Foul Blightspawn

"It's a funny thing, you know," rasped Brother Sardus Vomortis, "people often say that my order are sadists. I don't know where that came from. I'm a scientist."
He scratched at his side absently, the rhythmic throb of the churn in his guts drowning out the distant sound of screams. On the table, the eldar spat curses in its own heathen tongue and struggled against the bonds. 

"May Khaine himself be avenged upon you, filthy warp-soaked mon-keigh!"
Sardus looked around. He didn't raise an eyebrow, because his flesh and his armour had long since melded together and made such notions absurd, but he managed to convey the impression that the gesture would have imparted. 
"There's really no need to get angry," Sardus replied in halting but passage Asuryn, to the eldar's visible surprise, "I'm not here to harm you. Not in the long run, at any rate."
He lumbered over, dragging up a chair made of mouldering Astartes bones. He sat heavily. The chair had no back - it would have got in the way of his tank. It grumbled faintly in protest but held. Sardus looked at the eldar long and hard. 
"It's all about survival, you know," he said, "ultimately, that's all it's ever really about. We live in a universe which tries to kill us all, and it will have its way in the end. But we can forestall that end with the application of science."
The eldar spat. 
"What would you know of science, lowly ape-thing?"
Sardus grunted and reached down. From the putrid deck of the ship, he lifted a beautiful blueish gem and held it for the eldar to see. The alien grew deathly still. 
"I understand that this is a wonderful piece of science," said Sardus, "an absolutely incredible achievement. A literal defiance of species-wide damnation. From what I have read and observed, the stone resonates in just such a way and holds just the correct properties that it draws eldar aether-matter into it with a pull which, over a short distance, is greater than the pull of the warp. From there, the eldar's fellows release the aether-matter into a purpose built psychically resonant haven within the Craftworld. I offer no mockery when I say that your people were truly among the galaxy's greatest minds to devise such an invention."
The eldar stared at the gem, wide-eyed. He did not plead or beg, which Sardus admired, but the alien's fear could be felt almost physically. 

"It's a good solution, I'll grant," he went on, "especially as the alternative is so appalling. The Dark Prince devours your souls if they enter the warp unshielded. And we're not talking about the few moments of pain and surprise that humans feel before they ignite and the warp's predators shred their consciousness. Your people remain conscious indefinitely."
Sardus held the spirit stone out and wagged it, like a teacher waving a book at a stubborn student. 
"But, I started this discussion by talking about survival. And what does an eldar do to survive if his spirit stone is lost?"
The eldar's eyes widened and he might have spoken then, but Sardus was too fast. He hurled the stone against the wall. Astartes strength and the warp tainted malice of the ship did all the work. The stone shattered. The eldar stared at the remains in utter desolation.
"Now," said Sardus, "we can have a proper discussion. Let us examine the facts. You are trapped and weaponless on an enemy ship, surrounded by what you would call corruption and disease. And you cannot allow yourself to die. It is not a matter of honour or loyalty. You must make a determination about how to survive. As a scientist, I wish to help you make the best choice. I am also, after a fashion, a gardener. A gardener understands that his plants will die without the correct care and that a plant who stings is still a thing of beauty."
He stood up heavily and clumped over to a workbench. With surprising dexterity, he began to examine vials of unmarked liquid. 

"What insane riddles are these?" demanded the eldar, though his voice was empty and flat. Sardus glanced over his shoulder. 
"That feeling? That is despair. You are damned, and you can conceive of no way back. I can offer you no way out, before you ask. But what I can do is to help you recognise that being damned is not the worst thing that can happen to you."
The eldar regained a little of his former anger.
"You speak madness!"
Sardus snorted a small laugh. 
"Very probably. But that's kind of the point I'm making.  We need to stop thinking rationally in an irrational universe."
Sardus returned to the table and loomed over the eldar. He held a seemingly innocuous vial of clear liquid in his armoured hand. 
"A choice lies in your future. In the one case, you can continue to deny the nature of the universe around you and the events unfolding. In that case, you will die a very unpleasant death, and that will be only the beginning of your suffering. In the other case, you must accept a truth which will be difficult for you. I am no insensitive to that. You must embrace the knowledge that the world you have known is a hysterical lie smeared across the truth. Decay, debasement, and degradation are inevitable. In resisting these things, we give ourselves pain and heartbreak. By embracing them, we must face a moment of unhappiness. But beyond that, we are ironclad. We will survive much longer. And when death finally comes, the Ur-father himself will welcome us to the Garden. Embrace the Ur-father. Embrace the force that the world hides behind the name Nurgle. Your soul will be damned, but you will rejoice in it. Survival, you see?"

