Of course Black Library has already got involved in this time period, first with the Dark Imperium trilogy and now with the Dawn of Fire series, but it doesn’t really seem clear exactly what BL’s plans are. The clock has moved another step closer to midnight, we’re into the Era Indomitus, and everything from here on in is brand new. The Era IndomitusĪvenging Son – book one in the Dawn of Fire seriesįor the first time…well, ever I think…the ‘now’ of the 40k setting is genuinely ongoing, and being revealed over time. I’m not sure how likely it is that BL would commit to a long series about any of the smaller, lesser-known events, but anything’s possible – and the point is, something we don’t know much about could be an interesting option, and would somewhat do away with the question of ‘losing the mystique’. There’s nothing to say that BL couldn’t pick one or more of these and expand upon them – the Tyrannic Wars (M41) maybe, or the Nova Terra Interregnum (M35-36), or even ‘A Doom Unstoppable’ (M40 – I pulled this from the 8th edition Genestealer Cults Codex). Anyone who has even briefly skimmed through a rulebook, background book or Codex will know that there are countless interesting events and snippets of 40k lore out there, mostly mentioned just in passing. While it wasn’t anything like to the scale of the Horus Heresy, Black Library’s The Beast Arises series proved that there’s still plenty of scope for surprises in the 40k universe. I Am Slaughter – book one in The Beast Arises I’ll also include links to more information about each event/time period, if you’d like to know more – I’m going to go with Lexicanum as my personal preferred 40k wiki, and where available the lore videos of the excellent Oculus Imperia channel. For no reason other than it’s how my brain works, I’ll go in chronological order. In this first section I’m going to list a few of the most common events or time periods in 40k history that tend to be brought up when discussing what ‘the next Heresy’ might be. There are pros and cons to both sides of that particular debate, but for the purpose of this article let’s not worry about it too much. Of course it’s a balancing act for Black Library as to how much to reveal and how much to keep hidden, and it’s also up to each person to decide how important the mystique is to them as a reader. Clearly the Heresy series has told a lot of fantastic stories, but in the process of doing so it has definitely stripped back a little of the mystery, and in many respects it’s the mystery – that sense of only catching glimpses of events and names – that makes a setting like 40k so intriguing. Lastly, before I get onto the good bits, let’s touch briefly on something that always comes up in discussions of the Heresy – the question of how much to reveal, and how to avoid ‘losing the mystique’ of the setting. I’m also not going to talk about things like what format books might get released in – you know, whether BL will do ‘premium editions’ like the Heresy hardbacks, or paperbacks like Dawn of Fire. This isn’t really going to be a ‘pros and cons of each option’ sort of article, because I don’t want to spend too long talking about each option, and in order to try and keep things reasonably focused I’m going to stick purely to the 40k setting, Let’s face it, Age of Sigmar has not had a lot of love recently, and while I’d be very happy to see a step up in BL’s AoS output, it seems unlikely. With that in mind, I wanted to look at some of the most commonly-talked about suggestions for what might come after the Heresy, and talk a bit about what I would personally like to see. With the Siege of Terra mini-series drawing to a close – at the time of writing there are just two books remaining of the planned eight – and heralding the long-awaited end of the Heresy, that question of what might come next seems more pertinent than ever. For all that it started small and exploded into something utterly massive, as readers we’ve always known that it has a definitive end point, and for almost as long as there’s been the Heresy range there’s been speculation over what Black Library will do once the series has finished – what ‘the next Heresy’ will be. Black Library’s epic, ridiculously huge Horus Heresy series has proven incredibly popular, and for a lot of fans it’s the ‘premium’ BL range, the series that takes top billing and gets readers most excited.
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