the office so I took all the coffee mugs home to wash them. I forgot my coffee mugs, forgot the French press, so I had to make a quick Starbucks run. I hate to do it, I hate to do it, but I had to do it. So cheers to early mornings. I don't want to stop working. I don't want to stop working. My stomach's growling. Gotta go get some Texas roadhouse. Come on, come on. Pot today in the office. I don't have a light set so we're going to go to an old school. We're using the Ikea light, putting it into work. Okay. About three weeks ago I hung these cameras on the wall. This is my grandfather's camera, a Pentax, a 35 millimeter old school. This is probably 60 years old, no doubt. And it would still work if I put a battery in it. So on Saturday, four days ago on the vlog, if you saw that upper right hand corner, check it out. We visited my grandmother in Colorado Springs, and basically she watched the vlog where I talked about this camera and hanging it on the wall, and she thought to herself, wait a minute, my grandfather's camera, his last camera is just sitting on a shelf. And why doesn't Seth have it? So she, here it is, here it is right there. She gave me my grandfather's last camera. Now he passed away three years ago. So, one second, here it is.  Guess what is inside? It's one second. Sorry, hold on a sec. Boom. Hopefully you can see this. Just pull it out here. The memory card. I don't know what's on this memory card. Now it's a very, very strange memory card. It's like half the size of most memory cards, so it won't fit into my computer. So I need to find an adapter, but this is a pretty big deal. Anyway, my first, my first camera right here, video cameras acting as light stands, it's all connected. It's all connected. All right, now I'm leaving the office. The day has been very, very effective in the office. Time to go for a run, then go home. You know the routine. I'm going to try and go for a long run, but on the way over, I was listening to the radio and I like the radio. I like FM radio. I like AM radio. I don't really listen to XM, but the reason I like radio is because it is the free flowing. Sorry if it's windy. Oh, I apologize. I'm going to keep talking. So I like the radio because it's the free flow of ideas without any filter. At least in the United States, we have free press. But what I want to talk about, well, what I just listened to on the radio is healthcare and the whole debate between who should receive healthcare coverage, whether it's provided by the government, whether it's all private sector, whether it's through the company that you work for, et cetera, et cetera. Now, we're not going to talk about healthcare today. If you want to comment below, feel free. So a democratic republic, they can make decisions for us legally. And that might be the case in your country as well. In fact, that might have to be the question of the day. How is your government set up? I have a general feel for many European countries, how it worked here in the U.S. What these people in the federal government cannot do or even local government, so state government or even county government, they cannot dictate how much we exercise. Does that make sense? So if you want to go for a 50-mile run, that's about 80 kilometers, you can go run 80 kilometers if you want to. And I know that's the case in many countries around the world, maybe not all countries. So what I'm getting at is like, for our personal health, we are in charge of our personal health. So it's all about preventative medicine, which really comes down to how much what do you eat and how much do you exercise. That's it. And that can prevent heart disease, diabetes, even cancer, so I'm told. Now, I know not all diseases are preventative through exercise and what you eat, but a lot of it is. So it's went exactly as far as I wanted to. A little short, look me up on Strava. If you want to see how far I went today, let's just say we're halfway home, Joseph, for the goal on May 5th. Oh, shout out to Bridget for calling me halfway through, because I took about a two-minute break for that phone call and that actually really reset me well. All right, time to go home. Guys, we are vessels. Oh, hold on. We are vessels. Our bodies are vessels. We got to take care of them. They're carrying precious cargo. You know, we got to be watch our cholesterol, watch what we eat. I don't want to be your mom, but you know, those veggies. All right. Boys are down. Seth was tired, just like his papa. I am so tired. I'm actually going to resist filming the time lapse for the evening for the sunset. It's just I'm too tired. But because I am resisting, I actually found a new spot on our estate to film a time lapse. It's just like right over there, because I walked around the house. Anyway, long story. All right, I got to go to bed because tomorrow I'm filming the first tutorial on vlogging. So come back for that tomorrow. Love you guys. Seek beauty, work hard, love each other. See you tomorrow.


This toy has fascinated me since childhood. To me, its motion is almost hypnotic. Here's how it operates. Wet the birds beak thoroughly with room temperature water. The opaque container makes it look chilled, but it isn't. Then stand it upright. It'll take a few seconds for it to start drinking. Notice that all of the action right now takes place in the stem here. As I speed up the action, you see liquid rising and the bird rocking back and forth. If I return to normal speed, you can see the bird slowly, very, very slowly, rock forward until it takes a drink, which it will do again and again. In this video, I'll detail the bird's clever engineering design, explain how it uses thermodynamics, and link its action to some of the greatest and most impactful devices created by engineers. This toy has a long history, but its current incarnation is due to Miles V. Sullivan, a scientist at Bell Labs. He's specialized in methods of manufacturing semiconductors, but as a sideline invented toys. It's reported that this bird delighted U.S. President Herbert Hoover, an engineer who failed to figure out how it worked, and it also defeated the great scientist Albert Einstein, who spent three and a half months studying it. It's reported that he refused to take the bird apart. With the benefit of hindsight, let's start by exploring how it works and examining the key engineering design aspects. First, let's ask, is the water ornamental or essential? At first, the bird acts just as if the water were still there. Now let's speed up the motion. You see at 15 minutes it's still drinking. At 30 minutes still drinking. 45 minutes still drinking. 60 minutes still drinking. 75 minutes still drinking. And 5 or 10 minutes later, at 8 or 85 minutes, it takes its last drink. The liquid still rises a bit, but it never rises enough to make the bird tip over, which shows that the motion is not perpetual. As long as there's water, the bird keeps drinking. Let's look inside the bird to get an idea of how it works. Underneath the bird's hat, beak, and fabric covering lies a glass ball, smaller than the ball but the base and also rounder. Now watch as I put a few drops of isopropyl alcohol on the top bulb to cool it. The liquid rapidly rises to the head, and this changes the bird's center of gravity so that it will tilt forward. The head now fills with liquid and then, there, it drinks. It becomes upright and the liquid drains from the head. Liquid rises again to the head and the bird drinks again. This cycle repeats until all of the isopropyl alcohol on the bird's hat evaporates. Why does the liquid rise? The place to begin is with the bird's manufacturer. The bird is filled through this tap, a small pipe built into the head with methylene chloride dyed red, which is then frozen, a vacuum applied to evacuate the air, the tap seal, and of course later hidden by the bird's hat, and then the methylene chloride melts. It turns to liquid and then some of it evaporates, turns into vapor. The key to the bird's operation is that the vapor in the head and in the base are separated by the liquid in the base. It's hard to see, but a tube extends into the base, nearly reaching the bottom. This separates the vapor in the base and the vapor in the tube and, of course, the head. So it rests the pressure in these two spaces are equal, but when the bird's beak is wet, the temperature falls, and as I'll explain in a moment, the pressure in the head drops below that in the base and the liquid rises. Of course, this liquid in the head causes the bird to tilt forward to drink, and when it drinks, the vapor in the head and the base are connected. The pressure is nearly equalized. A slug of vapor rises to the top and some liquid drains from the head, and then the cycle repeats. To see that pressure equalize, I'll slow down the bird as I tilt it forward. Right now the head is half full. When I tilt it, you see a slug of vapor go from bottom to top. I've tilted it far enough forward that the liquid in the head is below the top of the tube and the liquid in the base is below the section of the tube that almost reaches the bottom of the bird. This allows the pressure to equalize and as the bird becomes upright, the liquid returns to the base before the cycle starts again. In operation, it doesn't tilt quite this far forward and so the pressures don't fully equalize. Why though, does the pressure in the head drop as the temperature falls? You can see the answer if I shoot cool compressed gas across the bird's head. As the cool gas strikes, you see liquid condensing inside the head and as you see on the left, this causes the liquid in the base to rise. The cool gas withdraws energy as heat from the head, causing some of the methylene chloride vapor inside the condense to turn into a liquid. This decreases dramatically the amount of vapor in the head. The liquid is a thousand times more dense than vapor. This in turn lowers the pressure in the head and causes the liquid to rise. I used compressed gas to cool the head because I can control the amount of cooling. The bird though cools its head by drinking. The head is wrapped in fabric that absorbs water. As I put drops on its beak, you can see the water beads up at first, then saturates the fabric and spreads rapidly across the bird's face. On the right side, you can see it creeping to the back of the head. If I now turn the bird around, you can see that the water has spread to the back. As I continue adding drops on the beak, the saturated area on the back increases. When this water evaporates into the air, it removes energy from the bulb as heat. You feel this effect every time you step out of the shower. The evaporating water withdraws energy as heat and chills you. This evaporation, this withdrawal of heat, lowers the temperature and begins the condensation of the vapor, which starts the cycle as I showed you with a cool compressed gas. As long as the head is wet and heat is withdrawn from it, the bird will always drink. But if you were to operate the bird in humid air, it would slow down because little water would evaporate. And if the air were at 100% humidity, the bird would stop because no water would evaporate at all. Now, to make this dramatic condensation happen when the temperature is lowered just slightly, the evaporating water lowers the temperature by about 3 tenths of a degree, the bird's designer chose a highly volatile liquid. This means one whose budding point is near ambient temperature because for small changes in temperature, there's a large change from vapor to liquid and so the variation of pressure is large. Watch what happens as I heat the base of the bird with my hand. You see that liquid level in the base dropping, that's because energy from my hand is converting some of the liquid into vapor, which increases the pressure in this region. And that causes the liquid to rise to the head. Eventually, I heat the vapor so much that it shoots up the stem.  