“Boring Conversation Anyway…”
I’ll spare you the tedium and get to the point. Here’s why I’ve not been blogging much:
- I’m finishing ‘Extinction’, which is a short story in the GD UK anthology, serving as a prologue to The Talon of Horus – the first novel in the Black Legion/Abaddon/Rise of the Warmaster series. It’s all unconfirmed, but that’s the aim right now.
- I’m coming close to being about halfway through Betrayer. This book is starting to feel like it’ll be long; about as long as The First Heretic. Maybe a little longer.
- I’m slowly getting ’round to doing that video Q&A I promised a while back. It’s taking a while because it’s pretty time-consuming, and I’ve not got a wealth of free time right now.
- The Lordi crew have been working on The Lord Inquisitor, which now has so many views on YouTube that fucking it up has become a real fear. Last time I looked, it was up to almost half a million views, which isn’t exactly small fry.
- Alexander’s now 4.5 months old, meaning he never shuts up with his wordless babbles and is putting everything he can reach into his mouth. So there’s that going on.
- I’m playing way too much Civ V.
- But not so much WoW.
- The Suns drafted Kendall Marshall (that’s good) but lost Steve Nash (that’s bad). They signed Goran Dragic (that’s good) and Michael Beasely (that might be good or bad). They’re also moving in on Eric Gordon (that’s good) but New Orleans will almost definitely keep his contract (that’s bad). The frogurt is also cursed. That’s bad.
- I’m devoting a few hours a week to Star Wars: The Old Republic, playing with Katie and our friends Steve and Emma. We’re all D&Ders and roleplayers in WoW, so it’s all very in-character and stuff. I’ll probably do some Let’s Play updates here and there on my blog, if anything strikes me as funny or cool enough to show. I tend to prefer to play healers (which makes a lie of my Rogue in WoW…) and I’d briefly dabbled with a Trooper when I played the first month of TOR right after it was released. Republic Commando remains my fave Star Wars game ever (admittedly tied with Knights of the Old Republic), and I wanted to give a Trooper another shot, but I ended up trying something new.
Here’s the gang at Level 11, just starting out in our basic equipment after we just met up for the first time. In true MMO guild-style, we posed for a screenie. Click to zoom, and all that jazz.
I really like how the girls are playing gunslinging badasses… and the guys are sexually-repressed space monks.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden 
I’d just like to point out that my 4-year-old stepson stil puts things in his mouth, although I do have a habit of saying wordless babble…
Most certainly a freudian thing. People in Star Wars Universe (sexually repressed space monks in particular) always had a fondness for phallic objects. Not HUGE phallic objects that make you think about someone compensating for something, more like “disturbingly accurate representations”. SW is a lot scarier than it seems.
Umm at the risk of being a complete geek…what sever are you on?? just asking as i play swtor as well and thought it would be cool if i saw you on there sometime
The Primogenitor.
Good server, I’m clocking up far too many hours myself on there.
So Rise of the Warmaster isn’t confirmed yet?
I guess it is. But the names, etc. aren’t.
Good, you had me scared there for a while.
Civ 5? It’ll never be a patch (pun intended) on civ 4 with Legends of Revolution. Best. Civ. Ever.
Otherwise, woo! And looking forward to more storimagation of course.
Have you taken much notice of all the webspaffing over 6th ed Aaron?
Civ V with Gods & Kings is literally The One. It changes the game completely.
As for 6th, pretty much most of what I’ve seen is massively positive (most of the complaints I’ve seen are erroneous or flat-out knee jerk reactions), and I got the Ultimate Edition myself. I’m all kinds of loving it, right now. Essentially superior to 5th in every way, though bear in mind 5th was my least-liked incarnation of the rules.
Admittedly I never gave civ 5 enough of a chance, having put 500 odd hours into a patched up 4 the basic 5 didn’t really move me, and I backtracked. How much better is it now?
Ah yes, kneejerk reactions, the primary communication method of the websticle wargamer. I cut my teeth on 2nd ed – worked out the rules from Codex Chaos and still get shivers from that Matt Gibbons Khornate Terminator – and after the traditional break for uni and skirt-chasing, 5th was all the rage. To me it was such a vast step up on 3rd, I found no fault apart from Codex-creep. Why do you love 6th?
On a related note, did they have the good sense to tap you for any fluff or flavour in the rumoured forthcoming Chaosdex? Fully understood if that’s a taboo topic.
Totaly unrelated, do you ever listen to Arab Strap? Just been revisiting it, and it seems to fit with the romantic quadrant of your paradigm…
How much does Gods and Kings change it? Worth getting Civ V instead of playing the Rise of Mankind mod?
Did they fix the culture exploit yet?
