Royal House of Goose
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Royal House of Goose
Shooting the Sh*t with Sneaky
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A conversation on Military-History, History, and Gaming.
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Hello and welcome back to the Royal House of Goose. Today we're on with another friend of mine, Mr. Malik. I should warn absolutely everybody in this room that if you did not take the advisement with Sesh's episode, that it was for restricted audience, I cannot help you now. This also is. Now, Ms. Malik over here is one of the few historians I have met in this world that actually knows what the hell he's talking about, even though he has a deeply weird obsession with the Mongolians that I personally don't understand, but we'll get into that in a bit. Malik, you want to start with a little bit about Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Hello, I am Malik. That is my actual legal name. Don't look me up or anything. Don't be weird. I am a United States Marine, medically retired. Wait, hang on, hang on. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Malik. I am a retired United States Marine, a father. I was an MP back in the Corps. Didn't do any like Blue Falcon shit. All I did was drink a lot and put tickets into the system. I did learn obviously your basic Marine Corps stuff. What I have learned over my short time, and this is the two of the best pieces of advice I ever received came from my time in the Marine Corps. First was it's not that deep. And the second was if you don't keep moving, you die. And I think that applies in basically every scenario in life. Because really, shit's just not that deep ever. Like someone's being a certain type of way, someone's calling you this, you gotta do that. Some bitch nagging you all the time. You got a dog that's fucking dumb. It's not that deep. You're alive, you're breathing, you're moving. And if you're moving, you're alive and you can grow. You don't have to stay in whatever dumb, stupid situation you're in. You are in charge of your life. You are in charge of how you react to things, how you deal with things. Wasn't really it's barely anything about me, but I feel like that's something that people advice is good advice.
SPEAKER_01Plus, I mean, one of the things I really, you know, love about you and uh you and John, right, Frank, our our your doc, that always pulled me towards you is the fact that people would come up with their whimpery, white nighty, bullshit, political correct shit, and both of y'all would just straight call them faggots and tell them to go fuck themselves. And I will respect that till the day I die.
SPEAKER_00I try not to start out with that, but for some reason, it's not stupid. I wouldn't say I'm the most intelligent guy, but like I can think. I can hear some new information, I can think about it, and then give my opinion. Most people they hear some new information, they skip the thinking about it, then they say some dumb, stupid, wrong shit.
SPEAKER_01I was telling some buddies of mine the other day that I recently read some some legitimate studies in the United States. You know, most people don't have an inner monologue. Like, we gotta stop thinking, they gotta start thinking, and they think it's hard.
SPEAKER_00I pray that the people that took that survey just didn't understand what was being asked. Because if that's do you think if someone doesn't have an inner monologue, they can't rotate the apple, like the same level of human being.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, my my bet is that it's got something to do with trauma because I think a lot of that hyper-awareness comes from people that have actually seen shit, and there's just a lot of people in this country that have never seen shit, they never had to be hyper-aware, they never had to process more than one thing at a time, and so we see them just take whatever they're told as fucking face value. Like the Europeans were the worst colonizers in the world, America continued slavery, but you know, especially as someone like yourself, you got what Mongolia, Korea had the longest unbroken chain, fucking god forbid, Africa, the Nubians, like all this fucking shit. The Arabs. Oh god, the worst of them. Still today, still today, the worst. Like the fucking the the UK gang rape report. Like, I would have gone out and started hunting. I'm sorry, I would have. Those people are pussies. They're pussies.
SPEAKER_00I I that they conquered the largest empire ever. And now look at them.
SPEAKER_01They didn't do much with it, did they?
SPEAKER_00No, except fucking start two world wars they couldn't finish.
SPEAKER_01I still put that on France.
SPEAKER_00I put it on Russia. Really? And for yeah, Russia in during the first world war had like two armies in Poland when World War II started. So they had to mobilize like weeks before.
SPEAKER_01When did Poland's fucking council actually centralize? Because I know Captain the Great kept them unstabilized with their lover on purpose. So it's a buffer state for like a hundred years.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. Poland's been kind of, you know. Poland didn't have a good time, but now they seem to they're doing good, I guess. A lot of a lot of white people really like Poland.
SPEAKER_01Well, to be fair, Poland might be the only country in Europe that's got a fetish for guns that's not, you know, like Lithuania or any of these backwater shithole Eurotrip countries that are just like, you know what? Fuck it. Let's blow something up.
SPEAKER_00The German Empire should have won the first world war.
SPEAKER_01I agree with that. I do. I mean, it really it really was defensive until Wilheim went absolutely fucking batshit with that unrestricted maritime nonce. That was what fucked him.
SPEAKER_00Well, him being a him being Kaiser in the first place kind of fucked him. Also, Von Molke the Younger?
SPEAKER_01Kind of a bitch. I don't understand about that whole business. Because the whole thing kicked off with France, you know, trying to convince England that Germany was trying to take their imperial place on the seas. But why did Wilhelm throw that big ass party in the style of the Roman Empire instead of the Holy Roman Empire when that was 844 years of Germany? It seems like a dumb fuck up that bit him in the ass. I don't even know about that. Oh yeah, yeah. Right before the whole war kicked off, he threw this great celebration party for the German people, you know, kind of like they did in Iran for the 2500th and all this other shit, and France, right? Because you notice a pattern with certain types of parties. But the party, and there was a lot of complaints at the time on this. The party was themed in the Roman Empire, like the Roman Roman Empire, right? Not the Holy Roman Empire, which was you gotta keep in mind World War I was only what like fucking under a hundred years since the the monarchy had collapsed that had been there for almost a thousand years. Yep, yeah, like people don't realize how fresh that is. That's like one person ago.
SPEAKER_00In the Franco-Prussian War, like very much like a German thing was 30, 40 years before. That he sounds like a real fucking moron. He was that's what he Rome and Germany, the Germans.
SPEAKER_01You have 844 years to be like, you know what? Yeah, raise Charlemagne instead of Caesar. Let's fucking bring back the the united principalities and kingdoms that we shared as a culture, and nope, fucking there's Rome for some reason. England saw it, they're like, no, fuck this guy.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it's because like Charlemagne. I don't know if he was then, but now he's definitely seen as like French instead of all right, all right.
SPEAKER_01Slow down. I I'll I'll die on this hill fighting you with a battle axe, Malik, and I will win. I will I will get that retard strength and I will win. Okay.
SPEAKER_00The French don't. I consider him German. I think if we're being honest, France, Germany, not Spain, fuck Spain, uh the island, all German.
SPEAKER_01Spain can't hear us anyway. They're they're sleeping there. You know what I love? Have you run into those uppity Spaniards that are like, it's not a biza, it's a biza.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've never ran into a Spaniard. You mean a continental Mexican?
SPEAKER_01Oh god, well, they did lose half the world, but no, fucking you you know it is very literally a biza, right? Like they had one king with a lisp, and they were all afraid to get killed, so they all just started talking with a lisp. They've always been that makes sense. That sounds very continental Mexican. That's why it had to be the Reconquista, not the Conquista. That's also fascinating.
