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How do!

So a thread to extol the virtues of the Black Library horror series. Because they are pretty bloody wonderful.

See, unlike most Black Library yarns, these tend to be small scale affairs. Zooming into the life and times of mere mortals, and not the great and the good. In doing so, they bring us interesting and sometimes unique perspectives and insights into life in the 41st Millenium, where the horrors are manifold and all too real.

I’m currently reading “The Book Keepers Skull”, which features a lot about how one agri-world goes about delivering and managing its tithe. It also features genuine Nightmare Fuel in the form of Gambol. See. Gambol is kind of a Servitor, which when you think about it are pretty grimdark as they are. But Gambol? Gambol isn’t just a Servitor. Oh no. Gambol is a Servitor purposed to be child’s toy. And is a clown, with patches of colour stitched or tattooed onto his pallid flesh.

That’s a purpose of Servitor that’s never occurred to me. Taking a living, breathing human being who presumably did some naughty, or was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and turning them into a toy.

It’s that fine, horrifying, kind of detail I think many crave from 40K. A Galaxy gone insane, rank with hypocrisy and nastiness toward the common man.

Though, for a view of what this imprint can bring? I’d recommend the anthologies as a point of embarkation. You’ll get some AoS in there, and occasionally a sliver of Old World. But it’s all genuinely thought provoking stuff.

You should definitely give it a whirl for greater and grimmer insights into the mundanity of the horror of the settings.

I'm a big fan of the WH Horror series. I strongly recommend The House of Night and Chain. That being said, I find that the stories are mostly pretty predictable and not really that scary.

True, I mean they’re better writers than I’ll ever be, but they’re still BL writers.

But the odd minutiae of them. That macro look at day to day life in a setting as inherently oppressive as 40K? Totally worth it. That’s the inventiveness which keeps me coming back to the wider series.

To see the bravado and deus ex largely stripped away. To see a Mere Human doing their best against unfathomable threats? Is that not the core of 40k’s appeal? That against all odds, and it’s own stupid nature, mankind still somehow thrives out in the dark?

Given the subjects discussed in many of the main BL novels I really don't get why these are termed "Horror".

Some good stories amongst them though

Yep, I appreciate the focus tends to be more on civilians or low level mooks, but they've yet to really hit me with something that would qualify as being "horror" by comparison to the typical BL story.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Given the subjects discussed in many of the main BL novels I really don't get why these are termed "Horror".

Some good stories amongst them though

As in specifically using horror genre tropes in the novels as opposed to the details of the books themselves being horrific.

Well, at a basic level all 40k is horror of some sort. And the horror specific novels in 40k don't really dial it up sufficiently to rise much above the background level.

Yep, agreed

I do like how many Black Library authors have been venturing out into various realms of horror. In a game realm where unspeakable horrors beyond comprehension and big meaty men with chainsaw swords are the norm, it's kind of hard to do typical Lovecraftian and/ or Slasher type horror. Those two types never really scared me, because even if the main villian in a slasher film is just some dude (Saw, Scream, Halloween) the premise is farcical and the movie needs "jump scares" and fake outs to increase tension.
That said, "The Strange Demise of Titus Endor" and "The Watcher in the Rain" were brilliant because you never see the ends coming.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
In a game realm where unspeakable horrors beyond comprehension and big meaty men with chainsaw swords are the norm, it's kind of hard to do typical Lovecraftian and/ or Slasher type horror.

There is plenty of historic and contemporary horror literature which could almost be ported straight into 40K. Half of Laird Barron's work seems to essentially be about Chaos/Nurgle, for example, from what I've read. Take Clark Ashton Smith's Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, and just stick the phrase 'archaeotech vault' in there somewhere and you're good to go. You could pretty much take The call of Cthulhu, and just change the names around a bit and get a story about a C'tan.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
Halloween

It's been long established that there's a subtle supernatural quality to Michael Myers. It's not obvious in the films, but it is implied (and his seemingly supernatural resilience should make that pretty obvious).

Well, Myers is supernatural only in the sense they need ex-post-facto justification for why he keeps coming back/is so tough so they can make more movies. It's an outgrowth of the underlying sillyness of slasher films and not part of the original design.

