Latest / The Bad Moon's Orbit / Episode 19: Seraphon

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Episode 19: Seraphon · The Bad Moon's Orbit

0:33
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of The Bad
0:35
Moon's orbit. I am, as always, your skink star
0:39
priest, Dalton Montgomery None. and.
1:03
Let's go listen. Like it's from the 1980s.
1:08
Listen, if anyone ever asks you what's cool about Warhammer, you
1:12
can tell them that our like default fantasy, like ancient
1:18
ones who knew all the mysteries of the universe and exist with
1:22
their souls intertwined with magic and Starlight are
1:26
dinosaurs. And that's what's cool about.
1:30
Very good. It's.
1:32
Very good. So seraphon is the AOS term for
1:40
what in the old world were colloquially known as lizard men
1:44
or just lizards. Seraphon do not have like
1:49
biological sexes. It's kind of similar to orcs in
1:53
the old world. All Seraphon existed from the
1:57
start of the world, right? Like their eggs were in the
2:00
spawning pools and they would just hatch at predetermined
2:03
times in history. We're not super sure how it
2:05
works at AOS anymore, but we're going to get into that.
2:09
So they're not really lizard men, they're just lizards.
2:12
And now they're Seraphon to dodge all that.
2:17
But yeah, moving on. So talking about the Old World,
2:20
we can't really talk about Seraphon without talking about
2:23
the old World because they're very deeply tied into it.
2:26
The Seraphon were the first creation of the Old Ones, right?
2:30
The survivors of the world that predated the world that was who
2:34
tried to come up with that plan to, like, defeat Chaos.
2:37
And they made lizards and elves and dwarves and humans about it
2:40
and half finished builders. Yeah, the Seraphon during the
2:48
End Times, they fought like hell to try and stop Chaos from
2:51
winning. And then when it seemed clear
2:53
that Chaos was going to win anyways, they didn't die.
2:58
They didn't die with the destruction of the Old World
3:00
like everybody else did. They.
3:01
Did their spaceship they did that is that this is literally
3:04
what happened specifically they got into their big like Aztec
3:10
coded temples and those temples just took.
3:16
Off and. Flew into space.
3:17
Yep. Yeah, Seraphon escaped to the
3:22
destruction of the Old World aboard their temple ships.
3:25
It's just. Planets.
3:30
These worlds that not. Get into a spaceship.
3:35
Yes and no. Because they like, flew out into
3:38
the great dark beyond, which isn't what it's called in
3:41
Warhammer. That's Warcraft.
3:42
But they they flew out into space and like the world was
3:46
destroyed and like reality was destroyed.
3:49
Is it like in the Adventure Zone?
3:52
Kind of, yeah. Like the reality is destroyed,
3:55
but their spaceship happens to be able to go into the next.
3:58
Yeah, yeah. That's basically how it worked
4:01
with the Seraphod and. How did Sigmar end up here?
4:04
On the corpse of the old world? Yep, just cling into it.
4:07
And it and it also. Yeah, it just like flew through
4:12
space until it found the Mortal Realms.
4:14
Yeah. Yeah, it's.
4:16
All so I reiterate, is this the same universe?
4:22
Kind of. It's all very lucid.
4:25
Goose we. Really want to dance around
4:26
this. We don't want to commit to this
4:28
because then it would maybe anchor us to that other one that
4:31
we're not a podcast for. Yeah, it was.
4:34
We don't Yes and no. I'm.
4:36
Going to back away from this precipice, let's talk.
4:38
About the dinosaur, I was going to say yeah, 'cause like, Sigmar
4:40
rode the corpse of the Old world until he hit the moral realm.
4:43
So they are like tangentially in the same physical space.
4:47
But like, Chaos did destroy concepts like time when they
4:50
destroyed the old World, right? So it's all very like I don't.
4:54
Know if you've ever said that sentence destroyed concepts like
4:56
time? Oh yes, absolutely they did.
4:59
Obviously. I just don't think you said it
5:01
like that to me before, and I hadn't comprehended that
5:04
reality. Let's talk about the dinosaur
5:06
alien from space. So they get in the spaceships,
5:09
they fly away. Seraphon aren't immortal.
5:13
They just. Yeah, yeah, they fly up into
5:20
space. And then after an amount of
5:22
time, like they just start dying of old age.
5:25
Oh. OK, Yeah.
5:27
That's pretty. Immortal.
5:27
Wow, that's not. What happens?
5:29
Who's? Going to end?
5:29
Yeah, that kind of happens to most things.
5:32
Yeah but temple ships and like weird advanced technology for
5:37
ancient lizard people. The temple ships store the
5:42
souls. Yep, store the souls of the
5:46
seraphon as they die. They are just kept in the temple
5:50
ships like big data centers basically.
5:55
And all of the Seraphon after a while are dead except for one
6:01
type of them. There are 4 main types of
6:04
Seraphon. We're going to get into them
6:05
later. But the only ones who don't die
6:08
while the ships are just like flying through space are the
6:13
leaders of the Seraphon, the Great and Mighty Slon.
6:18
Fabulous. They're frogs which are not
6:22
lizards. No, they're not.
6:29
They're amphibious. The Slon were the very first
6:32
creation of the Old Ones. Were they Wizards?
6:35
They are Wizards. Being a frog wizard, yeah,
6:37
correct. Yep, Yep, it's.
6:40
Been so long and my parade. Is so full of.
6:43
Information now. Yep, the slon are big frog
6:47
Wizards, first creations of the old ones and they learned how to
6:50
do magic directly from the old ones.
6:53
Most seraphon aren't immortal slon or the exception 'cause
6:59
they can do magic. Learn magic from the old ones.
7:00
They're just built like that. They're just built.
7:03
Different, they share that trait with real life frogs where they
7:08
can go into like long term hibernations where they don't
7:11
need to like eat or anything. Yep and just exist for a long
7:15
time. We don't have any of the the
7:19
first spawning anymore. They're like original, original
7:22
Slon created. Yeah, a lot of people die.
7:26
The last of them died during the End Times.
7:28
So he was around for the entirety of the Old World, and
7:31
then he died during the End Times.
7:33
So sad, right? His name was Mazda Mundy, Yes.
7:37
Yeah, he's Wizard Frog. Yep, part of the end times.
7:42
Was that Scaven A. Star Wars.
7:44
Character right Scaven built a device to pull one of the old
7:50
World's moons closer to the planet.
7:53
Because that moon is made out of warp stone the like pure
7:57
coalesced chaos magic. I'll fully admit that when you
8:00
started that sentence, my brain finished it with of cheese.
8:05
Yeah, yeah, because the the the rats pulled the cheese moon
8:09
closer to the planet because Yum.
8:13
Naturally, of course it's made of it's called Morseleb, it's
8:18
made of warp stone and warp stone is pure chaos magic.
8:22
And so this gave and pulled it closer to use it to augment like
8:25
chaos magic and. Themselves.
8:27
Is that the bad moon? No, we are not Moore's lab.
8:31
We'll talk about the Bad moon eventually.
8:33
Eventually. Yeah.
8:34
It's. Episode 20 I know, but it's tied
8:36
to a specific faction that we haven't like really seen yet.
8:39
Incredible, but Skaven being Skaven obviously fucked it up.
8:47
And then they didn't just pull Moore's lab closer to the
8:50
planet, they pulled Moore's lab into the planet.
8:53
Like into the planet's gravitational pull and Majora's
8:57
masks The like Warhammer South America which is called Lustria
9:05
and is where the lizards originated.
9:08
And Mazda Mundi and all his incredible celestial power tried
9:12
to like, catch the moon with magic and just like push it back
9:17
into the sky. And he almost succeeded.
