Gray Knights series analysis thread

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm going to throw out the last two parts of Hammer of Daemons. Wrap it up and move on.



Page 145

"I forget, human, that you are not well versed in our ways. Some of you have studied us, I understand: the biologists of your Inquisition. The better to kill us, of course. But not you."

Alaric is ignorant about the Fall of the Eldar, and it is implied that only Inqusitors (at least of the Xenos Ordos) may know anything about them biologically or historically.

Page 146-147

"Long ago, my kind ruled the galaxy." continued Kelhedros," 'much as your kind claim to rule it now. We were artists and aesthetes, while you are soldiers. We took worlds and made them beautiful instead of merely inhabiting them like insects in a nest."
...
"From the sinful pride of my people was born… one of the great powers of the warp. I cannot speak of it. It plagues us still and reaps its toll among humankind, too."
...
"Then why tell me?"
"Because I see it on this world, too, and in your Imperium." Kelhedros looked up from his chain-blade. "The Fall killed the better part of my species. Only those who saw it coming escaped it in their world ships. My kind, so far advanced compared to yours, was almost wiped out. Think what another Fall would do to you. Do not think that you will see it coming, or that it has not already begun. You are living through the death of your species at this very moment and you do not realise it."
"I cannot believe that." said Alaric. "There must be hope."
Kelhedros arched an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because without it we are lost."
...
"Perhaps everything you say is true and these are the death throes of the human race, but even if that was true, I would not lose faith. There must be hope, and I must fight for my Emperor against Chaos and its servants. That is just the way it is."

Alaric is told about the Fall. Interesting in that it implies the Eldar Empire back then was similar in scope to the Imperium, which makes sense and that the "better part" of the Eldar race was lost, rather than a tiny fraction surviving. It does make some sense, given the scope of the galaxy compared to the Eye of Terror - you'd think alot more Eldar would have survived than not.

Also interesting is how it is implied that the humans are heading for another Fall, if you pardon the pun. This Echoes what the Hydra Cabal and the Illuminati/Eldar force hinted at in the Inquisition War Trilogy - given that, I wonder if the Rhana Dandra (Eldar battle of the apocalypse) is supposed to be foreshadowing this.

Also I like this quote because it is fundamentally anti-grimdark, and shows why I like Alaric - he still goes for the positive side of things and demonstrates why. Despite all he has seen and suffered, he is strong because he believes it has a purpose. It also echoes some of the writings of earlier 40K authors from novels like Eye of Terror or Pawns of Chaos.

Page 149-150

"They are just turning on each other." said Kelhedros
...
"Wrong," said Alaric. "Watch."
...
"That one," said Kelhedros, "he's in charge."
"Exactly."
"But it is the way of the animal. The strongest rules."
"And he is using that. He's training them, toughening them up."
...
"One-ear has a plan, which is more than most of the humans here. Think about it, the best way for
the orks to survive on Drakaasi is to make themselves essential. That way they can be sure that Venalitor won't throw their lives away. The better they fight, the better a show they put on for the crowds, the longer they will live."
...
"I hate the ork just like any other Emperor fearing citizen, but the fact remains that One-ear has a better grasp of the situation, and a sounder plan for surviving it, than most of the slaves here. I thought the same as you, Kelhedros, and assumed that an ork was just a fighting machine that couldn't even think. Then I took the time to watch, and I found I was wrong."

Alaric and the Eldar talk about the Orks while watching. This shows two things. The first thing is it shows that, despite being a joke race and sometimes under-valued, the Orkish culture and its inherent adaptability can be quite formidable no matter the situation, especially with a Leader to take charge. It wouldnt surprise me if even now Ork spores were infesting the planet.. imagine how THAT would turn out!

It also shows how clever the Orks can be when the situation warrants, at least when a leader is present. Again Ork adaptability ta work.

The second point is underscoring how perceptive Alaric is even in less than ideal conditions. He doesnt exactly respect the Orks or like them (He is a Space Marine after all) but he does not let that hatred or disgust cloud his judgement the way the Eldar does.

Page 160

Only Chaos could create a place like Gorgath, thought Alaric, and only the followers of Khorne would do it with such blunt, literal brutality. Columns of robed cultists and wild mutants marched on either shore of the blood river, follow­ing armoured champions towards Gorgath's endless battle. Alaric could hear the sound of its devastation, and could even make out the outline of a feral Titan as it lumbered around firing indis­criminately. Everywhere were the scars of war: bones poking from the barren soil, the foundations of long-fallen fortresses, monuments and mass graves. This was where the army that had taken Sarthis Majoris was first blooded. It was a factory for war, a machine for churning out armies, where the dregs of Drakaasi were fed into the battlefield and transformed into instruments of Chaos.

Alaric could see hundreds of thousands of them. Gorgath was an obscenity. It was a celebration of war for its own sake, death without purpose, a dreadful hollow slaughter that offended Alaric to the core.

Alaric reflects on yet another Khornate chaos city.. first we saw the farm, now we see the factories. Again even a Khornate world has its own sort of economy, because to make war you need resources, and those resources have to come from somewhere.

I also like Alaric's response, showing why the place is Khornate and why it offends him.


Page 163

Two smoke-belching tanks stood ready to pull them apart on lengths of chain. Alaric recognised the tanks as Leman Russ battle
tank variants, no doubt captured and brought to Drakaasi in one of the lords' slave raids.

They don't capture only people.

Page 162-163

"Those are prison tattoos...
...
"Murder." said Gearth.
...
"Who did you kill?"
...

...that was a question Gearth obviously feared.
"Women." he said.

At least some forms of murder are illegal in the Imperium. Echoes alot of what we learn in Guns of Tanith, I think. Given Gearth's fear in responding, his crime seems to be one he's particularily afraid to admit, especially to a symbol of Imperial authority.

Page 164

On every Imperial world there was some diversion for the citizens, and adoring followers accompanied the most famous fighters or sportsmen everywhere. Drakaasi's arenas held the same position on Drakaasi, on a far larger scale. The idea that Alaric could have devotees seemed as pathetic as the slave looked.

a rather interesting, and ironic, parallel. Not unlike the Emperor Sanctioned Death Cults and blood worship (well at least sanctioned by some...)

Page 167

There were brute mutants three times the height of a man, tentacled subhumans, and hated psykers, chained up and herded before the armies to make sure they died first. Whole cults of the Blood God stood in their robed finery, desperate to die beneath the eyes of their god.

Examples of mutants, how psykers are treated on a Khornate world, and that not all cults to Khorne are warriors (some seem to be effectilvey suicides.) Of course that's obvious, since spectators and shit are part of the whole world and its economy (such as it was.)

Oh and they let the psykers fight with psyker powers.

Page 172

The lords would be angry. There was plenty of blood, of course, and Khorne would have his due, but a free-for-all wasn't what the lords of Drakaasi had wanted. Alaric's riot was an insult to the planet's ruling order

I find this totally ironic and appropriate. Khorne of course wouldnt' give a damn as long as slaughter happens, but those in power want to stay in power, so unorganized bloodshed is a bad thing.

we also amusingly see the two-faced nature of Chaos in this, because Alaric's actions have inflamed a crowd of bloodthirsty populace, and they will even turn on their own lords in a frenzy if driven far enough. Such is Chaos, and its another nicely handled part of the story.

This also represents the first time (and step) in Alaric's greater plan to destroy an entire Daemon world, by realizing and exploiting this sort of fundamentla weakness (Chaos will turn on itself if given a chance.)

Page 182

"What quality do you possess that can win you victory if not a Grey Knight's willingness to fight?"
"Imagination."
...
"It is the understanding that there is more than one way to fight."
...
"Yes, I learned that against Ebondrake. I cannot fight them as I would any other enemy, not this whole planet. Even if I win, every drop of blood I spill is a victory for them. It has to be something else."

Again we see Alaric is not your typical MArine, but this is a quality to be respected. It also highlights again one of the underlying themes of the Gray Knights novels, and one of Counters favorite themes - the nature of Chaos and how one confronts (or defeats) it.

Page 187

It was a work of genius. The artist would have been one of the greatest of his generation on any Imperial world, perhaps good enough to gain sector-wide recognition.

Artistry in the Imperium and the (typical) scope of recognition. Again the idea seems to be small islands of sectors scattered throughout the larger Imperium.

Page 190

Alaric tested his body for injuries. It felt comfort­ing, because it was part of his training. There was still enough Grey Knight left in him for him to act like a soldier. He had the familiar cacophony of pain from hundreds of minor injuries. His chest was the worst. His breathing was hampered, and one of his hearts was wounded. He could still move, and fight if need be, but it was a major injury, even for a Space Marine, and back on Titan he would have been sent to the apothecarion to recover. On Drakaasi, he would just have to fight through it.

Alaric had been impaled through the chest by a sword. It shows that even when taking a major injury, a Space Marine, especially a GRey Knight can fight on, even if hampered.

Page 191

"It was a real mess in there." continued Haggard. "One of the lungs won't work. One of the hearts is looking shaky, too. Your spine made it, that's the main thing. There were splinters of metal in there as long as my finger. It was only by the Emperor's will that none of them severed your spinal cord."
..

Alaric tried sitting up again. This time he bit down the pain. A few of Haggard's crude stitches burst, and fresh blood ran down his chest. He saw that he was wearing the armour in which he had been fighting at Gorgath, with the breastplate removed. The wound on his chest was huge and ugly. No one but a Space Marine could have sur­vived it.

More on the extent of Alaric's injuries, and the scope of the healing methods on this world.
It's interesting that a Khornate champion cares at all about medical care of any kind... but slaves and fighters are a resource, and even Khornate champions are wise not to squander them. Again, economy, so a medic makes some sense.

Page 191

"These are Venalitor's chambers."
"Here? The ship isn't big enough."
Haggard shrugged. "Physics only works here out of habit. If Venalitor wants to bend it to give himself a place fit for a duke, then he can."

Despite being against "Sorcery" we learn Khornates apparently have their own means of manipulating the warp to suit their ends, including I gather pocket dimensions.

Also a PDF surgeon knows something about physics. So much for "ignorant populace"


Page 197

Venalitor knew the ways in which a human body could be made to feel pain. The tip of the blade hit just the right point, and nerve
endings caught fire in agony. Alaric could not move, only spasm on the altar as pain washed through him.

Chaos Champion knows nerve centers and pressure points, I guess.

Page 199

The Thirteenth Hand, since returning from their failure to disrupt Venalitor's armies on Sarthis Majoris, had taken up residence in a huge and filthy tangle of entrail sewers beneath Karnikhal.

War on Sarthis Majoris seems to be ongoing, and Chaos is trying to disrupt itself.

Page 199

Eventually, the Wrath had reached the heart of the fortress, and had enacted a ritual that brought life back to the organs that had hung dead for many centuries of Karnikhal's lifespan. A few of the Wrath made it out, while the Hand was drowned in filth, or dissolved by digestive juice

Again peculiar Khornate rituals.. technically magic I guess



Page 200

Drakaasi had seen many such wars. In a way, they were a part of its machinery of worship, for the aggressors were ultimately fighting for Khorne's recognition. However, they took place away from the arenas and altars, far from the eyes of Drakaasi's lords, filthy shadow wars and rolls of assassina­tions. Most of Drakaasi's lords had reached their positions by eliminating a rival in such a war, and all of them had survived such aggression from rivals jealous of their position. That was how power worked: aggression and annihilation. Khorne's patronage ensured that on Drakaasi it always took the form of naked violence.
...
Lord Ebondrake's pronouncement had demanded that the lords of Drakaasi work together to create a vast army to conquer worlds for Khorne in the wake of the Thirteenth Black Crusade. That did not allow for open conflict between the lords, and when Ebondrake took his lords to task, the results could be bloodier than any battle they could fight between themselves.

We see politics on a Khornate world.. it also shows the difficulties in herent in creating the sort of cooperation needed to launch a Black Crusade of any kind.

Page 207

...the bloody events shimmering on a great sheet of crystal that dominated
one wall of his audience chamber.

Some sort of magic scrying mirror which would duplicate the effects of viewing or sensory devices that Duke Venalitor is using to watch the progress of battles he is waging.

Page 220

Raezazel collapsed, defeated, but Venalitor did not despatch him. Instead he was taken to the Hecatomb, imprisoned behind doors marked with the most powerful anti-magical wards, and bound by ancient daemon oaths to accept Venalitor as his conqueror and master.

Anti magic wards of some kind. Interesting thta a Khornate champion can bind a tzeentchian daemon as well. Razzie must be corporeal in some fashion since he actually stays in realspace for a long, long time.

Page 222

"Raezazel!" yelled Alaric."'Daemon! A Grey Knight never knelt before witchcraft, and I shall not be the first!"

REad into this what you want.

Page 236-237

"I am not a Grey Knight. How could one such as I see what I have seen and keep my mind?"
...
With Alaric's psychic shield still protecting him, there was no way that the horror of such things could affect Alaric as they would a normal man. However, with the Collar of Khorne removing that shield, Alaric's mind was vulnerable, not just to creatures like Raezazel, but to Alaric himself.
....
He was the Hammer, he was a Grey Knight. He grasped that idea and clutched it to both his hearts. It was all he would have left.
...
Alaric let all the horror hit him at once: everything he had seen, everything he had done, the friends he had lost, and the lives he had taken.
...
Alaric lost his mind.

Heh. Clever actually, as a way to get around possession, and the daemon realizes it obviously. It's interesting in several ways. It is a confirmation of Alaric's essential humanity - without his usual defenses, his conditioning, and usual mindset he can't endure everything he has gone through, suffered, and had to do - it would scar him. He's not some soulless, mindless automaton who can just ignore things because he's a SPACE MARINE - he ignores and copes with them because, like a human, he has mechanisms and (even deceptions) designed to make things easier to deal with (deceptions which he cannot keep around a daemon of lies, obviously.)

What's more, madness is the obvious escape, when you think about it. They want him to "fall" to chaos, to be corrupted... but corruption basically requires a willing acceptance - a choice - to turn. It can be compelled, bribed, seduced, but the choice still has to be made. A crazy man cannot make a choice, cannot be held liable for their actions, and probably isnt someone that a daemon would want to inhabit. What makes this even more clever is that Khornates don't mind madmen, but who is to say a madman is truly devoted to Khorne, deep down? As we know Khorne doesn't care so long as slaughter and devastation happen.

At this point Alaric has, more or less, won. The daemons can break his mind, they can obliterate it, they can drive him insane, but he will never, ever serve. And if he is corrupted well.. he will do what is needed to handle that.

Page 243-244

Alaric was still there. It was a very small part of him, a fragment of lucidity, and it was trapped. The rest of his mind was a dark ocean....
...
He was the Hammer. The prayer kept him intact. He had a duty, encompassed by the prayer, and that duty was his reason for existing.
...
Slowly, he tried to drag himself up, piece by piece, memory by memory.

We see that Alaric still has at least part of his mind intact, compartmentalized even if the rest of it has "broken" or gone insane. Or rather, it seems liek he's given his animal nature free reign, and kept the rest of him (The Space Marine part) hidden and protected, camouflaged by the larger and darker part let loose. It is rather clever, and part of me wonders if this is because of Space Marine augmentations (something perhaps related to the Catalepsean node, or Sus-an membrane) or if this is something peculiar to Alaric's mind alone.

What begin are sereis of "blacking out" and coming to, discovering he's become something of a berserker, an Arena champion while passed out.

From this point on til when he comes to, Alaric struggles to survive madness and come to terms with is situation. Here things hit that gray area - has he turned, has he fallen, has he become a minion or a champion of Chaos? He himself wonders and even fears it as he tries to struggle to hold to his perceived duty and do what he must to survive, and achieve his goal (the destruction of daemons and those who serve Chaos.)

He also must fight against his own desire to surrender due to what is being asked of him. Again it is a tricky question - how much must be endure, or is he willing to go through, to see his duty to the end? It's a conflict between his refusal to give in and his refusal to submit to Chaos.

Again its one of those interesting points in the book where Counter tries to deal with Chaos, and its better handled than it is in other books (EG Soul Drinkers.)


Page 255

The skyship was one of the small fleet that remained on Drakaasi, relics of an earlier age, and Ebondrake owned them all. It looked like a galleon loosed from the ocean, sails spreading out horizontally like the wings of a dragonfly.

Technology, at least nonmilitary technology, seems to have backslid on this particular Khornate world. not surprisingy really, since the nonmilitary has no real value. Then again they had to capture Russes to, so it may be that their ability to fabricate things is limited (arms, ammo, etc.)

Page 258-259

"I have no wish to waste more of my troops, and Arguthrax will not risk angering the warp by sacrificing its daemons trying to kill me."
...
"If you and Arguthrax continue to waste this planet's armies on killing each other then I will
finish the job for you. I will kill you both. You are not too proud to be flayed into a banner, Venalitor, and Arguthrax is not too great to avoid a banishment to the coldest wastes of the warp at my behest."

Once again we see the means and difficulties in trying to maintain control and unity of a Chaos force, both of the mortal champions and the daemonic (In this context Ebondrake threatening Venalitor and one of the Daemonic allies.) Once again as well we see that "corporeal" daemons and the warp-bound daemons are also apparently separate factions despite being the same sort of entity or even serving the same god.

Page 262

"He was introduced to an ally from the warp. His mind did not survive the encounter."
"I would have heard of this from the warp. Flaying the mind of a daemon hunter would be a matter of great celebration among Khorne's daemons."

Ebondrake and Venalitor discussing Alaric. They seem to believe he has broken, and this somehow equates falling. This seems to confirm the idea he has, but this is simply their point of view. Chaos, and their minions, are hardly omnisicent or infallible, and its not the first time Chaos has been fooled (Eye of Terror, for example.)

Page 264

Alaric, finally saw everything that Raezazel had tried to hide from him.
In attempting to possess Alaric, Raezazel had let his mind touch Alaric's. In that mind was locked the secret of Raezazel himself, of Drakaasi and of the Hammer of Daemons.

