# Arjack Rockfist - Anvil of Fenris



## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

New Lords of the Space Marines limited edition stuff inbound, but behold: A single limited edition was not enough so there is also a Deluxe Limited edition available for the biggest suckers out there (read: me).

*Arjack Rockfist: Limited Deluxe Edition*
*Arjack Rockfist: Limited Edition*

Here‘s hoping it‘s any good... 

Edit: Ben Counter. *Fuck*.


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Is it a coincidence that Ben Counter's recent chain of novels have all had really shitty covers?


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## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Not a terribly interesting character to make such a cashgrab LE about imho. Pass.


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## serghe (Apr 6, 2011)

Arjack Rockfist looks like the monk from Diablo 3 game.:shok:


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## Angel of Blood (Aug 18, 2010)

£70......haha pass.


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

$60? Heh, no, y'all can fuck right the hell off. Seriously, Arjack though? Why? No one gives a damn. Hell, Lukas would have been a better choice. Anyone would have been a better choice, especially if you want me to fork over $60.


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## Znoz (Feb 9, 2013)

Arjack is awesome... but why do they need all those "limited extremely rare handmade editions" - looks like "download e-book somewhere" to me (despite i am a wolfie fan and have some thoughts about that 50e copy - standard 25e copy i would buy without any questions).


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

If this is told in the style of an actual Fenrisian Saga that could be pretty cool. Ordered the £35 version, the other one is nice and I really like that little rune shield but i'm not spending so much money after having bought _Macragge's Honour_ and the Dark Souls II Collector's Edition.


LottN


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## The Scion of Chemos (May 24, 2013)

Lord of the Night said:


> If this is told in the style of an actual Fenrisian Saga that could be pretty cool. Ordered the £35 version, the other one is nice and I really like that little rune shield but i'm not spending so much money after having bought _Macragge's Honour_ and the Dark Souls II Collector's Edition.
> 
> 
> LottN


Oh that Dark Souls 2 collectors edition looks amazing!
I wish I had a play station lol

That said, I don't have a playstation because I got the $120 version.
A lot of money, but it looks amazing on the shelf, and I am a fan of all of Counters work thus far.
And I really didn't want to regret missing it like I did with Brotherhood of the Storm.


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## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

Doelago said:


> Edit: Ben Counter. Fuck


Yeah, that sucks. Added to that ridiculous price tag, as big a SW fan boy as I am, I wouldn't buy it even if I won the euro millions tonight.


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## SecretsAndLies (Feb 17, 2014)

After Mepheston I think im done with lords of the SM series. While... OK. Paying overpriced for OK is not OK ;o)


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## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

According to the email blast I just recieved, they claim to have less than 1000 copies left of the 50€ deluxe version of Arjac Rockfist. Im honestly suprised. Still going to pass on it.


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## forkmaster (Jan 2, 2010)

Does the cover look familiar to you? Not the slightest interested!


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## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

I wish they'd fuck off with all these limited editions, special editions, novellas etc, and get back to what they used to do best. Their volume of output has really dropped off in recent months, with only short stories dotted by the odd proper novel. There used to be 3 or 4 new novels every month at least.


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## The Scion of Chemos (May 24, 2013)

Khorne's Fist said:


> I wish they'd fuck off with all these limited editions, special editions, novellas etc, and get back to what they used to do best. Their volume of output has really dropped off in recent months, with only short stories dotted by the odd proper novel. There used to be 3 or 4 new novels every month at least.


They have had slow months in the past though.
They probably had a lot of things planned, then authors missed deadlines, artists missed deadlines, etc.

I am sure they will have tons of stuff after we get out of this rut.
I wish they would stop reprinting short story anthologies with 1 new story -_-


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## Paceyjg (May 12, 2011)

The Scion of Chemos said:


> They have had slow months in the past though.
> They probably had a lot of things planned, then authors missed deadlines, artists missed deadlines, etc.
> 
> I am sure they will have tons of stuff after we get out of this rut.
> I wish they would stop reprinting short story anthologies with 1 new story -_-


I think they have hit upon a real cash cow for them with these limited editions. 

They know they can shift a couple of thousand books at five or six times the usual price of a full novel, quick turn around and maximum profits. I can see more, not less of these in the future.


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## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

Paceyjg said:


> I think they have hit upon a real cash cow for them with these limited editions.
> 
> They know they can shift a couple of thousand books at five or six times the usual price of a full novel, quick turn around and maximum profits. I can see more, not less of these in the future.


A basic law of economics is that you make more profit by selling high volume at low prices than low volume at high prices. By making these limited, that's exact what they are doing, limiting profit. If they just released them to everyone at maybe two thirds the price of a full novel they would vastly increase profit, especially with the HH ones.


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## Paceyjg (May 12, 2011)

Khorne's Fist said:


> A basic law of economics is that you make more profit by selling high volume at low prices than low volume at high prices. By making these limited, that's exact what they are doing, limiting profit. If they just released them to everyone at maybe two thirds the price of a full novel they would vastly increase profit, especially with the HH ones.


Only if you can sell the sufficient amount of volume in the first place. 

