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Siege of Terra - Garro: Knight of Grey


Joe

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I listened to the audiobook of this story. Toby Longworth is my headcanon Garro voice and I think he did a good job despite my issues with the story.

 

Spoiler

Regarding what I liked, it was Garro dying to Mortarion, though admittedly him dying to Typhon would have been equally good. Garro had to die: there was no way he could survive an encounter with Mortarion regardless of whatever God-Emperor power boost he got. I also liked Garro's vision of the afterlife which implies he may become a Living Saint. I appreciated the mention of Loken though it's sad he is not there to talk to Garro one last time. I also liked the callbacks to Flight of the Eisenstein with the Garro/Morty interactions being told from the POV of the Reaper of Men.

 

As to what I disliked, there was a lot. Typhon being so insolent to Mortarion, Keeler being at the front lines which messes up the Siege chronology post-Mortis, the plot armor is strong with Gallor, the long drawn out duel between Mortarion and Garro, and of course Garro's last strike. This last aspect had me laugh so hard due to how silly it seems that Mortarion would fall for this a second time against the Khagan which now robs the emotional punch the Khan v. Mortarion duel had in Warhawk. Like did the Siege authors not exchange notes for the big duels they would cover in the Siege series?

 

That is my take anyway. I wonder if we will be getting more Siege novellas later this year.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good day,

 

Read the novella and then this thread. The main impression was that this work was unnecessary as others have said.

 

Spoiler

Imo the entire novel is basically Garro’s ultra-stretched death scene. Every other character and action is basically setup for it. Well, also shows Mortarion with enough petulance to equal Fulgrim’s. He’s in need of serious intervention, since he can’t get over Garro for some reason, well after they both start seeing other people.

 

Is there a chance Garro will pull a Loken and reappear? There is leeway considering the end which cam be used in a future telling to bring him (or his soul) back for more. Guess that depends on what GW & BL have in mind. But keeping characters in some sort of obvious or hinted limbo is a neat trick development-wise. Can you hear me, you up there in the Golden Throne.

 

Personally, I would have preferred Loken staying dead and Garro staying alive, as others have said. Related to that preference, I wish some stories didn’t turn really good, full-bodied characters into wargaming caricatures. But such is the nature of the WH40K beast.

 

Art-wise, I thought the image of Keeler and Garro was pretty nicely rendered, and highlights their character traits beautifully. Not that the other art was bad, but this Keeler image (forgive the pun) was right on point.

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Would have been better if there were fewer Traitors in this Novella but they were much more powerful and going crazy in their killing spree

 

Have it basically be a chase scene like in a horror movie in which Keeler runs past countless retreating Conscripts and Refugees as they are slaughtered by 7 Death Guard Marines, the leader becomes a Daemon Prince

 

Keeler is cornered and is about to die when Garro and his Company intervenes and allows Keeler to flee to safety. The Daemon is banished and his six Marines killed but Garro and his Company all die in the process

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Not going to lie, Monnreapers story sounds better then what we got. Plus having a deamon prince ( the end of the road power/reward wise for chaos) vs one of the Imperial proto saints sets the stage (since we just HAD to cram the origins of the faith in the HH) nicely for the next 10k years. 

 

Much better then a mini Khan vs Mortarion buts its before the Khan vs Mortarion but ends the same way as the Khan vs Mortarion fight we got.

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12 hours ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

The novella would have been better if it was released after Mortis, but before Warhawk.  It would have retained at least some element of tension then.  

 

Better still, as another Frater mentioned, have it as part of Act 1 of Warhawk.  

Heartily agree with this. This novella really messed up the Siege timeline post Mortis and robbed the punch out of elements of "Warhawk". Seems the planning for the Siege was not as ironed out as we thought. I liked Garro dying which ended his arc neatly, but it definitely took too long to get there.

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I'd love to know some of the "behind the scenes" details about stuff like this. Was there some significant scheduling delay that arose from COVID or supply chain infrastructure or another cause?

 

How committed was the BL staff to having James Swallow be the one to conclude Garro's story? Were there scheduling conflicts there? (He does a lot of other work, after all)

 

Was Knight of Grey planned before or after Warhawk was completed? Did Swallow end up writing KoG without full details of other plot points and timelines and character arcs?

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9 hours ago, Sothalor said:

I'd love to know some of the "behind the scenes" details about stuff like this. Was there some significant scheduling delay that arose from COVID or supply chain infrastructure or another cause?

