# New Release - Apocalypse: Damocles



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

http://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/damocles_.html

The Apocalypse series continues with an anthology this time. _Damocles_, containing four novella length stories about, you did not guess it, the *Second* Damocles Gulf Crusade. A new crusade against the Tau Epire, featuring Captain Kor'sarro Khan and the White Scars, and the Captain Kayvaan Shrike and the Raven Guard. The anthology contains the novellas:

Blood Oath by Phil Kelly
Broken Sword by Guy Haley
Black Leviathan by Ben Counter
Hunter’s Snare by Josh Reynolds



Black Library: Damocles said:


> Two centuries ago, the Imperium of Man and the upstart Tau Empire fought to a standstill in the Damocles Gulf. Now, as the 41st millennium draws to a close, the tau have returned.
> 
> This collection brings together a wealth of brand new stories set in the Damocles Gulf. As the Tau Empire embarks on its most aggressive expansion yet, it is met by the near unstoppable power of the Imperial war machine. Both sides commit immense resources to the conflict - including their mightiest war machines, the tau Riptide battlesuit and the Imperial Knights. The stage is set for the greatest confrontation yet between the two empires.


On the whole it sounds quite good, especially the part about Riptides and Imperial Knights. No CD audio release this time, though an MP3 called Shape of the Hunt by Joe Parrino is also out and a short story called _In Service to Shadows_:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/shape-of-the-hunt-mp3.html

http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/in-service-to-shadows-ebook.html

Not sure about either of those two but the cover art for the audio is absolutely badass, a White Scar on a Bike doing a wheelie into a Tau Battlesuit's face. :biggrin:

I'll be ordering _Damocles_ promptly, I really enjoyed _Pandorax_ and three of the four authors here are those whose work I have always enjoyed, and the fourth I have not read (Kelly) but i'll give him a shot.

Edit: Just looked it up. This book is about Mu'gulath Bay, those who've read the Tau Codex will recognize this as one of their newer battles and the battle where the Riptide Battlesuit is deployed for the first time. Very interested in this now.


LotN


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## Garrak (Jun 18, 2012)

I'm sort of tempted by this but I'll wait for you to review it. I'm just hoping it won't be four stories of how unstoppable and superior the Tau are.


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## Vitarus (Apr 9, 2012)

I've never read any Tau. Are these all new stories?


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

Garrak said:


> I'm sort of tempted by this but I'll wait for you to review it. I'm just hoping it won't be four stories of how unstoppable and superior the Tau are.


Well I doubt that it will be a Tau hype product considering that Josh Reynolds and Guy Haley are writing novellas, they are both good at showing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, but there will be some instances of the Tau winning, this is Mu'gulath Bay which is one of their greatest victories against the Imperium.

But the information we have on that battle so far doesn't mention Astartes in any context. So this is likely set after Shadowsun wins the Battle for Mu'gulath Bay. Perhaps the Tau will keep their victory or the Imperium may wrest it away from them. We'll have to see.

I just hope that at some point an Imperial Knight fights a Riptide Battlesuit, that would be epic. :grin:



Vitarus said:


> I've never read any Tau. Are these all new stories?


Yes, everything in this book is completely new.


LotN


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## gamingharry (Feb 27, 2014)

Very Excited for this. Big fan of the Tau (First army I collected) and the Idea of a book that not only features the Tau Heavily but also moves the Damocles plot along is very much my kind of book. Ill probably pick up everything on launch.

Also Riptides vs Knights sounds mindblowingly awesome. :grin:


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

I hope this is not another giant product placement like _Pandorax_ was... Will pick it up just because there are White Scars there, and hey, _Bike in your face_ the audio, looks cool, but I am not optimistic about this one being all that good overall.


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## aaronspuler (Mar 10, 2010)

I did some edits to the audio cover art to remove the infamous red circle:









Download the edited image here:


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

Doelago said:


> I hope this is not another giant product placement like _Pandorax_ was... Will pick it up just because there are White Scars there, and hey, _Bike in your face_ the audio, looks cool, but I am not optimistic about this one being all that good overall.


Given that the blurb explicitly mentions Imperial Knights and Riptides product placement seems likely.


