[Souls Wars by Josh Reynolds]

Anyone else read this yet so? Finished it this morning and feel I can comfortably call this the best AoS novel about. Well worth getting if you’ve not already. Some (lengthy!) scattered thoughts below with spoilers tagged:

 

Structure of book

This was interesting! It’s not just a straight novelisation of the events of the Soul Wars box and the battle of Glymmsforge. It stretches back to the necroquake but moreover it largely doesn’t focus on the main players of the box. The Hammers of Sgmar and Malendrek are there but they and their battle are not the central focus.

Instead we follow the battle for the Ten Thousand Tombs, a sealed and guarded necropolis in the city, between the Anvils of the Heldenhammer - both the existing Warrior Chamber garrison and the new Sacrosanct Chamber arrivals - and the nighthaunt/zombie forces of the Knight of Shrouds

Spoiler

Pharus Thaum, former lord-castellant of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer.

This is a good choice, lets Reynolds dig into his own characters and write the story he wanted without, I suppose, bumping up too much against the ‘main’ plot.

 

Nagash and the nighthaunt

Both come off well and are extensively fleshed out (yeah yeah, easiest joke). There’s a lot on Nagash’s philosophy, for want of a better word. ‘Nagash is all and all are one in Nagash’. Everything must be ordered and hierarchical and completely subservient to Nagash’s will for the universe to be sane and correct. No lies, no illusions, just bleak clarity and justice. We hear this from Nagash himself but also from various deathlords and spirits. In their despair and pain they latch onto what he offers. It’s particularly well done in an extended vision-scene between Nagash and

Spoiler

Pharus, and then between Arkhan and Pharus, who he is treating as a sort of protege.

In this (self-serving) interpretation, Sigmar is the bringer of false hope, who uses people and tells them it’s for the greater good. It’s compelling, the same stuff we’ve seen in Reynolds’ other work on Nagash. Nagash himself is as good as ever. He can look the chaos gods in the eye and call them horrors or jackals of the waste to their face. He considers himself above them as he is aiming to literally become death the universal force. Not 'a' god of death, not a master of all the underworlds, but something as inherent to the universe as gravity.

Arkhan, it has to be said, does have a subtly different take, where Shyish and Azry balance each other out and so Sigmar and Nagash also must do so. A black sun and a bright sun. Less absolutist and with some strong implications for the wider plot.

We also get a good look at the sheer variety of the court of the dead. Wights, ancient necromancers, spirits, vampires… both in Nagashizzar and in the army of Glymmsforge, some linked to other AoS books: spot

Spoiler

Tarsus Bullheart’s betrothed working as an embittered lord executioner.

Lots of briefly appearing colourful characters, including Nagash’s personal jester, made to dance and spin so fast before his king on a building-sized throne that bits of him start flying off into the crowd…

 

The Stormcast

Interesting developments. We get a good look at Azyrheim, including the most detailed examination of the reforging process and how can go wrong so far. There was a Malign Portents story on this but there’s a lot more of it here.

When Sigmar himself shows up, he’s appropriately divine, not just a  big magic dude. Slightly alien and unnerving, mind working on a different plain, but still showing a glimmer of the man he once was. Perhaps surprisingly different from your 40k primarchs and emperors.

There’s some interesting thoughts on how time and duty are different for folks who die and come back: there’s a bit about a lord-celestant seeing a boy grow up to be a freeguild captain and then grow old, knowing he’ll die soon. There’s a scene where a knight-invocator watches pilgrims ignore her to flock to a statue of her from her pre-reforging life.

It’s low on some of the explicit darkness and grittiness that folks seem to be picking up on from the new battletome release but it’s all done well, including the suspicion between the warrior chambers and the sacrosanct chambers; not just ‘why didn’t Sigmar tell us about this?’ but also nervousness about asking members of the Sacrosanct chamber about the reforging process. It’s something mysterious and private and makes them justifiably uncomfortable.

 

Characters

Soul Wars seems to have wider range of distinct stormcast characters than most other SC-centric books. They’re three dimensional rather than, say, this guy being the gruff one, this guy being the bloodthirsty one, etc.

