Jareddm

The capstone story to Reverie is called, "The Sins of my Brothers" and can be found in the Successors anthology. It should shed a bit more light on the Resplendent-Penitent connection

Lelith was...fine. But third on the list seems crazy to me. 7th or 8th perhaps. And Deathworlder in tenth!? Unbelievable. Lazarus is about where I expected it to be.

From some past interviews, I don't believe a lot of BL would be given permission to make up new terminology like that. They have to stick to terminology presented in codexes. Abnett is often the exception to the rule.

I nearly spit out my coffee and had to recheck the DoF order to make sure I read that right. The Iron Kingdom I found to be an interesting, if bloated, and at times awkward story that still ties into the narrative of both the Indomitus Fleets and several key characters. Whereas The Martyr's Tomb is simply one of the most boring and meaningless 40k books I've ever read. I understand why you decided to stop, not questioning that. But I do recommend giving Sea of Souls a try. Despite it's extremely weak connection to the broader narrative, it is still a phenomenally well written Imperial Navy book with some great horror and mind-:cuss:ery elements. I would even recommend it to people who haven't read any other DoF books!

Vanguard immediately after Fire Caste, for sure. Are there others that should be locked together for a randomization?

Very happy to see more Denny Flowers. He has gone from strength to strength and while I thought his novella was the weakest of the three Gobbo stories I've read, it was still a ton of fun and I'm looking forward to Da Mad Dok.

Might be fun for newcomers to just randomize their table of contents and read the omnibus in that order instead!

A growing chunk of the community wears primarch-tinted glasses.

I'm about halfway through Lelith Hesperax's novel and this is the thing that's driving me crazy. Constant internal reminders that she's the best gladiator fighter in Commorragh. Constant internal reminders that Asdrubael Vect controls everything. We get it. It's funny, I feel this kind of trait worked great for Alpharius because it's his character to overthink, and even for his Orks for the novelty of it, but on other characters it starts to grate.

I used to think this too, then I met a tournament exclusive player. Six armies, all exactly 2,000 points and not a scrap of plastic more. Everything excess gets sold immediately.

The early Indomitus Crusade is in desperate need of a "Sabbat Worlds Crusade"-style lore book. As mentioned, the appendices in DoF have been a godsend to helping lay out the broader events of the Crusade and help fulfill that marketing tag line, if only at the most superficial and lip service of levels, but the material found across various White Dwarfs and things like Warzone: Nachmund, Arks of Omen, and even the Kill-Team sets have added a fair bit of interesting nuance that passes many folks by.

Is Kitur Neferis a character that's been mentioned before? I like his pro-psyker warband concept.

The next phase is Dark Imperium, and that's already written. I imagine any further development would be through campaigns/White Dwarves first.

You know, as much as I love Fehervari, every once in awhile I think, "He's still just a Black Library author. He can't be THAT good." Well I was recently chipping away at my backlog, and amongst a decent amount of slag I found "Nightfall." For such a very simple premise of a Night Lords warband comes to collect new recruits, it felt so atmospheric, so poetic. I've forgotten the names of more space marines than most will learn in a lifetime, and yet Haz'thur, Zhara'shan will stick in my mind for quite awhile.

Finally continuing a series I've put off for ages, but managed to keep myself pretty spoiler free. Just finished Soul Drinkers 2: The Bleeding Chalice Pretty heavy on the bolter porn, a couple of middling antagonist (with one exception) and we don't really learn anything new about the Soul Drinkers. Sarpedon remains the only character with a meaningful line of dialogue. Inquisitor Thaddeus is pretty typical by modern presentations of Inquisitors so nothing too special there. That said, the one exception is Teturact. He is exactly what modern 40k needs. He is what I want to see more of in Imperium Nihilius. Final book score: 6/10 Teturact is awesome

Are we counting the Ultimate Guide to Warhammer 40k?

GW: We need you to write about this. JR: Okay can I use these sources? GW: No! JR: So I'm supposed to invent it? GW: No! JR: So what sources am I using? GW: None! JR: Sooo what am I doing? GW: The best you can! Simply amazing.

Track of Words put out an interview with Denny Flowers about Above and Beyond, the sequel to Outgunned: https://www.trackofwords.com/2024/10/11/rapid-fire-denny-flowers-talks-above-and-beyond/

Can absolutely confirm both the solidly interesting topics and the fact that they felt both too short and summarized. The Ecclesiarchy anachronism talk had a line at one point like, "We're going to skip over some messy theological stuff" and I just went Nooo.... :( Still was very cool to think about how irl Catholicism's baroque style came out of the counter-reformation, but because 40k's reformation equivalent (Reign of Blood/Sabastion Thor) ended not with the splitting of the church, but with the reformist becoming the new head of the church, it is anachronistic for the Imperial Cult to have maintained what were effectively the styles of the old order.

Sooo...did anyone actually watch any of the talks? The timezones difference made it tough so I only caught the last two on transhumanism and the anachronism of Ecclesiarchical aesthetic, which were both pretty interesting. I'm sure the talks will be up on YouTube soon but I'm interested if anyone had any immediate impressions?

Haley wrote a handful of harder sci-fi novels before Death of Integrity. I feel DoI is a great showing of him putting that research and comfort in applying a little more physics to 40k.

I would say it's perfectly on par for Fulgrim and makes a nice contrast to Rogal Dorn's view. Dorn did not approve of the librarium and fought against its implementation. But once it was approved, he wasn't going to deny himself the use of any weapon. Fulgrim vs Dorn on this matter is policy vs practicality.

I would actually say that in comparison to the approach 40k has taken, I've been really enjoying the direction Necromunda has been using. Yes, there is now a progressing narrative, but it is more centralized and feels like it is moving in the direction of an actual conclusion that will establish a new status quo. For me, the Aranthian Succession has been a big hit.

Quick comment about the Dragonspears. The likely reason they were there was because they had already been written into the ongoing Space Wolf vs Ork engagement from Psychic Awakening: Saga of the Beast. Did they need to be brought in now, before the Space Wolves even knew what a Primaris was? No, and I do think it was a mistake on Gav's part to do so. But I don't think it was just to include a dragon related pun. Back to our space dwarves. While I've really liked the design aesthetics of the League so far, the names have been terrible for me to pronounce so I'm waiting with great trepidation for the audiobook version.

My standards for Thorpe these days are Our Martyred Lady and Lorgar. If this can match either of them, I'll be happy.