The eldar spat.
"Never!"
Sardus shrugged, the motion tectonic in his corroded power plate. The stench rolling off of him killed the eldar's defiance and he fell to coughing. 
Sardus regarded him for a moment longer before grabbing the alien's face and forcing the vial of liquid down his throat. 
"Call when you change your mind," he said mildly. He lumbered back to his workbench as the screaming began. the churn in his guts continued to work slowly, unhurried. 
Eventually, the eldar changed its mind.

Adept Primaris Rebyka Darlayn

Psyker.
A strange word, is it not? So much power, so much potential, so much hate, so much fear, all wrapped in six letters. A fitting name, though, because part of it is silent and unseen. Just one letter, one little letter 'P'. There is so much about an actual psyker that remains unseen.
I am a Primaris Battle Psyker. I look thirty-five, which is a little more than a third of my real age, sidereal. Partly a conceit to vanity, for I am considered attractive. Partly pragmatism: an individual of my skill and potency cannot be allowed to die simply by the tyranny of age. I was born psychic. The Black Ships came for me when I was seven years old, standard. Since then, I have served His Divine Majesty as an adept of the Scholastica Psykana.

I am not like those poor shackled wretches, chained in their own filth, who are herded into battle in crude Wyrdvane covens. I pity them for their fate, but see the necessity of it. I have seen what seeks to enter the world through them, and what must be done to deny such creatures. Most of those poor, shuffling creatures may live painful lives, but most will reach the Emperor's Light. Regardless, I am a different order of being.  

I can summon lightning to blast the enemies of the Imperium to ashes. I can fill the foe's mind with nightmares and shadows so that they scarcely know how to point their weapons. I can restore balance to broken men and screen my own troops from unfriendly eyes. I have stood alongside legends. Ulyssiad Sagath knows my name, and I bear a token from Aegyptor Astagath. Why do I tell you this? Because I want you to understand who I am before you attempt to lie to me. You are going to die. Let us not pretend otherwise. You, Corporal Vaylin Weisser of the 885th Volscani Cataphracts, are a traitor and a heretic. You will be remembered as such. We are here to determine two things. The first is whether a footnote will be added saying that you offered all that you knew and accepted the justice of Commissar DeSarco, the lady standing behind you. The second is whether, in doing so, in offering me everything you know, there is a small chance that you may yet be redeemed and reach the Emperor's Light. If you do not give me everything I ask for and mean it, your soul will ignite in the warp seconds after it leaves your body. This is not my judgement. This is not even the judgement of His Divine Majesty. This is the choice before you now. Confess your sins, tell me every single thing you know about the archenemy's movements in the Rubicon Sector and have a chance at redemption. Defy me and face death and damnation. Shall we begin?

The boom of DeSarco's bolt pistol was deafening. Adept Darlayn did not flinch. She looked at the corpse of the Traitor Guardsman, his head exploded like a rotten fruit. DeSarco called out into the hallway, and a pair of grim faced Ophelian Guardsmen entered. Without a word, they hauled the corpse away. Darlayn carefully added some notes to her docket. 

"Did you get anything?" DeSarco asked quietly. 

Darlayn didn't look up. 

"Some basics of troop deployment. He had no idea where Eiterfex is. He'd never even seen the Plague Lord, truthfully."

DeSarco grunted with an entire lack of surprise. She looked at Darlayn sidelong. They had been friends a long time, but neither one of them ever lost sight of the fact that part of DeSarco's job was to keep an eye on Darlayn. DeSarco was good at picking up on Darlayn's subtle tells. After twenty five interrogations, the Primaris Battle Psyker's iron will could not quite contain her tiredness. 

"You need a break, Byka?" DeSarco asked quietly. 

Darlayn looked up, pride and determination in her eyes. After a moment, she sighed and nodded.

"Just a short one," she replied. 