Heat from my hand converts liquid to vapor, which increases the pressure and forces the liquid back to the base. To test this explanation of the bird's operation, let's activate the bird in different ways. As I noted, it is the temperature difference between its top and bottom that drives liquid to rise to the head. So let's see what happens if I point a light at the base of the bird, which I've painted black so it will absorb the energy from the light better. As I heat the base of the bird, the liquid rises as before, but the bird tips backwards. The wet nose tilted the center of gravity and so I've added some modeling clay to the nose to get the bird to tilt forward. And now, when I turn on the light, the liquid rises. The bird drinks just as if there were liquid in front of it until I turn the light off and the bird drinks for a little bit longer until eventually it comes to rest. Next, let's see what happens if we use this whiskey. Again, thoroughly wet the bird's beak with the liquid, stand it upright, and then we see again the liquid rising in the bird. And then it drinks. We can also now understand why the bird's rate of drinking differs among the three methods I use to activate the bird. A heat lamp, whiskey, and water. Roughly, the heat bird takes three drinks for every one of the water bird. The whiskey bird takes two for every drink of the water bird. The reason the bird drinks whiskey faster than water is because the rate of evaporation of the alcohol is greater than that of water. This means that heat is withdrawn faster from the head and so more vapor condenses in a shorter amount of time, which accelerates the pressure difference. The heat lamp causes the greatest difference of all, which highlights how an engineer thinks about this bird. To an engineer, this bird is a heat engine. A heat engine turns heat differences into work, mechanical motion. To see that, recall that when the bird is just about to drink, that its head is at a lower temperature than its base, which is at ambient temperature. Then when it drinks, the pressure in the head and base start to equalize so liquid returns to the base, but the overall temperature of the bird is now just a little below ambient temperature. When it returns to upright, the base draws in energy as heat. The head then rejects some energy as heat and the bird drinks again. These two flows define a heat engine, a device operating in a cycle that absorbs heat from a high temperature reservoir, converts part of it into work and rejects the remainder into a low temperature reservoir. The fact that it's a heat engine means it's related to the great machines that make our globalized world happen, among those the mighty steam turbine that generates electricity, the giant diesel engine that propels container ships across the oceans, and the great gas turbine that flies us around the globe. I'm Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy.


from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering AWS re-invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel. And their ecosystem partners. Hey, welcome back, everyone. LiveCube here in Las Vegas for AWS re-invent. I'm John Farrier with my coach Dave Vellante. Day three of wall-to-wall coverage, holding our voices together. Exciting for our next guest, Shane Hawthorne, general manager at AWS for the exciting project around the ground station, partnership with Lockheed Martin. Really kind of an outside-the-box announced on Tuesday, not at the keynote, but this is a forward-thinking, real project where satellites can be provisioned like cloud computing resources. Totally innovative and will change the nature of edge computing, feeding connectivity to anything. So thanks for joining us. Thank you guys for having me. You're right, my voice is going out this week too. We've been doing a lot of talking. Great service. If this is really compelling because it changes the nature of the network, you can feed connectivity, because power and connectivity drive everything. Power, you got battery. Connectivity, you got satellite. Totally obvious now that you look at it, but not before this. Where did it come from? How did it all start? You know, it came from listening to our customers. Our customers have been talking with us and they had a number of challenges in getting the data off of their satellites and down to the ground. So we listened to these customers and we listened to the challenges they were experiencing in getting their data to the ground, having access to ground stations, having the ability at the network level to move the data around the world quickly to where they wanted to process it. And then also having a complex business process logic and other things that were required to help them run their satellite downlinks and uplinks. And then finally, the ability to actually have AWS services right there where the data came down into the cloud so that you could do great things with that data within milliseconds of it hitting the ground. So it's essentially satellite as a service with a back end data capability, data ingestion analytics and management capability that had that idea come about. I mean, it just underscores the scale of AWS and I'm thinking about other things that you might be able to, where did the idea come from? How was it germinated? Well, and actually let me just say one thing. We actually would call it ground station as a service. It's the ground station on the surface of the earth that communicates with the satellite and allows us to get the data off the satellite or send commands up to it. And so like I was saying, we came up with the idea by talking to our customers. And so we went into, I think this is like an incredible part of working at Amazon because we actually like followed through with our leadership principles. We worked backwards from the customer. We actually put together a press release in a frequently asked questions document, a PRFAQ, in a traditional six page format. And we started working it through our leadership and it got all the way to the point that Andy and the senior leadership team within AWS made the decision that they were going to support our idea and the concept and the architecture that we had come up with to meet these customers' requirements. We actually were able to get to that by about March of 2018. By the end of March, Andy had even had us go in and talk with Jeff. He gave us the thumbs up as well. And after six months, we've already procured 24 antennas. We've already built two ground stations in the United States and we've downlinked over hundreds of contacts with satellites, bringing earth imagery down and other test data to prove that the system works. Get it ready for preview. Some believe because you're basically taking the principles of AWS, which is eliminating the heavy lifting, applying that to building ground stations, presumably, right? So the infrastructure that you're building out, partners that you're working with, are there critical players there that are enabling this? Yeah, it's really neat. We've actually had some really great partnerships both with helping us build AWS ground station as well as partners that helped us learn what the customers need. Let me tell you first off about the partnership that we've had with Lockheed Martin to develop a new innovative antenna system that will collaboratively come together with the parabolic reflectors that AWS ground station uses. They've been working on this really neat idea that gives them the ability to downlink data all over the entire United States in a very resilient way, which means if some of their ground station antennas in verge don't work due to man-made reasons or due to natural occurrences, then we're actually able to use the rest of the network to still continue to downlink data. And then we complimentary bring in AWS Astra for certain types of downlinks and then also to provide uplink commanding to other satellites. The other customer partnership that we've worked with was working with the actual customers who are going to use AWS ground station like Digital Globe, BlackSky, Compelisar, Hawkeye360, who all provided valuable inputs to us about exactly what do they need in a ground station. They need the ability to rapidly downlink data. They need the ability to pay by the minute so that they're actually able to use variable expense to pay for a satellite downlinks, instead of capital expenses to go out and build it. And then by doing that, we're able to offer them a product that's 80% cheaper than if they'd had to go out and build a complete network similar to what we built. And they're able to, like I said before, access great AWS services like recognition or SageMaker so that they can make sense of the data that they bring down to the earth. It's a big idea and I'm just curious as to how and if you sort of validated it, how'd you increase the probability that it was actually going to deliver a business return? Can you talk about that process? Well, we were really focused on like validating that we could meet customer challenges and really give them the data securely and reliably with great redundancy. So we validated first off by we built our antennas into ground stations and into preview software. We finished over a month and a half ago and we've been rigorously testing it with our customer partners and then letting them validate that the information we provided back to them was 100% as good as what they would have received on their own network. And we tested it out and we've actually got a number of pictures and images downloaded over at our kiosk. They were all brought in on AWS ground station and it's a superb products over there. So Shane, how does it work? You write this press release, this working backwards document. Describe that process, was that process new to you? Had you done it at other companies? How did you find it? Was it a useful process? Obviously it was because you got the outcome that you were looking for, but talk a little bit more about that approach. Yeah, I mean it's actually very cool. I've only been at AWS for a year and a half. And so I would say that my experience at AWS so far completely validates working backwards from customers. We were turned on to the idea by talking to our customers and the challenges they said. I started doing analysis after the job was assigned to me by Dave Nolton, my boss, and I started putting together the first draft of our PRFAQ, started engaging with customers immediately. Believe it or not, we went through 28 iterations of the PRFAQ before we even got to Andy. Everybody in our organization took part in helping to make it better, add in, ask hard questions, ensure that we were really thinking this idea through and that we were obsessing on the customer. And then after we got to Andy and we got through approving that, it probably went through another 28 iterations before we got to Jeff. And then we went through talking with him. He asked additional hard questions to make sure that we were doing the right thing for the customer and that we were putting together the right kind of product. And finally, we've been iterating in on it ever since until we launched it a couple of days ago. Sounds like you were iterating, raising the bar, and it resonated with customers. Totally. And even as part of getting out of it. That sounds language of love. And then your engineering resource, you know, if people are asking you hard questions, you obviously need engineering folks to validate that it's doable. At what point do you get that engineering resource? How does that all work? Well, it's neat. In my division, Region Services Division, we actually were supporting it completely from within the division all the way until we got approval from Andy. And then we actually went in and started hiring very good skills to show you what kind of incredible people we have at Amazon. We only had to hire about 10% space expertise from outside of the company. We were actually able to bring together 80 to 90% of the needed skills to build AWS ground station from people who've been working at Amazon.com and AWS. And we came together. We really learned quickly. We iterated, failed fast, put things together, changed it, and we're able to deliver the product in time. Whole cloth made from our own expertise. So just to summarize, from idea to actual, we're going to do this, how long did that take? I'd say that took about three months. From idea to making a decision three months, from decision to have a preview product that we could launch at re-invent six months. That's unbelievable. It is. You think about something of this scope. And it was a joy. I mean, it was incredible to be a part of something like this. It is the best work I've ever done in my life. Yeah, space is fun. It is. Shane, thanks for coming on theCUBE, sharing your story and insight. We love this. We're going to keep following it. And then we're going to see us at the public sector summits and all the events you guys are out. So looking forward to seeing and provisioning some satellite. I'm looking forward to showing you what we do next. So thank you for having me. We're going to speak peak. This is theCUBE here in Las Vegas. We're back with more coverage after this short break.