Possession is a two edged sword. merging with someone like that means both minds are open, and I would wager that it is the strength of will (or psychic power) of one or the other which determines dominance and acess. Daemons (usually) can be stronger, but it is not an absolute. Especially for a Daemon of Tzeentch.

Page 268

Alaric looked down at his arm, from which the waves of pain were emanating. His consciousness had kicked off the endorphins in his brain, which were dulling the agony, a typical physiological response for a Space Marine, but the pain was still tremendous.The skin of his forearm had been slit and pulled open from the wrist to the elbow, and several pins were sticking from the exposed muscle, piercing nerve centres with such precision that there was no room for any more pain.

Alaric tried to speak. He gasped dumbly. His ner­vous system wouldn't respond properly. An unenhanced body would have died of shock, he thought vaguely. One again, he was alive because he was a Space Marine.

Once again Space Marine durability.

Page 274

He must have won great glory for Khorne. He must have taken dozens of skulls for the Skull Throne.

Which is true, but it remains true for anyone on this planet, much less throughout the galaxy. War and killing will inherently strengthn Khorne regardless, its just the degree that matters (someone who does it willingly for them, rather than just in general, probably rpvodies more strength as it is an act of wroship, rather than just an act of emotion.) And remember Khorne (and many of his minions) care less about who dies than they do about the fact that someone dies. If we used "killing someone" as the sole benchmark for being a worshipper of Khorne, that also means that anytime someone tells a lie they worship tzeentch, or if they catch a cold they must be favoring Nurgle. Nevermind anything tied to Slaanesh...

Page 275

"I was not myself for a while. Venalitor tried to have one of his pet daemons take control of me. I did not cooperate, but resisting cost me my mind for a while."
"You did some terrible things." said Haggard.
"I know, but then that was true before I ever came to Drakaasi."

Again quite true. Most of the shit he does in that arena probably pales in comparison to shit that has been done beofre in the name of the Emperor - planets destroyed, populations purged - the carnage caused amongst the Balurians and Sisters in Greey Knights to stop a Daemon are a good example of this - but what matters (at least to Alaric and whether or not he fell) is the why, and that is what determines his fall (he's not doing it to appease Khorne, nor does he like the fact doing it strengthsn Khorne... he does not delude himself in any of this, or that he is suffering corruption in the act, but he has not turned willingly to Chaos either.)

Page 277-278

The priests of Khorne wet the hems of their bronze-threaded robes as they wandered among the
sacrifices. They scraped through the pooling blood with their ceremonial blades, and pored over loops of entrails. They examined the angles at which the soldiers' swords had pierced their bodies. They lifted the visors of their helmets, taking careful note of the final expressions on their mutated faces. For several hours, they pursued their divinations, until swarms of insects descended on the fresh corpses, and the blood began to congeal in fascinating patterns on the surface of the bronze shield.

Khorne has no psykers or sorcerers, but he does have priests. Which probably explains the source of his abilities. (They're not magic, they're miracles.. just as any ritual, summoning, etc. is a "miracle" for Khornate religion.) Again, objectively it probably all can be considered psychic power or sorcery, but such is the paradoxical nature of the warp and its variations. Also, Khornate divination.

[Connor MacLeod]

Last part, and.. done! Say Bye Bye to Alaric.

Page

"You killed us."

"I did." said Alaric. "I almost fell to Khorne, but I did not fall all the way, and I was brought back."

Almost fell. Again its a matter of degree here. That corruption has happened is indisputable, but how much is debatable - he certainly hasn't forsaken the Emperor or been deceived yet.

Page 282

The daemon had spent thousands of years in ser­vice to Tzeentch, but of course he had not truly served the Liar God, since Tzeentch did nothing so mundane as dispense orders. He manipulated, he bled half-truths into the minds of foes and follow­ers so that they converged at a point in space and time that Tzeentch had conceived in ages past.

Very rarely, he spoke to the souls of his servants. It was a great honour, and yet a thing to be greatly feared, for he still lied. It also meant that Tzeentch was displeased enough to commit the great medi­ocrity of speaking to his servants as a god.

Tzeentch required souls, new servants, perhaps, or fodder, or maybe playthings to be caged in a maddening labyrinth in the warp, so that Tzeentch could observe their torment with a smile on his thousand mouths. He required souls nonetheless, and the holier the better. The more they believed in the corpse-emperor, the false god entombed on Terra, the sweeter the terror and madness would be.

Raezazel the Cunning was tasked with finding such souls and delivering them to Tzeentch. Why they were needed did not matter to Raezazel. Quite possibly, Tzeentch needed none of them, and it was merely the act of their abduction that would set in motion some impossibly complicated sequence of events that Tzeentch wished to come to pass.d.

Tzeentch's MO, and his task to Raezazel.

Page 283-284

He came to a belt of isolated worlds and proclaimed himself a prophet..
...
Nobles and governors fell under the spell...
...
They found a spacecraft and used all the cult's resources making it warp-worthy, and making it home to thousands of followers.

Razzie's cult is able to purchase and refurbish a warp capable spacecraft, using the resources tapped from a handful of worlds.

Page 284-285

The ship reached the Eye of Terror, and the way­ward tides of the warp there were calmed, perhaps by chance, perhaps by the impossible will of Tzeentch.
...

The pilgrims, though, were only human, and they were fallible. Their navigation had failed to take into account one of the many worlds that drifted across the Eye of Terror on the echoes of the warp's haphazard tides. One such planet was in their path as the ship exited the warp, and the ship was caught in its gravity well, its course spiralling down towards the surface.
...
Raezazel stayed on the ship, using sorcery to force it back onto its course, but Raezazel's powers were not enough to compete with the gravity of a planet.

The ark ship apparently was navigated by the pilgrims, not a navigator, from whereever it had arisen to the Eye (why was it not stopped?) Ship gets caught in gravity well and lands on surface (damaged perhaps, but intact enough it will launch off eventually.)

Also Tzeentchian daemon can apparently use his powers to influence warp navigation - the Thousand Sons are implied to have similar capability.

Page 285

The ship crashed into a city, and its structure was sound enough to keep it intact, but the minds of its inhabitants were not so sound.

As I said it survived collision.

Page 293

"The Hammer of Daemons had a medical suite," said Alaric, recalling the images of the ship from Raezazel's memories, "autosurgeons, synthi-flesh weavers, maybe even medical servitors."

The sort of medical technology available to (Wealthy and influential) civilians.

Page 294

Alaric had died a dozen times over on Drakaasi, but being a Space Marine meant that none of them
had quite counted yet.

More Space Marine durability.

Page 296

The Hathran Guardsmen took the swords that most resembled the cavalry blades with which their forefathers had fought, the horse tribes of their home world that had never seemed so far away.

Armoured regiment that seems to have had some origins in horse cavalry. This may suggest they also still raise rough riders, but it does also suggest that such forces can move onto other forms of warfare.

Page 308-309

"that Arguthrax's ambassador to the warp was murdered..."
...
..hunting the emissaries and heralds who formed Arguthrax's link to his court in the warp. Arguthrax might even be forced to retreat there or be cut off from his fellow daemons...

The corporeal daemon has a warp-ambassador, or maybe more a middleman.


Page 309-310

Daemons were as welcome as mortals in Vel'Skan's arena.
...
..along with other daemonic lords of Drakaasi..
...
Many were priests, resplendent in the vestments of Khorne's various
priesthoods. Others were soldiers, proud in armour or uniforms. More were simply wealthy or powerful and wore that influence in the lavishness of their dress and their coteries of slaves.
Among them were Drakaasi's mortal lords...

Those in attendance of the arena, as well as a cross-section of the upper echelons of Khornate society on this world. Note the Khornate priests seem to encompass many different "aspects"

Page 311

"More than half of those have wagered many skulls on him to die."

appropriately the medium of exchange on a Khornate world (or at least this one)... is a skull.

Page 315

...with blades fine and numerous enough to tease out every
nerve ending on a victim...

Ouch

Page 315
[quote
The
prison guards were easy to spot; their eyes burned in their ruined faces, for they were just hollow shells of bones and meat to house the daemons controlling them.
...
]Neither the daemon, nor the human trapped somewhere inside, had any idea that Kelhedros was
there. It was as if the eldar could just opt out of reality and ghost past the perception of anyone he didn't want to see him.[/quote]

Possessed guards, and Eldar stealth.. or rather Dark Eldar super stealth. Pretty sure there are Dark Eldar who can do shit lik ethis.


Page 316

Lords from across Drakaasi sent captives to be strapped in down here where the precision machines would peel spiral strips from their skin until they broke. A person could be almost completely dissected, and still remain alive and conscious.

interesting bit of technology.

Page 317

The balls of flame set into his piggy face roved across the room, but they couldn't focus on
Kelhedros. The darkness helped. The waves of pain and misery helped even more. The torture chamber had such a history of suffering that it was like a shroud in which Kelhedros could wrap himself.

Shadows, plus emotional stress of general suffering, especially for a long term, help the Eldar hide from a daemon.

PAge 318

Kruulskan grabbed the slab with his remaining good hand and ripped it from its moorings. He spun once, like a hammer thrower, and hurled the slab at Kelhedros. Kelhedros dived out of the way as the metal slab crashed into the wall, crunching through the torture device.

No idea how big the slab is, but it had leather restraints so probably at least man sized. ASsuming a rectangle 1 metre wide, by 2 meters tall and 5 cm thick and made of iron we're talking 750-800 kilos easily, and this is a daemon incarnated for maybe a century.

Funny enough the daemon takes quite a bit of damage to the wrists, head, etc.. and doesnt seem to be bothered by that. Or rather the daemon inhabiting the body is. It literally is a meat puppet to the daemon.

Page 325-326

He had never thought he could despise a place like he despised Drakaasi in that
moment. Hatred was holy to a Grey Knight and, yet he had never felt it as he did for the vermin who populated the stands.
...
He could have let the noise of the crowd in and taken strength from it, but that was not who he was. He was not a gladiator fighting for glory, but a servant of the Emperor fighting first for survival, and then for justice.
...
He had a weapon in his hand and an enemy to kill. That was all a citizen of the Imperium ever needed, that and the hate.

Sounds to me like Alaric hasn't fallen to chaos, despite what he's been through. He may have been close to breaking, but he didn't break. Besides its silly to think it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a Grey Knight to not break just because it hasn't happened yet. The same was said (still is said) of the Sisters, yet they have (willingly) turned to Chaos... so even if a GK did break, the Imperium and Inquisition is not about to let on that it happened and ruin their image, are they?

Page 328

Alaric smiled. It was a strange thing to feel, some humour, some joy, up there amid the blasphemy and death, but it was there, because Alaric was human, and being human meant dragging hope out of hell.

And because Grimdark and skulls gets repeititve and dull.

Page 330

Behind him were four thousand arena slaves in the uniforms of the Hathran Armoured Cavalry.

the remains of the Hathran armoured cavalry. They must have been a damn large regiment. I dont think they were all armoured though, combined regiment maybe (armour and infantry). I'd guess they lost at least half at Sarthis Major and the arena battles after, but probably several times that. high thousands, low tens of thousands at least?

Page 330

It was also the only chance the slaves would have of escaping the planet, but if Alaric was honest with himself, truly honest, he had to accept that their escape was a secondary objective for him.

Many of them would die. Alaric knew he was sacrificing them for his own ends, but that was the way the galaxy worked. It was a cruel place, and that meant that, sometimes, he had to be crueller.

Some chance is better than none, but Alaric's real goal is to stop Ebondrake's Khornate crusade and to destroy this world as much as he can in the process, even if it means killing his allies and himself in the process. Like I said before, the shit he did for Khorne pales to the bloodshed he unleashes in the name of the Emperor - grimdark though it may be, but the intention is what matters here, not the act.

This actually reminds me alot of things in Eye of Terror and Pawns of Chaos, thematically - where you have humans (or Space Marines) faced with Chaos, seemingly tempted towards corruption or surrender, and yet still decide to opt for humanity and Order and the Imperium and fight back against Chaos. It's not a particularily stirring or in-depth theme, but for the 40K universe it works. (Better than MORE SKULLS FOR DARKNESS).

Page 350

...headed for the sky chariot stationed beside the eyrie. It was a relic of an earlier age, a piece of grav-technology that the
Imperium, in its bloated weakness, could no longer replicate.

Naturally. They can replicate Grav cars, skimmers, grav chutes, grav-gliders, gravbikes, land speeders, and so on though. But not grav chariots.

Page 351-352

Now that Alaric knew the truth he could see the flare of its engine cowling, the blunted underside of
the prow, the ridges of sensor towers and the indentations of torpedo tubes.
..
"It's an old ship,' said Alaric. 'All the best ones are old."

The Hammer had torpedo tubes?? Also its old - thousands of years old judging by Razzie. The fact its a dagger shape (like Heresy era designs) also confirms this. It also has voice operated doors.

Page 357

"You are things of darkness, with skin made of shadow, wrapped in silence. Mandrakes, the Guardsmen called you, assassins and spies."

Our "Eldar" is a Dark Eldar

Page 361

Scathach's contingent was the largest, with rank after rank of solemn warriors, from uniformed men with guns, to armoured
cavalry.

There are at least guns here, and uniformed troops of some kind (although what era or type we dont know) and I'm not sure if armoured cavalry means vehicles, horses, or both.


Page 367

"It's working. There's plasma in the conduits! The reactors are warming up!"
...
"Take-off vectors are pre-loaded," said one of the faithful from the navigations helm, surrounded by slab-like banks of memm-crystal. "They're all up. Once the thrusters are on-line and the main engines are primed we can take off."

Mem crystal, an the ship seems both highly automated and ot have weathered the millenia well. Even the plasma fuel did. Also note they need engines to take off.

Page 371

Thousands of arrows and spears rained against him, but he breathed a sheet of black fire over Tire-sia's tribespeople, and a hundred of them died, gutted to charred skeletons by the force of Ebon­drake's anger.

Lord Ebondrake, Lord of Drakaasi and its basic ruler.. he seems to have his own built in warp flamethrower, as well as resisting crude weaponry. tens if not hundreds of megajoules easily, and more liekly tens or hundreds of gigajoules (cremation, if not totally so.) Of course, being the warp, its possible it's technobabble (maybe its just flesh dissolving magic with some thermal side effects)

Pages 372-373 -

The echoes of the battle rippled through Drakaasi like an earthquake reaching right through the planet's core. Every one of the planet's great cities felt it and they, too, were suddenly divided.

..
Drakaasi quaked. The day turned blood red, while on the other side of the planet the stars grew into burning rubies like eyes gorged with bloodshed. Howling winds ripped across the plains, rousing every living thing into a frenzy, turning hidden cabals of cultists against one another or forcing the jungles into bouts of continent-wide cannibalism, predators and prey turning on their own. Even in the depths of the sea, bizarre creatures, unknown on the surface, ripped one another to shreds with needle-like teeth.
There was a sound on the wind that carried fur­ther than the clashing of blades and the screams of the dying.
It was laughter.

Khorne was enjoying this particular spectacle.

its too long to actually quote it for what can be drawn from it, but Alaric basically triggers a revolt and open war in the capital of Drakaasi, and the effect sof it reverberate through the entire planet, triggering a planetwide war. and its definitely indicated that Khorne is the cause behind it. Because as we know, Khorne doesn't care who dies, as long as people die.

Page 377

Alaric fired a burst from his storm bolter. Venali­tor swatted the bolter shells away like insects.

Venaltior has the reflexes to knock aside bolt rounds at close range. Alaric has similar reflexes, without his psychic powers (he's still got the collar of Khorne on, remember.)

Page 379

"Our pride, our wrath, our devotion, all these were just a weapon for you." Venalitor smiled. "The Dark Gods would be proud of you, Justicar."
Alaric had never heard anything so hateful, because he knew that it was true.

True, but also because Chaos is a paradoxical beast - you literally cannot do anything that they wouldnt' approve or dispprove of, sometimes simultaneously.

Page 379

He fired his storm bolter point-blank into Venal­itor's chest. Venalitor's armour held, but the force of the exploding bolter shell was enough to knock him off his feet.

Chaos armor stnads up to close range bolter fire, but the explosive effects still cna send a guy flying. Probably more concussion than fragmentation, but I don't think at close range a grenade would do that, either.


Page 381-382

..its plasma reactors filled up with superheated fuel.
...
Plasma was coursing through the ship's conduits, swirling from the reactors through the engines.
..
The engines flared and blew out the back of the cranium, incinerating dozens as plasma fire spewed from the exhaust housings.
...
..the ship rose on vertical thrusters..

Interestingly they describe the plasma as "superheated fuel" it has "vertical thrusters", and the intial engines can "incinerate dozens" (dozens of megajouels to dozens of gigajoules at least, simply to lift off and hover.) And the reactors are tied to the engines (like also to the weapons, etc.)

PAge 383

The flight deck of the Hammer of Daemons was as lavishly decorated as the rest of the ship.
..
The ship's shuttle craft had survived the years intact, sealed inside the flight deck...

- the Hammer of Daemons is large enough to have a shuttle bay housing multiple shuttles.

Page 384

Alaric shot Gearth once in the stomach. The bolter shell exploded in his abdomen and blew a length of spine out of his back. Gearth flopped to the ground.

The woman murderer gets his comuppance. Blowing ot the torso at the same time.

Page 388

He saw Lord Ebondrake on the pinnacle of a mighty temple, holding its brass dome against a horde of Vel'Skan's citizens who had gathered in a spontaneous army to bring him down. He inciner­ated them by the dozen, but there were too many of them...

Lord Ebondrake's magic flamethrower again.

PAge 389

He aimed the shuttle's controls upwards, accelerating to orbital speed. He glanced down at the fuel gauge. Much of the fuel had evaporated in the shuttle's tanks in its years lying idle, but there was just enough to get him out of orbit once he was beyond the atmosphere, and perhaps to somewhere the Inquisition would find him.
...
Alaric could survive for years if he had to in half-sleep, his brain shut down until only the most basic of
life processes were continued.

he probably would have gained some velocity from the Hammer's own passage, but I suspect he needs at least some from whatever fuel the shuttle has. Whatever it is it can evaporate over millenia, but not totally so, and its powerful enough to allow him to break orbit and perhaps get out of system in some reasonable timeframe. he can leave orbit in minutes or seconds, but again hard to measure since we don't know how long the Hammer took to reach orbit.

