The Kroot are expert jungle-fighters and trackers, who can be found fighting across the Ultima Segmentum and beyond. The majority of the Kroot warriors fight as mercenaries in the armies of the Tau. Their integration into the Tau Empire requires them to provide troops to the Tau military, and furthermore attempts to prohibit them from fighting alongside the armies of other races.Kroot evolution depends on their absorbing the genetic traits of other races, selectively inheriting the most desirable. They do this through eating specific prey animals to ensure that the next generation take on certain characteristics, the Tau insistence that the Kroot fight exclusively for them would lead to a disastrous stagnation, as they have absorbed the traits of most of the creatures from within the Tau region. To collect as wide a range of characteristics as possible, they secretly despatch entire armies of mercenaries to fight alongside other races in order to expose themselves to creatures and environments not found in Tau space.The result is that each of these mercenary bands develops separately to the mainstream of Kroot society. When they periodically return to the Kroot home world of Pech, they bring with them a wealth of new traits to be absorbed by the race at large. These itinerant bands often appear radically different from the standard Kroot, having absorbed all manner of outlandish genetic data.
If you feel like using the Kroot in 5th edition this is an updated Codex that I have worked on.
Feel free to comment
Hi all,
Another exclusive for us here at the Gaming Kingdom we managed to get an interview with author Graham McNeill. So without beating around the bush for too long, lets get right to the interview.
KS: Hi, Graham and thanks for answering a few questions for us. So a stock question to start us off, do you remember what it was that attracted you to the Wargaming hobby and do you have a preferred system/background?
GM: I first got into the hobby via the old ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, and I still have my battered copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain on my shelves to remind me. I collected and played all of them, before graduating to role-playing, where I spent altogether far too much time developing worlds and characters and plots. My players never got to see or interact with a lot of these, but they made the world seem more real to me and, by extension, them. As the adventures I wrote became more ambitious in their scale I needed a system of rules to allow us to fight mass battles. A brief flirtation with the AD&D Battlesystem soon led me to Warhammer and 40K…and the rest is history, I fell in love with the darkness of the background and the scale of the games, and played them every weekend with my mates, writing campaigns, new rules, new characters and all manner of ‘between-game’ stories. I love both backgrounds, since they’ve developed into such rich and varied worlds. I prefer reading 40K fiction, but writing Warhammer fiction. Odd, I know, but that’s the way it goes.
KS: Do you still make time for role-playing and gaming and what are you favorite armies/systems and are you working on anything hobby related at the moment?
GM: Very much so. Every Wednesday the guys gather round my house for a spot of role-playing. We’ve been playing for the last eight years and have ventured into the realms of Cthulhu, Serenity and WFRP. Currently we’re playing through an AD&D campaign, which is proving to be great fun. On the Wargaming front, I don’t play as much as I’d like to, but every now and then I dust off the Empire or Space Marine models for some dice rolling.
KS: What part of working for GW did you enjoy the most and is there any project that you are most proud of other than your Black Library Books?
GM: I enjoyed all the work I did for GW, but the project I was most proud of was the Witch Hunters book I did with Andy Hoare. At the time, we felt that 40K had drifted into an arena where it had lost some of its gothic madness and after the Daemonhunters book I did with Phil Kelly and Andy Chambers, these books put that insanity back, front and centre. We got to come up with some really cool concepts, got some great miniatures for the project and I’m very proud of what Andy and I did with that book. Oh, and the Black Templars…and the Empire…and so on.
KS: The Horus Heresy books have been a big success, how did they come about and was it always planned to keep them running?
GM: Yeah, they’ve been amazing, and we’ve been blown away by how much people have gotten into them. Doing Heresy books was something that had been talked about for a long time, but I’m glad it’s taken us this long to do it, as I don’t think we were ready to do them before now – certainly I wasn’t. Basically, a whole host of us BL writers got together with the editors and GW background guru, Alan Merrett, to talk about what was involved; the history, the characters, the themes and, most importantly, what differentiated a book set in HH times from one in the Age of the Imperium. That last part was, for me, the most important facet of what we were going to be writing, because these novels should read as completely different types of book from a regular 40K story. They shouldn’t just be 40K books with different names, they should read and feel like something totally different. As to how many books there will be in the end, the answer is that there will be as many as we think are needed and as many as people want to keep reading. As long as there are ideas and stories to tell, we’ll keep telling them.
KS: As you entered the Heresy series with book two, what was it like taking over the reins of characters rather than working on ones you had created yourself?
