Category: Warhammer 40k

Inevitable

Oh no, not again...
Oh no, not again...

If you play Warhammer 40k, it’s inevitable that sooner or later Games Workshop will completely screw you over.

In my case this happened a few months back. I’d figured out a strategy that I reckoned would – if not actually defeat Fabes and his Spess Mehreens at least give them a run for their money. I even spent some money purchasing models to do it all proper and official like. Then Games Workshop changed the rules and invalidated the entire thing.

Dang.

(I’m not going to say what the strategy was as I’m sure Fabes would be interested in playing a game using it just to see what would have happened…)

And this month Games Workshop have done it again with the release of the new Necrons Codex.

Of course they haven’t screwed me over games-wise – I’m an IG Treadhead not a Necronphile. They’ve instead completely offended my stylistic sensibilities by changing the Necrons from a ruthless, emotionless killing machine serving the omnicidal agenda of millenia-dead star gods into a bunch of bickering empire builders who no longer want to harvest the galaxy, just rule it with a living-metal fist. The latest White Dwarf even features a conversation between a couple of Necrons. A fething conversation!

And the C’Tan! Now it turns out that the Necrons overthrew the C’Tan and split them into “shards”. Shards? What pantheon are we talking about here?

The Necrons used to represent an important aspect of the grimdarkness of the 40k universe – make deals with things more powerful that yourself and you’ll lose everything. Now you can apparently make deals with things more powerful than yourself, overthrow them, and walk away with cool metal bodies covered in bling. That’s not 40k. That’s not even close to 40k. But I suppose it does mean Games Workshop can sell a bunch more cool looking models, which is the main thing*.

Oh well, time to invoke the MST3K mantra….

* Yes, of course selling models is the main thing, it’s always been the main thing, and if Games Workshop wants to alter their IP to sell more models they’re perfectly within their rights to do so. It just hurts to have it shoved so obviously in our faces, that’s all.

Salvation’s Reach

Yeah, what the hell is going on with Yoncy?

It’s Halloween! Boo! Hooray! Boo! Hooray! Call me when you’re finished…

In addition to all the other exciting things that I did over the weekend I also picked up a copy of the latest Gaunt’s Ghosts novel, Salvation’s Reach. Since I’ve got nothing else to blog about right now I figured I’d share my thoughts about it in a sort of review (what? I bought it on Saturday, do you honestly think I wouldn’t have finished it by Monday? ;))

I’ll do my best to keep spoilers to a minimum, but caveat lector.

Well, first up, it’s a Gaunt’s Ghosts novel, which means I’m pretty much guaranteed to like it. As long as it’s by Dan Abnett and it involves vaguely-Celtic Ninja-Commandos firing off lasguns in people’s faces while making the occasional wisecrack, I’m a happy man. However there were a few things about Salvation’s Reach that meant I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as some others in the series.

The first is that we’re introduced to a lot of new characters. The Tanith First is finally getting reinforcements and that means a whole lot of new blood into the regiment (including of all things a… nah, I’ll leave you to read it yourself ;)). On top of that there’s new Commissars and an unexpected arrival from the past. This is well and good, but having introduced all these new people not a lot is done with them. The actual action focuses on the tried and true characters from the other books, which (while I certainly have no objection) leaves the book feeling unfinished. Like it’s Salvation’s Reach Part One rather than a book in its own right. I have no doubt that the newcomers will get their days in the sun in future novels, but it almost feels like Dan bought all these extras on board and then couldn’t think what to do with them.

Another problem for me was that unexpected arrival from the past. The whole thing feels like a cliche. To his credit Dan hasn’t used the character for cliched things, but having them there feels kind of trite – as if he’s running out of ideas so went with a really obvious one. And accelerated aging? Deux Ex Machina anyone? But hey, nothing heinous storywise has happened with the character yet, so we’ll just have to see how the series continues.

But enough about my nit-picking. What’s good about the book you ask? Two words. SPESS MEHREENS!!

