Assassinorum Kingmaker (Warhammer 40,000)

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The resulting short story, Assassinorum: Divine Sanction pitted the wily Callidus Assassin Sycorax against a heretic confessor and his retinue of penitent engines. Enter this book, The Immortal and the Divine by Robert Rath. Rath depicts the story of two mighty Necrons, one an eccentric collector whose home planet doubles as a giant museum, and the other a conniving magician and fortune teller bent onbecoming a being of pure energy and power. Both hate each other. And when an incredibly rare and potentially lucrative mystery falls before these two, they engage in an epic rivalry that spans thousands of years as each does whatever he can to annoy, frustrate, maim, and potentially even kill the other. Well, at least this one is a tie-in to a game I've actually played, though not recently, and the Necrons were an element introduced after my first bout with 40K. A brilliant idea, though: a race from millennia in the past, who transcended the flesh and now have distinctly mixed feelings about that, in so far as they have feelings, because the fidelity of their transfer to immortal metal bodies varied massively in line with their social class. Legions of warriors retaining only the barest fragments of self, answerable to overlords who were transferred almost intact, but never quite, their eccentricities and rivalries then only deepening over the long centuries. Nate Crowley's Severed played this mostly for gruesome laughs, a Jeeves and Wooster riff with zombie robots, but while there's plenty of comedy here too, from Spy vs Spy battles between two immeasurably ancient and devious rivals to the fish-out-of-water appeal of seeing them interact with younger and livelier races, the dominant mood is somewhere between cosmic horror and space opera. We open with a recapitulation of deep time, a potted history of life as a whole, from its inception up through fish and lizards to the sort of races who get their own army list, but always, from the earliest days, "Layer upon layer, each generation withering and ossifying, so the living stood unthinking upon a vast necropolis of their predecessors." Despite not having Imperial Knights in the title this is the best Imperial Knighs book that I've read so far. So many deep dives into Assassin/Knight lore. Intricate descriptions. Great ending. To achieve the exacting tasks assigned to it, the Callidus Temple specialises in the use and development of the shape-altering drug Polymorphine to enable its Assassins to undergo dramatic physical changes, altering their appearance to assume the features of any humanoid (of whatever gender).

The Spy Novels That Inspired Assassinorum: Kingmaker – Robert The Spy Novels That Inspired Assassinorum: Kingmaker – Robert

A fun, fast-paced espionage thriller that’s a great read on its own merits as well as a great showcase of how 40k as a setting can be fluidly adapted to various genres and story types. Now they're High Lord's in an empire of Undead Ancient Egyptian Robot Zombies, and they take their feud to galactic levels, over a tapestry of time spanning entire Epochs. I was warned that this book is more Knight than Assassinorum, but I don't agree. I would say it's about 70-30 if favour of our killy boys and girls.The Reign of Blood (ca. 200.M36) - Goge Vandire, Ecclesiarch and High Lord of the Adeptus Administratum, falls from the Emperor's light. His tremendous influence, charisma and determination to overhaul the Imperium sparks a civil war that lasts for seven decades. His insurrection only ends when a counter-crusade mounted by Sebastian Thor tears power from the Traitor's cold and clutching claws. The methods of the Callidus Assassin are those of utmost cunning and duplicity. They are sometimes used on missions where overt interference by the Imperium would upset the intricate balance of power maintained by the High Lords of Terra.

Assassinorum: Kingmaker by Robert Rath Warhammer 40,000: Assassinorum: Kingmaker by Robert Rath

