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.
The region is littered with these old towers, like barnacles on a shipwreck, relics from the Age of Myth that stretch far away up the coast to the rough-etched places at the edge of the map, where any man foolish enough to stray would surely be swallowed whole by godbeast leviathans, or fall off the edge of the realm to drift forever in the sea between the stars.
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:
Ex Profundis is a collection of miniatures, art and fiction that explores the darker and stranger sides of the various Warhammer universes and games, particularly Warhammer 40k; Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar; Mordheim; Inquisimunda and Inq28. It is a celebration of grotesque creatures that live in dark places, of cosmic horror and twisted gods, and of those poor doomed souls that struggle in vain against insurmountable odds.
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.
The priest somehow has Tomas’ notebook, a tiny thing in his huge hands. He slathers drool onto his fingertips and turns the sodden pages carefully. ‘I see you are a man what has an appreciation for beauteous and wonderous things, and a man what has hopes and dreams: He tosses the little book aside. ‘Well, ye are in luck, my lovely boy, and ye won’t be needing those any more.