9:20
And then his head exploded because it's just too big of a
9:23
task even for Mastivandi I think.
9:25
That's how Chewbacca died in the original Star Wars EU.
9:27
He got crushed by a moon. Yeah, I.
9:30
Think he had to like push the Millennium Falcon to get it
9:33
moving and. Majora's Mask has done
9:35
irreparable damage to the psyche of all millennials, so we don't
9:42
have any of the, yeah, the first spawning anymore.
9:44
They like the original, original Slon who learned from the Old
9:46
Ones, but all subsequent Slon learned from those Slon.
9:50
So all Slon are incredibly capable in magic.
9:53
They are by far the most capable mortal Wizards, and mortal just
9:58
in the sense that they aren't demons or gods because they
10:01
can't technically live forever. But yeah.
10:04
I'm. Going to cut us off real quick
10:06
so we can talk about game mechanics because I forgot to do
10:08
that at the top of this episode. Yo, let's go.
10:11
Yeah. Do you have 1 you would like to
10:13
start with all? Right, yes, since we talked
10:17
about video games and the last one, I was like, well, Finn,
10:21
it's not a recent one, but it was one when I was thinking
10:24
what's a mechanic I would like. And I just want to shout out the
10:26
Key Blades and Kingdom Hearts. Hell yeah.
10:28
I just really like they're good designs.
10:31
They're good designs. They do in fact, peak in game
10:36
two. I went through and compared all
10:40
of the keyblade designs, and they definitely admittedly go
10:44
down here after Game 2. But they're fun and it's a fun
10:49
weapon, especially in this like game for younger audiences.
10:53
It's just a giant key and you're just using it to bash around the
10:58
monsters. And in your head when you're a
11:00
kid, you're like, yeah, it's like a sword, like the Master
11:02
Sword, whatever. And then you're a grown up and
11:04
maybe you get a prop replica of the Keyblade and you hold it in
11:08
your hands and you realize this is just a fucking club.
11:10
You're just bashing people with it.
11:14
But I think it's a really cool thing, and I think the element
11:19
of getting the different charms from the different Disney
11:23
characters you meet and it makes your weapon look different and
11:26
the aesthetic matches the characters is fun.
11:31
And sometimes it means you roll up into a really intense and
11:35
important cutscene with the goofiest fucking weapon of all
11:39
time, bulky gummy column Greek Hercules.
11:46
One that is the ugliest one in the first game, but it is the
11:50
strongest one. And you have to have it equipped
11:51
if you're going to beat Riku, because otherwise you're going
11:54
to watch that cutscene a whole lot.
11:55
So suddenly it switches from Riku holding the Kingdom key to
11:58
it goes back to Sora's hands and he's got his bulky ass.
12:04
This is back when you couldn't skip cutscenes in video games.
12:07
Younger listeners, yeah. Cutscenes in the original
12:11
Kingdom Hearts on the PlayStation 2 so.
12:15
That cuz it's so fucking long. It's so long, and the thing
12:19
about it is, it's really good. Yeah.
12:21
Like it's a really good cutscene for the narrative.
12:24
A lot of stuff happens emotionally.
12:26
It's a really important story beat and it is just remembered
12:31
with such disdain because the boss battle right after it is
12:34
justifiably very difficult. So most people had to watch it
12:38
like 50 times. Watch it so often.
12:42
So yeah, yeah, I love them. They're ridiculous.
12:48
Hell yeah, I'm going to talk about a tabletop RPG mechanic
12:53
I've been on a kick of just like finding and reading like kind of
12:57
niche indie tabletop RPGs because.
13:00
Is this use your Dalton Montgomery?
13:01
And I love tabletop RPGs and I want to play it more of them all
13:05
the time. And I'm going to shout out the
13:08
like improvised mystery mechanics originated in
13:13
Brindlewood Bay, which is a like indie tabletop RPG.
13:17
And then also like reiterated on in Apocalypse Keys, which is a
13:22
like high power, like supernatural mystery game.
13:26
Brindlewood Bay is like a more mundane mystery game.
13:28
It's like an Agatha Christie game.
13:30
What a good name for something like that bass.
13:33
Like a crazy mystery type game. Oh my God.
13:37
An Apocalypse Keys baseline assumption is that every player
13:42
plays a like potentially world ending threat who is coerced
13:48
into being on the good side. It is Suicide Squad where every
13:52
person on the team is Enchantress, but both are
13:57
mystery games with the inherent hook that the GM does not know
14:01
what the mystery is going in. The mechanics are designed to
14:05
present the players with clues and they have a role to like,
14:09
determine, like to find the answer to what the mystery is,
14:13
which is when that becomes real again.
14:17
Like the GM doesn't come up with a mystery, it is a game designed
14:20
to create a compelling mystery. Oh, how?
14:23
Fun, right? It's so interesting.
14:26
Yeah, right. It's less back work.
14:28
Reduced. It's less back work.
14:30
It means it's something that all of you are engaging with at the
14:32
same time instead of it being. Yeah, instead of just being like
14:35
a theme park that you're walking players through.
14:38
Yeah, I like it a lot. And I want to play both of them
14:42
more. I haven't played Apocalypse
14:44
Keys. But you made the brittlewood.
14:46
One just briefly, yeah. And I want to play both of them
14:49
more, but that's game mechanics. Let's get back to lizards.
14:53
Let's get back to lizards. So Serafon souls stored in the
14:59
temple ships, the salon going to hibernation.
15:02
Just keeping a baseline awareness for like if the ships
15:06
drift into something cool, they can wake up and like check it
15:09
out. But the ships don't for a long
15:12
time. They just drift through the
15:14
cosmos until, similar to Sigmar arriving on the course of the
15:20
Old World and being caught in Dracothian's tail and delivered
15:24
to the Old World. The Seraphon ships are slower.
15:27
They don't arrive until near the end of the Age of Myth.
15:30
But when they arrive, we talked about this a little bit in the
15:33
like myth to Chaos episode. When they arrive, the Salon,
15:38
their minds like, connect with Dracothian.
15:41
Yeah, 'cause it's literally just like big lizard.
15:47
Your eyes won't lie when. You big lizard recognition.
15:54
They connect with Jacothian and Jacothian's like oh, you're from
15:58
you're from the same place that my buddy Sigmar is from.
16:01
Sigmar. Yeah Yeah, like what happened?
16:05
And the swan yeah. Share the.
16:08
Whole thing in a way that Sigmar never has.
16:11
Sigmar is always like, he doesn't want to revisit like the
16:13
trauma of it. He doesn't want to, like, he
16:16
wants to focus on the here and now and like the future.
16:18
But the salon just beam, like all of their memories of the end
16:21
times, directly into Dracothian's head.
16:23
And like Dracothian cries tears that become new stars in the
16:27
sky, 'cause that's the kind of thing you could do when you're a
16:29
giant dragon. Yeah.
16:31
So Dracothian knew that Sigmar lived on a world that Chaos
16:34
destroyed, and that was probably the beginning and end of.
16:37
It pretty much. Knew that's what happened and
16:40
it's like never going to tell you about the details.
16:42
And now he got all of the deeds, yeah.
16:44
So have you realized? This is what my buddy has been
16:47
carrying this whole. Time, yeah, 100%.
16:50
The more details of the trauma involved in it and everything.
16:54
That's really when. Because Ducothian was Sigmar's
16:57
friend, but he was still like a God beast.
16:59
He was still like had his own focuses and stuff.
17:01
I like to think that was the moment where Ducothian was like
17:03
OK like hell or high water. Like I and my like descendants
17:08
are in this now. Yeah, that's when they became
17:10
Ride or Die. Yes, absolutely.
