A discussion of the lore of AoS after 7 years

[JReynolds]

On 6/13/2022 at 10:15 PM, Whitefang said:

Out of curiosity, did the "(relatively) hard work got ignored but easy work went popular" kind of strange thing happen to you throughout your time writing for BL?

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

[SunStorm]

14 hours ago, derpherp said:

The more I read about AoS lore the more I think it would make a truly epic MMO.

Agreed, I've always thought AoS is perfect for an MMO, or large open world RPG. 

Between the idea of finding and opening old realm gates, taking you to new areas or new realms and hunting stormvaults for rare magic spells, items, etc could make a compelling gameplay hook.

Different realms having different bonuses or even debuffs depending on which one you're in and how close you are to the centre/edge. 

Plenty of different races, enemies to fight across all realms. 

If done well it has all the lore in place for a successful game. 

[Twisted Firaun]

2 hours ago, JReynolds said:

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

Out of curiosity did this happen to you during the Fabius Bile trilogy and the Fulgrim Primarch novella? They’re the only reason I like the Emperor’s Children to be honest. I also really enjoyed your work regarding the characters of the grand alliance of death. You made what were essentially Saturday Morning Villains into quite the ensemble cast.

[CommissarRotke]

10 hours ago, JReynolds said:

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

This really sucks. It's extremely frustrating that fandom is taking the stance that quality does not matter as much as content. It's not new nor is it only Warhammer's issue, but it feels like it's getting worse especially after the MCU exploded.

I got into 40k through Gaunt's Ghosts because they were good books, not solely because I ended up liking the Ghosts as characters. Then ironically, I never finished the series because it got tiresome having too much of the same thing!

Edited June 15, 2022 by CommissarRotke

[EccentricCircle]

11 hours ago, JReynolds said:

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

I'm sorry to hear that, though not surprised. I've enjoyed you AoS novels a lot despite any executive meddling. I must admit though that I'm not familiar with your wider work. Do you have series where you do have creative control, where you are able to be more "literary"* than when doing work for hire?

 

* For want of a better term. I'm firmly of the opinion that genre writing can be just as literary as so called literary fiction itself, if not more so. But there is a clear difference between something like one of Joe Abercrombie's novels and the best of what black library puts out, even if the subject matter is ostensibly the same. 

[Gitzdee]

20 hours ago, JReynolds said:

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

I can imagine that if a character/faction becomes popular because of the book it is that much more awesome! 

[Bosskelot]

20 hours ago, JReynolds said:

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

Wish they'd tell the Eldar writers that.

Apparently they get carte blanche to write the faction as a complete joke within their own novels.

[Greybeard86]

23 hours ago, JReynolds said:

Oh definitely. With BL books, it's hammered into you early on that the majority of the readership is buying because they want to read about their favourite faction/character/lore nugget. Everything else is secondary, including and especially any pretensions you may have in regards to the craft.

I find this a bit surprising. Same as your other comments on writing to support models.

What built GW's most "iconic" set up, 40k, was not "novels for models" in the strict sense that you describe.

Yes, they started by creating a setting and a game to sell more miniatures. However, what contributed more to the setting, Eisenhorn's collections or some random short story to support new models? In following Eisenhorn (or Gotrek), the reader is placed in many different contexts of the setting, most of which do not have a direct correspondence on the shelf. It does, however, contribute to world building and this is what reels in the reader/player/buyer (at least in my case).

My impression is that the sort of subordination of art and prose to models you describe is a newer phenomenon. Very much like the case of new codexes / army books having a smaller ratio of illustrations to pictures of models. I bought the black templars limited edition codex and the only memorable part of it is the cover. Which is simply a re-printing the original illustrations by JBlanche.

All this to say that I believe that GW's obsession of only doing things to boost sales (e.g. old white dwarf vs new white dwarf, attitudes on conversions, or whatever warhammer community is) is simply eroding at the capital their franchise had build over time. I certainly don't find most of AoS's lore interesting and much of what you and others have said about here is, IMO, spot on. Losening the grip on writers and detangling a bit more novels from models might lessen initially whatever "conversion metrics" they are considering, but could prove a smarter long term investment.

[Bosskelot]

White Dwarf nowadays is one of the best it's ever been though. Early 2019 onwards its had a complete renaissance. 

[JReynolds]

On 6/15/2022 at 1:45 PM, Loyal Son of Khemri said:

Out of curiosity did this happen to you during the Fabius Bile trilogy and the Fulgrim Primarch novella? They’re the only reason I like the Emperor’s Children to be honest. I also really enjoyed your work regarding the characters of the grand alliance of death. You made what were essentially Saturday Morning Villains into quite the ensemble cast.

