Twenty years ago this month, my first ever piece of fiction for the grim dark future of Warhammer 40,000 appeared in the pages of Inferno! magazine, then Black Library’s monthly short fiction and comics publication for the worlds of Warhammer. That story was “Crimson Night”.
The Space Marine chapters of the 41st Millennium are the face of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 table-top miniatures game and its extended world, so it’s no surprise my debut story for that universe featured them; but while I’d later become known for writing another Space Marine legion – the Blood Angels – my initial venture used characters from an entirely different cadre… The dour, death-obsessed Doom Eagles.
The synopsis for “Crimson Night” reads:
In the war-torn world of the 41st Millennium the forces of the Imperium are feared throughout the galaxy, and none more so than the Adeptus Astartes – the Space Marines, gene-engineered super-soldiers, warrior-monks of the Emperor who live only to fulfil his commands. Rich in iridium deposits, the mining world of Merron is a valuable resource for the Imperium. As civil unrest spreads and rumours fly, the Doom Eagles are forced to investigate exactly what manner of evil is preying on the people. A series of grisly murders on the planet Merron bear all the hallmarks of the notorious Flesh Tearers chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Can Sergeant Tarikus overcome his prejudices and uncover the truth or will the truth be too much for him to handle?
When I first pitched a story to Black Library, I was working on sci-fi entertainment magazines as a feature writer and reviewer, having no luck finding an ‘in’ for my attempts to write fiction. Then I found myself talking with someone who had sold a story to the Black Library, and I wondered if a guy like me – who knew the Warhammer universe and had played the game in the days of the original ‘Rogue Trader‘ 1st Edition – could do the same. Two decades on, I have an extensive list of short stories, books and audio dramas in the worlds of Warhammer, so I guess I can say I did…
In “Crimson Night”, the lead character Tarikus is part of a Doom Eagles garrison force coming in to relieve the Flesh Tearers unit that has been guarding the planet Merron, who are notorious for the rumours of battlefield atrocities and ritualistic practices of blood drinking that swirl around them. Tarikus begins to suspect his supposed allies have been killing innocent civilians to slake their blood-lust, and sets out to make certain, even if it leads him into direct conflict with fellow Space Marines.
In my very first iteration of the plot, Tarikus was going to be a Blood Angel – a warrior of the legion from which the Flesh Tearers had broken away, which would have given the story a very different resonance. But Black Library editorial were keen to tell stories about the Doom Eagles chapter and asked me to change his origins.
Because I enjoy a bit of continuity, I later brought Tarikus back in my stories “Relics“, “The Returned” and “Vigil“, and I gave him a guest-starring role in Black Tide, my 4th Blood Angels novel. At one point, there were plans in development for him to feature in a trilogy of hour-long Doom Eagle audio dramas I was to write, but Black Library’s publishing policy shifted away full-cast productions to simpler single-actor audiobook readings, and so that project fell by the wayside.
At the time, the Doom Eagles were thought of as a “fiction-only” chapter, not appearing in any rulebooks or lore supplements for the Warhammer 40,000 wargame, only having turned up in previous stories and comics by Dan Abnett, Si Spurrier, Gordon Rennie and Jim Alexander. A reference article on them for the ‘Index Astartes’ column in Games Workshop’s White Dwarf companion magazine was written, but I believe it was never published – still, it helped form the basis for how I wrote Tarikus and his morose brethren.
While Inferno! magazine is no longer in print as a monthly publication, “Crimson Night” remains available as a downloadable “quick reads” ebook. Text on the cover incorrectly bills it as ‘A Flesh Tearers Story’ and the artwork depicts a Space Marine in the livery of a Flesh Tearer – but the Tearers are only secondary characters in the tale, and this is a Doom Eagles story through and through.
In this guise, it also appears in the anthologies The Book of Blood and Sons of Sanguinius: A Blood Angels Omnibus (and the latter also includes a few other bits of short fiction by me). As well as its first printing in issue #38 of Inferno!, you might still be able to find it in a second-hand copy of the collection What Price Victory.
20 years is a long time, but I think the story and its themes still hold up, and I’m pleased it’s still out there in the world for new readers to discover.
You can download an excerpt from “Crimson Night” in .ePub or .mobi formats by clicking on the links, or grab the full ebook version from Black Library right here.