17:12
That's why a lot of storm casts like ride Dragons into battle.
17:15
Like I think that's the moment where I was like, cool, we are
17:18
like fast allies forever now did.
17:21
Not truly see the stakes. Yeah, Yep.
17:25
And also it's. His friend, he doesn't want him
17:27
to ever have to experience that. Again, yes, absolutely,
17:30
absolutely. So the Seraphon arrived near the
17:33
end of the Age of Myth and they just kind of hang out.
17:36
They like, they know, like, they don't have to do any of the,
17:41
like, jumping through hoops of like, OK, everybody, we got to
17:44
get together to stop chaos from coming.
17:46
The the Seraphon were designed to fight chaos.
17:51
Like that is their only role in existence.
17:53
And so they show up and they're like, this is a world that chaos
17:56
will come for next back to sleep till they get here.
17:59
Yeah. Cool.
18:01
Yeah, put our big Aztec pyramid down.
18:05
Somewhere they just floated above his ear, right?
18:10
It's just hanging in the sky. They're like.
18:12
I guess that's the thing now. Yep.
18:16
Cool. So we're going to not talk about
18:19
like what happens next real quick.
18:21
We're going to talk about a little bit of like Seraphon
18:23
psychology or Seraphon philosophy, kind of.
18:26
So all of Seraphon society result revolves around the great
18:31
plan. The Great Plan is Word of God, a
18:38
complete plan crafted by the Old Ones to eliminate chaos
18:43
permanently now. Is that different from the
18:46
ineffable plan? Yes, it has de facto not
18:51
happened, a big part of it. And also we don't have any
18:57
angels and ages. We de facto have demons, yeah.
19:01
That's interesting. Stormcaster kind of angels is
19:06
kind of the idea I think. Yeah, like angelic Archangel.
19:10
Function yeah, they have a lot of them have wings.
19:13
They descend from the realm of the heavens.
19:15
Yeah, but I was just trying to play off the Crowley and a zero
19:19
fell. Yeah, yeah, coming to Amazon
19:23
this fall. A storm cast in a fucking pink
19:25
horror reconnecting. I just tried to think of the
19:31
funniest possible demon for that to be and it's just the
19:34
gibbering. Like the five armed Zinchian
19:37
demons that split when they die. Yeah, played by David Tennant
19:43
still. So yes, the Great Plan,
19:48
supposedly a complete plan to eliminate chaos permanently,
19:51
just like cease it to exist. Crafted by the Old Ones.
19:56
No one but the Salon know what the Great Plan is.
20:00
They intentionally don't share it with anybody else.
20:02
But they are never, they are never called like the keepers of
20:08
the Great Plan or the distributors of the Great Plan
20:11
or the like custodians of the Great Plan.
20:13
They are always called the interpreters of the Great Plan.
20:18
Yeah. So the implication is that not
20:23
even the slon, yeah, not even the slam really know what all
20:28
the pieces of it are, right? Like that's kind of the
20:31
implication and they're just trying their best to follow it
20:33
do. We think it would work.
20:39
We don't really know. Well, that's the thing.
20:43
Part of also the thing of like, OK, if there's a.
20:45
Bunch of times. Kind of like because this is the
20:49
great plane crafted by our old ones, like the survivors of the
20:52
previous world before the world that was, and they only existed
20:57
for one cycle. Like they were mortal in the
20:59
world that came from before the world that was.
21:01
And that's all we know about them as they exist briefly.
21:04
They made lizards and elves and humans and half of ogres and
21:06
then they got gotten. And so supposedly this is their
21:11
complete plan, but we don't know.
21:14
If it. Wouldn't work, I was going to
21:16
say. What?
21:19
It's not an accident that the Serafon are the only people who
21:22
are like real concerned with the Great Plan and part of that's
21:25
probably because they were made to be really concerned with the
21:27
Great Plan. Yeah, I'm sure one of them went
21:30
to Sycamar was like, so the great plan.
21:32
And he's like, uh huh, nice. And he walked the fuck away.
21:35
He left that meeting keep. Trying that.
21:39
End of chaos. Sounds good to me buddy.
21:42
Even if the great plan is real and could work, I just don't
21:45
think anyone could pull it off like that's my like.
21:48
Famously, the sauna about half half split on whether the death
21:55
of the world that was marked the failure of the Great plan.
21:58
Like that's the thing that can't have happened until the Great
22:00
Plan is abandoned now or if it was part of the.
22:03
Great, that's. What I wanted to know what kind
22:05
are? We doing a Doctor Strange in
22:09
Infinity War being like we got to, we're playing like 40 chess.
22:13
We got to give up some pieces in order to win in the end.
22:15
The sawn disagree, which is why I don't think they could pull it
22:18
off even if it was real, which I also doubt.
22:21
Right, like Mazda Mundi, famously the like guy blew his
22:26
head up trying to stop Moore's love from hitting the world.
22:30
Yeah, like Mazda Mundi famously declared that the the great
22:35
plane had failed and that they just had to, like, try and fight
22:38
to save this world now before he died.
22:42
Yeah, right. Also, I'm not going to whitewash
22:48
Mazda Mundi's reputation, by the way.
22:49
I'm going to make you hate Mazda Mundi real quick.
22:51
Mazda Mundi also didn't think think that anyone who wasn't a
22:53
lizard was part of the great plan.
22:55
So all all non lizards who show up in Austria were kill on site
23:00
for most of Monday. Yeah he wasn't a good dude.
23:04
He was just. Frog Wizard.
23:06
Yeah. So, yeah, that's the
23:10
relationship with the great plan.
23:11
There's some salon who like don't follow it.
23:14
There's some salon who our way into it still and think that
23:17
it's still like ongoing and all of the Seraphon kind of fall
23:21
into that like those niches. But it's not like a huge part of
23:25
the Seraphon's identity anymore. It's just kind of a like, yeah,
23:28
there's still like some great, great plan stuff.
23:30
Is it? Are we still on the great plan?
23:32
Who's to say? Depends on who you ask.
23:37
The main division in Seraphon. So Chaos shows up at the end of
23:42
the Age of Myth. Seraphon immediately go into
23:45
like fight mode because that's their job that is.
23:48
What they are built for? And we before we talk about what
23:52
that looks like, I want to talk about the actual kind of like
23:55
big division, the thing that I think is really interesting
23:57
about Seraphon in Age of Sigmar, which is the split not even
24:04
necessarily among ideological grounds, but just on almost like
24:07
a metaphysical ground between the two different main groups of
24:11
Seraphon. So in the beginning, so the two
24:14
groups are called the Starborn and the coalesced.
24:18
And in the beginning there are only Starborn because they came
24:23
from the stars. Yeah, Starborn are those souls
24:26
and computers. OK, They are the stored seraphon
24:29
souls. And when cats arrive somewhere,
24:33
the slon like, drive the ship over there and they use astral
24:40
magic. They use heavenly magic to
24:42
conjure bodies for the seraphon's souls to inhabit.
24:46
Whoa. OK.
24:47
Yes, so. And they just like they conjure
24:50
them on the surface of the world where the fighting is happening.
24:55
That's what it means to be a star born where you are.
24:58
This like a mortal soul, like in a computer hard drive.
25:02
Basically on this temple ship and occasionally a salon will
25:05
manifest a body made of Starlight for you to inhabit, to
25:09
fight chaos. OK, Yeah.
25:13
What's the other one? Coalesce, yes.
25:16
So I'm going to hold off talking about Coalesce real quick just
25:20
because I want to talk a little bit more about starboard.
25:22
Yeah. So like I said in the beginning,
25:24
there's only Starborn. The temple ships split up, they
25:28
go to the different realms as cast is showing up, temple ship
25:30
flies over, beams down a whole army of like seraphone warriors.