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## Karthak (Jul 25, 2010)

Lord of the Night said:


> But the information we have on that battle so far doesn't mention Astartes in any context. So this is likely set after Shadowsun wins the Battle for Mu'gulath Bay. Perhaps the Tau will keep their victory or the Imperium may wrest it away from them. We'll have to see.
> 
> LotN


Just read an excerpt, and it seems that this story details the original Tau attack on Agrellan.

Man, I hope this doesn't mean they somehow retcon the Tau into losing this war. That's what some people on B&C are hoping for.


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

Karthak said:


> Just read an excerpt, and it seems that this story details the original Tau attack on Agrellan.
> 
> Man, I hope this doesn't mean they somehow retcon the Tau into losing this war. That's what some people on B&C are hoping for.


Excellent. Mu'gulath Bay is a great Tau battle and i'm looking forward to reading it tomorrow.

Imperials, bah. I recall reading somewhere that _Damocles_ would be surprising for readers, perhaps this book will be a true Tau victory over the Imperium. At the very least if they do lose it should be a hard fought battle, but I would hate to see the Tau's advance stymied so early. The potential for stories there is so great, especially with the revelation that the Zeist Campaign was just a feint.


LotN


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

Anakwanar said:


> To *Lord of the Night*
> 
> Please provide us with spoilers for all 4 novellas:
> 
> I'm interested whose side each author wrote for; is where any victory for the Imperials. who are usually used as dummies for mighty tau to shoot at; how White Scars and Raven Guard are represented?


Okay here are the spoilers you asked for;

_Blood Oath_ by Phil Kelly;




This novella covers the actual Battle for Agrellan that is in the Tau 6th Codex and is a mix of White Scar and Tau POVs. The novella shows why the White Scars come to Agrellan and how Shadowsun wages war against them and the Imperial forces in the early campaign. The Imperial Knights are deployed against the Tau for the first time, and proceed to practically curb-stomp them. Later the Riptides are deployed for the very first time, and the notes confirm that a Knight is bigger than a Riptide but not greatly, and the Imperials are forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming Tau numbers.

Shadowsun and Kor'sarro Khan fight for the first time and the Khan wins, but Shadowsun survives albeit wounded. The most interesting thing that happened here is that Shadowsun destroys Kor'sarro's Bike Moondrakken.



_Broken Sword_ by Guy Haley;




This novella covers the lead-up to the battle and is done from the POV of a Gue'vesa'vre who defected to the Tau and is a bodyguard to a Water Caste named Skilltalker. They attempt to convert a Hive City on Agrellan to their side and fail. Meanwhile the other POV is a Raven Guard sergeant that has been captured by the Tau and is being mentally interrogated by the Nagi, we see brief flashes of his past as a child on Kivahr who became a Raven Guard after his childhood girlfriend was raped and possibly killed and he hunted down her rapist and killed him. He is directed by the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard, whom we finally learn is called Corvin Severax, to abduct a Water Caste Tau for study.

The Gue'vesa'vre and the Water Caste Ambassador are later ambushed by the Raven Guard, the Catachans and an Imperial Knight, but the arrival of a Riptide along with a Tau Commander prevents the Ravens from getting the ambassador, who is then given direct orders from Aun'Va to return to the orbital fleet stations the Tau have set up. He does so but the Raven Guard ambush them in space, and reveal that one of the Gue'vesa charged with protecting the ambassador is an Inquisitorial plant. The ambassador goes willingly rather than see his Gue'vesa friend killed, and the Raven Guard make a fighting retreat but the sergeant is forced to cover their escape and is captured. The Gue'vesa'vre is hurt by his failure but is informed by a Gue'O, an ex-Inquisitor no less, that the capture of Skilltalker was planned and that his memories have been altered so that he will give the Imperials false plans and information that he truly believes, the Tau wanted him to be abducted as a counter to the spies in the Gue'vesa that the Inquisition has planted. As the Inquisitor leaves the Gue'vesa'vre notices that he has a Nagi attached to him and it is up to the reader whether or not the Inquisitor is being controlled by it or if it really is just an adviser to him.

The novella ends with the Tau determining that the gue'ron'sha, Space Marines, cannot be integrated into the Greater Good and that they must be killed on sight. The Gue'vesa'vre wholly embraces the Tau'va even though he admits it is far from perfect and that ultimately, both the Tau Empire and the Imperium are evil, he chooses the lesser evil in the Tau'va.