It would be hard to speculate how far or how long he'd have to travle, but unless its near-c "years" means decades if not centuries or millenia, since light years would be separating systems, but he appears confident that the shuttle could make good time away from and out of this system (suggesting at least several tens if not several hundreds of km/s velocity - 500-600 km/s to escape a system if it were like our solar system, for example.)


Page 391

The bridge was ahead. Raezazel melted the blast doors into a pool of molten gold.

Assuming a 1 meter wide, 2 metre tall blast door about 5 cm thick we're talking 1900 kilos, specific heat of 126 J\kg*K, 1337K melting point, and heat iof fusion of 63 kj/kg meaning it needs some 194 kj per kg to melt.. 368 MJ over a short timeframe to melt a good blast door.. if the door is entirely gold, and it was literal melting. Problem with Tzeentchian daemons is they can "burn" stuff by mutating it, so he could just be magicing it into a liquid state, or somethign (like a flamer of tzeentch.)

Page 392

A couple had guns from the ship's armoury. Raezazel turned the floor beneath them to liquid, and they sank to their thighs in molten gold, spasming in shock as they were incinerated.

A couple MJ to incinerate, melting the floor to thigh level (maybe half a deep and 2/3 a metre diameter) 3500 kg.. at least 680 MJ... but it oculd be several times that depending on exact diameter. Again timeframe isnt specific but relatively short, and the ncie thing here is that this strongly suggest the daemon is literally melting through stuff. He also forms golden scythes to slice through stuff as well. He apparnetly also consumes those around him and can assimilate their memories.

Page 394

Raezazel's realm was the human mind. Machines were just tools, just pieces of metal. He had no way of rewriting the ship's cogitators as he might rewrite the memories of a victim.

This daemon seems to have an odd weakness against cogitators. This may suggest it takes a particualr kind of daemon to corrupt technology (which is interesting considering what we saw in Dark adeptus.)

Sufficed to say Tzeentch was not happy with Razzie, so those he killed got revenge.


Page 396

Alaric stayed in suspended animation for seven months.
...

A salvage team trailing an Imperial battlefleet found the distress beacon on Alaric's shuttle. Think­ing it was a saviour pod from a larger ship, and that they could ransom the crew inside to the Imperial Navy, they eagerly boarded the shuttle among visions of retiring on the armfuls of credits the Navy was sure to give them for the officers inside.

He spent "months" on the planet captured.. this must suggest he spent close to a year, probably more in captivity.

Also we learn something of navy practicies.. salvage teams taking ransom (reward) for recovering Imperial navy crews.

I rather doubt that he reached any systems, not in seven months and even if he was moving at near-c, which means he was picked up somewhere in between systems. Light months out from his location at best, and probably less. The salvage team (not navy) must have a warp ship to retrieve him, and quite possibly has some sort of FTL sensors (passive likely) to pick up whatever beacon there is.

Page 398

Greenskinned and hulking, most of them were brute animals, barely able to hold an axe the right way, but a few of them had enough cunning to lead their fellow creatures, and one, the grizzled one-eared greenskin, had a light in his eyes that suggested he might still understand.

The scaephylyds and greenskins assembled around the general, lowering their weapons in deference. The general waved a forelimb, encompassing the shattered city and the landscape still torn by desperate, endless war.

"Do you see now?" he asked, his intonation of the scaephylyd tongue a momentous rumble. "Chaos."

I wonder if this is supposed to be some sort of reference to the unheard of (And possibly non-canon nowadays) reference to Orks falling to Chaos. In early fluff it was possible (But rare) but nowadays its ivrtually impossible.

Page 399

"This place," said Inquisitor Nyxos, "used to be a pleasure world."
...

"You could win a place here with a lifetime of ser­vice and a few medals. Lord generals, admirals, that sort of thing. Good hunting, plenty of imported lads and lasses - all very willing. Hot and cold run­ning narcotics. Well worth a couple of centuries in the trenches." Nyxos turned away from the sight with a smile. "I suppose the planet didn't like it

...

The stately pile, half-reclaimed by the forest, had apparently once been the Inquisitorial fortress. All the equipment had been stripped out when the planet decided to turn on its inhabitants, but the mansion still had warrens of cells and storage vaults beneath the handsome exterior.

Inquisitorial fortress world.Its not sure whether the planet turned to the people there because of some sort of genetic engineering catastrophe (as can be attributed to some Deaht Worlds) or because it is turning to Chaos. I'm guessing the former, since there is a Space Marine and Inquisitor actually on the planet. Once again too we find these palces are havens for Chaos cults.

Page 403

"I did some terrible things. I turned Drakaasi's lords on one another, just like a cultist would to foment
rebellion. I consorted with heretics, and aliens. I left a great many people to die to escape, and to get revenge. A Grey Knight would not have done those things. Many times, I wondered if the right thing to do would be to just die, but I… could not. I had to survive. I had to go that far, and even survival was not enough."
"You fear corruption." said Nyxos.
"I do. More than anything. I know what fear is now."
...
He had probably seen just about every strange and terrible form corruption could take, but a Grey Knight who had fallen was beyond any of that. "Alaric, there are ways you can be purified. It is not easy, or painless, but it can be done. We have ways."

"Can I fight as a Grey Knight again?"

"There is more than one way for a Grey Knight to serve, and many more for you. You have an
imagination, Alaric, dedication, yes, but creativity too. How many Grey Knights could have survived on Drakaasi? Ignoring whether it was right or not, how many could have thought it up in the first place?"

Discussion of the aftermath of Alaric's trials. Again uncertainty as to whether he has fallen, but he is clearly guilt-ridden and prone to think of the worst of himself (even though he earlier said he had almost given in but nto clearly.) HE clearly has remained loyal (as he sees it), and the fact he fears corruption and remains aware of his onw possible corruption are optimistic signs. Indeed Nyxos seems not to find him evil or tainted, or not irrevocably so (Alaric is willing to accept the consequences - more than a real Chaos Champion would do.) - but Nyxos ia an Inquisitor and they are pragmatic and devious, evne the fanatical or lyal ones.

[Lost Soal]

So I've finally managed to buy & read The Emperor's Gift which is Bowden's Gray Knights story set set in the lead up to the First Battle for Armageddon against Angron, the battle against him and the aftermath of the purging.
While I'm not going to give a full breakdown analysis I will talk a bit about the portrayal as these are very different from Counters Knights. I'm also going to try doing this without spoilers since its still a pretty recent book.
BTW, I liked it.

The biggest difference in the portrayal for me is with the psychic core (Yes they call it a core of faith but since it can be nullified with an Collar of Khorne, its psychic). Counter gave them a psychic core which made them incorruptible, which never really made sense to me since being a psyker makes you a potential gateway and thus more at risk not less. But whatever. Besides this however they aren't really psychic with only the elite Terminator squads being able to focus their abilities together into an active attack.
Here however all the Knights are active psykers with their owns individual powers; Telekine, Pyromancer etc. and all members of a squad create a telepathic bond with each other allowing them to communicate and feel what the others feel. They are trained to feed and focus their powers through the Justicar when banishing powerful deamons and for other occasions.
There is a discussion as to the source of their incorruptibility, whether it's genetic, the titular Emperors Gift or through a constant struggle "to always remain pure of thought and deed"

This book also goes back to the old fluff of absolute secrecy. Anyone sees a deamon, dead, anyone sees a Gray Knight; dead or at best mind scrubbed, even knowledge any of the Primarchs rebelled is kept secret. Amongst the Astartes only the Chapter Master knows of the GK's existence

Equipment wise they are equipped with Nemesis weapons of various designs, storm bolters loaded with blessed shells (no mention of sacrificed innocents) and power armour equipped with warp jump generators.

GK ships are much faster through the warp than others, a 2 month journey under conventional warp would only take less than 3 weeks in a GK ship which is a modified Nova Class frigate.

This is everything which comes immediately to mind without covering the actual story & plot.

[Lost Soal]

Actually, no, there is something I forgot. The Emperor's Gift. As briefly mentioned this is the GK's genetic inheritance from the Emperor which makes them anathema to deamons and weakening them, making them easier to destroy.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well after a lengthy delay I've decided to cover 'The Emperor's Gift.' by ADB. And as you might expect of anything ADB writes, I'm quite impressed by it. But even by ADB standards this book, in my lights, stands out. In this novel ADB does what he does best - try to bring complexity and depth to superhuman killing machines, much as he does with the traitor legions. Except here, its the supehuman psychic daemon killers. He doesn't portray them as some over-the-top 'kill em all' superhero crap. Instead they are very serious, introspective and even a bit callous detached from the rest of reality. They are, like most of ADB's creations, flawed creatures, with potential to grow or to fail by their lights. And there are twists and turns aplenty - the story does a great job of portraying many differnet sides to the factions involved and avoids falling into the trap of making one character the obvious bad guy. Indeed, ADB traps the reader this way quite often, presenting each faction as perhaps being flawed in some key way - including the Grey knights.

The story follows one Hyperion, a powerful Grey Knight psyker (albeit a newcomer) who, amongst other things, gets tied up in the conflict of First Armageddon against Angron (and its portrayed as epically as ADB can manage.) and the fallout from the victory (The inquisition vs Space wolves.) The story is very much a 'gray area' sort of thing, as Hyperion's interactions with the various groups, his own failures and flaws, chart the development of the character from his humble beginnings at the start of the book to the veteran we know by the end. This makes it far more than that typical 'day in the life' type of story like you got in Ian Watson's 'Inquisitor' or 'Space Marine' or so many other similar novels. It has an actual story beyond showcasing the Grey Knights and as I discuss during the analysis its what makes this book truly great.

As typical for such updates I will divide them. This time into groups of three rather than two, just because I'm lazy. This is part one.


Page 21

. Hexagrammic wards. We had to be sure you were free from taint. We also had to be certain you recalled nothing of your former life.
The second voice cut in. You have remained here for the mandated ninety-nine nights, as we scryed into your soul.
The ritual is complete, a third voice spoke at last. We are satisfied with your purity.

Potential Grey Knights are examined for purity for 99 knights. That alone is over 3 months.




Page 30

The irises of her eyes could have been cut from those crystals – they were the same clear glass turned cerulean blue by the night sky.
They were artificial, of course. Despite the exquisite craftsmanship to shape them in absolute mimicry of human eyes, I could hear the softest clicks when she would use her bio-optics to take a pict. I often wondered if she had chosen the colour for its inhuman hue.

An in quisitor's augmetic eyes. Shows how well they can be miniaturized and made to seem 'normal'. Not unlike the 'artificial' limb of LExandro from Space Marine/Inquisition War.




Page 31

She carried no scaled-down weapon to fit well with human hands. Hers was a mass-calibre Adeptus Astartes boltgun, Mk Vb Godwyn pattern, hefted like a cannon when she held it in her gloved hands. Evidence of its craftsmanship was in every contour along the weapon’s body: an artisan of rare skill had wrought the black iron alloy with jagged Cretacian runes of dirty gold.
That only raised more questions. I could speak three dialects of Cretacian Gothic, for it was one of the six hundred mongrel threads of the Imperium’s root tongue I studied in the course of my training. The weapon had been crafted for her, that much was undeniable. The scripture along the bolter’s side proved it, though what deeds she had performed alongside the Flesh Tearers Chapter that claimed Cretacia as their home world, I could not guess.
The weapon, so monstrous in delicate human hands, was rendered usable by a streak of thumbnail-sized suspensors attached to the stock. The rare antigravitic coins – three tiny thimbles of bronze – buoyed the weapon by countering its weight.

Astartes grade bolt gun bequeathed to said Inquisitor by the Flesh Tearers for some unnamed deed. She needs suspensors to help lift it, perhaps to even fire it (recoil, potentially.) The suspensors are 'thumbnail sized' which shows how they can be miniaturized.
Hyperion has also learned some 600 variations of Gothic in his career.



Page 31-32

Cheth was a world like ten thousand others.
Populated, clad in a clanking grey covering of industrial cities, yet claiming neither a forge world’s honour, nor a hive world’s flesh resources. It paid its Imperial tithes in coin and trade to the subsector capital, which in turn shipped them to the sector hub, and theoretically on to the coffers of Holy Terra. The last Imperial Guard founding was eleven years ago, and raised almost two hundred thousand fresh Guardsmen, known under the collective regimental name ‘Cheth Sixteenth Rifles’.
..
Cheth supported its own colonies on two nearby mining moons, and maintained a standing defence garrison of one million souls. The Cheth defence force was the usual mixture of veteran ex-Guardsmen and career soldiers, unified with a minor percentage of volunteers who possessed little more training than how to load and shoot straight. A million bodies between invasion and conquest, though. No small figure. Sheer weight of numbers counted where expertise did not.
Even the heavens were well-defended. Thirty-seven weapons platforms orbited the world, and Cheth was a frequent resupply point for Imperial Navy patrols.

10,000 worlds 'just like' Cheth. If we take that literally there are 10K worlds somwhere between a forge world and a hive world.. possibly industrial worlds ( like Vostroya, etc.)
Also without knowing the exact population (probably in the billions) they have around a million PDF (although they are rathe rprofessional) and have raised a regiment with as many as 200K troops in it (not the largest PDF, but sizable.)





Page 32

Cheth’s delicate infrastructure was ruled by the office of the Imperial regent. Unlike many Imperial worlds answering to a lord governor or governor militant, the seat of the Imperial regent was a spiritual post as much as a temporal one, named in honour of the man who would rule the world in lieu of the absent God-Emperor of Mankind.

Apparently a 'Regent' is a different matter form your bog standard Imperial Commander or governor or whatever. It encompasses more than just 'ruler in the Emperor's name' it would seem, although that's not clear. For all we know this is just a local/sector customa nd doesn't carry out throughout the Imperium ( he may just be a Lord or Imperial Commander.)





Page 33

But Cheth differed in one crucial way to ten thousand other Imperial worlds. Those worlds were loyal. Cheth was not.
..
While deviancy, dissidence and apostasy were hardly rare in the great kingdom humanity had carved across the stars, it was rare for a world in the Imperium’s heartlands – with no evidence of former corruption – to fall into sedition.

Mention again of the 10,000 'worlds like Cheth' figure, as well as hint that it is in or close to the Segmentum Solar region (heartlands). Also indication that the core worlds of the Imperium are relatively more peaceful and stable than the outlying regions, which makes sense (they're closer to Terra and the Astronomican, their fleets and gear are supposed to be more sophisticated, they're closer to the Astronomican, etc.
It could also be that '1 in 10,000' is restricted to the segmentum rather than the Imperium as a whole.




Page 36

Psyber-cherubs flitted in the throne room’s rafters, carrying white silk banners proclaiming the regent’s holiness and the many wars won by Cheth’s distant Imperial Guard regiments. The vat-grown cloned infants flew on anti-gravitic angel wings of white iron, giggling and communicating in monotone buzzes of information to one another when they weren’t singing in choir. They had their uses to those enamoured of vile decoration, I’m sure. I still found the spawning of such things to be an abhorrent and blasphemous waste of resources. Was it mankind’s place to breed a soulless imitation of true life? Surely not.

Another frivilous use for the Imperium's advanced technology. Use cloning and antigrav to make midget freakish angel things, but not in your military. NOT AT ALL. It just shows how things can be skewed in those ways. Hyperion is right too in that its a criminal waste of resources, but hey, its the Imperium and they have the corruption and resources to waste, I guess.






Page 38-39

Annika backed away, and a single thought lanced into my mind. My name. She silently said my name.
..
A thousand kilometres above, I opened my eyes.
..
"Fifteen seconds"
..
"The machine-spirits sing. Initiating telep–"

teleport range of 1000 km or so, within 15 seconds of the command. Hyperion also has that range of communication with Annika - Fenrisian born Inquisitor.





Page 40

We closed our hands into fists, and five storm bolters boomed in the harmony of absolute rhythmic unity.
The regent’s physical form burst across the five of us, painting silver armour with vascular, stringy viscera. Bones shattered and crumbled, blasting apart, cracking off our helms and breastplates. A partially articulated ribcage crashed back onto the throne.

5 storm bolters blow apart grossly obese human (some 150-200 kilos, maybe?) 10 bolt rounds equal to at least one, if not several grenades.




Page 40-41

The named warrior drew his blade in a sharp pull. Each of us added our emotions – our disgust, our revulsion, our hatred – to his own, layering our surface thoughts around his clear, clean rage. The touch of our minds spurred his anger deeper, blacker, into a wrath intense enough to cause him physical pain.
But he was strong. He let his own body and brain become the focus for our psychic force, channelling it along the length of his blade. Psychic lightning danced down the sacred steel, raining fragile hoarfrost to the marble floor.
All of this, from our arrival to the focus of killing energy, happened in the span it took Annika’s heart to beat five times.

Which he uses to pin down some sort of daemonic shadow. Its an interesting thing, and rather strong as a theme of this novel. GRay Knights aren't badass simply becuase thy get the best toys (even above Space Marine benefit) and tha tthey're the greatest and most incorruptible - its their unity in mind and purpose, the working as an entire squad, that makes them so formidable.. the sharing of thoughts and mind, even of power and perhaps abilities.




Page 43

She had only half-turned when the energy beam whined aside at the last moment, deflecting to carve a groove in the gilded wall.
A second later, I released my anger as flame. The violet fire ignited him, body and soul. He shrieked as he burned, dissolving to powdery bones in a lake of his own boiling blood. The smell would have been something formidable, but my helm’s olfaction filter negated much of its strength.
Annika cleared her throat when nothing but a blackened skeleton leered up at us.

Hyperion, whom we learn later is a pyrokinetic, can within a second or so reduce the flesh to ash on a human being. Megajoule to gigatjoule range outputs. Hyperion can also race a shield capable of deflecting lasgun fire.