25:35
This is just. Another layer of this cryptids
25:38
that exist. In this world, I was going to
25:40
say when we were talking about the Idneth earlier and you're
25:45
like, oh, there's like some Cryptid like mythical shit.
25:47
I just waiting because yeah for however like.
25:52
Your one drunk cousin rolling up and saying he saw dinosaurs from
25:58
the sky to fight the chaos demons?
26:00
Yeah, sure, buddy. Idneth like Idneth will give you
26:04
the amnesia or they're they're here for hostile reasons.
26:07
Starborn are like eerie. They have like a mythic quality
26:12
to them, almost of like spooky. As.
26:14
Hell yeah. Because Seraph, like Seraphon in
26:17
general, don't have anything to say to people.
26:19
Like they're not like, friendly. Hey, how are you?
26:22
We're here to help. It's literally just like.
26:25
Storm cast. No, yeah, it's literally just
26:27
like we're here to fight chaos and we're not coordinating with
26:30
you. We're just going to like fight
26:32
chaos. So literally you can picture
26:35
this like peasant village out in the like reaches of Guy Ran or
26:39
Akshay or wherever where like Stormcast aren't getting to it
26:42
or like right at the start of the age of Chaos, Stormcast
26:44
wouldn't exist yet, just like normal defense forces aren't
26:47
getting to it. Them just seeing this like
26:49
oncoming thing of Chaos warriors and then just this military
26:53
legion of dinosaurs coming into existence.
26:58
Yeah, fighting off those chaos, Yep, fighting off those chaos
27:04
warriors and then just vanishing.
27:06
Never even like acknowledging that you exist just.
27:11
Gone. Yeah, yeah.
27:12
No, that's definitely like spooky crypted more in in the
27:17
moral. Realm yes, you have been saved
27:20
by Batman and it is like and he is not acknowledging you.
27:25
Yeah, I even have in my notes. It's a contrast to Stormcast
27:28
where like rebuilding and securing the realms is like a
27:31
big part of the Stormcast thing. They show up to the the fight
27:34
and then Stormcast will often hang around to like help rebuild
27:37
town hall or whatever. Like they are part of these
27:39
communities that they're trying to or they're they're separated
27:42
from them, but they want to foster these communities.
27:44
Seraphon just beam in and do the fighting and then they beam back
27:48
out. I mean, realistically the slam
27:50
just stop concentrating and their bodies of Starlight just
27:53
dissipate back into the winds. Yeah.
27:55
Spooky as. Hell, right, It's.
27:58
Like the beaming element would make it feel a little bit more
28:00
grounded. Rather, they just dissipate.
28:02
It's. Like a lot of just.
28:03
Turns them off. A lot of common people think
28:05
that Seraphon are ghosts for that reason.
28:08
Yeah. Like vengeful spirits like here
28:10
to fight off chaos. Yeah.
28:12
Do they have dinosaurs in? The in the world, yes, but we'll
28:18
get to it. It's important.
28:20
Yeah. So, yeah, like, it's Starborn.
28:22
Starborn have like an amenable relationship with Sigmar, but
28:25
it's like through Dacothian where like the Starborn are not
28:29
asking Sigmar his opinion. They're not like, where do you
28:32
think we should go fight Sigmar? They're just like, we're going
28:35
to send a bunch of Temple ships to patrol Othawan are not old,
28:38
that's in the old world. We're going to send a bunch of
28:40
Temple ships to patrol Olgu because some part of the Great
28:42
Plan says it's a good idea. So we've interpreted and they
28:45
tell that to Dracothian, who then relays it to Sigmar,
28:48
because the salon, some of the salon who are still alive
28:52
despite not being first spawning, were alive for 1000
28:55
years when Sigmar was born as a human man.
28:58
They're not, they're not collaborating with this human
29:02
barbarian king like they're just going to go do their own thing,
29:07
right? A quirk of Seraphon as a whole
29:09
is that they're completely immune to chaos corruption.
29:12
They're basically the only species we know of that is Orcs
29:15
are extremely resistant, but they can technically fall to
29:19
chaos. But Sarah Von are just
29:21
completely immune, which is great.
29:23
They can't be mutated. They can't be like, affected by
29:26
a lot of chaos magic. Yeah.
29:28
They're just. Super handy.
29:29
They're just pure order. Yeah, and Starborn specifically
29:32
get compared a lot to demons. They're basically ordered
29:36
demons, right? Their bodies are made of magic.
29:39
When they die, they just return to the temple ships and the
29:41
salon make them new bodies. Like, yeah, that's.
29:45
So. Interesting, right?
29:47
I like them a lot. So that's the Starborn.
29:52
Also like militarily the Starborn very quickly earn a
29:55
reputation for being just like the top echelon of like magical
29:59
combatants they are in a Yep they are in a class by their own
30:05
alongside like Techless and zinch when it comes to like
30:09
magical warfare. Just entire battlefields where
30:12
they don't even bother manifesting like warriors they
30:15
just scour the earth with blasts of holy light.
30:18
But that is mostly a starborn trait because the salon are
30:22
doing all that stuff. It's literally just a
30:24
calculation to them of will I use up more like magic
30:27
manifesting an army or popping that guy real quick.
30:33
So then coalesced come into the picture.
30:36
So I love Seraphon because like I said at the top of the
30:40
episode, they are warhammers like equivalent of like a
30:45
precursor species, like ancient mysteries of the past, so
30:50
entwined with like the mysteries of the universe that they've
30:52
just become these like Starlight made bodies powered by
30:58
incredible Wizards, all that stuff.
31:02
But they're still big lizards, right?
31:04
Like they're still, there's no getting around the fact that
31:07
they are still dinosaurs. And so something starts to
31:11
happen the more often that Serafon go out and the salon
31:17
like beam down these like Starlight bodies for them to
31:20
fight in. Sometimes if the fighting goes
31:22
on too long or it happens into like magically suffused a place
31:26
or any number of other factor factors can cause this to
31:28
happen. Sometimes while the Seraphon are
31:31
down, like on the land, their bodies stop being made of
31:36
Starlight and they coalesce and they start again being made of
31:41
meat and scales. That's upsetting.
31:43
They just become real again, like.
31:46
Can we just waste upon A star and become real nice from the
31:50
beginning of time? And when that happens, like the
31:55
Seraphon are still like on their mission, they still know that
31:58
they are there to fight chaos. But all of those, all of the
32:02
parts of of your like mind and like being alive that are
32:06
instinct and are like pheromones and hormones and like things
32:10
that your body is doing to the part of you that you think of as
32:13
you like, all those things come back all at once because they
32:18
have, yeah, they have physical forms again.
32:21
And so when it happens, they become coalesced, and most
32:24
coalesced go actually, like we're going to keep the
32:28
operation up from down here. Like, we don't want to come back
32:31
up onto the ship A there's no food up there for us.
32:34
We would just die again, get put back in the computer.
32:37
You can grab us. Yeah.
32:38
You can grab us back from the computer when we die here on the
32:42
Earth if you want to. But we're going to just stay
32:45
here. We're going to be lizards first
32:48
and like, ancient magical. Yeah, later.
32:52
That seems to happen to some types of seraphon more
32:55
frequently than others. And we'll talk about that.
32:57
Yeah, it seems to be the Seraphon who are more like
33:01
physical already, kind of like the warrior like type Seraphon.
33:05
That makes sense. Yeah.
33:07
They just have a stronger connection to like the
33:09
physicality of the world, which is very interesting.
33:11
Coalesced have more natural instincts and quirks.
