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Arcsquad12 posted:Kek you, you giant oaf! I always found that insult funny. Apart from Feth, I don't know if any 40K swear words are that good, though you can always throw a gently caress in somewhere because its english. It's Feth. And it's not a swear word! Feth is a woodland trickster god and furthermore... 
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Sep 10, 2015 23:46
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Anyone read the final Ahriman novel yet? The ebook seems to be out but haven't heard any comments on it yet.
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Sep 11, 2015 16:15
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Is it Ahriman: Sorcerer? I read it some time ao and it was fun, though a bit vague in some aspects. It has some interesting twists, and it's nice to see the kind of crazy shenanigans Ahzek can pull off when he decides to stop moping and just be a chaos lord. But the set-up felt a bit too Macguffiny for me. I give it a 7.5 out of 10.
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Sep 12, 2015 05:00
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The final book is Ahriman: Unchanged. Haven't read it yet. Ahriman: Exodus also came out recently but it's an anthology- but I think all the stories are by John French.
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Sep 12, 2015 14:55
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So far, Ravenor feels like Abnett is trying to channel Philip K Dick and 1980s Gibson into 40k.
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Sep 12, 2015 16:19
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victrix posted:So far, Ravenor feels like Abnett is trying to channel Philip K Dick and 1980s Gibson into 40k.
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Sep 12, 2015 17:00
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SRM posted:That doesn't sound like a bad thing at all! It's not really  But he's trying pretty drat hard, it feels like each chapter he struggles to find a new way to grittify/weirdify something. Also, and I noticed this in some of his other books recently too, he is using a shitload of $5 words I have never loving heard of. Most of them in reference to clothing/furniture/architecture (wait, that's modern gibson...) Hmm... or maybe I'm an uncultured boor.
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Sep 12, 2015 17:23
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I just read the Warhammer 40k comic book series Fire & Honour. It loving sucked
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Sep 13, 2015 05:16
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boom boom boom posted:I just read the Warhammer 40k comic book series Fire & Honour. I agree The Ork comic they did was alright though. An Ork warboss mistakes a IG commander for his lucky grot
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Sep 13, 2015 05:19
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Deff Skwadron or bust.
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Sep 13, 2015 06:00
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I just read the Warhammer 40k comic Defenders of Ultramar. They got some really lovely artists on those Warhammer 40k comics.
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Sep 18, 2015 15:54
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VanSandman posted:We'll see how the ultimate duel plays out when they give the Assault on Dies Irae to Abnett to turn into a book. I'm wasting time reading through this thread from the beginning but of all the dumb posts, I really want to single this one out. Abnett is a fun author but endings and combat aren't really his thing. In a 256 page book, the last three pages would be devoted to a very quick, prefunctory description of horus killing sanguinus and the emperor killing horus. The characters are well built, the action . . . not so much.
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Sep 19, 2015 00:57
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Alright. As I mentioned, Kylaer's amazing Doc Eldar series motivated me enough to start jotting down a similar project, tentativel called 'Seven into Eight'. All form of feedback and suggestions are of course welcome. -- The warlord’s personal sanctum was never quiet, but its music was so faint most mortals would call it silence. It was a spacious chamber, all brushed steel and spartan order, with the obsidian griffon of his heraldry displayed proudly on the back wall, his racks of weaponry kept pristine by silent servitors, and a massive hololith screen near the entrance. A shelf-like cot and a velvet-covered pedestal by the east wall were the only hints that this was someone’s room and not an arming chamber. That, and music. At first, it was hard to tell where it came from, until it became obvious. Lining every wall, and crossing the room at angles both high and low, slender metal rods let hundreds, thousands of metal orbs travel to and fro, sometimes balancing on two metal rods, sometimes guided by a spiraling trio lines. They clicked together at intervals