Warhammer Wednesday: Best Black Library sales

Today I received my latest royalty statement from Games Workshop. It may be a while since I last wrote for Black Library but I still get a few pounds and pence in royalties each year from sales of my novels and short stories, thanks to the prevalence of eBooks.

I thought it might be interesting to share the best-selling titles, based on earnings. So, here we go...

1) Iron Hands

2) The Relic - published in the Warhammer 40,000 anthology Legends of the Space Marines.

3) But Dust in the Wind

4) Journey of the Magi

5) Paradise - published in the Necromunda anthology Uprising.

Necromunda: Uprising

This is released today...

At the poison heart of Necromunda, a sickness festers: where the word of Helmawr is law, the many go hungry… but murder is cheap, and meat is everywhere, for those willing to take it. While the nobles of the spire sit and watch, bloody-handed gangers war in an endless battle for survival.

The venator Yar Umbra cuts a swathe through Hive Primus, chasing the promise of escape from Necromunda. A cawdor juve, desperate to prove himself, finds a statue of the Emperor that will change his life forever. A corpse guild drudge learns what his superiors are desperate to keep forbidden. And Caleb Cursebound, ninth most dangerous man in the underhive, thief of the Hand of Harrow, flees to the remote mining settlement of Hope’s End, pursued by those who would see his reputation forever tarnished…

Uprising: A Necromunda Anthology features my first Necromunda fiction in seventeen years, a short story called Paradise. It is available to buy now.

Tie-in Tuesday: Forever Autumn

Today, Tuesday 22nd September, is the autumn equinox.

There are a couple of short story anthologies coming out this autumn, featuring tales by Yours Truly.

Uprising: A Necromunda Anthology is released on 1st October.

My story, Paradise, sees a gang of Orlocks looking for a lost dome, rumoured to be an oasis of fresh water and clean air; a veritable... paradise. But the Dust Dogs aren't the only ones searching for it...

Paradise is the first piece of Necromundan fiction I have had published since 2003.

Judge Fear's Big Day Out and Other Stories is a collection of prose tales that first appeared in the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine and the anthology comic 2000AD.

The 'Other Stories' include four of mine, that first saw print a few years ago. If you missed them at the time, look out for Judge Fear's Big Day Out and Other Stories when it is published on 12th November.

Warhammer Wednesday: Uprising - A Necromunda Anthology

I love New Book Day. And the latest New Book Day was yesterday, when these arrived.

It is seventeen years since Necromunda Underhive appeared in 2003, which featured the last pieces of Necromunda fiction I have had published to date. And now Uprising: A Necromunda Anthology features my latest short story for the Black Library.

Paradise, sees a gang of Orlocks looking for a lost dome. It is rumoured to be an oasis of fresh water and clean air, a veritable... paradise. But the Dust Dogs aren't the only ones searching for it...

Uprising: A Necromunda Anthology is released on 1st October.

Warhammer Wednesday: Inferno! classic reprints

Black Library have released the next batch of classic Inferno! reprints. Each issue is a facsimile of the original magazine, available to print on demand for two weeks only, and you can purchase them as a single collection that will get you issues 26-35!

The period covered by this collection just happens to be the time when I was at my most prolific, in terms of making contributions to Inferno! magazine. Of these ten classic issues, six contain short stories or comic strips by Yours Truly, and they are...

Inferno! #26 - Firestarter! – Necromunda short story

Inferno! #27 - The Nagenhof Bell – Warhammer short story

Inferno! #28 - The Executioner’s Tale – Warhammer comic strip

Inferno! #29 - Bad Medicine – Necromunda short story

Inferno! #32 - The Miner’s Tale – Warhammer comic strip

Inferno! #34 - Mark of the Beast – Warhammer short story


To order the collection of ten issues*, or just the edited highlights, follow this link.

* These issues are available to order until 6:00pm GMT on Saturday 18th July 2020.

Warhammer Wednesday: Old Inferno! Reprints

The Black Library are offering reprints of some of the original Inferno! magazines, which some of my short stories first appeared in.

