Lord of the Night wrote:Well while I don't normally read ebooks, don't care for them, I would definitely be interested in reading an original novel or series from you, even as an ebook, particularly if it's as dark as FC.
LotN
O'Seishin wrote:Greetings Captain of Chickens,
I've always been fascinated by that particular period of American history and the Civil War in particular, which was such a turbulent and agonising trauma for the country. It wasn't the clear-cut conflict you might first imagine it to be, which makes it a rich source of stories. And of course the military history and imagery are also striking, so I was interested in translating that to a 40k setting. Some readers felt I was too literal here (there is a particularly vitriolic review on Amazon.com to that effect) and in hindsight perhaps I should have reined it back a little, but I still feel it's worth it for the authentic flavour it gives the Arkan.
I admit I also wanted to see what would happen if I threw Civil War era soldiers into Vietnam. With monsters.
PF
PS - Is it a company of avians you command or a company of Guardsmen with exceptionally poor morale?
O'Seishin wrote:Lord of the Night wrote:Well while I don't normally read ebooks, don't care for them, I would definitely be interested in reading an original novel or series from you, even as an ebook, particularly if it's as dark as FC.
LotN
Thanks LOTN. I share your view regarding e-books - they don't feel real to me - but as an aspiring writer I can't dismiss them if I want to write something 'independent', which I increasingly feel the compulsion to do.
Trust me, anything I write will be dark.
PF
Spoiler: Listening to the narrator, you can't help but agree... and that doesn't change once he shows his true colors. I guess the conclusion is that they are all wrong. All wrong, all evil, all tainted. All beyond redemption, because you cannot be redeemed from if your penance is wronger than your crime.
Lord of the Night wrote:The Coil:
The Coil that Talasca seems to serve, or venerate, was interesting. I assumed that the Dolorosa Coil was a geographic aspect of Phaedra, twisted and wrong, but focused solely on Phaedra. Yet the Coil seems to be part of this character who clearly has never been to Phaedra (on account of actually him being alive). Could it be that the Coil is something metaphysical, that connects multiple worlds in this "Koronatus Ring" that I would hazard a guess Phaedra is located in as well, as well as Sarastus (I haven't had the chance to read Walker in Fire yet), both of which seem to be worlds where reality appears to be superseded by a powerful enough will,->Spoiler: as Talasca showed when he and the Paladins somehow crossed the wastes of Redemption in minutes rather than the hours that Tarcante* said it would.
->I think that the Coil is something beyond the physical world, a series of tunnels for want of a better descriptive phrase, that allows one to traverse the Ring, and perhaps beyond, similar to the stable travel-hub nature Webway, yet with more akin to the capricious tides of the Warp.
*Side note: I quite liked Tarcante as a character, even though he had few words his actions in the final chapters showed more about him than conversation and exposition could. I found myself comparing him to Magos Caul, where Caul was selfish and would never have bothered to help the Arkhan Confederates had they been in the same situation, Tarcante put himself at risk to establish a defence against the Spiral Dawn and provided leadership to the Black Flags when they were lost. I might be reading a bit too much into it, but he came across as a Enginseer who actually cares about the men he serves with.
Captain "Cross"Spoiler: The return of Templeton was quite a shock. I assumed that he had become part of the, let's call it The Growth, on Phaedra as befell Admiral Karjalen's daughter Natassja after Gurdijev was done with her. Yet it seems to have sent him across the galaxy, a gateway to other worlds. I got the feeling that Talasca and Karolus stumbled across another of those gates in the bottom of the Spiral Dawn's temple, and that they are somewhere else now, another voyager among the Coil like Templeton and Gurdjieff**. I never actually saw it coming, Cross was so different from the bookish and rhyming Arkhan Captain Templeton, the glasses comment should have tipped me off but it's been so long since I read Fire Caste that I had forgotten that particular quirk of the 4th Captain.
**Another side note, I find it very interesting that Preacher Gurdjieff wound up on the homeworld of the Angels Resplendent, a chapter that has a strong connetion to Redemption, a world that is similar in aspect to Phaedra. Coincidence? Or is Templeton right that there is no coincidence? Or perhaps what Canoness Aveline said about Redemption eventually turning on it's protectors had more weight than it appeared, the Prophet after all was the instrument of the Angels Resplendents fall from grace into the Penitents, perhaps that was Redemption finally exacting it's price on the Chapter as it did the Sisters through the early Spiralites.
The Dark Beneath the Spires:Spoiler: This was another element I found interesting, I got the sense from the line that describes it as "something for whom bloodshed is the end," that it is Khornate in nature. It does seem like a Daemon as previous sources have shown that Chaos Daemons are the only thing that the Hive Mind, and extensions of it like the Spiral Father and other Broodlords, recognize as a genuine threat to the Tyranid race (a fellow predator) and have actively worked against it wherever they encounter it, rather than ignore them as beings that can yield no biomass. Yet whatever was down there felt more sinister than a mere creature of carnage and war, something older that is more intrinsically connected to the Coil and the strange nature of the worlds of the Koronatus Ring, perhaps something that lived in the Coil and was imprisoned by the Imperium or it's predecessors in the Diaspora era prior to the Emperor's birth. Or perhaps it's something much more connected to the story that links to all these different novels, a certain Dark Man.