Page 46

My training had torn away the capacity to feel biological desire, but it was still pleasant to watch the ruthlessly feminine grace in the play of her muscles.

Grey Knights, probably like most Space Marines, feel no biological desire as such, but still can appreciate beauty in a sort of abstract way.



Page 46

hey were my own writings: parchments detailing the deeds my brothers and I had achieved in the short year since I’d been appointed with honour to serve Justicar Galeo. The reason she couldn’t read them was because of the runic language used. I wrote everything of import to our Chapter in Trecenti, one of Titan’s encrypted tongues. It used three hundred separate letters in its core alphabet, and had no spoken equivalent.

Grey Knight shave their own secret languages to keep documentation in, which is in keeping with their and the Malleus habits of secrecy and such.



Page 47

"I returned from Cheth not twenty minutes ago. A thorough investigation of the remaining Administratum tiers is now under way, but we have purged the hoggorm nest."
..
"When a new lord militant arrives, he will have to rebuild the infrastructure of planetary governance."
There was nothing unusual in that. Deep purges often required nothing less, and I didn’t understand why she was choosing to tell me all this. There were three inquisitors and their retinues on the surface, of which Annika was merely one. More than enough to deal with such matters.

AFtermath of an Inquisitorial purge of hertic/corrupt elements. Not surprising, as we've seen similar in the Eisenhorn and Ravenor novels - the 'mop up' included. It is pretty nasty and probably disruptive of the planet's society, but utlimately useful in the long term. Its also an interesting contrast to what we see later on.. Annika is one side of the Inquisition and we will see another later.
'



Page 49

"Given the empyrean’s tides, Valdasca could be as much as two months away under conventional warp flight."
..
"It is less than three weeks for the Karabela"

Grey Knights vessel (a gladius frigate I believe) is roughly 2-3x faster than 'conventional' warp drive (8 weeks vs 3)





Page 49-50

... the last of those was the reason my brothers and I had been sent with her in the first place. The Prognosticars’ vision had been one of rare clarity, heralding a world going dark within the year if the source of the corruption was not ended before it could bloom.

The GK make extensive use of divination/preog to anticipate disaster. Given the slow response time and limited numbers of the GK, this makes sense. Although they probably aren't nearly so good at it as the Eldar are.




Page 51-52

The air was also populated by debris. It hung above the ground, orbiting Malchadiel with stellar serenity, making him the star at the heart of a system of scrap. Metal tubing turned in the slow aerial dance, along with focusing lenses, rivets, screws, bolts and slats of matt-black armour plating.
Whatever he was working on, its component parts floated around him in conflicting directions without ever colliding.
..
The mess Malchadiel had made began to condense and twist together in the air, with only the faintest whisperings of metal against metal as each chunk of debris met. Screws rolled unerringly into place, turning of their own accord to spiral down and lock tight. I watched a series of focusing lenses drift into a piecemeal gun barrel, while unseen hands screwed each section together with patient care.
Annika caught on at last, and the realisation narrowed her eyes. In less than a minute, a fully assembled, many-barrelled multilaser turret hovered in the air before Malchadiel.

GK Telekinetic can lift the mass of a multilasers components and assemble them in under a minute with precision. By FFG terms a multilaser is some 35 kg - not much in terms of lifting ability, but impressive for the multitasking and precision.




Page 54

Our training scours the mind beyond simple lobotomy. All memory is flensed away, stripped and removed as a surgeon cuts cancer from healthy flesh. Sothis and Malchadiel were no different to any of us in that regard. They remembered nothing of their lives before coming to Titan as children.

Space Marine mindwipes for GK.



Page 55

I can’t accurately record the sheer number of infants harvested from the Imperium who fail in their training on Titan, to die forgotten and alone in the bowels of our fortress-monastery. I’ve seen archival evidence that for every million children stolen by our agents, a single one survives to become a Grey Knight. The rest are fated to end their lives as servitors, Chapter serfs, or more likely as names in the Archives of Failure.

Success rate for GK, which is perhaps even worse than it is for Space Marines (1 in 10,000 or 100,000 IIRC)
We can also do some math based on this. If there are 1 GK for every million potentials, and we know that GK recruit from psykers brought to Terra (those strong enough.) we can further refine this down. We know there are at least hundreds of million if not billions of astropaths (hundreds or thousands on average per a million worlds, corroborated by the Cacodominus bit.) Which means that there are at least hundreds if not thousands of potential grey knights recruits from the tithe on Terra (although not all will be taken) We also know that those represent at least 1 psyker per 100,000 or 1 million nonpsykers (depending on your source), which means there is roughly 1 Grey Knight per 100 billion or even trillion normals (roughly) which in turn would imply there are something on the order of 100 trillion to a quadrillion people in the Imperium (at least). And quite possibly more. Indeed given the varaibles I fudged its quite likely there are much more (quintillions of humans is quite possible by implication, because I am almost certainly lowballing the psyker numbers)




Page 55

The structure of his visage still resembled his brother’s, but his face was a discoloured mesh of bare bionics, regrown flesh and synthetic skin. Most of his teeth were replacement metal pegs set into his gums,..

Astartes augmetics and cosmetic surgery (or what passes for it)




Page 61

I could feel the tight, narrow focus of his silent voice. If a standard psychic emanation was akin to a shining a light upon a mind, this was a thin, sharp blade of communication, jabbing directly at each of us. The justicar was taking great care to ensure no nearby minds overheard his words. Each of us shifted our own speech to the same unspoken communion.
+I know that name.+ Dumenidon leeched a touch of Galeo’s strength to respond with the same focus.
..
Proximity to the others using their powers always strengthened my own. It was no effort at all to embrace Galeo’s psychic pulse, reform it, and push it back with my own words within.

More of that peculiar 'unity/sharing' that marks Grey Knights and their abilities - they are stronger than the sum of their parts by this bond, I believe. What's more they can 'borrow' power quite easily and efficiently (back and forth, such as using Galeo' spower to facilitate the communications)
Also 'narrow beam' psychic communication, which is like the psychic version of using a laser rather than omnidirectional radio waves to communicate.




Page 67

The Frostborn was a standard Adeptus Astartes destroyer, meaning it bristled with weaponry, statuary, jagged battlements, and was close in size and bulk to the Karabela. Our own vessel was a modified Nova-class frigate, better armed and much faster than its counterparts in the Imperial Navy or the lesser Chapters.

It is a Hunter Class destroyer, and the GK ship is a Nova class Frigate.




Page 69

" Look at the way the ablative armour is wrenched outwards, like the petals of a flower in bloom. "

Space Marine escorts have ablative armour.




Page 76

An Adeptus Astartes warship is a bastion in the void, designed to break blockade fleets, rain bombardment upon the surface of a world, and face down warships many times its size. Many of the secrets in our fleet vessels’ exact design are lost to us, predating the Imperium, with their roots back in the Dark Age of Technology. Suffice to say, any Imperial Space Marine warship is a fortress in space, and its insides are a labyrinth of ornate architecture and grand chambers.
..
While a Hunter-class destroyer lacked the scale of its larger cousins, it wasn’t entirely devoid of majesty.

Again the Frostborn is a Hunter class destroyer, and we learn about how special Space Marine starships are relative to their navy counterparts, and how the GK are even more special. This in part evidently explains their ability to take on ships many times larger than them (escrots presumably taking on cruisers, for example.)
One imagines that Inquisitorial and AdMech vessels have similar 'benefits'... and probably also reflects the value of the truly 'old' and irreplacable ships - they are much more powerful for their size than more 'modern' contemporaries, which makes them rare and precious. And explains why salvaging of hulks from various sources is conisdered such a valuable way of acquiring starships.





Page 80

While we are no longer men in the human sense, we carry our origins within us, so no Knight is exactly equal, either.
Sothis had no affinity to carry out a sending, nor did Dumenidon. Malchadiel’s abilities were primarily those of a telekine, while I was classified in the strictest terms as a pyrokine. But of the five souls in Castian, the responsibility for a sending always fell to Galeo or myself. They were almost always undertaken alone

Differences in Grey Knight gifts. It reminds me of the 'specialization' from the Soul Drinkers and other GK stuff, but at the same time its not quite so 'extreme' specialziation/




Page 80

all by hall, chamber by chamber, I unfolded my senses and drifted through the dead ship.
To see without sight, to perceive without any physical sense, is disconcerting even for a prepared mind. I’d once performed a sending in a habitation block, and the assaulting feedback had been a siege against my senses: a hundred minds hammering their needs and thoughts back into my brain, all in one toxic flood. Beneath that maelstrom of sentience lingered the simple, sharp hind-brain instincts of the vermin breeding behind every wall, and the contours of the building itself – its angles, the porous holes in its materials, the way its weight leaned on its foundations…
Sending my senses through the destroyer was poisonously kin to that experience. The baroque walls and narrow conduits pulsed with a secret heartbeat, alive in a way that no scanner would ever detect.

Sending.. which is bascially a psyker's form of detection/scrying (something we've seen before) - its quite extensive too.. it can 'pick up' even inantimate objects by the warp/psychic energy imprinted upon it. (which as I've noted in Ahriman Exile, can give an indicator that you could develop some sort of crute FTL comms by 'painting' a target with warp energy in some fashion and then picking up those emanations - sort of like marking something with a homing beacon or a bright glowing flare/mark of paint to make it easier to pick out.





Page 81

I narrowed my senses, focusing the sending through the grand chambers of the enginarium deck. The arcane fusion reactor machinery that had once been the warship’s burning heart lay silent and still, decorated in frozen blood and drifting debris. The plasma in its pipes and core was similarly motionless, thick in its frozen state.

Okay its a fusion reactor.. with frozen plasma in it. Maybe its actually promethium. Whether its literal fusion or 'magic pseudo-fusion' I'll leave it up for others to debate (lol).




Page 82-83

"Why did they not eject their warp core? Was there no other way to return to real space?"
..
"They couldn’t break from the warp. They couldn’t even cripple the ship to stop it, by hurling their warp core into space. The Navigator wouldn’t let them. There’s a network of labyrinthine cables beneath the deck still aching to touch, stinging with the resonance from the Navigator’s spite. He wouldn’t even let them slow down"
..
Surely that amount of control over a warship’s journey was unprecedented. A Navigator was a guide, a pilot through the warp, not an overseer of every single system.

Ejecting the warp core.. apparently there is a physical element to the core that can be ejected.. unless they're talkinga bout dumping out the reactor system (which is what happens later on.) I wonder if this is meant to be some sort of deliberate Star Trek reference, or something?
The curious thing is, it would also imply that said reactors are farily close to the surface of the ship (in order to be ejected) which seems to be a curious limitation to impose on a Space Marine vessel, since they are designed to fight.




Page 94

It wasn’t an uncommon reaction, even among the Adeptus Astartes. Most Chapters believed our order to be a myth, if they’d heard of us at all. Few souls were allowed to remain aware of our existence.

Most Space Marines are unaware of Grey Knights, and consider them mythical.



Page 94

"The Great Wolf, High Jarl Grimnar, told us of you. He sent us to find you. To Titan, he said. Sail to Saturn’s mightiest moon. "

The wolf vessel was sent to seek the Grey Knights at Titan.




Page 105

The man had three eyes. The third, in the centre of his forehead, opened to reveal a bloody black orb. I didn’t meet its gaze. None of us did. To do so was death, even through the dubious protection of our retinal displays. Ceramite and devotion were no armour against a Navigator’s third eye. Some deaths cut right to the soul.

Grey Knight defenses offer no protection against the Navigator's Third Eye.




Page 105

Galeo’s chanting almost drowned out every other sense. His reverent words unified us, forming a conduit to pour our power into him. In this moment of execution, he became Castian, the manifestation of all five of us, wielding our strength as his own. This was our brotherhood brought to life, focused into a killing weapon.

GK squads again concentrating thier power into a single individual, and even through that individuals Force weapon.


Page 106

+The Anathema’s sons.+

In reference to the GK. If one recalls the Anathema was the name the Chaos Gods gave to Big E. Whilst All Space Marines are descended from Big E, I suspect that this may be referencing their purported 'special' connection (rumors that the gene seed comes directly from the Emperor, which would make sense in context of the GK geneseed or analgoue being called 'The Emperor's Gift')




Page 107-108

Each one was angelic in form, possessing spectral radiance in place of wings, yet each was debased by flayed wounds, weeping blood from the carvings across their pale skin. Unarmed they came, silent in the airlessness, with lashes of bleached light reaching from their shoulders. Their eyes bled the deepest, richest red.
..
"Wraith Angels"

I dont remember if these have appeared in any other source, or what faction they belong to (Khornate I'd guess, given later stuff) but its interesting nonetheless.



Page 110

Some say the Emperor’s Gift makes us immune to corruption. This may be so, or it may be that our resistance requires a simple explanation for our Inquisitorial masters’ minds. Sometimes I believe our lords and mistresses within the ordos fail to understand this about us. As sons of Titan, we are incorruptible through devotion, attaining purity only through tireless effort. No soul is born perfect, but a warrior can be bred to become it.

It could be a bit of both really. The Gift, their psychic natures, and their special gear all give them the raw potential, but it takes the training, indoctrination - indeed the literal reforging they undergo - to make them the weapons they are (literally, as the book states.) And like all weapons they often need maintenance in proportion to their quality/capability.



Page 112

In that battle, time lost its hold on my senses. Even an eidetic mind cannot process a thousand actions undertaken through instinct when you move faster than perception can follow.

This may be considered odd given that Space Marines have been implied to have millisecond or even microsecond level 'perceptions' - where time slows down and they can absorb and process information. Theri bodies don't move that fast, but it helps their ability to assimilate information and plan even in the midst of combat as well as general multitasking (Word bearer trilogy, Space wolf novels, HH novels, etc.) Maybe its not so much the time thats the issue as the number of things they have to process. Just because they can think/analyze at microsecond scales does not mean they can keep track of everything they can see - a thousand objects at once would be impossible for a normal human, so its not terribly surprising if a Space Marine can't.)



Page 113

Of the many weapons forged in our monastery’s subterranean foundries, few required the same complexity and care in their crafting as a nemesis warding stave. Like any nemesis-breed weapon, its inbuilt matrix was a shielded, inert core awaiting psychic activation, and just like the more traditional blades, its functions could only be activated by the thoughts of the warrior it had been built for.
..
Every stave bore a headpiece of punishingly rare purity. I’d seen a small handful topped by the armoured skulls of Imperial saints, or psykers of great majesty. My own was rarer still.
Atop the stave, haloed by consecrated gold, was the skull of Justicar Castian, veined by mercury-threaded circuitry. Ceramite plating had preserved the relic for these last one hundred centuries.
..
A warding stave’s haft was an adamantite sheath encrusted with hexagrammic banishment runes, constructed to house several linked, amplified refractor field generators. Psychic activation awakened them, priming the stave for its defensive use as more than a daemon-slaying weapon.

It seems to be more than just a force weapon really.. more akin to Eisenhorn's staff really, up to and including the 'totem' on the head for assisting with dealing with psychci power.



Page 115

..unleashing this much psychic force was taking its toll on each of us. There was a reason we usually channelled our might through the justicar. He had the training to measure it as a precious commodity, and spend it most carefully.
Physical weariness was less of a worry. Our genetic enhancements would allow us to fight until the system’s star went cold; I had once duelled Malchadiel for a hundred and twenty-two hours before finally landing the winning strike, and even then, he failed due to misjudging his footwork rather than exhaustion.

comment on GK Endurance - their physical endurance is much greater than their spychic endurance. Also another benefit of the squad 'link' is that it allows the one providing the focus to measure and ration the precious commodity known as psyker power, and Hyperion quite a bit in this conflict gets berated for wasting his power in 'isolated' displays rather than working as a team.




Page 118

Elsewhere on board, machines were awakening to their abandoned duties. I sensed cranes grinding to life, sending shivers through the deck as they turned slowly in their sockets, loading huge warheads into their turret feeds.

This is either the dreaded 'autoloaders' or its servitor-operated machinery (of course it comes to the same thing, but some people think the aesthetics matter. The Imperial way is all about cyborg zombies rather than shiny metallic robots, after all.)




Page 119-120

The sensation stroked over me in a bitter caress, born from a cluster of secondary power generators latched with parasitic glee to the still-cold plasma drive. While all other power stations remained cold, this lone generator was shuddering as it resurrected itself.
The drive core’s turgid, grey plasma gave a liquid heave. I saw a hand, or something like one, press against the glass from within the fusion ooze. As it dissolved into the dense muck...
..
Other secondary generators started shivering.
+The daemon is here, justicar. It swims within the drive core, inside the machine-spirit’s bones, resurrecting the ship.+
...
... the daemon within the plasma ooze; the creature spreading itself through the drive core; the secondary brain-cogitators once belonging to the machine-spirit, now housing a panicking daemonic intelligence.

Once more plasma, fusion and both described as some sort of frozen liquid. Draw your own conclusions. I'm undecided whether the secondary generators reference reactors or just something tied to the reactors that converts energy from one form to another (like an electric generator.)
Also the daemon has possessed the ship's machien spirit. Given Daemon ships, this should hardly be surprising.



Page 125-126

"We’re clear. I’ve never seen an active warp core breached in the void. Not without its failsafes and containment fields."
..
The warp core chamber no longer existed. The entirety of its rear half was open to the void, offering a mist-wreathed view of the shrouded stars. All the walls and machinery I’d seen in my sending – all gone, spat out to tumble through space. Where power generators and fusion cores had rested, bound in immense sockets, empty tracks and scorched metal marked the systems’ absence. The Frostborn would never move again. She’d jettisoned every vital generator across a dozen decks, breaking her own back purely to make her last shriek that little bit louder.
It had worked well enough. That last shriek had torn a wound in reality. Had the Karabela been closer, our own vessel would have been caught in the detonation, and its own sensitive warp core could easily have died in sympathy with the Frostborn’s.
We watched the bulk of broken black-iron machinery twisting away through the nebula, drowning in dust. No more than three thousand metres away, where the principal drive engines had been, a slice in the galaxy was bleeding filth into the void.

