this scene.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's if you, for the Melt-A-Gun in Tabletop, it's a tank buster.
Speaker: That's what you use it for.
Speaker: You use it to melt through armor and blow up tanks and shit.
Speaker: So if you're firing it upon like unarmored bridge crew.
Speaker: like pouring burning gasoline on an anthill.
Speaker: It's just a fucking nightmare.
Speaker: He's like, he's like the guy screamed.
Speaker: And then his, as he's screaming, his jaw falls off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, it's, it's horrible.
Speaker: I got to tell you, Spurrier is good at the gore.
Speaker: He's very good at it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If that's looking up, I'm, I'm looking up the, uh, the exact, uh, scene.
Speaker: Is this it?
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: So like, so basically the people are screaming.
Speaker: You got, you got one guy saying deck officer to me.
Speaker: Ah, sweet mercy.
Speaker: My foot's gone.
Speaker: Oh, living God.
Speaker: You got people yelling, kill it.
Speaker: A tree of servitors, blade limbs, grasping out for him, slunk away like snow devils in the sun.
Speaker: Their flesh peeled off in a second, leaving asymmetrical frames to twitch and shudder.
Speaker: The last few goela, hair singed and clothes scorched, exchanged terrified glances and sprinted clear.
Speaker: He enveloped them in the fusion stream and watched hearts racing as they floundered and flapped and became part of the deck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fucking brutal, dude.
Speaker: Like, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: It's fucking mental.
Speaker: And then there was silence.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's fucking amazing.
Speaker: Now, one of the things that you were getting at before with Delphius is Delphonicus, Delphius Del Rio.
Speaker: He was, he was, he's, he is freaking out.
Speaker: He is having, he has, is having like psychic feedback and he knows something is near, something horrible is near.
Speaker: And we get this, and at this point the captain and frankly, the other ultramarines are like, what is his problem?
Speaker: Like they're basically what is your major malfunction?
Speaker: It's exactly it.
Speaker: They're just like, what?
Speaker: And I would think, again, I would think if you've got, you've got a guy here who's, who's his thing is he has psychic powers.
Speaker: I'd be like, maybe we pay attention.
Speaker: Take that seriously.
Speaker: Cause that seems like a lot.
Speaker: And, and then, and then he, he looks Arteus in the face and says something like, he's like, I'm about to die.
Speaker: And then the horror, the demon horror just splits through the wall and carves right into his heart.
Speaker: And like Kevin said, like takes out a bunch of the space marines and just fucking gets out of Dodge.
Speaker: And one of the last moments that Delphius has alive is, is because now, because now it's like, oh, do I have your attention now, captain?
Speaker: Is it okay if I'm a little freaked out now, captain?
Speaker: Because suddenly Artius is like, I never doubted you for a second, my friend.
Speaker: Ha ha ha!
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: This sucks.
Speaker: And he, and you get this really cool moment where he's fighting in his final moments to warn Arteus of, of the demonic influence and everything.
Speaker: And he loses his willpower in the final moments and the, and Severus using the demon to,
Speaker: basically psychically implants himself in the librarian's head and tells him to stop, like make sure that you stop the war, that you stop what's happening, whatever happens, that has to be the case.
Speaker: That's your goal.
Speaker: That's your goal.
Speaker: And the librarians inner monologue tells us this is incorrect.
Speaker: This is not what I wanted to say.
Speaker: Somebody else said this, somebody else planted, but, but, but artists is like,
Speaker: Because he fucked up.
Speaker: So he's like, absolutely.
Speaker: With my dying breath, I'll make sure it happens.
Speaker: And so, you know, they're royally screwed.
Speaker: They are.
Speaker: And we get another little flashback to Severus feeling very pleased with himself.
Speaker: Yeah, he's very pleased with himself.
Speaker: He's rubbing his nipples on this moment.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: I mean, God, I, again, we've, we've mentioned this before, but the character in, uh, in the frighteners, uh, who, who the, the, the real spooky detective taking a shirt off and he's burned his nipples off and he's covered in my body is a flesh patchwork of pain or something like that.
Speaker: And just like, that's every chaos guy you've ever met.
Speaker: Like he's just covered in ritual scarification.
Speaker: He's probably has hemorrhoids, stuff like that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So let's see.
Speaker: So yeah, there's basically that scene then with Lakai's melting everybody on the deck.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: And he gets the Admiral comes back to the deck, finding everybody dead.
Speaker: And Kai's like puts a knife to his neck.
Speaker: That's right, yeah.
Speaker: And is holding him hostage and like slices his neck a little bit, you know, just to- Just to show him he's serious.
Speaker: Just to show me serious.
Speaker: And then comes back around the Ultramarines.
Speaker: Ardias comes in and is like, all right, just step away from him.
Speaker: Our Admiral's like, what are you doing?
Speaker: Why are you letting him go?
Speaker: And Ardias is like, we got to just...
Speaker: stop everything.
Speaker: We got to stop the conflict for now because there's a greater threat.
Speaker: And I understand why this is Severus's plan because like the Tau have Severus
Speaker: And the ship that Severus is on dead in the water.
Speaker: Like the Tau can just win and go home if they wanted to.
Speaker: And Severus needs the Tau to stop basically their assault.
Speaker: And the only way to convince them to do that is because if they wanted to, once Kai blows the engine, it's game over.
Speaker: They could basically just be like, all right, blow up the-
Speaker: Destroy the Enduring Blade.
Speaker: Game over.
Speaker: Move on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: And another thing that we're going to find out is Kai's... Not Kai's.
Speaker: Severus also wants as many people, as many living people there as possible for the shit he is trying to pull off.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne.
Speaker: And... And...
Speaker: But but that does that does bring it into that chapter.
Speaker: And we get this really weird section in the next chapter, chapter five, where we get basically the Admiral and Ardeus are basically arguing over what the fuck is going to happen here.
Speaker: What are you talking about?
Speaker: And
Speaker: we're going to parlay with these Tao.
