#Dark Imperium: Godblight

[fortythealien]

Son and Father

He was in the dust of a corpse-king’s court. He was before a resplendent Emperor for all the ages.

‘Father,’ he said, and when he had said that word, it was the last time he had meant it. ‘Father, I have returned.’ Guilliman forced himself to look up into the pillar of light, the screaming of souls, the empty-eyed skull, the impassive god, the old man, yesterday’s saviour. ‘What must I do? Help me, father. Help me save them.’ 

In the present, in the past, he felt Mortarion’s wordless presence at his side, and felt his fallen brother’s horror. 

He looked at the Emperor of Mankind, and could not see. Too much, too bright, too powerful. The unreality of the being before him stunned him to the core. A hundred different impressions, all false, all true, raced through his mind. 

He could not remember what his father had looked like before, and Roboute Guilliman forgot nothing. 

And then, that thing, that terrible, awful thing upon the Throne, saw him. 

‘My son,’ it said. 

‘Thirteen,’ it said. 

‘Lord of Ultramar.’ 

‘Saviour.’ 

‘Hope.’ 

‘Failure.’

‘Disappointment.’ 

‘Liar.’ 

‘Thief.’ 

‘Betrayer.’ 

‘Guilliman.’ 

He heard all these at once. He did not hear them at all. The Emperor spoke and did not speak. The very idea of words seemed ridiculous, the concept of them a grievous harm against the equilibrium of time and being. 

‘Roboute Guilliman.’ The raging tempest spoke his name, and it was as the violence a dying sun rains upon its worlds. ‘Guilliman. Guilliman. Guilliman.’ 

The name echoed down the wind of eternity, never ceasing, never reaching its intended point. The sensation of many minds reached out to Guilliman, violating his senses as they tried to commune, but then one mind seemed to come from the many, a raw, unbounded power, and gave wordless commands to go out and save what they built together. To destroy what they made. To save his brothers, to kill them. Contradictory impulses, all impossible to disobey, all the same, all different. 

Futures many and terrible raced through his mind, the results of all these things, should he do any, all or none of them. 

‘Father!’ he cried. Thoughts battered him. 

‘A son.’ 

‘Not a son.’ 

‘A thing.’ 

‘A name.’ 

‘Not a name.’ 

‘A number. A tool. A product.’ 

A grand plan in ruins. An ambition unrealized. Information, too much information, coursed through Guilliman: stars and galaxies, entire universes, races older than time, things too terrifying to be real, eroding his being like a storm in full spate carves knife-edged gullies into badlands. 

‘Please, father!’ he begged.

 ‘Father, not a father. Thing, thing, thing,’ the minds said. 

‘Apotheosis.’ 

‘Victory.’ 

‘Defeat.’ 

‘Choose,’ it said. 

‘Fate.’ 

‘Future.’ 

‘Past.’ 

‘Renewal. Despair. Decay.’ 

And then, there seemed to be focusing, as if a great will exerting itself, not for the final time, but nearly for the final time. A sense of strength failing. A sense of ending. Far away, he heard arcane machines whine and screech, close to collapse, and the clamour of screams of dying psykers that underpinned everything in that horrific room rising higher in pitch and intensity. ‘Guilliman.’ The voices overlaid, overlapped, became almost one, and Guilliman had a fleeting memory of a sad face that had seen too much, and a burden it could barely countenance. ‘Guilliman, hear me. 

‘My last loyal son, my pride, my greatest triumph.’

How those words burned him, worse than the poisons of Mortarion, worse than the sting of failure. They were not a lie, not entirely. It was worse than that. 

They were conditional. 

‘My last tool. My last hope.’ 

A final drawing in of power, a thought expelled like a dying breath. 

‘Guilliman…’

[wolf-tail]

Roboute: *literally dying of Godblight*

The Emperor: It's cause you always on that damn astropath

[transmechanicus]

Where would you advise someone interested in reading 40k books start?

