Meet your hosts of Zero to 40K and stumble into the world of Warhammer 40K novels with us. Warhammer expert Walter Stewart leads a discussion with novice co-hosts Shannon Tierney, Erik Strangefellow, Sarah Fettke.

Intended audience: Everyone 18 and older. No need to know anything about Warhammer, but there is some spicy content!

Interested in Warhammer novels but haven't started reading them? This is perfect for you. Not interested in Warhammer novels? Neither were some of us! Some of us still aren't! Listen anyway.

Already a Warhammer novel expert? Listen and write in to tell us how very wrong we are!

Originally recorded on April 9th, 2023.

Contact us: 0240kpod@gmail.com

Check out our website: https://www.0240k.com/

Check out TableTop Game & Hobby: https://tabletopgameandhobby.com/

Check out Erik Strangefellow: http://www.erikstrangefellow.com/

Check out Sarah Fettke: http://how-queer.com/

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Erik Strangefellow

[Singing] Zero...zero...zero to 40 k

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Walter Stewart

Greetings, citizens of the Imperium. Welcome to Zero to 40 K, the podcast where I drag three friends kicking and screaming into the world of Warhammer 40,000. I'm your host Warhammer Walter Stewart, broadcasting here from the Imperial Palace. With me are my three co-hosts. First, Sarah. Sarah, how are you today?

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Sarah Fettke

Hi, I'm good. How are you?

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Walter Stewart

Good. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how familiar are you with the Warhammer universe?

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Sarah Fettke

Of course I am a writer, tabletop gaming enthusiast all around nerd and I think I'm a zero on a scale from 0 to 40. Uhh...yeah, maybe... I know just enough from walking past the books. I'm like, at the shop to know that there are Space Marines and war.

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Walter Stewart

There's both. Both of those things...

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Sarah Fettke

That’s about all I know about it.

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Walter Stewart

...feature heavily.

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Sarah Fettke

And I am not kicking or screaming too much. Just a little bit.

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Walter Stewart

Our second co-host, Erik. Erik. Hello. Hey, how are you?

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Erik Strangefellow

I can if you're going to be Warhammer Walter, can I be imperior...or Imperium Erik?

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Walter Stewart

Okay, everyone can pick...

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Erik Strangefellow

Or some word like that.

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Walter Stewart

Everyone's going to have to pick one. I bet we'll find something.

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Erik Strangefellow

So. Yeah. Hey, I am. You started with writer. I'm. I guess I would describe myself then as a musician and artist in general. Also a games enthusiast. I like that. I'm going to steal that.

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Sarah Fettke

Go for it.

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Erik Strangefellow

Yeah. So I think I might actually be less than zero. I might be a negative figures. And I'll tell you, I in anticipation of this, I was thinking today about like what background I had with Warhammer, and I was realizing that every time someone has said Warhammer or someone has said Warcraft.

(Laughter)

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Erik Strangefellow

I combine the two ....and....

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Erik Strangefellow

Literally in my mind I thought that Warhammer 40 K was like the space version of Warcraft. Because I thought they both had the same....

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Shannon Tierney

Well, there's a reason for that...

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Erik Strangefellow

There you go. Yeah.

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Walter Stewart

I have a lot to say on the subject...

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Shannon Tierney

Put a pin in it.

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Walter Stewart

Yeah, well, fine, we can put the pin in it, but you work Warcraft and Warhammer, there's some, there's some history there of rights and people doing things and not doing things anyway. That's not important or germane right now.

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Erik Strangefellow

And then you said you've walked by the books. I don't think I've ever I don't I didn't realize there were books, but I've, I've walked by the miniatures a lot, so and I don't know if there's orcs in Warhammer...which we’ll be doing...

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Walter Stewart

There are!

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Erik Strangefellow

...but okay, so there you go. So that's probably some of like confusion to, because I know orcs play...

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Sarah Fettke

Did I make up books? Aren’t there...like...rulebooks or something?

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Walter Stewart

Oh, there are many.

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Erik Strangefellow

Oh, that's what books you mean. I thought you meant these novels.

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Walter Stewart

There are both novels and rule books, of which there are copious amounts around areound us as we speak.

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Sarah Fettke

I was questioning if I needed to crank down my rating below zero.

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Walter Stewart

I think you're less confused. Okay. And our final, last but not least, co-host Shannon. Shannon. Hello.

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Shannon Tierney

Hello.

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Walter Stewart

How are you today?

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Shannon Tierney

I'm great.

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Walter Stewart

Tell us about yourself.

