40K LEGENDS - BATTLE-CAPTAIN NATHANIEL GARRO | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History

today's video is brought to you by audible audible provides an easily accessible way to access audiobooks for its members just one of the reasons why i recommended along with enabling you to make huge savings on the newest full-length warhammer audiobooks as an audible member you get one credit every month to use on any title across their entire premium selection but clearly credits are best spent on longer nine hour plus premium audio books nathaniel garrow is one of the most legendary figures among the imperium for his service and unbreakable loyalty to the emperor as today we explore just what garrow is about in his core if you want to learn and hear more about the myth the legend you should seek out both the stories i recommend today obviously first flight of the eisenstein and then also garrow if you really want to go deep there are four other smaller audio dramas that i'll mention in today's outro you can start today using audible with a free 30-day audible trial to get yourself full access to thousands of audiobooks originals and podcasts all you need to do is visit audible.com luton and for those in the us you can also text looting to 500 500. [Music] [Music] [Music] nathaniel garo is i have to say likely one of my favorite figures in the entirety of 40k the reasons for that we will look at today but primarily it's the combination of his presence at critical events for the imperium and indeed the emperor how he chooses to act and the resonance of his achievements through into m41 his strength of character his conviction and his unbreakable sense of loyalty and self to the emperor and humanity are what set him apart from so many while we are led to believe and assume that all space marines would hold as true as nathaniel garrow time and again we see this not to be the case forget heretics some astartes merely become even renegades to survive as a human in the darkness of the far future is a grueling marathon of endurance mental strength in the case of the trans-human genetically adapted space marines of either 30 or 40k millennia more is required their massive body adaptations and character tests are seemingly not enough because even when the shadow of the heresy fell upon the legions not all would have the unbreakable will of figures like nathaniel garrow far too many allowed themselves to be easily manipulated and twisted into positions where they could not tell up from down allow themselves to be backed into corners open to certain persuasions where there should never have been any room for such considerations and worst of all they doubted themselves and their loyalty to the emperor of mankind i've always had a great respect in the context of characters of the heresy period when it comes to seigero more so for himself than many of the primarks quite honestly but thinking about garrow today comes at an opportune moment for we are very excitingly about to receive a new novella focused on the legendary knight errant it has been quite some time since we heard anything at all new about garrow i say that obviously saturn but those who know me know that it's pretty rare for me to truly feel hyped about anything i often have a pretty neutral sort of blank emotional personality but garrow and his involvement in and around the siege of terror not gonna lie gives me a tightness in the chest it's either that or my heroic intake of muffins every day for breakfast as the epic battle for terror rages and the future of mankind hangs in the balance former knight errant nathaniel garrow fights among the ashes and fire of the embattled imperial palace as the shadow of horus lupercal's triumph looms from the brutal betrayal at istvan to the desperate flight of the eisenstein through his missions as malcador the sigilites aegentia primus garrow's path has drawn him inexorably towards a destiny that can only end in bloodshed as he struggles to protect euphrates killer the first saint of the imperial church from the horrors of this titanic scale war gary must face his greatest enemy his father mortarion his former master and the monstrous liege lord of the traitorous death guard in a final shattering confrontation it sounds nail-biting quite honestly but i feel this not without a sense of concern especially with us knowing full well that it seems somewhat unlikely that garrow is going to best mortarion but i hope to be proven wrong we will know soon enough although knowing that in the past iterator cinderman described garrett as the first true martyr of the church of the god emperor it's daunting and concerning but so many legends of humanity have perished in the 10 000 years since the heresy almost meet their fate at some point in time for those who want to know where to consume all about garrow as i've noted in the intro and later the outro there's many audio books the core sources are the 4th and 42nd episodes in the heresy series flight of the eisenstein garrow both of these available on audible there are also smaller mentions in the story's patience buried dagger saturnine agaro oath of moment vow faith and some others good to check out but i'll just throw in a caveat here for any of you who are especially new to 40k when it comes to specific aspects characters legends of the law there's almost no limit to how much detail you can drill down on especially when it comes to small tangents associated information related to specific figures and factions and it's interesting and it's entertaining but it's not always helpful for staying on topic and i'm already bad at that so bearing this in mind now and forever if there's a detail or a piece of subsidiary information a character not mentioned it's usually by choice not so much absence of memory and bearing that in mind while the events after eisenstein are equally of interest and i will speak to them a little i want today to be more focused on garrow in and around eisenstein primarily because this is the critical turning point in the death of garrow the death guard astartes and his rebirth due to the ideological firestorm of the heresy later on in garrow you hear about his journey from the initial transformation but in multiple ways through the story of eisenstein it's one of the best illustrations of the subtle duplicity facing all true astartes at the outbreak of the heresy additionally with garrow it's an example of how he faces down the darkness and becomes more than even he likely ever imagined possible as would so many characters of legend during the heresy so nathaniel garrow was the captain of the seventh great company of the death guard legion garrow was not an astartes to be forged later in the crusade but he was instead one of the astantes to be originally birthed on terror obviously not birthed as an astartes he just was born on terror at this time many of the legions operated under names that would later be replaced by their primarks so for example garrow enlisted in the dusk raiders legion garrow's story mirrors that of so many of the original astartes who will be later merged with replacement astartes used to bolster the legions throughout the crusade unlike those original studies from terror who walked the planet with the emperor in the later period of the unification wars this became unexpectedly problematic in time and one of the reasons i placed so much importance in garrow is that he is one of the best examples of why the heresy occurred often the heresy is framed as being led orchestrated by the traitor primarks who instructed their legions to turn against the emperor but this is of course a very simplistic explanation one of the reasons why the heresy was so horrific and offensive was due to the fact that it was not merely traitor legion versus loyalist legion although many loyalist legions remained very strong truly to the emperor among the traitor legions especially some of them it was far more fractured those like the night lords and the word bearers were more unified in their change of allegiance but for others like the death guard and the sons of horus it was internally a lot more fractured one of the main reasons that can be attributed to the fracturing of astartes battle brothers was their origins for individuals like garrow who had walked terror perhaps figuratively with the emperor they felt a strong bond and loyalty to him more than to the primarks which is correct astartes who joined their legions later in the heresy or recruited from primark homeworld were more inclined to feel a stronger bond to the primark than the emperor so by the time of the eisenstein and the horus heresy garrow was one of the few originally terran marines still serving in his legion which was causing an uncomfortable rift between him and his fellow captains they were more aligned with the personality of mortarion whereas garrow was more stoic and pure in his interpretations of their duty and their loyalty to the emperor now as i noted before i don't want to diminish the later garrow storytelling in his appearances the 42nd episode in the heresy series is excellent and it's full of everything that makes garrow such a strong character in the history of the imperium it has its own revelations as well but it's in this fourth episode flight of the eisenstein that really frames who garrow is and why he is important and that's what we'll focus on more today in addition to fractured loyalties eisenstein also occurs at this key point in both the heresy and imperial history as we see in the final conclusion of the story but moreover it gets right down to the bedrock of the struggles humanity is facing at both an emotional and ideological level the realization that the emperor is more than he claims to be coupled with the awakening that the concept of the imperial truth itself is seemingly not in fact accurate nor even applicable any longer in fact garo later becomes as we discuss the so-called first martyr and this is around the point where this concept of saints faith followers of the emperor really starts to occur this is the point of inception for the imperial church what follows is ten thousand years of unrestrained extreme zealotry factional fragmentation misrepresentation dogma and indoctrination from humble beginnings the faith placed in the emperor at this time bears little to any resemblance to the horrors that exist in m41 there's no arco flagellance penitent engines and the like now whilst we're talking about garrow you can't really discuss him without the context of the characters within the story also a little adjacent eisenstein has some genuinely exciting battle sequences which for me is actually a little unusual i normally am not a fan of extended battle descriptions i often actually skip past these but in eisenstein they're quite gripping and 20 minutes of battle description feels actually more like two minutes mainly gripe is in fact with a common but very understandable aspect of most space marine narratives which is that whilst these tier one and two characters stand out very well those in the background the subsidiary supporting marines are pretty forgettable for the most part it's only a minor gripe and it's actually relatively understandable not everybody can be at the fore but as we learn about nathaniel garrow we need the context of his situation as he is introduced in eisenstein it's important because without it you can't really start to understand the difficulties he will have to overcome both literally and more metaphorically we start by gathering a feeling for the current state of the nascent imperium the mood of the astartes and perspective on how things are playing out in the crusade we see how there is a developing and continuing feeling of attrition occurring between some and you quickly