Next up Salvation, an incredibly odd novel. Which may not be unusual for Goto, but the problem is.. there's the element of a good story here, but Goto didn't carry it off in the right way. You have either the elements of an ian-watson style 'Space Marine' type story without the Space Marines (highlighting the Imperium from a perspective of silliness and absurdity, which would inject a much needed dose of humor into 40K) or you could have 'indiana Jones and the Hive City of Doom', which woudl also work. Ironically the cover of the book displays the latter, and also has absolutely nothing to do with much of the book itself. The idea of 'exploring to discover forgotten artifacts' would have worked well, since many other Necromunda stories tend to play on similar themes (Necromunda take on zombie movies in Back from the Dead, Necromunda take on Western movies in Outlander, Necromunda version of Ciaphas Cain with Kal Jerico, etc.) but that's not what we have. What we have is some weird protagonist who sniffs books and is a general doofus who manages to muddle through problems and trouble by sheer luck... as well as three different groups (four?) after him. IT feels more like 'Muppet 40k' than anything, and that's probably crediting it with more sanity.
And yet there is a certian charm in the absurdity.Goto should have gone for more of a Ciaphas Cain/Ian Watson approach to 40K. He simpyl does do grimdark well. He does goofy well, and that could have worked well. But I think many of this novels tried for 'serious' and just failed (like Eldar Prophecy.)
A good example was Jonas the Excavating Librarian from Dawn of War: Ascension. I actually like him. I thought he was a fun and interesting character. But I never liked Gabriel, and I didn't much care for Isador. Goto's writing of Gabreil and Isador (and the Eldar Emo drama) was generally silly and goofy (cue all ym references to Gabriel 'having an episode.')
Page 8-9
He was not an observant man at the best of times, even when his nose was not pressed deeply into the glue-cracked spine of an ancient tome. He read with his whole being, always sniffing each page before he read it, hunching over his desk and pushing his face close to the parchment, as though certain that he could inhale some of the original intent that the author had been unable to transliterate into the orderly etchings of script.
...
He called it his desk because he sat at it every night and read for three hours exactly. In the four and three-quarter years that he had been permitted access to the higher levels of the librarium, he had never once seen another curator sitting at that desk. Hence, he reasoned, it was as good as his. Every ninth evening, he would carefully place his stylus into an ostensibly careless position on the desk and leave it there overnight.
Our hero, people. This sort of thing comprises about the first 1/5 of the book or so, and I have to admit that this being the first Goto novel I had ever read, pretty much summed up my whole view of him up to this point.
Page 12
It rose erratically from the barren wastelands of the surrounding planes to a height of about ten miles, slicing through the permanent layer of lethally poisonous, yellowing and noxious undercloud at about three miles, created by the continuously vomiting factories of Necromunda. Then, at the five mile mark, there was the layer of natural cloud, thick and billowing, as the heavier toxins rained down into the underlayer leaving only the relatively clean, acidic water vapour congealing into a thick cumulus belt...
This may or may not be a novelized version of the diagram in the Necromunda games and stuff, but frankly I don't remember
Page 12-13
The great Ko'iron librarium was a tower of more than one hundred levels; at unbelievable expense, it had been built on one of the exterior walls of Hive Primus, five-point-two miles from the Underhive. The founders of the great House had insisted that its curators should be granted the extraordinary privilege of natural light by which to study the history and glory of Ко' iron over the generations to come. Hence, the librarium protruded like a thorn from the side of the Spire, the windows of three sides pointing out into Necromunda's vaporous atmosphere and the fourth connected by a web of bridges and walkways back into the Spire itself.
In fact, the Ko'iron curators enjoyed almost no natural light at all. The House Ko'iron architects had overlooked the fact that this altitude was perpetually enshrouded by the natural cloud belt. When the local star was at its peak, just after noon, a thin yellow light filtered through the thick clouds, but it was certainly not enough to read by. In any case, most of the curators would be on their lunch-breaks at that time. Unfortunately, the architects had been so stubborn about the potential wonders of natural light that they had neglected to install sufficient interior lighting - thus, like the other curators in the librarium, Zefer had to carry a supply of candles with him at all times. Rather than producing the most magnificent librarium in the Spire, bathed in the splendour of natural light, House Ko'iron actually boasted the darkest and dingiest librarium out of all the Spire's great Houses.
Necromundan engineering at its 'finest'. A good majority of the book are little 'ironies' like this, particularily those of a bureaucratic nature (or rather mindlessly bureaucratic. Goto seems a bit obsessed by that in this book, which reflects attitudes he's displayed in short stories as well.)
Page 14
He looked nervously over each shoulder, as though suspicious that this would be the first night in nearly five years that there would be someone else on the seventy-third floor, watching him. He couldn't see anyone, but it was almost completely dark beyond the reach of the candlelight, so there might have been an entire troop of Delaque spies waiting in the shadows for all he knew.
We call this irony, because as it turns out, there ARE spies waiting in the shadows, spying on him. Apparently Library espionage is a big thing on Necromunda.
Page 15-16
The goggles blinked and whirred, chiming quietly when they clicked into focus and then buzzing when the image fuzzed again. They were an old and unreliable technology, with a blind spot right in the middle of the lens where the tiny pixels on the little image intensifier had burnt out, but they were all that Krelyn had been left with after House Delaque's Red Snake gang had cut her off. She bobbed her head slightly, like a mongoose taunting a cobra, trying to trick the goggles into focussing on the speck of reality hidden behind the digital blind spot, but it was no use. The faulty pixels where precisely those used for focussing, so the little machine had no hope.
Clicking the goggles to manual, Krelyn estimated the distance between her rooftop perch and the circular access tunnel set into the wall on the other side of the street.
..
About three hundred metres, thought Krelyn, thumbing the dial on the side of the goggles and watching the image leap into focus.
