Thursday, June 21, 2007

It's that man again

Devastating lack of regular blog action recently. My apologies. The reason is very simple - Legion (that’s Horus Heresy volume 7) has been entirely occupying my attention, and the typing fingers of most of the clones.

So, sorry for the empty landscape and the forlorn tumbleweed. I wasn’t in Aruba or Clackton-On-Sea, I wasn’t indisposed or out for lunch. I was in deep cover with an Alpha Legion insurgency team. Honestly, officer.

While I’m on the subject of apologies, sorry about the centred thing (scroll down and behold). I don’t know what the feth that’s about, and it seems the only way to cure it is to remove the lovely Blood Pact pics from the last post, which I frankly don’t intend to do as Big Steve’s work deserves all the unabashed staring-at it can get.

Creativity certainly breeds oddness. You may care to know that after weeks of no-show my household guest is back. And all the clocks in the house went screwy again yesterday, just like last time. Maybe I generate poltergeist activity when my brain is in full writing mode. Maybe the ‘guest’ is a manifestation of my muse, though I thought my muse was Nik. Maybe it’s Nik, re-setting the clocks when I’m not looking to mess with my head.

I’d like you to run, not walk, directly to your local quality bookstore and purchase a copy of Graham M’s excellent Fulgrim (not that any of you need such encouragement, I’m sure). It’s worth remembering that a man who can write a Horus book that good knows what he’s talking about, so when he tells you that Stornoway black pudding is the best black pudding in the whole wide world, take him seriously. I can confirm that it is, and would only add the word ‘yum’.

What else? Nova has now reached its third issue, and every issue so far has sold out, which either means people like it, or Marvel is only publishing ten copies. Preferring to believe the latter, you’ll pardon me while I do a little happy jig.

By way of amusement, I recommend you google ‘Transformer costumes’ and watch the various U-Tube style clips the links lead you to. Home made transformer costumes that actually transform. Fantastic.

Also amusing was a sign I saw recently sellotaped to the doors of a lift in a department store. It said “This lift is isolated”. I know how it feels. More amusing - well, inexplicable, actually - was a sign I saw about ten minutes later, taped to the closed curtain of a changing cubicle in a clothes shop. It read “This Changing Room is Out of Order”. Uh... but... how could... ? What working parts are there in a changing room that could break down? Or maybe the shop assistants had just had enough of the cubicle’s unrelentingly surly attitude.

Finally for today, I got an e-mail from a ‘lilibat’ who is making an inquisitor costume for her husband and wondered if she could costume herself as the inquisitor’s wife, or would have to settle for being ‘a member of his staff’. I answer her here only because for some reason my e-mails back to her keep getting bounced. Can an inquisitor have a wife? Well, seeing as inquisitors can do pretty much anything they want to, I don’t see why not. May you have and hold, honour and respect, and burn and purge, from this day forward.

30 comments:

Saxon said...

I dunno about everyone else but I think novas very good. Especially when he read the thunderbolts their rights!

Anonymous said...

wait for Fulgrim to hit the stores?? c'mon, you know us better than that by now. I pre-ordered it from BL weeks ago.

as far as Inquisitorial spouses go, I have an idea that it'd be strongly discouraged for security reasons - an Inquisitor's "moral judgment" might be jeopardized if their wife/husband was under threat, for example, so I think it'd be pretty difficult to get an Imperially-approved union under their REAL identity...

having said that, I can certainly imagine them having any number of concubines/toyboys without earning their colleagues' opprobrium: it's a stressful job, after all :P

Anonymous said...

Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. Need a new fine suit, and so I'm completely broke now... and my favorite shop owner has one of my BL orders to be paid... so no Fulgrim to be ordered for a month *weeps*


A wife could be ab bit, well, complicated, just like sredni said. But as a lover, without formal wedding, well, what's the problem?

Anonymous said...

Whether Cherie Blair, Hilary Clinton, David Furnish or Nancy d'elolio (bless her), whether visible or not, doesn't every powerful man have some sort of partner?
Churchill had a wife, and even Hilter had Eva Braun.

I'm always a little suspicious of anyone who doesn't have some sort of companion, even if it's only a good book or a cat, both of which could quite easily be held to ransome.

Of course, that raises all sorts of questions about - dare I say it? - God and - perhaps more blasphemous - the Emperor!

Kids? Now that's a-whole-nother can of beans.

Anonymous said...

Nik, sometimes I think you're as nuts as Dan ;)

(no offense meant)
But, well, I think that's the point for a good relationship, ain't it? ;)

Anonymous said...

martin - it works for us :-)

Anonymous said...

Well, as I wanted to say, that's the point ;)

Rob Rath said...

Oooo! Where's my e-mail. I need to be the first to proposition the Black Library on a 40k Da Vinci Code ripoff... er, I mean "inspired piece."

Little does the world know that the Emperor had a wife, and his wife bore a son... and the lineage of The Emperor was born.

Join symbiology specialist Eisenhorn, and an improbably good-looking Arbites cryptologist as they follow a trail of forgotten clues and conquer extremely complex ciphers with snap judgments and indescribable leaps of logic. To answer the important questions:

Who is the heir to the Emperor? Why is the Inquisition so afraid of his being revealed? And why do all the villains have some physical difference like albinism or polio, while the hero and heroine are perfect physical specimens?