_Black Leviathan_ by Ben Counter;




Without a doubt the best story in the anthology. A team of ten Ultramarines led by Captain Devynius and ten Jade Dragons led by a Sergeant Senoa are sent to the sister world to Agrellan called Briseis that has been visited by the Water Caste and is believed to be seditious. The two Chapter teams split up with the Ultramarines taking the planetary capital's seat of government and rooting out the xenophiles there with bolter and sword. The Jade Dragons want a more direct solution, orbital bombardment, but the Ultramarines refuse to inflict such casualties on loyalists. What they don't realize is that the Tau have their hooks much further into the planet than they think. A team of Ultramarines led by a Sergeant Thaxos head underground to root out the Tau and find a Water Caste Tau and a captive Inquisitorial interrogator who after being freed, murders the sergeant for the Greater Good.

Meanwhile the Jade Dragons slaughter a camp of xenophiles, and the loyalists living there that the xenophiles used as unwitting cover, and we learn a lot about them. They are a chapter that use predation and essentially the law of predators to govern themselves, those who lead are those that are willing to kill their brothers to maintain that position and weakness is something that others would capitalize on. They are fanatical about omens and believe that everything and anything can be an omen, the formation of the stars, the path a bullet takes, the sun glint on an enemy's armour, etc. They consider themselves true predators, and the Ultramarines as stodgy fools who slavishly follow a dead man's words. Their history notes something called the Black Leviathan, a warp beast that has it out for them and that they are constantly hunting, and they remember a Chaos Lord who once took some skin from the Leviathan to make a cloak who was later found killed by the beast. The cloak is a portent of the Leviathan, and it has been seen on Briseis on the shoulders of the Mechanicus Chief Magos there.

However this is a feint. A Tau Water Caste leader, O'Myen, has captives who inform him about his enemies and one who knows about the Leviathan, having served an Inquisitor who was connected with the initial encounter with the beast. He has the tribes of Briseis, who are firmly on his side, fashion a fake cloak that looks similar and present it to the Magos in a ceremony ostensibly as a sign of brotherhood among the people of Briseis. The Jade Dragons slaughter the Mechanicus in the city, believing that Chaos is here, and broadcast their actions to the entire planet, which turns them against the Space Marines. The Ultramarines are forced to retreat to the city's generators where they are ambushed by three Riptides and many Fire Warriors, they are swiftly killed except for the Captain who is forced to call down an orbital bombardment. He meets up with the Jade Dragons and beats the crap out of Sergeant Senoa for ruining everything, but doesn't kill him. The Dragons go to hunt the Leviathan while the Ultramarines leave after destroying the parts of the city confirmed lost to the xenophiles with an orbital bombardment.

The Tau aren't done yet though. They have tribesmen plant bombs in fissures across the planet which when they detonate cause massive surface damage that annihilates the city entirely, likely killing the Dragons, and utterly removing the Imperial presence from Briseis. O'Myen congratulates himself and the tribal elders realize that they've been screwed, it is implied they are never going home again. And it is revealed that O'Myen is a sadist who doesn't believe in the Greater Good, but spreads it in this fashion because he enjoys it.



_Hunter's Snare_ by Josh Reynolds;




The White Scars are hunting Shadowsun across Agrellan after returning to the fight. They run her to ground at a small fortress in the polar region but find the fortress is abandoned. The Tau quickly ambush them and the White Scars are forced to fight to survive. The novella covers the battle and how the White Scars and Tau counter each other's strategies and tactics. Shadowsun and Kor'sarro Khan meet again and fight once more, Shadowsun nearly wins by favouring her fusion blaster but one of Kor'sarro's men who was also his mentor sacrifices himself to save him. He isn't dead though and if returned to the chapter he will become a Dreadnought, a fate that every White Scar fears. Kor'sarro subtly informs Shadowsun of this and in a moment of respect to a fellow hunter, gives the White Scar an honourable and quick death. For that the Khan allows her to leave with her warriors but renews his vow that he will have her head.

The book ends with the Khan informing his warriors that they will be returning to Agrellan Prime.