Yes, the Astartes make their first on-screen appearance in Gaunt’s Ghosts (or at least the first I can remember, which is all that counts). I haven’t read any of Dan’s work with Space Marines before, but I really like what he’s done with them. Seen from the perspective of the Imperial Guard the Space Marines assigned to the mission are intimidating, frightening, and just alien. The way they talk, the way they behave and the way they think is so different that you get much more sense of just how changed a Space Marine is from an unaltered human. The Ghosts – who in the past have exchanged jibes with Chaos Magisters and taken out corrupted Dreadnoughts using only lasguns and cacti (seriously, Sound and Fury, look it up) are scared to even approach them. They’re the godlike sons of the Emperor, and they really seem like it.

There’s nothing wildly special about the plot, but it gets the job done. The MkRedshirts are present and accounted for (any newly introduced Ghost with a name starting with “Mk” will be dead within four pages – I guarantee it), there’s action, explosions, gunfights and heroic sacrifices. Shoggy Domor (one of my favourite second stringers) even gets some lines. All the ingredients are there for a good, action-packed read. Including, of course, character deaths.

That’s the big thing in any Ghosts novel of course, who (if anyone) dies? (well apart from MkTan, MkKonnor, MkMapp, MkSal, MkGillikudie…). Well, brace yourself, there are two character deaths in this one. One expected, one out of the blue. They’re both pretty heroic and Dan grants the unexpected character some closure before they go, which is good to see since they were another of my favourites. Some nice last words too, sticking the middle finger up at the enemies of the Emperor in true Ghosts fashion. Good, albiet sad, deaths.

Finally, there’s a throwaway reference to a mystery that’s been hanging around since Necropolis. It’s a small thing, such a small thing that I wondered if it was a typo in my copy, so I can’t tell if Dan’s preparing to drop a second shoe that’s been hanging since the Ghosts were at Vervunhive, or if he’s just having a laugh at something the editors missed. He doesn’t do anything with it in this book, but I’m intrigued as to what the next novel will bring.

So, that’s it. Salvation’s Reach. More of a His Last Command than a Necropolis, but still a bloody good read. Bring on the next one Dan! 😉

(PS: Also meant to say that someone obviously handed Dan a Forgeworld catalogue. The story is littered with Forgeworld spacecraft, Forgeworld vehicles, and Forgeworld Spess Mehreen boarding armour. Get a hold of your own copy and tick them off as they come! :))

(PPS: Oh yeah, there’s also a third character death, but it’s a minor character who probably had it coming. So there.)

CHOGM, Resin Skulls and Stephen Fry

An update

I think I promised a blog update this weekend didn’t I?

It’s kind of difficult to keep up with the blogging at the moment because the old black dog is nipping at my heels again – quite badly as a matter of fact. A lot of the time all I want to do is sleep. I’ve actually tested that out, to see if it makes things better, but it doesn’t really – I just wake up tired and fuzzy headed with my mouth feeling like the bottom of a lion cage, so it’s down to the tried and true methods of eating right, trying to get more exercise and doing my best to get out and be social, despite the fact that I’d rather be unconscious. No doubt I’ll pull out of it sooner or later, but in the meantime it’s not much fun.

In any case for those not in the know this was CHOGM week in Perth, when the heads of the Commonwealth nations descended on the city like a horde of Elder Gods, dragging hordes of vile servitors in their wake, and the Yog Sothoth of this abominable crew, Her Majesty the Queen (and her personal Nyarlathotep, Prince Phillip) also stopped in to say hi and attend a barbecue.

We’ve been preparing for this for months, and in the end it’s all been a bit of an anticlimax. Some roads were shut down, some exclusion zones were set up, some protesters waved placards and some civil liberties were casually abused in the name of security, and then it was all over. Some interesting things were done – the laws of Royal succession were altered to favour the first born child regardless of gender for instance – and some important things argued about and ultimately ignored (such as agreeing to give Commonwealth citizens a few basic human rights) and then it was all over. Ho Hum.

The big event for we peasants was the barbecue on the foreshore yesterday. It was the typical public event thing, everyone milling around for a few hours waiting for the Monarch and Royal Consort to put in an appearance, which they eventually did for a while before leaving without so much as eating a sausage (although Prince Phillip played with some barbecue tongs). On the plus side public transport was free across the entire city all day, which I took advantage of to catch up with Rebecca and Dom and the kids at Siennas in Mount Lawley for lunch. Strangely though, despite the free transport the railway was shut down between Perth Underground and Esplanade. If you asked they’d probably say they were concerned about someone trying to pull a V for Vendetta and blow up the Gleddon Building from below, but I suspect the real reason was that they’d either bailed up the city’s homeless in the tunnel to prevent the sight of them offending the Queen, or the Mole Men were holding their own CHOGM barbecue down there. Maybe both.