gain the feeling that unusual things are happening strange procedures unusual requests the appearance of this so-called warrior lodges within the legions a closed clique of warrior brothers existing outside formal structures and chains of command within the legion and significantly frowned upon by traditional usually more terran-born astartes or just those who like to stick to the rules early in eisenstein we're introduced to the character of caleb aaron who is a house carl also sometimes titled as an equerry these were most often seen during the great crusade and toward the end of this time was seen somewhat as an outdated role as commented on during eisenstein it's a role usually taken by an ordinary human who is placed as say an advisor assistant and intermediary for a space marine and their role is to care for their masters war gear to act as a connection between themselves and other astartes or humans basically a servant to handle tedious basic tasks so their master can focus on more important matters caleb is relishing the aesthetic of the death guard astartes marbled armor he notes its green trim gold flashing but in carrying out his role he's also left musing about how moods among his masters of late appeared to be changing primarily since horus became warmaster we subsequently learn caleb is a failed aspirant but retains a great pride and honor at being allowed to walk the halls of a ship containing the emperor's finest warriors and rightfully so although many aspirants who fail to become a space marine may consider themselves dishonorable not worthy and may just seek to kill themselves outright or may not just survive anyway those who do survive and wish to serve can continue but it's a difficult role to take on board as becomes clear later when caleb speaks to other death guarder studies through the lens of caleb is how we are first introduced to the fabled sword of garrow libertas which is said to even predate him it's a truly ancient weapon of old earth possibly even from the later period to degrees from the dark age of technology how much garo's sword is mentioned it's it's almost a character in itself and we quickly introduced to other relevant figures in the framing of nathaniel garrow both mortarion who is a board and the first captain of the death guard typhon who of course later becomes the legendary typhus he greets temita and garrow and we immediately learn how the first captain is a greatly intimidating figure gravel voiced as soft and are the intimidating astartes he wears period terminator armor he has a power and presence dominating to all one of the early scenes that sticks in my mind is where caleb is inspecting though garrow's armor and making special note of his igor kuras garrow's eagles are both open eyed instead of the more standard of having one be blind but also people often forget the meaning of the acryla did change during the heresy period because the imperial aquila began as just an eagle with thunderbolts then would change to the two-headed eagle we see one blind one sighted and this blind eagle originally was meant to represent humanity looking back towards its obscured past the other eye was open looking to a more constructive future and there's often confusion around the meaning of the acryla but it's simply that during the crusade it was meant to represent the perspective of humanity at that time but then after the heresy the aquila's meaning changed to represent the more political union of the imperium of man in general as well of that which formed between terror and mars it retained its one eye closed one open but caleb had interpreted garrow's armor to be perhaps suggestive of actually being able to see into the future more than we might ordinarily be able to two eyes cited both looking into the future maybe even able to see things yet to come to pass this may not mean that gare of course held any psychic power we actually know that he does not it just really means he has the ability to see things more clearly than most to read between the lines that he is a prescient individual especially as the death guard or legion generally very quick to dismiss say any superstitious myths the death guard would say ours is a war to dispel fable and falsehood with the cold light of truth not to propagate myth to tap on the eagles and say that these are inanimate brass and no more just as we are all flesh and bone but such references become important later because really while eisenstein tells the death of one garrow and the birth of his new cleansed form by the fire of heresy the overall story is about the collapse of the legion's stable beliefs and their understandings of the galaxy so this observation early on is actually a specific metaphorical anchor to themes of the entire narrative i should probably note in this story we also meet amandera kendor who is what's referred to as a silent sister these are the blanks or null psyches of the emperor who crew the black ships and who from the heresy onward spend their time rounding up cycles to fuel the emperor's unending thirst for psychic energy they're known as oblivion knights and really i just wanted to mention this because i think it's perhaps the most epic title of any 40k role oblivion knights mortarion to the surprise of none as primark of the death guard is revealed to us as a truly terrifying figure akin to the grim reaper his huge man reaper scythe his scraping rasped voice he sounds like a death shroud come to life which quite honestly i seem to sometimes these days ashen headers face and armor which literally exudes toxic gases drifting out from around his neck brace armor in eisenstein there is an interesting adjacent detail here that i always enjoy they board a massive xenoship obviously slaughtering all in the name of the genocidal emperor all who are not human of course must be destroyed but this ship is shaped like a cylinder and is observed upon by a younger death guard within garrow's company solon decius who describes the ship as being unimpressive another astati's though tolen sendik notes that human space phrase once lived in cylinders such as this in the deep past before we mastered the force of gravity syndic refers to them as being called onil colonies decius again though says i feel like a fly trapped in a bottle what sort of inside out world is this and as he gestures upwards you see a landscape curving away to meet itself kilometers over their heads a thin bar of illuminators extends away down the axis of the cylinder disappearing to the fore and aft in yellow clouds garrow's eyes narrow as he spies moats of dark green moving shifting through the corridor of zero gravity at the world ship's center now this i actually find to be really interesting because it's a really small part of the story but in this these aliens have seemingly constructed what presumably references what are known as o'neill cylinders i'm always actually confused why it's spelt in the book only o n l y and then pronounced o nil which makes little sense presumably though it's attempting to insert what often happens in 40k with its references to real world science or history that it's going to be twisted manipulated misremembered over time and that zendek is suggesting that this is how ancient humans originally traveled to the new worlds before they had warp travel and stc during the dark age of technology adjacent adjacent the o'neill cylinder was a concept proposed by american physicist gerard k o'neal in his 1976 book the high frontier human colonies in space in fact this is the spacecraft you see at the end of the movie interstellar babylon 5 is also essentially an o'neill cylinder but adapted somewhat to the specific needs of a space station instead of a craft for mass population travel it always annoyed me actually that in babylon 5 they didn't explore that open space shown more it tends to be for obvious budgetary reasons more focused on smaller internal spaces anyway the concept of an o'neill cylinder would consist of two counter rotating cylinders their rotation meant to provide artificial gravity the habitat was planned to have a half-pressure atmosphere to save gas and reduce the needed strength and thickness of habitat walls and the air within the cylinder and the shell were meant to provide adequate shielding against say cosmic rays and the internal volume of an o'neill cylinder great enough to support its own even small weather systems for light heat and energy large mirrors are hinged at the back of each long section of windows running along the structure the unhinged edge of the windows pointing toward the sun the purpose of the mirrors is to reflect sunlight into the cylinders through the windows night is simulated by opening these letting the window view empty space the idea also permitting heat to radiate to space during the day these reflected sun appears to move as the mirrors move creating a natural progression of sun angles it's pretty complicated stuff because the habitat and these mirrors must be perpetually aimed at the sun to collect solar energy and light the habitat's interior anyway it's very interesting stuff i feel i might have gone slightly off topic here but o'neill cylinders go look it up they're very interesting albeit very theoretical and probably not possible this idea fits with descriptions of the earliest vessels during mankind's burgeoning exploration into space the first colony ships during the dark age of technology may have been similar in design to these o'neill cylinders it's nice to have that little reference crowbarred in to 40k the astartes of course just exterminate the xenos and garrow along with some sisters enter the hatchery where they encounter a modified giant xenos these your goal and this is where i come to the point because it is relevant they discover some mutated younglings who appear to have psychic power and one speaks to garrow through his mind and tells him they have seen the future and that everything he worships and knows will die he believes this to be in relation to their current situation but of course forgero it is not it's about all the stuff that's about to go down back aboard their ship the endurance a sister of silence comes to garrow with an unsworn sister who is able to speak with him having not yet taken her vow of tranquility that all the sisters of silence will eventually take garrow reiterates what this psycho said to him that all he worshipped would die but garrow exclaims how he does not worship anything as he is an astartes this is presumably a nod to those previously mentioned core themes in eisenstein and the early heresy stories but specifically here for garrow the astartes are heavily insulated against entertaining even the possibility that their foundational beliefs are open to question it also obviously is going to reference something which occurs with garrow later on but this is also where we get a key developmental moment indirectly for garrow where caleb garrow's house car inadvertently observes ignatius grulgore commander of the second company and not of terran born instead he is like many of the newer members originating from the death guard homeworld of barbarus caleb sees him making some suspicious trade down a corridor of the ship with another death guard caleb and grugo also have a verbal confrontation with grugor voicing his opinions that a house girl is a pathetic useless role his mere presence only serving to remind successful marines like himself of their potential shortcomings and failures that individuals like himself like to dream imagine pretend play dress-up to be worthy of astartes moreover that he is even a spy for garrow this sets for us the contrasting differences of opinion and behaviour gare and others like grilgore in the widest sense the terran born and those of primark