A D-B

I asked them to try and get Jameela Jamil for it. That'd be perfection.

June, I think.

No wrong answer, though it's unlikely he'd be a Paragon, as they're outside the Warhost hierarchy. Though, even then, it's possible if it's a Chapter banner rather than the specific Warhost banner. More commonly: A Veteran Sergeant that outlived his squad or a Sergeant that was sideways-promoted out of his squad to this new duty? Cool. A Captain that stepped down from his officer role in favour of another commander? Totally. A battle-brother that displayed great courage or ingenuity in a campaign and was granted the honour of the Warhost's banner? Absolutely. Every Warhost likely does it their own way, so don't feel too constrained. The Exilarchy (and specifically the Pure) collects Adeptus Vaelarii war banners though, so it's one of the most dangerous jobs in Elara's Veil.

Exactree. It's not that there's nothing to say. There's something to say in any era of 40K. It's just that there's not this great, grand The Scouring Series' worth of material that some people might believe. A great trilogy! Probably a boring, thin series - where many of the good bits are retreads of themes that apply universally throughout other eras anyway, like Rohr says.

I'm sure it'll happen (I'm less sure I'll be involved) but it's definitely not officially confirmed. Even around the HH table we talk about "If we do the Scouring..." and it's not a universal "YES" among the team. The Scouring wasn't a war; it was most of the Traitor Legions running away and the Imperium mopping up the rebellious worlds increasingly deprived of their Traitor overlords. There's stuff there, but there's way less than some people seem to suggest. The Iron Cage is amazing... but it's one book. Same with the Codex Astartes crisis. Great! But... not a series. I think there are some great stories in the Scouring. I also think several of them have already been told, and there aren't enough to justify a long series or a setting. A great trilogy, sure. Much more than that, and I'd be less interested in reading it.

You know what I find interesting is that, aside from ADB's posts earlier in this thread, I would have said he and Goulding were among the top candidates to introduce a twist. The difference with them and other writers is when they write something that spins people up, both of them then take to the internet to tell people they are just interpreting what they wrote incorrectly. Goulding tends to be far more confrontational about it. Partly it's the Streisand Effect: I draw attention to it a lot by explaining things. Partly it's that some people mistake something new for a retcon. Partly it's a difference in understanding of the lore. I change very little. If it's in an ancient Index Astartes article, then it's probably going to stay the same in my books. One of the things I get accused of most is the Emperor teleporting Angron away from his final battle, which makes the Emperor come across like a jerk and whatever else. But that had nothing to do with me; it's always been the lore that it happened that way, so I just... had it happen that way. And a significant number of times I see myself accused of changing stuff comes down to someone else later in a thread saying "Um, that's old lore... nothing to do with ADB." If you take my three Horus Heresy novels, and three by Dan or Graham or Jim, I'm willing to wager you'll find significantly fewer changes to old lore in my stuff. Sanguinius's vengeance against Ka'bandha (the culmination of his Legion's arc in the Horus Heresy) now happens years before the Siege of Terra, at the end of Fear to Tread. Fulgrim's corruption and course before, during, and after the Dropsite Massacre is miles different from the way it was described in older lore (whereas, say, Angron's wasn't really described at all). And Legion? Prospero Burns? Nothing in Betrayer or The First Heretic changes classic lore like those novels do. Even TMoM changes practically nothing about the established facts of the Webway War. I give it some locations and add a demon, but there's no contradictions between The Master of Mankind and any classic lore. It's almost a beat for beat retelling of the limited published material. My conservatism with the established lore isn't necessarily a good thing, of course; some of the coolest stuff has been a twist or two that the other guys have injected. We talk about this, sometimes. Not just the authors, but the Studio people I know, too. The answer is universally "Nope." The "pressure" in the so-called culture war is practically entirely on one side. I get zero demands to include X, Y, or Z for the sake of inclusion. I feel no pressure at all to include A, B, or C. No one I've spoken to has ever felt like they're under pressure to include X or had a demand to feature Y. On the flip side of the coin, some of us get fairly frequent messages brimming with rage about "Don't include X" and "Please don't pander to Y." Even if X or Y would be in the setting, even if it's perfectly valid they'd be there and would be weird if they weren't -- it's this side that insists they know best and that everything must be a certain way. It's also this side that famously takes our quotes massively out of context for monetised YouTube videos that rile people up with scaremongering (for profit, of course...) and this side that insists creators are under endless pressure from the previous side. But nope. We're not. The pressure and tension comes entirely from one side, and it's not the one you're referring to.