But anyway, it’s all over now and CHOGM ephemera is now selling for decent bucks on eBay.

I’ve been playing around with casting this weekend. I needed some large Adeptus Mechanicus symbols for some 40k terrain I’m sporadically working on, and a search of the net indicated that no one makes them anywhere and hence they’re quite hard to come across and rather expensive when you do. So I said, to hell with you, I’ll make my own people! Or rather my own AdMech symbols. I built a master out of plywood, plasticard and the general debris that a natural hoarder such as myself invariably accumulates, made a latex mould from it and have been merrily turning out cogwheels-with-skulls willy nilly all weekend. I’m almost tempted to make some extra ones and sell them on eBay, but I suspect Games Workshop’s lawyers would come down on me like the hammer of Sigmar and I’d never be heard from again. Oh well, I have what I came for 🙂

Last weekend of course it was QI Live at the Burswood theatre. I’d assembled a small group to attend consisting of myself, Katie, Justin and Marika. I met up with Justin and Marika at the Atrium buffet before the show which, despite the fact that it was stupidly expensive and they threw us out at 7:30 (they close for half an hour on Friday and Saturday evenings – no idea why but I suppose it’s not for the likes of me to criticise the behaviour of the wealthy) was fantastic. I was particularly fond of the beef and mushroom ragout, and the desert bar was absolutely sumptuous. We then met up with Katie outside the theatre before proceeding in to our seats.

Our seats were in the very back row of the ground floor and, surprisingly, turned out to be excellent. Sure, we were about as far from the stage as it was possible to get, but our view was completely unobstructed. We could also listen in to the chatter of the stage-management guys just across the aisle, which was most amusing when one of the guests’ microphones failed and they had to improvise a solution. We also heard the final scores a few second before everyone else, for what it was worth 🙂

The show was excellent. Entertaining and informative in equal measure. It was a bit shambolic, what with being the very first QI Live ever, but that was part of the fun. Stephen Fry regaled us with tales of his first visit to Perth (the phrase “eastern states or overseas” will never sound the same again) and Alan Davies hammed it up for the crowd, despite being seriously ill (or at least claiming that he was seriously ill, there was a lot of mention of ‘slurry’). The guests were Colin Lane, Denise Scott and some guy who I’ve never heard of, but who did a decent enough job despite being the victim of the aforementioned microphone failure.

If there was one problem it was that it did drag on a bit. The show didn’t finish until just before 11:00, and Justin even fell asleep in his sear despite the regular klaxon whenever Alan Davies tried to answer a question (he had been up since 4:00 though so it’s quite understandable). I imagine they’ll get the hang of balancing amusing blather with keeping things moving in future performances, but it was a small price to pay for the privilege of being there for the show’s first outing.

Once it was all over we dumped our plan of going somewhere for drinks (Justin was just about dead on his feet and I wasn’t far behind) and Katie and I wandered around what seemed like all of Burswood looking for a taxi before stumbling over one who’s driver was just as lost looking for the taxi rank as we were.

So, a good night was had by all, despite being informed that the first European to discover Australia recommended that it be named “New Zealand” 😉

Hmmm, that’s all I’ve got to say. There’s cleaning I have to do, and after that I’m tempted to see if that sleep thing might finally work 🙂

Well, how else do you explain the reality distortion field?

Every day thousands of Apple Fanboys are sacrificed to keep iTunes running…

The real reason Steve Jobs retired? He had to ascend to the Golden Throne to sustain the iCloud servers.

(He also powers the Applenomican – the psychic beacon that enables geolocation on all iPhones…)

Later: Oh wow. Bad timing on this post…

Really? That seems rather inconvenient…

Ah….

OK, I think Servants of the Imperium has been hacked… (Not Safe For Work!)

(The hackers have been changing it up a bit, so the title of this post doesn’t make much sense anymore. Move along!)

(Much Much Later: Note for future generations and other interested parties – at the time I originally wrote this entry the Servants of the Imperium site had been replaced with a somewhat undecorous illustration of two men engaged in, shall we say, “the art of love”, with the caption This is how I play 40k with my boyfriend)

The Life and Times of Ibram Gaunt

Do you want to live forever? Not if I have to do this again.