Balthas, the central lord-arcanum is cold, distant, irritable, scholarly, fairly uncaring of what his men think of him, and easily ticked off when things don’t go according to plan. Balthas isn’t particularly likeable and doesn’t come off as a natural warrior and in that he’s pretty far from other SC protagonists I’ve seen.

Calys is tough, professional, forthright and willing to hold a grudge. She’s not a rookie but she’s come to a new duty and seeing her wrestling with that was good. Fun to see her bounce off Balthas too.

The same applies to other characters. Ely is the standout, even if she doesn’t quite fulfil the potential she seems to have had in the early chapters. She winds up being a sort of cipher, a representation of what the soul wars are being fought over while still being personally tied to the fighting characters with more screen-time. Her relationship with Calys is pretty telegraphed from the get-go but has resonance despite that. Fosko and the other freeguild characters are fun. They feel like Pratchett’s watchmen. Not actively bad, just supplementing their income through less than legal means.

Pharus Thaum is great. Clever, patient, engaged with mortals, tolerant of small children running around his labyrinth, a good teacher and senior officer without being an unnecessary hardass. He's quietly proud of the labyrinth he built, full of traps and architectural techniques to cage unruly spirits; he's much more than a warrior (there's a nice bit where the dwarf engineers scoff at his prowess and note that while he might have planned and designed this impossible maze, they physically built it, manling, so there.?) He knows that eating apples is essentially a small vice, connecting him to his mortal life, but has enough wisdom to know it’s not a big deal as these things go.

Spoiler

And then… his fall to Nagash. His psychological breakdown was convincing. His feeling about Sigmar were pretty reasonable. Pharus wasn’t a token weak or selfish character earmarked for betrayal (a Theon Greyjoy or an Anakin Skywalker), he was likeable and strong, making his descent that bit more convincing. It’s the best ‘fall to the dark side’ I’ve seen in BL work since Eisenhorn (it’s very different but still impressive) or the brilliant old WHFB novel Riders of the Dead. He’s not offered power or seduced by strength as with chaos-turns, he’s psychologically ground down and presented with reasonable-sounding arguments about Nagash being the only logical and justifiable choice. Choice is probably the wrong word, Arkhan basically says ‘this is how it is, get used to it’ and it’s hard to see that he had a clear way out. 

Pharus is hollowed out, almost. From his conversations with the other spirits, particularly the philosophical and sycophantic Guardian of Souls, it's clear that all servants of Nagash are, in some war, part of Nagash. ‘Nagash is all and all are one in Nagash’. They all hear his voice in their head and can't quite distinguish between their own will and his will. This is distinct from his cold mind-obliterating command, this is individuals not being able to pinpoint their own identity because it has been subsumed into the grander will of Nagash. Pharus doesn't seem to truly have had a say in the matter in the same way he would with the chaos gods. There's some more on this in the old Nagash the Undying King thread from about a year ago: http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/9601-nagash-the-undying-king-discussion-spoilers-of-course/?tab=comments#comment-100893

 

 

Unit names

An odd thing I noticed was a quirk of ‘unit names’. These don’t match up with what we now know certain stormcast units are called, e.g. Mage-Sacristan instead of Knight-Invocator, Celestors instead of Evocators. I guess you could say these are Anvils of the Heldenhammer-specific terms but I’d say it’s much more like a product of writing a novel while other GW stuff is in development, as with the End Times.

 

Glymmsforge

Glymmsforge as a place feels lived in. It comes off as realistic and full of different classes of variously grumbling, scared, just-trying-to-get-by normal humans with their own hopes and dreams, etc. It’s vaguely colonial, as Sigmar’s foothold in Shyish: there’s the Azyrite-Shyisian tension we’ve seen in other books (more subtly here, really) but there’s also hints of deeper, more RL stuff. Relations to the native desert nomads, the use of wandering bands of pretty rough mercenaries as enforcers, Azyrite merchants exploiting the natural resources of the different realms for Azyr’s benefit. The differences between the stormcast garrisons who know the city (and helped found it) and the stormcast crusaders who pass through. It’s cool.

