Warhammer: After 18 years, finally an end

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drgnvale: Apr 30, 2004; A sword is not cutlery!

I really need to finish Eisenhorn one of these days. I always get about halfway through the omnibus when I lose interest/get distracted by something ADB wrote.

Speaking of things ADB wrote, I finished the Talon of Horus last night. I thought the whole thing was great, and I didn't mind the main character's alien girlfriend at all. Since it isn't likely that the followup book will be out anytime soon, what was that historical fiction series that ADB is drawing from? Whatever inspired this style of story sounds like something I'll want to read.

# ? Dec 20, 2014 07:30

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 00:00

Jerkface: May 21, 2001; HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE DEAD, MOTHERFUCKER?

drgnvale posted:

I really need to finish Eisenhorn one of these days. I always get about halfway through the omnibus when I lose interest/get distracted by something ADB wrote.

Speaking of things ADB wrote, I finished the Talon of Horus last night. I thought the whole thing was great, and I didn't mind the main character's alien girlfriend at all. Since it isn't likely that the followup book will be out anytime soon, what was that historical fiction series that ADB is drawing from? Whatever inspired this style of story sounds like something I'll want to read.

Warlord chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. An interesting take on king Arthur and his court, highly recommend.

Are any good books coming out in the near future? I wish Abnett would release anything from any of his many possible book lines. Any interesting horus heresy being released? Last i checked on bl.com they were doing some 12 days of expensive rear end ebooks bullshit

# ? Dec 20, 2014 08:08

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

quote:

"I heard that you were about to undergo surgery," he said. "I ordered that it be delayed until I could arrive to perform it."

Lost it at this line. I'd happily read a novel's worth of this poo poo: you should totally quit your job and start writing full-time on here, so I can read it.

# ? Dec 20, 2014 17:03

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

For background fluff book 4 of the forgeworld Horus Heresy series is out. Also Konrad Cruze got a model and its pretty sweet looking.

I think the on BL Horus Heresy books that came out this year were damnation of Pythos, Vengeful Spirit, and 3 short story collections, with 3 other novels that were supposed to be out getting shuffled several years out.

I don't know what but it really looks like something disrupted their publishing schedule this year.

Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Dec 20, 2014

# ? Dec 20, 2014 21:04

Kylaer: Aug 4, 2007; I'm SURE walking around in a respirator at all times in an (even more) OPEN BIDENing society is definitely not a recipe for disaster and anyone that's not cool with getting harassed by CHUDs are cave dwellers. I've got good brain!

Umiapik posted:

Lost it at this line. I'd happily read a novel's worth of this poo poo: you should totally quit your job and start writing full-time on here, so I can read it.

Glad to hear you enjoyed; I actually really love my job and wouldn't quit it, but I will keep writing and posting, most definitely. There's actually a couple of longer stories not involving Doc Eldar that I want to write, but right now they are just story seeds in my mind, I haven't developed them to any degree. I've also got some more ideas for Doc Eldar, of course.

Here's a story that I wrote a while ago, it's more of an exploration of what could be possible in 40K societies than whacky hijinks, but I really enjoyed writing it:

quote:

Let me tell you a little story about the most terrifying boss I've ever had. He - at least, I always assumed he was a he, although to be truthful I never explicitly asked about it - wasn't human. Humanoid, sure, enough to pass as a human, as long as you were half-blind and didn't notice his ears, or his eyes, or his teeth, or the way he moved. But human he was most definitely not, as any interaction with him would quickly prove. For the unfortunate majority of people who did interact with him, it was from the position of one of his patients, since he'd been hired by the Monsignor Jeremias as the ship's chief of trauma surgery. As his orderly and principal assistant, I was one of the few members of the crew who interacted with him regularly. Despite working with him on a daily basis, the pronunciation of his xeno-language name forever escaped me. I called him Doc Eldar.

As time was measured on the ship, it was late night or early morning, depending on your personality. About three hours before the start of the day shift, in other terms. Doc Eldar lived his job, though, instead of working a given shift, and since I was his assistant, I kept the same hours, outside of an occasional designated rest day.

The job came with some perks, I can't deny that; for a non-officer crew member, I was well paid, and my quarters were a fairly nice private room. But it had its downsides as well, so none of the other orderlies had ever offered to switch jobs with me. The hours were one. The other was being present while the xeno was operating.

