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[Tack]

So either a few companies of sisters, or many millions of PDF.
Intriguing choice.

[Loud Whispers]

Here's a fun lore question?
Would it be possible, or feasible, to raid a black ship?
Specifically chaos, if it matters.

I'm given to understand that they're pretty heavily escorted, but how else are you gonna snatch up some young, impressionable psykers?

You'd be better off trying to steal one than raid one with infiltrators

Stealing one wouldn't be easy either

[Grim Portent]

So either a few companies of sisters, or many millions of PDF.
Intriguing choice.

Millions of under equipped, under trained, poorly organized guys who didn't make the cut for the Guard tithe, or fanatical warriors with the best gear the nigh infinite wealth of the Ecclesiarchy can buy, the ability to cause literal miracles and who have trained to fight since they were children. I'll take on the PDF every time, especially if I have chaos marines and/or chaos sorcerers backing me up.

[GiglameshDespair]

You wouldn't be fighting all those PDF, just where the psykers were being stored.

Meaning probably the elite of the local forces and quite possibly the Arbites as well, who probably take that sort of thing seriously. Not quite Sisters of Battle level (well, probably. Cream of the crop and all.), but still probably pretty damn good. No one wants to mess around with psykers getting out. Not only would you have a bunch of angry psykers on the loose, you'd have an angry Inquisition that you let them get loose, and both of those you'd want to avoid.

[sprinkled chariot]

Officio asassinorum tried to wipe out etherals?

[LordBaal]

It seems they tyy to wipe out everything considered a menace at least once, with several grades of success. Hell if it weren't fiction they'll probably try to take on GW and/or customers for some fucked up reason.

[Grim Portent]

Officio asassinorum tried to wipe out etherals?

For the most part the Imperium doesn't care about the Tau enough to send assassins after them when there's Ork Warbosses, Chaos Lords and Fallen Cardinals and similar to send them after instead, all of which are vastly more dangerous threats to the Imperium.

The one occasion I know of where they definitely sent an assassin after an Ethereal it was (Spoilers for the Kauyon and Mont'ka campaign books)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

after Aun'Va, the Supreme Ethereal, and killed him

.

[LordBaal]

They also sent assassins after the high command on Taros and if I recall right the eversor with his Pelvic Thrust™ managed to kill the ethereal there.

[Loud Whispers]

I sometimes do wonder if behind the external WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY internally Eversors have other thoughts

[Grim Portent]

I sometimes do wonder if behind the external WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY internally Eversors have other thoughts

Probably not all things considered, they're drugged up, cybernetically altered teenagers who were trained and indoctrinated for the few years they had before being augmented and frozen in stasis units, I kind of doubt that they're even sapient anymore. The only interaction they have with other people is either killing them or being treated for their injuries, and I think they're rendered unconscious for the latter.

[Kot]

Sick. The Officio Assassinorum drone always felt sick whenever he entered ‘the hive’. A long catwalk suspended in the middle of a cavernous hexagonal hall, the putrid green glow of endless status monitors and stasis tubes radiated an aura of death and decay. Not so unfitting for the legendary storage vaults of the Eversor Temple.

Despite his many trips to the hive, Nicolas Gilbo could never suppress the shiver in his spine that always snuck up on him when he least expected it. Shaking off his unease, he moved slowly to monitor station #4432 to finish the rites of rearming and release. He stared up into the face of death, suspended in a foetal position within its fluid tomb. The irony was not lost on him. A skeletal, barely human husk gazed vacantly back at him, its augmentics continually twitching despite being comatose. Out of curiosity, he flipped through this unit’s combat history. Unit service life three years. Number of sorties, two hundred and sixty. Estimated enemy casualties inflicted, eight thousand five hundred and twelve, half of those from a planetary governor’s dirigible brought down in the center of Falchion hive.

Biological age, twelve standard years.

But it was the list of wounds sustained in action that horrified him the most.

