 Hello everyone, and welcome to the long, long overdue second Oculus Empyrea Q&A video. It's been maybe about 20,000 subscribers since the last, and I mean, wow, even saying that just sounds absolutely bizarre. So I want to start right out the gate with thanking everyone for the incredible support you've all been showing the channel since that point. We've managed to hit 30,000 subscribers, that lovely, nice, round, warhammer-centric number, and I'm recording this in the aftermath of the wonderful reception you've all given to the 30,000 subscriber special. If you haven't seen it, maybe if you can take an hour and 20 minutes out of your day, go check it out. If you have, thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for commenting, sharing, subscribing, liking, all that usual stuff. It shows the love, and it really vindicates what I'm doing here. And it's just wonderful to be able to look at everything that rolls in subsequent to a video release, and really be able to see how much you're all engaging with what I'm producing, so thank you, thank you all. And with that out of the way, let's get down to the Brass Scorpion Tax, if you'll pardon the her being parlance. Where are you from, and have you any history in acting or the like? I am from South County Dublin, in Ireland originally, in case you can't tell, although I live in glamorous Toronto, Ontario these days. I happen to be one of those post-global recession immigrants that every Irish person knows, and I'm following a particular family tradition of leaving the country as soon as there's no jobs. I have absolutely no background in acting or theatre, although history is what I studied in university, and I imagine that's pretty obvious from how I conduct the channel. Any interest in voice acting I've had is a product of a lonely childhood spent loving every animated show or movie I could find, in particular any output Warner Brothers had, from either the early 30s or 40s, 50s, whatever, and that early 1990s animation renaissance. If you want to know about me, basically Tiny Toons, Animaniacs and all that Spielberg produced stuff forms the bedrock for my love of pop culture. How did you develop your chronicler persona, and how comprehensive is that canon? A chronicler or a chronicle question? The Oculus character was sort of an evolution born of feedback here on YouTube. If you listen to the first few episodes, God please don't, they need to be redone so badly, I don't actually go into it a whole lot, and while in those early days it was supposed to be a bit of a nod in a wink thing, how people responded to it over the months led me to be way more into it than I'd initially intended, and I'm not complaining about that in the least. Oculus has served as a wonderful way for me, and I like to think the audience, to explore and contextualize the lore in a really fresh way. As far as comprehensiveness to canon, I've tried to make him as lore-friendly as possible because I mean, come on, he's a member of the Logos Historic Aversia, an organization set up by Gwilliamon after his return to actually investigate and apply proper historical work to the Imperium after 10,000 years of, well, burning everything for heresy. In this way, he's not an average Imperial scribe, so it's a neat way of explaining a way, in a lore-friendly way, his access to stuff baseline humans on Terra wouldn't just come anywhere near in their wildest dreams. Is there anything in particular you do to get into character, and where do you draw inspiration from for your character from outside the 40k universe? Quite honestly, there is nothing I do specifically, except to ensure that the scripts I write maintain the best possible tone. This whole channel started off as a multi-faceted creative project to keep me basically sane during the worst chapter of my entire life, and it turned out at the time that channeling the feel of fiction I'd been reading for 15 years at that point was a good way of doing so. My historical background from college helps me with the character, though, as reading older histories and chronicles from the Enlightenment usually sparks the tone that when 40k material might not. What was the fate of the solar Auxilia after the Horus Heresy? This I genuinely have no idea about, but oh boy do I want to know. From what I do know, the Auxilia were something of Alan Bly's baby, and since his very tragic passing, I imagine their fate is somewhat up in the air. Here's hoping later-Forge World Horus Heresy books shed some light on what have been a total fan and personal favorite army. If you could redeem one traitor from the Horus Heresy, who would it be and why? This really is the best type of what-if, right? As a huge 20th Legion fanboy, I want to say both twins, or whichever one fell. The idea of the invisible Leviathan that is the Alpha Legion as a whole, unshattered thing bent towards the Imperium's vision is honestly too good to be true. The second runner-up would probably be Perto Abo, just for that whole tragic Da Vinci thing. I think it'd be fascinating to see where his character could go if that sort of energy was turned towards the betterment of the Imperium. Here's a question. Why don't you work for the Black Library, or do some reading for the books they have on Audible? I mean, they can call me, or at very least drop me a DM. I'm not opposed to it by any means, they just haven't done it, would totally be open to that idea if they ever came knocking. Are you interested in doing other A Pilgrimage 2 videos with major planets in the Imperium, like McCrag, Armageddon, Medusa, etc? This would honestly be an excellent idea for a new sub-series, and I'll have to explore it. The one barrier I'd foresee is the potential lack of lore on other planets to the same degree Terra has, but hopefully work could be done to make sure that the videos are, if not as long, at least as evocative as the Terra one was. Do you have any plans for smaller supplement videos or minor tidbits of lore? I thoroughly like the long format and wouldn't care if they were ten hours long, but there was a plethora of tiny lore subjects I would love for you to cover. So can you see yourself doing additional short videos in the near future? It's something I've considered and will likely do so at some point, but it's very