33:15
They're a coalesce Seraphon and a star born of like the same
33:18
kind of Seraphon. The coalesced will be stronger
33:21
and hardier and like, harder to kill.
33:24
Yeah, because they're physical. They're more real.
33:28
They still operate within, like in service of the great Plan,
33:31
but they interpret in a different way.
33:33
That's much more like Grounded. Unlike Starborn, who just like
33:36
show up to do a thing and then leave, Coalesced will actually
33:39
integrate into their like communities and stuff.
33:41
Like you'll have human cities who they might not like hang out
33:45
in town, but you have human cities who know their things get
33:48
hairy. They can like signal for the
33:51
Seraphon to show up. Yeah, 100%.
33:53
I have in my notes Coalesced focus more on being dinosaurs.
33:58
Yes. Oh wow, this is so cool.
34:02
Right. This is so a bunch of armored
34:05
colorful Dino beasts coming from a massive glowing pyramid from
34:10
the sky racing out to battle. Yeah.
34:14
That's so cool. That's a temple ship.
34:16
That's what they look like. Yeah.
34:19
You got the big flying 1. You got the big beams of light
34:22
and the like, electricity. You got the the salon back there
34:25
doing the the Darth Sidious just like both lightning hands.
34:30
Yeah, they're so cool. Right.
34:39
The next photo in that is just to give you a sense of, it's
34:44
actually a photo of the old world.
34:45
So chill. Yeah, that's Illustria.
34:48
That's where the Seraphon originated from.
34:50
They're like ancient temple cities and stuff.
34:54
Would live there. Right.
34:55
It's very nice. But then, yeah, on to the next
34:58
one. For each of the, like, different
35:01
species of Seraphon, I've tried to include a picture of both a
35:05
Starborn and Coalescedvarian where I can.
35:09
So those are slon. They're big frocks and I love
35:15
them. Terrible.
35:16
This. Will be mean they're not as cute
35:21
as I was. Picturing all sad.
35:23
Oh no. Little frog guys.
35:26
And that's my fault. We lost the trees all over
35:30
again. And I know this, this is like,
35:34
they're awful, but like they're wonderful and I wouldn't change
35:38
a thing about them. But like, this one's got some
35:42
piercings, you know? Samesies.
35:47
I love the so the one on the left, you can see he's like
35:49
doing some Big Magic. That's a star born Slon.
35:52
I stand by the Star Wars thing now that I see what they look
35:57
like. Yeah, this.
35:58
Is a Star Wars character. Yeah, I adore the coalesced
36:04
slon. I think he is so fun looking.
36:07
He's just like he's deep in meditation.
36:10
He's chilling on his chair. Yeah.
36:14
He's just leaning really like relaxed into his.
36:17
Yeah, Slon are undisputed masters of magic.
36:22
Again, Wizards of the highest order, trained by the Old Ones,
36:25
like almost directly. Slon spend so much time in,
36:30
like, deep concentration, just like, trying to attune to the
36:33
natural magic of the universe and like, unravel its mysteries
36:37
that their bodies are atrophied. Slon could not get out of those
36:40
chairs if they wanted to. Yeah.
36:42
Hey, that makes sense. I'm interested in that, Yeah.
36:46
Yes, they kind of do a Professor Xavier where they use their own
36:51
magical powers to like, lift those chairs up to carry them.
36:55
Yeah, Yeah, which is fun. Starborn Salon specifically are
36:58
the peak of magical excellence for mortals.
37:01
No other mortals compared to them in terms of pure magical
37:03
power. I mean they.
37:04
Got like swirling galaxies around this dude.
37:06
So yeah, I didn't mention this before, but I think it's
37:08
extremely fun. Both Starborn and Coalesced call
37:12
their groups constellations. Is a.
37:16
Yeah, a group of Seraphon is a constellation.
37:19
It's a constellation of Seraphon.
37:20
Yeah, it's really good, Right, Right.
37:25
Starborn Slam are obviously the, like leaders of those groups.
37:29
They are required for the, like beaming star bodies down to the
37:33
planet Kola Slon exist, but they're rarer because it means a
37:37
Slon who has intentionally chosen to leave his temple ship.
37:40
Right. Because they don't do the star
37:42
body thing. They just are their original
37:44
selves. Yeah, so, but some slon see like
37:48
the coalesce way of doing things as like a proper continuation of
37:51
the great Plan. They were all like physical and
37:54
mortal back in Austria. Like, why would that change now?
37:57
And so slon who intentionally joined coalesced often have a
38:00
much deeper connection to the land.
38:02
They lose a little bit of their like vast magical power, but
38:05
they can reshape the land a little bit to be more.
38:09
It's still a little bit eldritch horror, but Coalesce Slon will
38:13
often take wherever they are and just like terraform it to be
38:18
jungle to make it more like Lustria, right?
38:24
That's such. A wild thing to.
38:27
Do Can you imagine? You're that?
38:28
Yeah. That like English.
38:31
Yeah, like English equivalent farm village out on the, like,
38:34
rolling hill plains and suddenly there is a rainforest next door.
38:37
What else, Sarah? Fun moved in.
38:41
Yeah, Oh. God, I feel safer.
38:44
They're wonderful. Next slide is our skinks.
38:49
Oh my God, I love him. They're so.
38:59
Cool. They're so cool, right?
39:01
I love skinks. They're adorable.
39:03
Yeah, they're doing their thing. They had.
39:06
A little frill, yeah. Tell me more about the skinks.
39:09
So skinks are the smallest variant of seraphon?
39:13
Yeah, all seraphon except for slon are the same species.
39:18
What determines how they like what subspecies they are is how
39:22
long they incubate. Yeah, skinks incubate the
39:25
shortest amount of time so they are the most plentiful, and
39:28
they're also a little and smart. Skinks are the only other type
39:32
of seraphon who do magic other than slon.
39:35
Skinks learn magic from the slon.
39:38
They're not as capable as it with it as the slon, but they
39:42
can definitely like act in a support role.
39:45
Slon often will channel their own magic through skinks and so
39:51
a salon can just like a tune their mind to a skink and cast
39:54
their own spells through that skinks body which will let
39:57
skinks operate as like ground troops and stuff for the salon
40:00
is just like beaming magic through them, which is cool.
40:03
Skinks are fast, they are smarter.
40:06
I guess they're more like intellectual than the other
40:09
types of Seraphon and. They serve both in a like
40:14
administrative role because of that they are kind of the like
40:18
bookkeepers and record keepers and like bureaucrats that keep
40:21
like seraphone stuff running because it's slaughtered too
40:25
deep in contemplation. And also like scouts and like
40:30
they perform a lot of the like non physically intensive roles
40:35
of seraphone society. And that varies a lot for like
40:38
Starboard and coalesce as well. Starborn skinks tend to be a lot
40:43
more magically focused. You get a lot more like skink
40:46
Wizards amongst the Starborn. And they generally, and that's
40:50
partially because they are helping the salon to like
40:52
interpret the great plan and stuff.
40:54
A salon, a Starborn salon will have like a dozen skink
40:57
attendants that they've just like manifested star bodies for
41:00
on the temple ship itself that they are like consulting with
41:02
and whatnot. And then they'll send them down
41:04
into battle to do like their magic or like to relate to the
41:09
armed forces or even just as because skinks are plentiful,
41:13
even just as like skirmish troops just swarm the enemy with
41:17
lots of little guys with Spears. Skinks have a subspecies that I
41:22
forgot to include a picture of chameleon skinks, which are
41:26
exactly what it says on the table.
41:29
They're skinks with that big chameleon head Crest and they're
41:33
like boggle eyes on the sides and they can turn invisible.
41:38
Good. Yep.
