#talking about warhammer instead of writing(ish)

[fourgods-nobrakes]

I made a grave error this week. With the Sanguinala deadline looming and my attention span already terrible, I tried out one of the WH40k phone games. Did you know that when you take a terrible dopamine drip pastime and weld it to your existing hyperfixation, you can just lose days like it's your job? Yeah.

There's not a lot of story, mostly collecting gubbinz and sticking them on your characters to make them do more numbers, but I've still caught a couple of interesting moments. Like. Most factions have a couple of lore characters for the "legendary" and "epic" slots, and then some generic ones to round out the team. They're generally people one would expect (eg., Tigurius and Calgar for Ultramarines - plus Titus now as an event character - Maugen Ra and Jain Zar for eldar, Typhus and Nauseous Rotbone (afaict the only chaos healer) for Death Guard, etc) but in the Black Legion we get Abaddon, Haarken Worldclaimer... and Volk. The first Obliterator. Who I think we had only seen during the Heresy? A thousand years before the Black Legion formed? I would love this to be evidence that he lived, tbh.

Also one of the generic World Eater units is a Jakhal, and I got him early, so he's on my too-small Chaos team with terminators from the Black Legion and the Death Guard and you know what I will ship anything and possibly that's my superpower. I just picture him following these ancient, legendary tanks around the battlefield and really, really, really wanting to kill enough guys to get them to nod at him in approval.

ALSO the first faction you fight/second faction you start collecting is the Necrons, and I got as far as meeting "Imospekh" and was like, what the fuck kind of bootleg tomb world is this. Great designs, though. The hexmark destroyer and canoptek spyder are just fun to look at on the character screen.

Anyway I have made terrible choices and had better get back to the exchange fic mines.

[the-unsleeping-bi]

Attention anyone who enjoys fanfiction of Warhammer 40K novels! Over the past few months, I devoured the whole Ciaphas Cain series and wrote a series of short fics as I went. Since they're all pretty much stand-alone and only very loosely connected, I thought I'd make this post listing them all with a bit of summary and detail, to help people pick and choose which ones they might be interested in reading!

A lot of them don't require much specific knowledge of the source material, since I wrote most of them when I wasn't finished reading it all myself either, and focused a lot more on the characters and their relationships than on specific plot events. Also, many of them are way more about sex than anything else (and I'm shipping Cain with absolutely everyone at once, because why not), but with varying levels of explicitness and seriousness about it, plus there's also one of them in there that's just funny and not sexual at all. So I think there's something for everyone! If that sounds good to you, check out the list below, and enjoy!

For each one of these I'll give a brief description/reflection, and list the main ship in it, whether you need much knowledge of canon to get it, and the level of smuttiness.

Note from the Inquisitorial Archives #1: In retrospect, this one kind of feels like it was a warm-up to the rest of the series. It's entirely from Amberley's perspective, which kind of sets it apart because I soon switched to mostly writing from Cain's perspective for the rest of the series, and really not much happens in it. But it's the origin of some cute ideas that have stuck with me and it's okay! Enjoy it maybe! Main Ship: Cain/Amberley Required Canon Knowledge: minimal Smut Level: mild

Note #2: This one was heavily influenced by some of the other great Cain fanfiction I found on Ao3 after posting my first one! I was really happy to see a few other people exploring the same characters, and it inspired me to keep going too. Anyway this one is pretty cute I think. Main Ship: Cain/Jurgen Required Canon Knowledge: best if you've read book 3 or at least don't mind it getting spoiled by way of references to major events Smut Level: medium

Note #3: I feel like this is where my writing of this series really hit its stride! This one is about a threesome and it's great, highly recommend reading it. Main Ship: Cain/Amberley/Jurgen Required Canon Knowledge: minimal Smut Level: high

Note #4: Another one I'm especially proud of, which I wrote with a burst of inspiration in just one day. Amberley introduces Cain to some light bondage, and it's very cute. Main Ship: Cain/Amberley Required Canon Knowledge: best if you've at least read book 1 and have some general understanding of Cain's character and the pressures of his career Smut Level: high

