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We have all seen that Black Library is able to flesh out other periods of time in Warhammer such as the Horus Heresy. For better or worse, they quite easily made MANY stories from this period with varying quality. We can also agree that the Horus Heresy series has made GW quite a lot of money.

So why not do the same with the Age of Apostasy?

We've even seen entirely new historical events being invented as we've seen with "The Beast Arises" series. So why create new events rather than fill out other pre-existing ones?

What are your thoughts and theories?

Here's the thing.

The Horus Heresy was 10 years from the Razing of Prospero to the Siege of Terra.

The Beast Arises was 2 years. (And as an aside, it's not a new event, as it was previously described in the 5th edition base rulebook).

The Reign of Blood, was 70 years! And that's just the capstone of the Age of Apostasy which was close to 1,000 years long! You're looking at completely different time frames compared to previous events.

The answer of course, is that all the books were burned.

Seriously though. BL clearly wanted the ability to assign more weight to their stories without having to deal with the constraints of not advancing the setting. The first three Heresy books were clearly meant to test the waters and see what the appetite was for a series like that, telling the story of Horus' fall as a complicated epic while setting up the inter and intra faction politics that lead to it, but also laying the seeds to other stories that could either have their consequences mentioned in later books, or explored outright in their own novels.

Had the first three stories failed to capture interest, it probably would have been followed later by a three part 'siege of terra' set to close the remaining open plot threads, but because the response was so positive, BL is now free to tell stories with a narrow perspective in big events which have consequences for dozens of later books.

The Beast series is an attempt to do something similar in a post HH setting. Despite what you may have heard, the seeds for the Beast storyline are from the 6th edition rulebook.

Whether or not we see a series about the Reign of Blood specifically will depend on the success of the Beast series and others like it. To prove the success of the Horus Heresy books wasn't just a lightning strike.

Quite probably it's because none of their writers have an interest in this era. Why write about religious manipulation and twisting of doctrine and all manner of subtleties in order to get to a galaxy wide apostate movement and holy wars when you can just throw more marines at some orks. The writers are secular and write excellent secular perspectives, but I imagine they don't have an idea how to approach this era and do it justice.

Besides, this time period isn't a space marine glory boy time; the marines take a back seat while real humans have a go a stuffing up the imperium.

Would love to see this period myself though; good to see the Genesis of the daughters/wives/daughters of the emperor.

Read the first Sisters of Battle codex, the one that was published at the end of the 2nd edition. It has several pages about the Age of Apostasy. It goes into more detail than the later Witch Hunters codex. This first SoB codex also has several pages on the Plague of Unbelief.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Quite probably it's because none of their writers have an interest in this era. Why write about religious manipulation and twisting of doctrine and all manner of subtleties in order to get to a galaxy wide apostate movement and holy wars when you can just throw more marines at some orks. The writers are secular and write excellent secular perspectives, but I imagine they don't have an idea how to approach this era and do it justice.

Besides, this time period isn't a space marine glory boy time; the marines take a back seat while real humans have a go a stuffing up the imperium.

Would love to see this period myself though; good to see the Genesis of the daughters/wives/daughters of the emperor.

l
the marines were still involved - even fighting in the "second siege" - but its far from an astartes only affair. I'd agree it'd be a great one to see!

bbekins wrote:
Read the first Sisters of Battle codex, the one that was published at the end of the 2nd edition. It has several pages about the Age of Apostasy. It goes into more detail than the later Witch Hunters codex. This first SoB codex also has several pages on the Plague of Unbelief.

This. 100% this. The story about Cardinal Bucharis and Confessor Chirosius is one of the best 40k fluff EVAR!

Also to answer OP, because there are not enough space marines involved. It's really as simple, and as stupid as this. If it's space marines it's worth all the book. If it's Inquisition it's worth some books because Inquisition can make pretty cool stories. If it's the IG, meh, why not. If it's something else, why even bother…

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

bbekins wrote:
Read the first Sisters of Battle codex, the one that was published at the end of the 2nd edition. It has several pages about the Age of Apostasy. It goes into more detail than the later Witch Hunters codex. This first SoB codex also has several pages on the Plague of Unbelief.

This. 100% this. The story about Cardinal Bucharis and Confessor Chirosius is one of the best 40k fluff EVAR!

Also to answer OP, because there are not enough space marines involved. It's really as simple, and as stupid as this. If it's space marines it's worth all the book. If it's Inquisition it's worth some books because Inquisition can make pretty cool stories. If it's the IG, meh, why not. If it's something else, why even bother…

This is sad because there are a lot of interesting tidbits to be potentially expanded on. Sadly though none of those tidbits are space marines so we aren't going to get them fleshed out anytime soon, but the potential exists.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

bbekins wrote:
Read the first Sisters of Battle codex, the one that was published at the end of the 2nd edition. It has several pages about the Age of Apostasy. It goes into more detail than the later Witch Hunters codex. This first SoB codex also has several pages on the Plague of Unbelief.

This. 100% this. The story about Cardinal Bucharis and Confessor Chirosius is one of the best 40k fluff EVAR!

Also to answer OP, because there are not enough space marines involved. It's really as simple, and as stupid as this. If it's space marines it's worth all the book. If it's Inquisition it's worth some books because Inquisition can make pretty cool stories. If it's the IG, meh, why not. If it's something else, why even bother…

I agree I find the fluff in the first SoB codex on both the Age of Apostasy and the Plague of Unbelief very interesting. I think it would be interesting to read about how Goge Vandire came to power through manipulation, tricked the Daughters of the Emperor and then lost it all with the rise of Sebastian Thor. And also to read how much much later later Cardinal Bucharis used news from the age of Apostasy to trick people and create his own little empire until he was brought down by the Great Confessor.

Vandire and Bucharis are both interesting villains to me because they took power through deceit and manipulation not through direct overt force and in some ways had more success for a limited amount of time.

Probably because writing anything good about complex political and ideological conflicts is beyond the skills of BL writers.
A series on the Age of Apostasy would mostly be about political intrigue with only a limited amount of 'action'. That is not something GW or its writers are used to, and it is quite possible that they think there would not be a lot of interest for something that lacks action.

But yeah, I agree that in the hands of a very skilled writer, it would make for a great ASoIaF-like series.

jareddm wrote:
Here's the thing.

The Horus Heresy was 10 years from the Razing of Prospero to the Siege of Terra.

The Beast Arises was 2 years. (And as an aside, it's not a new event, as it was previously described in the 5th edition base rulebook).

The Reign of Blood, was 70 years! And that's just the capstone of the Age of Apostasy which was close to 1,000 years long! You're looking at completely different time frames compared to previous events.

That's a fair point. I did not realize the expanse of time the Age of Apostasy covered.

As for the other points on lack of action and writing complex theological conflicts, I think they're still doable. Some Horus Heresy novels did touch on conflicts of faith. Where should one place there faith, is faith ever truly dead? So we know some writers can pull it off, at least to an extent. We've also seen The Beast Arises series delve deeply into political intrigue, which personally I found was what pulled me into the series. Now both examples did take place during times of violence so there was plenty of action to be had.

As for a lack of space marines, I think you could put them into the series enough to keep people's attention. Being alienated from the Imperium they are sworn to protect would be great reading material and going back to them every few novels should give enough spotlight.