Something for the weekend, sir…

by grahammcneill on Jan.23, 2010, under Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill

Well, hello…

Guest blogging on someone else’s site is a juicy prospect, so I’ll start by thanking Dan for the elegance of his handover, and the good folk at Babel Clash for trusting me not to break anything and leave them open to multiple lawsuits. It is rather shiny around here, isn’t it? Lots of features I don’t have on my own website (www.graham-mcneill.com), but I promise not to break anything, and I’ll not abuse my room service privileges. Though I can’t promise I won’t raid the mini-bar. I hope I’ve got my nice shiny icon beside me, but we’ll see what happens when I hit the ‘publish’ button. Dan’s been doing sterling work so far on the blog, but now it’s my turn. I’ve been lurking in the comments pages for the last week like the swotty kid at school, piping up whenever I knew the answer, but now the blog is mine. I can say what I want, and I’m answerable to no-one! Right, so what are we going to talk about today?

I thought I’d begin by talking about a subject very close to my heart: Ultramarines. Now, some of you are leaning forward, looking interested, but some of you are already yawning at the back. Now, it’s my intention to disabuse you of that notion. A question I was asked a lot when I first started the Ultramarines series was, why them? I mean, they’re boring right? Vanilla? Wrong, wrong and more wrong. There’s wrong, there’s wronger than that, and then there’s the wrongest thing ever. And then there’s the belief that the Ultramarines are boring.

I’ve encountered this many times, and I think it boils down to two factors. The first, nuts and bolts factor, is that Ultramarines are the poster boys for 40K. That’s true for a number of reasons. They’re easy to use on the tabletop, which makes them a perfect choice for introducing people to playing the game. You don’t sit down with a new player and show them an army filled with special rules, exceptions and mind-boggling special abilities. As a result, quite a few younger players start their gaming careers playing Ultramarines. And the stigma begins. The second reason is a factor of the first, they don’t have any special rules, no Red Thirst, Acute Senses, Righteous Zeal or any of the malarkey that makes other Chapters so much fun to play with as your skill and confidence as a gamer grows. But they’re still Space Marines, seven-foot tall genetically engineered killing machines. And where those other Chapters have their angsty darkness, the Ultramarines are heroes. And therein lies the appeal of the Ultramarines to me. They’re heroes. They remember the original role of the Space Marines as the protectors of humanity. Over the centuries, many other Chapters have come to regard humans as somehow inferior to them, as ants who can’t protect themselves and need the Space Marines to haul their backsides out of whatever peril they’ve gotten themselves into this week. But not the Ultramarines, no sir!

The Ultramarines remember that they were created to keep the galaxy safe for the human race; that their entire raison d’etre was to conquer the galaxy and defend the frontiers of human space against all-comers. They illustrate the millennia of honourable service to the Emperor and humanity. They are arch-conservatives, putting tradition and history before adaptation and evolution. The Chapter’s history links the present with the great deeds and glories of the past. They illustrate the ideal of a Space Marine Chapter and the importance of discipline and organisation. The Ultramarines, and Uriel Ventris in particular, know that they exist to serve humanity, not the other way round.

In my eyes, this makes them one of the most heroic Chapters around, since they are now totally divorced from the human race by virtue of their genetic enhancements, yet they still fulfil the role for which they were created. To me, it humanises the Ultramarines, and while I know that some people prefer their Astartes to be inhuman monsters or so aloof from human nature that they become like automatons, they’re not the Astartes I care to write about. Neither interpretation is wrong (and there are Chapters like that) but I want my Astartes to be different; to be so removed from their genetic heritage that they find it hard to relate to humans on most normal levels, but who still retain their humanity. These are warriors who willingly gave up their chance to live a normal life for an eternity of battle and bloodshed. That they live apart from the rest of humanity is important because this speaks of the sacrifices they’ve made in order to better serve their masters (the Emperor and humanity). This kind of sacrifice is part of what makes the Astartes heroic, more so than their skill and power! And if that doesn’t make them heroes, then I don’t know what does.

I came up with the character of Uriel many years ago, imagining him to be the embodiment of what makes the Ultramarines who they are. A Chapter that bases its entire organisation on a ten thousand year old book, but which lives in an ever-changing galaxy. How would they deal with that, and what would be the consequences of choosing to do things in a different way? It opened up a lot of dramatic potential, to see how Uriel dealt with fluid battlefield situations and what that meant for him (and the Chapter) in the wake of his adaptations. I knew I wanted to go strange places with the character, but as Dan mentioned earlier, it’s sometimes a good idea to know the rules and where the boundaries are before you go and break them. That’s why I spent the first novel creating the Ultramarines, establishing them as a ‘by the book’ Chapter, then set about breaking that mould by the end of the second. By the third and fourth books, I’d taken Uriel and the redoubtable Sergeant Pasanius out of their comfort zone into some very un-Ultramarine places. I could only do that since I’d spent the time and effort to set them up in the first place.