I could write an entry about the various things I’ve been doing lately, but frankly they’re all rather boring (well, apart from winning a quiz night at Justin’s tennis club).  So instead I’ve compiled a timeline of Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series.

(Hey, I didn’t go to Supanova – I had to do something spectacularly nerdy with the weekend).

So here we go, a partial and even somewhat reliable timeline of important events regarding the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, compiled from various sources including the somewhat rare Sabbat Worlds Crusade background book (Yes. I own a copy. Read it and weep :))

The Original Crusade
~500.M35: Birth of Saint Sabbat.
~515.M35: Start of Sabbat’s Crusade.
~620.M35: Saint Sabbat martyred on Harkalon.

Heldane and Ravenor
~220.M41: Birth of Golesh Constantine Pheppos Heldane.
~235.M41: Heldane apprenticed to Inquisitor Commodus Voke.
240.M41: Heldane horribly scarred during investigation of House Glaw. He later (prior to 338.M41) has surgery to enhance the resulting terrifying appearance.
251.M41: Three Astartes of the Iron Snakes are sent to Formal Prime to investigate a warp incursion. Only two return to Ithaka.
278.M41: Heldane rises to the rank of full Inquisitor.
304.M41: Birth of Gideon Ravenor.
338.M41: Ravenor horrifically injured in the Thracian Atrocity and confined to a Force Chair.
386.M41: Heldane suffers terrible injuries while facing the daemonhost Cherubael. He undergoes extensive augmetic reconstruction and takes many years to recover.

Lead up to Slaydo’s Crusade and Gaunt’s Background
600.M41: Chaos attacks on the Sabbat Worlds increase notably.
~605.M41 Birth of Slaydo.
~702.M41 Birth of Ayatani Zweil.
~680.M41 The Verghastite hive cities of Ferrozoica and Vervunhive engage in a bitter trade war. Vervunhive is victorious.
707.M41: Birth of Tolin Dorden.
~717.M41: Birth of Hlaine Larkin. Birth of Macaroth.
719.M41: Salvador Sondar murders his uncle Heironymo, taking over his role as High Master of Vervunhive.
~722.M41: Birth of Veynom Blenner.
724.M41: Birth of Ibram Gaunt.
732.M41: Slaydo writes A Reasoned Approach to the Reconquest of the Sabbat Territories.
735.M41: Death of Gaunt’s father on Kentaur (Gaunt aged 11).
736.M41: The 12 year old Gaunt is sent to the Schola Progenium on Ignatius Cardinal.
741.M41: The Civitas Imperialis is officially suspended across the Sabbat Worlds. The worlds are officially considered lost. Birth of Thuro of NorthCol on Verghast.
745.M41: Twenty-one year old Cadet Commissar Gaunt fights separatists on Darendara with the Hyrkans under Commissar Oktar. He encounters a Psyker who makes numerous predictions about his future.
746.M41: Birth of Ban Daur
747.M41: The 23 year old Gaunt fights Orks with the Hyrkans and Oktar on Gylatus Decimus. He is promoted to full Commissar on the death of Oktar by Ork poisons.
749.M41: The 25 year old Commissar Gaunt avenges his father on Khedd 1173. Birth of Dermon Caffran. Birth of Kolding.
~750.M41: Thirteen Tempest Class Frigates, including the Highness Ser Armaduke are constructed in anticipation of the Khulan Wars. A shortage of raw materials requires the recycling of metal and components from many older and wrecked warships.
750.M41: Birth of Brin Milo.
752.M41: Birth of Tona Criid
752-754.M41: Slaydo rises to prominence and achieves victory in the Khulan Wars.
754.M41 – Tempest class frigate Highness Sir Armaduke is placed into reserve after suffering substantial damage in the Khulan Wars.