much a future thing right now, or if necessity in whatever form dictates shorter videos become the format. I do enjoy the longer scripts as grueling as they can be to record, so no immediate plans for 5-10 minute videos as is. What interests or hobbies do you have outside of 40k? Does age of Sigmar count? I mean outside of Warhammer in general, my obsession with kaiju movies is probably the tip of my pop culture iceberg. I've got a fascination with movies, music, media in general that I like to take where I can, and I've often thought about doing some video essays on the subject in a spinoff channel, maybe one day. I try to read where I can, and 40k audiobooks serve me for my commutes, which lets me read non-fiction in my downtime. History is obviously a particular favorite, but I do try and kind of keep up with literary fiction where possible. Generally speaking though you'd probably find me gaming. Overwatch has still got me hooked, and right now I'm playing my way through Death Stranding and loving it. The new Pokemon seems a little bit basic, but hey it's fun, and as I record this I've just spent the last couple of hours playing a Camry campaign in Total War Warhammer 2, which has really just become my old standby. Will you do lore on the period between 30k and 40k? Absolutely, I mean there's plenty to cover. The Beast of Rises, the Taros campaign, the Dabor, Siege of Wrax, there's a lot of ground there, and a lot of meat for good little miniseries. I'll be absolutely getting to it in time, and spoilers, but you can probably look out for the first in a series of Badab War campaign videos fairly shortly? I don't want to set a date, but near future. How do you find the works and information you post? Is it your own writing of facts from books and quotes, or do you read passages from the novels? All the information in my videos comes from Official Games Workshop and Black Library publications. Occasionally I'll throw in a little bit of inference, but I always make sure to do the scripts myself, combining the character of the chronicler with the tone of Warhammer lore in a way I hope is compelling and characterful. I use direct quotes here and there, but I will always pen them myself, as one of the stated aims with this channel is to absolutely not just read off a wiki, or narrate straight from a book. Do you plan on going into more depth and getting into specifics with regards to Xenos, or do you want to stick to broad overviews? Also, do you have any plan on covering specific characters, like Commissar Yarek, Malkador, or Gregor Eisenhorn? Specificity with regards to the Xenos will absolutely happen when I drill down into stuff like specific craft worlds, or Necron dynasties, or Hive fleets. And as for covering specific characters, that will absolutely happen. A sort of heroes and villains type of video, only with a non-copyrighted name to them. How are you? I'm doing honestly fantastic, thanks for asking. The 30K special was spectacularly received, and I'm kind of flying high on that right now, so yeah, things are going great. What will the fate of normal space marines be, considering the existence of Primaris marines? This is a tough one to call, the lore in this case is pretty obviously subservient to model sales, the older space marine kits probably still sell like gangbusters because, let's be real, they always have, but I imagine they may be faded out. Now that the Rubicon Primaris has, in lore terms, been crossed by a lot of named characters, I can kind of see the space marines of old going the way of the dinosaurs, or at least their kits being used exclusively for the Horus Heresy, or other kind of historically minded specialist games, like maybe we'll see a Badaboar game at some point, who knows. All of this being said, I'm neither a farceer nor employed by Games Workshop, this is just my two cents on the matter. Will you do more Age of Sigmar content, either in specials or as a spin-off companion channel? Age of Sigmar stuff will absolutely be happening, I know that it does not necessarily have its fans to the same degree as 40K has, and I know that 40K fans might not simply be interested in it, but I for one absolutely love the setting and I love the lore, I think it's pretty underrepresented on YouTube and I'd kinda like to be able to contribute to that. I want to get through the Age of Myth first and then I'll start with various factions, but it's absolutely going to be happening, and it's going to be happening here in the main channel. I do want to assure 40K lovers that it is not going to replace anything, 40K is and always will be the central focus of this channel. What was the first Warhammer book you've ever read? That would be First and Only by Dan Abnett, the first in the Gonskos series. It remains one of my absolute favorites as does the series, and if you haven't ever read it, go, it's one of the foundational Black Library books, you owe it to yourself to experience it. I'm interested in hearing your perspective on 40K as a setting or story, versus the board game Fluffer Lore. Personally, I've mainly enjoyed 40K as a story, something like the fanfic, the nightmare before the nightmare to come, which was so enjoyable to me. The beauty of 40K and Warhammer in general is that it can be all of those things. Whatever you want your involvement to be with it, it can be. If you just want to read the lore, great, there's plenty. If you want to enjoy the hobby, great, there's a huge range of really excellent miniatures. If you want to game, great, there's a huge community for that too. I've always appreciated the license the hobbyist or fan is given in kind of setting their own pace with it, and I think that's something that we, also as fans, need to bear in mind. If someone is just in for the lore and isn't especially interested in the other aspects, that's fine. If someone's a gamer and not super interested in making Fluffy armies, well, that's also fine. That's how they're doing it. Kind of let people like what they like with this stuff, especially because we're granted this setting, this game, this hobby to do that, to just set our own pace. If a new faction was added to the tabletop, which one do you think it would be? Part of me wants a new army to be something entirely new for the sake of kind of shaking