Transcript
Trevor Paul: Hey. Welcome to the I think you should pod. And oh. My goodness, is that? In... is Is that... Is it really? B?
Bea: don't shh Don't.
Trevor Paul: yeah
Bea: Be cool. Be cool.
Trevor Paul: be Because... Be cool. Guys, guys, Bea's back.
Bea: Be cool.
Trevor Paul: I told you she wasn't dead.
Bea: Oh, my God. Well.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. Ha ha!
Bea: that's That remains to be seen.
Trevor Paul: I do have to.
Bea: I...
Trevor Paul: Go ahead.
Bea: Do exist. No.
Trevor Paul: a uh i do have to say b i forgot to tell the audience in the villain episode that your villain was late stage capitalism and and and is the correct the correct observation so i'm sorry i left that off
Bea: Yeah.
Bea: I feel like we should record an addendum just the two of us.
Trevor Paul: ah
Bea: So that it's like, hey, you were. on sabbatical. while we did this episode do you have any thoughts be like boy do i You know, just like add on.
Trevor Paul: just 20 minutes of, of like, listen.
Bea: Just... riffing just be as we know that's what i do here
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: I mean, it's it's one of the potential problems or dare I say flaws of the show might be that that's what both of us do.
Bea: yeah Well, I mean, it is.
Trevor Paul: sir
Bea: Our show. So.
Trevor Paul: I get, yeah. yeah
Bea: We get to do. Whatever we want on it. And if people don't like it, guess what? There's an X right in the corner of this fucking browser.
Trevor Paul: uh -huh
Bea: You can just click right off of it and go start your own podcast.
Trevor Paul: Uh huh.
Bea: Microphones are basically free now. so
Trevor Paul: Yeah. and And dear listener, we we already know that Burke is a better podcaster than both of us already. We've listened to her on our episodes.
Bea: I. yeah so so i hear i mean i feel like we've both been replaced So i'm I'm good. I can just go back to doing what it was I was doing, which is unfortunately classified.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. There you have it.
Bea: I can't tell you what it was.
Trevor Paul: They don't even have to change the name of the podcast. They can keep the name. We just take our names off it.
Bea: Yeah. exactly yeah
Trevor Paul: Uh,
Bea: Maybe we can just be producers.
Trevor Paul: i hear that's a lucrative business.
Bea: Allegedly.
Trevor Paul: Allegedly. ah So, hey, what's been up? what do you what do you Anything new to report? Fun to report? a Not fun to report? I don't know.
Bea: I mean, not fun to report. Are we going to mention that we are recording this on a tragic day in American history in which we have lost?
Trevor Paul: Oh, i yeah we have to. i
Bea: The dear, dear Dolly Parton.
Trevor Paul: I'm... Insert like several cuts of Dolly's greatest hits.
Bea: yeah i mean they're they're all the greatest hits so uh we are recording this on the day of her death being announced um and it has saddened us both greatly so
Trevor Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Bea: Uh...
Trevor Paul: one of One of the few celebrities that use their celebrity entirely for good.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Like, I don't even think that needs a caveat entirely for good.
Bea: Like. Like, all all of her employees were basically family. She donated so much of her money and time.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: to everybody and all she wanted.
Trevor Paul: Libraries?
Bea: yeah oh my god books for children just in general and just being a good human being and encouraging other people to be good human beings
Trevor Paul: Oh my god. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
Bea: And her being from a part of. the country that is notoriously really closed -minded and and she was an advocate for so many people and yeah like
Trevor Paul: Mm hmm. Not. Yeah.
Bea: A woman who... Is. We'll be. irreplaceable and we will be sad for the rest of our lives that we lost her i mean granted she was 80 but i would have loved for her to live forever frankly
Trevor Paul: Hey, but you know what? I'll put it this way because this is what I saw someone say online, and they're right. The wrong 80 -year -old died.
Bea: Oh my god.
Trevor Paul: That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying.
Bea: Every... I feel like I'm being punked every day.
Trevor Paul: yeah Yeah, I really, I needed.
Bea: Topical reference, punked.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, no i was I was about to say, I need Ashton Kutcher to back off.
Bea: You know, remember punked? Yeah, Ashton Kutcher needs to go somewhere else
Trevor Paul: Yes, punk someone else, Ash. God. um Yeah, no, it sucks
Bea: But yeah, other than that, no, there's, I mean, I'm.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: her am am i doing anything really interesting i mean not really i'm playing a lot of like Uh... mind -numbing like tidying games like that's really the hype right now i'm trying to like find the ones that are not ai generated um
Trevor Paul: Mmm.
Bea: Because fuck AI so hard.
Trevor Paul: Uh -huh.
Bea: So finding the AI. tidying game that the non -ai tidying games that are just basically uh here's a shop that got shaken by a giant put all of the stuff back where it belongs and it really scratches an itch
Trevor Paul: Hmm.
Bea: that i need scratched and it is so mindless and i i just love it so that's really what i'm doing
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: What are you doing?
Trevor Paul: Well, Well, you know what I'm doing because I've been messaging you about it, which is I'm playing Raft. which is an old game.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: Uh... but like my son loves it and and so caleb this is by the way last episode you haven't heard it yet but we started my new thing which is dad corner which i said would become a bit on the podcast
Bea: Yeah, head corner.
Trevor Paul: So dad corner.
Bea: That's so cute.
Trevor Paul: Dad Corner Part 2. My son's extremely into Pokemon. and Ladies and gentlemen. when I say he's extremely into Pokemon. The child owns in excess of 200 Pokemon stuffies.
Trevor Paul: That's not an like I'm not being hyperbolic.
Bea: and sleeps on a bed of them every night.
Trevor Paul: Sleeps on a bed of them. He has... ah inherited my Nintendo Switch. on which he has three pokemon sorry four pokemon no five pokemon games he's just not playing two of them that much, but he is.
Trevor Paul: Fully 100 % completed. Let's go Evie. twice. and Pokemon Sword. Twice. and is working on Brilliant Diamond.
Trevor Paul: but also keeps popping back and forth to Eevee and Sword because those are kind of his faves. Um... He has Scarlet. That didn't really... Connect with him.
Bea: because it's bad.
Trevor Paul: yeah i i think it is i think it is a bad one i don i don't really enjoy it we've never but then we also
Bea: i wanted it I wanted it to be better. Yeah. I also have Scarlet, and I was like, eh, okay.
Trevor Paul: yeah um okay i'm glad that it wasn't just us and then he has pokemon snap which is like i think adorable and fun you just take pictures of pokemon um on like a rail shooter, basically.
Bea: That's fun.
Trevor Paul: so he plays that but also like he plays it with me i have to help him sometimes but my wife and i've been really cool about him doing it because it's all text and he has to read and like getting a seven soon to be eight year old reading and then having that kid look over my shoulder and just read what i'm looking at on the screen like with no assistance that I'm like, you should not know how to read that word.
Bea: Yes.
Trevor Paul: Crazy to me.
Bea: That was also the parameter for a friend of mine getting... Bear kid. the last pokemon game was like you need to be able to read it on your own like we're not going to sit there and read it to you and that was And it worked.
Trevor Paul: mm -hmm Mhm.
Trevor Paul: Exactly. and and And it also is great because he'll come to me and ask for help. He's also like he's obsessively watching this YouTube channel called. um pokey tips which is like...
Trevor Paul: I would say he's going to be a 20 -something -year -old guy who's Pokétip's Mike. and It's so child -friendly, what he's doing, and but he's showing all kinds of like glitches and how to catch like rare Pokemon, and he's doing randomizer modded runs.
Trevor Paul: But all of it's being done in a very like, this is PG friendly for kids thing.
Bea: Oh fun.
Trevor Paul: that like i'm like yeah go nuts man but anyway he has started coming downstairs where i have my computer set up and he sits in a stool next to me sometimes playing switch, but now he's so into raft.
Trevor Paul: that he just sits there and watches last.
Bea: It's a great game.
Trevor Paul: uh last night he put the headphones on and i said you're in charge of all the audio cues And he's... Learn from me. The phrase Bruce. Bruce, stop it.
Bea: oh ah
Trevor Paul: Because, folks, if you haven't played this game, there's a shark. that is called Bruce, which is a reference to the mechanical shark and jaws and he follows your raft around what's basically water worlds and he'll occasionally charge in and bite the raft and like pull a chunk of it off And you can hear the sound of it. And I always chastise him in a gentle way because Bruce is my friend. And Caleb thinks this is the funniest thing in the world. So he.
Trevor Paul: you know. he starts doing the same thing, but. He's now telling me strategies of where I should go and what I should do and how to play the game.
Bea: mm -hmm
Trevor Paul: He is basically my producer. while I'm playing Raft now. Um,
Bea: Yeah. There you go.
Trevor Paul: and i had to he's staying at his cousin's house tonight, and I promised him I would not play Raft without him because he's like, we have some we have some big things to do, Dad. We got we got a ship to check out. we got We got an island we got to explore. He's like, I want to be there for that.
Trevor Paul: Alright.
Bea: Yeah, can't you can't. you can't skip ahead you can't you know
Trevor Paul: Right.
Bea: watch Netflix while the kid's away, you know, that kind of a thing.
Trevor Paul: And...
Trevor Paul: Right, and I will say, I tried to get into this game earlier when you were playing it with some of our other friends, and it didn't quite...
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: connected Man, did it get its hooks in me this time. um
Bea: It's really good. It's a lot of fun. And the art is really cute, but like.
Trevor Paul: The art's amazing. Amazing.
Bea: People don't realize that there's like an actual story to the game.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: And you're like, oh. Fuck. would have never guessed.
Trevor Paul: We put up the three antennae. last night and got a signal. and are heading towards it and caleb is all stoked about what's gonna happen
Bea: Yes.
Bea: i'm very excited i'm very excited for you guys to discover this together
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it's very cool. I do like that, though, because you I have pestered you because you had played it. about this and i was like Am I missing something if I don't do? blah blah blah do i miss out on the story and you were like No.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: just You just float around. Like.
Bea: Right yeah.
Trevor Paul: um it's not like you don't have to like actively pursue the story but if you do it's pretty cool um
Bea: Right, exactly. You can just like. just move around the world and not do any of the story. And.
Trevor Paul: Which is crazy. i
Bea: pick up stuff in perpetuity, you know.
Trevor Paul: I do kind of wish more games. had did something like that like i don't know We've talked about Valheim on the
Bea: yeah
Trevor Paul: podcast before, but like that that would have benefited from something along those lines, I think.
Bea: I agree.
Trevor Paul: uh because that becomes super gatekeepy about biomes as you get into them. And I get. I get it. I guess it's tough to do it with a biome based. like survival crafter which raft isn't but like I don't know There's got to be a way to do it.
Bea: I mean, there are definitely parts of raft that like If you go there too early, you're not going to be able to do a lot of the stuff, which is not like biome based as much as it's like, oh, I haven't unlocked this.
Trevor Paul: Sure. Right.
Bea: bit yet you know like
Trevor Paul: Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. I just... yeah yeah there There has to be and a way. to do that. um The only other thing I'll end with is... um Stay tuned because...
Trevor Paul: ah my My friend, Zach. the person who got us into repo. has acquired what he described as repo 2 .0. which is how to fish.
Bea: Oh no.
Trevor Paul: And it is a physics -based... game in which you are a person out fishing. and crash on a deserted island and have to. Learn how to fish. to survive.
Bea: Oh, neat. So it's how to end friendships the game.
Trevor Paul: I guess.
Bea: Cool.
Trevor Paul: I don't know.
Bea: Oh, I know what I played.
Trevor Paul: It's a clock.
Bea: Why didn't I mention this earlier? We played Big Walk with a couple of my friends.
Trevor Paul: Oh, tell me about...
Bea: Oh my god. Sorry.
Trevor Paul: Tell me about Big Walk. I don't i don't know anything about it. i have look I know that you've been playing it, but like... I know nothing. So, so regale me in the audience with why this is. a game worth looking at.
Bea: Oh my god, it's... Okay, so... People are calling these games like Repo and Peak and all of that like friend slop games, which, i you know.
Trevor Paul: Shitty title and inaccurate.
Bea: It, yeah, and it... The way I've seen it described is like. Some of them are free to play. Some of them are a few bucks. And then, like, you never play them again. and I saw on the internet somewhere because that's.
Bea: where I get most of my information that Somebody put it in a really... great context is that for the price of these games that you get to like even if you play them once for a few hours It's the cost of going out and, like, getting a drink with your friends.
Trevor Paul: oh How to fish is $5.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: And like big walk.
Trevor Paul: I've...
Bea: was 20 at full price.
Trevor Paul: i've Yeah.
Bea: but like it's huge it's a huge game so like the repos and the how to fishes and
Trevor Paul: Yup.
Trevor Paul: I was going to say repo. I don't remember what we paid, maybe seven bucks, eight bucks.
Bea: Yeah, it's under 10, yeah.
Trevor Paul: I've gotten. i've gotten more than that value in terms of experiences from it and it also like I often say like games that still have that, like, holy shit, like.
Trevor Paul: memory moment that ah occurs like I've had a few of those in repo.
Bea: Yes.
Trevor Paul: And to me, that's worth the price admission right there.
Bea: I agree. I agree. So like a friend of mine is.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: um in stage three cancer treatment right now and we haven't been able to like hang out as much obviously and so I've been sending her like.
Bea: tiktoks of this game and it was before it came out i was like this game looks so cute we have to play it it's like full goblin mode and it's from the people who made um Untitled Goose Game.
Trevor Paul: Yes, I remember. Okay, that's the thing that I had forgotten that I knew about it.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: and it's and it's you have to play multiplayer you can't play it solo and you're literally just it's You know what it reminds you know it reminds me of is like mist, only not creepy.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: or like the witness so you're walking around solving puzzles but like all of the puzzles are based like you have to have a person like people or persons with you in order to solve the puzzles because you're on like opposite sides or so of something or one of you is in a soundproof room and you have to like point at each other and like.
Bea: there's proximity chat and there's like a huge disclaimer when you log into the game being like please don't have discord open or have like a discord channel open while you're playing this like we want you to like
Trevor Paul: Yep. Yeah.
Bea: play it in proximity to each other like that's the point of the game and
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: it's honestly like i would thought it was going to be tough because it's first person But they have a lot of things in place to help people who are motion sick prone like I am. um So I did not have a problem with it at all. We played with.
Bea: six people you can play up to 12 and we played for two hours and i've never laughed so hard in my life we all got lost immediately we we got separated but like there's no
Trevor Paul: Thank you.
Bea: um drawbacks right there's no stamina there's no life.
Bea: points like you don't there's no dying the only time you die is if you disconnect and then when you disconnect from the server i'll send you this picture later um your character just falls over and has x's over their eyes so whoever's like the last person to log out of the server is just surrounded by dead bodies it's it's hilarious and i guess they make like a balloon fart noise when we disconnected i i can't i can't confirm because i was one of the first people to jump off but like
Trevor Paul: Okay.
Trevor Paul: Like dead bodies?