homeworlds another character apothecary voyan intervenes and saves caleb from what could have been his last moments caleb asserts his noticing of the abnormal suspicious meetings that he has seen between astartes and other private areas of the ship but voyan dismisses this as being anything to worry about and as was often the case around this period in the crusade and early heresy many loyalist astartes believe them to be nothing more than distilled products of astari's brothership in the form of these so-called lodges warrior lodges cadeb though has seen them passing around a badge a medallion bearing the mark of their legion that it is some kind of membership token he notes that this could even be suggestive of sedition among the legion caleb states that secrecy is the enemy of truth that meetings in shadows even of themselves are suggestive of conspiracy this is a lot to say coming from a house call but voyan again dispels this and reiterates that it is not something even worth entertaining because loyalist artists could never allow such things to come to pass and the conclusion can only be that the happenings are entirely innocent of course voyan is biased for reasons that become clear because voyan is heavily committed to the lodges and this coupled with him being an astartes means that he will not even consider any possibility of such things being a dangerous sign so one of the problems with astartes of the crusade because they were so committed so indoctrinated unquestioningly of the emperor's core tenets for themselves and their brothers and their quest that they're essentially an occult like mentality they can't see how it looks to observe us outside their world and of course sure enough this blinkered unquestioning mentality would become very clearly problematic when gero meets with mortarion and typhon they share the mythical poisoned cups of the death guard they walk together for a more informal conversation and maltarion explains how these acts themselves are important that people must be seen to be rewarded mortarion is essentially implying that he wishes it necessary for a more competitive sense of duty to exist between the marines he tells garrow how he is respected by the death guard even by grulgore and that the astartes trust him in his character and leadership garrow though does not feel honored in fact he feels the opposite of what mortarion is expecting he doesn't say this of course but because garrow is a true astartes of the emperor mortarion's feeble efforts to lead gerodena path away from the emperor fail spectacularly garrow feels now troubled and although mortarion's suggestiveness is so vague as to have full deniability it still felt very uncomfortable gary knows to trust his instincts and they are screaming red flag to him an undercurrent and hidden meaning that he couldn't identify and he couldn't identify it because for him now the meaning is unthinkable montarion talks about wanting unity in the death guard as horus does in the astartes as a whole except of course when you read between the lines horus and mortarion's idea of unity means following only whatever they dictate no matter how egregious extremely wrong bizarre or uncomfortable a concept it doesn't actually mean bringing everybody together the state's pledge loyalty always first to the emperor which guerra of course understands all too well and those astartes recruited from home worlds in the later crusade have a far weaker sense of this even if they might say otherwise maltarion asks garrow about these lodges and what he thinks of these and gary explains that he would never consider being any part of these multiram gives us no definitive opinion as to his stance he then explains that they will now travel to the ist van system and that he wants garrow to be his equery among a council which will include the war master garrow is now genuinely blown away by this shaken to the core that's such a rare and unexpected honor we come then to grolgo and typhon talking about garrow and how he's terran born and straight as an arrow garrow condescending about him they're basically saying he's the boy scout of astartes which reminds me very much of a certain well-known tom clancy novel but it comes out how some of the death guard like grill gore place mortarion first and the emperor second and there are soon things that are going to come to bloom and that a time will come where loyalties must be placed these conversations and their blunt rhetoric are obviously extremely dangerous and next we have mortarion showing garrow a transmitted video of a woman's death on istvan 3. presumably mortaring wants to gauge his reaction it appears that for us we understand it's likely a chaos incursion taking place for the astartes it's confusing she seems to die by what we presume could be a demon but either way it's so horrifying even he is an astartes finds it pretty difficult to stomach then we come to garrow a mortarion arriving aboard the vengeful spirit this is horus's ship garo is very suspicious because there are not more casual ship staff including astardis just observing this unusual gathering of so many primocks and then additionally more specifically he also notes there are very few remembrances and appointed artisans and this is all things that you would expect to a massive degree of ceremonial display for such a gathering of multiple primarks side note that the inclusion of artisans into the great crusade i always think this was intentioned by the emperor in part because he knew that the astartes in their crusade would be only a small period for humanity that it wouldn't be permanent and so all the remembrances and artisans that the emperor sent out were there to basically document the crusade because the astartes were never meant to be a permanent feature of the imperium so the idea was the emperor wanted to collect all the information and visuals of this so that it could be remembered in the future so it's such a small thing that's mentioned but i always think these things have bigger implications that you can read from so garrow's impression of the meeting basically is this horus lupica's court appears greatly self-serving almost something of a challenge to the court of the emperor they watch this video again of isfan 3 and garo notes that only a few other astartes appear as moved as he was mainly it's loken of horus's lunar wolves reacting to the woman's screaming it's interesting that it describes garros having to steal his stomach so as to not feel revulsion from her death and this is surprising considering what we know of astantis that they should have to feel any uncomfortable feelings toward death but it gives a sense to me how offensive her death must be in a human sense something that is the exact remit of a demon to be as offensive as possible but it's perhaps more surprising and suggestive that there are these other astartes that don't seem in any way similarly affected and this is something which is kind of lost on garrow because again he has no reason to really draw anything from that then we brought to another astari's character saw tarvitz and garrow meeting upon exiting of the ship tarvitz belongs to the empress children legion a captain now and garrow has fought alongside him before we get the strong sense that garrow has complete faith in him as a battle brother this is less notable in and of itself it's more just of a contrast against the discomfort that he has continually felt even among his own death guard here he seems relaxed his guard is not up basically once they're back aboard the endurance we hear solendecius and the other astartes playing a game regicide which is obviously meant to be some kind of far future iteration of chess again the smaller side it's great to see astartes sitting down to say play a board game together between battle engagements especially given the banter and harassment they give each other it indicates more about each other's personality merrick voyn the apothecary we heard from earlier now has an argument with others in this seventh company under gero at this point we could speculate that he in fact belongs to one of these warrior lodges and has to defend his position because he is surprisingly defensive about it but upon examination by others he actually then struggles to explain why precisely these things are necessary because such close bonds already exist among astartes why is it that they need to go beyond this and create special secret groups what's the point voyan becomes very agitated by this and his inability to present an objective explanation descends into aggressive argumentation that it is not in any way a harmful secret society except this is very clearly not true because it's blatantly clear to all that the mere existence of these groups is already creating fractures between the astartes and suspicions something supporters of the lodges seem to claim the exact opposite of their purpose to be then garu arrives and upon assessing the situation is very quickly enraged but this emotional outburst shifts quickly to profound disappointment garrow tells voyan that if he wishes to stay within his company then this deception regarding the matter is greatly troubling garrow compels voyne to pledge that if the lodge ever tries to turn him in any way from the emperor then voyan would reject them this is quite the powerful and insightful statement by garrow and it goes to some measure to demonstrate his ability to see in question more than the average astartes as such voyan is baffled by even the suggestion but his trained astati's mentality means that without hesitation he swears on terror itself that he would do so garrow then briefs them on the plans for isfahan 3. we have a little time where gareth reminisces about the origins of the death guard and barbarossa and the slow loss of the dusk raiders from their terran traditions and although you could argue that these historical asides are somewhat irrelevant to the main story it actually isn't because it grants us another snapshot into garrow's character we can see that he longs for a different era where there is far more respect and ceremony between the astartes more order more clearly defined lines of operation as we've seen repeatedly fractures are showing among the mix of terenborne and the primark homeworld those like garu who begin their journey from terror itself will likely have been in the presence of the emperor sometime or at least in his aura whereas those who have began their life as an astartes far from terror do not have those same connections and loyalty one of the main problems with especially the later parts of the crusade was the speed with which the emperor wanted to complete this stage of his new empire we might consider there was a reason as to why the emperor pushed so hard to achieve the end goals of the crusade and this has never really been explained but it's very suspicious how hard the emperor seemed to want to conclude things almost as if he was working to a planned timeline or running against some kind of invisible galactic clock because had it not been for this impatient effort had the emperor not been in such a rush perhaps he could have returned some astartes for example back to terror itself rotated astartes to different areas of duty given some of them less battle time more time to consider the importance of their loyalty to humanity and the emperor but one might also consider as i've noted before my belief that the astartes were not actually designed as a force to go on existing for 10 millennia as we were talking about just a minute ago i think they were merely just an iteration of thunder warriors and so they likely would have eventually become irrelevant basically extinguished after the crusade and so perhaps the emperor believed if he could