both measured and random, deviated along different junctures, funneled into rolling herds in the broader passages and then parted to disparate ends of the chamber again. Always in motion, like blood inside a creature’s veins. Yurghan Vos plucked one of the polished spheres from its track by the cot, fighting back a small surge of annoyance as that denied him the gentle ‘tic’ sound that was due when it collided with two others in a nearby track. At times he chose to meditate by picking one sphere and seeing how long he could track its individual progress among the myriad identical ones, but now he simply held it as he walked over to the hololith to survey his newest acquisition. The panel showed a small planet, coated in the telltale green-brown that identified most agri-worlds at a glance. Teritu IV. The sole detail betraying human presnece was a telling one, however; the orbital elevator and geostationary spaceport that most such planets boast in order to bleed their production out to the stars. It was an incongruous jagged arch of dark gray metal, but that made the contrast oddly appealing. His first world had also been a farming fiefdom. Coincidence? A sign of favor from the god of ambition? He could dare to hope. Vos was not a raider, though he led frequent raids and ordered his champions to engage in many more. He was not a zealot, though again, he felt and honored the touhh of the God of Change in all of his doings. Above all, he was not a butcher, although the number of lives claimed by his hands was a black cypher indeed, and those ended by the forces under his command across five millenia of the Long War would require a conclave of Mechanicum magi to tabulate. Yurghan Vos was a gardener. Precious few knew of that fact. Some mocked him for it, and he welcomed their scorn even as he wrote them off. Others saw it as one of the more acceptable flights of fancy warriors in his position indulged, and he used them. A handful actually admired him for it. He used those the hardest of all. His garden was composed of planets, not vegetation. Worlds forgotten by the Imperium here in the margins of the failing Astronomican, or written off as lost after years of investigation fleets had been destroyed by seemingly unrelated attacks or warp phenomena. None of them came free easy, for the if there was one tenet that the Imperium was adamant about, it was that no ground where the aquila had flown could ever be surrendered. But come free they did. Most were not even aware of their secret benefactor, or how many other nearby systems were also Imperial in name only, and barely at that. Perhaps a handful of mortals in each of them knew his name. And for almost five decades now, he’d tended them, letting each one bloom in its own manner. Thirty-one systems, now thirty-two. The idea had come when he’d arrived at a system for a supply raid, only to find it already in the throes of insurrection as the local ecclesiarchy had delved too deep into the secrets it was supposed to be suppressing. The reigning heresiarch had proven to be a loud and annoying enough little pustule that Vos incinerated him and his cadre in a fit of pique, and was then surprised as a crop of radicals took their place and openly gifted him most of what he intended to steal, showing him the respect owed a liberator, not the sniveling obsequiousness displayed by cowardly slaves. Then a near-spent mining colony in Arkos Eta. And the twin systems of the decadent Tocknotous Syndicate. His own champions didn’t realize what he was doing at first. Why would he refuse to let Verrus, then the leader of an allied warband since incorporated by the Griffons, turn Arkos into a honeycomb of pestilence as a gift to Nurgle? Why not let his forces scour the Syndicate’s holdings in honor of the Pantheon instead of simply taking tribute here and there and only coming down on unruly local guildmasters? Balls of the gods, it took work. Yurgahn was not by nature a nostalgic soul, but even he sometimes ached for the fabled time of the Legions where one could just issue orders and know they would be carried out without having to resort to posturing, bribery and intimidation. He had not been alive then, but during the moments in which the plotting and scheming weighed heavy on him, it felt achingly tempting. Keeping his legionaries loyal with less than the endless level of casual butchery and raiding that seemed to be ideal had required an open hand and no small degree of luck. Spreading the spoils of conquest liberally to keep champions mollified, for one. Just four months ago, he had parted with a pristine combi-plasma captured from a Raven Guard sergeant who underestimated the force he was taking on. His own bolt pistol, despite being a masterful piece of weaponry, was showing its age, but in the end, he chose to reward the prize to Dhuur, the champion in charge of his Raptors. He told himself that it all paid in the end by having a warband that was well-supplied and geared, but in both engagements they had gone through since, he felt his teeth gritting in bitter frustration whenever he saw his bolts skidding off denser armor. And above all, foresight. Knowing to