Dan Abnett - Eisenhorn

A WARHAMMER 40,000 OMNIBUS

EISENHORN

Dan Abnett

original scan by Undead

edited by fractalnoise

v1.3 (2012.01)

I T IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Y ET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants and worse.

T O BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

O NCE, WHEN ASKED where he got his ideas, David Mamet replied, I think of them. In a similar vein, when asked where she got her energy from, my daughter Lily answered, Woolworths. Ba-dum tish!

Rather less quick-witted than either of them, I regularly struggle when I get asked about ideas and their origins, and usually come up with some old cobblers about sometimes, if Im on a train, things just occur to me or you never know when an ideas going to hit you

Because you dont. Owning, as I do, a mind as reliable and watertight as the average game of Ker-Plunk!, I have learned to become something of a note-taker. I jot stuff down, anything, everything, as it occurs to me yes, on trains, or planes, or sofas, or seesaws, or the queue at Tesco so I dont lose it. I use notebooks, old envelopes, Post-its, the backs of shopping lists, the foreheads of passing children, whatevers to hand. Then, when I actually need an idea, professionally speaking, I rifle through this scrap-head resource and eventually come up with something that makes me go Oh, yeah, thatd work. Except, of course, for the occasions when I find something that makes me go, What is that? A B? Whats that word? Did I write this?

So Im delighted to be able to say that in the case of Eisenhorn (which is the umbrella title weve given to the cycle of novels and linked short stories collected in this spiffy volume), I know exactly where the idea came from. Not me, thats where.

There is a rather gorgeous painting that many of you, Im sure, will be familiar with. Its called Inquisitor Tannenberg, its by John Blanche, and it has been reproduced in various places, including the Inquis Exterminatus. Know the one? Guy with a scalp full of cables, a black fur coat, a double-headed eagle familiar on his shoulder, a gold-chased bolt pistol in his hand? Yes, it is good, isnt it?

Id been working for the Black Library for a few years, producing a variety of things, most notably the Gaunts Ghosts novels. So the grim nightmare of the far future, where there is only war and the galaxys alight and everyones got a headache, was pretty much my thing. The editors kept me fed with all the latest fluff and hot new supplements, just to keep me in the loop. And one day, they sent me this pile of photocopies: sketches, paste-ups, notes. There was going to be, they told me, a new game called Inquisitor, and they were so jazzed by the concepts and ideas coming out of the games development, they decided to send me all the stuff, hush-hush, in the hope that it might inspire me, Gaunt-wise.

As soon as I opened the package and started leafing through, I could see what they meant. This was a rich seam indeed, full of wonderful baroque material. Among the pages, along with a number of other very fine pictures, was a copy of John Blanches painting. And that was it. I picked up the phone, called Black Library and said, Can I please write about this? Even though, truth be told, at that stage I didnt know exactly what this was.

They said yes (I think they sensed the enthusiasm in my voice). The idea was that if I could write the novel quickly enough, it could come out AT THE SAME TIME as the game launch, and everyone would look big and clever, like it had been planned that way all along.

I visited the Studio, and got great help and advice from the game developers, particularly Gav Thorpe. Then I got to work.

I think what inspired me about Johns painting was the aristocratic clothing: the rich black velvet of the sleeves, the engraved gold of the elegant weapon. This wasnt about the battlefield, the front-line of mud and gas and behemoth engines. This was a glimpse behind the lines at the internal complexity of the Imperium. It offered a chance to explore what might be called the domestic side of the Warhammer 40,000 universe: the daily, non-military, life at work, at worship, at rest, at court, at slum-level. A chance to visit worlds that were not levelled by war, and see how the billions of Imperial citizens lived.

And also to find out what evils stalked them, even in the shadows of their own hive cities.

The novel turned into a trilogy that charts the career of a man. Other stories, two of which are collected here, lace into that trilogy and, for those who are interested, the exploits of several of these characters continue in the Ravenor novels that are my current concern.

John Blanches images have always had such a profound influence on the growth of the Warhammer 40,000 universes unique flavour, Im proud to acknowledge that painting as the inspirational source of Eisenhorn. Everywhere you look, his spiky, gothic, ornate visions inform the game, and Id like to think you can find a hint of them permeating this collection. So, individual dedications notwithstanding, this collected volume is respectfully dedicated to Mr. John Blanche.

Of course, if I ever work out whose idea it was to write these stories in the first person, Ill be round their house with a baseball bat. The plot problems that caused

Oh, hang on. That was me.

Dan Abnett

Maidstone, 9th August, 2004

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[Pict-record white noise segues to] Darkness. Sounds of distant human pain. A flash of light [poss. las-fire?]. Sounds of running.

Pict-source moves, tracking, vibrating. Some stone walls, in close focus. Another flash, brighter, closer. Squeal of pain [source unknown]. An extremely bright flash [loss of picture].