Xisor

As someone with a fondness for both Tzeentchian mortals, Tzeentchian non-Thousand Sons, Thousand Sons and very offshoot/non-Thousand Sons Thousand Sons (e.g. the Crystal Harbingers), I'm quite passionate about diversifying the range. Not diluting, per-se, but making it be a thing where there's incentive/reward/penalty for playing Thousand Sons versus Tzeentch-heavy Tzaangors versus off-piste Thousand Sons. Frankly, I think it was a mistake to have Ahriman and Magnus be described and gamed as having 'bonded' again. Maybe allow it to be technically feasible in rules terms (model sales!- no sense ruling out options wholly), but emphasise the army-wide special rules take a hit. You can't be fielding an entirely "Magnus did nothing wrong!" army if Ahriman's there, and it can't be a "Ahriman's ambition is the only thing that matters!" army if Magnus is about, you know? (Well, it can, moustache-twirlingly. But at least have conflicting keyword-benefits where you can only bond them by going very holy/Tzeentch's masterplan, or something.) ---- Anyway, the long and short of that is: 1- it's a no-brainer for sales to include possibilities like the Gaunt Summoner (DP-adjacent?) and even the Ogroid Thaumaturge. 2- you'd surely want some mortal magisters in there, with rules (strategems?) to reflect their sacrificial nature as pawns of the Astartes, but also where they can be their own force where Astartes are minimal. 3- In terms of new models, there was some disappointment that the much-mentioned 'Flux Cairn' of the Tzaangors never manifested as a terrain piece in AoS. I think GW would be missing a trick if they didn't blur some of the lines: a new Tzeentch model, but also allow a Noctlith Crown, and perhaps even 'hijacked' a Webway Gate to be chosen. (If nothing else, it's thematic and offers up further flexibility.) 4- More than anything: something new that's very specifically Thousand Sons-y, maybe a variant Astartes kit - Rubric-Revenants, partially re-animated Rubricae who've suffered immense metaphysical axiomatic damage - who's souldust's partly gone, who've been blasted by C'tan or meddled with by Ynnari or got on the wrong end of a D-Cannon - things that even the Rubricae wouldn't necessarily come out of 'intact'. 5- Sorcerous-leaning possesed - Possessed, Greater Possessed, Daemon-Engines, Hellbrutes and whatnot - have them plainly be psykers. Perhaps not fully-fledged psykers a la sorcerers, but even nominally being sorcerers gives them the authenticity of being 'real' Thousand Sons without being questonable in their proximity to Rubricae. (Like how would a non-Psyker Thousand Son come to be? If you implant Thousand Sons geneseed into a non-psychic aspirant, do they become subject to the Rubric, or do they too-quickly fall prey to the flesh change?) 6- I'd be kinda happy if they did a conversion sprue, to allow for Rubric+Sorcerer Havocs, Chaos Marines etc. It feels peculiar that they don't exist, but I can understand why they don't. (And yet, they could exist for GW but for the sale of an extra upgrade sprue...) Obviously wish-listing, but as many others have said: it's Tzeentch. There's huge realms of possibilities to reach out into. It's sad (in a manner of speaking) that it's actually quite a tight, uniform and orderly visual army for something that really shouldn't be. --- All of that again hinges on the detail: it'd be nice if there was an alluring angle that meant you could play not-quite Thousand Sons, without simply reverting to normal Chaos Astartes, or having it essentially be headcanon. Getting the 'variety' of available options in there would be good, but in terms of new releases an Upgrade Sprue would really help add new possibilities (Havocs, etc) without totally compromising the idea that you can freely, happily play 'pure' Thousand Sons as you'd wish to.

Pythation of Damnos? Edit: Ooooh, Praetorian of Dorn!!