And who is this "Gazkull" who keeps being cited as the son of the Emperor?

Anonymous said...

nik: while that is true, you gotta put it in the psychologically-questionable context of the Inquisition in 40K.

if, to run with your example, an Inquisitor had a "formal" spouse, and their life (or soul...) was ransomed for whatever reason, where does that leave the Inquisitor? whichever way they jump, they've already lost all cred with their fellow Inquisitors - the only people whose opinions REALLY matter, after all - for getting themselves into that situation in the first place.

I think that if an Inquisitor did have a partner or partners who were THAT important to them, they'd have to do everything in their power to CONCEAL the fact from anyone else - for the sakes of both their partner's safety and their own career.

as for being suspicious ... well, they're Inquisitors; you should be suspicious of them anyway!

lordy said...

@Robert
The Emperor's kids have been done before - The Inquisitor War series had them in. Not that I'd recommend the trilogy.

And what's all this about ordering Fulgrim? I finished my copy weeks ago.

Soapy said...

A long time a ago in a galaxy, no well right here actually, there was a pair of books called Realm of Chaos.

In them we got to find out that:

The Emperor was born in around 8,000BC.

He has lived for ages and fathered many children.

These children are near immortal and often have no knowledge of their true parent.

They are often blanks and invisible to the warp.

There is a secret society within the Imperium (called the Illuminati) seeking the children of the Emperor in preperation for his death so they have a puppet king to rule for them.

And this lot was all 'official history' for a couple of years.
Those were the days...

Stay lucky,
Soaps.

Richard Cooke said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rob Rath said...

Sarcasm doesn't travel that well over the internet sometimes. Let me write it: the previous comment was a vehicle for making fun of the Da Vinci Code, not a serious thought about writing a book. (I'm working on two already for God's sake!)

Realm of Chaos. We used those books in a Mordheim campaign once. In fact, I was a "Sensei," which I think is one of the sons of the Emperor we're all talking about. It was a messed-up campaign that doesn't bear talking about except that it involved Chaos-mutated steeds with autocannons in their noses.

NEVER let your GM use Realm of Chaos mutation charts in your games of Mordheim!

Richard Cooke said...

Whether an Inquisitor would have a wife, I don't know. But I imagine Hell Hath no Fury like an Inquisitorial Woman's Scorn.

And I have too many books to buy. I'm sad to say I havent even managed to get my hands on Brothers of the Snake and now Fulgrim is almost here. :(

Still looking forward to Legion though!

PS: I figured I'd repost this seeing as I mistyped the name of the first book (Brotherhood instead of Brothers) and that made me feel particularly stupid.

Toymachine said...

A changing room out of order?

Its somehting you have to stop and think about... :D

Anonymous said...

I douth not have to walk nor run for Fulgrim....for it arrived at my door-stepafter my older sibling did all the running and walking last week.

'tis definitely not what you know but whom!

WIN!

Anonymous said...

The thought of of an inquisitor is scary .The thought of a female iquisitor is even more scary
"For once a month in my house everybody is guilty"

Anonymous said...

Steve - it's no coincidence that Dan lives with three women :-)

lordy said...

So - has anyone heard about the Forge of War comic? I hadn't heard anything about it when I saw it in my local store.

Looks good though.
Lordy.

Anonymous said...

Just have seen the preview of The Inquisition!

Dan, I presume you're in love with the pictures of Nayl and Fischig? Nayl for sure, eh? :D

Anonymous said...

Yeah.

God Bless the BL newsletter.

Though I was dismayed that there was only the first page of the Eisenhorn entry....and a certain name didn't appear.

DAMN!

Anonymous said...

Inshabel? ;)

Anonymous said...

NATHUN!!!!

Bodjo said...

Only a week until Brothers of the Snake actually exists in the U.S. of A! Jes fine says bug. And me.

Something that's been bothering me recently...how do you pronounce "Kowle" from Necropolis anyway? Is the e silent? Is it like "Cole"?

Anonymous said...

Saberrox - Dan and I have this conversation from time to time - pronunciation that is - there are several characters that I refer to one way, and Dan another. The answer is that however it reads in your head is the right pronunciation... but I for one have never managed to get used Dan referring to Molotch as 'Molotok'.

Bodjo said...

Sweet. I thought it might be something like that. Molotok?? Wow. MO-Lot-cha, I always thought. In either case, of course, I liked that we actually got to know Zygmunt. He was cool. Culzean was just a putz.

Kowle pretty much exemplifies the 'bad commissar.'

lordy said...

I always thoguht Kowle was prenouced like Cowl, rather than Cole.

Anonymous said...

Hehe. Like the discussion "how do you pronounce 'kroot'" - there's no real answer to it ;)

I'd say it like 'Cole', too. But 'Molotok'? Nah, more, like saberrox said, 'molo-tcha' ti me...

(you have no idea how complicated it is to 'write' a pronouncing in another language than your own, because sometimes you don't even have an idea, how to ;D)

lordy said...

...how do you pronounce Kroot then? I think I'd pronounce Molotch like Molotk, without a third 'O'.

Anonymous said...

Kroot should be pronounced with about 5 O's.