41:39
Bummer if they couldn't. Right, excellent scouts and
41:43
trackers. They lean a little bit more into
41:45
the like we're going to do like quick and like out in the world
41:48
jobs then like being administrators and stuff like
41:51
normal skinks are. There's a very famous, he's dead
41:56
now, sadly. But in the old world there is a
41:58
very famous, sorry, there's a very famous skink in the old
42:02
world named Axolotl who was not an Axolotl, unfortunately.
42:06
He was a chameleon skink but he got lost in the realm of chaos
42:12
at 1.0. Damn and just spent his whole
42:15
time there assassinating high-ranking demons.
42:18
Oh damn yeah. It's so suffused him with chaos
42:22
magic that when he finally escaped the realm of chaos
42:26
because it like can't take root, like it wouldn't mutate him or
42:28
anything because he was a seraphon.
42:30
But when he finally escaped the realm of chaos, like chameleon
42:32
escapes can't really turn invisible.
42:34
They can just like mimic like a real chameleon does.
42:36
Axolotl could properly turn invisible.
42:39
He attuned his skin to the fabric of the universe because
42:43
he was so suffused with chaos. That's really.
42:46
Cool also. I'm going to mention now because
42:48
I know people will be mad at me if I don't.
42:50
All Seraphon from the old world have stupid names except for
42:55
Mazda Mundy. He's got like a totally normal
42:57
name for whatever reason for like space lizard standards.
43:01
Yeah, like I said, Axolotl is not an axolotl, but he's like a
43:05
lizard related thing. His weapon is the the Great
43:09
Blowpipe of Patui. Yeah, there is.
43:15
We have a skink who is Moses, and that's not a joke about him.
43:20
Yeah, he found two stone tablets on a mountainside that have
43:25
parts of the Great Plan described on that, But it's a
43:30
different variation of the Great Plan that told him to stop
43:33
worshipping the Old Ones and start worshipping like a
43:36
different God, you know? And I'm always a little sussed
43:39
when it's stop worshipping the old gods OK and start
43:42
worshipping someone new. His name is Tenon 1, but it's
43:47
spelled weird and it's a reference to the the children
43:51
who died in the great plagues of Egypt.
43:53
Yep. What a thing to reference.
43:58
Yeah, you could have picked a lot of things.
44:00
Yep, yeah. Moses is some sort of reptile
44:04
variation in Moses, right? And you picked that?
44:07
Yep, We got Mazda Monday and the last one I'm going to save
44:09
because we're going to talk about them later.
44:11
But yeah, chameleon skinks, like I said, in Starborn
44:17
Constellation skinks tend to have more leadership roles.
44:20
They tend to be more integrated into the whole vibe of it.
44:23
And they get, and they get to be a little bit more cavalier with
44:26
their like, personal danger because star bodies, yeah.
44:31
And so they tend to be a bigger part of like Starborn, like
44:35
military bodies as well for that reason.
44:37
Coalesce skinks do more of the like administrative thing, while
44:41
Starborn skinks are helping the salon like research the great
44:44
plan and ponder the mysteries of the universe.
44:46
Coalesce skinks are like making sure everyone has food because
44:50
like that's the thing they have to worry about.
44:51
Again, with the exception like we don't see skinks in the
44:56
military structures of coalesced as much because they're like
44:58
frail and like real bodies. Now, with the exception that
45:03
skinks possess like, exactly the amount of like cunning,
45:07
intelligence and like physicality that they are the
45:11
dedicated monster tamers, Seraphon cohorts, coalesce
45:16
cohorts, Yeah, and boy do Seraphon tame monsters.
45:20
I would hope so. Next picture on our list is our
45:24
next type of Seraphon. Whoa, big boy.
45:30
Hours. Hours.
45:32
Yeah. The hours are kind of like the
45:36
default Seraphon, right? They are not particularly
45:39
special in any capacity. They are roughly person sized, a
45:44
little bit bigger. They aren't as smart as skinks,
45:47
but they're of like average human intelligence.
45:50
They are the workhorses of any Seraphon constellation.
45:56
With the caveat that source are for war.
46:00
Saris do not do manual labor. They are the military.
46:04
That is why they exist in Starborn constellations.
46:07
Seraphon or Saris are usually relegated to like a bodyguard
46:12
role. They'll still often make up the
46:14
bulk of the military, but any source who rise above just kind
46:18
of like foot troop level are doing so because they are temple
46:22
guard. They are like I exist to jump in
46:25
front of bullets meant for the salon or yeah, like guard the
46:30
the skinks who are here with us, who are doing magic to like help
46:34
win this battle. Yeah.
46:36
In coalesce, though, hours are the leadership.
46:39
Salon still have ultimate say even in a coalesced
46:42
constellation. But hours are the type of
46:45
Seraphon that is most likely to coalesce.
46:48
That makes sense. Yeah, right.
46:50
They're more physical. They're the military like cast
46:53
and a lot of their like military combat is based on kind of that
46:56
instinctual fighting something awakens.
46:59
And then when they're on the realms again too long, where
47:00
they start feeling those instincts that like dinosaur,
47:03
like reptilian, one of their abilities.
47:06
Yeah, one of their abilities in game is I'd sorry, it's the
47:09
we're back reference. I didn't.
47:11
Drop that one earlier. One of their abilities in game
47:15
is called Predatory fighter like where they are just more focused
47:18
on being dinosaurs than they are on being like in Fathomable.
47:23
Like star creatures. Yeah, star creatures in the.
47:25
Beginning of the universe. Yeah, hours.
47:30
I said like great name. They're very good source
47:33
generally can't do magic. There are exceptions, but it's
47:36
just not their focus. Like they're the tacticians.
47:38
They are your military leaders, your generals and tacticians.
47:44
More so in coalesced. Obviously in coalesced
47:48
constellations. They'll often also take to
47:51
riding those big monsters that the skinks are taming.
47:54
You don't see that as much in Star Born just because like,
47:58
it's hard to store a monster soul on the ships, basically,
48:03
but in Coalesce you're just taming them and raising them and
48:07
keeping them in pens, right? Yeah, is a.
48:10
Physical thing you can do. Yes, yeah, they're big, tough
48:13
lizards. The amount of choice, their
48:15
amounts of choice, if they are like taming monsters are and
48:18
this is where they'll like, do dinosaurs exist in the Mortal
48:20
Realms? Kind of.
48:22
Do we get the implication that they didn't and tell Seraphon
48:25
showed up? And then part of that, like
48:28
slon, like terraforming they're doing, where they're recreating
48:33
the jungles of Austria, also brought Austria's native
48:35
wildlife back. Which are dinosaurs?
48:37
Which are dinosaurs? Yep.
48:39
OK, OK. And so when source write
48:42
anything into battle, they ride velociraptors as shock cavalry
48:46
and T rexes as heavy cavalry. Yep, which is excellent.
48:54
But yeah, source, big tough lizards.
48:56
We love them around here. Super cool.
48:59
But talking about big tough lizards, our next one, the last
49:02
variation of Seraphone. Hey.
49:05
That's a big boy, Croxagor. Look at that.
49:10
Skull. Yep, Crocsagore are.
49:14
Name is perfect. Peak I love that's exactly what
49:18
that. Is a Crocsagore.
49:20
Crocsagore are massive. There aren't any pictures of
49:23
Starborn Crocsagore because they are mostly coalesced.
49:26
Like yeah, source of the most likely to coalesce, but
49:30
Crocsigore are right fucking there.
49:32
Crocsigore are huge. They're brutish.
49:35
They don't they're not very bright.
49:38
That's the alcerfon operate on a sliding scale of how big are you
49:42
to how smart are you. So Crocsigore are huge, they're
49:44
troll sized, but they're just not super.
