Absolute Favourite Comics: The Third Testament, Xavier Dorison, Alex Alice

Another of my more esoteric favourites:

Pictures only from Book 1: Marc, or The Awakening of the Lion (The Lion Awakes)

Book 2 is called Matheus, or the face of the Angel (The Angel's Face),

Book 3 is called Luke, or the Breath of the Bull (The Might of the Bull),

Book 4 is called John, or the Day of the Raven.

Which I find to be such bad-ass titles I just had to share them.

Pictures might also make it seem as if the story's really sensational, with high octane action coupled with mood shots and gorgeous scenery, and there's that at, sure, but the comic is actually quite slow, wordy and dry, in a good epic slow-burn way. 200 pages of perfect build-up and execution.

France, 1306, and the peacefully sedate lives of a group of Franciscan monks are shook from their isolated routine as an old crypt is uncovered in the monastery's cellars.

It is immediately apparent that there's something deeply wrong in the place.

Old scrolls are found, containing new and dangerous knowledge written by the hands of those alive at the time of Christ.

A short time after, the monastery burns, every monk inside put to the sword, massacred.

And no sign of the scrolls.

In response, the archbishop of Elsenor, coincidentally visited at this time by his foster-daughter Elisabeth, contacts an old friend of his, an ex-inquisitor by the name of Conrad the Marbourg, to find answer as to why the monks needed to die for words written 1200 years ago.

But Conrad is done with the brutal work required of him by the church, and refuses to accept the mission. But there is a hidden hand on the lever of destiny, and Conrad's involvement will be required.

 Before he leaves the city he is accosted by Elisabeth, with claims of a letter sent by him to say that he does accept the task.

Suspicious and worried, Conrad hastens to where his friend is supposed to be and finds another bloodbath.

The archbishop has been crucified, and dying, his last words are to make the terrifying claim that they are living in Hell, and to make a desperate plea for Conrad to take care of Elisabeth.

It swiftly becomes apparent that he has been set up.

Hunted by the authorities and all the might and wealth of the church,

Marbourg is once again a pariah.

But with his oldest friend dead, he sets out to avenge him and to find answers to the mysteries surrounding the missing scrolls. Bereft of her father, swept up in events beyond her control Elisabeth joins him.

But, a dark shadow dogs their quest, and while it comes in the shape of a raven, its true form is as yet inconceivable.

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It's a bit hard to know what I can talk about still without giving too much away.

There's alot of dialogue, interesting and beautiful locations, the mystery and themes at the heart of the narrative are right up my alley (and that should tell you something), the action and set-pieces are all very memorable, Alex Alice' art is all clean lines and beauty, in particular that final panel, which I wish I could just have framed up on my wall.

But that panel is just one of several perfect ones; some scenes are just so well composed, where story and art are married perfectly to give an intense and lasting impression, lending a style and quality to this particular comic that elevates it above many others.

Third testament is Biblically epic, playing out both intimately and on a grand scale, and I absolutely love it.

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Though the four books form a standalone story, with an in my opinion very satisfying conclusion, The Third Testament also has a second cycle to its name, taking place at the origins of the relevant mythology. I haven't read it, as its conclusion with book 5 was released only a month ago in French. I'm hoping this second part will hurry up and get itself translated to English or Dutch quite soon.

Gormenghast Quote

Making a virtue out of indolence.

Update; hungover, and a visit.

Warning: Some bloody graphic imagery, though I've kept it down.

Imagery in question constituting of three pictures of a skinned deer.

Pictures

Nothing too special, but interesting enough to fill the doldrums with wind while I continue exploring Annihilation and Time and the Gods: some cool Warhammer posters I found while cleaning out some closets:

The awesome Beastmen, when they were still terrifying and cool.

The Chaos Warriors' most tenacious hero;

Harry the Hammer.

Pre- Dark Imperium map of the Eye of Terror and its surroundings

And the 25 years of Warhammer celebration poster from back in 2008.

It's good to occasionally just post something less meaningful.

Let your hair down and all that.

Lizards and Lizardmen, brothers still.

I did promise I'd show you which story I was talking about in the second Warhammer Anthology post. It took me a while and even though the label states fun, scanning these pages was an absolute bitch to do.

Turns out it's rather hard to scan whole pages of a book with a hand-scanner without wrecking the spine, the edges of the pages, or the last shreds of my patience. And the big scanner we have around here was absolutely no help at all either.

But hey, good quality or not, I did get it done.

The story served as some introductory background fiction for the original Lizardmen release in 2003 and follows the short chronicle of a captain of the Imperial Cathayan fleet who shipwrecks and in his journeying stumbles on the ancient Lizardmen civilization.

Besides of course being a good story it also is one of the few times the fiction actually gets to touch on the Cathay civilization, which normally is only visited in the rulebooks and the rpg handbooks, and even then, fleeting, and not as the heart of the matter.

 Imagine a small room. It is the room of a young boy yet dreaming of adventure. But it's a specific kind of adventure, one of journeying and of mysteries. Of seeing, and discovering. A boy's dream of the world's hidden places and as yet undiscovered wonders.

 There are plants and greenery throughout the room, some imitation and used in your brother's odd war-panorama displays, and some, real, still wet with the day's moisture. There's a bubbling mist-fountain in a glass bowl, the mechanism creating the mist hidden in an almost motionless sea of white, spilling occasional tendrils that vanish as soon as they tumble over their enclosing rim. The room, despite its active light sources, is largely in shadow, cast for the most part by the top half of the bunk bed, in the lowest bunk of which your older brother is reading this tale aloud to you. You are sitting in the farthest corner from him, in the deepest shadows. It is a favourite spot, because the light from besides the bed, the light your brother needs to read, doesn't reach you, and you are near the buzzing heat of the terrarium, the light of which spills out away from you, into the heart of the room. The lizards are quiet, but the crickets are not. Those tucked away in a little cabinet are in darkness, and chirp only on occasion. The ones being eyed by the lizards, chirp for all they're worth, as their time is running out with every self-satisfied rasp of leg on leg. Every once in a while, the lizards jolt into action, and scamper and rustle in their private undergrowth, and then, one by one, the crickets fall silent.