be at the right place and at the proper time. His forces had barely been two-platoons worth at first, ragtag veterans with a stolen frigate, but when the Blood God’s Scion ravaged across the Imperium with his maddened hordes in the Dominion of Fire, Yurgahn had gambled on skirting along the path of Angron’s rampage, far enough to not be caught by the gathering forces trying to halt his advance across sector after sector, but close enough to prey on damaged warships and supply convoys. By the end of it, he was the lord of over two score astartes, seven thousand mortal troopers and four ships, and his reputation as a canny leader who knew how to keep his troops alive and the enemy dead was established. Somehow, it was all worth it. He asked relatively little of those in his garden; watching it grow, and seeing what different ways they would choose to govern themselves and find their place in the galaxy was enough. For now. With a careful tug, he removed the velvet drape that covered the tripod by his cot. It was an ugly, oily scuplture of black iron, shaped like three serpents facing each other, holding a globe of green glass jointly in their mouths. The Eleidokos, it was called; a gift from his chief advisor Alephon, the sorcerer whose keen insights and predictions had made so much of his dream possible. Merely being close would be enough to activate it, but the warlord felt that experiencing it through the direct contact of skin on glass worked best, so he removes his left gauntlet and rested his bare hand atop it. The familiar fire danced at the edge of his vision, even though his eyes were closed. Then his senses rushed through the mad scream of the Warp for a billionth of a second that felt longer than all the millenia of his long life....but it was worth it. When he came to, he was looking out of a balcony to greet pale green skies, with the smoky but jagged shape of a massive orbital defense station appearing a fair bit larger than the sun. Apheria, then. The crown jewel of his his little collection. The Eleidokos let him ride the senses of random mortals across his domain, and even experience their emotions in a muted, echoing shadow. This time, it had brought him to a person of means; someone who was enjoying the day’s first meal watching the glimmering megalopolis below, suppressing an odd mix of amused annoyance at the chatter of infants somewhere further inside the residence with another long sip of some rich, strong kind of caffeine analogue. Such familial bonds were almost alien to his transhuman-conditioned mind, yet the residual pleasure attached to them felt all the more exotic for that. Apheria was also, of course, the only one of his worlds that he had almost burned. Once they realized that the ever-heavy hand on the Imperium was nowhere to be found, the initial blooming conflict gave way to a vibrant new system where the population was ranked according to a complex combination of their dates of birth, the position of the stars in the sky, and their own natural aptitudes into castes of builders, healers, soldiers and artisans, with the system’s psykers set as an arbiter class to mediate between them. He was thoroughly amused at first, until one of his subordinates told him that it was almost identical to the way a xenos empire in the galactic south was organized. The wave of sudden revulsion and betrayal had been the strongest emotion he had felt in centuries, and he actually had sent messages to his other ships to gather for assault. As soon as it passed, though, he found a grim humor in that little heresy-within-a-heresy, and decided to let matters lie. And to his surprise, it had grown into a greedily prosperous system-wide federation. He would have spent longer riding the mortal’s unaugmented perceptions, but this was a pleasure he rationed carefully so it would not lose its power. Once he had spent three full days living the life of a young card-reader and con-artist on Dalmii, growing almost obsessed with each pang of hunger, each adrenaline-filled altercation with local law enforcement, or relief of having scrabbled enough coin for a proper bed, before he tore himself back to his flesh. He was far more careful now. It was not time for indulgence. Instead of replacing his gauntlet, he summoned his arming servitors, who brought the gleaming, artful black lightning claw that was the source of the warband’s name. He could feel the pleased hum of his armor’s machine-spirit as the weapon connected, a wholeness restored. A mental pulse activated its power field for a brief moment, sending blue-purple lightning dancing over taloned fingers and bringing a harsh smile to the warlord’s pale features. Not the menial pleasures of hearth and kin. But not bad, not bad at all, he decided as the flaring power reflected over his polished-iron ceramite, adding shadowy contours to the engraved griffon on his shoulder guard, where the grim armored skull of the IV once stood. Another mental command sent summoning runes to his champions, calling for a gathering. If all was in place, now would be the time to make seven into eight, and then another full step of his designs would be within reach.
