Yet if I am making this sound easy, I am doing a disservice to the slayer’s craft...

>Yet if I am making this sound easy, I am doing a disservice to the slayer’s craft. Most of these undertakings are monumental. Many are impossible without a coven of allies and apprentices, both of which I have used in abundance across the millennia. Sometimes, however, I work alone, and those sorcerers capable of such feats must be psykers of immense strength. I do not say this lightly. My reputation among the Nine Legions has been hard earned, and there are precious few sorcerers able to match me in might. Most of those that can tend to waste their talents in the unreliable impracticalities of precognition and prophecy. A tragic waste. Some say the best blades are those that are never drawn, and there is wisdom in such a philosophy. But power must be wielded, tested and trained, lest it wither on the vine.

>You have heard me speak of Ahriman before. I know you know his name, from his many predations upon the Imperium. My brother, my naïve but most admirably honest brother, Ahzek Ahriman once told me that he alone among the Nine Legions stood above me in talent with the Art. It was typical of his habit for blending humility with arrogance, to say nothing of manipulation.

>I cannot speak for the veracity of his words. In the long years of my life, while almost all of my sorcerous rivals lie dead, a few of them came close to killing me. There are others whom I would never wish to face, and still others that carry reputations equal to, or greater than, mine.


I swear to God, why can't ADB make his characters average? I like how he writes, I really do, but his snowflake complex is gettint really annoying, almost on par with Abnett's.

>why isn't this power fantasy about average joe working class chaos marines?

You can make a solid story without the need to make a character one of the best though. Notice how 2 characters written by ADB, that you've never heard of before, were the fall of 2 demon Primarchs.
That's puhsing the power fantasy a wee bit too far.

No one reads or considers this shit canon.

I'd read a book about a lower level bunch of aimless post heresy traitors finding some semblance of purpose in the growing black legion. They'd by large have to die and it wouldn't be a great time though. Which is a problem because most people read to feel good, like continuous characters that can become a series to sell units, a team they can root for, shit like that. Doesn't lend itself well to the tragedy of the setting imo, but its not exactly Sophocles.

I do.

and that's why kids laugh at you

That's basically the Night Lords books in a nutshell. Sure, Talos is kinda special because he gets shitty visions like Curze did, but the whole squad was basically a bunch of shitty dudes trying to get by in their shitty Warband from a shitty fractured legion. The best part is that Talos was a fucking Apothecary during the Heresy.

I don't know, even if you have all its individual members die, you can still have a "team" that recruits new guys as its old characters die off and that still has the same bonds to each other, iconography, history etc. Like in sports, almost no teams still have their original roster, or even any of their original players.

I dunno what you guys being bitches about. The guy failed to kill his target 5 times and is risking punishment from Abaddon, going by the teaser text.

Siege of Castellax is like that, really captures the essence of what it means to be living for chaos but also just trying to stay alive so that the shit above you doesn't roll downhill

I've become convinced that ADB and Laurie Goulding are the reason I hated BL from 2008-2016, that's the era where they've been most involved in BL and basically nothing good came out of it.
And now that there's a new generation of authors coming in from a few years ago and starting to take up a good amount of the writing duty: David Annandale, Guy Haley, and Chris Wraight foremost among them, shit is becoming decent again.
I mean, I could be completely off and it could have everything to do with Kirby retiring or someshit, correlation != causation. But I don't really see a better reason atm for why I think pre-2008 and post-2015 BL is decent, and the intimidate period sucked ass besides that being the time when Laurie and ADB were most involved.

>did I tell you the time Ahriman told me I was the best sorc ever after him
>anyway there's a bunch of sorcs I'm afraid of and are greater than me

??????????????????????????????

Because he's writing about one of Abaddon's right hand men? He's a big deal, though even then he's not perfect as points out, and him having that big spiel about how he's real good is undercut by his eventual failure.

Also this.

So wait, you like their stuff, but because they were the only authors you liked in that period, you think they're to blame?

On a related note, shit was bad at Black Library until a few years ago. I can't remember the details (or find a link to the article), but the general gist of it was that the divisions between teams/subsidiaries were broken down, the schedule for releases ramped up people ended up doing too much stuff. You had authors being pulled into write codex fluff instead of being able to focus on their books, or being tasked with limited edition stories to be sold for premium prices on top of their existing work.

No, I didn't like their stuff and they were the prominent figures, and Laurie was editor (though he's apparently leaving that position), so they're to blame. Night Lords was alright, but on the whole I think ADB in particular is horribly overrated.
But like I said, I'm sure there's other factors too, like Kirby leaving.