There are all sorts of strange and mysterious things in the room, not the least of which is the ornate pirate gun, tucked away on the high shelf of a bookcase, the shelf which you can't quite reach yet. But maybe you're holding it, maybe your brother, mindful of the feel of it and of the wonderful immersion that it brings, gave it for you to hold on this special occasion. Strewn everywhere are knives, feathers, glass bottles, drippings of candle-wax, bits of wood, tattered clothes and the usual old rubbish; the carefully hoarded collection of a boy not yet caught by life's stale drudgery. There's the tiny smell of paint dripped on the warm wooden floor, dripped on the cabinets and on the large desk piled with books and magazines. It should by now have been on the models of the warriors, on the monsters and the aliens, which are also strewn everywhere, but the boy has always been impatient, and creativity doesn't lend itself to colouring inside the lines anyway.

The one-sit is soft and comfortable, pliant, it smells of your brother and of safety, and you are small enough yet to have it envelop you still. Covered in blankets, you listen to your brother and to his tale of a hot and steamy jungle, in which mysterious lizards roam, lizards far larger than the ones beside you, basking in the heat of an artificial sun. These other lizards roar and chant, and have no need of man. Their realm is one of mystery, rite and horror.

As your brother tells the tale, you begin to drift and almost dream, but you snap awake and back into awareness, because the story's not yet done, and it is so important yet. But soon, you will sleep, right where you are sitting, huddled still in comfort and safety. And maybe you will dream, like he does, of adventure and mystery, and of wonders undiscovered.

But for now, you'll hold off sleep with the desperation of a child, because you know that here, on this couch and in this moment, is the best time of your life and that once it's gone, all you will be left with is a memory, incomplete and oh so fleeting.

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Some Music

This song has been stuck in my head for days now.

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I don't listen to the radio if I can help it, and I always find my music in movies or games.

This one I originally heard in the credits for Edge of Tomorrow.

Which is by the way: an incredibly bad-ass movie.

Emily Blunt is in it, and she's super-hot, and leading man Tom Cruise is actually really good in it as well.

Action, Emily Blunt, Humour, Emily Blunt doing sexy push-ups, Sci-fi, Aliens, Emily Blunt glowing like she's pregnant (which she was during the shoot), good fucking music: You could do worse with watching a movie on a Sunday evening.

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Oh, and for those of you that might need a bit of a resolution after watching Newman's Love me Again, go watch his 'Cheating' music video; it'll show you what happened to the two protagonists of this one's music video.

Update

These are Peter Wessel Zapffe's four methods whereby mankind minimizes its consciousness in order to deal with the day to day terrifying banality of existence.

Now, normally I'm someone who abides by the Sublimation method of dealing with my stance and views on existence. I tend to work this in with (tedious) frequency in my posts on books with themes that lend themselves well to it: Barker's Weaveworld, Bakker's Apocalypse, Lao's Circus, and so on and so forth, there's no shortage of them; the books that touch on life's meta-aspects, either those who gaze at it with fleeting vapidity or grace them with a more sustained, unflinching look. In my opinion, most authors need and should focus on this aspect. This is a new development for me; I used to be good with pretty much anything I would read and as such this gaze constitutes a radical department from my earlier non-judgment attitude towards fiction. I think the age of my escapism is wholly over, at least in regards to the fiction that I read.

It's a little troubling.

The blog is to blame for it, of course.

The second you read more in and behind your fiction you tend to demand more of what you read, And what once sufficed doesn't anymore... He says with a Warhammer post fresh under his belt...

Either way, whether this is a sustained alteration or not, I find that recently I've been focusing more on the Distraction method. In a way, Sublimation is Distraction as well, of course. And Anchoring becomes Sublimation in a way, or at least, it has for me: lose one 'what', and a 'why, how and what else' falls in its place. These ideas are shades of one another. Imbued with meaning only where we allow them to be gifted with such. It might not be conscious.

No. It definitely isn't: you latch on to something else, or you drown.

So.

Sublimation has had to budge itself aside a bit so Distraction can come in its place. In a way because, even though I've dealt with most of the separate themes here on the blog, they're still very much present in my life. As such, I can't very well bang on and on about them, right?

So, here's where it gets easy.

As I've already established that this won't be about books:

Gaming and Television.

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In the Television department, for the past 2 days, in between exercise and gaming, I've been filling my time watching Orphan Black as if its the much sought after answer to existence. Up 'till now it's been a re-watch. I had previously seen the first 2 seasons, some years back, when 2 seasons was all that there was. I've somehow let the 3 remaining season pass me by. Mostly because I unreservedly loved the show when I first saw it, but, as season 2 ended on such a heartbreakingly ominous note, and together with the hesitant idea that it might have jumped the shark, I made the resolution I'd just wait until the vision in its entirety was available. So, this week, kind of spur of the moment, unplanned and without too much thinking, coupled with a little drinking, I revisited a show I once thought was pretty much perfect.

Immediate verdict, having seen all I'd pretty much seen before:

It still is pretty much perfect.

Tatiana Maslany is fucking amazing. So beautiful and so incredibly talented.

You can't really talk about it without spoiling it though.

But it's hard to envision any other established actress pulling this kind of thing off. She didn't do it alone, of course, and there are maybe three moments where I was aware of the manipulation going on. Excuse me, I should say; where I saw the manipulation going on... One tends to forget after a while what's being done right before your eyes. She sucks you in, selling it so well.

For the rest:

The editing as a whole is pretty much perfect, and beautifully done, coupled with music, both established tracks and those created for the show.

