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 Malisteen wrote:
I'd add in the eisenhorn & ravenor books to that pile of best Black Library works, but again they're focusing on characters who are much closer to 'normal people'.

The last 40k Black Library book that I found to be successful that focused on marines was Talon of Horus. I'm not sure what I could say was the key difference there, other than ADB just being one of the better authors they've got, especially when it comes to Chaos stuff.

Yeah I love ADB. His Night Lords trilogy inspired me to restart the army because characters like Talos and Septimus were so great. Septimus and Octavia are good examples of more "real" people with mortal struggles and concerns.

For some reason it seems to be easier to write Chaos Marines like Talos or Honsou with more personality than a standard Imperial Marine. Probably because they don't have to follow this warrior monk cult motif where they live lives of discipline and restraint.

@Roper I'll check out your request when I get home from work and look at some books.

I'm not sure I'd say that. There's a lot of particularly terrible chaos marine writing in 40k, particularly where they're the antagonists in stories that focus on loyalists marines as protagonists. In those types of stories, chaos marines are typically treated as mindless cannon fodder - berzerkers scythed down by the dozen as they attempt to assault a handful of entrenched loyalists, that sort of thing.

Semmi off topic grousing:


Almost nobody at Black Library can portray a respectable antagonists. We almost always see antagonists reduced to mindless, worthless mooks threatening only in their numbers, in order to portray the protagonists, whoever they are, as unassailable super heroes. It's a problem. It undercuts the threat of the antagonists, and leaves the protagonists feeling empty as characters, incapable of growing or developing as characters because there's nothing required of them to mentally or morally change in order to overcome, just an endless progression of rote physical challenges.

And when even sigmarines that die just respawn, with very little sense of meaningful loss from that, when even the 'god of death' can't actually kill them, it really undercuts the stakes. You could raise the stakes back up by getting the reader to invest in the things the sigmarines are trying to protect, but that would, again, require shifting the narrative focus to the normal people.

It's no mistake that the best bits and pieces of fluff we've gotten have done that - like the second part of the Nagash audio drama, where the sigmarines encounter human pilgrims in the world of death, and escort them to a vampire monestary where they renew an ancient pact where by the humans willingly offer the vampires sustenance in exchange for the protection that the vampires offered from chaos when even the gods themselves abandoned the mortal realms.

That's interesting stuff! I want to hear more about that! I want to see the villages these pilgrims came from! I want to know how they've survived Chaos's domination of the realms, how they've hidden from chaos warbands and survived the various natural dangers of the realm of Death. Their leader was awesome, I want to know more about her! I want to buy her model! I want to buy models for their entire interesting 'mortal residents of the realm of death' mini group.

By contrast, I knew everything there was to know about the stormcast, everything that could ever possibly be worth knowing about them, about three paragraphs into the description of them.

Yeah I really hate the faux-medieval style of talking... No one ever talked like that! It's basically modern English with some words replaced with "thou" and "alas". Always annoying, and no less so here.

 CoreCommander wrote:
There are plenty of "O, my brethren", "thine", "though" etc. and it's ok for a medieval fantasy book. What is not ok is stuff like this:

"The darkness of the night, alloyed to the sulphurous smoke rising from the basin of the flume, was enough to conceal their ranks, but not caustic enough to trouble a Stormcast. The reflected glow of the lava gave their armour a lambent shine, though not bright enough to give away their position." - War Storm

Except the latter is bad writing if you don't like that kind of thing, not bad setting.
On the dialogue front, there are plenty of examples of Stormcast not talking like an eccentric Brettonian, primarily when it's not the command types.
These guys have effectively been destroyed and reassembled with the essence of a god bound in to them, and a promise made that when they die they probably won't die permanently but they might lose part of what makes them them.
Their camaraderie is born of combat and purpose. It's entirely possible that in an entire Stormhost there are no two Stormcast who were alive in the same place at the same time, so there would be no shared experience beyond the point of being 'chosen'. I think you can forgive them for being a little formal in their language...

The part after the "O" sentence was me yelling out my frustration with the books.
As for the language - I meant that I'm ok with the "O"s and "thou"s as AoS books are essentially medieval fantasy books - this was unclear, I see, my apologies.