Insert own McBain goggles joke here. On a more serious note, these are Delaque issue goggle/visors, which actually seem to be fairly sophisticated (By Imperial terms, shock and amazement) even though the person in the book considers them 'old and unreliable' - how many IG regiments would kill to have tehse even with the blind spot! Mainly the implied fancy-ness from the 'pixel' bits in the image intensifier, which basically means magnification is cool.
Luckily they have a manual zoom function, although you have to do the math in your head
Page 18
She was supposed to ensure that the librarium was emptied each night, and to monitor the movements of those employees who kept unsociable hours.
..
It usually took another couple of minutes before the spies started to appear. There were invariably five of them; Krelyn presumed that one was in the employ of each of the other Noble Houses of the Spire. She wasn't sure why they would want to spy on the Ko'iron librarium, but she was aware that Ko'iron also sent spies into the librariums of a couple of the other Houses, especially Ulanti and Catallus. Indeed, she had served for a time as a spy in the upper levels of the Ulanti librarium, keeping tabs on the discoveries of the curators who were researching the history of that ancient House.
Like I said earlier, LIBRARY espionage.
page 19
..Krelyn was confident that she would be almost invisible from the ground - her cloak was made of a special, unre-flective fabric that actually drew light into it, soaking it up from the surrounding air like a sponge, producing a blurry phase-field that cast the wearer into a perpetual dusk. Wearing the cloak was like having tinted glass windows on your transporter, but without the transporter.
Delaque cloaks and their super-invisibilty properties. We also learn later in this novel (and in others like Fleshworks) they also help to mask body heat.
Page 20
Slashed across his face was a visor of midnight blue - an optical enhancer used by Delaque spies in particularly bad light to heighten their already sharp vision, or in intense light to protect their sensitive eyes.
More on the fancy Delaque visors.
Page 21
Conversely, there would be nothing gained from following one of the other spies and trying to prise the information out of them - Krelyn was well aware of the pycho-conditioning undergone by all Delaque agents and she still had the scars on the base of her neck to prove it. Besides, her masters in House Ko'iron would not look favourably on the creation of the kind of major diplomatic incident that would arise if she damaged the servant of another House, even if that servant had been spying on Ko'iron's famous librarium.
As far as library espionage goes, there seem to be certain.. 'rules of engagement' that are unofficially held to, which is rather rare I'd think on Necormunda, given how the politics goes in between the families in all other respects. In any case, there is psycho-conditioning to make interrogation tactics futile (what that conditioning entails is completely unknown. It could be anything from preventing details from being spilled to instant suicide if captured or tortured.)
Page 26
Like the vast majority of people in Hive Primus, Krelyn had never been outside the immense edifice, and any reminder that there was an outside made her slightly nauseous. Like most people on Necromunda, she was intensely agoraphobic, and the thought of five miles of open space beneath her feet made her eyes bulge as she dashed through the last few metres of the tunnel.
supposedly, most hive owrlders on Necromunda are Agorophobic. It makes sense in some respects given their enviroment (Closed in vs wide open spaces - they tend to associate the outside with being a complete shithole) but I can't believe everyone holds to that - at least not everyone in the underhive, since quite a few novels (like Outlander) have people traversing the outside to get from one place to another.
Page 27
Clicking to infra-red on her visor, Krelyn studied the marble steps. The stone showed no trace of footsteps -it was an incredible heat-conductor and thus a tracker's nightmare. However, there was a thin strip of carpet that ran up the middle of the stairs, and Krelyn could just about make out the telltale pink of human thermo-prints heading up into the upper levels. Five nimble spies and a heavy-footed curator left just about enough of a heat trail, even after half an hour.
Springing up the steps two at a time, but keeping her eyes trained on the ground to keep track of the thermal images, Krelyn rapidly ascended into the upper levels of the librarium.
Delaque visors (or at least the ones in this book!) also have an IR mode in addition to night vision and other capabilities.
Page 37-38
The Breath of Fresh Air was an unusual establishment. At first glance it looked like a genius-stroke of planning. Outside its main doors was a huge, four-bladed fan in the junction of three enormous ventilation shafts. It was the only fan in this area of Hive City, and thus the only source of even remotely fresh air, which made it an extremely valuable site.
..
However, the genius of the site also bordered on insanity. The fan was the biggest point of contention
between three separate gangs that held territory along each of the ventilation pipes that fed it. Gangers from all three would frequent the Fresh Air, which brought in a great deal of money. But with the gangers came tension, broken bottles and occasional skirmishes, which cost a great deal of money.
This is actually the opposite of the bar in Fleshworks, that drew in clients through piping in factory fumes for them to get high off of. Again, the ingenuity and capitalist spirit of the Necromundans must never be underestimated!
Page 38
The proprietor was a tiny man, not more than a metre tall. He only had one eye, but never wore a patch - he liked to watch people staring into the open socket with his other eye. He told everyone that his growth was stunted by the potency of the liquor that he distilled in the smoky backrooms of the Fresh Air. For some strange reason, this seemed to make people want to drink even more of it, so Squatz prided himself on his rare psychological insight.
Yep a short guy, named Squatz, associated with Alcohol. I wonder if this is supposed to be a reference to the long lost Space Dwarves. They went to hide on Necromunda, obviously.
PAge 42-43
She was not entirely sure that her equipment still functioned well enough to enable her to perform these functions. Most of it, like her goggles, was old and decrepit - it had not been replaced since her masters in House Delaque lost the lucrative Ko'iron Contract nearly ten years before.
..
..Krelyn had been on her own amongst the ritual and pompous splendour of the Spire, struggling to service her own equipment and to fulfil her obligations to her adopted masters.
Maintenance and repair of own equipment, which implies some knowledge of its workings.. and probably not anything pertaining to Machine Spirit stuff, either.