A tech had just wheeled our most recent patient away on a gurney. He would make a fine recovery, I was sure - the alien was a brilliant surgeon, on a level beyond the best human I ever witnessed. But no human surgeon displayed so little concern about the pain his patients suffered.

"You could have covered the wound with a smaller graft if you'd meshed it," I offered, as I restocked the suture rack.

Doc Eldar finished polishing his knife on a gauze pad and made it vanish, presumably into the sleeve of the robe he wore. "A meshed graft would have been cosmetically unappealing," he replied.

When we had first met, I had been terrified of angering the xeno with an ill-chosen word. I had found over time that he took my questions at face value; I had not yet succeeded in finding a way to make him admit that a less-painful option might be superior to a more torturous one, but I would keep trying. Just not during an actual emergency - I reserved my disagreement for when patients weren't around.

"It was on his foot. Given the choice he may have opted for the less beautiful procedure." If it had meant a smaller graft harvest, I didn't say aloud.

The patient had been a fairly young man, barely out of his teens, who had scalded his toes and the front of one foot by spilling hot grease onto them; not a life-threatening injury, but bad enough that it wouldn't heal appropriately on its own, so a skin graft was indicated. Doctor Bisko, the xeno's predecessor in the role of trauma chief, would have sent the man to a ward overnight and done the graft the next morning. But Doc Eldar was not one to see value in waiting. He had immediately taken his knife and peeled off the layer of dead skin, which was, oddly, bright yellow.

"This smells like a food condiment," he said, as he exposed the bed of healthy tissue. The patient was staring wide-eyed at the flickering knife, but he wasn't screaming yet - the burn had rendered the first stage of the surgery painless. That wouldn't last.

"It's mustard, yeah," the young man said.

The xeno stared him in the eye, knife now moving in minute twitches as the last shreds of dead skin sloughed away. "Why."

"It's good for burns, man!" The patient's nerve broke at the same time as his voice, squeaking the word "burns," and he turned his head away, eyes shut tight.

"Graft suture, size three," the xeno told me, apparently uninterested in correcting the patient's misconception. As I was retrieving it, he had strapped the man's leg to the operating table. The first pass of his knife shaved the hair off a patch of healthy skin on the man's thigh, as close as any barber could.

The second pass shaved off a partial thickness of the epidermis. Normally this was done with a dermatome, which had an automatic blade and a guard that let you precisely control the thickness. Doc Eldar didn't need the guard, just his knife and the fingers of his free hand to stretch the skin taut. Of course, normally it was also done under anesthesia. The patient gave a shriek that faded to gasping whimpers as the donor skin came free, which thankfully took no more than three seconds.

Doc Eldar held up the skin, which I now saw was not a simple rectangle - he'd harvested precisely the shape needed to cover the forefoot and the toes. He perforated the skin in a few places with his knife-tip, then laid it over the burn. The fit, to my eyes, looked perfect.

I handed over the suture, which was hair-thin, and the xeno stitched down the graft, taking less than a minute. He didn't get any more screams, just yelps - he was probably disappointed. And then the patient was on his way out, and no doubt praying to the God-Emperor that he would never be seen by the alien again.

"He was clearly distraught from the situation," the xeno countered. "His decision-making ability was compromised. I acted in his best interests."

I was thinking of how I might counter that when I was interrupted by the chime of the trauma-alert vox.

"Priority one scene response needed to power routing station, deck gamma-sub-four, compartment eighteen," the dispatcher intoned.

Priority one. That didn't just mean that someone was in critical condition. It meant that someone important was in critical condition. The xeno had made the point in the past that all patients were important - and had backed it up, with the weight of his position and his own unique approach to conflict resolution - but if this one was officially important, the clock was already running. I had the scene box slung over my shoulder before the message had finished. The xeno, naturally, was already out of the door.

I caught up to him at the lift bank; even with the priority override he possessed, a car wouldn't arrive instantly. The first lift car to arrive turned out to be loaded with freight, crates of produce and other foodstuffs on their way to officers' country. The boxes were stacked unevenly, shoulder-high for the most part, with no floor space unoccupied. The xeno simply pounced upwards, landing in a crouch on top of a plastek crate. Feeling utterly ridiculous, I tried to scramble up beside him; if he hadn't given me a helping hand, I wouldn't have made it, not with the lopsided weight of the scene box slung around me.

"Go to compartment eighteen, deck gamma-sub-four," the xeno ordered to the servitor built into the panel next to the door.