SPEAKER_00You ever hear about the Battle of Tours? Bits and pieces. Oh my goodness. You should check it out. It's okay, well, just a short overview. So the Umayyad Caliphate now is like balls deep in France. Like all the way to Aquitaine, which I didn't know. It's pretty far into France. And the mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, the hammer he deposes well, he doesn't yeah, he goes, he leads this mostly army of footmen and the uh the king of Austrias, who had just been defeated at the Battle of Kobadanga, I believe. He goes to Charles and like, hey man, big C, there are these fucking Muslims and they're coming. And it's not looking great. Carly, he's like, Alright, dog. So they march and they meet the Umayyad force. Who there's a lot of contention as to whether or not it was a raiding force or blah blah blah, which I think is stupid modern revisionism. Clearly, they had intent to conquer, they had been, and the only times the spread of Islam was stopped, especially during this time, was through loss. So, and there's no like why wouldn't they should they have beaten Charles the Hammer at the Battle of Tours? There's really no force until I don't know, until like much deeper that could even challenge them.
SPEAKER_01Well, then to be fair, you know what we think of as Europe today, Western Europe, which I think they were better when there were 35 countries in the whole world and not 44 recognized and six unrecognized. The whole thing's bullshit. It's bullshit. But like you look at the old world, right? You look at like the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, you look at the old Hungarians, you look at the nutbags like Bathroy or or Tepish, right? And I'm not saying they're not justified nutbags, but they were proper nutbags, and God bless them for. But they held back for generations the fucking invasion from the Arab states, right? All the fucking time they held back the invasion from Islam. And what did mainland Europe do every single fucking time? They turned around and they fucked them. Every time. Every time. So I don't know. I I'm not confused, right? If you know history, because Europe measures foreign policy, they measure domestic policy in history, in culture, in tradition. We measure it based off of common sense, which is one of the reasons why history started in 1776 and the rest is backwards, savage bullshit. They can't grow up, right? But from that perspective, it makes sense that the Polish and the Hungarians, when they saw this wave of Islamic, you know, asylumes and and migrants coming in without vetting, without any type of of I'm just gonna say it, civilizing away from that shitty ass book, that they'd be like, you're not doing it this time, and just lock them the fuck out. And if you look at Europe now, the countries that are the least fucked by it Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, everywhere else, different things in culture, Malta, too.
SPEAKER_00That that Ottoman hate, which I understand, like I don't like the Turks either. But that it's interesting how something in the past affects certain people that weren't affected by it at all so much to this day, like their mindset, culture, uh just a whole lot of shit. But at the same time though, why don't any of the like the Balkan states hate Hungary?
SPEAKER_01Because Hungary isn't hunger anymore, they lost the vast majority of their fucking holdings and their pride and everything after that fucking treaty. What was it after World War I ripped them to absolute fucking shreds, and now they're just a dot on the map? Because if they hated Hungary now, then the land they took from them would need to be hated internally, and they're never gonna assimilate them if they do that.
SPEAKER_00I don't think there's any assimilation for anybody over there. I think Europe's fucking done.
SPEAKER_01I think it has Romanians still think they're 5,000 years old.
SPEAKER_00That's what I think about that Romanians, gypsies.
SPEAKER_01You know, I the the worst fight, like I left the Catholic Church years ago, right? I was confirmed all that shit. I learned the rituals and the rites, but I I'm not I'm not gonna believe in a heretical pope, and he is, and the last five popes have been heretics, right? They're they're pussies and they're heretics, I'm tired of it. But you know, you really look at this, and the new fucking revisionism that's sweeping the world is that oh, the crusades were just as bad as the fucking monk not Mongolians, I'm sorry that we're we'll we'll get there as the fucking Arabs, right? It's like no the fuck they weren't. Why are you all casually leaving out what 483 years of sacking, burning, raping, and pillaging Christian cities and holy sites?
SPEAKER_00Not just Christian, but absolutely like the early Islamic expansion started in like the 620s. Well, no, well, yes, started in the 620s, like right after the uh like the big Arab fight. Coming right into a Levant that had the Byzantine Empire and the assassinate Persians, who had been fighting for hundreds of years on and off, and that their most recent conflict, which literally ended like the year the first Muslim envoys show up, had been the most devastating, costly conflict in both nations' history. Heraclius, when he had to go and retain, like he so the Sassanids an emperor in Rome is killed, and the Sassanid guy, the Shah, was like his pal, his friends, he raises a massive army, conquers all the way into Anatolia. Heraclius raises a basically depopulates the empire of fighting age men and he also contacts the Turks starting the fifth Persian Turk Turk War, and he conquer, he like goes all the way to Tesaphon, nearly puts under siege, and because you know they don't want to wipe each other out completely, I guess, they have a little peace. Immediately after that, envoy shows up in Tessaphon and in Constantinople saying convert or die, and people like to suck off the early Islamic Lord, we conquered the Romans. You conquered like a shadow of a shadow, and Persia, and then it just goes up from the Levant, all of North Africa, like all well, all of Northeast Africa, all of the all of the Persian Empire into India in the first caliphate, and then the Umiad Caliphate, even larger, all of Spain to the borders of fucking China. The cre like people that try and compare that, they're they're night, they're not even close to the same thing. They're in different realms of what they were. The Crusades were a request by the Emperor Alexios Komnenos for military aid following the loss at the Battle of Manzikert. The Battle of Manzikert fucking crippled the Byzantine Empire, the Romans. It lost most of Anatolia, it lost basically all of the Tagma units, lost a lot of like commanders, and because it lost most of Anatolia, it lost its breadbasket, and where it recruited and housed a lot of these Tagma units.
SPEAKER_01They were still derisive dicks about it, though, because even when they you know wrote to Urban, they were basically like, Yeah, no, if you can send like two people that because they really thought that Western Rome was just shit at that point, and it wasn't, you know, it was it was feudal, but I view it almost like the Byzantines continued the culture and the tradition of Rome, but they weakened their military, you know, mandates, and the West, which was more or less shattered by the Visigothic tribes, right? By time it centralized, it just merged the military tactics of both. I mean, you look at things like the even the Lanschnecks later down the line. Like, I know we've gotten to the into this fight before, right? But we gotta we gotta collectively agree here. The Lanschnecks are nothing like the condoltieri, right? We're not comparing them to the Jeanettes of old or what Theodora was dealing with, but they've always been military, even though the Holy Roman Empire was broken and decent, it was always military, and the crusades not only helped centralize them, right, but it stunned the hell out of the Byzantines when they came down thundering, too.
SPEAKER_00Well, I have to push back. You said the Byzantine Empire weakened its military. I'd say up until that point, the Byzantine Empire had the best army in the world. For they had a professional standing military.
SPEAKER_01Okay, now if you want to argue the best professional cohesive army, I can do that.
SPEAKER_00Well, the best cohort of established army best army.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, because they had all types of specialists based off of terrain in the HRE. They just weren't united.