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Sep 19, 2015 17:37
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Interesting piece. The short response is that I like it, but I'll try to break it down a little and give you some more detailed feedback. I like the baroque and weird details. The music system made out of balls on tracks is a perfect "40K-ism" without resorting to putting skulls on everything. I think your word choices are mostly well chosen to stick to the mood; "to bleed their production out to the stars" is a clever phrase. ("Balls of the gods" doesn't fit as well, in my opinion, since the Chaos Gods aren't usually depicted as being human in form, and it also doesn't seem like something a Space Marine would say. There's also something about the "At first, it was hard to tell where it came from, until it became obvious" line - given the description of the ball and track system, it seems like something that would instantly grab the attention. Maybe replace that line with something like "It seemed to have no single source - which was precisely the point."). The concept of taking a psychic piggyback ride on someone else's senses is also a good one, I thought it worked well in Ravenor and it also works well here. The only thing that I have a real question about is what your intended scope of the story is. 100,000-word novel? A short story a quarter that size? The reason I ask is because you're putting a lot of exposition into your opening scene, which is a really easy thing to do and which I've done myself in some of my pieces, but if you're going for a longer story, you may want to spread this out, so that the audience isn't immediately exposed to exactly who Vos is and what his motivations are. This is kind of nebulous advice because I'm not any kind of professional writer myself, and I'm not actually good at spreading out revelations, hah. And if the story's going to be short, by all means, introduce the character and give the audience some details right away, so that then you can get to the politicking and action scenes with an understanding of who he is. There are some spelling and grammar issues here and there, but that's just proofreading, not actually a content issue. I think your story "feels" like 40K, for sure, and that's not as easy as it may seem. I definitely look forward to reading more.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:11
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Thanks a bunch for the feedback. I intend this to be a 4-part short story; I already have the conclusion very well set in mind. I know I went a bit overboard with the exposition, but I wanted to make clear why Vos is the way he is instead of being the maim-kill-burn sort of chaos lord; that he's somewhat OCD, craves recognition like most his former legion, and actually has enough of a vicarious bond with regular humanity to temper his ambition. Maybe some trimming is in order. As for the grammar, any specifics would really help. English is not my first language and it's been a while since I tried writing at length in it. At least writing is better than speaking; do you know how hard it is to say that drat 'th' sound you guys created? My american ex-fiance use to make me say 'thither' when she needed a laugh. With most of the exposition out of the way, the next parts should all deal with events. And I think I read 'balls of the gods' being used somewhere. Making up expletives and curses is always the hardest part in making fiction. It's so easy to end up with something too sci-fi pulpy like 'blork-headed nerf-herder' or something safe and childish like 'blast!", and both take you right out of the intended mood.
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Sep 20, 2015 16:59
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I don't think it's too much exposition per se, it's just putting all the exposition up front is probably not the best idea if it's meant as a novel. If it has four parts of roughly that size, I think making the first one heavy on exposition is fine, since you don't have a lot of time to lay it out bit by bit. When I have a little more time and am not posting from my phone I can go through and do a full proofread with corrections, no worries. As for swear words, yes, they're tricky. I think "names of the gods" would flow a little better, personally.
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Sep 20, 2015 20:07
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Stupid app, nm
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Sep 20, 2015 20:18
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'Balls of the gods' doesn't work for me coming from an Astartes, because they're pretty much asexual and it just doesn't strike me as something they'd place any emphasis on. Maybe a Space Wolf would use "balls of the Allfather!". I could see that. Others, though? Eh. Doesn't work for me.
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Sep 20, 2015 20:38
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How does a Space Marine Curse: A chapter-by-chapter breakdown, by Spergus Maximus. (Spoiler alert, I'd write it if I wasn't about to go back to work)
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Sep 20, 2015 20:57
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Khizan posted:Maybe a Space Wolf would use "balls of the Allfather!". I could see that. Others, though? Eh. Doesn't work for me.
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Sep 21, 2015 15:36
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Blood Angels says Balls of the Baal Father
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Sep 22, 2015 03:07
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Has like anything good come out recently
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Sep 22, 2015 22:31
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Not a great deal. Lot's of mediocre short stories and lots of re-issues. Their 40k output had dropped noticably in the past year or so. Ditto heresy stuff. The latest Heresy novel was Deathfire. which was anothe mediocre Nick Kyme book. If your still a physical copy guy, Stormcaller the second in Chris Wraights Space Wolf trilogy is coming out in paperback soon, that was good as was the first book. Or if you've more money than sense you could spend £40 on ADB's latest Novella. Ragnar Blackmane. Lots of new Age of Sigmar stuff out, about which I couldn't tell you, read the first novella and now have no interest in the rest.
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Sep 23, 2015 09:45
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Warmaster still not out yet. Has Sabbat Crusade seen wide release?
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Sep 23, 2015 13:35
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Deptfordx posted:Not a great deal. Lot's of mediocre short stories and lots of re-issues. Their 40k output had dropped noticably in the past year or so. Yeah, I've noticed this too - before AoS, the 40K release schedule was staggering, and now, nothing. Novels and stories form BL were coming out faster than could be read, now a trickle of AoS and not much else. I was trying to catch up on my BL reading at one point, but once AoS dropped, I have had zero interest in reading anything from BL, past or present. I don't even think I've downloaded a single book or story in that time.