As for story... I don't know, man. I shouldn't like this show. It's in my opinion the worst kind of contemporary tripe. The idea, the concepts, the conspiracy bullshit... And yet, I love it, it's brought so well, so intelligent, or at least; so convincing. If I were to tell you the central premise, you'd scoff and refuse to even watch the show. But stick with it for 5 episodes and you're hooked.

Now I'm at the point where previously I estimated that the show might have jumped the shark, but even though rationally I still think this might be the case, it certainly does not feel that way; everything still felt very confidently under control. I'll see when I continue watching tomorrow. New material at last.

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As for gaming:

Since finishing up the Surge, which was cool but definitely more memorable for its engrossing, visceral combat than for its subpar story and minimalist storytelling mechanic, I've been taking a deep-dive into Final Fantasy 12 again. I'm determined to get it done this time, and I'm well underway.

It's still the same save file, but since the game is so large and so intricately built-up one can spend a hundred hours easily without even having the great lines done. In my case I'm still going for the Espers, the main story line, the hunting missions and I guess; the Rare Game, which means I think I'll have to just complete the Bestiary as a whole.

I had played the game as a child, though I doubt I understood all of it very well. I certainly didn't kill any Espers outside of the main storyline. Said storyline is convoluted but pretty rewarding.

Here's some footage that gives you a glimpse behind the scenes, and pretty much the most expository scene in the whole game. I would have liked to have given it in one go, and slightly more of it but as it runs on to like 7 minutes, and Blogger only allows for 100 mb uploads, and that's only about 2 min of ps4 footage You'll have to make do with two clips instead.

Fun fact; apparently the Occuria in this clip speak in iambic tetrameter, whereas the The Rogue Occuria Venat, later in the game, speaks in iambic pentameter. What does that mean you ask?

I don't know man, I'm just relating the fact. Look it up, it's what the internet is for.

Also, if there's one thing I wish the game'd let you do, is alter clothes.

Staring at the same half-naked people all day can get very tedious, not to mention just how utterly ridiculous they look.

The gameplay is intricate and reasonably rewarding but not one of those types that's much fun to watch, especially if you're not the one doing the playing.

I'm here mostly for the mythology anyway. Or rather the hints to all the various mythologies that the game liberally steals, pays homage, or lip-service to: From Gilgamesh to Don Quixote, from Biblical mythology, Hindu mythology, Jewish scrolls, and on; there's pretty much nowhere the game hasn't gotten its inspiration from.

I remember being intensely intrigued by it way back when, but not having the tools to follow up on it.

Now I do, and it's quite a lot of fun to delve into the background of some name or character whenever the game serves up something new.

It also has a pleasant sense of humour sometimes. Maybe to counteract all the melodramatic ponderousness that it frequently indulges in.

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Alright then. I'll talk about it quick.

Reading is taking a backseat, as the main read; Gormenghast is mainly being read for the beauty of it. It's not like there's a real sense of desire, or pressure to know what'll happen if one knows that the story's overall vision is pretty much unfinished. It's still being read, but in stops and starts rather than anything sustained. It's in any case not a work that should be read with a desire to finish it as quickly as possible, so I won't press the issue, and rather let it happen in its own time. There's enough going on outside of it anyway.

For the blog, the big focus is, or should be, the Time and the Gods write-up.

It'll be two posts, one focusing on the overall book, and with the other I'll focus on the intriguing Pegana mythology. But both of those are getting sidetracked because of a few reasons. For one, I'm getting the impressions that Dunsany was a bit slipshod when it came to establishing his mythological framework, which makes it kind of a crap-shoot to connect his Gods of Pegana to anything outside of his Time and the Gods (the novel, not the Masterworks collection book).

Another reason is that the Time and the Gods novel has been read some years ago now, and I'm rather hazy on the details, so connecting that to the Pegana story cycle, which I've read last month, is rather a difficult task. Honestly, I should just pour any efforts in re-reading the Time and the Gods novel first, but I'm just very, very unwilling to do that.

I'll get round to it. But I just need to shuffle something, somewhere up first.

Warhammer Anthology review: Ignorant Armies

Here we are; it's the second anthology of the Old World; Ignorant Armies. This edition, like the first one I did, is the one that got published by GW books and one of the (three?) earliest anthologies which had story-specific, black and white artwork for each of its 8 tales, commissioned from a variety of artists.

Unlike with the first anthology post, the artwork has been scanned rather than having badly lit pictures taken of it. Yes, I'm still very pleased with that purchase :)

Geheimnisnacht

Of all the novels set in the Old World there is only one series to have been there from the very beginning, through every permutation of lore and tone, weathering every upheaval with dwarven stoicness, straight to the end at the heart of the all-devouring storm... and then right on through, out the other side...
I'm talking, of course, about Gotrek and Felix.

As the young fugitive poet Felix Jaeger follows his crazed dwarven companion Gotrek on the darkest night of the year, he and his companion are almost run over by a sinister black coach.

Following it, they arrive at an inn, where the occupants tell them of dark rituals enacted in the woods. With his death oath driving him on, Gotrek takes off into the dark forest to meet his end, and Felix, bound by blood-oath to witness and record the Slayer's mighty death, must follow.

Geheimnisnacht, by the always welcome William King is an absolute classic in Black Library's stable. It's the one that kicks off Trollslayer, the first novel in the Gotrek and Felix series. Written in 1989, it's been around a while and it's still a fun one. It's got a wild and happy soul of adventure, and it's hard not to fall in love. I found myself unabashedly giggling now and then. This might have been the first Old World fiction I had ever read, unless you count those extracts from my brother's White Dwarf magazine. In truth, he's the sole person responsible for me getting into Warhammer, as he read  the terrifying tales of steaming jungles and horrific space war out loud to me. But of those tales it was the Lizardmen tale that still stands out the most. (I'll see if I can find that for a next post somewhere.)