Some of us, cursed with knowledge. Sometimes it is perhaps better to be ignorant. This near aphorism is somewhat unremarkable when understood in the context of our day-to-day existence. Does one wish to know the time and circumstance of one's own death, for example? What good would the certainty of knowing precisely how much of one's time one has remaining? What good would it do? To this, and to many questions there besides, the common man would simply answer no, I wish to remain oblivious. We are happier, better off, more fulfilled, with blinders of witlessness occluding our sight. Indeed, such a thing has been the avowed policy of our Imperium for millennia. It is better not to know. Knowledge is a dangerous beast. The first step on the path to a damnation inevitable, as one is forced to confront the true and horrific nature of our universe. It however goes deeper than the simple practicality of keeping the heaving masses of our species unaware of the nature of all things. Ignorance prevents us from anticipating the consequences of our actions, shields us from facing difficult decisions. Our immunizes us against attacks. Maintaining ignorance is a way the current self can extend its own life, avoiding the realization of a morally and practically distinct future self. In a sense, a form of self-preservation. Knowledge, conversely, is a power to foresee, to leverage the world to one's benefit, to consistently adapt to change. To some, knowledge is an intoxicating thread that must be pulled at so that whatever lies beyond the woven veil is finally revealed, that reality may be perceived in dread actuality. The subjects of this account are such men, men cursed with knowledge, but too blinkered in their arrogance to perceive the true nature of things. Know then that this is a record of the scholar-warriors of the Legion as a startys. The battle-librarians, those who hungered for truth, but found only damnation. The 15th Legion, thousand sons. The 15th Legion, as with all of their contemporaries, was first forged on Terra by the Emperor of Mankind, with initial recruits drawn from pre-selected Terran populations. This is however where the similarities end for the 15th. From the outset, they were quite unlike any other a startys force raised within the cradle of humanity. For one, their creation was far, far later than many of their fellows, even past that which their mere numerical designation would suggest. The unification wars were effectively complete, Luna and the Selenar gene cults had already fallen to the wrath of the 16th and 13th legions. The last of Terra's tyrants were or had been put to the sword, and the various planets, satellites, and space stations of the Solar Reaches were already being won for unity by the bolters of the a startys. The character and purpose of many of them were already becoming quite established. This in turn had the effect of allowing their ranks to be swelled by vast influxes of recruits taken from these newly compliant worlds and moons. Especially those legions whose skills, experiences, and qualities were of special use for the theatres the Solar Reclamation threw into the path of the Imperial juggernaut. It was a time of transition. The unification wars were no more. Onwards lay the great crusade. To this came the 15th legion, and it was a birth marked by storms. Not metaphorical, mind you, quite literal. Aetherical squalls in the warp surged to levels not seen since the breaking of the age of strife centuries before. At high anchor, void traffic was halted entirely. Astropathic communication with the a startys forces in the deep Solar Reaches was severed, reduced to blurts of intra-system Vox networks crackling with static. On the homeworld, records spoke of strange atmospheric phenomena dancing across the skies, and a spike in mutant births, both physically and mentally, as the divisio telepathica struggled to account for a sudden upsurge in Psyker awakenings. It is perhaps unsurprising that this prompted an immediate wave of panic over newly unified Terra, as a specter of old night seemed to be raising its hideous head once more. The Arbitas were stretched thin, attempting to quell civil unrest, and the emergence of superstitions in blatant defiance of the Imperial truth. The plate cities of Terra's equator referred to the events as the spiral misrule, while the Nordafric conclaves recorded it as the Song of the Blood Disguise. In official early Imperial Chronicles, far less flowery than their contemporaries, it is simply noted as the First Tempest, being the first immaterial disruption of such a scale noted by the new regime since its inception. Had the lord of this regime been perturbed by the storm, it did not show. The Emperor, with the progress of his conquests momentarily halted by the sudden stoppage of all offworld traffic, appeared to simply put his efforts and attentions elsewhere. Indeed, some officials noted in private diaries that the speed at which the lord of lightning switched the target of his phenomenal focus spoke perhaps to either foresight or forewarning, a plan that accounted for extra time upon the homeworld, so to speak, but also for an opportune aetherical alignment between the local reality of Terra and the unreality of the warp. These theories have further credence lent to them by the supposed date of origins of specialized formations within the Divisio Telepathica, namely its Investigatti's wing, commonly known as the Silent Sisterhood, but also the Black Sentinels. Warpcraft and the Emperor's own utilisation of it is ill-understood at best, so for now we may simply place these theories where they belong. It is verifiable by official records that during this period the first of the 15th Legion were very exactingly created. One says exactly for the means of neophyte selection and ascension was conducted under standards far beyond anything their fellow legions were placed under. Points of origin were restricted to some of the oldest, most stable and culturally sophisticated polities of Terra, namely the enclaves of Aus, the Kashi domain, and most notably the ancient Achaemenid Empire, which stretched across leagues of desert plains to the north of the planet's equator, occupying many of the regions that, what scant records of priest-ryph years remained, claimed were the very cradles of human civilisation itself. The Empire, the enclaves, and the domain had been amongst the first powers to swear to the Emperor's banner during the early days of the Unification Wars, supplying his armies plentifully and thus being spared from the devastation unleashed by his thunder warriors. Their populaces were content, productive, refined, and most importantly genetically stable. It was incredibly low rates of mutation compared to similarly sized polities elsewhere on the once-benighted homeworld, not least the barbarian conclaves that rendered so many neo-fights for other Astartes legions. This would ordinarily have rendered them ideal populations to draw large numbers of recruits from four said legions, but despite this, the number drawn for the new fifteenth remained incredibly low. The Ionis Plateau, for instance, rendered only one youth for the programme, though it had also granted several hundred of its children for the seventh legion for exactly the same purpose. Many who observed this knew it meant only one thing. The Hand of the Emperor, unknowable, all-powerful, was absolutely at work here. Indeed, it is a matter of record that the master of mankind himself personally selected candidates, something he had done for very few legions indeed. While it is of course impossible to ascertain precisely how many aspirants were rendered unto the fifteenth for ascension, it would appear that, according to janitor records and data looms, the implantation success rate was very high. Undoubtedly, the careful selection process for these neo-fights was paying dividends here, as it perhaps would have if any other Astartes legion had paid so much attention to its candidates. It rendered unto the Waiting Emperor a very exact number. One recorded and mentioned so many times one cannot help but wonder if there was some greater significance to the quantity. One thousand warriors, born of the gene-rights of both Terra and Luna, the minimum initial fighting disposition for an Astartes legion, known typically as the Alpha Induction. The Emperor personally presided over their Odes of Eternity, granting them an special honor no other Astartes legion had received, a name before a single bolt shell had even been fired before a single battle brother had been lost. The fifteenth would henceforth be known as his Thousand Sons, and the more poetic of early crusade accounts state that, as these Thousand Sons rose from their knees, the warped storms around Sol dissipated, bringing with them a new dawn for the future of humanity. Howry as this may be, the breaking of the Aetherical disturbances did coincide with the date of the fifteenth legion's formal inception, all sources pointing to a robust resumption of crusade operations around this time. The fifteenth legion were now fully part of the Imperial War effort, but initially there was little to set them aside from their fellow Astartes. They were relatively tiny in number compared to their cousins, and even those that did not vastly atlip them in sheer quantity had managed to develop skills and talents in one form of warfare or another. Despite their incredibly auspicious origins, they were in actuality completely unremarkable, prosecuting their early campaigns with competency, but no flair. They put the Micah clans of Secularis to the torch alongside the seventeenth legion Imperial heralds, supported far larger battalions of the sixth legion in the Purgation of Gladres, and toppled the remaining transgenic blasphemies of Proxima III in their cloud warrens. Nothing about their comportment was worthy of note, beyond, perhaps, a degree of synchronicity displayed by