A bit. I initially picked Fabius because he was the only Chaos character no one had dibs on, which meant I got away with a lot early on - and then as the series picked up popularity, I was encouraged to colour within the lines, so to speak, particularly in regards to the last book. Fulgrim was similar in that he was the only Primarch not dibbed when I inquired about the possibility of writing one. Truth be told, I had more freedom on the latter because they didn't actually have time to edit it properly - it was a bit of a rush job all the way around, and I don't think they expected it to be as popular a seller as it turned out to be. IMO, GW and BL consistently underestimate how popular both the III Legion and Slaanesh-focused stuff is with readers. 

And thank you! Glad you enjoyed what I did with them. 

[JReynolds]

16 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

This really sucks. It's extremely frustrating that fandom is taking the stance that quality does not matter as much as content. It's not new nor is it only Warhammer's issue, but it feels like it's getting worse especially after the MCU exploded.

I got into 40k through Gaunt's Ghosts because they were good books, not solely because I ended up liking the Ghosts as characters. Then ironically, I never finished the series because it got tiresome having too much of the same thing!

It's not just fandom. It's a whole 'snake-eating-its-own-tail' thing. To keep it focused on GW, BL has to churn out a certain number of guaranteed sellers in order to justify its existence within the corporate whole, and that means giving people what they want - but what people want is often determined by what they're given. Books about Space Marines are considered popular because Space Marines sell; Space Marines only sell because they occupy 60-70 percent of the retail space, effectively limiting customer choice; but they only occupy that percentage because they sell in the numbers to justify it. 

Round and round we go. Different faction-focused books could be as popular with some in-house effort in regards to marketing and release synergies, but they won't sell enough copies, quickly enough, to justify commissioning more than a few. They're an investment that BL can't afford to make - or think that they can't afford to make. 

[JReynolds]

15 hours ago, EccentricCircle said:

I'm sorry to hear that, though not surprised. I've enjoyed you AoS novels a lot despite any executive meddling. I must admit though that I'm not familiar with your wider work. Do you have series where you do have creative control, where you are able to be more "literary"* than when doing work for hire?

 

* For want of a better term. I'm firmly of the opinion that genre writing can be just as literary as so called literary fiction itself, if not more so. But there is a clear difference between something like one of Joe Abercrombie's novels and the best of what black library puts out, even if the subject matter is ostensibly the same. 

I've written quite a bit outside of BL/licensed fiction. You can find links to much of it on my site, if you're interested: https://joshuamreynolds.co.uk/works/creator-owned-work/. My largest body of work is probably the Royal Occultist series, which is basically urban fantasy by way of PG Wodehouse. I also have a Patreon, where I publish new stories and essays on horror films and such.

But be warned, little of what I write is what I'd call 'literary'. I'm very much a pulp writer, in spirit.  

[JReynolds]

4 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I find this a bit surprising. Same as your other comments on writing to support models.

What built GW's most "iconic" set up, 40k, was not "novels for models" in the strict sense that you describe.

Yes, they started by creating a setting and a game to sell more miniatures. However, what contributed more to the setting, Eisenhorn's collections or some random short story to support new models? In following Eisenhorn (or Gotrek), the reader is placed in many different contexts of the setting, most of which do not have a direct correspondence on the shelf. It does, however, contribute to world building and this is what reels in the reader/player/buyer (at least in my case).

My impression is that the sort of subordination of art and prose to models you describe is a newer phenomenon. Very much like the case of new codexes / army books having a smaller ratio of illustrations to pictures of models. I bought the black templars limited edition codex and the only memorable part of it is the cover. Which is simply a re-printing the original illustrations by JBlanche.

All this to say that I believe that GW's obsession of only doing things to boost sales (e.g. old white dwarf vs new white dwarf, attitudes on conversions, or whatever warhammer community is) is simply eroding at the capital their franchise had build over time. I certainly don't find most of AoS's lore interesting and much of what you and others have said about here is, IMO, spot on. Losening the grip on writers and detangling a bit more novels from models might lessen initially whatever "conversion metrics" they are considering, but could prove a smarter long term investment.

I mean, talking to Bill King and some of the other early writers, it was always about selling models - it's just that the idea of how best to do that changed. Initially, the first batch of writers - King, Newman/Yeovil, etc. - were given a blank canvas to work with.  The idea apparently being you hire a bunch of professional writers and let them do the job without too much interference. There's a really nice set of essays floating around somewhere about the old Boxtree GW novels and their genesis, but I can't remember the link for the life of me. 