There's something to this, but I don't think it works on a book by book basis, or perhaps a setting by setting basis. It only works if you have someone popping out of 40k to speak to someone in 30k. Otherwise you're implying that within those settings, everyone's monolingual. (Or whatever the equivalent is for accents.) In that respect, it's a grand failing of BL. (And of most SciFi I've read, to be fair. Very little of what I've actually read bothers to push any linguistic boundaries. Look at Arrival and compare that to Yesugei in A Thousand Sons. One's visionary and impressive. The other - up to that point in the series where everyone essentially spoke the same language without issue or comment - is a racist caricature of the howlingly offensive Ching Chong Chinaman variety.) One example I always go to is Captain Corelli's Mandolin (great novel, by the way) - which is set on a WW2-era Greek Island (Cephalonia, if memory serves). The cast's big and varied, but one of the characters (isolated on a mountain, and speaking mainly with a young local shepherd) is a British paratrooper. Being British of the old boys network, he was selected for this mission based on his expertise and familiarity with Greece & Greek via his education. His education which was in Ancient Greek. So to this perplexed shepherd, he's got some soldier with a radio halfway up a mountain yammering at him with "hark, forsooth wherefore art thy be" etc. Absolutely wonderful stuff. But BL don't touch it with a bargepole. It's just cod-Latin and maybe some startup-ified greek words. Or an outright fantasy language that is basically just English word-swapped. (Hell, even then there's few enough of those around.) It's a perennial problem that I'm not sure I've seen tackled well. Hell, even for Britain, only the 'guide to pronunciation' in White Dwarf several months back started to illustrate what they're missing. E.g., did you know the Nottingham (+Midlands) accents are fairly distinctive? That all the time they're Scots- or Brummie-ifying the scant phonetic pronunciations to make it sound more authentic, they could be doing any number of other tricks that are much more illustrative of stuff that even within the UK barely gets time of day? Look at a film like This Is England (or Trainspotting) and think that it would be trivially easy to riff on some of the things like that. Not to make Orks more Corkney, but to actually explore and invoke and adapt real life stuff. The authors likely have reams and depths of it to engage with, but it's all filtered through to a fairly neutral output. When was the last time a Space Marine was seen to be mithering? 'Cause they do it all the damn time. --- Back on the Necromancy wagon, after a fashion: Speaking of all of this, one of the few authors I recall who resolutely put some local flavour into their works was Bill King. Of the latest of his I read (the Macharius books, I really enjoyed them - decent 6+ or 7/10s for the first two, though I've still not read the last) there wasn't quite as much to go on (though the guardsman who was convinced he could be promoted to Space Marine was a gem of misunderstanding the likes of which we only recently started to see again in Chris Wraight's Terra books). But from his old WHFB Gotrek & Felix? The character Malakai Makaisson? I always thought he was rendered as 'daft scottish', but when I re-read some of them recently, it's pretty un-daft - in fact it's pretty much close to the only bit of written Scots that BL's produced (to my knowledge). And to think that for other aspects of the UK's languages and culture that are basically excised out - and for what? (Let alone persistent examples of other cultures feeding into the 41st Millennium and beyond!) (This is not a 'make Britain great' angle, but a 'why be shy about getting into the rich, vibrant weeds of nearby culture when we'll more fervently [and badly] Aztec-ify lizards?)

You should probably stay silent about that.

Five out of ten for a book that won you over? For my part, it's a solid 7/10 - I found Cadia Stands a really entertaining book. Interesting cast of characters exploring the unthinkable (yet also massively prepared for) happening. The predictable, unwinnable disaster actually happening. I thought it was fascinating, and brilliantly done. And though I really liked Hill's Creed shorts, I thought the novel was much better off for not cleaving closely to any of the Gathering Storm big plot. (Mainly because TGS wasn't very good; the decent parts mainly came in the form of 'cast of characters walk somewhere' sections. The rest? [such as the Phalanx bit] Unsatisfyingly poor.) Cadia Stands on the otherhand? An actual, credible and interesting story done well. Really enjoyed it, all told, and was impressed that a relatively new author to BL managed to really nail the feel of Cadia and the guard. As said, a very solid 7/10. Been quite keen to read more of Justin's for a while - Terminus: Overkill and Cadian Honour are well looked forward to, for me!

I'm happy with things like Khan and Jarl surviving, they're backfitted proxies more than literal things. At least in most cases. Gothic isn't literally pig Latin, but it's analogous to how Latin's been used down the years: a trade language, an invoked better days language, a spooky language for cod magic, an esoteric language for "real names" for things. But Fenris was particularly egregious, because its wholesale *everything*. Not a proxy analogous thing, but as if they've wholly tapped into or revived bits of old Norse culture and myth, Frankenstein style. It grinds in a way that Macragge's romanesque styles don't - mainly because Guilliman isn't Guilliman Caesar, and Macragge isn't Roma, etc. It's in the nose, maybe, but it's more visual aesthetic than Marneus Calgar running about being entrenched in every trope and stereotype of Rome going. --- Contrast that to Captain Japan in The Outcast Dead, and you're right back in Fenris. To keep on topic... --- The Outcast Dead: 2/10, self-plagiarised tripe marginally redeemed by a fun-ish cast of characters, mainly riffing on what worked well in Battle for the Abyss. Captain Japan is particularly egregious in my dislike.