Note #5: A longer one! This one has three chapters, one of which is from Amberley's perspective instead of Cain's, which all sets up for them having a threesome with Felicia Tayber. It comes especially highly recommended from my friend @sybilius​, whose support has generally helped a lot with my writing. Thanks! Main Ship: Cain/Amberley/Felicia Required Canon Knowledge: best if you've read book 4 so you know who Felicia is Smut Level: medium

Note #6: A rare entry which is actually not about sex at all, it's just funny! I hope so anyway. Involves Cain getting really drunk and Jurgen putting up with a series of silly antics. Main Ship: Cain/Amberley is like, an element of the plot, but it's less about that than it is about Cain drunkenly stumbling around a starship Required Canon Knowledge: best if you've read the short story "The Traitor's Gambit" (the one in between books 5 and 6 in the omnibus), since it basically functions as an epilogue to it, but it doesn't rely on it so much that you wouldn't be able to appreciate it without that Smut Level: Zero! What a concept.

Note #7: This one is just about Cain and Amberley being into BDSM. Involves her slapping him in the face, like, in a hot way. Main Ship: Cain/Amberley Required Canon Knowledge: minimal Smut Level: Depends on your definition of smut I guess, since it doesn't really describe anything directly sexual, but you know what I'd still say high

Note #8: It was high time to add yet another character to my growing list of people I ship Cain with. Involves some creative and probably extremely not canon interpretation of space marine lore. Main Ship: Cain/Drumon Required Canon Knowledge: best if you've read book 7 Smut Level: medium

Note #9: Okay this is another one I'm extra proud of, I think it's very funny. The concept is that it's a passage written by Sulla, describing a time she allegedly slept with Cain, but Amberley has a lot of comments to make about stuff she thinks is inaccurate. Main Ship: Cain/Sulla Required Canon Knowledge: best if you're familiar with some of the bits where Amberley comments on Sulla's writing (also it's set during book 8 but doesn't rely on much specific knowledge of that) Smut Level: high-ish but not at all in a way that's meant to be taken seriously

Note #10: My most recent and also most explicit one! I did a little bit of actual research on what kind of video-call-type technology exists in 40K just so that I could write about Cain and Amberley making creative use of it. This one is hopefully very relatable to people in long-distance relationships. Main Ship: Cain/Amberley Required Canon Knowledge: minimal Smut Level: high

Also, separately from this series, I wrote another pretty cute Cain/Amberley one called Divine Providence. It's specifically based on another fic, Attalander's A Sinner And A Saint, so check that one out first if you're interested! I've also written a couple fics for other 40K novels too: my very first 40K fic about Bannick from Baneblade and Shadowsword fucking a chaos marine, and a very short one about Sebastian Yarrick and Dominic Seroff that takes place near the beginning of Imperial Creed. Maybe you'll like those too!

If you read that whole list, thanks, and I hope you find something to enjoy! I'll probably write more soon, so follow me here or on Ao3 if you want to see it. And feel free to comment or message me if you want to talk about Ciaphas Cain! Have a good day!

[flowing-paint]

Progress and updates

A quick post to update all my (limited) audience on my hobby progresses.

Painting

Death Guard - Warhammer 40K

I am actually committed to finishing 1000 points worth of Death Guard models because I’m planning a game with my WH40K friend by the end of this month. Despite having a lot of painted models, it’s still not enough. I also had to buy more plague marines because those I had were not sufficient. They were not even close to being enough... I will probably have to use my USCR Mercs miniatures as proxies, ‘cause you know: they come in fucking power armor! While counting points and units, I was going through my models and thought I may write a list of what I have and my painting progress.

