Basically the extent of my knowledge about the 40k universe comes from the Necromunda tabletop game and books. I have also played Dawn of War (the original, not the expansions) and Dawn of War 2. Obviously there is some good information in those places but none of them really get into the inter workings of the Imperium. I don't know much about the lore of the different groups... I can tell you about life in a spire, the different gangs one might find there, possible creatures, maybe a little about the Redemptionists, and maybe a little about bounty hunters.

What are some good books that talk about Tech Priests, The Cult of the Machine God, Space Hulks, What causes a scribe in the Administratum to turn to heresy... You know... Things to get me into the story of the 40k Universe.

I could run a decent Necromunda Role playing game but I want to expand beyond the spire.

I know I could go just pick up any ol' 40k novel but what I am looking for is the really good ones. The ones that dig deep into the lore of 40k, not just novels about a bunch of space marines snuffing out orks and eldar.

Thanks!

Just about any of Dan Abnett's books would do you well for Imperial background. For straight Inquisition try Ravenor or Ravenor Returned (I have not yet read Ravenor Rogue or the Eisenhorn Trilogy), the Gaunt's Ghosts is also a good series but more on a massive warfare level.

Read Eisenhorn, it has a beautiful description of how a puritan inquistor turns radical...oh and a titan for that oohh f.... moment.

And Titcanus (sp) for choas titans and feel of adept. mech.

Like he said, read Dan Abnett.

The Eisenhorn , Ravenor and Inquisition Wa r trilogies are a decent starting point, along with the Let The Galaxy Burn meganthology.

Eye of Terror is probably decent in some respects, but was bloody poorly written (well below Barrington J Bayley's usual par).

Rogue Star and Star of Damocles are excellent, as is the Shira Calpurnia series ( Crossfire, Legacy and Blind ) although some of those may be tricky to get hold of.

Mechanicum and some of the other Horus Heresy novels are worth grabbing for your purposes (in general terms they're worth reading anyway, with the exception of Battle For The Abyss, which, while a vaguely passable David Weber imitation, in bad light, is not proper 40k, and very mary-sue to boot). To see the very early groundwork being laid for the Imperium (not merely pre-Heresy but pre-Crusade, pre-Unification, hell, pre-Strife) check out Jack Yeovil's (aka Kim Newman's) Dark Future trilogy.

Scourge the Heretic , while not one of Sandy Mitchell's best, is also worth nabbing. There's also a lot of fun stuff in his Ciaphas Cain series, although not all of it may be entirely suitable for your purpose. Get them and read them anyway, if you'll pardon the tone.

I'm even going to go out on a limb and recommend Angels of Darkness (easily Gav Thorpe's best novel... ah, to be damned by such faint praise ; in all seriousness though, it really is very good, although for full effect, you should read it in conjunction with Descent of Angels )

Agree with the majority of the above but also...............Highly recomend Lord Of Night by Simon Spurrier who weaves an excelelnt tale around his cast.

it also gives an excellent insight into a hive city, a retinue of an Inquisitor, and its a **** good book

Cain novels are a fav and do have lots of useful information.

enjoy!

For backround information useful in Dark heresy, Shira Calpurnia and Eisenhorn series are imperative, there are other good examples mentioned above, I´d also like to add suprisingly good Faith and Fire (Soritas, investigation, hidden heretics, wonderful)

Definetely the Shira Calpurnia novels by Matt Farrer. They are less over-the-top than Abnett and give a good impression of the background. Also great to spotlight the work of Arbitrators.

The Eisenhorn and Ravenor books by Abnett are obvious choices as they deal with inquisitors and their retinues.

Junktion (a Necromunda novel by - again - Matt Farrer) describes life in the underhive, good for hive-world scum characters.

Relentless by Richard WIlliams is a naval story. I used his description of warp jump procedures in an advebture (crew and passengers being herded into a chapel-like room during warp entry, then being scanned for warp taint). Not an essential book but I think quite interesting as acolytes will do a fair amount of space-travelling.

And then there is Scourge the Heretic by Sandy Mitchell, a somewhat tie-in novel to Dark Heresy. Its an easy read but not as good as any of the books mentioned before. Naming the group of acolytes "Carolus' Angeli" (= Charlies Angels) maybe a fitting analogy but still is one of the lamest puns ever.

For Guardsmen characters any Imperial Guard novel will do, though Gaunt's Ghosts by Abnett are your best pick here. As with all Abnett stuff these novels are rather cinematic in terms of character abilities but since the Ghosts mostly fight the forces of chaos I think they are quite well suited for Dark Heresy perparations.

I personally feel that Titanicus gave a wonderful look at the subcultures that can be found on a world influenced by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Plus it's a ton of information on titan legion politics to make for an interesting mission for an acolyte.

Nice guys, Thanks for the information. Looks like I have some reading to do so I better get crackin'

I think I am going to print this whole list and just take it down to the book store.

I'll add a voice for the Cain books by Sandy Mitchell. I liked them better than Abnett for their more "realistic" portrayal of the enemy. When a guardsman manages to defeat a Chaos Space Marine in close combat (as Cain does in Traitor's Hand), that's something spectacular, unexpected and above all lucky - not like the light infantry of Gaunt's Ghosts, who mow down a whole force of them, with one of their scouts killing a Chaos Dreadnought with a single exploding Lasgun magazine.

1 Ok so I have looked up all of the titles mentioned above... The priorities on my list are the following.

Eisenhorn Trilogy, Ravenor Trilogy, Shira Calpurnia (Out of Print), and Ciaphas Cain Series (Possibly Out of Print? I'll have to check), and Lord of Night.