For my tastes, many short stories are worth a lot more than many novels. Where it comes to my favourite authors, many of their sentences are worth a lot more than some novels. --- Again, I'm pretty certain there's an adage or truism or some other sort of relevant quip about this. My old fishwife is muttering something about covering judges in books, but that can't be right.

I don't believe the barbarism existed at that time, nor most of those features. He's the legion's free spirit and informality which defined it when the series began, and in fairness to Garro he was a resilient guy, which is about as far as the Death Guard's lore would have carried him as well. Both I'd say are more distinct than Raldoron, who I can't agree is obviously anything. I agree the problem is for Garro to have been the POV into his legion, Morty and sons should have had their own books. I just can't agree Loken is a cookie-cutter generic hero, because in Horus Rising he has an ambiguity to him that Garro does not. Garro is a parody of Loken, all the conviction with none of the doubts or missteps. As an aside on Raldoron - he could be so much, even just in the capacity of 'most boringly competent Marine in any Legion' - like he could be so archetypally un-Blood Angel-y that he loops right back round. There's huge plays one can do with that, without making him anything too specific or edgy or extreme too. He doesn't need to exemplify the Legion, but for goodness sake at least let him be wonderfully boring. But he isn't. He's a tedious non-entity. He's not like a nondescript sort of everyman a la Loken, Garro, and Tarvitz. He's not... not. A placeholder more than a character.

In Ahriman: Exodus there is a scene where Big Named Demon shows Ahriman/Ctesias a scene of a Demon Prince of Tzeentch, once a Thousand Son, battling a Demon Prince of Nurgle, once a Son of Horus (if I am remembering things correctly) - and we never find out who this is or who this will become. The fan-favourite theory I've seen is Helio Isidorus, which is particularly dark I do hope this is explored in any future Ahriman works, and based on a few titbits here and there it seems John French intends for Ahriman to try experimenting with Necron chronomancy (which is presumably a failure, before his quest for the Black Library begins) so more Ahriman works might be on the horizon! We "know", thanks to the "delights" of the Gather Storm books, that somebody has the very real ability to undo the rubric. Unfortunately we "learn" this in the cheapest, tackiest, jump scare I've read yet. (And this is a book series where Cadia splits open, Biel-tan falls apart and R. Guilliman doesn't bat an eyelid and being killed, resurrected, encased in armour and in cahoots with xenos and maverick machine priests to nip off and tour the Maelstrom and spar with his ol' pal, Magnus the Red. So the low point being what's used to kick down the Ahriman sandcastle is pretty low indeed.)

Of course, you're quite right. Tobias Maxilla, the lone human on an all-servitors crewed ship. That might be why my mind's displaced it to "maybe the guncutter was warp capable". :D (0.o, as we used to say.)

In terms of defining the Abnett-verse, a lot of it comes from the early distance from 'core lore'. Like in Xenos where the Marines - if I recall right - think of their Primarch as if they're still up and about, just over...there. The Eisenhorn books were chief-most tie-in novels to the Inquisitor game, but were not always looked on strongly by fans of the =][= game, because Eisenhorn is much more of a super-hero detective spy than the stylistic approach of the game. That's not the best description, I find it difficult to articulate, but if you look at the sort of grimy, messy impression (almost Blanchihtsu) that the =][= game had, gelling that alongside Abnett's more breezy style is tough. Eisenhorn travels through space on a ship the size of a jumbo-jet, or smaller. But Space Marines can't do that, the Ad Mech don't do that. Even Navigators seemed to travel on cathedral-space ships, not rickety junkers that any goon and his henchmen could (gun)cut about on. Where's the tech-priest? Where's the astropaths? The navigators? All the sort of essential touchstones weren't 'just out of sight', they were replaced with a detective institution made of... Pariahs. It feels absurdly pedantic to pick at these, in this day and age - especially given how superior (for my tastes) Abnett's writing, characters, story, scene-setting... the whole kit and kaboodle is over the of-the-day much-ballyhood Inquisition War trilogy. So it's not like Abnett's setting is bad, but when you're intrigued by the =][= setup and the people, it's difficult to sustain enthusiasm for it when someone's turned it all on its head and made it a bit thoroughly sci-fi with laser-swords and hover-cars and consequence-less magic powers of little relation to 40k's style of psychic powers and selling-souls and things. Put that alongside Colonel-Commissars who might as well have just been a Colonel, as he did flip-all Commissar-ing. Y'know. --- The Magos and Pariah were worth it, given this sort of foolish complaint I'd be on about. Even as far back as Titanicus I was starting to feel that Dan wasn't just writing awesome stories adjacent to 40k, but really diving into the heart of it and being an almost seamless, deep addition to the setting. And the likes of the Ravenor trilogy really starts to get away from the "problems", by making the Abnett-verse much more explored and mad and detailed, and really brushing past any discrepancies by just not looking at them very much. There's much fewer occurences of discrepancies, and when they're there, they're forgivable, or earnt, or so cool they feel like they were considered and chosen as deliberate transgressions. It's good stuff. --- By contrast, consider Peter Fehervari's work as an almost similar pocket universe. It's not quite so strongly discrepant, but it is so distinctive and strange and intricate and isolated from the wider world. (See also also Henry Zhou's pocket universe. Well, I say Zhou's - obviously there's that non-trivial, deeply dodgy detail of some of it not even being his contribution in the first place.) Most other authors tend to be a bit more connected and immersed in wider things - not necessarily between authors (as others have said: McNeill & Abnett have collaborated a lot [Titanicus/Mechanicum being the forerunner for Prospero Burns/A Thousand Sons - both authors - if I recall rightly - noted that the collaboration was invigorating and stimulating, and for my tastes between the two authors, I think it also led to some of their most distinctive and memorable works!]), but in a more sort of 'using known things', where Dan's much more keen to... Re-invent the wheel? It's usually used as a dismissive thing, but in such a thing as creative writing & fiction, I could have the wheel re-invented time and again, seeing how well done they can be. I guess it's just jarring when you want to read about a specific iteration of the wheel, and the author keeps introducing Colonel-Commissars and highly bureaucratic "City Hall are giving us hell, the Space Mayor'll have your badge and your gun!" Inquisitorial Conclaves... :D

