#the real question is who between ahriman and mortarion has the lower WIS stat

[quietbluejay]

Ahriman: Exile Reread 1

So, I decided not to include my thoughts on the samples I read in between Buried Dagger and this the TLDR: Betrayer: I'm definitely intrigued but it felt like it was being unfair to Magnus :/ Angel Exterminatus: McNeill has really upped his game! The Path of Heaven: slaps roof of warhammer this franchise can fit so much chronic pain into it The Crimson King: this is what got me interested in Lucius originally

And now, the main event: Ahriman: Exile was the second ever WH40k book I ever read (first being Know No Fear), and it was basically the make or break between me staying and me leaving.

story begins with a space wolf pov and man i gotta read a space wolf book at some point, i found out there's a book where a space wolf and a thousand son end up sharing a body and then apparently they become besties so like this is a book written just for me future bluejay note: i read the sample at a later point and the book is on the list now

this guy however in the ahriman novels was as i recall my introduction to warhammer cannibalism And at this point I feel like I should maybe put a content warning. Cannibalism mentions ahead, if you've read the book it's fine, I'm not screenshotting those bits and I'm being even less descriptive

haakon (the pov guy) undergoes an experience that sounds a LOT like he has the butchers nails haakon dude r u ok

you know if i had a nickel every time in this book a dude got stripped and hung from a wall in chains and scribbled on with ink pens by one specific sorcerer i'd have two nickels which is not a lot but man, amon, you need better hobbies note from future bluejay: I misremembered oh i also forgot this bit

im sixteen pages in and we are on our SECOND cannibalism this is really gross i shouldn't have read this right after eating i was going to describe a bit and thought better of it even behind spoiler rip haakon you were alive only for the prologue chapter though wait i feel like he showed up again in a later book??? maybe it was a different gross space wolf

carmenta my beloved blorbo no, self, you have enough cosplays planned her child, for context, is the spaceship she's a rogue techpriest and she's connected to the ship

and here he is the specialest boy the sad wet beast of an evil sorcerer, the platonic ideal of a poor little meow meow

ahriman is uh, not doing very well how the mighty have fallen literally kneeling for an unsanitary blood covered dude who collects evil sorcerers like jewels

viva la vida plays in the background this is, to be honest, an uncomfortable scene, but it really works for setting the mood of the book

meanwhile ahriman is just sitting there like "his main sorcerer is going to betray him i could probably do something but what is the point of doing anything i don't know if all my powers still even work" "it was as if a portion of his soul had shrunken to a wasted shell" and meanwhile gzrel is calling him "a whipped dog among wolves" rip wolf reference ahriman doesn't actually react to that at all khayon would but ahriman basically attempts to repress all his trauma and Does Not Think about it he does that about a lot of things so yay ahriman got chosen to lead the attack on the Titan Child, he's being set up to die ahriman: ok and now over to astraeos who is also blorbo there's a lot of great characters in these books

ok so he's part of the remains of a renegade space marine chapter imperium turned on them without saying why we don't find out about this til a lot later and we find out why waaaay later and it's normally a plot i hate but it was kind of okay here because it fits the story thematically somehow he became the leader of what remains but he has no clue what to say also they're guarding carmenta

Gee I wonder why your powers don’t work any more Do I really need to know about the bloody mucus, French?

the overwhelming message im getting from this is "chaos space marines are gross and unsanitary"

ok i don't remember this either something possessed the dude next to ahriman and now there's frost everywhere it's speaking to ahriman and also everyone else is frosen in time "i am your fate come round at last" spooky note from future bluejay: arc words! arc words!