It depends on what you’re interested in about 40k. The books tend to be very faction specific, so if you’re interested in say the Adeptus Mechanicus, there’s (maybe) not going to be much reason for you to read a book about Fabius Bile. There are some 40k books that are commonly regarded as being more foundational to the setting in the early 2000s, some that are advancing the story and were published last week, and others that have recently become fan favorites due to their broad comedic and story quality. So, TL;DR, i can give more specific recommendations if i know what you like abt 40k.

“Classic” books that are approachable for complete beginners to the setting in my experience or according to trusted sources:

The Night Lords trilogy (Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver, Void Stalker) by Aaron Demski Bowden

The Eisenhorn, Ravenor, and Bequin novels by Dan Abnett

Priests of Mars and sequels by Graham McNiel

Books advancing the current ‘story’ of 40k in M42:

Dark Imperium, Plague War, and Godblight by Guy Haley, focused on the Indomitus Crusade

Fabius Bile: (Primogenitor, Clonelord, Manflayer) by Josh Reynolds

The Great Work, and Genefather by Guy Haley again, focused on Belisarius Cawl

The Dawn of Fire series (various authors)

Books i just like or heard really good things about

Twice Dead King by Nate Crowley

Infinite and Divine by Robert Rath

Ascension Day by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Ahriman series by John French

Krieg and Siege of Vraks by Steve Lyons

If i missed any real bangers you can check the notes of this and i’m sure someone will pipe up😂

[aurotoiras]

book time

1/???

Dark Imperium: Godblight fun read, mortarion is my little meow meow, I refuse to make him better, made me fall in love with the death guard and kugath is such a treat, I loved everything dealing with the garden of nurgle

[bolters-and-rivets]

Like, there is an honest-to-God 64 book series of novels - the final one just came out this year - and that is just the fucking prequel.

LOL, LMAO

64 books is only the condensed storyline, if you want EVERY book set during that point in the storyline you'll need to double that figure

though I agree, looking at Warhammer as an outsider looking in trying to get into the setting feels a little bit like this:

The setting interests you, you want to know more, but you see the bottomless abyss filled with books and you think "do I really want to climb down there?"

if you want book recomendations? ignore what most people say and skip the Horus Heresy for now, that's really only for when you're really invested in the setting. If you're new it can feel like having to run a marathon and you'll probably be turned off having to slog through it to get to other stories.

I would recomend The Infinate And the Divine as a crash course on the wider setting, it's a bit more light hearted, think Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy meets long-con mystery-drama involving two freinemies.

then pick up Dark Imperium, Plague War, and Godblight as a deep dive on the state of the Imperium of Man at the start of the soft reboot back in circa-2015 when they started to progress the storyline beyond "everything sucks the same all the time, now hush and go play with your toy soldiers"

then get Lion: Son of the Forest, as it's the most recent book in the storyline as far as the Imperium is concerned.

once you've read those you should have a grasp of the wider setting, so look into factions, pick one that clicks with you (there are no good guys, so it's all vibes), and go for the books involving them.

I've been vaguely aware of Warhammer 40K for several years, as a popular miniatures games and as a kind of deliberately over-the-top grimdark setting. (The tagline for the franchise is, "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war," which is where the word "grimdark" comes from in the first place.)

Anyway, a recent bit of internet rabbit-holing led me to the edges of the W40K lore and. Holy shit. I had no idea of the sheer vastness of the lore for this setting.

Like, there is an honest-to-God 64 book series of novels - the final one just came out this year - and that is just the fucking prequel.

I'm not particularly interested in the actual tabletop game - miniature wargaming is not my genre - but the lore has gotten its hooks into me enough that I bought the core book just for the overview of the setting. And I read the first book of the prequel series.

I think I'm doomed.