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Sep 23, 2015 13:35
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Oh look http://www.blacklibrary.com/horus-heresy/wolf-king-le.html It's another £30 Novella. And it's Limited edition and you can buy it as an ebook. How the gently caress does that work.
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Sep 23, 2015 14:18
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Deptfordx posted:Oh look Applying the miniatures sales model to books is such a bizarre move. I wonder how the authors feel about their work being so inaccessible.
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Sep 23, 2015 15:03
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I just finished Talon of Horus last night. Holy gently caress was that a good book. It's not what I was expecting going in, but I was not disappointed in the slightest. I didn't mind Nefertari, and Abaddon not being the central character (or really even being in the first half of the book) didn't detract from it at all. It was also a much smaller scale story than I was thinking it would be, and I liked how personal it was as a result. The cast was pretty small compared to a lot of BL books. It also averted something I'm not a fan of in most Space Marine books - it didn't have a second story with a bunch of remembrancers or other humans. It just focused on the main characters and nobody else. I appreciated that focus, and it kept it feeling fast paced instead of jumping over to some love triangle between journalists or whatever.
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Sep 23, 2015 15:27
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Applying the miniatures sales model to books is such a bizarre move. I wonder how the authors feel about their work being so inaccessible. Depends on if they get money for sales, or if they just get a lump sum of money for each book.
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Sep 23, 2015 15:32
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Sandweed posted:Depends on if they get money for sales, or if they just get a lump sum of money for each book. I mean, there's more to being an author than getting paid. Presumably they also enjoy having people read their work.
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Sep 23, 2015 16:24
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Arcsquad12 posted:Has Sabbat Crusade seen wide release? Maybe? I picked it up in a GW store in Stockholm back in July. Still haven't finished it because I know I won't read anything else by BL until earlier/mid 2016 or whenever Warmaster comes out.
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Sep 23, 2015 17:12
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Sandweed posted:Depends on if they get money for sales, or if they just get a lump sum of money for each book. I have a feeling it's a flat fee. NB.I have nothing to base this on. I just think GW really does, or is now treating their books like a new figure. You're paid a flat fee to
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Sep 23, 2015 17:35
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SRM posted:I didn't mind Nefertari
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Sep 23, 2015 21:03
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So apparently Ben Counter, one of the worst of the Black Library stable, has a Patreon where he's having people fund him write some dark fantasy novel: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/664957.page https://www.patreon.com/BenCounter?ty=h He's responsible for the Soul Drinkers series, as well as a number of other not-very-good books.
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Sep 25, 2015 02:10
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SRM posted:So apparently Ben Counter, one of the worst of the Black Library stable... I thought Galaxy in Flames was pretty good.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:37
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Lovable Luciferian posted:I thought Galaxy in Flames was pretty good. Broken clock, twice a day, etc. I think with the first few Heresy books they were probably really working closely together to make it more of a prestigious series.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:55
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SRM posted:So apparently Ben Counter, one of the worst of the Black Library stable, has a Patreon where he's having people fund him write some dark fantasy novel: Hahaha gently caress that guy he is dreadful. I'm going to find the thing I wrote about his Battle for the Abyss because it bears re-iterating. Edit: I can't find the review I wrote of BftA but here, all you need to know of Ben Cunter's writing is that this is a line of words he scooped out of his arse. quote:"It [sic] cannot believe that the very ship carrying five companies of my battle-brothers and en-route to Calth was destroyed before reaching Vangelis in a random act of Xenos contrition." Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 21:57
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Not books but fluff related, I bought Spess Mahreen on the Steam Sale and while it's a fairly basic hacknslash, it absolutely nails the feel of 40K.
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Sep 26, 2015 01:37
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Arcsquad12 posted:Not books but fluff related, I bought Spess Mahreen on the Steam Sale and while it's a fairly basic hacknslash, it absolutely nails the feel of 40K.
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Sep 26, 2015 01:42
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| # ? May 24, 2024 03:25 |
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YOU GET AN ANGRY METER. It is the best thing most  thing ever.
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Sep 26, 2015 01:51
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