carmenta: ah my death is here i will be free at last but oops astraeos rescued her ahhh okay so she found him and his brothers floating lost in space and she rescued them and thats why they swore to protect her

ahriman 🤝 carmenta hearing ominous voices behind their thoughts ahriman 🤝 carmenta "you know what just let me die here"

oops ahriman's repression failed traumatic flashbacks to his brother's death time oh yikes rip astraeos he's a prisoner and they took one of his eyes and he's being hung from the ceiling with HOOKS IN HIS SKIN euerrrrgh rusty hooks man french is really going out of his way to emphasize the whats the right term the physical elements and the horrible reality of what it would be like, it's very visceral but also lmao trying to earn the mature rating for the book as if it didn't with the cannibalism

i don't think it's overshooting the horror im just trying to make a joke to lighten my mood because this book gets dark i actually had to take breaks when i was reading it originally because I was in a pretty bad mental place at the time oh yeah ding we have a third character held prisoner naked and hanging from the ceiling though tbh astraeos' situation is worse than haakon's or than future ahrimans will be note from future bluejay: you misremembered, there are 3 times characters are imprisoned and vulnerable and hanging from the ceiling but in only two cases were they naked and cannibalized, no one ate ahriman and he got to keep his tunic. To be fair to past bluejay, it is a weird thing to pop up multiple times in the first place

both of them they were both betrayed by the imperium that created them and outcast by it

astraeos is unsettling ahriman oh this is why he adopts astraeos isn't it

it's because he reminds him of himself and then he shapes astraeos into himself including his own mistakes…. third cannibalism at least it happened offscreen ahriman feel supernatural fear French does a good job at conveying the creeping feeling of something wrong at your back ;-; ahriman kept all the physical things he could from his time in the TS

forget bad mental health day ahriman is having a bad mental health millenium

I can't help but hear this as a riff on the "we should improve society somewhat" meme

so i am STILL not sure if it's the voice of something else in his head or not maybe this time when i finish the trilogy i will have clarity the end got really confusing

oh hey time for him to meet carmenta

and then he warns her to be careful oh gross not the human tallow candles again this was I think my first encounter with them, but sadly not my last of course they didn't do a good job rendering you think these guys know how to properly render anything it explicitly smells like meat

the visitors are thousand sons ahriman basically has a panic attack

oh ahriman is happy :D visitor is someone he knows and actually liked him

ahriman: i'm not alone :D :D :D meanwhile he keeps having visions oops "the vision slipped into his mind like a razor" i love french's similes tolbek threatens gzrel a bit and then ahriman and him talk via telepathy tolbek: you must come with me ahriman: sorry no tolbek surprise attacks it's super effective

annnnd ahriman awakens his power again

after centuries of depression, local man finally feels something and it's joy that he's going to kill someone he knew rip and then ahriman turns into a killing machine rip everyone in the room you're all dead also things get trippy with visions

oh, honey sometimes, having hope is bad because this is wh40k

but this is where it starts he's at his lowest point but he's going to start to climb oh welp he didn't kill one dude just broke his mind

ahriman: i almost feel bad for him then he remembers that this is the guy that ate astraeos' eye and tortured him ahriman: nvm and then for some reason (vision he had) he doesn't kill Maroth seriously at this point i have to think it was something making him not do it the first thing ahriman does is go to free astraeos

the thing he does not want to do is he frees astraeos anyways so now astraeos feels obligated because his honour and obligation are all he has left time for carmenta to be a badass

elmo emoji

anyways the prose is definitely holding up the weird stuff feels weirder, somehow

thinking about how fast ahriman gets attached to carmenta and astraeos but doesn't really admit it to himself which is a repeating pattern in his life thought I had last night: he has the wisdom and critical thinking skills that God gave a slug

let me amend it, that's mean to slugs ahriman does not have the wisdom and sense that God gave a slug i had some thoughts about ahriman and astraeos and some of the themes of this book but they aren't entirely coherent but basically about ahriman being at his kindest when he's at his lowest point mentally and physically and also tbh at his wisest and as he gets in better shape he loses that to his all consuming focus

ahriman is basically the manifestation of that diane di prima poem all he has is a collection of means

#bluejay reads warhammer #warhammer 40k #the real question is who between ahriman and mortarion has the lower WIS stat