Belief is touched on too. There are temples to Alarielle and Malerion and even Nagash-Morr (the friendlier Shyishian aspect of Nagash who ushers the deserving to their peaceful rest) as well as Sigmar. There are occasional purges (zombies, vampires, necromantic cults) and the Lord-Veritant is looked on with a lot more fear than the other SC. There’s a nice scene where he notes that he’s burned down the temple of Nagash-Morr for its subversive potential eight times in a century and every time the priests accept it stoically as another ending then invite him to the first service when they rebuild. Shades of… I dunno, fit your own extremely polite religious minority in an unfriendly state to this.?

 

A certain character’s identity

Spoiler

So I felt pretty frickin’ dumb only realising who he was at the end of the book. An irritable golden-masked wizard on a mount named Quicksilver and with an affinity for Chamonite magic. Named Balthas. Duh. I think he’s probably the most high profile import from the World That Was who isn’t identical to his WHFB incarnation, am I right? Maybe Drycha...

 

Grand plot implications

Spoiler

 

Nagash is actively looking for new mortarchs for his war and there are a lot of high-up lords of undeath viciously competing for the positions. Lady Olynder isn’t going to be the last, I think.

Arkhan is not as utterly subservient to Nagash as we thought. He seems to have manipulated events following the necroquake to make Sigmar and Nagash turn against each other, to lance the boil and end their cold war. The idea is that this war will burn briefly and they will reconcile, as they did in the age of myth (Sigmar considered Nagash his closest and most important ally, the dark to his light, the yin to his yang. By contrast Nagash gets a brief memory of Sigmar smashing in his skull in the world that was), ready to fight the chaos gods when they inevitably regroup. Mannfred and Neferata seem to have picked up on Arkhan’s scheming but Nagash rather lacks the imagination to realise that he’s being subtly guided in this by his most loyal servant.

This book has the first stormcast we’ve seen actually be subverted and turned into (basically) a knight of shrouds by Nagash. It’s made clear that all Stormcast basically have a small bit of god-stuff in them, a portion of Sigmar’s power. In this, Nagash realises that they are much like his own Mortarchs. He can’t eliminate it entirely but does successfully turn Pharus, if not 100%. The other SC take this as an omen but not sure if we’ll see it more in the future.

 

 

Thoughts?

[The Rumour Thread]

The Taurolan is... interesting. Good in theory to have a weird winged bull thing. It's new, it's unprecedented, looks good in the art. It's like some of the Mesopotamian monsters or something angelic from Kabbalic esoteric. In execution though... eh. All good on the body and wings, pleasingly gracile, except the head. It's like a cheekless dinosaur combined with a bull, quite unsettling to look at. Reminds me of that comic image showing what horses would look like if their mouths went as far back as dogs' mouths.

The Dracoline is the opposite, better model than illustration. The art makes it look like Sonic the hedgehog.

Both the riders are pretty restrained for stormcast commanders. Solbright's book-filled saddlebags are cool and she looks closer to a bog standard evocator than a lord-arcanum. Firestrike's staff has some nice phoenix details.

[The Rumour Thread]

So, the photos from that new Death page on the new AoS website (https://ageofsigmar.com/factions/death/. Can't seem to link them but looks like there's another variant of that flail-ghost from the Nighthaunt video, one holding the flails/shackles down. Might still be a variant of the Spirit Torment? Seems to be wearing a lot less armour.

Also the mounted wraiths we saw at Warhammer Fest appear again, seemingly as individuals mixed in with a larger unit of hexwraiths. That, and the fact that there are only two of them, suggests that they might be characters. That'd bump the count up to eight non-special NH characters.

[The Rumour Thread]

13 hours ago, erasercrumbs said:

Lady Olynder exists to force people to accept the inevitability of death?  Olynder needs to hook up the with Horned Rat* for stealing Nurgle's schtick!

?Just kidding! Much like the GHR, who shares diseases as a portfolio with Nurgle, Olynder does Nurglesque things as a means to an end rather than out of philosophical purity.  GHR is a hateful being who spreads disease out of spite, while Nagash is haughty and spreads despair so that mortals may accept his authority, both of which are very dissimilar to Nurgle's earnest devotion to sickness and misery, seeing them as altogether good things.

