A sequel of sorts to City of Secrets, Nick Horth’s short story The Old Ways once again features Armand Callis and Hanniver Toll, sent by the Order of Azyr out through the marshlands outside Excelsis to settle a dispute between two rival houses. Exploring the dangerous Ulwhyr Forest on the trail of a missing – supposedly murdered – young nobleman, Callis and Toll find themselves tangled up in not just a feud between rivals, but also a conflict between the old and the new.
Nick Kyme’s Horus Heresy story Dreams of Unity shines a bleak light on some forgotten heroes of the Imperium. In the poverty-stricken underbelly of the Imperial Palace, a handful of surviving Thunder Warriors – the tattered remnants of the proto-Astartes legions with whose help the Emperor unified Terra – eke out a brutal existence as gladiators despite their ageing bodies and troubled minds, forever defined by their loyalty to an old notion. As Horus nears the Throneworld, even these abandoned warriors are affected by the approaching conflict.
An unusual tale of a rarely-depicted chapter, Ben Counter’s short audio drama Heart of Decay sees two brothers of the Relictors interrogating a captive warrior of the Death Guard in the hope of learning his secrets. Captain Vidarna and Apothecary Achaon are keen to find out what mission the diseased warrior Urbaar had been undertaking before they interrupted it, but in order to do so they must to expose themselves to his corrupting influence. There may be a high price to pay for the knowledge they seek. Keep reading…
Evoking faint memories of his Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter series, CL Werner’s The Witch Takers takes place in the Realm of Chamon with two Sigmarite witch hunters on the trail of something monstrous…and Chaotic. When an ancient tomb is looted and a powerful artefact accidentally unleashed, triggering a series of grisly massacres, witch hunters Esselt and Talorcan hunt for survivors through the sands of Droost as they attempt to destroy whatever relic is causing such carnage. Though their order is feared rather than welcomed by the inhabitants of Droost, they may be the only hope of preventing further massacres.
Hello and welcome to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, my regular look at what’s been happening in the world of Black Library. This week it’s mostly been about the continuing Advent Calendar, with a couple of cool new releases at the weekend. I’m going to go straight into the Advent section this week, as we didn’t get a separate Digital Monday story…
A quiet, measured short story that could only have come from John French, Now Peals Midnight is the calm before the storm, in which Rogal Dorn and the loyal defenders of Terra take a last, deep breath before the Siege of Terra begins. As the ever-present unrest in the Sol system fades away leaving an eerie sense of quiet, Dorn orders the final preparations knowing that Horus is only hours away. Across the breadth of the Imperial Palace, defenders wait…from conscripts huddled in the darkness to Primarchs standing proud on the walls. At last, the wait is almost over.
Josh Reynolds’ 2016 novel Fabius Bile: Primogenitor provided an unexpected injection of variety into Black Library’s 40k output, which is continued with the sequel – Fabius Bile: Clonelord. Picking up a fair amount of time after Primogenitor, we catch up with Chief Apothecary Fabius just as he’s about to set out for a darkened spur of the Webway in search, as always, of knowledge. When his exploration of a long-abandoned Craftworld is interrupted by familiar, if unwelcome, faces he ends up drawn closer to an old brotherhood than he’d really like, and persuaded to risk much…for great reward.
The second instalment of Chris Dows’ three-part Elysian Drop Troops audio drama series, Renegades of Elysia follows on from Scions of Elysia and continues the story of Sergeant Zachariah and the 158th Elysians. This time around Zachariah is ordered by the power-hungry Captain Bandrac to ramp up the speed and intensity of the regiment’s training, in order to recover from losses incurred in the previous mission. After clashing with Bandrac over supposed accidents during training, Zachariah and Adullam are tasked with leading an inexperienced squad of Elysians on a reconnaissance mission with little chance of success or survival.
With the short audio drama The Assassination of Gabriel Seth, Andy Smillie adds another piece to his slowly-growing jigsaw of Flesh Tearers stories. A distant sequel to A Son’s Burden, it returns to Nekkaris as Chapter Master Gabriel Seth comes to pay his respects to the men he left behind to die. In the quiet corridors of a shrine built to remember their sacrifice, Seth is confronted by an assassin sent by powerful enemies to remove him from the head of the Chapter, using his own rage against him.
Welcome to this instalment of Rapid Fire, my ongoing series of quick interviews with Black Library authors talking about their releases. These are short and sweet interviews, with the idea being that each author will answer (more or less) the same questions – by the end of each interview I hope you will have a good idea of what the new book (or audio drama) is about, what inspired it and why you might want to read it.
In this instalment I spoke to Chris Dows about his new audio drama Renegades of Elysia, the second instalment in a series after Scions of Elysia, which is available to buy now.