Psychic Awakening

[Knockagh]

I must say this has me salivating. Particularly given the opening salvo centres on my fav faction.

Hopefully we get some fiction from BL around these events. Vigilus sadly passed with no novels. The campaign books though were excellent and packed with fluff, hopefully we get something similar for this event.

I think I prefer campaign books leading major narrative changes and just letting authors filter their own stories into the main events in their own time. It feels less contrived. Not sure though as solar war is doing a fine job on using novels, but the vigilus campaign was excellent done through the campaign books. It feels like a long long time since we had any Eldar fiction. It would be great to get something soon.

The event is described as changing the whole nature of the 40k galaxy and making the 13th black crusade seem like a scuffle.... crazy. Not sure were this goes but certainly feels like we have been creeping towards something for a while.

Are we all tired of big events or crazy for more?

[theSpirea]

I'm not really happy with this direction: every time trying to top the previous event. I understand they can't advertise is as "this conflict/event is super small and will probably have zero impact on the Imperium" but they should also be cautious with trying to outdo the previous ones.

 

It seems to me the BL still has this old mindset that unless everything is at stake and things are bigger = better. Bigger than the Horus Heresy and the 13th Black Crusade is a bold statement.

 

On the positive note, I'm happy they are going to focus on other factions, starting with Eldar.

[Knockagh]

I tend to agree. Particularly just running off the back of the galaxy splitting in two. We have no conclusion to the 13th crusade and it looks like we won’t be getting one anytime soon. The crusade is the new setting. The awakening has loads of potential and in all likelihood will be a gripping tale but maybe a case of too much too quickly. I thought we would have seen some more storyline developing around the pylon material from Cadia and it’s potential. Perhaps that will come into this. Who knows, it does seem the inquisition will be getting their hands dirty.... Superb.

Anyway definitely good to see some Eldar love.

[b1soul]

I feel like Guilliman's awakening and the crusade to Sol should have a few novels to deep-dive into the "actual" lore, as Imperial campaign books tend to be written in the style of propagandistic Imperial records.

[StrangerOrders]

I really dislike that it feels like modern 40k is pushing against small events with a constant barrage of big interlinked things.

 

I like the setting feeling overwhelmingly massive and having constant galaxy-wide-effect things is really becoming a bit of a buzz kill.

 

Probably the only one I liked was the Horus Heresy because the 'event' was multi-decade and in practice thousands of smaller conflicts with dozens of individuals even at the highest tiers of command doing their own thing. I know this shouldnt be common in 40k but recent events make the factions feel way too cohesive, hearing every Craftworld being involved in a conflict is sort of like hearing all First Founding chapters are in the same place, it makes the setting feel really small.

[Kelborn]

The biggest issue I currently see is the lack of diversity and the preparations ramping up to certain events.

 

I can only compare with Age of Sigmar (and only that to a certain degree as I just started to get into it) so bare with me, if I got something wrong.

 

Age of Sigmar had large campaigns like the Endtimes, followed by the Realmgate Wars, followed by the Soulwars and so on.

A constant struggle with each of the majore forces having its own time in the spotlight. Even within said campaigns, it is not focused on one or two armies/ factions but a variety of several things happening at the same time, for example the Hunt for Ghal Maraz along with the Search for Alarielle

 

Soulwars was one major event, impacting all factions at once.

 

Each and every event is supported by appriopiate Blacklibrary releases, helping people to get into those eras via novels, shorts, audiobooks, whatever.

 

Now, if I look on the current Dark Imperium setting, we got the following:

 

Gathering Storm as the transition from the incredibly hyped 13th Black Crusade, which turned out to be N O T covered at all, into the Awakening of Guiliman and his odyssey to Terra

 

C U T - 100+ years later

 

Everything has changed. We know next to nothing except codices and the Dark Imperium trilogy by Haley.

Yes, BL is releasing more and more stuff but besides that, campaigns like Vigilus feel rather left alone. They feel like a very short focus on one world with x factions. Don't get me wrong, Vigilus did a lot. New chaos models, the fluff of Vigilus itself was great and a good example to work with. But besides that, no novel release. No shorts, no audios, nothing besides that one Warhammer Community page story.

