Lord Castellan Ursula Creed bears the weight of her father’s name but the Imperium has no patience for self-doubt. After spending years forging her own legend far away from the shadow cast by her father, Ursula returns to the shattered remains of her home in Creed: Ashes of Cadia. Searching the hellscape for the final orders that her own father penned, Ursula must wrestle with a hellish war zone full of secrets that have her questioning herself and the Lord Castellan’s legacy.
Jude Reid’s first full-length Black Library book is a huge new step in Astra Militarum lore, so we asked here a few questions about how she tackled such a complex character.
Warhammer Community: Ursula Creed represents a significant passing of the torch from a beloved Warhammer 40,000 character of the past into the new era – did you feel any pressure when tackling the subject of such a popular figure's disappearance?
Jude Reid: Massive, massive pressure! I don't think there's an author out there who wouldn't feel the strain of bringing a new character to life in the absence of someone as iconic as Ursarkar E. Creed, but as my first full-length novel for Black Library it seemed extra daunting. I knew from the start that I wanted to feel Creed Snr.'s presence strongly in the book, both in terms of his physical legacy and the effect his life and demise had on his daughter, and without giving too many spoilers, the return to what remains of Cadia was a perfect backdrop to bring that out.
It was important to me that Ursula was also painfully aware of that legacy – you can't be the daughter of the most famous and brilliant Astra Militarum commander since Solar Macharius without that having a massive influence on your entire life. And like her, I was conscious of the fact that I was being called on to stand on the shoulders of giants – the authors of the previous Astra Militarum stories who paved the way so magnificently for me to follow.
WarCom: Your previous story, The Bones of the Martyrs in The Vorbis Conspiracy, was about, well, a conspiracy! Did you learn anything from writing that book which helped you with Ashes of Cadia?
Jude: I like to think I learn from absolutely everything I write, and The Bones of the Martyrs was no exception. Superficially the two stories couldn't be more different – Martyrs is a short story about a young idealistic detective caught up in a life-shattering conspiracy, while Ashes of Cadia is about an experienced and jaded military commander thrown abruptly into a warzone from hell – but there's a mystery at the heart of both stories that the whole plot hinges around. I definitely used what I learned from writing Warhammer crime stories in how that mystery is revealed to both the characters and the reader.
Short-form writing is arguably a totally different discipline to writing a novel, and every scene and story beat has to be so carefully selected, and the pacing analysed so meticulously that you can't help but learn from writing it. That said, Ashes of Cadia ended up as a much longer book than I had originally envisioned, so there was plenty to learn from that experience too!
WarCom: What do you find makes Ursula Creed such a unique protagonist?
Jude: An interesting question! The easy answer is that all protagonists are unique – they've all got their rich inner worlds and points of view, and they're all a sum of their experiences – which in the Warhammer 40,000 universe can be wildly diverse. But what really drew me to Ursula is the conflict inherent in being who she is – she's from this profoundly militaristic culture, and not only does she have to shoulder the weight of being Cadian from an early age, but also the burden of who her father is with all the expectations that that entails.
We don't meet her as a young hero, either – she's not setting out to prove herself – at the start of the novel that's a battle she's already won – but the fresh demands put on her for the sake of the Imperium are going to force her to question the entrenched beliefs of a lifetime on a fairly fundamental level, and that was a tremendously exciting journey to take her on.
WarCom: How did you mesh the personal tale of a daughter walking her father's legacy with the wider drama of an Imperium at war?
Jude: The more I worked on Ursula's backstory, the more I realised how much the setting of Warhammer 40,000 hinges around the relationship of fathers and children, generational expectations, and the burden of parental legacy. With Guilliman's return that narrative has been brought even more sharply into focus, and I found Ursula's story unfolding in parallel with the wider events of the novel really naturally as she retraces his footsteps across the world where her father fought his final battles, learning more about him and the reasons he made the decisions he did as she goes.
WarCom: You are a doctor by trade, and this is a story about soldiers battling in the far future – what kind of research did you undertake to get in that headspace?
Jude: It was really important to me that the military aspects of Creed felt real to the reader, so I did a whole lot of research – interviewing current and former soldiers as well as reading primary and secondary source material including military technical manuals, particularly relating to small unit tactics.
I found a brilliant series of first-person accounts of service during various tours of duty, and I spent a long time listening to those to really get a feel for what it must be like serving as a soldier in a hostile and unfamiliar environment – and then for Cadia turning everything up to 11. And while I wouldn't want to be too naive about drawing similarities between military life and life as a doctor, there were some elements about teamwork in a high-pressure environment that I felt I could draw on from my own experience – reliance on colleagues, trust and respect, and using humour to defuse tense, difficult situations.
I also took the opportunity to re-read a lot of my favourite Warhammer 40,000 novels to get the technical details right – and there are a few loving references to them scattered throughout the book. One of the other major characters in the book is a military chirurgeon, and I really enjoyed writing some excessively gruesome surgical scenes from his point of view!
WarCom: Everyone loves the Cadians, but are they your favourite regiment? If not, who is?
Jude: The Cadian 8th are definitely my favourite now, but before them it would definitely have come down to a hard choice between the Savlar Chem Dogs and the Valhallan 597th!
Thank you so much Jude! Creed: Ashes of Cadia will be available to pre-order soon, and will make the perfect addition to the growing collection of Cadian novels. Sign up to the Black Library newsletter to find out when you can get your own copy.