I think they are well aware of the numbers they can shift of these 'part books' and are choosing the highest profit route available.


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Actually read this today and it was surprisingly good;



The story is told as a Fenrisian Saga, around the hearth with the audience in attendance and the narrator getting the reader involved with the story by asking questions, talking directly to the audience and even breaking the narration to offer facts and truths.

It shows Arjac Rockfist as a young Space Wolf, earmarked for the Iron Priests almost as soon as he returned from his initiation trials, being asked to repair an ancient suit of Terminator armour that none in the chapter have dared attempt thus far. He succeeds and then is asked to repair the Axe of Morkai which shattered in a greenskin warlord's skull shortly before. While he does this, using a vial of Leman Russ's own blood to re-sanctify the once-tainted weapon, the entire Space Wolves chapter heads off to a crusade leaving only Arjac and a single Grey Hunter pack in the Aett. After a day one of them is murdered by something on the ramparts of the Fang, the others swear vengeance and hunt it which results in the Pack Leader being killed and his gene-seed stolen.

Arjac researches what he saw of the creature and finds that it is a genus of the Tyranid Lictor that has infiltrated the Fang and is taking gene-seed for an unknown purpose. Arjac proposes that the Lictor wants gene-seed and is prepared to either wait until the Chapter returns and pick them off in the tunnels of the Fang or force their hand by murdering Thralls until the Wolves have to chase it down where upon it can lead them into more ambushes. So Arjac decides to open up the Chapter gene-seed vaults and let the Lictor come to them. They do this and it fails, killing two more members of the Pack, though Arjac is able to send the Lictor fleeing before it can get at the gene-seed.

At this time Henghis Blackhand, the High Iron Priest, returns with a Great Company claiming that Warp storms separated the chapter fleet and that his company had to return. On hearing the story he is livid and banishes Arjac to the forges while he and the company hunt the Lictor. He also refuses Arjac's claims that it is a Lictor or that it may be an ancient creature that landed on Fenris long before the Tyranids ever showed their faces in the galaxy, he cites a few examples including one where 4,000 years before M41 the Space Wolves chapter faced a xenos scourge on the planet Ourouboros that now they can be sure were Tyranids, they just didn't know it at the time. Arjac goes to the Heart Forges and works on the Axe of Morkai, which he had fixed earlier but used against the Lictor and rebroke it against a wall with his prodigious strength, and has left a sliver of the axe in the Lictor meaning the axe cannot be repaired.

Soon after something begins to happen in the nearby ocean, and Arjac sees that his theory was correct. The Lictor did come from Fenris and the reason it looked so odd and serpentine is that it had adapted to live in the bottom of Fenris's oceans, along with the rest of it's swarm which is now emerging to attack the Fang. A horde of Kraken-spawn, as the Wolves call the Tyranid fleets the Kraken, emerges and in response the Great Company line the walls but seal the doors of the Fang, trapping hundreds of Thralls outside. Arjac pretends to go for a better weapon and instead barges out into the coastal forges to fight alongside the Thralls.

He battles against the Four Tyranid Generals in the swarm, a Zoanthrope, a Dactylis, a Malefactor and a Dominatrix with the Lictor on it's back in place of a Queen. He kills the Dactylis and the Zoanthrope, and then lures the Dominatrix and Lictor towards him by revealing the vial of Russ's blood, which attracts the Lictor towards him. Arjac is devoured by the Dominatrix, which shortly after keels over and dies. It turns out that Arjac had returned to the trophy room as well and took the wargear of a Venenum Assassin that had been sent after a Great Wolf once, and was caught and killed. The Dominatrix swallowed him and in his blood the poison kills the Dominatrix which is not prepared to deal with something like that due to the millennia it has spent in the ocean. The Lictor dies with it, taking it's knowledge of the power behind the Space Wolf gene-seed with it, and the swarm goes into disarray. All those who fought with Arjac are dead, but many more Thralls were saved by his actions.

Logan Grimnar's company arrives and mops up the remaining Tyranids with Grimnar himself killing the Malefactor. Upon hearing of Arjac's deeds he cuts his way into the Dominatrix's corpse and returns with a barely alive Arjac. The narrator tells the audience that because Arjac never boasted of his deeds, nobody remembered them and assumed he had died in the beast. But Grimnar remembered them and believed that Arjac had lived, and so he had. The narrator reminds the audience that perhaps the greatest warrior is the one who never needs to boast, and with that the saga ends.



Quite a good novella with great callbacks to the earlier incarnations of the antagonist xenos and a very interesting twist on Arjac's most famous moment. Also loved a reference to a famous Space Wolves moment;




In the Space Wolves trophy room they have one of Lion El'Jonson's teeth in the centre of a great ruby set in a war-scepter, taken from the fight where Leman Russ punched him and knocked it out. They consider it one of their finest trophies. Hehe.




LotN


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## The Scion of Chemos (May 24, 2013)

Lord of the Night said:


> Actually read this today and it was surprisingly good;
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well, that makes me hopeful!
Mine still hasn't arrived yet, but I live across the pond.
I look forward to it though!


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