00:00.00 alifeinruins Welcome to episode one fifty two of a life froms podcast wein investigatte the careers and research of those living a life in ruins I'm our host carlton shield chief goover and I am joined ah by my ah featured co-hosts Alex Craib who previously joined the podcast for episode 26 of ah our ruined lives with Alex Crabe and appearing for the first time is mason and Niquette Mason and Alex thank you guys so much for joining. Um, how are you guys doing this evening I guess we'll start off with you Alex how have you been since you've last been on the podcast. 00:31.67 Craibo Not too bad, not too bad finishing up this ph d at some point accepted a salary job that cultural resource analysts out in Lexington Kentucky and live in the dream having a blast. 00:47.90 alifeinruins That excellent and then ah mason yeah, please introduce yourself to the audience for the first time. Ah, basically just where you went to school what degrees you have and where you at now in life. 00:57.71 Mason Ah, yeah, sure. Ah, so my is Mason Kat I did my master's in ph d at the University Of Kansas I'm a ge yorkeologist. My master's was on a pretty cool late paleo through Midic site in the ozarks and then my justation was. Looking at site formation and juopreology at a rock shelter in West Texas currently I'm also working for culture resource analyst and license in Kentucky. 01:27.80 alifeinruins We excellent. We're really excited to have you both on the podcast for this very riveting discussion. We're about to have so ah for context, we're gonna be talking about the archeology of warhammer forty k and we'll we'll delve into that subject in kind of the background behind it. But. In ah the nerd world. Some big happenings caused me to text Alex about some of the the most recent reveals and like we need to have an episode about this and Alex like I actually have a coworker who's also a huge war hammer 40 k nerd and just so happened when you're at the essays. I was having some drinks at the bar and ran into Mason Mason's like yeah I know cra I work with him and I'm like are you are you the 40 k friend and he was like yeah and I was like okay, we're going to have you on the podcast to talk about this? Um, so this episode's gonna be kind of ah very similar in what we did with. The archeology middle earth. However, we've done really dotted our eyes and crossed our twos with this episode or hoping to to fit it all in because it's it's extensive. Ah, the lower behind warhammer 40 k is more extensive I would say than what Tolkien has. Tolkien did it himself though like let's that's the caveat the ah lord of the rings middle earth is is Tolkien's baby whereas four hundred forty k is is contributed by many different authors and you know basically a company that has been producing this game and the lore behind it since the late eighty s. 02:57.88 alifeinruins Like 1989 or something like that. Um, so real quick. Ah what mason what? what armies do you collect and which factions are your favorite. 02:59.19 Craibo Thanks. 03:08.93 Mason Well, right now. Um, we're going on have little like black templars Army um, got that going for me got a little leagues of Botan got a bunch of random chaos like Negle models and so like plague marines. 03:23.57 Mason Yeah I kind of just like to paint a lot of stuff and I'm spending way too much money just getting kind of whatever what about you. 03:31.10 alifeinruins I. So yeah I started forty k I think when I was in fifth grade with fourth edition and my first army were the tyran needss so I have some of those old school termmegans and and harmegans and those like pewter models of old one eye and like an old school. Um, hive tyrant and a couple lictors and then like I think I ended up collecting over 64 homeagons and termmeagons alone because they used to come in those big box sets of 32 before they got. You know you can only buy like 16 at a time at the same price range now and then um I got back into it an undergraduate. Um, with seventh edition and I started playing Tao because I really liked the idea of shooting armies. But then I got really bored because they they're just a shooting army. They don't do melee they don't do any of the fun stuff and then um I switched to blood angels became my. 04:10.29 Mason Um, I mean. 04:25.74 alifeinruins Went like hardcore the opposite direction I want a ah melee army um, and you know that's just full melee and I love red's my favorite color. So as I was like gravitated I love their Lauren the backstory so crave what about you man. 04:30.80 Craibo Um, home. 04:40.24 Craibo I'm an o g dark angels guy I think I started my armies right around when you did fifth sixth seventh grade. Um, and then I did a little bit of Taw a little bit of haldar just to branch out I don't really like either 1 and now I've been doing like a. Hit bash home brew chapter based on my fraternity colors and heraldry and and all that stuff. So. It's basically like a best of all world space marines chapter I call it heavy assault. 