DeSarco pulled up a chair and sat down. They sat in companionable silence for a while. Servitors trundled in and scrubbed the blood from the floor and the wide interrogation table. Slowly, Darlayn centred herself and refocused her mind. She allowed herself a moment of sorrow for the faint sounds she had heard in the echoes of DeSarco's pistol: the shrieks of the dead traitor as he immolated in the Sea of Souls, and the Neverborn ripped his essence to shreds. Evidently, he had not sought redemption with enough conviction. 

Will they ever learn, I wonder?  she thought to herself. Then she sighed and pushed the thought away. She called for the Guardsmen standing outside.

"Send in the next one," she said. 

Pride

I am a bisexual.

I have been out for 17 years, and I am proud. As Pride month closes, I am as proud as ever. I'm proud of the brave LGBT community around the world, daring to live as they were made despite the predations of tiny little frightened people who would see them killed or mutilated.

I have never met an LGBT person who hadn't received violence or aggression for being the way we are. I've certainly taken some flack for it. But what makes me so filled with pride is that the majority of us just get on with it. The people who hate us have an overwhelming victim complex, believing that their very existence is under threat by us just being here. They make up their little fantasies about our all-powerful agenda and delude themselves into believing that they're oppressed underdogs if the law mildly rebukes them for acts of violence. I'm white, male, British and can pass for straight if necessary. It means that I can provide a control group. I can tell you, whether people know about my sexuality does make a massive difference. A white man who appears to be straight is coddled by the world's institutions. Factor LGBT into it, and suddenly he's the object of fear.

That's where the chips have fallen. We accept it. We shrug it off, laugh it off (I enjoy reading what foaming anxiety-filled nonsense pours from the snouts of madmen like Kevin Swanson or Jim Corr). When we can, we fight back. The road to recognition is long, and it isn't over yet by a long way. Insecure manbabies like that oaf Ramzan Kadyrov still like to lock us up and murder us to make themselves feel more masculine. Empty-minded blowhards like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson will go along with our demonization just because they're too weak and pathetic to stand against it. And you know what? Get over yourselves. The LGBT community has been taking the rubbish of these industrial-strength wankers since time immemorial. We've made a lot of progress towards equal rights in the last few decades. Now, a bunch of simpering cowards and simpletons who don't know how to deal with the actual problems are blaming us again. I don't think that they realise how pathetic it makes them look (not that it matters a great deal, given that they're appealing to a base of fearful idiots). And I don't think they really understand how little we really fear them.

So yeah, we face these threats. But we don't tune into a vulpine news channel where millionaires sob about how oppressed they are. We live our lives. I love that my fellow LGBT people have the courage to live a truth rather than a lie. We have Pride Month partially to push back at the demented creatures who wish us ill purely for existing, and partially to celebrate the bravery we have all, at some time, had to show. Any LGBT person you meet has been brave at least once: when they came out. It's actually the most massive burden being lifted, and it's really easy. Once the words are out, you wonder how you could have been so difficult. But beforehand, we all had to overcome incredible fear and anxiety about how it would turn out. There are sadly many accounts of families degenerating into howling beasts rather than accept a simple and harmless truth about a loved one. My own parents didn't disown me, but never seem to have really accepted reality either. We get on fine, but I recognise that they feel the need to shelter themselves from unexpected truths. If we're honest, the world doesn't change much when you come out - but it feels like it will, and overcoming that takes a moment of massive courage. Every time you see someone who acknowledges their LGBT sexuality, remember that no matter how timid they seem, they faced that.

And I love that the vast, vast majority of heterosexuals are proud to stand with us. The frantic, swivel-eyed lunatics are a small portion of monsters and madmen. They like to make noise, and sometimes they get into positions of power where they can act on their violent urges, but that doesn't change the fact that they're the detritus of history. Just as they were wrong about race, religion, women and everything else they've had positions on, they are wrong about the LGBT community. As with all bigots, homophobes will eventually be rendered extinct. Reason will slowly displace hatred, and love will replace fear. The LGBT community is not a threat to anyone. We're just people, as diverse in personality and ideology as any other sampling of humanity.

Much love to both bravery of the LGBT community and our allies, who represent the vast majority of heterosexuals. Together we will make a better world.

The Great Taurus

This probably isn't one of my best paint jobs, but I'm really pleased with it anyway. I'm pleased with it basically because it involved me stepping waaaay out of my comfort zone.

