The Hall Monitor is published every other week, the same day as the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame drops on Tabletop Battles. A cross between a director’s cut and a backstage pass, it’s a look behind the scenes at the Hall of Fame project.

Somewhere around 2011 or 2012, Games Workshop appears to have made the painful and difficult decision to kill off Warhammer Fantasy Battles1. The fans wouldn’t know this for a few years yet, but the property was a dead man walking.

When looking to understand why GW would kill off a storied property that had enjoyed three decades of lore, story, and development, there are three major factors to consider.

The Financial

By the time you saw the game’s 8th Edition in 2010, its most prosperous days were well behind it. It’s often cited that a Space Marine Tactical Squad box by itself was outselling the entire Warhammer Fantasy Battles product range, and whether that’s true or not it certainly hits at a financial reality for the game: it just wasn’t making money.

There’s a number of reasons for this- as with any property consumer interest comes and consumer interest goes depending on all sorts of factors both internal and external. But it didn’t help that the barrier to entry for the game was quite high. Building a playable army required a substantial investment, while your most mature consumer base- who already had their preferred armies bought- weren’t incentivized to continue their purchasing2.

Games that don’t make money do not stay games forever.

The Legal

In 2010, Games Workshop sued a Texas-based company called Chapterhouse Studios over copyright and trademark infringement. Chapterhouse had existed on the margins of Warhammer; it wasn’t so much creating counterfeit miniatures as selling miniatures accessories (heads, shoulder pads, weapons, etc.) for players to customize their Warhammer models.

Chapterhouse fought back, using the defense that they were in the aftermarket business selling non-infringing accessories that were simply “compatible with” Warhammer figures. After a bruising three-year trial, the jury ruled in favor of Games Workshop- but only just. Damages were reduced down to $25,000, and GW left to learn some painful hard truths about their market position.

For one thing, the entire affair revealed just how exposed their IP was. Orcs, Elves, Space Marines, Imperial Guard… far too many of Warhammer’s core factions were based upon concepts that were firmly in the public domain, and therefore could not be trademarked. Now Orruks, Aeldari, Drukhari, Adeptus Astartes, or Astra Militarum… now those are substantially more enforceable.

Given how much of Warhammer Fantasy’s IP was based on a blend standard, Tolkien-esque tropes and Renaissance Europe, however, the writing was almost certainly on the wall. What looked rich and deep to us fans on the inside looked generic and unprotectable in a court of law.

The Narrative

Warhammer Fantasy- based as it was on European history with a seasoning of fantasy- did not have a lot of narrative agility. By having everything tightly locked on a map you had to do a lot of lorework if you wanted to introduce, say, a new faction, or shake things up politically. Sure 40K had a “map” of the galaxy, but its immense size meant that you could stage just about anything anywhere and not bump into anything around it.

The flexibility of settings like AD&D’s Planescape (released in 1994) was surely not lost on Games Workshop, with the “planar model” meaning things could be added and subtracted almost at will with minimal disruption to the rest of the setting.

Ripping the Bandaid Off

The transition from Warhammer Fantasy to the Age of Sigmar presented Games Workshop with a problem- but also an opportunity. The problem they keenly wanted to avoid was having too long a lead time between the demise of one franchise and the birth of its replacement. After all, gamers tend not to sit still, and if the market was allowed to move on from WFB while Games Workshop worked on its replacement, they’d find no small portion of the market no longer there when Age of Sigmar launched.

This required a fair bit of behind-the-scenes coordination, with development of the Age of Sigmar property going full tilt behind the scenes while Warhammer Fantasy began its sunset. Narratively, this found its fruition in The End Times, a story-based detonation of the entire property woven through both the tabletop as well as the fiction of the Black Library.

I was never into Warhammer Fantasy; my introduction to 40K came at around this time so I was busy with Eisenhorn, Cain, and Gaunt while the likes of Karl Franz, Thorgrim Grudgebearer, and Vlad von Carstein faded into history. But as I’ve been walking through the hallways of that history thanks to the Black Library Readers Hall of Fame project, it’s been difficult to escape a sense of the maudlin while through its echoes.

This world- these characters- were beloved once.

The End Times was a commercial success for the Black Library, though hardly one without a great deal of controversy and upheaval- not least due to its feeling very compressed and arbitrary. With pallets of Age of Sigmar plastic waiting in the wings, the clock was ticking to wind one world down so that another might be born.

It’s been heartening to see that denouement being well-recognized in the Hall as well. There were more fantasy titles inducted this week than any other property, which might well be a first for the Hall. It may be going out, but it’s not going out with a whimper.

Exactly how it should be.

The Vox Populi Top Twenties

So here are the updated Top Twenties for both halves of the Black Library, but first a look at the updated Leaderboard:

Hall Winners Leaderboard

Exciting news for Rob Sanders, of course, as he gets his name amongst what remains very select company indeed. A second for John French and Josh Reynolds, Chris Wraight jumps up a bit, while Aaron Dembski-Bowden draws level with Graham McNeill towards the top of the table.

What’s particularly notable here is that Wraight landed two Hall of Fame books in 2014. Bartender, I’ll have what he’s having, please…

Fantasy

30K/40K

Not a lot of movement in the Top Twenties, but this far along in the project that’s probably to be expected. I think the days of extraordinary unity as seen with books like Horus Rising and For the Emperor are likely behind us, but it’s fun guessing which books have the best shot at landing here in the upper 70’s and 80’s.

That’s all for this time, thanks for reading!

With much of my contemporary reading in service to writing reviews, audiobooks are my chance to “play catch-up” on the older catalogue of Black Library books. What you will find in this occasional feature is neither a full, formal book review nor a simple blurb, but rather something comfortably in between: impressions.

The first-ever Class considered for induction into the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame represented the earliest efforts by Games Workshop to expand their properties into the realm of fiction. There was no Black Library then, not as we know it today- that wouldn’t come into being until 1997. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t foundational works being produced, and today we’ll be looking at one of the first three books ever to be inducted into the Hall: Drachenfels, by Kim Newman (writing as Jack Yeovil).

It was inducted as part of the Class of 1989-98, alongside two legendary books by Ian Watson (Inquisitor and Space Marine). Warhammer fiction then was something of a Wild West, given the relative infancy of the properties and the lack of established lore (Warhammer Fantasy Battles debuted in 1983, Rogue Trader- what we now know as Warhammer 40,000- followed four years later). To get its literary arm off the ground, Games Workshop turned to established genre writers to work their magic inside their new sandboxes.

I’ve written before about Ian Watson’s somewhat gonzo legacy as part of my 40K History of the Black Library series (originally on Tabletop Battles, now continuing here on the Wordforge). But I’d long been curious about how the Fantasy side of that era held up. To my delight, I found that there was an audio edition of Drachenfels (and indeed, a four-book Collection!), so in I went!

The Story

I went into Drachenfels completely cold, with no knowledge of the story, the character, or really much of anything in the Fantasy1 canon. And at first, it unfolded like a standard fantasy novel: a group of heroes. A forbidding and sinister castle. An ancient evil. One by one the heroes succumb to the many traps and perils, bravely battling ever onward towards the inevitable, triumphant confrontation in the heart of the castle.

And then, everything changes.

Drachenfels, you see, isn’t about the story of the heroes vanquishing Constant Drachenfels. It’s the story about the story of the heroes vanquishing Constant Drachenfels. It’s now two decades later, and the hero who struck the fatal blow against the sorcerer, Oswald von Königswald, wants to commission a great play commemorating the anniversary of the event. He retains one of the great playwrights of the era, Detlef Sierck2, and flings his coffers wide for a no-expense-spared production that will be staged in the original Castle Drachenfels.

Sierck brings together the remaining, surviving heroes of the original event, a small group which includes the vampire Geneviève Dieudonné3. He begins work on the play and production immediately, diving in to what he intends to be his magnum opus. The sets are build and actors auditioned, but as the play moves towards its opening night, strange misfortunes begin to plague the production.

And then the murders begin.

von Königswald, Sierck, and Geneviève must uncover what sinister forces seem to be trying to derail their production, while bravely trying to keep the whole thing from derailing and ruining Sierck’s reputation. When the curtains go up on opening night, will there even be an audience? Or even a production?

The Author

Drachenfels was the perfect debut novel for Newman, combining two of his great loves: horror and theatre. Mainly active in the Black Library between 1989 and 19934, he’s had a much more substantial body of work outside of it in both fiction and non-fiction.

The same year Drachenfels released, Newman won the first of his two Bram Stoker Awards, co-writing Horror: 100 Best Books with Stephen Jones. He’s also been awarded a BSFA Award (for Short Fiction, in 1990) and in 1994 his novel Anno Dracula earned him an International Horror Guild Award5.

His latest novel, this year’s Model, Actress, Whatever6 is a satirical blend of superhero and alternative reality elements (where the Beatles never broke up), and he’s also an established film critic and posts something vampire-related every day on social media.

The Voice

Drachenfels is narrated by Antonia Beamish, who has also provided narration for a number of other Warhammer stories including Lelith Hesperax: Queen of Knives by Mike Brooks and Chris Thursten’s Abraxia: Spear of the Everchosen. In addition to a small number of short film credits7, she provided voice talent for Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin II.

When assessing the voice production for an audiobook, I typically look at two things in particular. First, how is their general narration voice overall? Is the book enjoyable to listen to? Then second, how is their range of characters? Are they able to give each their own, distinctive voice so that they stand out in contrast to one another?

In both, I found Beamish’s work here to be excellent. The story was a very easy listen, and her range was terrific. Beamish reminded me of Jonathan Keeble in her willingness to employ not just tonal shifts in her voice, but the adoption of different accents to distinguish her characters. Tonal shifts when the narrator is crossing genders can be a bit fraught, but again as with Keeble I found Beamish’s masculine voices worked.

If there was one questionable choice, it was her adoption of a French accent for Detlef Sierck. Sierck, from Nuln, would likely not have sounded like a Bretonnian; that accent would more rightly have gone to Geneviève (which it did not). But this is the kind of background information that any narrator would probably be unaware of in the absence of a “lore primer” from Games Workshop, so it’s no mark against Beamish.

Similarly, I chuckled for a moment when she mispronounced the “lead” in lead soldier, giving it a long -e sound (as in “leader”) rather than the short one (as in the metal). We can’t expect everyone to have a gaming background, right?

My Impressions

I enjoyed this book far more than I expected to. Newman’s focus on a theatrical production was delightful, an unusual setting that his background was able to inform and flesh out with terrific detail. I wouldn’t have minded a more generic fantasy tale, but I give Newman a ton of credit for taking the unexpected route for his first Warhammer novel and delivering something truly special.

Beyond just the story itself, Newman’s writing was delightful. His Geneviève is the kind of lush, sensual creature you’d find in an Anne Rice story, but rather than making her some decadent aristocrat she’s very much a creature of the world she inhabits. Her longevity doesn’t imbue her with listless stagnation; rather, Newman’s Geneviève is a barmaid when we first encounter her, and has lived all sorts of lives in her time.

His characterization for the others is similarly terrific. We first find playwright Sierck in a debtor’s prison, for instance, with Newman using the amount each of Sierck’s cellmates’ debt to introduce them into the narrative. “Money was like the fabled warpstone,” Sierck later notes, “the more contact you had with the stuff, the less like a human being you became.”

Finally, Newman’s pacing keeps the story moving forward laden with suspense. Having recently enjoyed Dan Abnett’s Hive (reviewed here), I enjoyed how Newman too took an approach that avoids driving to the heart of the story. Instead it takes its time, circling around the edges while moving ever more closely inward.

Drachenfels is a story to be savored. And this audiobook is the perfect vessel for doing so.

Bits n’ Pieces (Possible Spoilers)

• In most heroic fantasy stories, the heroes storm the castle, win the day, and live more or less happily ever after. Not here. I loved how the initial foray into the Castle Drachefels that opens the tale leaves an indelible trauma on each of those that survived it. They emerge from the ordeal not triumphant, but forever damaged. Somehow, that feels a lot more true to life. After all, you’ve just watched your friends and companions getting horrifically killed. Who’s popping champagne? And by advancing the tale two decades after the event, Newman has plenty of space to work with to illustrate the lingering trauma that never fully goes away.

• Towards that end, there’s a fascinating kind of resonance that Newman skillfully weaves into the story when the heroes return, two decades later, to help stage the play. Seeing those places for the first time in two decades, imagine how that would feel. There’s a terrific scene where one of the old heroes is half-drunk carousing with a woman, suddenly realizing that he’s in the very corridor where he and the party had been savagely attacked by living gargoyles twenty years ago.

• While billed as a Vampire Geneviève novel, there was surprisingly less of her than I’d have expected. She’s present, she’s important, but as with any good theatre production it’s the cast that shines.

• Finally, a quote where this story’s love of the theatre shined through… One of the original party (Rudi) is regaling the play’s cast and crew with stories of his adventuring days over a pot of gin:

I came to Drachenfels expecting something relatively by-the-numbers, and instead left with one of the best Warhammer fantasy stories I’ve read. Looking forward to the next installment, Geneviève Undead!

With much of my contemporary reading in service to writing reviews, audiobooks are my chance to “play catch-up” on the older catalogue of Black Library books. What you will find in this occasional feature is neither a full, formal book review nor a simple blurb, but rather something comfortably in between: impressions.

With my road trips to Houston becoming more of a regular thing, it’s been a great time to make good progress on the Horus Heresy. Originally released in May 2011, Age of Darkness is both the sixteenth book in the mainline Heresy series as well as its second anthology.

The volume contains nine short stories from some of the Black Library’s biggest hitters, and indeed six of them have been enshrined within the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame. For the audio talent, we get readings from Gareth Armstrong and Jonathan Keeble- both of whom we’ve profiled before in this series- but also one narrator that we haven’t.

Until now.

A New Voice

Banks’s background, like many of his peers, shows early theater and small-screen production credits (including Coronation Street and Footballers’ Wives) eventually giving way to finding a real stride in voice acting. Listed in nearly a hundred episodes of various Doctor Who podcast dramas, he’s also played Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes series by Big Finish Productions.

His body of work for the Black Library is similarly extensive. He’s been the primary narrator for the Dark Imperium and Dawn of Fire series, the Watchers of the Throne Series, and plenty more. I find his range to be comparable to Gareth’s Armstrong, in that he has a strong reading voice and can carry a small number of characters, but struggles a bit in differentiation for stories with a larger cast.

That said, there are some voice actors that have fully claimed particular characters for me, such as Jonathan Keeble’s Gotrek or Stephen Perring's Commissar Cain. To this august company I must add Banks, whose Roboute Guilliman exemplifies the sound of this most analytical warrior and statesman.

It’s worth noting, too, that Banks isn’t just a professional putting in a shift. It’s always gratifying to learn that the creative talents bringing Warhammer to life are themselves fans, and as he shared in a Doctor Who podcast he’s a great fan of the lore and enjoys playing the game (though he admits to being challenged at assembly and painting).

To anyone who’s ever thought, “they’re just reading a book, how hard could that be?”, here’s what Banks has said before on what his workday can look like.

“Seventy different voices” certainly gives one pause for thought, let alone having to speak for seven hours a day, every day. For all that effort, though, we get some truly enjoyable stories- including three of the ones we’re looking at today.

The Stories

Rules of Engagement, by Graham McNeill

Narrated well by Gareth Armstrong, this was an excellent opener to the anthology. One of the things I appreciate about McNeill is that he’s interested in some of the more esoteric elements of the Warhammer universe. We’ve seen this with A Thousand Sons and the legion’s mysticism, his diving into the Cult Mechanicus with Mechanicum, and now here in Rules of Engagement we get a story about… the Codex Astartes.

Trust me, it’s way more exciting than that probably sounds. Guilliman has completed what is destined to become one of the Imperium’s most influential works, and now it must be put to the test. Outstanding.

Liar’s Due, by James Swallow

When Orson Welles broadcast the War of the Worlds radio drama back in 1938, it famously caused a national panic. Much of the story of a Martian invasion of Earth was presented in news-broadcast format, and listeners who didn’t catch the disclaimer at the start of the show might be forgiven for thinking something momentous and terrible was happening.

It seems a bit silly in hindsight, of course, but in fairness it was already a time of popular instability. The Great Depression, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Hindenburg disaster, tensions in Europe… the pot was already simmering a bit. James Swallow channels this event through the Warhammer lens, telling a story of a series of news broadcasts heard by an isolated mining colony reporting that Horus Lupercal has accepted the surrender of the Emperor. I’ll give you twenty guesses at who might be behind it such a thing, but I suspect you’ll need no more than one.