NL series was pretty focused on how special they all were. It makes sense, living for that long means basically all the various veterans of the long war are interesting characters, but 1st claw was comprised of the favoured son/prophet of the legion, the best swordsman of their entire warband, a possessed trickster, a tortured good guy bzerker, and the best apothecary from the corsairs. And the dreadnaught captain. And the rich kid outsider warrior poet, who was basically the most normal of them all. Oh, and they reunited their legion of totally ununiteable psychopaths. I liked the series, but it was pretty much the opposite of what I was talking about.

A collection of linked shorts about a conflict from a variety of different perspectives would work well I think. The seemingly futile and violent ends of each story forming a cohesive and interconnected picture of the battle/campaign/whatever from the reader's perspective. Probably the only way to have the HH's siege of terra be interesting, but that's harder to write and people would complain every ending was the same. They're going to do a series of linked 400 page slogs instead, but that happens.

I'll check that one out, thanks.

Actually... they didn't really live 10,000 years they went into the warp during the heresy, came out and it was 10,000 years later

can I just say how glad I am that that meme has died down. Around 4th there was a subset of chaos fans (and ADB was a champion of it too) of reminding everyone that not ever chaos legionairre is 10,000 years old. I think it came out of defending the 4th edition csm codex because of the bland rules. But now we 10,000 year old vets and we full on traitor legions now.

>didn't live 10000 years
I know. The retcons to cover/explain/deal with that were interesting, but I didn't really think they were that necessary personally.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the series. But its not about regular traitors. They're written in a more thoughtful manner than most, which probably gives them more salience, but presenting them as average, normal, sane, or any of the other memes around the series seems dishonest.

So knowing how these sorcerers tend to blow things out of proportion on regards to their own abilities, would he rank as...
>aspiring sorcerer
>sorcerer
>exalted sorcerer
Or
>named HQ

>Guy Haley

He wrote the worst story in War Storm with an almost word for word copy from the Faramir navel gazing over a dead haradrim in Lotr. It was was such a uninteresting story, even the low standards of Age of Sigmar fluff. I was really pissed off by this.

Maybe he has written other stuff that is good, but I put ADB past him. He does at least more interesting, complex and more believable characters than Guy Haley does. I mean most off ADB's characters are "dark" in a stupid heavy metal lyrics kind of way, but you kind of want to know more about them. I would say that I felt a lot more for the Thousand Son guy in Black Legion and his delfdar waifu than I did for THOSTOS HAMMERSTORM OF THE STORMHAMMERS.

> no feels for HAMMERSTORM'S trials and tribulations while fighting in Sigmar's glorious STORMHAMMERS
it's like you don't RIDE THE LIGHTNING

I can't speak to that since I don't follow AoS, but I loved Baneblade and Dante, and Dark Imperium and Death of Integrity were both real solid. He writes great Eldar, his Eldar are pretty entertainingly smug and haughty in a way that I haven't seen other writers portray them.
Of what I've read, Shadowsword was easily his worst, but even that was passable.

Oh boy here we go

We just don't know.

"I'm not saying it was sorcery. But it was sorcery."

John French ruined Ahriman.
Therefore, Abnett and ADB are still better than John French.

Explain.

5th edition:
"Yet, to Ahriman, the Rubric was a resounding success."
- Refuses to acknowledge his servitude of Tzeentch
- Attempting to break into the black library so he can achieve godhood
- Completely disregards Magnus as an emotional fool
- Pragmatic and Ruthless
- Doesn't really give a shit about the yiffs

7-8th Edition
- Muh Bruvvas!
- Trying to enter black library because 'Muh Bruvvas!'
- Cucked by Yvraine because 'Muh Bruvvas!'
- Is an emotional fool


It's straight-up appalling.

>John French ruined Ahriman.
Pleb.

Ahriman is a much stronger character than he used to be. The rubric was a failure and him going
>NUH-UH
>THATS TOTES WHAT I WANTED TO HAPPEN
>NOW OFF TO BECOME A GOD
Was lame and nonsensical.

The rubric
A. Protected the sorcerors from mutation
B. Made all of the foot-plebs into nigh-unkillable fearless automatons.
Best failure ever.

Turning him into a bleeding heart moron was not an improvement.
Where the hell else am I supposed to find ultra-pragmatists now that every Chaos kid is a bundle of angst and daddy issues?

>where are my rational maximizers in Warhammer 40k?

could be worse. Could be Gaunt's Ghosts. That was Mary Sue R Us.

They were more invisible than the love child of a Callidus and a Lictor. They were more accurate than Vindicare. Their women were all babes. Muh visions plot armour. Holy fuck, the scene where they break out of prison and hide in a Leviathan from scanners at the start of last command made me vow it would be the last Abnett book I read.