Bea: Ah. i can't recommend it enough it was on sale when it first released now it's like 1999.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: I've seen people get like 10 to 12 hours out of it, which for me is a great payoff because. If you're hanging out with your...
Trevor Paul: That's 20 bucks.
Bea: if you can't hang out with your friends right so it's like you and i live four hours apart from each other or like you know a lot of our friends live across the country so it's a great opportunity to like play a game together that may not be like a shooter or something you're like i don't always want to play fortnite sometimes i want to do something goofy and fun
Trevor Paul: That's $20.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: Mm -hmm.
Trevor Paul: I... BL, you'll be shocked to learn I never want to play Fortnite.
Bea: right you're like or i can't play repo because i'll cry the whole time you know like
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: so playing big walk the the most the most frustrating the part of about big walk is like
Trevor Paul: it's a valid response honestly
Bea: you're you're three quarters of the way through a puzzle and then one of your friends i won't name names amy presses a button and starts the puzzle over again. You know.
Trevor Paul: You smell a bitch, yeah.
Bea: but like it's all in like super good fun because again there's no penalty there's none whatsoever so
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: 10 out of 10, highly recommend. If you have... friends that are not local to you or you know you you guys are looking to get together but you can't find time to all actually be in the same room Get this game. Please do it. It's so fun.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, the thing is, not every game needs to be Baldur's Gate 3.
Bea: No.
Trevor Paul: I've been playing that with... ah Zach and Derek and Ollie. our some of our dnd buddies and like we're having a blast playing it together like it is actually i think i told you this before but like it actually does recreate the feeling of being at a table playing dnd
Bea: Mm hmm.
Bea: which is great.
Trevor Paul: shockingly well. But also, the game is... I mean, if you really want to do all of it, it's like 40 plus hours of like game
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: That's cool, but like... I don't need that to be every game that I play. And the beauty of like repo.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: being that you jump in and you can be in and out. Like. We'll be on. mike being like i got time for one round like i got 15 minutes like can we can do 15 minutes you know
Bea: Sure, yeah.
Trevor Paul: And then I think about like, and this will become pertinent to what we're going to talk about today, but like Space Marine 2, I paid the full price for it. at like 60 bucks when it came out, I think. And the campaign in that game is like 12 hours.
Trevor Paul: which is the same as Big Walk.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: You know? And like, I, because I'm... Like. I like the game a lot. and playing Sorry. I like I'm playing it because it has a cooperative.
Trevor Paul: Online mode.
Bea: Mm hmm.
Trevor Paul: which is like basically a Left 4 Dead type thing. like Complete all tasks. And. you know beat the level. I play that. Like. multiple rounds a night often.
Trevor Paul: because I like that kind of game.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: um If I had just gotten the campaign mode of it, which is originally all I played, I did not touch anything else. I was like. Noose. I get, yeah, it was pretty, it was okay. A lot of money for that campaign, you know, and yet you can get something like you said, that's 12 hours and pay way less.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: and It doesn't need AAA graphics and everything else and voice acting and all that shit.
Bea: Right. I mean.
Trevor Paul: Like, it just doesn't to be a good game.
Bea: And I'll say Big Walk, the graphics, are... Delightful because you're playing in. An environment very akin to... A mist or.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: A. ah a witness you're in like a real like forest slash like terrain environment but you're a cartoon like so like you look insane but the rest of the graphics are completely normal and then everything that you're doing all of the puzzles and stuff are in like vibrant primary colors so they stick out from the landscape it's it's really well done It's so much fun.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: Mhm.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: Is there replayability? No, because obviously once you know the puzzles, you know the puzzles, but you can also play the game with different people who have not done the puzzles, or even if you've all done the puzzles.
Bea: You don't know how each of you handle it. So it could be. fun as heck but you know yeah i do recommend
Trevor Paul: Yeah. i
Bea: Recommend it.
Trevor Paul: we We had planned on talking at some point about Curse of Strahd and like... which is a D and &D module that I was like, I just don't know how you play it again.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: You're like, I've played it multiple times.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: you definitely could do it again. And it's the same thing. It's like, you know, the, after you said it, I was like, obviously, you know, the characters, you know, the sort of set pieces, but like, there's so much like.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: the people you bring to the table.
Bea: There's a lot of worlds.
Trevor Paul: Well, and it's also the people you bring to the table will change everything about it, right?
Bea: Yeah, absolutely.
Trevor Paul: like And the characters they choose to play and how they play them. and Yeah. um So, yeah, that's I'll have to check it out. it's it
Bea: You should, yeah.
Trevor Paul: It got on my list after I... I didn't play Untitled Goose Game. I watched people play it.
Bea: Oh, I did.
Trevor Paul: I...
Bea: It's chaos.
Trevor Paul: I thought it was hysterically funny to watch. um I don't know that I... would play it, but I... it's like seeing something that's like, I don't know if that's for me, but I have a deep admiration for the people who made it.
Trevor Paul: And so I support them.
Bea: Yes.
Trevor Paul: Like.
Bea: It's really fun to watch other people play. like if Even if you don't want to play it yourself because you're like, this would just frustrate the hell out of me.
Trevor Paul: Mm.
Bea: It's so fun to watch somebody else play it because you're like, oh my God, that would drive me nuts.
Trevor Paul: Mhm.
Bea: you know like
Trevor Paul: mm -hmm
Bea: So.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: Highly recommend.
Trevor Paul: Cool. Well... uh We're talking about something today that I've teased probably multiple times on this. podcast, but... At one point, I had mentioned talking about this author that I really...
Trevor Paul: deeply admire peter ferravari who writes for the black library which is the publication house for games workshop the folks who make warhammer and warhammer 40 000 usually ah known by most people as warhammer 40k And. I finally realized as I kept trying to figure out a way to do that episode. what we should actually do is talk about.
Trevor Paul: the black library itself and why you should read these books, whether you care about this universe or not. uh, And despite the fact that.
Trevor Paul: I will provide context. in this episode as needed. You could read these books, I swear, without any context around the world of 40K. I promise you. But before that, B, what do you personally know about Warhammer 40 ,000?
Bea: um All I know about Warhammer is... The... Tabletop? game
Trevor Paul: Mhm.
Bea: which is a minis game i don't want to call it an rpg because it's like a it's a
Trevor Paul: It's wargaming, yeah.
Bea: Yeah, it's war gaming. You know, I've never played it because I'm poor and ah it is a very high barrier of entry type game.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: And also.
Trevor Paul: You don't say.
Bea: Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you've ever tried to get into a game like Magic or Warhammer, but it gets expensive so fast because you're like, oh, I really love this.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: And then all of the kits are $1 million. dollars And then you have to learn how to paint minis.
Trevor Paul: Yes. Yeah.
Bea: And I'm like, nope, don't want to do that either. But I do respect a lot of the people.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: who are Who are into it. Now as far as the universe goes. I know. Nothing. Except for what you have mentioned.
Trevor Paul: Okay, cool.
Bea: in passing, that I have definitely listened to entirely.
Trevor Paul: Okay, cool. Yeah All right, it's a good thing we have an audience for this because somebody will listen to me. Anyway.
Bea: I'm gonna listen. i' Am I gonna get it? Don't know.
Trevor Paul: So for quick context for people, Games Workshop is a British company. They made this like. um Wargaming tabletop. For those who don't know. And I always found this super fascinating. Like what? Dungeons and Dragons is now the er, like...
Trevor Paul: RPG tabletop game, right? Like I feel that's pretty Not.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: debatable. um But it actually didn't. get there initially. The first real tabletop games that weren't just like out of the box board games. you know like Parcheesi or whatever um were war games. They were like war simulations. And most of the original ones were based on actual like combat situations and tried to make rules that mimicked.
Trevor Paul: the effectiveness of real like tanks and units and all this stuff. Right. And then. Games workshop come Workshop comes around. They make... uh like historically based wargaming stuff at first and then They decide to go hog wild, making... a universe that's basically We're going to use this term a lot, a grimdark version. of like the Tolkien fantasy setting.
Trevor Paul: and it's like what if you had an army of orcs against an army of elves and they had all these different abilities and things and crazy stat lines and you rolled six billion dice and you know there's 8 000 pages of rules you know
Bea: The rulers involved and...
Trevor Paul: rulers are involved yeah and and these games were designed to be something where you like you bought minis you painted them and you could customize the look and then you went to the store and you played with your friends and you better set aside four to five hours because my god these games take for fucking ever Um, And then. That spun off into...
Trevor Paul: a science fiction world that they called Warhammer 40 ,000 because that's the year it's meant to be set in. the or whatever.
Bea: Oh.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, that's where the title actually comes from.
Bea: See? I've already learned something, everybody.
Trevor Paul: yeah
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: yes yeah yeah uh and we'll get into a bit of the timeline because that actually is kind of important but like Basically, they spit it off into this sci -fi setting that ends up blowing up in terms of popularity even more. I could... wax poetic about all the bizarre ways that Games Workshop's Warhammer franchise has spun off into other things like their football simulator called Blood Bowl.
Trevor Paul: Uh...
Bea: That I have heard of.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it's very popular. There's whole tournaments built around it, and those don't take as many hours as a fucking... warhammer game but Um, I do none of this stuff.
Trevor Paul: I didn't really care about this. I, however, played Warcraft. Did you play Warcraft or World of Warcraft at all?
Bea: No, no, that was before my time on the on the computer.
Trevor Paul: Okay. yeah i got into warcraft the actually literally the first warcraft like rts game and i played world of warcraft solidly for like a year um loved it had a great time but like basically warcraft took everything um from warhammer and copied it So like.
Trevor Paul: Um... they like the their vision of like you know having orcs and and all that all that stuff is basically like a one -to -one sort of like borrowed from Warhammer.
Bea: I did not know that.
Trevor Paul: Um, Yeah, because Warcraft comes out in the 90s. Warhammer has been around since the 80s. So like. You get Warhammer. and like i said it starts off fantasy and then they make a sci -fi version so The context.
Trevor Paul: We're not going to talk about the gaming itself. Right now, if you know Warhammer 40K, you might know Darktide. which is extremely popular. squad based like extraction shooter. You might know Space Marine 2, which is also like squad -based, team -based, or just the campaign.
Trevor Paul: They're both very good. The big one coming down the pipe is Total War, Warhammer 40K, which everybody's very excited about, myself included.
Bea: Yep.
Trevor Paul: I might actually... like that's as close as i'm going to get to playing something like the tabletop maybe is that um But anyway. All that's to say, we're on the 11th edition of Warhammer 40K in terms of source books. They have an RPG book as well. It's... fucking everywhere. They have 7 ,000 Like... properties that they're running.
Trevor Paul: uh they've made a billion games because they seem to be willing to sell their license to anybody with a checkbook uh and if the game is good That's cool, but a lot of them suck balls.
Bea: hu
Trevor Paul: ah I've played a bunch of them because of what we're talking about today, which is. I... played Space Marine. the original which is i think a 10 year old game before they came out with the space marine 2.
Trevor Paul: at the... recommendation of a friend and I played it and I was like, This is a pretty cool. concept. So like you've got these like big tanky space Marine guys in a shooter. And they, as my friend explained it, they don't like duck behind cover, which was very popular in shooters at the time it came out. They are the cover.
Trevor Paul: Like. You are. tank. like you can take a lot of damage that's the whole point uh and i was like oh this is kind of interesting spin there's this weird stuff so i Started looking into like wikis on it And then eventually I discovered that there's this thing called the Black Library. They write these books.
Trevor Paul: And I started reading them and B. to my shock. They're really fucking well done, some of them. Not all of them. There's some really bad ones out there too, but like. there's some actually brilliant books in here and the lore is actually Very cool. So...
Trevor Paul: For the purpose of today, the only lore thing I'm going to basically explain to you has to do with the human faction in the setting, which is the Imperium of Mankind.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: So. The gist of this is... there's this being called the emperor who's like The apex version of a human, I guess. And he may have existed in multiple forms across time and history.
Trevor Paul: And eventually he. in a very genocidal fashion. Genghis Khan -esque, unites all of Earth under his banner.
Bea: Yeesh.
Trevor Paul: And then determines that. Because he knows some things, he's going to need to do the same for the rest of the galaxy, that the galaxy will have to become united. humanity that has been spread across all these worlds.
Trevor Paul: will have to come together. and like unite under one banner, and like he's the guy that's going to do it. Okay. So... He decides to create 20 sons. Sorry. 18 because two of them get redacted and we don't know what happened to them.
Bea: who
Trevor Paul: that's actual that's actual lore that is like very popular fanfic with the warhammer 40k like fan base is like they were supposed to be 20 like of these. you know, children and then.
Trevor Paul: Two of them get. erased from history and and nobody knows what that's about.
Bea: Interesting.
Trevor Paul: yeah that that's actually i think very cool and i really would like games workshop
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: or the black library to eventually do something with that because i think There will always be people mad about how they choose to answer that question, but the answer is something that they could do so many cool things with.
Trevor Paul: Um. But basically he makes his 18 sons and they're all sons. and this is an issue with Games Workshop's early stuff is it's so mail -heavy.
Bea: Ugh.
Trevor Paul: It has gotten... So much better in the last like five to 10 years, both in terms of the representation of women and. also like uh some of the writers we're going to talk about today actually write female characters so well despite the fact they are unfortunately all male um but they write great female characters. um So he's got his 18 kids.
Trevor Paul: And. They're all supposed to represent sort of like an aspect of him. at its best right his greatest strategic mind or his greatest like imperial management mind like the man who could do spreadsheets real good whatever
Bea: hu
Trevor Paul: ah And he has them, and then... Through some mysterious event, they are scattered across the galaxy. So now he's going to go find them. And he does. He goes around. He finds all of his kids. They all grew up on different planets. They have different experiences. They all sort of specialize in a different type of.
Trevor Paul: like strategy governance warfare. Whatever. And this begins the great crusade where the emperor and his kids go around the galaxy. bringing planets into compliance through a variety of methods, many of them very unpleasant.
Trevor Paul: And one of the important things about Warhammer 40k is that there are no good guys. There are no good factions. The Imperium is a fascist state. And.
Bea: o
Trevor Paul: uh what's what i find delightful about these books. is that it's all bad. And then you're reading sometimes about the good guys within the bad place that are trying to make something good out of this rotten thing they're in.
Bea: okay
Trevor Paul: And I find that super compelling. if it's done well. So... Uh... Okay, so the emperor has his kids. he does this big crusade. And then at one point he goes, you know what guys?
Trevor Paul: I gotta go back to Earth to Terra. I gotta... Like... There's some stuff I got to do back there. Don't worry about it. uh
Bea: Don't worry about it.
Trevor Paul: We'll get there, don't worry. ah And he's like, hey... Instead of me, I'm going to have one of you. lead the the Crusades. And he picks his son, Horus. And.