Courage and Honour saw them returned to their Chapter, and thus began the countdown to total war that is the book I’m working on at the moment, The Chapter’s Due. In this book, Uriel is once again confronted with his old enemy, Honsou, and the entire Ultramarines Chapter is plunged into a cataclysmic war. From Storm of Iron and through the course of Dead Sky, Black Sun, Honsou became a fan favourite and started demanding more and more screen time. Not bad for a character who was only ever supposed to appear in one, stand-alone, novel… Honsou became, for me, the anti-Uriel, the warrior that Uriel might have become had he continued along the path he’d started down in Warriors of Ultramar. Honsou was a dark mirror for the Ultramarines, a representation of all that was bad about Space Marines who had no code and who weren’t bound to a rigid set of rules. Other Chapters might decry the Ultramarines strict adherence to the aeons-old words of a dead (or is he?) man, but the Ultramarines know that their path is the only one that offers ultimate salvation. Especially given what happened in Ultramar, back during the Horus Heresy…

Over the course of the Ultramarines novels, the characters have grown and developed, though they’ve largely been confined to those in the immediate orbit of Uriel. I’m starting to broaden out the cast to encompass more of the 4th Company, and the Chapter in general. It’s something Dan’s done with great skill and success with the Ghosts, creating a broad swathe of characters of different stripes over the course of many novels, and it’s something I intend to do more of in the Ultramarines books. I want to make them Ultramarines books, not simply Uriel Ventris books. Though we’ll have to see how many of the company are left standing after The Chapter’s Due finishes to see how well that works out.

So, there you have it, the roots of my love for the Ultramarines, and why I think they best epitomise what it means to be a Space Marine. In a completely different tack, tomorrow I’m going to be talking about how I go about taking a novel from a floaty idea drifting through my transom to a wad of pressed cellulose with a pretty cover in your hands. In the meantime, have a great Saturday, and see you tomorrow…

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12 Comments for this entry

Thariq
January 23rd, 2010 on 7:30 am
Hi Graham a big thank you to Dan and yourself for writing such thrilling and image filled books whereby after you read a chapter you can close your eyes and imagine the scene that just played out, Fulgrim is by far one my favourite books written by and whenever I read the opera bit I can actually visualise and see the whole thing play out in your mind !!!

Dan your book Triumff was a great read the language used was so funny and the whole victorian theme was a great fit !
Jay
January 23rd, 2010 on 8:32 am
Hmmmm my 4th post, starting to turn into a fanboy stalker!

Graham, great post re: Ultras. Have to say that series of books restored my faith in reading about SMs.

I’m 40 and like many people my age got into sci-fi because of Star Wars. However, as I got older it was the “darker/grittier” sci-fi that began appealing to me (like Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner films). I have never liked Star Trek and all that squeeky clean, hi-tech swooshing doors and spandex suits!

In addition my favourite books were the Dune series by Frank Herbert and the flawed but still wonderful David Lynch film. This (and playing D&D) all led me to discover W40k Rogue Trader in ‘87 which I played until the early 90s before temporarily “growing up”! I spent some time reading “real books” including sci-fi but nothing really grabbed me (in the way Ian Watson’s Inquisitor Draco series had).

I realised the gap that needed filling was what I call Science Fantasy (100% certain I didn’t invent that term of course). What this means to me is combining fantasy elements (like LotR) with the distant future where things don;t all work, are dirty and rusty and don’t always go swoosh and no spandex in sight!

In 2006 I was looking through a bookstore in London and noticed a Warhammer 40k section (a whole section loaded with books). “I used to play that game” I thought to myself as I examined the shelves. Skeptical though I was about the quality of “tie-in” (having be thoroughly put off by early Star Wars attempts) I decided to buy one. It had a really nice cover and an intriguing story summary. This book was by a chap called Dan Abnett (who I had never heard of) and was a huge omnibus called Eisenhorn.

I was blown away. It was the best dark gritty gothic sci-fantasy novel I had ever read or could have hoped to find. What’s more it was not about the wars in W40k it was (as Dan said in an earlier post) “Domestic40k”. I proceeded to buy and read through the books available at a rapid pace but steered clear of the Space Marine novels. Initially I focused on the “Domestic40k” with the equally excellent Matthew Farrer’s Calpurnia books (about the Arbites), followed by Ravenor etc. I relented and bought the first Gaunt Omnibus and slowly but surely got to a point where I had exhausted everything that was not SMs.