 

Now, the Psychic Awakening happens. "Nearly" out of nowhere except some hints here and there. But again, it will focus on x factions in a chronological order. Let's say one book/ campaign will cover the Wolves against the Sons round 4. Another focuses on Armageddon. Only one at a time. I at least, missing the impression of an all out war across the entire Imperium at the very same time. It all feels like "now this happens and then this happens" "What about the rest of the Imperium?" "Naaaah, screw that. Not important right now."

 

But I digress. AoS is, of course, smaller than an entire galaxy but at the same time, it's way larger than a regular fantasy setting. Still, there's the impression of "regardless of where you are, there is war everywhere"

 

Maybe it's just me, who knows?

 

What is currently missing is an overview of what is going on right now. If you don't have every single codex including the respective galaxy maps at hand, you're limited. I once did an overlapping map for just a certain region of the Imperium in order to use that for my DIY chapters and guess what happens? That regions is so pretty screwed:

 

 

A lot of it was done added by myself but still, you got around 2-3 Necron Dynasties, 3 Ork Waaaghs, an entire Hive Fleet approaching and several warp storms all in one corner. And those are all copied from official codices. Why not writing a xenos centered novel? Necrons vs. Orks as an example? It's only about Primaris these days and even that feels the same again and again. By that I mean, a Primaris character dealing with a certain threat/ issue.

 

Man, I'd love to see a Primaris only chapter being in the focus just to have an example of how they see the galaxy or a new/old mixed chapter struggeling to accept their new brothers. That's something we are heavily missing right now, if we want to focus on the Imperium.

 

I hope you're getting what I mean. Having a large sandbox is awesome to play with. But we're lacking somewhat of an grander overview. Even the newest codices do not feature any real news about the Dark Imperium setting and how it influenced them.

 

Long speech short, my "real" issues:

- 13th Black Crusade was hyped for years (even decades maybe?) and nothing really happened, except Cadia . . .

- too much focusing on certain factions and characters

- no real overview except some few bits here and there

- compared to AoS, we haven't had supporting novels to certain events

 

Jeez, longer than I though. Maybe it's just a pile of nonsense at all but that's how I currently see it.

[Knockagh]

@kelborn, I’m with you here. The advancement in the plot has felt rather poorly supported by BL.

I’m slightly reluctant to complain too much as in the past we have seen authors set a task of telling a story in which they have to stick to a very narrow narrative with a pre determined outcome and it’s felt very awkward. AoS is a case I point. The novels were awful when they told the main story, but really came into their own when the setting settled down and authors could tell stories about people within the setting. The first of Guy Haley’s Dark Imperium novels also felt slightly awkward. Authors seem to work best when they are guided as little as possible by GW central. Ruins their creative mojo or whatever.

But I definitely feel like we know very very little about what’s happening at the minute and to move on to another massive event when the last one hasn’t really been described at all feels odd. The campaign books did a marvellous job but they will never achieve the depth of a novel

There were two shorts on the vigilus campaign in white dwarf but they were just short action sequences.

It’s all feels rather rushed,like it’s passing me by!

[DarkChaplain]

I mean, it at least looks like Psychic Awakening is a somewhat setting to follow up on the Dark Imperium stuff we've had so far. It pulls on a few plotstrings we've seen brought up at the outbreak of the Ruinstorm (like the Horusian Wars), and if the website is anything to go by, we may be seeing multiple Warzone-style supplements to cover various worlds and factions within the overall campaign setting, rather than repeating Nermenghast.

 

But yeah, BL is indeed dropping the ball on campaign coverage. I'm glad they're doing original stuff more these days, but as somebody who barely bothers to read GW fluff tomes for 40k, it's just missing a lot. My assumption is that they've been trying to wait it out a little while covering the early Dark Imperium era and the Indomitus Crusade through Space Marine Conquests, rather than being at the most up to date events. I still miss the days of, say, Sanctus Reach and Shield of Baal, though, where we'd get a pastiche of short stories and a few novellas, or a novel, to cover the main events in some BL-style detail. Things only really started slipping with Warzone Fenris, where they canceled the Wrath of Magnus novel, leaving the thing at Curse of the Wulfen and the serialized shorts that stopped just before Wrath of Magnus. That was, iirc, when control flipped back more in BL's hands, and I'd guess this affected coverage for the Gathering Storm too, although there we at least got Cadia Stands and Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion to support the Fall of Cadia part a bit from afar.