The destroyer's warp core is ejected, which evidently includes the entire power ship's systems. BFG originally hinted that Imperial ships were powered by 'warp drives' (unlike Eldar with their magic solar sails) It seems the fusion reactors and power generators (whether real or made up fusion) were what ran both the FTL and sublight drives, and the scope of those systems was across a dozen decks.
I have to say the ability to simultaneously eject that much of the ship's power systems by detaching it from the ship is both insane and impressive (a dozen decks and who knows how big in the other dimensions) even if the other engines are still attached (and the fuel tanks.) I wonder if this might point at a more 'modular' nature to 40K starships (which again explains the crazy variation in dimensions as different world build to somehwat different templates.)

Also an exploding warp core is dangerous to toher nearby warp cores (sensitivity) and could lead to dangerous chain reactions. Evidently when they have to breach the reactors and stuff have some sort of 'safety' systems built in to damp down this effect (which the daemon-navigator disabled to maximize visibility in the warp from the detonation.



Page 131

...he Daemon of Wrath butchered its lesser spirit brethren in its bid to reach us, but its presence alone was enough to diminish them. Such a beast’s very life force is a bane to its lesser kindred. Away from the warp, creatures of raw Chaos suffer in the physicality of the material realm, and the greater daemon’s dominance sucked at those weaker bodies, siphoning from them in order to continue manifesting in our reality.

In realspace its every daemon for themselves, as greater daemons will pray on the energies of the lesser forms to sustain their own existence. Its really a testament to the 'order vs disorder' divide between the Imperium and Chaos, rather than just good or evil.


Page 132

A spindly thing of bladed limbs and leathery flesh scrabbled onto my back, and its knuckly stabs dug into the joints where my armour plating overlapped.
..
.. I felt knives of black bone puncturing my armour joints, digging into my body. They brought pain with each push, mostly focused behind one knee and in the base of my spine...

Even Grey Knight armour has weak points, which we've seen in the Counter novels as well. Get in close and you can target the joints.




Page 133

The explosion’s dispersing force encounters no other forces to oppose – not air, not heat, simply nothing at all. Unaugmented eyes cannot grasp the subtle beauty of a void explosion, for despite the perfection of the human form, the physics at play occur too fast for the eye to follow.
Our eye lenses were a different matter. Each bursting shell bred a spherical afterimage of expanding light from their impact points, a visual echo on our reactive visors to show the impact points of gunfire.

Space Marine eyes can apparently break down/observe explosions in totality, at least in a vaccuum.



Page 135

My retinal display bisected, offering me the separate views of both weapons. My senses melted into the familiar cadence of glance-aim-fire, glance-aim-fire, firing both weapons at once, never slowing, never ceasing.

Hyperion firing bolt pistol and arm mounted storm bolter simultaneously, and his autosenses bisecting to allow him to independently target both weapons at once - something Space Marines should be quite handily able to do. (actually makes you wonder why they don't dual-wield more often, like bolt pistols With their reflexes and multitasking ability they'd make formidable gunfighters like that.)



Page 137

A battle with a greater daemon occurs in two realms. There’s the physical aspect: the world of numbing blows, sweating hatred, and the breathless release of energy that lesser minds would call sorcery. And then there’s the spiritual side: a duel of prickling wills and jagged thoughts, where even standing in the enemy’s presence causes a spiritual sickening.

GK vs GK battles - physical and psychic both. It goes on to describe Greater Daemons as the literal concentration of negative emotion given form and describes a gamut of emotions that encompass war - not just hatred and violence and bloodlust, but fear, pain, despair, etc. Its really a nice touch by ADB, as he renders Chaos into its more traditional 'nature' rather than going LOL SPACE MONSTERS.



Page 141-142

I had one chance at this, one chance to teleport back to the ship before my armour’s jump-systems failed. If I missed it, I was as good as dead. The Karabela could cut through this dust for an eternity and never get a teleport lock on my armour.

Apparently the GK armour has some last ditch 'teleport' funciton built in in some way, which could be those backpack teleporters from the GK codex, or it may be some sort of emergency beacon/signal designed to automatically activate the ship's teleporter and lock onto him for retrieval, although the context implies the former more than the latter.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 2

Page 147

The Frostborn bared her belly, rolling in the momentum of her destruction. Our weapon batteries ripped through the defenceless vessel’s armour with ease, but the ship still took a long time to die. With so few of its systems active, there was little combustive effect. And with nothing to explode, our guns had to take the ship apart in a series of patient strafing runs. It took almost an hour, such was the destroyer’s cold tenacity.

An hour for a Nova class Frigate to destroy a Hunter class Destroyer. Whilst its probably a testament to the durability of the ship's design, even without shields, it should also be noted how the lack of 'volatiles' seems to contribte to this and it might normally take less time. Apparently stuff lke the power generation and capacitors and such can contribute to the destructive effects of a warship when damaged. Oddly no mention of ordnance - either the destroyer had none (unlikely), it was all out, or for some reason it is not innately 'volatile'. It makes some sense, as Ahriman: Exile notes that ships often depower and depressurize their outermost decks as a damage control/defensive measure (no power means no boom, and no atmosphere means no shock or fire.)
Although to be fair, the ship's power systems are only 'volatile' when active too (Even the 'plasma ooze') so it balances out I guess




Page 150-152

"It happens, Hyperion. It happens across the galaxy, in every walk of life. People make the wrong decisions. They choose poorly."
..
"I am not people. I am a Grey Knight. We are the Imperium’s flawless blade, mankind’s faultless heart. We are the Emperor’s Gift."
..
"She tolerates me because I am one of her many triumphs. She saved my soul. She redeemed me."
..
"You whored your soul away to the gods behind the veil. No matter what salvation came later, some sins cannot be forgiven."
..
"That’s your view, Hyperion. Not an inviolate truth."
"And there speaks the voice of corruption."
"Think of your Inquisition’s pet Adeptus Astartes mongrels – the Exorcists. Their training is spoken of in the ordos’ archives, you know. They’ve housed daemons within their bodies, and endured exorcism under the Inquisition’s watchful eyes. They are forgiven. Why not a human like me? Where does your hypocrisy come from?"
"They are as corrupt as any other."
...
"I was only a minor recidivist, in truth. But my mistress is a firm believer in redemption. Mistakes will always be made. What matters is how we deal with them, and what we can bring forth from their aftermath."

This is an interesting discussion, and it shows why ADB often can write some interesting Space MArine books: Because he writes with an eye towards Space Marines as flawed characters. Perhaps not flawed in quite the way humans are, but their nature, training (indoctrination) and such give them a certain blindness - one of absolute certainty. A Space Marine's world - and a GK's especially - exists in terms of blacks and whites out of necessity, because that is their role. Whereas a mere 'human' often cannot afford such simple views (although they may try to enforce them on themselves and others.) Hyperion is a flawed individual - he is gifted as a psyker, but also quite arrogant and rash and holds to the absolute rightness of his convictions. Which might be proper Space Marine attitudes... except that Grey Knights by nature are a brotherhood and rely on unity as much as fancy gear and psychic power for their success. Indeed Hyperions' pride is what causes him to fuck up (and the fact he is flawed in those ways is what makes him an interesting character, as he must face the consequences of those actions and tackle them.)
This also stands to show the true nature of Inquisitor Annika. Whilst in the earlier parts of the book we see a cold and determined enforcer of the Emperor's will, she is not so inflexible as some of the Inquisitors we will meet. Indeed some might view her as a radical, as she does not hold the simplistic view that Hyperion himself holds - she is one who believes in redemption and in the fallibility of humans. Its often so interesting because humanity's 'champions' are often portrayed as fautless (and any attempt at their flaws is hidden - another point that will be important later), when they believe only the Emperor is 'perfect' at the same time. And even more ironic is how they punish the slightest weakness in humans, when it is human nature to be imperfect.
Likewise, his interactions with the non-Astartes associates like the Inquisitor also provide an interesting comparison against which Hyperion's own actions can be measured, as well as fodder for conflict and tension.
It's actually kind of amusing in that way, as the GK in ADB's book are the oppsoite of what they were in the GK Codex, and Hyperion himself is the complete opposite of Alaric - where Alaric is humble and a thinker, Hyperion is arrogant and proud. And ignorant because of those flaws.



Page 156

"Before the Inquisition took you, I mean. The Ordo Malleus keeps the most meticulous archives. I know who you all were as children."

Interesting. The GK know nothing of their pasts (having it stripped from them at an early age) but the Inquisition does keep the records.




Page 157

The voyage took eleven days. For a conventional ship, it would have taken several months.

unlike the last time (a 2 month journey in 3 weeks) it is 'several month' journey in slightly under two. Figure 60-90 days thats a 5-8x speed difference between GK vessels and 'conventional' warp drive (which could mean anything from Navy ships to merchant and civilian ships, although one assumes it excludes warp-capable ships that do not have navigators.)



Page 158

The journey of a Grey Knights vessel may be rapid, but it is also spiritually tectonic. Hexagrammic shielding and consecrated armour plating protects our warships beyond anything else humanity can create, but the Sea of Souls burns in response to such invasion.
..
The ship would shake with greater force as we dived deeper into the aetheric ocean, slicing days from our journey as our Navigator trusted the ship’s resilience to hold while he guided us through darker seas.
..
To push one of our vessels so hard was hardly a rare occurrence, but we all knew the Karabela was earning herself a great deal of time in orbital dock for this. The damage inflicted upon the Grey Knights fleet from such travelling meant many of our ships lived housed in repair docks as often as they sailed out of them. Given the advantages, it was a price willingly paid.

The prime reasons (and the price) for that increased speed. It seems we can divine that ship tech/drive quality, the quality of the Navigator (as well as the warp conditions and the strength of the AStronomican and local signals like astorpath relays), the information they have, and the durability of the ship and its protections (physical, symbolic/blessed and forcefield) The last bit in particular seems important, given the roughness of warp travel - evne with their durability, high speed warp travle seems to require extensive maintenance to supplement the increased speed.)



Page 161-162

We drifted in from the far reaches, sailing along the Enceladus Strait. The Karabela came close enough to feel the moon’s pull...
..
We watched Enceladus turning away as the ship powered past. We’d reach Titan within the hour.

An hour to reach Titan from Enceladus. According to Nineplanets Enceladus is some 238 thousand km away from Saturn, whilst Titan is over 1.222 million km away from Saturn. We dont actually know their positions relative to each other (which can complicate things somewhat) but we know They pass by Encaldus first before heading to Titan so they probably have to pass a certain distance (about a million km or so given the differences in orbit) to reach Titan, given they pass VERY close to Enceladus (even if titan was lined up parallel, it would still be close to a million km or so) If they are farther apart it could be further, say up to a million and a hlaf or so km (Enceladus' distance from Saturn plus Titan's.) If we're talking average velocity with no slowing, we're talking at least some 278-417 km/s and require at least some 8-12 gees to slow down. More likely, we're talking 500-900 km/s I'd guess, and probably more like 30-50 gees to slow down to a zero velocity. So either way call it hundreds of km/s average velocity and high single/low double digit gee accel. Although since it would probably be slowing down rather than accelerating this probably is for forward thrust rathre than rear engines. And there is the aforementioned damage from the warp transit.




PAge 163

"A million worlds turn within the Emperor’s Light. Countless billions offer their lives for the Throne, while endless trillions live by His grace."

Million, billions, trillions. Whilst the actual numbers are probably approximates at best, it does tell us something of rations. For example, a million worlds, and for every trooper fightin gthere are perhaps hundreds or thousands for whom that one man is fighting for - fighting and even dying so they may survive.



Page 166
- Whilst I feel too lazy to quote it I will note that Hyperion actually DOEs make a joke here, gets teased for it, has his armour touched by one of Annika's acolytes (when having been warned not to) and then psychically gives him a nosebleed for it. Pretty amusing interplay really, and I applaud ADB for it.


Page 167-168

No two squads operated quite the same way, nor did they channel their powers along the same paths. To be accepted into a squad was to harmonise one’s entire life with those who would be your brothers, learning anew how to focus your powers alongside your kindred. Even after decades of rigorous training, failure to meld with a squad was hardly uncommon. I was in danger of it myself.

Hyperion reflects on his flaws and the acceptance of a new intiiate into their squad, as well as what that means. It also reflects the individuality that can exist amongst Grey Knight squads - they are tightly knit within that group, but they can also be distinct (evne isolated) from the others to some extent as a result.
Also decades of training to become a GK.



Page 169

Titan filled the viewports, its soft orange gleam the perfect backdrop to show our fleet in orbit above. Huge, battlemented cruisers and interceptor frigates alike glided through the void, stationed in defensive formations, ever vigilant over inbound vessels and forcing them into narrow docking runs.
In all of mankind’s galaxy, only Mars, Terra and distant Cadia could claim such defences. We sailed through the heart of the most advanced fleet in humanity’s arsenal, well aware that ten thousand guns tracked our passage.
The Karabela was far from alone in the ocean of patrolling vessels – dozens of other ships drew close to dock or made ready to leave Titan’s orbit. Our world was an Inquisitorial nexus, receiving a constant stream of the ordos’ Black Ships, their sterile holds packed with children to be tested, trained, and most likely to die on the surface of Titan. By far the largest flow of stellar traffic came in the form of bulk-hulled Adeptus Mechanicus cruisers, laden with supplies. Our own immense forges on Titan were still unable to provide the amount of ammunition and weaponry our crusade required, such was the scale of war we waged. Freighters and cruisers from Deimos, the forge-moon gifted to us by ancient decree, ferried material back and forth in an unceasing convoy.
In the rarest cases, a red-armoured cruiser from Mars herself would arrive within our space, heralding the return or departure of a Techmarine...

Scope of the starship activity around Titan, the GK/Malleus HQ in Terra. It seems they woudl have an implied (at a guess given 'gun numbers') dozens of ships at any one time (the cruisers and intercept frigates, I'd gather mainly) as well as dozens of other vessels And all that industry...
Given that Mars, Terra AND Titan all occupy the same system, this tells oyu something that the Throneworld's defences are at least thrice what is at the Cadian Gate.



PAge 169

As we came past one immense grey battleship, its ridged gunports filled the windows. I couldn’t help a small smile as the name Unforsaken passed by, in massive silver script along the dark hull.

Grey Knights battleship. Or is it a battle barge?



Page 169-170

It wasn’t a mere space station, it was the space station, and it played home to thousands of souls, dozens of ships, and the greatest secrets in the Imperium of Man. I could think of no other void-citadel in the Imperium – including the Phalanx of the Imperial Fists – that would match the Apex Cronus Bastion in firepower. The size of a small moon in its own right, our navigational charts tended to refer to it by its more militant title: Broadsword Station.

Broadsword station. Superior to Phalanx. A 'small moon' whatever that is.




PAge 171-172

"Warp rift"
..
Our surroundings gave another kick as the engines flared into brightest life, leeching power from every other system on the ship.
..
Although the occulus remained fixed upon the warp rift forming dangerously close by, the windows offered a sickening view of Titan swelling before us.
..

"The manifesting ship may still strike us if it comes through without changing course. Shields, captain?"
"No shields," Castor ordered. "They’ll leech from the engines. Run."
"Engines at full burn."
..
"We will reach Titan’s gravitational hard deck in thirteen seconds."
..
"The ship jumping in-system reads as the Adeptus Astartes destroyer Veregelt."

Two things. One Space wolves ship emerges from the warp within close proximity to Saturn's moons about 9.5 AU from the Sun, 8.5 AU from Earth.
Secondly, the GK Frigate has a matter of seconds to get out of the way of the Space wolf destroyer, and apparently clears that easily (maunvering and diving) although how many minutes we don't know. Assuming a minute and 2000 m covered (one ship length) the thrusters would be at least three gees, at a rough guess.

Another point I don't elaborate on, the ship basically plunges ona course to crash into Titan, and has to spend some time banking hard with its thrusters (manuvering thrusters) to pull out. We dont know the velocity going downwards nor the angle, but it suggests there probably are some hefty limits to their manuvering thrusters in pulling out (maybe single/double digit gees?) That said, the ship was already noted to be damaged anyhow so thats definitely a factor as well.



Page 180-181

In their dealing with the wider Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicus occasionally mandated the modification and use of specialist ambassadors for the comfort and ease of unmodified humans. These executors and famuli were often reshaped with the human norm in mind, their augmetics kept entirely internal or externally subtle, and communicated via traditional speech rather than the emission of binary cant screeds.
..
His face was far from smooth – to mimic the nuances of human expression, even his silver lips and eye sockets were formed from hundreds of minute servos – but his body’s musculature was shaped from interlocking plates of burnished silver, concealing much of the metalworking and circuitry beneath.
Sophisticated sound suppressors the size of common tin coins were fused to his joints, muting his movements. Instead of the gentle purr of servos and the heavy tread of silver feet, Axium sounded perfectly human: his heartbeat was the natural rhythm of the human organ within his chest, and his breath came from biological lungs.

AdMech ambassadors. We've heard about them in the FFG RPGs, of course, and also from GRaham's AdMech novels. Also the scale of sophistication of such augmetics.




Page 185-186

The Inquisition made use of psychic nulls, mortals casting no soul-echo in the warp, as anathema to all psychic activity in their proximity. Such creatures were useful as weapons, in their own servile, incorruptible ways, but it took effort just to stand near the hollow man. I wondered how he was even alive, and what genetic aberration allowed him to be born.
Outwardly, he was one of us – his bulky physique was unarguably the result of Adeptus Astartes genetic enhancement – yet he stood unarmed and unarmoured, clad only in a patchwork grey robe that had clearly seen better years.

Space Marine/Grey Knight Pariahs, it would seem. Rarer even than Grey Knights I wager. Makes you wonder why they don't serve out in the field.