GM: It was a challenge, that’s for sure, but one that turned out to be a real pleasure. Continuing a series kicked off by Dan Abnett was always going to be hard work, but continuing it after such an awesome novel as Horus Rising, was the biggest test and honour of my career. I read the manuscript of Horus Rising over and over to make sure the characters and plot was etched in my brain before starting. What made it easier for me was that Dan had crafted such well-rounded characters that it was easy to get a handle on them and get them to walk and talk the way they did in the first book. Dan and I were in communication with each other all the time during the writing of these books, zipping ideas back and forth to make sure the two books really gelled. I think you can really tell there was a lot of care put in them and it’s something that’s been commented on by the fans, so that’s very gratifying.
KS: On to the next book in the series Mechanicum, what’s it about and where does it fit in the series?
GM: Mechanicum starts slightly before the Istvaan massacre and covers the fall of the priests of Mars to Chaos and sheds light on what was going on in the minds of the Adepts, Titan Legions and Knight Households while the galaxy was tearing itself apart. One of the maxims we have with HH books is to always bring something new to the table and to always try and show people something they didn’t know or turn something they thought they knew on its head. The novel follows the exploits of a number of characters, but the central one is Dalia Cythera, a lowly transcriber from Terra who gets caught up in events that will have far-reaching consequences for the galaxy at large and which have their origins in the far past of Old Earth…
KS: I hear on the grapevine that you tried to keep Space Marines to a supporting role only in this book. Was this a conscious decision or just something that happened while you were writing?
GM: It was something that evolved in the writing. Originally, the Space Marines were going to be much more prominent characters, but as the story came to life, I realized that I was drifting from the point of the book, and that was the Mechanicum. It wasn’t the Space Marines’ story and I cut back their scenes, though I still gave them some screen time, as they do play a part in the final fall of Mars. The more I cut them away, the happier I felt, as it meant I was staying ‘on-message’.
KS: I know that Dan Abnett was really pleased that he got to uncover some big secrets in Legion, have you got any planned for us in Mechanicum?
GM: Hell, yeah. I can’t really say what they are without giving it all away, but I think there’s going to be plenty of fodder for the conspiracy theorists out there.
KS: What about your Ultramarines Series, Uriel Ventris is back and The Killing Ground is in my pile of books waiting to be read (so don’t spoil it for me) but do I have more of the same to look forward to or do you have a new direction planned for him?
GM: After Dead Sky, Black Sun I had my characters in a place that needed some real planning to get them out of without the readers being cheated. The Killing Ground is the characters’ odyssey home and it gets them back in a way that I felt dealt with the circumstances of their return in a way that was exciting, interesting and, most of all, fair. I mean that in the sense of feeling right. Think of the scene in Stephen King’s novel, Misery, when Paul Sheldon writes the first scenes of Misery Returns for Annie and she is raging that it’s not fair, because it ‘cheats’ in relation to what went before. Well, I didn’t want that, so I put a lot of thought into how to get my boys home in a way that would prevent me from being hobbled by an angry fan. The next book, Courage and Honour, is halfway done and is a much more back-to-basics story, with Space Marines doing what the do best. It’s a step up in scale for the Ultramarines again, since the last two books have just had Uriel and Pasanius as main characters. This book has a full company at war and the next one will be even bigger!
KS: On the Sigmar trilogy, I really enjoyed reading the first book and can’t wait for the second. One thing that struck me about it was that it felt a lot more mature, in a similar vain to the Ambassador Books. It still has the grand battles that Black Library books are all about but there is a lot of depth to the characters and the emotion of the moments really come through. Was this something that you went in to the book planning to do?
GM: Absolutely. I never write for gamers, I write for readers, and I’d never write a book I wouldn’t want to read myself. If all I want are battles, I’ll play a game of 40K. A story’s not worth reading if there’s no depth to the characters and I always try and write each novel as though the game doesn’t exist. I avoid anything that breaks the illusion of the novel’s events not being ‘real’, say by referring to a unit type (that isn’t an in-world name) or a piece of terminology that could only be known by a player. It’s the emotions of the characters that keep you reading a book and that’s paramount when it comes to telling a gripping story. If you don’t care about the characters, then what does it matter if they live or die, win or lose?
KS: Do you have any other things that you are working away on? What else is there for us to look forward to?
