#rushal

Just finished Malleus, and I absolutely *devoured* the audiobook whenever I had time to listen to it. Definitely understand why people recommend the Eisenhorn books as an introduction to Warhammer. I am after all a neophyte (am I using that right?) in the Wh40k fandom. Honestly all prev knowledge came from a couple of friends who paint figurines and some who play some of the games on the PC and sometimes tell me about it, so I am genuinely figuring out all this on the fly. Of course *some* knowledge has been aquired since I am chronically online and on Tumblr(TM), which means some of the terminology and very rudimentary understanding of the warhammer universe had been aquired through osmosis on this webbed site.

I quite liked the insight into the inquisition and poilitics when it comes to the empire of mankind that Malleus brought. I'll definitely read up on the internal structure and hierarchy within the Inquisition, because some of the politics were a bit above my head with no context or background. My one irk would be related to Carthae sword techniques of the Ewl Wyra Scryri which Eisenhorn used with Barbarisater. Especially in the form of an audiobook and with little to no elaboration on how any of the techniques actually work besides a one-liner (if that) to explain the movement, it felt a little forced to sprinkle in all these terms for the fighting technique from a character that dies basically the next chapter and then never mentioned again. And of course the way the novel is wrapped up in less than two chapters after building up to it for the entire novel felt a little... abrupt. But then again they introduced the whole side-quest of the Lith, which was an... sentient, daemon-infested crystal (?). Which apparently killed several thousand people and yet then was quickly banished by.... re-playing an exorcism I guess? (i can't get the image out of my head of Eisenhorn with some sort of 90's boombox over his head blasting the Emperor's Prayer of Abrogation Against the Warp)

*hand signs* Welcome back to my library! Try not to bump your horns on the chandelier this time, yeah?

Alastor Rushal is elusive indeed. So much so that I’ve only found one novella in one book in which his name is mentioned a total of 9 times. These pages are most of what we know about him.

He was a Raven Guard captured - or more likely defected to - Night Lords at Isstvan V. He was tortured including by Sevatar. He had his tongue cut out as part of that torture. He struck out his own armor markings and fights with Sevatar. Sevatar insisted that Rushal join the Kyroptera, over the objections of other Night Lords captains. He has a badass weapon called a “meteor hammer” that’s described as more of an energy weapon in the form of a huge flail with a mace. I think of it as similar to the sci-fi version of the Witch King of Angmar’s weapon.

Unfortunately we don’t know anything else, really, as the authors seem to have dropped the thread on this guy. We don’t know his motivations, why he turned, what exactly happened to him at Isstvan? All open questions that Black Library may never answer.