Speaker: And Constantine, the Admiral is disgusted at the prospect of this.
Speaker: Disgusted at it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And Artus is not thrilled about it, but, but he, but he is basically taken to heart everything he's seen with, with Delphonica and, and wants to, you know, make sure that he does right by him because he was right about, well, he was right that he's got about to die.
Speaker: Yeah, he picked it.
Speaker: You know, he called it.
Speaker: He called it.
Speaker: Yeah, swish.
Speaker: Nothing but net.
Speaker: Nothing but net.
Speaker: Nothing but net.
Speaker: So they've invited this entire clutch of the, like all of the high-ranking cast members...
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Of the Tau ethereals and like the to show up to parlay and and the tower doing it because they're like, well, we could win.
Speaker: But like we don't want to kill a bunch of people if we don't have to.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Their whole deal is like, yeah, let's, you know, let's if we can win by by diplomatic means, let's take the opportunity.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's just the Tau's way of doing things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, for now.
Speaker: They don't want to – no more wasted life if we can avoid it.
Speaker: And basically, I always get the impression with what they're doing is just like we have to be the bigger people.
Speaker: We have to be the bigger people here.
Speaker: You know what the Tau is?
Speaker: The Tau is the Star Trek –
Speaker: of of Warhammer.
Speaker: Like very much so they're not there to kill.
Speaker: You know, they can, but they're not there to do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we get these and we get these these this little, you know, verbal sparring because because the because artists, the ultramarine, he just leaves the the admiral.
Speaker: He's like, you take care of it, which I wouldn't have done because he is so not on board.
Speaker: So yeah, Arteus is like, we're doing this, but I'm not a diplomat.
Speaker: So you do it.
Speaker: And it's like, I'll be, I'll be over here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good luck.
Speaker: I hope everything's counting.
Speaker: We're all counting on you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good luck.
Speaker: And so we get this, we get this bit of verbal sparring and the towel kind of, you know, kind of little cocky and like, you know, like, like, Hey, wait,
Speaker: We can you're I mean, and rightfully so, because the because the admiral is trying to be like, no, the first chance we get, we drop you guys.
Speaker: I'm like, what are you talking?
Speaker: You're dead.
Speaker: You're sitting ducks.
Speaker: You're sitting ducks.
Speaker: The admiral is like being as racist as he possibly can.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: While he's talking to them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is a race that doesn't exist in the real world.
Speaker: And it still made me uncomfortable.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is, you know, that's a negotiation tactic.
Speaker: That's the way that's.
Speaker: That's like a thing, I guess you can do.
Speaker: It's kind of hilarious because he, at some point he says, he says like, uh, they were like, we would, if we started this fight up, you'd have like five seconds and then you guys would all be dead.
Speaker: And he says something like, well, it's better to die, uh, with my convictions intact.
Speaker: And they're like, it's so much like, well, why don't you then?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: The ultra reason.
Speaker: Being weird right now.
Speaker: They're telling me to do stuff and it makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just want to be dead with, with, with, and dead, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: I wish, I wish I could just be dead.
Speaker: And so, so, and this is great.
Speaker: So this is all happening.
Speaker: And the most, and, and, and remember when we said you were going to get more scenes where you're going to get to know somebody and, and they would die almost immediately.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: None of them.
Speaker: have quite the gravitas as the legend of Trooper Moyles.
Speaker: Moyles!
Speaker: Trooper Moyles.
Speaker: Trooper Moyles, an Imperial Guardsman, as the book puts, an uncomplicated individual.
Speaker: Uh, and he's, he's basic, you basically learn that he signed up for the Imperial guard because he, there was nothing really else for him to do.
Speaker: His IQs mark down as 75.
Speaker: He, uh, quote, he had never ever succeeded in anything in his life, but the guard accepted him.
Speaker: showed him which direction to point his gun, trained him until his muscles showed through the flesh on his arms and chest and made him worth something.
Speaker: He'd never been so happy in his entire life.
Speaker: And he is on routine guard duty.
Speaker: He had joined.
Speaker: He had joined because he liked the color of the uniforms.
Speaker: That's right, that's right, because he liked the color of the uniforms.
Speaker: And he is on routine guard duty.
Speaker: He is patrolling with Severus, as it turns out.
Speaker: They walk into the bridge where the negotiations between the Admiral and the diplomatic Tao party are taking place.
Speaker: And he finds a knife at his neck.
Speaker: And basically what happens is,
Speaker: is his throat is slit and it is the final ritual required to summon fucking chaos.
Speaker: And I mean that in both senses of the word.
Speaker: Severus just, just poor Moyles.
Speaker: He's just like, the saddest part was he was so taken by the plush uniforms, the rousing tales of heroism and bravery and the prospect of promotion and sliding scales of payment.
Speaker: He signed up without hesitation.
Speaker: The uniform upon reflection had been a poor reason to join the Imperial Guard.
Speaker: It had changed.
Speaker: It had changed since then five times.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh, Trooper Moyles.
Speaker: Trooper Moyles.
Speaker: We salute you, sir.
Speaker: We salute you.
Speaker: He goes in there.
Speaker: Gets his throat slit.
Speaker: Severus says some words in a language that is incomprehensible and shouldn't shouldn't be uttered and heard by human or towel ears alike.
Speaker: And wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: Chaos space Marines are coming through portals.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's here we are.
Speaker: And it's, and it's so it's this scene.
Speaker: I actually laughed out loud at this because you've seen psycho, right?
Speaker: The original psycho.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Spoilers for any of you who haven't seen psycho, go watch psycho.
Speaker: Uh, at the very end, when you find out that the, the killer is not indeed, uh, uh, what's his name?
Speaker: Um, Oh gosh.
Speaker: Uh, uh,
Speaker: Norman Bates.
Speaker: Norman Bates.
Speaker: God, I'm chastising people for not seeing it.
Speaker: I can't even remember his name.