 Lexington wrote:
I see a lot of these threads come up, and it's always surprising to see how often they dance around what's probably the biggest issue with AoS' background, which is the actual quality of the writing. Sure, it's never bad on a basic technical level, but look at that post of Cataphract's with all those quotes - that is some industrial-grade fantasy product right there, professionally stripped of anything that could be mistaken for human input. It's the sort of remaindered prose that's sold by the pound and recycled into IKEA chair legs. Say what you like of the Old World, with it's shameless conceptual thefts and occasional dips into outright nonsense, but you can't deny that it had a personality and some real zest. AoS is a world conceived by a sales department, brought to life with writing that just couldn't cut it as ad copy, and I'm sure someone, somewhere is just completely confounded as to why that foolproof approach hasn't captured the imagination of gamers worldwide.

Very good point. AOS stuff is clearly written differently than WFB was, in a much more childish manner. WhilE it wasnt exactly Shakespeare, WFB backgrounds was at least written competently, and helped you to immerse in the setting. AOS reads like bad fan fictions. Very poorly written with barely any character development.

 Malisteen wrote:
I kind of disagree on that note about the end of the audio drama. Part three was, imo, the weakest of the parts, and really undercuts any sense you might have had of Nagash being a major threat beyond just being a particularly potent brawler.

spoilers:

Spoiler:

He can beat up sigmarines, but his mastery of the dead is so much weaker than Sigmars that he struggles - and fails - to hold onto even a small handful of stormcast souls, and his mastery over his mortarchs is so weak that he was unable to prevent Mannfred from leaving him in the first place, unable to prevent him from returning when he wasn't wanted, unable to kill him when Nagash attempted to strike him down, and unable to prevent him from fleeing again.

This on top of the other fluff in AoS specifically calling out that Nagash wants and needs to regather his mortarchs in order to launch a real counteroffensive against chaos, and here comes one of them begging to be taken back and Nagash refuses him outright?

I was rather let down, honestly. Nagash is basically the magical equivalent of a big dumb bruiser, not especially smart, not particularly manipulative, not able to maintain control even over his own undead legions and their commanders, not able to assert control over the spirits of the dead if Sigmar happens to claim them. He is, frankly, just not on Sigmar's level. At all. And that leaves the 'grand alliance of death' on rather shakey footing in the fluff.

No wonder the entire grand alliance comes out to barely mroe total forces than even some individual faction battletomes in other alliances.

Well I disagree.

If they want Nagash to want to destroy Manny, that's fine, but they can't then have him fail to do so when he's right there in his presence, and they can't have manny escape when Nagash apparently has a kill switch that lets him dominate his mortarchs whenever he feels like, as established in BoP.

Also, while what mannfred did to the old world was egregious, the writers needed to find a way to work around it to put him back in Nagash's good graces, because right now there are literally three named characters in all of the grand alliance of death if you don't count him, and that isn't enough to be spinning some off on their own.

If we had at least half a dozen mortarchs, instead of only three, then maybe. But there are only three. The faction is far, far too anemic to have this kind of sub-factionalism, and it creates a huge sense of dissonance when you then start looking at group shots in, say, the GAoD book, that have nagash, arkhan, and manny all buddy buddy together, because of course they do, because they don't have enough different personalities to not do so.

after reading neferata, the nagash trilogy and the suckmar trilogy ( good despite suckmar being in it) this makes me sad, I loved the vampires and tomb kings of the old world, this just seems..extremely lame.

It's not that terrible. So long as you sort of disregard the audio drama. Nagash is a big deal in Age of Sigmar. He's been having some trouble getting back on his feet, but Arkhaon treats him as a major threat, committing his seers to scrying for activity from the Great Necromancer, and diverting considerable military resources, including himself and pretty much the entirety of his varanguard) whenever his seers say Nagash is about to try something, as per the Archaon tome. Sigmar considers him a big deal, sending multiple bands of emissaries to try to treat with him. Chaos is pretty clearly worried about them teaming back up (although Nagash is too angry at Sigmar for that to be much of an option right now).

The mortarchs are considered to be bad dudes for the most part as well.

Unfortunately, it's all 'tell don't show' so far, and none of the attention we're likely to get in the foreseeable future includes new models, while half the existing undead line is queued to go on 'last chance'.

