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2019/09/01 13:17:16
Subject: Warhammer Adventures - adventure stories for younger readers.
BaronIveagh wrote: well, as was pointed out earlier, 40k isn't actually kid friendly so GW having to take a gak on it's own lore was to be expected.
It isn't? I wish you'd been around to tell 9 year old me and my group of friends that at the time we all started reading and playing
I think he means the setting not the game The game is clearly aimed at young teens and that rough age bracket. Heck I did a poll here a while back and around 13 or so was the biggest spike with the bulk of people starting this hobby being under 20 with a fast tapering off beyond that.
The setting itself is most certainly not kid friendly
You've managed to avoid almost every RPG game right? The FIRST rule of adventuring is to STEAL EVERYTHING that isn't bolted down*! If you can carry it you steal it! Coins, gemstones, rubbish bits of armour. Anything you can lay your hands on you steal!
I mean, sure, Skyrim doesn't get referred to as Inventory Management Simulator for nothing - but then Skyrim doesn't preach that Tau confiscating barrels full of ravenous squid monsters is bad, but stealing from a market stall is fine so long as you're trying to help your freind.
And in the first book we learned that looting shops doesn't warrant passing judgement over, but selling space on your own starship makes you reprehensible.
Perhaps this is why we don't generally turn to pre-teens for lessons on morality.
2020/06/19 16:27:14
Subject: Re:Warhammer Adventures - adventure stories for younger readers.
After a whopping seven months since the last installment, it’s the turn of the Orks to take a beating...
Spoiler:
Chapter 1 Inquisitor Jeremias arrives at Hinterland Outpost as the locals are tidying up from the carnage caused by our heroes in the last instalment. He questions a sassy female medic about what happened and whether she has seen the children. She can’t help. Then the beastman from Secrets of the tau introduces himself and says that he knows all about the children if the Inquisitor will give him passage off Hinterland...
Chapter 2 We get reintroduced to our main cast, who are aboard the Privateer.
Apparently, Captain Amity ‘had been promised a small fortune if she helped them find Zelia’s mum’ – which straight up didn’t happen in the last book – as I noted back then, Amity has no reason to be taking orders from a twelve year old.
We’re also told that, ’Talen had tricked the crook [Karter] into giving them the location of the Emperor’s Seat’ – that’s not true either! He traded Fleapit for the information. He didn’t trick him.
Karter had given three possible locations for the Emperor’s Seat – Terra (duh), which the group disregard out of hand – presumably because we need to save it for the series finale – Weald, a forest world on the Eastern Fringe, and Pastoria, which isn’t in Amity’s list of worlds; but as luck would have it Amity’s family archives contain a scroll titled Legends of the Emperor which mentions it (how VERY CONVENIENT) but doesn’t give coordinates.
Mekki is able to conjure up a hololith of a series of stained glass windows from Terra which show the Ultramarines carving a mountain on Weald into a likeness of the Emperor. Handy that they had access to that...
Zelia orders Amity to set course for Weald. Amity asks the children who wants to be co-pilot (does she need a co-pilot? Her entire crew is a single servitor...) and Talen rushes to volunteer. Does anybody else remember when Talen was afraid of flying, or am I the only one?
Chapter 3 Talen is apparently a natural at piloting a warp-capable spacecraft. Of course he is. Whatever you say book. Zelia hypothesises that he ’had a slight crush on the woman’.
The Privateer enters Weald’s atmosphere and they fly to the mountain-statue of the Emperor. They fly literally right up to it for some reason.
Then unknown attackers start firing rockets at them out of the jungle. One of the rockets blows the nose of the statue, which smashes through the Profiteer’s wing. They’re going to crash, so Amity orders them to go to the starboard hatch and jump out (!) She intends to stay aboard and crash land – perhaps this is her way of finally getting rid of these children..?
Talen doesn’t know which side starboard is. Mekki tells him ’to the right’; but if they’re moving from the cockpit back down the ship, the starboard hatch would actually be on their left.
They put on grav chutes (I guess Amity keeps a load of spares just in case?), one of which Fleapit modifies for Mekki so that he doesn’t have to take his backpack of tools off; but the hatch is stuck. They can’t just use the port hatch I guess, and Fleapit doesn’t seem willing to help, despite ripping the hatch clean off a starship in Claws of the Genestealer, so Talen holds it open. Mekki doesn’t want to jump in case his chute doesn’t function. Fleapit pushes him out before he and Zelia jump.
Mekki’s chute doesn’t activate (did Fleapit just straight up try to murder Mekki!?) but Zelia saves him because she’s also a pro skydiver. But oh no! – Talen didn’t jump because he was stuck holding the hatch open for them.