achieve his goals quickly enough that any grumblings or problems down the line could just be dealt with once the important issues of unifying the galaxy were already secured basically do it as fast as possible push all that stuff out the side and then crack on with the core goals then of course we even have the more complex question about did the emperor malcador deliberately orchestrate the heresy at which point it's understandable why he seems so apathetic about the genetic and mental stability of the astati's legions basically did the emperor plan that the studies would essentially just cancel each other out the astartes were so numerous for the crusade he couldn't do what he did with the thunder warriors and just slaughter them all in a mountain out of sight out of mind and so instead he had to construct this extremely convoluted plan whereby most of the astartes would all kill each other and then perhaps his custodies and some other things would be enough to just finish off the rest it's really unknown this is wildly speculative it's not based in any real solid foundations but i think there's enough evidence out there to at least place it as a pretty solid speculative option anyway back to eisenstein we're now on isvan 3. they start having the old bit of battle rat attack boom counter 7 all that jazz they fight their way to this comms location on a subsidiary world and find a big dome that is open inside there's a big stone statue called a ziggurat which is basically a tiered pyramidal structure and these were adopted by several cultures in ancient human history the emperor's children turn up and they carry on the fighting garo decius and so on and eventually they find themselves fighting what's referred to as a war singer and so this is one of the first real challenges we've seen for the astartes they have to fight this strange semi-warp using creature called the war singer who is using sound weaponry it reminds very much of the elected to be developed noise marines with the emperor's children it's carving through astartes with blades of sound and this takes garrow's leg clean off with these weapons his estadie's brothers managed to save him with one of the emperor's children's apothecary tending to him much to the annoyance of voyan not in a malicious way but obviously he's a death guard and wants to be in that position of saving his captain himself then we see gary describing his brain going into stasis as part of the estadi's conditioning protecting him from the huge body shock of his leg being taken clean off the damage of the war singer seems to have caught giraffe guard and he is surprised that this was even able to do such catastrophic damage smaller side here this actually speaks to something i always think about which is i get this impression from the unification onward that the crusade is basically about crushing weak xenos and human wilds who are in semi states of ruin already with massive entirely unnecessary overwhelming force basically i always feel like the crusade is the emperor spawn camping most planets that they tried to crush it reminds that scene during unification where there's this small township they don't really have particularly strong weapons but they they resist the emperor's will they stand up to his forces they line up for a big battle and they're like we don't want to take this now instead of being talked down allowed to run away demonstrated that they have no hope of beating the emperor's forces they're just horrifyingly graphically butchered with the most extreme levels of violence no mercy shown men women perhaps even young fighters that could be considered children cut down i've spoken about it before and it's a harrowing description and it talks to the will of the emperor he doesn't care about these people he just wants to send a message with the most level of violence possible so the emperor's great crusade mostly is the astar he's being vastly overpowered to the point that they have a big fight and then all sit around having a good laugh a drink and a banter about it so by the time they come to this point later in the crusade their crushing obliteration of enemies of humanity leaves them seemingly more concerned about their internal politics than the missions that they're on it feels as if battle engagements are a routine thing that larger ongoing structural on organizational issues seem to weigh far more heavily on their minds which for astartes bred for war is surely not a constructive or a healthy thing idle hands etc now gary survives of course he comes around but now he has this augmented leg but this is where a critical moment occurs garrow learns that in the next engagement horus will be choosing which units are to be deployed and garrow comments on this being very unusual but they note that horus is the war master and so presume that he has some reason for it again it's not in their realm of comprehension to imagine the true reasoning so they simply follow that all as well of course this is not the case and the next actions will have major implications for the imperium for the next 10 000 years because of his injury apothecaries have not cleared garo for duty this means he will not be able to take part in the next engagement and some might consider this to be fate garrow will not take part in the isvan iii assault as ordered by typhon himself gary's very obviously zenith studies would be enraged about this this moment right here the fact that garrow remains behind is in my opinion one of the most pivotal events in the entire horus heresy because without this occurring the heresy and garrosh's future could have been very very different catastrophically worse even if not just significantly more difficult to come to a reasonable conclusion because as we see through eisenstein garrow will become one of the primary triggers for the waking of the loyalists to the coming rebellion we can deal with the fact that you know the emperor and malcolm basically know what's going on but nonetheless guerrero does play a role in kind of waking things up garrow briefly verbally spars with grolgo again just spitting their standard salty banter and barges on typhon to demand he must be able to attend this new assault on isfahan 3. grogal though gets ruined by typhon who's telling him that he's also going to remain behind to the rage and humiliation of grolgo except that immediately after this situation typhon reveals to grulgo that the reason he must remain is to be able to watch over guerrero that the war master and mortarion do not believe that garrow will stand with them at what grulgo references as the turning point which we very obviously can understand what that means girl girl clearly knows the score he even has voiced it several times openly that he has a strong dislike of terran born like garrow and thinks the legion better off without them typhon explains that horus is seeking to specifically select units from battle companies to be deployed so as to separate those who do not share his and his men like gruel goes by now nearly openly traitorous convictions typhon explains how there will be duties for guru gore to perform on behalf of horus and typhon says garrow will betray them when it comes down to it girl girl states that he will not allow this to occur so it's all but said at this point that grugor is going to kill garrow and his loyalist followers aboard their ship when it comes down to it garrow is meanwhile further contemplating the situation and he cannot shake the sense that something is deeply deeply wrong but yet again his belief in their studies and their rock-solid brotherhood of loyalty will not allow him to entertain the possibility that anything cataclysmic will soon come to pass much like the ultramarine's word bearers at calth he reveals to his brothers they are to be situated aboard an old imperial frigate the eisenstein [Music] the section concerning the eisenstein actually begins nearly halfway through the actual narrative so quite far into the story but it makes up the majority of what remains garrow and the other astartes come aboard the eisenstein grugor seemingly has brought few of his astartes under his immediate command with him garrow feels that the tensions between their studies are becoming more than just friendly rivalry he says what am i sensing meanwhile on isfahan 3 the astartes are engaging the locals and basically smashing through them they take note of the arrival though of the legiomortis drop pods containing titans the god machine's footfall is so heavy so powerful that it shakes even astartes from the ground and the roof of the bunker they've just taken is cracking under the vibration one of these titans though specifically is not just any titan but an imperator titan the dias irae and things quickly start to go wrong the death guard on the planet is starting to have communication difficulties these appear not to be jammed but as if their comms have been disabled deliberately they brush it off though as part of the nature of combat things can go wrong and there must be some other explanation that is not immediately presented back aboard the eisenstein and gary learns about the history of the ship and that it contains a fairly grounded and loyal crew he immediately feels a sense of kinship with these ordinary humans and again this is something you tend to see with the astartes of terran born origin they often will appear closer to humanity than others who would come later who tend to have a more disconnected sense of service even though most marines come of course from human origin gero begins to suspect and consider that this posting is stranger than it first appeared the ship appears to be incorrectly configured nor assigned any specific role suitable for such a vessel nor is it even really necessary for the current engagement given the status of enemy on the ground garrow concludes their only role could be that of orbital bombardment but this would make no sense for one thing horus had already dismissed this idea and for another there are starte's brothers actively on the surface still garo simply cannot place just what the problem facing them is which is understandable how could he anticipate it has carl keleb felt that somehow the emperor has spoken to him as well whilst he was praying for the recovery of garrow and now he is tasked with following among the ship's ordinary crew and unloading the cargo of gragor's storm bird this is where caleb and then apothecary voyan discover that grugor has brought aboard huge virus bombs containing the extremely dangerous life eater virus world enders used only for exterminatus voyan tells caleb to inform garrow immediately this is where a lot starts to happen in very short order and emperor's children thunderhawk suddenly strays into the firing positions of eisenstein but also appears to be under fire from astartes fighters this is greatly confusing for both garrow and his death guard even more so when the report comes in that they have turned against horus and will not obey his commands the death guard comment that surely the galaxy has gone insane especially when they discover that it is garu's most honored friend from the emperor's children aboard this thunderhawk saul tarvitz tarvitz in a desperate attempt to reveal the situation to garrow and those on the eisenstein tells how he has learned that the entire planet will be bombed and this is why they refuse their orders the human crew cannot believe it nor can the astartes saul is screaming into the vox every astartes on the planet is going to die ingarro doesn't destroy tarvitz but does take out the attack craft that are after him they send a false report that the thunderhawk is destroyed along with the attackers in the explosion garrow decia sendak and the others discuss the current