On offer this time around are issues 16-25, but if you want to order one you'd better hurry - they're only available for the next two weeks.

The stories of mine, from the turn of the millennium, that you'll find in the issues are one Badenov's Band tale, called The Plague Pit, and a pair of Nathan Creed Necromunda stories - Mama's Boys and Boyz in the Hive.

And don't forget, as reported last week, Inferno! Volume 4 is published at the end of the month, and includes a brand new Warhammer 40,000 story by me called Journey of the Magi.

Warhammer Wednesday: Orktober

This month, over on the Games Workshop website, it's Orktober.

I've written a few stories over the years featuring the alien greenskins, but most of them seem to have been branded as heretical texts and so are no longer available to buy, including the Nathan Creed Necromunda short story Boyz in the Hive*, and the Armageddon duology.

However, there is one story of mine that features orks that is still available to buy from the Black Library, and that is the much loved The Relic. Yes it's primarily about Black Templar Space Marines, but they go up against a lot of greenskins in the story, and I do mean 'a lot'.

The Relic is available as either an eBook download, or in print as part of the recently released War for Armageddon The Omnibus.

It's just a shame I never got to write a story set on the world of Gorkamorka.


* Not my name for the story, I hasten to add. It was supposed to be called Illegal Alien.

Warhammer Wednesday: Black Library Open Submissions

Exciting news, Black Library fans! Not only is the Black Library open for submissions from new authors, but Inferno! magazine is coming back!

For anyone who doesn't know, Inferno! was a bi-monthly magazine packed full of comics, short stories and artwork. During its run, I had thirteen short stories published in the magazine - set in the worlds of Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, and Necromunda - along with a couple of comic strips. This led to me writing novels for Black Library, which eventually led to me writing Doctor Who books and creating the Pax Britannia for Abaddon Books.

Incredibly, 2018 marks two decades of the Black Library and to celebrate Inferno! is being given a new lease of life as a collection of short stories, penned by new authors and old, and showcasing the best works from across our many universes, including Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda and Blood Bowl.

If you think you have what it takes to write for the Black Library, now's your chance! You can find out more about the kinds of stories the editorial team are looking for, how long you have to submit ideas, and how to format your submissions, plus full terms and conditions, here.

Black Library Friday

Seeing as how it's Black Friday, and the Black Library still have several of my stories on sale, as either eBooks or Print on Demand titles, why not pop along to their website and buy one?

          

Warhammer Wednesday: Tales From the Underhive

In case you've been living under a boulder in the sump beneath Hive Primus, you may not have heard that the classic skirmish game Necromunda has been resurrected and reimagined by Games Workshop, and is now available for pre-order as Necromunda: Underhive.

As well as bringing the game back from the dead, Games Workshop - or at least its publishing arm, the Black Library - is also bringing back the Necromunda fiction range, some of it available for a limited time as Print on Demand. This includes the short story anthology Status: Deadzone, which features the very first Nathan Creed short story Bad Spirits.

A digital version of Status: Deadzone also comes as part of the Tales from the Underhive eBundle*, and can be purchased here.

* Which makes the rather bold claim of being, 'all the Necromunda prose fiction Black Library has produced, all in one place and at one great price', even though it only contains one of my five Creed stories.

Tie-in Tuesday: My new claim to fame

The first comic strip I ever had commissioned was Kill Confirmed, which appeared in a special free issue of the Warhammer Monthly comic given away with Games Workshop’s White Dwarf magazine. It was a short tale of life and death in the Necromundan Underhive with a nasty twist in the tail.

The artist assigned to the strip was Paul Staples whose name was already familiar to me from his work on seminal British anthology comic 2000AD. His work on ‘Finn’ for the ‘Interventions’ had impressed me in particular. However, after illustrating Kill Confirmed he mysteriously became Paul Jeacock and worked for a time as part of Games Workshop’s art department. While there, he was particularly involved in developing the most recent editions of the Warhammer Wood Elves army and the new Ogre Kingdoms range.

So what's my claim to fame? Well, Paul Jeacock just also happens to be the man who designed the masks that feature in the new Max Max movie Fury Road. Like the one worn by the charming Immortan Joe.

