Nate Crowley’s second Black Library short story, Empra offers a unique take on 40k and a rare perspective on the Imperium. Toa is a Shellmaker, daughter of the chief shaman; she and the tribe her mother oversees toil to forge great shells that they send up to the Body of Empra in return for food and protection from the poisons of their world. When Toa finds an Angel out in the manhills, her world is turned upside down as she learns that everything she had been told – about Empra, his servant Two-Bird and her entire religion – has been a lie.
Clearly, this isn’t your usual Black Library story, but it’s as compelling a tale as you’d want, with a great protagonist in Toa, whose perspective on life is powerfully altered by her chance encounter with the Angel…or at least a being who she interprets as angelic. Hers is a society founded on a simplified, stylised version of Imperial reality, entirely bent towards a singular purpose, with a fascinating sense of mythology and history despite the story’s brevity. It’s darkly satisfying picking through the tenets of this primitive, cyincally-constructed faith and the way it defines life for Toa’s people, and by focusing on this most unusual angle, Crowley tells a story which illustrates the Imperium in a nutshell, complete with a delightful sense of ambiguity regarding the oh-so-40k question of exactly who the good guys are.
Empra is currently only available within Inferno! Volume 3.