Bleeding heart characters is seemingly what the 40k fanbase wants though. They don't like evil or even "grey" pragmatic characters. Everyone has to be Superman sans the weakness to kryptonite.

I'm about to start the first gaunts ghosts book in a few days; I'm kind of hyped especially after your post.

In my opinion it starts off fantastic and gets better and better, then abruptly turns to shit.

Traitor General was the beginning of the end, while it peaked at Straight Silver, imo.

I really liked Only in Death, I thought it was pretty intense; though Blood Pact was a bit bland and forgettable, especially as a follow up.

I'd say the first four are good fun in my view.

I loved the fuck out of Gaunts Ghosts, but that whole Gereon arc was some of the worst shit I have ever slogged through in my life. The best parts of the series are up until Traitor General, and then the one in Hinzherhaus is good afterwards.

The biggest problem I had with GG is that some of the characters don't fucking matter (Seriously, that scout and colonel for the Belladons are all that have character for a full third of the regiment), while the Sons of Set are made out to be these really badass Ghost equivalents that end up being faceless mooks who can't kill anyone worth a damn.

Necropolis will always be his best work, hands down. Satisfying as fuck the whole way through, with the only major complaint being that fucking ziggurat at the end.

It's pretty much confirmed that Ahriman is deluding himself into pursuing power through any means necessary while justifying it as a quest of redemption

>Shadowsword
>passable
I mean, it wasn't as great as Baneblade, but it was still very decent. I'd put it above DI in terms of pure writintg, but obviously one has to consider DI had the task of being a marketing book.
Have you read the short story Iron Harvest before Shadowsword? It makes the whole crew, especially Golph, a lot more likeable. I got a Band of Brothers/Fury feeling from Baneblade and Shadowsord

Since we're talking BL, I'll post my pasta:
I highly recommend Deathwatch by Steve Parker and the associated short stories, Headhunted and Exhumed IIRC.
Baneblade, Shadowsword, and the 2 short stories, Stormlord and Iron Harvest (Read this one before Shadowsword, it will make the crew much more likeable, in a Brothers in Arms sort of way) by Based Guy Haley (generally speaking Haley is a good pick).
Dead Men Walking for one of the most grimdark book about 40k, featuring the KDK, by Steve Lyons. Fantastic but super depressing. The short story Down Amongst the Dead Men by the same author deals with "training" on Krieg is equally good and depressing.
Red Tithe by Robbie McNiven and Eye of Medusa by David Guymer are two excellent books giving loads of background information about, respectively, the Carcharodons and the Iron Hands (I have to say, I'm a Carcharodons player but hot diddly damn Eye of Medusa was good, IH are scary and brutal as fuck in this book)
Death of Antagonis and Warden of the Blade by David Annandale are solid books as well, one fluhes out the Black Dragon nicely (very different interpretation than Kyme's savage view on them) and the 2nd is about Castellan Crowe, and a fantastic insight on the perils of the GK and the bearer of the blade of Ant'wyr in particular. Manages to make him non Mary-Sue.
Pdf related is also a great book, it's everything a book about an unknown chapter should be. I like to share it around since it was take from the BL site 2 weeks before release because of legal problems, so poor Kearney wrote a whole damn novel for nothing, and I suspect he is the one that put up his novel on torrents so that it's not forgotten.

>Death of Integrity

Death of Integrity was the bomb, and it doesn't get near as much attention as it should.

>Chaos
>Pragmatists

The closest you're gonna get is Iron Warriors and they have angst and daddy issues out the ass

>Didn't mention Fifteen Hours

I preferred it when he was very upfront about his pursuing power through any means necessary, and just deluding himself into thinking it wasn't all furthering Tzeentch's goals.

Yeah, well, we had one. John French fucked it.

>hating ADB

Is a meme.

Mate. You are no fun. No fun at all.

That's the one about average guardsmen lifespan yeah?

You mean you liked it when he had no lore and no character beyond a few lines.

ADB has some of the best prose out of anyone in the BL stable, but he sorely needs editors that will tell him to stop being a tard.

Ret-conning Khayon into Ahriman's plot was retarded, but the dude should be a big deal. ADB's just been leaning way too heavily on the dude sermonizing about how awesome he is. The interrogation scenes in Talon of Horus were awful.

>- Is an emotional fool
Not liking changing Ahriman's opinion of the rubric or nominal goal is a matter of opinion, but this is straight wrong. You need to reread the Ahriman novels if you missed how he's constantly coldly manipulating everyone around him.

>You mean you liked it when he had no lore and no character beyond a few lines.
Most "muh old lore was good" complaints in a nutshell. Most old lore, especially old lore detailing SC's and major events, was extremely barebones. Grognards just get pissy when the new lore doesn't completely match their asinine headcanon.