And in case you're wondering what my old claim to fame was, it was that I once directed Colin Firth. Yes, the Colin Firth.

Seriously.

Warhammer Wednesday: Free Shipping Ends Today!

Christmas has been and gone but Black Library's free shipping offer is still going - just. On top of that, it turns out that a couple of my Direct Exclusive titles are down to the last few copies and aren't going to be reprinted.

So if you fancy picking up a copy of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Iron Hands (there are less than 5 copies left!) or The Armageddon Omnibus* (there's a few more of those, but not many more) then follow this link.

* I'm also in the Necromunda Omnibus 2, but I don't get any royalties from sales of that particular title.

Warhammer Wednesday: Greenskins, greenskins everywhere!

It's all about the galaxy-bothering greenskins over on the Black Library website at the moment. Well, if you like Ork stories then you'll love The Armageddon Omnibus, my short story The Relic, and Herald of Oblivion. There's even an Ork in one of my Nathan Creed stories in the Necromunda Omnibus 2.

My short stories #3: Bad Spirits

Here's one from the archives (a.k.a. my old blog Unnatural History) presented here to mark Black Library's 15th birthday this week...

The Black Library’s ‘Inferno!’ magazine published stories of action and adventure from the worlds of Games Workshop’s tabletop games. These are primarily the medieval fantasy world of Warhammer and the Imperium-dominated galaxy of the far future from the Warhammer 40,000 setting. However, when ‘Inferno!’ first came out, a popular off-shoot of one of these shared universes, with a suitably detailed background, was the world of Necromunda.

Necromunda is a hive-world, a planet dominated by the mountain-sized cities that cover its surface separated by deserts of the worst industrial pollution imaginable. The atmosphere of the planet is a toxic fog and the spires of the vast hives are so tall that they pierce the stratosphere. It was a fantastic setting – a cross between the Wild West (complete with gunslingers and tribes of Ratskins) and the dystopia of upper decay gone mad (with rogue cyborgs wandering deserted city-domes miles across).

As you can probably tell, I loved the Necromunda setting and wrote, what I feel, are among some of my best short stories set within that particular background. My first foray into Necromunda fiction was a story called ‘Bad Spirits’, featuring a bounty hunter in the vein of The Man With No Name, except that he had a name: Nathan Creed.

Nathan Creed was a cliché in many ways, but I prefer to think of him as an archetype, inspired by the drawling cowboys of the spaghetti Westerns as portrayed by Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood. Creed didn’t really develop as a character until I began to expand his world and build a cast of characters around him, who started to act as foils to the bounty hunter. He was a crack-shot with a great line in put-downs, always having the last word in any matter, usually because everyone else was dead. So detailed did this background become over the next few stories, and in my ideas notebook, that I actually planned to pitch a Creed story as my first novel for the Black Library, but unfortunately, it was not to be.

'Bad Spirits' first appeared in 'Inferno!' Issue #3 and was ultimately re-printed in the Necromunda short story anthology 'Status: Deadzone' (2000).

If the opportunity ever arose, I would love to go back to chronicling Creed’s adventures. But ‘Bad Spirits’ is where it started and with this story it was all about the adventure, not to mention the twisted sting in the tail. And it was, of course, a paying gig, and as Nathan Creed himself would say, ‘A job’s a job, old man.’

Bad Spirits is available again as part of the Necromunda Omnibus Vol. 2 which you can purchase direct from Black Library as part of their Direct Exclusives range.

Nathan Creed lives again!

Fans of Underhive bounty hunter Nathan Creed (and I'm proud to say that BL writer Clint Werner is one of them!) will be pleased to hear that the five short stories I wrote back in the day featuring the character are now back in print, thanks to Black Library's Direct Exclusives range.

The five Creed stories (which probably equate to a good-sized novella in terms of word count), presented in chronological order, are:

• Bad Spirits – Bounty hunter Nathan Creed tracks a monstrous creature that has decimated a ratskin camp. What could this monster be and what are its origins?

