GW: Neue Golden Demon Season und Warhammer Horror

Der Golden Demon Malwettbewerb von Games Workshop startet in eine neue Season und von der Black Library gibt es erste Infos zur neuen Warhammer Horror Reihe.

Golden Demon: A New Era Dawns

Last weekend saw Warhammer World hosting the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Open Day, which also, naturally, included a Golden Demon painting competition. It was a hard-fought contest, with a host of truly spectacular entries, but in the end, the coveted Slayer Sword could be held aloft by only one winner. Matthew Kennedy walked away with the sword, won for his stunning Slann Starmaster.

This Golden Demon brings the events season to an end, and we have big news about the next season of Golden Demon competitions, starting soon. This new season will include more chances to participate than ever, as events from Warhammer Fests to Open Days play host to painting competitions. With the new season of Golden Demons upon us, we’re introducing some changes to the way we structure competition at events around the world.

With more Golden Demons in the calendar, we want to ensure that the Slayer Sword remains as rare and prestigious as it should be – and we know you do as well, based on feedback from attendees and participants alike. To that end, the Slayer Sword will only be awarded at Golden Demon Classic competitions, which will be held at select events. This will mean that when a hobbyist holds that famous blade aloft, all will know that they are truly one of the greatest miniatures painters in the world.

“Archaon – the original Slayer Sword holder”

Other events will still have Golden Demon competitions, simply without a Slayer Sword to be won. These will often be themed competitions, such as the one at the forthcoming Forge World and Specialist Games Open Day, which will award prizes for exceptionally painted Forge World models. More events like this will be on the way soon, so keep an eye on the Warhammer World website and Facebook page for more information.

Another request we’ve had from Golden Demon attendees is more prizes – and so we are making sure that there are plenty of prizes to be had – including these stylish pins and certificates for all Commended Entries – models our judges think are deserving of special recognition, but which don’t quite make the top 3 in each category.

You can find out more about forthcoming Golden Demons, including the events they’ll be held at and the categories for entry, on Warhammer World’s website. We look forward to seeing you – and your models! – at a future event. And if you want to see more of the winners from the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Open Day, you can check them out now on the freshly updated Golden Demon website.

Oh, The Horror

At Black Library Live last month, the coming soon seminar revealed something intriguing: the logo for a new line of books, tantalisingly entitled ‘Warhammer Horror’. The editors were tight-lipped about other details, so we set out to investigate…

The Warhammer settings have always been dark and macabre places, filled with terrors and malign forces – daemons, dark sorcery, unquiet spirits, human sacrifice and monstrous gods. It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect setting for a horror series!

While it’s certainly true that many Black Library novels have included terrifying characters and foes, their focus has always been on the grand narratives and battles of those worlds, rather than the terrifying existence of simply inhabiting those settings. After all, it’s tricky for a story to be too terrifying when your lead protagonist literally Knows No Fear.

Warhammer Horror fills that niche. It’s a chance to explore the darker side of the Warhammer universe – and believe us, there’s plenty of dark to explore…

You may have seen the Warhammer Adventures line aimed at younger readers that we talked about recently. Warhammer Horror is a similar idea for a very different audience, a range of titles written for more mature readers that delves into the rich legacy of darkness and terror at the heart of the Warhammer universes. We spoke to the Black Library editors about the new range, and here’s what they had to say:

Warhammer Horror embraces the macabre and the disturbing, and will bring you tales of fantasy and the far future the likes of which you have never seen before.

There has always been horror at the heart of the worlds of Warhammer, from daemonic abominations to baleful magicks and alternate hellish realms; from spectral warriors to mutant alien monstrosities and the creeping dread that inhabits all mortal minds. Here, for the first time, these dark and forbidding overtures are brought to terrifying realisation in a new imprint that focuses wholly on stories that will scare and delight.

Warhammer Horror treads a path into unsettling and unnerving places, engaging with more mature themes that are not for the faint or tender of heart. Visceral, psychological, supernatural, we plan on delving deep into the underbelly of the Warhammer worlds, exploring what is truly frightening and then offering it up to you, dear reader… if you’re brave enough?

The Black Library team also gave us some tantalising hints about the titles that will launch the Warhammer Horror range when it premieres next spring.

First up is Maledictions, a horror anthology featuring stories from existing Black Library authors and new faces with a background in horror writing. Graham McNeill, Cassandra Khaw, Alec Worley and David Annandale are among the contributors, and stories will be set both in the cold vastness of the 41st Millennium and the magic-infused Mortal Realms.

Horror-based short stories have a long history, from spooky tales told around a campfire to the sinister works of Edgar Allan Poe and the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft – which had no small influence on the conception of the Chaos Gods in Warhammer. Maledictions will build upon this legacy of spine-chilling short fiction to tell tales that could only be Warhammer stories… but not like any we’ve told before.

Portmanteau pieces, which tie together stories from multiple narrators with a linking thread, are another staple of horror, both in written fiction and film – all the way back to Scheherazade’s tales of vengeance and monsters in the One Thousand and One Nights, in fact. The Wicked and the Damned is an example of just such a work, with some uniquely Warhammer 40,000 twists. On a misty cemetery world, three strangers are drawn together and tell uncanny tales of their narrow escapes from death… but in a universe of twisted reality and thirsting gods, can they trust even their own recollections? The three stories are written by Josh Reynolds, Phil Kelly and Ian St. Martin, and tie together in surprising and compelling ways in a classic horror format.

The third of the initial releases is a Warhammer 40,000 audio drama by Alec Worley, entitled Perdition’s Flame. A disgraced Vostroyan Firstborn in penal servitude, mentally scarred by the horrors he has seen, relates his tale in an atmospheric and blood-curdling story that draws on a tradition of audio horror, including radio plays and, more recently, popular podcasts that tell chilling stories in the audio format.

These initial releases will be quickly followed up by some classic Warhammer horror from the world-that-was. Way back in the mists of time, Jack Yeovil – a pen name for world-renowned horror expert and author Kim Newman – wrote the terrifying novel Drachenfels and a series of follow-ups based around the experiences of the vampire Genevieve.

Each of these four books will see re-release as part of the Warhammer Horror line, with brand new introductions by the author and, for the first time, Newman’s real name on the covers. If you’ve never read these novels and short story collections, or only dimly remember them from the distant past, you’re in for a real treat, as they delve into the grimness of life in the Old World and tap into the rich vein of dark horror running through that setting.

We’ll have more information about Warhammer Horror later in the year – including your first glimpse at the covers of the new titles. For now, we’ll leave you with some words from Josh Reynolds, one of the authors involved in the new range, and an ardent fan of horror.

Josh: I’ve always liked a good horror story, whether it’s on the screen or on the page. So, as you might imagine, I was pretty pleased to be invited to contribute to the new Warhammer Horror imprint. While I’ve written a good number of horror stories in my career, the chance to take settings as viscerally horrifying as these, and actually dig down deep into the guts of what makes them tick, was impossible to pass up. I was given the opportunity to pull back the curtain a bit and peer into the dark underbelly of both the Mortal Realms and the 41st Millennium, and see what nightmares I could shake loose…