Jonathan Keeble is terrific here, as ever, and this one’s another terrific tale.

Forgotten Sons, by Nick Kyme

Not every Warhammer story needs to be profound- indeed, most aren’t, though a surprising amount have their moments. If there’s one kind I have high expectations for it’s those that trade in their bolters and power swords for the cut and thrust of spirited debate.

When I reviewed David Annandale’s recent Word Bearers tale, Apostle, I was impressed that the author took a genuine attempt at serious religious conversion.

Sure it didn’t land as well as I’d hoped, with the conversions feeling far too easy than they should have- but I could credit the effort. The same here with Nick Kyme’s tale of a planet having to decide between siding with Horus or remaining loyal to the Imperium. Ultramarine Arcadese and Salamander Heka’tan have been tasked with acting as representatives for the Imperium, facing off against an iterator (orator) from the forces of the Warmaster to debate and persuade the planetary council to declare fealty to one side or the other.

It’s an interesting concept, and in fairness Kyme doesn’t make any pretense as to the speaking skills of the Astartes, but there was a great opportunity here for some stirring prose from both sides and it never really came together. The ‘arguments’ from both were fairly pedestrian affairs, of interest only because they did a good job referencing events of previous books in the series such as the destruction of Monarchia (The First Heretic, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden) and the assassination attempt on the Warmaster at Dagonet (James Swallow’s Nemesis). A shame.

Nor did much else really work for me on this one. Both of the story’s ultimate villains were a bit too moustache-twirly, though this one makes good question material for a Warhammer Pub Quiz due to the presence of a rare, shapeshifting xeno known as a Lacrymole. That’s one thing I love about the Horus Heresy setting is that it can feel like Star Wars with the wider variety of xeno species present in the universe (at least, before the genocidal Great Crusade snuffs many of them out.)

John Banks read this one, and was in his element with the smaller cast and wide range of tones (from oration to combat).

The Last Remembrancer, by John French

Interrogation stories make for good drama, which John French plays for maximum effect here in the story of a remembrancer found inside a Heretic Astartes ship, drifting into the edge of the Sol system. Rogal Dorn assumes responsibility for the interrogation personally, and must come to understand for what purpose the Warmaster sent him.

With a cast of three, this kind of drama is a perfect fit for Gareth Armstrong, and this one is like what NPR has referred to as “driveway moments,” news stories that when you’re listening in your car and pull into the house, you sit and listen to the rest of it because you’re so riveted.

Rebirth, by Chris Wraight

It’s difficult to discuss this one without giving away the story’s great reveal, so if you’d like to preserve the mystery I’d invite you to scroll down to the next one.

Chris Wraight plays with expectation here in another interrogation story, this one involving a member of the Thousand Sons captured while nosing about the ruins of Tizca searching for signs of Magnus, his Primarch. The reader sits alongside Kalliston through the story, with the identity of the interrogator concealed from both.

Wraight’s misdirection in the story is that you’re led to believe he’s been captured by Space Wolves, but in the story’s reveal you discover instead that it’s Khârn of the World Eaters, himself on a secretive mission in the ruins of the Thousand Sons homeworld. The writing is masterfully done, the reveal pulled off expertly, but I didn’t think that John Banks was the ideal fit for this one. He doesn’t have quite the “wet leopard growl” sound of the Space Wolves (or, for that matter, what I’d expect from the World Eaters).

The Face of Treachery, by Gav Thorpe

Nicelty performed by Johnathan Keeble, this one was really interesting. While many of the Horus Heresy stories stand entirely on their own, some of them carry a significance that’s not always obvious on first reading. This one is a perfect example (some spoilers ahead).

On the face of it, it’s the story of how Corvus Corax was rescued from the surface of Isstvan V following the Dropsite Massacre. That’s already highly consequential to the future of the Heresy, but it gets better. As the World Eater ship closes in to intercept the Raven Guard rescue vehicle, they’re thwarted at the last moment by a sleeper agent from the Alpha Legion.

Now, if you’re going in book order through the Heresy, you know from Legion that there’s a certain ambiguity of allegiance with Alpharius’s lot, and this is played here as the Alpha Legion putting their thumb on the scales to ‘preserve the balance’ of the conflict. But the deeper motives won’t make themselves known until later, in Gav Thorpe’s Deliverance Lost (Heresy #18).

It can be tempting to assume that short stories are in some ways less consequential than novels, but you sleep on them at your own peril.

Little Horus, by Dan Abnett

This was another consequential story, one that tells the tale of ‘Little’ Horus Aximand, onetime member of the Mournival, and his eventual embrace of Horus’s treason. The events of Isstvan III and V weigh heavily on his conscience, but as he hunts down survivors of Isstvan V a single swing of a sword will change the face of things to come.

While it’s written by Dan Abnett, this one was a miss for me. Part of that was the narration, which again was delivered by John Banks. Neither story nor delivery were bad, per se, but they suffered a bit following in the footsteps of some real bangers.

The Iron Within, by Rob Sanders

And here it is, my “best in show” story for the collection- and delivered by Jonathan Keeble, no less. You don’t get a lot of stories that focus on the Loyalist remnants of the Heretic Legions, but this one is fantastic.

It features Barabas Dantioch, a Warsmith of the Iron Warriors out of favor with Perturabo and exiled to lead an outpost on a remote backwater. With characteristic Iron Warrior determination, Dantioch has taken his punishment detail seriously, building an extraordinary work of military engineering in the construction of a fortress, the Schadenhold.

When a delegation of Iron Warriors loyal to Horus arrives, everything Dantioch has built- and everything he is- will be put to the test.

I loved this story, with its clash of Iron Warriors both sieging and being besieged. Another “driveway moment” story, once things kick off you won’t want to hit the pause button.

Savage Weapons, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Set in the Thramas sector, this one pits the Dark Angels against the Night Lords. Konrad Curze, Primarch of the VIIIth, reaches out under flag of parley to his opposite, Lion el’Jonson. Meeting on Tsalguasa with the barest of honor guards, much of the story involves a conversation between the two giants.

It’s hard to imagine such a chat ending in anything other than conflict, so you won’t be surprised that things soon go sideways. A sword is drawn, blood is spilled, and a head is taken, with Gareth Armstrong doing right by the narration involving two very different sorts of men.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is well-loved for his ability to portray those wayward souls that have broken with the Imperium, and he’s in full form here. This is an excellent story, and a great way to conclude the anthology.

Overall, I found Age of Darkness to be a terrific collection. I was a bit wary going in given that I didn’t love the previous anthology, Tales of Heresy1, but this collection felt a lot stronger and more tied in to the ongoing narrative in many ways. The narration was a bit uneven in places, but overall an easy title to recommend.

The Hall Monitor is published every other week, the same day as the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame drops on Tabletop Battles. A cross between a director’s cut and a backstage pass, it’s a look behind the scenes at the Hall of Fame project.

Every author in the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame entered it somewhere for the first time. Even someone like Dan Abnett, with an extraordinary book count now sitting at seventeen hall-of-fame titles, experienced a moment where he instead had zero1.

Rookie moments- those inductions where an author is winning their first award- are exciting times at the Hall. I’m under no illusion that the population of Black Library authors are sitting at the edge of their seat like it’s Draft Day for the NHL, but it’s meaningful enough for some that it makes it extra enjoyable come each induction day.

For instance, here’s Sarah Cawkwell on the inclusion of Valkia the Bloody:

Then Graham McNeill, for False Gods:

And Mike Lee, for Nagash the Unbroken:

What’s also been fun is seeing the authors most familiar to the modern reader beginning to come into the frame as the initiative rolls on. Do you think John French had any idea, back in 2013 as he debuted with Ahriman: Exile, that not only would that series run for four more books, but that he’d go on to pen the Black Library Book of the Year in 2025 with Dropsite Massacre?

Alongside Frech, the Class of 2013 also includes Guy Haley, Peter Fehervari, and Steve Parker. For Haley, who was inducted for his book for Warhammer Fantasy, Skarsnik, it was a heck of a debut year that also included Baneblade and Death of Integrity. Fehervari, of course, kicked off the much-beloved Dark Coil series with Fire Caste, and for Parker this first-time honor came towards the end of a career that also incluced Rynn’s World and Gunheads.

Heresy Fatigue?

We’re now halfway through the 54-book mainline series of the Horus Heresy, and it’s a good time to talk about how this unfolded behind in the scenes with the Committee.

For those who are new to this initiative, we use a sort of bicameral system to determine which books get in. There’s the public, “Vox Populi” vote as well as an eight-member Hall of Fame Committee, and the support of both is essential for any book to get in. Unlike some sports hall of fame where the public vote is essentially a token, public support has a significant weight in the final results.

No series or imprint in the Black Library has ever been anywhere near as successful as the Horus Heresy. Horus Rising, the first book in the series, was released twenty years ago and still has a huge presence in the catalogue. Debates about “which ones are good” and “essential reading lists” abound in the gathering places of social media, and the Heresy is as alive today as ever it’s been.

From the Committee side of things, it was the most prominent example of what you might call “block voting.” That term refers to the practice of voting in books as a group rather than individually. We see this often with popular trilogies, and it’s also quite prominent with long-running character series like Commissar Cain and Felix & Grotrek. Sandy Mitchell’s Cain is an extraordinary character, and naturally those who love Cain tend to reflexively vote for any and all Cain books to get into the Hall.

On the Committee, meanwhile, we take a more granular approach, weighing the merits of each book individually. Did Cain’s Last Stand, the sixth book in the series, do enough on its own to warrant inclusion? Was that book- not the series, but just that book- “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significant? The Committee is not a monolith; each person serving may have their own ideas and opinions (and usually do!), so if that book can gather the necessary 60% of the overall votes, in it goes.

With something as massive and long-running as the Heresy, the degree to which we’d see block support was a big question we discussed last March. Were the voters just going to auto-pick most Heresy books because they were Heresy? We’d soon have our answer- and it was an interesting look at how the books are regarded.

Here’s a table showing how the Vox Populi voted, with books showing “Yes” under VoxPop crossing the requisite 50% threshold. It also shows whether or not a book made it in, and- just as a lark- whether or not that particular book is part of the new Horus Heresy Saga reprint cycle.

The public voters threw their weight behind the majority of the Heresy titles, fourteen of the twenty-two eligible books (the five unlisted books are anthologies, which aren’t considered). That might seem a bit high on first blush, but it’s worth noting that from this list twelve books ultimately made it into the Hall. It’s not a perfect overlap; the people liked Betrayer and Mechanicum, but they didn’t quite secure enough Committee support to make it in. But you can hardly accuse the voters of irrational exuberance.

Plus, it’s worth noting that nine of the twelve-volume Saga reprint cycle came from the first half of the Heresy. I’d say its clear that the acclaim for the book line is well-warranted.

But if you’d like to see nuance, where it really gets interesting is when you look at the actual data behind that support. Here’s the same table, but I’ve added one more column which shows the percentage of popular support each book received in the polling2.

For statheads like me, this stuff is catnip. It also contextualizes the concerns around block voting. Sure the people are throwing a lot of support for most books in the Heresy, but it’s not blind support. The early books enjoy a huge push, but as the series continues to roll out opinions become a lot more split. Note that only 54% of respondents supported the induction of The Unremembered Empire, whereas Horus Rising was almost universal.

Whether or not this represents a kind of voter fatigue versus critical discernment one can only speculate, though the reception to the new Saga suggests that we’re far from over the Heresy- and I’m absolutely here for it. It’s certainly true that the series did suffer from bloat- even the early editors have noted they didn’t plan beyond the first few books and were sort of winging it a bit after that.

But from such moments, sometimes, serendipity happens.

The Vox Populi Top Twenties

So here are the updated Top Twenties for both halves of the Black Library. In weeks past we’ve put the Winners Leaderboard at the bottom, but because the Top 20 lists had no new entries this week, I’ve lead with the table that did.

Hall Winners Leaderboard

While I talked about the four ‘rookies’ collecting their first-ever Hall induction, we can’t help but notice Abnett nabbed another one as well. When your tally rivals the sum of the next three on the list, it’s safe to say your lead is pretty unassailable. Still, this is one of those lists where you can genuinely say that even making it is probably an honor. I’d certainly like to think so.

Correction notice: Previous iterations erroneously had Ben Counter at 3, this has been corrected to 2.

Fantasy

30K/40K

No big breakouts inductions this week to crack the Top 20 on either side. Let’s see if 2014 shakes things up.

That’s all for this time, thanks for reading!

Every week, part of my beat covering the Black Library sees me having the privilege of connecting with the community. Whether it’s one of the prominent gathering places like the Black Library Nutters group on Facebook or the Black Library subreddit, the writer-heavy circles on BlueSky or elsewhere, there’s a lot of passionate readers and collectors and that means a lot of thoughts about how Games Workshop is doing.

I cover a lot of these trends each Monday for Black Library Weekly, but a lot of this is anecdotal in nature (for example, a rough preorder window, or a Limited Edition people are getting excited about).

Wouldn’t it be useful, I started thinking, if we had something a little more rigorous, some way to measure community sentiment? From there, the Black Library Reader Satisfaction Survey was born.

I’ve endeavored to make the questions as neutral as possible, to help ensure we get an accurate sense of community sentiment. Because the Black Library is ever-evolving, this will be a twice-yearly initiative, each July and January, so we can see how community feeling changes over time.

It’s my sincerest hope that this accomplishes two main objectives.

First, it will provide a vehicle for us Black Library consumers to be heard in a quantifiable way, and get a look at the general feeling of our fandom.

Second, it offers Games Workshop an opportunity to get some insight on how their customer base is feeling about their performance- the good and the bad. During my Magic heyday Wizards of the Coast was frequently checking the pulse of the playerbase with a stream of surveys; perhaps GW might see the value in taking a page from that playbook.

To be clear I offer no illusions about what they do with it- that is well out of our hands. But this initiative represents an organized and good-faith attempt to compile feedback, and that is something that has value.

I thank you all in advance for sharing your opinion through the survey. I’ve tried to keep the number of questions reasonable out of respect for everyone’s time, and would greatly appreciate if folks would share the link to the survey with others so we can get the widest possible pool of responses.

A new White Dwarf, a new Armageddon story! This time, though, instead of Cadians we’re getting to see the renewed conflict through the eyes of the Steel Legion.

If you’re somewhat new to the universe, the mystique of the Steel Legion may not be readily apparent. Loosely speaking, in spirit they were the Cadians before the Cadians were pushed, and in appearance the Krieg before the Krieg were pushed. You don’t see a lot of Steel Legion representation these days, but the players certainly remember.

So, too, does Rusty Zimmerman, who penned the short story Answered Prayers for the current issue of White Dwarf. After the five-month serial The Chronicles of Bain (reviewed here), we’re back to the standalone format with this tale of a Leman Russ detachment left behind on the battlefield when things go horribly awry.

Zim and Vigor

Zimmerman originally broke into tie-in fiction in 2012 with Neat, a story for the Shadowrun universe, and has continued to write for the property (his latest, Dark Synergy, just dropped in 2024). From there, he expanded into Earthdawn and BattleTech1, with his entry into the Black Library stable of writers coming in 2025 with the Death Guard short story, Seven Ships.

Released as part of a digital short story theme week, Seven Ships was my “best in show” pick in my review of Heretic Astartes Week, in no small part down to how deliciously he evoked the feel of the Legion through small details like the glint of mucous off a visor. It also won Zimmerman Best Black Library Debutant in the 2025 Goonhammer Book Awards, an honor he shared with Avalon Irons for Imperfect Engines2.

His next story, Resounding, was included in this year’s Death and Duty: An Astra Militarum Anthology, and I was pleased to see him get another out so soon with Answered Prayers. Here’s a spoiler-free look at the story (with spoilers in the next section clearly marked).

The Story

Zimmerman’s latest takes us straight into action on Armageddon alongside the Steel Legion’s armored 127th, the “unstoppable fist of the Morpheon Line.” Sergeant Valek Aertsev and his crew are part of a glorious push against the greenskin hordes, “six thousand souls riding in over five hundred Chimeras,” pushing back the orks like one shovels snow off a driveway.

Everything goes according to plan- until it doesn’t. Aertsev’s Chimera, the Faithful Perseverence, strikes a land mine, resulting in an inadvertent mobility kill as one of the tracks is shredded and its vox-array befouled. The rest of the assault pushes forward, leaving them behind in the middle of no-man’s land. Unable to go forward, unable to go back, and unable to call for help, they manage to “lever, heave, and curse” the Chimera into a nearby artillery crater for cover and wait for Imperial forces to return from the assault.