The story's unexpectedly delightfully humorous, developing almost as if it is a play, with question followed by exaggerated humorous (to the reader) pantomime, followed by answer, and repeat.
Recently there was a post by William King on his writing process and how his experiences as a DnD Game Master helped his writing. It's quite an interesting read: Roleplaying games and the Blessings of Father Nurgle.

Art by John Sibbick

Looking at the unabashedly gleeful artwork above (also; very spot on), I had an idea.
At Games Workshop's beginning, dwarven lore obviously wasn't set in stone and dwarven beards weren't as yet a staple, and just like there isn't any mention of that here, there wasn't any mention of it in the previous anthology's Wolf Riders short story. Now obviously, John Sibbick took his cues from Paul Bonner, who did the artwork for the Wolf Riders short story, but I'm wondering now if Paul Bonner didn't take some inspiration from 2000ad's Celtic warrior Slaine, and his dwarf sidekick, Ukko: Woad tattoos, spiky hair, double bladed axe. You can easily see what I mean. And Slaine was published some years before so the idea has some merit I think.

The Reavers and the Dead

Written by Charles Davidson, the Reavers and the dead is a tale of a young man in a village by the Sea of Claws, as he arrives at a significant stage in his journey to become a necromancer. At the time of the story's beginning he has already been dabbling rather aimlessly into the necromantic arts, but its effects have nonetheless been felt far to the north, where fish have been dying off in great shoals, and delivering to the fierce warriors of Norsca disease and famine. To lift their 'curse' they have journeyed south to the northernmost lands of the Empire to exterminate the culprits of their misfortunes. As necromancer to-be, Helmut Kerzer, contemplates the door behind which the dreaded Liche lies waiting, the raiders arrive at his village, spurring him to fateful action.

Though it's a straightforward tale, it's actually a remarkably good one, with an emotional subtlety to the writing, and where every character has multiple dimensions and understandable motivations.
It even has an almost benign Necromancer-Liche, if you can fancy that. It might not be all that canonical because of it, but if it's off it's only so by a hair's breadth.

Artwork by Steven Tappin

The Other

Stefan is a young surgeon in training with his father. On a trip out of the city he meets a young aspiring doctor, Katya Raine, and though Stefan is instantly attracted to her, but he also finds himself strangely repelled. Try as he might, he can't get her out of his head.
 Later as he celebrates with his friends the acquisition of his surgeon's license, he sees Katya again, singing and performing as the evening's entertainment, and as she sings of a young girl innocently corrupted by the forces of chaos, he begins to have suspicions on the origin of his conflicted feelings for her.

By Nicola Griffith, a Nebula and among others, a James Triptree, Jr award and multiple Lambda award winner. And I did see some nods to those themes here, and though they don't take center stage they are pretty undeniable, prompting our main character at one point into some strata of moody envy and bubbling jealousy; the helpless gaze of the outsider.

Though those elements might be a rarity in Warhammer, and their inclusion here a welcome one, the story itself is unfortunately not one of the better ones in here, which isn't an indictment of Griffith's skill but rather of her subject matter. It's one of those tales that the Black Library's march forward has rendered largely incompatible with what came later. Also, unlike with the other tales, there isn't much going on in the way of action, focusing rather on mood and internal strife than anything the Library is usually known for.

Artwork by Jim Burns

It's a story about mutation, undoing the effects of it and has a (for Warhammer) jarring focus on the practices of surgery.

In a world where Gods are very much active and people have healing sorcery and magic, one questions the continued practice of 'sawbonery'. More than that, coming out of Van Horstmann, which has a massive focus on healing and sorcery, and with its hardline depiction of Witchunters, going after mutation and heresy like they're breathing air, The Other's treatment of mutation feels more than a tad out of place. There's simply no way this set-up would work in later-era Warhammer of any kind. What can I say; the Old World was a kinder, gentler place, once upon a time. Oldhammer through and through.

Apprentice Luck

By Sean Flynn, Apprentice Luck, like The Other before it, takes place in Middenheim, the city of the Wolf, for some reason. The story and I got off the wrong foot immediately by on its first page maligning the antiquarian book trade.

Karl Spielbrunner has been an apprentice for 6 months to an aging antiquarian book seller, and over that time he's grown heartily sick of it. Surely there's more to life than this stale old drudgery?

But Karl finds his boring days suddenly at an end as an old crone steps through the door to sell an ancient tome dressed in human skin. Between its pages Karl discovers a curious map, and soon he finds that there are several interested parties looking for it and the danger-skirting path that it reveals, leading through the city's forgotten tunnels to much coveted treasure.

It's not actually a bad tale though, it even reminded me a bit of those old Path to Victory gaming books. A classic dungeon crawling adventure, with a likeable main character complete with a happy ending after all the hard trudging. Very pleasant, pretty canonical.

Artwork by Martin Mckenna

A Gardener in Parravon

I will tell you a story that has to do with the city of Parravon in Brettonia, and of my old friend Armand Carriere and his unhealthy obsession with his neighbor's hidden garden. The garden that ate birds and of the dark reason for their growing. It's a sinister tale, with a sad and bloody ending. Come listener, sit and listen.

Here we have yet another very good tale, by Brian Craig, and it's reminiscent of Lovecraft in its horror and mystery leading up to an unhappy ending, foreshadowed at the start. Of a young outsider, well to do and well off,  and his growing obsession which will eventually lead to his demise. 

It's on occasion a rather creepy tale, working on vague suggestion rather than divulging clear-cut images. This is helped along by in other places delivering a rather vivid depiction of what could have been a very ordinary setting, making the story on the whole very memorable.

 This is also helped by the artwork being gloriously stunning and, so far, the absolute stand out piece in this collection.

Artwork by Ian Mcaig

The focus on gardening was rather amusing (for in truth, and for the moment, I be a gardener by trade), and though demons are obviously an odd subject to throw into the plant-care mix, there were enough unique and intriguing ideas present to make this more than memorable. Dare I say that this one might be an actual classic?