SPEAKER_00And they didn't have the basically all of West, all of Europe, like what people think of as Europe, especially like Western Central Europe, after the fall of Rome, was so influenced by Jimmy Christmas, like the the nomadic peoples and mostly the Germans, just like Caesar's German calf that he had as a little bodyguard. Because they couldn't, none of these much smaller polities could sustain like a large professional infantry force, they went with what they could do the most with for the least, and that was a heavy cavalryman. Everything in basically all of medieval European warfare until like the 1400s was based on your heavy cavalry, your knight. And the the knight was fantastic, the best heavy cav of all time. But the rest of European militaries, especially Western, Central, not that great.
SPEAKER_01Okay, first of all, I I I have yielded on the point that heavy cavalry was the poison, and I've even yielded to the point where I will respect the gendarmes as the very last time I respected France. Okay. With that said, Europe was unparalleled when it came to defensive measures because castles to me are what Mongolians are to you, and I'm sorry, but those things were some of the most brilliant death traps that have ever been created.
SPEAKER_00You know who else had castles? Oh god. The Nizari Ismaili. You know what, Mongolian? These capals were high up in the mountains, like European-style castles, high up in the mountains. The Mongols smashed them, which is a great way. Let's get into that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, okay, yeah, no, we can get into that. Would you like to start with the fact that you know the three major losses that Mongolia had were in modern day Vietnam, Japan, and Israel? You want to start there?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's interesting because there weren't three major losses in modern Vietnam, Israel, and Japan by the Mongols. The Yuan dynasty failed to invade China or Japan. The Yuan dynasty didn't lose in Dai Viet. They fucking crushed three armies, and then the Vietnamese were like, hey, we'll we'll be your tributary. And the fucking the Battle of Anjaloo that everybody likes to suck off was one Tuman and a bunch of native subjects from the area, like Armenians, Georgians, etc. Was it Ilkhanate? And and before the Battle of Anjaloo, Helagu had a hundred and fifty thousand men in that area. He took most of them back to the well allegedly he was probably gonna go to the Krill type, but they're too legitable.
SPEAKER_01War started. Well, sure, sure. I mean, I'll I'll I I do have a certain degree of respect for Mongolia and you know Stanistan, which is the best you'll get today. Even though Mongolia has been a decent ally in the modern world after Russia tried to convince them Genghis wasn't real for like a hundred years. But succession crises to the side here. They did, you know, integrate lobbying diseased gaseous cattle and corpses over castle walls. And I will absolutely give credit to the fact that that was a problem. Allegedly. Bullshit allegedly. The Black Plague started in fucking Mongolia, Malik. Don't play with me.
SPEAKER_00I mean, the disease is there, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The disease is in age marmot that is still alive today for some reason. Every single places fucking marmot.
SPEAKER_00Could also have started in like China. China's eaten a whole bunch of China eats literally everything. Including people.
SPEAKER_01I'm not saying they didn't, but it doesn't change the fact that Yersenia pestis is naturally found in that fucking marmot in Mongolia, and they absolutely weapon. I don't.
SPEAKER_00I would too. It's a hell of a weapon. I know what you're talking about, like the the battle, the Kafa thing, where allegedly Janny Beg threw plague-infested bodies. But I have looked high and low. There's only one scholarly source for that. And it's not even like definitive. It says this is possible that it happened.
SPEAKER_01Probably did. I'm sorry, Malik, but there's no way for cavalry to bring down a proper castle without either a siege engines, which they did not have until mid-fucking conquest, and B some way to re-isolate the castle quadrants through quarantine, and that was only done through either poison disease or fire.
SPEAKER_00The Mongol Empire absolutely had artillery, infantry, etc. Not in the beginning. Yes. Well, not in the beginning when they fought Jin China, but immediately after fighting, well, they didn't even start with Jin China. But after Jin China, they had access to gunpowder, Chinese siege technology.
SPEAKER_01You think if China had gotten those fire lances off the ground in time for mass production, they might have actually had a shot of holding some of the old castles, the dojan. Genuine question, Malik. Like if they had properly Yeah, because they were just starting to build the fire lances up before you know Genghis had proper access to siege equipment. Like if they had mass produced enough of those, you reckon they could have turned them around. It's possible. They had explosives. But they didn't have mass production of them.
SPEAKER_00Oh buddy. You ever read about the Jin Sung War? The war immediately preceding the Mongol invasion of China? You have my attention. So the Jin, the Manchu, who for some reason don't exist anymore, whatever happened there. They were like a step people. They come in with like they were called the Iron Pagoda, Iron Buddha, Iron Temple Cataphract. Oh, okay. Yep. Yeah, I'm with you. In all of history that I've studied, that's basically the only like force of calves that was known for breaking formed blocks of infantry. I just found that cool. But they fucking they come in, they smash, smash the uh Kitan dynasty, and they start fighting Song China, and they take quite a bit of it, and then they get like held for a while, and then they hit like um, I don't remember what city it is, but this city was like a an armory, it had bombs, arrow bombs.
SPEAKER_01Can you put a bunch of gunpowder weapons? Can you put an Apalm out with concentrated vinegar? I don't know. I don't the only reason I ask is because you know, one historian to another, part of my brain is still on you know the Byzantine Empire and the fact that if they'd have paid their debts twice, they might still be around the fucking you know great betrayal crusade, never would have fucking happened, they never would have lost the cannon that was sold to bring down the Theodosian Walls, they could have just bought it and up in dicks and pussies. But no, I'm I'm thinking about Greek fire, right? Because the only thing that we really know about Greek fire, and we we've speculated, right? Is that we can reverse engineer it because it's something that, even though it's sticky and it can even hold on water, it can be put out by vinegar, old condensed vinegar. So I'm wondering if its replication can be. Also, why was no one using Greek fire against the Mongolians? That seems like a terrible loss of opportunity when you're dealing with fucking cavalry.
SPEAKER_00No one had it by that time. Even like the what remained the Byzantine successor states, they had lost uh Greek fire for a while.
SPEAKER_01I think. How would you have fixed the Mongolian succession crisis? Damn. Right now, you're you're the skulking and duplicitous advisor to to Chingis himself, and you've you've advised him through every battle of his career what's gonna happen, what you know about it, this, that, the other. And now he turns to you and he says, What happens after I die? And you explain the crisis to him. What do you think he would do, and what would you advise him to do?
SPEAKER_00What I'd advise him to do is I it's difficult because the way he did things, the way they did things is like like it makes sense. Pig style. And and that you had like it was the tradition, like the Mongol tradition. I would have advised him, like honestly, he should have killed he well should have killed Shagatai. Because if Shagatai is not in the picture calling Jochi a bastard and saying if Jochi is the next con, there will be war, blah blah blah. Then Jochi He inherits the empire. And I think that sets a precedent for just the youngest son inherits. But I don't know if there's any. I don't know. I don't think there is any fixing it.
SPEAKER_01So from your perspective, what impact did Mongolia have on Islam?
SPEAKER_00To me, my studies, my research, it seems like before the sack of Baghdad, especially, Islam is known, oh, it's the golden age, science, technology, poetry, blah, blah, blah. After, it's more of the violent stuff that we it was still like violent before, but it was like more, way more of that. They became a much more insular, not learning, not forward thinking faith.