I think one issue 40k has from the perspective of the writers is that many of the potential protagonist character options are themselves more than human. Most books are about space marines. Which isn't necessarily a problem, but it does cut down some of the sense of scale that is needed for true horror. Michael Myers or IT would be less scary if they were fighting a space marine. Or even just a human who is much better than a normal human. Having grizzled Inquisitor Bob as your main protagonist will nerf the horror of the enemies he is fighting because he is an Inquisitor... its his job to fight monsters.

So to really get a true 40k horror story, you must have the characters be normal humans to up the scale of the monsters from the perspective of the audience.

This is also why I hope that our first Amazon 40k show at least features humans as the main characters. If we jump straight to the space marines it'll kill some of the majesty and horror of the setting. We need to work our way up.

Yeah, and I think thats part of the struggle that Warhammer Horror has in making stories that are... well... horror. Given the nature of the setting and the horrors that we are already so very familiar with on the tabletop, theres really not much they can introduce into the setting that would actually be horrific to the average reader. Daemons? *yawn*, I have 5000 points of them, big deal. Tyranids/genestealer cults? Whatever, damn buggers are all over the place, better get a Deathwatch Kill Team on the case to handle it. The threat of a demonic extra-dimensional entity or an extragalactic rape-alien seems less threatening in a setting with genetically engineered supersoldiers, etc. that are capable of fighting toe-to-toe with these things and winning. In a setting where you're only left with "average humans" who are clearly outmatched, its a different story, but half the time you're reading warhammer horror you're left wondering when the cavalry will arrive to effortlessly save the day, and what color their power armor will be.

For the most part they never do, but knowing that there are "good guys" in the setting that can resolve the issue without too much of a bother takes a lot of the fear out of it (even if the characters in this story don't have a chance in hell of having that kind of help), whereas horror stories in more "real" settings don't have that problem. A cop with a gun or a special forces troop are often just as powerless to stop the demon or ghost or whatever as anyone else, and your only real hope is that the alcoholic ex-priest with a vial of holy water can pray hard enough to banish the entity while working through the guilt of whatever sin he committed to get excommunicated, etc. Thats what makes real world horror scary, its that the people you traditionally rely on to protect you with their "easy button" solutions to real world problems are powerless to help you, and instead you're relying on people who in normal life might seem crazy or extremely flawed to deliver salvation in a manner that stretches your ability to trust or believe in it, etc.

I think thats why House of Night and Chain works so well, as it steers into Gothic Horror which is less about "scary" or "monster" and more about the ambiance of the environment and the psychological and emotional impact it has on the characters, etc. as opposed to just jump scares and gore. Even then though, by the end of the book it falls back to a threat which in a normal setting might seem horrific, but in the context of the 40k setting is just kinda... there, and for me it sucked all the fear out of the story once I was able to basically put a name and a face to the threat.

Honestly, probably the best thing they could do in warhammer horror - you couldn't get away with this for every story, but you could for one story - is have it feature space marines, who then get wrecked by whatever the big bad is, as thats the only way to really communicate the danger - if the genetically engineered supersoldiers angels of death couldn't save you from this threat, nothing else will either.

I actually think stories like Wrath of Iron where the Iron Hands cleanse a world and you see them for the perspective of other imperial forces or the Carcharodons and how they treat their serfs is more horror than any of the horror novels thus far - same with the original Deathwatch novels and some of the things the Inquisiton were prepared to do to their own.

Some of the detective stories have been quite good in this aspect as well.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I actually think stories like Wrath of Iron where the Iron Hands cleanse a world and you see them for the perspective of other imperial forces or the Carcharodons and how they treat their serfs is more horror than any of the horror novels thus far - same with the original Deathwatch novels and some of the things the Inquisiton were prepared to do to their own.

Some of the detective stories have been quite good in this aspect as well.

On the detective stories front, the Warhammer Crime novel ‘Bloodlines’ has got to be one of the creepiest 40k novels I’ve read and all it does is put a 40k spin on a real type of crime.