Warhammer Adventures

This article contains something which makes absolutely no logical sense, such as Nazi Zombie Mercenaries, Fucking Space Orangutans, anything written by a certain Irish leper or Robin Crud-ace, or Wizards of the Coast hiring the fucking Pinkertons over a children’s card game. If you proceed, consider yourself warned.

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Warhammer Adventures is a series of Middle Grade (ages 8 to 12) novels published by Black Library and based on Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 8th edition. Each novel will feature a group of children going on amazing adventures, like in every Middle Grade novel ever released. Given that this generic plot template is being applied by freelance writers with little to no experience writing for Warhammer to settings filled with overpowered capeshit assholes and overpowered grimderp assholes, respectively, expect canon rape to ensue. The whole series has been described by Black Library in a Facebook comment as: "The Grim Darkness of the far future, but with a nightlight on".

The death threats have already started rolling in, by the way. Fucking fantastic.

Novels

Warped Galaxies (40k)

• Attack of the Necron by Cavan Scott

Realm Quest (Age of Sigmar)

• City of Lifestone by Loki Tom Huddleston

Characters

Something you'll notice is that both settings follow a particular set of generic token characters: a peace-loving leader, a brash misfit of a brawler, and a prodigal artisan. Who, despite never going past their teenage years, are somehow just as, if not more, proficient as full-grown professionals in their settings.

Yep, the writers either have teenage fanfic-tier writing abilities, or else they're pulling from every YA novel cliche possible. Bear in mind this is an officially-endorsed novel by GW and not something you dug out of the crusty underbelly of Deviant Art or fanfiction.net that you read for laughs; on the other hand, sometimes it's hard to tell them apart anyway (see also: C.S. Goto).

40k

Zelia: The female leader (and also the token black) that every young adult novel seems legally required to have these days. A young daughter of an galactic explorer, she helps her mom dig up ancient alien artifacts and hates weapons in a setting where everything that's alien and most things that aren't actively try to kill you. Instead she believes that the best way to overcome fear is by learning. Voted most likely to be slowly tortured to death by the Inquisition for seeking out the truth.

Talen: The son of an Imperial Guard officer, Talen decided to run away from home to avoid military conscription and became a hive ganger. He's fairly aggressive and kind of a brute; however, that is offset by his loyalty to his friends. Expect someone to make a greenstuff version of him as a Necromunda Juve. He carries around a toy Soldier which is one of the only reminders he has of his older brother who went off to war. All in all, the only character whose preview is not a fluff-rape of multilasered proportions. It would be ironic if his gang got conscripted by the Imperial Guard anyway, as they are wont to do - he just better hope that the Commissar never finds out about the whole desertion thing.

Mekki: Pretty much your average Techpriest but younger. He hails from Mars and is described as an inventor, due to his creation of a small robotic swarm that assist him with certain duties. His right arm is paralyzed so instead of doing the normal, cool Mechanicus thing and replacing it with cybernetics he decides to just build a brace to help him move it. Omnissiah only knows why he wasn't forcefully re-purposed as a servitor for his blatant tech-heresy yet, especially considering he's from Mars and not some backwater Forge World where things like autonomous drone swarms can be overlooked. This goes double as this is post-Great Rift, where Guilliman's protection of Cawl's tech heresies (one of which includes AI-tech) has the AdMech inching closer to another civil war.

Space Marines: Here as usual. Depicted in Primary-sue armour, so this bright and happy tale is happening post-Great Rift. Naturally, they're using the Ultrasmurfs, as they're "bravest of all the heroic Space Marines", and not because they're just the most easily recognizable Chapter that gets the most publicity, honest.

Necrons: The cold and unfeeling "enslaving tyrants" we all know and purge, probably chosen because killing robots is much more family-friendly than shooting at living things, and some of their primary weapons kill cleanly too. Them keeping slaves can be brushed off as an individual Phaeron's insanity, as there are dynasties who enjoy having slave/pet races, and some of those living under their thumb even enjoy decent living standards as Necrons have no need for manual slave work with their techno-sorcery. Of course, every canon Necron that does take prisoners does so for reasons such as personal insanity, acquiring test subjects for deadly experiments or to have them frozen in Carbonite trapped forever as a living diorama. Though in retrospect, Trazyn being an evil space collector who traps living beings to keep as exibits and ART he actually would make a pretty good kid-adventure villian (leaving out the eternal agony parts in regards to some of his captives).

Age of Sigmar

Elio: Token black kid from the realm of life. His medical skills are "second to none", presumably among his age bracket of a mere 14 years. Obsessive about plants, but apparently interested in all critters great and small, up to and including monsters like manticores. Also, he's not much of a fighter - because that's not a concern with giant man-eating monsters, right? Basically the embodiment of the gentle giant/pacifist healer trope, in a setting where people like that exist to be fed to Chaos warriors to show the audience how evil they are.

Alish: A 12 year old from the Realm of Light, who is "restless, inquisitive and highly intelligent" and has the instinctive ability to repair "almost any mechanical device". She also loves inventing and has apparently designed and built everything from clocks to airships, despite being 12. Mary Sue classic. And to make her extra stupid, the one thing she refuses to build is weapons, despite A) walking around with a sodding huge hammer and B) living in the monster and barbarian filled world of AoS where access to weapons can and will save lives. Basically Zelia, but in fantasy.