The Monsignor had spared no expense when it came to the quality of his ship. Although the lift system was chiefly used for vertical movement within the ship, there were a number of shafts that ran horizontally as well as, and the car was able to take us to within a hundred meters of the routing station. The xeno outdistanced me again, no surprise there, but I caught up with him before the real work could begin.

The routing station was fairly small, as shrines to the Machine God go. It was a cubic room full of arcane devices, which drew power from the ship's almighty central superconducting loop and portioned it out in manageable trickles to the surrounding compartments. The lighting was bright and iconography shone on the walls, and the ceiling was painted in a sweeping mural, depicting the interconnection of organic and mechanical components - I recognized neurons, meshing into spiderwebs of steel and gold and carbon-black.

The ceiling where Doc Eldar was standing was discolored with soot. I made my way through the banks of machines until I could see what he saw, and my suspicions on why this had been a priority one were confirmed.

Two figures in the red-and-white robes of the ship's Mechanicus enclave lay sprawled on the floor. One was prone, the other propped in a half-sitting position against a machine. The station where they had been working looked like it had exploded, and the surroundings were scarred from flying shrapnel and scorched from electrical discharge.

The xeno knelt and performed an eyeblink-quick patdown of the prone tech-adept. "Biologics are shut down," he reported. "Condition appears stable."

At the sound of his voice, the other adept stirred. "You...the xeno." His voice was a thick whisper; probably accustomed to using a vox speaker that was now offline. "I need four hundred seconds," he said. "Without intervention, I estimate I have less than two hundred."

"Your biological components can hibernate. Do so and you will have sufficient time," the xeno replied.

"I cannot shut down my bloodstream. I carry a fetus that is reliant on it."

Doc Eldar gave the adept a stare. "You are male."

The tech-priest twitched the front of his robe open. Beneath it, he was largely augmetic. In the space below the junction of his ribs, where a normal human's abdomen would begin, nestled a complex creation, a thick glass cylinder with elaborate brass and chrome end-caps. Wires and tubes joined the cylinder to the adept's body, some of them clearly pulsing with bloodflow.

Inside the cylinder was a human child, a fetus perhaps five or six months of age. Its umbilical cord led to a placenta that clung against the upper cap.

Doc Eldar stared at the assembly, blinked, paused for an instant, and blinked again. It was the most profound expression of surprise I ever saw him make.

"Four hundred seconds," he said, recovering. "What then?"

"Another will arrive who can carry the child, and I can hibernate safely. Three-seventy, now."

The xeno nodded. "Synth, two lines," he volleyed at me as he opened the adept's robe to expose the rest of his body. I got to work, spiking two bags of synthetic blood-surrogate, as the xeno assessed the injuries.

Metal, ceramic, and flesh were blurred into a tangled ruin all down the adept's left flank - it seemed that he had managed to turn away from the blast enough to shield the fetal support cylinder. The xeno had unfurled one of his trauma rolls onto the deck, and he was probing at the wound with his bare fingertips, through the wash of dark blood and pearly grey synthstream fluid.

"Your heart is functional," the xeno said, occluding a spurting artery with a finger. "Adequate pressure." He flicked a clamp out of his trauma roll and sealed the bleeding vessel. "But your synth pump is marginal."

I held out the first of the primed infusion lines. Doc Eldar hadn't yet established any intravenous access, and given the lack of exposed organic tissue on the Mechanicus adept, I wasn't sure where he would find it. He solved the issue by piercing one of his oversized vascular needles into the tube that returned blood from the growth cylinder - it was armored with a wire-mesh skin, but he twisted the needle in a precise motion that drove the tip through, and then the line was open and pouring replacement fluid volume into the wounded adept.

Doc Eldar explored the flank wound further; the injury was mostly from shrapnel from the machine's casing, I thought, but the margins of it were scorched and the overlying areas of robe had been burned away, either from flame or an electric arc discharge. I thought I recognized intestine exposed in the deepest areas of the wound, but there was so much augmetic strangeness that I wasn't sure what I was seeing. The xeno was blotting closed the microscopic bleeders and clamping off the larger ones, rapidly cleaning up the gaping wound. He paused with his probe-tip touching a severed synthstream vessel. "Return?"

The adept nodded. I had the second infusion line ready by that point; the xeno took it, didn't even reach for a needle, and wedged the line itself straight into the open vessel. The fluid bags were made of memory-polyer, and once their initiator tapes had been pulled they would contract towards their empty shape, forcing fluid through the lines faster than gravity alone could drive it. Both bags were emptying rapidly. I had two more ready to spike, and from the size of the pool of mixed life-fluids that had spread from the tech-priest, he would need all of it.