I'd venture a safe-ish prediction that there'll be relatively little revelation jazz overall.

Heh, you'll get no such confirmation from me, mister. I'm too careful with my phrasing, so don't look for any insight into authors/assignments, there.

I've said, like, a squillion times: 'Play the hits. Now's not the time for "ACTUALLY..." ' I'm only 1/8 of the team, but there will be almost no "ACTUALLY..." in my contribution. There's very little of it in any of my work in general -- compare my HH stuff to most of the others, and you can see there are relatively few 'revelations' or changes to old lore -- but I've said in several Siege meetings that now's the time to play the hits as well as we can. I would vault the table and physically attack someone if they said that in a meeting.

I knew it was on the boards SOMEWHERE. I just couldn't find it in this thread Okay, so transverse crests are the ones like on the Mark IV and Mark III marines, longitudinal are the ones like the Primaris Captain, Sternguard Sergeant and Centurion Sergeant. That's helpful. Some of that stuff is from my notes and either never made it into the novel or changed over time, but the crests are still dead on. Colours for them are still dead on as well? 'cause I just got merself one of those Primaris to test paint jobs on. Yep! EDIT: Mostly.

I knew it was on the boards SOMEWHERE. I just couldn't find it in this thread Okay, so transverse crests are the ones like on the Mark IV and Mark III marines, longitudinal are the ones like the Primaris Captain, Sternguard Sergeant and Centurion Sergeant. That's helpful. Some of that stuff is from my notes and either never made it into the novel or changed over time, but the crests are still dead on.

Nope. I read out loud every night for the most obvious of reasons (I have two smaller versions of me in the house) and I have a weird thing where it makes me yawn a lot. I was so weirded out by it that I Googled it, and it's actually a thing. Who knew? I've yawned twice just typing this. That's how weird/bad it is. Anyway, yawning isn't cool. So I'll leave it to Dan.

Which is a shame, as it's moronic.

Pretty sure he's already started the sequel to Spear of the Emperor, with BL3 (probably) following afterwards Spear II, Black Legion III, and... ..then probably that.

They were described as such repeatedly at the Weekender; Aaron gave that reason for his being on the Ultramarines panel. Also, Yep. They're a lesson/reminder of the scale of the setting. 60% of Space Marine Chapters are from Ultramarines gene-stock. That doesn't mean 60% of Chapters are just Ultramarines-lite, or even similar to the Ultramarines. I've never liked it when Chapters are shaped purely by their genetic code, or that being their defining trait. Homeworld, culture, and actual experience over the course of centuries/millennia have a far, far greater role. EDIT: See also - the Celestial Lions, Executioners, and Black Templars. They're not just Imperial Fists. I get the feeling you're the only writer I've seen who does that. Because all I've seen of Ultramarines successors, barring the Mortifactors or Iron Snakes are "Ultramarines, but a different colour". Same with the Imperial Fists (barring the three you've mentioned) and Dark Angels Good to know you've tried to change that with your writing. Haley's Novamarines and his BA successors to a degree, pretty much anyone who writes Flesh Tearers stuff, Kearney's Dark Hunters was pretty apart from WS with a different flavor. Unfortunately DA successors on the rare occasion they do appear get pigeon-holed into being super similar to DA, but I think the problem is a lot less that successors are the same as their parent chapters, rather that we really just don't see a lot of Successor fiction. It's good to see something like Spear of the Emperor coming out to kind of provide alternatives to the Big Few, as it were. There's probably some kind of sales/marketing justification for the majority of works being about First Founding Chapters, but whatever. That's a very good point. Visibility, not a setting-wide statement. And there's safety in the lore, too. Plenty of Successor Chapters are very similar to their parent Chapters, like the Genesis Chapter or plenty of the Blood Angels and Dark Angels' Successors, f'rex. "My" Chapter, the Angels Numinous, are more or less the Blood Angels with their serial numbers filed off, and slightly meaner. So I do it as much as anyone, and it's totally valid. But yeah, it's definitely a marketing deal, at times. And not necessarily in a money/mercenary way, but in the sense that a lot of the time, the books promote the lore people like and are familiar with, because they're the audience. That's what they expect and want, and are familiar with from years of the lore. Anyway, I'm going back to being too scared to read any opinions of the novel for another, say, 5-6 weeks. The book release ritual demands nothing less.