What they get instead are orks. Shooty orks during the day. Sneaky orks during the night. The tank crew and troopers they were transporting face dire straits and long odds as attrition whittles them down. In desperation, they’re forced to send an unsecured vox-call mayday, which would pinpoint their location to friend and foe alike.

And ultimately, the help they hoped for isn’t the help they get.

Impressions

Zimmerman’s last piece, Resounding, felt a little imbalanced due to a lot of character exposition in the early establishment of the story. It’s a difficult balancing act, giving the reader enough of your characters so that they can understand and engage with them, while making sure that the story’s pacing or tone isn’t adversely impacted (I’ll go into this a bit more in my upcoming review of Death and Duty over on Tabletop Battles).

Having only recently read Resounding, I was particularly sensitive to this going in to Answered Prayers, and was pleased to see a much more lean balance being struck. Zimmerman wastes very little time setting up the story, and the necessary character development gets braided together with the forward movement of the plot.

Indeed, he crafts a very tense and taut narrative here. Aertsev’s soldiers are in deep trouble, an island of the Emperor’s will in a sea of green. Time crawls by, with the hours of their remaining life measured in soldiers and bullets3 that they can’t replace.

If writing the White Dwarf Stories features has shown me anything, it’s that I’ve underappreciated the the Black Library content in White Dwarf to my detriment. Answered Prayers is a terrific little tale, and would fit just as well in a Theme Week or in-print anthology.

Bits n’ Pieces (Spoilers)

• So here’s where I get to talk about the story’s twist ending. As Aertsev’s crew throws the Hail Mary, we see the story’s title come into sharp focus.

• Turns out, they’re Blood Angels all right. Blood Angels in black armor. It’s one of those “oh shit” moments that suddenly gives the story an entirely new dimension, and credit to Zimmerman for never naming them as Death Company4.

• Indeed, this is one of those stories that, if read by someone new to Warhammer, would leave them genuinely puzzled, for it’s never explained why their Astartes ‘saviors’ then slaughter the Guardsmen just as eagerly as they did the orks. No explanation, no exposition- just a thing that happened in one tiny corner of a future where there is only war. Those can be refreshing for us property veterans, and White Dwarf is probably an ideal place to run them.

• While there’s an element of ‘be careful what you wish for’ here, I think the less obvious lesson might be, ‘when Astartes tell you to do something, do it.’ When the Blood Angels tell the Guardsmen to hide in their Chimera, they ignore it feeling like it would be a cowardly dereliction of duty to not do their part in fighting back the rampaging orks. Grimdark lit has a proud tradition of people finding out the hard way that sometimes doing the right thing is the wrong thing to do.

• One of the things I always look for in Warhammer is to see how different authors present machine spirits. There’s this ‘middle ground’ between superstition and supernatural with them, and the sweet spot (for me) plays firmly with the ambiguity in between them5. Zimmerman played it to perfection here.

• Finally- and this is totally a nitpick- but I’m starting to get a little fatigued of the “X and Y in equal measure” construction. There’s nothing wrong with it, I’ve just noticed it being used a lot lately and it’s become a little too conspicuous. In fairness to Zimmerman, it’s employed but the once here, and it’s hardly the thing writers can coordinate.

The Hall Monitor is published every other week, the same day as the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame drops on Tabletop Battles (here’s today’s). A cross between a director’s cut and a backstage pass, it’s a look behind the scenes at the Hall of Fame project.

Prior to 2010, the most books that entered the Hall in one year was six, which happened only twice. The first time was 2004, with early series work by Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell helping build a strong slate. The next time was 2006 with the advent of the Horus Heresy opening up a new category in the balloting.

That record wasn’t just broken, it was smashed by the incredible Class of 2010 putting nine books in the Hall. After a lull in 2011, we fell one book short of equaling the feat in 2012.

The simplest possible explanation for this is that, over time, the books just got better. As the Black Library grew in success, it could raise the standard of what it was looking for, offer more compensation1, and attract more talent.

Another consideration, though, is that we’re getting closer to the present day with each year. That means an increasing number of voters will be seeing books they’re more familiar with as time goes on. “Recency bias” certainly exists, but at the very least I’d like to think we’ll see a decrease in the proportion of “No Opinion/Abstain” votes in each poll.

I don’t have the answer to this, but it’s going to be interesting seeing if voting patterns change as we move into modernity. I might quibble with a book or two that missed out, but by and large I think the Hall’s gotten it right. It’s certainly been fun to watch! By the time we catch up to the current era later this year, we’ll have a much clearer picture of how things shook out.

The Vox Populi Top Twenties

So here are the updated Top Twenties for both halves of the Black Library.

Fantasy

No changes here again this week, 45% positive support seems to be a difficult threshold for Fantasy titles to hit right now, even if they’re still managing to find their way into the Hall. Remember, this number (the 45%) represents the percentage of public poll respondents that vote for the book to get in. It doesn’t have to get more than 50% support to be considered, it just needs to get more “yesses” than “noes.”

Still, it’s a good barometer of public awareness and enthusiasm for a particular title.

30K/40K

Some movement here this week, though, as three books climb aboard. The bottom of the table is fairly congested, and it won’t take much to see a large chunk of books fall off the table entirely.

Hall Winners Leaderboard

The top of the table continues to pull away from the middle, with Graham McNeill and Aaron Dembski-Bowden neck and neck. Abnett is nigh uncatchable, I’d wager, but it’s also a delight when we get to add new names to the table as well. Congrats again to Sarah Cawkwell (for Valkia the Bloody), and Josh Reynolds (for Neferata: The Blood of Nagash)!

Thanks for joining me on this look behind the curtains of the Hall, and if you haven’t already please make sure to vote your picks for the Class of 2013!

I’ve long been a believer that if you want to see something in the world that isn’t there, rather than wait for someone else to come along and make it happen you should roll up the sleeves and get to work.

Back in 2024, for instance, I was amazed to find that there just wasn’t a cohesive body of work out there chronicling the history of the Black Library. Sure there were bits and pieces all over the place, but a true narrative? I reached out to Tabletop Battles (then Goonhammer) and offered to write it, a series that became the 40K History of the Black Library.

In a similar vein, I was genuinely surprised to find that there had never been a real “Hall of Fame” for the Black Library. Sure, Games Workshop made a modest and short-lived stab at it in 2016, asking authors of the day to select books to include, but after just nine selections it quietly shuttered. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, and now it’s been a continuous project since last November that has- with the help of the community- examined every novel each year has produced, and inducted over fifty of them into the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame1.

So in short, if you want to see something in the world, give it a go yourself instead of waiting for someone else to2. You might be waiting forever.

Enter Wicked Brick

This same philosophy is what brought Wicked Brick into the world. A decade ago some collectors in Cambridgeshire realized that their collectibles didn’t have any quality protection and display options. The market has always been a bit of a laggard here, given that it responds to market forces that have already hit a critical threshold before making preservation products available.

For instance, Ty’s Beanie Babies were introduced in 1993, but it took around four years (and a massive craze) to see plastic “tag protectors” begin being offered. It took slightly longer for Funko to roll out Pop! Stacks, acrylic display and protection cases for their vinyl figures. It’s notable that in each case, third party manufacturers beat the official companies to market by about a year, which gives some idea of market agility.

Not seeing the kinds of solutions they were after, the founders of Wicked Brick opted to bootstrap their own. “We loved collecting,” they note on their company site. “We just didn’t love how our collections looked sitting on an open shelf. Dust, UV light, the odd knock. We knew there was a better way to show them off. So we built it. A display that did what nothing else on the market could: protect the set, enhance how it looked, and let the collectible be the focus.”

In 2024, Wicked Brick landed the license to produce official displays for Warhammer, and it’s these that are in the spotlight in today’s feature.

Plastic, Meet Paper

My own Black Library collection has two components, the Library and the Museum. The former is exactly what it sounds like- bookshelves full of books, arranged in whatever formation happens to be most aesthetically (and organizationally) pleasing in the moment, but the Museum is where the Black Library truly comes to life.

Plastic miniatures are a key component of my displays, and today we’ll look at Abaddon, the Despoiler, who stands vigil in front of the Liber Chaotica and (a presently non-limited edition) Black Legion by Aaron Dembski-Bowden one of display shelves.

More specifically, we’ll look at his containment field, a Wicked Brick Limited Edition. Let’s get a closer look.

Wicked Brick has adopted the FOMO-inducing “limited” model for many of their releases, which is more or less industry standard at this point. All Wicked Brick products are made to order, which means that any limitation is entirely arbitrary and artificial. It also means that you’ll typically experience a wait time of 8-10 weeks between order and delivery3.

Assembly

Wicked Brick products are shipped unassembled, meaning it’s on you to put the thing together. This makes complete sense, lest you pay significantly more postage for what would, ultimately, amount to a bunch of trapped air. Assembly was fairly simple and straightforward, and there are instructions on the website.

Pricing

When I ordered it this past January, the Abaddon Limited Edition case was USD $67, and I also purchased a pair of the standalone plaques (like the one above that says ABADDON, but instead for the Ultramarines and Thousand Sons) for $17 apiece. An introductory promo code knocked 10%, and adding in shipping and duties the total came to $131.61.

Looking now, prices have come down a bit. The same case now goes for $54, with the non-limited edition priced at $48. The plaques are currently $14 apiece.

So that’s the second pain point with these, after the long order time. They’re not cheap, even if they’re a little less now than when I pulled the trigger. Factoring in all of the associated costs, this will set you back about the same as a Special Edition book, though mileage will vary depending of course on geography (they’re UK-based).

Satisfaction

In all other regards, I couldn’t be happier. It’s a very sturdy construction, and the Limited Edition looks fantastic. Having a Black Library quote as the background image (from The Talon of Horus, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden) makes it a perfect accessory for highlighting your favorite characters or legions in your museum or library.

I found the upcharge over the Standard Edition to be worth it, as the text gives it a certain museum-display quality I find irresistible. Here’s what the regular one looks like, for the curious:

If I won the lottery tomorrow I’d order one of everything. In the meantime, I’ll have to be a lot more selective (such as this upcoming one that appears to be for Gaunt’s Ghosts). And if you’re interested in the Abaddon Limited, at time of writing Wicked Brick appears to have sold 95 of them, meaning there are only 5 left.

Other Options

There are plenty of other offerings in the Limited Edition range of displays, many of which fittingly enough bear quotations from the Black Library.

For example, here’s our main man Bjorn with an excerpt from Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame inductee Battle of the Fang, by Chris Wraight.

For a more current example, howabout Ferren Areios from Rob Young’s Master of Rites.

Marrying Black Library books with miniatures displays is absolutely inspired stuff, and I’ll be keen to see what else they have in store.

Beyond that, they also have some products that are fitted to IKEA shelving solutions. The IKEA Billy shelf is one that many Black Library collectors swear by, and having an acrylic window that slides right in is a great way not only to display your memorabilia, but to keep the dust off your books as well.

Community Shelfies

Finally, some shelfies that caught my eye recently from around the community, because as much as I like to look at what’s in my own study, it’s a blast to see how others are displaying their own collections!

First up is u/g1aice’s beautiful collection of omnibuses for Warhammer Fantasy. Some of these- in particular the later Gotrek & Felix ones- can be difficult to source and/or pricey, and it’s great to see them together. I’ll share here that seeing Malus volume two before Malus volume one was a bit triggering, though.

I liked this display from u/ChillSappho, because it shows how even a small collection of books can be turned into a terrific display for anywhere in the house. I haven’t managed to convince the wife to let me expand my bookshelves beyond the study, but this might be the way to go.

Loads of deluxe goodies on these shelves, which comes to us courtesy of Ryan Hamilton in the Black Library Nutters group! I’m still kicking myself for not getting that Astra Militarum canteen when it was originally offered during last year’s Black Library Celebration.

Where to begin here? Obviously the Siege of Terra Limited Edition run is the star of the show (though I love the cheeky cameo of Justin Woolley’s Da Freebooterz Code Special Edition on the third shelf), and this helps illustrate why so many people went so mad for them. It’s a breathtaking centerpiece, but Paul Benham’s accessories- particularly the skull, brown-glass bottles, and candle- alongside the rich hue of the bookshelf give this almost a wizard’s study vibe. The Horus Lupercal bookends holding down a rack of Horus Heresy hardcovers is a very nice touch, too.

Congrats on completing the collection, Paul!

I’m genuinely envious of u/Joker8392 here for two reasons. First, for having all those lovely Siege of Terra maps, and second- just as important- having the wall space to display them. My copy of The Primarchs Collection: Visions of Glory and Despair is still sitting in the box, awaiting the day when I’m able to frame and mount them somewhere.

That’s it for this week, may your books be abundant and your shelves overflowing! Next time, we’ll look at what happens when chocolate and peanut butter collide.

Welcome to the latest installment of my latest occasional series, Show and Tell, where I dive into the world of WarhammerTV’s suite of video programming.

Some exciting news last week on the Preview Show as WarhammerTV’s next animation, The Butcher’s Nails, will be landing this August. It’s a one-shot for the Hammer & Bolter series, but I’m delighted to see the programs continue at a steady pace.

Meanwhile, last Friday saw the final installment of the most recent series, Aeronautica Imperialis, come in for a landing.

The Story

On the planet Sigma-Nova, the men and the machines of the Imperium toil away at the planet’s surface, mining the rocks for precious ore and minerals. Little do they know, however, that the site is considered sacred by the Aeldari of the Saim-Hann Craftworld, the Tracts of Fuethán1 “where our god once walked.”

Naturally with no open dialogue and mutual hostility and mistrust, there’s only one way to settle this: war.

Thrust into this cauldron is Kae, wing commander of Steel Flight. As we open, she and the trio of Thunderbolts in her squad have made planetfall and are on their way to report in at the Aeronautica base attached to the mining facility. As they near the landing, a chilling sight awaits them below: a graveyard full of destroyed Imperial aircraft.

Ambushed by nimble, sleek- and deadly- Aeldari Nightwings led by a pilot named Idranith, Kae’s entire squadron is destroyed, all pilots killed in action.

Before she’d arrived, Kae had never seen an Aeldari. Now, she can’t wait to kill one.

As Kae integrates into the Thunderbolt force defending the base, the “phantom” Aeldari fighters appear from nowhere- and disappear just as quickly. Outclassed in the air, and uncertain of where their xenos enemy is based, the desperate Aeronatica pilots get picked off again and again, their identifier tag getting posthumously added to the wall of honor.

What they need is a lucky break.

They’re about to get one.

The Talent

Details on the cast and crew are thin, as usual with these, but we do know a couple names attached to the voice talent.

Kae is brought to life by Elsie Lovelock, herself no stranger to Warhammer productions having voiced the navigator companion (and combat nuke) Cassia Orsellio for Owlcat’s Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. She also supplied some Imperial Guard voices for Space Marine II, was Queen Ansurek in World of Warcraft, Kennen for League of Legends, and loads more.

David Monteith, meanwhile, plays the role of Romas, the base’s flight commander. He’s been in plenty himself, including Baldur’s Gate III, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and 007: First Light.

At time of writing no actor had been identified for the role of Idranith, the Aeldari pilot, which is somewhat baffling. That said, voice actor Christoper Tester- who has featured in several Warhammer video games including the role of Heinrix van Calox in Rogue Trader- was delighted to get his first appearance in a Warhammer animation thanks to a ‘cheeky cameo.’

While story duties were handled by the “Warhammer Storyforge,” whoever that is2, Dan Abnett does have a writer’s credit on IMDB. Given his work on Double Eagle and Interceptor City, the pieces would certainly fit!

Production duties were handled once again by M2 Animation. They’re the studio behind other Warhammer fare such as Pariah Nexus (reviewed here), The Tithes, and Angels of Death.

Notes & Impressions (Spoilers Ahead)

• I watched this with two of my daughters, aged 12 and 11. While it’s listed as being recommended for ages 15+, that’s largely down to a couple of instances of mature language rather than any gore or adult-oriented content. They both really loved it, one rooting for the Imperials and the other cheering on the Aeldari. Something for everyone!

• I’m personally a big fan of swears in my stories, because that’s how (most) real people speak. It’s authentic and genuine, even when an author prefers to use ‘swear substitutes’ (like drokk, frakk, or fething). Nobody’s getting shot by an Ork and crying out, “heavens to Betsy, I’m hit!”

