Siege of Terra - Fury of Magnus

[Kelborn]

Heya brothers and sisters,

 

I just found a Tweet by none other than Neil Roberts featuring the next release of the siege series.

 

As it seems, it's called Fury of Magnus by Graham McNeil. Unfortunately, uploading the picture here at work is quite difficutl.

 

It would be more than awesome if someone could do share it in here.

 

Thanks and let the speculations begin!

 

 

Cheers,

 

Kel

Edited March 11, 2020 by Kelborn

[Matcap86]

There's a decent article dedicated to it on the community website as well with some blurbs about the contents: 

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/03/11/the-fury-of-magnus-unleashedgw-homepage-post-2/

 

[G_R_H]

It’s not book 5, merely a novella which sits betwixt books 4 & 5. Which means I’ll have to fork out for it but thankfully it seems to not be around any other LE series release I’m interested (yet)!!

[Qkhitai]

I think I fell asleep reading The Crimson King, so I don't know much about all the shard shenanigans (although I assumed they had sorted it all out by now), but phrases like '[Magnus] is looking for the missing piece of his soul and believes that it’s on Terra, inside the Palace' and 'It’s very much a story of Magnus figuring out, once and for all, whose side he is on. It’s his last chance to turn back and embrace the Emperor again' leave me rather bitter about how the Thousand Sons have been handled. I mean really? They got the homeworld wrecked by the Space Wolves, spent 7 years twiddling their thumbs in the warp consorting with demons (missing most of the actual war), and we're still talking about this silly shard subplot and the prospect turning back? This is the grand finale, Terra itself, the big throwdown; this stuff should have been sorted out much, much earlier in my opinion. I really dislike the fact that the Thousand Sons feature at Prospero, then never show up again until Terra at the very end, but I can live with it if I have to. But turning up at the very end and still not having their affairs in order? They really drew the short straw this series. As much as we all bemoan bolter porn, if anyone deserved a slice of actual, shameless balls-to-the-wall action, its the Thousand Sons, so hopefully they can wrap up this shard nonsense quickly and finally let the legion cut loose a bit.

 

The cover is dope though, gotta give it that.

[byrd9999]

I got very excited when i started reading the email from BL, then my heart sank when I found out it was Graham McNeill again.

 

Please please please let someone other than Graham McNeill write the Thousand Sons.

 

Chris Wraight would be awesome.

 

Plus Chris Wraight has already dealt with what happened to the missing Shard of Magnus on Terra, thus rendering the new novella's maguffin pointless.

[theSpirea]

Wasn't really impressed with Sons of the Selenar so can't say I'm hyped for this one. Also, can we have the title edited, it's not 5th book in the series, it's a novella.

[Kelborn]

Sorry, my fault.

Thought that I had already changed it.

[RedFurioso]

Please please please let someone other than Graham McNeill write the Thousand Sons.

Fow what purpose? The TS story arc is McNeill's story arc. He created characters, subplots etc. A Thousand Sons is one of the most acclaimed HH books ever. Just let the man finish his story.

[Scammel]

I think I fell asleep reading The Crimson King, so I don't know much about all the shard shenanigans (although I assumed they had sorted it all out by now), but phrases like '[Magnus] is looking for the missing piece of his soul and believes that it’s on Terra, inside the Palace' and 'It’s very much a story of Magnus figuring out, once and for all, whose side he is on. It’s his last chance to turn back and embrace the Emperor again' leave me rather bitter about how the Thousand Sons have been handled. I mean really? They got the homeworld wrecked by the Space Wolves, spent 7 years twiddling their thumbs in the warp consorting with demons (missing most of the actual war), and we're still talking about this silly shard subplot and the prospect turning back? This is the grand finale, Terra itself, the big throwdown; this stuff should have been sorted out much, much earlier in my opinion. I really dislike the fact that the Thousand Sons feature at Prospero, then never show up again until Terra at the very end, but I can live with it if I have to. But turning up at the very end and still not having their affairs in order? They really drew the short straw this series. As much as we all bemoan bolter porn, if anyone deserved a slice of actual, shameless balls-to-the-wall action, its the Thousand Sons, so hopefully they can wrap up this shard nonsense quickly and finally let the legion cut loose a bit.