SPEAKER_01Kind of like Ireland after they discovered whiskey for 300 years. Yeah, kind of. I'm not even shitting you. There's a whole like if you look at Irish advancements in technology, whiskey hits, and then there's just 300 years of of slow minimal progression. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00And it's kind of like how like Christianity, you had like the the before the collapse of Rome, you have all these people becoming Christian, like being martyred, working in hospitals, blah blah blah. And then you have the collapse of Rome and the Franks come, and when the Franks Franks convert, like they're they view Jesus as like like a Thor, like a warrior. And like it's kind of more, it's not really it doesn't change the religion, but the way they practiced it and what certain things meant to them.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it fucking did. We had warrior prelates in in Europe. We absolutely had bishops that knew how to gut and kill a bitch. Yeah, that's how you got bishoprics because they knew how to do it. They had that before, yeah, but they weren't afraid of the fucking sword, is my point. Not like you know, Pentecostals or Baptists today, where it's he must love everybody always and never think of violence. Ah, I don't know. Christianity, uh, people are starting to genuinely believe that it's it's the religion of the pacifists, and it's not.
SPEAKER_00It's really well. I mean, it kind of is though.
SPEAKER_01Look at the for the schism. Olya was a crazy bitch, and she was damn good at what she did. Like most of the people who were canonized prelates were warrior saints. That's all I'm saying. They weren't no Mother Teresa pretending to be nice while abusing kids off and fuck all nowhere belt. But as a Christian, we're called to be like Christ. You're also called to take up arms in the defense of the innocent no less than 23 times in the Bible, the original Bible. What do you mean the original Bible? Don't don't don't make me don't make me go down the King James route because I will fucking I will rail for an hour about the higher.
SPEAKER_00Are you saying the King James Bible is the original Bible?
SPEAKER_01No, I said if you fucking make me go down this route, I can shit on it for an hour. No, just the Protestant 66. Yeah, fucking heretics. Actually, that's a good transition. What's your stance on the Inquisitions or what?
SPEAKER_00What's your stance on the Hussite War?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, take that L Papist. You know what, motherfucker? We're not the ones who radicalized Islam. Good job being responsible for that, bud.
SPEAKER_00I'm not Mongolian, I'm Protestant. Uh Islam radicalized Islam.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there is a reason that Salah Hadin killed more uh, you know, Muslims than Christians during the crusade, I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the entire basically infantry force of the Batimids who were black, not just them, he also killed their families, burned their houses after promising that they could leave in peace. Yeah, they were pretty fucked up people.
SPEAKER_01Although I will say to this day, one of my favorite, you know, siege stories ever, I can't remember if it was a siege tower or a battering ram, when they wheeled this, the crusaders wheeled it up against this fucking wall at the Siege of Jerusalem. And the defenders are trying to set this thing on fire, right? It just becomes this lump of fucking mess. And then the the crusaders start desperately trying to set this lump of mess on fire so that they can get it out of the way and wheel another ram forward or siege tower, whatever it was. And the defenders within like you know, 30 minutes of all this happening are now frantically trying to put out the fire that they started to prevent them from moving this thing.
SPEAKER_00But even them like building that siege tower, there were no trees and shit in the air. Yeah, there were no trees and shit. So I think two Genoese ship Genoese ships landed and they destroyed those ships to build the siege tower. That explains why they were fighting so desperately for it. Yeah, because it's fucking I'd be pretty fucking desperately fighting too. I hadn't had water in a while. There's a whole nother No, it's a season Siege Baker. Hadn't had water for a while. I'm a Frank, I'm surrounded by Muslims in this sh place that's hot with sand and shit. I'd be pretty fucking frantic too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but why would they follow that stupid prick after Baldwin, who literally led them into the middle of the fucking desert with no logistics, no materials, no water, no supplies, and no plan, and just got nerfed out in the fucking dunes and lost Jerusalem over it? Like, why would you follow that stupid cunt?
SPEAKER_00Because people are dumb, they believe their own hype. Can't get higher. The Mongol Empire wrapping it back around. Alright. The uh the Shah of Khorizm, the Kresmian Shatum, why did he not punish his governor instead of insulting the most powerful man in the world? Person that called himself the Emperor of Mankind. Pretty fucking dumb. Led to the death of upwards of 15 million people and the destruction of the Khresmian Shatum.
SPEAKER_01I mean, to be fair, if you really look at, you know, fucking Genghis, right? He gave them all a chance. Like every major city, he gave them a chance and they spat in his face and they just kept spitting in his face. So he was like, you know what? Fuck you.
SPEAKER_00Even the same the Shah who didn't punish the governor, they had been had friendly relations and like traded with each other for a couple of years before that. Like, what is it's stupid. The same guy, the Shah of Khorzum, had thought about invading Jin China, and he sent a delegation, like a hundred or so men, like scout it out, see what was going on. And they make it into what's normal now modern China, and it's just there's no people. They keep going a little further, they're going towards Kaifeng. And off in the distance, they like they think they see mountains. These giant white mountains. Some of them start getting sick, really sick. Get a little closer, the roads become unstable, like sticky, slick. And then they get to Kaifeng, and those mountains are human skulls, human bones. Kaifeng is absolutely destroyed. And that slickness on the road, that miasma in the air, came from millions of decaying human bodies. They come back reporting that to the Shah, and they like he knew that the Mongols did that to a more powerful, more advanced place in China. Why would you then start a conflict with the people who did that? Because he believed his own hype. He was a guy that his followers called him the second Alexander, like Alexander the Great. And like to most of the Muslims, he was like the sword of Allah, the sword of Islam. Yeah, you can be called that, but when Godzilla walks into the fucking room, even King Ghidorah gets a little nervous. You know what I mean? Or there's actually that's that happens so much in history. Like the Battle of Nacopolis, one of my top favorite battles of all time. If those French would have been just like five percent less arrogant, you don't have the Ottomans taking all the Balkans and that shit.
SPEAKER_01You think Tamerlane had a right full claim to Temujin's legacy? No, Turk.
SPEAKER_00He was he was way more like people, oh, the Wong was so brutal. Tamerlane was like an evil, evil guy. It was a sadist. Yeah, like and he where Genghis Khan came from a time and a place that the monk the the steppe they didn't view people that farmed as people, they viewed them as like this. So the Mongols to the Mongols like deer eat plants, animals eat plants, and animals that eat plants are what we eat, they're prey. So they seeing these a bunch of people that are settled and farming and doing all that shit, they're prey too. Tamerlane grew up in a fucking city, was like a minor noble, they didn't have that belief of people, and yet he was way more brutal.