05:11.91 alifeinruins Excellent, excellent. Um, so there's the product background behind 40 k just for our viewers. It is a tabletop miniies game that you paint and early on in the 80 s and ninety s it was like the the back ground and the story you would get through your little army. Handbooks codexes. There was a big old you know rule set that came in a book and then you had to buy your individual army booklet and then thered just be kind of laurn history spread out through that it wasn't till like the two thousand s um, did books about warhammer 40 k um. Be published and if for those that might be familiar with gaming. There's um, like Donna war warhammer and there is you know like warhammer where you kill all the rats on steam same companies early on they were actually connected warhammer and warhammer 40 k were kind of these weird extensions. Um, but really since the two thousand s they've cashed in on expanding the lore of warhammer 40 k um, and so so what is warhammer forty k well that the term 40 k for us archeology nerds and and geologists. It stands for 40000 years so this universe where we play in the tabletop realm. Um, we're we're year forty thousand so we're we're 20000 year to no like 38000 years in the future um that's that's where we're at and a lot of stuff happened and with that there is um. 06:42.37 alifeinruins Archeology is present and we'll get to that but we're going to go through like a very very surface level like not even cutting the skin like basically just like cutting the smallest pieces of hair off of your arms of the lord to kind of set the stage for why archeology is present in. 06:53.31 Craibo Um, yeah. 07:01.23 alifeinruins In the lore itself. 07:02.70 Craibo 40000 years in less than 4 minutes 07:05.25 Mason Are. 07:05.72 alifeinruins Yeah, hopefully that that's bold statement because we're gonna We're gonna go off on tangts. So so we're gonna try to do this first segment and probably into the second segment is like. 07:12.89 Craibo Um, ah. 07:19.98 alifeinruins We're gonna go through. It's not even like 40 that we got to set the stage for like it starts sixty million years ago that's when the universe starts and so we're just going to real quickly just go through that the time of the universe into the future and then get into like ok, what's the archaeology. Um, so. 07:24.74 Craibo But but. 07:39.97 alifeinruins The the first part of this and it and it does actually relate to 40 k itself like these people show back up is what's called the war in heaven and this happened sixty million years ago there's 2 main factions the old ones they're this benevol and benevolent beings this race that like see the universe. They're friendly, peaceful and then you have the neck frontier and at basic could you describe the neck frontier for us real quick. 08:03.17 Craibo Um, you. 08:11.67 Mason Um, there are yeah. 08:12.00 Craibo It's like the care bearsing against the anti-care bears so you got a group of people that are all about feelings and then the neck frontier who decide to sacrifice their mortal beings to space gods. In exchange for Immortality. So that way they can spite these care bears. 08:31.10 Mason Yeah, so pretty much the ah oga ones were just a much like weird lizard space gods that just kind of hung out created a bunch of life had a great time and then get the neck frontier who. We're a weird little flesh species. They're planning to have to be close too close to a star. They just got cancer all the time and it turns out that even they love that space. They kept eating cancer and so turned to a whole big to do. Um. 08:58.47 alifeinruins And yeah, so the neckronier they're basically like cancerous space. Egyptians is the best way to describe that faction. Their lifespans were like forty years they were too close to a star and there's some other things that were happening that created this weird stuff. Super focused on immortality through um basically everyone wanted to be an alexander to great and that was their focus on so their their start spacefaing society was a a fucking wreck because everyone was concerned about themselves. It wasn't holistic. They united against the old ones because the old ones wouldn't. Basically help their space cancer and they went to war. Um, didn't go so great for the for the neck frontier. They ended up coming in contact with basically a different race of space gods in a different dimensional plane. 09:47.61 Mason And then she. 09:49.90 alifeinruins Um, known as the catan they made an alliance and they absolutely wrecked the old ones as a response the old ones created species specifically meant to fight the neck frontier in the catan the eldari and the ah cork. Um. And the cork are basically ancestral orcs and ended up they ended up losing to the neck frontier and the Katon but then the neck frontier found out that the catan were the troubles of all their space cancer and during the war trick the catton and or the neck frontier sorry into giving up their fleshy beings. And downloading themselves into mechanical automaton where only the elites of the neck frontier kept their their consciousness and so ah, they they betrayed the Catan and 1 of the most like epic battles of betrayal and. 10:32.29 Craibo Their consciousness. 10:44.89 alifeinruins Like just hunted them. But as a result the neckronier were were severe this is when they become the neckrons is when they go from like fleshy egyptian with cancer to mechanical egyptians. Basically there's pyramids like there's a whole thing and you just have to Google what they are and everything is very Egyptian like there's pyramids and obelisks that's the vibe. Um yes, like space scarabs like it's fair, but they are green. They glow and mechanical. You know it's like it's a whole thing. 10:59.67 Craibo Um. 11:04.91 Craibo Um, everything will scream. 11:06.80 Mason I'd also like space oists and like space pyramids. 11:14.22 Craibo I see 99 yeah 11:18.83 alifeinruins Yeah, and but during this war the eldari in the court kind of made a comeback and the neckron the necrons were like we need to go into hibernation and basically because we're going to lose like if we keep fighting. We're going to lose so they basically put everyone in stasis and go to sleep up until the forty first millennium so that's the background but during that time there's ah, a dimension called the warp which is where you basically light speed occurs and it's a reflection of of the material world. 