"Synth pump critical," the tech-priest rasped. The xeno was stemming the bleeding rapidly, but the priest wasn't yet looking much better.

"Where is it?"

"Spleen."

From what biological landmarks the machine devotee had left, his spleen would have been slightly above the wound he'd taken. Doc Eldar went burrowing for it with his hands - anyone else would have had to rip and tear through tissue and augmetics to get to it with the speed that he did, but I could see that he was dividing tissue planes with his fingertips, sliding between and around structures without damaging them. Don't mistake "not damaging" for "not hurting," mind you - the adept couldn't spare power to drive any of his manipulatory augmetics, but I saw the frantic twitching of his two remaining flesh fingers as the xeno sought his damaged pump.

The synth-pump turned out to be a flattened metal frame with four electro-fiber balloons bulging from it, with hoses and metallic linkages trailing away from it. I could see that the balloons were barely twitching, when they should have been contracting deeply. The damage must have occurred somewhere in the power delivery mechanism; the balloons and hoses themselves were intact, else the adept would have exsanguinated before our arrival.

Doc Eldar wrapped the long fingers of one hand around the artificial heart and began squeezing, his joints rippling in a complex, disconcerting pattern. I could hear, very faintly, the clicking of valves within the device, and the rhythm sounded exactly like that of a healthy human heart. With his other hand, he continued sealing vessels - with the increased perfusion pressure he was now delivering to the adept's synthstream, many new sites of bleeding were revealed, washing pulses of thick fluid into the wound bed with each heartbeat.

I kept the replacement fluids running and provided the xeno with his tools; he was focused on pure damage control rather than attempting to repair things, so it was mostly vessel clamps and blotters.

"Fifty seconds," whispered the adept. Although he still appeared to be not far from the edge of death, the terror that had filled his remaining organic eye had eased away.

"That will be easily achieved," the xeno replied.

Moments later, I began hearing a noise. At first, I thought it was something coming from the shrine itself, a faint rhythmic crashing noise. As it grew, I realized that it was coming from the hall outside.

It occurred to me then that I had never seen a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus run. They had always been solemn, sedate, droning their prayers and performing their rites of maintenance, or picking meticulously through a site where something had been damaged. They were calm, logical, skillful, perfectionistic, and they never, ever ran.

When this one rounded the corner into the shrine, she must have been moving better than twenty-five kilometers an hour. She had four augmetic eyes, two on her forehead and one on each cheekbone, but both of her organic eyes were still there as well, and the expression in them was one of terrifying focus. God-Emperor have mercy on anyone who didn't get out of her way fast enough. Given how much of her was elaborately wrought brass and steel, she must have weighed as much as three or four unaugmented humans. It would have been like standing in front of a cargo tram.

With a heavy-lifter mechadendrite, she seized hold of the doorjamb and swung around it like a pendulum, losing only a little speed as she pelted into the room. I, wisely, got out of the way. Doc Eldar shifted in place, and I saw that he had shifted his free hand to rest on top of the fetus' cylinder.

The female tech-priest dropped to her knees, skidding across the floor in a squeal of metal on metal. Slender many-jointed mechadendrites looped above and below her shoulders, opening her robe and proffering a set of cables and tubes - the match to those on the fetal cylinder. Doc Eldar released the augmetic heart as she slid to a halt within touching distance, and his hands blurred in the same tempo as her augmetic manipulators, connecting her to take over the growing child's life support and freeing the cylinder from the injured adept.

"Thank you," whispered the male, and slumped as he at last was able to go into hibernation.

"Thank you," echoed the female, as she latched the cylinder into place against her own abdomen. "We will be able to repair him without lasting harm. But this one would have died if not for your skill." She placed her right hand over the cylinder - it was flesh, and clearly old, the skin thinned and wrinkled and the veins prominent.

"It is part of my job," the xeno replied, "I would not do less. Are you the child's mother?"

The tech-priest shook her head as she rose to her feet. "As you intend the word, no, this one is not of my genes. Nor of his, for that matter. Our children are children of all."

"Interesting." It was difficult to pick out any emotion or inflection in Doc Eldar's speech, but there was something in that word. He sounded almost puzzled. He had collected his trauma roll and was turning to go, and I was getting the scene box ready to carry, when the adept spoke again.