• Mama’s Boys – Hunting the scavvy cannibal Django Kaynn, Nathan Creed finds himself beset by mutants eager to recapture the twisted killer.

• Boyz in the Hive – Nathan Creed faces his most dangerous foe yet: a savage greenskinned ork that has escaped from an uphive zoo.

• Firestarter – Nathan Creed tangles with a fearsome mutant with power over fire – but the mutant’s power is rapidly growing out of control…

• Bad Medicine – The Death Walker, terror of the Underhive, is on the prowl. His target? Nathan Creed.

I always intended there to be more Nathan Creed stories, but with the demise of Inferno! magazine there wasn't an outlet for them and so no more were ever written. Nathan Creed was also supposed to be the subject of my first Black Library novel, but my idea clashed with something being developed for another Games Workshop project that I knew of as Hive Secundus, but which never saw the light of day (as far as I am aware).

When Black Library started publishing Necromunda novels I was disappointed not to be asked to contribute a title then, but I'm thrilled that the Creed stories are available again now - ten years after I wrote the last story Bad Medicine!

To order your copy of the Necromunda Omnibus 2, simply follow this link.

Necromunda Underhive: Urban Legend

by Jonathan Green

‘Now I know what you’re asking yourself,’ the bounty hunter said, taking a cheroot from a crumpled packet, that had been secreted in one pocket of his long leather coat, and lighting it, all the while keeping the wide-calibre stub gun trained on the Van Saar. ‘What you’re wondering is, did he fire eleven shots or twelve? Well, do you fancy finding out?’

Narve Vanderacken didn’t say anything but moved his hand away from the autopistol lying on the plate metal floor only a few centimetres from his fingertips. He could feel cold sweat beading on his brow and trickling into his greying beard. How had it all come to this? What had started off as a straightforward hunt for a piece of tech, stolen by those Emperor-cursed Escher gangers the Hive Tigers, and a bike chase along Thunder Road, one of the few remaining stretches of navigable highway in the Underhive, had ended up with half his gang killed in a flash-flood of industrial waste, no doubt caused be a discharge from the manufactories of Hive City far above, and Vanderacken himself being pursued across half the Rust Sand Desert by one of the most ruthless and notorious hired guns in the sector, with a reputation that reached from Toxic Sump to Steel Canyon.

Vanderacken looked up at the bounty hunter, the brim of his hat hiding his eyes, silhouetted against the fitfully flickering, red-glowing hazard beacon, that also cast its ruddy light over the scuffed and scored yellow and black diagonals of the factory barn’s loading berths. Nathan Creed, gunslinger, bounty hunter and downhive desperado, took a long drag on the smouldering cheroot and reached into the folds of his coat again. This time he pulled out a black metal sphere, bisected into two hemispheres by a knurled ring. Vanderacken swallowed hard. It was the Inferno device: the stolen piece of tech that had got them all into this mess in the first place.

‘I found this in the smoking ruins of what used to be the gambling hole of Lucky Break,’ the bounty hunter’s voice was a distinctive downhive drawl, ‘thanks to a tip-off from a half-breed, who bought his freedom with the information he gave me, and something the good Doc Haze knocked up for me in his workshop.’

Creed tossed the sphere into the air, making the Van Saar wince, and then caught it deftly in his gloved hand. Vanderacken gulped audibly. In a split second he made his decision: it was now or never. The Van Saar made a lunge for the autopistol and rolled sideways as his hand closed around it. The last of the twelve-shooter’s dum-dum bullets impacted against the floor with a metallic ringing. ‘Damn!’ he cursed.

The bounty hunter dived for cover as a chattering hail of autopistol rounds tore apart the fungus wood crates that he had been standing in front of only moments before. He landed heavily, sliding to a halt behind a crane gantry.

‘Now what you should be asking yourself,’ Vanderacken declared, barely able to contain his new-found mirth at this reversal of fortunes, ‘is how you’re going to get out of here alive now that you’re effectively unarmed and I’m the one holding the loaded gun.’

