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.
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!
This list doesn’t include anything pre-WarhammerTV, which we’ll cover at a later date. Also, while I’m focused on animations at the moment, Show and Tell may at some point mix in some of the non-animated programs as well.
I had big problem with this series since we actually got to see a Kriegsman without his mask on and it was incredibly underwhelming. They just look like loyalist Alpha Legionnaires and it kinda killed the mystery for me. My headcannon remains that they look like Blood Angels... because I find the idea that their oath and customs forces them to hide their awesome (and potentially inspiring beauty) from those around them to be comfortably more grimdark than them just being ultra-loyalists with a chip on their shoulder and penchant for self-mutilation...