#forges of Mars

[cursedbeasts]

Dahan

2023

Commissions

[definitely-not-iorveth]

[warhammersnippets]

'You bear an honourable name,’ said the Reclusiarch. ‘You are of Ultramar?’ ‘I am,’ agreed Roboute. ‘I was born on Iax, one of the cardinal worlds.’ ‘It surprises me to see a citizen of Ultramar as a rogue trader.’ ‘It’s a long story,’ said Roboute.

From: Forges of Mars, Graham McNeill

[niseag-reads]

Ouch my brain /pos - a ramble

Right. I want to say something sensible about this book, but I have been reading it since January, and I would be damned if I remembered what happened in the first half of it in any detail. This is a ramble/review for "Forges of Mars." the full trilogy. by Graham McNeill

Taking so long to read it was not the books fault. Indeed, that was me running into burnout and being preoccupied with university stuff. But being somewhat less than fully emerged in this book probably didn't help the book at all.

There are so many characters, holy shit. And some of their names are so similar! Hawke and Hawkins come to mind. Additionally, characters will be named by their first name, last name, or nicknames and keeping apart who is who is no joke. The dramatis personae provided is somewhat useful, but annoying when you have to refer to it too often. this does come with the caviat that I do, as a rule, not really remember names (I think it's the autism) making this all the more difficult to me. Where characters are diverse enough in their thinking and acting i will be able to tell them apart by that, but for side and background characters that really doesnt work.

With this, there are also multiple storylines, and my issue with that in many books is that there is always some I prefer over the others and then I get annoyed when they switch to the ones I do not care for as much. Also because I often didn't immediately know where we were jumping to. it really grated my gears that when a POV switch happened it wasn't always immediately clear whose POV the book had switched to, causing moments of confusion. Perhaps if i remembered which names belonged to what people it would be easier, but sadly it was not. for fairness, I was reading the ebook. Maybe this is clearer in the paper version.

In this trilogy, I found myself intrigued by the characterisation of the mechanicus characters whom I wanted to stick with, only to be forced to read about these other groups as well... if I wanted to read space marines, I'd have picked up one of their books, you know? Regardless, the arcs of kotov, linya, and tychon were all very interesting to me, and eventually, around the second book, I started to appreciate locke as well. The way the warhounds were written actively annoyed me, but I am someone who has read a lot of books involving (were)wolves, and my expectations from that may have influenced how I looked upon these chapters. the many POVs in this book felt somewhat unnessecary, too, like, I am unsure what the marines or the warhound POVs truly added to the storytelling. I get why there was both mechanicus and bondsman perspective though, that was a very interesting and clever choice in worldbuilding that allowed the reader to see the two ends of the coin when it comes to the runnings of a mechanicus expedition. the eldar perspective was not one I cared for much, but I do not fault the book for including it because it did definitely add a completely different angle to everything going on in this book.

The last book in the series is significantly more intense and action-packed than the other two, which I had not expected. It solidifies the feeling of a finale, I suppose, especially since the other two books lacked proper ending points. I thus believe that this was written as one very long book that was chopped into threes for marketability. That's not a negative, just an observation. the final confrontation is a-tier. very good, very satisfying. Galatea deserved worse. All in all, this was a decent enough experience and I can see why some people go wild for the characters in this book, they're very good. I left this review sitting in my drafts for so long I forgot where I was going with it. anyways. 3.5 stars. do recommend, but is very long and requires brain.

[vossn]

I'm starting a collection

[dread-master-styrak]

Archmagos Kotov with the steel chair. That's it, that's the post

[jaal-ama-daravv]

Omnissiah Forgive Me - Chapter 3 - WIP

An evocation came flooding back to Pasqal in an instant. A fleeting moment on the battlefield just a few moons ago. 'Enemies were closing in, firing upon Pasqal and Kassard as they crouched behind a large concrete barrier. Kassard tried to be the daring commissar she is, and Pasqal was having none of it. As Kassard began to shuffle to take aim at their enemies, Pasqal’s mechadendrite launched towards her and gripped on to her thick leather collared garment and aggressively dragged her back down. She was now engulfed in his stance. His blood pressure rose greatly. The mechadendrite released its grip and Pasqal threw his arm across her chest - only death would release it - and pulled her into him as he peaked the barrier and dispatched the remainder of their enemies. The pair locked eyes and exchanged several moments of long, dragged out breaths as the adrenaline wore off.'  Kassard laid neatly tucked in the space between Pasqal’s forearm and bicep - the heat radiated off his metal chest, the gears whirred - she trembled whilst in his embrace and whispered, “You didn’t have to do that…” “I had no choice, Lord Captain.” His voice shook, and his vox hissed.  It was in that moment that Pasqal wondered if he should be grateful, or should curse the fact that despite his servitude to the Omnissiah, his heart was no longer sheltered inside his metal plated chest - it now took form in the shape of the Lord Captain. [x]

[nosetoons]

It's been a long-ass while since I did a digital drawing, or at least posted one.

This was a long overdue gift for probably my favorite artist (no exaggerating) on Weasyl and here, @cursedbeasts.

This is their design of Hirimau Dahan, a character from the Forges of Mars trilogy created by Graham McNeil. I've always loved their art, especially with Dahan involved (my favorites are probably about 40% of him).

TL;DR design was done by CursedBeasts, character entirely was actually done by Graham McNeil

[jaz1312]

This is one reason why I love the Forges of Mars series by Graham Macneil. Sure you follow the magi, traders, and space marines, but you also get to see crew life, the indentured servants, servitors, and minor tech priests that have to endure the terrible battles and warp incursions.