[40kmemes]

Dark Imperium: Godblight (2021)

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

I have a lot of feelings about Dark Imperium: Godblight and none of them are positive, honestly. It feels like such a departure from the previous two novels and it leans so heavily into all of the absolute worst bits of Imperium-centric favouritism. Just agh. Aaaaagh.

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

I've been on the fringes since my teens, when I started reading Ciaphas Cain and went for the occasional wiki dives on the Lexicanum and 1d4chan. Started watching TTS during its early episodes, too. So I knew the basics of the setting and its most popular memes, but not much beyond that.

I had tossed around the idea of picking up books beyond Cain for years, but never followed through. Then early last year I started reading up on Gathering Storm and really liked the storytelling potential of the Ynnari, and found the idea of a primarch returning to find everything in ashes pretty interesting. So I took the plunge and bought Ghost Warrior and Dark Imperium (the book, not the whole trilogy). Dark Imperium was good, but Ghost Warrior bored the hell out of me, so I picked up Plague War and Godblight while kinda allowing Ghost Warrior fall to the side. Around this time I started getting involved in the 40k subs on Reddit, and eventually rezzed a Tumblr account I had created years ago but never used (hence the outdated name).

The end of the Dark Imperium left me thirsting for more Guilliman, but there didn't seem to be any other 40k books from his POV (I was wrong on this count), so I turned to 30k and picked up Know No Fear. Loved that so much that I immediately hopped into Unremembered Empire afterwards. Started to branch out after that, jumped into Son of the Forest and The Infinite and the Divine.

Finally went back to Ghost Warrior in the autumn and got through it by swearing not to touch another 40k book until I finished it. Once I was done I swore off of Gav Thorpe permanently. Unfortunately almost all Eldar books are written by him (WHY), so that moment was the death knell for me being much of an Eldar fan. I love them a lot, I want to read Eldar lore so much, but Ghost Warrior was actively painful to read. Every so often I get a hankering and think, "Oh come on, don't you want to see the lore firsthand? Don't you want to write lore-accurate fic? You can just skip the incessant tell-not-show scenes. Pick up Wild Rider. Check out the Path books. Just mine for lore." But UUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGH.

It's left me very bitter when it comes to xenos. Everything Necrons is amazing. From what I've seen of the Tau (which is admittedly little), they've got some good shit, too. But Eldar? Get fucked. No compelling stories. No victories or unmitigated successes. Here, have a faction led by a woman in this sausagefest of a franchise, let's promise all kinds of great story hooks, and then let's make her and her faction look boring and incompetent. Surprise surprise, no one wants to engage with her except as a blowjob punchline. WOW THANKS. This is why I want femmarines, sure there will be dommy mommy jokes but at least they'll show up in books regularly, and some of those books will be good.

I want to write Eldar fanfic so they have good stories written about them. But I haven't consumed enough of their lore to feel comfortable writing or to get enough inspiration. And so I need to read more of their lore, but I hate hate hate Gav Thorpe's writing. Plus Eldar fans kind of intimidate me, they seem to operate on a different wavelength from me, so I'm shy about engaging with them.

This kinda got away from me. I have a lot of feelings about this stuff as you can tell. Anyway, I've been making my way through book after book (a couple of short stories, too), big focus on my second love (Ultramarines) but not exclusive to them. Just started on The Fall of Cadia because Robert Rath. Who knows, maybe GW will give him the rest of the Gathering Storm books to write? Pfahahahahaha I'm not even going to get my hopes up. Can't help but dream a bit, though.

browsing through the Space Wolves pages on the Lexicanum and I found these minis:

lookit them! just a pack of babies! they got their fur bristled out and they're barking up a storm! so precious!

aaaaah he's got robolegs! he's just like that dog in FMA! look, his human friend even decorated his front leg with a li'l gem! so cute!

DOG MOUNT DOG MOUNT DOG MOUNT WHAT IF HORSE GIRL BUT MORE CANINE

[transmechanicus]

heyo! i love 40k but rarely get the chance to play it, so i was wondering if u have recommendations for where to start with the books? if it matters which i read first lol

Most of the books are entirely disconnected and don't require reading in a specific order unless they're part of a series.