situation none of them can believe what is happening garrow finally comes to the only possible conclusion that the betrayal must have come from horus himself but as they pragmatically work through this analysis they come to understand that worse still it must also be that angron fulgrim and even their own primark mortarion also know of and presumably have for whatever reason gone along this treacherous path of insanity garrow thinks back to mortarion's questioning and it suddenly sits with an entirely different tone and perspective gary begins to realize the truth of things finally caleb and voyan appear to speak of finding the virus bombs aboard eisenstein and that grug and his men are loading these weapons of destruction voyan recalls to them for clarity the effect of the life eater virus on condemned criminals a single droplet would eat clean through into a screaming heretic i always found the use of some terminology in the series a little strange for example the use of the phrase heretic it seems not to fit as i always think of heritage coming much later once the official religion of the emperor has begun improper not just a few scant believers here and there i know obviously heresy can apply that but it just doesn't seem right strangely it's used in these early times of the crusade it just seems like a heretic is something that the ecclesiarchy is going and persecuting and that a traitor or renegade might be a better used word here they confront gorgo who reiterates the standing talking points of the traitors that the emperor has abandoned them he's done nothing for them and that he's put civilian humans in charge of the imperium who have not shed blood nor known the struggle for unity these are all the default points of the traitors who essentially place themselves higher than humanity not as its servants or protectors but seeing themselves as victors and would-be rulers this was not at all the plan the emperor had as we understand it heresy or not the estates would never have been in charge of the imperium by the emperor's command which again makes it ironic that this is to a degree now largely the case in m41 garrow calmly tells grugor to stand down and grugal tells garrow he is outnumbered however the following engagement favors garrow with libertas and his expert close quarters skills grow girls traitors cannot risk detonating their life eater virus pods and so very limited in what they can do despite having bolters and more men now when it comes to 40k narratives i'm normally not a great fan of combat sections but this description in eisenstein is a great example of it done right especially the details of garrow beating enemy with the pommel of his sword undercutting arms to hit weak points it feels very specific flowing it enables you to imagine the sequence and pace of combat we also have caleb finally get a snipe at grougor as he shoots a bolt pistol asking the emperor to guide his aim and although merely a token effort the round knocks gulgor's aim off enraged he throws a blade at caleb hitting him in the chest and taking him down but you get the sense that even the fact that caleb lands around on grilgo is enough to absolutely incense him and i think from the point of view from caleb grugor kind of feels like somehow he has been bested by this pathetic weak human the fact he would dare shoot at him at all but this is when they see that a virus bomb has been cracked amid the combat and is already causing crew to vomit tear at their skin which is falling away like rotten fruit they're quickly consumed amid the gaseous vapors and dissolved in seconds caleb along with some death guard and crew are caught in an emergency compartment seal one of the death guard is cut in half gareth notes the horror of the chemical reactions occurring within and they vent it all off the ship as apparently the virus cannot survive without an atmosphere garrote and voyan return to the bridge and they have to recount the revelations of heresy from gurukor they have to try and explain how they must alone now carry this vital message of warning to the other astartes who of course can barely believe what they're hearing which is pretty much an ongoing theme at the start of the heresy gary explains how he did not follow the command to slaughter saul tarvitz who he hopes is now warning those on the surface to seek shelter from the virus bombs gary explains that the traitors are not just grudelgor and his lodge kin but it contains all of the aforementioned primarks and horus they finally come to the agreement that their only course of action is to try and get a message to terror to warn of this heresy gara has everybody take the legendary oath of moment this basically being a proto-purity seal that are now commonplace among space marines in m41 the oath of moment is though not religious or protective scripture it's a sworn declaration to complete your chosen objective or task no matter what to your battle brothers and of course to the emperor garrow takes a brief time to reflect on the disastrous situation how could it be that his brothers could turn against the emperor he considers how now this message was the most important thing above all else and it must be delivered at any cost more important than any of them more important than attempting to save all those left on the surface of isfahan 3. this is also when we start to get these first glimpses of the earliest followers of the emperor as a divine being garrow discovers caleb's belief in the emperor as a religious figure he finds scraps of paper where caleb was talking about the emperor as being the god of mankind and these are the first notes which are circulating around the sort of proto-imperium basically it's loregar's words that have been copied and replicated and are now being seeded throughout humanity garen notes that he is already aware of this sect of humans believing in the god emperor one thing that i do always find with 40k it's so vast that it can be quite difficult to remember key details and it's also why i enjoy revisiting things several times over so this detail about caleb and his belief in the emperor as the god of mankind is actually something i'd forgotten because it's been some time since i was looking at eisenstein an early in the story where caleb was speaking about the god emperor i was thinking hold on were people even openly speaking about the god emperor already surely not in this time the view of the imperium was very much that of a secular rationalist society and the emperor had sought to purge humanity of mysticism and actually that is something you see also in garrow not garo the figure garo the 42nd part of the heresy anyway the beliefs that had come to be held by many among the masses of humans like caleb were that the emperor's protestations of being a mere ordinary human were in fact a test of belief and faith the more anybody told them that they were not a god only further entrenched their beliefs that they were being tested in their belief to know that it was the opposite to be true which is of course to anybody outside looking in absolutely absurd and quite python-esque for that matter all right i am the messiah and so on and so on so this was the early formation of what would eventually become the cult of the emperor and the default state religion of humanity in the millennia to come but even in these early times quite amazingly we can see the benefit of it caleb's belief in the emperor in many ways enabled him and spurred him to be more driven to fight against enemies of man like grulgo he had faith and he believed that the emperor would protect him he was wrong of course but it gave him that spirit to do what he would not have had the fortitude for otherwise anandesius is arguing with garrow about if they were wrong what the consequences would be resenting being tied in with garrow's fate now that he had no say in what was happening meanwhile on the surface timiter and the other death guard are slowly realizing that the virus bombs are about to hit the planet they notice that the titan diazire has closed off all of its vents and has become fully sealed from the external atmosphere and then he visibly sees the bio bombs streaking across the sky they rush for a bunker to get in and seal it shut many death guards do make it inside but temater waits outside too long and along with the veteran dreadnought is consumed in the horror as the virus rains down smothering the planet and dissolving all biological matter even a study suits do not fully protect against virus bombs garrow and decius watch as horus's ship the vengeful spirit fires upon the world and ignites the gases produced by a decaying planet as the entire world is turned into a firestorm they try to bluff why eisenstein is not firing on the planet that it's had some malfunction but it's a weak argument and they know they will soon have to escape and fight off any incoming ships that want to board them an escaping thunderhawk approach is containing a captain of the sons of horus after initial doubts garrow senses that they are loyal to the emperor still he detects this by sensing there is a woman on board with whom he has been having intermittent psychic contact since the start of this particular campaign when they eventually come aboard introductions are made all around the son of horus now states he will no longer be known by that legion and takes back the title for himself as a lunar wolf with them are kyriel cinderman a primary iterator euphrate kira this new saint this remembrance sir and acton cruz the half-herd captain third company of the lunar wolves they plan to punch out of this armada and now to make their escape and this is where something really goes quite catastrophically wrong because the crew of eisenstein are discussing how they should escape what their options are but before they can implement any of these though a weak minded vox operator tyradine mass is dreaming of his own command and decides to report them all to typhon eisenstein has cleverly reported problems on board and been allowed to fall back but by now typhon realizes what is happening he knows that garo is a board and he begins to engage eisenstein because of tyrion mass they begin their attempt to escape and we have great descriptions of the ships attempting to maneuver we also have a nice description of the navigator and how the navigator has been in isolated meditation but will live for the thrill of the jump into warp space after a pretty exciting description of their escape attempt and typhon's ship unable to keep up with their swift course changes of the eisenstein typhoon ends up being pulled into a gravity well of the white moon of isvan iii enraged knowing he faces utter humiliation having lost garrow when he will face mortarion garrow now being on his way as well to report to the emperor they all finally get eisenstein to make a difficult jump to warp space which the navigator along with apparently many others feared making because of the seeming resurgence of horrors within the warp as the eisenstein travels in warp space reports from sergeant haker come below that intruders are on board but of course what they discover is far worse one of the very first interactions of astartes and plague demons of nurgle garrott and his men engaged them along with foul descriptions of these monsters the ship appears to be also decaying rusting bursting with ooze garroth even has a vision of his men being corrupted their armor rusting and bloating as they become plague marines the death guard icon disappearing and now being replaced by the three rings of nurgle mortarion also now speaks to gero but he's shocked out of this one of the navigators adjutant kills herself in a skin tearing misery impaling herself on garrow's sword then they encountered