Page 200

If the Space Wolves survived Armageddon, the Chapter would need to endure telepathic scouring. Only Adeptus Astartes Chapter Masters could know we walked in the Imperium’s shadows. So stated the tradition, and so had it always been since our Founding. Most Imperial Guard regiments we fought beside were simply executed. Mere men armed with cheap lasrifles were an inexhaustible commodity all too easily replaced in humanity’s empire.

The old fluff had daemons and Grey Knights considered such secret knowledge that people would be killed or mindwiped to preserve that secret. Which actually forms the underpinning of alot of the tension between the novel.




Page 201

"Our own augurs and Prognosticars have spoken with the survivor, as I speak with you. They have studied the testament of Justicar Galeo, and listened to the words of Inquisitor Jarlsdottyr. They quest now, piercing the Sea of Souls, to see with their own eyes the poison that threatens Armageddon.’"
..
...when he spoke of our own prophets and seers heeding the Wolf’s warning, I felt the presence of every knight grow sharper.

Grey Knight seers and precogs.




Page 208

"I have failed the order most grievously. The Wolf told the truth, you know. The Armageddon War has been raging for weeks now, and their world has fallen silent. Is it not a Prognosticar’s duty to hunt through the Sea of Souls, seeking the ripples caused by our Archenemy’s greatest intrusions? And yet… at no point have I sensed a whisper of this in the warp’s winds."
..
"...the order is poorly served when I alone reside at the apex of the Silver Tower. The galaxy is vast, and I am but one man, with one mind."

The GK use their Prognosticars to scour the galaxy looking for sings of daemonic threats and such. between this and the communication aspects (implied later) we get the idea that Prognosticars are not unlike Astropaths in some ways (who can also do scrying/divination and communication both, only not as effectivley.) and not unlike the use of Librairans as astropath substitutes.



Page 209

I’ve seen one of my brothers reassemble an entire battle tank over the course of an hour, without physically touching a single piece of the wreckage. I’ve travelled across the surface of a world, from one continent to the next, city by city, drifting from mind to mind in search of a single secret.

Grey Knight TK and detection capabilities.



Page 209-210

The way he pulled us from our bodies was kin to a psychic reaching only in the way human breath is kin to a storm’s wind. One moment we existed in the candlelit chamber, the next we sailed among the stars.
Few of us project our psyches the same way, and no knight but a Prognosticar had the same strength Torcritch displayed. We didn’t move through the heavens; no stellar dance of planets passing by. He pulled us from our bodies, up into the black sky above Titan’s curdled atmosphere, and plunged right into the warp.
..
+That is because we are moving too fast for them to manifest, let alone reach out to us.+
+Even the Karabela cannot move at this speed.+
+In warp flight, the Karabela is a physical construct in a realm without physics. She is real in an unreal place. So she struggles and suffers, labouring against the tides.+

The Prognosticar is interesting, as he's actually traveling through the warp in spirit form.. far faster than a ship does to reach Armageddon. If we figure it takes a couple minutes to a couple hours to cross 10,000 LY which would be between 40 million to several billion c estimated.





Page 210

+I am reading the tides,+ he answered my unasked question. +Seeking any sense of invasion into the material universe. They flow as the ocean becomes rivers, and rivers become the ocean. Thousands and thousands and thousands every second; on worlds, on deep space outposts, on ships lost in the warp…+
Is this what he did? Was his life reduced to night after night of projecting his soul into the empyrean, tracking the flow of every single thread into humanity’s empire?
+Yes. But I am only one hunter, Hyperion. I cannot stalk my way down every thread. Only the largest incursions matter to me. The most infected. The most dangerous. The most laden with ripening prophecy.+

More on the Prognoistcar. It implies that he's scanning the whole warp, observing thousands of dangers, on a daily (nightly) basis. again hundreds of millions if not billions of c easily implied for this sort of feat In many ways its not unlike whata Farseer does, although in many ways more direct.
It goes without saying this is a strong indicator of FTL detection, at least the upper limits of the capability here.




Page 211

+How… How could we be here so quickly…?+ one of my brothers asked. I wasn’t sure which one, for Torcrith’s consciousness overpowered ours. +It will take the Karabela weeks to reach this world.+
..
+Do you see those hive cities burning? The war is only a handful of weeks old. While that’s an eternity to the people suffering in those cities, it’s not long enough for Imperial reinforcement. The Wolves sent their lesser ships out to cry for aid – messages in bottles – but to no avail. The Archenemy followed them, overran them, and rendered them silent.+
+But the Frostborn,+ I pulsed, +and the Veregelt.+
+They reached us eventually, though at great cost in priceless blood and loyal iron+

'weeks' for the GK's frigate to reach Armageddon from Terra, and the battle is 'handful of weeks' old, implying perhaps 2-3 weeks for GK transit, and 2-5 weeks for the Space Wolf destroyer. Armageddon is typically described as some 10K LY from terra in old Armageddon (like epic) sources, which is roughly consistent with the map. 2 weeks for eithre vessel is at least 260,000c straight line, uninterrupted travel. For 5 weeks for the Space Wolf destroyer it would be 104,000c under same conditions.
Subjectively the Prognosticat'rs travel speed was faster than the warp, but we dont know how fast. tens or hundreds fo millions of c at least maybe, but it WAS straight line.




Page 212

+I don’t understand. Your strength brought us here. Project yourself into the minds of governors and generals on nearby worlds. Rally them. Bring them here.+
+I am a seer, not a speaker.+ For the first time, I sensed Torcrith’s frustration. He struggled to see things as we did, so different were our perceptions of the universe. +Think of astropathy, brother. It isn’t a clear bridge from one mind to another. Even contact between the strongest minds is an exchange of dreams and flickering memories that may or may not be understood, or heeded. Look to our own speech, when the knights of our order speak mind to mind. How much stronger are we by comparison to mortal men? Our minds make words from the connection between one consciousness and another, but are we speaking these words to one another? Of course not. We share emotions, intentions, meanings… and our perceptions twist that contact into something we can process with ease.+

It would seem the 'astral travel' thing the Prognosticars do is akin to certain forms of astrotelepathy (which we know some sources have astropaths doing) but rarer becuase it requires a more powerful psyker (a GK psyker at that.) to pull it off. We've known a few examples in the HH novels of such 'close' and clear psychic communication and it was rare - due to the two communicators sharing some sort of bond (and we know bonding is a big part of GK, which probably is a further reason they can do this.) Astropaths as a rule do not often share either (at least not with many other astropaths) and thus the communication is less precise.
We could therefore view it as a tremendously broad range or 'levels' of communication. Very powerful astropaths (or large groups) could maybe emulate this (at least over short distances - cf 'Bleeding Chalice and similar examples) but in the main Astropaths aren't in as many groups or as powerful, and so more frequently they can only transmit more imprecise symbology (memories or dreams and such.) which we might view as the 'minimum' acceptable level of communication.
There are also the differences in method of communication which can be variable - some cases they send from astropath to astropath over relatively short distances (what I usually call 'bucket brigade') which is slower but more reliable, or (as described here) they may use the 'point to point mind contact' which may be faster, but may also sacrficie precision and reliability. and then there ar those psychic communications which send out a psychic 'message' and hope it just gets received by the right person in a reasonable period of time (typical of distress signals.)
It is also interesting to speculate whether the Prognosticars ability might be some variation of the 'astrotelepathy' some Librarians are capable of.




Page 217

"Right now, the Imperium suffers through countless worlds enduring daemonic incursion across the vastness of space. In the last few days alone, I have sensed the portents and written prophecies on many of them myself. I have sensed an inhuman voice whispering words into the mind of a three-year-old girl almost three-quarters of the galaxy away from where we sit at the moment. Yet I sensed nothing of Armageddon..."

Implies that the Prognosticar can cross 3/4 of the Imperium in a few days or less. 3/4 of the galaxy might be some 80-90 thousand LY away, which would be tens of millions of c at least.





Page 228

We waited for him in the main hangar of our fleet’s flagship, the Third Brotherhood battle-barge Ruler of the Black Skies.

GK battle barge. If each brotherhood has one Battle barge, that means they have at least eight of them.





Page 230

. We watched in our vague ranks, conceding no dominance and offering no submission, facing them as equals. Perhaps they considered that their right, though in truth we did them a great honour. They were genetic thinbloods; their gene-seed formed from the flesh and blood of the Emperor’s son, Leman Russ. Our gene-seed came from a more direct, purer source. We didn’t call it the Emperor’s Gift as a jest.

I guess that answers my earlier speculation re: 'Anathema's Sons.'




Page 231

As these rattling, burned warriors approached, I felt shamed by my pristine suit of armour. They’d been fighting a war for weeks, while we’d been locked in transit, readying for our eventual arrival.

Weeks for the GK to arrive.




Page 236

"I know how your Inquisition works, captain. I know how those wheels turn, with regiments of Imperial Guard butchered for the sin of seeing into the ordos’ dirty secrets, or entire ship crews given over to void-graves because they chanced to catch a Grey Knights vessel out of the corner of their eyes. Let me speak clearly, son of Titan. These people have seen nothing, and suffered no taint. My brothers and I fight for their lives, watering this world’s earth with our blood so they might breathe another day in the Allfather’s empire. So you will do more than nod and agree, you will give me your word not to appear before them. I will not have your presence damn them into early graves."

And this pretty much sets up the post-Armageddon fallout, because we all know what will happen in the aftermath of Angron's banishment.




Page 242

The saddest thing was that she meant it, at no older than sixteen. Her devotion to duty was admirable, but our order was supposed to carry these burdens so humanity didn’t have to. I felt guilty every time I looked at her.

A GK who feels guilt over his duty to protect humanity. This is a big part of his character throughout the book, and even when things get grim, its nice to know he's still, at the core, that 'defender of humanity.
I think it also reflects Hyperion's growth as a person. When we met him he was an arrogant and uncooperative sort, but through some hard lessons he is learning to become a truly valuable member of the Grey Knights.




Page 245-246 Spoiler

Imperial Representative Responsible – [Inquisitor Lilith Abfequarn,
Ordo Hereticus]
Imperial Heavenly Solar Reckoning: XXX.XXX.406.M4
..
SUBJECT borne in stasis from Eustis Majoris to Titan. Stasis integrity absolute upon arrival: confirmed absolute by Inquisitor Lilith Abfequarn (Representative), confirmed absolute by Apex Cronus Bastion (Destination).
SUBJECT before and after reanimation presented as Human Male, chronological age 15-Fifteen-XV,
..
Inquisitor Lilith Abfequarn presented SUBJECT to Chapter VI-VI-VI on basis of the latter anomaly. SUBJECT has recorded involvement with the actions of INQUISITOR GIDEON RAVENOR, ORDO XENOS.
Initial testing confirms SUBJECT’S heightened Reflective Psychic Ability, cross-reference: ‘Mirror Psyker’.
Clarification – SUBJECT has no capacity to access his own innate psychic strength. SUBJECT leeches from nearby sources of psychic power. SUBJECT then displays ability to mimic any and all psychic ability he has leeched from others.
Principal Refraction to the Anomalous Condition: SUBJECT shows signs of potential to be Unlocked. In the process of Unlocking, SUBJECT will be broken of parasitic instinct and reshaped accordingly. Immense potential for psychic mastery.
...
I followed where she pointed.
EFFERNETI, ZAEL

Fucking hell. I wasn't expecting this. So we learn what happened to Zael after Ravenor - he becomes a Grey Knight. Pretty cool really, for the surprise factor and that he made something of himself. This is one of the reasons why this book is so epic - it is one of the few Spac eMarine novels that has genuine twists, a sort of continuity, as well as a feeling its at the center of big events and great triumphs and tragedy. Its that epic feeling, as well as the strength of the characters and the human-Astartes interactions, Zael's growth in his role from start to finish.. all of that contrive to make this my favorite of ADB's work.
The mention of his mirror psyker ability is interesting, as it implies the passivity results from some sort of blockage that had to be undone, but when undone he would be tremendously powerful. Makes one wonder why it manifested as a 'mirror psyker' like that.)
We know he arrived on Terra some time in 406, and we know from Ravenor Rogue he left for Terra in some time around 405. Anyhow, he also covered some 30-50 thousand LY within a year or two to reach Titan (From Scarus to Terra), giving some tnes of thousands of c roughly average transit time, at least.
It also goes without saying that Zael learning his past (and that of some of his brethren) goes against Grey Knight traditions, although Zael himself is rather non-traditional throughout the book.

PAge 248

"Curiosity is no sin, Hyperion. I like picking through the bones of old archives. The things you learn."

Annika again shows she is not a typical Inquisitor. I also like her second phrase, as that is a paraphrase (intentional or not? Can't decide) of the 'Things you know' comment interspersed throughout the Ravenor books.





PAge 249-250

"It’s like the Imperial Creed. On one world, they worship the Emperor as a god enthroned on solid gold. On the next, He’s a metaphor for eternal life through acts of self-sacrifice. On another, He’s a sun deity, responsible for the daylight and the growth of crops – they pray to Him for ripe harvests. And yet, on other worlds, He will be venerated as a prophet whose words are lost to time, and lesser men conjure up apt phrases in His name, that make sense to the local populace. On yet another world, He’s the supreme being that welcomes and protects the spirits of people’s ancestors after they die. And on another? He’s the Guiding Light: the source of the Astronomican, the living, mortal man with the powers of a god, whose machines project the beacons for our ships to follow in the endless night."
..
"All of those religions are a tolerable variance on the Imperial Creed. They are the Imperial Creed. The galaxy is vast, and the Ecclesiarchy cares nothing for what any of these worlds and nations do – so long as it’s the Emperor to whom they pray. The Imperium is not a unified whole, Hyperion. It’s humanity in its infinite, lost, separated variety. The Inquisition is the same. Tell me, how many inquisitors in your experience are no different to me?"

Annika again shows amazing perception for how the Imperium exists and functions. Its strength and its weakness lies in that size and diversity... that blending and sharing of myriad unique qualities which both help and hinder it in myriad ways. Calling the Imperium a disorganized mess is probably a bit cruel but also somewhat apt - it will never be unified, but it is also an endless source of varity and diversity that can keep things interesting.
We also get some variation in what the Emperor is worshipped as. As always the Imperial Creed is far more variable than any real life religion



Page 255

We wore our Tactical Dreadnought plate, adding significant weight and mass to our armoured bulks. Castian rarely went into battle wearing our most precious heirloom wargear, and I already missed the reassurance offered by the warp-jump generator mounted on my power armour’s backpack. Terminator plate had an internalised power source – one of many reasons it was infinitely more durable than our standard warplate – but I’d have gladly traded the extra protection for familiarity and freedom.

Differences between GK power armour and terminator armour - the power armour seems to carry that mini warp jumper as astandard, whilst the Terminator armour can be teleported in more conventional means, but provides the Chapter with greater durability and firepower.




PAge 261

The Emperor’s Gift makes us anathema to the daemons of the worlds behind the veil. That much is no secret. Many times in my first year of service, I’d seen Neverborn crumble before our presence, recoiling from the sheer fact our souls were girded in gene-coded divinity. Castian’s presence – the Aegis of five knights wielding their psychic aura as a weapon – weakened daemonkind, sickened them, purified them against their will by sapping their ability to remain manifest in our reality.
..
The Aegis of one hundred and nine Grey Knights tore from our hearts in a tidal flood, hurling creatures of bronze, bone and bloody flesh from their cloven feet. Ivory horns cracked and limbs snapped in their sockets as the Neverborn were hurled back, physically and psychically, from our arrival in their midst.

Effects of GK Aegis.



PAge 262

It rivalled a Warhound-class walker in size, standing even above the beast-lords that served as its bodyguards. Chains and cables dreadlocked from its saurian skull, and from the clawed tips of its dripping wings to the ridged, stinking red iron that served as its skin, it had long since surrendered any claims to humanity.

Mr Furious, Angron himself in all his Daemonic gloryage.




Page 271

The most common manifestation of psychic power is the phenomenon often referred to as witch-lightning. Coruscating arcs of the crackling, jagged energy washed over the Great Beast’s red flesh, ripping like razors and shedding splashing gouts of stinking, searing blood.
..
No Grey Knight displays the exact same gifts as his brothers. Try to conceive of the actual manifestation of a species’ wrath and defiance. That’s what we threw against the Blood God’s chosen champion. Slices in reality cleaved open in the sky and across the ground, vortex-strong, sucking in the nearest Neverborn and even pulling at the Great Beast itself.

The diversity of GK attacks against Angron. It mentions other less gifted Knights simply attacked by channeling their gift through their Force weapons. But the warp rifts are pretty dang impressive.


Page 272

Telekines in our ranks – of which Malchadiel was merely one – protected the rest of us with shimmering domes of repellent force, resisting the beast-lord’s great blade. Such manifestations of holy protection still burst like bubbles after the second or third strike.

GK TK's can create barriers to (briefly) resist Angry's blows.


Page 272

The beast itself was a savage, hideous blur. Its blade moved faster than the eye could follow, cracking down to blast light-flares across force domes or carve without pause through entire squads.

Daemon-Angron and his doom sword strong enough and fast enough to cut through whole squads of Grey Knights in a single pass. Considering they're all in TErminator armour, this says something.



Page 274

I gave everything I had left. Absolutely everything. With my hands raised, I slowly curled them into fists, pouring body and soul into my sixth sense clutching that blade.

Hyperion is able to fuel his psychic powers by sacrificing his life force (more or less.) What he does with this against Angron is pretty damn cool and another one of those kickass parts of the book (really the high point of the positive shit) but I'll try to leave that something of a mystery



Page 278-279

Gunships flew overhead, some from the Wolves, others from the Imperial Guard.

IG gunships of osme kind.




Page 290

"Suffered a host of severe reactions to your psychic outpouring. I’ve prepared a list for you to access at your leisure. I hope you’re prepared to read the words ‘haemorrhage’, ‘embolism’, and ‘risk of neurological damage’ a great many times. You were lucky to survive unleashing your powers like that."
..
"The damage to your nervous system and a host of blood vessels was almost terminal. "

The 'sacrifice' Hyperion makes to overcharge his powers.