 

How committed was the BL staff to having James Swallow be the one to conclude Garro's story? Were there scheduling conflicts there? (He does a lot of other work, after all)

 

Was Knight of Grey planned before or after Warhawk was completed? Did Swallow end up writing KoG without full details of other plot points and timelines and character arcs?

I don't have my copies of mortis/warhawk and garro to hand to check, but it would be interesting to note what date the respective authors sign off their afterword's on.    

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On 3/22/2023 at 11:10 AM, Ubiquitous1984 said:

I don't have my copies of mortis/warhawk and garro to hand to check, but it would be interesting to note what date the respective authors sign off their afterword's on.    

I just checked my LE’s.  Warhawk’s afterword was written a full year before Garro’s afterword.  

Edited by Ubiquitous1984
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I still stand by my theory that Garro: Knight of Grey was not intended to be released in print but as an audio drama. Corporate (and covid) ditched the format, necessitating a full printrun that wasn't originally scheduled. I doubt they'd have added an afterword to the audio drama release at all, hence the late dating.

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13 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I still stand by my theory that Garro: Knight of Grey was not intended to be released in print but as an audio drama. Corporate (and covid) ditched the format, necessitating a full printrun that wasn't originally scheduled. I doubt they'd have added an afterword to the audio drama release at all, hence the late dating.

 

Yeah but does not 1) fix any of the story issues, especially the Khan Vs Mortarion copy paste ending. 2) Excuse anything, they are still charging us full price so i expect them to go back and make the needed changes to the story/writing to make it work.  I mean for the delay and total page count they could have re written from scratch. 

 

If it was a audio drama crammed into a novel body then that makes it for me at least WORSE. As for the grand finale for the grand series to have such cash grab antics simply diminishes the whole. 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

Yeah but does not 1) fix any of the story issues, especially the Khan Vs Mortarion copy paste ending. 2) Excuse anything, they are still charging us full price so i expect them to go back and make the needed changes to the story/writing to make it work.  I mean for the delay and total page count they could have re written from scratch. 

 

If it was a audio drama crammed into a novel body then that makes it for me at least WORSE. As for the grand finale for the grand series to have such cash grab antics simply diminishes the whole. 

 

 

 

To be fair to Swallow, it's not as if he's alone in lazily using the BL/GW special to resolve fights. Between 30k/40k books and campaigns, you can be sure a minor variation of it will pop up somewhere. ADB dutifully rolled it out to kill Angron, barely a book after the Khan's.

 

Loads of the writers clearly see it as an easy way to give both combatants "their due", without having to come up with a more creative battle/fight, and regardless of how much sense it makes in relation to the abilities/styles of those fighting. One variation allows the one who loses to get in a last quip/blow that humiliates/ruins the victory; the other allows the author to suggest the loser was just as good/stronger, and could have won on another day, so needed a very risky gambit to take down.

 

This one just ended up being worse than usual because of Mortarion being involved twice back to back. The Swarmlord gets similar treatment in his appearances against Dante and that Custodes short.

Edited by Fedor
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I would have preferred Loken stayed dead after Galaxy in Flames.  He's since been a pretty benign character, in my opinion.  A lot of what Loken has done could have been perfomred by Garro in some manner or another.

 

Garro himself was also someone who, for me, his story really could have ended after Flight of the Eisenstein.  The point of the story was that the "ordinary" Astartes decided to go against their Primarchs and the cult of personality surrounding them so they could warn the Imperium, which itself was a huge thing.  The tales afterwards of Garro recruiting the initial Grey Knights was fine, a Legionnaire without a Legion recruiting for another "Grey Legion".  But, it lost steam pretty quickly, in my view, and he otherwise became a background character.

 

If Garro had to die in his own novella (which is ok, having a book to tie together the various old Index Astartes: Death Guard outcomes), having it be some legendary fight against Mortarion isn't it, for me.  It should have been against Typhus, who in reality was really Garro's big bad guy nemesis in the Death Guard. 

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  • 1 month later...

Just got round to reading this.

 

The story is fine in itself, but I would probably echo some of the other stuff mentioned here in that the timing of the release is poor, and that Loken's out-of-nowhere return way back when has kind of trodden on Garro's toes, stolen his thunder. The overall arcs are poorer for it. 

 

Almost everything Loken has ended up doing since returning, could have been Garro. Could have been used to flesh out Garro even more. Loken's Galaxy In Flames is cheapened by his return, and Garro's experiences are cheapened in turn. 

 

It is a shame, because individually I liked them both a lot - Loken is iconic for the OG HH story, Garro's has been a great run at times after taking up that torch - but the galaxy wasn't big enough for the both of them. 

 

 

Edited by Carach
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