I nearly chickened out and painted him red, ala the 90s paint job. But I didn't want to do that: I envision the Great Taurus as a near-molten mass of burning embers. It isn't an animal in any true sense, more like a daemon of the harsh landscape. I imagine that when it moves, it does so with a fizz and hiss and crackle, furnace heat blasting out of its joints. 

The thing is, this effect called upon me to do everything in completely the opposite way I normally would. The recesses would be brightest, and inconsistencies were actually desirable. This was going to be a ... hair raising experience. 

So I sprayed him black, then... uh... Averland Sunset yellow. I looked at what I'd done with a dull, distant sense of hysteria. If this went wrong, it was going to go very wrong. With a sort of crazed reckless determination, I grabbed a drybrush and heavily drybrushed the whole model Fire Dragon Bright. It looked unutterably horrible. Before I could cower out, I grabbed the Mephiston Red and hammered the model with a heavily drybrushed layer of it. It looked like a film of a John Blanche nightmare directed by Gary Morley. But I was committed now.

I did a sort of rough wetbrush layer with Eshin Grey over the top. Mercifully, it was starting to look like something. I then applied two layers of Nuln Oil over the grey areas to give it the uneven impression of ash and coals.

I picked out his horns, nose ring, hooves and eyes in brass colours, and applied small amounts of Carroburg Crimson, Fuegan Orange and Ardcoat to soften rougher edges and give a bit of a glow. 

It's worth noting that this is a very beautiful model to work with, which is puzzling for a model that was sculpted 25 years ago. It remains an imposing, ferocious and distinct monster which I'm pleased to have been able to get hold of. 

Game of Thrones is over and I'm... pretty happy, actually

Game of Thrones was a pretty good TV show. It wasn't ever as great as people tried to make out: even the early seasons had uneven and sloppy moments. Hardly surprising, considering that Gerge R R Martin's books were uneven and had sloppy moments (apart from A Dance with Dragons, which was pretty much all bad all the time with repetitive diction and incoherent plotting, and Dany actually being out of character). Now it's over, and I really do mean that. George R R Martin will never, ever finish his books. I'd put significant money on that. I would be fairly surprised if he ever finishes the mythical sixth book. Let's not forget he's managed to write other books and screenplays while not writing The Winds of Winter. I doubt he has any idea how to end it or much inclination to do so. In all probability, until he dies and another author is recruited to finish it, the end of the show is the end.

And I think they did a pretty good job in the end. The last season was uneven, but then they all were. The Long Night was a terrible episode, granted. Daenerys was never particularly fit to be a civilian ruler. She's an absolutist: in season one she told her new followers that people who defied her would die screaming (and then set a witch on fire as if to prove the point). In season two she told the rulers of Qarth that she would take what was hers is blood and fire. Season three she mass-murdered the masters, season four she crucified hundreds over Barristan's objections. Even then, as Barristan the Bold looked a bit unnerved, Dany was starting to look a bit dodge. She always picked on people we didn't like, but how long would it be before her perception of who the bad guys were shifted to encompass a population? So it was absolutely right to have her do what she did. The internet is sobbing about a sudden personality change, but there's been no such thing: we've seen her from the point of view of the people being Dracarysed. She applied the same absolutist mentality to her war with Cersei.

This, of course, leads us to the real problem. The show had potentially written itself into a corner with the early dismissal of the Night King, the climate-change embodying scariest of old white men. There was suddenly a villain void which only the half-guessed at Dany heel turn could fill. Which meant that they'd backed themselves into a corner where their two antagonists were women and only a dour white man could save the world. We live in an age of resurgent misogyny, with the screaming hellbaby in the White House and attempts to confiscate women's rights popping up all over. It was a little cringy that a manly man was going to be the answer.

