"The Sigillite" by Chris Wraight

It’s time for me to review one of the best Horus Heresy audio dramas ever. This one’s just over 70 minutes, and it’s produced by Big Finish. It’s read by Tim Treloar, Ramon Tikaram and Toby Longworth.

Lots of cool stuff going on this artwork, but fuck that giant red circle.

We open in the Sigillite’s chambers in the Imperial Palace, where Khalid Hassan is awaiting with some dread his debrief about his calamitous last mission. That action is told in flashback – a tense but comparatively subtle raid against an undefined enemy in Gyptus, ending with an apparent failure to retrieve what the team was sent for. In between those flashbacks, Hassan marvels at the majesty of the Imperial Palace, at the ongoing work Dorn is doing to turn it into a fortress, and ultimately at the nature of Malcador himself. By turns kindly, unassuming, wise, sinister and utterly terrifying, Malcador’s portrayal here is probably the most compelling study of this character in the entire Heresy series. In Wraight’s words: “For all the man’s frailty, Hassan could sense the quiet power radiating from him, as deep and cold as a well-shaft.” There are discussions of the unfolding Heresy, and hints at the Webway War, but you won’t find much in the way of series-vital plot points here. Rather, it’s about building the background and showing us the growing feeling of desperation on Terra, and how the Sigillite is adapting his role to the new circumstances.

This is a one-shot, and it’s not entirely clear where exactly it sits in the series chronology, though a brief mention of the events of ‘The Outcast Dead’ provides some context for the story. Don’t try this if you’re one of the people who insist that if a book doesn’t end with the Traitor Legions a measurably closer distance to Terra than they were when the book began, then that book’s a failure. But if you’ve liked the Terra-set episodes of the story – like I have – and you’re fond of the behind-the-scenes intrigue aspect as much as the pitched battles between thousands of Space Marines – like I am – then ‘The Sigillite’ may be a winner for you. And the end-of-drama kicker, where it's revealed that the worthless cargo Hassan's squad retrieved may not be so worthless after all - well, I couldn't help but smile.

                                           

Here’s how the roles are assigned, as far as I can tell. I apologise if these are incorrect - I'm still really unsure why Black Library never provides specific casting credits for these dramas. Ramon Tikaram plays our hero, Khalid Hassan, and his squadmate Farouk. (For some reason, a lot of reviews out there refer to the main character as Hasani Sabyat; perhaps, like Ollanius Pius, this is a name he will take up later, but for now, he’s Khalid Hassan – I double checked the CD case and everything.) Toby Longworth reads the titular Sigillite and the narration is done by Tim Treloar. Yes, there are only three named characters and four speaking parts in the whole hour-plus drama. As usual, Ramon Tikaram is excellent; I’m not sure what accent he’s doing exactly, but it doesn’t at all get in the way of the character portrayal and he invests straightforward soldier Hassan with a real sense of wonder (and dread) at being so close to such a legendary figure. Toby Longworth is excellent as well. While I think Garro’s been my favourite role for him, his Sigillite is great; venerable, but full of quiet authority. Wraight’s script calls for Longworth to switch between moods with little warning, and he pulls all of the transitions off with grace. Tim Treloar, as the narrator, is good also. At times, though, he seems to stumble in phrasing and pronunciation. This is certainly a narration-heavy piece so that’s sometimes quite an obvious problem; as with so many Black Library audio drama narrators, he just doesn’t seem to know what everything he’s saying actually means. An issue we can all sympathise with, but the producers should be make the extra effort to correct these mistakes. He also unfortunately does the thing I find so annoying in nearly all Black Library narrators: he thinks that in a combat scene, it’s necessary to convey the intensity of combat by SPEAKING LOUDLY and WITH GROWING INTENSITY. I guess it’s unfair to penalise the drama for that, though, since it’s been a drawback to every Black Library audio work I’ve heard, with the possible exception of ‘Chosen Of Khorne’. Lastly, Treloar's voice is at least very distinctive from the other two actors - ideal for a narrator who will often have to interject amidst bits of dialogue.

The soundtrack is absolutely superb in this drama – the understated plinking of Malcador’s waiting room, the percussive pounding of the battle scenes, the middle-east sounding atmospherics of Hassan’s stealth ops. And it’s not just music that’s done well. The sound effects are great and varied, too. We’re nearly ten minutes in before we even get any explosions, and when there is crazy action and gunfire going on, the SFX tends to be at an appropriate volume so that you can still hear the narration easily. They know when to back off completely, too. A large amount of the dialogue has no sound effects strangling it; sometimes there’s not even any music playing. Perhaps it’s due to Wraight’s inventively written scene-setting, but there are opportunities for lots of different, non-combat audio tags in the drama, and Big Finish don’t drop the ball on any of it. What I’m basically saying is that Black Library should still be using these guys to do their audio dramas still, but ahh, I guess Heavy Entertainment ain’t so bad.