• I found the animation a bit stylistically uneven here. Check out the cockpit sequences, where there’s a sort of blocky angularity that reminded me a bit of The Clone Wars or the (criminally underrated) Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles.

• Compare that with your first look at Kae out of the cockpit, now looking more like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. This aesthetic duality persists throughout the entirety of the series.

• Shot of the Series Award goes to this one, the fireball from a crashing Thunderbolt illuminating a speeding cargo train. It’s almost blink-and-you-miss it from the second episode, but it’s a hell of a moment.

• GW has gone full-court press on this release over at the mothership, with each episode not only getting a callout article, but each one also getting a trailer. Extra credit for this one even having a callout for where you can buy Thunderbolt minis3, well done.

• Terrific dialogue in episode two, with the Aeldari discussing the nature of humanity. “But they keep coming. They may be brief things, but given long enough…

• Overall I enjoyed this one, it was an hour well-spent with some fun dogfighting action and a solid story that would have benefited from another fifteen minutes of length to really fill out. Idaneth’s fateful choice at the end, in particular, was less of an emotional beat than it could have been due to time compression. Still, the parallels in the story arcs between Kae and Idoneth were fertile territory for storytelling.

That’s it for Aeronautica Imperialis! With the next animation not dropping until this August (The Butcher’s Nails), next time I’ll be going back into the archives. A little Heresy, perhaps?

“Do something you love,” the old adage goes, “and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

When we announced the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame last November, we had no idea how it was going to be received- only that it was an idea long overdue in the community, and since it had never been done before it was time someone gave it a go.

From where I’m sitting, quarterbacking the logistics of it, it’s been an absolute blast. I’m working with great people, enjoying seeing the discussion in the reading community, and getting a ringside seat week after week on the incredible, unfolding history of the Black Library.

I’m gonna miss all this once its done.

Now I guess technically, as long as the Black Library keeps printing books (and may that be as enduring as the Emperor), this project will never really conclude. But by the time 2026 comes to a close, we’ll have worked our way through the Black Library’s catalogue and caught up to the present day.

That’s what I refer to as the project “reaching maturity.”

In most halls of fame there’s a certain “cool-off period” between when a player retires from the sport and when they become eligible for induction to the hall. That helps ensure that their candidacy is both assessed dispassionately, removed from hype and sentimentality, as well as the full impact of the player is understood. I wouldn’t want to be doing a Readers’ Hall of Fame for 2026 at the start of 2027, right?

What that cool-off period for us in this project isn’t fully sorted yet, but will probably be either two or three years. That means the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame will eventually transition from biweekly to annually, though, likely becoming something of a Spring tradition on Tabletop Battles much like the Goonhammer Book Awards1 will be.

So I hope you’re enjoying it while it lasts this year, folks, because we certainly are loving the ride. And if you’re reading this, that means you probably are too- and thank you for helping make this project such a success!

The Vox Populi Top Twenties

So here are the updated Top Twenties for both halves of the Black Library.

Fantasy

I’ve been delighted to see Fantasy rage against the dying of the light. We all know that the entire line is about to be nuked from orbit, replaced by Age of Sigmar, and we’ve watched Fantasy seem to slip from contention for the Hall. But reports of its death have proved premature, with Mike Lee’s Nagash the Unbroken arriving in the star-studded Class of 2010, and Blood of Aenarion by the legendary William King now enshrined as of today.

However, no Fantasy title from the Class of 2011 managed to score high enough in the Vox Populi vote to knock anyone off its perch, and the table remains the same as it did two weeks ago here.

30K/40K

We did see a touch of movement on this side of things, though, as Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Blood Reaver landed at the #14 spot. That means we bid farewell to Dan Abnett’s Prospero Burns, which at 76% approval slips off the Top Twenty.

Hall Winners Leaderboard

Congratulations first to Chris Wraight, notching his first entry into the Hall of Fame- one that’s unlikely to be his last.

Second, William King and Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s wins help solidify them in a strong “second tier.” It’s amazing to think that just a couple years ago we weren’t even mentioning ADB, whose success mirrors the early days of Abnett and King.

Thanks for joining me on this look behind the curtains of the Hall, and if you haven’t already please make sure to vote your picks for the Class of 2012!

White Dwarf Stories covers that little corner of the Black Library tucked away between the covers of Games Workshop’s flagship periodical. Many established writers have gotten their start there, with short stories paving the way for future work. Each installment, we’ll look at a different story and who knows, you just might find it in a future anthology!

Not for the first time, I’m reminded of just how much fun it must be to be a part of Games Workshop’s content and editorial teams. While the release of the game’s Eleventh Edition slowly came into focus for those of us on the outside, we can in hindsight see the design behind releasing a five-part serial to kick off the new year, ending in May the month before we’re back on Armageddon.

And so we’re treated to the stories of Shock Trooper Elias Bain, a Cadian of the 96th freshly-inducted into the regiment’s elite squad, the Callous Jacks. And to tell it, the Black Library brought in a new face, Neil Andrew Miller.

The Black Library’s Unlikeliest Author

There’s little chance you’ve heard of Miller before now, as it’s the nom-de-plume he’s using for his Warhammer writing. On the other hand, perhaps you’ve heard of comedy writer Nick Spalding. No points for guessing that they’re the same person (not that he makes any secret of it), but Nick has had about as unlikely a path to getting here as you’ll find.

For ages, the term “self-published” was just a nicer way of referring to someone’s vanity project. Bang out a bunch of words, pay a book manufactory to bind ‘em up with your name on the cover, and voila- you’re an author, Harry!

Before the digital age, self-publishing success stories were out there, but they were rare. A trained printer, Walt Whitman helped set some of the type for his self-published book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was self-published, as was The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer some three decades later in 1936. For a more contemporary example, consider teenager Christopher Paolini, whose parents helped him self-publish his debut fantasy novel, Eragon, in 2001.

But then came the digital age, and as with so many other industries, everything we knew was turned on its head.

In November of 2007, Amazon launched its first Kindle e-reader, allowing writers access to a platform for distribution that bypassed the traditional book publishing model- cutting out the middlemen, as it were. This was the kind of potential exposure that the Whitmans, Potters, Rombauers, and Paolinis could never have dreamed of in their day, lugging around their boxes of a few hundred initial copies and wearing out their shoe leather trying to sell them.

Three years later, embroiled in a tech arms race with Apple, Amazon makes a huge change to its compensation structure for publication royalties. For books priced under ten bucks, writers would get to keep a whopping 70% where before they were only getting half of that. This sea change ushered in a boom of self-publishing, now a far more lucrative endeavor than at any time in the past.

Digital e-reader devices continued to climb in sales, and in the first half of 2010’s you began to see a number of indie authors make it big through this non-traditional (and previously disdained) approach. Amanda Hocking, writing paranormal romance stories, started self-publishing in 2010 and was a million-seller by the following year. Hugh Howey self-published Wool, initially a short story that grew into a much longer narrative that not only landed him a deal with Simon & Schuster but also would go on to become the tv series Silo on Apple TV+.

And that, of course, brings us to Nick Spalding.

Spalding self-published the romcom Love... From Both Sides in 2012, right in the heart of the boom. Within a year it had sold a quarter of a million copies, which soon brought him a mainstream book deal with Hodder and Stoughton (now an imprint of Hachette, which should have a different resonance for us fans of Warhammer and the Black Library) before he moved to Amazon’s Lake Union Publishing.

So when I say that Neil Andrew Miller is the Black Library’s unlikeliest author, it’s not because he doesn’t deserve to be here. Rather, it’s a reflection of how many things had to go right- things that before the digital era would have seemed like wishful thinking- to put him in the position he occupies.

Even then, The Chronicles of Bain was hardly a foregone conclusion. As he tells it,

About five years ago, I needed a sci-fi franchise for one of my Nick Spalding characters to be a fan of - and before you could say Ferrus Manus I leapt at the chance to use Warhammer 40k.

Researching for the story that eventually became Third Wheel, I was pulled back into the 40k hobby in no uncertain terms. The book got published, but I still continued to immerse myself in the lore, purely from an enjoyment perspective.

And then - wouldn’t you just know it - the talent agency I’m represented by also has a very respected and brilliant Warhammer author on their books1, and that was my ticket in.

I pitched a few stories, and one got picked up.

So all of these events had to line up just right to bring us to the subject of today’s piece, the five-part serial story The Chronicles of Bain.

A Tale of Years in the Making

January’s issue of White Dwarf featured the new Shard of the Nightbringer model on the cover, with the pages within filled with the Wardens of Ultramar, lore for the new Warhammer Quest: Darkwater… and Miller’s Black Library debut.

Part 1: Skullchewa

Miller kicks things off in media res in the first installment of the Chronicles, with Elias Bain fighting for his life against a raging Ork Nob before filling everything in with flashback. That Nob, Skullchewa, is target numero uno for the Callous Jacks- with Bain its newest recruit.

I was particularly impressed with Miller’s economy of space, packing a lot into the small number of pages he’s been allotted to make this first impression. Very quickly we get a good read on Bain’s character, with his mix of calculated cunning (“Bain resolves to get on Tegg’s good side as soon as possible. The hard-faced corporal clearly has sway with them all. That’s important. That’s valuable.”) and genuine piety (“Everyone else chuckles at this display, even Artoli. Bain does not. Tegg’s attitude edges close to blasphemy.”)

Not only that, but he does a great job setting up the first piece’s villain by sprinkling in a delightful touch of horror to go with it all:

The only misstep for me comes at the very end as Bain is wounded in battle. We learned earlier that Bain’s lived a charmed life, never injured during his service- a fact that he attributes to his faith in the Emperor, and the protection it grants him in return.

Once wounded, though, Bain exhibits what I refer to as the ‘brittle faith syndrome’ I see too often in Sororitas stories. That’s when a character lives their faith at a level ten, but plummet to zero once it’s tested or set back. An all-or-nothing binary when what I’d really expect to see is maybe a recalibrating five, less “the Emperor has forsaken me” and more, “is the Emperor sending me a message through this setback?”

Of course, there’s plenty of story ahead for nuance and recalibration, so no points deducted from the ringside scorecard.

Part 2: The Hole

Then in February the second installment offers an explanation for why the series is called the Chronicles, since we now find a partially-augmetic Bain two years later on a demolition detail for the Callous Jacks. The Guard has been giving ground on Ancar Majoris, and the Jacks have been tasked with destroying ammo stockpiles left behind to prevent them from falling into Orkish hands.

Something goes terribly wrong, however, leaving Bain presumed dead and trapped in a mineshaft. The story becomes the Warhammer 40K version of Cast Away, to delightful affect. The pacing changeup from the first installment is a canny choice, giving this story a very different feel- as well as an opportunity to further explore Bain’s increasingly-desperate faith.

This one’s terrific work from Miller. I will note that there tend to be two kinds of humans-versus-ork stories: ones where there’s a language barrier between them, and one where there isn’t. Rob Young’s Leontus: Lord Solar handled this splendidly, giving the titular character a compelling reason for speaking Orkish and using it to great effect. David Annandale’s Chains of Golgotha has a dramatic moment where Ghazhgkull speaks in High Gothic to Commissar Yarrick.

Miller takes the “no barrier” approach here, with Orks appearing to all be speaking Gothic.

I don’t love it, but I accept there’s plenty of precedent and it doesn’t take away from Miller’s story here. Just my cross to bear nit to pick.

Part 3: Glory Makes Us Fools

Another installment, another time jump. We’re now a few years further down the road with Bain, and now he’s a freshly-minted Sergeant for the Jacks. This “time capsule” approach is clever; by allowing each story to inhabit its own space rather than being a direct continuation, you’re not demanding a lot of the reader, as someone reading these as they’re released won’t need to remember much from installment to installment. “Bain fought an Ork” is about all you need to recall from the opening round, then “Bain was in a hole” for the next.

For this one it’s a situation we’ve seen Guardsmen in before, caught between an implacable foe in front of them and a miserable bastard of a commissar behind them. Beyond the action, this installment moves the character forward in two ways.

First, Miller has continued to anchor faith as something central to the character- and does an uncommonly good job of it. From the naive, brittle faith of the first to the desperate faith of the second, by the time we see Bain on Hycar’s Doubt it’s a faith much worn down by the trials of the soldiering life. He utters profane curses (“Throne damn it!”) as a matter of course, and much of the early certainty of his belief has eroded away.

This isn’t to say that Bain is descending into moral vacancy, and here’s where Miller shows a deft hand with the quill. That would be the simpler story, the more easily-told-tale. Instead, the source of Bain’s conscience simply relocates in his mind. He’s not listening to the Emperor as much anymore here, but he is listening to the voices of his fallen comrades.

Across three stories Bain has clearly developed as a character in a way that is consistent and understandable. For a story tucked away inside of a magazine Miller sure has me dying to see where we go from here. Job done.

Part 4: A Life That Matters

It’s around this one that I started to really appreciate Miller’s mission variety, getting the sense that the guy saw a great opportunity in a five-part serial to show the kind of range he’s capable of. The first is a close-quarters fighting story, the second a survival tale, the third an subterranean tunnel exploration (a la Sandy Mitchell’s Caves of Ice or The Relentless Dead, by Steve Lyons)… and now, a high-speed getaway caper in a dilapidated Chimera.

As an action story it’s great, a galloping, kinetic tale that Miller maintains at a frenetic pace. The Orks are getting closer every moment, and safety still ever so far away. It’s a cracking read, but what’s really pulling me into these is his development of the main character.

At this point- and again, we’ve flashed a handful of years forward- Bain’s loss of faith is now complete. He’s not anti-Emperor by any means, but he simply doesn’t give much of a shit any more, a far cry from the Emperor-botherer we saw at the outset. It’s an important distinction that keeps him on the right side of heresy, but he’s clearly jaded. And weary. Assigned to rescue a planetary official, his exhaustion isn’t just physical, it’s soul-deep.

All of this… the full measure of the arc of Bain’s descent, comes to a sharp underline in the story’s closing moments.

Part 5: Da Nasty Git

And here we are, the final installment of Miller’s nearly half-year run with The Chronicles of Bain. I have no idea how he’s going to cap it off, but the direction it’s been taking suggests it’s probably either some last-moment act of noble self-sacrifice- or heresy.

What we get instead is quite a surprise. An Ork story? We’re thrust instantly into the mind of Grat Zuglug, Ork Kommando on an assassination run. Grat’s not the biggest of the krew, but he’s the most kunnin’ and if we can just get his knife on the throat of their target he’ll be the Nob’s right-hand boy.

Their target? “Da Nasty Git,” and you quickly realize that this is the latest nickname given to Sergeant Elias Bain of the Callous Jacks- and the first one that has been given to him by the enemy. Using the plot device of the first story, Skullchewa, but in reverse for the closing story of the series is a chef’s kiss realization. Instead of the Jacks hunting the Orks, we’ve come full circle with the Orks hunting the Jacks.

Through this we also come to realize where they are. Each story in the Chronicles has been set on a different world, reflecting the continuing deployments of an Imperial Guard regiment.

It’s quite the reveal, and lands perfectly given that this final story was published in May’s White Dwarf.

As the Orks make their play, the point of view eventually reverts back to Bain and the Jacks as they are mysteriously summoned back to outpost command. Upon arrival, the first sign that something’s afoot is the presence of Astartes guarding the building. Bain is escorted into the strategium, a room filled with cogitators and holo-projectors, commissars and generals. In other words, a proper Imperial war room.

And there Bain comes face to face with someone that strikes more fear into him than any Ork ever has: Commissar Sebastian Yarrick. Yarrick, preparing to depart the planet, is wanting to make sure the Guard is in capable hands during his absence and that includes promoting Bain to an officer.

I’ll leave the rest unspoiled, only to note that Miller avoids the usual pitfalls in writing in major characters by casting them in service to the writer’s own protagonist. Yarrick is definitely Yarrick here, a man who’s seen too much and done too much to have much time to suffer dissent.

Miller absolutely sticks the landing here, and he’s done it because he’s ‘done the work’ in all of the preceding chapters. Doing the work is my term for a writer doing the necessary “building-up” early in a story to ensure that later emotional beats and narrative payoffs land effectively, a sort of “Chekov’s gun” in reverse. Everything that happens in the climax of Da Nasty Git is a result of everything Miller’s taken pains to lay out for the reader already, and as a result it closes out the arc terrifically.

Final Thoughts

A week ago if you told me I was going to spend 3000 words writing a deep dive about a short story that appeared in White Dwarf, I’d have thought you mad. Who’d have that much to say? Hell, who’d want to read that much? I can’t answer the latter, but I can certainly note that The Chronicles of Bain was a very pleasant surprise, and between it and Jake Ozga’s Tattered Sails, the story from my debut of White Dwarf Stories, I’ve completely revised my opinion of White Dwarf’s creative content.