Quick aside: this didn't mean that the women in question didn't do a great job. Emilia Clarke's scenery chewing has been beautiful in the last two episodes, and Lena Headey was the MVP of episode 5. I'm not a massive fan of 'rocks fell and people died', but actually, Headey pulled off Cersei's fall perfectly. Her arrogance and superiority are chipped away systemically until she's a broken, cowering husk. There's a great moment as she crosses the maproom where some rubble falls beside her and the look of total terror she pulls off is stunning. After all she had done and been, Cersei Lannister died cowering, helpless and afraid, unnoticed by the younger and more beautiful one who had come to take her place and who was ultimately responsible for her death. She died begging to live, knowing that she wouldn't, knowing that House Lannister would die with her. She who controlled and judged so many lives couldn't, in the end, control her own fate. The prophecy about her little brother killing her came true twice over: Tyrion's plan to let her flee and Jaime's attempt to execute it led her to that dead end. It was a wretched, squalid end for a thoroughly unpleasant individual.

Back on topic. Entering the last episode, I did worry. Dany pretty much had to go, but Jon Snow's ascension made me uneasy. Partially because of the tacit endorsement of misogyny it could imply, partly because inherited wealth and position have given us some of the worst people imaginable. Jon being the 'true heir' made me feel a bit off.

They pulled it off pretty well. Dany makes pretty much the same speeches she always has, motivated by the same goals she always has, but now we're seeing it from the other side. Jon accepts the reality of what he has to do and does the deed. Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke have never had amazing on-screen chemistry, and it felt a little by-th-numbers, but it was the right result. Drogon's symbolic destruction of the Iron Throne and flying off into the mist never to be seen again was pretty spot on.

Then we get on to a bit of kinging. I liked this sequence a lot. The High Lords of Westeros just not being sure what to do. I liked that they laughed Samwell down... and then ironically moved in the direction he was proposing. An electoral monarchy is a step towards a Republic, which in itself is the forerunner of representative democracy. They weren't breaking the wheel, but maybe they were reinventing it to be less of a bastard. The choice of Bran did take me by surprise, but I liked it. Logical, distant, not who you'd expect and averting the wince-worthy stereotypical handsome-man action hero. Bran will be a good king because he's seen all this rubbish before. The closing sequence with Tyrion and the Small Council gave me a chuckle. It was a nice way to see off a group of beloved characters, an odd assortment of misfits and rascals. And that the Seven that we got to see Brienne again, majestic and powerful after that ghastly scene with Jaime at Winterfell.

And then the actual end. I'll tell you what I loved about this: everything. It was all Starks (counting Jon here, he's informed more by Ned Stark than by his blood) and that's as it should be. The Starks were the good guys we all routed for at some stage. They were torn to bits in seasons 2-4, and the narrative says that in the end, they had to emerge remade even stronger. Sansa becomes queen at last - not the way she expected to be all those years ago as a dreaming girl, but queen nonetheless. Arya does what Arya does - something nobody else would think of. I think she's the biggest winner of the entire show, honestly. She sails off into the blue yonder to adventures unknown. I hope we hear from her in the Land of Sequels, but if we don't, she was the hero we needed.

And then it's down to Jon, leaving the Wall behind with Giantsbane and Ghost. Let's be honest now, sending him to 'take the black' when the wall's broken and the Night King is slowly defrosting in a million shards was just a way to key Grey Worm happy. Sansa and the others knew he was off to the true North, the only place in the whole show where he seemed that happy. And in the closing shots, with a sprig of symbolic green showing, the show comes full circle, with men riding out beyond the wall.

It wasn't perfect. But you know what, it was fine. I felt happy at the end. I liked that seeing Ghost made Jon smile and laugh a bit. I liked that the Starks ended up ruling Westeros and that most people seem to have emerged largely alright. I'm very happy that Bronn and Davos made it out alive. In a show which seemed to want to spend years making us miserable because of faux-realism, I'm glad it went out on a fairly high note. None of the ridiculous internet conspiracies came true, and that's a relief. Stop for a moment and think about how utterly ridiculous it would have been to explain that the Night King was Bran or that there were suddenly a clutch of baby dragons or any of the other nonsense peddled online.

That was the end of an unevenly written show based on very undisciplined books. I for one am glad that I walked away with a smile, even if it's a slightly dumb one.

Thunder over Nuln

The hour has come. The Empire and its Lustrian allies have reached the city of Nuln. The Empire's first major test since the dark years.



Read the Siege of Nuln.

Gorgonok the Dread

So I've been quiet on the WFB front for a while, especially my Age of Rebuilding project. There's a good reason for this, which I'll discuss a bit below. But let's do the fun part first! 'Thunder over Nuln' should only be a couple of weeks away now, but for the meantime, this is the model and rules for a character that readers of Age of Rebuilding might recognise from some of the chapters: the nightmarish Doombull Gorgonok the Dread.