SPEAKER_01The original Mongolians under you know Tomrid 2, they had a lot of very, very specific folklore. They were very you know tribally oriented and and animism-oriented. Like, even if you think about Mongolian throat singing, not that weird Tibetan high whistle. Like they learned how to do that by sitting on mountains and watching thunder crack in the sky and trying to echo it with their bodies, and then they just did. That's some hardcore shit. I didn't even know that. Yeah, that's where that came from. Was listening to thunder cracking around them until they can mimic it. And so the Tibetan variant of it, right? That's the high whistle that's almost nasally. The Mongolian one, and you know, I fucked around with this a little bit, I can do some of it, but I can't get to that depth that the Mongolians could hold traditionally. Because if you really listen to it, like really listen to it, it'll it'll rattle your bones and and set a chill down your spine. Like it they learned it from mimicking thunder. It's beautiful. Was it like a shamanic thing? Yeah. A lot of what the Mongolians did was biomimicry, and especially if you look into some of their folklore, right? Like the whole thing with um the belief that that you know he would become Genghis, supposedly, right? And I'm I'm not saying this definitively because yeah, we found some records of this, but it's still secondhand sources at the time. Came from this this great fucking image of the cow, right?
SPEAKER_00You with me? Yeah. I've never what do you mean it came from the image of the cow?
SPEAKER_01There was this whole the cow there was this whole like dream thing that what the hell's his name? Fuck that that fucking hell. What the I just said his name. Help me out here. Genghis's proper name. It slipped on me. Temujin. Thank you. That he had this this great and terrible vision that you know the cow was given a voice to moo, and in so doing that he would be, you know, the con and the emperor of all mankind. Like that's where that confidence came from was a spiritual vision in the shamanic. At least that's the secondhand accounts, because you know how I am. I'm a big proponent of reading the the mythologies and the religious practices and the mystical practices of of different cultures and people. I think it's just as important to understand what drove them. Like that crazy worm in the desert that they spread the rumor of that had like electricity and fucking deathworm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's I need to do more of that. Like, I need to call animism.
SPEAKER_01I'm telling you, dude. Like, you you have me beat on battles every day of the fucking week. Every day of the week. I can't retain the way that you can. But when it comes to mythology, that animism was huge. That's where the deathworm came from. That's where the the emperor of all mankind came from, that's where the blue wolf came from.
SPEAKER_02Interesting.
SPEAKER_01I need to look into that.
SPEAKER_00That sounds fascinating. I know that allegedly, because there's really what we know for sure about Genghis Khan, basically fucking nothing. But it said that when he was born, he was clutching a blood clot, and to them it was like a sign of a destroyer. Is that thing about his granddaughter and the the horses and the wrestling trail? I know that there was some one of them that was like a big wrestler or whatnot, but it's a girl. I don't know. I don't pay attention to that.
SPEAKER_01I could I couldn't find corroboration for it, but it was something like if you wanted her hand in marriage, you had to beat her at wrestling, and if you couldn't, you had to give her your best horse, and by the end of it, she had like a hundred fucking horses and sleeper.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I've heard that. I have I've never seen like a primary source on that or anything, but neither have I.
SPEAKER_02That's most happening.
SPEAKER_00It wouldn't it make sense. Just like they were wrestlers.
SPEAKER_01So I do want to ask you then for a very specific tip and trick because you know people in our field, formally, informally, you know, whatever area it may be, whatever subfield it may be, I can't handle this revision of shit anymore. I can't handle the feminist lens. I can't handle this. Oh, well, this is what it is today, therefore, like no, fuck yourself with a cactus. What are some things that you look for in in primary sources or secondary sources that you can immediately look at it and be like, you know what, this has been tampered, tampered with by retards? Like, what's what's your your intrinsic flare-up?
SPEAKER_00When there's like Reddit history where people have seen like a video or like a snippet or something, and they think that's that's actually what it is. That makes me so fucking fuzzy it's not hard. It's not hard to educate yourself and learn more about history. All you gotta do, literally, you can get a JSTOR account right now, and you have access to the fucking entire collection of academic scholarly sources that every historian, every PhD professor, etc., uses.
SPEAKER_01Fuck the peer reviews. You can get into the special collections, the the scrolls, the tablets, the the original relics and curios, and and you know, fucking what the hell do you call it? Antiquarian. It's like ten dollars a month. Yeah. Like one of my favorite books, and you're you're the battle historian for that era. You know me, I'm more medieval Europe up until you know Starforks type deal. And I I I've recommended this to a few people. I even got John a copy of it. I don't know if you've ever read it, but like for me, I think a good start for new people is 5,000 years of battle. Right? Because you have the battle plans laid out, a little bit of history, a little bit of technology. It's just basic shit. But it's a good book. You got any specifically you want to recommend to the good people? Oh, I got two.
SPEAKER_00All yours? Crusades, an authoritative history on the war for the Holy Land, and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. The first one by Thomas Aspridge. It just it goes, it starts before the Crusades and it just runs through like what led up to it, what the motivations were, what happened, and it ends with a beautiful, beautiful gave me chills thinking about it. It said what the crusades were is in the past, and it's where they should remain. And I love that so much. Because a lot of these people today, they like LARP and they try to play as oh, we need another crusade, blah, blah, blah. You don't know what that even means. You don't even know what that was for. It's not your little fucking LARP for you to get some clicks from F-words.
SPEAKER_01No, it's it's not because even the nobility gave up everything. Like at St. Francis. They gave up everything to go on these crusades to save their lives against what was happening.
SPEAKER_00I know. Then people are like, oh, they did it to take land and money. Like, no, they like all of them, all the leaders, they promised to return the land. Well, except for that one fucking cunt. They promised to return any land taken to the Byzantine Empire. And like people bankrupted them to go on crusade. They went into starvation. I don't that's that's what now there's so much presentism in history. And like the academic, like if you go to college for history, which I don't recommend, you don't need to do that.
SPEAKER_01No, it's not worth it. You'll you'll learn more if you just pursue your interest. Take it as someone who got the uh the college focus in it.
SPEAKER_00Let's say I was I'm four credits away from my bachelor's in history. I will never get those four credits. No, it's not the way they despise it so much. It's not even the it's not that they like teach you history, they just try to teach you what to think. And that's literally the opposite of what a historian should do. Yeah, like we're not there to say, oh, this is what you should think about the thing.
