I recently posted a Forgotten Texts review for Chris Pramas’ classic (and excellent) Dark Angels short story The Black Pearl. I also got in touch with Chris for a quick interview, talking about how he ended up writing for Black Library and giving his thoughts on the wider hobby. Let’s get straight into the interview…
“I was afraid…to face up to what I had done…”
In Chris Pramas’ classic Dark Angels short story The Black Pearl, the young Interrogator Chaplain Uzziel leads his brothers in a mission so important it could change the face of the Chapter. The prize, so valuable it’s worth risking everything for, is nothing less than the legendary Lion Sword, the whereabouts of which was revealed during the interrogation of one of the Fallen. Standing between Uzziel and the sword are the Exodite eldar of Lughnasa, but can he really trust the word of the Fallen?
On the nineteenth day of Christmas, Black Library gave to us…a Dark Angels audio drama by Gav Thorpe. Another twenty-minute audio, Holder of the Keys sees an unnamed member of the Fallen offering his recollection of events that took place on and around Caliban 10,000 years previously, as he suffers under psychic interrogation by the titular Holder of the Keys. His confession, drawn out of him under duress, paints a very different picture of events to those held to be true by the Dark Angels Inner Circle.
While the Horus Heresy series has been rolling on quite contentedly, reaching 31 books and countless other stories, it’s been a while since we’ve heard much from Caliban and those members of the Dark Angels sent home by their primarch, Lion El’Johnson. What has been happening back on the home world while the rest of the galaxy falls apart, and the Lion has been out chasing Konrad Kurze? Fear not, Gav Thorpe is on hand with a new audio drama, Master of the First, to shed a little light on the situation. This is a 35-minute audio drama available as a standalone MP3 download prior to a future release in a combined package with The Long Night by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.
Veteran Black Library author Gav Thorpe enters the fray on the third day of Echoes of War, the new collection of five Black Library audio dramas released over the course of this week. Accept No Failure continues his work on the Dark Angels and ties in with the Space Marine Battles novel The Purging of Kadillus, following Captain Belial as he returns to Piscina IV, a planet where once before he fought the orks of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. Shamed by his failure to stop Ghazghkull when they met in combat, he now petitions Chapter Master Azrael to wipe Piscina IV clean of orks (and at the same time everything else) with Exterminatus in order to free the Chapter to seek out the warlord and stop him for good. As he does so he looks back on his confrontation with Ghazghkull and considers the actions of his younger, more headstrong self.