their squads in open combat, but even that drew little attention. Conversely, their name, the stories of their origins, the knowledge of the special favour paid to them by the master of mankind, these absolutely did draw comment. As many, not least the Astartes legions they served beside, openly questioned why such an unremarkable legion was worthy of such august treatment, especially having effectively sat out the entirety of the unification wars. To add to this, the fifteenth wore their cognom and with pride, adopting the ancient terral millennial glyph and ochre patterning redolent of the immortals of the Achaemenid Empire of old. They clearly considered themselves a breed apart from their cousins, something said cousins increasingly began to perceive as completely undeserved. The speculation and curiosity surrounding the legion would only grow from there. As would, it must be said, quiet and then open resentment. It must be understood that in these days of crusade, the legion as Astartes were accomplishing feats of warfare never seen in the annals of humanity that yet survived. The ninth legion of revenants had been sent to the depths of the Neptunian volume, likely never to return, yet had emerged from their suppression of the mutants of the moons, with more Astartes than they had entered with. The Lunawolves was a name on the lips of all, headed by the Primarch Horus Lupercal, first son of the Emperor, or first found son, the Imperium's brightest star. It counted within its ranks upwards of 30,000 Astartes. The seventh legion were fortifying dozens of systems against separations of those who would strike behind Imperial vanguards. The eighth legion had developed such a reputation that word of their approach would drive a world to compliance through fear alone. The fifth legion's star hunters were pushing the boundaries of Imperial stellar cartography faster than the star map makers could keep up with. The Thousand Sons, well, they outgrew their literal name, but beyond that, few within the Imperium had much to say regarding them at all, or fast becoming a footnote in the mytho-historical renderings of the early crusade, notable for not saving the growing gulf between their origins and their comportment. Within this gulf, combined with their still rigorous policies surrounding potential legion aspirants, crept suspicion. Many, or at least the canny, were aware that the regime of the Imperium held secrets. Given the Paul surrounding the Thousand Sons, it drew the eye of the apprehensive and the distrustful. Given their horror when, in the second decade of the great crusade, the apparent reason for the 15th's status became far, far more visible. Across all expeditionary fleets they were present in, the Astartes of the Thousand Sons began openly manifesting psychic powers. These were not the abilities of the psychers that were widely known to humanity. Not for the 15th with the petty powers of the topony gutter sorcerers, but the gelded spotterings of the Imperium's divisio-telepathica psychers. Nor even the vile corrupted aetherics of the genocide priests of Terra's age of strife. No. These were the destructive powers of the immaterium manifested like few had ever seen. The elements of air and fire bent to their will, seemingly alive conflagrations and uncanny lightning storms leaping from the hands of Astartes. These sundered are crushed by invisible telekeem forces, their secrets already torn from their minds by other, weirder adepts. The change was simply staggering, a legion known for practically nothing was suddenly a name on the lips of many, for it was speculated that, finally, the wisdom of the emperor was manifesting. Suddenly the sequestroment, the especial attention, the rigorous recruitment all now had clear and explicable purpose. It was genius, said some, unparalleled, the wedding of the superlative gene-craft of the legion as Astartes, with the psychic potential of the human future. The victory tally of the 15th legion skyrocketed. Though few in number compared to their cousins, the Thousand Sun's psychic craft served as an almost exponential force multiplier, carrying the day against foes both mighty and numerous, none of whom seemed capable of devising means to combat these stunning new battle-sikers. Had times, had context, had history, had they all been different, this would perhaps have finally won the legion, the support and acceptance of its fellows. Would that it were so simple? In actuality, the abilities of the Thousand Sun's only worsened the divides between them and those that they would call kin. To the majority of the Imperium, the Sikre was an abomination, a thing to shackle, if not simply annihilate, control with the strictest of regiments only. The unification wars and the solar reclamation, neither of which the 15th legion had participated in, had been marked by numerous engagements with foes corrupted and swollen by the malignant energies of the warp. It was the fundamental belief of many, that the Sikre was by their nature unspeakably dangerous, that their powers were ultimately corruptive no matter the intent or training of those who wielded them. The idle, frustrated curiosity of the legion as a starty is now pivoted to outright hostility and refutation quite rapidly. For example, the 14th legion dusk raiders during the prosecution of the Kahlgren campaign refused point-blank to deal with any members of the 15th face-to-face, or even over vox-links, instead using human-surf intermediaries or even servitors for what perfunctory communication they deigned to participate in. The 3rd legion emperor's children, too, was noted as having withdrawn all of its ships from orbit over Ostrastus, and the 15th legion rendezvoused with them for outward advance to the sign-stars. Despite this, no word came from the emperor over their conduct whatsoever, and without any rebuke from the Lord of the Imperium, the 15th legion were as free as any other starty's legion to make war in their preferred manner, and make war they certainly did. Their victories went from notable to remarkable to spectacular. Accomplishing feats no other legion had. The tales of their accomplishments were rendered so luridly by contemporary accounts that one often wonders if the taint of fear-fueled exaggeration had crept into the chroniclers who penned them. Whole armies were seemingly turned to ash, starships were pulled out of orbit or formation, whole squads or companies of Astardes were kept free from torrential enemy fire by invisible forces. All of this seems beyond the scope of any one Psyker, but given what is verifiable about the powers the legion wielded, I am hesitant to dismiss any of this as fanciful fabrication. The emperor himself was known to have personally requested the presence of the Thousand Sons at his side during a series of campaigns to exterminate emergencies of the Xenos Crave, a supremely dangerous strain of psychic parasite. About this, the 15th recruitment practices remained firmly the same as ever. When the 16th legion Lunawolves had hit 50,000 serving Astardes, the Thousand Sons remained hovering around a fifth of that number. To be sure, they endured less casualties thanks to their uncanny defensive and healing abilities. Their number kept them from being thrown into the meat grinder battles that the 4th legion was routinely rooted to, but the fact remains that the 15th were easily the smallest of all active serving legions by a long margin. Even for those humans they did mark for Astardes' ascension, success rates had fallen since their departure from Terra, and were now far below the median standard set by the 1st legion. Despite all these challenges, however, those Astardes that succeeded in being raised to maturity all displayed some degree of psychic talent, and at all levels of the power scales the Imperium used to determine aetherical capabilities. Their effectiveness on the field of battle was undeniable. It appeared the 15th legion had truly found its place. Would that it were so simple? It began on Byzant. A lush world with a sizable and long considered lost human population. Over the years of strife it had transformed into a stable society predicated around the veneration of the sun as a solar deity. The strength of the faith held by the populace led them to rebuke the emperor's offer of membership within the Imperium, spurning his empire as godless and accursed. It would have made for a fairly routine compliance operation for any imperial expeditionary fleet were it not for the stunning rate of psycher births upon the world, estimated as high as 10%. Accordingly, the 2nd and 5th chapters of The Thousand Sons were rapidly assigned to curtail such a wanton excess of human psychics, with many within the deployed forces marveling at the almost impossibility that the world had not fallen to a grand mal immaterial incursion. Despite the initial optimism the campaign was launched with, Planetfall showed the 15th that despite the familiarity of the sorceress arts they were facing, they were unprepared for the scale that they would be unleashed with. The Byzantine were no rabble of cultists.  They who could hear the light of the stars. Their powers appeared to rival those of the Legion themselves, pitching The Thousand Sons into a battle that was far more equal than many they had ever faced. The conflict exists in scant records, few that survive, speaking to the content of the engagements in terms specific. It paints an apocalyptic picture.  