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Shannon Tierney

Yeah. I didn't realize that I was going to have to talk about, like, cool stuff that I do. I’m a cat enthusiast. I'm a Lego enthusiast, I'm a nap enthusiast. And putting myself on a scale of 0 to 40 k, I would say I'm at like a like a two or three.

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Walter Stewart

Yeah. You have to hear my ramblings.

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Shannon Tierney

Mmm. Yes. For those of you in the, in the audience that we may have, I'm married to Walter and so I do hear about it a lot and, and actually I would say almost everything I know about Warhammer comes from helping with inventory. Cause...uh...although you did you talk about this? Yeah. Walter is a game store manager.

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Erik Strangefellow

You didn't really introduce yourself, Walter.

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Shannon Tierney

And, well yeah... what's.... what are your credentials? Gives you the right to do this?

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Erik Strangefellow

Pigfucker

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Walter Stewart

This got...aggressive.

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Shannon Tierney

No, no, no. What I. What I wanted to say is helping you do inventory at the store, I think was my big, big introduction to WHAT...IS...THIS? Because I was, I, we were doing inventory and I was I was like, okay. Trying to read out the things like we have two of these...

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Walter Stewart

We had a whole list of inventory items and it is all the names of the different models.

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Shannon Tierney

And I'm like, why does this one have blood in the name twice?

(Laughter)

I don't remember what it was.

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Walter Stewart

They were Khorne blood bound, blood warriors, blood or something that all yes, everything has skull blood crushers of blood slaughters.

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Shannon Tierney

And I was like, why these sound like these were named my 13 year old boys. And so that ...

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Walter Stewart

They were named *for* 13 year old boys.

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Shannon Tierney

Yeah. So I know a lot surrounding Walter does a lot of like events at the shop. One time I went up there and he had a “40 cake”.

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Walter Stewart

Yes for the edition for the release of I think seventh edition. We, we, we made a Warhammer 40 cake for everyone.

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Shannon Tierney

Midnight releases. He almost didn't make it to our shared birthday party because he wanted to be at a midnight release.

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Walter Stewart

It's very important. We were running it.

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Sarah Fettke

The night release of what?...

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Shannon Tierney

Doesn't matter.

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Walter Stewart

The new edition of Warhammer.

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Erik Strangefellow

This is many more things I know about Warhammer.

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Shannon Tierney

So I still think yeah, 2. I would say 2 because.

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Walter Stewart

Yeah, you hear a lot of you endure a lot of Warhammer stories for me. Yeah. So I'm a Warhammer Walter Stewart, I am one of the owners of Tabletop Game and Hobby, a friendly local game store here in Overland Park, Kansas. I have been playing Warhammer for a very long time. It's a depressingly long time almost. So I probably picked it up in the early nineties and been doing ever since then.

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Walter Stewart

I've been reading these wonderful, terrible novels ever since then and they range in quality a great deal. So that leads us into talking about this book. We are going to be reading to start the inaugural...the first episode of this podcast will begin with us reading Horace Rising by Dan Abnett. Dan Abnett is a bit of the high watermark considered for Warhammer authors.

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Shannon Tierney

So these are the...we get to read some of the good ones.

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Walter Stewart

And so you can take that as you read this as you will. What that might mean.

(Laughter)

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Walter Stewart

But yes, he is widely considered one of the finer Black Library, which is Games Workshop's publishing arm, authors. He has somewhat of a career outside of Warhammer. He doesn't just write Warhammer novels. He's done a bunch of comics, that kind of thing. The book itself is the first in the preposterously long Horus Heresy series of novels, which bridges some 50, some 60 books and almost two decades.

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Walter Stewart

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Shannon Tierney

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Walter Stewart

Two *thousand* six.

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Shannon Tierney

Why did I think this was from the 80’s?

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Walter Stewart

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Shannon Tierney

This is following my mind right now for some reasons that I.... can I see your copy because...I...yeah...ohhhh.

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Sarah Fettke

Are we talking about the art? Is it time?

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Walter Stewart

Anyway.

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Shannon Tierney

I don’t...

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Walter Stewart

Anyway...talking about the books: aggressively long series of books where it started launching a Games Workshop into getting into serious book publishing and having like this overarching, huge narrative. And it was drawing all of these things that have been hinted about for 20 years of Warhammer. And now like finally, like fleshing those ideas out and going into it.

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Walter Stewart

And that's what we are going to jump into.

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Erik Strangefellow

The only Google searching I've done regarding this is we're working on one of the little themes. I wanted to know how many books there were total, and I found an estimate of 363.

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Shannon Tierney

Hey, I thought we weren't supposed to Google anything.

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Walter Stewart

And you'll see behind me I have a distressing plurality of that number of...

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Sarah Fettke

Those are all....?

