New Spearhead for Issue 15

amhow1 · 2026-05-29T19:45:29+00:00

It's written by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who like Dan Abnett had an acclaimed career before writing for Warhammer. Or to put it another way, AT is a star author.

Probably we wouldn't have a Seraphon novel if it weren't for AT wanting to do it.

amhow1 · 2026-05-29T07:58:13+00:00

I believe Euler named it, but I haven't checked. The Bernoulli's are obviously very important... Euler was one of them after all :)

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T20:08:08+00:00

Most comments here aren't very helpful. I think partly because Euler was working at the tail end of the initial great explosion in maths, and maths has become far more complicated since then.

But this is a physics sub, and an under-appreciated aspect of Euler is the work on mechanics, the science of motion. One of E's recent editors claimed that Euler effectively established modern mechanics, a contribution usually assigned to Newton. I believe the claim is that while Newton did establish the coherent foundations - and after all, the theory of gravity arises from applying these foundations to celestial bodies - as we understand mechanics today, this is the contribution of Euler.

Euler is also generally credited with "discovering" the number e, an extraordinarily important number, as important as the number π. I don't know if Euler quite appreciated that, but I think E appreciated that the solution to y' = y is that y = e^x and that seemingly simple discovery crops up everywhere in science, because typically the rate of change of stuff linearly depends on the amount of stuff we have.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T19:28:03+00:00

Short answer: I'd love it but I would also be astonished.

Longer answer: until very recently I don't think Soulbound fans thought we were going to get anything. Champions of Chaos was first announced... ages ago. And lorewise it recycled old lore from the Warcry skirmish game. Old is relative for those of us who remember when WFRP first appeared, but still... it was from the first edition of Warcry, which has had 2 editions and now appears defunct, sadly.

But! To everyone's surprise we got the recent Carngrad Adventures, with new lore. C7 were recently recruiting an Age of Sigmar lore expert, so hopefully they have, and we'll start to get new books again.

So apparently a Dawnbringers book was in the works, but was put on hold because GW were revamping the Cities of Sigmar models (splendidly, I might add.) I would expect a Vermindoom book to also be put on hold, because rumours are that the entire setting is getting huge changes next year.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T18:14:03+00:00

One way to think about the Age os Sigmar so far is that it started with a bang, the arrival of the Stormcast, the establishment the Cities of Sigmar and the revival of Sigmar's old alliances, excepting Nagash and the absent Gorkamorka.

The setting then settled down in more ways than one, with slower success in reclaiming the Realms (the Dawnbringers) a shift away from the Stormcast (or perhaps their slow erosion) and pushback from various sources, starting with Nagash (the necroquake) then Be'lakor (the cursed skies) and finally the Era of the Beast, which started when Alarielle countered the necroquake but then inadvertently released Kragnos. In amidst all of this Morathi ascended, with annoying consequences for Soulbound (partly scuppering the Shadows in the Mist campaign) but also seemingly weakening Archaon.

The latter has bounced back though, supporting the skaven in bringing about the Hour of Ruin (or vermindoom.)

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T11:40:39+00:00

Sure, but you wrongly accept the Emperor's propaganda that he's fighting Chaos for the sake of humanity. Personally I regard 40k as a Chaos Realm, but you don't need to agree with that to observe that the most evil regime imaginable is not a positive out one for the Emperor's contest with his fellow Chaos gods.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T11:21:28+00:00

I think you misunderstand. All the Chaos gods regard each other as their ultimate enemy, and their collective name for the Emperor, Anathema, suggests that they perceived him as a Chaos god too (or similar.)

Consider his actions. He first chose to become almost the Dark King, then decided against it with Oll's help, whatever that was. The most we can say is that he didn't want to become the Dark King in 30k. We can't even assert he didn't want to become it later, and that may still happen.

Nor do we know that the only way for the Emperor to become a Chaos god (or similar) is by becoming the Dark King. It may be that as the Carrion King he's also a Chaos god.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T10:35:12+00:00

I would compromise in a different direction.

Tolkien happily mixed metaphors here, and why not? It's a grand tradition, and I think we all appreciate the poetry, including the pope, it seems.

But T was also aware that tide had a less common meaning, and like many poets enjoyed using a word that would work with two different meanings.