2 Less of a priority but still definitely on the reading list:

Rogue Star, Star of Damocles, Angels of Darkness, Descent of Angels, Faith and Fire, Gaunts Ghosts.

3 Least Priority but still planned reading:

Inquisition War (OOP), Titanicus (OOP), Jack Yeovil Books.

Did I miss any? I have already read Junktion as it is a Necromunda book and I love necromunda.

Regarding Mechanicum... I want to add that to the list but is it a sequel to another book? If so it will go lower priority simply because I will have so much to read... If not It will be ranked higher. Either Category 1 or 2 depending on other books. If there is anything I missed please let me know.

Did I miss any? I have already read Junktion as it is a Necromunda book and I love necromunda.

Yep - Scourge The Heretic , a novel specifically written for the RPG. I haven't read it myself (which reminds me...), but the comments of other people weren't exactly negative.

Ciaphas Cain Series (Possibly Out of Print? I'll have to check)

Cain, to my knowledge, has the following books:

In the Name of the Emperor

Caves of Ice

The Traitor's Hand

Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium (contains the first three books and two short stories)

Death or Glory

Cain's Last Stand

To my knowledge, Hero of the Imperium, Death or Glory and Cain's Last Stand are all still in print, so it's possible to get the entire series. There's also another novel in the making...

Ok I went to my local bookstore and here is what I found... This will get me started and the rest I can get from Amazon or something.

Ravenor, Ravenor Returned, and Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium (Has 'For the Emperor', 'Caves of Ice', and 'The Traitor's Hand')

It's been said before but...

Eisenhorn
Eisenhorn
Eisenhorn
Eisenhorn

It's nearly mandatory reading for running or playing in a DH game in my opinion.

Yeah I know... and its a high priority on my list but the local store didn't have it. Definitely on my 'to buy' list on Amazon.

Cifer said:

Don´t forget the 5th part:) In buying Ravenor I would wait a little, this summer Black Library is releasing Ravenor Omnibus featuring all three novels and also two or three short stories (oh ****, how I want to read Thorn Wishes Talon )

Somewhere I saw topic about playing Dark Heresy in battlezone so I´d like to add several Imperial Guard novels (Gaunt´s Ghosts are perhaps the most popular, but they are far too epic and superheroish to be well represented in DH I think ): Last Chancers Omnibus (featuring novel 13th Legion, Kill-team and Anahilation Squad), Rebel Winter and Ice Guard, all of them have good sense of 40k atmosphere and are more or less centered on IG kill-teams and their special missions (and manytimes, Inquisition has its nasty fingers in it...)

In The Name of the Emperor is actually For The Emperor...

@Torog

Must have been a freudian slip as I didn't especially like the book. I'm not quite sure, but I think it had way more "If I had known about this before, I would have been sooo terrified", repetition of the word scuttling (about every second time a noun referred to the 'nids, it was accompanied by the adjective 'scuttling') and that

(SPOILER!)

(SPOILER!)

rogue inquisitor responsible for it all. The other hidden enemy in the series, Governor Grice, had me genuinely fooled as the idiot he appeared to be. The inquisitor just seemed like a madman who would never have been able to attain that rank - and a Giant Space Flea out of Nowhere to boot.

Actually, Inquisition War has recently had a reprinting, and Titanicus is (I believe) still in print, but only in hardback.

Mechanicum is part of a series, but not a direct sequel to anything- really, the only parts of the Horus Heresy series/range that are direct sequels are the 'early' ones ( Horus Rising to, say, Flight of the Eisenstein). You may find it helps somewhat to either bookmark/copy the dramatis personae section at the start or do some reading around the Heresy series first- put it on the sort of 'sequel' priority, really, at least unless/until you know a reasonable bit about the heresy. Unless of course you feel the need to know the AdMech.

I'm going to recommend leaving off reading the Ravenor until Eisenhorn arrives, but I will warn you that the epilog of Hereticus has a subtle but major spoiler for Ravenor Returned - in fact it is pretty much the major plot twist of Ravenor Rogue.

Also, you missed, and hould definitely get, the 40k meganthology Let The Galaxy Burn . Sure, some of the stories in it are sub-par, and some are rather formulaic, but it's enormous, and there are a large number of excellent ones not available anywhere else. I'd say put it in tier 3, but don't dawdle about getting it- the anthologies tend to only get one print run.

Made another trip to the bookstore.

I now have the following:

Eisenhorn

Ravenor

Ciaphas Cain

Lord of Night

Mechanicum

I'll be picking up the rest at some point on Amazon...

I did not really notice anyone else bringing it up, but if you can borrow or find the Inquisitor miniatures game from Games Workshop, it is full of great fluff material along with some neat ideas for use in Dark Heresy.

Right, Eisenhorn, Eisenhorn and Ravenor, and Lord of the Night Nuff said.

So due to recommendations I stopped reading Ravenor until I could read Eisenhorn first. Because I didn't have it yet I opted to start reading Ciaphas Cain first.

Let me just say so far that series is pretty darn good.

*Spoiler if you haven't read it, stop now*

Thus far Ciaphas has just met his first Inquisitor who has roped him into his first mission... which of course he can't say no to. I particularly enjoy the fact that he is a hero by chance and not necessarily by deed of his own actions. Its a nice twist... Plus I already have a pretty good idea of what is going on with Jurgen after reading the Dark Heresy rules. As I don't play 40k, I don't know much about the Tau... so I had to look them up and find out about their story. They really don't seem so bad as far as Xenos go... Heresy, I know... but still they seem like a fairly decent lot. Although, I imagine that just like everyone else they are out to expand their territory and look out for number one.