Welcome to this instalment of my Rapid Fire series of author interviews – today I’m speaking to Richard Strachan about his upcoming novel The End of Enlightenment, part of Black Library’s range of Age of Sigmar fiction. A new AoS novel is always something to look forward to, and a novel featuring the Lumineth Realm-Lords doubly so, as this faction of aelves still feels very new, so I’m sure this novel is going to be of interest to a lot of Black Library fans! It’s available in hardback, ebook and audiobook editions, so check out this interview, have a read of my review (link below), and then go out and grab a copy of the book!
Without further ado, let’s get straight on with the interview!
Track of Words: How would you describe your new novel The End of Enlightenment?
Richard Strachan: Fundamentally I think The End of Enlightenment is a book about confronting the past and coming to terms with who and what you are. It’s about war and invasion, and the clash of two vastly different cultures, and how the characters react when their backs are against the wall.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
RS: There are two main characters in the book. Carreth Y’gethin is an Alarith Stonemage, a legendary warrior in the days when Lumineth society was recovering from the Spirefall, who has now devoted himself to study and to achieving the emotional equilibrium that is the pinnacle of Lumineth culture. He holds himself aloof from the growing conflict between Teclis and Nagash, but when his beloved sister is killed during the invasion of Shyish, he is forced to confront his attempted neutrality, especially after Teclis himself charges him with a vitally important task.
The other main character is Akridos, a brutal and ambitious Liege-Kavalos of the Ossiarch Bonereapers, who leads his Legion during the invasion of Hysh, and whose growing success kindles old memories of his mortal days as a powerful king on the Stalliarch Plains in Shyish. There are lots of supporting characters as well, including my favourite: Belfinnan, who leads the Dawnriders who come to Carreth’s aid, and who’s either known as ‘Belfinnan the Brave’ or ‘Belfinnan the Brash’, depending on how you take him …
ToW: What can you tell us about your take on the Realm of Hysh where this is set?
RS: Hysh is a place of physical and spiritual beauty and magical perfection, but I’ve tried to show a little of its darker underbelly here as well. This is a Realm which has had to drag itself back from the brink after the Spirefall, so it’s littered with ruins and with the ghosts of old memories and disasters. The book is set in Ymetrica, one of the continents of Hysh, which geographically is a place of lush plains and soaring mountain ranges, a lot more paradisiacal than somewhere like Ghur or Aqshy.
ToW: When does this story take place? Does it tie in with the wider, ongoing Age of Sigmar timeline, or is it more of a standalone?
RS: It takes place in the current timeline of Age of Sigmar, and definitely ties into the wider narrative around the Broken Realms campaign books.
ToW: What appeals to you about the Lumineth as characters to write about?
RS: They’re proper elves! (Or ‘aelves’, I suppose). Whereas the Idoneth Deepkin are cruel and twisted versions of the classic elf, the Lumineth are far more your traditional archetype; haughty, powerful, a race that sets itself apart from everyone else. At the same time, I really liked the idea of them as having an almost Zen-like culture of spiritual refinement and perfection. What I tried to do here was look a little bit more at what might make that Zen-like sense of control necessary, so for me the Lumineth are basically trying to control an immensely powerful capacity for volcanic emotion. They’re not cold and emotionless in the slightest; they’re some of the most passionate and zealous creatures in the Mortal Realms. It’s this capacity for emotion that almost destroyed them during the Spirefall, and it’s their knowledge of this and their attempts to suppress it that’s interesting to me.
ToW: Of all the possible stories you could have written about the Lumineth, what made you choose this one?
RS: It was partly the brief, to have the story tie in with that wider Broken Realms narrative, but I also liked the idea of stress-testing the Lumineth sense of emotional and spiritual equilibrium. What happens when a character like Carreth is put under enormous pressure like this, and how will he react? I also wanted to show the more ‘human’ side of the Ossiarch Bonereapers as well. They’re not mindless automatons, they’re the elite of Nagash’s armies, with a degree of free will. What happens when that free will begins to break its bounds, and a character like Akridos begins yearning for past glories? I also wanted to show the Lumineth on the back foot here. They style themselves as ‘Realm-lords’, but how do they hold up when they’re on the verge of defeat?