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Shannon Tierney

That's true. I should take a picture of you with all your books. Put it on the show notes.

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Erik Strangefellow

We should have a group picture.

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Walter Stewart

I need these two shelves of Warhammer books just top to bottom. All full. And I have not nearly all of them yet. People talk about the Star Wars extended universe. No, that's got nothing on this. The Star Wars punks can back off if they think they have an absurd...

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Erik Strangefellow

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Shannon Tierney

Well, this isn’t the beginning of this.

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Walter Stewart

Well, this is the beginning of *this* series. Now, they've been writing books of various quality...

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Sarah Fettke

So...this isn’t the first book that was written..

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Walter Stewart

No, not even close.

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Erik Strangefellow

I thought there was like a fleet of authors cranking these out.

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Shannon Tierney

So if people want to then and there are listen to this episode zero and follow along with us in the books.

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Walter Stewart

But we are reading Horse Rising.

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Shannon Tierney

I'm going to be listening to the audiobook, but the rest of you, I think, are you love your paper books.

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Walter Stewart

I do love a paper book. And the first we haven't read the book. We are going to now. I think it's time to judge a book by its cover.

(Shannon laughing)

(Laughing)

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Walter Stewart

Cause...it is hard to look at.

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Sarah Fettke

Like a Hulk zombie Axl Rose.

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Shannon Tierney

Kind of slightly purple skin. Yeah, they look maybe like like you're going to see them in a post-credits scene.

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Sarah Fettke

Are they Thanos?

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Shannon Tierney

Yeah, there's like a little bit of Thanos in there.

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Walter Stewart

And I'm not sure which of these characters is even supposed to be. I don't know why one has a weird leather beanie on. Like he maybe just got done doing like bad slam poetry at his local coffee shop before wading into battle. I don't know why we don't see... neither of them are Horus. I don't see why we don't get to see him.

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Shannon Tierney

None of us have any idea what we're looking at here.

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Sarah Fettke

I just really feel like New York Times bestselling book just has lost all meaning.

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Shannon Tierney

It has.

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Sarah Fettke

Yeah, it's on so many books.

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Shannon Tierney

It is. It is.

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Sarah Fettke

Of all of them. It can't be. Well, it.

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Walter Stewart

Depends on what, what how what number. It's what number of books are the best selling book.

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Shannon Tierney

How do you.... Where does it end?

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Walter Stewart

It doesn't. It's all books.

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Erik Strangefellow

How often do they release these figures.

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Sarah Fettke

If you are on the list...are you in New York Times bestseller?

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Walter Stewart

Which ones are they choose? Yeah, but here we go. This made the cut.

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Sarah Fettke

Did ...did Dan Abnett write all of the books in the Horus...?

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Walter Stewart

No. Dan Abnett...There is like a stable--I think that's the best way to put it--of writers. And even for an individual such as myself who is a unapologetic fanboy for Games Workshop novels, some of these authors are better than others. So we will we will get to there. And and as you'll see, if this continues on to further books, that also there is not a lot of agreement necessarily on what things do in the books...

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Shannon Tierney

What things....what *things* do?

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Walter Stewart

What just how certain things in the world work and what they're supposed to be and that kind of thing aren't necessarily discussed well between the authors.

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Sarah Fettke

It’s good worldbuilding when everything is inconsistent. Star...speaking of Star Wars.

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Shannon Tierney

Midi-chlorians....Do they have midi-chlorians here?

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Erik Strangefellow

They have enough war cannons that they don't need literary canon.

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Everyone

(Groaning and laughter)

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Walter Stewart

Okay, on that note.

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Everyone

(More sounds of laughter)

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Walter Stewart

So this is the intro episode for episode one for you at home following along, you'll want to read the first five chapters of Horus Rising, which goes to about page 108, the first five chapters. That's what we're going to be talking about in episode 1, the first episode of Zero to 40K. Okay, Thanks for listening. In the meantime, uh, Henry Cavill, I know you're out there and that you're probably listening to this podcast because you're a man of culture.

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Walter Stewart

Just tell us what you think about these first five chapters. We're looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks.

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Erik Strangefellow

[Singing] Walter knew Warhammer real well,

so he seized every opportunity to tell

anyone he could about the books,

but no one ever gave them a second look,

so he thought, “Hey, I'll start a podcast.”

And they gathered around him together at last

three friends willing to jump into the fray

and go from zero to 40 K.

00;12;39;27 - 00;13;00;06

Shannon Tierney

Zero to 40 K was created by a Warmaster Walter Stewart.

Production by Administrix Shannon Tierney.

Music by Erik Strangefellow.

Special thanks to Sarah Fettke.