up the setting in lore a bit and expanding the universe further, but the majority of me wants a Herod army with a weird fire-in-the-sky kind of biotech and chronomancy powers. And I think it would be an awesome twist on the idea of space-scaven and provide something that's radically different both aesthetically and gaming-wise. When are we going to get a video on the space wolves and the Dark Angels? If this is supposed to mean specifically Legion histories of the space wolves and the Dark Angels separately, the former will be getting a video with the Thousand Suns when I cover Prospero, and the latter will get one literally as soon as Book 9 of the Horus Heresy series from Forge World drops because, other than the Blood Angels, there is no more requested video. Who is your favorite string storm, Warhammer 40k idol? That would absolutely be Catherine. Will you consider setting up a website for fan-submitted audio samples? This is an interesting idea and not one I'd thought of until I was asked. I'll definitely look into it, but there is also the possibility of me covering fan lore in character, possibly as a Patreon tier, pretty much because I love you all. How did you get into Wargaming and what armies have you collected? I got into Warhammer in general after a friend of mine lent me a copy of White Dwarf Issue 260, which had an Index Astartes article about the Night Lords written by Phil Kelly. Something about that incredibly macabre and grim tone of that excellent piece struck accord with my macabre and grim 13-year-old self. A few weeks later, I bought my first third edition rulebook and a Dark Eldar battle force, and after two games with them, I bought Codex Space Marines, Codex Armageddon, and was painting some Astartes as salamanders. Ugh, third edition Dark Eldar. Over the years, I have run Necrons, Tyranids, and Dark Eldar in fifth edition, again in 40k, before having to emigrate, sell everything, and later restart the hobby from scratch with a 30k Alpha Legion army. Currently, I have them, an Age of Sigmar Chaos Dwarf army, just started an Ossioc Bone Reaper army for that as well, and a couple of Adeptus Titanicus Maniples. I'm not sure if and when I'm going to get back into 40k proper with 8 edition, but oh that sister's a battle army just looks so perfectly gothic, we'll have to see. I always hear about how the Primarchs are mighty, strong, and powerful, but what I want to know is which one of them was weakest, and the strongest amongst them. This one is debatable because they're all built for different things. As far as I'm aware, the strongest is probably Vulcan, who has that whole I can't be killed thing going for him. The weakest is easier to answer because it's canonically Lorgar, who just did not want to fight at all before the heresy if he had an option, and came close to being completely obliterated by Korax during the Dropsack Massacre. Feth-Marry-Kill, Guiliman-Dorn-Vulcan This one is a no-brainer. Feth-Guiliman, because he's crunched the numbers to make it as efficient and fulfilling as possible, Marry-Dorn for the rock-solid financial dependability that he represents, and Kill-Vulcan because he's coming back to life anyway and won't begrudge you for it. So on a scale of one to the glory of the man-emperor of mankind, how happy are you to be a part of the TTS series? And how did it come about? Honestly, I'm delighted beyond words, really. I have been a fan of Alphabusa's work since he was making Dawn of War videos in, I don't know, 2012. He was the one who approached me, and when he did, it was something of a dream come true for a lot of reasons. Getting to collaborate with a creator you've admired for so long always is a privilege. But getting to do so in a way that also lets me be a cartoon character and thus living out kind of a childhood dream, there's really no feeling like it. Not to mention that it's just so, so much fun to do. I have a bit of a bigger role in the role-playing special that they just did, so check that out and like Urban the Hag Flayer specifically. Favourite Titan-class, Mars pattern Warlord without a shadow of a doubt. Will you ever do something on the Blood Ravens and your interpretation of their lost history? I do love me some Dawn of War, the chroniclers investigation into the theories surrounding them could indeed be on the cards. Cups in the cupboard with mouth up or mouth down? Mouth up because how else are they gonna dry and also my home is not infested with vermin. Why Butstuff Kaiju? Well, I like Kaiju and, I mean no but seriously, its actual origin lies in comic book author Matt Fraction's one time Halloween Twitter handle of Butstuff Werewolf, which I loved so much I just had to adapt. Why I've not changed it since then is a combination of my own absolutely terrible sense of internet branding, but also because it's dumb and fun and I like things that are dumb and fun. Also I get at least one complaint about it per video and that still tickles me, so every time I do get a complaint about it the clock gets reset and me changing it gets kicked back a few months, so bear that in mind. Alright I have subjected you all to my opinions for far too long already, but thank you for joining me for this very special Q&A. It's coming up to the end of 2019 and I've had a lot to be grateful for this year and the success and continuing success of the channel is pretty damn high amongst them, so I'm gonna thank you all again because I can't ever stop doing this. Be sure to tune in in a couple of weeks when we'll be right back to our regularly scheduled lore videos, so until then, Ave Imperator Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel is made possible through the incredibly kind support of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel head on over to patreon.com forward slash Oculus imperia if you want to kick me a buck or two to help keep the lights running and the scripts flowing. You can keep up to date with channel news if you follow me on twitter at buttstuffkaiju nope not changing that name anytime soon and new this month if you'd like to support the channel with some merchandise my very first t-shirts are up for sale on teespring.com forward slash Oculus imperia. Join the channel on discord as well a link to all of this will be in the description below.