Horus Heresy Weekender - Part One

PURPLE HERESY BLAZIN' IT UP @ HORUS HERESY WEEKENDER, 7^th, 8^th February 2015 at the Nottingham Belfry Hotel. This coverage is totally non-exclusive and has most likely already been covered by your favourite forums... with that in mind... let's get into some shit.

DISCLAIMER! I took extensive notes throughout the weekend and my memory is fairly good, but I didn’t have a hidden lapel-mic handy (Alpharius doesn’t let us take those out of the treehouse) and video wasn’t allowed on-site, so any quote from any person is not going to exactly be verbatim. I’ve tried instead to mostly give the ‘feel’ of what was said rather than exact replications, but when it felt like it was appropriate I’ve sprinkled in some quotes I could more or less be sure of remembering with some accuracy. If you feel I’ve misrepresented what was said (especially if it was you who said it!) drop me a comment and I’ll try to rephrase it or cut it out, within reason.

Day Zero: 6^th February

Arriving safely at the hotel, I checked in and got all my shit in order before wandering down to the lobby to see the Black Library and Forge World tables being set up. But they didn’t look like they would let me buy everything early and fuck off home, so I gave up on that pretty quickly.

I ate alone. The older couple next to me in the restaurant asked our waitress why the hotel was so busy. Her reply was, as far as I could tell, “It’s a Games Workshop event all weekend, so people come from all around and workshop.” Made it sound like an improv convention or something! On the other hand I was glad she wasn’t more truthful or accurate – if she’d said “Grown men come to buy little toys and get way to excited over stories about space-knights and wizards”, I’d probably have collapsed from shame.

Following my meal I did note the increasing amount of scary-looking geek motherfuckers in the bar (be fair – most people look scary to me) and briefly wondered if I should yank off the band-aid and go introduce myself around, but in the end I decided to slink off to my room. I did sneak a look at the BL stalls again and noted the presence of several novellas, including the new one ‘Blades Of The Traitor’.

Unused to a double bed, and a bit apprehensive of how things might go tomorrow, I spent a rather restless night half-sleeping. I woke up at around three in the morning having just dreamed about having to explain to a work colleague why I was going to this thing, and ending up being unable to speak. I’d also dreamed about going out to a reservoir to be alone, and getting surrounded by wild foxes, Jurassic Park velociraptor style. Both pretty clearly illustrated my worries about the days ahead. After eating an oat bar and falling back asleep, I had a further weird dream about being a waiter and having to resolve the arguments of my female colleagues, who were from Vietnam, France and East Anglia. I don’t even want to think about what that one means, but it's probably pretty patronising.

Day One: 7^th February

Breakfast was an interesting experience. Looking around the restaurant, I started to get the sense of who I’d be sharing a conference hall with for the next 24+ hours. It actually looked like a cross-section you’d expect to see queueing for a gig by a fairly popular metal band. You had some people who were into ‘the lifestyle’ to such an extent it screamed from every aspect of their appearance, but also some older guys who str8 didn’t give a fuck, and some young, relatively hip people. I was surprised at the amount of couples in attendance. I’m sure there are lots of couples who like the Heresy but my cynical asshole brain just went straight to “Pfft, yeah, right, buddy, she’s just pretending to be interested in what you like; really she’s bored senseless. It’s the same when you’re having sex.”

But enough of me projecting my relationship issues onto innocent bystanders. I signed in, got myself a ‘free’ goodie bag, which included some badges and a program. Of course the first thing I did was check this year’s ‘programme exclusive’ story, which was ‘Tallarn: Witness’ by John French. John himself later described it as “after the battle of Tallarn, the lucky winner who has the position of Governor-Militant of Tallarn turning up to his first day at work”. It’s a great story and the programme says it’s available on the Black Library website now. As of now that’s not the case but I’m sure it’s coming soon and I can attest that despite its brevity – less than 1 side of A4 – ‘Witness’ is well worth reading.

So then, I got into the queue for Black Library releases – pretty easily, since the main crush was massing around the Forge World stands, which kind of gave an early indication of the priorities of most attendees – and lined up for what was on offer.

And then the disappointment commenced.

I had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that ‘Tallarn: Ironclad’, by John French, was going to be the 32^nd full-length Horus Heresy book. It turned out to be a weird not-quite-novella at 240 pages, and a ‘First Edition’ to boot. I knew this day would come. This was probably the best place for Black Library to roll it out as people seemed pumped enough for new HH content that they’d pay it with minimum fuss. On the one hand, I hope they do more non-novel HH stuff as it just means more frequent releases, and at £40, it’s like £10 for 100 extra pages compared with a ‘standard’ Limited Edition novella. On the other hand, I think that this ‘First Edition’ joyride they’re on is real fucking scummy, and I resent HH being dragged into that game. I guess I’ll have to read ‘Ironclad’ to know the full deal, but I trust John French to bring the A-Game quality shit every time.

This next one doesn’t affect me, but I noticed that a lot of people were real bummed about ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ not being available. The Weekender email circulated by BL not long before the event did state that it was going to be there, and there was no explanation for why they hadn’t followed through on that. Later, I got the feeling that it was a distinct possibility that ‘Executioner’ and ‘Ironclad’ may be packaged together as a ‘numbered’ Heresy novel. But that’s far from concrete, and probably a long way off. For those of you who only want the Mass Market paperbacks, I think it will be a long, lonely road to the point where you can read about Tallarn. I do encourage everyone who doesn’t mind the novella format but resents shelling out £30 for 120ish pages to buy ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ as soon as it becomes available for £15. It’s a fantastic book and well worth it.

As I write this, Black Library have put up a ‘teaser’ for the wide release of the ‘Tallarn: Ironclad’ first edition. They’re marketing it as a novel. Even though the book itself doesn’t feature ‘Ironclad’ in the list of numbered novels. Fuck’s sake.

Keeping with that theme of Black Library stating things would be available which weren’t, Gav Thorpe’s new Raven Guard/Space Wolves audio drama ‘Raptor’ was not on sale this Weekender. Again, staff were unable to explain why this was, though they were extremely polite and apologetic. I’m sure it’ll be available in due course soon, but maybe BL should alter this page which continues to feature inaccurate information about the CD.

‘Garro: Knight-Errant’ turned out to be an audio drama collection. Of course. There’s a twenty-minute story exclusive to this collection called ‘Garro: Ashes Of Fealty’ (I’m sure it’ll be available as an individual purchase at some point). (Update: Yes. Less than a week after the Weekender, ‘Garro: Ashes Of Fealty’ is available as a download on BL’s site – so I’m glad I didn’t buy the whole collection to listen to the new short.) On no basis of fact whatsoever, I’d convinced myself that this would be the prose release of Garro’s adventures – I’m the only one to blame here, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed at that. I hope a Garro print collection is still on the cards.

Despite having been marketed in the lead-up to the event as “a brand-new anthology” (technically true, I guess), ‘Blades Of The Traitor’ included the previously downloadable ‘Daemonology’ and ‘Black Oculus’. Hey, I can’t pretend I was disappointed, but someone out there was probably super mad. Buy ‘Blades Of The Traitor’. It’s real good.

Join me next time when I actually go to some seminars...