Airstorms roiled across the Metropolis who need to be turned and directed as mines clashed on a plane beyond mortal Ken, all the while the very air thrumming with impossible forces. The very apex of the conflict, when the Legion was being tested as it had never been before, it is recorded, thanks to Legion attendance ships in orbit, that a single scream of unbearable pain broke into the minds of all, human and astartes, planet side and in high anger. It was death, the first death that marked the beginning of the Legion's darkest days. The warrior's name is not known. In what records remained upon Prospero after its burning, he had simply referred to as Daleth. The word is one of significance, or would almost certainly be if any survived who spoke the tongues of impossibly ancient old earth. I have by authority been assured that it, by technicalities, means door, but in symbolic terms that can be rendered as a portal to unknowable beyonds, or as decision made to step forward are the unsealing of spaces and frontiers unknown. Had the Legion understood these implications or possessed their own, we will never know. For poor Daleth, he did mark a step forward, a great and terrible one. His body rebelled against him, simply put. In a sudden and violent transformation, his flesh became as an expanding liquid, flowing out of the cracks of his swelling armor. His blood spurting from ruptured veins at such pressure it misted in the air. Protrusions of bone fusing with the Ceramite, all the while screaming, screaming into the minds of every soul that yet lived upon the world and in its orbit. The only solution was death. His despairing brothers, half manic from the screaming that cacophonyed around their skulls, tore into their kin with bolter and blade, dousing what remained in fire, till there was not left but ash upon the storm choked air. Byzant was rendered compliant shortly thereafter. All present had known of Daleth's passing, regardless of whether they had been planet side at the time or stationed in orbit. All swore that word of it would never reach any outside the Legion. It was hoped, in retrospect naively, that this incident had been singular, a localized warp flux caused by the sheer amount of immaterial energy being unleashed by both sides at the Byzantine War. Senior Thousand Sons command continued to prosecute their campaigns as they always had, unleashing the total might of the Legion's psychic potential. It is unknown when the second incident occurred, for the third, for the fourth, fifth, sixth. Only the fifteenth knew, and while it is absolutely certain records were kept of the circumstances and timing of each so that they may be studied, they were unsurprisingly never made available to outsiders. It may have been months or years after Byzant, but it did happen and then again and again and again. It now had a name, a terror to haunt the Legion. The Flesh Change It followed the same horrific pattern that had befallen poor Daleth, massive, sudden, and utterly uncontrollable physical mutation. The response was akin to that of Byzant, with the Legion scrambling to hide the secrets. Circumstances, however, made such an effort nearly impossible. The Flesh Change had absolutely no predictors. It could strike any fifteenth Legion Astartes at any point. Typically, it would occur when the Astartes in question was utilizing their psychic talents, but that was not always the case. Nor indeed did it strike individuals. In some cases, it affected hundreds at once. It was an epidemic of total lethality with no discernible cause. Naturally, the information eventually leaked beyond the Legion's ability to control it, making its way to the higher echelons of the Imperial military regime, specifically the offices of the Sigillite and the Divisio's Telepathica and Biologis. Many who were now made cognizant of the issue drew the same conclusion. It could only be rooted in the genetics of the Legion as a whole. If it were, say, a Genophage akin to that which had almost destroyed the third Legion in its infancy, or worse yet, the cascading cellular degeneration that beset the Ligio Cataegis, the Thunder Warriors during the Unification Wars, none could rule upon with any authority. Plenty, of course, were quick to point out that the Legion's psychers were the root cause, the grand mal-mutation being a widely known side effect of unrestrained immaterial energy use. From without, the remainder of the Imperium observed the Legion that became increasingly insular and erratic in their operations. The former was not exactly new, but the latter was. Thousand Sun's forces would inexplicably pull out of war zones or arrive late. Exertus Imperialus or Mechanicum forces had served alongside them saw a curious increase in inexplicable disappearances. One suspects that these were desperate Legionaries attempting to silence unfortunate witnesses who beheld that which they should not have. The Legion could do not but struggle on, unable to simply disengage from the Great Crusade for obvious reasons, but all the while desperately struggling for a cure to the terror that had befallen them. Personal diaries, or what survives of them, grants us precious insight into this period in the Legion's history. The flesh change was sudden in some creeping in others. It was not always a stunning outbreak like those that had befallen poor Daleth. In some cases a Legionary could feel, sense, or even see the affliction begin to take hold. Many techniques were utilized to attempt to arrest or control its spread. For the Thousand Suns were scholars of Arcana unparalleled and frantically plumbed the depths of their archives, for whatever scraps of information they felt could potentially aid them in their plight. Some attempted long lost alchemical or biogenic methods to isolate the areas of their body they deemed in danger, while others bent their sheer force of psychic will into the suppression of their coming mutations. Some were even placed into stasis, either voluntarily committing themselves as soon as they felt their flesh begin to rebel, or crammed bodily into the vital chambers by their desperate brothers even as their bodies liquefied before their very eyes. As the years ground on, more and more brothers were committed to this dreamless brotherhood. The Thousand Suns battled on during all of this, but casualties upon the field of battle and the relentless attrition of the flesh change were reaping a terrible toll upon their now dwindling numbers. Ironically, even as their brothers succumbed to the curse of the flesh, as newly raised Astartes realized the terrible fate of the Legion that they had become a part of, the powers of those Thousand Suns yet unaflected only continued to grow in scope and scale. Even as they battled the flesh change, the Legion still continued to refine, develop and explore their psychic potential, manifesting new and ever more destructive powers with each passing year. Some chroniclers have defended this action in the past, stating that given their commitments to the Great Crusade and the Imperium as a frontline combat Astartes Legion, they had no choice but to compensate for their ongoing deficiencies with the most readily available skills they had. At the risk of editorializing, it is hard for your most humble of servants to see this as anything other than the Legion's character in its purest, most lamentable form. The Thousand Suns, despite all evidence that doing so may either be causing or exacerbating their affliction, continued to use their powers simply because they believed they had the right to do so. Remember about the force-multiplying effects of battle-psychers. They were still Astartes, capable of taking worlds by bolter and gen-hanced power alone, yet they did not. They appeared to welcome the seclusion from the Imperium, becoming a Legion mendicant, devoid of kinship for with their cousins, continuing their paths of conquest under their own power. They hoped there was a perverse validation in the loneliness and torment they were enduring, a vindication that despite their challenges, they were still able to claim for the Emperor's realm worlds no other Legion could. The Thousand Suns were now upon the precipice, their numbers bleeding away into nothing, calls for their censure now being turned to calls for their dissolution and disbandment. A mercy, some said, to prevent one of the Legion as Astartes from fading into ignominy and shame. Prospero was a planet shaped by legacy, one of both civilization and ruination. A kin to the old earth as described in legend, it possessed a diverse biosphere and climate, and had in the depths of the age of technology being settled in the ancient age of technology during the time of the first human stellar hegemonies. These settlers had colonized every continent on the planet, raising massive metropolis and developing their world into one of peace, understanding, and scholarship. However, as with so many human worlds during the age of strife, this had come to ruin. While the precise course of events is impossible to establish, all signs point to Prospero's population undergoing a massive surge in Psyker births, in an all too common occurrence galaxy wide during the old night. But this, as bad as it was, was merely a prelude to an even worse calamity. The Psyknoen, a predatory species that dwells both within real space and the warp, descended upon the planet, or experienced their own population boom, for the method of their reproduction is truly foul. The eggs of these Xenos filth require a psychically sensitive mind in which to gestate. They are laid, for want of a better term, in the immaterial plane, fusing with the warp presence of the Psyker until they blossom into dreadful maturity within real space. It is a spectacularly horrific way to die, and what it gives birth to is nothing less than one of the most vicious imperial parasites outside of the enslavers, or the never-born themselves. With the crop of Psykers rarely found in the span of the galaxy upon which to glut, the Psyknoen toppled the Prosperine civilization almost overnight. What survivors remained, cling to their knowledge, arcana and technology fled to find the last true bastion of Prospero, Tizca, the city of light. This metropolis was a true jewel, its pyramids made of crystal and marble rising far above clean, airy boulevards flanked by glorious statuary and public art, all the while the breeze from