GM: On the novels front, after Courage and Honour, I’ll be moving on to the second of the Sigmar trilogy, which will be called Empire. I can’t wait to get to this one, as it has lots of big battles, some really nice character moments and some stories of Sigmar that we’re not so familiar with. After that, it’ll be onto the concluding part of Defenders of Ulthuan. My first Starcraft novel, I, Mengsk is out in January. What else… oh, yeah, Fire and Honour issue 2 is out just now and we’re looking at the pencils for a four-part Ultramarines comic strip. So, lots to look forward to!
KS: Space Hulk or Hero Quest?
GM: Space Hulk, simply because you can’t beat the idea of Terminators in a haunted house.
KS: Lord of the Rings Trilogy or Band of Brothers?
GM: It has to be Lord of the Rings. I could watch those movies over and over again and never get tired of them. Everything about them came together in an amazing way to craft something incredible, the likes of which I doubt we’ll see again in movies for a long, long time.
KS: The Emperor or Horus?
GM: That’s a tough one. Before embarking on the HH books, I’d have said The Emperor, but having read and written Horus, I have much more sympathy for him and now feel the tragedy of what happened to him. The more we write of the Emperor, the more we see what a ruthless bastard he really was. And though it may damn the galaxy to oblivion, I’d side with Horus, simply because it looks as he and his lads are having the most fun. For now, anyway…
Well that’s all the questions I had for Graham and I would like to thank him again for answering them for us. If you want to find out more about his books and what he is working on you can check out his website at www.graham-mcneill.com
Feel free to comment
Kris
Hi all,
We have something of a first for our fledgling website today, an exclusive interview with Gav Thorpe. For those of you who don’t know Gav was a long time employee for Games Workshop and has been involved in many projects over the years. He has recently left GW to pursue other things but he took the time out to answer some questions for us. Anyway on to the interview.
Hi Gav and thanks for answering a few questions for us. So to start us off, do you remember what it was that attracted you to the games workshop hobby and do you have a preferred system/background?
I dabbled in toy soldiers from about the age of eight or nine, making up some rules with friends for our Airfix models. Then my grandparents gave Dungeons and Dragons to my brother and me for Christmas, and through that found out that my older cousin was into role-playing too. I visited him usually once a week and found his growing collection of early Citadel miniatures. He had Warhammer (2nd edition) and it grew from there.
When I went to secondary school I made another friend, Danny, who was also into this stuff and we became regular gaming buddies for the next six years. Our main game was Epic - Adeptus Titanicus and then the two editions of Space Marine. We also played quite a bit of 40K. At the same time I managed to get some other friends into Blood Bowl (through our mutual addiction to American Football, which was very new and exciting in the UK at the time).
I’ve always liked Epic scale since those earliest days and Blood Bowl (3rd edition? The one that introduced blocking dice) is one of the best game systems around. That said, I haven’t had an Epic army for about eight years now. However, I met Danny a few weeks back for the first time in many years and hopefully we’ll start gaming again, so who knows?
Well if you do start playing Epic again you will have to give me a shout, as I never seem to be able to get a game in the club. That said some of the gamers at our club are dipping their feet in to other game systems, do you play any non GW games or which do you find most interesting?
I’ve always had an interest in other games and miniatures, from a professional as well as personal standpoint. I used to play the Rapid Fire WWII rules, and I’ve played a few other historical rule sets, but I’ve never had the time or inclination to expand into other sci-fi or fantasy games. For me, gaming is a large part about socialising, so the actual rules system being used isn’t a huge factor. Recently I’ve been drawn more towards writing my own rules for games I want to play, just as I used to do before I joined GW. After so many years being a ‘professional hobbyist’ I need to find my own angle again, rediscovering my likes and dislikes. I’m slowly getting back to the stage where toy soldiers are my own thing again, and at the moment that means not worrying about other people’s rules systems.
I had an eye-opening experience recently, concerning Flames of War. It’s nothing to do with the games system itself, but simply the sheer size of the most popular games out there. I was looking at all of these army lists and supplements and thinking ‘where the hell do you start?’
I have to say, I was exactly the same when it came to starting Flames of War a few weeks ago, I was looking at all of the different briefing books and was like so which one is for what again? Luckily we just picked a theatre and all went from there. It does remind me of being at school a little though; I can’t help but want to do an allied army as I know that they win! I do sometimes worry myself that I know more about the history of the 40K universes than our own though.
That's sounds like a good way to approach it. It's like measuring a circle, you just pick somewhere to start and get going. You get the same sense from people starting out with GW games - what army should I collect? What should I have in my army? That has to be a natural process, exploring the game and the history (or background) and finding what appeals.