Page 291

"We arrived nine standard days ago. Others from the order reached here much earlier than us, of course. And I’ll answer your next question before you can ask it. You’ve been unconscious for a hundred and thirty-one days. I’ve been tending to you for the last two days and nights"
..
I suspected the millions of people on Armageddon locked in battle for half a year would beg to differ with his appraisal..

Half a year of conflict on Armageddon and Hyperion was out of it for 131 days. This means that the time the Space wolf ships spent to reach Titan, plus the GK's time to respond occured within a space of some 50-52 days. That averages out to around 140,000c for each trip, although the fact the GK are faster than the Space wolves means its probably less. Figure 70-100,000c for the wolf cruiser at least, which would 180-200,000c for the GK vessel roughly.





PAge 291

"Almost two hundred. Three battle-barges, including the Fire of Dawn. We came in force, brother, little by little, as soon as we were able. Imagine our disappointment to learn the heroism was already done, months before we arrived."

The GK have at least 3 if not 4 battle barges, it would seem.




Page 300

" This foulness is almost finished – only the cleansing remains. We’ll be back at Titan’s docks before another month or two. You have my word."

A month or two til they are back at Titan from Armageddon. Again 10,000 LY and assuming they left right away, thats 60,000-120,000c at least.





Page 303

+You don’t think this is a rather extreme reaction for our masters to take?+
+I’m saying it doesn’t surprise me. These people have walked the same world as one of the Great Beasts of Sanguinary Unholiness. Armageddon is only escaping Exterminatus because of its industrial value to the subsector’s Imperial Guard.+

The Inquisition and its secrets. As we knew of course the Armageddon colonists were gathered up and forced into labor camps and sterilized until they died, and we also learn that the soldiers who fought were (attempted) to be killed for seeing what they saw.
Its kind of interesting because this is a turning point in the story to a very 'gray' area. While you can assign places due to like or dislike, its not absolute, and as we learn there is plenty of guilt to assign on both sides.

[Connor MacLeod]

PArt 3



Page 303

Even in the months since the Great Beast’s banishment, most of the vessels to arrive had been long-haulage cruisers for Imperial Guard troops. There must be close to a million fresh soldiers on the surface, not even counting the several million survivors.

Months since Angron was banished, and around 3-4 million troops on planet at least, depending on how one defines 'several'





Page 304-305

"The fleet numbers at twenty-eight vessels capable of void warfare, sir. Eight are Titan interceptors and warships, wearing the Chapter’s grey. The Karabela brings the total to nine. A full sixteen are Fenrisian, belonging to the Wolves, including the capital ship Scramaseax. The remaining three are Inquisitorial cruisers, including the Imperial Navy vessel Corel’s Hope, commandeered for this operation by Lord Inquisitor Ghesmei Kysnaros."
So the Wolves outnumbered us in the void. Significantly. With sixteen ships, that surely represented almost half of their Chapter fleet.
"And the Imperial Guard troop ships?"
"Wallowing cogs and bloated whaleships, sir. Twenty of them. None are battle-capable. At least, they can fire their little guns all day and night, and not scratch us even on a gamble."

Ship dispositions at Armageddon. 9 GK vessels, sixteen Space Wolf, and 3 Inquisitorial criusers (one of which IIRC is a borrowed battleship.) Hyperion must be going by estimates of 'typical' Space MArine fleet sizes (or just guessing) unless he actually knows how many ships the Wovles have, which implies maybe 30-40 ships depending on you you figure 'almost half' ot mean.
20 Troop ships. As noted before there are at least 3-4 million IG on the planet, so this means each ship on average transported at least some 150-200 thousand soldiers.




Page 305-306

What honeyed lies were being poured in their ears, to get them to go willingly into a program of sterilisation and forced labour camps?
I’d thought we were dying for these people. I’d believed we were selling our lives to purge this world of evil.
Instead, we’d fallen in droves, purely to preserve a planet’s industrial infrastructure, so Armageddon could keep churning out ten million battle tanks a year in the care of a new colonist population. I wasn’t sure that was worth so many lives, though I could almost imagine Dumenidon arguing with me.
The armies of mankind need those weapons, he’d say. What is the loss of one world against all those that would fall without Armageddon’s armaments?
And he’d be right, but the truth would still taste foul. This was why Galeo forever advised us against questioning our leaders. Too many truths. It wasn’t our place to choose the right one. It was our place to heed what we were told.

Ah quite a quandry for Hyperion. Honor or duty? Honor for their role as defenders of humanity (something Hyperion feels strongly) and the sacrifices they made to preserve the people (not just the machinery) of the planet? Or duty to their Chapter and the MAlleus in this task? We know the wolves choose honour their way - defying the Inquisition to preserve and protect people they respected and bled for. The situation presents itself as a very complex one, and one that is very typical for the way hard choices like this are made in the Imperium - are the lives of one planet worth the potential losses of other worlds at some point in the future? How much should one gamble to preserve life? Its a hard choice, and its small surprise some choose conservatism for this reason. Even if it is more 'human life for some abstract ideal of humanity' rather than being truly caring people. The situation is rather complex, we will discover, and that complexity is what causes much of the tragedy and conflict to follow.
Also Armageddon pumps out 10 million tanks annually. This is considered an important 'subsector' planet remember (or at most multiple sectors or thousands of LY by other sources.) If we figure this is 'typical' for a Hive world output (given that Armageddon is mentioned to raise 100 million men and several hundred vehicles annualy for the guard as is usual for hives) we might get some potentially 330 billion tanks a year produced, just by hive worlds. The quesiton is does 'battle tanks' represent one type of vehicle, or does it include other IFV and armoured vehicels?



Page 310-311

Three nights later, the first troop transport made its move.
The Trident of Ilmatha drifted into high orbit, the first step in readiness to leave the world of Armageddon behind.
..
The Trident of Ilmatha was a fat lady, modified for greater transport capacity according to the whims of the Administratum in whatever subsector it had first originated. Its capacity for void warfare walked the border between ignorable and laughable, with almost all its bulk given over to additional cargo holds, communal barracks and engine deck space.

IG troop transport described and a rough hint perhaps of how long it takes to load troops (they were still processing the population three days prior)




Page 312-313

"Hyperion, you are to escort the Trident of Ilmatha to the jump point past Pelucidar. Once it reaches the transit point and you’re out of auspex range from the fleet, you know what to do."
..
On the occulus, I watched the fat-hulled troop ship accelerating with all the speed and grace of a wounded mollusc. At this rate, it would take eleven hours to reach the safe transit point past the world of Pelucidar. By comparison, the Karabela alone might have reached it in less than one.

Per this link here we can tell that Armageddon is some 6 AU from Pelucidar, which is defined as the jump point. It takes the troop transport 11 hours to cover that distance, and a GK strike cruiser 1 hour. For the transport I'd guess at least a hundred gees, more probably a couple hundred gees at least, with a velocity between 8 and 15% of lightspeed if it doesnt slow down. If it accelerates halfway and slows odwn the other half we'd probably be talking twice the accel and roughly the same velocity.
The GK strike cruiser is pretty much pulling at least a couple tens of thousands of gees to cross that distance in an hour, and velocity of near-c in the same time (80-90% of c) and even if its half and half the accel would only double. The Transport is doable, but the accel for the strike cruiser is pretty odd by reaction drive alone, not unlike the Sabbat Martyr and similar (Nemesis, etc.) One could probably invoke the 'mass lightening' crap to justify that, at least, much as I hate to do it, but it could allow the high accels without ludicrous accels that would cut fuel endurance down to zip. This also is literally orders of magnitude faster than the previous calc, but we may ascribe that to either being the retros rather than the primary thrusters, and/or its damaged state on arrival at Terra.





Page 313

"‘It’s a Gladius frigate, brother. Twenty thousand crew, perhaps a few thousand more. We outgun it, and could easily outrun it."

Gladius Frigate. Same size and crew complement as the Nova class the GK ship is, but the diff in tech means its faster (sublight) and more firepower. 20K crew is rather supposed to be alot for Space Marine vessels though, they are often servitor-run.




Page 314

We reached the transit point just over ten hours later. The Runefyre broke away in a sedate drift, putting minimum safe distance between itself and the Trident. The troop ship’s engines began to power up hotter, harder, in readiness to break into the realm between worlds.
The transit point was, in reality, nothing more than a vast area of clear space past the outer world of Pelucidar. Routes in and out of solar systems frequently ended at such junctures away from the planets themselves – all the better for avoiding risk of collision between vessels in orbit, let alone the chance of Geller malfunction allowing a warp breach to infect a nearby world.

10 hours rather tahn 11 implied, not much differnce in accel or velocity really. Of primary interest is how Transit points are defined and their purpose. The implication is that the Pelucidar one is perhaps a common type of 'transit point', which presumably includes distance (but this may be up for debate) We know of further ones though and even closer, so it should be treated as another approximation.
If we figured 1 week or so at 6 AU (as a comparable example, as some ships take a week or so to reach the edge) you'd have one gee of constant accel for a nonstop burn and almost 1% of c top speed. twice that if they do hal accel/half slowdown. If the transit time is a day or two. we'd be talking betwene 30-50 gees and 5-7% of c.
Danger of warp breach (as we've seen) seems to be a big factor in dictating the distance from a system.. rifts are dangerous if a planet or starship passes near or through them (and planets can't dodge) so you have to be careful to avoid such potential infection if at all possible. Thus, its not just the gravity limiting close approach, its aso safety considerations, so there is indeed some 'wiggle room' in transit point distances.





Page 317

When silence reigned, the Karabela coasted through the wreckage and past the drifting hulk. The auspex return several minutes before opening fire had read four hundred thousand souls. Now, it read none.

Troop ship capacity. If we figured each ship was comparable to that, it would be upwards of 8 million troops in 20 transports being carried off.
This also marks the beginning of the Inquisition-Space Wolf conflict over the Armageddon survivors. And Hyperion and the GK have chosen Duty as their side of the conflict, which means Hyperion does things he dislikes.




Page 320

In the Inquisition’s long and bloody history, countless trillions had died to preserve the ordos’ secrets. In the greater scheme of the galaxy, no one would miss these poor soldiers.

Estimated Inquisitorial kill count over the millenia. Figure this means the imperium's population is far greater since they haven't killed them all off yet.




Page 321

His new arm seemed little different than the first, though he’d smithed the new one in the Karabela’s forges, rather than on Deimos.

GK frigate has its own forges it seems, for maintaining its equipment onboard.



PAge 325

Troop carriers are toothless in a void battle. Some are built with reinforced armour and overcharged shield generators, but even they rarely carry an impressive armament.

Some troop ships, it seems, can at least be well defended, if nothing else.



Pgae 326

Even a small ship like the Karabela has a crew of over twenty thousand souls, and no matter how precise Castor’s cutting lances were, he was still sawing his way through the bowels of a ship carrying closer to half a million men and women.

Ship number comparison. Crew of Karabela (Nova frigate) veruss the troop transport, now again half a million. If we figure that the previous numer mentiond troop transport 400K, we could figure they have a crew of 100K. Upper limit is all are troops, which would mean 10 million tops on Armageddon.




Page 327

Our vessels were already firing, raining fusion on the Space Wolves ships to blast them aside.

what kind of fusion weapons (beam or munition) we dont know, but its interesting nonehteless.




Page 332

I don’t blame them, myself. They are Adeptus Astartes, bred to be weapons first and reasoning souls second. They would consider it the coward’s way – the way of the immoral enemy – to prevent a greater evil by committing a lesser evil. There’s honour in that. There’s a simple, ignorant, honour.
They are, to be blunt, not pragmatic creatures. There’s no room for pragmatism in honour.
But we were born, schooled, trained and sworn to see a greater picture, beyond personal honour and the lives of a few million souls. Our mandate was to defend the species itself, and the lives of billions were always of greater value than the millions.
I admire the Wolves. I even forgive them for their narrow-minded, stubborn honour. I hold no grudge that their actions meant we were forced to silence ten billion innocent voices instead of a few million potentially corrupt ones.

Hyperion's assessment of the situation is pretty accurate, IMHO. Its very much a 'POv' gray area, because in many ways no one faction is truly blameless. The Inquisition were the ones who brought this on, true, but the Space Wolves intransigence has also lead to massive deaths as a consequence. You can argue whose fault it is MORE and whose morality was justified (the whole gambling that sparing a few now won't doom many later, which is not wholly without merit as brutal as it is.) but it is not a clear cut 'good guy vs bad guy' issue, and the fact many realize this is what makes it powerful, I think. There are no easy answers and it requires a deep, personal struggle with the choices (and consequences) to resolve. The choices like this and the way it ties into what it means to be a GK both in general and for Hyperion personally, is another of those strong elements that carries the story well.




Page 334

Jendara Quintus, in the Tremayne Sector, categorised by the Imperium of Man as a Gamma-class planet: civilised, but not teeming with the same masses of life that make up a hive world. Its main population centre was the city-state Illustrum (population: nine million) at the mouth of the Shuma River.
..
Jendara Quintus was protected by a blistering array of orbital defences, none of which activated when the Grey Knights warships Ruler of the Black Skies and Fire of Dawn entered the world’s ionosphere.
The orbital defence array remained inactive even as the warships bombarded the cities from the heavens, never once replying to the screams for mercy rising from the surface.
Five days after its satellite defences failed to come online, Jendara Quintus was left alone in lifeless, silent peace. Beacons deployed in orbit warned any nearby vessels away from the dead world, citing the brutal xenos invasion that had swept the planet clean of all human life.

As we learned before the two ships were GK Battle barges, and it apparently takes them five days of orbital bombardment to kill all life on the planet. The question is, what is the extent of the damage? We might argue at least something aorund 1e8-1e9 megatons, which would be 'high megaton/low gigatons per second' damage at least, but if its more (sterilizing, boiling oceans, blowing off atmosphere) it could also be orders of magnitude greater (and would not be inconsistent with other examples.)




Page 335-336

It was common for vessels on long warp journeys on nearby transit routes to refuel and resupply at Tybult’s extensive orbital docks. Three ships were doing so on the eastern hemisphere morning of the planet’s death – one of which was the Imperial Guard transport Casus Belli.
The dockyard installation exploded under direct nuclear warhead strikes originating from deep space. All three of the docked vessels went down with the docking station, burning up in the atmosphere several hours later, when they fell to the surface.
The crews of the three vessels – almost entirely on shore leave down on Tybult’s surface – survived almost one hour longer than their ships. They died with the rest of the planet’s populace, when the warship Corel’s Hope, rearmed under Inquisitorial mandate, deployed air-bursting virus bombs above the main cities.
The virus matter contained within each globular incendiary was an artificial strain of cytotoxic agent, designed by ancient minds in service to mankind during the age of Imperial expansion. The merest contact ate all cellular life, in any organic form, from soil and trees to flesh, blood and bone – and the virus itself spread by damning everything it touched, even microbiotic life in the air.
The disease’s hunger ages everything it touches, breaking it down at the cellular level. The end result for most biotic substances is to become a flammable, chemical-rich residue – not entirely unlike organic slime.
Amazing to think that the architects of the Imperium would design an artificial disease that rots and melts all life, degrading it into inert sludge. What enemies did our ancestors face, to warrant such foul genius in the Emperor’s name?
Tybult burned that day. As the population corroded while still alive, along with the planetary ecosystem, the atmosphere thickened with volatile byproduct gases, as a result of dissolving matter.
A second bombardment, this time of the warship’s plasma batteries, ignited the planet’s turgid, poisonous air. Already a grave-world of biological ooze, Tybult was reaved clean of all life by the ignition of its atmosphere. A handful of hours after its arrival, Corel’s Hope turned away from the world it had slain, leaving nothing but superheated rock and silent cities.

***



Page 338

Primarch. Such a word, laden with the resonance of mythology. Angron. Lord of the Twelfth Legion. The wider Imperium could never be allowed to know the Emperor’s own sons turned against him, nor that the Grey Knights existed in the empire’s shadows, fighting a war against creatures that couldn’t be real. We spent so much sweat and effort ensuring even the most minor sins never reached the eyes and ears of Imperial citizens; the greatest heresies of all had long since passed into apocryphal legend.

And yet.. Horus is known to many as a figure of evil and sin, and there are lots of examples of this that counter it. I wonder if this is just something unique to the core regions (the heartlands) which Armageddon is part of -they keep security by brutal suppression, whereas in other Semgentae (or closer to the edges) the restrictions are much looser (either because they can't be so brutal due to lack of resources, or lack of inclination.) It could go either way.
Its also possible that the aftermath of this confrontation relaxed the strictures on such secrecy, as some get away and the Inquisition is restrained. I doubt the High Lords would want to tempt another civil war any more than they would want secrets to get out, and we know that an Inquisitor who is a bit too free in destroying planets (Eg Kryptmann) can be declared traitor.




Page 340

The Wolves had scuttled the Barsavans’ troop ship themselves after leading several of our ships into a deep-space chase, and proceeded to leave the survivors on random Imperial worlds across a number of subsectors. What hope was there to find a few thousand soldiers on a world with three billion people? What worlds should we even begin to target for investigation, let alone Exterminatus?

The Wolves are scattering the Imperial forces across multiple planets, showing not even the Inquisition can just randomly scorch planets to hide the truth. Imperial world (at least one if not more) implied to have a population of 3 billion.




Page 341

The cyber-mastiff walked at his heels, though perhaps a more accurate word for the way it moved would be loped, surprisingly close to a real canine in its movements.
+Hello, Faith,+ I sent to the mechanical beast. I wasn’t sure of the creature’s exact mechanics, but something in its artificial brain always seemed to register my silent greetings.

Which means that Hyperion doesn't know the thing is partly organic (as hinted at in FFG materials an dothers), or this particular Mastiff does indeed have an artificial brain. It could go either way depending on sources, too.