Chapter 4 Back on the Privateer Talen returns to the flight deck. Amity asks him why he’s still here, and why he didn’t just have Grunt hold the hatch open. It’s because he’s a teenage boy and she’s a hot female space captain.
They are looking for a clear area to land in when they spot some other downed craft in the distance.
Zelia, Mekki, and Fleapit land. Fleapit has lost the Necron Diadem. Somehow. It turns out that he had hidden it aboard the Profiteer before going into the whole getting sold to Karter plan on Hinterland. Apparently he had told the others this - but that didn’t happen in the last book. Why not retrieve it as soon as the chance presented itself? Because plot, that’s why!
Just then Talen contacts them on the vox to say that they’ve survived the crash landing (needn’t have jumped out, really, but the plot required it, I guess). The Diadem is inside a different micro-dimension, which only Fleapit can get into, so they need to get to the crash site several kilometres away.
The Privateer needs Mekki and Fleapit to repair it. Zelia tells orders Talen to go and check out the other ships while she and the techs travel to them.
Talen shortens Zelia’s name to ‘Zel’ as they talk, ’Usually she hated that, but somehow it sounded right coming from him’. Ooh - are we going to get ourselves a love triangle plotline?
Fleapit converts his grav chute into a hover pack. He refuses to do the same for the children, even though that would allow them to get back to the ship more quickly and safely than walking through the jungle. He does actually want them to die, doesn’t he?
Chapter 5 Zelia drinks some water from a leaf. Mekki lets slip that his family were forced to leave Mars.
The group find a huge set of footprints amongst a path of fallen trees.
But before they can investigate they hear someone calling for help nearby. They go to investigate and find a crashed flying machine. The calls for help are coming from beneath it. Fleapit wants to carry on towards the Scriptor but Zelia convinces him to help because ’It is the right thing to do’. He takes the anti-grav devices from their grav chutes and uses them to lift the wreckage up. But oh no! It’s not a human trapped under it, but a gretchin! Who could have possibly foreseen this turn of events?!
Chapter 6 Talen and Amity are exploring the wrecked ships. They are Imperial, but have been crudely modified. They go inside one and find that the walls have been painted to show scenes of green figures battling against a large, fanged monster, which they chase into the jungle, before getting eaten by it, repeatedly. Talen finds a tooth. Then the penny finally drops for Amity and she identifies the figures as Orks.
Then there is an inhuman roar...
Chapter 7 The gretchin drags Zelia towards itself, but Fleapit drops the wreckage back on top of it. Then the gretchin starts crying and apologises for scaring the children – he explains that his name is String-Guts, and says that if the larger Orks find him here they’ll beat him up. Zelia turns to the fourth wall and explains that bullying is bad. Mekki sensibly says that the greenskins are monsters and that they shouldn’t help him. Zelia then says, ’But aren’t we no better than them if we leave him here?’ – it’s like she doesn’t remember every interaction she’s had with aliens in the last three weeks (excluding Fleapit - although she would have died due to his inaction in Claws of the Genestealer too!)
The children retreat to a safe distance and re-activate the grav devices. String-Guts doesn’t move from beneath the wreckage though. Zelia fears that he’s paralyzed or unconscious, and so goes back to help. She is unable to drag him free so Mekki also joins her. They pull the alien free just as the grav devices fail and drop the wreckage again.
Then String-Guts jumps up and overpowers Zelia – he was just pretending to be incapacitated! Who could have possibly foreseen this turn of events?! The gretchin yells that it has been attacked by humies and two Orks appear out of the jungle.
Fleapit has disappeared.
The greenskins take Zelia and Mekki prisoner and begin escorting them to the Ork leader of the Tek-Hedz clan, Badtoof the Rotten.
Chapter 8 The wrecked ship Talen and Amity are in gets attacked by a giant squig the size of a battle tank. They get thown around for a bit while Amity drains the power packs of her laspistols by not shooting it (Note: usually the pistols are referred to as ‘beamers’. I don’t think that they have been referred to as laspistols anywhere else but here across all four books) Talen then hits it in the eye(s) with his bolas, causing it to back off.
The squig is pulled back on chains by three Orks clad in bone armour. The Ork leader, One-Eye, crushes Talen’s bolas to dust in his fist, and then has a conversation with the two humans. The Orks are using the sniffler-squig to tack something through the jungle for their warbass, Nettle-Nekk. They don’t know what they’re looking for, but assume that they’ll know it when they find it. Amity convinces them that they should go back to Nettle-Nekk to find out what they’re supposed to be tracking just in case they don’t know it when they find it and anger the warboss. She agrees that she and Talen will wait there until the Orks return. This works, and the Orks are leaving, when she tells Talen to run away. She gets shot in the shoulder by a crossbow, and Talen gets taken prisoner. Probably should have waited more than literally no time at all before trying to leg it.
