Nightfane (warning: spoilers! and ranting...)

[Tymell]

So I listened to this one last night, and I feel the need to rant, or perhaps if I'm more generous, ask if anyone else can shed some light on what seems to be an exceptionally shoddy, bizarre and unsatisfying story.

 

It's tricky to properly articulate everything I felt was wrong with this, it gave me that feeling where I was overwhelmed and flooded by all the stupid decisions/moves, so I'll start by laying out what happens. Hopefully that'll clarify at least some of my frustration over it:

 

It opens with an audio log from Iax, mentioning that there are lots of dead/injured coming in from Calth, and that they all have odd psychological problems.

 

We shift to Bale (not sure of spellings since it's an audio drama, sorry), where Thiel and the Red-marked are continuing their mission from "Red-marked", to try to track down and figure out the traitor plot of the "Nightfane". There's a bad storm, and a device (a lightning rod of sorts I believe) ends up damaging their craft and forcing a crash landing, killing the pilot.

 

They descend into an undersea facility of some kind. The techmarine and one other are left behind to work on repairing the ship, along with watching over a couple of those wounded in the crash, while the others go to explore. The facility seems to be deserted, with no sign of the 500 or so crew they'd expect. They eventually find one man, alive but unconscious, but when they try to check on him they're attacked by servitors.

 

They defeat them, with one of their number, Denaius, being injured. He is sent, along with Larentios and their apothecary, Aberon, to be tended to, while the remaining trio of Thiel, Bracheus and Petronius continue exploring. Aberon also examines the man they found, who ends up spasming wildly and dying. Aberon finds a surgical cut and looks into it, seeing cuneiform words carved into his bones, which he reads. At this moment Denaius suddenly starts acting as if possessed, rising up menacingly and raising his hand while speaking strange words.

 

Bracheus and Petronius are cut off from Thiel by a bulkhead door, and Thiel ends up finding a survivor, Meriad, a Mechanicum enginseer. She doesn't trust him at first, talking about how the man they found (who had previously been on Iax) ended up flooding the facility and murdering everyone else there. She shows Thiel a view out on the ocean bed of lots of decayed bodies. She then says that she saw what happened with the others (Denaius) and shows him a security recording of it.

 

Bracheus and Petronius find signs of significant damage caused by hand, and some kind of foul, black residue, then find Denaius. He attacks them, setting Petronius alight with a dark flame and turning the fire from Bracheus' flamer into ice shards, then flinging it back at him. He leaves them both to suffer.

 

Thiel, having now seen what Denaius has done, tells Meriad to seal the door to the lift platform where their ship is, and goes off to confront Denaius himself. He finds him at that closed door, where Denaius claims to be Alpha Legion. Thiel says that though he didn't know there was a traitor in their midst, he knew there might be, as infiltration has happened before, and so he orchestrated this to draw any possible traitor out. They fight, with the arrival of the injured Bracheus and Petronius (along with Meriad) finally ending it, as Bracheus shoots "Denaius" through the throat.

 

They leave in the newly repaired flyer, with Thiel saying they must go to Iax to root out the source of this traitor infiltration. He also says that although "Denaius" claimed to be Alpha Legion, he suspects the Word Bearers' hand in it, given the methods used.

 

There are a bunch of smaller things that bother me about this audio drama, but I think the big one is how nonsensical and disconnected the plot feels. For the first two thirds or so, it's very much framed like a horror mystery. They find this empty facility with no bodies, no indications of what happened. They find a survivor and examine him, more strangeness, etc etc. And then....it's just a traitor infiltrator. The entire set up feels discarded and forgotten, like it had nothing to do with the resolution.

 

Sure, we technically get (or can piece together, since it's badly explained) what happened, but it all feels secondary and inconsequential. Okay, all this stuff happened. And? It never amounts to anything, and most of the details are ignored, leaving an extremely sparse plot that is supposed to make up the bulk of this audio, and which is then just dropped for a much more mundane topic.