‘Is that so?’ came Creed’s retort from behind the loading assembly. ‘You know what?’ he went on. ‘What you don’t realise is that I was never after you or this infernal Inferno Device to begin with. I only got involved when you and your boys started using me for target practice.’

‘Okay. So I guess we were both just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ Vanderacken’s tone was deadly serious now, as serious as a hivequake. ‘Now give me the device.’

‘I don’t have it,’ came the husky drawl.

‘What do you mean, you don’t –’ It was then that sudden, harsh realisation struck the Van Saar ganger, like a speeding motorbike. ‘Oh shi –’

The sub-sonic explosion shook the factory to its very foundations. What glass remained in its high, gothic-arched windows was blown out in a hail of diamond splinters. Crane pylons came crashing down in a cacophonous clattering crash, while the shockwave buckled the steel plates of the floor, sending barrels and drums bouncing away along the length of the building.

As Narve Vanderacken clawed his way out of the pile of twisted wreckage where he had landed, his body below the waist a bloody mess of pulped bone and tissue, Nathan Creed calmly strode towards him.

‘I told you,’ the bounty hunter said crouching down next to the dying ganger, his voice barely more than a whisper, ‘you shouldn’t have got me involved. I’m bad news. The worst. But seeing as I’ve got your undivided attention perhaps you can help me after all. You wouldn’t happen to know the whereabouts of one outlaw pit slave, arsonist and Guild caravan hijacker, who goes by the name of Crusher Harlon, would you?’

Necromunda Underhive: Retribution

by Jonathan Green

The settlement of Lucky Break burned. Crimson and vermilion flames rose high into the still air of the dome. Above the burning holestead lights flickered, through the smoke, against the ceiling of the dome in a myriad constellations, looking so much like the night sky that untold millions inhabiting the mighty mountain city of Hive Primus would never see. Figures moved amidst the flames, scarlet shadows spewing sanctified death from their holy weapons, roasting penitents and sinners alike in the Emperor’s purifying fires of retribution.

Coughing violently, her lungs full of acrid fumes, Crazy Maisy dodged a blundering, smoke-blinded hiver and ducked into cover behind a large water butt. A few more hacking paroxysms and the coughing fit passed. All around her was chaos and confusion as holesteaders ran to and fro through the streets of the gambling town, with no idea where they were going. Splashing her face with the stagnant, green-skinned soup that passed for water in the huge barrel, Maisy tired to locate the rest of the gang.

The Hive Tigers had only come to Lucky Break for a bit of rest and relaxation, after collecting on the Graff Brothers contract, but rather than a couple of night’s fun at the gaming tables and winding up the locals in the drinking dens, instead they had found themselves in the middle of a Redemptionist Crusade! She had met and dealt with the insane devotees of House Cawdor before, but these Redemptionists were madder than she was.

There had to be an easier way for a girl to make a living than this, she thought. The saloon-girls of Lucky Break had certainly seemed to be enjoying the high life – that was until the Redemption had showed up in town.

Maisy could hear someone shouting over the screams of the terrified populace and the roaring conflagration. It was a man’s voice, booming and authoritative, as if its owner was used to being obeyed, no matter what, and one that had total conviction in the message it preached.

‘It is your foul living that brought the spider plague upon us,’ the voice proclaimed, ‘your debauchery that summoned the swarms of flies, your lack of faith that made the mould harvest fail, your ungodliness that caused the Ratskins to rise against us! So sayeth His most holy Apostle Cinnabar!’

Maisy suddenly found herself caught up in the press of panicking gamblers, bar-girls, prospectors, and hired scum trying to flee the town. She tried to elbow her way out of the pack, which, bizarrely, actually seemed to be carrying her towards the so far unseen preacher. Then suddenly the mob parted and the Escher girl stumbled, ending up on her knees in front a pair of scuffed and scratched black rat-hide boots.

She let his gaze rise and took in first the frayed, once golden hem of a robe, then its soot-blackened, once crimson, heavy sackcloth folds, the racking slide shotgun holstered in a sturdy gun-belt, the bandolier loaded with wide-calibre shells, and the scorch-muzzled flamer, its pilot light a needle of brilliant blue flame, the air around it shimmering with heat-haze. The man’s face was covered by a polished, ebony devil-mask carved with a leering, unseemly expression. Behind the lunatic priest stood his anonymously-masked and cowled followers.