Yeah, there's definitely something here about GW trying to distinguish between the portfolios of Nurgle and that of Nagash over the last few years. The stuff about Nurgle being a pseudo-nature/fertility deity, part of the ciiiiircle of life... and decay and life again isn't new exactly but has got a lot of emphasis in AoS and recent 40k. Still has a focus on despair but with less finality. More joy, more identification with a jolly caring deity. More corrupt growth and flesh, more colour, more tree and insect imagery, more linkages to Ghyran. "Life is more horrible than death", as Lovecraft said.

Nagash gets coldness, sterility, domination and totalitarianism under one personality, the reduction of chaotic possibilities inherent in life to the repetitive single point of death. Death as a bleak inevitable terminus. You could probably attribute the increased focus on the, let's say, 'dry' elements of Death's visual language since the end of WHFB to this need to stake out the different conceptual spaces. Less zombies and dire wolves and hanging guts, that's almost entirely Nurgle's wheelhouse now. More skellingtons, morghasts, bone armour, mortarchs and now ghosts.

[The Rumour Thread]

8 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Maybe I missed something - why do we think there's a whole Darkoath faction/battletome coming?  Is there something beyond "well, there was that MalPo herald, and so far 2 of the 4 heralds have led the way for large factions so bring on Moonclan and Darkoath battletomes"?

That and the likelihood that Moonclan will follow, based on some WHC rumour engines, vague hints from GW-affiliated painters and interpretation of FW updating the pages for some of their squiggly beasts. It seems likely. That'd make three of the four hinting at future factions.

There's also the presence of the Darkoath as the antagonist faction of marauders in the new AoS Warhammer Adventures children's/YA books: https://warhammeradventures.com/age-of-sigmar/ It's not a slam dunk - they're sort of generic enough that they serve as a viable enemy without inflicting Nurgle or Slaanesh on younger readers - but it's something.

[The Rumour Thread]

21 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I could swear that I heard they changed it in a podcast or some other fluff description video (maybe it was 2+ Tough).  But, that does not mean they are correct, and I have not read the AoS Nurgle Battletome so I will defer to people who have on this one.

Can you confirm that they kept Gutrot Spume & Thanquol's background from the Old World the same?

It's kept somewhat ambiguous in the battletome, only saying that they are seriously old and rumoured to have come from the World-That-Was. Spume though is said to have been a coastal chieftain living around the end of the age of myth.

I think both ways of setting up SCs - new and old - have merit. For someone like Thanquol, it'd be a shame to lose all the character that came with his WHFB life. It'd be fun to simply have him dropped in the world of AoS by the Horned Rat and immediately get down to scheming as though nothing happened.?

[The Rumour Thread]

Waitaminute waitaminute... We've finally got our spooky spooky skeleton!

[The Rumour Thread]

9 minutes ago, ShadowSwordmaster said:

The Nighthuant model range seems to be a lot bigger than the usual faction release. 

Might be best to think about it in terms of the colossal 40k Death Guard release. A starter set faction and then some, including multipart versions of the easy-to-build dudes and tons of plastic characters.

 

The Craven King though, wow. Now that's that good good Dark Souls look I was waiting for. Brilliant mini, imposing without having to leap into a dynamic action pose.

 

That's almost certainly the Mortarch of Grief on the right. I wonder if her attached ghosts are the banshees we saw in the video? The scythe-handed ones with roses in their hair that didn't appear to be an obvious alternate build of anything else.

[The Shadespire News and Rumour Thread]

New card-only expansion. Maybe this opens the doors for future releases of existing packs as standalones?

 

[The Rumour Thread]

On 5/20/2018 at 7:22 AM, Burf said:

Also, the number of easy puns and lame double-entendres associated with Slaanesh are just two of a whole host of reasons why slaanesh is and always has been the worst part of warhammer.

 

You're right about the puns and double-entendres just being an all-round awful bit of gamer culture when it comes to Slaanesh buuuutt I feel there is room for GW to make something more interesting and less crappy joke-fodder from this absence. Possibly you've seen this but Kieron Gillen wrote a pretty great, if rambling, piece about 'the problem of Slaanesh', including roundups from folks taking explicitly ******-centric POVs: http://hipsterhammer.tumblr.com/post/156891771531/on-slaanesh

Not saying I have 100% faith that GW will do it well but there's conceptual room for them to do so.