the remains of the other traitors on the flight deck who have seemingly been trapped when garrow purged the bay of the life heater virus those who had been partially dissolved were now decomposing and left in horrific states but they'd also been found by the touch of the plague and were becoming walking reanimated abominations including very unfortunately garrow's former house car caleb some of the descriptions of nurgle creatures are always amazing and this is no exception around the legs of the abnormal astartes were things that were once members of eisenstein's crew men caught halfway through the venomous ravages of the life eater and suspended their flesh in tatters organs are washed with icar they bathe and scrambled forward to attack garros warriors decius led the firing as the death guard let fly with bolters and flamers a ragged scarecrow of skin and bone flying itself to the deck and mute fly blown pustules pocking her face eaten away by leprous cancers there are always creative descriptions around nurgle one of the most foul is that which i've referenced before the description of the port master in dark imperium plague war being steadily ruined by nurgle over and over as his bloated split dissolved and rotted in every way possible all while his soul is confined and attached to the still living shell of his body which is now existing in various states of d and recomposition finally a bloated knurling emerges from his split distended belly whilst chomping through gobbets of fat viscera and chunks of rotten flesh this artificially still conscious portmaster is in maddened states of agony and typhon now typhus observes and she continues to have an extended conversation with a demon nurgling before finding the wretched port master is allowed to die it's a completely insane situation but it's one of the most disgusting and best in 40k again if you ever really wanted to make 40k a movie and you didn't want it to have a pretty adult rating you're gonna have to tone all that down which is why i think they will always struggle to make a 40k movie anyway back to eisenstein gero and the other remaining loyalists now fight off these misshapen monsters supposedly the first plague marines really to ever be witnessed they quickly learned that astartes blessed by the chaos gods have strange and difficult challenges to overcome mainly for the death guard their bloated corpses numbed to any damage and extremely hard to kill we also see the effects of the plague knife carried by them as decius is wounded and his body begins to become ravaged by the plagues and diseases almost as if they were coated by the life-heater virus itself deceius in an attempt to stop this from consuming his whole body hacks off his own arm with his chain sword garrow then of course has to face off against a belligerent grogor who is as boasting and self-assured as ever but garu and libertas finally best him although as libertas is enveloped by the apparent doe of gruelgr's distended stomach it describes garrow cutting right through him opening him up so that fleshy ropes of intestine burst out and groggo is left wailing trying to mash his innards back into himself it's a comically absurd death that the grumbling gravel voiced bad guy is given this extremely over-the-top final blow causing catastrophic physical damage and i always enjoy their parting words no no no grogor pounded across the deck towards him raising his blade you will not deny me my satisfaction i will see you dead garrow i will outlive you the battle captain brought up his sword and batted grillgo away be gone you stinking freak back to your hell and choke on it then they realized that the ship's getting field is failing and the warp itself is sustaining the life force for these abominations important to remember that at this time many astartes and the vast majority of those in the imperium do not fully understand even what is happening or how the forces of chaos are corrupting them so any revelations about the warp sustaining demonic creatures is entirely new garrow orders them to emergency crash out of the warp to save the ship and their mission the eisenstein emerges into an empty sector of the galaxy but now they are adrift isolated far from the help of any loyalist imperials garrow and voyan are assessing the damage in the aftermath voyage voices his frustration their situation and the interesting thing with voyan is the fact that he like decius vents but with a far more restrained nature also with voyan being part of the lodge structure of the brotherhood we see that even membership within the lodges did not automatically equate to being a traitor but it certainly qualified them as naive idiots and voyan realizes this now more strongly than ever a curious thing when cruz the lunar wolf attends garrow with a battle report they're comparing their ages we get some insight to that favorite 40k topic of mine time and their discussion seems to again back up my position you all well know now that the perception of time is a significant factor within 40k and it's also greatly confusing for those living existing in the imperium and here's a relevant quote garrow broke away from the sight of his comrade then by that reckoning i am older still with all due respect you're a stripling battle of captain garrow you think so luna wolf gary replied you forget the nature of the realm through which we pass i would warrant that were we to match our days of birth to the imperial calendar i would be as old as you brother perhaps even your senior impossible scoffed the other astartes is it time moves at different rates on terror and sithonia in the warp it becomes malleable and unpredictable when i think of the years i've spent in passage through that infernal domain or in the little death of cold sleep on voyages below the speed of light i may not match you in days but in chronology the story would be quite different this is also a round where we learned that iterator cindermen and the remembrances that came aboard are part of the early beginnings of the religion of the imperium the divine cult of the emperor and they describe how they feel they have been touched by the emperor especially euphrates killer interesting of course when you consider that iterators were designed to speak the imperial truth to new worlds of the imperium that have logic reasoning to help people understand and cast off their spiritualism and religious tendencies but now cinderella believes that they're feeling true faith for the emperor that's quite a u-turn and that now he understood why these societies crushed under a banner of secular rule and the emperor had resisted them so fiercely while he was still acting as an official iterator for the imperial truth they consider that perhaps their divine cult of faith was now likely elsewhere and that perhaps it was reaching a point where it might become a true following if only they had a symbol to get behind somebody like a saint somebody like remembrance sir killer the role of cinderella as an iterator was especially useful for them because he had a long and considerable experience of speaking preaching to congregations of humanity but they all understood the danger that is present for them by practicing this cult of faith in what is meant to be a strictly enforced secular society they're all risking execution basically but garrow discovers them and comes to speak gary tries to remonstrate with kira but she essentially argues to him that the faith in the emperor is the real imperial truth based on the fact that the emperor's divinity is self-evident and that unlike classic religions the faith of the emperor can touch your soul through the void and that he is clearly a divine being that faith in him is the only natural conclusion of this reality garrow is already broken because of what's happened so far and the collapse of all his normal guidelines and boundaries leave him questioning everything they ever thought were true so it's not surprising that this includes the imperial truth because that could be as much as a lie as everything else that they believed up until this point which interestingly seems to also be somewhat what is occurring with robert goloman when we fast forward to the indomitus era of m41 so garrow is having as are all the surviving astartes on the eisenstein an existential crisis kiera explains how she did not want to be a prophet or feel the touch of god upon her but this is her reality now she has no choice but to follow these events to their obvious conclusion that she has become what is now her true calling the chosen role by the divine emperor of man narrow mentions the word spoken to him by caleb you are of purpose killer says we both are back on the bridge they realize that they have few supplies and with no way to travel into the warp safely now their navigator is gone dead i think they're discussing what they can do being thousands of years away from help they even discuss culling some of the crew but this in itself seems equally futile it's not going to really gain them anything garrow enters the bridge and orders the crew to charge the warp engines he plans to jettison the drive block of the ship and burn them with thrusters to detonate the warp engine and create an artificial supernova which will resonate so powerfully in the warp it should be a calling for any ships in a vast distance to hopefully mean that an imperial ship may come to discover them when their navigators pick up on activity however it could also destroy them should they not be able to escape the blast radius and the worst possibility of course is that it attracts the wrong kind of attention apothecary voyan is so panicked by this that he pulls his bolt pistol on garrow and threatens to kill him gary refuses to cancel their orders angero says he will have no regrets as he knows that even if voyan kills him they will be saved gary explains that he has faith and taking the weapon from voyan says the emperor protects garen cruz meet and discuss things and the shame of their traitorous legions garrow wants crews to genetically sign on to a chronicle of events that should survive even if they're destroyed or otherwise failed to survive but cruz notes this is largely a future action they also discussed the issue of the burgeoning religious cult on board and how more joining it desius is struggling now to survive and garrow comes to see him he's in a terrible state of decay and suffering because of the plague knife wounding by gulgor he's falling into despair and appears to have a little hope of survival as noted earlier deseus was already doubtful of garrow's cause and so he can't really draw comfort from garrow's beliefs and the purpose of their mission there were ships now finally approaching the eisenstein and gary prepares for them with his astartes distributed around he wants to allow them to board so they can make a judgment on who or what these would-be saviors or executioners are horus xenos or loyalist garrow is walking among the ordinary crew and he considers how he had respected ordinary human soldiers before now but today he feels something much much more because his eyes are open when he speaks with the shipmaster who comments the astartes in some ways are so very like ordinary humans but he cannot help wonder what they would do if there were no wars to fight interesting that this has occurred to this ordinary man but seemingly not to garrow who finds this line of thinking challenging maybe it's never occurred to the astartes that at some point they would in fact become redundant as were the thunder warriors finally the ship is breached and the imperial fists come aboard with the primark rogue or dawn garrow has to recall the whole situation to dawn and of course it does not go well garen had been so busy with escaping