"When it is time for the birth, you are both invited to attend. It is a rare thing for one not of the enclave to see, but the two of you are also in part responsible for making it possible."

I expected the xeno to ignore the offer, but he stopped, turned to look at the adept, and nodded. "Yes. I would see this."

Three and a half months later, just after the mid-day bell had tolled, a figure in red-and-white robes arrived at the hospital. It was the man who had been carrying the child, looking none the worse for the injuries he had suffered. He informed us that the time had come, that all was ready and waiting only for our arrival. We followed him towards the stern from the hospital complex, through bulkheads marked with the skull-and-cogwheel, into the territory claimed by the Mechanicus.

The birthing room turned out to be a small but steeply-terraced amphitheater, like a surgical suite in a training hospital, its seats filled to capacity by robed adepts. The growth cylinder sat on a pedestal in the middle of the open central floor, and flanking it were a pair of adepts, female and male - neither ones that I had seen before, but the cylinder's life-support feeds led to both of them equally. The elderly female priestess was there as well, standing slightly to one side.

Inside the cylinder, the child - a female - had reached full term. She twisted and flexed her limbs, and I could see the ropy grey-white umbilical cord with its dark vein standing out, a fine cap of pale hair covering her scalp...and a mechadendrite, silver-bright, one end floating free in the amniotic fluid, the other tunneled to the base of the child's skull.

"As the ship's ranking medical officer, you may perform the delivery if you wish," the elderly priestess said. "It will be rather more simple than most you have done, I am sure," she added, flicking a dendrite towards a mechanism that had been fastened onto the cylinder cap and was clearly some kind of removal tool. The placenta was on the downward pole of the cylinder in this orientation, so it would be simply a matter of reaching in and lifting the child from the amniotic fluid.

The xeno shrugged and stepped over beside the pedestal. "Now?"

"Ah, you may remove the lid, but before she leaves the amnion one thing remains. We must be ready to welcome our daughter." She held out a cable.

Doc Eldar worked the unlocking mechanism and twisted the cylinder cap free. I could smell the pungent amniotic fluid inside, as the priestess carefully lowered the cable beneath the surface. The tip flexed, prehensile, seeking connection to the infant's matching cable. I traced the other end of the cable, and found it led to a junction box built into the ledge of the first level of the amphitheater seats. And from that junction box - dozens of cables, snaking up and out.

Every tech-priest in the room had a cable running to them. An enormous mind-impulse link, a shared consciousness. All focused down onto that almost-born child.

The cables joined, and the child gave a twitch. "We are ready," the priestess said.

The xeno reached into the cylinder and raised the child into the air. There were cord-clamps, scissors, and a stack of fine soft towels on the pedestal; he used the clamps, but didn't deign to touch the scissors, instead parting the umbilical cord with a touch of his knife. He briskly toweled the child dry and began wrapping it in another clean drape.

And the child hadn't cried. Hadn't made a single squall or protest at having to leave the warmth of the amnion and be forced to make the effort of breathing on her own. She appeared content, happy - not sedated, for she wriggled her limbs as actively as any other healthy newborn, just not upset.

"What are you projecting through the mind-link?" the xeno asked.

The priestess would have smiled, I think, but the lower half of her face was augmetic, and instead she sketched a bow. "Love, doctor. She knows that she is loved, and always will be."

Doc Eldar handed the precisely-bundled child to the woman, and without prompting the two adepts who had flanked the pedestal moved in as well, each providing a hand to support the infant. It was a unique situation for him, I thought. There was no-one around him afraid or in pain; he was, in a way, out of his element. His face betrayed no emotion, so I can't know what he thought of it.

But for me, it was close to magic.

I really love the Mechanicus, and the opportunities for storytelling they represent. There're so many ways they could be developed other than "people who really want to act like robots," and the great thing about 40K is that it's such a big setting that all of the different possibilities can exist simultaneously with no contradition whatsoever.

# ? Dec 21, 2014 01:35

Preechr: May 19, 2009; Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President

That is a fantastic piece of world-building.

# ? Dec 21, 2014 10:49

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

You are seriously writing better 40k than pretty much everyone that has written 40k and gotten paid for it. I can only think of a few short stories and the obvious series that are comparable to it. Get yourself an agent man.

# ? Dec 23, 2014 03:00

Kharn_The_Betrayer: Nov 15, 2013; Fun Shoe

That was a great one. It really gives the mechanicum a more relatable aspect.

