Tag Archives: Dan Abnett

First published in 2003 in Inferno! magazine, Dan Abnett’s short story The Curiosity offers the first glimpse of Valentin Drusher, magos biologis. After seven years of determined study, Drusher’s work to create a complete taxonomy of Gershom’s indigent flora and fauna is almost complete. Dispatched to a bleak, distant province to investigate sightings of an unknown beast that’s left a trail of corpses behind it, it’s not long before he realises this is more than just an apex predator he somehow missed. Caught up in the hunt for the beast, Drusher is out of his league and in terrible danger.

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An Eisenhorn short story that doesn’t actually feature Eisenhorn, Dan Abnett’s The Strange Demise of Titus Endor is a bleak, unsettling story and a reminder that the horrors of the 41st millennium come in all sorts of forms. Focusing, unsurprisingly, on Eisenhorn’s old friend Titus Endor, it finds the inquisitor alone in a drab city, hunting an elusive quarry who always seems just out of reach. Musing on recollections of his old master, Hapshant, Endor wonders what happened to his friend Eisenhorn, even as he follows up clues to his quarry’s whereabouts which point to sinister omens and old ghosts.

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In Dan Abnett’s short story Backcloth for a Crown Additional, inquisitor Eisenhorn turns paranormal detective as he investigates the unexpected and increasingly suspicious death of Lord Aen Froigre, head of one of the ancient noble houses of Gudrun. An old friend of Eisenhorn, Froigre’s death is enough to drag Gregor and Bequin away from a precious moment of peace and quiet. What might otherwise have been a simple, if emotional, investigation proves to be rather more complex when it’s revealed that Froigre died of terror, and Eisenhorn detects a trace of warpcraft on the Froigre estate.

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Set between Xenos and Malleus, Dan Abnett’s short story Missing in Action sees inquisitor Eisenhorn returning to the field having recovered from the events of the Necroteuch affair. Sent to Sameter for a routine mission to ease him back into work, when bodies start appearing with signs pointing to ritual killings he realises there’s a much bigger puzzle for him to solve on Sameter. As he digs deeper into the horrifying crimes being committed a pattern begins to emerge, but it seems to point in an unexpected direction.

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Originally released in audio drama form as part of Thorn and Talon, Dan Abnett’s short story Regia Occulta sees a young Eisenhorn, not long qualified as a full inquisitor, working as a sort of temporary travelling magistrate-slash-investigator. Stranded on the dreary world of Ignix, he braves the weather and the strange electrical storms to investigate a series of killings which at first have all the hallmarks of cult activity. It quickly becomes apparent that the culprit is not a cult after all, but Eisenhorn’s continuing investigation proves dangerous all the same.

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One of three Inquisition stories originally released as audio dramas (in Thorn and Talon) before the prose versions were made available, Dan Abnett’s Master Imus’ Transgression is a short story in which we see Eisenhorn in his youth, still an interrogator under inquisitor Hapshant. Master Imus, a quiet and honest man dedicated to his life as a book-keeper, comes to Eisenhorn to confess his unwitting involvement in an unusual crime – or a transgression, as he puts it. What seems at first to be a strange, inconsequential confession turns out to reveal something much more sinister beneath.

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Originally published in the 2001 reprint of the Deathwing anthology, Dan Abnett’s short story Pestilence is a slowly-unfurling mystery set to the backdrop of an astonishingly virulent plague wracking Imperial worlds. As Uhlren’s Pox rampages through the Genovingia system, Lemuel Sark – a recollector, tasked with researching long-buried medical knowledge – is one of many sent out to look for a cure. Travelling to an isolated hospice in search of a survivor of a similar contagion – ominously named the Torment – Sark gradually uncovers the horrifying truth of what happened amidst the broken remnants of so many shattered lives.

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