Now, when Black Library was first conceived, the idea was to treat the books as a gateway into the game, as opposed to an out and out commercial. Hence your Eisenhorn, your Ghosts, etc. And again, the first writers hired on were already professionals - Abnett, Swallow, etc. But the idea that certain models and factions were to be emphasized over others was already there. Space Marines were seen as sure sellers, hence the Ultramarines, the Blood Angels, the Space Wolves, all getting series at the outset. The xenos not so much, so fewer Eldar, Orks, etc. And that thinking has largely continued to the current day. 

That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind - just a limited one. A narrow focus does not automatically make for a bad book, though it makes coming up with a good book more difficult. And BL is attempting to pull back from the 'toy-commercial' aspect some with Warhammer Crime/Horror - though I have my own issues with how they're approaching those. 

I do agree that loosening up the restrictions on the writers would be a good long-term investment. I'm hoping that the forthcoming new AoS character series are a step in that direction, even if they do smack of an attempt to brute force the organic popularity of Gotrek & Felix. 

[JReynolds]

1 hour ago, Bosskelot said:

White Dwarf nowadays is one of the best it's ever been though. Early 2019 onwards its had a complete renaissance. 

While I don't read it anywhere near regularly these days, I do agree with this. They've even started putting fiction back in, which was unheard of when I started writing for BL. 

[Whitefang]

6 minutes ago, JReynolds said:

And BL is attempting to pull back from the 'toy-commercial' aspect some with Warhammer Crime/Horror - though I have my own issues with how they're approaching those. 

Yeah, I always found the Horror series an enigma, apart from certain works like the Dark Harvest written by you, most Warhammer series seem to be neither proper horror nor memorable good work.

Do you think this phenomenon is caused by restrictions applied by BL doctrine? 

[JReynolds]

6 minutes ago, Whitefang said:

Yeah, I always found the Horror series an enigma, apart from certain works like the Dark Harvest written by you, most Warhammer series seem to be neither proper horror nor memorable good work.

Do you think this phenomenon is caused by restrictions applied by BL doctrine? 

IMO, I suspect it's a combination of factors. You could argue that horror and Warhammer are so inextricably entwined that attempting something like 'Warhammer Horror' is basically doomed to fail. And there's some restrictions there, obviously, but there was also - at least at the beginning - an uncertainty as to what the books were supposed to be.

They've probably firmed that up, since, but when the lines were proposed, I sensed - and this is purely anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt - a lack of awareness about the extent of the horror and crime genres. They had a very narrow idea of what a horror novel was, and what it could be. The same for crime. 

I think readers do as well, to be honest. 

What is a proper horror novel, after all? Is it The Shining, or is it A Sick Grey Laugh? Is it Grin of the Dark or The Croning? What about The Fisherman or Mexican Gothic? All very different novels, with very different approaches to the unsettling and the unpleasant. Some of them aren't scary at all. Not in the sense of giving the reader goosepimples, but in the idea of something of the outside seeping in. Existentially horrifying, rather than jump-scare creepy. And readers disagree about which is which all the time and at length. 

For instance, I like R. Chetwynd-Hayes. He wrote horror, says so on the spine of his books in the library. But it's not scary or even unsettling. Some of its grisly, some of its amusing - all of it is a bit melancholy. The same with M.R. James. I love a good Jamesian ghost story, and well-constructed one is a work of art IMO, but I'm rarely creeped out by one (though "Lost Hearts" always gives me a few bad moments, especially the BBC version). Progeny of the Adder is a fantastic novel, one of the first to posit a realist approach to modern day cops versus a for-real vampire. It's considered old-fashioned today - not scary, or even startling by modern standards - but it's still a horror novel. 

Horror is as much about atmosphere as it is fear. The old Universal monster films are atmospheric, elegant - but not frightening. John Carpenter's Halloween is startling, eerie at points, but is it truly frightening? What about Prince of Darkness or The Fog? Both horror, both tense - but scary? Is Suspiria scary? Brides of Dracula? They have atmosphere in spades, but you know Peter Cushing is pulling out the win in the latter, so is it really properly frightening? Is Saw frightening? Hostel? 

That's what I was trying to get at above. Horror is a spectrum, as is crime (The Thin Man is a detective story, but so is Red Harvest. Same author, two wildly different approaches, as an example). And I don't know that BL understood that, in the beginning. 