Chapter 9 The Orks take Zelia and Mekki to their camp in a big net. There the children are introduced to Badtoof the Rotten (who has bed teeth, hence the name) who has just finished beating up a would-be challenger. It takes Zelia literally two sentences to reveal the existence of the Privateer to him.
The three Ork bikers appear. Badtoof greets their leader by head butting him, which knocks a tooth out. Zelia collects it and starts to use it to saw through the net.
Chapter 10 Talen and Amity are taken to the camp of the Snake-Skull clan, where they are presented to Nettle-Nekk (who has a fake beard made of nettles, hence the name).
Nettle-Nekk is annoyed that One-Eye brought him humies instead of da Biggun. One-Eye says that he had a question to ask, but can’t remember what it was. Nettle-Nekk tells Talen that the Snake-Skull clan hate the Tek-Hedz because the latter don’t care about nature, whereas the Snake-Skullz do. Insert Greenpeace joke here.
Nettle-Nekk want’s to capture da Biggun – a colossal squig – in order to use it to defeat the Tek-Hedz. Talen convinces the warboss that he and Amity can capture the beast for the Orks by setting a trap for it.
Chapter 11 Zelia overhears that the Tek-Hedz are also trying to capture da Biggun.
There is a reference to’...one of the sniffler handlers’[i] talking to Badtoof – but the sniffler handlers were Snake-Skulls, not Tek-Hedz. Proof readers, people!
Badtoof wants something to eat that isn’t squig-based. Zelia cuts her way out of the net, but runs directly into String-Guts and gets immediately captured again. The gretchin suggests roasted humie.
Zelia and Mekki are tied to a spit, being cooked. Mekki suggests to Badtoof that he can provide the Orks with entertainment by doing an impression of C-3PO telling stories to the ewoks, projecting hololiths of their adventures from the last three books, and offers to build machines for them. Badtoof orders the cooking to cease.
Zelia and Mekki are given armour and weapons and are going to have to fight to the death to prove how inventive they can be.
Chapter 12 Talen and Amity are taken out into the jungle and tied to a wooden stake – they are going to be used as the bait for the trap to capture da Biggun.
They manage to escape, using a micro-laser hidden in one of Amity’s brooches, and flee into the trees. They encounter One-Eye, who is armed with a bind-weed bomb firing wooden semi-auto bazooka, which essentially shoots a vine net. Talen throws some paint in the Ork’s one good eye, and then shoots him with the bazooka. The wooden nut-firing bazooka. Sure; Whatever...
They take a squig chariot and ride off (you’d think that a jungle wouldn’t be the ideal environment for chariots, but here we are...)
Chapter 13 Mekki uses a vox mast being used as a flagpole to boost his signal so that he can contact Talen (I guess the Orks had powered their flagpole..?) He sends a homing pulse along the frequency (???) so that Talen and Amity, who are in the midst of a chariot chase can come to them.
Chapter 14 An Ork with an electric guitar sings a song.
Zelia and Mekki put on a poor show of fighting to the death against one another. Badtoof sends in some bomb squigs to liven things up, but the children survive the explosions because they’re as invincible as the children in [i]Skyrim. Badtoof orders his Orks to kill them, when suddenly Talen and Amity arrive, with the Snake-Skulls in hot pursuit.
Waaagh! A battle begins.
Chapter 15 While the Orks are fighting each other, Zelia and Mekki get out of their orky armour. The wheel comes off Talen and Amity’s chariot and they crash.
Zelia feels bad for getting them into this mess by bringing them to Weald.
Amity has disappeared.
Instead of just running away, Zelia grabs a bomb squig and throws it at Badtoof and nettle-Nekk, who are fighting. They are both knocked down by the blast. Zelia gets between them and shouts for the Orks to stop their battle – which they do, because obviously that makes sense. She claims that because she won against the two warbosses she must be stronger than both of them, and they should bow down to her (despite neither of them actually being hurt). Surprisingly this doesn’t actually work, but all of the Orks start laughing at how absurd the idea that she is stronger than them is. Zelia proceeds to give an inspirational speech about how the Orks are all the same, really, and instead of fighting against each other, they could have been working together to capture da Biggun.
The orks are inspired by the power of friendship and agree to put aside their differences and team up. String-Guts picks up the electric guitar from earlier and sings a song.
Then Nettle-Nekk puts a grenade in Badtoof’s hand during a handshake, and the Tek-Hedz warboss explodes.