For whatever reason, I’ve carried the seeming misconception that White Dwarf was a lesser tributary of the Black Library pipeline. It’s not entirely ungrounded; stories that ran in the digital Theme Weeks and Advent Calendars appear to have had a much higher rate of ending up in paper. Indeed, the recent No Peace Among Stars anthology was entirely populated with digital-first content (my review here2). White Dwarf stuff does make its way in here and there, such as Jon Flindall’s Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance in the Blood of the Imperium anthology, or the recent Grombrindal books).

But even if it was a lesser tributary, it’s clear that the content there is not lesser. Sure, it might well be that Ozga’s story was a ‘leftover’ from his period of work in Age of Sigmar rather than something written more recently, but a good story is a good story all the same. As consumers we aren’t privy to the demand and decisions that so occupy the Black Library’s editorial team, so for all I know they’re sitting on a mountain of unpublished gold.

As for Miller, I’m delighted to note that this won’t be the last we’ve seen of him (nor, hopefully, of Elias Bain). As he noted on his Substack:

If you’ve already read The Chronicles of Bain, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts! If not and you’ve got ‘em handy, go grab White Dwarf issues 520 through 524 and treat yourself.

There’s no doubt that within the canon of the Horus Heresy, Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett is a masterwork.

Even if you haven’t read it yet, you probably won’t need much convincing beyond the fact that it’s written by Dan Abnett and is one of only twelve books to be selected for the “Horus Heresy Saga” special reprint cycle. With the second book of the Saga, Graham McNeill’s False Gods, up for preorder this week it will probably be awhile before we get to see the new edition, but being one of a dozen representing a line of 54 books is no mean feat.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to note that it was recently inducted into the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame, either. And while I can’t automatically equate popularity to quality, it does the book’s case for greatness no harm to recognize that it was the first Horus Heresy book to crack the New York Times Bestseller List top twenty (peaking at #161).

Nope, there’s little doubt that Prospero Burns is a monumental work… and I hated it.

Bait and Switch

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, I didn’t actually hate the book. But I often like to say that not every book is for every person, and while I went into this one with high hopes it just wasn’t a book for me.

On the face of it, I was expecting to hear the story of the destruction of Prospero from the perspective of the Space Wolves. It was a terrible tragedy I’d last visited only a couple months ago listening to Graham McNeill’s A Thousand Sons, showing it from the side of the Legion of Magnus the Red. And given this, the official blurb from the Black Library, one could hardly blame me:

Yup, that sounded exactly like the other-side-of-the-story of A Thousand Sons, a story I enjoyed a great deal, even as I noted that I felt that McNeill’s destruction scene- the very climax of the book- wasn’t quite the emotional payoff I had been hoping for.

Would this be the opportunity to see the tragic event handled with perhaps just a touch more pathos and gravitas? It was a hope.

But not only was Prospero Burns not about the actual destruction of Prospero, but the Thousand Sons themselves barely registered for much of the book!

Too Clever by Half

So that last statement was technically true, but not exactly. And because this is a book that’s almost impossible to discuss without spoilers2, I’m gonna just plow on. If you’ve never read the story and intend to, you might consider hitting the eject button now.

So sure… it’s not “about” the actual destruction of Prospero, and indeed the event is rather anticlimactic at the very end of the book. But as it turns out, the Thousand Sons were very much a part of the story all along- you just had no way to know that until some of the plot twists and machinations begin to be unveiled.

Prospero Burns was Dan Abnett’s third foray into the Heresy, not counting the terrific Blood Games short story from the Tales of Heresy anthology (book ten). His first, Horus Rising, was a very straightforward opening salvo while Abnett dipped into his bag of tricks for Legion. Propsero Burns strongly takes after the second, but unlike Legion this one didn’t feel quite as lean or focused. It meanders more, takes its time to get to its reveals, and dare I say feels a bit more self-indulgent.

Again, not every book is for every person, and that by no means makes it a ‘bad book.’ I often bring up Marc Collins’ Eidolon: The Auric Hammer as an example of this. I didn’t love the book, finding it a bit too uneven and introspective a tale for my liking- only to see it get voted as the runner-up for the Black Library Book of the Year for 2024 on Warhammer Community.

Wet Leopard Growls

Up until Prospero Burns, I’d thought the readers a bit harsh on Abnett for the term “wet leopard growl.” Sure it’s an unusual phrasing, I thought, but that hardly warrants it getting the full-fledged meme treatment. That opinion changed once I’d listened to it. Repeatedly.

Abnett uses the word “leopard” twenty times in the novel, with sixteen specifically being “wet leopard growl.” With the book being a little over 400 pages in length, you’re getting leoparded every two dozen pages or so. I chuckled the first time I heard it… aha, so here’s where it came from!… and very quickly after that I’d cringe each time I heard it.

Fair play to Abnett, I’d only later learn that he was aiming for something very specific here. The term perfectly evoked the timbre and resonance he was going for in Space Wolf voices, reflecting their feral and predatory nature, and as he shared in a fantastic interview3 with Mira Manga the aim was to employ the term with enough frequency that it faded from active notice in the reader. Abnett compared it to the word “said,” which is employed so frequently that it’s effectively invisible4. Abnett acknowledged that he’d failed in the effort, but it’s interesting to learn that there was a deliberate purpose here even if it didn’t work.

The Falling Sickness

Here’s something else I was amazed to learn, that Abnett had some health struggles that came to a head during the writing of Prospero Burns.

As he wrote in the book’s Afterword in 2014:

Where it gets really fascinating (in a life-imitates-art-imitates-life kind of way) is how this episode in Abnett’s life gets baked into Prospero Burns. Prospero Burns is a story very much about the unreliability of memory, as experienced by its main character Kasper Hawser. Abnett, again:

Thankfully, Abnett was diagnosed and medicated, and at least as of 2014 he hadn’t had a recurrent episode. By the same token, he does note that the medication has altered some essential part of himself.

Then again, this person is the one who gave us that magnum opus, Hive, so I think we’re doing pretty well, Dan.

Glad you are, too.

Giving Voice

This is my fourth exposure to Gareth Armstrong since I’ve begun the Audio Impressions review series, having first profiled him in depth for Mike Lee’s Fallen Angels. He’s like a comfortable old friend at this point, enjoying him for his strengths and happy to look past anywhere he might fall a bit short.

Those strengths and weaknesses are the same as ever. A terrific reading voice, but a rather limited character range:

Indeed, Prospero Burns actually worked to limit the demands on Armstrong’s range. Hawser does a great deal of the book’s talking, with the cast of Space Wolves characteristically dour men of fewer words.

Bits n’ Pieces

Just one here as we’re already at full-review length. This is the first audiobook I’ve consumed that I wish I’d enjoyed on paper, instead. That’s no fault of Armstrong’s, who as I noted above did a fine job with what he had to work with here.

Rather, it’s more a testament to the story Abnett wanted to tell- or, more accurately, how he told the story he wanted to tell.

Robert Rath’s extraordinary The Infinite and the Divine has a section in it where Orikan and Trazyn are standing before a tribunal and, unbeknownst to Trazyn, Orikan keeps traveling back in time to try and rig the judge selection.

It’s not immediately apparent in the story, but as Rath essentially rewrites the same section multiple times in succession there’s a moment of realization when you, the reader, figure out what’s happening. Having both read the novel and listened to the audiobook recently5, this sequence is a significantly better experience in print. The audio can do a lot of things as well as print… can do a few things perhaps even better on occasion… but what it can’t do well is convey any kind of ‘meta’ writing.

The same thought applies here.

As Abnett grew more and more visually expressive in the story, rewriting the same passage over and over as Hawser’s recollections sharpened, the audio format was less and less effective a medium. Far more often than the use of “wet leopard growl” were the times I wish I was reading the book in print just so I could flip back a page or two and see what Abnett was doing.

I think I’d have enjoyed the book a great deal more.

With everything I’ve learned about Abnett and Prospero Burns, it’s only a matter of time before I give this one a second chance. In the meantime if you’re approaching it for the first time yourself, I definitely recommend the paper experience.

The Hall Monitor is published every other week, the same day as the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame drops on Tabletop Battles (here’s today’s). A cross between a director’s cut and a backstage pass, it’s a look behind the scenes at the Hall of Fame project.

Every word you’re reading now… every article you’ve read or seen on the Warhammer Wordforge… every piece or review I’ve written for Tabletop Battles (formerly Goonhammer)… it all springs from one single font of inspiration.

It might surprise you to learn that it’s not Warhammer. It’s cancer.

Strap in for a personal one today, folks. If getting hit with an involuntary trauma-dump right off the bat isn’t what you' signed up for, that’s okay, I get it. Skip down to The Vox Populi Top Twenties below- I’ve made a really cool change this week to the format of the Top Twenties (note the plural!) that you won’t want to miss.

My Warhammer discovery story came about fifteen years ago, back when I was playing Aussie Rules football. One of my teammates, upon learning I was a sci-fi and fantasy buff, was eager to share the gospel of the grim and the dark. He let me borrow three of his omnibus books, and so I became acquainted with Eisenhorn, Gaunt’s Ghosts, and Commissar Ciaphas Cain.

I remember reading them, and I certainly remember enjoying them. I especially remember sitting on the front stoop of the family cottage in Cape Cod, on vacation with my girlfriend devouring Eisenhorn greedily in the fading light of the evening as she read beside me.

All that reading put Warhammer firmly on the map for me, and I’d go on to read plenty more. The books occupied a small corner of my personal library, with me adding a new one every great now and again when the mood stuck. I wasn’t so much a fan as I was an enjoyer, and I enjoyed a great many different books and genres.

As for the girlfriend, well, Jimi was a keeper. A couple years later, in an event we’d both anticipated from the first day we met, we made it official. Sometimes you just know.

A lot of this followed. In addition to the wonderful two she brought with her from her first marriage, we continued to be blessed with children. First Liam in 2010, then the twins Declan and Lorcan, followed by Ruari and finally Moira.

I’d scarcely had time to pick up a book, and when I did- sitting out on the back porch listening to the tree frogs and crickets wake up at the end of a long day, it was usually a history. Fiction was a rare treat, so my Warhammer books sat in good company on the shelf with all the other ones I seldom touched.

In 2013 we became FLGS owners, buying our town’s comic and game store from its previous owner. No Warhammer, I’m afraid. Games Workshop required a minimum buy-in of $2000 of stock, and situated between two larger markets (Louisville and Lexington) there just wasn’t enough local demand to justify it (though we’d stock the tabletop games and RPG’s from Fantasy Flight, who held the license back then).

Between my day-job career and the shop I was putting in 80-hour weeks. When we learned we were once again expecting (this time our daughter, Ruari), I realized I had to pick two: my career in health insurance, a game store owner, or a father to my kids. A bittersweet decision but not a difficult one, we sold the game store.

Life continued as it does. She got prettier, I got older.

In 2023, we got our big break. She’d landed her dream job, a doula at a Louisville hospital helping bring babies into the world. She’d been freelancing for years, but this was like getting called up to the majors. The following year, we moved to Louisville, and in one of those happy little accidents life can bring, we found ourselves just up the road from the Warhammer store.

It was full steam ahead, things were looking up for the Kirkmans…

…until they weren’t.

A saying that’s kept us going these last couple years is, God gives you what you need, not what you want. We certainly didn’t want Jimi’s job to go away at the hospital, but when a few months later she found a lump on her breast we were grateful she’d had time to grieve the loss of it and ready herself for the battle ahead. The battle of her lifetime.

Jimi’s energy is infectious. She walks into a room full of strangers and leaves a room full of friends. Me, I find a reason not to go in at all, happier to read and write in quiet and relative solitude1. She is vibrant, gregarious, disarming, alive. Not one to ever do anything in her life by halves, she wouldn’t be content with just garden-variety, run-of-the-mill cancer. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Instead, she picked the rare and aggressive triple-negative inflammatory breast cancer.

Great choice, babe.

Those early days are very much a blur. The shock of it all, slowly giving way to dread, punctuated with bouts of sorrow- but gradually becoming replaced by resolve. It was unimaginable that something with such long odds could be happening to us, but then it has to happen to someone, right?

It was in those early days, her first round of chemotherapy in Autumn of 2024, that I’d picked up a bit of light reading at the Warhammer store. Something to take my mind off things, some book called the Night Lords Omnibus by some guy named Aaron Dembski-Bowden, whoever that was. Very casually invested in Warhammer, all I knew about the Night Lords were that they were the edgelord legion, the one preferred by nine out of ten Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails fans2. All the same, the book came highly recommended by the store manager and the sheer length of it meant I’d have something to keep my mind occupied for awhile.

And so I’d sit next to my wife, with an IV full of chemicals in her arm as she drifted in and out of sleep, and read about Talos Valcoran, Septimus and Octavia, and the rest of First Claw. Page after page, IV bag after IV bag.

Week after week. Story after story.

When I talk about the three great books I’ve read in my life, it’s never just because they’re terrific reads. It’s because they meant something profound to me in that time that I read them. Frank Herbert’s Dune showed me what depths science-fiction could explore. Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, prompted a change in the way my inner self thought and acted, giving me the focus and awareness to tame the terrible rages of my adolescence. And about R. A. Wilson’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy, well, perhaps the less said the better^fnord.

The Night Lords Omnibus takes a comfortable place amongst them now, opening up as it did a place of refuge for me at a time I needed it the most. I went from being an occasional reader back to being the voraciously daily one of my youth and young adulthood, always having an answer for ‘what are you reading right now?’

Night Lords then opened the way to reading Krieg, to reading Bloodlines, to reading every other Warhammer book I’ve read since then. Opened the way to delighting in building miniatures after a lifetime of disinterest. Opened the way to writing about my hobbies for the first time in a decade3, to then getting paid to write about them again… and to once more founding a site of my own.

Is this at least in part a trauma-induced escapist hyperfixation? Of course it is. My wife wasn’t given cancer just so that I’d rediscover my love of books and stories, writing and publishing. I’d give all of it up if it took her sickness away without a moment’s hesitation, but that’s not how it ever works.

But gratitude is how you keep it together when life throws its worst at you, because screaming at it sure doesn’t do a damned thing.

Just last month I lost my job, my career of twenty years. It came out of nowhere, but it came at a time when my wife needed me more than ever. The cancer hasn’t been idle, you see, and despite the best efforts of the physicians and the pharmacology industry… its grown. And spread. Now Stage IV, she’s been accepted into a clinical trial at MD Anderson, which means trips to Houston, 800 miles away. Lots of trips. I’ve been able to focus on her and our family, and for that I am grateful.

She can’t drive anymore. Some days, she can barely walk. But she remains that beautiful, amazing soul I fell in love with two decades ago, and I am grateful for that, too. She’s a fighter, and if anyone can prevail through this it’s her. It would be easy to look at all the misfortunes that have befallen us these past two years, an annus horribilis that’s well overstayed its welcome, and lose sight of all the blessings we’ve been given over the years.

But that’s how you lose.

“I lived a life of repetition,” noted Septimus to Octavia in Soul Hunter, “another tiny cog in a vast, dull existence. But this? This is different. Every week will bring something new, something incredible, something that takes my breath away.”

“Rarely in a good way, I confess.”

So why did I choose to share all this today? I had occasion to reflect on my own Warhammer origin story this week as Soul Hunter entered the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame with the Class of 2010, an induction that surprised me with just how personal it somehow felt. It’s a book that has given me so much.

Life throws a lot of shit at us, it’s true… but it’s the other stuff that gets us through.

Thanks for reading. Now, let’s get to the fun stuff!

The Vox Populi Top Twenties

In one of those ‘so obvious, why didn’t I think of it sooner” moments, I realized that Fantasy was at risk of disappearing into oblivion entirely as more and more 30K/40K books came in with dominating board positions. Why not just… break them out seperately?

So going forward, we’ll have two different Top Twenties, one for each side of the Black Library.

30K/40K

Aaron Dembski-Bowden came storming onto the table this week, with a remarkably tight grouping. Soul Hunter, Helsreach, and The First Heretic all enter the table with an approval rating in the mid-80’s, while Dan Abnett’s Horus Heresy story Prospero Burns squeaks in at the bottom.

Of course, that means we must bid farewell to those books who have departed. With the above four coming in, we say goodbye to Traitor General and Legion by Dan Abnett, as well as Graham McNeill’s Fulgrim.