1x Mortarion (Forgeworld one)

1x Typhus (Painted)

1x Leviathan Dreadnought

2x Contemptor Dreadnought (Painted)

1x Wheelbarrow (Rhino) (Painted)

1x The combine (Plagueburst Crawler)

2x Foetid Bloat Drone

1x Myphitic Blight-hauler

2x Lord of contagion (1 Painted)

10x Plague Marines (only THREE Painted)

10x Baby Plague Marines (4 Painted)

1x Malignant Plaguecaster

1x Noxious Blighbringer

5x Blightlord Terminators (1 Painted)

5x Deathshroud Terminators (2 Painted)

20-ish Poxwalkers (5 Painted)

This is it: all the units I have. It makes me shiver if I think how many of these guys are still in the “grey plastic” stage. Moreover, I paint almost only in subassemblies so all the unpainted models are still on a sprue in the box. Every time I get depressed I take a look at this group picture and I get going again!

Casting

These days I am using my really limited free time trying my hand at silicon mold making. Silicon mold making, the hobo way! I came to this because my wife creates her own molds for soap making with RTV silicone and I felt I could try that. It’s all still too embryonal to write something here but I would like to try to create some scenographic bases for 28mm miniatures and see if I can do some mass (re-)production. For now, I’m just having fun with small bits/trinkets I got at work that I try to copy. Geared wheels, metal fittings, etc... If I will succeed at this stage, I will start producing the masters and then copy them. If I end up with some interesting result I may also think about selling them on the eBay! Not that I’m super sure I will be able to do it but still... I will keep it simple and try to make some sand and stone patterns to use in Age of Sigmar.

New hobby Juice

I want to give a big shout out to this new item I bought the other day on the eBay: Shadow War Armageddon. I guess everybody knows what I’m talking about but for those living on Mars, Shadow War Armageddon was a boxed game in the Warhammer 40k universe released in 2017 that was called by some “Necromunda 2.0″. Here is the picture of the box I just bought:

This boxed set is crazy value for a couple reasons:

It allows you to play with just a bunch of minis. Rules for a lot of factions are available.

It comes packed with some amazing terrain. Take a look here, here and here.

In the box, you get a bunch of Orkboys and some Marine scouts (which represent all the models you will ever need to play this game), the rulebook and those mythical artifacts called “weapon templates”. For the newcomers, they’re not in WH40k 8th edition anymore but I used to use them a lot in Warhammer Fantasy (dragon flames and salamander venomous spit were template based damage). 

However, the most interesting thing about this game is not inside the box: it’s how it came out and disappeared in the span of less than on year. The game was released in April 2017 and was welcomed with tons of e-ink in praises and reviews. GeeDubs themselves, impressed by the reaction to the game, decided to release a separate rulebook for those that already had everything needed to play and didn’t want to buy all the stuff. Despite all this, the game went immediately out of production and today you only find the terrain (see links above) and the rulebook in GW website. Let’s see if this theory I came up with makes sense.

The game “Shadow War Armageddon” was only a market test to verify the audience reaction to a possible Necromunda re-launch. Now that we know how the story ended, it is easy to get to some conclusions. Let’s say you have digital designs for the new Necromunda in you pc, people keep asking for it but pulling the trigger means making a lot of new molds, advertising campaigns, etc: a lot of money. So GW came up with a super-cheap / super-effective idea:

we create a bunch of terrain --> We are going to sell it anyway

we grab a couple sprues of high selling factions (SM and Orks)

we grab old Necromunda rules and revamp them

we stuck everything in a big cardboard box.

What’s the cost of doing this? Well, I work in product development and I can tell you that, apart from the design costs (new book, new box) it’s only the cost of the logistics. This means that GW investment in this game was close to zero. So they put themselves in the advantageous situation where they could potentially earn a lot of money because of all those nostalgic gamers while testing the ground for the launch of the new Necromunda. As soon as they saw all the traction this boxed game garnered the New Necromunda project got the green light and got released at the end of 2017. Shadow War Armageddon immediately vanished to avoid cannibalizing the new market but the support still remained online for those who bought it. Does this make sense to you? I think therefore that this set deserves some more attention that it is now receiving... but I know that GW is really heavy in exacerbating our shiny syndrome so that buyers only think about new things.

Well, the post turned to a sort of GW market strategy review when I just wanted to write down some updates instead. If you have any comments please feel free to drop them below!

...game on!