Speaker: When Norman Bates shows up, dressed up in his mother's clothes, wearing the wig, when you first see him, when he turns the dead body on the chair, and he comes in, and we get a look, and he's got this big smile on his face.
Speaker: And it always makes me laugh.
Speaker: And that's a great film.
Speaker: It's a chilling film.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But that always...
Speaker: cracks me the fuck up.
Speaker: This big smile and he's got a knife and he's pretty quickly overpowered.
Speaker: And that's that.
Speaker: This is exactly how I imagined this scene.
Speaker: Because it takes, what has to happen takes place so quickly that I just imagine them walking in and Severus going, ah!
Speaker: And just, yeah!
Speaker: The trooper's throat.
Speaker: Like, what are you doing?
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: And it just all, literally all hell breaks loose.
Speaker: Yeah, all hell breaks loose.
Speaker: Chaos, ultra space Marines who have been.
Speaker: So I just did not understand that.
Speaker: who, what was going on in this scene?
Speaker: Like other than people were dying, we had flashbacks to a chaos Marine's like childhood, but also beyond his childhood.
Speaker: Like, okay.
Speaker: I think I can explain.
Speaker: I don't understand how he was like a kid 3000 years ago, but also somebody else 10,000 years ago.
Speaker: Like what exactly was happening with that timeline?
Speaker: Okay, what we get for a few pages are kind of back and forths between what is essentially a demon, an actual entity of the warp, a chaos demon, and a person who is a space marine would become a member of...
Speaker: Horus' legion of the Luna Wolves.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And that's one of the most interesting things about the Chaos Marines is that so many of them have existed since the— The Horus Heresy.
Speaker: The Horus Heresy.
Speaker: They were still around from it because a lot of these demons give them insane longevity, bring them back to life.
Speaker: They can't die like the demons can in many ways.
Speaker: And it's so what we're getting, and it's not very clear because it's totally fair that it's good.
Speaker: I had to read it a couple of times, but basically what starts out as we get the story of this boy on Chthoni, I believe it is.
Speaker: being chosen by the Marines to undergo the training and the, and the, the, the changes and all that stuff.
Speaker: And then this demon that exists, uh, between the liminal spaces between reality and unreality and the warp and essentially them eventually coming together.
Speaker: Um, and him getting the space Marine being coming this close to death, uh,
Speaker: And surviving.
Speaker: And so they put him in a dreadnought, which is for those of those playing the home game, a dreadnought is the space marine, space marine version of a match.
Speaker: Basically, it is a there are these stalwart, bulky, walking tanks,
Speaker: And they are, and they're very cool.
Speaker: And I remember, I think it was years of me playing the game before I realized the truth about what's in them.
Speaker: What's in them is a space marine that should be dead, but is not.
Speaker: And they man it.
Speaker: They are, if they left the dreadnought, they would die.
Speaker: It's the only thing keeping them alive.
Speaker: And so like, basically it's like, this is their last hurrah.
Speaker: Is to be a dreadnought.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it's the demon and in 40k lore demons will inhabit the bodies of space marines and they'll basically be a twin sold kind of thing where it's the two of them working together and it manifests in a lot of ways.
Speaker: And in this case, it's them working together in the dreadnought to fuck shit up.
Speaker: And so what we've got basically is a giant chaos dreadnought that has existed in
Speaker: uh, in some ways before the beginning of time, like it used to be a demon that fought the Eldar back when the Eldar were a plentiful race.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, and the, and a, and a space Marine who's as ancient as a space Marine can possibly be essentially.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: And so we get a back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker: And it's really interesting.
Speaker: Um, good news slash bad news.
Speaker: It's basically just another one of those.
Speaker: And then they died horribly things when our, uh, our, our protagonist Kai's just obliterates them.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and, and it cracked.
Speaker: And you were talking about them cracking open and being full of goop and all that stuff.
Speaker: I think this one was particularly effective because the, the, the shell of the dreadnought breaks open and he sees this horrible, uh,
Speaker: deformed the remains of the, the ancient half dead space Marine inside.
Speaker: Um, but that's, and that, and I can't blame you for being confused by all that because that requires, I feel like this, this had, you had to assume this book was going to be an entry point for a lot of people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's written that way sometimes, but then you get something like this and it's like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker: Uh, you know, I've been, uh,
Speaker: I've been in this world, you know, for a while and I still had to kind of reread it a couple of times to figure it out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, but long story short too late.
Speaker: That's, uh, that's what that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: It's really weird.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So it's basically this kid on Chthonia, just to recap, kid on Chthonia becomes a space Marine.
Speaker: 10,000 years ago, there's the Horus Heresy.
Speaker: So 6,000 years ago, he woke up as a...
Speaker: demon kind of fused demon.
Speaker: Earlier than that, there was the Horus Heresy.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is like...
Speaker: And then, yeah.
Speaker: And also like the other thing is the guy, the captain of the space Marines is like, tells the other ships.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, all right, the Aeon and the Admiral have been kidnapped by Severus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: the ultra Marines are going to, he's probably has gone down onto the planet.
Speaker: The ultra Marines are gonna go down to the planet and get him back.
Speaker: And the other ships are like, do you need help?
Speaker: And he's like, you can send soldiers.
Speaker: The ultra Marines require no assistance.
Speaker: Stay out of our way.
Speaker: Also destroy the ship.
Speaker: Destroy the Enduring Blade.
Speaker: Like once we're off of it, just destroy the Enduring Blade.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like just don't take any risks.
Speaker: Just just scuttle.
Speaker: Just blow it up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's it's terrific because he's like he basically we we we call for a ceasefire between and he he reaches out to the towel calling for a ceasefire.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically, he also lacks some of the non racist diplomacy that we got from Constantine.
Speaker: And he's like, look, there's something worse on here.
Speaker: The Tau don't really understand chaos.
Speaker: They don't know what he's getting at.
Speaker: They think this might be some kind of trick, which is silly because these kind of space marines, they don't do tricks.