Wait, you might say, how did four come in and only three go out? That’s because we’ve also removed the two Fantasy books that were previously on the combined table. They get their own now, and here’s how it looks.

Fantasy

It’s amazing to consider that the entirety of Fantasy’s top twenty belongs to only six different authors: Dan Abnett, William King, Mike Lee, Nathan Long, Kim Newman (writing as Jack Yeovil), and C. L. Werner. Of these, only Long has yet to be inducted into the Hall, but it represents quite the body of work- particularly around the characters Gotrek and Felix, and Malus Darkblade.

The divide in popularity between the two halves is also evident in the approval ratings. To crack into the Fantasy Top Twenty you can sneak in with less than half, but you need to be in the top three-quarters for 30K/40K.

Hall Winners Leaderboard

Finally, with the bounty of new inductees this time around there’s been some movement on the Leaderboard:

Extra special congratulations to Steve Lyons, who made his Readers Hall of Fame debut!

Thanks for reading as always, for I am grateful too for all your support! And if you haven’t already, please don’t forget to vote for your choices in the Class of 2011!

It’s time to finally start talking about White Dwarf.

In the last eighteen months that I’ve been covering the Black Library beat (first and currently on Tabletop Battles/Goonhammer (TTB), but increasingly so here on the Warhammer Wordforge), it’s been the red-headed stepchild, occasionally mentioned but generally neglected.

In my defense, it’s an oddly-shaped puzzle piece. I can do a review of a Theme Week of short stories and that’s a full article on TTB, but a single short story in White Dwarf is too small to carry a review on its own. But that was before the Wordforge, and here I can cover anything I want. I’ve been covering Warhammer audiobooks with Audio Impressions, WarhammerTV animations with Show and Tell, and now- at last- that corner of the Black Library that lives within the pages of Games Workshop’s monthly periodical will get the spotlight they deserve with White Dwarf Stories.

One Caveat

I’m a subscriber to the magazine, which means two things. First, mine arrive with a beautiful, full-art cover available only to subscribers. And second, I get them two weeks later than everyone else.

Now we’ll add a third to that: I’ll be seeing out my current year’s subscription and then reverting back to in-store purchasing, so that I may be more ‘current’ with covering new issues’ stories. But for now, we’ll have a small delay built into White Dwarf Stories for any tales in the current issue.

Now, let’s talk horror!

Black Sails on the Horizon

Tattered Sails, by Jake Ozga, appeared in the October 2025 issue of White Dwarf (#517). An Age of Sigmar horror story, this was a Hallowe’en treat for readers from an author who has (this far) largely flown beneath the radar.

Tattered Sails puts us in amongst a Freeguild company that’s been assigned to keep watch from a beachside fort somewhere on the coast of Shyish, the Realm of Death. It’s an isolated and miserable posting for Tomas and his fellow Five Bars Artillery Regiment soldiers.

Foggy and grey, a constant, drizzling rain has turned the ground to sandy mud, and the nightly chill has settled into their bones. To make matters worse, Tomas has begun having unsettling visions, and his sketchbook- the one he’s used like an amateur naturalist to capture the flora and fauna of places he’s been posted- now contains strange drawings he has no memory of doing.

“This place,” he observes, “could grind a man down.”

Tasked with keeping watch for raiders, they are entirely unprepared for what arrives one day on tattered black sails in a still wind.

For who could be prepared for that?

Going on Pilgrimage

This is a terrific slice of Age of Sigmar horror, in a setting that’s perfect for it. Ozga clearly has spent time on a coast, his descriptions so evocative that it brought back childhood memories spent on that little slice of heaven on Earth known as Cape Cod.

Ozga is terrific with the economy of the short story here, using the space allotted him to full advantage. Just enough characterization to give us a sense of the players without padding out the length; just enough time spent before the climactic moment to give the telling body and balance; and just enough of a wickedly evocative finale to see the story out in a wonderfully unsetting conclusion. It’s very well written, unsettling and atmospheric, easily one of the stronger Age of Sigmar shorts I’ve had the occasion to enjoy.

Writer Ozga landed his first two Black Library tales in 2019- and both, interestingly enough, set in Shyish. A look at his background shows him well-positioned to bring Shyish to life, he was one of the principals (Bruticus) behind the Ex Profundis website:

Interestingly, Ex Profundis appeared to sunset right as his involvement with the Black Library was beginning to take shape. “I got in through open submissions, Ozga related to Track of Words, “I submitted the usual Space Marine sample and was then asked to try submitting something for the horror imprint instead, and to try it in my own style, my own voice.”

And so he did, with Supplication soon appearing in the Warhammer Horror anthology, Invocations.

Since that time Ozga has existed as a bit of a fringe figure, with contributions largely limited to inclusions in subsequent Horror-imprint anthologies. With both Crime and Horror appearing to have come to an end, one has to wonder where these stories might be able to squeeze in. Indeed, it may well be the case that Tattered Sails was a submission from this period of time that the Black Library didn’t manage to find a home for, making an October White Dwarf a good opportunity to move it to published status.

That’s a shame. Ozga is terrific at this, with Michael at Track of Words having similar words of praise in his review of Ozga’s second Black Library story, Skull Throne.

Here’s to hoping we see more of him.

Bits n’ Pieces (Spoilers)

• For whatever reason, with a name like Tattered Sails for a story set on Shyish, I was expecting a Death ship, but that’s not what we get here at all. Instead, the force that visits the hapless Freeguilders belongs to the minions of the Grandfather.

• Ozga packs in the usual stuff we associate with Nurgle- the rot, the eviscerated bodies, the gore- but there’s a lushness to the writing that really underlines the horror of it. By the time you get to the story-ending “banquet,” you know poor Tomas has passed the point of no return- but it’s impossible to look away.

With much of my contemporary reading in service to writing reviews, audiobooks are my chance to “play catch-up” on the older catalogue of Black Library books. What you will find in this occasional feature is neither a full, formal book review nor a simple blurb, but rather something comfortably in between: impressions.

In a previous Audio Impressions, I went to bat for some of the Heresy’s less-loved books I’ve already come across (including James Swallow’s assassin-fueled heist-style adventure). For the Heresy’s “missteps,” I wondered, could it just be a matter of placement?

…the first five books of the Heresy are one hell of an act to follow. And in these, the Horus Heresy itself is the story. The tale of the Warmaster’s rise and fall is riveting fiction, and the overall success of the series is due in no small part to its incredible kickoff. Little surprise that Horus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames, The Flight of the Eisenstein, and Fulgrim have all been inducted into the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame. These tales cover monumental events, ones which resonate all the way through to the 41st millennium.

For other stories like Battle for the Abyss, though, the Horus Heresy is less the story and more the setting. In this Ben Counter’s novel might have suffered somewhat from heightened expectations, and I would put Nemesis right there alongside it. Readers were looking for the Sturm und Drang of the earlier books, and instead were getting some of the smaller-focus stories that helped make up the weave of the Heresy’s tapestry rather than being whole sections of it on their own.

Well, suffice it to say that The First Heretic does that hypothesis no disfavor, being perhaps the most consequential book (lore-wise) since the original trilogy. That’s not selling books like A Thousand Sons or Legion short, but rather a reflection that those stories- filled with the mythologies of the universe as they were- were largely contained to a single Legion.

And yes, while The First Heretic is inarguably the origin story of the Word Bearers, it is so much more than just that. Little surprise, then, that it is one of the twelve selections of the new Horus Heresy Saga reprint series.

The Story

In A Thousand Sons, Graham McNeill built up the Emperor’s case against Magnus, using the ruination of their homeworld Prospero that resulted as the book’s climactic event. Here, Aaron Dembski-Bowden instead puts the legion’s chastisement at the beginning. Both the Thousand Sons and Word Bearers were humbled for daring to look for meaning in the supernatural, and the wages reaped by each was damnation and destruction.

For the Word Bearers, who took great pride in bringing new human civilizations not only into Compliance with the Imperium but also in fostering their faith and spirituality, this arrived as the obliteration of Monarchia, crown city of Khur and pearl in the Legion’s crown. Its population, devoted in worship to the divinity of the Emperor of Mankind, given seven days to evacuate by the Ultramarines before the commencement of orbital bombardment.

As with the Council of Nikaea, the Emperor likes to issue his correctives in person, and Lorgar and his Legion are summoned to the ruins of Monarchia, there to kneel in its ashes as one. The Emperor upbraids Lorgar for wasting time on the hollow pursuit of faith rather than devoting that time to bringing more worlds into Compliance. The Legion, he notes, is one of the most populous in number but slowest at accomplishment and consequently, he has failed in the aims of the Crusade.

Chastened, Lorgar falls into deep depression. Two of his closest advisors, First Chaplain Erebus and Kor Phaeron, First Captain (and Lorgar’s foster father) convince him that while the Emperor may have indeed rejected his own divinity, other gods must surely exist elsewhere in the cosmos if they had but the courage and means to find them. Renewed in hope, Lorgar launches a pilgrimage under the guise of the Crusade. To all observing (including the host of Custodes the Emperor assigned to keep watch on the Word Bearers), it would look like Lorgar is merely bringing worlds into the Imperial bosom, as commanded.

But in realty, the search is on for a deeper, more primordial truth. And when they find it- and find it they do- the fate of Lorgar and his Legion will be forever changed.

Giving Voice

The book is read by Gareth Armstrong, who we last saw just two books ago in Graham McNeill’s A Thousand Sons and was given a full profile just before that for his work on Fallen Angels by Mike Lee. Here’s what I’ve observed from his work before:

But whereas some narrators will use accents to differentiate characters, Armstrong instead relies more on pitch and cadence- with much more mixed results. Zahariel and Nemiel in particular often sounded unimposing, at times more like a short-of-breath old man shouting rather than a towering transhuman warrior issuing decisive battlefield commands. I suspect Armstrong might be a better fit for books with a smaller cast of characters, and given the breadth of his body of work in the Heresy I’ll have a number of opportunities to put that theory to the test.

Armstrong here, too, delivers a solidly serviceable performance. His strongest feature still tends to be his default reading voice, which carries plenty of the dramatic gravitas needed for telling tales of this scope. How you feel about his Lorgar probably depends on how you feel about Lorgar to begin with. As with Magnus, Armstrong doesn’t try to imbue his Primarchs with deep or resonant vocalizations to elevate their stature. Rather, both sound surprisingly ordinary- though at least with Magnus, Armstrong gave him an air of certainty and confidence befitting The Smartest Person in the Room.

Lorgar, however, by contrast seemed small, almost weak at times. Sure he had his moments, such as when he stands up to Guilliman and Malcador in the ruins of Monarchia, but overall I found the character to be largely uninspiring. To be fair, much of that comes down to ADB’s portrayal- Armstrong, after all, only reads what’s in front of him- but more than once I found myself wondering how an entire Legion of Word Bearers chose to follow this guy into damnation1.

One stylistic choice Armstrong made was pitch-perfect: the sibilant whispering he adopted for the voice of the demon Raum, who sets up shop inside the body of Argel Tal. It’s perfect not only for the character, but also because it made it immediately clear which character was speaking- not always entirely evident otherwise given Armstrong’s lack of vocal differentiation.

Bits n’ Pieces (Spoilers)

• This was an excellent book overall, and it’s not hard to see why it’s so highly rated by the Warhammer community. What’s really fascinating is how quickly Dembski-Bowden hit his stride in the Black Library. His debut novel, Cadian Blood, arrived in 2009 and was the year’s only inductee to the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame. 2010 brought with it not only The First Heretic, but Helsreach as well.

• If I’m really picking nits, though, I don’t think ADB did full justice to the Word Bearers. I expected a lot more philosophical reasoning from this most spiritual of all Legions, a genuine depth to their faith that would slowly unravel before reforming into the path of damnation. For all Lorgar, Kor Phaeron, and Erebus trumpeted about the contribution faith has made to the evolution of mankind (which is one of their central tenets- that all human cultures have instinctively reached for something greater than themselves), never once did ADB note that one of the most significant is that it impels the individual to strive to be better than they are. The benefits of religion seemed limited to the external rather than the intrinsic.

• I kept waiting for this, because I wanted to see how they squared that with the obvious evil of the so-called primordial truth. It never happened, as the characters tended to use faith as a synonym for religion. We get why the Word Bearers developed a spiritual void that throws their entire raison d’être into crisis. Far less clear is why the embrace of Chaos was so uncritical that it blew past the border of gullibility.

• I’m probably expecting too much here from IP tie-in fiction. I gave David Annandale a lot of credit for even trying conversion dialogues in his recent Word Bearers novel Apostle (reviewed here), but those tended to fall well short of the mark as well. To date, the only book I’ve found that really seems to touch the essence of faith is Steven B. Fischer’s Broken Crusade- the first Warhammer book I ever reviewed for Tabletop Battles (then Goonhammer).

• While this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the “lost Primarchs” of the 2nd and 11th Legions- they’ve been at least hinted at before- that bit of lore gets a bit more fleshing out here. That’s a nice get for ADB who, don’t forget, is the new guy in the writer’s room at this point.

• Lots of great little touches in the story throughout. You could have written an entire novella out of Incarnadine, the Conqueror-class battle-automata belonging to the Legio Cybernetica that was adopted by the Word Bearers. A sequence where his handler, Xi-Nu 73, tries to figure out how his brain was spontaneously rewiring itself was almost criminally underdeveloped- a fantastic idea that’s given a brief mention and never expanded upon.

• Finally, while ADB is perhaps best-known for his humanizing treatment of the Night Lords, he truly excels at bringing out the human character in characters that may otherwise be harder to redeem. He makes little secret that Argel Tal will ultimately betray his friend, Aquillon of the Custodes, and he weaves in the tension throughout the latter half of the book to terrific effect. For all you know it’s coming, it’s still heartbreaking when it happens.

I’m continuing on with the Heresy, with Abnett’s Prospero Burns already underway. With a road trip back to Houston this week (16 hours, one-way), I’ll have plenty of time for listening. Thanks for reading!

The Hall Monitor is published every other week, the same day as the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame drops on Tabletop Battles. A cross between a director’s cut and a backstage pass, it’s a look behind the scenes at the Hall of Fame project.

Another installment of the Hall has come up on Tabletop Battles, and unfortunately the issues we’re experiencing with the site upgrade continue to persist. For those coming to this cold, here’s the quick background. We at Tabletop Battles pulled the trigger on a rebrand, changing from the long-established but now dubious Goonhammer. As part of that, we opted for a full site overhaul, from appearance on the front-end to performance on the back.

In many ways, it’s been a tremendous success. Website operations are like prayers of the Tech-Priests to me, interesting in their effects but well beyond my understanding beyond that. I know that it’s a much more efficient operation, and that’s good enough for me.

On the other hand, a few things got ‘knocked loose’ with the site upgrade, one of them being polling. That means for three cycles in a row, now, we’ve had to host the polling here on the Dispatch. And for the past two, voting has been significantly down, close to a 75% decrease.

This would make sense if we just weren’t getting the traffic, but the metrics show that plenty of folks are reading the Ballot pieces.

They’re just not voting as much.

Isolating the Variable

For the avoidance of doubt, we still get enough activity to make it a legitimate exercise; I’d be a lot more concerned if voting had fallen to the single digits. And looking at historical patterns, the lower vote count isn’t having a particularly distortionary effect on the results. But it’s curious.

The other part of the equation is that we’re not necessarily comparing apples to apples. The changeover in Tabletop Battles coincided with a change in the pace we are conducting the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame initiative. Previously each article covered half a year, mainly because I worried that by doing a full year and giving folks more than two dozen books to vote on, it might cause fatigue to set in.

Eating a slice of cake is great. Eating a whole cake? It gets gross pretty quickly.

So is it the extra step of clicking over to the Dispatch? Too many books at once? I have no way to know, of course, but I’d welcome anyone’s opinion. This project overall has been a runaway success, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to improve!

UPDATE: Problem solved?

Shortly after this went live and I’d posted the Tabletop Battles article on Reddit, someone raised their hand. u/Kasrkin noted that he has been unable to vote since we moved voting to Substack. While he can see the voting on the Dispatch, he can’t click on anything to register his choices.

This led to some additional research which appears to have resulted in an answer. TLDR: Per Substack’s settings, polls only have two options. Option one is, only subscribers can vote. Option two is, only paying subscribers can vote.

Which, let’s be honest, kinda sucks. I want subscribing to be something people want to do, not something that they are compelled to do. I’ve submitted a request to the developers to add “open polling” to the list of options, but who knows if/when that will ever be looked at.

