Hi all,
We are looking at the end of the Arks of Omen saga and how this might impact the lore for 10th. As you might expect there are a lot of spoilers ahead so read at your own risk.
Arks of Omen Finale
The last Arks of Omen book begins with the Dark Angels gathering their attendant chapters, and the Unforgiven, to avenge Vashtorr’s attack on the Rock. When they arrive at the Chaos base, they discover that Vashtorr has rebuilt Caliban and stitched it together using sorcerous magics. They attack the main palace only to see that it was a trap. Shortly after arriving, Angron is summoned and starts to lay waste to the assault force. With things looking grim, the Dark Angels are buoyed by the arrival of Dante and the Blood Angels who help turn the tide, although Dante is badly injured by Angron. As Angron is about to finish off the Blood Angels commander, the Lion appears and saves him, before banishing Angron back to the warp.
While all this has been going on, Vashtorr infiltrated the Rock and manage to steal the Tuchulcha Engine. This is a weird warp device that is sentient (it helps to read some of the Horus Heresy novels which introduce it.) The Dark Angels had hidden this device for years after using it to defeat the Night Lords at Thramos during the heresy. With this last key, Vashtorr was able to awaken his Dissonance Engine and transport the planet into the warp. While the Dark Angels had evacuated the planet, and destroyed an Ark of Omen, this leaves Abaddon and the forces of Chaos with a solid “W”. This device allows Vashtorr to access certain parts of the Webway although we don’t know for certain what he is looking for, only that he now has the key.
Prospects for 10th
With all this chaos combat you would expect them to be the big baddies in the 10th ed box, not another Xenos race. However, GW might be trying to shift the focus for now to the other art of the galaxy and adding in more details later. It wouldn’t surprise me to see them revisit this story after all armies have their codexes or in a narrative campaign book. With the Lion back we now have a primarch on each side of the Cicatrix Maledictum. It’s also interesting that it’s another edition that ends with Chaos getting a win (the other being the sift from 7th to 8th). We saw GW roll back a lot of the lore going from 8th to 9th setting the story back a few hundred years, so who knows how they will advance the story in 10th.
The Arks of Omen have mainly introduced new characters but we have gotten some updates for older ones. Snikrot’s and Farsights stories seem like an odd addition as they don’t tie in that directly to the other books. Heck Snikrot never shows up (or is just so well hidden we never notice him!). There are some hints that Farsight might be at risk of chaos corruption, but these are a little immaterial so there isn’t much more to say.
All in all, the story was pretty good with some big moments for each side. I will be curious how they adapt this story moving forward as the Chaos pantheon has more independent actors now which shakes things up. As we shift to the other side of the galaxy, I wonder if we will get more story participation from other Xenos factions as well?
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