Chapter 16 Zelia admonishes Nettle-Nekk for going back on his word after shaking on it. Nettle-Nekk proclaims himself the leader of all of the Orks now, and declares that together they’ll capture da Biggun and then launch a Waaagh! Against humans off-world.
Zelia, Talen, and Mekki are all captured (again). They are tied to a stake at the foot of the Emperor’s Seat mountain as bait for da Biggun.
Zelia apologises for bringing them to Weald and trying to negotiate with the Orks. Talen says that since none of them objected to coming to the planet it isn’t her fault, and them being used as bait is his fault because he suggested the idea to Nettle-Nekk.
Da Biggun appears (why was it hanging around basically just outside the Ork camp(s), and why is it attracted by the tiny morsel of food which the children represent? Who cares!) The unified Ork clans capture it before it can eat our heroes.
Talen tells String-Guts that if he frees them, Talen will trade him the Profiteer, which String-Guts can use to gain influence with Nettle-Nekk. The gretchin agrees and frees the children. Talen then pushes the greenskin away, and they flee, but String-Guts raises the alarm and holds them at guitar-point. Nettle-Nekk says to kill them since they’re not needed anymore, but just then a whole heard of colossal squigs show up!
Chapter 17 String-Guts gets stepped on by a squig. The Orks and squigs do battle, but the Orks are losing.
The children set off orky stink grenades, which repel the squigs.
Mekki tries to contact Amity. Fleapit responds, saying that he and Amity at back at the Profiteer, but gets cut off.
Nettle-Nekk attacks the children. Talen blasts him with the guitar, causing the warboss’s nettle beard to flap up into his face. Then da Biggun eats him.
The stink grenades have run out, and the strings of the guitar have conveniently all snapped, so our pint-sized heroes look doomed; but just then a voidship swoops down... but it isn’t the Privateer!
The illustration here of the children running from squigs shows them in pristine condition, despite the narrative saying that they should be covered in paint/mud, with torn clothing and various minor wounds.
Chapter 18 The black ship makes an attack run, and then beams the children up, Star Trek teleporter-style.
The mystery ship is the Zealot’s Heart, piloted by Inquisitor Jeremias. He shoots the mountain-statue of the Emperor, causing a rockslide which buries all of the Orks.
While Corlak the servo skull pilots the ship (!), Jeremias reveals that Captain Harleen Amity is an enemy of the Imperium who wanted the Diadem all along. He has also been searching for it. And now they’re going to have to get it back from her together [DUN DUN DUN]
The end.
Well that was a romp.
Spoiler:
Why did Amity fly them so close to the mountain?
Why didn’t they run an auspex sweep of the area before flying headfirst in? (the galactic compendium section at the back of the book even specifically talks about auspexes)
Why did Amity want the children to jump out of the Privateer?
Why does Zelia think that not rescuing String-Guts would make her and her companions as bad as the Orks?
Why didn’t Amity wait until One-Eye had left before trying to run away?
Wooden bazooka.
Why didn’t Talen lead String-Guts away from the rest of the Orks a bit before attacking him?
What is up with the teleporter array on the Zealot’s Heart?
We’re obviously supposed to believe Jeremias’ claim that
Spoiler:
Amity is a baddie (along with Fleapit, who has been her accomplice all along according to the preview of Plague of the Nurglings), but that’s clearly not going to be the case.
For a start, Jeremias is a dude, and if I’ve learnt anything from these four books so far it’s that men are the antagonists. He’s clearly the real bad guy.
Secondly that would make no sense at all – Amity would have had to have known that the Diadem was on Targian; would have had to have known that it had been found and who had it; would have had to have known which ship it would end up on during the evacuation (the Mercantor rather than the obvious Scriptor); would have had to get Fleapit aboard that ship during the destruction of Rhal Rata; Fleapit would have had to have been able to locate the Diadem onboard the ship, and track it to a specific escape pod; why wouldn’t Fleapit have disposed of the children once he had the Diadem in his possession on the ice planet?; Why wouldn’t Amity have disposed of the children once she had rescued them?; Why would she even rescue them and not just Fleapit?; Why would she stop off to work for the Tau on Hinterland instead of doing whatever she was planning to do with the Diadem?; Why would she not dispose of the children during/following the business on Hinterland?; Why would Fleapit jump out of the Privateer with the children when the Diadem is onboard?; Why wouldn’t fleapit dispose of the children in the jungle – he can easily overpower them; Why would Fleapit have responded to Mekki’s vox call for aid instead of just ignoring it?
The game is clearly aimed at young teens and that rough age bracket. Heck I did a poll here a while back and around 13 or so was the biggest spike with the bulk of people starting this hobby being under 20 with a fast tapering off beyond that.