It would be worse, we could be elves. Or regular humans.

I'm not as angry about it as I was yesterday, but it's still not a great place for our faction to be in, narratively or as a product line.

 streetsamurai wrote:

Very good point. AOS stuff is clearly written differently than WFB was, in a much more childish manner. WhilE it wasnt exactly Shakespeare, WFB backgrounds was at least written competently, and helped you to immerse in the setting. AOS reads like bad fan fictions. Very poorly written with barely any character development.

Pretty strongly disagree with this statement, not because I think AoS background is amazingly well written, but because I don't see any significant difference in the writing strength before or after The End Times. There are a handful of outliers on both sides of particularly bad, or fairly good pieces of fiction, but I just don't agree with people who think there's some significant difference in the *quality* of the writing. I think people are maybe tripping over emotional attachment to a setting they may or may not have grown up in the hobby with.

I could use a pair of those rose tinted glasses people are using to look back at Old World fiction.

MongooseMatt wrote:
Ah, I see.

What was the Old World created for?

For the living, bleeding hell of it, to read it - and that's what matters. A sale might've been the end goal, but you never see it on the page - it's the loving pastiche of culture, history and personality that jumped out of the source material and made the Old World something to remember. With AoS, there's nothing on the page but the sale. If there was ever any love put into that universe, it was smothered under the weight of marketing briefs well before a printing press ever got involved.

 Red_Zeke wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

Very good point. AOS stuff is clearly written differently than WFB was, in a much more childish manner. WhilE it wasnt exactly Shakespeare, WFB backgrounds was at least written competently, and helped you to immerse in the setting. AOS reads like bad fan fictions. Very poorly written with barely any character development.

Pretty strongly disagree with this statement, not because I think AoS background is amazingly well written, but because I don't see any significant difference in the writing strength before or after The End Times. There are a handful of outliers on both sides of particularly bad, or fairly good pieces of fiction, but I just don't agree with people who think there's some significant difference in the *quality* of the writing. I think people are maybe tripping over emotional attachment to a setting they may or may not have grown up in the hobby with.

I could use a pair of those rose tinted glasses people are using to look back at Old World fiction.

Even if you think that the quality is pretty much the same (which I strongly disagree with, but at the end of the day, it's a subjective thing), I'm really surprised that you don't see a difference in writing style between the end time books and AOS books ?

 Lexington wrote:

MongooseMatt wrote:
Ah, I see.

What was the Old World created for?

For the living, bleeding hell of it, to read it - and that's what matters. A sale might've been the end goal, but you never see it on the page - it's the loving pastiche of culture, history and personality that jumped out of the source material and made the Old World something to remember. With AoS, there's nothing on the page but the sale. If there was ever any love put into that universe, it was smothered under the weight of marketing briefs well before a printing press ever got involved.

Objection - appeal to emotion.
You are *again* comparing the depth of a product that was designed, expanded and written over 30 years to one that is not even a year old.
I have never set eyes on a 1st edition WFB BRB. Exactly how much did we know about the Old World when it was 9 months old?

In all venues where it appears, I love the cry of "they're just doing it for the sales!" Sales, which by nature means appealing to the customers' desires, of course. And yet at the same time, these companies, GW in particular, get blamed for following their own desires and ignoring market research, which critics say would theoretically improve sales. Whatever is negative at any given moment is the side to be on.

 streetsamurai wrote:

Even if you think that the quality is pretty much the same (which I strongly disagree with, but at the end of the day, it's a subjective thing), I'm really surprised that you don't see a difference in writing style between the end time books and AOS books ?

??? I haven't mentioned style, just quality, so, I'm not sure where you're coming from with this.

RoperPG wrote:

I have never set eyes on a 1st edition WFB BRB. Exactly how much did we know about the Old World when it was 9 months old?

If you have to ask ... In short, I'd say about 20-30 odd pages giving various information on religion, races, ancient history, geographic regions, countries, cities, politics, maps etc. A typical, brief presentation of a setting that comes packaged with the rules in a rpg book. Of course one can take into account the short description that comes with virtually every class, item, skill or creature and say that it is also an integral part of the setting.

