Warhammer: After 18 years, finally an end

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KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Hey folks I've got an excerpt of Pariah thanks to the BL catologue I picked up today. The BL website also has a new summary for it as well

quote:

I heard the crack, the crack of metal on flesh, the sound of an axe smacking a ripe tuber. Saur's head was snapped aside, his body rotating after it. Blood flew. It was in his dirty white hair. He crashed backwards into the railings of the upper ring, and knocked over a spit bucket. He half-fell, yet somehow kept his feet, but he was done. The stranger was following in, the salinter going for the throat while the guard was dropped.
You have to remember the speed. You have to appreciate, as I tell you this, that virtually no time at all had passed since I first entered the room and saw them fighting. Three, four seconds, enough time for them to trade two dozen blows. I had come in with just enough time to grasp the basic situation and see Saur fall.
I never liked Thaddeus Saur. It's safe to say my feelings towards the cruel bastard were stronger and more negative than that.
But he was of the Maze Undue, and so was I, and this could not be permitted.

I started forward. I shouted out a great cry, and snatched a buckler from the pegs. My cuff was turned to dead, so the force of my bluntness came with me and my shout.
It can be like a slap to have a pariah come at you, aggressive, un-limited. To even a non sensitive, a regular human, the psykanic null of a blank mind be disturbing, if only fleetingly.
He recoiled. The stranger recoiled. It was enough of a surprise to stop him cutting out Saur's throat. My interruption wasn't going to stop there. I hurled the buckler like a discus.
The small, circular shield missed him, but he was obliged to duck. Saur was far from finished. He kicked out, savagely, and caught the stranger on the inside of his thigh with his heel, throwing the man sideways, clumsily.

The stranger landed, hands on the canvas, but was ready as Saur propelled himself forward and kicked the mentor's legs away. Saur slammed onto his back.
And I was, all this time, still running at him. I turned the run into a flying kick.
He rolled under me, flat to the floor, and sprung up as I landed and turned.
I think he wanted to say something to me, but he didn't know what. Perhaps he wanted to tell me to flee, to back away from a fight I had no part in, but he couldn't. If he wanted Saur dead, he had to kill me too, or the whole house would come down on his head.

I could sense his conflict. Unarmed as I was, I drove at him, using his reluctance against him. Fighting Saur was one thing, but he didn't want to engage a young woman. His response was half-hearted. He tried to shove me away. He tried to spare me his blade, though it was still in his hand. I think he hoped to clip me with the hilt or pommel and perhaps knock me out.
I would not let him off so easily. I grasped his wrist, turned it and, with my other hand, punched the pressure point in his upper arm.
The salinter flew out of his deadened fingers.
"Who are you?" I demanded.
With both hands, he rammed me aside. I staggered and fell, knocking down a rack of wooden exercise staves.

I got up, gripping one stave and kicking the others out of my way. The stranger was backing from me, his hands up.
I think he was intending to cut his losses and flee.
He doubled up as Saur's cutro tore into him from behind. The short sword went through his coat, through his robes, through his under-jack and mesh, and sliced into his wrist. Saur ripped the blade free,and blood squirted out across the canvas. The stranger stumbled away, his head wobbling like a drunkard, his feet unsure, his eyes confused. He had both hands clamped to his waist, but even tight together, they could not plug the hole in him. Blood poured out, like red wine from a jug. His hands and sleeves were soaked with it.
His mouth opened and closed, without managing to form words.

He fell down on his back. Saur just stood there, watching him bleed out, the bloodied cutro low at his side.
Blood formed a huge, dark red mirror on the canvas around the stranger. The mirror crept out. Blood soaked his coat and robes, covered his hands and flecked his face. He stared at the ceiling, mouth fluttered open and shut, his legs twitching.
I bent over him.
Perhaps he didn't have to die, I thought. We could hold him, bind his injury, call for the city watch. I tried to apply pressure to his ghastly wound, but it was open, and as big as a dog's mouth. My hands were no better at stemming the flow of blood than his had been.

He suddenly, finally, saw me instead of the ceiling and the lights. He blinked, refocused. Tiny beads of blood had lodged in his eyelashes.
"What is this? Who are you?" I asked.
He said a word. It came out of him like a gasp, more breath than sound.
It was a word I had not heard before.
He said, "Cognitae".
There was a bang, right in my ear, and it made me jump because it was sudden and close and painfully loud. A bark of pressure clouted me along with the noise. I flinched as bloody back-spatter hit my face, throat and chest. I had his blood in my eyes.
Mentor Saur put another round through the stranger's face for good measure, then holstered his snub pistol.