The Sabbat Worlds Crusade
755.M41: Slaydo is promoted to Warmaster and appointed to lead the Crusade to liberate the Sabbat Worlds.
755.M41: Commissar Gaunt and a team of Hyrkans investigate an ancient shrine on Formal Prime.
757.M41: Thirty-three year old Gaunt is assigned to the newly founded 8th Hyrkans.
759.M41: Birth of Dalin Kolea/Criid
~762.M41: On Verghast, Thuro moves from Ferrozoica Hive to NorthCol.
765.M41: The assault on Balhaut. Gaunt (aged 40) and the 8th Hyrkans bring down the Tower of the Plutocrat. Slaydo is mortally injured defeating Archon Nadzybar but promotes Gaunt to Colonel Commissar on his deathbed. Urlock Gaur assumes the position of Archon.
765.M41: Three new regiments are raised on Tanith. Gaunt is sent to take command and rescues around half of them from the planet’s destruction on the day of Founding.
765.M41: The Tanith first and Only engage in their first action on Blackshard.
765.M41: The Tanith assault Voltis City on Voltemand and are then redeployed to the ruins of Kosdorf.
765.M41: A Vermillion level message is relayed by ships scouting the Nubila Reach.
765.M41: The Tanith fight on Fortis Binary and Menazoid Epsilon, then are deployed to Bucephalon and Caligula.
767.M41: The Tanith fight Orks on Typhon 8, then Chaos on Nacedon and Ramillies 268-43.
768.M41: The Tanith take part in the assault on Sapiencia and are then deployed to Monthax. On Verghast, Thuro of NorthCol carves a frieze for the portico of the NorthCol Imperial Hospice.
769.M41: The Tanith defend Vervunhive on Verghast. House Chass commissions Thuro of NorthCol to sculpt a memorial to the victory. Many Verghastites join the Tanith First under the Act of Consolation.
769.M41: The Highness Ser Armaduke, Lights Excelling and Cold Steel transport war material from Verghast to the Niadoral system for Adeptus Mechanicus reseach.
770.M41: The Tanith fight on Hagia. Birth of Meritorious Felyx Chass.
771.M41: The Tanith take part in the liberation of Phantine.
772.M41: The Tanith fight on Aexe Cardinal.
773.M41: Saint Sabbat is reborn on Herodor. The Tanith are redeployed at her request and fight alongside her. The Phantine Air Corps fight on Enothis.
~774.M41 – Captain Wilder of the Belladon 81st Recon requests a regimental Colours Band.
774.M41: A specialist team of 12 Ghosts led by 50 year old Commissar Gaunt are sent to the Chaos held world of Gereon.
~775.M41: The under-strength Tanith First and Only is merged with the Belladon 81st Recon to form the 81st/1st Recon, and the new regiment is deployed to Ancreon Sextus.
776.M41: Gaunt’s team return from Gereon and are reunited with the 81st/1st on Ancreon Sextus. Gaunt re-assumes command and the Tanith First and Only is reformed, absorbing the Belladon personnel from the 81st.
777.M41: The Tanith assist in the liberation of Gereon.
778.M41: The Tanith defend the Hinzerhaus on Jago. The Belladon Colours Band requested by Captain Wilder arrives on Ancreon Sextus. They spend the next three years trying to catch up with the Ghosts.
779.M41: The Tanith and 55 year old Gaunt arrive on Balhaut after being rotated off the front line.
779.M41: Titan Legio Invicta diverts from the Crusade to assist the Forge World of Orestes against a Chaos invasion.
780.M41: Gaunt and the Tanith battle a unit of Blood Pact infiltrators on Balhaut.
781.M41: Gaunt and the Tanith lead an attack on Salvation’s Reach. A warp translation error during their return jumps them 10 years forwards to 791.M41
~784.M41: Gaunt is ‘posthumously’ promoted to Lord Militant Commander
791.M41: The Ghosts defend Urdesh against the Sons of Sek. Gaunt is appointed Lord Executor.

Later Events
812.M41: Death of Major August Kaminsky of the Phantine Air Corps
829.M41: Thuro of NorthCol records his memoirs. The remains of Vervunhive have been completely demolished.
999.M41: Necron Overlord Trazyn the Infinite releases captured Imperial forces – Including Tanith snipers – from his Tesseract Labyrinths to aid in the defence of Cadia

From this timeline it’s possible to construct a chronological reading order for the series – by which I mean reading all the various fragments of stories (particularly in First and Only and Ghostmaker which were largely pieced together from previously published short stories) in the order that they happened. It would be madness to read the series this way for the first time, but it could be fun for a re-reading. So, here we go…