# ? Dec 23, 2014 05:24

drgnvale: Apr 30, 2004; A sword is not cutlery!

Arquinsiel posted:

You are seriously writing better 40k than pretty much everyone that has written 40k and gotten paid for it. I can only think of a few short stories and the obvious series that are comparable to it. Get yourself an agent man.

Please do this. I would pay BL prices for a book of Doc Eldar stories.

# ? Dec 23, 2014 22:25

Kylaer: Aug 4, 2007; I'm SURE walking around in a respirator at all times in an (even more) OPEN BIDENing society is definitely not a recipe for disaster and anyone that's not cool with getting harassed by CHUDs are cave dwellers. I've got good brain!

Really happy that you all are enjoying the stories. To be honest, I don't have the first idea about how I'd go about finding an agent. And even if I did know, I'm not sure I would want to do it - I'd be thrilled to have my stories reach a larger audience, absolutely, but I don't care about being paid for it, and I really don't want to deal with schedules and deadlines, I think that would hurt my enjoyment of the writing process. My job doesn't give me much free time as it is.

That said, I'm planning to start work on another story, and there are three candidates that I have ideas for, each with a different tone. I'd like your input on which one I should do first. One is a piece focused mostly on exploring the setting, like the most recent one, this one dealing with the menials among the crew. The second is the idea that was proposed earlier, of Doc Eldar "versus" the Deathwatch (this is going to be tricky to write, because the Deathwatch themselves have to be kept offscreen from the narrator, but I have some ideas). And the third one is full-on whacky hijinks, in which the narrator meets a kindred spirit as it is revealed that Jeremias is not the only shipmaster insane enough to hire a xeno physician :orks101:

# ? Dec 24, 2014 03:36

AndyElusive: Jan 7, 2007

Did you know that Black Library are actively looking for new writers? Have you considered sending something in?

# ? Dec 24, 2014 03:38

MrNemo: Aug 26, 2010; "I just love beeting off"

I love slice of life stories but the idea of meeting a ship that's hired a Pain Dok is just too wonderful.

# ? Dec 24, 2014 09:44

Mikojan: May 12, 2010

I pretty much read all the good to decent WH40k books so far and decided to delve into Warhammer Fantasy recently.

I read the fall of altdorf, sword of justice and sword of vengeance so far. (I'm really enjoying Chris Wraight's writing)

Was curious if the other End Times books are any good? And if so what order should I read them in?

Thanks!

# ? Dec 24, 2014 15:24

Lincoln`s Wax: May 1, 2000; My other, other car is a centipede filled with vaginas.

I really liked the Return of Nagash. Reynolds is pretty excellent- I liked his Gotrek books as well. I'll probably pick up Shield of Baal at some point to see how he does 40k.

If you like Wraight, have you read his spacewolf books? I like them.

# ? Dec 24, 2014 15:41

Mikojan: May 12, 2010

Lincoln`s Wax posted:

I really liked the Return of Nagash. Reynolds is pretty excellent- I liked his Gotrek books as well. I'll probably pick up Shield of Baal at some point to see how he does 40k.

If you like Wraight, have you read his spacewolf books? I like them.

I read most of wraights 40k books I think. All of which I really enjoyed.

Battle of the Fang
Wrath of Iron
Scars

Did I miss any good ones?

- edit - looking at the OP, is Blood of Asaheim worth a read? I am not really a fan of the space wolf legion though, and I read battle of the fang mostly because of the thousand sons being their adversary.

Mikojan fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Dec 25, 2014

# ? Dec 25, 2014 09:56

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

AndyElusive posted:

Did you know that Black Library are actively looking for new writers? Have you considered sending something in?

I think the BL have a 'no fun allowed' clause when it comes to writing for them, unfortunately.

# ? Dec 25, 2014 11:34

Lincoln`s Wax: May 1, 2000; My other, other car is a centipede filled with vaginas.

Mikojan posted:

I read most of wraights 40k books I think. All of which I really enjoyed.

- edit - looking at the OP, is Blood of Asaheim worth a read? I am not really a fan of the space wolf legion though, and I read battle of the fang mostly because of the thousand sons being their adversary.