from the traitors and the events that came after so wrapped in his own crisis of beliefs that they had not stopped to think that perhaps they wouldn't be believed and suddenly their entire mission appears to be very rapidly all falling apart i love of course when garroth asked the primark of the imperial fists if he is blind because only one blinded by that of his brother could be suffering such an ailment dawn takes this unsurprisingly quite badly and comes for garrow to slaughter him but then gary is saved by remembrance akilah the other remembrance sir olatun connects her head up to the view screens and then she will be displaying events that have played out she notes that these images can't be altered or tampered with as one of the emperor's official remembrances dawn watches the hololith and cruz notes some among the sons of horus he recognized garrow describes tequila a dreamed vision of him fighting some horror like that of grulgo aboard the eisenstein dawn spends considerable time considering what to do now and in the end he decides that sigismund his first captain will take the imperial fists toward the traitors while he will carry on to terror to personally deliver the message of heresy to the emperor garrow and voyan now have time to resolve their overhanging issues garrow tells voyan that he should never fear again and that he may find comfort in the papers that he is held from caleb his house carl he gives these to voyan which speak about the emperor's divinity it seems likely that voyan's approval of the lodges will now be replaced by this cult worship of the emperor the phalanx of rogueldorn enters the soul system of terror garrow though painfully learns how he will not be delivering any message to the emperor as dawn informs him that they're being shadowed by a ship carrying the sisters of silence who have instructed dawn that keeler along with garen his contingents will be secured now on luna here among the massive military base constructed they will await their fate i remember this being initially quite frustrating because all through the story of eisenstein garrow has been struggling to get to terror to see the emperor and tell him warn him basically and it's a little deflating to know that actually they don't get to do that but on reflection i actually really like this because it's not some big grandiose ending it shows some solid logic in the thinking of the imperials and although garrow and his followers appear to be telling the truth in these mad days dawn is taking no risks along with the sisters of silence and honesty he has right to do so because few know what to believe anymore or even what is exactly happening sagara and his companions arrive on luna and they have seen terror on their approach so near but so far they meet the sisters of silence again as they arrive and garrett encounters this previous sister he met so long ago now here at the summer citadel garo ponders trying to sleep on what he had seen what had happened to grogor had it been real he felt inside of him that it was this dark spectre maybe reflected in the warp by all humans but he also felt a bright light of gold he couldn't put his finger exactly on it but it was there of course we can speculate that this may well have been the emperor coming to him in a warp vision we see as well now unfortunately a final transformation of decius who had been wounded previously now fully corrupted by chaos the sheer agony of his body having become a rotten pile of carcass infested with nurgles plagues and fat borrowing maggots is too much even for an astartes to bear this is a perfect example of the core of how knurkle functions it corrupts through despair it brings more to us to a state whereby they cannot contend with their suffering so great that they simply scream for death and a release and nurgle provides this release by allowing them not to feel pain and actually to enjoy the disgusting delights of nergo's garden but it doesn't bring them peace because they become as nurgle describes life they become a new life a life blossoming of nurgle rotten foul bloated horrors that bring ordinary mortals to vomit by simply looking upon them andesius is no different as he now becomes the true horror known as the lord of the flies decius breaks out of the medbay and takes his first victims some death guard who are meant to be guarding him on rotation when garron crews arrive they see the horror on display and yet more evidence of the corruption of nurgle the blight and decay having consumed the victims of the monstrosity they track the creature but find many sisters of silence that they've encountered before now suffering terrible wounds from the being garendesius the lord of the flies then have this very extended one-on-one battle again it's really astonishingly well described conflict as are some of the other earlier battles in eisenstein it's actually about 20 minutes long just the two of them fighting and very often i feel pretty bored by battles being described in 40k but again the fight between garendesius it just flies past it's highly engaging feels genuinely pretty attention holding throughout so finally when garendesius are sucked out into the lunar landscape garrow is at his lowest he almost gives up but then finally he hears the voices in his head once again reminding him that he has purpose that he should take strength from his faith and he does and he absolutely smashes deceir's face to pieces and whilst he's scraping his face from the floor garrow delivers the killing blow beheading him gary finally next to terror and the sign of the aquila and speaks to the emperor imploring him for new orders in the final chapter we learn the outcome for guerra cruz voyan and kieler malcold the situate comes to luna to deliver personally a message to garrow jarrow at this point is considerably and understandably frustrated he feels that he's done everything in his power to serve the emperor he has not been granted an audience nor even allowed to set foot in the imperial palace but given the circumstance he understands the need to maintain composure garrow recognizes the rod immediately it's the staff carried by the regent of terror and gary notes that as malcador comes to speak with him he is exuding this sense of serene power this is something often seen in malcador and in gary's peripheral vision he even sees a sister of silence take a few carefully placed steps backward as malkador is in the room it's almost as if she cannot bear this invisible aura of the sigilite which i think is always a nice specific detail about the balance between psyches and nulls we often think of nulls or blanks as being a suffocating presence that can snuff out the power of any psyche often though this is not really how it's presented for any ordinary psychic in the middle range of power that seems to be true but against the more powerful psyches their power seems too much even for a null to stand against but again even nulls are on a kind of different scale you have to find those of sort of equal waiting but malkador seems to be this fire so hot that you might imagine that the water of a null which might otherwise extinguish it is even vaporized before it can have any effect malcador speaks to gareth opening by saying the emperor protects he notes that the emperor does protect but in a way that is incomprehensible to someone like garrow he also explains that he has studied through dawn's report and gareth will not meet with the master of mankind gareth cannot even travel to terror which is why malcador has come here guerrero and cruz are both now highly concerned the custody standing with maukar makes them fear they are about to be eliminated but malcolm quickly dismisses this ever more frustrated gary demands that then he be allowed to continue in service to be given a task a purpose not just left to rot in luna's citadel malcolm though explains how their best role is yet to come and likely it won't be coming soon he explains how horus's disposition has made it clear that the imperium requires men and women of an inquisitive nature hunters who might seek the witch the traitor the mutant the zenos warriors like garrow and cruz to root out the taint of treachery after this discussion garrow also encounters the apothecary voyan once more who having read the early religious texts of the imperial faith has come to something of a personal epiphany he no longer is wearing any robes befitting that of an astartes or death guard instead merely a citizen's petitioner robes voyan feels very obviously that he is partly responsible for what occurred at isvan that if he had been more searching and attentive more questioning and faithful to the emperor that he may have seen through the charade of the lodges he is in fact quite broken by this belief that he even played a minor part in the treachery he explains how he plans to travel to the apothecary of terror where he will study a cure for the demonic plague that consumed grulgo and the others so garrow and those who remain are now left in the citadel to sit observe consider and look upon terror giving their prayers to the god emperor of man [Music] now whilst i noted we'd focus upon eisenstein today as it is the core of how garrow becomes this figure of legend it's worth just stepping into the first part of the next story to feature him the appropriately titled garrow and it comes far down the line of the heresy eisenstein being only the fourth installment garrow next appearing in the 42nd so quite a significant break in time yet i absolutely love the fact that the story opens almost exactly where it left off garrowing the citadel waiting it would be so very easy for the story to open with a grandiose heresy abstraction a dream a memory sequence something unknown to us this is actually pretty typical and common with 40k stuff it can often open pretty ambiguously and you don't really know what's going on and then it's like oh okay they're trying to just bleed us into the story but no with garrett spam he's still there waiting for his grand task to be assigned by malkidor and eustraighten and again there is some sense to malcolm making garrow wait here for some time the trauma of the events of istvan and eisenstein was still raw wounds upon the astartes whose safety made it to luna unlikely they haven't really even begun to consider how it has affected them garen crews were clearly very emotional angry even and malcolm says as much so this time for calm reflection since then has allowed them to consider and gain a clear-minded perspective necessary for what is to come next despite this you can tell gareth is still frustrated because frustrated for all of his immense efforts effectively the reception to the message that he felt was the most critical thing above all others to deliver once they arrived at terror they were basically greeted by the powers that be saying oh that yeah we know thanks for coming though but malcolm can see through all of his troubles he understands what garrow is he understands what garu needs as he does all and gary notes that to kneel before moukador is to be like glass the sigilite can well see that nathaniel gary remains unbroken the core of himself could not be poisoned like so many of his brothers and gary states simply that i and the emperor's hand this calls us back to the meeting garrow has with mortarion when the primark is implying that those in service must be rewarded and through those rewards seem to gain so that others might wish to do the same for garrow this was an immediate red flag because as he kneels before malcador now the prospect of receiving any reward for his service is simply absurd trivial irrelevant for someone like garrow and as should be the case for all true astartes duty is its own reward yet his observance of