Would also enjoy a more in depth post on what you think of 6th, if you could. I like most the changes, though the apparent Tyranid hate and Templar/Eldar alliance seem like typos more then anything else.
I think all of your fans can agree we appreciate whatever time you’re able to give us, what with Katie, Alexander, and writing the best stories BL has to offer. Thanks for everything bro,
Betrayer being long sounds like a good thing to me!
With Lordi, just make sure the Crozius isn’t retarded. I understand it wasn’t entirely Dan’s fault, cgi budgets and all, but I know you guys will take the time necessary to get it done right. 🙂 I look forward to seeing the story told that way.
Dear ADB, this is about The Emperor’s Gift but I wanted to make sure you saw it. It seems it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, in our view because no one else has commented there since January. There must be something dreadfully wrong with the world. So, I lifted what we had to say and moved it here. We hope you will like and enjoy what we think of your work. Without further ado…
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I have nowhere else to leave this, no other contact info to privately say this so….*APPLAUSE*APPLAUSE*APPLAUSE* There is a small, private, exclusive coven of 40K fiction fans and model collectors in the town of Frisco, TX, USA. I am their Voice. The…individuals…at the Black Library do not allow you to leave a novel review unless you praise every single thing as if it were written by old William Shakespeare himself. Our coven goes back some time, far enough that the only thing worthwhile reading reading was written by Dan Abnett. So, everything moving forward is judged against Dan’s work. Totally unfair, I know, but as I said earlier, we are a small group and we don’t matter too much except for the fact that some of the models we’ve collected have actual historical value in the 40K realspace universe and they could see a shop opening or be on display, if only. If only. Enough sour grapes, that is not why I am here, The Emperor’s Gift is why I am here. We have an actual RANKING system for you guys…the 40K authors…not unlike the old level titles of D&D you mention above which we had to devise because the BL seems intent on printing as much stuff as they can now…actually not so much printing is going on…there are a lot of audio shorts, audio CD’s, e-shorts…call us Puritans (in the Inquisition sense), if you will, but our small group still likes to read books. In this ranking system, Dan has always been 1A. YOU are now 1B. There is debate over 2A and 2B between your editor and MacNeill. Please tell them there is no shame in being 2-something in our Guild. But I do apologize for Nick and Graham being labeled with a 2-anything. Perhaps I will propose a 1C and 1D at our next heretical cult meeting. I apologize for such a long entry but we’ve not said much in awhile publicly but I was MOVED…literally MOVED…by The Emperor’s Gift. You did what I thought was not only impossible but unimaginable. You brought long dead pieces of Ravenor back to Life, meshed them with your own style, writing the finest Ordo Malleus book yet, and you also managed to write in Space Wolves the way the Space Wolves were SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN IN THE FIRST PLACE. The only other Space Wolves novel our coven recognizes is Prospero Burns…by 1A. Thanks to you, we have two Space Wolves novels now. And you did all this in only 394 pages. 2 of us are voting members for the Hugo Award. Since we are all full heretics, our write in votes won’t mean anything except, perhaps, to you…to let you know that we feel your work is that good. If the BL prints nothing else this year, that is fine. The Emperor’s Gift was enough. Please give our regards to 1A, 2A and 2B, to yourself….you are allowed to pat yourself on the back until 2013 in our book. Huzzah, ADB, Huzzah! Speaking for myself only, though I likely speak for The Others as well, full and equal marks for the Night Lords Trilogy. Brilliant, enchanting work and again you managed to avoid damaging
40K Canon by working Lord of the Night into it. We are all looking forward with great anticipation to the publication of Betrayer…or anything else you write. The turning and existence of the Traitor Legions has been left too long. I am happy to see it was you that took up the mantle, you and MacNeill, the genius behind Iron 🙂 When you have finished these projects, perhaps you can explain in full and proper detail just exactly what Ahriman is doing and his opponents i.e., why has he been thwrarted so often? It is a question we often puzzle over here. Today though is a day for basking in the glory of the Emperor’s Gift. Enjoy it, the rest of your work so far, your family, ST:TOR (played it myself), and whatever else brings you pleasure.
The things you know, ADB.
don’t know if you like MechWarrior at all but they have a free to play game comming out called MechWarrior Online. I have always been a big fan of the mech games and universe so it gets me excited. I love the F2P games that are coming out these days.
Good to see that Rise of the Warmaster is confirmed, I do hope that you can bring some prestige back to Abaddon and give him some successes for his fans to tout. Also cool to see you play Swtor as well, though on the wrong side you Republic scum! Empire forever! 😀
And you are dead right about Republic Commando being the best Star Wars game ever, though its second to TOR imo, I still miss Sev so much.
And the toppings contain potassium benzoate, that’s also bad.
LotN
Should have gone Dark Side.
can i go now?