Books involving ancient Terra?

[Valkyrion]

Do any novels go reasonably in depth about now or even earlier?

Not necessarily imperium centric novels - anything.

 

Like Master of Mankind had a few scenes about the Emperor way back when, and Oll Persson get's his time in the ancient sun and so on. 

[N1SB]

Hi Brother Valkryion, the 1st Dawn of Fire novel, Avenging Son, has a subplot about an Administratum bureaucrat, a low-ranked scribe, in a hive that's just a grimdark government office.  Although it's recent lore, it's so surreal a Kafka-esque nightmare that it stops being grimdark satire to being an allegorical cartoon show.  I'll go over it in this spoiler, because it's really strange, and you might not want to go through a whole book for just this very specific slice of Terran life:

 

A low-ranked bureaucrat processes messages receives a missive that demands the attention of Roboute Guilliman himself.  It knocks her Emperor's Tarot deck of cards into a perfect spread, she interprets this to mean it's a message that could save the Imperium from doom.  She calls up her boss, as this is super urgent.

 

Her boss completely dismisses her.  She believes she holds the fate of the Imperium in her hands, with this missive, she sneaks out at night and goes on An Adventure.

 

Through her we see this aspect of Terra.  Grimdark offices going for miles and miles, piles of paper big enough for someone to make a house out of them.  She meets a Data Miner, an old man whose entire life is to look through old records for mistakes.  He gets a bounty for each one he finds, and he has found a whopping 3 in decades.  There is gang warfare of...Recycling Raiders, they fight over the best old paper to recycle.  It's like Necromunda inside a government office.

 

After a tragic journey, she finally goes to a gargantuan office where she believes she could escalate the issue.  Her office uniform is in rags now, she's lost her shoes, she swam through a river of sewage, she hasn't slept since forever.  She's queuing up and everyone in line looks exactly the same as her, they've all gone through An Adventure of their own.  And in typical fashion, when it's her turn, the office klaxon sounds, meaning it's time to shut down permanently, servitors seal the doors.

 

But before she is shoved out, she does the thing where she reads the papers on the table, like you read what's in your boss's in-tray?  All these people who fought their way to get there were trying to deliver the same missive.  She was not special, she was one of countless FWD: Urgent message carriers, who managed to survive.

 

She breaks down and cries.  As for this all-important message that she and all these people fought their way to deliver?  It's implied it's the Necrons awakening in the Pariah Nexus

[Ubiquitous1984]

Hi Brother Valkryion, the 1st Dawn of Fire novel, Avenging Son, has a subplot about an Administratum bureaucrat, a low-ranked scribe, in a hive that's just a grimdark government office.  Although it's recent lore, it's so surreal a Kafka-esque nightmare that it stops being grimdark satire to being an allegorical cartoon show.  I'll go over it in this spoiler, because it's really strange, and you might not want to go through a whole book for just this very specific slice of Terran life:

 

A low-ranked bureaucrat processes messages receives a missive that demands the attention of Roboute Guilliman himself.  It knocks her Emperor's Tarot deck of cards into a perfect spread, she interprets this to mean it's a message that could save the Imperium from doom.  She calls up her boss, as this is super urgent.

 

Her boss completely dismisses her.  She believes she holds the fate of the Imperium in her hands, with this missive, she sneaks out at night and goes on An Adventure.

 

Through her we see this aspect of Terra.  Grimdark offices going for miles and miles, piles of paper big enough for someone to make a house out of them.  She meets a Data Miner, an old man whose entire life is to look through old records for mistakes.  He gets a bounty for each one he finds, and he has found a whopping 3 in decades.  There is gang warfare of...Recycling Raiders, they fight over the best old paper to recycle.  It's like Necromunda inside a government office.

 

After a tragic journey, she finally goes to a gargantuan office where she believes she could escalate the issue.  Her office uniform is in rags now, she's lost her shoes, she swam through a river of sewage, she hasn't slept since forever.  She's queuing up and everyone in line looks exactly the same as her, they've all gone through An Adventure of their own.  And in typical fashion, when it's her turn, the office klaxon sounds, meaning it's time to shut down permanently, servitors seal the doors.

 

But before she is shoved out, she does the thing where she reads the papers on the table, like you read what's in your boss's in-tray?  All these people who fought their way to get there were trying to deliver the same missive.  She was not special, she was one of countless FWD: Urgent message carriers, who managed to survive.

 

She breaks down and cries.  As for this all-important message that she and all these people fought their way to deliver?  It's implied it's the Necrons awakening in the Pariah Nexus

Thanks for posting this, I read that book and completely forgot about that plot line and the implications.  

[N1SB]

Thanks for posting this, I read that book and completely forgot about that plot line and the implications.  

 

 

Brother, we thank Brother Valkyrion both, because if he hadn't asked even I would've forgotten.  It was a fascinating facet of the Imperium, but it's so far out there despite being at the very heart of Terra.

[cheywood]

Mortis has some scenes from the Emperor’s early days, and there’s a great scene in Talon of Horus about a daemon in the medieval era, but you’re not going a find a book that goes in depth about Terra before the Unification era, let alone our time.

[Sothalor]

Au contraire, you can find many, many, many books about Terra before the Unification era. They just all happen to be about M.2 and before.

 

It's called the history section of your local bookstore. 

[Taliesin]

Chris Wraights' Valdor surely has some early Terra scenes I recall, though perhaps not as early as you'd like.

[aa.logan]

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s current, non-40K, series, Final Architecture, isn’t *actually* about the Dark Age of Technology and the creation of navigators but it really could be…

[DukeLeto69]

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s current, non-40K, series, Final Architecture, isn’t *actually* about the Dark Age of Technology and the creation of navigators but it really could be…

Hmmm may have to check that out!