An organisation chart showing how the Officio Assassinorum is organised beneath the Administratum. Note that the Venenum Temple and the Vanus Temple are classified on this chart. The Renegade Maerorus Temple is not shown as it is no longer in existence. Civilisation’ is applied as equally to a coral reef as it is the Imperium by Trazyn, fundamentally there is little difference between the two for him- all impermanent, all interesting but ultimately of a lesser status than him. The hierarchies of the Necrontyr still haunt the Necron psyche, it’s no wonder that they place themselves so far above the galaxy’s other species. Trazyn, for all of this distance, is keen to learn from what he encounters- his arrogance is of a different kind to the one we usually encounter in 40k. Orikan, I’m contrast, professes to look down upon others- on seeing a human cafe, his response is “This is ridiculous. Standing here among these biologicals, pretending to be their equals. Watching them gargle bean water down their oesophagi, swilling it through their fatty insides. It makes one ill.”- but how much of that is jealousy? Trazyn bemoans the loss of Necrontyr music, Orikan responds with a defence of their replacement, algorithm chants. Music can evoke long-lost places and music, whereas these chants can reshape time. Both believe their preference to be superior, and, I suppose, they are both right. Apart from Raithe, there is also a lot of focus on Sycorax, a Callidus assassin who specialises in infiltration and whose enhanced abilities allow her to morph her shape. Due to her role impersonating Rakkan for most of the novel, Sycorax is one of the most significant characters in the book, and she ends up with some thrilling and intrigue laden sequences. Watching her take on multiple personalities throughout the novel is really cool, and it was captivating to watch her more elaborate methods strongly clash with Raithe’s more direct attempts throughout the book. Sycorax also provides the reader with some of the best and most intense insights into being an Imperial Knight pilot, as she is required to bond with Rakkan’s Knight Jester for much of the book. Seeing an outsider character interact with Jester’s mind, which contains the spirits of its previous riders, was extremely fascinating, and you get a good sense of the difficulties and insanities involved with piloting such a machine. In addition, the experiences and memories she obtained from the link impacted on Sycorax’s psyche and ensure that she gets some fantastic interactions with Rakkan, while also gaining a better understanding of the people and machines she is trying to manipulate. But the big problem is the quite frankly insane amount of exposition. I don't know where Robert Rath learned creative writing, but they must've taught him that you need a lot of it and told it in a way that's pretty dry. I'm one of those weirdos who can enjoy exposition, but even for me, it's too far.Kingmaker more than does the job. Rath realizes the Assassinorum as unique and distinct from the Inquisition despite an oft overlapping remit, giving the Officio a Cold War spy vibe that really fits. There’s no religious mumbo-jumbo and everything seems much more centralized than you get in Abnett’s or Wraight’s work. However this book is decidedly more about the process of conducting an operation than the Assassinorum as a whole. Rath focuses on how the assassins involved, all of whom are wonderfully well depicted in their interactions with each other and their targets, plan out/perform their mission. There’s also a lot of time spent getting to know the world of Dominion, to the point that this might be the best work on Imperial Knights in the canon. I generally don’t care for the ‘medieval nobles piloting mechs’ vibe it seems every Knight House has to have (why can’t they be diverse like the Titan Legios?), but Rath clearly put a lot of time into giving Dominion an engaging political identity. In the broad view I think it’s a brilliant move to focus so much attention on whomever the Assassin(s) are targeting. Hopefully it will mean future books in the series, if they happen, vary considerably with each entry. Robert Rath has done the two things I look for in a BL book- fleshed out the universe with some great details and told a fantastic story. The book manages to render the Necrons as notably inhuman but still fully relatable while telling a story that was genuinely pleasing, taking me in totally unexpected directions; several times in the book I sat basking in the smugness you get when you realise how the plot of a book really starts to slot together, events and connections that in retrospect seem obvious but you don’t see coming until it’s there. No, no,’ scolded Ossuaria. ‘Phillias, activate the signal dampeners. Anything you two say we shall all be a party to. No colluding on testimony–’ Such horrible phenomena make Pariahs outcasts among Human society. And yet it is these very powers that the Culexus Temple refines and amplifies to create their terrifying Assassins. As a result, they can emit negative psychic energy that is deadly to psykers and Warp entities alike.

Assassinorum Kingmaker Black Library - eBook: Assassinorum Kingmaker

But while the sense of peril is great, what’s really fun is seeing soldiers of different nationalities, specialties, and ethical codes bounce off each other and fall into conflict. It’s a dynamic practically every ‘team must do a thing’ story has pulled from since, whether Guardians of the Galaxy or Gaunt’s Ghosts (it’s called The Guns of Tanith for a reason).The techniques that the Callidus Temple uses to bring down its targets are many and diverse, and can go far beyond that of simply killing the perpetrator. The Callidus Temple undertakes many covert operations that may involve an Assassin infiltrating an enemy civilisation for solar weeks, months or even standard years.

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I know I’ve said this before, but 2022 is turning out to be a fantastic year for Warhammer fiction. Thanks to my recent obsession with this franchise, I have been deeply enjoying all the new tie-in novels associated with this table-top game, as a bevy of talented authors seek to expand on the already massive lore. I have already had a lot of fun with books like Steel Tread, The Bookkeeper’s Skull, Day of Ascension, Kreig, Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waagh!, Reign and The Vincula Insurgency, but I may have just finished one of the most purely entertaining and awesome new entries, Assassinorum: Kingmaker. Written by Robert Rath, who previously wrote the intriguing Necron focused book, The Infinite and The Divine, Assassinorum: Kingmaker had a very appealing story that instantly grabbed my attention and which ended up being an outstanding read. The Assassins of the Imperium are able to change the fate of worlds with the pull of a single trigger. Where the length of the Emperor's reach needs to be made abundantly clear, a Vindicare sniper will put a bullet in the target's head whilst the errant individual is surrounded by his followers. If the traitorous creed has spread to an entire organisation or military force, an Eversor will instead be set loose; a bio-enhanced berserker that will slaughter dozens if not hundreds of rebels alongside the key individual he has been sent to slay. Should the deed require more subtlety, an operative from the Callidus Temple will instead be despatched; in such cases it is all but impossible to detect the presence of these shape-shifting Assassins until the deed is done. If the target is a psyker, one of the rare and fearsome Culexus will be sent to hunt them down –- beings with a strange void in place of a soul that makes them the bane of all who treat with the Warp. While Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is his most famous work, Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is in some ways the thesis statement of the George Smiley series. To Slay a WAAAGH! (718.924.M40) - The Ork Warlord Urgak the Unstoppable is on the verge of completing his Gargant and launching a WAAAGH! into the Vondiac Sector when a Vindicare Assassin sends a bullet into the reactor core of the giant effigy. The thing catches fire and then explodes spectacularly, killing not only Urgak himself but also the vast majority of the Meks in his employ. The WAAAGH! is halted before it even begins, putting the lie to Urgak's self-aggrandising title and plunging the surviving Orks into a bloody civil war.This is a book about Necrons, so some knowledge of Necrons might be good in advance. You could also watch TIMELINE of the 40K UNIVERSE by Trazyn the Infinite by WarriorTier to understand whole history of the universe because Necrons are a long lived race and this book spans a period right between 30k and 40k timeline. Unless you already are WH fan, and know of the history, then no more words are needed.