SPEAKER_01It's no, you have to take on the perspective of who you're looking at, otherwise you won't understand it. Like, if you're reading a diary from a slave holder during the Civil War, you're not looking at it from the typical perspective of, oh, well, fuck this bit of property. You're looking at it from the perspective of, oh shit, I've got to go to war with my brother. Oh shit, the farm's gonna close down. Now, there were some, but again, it depends on whose diary you're looking at. And you have to be able to tailor that. Like the the Catherines of the world, right? This is this is my biggest gripe against the female lens, right? And I know you're not a huge fan of female monarchs, but there were a couple really good ones, and I will stand on this. The Catherines of the world were some of the biggest earthshakers, right? Catherine de' Medici, Catherine the Great, Catherine of Aragon, Catalina Schwarza, fuck that bitch. She deserved what she got. But for some reason, a lot of Catherines, right? Sergei out of China, Carlotta in Mexico. Well, Carlotta's a little bit more modern, but Cersei, right? If you actually know history and you watch them, they clawed their way to the top. Catherine de' Medici was known for creating the first spy network among you know prostitutes and and and all these people in society that were just casually overlooked, dragging them into the court, training them in Milan to be proper ladies, and then no one knew what they were until they had a knife at their neck or poison in their body, right? Like she she knew how to play the game. Olya of Kev. Absolute crazy fucking badass. Now, were there shit female monik? Well, yeah, fucking look at the pharaohs, right? I'm not saying there weren't. What I am saying is when you look at the real ones and you look at it from the perspective of, oh no, well, you know, she just she couldn't be empowered because the thyety hated her. And like the stupid fucking feminist lens crap, all you're doing is devaluing how much actual like blood, sweat, tears, and and just ungodly things I had to do to get to that position. Like, say what you want about Catherine the Great. But she went from being a thrown away Prussian princess to one of the most powerful monarchs in the fucking world. And she gave up the one man, the one man who genuinely loved her out of a life of absolute cruelty to use him to keep Poland destabilized and abuse his love for her forever just to protect her country. Now, there's something about certain monarchs when they step into that role where they take on something bigger than themselves that it doesn't matter once you get to that point.
SPEAKER_00You know what I mean? Twice in the Mongol Empire, and arguably two of the most powerful women in history were regents of the Mongols.
SPEAKER_01And how do you imagine history would depict them today? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00There's a book about it that I'm not gonna read because I would imagine it's pretty feminist coded. And that's like they didn't think about that shit then. And yet the further back you go, the more like weird and surreal it gets like Neo-Assyria. Because people believed in magic, like actual magic, believed in the gods. And what what is there to tell them that what they believe, like Asher, the god of Assyria, it wasn't like a Zeus or Thor, it was like the Assyrians themselves, but deified in a way. How are you gonna tell a person like that that all they're doing, they believe, is like this is what the god Asher wants, and they're king. They see that he is the representative of that god on the planet, whatever horrific tortures, blah blah blah blah blah to us, we find their god. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01It is the right thing to do. Because whether or not you like it, if you you know go back in time and you get them to deny that, they're never going to evolve into the society that they were for everything that came of it, because without that core principle, that core belief structure, there would have been no cohesion at all. Could you imagine the Mongolians if they were an animist, if they didn't believe in that connection that they had to their horses? No, they would have been shitty horsemen, very shitty horsemen.
SPEAKER_00Definitely, they would probably probably know about them today.
SPEAKER_01Because that faith, whether you look in the and this this is why I say it's always important to look at it, because even today a lot of societies believe in magic. If you really think about it, if if we describe modern things in in medieval or or middle-aged fashion, right? Like right now, you are looking into a clump of crystals, right? And you are throwing your voice through a series of grids made up of crystals to me so that I can hear your voice from all the way, many, many miles away. Describe it like that and tell me that shit's not scrying. Fair. Exactly. It's not this Hollywood ooga boogery bullshit.
SPEAKER_00Electricity. Exactly. You know, power lines, they like pull ambient electricity from the air. What the fuck does that mean? Who figured that out? You're telling me that wasn't a sorcerer?
SPEAKER_01We've normalized and commonplaced a lot of what we deal with. Doesn't change the fact that arguably it's it's what they would have considered magic. I mean, what the fuck do you think an EMP, a directed EMP or anything out of the Department of Energy today would register as to a fucking Assyrian? Forget the fact that a rifle would blow their fucking minds. Go go explain to them how we can send a pulse that will rip people's skin off and liquidate their organs. Go ahead. Good luck. Do we have several? It's under the sonar division's uh development.
SPEAKER_00Like that's learned we can drop EMPs.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's not so much drop. We've got EMP webs we can fire out. You know about that. They had that over in fucking Iraq. I've never heard about that. That's terrifying. I hate that. Yeah, no, it's it's really fucked up shit, but like this is my point. It's magic. It's it's we're we're weaving with and this is why I get pissed, right? And I I will I will die on this hill too. We've got science evolving to the point and and and technology evolving to the point where and this that I want to be so clear. This is why when I say I miss the old days technology, I'm not saying don't bring the cure for syphilis and basic engineering, keep that shit. But why do we have VR goggles out of Wally for all these fat fucks that want to leave society while we fleece them from everything instead of, oh, I don't know, have the zoologists meet with the biological gene crispers, meet with the archaeologists and gather together all of the bones, and now we have fucking potbelly dragons. You're telling me, Malik, that with modern technology we couldn't create a centaur. I I've had this with everyone.
SPEAKER_00I have been saying this shit for so long. We could have whimsy and we could have dinosaurs, we could have dinosaurs, we could have a griffin. There are allegedly trillionaires in the world, and there's not one fucking dinosaur. That's my that is my eat the rich, dude. If you have just that amount of money and you're not working to make like some fantasy creature, fuck you. Die.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, actually, I'm I'm wondering because we're starting up a new segment. We got a lot of military guys on here called military mezzanine, and I want Frank to be a part of this after he does his. I'm still gonna try to drag him up here, but it's basically one random question that we lob into the room of all our military guys and we let you just fight to the death over it. Like the last one was uh you have to categorize every type of weaponry into either flora or fauna. And tanks, I believe, was the one that threw them over the fucking edge. I don't mean you have to categorize them as flora or fauna. I mean you have to either put them into a phylum as an animal or a plant because you think about biomimicry, right? The way that we adapt weaponry and technology to these things, you think about what you know the drones can be now. So are we building it as a flora or a fauna? For example, artillery seems to be the the consistency is a flora because it's in place and it shoots at a range, right? A pistol would be a fauna because it has to run up to you to bite. Like if you made a pistol with fucking robo legs that ran around, it would be fauna. If you made a piece of artillery that could grow and develop robotically to make new artillery as it as it grew in place, that would be a flora.
SPEAKER_00What about mobile artillery?
SPEAKER_01That's where the heat came in because they went at each other for fucking like a straight hour. It was one of the most vicious things I've ever seen over tanks. So you want to come in and join us on the military mezzanine whenever we start kicking that off once or twice a month? Because it's just gonna be a bunch of military guys. I'm gonna lob crazy questions like that at y'all and just let you go for the fucking jugular. I'm open to it. You think we'll ever get Frank up here? Uh maybe. Maybe. You can testify to the fact that you know these podcasts aren't exactly rigid besides like the first four minutes.
SPEAKER_00True. Uh I think he's maybe. I'm not gonna speak for the co-leader of the Wolfpack, I would never.
SPEAKER_01While I have you here, is there anything you want to promote? Any products or or fucking businesses or anything you got going on that you want to latch on to?