 

EDIT: Oh wow, the q-word is bleeped out by the forums. Probably should have expected that, even when it's used in an academic or self-identifying context.  'LGBT-centric POVs' then.

[The Rumour Thread]

Honestly this works so much better for AoS than for 40k. Fewer satirical elements to iron off or that kids are going to miss. Even at its darkest, "stormcast are tragically losing their identities and memories" is easier to get across to children (and has genuine pathos that they can understand) than "space marines are brainwashed child-soldiers fighting for a brutal space-facist regime but actually you're not supposed to identify with them sooo...".

That said it does mention one character growing up in a slave camp. It's probably too much to expect the authors to address this with the gravitas of even a historical YA novel but maybe there's something there.

 

@ Enoby: now that's a good portrayal of a chaos god. Cosmic, threatening.

[The Rumour Thread]

Possibly she's simply painting it for a new image on the FW webstore? Currently the colossal squig is advertised with a square base, could use an AoS-targeted update. Making it red would also bring it into line with the FW squig gobba and (presumably?) whatever squiggly beasts accompany the new moonclan releases.

This is at the crossroads of 'watch what certain painters are doing for hints of new releases' and 'watch what FW is doing to tie in with main GW releases'.

[The Rumour Thread]

20 minutes ago, AthlorianStoners said:

That could be possible. Is there a precedent for this kind of thing?

Sort of. It's common enough for units (Liberators, prosecutors, bloodreavers, blood warriors) but less so for heroes. The Lord-Celestant on Dracoth has both a starter set 'Vandus Hammerhand' version and a later multipart version but you see it in 40k as well. The SM lieutenants and the Lord of Plagues have semi-variant versions for other chapters and as part of an expanded easy-to-build kit.

[The Rumour Thread]

29 minutes ago, AthlorianStoners said:

Damn that article was good. 

- So existing Nighthaunt stuff is still supported (Hosts, Hexwraiths etc). I recall some people being concerned so that puts that to rest. 

- This faction will now be HUGE! 

7 Known 

- Cairn Wraith, Banshee, KoS, Mounted KoS,  Spirit Torment, Guardian Of Souls, Lord Executioner

4 Unknown 

- Mortarch Of Grief, Lantern Bearer (@32 seconds of the announcement video), ghost with one handed axe, ghost with two flails  (@50 seconds of the vid)

5 Known

- Hexwraiths, Spirit Hosts, Grimghast Reapers, Gravewraith Stalkers, Chainrasp Hordes

4 Unkown

- New cavalry, alt build with swords for the Reapers, praying mantis armed ladies (@20seconds Of video), Cowled Banshees

2 Behemoths 

- Mournghul and Black Coach 

Absolutely LOVE the Oldschool LOTR Nazgul vibe they have with their helmets.

 

 

I'm wondering if some if these aren't starter set versions of Nighthaunt heroes. So the ghost with two flails from the video could be the same as the Spirit Torment but in a different pose and with a different head.  We appear to have two different versions of the Lord Executioner, one with the gibbet on their back and one without. It's still not entirely clear if any of these are shadespire models hiding in plain sight, as the bases are more ambiguous than they seem.

There also appears to be two variants on the lantern bearer that look like alternate builds/loadouts, one with a lantern and a mace and one with a big vase and a one-handed axe.

[The Rumour Thread]

That's a lot of new stormcast and a 40k death guard-sized release for Nighthaunt. There's a lot of good ghost sculpts there, some pretty seriously distinct units and characters for a bunch of floating bedsheets.

 

I wonder if the tabarded sword and board stormcast are just variant models for liberators?

[The Rumour Thread]

4 minutes ago, Barkanaut said:

The avatar’s armor is painted up in the default de scheme. So it’s official the de are being ported into fantasy. I think this is the first time I’ve seen a 40k army ported into AoS. Lore wise I’m sure they are vastly different, but rules and look wise they seem similar. 

Well, they seem to be fighting an Imperial Fists force that somehow looks like armoured orks... It's very close to the default DE scheme - maybe a slightly lighter shade of turquoise than Vect's lot? - but it's one that works very well on armour with lots of edges and fits the aquatic style.