It doesn't fit completely with the Warhammer mythology as it became, but the quality is so good it might just transcend the setting.

The Star Boat

This one, without a doubt, takes the 'Incompatible' cake for its uncanonical shenanigans.

In it the Norscan were-man; Erik, is contracted by a travelling Slann to join with him on a trek into the Chaos Wastes to find a crashed space ship.

Yes. Indeed.

It's not a bad story though. It's just another one of those that doesn't fit into the Warhammer universe as it came to be.

Besides the werewolf-man, the Slann, and the spaceship, which technically are all explained and do fit in the lore somehow, somewhere (though very inelegantly, and still in the case of the spaceship and the Slann; extremely improbable), there's also mention of chainswords (which could feasibly also be explained away but... you know), mithril holding back the power of Chaos, genuine giants in the employ of Erengrad's ruler, the aforementioned Slann's technological steam-apparatus, to say nothing about the silly mithril land-boat, and some smaller stuff besides.

What makes this more confounding is that these elements are mixed with some very cool references to The Great Catastrophe; the destruction of the Slann's great polar portals, here depicted as a great storm of fire crashing from the Portals into the cities, which you can take as a revelation or as a neat interpretation, with the errors explained away by the unreliability of the legend's narrator. 

There's also the presence of the spaceship itself and all it summons up. You see, it's technically not impossible, as in there's precedent in the setting, it's just slightly, well... ridiculous to put it in any contemporary Warhammer story. Too much time has passed since the arrival of the Old Ones on this world to make this easily acceptable.

Artwork by Adrian Smith

What's good then about this one?

Well, despite it being one of the two longest tales in the collection, the story roars along at a decent pace, whisking our likable beast of a protagonist south to Kislev and back to Norsca in the space of a few pages, and then doubling down on the journeying for the rest of the tale. An easy and enjoyable ride. The last part of that story, where Erik treks alone through the Chaos wastes, was particularly welcome. I'm always up for trekking in the mad country, and Baxter had some really cool moments in here. Every author depicting the Wastes tends to have some unique take on them. The parts where the ground spurted blood wherever the soil was broken, or the appearance of the horrible herd-chimera, which was particularly nasty and inventive, or even the disorienting landscape in general were all very memorable.

So despite this one having more than its share of problems, it had a hopeful, pleasant ending and I enjoyed it very much.

The Ignorant Armies

To the north of the Empire, in the forests of Kislev, a young man silently reminisces on the events that led him and his retainer in pursuit of the warlord who razed his family's mansion to the ground, who murdered his family and kidnapped his younger brother, Wolf.

Relinquishing his hereditary title and the claim on his lands, Johann has been giving chase to the warlord's forces, in a desperate bid to save his brother, or, if Wolf is beyond saving, to take vengeance on the monster who upset the course of all their lives.

And now the hunt draws to a close, and soon Johann and the warlord will meet on the plains where champions clash and lead their ignorant armies in never-ending war for the bloodthirsty joy of the Chaos Gods.

The collection's titular short story, Ignorant Armies is one of those early tales that had an enormous influence on the Warhammer setting as whole; a certain tone to be carried forward into the future, but even then it is Yeovil's deft skill that still makes this one stand out. It's another absolute classic.

It's also a tale that's connected to the Genevieve stories by the character of Vukotich the mercenary, who here is Johann's faithful retainer, situating the events of this story as taking place after the Red Thirst short story in Red Nails.

Yeovil, as usual, is an amazing writer. setting his pieces on the board, seeding his ideas and story tools well in advance, without giving too much away beforehand. 

Now, if this was a modern Warhammer story, the conclusion would be a foregone one: 10 years is a long time to be in the thrall of the servants of Chaos. See, for instance, Dan Abnett's classic Warhammer story, Riders of the Dead... or, really, any later Warhammer tale with characters captured by Chaos forces.... or... ooh, like Dark Apostle; an insanely dark and brooding Chaos tale in the 40k setting, also having a large part of its runtime dedicated to one such character. But as it is, the conclusion to this story is rather surprising.

In Oldhammer, the forces of Chaos weren't so much the end-all force of absolute evil that it came to be. It and those who follow it are absolutely evil, of course, but where in the future, Chaos' all- corrupting influence is really all-corrupting and all-consuming, and once touched the taint would never wash off, in this setting where the dark will come to be never-ending, here, in these early tales, the good may still occasionally prevail.

 Looking back one can see the neat foreshadowing, that is nonetheless quite invisible the first time. The scene itself is a glorious but dark miracle. And as usual, Yeovil is excellent in his delivery, adding force to something that, in a less skilled writer, might've come off silly or blatantly contrived.

Artwork, just like with the Star Boat above, by Adrian Smith.

And here is the book's coloured Frontispiece, depicting the fateful clash between the Chaos warlord and Johann.

By John Blanche

It's a very enjoyable tale. I'm looking forward to seeing Vukotich again in the Red Thirst short story in a month or two.

The Laughter of Dark Gods

...Wow...

 ...this one was dark. 

By the effervescent (:p) William King, this tale is an exploration of what it means to be an aspiring Champion of Chaos. Of dark deeds and wants, and fighting aimless bloody fight after fight, wracked by mutation and rewarded with a mind unhinged from its original track, all in a desperate bid to win the favour of a chosen patron lord. But, unsurprisingly, what's in a name after all, the Chaos Gods are notoriously fickle and untrustworthy, and how they reward their champions might not always be reward at all.

As with Baxter's Star Boat, we travel into the Chaos Wastes, and this time we follow someone around who actually wants to be there; the disgraced outcast nobleman Kurt Von Diehl...

Yes, that Von Diehl, of the same family that William King has Gotrek and Felix trek around with for a short wile in the Wolf Riders short story.

In Wolf Riders Manfred Von Diehl tells Felix about their curse, cast upon the Diehl line when Manfred's father burned a witch, who cursed her killers to horrible deaths as she died, and makes mention of one of his uncles; Kurt Von Diehl, who headed north, having turned to banditry and falling to a chaos warrior, or maybe, as rumours suggested; falling prey to yet a darker fate.

