The Unending Storm

Call of Chaos #2

by Nick Kyme

The Warson, a Khornate champion, leads his warband on a mighty quest across the realms. Over and over he proves his might against the Stormcast Eternals, but how long can he escape Sigmar's judgment?

Read it because
It's a blood-soaked and brutal tale that pits the followers of Khorne against Sigmar's champions. Which god's servants will come put on top?

25 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 2, 2015

About the author

Nick Kyme (b. 1977) writes mostly for Black Library. His credits include the popular Salamanders series and several audio dramas.

Reviews

[DarkChaplain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. I don't say this often, but this was pretty awful. This was basically flinging dirt at a wall in an attempt to see what is going to stick. There is so much wrong with this piece, it made me want to drop it, and throw my Kindle against a wall in frustration.

The story kicks off with a Khorne warleader, called "Warson", finishing off one battle and seeing a lone Stormcast Eternal in the distance. This Stormcast is seemingly a Liberator at this point, and utters funny preaching phrases in Sigmar's praise.

A single Sigmarine. Challenging a Khorne warband. Just.. why? This is unlike anything Age of Sigmar has shown us so far, and unlike anything the Stormcasts usually figure for tactics.
Obviously, the Stormcast falls to Warson.
...and returns in the next scene, now with wings and leading a host of Prosecutors. Damn, Sigmar really has sped up his reforging procedure and given the guy who was stupid enough to go out alone a promotion!

I'll be spoiling the whole rest of the plot, just to show you how ridiculous it is:


Being a really stupid "Stormrider", the Prosecutor obviously gets slain once again, with the Warson taunting him. Not only that, but his death and the following lightning strike open a realmgate for the Khorne champion.

And yes, you guessed it, he returns yet again, this time promoted to hammer-wielding Paladin and leading an army of Stormcasts. He tells Warson that he will never leave him alone (no matter how often he fails to cause him harm, I guess), and the Chaos champion starts talking in thee's and thy's now too. And this is happening at a distance, across a battlefield. Either way, Warson triumphs again, and is looking forward to their next meeting. Oh well, at least this time Stormrider actually hit him.
In the next scene, Stormrider is yet again promoted, and thus now a Knight Venator. He finally slays Warson, whose warband was pretty much done and over with at that point anyway.

The final scene puts the point of view of Stormrider into focus, still a Knight Venator, and barely aware of anything at all at this point. He only remembers the name "Stormrider" and that's that. A horde of Khorne dudes emerges, and it would appear that Warson is now a mutated Korgorath - and apparently still able to talk, which is new for those things.


This repeated duelling is just highlighting another thing that I despise about Age of Sigmar as a setting. Characters won't just stay dead. Death doesn't hold any meaning when either side's champions just return with a bit of memory loss, if even that. There was zero tension here, as the theme of the story was clear from the second scene on already.

Then there is the added problem of every scene taking place in a different realm. Warson's doomed crusade starts in the realm of beasts, where he and his warband climb atop a bunch of totems through a realmgate.

They enter the realm of fire, specifically the "Lavasands", where a big "maw-wyrm" is spitting fire/lava/sand at them. They are paddling through the Lavasands of its pit aboard "rust-metal hellbarges", which also use "blood-furnaces" for fuel. Nevermind the difficulty of paddling through sand with oars, but this scene makes me wonder where the hell they got enough of these ships from to ship the Warson's whole warband around - which has apparently grown in numbers since the last scene, too!
Warson himself seemingly enjoys playing Ahab, though. And obviously, the "maw-wyrm"'s throat appears to be the realmgate he seeks.

And on we go to the realm of death - at least it seems to be that, as the whole warband is riding on "corpse-titans" or "ur-gargants". It is also snowing acid. Plus, Warson now rides a Juggernaut, atop the corpse-titan, and his warband wages war against Stormrider's Paladin host atop the titan, too.

Afterwards we're in the realm of life, corrupted by Nurgle and turned into a swamp. By this point, the warband is barely a thing. I had to re-read the opening pages of this scene multiple times, as apparently tridents impaling champions now manifest from thin air, with no explanation provided.
It was such a messy scene, I couldn't believe it.
Finally, we're in another realm, above the Azure Plain, where we see Azurite crystal statues and what not.

Can you tell why I didn't like this story one bit yet? There's way too many ideas thrown into this story, with none of them feeling like they got enough pagetime, enough significance, enough gravitas. Nothing is elaborated upon, and the realms were obviously made up as Kyme went along. They feel silly and contrived.

I can honestly appreciate the idea of fated enemies Kyme tried to pull off. It is just that he executed it rather poorly, and threw in so many other things that the story lost its focus amidst a sea of half-explained environmental hazards. It felt like a slideshow, not a coherent narrative.

This was never going to be sustainable for a story less than 4500 words in length. It couldn't hold up, and it was a pretty bad idea to try in this format. Maybe at novella length, things could have been fleshed out more, to the point where tension could exist, and characters were actually relatable. The way this was written, they weren't even interesting to read about, as the end was obvious from a mile away.

It truly was an Unending Storm, just not of a kind you'd like to experience. And yes, it felt unending to me, too, and thus a chore to get through. I can't wait to delete The Unending Storm off my Kindle.

[Michael Dodd · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second story in Black Library’s 2015 Advent Calendar, The Unending Storm is an Age of Sigmar short from Nick Kyme that’s written from the perspective of a champion of Chaos – Ghaar’ath, the Warson. Having led his warband to victory against a rival force he gets his first glimpse of the Stormcast Eternals, which sets him on a path to victory and glory in the eyes of his god, but also gives him an understanding of just why they’re called ‘Eternals’.

Read the rest of the review at https://trackofwords.wordpress.com/20...