Something that I think Warhammer 40,000 storytellers miss sometimes is the sheer scale of their setting. I mean, don't get me wrong - I love the big, dramatic clashes, the characters you can buy in mini form and their convoluted, interwoven lore, the dramatic combats against unstoppable foes across a thousand ruined worlds. But that's the top of the setting, as it were - the most powerful beings in the universe, all fighting for supremacy. And at ground level, the level of the ordinary person, are so many other stories.

Did you know that a Lunar-class void cruiser has a crew of 95,000? Nearly a hundred thousand people, aboard a spaceship five kilometers long. A city, flying through outer space to wage war. Many of those people are proper trained soldiers, fresh from some academy or veterans of long, grueling campaigns, and many more are pressed into service, begrudgingly laying their lives at their Emperor's feet. But, unless the ship is currently actively involved in a really bloody campaign, most of those people were born aboard that ship. Most of their parents were born aboard it. And their grandparents. And their great-grandparents. Lineages stretching back centuries, so far that the original soldier who came aboard has been forgotten. A lot of those people probably know, on some level, that they're aboard a ship flying through space - but a lot of them probably don't, and I guarantee you almost none of them understand what that means. This ship is their world. To look out the window means madness so often that they avoid it - not that windows are readily available anyway. Most of them probably barely even understand that they're fighting. All they know is that when the readouts on their analog instruments display like so, when they hurry to obey the blared orders through the klaxon, the Emperor is pleased with them. They were born into that world. When they were children they did smaller tasks the adults couldn't. Their entire existence was winding metal corridors, laid out according to some archaic design, any logic that might dictate their layout long since degraded after millennia of ignorant maintenance, lit only by emergency lights that have long since become the default. They learned how to read an angle readout or how to relay an order perfectly the way another child might learn history or math. When they grew up, their service was flawless, born of pride and ignorance, and when they grew old and died, their legacy was remembered until it was forgotten. Many were killed in battle, but who cares? They gave their lives to the Emperor - a name whose meaning they don't understand, but whose importance they believe in wholeheartedly, all but synonymous with the commanding officers up above.

Sometimes, the klaxons sound a specific command, and every person on board who understands what it means feels a deep, awful dread as they run to their battle stations. They don't know what a warp jump is. They don't understand they're going from one place to another by the fastest way available. All they know is that, for a time, the ship dips into hell. The corridors go wrong. Things and people might not be where or what they were before. Daemons stalk the halls, and must be killed by any who can hold a lasgun. The overcrowded berths, the little nooks that families find for themselves - they are not private anymore. They are not safe. Things drift through the shift that do not care about the laws of physics, but that delight in killing and torturing human beings. Vast energies shake the ship and tear parts of it away - their home, their world, their existence, the biggest thing they can imagine, assaulted by something bigger. Is it the Emperor's punishment for failure? Is this what battle is? What's going on? They don't know, and no one who does can be bothered to tell them. The dread of those who have seen this before is even worse, because they don't know how long it will be. It might be just a few hours. It might be days, or weeks, or months, or years, or decades. It might be centuries, as the captain of the ship goes hunting daemons deep in the warp - the officers live that long, after all, and have little care for those who don't. There will be people born in hell, who spend their entire lives fighting from the day they can stand, and who die in hell, as old age and need catch up to them and they curl up in a corner to perish. To them, it isn't even hell. It's just the world. The world is death and pain and cruelty, an infinite metal box through which monsters stalk, and sometimes you must run to a battle station and do as you're ordered to do. And sometimes, as they reach forty or fifty or even a ripe old sixty, the ship drops out of the Warp, and, for the final years of their life, they are granted a life of relatively safe service better than anything they ever hoped to dream of.

Those are the kinds of stories I want to see more of. Super-soldiers fighting each other is cool, yes, but I want to see this universe explored. I want stories from the perspective of those that keep the Imperium going, or the aeldar, or the tyranids, or anyone, really. There's just so much potential in this setting. It deserves it.

[bobombun]

In Forge of Mars, there's a moment where a Magos gets complimented, and though his face is mechanical and so does not show much of his emotions at this, it is mentioned that from under his hood a light pulses in binary as a thanks, and I just have to say that that is somehow the cutest thing. It's like the closest thing the Mechanicus have to blushing. A silent practically morse code of "aw shucks thank you" that's so clear to any Mechanicus.

[cursedbeasts]

2025 vs 2023

Dahan after defeating a crystal monster. Forges of Mars fanart.

Commissions are open!

[ocherednoe-dno]

space marine chapter lineages tree but it's a chart which world the founders of each Forge World hailed from

[thegirlwiththebikermicetattoo]

@brimstoneandstardust - this reminded me of your fic. ❤️

[maggotknight]

Lilith von Valancius keeps her local inquisitoral agent close on particularly snowy worlds.

Conducting most trade deals and explorations huddled like a penguin against his person.

[vossn]

Listen, we all know AdMech are absolute goals in the "I replaced my gender with some cool new gadgets" nonbinary way, but I also keep coming at it from a more binary angle and it kind of tickles my brain, so. hear me out-

You do not look like a man. You looks like steel, machine, wires, cables, but these are not the things that make up a man. As flesh melts away into steel you shift closer and farther from an arbitrary point of data their decisions are based on, but it means so very little.

You honor no aesthetics because your body has long foregone aesthetic purpose. It wasn't made to be perceived, it was made to run tirelessly, and to fight just the same, to serve you, and to serve The Omnissiah. If you shape it to fit its function, who dares question you?

They will not know if you have ever been a man to begin with. You might not even know. It doesn't matter where your path of enlightenment started. It doesn't matter what your flesh looked like before it became something sacred.

You are, by all accounts, more machine than man. But you are still a man. And so you declare yourself as one, because what else would you be?

[cursedbeasts-cc]

Brontes goes on a weird date with Kotov