In the meantime, I can only apologize to anyone who repeatedly ran into a brick wall when simply trying to cast a vote. With no sign of a fix on TTB’s site, I’m going to look into a Plan C for next time.

The Vox Populi Top Twenty

If you needed a visual display of the perceived lack of standout books in 2009, you could certainly do worse than this week’s updated Top Twenty.

That’s because there’s no update.

By this point, a book needs to get a 73% positive vote in the public polls to get their foot in the door, and none of them last time came close. Cadian Blood, the one book that made it into the Hall? Only 48%- with 44% of respondents choosing the No Opinion/Abstain option.

That means our Top Twenty is the same as last time:

Of course, the big news this time is whose name was added for the first time to the Winners’ Leaderboard.

Here are all of the Black Library novels published in 2010 for your voting consideration. Which books do you feel have “cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance” worthy of induction?

Reminder: this is not a knockout competition. You can vote in as many books as you feel are worthy of inclusion- every book that ultimately gets enough votes will be inducted! Polls will close at the end of day on Saturday, 6 JUNE.

UPDATE 5/30: Some readers have expressed an inability to vote in the polls. With the help of u/Kasrkin on Reddit, I think we’ve figured out why. Substack only lets Subscribers vote in polls. I think that’s a terrible “feature.” YES, it’s true that subsrcibing to the Dispatch is free, but it’s an extra hassle for people just wanting to vote. I’m going to look into a Plan C for the next time.

The Ballot: The Class of 2010

Warhammer 40,000

Book: Black Tide, by James Swallow

Summary: “Having prevented the ferocious Bloodfiends from bringing disaster to their homeworld of Baal, the Blood Angels go in search of the renegade who almost destroyed them - Fabius Bile. Tracking the Chaos traitor down to his secret base on Dynikas V, a world beset by alien tyranids, the Blood Angels find horrors more terrible than even they can imagine. And with a sample of primarch’s blood in his possession, the Blood Angels must discover what nefarious plot Fabius Bile is bent on.”

Note: Book 4 in the Blood Angels series.

Book: The Chapter’s Due, by Graham McNeill

Summary: “War is unending in the life of a Space Marine. After defeating tau forces, Captain Uriel Ventris of the Ultramarines has returned to the Chapter's homeworld of Macragge, but there is little respite. The Ultramarines are thrust back into battle, and this time the enemy is the Chapter's greatest nemesis. The traitorous Iron Warriors, led by renegade Warsmith Honsou, have gathered together a massive and brutal warband. Their target is the realm of Ultramar. Their objective is total annihilation. It is a final showdown between legendary Space Marines, and Uriel Ventris must take on the might of Honsou if he is to save his Chapter's homeworld.”

Note: Book 6 in the Chronicles of Uriel Ventris.

Book: Dark Creed, by Anthony Reynolds

Summary: “Dark Apostle Marduk faces challenges from within his own Legion as he wages war with the White Consuls. Harnessing the power of the Nexus Arrangement, a powerful Necron device, Marduk can turn the tide in the Word Bearer's favour. But just as the White Consuls are on the verge of defeat, an old enemy returns to throw the entire dark crusade into ruin. If Marduk is to survive and fulfil his ambition, he must defy an onslaught from the necrons, White Consuls and his own Legion.”

Note: Book 3 in the Word Bearers series.

Book: Dead Men Walking, by Steve Lyons

Summary: “When the necrons rise, a mining planet descends into a cauldron of war and the remorseless foes decimate the human defenders. Salvation comes in an unlikely form - the Death Korps of Krieg, a force as unfeeling as the Necrons themselves. When the two powers go to war, casualties are high and the magnitude of the destruction is unimaginable.”

Book: The Emperor’s Finest, by Sandy Mitchell

Summary: “Commissar Cain is called to duty once more, saving a governor's daughter from aplanet over-run by rebels. The uprising hides something far more sinister however - genestealer hybrids! The search for the source of the alien threat leads Cain to a drifting space hulk - a far safer place than beside the obsessed governor's daughter. But when the Reclamator Space Marines suffer devastating losses at the hands of the Great Devourer, Cain and his trusty aide Jurgen must go it alone. With the tyranids waking and a group of stow away orks on the loose, there are no safe places to run or hide, and Cain must use all his ingenuity and cunning to escape the space hulk alive.”

Note: Book 7 of the Ciaphas Cain series.

Book: Firedrake, by Nick Kyme

Summary: “When Chaplain Elysius of the Salamanders is taken captive by Dark Eldar, he faces a fight for survival at the hands of these cruel aliens. The Firedrakes of 1st Company attempt a daring rescue mission, but much more is at stake than the Chaplain's life. He holds the key to secrets buried beneath Mount Deathfire, secrets that could reveal the damnation - or salvation - of their home world. The Salamanders must penetrate the Port of Anguish and defeat the xenos threat there if they are to unveil the mysteries within the Tome of Fire. Meanwhile, Dak'ir battles to survive the brutal Librarian training, and in his visions lie an even darker future…”

Note: Book 2 of the Tome of Fire.

Book: Flesh and Iron, by Henry Zou

Summary: “There are reports of an uprising on the planet of Solo-Baston. Indigenous forces are rebelling against Imperial rule, led by the mysterious 'Dos Pares'. Amidst the conflict, the 31st Riverine Imperial Guard are dispatched to seek and destroy a vital piece of weaponry, but find themselves beset on all sides by hostile forces. And what they originally thought was simple tribal warfare soon reveals a much more sinister activity.”

Note: Book 2 in the Bastion Wars series.

Book: Helsreach, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Summary: “When the world of Armageddon is attacked by orks, the Black Templars Space Marine Chapter are amongst those sent to liberate it. Chaplain Grimaldus and a band of Black Templars are charged with the defence of Hive Helsreach from the xenos invaders in one of the many battlezones. But as the orks numbers grow and the Space Marines dwindle, Grimaldus faces a desperate last stand in an Imperial temple. Determined to sell their lives dearly, will the Black Templars hold on long enough to be reinforced, or will their sacrifice ultimately be in vain?”

Book: The Hunt for Voldorius, by Andy Hoare

Summary: “Captain Kor'sarro Khan of the White Scars is petitioned by his Chapter Master to hunt down and destroy the daemon prince Voldorius, a warleader of the renegade Alpha Legion, thus ending his reign of terror across the stars. Hunting the beast doggedly for over a decade, Kor'sarro finally brings Voldorius to battle on Quintus, a world that has totally given itself over to the Alpha Legion. Together with their Raven Guard allies, the White Scars must fight an entire planet if they are to slay the daemon prince.”

Book: Path of the Warrior, by Gav Thorpe

Summary:

Note: Book 1 of the Path of the Eldar.

Book: Redemption Corps, by Rob Sanders

Summary: “Led by the fearsome Major Mortensen, the Redemption Corps is a regiment of ultra-tough storm troopers sent to the deadliest warzones on missions of mercy and destruction. But when Mortensen comes to the attention of the deadly sorority of the Battle Sisters, he not only has an ork invasion to contend with but these fearsome warrior-fanatics too. Caught between the xenos and the fury of the Imperium, can the Redemption Corps fulfil their mission and survive into the bargain?”

Book: Rynn’s World, by Steve Parker

Summary: “When the ork hordes of Warlord Snagrod lay waste to the planet of Badlanding and wipe out the Crimson Fists sent to stop them, Chapter Master Kantor prepare a hasty line of defence on the Fists home planet of Rynn's World. Tragedy strikes when an errant missile destroys the Space Marine's Chapter monastery, killing most of their warriors. With a handful of Crimson Fists left, Kantor must fight the campaign of his life, to defeat Snagrod's orks and prevent his Chapter's annihilation.”

Book: Sons of Dorn, by Chris Roberson

Summary: “Having survived the Imperial Fists brutal recruitment regime, rivals Zatori, du Queste and Taloc advance to the ranks of Scouts. When they join the Imperial Fists in their action on Vernalis, a planet blighted by Chaos, their loyalty to the Emperor and their fortitude in battle will be sorely tested. They must overcome the power of the Roaring Blades Traitor Guard in order to ensure victory.”

Book: Soul Hunter, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Summary: “The Night Lords were once among the most potent forces of the Imperium, Space Marines who used fear itself as their weapon. Now, cast adrift from the Emperor's light and hunted as heretics after their monstrous betrayal, the Night Lords clad themselves in symbols of death and fight the Long War, bringing pain and terror to all who worship the corpse-god of Terra. A summons from Warmaster Abaddon sends these rebels on a dangerous journey that leads inexorably to a conflict with the Emperor's chosen warriors: the Blood Angels.”

Note: Book one in the Night Lords series.

The Horus Heresy

Book: The First Heretic, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Summary: “Amidst the galaxy-wide war of the Great Crusade, the Emperor castigates the Word Bearers for their worship. Distraught at this judgement, Lorgar and his Legion seek another path while devastating world after world, venting their fury and fervour on the battlefield. Their search for a new purpose leads them to the edge of the material universe, where they meet ancient forces far more powerful than they could have imagined. Having set out to illuminate the Imperium, the corruption of Chaos takes hold and their path to damnation begins. Unbeknownst to the Word Bearers, their quest for truth contains the very roots of heresy...”

Note: Book 14 in the Horus Heresy.

Book: Nemesis, by James Swallow

Summary: “After the horrors of Istvaan V, Horus declares outright war against the Imperium. In the shadows of the Emperor's Palace, powerful figures convene. Their plan is to send a team of assassins to execute the arch-traitor Horus and end the war for the galaxy of mankind before it's even begun. But what they cannot know is that another assassin is abroad already, with his sights firmly set on killing the Emperor.”

Note: Book 13 in the Horus Heresy

Book: Prospero Burns, by Dan Abnett

Summary: “The Emperor is enraged. Primarch Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons Legion has made a terrible mistake that endangers the very safety of Terra. With no other choice, the Emperor charges Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves, with the apprehension of his brother from the Thousand Sons home world of Prospero. This planet of sorcerers will not be easy to overcome, but Russ and his Space Wolves are not easily deterred. With wrath in his heart, Russ is determined to bring Magnus to justice and bring about the fall of Prospero.”

Note: Book 15 in the Horus Heresy.

Book: A Thousand Sons, by Graham McNeill

Summary: “Censured at the Council of Nikea for his flagrant use of sorcery, Magnus the Red and his Thousand Sons Legion retreat to their homeworld of Prospero to continue their use of the arcane arts in secret. But when the ill-fated primarch foresees the treachery of Warmaster Horus and warns the Emperor with the very powers he was forbidden to use, the Master of Mankind dispatches fellow primarch Leman Russ to attack Prospero itself. But Magnus has seen more than the betrayal of Horus and the witnessed revelations will change the fate of his fallen Legion, and its primarch, forever.”

Note: Book 12 in the Horus Heresy.

Warhammer Fantasy

Book: Bloodborn, by Nathan Long

Summary: “Ulrika, recently turned as a vampire, attempts to adjust to her new way of life. But when a fellow vampire is killed in Nuln, Ulrika and her mentor, Gabriella, are sent to investigate. Soon they find themselves facing danger from all sides as they attempt to solve a mystery that threatens the very existence of the Lahmian bloodline. How can they hope to destroy something with the power to kill a vampire?”

Note: Ulrika the Vampire book 1.

Book: Call to Arms, by Mitchel Scanlon

Summary: “Dieter Lanz is a young recruit to the 3rd Hochland Swordsmen, otherwise known as 'the Scarlets'. His regiment is called into battle when an orc army starts to rampage across the countryside, and when the Scarlets are defeated, Hochland is threatened with collapse. As a desperation measure, legendary general Ludwig Von Grahl is brought out of retirement - he is the last hope to stem the vicious green tide.”

Book: Grimblades, by Nick Kyme

Summary: “When orcs and goblins invade the Empire, the Emperor Dieter IV does nothing. While the other elector counts bicker, Prince Wilhelm is left to defend the Reikland alone. The Grimblades are among his brave army that opposes the greenskins. Amidst desperate war across the Empire and a plot to kill the prince, the Grimblades must survive this orc invasion and be victorious.”

Book: Nagash the Unbroken, by Mike Lee

Summary: “The powerful necromancer Nagash, having suffered defeat on the battlefield at the hands of the priest kings, is forced to lick his wounds in the mountains of Nehekhara. Over time he rebuilds his strength and finds new allies in the skaven, mutant ratmen that live beneath the earth. In his new lair of Cripple Peak, the necromancer discovers something dark and powerful - warpstone. Coveted by the skaven, this magical rock could make the evil Nagash unstoppable.”

Note: Book 2 of the Rise of Nagash.

Book: Sword of Justice, by Chris Wraight

Summary: “Fresh from the slaughter of the Emperor's enemies in the north, Ludwig Schwarzhelm, Emperor's Champion, is sent to Averland to oversee the inauguration of a new elector count. Beset by greenskins, and hampered on all sides by the ambitions of rival magnates, he is soon fighting to keep the fractious province together. But the rot runs deep. Powerful forces in Altdorf seem determined to see him fail, and suspicion falls on even his most trusted allies. When all is at its bleakest, the mark of Chaos and the full horror of his task is finally revealed. Alone, doubted by those closest to him, this will be Schwarzhelm's greatest ever challenge, one on which the destiny of the Empire itself depends.”

Book: Temple of the Serpent, by C. L. Werner

Summary: “After a series of failures, Grey Seer Thanquol is offered a chance to redeem himself by going to the island of Lustria to kill the Prophet of Sotek. Dogged by assassins and stranded in a foreign land of giant lizards, temple cities and endless jungle, Thanquol must use all of his cunning and magic if he is to come out alive.”

Note: Thanquol & Boneripper book 2.

Book: Warrior Priest, by Darius Hinks

Summary: “Warrior Priests are the holy crusaders of the Empire, crushing daemons, witches and heretics alike with righteous fury. These bold men wield death and damnation, with warhammers held high and the word of Sigmar on their lips. They provide the final bastion against the forces of darkness that would run rampant and forever turn the hearts of men. Jakob Wolff is one such warrior, and sets out to track down his brother, whose soul has been tainted by the Ruinous Powers. Family must be put to one side as he battles to prevent the Empire from sinking into Chaos, with only his strength of arms and the purity of his beliefs to call upon.”

Book: Wulfrik, by C. L. Werner

Summary: “Emerging from the mists, Wulfrik the Wanderer brings destruction and death everywhere he treads. Cursed by the Ruinous Powers, the champion must travel across the Old World and seek prizes to appease the forces of Chaos. But now dark forces plot against Wulfrik, and he must discover the enemy within or else his soul will be lost to the Dark Gods forever.”

Book: Zombieslayer, by Nathan Long

Summary: “Pursued by the dark forces of the necromancer Heinrich Kemmler, Gotrek and Felix arrive at Castle Reikgard, where they must hold out against the zombie hordes.The brutality of the siege is unremitting as wave after wave of horrific creatures, led by the undead champion Krell, attempt to take the walls. With supplies running low and morale sinking, the defenders begin to hear terrible whispers and endure awful nightmares. Suspicion and paranoia run rampant within the castle walls, and the defence seems impossible. Somehow Gotrek and Felix must unite the forces of the Empire against Kemmler's ever-growing legion until help arrives, or will the Slayer find his doom amidst the unrelenting undead?”

Note: Gotrek & Felix Book 12.

Thanks for voting, and we’ll have the results announced in two weeks’ time!

One of the fun side-effects of quarterbacking the Black Library Reader’s Hall of Fame has been how much more I’ve been exposed to Warhammer Fantasy. Back when I began at Tabletop Battles (formerly Goonhammer), I was much more focused on the 40K side of things. Back when I was frequently reading the genre, my IP fantasy flavor of choice had always been TSR’s, if that gives you any idea of what era I’m referring to.

But this past year has been a year of discovery, and one of the early audiobooks that made a real impression on me was William King’s Trollslayer. I’d grown curious about Warhammer Fantasy in general1 (and Gotrek & Felix in particular), and very quickly I realized how much I’d been missing out on.

Recently in one of the Black Library forums I haunt, someone gave a ringing endorsement of the audio version of The Daemon’s Curse, the first Malus Darkblade book from 2005 by Dan Abnett and Mike Lee. Curious both for the book as well as the opportunity to explore a narrator I hadn’t listed to yet, I gave it a go- and am delighted I did!

The Story

The Daemon’s Curse is essentially the origin story of Malus Darkblade, druchii (Dark Elf) highborn of the city of Hag Graef. Warhammer’s Dark Elves share very similar DNA as the Drow of Dungeons & Dragons, so the book’s endless scheming and betrayals had a very familiar ring.