1: The Fissure (optional prequel)
2: First and Only – Manzipor
3: First and Only – Ignatius Cardinal
4: First and Only – Darendara (Part 1)
5: First and Only – Darendara (Part 2)
6: First and Only – Gylatus Decimus
7: First and Only – Khedd 1173
8: A Ghost Return
9: Blood Pact – Epilogue
10: Ghostmaker – Ghostmaker
11: Ghostmaker – A Blooding
12: Of their Lives in the Ruins of their Cities
13: The Vincula Insurgency (Ghost Dossier 1)
 14: First and Only – Nubila Reach
15: First and Only – Fortis Binary
16: First and Only – Cracia City, Pyrites
17: First and Only – The Empyrean
18: First and Only – Menazoid Epsilon
19: Ghostmaker – The Angel of Bucephalon
20: Ghostmaker – The Hollows of Hell
21: Ghostmaker – That Hideous Strength
22: Ghostmaker – Permafrost
23: Ghostmaker – Blood Oath
24: Ghostmaker – Sound and Fury
25: Ghostmaker – A Simple Plan
26: Ghostmaker – Witch Hunt
27: Ghostmaker – All connecting text between chapters
28: Ghostmaker – Some Dark and Secret Purpose
29: Necropolis
30: In Remembrance
31: Honour Guard
32: The Guns of Tanith
33: Straight Silver
34: Sabbat Martyr
35: Double Eagle (optional)
36: Apostle’s Creed (optional)
37: Traitor General
38: His Last Command
39: The Armour of Contempt
40: Only in Death
41: The Iron Star
42: Titanicus (optional)
43: Blood Pact (Except Epilogue)
44: Salvation’s Reach
45: Family
46: You Never Know
47: Viduity
48: Ghosts and Bad Shadows
49: Killbox
50: The Warmaster
51: Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint (optional)
52: Urdesh: The Magister and the Martyr (optional)
53: Anarch
54: This is What Victory Feels Like (Forever the Same)
55: From There to Here

There. That should keep you busy for a while 🙂

Edit March 2014: Updated the timeline with some info on the background of Inquisitors Heldane and Ravenor (author of Gaunt’s beloved Spheres of Longing). Added Salvation’s Reach to the timeline and reading list.

Edit July 2015: Updated the timeline to include stories from the Sabbat Crusade Anthology.

Edit March 2017: Added details of Thuro of NorthCol

Edit December 2017: Added Tanith involvement in the Fall of Cadia

Edit February 2019: Added The Warmaster, Killbox, Anarch, Double Eagle and Apostle’s Creed

Edit June 2019: Added a few details concerning the Highness Sir Amaduke and the regiment’s Colours Band.

Edit June 2021: Added The Vincula Insugency, This is What Victory Feels Like and From There to Here, and info some background info on the Highness Sir Armaduke.

Edit February 2022: Added a few details on the history of Vervunhive. Added Matthew Farrer’s Urdesh novels to the reading list.

Blood Pact

Blood for Book God! Skulls for the Abnett Throne!

My copy of Blood Pact arrived. Hooray! I’m about halfway through and was seriously concerned for a bit there that Abnett was going to kill Tona Criid. He hasn’t – yet – so I’m happy. For now.

It’s occurred to me while reading that if Daniel Craig isn’t available to play Gaunt in my theoretical TV/Movie adaption, Anthony Stewart Head could also do a very good job. And would probably be a bit cheaper 🙂

Captain Fishface agrees!

Casting out Ghosts

Yes, it’s one of those “who would play so-and-so” entries…

Woke up this morning intending to have a shower, shave, put a load of washing on and get into some much needed cleaning of the apartment. All of these aims have been frustrated by the revelation that I have no water.

There’s a lot of banging coming from the apartment next door, so I suspect they’re doing bathroom renovations and have managed to switch off my water along with their own. I’m tempted to head out to the… what do you call the place where all the pipes and taps are? A tap cupboard? That’ll have to do. I’m tempted to head out to the tap cupboard and start messing around in the hopes of restoring my water while leaving theirs off, but I’d probably screw up and spray scalding steam all over the renovators – not that that’s a completely unappealing idea in my current waterless mood.

Anyway, of late I’ve been indulging in my Imperial Guard fetish (oh man, that doesn’t sound good does it :)) by reading my way through Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series. They’re bloody good reads (often summarised as Sharpe in space) and I’ve caught up all the way to Blood Pact, which I will commence upon as soon as Amazon gets its act together and actually delivers it.