 

I have to say though that while Age of Sigmar has been a bit more direct about supporting campaign supplements with novels, novellas and shorts, it's not all so great under the hood; the Realmgate Wars series was pretty poor until book 7 or so, out of 10, with most novellas reading very battlereport-y, too heavily guided by the campaign books (and indeed covering the exact same events), with little room to navigate on the author's terms and add sprinkles of creativity. And the moment they stopped being that way? They dropped audiobook support and limited edition releases :')

 

After the Realmgate Wars though, this support also dried up. Soul Wars was seemingly a last minute deal with Josh, and all that sustained the Necroquake up to that point was a series of short stories without author credits via Warhammer Community, which will likely never be collected in print, and the same goes for Forbidden Power and the current campaign. Warhammer Underworlds took a long time to get Josh's Shadespire: The Mirrored City to release, Nightvault was almost entirely forgotten and Beastgrave is finally back with a novel on launch. Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower had a tie-in novella, while Shadows over Hammerhal didn't get anything (kinda mirroring how all its hero minis were old recycled ones from WHFB plastics).

In general, at this point it's pretty clear to me that a lot in AoS depends on Josh Reynolds doing the legwork when it comes to campaign stuff or wider setting detail. We've got a bunch of authors pursuing their own niches now, from Guymer over Horth to Werner, but Josh is usually the one tying the setting together - and he did so with the End Times as well, giving sendoffs to characters and plot threads that the studio simply forgot or abandoned. Not to diminish the other authors' works, obviously.

 

I'm not sure why the two approaches differ so much, though. I'd guess it's really down to author-editor dynamics and a lack of general interest by authors for such commissions, or past unpopularity with them that makes editors now wonder if it's worth spending time on them over books with longer-lasting interest.

[Roomsky]

I mean, considering how many authors we're getting back now that tie-in books aren't being pushed on people, I'm pretty happy with where we are. I'm sure someone will handle the nitty-gritty of the big campaign book events down the line.

[cheywood]

The campaigns/constant hyping of events feels somewhat Marvel/DC to me with the sense of one-upping the past event every time. From a lore perspective I’d much prefer time be spent exploring the changes to all the factions a bit more instead of blazing onward. But the novels coming out today, which are my favorite way of consuming the setting by far, are the most diverse in BL’s history (and arguably of a consistently enjoyable quality) so I really can’t complain. As I see it the constant stream of narrative events and new models is a big factor in the growth GW has seen the past few years and has helped provide for a more stable future than would otherwise be likely.

[Knockagh]

Perhaps today’s release of the Cawl book will answer some of the background to recent developments. Maybe Guy will save the day and do a series on everything that ever happened in 40k.

[Kelborn]

Guy's becoming the 40K Version of Josh it seems as being the explaining guy.

[Knockagh]

Guy's becoming the 40K Version of Josh it seems as being the explaining guy.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. Best man for the job. Let’s just hope his brain doesn’t melt

[b1soul]

...so do we have any clue what this Psychic Awakening is actually about? No solid news yet?

[Kelborn]

Only prophecies via the Warhammer Community site from an Eldar pov.

Currently at work, so I can't provide the links, sorry.

[Knockagh]

Some free fiction on this topic has been put up on Community. Haven’t had a chance to read yet myself.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1-The-Path.pdf

 

I don’t know the author Melissa Roddis.

[Xisor]

The psychic awakening is A Thing that's been in 40k since the beginning.

 

The problem, I think, is trying to make Single Events - rather than explicitly covering many events under a single, more vague conceptual story.

 

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Like the thread through the Gathering Storm - having Cawl, Celestine and Greyfax at Cadia is fine. That's unifying.

 

So too is having the Ynnari be happening at the same time.

 

So too is Guilliman being resurrected as a confluent product of these things And More.

 

However, shoving all six of the above to Ultramar, and having Cypher and Also A Grey Knight show up for G's birthday party...

 

It got messy.

 

Similarly then for the Guilliman's jaunt back to Terra.

 

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The muddle isn't that these things are implausible, but that the contraction of the galaxy to make them fit makes the setting feel REALLY distorted - and all because of the insistence that it's a single linked thread with multiple strings bonded within it.

 

If they'd made it more sprawling, more narratively *messy*, that would make more sense. Or be more palatable, less distorting.