 

The avatar seems to be a different build  to the one from the trailer, not just variant parts. Got a hook/scythe thing (a 'Crulhook') instead of the pearl-sceptre the other one has, which appears to come through in the warscroll, where this one is an 'Avatar of Mathlann: Aspect of the Storm'. Presumably the other build will be a different aspect with different rules.

 

My French is rusty but the text say some stuff about 'the spirits of the ancestors of the Idoneth being invoked' and about the Avatar being an 'idealised incarnation of that lost god'. So regardless of if the Idoneth worship or draw upon Mathlann, this appears to confirm that he's either dead of disappeared, like Khaine.

[The Rumour Thread]

I think there's a possibility of two 'thrall' infantry boxes, one with bows and one with swords. The legs seem quite different, the CC dudes have static poses while the archers are sprinting and leaping.

This image also shows one thrall with a massive sickle while the others have swords, might be a goreglaive/grandhammer-style 'one per unit' weapon.

[The Rumour Thread]

1 minute ago, Trayanee said:

I would say Kharadron and Stormcast. Fyreslayers aren't even DoK level. Just old slayers with new lore each unit looking almost the same.

Partially agree, the look of them pushes beyond the old slayers but they're pretty one-note, there's buggerall variation between them. 

[The Rumour Thread]

The pose of the female character (wizard?) at 1:03 in the deepkin trailer is really familiar but I can't think from where.

I love how unified the aesthetic of the faction looks. Sweeping curves coming to sharp points (collars, elf ears, turtle scales, armour), jagged or serrated edges to armour plates/weapons, fins on fish/crests/banners, underbites on the fish/turtle and some helms, scalloping or ridges on armour, eyelessness on the thralls and war beasts. It's great.

Some influence from WHFB stuff but an entirely new range, no legacy models repurposed, a new visual language. Not to put down the evolution of particular subfactions we got with DoK or Sylvaneth, but this feels bigger. Only the Kharadron and Fyreslayers have had that so far.

[The Rumour Thread]

Looking at the WHC hint that turned out to be the Van Saar weapon, it's pretty clear that it's a shot of a piece off a sprue, rather than something that has been assembled. It's missing the rest of the barrel. We might have know this already but the stuff that looks like possible Deepkin stuff could be similarly isolated parts.

Look at 11. That could very easily be a crest for a Corinthian-style helm that's missing the actual helm bit.

[The Shadespire News and Rumour Thread]

Eh, the Blood Warriors are very obviously CAD reposes of the starter dudes. Same features, nearly the exact same poses. Might still be interesting to play but it's disappointing, if not surprising.

[The Rumour Thread]

1 hour ago, Burf said:

They already confirmed that it's its own thing

Yeah, just wondering if by fielding it "as a separate unit, representing an iron Avatar of Khaine" they mean it to be a moving fighting statue, like the 40k Eldar one, or a fixed immovable piece of scenery like the Feculent Gnarlmaw. It's about twice the height of the 40k dude and would make a great centrepiece if it weren't overshadowed by the much taller cauldron of blood version and Morathi.

[The Rumour Thread]

The statue of Khaine from the cauldron of blood kit seems to be freestanding in the background of the oracle photo, confirms what the older WHC article said. There's mist added but look like it might have its own base? It will be interesting to see if this is a 40k-style walking battle construct or a scenery piece like the gnarlmaw. You can build the cauldron kit as a cauldron without the statue easily enough, so maybe that will be an option too.

[The Rumour Thread]

7 minutes ago, Ar-Pharazôn said:

I for one welcome Battletome: Fishmen.

 

This is 100% the objectively correct answer. I scorn the fools who fail to realise that this is the Fishmen's day, at long last.

 

Ahem.

 

The deep elves idea doesn't seem impossible but with the WHC rumour engine pics that fit the visual style of late WHFB/AoS Death models and the speculation about Nighthaunt getting some sort of release based on their lessened showing in Legions of Nagash... undead pirates perhaps? Take the seed that the Firestorm Wraith Fleet stuff planted and build on it, spectrally?

[The Shadespire News and Rumour Thread]

Man, every one of those fyreslayer sculpts is better than 90% of the fyreslayer range. That's how you make an oversized key-axe look badass.  Some more variation in helms, beards and faces would be nice but warband's a good 'un.

EDIT: Wow, skaven look infuriating to play against.