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Hi all,

I just learned about this thought some people would find this interesting. When Geoffrey of Monmouth first wrote the biography of King Arthur his sword was called Caliburnus or Caliburn - described a basically the best sword ever made on the magical island of Avalon.

This predates stories of Excalibur and the sword in the stone.

So as soon I read this I thought that must be where the name of Caliban comes from.

Cheers

It is more likely that a 40K writer encountered the character in Shakespeare's The Tempest or the Marvel comics mutant created in the early 80's.

It's definitely from The Tempest.

Caliban, the character, was exiled by the wizard Prospero and forced into servitude. He resented Prospero's harsh treatment and magical torment. He sought to overthrow Prospero by making allies with the shipwrecked Trinculo and Stephano, offering them the chance to kill Prospero and take control of the island.

Definitely some inspiration for the Fallen of the Dark Angels.

Ah ok interesting I don’t know Shakespeare but knew there was a lot of ye olde inspiration in the dark angels

Plus, the sword, Caliburn, ends up being a different sword than Excalibur in the Vulgate Cycle and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur.

Caliburn is the sword Arthur pulls from the stone, while Excalibur is the sword gifted to him by the Lady of the Lake.

As with a lot of Fantasy stuff? It’s probably a mish-mash of all the above.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As with a lot of Fantasy stuff? It’s probably a mish-mash of all the above.

Probably not, no. GW fiction of the time was written neither by a single author layering intricate subtextual references, nor a dedicated committee of loremasters conscientious about making stable and watertight perma-canon. In all likelihood a single person picked a name they had encountered somewhere else that they thought sounded good and/or had an interesting superficial linkage to the material they were working on. The name of a second-tier planet would not be laboriously researched and selected to have multiple layers of referentiality. It was just a cool word bouncing around in some nerd's head. Probably.