George Man continues his exploration of the Raven Guard in 40k with The Geld, a 70-minute audio drama which sees a small group of elite Space Marines infiltrate the besieged fortress of Chaos warlord Mazik the Unfixed. Desperate to find a way to eliminate Mazik, Chapter Master Strike draws four Shadowmasters – rare genetic throwbacks to the Mor Deythan of the old Legion – away from their usual companies and tasks them with this vital mission. Putting their unusual gifts to the test, Shadow Captain Qeld and his brothers soon find themselves hard pressed to survive the trials before them.
It’s a cool concept and an interesting call-back to the relatively recent Horus Heresy stories which saw the introduction of the Shadowmasters, while the inclusion of Captain Mordren from successor Chapter the Knights of the Raven is a nice touch. There’s obvious antipathy, at least to begin with, from the Raven Guard towards Mordren, and it’s a shame that there isn’t more time spent really exploring how the four Shadowmasters learn to work together and get past their preconceptions and prejudices. By the end there’s a grudging fellowship between at least two of them, but it’s only covered loosely. Likewise there isn’t much emphasis on what their powers mean, beyond a moment of reflection from Qeld, and the focus is instead on keeping up a rapid pace and throwing the characters into action.
At its heart this is a pretty straight-up stealth mission-style story, starting off slow and gradually building up to a big climax. Narratively things jump back and forth a bit between the ‘present’ and a couple of pre-mission locations, but the majority of the story focuses on the trials that the four Shadowmasters undertake as they creep closer to a confrontation with Mazik. There’s a fair bit of exposition as things progress in Jonathan Keeble’s narration, but as usual it’s such a pleasure listening to his voice that it doesn’t distract, and in fact it adds to the rather serious, dark and portentous tone of the whole piece. This is 40k in broad brush strokes, introducing interesting and often unexpected enemies and problems for the Shadowmasters to overcome, but not lingering too long on any of them.
The dialogue is sometimes a bit stilted, and it’s all very serious, but the cast – mainly Black Library audio stalwarts like Toby Longworth and John Banks – do typically well with it while the rapid pace and varied trials mean there’s plenty there to just kick back and enjoy. There’s a great sense of atmosphere throughout, although for the most part the music and SFX fade comfortably into the background allowing the cast to shine, which is as it should be. Overall it’s an entertaining story, as long as you’re happy with lots of action and don’t expect too much in the way of character development or deep lore explorations.