this fact when he feels that burning discontent within himself that pacing around the citadel of luna impotent to carry out the role he was made for is immensely frustrating he is a warrior without a war without a purpose but manchester of course will give him this new purpose garrow no longer wears the colors of the death guard his armor is blank grey silver he's neither the dark nor the light he is quite literally the grey man the invisible unseen agent yet his iconic eagle kuras remains malcador has now a blind mechanicum adapt inscribe a new icon upon the shoulders of garrow as he takes his new oath of moment from malcador the sigilite once again peers into the mind of the astartes and he sees his fury now directed outward toward the traitors most notably and i find this interesting is garrow's intent to wish to even challenge his primark but not for the reasons that you might imagine and i think this is where we can leave it today as well because i feel we've reached a point that underlines the antithesis between garrow and those who would side with the war master for garrow it is not the actions the horror that the traitors have wrought garo seeks to challenge mortarion for the crime of daring to believe that garrow might that he could be turned from the emperor that belief that there was ever a possibility that such a thing could occur in rages and burns more powerfully in garrow than all the dead of israel darrow's task is set he's to travel the galaxy now for malcador and discover these 20 individuals more interestingly though the sigilight states these are to be both from loyalist and traitor legions he's to gather them and return to malkador and leave no trace no mark behind the tale of garrow and his mission to terror are an important story we learned so much about the nature of the astartes and their humanity but also about the nature of the warp time and the beginnings of chaos corruption the flaws of the astartes the differences between humans astartes and the primarks we see the beginnings of faith in the imperium and the starting point for the inquisition and gray nights it's a critical part of the imperial history mosaic the many starting points for the entire 40k verse the actual story in terms of character developments is far more straightforward than others like for example valdor which is a more character-driven story with the lower tier space marines they're a little interchangeable even some of the more standout characters like cruz and voyan are not especially strong it's more story about beginnings most obviously about garrow coping with the events that occur which fracture him from the imperial truth and awaken him to the new cult of the emperor one of the very first studies to do so in many ways it is this story which is the true birth of the imperium because it is from this point that so much of the modern era of the imperium originates garrow for me is very much one of my top tier 40k characters unlike so many of the other astartes he does not blindly obey or i should say he does but he allows himself room to question and to doubt those lesser astartes like voyan would have seen the imperium slide into the abyss with their inability to see beyond things as they appear figures like garrow have a prescient ability to tease out strands of truth from the web of lies and obfuscation the events of ishvan were cleared to garrow before he really knew himself he could see that things were not right it was only in this first instance that the sheer scale of the horror was so unimaginable that he could not act upon it until it was in plain sight and unquestionable this is of course one of the biggest issues with the imperium in general those having the will and the presence of mind to question to not accept things that face value to doubt to consider to be open minded to possibilities that do not immediately present themselves to challenge oneself to the very last to seek understanding and of course to be allowed to doubt yet garrow went even beyond this he was one of the very first to make a leap of faith the astartes had been forged by the emperor yet despite their transhuman adaptations they still were at the very core human this was in one part the reasoning for the heresy the weaknesses in the astartes and the primarks were not their physical or mental powers but in their humanity and just like all aspects of the astartes these were magnified many times over so that when they were consumed by their flaws the consequences were significant and very obviously even more so for the primarks there are of course more details about garrow and his development in the 42nd piece of the heresy series but i think that i will overview that along with knight of grey when that is released because it can be summarized fairly easily one of the most interesting parts for me that i will mention though is when malcolm orders the summary execution of someone gary believes to be a true faith believer angero actually refuses malkidor's order garrett considers it unnecessarily cruel amalcador is forced to back down and find an alternative solution which is very unusual it's a tiny thing in the grand context of garrow and his missions but it always strikes me as underlining the core hypocrisy between the faithful and maukador and the emperor makudo and the emperor seem always willing to dispose of any and all humans on really the slightest pretext but gyro seems to hold more value with individual human lives and especially with them being one of the newly emergent faithful and despite who and what he is he cannot just cut this person down in cold blood or malkadors say so which is really quite bizarre in many ways also during garo's exploits we see something of a precursor to the age of apostasy where the struggle between those who still consider worship of the emperor to be illegal and distasteful breaks out into the open then of course there is the fate of euphrates killer the remembrancer who saved gary from the wrath of rogul dawn but in the aftermath turned him to the new faith what comes for gary later as the siege of terror begins proper is pretty epic suffice to say he ends up cutting in half elite traitor terminators facing off against chaos demons once again and even forcing baden to teleport away rather than face off against him that's right i said abaddon in the ancient pages of the index astartes though law which came prior to the heresy series and eisenstein itself much of what is suggested here has actually come to pass for garrow it's worth noting though that the way it's told in the more ancient law is through the eyes of imperial myth and rumor rather than first hand it's the typical imperial administrative scraps of legend passed down over millennia much of it though still hits the mark because it tells of eisenstein breaking the blockade of the isvan system how it traveled to terror garrow commanding their subsequent confinement upon luna from its perspective what comes next seems appropriate in that it tells how garrow is linked to secret societies and that the imperial palace was uncertain what to do with them we now know of course just what they were doing this time was for the sigilite but it makes sense that in the context of general imperial knowledge that this would be very shrouded and secret unknown to all but the very most trusted internal servants of the imperium likely only to the grey knights at this point in time this very old first description of garrow also hits the mark in terms of his involvement during the siege of terror they fought in defense of the palace and saw what had become of his brother astantes by the time they reached terror it speaks about the possibility of garrow even joining the apothecariet in search of a cure for the plague and this seems interestingly a conflicted confusion through the mists of time where it was of course voyan who did this although garrow does also have some involvement again later with voyn and his quest the most interesting of course is yet to come we do not know the ultimate fate of garrow and hopefully in the upcoming new novella knight of grey this will be answered how will garrow face mortarion will he become as has been said a martyr of the faith there are those who believe garrow even fell eventually after all his trials to nurgle itself that he would be eventually consumed by the horrors of chaos and now an m41 leads plague fleets into the imperium as a great demon prince in black iridescent armor but then there are those who say he's still an m41 lives that he somehow appears along with astardee's brothers still bearing the colors of the original death guard as an elite strike force to cut down servants of nurgle and then disappear like ghosts from the warp not dissimilarly to the legion of the damned carol cinderman described garrow as the first true martyr of the church of the god emperor i have to say personally i hope that not to be the case because of how awesome a character garrow is but one way or another soon enough we may well be given the answer [Music] [Music] so [Music] so let's talk about my next selection for audible eisenstein as we just discussed is an amazing and critical tale for the story of the imperium diving into the audio drama of gero and the trials of the eisenstein it paints a vivid and troubling picture for the imperium and soon this new story of garrow during the siege of terror will come forth to be ready for that it's well worth studying gero and what has brought him to this point now normally i just recommend one maybe two audio dramas for these segments but in this instance you may want to consider eisenstein garrow and even the four short audio dramas sword of truth legion of one oath of moment ashes of fealty as always i know that for these shorter audio dramas one or two hour in length i consider it worth being a purchase as you still get a discount through audible premium and audible credits are best used for those full length 9 or 10 hour plus audio books if you really wanted to go mad and go all in for garrow it is also worth checking out saturn 9 the fourth in the siege of terror series although this is a minor element but it's one of my favorites in that series overall for multiple reasons for myself revisiting eisenstein just like anything i tend to revisit in 40k invigorates my appetite for the characters and events they're in there's some great malkador action toward the end but it really sets the scene for an overarching drama soon set to culminate in a final showdown between mao kador and mortarion i'm not normally one as i said in the beginning to get especially excited hyped if you will but this new gara offering really has me ready almost literally on the edge of my seat you might think that's a little over the top but garrow's story has been building for 15 years now that's a long time to wait for its conclusion and who knows even then if this will be the last we hear from nathaniel garrow enjoy eisenstein enjoy garrow and be ready for knight of grey when it soon arrives as a final reminder if you're new to all this you can start listening today with a free 30-day audible trial and get full access to thousands of audio books originals and podcasts included in the plus catalog visit audible.com luton or tech suiting to 500 500 for those in the us thanks for your support as always and i'll see you all in the next one you

Channel: Luetin09

Views: 962,339

Keywords: Gaming, Discuss, Channel, Future, 40K, Warhammer 40K, Imperium, Humanity, Mankind, Doom, Fall, Space Marines, Heretic, Heresy, The Emperor of Man, Lore, History, Guide, Warhammer 40000, Warp, Immaterium, Rift, War, Slaughter, Horror, Nightmare, Tabletop, Inquisition

Id: uiCxXWo7KNE

Length: 94min 16sec (5656 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 25 2022