Trevor Paul: The thing is, there were other... Primarchs, which is what his children are called. That maybe would have been. Um. reasonable choices as well there's robute gilliman who's a brilliant strategist there's sanguineus who is regarded he literally has angel wings he's the goodest boy um you know there's there's Dorne and Perturabo who are brilliant military minds like there's all these possibilities but he picks Horace and the thing is all the other brothers kind of go yeah that makes sense Horace is kind of cool like they all like him Horace is this very charismatic
Bea: oh okay so it's not like a joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat situation where they're gonna like push him in a well
Trevor Paul: No, they actually are. yeah they're no they're actually all like no horus yeah yeah yeah i get that you know like none of them really are are embittered by it.
Bea: got it okay
Trevor Paul: Right. And so Horace takes over. And what's interesting without going too deep on Horace's story is like. he kind of tries to like get away from a very xenophobic attitude. The Imperium had, which was if it's an alien race, we simply exterminate it and take their stuff.
Trevor Paul: We don't negotiate.
Bea: Hello.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. I mean, I told you they're the bad guys. Just.
Bea: That, yes, yep, I forgot.
Trevor Paul: ever Yeah. so So Horace kind of starts going to the, like, what? well have we ever tried diplomacy have we ever tried to figure out like how we could maybe work with these other groups and then uh He gets...
Trevor Paul: wounded by a strange weapon. and placed in place it basically a situation where to save Horus... He has to make a pact with... Something. And this is where I get to deviate from the little story of Horus to tell you about the fact that there is this thing in Warhammer 40k called the warp.
Bea: o
Trevor Paul: And you've seen Event Horizon.
Bea: I unfortunately have, yes.
Trevor Paul: yes it's going to help you a lot here right now though because the warp is basically the idea in event horizon of you cut through reality And you go into another reality or another dimension. And when you pop out the other side, you've covered this vast distance in a very short amount of time.
Bea: Got it.
Trevor Paul: downside, there's demons and shit.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: and they will get in and do really crazy shit to your your you know to you and to your ship. Right. Um, To get around this, the the Imperium has created these things called Geller Fields. uh other alien races that we're not necessari necessarily gonna talk about have simply gone why not go through the fucking demon world place and don't even bother with the warp? But we're, we're humans. So we're like, no, we must. Um,
Trevor Paul: And essentially what has happened is that. horus unwittingly or wittingly it's it's very open to interpretation makes a pact with chaos which is this like all -encompassing force that's in the warp It has its own sort of like sub gods. like Khorne, the god of like blood and skulls, who's like violence. You have Nurgle, the god of debt disease and decay.
Trevor Paul: You have. ah slanesh the god of excess and then you have like Zinesh. the God of change. Right. Those are the chaos forces. And they're all they're very monkey's paw type.
Trevor Paul: forces right like you're a great warrior and you're really good at fighting and you're noble and corn gets his eye on you because he's like oh but you could be even more powerful if you do what i want you to do and now you're just murdering anybody to murder them right like that's kind of the setup
Bea: h
Trevor Paul: So what happens is Horace... he He gets kind of like. corrupted by this thing. And he decides. ah You know what? Dad sucks, which is true. The emperor sucks. uh were going to war with him.
Trevor Paul: And of course, because it's setting up a wargaming set, you have nine sons that join, well, eight sons that join Horus to make nine traitors, and you have... nine sons that oppose him to make the nine loyalists
Bea: ah oh
Trevor Paul: And this is called The Horus Heresy. It happens in the year 30 ,000, and it is this big story that is, I shit you not, 66 books. blog.
Bea: 66?
Trevor Paul: yes written by multiple authors many different tangents that come out of them some of them are remarkably good and some of them are absolute trash it's a real It's a real shit show.
Trevor Paul: But it's like the most famous story in the lore because it explains why there are chaos. forces of humanity and then the Imperium. Right.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: it's It's why the split exists. um And so that's, I mean, that's really what you need to know to understand sort of the setting. it By the time Warhammer 40 ,000 has come around, the Emperor and Horus have had their showdown.
Trevor Paul: The Emperor has killed Horus after Horus almost took over and destroyed Earth. but in the process of defeating his own son. Horus has become so powerful, he ah he basically kills the Emperor, and the Emperor is now a corpse on a throne.
Trevor Paul: Uh... and he's both dead and alive kind of at the same time. Right. And. Because of that. things have only gotten worse in the 10 ,000 years in between humanity or the imperium is fighting on all these different fronts to protect the worlds that they are in control of.
Trevor Paul: um against the forces of chaos and the and aliens like space orcs that show up or dark elves which are The Drukhari, they're space dark elves. That kind of thing.
Bea: Got it.
Trevor Paul: Okay. So this brings us to the three people I want to talk about, which is three writers that I think. And if you don't know anything other than the context I just gave you, and even if you didn't know that. are 100 % worth looking into their work. and I'm going to put a spoiler warning here right now, which is I am going to try to avoid. I'm not going to do any big time spoilers with any of these stories.
Trevor Paul: But in the case of a few of them to really get at what makes them so good, I kind of have to do a little bit of like. peeking behind the curtain. So if you are interested in any of this, the writers I'm suggesting, just so you know.
Bea: Of course.
Trevor Paul: Our Dan Abnett. ah Aaron Dembski wrote... ah bowdin Sorry, not Broden, Bowden. And ah Peter Ferravari. And you should just go look those guys up. In the case of Abnett, it's Gaunt's Ghost. In the case of... demski boden it is the night lord's trilogy and for ferravari it's literally everything he's written ah but I'll explain that one later.
Trevor Paul: So let's start with Dan Abnett, who is the one that people might actually know because ah I knew he was a prolific. Sorry, prolific writer of... ah Warhammer.
Trevor Paul: He's written 38 novels. in that setting And when I say novels, these are like your classic paperback fantasy sci -fi, like 300 pages at minimum.
Bea: oof
Trevor Paul: Right. Uh, However,
Bea: Goodness.
Trevor Paul: Until I looked him up, I did not know he's he had also written extensively for 2000 AD. Marvel UK, and also Marvel US side, as well as DC and Wildstorm.
Bea: Goodness.
Trevor Paul: So the dude has written a ah lot of stuff. um
Bea: Busy. Busy busy busy.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. He's also the oldest person we're going to talk about in this case. He's born in 1965 in Kent in England. so I decided, obviously, he's so prolific. He's written stuff that's in the Horus heresy. And by the way, it's good.
Trevor Paul: Um, He's written stuff. in a variety of different series i'm going to talk about the one he's probably most known for because he's most known for it for a reason, which is Gaunt's Ghosts is the series.
Trevor Paul: um now I don't, he has books he wrote in the Horus Heresy that might be better novels than some of the Ghosts novels. But the thing about Abnett is that he's not a great.
Trevor Paul: Story writer? He's not bad. He's an incredible character writer. He writes characters. so well. He gives them so much like.
Trevor Paul: personality and also like until the later books in god's ghosts which i will mention in passing don't read them um They're consistent. he He starts to lose that a bit. I mean, there there are like 13 books in this series. So like. Fair and fair play, man. You wrote...
Trevor Paul: He wrote some good stuff and then he kind of ran out of road. I get it. um But basically... What I like about it is the Ghost Series. puts out pretty clear rules and expectations for worlds and it sticks to them.
Trevor Paul: And the reason I don't like the later books is it kind of goes off the rails of that. Right.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: Because like in this world. um We're talking about the ghosts are. A group of... um essentially regular human soldiers in the Imperium. So for context,
Trevor Paul: Those Primarchs, those sons of the Emperor I talked about, they themselves get entire legions of super soldiers, literally like eight foot tall, muscle bound dudes made just to fight. I mean they have things like extra lungs and hearts.
Trevor Paul: Okay.
Bea: okay
Trevor Paul: And they all have a certain color scheme that goes with their... There. like gene seed father, their Primark. um and they all have, like, a Legion title, so, like...
Trevor Paul: Um. For example, you have ah The Ultramarines, which are Reboute Guillemin's.
Bea: Oh I've heard of them.
Trevor Paul: yes they're the most well -known ones they're the characters from space marine 2 they're often pointed out as kind of the the most boring of the legions because they're kind of straightforward
Bea: got it
Trevor Paul: And I would sort of agree with that, but there's other legions too. You have the salamanders who are like. born on a very volcanic world and so they have like dark skin red eyes and have basically grown up surrounded by like flame and therefore they're resistant to it they they have dragon motifs going they wear green armor you know that kind of thing
Bea: what
Trevor Paul: um So you get the gist. Uh, But then there's just regular people who are not super armored like murder machines. And like. they still get drafted and fight. And that's what the Gaunt's Ghost series is about.
Bea: Against these like fucking superhuman or like these.
Trevor Paul: Or against like aliens that like have abilities.
Bea: All right.
Trevor Paul: of the Yeah, like in God's Ghost, they occasionally run up against. uh chaos space marines but not that much. They mostly run up against like hordes of orcs or against other humans who have turned to chaos and have like weird creepy demon abilities and stuff
Bea: Oh, fun. Okay.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. So. In this series, you get this guy named Ibram Gaunt. And he's a commissar. which is if you know your history and you know anything about Russian history, commissars were the sort of like discipline officers for the Russian army.
Trevor Paul: And by discipline, I mean, if you ran or disobeyed orders, they just shot you. to keep you in line
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: And that's what the commissars are supposed to be modeled after kind of in this setting. Our boy, Ibram. is a commissar of a different cloth. one who'd much rather encourage through Good leadership.
Trevor Paul: through like you know so actually listening to his soldiers so on and so forth. Gaunt? because he's done quite well in his young career. is being told, hey,
Trevor Paul: We're going to give you it your own like. regiment your own army. that you'll command and kind of whip into shape because they're the first like group we've recruited from this planet called Tanith.
Trevor Paul: And. They become known as the Tanith First and Only.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: And the reason is the setup for this, the premise that Abnet came up with that I think is just so cool. is Gaunt shows up. They have this big ceremony of all these new recruits. they're being you know they're They're getting put on these ships to go off and become these imperial guardsmen because that's what the human contingents called.
Trevor Paul: And Gaunt... um ri finds out that a chaos fleet A very large one with a lot of... guns and weapons is going to has entered space above tanith and tanith the planet is not ready to defend against this they will lose and they will burn
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: And so he's left with a choice. Do we stay and fight? and definitely lose. Or do I get out of here with as many of these guys as I can? And you could probably guess which one he picked.
Trevor Paul: Because.
Bea: They left, right? They just decided to just...
Trevor Paul: They left. he And so they become known as the Tanith First and Only because there will never be another Tanith regiment.
Bea: Wow.
Trevor Paul: Um. Very cool setup, right? um They're also known as the Ghosts because they specialize in covert warfare and use camo cloaks. that make them really good scouts.
Trevor Paul: um but there's another reason for that name. So I'm going to give you a quote here. The first of a few I've got, this is. kind of like the story that i gave you but a better version of why the ghosts are who they are Word came that the Tanith was to raise three regiments for the Imperial Guard.
Trevor Paul: It was the first time our world had been asked to perform such a duty, but we had a large number of fighting men trained in the municipal militias. The process of the founding took eight months, and the assembled troops were waiting on wide, cleared planes when the transport ships arrived in orbit. We were told we were to join the imperial forces engaged in the Sabbat world's campaign, driving out the forces of chaos. We were also told we'd probably never see our world again, for once a man had joined in service, he tended to go on wherever the war took him until death claimed him. or he was mustered out to start a new life wherever he had ended up. I'm sure they told you the same thing.
Trevor Paul: Zogat nodded. his noble profile a sad motion of agreement in the wet dark of the crater. explosions rippled above them. in long, wide series. The ground shook. So we were waiting there, Catherine continued, thousands of us, itchy in our new stiff fatigues, watching the troop ships roll in and out. We were eager to be going, sad to be saying goodbye to Tanith, but the idea that it was always there and would always be there kept our spirits up. On that last morning, we learned that Commissar Gaunt had been appointed to our regiment to knock us into shape.
Trevor Paul: Catherine sighed, trying to resolve the darker feelings towards the loss of his world. He cleared his throat. Gaunt had a certain reputation. and a long and impressive history with the veteran hirken regiments we were new of course inexperienced and certainly full of rough edges High Command clearly believed it would take an officer of Gaunt's metal to make a fighting force out of us.
Trevor Paul: Cafford pause. He lost the track of his voice for a moment as anger welled inside him. anger, and a sense of absence. He realized with a twinge that this was the first time since the loss he'd recounted the story aloud. His heart closed convulsively around threads of memory, and he felt his bitterness sharpen.
Trevor Paul: It all went wrong in that very last night. Embarkation had already begun. Most of the troops were aboard transports waiting for takeoff or were heading into orbit already. The Navy's picket line had not done its job for a significantly sized chaos fleet. A splinter of a large fleet running scared since the last defeat the Imperial Navy inflicted slipped into the TANF system past the blockades.
Trevor Paul: that was there was very little warning The forces of darkness attacked my homeworld and erased it from the galactic records in the space of one night. Catherine paused again and cleared his throat. Zogat was looking at him in fierce wonder.
Trevor Paul: Gaunt had a simple choice to deploy his troops at his disposal for a brave last stand. or take all those you could save and get clear. He chose the latter. None of us like the decision. We all wanted to give our lives fighting for our homeworld. I suppose if we'd stayed on Tannis, we would have achieved nothing except maybe a valiant footnote in history.
Trevor Paul: God saved us. He took us from a destruction we would have been proud to be part of so that we could enjoy a more significant destruction elsewhere. Zogat's eyes were bright in the darkness. You hate him.
Trevor Paul: No, well... Yes I do. as I would hate anyone who had supervised the death of my home, anyone who had sacrificed it to some greater good. Is this a greater good? I've fought with the ghosts on a dozen warfronts. I haven't seen a greater good yet.
Trevor Paul: You do hate him. I admire him. I will follow him anywhere. That's all there is to say. I left my home world the night it died, and I've been fighting for its memory ever since. We Tanith are a dying breed. There are only about 1 ,200 of us, 1 ,200 of us left. Gaunt only got away with enough for one regiment, the Tanith First, the first and only.
Trevor Paul: That's what makes us ghosts, you see. the last few unquiet souls of a dead world. And I suppose we'll keep going until we're done.
Bea: Wow.
Trevor Paul: That's the longest quote i I picked out. But I think it's a necessary one because I think it's basically just setting this is the tone of this series.
Bea: Sure, sure.
Trevor Paul: Um, most of that first book in like the trilogy that is the original omnibus which is uh called The Founding. um The first book is basically all about them. like kind of getting a feel for gaunt and like a kind of Something sort of falls in his lap that he doesn't expect. And it's a bigger problem than it should be. They have to deal with.
Trevor Paul: um His second and third books in that series, ah the third one, Necropolis, being the one that is often cited as one of the best. And I agree, it's very good. um is is excellent but i didn't really want to talk ah too much about the books because it's actually the characters that like i said abnett does a good job with so you have gaunt He's like your point of view character, but he's like. the anti commissar.
Trevor Paul: his kind of right -hand man is a guy named colm corbeck uh who is this older guy but he's just tough as nails kind of fun older character he's got a bit of a death wish attitude but only in situations where he can save someone else kind of thing
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: um One of my favorites is Major Elim Ron, who is notable as... For the first several books, he is planning to find a, if he's given the opportunity, to kill Gaunt. Because...