But you’ll probably already have made your mind up about whether you like or dislike BL’s audio presentation. The main draw here – apart from it being well established that Wraight is an excellent writer – will be the hope that this will answer some of the long-running questions about the mysterious Sigillite. Who is Malcador? What is Malcador? What motivates him? What help did he provide the Emperor before Unity and the Great Crusade? What is the mysterious Order of the Sigillites? Some of these answers are well-established in ‘old fluff’ but the Horus Heresy has shown a willingness to trample on that fluff if the authors can come up with something better. But, well – no. ‘The Sigillite’ doesn’t really answer definitively any of those questions, though we can certainly tell Wraight and Black Library know what people want to learn about Malcador. There are moments – like the mention of the future High Lords of Terra – which may imply that Malcador has a firm grasp on the future direction of the Imperium; they could also be taken as the author slipping in a sly wink to fans of 40K who know how things will go, and may be sometime Malcador can claim no credit for. If you go into this drama not quite sure where the Emperor has been for the whole Heresy, you’ll definitely know when this is over – but you should have been able to pick that fact up from several previous Heresy books. For me, the lack of big, important revelations was not a problem – see my explanation earlier about the appeal of this drama. But I know that more than a few people will be angry about that.

Enigmatic origins aside, a real highlight for me was Malcador’s recollection of the Primarchs as they once were, as well as his anger and guilt at the way many of them have betrayed him. This leads to maybe my favourite quote of the whole drama:

“Do you know, out of them all, if I could have saved just one, it would have been Lorgar. Even though he despises me, and even though I was… wounded by him, he was such a fragile soul. So subtle and ready to bruise. We might have handled him better. Did we make mistakes with some of them? Surely we did. Though I fear the time to correct them is now long past.”

The repressed fury, the regret, and also the tired acceptance in Longworth's voice as he reads this line is great to hear and very impressive. Not quite as emotionally wrenching, but another nice quote takes place as Hassan looks out on the growing fortifications of the Imperial palace. The Sigillite makes the wry observation:

“With each passing day it will get a little bit uglier, a little more worn. Just like us, eh?”

A great line, and again, really well played by Longworth.

Of all the audio dramas, this one screams out most obviously for a follow-up. Perhaps it’s a little unfair since so many of the audio dramas I like have already had obvious follow-ups: ‘Butchers Nails’, ‘Wolf Hunt’, ‘Grey Angel’, ‘Sword Of Truth’. But I’d absolutely love for this to get an explicit sequel. Sure, Wraight returned to the Sigillite in ‘Daemonology’ – and ‘Scars’, I think – but I’d love a novella or short story from Wraight exclusively focusing on this enigmatic figure. He obviously knows how to hint at the mysteries of Malacador without it just being a bunch of arch pouting. With ‘The Master of Mankind’ on indefinite ice, perhaps that would be a nice Terra-focused stopgap? Really, we don’t even need a Malcador story – a Hassan story would be awesome as well. Since Malcador’s networks obviously go beyond Knights Errant, Hassan might be a nice guide for that world. Then again, if forced to choose between Chris Wraight writing more Malcador or more White Scars, I shamefacedly admit I’d go with the V Legion.

Is it a flawless drama? No. There are moments in ‘The Sigillite’ that take me out of the drama a little bit, and break immersion. For Malcador to hold forth about how Horus will bring them to the “barbarity of despotism” seems hypocritical. Horus is certainly WORSE – but the barbarity of despotism under the Emperor is pretty harsh, Jack. It’s just easy to forget about that when you’re in the middle of a cool-ass museum. The fact he’s also currently laying the groundwork for the Inquisition, and the direction that organisation will take in future years, makes his claim of the moral high ground even tougher to swallow. And that strange little moment near the end I – perhaps wrongly – assume to be a discussion of the Bible? That’s going to be problematic for some listeners. Yet I’d say even at the moments I didn’t like, I respect Chris Wraight’s authorial choices. He writes both action and dialogue with excellent craftsmanship and aplomb; some of these conversations are just as tense as the fights. ‘The Sigillite’ is damn-near definitive in several ways: as a character study for the Sigillite, as a Heresy drama tackling the Silent War, as a portrait of Terra in decline, as an illustration of how Warhammer-themed audio dramas can be done with subtlety. In a word, it’s excellent. 9/10

New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.