I hope that's changed. 

[Greybeard86]

57 minutes ago, JReynolds said:

I mean, talking to Bill King and some of the other early writers, it was always about selling models - it's just that the idea of how best to do that changed. [...]

Now, when Black Library was first conceived, the idea was to treat the books as a gateway into the game, as opposed to an out and out commercial. Hence your Eisenhorn, your Ghosts, etc. And again, the first writers hired on were already professionals - Abnett, Swallow, etc.

I think we "consumers" also got this impression. It might be generational, but I much prefer it.

57 minutes ago, JReynolds said:

But the idea that certain models and factions were to be emphasized over others was already there.

Absolutely, I guess I resent this a bit less.

57 minutes ago, JReynolds said:

I do agree that loosening up the restrictions on the writers would be a good long-term investment. I'm hoping that the forthcoming new AoS character series are a step in that direction, even if they do smack of an attempt to brute force the organic popularity of Gotrek & Felix. 

Perhaps you might even come back if that is the case?

I think the Kurnothi seed from your Dark Harvest needs you to develop (and then hopefully bring models).

[JReynolds]

7 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

I think we "consumers" also got this impression. It might be generational, but I much prefer it.

Oh I much prefer it myself, as well. It's one of the reasons I enjoy working with Aconyte these days. We're allowed - encouraged, even - to investigate the corners of the IP and scrounge up something interesting. 

[Twisted Firaun]

2 hours ago, JReynolds said:

A bit. I initially picked Fabius because he was the only Chaos character no one had dibs on, which meant I got away with a lot early on - and then as the series picked up popularity, I was encouraged to colour within the lines, so to speak, particularly in regards to the last book. Fulgrim was similar in that he was the only Primarch not dibbed when I inquired about the possibility of writing one. Truth be told, I had more freedom on the latter because they didn't actually have time to edit it properly - it was a bit of a rush job all the way around, and I don't think they expected it to be as popular a seller as it turned out to be. IMO, GW and BL consistently underestimate how popular both the III Legion and Slaanesh-focused stuff is with readers. 

And thank you! Glad you enjoyed what I did with them. 

Honestly the Fabius trilogy is easily in my top ten of 40k fiction. The way you portrayed Fabius and the Emperor's Children as a strange mix of nihilistic revelers and old souls attempting to re-establish some remnant of their past life was wonderful. Fabius naturally showcases this the best, clinging to the Imperial Truth for as long as possible, even when he actually saw the face of Slaanesh (that's another thing I like about your works as a whole, the divine/daemonic are beyond human comprehension), until he is forced to submit. I especially loved what you did with the Noise Marines, portraying them as a strange mix of musician and sufi-esque mystics, content with keeping the song alive and largely staying out of inter-legion politics. I truly hope GW uses some of your ideas when they inevitably release the 40k EC expansion... It was just so good!

Based on your quote above, can I assume that is why your books in WHFB and AOS largely covered Tomb Kings/Vampire Counts and the grand alliance of Death? If so then I respect you even moreso. You wrote most of the major characters of each faction in such a way that they truly feel like they're millennia old beings whose morals and personalities have warped/devolved to a select few traits, but they still have some of their selves in them (and have even evolved past them). Stand outs are Nagash, Neferata, Khalida, and Arkhan the Black.

Nagash has become nearly as eldritch and unattached from the realms of man as the Chaos Gods with each "death," but still clings to his absolute control over death. Arkhan meanwhile, has become the faithful/honorable (for a necromancer) of Nagash's mortarches, essentially forced to pick up the pieces of his lord's shattered mind and keep the realm's interests over the intentions of his fellow undead. Neferata is an unrepentant manipulator, weaving webs so convoluted Tzeentch wishes she was a chaos champion, but at the same time she clings to certain places and people from her past, with examples being the vampire Naiima from the Mike Lee trilogy and Lahmia as a whole. Then there's Khalida, who really only receive her personality from "The Tomb of the Serpent Queen." Khalida in the Battletome is as cold and cunning as the snakes her chosen deity loved, only really getting angry when vampires are involved. In the book she's as cunning as her cousin and has a sense of humor drier then Nehekhara in the summer, and is willing to ally herself with the living if it means her goals are completed.

My point is this: thank you for picking the factions that most BL author's didn't really want to touch beyond their most basic iterations, it really helped expand the setting in "minor" yet compelling ways, and I hope that the seeds you planted in the lore are expanded upon in the near future. 