 Red_Zeke wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

Even if you think that the quality is pretty much the same (which I strongly disagree with, but at the end of the day, it's a subjective thing), I'm really surprised that you don't see a difference in writing style between the end time books and AOS books ?

??? I haven't mentioned style, just quality, so, I'm not sure where you're coming from with this.

Well, since you responded to a post of mine that was mainly about the difference in writing style between the two games, it shouldnt be too hard to see where im coming from with this

 CoreCommander wrote:

RoperPG wrote:

I have never set eyes on a 1st edition WFB BRB. Exactly how much did we know about the Old World when it was 9 months old?

If you have to ask ... In short, I'd say about 20-30 odd pages giving various information on religion, races, ancient history, geographic regions, countries, cities, politics, maps etc. A typical, brief presentation of a setting that comes packaged with the rules in a rpg book. Of course one can take into account the short description that comes with virtually every class, item, skill or creature and say that it is also an integral part of the setting.

Cheers for that!
So it seems roughly to be that with AoS people are getting journalism when they want Wikipedia articles?

 streetsamurai wrote:

Well, since you responded to a post of mine that was mainly about the difference in writing style between the two games, it shouldnt be too hard to see where im coming from with this

Er, I was responding to your descriptions of the background as "childish", "very poorly written", "barely any character development", so no, I don't see your connection. Maybe on top of our subjective differences, we don't define words the same way either.

Look, my core argument is that AoS fiction, from a quality perspective isn't any better or worse than anything else from Black Library. Stormcast annoy me in the same way that Space Marines annoy me. You can't relate to them. They shout lame things on the battlefield like "Show no mercy!" (Really? Were you all going to show mercy to the enemy before you said that?)

Maybe being more specific would help make it clear where I'm coming from:

A good portion of the books is spent on battle sequences, which, barring a few exceptions, I tend to find kinda boring, whether they were in the Old World, End Times, or Age of Sigmar.

Equally I've seen pieces I like in both settings:

Vlad felt like a real, understandable antagonist/anti-hero in the End Times. Awesome. Several characters in the AoS fiction so far have been Chaos characters that I actually found genuinely relatable (something I never remember thinking in any other BL fiction) - Ushakar Mir had cool motivations, an interesting character arc, and one of the best AoS twists so far. Lord Grelch was an actual believable perspective for a Nurgle follower. Kairos had some pretty interesting dialogue and that's gotta be one of the harder dudes to write.

When the Elves took a little trip through the Garden of Nurgle in the End Times, that was pretty cool and had the novelty of discovery and mystery that keeps a lot of the AoS fiction readable for me.

Oathbreaker was a decent Old World Dwarf tale, and the Fyreslayers compilation felt right in line with that. Not incredibly written, but interesting because in between the adventure and fighting, you get looks at the history and culture of the Dwarfs/Duardin.

RoperPG wrote:

 Pojko wrote:

Yup. One of the big problems is the dialogue because no one sounds like a real person.

Okay, I'll bite. Citation please. Or at least examples of what a 'real person' sounds like.

Alrighty, forgive the delay for this. I'm not sure exactly what your criteria is, or what you're looking for specifically, but I can open up any Gaunt's Ghosts book, pick a random page, and find a conversation between troops that doesn't have the processed and flowery language of Stormcast Eternals in it.

Conversation between Colonel Corbec and Major Ormon, Necropolis, pages 235:

Corbec sauntered over to the big Verghastite
"Corbec, Tanith First and Only."
"Major Ormon. I want to lodge a complaint, colonel. Your man Mkoll ordered our withdrawal from the Spoil, and-"
Corbec cut him short. "We're fighting for our fething lives and you want to complain? Shut up. Get used to it. Mkoll made a good call. Another half an hour and you would have been surrounded and dead. You want a "spoil" to defend? Take a look!" He gestured out of a shattered window at the wasteland around. "Start thinking like a soldier, and stop cussing and whining. There's more than unit pride at stake here."
Ormon opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish.
"I'm glad we understand each other," Corbec said.

Or Guns of Tanith, page 12:

"Fething idiot, you nearly killed me!"
"Killing you was the point of the exercise, Tanith," Cuu grinned, fixing the flustered master-sniper with his feline gaze.
"You're supposed to tag me with that!" Larkin snapped, nodding at the unopened paint stick hooked on Cuu's webbing.
"Oh, yeah," marveled Cuu, as if he'd never seen the stick before.

