*** Spoiler Alert ***
Every now and then I’m asked a question about one of my books, that would be an almighty spoiler if I was to just publish it on the blog. I’ll use this page, which will only be linked from a ‘spoiler alert’ to publish and answer the questions. You’ll need to scroll quickly past any titles you haven’t read yet!
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Book: Mission: Purge
From Blog Post: A Brief History Of The Deathwatch
Brother Urbino: A Black Shield. As a Black Shield, Urbino’s origins are kept secret. He has severed ties with his former Chapter and serves only the Deathwatch now. He is actually a Blood Angel, teetering on the brink of the Red Thirst, forever on the edge of descending into an uncontrollable battle-frenzy. He masks this with high brow observations and a self-effacing humour.
Book: The Unforgiven
From Blog Post: July 2016 – Q&A
After commenting on Facebook, Dor sent me this email: My question to you is about ‘the wish’ from the end of the book to save everyone. First of all, the ending blew my mind and I had to reread it a few times just to realize that what I thought actually happened, actually happened! (You wrote it perfectly well, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, like all of your other Dark Angels writing, but I was just so mind blown that I doubted that it happened the way I had read it haha).
Anyway, my question is: You finally provided us with the reason as to why the Fallen were dispersed after the end of the battle on Caliban, but what I do not understand is why weren’t the forces loyal to the Lion dispersed too?
And haven’t the Fallen dispersed not only across space, but also across time? This might be information from the old codices so please, do correct me if that’s not longer the case. If it is though, why haven’t the ‘current time’ forces of the Death Guard and the Dark Angels disperse across time? And why have they dispersed all grouped up while most of the Fallen were dispersed individually? Why haven’t Luther dispersed along the rest of the Fallen?
I mean, of course the only reasoning that I could come up with is that it is all Tuchulcha’s machinations and that the reason it did things in the specific way it did it was because it was a part of some sort of grander plan? But it and the other devices get destroyed in the end no? Or am I wrong?
Anyway yea – I had all those questions in my head since I have read the Unforgiven and hoped you could answer them!
The answer is very simple… not. For the moment, bearing in mind I may not get to write the fall of Caliban and certainly not any time soon, all I can say is that as well as being in the Caliban system in the ‘present’ timeline of 40K shown in The Unforgiven, the Ouroboros and Tuchulcha (and potentially the daemonic Plagueheart…) are also present on Caliban during the time following the Horus Heresy. Basically, we only have the story from one end of the warp hole so far, hopefully I’ll get to tell the other.
Book: The Lion
From Blog Post: More Dark Angels Secrets Revealed
Marcus Pitt asked: What made you decide to kill off Nemiel and whose idea was it?
It was a combination of my idea, and then-editor Christian Dunn’s input. I wanted the Lion to lash out in a moment of stress, Christian suggested it should be Nemiel. The reason was three-fold. Firstly, to confound the expectations of a stereotypical and narratively inevitable confrontation between Nemial and Zahariel, and secondly to show that characters aren’t safe just because they are named or even have a storyline. Lastly, I wanted to hint at the notion that the Lion’s civilisation is a mask he wears, that the beast of the forests still lies in there somewhere trying to escape. This is a theme that I have been developing ever since Angels of Darkness and the consequences of that act start to show themselves in Angels of Caliban.
Book: The Lion
From Blog Post: June 2017 – Q&A (Part 2)
Jon replied to my newsletter: I have a question about the death of Nemiel. Throughout Descent of Angels, he is set up to be a counterpoint agent to Zahariel, the stalwart Legion loyalist as a Chaplain vs. his errant brother the Librarian being subsumed by the Ouroboros. Then abruptly, the Lion beheads him and the story of Nemiel seems to be done. It feels jarring that Nemiel was done away with so quickly. Did the Dark Angels story arc and that of Zahariel change somewhere in the process, resulting in Nemiel no longer being needed?
It was very deliberately Nemiel because he looked so fated to play a bigger part! In discussion with the BL editors it was decided to take the Dark Angels storyline in a different direction from that predicted by the Nemiel / Zahariel set up. Also the death of a seemingly ‘plot-armoured’ character serves to remind readers that not everyone that they are gets to survive these tumultuous events. The act itself serves to demonstrate the underlying tensions and character of the Lion, and if the act had been carried out on any lesser individual (one invented just for that occasion) it would have lacked any gravitas.
It also gives rise to ‘What if…?’ scenarios for readers to speculate. What if Nemiel had survived, how would it have changed the course of Zahariel’s arc? Nemiel’s death plays a major part in what happens in Angels of Caliban – I don’t know if you’ve reached that far in the series yet… Let’s just say there are always consequences to actions.
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