Page 43
Her firearms were a completely different story. She was trained to use them, not to maintain them. A glorious example of a pilfered Van Saar laspistol, perhaps the finest weapon that Krelyn had ever had the good fortune to steal, was displayed in a wrack above her bed. Before she was posted up in the Spire, she had even had the audacity to take it to a House Van Saar weaponsmith to have it customised to her requirements - the butt was extended into a shoulder-brace for better stability on ranged shots, almost transforming it into a rifle. As it was, she could wear it hanging vertically at her side, with a simple strap securing the stock under her armpit.
This suggests some 'laspistols' may actually cross the line into rifle territory, barring the stock. Or perhaps some laspistols are actually the energy weapon version of PDW/SMGs?
Again maintenance of equipment can be expected to be normal amongst people without significant access to techpriests. So naturally belief in those things probably is not as prevalent.
Page 57-58
"Oh, I see what has happened. BFD5BF is a number. After the first few years, the queue grew so large that it became increasingly inconvenient to employ numbers in base-ten. Hence, we shifted to base-sixteen, which obviously required the use of a few letters. Actually, the new system is working very well indeed. Take your own number, for example. Had that been written in base-ten it would barely have fitted on the pass!"
...
"If I'm not very much mistaken, you are number thirteen million, four hundred and ten thousand, two hundred and twenty six, as you would say in conventional decimal terms. CC9FB2, as we would say, more correctly, in hexidecimal."
..
"CC9FB." replied the little man cheerfully. "Eight hundred and thirty eight thousand, one hundred and thirty nine."
...
"There are more than twelve and a half million people ahead of me in the list..."
This is an abbreviated summary of what I call the 'Adventures in Bureaucracy' phase of the story. Basically once our hero (the book sniffing obsessive compuslive) actually gets out of the Library he sets out on the mighty quest to... get noticed by people higher up so he can tell them what they discovered and encompasses a substantial chunk of the book. Probably not literally a fifth of it, since the first thirty pages or so include him sniffing books in the library to make his discovery, and there are all the 'ganger' subplots which tie into this later on (sort of) but it feels like it drags out that long. It's one of those things that really just fails to engage me when I read it.. this part of the story could have spent time showing how life in the upper levels of Necromunda was, and then do a contrast later on once they get into the lower levels, and going lower.. but it gets caugth up in the tedium of trying to be 'absurd' and funny in a hit-or-miss manner. I'm not sure why Goto thought it would be funny to take us on a detailed journey through the Administratum equivalent of a PDF, but he apparently did.
That said, this specific bit of weird actually succeeds in being funny, IMHO. The Necromunda equivalent of 'take a number/now serving' type shit involves hexadecimal, base-sixteen stuff due to sheer numbers. I dont know if Goto got it right or not, but he gets points for trying. And if he had not kept this going for a good 1/5 to 1/4 of the novel, it might have been even more amusing, but the whole 'Adventures in Bureaucracy' crap goes on and on which gets.. tedious.
They also mention more than a few people die waiting which is.. pretty funny in a morbid way. It even happens later on right in front of the guy, and it just kinda reinforces the absurdity of the whole thing. If Goto had just kept this bit and trimmed down the rest I probably wouldnt object to this story quite so much.
This also shows up a bit of that 'ignorance' bit, since they apparnety know enough not only to count, but count by other formats. At least in the higher levels, and even if they use it for fairly trivial and useless shit.
Page 59
It had taken six years to get through eight hundred thousand places on the queue. Six years. And that was partly because hardly anyone had actually turned up for their appointments. Zefer couldn't even do the maths. He had no idea how long it would take to get through another twelve and half million people. Come to that, he had had no idea that there were even that many people in the Spire, let alone in House Ko'iron or in the Historical Research Section.
This means that in the uppermost levels (the noble levels at least) of the spire there are at least tens if not hundreds of millions ofpeople, not including the noble families themselves.
Page 73
"Are you saying that there is something down at the bottom of the hive that belongs to me?"
"Yes, yes, I suppose I am suggesting that." admitted Zefer, somewhat shocked that the little girl had seen straight through to the most material implications of his story.
"And, you have come here to tell me that you are going to get it for me?" she asked, smiling sweetly.
"Oh, um, no. No, that's not quite why I'm here, I don't think." replied Zefer, suddenly confused about what he expected to happen as a result of this meeting.
"But, if you don't go and get it, why should anybody believe what you are saying. It's just a story for children, isn't it?" explained Gwentria wisely. "So, I think that you should go." she concluded with a firm nod.
With that, there was a loud clunk and a hiss, and the wall behind the huge, squishy seat in which Gwentria was enthroned drew up into the ceiling. In the space behind was revealed a group of scribes, each feverishly scribbling onto clipboards, presumably recording the details of the conversation, thought Zefer. The strange, stick-like permittor from the other side of the brightly lit corridor was also there. He looked up as the wall vanished into the ceiling, making a few last marks on his clipboard.
"CCA04, this is the end of your audience. Please come with me." said the permittor as he strode through the chamber towards Zefer, picking his way naturally over the mess of toys on the floor. "It is time for her excellency's nap now."
This is another part of the 'Adventures in Bureaucracy' bit, where he actually gets an audience with someone high up.. who happens to be a little girl. A little girl who, as we see, manages to totally outwit our Fearless Hero and send him off on a mission without any aid or idea about how to do it. And he doesn't evne realize any of that. Unintentionally funny or delibearetly so? I can't decide
Either way we're stuck with watching him continue to amble about asking where he gets his supplies, stand in line, and generally get passed about like an administrative football until he's booted out of the hive and realizes he can't get bakc in. Whereupon he gets passed around the various gangs.. like a football. At least when THat happens things tend to get more interesting.
Page 76
Even from this intimate distance, she could only just make out the shape of a stooped man hurrying down the tunnel. His cloak was long and impossibly dark, just like her own, and it shielded him from the attentions of the already dim light.
She watched the man take a few steps and then vanish in the darkness. She clicked her visor onto infra-red, but the thermal balancing of the Delaque cloak meant that she could only see him for another step or two before he was utterly invisible.
...
Then suddenly there was a face, bright and blaring with heat immediately in front of her.