Speaker: That's really not their way.
Speaker: But they don't know that.
Speaker: And so he basically says...
Speaker: He says, look, everybody on here is getting torn to shreds by these chaos space marines and these demons and shit.
Speaker: Go talk to one of your other soldiers.
Speaker: Go talk to them.
Speaker: They'll tell you.
Speaker: And they're like, all right, they key in to Lakai's, and Kai's is like, what the fuck is going on, man?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I like to imagine that they reach out to Kais and they hear him, they're like, hey, Kais, how's things looking?
Speaker: Oh, God, man, oh, God!
Speaker: Like, Kais is flipping out.
Speaker: He is flipping out.
Speaker: He is snapped.
Speaker: There is no happy ending for Kais at this point.
Speaker: It's like, it's so far afield from the video game at this point, where you're just like a grunt shooting things.
Speaker: Like, Kais has lost his goddamn mind.
Speaker: It's going into Spec Ops the line territory here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where it's like, it's just, it's, I expect the loading screens to be mocking me.
Speaker: It's really, really fucked up.
Speaker: And they go, all right, Kai is great.
Speaker: Thanks, buddy.
Speaker: We'll get right back to you.
Speaker: No, but there's like, click.
Speaker: They go back to the Ultramarine.
Speaker: Ultramarine's like,
Speaker: What did he say?
Speaker: And they're like, all right, we believe you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Seems seems plenty fucked up.
Speaker: So we're not going to shoot each other.
Speaker: And basically, that's where he's like, yeah, for now.
Speaker: Yeah, for now.
Speaker: I mean, we'll get back to it later.
Speaker: But for now, let's like, yeah, put it.
Speaker: Let's put a pin in it for now, because there's some weird shit happening.
Speaker: It's so fucking funny.
Speaker: One of the other bits was how one of the chaos marines killed everybody who was left on the ship that was going for the drop pods, the escape pods.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Speaker: And it was like he shot a beam that sliced everybody's like...
Speaker: arms off or, or like sliced all their legs off and then sliced all their arms off so that they were just like torsos rolling around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it was more fun that way for him.
Speaker: Because it was more fun that way.
Speaker: That's how it's written.
Speaker: Because it was more fun that way.
Speaker: Because it was more fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get, so basically that's the, we come to the end and Kai's,
Speaker: fucking hops in one of the drop pods that's going to go down.
Speaker: Cause they basically, we've got a contingent of fire warriors and we've got, uh, what remains of the space Marines.
Speaker: Everyone's hopping in the escape pods to head down to the planet surface, to have the final confrontation with chaos and Kai's hops in his own flies down.
Speaker: And, uh, we're told at the end of the chapter that he sleeps the entire way down, the entire way down.
Speaker: Somebody wake up, Hicks.
Speaker: It's like I watched.
Speaker: I mean, I watched the gameplay and it's like the gameplay is like, oh, this looks a little boring.
Speaker: It's like it looks fine, but it's like and then Simon Spurrier was like, I'm going to turn this.
Speaker: mediocrely reviewed game into a gore infested, like true, true blue 40 K book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You gotta give it to him.
Speaker: He, he fucking like goes, he's like, he, he played the game or watched people playing the game and went, what the fuck am I supposed to know?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: No, we're just, I got a lot of work to do is basically what
Speaker: I mean, this is still the plot of the game because they like in the game, like, but still just the, it is gore and violent on a level that just wasn't, I guess you couldn't really get show in what was it?
Speaker: 2003 or something like that.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Couldn't, you couldn't effectively depict if, unless you were, you know, I,
Speaker: In a, in a, in a, in a big like release or whatever.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's no.
Speaker: So, so now that we finished that chapter, Kevin, what, how do you feel so far?
Speaker: What are you thinking?
Speaker: Queasy.
Speaker: Queasy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's fair.
Speaker: That's totally fair.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker: I mean, I like this section more than the first section.
Speaker: I think Kais himself as a character is like fine, but you can only go so far with the like the, oh man, what if I'm the demon?
Speaker: And they play with that still a little bit.
Speaker: You know, Simon played with that a little bit in these chapters, but then he fucking is like, nope, I'm not the demon.
Speaker: That's the demon.
Speaker: By the time the chaos Marines show up, he's like, I'm the Montau.
Speaker: Oh, I feel way better now.
Speaker: I'm the Montau.
Speaker: And then he sees chaos Marines and he's like, he's like, yeah, that was.
Speaker: That's, it's pretty great.
Speaker: It is, it is one of those moments where, you know, you're having a really bad time.
Speaker: You're having like, like a bad month or something, you know, things are going so good at your job and you know, maybe you don't have a girlfriend or something.
Speaker: You're lonely and, and you're like, I'm a fucking loser.
Speaker: This, this sucks.
Speaker: And then you see like five minutes of an incel message board and you're like, I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm not the demon.
Speaker: I'm a, that's not,
Speaker: That's not who I am.
Speaker: That's the demon right there.
Speaker: You see Ben Shapiro recite the lyrics to Wet Ass Pussy, and you feel better about yourself.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You look at Andrew Tate's in jail Twitter feed, and you're like, you know what?
Speaker: It's going to be all right.
Speaker: I'm going to be all right.
Speaker: I'm going to be all right.
Speaker: I'm going to be all right.
Speaker: I don't need Jordan Peterson popped up on Benzos to tell me to clean my room.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: Well, now that we're fine, now that everybody's fine, Kevin, I get to do this now.
Speaker: I get to do this.
Speaker: Oh, what are you going to do?
Speaker: I'm going to... Well, now that we're both fine, Kevin, that leaves me with only one question left to ask you.
Speaker: Oh, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I did not expect you to... I'm completely unprepared.
Speaker: Yay!
Speaker: This is fun!
Speaker: I got to...
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: What am I playing?
Speaker: So I had been playing a lot of Lies of P. And then one of my big critiques of the game and why it's sliding down my list of like game of the year is the bosses are so poorly designed in terms of combat and counterbalance.