In The Laughter of Dark Gods the fate of the last of the Von Diehl line is revealed.

I've been wanting to read this story for a very, very long time, since the time that the Black Library site still showed extracts online. I remember downloading all the extracts I could get my hands on, printing them out and hiding them away from my parents and reading them secretly, away from god-fearing eyes, and this one in particular caught my fancy; It was so mind-numbingly horrifying to someone in his early teens, especially with that cover.

King's nasty little denouement at the end of one particular paragraph, still pretty early into the story, has been engraven into my mind, and reading it again here, within the whole picture, as it were, gave me a nasty little thrill; an echo of earliest horrors.

So here we are in the Wastes again.

Fiction writers in the early days of the Warhammer world must have been looking at the various elements of the infant Warhammer world, start out basing their tales on some fact, figure or event that piqued their interests and proceeded then to construct their journey on such rough beginnings, eager for the untrammelled opportunity of fleshing out the shoreline a bit more.

And I imagine that for any writer it would be hard to leave something so wild and crazy as the Chaos Wastes be. The sheer unchecked horror of the place... Lucky for me because I still love these particular tales. And two in one collection! :)

Here, on the prowl in the Wastes, as in the Star Boat, one of the main characters speculates on the origins of this maddening intrusion of the stuff of Chaos on the world, proclaiming it's the work of a sorcerer that has gone hideously wrong; a theory without much backing it up and quickly dropped in favour of the other correct 'theory'; that it's something to do with the elder Slann and who, long ago, once had gates far to the north to work their ungodly schemes with.

It's another cool little reference to the Great Catastrophe, although by now it's decidedly odd that this would be common knowledge, it having happened so far in the past. But you know, it is Chaos and I gather that those exposed to its raw intensity might indeed be gifted (or cursed) with sights beyond the ken of normal men.

There's also a reference to ' the followers of the renegade god Malal', whose champion has eyes red as blood and skin white as milk. More echoes from a different age, one could dismiss, but the Chaos wastes are a strange place, directly touching on the realm of Chaos (read: the Warp), as is evidenced when Kurt finds a strange crossbow which fires bolts of light, and which beams shrivel everything it touches. Technically this in't out of the ordinary for the world of Warhammer as I heard that in one of the End Times novels a character from the 40k universe shows up. 

Either way, easily slotted in or not, I do tend to dismiss thoughts of canonicity in the wastes, it's just so much fun.

Artwork by Bob Naismith

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Ignorant Armies is immediately a step above Wolf Riders in quality, with several classic works of Warhammer fiction between the covers, with even the lesser works being pleasant or unique reads.

A worthwhile excursion into the earliest days of the Old World.

Scott Bakker's the Second Apocalypse, the Bible and Subversive Feminism.

Obviously: SPOILERS and speculation for The Second Apocalypse.

Though be warned; this is going to get ugly and it'll be very hard to digest without a receptive attitude.

I wanted to look at a troubling aspect of the Prince of Nothing Trilogy, and the Aspect-Emperor cycle.
In a few words: this is about the rape of, violence against, dismissal and suppression of the female characters, and the treatment of women as a whole in the Three Seas society.

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I'm not talking about the acts of the Inchoroi here. I've made mention of why they are as vile as they are in the 'Personal: Road of Faith and The Second Apocalypse' post (number three). There's no need to address that here. Even so; something worth mentioning; in the scenes where they are in the picture, they tend to focus more on men than on women.

Regardless, they are not in the picture here in this post. They fall squarely under the religious aspect of the series and everything they do must fall under the 'Damnation' explanation. They are the orcs, as unmitigatedly dark as even Tolkien would not make them, but, dark without being a byproduct; they are dark, because they are the heart of the matter.

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For the longest time, I looked at these scenes in Scott Bakker's Philosophical Fantasy series with a kind of puzzled fascination.
I couldn't quite understand why Scott Bakker, who in every other way seemed to have a reason for doing what he did, and who seemed so self-aware everywhere else, would so monumentally fuck up when it comes to so volatile a subject. The mistreatment of women is a topic that tends to blow up in this day and age, regardless of whatever the context, or even regardless of who touches on the subject. There's an overexposure to it that tends to raise the hackles of even the most progressively-minded bystander, an immediate knee-jerk response, and don't deny it: you felt it too just now.

So, why would Bakker endanger his magnum opus by putting this troubling element into it, and more than that; make it such a prominent element of his fiction?

There is of course a reason for it (apart from hubris and a pathological need to be as exacting and all-encompassing as possible, of course).

From the get-go I've looked in utter bewilderment at Bakker's claims that the Second Apocalypse is pro-feminist at heart.
Usually this statement receives a rather subdued response, as people don't really want to tackle that particular line of conversation, but more often, I've seen it unthinkingly dismissed in furious, frothing scorn, followed by the throwing of bile and vitriol on his work and character.
Obviously that's the wrong action to take.
But I've also seen people outright dismiss these claims of misogyny, and discard them as fantasy fiction or bury them beneath labels, or beneath the merits of the rest of his work. And that's also a strange response to have, because there's obviously some really problematic elements here.

In these novels, women are mistreated. This is depicted and I needed to understand why, why this element is here. There needs to be a reason for it, a goal it's ultimately working towards. Because I am me, I couldn't let this go, and, in general, books who can not give me an ultimate reason, an absolute coherence, for all of its elements will be deemed as failures in my eyes. I'm looking at you American Gods...

Of course, after doing the Road of Faith Post, well along the way actually; I came to the conclusion that Bakker's books were not as I previously had thought; a reaction to Tolkien like the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but that, like Pullman's Dark Materials, it was in fact a reactionary work to the Bible.
Specifically; to the Bible's archaic rules and tenets, to its indoctrination, to its... yes indeed: its treatment of women, to the sidelining and to the punishments: Women can't be eldest/leaders in the church, stone an adultress, but don't kill the man, submit to your husband...
The tenets that show that in this patriarchic society women are viewed as second-class citizens.