Page 344-346

The ship shook around us a few seconds later, hard enough to threaten our balance.
..
"That wasn’t us dropping from the warp," I said. "Something hit us."
..
The occulus showed a single vessel, the capital ship Scramaseax, taking a pounding no Imperial warship should ever have to receive. Void-fires ravaged its battlement-spine, while a visibly weak shield buckled and flickered in and out of existence.
..
"She’s already half-crippled."
...
"We dropped from the warp to link up with Kysnaros’s armada. The fleet was already in battle."
..
"How many other vessels are there in our armada?"
...
"I count fifteen, including the Karabela."
..
The Scramaseax retaliated with insignificant weapon bursts, flailing back at enemies it was now too wounded to harm.
..
"Why did the Wolves only show up with one ship?"
"They didn’t. They showed up with five." Malchadiel turned the starscape to a better angle. It was then that I saw the wreckage. This battle was hours old.

it takes fifteen GK ships 'hours' of apparently constant fighting to cripple/destroy 5 Space Marine warships, which tells you something about said ship durability given GK ships are supposed to be very powerful for their size.
Likewise impact of osme kind shakes ship hard neough to imbalance people, but not send them flying per se. Evidently its the Space wolf flagship, although more than crippled at this point, so it can't be diverting lots of firepower, especially against a single escort. If we figure a single macro-cannon hit and a 7 million ton escort and half a m/s velocity imparted (3.5e9 kg*m/s of momentum), or about a 3.5 ton shell at ~1000 km/s. If a laser beam (it would be around 1e18 J of energy, assuming it strikes shields and is not explosively vaporizing hull to impart the motion.






Page 351

"You have to understand, great jarl, that your Chapter’s reputation with Imperial command hierarchy calls the worth of your sworn oaths into question. How many times have you come into conflict with the Ecclesiarchy? Or the Inquisition’s lesser elements? I wasn’t sure I could trust you."

I cite this to note how the blame may not entirely be on the side of the Inquisition. The Space wolves are known for causing conflict with other organizations (several dioceses have censured them, its mentioned) and they have come under Inquisitorial scrutiny before. They don't make friends, and have even fired on Sisters of Battle/Priests for violating their space (as we learned in 5th edition.)
Whilst I still believe the Wolves had the right of it, it cannot be discounted that Grimnar KNEW what the consequences would be, and that he had chosen to save a few million and let the Inquisition kill upwards of ten billion to protect its secret. Whilst the Inquisition was still the one who did it, the Wolves (as 'protectors' of Imperial citizens') could have backed down despite the fact it meant the death of those who had fought and lived on Armageddon. Its easy for us to judge Inquisitor Harsh for brutal choices like this, but if we were in a position and up against threats like Daemons (with what we know Daemons are capable of), would we neccesarily do better?
Ultimately its a 'point of view' thing, because the people involved had their own ethics at play and their own reasons for the choices they made. As events progress, we get more of this 'point of view' thing laid out, and its one of the big reasons why there is actual, interesting drama in the book rather than silly grimdark. There are no simple good/bad choices here, only humans making the best choices they can according to their consciences and beliefs.
Another interesting thing to consider here is my own prejudices regarding the wolves. It can be said without a doubt my 'view' of the Space Wolves is most often characterized by Bill King's work, and that definitely paints a more heroic picture. As I noted in 'Battle of the Fang' I wasn't fond of Wraight's view, nor of Abnett's, and I know I am not the only person to have done so. But ADB has commented online before that disliking the depiction because 'its not what I am used to' is pretty silly and irrational, and its a very good point. I mean, I detest the attitude people take towards 5th edition necrons just because they were a departure from what was implied in 3rd edition.. and how is that any different from my view of non-King Space Wolves? Likewise here, my belief in the 'Heroic' wolves probably makes me more inclined to side with them than with Asshole Inquisitor (a character type I am also predisposed to dislike) and that can make you blind to potential flaws like this.





Page 351

I had no doubt rejuvenat surgery played a part in his youth, of course. He couldn’t truly be as young as he appeared; no man or woman in their mid-twenties could ever rise to the rank of Lord Inquisitor. Such ascensions usually took centuries, and a legion of allies, favours and supporters.

Implying that you cna be centuries old and at least look in your mid twenties. 8 or 10 to one ratio implied.



Page 358

A Space Wolves cruiser patrolled around the installation hub, finally leaving with the transport when the whaleship was due to depart.
By that point, the hundred thousand men of the Uruvel Outriders had scattered across seven other vessels, departing for other warzones on other worlds.

100K troops on a transport at least, and also the size of the regiment.



Page 360

"Auspex readings indicate almost twenty ships in Red Hunters colours have joined the armada. That would suggest we’re dealing with…"
..
"Their entire Chapter is here. Kysnaros has summoned an entire Chapter."

Another view of Chapter fleets. The Red Hunters evidently have around twenty vessles which can be seen to represent their whole fleet. We might figure a First Founding or other Important Chapter can have thirty or more ships, whilst one that is not so illustrious might have only twenty.



Page 368

I didn’t hate him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t muster the requisite depth of emotion. None of us hated him, not even Annika. Hatred thrives on familiarity and intimacy, and struggles to grow in less fertile hearts. He wasn’t a figure of loathing and lies, cackling at the notion of genocide for bloodshed’s own sake. He was merely a man, one we scarcely knew, who turned our talents to unwholesome ends. Pragmatism moved him above all else. In that regard, he was no different from any one of a thousand other inquisitors. He was no worse than any one of a hundred Grey Knights, either.

Whilst this is a good quote to reinforce that whole 'point of view' thing I spoke of earlier, I also think its a great example of how Hyperion, as a character, has progressed through the series. This isn't the arrogant, dogmatic loner who prejudged Clovon, or disregarded his comrades ot pursue his own course. His choices and experiences, and his losses, have tempered him greatly.




PAge 373-374

"How strange to hear the name history will remember you by. No worse than I deserve, admittedly. But you’re right. The Grey Knights have a greater, wider calling than this debacle. Which is why I’ve not summoned them. I could have. Many inquisitors would have by now. But I have no desire to pull them away from their other duties. Even if I did, it presupposes the Grey Knights will actually fire if I had to give the order."
..
"Some stories have no villain, Hyperion. Merely a mix of souls, each seeking to find where the answers lie. Help me, damn you. Stop staring at me with your eyes full of judgement and help me. How can we end this? Shackling Grimnar to my will would damn him in the eyes of his Chapter. They’d declare war on the Adeptus Terra, and how many Chapters would join them? Even one would be too many. I will not preside over another Badab War, a reliving of the Reign of Blood, or a second Nova Terra Interregnum."
..
"Joros gave me little counsel, beyond swearing he could arrange for his men to fire when the final order came. He suggested we posture, so we did. He assured me the threats would work, so we threatened. He swore taking Grimnar captive would end the war, so we ambushed and betrayed them at an armistice. The blame is mine and mine alone. I will not hide from it, and I’ve recorded my culpability in the archives myself. But I’d never even met one of the Adeptus Astartes before. Joros was a mutual commander and advisor in the face of the Wolves’ intolerable independence. He was difficult to work with, but what could I do? As I said, I have no desire to demand more resources from Titan’s fleet. I couldn’t demand another leader for so few Grey Knights, when they had a duly elected one already here."

I admit that up to this point I pretty much had dismissed Ky as a jerk, so it comes as a bit of a surprise to have him turn out to be different than my expectations. Surprise surprise again from ADB. And it works well because of how misleading it is. It isn't that Kysnaros suddenly becomes a great guy here (he doesn't, and his actions continue to be pretty dumb til the end.) Rather, we are presented with someone who comes across initially as an inept and overzealous twit showing himself to be something completely different. He's aware of the magnitude of the situation he has created, of the mistakes he's made. He owns up to responsibility for them (and the consequnces) and he is honest in seeking a way to avert further catastrophe - however strongly he believes in the primacy of the Inquisition (over even a Chapter whose exploits extend back to the dawn of the Imperium) - he is not willing to drag the Imperium itself down just to make his point. As Hyperion said before, its hard to hate the guy, because despite all the authority and power he is still a fallible human, and its easy to envision how difficult it would be for us in his situation, and with his beliefs.
This yet again shows why this is a fantastic book, because we're presented with these differing perspectives that challenge our preconceptions, make us think and review our own beliefs, and carry our interest from start to finish.



Page 375-376

"You stand before me here with murder in your eyes. Such deeds, such emotions, pull at the Dark Gods’ attentions. But no Grey Knight has ever fallen to them. Are you free to act with impunity, forever protected purely by genetic divinity? Can you revel in bloodshed and sin, knowing you cannot be corrupted?"
..
"Or," he continued, "is it a struggle to always remain pure of thought and deed, against the madness and malice that would stain all other souls?"
..
"You’re asking the fundamental question that lies at the heart of our order. We ask it ourselves, from the moment we first don the grey and silver, to the night we inevitably die in battle. Philosopher-soldiers among our ranks have written treatises on the subject for millennia"
..
"Hyperion, what is the Emperor’s Gift? A license to do as you please, safeguarded against the evils that wrack our species? Or is it a sacred charge, a responsibility you have to live up to, fighting every second to remain purer than the species you’re sworn to defend?"

Yet another good point, I think, and the question at the core of the book, given not only the title but how the Grey Knights themselves think and act in this book. ADB doesn't try to present one single 'answer' to how this shoudl be viewed - he leaves it up to the individual (including the reader) to decide how the Grey Knights are. This is distinctly different from the Codex view, and actually echoes alot of what we witnessed in Counter's books (bringing Hammer of Daemons in particular to mind, as the concept of 'what keeps a Grey Knight pure, and what it means to fall' was dealt with there as well.
Hyperion's answer - that each chooses to believe what they wish - is interesting, but it could also be true, given how the Warp works. Belief and thought shaping things, and given their gifts and their training, that could likewise shape the way they think and believe, and thus what provides them their purity. Again the way passages like this make you think is what really makes this book stand out, even amongst ADB's writing I think, and its what makes me like this as much (or more) than the Ben Counter GK novels.




Page 381

While power armour was built to be worn for days, weeks, even months if necessary, that didn’t mean it was pleasant after a few weeks. Waste was minimised by regulating intake, but the real trouble came in the form of rashes on the skin, which couldn’t be cleaned or disinfected without the armour being unplugged and detached, segment by segment.

Limits of power armour.




Page 384

"God-Emperor?" The Dreadnought made the sound of gears slipping, grinding together. From the booming augmetic tone, I assumed it was supposed to be laughter. Either that, or an internal weapons system reloading. "Calling him a god was how all this mess started."
...
"Now. What brings you into the night sky above Fenris, and why shouldn’t I break your little fleet into pieces with this castle’s many, many guns?"
..
"Are you blind, little man? It’s written on my coffin."
..
His name is Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed. First Great Wolf of the Chapter, and second High King of Fenris after Jarl Russ, the primarch himself. They woke him to deal with us.+
..
"You… You walked in the Age of the Emperor?"
Bjorn made the gear-grinding chuckle again. "Walked, ran, pissed and killed. I did it all. I met the Allfather, you know. Fought at his side more than once. I do believe he liked me."

AH, even towards the end this book surprised me. I'd forgotten about Bjorn. And who else would they send to deal with the Inquisition? And what Inquisitor is giong to have the authority to order HIM around? I think the way he treats them (and the Inquisitor) was apporpirate and hilarious and it added to the book both as plot resolution and characterization.
Also the Fang is powerful enough to perhaps wipe out a combined Inquisitorial task force of some 20 or so REd Hunters ships, plus however many (15-20?) Inquisitorial and Grey Knights vessels there are. Inlcuding at least several battle barges (from both GK and Red Hunters) and at least one battleship bigger than the BB's.


Page 386

"I didn’t come to see Fenris burn, but mark my words, this world will die if the Wolves don’t compromise. Too many inquisitors view this as the perfect chance to rein in that famous and inconvenient Adeptus Astartes autonomy, and silence a troubling voice once and for all. The Wolves are beloved by the people of the Imperium that know of their existence, but the institutions of the Adeptus Terra are far less well-disposed towards the Sons of Fenris."

The situtation at this point has expanded far beyond the point of the actions at Armageddon into the realm of politics, because the Imperium runs on politics of all kinds, especially when it comes to who has control and autonomy. Natural for the Inquisition to resent any faction having authority outside its purview, nevermind the High Lords. And as we noted the Wolves are known for pissing other Adepta off too.
On the other hand, unless the Wolves truly alienate themselves from the other Chapters, pissing on a First Founding Chapter like that could backfire if the other Astartes Chapters feel THEY are being threatened.




Page 392

"I want half of the fleet to focus all its fire on the fortress-monastery. All use of atomics and cyclonics are disallowed, but traditional bombardment mustn’t cease. The rest of the fleet, focus on their capital ships."

Starships ordered orbital bombardment, atomics and cyclonics forbidden. Of course what 'atomics' means is up for debate of course lol. Plasma weaponry apparently is not forbidden, or whatever the 'fusion' stuff mentioned before is. This does imply the starships have less than 'cyclonic' or 'atomic' level firepower, however we define that (since Cyclonics can vary from city destroying to world destroying, nevermind what atomics can vary at.)



Page 392

The fleets crashed together in the sedately brutal way of the most vicious void battles. Warships so often duelled over vast distances, waging war with calculated weapon strikes, that it wasn’t uncommon for a captain to have never once come face to face with another ship prepared to ram his own.
Only a commander’s madness or hatred could bring warships within ramming reach of one another. Too much could go wrong with no room to manoeuvre; with no space to come about; with no hope of escaping if something went wrong.

Comment on the nature of void battles. Note how 'ramming' is considered atypical and generally the wrong idea




Page 392

"Shields to variable cycling," he ordered, already moving from the void shield station to the gunnery platform.

Void shields for some reason can 'vary' their cycle. What is varied and what cycle we dont know, but its interesting. Maybe it plays with the time they are shut down before reactivating, or something.




Page 393

"The Corel’s Hope is the biggest, most heavily defended ship in the armada"

Bigger and tougher than the GK ships even? The Battle Barges? That must say something.




Page 400

"Enough. Enough. The Fang is aflame, burning hotter than it ever did under the black magic of Magnus One-Eye. Three Imperial ships have crashed into our walls, pulling them down and opening our hearth-halls to the Fenrisian winter."

Considering the Battle of the Fang (what he is referring to I wager) involved multiple continent-scouring warships and similar, I'd suggest that the level of firepower directed by the starships via orbital bombardment (as specified before) was similar. We dont know how long it took, but if we assume half the fleet spend an hour or so doing it (call it 15-20 vessels) and around 2e8 megatons (two continent scourers) at least we'd get a sustained firepower of 2-4 Gigatons per second approximately, with that figure scaling appropriately to assumptions of continent size being demolished. As an order of magnitude figure it works, even on the low end.




PAge 404

"We will explore alternate avenues against this Chapter"
..
"Perhaps the next time Fenris comes under siege by the Archenemy, Battlefleet Solar will be slow to react. What a shame that would be."
..
There are some moments in life you will always regret witnessing. The insipid scheming of the Inquisition after the battle was one of them. The bitterness of the Wolves was another. Both sides were justified in their anger, but validation didn’t render it wholesome.

Again politics rules the day here rathe than common sense. After all the death and misery and pain noone is truly satisfied, nothing is resolved, and everyone is left hating the other side even more. The worst part is these people are clearly even more dumb than Kysnaros was (who at least was willing to recognize his limits and faults in the matter and try for SOME reconciliation, even if it was a half-assed one.) These bozos don't even go that far - they know they're right, and they'll find some way to make those damn wolves SUBMIT. Whatever lessons KYsnaros learned were lost with him and lost upon these fools.
This is perhaps a great example of what Annika and others kept emphasizing about the Inquisition - externally it projects this appearance of being a single, menacing monolithic order, but behind teh scenes its a bunch of squabbling, petty, and politicking fools who are as often fighting with each other or other parts of the Imperium as they are fighting the actual enemies of humanity. There's a kind of tragedy in this because despite the sacrifices and the loss and the sense of victory that banishing Angron may have brought is now ashes because of the aftermath. I kind of envision this is what the Macharius novels will turn out as - Macharius has these grand visions and does all this great (and terrible) stuff, yet will be undone by the small minded and petty people who run the Imperium and consider him a threat.
As much as the Imperium has many external threats and internal ones, the Imperium is also its own worst enemy. The fact it survives even that is perhaps miraculous.

[Lost Soal]

PArt 3

Page 338

Primarch. Such a word, laden with the resonance of mythology. Angron. Lord of the Twelfth Legion. The wider Imperium could never be allowed to know the Emperor’s own sons turned against him, nor that the Grey Knights existed in the empire’s shadows, fighting a war against creatures that couldn’t be real. We spent so much sweat and effort ensuring even the most minor sins never reached the eyes and ears of Imperial citizens; the greatest heresies of all had long since passed into apocryphal legend.

And yet.. Horus is known to many as a figure of evil and sin, and there are lots of examples of this that counter it. I wonder if this is just something unique to the core regions (the heartlands) which Armageddon is part of -they keep security by brutal suppression, whereas in other Semgentae (or closer to the edges) the restrictions are much looser (either because they can't be so brutal due to lack of resources, or lack of inclination.) It could go either way.
Its also possible that the aftermath of this confrontation relaxed the strictures on such secrecy, as some get away and the Inquisition is restrained. I doubt the High Lords would want to tempt another civil war any more than they would want secrets to get out, and we know that an Inquisitor who is a bit too free in destroying planets (Eg Kryptmann) can be declared traitor.

They've had a long time to re-write history so that Horus is no longer a Primarch son of the Emperor but a highly trusted human commander.

[Connor MacLeod]

Did they actually go with that explanation (I remember him being 'General Horus' or something like that before they decided to make him a Primarch) but I wasn't aware that was teh actual explanation

[Lost Soal]

Did they actually go with that explanation (I remember him being 'General Horus' or something like that before they decided to make him a Primarch) but I wasn't aware that was teh actual explanation

Just a theory. Only other one I can come up with is they acknowledge Horus because he died for his treachery so serves as a lesson that no one is powerful enough to stand against the Imperium but whitewash the others because their survival would give people ideas