T3-T9 thoracic vertebrae shattered from an Ork Warboss, left arm amputated after close combat with World Eater Champion, fifty seven separate stubber and lasgun wounds. Three cardiac arrests and automated restarts, and it didn’t stop there. By the Emperor, what did it take to kill one of these things? With great trepidation, Gilbo keyed through the unit’s start up routine and assigned unit #4432 its next mission.

“What kind of dreams does a monster like you have?” Gilbo wondered.

[Loud Whispers]

That is some sick worldbuilding fluff right there

[nenjin]

Damn it, it's so lip-smackingly grimdark.

On that note I just finished Ahriman: Unchanged, the end of the Ahriman Trilogy.

Honestly I don't know what to think about the whole series. Maybe I'm not dialed in enough to the subtlety or depth it was written with. (I think going straight from the Horus Heresy novels to this trilogy would help as many of the same Thousand Sons characters reappear.)

But it all seemed so self-servingly "arcane." Half the series probably is about what psykers see and how they communicate and what the internal life of magic is. But none of it was really interesting. Colors and forms, obvious metaphors, the execution was adequate without being novel and it just kind goes on and on and on....Because it's a series about Chaos Sorcerers and Tzeentch, the twist ending is such a complete pretzel you can't honestly say what it meant just on a casual first reading. And Ahriman....the way he's written he needs a picture done in bishounen style with a wrist over his forehead and a rose held outstretched in the other hand. Ironic given my complaints about my gaming group but damn this shit was angsty. I started to dread all the parts where half the books' casts are:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Beings inside Ahriman's psyche enacting his own internal questioning and search for answers.

You like dream-vision-quest type literature? Half the series is nothing but that.

I'm glad I own the books because, you know, Thousand Sons rule. I just think the author went straight at tropes and then repeated them for three books. I did enjoy the depictions of the Planet of Sorcerers though.

Now I'm reading I Am Slaughter by Dan Abnett and it's not his finest work either. It's set after the Heresy well before the 41st millennium. And it's got to be the bluntest writing from Abnett I've read. The overall plot arcs are still his, really detailed so you get a sense of the enemy, pretty good scene setting. But he's dropping lots of tough sounding one liners to punctuate things (he title drops the book within two chapters) that don't really work and the story is split between Space Marine action and Terran high politics, showing how one is impacting the other. I won't finish it for a while and maybe I'm still sour coming off of Ahriman....but so far it hasn't grabbed me like his Gaunt or Eisenhorn or Heresy stories. It's still Abnett but several parts seem kinda phoned in. I didn't realize I wanted to know about the post-Heresy years until the book was set in it but....so far he's not delivering on it very much other than to describe the state of Imperial politics. Things actually sound almost boring and normal in the Imperium during this time. (I think it's M32 or M33.) It doesn't help how several characters in the book talk or think about how bored they are with the current state of things.

[Digital Hellhound]

I found the Imperial politics the more interesting part of I Am Slaughter, but even that was just build-up for the following books. It's a really mediocre work, way below Abnett's usual level.

Also man what is taking so long with the next Gaunt (was supposed to come out years ago) or Eisenhorn-Ravenor? Titan-sized case of writer's block?

[nenjin]

I found the Imperial politics the more interesting part of I Am Slaughter, but even that was just build-up for the following books. It's a really mediocre work, way below Abnett's usual level.

Also man what is taking so long with the next Gaunt (was supposed to come out years ago) or Eisenhorn-Ravenor? Titan-sized case of writer's block?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I may end up agreeing. The mystery of what's happening to the planet is pretty cool. Abnett is really good about having stuff happen to build atmosphere and letting it play out naturalisitcally so you get into the moment.

The politics are ok but I've always thought Abnett's dialogues were always a little too sharp. Like the witty repartee between characters is enjoyable, don't get me wrong. It sometimes feels a little divorced from 40k. Sorta like it's too good It's probably because Abnett writes for a lot more audiences than 40k. The Grand Master Assassin is pretty suave though.

Just about done now. Not a bad book all in all, just not one of his bestest. At least he manages to approach an (ultimately) routine story for 40k in some fresh ways.