KramFoot fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Jul 17, 2012

# ¿ Jul 17, 2012 18:25

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 08:18

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

VanSandman posted:

How come nobody ever writes about the White Scars? I don't think the Khan has even appeared in the Horus Heresy series.

From what's been said on Warseer and a couple of other places, Chris Wraight is doing a HH novel about the Scars and the Wolves and their fight in space against the Alpha Legion. I think he's mentioned it on his blog as well.

# ¿ May 5, 2013 16:32

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Just got a copy of that novella Corax: Soulforge. Spoilers ahoy.
-Two stories here. The Shadowmasters is a short on the inside of the dust jacket. It explains that a couple of marines in every generation from Deliverance have a watered down version of Corax's invisibility trick. Some think it's a "quirk" from the gene-seed, and only Corax can see who has inherited his trick. Would explain why they're not around in 40k.
- The main story itself has the Raven Guard following a small band of Word Bearers to see why they're hiding on a mechanicus planet.
- Corax doesn't know that the Alpha trolls tampered with the genetic stuff in DL, and starts to doubt himself.
- The mechanicus is actually pretty neat in this story, there's half demon- half machine tanks with tails and two floating cities blasting each other apart as loyalists are thrown into a fight with the dark mechanium.
- Guilliman is mentioned, with Corax remembering how he fielded theoreticals without including non-combatants. Corax mentions that this worked in his favour in three military exercises. By the 4th, Roboute changed that and couldn't be beaten once.
- the Raptors( those fun guys with mutations all over the place) in the RG are pretty normal. Seriously, was kinda expecting something interesting to be done with them, ah well.
- I think this is the point from where we will see Corax slowly form into the one who says "Nevermore." At the end, he catches up to the Word Bearers commander. The guy becomes a CHAAAAOS champion and proceeds to kick the poo poo out of Corax, points out to him that the Primarchs weren't made naturally, and spells out that the Emp had help from Chaos. Corax begins to doubt himself again.
- Not sure if its been mentioned in other stories but there's now several Word Bearer warbands who have escaped from Calth and burst through the Ruinstorm mentioned in Betrayer. Guessing they've went solo from the legion?

# ¿ May 31, 2013 16:54

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

berzerkmonkey posted:

I just finished The Unremembered Empire last night - I felt it was a little below the normal Abnett standard, but he did say in the afterward that it was a real pain in the rear end to write, what with all of the storylines that had to converge to meet at this point. One thing that confuses me though was the timeline: at the end of Vulkan Lives, Vulkan, seemingly very lucid and sane, escapes Curze's ship by teleporting into Macragge's upper atmosphere, where he plunges to the planet. Yet, at the beginning of Empire, when Vulkan comes falling from the sky and smashes into the earth, Curze is playing hide and seek with the Lion on the Lion's ship. That seems to be a hell of a continuity error! Are there any stories I may have missed that explain this? I can buy that Vulkan went crazy after burning up on reentry (though it is a stretch, considering all of the dying he did previously, but the crazy time seems out of character for Abnett.

It's not brought up a lot but Vulkan Lives end scene is actually a time skip to a year or two forward thanks to some weird timefuckery with the teleport beacon.
Plus it sounds like you should read Prince of Crows in the Shadows of Treachery book, that's the most recent story with Night Lords before Unremembered Empire.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2013 20:16

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

The editor for the HH- Laurie Golding made a post about it on the First Expedition Forum, I'll look it up and try find it. Still, this kind of thing shows up in Fear to Tread as well, where the Blood Angels end up in Maccrage round the same time as UE despite the fact that Signus Prime must have been shortly after Istvann 5. Basically the answer for weird time shennigans seems to be "the warp did it".

Tempted to try make a timeline for the Horus Heresy, including books as well. Or has it been already done in a previous post?

# ¿ Nov 19, 2013 21:38

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Key example probably being The Outcast Dead. Just... dear god. I'm still confused by the timeline bollocks in that story. Apparently an audio drama explains it but it seems like a weak cop-out for an answer that should have been an epilogue in the book itself if that makes sense.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2013 23:35

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

I thought it was an unamoured space marine? But yeah the custodes dies by spine removal via chest.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 00:44

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

It's Konrad Curze.
Anyways, some news, a new HH book has been announced on the BL blog, it's called "Shattered Legions" by David Anneadale, that guy who wrote the Yarrick novella. It's coming out in July apparently. So pretty soon after "The Vengeful Sprit" in March I believe.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2014 20:16

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Aziraphale posted:

Ok, I'll check those out after I re-read the NL trilogy.