I suppose - conceptually - the big question is what would work for them thematically? I guess something big is the attraction. We've seen with Warwalkers and Dreadknights and Hip-shooting Sneaky Dreadnought... all of that can work. I'm not sure I've got the vision for it, but if they can keep it agile and dynamic enough - maybe a little like one of those shapeless sculpting mannequins that can be put in cool dance positions? - then I could totally see it being awesome. Somewhere between Wraithguard and Riptides in that sort of 'poseability' look. Not static, but easily reposed? Harlequins who, with the unleashing of the Ynnari, think it's maybe absolutely the sort of time to let the Jokaero built them a... punchline? Who knows. Not 'wraith' though, not made of dead in the Ynnari-style. Gotta be somehow Cegorach-y. I could see that. Same with something maybe closer in style between the new Pteraxi, Swooping Hawks, Scourges and Hellions. Hell, even parody things, like 'impersonations' of iconic things from other factions could work. Like stylised "Gunners" parodying Ork Lootas, or 'Farce Suits' joking around with Crisis visuals. Again, my vision for it's not quite right, but I feel there's some room for some stuff in there. And because it's Harlequins, having something bigger makes them a bit more appealing to general modellers. Trying to paint diamonds on the damn players is a nightmare for hamfisted goons like me.

I'm sympathetic to Titandeath, perhaps more because of the slightly wobbly feel than in spite of it. Like the discrepancy between the two Legios, being quite on the nose presentations of masculinity and femininity in aggressively prosecuting war. But even that wobbliness and rough edged presentation felt at peace - like he was taking pains to emphasise that "yes, this is awkward because it's been almost Victorianly prudish until now" - I felt it was more like, I dunno, faltering first steps? Someone trying to walk after months in a coma? I'm happier seeing that sort of not-quite-perfect stuff tried and fall short, than never tried. And, given that it felt like it was emphasising "YES, THIS IS UNUSUAL AND THE NARRATIVE OF THIS SERIES IS NOT WELL TRODDEN FOR THIS PARTICULAR EFFORT TO FEEL NATURAL!", I was actually quite pleased with the results. Imagine if it hadn't been slightly rushed and awkwardly turned round. Given the situation, I enjoyed it. Imperfect, and with surprisingly big/obvious rough edges to it, but it felt a better, more thoughtful and engaging delivery of "complicated ideas done less well than they deserve" than other books in the latter day Heresy. The Buried Dagger, for example, being right next to it in the series. It had an almost unique opportunity to draw together threads that had been evoked and hardly explored. To my mind, the novel closest to Titandeath of the rest of the Heresy is... Battle for the Abyss. It's a sort of flipside. The first story that "didn't need to exist", and a story that was sort of bullied into existence. A story populated by various main characters, but with supporting cast and their not-entirely-relevant plot threads stealing the show. (And certainly it feels like: stealing the authors enthusiasm.) Memorable, novel war and void-war scenes out the wazoo, but where they end up being sort of resented in folk's memory rather than esteemed. Too much visuals, not enough character? JF somehow managed to get away with in the Solar War (and Dan also in Know No Fear), but perhaps they were more explicitly leaning into the disaster spectacle where Guy and Ben Counter held back a little too much, and gave too much over to exploring a few central characters... A sort of unhappy medium amount of compromise! A story where the memorable and enduring characters are essentially independent of the plot underpinning the novel's existence. It's one of those where Guy's endearingly mercenary and absurdly industrious work ethic just rules me up a tiny bit... Like I'd want to sit him down and shake him or buy him a pint or something daft: and he'd rightly think I'm a utter fool for it. But the story of the two legions, even with most of the novel basicly being the same, could have been expanded in places, and trimmed or polished or tightened up in other places... And been wonderful. No great or particular change, per se, just that maybe with more time, or more complimentary deadlines and external pressures