That’s when I bought the Ultramarine’s omnibus (convinced you were the man having really enjoyed Mechanicum which I read completely out of Horus Heresy sequence).

Well long story (sorry) but your Ultramarine’s novels convinced me that SMs could in fact be interesting…very interesting.

My wife would like to put me into W40k rehab because I have now read more than 50 Black Library novels with at least 10 on the shelf waiting to be read (including Storm of Iron that for some strange reason I keep postponing).

Final point and I will stop rambling…thanks for the hint in answer to earlier post re: future novels. I cannot read binary but the idea of another mechanicum novel is very exciting.
Big
January 23rd, 2010 on 1:09 pm
Let me start by saying hello Graham, best wishes to you and new family , i hope this message finds you all safe and well!
Ahem….Ultramarines, i have avoided, up until now getting the S.M. codex thinking it would be bland and in a word to straight snd constricting, mirroring my feelings for Ultramarines.Boy must i eat my words!
They have matured in this edition.I feel this has something to do with yourself because im finding myself strangly drawn to them. In such a depressing galaxy they are the light! i have all your Ultramarine novels to date ,but their adventures on tarsis ultra were my fav. There they took charge and acted as force multipliers with Uriel even breaking the rules. In my mind that kind of professional soldiery is what the Imperium needs ,Combined Arms as it where. Concerning how they follow the Codex Astartes, i do think that the way the background that has been written now is more in touch with how it was.I dont feel that Gulliman wrote it to be a bible, more of a tatical doctrine originally meant to be flexible and adaptable ,allowing to react as the situation demands. Could we possibly see more of that?! i hope so, the threats in the galaxy are certainly big enough and the Ultramarines “Lead The Way”. With the added characters in the new codex the future is definatly exciting for the Ultramarines.
Proffesional soldiery, Flexible adaptability, and provision of well trained military might means that the future of the Imperium probably rests on their shoulders.
As much as it chokes me to say …LOL!
Honsou is DA MAN when o when are we going to see more of him.personally i feel he woulda kicked the shite outa the so called Tyrant of Badab ! theres always a hope hahahaha
Double looking forward to next enstallment of the Sigmar books (is it gonna be a trilogy) i hope not id love it to continue,after reading it i thought youd do a great job with the Wolves (please take that as a compliment, it was intended as one)
Have you got any one off subjects you would like to write about for G.w….or not G.W. do you have a Triumff on the go somewhere?
Any how i gotta go change nappys .
Good Luck
Big
Matthew Churchill
January 23rd, 2010 on 2:32 pm
Hi Graham,
So far I’ve only read The Killing Ground, and have been meaning to pick up The Ultramarines Omnibus. Maybe I’ll get it at BL Live.

Your comments on the Ultramarines conservatism and discipline are interesting. I’m not usually one for taking a pop at authors, but I was a bit disappointed with the presentation of the Ultramarines in Battle for the Abyss. In my reading, the Ultramarines there were much the same as the conservative Ultramarines of the 41st millennium and I felt it was a bit of a wasted opportunity to explore their origins.

The Heresy stains the conscience of all the Chapters, but in some like the Blood Angels and Dark Angels the scars are more obvious than others. As I see it, the Ultramarines, after starting to build their own utopia on the distant fringe of the galaxy, failed to reach Terra in time to protect the very heart of the Imperium’s primary utopia. So their retreat into conservatism was a desperate reaction to protect the status quo of their personal paradise.

Working backwards, to me this suggests that the Ultramarines of the 31st millennium need be little like those of the 41st. Obviously their genetic structure is very much the same, but their collective psychology has not been influenced by 10,000 years of history of striving to preserve their purity. The Ultramarines are unique in that the project of the Great Crusade was an enduring success for them, but it worked in a limited realm of influence and the cost is (if you’ll excuse the pun) ultra-conservatism. But as I say, working backwards to the Heresy itself we have a Legion that has no Codex Astartes, no desperate need to preserve, but an optimistic, open dedication to the Emperor’s mission of creating a galaxy where the human spirit can flourish. They’re not fighting by the book cause the book ain’t been written yet, they’re fighting under the direct inspiration of a charismatic and honourable leader. At the time of the Heresy they are untainted by the need to desperately conserve what they have achieved. Their Dream is still expanding.

Anyway, that’s my twopence worth. What are your thoughts on Heresy-era Ultramarines? Would you consider writing a book on them too?
M
Big
January 23rd, 2010 on 2:59 pm
Matt that was bloody good Question , i second that .Genuinely what were they like before all of the Codex buisness?
and Graham ou WOULD be the guy to write it! You would have virtually free reign.
grahammcneill
January 23rd, 2010 on 3:14 pm
Oh, Matthew, Matthew… How like ours your mind must work.. Funnily enough, that same question had occurred to me after a series of ideas that came out of our last Horus Heresy meeting. Dan said something at the meeting that just sent us off on some of the wildest speculation and ‘what if’s’ we’ve been down.