The Apostle Cinnabar in turn looked down at the purple-haired girl ganger, clad in laced-up leather trousers and pink nylon crop top, with undisguised disgust, as if she were the cultist of some unspeakable, carnally-obsessed deity.

‘Tempter!’ the gargoyle-masked man screamed at her, unexpectedly. ‘How dare you prostrate yourself before the Apostle Cinnabar, Harbinger of the Holy Redemption, offering yourself to him like some voluptuous incarnation of man’s most wanton and base desires?’

What was this guy like? ‘You don’t want to do this,’ Maisy hissed, feeling her cheeks reddening with angry heat.

‘Vile harlot! Prepare to be judged by the weight of your own sins!’ the slavering Apostle screamed, turning the nozzle of his flamer on her.

One concentrated thought was all it took. The Apostle Cinnabar went hurtling ten metres backwards, smashing aside his zealot lackeys in his flight. Maisy didn’t know how she did it, just that she could. It was a talent she had, that was all she could describe it as, a talent that had saved her from certain death more times than see cared to remember. The surrounding crowd gasped and before anybody else noticed, Crazy Maisy was gone.

Necromunda Underhive: Medicine Man

by Jonathan Green

The flickering emerald flames of the fire illuminated just this one tiny corner of the vast sump-dome, drawing an eerie luminescence from the photo-reactive fungi coating the stalactites of ore-deposits suspended from the roof of the cavernous dome. They in turn cast shimmering, rainbow reflections on the oily sheen of the surface of the polluted lake where it lapped at the ferro-rockrete shore. The eerie copper-green firelight also under lit the Ratskin Shaman’s angular features, lending them an even more harshly cold and knife-like quality. The spiral tattoos on his cheeks seemed to swirl in the ever-changing light.

The shaman was clad in the garb of a tribal medicine man of the feral peoples of Necromunda. The rat bones strung to his ceremonial armour knocked against each other as he moved, the hollow sound eerily echo-amplified. From his waist hung the pelt of a giant rat, the same rat whose skull now adorned the top of his shaman’s staff. He had a pointed goatee of a beard and from his pierced ears hung tiny archeotech artefacts. Such relics helped him to commune with the Hive Spirits and here, in the uninhabited dome, in the ‘natural’ environment of the toxic waste zones of the Underhive, he could commune with those same spirits more closely.

Casting a handful of Scarlet Feng spores into the fire, the shaman began his invocation, as thick, foul-smelling orange smoke poured from the fire of burning fungus stalks.

‘Great Spirits of the Hive,’ the Ratskin intoned. ‘Once again our sacred lands have been desecrated by the hivers and evil drawn down upon us. Our hunters have become the hunted, slain by the Spider Daemon in its quest for fresh souls. Your humble servant, Quaking Dome, beseeches you to aid us now, o mighty masters of Hive Primus, the true Lords of the Spire. Send your terrible judgement down upon the defilers. Let the sacrilegious and the blasphemous know the wrath of your retribution,’ the medicine man chanted, throwing a handful of grey-black grit into the flames. Picking up his staff he rattled it over the now sparking purple blaze. ‘By the Hive Spirits, may it be so.’

Quaking Dome was suddenly aware of movement nearby. Looking beyond the fire he peered into the gloom over the lake. Sparkling diamonds eyes looked back at him. He felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. At the same time he heard the rippling surge out on the lake of something moving towards him over the oily surface.

Raft spiders, hundreds of them, were gliding over the filthy water on spindly, crab-legs, their bodies white and glistening. Hearing a skittering sound above him the shaman looked up. Scuttling down the sides of the dome above him were yet more arachnids. These were covered in coarse black and crimson hair and were as large as dogs. The spiders moved as one, as if guided by one will. Then they stopped, every single one of them, none encroaching within the circle of light cast by the flickering fire. The shaman’s prayers had been answered.