I always recommend the Forges of Mars omnibus which contains Priests of Mars, Lords of Mars, and Gods of Mars in one book. These follow a Mechanicus explorator crusade and is both self-contained, and has a variety of factions present, specifically Mechanicus, Eldar, Astra Militarum, and Black Templar Space Marines.

For the stories that are the most recent in the setting and are actively progressing the timeline, there's Lords of Silence, or Guy Haley's Dark Imperium trilogy (including the book by the same name, Plague Wars, and Godblight).

If you're not a fan of Imperial factions and want something with aliens, The Infinite and the Divine, Farsight: Crisis of Faith, Day of Ascension, and Ghazghul: Prophet of the WAAAAGH focus on various xenos factions and i can personally recommend the first three.

I just finished The Carrion Throne, which is about Inquisition operatives on Terra, and is also one of the other series set farthest forward in the timeline during/after the Great Rift. Enjoyed it, would recommend, anything by Chris Wraight has always been a solid 8/10 minimum.

[absolutely-nothing-to-see-here]

Dark Imperium: Godblight spoilers without context

[ask-valerian-40k]

A champion came at him, whirling a two-handed flail around and around his head. Weighted skulls on rusty chains vomited a stream of green gas that threatened to burn through Colquan’s softseals. Colquan resisted the urge to attack immediately, holding back to judge his foe. The Plague Marine was powerfully built, his height and strength increased by the gifts of his patron god. Through gaps in his corroded armour the tribune saw the movement of flabby muscle. This champion was stronger than his fellows, and he would be as inured to pain as all of them. That made him dangerous. The champion’s followers gave their leader room, opening up a duelling ground in the swirl of the melee. Colquan paced around his opponent, noting everything about him. The Death Guard were among the last of the Traitor Legions to retain their organisation, and had kept up their numbers by aggressive recruitment, but the greening brass honour badges and tokens of devotion this champion wore marked him out as ancient, perhaps one of the original traitors who had followed Mortarion down his dark road. His armour was streaked with rust and congealed oil. His power plant shook and coughed smoke from its exhaust ports. Viscous saliva ran from his arched breathing grille. A cyclopean eye-lens glowed green above this, and above that a single horn, slightly off-centre, thrust outward. The censer skulls thrummed around and around. Balefires glowed in their eyes. Colquan made a feint to draw an attack, to see what response his opponent would offer, but the plague lord did not fall for the trick, and repositioned himself, kept up the whirl of the skulls, and spoke. ‘I was born upon Barbarus,’ he said. His voice was surprisingly pure. ‘I have fought the Long War since the days of Horus himself, where I walked the ground of Terra, and saw the Imperial Palace burn.’ More fluid welled from his mouth as he spoke. ‘But I have never slain one of your kind, corpse-watcher.’ Then he struck.

Dark Imperium: Godblight, by Guy Haley

[moodymisty]

I actually mentioned that to mothirr in dms! Like yeah emps fucking sucks, but i don't imagine anyone would be able to live as long as he has and see as much as he has and not being unfahtomably changed by that.

perhaps if he hasn't been through all that he's been through, maybe he would've thought of the primarchs differently, but who knows.

SPOILERS FOR DARK IMPERIUM GODBLIGHT.

I really think this moment kind of emcompasses how complicated emps can be.

‘Father,’ he said, and when he had said that word, it was the last time he had meant it. ‘Father, I have returned.’ Guilliman forced himself to look up into the pillar of light, the screaming of souls, the empty-eyed skull, the impassive god, the old man, yesterday’s saviour. ‘What must I do? Help me, father. Help me save them.’

In the present, in the past, he felt Mortarion’s wordless presence at his side, and felt his fallen brother’s horror.