Going from a position of knowing Warhammer and 40K very intimately to one of almost utter ignorance was very sobering. Jervis got criticism from some quarters for talking about his son Jack’s experiences in his Standard Bearer column, but I have some sympathy for Jerv’s attitude. Looking at that wall of information can be hugely daunting for those just starting out, even if they’re not newcomers to gaming in general.
In the time it would take me to have a good knowledge of another big games system, I could write my own! At the moment it seems more natural for me to design a rules system that gives me exactly what I want from a game than go hunting around for one that comes close. I’m sure that will change over time.
Which parts of working for GW did you enjoy the most; rules dev, White Dwarf, writing novels?
The novels were never part of the day job; they were freelance projects in my own time (and now full time!). White Dwarf was very exciting, but also lots of hard work with many weekends spent working, especially when we moved over to ‘Fat Dwarf’. Games Dev is the most fun overall, as you get to play in lots of different sandpits – rules, background, hobby articles, range planning, talking to artists and miniatures designers. Some of the best memories are from when projects were just starting up, and especially with totally new subjects like Inquisitor or a new army such as Ogres – or even a big revamp of an army like Bretonnians and Wood Elves. We would have great chats with the artists and designers about what was possible and it was a very creative atmosphere. Working with such talented people is very rewarding and it’s those opportunities that I’ll miss the most. Running around on deadline day getting corrections inputted, checking photography, getting approvals and all that are things I won’t miss!
On the subject of White Dwarf, I remember reading your old tactics columns and was pleased that they got a run out in the more recent issues. For someone with so much sound tactical advice you did seem to lose a lot of Battle Reports.
Always better in theory than practice! There are two factors that differentiate my tactical acumen and my actual ability on the tabletop. One is concentration. Often I start with a great plan but get sidetracked by events or over-excited and the plan goes out of the window. The other is attention to detail. I always take a holistic view of army choice, which means that if left to my own devices I sometimes miss clever tricks and tactics that others might see. I always found the input of play testers invaluable in this area, spotting potential loopholes or wicked combos for me. In management jargon, I’m not a completer-finisher!
What are you working on at the moment; the last time we chatted there was talk of the Dwarfs being shelved and a possible Dark Elves army being started?
Like many people I usually talk big when it comes to new armies but rarely ever get started. When I do find myself getting back into playing Warhammer the Dark Elves are the way to go. Although that might just be the residual enthusiasm I have after every project – the last thing or the next thing is the most exciting thing ever so I never actually settle down before something even cooler comes along!
In relation to what I was saying earlier, I’ve been working on a card-based modern combat system and I’m currently building a board and buildings representative of downtown Mogadishu. The American Special Forces and Somali militia miniatures are in the post (I hope!).
Sounds cool, I can almost hear the cry of ‘We have a Black Hawk down!’ already. One of the things I think would be hard to represent in a modern combat game is the tactical aspects of suppressive fire and convincing people that missions and tactics rather than killing the opposition force is the way to go?
The system is all about momentum and command - casualties are relatively low and the greatest effect from shooting is the suppression of squads and the deterioration of command and control. I haven't tried it out yet, so it could be complete bobbins, but I think the system captures the right feel of modern urban combat and doesn't try to be a strict simulation. The other part is the missions, which I haven't started yet.
Speaking of new rules and the like, I have recently been working on an update of the Kroot Codex for 5th Ed for my own use, whilst I am supposed to be helping a friend to develop a WW2 Air Combat rule set based loosely on AI for a game we plan on running at next year’s RAF Leuchars’s Air Show. I am often surprised by the questions on forums about how legal a rule set is or how you can no longer use such a thing. That said one of the busiest times at the club last year was when I was running a Necromunda Campaign when I just made up rules and handed out new scenarios on the night for people to play.
The question of 'legality' only applies in particular circumstances - tournaments. Even in pick-up games at a store or club I would encourage players to be imaginative and inclusive rather than not. I once wrote a 'Last Rant' for Fanatic Magazine about trying out new things. The short version: Why not try out new (or old!) things? All you have to lose is a game of soldiers. The potential for a new gaming experience, a new gaming buddy far outweighs a win/ loss record.
I was lucky enough to get Angels of Darkness when it first came out, you must be pleased that it has gotten a new print run, and do you have any fond memories of writing the book?