49:48
They don't have an affinity for the intellectual arts That's
49:50
fine. You know what?
49:52
It takes all kinds. Yep, Crocsigore are hulking and
49:56
powerful and they have an instinctive affinity for skinks
50:03
that was like put in them by the old ones.
50:06
They have like a weird. It's not weird.
50:09
It's kind of an interesting, like the old ones were just
50:11
like, you're going to be big and huge and not very bright.
50:13
And we are going to literally plant the idea in your brain
50:17
that you should always be like finding a skink to like help you
50:20
basically, and to help that skink, right?
50:23
If skinks are like the administrators and they're like
50:25
running stuff in like a coalesced constellation, they're
50:29
doing that largely by like symbiosis with the Crocsigore.
50:33
The skinks are like, OK, we need a building here to store like
50:36
food or to act as a pen for like the monsters we're taming like
50:40
Crocsigore and the Crocsigore are like on a bus.
50:42
Yep, you got a bus. Like happy to help.
50:45
I'm big and strong. I love that.
50:48
Yeah, Crocscore's main purpose is actually civil, which is why
50:51
we basically only have coalesced ones because you don't need
50:54
people to build warehouses and stuff on a temple ship.
50:58
When Starborn's Crocscore happened, it's because they are
51:02
being like almost misappropriated for warfare.
51:05
It's not their job. They're they're big strong
51:07
laborers is the intent. So like they they are big strong
51:11
laborers specifically. So the source don't have to
51:13
focus on that. Yeah, yes, yeah.
51:18
Like Starburn Crocs is rare as a result.
51:20
And when they get like beams down, they almost always
51:23
coalesce. They could coalesce to use them
51:26
for their intended purpose, where they're building and
51:27
constructing and like building new temples on the realms, which
51:31
is cool. But then yeah, like Crocsigor
51:34
will always like also March out to defend their own territory,
51:39
their own like temples that they're helping build and stuff,
51:42
often with skinks at their back. Both like, yeah, both variants
51:48
of Crocs score in game baseline Crocs score who are the civil
51:51
ones. And then Crocs score Warspond
51:54
which are Crocs score who just like come into existence to do
51:57
military rules have bonus rules or they get an advantage if
52:01
they're near skinks which. I think is fun.
52:03
Yeah, they're helping them. They're telling them how to, how
52:06
to do. That's all of our types of
52:09
Seraphon. I can't not mention dinosaurs.
52:14
Our next slide is dinosaurs. It's just some dinosaurs.
52:18
Yeah. Get them go.
52:20
That's a big Dino. We got a hours riding the T Rex
52:24
there. Yeah, a carnosaur is the
52:28
Warhammer name for it. Yep, Yep, cuz.
52:30
You got to copyright that. Yep, that was even in the Old
52:32
World, we don't have Latin and Warhammer.
52:34
So. And then a oh, no, I can't
52:39
remember what it's called. It's a Triceratops, but it's.
52:42
Yeah, it's got a different AOS name.
52:43
You can see some pterodactyls above it flapping around.
52:47
The Triceratops is carrying what is called an Engine of the Gods
52:50
on its back. It is a channeling device for
52:53
Astro magic that skinks can operate.
52:56
That's pretty cool. Yeah.
52:57
So they it's very good. It has the funniest rules in
53:03
like I don't know which rules are currently actually, because
53:05
we just said the addition changed a little bit ago and I
53:07
haven't played against Sarah fun since.
53:09
But it's all the rules were extremely funny because you
53:11
would just roll 2 dice and it would have 12 different things
53:14
that could happen based on the results on your dice ranging
53:18
from like you rolled snake eyes And it just hurts itself because
53:22
the power gets like miss channeled and it blows a piece
53:25
off of it to like you summon a dinosaur like it just manifests
53:31
a dinosaur out of astral magic and you just get to add it to
53:34
your army for free. I'll.
53:35
Take those odds. Right next slide is more
53:38
dinosaurs it's. My birthday more.
53:43
Wow, Look, it's a skink on a velociraptor.
53:47
Yep. It's got feathers.
53:49
Yep, we got a skink on a Raptorix.
53:51
Is that what theirs are called? You know.
53:54
Looks like a Dino beetle. Yep, he is a He's a Bastilodon,
54:00
which is a good. Name what?
54:01
A run of name. Right, that is a solar engine on
54:06
his back channel sunlight into devastating laser blasts, which
54:10
is great. Also, that boy is huge.
54:12
You can see some Chaos warriors in the foreground there.
54:15
Big right It's. So very big.
54:17
Right. And love that boy, but that's
54:21
all of our kind of default Seraphon stuff.
54:26
Seraphon are in a weird position where they're from the Old
54:29
World, so we have like a lot of context of them in that way, but
54:31
they haven't had a ton going on. Like in main AOS, they basically
54:35
exist to be like. And then Seraphon showed up and
54:38
they did a thing. Yeah.
54:39
So while we have a lot of like characters in the Old World,
54:45
most of them died during the End Times.
54:47
Yeah, you know what? That could happen.
54:49
So we don't really have any of them in AOS exception, yeah.
54:53
So we only have. One famous.
54:55
Face for sheriff on and his name is Lord Croak Oh my God.
55:03
Look at see Lord Croak looks more like how I was picturing
55:06
all of them to look like. Yeah, Lord Croak is a slung.
55:11
Obviously. And he is dead.
55:13
Are you sure? Oh yeah, that.
55:18
Listen, Lord Croke is a lot of things, and the first among them
55:21
is dead. Yes, yes, he is a mother.
55:24
He is a corpse. Not only do you know that?
55:27
Yes. Not only is Lord Croke dead,
55:30
Lord Croke died. Like in the earliest days of the
55:34
Old World, the specific phrase is dead.
55:38
For innumerable ages. Lord Croke was the first slon
55:46
OG. For.
55:48
Spawning learned magic directly from the Old ones.
55:52
Yep Yep. Did not lie.
55:55
Yeah, technically all of the name Sarah on characters from
55:58
the Old world. They're dead.
56:01
Lord Crow. So what's the deal with Lord
56:03
Crow? So.
56:04
In the old world. The old ones create the lizards
56:08
too inflexible, they create the elves, they don't reproduce fast
56:11
enough, they create the dwarves. They are too quick to like take
56:14
a defensive position, They create the humans, they're too
56:16
corruptible and they're halfway through creating the ogres and
56:18
they get got the same event where the.
56:22
Old ones got. Got was the first Chaos War of
56:25
the old World and it was a minor incursion and Seraphon were able
56:30
to push it back by themselves. No one else was ready to like do
56:35
that fight yet and the lizards were perfectly positioned to
56:39
like solve it themselves basically.
56:41
Though they did take heavy losses and it wasn't as clean as
56:45
it could have been. We got to the point where Chaos
56:48
had threatened most of the world and was descending on like the
56:51
last safe city, the city of Ixtal, which is a Seraphon city
56:57
naturally, as Seraphon are pretty like a South American
57:00
coded especially in their names. And in Ixtall the main defender
57:07
of the city is Lord Croak first first of the salon.
57:11
Lord Croak basically like rings the dinner bell like tries to
57:15
lure as many chaos demons as he can to Ixtall, displays a force
57:19
to try and convince them that they can't take it if they,
57:21
like, attack it. Piece meal just get like as many
57:24
demons as he can to Ixtall. And then he casts a spell that
57:28
will be named by later. Seraphon.
57:32
Celestial Deliverance. Excellent name.
57:37
Kills all of the demons. Yeah, just period.
57:42
Kills all of the demons, kills all the demons.
57:46
And after that, the Seraphon work with the elves to create
57:51
that big vortex that, like, pulls excess magic out of the
57:53
world that kept the old world safe for a long time.