He looked at the Emperor of Mankind, and could not see. Too much, too bright, too powerful. The unreality of the being before him stunned him to the core. A hundred different impressions, all false, all true, raced through his mind.

He could not remember what his father had looked like, before, and Roboute Guilliman forgot nothing.

And then, that thing, that terrible, awful thing upon the Throne, saw him.

‘My son,’ it said.

‘Thirteen,’ it said.

‘Lord of Ultramar.’

‘Saviour.’

‘Hope.’

‘Failure.’

‘Disappointment.’

‘Liar.’

‘Thief.’

‘Betrayer.’

‘Guilliman.’

He heard all these at once. He did not hear them at all. The Emperor spoke and did not speak. The very idea of words seemed ridiculous, the concept of them a grievous harm against the equilibrium of time and being.

‘Roboute Guilliman.’ The raging tempest spoke his name, and it was as the violence a dying sun rains upon its worlds. ‘Guilliman. Guilliman. Guilliman.’

The name echoed down the wind of eternity, never ceasing, never reaching its intended point. The sensation of many minds reached out to Guilliman, violating his senses as they tried to commune, but then one mind seemed to come from the many, a raw, unbounded power, and gave wordless commands to go out and save what they built together. To destroy what they made. To save his brothers, to kill them. Contradictory impulses, all impossible to disobey, all the same, all different.

Futures many and terrible raced through his mind, the results of all these things, should he do any, all or none of them.

‘Father!’ he cried.

Thoughts battered him.

‘A son.’

‘Not a son.’

‘A thing.’

‘A name.’

‘Not a name.’

‘A number. A tool. A product.’

A grand plan in ruins. An ambition unrealised. Information, too much information, coursed through Guilliman: stars and galaxies, entire universes, races older than time, things too terrifying to be real, eroding his being like a storm in full spate carves knife-edged gullies into badlands.

‘Please, father!’ he begged.

‘Father, not a father. Thing, thing, thing,’ the minds said.

‘Apotheosis.’

‘Victory.’

‘Defeat.’

‘Choose,’ it said.

‘Fate.’

‘Future.’

‘Past.’

‘Renewal. Despair. Decay.’

And then, there seemed to be focusing, as of a great will exerting itself, not for the final time, but nearly for the final time. A sense of strength failing. A sense of ending. Far away, he heard arcane machines whine and screech, close to collapse, and the clamour of screams of dying psykers that underpinned everything in that horrific room rising higher in pitch and intensity.

‘Guilliman.’ The voices overlaid, overlapped, became almost one, and Guilliman had a fleeting memory of a sad face that had seen too much, and a burden it could barely countenance. ‘Guilliman, hear me.

‘My last loyal son, my pride, my greatest triumph.’

How those words burned him, worse than the poisons of Mortarion, worse than the sting of failure. They were not a lie, not entirely. It was worse than that.

They were conditional.

‘My last tool. My last hope.’

A final drawing in of power, a thought expelled like a dying breath.

‘Guilliman…’

Guilliman is both a son and not a son, a tool and his last hope, a failure and a victory. really uniquely sad.

Started reading the warhammer books and there are moments where I laugh out loud physically because the emperor is such a bad father. Like this is man is supposed to be the epitome of human perfection and he acts like that. At first I saw the fics about him being a horrible person and stealing wives and thought maybe it was comically exaggerated. Nope. He is just like that.

Yeah he’s not the best person lol xD

[skunts-own-truth]

Couldn’t reply to you there, fella, but if you see this, it’s from “Dark Imperium: Godblight.” I’m about halfway through currently, and it’s a heck of a fun read.

[paulblart-animehunter]

OP I have great news for you. He's mentioned in Dark Imperium: Godblight. That being said, he's just a pure Eldar IIRC, but he still exists.

My completed Illiyan Nastase. No, I don't care that he hasn't been canon since first edition and has no rules. He's my half-eldar ultramarine boy and I love him all the same.