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: because he's mad about what happened to his homeworld. So he has kind of internalized the hatred over. the death of their planet, not being allowed to fight to the death for it.
Bea: interesting
Trevor Paul: He persists, as does Gaunt, through all the books in the series. And their relationships evolution is one of the best things I've ever read. It's so cool. Ron is never portrayed as a villain for his hatred of Gaunt because it's totally justified.
Trevor Paul: And Gaunt never treats him like... um an enemy even though he actually is for a bit. It's really cool. like they They do a really good job. um There's some other guys. There's Jordan, the medic, ah Mad Larkin, the sniper who talks to dead people, who's very fun. um there's uh Brynn Milo, who's like their mascot, kind of, who has more of a role later. My personal favorite character is Mick Venner. who is...
Trevor Paul: the scariest one of the ghosts because even his own sort of like scout buddies are like he's real fucking good at this and it's kind of creepy how good he is at it like
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: and And he has a... He has probably my favorite ending to a character. In the series. That I won't spoil. But like. He's just cool as hell. um And the thing is like.
Trevor Paul: The one other point I will give in Abnett's favor, other than he's really good at writing characters, and these are basically war novels you know set on various locations, and he does he does a a novel that's like Trench Warfare, and he does another one that's like...
Trevor Paul: an urban setting and he does another one that's like you know it's a forward scout mission. Right. Like he's.
Bea: Okay, sure.
Trevor Paul: he's He's writing war novels, but with with a lot of heart. and he's not afraid to kill his characters. He will kill characters in ways that are truly shocking. And it's not like he's going to bring them back.
Bea: Ooh, I like it.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: i mean i don't like it as a reader but i do because like i as a writer i'm like all right Go for it.
Trevor Paul: So.
Trevor Paul: yeah i mean like if you don't have death mean anything then Like I always talk about R .A. Salvatore and the Drist books this way.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Because, like... I like Drist as a character. I think he's very cool, but like... every time in those books a character died, I'd be like, he'll be back in fucking 10 pages. What do I care? Like...
Bea: Right. Right, yeah.
Trevor Paul: That's just how Salvatore chose to do it. He didn't want to kill his golden gooses and like, that's fine, man. I get it. But like.
Bea: That's fine.
Trevor Paul: it doesn't make for very compelling. writing to me. So. So that's Dan Abnett and the Gone's Go series. Again, military stuff. I don't know how appealing that is to everybody, but like I think that a military series where the characters matter much more than the fighting parts.
Trevor Paul: is pretty. Pretty cool. Like.
Bea: Sure. Yeah.
Trevor Paul: and And the characters are dynamic. He does not do one note characters, which I really like. um The next thing I want to talk about was Aaron Dembski Bowden. And he was born in 1980 in London. He actually currently lives in North Ireland.
Bea: ooh
Trevor Paul: And he's actually the head of the 40th. K narrative. since 2022. um which I guess would explain why he hasn't written as many books recently, because the trilogy he wrote that we're going to talk about, many people have argued is the greatest one in the black library.
Bea: Wow.
Trevor Paul: And I... Kind of agree. I mean. As a trilogy or series, it's... but Definitely the best one. I think that depending on how you feel about Peter Ferravari.
Trevor Paul: you know. and what he's writing in, you might just... find that better. But anyway. He writes this series called the Night Lords Trilogy. and the Night Lords are one of the traitor legions.
Trevor Paul: that turned against the emperor. And it follows the... Like... top um squad. That's in one of these, they call them war bands now because most of these chaos places are totally scattered.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: And they're called the first claw. And they're led by a guy named Talos Valkorin. Uh... And Talos. goes by a couple of their names. He's sometimes called Soul Hunter. which I won't spoil why that one is in there, but because it's kind of cool. If you read the books, the other one he's known as is the prophet. And that's because.
Trevor Paul: He sometimes gets visions of the future. like goes into like a sort of catatonic, like.
Bea: who
Trevor Paul: seizure state and and seize things, right? Um. Dembski -Boden wrote about 19... novels novellas and short stories so he did he did write quite a bit um But a few things we got to know about the Night Lords first. They were the 8th Legion out of the 18. Their Primarch was a guy named Conrad Kurz.
Trevor Paul: uh curs inherited, had the ability to see the future. And he unfortunately became very fatalistic about what he saw. And so. He...
Trevor Paul: foresaw his own death and a bunch of other things and assumed everything he saw was true. um he also grew up on a planet called nostromo where crime and just general like awful behavior by humans was rampant.
Trevor Paul: So... Just like Bruce Wayne, he becomes Batman.
Bea: fit Well, fantastic.
Trevor Paul: Yes, but it's...
Bea: I love Batman.
Trevor Paul: Except that Batman, except it's the real Batman, which is super fashy.
Bea: Right. Right.
Trevor Paul: So what happens here is that Kurz, the philosophy he comes to is essentially that. Bad people can't be like... You can't. fix them or bring them out of into compliance. You have to scare them into doing the right thing.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: And how he does that is by being just more monstrous than them. i mean we're talking like skinning his enemies and leaving them prominently displayed to show what happens if you violate.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: decency, right? Um, He is... uh Met. The Emperor, when he finds him on his planet, he has basically turned Nostromo into the safest place in the universe because everybody's terrified to do anything.
Trevor Paul: And when the emperor sees him, he's basically like. Hey. I need you to bring this terrifying way of waging war to other planets to make them join us. So like.
Bea: Ew.
Trevor Paul: yeah so like they become these horrible shock troops where it's like If you can't get a planet to join the Empire, so the Imperium, simply by like, you know, showing up and saying, hey, check out our giant super soldiers, um you're... going to join us now, right?
Trevor Paul: What the Night Lords would do is... when somebody would resist, it's like, cool. We'll murder everybody in your city.
Bea: Ew.
Trevor Paul: Everybody. Age. Irregardless. Does not matter. every single one of you. and do it in the most graphic and like. public way we can. And then...
Trevor Paul: Like. You'll know. what happens if you don't do what you're supposed to do. Uh, So they're not the good guys is a bit major point that I wanted to make about the series. You're not reading about heroes at all. That's actually a very critical point.
Trevor Paul: Um, and what happens is that the reason curse actually turns against the emperor is because All of his brothers hate him? Because he's a freaking... Freak. and a murderer.
Bea: Yeah, valid.
Trevor Paul: Eve. Even though, as he points out very well in a couple of the books. They are too. They just put a paint of nobility over it. Like. which is a really fun foil to have. So he's like, I'm open about. The fact that like.
Trevor Paul: I'm a killer. You're hiding behind a bunch of rules and supposed. and codes. that don't change what you do Right. Um. He turns against the emperor because he gets cast as this evil person, which he is.
Trevor Paul: but none of his siblings really do. And he's just like, F you like I did everything you told me to do. I did you because the emperor tells him to go. bring these places under heel through him the methods he used on his home planet.
Trevor Paul: And he does, and everybody hates him for it. Um. Now. between the heresy in 30 ,000 and the setting of the books. Kurz is assassinated.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: it's possible It's possible that he allows it to happen. It's unclear. um but the key is that these aren't the good guys and and what we follow in this trilogy are this fractured group specifically that first claw and it's talos valkorin who they call the prophet Um, And he also has the ability to see the future. But unlike...
Trevor Paul: curse he has sort of come to realize that his visions aren't always accurate They maybe give him a piece of truth. And I think that that was intentional to sort of suggest that maybe Conrad Kurz thought he knew things that weren't true.
Trevor Paul: I think it's a bit of like playing around with that setting. um What's interesting about the Night Lords as like guys who... Broke away from the Emperor. a lot of those places turned toward chaos and embraced it really. fully so like For example.
Trevor Paul: the death guard embraced Nurgle and they're basically all zombies. Now they're walking around with like intestines falling out and like.
Bea: Oh, Nurgle I know.
Trevor Paul: flies around the parties.
Bea: I know that from Bronze.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. Yeah. So like. Yeah, because Darktide. Yeah. So like.
Bea: yes
Trevor Paul: Yeah. So like Nurgle, like they've fully embraced it. So they're all like these putrid, like walking, like. diseased factories, right?
Bea: Got it.
Trevor Paul: The Night Lords never embraced chaos. Not all of them. So some of them kind of have. And some of them have really tried to stay true to Conrad Kurz and like the philosophies of like his order, which is.
Trevor Paul: Like. Their phrases are Ave Dominus Nox, which is Hail Lord of Night. and in midnight clad and their whole thing is like they're shock troops they strike when you don't expect them to if the night lords are attacking you it's because they have an advantage you don't know about because they never fight fair that's their whole thing uh, And so like Talos is in charge of this group.
Bea: h
Trevor Paul: um So you've got Talos, but then you also have... ah these Like. other characters here. so You have Vandrid. who in the story, he's the guy who's basically leading the war band that Talos belongs to. And he has become grotesquely malformed.
Trevor Paul: Because he has embraced. chaos to the point that he has a demon sharing his like body with him
Bea: but
Trevor Paul: And Talos hates it because it's warped his appearance, and Talos would deliberately call him Vandred, even though he supposedly goes by the name The Exalted. um
Bea: um Yikes.
Trevor Paul: And like. Vandred, though, has one of the greatest arcs in these books because... You - Talos constantly refers to the fact that like I used to admire this guy, that there was something great about this guy. um And what it is, is that Vandrid was actually this incredible, like.
Trevor Paul: tactical mind when it came to piloting these giant warships. So at one point, the demon that's sort of piloting him has to give him control and this is what happens The first thing to hit him was the way it felt to breathe. It hurt.
Trevor Paul: His lungs burned. Sensation flooded over him as if he'd just been pushed from the womb into the bright cold world. He roared again, this time it ended in laughter. The ship was shaking around him, already taking damage. The Corsairs were wily bastards. They knew how to strike. It wouldn't be long before the Covenant's warp engines were rendered worthless by enemy fire. If Vandred turned to run... He'd only hasten his death by offering a ripe target.
Trevor Paul: The only other choice was... the the only The other choice was the only choice. Stand. fight. Gunnery Officer Joen. He growled through a lion's smile. The man flinched as he was addressed.
Trevor Paul: My Lord. Vandra gestured to the hololithic, forcing himself not to be distracted by the clawed monstrosity that his right hand had become. We will begin with that murder class cruiser, Joen.
Trevor Paul: Ready the lances. And he ends up winning this fight.
Bea: oo
Trevor Paul: and like just wrecking all these other ships because he's just a supremely great like commander but i love when i'm gonna call him adb just did not have to say aaron demski boden's name every time but i love how he like gives this character his like agency back and mentions him seeing the clawed hand and like It's just very good writing.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: uh
Bea: Totally.
Trevor Paul: and of and the other characters kind of in this group have some features like this too. So like Talos is the leader of the First Claw. It's no longer its full strength. It only has four members. There's Talos, there's Uzis, there's Kyrian, and there's Zarl.
Trevor Paul: Zarl and Talos, you learn, actually were like childhood. sort of friends before they both became Night Lords. zarl is by far the best fighter in the group and he might be the closest thing to like a decent person among them because he's
Bea: Let's see.
Trevor Paul: He's like kind of, he's very kind.
Bea: maybe
Trevor Paul: Yeah, I mean, they're all awful, but and they and they enslave humans to work on the ship and everything, so clearly not the good guys. But Zarl is one of the ones who has the most respect for... Like. regular people.
Trevor Paul: um interestingly within that group uzis and kyrian have succumbed to chaos forces uzis is a corn berserker he loses his senses he craves blood and violence he's filed his teeth into fangs and will lick them to make his tongue bleed.
Bea: Ew.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, he's he's kind of lost it. Kyrian is slipping further and further into Slaanesh's influence, and he just keeps seeking more extreme forms of sensation. um mostly through like hurting others so yeah they're both pretty awful But.
Trevor Paul: They have cool arcs. But I really wanted to share this one because I think Uzis is one of my favorite characters, the corn berserker. Because. he gets these beautiful moments where.
Trevor Paul: he's able to kind of like get through. his obsession with violence so
Bea: Mm hmm.
Trevor Paul: At one point, he saves Octavia, who's the ship's navigator. and this is what happens Ugh, said Uzis in the aftermath. He dropped his weapons in disgust, letting them clatter to the floor.
Trevor Paul: No blood, no skull, no gene seed to taste, just a hunk of slime melting into the air. Who is this? Octavia called his name. The Night Lord turned to Facer. You do this. You summon the Neverborn to you.
Trevor Paul: I know the stories. You killed with your mutant's eye. I know this. So the Neverborn come. Weak ones, easy prey. kill them before they go strong. this time. This time. Navigator is lucky. This time.
Trevor Paul: This time. Thank you. She had no idea if he could even hear her. or would care if he did. Thank you for killing it while it was. week. The warrior left his weapons where they lay. The covenant doesn't sail without you.
Trevor Paul: Uzis hesitated, looking back to the vaults. One locker stood open, its door wide and dark, a missing tooth among a multitude. The pain returns. Slay a piss -weak little demon thing and the pain returns. No blood. No skull. nothing to offer, nothing to prove the deed was done, and the creature was too weak to matter, not even a true demon, a lost soul, a phantom.
Trevor Paul: I said that first, didn't I? I killed your foolish little ghost. Others still chase you, don't they? Kill with your eye and they grow stronger. Stories about navigators. heard many of them. She nodded, skin crawling at his meandering speech.
Trevor Paul: He's no better than the warp echo. she thought. though she felt a flood of guilt for thinking it. Yeah, and so Uzis, like... He is just. succumbs to his like loyalty to this violence but he's still there
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: And that's what's very cool about him. He's specifically referring to the fact that navigators are like a mutated human that have a third eye that lets them see through the warp. And. It can also be used to kill.
Trevor Paul: in an extreme form. but it like undoes a person's existence and.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: Yeah, and Octavia has done this to protect herself at one point because she doesn't have any other options. but it has invited a little bit of that demonic force into the ship. And she gets chased by one of these and oozes.
Trevor Paul: surprisingly, is the one who saves her. because he seems to be the one that everybody thinks is the most unhinged. and He is at times, but he also like. There's still something there. Right. um There is one other member. who used to be part of the first c call, I do want to mention called Malkarian.
Trevor Paul: And he gets killed in action before the books start. But... what will happen a lot of times with space marines is if they're killed but they're still like functionally alive. They're not. truly like dead dead.
Bea: m
Trevor Paul: they will put them in a machine called a dreadnought, like a giant mech. And they become. A. Like. living weapon. ah And it's a pretty shitty existence because... They only get awakened to fight.
Trevor Paul: basically and they don't have much sensation beyond like the phantom feelings of their body But Malkarion is, for a Night Lord, one of the most heroic figures in the story. He's amazing. I fucking love him. He... Died.
Trevor Paul: doing incredibly brave work to protect his his like brothers. and then gets brought back. And at one point... He counters this. Just random human girl.