And all of a sudden. Bakker's claims of pro-feminism start to make more sense.

Do understand that feminism is not the heart of the matter.
The heart of the matter, besides being a look at the power of faith, is shining a light on the hypocrisy of the basis underlining Judeo-Christian values as the Bible lays them out to be; the idea of salvation and exaltation for a chosen minority, and everlasting pain for humanity's ultimate majority; those who choose wrong.
Bakker looks at religion, a society built on this type of religion, and only along the way hits on the side-effect; that all these things are influenced by a work written, if not by the minds of, then at least by the hands of men, and with all the inherent bias that goes along with that.

So here we go.


The status Quo

Of course in the Prince of Nothing trilogy, things start out this way as well: Women as second-class citizens. But the further we get, the less it actually remains so. Granted, it takes a while to get there.

Bakker, for starters, explores the role and position of the woman in the Three Seas society by the use of three female archetypes; Maiden, Mother and Crone.
More than that, he also goes a step further and also makes of them; Virgin, Whore and Succubus.
These archetypes exist at the heart of the characters of Serwe, Esmenet and Istriya.
These three beautiful women are also endowed with notable variations in intelligence.

Serwe

Serwe is the most problematic of these.

Maiden. Virgin. Slave.
But virgin as in untested, naive, innocent, and dumb.

Serwe, unfortunately, is the least gifted of all the female characters. She has looks, but little in the way of cunning or knowledge, nor if she had, the tools to use them, and because of this she suffers the worst abuse that the world throws at women. She is fresh off the destruction of her former owner's home and she is raped repeatedly before we've even met her. And this will continue to happen for a while, but as a tool of manipulation between two men.
Being dumb and only pretty, she can only be used. She can not dig herself out of the mess she's ended up in. She has only her charm and so tries to use it on her tormentor. But as it is Cnaiur who claims ownership of her, the same Cnaiur who is obsessed with and aware of any and all attempts at manipulation due to his own tormented past, this backfires. And he in turn escalates the hardship when he attempts to use her to rebel against the manipulations of Kellhus. And it is only when Kellhus steps in, to see how far he can go with his manipulations, and to experiment with how much he can influence people, that she is put in a better situation. There is stuff that happens along the way, but in the end, she is sacrificed on the altar of Kellhus' ambition.

Ostensibly, Serwe is the ultimate victim of the patriarchy. Hitched as she is to Kellhus and his fate, her death comes with a whole sheaf of raw symbolism, most clear of which are Example, and Martyr.
The punished wife, joining the transgressing husband in death. Woman in flames. Woman above her station...

One could argue that Kellhus, with all his capabilities, could have stopped the events that lead to their joint crucifixion.
But events had already spiraled out of control, and in the Prince of Nothing trilogy at least, it is his greatest gamble and the one to lead him nearest to death in his whole life. It is also the one to gift him with immediate status and followers... and the thing which will alter everything that comes after.
But in any case, it is wrong to label Kellhus as a man, as he is not governed by the male mindset, impulse, or even anything resembling human pathology.
Kellhus is other, one who is outside of humanity, and its inherent bias.

Serwe is the most problematic of these three female characters, and was always going to be, because she was always meant to be.
Innocence personified, she was always meant to die as an example, without cause and unwarranted, as the symbol for the worst fate a woman can have in a male-dominated society.

 Raped, abused, manipulated, murdered, sacrificed. All of these.

Istriya

Istriya is, for me least, uninteresting, and the least problematic of the three.

Crone. Empress. Succubus.

I use the term Succubus here because of what it implies, as in Wrong/Immoral/Unclean and Seducer, not because Bakker uses this actual creature in his story.

Istriya was once a powerful ruler that at the start of the trilogy had already been marginalized by her son. She is intelligent, but realized when her son was born, that the only way for her to hold on to power was by manipulating him. This fails in the end, because she settles on a clumsy and overt manipulation, using her sexual wiles in order to make him do her bidding.
But with age comes insight and as her son levers her hand off the scales of power definitively she is more than ever marginalized.
She meets her end alone and unwitnessed in her son's palace at the hands of a skin-spy assassin.

Representative of an intelligent woman in a world of men, she latches on to power and, for a while at least, builds something for herself, cleanly, on her own merit.
But this is before we know her, and the Istriya of the trilogy is a character built on compromise, and steeped in manipulation and immorality.

As I said; unproblematic, because she is so very easy to denounce.

Esmenet

Now here we come to the most interesting one of the three and the one through who we will follow Bakker's pro-feminist designs.

Whore. Mother. Lover.

Esmenet is second only to Kellhus in intelligence out of all the characters in the Second Apocalypse.

And then only because Kellhus is somewhat of a walking Deus Ex Machina, though this is incredible dismissive of the concepts and ideas at the heart of Kellhus' character, he is the lynchpin, after all, for this story to work. He is a meta-protagonist in a world of normal characters, able to see, literally, behind the facade of the world and the faces of its inhabitants, and able to act on what he sees, as he is the hand from outside, reaching in. 

The mother in the system of three archetypes, Esmenet has some obvious history behind her: I won't touch on that here.
Literally marked by the snake tattoo, symbol of the whore, in mock imitation of the goddess of love's tattoo (covert female empowerment), which gives men the license to subjugate her at will, but for a price, and if she's without a man to back her up, it occasionally means she won't be paid, as the physically strong take what they can get away with, after all.