The Codex Astartes did exist before the Heresy, it wasn’t an official tome at the time, but Roboute Guilliman was collating his thoughts and writings all during the Great Crusade. Its influence was felt throughout the Chapter, but the *rigid* adherence to its words wasn’t quite the same as it is now, because, as you say, the necessity of it hadn’t arisen yet (ie the consequences of Legions acting without such guidance). We did some reverse engineering of Ultramar and the Legion at the last meeting, and let me tell you the results were head-spinning to say the least. I’ll leave it at that for now, but to answer your question I’ll have to say that A: yeah, I’d love to tell part of that story and B: you’ll have to wait and see.

Jay: Space Marines can indeed be interesting. Just look at Priad in Brothers of the Snake. Rafen in the Blood Angels books. Glad you hopped on board the Astartes train, and you couldn’t have picked a better place to enter the world of 40K than with Eisenhorn.

Cheers Big, nice to see you in these salubrious surroundings, and thanks for the best wishes. I think Guilliman wrote the codex as more of a journal, intending to make something along the lines you suggest, but fate forced his hand… Honsou will be appearing in his own novella later this year, and the Sigmar books will indeed be a trilogy, though don’t discount the idea of seeing more of his story in the future.
Big
January 23rd, 2010 on 6:35 pm
Huzzar, Huzzar, Long Live The Mighty McNeill!
Man did you capture Night Haunters character,Through the Audio medium i really felt his character.Was he a character you enjoyed writing? Would you ever revisit him? i mean he is a real stand alone bad guy. He so unlike the other “Bad” Primarchs , they seem like Fallen Angels rebeling against the powers that be, but he is like the bloody Anti-Christ. A raven haired psyker so powerfull he can foretell the future, sounds just like his Dad but wired the wrong way….or is he just honest to his own truths and experiences? he is certainly no slave to Chaos.
You ever gonna visit the 2 missing Primarchs ?, surely after all these years there is now some room for manouvere.Personally i think you and Dan would smash it.
Big
January 23rd, 2010 on 6:38 pm
More than that you two DESERVE to invent your own founding legions for the history books.
grahammcneill
January 24th, 2010 on 7:45 am
I loved writing Night Haunter, as he was so honest in his fall, he knew how things were going to play out and went with it anyway. I may revisit him, who knows, though I don’t have any plans to - so don’t go expecting a Heresy Night Lords novel!

As to the two missing Primarchs. Here’s the scoop. You heard it here first. Remember where you were when you heard the news. Dan’s the Primarch of the 11th Legion, and I’m the Primarch of the 2nd. The mystery is solved.
Big
January 24th, 2010 on 9:04 am
LOL!
Jared Meyers
January 25th, 2010 on 5:03 am
Back when I was about… 8 or 9, I started reading black library novels in the form of Bill King’s books, though other than that I tried to avoid black library. Eventually I saw the ultramarine books and thought it was great that someone would write them, even with the ‘noob’ stigma that seems to follow them. I had started playing them after seeing them in the now ancient RTS ‘Chaos Gate,’ and picked up the book. After that I spent every spare moment reading it until I had finished it. My copies are now worn from the amount I’ve read them, but they still sit proudly in my collection as the books that brought me back into the fold of 40k books.

Looking at more of your books, I picked up Guardians of the Forest, which I loved so much that I began a wood elf army that I have now been playing for more than 4 years. My best friend then started a Brettonian army after reading it.

Unfortunately I remained bored of the fantasy books, though I played fantasy far more than 40k, until I came upon Heldenhammer. The book came off amazingly as a myth, like the stories you would find in a collection of norse or greek mythology, and that instantly drew me in. The story was so immersive and fascinating that I began reading more fantasy novels, so I feel I must thank you for rekindling my love of the background for both 40k and fantasy. Not only that, but you got me back into the hobby of warhammer fantasy. I should probably be unhappy that stemming from you, I’ve spent most of my money on books and models, but really, I just thank you.
grahammcneill
January 27th, 2010 on 5:16 am
Man, I wish I was on commission to the GW studio, as I’d be rolling in it after all the Iron Warriors armies that were started in the wake of Storm of Iron.

Jared, glad you liked Heldenhammer (and hopefully you’ll like Empire), as the vibe you describe is exactly what I was going for. And you’re welcome. Thank *you* for coming along for the ride!