40k

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.

Earlier this year, I looked at the writing of my first book in the epic Horus Heresy series, The Flight of the Eisenstein – and once again in 2022, I find myself looking back at another of my works in that saga as we pass a milestone; ten years ago this month my third Horus Heresy novel Fear To Tread was released…

Originally published in 2012, with a hardcover collector’s edition in 2015 and a part-work hardback in 2018, more than anything that came before or since, Fear To Tread was the one novel I felt compelled – destined, even! – to write in the chronicles of the Heresy.

A quick recap: Black Library is the publishing arm of Games Workshop, the creators of the colossal Warhammer 40,000 franchise, a universe built off a massively popular table-top wargame set in a pulpy, gothic sci-fi future. BL’s job is to create tie-in fiction for their intellectual property, and the core of the Warhammer mythos is the tale of an interstellar civil war fought between brother-champions and their vast legions of Space Marines, led by the Warmaster Horus Lupercal – hence the name. Horus’s heretical rebellion is the ur-myth of this vast saga, and across more than sixty novels and dozens of short stories, novellas, graphic novels and audio dramas, I and many other writers have told the tale since 2007.

I’ve talked before in other places and at other times about the start of the Horus Heresy series, but here I recall the very first thing that went through my mind when I was offered the chance to work on the project – the Battle of Signus Prime.

Even though the first book I wrote for the Heresy saga was The Flight of the Eisenstein, even though I would write a half-dozen other stories in that era before I got to it, the great conflict between the mighty primarch Sanguinius, Lord of the Blood Angels Space Marine legion, and the daemonic forces of Chaos was the story I most wanted to tell.

When the Heresy project kicked off, I was already writing about the Blood Angels chapter in their later Warhammer 40,000 incarnation. Over four novels – the duologies Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius, and Black Tide and Red Fury – the deeper I went into the character of their legion and the rich history of their foundation, the more I wanted to peel back the layers and find the true heart of their story, back in the prehistory of their most epic battle during the Heresy era.

Fear To Tread was the evolution of that intent; a novel that burned away in the back of my mind for five years as the Horus Heresy gained momentum and the clock of the Warmaster’s betrayal slowly turned toward the events on distant Signus Prime. What happens on Signus is not only an event of great import for the Heresy itself, but also a defining moment for the Blood Angels, and I have to admit, I was both excited and daunted by the prospect of writing these epic scenes.

Fear to Tread allowed me to bring the experiences of the Blood Angels to the fore of the Heresy and set up links in the chains of narrative that would go on to play out in the stories that followed and eventually, all the way to the conclusion at the Siege of Terra – where Sanguinius and his arch-nemesis the daemon-lord Ka’Bandha meet again for some final settling of scores.

With that frankly epic death-metal album cover art by the incredible Neil Roberts, and more than eleven printings in seven languages and approximately 150,000 copies in print worldwide to date, Fear To Tread became the highest-charting New York Times Bestseller of the Horus Heresy series, and I’m proud to have been the author behind it.

As I’ve said before, much has changed in the ten years since I wrote this novel, both for me personally as a writer but also with Black Library, the Warhammer franchise and it’s fans – but what hasn’t changed is the passion and the amazing, enduring support from the readers that have made Fear To Tread a linchpin in the mythos of the Blood Angels, now and for the future. Thank you all!

It was somewhere in the Spring of 2006 when the suggestion was first made. Lindsey Priestley and Marc Gascoigne, my editors at Black Library, floated the idea that we were going to novelize The Horus Heresy.

Those of you in the know will understand what a big deal that was – but for readers unfamiliar with the grim, dark future of the 41st Millennium, I’ll elucidate: Black Library was (and still is) the publishing arm of Games Workshop, the creators of the colossal Warhammer 40,000 franchise, a universe built off a raft of massively popular tabletop wargames set in a pulpy, gothic sci-fi future. BL’s job is to create tie-in fiction for their intellectual property, and in ’06, I was in the front rank of their writers penning epic narratives of their clashing armies and larger-than-life heroes. A key part of the Warhammer mythos is the tale of an interstellar civil war fought between brother-champions and their vast legions of Space Marines, led by one Horus Lupercal – hence the name. Horus’s rebellion had never been fully detailed before, and it’s no exaggeration to describe it as the ur-myth of this vast saga. So when we decided to codify it in a series of novels, anticipation – and trepidation – was high.

Being invited to commit the events of that great conflict to prose was no small task. At the start, there were a few folks who worried it might not be a success, but I was never one of them. I always knew that the Heresy saga would be a hit with our readers, because like them I wanted to know the details of Horus’s treachery and the war that ultimately destroyed the dream of the great Imperium of Mankind. But I never could have predicted the scope of what we unleashed. At the start, some people thought it would be done in three books. Or maybe six. Or ten at the most. To date, over sixty novels and anthologies, plus audio dramas, novellas, short stories and graphic novels have told the tale, along with rulebooks that allow gamers to play the fiction as well as read it.

My first step into that huge narrative was The Flight of the Eisenstein, the fourth book in the series released in 2007, fifteen years ago today; I would go on to write much more in the series (the Nathaniel Garro audio dramas, the novels Nemesis, Fear to Tread, Weapon of Fate and The Buried Dagger, and more).

At the time I had a big task set before me; Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill and Ben Counter’s opening trilogy Horus Rising, False Gods and Galaxy In Flames were the rising tones of the overture of the Horus Heresy, each bigger in scope than the last – and I had to follow that. I knew there was no way I could top them, so instead I changed tack. Flight is much tighter in scope than its predecessors, and deliberately so. It’s the tale of one man, the legionary and Battle Captain Nathaniel Garro, as he follows a path of sworn duty from the most horrific betrayal by his brothers, to the realization that fate has a purpose for him. Garro’s personal journey mirrors the larger themes of the Heresy, as we see the same forces acting on him that are acting on the galaxy around him.

When Flight was first written and delivered, I had no grand plans for Garro beyond some thoughts about returning to him at the Siege of Terra, the final act of the Heresy saga – and I still have plans for that. But in 2007, I had no idea he would resonate so strongly with the Warhammer readership and fandom. Garro would come back into the ongoing narrative in a series of audio dramas, and the character took on a life of its own – which for an author, is immensely rewarding.

Fifteen years on from the release of this novel, a lot has changed – not just with my growth and experience as an author, but with Black Library, the Warhammer franchise and its fandom – and it remains one of my best-selling and most widely-read works, with (as I write this) approximately 400,000 copies in print in multiple editions across seven different languages. But by far the most rewarding thing that has come from writing Flight has been the amazing people I have been able to work with – not just my fellow Horus Heresy authors and editors, but artists like Neil Roberts, voice actors like Toby Longworth, and many more – and the readers who I’ve been able to connect with.

Thank you all for your support, and for making The Flight of the Eisenstein an enduring success.