 

In addition, this whole thing is supposedly Thiel trying to draw out a possible traitor, one he doesn't even know for sure exists. Yet this is an important mission into a completely unknown situation. He had no real way of knowing if this situation -would- be the sort that would draw out a traitor, or if it would be the sort of situation where you'd -want- that to happen. It all comes across as incredibly reckless and contrived. I know Thiel is a bit of a wild card, but this is not the time or the place. It seems especially crazy since he splits the party up so much. Trying to bait a (possible) traitor needs to be weighed up against making it too easy for said traitor to wipe you all out!

 

Having said that, it's also unclear why this traitor actually did reveal himself anyway. I wondered at first if the words the apothecary read triggered it, but since it was a standard infiltrator rather than some kind of possession, that seems less likely. And if you are going to make your move then and there, surely it makes more sense to keep trying to use your cover too your advantage, rather than going on a warp/enuncia-fuelled rampage?

 

There are little odd things too:

 

Why does the apothecary read aloud the words he finds engraved on the man's bones? Surely by now they're experienced enough with Word Bearers trickery to know better than to mess around with something like that? It feels like one of those really stupid character moments where they completely discard all the development and knowledge they should have by now, just to further the plot.

 

I get that Bracheus is meant to seem kind of manic, the way he laughs when he fires his flamer, but it feels terribly out of place when he does it after they find the battered remains of a battle brother, killed by unknown means, and set fire to the room.

 

There are some odd parts where characters and the narrator talk as if there are more marines present than there are. When they all split up mid-way through, one group is just Thiel, Bracheus and Petronius. Yet we get things like Bracheus saying, "Red-marked, weapons ready!" like he's talking to a whole squad, and then in the audio we hear what sounds like a dozen weapons being readied. Later on, the narrator says they advance "in a chain, each legionary a few strides apart", which is again a weird way to describe it when there are only three of them...

 

Anywho, in short, I came away hating this. Maybe I missed something or something didn't click with me, but I'm struggling to think what someone else could say that would make me change my mind on it. As it is, I really can't recommend strongly enough that folks avoid this story.

[Khornflakes]

I listen to this one when it came out. It did appear disjointed and didn't fit in with the previous audio dramas in the Thiel series - which i did really like 

 

Like you, i was expecting a more demony (not a word but there you go) aspect and when it just came to just a traitor legionary..it was a bit...meh...

 

interesting concept of infiltration but the whole story was a bit lacking

[Kelborn]

Unfortunate...I enjoyed the Thiel audios and was expecting the next logical step towards the confrontation with Nightfane and the remaining traitor forces.

[DarkChaplain]

I enjoyed this one, strangely enough, despite not getting much out of Red-Marked before. I'll definitely agree that the twist of Thiel setting it up as a trap felt like a bit of an asspull - though I also got the impression that, up to a point, he might have been bluffing to confound the traitor, and maintain a sense of morale after the fact.

 

I did have some trouble following some of the events the first time listening, though, namely who got wounded when and how, and who was left where on the station. The cast of the drama was large enough to get names twisted if you don't focus fully on what's going on, which made this a cooking listen a bit tricky..

Certainly expected something more demonic about the traitor, though. I figured the traitor was an Ultramarine possessed for the best part of the drama, and that the passphrase read by the Apothecary triggered the latent threat to activate. In hindsight, this would also align with what we've seen in The Buried Dagger, for example, and the prologue/epilogue section on Iax and what else we heard about the phrase would line up with it too. Seeing how Nightfane is apparently about sleeper agents and how to activate them, it feels like a cop-out to have the infiltrator being a simple traitor double. It underplays the threat posed by the Nightfane.

 

I still really enjoyed the atmosphere it built up for most of the drama. It felt claustrophobic, and the adept left on the station brought out a good chunk of madness. In a way, the bulk of the drama felt very Alien-ish. I sincerely hope that, in the end, it's not actually an Alpha Legion thing, but an attempt at misdirection by the traitor agent, though. I don't need the AL to be part of the Calth/Iax storyline, at all. Word Bearers are enough by far, and while we had Alpha Legion in Ultramar as per The Unremembered Empire, I feel that they're out of place in this arc.