the sea wafting throughout the city. Despite the ravages of the Psyknoen, the Psyker genome expressed itself just as strongly among the surviving Prosperine. Almost every member of society possessed some measure of psychic potential. While this would have spelled doom for countless worlds, those of Prospero maintained full control over their powers. As a millennia passed, great schools and traditions emerged through which their potential could be channeled, harnessed and made safe for the betterment of all. Through this world, this gleaming prize of civilization in a storm-wracked galaxy fell from the sky a king in crimson. Magnus the Red, fifteenth son of the emperor, plunged from the stars into the heart of Tizca itself, his arrival being not only physical but aetheric. As Prosperine records spoke of the populous awakening suddenly at the moment of his impact, their dreams filled with riotous light. Naturally, for as discerning and studious a society as Prospero, every aspect of this event was meticulously recorded, and indeed debated upon. Few could deny that such a strange event was portentious in the extreme, although whether the omens were a boon or a curse to the city, none could say. Or rather not for centuries to come, if I may offer some gallows humor. The child, unmarked and uninjured by his fault to the planet, grew to maturity in a kind, nurturing, and intellectually challenging society. The rigors of the latter he applied himself to with the dedication that bordered upon the obsessive. As with his brothers, Magnus was sculpted by the world that he landed upon, as much as he would go on to sculpt it in kind. But unlike so many of his gene kin, the Cyclops did not have to struggle or claw his way to supremacy. Not for him was the dank of Nostramo, or the fighting pits of Nusiriya, or even the lethal politicking of Olympus. Prospero was a civilization of care and kindness, and within it, Magnus flourished. Under the eyes of his tutor, Amon, the Prosperion realized that this child had the potential far beyond the limits any of them had previously imagined, and sought, where possible, to temper the towering ambition of so singular an individual, with humility and empathy. Wisdom, Amon would tell his charge, was far more valuable than knowledge, as the universe had a way of burning the fingers of those who groped around too blindly in their arrogance. It was of course not long before the pupil outstripped the master, Magnus, as with many of his brothers, rose to the pinnacle of the city's governmental and academic circles, reshaping the world that had forged him and expanding its already peerless scholarship. Through warp-worn divination, Magnus and his covens scryed the imiterium for knowledge of the past, present and indeed future, filling librarians with information thought long lost, or discoveries not even conceived. Shaps of scientific knowledge became almost commonplace, and the untangling of mysteries thought inscrutable was merely a day of the week. Crimson King, as he became known, was truly in his ascendancy. Some colleagues of mine in ages past have speculated that a bond, or connection, existed between the Emperor and Magnus during this time. Magnus himself is known to have claimed such, stating that he was never truly separated from his father as his brothers have been. Some of his statements are far more direct, that he by maturity was holding frequent psychic communion with the Emperor, learning the skills of a theoretical craft from his sire as much as his tutor Amon, and that the two had frequently quested across the immaterial realm together. How much of this is true, none can say. Both the Emperor and Magnus were of course beings of transcendent psychic might, and the workings of the Arcane are strange and uncanny indeed. But it is also likely that Magnus may have been speaking metaphorically, or poetically, as he was wont to do. This all being said, the Emperor certainly possessed the foresight enough that, upon the great crusades reaching Prospero, he arrived for the unification with his long lost son, alongside all that remained of the legion Magnus's genetic code had sired. It was left of the 15th, scant few thousand, knelt before their Primarch. The moment was one of complicated emotions for Magnus. At least he had his disciples, sons of his own line, capable of rising with him into the bold new frontier for humanity he had dreamed about in his wildest of idealistic fantasies. But this was one so reduced by calamitous circumstance that the Cyclops' heart was nearly broken. Matters worsened still. Even as the Primarch welcomed his sons to their new home, even as Prospero took its place within the Imperium, so too did the rates of the flesh-change emergence hasten. Almost as if contact with their Primarch had caused the gene seed of the thousand sons to rebel further, pushing it into a final, horrific phase of the curse. In Magnus, this was of course simply untenable. Harrowed by his son's account of the change, only now to see it rise up at the very moment of their reunification, the Primarch bent his every iota of knowledge, wisdom, and power, curing the ailment in its totality. In his own way, he clearly counted this as a test, a trial by fire as much as an act of fatherly love. Here was an unsolvable riddle, a blight that neither the legion savants nor the emperor himself appeared to be able to counteract. Surely there was no greater proof of the value of Prospero, of what it's, what his learning, what all they have accomplished, what this could do for the betterment of the human future. And Magnus was victorious. That much is history. The means by which he accomplished this. Well therein lies only shadows and doubt. The cure was found, but the method of its finding, of its cost, is uncertain. What Prosperine Records remain state that Magnus consulted every single biologian, medicaid, alchemist, and geneticist upon the world, and bent his will to examining every librarian and archive the planet held, requesting additional resources from the Imperium and the Mechanicum, and his father's own household too. It is beyond doubt that Terra, Mars, and the Imperial household provided what they could, although the extent of which, given the secrets jealously guarded by all, is difficult to ascertain. Magnus was known to have grown increasingly desperate, as avenues thought promising failed to yield results, as lore ancient and untested proved to have no application, as more and more experiments became nothing but dead ends of sunken time and lost efforts. The Crimson King despaired, at one point to such an extent he withdrew into the sanctum, at the heart of his Prosperine Temple, to meditate upon what options yet lay open for him, seeking perhaps a path yet unconsidered, yet hidden from even his prodigious sight. Casting his mind across the warp, his aether presence in its grief sought far and wide across the realm immaterial for an answer desperately needed. This is where what can be independently verified ends, one should note, given all that has transpired since, both in terms of the burning, and the heresy, and all that has occurred in the ten thousand years after. It has been suspected far and wide and by parties diverse, that in his torment, down in the depths of the new place that is the warp, Magnus came across what he was looking for, but that to obtain it, a price was demanded. Quite what held the precious lore the Kings and Crimes sought inches into the realm of madness and outright heresy, the very discussion of the entities and invocation of not only their names, but their concepts is a danger of the highest order. One considers it, after all has been said, that in all deepest likelihood, based on all available evidence that in that pit, the Cyclops met with the feathered many, they that change the path material, or at least some aspect of this greater concept. Within this things grasp lay the secret to solving the flesh of his sons. In a universe that so beloveds its dramas, and within the unreality of the warp so wedded to the hectic weight of stories, a desperate father seeking to cure for his sons, only to strike a packed Faustian beyond belief, it has the ring of universal truth to it. Certainly the emanations of the Imperium, the monstrous self-aware hurricanes of pain and hatred they are shards of, apparently sought to bargain with those of the mortal plane, ensnaring the desperate and the arrogant within their honeyed webs. Magnus the Red, empowered by his knowledge so sure of his power, yet panicking for the death of those born of his blood, what more perfect a target could exist. Should this have been the case, it is of course certain that what was sold was a doom wrapped within salvation, because that simply is how the powers of the warp operate. Given how history was to transpire after this point, I need to say little. To say that the thousand sons were reinvigorated by the work of their Primarch would be a disservice to language. Mind you, given the size of the legion subsequent to the curing of the flesh change, it would not have been a significant task to reintroduce much in the way of reforms. The fifteenth legion were now living up to the truth of their own name once more. One thousand individuals remained active, a number that, had it been reported widely, would no doubt have caused some raised eyebrows for the curious symmetry it represented with their initial founding. What remained, at least, was fertile ground for one such as Magnus to cultivate. Those Astartes that had resisted the flesh change were mighty in abilities indeed, but under the tutelage of their Primarch, these were refined to hitherto unknowable complexities. The five Prosperine cults were embedded into the fabric of the legion, with each Astartes joining that which suited his gifts and temperament. The legion was rebuilt, from the legion's hierarchy to its language, fine-tuned all by Magnus's idiosyncrasies into