Or even if there is formal language, there's a reason behind it. Like a guy being beaten and trained to be a servant for a Chaos Space Marine who needs to show them the proper respect, so it just comes naturally to him now. Soul Hunter, page 66:

"Why am I here?"
He smiled at that, a warm and honest smile that Eurydice could have gladly punched off his handsome face. "What the hell is so funny?" she snapped.
"Nothing." His smile faded, but remained in his eyes. "Forgive me. I was told that was the first thing everyone asks when they are brought aboard. It was the first thing I asked, as well."
"So why is that funny?"
"It isn't. I just realized that with you among us, I am no longer the newest in our master's service."
"How long was I out?"
"Eight standard hours." Septimus had counted the exact minutes, but doubted she'd care about that level of detail.
"And you are?"
"Septimus. I am the servant of Lord Talos. His artificer and vassal."
He was annoying her now. "You speak strangely. Slow, like an idiot."

All I know is that I find these conversations much more engaging than things Sigmar says in Vengeance Eternal:

"The realms shake beneath our righteous justice!" "On all fronts your valiant brothers purge the taint of Chaos with hammer and the storm, and thanks to the legends you yourselves forged in pursuit of Ghal Maraz, we can now prepare for the next stage of the great war."

"You will travel to Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, to a wild region known as the Roaring Plains," the God-King proclaimed. "There lies a foul bastion of Chaos known as the Manticore Dreadhold. This fortress guards a realmgate that is critical to our next offensive. Destroy the dreadhold and secure this gate. Put its cursed defenders to the sword, and send their wretched souls screaming to their dark masters. This I task to you."

Or Stormcasts:

"Brother," said Mykos, shaking his head and pointing one finger down at the floor. "The ground is below us, and the ceiling above. Consider our last venture, and thank Sigmar we are not battling through the warped geometry of the Tower of Lost Souls, pursued once more by the mutant scions of the Broken Prince."
"A fair point, my Lord," Axilon smiled, but his mirth did not last long. He lowered his voice as he came closer. "Lord-Celestant Thostos has pushed too far ahead without us. He's going to get himself surrounded."
"I am certain that the Lord-Celestant's tactical situation shifted," said Mykos, a note of warning in his voice, "and he was forced to adjust our battle plan." It would not do for the rest of the chamber to start voicing their own concerns about Thostos' behavior.
"As you say, lord," said Axilon.

But hey, it's all up to individual tastes I suppose. What I find good others won't, and vice versa.

@Pojko- I don't think Sigmar is *supposed* to sound like a normal dude, chatting about high fives and the latest Kanye record, so that doesn't bother me.

As I mentioned earlier, Stormcast conversation bugs me in the same way that Space Marine conversation bugs me. I think you place the two side by side and (like many things) you see a bunch of similarities. Dudes that are bred/forged for battle and don't do anything else aren't very interesting (to me at least!). That's a definite problem with both.

But hey, it's all up to individual tastes I suppose. What I find good others won't, and vice versa.

So true about so many things.

I don't have a problem with the dialogue as such. Normal dudes talk normal, not normal dudes don't. The writing as a whole isn't great and I couldn't read much of it. But I didn't expect it to be good so wasn't really disappointed. I just read some to get a flavor of the background.

 Red_Zeke wrote:
@Pojko- I don't think Sigmar is *supposed* to sound like a normal dude, chatting about high fives and the latest Kanye record, so that doesn't bother me.

As I mentioned earlier, Stormcast conversation bugs me in the same way that Space Marine conversation bugs me. I think you place the two side by side and (like many things) you see a bunch of similarities. Dudes that are bred/forged for battle and don't do anything else aren't very interesting (to me at least!). That's a definite problem with both.

Yup. That was my only original point all along. There are no normal people in AoS. No one to form a connection with.

If it was GWs intent to make Stormcasts into fantasy space marines then they succeeded. Because that's all I think of when I read about them.

 Pojko wrote:

There are no normal people in AoS. No one to form a connection with.

But that's not entirely accurate- the pieces of fiction that talk about things that *aren't* Stormcast get more interesting. It'd be like saying no 40K fiction is interesting because it's all Space Marines. It's not.