Speaker: There is, and I know this is a big part of the whole stupid get good culture of souls likes, but like a lot of the time it's like, if you have the patience and whatever, you can get good just by the repetition, right?
Speaker: You understand what the attacks look like, you understand how to block and all that stuff.
Speaker: Um, the worst thing about Souls of P or Lies of P is that, uh, it's based on more of the Sekiro slash Bloodborne blocking.
Speaker: So blocks don't really get you much, but they have these enemies that are heavy attackers like Dark Souls, where...
Speaker: Playing, you don't need to ever parry in a Dark Souls.
Speaker: If you have a build with a strong shield, you can rely more on blocking than parrying or what have you.
Speaker: Liza P relies more on like the Bloodborne style where it's parrying or Sekiro where it's timed blocking in order to throw...
Speaker: to like build the, uh, to break the stamina of the enemy that you're fighting against.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: I get that.
Speaker: And for most of the game, it's been fine.
Speaker: I've gotten to this enemy, this boss though, it's called the green monster of the swamp where it, sometimes it'll randomly spam.
Speaker: It's unblockable attack, like twice in a row, um, where you have to perfect parry or else you get a ton, ton of damage.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Other times it has this like tentacle attack that does way too much damage compared to every other attack.
Speaker: So its attacks hit you with something called decay and decay in this is like a...
Speaker: It's a poison stat.
Speaker: It's a poison dot that you can acquire and you have to cure yourself or else you're just gonna be dropping HP pretty fast.
Speaker: So it has this two prong tentacle attack where if it hits you, not only are you full on decay immediately,
Speaker: but it takes away almost all of your hit points.
Speaker: So you have decay and you lose all your HP and then the decay dot kills you.
Speaker: And it does the it will do like the first time I fought this thing, I got through its first phase.
Speaker: Easy peasy, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But since then, I've been having trouble getting past the first phase because the first time I fought it, it never used this tentacle attack.
Speaker: And then it's been using this thing where it spams it like three times in a row.
Speaker: And if you accidentally, if it hits you, you're you are probably dead for that run.
Speaker: So I don't know, and this is not the first boss where it's just been like, it's not fun.
Speaker: So one of the things that people didn't like about Elden Ring, specifically the Melania boss fight was that it's just, it's not a fun boss fight.
Speaker: And some of it, it just relies on getting lucky to get through the fight.
Speaker: Um, even though you can get really good at the fight, like the, the, the famous, uh, Elden Ring player, let me solo her, which if you were lucky enough, you could wait outside of, of Melania's room and,
Speaker: his summon would appear and if he was online you didn't have to do anything you could just go and summon him let him run in and he was such a professional millennia fighter that he could solo her like you you could just sit by the by the entrance and he would go in there and
Speaker: and and solo her.
Speaker: The problem is here with Green Monster of the Swamp is that a and several of the other bosses with Liza P there there's just a slightly higher percentage of bullshittery than and I'm a and I've played a lot of souls likes.
Speaker: I have experienced a lot of souls like bosses.
Speaker: I've beaten just about every Souls-like out there.
Speaker: I've played and beaten.
Speaker: And I will say Lies of P after a certain point has the highest percentage of bullshit bosses that I have run into in terms of some of their, just some of the shit they do during a fight where it's just like, and the other thing is like Lies of P a lot of time relies on
Speaker: uh, throwables, consumables and stuff like that to like help you get through a fight.
Speaker: But you die.
Speaker: You, you, if you use them during a fight and you die, you've lost all of them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So then you have to spend the time going to get them back.
Speaker: So it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's not like it refreshes after.
Speaker: It's not like it refreshes after you die.
Speaker: And I'm sure there will be, you know, the souls like Chuds that'll be like, well, it sounds like a skill issue.
Speaker: And I'm like, no, it just sounds like just not a great design issue.
Speaker: They've had to patch down the HP of some of the bosses.
Speaker: Like, I'm not losing my mind here.
Speaker: In the fucking patch notes of the game, they've had to go and make some of the bosses easier because just people were running into it and saying, fuck it, I'm not playing anymore because it gets dumb.
Speaker: just yeah you're hitting a wall where it's like this is cheap like these and the other thing is lies of p unlike every other souls like i've ever played where you're like okay i'm at this boss i can go literally do something else i can go to another area that's not available in lies of p it's a straightforward linear game oh
Speaker: So you get to a point where this is like... And other souls aren't necessarily open world, but they have multiple... They'll have branching paths, right?
Speaker: That you can go and fuck around with.
Speaker: Lies of P is linear.
Speaker: It's straightforward.
Speaker: So if you're running into a boss that's giving you trouble, there's like... I guess you can go...
Speaker: grind, but I don't really want to, you know, like, so that's the boss you're going for.
Speaker: That's the boss you're going for.
Speaker: That's about it.
Speaker: It sucks.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's sliding down my game of the year list.
Speaker: Um, I don't know where it was necessarily when I started, it was, it was like, it was on the list of, and now it's like, yeah,
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: Kind of teetering.
Speaker: It's teetering at this point.
Speaker: It has to come back strong after.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And after, if I ever get through this boss.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or I just like say, fuck it.
Speaker: I'm playing something else now.
Speaker: Which is the risk you run with this shit.
Speaker: Like, you gotta balance this stuff.
Speaker: Which sounds at least like the developers are realizing that on a certain level.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, because there was one boss who was really hard and got through him and it was fine.
Speaker: And then there was just like a run of bosses that I mowed down, right?
Speaker: And then I get to this boss where it was like just way too much insta-kill bullshit, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, Eliza P and, uh, I'm sad to say that I got back into Marvel snap.
Speaker: Some of us never left my friend.
Speaker: Some of us never left, I guess I'm back.
Speaker: I'm back into Marvel snap while we were, I saw the discord, you guys comparing notes and stuff.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, me and VZ and occasionally Jesse Garasha have been in the Discord to compare notes.