When reading a sprawling novel series with a cast of dozens I generally find it useful to consider who I’d cast if I had an unlimited budget to produce a movie or TV series of it. This helps me keep everyone straight in my head. I’ve done this with some of the Ghosts, and – since this is my blog, I can do what I like with it and I’ve got nothing better to do while waiting for the water to be reconnected – I thought I’d list them here.

(I should note that this list is rather strongly influenced by one that I stumbled across online, lest anyone accuse me of casting decision plagiarism. I’d link to it if I could find it again)

Colonel-Commisar Ibram Gaunt: Daniel Craig. As far as I’m concerned Daniel Craig is Gaunt, which makes the current crop of James Bond films rather odd viewing 🙂

Major Elim Rawne: Eric Bana. I think he could easily pull off the combination of charisma and menace required for Rawne.

Master Sniper Hlaine ‘Mad’ Larkin: Hugh Laurie. Not an obvious choice but I reckon Laurie would make a really impressive Larkin. Everyone thinks of him as House of course, and as far as personality goes you couldn’t get much further apart than the domineering doctor and the mentally vulnerable sniper, but Laurie is such a gifted actor that I think he could do it, and do it well. You’d just need to give him a different accent (which you’d be doing anyway) and haircut so everyone doesn’t think “House!” any time he appears on screen.

Sergeant Agun Soric: Bob Hoskins. Another casting choice that just seems to work for me. Hoskins is Soric.

Chief Scout Sergeant Oan Mkoll: Robert Carlyle. Another from the casting list that I stumbled over. At first I thought it was a ridiculous idea, as Carlyle looks nothing like the Mkoll in my head, but after watching his performance in this week’s episode of Stargate Universe I’ve reversed my opinion. He’d make a great Mkoll.

Eszrah ap Niht: Jason Momoa. Momoa seems to be the go-to-guy for big menacing dudes in sci-fi/fantasy at the moment. I can’t recall if Eszrah is meant to be particularly big, but he’s certainly menacing, which makes him seem big 🙂

Major Gol Kolea: Tahmoh Penikett. He’s probably a bit young to really be (former) family man Gol Kolea, but I reckon he’d do the job.

Ayatani Zweil: John Hurt. If he wasn’t willing to commit to an ongoing role, Hurt would also make a great Lord Militant General Noches Sturm.

Trooper Brinn Milo: Colin Morgan. Get rid of that ridiculous haircut and he’d make a great Milo.

Sanian/Saint Sabbat: Ellen Page. Now that’s a casting completely out of left field I know, but I suspect that if she could handle the role, she’d be fantastic in it. Put her on the audition list and see how she goes.

So that’s where my casting list stands at the moment. Yes, it leaves out a bunch of important characters, but I simply haven’t decided who should play them yet. I know I did have a great idea for Varl, but can’t remember who it was. So, roll on the pilot episode people! Let’s get this underway! ;D

Tropes on the Ropes

In the grim darkness of the future there are only wiki edits

TV Tropes, was there ever a a better website for losing yourself in? You start at 9:00 in the morning reading up about your favourite movie and the next time you glance at the clock it’s 11:00 at night and you realise you’ve been absent mindedly been chewing on your own arm for sustenance while reading about Brian Blessed.

(Sorry. BRIAN BLESSED!!)

For quite some time one of my (and my friends’) favourite TV Tropes pages has been the one about Warhammer 40k, which does a fantastic job of explaining exactly what the setting is all about, all the time being side-achingly hilarious. So I went to check up on it the other day…

Oh the Horror!!

What was so great about the old page was that it was hilarious, accurate and subtle. A number of ridiculously insane things were discussed in an even, meaured, calm tone, sort of like Stephen Fry lecturing you on the complete works of Stan Deyo. Now it’s like a raving lunatic (or for that matter Stan Deyo) running up and screaming in your face about the complete works of Stan Deyo. It’s informative, sure, but nowhere near as enjoyable.

Or maybe it’s like the difference between a glass of well aged scotch by the fireplace in a well stocked library versus a vodka UDL by the toilets in a high octane nightclub.