     Download the big man's rules.

I've had the idea of Gorgonok for years. Originally, he came about because with the endless fawning over Archaon, I really wanted to present a character for the Beastmen who could be seen as a monstrous, all-powerful threat. I wanted a guy who wasn't going to crawl to some Gods-pampered three-eyed idiot but would prove that the Beastmen could get it done. I used the GW Doombull model to represent him, but let's be honest... that model's so-so. I spent a long time thinking I was going to have to just deal with that, until Zealot Miniatures released their beautiful new minotaur models. This model is the 'Minotaur General'. Incredibly, he will cost you exactly the same as GW want for their Doombull.  And this model is incredible..

Look at the speed and power of this bloke. This isn't some giant clumsy cow. This is a guy who is going to be ploughing through the enemy's ranks before they've even got their halberds up. And that's what an armoured minotaur should look like. He looks like he's wearing a wrecked Steam Tank and it isn't even slowing him down. 

I originally envisioned Gorgonok as an albino, but the thing is that albinism is almost complete lack of pigment. I'm not a good enough painter for that, to be honest. So instead I decided that he would be very pale. The paint scheme is a base of Rakarth Flesh, a 50/50 Reikland Fleshshade/Lahmian Medium mix all over and then fairly strong drybrush layers of Pallid Witch Flesh and white. 

I think what surprised me most was how easy he was to paint. And he's one of those models that you really enjoy painting. 

Where have I been?

Today of all days is probably a good time to tell this story, because of the date. 6th May. On this day several years ago, I left a job for a company which I'd been at for a very long time. It was not my choice, nor was I dismissed. Indeed, I was a high performing staff member in a high performing team. That we were at the time one of the company's better assets was never denied. But nobody is safe from desperate management trying to demonstrate activity, and we were all made redundant. It's a strange experience: by the time an employer is willing to do that, you're probably fed up with them anyway. But that doesn't make it less offensive when they decide to get rid of you in spite of the fact that your department works well, makes money and is needed. In the most literal sense, ou jobs weren't redundant: the company simply thought that a short term saving could be achieved by shipping the jobs up north. As you can imagine, I was somewhat put out. 

After many years of working in the private sector, I have to acknowledge I was tired of it almost beyond belief. I was weary of the ineptness, the corruption, the constant need to stroke massive but fragile egos. Truthfully, I could not have entered another corporate role. I promised myself two things: I would travel a lot more, and I would find something actually worthwhile with my life. Once I realised this, I was able to get back in the game with relative speed and ease. I started working at the University a few months after departing the other company, and was bowled over. It wasn't perfect by any means, but the academic world is far, far kinder and more competent than the corporate. I maintain this after a long time working there. My only slight gripe was that I was a contractor, needing to pitch myself and gain a new contract each year. In December 2018, that changed when my boss offered me a permanent position. I was and still am ecstatic. In February 2019, I applied for a promotion (more to stop my colleagues yelling at me) and was surprised when I got it. And I realised with a sudden, jolting sense of amazement that I was happy. I was comparatively well off, I had a secure job which I thoroughly enjoyed, a decent nestegg of savings and I had managed to fulfil my promise to see at least two new countries every year. There are some I knew who, in the late-stage-capitalism sense of success, are vastly more successful than I. But I realised that after a rocky start to my career years ago, I had finally 'arrived' as it were. 

So why did this cause me to have trouble with Age of Rebuilding? The answer's simpler than you might be thinking. The truth is that... since my last update in March, I've just been enjoying myself. Just taking time. I didn't have writer's block. I didn't have a struggle with what I wanted to achieve. I will admit that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I had this image of the narrative of the Empire/Lustrian alliance besieging Nuln, a separate Nuln army list and a seperate siege supplement. But honestly, I'm one bloke who writes for a living and only wants to write outside work... sometimes (this is also why you might find typos scattered through my work; I'm not damn well editorialising on my own time, and besides why should I do it if GW don't?). But mainly, the holdup has been caused by me just... kind of... living. I recently spent eight days wandering the national parks of Croatia, and as ever the new experience fired up my creativity again. Watch this space for 'Thunder over Nuln' very soon :)