11:37.50 Craibo Um. 11:49.89 alifeinruins And because there is so much chaos and death it turned this like gorgeous wellspring of life into a chaotic mess and it basically becomes known as the warp and it's we'll get to that later because that's just like a whole separate you got the you got the material plane and then you got space. Hell. 12:04.12 Craibo Um, and cut it. 12:05.84 alifeinruins Space hell and that space hell is where space travel takes place and it gets fucking crazy. Ah so yeah, it gets that the whole war in heaven basically poisons that and it just becomes this horrible horrible place. That's a reflection of the war in heaven because the war in heaven took place over like millions of years 12:06.90 Mason Um. 12:10.22 Mason It gets a little opening in us pretty quick. 12:25.20 alifeinruins Of basically genocide on a galactic scale moving forward up until forty thousand years ago ah from ah this is the age of terra. So just it's the same ah earth history up until today. So. Um, but there are some pretty important events that occur ah crave could you take a crack at some of the more pivotal moments of of how what happens here on earth affects the universe in War Hammer 40 K so 12:54.73 Craibo So Arguably the most important event that happens is the the birth of the emperor of mankind or the being that would become the emperor of Mankind. He's basically a immortal. Base being that can reanimate himself in different bodies and accrue. This long-term kind of memory and understanding of of time and he gets the idea that he's going to start directing Humanity. On the the right path. So The star child emperor comes about sometime Ten Thousand B C you know fertile crescent that that sort of area. 13:46.13 alifeinruins He and he gets born because basically a bunch of of mystic shamans like predicate in the future Shit's going to be bad for humankind. 13:56.39 Craibo So yeah, so there's a couple different theories about how the emperor came about whether he was just ah, an individual being that appeared and had this psychic magnitude to him or if he was actually a culmination of multiple. Kind of psychic beings coming together seeing the future and knowing that humanity needed like a protector kind of deal and they fused their psychic might together and created this god baby kind of like Jesus in a in a. You know tuxedo t-shirt. Yeah. 14:33.50 alifeinruins Yeah, so basically like all these like mystic shamans from across like the old world come together at at chatauho youke and commit rituals suicide to fuse their mental spiritual essence into the emperor of bad guy and he does become Jesus because he's. 14:36.64 Mason Um. 14:50.76 alifeinruins He's like right now in our in our world. He's just laying low. He's he's immortal and just kind of pops up through history to like try to steer people in the right way so he is Jesus and Muhammad and all these leaders throughout her history that kind of show up and try to change things and ultimately like just disappear like he's just hiding. 15:06.20 Craibo Are. 15:09.10 alifeinruins Um, yeah, he's it's weird but he he's He's super important for thirty K So and onwards yeah, he's just like you know I'm just he's just sitting in the back with popcorn just like this is fucked. Um. 15:13.00 Craibo Um I is heart his heart is my spread. Yeah. 15:15.38 Mason Um. 15:18.82 Mason Um, I mean only takes like 30000 years pm relevant is fine. 15:21.75 Craibo Um, yeah. 15:28.47 alifeinruins And then so so mason why? why are the middle ages ah important for the context of of the universe and. 15:36.45 Mason So the middle ages are kind of when shake goes sideways. Um, so we briefly mentioned like the idea the warp. The warp is kind of like a reflection of like. 15:49.42 Mason And Humanity aliens All their kind of things and all their like feelings thoughts ideas all this kind of stuff like bring yourself and manifests within the warp that makes the best sense. Um, yeah, it's like a psychic reflection of what's happening. 15:59.76 Craibo It's it's like with like a reflection. 16:05.26 Mason But pretty much during this time period we get the crusades and the birth of the blood got corn during a lot of time of hypervi who wants skulls for the skull around and blood flow blood god you get mass periods of disease for new black plague and you get the creation of this new god called Nurgle um, who is all about decay. Um, decay disease and then just get Zech um, who I admittedly do not know nearly enough about so ah. 16:35.43 alifeinruins Yeah, so so corn is born basically from from the crusades like there's so many people out there trying to kill for their God that their psychic energy creates a fucking terrorist God in the warp who is just the the God of War and death. 16:38.67 Craibo Um, he's the with. 16:53.91 alifeinruins Ah, then there's Zeench who is kind of like this God of knowledge. But it's like the it's the warranted pursuit of knowledge which is bad just like knowledge for knowledge's sake and he's born from like all these feudalistic. Ah, ah. 17:09.61 alifeinruins Scholars trying to reinvent society and religion. So he's a reflection of that nurgel comes from the black plagues where there's massive death from plague from you know China all the way to um, you know Europe and North Africa and he's like the most like he's not really. Evil he's just he loves life but the the greatest and most numerous life in the universe is bacteria and viruses so he wants to infect everything else with with disease. So like he's bought like people love of he's papa nurgel and his whole idea is just to spread his children of death. Across the universe. Ah, and so as as these things are happening but like people in our history. Don't know because we don't have access to the word yet. We have a little bit of what's the psychic energy. That's this reflection so those 3 gods are born during so the. Mankind contributes out of all the race in the universe mankind contributes to these these three gods we get through the dark age of technology which is from 1500 to 25000 in which mankind just does its thing and spreads across the universe and we don't know much about it. We just know during this time. Mankind settles the stars we have really advanced technology which becomes important for later and we become the dominant species across the universe. Um and and during this time the ldar from the war in heaven are still around. They're basically space elves that live forever. 