Now I tried accessing the history of the page to try and recover my preferred version of the text, but the wiki software used by TV Tropes is strange and confusing to me. So rather than engage in further faffing about I decided to use my extraordinarily powerful memory to try and reconstruct it. So, here it goes, the classic version of TV Tropes’ Warhammer 40k page…

(Well, the important bit anyway)

Thirty-eight thousand years in the future, the mighty Imperium of Man has expanded across the galaxy… to discover that the galaxy is a Hell that would make Hieronymous Bosch crap himself in terror, and it has a Hell. From without, the Imperium is besieged by innumerable hordes of alien monsters from the farthest abysses of space, soulless death-machines and nightmare daemons (as well as nightmare death-machines and soulless daemons, and the occasional nightmare daemon in a soulless death machine); from within, treachery, heresy, plain ignorance and the festering infectious taint that is Chaos threaten to rip it into uncountable pieces.

Warhammer 40,000 is not a happy place. Rather than just being Darker and Edgier, it soaks itself in light-absorbing paint, straps on a jetpack and hurls itself over the edge, screaming IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WARRRRRRGH! The Imperium of Man is a totalitarian, oppressive, stark, and downright sucky place to live where, for far too many people, living isn’t something to do till you die, but something to suffer through till something comes around and kills you in an unbelievably horrible way, while torturing your soul and melting down your body for biomass – and it’s quite probably something on your own side. The Messiah has been locked up on life support for the past ten millennia, laid low by his most beloved son, and an incomprehensibly vast Church Militant commits hourly atrocities in his name.

The problem is, as bad as the Imperium is, they’re not quite as bad as many of the other factions. Death is about the best you can hope for against the vast majority of the other major players in the battlefields of the 41st Millennium. The basic premise of 40k, insofar as it can be summed up, is that of an eternal, impossibly vast conflict between a number of absurdly powerful genocidal, xenocidal, and (in one case) omnicidal factions, with every single weapon, ideology and creative piece of nastiness imaginable turned up to eleven. The 40k universe is a spectacularly brutal playground of tropes and horrible things taken to their absolute extreme, and in some cases, beyond. Entire planets with populations of billions are lost due to rounding errors in tax returns. Orders a million strong of capricious, fanatical, genetically engineered Super Soldier Knights Templar serve as the Imperium’s special forces, while the trillions of soldiers in its regular armies take disregard for human life to new and interesting extremes. A futuristic space Inquisition ruthlessly hunts down anyone with even a hint of the taint of the heretic, the mutant, or the alien, and is backed up by legions of psychic daemonhunting elite super-soldiers and fanatical pyromaniac power-armoured battle nuns. The standard-issue sidearm of a Space Marine is a fully automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The Astronomican, a navigation aid has the souls of thousands of psychic humans sacrificed to it every day, dying to feed the machine. The faster than light travel used by most factions carries with it a good chance of being eaten by daemons. The ancient and mysterious manipulator-race contrive wars that see billions dead so that small handfuls of their own may survive, while their depraved cousins literally cannot endure the agony of a life not spent torturing numberless innocents to death in ingeniously horrific ways. There are several vast Bug Swarms trying to eat every organic thing in the galaxy, light-years-wide holes in reality through which countless daemons and corrupted daemon-powered super-soldiers periodically attempt to destroy the universe, and an entire civilization of undying omnicidal maniacs serving their star-god masters’ desire to exterminate all living creatures, down to the last bacterium. There’s a genetically-engineered survivor warrior species infesting every corner of the galaxy and cheerfully trying to kill everything (including each other if nothing better presents itself) because it’s literally hard-wired into their genetic code to do so and because it’s fun. The closest thing to the “good guys” you can find in this setting is a tiny alien empire sandwiched between all the other factions – and they may or may not have a thing for forcing new subjects into their empire through orbital bombardment and concentration camps, but at least they’ll offer you admittance into their club. Everywhere there are chainsaw swords, BFG’s, armored gloves that crush tanks, mountain-sized daemonic walking battle cathedrals, tanks the size of city blocks and warships that level continents, if not simply obliterating all life on an entire planet just to be sure. And sometimes even that doesn’t work. There is no time for peace, no respite, no forgiveness; there is only war.

There. that’s much better!

(The version of the Warhammer 40,000 text above is of course licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. In other words it  came from TV Tropes and you can do what you like with it as long as you let everyone else do the same.)

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