a truly unique combat force. Warrior scholars like never before were the Thousand Sons, and this was reflected in the intake standards, even more refined than they were previously. The Crimson King introduced rigorous academic requirements for aspirants to meet, prizing intellectual refinement as much as raw psychic potential and genetic stability. Initially, these were all drawn from Prospero, the seemingly unique population of Tizca, rendering hundreds of successful candidates, while other worlds would have supplied a scant dozen. Included in this number two were senior figures from the cults. Ordinarily, the Astartes ascension procedures became risky to impossible to implement once a human passes through adolescence, but with the alchemic techniques of his homeworld and the phenomenal command of bio-mancy and other psychochemical arts that Magnus possessed, the legion was able to achieve a success rate, and indeed completeness to later life ascension that outstripped every adept within the Imperium. Magnus's old master Amon was foremost amongst them, granted a physiology and functional immortality of an Astartes at years far beyond that of even unsuccessful aspirants, and with a degree of vitality that similar figures, such as Cor-Phaeron, of the 17th Legion word bearers, could not hope to match. These risen masters would be crucial to the intake and training of new Legion brothers, overseeing the process with a keen dedication seen by many as gratitude for the gifts bestowed upon them by the Primarchs' fidelity. When the reborn Housen Suns rejoined the great Crusade in earnest, the change apparent could not have been more pronounced. Many a legion had undergone seismic shifts in their character upon reunification with their Primarch. Some indeed had become almost inversions of their previous selves, hijacked as they had become by the sheer force of their Genesire's personality. With Magnus, however, the 15th Legion appeared to have finally, truly found itself and its purpose. They were elevated by him and he by they, a symbiotic relationship that seemed to bring only joy, triumph, and purpose. An avowed utopian in the truest sense, Magnus entered his father's great crusade with the express stated purpose, that his mission was to elevate humanity. Many of his brothers could be considered idealists, such as any who operated within the totalitarian framework of the imperial regime could be considered thus, but theirs was a hope born of militaristic frames of mind, or perhaps societal and civil development altogether mundane. Magnus could little stand minds whose views were so myopic in nature, or those he considered short-sighted. For the Crimson King, anything other than reaching for the impossible was considered a failure of imagination. This naturally put him at odds with some of his more pragmatically minded brothers, but made natural kin with the most optimistic amongst them, namely Sanguinius of the Blood Angels and Lorgar of the Wordbearers. Part of his drive to push the species towards heights undreamt was a furious desire to accumulate knowledge and lore, as a child of academia through and through, only through the recovery of science lost, and the discovery of that yet unfound, could humanity achieve the enlightenment that the emperor and his imperial truth had so clearly ordained they pursue. To this end, it became stated 15th Legion policy, that the knowledge and learning of every planet that was rendered compliant be catalogued, archived, and transmitted to Prospero for further study. All forms of media and record, from parchment to books to cogitator vaults, were meticulously digitized and recorded and, if possible, physically shipped off-world once the banner of the Aquila had finally been raised. This was not merely restricted to human worlds, Xenos artifacts and technology were similarly snapped up by the Legion, often drawing suspicious eyes from their fellow Astartes, and in the cases of Technologica, the more dogmatic of the Mechanicum Tagmata. Indeed, the appetite for lore verged on obsession with some members of the Legion, their acquisitiveness often leading them on campaigns that made little to no strategic sense unless one was privy to the scrap of information that was leading them to such great discoveries. In some cases, members of the Legion would be withdrawn from frontline combat service on the express wishes of its command staff, or a primarch, to be dispatched to worlds that had already been rendered compliant and stable, simply in order to investigate or acquire that which the Legion deemed valuable. This behavior, along with the Legion's already fairly toxic reputation across the Imperium, and Magnus' open and boisterous use of his psychic powers, did little to change the minds of those who either hated or feared the Thousand Sons. If anything, the split in opinion was only intensified. The Legion, and their primarch, did little to attempt to dissuade their naysayers. Theirs was now a pride born of utter self-confidence, a reciprocal sustaining loop between Gene Sire and Gene's son. This is not to say they did not seek to persuade and educate. The Thousand Sons were no magpie hoarders of lore. Indeed, they eagerly sought to raise up and enlighten wherever they could, sharing the fruits of their burgeoning utopia with wherever they could find fertile ground. Alas, too often they found said ground barren. Their aid spurned by bigotry and superstition, finding themselves labeled all too often with the strife-era monikers of witch and sorcerer. The Librarius, as discussed elsewhere within one's chronicles, is the most notable of such outreaches, but there were many more upon every level of scope and scale. Far too often, they were merely rebuked. Magnus steeled the hearts of his sons against this. Should the blinkered of the Imperium not wish to learn and educate their minds so lacking, then the Thousand Sons would simply make them see the rightness of their cause, through noble action, faultless comportment, and peerless scholarship. To many, this would naturally track as mere arrogance. The fifteenth simply could not help that. If a mind was so truly closed as to not accept enlightenment when offered in good and true faith, then what other paths were left open to them? Simply accept the presence of ignorance and bigotry within the Imperium, kowtow to the oblivious and blinkered and give their craven superstitions equal say in matters they knew nothing of. When aggrieved and helpless in the face of seemingly willful stupidity, it behooves one to simply turn the other cheek and carry on, to leave the unwilling to squat in their own intellectual squalor. Or so many within the Legion would off to pine. This was rarely a choice made venomously, although of course there existed a starties of the Thousand Sons who would say such of the ignorant within the Imperium in less than charitable terms. More often than not, the feelings expressed were those of a profound pity for the lack of vision such bigotry betrayed, but also resolve as to the course the Legion had set itself upon. The Great Crusade was the golden opportunity for humanity, it appeared, a chance like never before to seize true enlightenment from the cosmos and bend it for the good of all. It is easy to see how this infectious utopianism of the Primarch could extend to that of his sons, and doubtless the Legion accomplished so much in these years under such fervently idealistic ideology. But as with so many things in this most hated universe as ours, the claws of fate are nothing if not pernicious, and they were closing around the Legion with the passage of each grain of sand in the celestial hourglass. Until such a time as I may relate more of this tragedy, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com slash Oculus Imperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.


Welcome to PMMI's 2017 annual meeting. PMMI is continually advancing our industry, making 2017 a year of firsts and bests. Every one of our PAC Expo trade shows broke new ground this year. PAC Expo East marked its second edition. Pro Food Tech debuted in Chicago. Expo PAC Guadalajara has become an international event. PAC Expo Las Vegas and Healthcare Packaging Expo was the largest packaging show on the continent in 2017. Ticket sales for the annual PAC gives back broke records for hurricane relief. Healthcare Packaging Expo opens with the support of Healthcare Packaging Magazine's biggest show issue ever. Pro Food World gains market momentum and will reach 35,000 professionals in print six times in 2018. PMMI took over management of the Cold Pressure Council, expanding our reach to processing professionals interested in the use of high pressure processing. Our OP-X Leadership Network released two new work products, and our Global Marketing Department helped members reach an international customer base. PMMI added new opportunities to connect with peers, with the roadshow and regional dinners. And we're growing. This year, we are on pace to add 104 new members. A new record. Our updated PMMIU focuses on bridging the skills gap and providing needed training programs. Our new PAC Expo Scholarship Program gave $30,000 in scholarships. Six students each received $5,000, continuing our efforts to develop a skilled workforce and strengthen our industry. PMMI's Business Intelligence Committee is proud to have released 13 new reports. Now looking ahead to 2018. In January, look for the relaunch of OEM Magazine, the official publication of PMMI to be published quarterly in 2018. Get ready for PAC Expo East, 2018. April 16th through the 18th in Philadelphia. And mid-2018, we will say thank you to Chuck Yuska for more than 27 years of service leading this association through significant growth. Following Chuck's retirement, we will welcome in Jim Pittis as our president and CEO of PMMI. Thank you for helping to make 2017 a record-breaking year. And enjoy this year's annual meeting.


