Welcome to this instalment of my Rapid Fire series of quick author interviews, in which I’m chatting to Richard Strachan about his debut novel for Black Library, Blood of the Everchosen. It’s the first full novel to be set in the Warcry subset of Age of Sigmar, promising to explore this unique setting and its variety of competing Chaos warbands like never before, and here’s Richard to give the lowdown on what we can expect. It’s available to pre-order as of Saturday the 27th October.
Let’s get straight on with the interview – over to Richard!
Track of Words: How would you describe your new novel Blood of the Everchosen?
Richard Strachan: The basic pitch is: ‘Deep in the damned lands of the Eightpoints, a child is born during an apocalyptic storm. As omens and prophecies swirl around it, the warbands who fight across the Bloodwind Spoil believe the baby has been marked by the Everchosen himself. As the warbands make the dangerous journey across the Bloodwind Spoil to seek out the child, they become aware of an even more dangerous adversary stalking it for reasons of their own…’
It’s an epic of sword and sorcery action, set in one of the most forbidding locations in all of Age of Sigmar.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
RS: There’s quite a broad cast of characters in the book, but the main ones are: Ankhad, the father of the boy at the centre of the story; Burak the Bloodseer, the visionary leader of an Untamed Beasts warband, and his second in command Kurguth; Ashrath Silenthis, the callow and ambitious leader of a Splintered Fang warband; and Lord Rakaros, the brutal and fanatical leader of the Scions of the Flame in Carngrad.
ToW: For anyone not familiar with the setting, what can you tell us about the Eightpoints, and where this story is set specifically?
RS: The Eightpoints is basically hell on earth; the most violent, oppressive and tormented place in the Mortal Realms. Formerly known as the All Points, it used to be a place of great culture and learning when Sigmar’s pantheon walked the earth. Conquered by Archaon, it became the site of his dread fortress, the Varanspire. Archaon’s armies march across it night and day to bring war to the rest of the Mortal Realms, and in the shadows of these armies various warbands and mercenaries clash in the hope of gaining the Everchosen’s approval.
The Eightpoints is the most strategically vital place in the Mortal Realms as well because it’s at the centre of a Realmgate nexus that leads to all the other parts. The novel takes place partly in the wilderness and in the mountainous regions outside Carngrad (the main city in the Bloodwind Spoil), and partly in the depths beneath the Bloodwind Spoil, where the relics and ruins of ancient days are buried deep …
Richard’s short story Blood of the Flayer also focused on Chaos, though not in the Eightpoints
ToW: What specific challenges or opportunities does Warcry as a setting come with for you as a writer, as opposed to a general Age of Sigmar story?
RS: I started work on the book before anything had been released for Warcry, so initially it was perhaps difficult to picture quite how vicious and unpleasant the setting was going to be! The more I researched it though, the more I realised that there were some opportunities here to explore a unique environment, one that was in many ways topographically deadly in itself. The land has been saturated in the corrupting energies of Chaos for centuries, so the very ground underfoot can be poisonous and impure. Also, in the wider Age of Sigmar universe, it’s probably the place that has fallen the furthest from what it once was, and I tried to give a sense of the elegiac feeling of loss and dispossession in the lands the characters travel through, the idea that there was once something great here that has since fallen into absolute ruin.
ToW: How did you find writing a book where the majority of characters would, in most other stories, all be considered the bad guys?
RS: It wasn’t as hard as you might think, because the main characters still have their own motivations and rationales for what they’re doing (bizarre as they might seem), and as long as you stay true to that it still feels satisfying and authentic to write about them. In many ways it makes the book more fun to write, because even a character like Ankhad, who’s ostensibly doing the ‘right thing’ in trying to protect his child, is still an incredibly callous and brutal fighter when he needs to be. Of course, when even the ‘good guys’ are that dangerous, you have to work hard to make the ‘bad guys’ seem even worse …
ToW: Of all the different Warcry factions, and all the possible stories you could have written about, what made you go for this particular combination?
RS: I felt there was a good sense of variety in the three main warbands here, which gave me the change to explore a range of different perspectives – on the setting, and on their view of themselves and their rivals. I knew the Untamed Beasts had to be in it (my absolute favourite faction in the game), and the Scions of the Flame were so compelling I had to add them too. The Splintered Fang were the perfect foil for both, more sinuous and conniving where the other two warbands are far more direct. The Stormcast characters allowed me to introduce something diametrically opposed to the Chaos warbands, and also to show how corrupting and soul-sapping the Eightpoints can be.
As for the story, one thing I really love about the game, and which immediately stood out when I read the initial version of the rulebook, is the campaign system; each warband has their own unique quest(s) that they have to accomplish, and I tried to incorporate that concept into the novel. All the warbands in the book are essentially after the same thing, but for very different reasons – they each have their own quests to fulfill, and they’ll fight to the bitter end to do it.
Richard’s first BL short story – The Widow Tide – featured in the Maledictions anthology
ToW: How did you find the experience of writing your first Black Library novel? Did anything in the process – whether something fun, challenging, unexpected etc. – stand out in particular?
RS: The whole experience was exhilarating, to be honest. I’d written a few stories for Black Library by this point, and I hoped that at some point in the future they might ask me to write a full-length novel, but it all happened much quicker than I thought it would! I knocked loads of ideas back and forth with my editor, Jacob Youngs, and he was incredibly helpful in refining the story down to its core, and giving me feedback on the outline. When it came to the actual writing, I had this feeling of immense freedom, that I could do anything I wanted here. I normally write in the evenings (at least until I can give up the day job), but this became a story where I spent every spare moment just sketching ideas and scenes down, on post-it notes and scraps of paper.
ToW: Do you see this as a standalone story, or does/will it tie in with any other stories?
RS: It’s a standalone story, so the reader should get a complete and (hopefully!) satisfying experience from reading it, but a door is left somewhat ajar at the end should further stories be deemed necessary … Of course, the Warcry omnibus of short stories offers some other great perspectives on the setting too, and although the novel doesn’t tie in to it directly, the anthology would make a great companion piece.
ToW: What do you hope Age of Sigmar fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
RS: I hope they’ll feel they’ve had a chance to explore one of the most forbidding parts of the setting, filled with some of the nastiest and most unpleasant characters in the Mortal Realms! There’s a lot of brutal, sword and sorcery action in the book as well, so hopefully anyone who picks it up feels it’s an exciting read too.
ToW: Finally, if you could join a warband battling for the approval of Archaon in the Eightpoints, what would it be?
RS: I wouldn’t last five minutes in the Eightpoints, but if I had to choose, I would probably say the Untamed Beasts. There’s an honesty to them, I think, a weird sense of honour – if you played your part and carried your weight, you could probably do well there. Definitely not the Unmade, although after a few weeks in the Eightpoints maybe carving your own face off would make as much sense as anything else …
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Massive thanks to Richard for taking the time to answer these questions! I don’t know about you, but I think this sounds great – and I’m looking forward to reading it.
See also: my quick review of Richard’s Age of Sigmar short story Blood of the Flayer
Blood of the Everchosen will be available to pre-order from the 27th October
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Great interview, very thoughtful questions! Really enjoyed, thanks!