SPEAKER_00Follow me on TikTok. I post sometimes. I got some stuff I'm working on, but not really anything to promote. You know how to play chess, right? Yeah, I know how to play chess. I'm gonna whoop your ass in chess. You might once. It's been a while, but only once. I'd whoop your ass in Total War, guy. I ain't gonna deny that. You would.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna get Medieval 3? I I feel like they're gonna bastardize it like Vale Guard out of Dragon Age. Like they need to keep politics the fuck away from my video games, and they haven't stopped running. If I swear to god, if Patrick Rothloss releases that third book after fucking 12 years and there's any type of political correct bullshit in it. Patrick Rothloss. He he wrote one of my favorite books series. We've been waiting for the third and final book in the trilogy for over 10 years. It's maddening. But it's the same thing with Dragon Age. Like, we waited nine, ten fucking years for Veilguard, and then they just dropped this fucking new age slop all over it. The whole thing was just an exercise in political correctness.
SPEAKER_00I'm pretty sure the last Dragon Age game was Inquisition. It officially, yes, because fuck the one that followed it. They do that to a lot. Like a lot. People like Total War War. It's the best selling in the Total War franchise, but objectively, it's the worst at being Total War.
SPEAKER_01I mean, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be able to play any of the new Total Wars because you kind of got my mind acclimated to the new systems. But can we agree on something just to piss off Tom, who I'm sure one day will listen to this? Uh, that Europa Universalis is not a strategy game, it's an Excel sheet trying to fit in.
SPEAKER_00100%. 100%. I do have EU5. But I'm not good at it. I don't understand it. I don't know why I got it. It's just like an autism thing for me.
SPEAKER_01But mind you, my co-producer, right? Uh she loves you by the way, awesome. She thinks you're fucking hilarious and brilliant, and she's, you know, super thrilled by the fact that you put down morons everywhere, because it's one thing we're all in common. But she's obsessed with Excel spreadsheets to a point that's almost nauseating to me. And I I love it because it makes her very effective and she kicks ass at everything she does, but like I can't look at an Excel spreadsheet. It it curls my blood and annoys me, right? You're basically taking my brain, forcing it to be 2D, and making it ineffective. Like, no. But I had her, with all of her deep love of Excel as a shortcut for just about everything in life, look at Europa Universalis. I said, because she doesn't play strategy games, right? She doesn't do any of the fantasy stuff. And I said, All right, so looking at this now, would you say this is an Excel spreadsheet? You know what she told me? What? This will never be as good as Excel. This is just an abomination. That's funny. So it's worse than Excel.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's a video game and she's a girl. But I get it. Excel fucking sucks. I don't like looking at it. I don't understand it. I took a class in college on Excel, learned nothing. I wish I could get it. Because it seems like it helped, but you know what?
SPEAKER_01I started doing bad at math. What? I just I I really started fucking around with Gemini, and I'm just like, yeah, Gemini, can you break all this shit down, drop it in an Excel sheet? And she just does it. Does it work like well? Actually, yes. For Excel sheets, yes. Brilliantly. Brilliantly. It's it's been a godsend for me. I've been able to jumpstart everything and get reports to uh to Terry. Awesome, much faster.
SPEAKER_00Much faster. There are people that like they come up sometimes when they go live, and their argument is they punch something into Chat GPT and they think like that's oh, I I just did research. This is now a credible source. It makes me want to bust a bottle and stab them in the throat with it.
SPEAKER_01I know. And I dude, it pissed me off so much. I literally wrote the book on primary sources. I get it. Do you have a copy of that? By the way, I can send you one over if you want it.
SPEAKER_00You should.
SPEAKER_01I'll send you one. But it's it's wild to me because like if you're gonna use Chat GPT, I still think Gemini is better, but if you're gonna use Chat GPT, at least feed it the sources you want it to pull from so you're not getting sludge and crap, and you still gotta cross-reference it with Gemini or or another AI system after to make sure it's consistent, like hot.
SPEAKER_00I've like had argu arguments with AIs just for like I type in a little history thing, and it tells me wrong shit. I'm like, that's not true. I'm gonna be like, oh yeah, you're actually correct.
SPEAKER_01It's like how I don't think AI is gonna take over like people. I think it's gonna take over a lot of the menial jobs that people have come to be used to as like America. And I don't mean like in customer service, I think that's gonna crash and burn with the margins. I mean like lower corporate people who do reports, file spreadsheets, like that's what they're training it to be more and more advanced at so that it can just knock that shit out of the way, like design planning or or writing a proposal to a contractor. Those types of specialists are fucked outside of like disaster relief.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I think you underestimate the Chinese spirit.
SPEAKER_01You know what I'd like to make one day? What? Now, mind you, if I ever get fuck you money, I'm gonna pay one of my tech bros to bring back an old game called Reign of Swords because it used to be my happy place, and I'm pissed it's gone. By the way, if any of you are watching this and you know someone who can do that, fucking send me a message through the site write goddamn now, and you'll be my favorite person for at least a week. Yeah, that's just been a thing of mine. But one of these days, because we have all these unconstitutional things on the books, they've just integrated AI into SCOTA systems and SES systems. I'm not talking about like the AI that the military's had since Reagan. I'm talking like modern public-facing AI bullshit. The crap one. I want someone to create like a digital AI, George Washington, right? And I want this autonomous motherfucker to be trained in all of Washington's writings, his diaries, his actions, like every every fucking thing. And I want this motherfucker to float around the wide web and just hunt down other AI language systems, challenge them to duels, and just crack them down with a virus if they fucking suck with unconstitutional crap. That would be hilarious.
SPEAKER_00That would be. I wonder if that's possible. If you find a person that can bring back your video game, tell them they also need to bring back champions, return to arms, and champions of Nora. We want it.
SPEAKER_01Bro, Reign of Swords wasn't even complicated. Like you had a handful of units that basically played turn-based like chess, right? But they were all specialized units. You could upgrade to them, lower them, everything from footmen to gendarms to fucking priests, but you also had a little bit of that magical element. Like you had a wizard that could throw fireballs and lightning and shit. You had a shaman that could inspire the troops and weaken the other ones. You had fucking like dude. You had conjurers in the dunes in the second one that could summon deathworms. Like, I'm going into a nerd place. I shouldn't be with this, but fucking like I want that shit back. And the company went defunct, so it's not like I'll sue you.
SPEAKER_00I wonder. Reign of Swords?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was by Mobile Battles. Used to be called Reign of Swords. The first one was better than the second, but was a damn good game.
SPEAKER_00It was a fun game.
SPEAKER_01It was for its time. It's it's one of those games that if you play it and you're not kind of you know grown on the systems of early iOS, you'll be like, oh well, this if this very like it's it's like if someone tries to get into Total War and they start with Medieval 2.
SPEAKER_00Allegedly, you can get it on Touch Arcade and the Internet Archive.
SPEAKER_01I I tried. I downloaded it and it lets you play the first uh the first tutorial campaign and then it shuts down. Oh. Believe me, this this has been like fucking it went defunct in 2012. Like I've been trying on and off for years.
SPEAKER_00There's this one game I've been trying to look for. I played it a long time ago on PS2. You're like a gladiator, and you could like make your own gladiator and train them and blah blah blah. I can't even remember the name of it, and no one knows what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01Let me ask you, what are what are your top five uh historical games?
SPEAKER_00Total War Realm 2, Total War Attila, Total War Three Kingdoms.
SPEAKER_01All Total Wars count as one selection. You got four more. That's so wrong. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, I just did it.