Delaque cloaks mask body heat. Of course that can have drawbacks I'd imagine. I wonder how damn hot it would get under cloaks like that?
Page 85
. Narrowing her eyes, her visor clicked up the magnification and Orthios's fingertips seemed to zoom towards her face.
Zoom mode. SEems to be fairly automatic (or responds to some cues other than touch or voice)
Page 94
It seemed blatantly obvious to her: if an Undying Emperor, or whatever those ridiculous Redemptionists called it, ever really walked the surface of Necromunda, that Emperor must have been a woman.
..
And then her informant had come to her with whisperings of a piece of archeotech, hidden in the depths of the Underhive, an artefact that might prove to the weak willed Redemptionists, to Triar's pathetic Salvationist gang, and to the ridiculous Noble Houses that He was in reality a She. It was pathetic that anyone would require proof, as though Elria's own strength were not proof enough.
One of the subplots of the story is the Cawdor vs Escher argument over whether the Emperor is a man or a woman, and our Noble Hero (who goes by the name Zefer Tyranus btw) gets caught in the middle as his little discovery in his book sniffing is apparently tied up in what they (and others, as we learn) are searching for....
Which is why I said that Zefer ends up getting passed around like a football amongst the gangs once he steps into the underhive.
This also illustrates something that doesnt sit well with me. While I know the Escher theme in Necromunda was 'women are strong, men weak' and sort of a strong (and even abusive) Matriarchy, this character really just feels.. one dimensional. It really feels like Goto has her acting and doing things that are supposed to scream I HATE MEN without actually saying it (although they may actually do that too, I admit I didn't pay attention to that.) Characters can actually be one of goto's weak points when he tries for stuff like this, and its not the first time in a book this has come up.
Then again she is an Escher pyrokinetic with glowing eyes and animated hair (some sort of weird medusa effect I guess.. he seems to have a real mythology fixation in this story)
Page 111
Looking over to his right, Zefer could see the back of the Spiral Gates, dirty and pockmarked, but with tiny flecks of shiny metal glinting here and there. Before them a full scale riot was in progress, with hundreds of people pressing into the little open space that served as a plaza. The momentum of the crowd pushed towards the gates, but the guardsmen in front of them had their weapons drawn, and they were laying down a constant
stream of fire into the crowd, felling row after row of screaming rioters. The line of guards was three men deep, so that they could rotate as the front line began to run low on ammunition. The plaza was in chaos, with guardsmen and rioters hacking at each other with machetes and bludgeoning with pipes, leaving growing numbers of dead bodies to mount into piles before the gates.
"What's going on?" shouted Zefer to the guard next to him, horrified.
"What? What do you mean?" yelled the guard, leaning his mouth right up to Zefer's ear to make sure that he would hear.
"This... this riot." said Zefer, not really sure what to call it as he waved his arm vaguely at the mass of violence in front of the gates.
"Oh, that." replied the guard, nodding casually. "Yeah, it's quiet today. Welcome to Hive City... sir."
I quoted this simply because I couldnt be sure it was funny, silly, absurd, or all of the above. As it is it marks the end of Adventures in Bureaucracy, so that can be worth it all its own.
PAge 114
For the first time, he realised that he was in a long, narrow waiting room. There were seats running the lengths of both sides, each one occupied by progressively less sanitary-looking people.
..
Above its shoulders hung two security drones, bristling with camera lenses and gun barrels, which were also pointed directly at Zefer.
Oh good, more bureacracy. although this is more of the lower level variety, so there are guns involved. At least on the drones. Which I am sure are servo skulls of some kind, because thats usually the kind of drone the Imperium uses.
Page 123-124
The speaker was the largest human being that Zefer had ever seen. He must have been more than two metres tall - a clear head taller than the others in his gang, who were in turn head and
shoulders taller than anyone else.
And some goliaths appear. I'd guess maybe people in Necromunda are 1.5-1.6 m in height on average?
PAge 124
The man's arms were tense with the weight of a huge gun, almost as big as him, which he made no attempt to hide from the authorities... wherever they were.
...
As he spoke, he took a couple of steps forward, racking the mechanism of his autocannon.
goliath bearing an autocannon. and apparently a big one, although I'm not QUITE sure if I believe it is as 'big' as him.. as long as him maybe but even that.. meh.
Page 125
Uglar was staggering back away from him with a huge gash sliced across his chest; blood was spurting out of it and showering all over Zefer. A smaller man would be dead already.
Triar's blade flashed again, sparking against the heavy chains around Uglar's neck and severing the straps around the massive autocannon..
An indicator of the toughness of the Goliath leader.
Page 145-146
From the side of the room, a great plume of fire jetted out from a heavy flamer and incinerated Orthios's head before it could reach the gangers with the stub guns. The sheet of flame cut the room in half...
...
Orthios's riddled and smouldering head crumpled into ash as it thudded to the ground in the middle of the room and, over by the table, his body finally lost its balance and fell off its chair.
Human head cremated by heavy flamer in about a second.. which is at least going to be double digit MJ, depending on inefficiencies and energy injected into the process one assumes. then again, there's also the issue of why the flamer doesn't make the head explode (vapour boiling away to steam..) so it could be less than that (less than a MJ for the head, since it would be less than boiling point. I imagine a badly burnt human head is probably going to be pretty weak structurally when it hits the ground after being cooked like that.)
PAge 148-149
Close on her heels was the huge Subversive from the Wall, with bloody bandages tied crudely across his chest, covering the wounds inflicted by the Salvationist ganger earlier on.
...
A staccato of fire rattled behind the two charging figures, and another of The Coven's gangers emerged
slowly from the cloud-line. A chunky ammunition belt was wrapped around her waist and over her shoulder, and the tip of her heavy stubber was smoking.
..
Uglar stumbled as the shots impacted on his back. He was close enough for Zefer to see his bright green eyes widen in anger as he tripped and fell forward onto the ground, skidding to a halt as his momentum failed, and the metal plate on his scalp glinted into Zefer's face.