ToW: With only the Battletome and one previous novel (Dale Lucas’ Realm-Lords) to draw upon in terms of Lumineth lore, did you look outside of existing Warhammer material for inspiration when planning or writing this?
RS: The Battletomes (for the Lumineth and Bonereapers) were my main sources here, as well as the draft material for the wider Broken Realms stories. For the battle scenes I did draw a little on some classical Greek hoplite tactics, to try and inject a bit of realism into them too. Other than that, it was really my own thinking about what these factions would be like day to day, what is at the core of them that makes them who they are.
ToW: Your first Black Library novel, Blood of the Everchosen, really explored a part of the Mortal Realms that we hadn’t seen much of before, and how the people who lived in the Eightpoints were shaped by its nature. Have you taken a similar approach this time, in terms of exploring Hysh and what it’s like to live there?
RS: Yes and no. I probably haven’t gone into quite such detail about how environment shapes character in this book as I did in Blood of the Everchosen, but that’s really because the environment is much less extreme than the living hell of the Eightpoints. At the same time, the Lumineth (especially of the Alarith temple) venerate their land in a way you don’t really get elsewhere in the Mortal Realms – Carreth’s temple, for example, was founded specifically in the shade of a mountain that is considered sacred. The environment has shaped the Lumineths’ methods of warfare as well as their philosophy, with the influence of stone and mountain affecting their tactics, and so on.
ToW: Having written a full-on Chaos story for Blood of the Everchosen, how did you find adjusting to very different types of characters this time, in the Lumineth and the Bonereapers?
RS: It was a little easier and a little harder at the same time. In Blood of the Everchosen the challenge was in making horrendous people if not likeable, then relatable in some way; the reader had to feel invested in their personal quests, their motivations, without being completely repelled by them. Here, I had a bit more room to explore more ‘normal’ relationships between the characters, more normal motivations and challenges, but that can be quite hard in itself! The biggest challenge was probably with the Bonereapers and trying to make them not just stereotypical bad guys. In a way they’re the most inhuman characters I’ve tackled; I had to give them just enough personality to not seem bland, but at the same time not forget that they’re still essentially tools of Nagash’s will.
ToW: What do you hope Age of Sigmar fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
RS: I hope readers will get a good sense of a place and characters that we haven’t explored much before, and pick up on the emotional relationships between them. Also, there are some pretty grand battle scenes as well, so hopefully there’s a lot of enjoyable action!
ToW: Finally, if you were an aelf in the Mortal Realms would you want to be a Lumineth, or would you choose to be part of one of the other aelven factions?
RS: The Lumineth, definitely. Although nothing and no one in Age of Sigmar is completely content and well-adjusted (this is Warhammer after all), the Lumineth seem to have got closer to it than most. It’s a functioning, well-ordered society steeped in art and culture — although the sense that there are violent depths beneath it, just waiting to break free, gives it a bit of an edge.
***
Richard Strachan is a writer and editor who lives with his partner and two children in Edinburgh, UK. Despite his best efforts, both children stubbornly refuse to be interested in tabletop wargaming. His first story for Black Library, The Widow Tide, appeared in the Warhammer Horror anthology Maledictions, and he has since written Blood of the Flayer, Tesserae and the Warcry Catacombs novel Blood of the Everchosen.
You can keep up with Richard’s work on Twitter, and check out his website for more information.
***
Thanks so much to Richard for taking the time to answer these questions, and for giving us the lowdown on The End of Enlightenment. I can confirm that it’s a bloomin’ brilliant read – check out my review for all of my thoughts on it.
See also: my interview with Richard about his novel Blood of the Everchosen.
See also: the main Age of Sigmar reviews page on Track of Words.
Buy The End of Enlightenment on Amazon* – also available as an audiobook*
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to support Track of Words, you can leave a tip on my Ko-Fi page.
*If you buy anything using these linke, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.