Originally published back in 2000 in the pages of Inferno! Magazine issue 18, Barrington J. Bayley’s Warhammer 40,000 short story Battle of the Archaeosaurs pits the pride of the Adeptus Titanicus against the might of vast saurian war-beasts. It’s Titans vs. dinosaurs, in other words. With two prior forces having bafflingly failed to take control of a backwater world and its Stone Age-level population, Imperial commanders dispatch a battle-hardened Imperial Guard regiment accompanied by a pair of Warlord Titans to finally get the job done. The Princeps’ confidence of a quick resolution, however, is dented when they see the sheer scale of what they’re up against.
For a 20 year-old story that was written long before much of the current 40k lore (for the Adeptus Titanicus in particular) was codified, this holds up remarkably well, despite a few obvious anachronisms. It definitely has an old-school Black Library feel, but the core of the story – the Imperium’s standard approach of dealing with problems by throwing increasingly large amounts of firepower at it – is as appropriate now as it was in 2000. It’s not the most character-led story, but when there are Titans facing off against dinosaurs that’s not really a problem, and there’s a nice balance between the entertainment factor of such a heavyweight match-up and the overarching sense it offers of the futility of life in the 40k galaxy. If you can find a copy, definitely give this one a look.
Battle of the Archaeosaurs is available in Inferno! 18 (2000), Dark Imperium (2001) and Let the Galaxy Burn (2006). Header image is by Adrian Smith, copyright Games Workshop 2000.
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I was not expecting a 40K story initially judging the title!
I mean, this is old-school 40k! Some of the stories back in the day had the best titles – Barrington J Bayley also wrote ‘The Lives of Ferag Lion-Wolf’, another story with a brilliant title 🙂