I’m very pleased it’s been given another outing, and if the numbers of new copies I signed at Games Day are any measure it’s proving just as popular second time around. Writing Angels of Darkness was great, and at the time was an opportunity to do something very different. I’m indebted to Lindsey and the rest of BL, and others, for indulging my strange story structure and allowing me to play around with some different ideas.
Getting to put some mystery and intrigue back into the Dark Angels was something I’d wanted to do for a while and the novel gave me the chance. It was fun to see how twisted I could make the Dark Angels, to really take the idea of secrecy and self-serving agenda further than people realised.
What wasn’t fun was a computer crash that meant I had to re-write 30,000 odd words that were lost the weekend before deadline. Except for going in to work, I did nothing but write over the weekend and evenings for nine days straight to get it all back on the page. Luckily most of it was still in my head so it wasn’t as difficult as it might sound.
Again on Angels of Darkness, even before the new print run there the book was always quoted as a must read for any Dark Angel player. You must have a giggle to yourself every time the debate starts up on the internet forums about Astelan’s revelations in the book. Did you ever expect it to have such far reaching consequences?
I hoped that it would cause debate, but the level and intensity is unexpected but very gratifying. As I point out in the Author’s Afterword in the new version, I wanted the Dark Angels to be a subject of argument and speculation again, and I guess that I succeeded. People try to get me to admit that one side or the other is the truth, but the real truth is that I didn’t take sides while I was writing, so there is no definitive answer – just as 40K should be.
I agree, if you came out and gave a judgment on it I think the book would lose something. Part of the joy of the Games Workshop hobby, for me anyway is picking a side of the fence to sit on and the inevitable debates that that leads too.
That’s the biggest draw of miniatures gaming in general (and role-plays games too) - the ability to get involved in the story in a way you can't with computer games and the mainstream universes. I don't just mean debating the motives of the Emperor or whether Orks' guns would really work, I mean expanding your own part of the universe. There's an iteration of the Warhammer world and the 40K universe for every hobbyist. You can invent a Craftworld or a Skaven stronghold and in your version of the background it exists just as much as anything created from the Studio.
I am currently working on a Dark Elf army inspired by the Dark Elves in Ramon E. Feist’s books. I was wondering if you had any favourite fantasy/Sci-Fi series that inspired you.
I read most of the genre ‘classics’ during my pre-teen and teenage years: The Lord of the Rings, Conan, Lovecraft, Guy Gavriel Kay, Asimov, Narnia, Gormenghast. I also picked up Larry Niven, Alan Dean Foster, Hugh Cook, William Gibson, David Gemmell, Terry Pratchett, C. J. Cherryh, Dune, Iain M. Banks and others. I had a penchant for horror – James Herbert and Stephen King – and a fondness for Hornblower and Ramage as part of a general interest in naval war of the Napoleonic period. I’ve since added Fritz Leiber, China Mieville, Tom Holt, Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe, H. G Wells and nineteenth century gothic and horror literature to the list, amongst many other authors and titles. I can’t say if any single author has been my primary influence, though I’m definitely drawn more towards the European side of the Atlantic than the American. I prefer dragons eating princesses more than princesses falling in love with dragons.
I find ‘real life’ more directly inspirational than fiction. That includes history, myths, ancient legends, folk tales and such. These are a kind of first hand source for me, rather than the ideas that have already gone through someone else’s brain. I like to take those ‘real’ things, mash ‘em up, add some different things and see what comes out.
Care to give us any inside info on what you are up to. Any new book and the like for us to watch out for?
What I’ve been working on most recently isn’t public knowledge yet, so I can’t really talk about it. I have short stories in Heroes of the Space Marines and Tales of the Heresy (featuring everyone’s ‘favourite’ Dark Angel). I am about to start on Alith Anar, the second book in the Sundering series and I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been discussing the possibility of an Eldar trilogy with Black Library though that’s not confirmed as yet. Other than that, I’ve been making some time to work on my own stuff. I’ve started three fantasy novels, one of which I am now concentrating on to hopefully get finished by the end of the year.
Space Hulk or Hero Quest?
Space Hulk (first edition, on its own, no supplements or anything). Great game. I’ve never played Hero Quest, it just sort of passed me by, though I did play a bit of Advanced Hero Quest.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy or Band of Brothers?
Can’t I have both? Two very different but equally cool works. I have, and will do again no doubt, spent entire weekends dedicated to one or the other.
The Emperor or Horus?
Horus. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
That pretty much wraps it up for today but if you want to find out more about Gav and what he is up to you can check out his website at http://www.mechanicalhamster.wordpress.com/
Feel free to comment
Kris
