38: Jurten and the Boys

Bad Time Radio

For this episode, we discuss the novel Krieg by Steve Lyons. Meanwhile, Lawrence identifies WAY too much with the Krieg, and Ronald and Rahul talk about poop for over 30 minutes.
Recommendations
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Avengement (2019), directed by Jesse V. Johnson
Cautions:
Ip Man 4 (2019), directed by Wilson Yip
The Night House (2020), directed by David Bruckner
Plugs:
This article about poop: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-41167296
Warhammer 40k Summary
This is just my understanding, but warhammer fantasy got started when a company called Games Workshop realized that, if they wanted to sell more of the fantasy miniatures they were making, they should invent their own wargaming system. So, they spun up a slightly-idiosyncratic but largely standard high fantasy setting, complete with orc, dwarves, elves, and so on. Then, one of them glued a gun into an orcs hand, and they thought it was hilarious, so they set out making a custom setting set in the far future. This setting would have rough analogues to all the fantasy races, but be its own thing. And thus, we got Warhammer 40k.
Warhammer's 40k most distinctive thing is its aesthetics. The basic rule is that, if a metalhead teenager in the 90s thought something was cool, it'll be somewhere in the setting, turned up to 11 and made real grim. The Imperium, who are kind of the protagonists of the series, are defined by a kind of hypertrophic catholic aesthetic. They don't actually believe in catholicism, but their architecture is all cathedrals and skulls and their civilization largely revolves around accusing people of heresy. Other species in the setting embody everything from mecha anime to the xenomorphs from Aliens, all filtered through a "more is better, especially if it's more darkness" filter. To give an example of this, the Imperium has banned all artificial intelligence, because of a previous rebellion by synthetic life. Thus, to do all the stuff a robot would normally do in the setting, they instead have the servitor. The servitor is a convict or heretic who has been lobotomized and mind-wiped (which may not actually work all that well, depending on where the lore is) and then cybernetically augmented for one specific task, which it performs mindlessly until destroyed.
And now, an actual lore summary. I'm keeping this light, because there's a bunch there that doesn't matter for this story, so don't write in complaining about how I didn't talk about the Iron Guard or whatever. So, the setting primarily takes place in the year 40,000 (give or take, nobody in the Imperium actually knows what year it is). More than 10,000 years before the main setting, humanity had a galaxy-wide empire, but it was destroyed in some calamity. The Emperor of Mankind, an enormously powerful and apparently immortal being who probably wasn't really human, stepped into this chaos. He used an army of genetically engineered super soldiers to reconquer much of the galaxy, founding what is called The Imperium of Man. Then, one of his lieutenants rebelled. The rebellion was eventually defeated, but the Emperor was horribly wounded. He's currently encased in a life support system, nominally still in charge of the Imperium, but incapable of actually doing anything. Over the next 10,000 years, everything keeps getting worse. A cult grows up around the Emperor that worships him as a god, the traitors return and attack, the Imperium is pressed on all sides by hostile aliens, and its government grows increasingly incapable of managing the millions of planets it holds. And that's why, in the grim darkness of the 40th millennium, there is only war.
Two other things of note: This book makes some mention of the Mechanicus. None of the humans in the setting really understand how their technology works. However, the Mechanicus (also called Tech Priests) worship technology (possibly instead of the Emperor) and, although they don't really understand it, can reproduce the current tech of the Imperium. They're also absolutely terrified of inventing anything new, since they feel everything worthwhile has already been made and is just awaiting rediscovery.
And then there are the orks. These are about what you'd expect: 6-7' green dudes, kind of stupid but heavily muscled and utterly in love with fighting. They're also enormously fecund, so even one ork can, given time, produce an army big enough to challenge a planet. They're also masters of scrounging together technology, and can make working space ships out of piles of scrap or guns out of pipes.