On the whole the book is very pro-Tau, the first and third stories are mainly about them crushing the Imperials while the second is a balanced look into the life of a human in the Tau Empire and the methods they use, while the fourth is a fairly balanced look at the way the Tau do battle and how it compares with how the White Scars, a fellow group of fast and patient hunters, fight. A review will be up tomorrow on Talk Wargaming, until then make of these spoilers what you will.


LotN


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

@the ben counter one:

So a group of aliens who have no understanding of the warp whatsoever somehow encounter a group of Imperials who just so happen to know, what I assume to be, the/one of the most intimate secrets of one of the very two chapters sent to wipe them out (said secret is stupid as hell to begin with. herp derp we're hunting moby dick for life). 

They then have the local humans under their control fashion a cloak that's so similar to the original, despite them never having seen it and having no means of fashioning a cloak made out of an actual daemon otherwise they'd be pawns of Chaos given their intimate understanding of the warp, that they can fool the actual Chapter obsessed with said cloak.

Holy shit.

@ the guy haley one: since when do the Tau have the ability to read minds, let alone the minds of alien races? They don't use machines apparently so how do these Nagi do it? Clearly it's not through the warp.


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

Malus Darkblade said:


> @the ben counter one:
> 
> So a group of aliens who have no understanding of the warp whatsoever somehow encounter a group of Imperials who just so happen to know, what I assume to be, the/one of the most intimate secrets of one of the very two chapters sent to wipe them out (said secret is stupid as hell to begin with. herp derp we're hunting moby dick for life).
> 
> ...


From the start;

They don't need to believe in Chaos to recognize that the Jade Dragons are obsessed with something that they can use.

They encounter an Imperial archivist who has knowledge of the supposed first incident because it isn't secret knowledge. What is secret knowledge is that the Jade Dragons had encountered the Leviathan before, it hunts them and they hunt it. And they use torture to extract the information from said archivist and use the Dragon's obsession with the Leviathan to goad them into making the exact moves that the Tau want them to make.

The archivist has seen it, the Inquisition briefly had it before losing it. And neither I nor the story said that it was actual Daemonskin, it just looked convincing enough on a vid-cast to fool the Jade Dragons into assaulting the Mechanicus, and once they had done that it was irrelevant if they realized that they'd been had, which since they had likely never truly seen the cloak, only heard descriptions of it, they did not.

You should actually read it before forming that kind of opinion. I've only given an outline of things in these spoilers, not the nuance and tone of the stories.



Malus Darkblade said:


> @ the guy haley one: since when do the Tau have the ability to read minds, let alone the minds of alien races? They don't use machines apparently so how do these Nagi do it? Clearly it's not through the warp.


The Nagi;



Warhammer Wiki said:


> Sha'Galudd - Homeworld of the Nagi, a small species of highly intelligent worms known for their mind control abilities. When first discovered, the Nagi were hated creatures known as mindworms, but since the early violent conflicts, they have agreed a peace accord and joined the Tau Empire. Many Nagi now serve as advisors to the Ethereal caste.


That's how.


LotN


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Lord of the Night said:


> From the start;
> 
> They don't need to believe in Chaos to recognize that the Jade Dragons are obsessed with something that they can use.


I didn't say that. I meant if the local humans made a cloak look so alike the original that it fooled a Chapter obsessed with it despite the locals never having seen it then they must be affiliated with Chaos and thus would have nothing to do with the Greater Good/Tau.



Lord of the Night said:


> They encounter an Imperial archivist who has knowledge of the supposed first incident because it isn't secret knowledge. What is secret knowledge is that the Jade Dragons had encountered the Leviathan before, it hunts them and they hunt it. And they use torture to extract the information from said archivist and use the Dragon's obsession with the Leviathan to goad them into making the exact moves that the Tau want them to make.


What are the _odds _ the Tau come across a group of Imperials with knowledge that proves to be the downfall of the Chapter sent to kill them? Of the thousand chapters, the Tau obtain knowledge about the Jade Dragons who just so happen to be on their way to wipe them out. It's too forced.

And it seems to me that it is a secret/something only someone within the chapter would know.



Lord of the Night said:


> The archivist has seen it, the Inquisition briefly had it before losing it. And neither I nor the story said that it was actual Daemonskin,


-_their history notes something called the Black Leviathan, a warp beast _.