Trevor Paul: Like... who's part of like the crew or whatever, who's been stuck on this awful part of the planet. They're being attacked. They're being attacked by um the Eldar, which are like the elves. So this giant mech machine guy takes this little slave human that's stuck in the cold. And this is what happens.
Trevor Paul: Do you want to die down here, human? She hugged herself against the cold. I don't want to die at all. I'm not a god to forge miracles from nothingness. Everything dies. Yes, Lord.
Trevor Paul: Again, the silence. I hear more whispers, she confessed. The aliens are coming again. The immense cannon on the dreadnought's right arm lifted and made the clanking, reloading sounds that were already so becoming so familiar to her. The whispers were already growing stronger. She could almost feel the warmth of breath stroking the back of her neck.
Trevor Paul: My chronicle already ends in glory. Captain Malkarion, reborn in unbreakable iron, slaying Ragwell the Sufferer of the Ninth Legion for the second time, before at last - passing into an eternal slumber.
Trevor Paul: That's a fine legend, is it not? even without understanding the meaning of the words she felt their significance yes lord Who would ruin their legend with one last untold tale? Who would cast aside the slaughter of an imperial hero in favor of saving a single human from death in the infinite dark?
Trevor Paul: Malkarian never gave her a chance to answer. His weapons rose as he pivoted. and filled the chamber with echoing deafening gunfire. And what you find out is he does in fact choose.
Trevor Paul: to spend. his last glorious time saving this one human.
Bea: Awww.
Trevor Paul: It's so cool. It's so good. And he, I mean, it's, it's just so good. It's why I say he's probably the closest to a heroic figure. um It's just a great moment.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: But the guy we got to talk about is Talos. And there's there's two quotes from him that I'm going to bring up. that are just bangers all the way through. Um. He... He really loved Kurz.
Trevor Paul: as their like Primark, despite. curse being a monster himself because As you find out, Talos was a child on that planet when it was a crime ridden hellhole.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: And he sees Kurz as... regardless of the methods. being the one who saved his planet. Right. who got it out of like this crime ridden place.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: And so he hates the Imperium for what they've done. for the loss of Kurz, for all of it.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: And. In the books, he's just pissed off a lot because they're just going around doing stupid little pirating shit the whole time and not anything of significance. And so he finally says this. which is some people have said is argued as one of the greatest quotes in all of 40k we'll see what you think It's not enough.
Trevor Paul: We stand in the dust at the end of centuries of useless sin and endless failure. The Legion was poisoned and we sacrificed an entire world to cleanse it. We failed. We are the sons of the only Primarch to hate his own legion. There again we failed. We swore vengeance on the Imperium, yet we run from every battle when we don't possess overwhelming force over a crippled enemy.
Trevor Paul: We fail again and again and again. Have you ever fought a battle you'd struggle to win with no hope of running away? have any of us. Have you ever since the Siege of Terra itself drawn a weapon with the knowledge you might die?
Trevor Paul: I will not see my life. Hoard away without meaning.
Trevor Paul: Do you hear me? Do you understand me, Prince of Cowards? I want vengeance against the galaxy that hates us. I want imperial worlds to cower when we draw near. I want the weeping of this empire's souls to reach all the way to Holy Terra, and the sound of suffering will choke the corpse god on his throne of gold. I will cast a shadow across this world. I will burn every man. woman, and child, so the smoke from the funeral pyres eclipses the sun.
Trevor Paul: With the dust that remains, I will take the echo of damnation into sacred skies above Terra and rain the ashes of 20 million mortals down on the Emperor's Palace. Then. they will remember us.
Trevor Paul: Then. They will remember the Legion. they once feared.
Bea: Incredible.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. it's Fucking. Bonkers. um It just highlights like. how much of a badass Talos is as much as a bad guy.
Trevor Paul: But I have to, and I've mentioned this quote before, my favorite one for him, the one that makes me sad. And the thing that I will say. The reason these books work so well is that these guys are the bad guys. They do not deserve anything good to happen. They commit monstrous acts in the books.
Trevor Paul: They aren't good people. But you can see the nobility in them. at all these little points.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: where if things had gone differently, they could have been heroic. And I just love how well ADB writes that. Like. You listen to that speech by Talos and it's like, he's a. bitter.
Trevor Paul: Angry. Guy. who hates the person that he views as having. Like. taken everything from him.
Bea: h
Trevor Paul: But he could have channeled that into so many other things that might have been different. Right. Like.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: Um. And so there is this moment that happens where. basically on the ship. uh they haven't been able to have none of the humans been able to have kids But then a child is born and it's considered this great miracle.
Trevor Paul: And then during an attack, unfortunately that child is killed.
Bea: No!
Trevor Paul: And Talos had said he would protect that. child and he failed to do it. Cause you know, he's doing other stuff. Right. um And so there has been this uprising kind of where the father has been sort of preaching against the night Lords and everything. So Octavia comes to him and tells him what's going on. So here's what happens. I told Septimus to deal with this. Septimus is. By the way.
Trevor Paul: Talos is like personal. surf who like maintains his armor and everything.
Bea: okay
Trevor Paul: And he's a fascinating character. um the warrior in tone but thank you for bringing it to my attention i will end the situation myself Will you kill him? He wasn't deaf to the hesitation in her voice. Dead slaves are worthless, he said.
Trevor Paul: however so are disobedient ones i will kill him if he forces my hand but i have no wish to end his life He's an example of human resistance to corruption, for he was able to sire a child despite decades of life in the bowels of this ship.
Trevor Paul: I'm not an idiot, Octavia. He is as much an example as his daughter was. His murder would profit us little and serve only to antagonize the mortal crew. They must be brought to obey through fear of consequences, not crushed into obedience by hopeless depression.
Trevor Paul: The former breeds motivated, willing workers who wish to survive. The latter breeds suicidal husks that care nothing for pleasing their masters. The air between them grew awkward and Talos grunted in acknowledgement.
Trevor Paul: Will that be all? What awaits us in the maelstrom? What is the Hell's Iris? Talos shook his head. You will see it with your own eyes if the ship manages to hold together for long enough to actually reach the docks there.
Trevor Paul: So it's a dock. It's. Octavia, I'm a warrior, not a scribe or a literist. I lack the words to do it justice. Yes, Hell's Iris is a doc. You say that like it's a curse. I am a warrior. Olivia licked her drying lips before speaking.
Trevor Paul: What did you want to do with your life? She asked. I told you the truth. I'd always dreamed of guiding such a worship, and for better or worse, fate gave me what I wished for. But what about you? Do you mind if I asked? Talos laughed again, that same whispering chuckle, and tapped the defiled Aquila emblazoned across his chest.
Trevor Paul: I wanted to be a hero. A moment later, he masked his scarred face behind a skulled helm. Red -eye lenses stared at her, devoid of emotion. And look how that worked out. Yeah.
Trevor Paul: and if you don't know like the aquila is the like double eagle thing that is the symbol of the imperium and what the night lords do is they scavenge armor a lot they keep it but they always scar it with a knife like they cut it ah ah you know they they defy ah defile it or whatever.
Bea: Okay, that makes sense.
Trevor Paul: So, like, he taps it, and and what is being said there, I think, really clearly is, like, he joined Kurs, he followed Kurs, he followed...
Bea: yeah
Trevor Paul: the emperor. Cause he thought. he'd get to save worlds the way he thought Kurz saved his. And now look at what he is instead. And I just it's so heartbreaking, but it's so good because it tells you everything about. him as a character.
Trevor Paul: Because without spoiling really great parts of the books, he does do a lot of heroic things. at different points
Bea: h
Trevor Paul: Um, but he's never, ever going to be a good guy. and he's very clear about it It's just so... I don't really know how to explain it other than I think these are some of the best sci -fi books I've read. just this trilogy.
Trevor Paul: Um... But also if in the setting of Warhammer 40K, if you have any interest in it, these are the books you should read. The Night Lords are fucking cool as hell. And. These characters are just.
Trevor Paul: So... dynamic there's not a single one that feels one note like i mean for god's sake they take the exalted or vandrid who's like this mutated like you know monstrosity that pilots a ship and give him so many human moments that it's amazing like I don't know it's just great writing.
Trevor Paul: um So yeah. Did you have any thoughts on that one? from in the previous one.
Bea: I wonder, like, it's it's very well written. do I have a generic question. and i
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: Do you think that? maybe I mean like obviously these books are hugely popular but like usually it's by people who are like super into the 40k
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it's it's still very niche because the Black Library, I think I told you, like they have an in-house it's an in -house publication.
Bea: universe.
Trevor Paul: the One of the things that sucks about it is it's really hard to get physical copies of stuff.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: um
Bea: Do you think that... stops people from like reading these books who would otherwise read them who would otherwise like enjoy them
Trevor Paul: I do. I think you put that 40K label on it and you're really cutting down on your audience. And especially with the guy we're going to talk about next with ah Peter Ferravari, who I think is. Such a fucking incredible writer.
Trevor Paul: especially in horror. that like.
Bea: o
Trevor Paul: If he had gotten a major label to... give him reign and like publicity for a book that he wrote he would have probably blown up as his own thing
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: I think. That's personal subjective opinion on his writing. I also think ADB would have too.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: I mean, Abnett, obviously, he's worked in the business. It's like he's written for so many things that he doesn't have to do that publication, but he does.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: AGB is such a goddamn good writer. um as illustrated by those parts we looked at, but like.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: He also just seems to genuinely love Warhammer 40K. I mean, he's... he's officially in charge of the lore now and that's why he's not writing books so like I think the dude just really has a passion for it.
Trevor Paul: But I think you're 100 % right. like i actually thought about that a lot like if you took these stories out of the setting could you do something like would some of them still work and yes
Bea: Like if they were standalones or if they weren't associated with some kind of larger IP.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: yeah i mean there are some very good standalone warhammer 40k books but like because it's warhammer 40k i feel like people would hesitate to pick them up Like.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: I actually recommended the Night Lords trilogy to a friend of mine who's like teenage kid, like she's trying to get him back into reading and he's into like sci -fi. and stuff, but you like I'm like, give him this book.
Trevor Paul: Like it's so different because like you normally don't follow the bad guys. unless the bad guys are being made kind of cartoonishly.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: evil? And. These guys are not, there's nothing cartoon, like. You have so much sympathy for all of them. Like, it's...
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: it's baffling. Like how well. He writes it. to make you feel things for these people who are awful. Um... So like some of it like this, yeah, it would work.
Trevor Paul: Uh... I also think they would also have to give like. it over to a bigger publishing house to get more. distribution.
Bea: true yeah i mean that's also a thing it's distribution but i feel like some of the best sci -fi books. like the The things that are regarded as some of the best sci -fi in the genre didn't necessarily have widespread circulation.
Trevor Paul: Right.
Bea: It was like spread. ah in like used paperbacks you know but between people or you know like pirated files don't do that pay for your books and you know
Trevor Paul: Yeah. Or like... ah
Trevor Paul: Yeah. amazing stories too which i think is still going like the the magazine that used to publish you know, sci fi short stories and stuff.
Bea: ah
Trevor Paul: And that's how people made their names, you know, like,
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: I mean, think about like Ursula K. Le Guin, who is to me the apex sci -fi author. The Left Hand of Darkness is but is my favorite book and will probably do it on the podcast at some point.
Bea: For sure.
Trevor Paul: um Like, she's... unassailably one of the most brilliant writers I've ever encountered.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: um I...
Bea: I agree. i agree
Trevor Paul: I would put ADB and Ferravari in the tier below her. I think they're that good. Like. And I might even argue Ferravari belongs in the same class as Ursula Le Guin.
Trevor Paul: Genuinely.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: But they're writing within a genre. Now, when we get to Ferber in a second here, you'll realize he's doing everything he can to basically make what he writes have nothing to do with 40K. Um. Which is interesting.
Trevor Paul: uh,
Bea: Yeah. I find that really interesting. I mean, like, not that I think that's a bad thing because, but like.
Trevor Paul: Right. No, I mean, it's it's a great question. I do wonder that like it it it really does seem to like. Because like, again, if I went to somebody and said like, you should really read this, like the night Lords trilogy.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: and they And they didn't know what it was, and they just did a call. But then if they looked in, they're like... It's Warhammer, like the video game. I feel like just... read the fucking book. Like just. and that's kind of what this pod was inspired by was like, just read some of these fucking books.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: They're not just good. I would make a very strong case that the Night Lords trilogy is one of the best trilogies of anything I've ever read. Um. And.
Bea: i'm just curious as to like what the reach would be like say it's like when you have like the blind date with a book thing which i know is like really played out but it's like i covered i i took away everything that associates this with work with warhammer
Trevor Paul: I know. I wonder that. Yeah, yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: And it's just a really fucking good sci -fi book.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, I mean, like if you... what i like I am a big Reddit lurker. and like on the 40 K forums and stuff, whenever it gets put out there, like someone's like, Hey, what should I read next? The top recommendation is always the night Lord's trilogy.
Trevor Paul: Like people just flatter, like read the Nightlord's trilogy, read the Nightlord's trilogy.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: For people that are getting into 40K for the first time, a lot of times they'll suggest Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts. They're like, yeah, it's a good in entry. Like it doesn't take, you don't need to know much of the lore or they'll do Eisenhorn, which is his other series that he does about the Inquisition that like tracks down like heretical behavior within the Imperium.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: Um, And it's like based around one specific character named Gregor Eisenhorn. uh i've been reading them they're they're okay i like gaunt's ghosts a lot better but like They're entry points, right? they they they have They're sci -fi books, really.
Bea: yeah
Trevor Paul: like They're just sci -fi books. They don't require you to know anything about that lore. um
Bea: I think that's what happens like when you put an IP on it. like You can say that about Star Wars.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: You can say that about any of them. It's like, if you don't know the depth of the universe, you feel like you're getting into something that you're not going to understand.
Trevor Paul: Right. Right.
Bea: and like you're like oh do i have to and like i think no matter how much somebody like you like somebody people need somebody like you who's like you don't need to know anything about the universe in order to Get into this book.
Bea: Enjoy this book.
Trevor Paul: Right.
Bea: like understand what's happening in this book and still like connect with the characters and all of that stuff I think that that's really important but like
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: Not everybody has a you. I mean, like I didn't even know what the Black Library was.
Trevor Paul: Right.
Trevor Paul: i mean i didn't either like i i played the whole space marine game and all this stuff and then i found out there's this black library thing and i was like all right the first book i read weirdly so like
Bea: Mm hmm.
Trevor Paul: The way that I got into it was actually by being curious about. The lore seemed very cool.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: And I thought the death guard that I mentioned earlier, these like plague Marines were like, sounded like such a weird concept. And I read ah read a Reddit post where somebody was like, is there any good like representation of what the Death Guard are like?
Bea: Totally.
Trevor Paul: in a book. And somebody goes, oh, this series God Blight, which is actually relatively new, has like the plague Marines in it. Went out and bought the ebook, read it. when holy shit, this writing is good. What is this?
Trevor Paul: Like, what am I looking at here? Like, this isn't just like kind of throwaway.