Smiling like a snake, Quaking Dome got to his feet and walked unhesitatingly towards the mass of furry and slime-wet bodies. The arachnids parted before him and then surged in behind him to follow the shaman as he strode towards the tunnel that would take him out of the sacred dome and back towards the settlements of the hivers. Soon the desecrators would know what vengeance was, when the wrath of the Hive Spirits was visited upon them.

Necromunda Underhive: Spider Daemon

by Jonathan Green

The hunter watched as the bionically altered figure trudged onwards through the metal forest of collapsed scaffolding, punctuated now and then by a fallen monolithic slab of rockcrete. Prey, the hunter thought. Prey for the hunt.

* * * * *

Hearing the crunching footsteps getting nearer, Nesting Python remained perfectly still where he lay on the flat girder beam over the Ratskin path that wound through the ash dunes, so as not to give his position away to whoever, or whatever, it was that approached. He had felt the clumping footsteps before he had even heard them and it had given them all the time he needed to get into position.

Whatever it was that had strayed into his tribe’s territory was unknowingly about to become his prey. Its head would become the trophy by which he would prove he had passed the Rite of First Blood and earned the right to be recognised as a warrior of the Redsnake Tribe, a brave no longer. Feeling the juddering stomping even up on the beam, Nesting Python curled his forefinger around the trigger of his handbow.

Then his prey rounded the side of a rockcrete boulder and the young Ratskin baulked. His potential prey was an ugly, hugely-muscled, mohican-haired monster, half-man and half-machine, like something from one of the ghost legends of his people.

But, Nesting Python considered, if he brought down a monster such as this he would earn the respect of even the most hardened warriors of his tribe and Purple Moss would be the one wooing him rather than spurning his advances, as she had done ever since they were children.

Athletically, and silent as methane mist, the Ratskin swung down from the girder, depressing the trigger of his handbow as he did so. The dart flew true and struck the hulking, buzz saw-armed fiend squarely in the chest. Nesting Python landed in a crouch in front of the man-machine, but rather than finding himself facing a dying enemy he was now face-to-face with an enraged beast. Could it be that the creature was somehow immune to the Widowmaker venom he had tipped his arrowheads with?

The man-machine’s flesh and blood fist struck him like an iron fist and sent him flying. As Nesting Python scrabbled in the dirt for his handbow, his erstwhile prey fired up its jagged-toothed saw blade.

Sudden as a striking ash-viper, something dropped from the darkness above them on a glittering line and, before the cyborg could take another step, thrust half-metre long steel claws through skin, metal, muscle and bone in one grinding scream of a thrust. Vomiting blood, the man-machine was hoisted into the air so that its iron-shod feet dangled just above the ground.

Nesting Python only caught a glimpse of this new insectoid, chitinous spine-armoured, bulbous-eyed creature before it disappeared back into the darkness, pulling the man-machine’s heavy body with it, but it was enough. He knew what it was that had saved his life and it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Spider Daemon, the brave thought, and with that Nesting Python picked himself up and ran.

* * * * *

High on a narrow platform jutting from the concave curving wall of the dome, the Malcadon Spyre Hunter added the Goliath’s head to the carefully arranged pile it had collected since the hunt had begun. Twelve so far, and many more where they had come from. Prey just waiting for the kill.

Necromunda Underhive: Pit Fight

by Jonathan Green

Welcome, fight fans, to the twenty-seventh All-Comers Fight Fest, here at the To-The-Death Arena. Boy, have we got a treat in store for you tonight? The pit fight to end all pit fights. We’ve got Piledriver. We’ve got Ramrod Rameses. We’ve got the Head-Harvester. We’ve got Ghyarotha, the Ratskin Savage. We’ve got monstrous mutant Milliasaurs, hungry Scalies and the biggest rat-beast you’ve seen this side of the Effluous. Who will leave as our Lord of the Spire and who will leave in a body bag? It’s all here, fight fans! At the twenty-seventh All-Comers Fight Fest!

