So last night I finished reading the fluff in End Times: Khaine......and I'm not sure what I think.
Malekith has been rehabilitated by history.....all the torture and destruction of the past 6000 years was necessary in a CIA kind of way. Ulthuan is gone and the remnant elves have decamped to Athel Loren where the various factions - Wood, High and Dark - all live uneasily side by side. The darkies contend themselves killing Beastmen while the Forest Spirits look on grudgingly.
There are a raft of dead characters - probably more than remain living. The two most important survivors are Malekith and the Queen of Ho, Alliarelle (having hitched her wagon to first Finubar, then Tyrion and now Malekith, she's a survivor at least).
What does it all mean?
Well three books/races are now one. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm no fan of the PEGs but I thought that they each had a distinct character and individual play style and now.......
GW have done this before with Gav Thorpe's bastard child the 4th Ed Chaos Space Marine Codex which destroyed the Chaos Legions in 40k. The success of FW's Horus Heresy reboot would suggest it is a path that is fraught with danger. Certainly the popularity of CSM in 40k plummeted with Thorpe's abomination.
Story-wise I'm not sure I buy the whole Exodus vibe and certainly it is hard to see any peace and prosperity for the Elves with Chaos Ascendant and Nagash ruling the roost. The battle between Chaos and Order is only just beginning.
What is does mean is that it is now very difficult to effect a reset given the Khaine book. Any attempt to go back to pre-ET would have all the authenticity of Bobby Ewing in the shower (Wiki it kids!)
I'm really bummed that Malus Darkblade is dead. The Black Library novels on him are some of their best work, yet he seems to have be yet another casualty in GW's bid to outdo the Red Wedding. I guess it's his fault for not having a plastic model.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's going to be impossible to effectively retcon this, and I'd prefer it if they didn't try. I think this is part of the reason why Bretonnia got smashed, so that there was some lebensraum for the Elves to move to and write poetry.
I'm wondering how its going to play out post End-times. There has to be something to fight over, or there's no reason to fight. If the world is totally destroyed, you don't have storyline progression, you have an end: no more Warhammer. I can't see that happening, so at some point someone has to save the day and preserve some modicum of the planet for the mortals to eke out an existence while fending off the undead and the daemons.
But then we risk another 20 years of storyline stagnation. The Old World has always sat at 2 minutes to midnight. The End Times might shift that to 20 seconds to midnight, but I can't see it ever striking 12, because then it's all over. Surely GW don't want a resolution of the eternal war, where's the money in that?
Absolute shit...
ReplyDeleteMalus Dark Blade was a cool character and it's a shame he died. He was a great example of how it is possible to write a story from a non human point of view.
ReplyDeleteGW may be borrowing a line out of Elric where the cosmic balance restores the balance between the forces of order and chaos. Both forces are necessary to have a world that works. One side in dominance results in utter stagnation.
Since Gods need worshippers to have any power. Killing off the mortals that worship them is like America outlawing oil production.
If this is a standard play, then the first act establishes the characters, the second act imperils the characters and the third act has the characters triumph. I think so far we are only in early act two.
If the Old Ones come back to the world they could reset the world however they liked. Ulthuan could be raised above the waves again and then all the elves can go back to Atlantis.
There is plenty of Lebensraum in the old world. The empire will only have the population about 10% of what it used to and Estalia, Tilea and the border princes were depopulated by the Skaven.
It will be interesting to see how the Skaven manage to get into the game and screw up the plans of chaos and Nagash. Will The Chaos Dwarfs get a mention or will they just sit out the whole end times thing?
Will the Orcs do anything significant with the greatest fight in the world going on?
Did Darkblade really die?
DeleteSpite was shitting itself that darkblade was turning into a demon, before being killed by said demon.
At the end, reanimated Spite was moving itself to the demon's remains.
Morathi commented on Spite's loyalty. (But Spite was afraid of the demon.)
Rumours that End Times books will continue after the release of the next edition make me suspect that End Times will be an optional setting for games allowing different rules and at compositions, and that there'll still be plenty of scope for good, old-fashioned pre End Times games.
ReplyDeleteGod dammit, Malus was the only character I really enjoyed following in the Warhammer universe.
ReplyDeleteWhy did they have to kill him in such a horribly disgraceful way?
He was consumed simpering and begging to Tz'arkan? A pawn to be used and tossed aside by Morathi? For Tz'arkan, a demon who had been alive for untold millennia, to be fooled and fucking rolled aside as he abandoned the Warpsword of Khaine to Tyrion because he apparently fucking forgot about it or something?
What the fuck? It's like the author went out of his way to make Malus' end ignoble and pointless. Couldn't he at least given Malus a somewhat more dignified death than Morathi snapping her fingers and Malus is gone?
The thing is, he diden't have a deamon inside him anymore, as tz'arkan left Maleus and stole his soul. Thats the last we read in the last book about Maelus Darkblade. So how did a another greater deamon manage to get inside him? I find the whole end times to be utter crap. I've read a few of the books and its just so many stupid things going on.. For those who like the end times, good for you. My self, i pretend that it never happend.
ReplyDeleteAnd what buggs me to no end, is what they did to the Tyrion & Techlis series, it was amongst the best books in warhammer.. And we al know how the last book ended, i was just wating for the next part and then GW comes along and ruins the whole bloody thing.
Pisses me off. Fuck end times and the retard who came up with the idea.