The Wicked and the Damned

In my opinion, avoiding spoilers is even more important for horror stories than it normally is. This made it hard to do my spoiler free review of ‘The Wicked and the Damned’ and I’m excited for the chance to now elaborate on some of the ideas I expressed.

‘The Beast in the Trenches’ was not what I expected in the best way. This was my first exposure to Warhammer Horror and naturally I expected it to draw upon the wealth of Xenos and Daemons that the Warhammer universe possesses. I’d say the title backs this up and so does the red herring of the blue eyes. Until about halfway through this story, I found myself waiting for it to begin, so to speak, waiting for the beast to rear its head. I think the best part of this story is the suspicion and eventual realisation that Valemar is the ‘beast’ in the trenches.

That’s another reason why I think this story should have been last, as the other two set a precedent for an external, otherworldly enemy, which ‘The Beast in the Trenches’ then subverts. It’s also my favourite of the three and I think that a story should get better as it goes along.

Maybe you were sharper than I was and knew instantly that Valemar would be the villain. But still, I thought the slow revelation of his insanity was very well done and cultivated the growing dread. At first, I thought that Valemar was everything a Commissar ought to be. Rigid, dutiful, ruthless. I’d never really warmed to Ciaphas Cain because I just don’t think Commissars should be likeable. Their job is to shoot their own soldiers after all. Valemar felt like a realistic portrayal of how a commissar would feel and act. Of course, we later find out that he’s more than just ruthless. He’s crazy.

I really liked the part when Valemar is remembering his first execution, a lad sneaking into the commissar’s tent to steal alcohol on a dare. It seemed that Valemar did it without thinking about it and made me think that maybe that’s what started him down his dark path. Later though, I was proven wrong.

He uses the phrase, “I’m not a murderer” multiple times in the story. My favourite part of the story has to be when he remembers a rival in the Scholar Progenium who he fed to the eyeless hogs and then knew that the Emperor was on his side. Valemar is set apart from the other two characters by his complete lack of guilt. He’s fully convinced that he’s doing the right thing.

When the Colonel’s Aid talks about “incidents stretching back to the Scholar Progenium”, it made me wonder what other crazy stuff he’d done as a young lad. Kind of like Voldemort as a child. Basically I thought that Valemar was a compelling character and that our slow introduction to him throughout the story was very well done.

I’ll also touch on the revelation that they’re actually fighting another militarum regiment and that it’s actually not as rare as one would think. The revelation really hit me with that grimdark feeling and gave me one of those chilling reminders of what a vast and cold universe the 41^st millennium is.

As I already said in my spoiler free review, I felt that the lack of a clear goal in ‘The Woman in the Walls’ detracted from my investment in the story. There was not one point in the story when I was convinced that any of them could survive. Even though Leana is standing there telling the story I somehow knew she would die. At this point I was already pretty sure that all three of them were dead and ‘The Woman in the Walls’ cemented me in this. I’m also confused as to why exactly it happened. Why of all the people who get murdered, was this woman able to come back and get revenge? Unless it wasn’t her, and just the guilt of the conspirators manifesting itself.

I thought the rules should have been stricter and clearly defined for the ghost. Only being able to kill victims while they slept, would have been perfect in my opinion, if alittle derived. Having said all that, atleast they had the goal of exiting the warp, by which time Leana thought she might be safe. However, this wasn’t in her control at all and the story just felt like a bunch of people waiting to be killed. All of Leana’s attempts to stay alive felt pointless.

‘The Faith and the Flesh’ introduces us to the first Space Marine of the book, frozen in stasis, clearly in the middle of religious rapture. Once released from stasis he’s revealed to be in the middle of ascension to daemonhood. I’m normally a sucker for body horror and the daemon merging with eh ship and slowly turning it to flesh should have been right up my alley. But for some reason, it just wasn’t.

The part when a few of the crew fall down and have to climb back up felt tedious and broke the momentum of the story. It might have worked better if it was more frantic. I wanted to feel the characters’ sense of desperation to get off the ship before it was consumed, and their souls were trapped forever in this daemon. But I just couldn’t. I think the slow pace of this story really hurt it.

I’m of two minds about Marrikus’ love interest. On the one hand, she felt like a real person with real feelings and concerns, rather than just being ‘the main character’s love interest’. But on the other hand, I just couldn’t understand why Marrikus was in love with her. Their relationship soured to the point where I was almost relieved that he left her behind to save his own skin.

But did he? Of course we know that they’re all dead and I like to believe that Marrikus actually chose to stay behind and die with his love. However, this negates the story’s theme of hard choices and makes me think that maybe he did abandon her but failed to escape anyway.

I think that the story could have been made better in two different ways (keeping in mind that I have the benefit of hindsight).

The Space Marine could have stayed a Space Marine, but a crazy one, determined to rip them all apart, perhaps in the interests of achieving daemonhood. This could have turned the story into a stalking slasher type of deal with the naked, animalistic space marine prowling the ship and disabling the security systems.

Another way could have been to lean harder into the race against time aspect, as I said before. The idea of being stuck on a ship that is turning into daemonic flesh is objectively terrifying and the characters should have been desperate to get off the ship however they could. But I just didn’t feel that sense of terror from any of them and I feel that it was a real missed opportunity.

Now lets talk about ‘Silence’, the story that links the stories. You already know that I thought the twist was obvious, though I can forgive it for two reasons.

1. Even though I knew it was coming, it was still well executed, and I really sympathised with Valemar’s despair and dread at the realisation that he was dead.
2. Even though some of the hints are not so subtle, there are more subtle and clever hints that I didn’t pick up on until the second reading, like Valemar’s headache or Vendersen’s bandages.

Like I said in my spoiler free review, I wish that we got to see the characters interact more and react to each other’s stories. There is alittle bit of this, but it feels token and underdone. Valemar especially is established as an opinionated and judgemental character and I’m surprised he didn’t have more to say about the stories of the other two. This is another reason why I think Valemar’s story should have gone last. Throughout the stories of the other two, I occasionally wondered; “why isn’t Valemar shooting them?” He’s clearly a shoot-first-ask-questions-never type and both Marrikus and Vendersen admit to doing things definitely worthy of execution.

I know I’m pretty hard on this story but in the end, I’m just grateful that they finally decided to do Warhammer Horror and I believe that the excellence of ‘The Beast in the Trenches’ makes up for any flaws in the other two stories. I wonder if others share my view, or maybe people feel differently and thought that one of the other two stories was better.

The Emperor Protects