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[Loud Whispers]

Necropolis

One of my favourite authorial sieges of all time has to come from Simon Scarrow, during one of the books [I can't quite remember which] there is a chapter where the Romans lay siege to a British hill fort; it is amazingly done. Necropolis takes that intricate detail and cinematic quality of that one hill fort siege, amplifies it to a level that for once deserves to be called epic and has it take place for the entirety of the novel.

Honestly you don't even have to care for 40k to appreciate it.

[nenjin]

Sadly, I don't think any of the other Gaunt novels reach the level of Necropolis. The rest are good, surely, in their various settings. But nothing comes close the intricate detail of the Siege of Vevrunhive. And I've yet to read something else by another author that reaches his level of execution.

The one thing that I think really sets Abnett apart from his 40k contemporaries is he doesn't repeat himself a lot. Tons of Imperial fiction is filled with a lot of slogans and phrases that get beaten to death. Abnett keeps those short and sweet. "And they shall know no fear" "...but the Emperor was his shield so..." "...his rage and hatred of the foul xenos let him...." "But because of his two heart and three lungs, a gift from the geneseed implanted in his...", those lines and their like get abused by most 40k authors. Abnett uses that stuff sparingly, and it makes his novels an entire notch above the rest of the Black Library. He's usually moving the story forward with interesting ideas and characters instead of relying on the usual typecasts.

Which is why I love the Horus Heresy novels. None of that Imperial claptrap exists yet, so it's forcing authors to think outside of the box, use different vocabulary, rely on different tropes. It starts to read like genuine sci-fi again instead of the blowhard grimdark Imperialism of today that they've so artfully created.

[Radio Controlled]

Well, he certainly doesn't want to be that heroic badass. I see him as a coward badass that has no luck on staying out of action and has the luck to go through it alive. It is inconsistent (but what in 40K isn't?), but even that inconsistency is coherent in 40K, I mean, it's supposed to be memories and tales heavily changed/censured/altered what we are reading.

Plus it's implied that Cain is often way too hard on himself. As in, when he actually rises up to the occasion and becomes the hero he's rumored to be, he gives some sort of excuse for it so he can contextualize to himself his bravery with his own pragmatic/lazy/cowardly side.

[Radio Controlled]

It recently came to my attention that there is a new 40K game: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Storm_of_Vengeance
It... Appears to be pretty shite :/

In better news, it seems this one is better, and free to boot!
http://toucharcade.com/2014/10/31/warhammer-40000-space-wolf-review/

Anyone of you 40K nuts played any of these yet?

[nenjin]

Storm of Vengeance is a garbage lane pushing game ala Plants vs. Zombies. It is 40k in styling only.

Space Wolf though, I've never heard of. Will have to give it a look.

[Radio Controlled]

And before I forget: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JjaYW5Cnr5k

New trailer for The Lord Inquisitor. Looks good!

[Loud Whispers]

And before I forget: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JjaYW5Cnr5k

New trailer for The Lord Inquisitor. Looks good!

The Grey Knight is pretty damn respectable here, the Inquisitor guys did a damn good job on just the trailer alone.

[LordBaal]

Woa that sures look good!

[nenjin]

So my friend got it into his head to 40k-ify one of my photos.

Spoiler: Lord Inquisitor Nenjin (click to show/hide)

Came out pretty amazing I think. Although apparently that's Sylvester Stalone's neck

[Radio Controlled]

So my friend got it into his head to 40k-ify one of my photos.

Spoiler: Lord Inquisitor Nenjin (click to show/hide)

Came out pretty amazing I think. Although apparently that's Sylvester Stalone's neck

That is indeed quite cool! Can't really see your face that well, but who needs faces when we have stylish black 'n white?

[Bohandas]

Oh it wasn't that bad. Wasn't honestly any worse than some of the cutscenes for the game. I think for a first actual attempt at 40k movie, it was ok. Hammy as shit, but ok.

Well possibly the first time someone intentionally make a Warhammer 40k movie. There was also the 1997 movie Event Horizon which was effectively a prequel to Warhammer 40k, despite not being officially affiliated with it

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The plot of the movie centers around an investigation into the disappearance of the crew of a spaceship with an experimental hyperspace drive (after the now uninhabited ship unexpectedly reappears years after itself disappearing during its first test run)

Long-story-short It eventually turns out that hyperspace is actually Hell.

