Hi all,

I'm sure I recall reading somewhere there is an Eldar craft world that passes through Calixis space quietly and covertly with the aid of a faction of the Ordo Xenos. Can anyone confirm this? Is this something mentioned in one of the sourcebooks? ... Or am I going crazy?

Thanks for the help.

Yup - Craftworld Kaelor (see Creature Anathema pg 77) turns up in the sector every thousand years or so. Battlefleet Calixis prevents any ships from making contact with it.

See wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Kaelor for a summary of the Craftworld.

Nerd King said:

Ahhh! Cool, thanks. I guess I better read that novel quickly - I have it on the to-read pile, didn't realise it was that Craftworld.

Adam France said:

Personally, I'd avoid that novel. Everything I've heard about it, and everything else that author wrote, was simply bad .

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I've heard a lot of bad about him, but the only thing I read of his I rather liked. i can't remember the name of it now, but it was a short story in one of the collections (either Planet Kill or the Galaxy Burn one) which really illustrated the insanity of the Imperium and it's beaurocracy perfectly. Granted, if you thought too hard about the plot, it all fell apart, but the feel that you got from the characters in the story and what was going on was dead on what i think 40k is. That's one of the things I could never stand about Abnett's work, good writer and he makes some nice stories, but I always felt he missed the boat on the general feel of the setting, the insane over the top stupidity of it all. His plots weren't riddled with such gapping holes as that one short story by Goto, but they also weren't as alien feeling and his characters always seemed so damned normal -they might have been, for all intents and purposes, stories set in a million other space opera settings based on how normal and modern the characters felt.

Then again, I might have just read the one fluke story by Goto. So, either way, the book might be worth it... maybe.

Graver said:

Really?

I thought he nailed that just right in many of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels. I mean it is pretty "over the top stupid and insane" for a military commander to purposefully sabotage the campaign they are involved in, only to get a shot at achieving some petty personal glory or to "get even" with some rival commander involved in the same operation just because they don't like that commander. (Gaunt and his unit having been usbjected to the butt end of many Imperial Commanders greed and motivation for personal glory and fame)

I constantly got the feeling that the entire warmachine was just barely working cohesive enough to get by, and was always just inches away from imploding on itself, simply because of squabbling officers within that particular taskforce prioritizing their personal agendas over the common goal.

That's over the top insane and stupid, in my opinion. Just like the rest of the Imperium of Man.

from france

nothing to say about this appart that dan abnette tend to use more and more the "deus ex machina" trick when he is lock in a trouble situtaion.

and more importantly. happy birthday pal.

I happen to enjoy Dan Abnett's books. More to the point, his books have been QUITE influential in shaping the background for Dark Heresy. How many other officially sanctioned authors write about Inquisitors and their acolytes? Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell are the only ones that come to mind. The other authors focus more on orks, Imperial Guard, assorted Space Marine chapters, chaos stuff and so on.

So my basic point is this: If you hate everything that Abnett has written then why are you playing this?

from france

i think you forget graham mcneil who wrote several books that also shapes the 40k universe. some authors like wiliam king are (just my opinion) barely enough good to serve as an introduction to the universe of warhammer and 40k. some are just over the top like gavin thorpe who is not popular in france appart some officanados and mostly teens ( when you grew up, i f you are educated his wrinting style seem very poor). all this are just opinions and considarably drift from the original topics.

on the topics i think that the webway is sufficently extended that you can creat your own maiden world and your own craftworld.

ZillaPrime said:

Anyhow, since this thread de-railed and turned into a conversation about authors and their work, and as someone who has read the majority of Black Library's 40k novels, I'm invading.

As for the opinions on C.S. Goto, yes, he is bad. I have to admit, I'm a fan of his writing style, but he does bend the fluff over and then thrust until it bleeds. A few quick examples:
- Khornate Sorcerer
- The Avatar of Biel Tan lost his sword for >1,000 years. And is dead.
- D-cannons apparently shoot bullets according to him.

What's worse is, he's writing these novels for what will mostly be 40k fans, and as such a lot of these fans will expect that the author will stick to the fluff as much as possible, and when he received backlash from these people for breaking the fluff in so many ways, he used the 'artistic license' excuse. Not the best idea when dealing with a thousand raging fanboys.

Abnett is an amazing author, if only he'd remember that autocannons and autoguns aren't the same thing...
Another thing about Abnett I'd like to mention is that between him and Alex Stewart, they've had very little impact on anything like Dark Heresy. When the game Inquisitor was being written and playtested, it was that which inspired Abnett to write Eisenhorn. The aspects of Dark Heresy were taken from officially established canon. I can understand players being driven by the works of Eisenhorn and (to a lesser degree...) Scourge The Heretic, but these novels have nothing to do with Dark Heresy other than setting.

Trothael said:

Even more impressive is that between the game and the novelization for Dawn of War , the Eldar involved went from being Ulthwe to Biel-Tan . Why? There was some creative license taken there, obviously. Overall, I enjoyed the series; however, I did need to take some significant breaks from reading when compared to other 40K authors like Abnett and King, even Watson.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Oh...Gods above, I forgot about that. There was a very good reason that I never re-read the DoW novelisations >.>

Trothael said:

Correction: he was writing those novels. He hasn't done anything for Black Library in a couple of years now.

Trothael said:

Actually, Dan Abnett and Ben Counter wrote big chunks of the background for the Calixis Sector, and Andy Hoare wrote big parts of the Rogue Trader background in that rulebook.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Hmm, agreeable. However, I stand by my point of 'Eisenhorn/STH' had less to do with Dark Heresy than it would appear.

ZillaPrime said:

Egads! First, I'm sorry for ruining this topic! I should have had a better filter. But since it's mostly ruined...

I just feel I've gotta say a couple of real quick things here then I'll not mention another opinion about authors and their treatment of the setting, I promise!

First, I don't hate all of what Abnett writes. He's a good writer. I have just not ran across any of his stories that I've felt did the setting justice. This is mostly due to his characters. They all seem to have a terribly modernistic and normal outlook on things or are very easy to understand and have a very understandable and normal motivation for what they do. In other words, most all of the characters that i have encountered in his stories could have been characters in 2040, a Cyberpunk Tail or earth Alliance's First Colony to Jupiter, or characters in any other sci-fi space opera setting. Granted, there are always particulars about the characters which are trademarks of 40k, but they never seem to carry that to their core. Basically, i never feel like I'm reading about someone 38 thousand years in the future but perhaps someone maybe a hundred years or so and placed in a rather odd setting and that's it.

Still, he's a great writer -one of my favorite comics for 40k was written by him (can't recall the name now, sad as that is, but it was the one about the IG stuck on a planet in the last stages of a Tyranid invasion before finding their salvation in a pack of Space Wolves...). However, even in that little comic story, the Space Wolves felt tacked on and, barring them being Space Wolves, the story could have been set in any Space Opera setting out there; just toss Sigourney Weaver into their ranks and you'd have Aliens for Christ's sake (and, yes, i know the Genesteelers, and by proxy the tyranids were inspired by the aleans movies).

My point: i don't hate Abnett's writing as he's good. I just don't feel his characters capitalize on all the weirdness the setting has to offer and come off far too contemporary in mind and action for such a setting. Granted, I'm making this assessment without having fully read any of his novels for the setting, but if starting them and not finishing them counts, I have 6 books under my belt and a lot of short stories. They just, weren't quite right in mood and setting.

Finely, why would I play (or run) this game without likening Abnett's 40k books? Simple, i love the setting! To be honest, none of the BL authors I have read have been able to consistently turn out stories that matched the feel and bizarre qualities of the setting and what I feel it could be... comparing most all of the BL books to the 40k setting is a lot like comparing the Mutant Chronicles movie to the Mutant Chronicles game setting for me -it's there, it has the names and terminology down, but, for the most part, they just miss the boat.

And that's all I'll ever again say about anything BL related on these (or most 40k) forums.

Sorry for causing such a massive derail :-(

Getting back on-topic.

Opening Poster, you can feel free to disregard the "Eldar Prophecy" book. Not only is it god-**** awful purple prose that butchers all Eldar fluff, but it is totally irrelevant for Dark Heresy. It takes place in 40k's history, M39 at the very latest. It describes Kaelor at the brink of destruction, falling into chaos and about to enter Maelstrom. The Farseer who leads the Craftworld as of M41 (and has already led it for more than two thousand years), Ela Ash'bel is just a child in the novel. Since then, the society of Kaelor has undergone major changes, such as return to the Path and establishing Warp Spiders as main Warrior Aspect. Ela has probably been at the forefront of these changes.

Your best bet is to use Wayback Machine: ( http://www.archive.org/web/web.php ) and find archives for www.sabertoothgames.com. It's a now defunct company that produced Wh40k CCG Dark Millennium, where Kaelor was first introduced. The "fiction" section has some awesome short stories by Dan Abnett written from the perspective of Ela, detailing Kaelor as it is in M41.

EDIT: found the site for you: http://web.archive.org/web/20070927181845/www.sabertoothgames.com/40k/fiction.asp