Kiri: At fifteen, she seems to be the oldest of the bunch, coming from the realm of metal. Kiri is "as strong and steadfast as steel" who was raised in the barbarian slave camps of Aqshy (because the whole character would probably have been a lot different if it was a Slanneshi warband) where she learned to fight as soon as she could walk. "Somehow this harsh life hasn't made her cruel or resentful" - direct quote, and we're pretty bloody surprised too. She uses a slingshot. She fought in chaos gladiator pits and won with a slingshot.

Stormcast Eternals: As they are. Nothing particularly odd or inaccurate in their bio blurb - they even mentioned the whole "died and was reborn" bit.

Darkoath Barbarians: One of many tribes serving Chaos the forces of Evil (they're probably lumping all non-Order Grand Alliances into one big "bad guys" group, because Order totally lacks any dark side). Plundering, pillaging, enslaving... typical villain stuff. Their name is still less stupid than 99% of what GW Legal's shat out, though.

Reception

Initial reception has been polarizing, to say the least. Many consider this series a futile attempt to dilute the grimdarkness of both Warhammer settings to try and appeal to a younger demographic, with the slim but worrying possibility of the dumbing-down and "modern" approach to writing working its way into the setting proper in a greedy lunge for Daddy's credit card. (It's not like GW isn't known for terrible ideas, after all.) Characters hating weaponry, gleefully searching xenotech and running away from conscription in 40k certainly don't give people that much confidence, leading to pointed questions regarding how they would deal with darker groups like Dark Eldar/Elves, Daughter of Khaine, Idoneth Deepkin, Chaos, Undead or Tyranids; when asked, Black Library deflected the question or gave non-answers to the effect of "very carefully." There's also the argument that many kids prefer fantasizing about character older than them, and that by making the protagonist kids, they are invariably just making it corny and unappealing to the very audience they want to attract.

Defenders argue that this could be an opportunity to flesh out groups and aspects of the setting that often get ignored, showing positive aspects of the galaxy in a setting so focused on grimdark. There's also the possibility of new mini-lines being produced, probably somewhat cheaper than the mainline series to not scare children (or their parents) away, which could help flesh out the more neglected armies, assuming they don't just keep drowning us in Spacesigmarines and Stormhammer shit because that's what Marketing wants to sell. And the most obvious benefit being that parent gamers will be able to introduce their younger children to the setting with age-appropriate material before weening them into the more mature stuff (like it is meant for ages 8-12, older people aren't suppose to like it) thus giving young kids more options.

Considering that GW themselves have said that their ideal demographic is “an intelligent 18 year old,” it's somewhat baffling why they’ve chosen to write for a demographic so young. At best, they should have started with young teens, giving them more room to stay closer to the grimdark of 40k while still being able to pull back. Perhaps their reasoning is that younger kids are easier to sell merchandise to, which is probably true if properties like Skylanders are anything to go by. That being said, we don’t know what’s GW’s long-term strategies are for drawing in and maintaining this younger demographic, or what the parent’s reactions will be when their kids start screaming “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD” or “HERESY” at every opportunity.

Ultimately, market performance alone will probably put paid to Warhammer Adventures. Expect a few months, maybe a year, to go by of nobody buying it, either for their kids or themselves, after which GW will probably just sheepishly sweep their little failed experiment under the rug and join us in pretending it never existed. Considering just how smartly GW's been handling their relationship with the fanbase lately, it's actually hard to imagine them just bulling forward with such a stupid idea once it becomes clear that nobody's interested. In the unlikely event that it catches on (or the slightly more likely event that the project is kept alive for the sake of internal or external politics) and GW invests more resources into it, consider learning the history of Magic: The Gathering to see where that particular slippery slope will lead.

Gallery of Memes

One of the few good things to spring from the announcement of Warhammer Adventures is the number of lulzy images produced by /tg/ as anons interpret what little they know in their own "unique" way.

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  Everyone's first reaction upon reading Zelia's bio

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  The Commissar's first reaction upon reading Talen's bio

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  The Mechanicus' first reaction upon reading Mekki's bio

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  How the Necron book is most likely going to end

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  "Hey kids! Today we're going to learn about MURDERFUCKING!"

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  "Jeepers! It was old man Abbadon the whole time!"

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  They ripped-off the rip-off!

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  This is why you don't play in front of the anti-tank guns, kids.

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  Preview of the upcoming Dark Eldar Book (the next line is "I've got candy").

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  Look what I found, mom, an alien! Can we keep it?

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  Lore-friendly Zelia

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  Lore-friendly Talen

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  Lore-friendly Mekki

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  A sneak peek into the secret psyker character.

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  "The spiky guy said he'd take us all over the galaxy, surely we can trust him!"

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  Pictured; Zelia's father, Zelia's father's second-in-command, Zelia's half-brother (in the bag), unnamed warrior from the Kabal of the Black Heart.