Crucible:Spoiler: The Crucible Aeterna was the element that surprised me the most, perhaps because I haven't read Fire and Ice yet and I was told that if I did read that first, LotDM: GCs would make some more sense to me. My first thought is that it is some kind of sentient oversoul of Redemption, and that the beings that inhabit it are the true protectors of the planet. The "giant" I would guess is whatever Angel Resplendent was in charge of the Chapter keep on the planet during the Chapter's tenure as Guardians, the "man with hungry dreams" I am unsure of (perhaps it is a character from Fire Caste), and the final mind I think is the Spiral Father (since technically he was the guardian of Redemption by being the jailor of the Dark Beneath). Ariken's induction is interesting, as I would not have characterised her as the protector of the planet, but there seems to be more than just that required for entrance into the Crucible as Ariken's entry into it proves. But this is the part of the novel I understood the least.
'Stealers in General:
Lastly, I really liked how you portrayed the Genestealers. They were unmistakeably alien in their mannerisms and beliefs, yet they felt like a dark mirror of the Guardsmen. The camaraderie between kin (Uchzaf and Matias), the pride in duty (Iaoguai being proud to carry the Icon into battle) and the Primus's choice in clothing (reflecting that he likes his position) felt a lot more like the Imperial Guard than any other force in the galaxy. The Genestealers felt human, not completely and definitely more alien than human, but there was a lot of human in them, but twisted to an evil purpose.Spoiler: Also I liked, and was horrified by, the scene when Bharlo told Ariken what became of poor Ophele and even more when you physically described Iaoguai (since thanks to Steve Parker's Deatwatch we know how Genestealers that aren't Purestrains breed... shudder.)
O'Seishin wrote:I've loved Genestealer Cults since their first appearance in White Dwarf, back when they were cruising around in cyber-limousines and making pacts with Chaos, so having the opportunity to get my teeth into them was both a privilege and a creative high. There's a grungy, insidious 'bio-punk' vibe to them that contrasts nicely with the epic pomp and bombast suffusing most of the 40K world.
While 'FC' was structured around the template of 'the Journey into Darkness', 'GC' was planned as a claustrophobic narrative with an emphasis on escalating paranoia. The inspirations here were 'The Thing' and 'The Name of the Rose', along with Lovecraft's Innsmouth of course. Sadly, due to the constraints of time and word count I had to abandon a chapter where Cross explores Hope City, which would have pushed the Innsmouth vibe a little further.
Cross and the Coil:Spoiler: Talking about things I had to cut, Cross's 'origin' story was among them. Your interpretation of what happened to him after he entered the 'temple' on Phaedra is absolutely along the right lines, along with your speculation about those others who have descended/ascended into/out of the Coil, including Gurdjieff, Talasca, Malavoisin... and a couple of others.
My take on the 40k mythos (which I honestly feel reflects its logic) is that the firmament is mind, not matter, with emotions and beliefs literally shaping - or warping - reality. This is why 'ghosts' are not only frequent, but substantial in many of my stories. The Coil is essentially a metaphysical tangle - or cancer - growing at the heart of reality that manifests physically in regions where the consensus of beliefs have become particularly frayed, such as Phaedra, Sarastus and Redemption. I've been developing this concept pretty elliptically across the stories of the Dark Coil so its really heartening that some folks like yourself have picked up on it. Unexpectedly, the most serious debate and analysis has been on Warforge in Russia, where they've actually mapped out the interaction of the stories and picked apart every detail of my stories, particularly 'Fire Caste'. I've been blown away. Literally nothing gets past those guys.
Cross:Spoiler: You're right that the Cross we see in GC is a strikingly different man to the genteel scholar of Fire Caste. The consistency lies in his inherent thoughtfulness and decency, particularly in the protectiveness he shows towards Ariken and the other pilgrims. However, he's quite clearly been on one hell of a journey which hardened him - and almost hollowed him out. I hope to have the opportunity to write about this sometime, but it would have been too far outside the scope of the novel given its limited length. Perhaps the best reference is the fairly lengthy passage in 'FC' that outlined Gurdjieff's first voyage in the Coil, when he was gone for what felt subjectively like decades, but was in fact only a year or so.
I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on 'Fire & Ice', which is far and away my most esoteric story. It does tie-in directly with a couple of the characters and themes that appear in 'GC', notably Mordaine and Omazet, but you won't find any answers to the Crucible Aeterna there. That mystery makes its first appearance in the novel, however I can confirm that it is indeed connected to the Angels Resplendent...
Spoiler: In the scene when Mordaine's crews are lost to madness as a result of Redemption,
Spoiler: Given that they were Inquisition men. The Tempestus Scions were described by Xiathauli as having "iron" like minds, which directly informs the point i'm about to make, and we've seen in Ben Counter's Grey Knights that Inquisition ship crews often have their minds fiddled with to make them resistant to corruption. Mordaine seems like the kind of guy who would have those kinds of crews.
O'Seishin wrote:Sadly, due to the constraints of time and word count I had to abandon a chapter where Cross explores Hope City, which would have pushed the Innsmouth vibe a little further.
O'Seishin wrote:Answers to the Crucible Aeterna there. That mystery makes its first appearance in the novel, however I can confirm that it is indeed connected to the Angels Resplendent...
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests