Hey I picked up dark heresy as an alternate game for my group to play. I have read through the book and the system seems solid. I like the setting but unfortunatly I am not very familiar with warhammer 40k's universe. I am aware that there are many books based in this universe and was wondering if you guys could sudgest any particular ones for me to get some inspiration from.

Also if anybody lives in the Kitchener Ontario area and runs this game I would be interested in sitting in on a game or to to get a better feel for the game.

Thanks in advance for your help

Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Scourge the Heretic, Innocence Proves Nothing, to name a few.

First, be sure to delve hard into the fluff of the core book.

Games workshop maintains a free PDF of the original Inquisitor manual, which has excellent info on the inquisition and its factions.

While there are some who find them uninspired, and others who find them not quite grim-dark-praise the emperor enough, Eisenhorn and Ravenor are both good intro material for the inquisition, being as they explore a vast variety of worlds, enemies, situations,and practices. For the most part they're good books so long as you don't maintain any illusions about them being literature. Might be 1300 pages between them, so an easy read in a week or two. Sister cat named some others that are more grim-dark focused.

For general universing, Let The Galaxy Burn is something like forty short stories covering a huge range of the 40k universe. Probably your best single volume intro to the setting.

15 Hours is THE archetypical Imperial Guard novel, and probably your best bet for what "baseline" looks like in terms of human abilities and life. The title of course refers to the life expectancy of a new guardsman in a high intensity combat zone.

Storm of Iron is an excellent chaos novel.

All of the GW army books, called Codexes, can help flavor out other races and chaos. They range from cheap to free online.

Finally the wiki Lexicanum can usually provide a quick fluffy answer to most questions, albeit with all the traits of a wiki.

I would also dive deep into the eratta....plenty of them

I would suggest reading the offical GW army books (the codexes) and perhaps the Warhammer 40,000 wargame manual. I've never liked the fluff books like Eisenhorn that much. And ofcourse the other FFG Dark Heresy books.

You could also try going to your local Games Workshop (provided it is reasonable to do so), and have a chat with the supposed pros, bounce questions off them, etc, etc.

The Shira Calpuria books do an excellent job at introducing you to elements of the 40k verse while not focusing on the super heroic deeds of Inquisitors. For me they really filled in a lot of flavor that was left out of Eisenhorn and its like, on the assumption you were already familiar with the setting. (mind you, I thought Eisenhorn was fantastic series - though each consecutive book is a little worse than the last - it simply skimped on some details)

Jack of Tears said:

As a nice perk, you can now get all three Shira Calpurnia books in a handy omnibus from Black Library. Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble all stock it.

Since there was no link provided to Lexicanum, as providede by AppliedCheese, i'll post it.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Main_Page