I like it. The follow-up Stormcaller is good as well. I really like Wraight's take on the wolves- they're a hard group to write about, I think. You can take them too lightly and you can make them too dour. Wraight walks a fine line- they're very threatening ,ominous, and intelligent, the voice he gives them immediately lets you know they are not of the imperium but they aren't dumb savages. It's got space hulk action, so if you're into that, it's pretty good. The book ends on a pretty shocking note- if there's another book in the series, it'll get crazy.

# ? Dec 25, 2014 13:50

Waroduce: Aug 5, 2008

Mikojan posted:

I read most of wraights 40k books I think. All of which I really enjoyed.

Battle of the Fang
Wrath of Iron
Scars

Did I miss any good ones?

- edit - looking at the OP, is Blood of Asaheim worth a read? I am not really a fan of the space wolf legion though, and I read battle of the fang mostly because of the thousand sons being their adversary.

It was awesome read it ASAP

# ? Dec 25, 2014 17:53

Sulecrist: Apr 5, 2007; Better tear off this bar association logo.

Do we know what symbol the Imperial Heralds used before they became the Word Bearers? Was it still a big ol' book with a flame on it?

# ? Dec 26, 2014 22:31

PantsOptional: Dec 27, 2012; All I wanna do is make you bounce

Looks like it, yeah. I'd assume that they switched right after the Drop Site Massacre , with a minor holdout force still flying the old colors/symbols in order to perpetuate the deception at Calth.

# ? Dec 26, 2014 22:47

lite_sleepr: Jun 3, 2003

Get hosed FOTM purist baby army players :woop:

# ? Dec 29, 2014 22:42

Waroduce: Aug 5, 2008

PRESIDENT GOKU posted:

Get hosed FOTM purist baby army players

p gay that aleric hosed around the eye of terror for like years and remained pure, but now to sell books we gotta have one fall

imo

# ? Dec 30, 2014 05:25

Wax Dynasty: Jan 1, 2013; This postseason, I've really enjoyed bringing back the three-inning save.; Hell Gem

PRESIDENT GOKU posted:

Get hosed FOTM purist baby army players

Kind of hard to have a reputation for anything when they kill anyone who has seen even one of them.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 06:19

Lovely Joe Stalin: Jun 12, 2007; Our Lovely Wang

Marvellous, the laziest and least imaginative way possible to try and lend drama to a Grey Knights story. Keep on hacking, BL.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 10:53

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

PantsOptional posted:

Are you tired of reading books that turn out to be bolter porn? Do you think you can do better? Now's your chance. Black Library has an open submission window until the 26th of January.

Well, poo poo. I almost missed this. Looks like I have something more to do in January.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 12:22

Sulecrist: Apr 5, 2007; Better tear off this bar association logo.

I banged out a couple of very rough drafts but I am still way off. I'm currently reading some relevant stuff for inspiration and also a little guidance on what they're looking for structurally.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 12:29

Cooked Auto: Aug 4, 2007

PRESIDENT GOKU posted:

Get hosed FOTM purist baby army players

I looked up some talk about that thing just because I was curious, it's apparently just genestealers.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 13:27

Lincoln`s Wax: May 1, 2000; My other, other car is a centipede filled with vaginas.

That's honestly pretty funny. I liked them better when they were just a mysterious chapter created to fight demons. Now they're all "Heyyyyyyyy, that demon's prettyyyy strong- so we're gonna kinda have to bathe in your blood first. It's pure and poo poo and we kinda need it. All of it. It actually works best if we just roll around in it!"

# ? Dec 30, 2014 13:58

lite_sleepr: Jun 3, 2003

Genestealers aren't chaos :confused:

# ? Dec 30, 2014 13:59

berzerkmonkey: Jul 23, 2003

PRESIDENT GOKU posted:

Genestealers aren't chaos

In the old fluff they could be associated with Chaos: http://images.dakkadakka.com/galler...aler%20Cult.jpg

Though I highly doubt this story has anything to do with Genestealers, since GKs wouldn't be wasted on a 'Stealer infestation.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 14:04

A 50S RAYGUN: Aug 22, 2011

berzerkmonkey posted:

In the old fluff they could be associated with Chaos: http://images.dakkadakka.com/galler...aler%20Cult.jpg

Though I highly doubt this story has anything to do with Genestealers, since GKs wouldn't be wasted on a 'Stealer infestation.