From his crumpled heap against the wall, Zefer watched the scene in horror, as blood started to ooze out of the gaping wounds in the giant warrior's back.
Our friend who takes the chest slash is still up and moving, apparently with no loss of capability.. and then takes a barrage of heavy stubber shots to the back, delivered by what I take to be an Escher Heavy carrying said heavy stubber.
Page 150
Elria didn't move a muscle - knowing that if she showed any signs of fear, they would take her instantly. But she let her eyes scan backwards and forwards along the line of muscled men before her. Each brandished at least two weapons. Most had blood drenched battleaxes or spiked clubs in one hand and heavy stubbers or autocannons in the other. It took Jermina all of her strength to heft just one of those guns.
An indicator of just how big and strong the Goliaths are. They can pick up (and fire) a heavy weapon like a heavy stubber or autocannon in one hand, even against the recoil. A feat which even a Heavy can just barely manage with two, it would seem.
so what the fuck is the two handed autocannon the leader packs? A tank gun?
Page 160
He had ripped the bandages from his chest, and the huge gashes through his pectoral muscles bubbled and hissed as the toxic fumes invaded the wounds. He showed no sign of noticing the agony of infection and kept his expression fixed on the fire.
The Goliath ganger leader from before again, the one who took a slash to the chest and heavy stubber fire to his back. Now its infection and caustic fumes.. and he's okay with it. I have to wonder if Goto didn't confuse 'Goliath' with 'Space Marine' or something.. this is getting magical even by 40K standards.
Page 160-161
The other Subversives gangers were dispersed around the camp. A bunch of them had pinned the dead body of a Coven ganger against the wall and were firing volleys from their shotguns into it, laughing and drinking. Others were prodding at their weapons and cussing, obviously displeased with equipment that had failed on their raid. Some simply smashed the butts of their guns against the ground and then cast the rains into the pit-fire, whooping and cheering as the ammunition detonated and sprayed the cavern with shot. But most were slumped into the wreckages of vehicles with bottles in their hands, enjoying the heat of the flames and the toxic liquor.
"He is a puny man. We may have broken him already" mumbled Uglar, apparently to himself. His gaze was fixed on the fire, and its reflection danced in the depths of his brown eyes.
..
"It doesn't matter. If he dies, nobody will get there. If he lives, I will get there. Either way, I am the strongest." reasoned Uglar, nodding slightly as the warmth of the fire singed his face.
Goliaths - the closest human equivalent to an Ork you can ever find, I imagine. Of course this is supposed to 'contrast' the Escher or something, that 'Ugh me tough' super barbaric masculinity crap or some stupid shit. Either way, and even allowing for this being Necromunda standards - it feels really awkward and forced. Goliaths are all super men and fight and drink because thats what real super muscled men do. Escher hate men because thats what men-hating strong women do, or something. There's no other dimension than that. Contrast with novels like Fleshworks, where you have Goliath women who are just as muscle bound as the men, and believe as much in strength and physical power (which is what the Goliath were always about - at least thats what I interpreted it as. And the Escher had more behind them than just 'man hating' I'm pretty sure.)
Also, weren't the leader's eyes Green? (oh and his name is Uglar. Naming again is a rather weak point for Goto in his books.)
Page 164
At the signal from Triar, Koorl planted his melta-bomb onto the plasteel of the door and then turned back into cover, vaulting over a pile of the debris that was strewn throughout the area. From his position, he could see the plasma-gunner in Triar's trench take aim with his heavy, shoulder mounted weapon. There was an almost indiscernible nod from Triar and the gunner squeezed off a shell of bright glowing plasma. It seared across the street and punched directly into the melta-bomb, detonating the thermal charge in its own super-heated explosion.
The door melted and blew in all at once, spraying molten plasteel into the building.
I'm not quite sure why they needed to use a plasma gun AND a melta bomb, but eh. Also the plasma weapon si shoulder mounted. Maybe its a plasma cannon. I could probably calc the door if I assumed iron, but why bother, its not even strictly metal and the combination of teo weapons makes separating them hard.
PAge 169
Regardless of the masks that hid their faces, Triar knew that his men would be shocked by the scene that greeted them. They may hate Elria and her Coven of witches, and they may even have been looking forward to the chance to fight them today, but he was sure that they would be shocked to see what had been done to them in their own enclave. Triar and Elria had been at each others throats for years and, if they were perfectly honest, they had learnt to accept a roughly equal balance of power between their gangs in the sector. They fought every now and again, and even killed a few on each side, just to keep everyone on their toes. But the situation was actually pretty stable. Triar harboured a genuine desire to save their souls and, in the meantime, the conflict gave him an opportunity to exercise his righteousness. The Subversives were brutal people, and they had no place this high up in the hive.
"I suspect that we will find them in the Breath of Fresh Air," announced Triar, after some thought. "That's certainly where I always go when I want to irritate them."
You know, of all the gangs in this book, I actually like Triar and the Redemptionists the most, and that's saying something since the Redemptionists are basically religious fanatics. But he has a sort of.. charm about him even if he is basically a fundie christian type (SAVING SOULS!) I mean by Redemptionist standards he a freaking liberal - he'd rather save people than burn them to ash or torture them or kill them, which is more mainstream REdemptionist ideal.
Page 170
One or two grew rapidly bored of digging and shouldered their heavy bolters, shattering the rock with stuttering barrages of explosive shells. Stone shrapnel and errant shells ricocheted around the cavern, sizzling into the burning liquids or burying themselves into the flesh of other gangers, who roared with pain but threw their rage into their work rather than turning on their brothers.
Uglar watched the crude ingenuity of his men and nodded.
Again. Goliaths are human versions of Orks in this novel.
Page 170-171
He knew that they were horrified by their brutal existence in the lower levels of the hive, where electricity was scarce and water was richer in toxins than oxygen. Even the air was thick with sludge and the unwanted gases of the Hive City.