Bea: m
Trevor Paul: Um, And that just threw me down a rabbit hole. But you don't you really don't need to know that much. like I know I said like there's the context at the beginning, and the context was really more for this specific one with ADB and the Night Lords, because like...
Trevor Paul: You could read those books without knowing anything about the 40K setting, but it does, there's some extra weight that does come in when you know kind of Conrad Kurz's backstory, at least a little bit.
Bea: got it
Trevor Paul: And like what happened to that Legion? Because. with all good villains it's tragic right but like the tragedy is is what makes them so interesting
Bea: ah
Trevor Paul: Um, i just think that adb especially that quote at the end with that that just like lives rent free in my head of Talos saying I wanted to be a hero. Like.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: He turned it up to 11. He really like... established it. It's such a vulnerable moment. And it's the thing about it that I love is that it also expresses a finality of like, that's never going to fucking happen.
Trevor Paul: Right. Like.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: It's not like I want to be a hero. Maybe someday I will. It's like I wanted to be a hero. Look at me now.
Bea: And I... Can't be, yeah.
Trevor Paul: and And I'm a fucking monster. Yeah.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: And like, yeah, again. that's the genius of like, it's a really well -written sci -fi story. Like it, it does this thing incredibly well. And you don't need any of that setting. that's That's a great question. I'm glad you brought that up.
Bea: I'm just curious, like as somebody who wouldn't be able who wouldn't think to find that kind of stuff on on your own.
Trevor Paul: Mhm.
Bea: like What's a... like how do people get eyes on this and also like what's the barrier to entry and is that barrier the giant warhammer logo on the front of the book you know
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, I think that's the thing that deters people, but I would always say like. you know Again, the the reason for this episode was to recommend books that I'm like, hey, you don't need to you don't need that stuff.
Bea: yeah which i love i love that we're doing this so then that way it's like another avenue for people to be like hey these are the books i'd recommend do not be deterred by the fact that there is warhammer branding on everything like it is the least important part of what the story is especially for these books yeah
Trevor Paul: good Just go read this. Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Right. Right.
Trevor Paul: Absolutely. Yeah, and and I think if you... like Yeah, I think that especially... in the one we're going to talk about here with peter ferravari this is true because basically If you are interested in in like sci -fi and sci -fi horror in particular.
Trevor Paul: You just need to read. everything this man has written. Um, He's so fucking interesting, by the way. so he He was born in 1983. And I'm not going to be able to pronounce this correctly. But he's from Romania in Sfantu Giorga.
Trevor Paul: I'm sure I pronounced that wrong. he now He now currently lives in London. um Most interesting part about Peter Farah. actual real job. is not writing these books. He is a full time TV editor.
Bea: That's incredible.
Trevor Paul: Isn't that cool? um And he just... He is the most unique 40K writer you're going to find. Because like I said, he really doesn't. bother he he doesn't play around in the in any of the 40k like quote -unquote canon stuff he's not writing about an established legion like the night lords
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: he's not writing about the Astra Militarum, the Imperial Guard. Like you can buy miniatures of Gaunt's ghosts now, like as for the tabletop, you know what I mean? Like.
Bea: Okay, yeah.
Trevor Paul: Nothing about Fair Havari's work is connected in that way. um He writes his own sort of closed setting that he that is called The Dark. coil. And. While none of the works in it are direct sequels or prequels, they all are connected to each other. And there are characters that overlap throughout the entire series of short stories and novels.
Trevor Paul: So he has a very small but super passionate fan base.
Bea: h
Trevor Paul: And I have to. um Give a huge credit to A Traveler's Guide to Peter Ferravari's Dark Coil, which is a it's on trackofwords .com.
Trevor Paul: and These guys have done such work mapping this whole series out. because he loves living in the abstract. um He's a horror writer. He seems to understand the actual like ethereal nature of the chaos gods in 40K better than anyone else.
Trevor Paul: He does not spell things out for his readers. He wants you to work things out on your own. He leaves a lot of things open to interpretation. I think the best series in the black library is the night Lord series. I will stand by that.
Trevor Paul: But I think Fer Hervary has created the greatest. sci -fi writing i've ever seen the like the last 20 years. um and if it's sci -fi horror there's no contest this guy is just on a different level
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: Um. It's so unlike anything in 40K. He is so unlike any other writer. um So we're just going to look at a couple of the notable. stories and characters in his work because to cover everything is literally two omnibuses that are in excess of 600 pages.
Trevor Paul: So like...
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, he's written a lot and it's all set in this. If you want to read his stuff, it's the Dark Coil Ascension and the Dark Coil Damnation are the two collections. um But I want to give a sample at the beginning here to give you an idea of the way he writes. because Holy shit.
Trevor Paul: Um. Okay. Get out. Isaac tries again, searching for the conviction to say the words out loud so they'll count. He's found it plenty of times before and made other monsters go away, but now, when he needs it most, it's not there.
Trevor Paul: because this time the monster is really here. He finally understands. It's been here all along. folded into cracks in the walls or hiding inside the smallest shadows, waiting for the law keepers to leave, waiting for him. as it always has and always will, so long as a single shred of darkness or doubt remains to sustain it, waiting for a way to make darkness and doubt last forever.
Trevor Paul: waiting within him for the day when he'll grow up and carry it to the stars it loathes. In those myriad mingled moments of Revelation, Isaac... learns he must become a keeper of the lights.
Trevor Paul: for better and for worse. So it flows, the boy. The man. and the monster, say as one. Their journey to the stars is consecrated that eternal night.
Bea: It's very like. you know like
Trevor Paul: Yes. and and i picked that one because it just it does that and and like i'm not the thing i can't do is i can't show you where the he uses italics and bold and stuff
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: to Like at one point, one of the stories we'll talk about, he uses his own text he created for a specific. um demonic presence. to indicate when it's speaking.
Bea: m
Trevor Paul: And it's just like, I don't know. I'm a big fan of a House of Leaves. the book which I don't know if you've read that but like
Bea: I have not read it, but I do know about it.
Trevor Paul: I mean, everybody kind of knows if it's that it's a famously experiential. work of fiction where like you know writing in different colors and the text formatting and positioning and shape is all used to enhance the story
Bea: m
Trevor Paul: Fair Havari dabbles in a lot of that stuff too. Not on the same extreme level, but like he does. um
Bea: I think that's great though.
Trevor Paul: It's very cool. So like the three stories I wanted to talk about are. Requiem Infernal. Firecast and Cult of the Spiral Dawn. And I'm going to, again, as a spoiler here, because just like.
Trevor Paul: The problem with Fair Havari is to talk about these things and what makes them work is you have to spoil the fuck out of so many things. So like. If anybody listening wants to read these. Here's a quick recap or a quick overview of what they're about. Requiem Infernal, which is the one I would recommend the most.
Trevor Paul: A group of injured Imperial soldiers are going to a planet that houses a sisterhood of devout nuns, which in 40k means they're devout lunatics. They're either warriors or healers, but zealous to a fault. But something much more sinister is lurking in the halls of their stronghold, now fallen into disrepair. and it will be up to the priest Jonah Tithe and Sister Asenath Hyades to save or damn everyone.
Bea: o
Trevor Paul: That's Requiem Infernal. ah Firecast, an Imperial troop, the Arkhan Confederates, is sent to a planet of Phaedra to do battle with Tau forces that have bogged them down in a long war for as long as anyone can remember. The new arrivals of Commissar Holt Iverson and Ensor Cutler, Commander of the Arkhan Confederates.
Trevor Paul: Both believe something is amiss in the presence of the Tau that's more dangerous than the Tau or the environs of Phaedra itself. And then Cult of the Spiral Dawn. Pilgrims devoted to a splinter cult, the Emperor, head to a world called Redemption to devote themselves to their faith, along with a stowaway called Cross, who befriends one of the pilgrims, Arakan.
Trevor Paul: However, when they reach their destination, they are. The desperate and overworked Imperial regiment forcibly conscripts them, and soon they realize something is amiss with their new faith and there is a much bigger problem on redemption than they could possibly imagine.
Bea: well
Trevor Paul: So those are the three sort of setups. So Requiem Infernal is the one I would say. If you're going to read only one Ferravari novel, please, please, please leave read this one. It has my favorite female character in all of 40K. in asinath hiatis um She's so fucking cool.
Trevor Paul: And she's so. beautifully tragic and complicated and i just adore her Jonah Tithe, who's the other major character, is also just fucking cool as hell. um But yeah. Basically what happens here is.
Trevor Paul: Asenath is a she's a hospital material, right? She's like a healer. Um.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: And she's on the ship with a bunch of guys called Void Breachers. Void Breachers are like. um the Imperial guard that are charged with like going into spaceships and clearing stuff out. Right. And they just had a real shitty experience on one of them.
Bea: Oh, okay.
Trevor Paul: A bunch of them got really hurt. And so she is caring for them and leading them towards redemption because. uh on this planet or sorry Not redemption. They're going to... Actually, I think they are going to Redemption, but we'll come back to that. um But they're going there to hopefully... like get them proper treatment. And she used to be a sister in this like group that she's headed towards. And there's clearly some bad blood there. Right.
Bea: Hmm.
Trevor Paul: um And she meets Jonah, who's this like supposed priest of the God Emperor. Um, And they have this little conversation when they like after they've met a couple of times. That is absurd.
Trevor Paul: It is, he agreed, but that's how it works sometimes. how what works. the world. Jonah shook his head. It's all tangled up in itself, maybe even broken. I've seen things change, then change again, like they were being shuffled over and over. Nothing's more set in stone anymore, if anything ever was. The more you look at it, the more you see the cracks.
Trevor Paul: He inhaled deeply from his Eho stick, and Asenath noticed his fingers were shaking. You've seen it too, sister. the violation. even if you didn't recognize it. I... Asenath hesitated, remembering the contortions of her exodus and the creeping wrongness of her recurrent nightmare. Yes, violation was exactly the right word for all of it.
Trevor Paul: I have, she admitted. Let me guess. you've You think you've come here to fix things. He made it sound like an accusation. If that is the God Emperor's will, she answered. Is that not your intent, priest?
Trevor Paul: I doubt things can be fixed. I'm just here to find someone. And so that's like kind of their encounter. They become kind of thick as thieves as things go on. Um.
Trevor Paul: You learn that Asenath was essentially... very good at interrogating people. and getting them to confess the truth.
Bea: mm
Trevor Paul: And an Imperial priest essentially recruited her to become a. torturer. and use her powers to do that. like her skills and she began to truly hate it because she was like i think i'm torturing innocent people And he tried to encourage it.
Bea: yeah
Trevor Paul: And so she ended up. defying him. and became a repentant, which is when they basically send you into combat with no armor. And like, you know, you've been you've shamed the emperor. You're not loyal. And so you're going to go out there and you're either going to repent by. killing enough enemies to make up for your sin or you're going to die.
Trevor Paul: the obvious result being you're supposed to die, but she didn't. She came back.
Bea: Oh. Okay.
Trevor Paul: And the reason she came back is because we learn. S and F. has a sister. living inside her called Mercy. who may or may not be a demonic presence.
Trevor Paul: and it's probably a demon, but it's... The thing that is so fucking good about fair Havari is he never makes it clear. whether mercy. is like a split personality.
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: Or... I mean, she does grow.
Bea: That was going to be my question. Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, she does grow claws and stuff when she kind of becomes Mercy, but it's unclear if Mercy... Is real or like something she's projecting. Or if. the like manifestation that happens.
Trevor Paul: came after some kind of like split personality. that she developed to deal with her, like...
Bea: Oh. Okay.
Trevor Paul: self -hatred because of what she did it's just genius so like here's a couple great
Bea: Got it.
Trevor Paul: instances of them showing up. And whenever mercy speaks, it's in bold and italics. So it's like shouting almost.
Bea: I love that. Yep.
Trevor Paul: Beloved broken idols, forge an obeisance. To imperfect objection, be silent, Asinath shouted. With a groan, she forced herself to rise. She was due to meet with the Palantine shortly. The thought of listening to Patori prattle on righteously, all the while masking what she had discovered, was daunting.
Trevor Paul: but it was too soon to confront her, too dangerous. Then let us face the bitch together, dear sister, her companion urged. That old crone's as much my bone to pick apart as yours. No, Asenath said coldly. When the time comes. She's mine.
Trevor Paul: And that's, she's always talking to mercy, which is just so cool. um And we get this beautiful ending, which happens where Basically, at a certain point, she realizes she has she always is trying to keep Mercy from taking control because Mercy will just kill, kill, kill.
Trevor Paul: You know, she's a little berserk, but at a certain point she needs her.
Bea: Sure, of course Yeah.
Trevor Paul: And so they become more and more merged as a story. comes on which is just really beautifully done and this is this kind of this last beat that occurs your wits are addled sister mercy mocked I need no wits to recognize the truth. Asenath walked them towards the relic, her twin's dark form sloughing away with every step she took. Tell me, sister, how can this candle cast its light across the ring? How can it be seen from the ocean?
Trevor Paul: I. Mercy trailed off at a loss. It cannot. SNF answered for her. But it is not the candle's light that we see from afar, sister, but our own. Faith.
Trevor Paul: Faith is the worst of all lies. Their skin was blistering now. Yet you saw its light too, Asenath said gently. I offer you a choice, sister. Kneel with me and pray. or I shall stand with you and burn.
Trevor Paul: We'll burn either way. Will we? The tower lurched beneath them. As it fell. Mercy made her choice. And the thing about it is.
Trevor Paul: You don't know what the choice is. It's never explained.
Bea: oh NOOOOOO
Trevor Paul: He never answers it. Mhm.
Bea: Peter!
Trevor Paul: It's very implied in a lot of other stuff if you read some of his other stories. asinath slash mercy maybe shows up in them if you read between the lines a little bit but it's like he's never explicit about what that actually meant I love it because it feels like at the end of this story, finally, Asenath accepts the other half of who she is.
Trevor Paul: And it's just really beautifully done. She's so fucking cool as a character. um Yeah, it's it's great stuff. um Which brings us to Firecast, which is a book that I would recommend reading more than once because it is a closed time loop story.
Bea: Ooh, okay.
Trevor Paul: And I normally hate time loops and time travel stuff. Because I think most people try to do it do it really badly. But God damn it, Peter Ferravari knew how to do this. um What you learn essentially, the the spoiler here is that Holt Iverson, one of our protagonists, is actually the cause of the destruction.
Trevor Paul: of the Arkan Confederates, and in... it Perhaps. the collapse of both the Tau and the Imperium forces on the planet of Phaedra entirely. This one guy. Um,
Trevor Paul: It's hard to explain exactly how that works, but basically the Confederates had a. Like... traumatizing experience with some demonic force. in a isolated village on a... Like...
Trevor Paul: planet.
Bea: oof
Trevor Paul: And they basically. burned the entire population of this village and the town to the ground because of that And what you find out at the end is that the...
Bea: That seems normal.
Trevor Paul: Well it what you find at the end is that the demonic force they encountered is Holt Iverson.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: who's a character you're following as he's trying to solve a mystery.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, so again, time loop, it's a mindfuck, it's a whole thing.
Bea: Ooh fun!