It would be pretty 40k to have GKs fly out from Titan to the sticks of the universe, realize there are no demons, and instead of fighting the (still significant and very dangerous) non-demon threat, just turn around and leave.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 15:13

PantsOptional: Dec 27, 2012; All I wanna do is make you bounce

I kind of liked the notion that I saw floating around that maybe some of the GKs start hearing voices from the Warp and freak out about being corrupted but then it turns out that it's Draigo guiding them from beyond.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 15:24

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Given that Genestealer infestations are mostly independent and autonomous beings until the hivefleet arrives to absorb them it'd be interesting to write about a possessed Magus or Patriarch. Possibly some weird power struggle where Chaos cultists get infected and the resulting hybrids and human members of the cult try influence the infestation in a chaotic direction before the fleet arrives and eats everything.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 15:54

PantsOptional: Dec 27, 2012; All I wanna do is make you bounce

How well-known is the existence of Stealer cults to Imperial forces anyway? Obviously the Deathwatch would know about it but would Guard forces or random Space Marine Chapters know about them?

# ? Dec 30, 2014 16:11

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

PantsOptional posted:

How well-known is the existence of Stealer cults to Imperial forces anyway? Obviously the Deathwatch would know about it but would Guard forces or random Space Marine Chapters know about them?

Very well known, considering that the Imperial Guard uses genetic screening to weed out infiltration by Genestealer cults.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 16:50

jng2058: Jul 17, 2010; We have the tools, we have the talent!

It does depend on when you set your tale, as there was a period early on where no one knew what the hell those crazy four armed bugs were on about. And it is also possible that there are Imperial sectors way on the other side of the galaxy from the main Tyrannid invasion corridors who either haven't gotten the word or got updates but filed it in the "not my problem" bin.

That said, most of the Imperium is aware of both the Genestealers and the larger Tyrannid problem to which the Genestealers are a subset. Certainly most Marine chapters would know, since most of the big name chapters like the Ultramarines, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels have all had canonical battles with the Bugs and would therefore be expected to spread that knowledge around to their respective successor chapters.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 17:00

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

jng2058 posted:

That said, most of the Imperium is aware of both the Genestealers and the larger Tyrannid problem to which the Genestealers are a subset. Certainly most Marine chapters would know, since most of the big name chapters like the Ultramarines, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels have all had canonical battles with the Bugs and would therefore be expected to spread that knowledge around to their respective successor chapters.

On the other hand, it would be very much in character for the Grey Knights to completely disregard any information about threats other than Chaos.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 18:16

Shroud: May 11, 2009

Maybe their anti-psyker capabilities are being tested against the Tyranids' synapse connections?

Speaking of which, if you got a blank, or better yet a pariah, close enough to the hive queen, wouldn't that turn Tyranids into easy mode (to fight against)?

# ? Dec 30, 2014 22:36

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

That's one of the fan theories as to why the C'tan engineered the Pariah gene into humanity. It'll kill off the 'nids, thus reducing the amount of irritating "life" keeping everyone awake.

# ? Dec 30, 2014 23:01

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 00:00

Groetgaffel: Oct 30, 2011; Groetgaffel smacked the living shit out of himself doing 297 points of damage.

Kylaer posted:

Really happy that you all are enjoying the stories. To be honest, I don't have the first idea about how I'd go about finding an agent. And even if I did know, I'm not sure I would want to do it - I'd be thrilled to have my stories reach a larger audience, absolutely, but I don't care about being paid for it, and I really don't want to deal with schedules and deadlines, I think that would hurt my enjoyment of the writing process. My job doesn't give me much free time as it is.

That said, I'm planning to start work on another story, and there are three candidates that I have ideas for, each with a different tone. I'd like your input on which one I should do first. One is a piece focused mostly on exploring the setting, like the most recent one, this one dealing with the menials among the crew. The second is the idea that was proposed earlier, of Doc Eldar "versus" the Deathwatch (this is going to be tricky to write, because the Deathwatch themselves have to be kept offscreen from the narrator, but I have some ideas). And the third one is full-on whacky hijinks, in which the narrator meets a kindred spirit as it is revealed that Jeremias is not the only shipmaster insane enough to hire a xeno physician

I do love world building when it's done right, like your most recent Doc Eldar one was. But, taking on tricky challenges is a good way to improve, or at the very expand your comfort zone of what you can write proficiently about. After all, it took Abnett years before he felt he could write Space Marines.

I also want to say that I love your Doc Eldar, and I'd say it's certainly good enough that I'd pay money for it. If so you'd had to mail me a floppy disk with it. :v:

# ? Dec 31, 2014 06:57

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