 

@Kelborn Well, in a sense, this is the next step to confronting Nightfane, by way of gathering info on the situation and snuffing out a sleeper agent. The drama ends with the Red-Marked en route to where they believe the Nightfane are operating from, or at least one of their main targets, so this is like the middle piece of figuring out where the story ends.

[Kelborn]

Interesting. I thought they were already on route to Nightfane, thus the audios name.

 

Well, I'll listen to it for the sake of completeness, one day.

[rookie40K]

Censure is my favorite audio drama as the story and quality was amazing. That being said, I have been let down with all of the following continuations of Thiel’s tales. In my opinion Nightfang was a mess.

 

I also really enjoyed the first 3 Garro dramas, but like Thiel, the rest were let downs.

[Brother Lunkhead]

Greetings brothers  I couldn't resist putting my two cents in on this topic,  as it involves my favorite Ultramarine, Aeonid Thiel. After reading your post I took another listen to Nightfane and I have to say I came away liking it more. There is of coarse the usual over the top, eye rolling Space Marine action and dialogue.... but Space Marines will be Space Marines. I liked the isolated, claustrophobic, semi-horror setting/atmosphere of the story, and the line of the story makes sense to me.... let's see if I can bring you around to my point of view.
 
So, let's start with the "little odd things"
 

"Don't do that"..... apothecary reads the chaos incantation out loud: You would think he would know better by this time..... but, probably not. At this point our heroes most certainly are aware that the forces of the Warmaster are using "sorcery" and invoking "daemons" but I think it is WE who are fully aware of what this all is not our stalwart Space Marines. Remember up until now they believed that all was rational and there were no such things as daemons and sorcery. At this point they are doing well to acknowledge the existence of such things but I don't think they are even close to knowing the details. These are Marines of the 30Kverse. The Astartes of the 40Kverse  have now had ten thousand years of experience to draw on. Our Heresy  Marines have a fair idea of how to kill Chaosy thing but that's about it. Some will have more knowledge than others, based of personal experience, but not most.
 
Fire and Fury...…  Bracheus burns down the house: Bracheus (and his trusty flamer) has at this point had enough experience to know Chaos taint when he sees it..... and what do you do with Chaos taint?..... You burn it with gusto...yes
 
"Red-marked, weapons ready!"...… ".....in a chain, each legionary a few strides apart".... three Space Marines makes for a very short chain: I'll give you this one Brother Tymell. Eye rolling, over the top stuff to be sure. But, you can't escape it.
 

Now the big stuff.... the main story.....
 

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer: Thiel brings a small squad of red-marked on a fact finding investigation to the moon of Bael. Among his little band are two new recruits to the red-marked who may or may not be infiltrators. If not simple in and out mission..... if one or more is a traitor what better way draw him out than present him with the opportunity to take out a major threat to Nightfand, Aeonid Thiel. Thiel's location is perfect, an isolated, underwater rigging station, and only a small contingent of Astartes accompanying him. This is the perfect setting to draw out a traitor. Unfortunately, it's also the perfect setting for the traitor as well. That is the nature of these things though. The perfect setting to trap your enemy can also be the perfect setting for him to trap you. Quite often it's a race to get there first.
 
The traitor reveals himself in the medicae bay..... these guys know too much, better end them, plus draw in a few more and end them too..... the race is on.

 
I have to admit that there was a lot going on and I almost had to take notes but on the whole I liked it.
 
My one irritation with the Nightfane storyline is the word "Nightfane" These Chaos guys document it and talk about it an awful lot... I hope there is a point to this and it's not just that the author thinks it's a cool word and likes repeating it over and over again.... it's getting a bit old<_<

 

As with all things here, it's all just my opinion.

 

Courage and Honour