Lord of the Night said:


> it just looked convincing enough on a vid-cast to fool the Jade Dragons into assaulting the Mechanicus, and once they had done that it was irrelevant if they realized that they'd been had, which since they had likely never truly seen the cloak, only heard descriptions of it, they did not.


Is it explained as to why the JD care about a cloak that someone they've never met reportedly made from their Moby Dick?

If not then, BC has made a new chapter of his making sound so pointless. 



Lord of the Night said:


> You should actually read it before forming that kind of opinion. I've only given an outline of things in these spoilers, not the nuance and tone of the stories.


It's a short story, a page or more I'm guessing. What else could you have left out from your review?



Lord of the Night said:


> The Nagi;
> 
> That's how.
> 
> LotN


I assumed they were Tau not another race entirely.


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

Malus Darkblade said:


> I didn't say that. I meant if the local humans made a cloak look so alike the original that it fooled a Chapter obsessed with it despite the locals never having seen it then they must be affiliated with Chaos and thus would have nothing to do with the Greater Good/Tau.


The humans didn't make it. The Tau did, using the information they had on the cloak from the archivist who had knowledge of it. The Jade Dragons on the planet had never seen it before but they knew what it supposedly looked like, and the fake was good enough to fool them, especially as they saw what they wanted to see.



Malus Darkblade said:


> What are the _odds _ the Tau come across a group of Imperials with knowledge that proves to be the downfall of the Chapter sent to kill them? Of the thousand chapters, the Tau obtain knowledge about the Jade Dragons who just so happen to be on their way to wipe them out. It's too forced.
> 
> And it seems to me that it is a secret/something only someone within the chapter would know.


The secret is that the Jade Dragons have a history with the beast. As far as the Imperium knows two companies of Jade Dragons were present when an Inquisitor attempted to destroy the Black Leviathan and failed, and since then the Dragons have been hunting it ever since. What nobody outside the Chapter knows is that the Jade Dragons have met the Leviathan before and that the reason they are determined to kill it is that they believe the Leviathan is a reminder from fate that they are not the apex predator of the galaxy, and they wish to change that.

And the Tau used someone who was an Imperial archivist, who was basically a walking library on Imperial facts. He had a copy of the Noctis Vermillion in his head, a forgotten book that speaks of the Jade Dragons and the Black Leviathan, or at least what is known widely about them.



Malus Darkblade said:


> -_their history notes something called the Black Leviathan, a warp beast _.


Yes it is a Daemon. The Tau don't know that, they seem to think that the Dragons are obsessed with hunting down some kind of dangerous space creature. In the end it makes no difference to their strategy so why should they give a damn if the Dragons know it to be something that the Tau disclaim even exists.



Malus Darkblade said:


> Is it explained as to why the JD care about a cloak that someone they've never met reportedly made from their Moby Dick?
> 
> If not then, BC has made a new chapter of his making sound so pointless.


It is. The Black Leviathan is a harbinger of doom, whenever it's shadow has appeared Chaos has come swiftly in it's wake or has been revealed to have been there all along. The cloak has the same portent attached to it, wherever it has ended up Chaos has followed quickly or it ends up in places already rife with Chaos, just hidden. The Jade Dragons have enough of a track record with it to assume that Chaos is on Briseis as a result.



Malus Darkblade said:


> It's a short story, a page or more I'm guessing. What else could you have left out from your review?


I doubt that my description captures what Counter is trying to convey. Unless I cut and copy actual passages from the book which i'm not going to do, then I am not getting across the meaning behind the words and I may be missing somethings out unintentionally.


LotN


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## Garrak (Jun 18, 2012)

Based on your review Lord of the Night, I've bought the book. I'm with the Imperium to the bloody end but this book still sounds interesting and I don't mind some Tau fluff (I was actually disappointing that they barely appeared in For the Greater Good).


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## Anakwanar (Sep 26, 2011)

Lord of the night - now, that i have completed full book i could say about visible editors errors in this book. 
Editors have missed a big timeline and locations holes in this book. 


At first novella - WS fought to escape Agrellan and then conflict moves to Voltoris. At last novella start - they a fighting at icy cape, at the same time of Khan running at Agrellan Prime from Riptides at the first. Time consistency is wrong with this book. Timeline and locations of Blood Oath by Kelly and Hunter's Snare by Josh Reynolds contradicts each other - really broke the immersion into the book =(


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