 

The cover is dope though, gotta give it that.

This, this and this. How do you not know where you stand after you've opened up a warp portal in the Sun that will enable the grand warlord of Chaos to invade Earth with his legions of hellspawn? The Crimson King could quite happily have been a short story where Horus offers Magnus and his despondent legion pride of place in his new, ill-defined spiritual empire (throw in a contrived opportunity for Horus to personally orate to an audience of Sons, perhaps) before cracking on with some actual fighting.

 

Fow what purpose? The TS story arc is McNeill's story arc. He created characters, subplots etc. A Thousand Sons is one of the most acclaimed HH books ever. Just let the man finish his story.

For the purpose of perhaps getting a far better read than TCC. McNeil's afterword for that one reads like an apology.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Scammel

[Fire Golem]

I don’t think I’ll get the limited edition for this. I didn’t think Sons of the Selenar was worth it. 

[DarkChaplain]

The article indicates we'll likely be seeing Kyme's Salamanders from Old Earth and AD-B's Howl of the Hearthworld pack of Wolves. I wonder how things will shape up with Ianius, since it looks like he isn't on Titan yet. How much of Arvida is still left? Will the Khan encounter his brother one final time to chastise him for his choices?

 

As for Magnus still not fully committing to Chaos/Horus, that's one thing I'm totally fine with. Slaves to Darkness had him kneel before Horus, but we've known his true objective was simply breaching Terra and getting the remainder of his soul back (as embedded/merged with Arvida to form Ianius). We also know he's unlikely to succeed, considering we've seen Janus in The Beast Arises, and the psychic radiance that he emits.

 

In a way, Magnus is still very much in denial of what he has chosen to become, and whose puppet he really is. His hubris also won't let him acknowledge that he actually did wrong. He was ready to do so in A Thousand Sons, right after, but the actions of Russ and the Wolves have driven him into a corner. But even if he was repentant back then, it wasn't out of a real understanding that he was wrong in playing with the warp - it was that he messed up his father's grand plans. To this day, he might be the only one among his brothers to truly understand the scope of the Emperor's plans for humanity, despite Mortarion having been told by Malcador during his time on Terra.

 

There is so much narrative potential in Magnus coming to Terra to take the best part of him back into himself, coming to a head with his father, who he disappointed and whose dreams he destroyed, while also feeling like he was stifled and treated unjustly. Heck, Magnus was supposedly the one to sit the throne in the future and keep the Astronomican running, there's gotta be a lot of resentment built up on that basis alone, even as he understands the necessity of somebody doing the job.

 

I'm hopeful that it will really be a good examination of Magnus as a character, his journey towards self-justification and how he fully turns away from his father's dreams in favor of Tzeentch. It's especially interesting to see him appear not as the winged daemon Primarch we got a model of, but still in his giant but "human" guise. I'd wager we might see his de-facto ascension this time.

 

One speculatory bit would also be that instead of becoming one again, he'll be shattered a little further again, as the Emperor attempts to drive him back. We know there's a canon conflict with the Ahriman trilogy and The Crimson King, due to McNeill not having been up to date with the last volume of French's trilogy, and Battle of the Fang has at least one aspect of Magnus left behind to bait the Wolves, upon which's "destruction" he manifests on Fenris. This book could serve as a (maybe inelegant) way to fix those inconsistencies.

[Sandlemad]

I'm generally unimpressed with McNeill writing Magnus or the TS - ATS had a good portrayal but Crimson King was such a disappointment compared to French's Ahriman books and I don't have faith that this will resolve the inconsistencies in anything other than a very literal mechanical way - so knowing that the pattern of novellas will be these interstitial affairs is the main interesting thing here for me. Definitely onboard for a Howl of the Hearthworld novella.

[calgar101]

I would love to see a psychic battle between The Emperor and Magnus is this and the latter truly coming to terms with his actions.

[Fedor]

I'm fully on board for more character work for Magnus. Hopefully Graham gives us some meaty stuff there and with this being a novella he can resist the temptation to go too ar into wide scale ensemble battlebook like Vengeful Spirit.