that aren't just "meet this deadline". (Collaboration always seems to bring out good stuff in folk - McNeill's best stuff seems to be borne of his very close collaborations where he's trying to excitedly meet and work with other people's stuff: Mechanicum vs Titanicus, ATS/PB, Nouns of Mars vs a bit of everything (but it felt like more in the vein of Mechanicum and Titanicus). And in contrast, when left "unchallenged" to his own devices - say with Angel Exterminatis where freedom for him to tread new ground is very great indeed - it's not that he flounders, but just... Doesn't do as neat/satisfying a thing. Well, not for my tastes.) Anyway, that's also a problem that's plausible across all of the Adeptus Titanicus tie-in novels: Imperator, Warlord, Titandeath - they all seem a touch... Meandering? I'm not unhappy with it, myself - I like the opportunity to see where an author's mind goes on a topic with a loose brief, but it's a risky business. And sometimes that pays off really well. But at other times, and I think this is one of them, the wheels *slightly* come off. It might even have the problem of "Unremembered Empire", where a book has to tie up a lot of loose "fact" ends, but where the author doesn't necessarily feel that excited about the material details at hand. But it's been a wee while since I read it. And I agree with that feeling, I liked it, but every time I try to say something nice about it, I start caveating it with strange criticisms. (And the reverse. When I try to be critical, I get enthusiastic about other bits, like the simple but all too real idiocy Princeps chucking in with bloodletting daemon cults because it'll "stick a finger up to the elites/liberals/progressives back on Terra!".)

V. neat review AM Sanguinity. I'd quibble a few pieces, but not in a "you're wrong" sort of fashion. Rather, like the prose (inoffensively bland - I can see what you mean!), I found Darius' writing here to be a lot more evocative and intriguing than many writers. Not visually (though there was that!), but sort of conceptually intriguing. Maybe that tight "blandness" that you see is what I found much more compelling. Disciplined, perhaps? Especially given how the novel seems to be very explicitly spending a lot of time exploring very great flights of fancy. Similarly, those flights of fancy were, I think, earnt by the necessarily tame take on characters. (Doubly so because it's a loyalist Marine book: by their nature, they can't really develop as characters. [i find that agreeable, but a necessary risk/cost to a "good Marine book", myself, and one that for me was a worthy cost - but obviously mileage will vary!]). But otherwise, I think you captured it neatly. It's a book doing something a lot different than "tell a characterful story in a pacy, crowd-pleasingly emotional way" - so I suppose I don't even forgive it it's sins, so much as I don't view them as sins? But that's no bad thing either. For one last thing, I'm especially pleased that Darius didn't go to Mephiston for the protagonist. Even (especially!) in stories likes this, I massively appreciate a less special, more sidelined character watching inexplicable, ridiculous events unfold. Not completely agency-less, but it makes it more a disaster story, or almost like travel writing? That said, for the dramatic investment of most readers, that definitely has a very serious cost.

Honestly, I think Psychic Awakening *is* pretty big, it's just that the phase is still rolling out right now, and the ripple effects aren't apparent yet. Magnus doing big shenanigans? Psykers awakening en masse? Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka's reappearance in style? Getting a new glimpse at the Tau Empire post-assassination of Aun'Va, with all that entails? Mephiston's revelations and further empowerment? The Hive Mind being actually spiteful towards Dante and the Blood Angels? A lot of things are being set in motion and re-activated from narrative hibernation. At this rate, they'll have another surprise or two coming before the Psychic Awakening phase gives way to the new campaign. I quite like the concept of the Hive Mind being spiteful, all told. How would you know? It's like being victimised by the weather! (As in, it's so big. Short of "Sorry for the inconvenience" being on 500ft flaming letters on the side of a cliff, inscribed by several dozen carnifex..., how would you know!?)