Trevor Paul: it's very cool um But I just, this is also, I would argue. One of the times that Peter Ferravari proves he is. such a terrifying writer so i'm gonna i'm gonna warn here the next two quotes brace yourself
Bea: Ooh, okay.
Trevor Paul: There. they're They're rough. So this first one is the the archon have like reached. this beach that they're going to deploy onto. And we're following two characters, Ambrose Templeton and Lieutenant Thone.
Trevor Paul: Lieutenant Thone staggered from the boat behind Templeton and slipped, sending them both tumbling to the beach. The captain thrust his hands out to catch his fall and felt them punch through something soft and brittle that exploded into a cloud of liquid fetter.
Trevor Paul: choking and spluttering he found himself straddling a fleshy fungus that looked like a crude parody of a man Then he saw the dull eyes staring up at him from the violet balloon of its face. saw the distended jaws rammed open by the gnarled toadstool erupting from within.
Trevor Paul: saw the gleaming dog tags engraved into its bloated neck. By a small miracle, his spectacles hadn't slipped loose, and he could even read the name of the fungus. Falmer, C .A., Corporal.
Trevor Paul: Teppleton squinted in confusion, trying to make sense of it. Hunting for a metaphor. Like bittersweet flowers of boundary, the dead shall bloom and the blossoms shall devour those that linger at the threshold.
Trevor Paul: And then he saw Falmer's skin rippling and quaking and he felt something nipping at his hands inside the rib cage. Nearby Thones was screaming and Templeton felt an echo welling up inside himself. If he let that scream out.
Trevor Paul: He knew it would never end. so he tried to drown it with more. Words to snare and bury and deny. All the sins that. And that's how that ends.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: So Ambrose Templeton actually will reappear in the third story I'm going to mention by Ferravari as Cross. He is one of the coolest characters. He is, there's those two moments where he says the like bittersweet flowers and words to snare. He keeps basically reading poetry to himself in his head to deal with the trauma of what he's experiencing.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, and at one point he kind of just wanders off and leaves the group behind and never returns to the story. until you find him later in Firecast, and he is...
Bea: sure
Trevor Paul: like a loner now. So. Yeah, it's like. It's dark. It's not quite as dark as this. so An important feature of Holt Iverson.
Trevor Paul: He's also a commissar. He has shot people for not following. orders or like you know running from battle and he is haunted by the ghosts of the people he's Killed.
Trevor Paul: And he talks to them. and often sees them.
Bea: Is he lit? He's literally haunted by them.
Trevor Paul: Yes. Very much so.
Bea: Oh, okay.
Trevor Paul: and
Bea: Okay.
Trevor Paul: He is investigating what he thinks is some bullshit happening on this planet and in this war between the Tau, which are an alien species that. often recruit humans and other alien species to join them.
Trevor Paul: They're like a a conglomeration.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: And there, sometimes the group people point to as like, they might actually be good guys, but their whole motto is for the greater good. So I'll let you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bea: Oh no. Those are not the great. Those, hey.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: Hey, y 'all.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: I just, just disclaimer. Hey. was some Hey, I'm just going to punch in right here. ah Not the good guys.
Trevor Paul: They're not.
Bea: Not the good guys.
Trevor Paul: They're not. They're a big time cult, basically.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: um But they've been fighting on this planet for like. hundreds of years potentially with no real movement either way and so he wants to find out Iverson why that's happened he suspects there's something going on here right And another commissar is assigned to him to like. you know help him but he figures is actually there to like keep an eye on and then like kill him if he gets too close to the truth right Um, her name Her name is Reeve, right?
Bea: Valid.
Trevor Paul: And they have a little confrontation here. I understand, Reeves said. As he turned to go, she called after him, Iverson. you do realize you're insane. don't you He stopped and looked back at his ghosts, lingering on beers. If she told the truth,
Trevor Paul: He was being haunted by the shade of a man who still lived. Was that worse than being haunted by the dead? He found he had no answers. Do you think it makes a difference? He asked, but Reeve had no answers either, so he turned away.
Trevor Paul: Have I just stepped back from the brink? She's going for a gun, Neiman yelled. Iverson swung round and his pistol seemed to leap into his hand with a will of its own. Number 27 rose up before him. Her hands outstretched as if to beseech him or ward him off, but he was already firing. The bullets ripped through. her in a splatter of ectoplasm and found Reeve.
Trevor Paul: She was standing motionless and... What gun? I see no gun. The first round punched through her right eye. The second and third sheared away half her face. Horribly she was still alive when she hit the ground.
Trevor Paul: Reeve, Iverson knelt over her, already knowing there was nothing to be done. Isabel, listen to me. Her surviving eye rolled in its socket, hunting for him.
Bea: oh
Trevor Paul: I've, uh... Her shattered jaw mangled the words into wet nonsense as she clutched at him. Yeah. Basta. With the last shutter. She was gone.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: bro
Trevor Paul: He's good. He's a good writer of terrible stuff.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: um
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it's it's really cool. Um. It's also like. The three ghosts appear in that scene. One of them is Pierce, who was his sort of like mentor.
Trevor Paul: um neiman is uh a soldier that he kills for disabordination and then number 27 he didn't know her name but he shot her for running and then discovered she was like an 18 year old or something.
Trevor Paul: Terrible.
Bea: Whoops.
Trevor Paul: yeah and so like he's haunted by them for obvious reasons right um
Bea: Oh weird.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. and And so that Ambrose Templeton guy, like a lot of what's really cool about this here is he shows up in fire, casts himself. But the short story that comes. immediately after firecast because in this in firecast almost all of the characters die Um.
Trevor Paul: And I can't even go into some of how. cool some of these characters are roach is my personal favorite he's the fucking just the best um but like In the next short story he wrote. You have this. There's a group in Warhammer called the Mechanicus, and they're basically like they worship machines and they augment their bodies to be more machine like.
Trevor Paul: um
Bea: Of course.
Trevor Paul: They're cyborgs, right? And they take it to extremes. A lot of them, some of them become more machine than human. One of the things they'll do is they'll take dead bodies and turn them into machines. They call them skitari, and they act as servants.
Bea: No.
Trevor Paul: Sometimes they're fighters.
Bea: Oh, yes. You've talked to me about them. Okay.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, sometimes they fight, sometimes they have specific jobs.
Bea: Yes. ye Yep. yep
Trevor Paul: um If you read this follow -up story to Firecast... you will catch that some of the Skitarii characters... Say things that are obvious references to characters who died in Firecast.
Bea: Oh. oh
Trevor Paul: Farivari. intentionally drew that connection. And it's even more scary when you think about the commentary he's making is that supposedly.
Trevor Paul: When a Skitarii is created, it doesn't retain anything of its past self. but he has them saying phrases. or making... allusions to things. the living characters said previously.
Trevor Paul: which says there's still something of them in there.
Bea: Oh, okay, so pure trauma. just
Trevor Paul: It's so brilliant.
Bea: Just complete trauma.
Trevor Paul: It's... Yeah. So the last story he did, which is weirdly the first story I read by him called Cult of the Spiral Dawn. Um. We get our unstable poet back, Ambrose Templeton. he He's calling himself Cross now.
Trevor Paul: Um, he's a stowaway on this ship heading to a planet redemption. You heard it before. And he runs into this cult. of the emperor, which is in and of itself. pretty normal like there's lots of like mini cults of worshipping the Emperor. um And this...
Trevor Paul: Girl, Eric and who he. develops this really touching father -daughter relationship with that's actually very well done. Um. you know, he starts off as that classic jaded you know, Kurt. Type. character and then gradually softens around her because she's you know.
Trevor Paul: She's kind of immune to the realities of the world, right?
Bea: Got it.
Trevor Paul: um but This story is premised on another alien faction in Warhammer called the Tyranids. Do you know who the Tyranids are?
Bea: I mean, i'm and I can draw some conclusions based on what they're called, but ah what for the podcast, let's say no.
Trevor Paul: Do you know the Zerg from Starcraft?
Bea: Yes.
Trevor Paul: The Zerg are basically the Tyranids stolen. Almost whole cloth from... Warhammer 40k.
Bea: Oh.
Trevor Paul: So they're an alien race that like is a hive mind. and they are built to consume. biomass in any form, right? But what's really cool about the way they're set up in 40 K is they don't just show up and like, we got a big ass fleet and monstrous things. and We're going to eat everything. They do that sometimes, but.
Trevor Paul: One of the things they'll do is they'll infiltrate by sending gene stealers in. And what gene stealers are is they look. mostly human. and they'll mate with a human. and create hybrids And over various generations, literally over hundreds of years, they will create these hybrids that have extra limbs.
Trevor Paul: and more chitinous. appearances and they always form these cults around them that people worship and become attached to because a lot of times they make excellent workers, very dedicated.
Trevor Paul: They can do, you know, hard labor for longer periods of time.
Bea: What if they didn't do that though? What if?
Trevor Paul: Dude. Right.
Bea: What if instead they just didn't?
Trevor Paul: what if that What if not? um
Bea: What? but
Trevor Paul: And so. what fair harvari does with this that is like i i still see this as the best written version of what gene stealer cults like sort of inception would be like is like he makes it so that when they come to this planet the the group that's defending it.
Trevor Paul: um are just like... this totally put out like they're called the black flags and they just like they had a horrible experience in their previous campaign they but put on this planet and it sucks there and also they aren't being reinforced and they don't know why
Bea: Hmm.
Trevor Paul: And there's also this growing cult to the emperor happening in the town that they you know spend their leave time on. And it's getting bigger and bigger. and Things seem a little sketchy. So what happens here is that.
Trevor Paul: The gene stealers can kind of like warp your perception of reality because the more human of them can kind of put off almost like a pheromone or psychic level of manipulation where they make you see what you want.
Bea: o Mhm.
Trevor Paul: So we get this character Senka who has kind of fallen in love. with this um Like. woman that he's met who it turns out isn't really a human woman.
Bea: No.
Trevor Paul: Uh, Where are we going? He whispered as the train left the city and picked up speed. His voice couldn't carry above the noise, but he knew that didn't matter. Veritas, she answered, this track crosses the gorge to the spire of truth.
Trevor Paul: Veritas, it was the highest of the seven spires and the foremost enclave of the Spiral Dawn. Truth. A shard of memory lands through Senka, and he glimpsed a hulking abomination following the priestess into the blackout.
Trevor Paul: What was it? Senka hissed, fighting to see clearly. Last night, the thing with you, the other... There was no other, my love, she soothed. Only you and I. She smiled and he was lost. I will show you such wonders, Kazimir Zenka.
Trevor Paul: And that's the sort of manipulation that happens.
Bea: i don't like it
Trevor Paul: it's Oh, it starts subtle and it's smooth. And then as we go on, once Senka's fully in, despite her assurances, Senka found the Acolytes disturbing. There was a barely restrained violence about them that made his hackles rise. He understood that they were his brothers. But whenever they looked at him, he could sense a cold hunger, as if he were the prey they hunted.
Trevor Paul: Four of the hybrids met him as he climbed from his vehicle. Their leader wore a Vassago breastplate that Black Iron repainted a lurid magenta and embossed with a spiral worm. The acolyte's third arm terminated in a single scythe -like talon, but he also he also carried a fleshy, barbed -tipped whip that writhed in his grip.
Bea: No thanks.
Trevor Paul: as if with a life of its own. Brother. The leader said wetly, his long tongue flitting between his fangs.
Bea: No.
Trevor Paul: I am Iugwai. Icon ward of the spiral fire coterie. The Primus awaits you. And so what I love about this is like.
Bea: Bro, I just want to talk about the way that this is written, because like...
Trevor Paul: but
Bea: i would spend so much time being like nope and just like closing the book and walking i would have to read a physical copy of this book so i could close it and walk away yeah i'm like no and then just
Trevor Paul: You can shut it, yeah. Yeah, I mean... It's just so well done because like it's all perspective, right? Because he's forcing you to see it through the character Senka's eyes and you know he's being manipulated, right?
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: As the as the sort of dramatic irony of this of that moment. But like it's done so perfectly that you can see that like the brief flickers of knowing what's really going on.
Bea: Mm hmm.
Trevor Paul: flashing through his mind and spoiler alert. Senka gets an end that like has that. moment of sudden clarity right before he dies. that is just haunting as fuck right because that's what would happen and that's kind of the beauty of that story.
Bea: Of course.
Trevor Paul: um The rest of the story just devolves into this big last stand against the cult and the monstrosities that they've been like breeding. And. ah it, it,
Trevor Paul: It gives a really nice closure for the character of Ambrose Templeton. but I wanted to share a little bit of. fair hervari because the coolest thing about peter fair hervari he's probably the least well known of these three writers But he's very active with the fan base of his books. And he goes by Torn Prophet on Reddit and will respond to posts about his stuff.
Bea: Love that.
Trevor Paul: in the most He is so... Kind. Because... As you know, fans suck and some fans.
Bea: What? No. You guys should listen to our episode about fandoms.
Trevor Paul: Some fans came into the 40K thing and were like. this isn't the 40k like this isn't how it's supposed to represent 40k what's this bullshit kind of thing and he responded to ah multiple people that did this and just said,
Trevor Paul: Hey man, that's cool. I get it's not for like other people. I hope you like the other four, you know. black library stuff. I know my stuff is a little different. That was his whole approach. It's so cool.
Bea: Wow.
Trevor Paul: Um, And. So here's a little bit about like him trying to explain what he's doing. And I just think he's so eloquent about this. So like the dark coil, this whole series he's written of these interconnected stories.
Trevor Paul: Um. It says... The Coil is a vast tangle of plot threads that extends across space and time, connecting characters, places, and events, often in bizarre ways, with people slipping from one story into another, occasionally via fissures in the skin of reality. Some worlds are riddled with these faults, hence why Phaedra, Vytarn, Sarastis, and Oblast recur throughout.
Trevor Paul: The dark coil can also be considered an expression of chaos, a fourth wall bending manifestation that has infiltrated our universe via its constituent tendrils. After all, belief shapes the world and stories can shape beliefs.
Trevor Paul: Which is just like so fucking smart.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: It's just so smart. And and he says to. Um. I love his phrase on this is like. the dark coil takes place across a range of worlds with several either regularly recurring or holding particular importance.
Trevor Paul: Every world is a character, usually an unpleasant, but hopefully a compelling one. And I think that's a great description of all of his characters is like they're often unpleasant, but hopefully they're very compelling.
Bea: Wow.
Trevor Paul: Um,
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: And the reason I wreck. recommended Requiem Infernal is that he said, Requiem Infernal is the most central of the Coil stories, a philosophical nexus of sorts where the protagonists become aware of a bigger picture and actively confront it.
Trevor Paul: Um, And I think that that is true. like i i don't know that it's like my personal favorite of the stories i think that like and it To be honest, my favorite with him fluctuates as I read them again and again.
Trevor Paul: Like, cause that's how good he is.
Bea: I think that's great though. I think that's the mark of a good writer.
Trevor Paul: it's just so good and but like i do think he's just he's on a different level He's so abstract and so outside the norm. but he captures so much of the horror of what it would be like.