[Roomsky]

Despite his missing legs, I do like this cover and it puts The Crimson King's to shame.

 

However, the Nipple-Horns are not large enough.

[Kelborn]

Hm... don't horns continuesly grow like hair and nails? ;)

[Lord_Caerolion]

I get that they have the "light" over his missing eye so that you can't see what it looks like, but it just makes it look like he's wearing a really shiny monocle.

[b1soul]

How many SoT novellas do we know about?

 

Just Sons of the Selenar and this?

[Fire Golem]

How many SoT novellas do we know about?

 

Just Sons of the Selenar and this?

Yeah.

[b1soul]

I wouldn't more actually...but would prefer a few by Wraight or Abnett

 

EDIT: *wouldn't mind

[byrd9999]

 

Fow what purpose? The TS story arc is McNeill's story arc. He created characters, subplots etc. A Thousand Sons is one of the most acclaimed HH books ever. Just let the man finish his story.

For the purpose of perhaps getting a far better read than TCC. McNeil's afterword for that one reads like an apology.

 

True, McNeill did start it, but the quality of BL fiction has moved on considerably since 2012, and he has also written the Magnus Primarch novel (which I thought was a wasted opportunity for someone else to do something different) and a dull Magnus-Ahriman audio drama.

 

His style of writing isn't really geared towards developing subtle nuanced characters with narrative arcs and plot twists, he writes paper-thin stereotypes undergoing Lovecraftian descents towards an inevitable conclusion. This approach is fine for the first book, but needs something different now and it seems he has run out of ideas. But this is all imho.

 

Also, McNeill himself messed up his Magnus storylines in Outcast Dead ;)

[DarkChaplain]

Most of what you're saying is only speaking in support of McNeill having a novella to wrap things up. His Primarchs novel and the Morningstar audio drama both provide the setup for this novella, in a pretty direct fashion. McNeill not writing this novella wouldn't benefit anything, considering it'd just leave dangling plotlines, macguffins and canon conflicts.

 

As for The Outcast Dead, justification was provided, whether you consider it an excuse or a planned twist. Wolf Hunt suffered from schedule conflicts, and had it been released as closely to The Outcast Dead as originally planned, the whole McNeill-doesn't-know-his-own-timeline stuff wouldn't have festered the way it did.

 

For all my gripes with McNeill, especially in terms of always going back to the same characters without adding meaningful new ones, it's really surprising to me just how much he's getting slammed these days, considering he is one of the old guard, one of the most successful authors in the setting from the early days of Black Library. His works, like Dan's, Gav's or (for better but mostly worse) Swallow's have defined so much of the modern setting and factions in the fiction, it's difficult to say whether or not Black Library would have even lived this long without their efforts through the formative years.

 

That the setting has steadily developed ever since, retcons happened (and still happen with every ForgeWorld Black Book, which are a whole different mess in and of themselves) and their output diversified past solely writing for Black Library, doesn't automatically rid their works of merit. Especially when a lot of the gripes people had over the years have been meme'd up to massive proportions, taken out of context and often get circulated by folks who haven't even read the source material in the first place.

[Carach]

please make magnus tragic and genuinely regretful about the actions being taken. I mean like Argel Tal level but still like "i was your most loyal son, and i wish i could still be" kind of thing..

 

because at the moment he is a bit....weak on the motivations for joining Horus, the dude who quite literally screwed him over - has he even been informed of that fact yet? 

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][= Move along please.... We're not going there =][=

[Fedor]

I don't have much problem with the story beats Kyme is talking about. Magnus at the siege was always going to be a mix of  A: a vengeful weapon there solely for revenge and with an already finished arc, by far the least interesting and basically reducing him to a set piece beatstick if they ended up too heavily with that approach B: still somewhat conflicted/in denial about his situation, typical Tzeentchian stuff C: There for his own additional agenda

 

Crimson King mainly sets up C, but i'm more than fine with some B still cropping up. We all know what way things fall, but there's potential for some very good interactions with Malcador and the Emperor. It will come down to the execution.