Way of the Dead is one of the couple of anthologies of Warhammer novels edited by Marc Gascoigne and Christian Dunn. It consists of nine short stories featuring the following writers: Simon Spurrier, Robin D. Laws, Graham McNeill, Brian Craig, Jonathan Green, Matt Farrer, Simon Jowett and C. L. Werner. I will just very briefly go through each of them.
Simon Spurrier’s novel Glow is a short story about the Witch Hunter Richt Karver’s work to unravel the mysteries of a new and highly toxic drug called “Glow”, which is supposed to make everyone happy. Instead it drives people crazy and warps their bodies into terrifying mutants. It is a great detective story and the Witch Hunter Captain is not one to be taken lightly.
Head Hunting by Robin D. Laws is a short story in the series about Angelika Fleischer. She and her companion Franziskus meet with the very curious philosopher Dr. Schreber who offers them a job getting the head a local villain for his collection of skulls. The task proves a bit more difficult than first expected. This short story could easily be reconstructed into a Warhamme adventure, and it has all the nasty little twists and grim surprises that make it perfect for the Warhammer world.
The Small Ones is the first of two short stories by C. L. Werner. It is an extremely creepy and very Lovecraftian story about an evil sorcerer that exploit the complex hierarchy among the children in a small outback village to regain his youth. The way C. L. Werner describes how these innocent children are turned into coldhearted killers is all the way through a hair-raising experience! It is scary how any human can spawn such a disturbing story and still be allowed to walk free after dark.
Graham McNeill’s story Three Nights is about three Bretonian brothers fearlessly setting out to slay a breed of vampires from the Dragon Warrior clan. They are highly confident that they will be able pull of this feat all by themselves, and their believe in their abilities are what keeps them going on in their quest. At first it seems like a typical heroic hack and slash story, but as you read on it has all sorts of themes to it. The ties and battles amongst brothers, the believe in a common course and ones abilities, and quite a few more.
The Road to Damnation by Brian Craig is a story about an Estalian sea captain and an Arabian pirate’s venture into the Wastes in search for a hidden city supposedly filled with all sorts of valuables. On their travels through the desert they have a few fights with a gang of orcs and goblins. When they, in a highly unlikely manner, find their goal it turns out that something must have been left out in the tales about treasure. The story is quite good and displays the very special relationship between the sea captain and the pirate very well. It shows how manipulative the forces of Chaos that are at large in the Old World really are.
Mark of the Beast is what I suspect to be the first in the series of Torben Badenov and his band of mercenaries by Jonathan Green. It tells us how the company of soldiers under Captain Torben Badenov is left for dead by their incompetent general and picks up the trade as a gang of mercenaries instead. It is about how a small army of the Empire tries to hunt down a herd of Beastmen that have been ravaging the surrounding area. It turns out to be more than just a simple pillaging herd of Beastmen and Badenov’s Band will get more than their hands full with this one. The Badenov stories are always interesting and very well though through. I think that I will be using this story as a one-off story with one of my Warhammer Fantasy roleplay groups.
Matt Farrer’s short story Jahamma’s Lesson is a brilliant story about a Dark Elf invasion on one of the Bretonian duchies. Jahmamma is an extremely highly skilled assassin that is to sneak through the land and into the Duke’s castle and end the lives of all the Knights in their beds before the Dark Elf army starts the invasion. But as always with the Dark Elves everyone has their own agendas. It is quite interesting to read about the Dark Elf culture as there is so very little about them, and I really find their whole complex and intriguing social structure very exciting.
A Good Thief by Simon Jowett is about a poet and thief that can’t read. His poetic skills provides him jobs at the finest socials levels, but his lack of etiquette and love for the drink often result in him being on the run from the law. A certain magister, who has no time for poetry by the way, is willing to set him free provided that he does a job for him stealing something very special. Not knowing anything more than he will be certain when he sees the object, he is sent off to retrieve it from a bandit king who has taken control of an outback village. The object turns out to be of high interest, and yet not, for the thieving poet. This is a quite simple story, but none the less it fits quite well into the Old World and would make a quite nice scenario. My players in one of my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay groups will definitely be looking for an object they will know is the right one when they see it in the near future…
Lastly the book finishes with a classic; A Brunner novel by C. L. Werner called What Price Vengeance. Not knowing the true chronological order in which C. L. Werner wrote all the Brunner novels I still suspects this one to be the first one, as it starts very differently than the others. The reason for my suspicion on this is that this is not a story written by the scribe Erhard Stoecker, which is the normal introduction to the Brunner novels. It starts out with the story about a group of mercenaries returning to claim vengeance for being sent to death by Viscount de Chegney. By killing the son of the viscount and kidnapping his infant grandson they intent to blackmail him to paying twice the amount they were given for their job. This is where Brunner comes in, as he is hired to retrieve the grandson and now only heir of count hood of the de Chegneys. The rest of the story is dealt with in typical coldhearted and effective Brunner style, with a little moral twist in the end. This is yet another great Brunner story in this brilliant series.
All in all the book is very good, and full of very different stories in terms of writing style and themes. It is defiantly worth the read!
On a hot and sleepless summer night Karl Hoche, heroic army officer of the 5th Reiklanders, follows a hunch that something is amiss in the army camp. This leads to a fatal discovery of the remains of a horrific Chaos ritual performed by an inner part of the Reiksguard. Following up on his discoveries, Karl Hoche is soon entangled in a web half truths and carefully spun lies, and is drafted by an undercover agency called the Untersuchung. Hoche is constantly thrown into situations, that can only be solved by using his head, his heart, his sword or if all else fails his faith in Sigmar.