...
That genteel fop, Triar of Cawdor, would not last a day down in the furnace halls or the slag pits. He would not even have the stomach for the water, let alone for the epic barbarism of the great Feast of the Fallen.
...
There was not a single member of his gang who had not triumphed in the ceremonial pit fights after the Feast of the Fallen. Goliath gangs would not admit just anybody, contrary to the assertions of the softer hivers. It was not enough to be strong or robust. It was not enough to have survived into
adulthood in the harshest environment that the hive had to offer and to have become inured to the toxins and deprivations of life on the cusp of the Underhive. Every Goliath ganger had to make a kill in the pit following the great feast. Every Goliath currently breaking their massively muscled backs against the rock in the floor of this cavern had killed one of their own in the oldest ceremony known to Hive Primus.
A testament perhaps to Goliath durability, and a further reinforcement of their Orkish mentality.
Page 175
Despite his religious beliefs, he too reached behind the bar and snatched a bottle of the house special. "What?" he said defensively. "It's been a hard day."
Again, its hard not to like Triar.
Page 179-180
The Subversives were simply standing their ground around the great pit in the centre, spraying the other tunnels with flame, bullets and bolter shells from their heavy weapons. They stood and absorbed impacts
from the hail of slugs that flashed across at them from the tunnels. A few of them were bleeding from bullet wounds on their limbs and abdomens, but none had yet fallen.
Again, they're frigging orks, up to and including durability. although they might have better accuracy.
Page 180
They had a clutch of autocannons, braced by two women each, that were sending out constant streams of screaming shells, but most of The Coven's gangers carried lighter weapons..
Two woman autocannon teams
Page 181
She risked a peek over the lip of the trench, and saw the Subversives unmoved in their positions around the pit in the centre. Four or five of them had fallen now, with limbs blown clear of their bodies, but at least two of those were still firing their weapons with whatever limbs and whatever strength they had left. Krelyn had to admit that these were seriously tough gangers, and she wondered why Ko'iron had never thought to offer their precious contract to them. As Uglar stooped down and ripped the firing arm off one of his fallen brothers, casting the arm into the immense fire behind him and spitting off a hail of autocannon fire from the pilfered gun, she realised the answer to her own question. The Subversive on the floor at Uglar's feet roared with pain, and Krelyn realised that he was still alive.
Bizarrely, the body-shock seemed to spur the fallen, dismembered ganger into action, and he jumped to his feet, screaming a guttural call out into the cavern like an injured animal. In a second he was lumbering and running towards Triar's tunnel. But his intention was never to reach the Salvationists. Instead, he stopped suddenly and threw himself onto the ground. As he did so, another explosion shook the ground and the superheated, vaporised remains of the ganger were sprayed back into the faces of his brethren. By throwing himself onto the grenade, he had certainly saved a number of the Subversives.
Goliaths. dumb but dedicated. And brutal, because they're barbarians and stuff. And durable.
Anyhow, a grenade powerful enough to obliterate a Goliath (who is going to be many times more massive than a normal person) is probably many times more powerful than a normal (RL grenade)
Page 181-182
Triar stood forward of the tunnel with a gleaming silver orb and hurled it forward towards the centre of the cave. Krelyn instantly knew what it was, and she threw herself flat into the trench, pulling her cloak up over her head as a thermal shield.
...
Uglar watched the plasma grenade spin through the air towards him and swore. He yelled an order to his men to scatter and, at the same time, punched the detonator for the charges that he had planted around the great pit.
...
The plasma grenade and the melta-bombs detonated at the same time. If anyone had been watching they would have been blinded instantly by the starburst of plasma that erupted into an orb above the flaming pit, and then they would have been cooked and flattened by the thermal concussion that rippled out from the blast through the cavern. At the same time, they would have seen the melta-bombs detonate in a staccato sequence around the perimeter of the pit, blowing shards of rock into lethal shrapnel and rapturing the little dams that held the flaming liquid out of the channels in the floor. As the plasma ball radiated death into the air from above the flaming pit, tendrils of burning, toxic liquid gushed into torrents through the trenches towards the little pits in the tunnels' mouths.
Plasma grenades. Man, between that and melta bombs, Necromundan hive gangers get access to some pretty hefty military (or nearl military) hardware.
Also use of a thermal cloak as protection from thermal effects of said grenade.
Page 184
Finally, he found a bunch of metallic tubes tucked into his belt and he tugged one free. Unscrewing the cap and clicking the primer, he lobbed the photon flare into a high arc, making sure that it would not detonate close enough to him to give away his position. After a couple of seconds, it exploded with a burst of intense, white light, showering the cavern with brightness as it incinerated its own shell and sizzled slowly back down to the ground.
Photon flares.
Page 184-185
Clicked to infra-red, she could see pretty well through her visor in the almost complete darkness of the cavern. She could also see that large numbers of the gangers on all sides had been killed by the blasts and the torrents of toxic fluids - their body heat was already ebbing away.
more on Delaque visors and their infra-red capabilities. Damn useful things they are.
Page 184-185
Of the lucky ones who had managed to vault out of the pit before the waves gushed in, another three or four were fried by the thermal blast from Triar's plasma grenade.
..
Triar himself and a couple of his closest aides had made it into the shadow of an upturned battle-wagon, which was now an amorphous lump of melted plasteel, after it had absorbed most of the heat wave directed towards the Salvationist gang leader.
"How many left?" asked Triar, reclining gently against the warm and still slightly soft metal blob at his back.
...
"but there are about four of you and perhaps the same of Elria's people "
That would suggest 4 or so of the Escher died.. in the blast or nto we dont know. But 'fry' if it suggests 3rd degree burns would be at least single digit MJ for the plasma grenade. I expect that the yield for the grenade would be many times grater than what the people might have absorbed (double or triple digit MJ perhaps, depending on distances involved and degree of burning. Certainly the fact that it was melting tanks is indicators of significant thermal effects.)