18:38.27 alifeinruins Come in contact with them. We're pretty chill. They recognize humankind's kind of superiority. But then we have the age of strife and like 2 important things happen one basically terminator judgment day happens. All of our machines rise up against us and start going on a human genocide and it just absolutely destroys um human civilization across the stars. Everyone becomes isolated. It's not a great time but also as the aldari the space elves the ldar. They become so ingratiated in pleasure and lust they basically become space romans to an effect where they get just so carried away in um, the pleasures of life that their psychic energy borns. The chaos gods lanesh who. 19:19.15 Craibo Even there's um. 19:26.41 alifeinruins When he is born. It creates this like portal to hell in the universe and kills most of the Ldari Race he basically takes up their souls some survive you get the ldar proper these were like ldar that lived in the stars on craft worlds that's how they survived and then you get the dark ldar and in order to combat. Slanash basically the dark eldar become sadistic bdsm elves like their whole thing is we're going to just torture and kill and make life a living hell for anyone we capture they get into piracy and slavery so you have the dark elves and the light elves very original here. Um, but during this time humanity is spread across the stars. All the worlds pretty much are isolated from 1 another um, the automatons are beaten but um, during this time space travel becomes impossible because the birth of sonash basically makes the warp you know space hell where. Light speeded occurs extraordinarily dangerous and unpredictable. Um, and this is where the emperor comes back craibs what does the emperor do in ah the year thirty thousand so after you know ah like towards the end of of you know the space 20:42.11 Craibo Um, so yeah, so the emperor spends most of his life like Carlton was saying chilling in the background kind of poking at things trying to get them to change. 20:43.33 alifeinruins War against the machines. 20:55.50 Craibo And I think after the the birth of slash. He kind of realized that that he needed to be a little more proactive about things and it was about that time that that he kind of revealed himself and started uniting clans on on earth ancient terra. Um, and i'm. Um, pretty sure it started in kind of the India Himalayan region and it expands out and he starts messing around with genetics and he starts creating this race of super soldiers which would eventually become the thunder warriors. And he would use these kind of genetically superior genetically might think about like russian athletes but like done right? Um, you know actually being active if the russians were in charge of doping programs. Ah we actually did a real doping program. Anyway, so it's like a group of it's a group of genetically superior men that are you know large faster reflexes faster kit healing all that jazz and he basically takes over. Planet and then institutes this Primark program which think Mason could explain. 22:13.39 Mason Yeah, so um, yeah, so pretty much what happened with the Thunder warriors They were great for what Edwards goals were on terra. However, they were unstable. There were prone to all sorts of weird. 22:18.40 Craibo Um, that's a throw you under the bus or anything. 22:31.43 Mason Issues including like super super space cancer and stuff like that. So the idea basically was after that come up with an idea for a new set of soldiers to go take over the stars and take over the go back and reconquer effectively all the plans that were lost. Um. During the age of strife and so yeah, the primary program started where he was in make 20 perfect genetic sons partially from his Dna and all sorts of different things. Ah right. 23:05.15 Craibo And they each were supposed to be kind of a different aspect of his being right? like we're kind of to be an idealized version of you know one facet of humanity. 23:10.43 Mason And so you. 23:15.50 Mason You right? right? And so each one's supposed to be like a perfect facet of some aspect of man but things kind of hit the fan and the and so. They wound up getting swept out by the Kos cause that we mentioned earlier so Nurgel Monash Zench and corn and so they got sppersed across the galaxy and he's like well we ain't got time for this. And so jumped back into the stars with his new super soldiers who were the space marians. 23:51.76 alifeinruins We yeah, we glossed over some heavy shit there. But yeah, so allegedly the god of the god emperor like made a deal with the chaos gods when the chascots figured out. He tricked them. The Primarks may be warped. 23:53.85 Craibo Um, and they're basically yeah. 23:54.30 Mason Yeah I did remember. 24:08.67 alifeinruins Demigods in the human super soldier form. We don't know and they got spread across the galaxy to other you know, lost colonies and societies of earth so they get raised by different terran societies some really good. Some turn into gladiators with nails in their heads. That's a spectrum that isn't fantastic for some um and and with that we should probably take our first break before we we get into the great crusades of humanity. So we'll be right back with episode one fifty Two ah life ruins goes forty k here after these messages.