Thoughts on 'Warhammer 40k'

Disclaimer: I don't own the images. All rights go to their respective owners.

In my first article I summarized the Warhammer 40k universe (in a simplified way). I will not repeat the summary here. Instead I will first give you a simplified background on the Word Bearers.

The Word Bearers are a chaos space marines legion. They were one of the first to be seduced by the lust of chaos by their primarch, Lorgar and his close associates. It is because of Lorgar that the Horus Heresy (prequel to Warhammer 40k) came about. I will talk in-depth about the Horus Heresy in a future article.

For the origins of Lorgar, read the novel Lorgar by Gav Thorpe. Actually it is more accurately on Lorgar's history prior to the great crusade. As for the story on how Lorgar and his whole legion turned to chaos read The First Heretic by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (ADB).

Now to my first impression of the omnibus and review of the first novel of the omnibus Dark Apostle

The image of the front cover no doubt caught my attention. The guy on the cover is Kol Badar, the warmaster of the legion. He was the predecessor to Marduk, first apostle, and Jarulek, one of the apostles of the Word Bearers and master to Marduk. In Dark Apostle the Word Bearers invade an Imperial planet called Tanakreg.

While the Word Bears successfully take dominance on the planet and obtain a million, yes a million, slaves to build a obelisk called the Gehemehnet. It is basically the chaos version of Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower. With the Gehemehnet the Word Bearers got to make a huge ritual involving human sacrifices and human blood in exchange for the Warp's chaos energy.

Marduk and Jarulek travel through the Warp after their victory in the battle filed to obtain a chaos artifact called the Nexus Arrangement it is basically an orb. Not just any orb but a powerful weapon that can do great damage to a nexus or even the warp itself. You can say it is a weapon of humongous destruction. Marduk and Jarulek fight each other in the Warp not only for the Nexus Arrangement but also to be the successor of Kol Badar as warmaster of the Word Bearers. The chaos gods found favor in Marduk to say the least.

The side story of this novel is that of a space marine captain named Varnus who goes through a series of unfortunate events that ends him up being taken captive as a slave of the Word Bearers and forced into hard labor to build the Gehemehnet. Varnus tries to get free from both his physical enslavement and the chaos' influence while the chaos starts to affect him and everything or everyone around him tries to break him inside. After more unfortunate events (including an event where an Imperial Guardsman who is sent to "liberate" the planet from chaos tries to kill Varnus on first sight instead of liberating him) Varnus ends up giving up on any hope of freedom and the Imperium of mankind. These events along with the chaos' aroma drive Varnus to suicide.

In this novel and the rest of the omnibus the bad guy wins. There is NO happy ending. Only the bad guys (in this case the Word Bearers) get a happy ending (for the most part).

This book contained a lot of action, graphic description, and a decent amount of dialogue. As you read it you can feel the presence of chaos and breathe its lustful aroma. The catch is that it will slowly drink away your soul's energy until your soul starts to starve or cripple.

If you love horror films (particularly the graphic ones), gothic, macabre (anything of a grim-like nature), dark cults, and seeing the bad guys win then I recommend reading this omnibus.