Speaker: Right now, as we're talking, it seems like, oh yeah, VZ and Harry from Video Games are bad.
Speaker: I've just had a full-on discussion about the ending of...
Speaker: of Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye, the DLC.
Speaker: Complete with a very considerate.
Speaker: It's all redacted.
Speaker: It's all redacted, baby.
Speaker: It's almost all redacted.
Speaker: So yeah, but yeah, I've been playing a lot of Snap, trying to figure out new decks to play with.
Speaker: I keep going back to my old tried and true, which is Apocalypse, Dracula and Apocalypse.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Discard.
Speaker: So, you know, I focus two lanes and with Morbius on one and Dracula on another.
Speaker: And Morbius gets plus two every time you discard a card.
Speaker: I love Morbius.
Speaker: That one's so fun.
Speaker: He's fun.
Speaker: And so the other wrinkle I have is I have Ghost Rider in there.
Speaker: Yeah, I use Ghost Rider in that deck too.
Speaker: Yeah, so I, and Black Cat, because Black Cat does you the courtesy of discarding herself if you don't play her.
Speaker: So you have Black Cat in there, she discards herself, you play Ghost Rider, Ghost Rider then pulls Black Cat in.
Speaker: So for the cost of four power, you get 12 stats.
Speaker: That's nice.
Speaker: It's not bad at all.
Speaker: So yeah, I've been playing with that.
Speaker: I've been trying to find another deck that I like other than that kind of discard.
Speaker: I did pull Thanos recently from one of the...
Speaker: the creator cache or collector caches.
Speaker: And he's, and Thanos is, because, so I found out, I was like wondering how they determine things.
Speaker: Like series one and two, everybody gets series one and two.
Speaker: Those are the cards that you get as you play the, when you start the game, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: As you're playing the game, those are the series one and two cards.
Speaker: Series three, you have to get through...
Speaker: the basic caches and you're just gonna get them over time.
Speaker: Series four and five, series five cards are ones that you have to get usually under special circumstances.
Speaker: So that's either a brand new card.
Speaker: So like this season is Elsa Bloodstone who has a lot of fun stuff going on with her.
Speaker: Or you got the BBEGs, the big bads are always series five.
Speaker: I didn't realize.
Speaker: So that's Thanos.
Speaker: That's Galactus.
Speaker: I want to say Oliath is going to stay series five.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And a few others.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, I tried Elioth in my, I don't know if there's an official title for it.
Speaker: My symbiote Weapon X deck where we're chopping ourselves to death and come back from the dead.
Speaker: I tried him with that one and I didn't get a lot out of it.
Speaker: Yeah, Elioth apparently works really well with Galactus, where you use Elioth to basically clear a lane.
Speaker: because he's kind of like, he's basically like, he's a little bit like Shang-Chi, except for everything and not just nine power cards and up.
Speaker: Right, right, yeah.
Speaker: I did get to play, I did get, I've been playing with X-23 and Lady Deathstrike in that same deck though, and I think,
Speaker: Here's the thing.
Speaker: My brother has always accused me of this, even when we were playing Magic the Gathering as kids.
Speaker: I love a theme that goes beyond gameplay.
Speaker: I just like everything to look nice and good, even at the expense of maybe winning.
Speaker: So I've got, I call it Symbiote X. So it's like...
Speaker: symbiotes and Weapon X characters.
Speaker: And I'm getting as many of the Venomized variants for it.
Speaker: And I'm just, it's my little num num num num.
Speaker: And I'm solidly 50 something points into the tournament and I don't go much higher.
Speaker: Which is fine as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Does, what's it?
Speaker: Does Deadpool count for in that deck?
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: Yeah, I love him in that deck.
Speaker: There are some exceptions.
Speaker: I still have Nova in the deck because that's so helpful.
Speaker: Do you have Hulkbuster in there?
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: Maybe you should.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So what I've been seeing people do is they play Deadpool and then they Hulkbuster him and then they kill him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then suddenly he goes, he doubles to his, after that, because the thing about Deadpool, I was like, oh, well, he goes one,
Speaker: because two then four then eight like no the goal is to on the first double is have pump them up already so whether that be whether that's like forge hitting them with a plus three um or a hulk buster hitting him with plus six and then you double them and now you're getting uh one power on the next one for 14 one power
Speaker: He's a great card.
Speaker: Yeah, no, he's just terrific.
Speaker: Yeah, he's fun.
Speaker: And also, I've fallen in love with Jeff the Baby Landshark.
Speaker: I noticed that.
Speaker: Yeah, you were talking about that in the Discord.
Speaker: He's great.
Speaker: He's just, he's like, so I believe he originated from the Gwenpool comics.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: which are, I believe were written by, what's his name from Rude Tales of Magic.
Speaker: Christopher Hastings.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: Christopher Hastings.
Speaker: Oh, gotcha.
Speaker: Chris Hastings does works from Marvel on occasion.
Speaker: And I think Gwenpool is his character.
Speaker: I feel like he might've created, I don't know if he created Jeff the Baby Landshark or not, but Jeff the Baby Landshark is like, I think is Gwenpool's pet.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And it's just like a shark, but he has little legs like a puppy.
Speaker: And so one of the best thing about Jeff is that he's a two three, which doesn't sound like a lot, but he can't be stopped from being played in any lane.
Speaker: So Professor X locks down a lane, right?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: For everybody except Jeff to the baby land shark.
Speaker: Except Jeff.
Speaker: I love that it's Jeff with an exclamation point at the end of it.
Speaker: Yes, Jeff.
Speaker: Which makes me so happy.
Speaker: Jeff.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: But yeah, you see the joy I have when I talk about Marvel Snap versus Liza P?
Speaker: It's that one.
Speaker: I mean, that's the game that stuck with us.
Speaker: That was on both of our game of the year list last year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it stuck with us this deep into the following year.
Speaker: That says something.