The relationship of Esmenet and Achamian is the emotional heart of the trilogy.
Esmenet loves Achamian, for who he is, for the comfort he brings and because of the natural chemistry between them.
But also, and crucially important: Because he is a direct line into the games of power played in the Three Seas. Achamian is a Mandate Schoolman, one of the most powerful sorcerers in the Three Seas, and more than that; he is one of their spies, and as such; he is intimately in the know.
Via him, Esmenet is able to glimpse and ponder on the moving of power in the world of men, her eyes and ears on the shifting of balances and the politicking. It is this that she loves most of all.

And then of course comes the climax of the Prince of Nothing trilogy; the emotional slap in the face that Bakker delivers on its very last page: Esmenet's Choice.
It is Esmenet's story finally coming to a place where she is able to choose the thing she had desired all her life; to be at the center of power. And though she loves Achamian, she still chooses to remain at Kellhus' side. Because if she were to choose to go with her former lover she would be outcast once more, and this time irredeemably distant from that position that she craved, in fact further away from power, and even society, than ever before as she would have to follow him into the wilderness, and become a pariah along his side.
So, though it wrenches her heart, she stays where she is.

She can only look on in silent pleading as the man she loves demands that she gives up her dream; her ambition; to be at the center of things, and to waste all her talent, talent perfectly suited for this new position for her in a world that is on the cusp of revolution. She would have had to give that up. And so, even if there's a choice, it isn't much of one and she can really do nothing else. It would go against her very nature. So, even though it seems as if she's choosing between two men, she is in reality choosing for herself.

And then... 19 years pass.


Evolution

Almost two decades later, the revolution has well and truly come to pass and the entire Three Seas society has altered completely.
When Kellhus came to power, he reformed virtually every strata of Three Seas society, and one of the things he completely revolutionized is the acceptance of Witches.

In a world where Sorcerers are denounced by holy writ, as blasphemous, because of the ruling patriarchy; witches are deemed even lower than them. A woman in possession of literal world-altering power is a huge threat to the patriarchy after all.

Look at what the Bible says about sorcery: Exodus 22:18 "Do not allow a sorceress to live." (Schofield Study Bible) Stated colloquially: Burn the witch.

This was indeed a common practice in the three seas. The writings of the Tusk state it, verbatim, as if one needed more proof for the ideas at the heart of this series. And though not a lot of attention is brought to this in the Prince of Nothing Trilogy, as, really, there was already enough fuel for the fire, it was left by the wayside. But in the Aspect-Emperor cycle, things are a bit different. We are introduced to the idea that this was indeed ruthlessly done, once upon a time.

But Kellhus, in order to fulfill his goals, mindful of what is yet to come, seeing enormous amounts of powerfully talented women being killed, uproots and squashes this practice. He forms a school for witches; the Swayal Sisterhood, exclusively for women. And Lo and Behold: They become the most powerful school in the Three Seas, second to none. Imbued with Kellhus' pure knowledge of how magic works, they have an edge on everyone. And at the head of this school: Kellhus' only daughter: Serwa.

And look at her finally revealing what she is in the disturbing incest scene. It's not her brother who takes the lead, it is her; fully in power, in control, showing Sorweel her ultimate disdain for him. she is not yet another weak woman needing help, no, she wants this, she is this. He is the one who does not belong. Part Dunyain arrogance, part woman's disdain for the puffed-up, self-important machismo of a young man.

5 books in and the Swayal Sisterhood is the most powerful school, the religious underground is led by a woman who is directly empowered by the gods, Mimara is the one who forces Achamian out of his hiding hole, and Esmenet, in effect, rules the empire.

The books start out with women subjugated and frequently debased, in imitation of what is still our own mess of a society. Then the series graduates to man and women equal under the rule of the Aspect-Emperor.
Only possible because this new state is delivered by one who looks from outside of humanity, and who wishes for the most capable in it to attain his goals. True equality, delivered from a source outside of it, because humanity will never attain it on its own.


Future...

And then ultimately, somewhere down the line, when Kellhus, the hand on the scales of equality, is gone, Three Seas society will backslide yet again into one gender subjugating the other; artistically ideal would be to let the scales slide the other way, with who was previously the subjugator becoming the subjugated. And there are already seeds of this in the Aspect Emperor, with the power being pooled onto those women who work from either behind the throne or from in the shadows, presumably those who won't be consumed by the calamities to come.

But maybe not. Because I haven't even read the Great ordeal or the Unholy Consult yet.

I should've jumped into those by now, and its a miracle I've not been spoiled by anything yet. That certainly can't last, and I'll admit, I've even been tempted to just go ahead and spoil it for myself, see if am right about both the religious and the feminist aspects. But for now I've held off on that. And as for reading... well, there's always something else first, huh?

In any case: When I finally do get round to it there'll be another write-up (or 2), where I'll revisit the Faith and Feminist themes, and you'll either get a triumphant 'I told you so', or a whole bunch of  annoyed swearing.

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Small note: This initially went out unedited, and it's the worst write-up I've ever posted online.
It has since been edited. Quite a bit. The ideas are the same, though they have been re-structured, rephrased and built up more where necessary.

The problem here was that this post was very much a case of getting it out there, because this idea had been stewing around for such a long time but, since it's such a volatile subject, I didn't really want to broach it, and so get that attention on myself. But it needed doing, as I didn't see anyone defending the series like this anywhere else, and I had made a desultory and half-hearted attempt of it in a previous post; so, to get myself going, I did a rough draft, and proceeded to slowly edit it every once in a while.
Then, on a day of not much food, nothing immediately to hand, in temporary forced isolation, boredom and loads of coffee, I posted it without too much thought and in the throes of hopeful idiocy.
Then, after I had exercised and eaten properly, reviewed what I had put out and, in prompt desperation, went to work.

Esmenet and the Evolution part of the write-up do not have enough yet; as that story and aspect is not done, and I am vague on the themes of the second set of books as I've only read it once.
I'll only be able to revisit this when I re-read the Aspect-Emperor cycle, though I don't have immediate plans for that yet. Likely it'll just jump to the front when I'm feeling discontented with reading in general.

But for now, this is pretty damn done.