Loremaster - Brothers of the Snake.

 

'The giant slammed the speeder to a rough halt that threw Antoni against the restraints. The prow mounted cannons unloosed again and blitzed the roadside. The gunfire's roar was extraordinary.

As soon as it ceased, there was a buzzing sound, as if a swarm of bees was billowing past them. She heard scraping, pinging impacts, sharp metal on metal.

The speeder was moving again, the vents of the ramjets vectored so wide that it was advancing sideways up the road, the giant keeping his side of the vehicle facing the storm of impacts. To shield her, she realised'.

*****

Welcome to the fourth installment of the Loremaster series.

This post deals with a part of one of my favourite books, Brothers of the Snake:

First published in 2007, Dan Abnett turns his hand to the Space Marines.

'When Baal Solock comes under attack from a mysterious alien race the citizens are paralyzed with fear. In desperation they use an ancient artefact to signal for help for the first time in over six hundred years. They are stunned when their cry for help is answered and even more amazed when they realize that only one Space Marine is sent to succeed where their armies have failed. Follow the exploits of Brother Sergeant Priad and Damocles Squad as they battle to preserve humanity against a number of enemies from the depraved Dark Eldar to a vast Ork Waaagh!'.

Now, although he had written short stories in the Inferno Magazine (what a product that was!), I don't think Dan Abnett had turned his hand to Marines on a full novel scale before this book.

A lot of his later marine tropes would be experimented with in this novel. Their lack of understanding of mortals at times, their larger then life standing within the Imperium as a whole, and several of the Imperium's institutions attitudes towards Marines for example.

This book however deal with the chapter called the 'Iron Snakes', an Ultramarines successor chapter who had only received a colour print in the "Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes" poster/sections of codexes. So he really had room to flesh them out and create a culture for them.

To this end, Dan Abnett went to the Ancient Greeks for inspiration and blended the Hellenic period of history with the fancy sci-fi gothic asthetic of 40k wonderfully in my opinion,

(Much better then Forge World did with the Minotaurs literally being Spartan Space Marines, but I digress).

The sections of the book in the chapter house, and later on when they go to full war with the Orks are great, but the most interesting parts I found were the first sections of the first undertaking.

Brother Priad (he's not a sergeant yet), is sent to Baal Solock after they call for help when an alien ship crashes and the survivors start murdering, skinning, torturing and flaying the surrounding communities.

The novel does a lot of things which 40k did well at this time period in its history. 

The summoning ritual is barely understood and the officer, miss Antoni, doesn't even think it will work.

The culture shock of the locals when Priad arrives and his equipment, even having a malfunction on his scanners due to radiation (some real world reference there).

The commanding presence of the Marine compared to the mortals of the world.

Dreams, dreams and portents play a massive part in the book, more on that later.

And lots more, however, when he journeys up country with Antoni and a guard dog named Princeps from the palace to confront the threat, this is where we start to see what Marines are meant to be:

'For many years afterwards, for the rest of her life in fact, Perdet Suiton Antoni often wondered how none of them had heard him coming. He was just there, suddenly. How could something that big move so fast and so silently, and appear without notice?

Between the moment the Primuls began to spring, and the moment they would have fallen upon her, the giant appeared and interposed himself between her and the foul, pouncing creatures. It was almost as if he has stopped time and edited himself into that particular frame of it.

What followed lasted about three seconds'.

Remember, Space Marines are between eight and ten feet tall, weigh nearly a ton in their full warplate, and are practically walking tanks compared to the humans around them.

Likewise the "Primuls", if you haven't figured out by now are the Dark Eldar, are stick thin and move twice as fast as mortal humans, so nothing to shirk at.

Yet the brick shithouse of a warrior sprints in and "appears" in the middle of combat moving that fast he can engage the Dark Eldar as they are mid-pounce:

'As he arrived, he was swinging his shield out, and smashed it flat into the nearest leaping Primul, shattering bones and deflecting the thing away. Wheeling, he hacked out with his sword, cutting clean through the neck and shoulder of the second, casting out a shower of dark red blood. 

The third had a ranged weapon of some kind, before it could fire, the giant whipped his right arm over and threw his sword like a Lance. It struck the Primul through the chest, lifting it off its feet with the force of the blow, and impaled it upon an olive trees trunk, where it hung with its feet dangling and twitching'.

If you take a count on your watch for three seconds, you realise how little time that actually is, and Priad kills all the enemies and makes it look easy. Keep in mind these are one of the biggest threats to humans because of their speed and technology. 

Yet with all that, Dan Abnett writes brilliantly showing you just how the Astartes should be thought of in the game universe.

I love the little touch of him throwing the sword and pinning one to the tree.

'With his right hand free, the giant grabbed the heavy firearm which had been knocking at his hip on its long strap and shot the last Primul twice, in the face and chest. The double blow was so loud it made Antoni cry and cover her ears. The force of the shots tore the Primul apart, and slammed it's mangled body across the grove. It bounced sideways off the tree trunk and fell into the bracken.

Silence, except for the gurgle of leaking blood. The giant raised his firearm. He turned slowly into the trees, covering the area point by point.

"We-" Antoni began.

"Quiet!"

She shut up and the giant continued to circle, finally he lowered his weapon and moved to recover his blade.

The giant wrenched his sword free from the split tree trunk and let the pinned body flop limply to the ground'.

Aside from protecting Antoni and getting to the bottom of the threat, killing them all in the process. The book, as I mentioned, makes big use of dreams and unlocking what they mean.

The chief librarian of the chapter, The Great Petrok, remains with Priad's squad and later has a prophetic dream about Priad, along with a black dog. It takes a battle against Orks for the memory of Baal Solock to return to Priad in full and from there the book shifts to a recovery mission.

Priad dreaming and being stuck in a warp fugue and only able to offer slight insight into what they might face going forwards.

40k used to use these techniques all the time, one of the big draws for the universe was it's vagueness lorewise once you got outside of the Maine rulebook, and how mysticism and technology blend together.

Sadly the modern rote of 40k novels don't seem to use this technique to allow your imagination room to maneuver. Everything seems to be spelt out explicitly in what I've been reading, everything is explained more or less fully (unless it's an Alpha Legion novel). As things are being filled in more I feel that the universe is slightly loosing it's darkness.

It's like the writers have lost one of the classic writing techniques:

SHOW, DON'T TELL!

The book ends as the final battles have slowly drawn out to conclusion and it cuts back to Priad leaving Baal Solock for the second time after another one of Petrok's dreams:

'There was mist in the air. A watery sun fought with the clouds to be seen.

As he passed through the outermost gateway he turned as he heard a sound.

A black dog was following him, trotting eagerly at his heels.

He sighed and knelt, "Go home!"

The dog whined and dropped to its belly, looking up at him with doleful eyes.

Priad rose to his feet, "Go on home, Princeps", he said.

The black dog rose and turned. It ran back to the gateway and watched as Priad continued on his way. 

When he was almost out of sight, it barked twice.

Priad turned to look, but the dog had disappeared'.

The second time Priad visits the planet is about eighty years, local time, after his first visit when he exterminated the Dark Eldar.

He talks to Antoni, now local governess and an old woman leaning on a cane and asks about Princeps.

"Oh the dog, he died years ago" she replies to his question.

And yet he has the vision of Princeps as he is leaving the planet. 

Something comparing an old wardog leaving, maybe a future portent to Priads end?

Until next time, have nice day...