Speaker: Speaking of a game from last year that made both Marvel Snap and Midnight Suns, you've seen the Midnight Suns variant cards.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: Absolutely beautiful.
Speaker: The variant, I mentioned this when we first started playing this game.
Speaker: I'm an old trading card fanatic.
Speaker: From when I was a kid, I had all the Marvel trading cards.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: And these variants they're coming out with.
Speaker: It keeps me in the game.
Speaker: I might have dropped out by now, but it's like, oh, fuck, I got to try and get that now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the conquest tournament this year.
Speaker: This season is for getting the is it the Iron Man variant or the Iron Man variant right now?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I've been wanting to get that.
Speaker: I love Conquest.
Speaker: That's such a good game mode.
Speaker: I really enjoy it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So hopefully we see some more of the Midnight Suns variants as they continue on.
Speaker: They usually keep making like other variants because I imagine it would be, you know, Ghost Rider, Wanda, et cetera.
Speaker: Other games that appeared in other characters that appeared in the Midnight Suns game.
Speaker: I want to see a wolf
Speaker: That would be great.
Speaker: That would be great.
Speaker: But Phil, enough about me.
Speaker: What have you been playing?
Speaker: Oh, I have been playing.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I have been playing 100 Days a lot.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And 100 Days is a strategy winemaking sim.
Speaker: And I played for a while.
Speaker: I was playing this other strategy winemaking sim for years called Terroir.
Speaker: And it was very straightforward kind of thing.
Speaker: Now, the thing about 100 Days that I think is really interesting, you get your plot of land, you can expand your vineyards, you can plant different grapes, upgrade your wineries and your tool shed and all that stuff.
Speaker: And you're trying to make...
Speaker: the perfect bottles every year after year.
Speaker: And it has all this stuff that I find to be very entertaining in these games.
Speaker: But I think the thing that makes it stand out is its main gameplay mechanic is this funny little Tetris-y sort of thing, where in the center of your vineyard, there's a square.
Speaker: And how many squares are in the square depends on your upgrades.
Speaker: You can upgrade it to be bigger and you want it to be bigger.
Speaker: Because every job you do, whether that's... Every turn is basically a new season.
Speaker: So it's fall of this year or whatever.
Speaker: And I can... Well, I'm sorry.
Speaker: It's a week of each season, I think.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: And so this turn I can...
Speaker: do so many things.
Speaker: I can get out there and weed.
Speaker: I can prune the vineyards.
Speaker: I can spray for mildew and stuff like that.
Speaker: But you can only do as much as you can fit within that square, and every task has a different Tetris shape to it.
Speaker: So you have to kind of rotate them in there and fit them in just so.
Speaker: Which is just psychologically so satisfying when you get it just right.
Speaker: And you can slowly upgrade your plot there so that you'll get new corners of it so you have more space to maneuver within it.
Speaker: And sometimes you just don't have enough space and you have to wait.
Speaker: And it's really challenging at first.
Speaker: The...
Speaker: Not just in the game itself, not just in learning to play, but the game itself.
Speaker: you kind of have to work like a dog for the first few years to get over the hump.
Speaker: But once you reach a rhythm, you do start, you fall into this rhythm and it gets very relaxing, very soothing kind of game.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: The soundtrack's nice.
Speaker: There's a story mode, which I played through, which is great for the tutorial.
Speaker: But like so many things that are wine-centric and based on fiction, it has just kind of a cheesy, you know,
Speaker: romantic comedy kind of vibe to it, which I'm like, all right, that's enough.
Speaker: Let's, let's just, I just want to make a bottle of Barbera.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: And, uh, it's, it's, it's a lot, but I've, I've really, I've really enjoyed that.
Speaker: I've been playing that one off and on.
Speaker: Um, other than that, the game that's really focused all of my attention for the, since we talked last.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kevin, I love you.
Speaker: I'm not going to.
Speaker: I respect you.
Speaker: I'm not going to.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: I beat Alien Stark Descent for a third time.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: You know, I thought you were going to go with you started playing porn games again.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: We haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: A third time.
Speaker: Third time.
Speaker: That was a game where you were like, after the first time, you're like, man, fuck this game a little bit.
Speaker: It's not on my game of the year list.
Speaker: And now you've beaten it three times.
Speaker: Three times.
Speaker: And I beat it on nightmare mode.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: I beat it on like the, it's called in space, no one here can hear you scream mode.
Speaker: It's hardcore mode, so I can't lose any of my Marines.
Speaker: And I'm aiming for achievements now.
Speaker: There are like four of them that I need for a perfect, there's something, it's still, they have patched it, it's doing way better.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's still got that indie jankiness to it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: There's still some points that are kind of like frustrating, but I don't know.
Speaker: I love this game.
Speaker: You're absolutely right.
Speaker: I went from being like, fuck, they fucked it up.
Speaker: This was supposed to be my game of the year.
Speaker: I'm supposed to be, to this might be my game of the year.
Speaker: Despite- Despite everything.
Speaker: Despite everything.
Speaker: And it's just, it's so, it does feel at times like it was made specifically for me.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's like, to put it in other terms, this might be your game of the year while Baldur's Gate is standing there, like Karlak, while you accidentally sleep with Lazell.
Speaker: That's basically it, yeah.
Speaker: That's basically-
Speaker: And don't think I don't see the side eye from her.
Speaker: It's, I get it.
Speaker: It's like, that's the, I'm like, I'm so quick to be like, someone, a friend of mine texted me and was like, I see her playing that game again.
Speaker: I'm thinking about getting it.
Speaker: Is it good?
Speaker: And I'm, no, not really.
Speaker: I mean, it is, but it's not, it's complicated.
Speaker: I don't recommend it.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: It's the sideways thumb from the Emperor on this one.
Speaker: I feel like someone- I recommend it for me, but not for anyone else.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I feel very strongly like this game was made for me.
Speaker: The pacing of it.
Speaker: is the slow and steady pacing, because it is a slow game.
Speaker: You cannot rush this game.
Speaker: You have to take your time.