We open with Darkblade bringing a huge wealth of slaves to court as tribute to his father, the ruler of Hag Graef. Betrayed along the way, he is forced to show up to court empty-handed, and his exposed position leaves him vulnerable to exile or assassination. Desperate to rebuild his power base, schemes with his half-sister to betray their brother, pilfering a relic that can lead the way to a temple in the frigid Chaos Wastes, home to immeasurable power and treasure.

But as perilous as the dangers of the North are, he must contend with the schemes and intrigues of his own warband at every step of the way. And perhaps worst of all, the realization that note every kill is worth the chase.

Giving Voice

The book is read by Andrew James Spooner, and his Malus is every bit as pitch-perfectly iconic as Keeble’s Gotrek. Like many of the other narrators in Warhammer fiction, he has a background rich with voiceover work for television and video games, as well as a smattering of live-actor credits to his name. For Warhammer, he’s lent his voice to Space Marine II, Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, Darktide, and Total War: Warhammer III in the gaming department, and more notably brought Hendrick Silverwolf to life in WarhammerTV’s Blacktalon series.

Spooner also has a rich involvement with the art of puppetry, including performances in Muppet Treasure Island and 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted. If you’ve never seen the former, take a moment to appreciate the opportunity to work alongside the likes of Tim Curry and Billy Connolly on one of puppetry’s biggest stages. Amazing.

While other narrators have the ability to alter their voice enough to represent an ensemble cast, Spooner’s range was noticeably more limited. The steely menace he imbued Malus with made the book, and while the remaining cast was less distinctive they still earned a passing grade. Fortunately, the book didn’t call for a large cast, and Spooner resisted the temptation to get too lost into vocalizing the Beastmen- something that would probably have sorely tempted Keeble.

Bits n’ Pieces (Possible Spoilers)

• Two things really elevated my enjoyment of The Daemon’s Curse, and were more than enough to see me toss an Audible credit at Bloodstorm, the second book in the series. The first was Spooner’s scintillating Malus, and the second was the way that Abnett and Lee wrote him. Malus is thoroughly wicked and irredeemable, an anti-hero in every sense of the word. But he’s not an unfathomable one, and the writers did an amazing job of giving you a window seat to his internal dialogue throughout the book.

• Often when we’re treated to a character’s internal workings, it’s in lengthy monologues. There are some benefits to that approach- for one thing, it affords the writer the ability to expand on their character and its backstory- but Lee and Abnett took a different approach here. Through frequent use of short asides and reactions, we’re continuously aware of Malus’s thoughts and suspicions. The face he presents others in the story is blustery and arrogant, so this ‘parallel track’ lets us see the paranoia and scheming that’s running constantly just beneath the surface. Superb work.

• This gives us a larger insight into Druchii society, where alliances are temporary, transactional, and often merely a prelude to eventual betrayal. Honestly, it must be exhausting to live like that, and The Daemon’s Curse highlighted that far better than any of the books set in Menzoberranzan that I can remember.

• Finally, huge marks to the writers for keeping this fantasy story heavily grounded. Hunger, thirst, injury, and fatigue are constant companions in the story, lending it a gritty realism that at times reminded me of the best elements of survival games.

This was a terrific detour into Fantasy, and while I’m headed back to the Horus Heresy next, it won’t be long before I check in with the next part of Malus’s story. Highly recommended.

So yesterday kicked off the Warhammer Skulls celebration for 2026, the tenth anniversary of the event no less! Although most of what was revealed were video games, there were a few things in there for those on the lookout for decorations and curios to accent their Black Library bookshelves.

Presenting this year was Alanah Pearce, an actress who has lent her voice to Cyberpunk 2077 (as Lana Prince) and is voicing one of the two playable characters in Boltgun II. Of course, to call this presenting is a bit generous- her aggregate screen time is about a minute or so in total, with the majority of the Skulls presentation consisting of commercials for the video games. That’s no shade on her- it’s always great to see a lifelong fan get the chance to contribute to this amazing universe of imagination!

And while I’ve certainly been known to enjoy Warhammer video games (Rogue Trader owns me), I was more looking forward to seeing offerings in the physical realm- and I was not disappointed.

Dark Heresy (Owlcat Games)

Skulls certainly kicked things off with the 800-pound gorilla, showcasing the incredible collector’s edition of the upcoming Dark Heresy. Owlcat Games’s previous offering, the aforementioned Rogue Trader, wasn’t too shabby in the extra goodies department. A character statuette was the centerpiece, with a banner, warrant of trade, an art book, and I guess stickers.

Owlcat’s landed a massive coup this time- though one not without some controversy. First up, an Inquisitor’s rosette.

If that’s metal, as I hope, then it’s a very nice curio to hang near the Eisenhorn section of your library and comparable to something Starforged might produce.

Next up there’s another companion statuette, this one of Ra’akhti, the Kroot tracker. I’m of two minds on this one. First, companion curios are usually only as good as the companion they’re depicting. Cassia was a fine character (albeit devastating in combat), but we don’t have much to go on with our future Kroot friend yet.

On the other hand, I think Owlcat would have knocked it out of the park if the statuette was of a Night Lord antagonist instead. Space Marines tend to be a little more exciting than Navigators and Kroot, but I’ll have to reserve final judgment for after I play the game.

Maybe Ra’akhti will surprise me.

Finally, the pièce de résistance…

Here it is, the thing that had me opening up the wallet the moment I saw it. A new Night Lords novella from none other than Aaron Dembski-Bowden. His Night Lords trilogy is legendary, widely considered one of the finest works the Black Library has ever produced. The last time we saw him was 2022’s Siege of Terra title Echoes of Eternity, and for him to re-emerge back with new tales of the 8th Legion is a marketing masterstroke.

It’s also a rather contentious one, and to help illustrate why it might help to look the Wu-Tang Clan.

Back in 2015, the band released their seventh studio release, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. This was no ordinary album, but rather an artistic experiment designed to spark discussion around the commodification of music and the value of fine art. Only a single copy was ever made, and it eventually sold at auction for two million dollars1.

As intended, the album drove a wider conversation about exclusivity versus availability in art. For some, it was “their album, their rules.” Others found the idea of “putting art behind an artificially high paywall” to be fundamentally objectionable. With Games Workshop releasing a novella whose availability is presently limited to those shelling out USD $289 for the Collector’s Edition2, it’s rekindled a similar divide.

Ultimately, I think a lot of the angst around this will be decided on the basis of what the Black Library does longer-term. If Dark Heresy: The Night Lords Story gets re-released as a standard offering, I’d expect most in the Black Library community to see the one in the Collector’s Edition the functional equivalent of a Special or Limited Edition.

If, however, it’s only ever available in this format, that will likely prove more problematic.

I can understand the radio silence about the matter from GW. If they came out and said that the book would also be available in a regular edition separate from the Dark Heresy Collector’s Edition, that would rather defeat the purpose of shifting preorders.

So for now, it’s anyone’s guess.

Wētā Workshop

I’ve talked about New Zealand’s renowned propmaker before, but was surprised to see some reveals during Skulls as I much more associate their offerings with the annual Relics merchandising festival.

I mentioned above the debate around fine art and money, and to be sure Wētā’s pieces are not easy on the wallet. Sure he’s $1900, but clocking in at around three feet tall the Abaddon the Despoiler isn’t a shelf centerpiece, he’s a room one.

Of course, Wētā has a range of smaller offerings (Abaddon is 1:6 scale), and the recently-released Boingrot Bounder is a 1:10 scale statuette that stickers for a much more affordable $179.

To date, though, if you wanted some lower-priced Wētā window-dressing for 40K, you were stuck with the (very nice) collection of miniature helms.

Not anymore.

For Skulls, we got the big reveal of the next two in the 1:10 statuette line, a Blood Angel Intercessor Sergeant (above), and the Dark Angel Veteran (below).

If these hold to $179, that puts them in the same price range as JOYTOY’s wearable helmet line. The Bounder was just under 7” of height, so these will offer a commanding presence for your book displays.

Yootooz

If all that’s a little too much grimdark and you prefer the lighter side of the hobby, we also were shown some upcoming vinyl collectibles from Canadian toymaker Yootooz coming up that are tied in with Dawn of War IV.

These have a cartoonish appearance similar to Funko! Pop figures, although a little less blocky (and a little more pricey). They released a series of them in the wake of Space Marine II a couple years ago, such as the Thousand Sons chonky boi below.

You can find the rest of their current crop of Warhammer offerings here.

Laced Records

Speaking of vinyl, these guys were a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention at the tail end of Skulls, so small that they didn’t even get a nod on the official Warhammer Community article. A shame, because they not only have a massive catalogue of Warhammer official soundtrack (OST) music available, but they’re producing some of it… in physical form.

Don’t worry, Laced, we got you.

In the age of digital media, something you can hold in your hand makes for a terrific display item for a collection. I kid you not, an official release on audiocassette would be a no-look-buy from me, just to be able to put that in the Museum.

While this wasn’t highlighted on the presentation, a quick look at Laced Records’ website showed that, indeed, they do have a Limited Edition pressing available for the Space Marine II soundtrack…and it’s beautiful.

$42 for a double-LP special pressing is very reasonable, and I’ll be keeping an eye to see what else they come up with3.

Anything Else?

I was hoping to see more Collector Edition’s for some of the video game offerings, but nothing else was unveiled for Skulls. That said, there was an interesting featurette from DK Books on the Art of Warhammer Video Games4, but that’s a book that’s been out awhile already so it wasn’t particularly breaking news.

Finally, the Warhammer merch site has a Skulls-tied 20% off sale happening for the next week.

And that’s a wrap for this year’s Skulls. By this time next year at least a couple of these items will be decorating my own library, and I look forward to seeing some of them captured in yours!

So who else likes lists? As a ‘history guy,’ seeing where something exists in a timeline helps give it additional context, so as I continue to look at WarhammerTV’s slate of animations1 it can be useful to know where each title stands.

Let’s kick things off today with a lay of the land.

The WarhammerTV Timeline

August 2021: Angels of Death

August 2021: Hammer and Bolter

March 2022: The Exodite

June 2022: Interrogator

November 2022: Angels of Death: Origins

March 2023: Iron Within (reviewed here)

May 2023: Blacktalon Season 1

September 2023: Pariah Nexus

March 2024: Broken Lance

August 2024: The Tithes

October 2024: The Enemy Without: A Deathwatch Vignette

March 2025: Blacktalon Season 2

May 2025: Kill Lupercal

September 2025: Sigmar’s Toll

February 2026: Adepta Sororitas: Penitence

May 2026: Aeronautica Imperialis

It’s worth nothing that some of these shows ran over the course of several months (or more- Hammer and Bolter only concluded last year with Return to Cadia). The date listed reflects the debut date, not the conclusion of the run.

Today’s offering, Pariah Nexus, is right in the middle era, and while it drew acclaim for its high-quality animation it was not without criticism from the community.

Unlike Iron Within, Pariah Nexus is a three-part series that in total clocks right in at 60 minutes. Being a trio of episodes rather than a single, long one means there’s some filler time in there with intro/outro content, but thankfully no “Previously On…” segments.

The Story

Once a beautiful shrine world, Paradyce III has been broken under the hammer of the Necron invasion. Its cities lay in ruins, strewn with the corpses of Necrons and Guardsmen and Astartes under grey skies roiling with the Stilling effect of Necron noctiliths.

The war is over, now there is only survival.

Sister Danica, a battle-weary Sororitas whose faith (and perhaps sanity) is fraying at the edges is accompanied by a Cadian Shock Trooper named Georgina. As the pair pick their way through a ruined cathedral they see an Astartes gunship on fire crash in the distance, and make their way towards it.

In the wreck, grievously injured Brother Sa’kan of the Salamanders is the sole survivor of the crash. Their original mission- linking up with other Astartes elements within the city- is obviously over before it began, so when he finds a group of human citizens hiding with nowhere to go, he vows to escort them to safety.

As these two groups come together, they quickly realize that they are being hunted by the Necrons. Illuminor Szeras, who has been conducting horrific experimentation on captured humans and turning the leftovers loose out onto the streets, sends a Deathmark assassin after the survivors.

Can the Imperials get the survivors to safety before their time runs out?

The Talent

Sadly, not even IMDb has the info for the director and writers of Pariah Nexus, with us instead seeing a credit for Warhammer Storyforge. On the upside, we do know a few of the folks who came together to make this one possible, including the three exceptional primary voice actors.

First off, this was produced by Mads Munk’s M2 Productions, based in Bangkok. This is the studio that’s also been behind Warhammer’s Blacktalon and Interrogator animations.

Georgina is voiced by Helen Keeley, who also is the voice of Lorai in Blacktalon. In addition, she’s appeared in Baldur’s Gate III (Nightsong), Horizon Forbidden West (Untalla), and Warhammer 40,000 Darktide (The Cut Throat).

Sister Danica, meanwhile, was given life by Hannah Melbourn. Melbourn has also appeared in an episode of Hammer and Bolter (Remiah), while also boasting video game talent work including Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, Path of Exile II, and the terrific We Happy Few.

No less a Warhammer pedigree, though, belongs to James Phoon. In addition to Brother Sa’kan, the Bridgerton supporting actor has contributed to Space Marine II (Astra Militarum Trooper), The Tithes (Sa’kan, again), and Total War: Warhammer III (Cathay Astromancer). He’s also been in games Crimson Desert and Black Myth: Wukong.

Animation was driven by Varut Bambat, who also did The Tithes the following year. He’s also done work for Lego Friends, Team Mekbots: Animal Rescue, and 2015’s Transformers: Robots in Disguise. Finally, music was supplied by Emmy-nominated composer Paul Edward-Francis, whose other Warhammer credits include The Tithes and Sigmar’s Toll.

Notes & Impressions (Spoilers Ahead)

• I watched this one with my daughter (12yo), and we loved it. While it’s not without its flaws, this had a very high production value relative to Iron Within and it showed.

• One of the community criticisms that I think lands well is that it was too short, or tried to do too much in its runtime. Pariah Nexus had a lot going on, from early exposition to three different narrative arcs, flashbacks, and even a big ol’ plot twist (which I’m going to spoil, be warned). This would have been better served as a single episode instead of three mini-ones, if only to get a little of that time back to put into the story. Slow down some of the rushed pacing (particularly at the end), and this could have easily filled out 75 minutes.

• All three of the primary characters (Danica, Georgina, and Sa’kan) were outstandingly written. The bickering between Danica and Georgina in particular were terrific, a Battle Sister and Cadian Shock Troop engaging in a frank and open exchange of ideas (and ideals) to pass the time as they traverse the ruins.

• Georgina had some truly cynical bangers. “Where has your faith led you,” she asks her companion at one point. “One of the last to draw breath in a land of the dead?” When Danica’s zealotry increasingly begins to blame the citizens of Paradyce III for not defending their world to the very death, Georgina counters, “without the faithful there is no faith.”

• The first thing we see of Georgina is a close-up of her purple eyes. Points for the show-don’t-tell approach here.

• I’m not a big Salamanders guy but Sa’kan was a terrific ambassador for their noted compassion. It’s not grounded in needless sentimentality and he’s nobody’s fool, going from praising a Guardsman he encounters to killing him an instant later when he realizes the threat. This kind of thing gets written as weakness all the time- the soft-hearted soldier lets the enemy get lethally close because he’s unable to get past his own mercy- but Sa’kan was pitch-perfect.

• Pariah Nexus was very beginner-friendly, so if you’re looking for an animation to show a friend curious about Warhammer you could do worse. It’s not that it spends a lot of time explaining itself, it’s that it doesn’t need to.

• The plot twist arrives in the third episode, where we learn that Shock Trooper Georgina had died in an earlier engagement with the Necrons and existed only as a figment of the unstable Sister Danica’s imaginings. I’d had a hunch (it was the lack of interaction between Georgina and Sa’kan that eventually made me start to wonder), but it worked very well and telegraphed how far Georgina had been impacted by battle strain without having to specifically call it out.

• With Sa’kan seemingly fallen, when Danica takes it upon herself to escort the refugees to safety (a thing she’d been vehemently against initially), it seemed like the story had gone full circle and I expected to see end credits roll on that high note, but…

• …instead we get an ending that reminded me of 2007’s The Mist in terms of last-scene bleakness. This is the grim, dark future after all.

And that’s Pariah Nexus in the books! One we can definitely recommend no matter what stage you’re in on your Warhammer journey. Happy watching!