Ask The Captain General Of The Custodes

The ancient motioned to the remnants of his last battle, the soul-deep scars that would never leave him, no matter how many times he died. Mottled, ropy flesh coated his left arm and half his face, while the silvery remains of lacerations made their mark across his chest. His left eye, burnt to bubbling ruin by Horus's magic in another life , was now riddled with cataracts, blinding him in that eye.

A god should have no blemishes, no imperfections, but this one did.

Atticus ignored the blemishes as he spoke. The imperfections that quietly mortified him. Not from shame, but the smallest hints of concern and fear. This form of Kusig was unknown to him, he had not seen the countless scars once.

“The Martians are a capable force, but they stand divided for the moment. Utilize that division and take control of your own path. They are far weaker than when we fought them thousands of years ago.”

Would some of them have celebrated the end of my Imperium?

Atticus started to subconsciously pace as he finished speaking, mind going back to Terra. That planet was not a great place to live but damn it, it was his home too.

A few chapters in, and we have several plotlines to follow. Evelyn Darke, who was named at the end of Harrowmaster, is now on Solomon's trail. Akurra himself thinks he is playing at Star Wars, invoking hope as a weapon against the grinding tyranny of the Imperium. And the Astartes in his Ghost Legion do not ably take to the Harrowmaster's peculiar vision.

It is charming, that the previous book's deep cover agent bristles at the administrative and defensive role he's been saddled with. When he brings up his actual concerns with Ghost Legion conduct in this New Alliance, we complete an great dichotomy for Solomon Akurra to navigate.

1. Akurra says that the Imperium sucks, in large part because of how damn much it LIES. His big rhetorical moment in Renegades: Harrowmaster is a speech that unites various Alpha Legion warbands juuuust before their hands are collectively forced by Imperial action.

2. He also believes it is not enough to just be an evil and disorganized degeneration of the Imperium of Man. Because then you side with Chaos. So we get a decently long exchange where the 1st book's causus belli argument gets expanded upon*

3. The crooked timber of renegade Astartes does not make for the most just protectors of an alternative to the Imperium. Ideally, this will set us up for a playable Solomon model and more books. Because him saying, in Coil-esque fashion "I need my villain-run polity to be a shining city on the hill for reputational reasons" is both funny on it's face and an EXCELLENT thing to motivate a long heel-face turn.

Also, the Pillar of Dreams is a divinatory macguffin? proooooobably not the haft of the Pale Spear which our Harrowmaster needs to complete his Sentimentality-based totem of authority.

*this is an early contender for a yet-unpicked mystery. The Warhammer40k book club did an episode

There's no obvious black comedy turn as yet. Tulava is sentimentally attached enough to Akurra to get him out of harm's way when a Callidus nearly kills him, and the Vanus captured the moment on camera. This is both a fun use for the haxxor assassin AND a good setup for an eventual confrontation with the local Abominable Intelligence.

Solomon has also gotten more sympathetic! He tells his Nurgle-flavored brothers no when the warband leader broaches using biological weapons in defense of a city.

1. The Assassins interludes are Officially Confusing: I thought there was a pair of Calidus, but there was 1 infiltrator, 1 hacker, and 1 Oh Shi-! [Eversor]

2. The editor dun goof'd. Both by waiting too long to spell out the nature of a particular macguffin and having loose accounting of time with one of the returning characters. When part of the final act reveal is made, Everything starts spilling out in a single chapter in a way I thought detracted from the book.

3. We get a stupid, unforced error on the part Solomon while doing the last obvious fight of the book, for which I don't have a good explanation. Obviously in the past he'd cross falls with Tulava's warpwalks, but her protectiveness got her taken off the board. Our Harrowmaster is shown not wanting to take himself out with prolonged repairs of kit or refits, but I don't know that jump packs specifically are difficulg to swap on and off.

4. The Ghost Legion Admiral is a good boss! [After a fashion] Namely by inviting a little risk unto himself and his ship in exchange for letting the Female Space Marine Dishonor Guard of the Diabolicus feel Included.

5. The AI is not particularly clever, but I wonder if some of its parts got cut with the Novator's chapters? For reasons I'll discuss later, she was bound to survive the initial invasion od the planet, so she could be the human toll for the less stupid inquisitor. Disloyalty of the local tech priest was eventually guaranteed by the political state of exception on the planet, but the AI couldn't make that work in it's favor.