Speaker: There are so many instances where it makes way more sense just to hide from the goddamn aliens than to blow them up.
Speaker: There are so many...
Speaker: factors to it that just feel like it was fucking tailor-made for me.
Speaker: And I'm not going to hide my love anymore.
Speaker: I'm just not.
Speaker: It's been too good to me.
Speaker: I have, let's, let's.
Speaker: Not going to hide it under a bushel.
Speaker: Let's look at the board.
Speaker: Let's look at the board here.
Speaker: Oh, he's going to the hours played board.
Speaker: 114 hours.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: I put, I put 66 into Baldur's Gate 3.
Speaker: This is almost double.
Speaker: That is upsetting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're telling me.
Speaker: I am upset.
Speaker: I should have just lied.
Speaker: I should have lied.
Speaker: You should have lied.
Speaker: You should have not brought this up.
Speaker: I'm playing Resident Evil 4 again.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, the Separate Ways DLC is out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It could have been a perfectly.
Speaker: I do need to play that.
Speaker: I do need to play that.
Speaker: Actually, there is no excuse.
Speaker: I admit there is no excuse for that.
Speaker: I do need to play that.
Speaker: But yeah, while Lies of P is inching down your game of the year list, Aliens Dark Descent is inching up mine.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: It is dramatic and beautiful, and it's actually a really good storyline, too.
Speaker: Like, it's a very good storyline.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I fucking love this game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe I'll give it another shot.
Speaker: I basically played my way through the tutorial and was like, eh, I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I will say the solo, there's only, there's only two solo moments and it's, it's the very beginning of the game.
Speaker: And there's like this, about two thirds of the way through you have kind of, and I don't care for those.
Speaker: It's an interesting change of pace.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and I respect them for putting in it, but I don't, I don't give a shit about those scenes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But they've, they've patched it.
Speaker: I, I think it'd be worse.
Speaker: It is still janky as shit.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But it is playable.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so there's something, it's just this combination of, you know, strategy games that I love and Darkest Dungeon.
Speaker: And it's pretty good.
Speaker: So that's it, though.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I've been converting this fucking room.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And all kinds of shit.
Speaker: Like, I've been busy as hell.
Speaker: Yeah, you've been busy as hell.
Speaker: You got a baby on the way.
Speaker: Just to reiterate, if you somehow missed the beginning of the episode, which shouldn't be a thing, you play this on demand.
Speaker: Yeah, what the hell?
Speaker: Phil will be out for a few months at the beginning of 2024 because he's got a baby on the way.
Speaker: He also has a book coming out.
Speaker: I have my first baby and my first book in the same year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In November, I believe the plan right now is in the middle of November.
Speaker: We haven't got an actual date yet.
Speaker: We're doing a quick turnaround.
Speaker: It's a really great scrappy press called Psychotoxin.
Speaker: And we're doing a quick turnaround on it.
Speaker: And it's my novella Juice.
Speaker: It is...
Speaker: Yeah, probably enough based on the game I talked about today.
Speaker: It's a wine centric.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Horror satire kind of thing.
Speaker: It's kind of American Psycho, The Menu, if you liked The Menu.
Speaker: American Psycho, The Menu, and what's that fucking wine movie?
Speaker: Sideways.
Speaker: Sideways.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, imagine sideways if Paul Giamatti's character murdered people.
Speaker: Imagine sideways, but the trip was Patrick Bateman going on this trip.
Speaker: Actually, yeah, that's not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's my first book.
Speaker: It's coming out in November and we'll get more details for that as they come.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm tired.
Speaker: And the kid isn't even here yet.
Speaker: Kid's not even here yet.
Speaker: Just get used to that feeling of being tired.
Speaker: I'm just going to live in it now.
Speaker: It'll just be easier that way.
Speaker: Buddy, let me tell you, those first couple months...
Speaker: Are they're a thing?
Speaker: So, yeah, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Go to PixletPod.com.
Speaker: We had a little rearrangement of our stuff.
Speaker: uh get rid of the website don't don't not doing the website anymore but you can go to pixelipod.com and it takes you straight to uh the most wonderful website in the world which is patreon.com slash pixelipod where you can follow us for free now you can just follow us for free on there and get updates when we post things or you could throw us a buck
Speaker: Or five or ten.
Speaker: You know, whatever you want to do.
Speaker: Speaking of ten dollars, for those of you who do throw ten dollars in into the pot every month, you get a special shout out.
Speaker: And we want to give a shout out to our friend of the pod, geek scholar, friendly friend.
Speaker: Friendly friend.
Speaker: The friendliest friend of all.
Speaker: the friendliest friend of all for, uh, being a $10 a month, uh, patron of ours.
Speaker: Uh, we love you for it.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: Um, otherwise, yeah, social media is a roiling hellscape at the moment, but you can find us on blue sky.
Speaker: Um, we're on blue sky.
Speaker: We're on blue sky.
Speaker: Um, we're on, we're on the website formerly known as Twitter, um,
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: It's kind of on autopilot there.
Speaker: But you can still find us there.
Speaker: You can still find us there.
Speaker: We're there.
Speaker: Instagram, I guess.
Speaker: YouTube.
Speaker: Go to our YouTube.
Speaker: Yeah, go to our YouTube.
Speaker: Go to our YouTube.
Speaker: We're past 160 subscribers now on our YouTube channel.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Um, so if you want to help out there, just go subscribe on YouTube, uh, and let all of our episodes autoplay, uh, so we can get there with that, that we can get monetized.
Speaker: That would be, that would really do us a solid.
Speaker: That would be, that would be pretty sick.
Speaker: Um, uh, and yeah, you can join our discord.
Speaker: I, there is a link to our discord on patrion.com slash pixel it pod, uh, over on the, the info tab.
Speaker: So you can go ahead, click that, join our Discord, be part of the conversation.
Speaker: And with that, have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Goodbye.
Speaker: Goodbye.
Speaker: Goodbye.