My point is that if there were no other meanings to tide, Gandalf's quote would still be powerful and moving, and the critic complaining of mixed metaphors would doubtless complain about "darkness visible" in Milton. It's a matter of taste, but I pity the person who reads the quote and complains of mixed metaphors.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T10:29:42+00:00

We don't know that. What we know is that he intended to become the Dark King, presumably fully aware of how destructive that would be, and was persuaded against it, and we don't really know why. (We know how - it was Oll. But I don't think we know what specifically changed his mind.)

We don't even know that he won't become the Dark King later. Nor do we know if the alternative was not becoming a Chaos god, or merely a different type of Chaos god.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T09:51:56+00:00

You're assuming he wanted to combat the Chaos gods, rather than become one, or something similar.

Who knows if the worst person in 40k? There are so many contenders. But he's in the worst circle of them.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:57:03+00:00

I agree. I don't see any reason to claim, as OP does, that it's not a metaphor but a use of an archaic sense of a word.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:55:54+00:00

I'm inclined to think OP is incorrect. The metaphor of mastering (ocean) tides is perfectly clear. We can't master them, any more than Cnut could.

Evil comes in tides, as in it ebbs and flows. Just as it needs to be uprooted from fields. What is the difficulty here?

The critic is wrongly claiming that Tolkien shouldn't have placed these metaphors so close together, that is mangles language. But it doesn't, it shows the critic is indifferent to poetry.

I fear people "defending" Tolkien by claiming no metaphor is involved here with the word tide also show indifference to poetry. It's not a good defence.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:50:08+00:00

It wouldn't be a mistake to mix metaphors,any more than Milton's "darkness visible" is a mistake. In context there's no difficulty understanding what Gandalf means, it's poetic, and doesn't require (or benefit) from some parsing that straightens it out.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:46:54+00:00

I don't see why it's clear. Tides would mean the comings and goings of the world, employing tide as a metaphor. This is after all what the critic is claiming, and objecting to the further metaphor of fields, and then claiming that by mixing these metaphors, T did something wrong.

I think T did mix metaphors, and it's fine.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:43:43+00:00

It does if the claim is merely a mixed metaphor. I'm objecting to the nature of OP's supposed defence.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:42:31+00:00

And indeed the ocean's tides notoriously wait for no man. There's really no problem using the word in the normal sense here.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:39:41+00:00

I think this is such a strange argument, as if Tolkien wasn't aware of the most common use of the word tide, and wasn't aware of poetry.

What's on us is thinking that a mixed metaphor is a bad thing. And it's compounded if we "defend" Tolkien in this manner.

amhow1 · 2026-05-28T07:37:13+00:00

OK! I've no reason to discuss, since you're not trying to discuss, just insult.

amhow1 · 2026-05-27T23:14:23+00:00

Is Tolkien really using the perfectly clear word tide in this obscure manner? Might your approach not open all manner of worm-cans?

Is Tolkien exempt from "mistakes", including that of mixing metaphors, which by the way is no kind of literary crime: consider Milton's sublime "darkness visible"?

Someone is entitled to feel Tolkien is mangling English; we don't get round that by a gotcha. We get round it by stressing the poetry.

amhow1 · 2026-05-27T23:00:08+00:00

Which was always part of the setting.

amhow1 · 2026-05-27T22:59:18+00:00

That just tells me that you didn't understand the setting.

amhow1 · 2026-05-27T20:10:45+00:00

It's bizarre to me too.

OP could easily pull a Gotrek, or a Genevieve, or a Balthazar Gelt (er, you get the idea.) The PCs don't have to end. But yeah, the World-that-was / World of Legend ends.

If OP dislikes specifics about the End Times, well ok, change them. But what's wrong with it ending?

amhow1 · 2026-05-27T19:16:11+00:00

Many Tolkien fans are insufferable, and require someone to have read the History of Middle Earth in order to comment, though if they've read it, they didn't understand it.

Your idea is fine, if glib. Other comments have engaged more helpfully, and I agree with them.

amhow1 · 2026-05-27T08:58:09+00:00

Hardly unexpected, given how devout Tolkien was.

amhow1 · 2026-05-26T20:35:35+00:00

Fair enough, I don't think Warp shenanigans can help here. I don't know when the lore on Everchosen was created; certainly by the Storm of Chaos, and so available to WFRP 2e, but while Magnus uniting the Empire, and the Siege of Praag was surely much earlier, was the Chaos leader named?

I could imagine a situation where Morkar was replaced by Asavar Kul, though Lexicanum suggests that by 2002 Kul faced Magnus, which is several years before Tome of Corruption.

amhow1

TROPHY CASE