Let me begin by thanking His Excellency, the governor of this state, Governor Abdulai Suley, for the visionary zeal he has deployed in three and a half years or so in making this state, Nassau State, possibly the number one aggregate investment place of choice. I think that this, the completion of this project, and he's told the story already of how this started and how it's told, but now it's been completed. I think the completion of this project is a tribute to his commitment to making this state a notable state for agriculture, who were here a few months ago for the Nassau Rawa Investment Summit, and so many commitments that were made then were made, I think, on account of the fact that many investors, many notable investors feel comfortable working in this state. It is clear that your support for this project is fundamental, not just in completing it, but also in all that we are hearing today about the great potential for other investments. I'd also like to thank the good people of the Panda Local Government, led by the Paramount Chief, my little friend, Baista Jualanenge, the Ojong Njapa, for your farsightedness in encouraging the location of this project here. I think it takes a great deal of farsightedness, and as you said, you know, despite some of the initial apprehension, you are able to summon the courage and vision required to enable this sort of project here. I also bring you all the very warm compliments and greetings of President Muhammad Ibuwari, who as you know passionately believes in the role of agriculture as a key driver of job creation and economic growth in Nigeria, and of course he sends not just his greetings, but his congratulations to all of the partners that made this possible. As we've heard from Uche, in fulfillment of one of his key mandates, the NSIA has over the last 10 years invested in different sub-sectors of the agricultural value chain. In 2014, we know that the Fund for Agricultural Finance, FAFIN, was established by the NSIA in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and also the KFW. In 2016, his Excellency the President set up the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative to address the problem of cost and availability of fertilizers. NSIA was enlisted by his Excellency as the project implementing entity, and over its five-year run from 2017 to 2021, the program delivered 50 million KG bags of NPK fertilizer, the 2010 version, to Nigerian farmers. It resuscitated fertilizer-blending industries and a lot of fertilizer-blending factories, over 60 of them who are otherwise moribund scattered across the country. It created hundreds of thousands of jobs, direct and indirect, and it enabled us to come to conserve almost a hundred million dollars in foreign exchange. Now that the sector has been reactivated, the NSIA's role in the fertilizer value chain has now moved up street. The program was resuscitated in 2022, the Nike NPK Limited, which was the Special Purpose Vehicle through which the NSIA has run that program, and that has been acquired now fully by the Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated, Mofi. In 2018, the NSIA invested five million dollars in Bobangona, a high-impact, scalable agricultural franchise that seeks to provide sustainable improvement in the lives of smallholder farmers. And one of the very important things that that investment gave was to be able to provide credit, inputs, training in good agricultural practices, harvesting and storage, and also marketing services. So Bobangona was able to provide a wide variety of services, an account of the five million dollar investment that NSIA made. So we see that the NSIA has developed, you know, and we're talking of just one aspect of the NSIA's work, and I want to blow the trumpet of the NSIA because the NSIA is a very important, is a very important part of all the efforts of not just the federal government, but all of the states put together, as you know, all the federation, the states of Nigeria, as well as the federal government jointly owned the NSIA. But the reason why we're here today is that in 2017, as you've heard, the NSIA established an agricultural development fund under a 50-50 joint venture with the old mutual group of South Africa, and in the same year, they made a commitment of $50 million, $25 million each, both partners, $25 million towards the development and investment in large-scale agricultural projects, combined with outgrowth schemes in areas that address both unemployment, local production growth, and food security. In 2018, the fund committed $29 million towards the acquisition and two-phase development of what is now known as the Pander Greek Novoom Farms, the Pander Greek Novoom Farms, or the Pander Greek Project, an animal feed-processing business with backward integration through the farming of maize and soil beans. As we've heard a lot already about that, between 2018 and now, despite all the global challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the problems of the value chain on account of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fund has successfully completed the development of this farm, the Pander Greek Novoom Farms. And some of the key milestones that have been achieved under the project are the installation of the warm 47,000 metric tons per annum capacity poultry feed meal, the installation of 75,000 tons of storage infrastructure, two silos, six bunkers, as well as 35 tons of raw material and finished good storage, the installation of 750 hectares of center pivot irrigation system, the leasing of 3,500 hectares of land for the cultivation of maize and soil beans, the construction of a 1.4 million cubic meter reservoir for water management, and the successful planting of 856 hectares of maize in the 2021 wet farming season. And now, as we have seen, just as we arrived, 1,200 hectares of maize during the 2022 wet farming season. In addition to all of these commendable achievements, Pander Greek also built boreholes for all six of the neighboring communities here. They developed an outgrow scheme, provided inputs and training for over 500 smallholder farmers. They employ currently almost 800 direct staff and 2,000 indirect staff, making it today the largest contributor of PAYE, as we are told, to Nassau State Governor. Today, and today this is probably the largest farm, the largest maize farm across the country. So we must all commend the hard work and diligence of the Board and Management of the NSIA and Pander Greek Novum on the successful completion of this fantastic project, as the chairman has rightly described it. I must equally commend the partners, the team from old mutual assets managers, signature, and Greek investments, who not only part financed this project, but also ensured that it has been developed and operates at the highest international levels of technical capacity. So what we see today confirms that there is opportunity in Nigeria for solid investments in agriculture, while government commits to creating an enabling environment who will look to the private sector for the investments to galvanize growth in this sector. And we must indeed work together to redefine agriculture for the future of Nigeria. Once again, I say thank you to the sponsors of this great project and encourage you to see this achievement no matter how great, just as the beginning of what is possible in our great nation. And thank you for your time. God bless this project, God bless the federal republic of Nigeria.


Putin ally makes nuclear threats to UK and France. Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has suggested launching nuclear strikes on two members of the NATO military alliance. According to Newsweek, Solovyov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a state TV host, issued the warnings during two separate broadcasts of his show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov and Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. The Daily Beast's Julia Davis shared excerpts of the broadcasts on X, the notion that Russia could strike NATO members in response to the aid and weapons they've provided Ukraine in the ongoing war, has been floated by Solovyov and many other Russian officials regularly since the conflict began in February 2022. Meanwhile in Russia, Vladimir Solovyov assured fellow propagandists that none of them will be tried after the war is over because by then, the British will have been eradicated through nuclear strikes, wrote Davis of the first state TV clip. Meanwhile in Russia, Easter would be incomplete without Solovyov's nuclear threats to France. She wrote in another post sharing the broadcast. In the first state TV clip, Vladimir Kornilov, a political scientist, began by saying that the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, openly wrote that the Russian people are responsible. After the war ends, absolutely everyone has to be tried, including Patriarch Kirill. Solovyov interjected, pardon, who is going to judge us? The British, Kornilov responded. Solovyov continued by issuing his first nuclear warning. The country, by that point in time, will be buried under a radioactive wave, he said. Kornilov said he hopes it won't get to a nuclear war. It won't. The radioactive tsunami will just wipe it away. Solovyov replied, in the second state TV broadcast, Solovyov criticised Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo for saying over the weekend that Russian and Belarusian athletes were not welcome at this year's Olympics, which is being held in the French capital. I want to remind this unpleasant, ugly Nazi beast that today is the 210th anniversary of the Russian army entering Paris. Both back then and now, we couldn't care less whether or not you are glad to see us. Whenever we need to destroy all of you, we will do it, said Solovyov. He added, so Paris, you don't want to welcome our athletes? Welcome our hypersonics. Fast, reliable and very unpleasant. Transfer of ATA CMS missiles to Ukraine is no longer as risky U.S. top general. The transfer of long-range ATA CMS missiles from the United States to Ukraine is no longer as risky as it was before states the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, General Charles Brown. In a conversation with journalists, Brown stated that the risk of escalation during the transfer of ATA CMS missiles to Ukraine is not as high as it might have initially seemed. Russia publicly stated that providing such weapons to Ukraine would supposedly cross a red line. At the same time, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, stated that people in academic circles, analytical centres or other forms of analysis refer to this as declaratory policy. This refers to statements made by high-ranking officials discussing what they will or will not do if certain actions occur. Military officials speaking on the background have pointed to Russian military doctrine specifically as it relates to so-called existential risk, saying that giving Ukraine such weapons could compel a nuclear response from Russia or spur it to attack a NATO partner, the source writes. The U.S. general stated that Russia's restrained response to a series of recent attacks by Ukrainian drones deep into Russian territory allowed the Pentagon to adjust its risk analysis for sending ATA CMS. Those are the things that we pay attention to. You know what is the likelihood of escalation based on different capabilities and different actions, he said. Last year, Ukrainian soldiers struck Russian airfields in Luhansk and Burdiansk. Information emerged in the media that the armed forces of Ukraine used American long-range ATA CMS missiles for the strike which were provided in small quantities. Later, the U.S. confirmed this information specifying that the missiles provided to our soldiers had a range of up to 165 kilometers. As early as October 2023, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba stated that the supply of ATA CMS to Ukraine would be ongoing. Recently, the American agency NBC News reported that the White House is working to provide Ukraine with new powerful long-range ballistic missiles.