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.

This article or section contains opinions shared by all and/or vast quantities of Derp. It is liable to cause Rage. Take things with a grain of salt and a peck of Troll.

"Life in the 41st Millennium is hard."

– Cavan Scott making the greatest understatement of all time.

Warhammer is the worst possible setting for a children's series which could exist even in theory, so of course it now has its own "junior" product line. It makes perfect sense.

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 due for release starting February 2019.

Each novel will feature a group of children going on amazing adventures, like in every kids novel ever released. Given that this generic plot template is being applied by freelance writers with little to no experience writing for Warhammer 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".

Novels

Warped Galaxies (40k)

• Attack of the Necron by Cavan Scott
• Claws of the Genestealer by Cavan Scott
• Secrets of the Tau by Cavan Scott

Realm Quest (Age of Sigmar)

• City of Lifestone by Loki Tom Huddleston
• Lair of the Skaven by Tom Huddleston
• Forest of the Ancients by Tom Huddleston

Characters

Something you'll notice is that both settings follow a particular set of generic cliche 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, you're essentially getting a teenager's fanfic here, or if you want to be generous it's the same template used for literally every other book series marketed towards pre-teens. Bear in mind they are from a licensed novel series by professional authors being sold for real money and not something you dug out of the crusty underbelly of DeviantArt or Fanfiction.net that you read for laughs; on the other hand, sometimes that's a distinction without a difference.

40k

Zelia: The female leader 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. 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. Expect someone to make a greenstuff version of him as a Necromunda Juve. It would be ironic if his gang got conscripted by the Imperial Guard anyway, as they are known to do - he just better hope that the Commissar never finds out about the whole desertion thing.

Mekki: What happens when you cross a tech-priest with Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. 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 even on backwater Forge Worlds things like Vorax Automata are shunned and forbidden because of their animalistic intelligence. 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.

Fleapit the Jokaero: Yes, a frigging techno space ape is in this book series and it is helping the children. Yes, his name is "Fleapit". Apparently Cavan Scott thought that what 40k really needed to bring in the kiddies was Scooby-Doo.

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. (Emperor only knows why they didn't pick the Salamanders, as they're the only chapter more friendly to civilians than the smurfs and it would help them fulfill their brown-person quota at the same time.)

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. Less retarded than it sounds, since Wardcrons have enough variation in their personalities that some random Phaeron keeping enfleshed as pets makes perfect sense, especially considering Trazyn's "collection." Ol' Trollzyn as an evil space collector who traps living beings to keep as exhibits in his space museum would actually make him a pretty good kid-adventure villain (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.

Thanis A 12-year old gal from the realm of Fire. The strong wimmin type of the group who protects her friends.

Kreech A cunning Skaven packlord of the clan Quickfang YES YES. An unusual Skaven who has adopted the man-thing's behavior and their ability to be creative, very usual since most Skaven looked down on anything that's not Skaven. Currently scheming with a heretical woman-thing in order to gain more power in the man-thing hierarchy. He also owns a man-thing play-thing called Scratch. YES YES.

Scratch A 12-year old from realm of Beast and currently Kreech's plaything; his true name is forgotten. Like how Leman Russ and Lion El'Johnson was raised by the wild and had adopted it's behavior, Scratch has adopted Skaven's cunning thinking and has fashion himself to be like one of them.

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 characters older than them, and that by making the protagonists kids, they are invariably just making it corny and unappealing to the very audience they want to attract.

It's also inevitable that some parents will catch on to the fact that these kid-friendly adventures actually take place in a universe where the literal gods are embodiment of concepts like genocide and sexual violence. Less abstractly, Warhammer is full of things like race-wide mandated mass torture, machines who wear the flayed and bloody flesh of their foes, and horrifically mutated sub-sapient breeding slaves. Daddy and Mommy are going to be upset when they realize just what Warhammer is actually like. For once in human history, the parents who just bought their kids something which causes permanent psychological damage will have a valid point when they blame the company that sold it to them. Of course, all the above is moot if GW ends up depicting a comparatively whitewashed version of the setting with most of the nastier parts stripped out or otherwise not alluded to directly, but that still doesn't stop the kids from stumbling over the unabridged versions anyway (and their parents putting two and two together from there).

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.

Unfortunately for /tg/, the public Adventures roadmap has been expanded from two books to six before the first two books even came out. Perhaps it's time to start learning Infinity.

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 should end, but probably won't

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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

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

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  Lore-friendly Zelia (one step closer to canon with the upcoming "Claws of the Genestealer" book)

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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, unnamed warrior from the Kabal of the Black Heart.

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  Life in the 41st Millenium is hard.

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  Meet the Ultramarines.

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  Bio of the fan favorite character, Trooper 3959-9945.