Admiral Vakai REALLY got bailed out by timing. It LOOKS like this was causally related to Tulava taking the Deal, which was a bummer on two counts.

I know that I defended Tarkir Dragonstorm for having the overthrow of dragonlords happen offscreen, but 40k is all war stories all the time, such that if a matchup is interesting enough, the audience will Fucking Drown in it. This is sometimes known as "#th War for Armageddon"

Second, I feel like we didn't get enough of Tulava establishing her reasons for not consigning herself to Chaos. Especially since she's been palling around with a Renegade Space Marine for 2 decades.

The AI created by the Mechanicum priest in the Ghost Legion was a bitch coward. I know this because he gets this big, yucky ogryn servitor body, and never fights with it! Which is REALLY relevant when there's an Eversor in the building.

I didn't really like the macguffin of the Pillar of Dreams! Ooooh it's an AI that pokes at a wraithbone doohickey full of dead farseers to answer questions. The imagery of the Navigator trying to mentally grapple with it was fun and spooky, but it would have been a better macguffin if it could withstand 1 pyrokinetic making an ash of herself because she was too cringe to actually contribute to the story!

If I'm putting this on the scale with Genefather and Archmagos, it would place below both of them, but above the Scions of the Emperor book and Renegades: Harrowmaster [the 1st title in this sequence]. Reason being that less of Ghost Legion [this book] is joking and gesturing at the readers, which has some limits.

I kind of expect Solomon Akurra to reject the daemon in his arm out of grief in the 3rd book, which will be great to see now that one of his only friends is fully compromised by the Ruinous Powers.

I liked the friendship/brotherhood between Kyrin and Akurra, but I could have used more. Maybe when this gets omnibus'd we see them hanging out via short story while Qope Halver gets patched up after the events of #1?

Obviously, I understand that as written, the Pillar of Dreams is too strong a device to actually let stay in the keeping of 1 empire-building astartes, but I would have accepted it getting Pokeballed by warhammer's player avatar Trazyn the Infinite. If the Pillar was truly this human/aeldari hybrid tech, just like the flatworld of Genefather, then maybe we're getting a DAoT sketch of interspecies cooperation? The Pillar is clearly from a time when the relationship between monkeigh and aeldari had soured to exploitation, which is INTERESTING since the macroengineering project reflects better relations. Also, Trazyn isn't the Most poised to use it tempermentally, which is the Whole Point of his dispute with Orikan in TIatD. That monocular bitch would probably refuse to operate such a device out of principal, which would be Extra Rich if it could spit out an answer like 'how do I resleeve all the necrons into Decent Meatsacks?'

I have this dream of Akurra going through this loooong heel-face turn as he discovers that he can only defeat the Imperium by being morally superior to it, which includes rejecting Chaos [which would be a tragic conflict to have with his sorceress bestie!]

A thing I generally like about the book is that Akurra is struggling with Fancy Play Syndrome both in himself and his fellow Legionaires. Wanting to blow up the landing site a liiiittle bit later, deploy a superheavy tank when the enemy column is 50 meters further into your killzone. It's endearing, like an older sibling trying to assert responsibility after weeks of backstabbing and plotting by an under-parented family.

"Are you mad?! That is a question akin to asking a father whom his favorite child is!"

"Are you mad?! That is a question akin to asking a father whom his favorite child is!"

The ancient motioned to the remnants of his last battle, the soul-deep scars that would never leave him, no matter how many times he died. Mottled, ropy flesh coated his left arm and half his face, while the silvery remains of lacerations made their mark across his chest. His left eye, burnt to bubbling ruin by Horus's magic in another life , was now riddled with cataracts, blinding him in that eye.

A god should have no blemishes, no imperfections, but this one did.

Atticus ignored the blemishes as he spoke. The imperfections that quietly mortified him. Not from shame, but the smallest hints of concern and fear. This form of Kusig was unknown to him, he had not seen the countless scars once.

“The Martians are a capable force, but they stand divided for the moment. Utilize that division and take control of your own path. They are far weaker than when we fought them thousands of years ago.”