Nastrol Skedge opened his eyes and looked around him. Nothing had changed. It was the same nightmare situation he had awoken to after those slime-sucking snakes of Delaques had turned betrayer on the Ironfists. Unbelievably, his Goliath gang were being beaten by those snivelling dogs of Vito Scald’s when the Network had turned up, emerging like mirror-eyed ghosts seemingly from nowhere.

At first Sisken and his Delaques had leant their firepower to help the Ironfists bring down Scald’s Hotheads but as soon as that threat had been eliminated, they turned on the Goliaths. Skedge himself had been buried under a collapsing bulkhead and was taken alive, only to be sold to the notorious Guilder Phelonius Carbonyne to become one of his pit fighting slaves, fodder for the endless bouts of his bloodthirsty entertainments.

Skedge’s head ached like someone had rammed an electrode into his brain, as indeed they had: several electrodes, in fact.

‘Stop squirming,’ the techno grumbled. ‘If you want me to get this saw unclogged and working again before the next round you’d better sit still!’

Skedge looked up into the man’s eyes, or rather eye – the other having been replaced by a red bionic implant – and scowled. The techno was bald and wiry, and reminded Skedge of the traitorous Delaques. The Goliath’s shoulder and back ached from where the monstrous buzz-saw arm had been grafted onto his body and bolted to his spinal column, his left arm having already been brutally removed. The flesh around his newly-implanted ownership studs was still red-raw too.

‘Are you done over there yet, Lazlo?’ asked one of the other pit slaves sitting waiting inside the plasteel-walled bunker. He had a grease-black topknot of hair, a Guild skull tattoo on his left shoulder and a huge hydraulic claw in place of his right arm.

‘I will be if this muscle-head stops twitching worse than a Ratskin overdosing on Spook,’ the techno complained.

‘Don’t talk about our potential associate like that, Lazlo,’ the claw-armed pit slave chided, a broad grin on his face.

‘By the black Abyss, what are you talking about?’ Skedge growled, speaking for the first time since he had entered the bunker after eviscerating half a dozen scavvy mutants in the last round. ‘We’re slated to fight in the next round!’

‘We’re breaking out of here,’ the pit slave said. ‘Let me introduce myself. The name’s Scuzman Veck. I and my friends here,’ he took in the other cyborgs in the sweaty gloom of the bunker with a sweep of his claw, ‘have had enough of living life at stinking Phelonius Carbonyne’s pleasure. So, after the third round…’

This is it, fight fans, the one you’ve all been waiting for. Scuzman Veck’s Meat Grinders against the Executioner and the Beast of Broken Spar, Ghyarotha. You won’t see the like of this grudge-match again in a long time. Place your bets and remember, when the klaxon goes the blood flows!

The roar of the ground was deafening. Underhivers packed the stands of the arena, all eager to see the pit slaves slaughter each other in new and messily interesting ways. Scuzman Veck and his crew were lined up on the other side of the rust-stained ash floor of the fighting pit with Skedge and the drugged-up Ratskin brute they were calling the Beast of Broken Spar facing them.

Through narrowed eyes, Skedge could see the obese warty bulk of Phelonius Carbonyne squatting like a fat, albino toad on his servitor-carried palanquin within his own private arena box. Diesel engines roared and oily black smoke belched into the air as the pit slaves fired up their tool-weapons. The crowd roared even louder, in expectation of the bloodshed to come. If the plan was to work they had to make this look convincing…

Don’t panic, fight fans! Don’t panic! Everything is under control! Please remain calm and return to your seats. Everything is under con-… fzzz… krzzz… You can’t come in here! Get out! Hey, watch that power ca-… sprzzzz…skzzz… Get out, everybody! For skav’s sake, didn’t you hear me? Run while you still can!

Underhivers scattered before him as he powered towards them, sweeping the whirling blur of his buzz saw before him. Exhilaration running through him, Nastrol Skedge came to halt outside the arena gates and looked around him. They had done it. Skav, but they had done it! Well, at least he had done it. He could hear Scuzman Veck still cursing, trapped by the press of Guilder guards in the arena behind him. But Nastrol Skedge was free!