 

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The main issue then isn't just space, but TIME.

 

And for narrative reasons, the fact that time blatantly expands and contracts to fit the plot makes it feel not like the setting is credible and mad and fascinating ("I would like to know more"), but rather exposes the seems and seat-of-pants creativity at work. ("There isn't more to know; it hasn't been written, the next page is just blank, or possibly has unrelated scribbles on it.")

 

And that's where TGS made a big messed up, in my esteem - it didn't allow for or evoke the space that implies the Rest Of The Galaxy Is Also Happening And Having Cool Stories.

 

If Plague War and Dark Imperium and whatnot are HUGE stories, that's awesome.

 

But don't just transplant the protagonists in a discontinuous fashion over to Vigilus for a Completely Different Story.

 

Similarly, Wrath of Magnus, Angel's Blade, Cryptos, Armageddon - these don't seem like "natural parts of the big weave of 40k", as much as clunky forgotten or disregarded concepts.

 

---

 

So with Psychic Awakening, I'm actually very enthused. They seem to be much more sensibly treated as seismic events - vague, big things that colour everything.

 

The Cicatrix Maledictum does this - conceptually - in a way that the character-focus of Vigilus and the Gathering Storm (and Angel's Blade and Wrath of Magnus, before them) did less well.

 

If AoS is the indicator it seems to be, I'm hugely enthusiastic about it all.

 

It suggests a big and exciting sandpit or ballpool in which to get creative and excited, and where some exciting threads will be examine, but implying a lot more threads beyond them... not a claustrophobically scripted Just So story in which you've got to peer into empty spaces to imagine what else might be.

 

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Should be fun!

[Knockagh]

I see the collectors edition has 4 short stories included that won’t be printed elsewhere. Hopefully one at least will be by Eldar wizard Gav Thorpe.

[Felix Antipodes]

I see the collectors edition has 4 short stories included that won’t be printed elsewhere. Hopefully one at least will be by Eldar wizard Gav Thorpe.

Knowing GW's history of twisting words, I fully expect these stories to eventually turn up as eshorts via digital Monday or some such. I reckon it won't be until some time next year though.

[Knockagh]

Received my ‘collectors edition’ today. I bought this off the back of the excellent Vigilus books. Quick scan of this one.... great book , collectors edition, not so much. The additional content is the free stuff from Warhammer community. The cover is 99% the same as the regular one. Overall content looks nice and fluffy but I would stay clear of this edition. Waste of money. Absolutely nothing in it or about it worth £5 extra never mind double the price. Total joke. They haven’t even tried with this.

 

Anyway hopefully the content is good....

[Karthak]

Story spoilers for Phoenix Rising are out, and...well, I'll just echo all the other folks who are wondering why GW hates the Aeldari. Seriously.

[Taliesin]

Received my ‘collectors edition’ today. I bought this off the back of the excellent Vigilus books. Quick scan of this one.... great book , collectors edition, not so much. The additional content is the free stuff from Warhammer community. The cover is 99% the same as the regular one. Overall content looks nice and fluffy but I would stay clear of this edition. Waste of money. Absolutely nothing in it or about it worth £5 extra never mind double the price. Total joke. They haven’t even tried with this.

 

Anyway hopefully the content is good....

 

I looked through the book on youtube and decided not to get the regular edition either.

I read the lore summaries and it seemed somewhat interesting but yet another case of GW way overhyping the importance and magnitude of what we are actually getting.

Of course, more and possibly better volumes may be to come, and for Eldar fans this may still be worth it.

 

What disappointed me mostly was how short the fluff section was, at under 20 pages of fluff I just decided it couldn't possibly be worth it for me. The book is only 80 pages in total but the lore section is really short IMO.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

It seems like all this takes place significantly before the Ynnari become the powerhouse they are in the Rise series by Thorpe

[Knockagh]

It’s more like 40 pages of fluff so around half of it. I can’t find one piece of art I haven’t already seen (most of them several times).

The art has made the recent necromunda books so good. So many original and brilliant pieces.

 

These books should be optical show pieces. I’m an epic Eldar fan but this is visually very disappointing.

[Ubiquitous1984]

I bought the collectors edition also. Is there a different book in the eldar box set that I also need to buy, or is that book the same as this collectors edition ?