Speaking of, why did Konrad let himself be executed by Mshen? Was it because the emprah rebuked them for their brutality in bringing worlds into compliance? What was it that Curze was vindicated in with his death?

From what I've figured of it, Konrad eventually realized that he was the monster he always pretended not to be. He saw himself as serving justice, and his vindication would be that justice will be served by him paying for his crimes, in this case by letting himself be killed.
Or he was just batshit insane by that point. The Nightlord Trilogy touches on this in a pretty cool way, especially in the Void Stalker with Talos discovering that his gene-seed is literally killing him, hence why he has prophetic powers just like Kurze.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2014 17:44

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

DirtyRobot posted:

You fools, if GW reads this stuff about the lack of Dropsite Massacre they're gonna add another ten books before the siege of Terra.

GW would never do such a thing.
It'll be 10 limited edition novellas written by Gav Thorpe instead.

# ¿ May 26, 2014 15:18

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Prince of Crows was a story in the Shadows of Treachery novel, the new cover for it looks awesome though.
Oh also Nick Kyme just mentioned on his blog that he's writing a sequel to Vulkan Lives. or at least planning it out. I don't know whether to be happy or afraid right now.

# ¿ May 30, 2014 19:55

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Shadows of treachery also has The Crimson Fist novella in it as well so if you can find a copy or ebook it you're sorted

# ¿ May 30, 2014 22:58

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

No-one is safe. The only option is exterminatus. Or hopefully it's a actually decent story- unless it ends up being a direct sequel to UE... In which case prepare for emo kurze and all sorts of blandly described escapades! Anyways, just started Vengeful Spirit and Loken is in it? When did this happen? Feel like I've missed a story somewhere.

# ¿ May 30, 2014 23:47

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Sandweed posted:

Is it me or is the Age of Darkness thousand sons story a huge reference to the Blood Ravens from the Dawn of War games?

Yeah it really is , considering that according to the blood ravens codex their chapter founder was Arvida.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 01:01

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

SRM posted:

There's no Blood Ravens codex. They're not even mentioned in the newest Space Marines codex, aside from maybe one little picture of a painted Blood Raven in the unknown founding chapter section. That's all implied stuff from some Horus Heresy stuff.

I'm an idiot. I was thinking of the article they had in White Dwarf.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2014 17:54

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Nope, it's Anthony Reynolds that's writing it ie that guy who wrote the Word Bearers Omnibus. Reckon it'll have something to do with the Word Bearers purge he mentioned in the third book.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2014 23:51

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

I thought that BL said that the normal edition comes out 2 weeks after the limited ed goes on sale?

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 00:21

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

ADB just confirmed on Facebook that his Night Lords short will be about Talos and First Claw. Christmas has come early.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2015 21:11

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

I got through the first round of Black Library's short story competition. Uhh I'm in shock here guys. Don't know how to process this really. Been told that my pitch has been accepted but it could still be a no but to wait for further instructions. Suffice to say if I do end up writing for BL I will have to give you fine fellows a mention somewhere in my short piece.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 23:33

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Yeah pretty much under a NDA so won't risk it but still it's really exciting\bloody terrifying to think about.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 11:25

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Hmm challenge accepted. I was gonna go with giving a ship the latin translation of Something Awful buut you cant have a warham story without skulls and power fists.

KramFoot fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jun 8, 2016

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 15:36

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

Okay so something awful translates into Formidolosa est. Huh. Think I might actually use that.
DO YOU HAVE STAIRS IN YOUR SECTOR?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 20:03

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

So, got a question. Last year I got through round 1 of that short story competition BL held. I've not heard anything since. Any fellow goons been in the same boat as me?

# ¿ Jun 30, 2017 19:18

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 08:18

KramFoot: Sep 25, 2011

A few BL books are on sale for �1.99 on amazon if you want to try the ebook versions of them. I'll list them all instead of linking because phone posting.
The Founding, The Lost, The Victory by Dan Abnett
Magos
Forges of Mars
Magnus the Red, master of prosper by Graham Mcneill
Space wolf omnibus by William King
Spear of the emperor by ADB
Leman Russ, the great wolf
Valdor Birth of the imperium by Chris Wright
Honourbound by Rachel Harrison

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 17:11

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