Trevor Paul: To be in that universe.
Bea: hm
Trevor Paul: And like you said, like he just makes you feel like you got to put the book down for a bit and walk away.
Bea: Yeah, you're like, ahhood yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, like I for me, it wasn't.
Bea: I mean that as a compliment for the record.
Trevor Paul: Oh, I know. Oh, I know.
Bea: i just you know
Trevor Paul: Yeah. if For me, it wasn't.
Bea: I know you know that, but before you come for me in the comments, Warhammer fans, I mean it as a compliment.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, for me, it wasn't the... um It wasn't the... the Spiral Dawn book that got the ick. factor for me it was actually firecast like the description of of reeve dying but also that happens like 20 times in the book where it's like,
Trevor Paul: The death is such a. Because the thing is, he doesn't over describe it. It's just done so.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: perfectly and so real that you're just like, ah Like, ugh.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: you know and even the quote -unquote like good deaths you know the noble deaths have that same feel like i talked about that character roach that i like so much And like. Part of me just kept holding out hope he'd make it.
Bea: well
Trevor Paul: Even though I'm, cause like I liked him and then like.
Bea: Even though you've read the books and you know what happens to people.
Trevor Paul: Even though I've read the books. B, I've read that book more than once. And the second time reading, I'm like, well, maybe this time it'll get through it. I don't know. Roach.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: You know, like, it's...
Bea: the author just sent you the pages be like just kidding it actually ends like this and then just gives you new information
Trevor Paul: Yeah. Yeah. It's like he just makes you like these characters so much.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: and also makes what happens to them feel so real like The quotes I picked for Holt Iverson really make him. monstrous but like I love Holt Iverson as a character.
Trevor Paul: Because. this character you get of him. in that story. is the character who isn't the guy who pulled the trigger on the ghosts that are haunting him. He's the guy who suddenly realizes.
Trevor Paul: Oh my fuck, I've been a goddamn... Like... you know Monster. Like.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: and And so he's. the the thing he's trying to correct in the story is he's trying to fix what he did wrong before And what makes the scene with Reeve heartbreaking is that.
Trevor Paul: It's never made clear. There's a lot of hints that she really was a spy who might. off him if he got too close to the truth. But again, it's fair Hervary. He's never going to tell you.
Bea: ah
Trevor Paul: So you don't know. So you're like, well, if I look at this quote on this page, it seems like she really was a turncoat. But if I look at this one, you know what I mean?
Bea: I need to believe. yeah
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it's so and like ah as a teacher, especially. I work really hard, like students that hate ambiguity. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. We got to find something about ambiguity. of Like, cause that's actually the most delicious part of storytelling. is the flexibility of of what it might be about or what it might mean.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: And. that's why I like him so much is it's like, This motherfucker does not want to tell you anything straightforwardly. Like. You got to do work to find truth in his stuff.
Trevor Paul: And even then, it's never going to be. clear cut.
Bea: i love that
Trevor Paul: Yeah. So. At the end of this... Are there, of those three, Or is there anyone that you're more intrigued by? End. Secondary question, is there any of them you're actually interested in? reading.
Trevor Paul: Or would... give it give it Trial run 2.
Bea: I mean the The... The gross curiosity in me would probably want to read Farivari just because I really like. the writing style even though i would be completely skeeved the whole time right like just completely skeeved out the whole the whole time
Trevor Paul: Sure. Yeah.
Bea: But like, I would still. Of all of them, probably. read his stuff. The most. But that's also because of like the hype train that's been surrounding him. You know, like.
Bea: talking to you about it because I know how much
Trevor Paul: As you say, the the hype train driven exclusively by me.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: Yeah, the the one man fan club. that yeah but like i just I like all of them. I just like also I want somebody that's going to give me I love character because that's my favorite thing to write.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: But also at the same time, like I really need compelling story, especially if it's a universe that I'm not sunken into yet.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Trevor Paul: Mhm.
Bea: like I need something that's like the most gateway books of gateway books that makes me care about the universe enough to try another author in the universe. You know what I'm saying?
Trevor Paul: Yeah, I think. To me, the...
Bea: So it's like kind of dipping a toe into something that's like kind of not. even part of the universe?
Trevor Paul: Right, yeah.
Bea: like farivari just being like this isn't even canon and and just like throwing it at you yeah like
Trevor Paul: Yeah, no it isn't. uh literally nothing like i'm not even kidding um the angels penitent which is the only space marine group that appears in his stories is like the one group i want to have a skin in space marine too because i would just think it would be so cool to play as like The.
Trevor Paul: the one Space Marine chapter he ever created, but they're only in his stuff.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: They don't branch into anything else, you know?
Bea: And I think that would be appealing just as somebody who doesn't. have like their like the hooks of the universe aren't in me enough. Yet.
Trevor Paul: Right.
Bea: And I'd be like, oh, well. this kind of doesn't have anything to do with anything.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: This is just like. It's there, but it's not. at the same time
Trevor Paul: I didn't even bring... the story that they appear in into this. and i should have because you would actually adore them their whole plot with the angels penitent is that They...
Trevor Paul: Uh... so Sanguinius is... um the Primarch, the Blood Angels, which is his legion. They're basically vampires. Um, And like they.
Trevor Paul: find ways to deal with their like thirst for blood but some of them don't and they succumb to a thing called the black rage and they basically become totally insane except the angels penitent
Bea: Love that.
Trevor Paul: who somehow none of them ever fell to the Black Rage. but they were really into art.
Bea: Yep.
Trevor Paul: I'm not kidding.
Bea: Same. Same.
Trevor Paul: And that became the thing that brought about their downfall.
Bea: Wow.
Trevor Paul: Their obsession with art. I'm not joking. This is what Peter Ferravari writes. Shit like this.
Bea: See? Dude, that's selling it, you know? Be like, oh, that's... actually really interesting you know
Trevor Paul: i think I think actually, like to me, I was not as into those ones. um But I feel like you might get a real kick out of those stories. They're pretty fucking wild.
Bea: Probably.
Trevor Paul: It's like. Okay. Art destroyed them. That's different.
Bea: What a mood. yeah no i get it Same, girl.
Trevor Paul: ah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, the reason I had those three was like, I think the best writer out of the three is fair. hervari i I actually don't think it's close. I think.
Trevor Paul: He's just fucking. I don't, I mean. I.
Bea: And I'm sure that there's going to be a bajillion people that argue differently towards it, you know.
Trevor Paul: They will, 100%. And I don't mean that he's the best. The best storyteller is ADB. By far.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: the The Night Lords trilogy is one of the greatest stories I've ever read. um I think Ferravari is a better writer because he's just. It's not that he has the database of language to pull from. It's that I.
Trevor Paul: Always feel like he picked the exact right. Word. phrasing length like he just hits every single button every time probably because of the editing background honestly he probably edits like a motherfucker when he writes
Bea: Yeah.
Bea: Probably, yeah.
Trevor Paul: Um. ADB Tele...
Bea: i i love reading writers who are editors just like by the way i just sat just tight tangent i Love it when I find out a writer.
Trevor Paul: Ugh. Yeah.
Bea: is an editor as a day job.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: Because I know that I'm like, oh, good. There is not going to be an ounce of fat in this book. that I have to be like, why didn't you take this out?
Trevor Paul: well yeah That is the other thing.
Bea: you know
Trevor Paul: That is the other thing with Fer Hervary that is like... He does not. it's all lean you know i i would say adb also is like that which makes sense because again if he's the guy running the lore he's doing a lot of editing bits with that too so he's probably got his toe in that a little But like.
Bea: Yep.
Bea: Sure.
Trevor Paul: Both of them. waste nothing in their work everything has It matters.
Bea: that's That's what I like.
Trevor Paul: dan abnett definitely has a lot of fat on his stuff Sometimes it's great. Sometimes he's genuinely. Like. he's cooking just because he's a fun writer like he just knows how to tell a story well like the reason i picked the three of them is i think if you're trying to get into the setting
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Go read Dan Abnett. He doesn't miss. His bad work is better than almost everybody else's. like good work.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: You know what I mean?
Bea: Mm hmm.
Trevor Paul: Like he's just. he He is the old reliable. like staple you can fall back on. It's never going to suck. You know what I mean? And, and he's written some books that are are genuinely on the same caliber as others.
Bea: Right.
Trevor Paul: I didn't bring up no, no fear, but like that book is a fucking banger from beginning to end. And it's Abnett just working character stuff the whole time.
Bea: h
Trevor Paul: If you're looking for a great story, I think it's it's adb's uh night lords because i think that story literally hooks you. from the first sentence and never lets you go the whole way through it's just you're like i read that 800 page Like.
Trevor Paul: trilogy in a day. Like I couldn't stop reading it. It was too good. And I multiple times put it down and walked away because I was just like, fuck. Like. Damn it. But I do think that.
Trevor Paul: to your point like if you want something that's going to kind of get you in and not require any back knowledge, man.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Fer Hervary is just crushing it. And like I said, I still say. I think I put him in the Ursula Le Guin category in terms of writing ability.
Bea: That is a mighty. Mighty placement.
Trevor Paul: i i just like i have read so so for context i have read his entire collection of books Twice. And I've read some sections of it three times. and I'm going to read them again.
Trevor Paul: I know I am I will also read ADB's stuff. the trilogy. I know I'm going to read it a second time. But I keep going back and rereading Ferravari. Like.
Bea: That's a pretty ringing endorsement for, you know, in a in a in a world.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: In a world.
Bea: Where there are so many. Things you could be reading.
Trevor Paul: Mhmm.
Bea: And as somebody. who is a writer. uh to be like I could read this over and over and over again and still every time it gets me.
Trevor Paul: Yep.
Bea: Like that's huge.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it is. I would compare it to watching the Lord of the Rings films and how those get me at certain points that there are just moments that I, like, I know I keep bringing it up, but that.
Bea: my weakness. Yeah.
Trevor Paul: That Talos line about wanting to be a hero guts me every moment I read that. um it just gets to me every fucking time and i adore it so much it's it's the equivalent of Who am I gambling in?
Trevor Paul: two towers, which is the line that crushes me every time in Lord of the Rings.
Bea: Yeah. I mean, we know Listen, those of us who know you and who are friends with you on Steam know how much you love Talos.
Trevor Paul: He is my literal Steam name right now. Yeah, it is.
Bea: I really I did have to google it to be like who the fuck is this guy and then I was like oh wait it's It's Trevor.
Trevor Paul: Yeah. And you know what's... What's super funny is because I play Space Marine 2 and this is just adorable. It's like I had a guy get into voice chat and just tell me how much he loved those books.
Bea: oh See, I love that.
Trevor Paul: And how much? and how much he loved that i because my skin for my character is like i've done my best to recreate what the night lord character would look like and he's just like i love what you've done with that that's so cool those books like changed so much for me and it's like clearly someone who's younger than me and i was just like man that's that's awesome
Bea: Aww. I love that so much.
Trevor Paul: That's really awesome.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Like, and in Darktide, funny enough, all my Darktide characters are named after Peter Ferravari characters. So one of them is Ambrose Templeton.
Bea: Of course.
Trevor Paul: ah One of them is Asenath, you know, and when I was playing my character that goes under the Asenath name, I had somebody totally geek out about that, too.
Bea: Awww.
Trevor Paul: And it was just the coolest thing where I was just like, yeah, I i just love that. like And it was funny because this this person was like, I love that book so much. like She's such a great character. It's like, yeah, I love all of his books. And this person was like, she goes.
Trevor Paul: He wrote other books?
Bea: ah
Trevor Paul: And I was like, oh, sweet summer child. Guess what? And I just get to share with her all.
Bea: we were like quick i'm just gonna just throw this out here for you i'm like we're not gonna do anything else today
Trevor Paul: Yeah. I was like, hey. yeah and i got a i got an actual dm from this person later that said like i went and bought the omnibus after you told me and i'm so excited and that's so cool and i was just like good Like, go read those books.
Trevor Paul: That's so cool. like
Bea: And that's how it happens, kids.
Trevor Paul: Yeah, it's great. um i just the point of doing this and now we've gone over two hours and i'm sorry b um but like
Bea: I've been riveted.
Trevor Paul: Well, I appreciate that. I just think that like. Warhammer 40 K is such an insurmountable thing to get into much.
Bea: Mm -hmm.
Trevor Paul: Like you said, magic, the gathering, which like I tried to get into and never could breach it. It doesn't have to be. The Black Library is one of the weirdest success things.
Trevor Paul: I've ever witnessed because like It just shouldn't. be something that is Like. successful and yet they've gotten these writers who do such great work to tell such cool stories, and you don't have to play the game to like that.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: You really don't. And I just want more people to go. Like you said, when you asked the question about the label, like ignore the label and just read the book. There's some really good stuff there. like Genuinely some good stuff.
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: Um. And i I mentioned that, like, it's obviously these are three male writers. I don't haven't found any female author that has had significant... Like. impact on the black library but i hope they're coming soon because because games workshop has really started being much much much more inclusive of like its female audience And.
Bea: Let's get to it.
Trevor Paul: Yeah.
Bea: Ladies and ladies, let's... Fucking write some Warhammer shit. Come on.
Trevor Paul: and and because there's stuff to be written right and and i think the thing that i like about all three of these writers is all their female characters kick ass Like. They genuinely are, like, and they're real characters.
Bea: That's important.
Trevor Paul: They have so much depth to them. It's fucking awesome. Like, I highlighted Asenath, but, like, Arakan in Cult Spiral Dawn for Fair Havari is also great. um Octavia in the Nightlord series is a fucking badass and is like.
Trevor Paul: by far one of the most like. complex characters in those stories.
Bea: Mm hmm.
Trevor Paul: And then Abnet. one of the things that's cool about the ghost series is like it starts off as a bunch of dudes in an army and then women start getting added And you could almost be watching Abnett go through his own re relevation of revelation of like...
Trevor Paul: women also can be in the army and be fucking cool and like
Bea: Yeah.
Trevor Paul: they become some of the best characters it's just really neat that that like you watch it happen in real time so
Bea: I love that
Trevor Paul: Yeah. So I think we have sued.
Bea: I think so.
Trevor Paul: yeah so if you guys want us to do another topic for two hours plus um email us at i think you should pod at gmail .com you can try to find me on blue sky too at th paul uh or you know you could ah send an interplanetary exterminatus order to ah do a topic.
Trevor Paul: or else.
Bea: Oh my god, you nerd.
Trevor Paul: if you play 40k you know what i just referenced b do you have anything you want to plug or mention
Bea: Uh. We are on Instagram.
Trevor Paul: Mmm.
Bea: Under I think you should pod. All one word. I post about the episodes. and definitely do it diligently and nobody look at the last time i posted and i'm on the internet as well Good luck finding me.
Trevor Paul: Yep. ah That's also the thing that I want to mention is that B is our social media guru and I just do the audio, which is why the audio sucks and our social media presence is cool.
Bea: Boots. Yep. I'm just gonna go with that.
Trevor Paul: Sounds good. All right, folks. Bye.