My favorites so far have been Call of Archaon (Khorne bit especially), Fyreslayers, some of the advent shorts, none of which place Stormcast front and center.

 Red_Zeke wrote:

 Pojko wrote:

There are no normal people in AoS. No one to form a connection with.

But that's not entirely accurate- the pieces of fiction that talk about things that *aren't* Stormcast get more interesting. It'd be like saying no 40K fiction is interesting because it's all Space Marines. It's not.

My favorites so far have been Call of Archaon (Khorne bit especially), Fyreslayers, some of the advent shorts, none of which place Stormcast front and center.

He kinda beat me to it!
@Pojko I get what you mean now, but it's comparing apples and oranges.
You have an actual God talking to his chosen warriors, and those sorts of speeches tend to be worded for posterity.
You have a commanding officer of an armed force talking to a subordinate who's on the verge of sowing discord.
Leagues away from what you'd expect to find in a Gaunt's Ghosts novel. (Don't get me wrong, I love the GG's).
GG are the Wolverine-type of the imperial guard, part of their schtick is that they never really got properly trained/inducted into the Imperial Guard, so they have a distinctly informal attitude to military doctrine. But that said, some of Gaunt's own speeches when he's *not* guy-in-command-tent-with-Corbec are on a par with some of the fruitier AoS wordings. But overall, GG's are the anti-heroes/normal guys, whereas Stormcast are supposed to be these paragons of humanity.
If you switched the dialogue around, it just wouldn't work because it'd be incongruous.
Whether you think it's any good or not is down to you, but I think Stormcast talk exactly as I'd expect them to.
Lord Celestant Zephacleas is a pretty good example that they aren't all like that though (can't stop picturing him as Brian Blessed...)
As for 'normal guy' talk - I'm currently reading the QfGM BL books and there's a section where Torglug, the Glottkin, Gutrot Spume, a couple of other Nurgle big hitters and a Verminlord are figuring out how to find the Hidden Vale in order to kill Alarielle.
You couldn't really get a more fantastical scene than a bunch of almost-daemons plotting to kill a God - yet the conversation is on a par with most 'who's round is it next?' discussions just before kicking out time on a Friday.
I'll be interested to read the Fyreslayers collection of BL stories too.

I had mentioned previously that my initial read of BoP had been very swift, and I'd post again to take back any complaints I had made if they turned out to be based on mistaken impressions or recollections.

I'm doing that now - based on my apparently failing memory, I had though Nagash took control of Neferata by force, which didn't make much sense with Mannfred being able to flee from Nagash's presence under his own power.

I was wrong on that, I've gotten back up to that part in a closer read, and Neferata willingly lets Nagash speak through her.

This doens't improve my opinion of Nagash's portrayal in the audio drama, but this isn't a point of conflict between the two sources.

That said, Nagash does consider the stormcasts offer, and even considering such rather than immediately careening straight off the rails into ravings and attacks is a (welcome) change from his audio drama characterizations. BoP ends with the offer still under consideration, so I guess we'll see in the next campaign book if Nagash's rediscovered capacity to show restraint lasts for more than five seconds.

As I said it still makes sense considering this may have been after he mutilated a certain someone's soul so he may now know things that he did not know before. Plus he was cranky after being sliced up by Archaeon cut him some slack. XD

Of course knowing nagash he is going to try and find some way to get a better end of any deal he makes.

Ok a fluff question occurred to me and I figured this is the place to ask it.

Why are the lizardmen (or rather the Slaan) fighting?

They live on spaceships now don't they? Why don't they just stay there? Do they have any reason for summoning up those memories of dead lizardmen and doing down to the different realms to actually fight other than 'chaos is bad and needs to be opposed'?

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok a fluff question occurred to me and I figured this is the place to ask it.

Why are the lizardmen (or rather the Slaan) fighting?

They live on spaceships now don't they? Why don't they just stay there? Do they have any reason for summoning up those memories of dead lizardmen and doing down to the different realms to actually fight other than 'chaos is bad and needs to be opposed'?

Because the Slann are still pissed at losing their retirement homes in South America. They are cold-blooded after all and like the sun ;-)

Because they are demons of order and are geometrically opposed to demons of chaos.

Reasons along these lines :-)