#commissariat

Plot: AS another one of those short twenty minutes audio dramas there isn’t much plot. Basically it is what it says on the tin; a Commissar executes a Guardsman, begins seeing his phantom and having a mental breakdown.

However, the plot is delivered very well! Honestly I prefer the sort of creeping, doubt-yourself, existential dread horror that is featured in this to the visceral horror of Perdition’s Flame’s ending. The story works well at making the Commissar’s situation seem eerie, genuinely, through use of mostly not showing directly what he engages and encounters and instead focusing on his own harried and fraying responses to it, helping convey the weight of it through his reaction whilst leaving the horror open to interpretation by disclosing little to nothing about it.

The second part of the plot that works well is that it shows the Imperial forces in a less brutal light. Despite the topic, a Commissar’s execution of a Guardsman, this is one of those stories which reflects the Imperial commanders present as not being mindlessly evil and brutal, but instead as being authoritarian, facist, ideolouges. They calculate their actions and motivate them through a belief that they are doing what is right and necessary. They don’t do it simply to be mindlessly cruel. It doesn’t stop them being bad people but it means they don’t come across as cruel and vindictive, just ruthless. It straddles a line between lionizing them and turning them into idiots very well which is appreciated. 

Characters: There are really only two characters to discuss; Commissar Selander himself and his friend and confidante the Confessor Hallstrom. Both characters are, considering the time given, fleshed out rather well and don’t fall into the archetypes of their character.

Selander is not needlessly cruel and jackbooted, indeed a vital conversation he has with the Imperial Guard Commander present is about him specifically acknowledging that the Commander being reticent to commit to an aggressive posture in a war, causing it to drag on, is not defeatist. Further Selander himself grapples with the guilt of potentially having been wrong in executing Trooper Arehn. 

Hallstrom, despite being a Confessor, isn’t the usual ‘fire and brimstone’ fanatic sort. He is displayed as deeply faithful, yes, but he is intellectual about it as well. He’s well-reasoned, almost always calm, and even attempts to approach Selander’s fraying mindset from a rational perspective, expressing concern for him and trying to convince him that he is simply fatigued and experiencing delusions. 

Sound Direction: It is good as usual. At only twenty minutes there is not to much to say. The voice actors do a good job and I have no problem distinguishing them this time. Props to the Servo-Skull, they have a nice voice and accompanying sounds for it which help to hone in it’s somewhat eerie nature. 

Theme: There is a rather simple, short, theme here simply about how the Imperium blinds itself to danger through dogmatism. There is ‘something’ in the Wastes, a threat, a danger, and people see it: Arehn, Selander etc. but they are conditioned to not believe anything is there because, well, Chaos is a no-no. In short the theme is about how the Imperium’s lack of knowledge of Chaos leaves its military forces woefully incapable of handling it. Ignorance is not the best defence, in short, as it leaves those afflicted to behave irrationally and those who observe them refuse to believe them and instead, as this is the Imperium, kill them for any ‘deviance’ from the consensus.