SPEAKER_00Son of a bitch. Stratagos is pretty good. Not finished yet, but pretty good. Let me see. Actually, I'll just pull up my steam because this is an important question.
SPEAKER_01It is, yeah, because I know I know you hold uh proper gaming in the same threshold as proper history.
SPEAKER_00Crusader Kings 3. Steel Division 2. No, take out that war game red dragon over Steel Division 2. Ghost of Tsushima, the first one. Even though it's like, you know, it's not one for one history. Great game though.
SPEAKER_01You hold anything with Oriental Wars?
SPEAKER_00I used to. I thought there was gonna be more to it. I bought it. Quite a few hours in it.
SPEAKER_01Kinda like that old PS2. Game Goblin Commander as far as the actual command system mark. Nothing on medieval. Not even close. So, you know, just to bring us back a little bit to your your origins, I have noticed, and I I'm I'm asking this formally as as a civ, right? Like I know my place in this one. But video games seem to be a a common way for you know military vets to kind of reintegrate and balance in society almost as much as going down to the shooting range and letting off a couple rounds. So what what are the main types of games that you find veterans typically you know pull cod lobbies into?
SPEAKER_00I don't know, I don't really talk to a lot of a lot of veterans.
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_01Bro, look at the team that you game with, a solid half of them are vets. Oozel, fucking Frank, TK, Oozel thing.
SPEAKER_00Rarely games. I don't know who that is. Oozel then. I'll I'll send him an inventory when you're lives.
SPEAKER_01Like shooters at Helldivers 2 and Darktide and Total War, but not I don't I didn't because I mean even your furry buddy, you know, who went to the dark side because he was, you know, beaten down by an MP so hard that he's now a furry and he just wants to be a good boy. He's he's in the gaming realm of y'all, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he plays total war with us sometimes. I think total war can bring people together, but what I think dark tide would be. I think you know, if you're a vet, you're struggling, start playing dark tide. You ever play with it?
SPEAKER_01There's a there's there's a fucking mower in my my back ear. What the hell? Did you just say darkest dungeon for vets? No, but are you trying to push him over the fucking edge? Jesus.
SPEAKER_00You play Darkest Dungeons?
SPEAKER_01I love Darkest Dungeons, one of my favorites.
SPEAKER_00First one is my jam.
SPEAKER_01Second one sucks. First one's amazing. First one's a masterpiece. Dude, can we take a minute to give a shout out to the brilliant narrator who fucking died? Like he he he was, what was his name? Wayne uh I'm gonna pull that up because I don't want to butcher it. He he did an amazing fucking job. He died? Yeah. He died before the second one. Well, good. So you didn't have to see that abomination. Wayne June. Amazing. The fucking and even the the design structure of it. Like did you do all the add-ons with like the countess and the fucking blood plague and the fanatic and shit?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I still quote shit from his narrations, just randomly inordinate exanguination. Fuck. Fuck. That was a overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer. But I I recommend that game a lot to people who like because it's kind of like DD, but A, it's fixed, B, you've got a set path, and C, more importantly, your characters actually suffer consequences. You know what I mean? Like you don't just go in and loot and raid like Baldur's Gate and come back. Like you go in, you loot and raid, and the stress builds up. And if you don't fix that stress, your healer goes crazy, throws a lightning bolt at someone you're trying to keep alive and they die.
SPEAKER_00Fucking age 200 heart attack. It's over. I don't like the fucking the mosquitoes.
SPEAKER_01You know what I recently found out about that shit? Malik, there's apparently, and I watched the YouTube on this the other day to kill time while I was multitasking. You know how there's like the special items that you can get in the courtyard for all those characters?
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Every one of those characters has a fucking backstory from a comic book that the same company released.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think you got it if you bought the game.
SPEAKER_01Dude, if you come at it from the perspective of I want to keep any of these fuckers alive besides Dismas and Reynolds for the last achievement, like you're gonna have a real bad fucking time. Real bad time.
SPEAKER_00You never even got that achievement. Keeping your first people alive until the I j like I've only beat it once. Like killed the heart and everything. But you did it on easy, didn't you? No, I don't play on easy.
SPEAKER_01What's the point of playing a video game if you play it on easy?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. They need to fix once like AI gets good enough to where it can be somewhat comparable with a human being in Total War, it's over. It is over. And oh for I swear to god, Creative Assembly. I see what you're doing and I don't like it. If there aren't the Mongols, the Karakatai and the Karesmians, this whole fucking immigration crisis shit you got going on is gonna be the least of your fucking problems.
SPEAKER_01Oh shit. This was this was fun. Any final thoughts you want to throw out there before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_00Read a Bible and read a book. And before you come saying something fucking stupid to me, read a book. That's all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Do you have any any final words? Read a book is pretty fucking good. I gotta be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00I've fucking been saying it for years, dude. It's starting to catch on. Back when uh before the app started targeting me for no reason, I was gonna make merch that said read a book on it.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, we did just open our merch store, and if you give us a whole bunch of quotes and designs that you want, Malik, we will gladly stick it in the store and give you a cut we can negotiate later if you want.
SPEAKER_00Perhaps I I mean I doubt I don't have the the reach anymore.
SPEAKER_01Just just send me descriptors of what you want. We'll get them on shirts and give you fucking well we'll figure out the percentage, but that way you'll make passive income. You don't have to do dick. You can throw a design at us every now and again, and you can put it towards the project we talked about.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad I met you. You're a good guy. This is a good it was a good chat. Should do it again sometime. I went to sleep too late last night.
SPEAKER_01Next time we do this besides uh the the military mezzanine banter, which we we do absolutely want to have you up for when we kick that shit off with random questions, but I wanna I wanna get a whole bunch of the historical military guys in here. You know, back when TikTok used to like actually let you pull more than four. And then just you know, release the real fight on Charlemagne, release the real fight on fucking Mujahideening France, like everything.
SPEAKER_00It's like what was Charlemagne's name? They didn't call him Charlemagne, they called him Carl De Agrossa. Carl sound French? Is that sound French or German? Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01Plus, you gotta keep in mind, like alcohol's always been a big thing. Like the Persians, the old Persians used to debate ideas once drunk and once sober before going into battle. Fucking de Gaulle was a drunk, fucking Churchill was a drunk, goddamn Charlemagne was a drunk. Pretty much everyone for the first like 4800 years of human history was a drunk. Either high on bread mold or drunk off their ass. Not Genghis Khan. You know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna extend us for another minute. Uh, what's your stance on Plato? Not a big fan.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because he was a jackass and he didn't make him.
SPEAKER_01Alright, so we're spared that but you want to give him your TikTok handle if they want to come and uh and I I will warn you guys, is his advice is solid. If you go and have a real conversation with you, he'll have it. But if you come up sideways or you come up stupid, he's gonna whoop your ass.
SPEAKER_00TikTok is at sneaky maliki. But my daughter needs me.
SPEAKER_01All right, she's cool. Appreciate you joining us, brother.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me, truly. Look forward to talking to you again.