Page 186
Uglar directed the surviving Subversives to collect up the weapons from the remnants of the Salvationists and The Coven gangs, who had been herded down into the great pit in the centre of the cavern. The liquid that until so recently had filled the huge pit, had all ran out of the cave or been evaporated by the tremendous heat of the plasma explosion.
a pit big enough to hold at least 8 people is probably a good 4-5 m across, and at least a metre or two deep. Vaporizing that much water would be upwards of 42 GJ, and the quote implies that but we don't actually know how much of it was evaporated and how much ran out. And even then it's possible it was so polluted it might be combustible (I think it was even implied to catch fire earlier) so that could contirbute energy. But still, even if 1/1000th of that energy was from the grenade, we're still talking double digit MJ, which woudl fit with the idea that there was far more energy than to just flash burn a few people.
Page 186
The explosive pit-defences had taken them by surprise, and the plasma grenade that they had hoped would have dealt with the bulk of the Subversives force had actually fried as many of their own gangers.
Again the plasma grenade seems to have been VERY energetic.
Page 190
The Subversive was motionless, face down in the dirt, with charred and melted skin dropping off his head.
The Escher Wyrd pyro managed to burn the guys skull. triple digit kj maybe for severe third degree flash burns, maybe a fe times that for head boiling?
Page 191
Her cloak ballooned out behind her as she sprung down into the pit, slowing her fall so that she looked as though she were floating. As her feet touched the ground, she jumped again, letting the grav-shooter in her cape reduce her effective weight. She seemed to bounce, flipping up into the air to a height similar to that of the pit's edge, turning a slow somersault and landing again on the far side of the pit, a short distance from the group of uphivers.
I think 'shooter' is supposed to mean some sort of grav-chute, or a suspensor device meant to improve acrobatic leaping, not unlike a REnegade Legion bounce pack or that fancy antigrav belt Eldar Harlequins have. Which again shows you how advanced Necromunda tech is, since this is supposedly in a freaking CLOAK.
It also apparnetly explains lal the weird Matrix-like ninja-ing the Delaque gangers do in this book, and I'm not kidding. Krelyn alone does some fairly crazy close combat shit.
Page 192-196
She spun and flicked out with a short dagger, plunging it into Uglar's lower back where his kidneys should be.
...
...she whipped her hand forward and released the little knife. It flipped end over end until it slit into Uglar's chest, burying itself completely through the half-healed gash that Triar had left there at the Wall.
The Subversives' boss roared in frustration and batted blindly at his chest, trying to dislodge the blade that had already sunk into one of his lungs. As he roared, he coughed, and a mouthful of blood vomited out onto the pit-floor.
...
..she whipped out a couple more throwing knives and darted them at Uglar. One stuck into his exposed shoulder, just inside his collarbone, but he swatted the other one away with a grumpy flick of his sword.
...
..tugging long-bladed daggers from her boots with each hand as she went. She streaked under the descending arc of the broad sword and emerged at Uglar's right shoulder, dragging her two blades through his ribs as she rushed past and out in the middle of the pit once again.
..
With blood gushing out between his ribs and dribbling down his chest, Uglar yanked the blade free and turned to face Krelyn again. He was dragging the tip of the heavy sword along the ground now, as though the strength to lift the mighty weapon had deserted him. His posture was broken and slumped, as he tried to hold his body in a position that didn't rely on any of the lacerated muscles. As he staggered forward, he stumbled slightly and coughed, and blood started to spill over the edge of his metal jaw.
...
...she flicked out a cluster of throwing knives, exhausting the supply strapped to her thighs. Then she dropped into another roll, reclaiming her curved daggers from her boots, and plunged them forward as her spin brought her up onto her knees.
...
..her daggers buried up to their hilts in his stomach. His chest was peppered with throwing knives and there was one sticking out of his forehead.
...
He crashed down onto the pit-floor, his weight driving the knives straight through him, so that their tips protruded out of his back.
A constant stream of blood coursed out of his metal mouth, but his eyes still twitched with the last residue of life. Krelyn touched her knee to the ground next to the giant's head.
...
"Ss 'ver now." replied Ulgar. Then he died.
I wasn't kidding about the weird ninja-ing crap. But the commentary here is more on the sheer durability of the Goliath leader, and this is on top of the abuse we know he suffered in previous battles and by simply being injured in this enviroment. Again they're frigging human orks.
What's even funnier is that after the leader dies Krelyn is now the leader (she's the strongest!)
Page 200-201
"I didn't say it, and neither did anybody else." She was genuinely unnerved now, and not entirely sure that this was Zefer at all. She had heard legends about strange creatures in the Underhive who could take on the form of anything or anyone they consumed. Such creatures were said to be telepathic, luring their victims to their doom with reassuring platitudes injected directly into their minds.
...
"What happened to your arm?" she asked, pointing. Most of the greenish fluid had dried now, but his left arm was still aglow, as though the veins from his shoulder to his finger tips pulsed with light.
Zefer shrugged and reached the arm out towards her. "I don't know." he answered honestly, as Krelyn stepped back cautiously. "It happened when they put me in that cell. I thought that it might have had something to do with the water."
...
" But my neck feels much better now, and I think that my ribs have healed."
..
"Curator, do you know what wyrds are?"
Our Hero has been infected by magic radioactive green water, which seems to give him mut- err psyker powers (hence, wyrd.) He has super healing, he glows green, and he can hear thoughts. And this means that the Redemptionists (and probably the other gangers) will pursue him.
Page 202
But down here in the depths of the hive, the Subversives had to deal with creatures far more terrifying than telepaths and weakling pyros. All of the wyrds from the upper levels who were too mutated or too powerful to pass as ordinary citizens would eventually find their way down here, where the short arm of the authorities would not bother to look for them. When a Goliath ganger yelled "mutant" he really meant it.
The underhive is a really fun place!