[nenjin]

Event Horizon is like, one of my favorite movies. It's gotten some flack for being a B movie, but I think it's great. Although I've always thought the comparisons to 40k were a little tenuous.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While hyperspace does tie together pretty well with the Warp, and the whole last half of the movie is essentially about "the warp leaking into reality", I always felt like the movie sort of stood on its own with its ideas. And the execution of most parts of the movie don't feel 40k either. A slightly grimmer general sci-fi look. Still, it's the kind of movie where if you put everyone in Imperial costume and threw some Aquilas around, the plot wouldn't be out of place at all. It'd just be a generally milder and slower building version of what generally happens in 40k

I'm kinda picturing it now. Adeptus Mechanicus Magos joins an Imperial Navy recovery squad to reclaim its lost research ship that suddenly re-materialized out of the Warp after being centuries of being missing. The ship is remarkably unchanged, most of it still functional and visibly uncorrupted by Chaos. But it's tainted in subtler ways. The Magos becomes obsessed with the Warp Drive as it has been changed by its time in the Warp, despite no log of the Geller Fields breaking down during the ship's absence. In the weird time of the Warp, it might have only been gone for a few days, yet if so, where is the crew?

The Magos, in studying the Warp Drive, becomes exposed to the Daemonic presence that crept into the ship through its Astropaths, and that wove its way into the ship's machine spirit, and becomes corrupted by it, a slave to its will. Lured by the dark knowledge of the Warp it offers him for his service, he begins prepping the ship for translation back into the Warp. The Imperial Navy troops start dying, the cruiser they arrived on gets destroyed when the Magos reactivates the ship's weapon systems so all they have left is their non-warp capable boarding craft. The Imperial officer in command decides that the whole ship and the Magos must be destroyed at any cost before it translates to the Warp. Final battle, Pyrrhic victory, yadda yadda yadda, roll credits.

Mmmmm, have tried my hand at some 40k fiction before, and with the story already mapped out, maybe I'll take a crack at writing this

[LordBaal]

Oh it wasn't that bad. Wasn't honestly any worse than some of the cutscenes for the game. I think for a first actual attempt at 40k movie, it was ok. Hammy as shit, but ok.

Well possibly the first time someone intentionally make a Warhammer 40k movie. There was also the 1997 movie Event Horizon which was effectively a prequel to Warhammer 40k, despite not being officially affiliated with it

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The plot of the movie centers around an investigation into the disappearance of the crew of a spaceship with an experimental hyperspace drive (after the now uninhabited ship unexpectedly reappears years after itself disappearing during its first test run)

Long-story-short It eventually turns out that hyperspace is actually Hell.

Liberate Te Ex Inferis

[Radio Controlled]

Event Horizon is like, one of my favorite movies. It's gotten some flack for being a B movie, but I think it's great. Although I've always thought the comparisons to 40k were a little tenuous.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While hyperspace does tie together pretty well with the Warp, and the whole last half of the movie is essentially about "the warp leaking into reality", I always felt like the movie sort of stood on its own with its ideas. And the execution of most parts of the movie don't feel 40k either. A slightly grimmer general sci-fi look. Still, it's the kind of movie where if you put everyone in Imperial costume and threw some Aquilas around, the plot wouldn't be out of place at all. It'd just be a generally milder and slower building version of what generally happens in 40k

I'm kinda picturing it now. Adeptus Mechanicus Magos joins an Imperial Navy recovery squad to reclaim its lost research ship that suddenly re-materialized out of the Warp after being centuries of being missing. The ship is remarkably unchanged, most of it still functional and visibly uncorrupted by Chaos. But it's tainted in subtler ways. The Magos becomes obsessed with the Warp Drive as it has been changed by its time in the Warp, despite no log of the Geller Fields breaking down during the ship's absence. In the weird time of the Warp, it might have only been gone for a few days, yet if so, where is the crew?

The Magos, in studying the Warp Drive, becomes exposed to the Daemonic presence that crept into the ship through its Astropaths, and that wove its way into the ship's machine spirit, and becomes corrupted by it, a slave to its will. Lured by the dark knowledge of the Warp it offers him for his service, he begins prepping the ship for translation back into the Warp. The Imperial Navy troops start dying, the cruiser they arrived on gets destroyed when the Magos reactivates the ship's weapon systems so all they have left is their non-warp capable boarding craft. The Imperial officer in command decides that the whole ship and the Magos must be destroyed at any cost before it translates to the Warp. Final battle, Pyrrhic victory, yadda yadda yadda, roll credits.

Mmmmm, have tried my hand at some 40k fiction before, and with the story already mapped out, maybe I'll take a crack at writing this

Hah, that sounds like it has potential. Be sure to post it in here if you actually do start writing, I'm sure the others would also like to see.

What viewpoint would you use? I'm guessing switching between the magos and said imperial commander? Or more like a 3rd person narrator?

[nenjin]

I'd probably use third person and the omniscient but personality-less narrator. I enjoy scenes that describe things the characters can't know.