Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress is on the way, and alongside this magnificent boxed game, you can pre-order an equally fantastic novel by Darius Hinks. This tie-in to the game focuses on Janus Draik, Rogue Trader and one of the explorers you can control as you venture into the depths of the Blackstone Fortress. To find out more about the novel, the mysteries of the Blackstone Fortress and the appeal of the setting and characters for a writer, we talked to author Darius Hinks. Here’s what he had to say:
Darius: For things that loom so large in Warhammer 40,000 lore, Blackstone Fortresses are wonderfully mysterious, so when Black Library offered me the chance to write a novel tying into the new Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress game, I jumped at the chance.
There are so many reasons to get stupidly excited about the whole Blackstone Fortress project. For a start, there are the fortresses themselves – mysterious, ancient stellar forts so powerful and alien that they make no distinction between realspace and the mind-bending dreamscape of the immaterium. They laugh in the face of physics and logic, and plough their own inscrutable furrow through the story of the 41st Millennium.
Throughout the Imperium’s history, the Blackstone Fortresses have been used as weapons of unimaginable power (notably during the Gothic War, when they were a key asset fought over by the Imperium and Chaos), but who can claim to understand their origins or their purpose? Why are they here? Who made them? Are they a relic of a dead civilisation or the weapons of a god – or are they a monolithic footstep of doom, about to inflict galaxy-wide destruction?
Writing a novel that delves deep into the heart of a Blackstone Fortress, exploring this sinister enigma, was a gift, especially when I found out about Precipice – a bizarre shanty town orbiting the fortress. It’s little more than a mound of salvaged space-debris, but it works as a kind of brutal Wild West outpost in which any and all of the galaxy’s inhabitants are forced to live alongside each other, setting aside ancient rivalries for a chance to capture the Blackstone’s treasures. Almost every race, faction, creed and cult from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are forced to deal with characters they would usually annihilate from the safety of a gun deck, with the whole uneasy truce upheld by fragile frontiersman law.
And then there are the miniatures. If someone could have peered into my head (not recommended) and picked out my dream cast of characters, this would be it. They’re like a wish list of all the weird, shadowy, life-blood-essence-of-Warhammer 40,000, fevered-imaginings-of-John Blanche that I would love to see in a release. They include haughty, barely-human Navigators, half-forgotten abhumans who hark back to Warhammer 40,000’s earliest incarnation, faith-maddened zealots with flamers and, most of all, an adventurer built in the classic mould.
Rogue Trader Janus Draik is a proud, rakish hunter, freed from the Imperium’s usual shackles by his Warrant of Trade and only a fearless leap away from bagging the biggest prize in the galaxy. The snapshots of Janus Draik in the Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress rulebook are a great springboard for the hero of a novel.
Just reaching Precipice is close to a suicide mission, and actually boarding the Fortress is the action of a lunatic, or at least a very desperate man, so what could have driven Draik to this point? Why is he prepared to risk everything on such a hazardous gamble? Is he just a pawn in the fortress’ strange, unknowable game, or is he about to seize a prize that could alter the Imperium forever?
Thank you, Darius! To discover the answer to Darius’ teasing questions, delve into the secrets of the Blackstone Fortress in a number of editions.
You can pre-order the hardback novel, the eBook edition (which is also available from iBooks and for Amazon’s Kindle) and the deluxe special edition. The latter comes in a lavish 368-page hardback, beautifully decorated to look like an artefact of the 41st Millennium, and includes an author introduction and additional short story, as well as being signed and individually numbered – only 1,250 copies are available, and you can pre-order yours now.