57:57
Celestial Deliverance is too big.
57:58
It kills Croak. Just what's his face Got his
58:01
head blown up. Yeah.
58:02
Just pulls the soul. Out of Croak's body.
58:05
It's just too much magic all at once.
58:07
Describe death. Yep.
58:09
And so croak is. Dead.
58:11
He. Is just a corpse on his chair
58:13
hanging out in the city of Exton.
58:15
OK, Croak is so powerful and magic that the other seraphon
58:21
take his body and they mummify him and they keep his still dead
58:26
corpse on that chair so that when other demons threaten the
58:31
city of Ixtall in the ages to come, they can wheel croaks
58:36
desiccated corpse out onto the battlefield and like, hit it
58:39
with a stick and it will. Yep.
58:45
They we could. Defer these Lord Croke's corpse
58:48
and it's like mouth and tongue redoes the last couple of
58:52
syllables of celestial deliverance and blue.
58:56
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It works.
58:58
Like yes, it's not just a trick. No, it works.
59:02
Weapon. Yep.
59:03
Oh my God, they use Lord Croke's.
59:05
Desiccated. Corpse as a weapon, obviously,
59:07
like he's dead and it's not the full incantation, so it's
59:10
celestial deliverance, just like blows up like 100 yards in front
59:14
of Croak. It's not the full power of the
59:16
spell. But yeah, Lord Croak's corpse is
59:19
the main weapon used to defend the city of Ixtal for the next
59:25
like thousands of years. You know what?
59:27
It's probably what he would have wanted.
59:28
Yes, it's absolutely what he wanted.
59:31
It's his whole, whole. Purpose.
59:33
Lord Croak is dead. Dead all through the end times.
59:38
Well, Lord Croak was dead to begin with, yes.
59:41
He is dead. All the way through until like
59:45
right near the end of the end times where, no shit, he just
59:51
decides to stop being dead. What a time.
59:57
OK, wherever. Lord Croke's soul.
59:59
Was it was just like that's enough and comes back to perform
1:00:06
the celestial. Spell again like blows up like.
1:00:10
All of the demons in Austria, he doesn't.
1:00:12
He's not his full power because he's dead, but kills a ton of
1:00:16
demons in Austria specifically to buy time to board the temple
1:00:21
ships and, like, get everybody out.
1:00:23
Because he knew that this world was done, but he knew that the
1:00:25
Seraphon had to continue. Yeah, he shows back up.
1:00:30
He blows up a. Bunch of shit.
1:00:31
He dies again. They load his corpse onto a
1:00:34
temple ship and they fly away. Yeah, you could show back up at
1:00:38
any time. I was going to.
1:00:39
Say you've got to take. Him with you.
1:00:41
They. They take his body to the Mortal
1:00:47
Realms. He wills himself back to life
1:00:49
again to help during the fight against Chaos.
1:00:54
And that's how he's been ever since Lord Croke refuses to take
1:00:59
a leadership position within the Seraphon.
1:01:01
He just wants to be like spellcaster blow up demons, man,
1:01:05
basically. But he has kind of developed A
1:01:10
and I'm going to use this as a hook for our next episode
1:01:14
because we're going to take a I'm going to do the most this
1:01:17
character thing I could think of.
1:01:19
And we're going to take a detour from talking about Grand
1:01:21
Alliance order to talk about a single character for next
1:01:25
episode who I'm going to tease now.
1:01:28
Lord Croak has largely just been like using his mastery of magic
1:01:32
to like support the Seraphon and to push back against chaos just
1:01:35
showing up to like blast in game.
1:01:38
He still can cast celestial deliverance and still
1:01:41
devastating. And I hate playing against Lord
1:01:43
Croak, but that's neither here nor there.
1:01:47
But in recent years he has kind of refocused from just being an
1:01:52
entity that fights chaos generally to kind of having a
1:01:56
feud with a specific like, deepen.
1:02:00
Hell yes. We haven't.
1:02:04
Talked about him at all yet. Which is kind of intentional
1:02:07
because you're building to this. Yeah.
1:02:10
He's fascinating. Croak.
1:02:12
The last time we saw Croak in a major appearance, it was
1:02:15
specifically to foil this person's plan.
1:02:19
And he failed. No, not nice.
1:02:21
Yeah. Amongst all of the demons of the
1:02:25
chaos gods. One stands apart from all of
1:02:31
them. We talked in the Corn episode
1:02:34
about Demon Princess mortals elevated to like their souls
1:02:39
reshaped by chaos magic to become demons, granting them
1:02:43
dark apotheosis, making them immortal.
1:02:46
Among all of the Demon Princess who have ever existed, there was
1:02:52
a first. One, of course.
1:02:53
Whoa, the. First Mortal.
1:02:56
To ever pledge his soul to chaos and become a demon Prince, not
1:03:01
by the will of a single chaos God, but by all four in tandem.
1:03:07
But they hate working together. They do.
1:03:09
Hate working together. Not only the first demon Prince,
1:03:15
but. Also the first.
1:03:17
Ever chosen of Chaos, A mortal champion destined to destroy the
1:03:23
world, who is still mad that he was abandoned by the Chaos gods
1:03:30
when they didn't think he could deliver, Who hates everyone for
1:03:38
the rightful destruction that he was denied?
1:03:42
But Archaeon above all others, the upstart who has his title.
1:03:50
Interesting. Interesting.
1:03:52
He hates Sigmar. He calls him the upstart
1:03:56
barbarian God because he was immortal before Sigmar was even
1:04:02
born. He's from the old world, that's
1:04:05
all we know. He's like from the world that
1:04:06
was, and that's literally all we know about him because he has
1:04:09
taken great steps to obfuscate everything else about his
1:04:13
identity. Of course, dear listeners, I am
1:04:17
segwaying off of our episode about Seraphon to tell you that
1:04:21
our next episode is going to be about the first Prince himself,
1:04:28
Bellacor, the demon of Shadows. You know I love shadows.
1:04:33
Oh. My God, Dinos and Shadow was wow
1:04:38
that's bad and I'm very excited to talk about.
1:04:42
Bella Core and my buddy Daniel is going to be very excited for
1:04:45
our Bella Core episode. He plays Army dedicated to Bella
1:04:49
Core. Yeah.
1:04:52
Yeah. Next episode we are going to be
1:04:53
talking Bellacore, the first demon Prince.
1:04:57
We're going to be talking of the mortals sworn to service to
1:05:00
Bellacore, the legion of the First Prince.
1:05:03
Yeah. And we're going to be talking
1:05:06
some more, like chaosy stuff. I am, I am usurping our Order
1:05:11
faction theme in the way that Bellacore would want.
1:05:17
Our our great. Plotter, our great planner who
1:05:21
outsmarted even they dead for innumerable ages.
1:05:24
Lord Croke, let's go. Yeah, willing.
1:05:27
To work across faction. Lines struck a deal with the
1:05:30
gash and all that fun stuff but we will learn about that more
1:05:34
next episode when we talk about Bella Core.
1:05:38
A little bit of a shorter one this week.
1:05:40
I think it's reasonable. Yeah.
1:05:42
Yeah, we're. Waiting for Sarah Fonda.
1:05:43
To do some more stuff and we'll probably revisit them when they
1:05:46
do. But in the meantime, I have been
1:05:49
your forgetting what I was at the top, a Skink star priest.
1:05:55
I have been your Skink Star priest all in Montgomery and I'm
1:05:57
Darren Smart and invite you all to come.
1:05:59
Along with me. Hell yeah, we will see you.
1:06:03
When the moon comes back around, take care.
1:06:05
Bye bye.