 

[CommissarRotke]

55 minutes ago, JReynolds said:

IMO, I suspect it's a combination of factors. You could argue that horror and Warhammer are so inextricably entwined that attempting something like 'Warhammer Horror' is basically doomed to fail.

Ya know I had this exact thought when I saw my first announcement about Warhammer Horror 😂 "Wait, what the hell have you been writing this whole time?" since 40k's setting especially relies on the inherent horror that the infamous blurb sets up. I am also hoping they're using this as an opportunity to reach across the spectrum of what Horror is and can be in Warhammer. Hell, I could see an entire (cerebral) horror novella taking place from the POV of a Stormcast going through successive Reforgings.

I do have my own question about Soul Wars: at what point did you think of the "Cat Queen" girl, and was there pushback on how you wrote the Stormcast interacting with her? I knew I was going to love the book based on that chapter alone. The intro about the Black Pyramid was phenomenal, but Something as small as Stormcast letting this tiny girl and her cat retinue wander around catacombs because their boss doesn't mind cracked me UP. 

 

[JReynolds]

37 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Ya know I had this exact thought when I saw my first announcement about Warhammer Horror 😂 "Wait, what the hell have you been writing this whole time?" since 40k's setting especially relies on the inherent horror that the infamous blurb sets up. I am also hoping they're using this as an opportunity to reach across the spectrum of what Horror is and can be in Warhammer. Hell, I could see an entire (cerebral) horror novella taking place from the POV of a Stormcast going through successive Reforgings.

I do have my own question about Soul Wars: at what point did you think of the "Cat Queen" girl, and was there pushback on how you wrote the Stormcast interacting with her? I knew I was going to love the book based on that chapter alone. The intro about the Black Pyramid was phenomenal, but Something as small as Stormcast letting this tiny girl and her cat retinue wander around catacombs because their boss doesn't mind cracked me UP. 

 

Oh she was in the initial pitch. I wanted a mortal character that had a connection to Pharus, but one that wasn't a soldier or authority figure. The cat stuff came from the early info on Glymmsforge being full of cats (because cats can see ghosts), and I just sort of...improvised as I wrote. I have a bad habit of doing that; bane of my editors. When they read the finished draft, I had to argue a bit to keep the idea that she was connected to the cats, but not as hard as I was expecting. There was more pushback regarding her interactions with Pharus, but they were seesawing back and forth on whether Stormcast were space marine-lite still, and the design studio came down on my side in that instance, which nixed any concerns editorial had. 

[Twisted Firaun]

36 minutes ago, JReynolds said:

Oh she was in the initial pitch. I wanted a mortal character that had a connection to Pharus, but one that wasn't a soldier or authority figure. The cat stuff came from the early info on Glymmsforge being full of cats (because cats can see ghosts), and I just sort of...improvised as I wrote. I have a bad habit of doing that; bane of my editors. When they read the finished draft, I had to argue a bit to keep the idea that she was connected to the cats, but not as hard as I was expecting. There was more pushback regarding her interactions with Pharus, but they were seesawing back and forth on whether Stormcast were space marine-lite still, and the design studio came down on my side in that instance, which nixed any concerns editorial had. 

So Stormcast Eternals were saved from becoming Fantasy-Space Marines due to one author's habit of improvisation..... You can't make this stuff up.

[JReynolds]

41 minutes ago, Loyal Son of Khemri said:

So Stormcast Eternals were saved from becoming Fantasy-Space Marines due to one author's habit of improvisation..... You can't make this stuff up.

I'd love to claim credit, but the design studio had the same idea, as did Guymer and most of the other authors. It was only a few people in BL that held onto the idea of them as space marines, at least until just after AoS 2.0 launched. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by JReynolds
Clarity

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, JReynolds said:

I'd love to claim credit, but the design studio had the same idea, as did Guymer and most of the other authors. It was only a few people in BL that held onto the idea of them as space marines, at least until just after AoS 2.0 launched. 

An indescribably huge THANK YOU to all of you who made sure Stormcast weren't Fantasy-Marines 👑

[EccentricCircle]

7 hours ago, JReynolds said:

I've written quite a bit outside of BL/licensed fiction. You can find links to much of it on my site, if you're interested: https://joshuamreynolds.co.uk/works/creator-owned-work/. My largest body of work is probably the Royal Occultist series, which is basically urban fantasy by way of PG Wodehouse. I also have a Patreon, where I publish new stories and essays on horror films and such.

But be warned, little of what I write is what I'd call 'literary'. I'm very much a pulp writer, in spirit.  

 Nothing wrong with that, I'll check that out! Thanks for the link.