Page 203
"But she's not really your boss. Don't you understand about vengeance?" asked Triar rhetorically. "Vengeance is what makes us human. It is what places us above the level of animals. It is what makes us the chosen of the Undying Emperor himself."
Triar was never one to miss the chance to preach, and this sermon might also have the advantage of saving his life.
Ah Triar, you get so many good lines in this book. You almost redeem it from having to endure Zefer.
Page 207
She praised the Emperor for her infra-red visor, without which she would surely have brained herself against the roof.
More night vision mode, and one of the better reasons for praising the Emperor in this book
Page 216
The most striking feature, however, was a huge column in the very centre of the square. It must have been a couple of metres in diameter and at least ten metres high. Roughly cylindrical, it could have once been the barrel of one of the great cannons that bristled around the very summit of Hive Primus, protecting House Helmawr from air-raids and attacks from outside the hive. But that would have been long, long ago, and the cylinder oozed such an aura of permanence that it seemed to have been rooted down here in the foundations of Necromunda since ancient times. Perhaps it had never seen the heady heights of the Spire. Perhaps it dated from before there was a Spire to protect, when the battles for land in the wastes of Necromunda raged horizontally across its surface rather than vertically into the skies.
Necromunda defensive guns.
Page 219
.snatching a stubgun from her back and racking it...
Stub rifle or pistol?
PAge 222
Looking around, she noticed that many of the ratskins bore marks of mutation, as she would have expected at this depth in the downhive, and with mutation often came wyrd powers. Despite what the Redemptionists would have people believe, lesser powers such as telepathy were not even that uncommon in Hive City.
Comment on the frequency of low level psyker capability amongst Necromundas populace.
Page 225
Sitting on the edge of the dais, he carefully opened the book onto his knees and pushed his face down into the pages. He sniffed, inhaling deeply and holding the book against his nose as he sat back up again.
Apparently the secret lies in his super-sniffing powers.
PAge 227
Triar must have deployed another plasma bomb. However, as she lay waiting for the superheated sphere of plasma to expand into a miniature star above their heads and incinerate them all, a sudden blast of cool energy coursed through her and the coruscating flames in the air simply blinked out.
Rolling off Ruskin and Zefer and springing to her feet, Krelyn saw Roojika floating on a column of green, liquid light in the middle of the square. Threads and streams of the strange liquid had seeped up from under the scrap-metal floor and extinguished the fiery discharge from the plasma grenade, and a web-like lattice of tendrils had caught the fledgling star before it could form, choking the life out of it and suffocating its flames. Roojika was held entranced, muttering and mumbling wordlessly, orchestrating the hive's very own defence mechanisms.
"She's talking to the hive." said Krelyn, the realisation striking her like a concussion.
Another plasma grenade capable of badly burning (or cremating, up for debate) large numbers of people... and the 'hive defence systems' suppressing that action, which makes sense inside a self-contained habitat like a hive. Excessive damage could do unforseen things if you let it. I'm actually rather surprised the Ratskins have some means of accessing/controlling it here... I wonder how they do it.
Page 227
...she heard the crisp report of a bolt gun from the edge of the square and saw the muridae's head explode into a fountain of red.
Bolt weapon
Page 227
Tracing the line of the shot, Krelyn shouldered her stubber and rattled off a hail of heavy bullets towards the shooter.
Stubgun again.
Page 228
..reaching her decision and dropping a chain of frag-grenades into her weapon's reservoir, leaving only one still clipped to her belt.
belt-fed.. grenade launcher?
Page 231
Instead, he felt the weight of Krelyn fall against his back. He stepped aside, and she collapsed forward onto her face with two seeping entrance wounds on her back.
..
..prodded Krelyn with the barrel of her still-smoking needle rifle.
Needle rifles apparently leave bigger holes in this novel.
Page 234
Zefer sniffed as he closed his eyes to prevent the particles from stinging them. As he did so, a burst of images besieged the darkness behind his eyes.
..
He saw Triar turning on Elria, and he saw Krelyn bleeding to death on the ground, thumbing a grenade
Apparently the green goo elevated his super sniffer powers to clairvoyant levels. TWIST!
Also again bleeding out from needle rifle wounds.
Page 238
Triar and watching his boss's eyes flare with unearthly blue fire. He had seen the glow of righteousness in those eyes before, but he had never seen them burn so violently. A thread of horror stitched itself into his soul as he realised what it could mean for the Redemptionist firebrand.
...
Triar's voice bellowed unnaturally, sending waves of imperatives and commands rippling through the devastated plaza. As he spoke, all of the gangers stopped hacking, slicing and blasting their way through the haphazard structures of the settlement. He had always been a charismatic and persuasive boss, but there was more to his tone than charm now.
Triar seems to be a wyrd himself, which is ironic, as Elria recognizes him as such (even though Triar doesn't realize it.) This is the second Redemptionist Wyrd in the novels (after Back from the Dead)
Page 241-242
Ruskin stood defiantly in their paths, sucking the tendrils of green sluice off the ground through his staff and then radiating an incredible green energy field into a dome that encompassed both him, Zefer, and the lower half of the impregnable doors. The hail of bullets that flashed out of the charging mob just seemed to glance off the field, but each impact made it stutter and flicker, and Zefer was sure that it would not hold forever.
Given everything up to this point it seems like the green shit is tied to Necromunda's existence in some fundamental way, between the Ratskins (these ratskins at least) having the ability to control/manipulate certian elements of the Hive's technology (like defensive fields) - apparently through this green shit, as well as Zefer's own apparent transformations... exactly WHAT it is we don't know, or why it is this way. Some sort of self repair or maintenance technology perhaps - micromachines or nanowank or something.
Anyhow this is the last quote, and the ending isn't really that great. apparently its all a Delaque plot (which doesn't make alot of sense.) and everyone dies, blah blah... the last 50 pages really change to a grimmer and more 'serious' tone and Zefer turns into some super elite badass.. which really makes you wonder where this fits in with the rest of the book.
