David Guymer’s three-part Age of Sigmar audio Heirs of Grimnir revisits a character from Realmslayer and explores the dynamic between the quarreling Runesons of the Unbaki. Disaster has struck the lodge, as its Runefather and eldest Runeson have been found murdered and Aruk-Grimnir’s legacy chest – the means for deciding succession – stolen. The Unbaki’s enemies are legion, but only a great power could have committed such a terrible crime. Alongside his remaining brothers and the elderly Battlesmith Firebrand, sixth and youngest Runeson Forn sets out to retrieve the chest, discover who is to become the new Runefather of the Unbak lodge, and take revenge for the dead.
While the main Realmslayer stories have room to follow Gotrek as he rampages across the Mortal Realms, this is (unsurprisingly) smaller scale and lower key. It’s part of the same series, but off at a tangent from the main storyline, less worried about exploring the wider setting than pitting a group of proud, confident (arrogant, really) characters against each other and seeing what happens. Instead of Gotrek (who’s only vaguely referenced) the focus is on the grumbling, begrudging respect between Steve Conlin’s Forn, his brothers and the old Battlesmith (played with suitable gravitas by John Banks), as they battle against grots, squigs and skaven and engage in gruff brotherly one-upmanship to determine who’s going to succeed their father.
Like the longer Realmslayer audios, there’s no narration so everything is told via dialogue, SFX and music. Guymer doesn’t worry about trying to bring all the little details of the faction or the setting to the fore – they’re there in the background, letting the cast concentrate on having fun bickering, boasting and bellowing their way through the story. Although they spend much of the time fighting (often each other), the focus is on the relationships between the brothers and how their wildly differing temperaments and outlooks variously clash with or complement each other. It’s undoubtedly a character piece first and foremost, and while Conlin is front and centre as Forn the cast all do great work (even if a couple of the brothers don’t get much of the spotlight), particularly Cliff Chapman with the always-drunk, surprisingly sly Drukkur.
Multi-part audio dramas must be second nature now to Guymer, after this and his two epic 4-hour-plus audio box sets, and it shows in another confident, tremendously entertaining story. Each of the three component parts has its own narrative, with a recognisable and enjoyable start, middle and end, but as with all of these multi-part audios while you could just listen to one, it’s very much a single story and works best taken as a whole. It adds up to about 70 minutes listening time in total, packed full of fraternal bickering, chest-beating bravado and typically belligerent duardin behaviour. If you’re after the visceral enjoyment of fyreslayers (and magmadroths) taking their anger out on their ancestral enemies there’s plenty of that to be found, but the real joy here is simply enjoying a great cast bouncing off each other and having fun with an entertaining script.
This was released as part of the 2019 Black Library Advent Calendar – click here to see the main Track of Words page for the Advent Calendar, with links to all of the reviews.
Check out the main Age of Sigmar reviews page on Track of Words.
Click these links to buy the individual parts of Heirs of Grimnir:
