WARHAMMER HORROR: A NIGHTMARE COME TRUE

For those who have been fans of Games Workshop's tabletop wargaming multiverses, it's no great revelation that the -expansive, to say the least- mythologies accrued around them derive influences from so many sources, it would take several lifetimes to list them.
 
From the grim-dark, dystopian styles and settings of 2000AD to the artwork of H.R. Giger, from The Lord of the Rings to The Eternal Champion series, there are influences and touch-stones from throughout popular media, mythology, history and practically every source or tradition one might name (including Romantic poetry and Batman comics).
 
But perhaps one that is least remarked upon, despite its utter pervasiveness, is horror.
 
Horror in all of its glorious forms and manifestations has always been a key part of what makes Games Workshop's settings distinct.
 
At the company's original formulation of the classic Warhammer franchise, the now non-existent “Old World” (it experienced something of a metaphysical apocalypse a little while ago and now consists of various “realms” that aesthetially resemble Roger Dean prog-rock album covers) was comprised primarily of a Lord of the Rings style fantasy setting, flourished with darker, more surreal influences from the likes of Michael Moorcock and H.P. Lovecraft.
 
Whilst the world did (and still does, in a manner of speaking) contain the likes of elves and dwarves and others not a million miles away from J.R.R Tolkien's various Middle Earth denizens, it also incorporated numerous forms and styles of more horrific entities, from the undead legions of Nagash, the Great Sorcerer and demi-god of death itself, to the folk-lore and fairy-tale inspired Beastmen and Skaven (Rat-Men, essentially). The nature of the setting and of its wider metaphysics was to comprise numerous elements and smoosh them together into a great, heaving whole where players and hobbyists of various influence and intrigue could pick as and how they wanted to engage with it.
 
Even the fundamental metaphysics of that universe is one of Lovecraftian nihilism and cosmic hopelessness: beyond the bounds of waking reality lies The Realm of Chaos or the Warp; a state of utter abstraction, where thoughts, emotions and drives coalesce to form states of being and even entities, which we call variously daemons, angels and spirits. The most powerful and pervasive of those entities are the Four Great Powers of Chaos, beings of supremely divine scale and influence formed from the most fundamental drives of humanity and the other sentient races: Khorne, the lord of rage and violence, Tzeentch, the Great Schemer, master of change, revolution and intrigue, Nurgle, patron of despair and disease and -my personal favourite-, Slaanesh, the Prince of desire and pleasure, scion of sadism and delight.
 
These four entities and their servants underpin the true darkness of this reality, in that they are a threat to the souls and sanity of all that exist in it: whilst there are other gods and powers (Nagash himself was a mortal man who effectively cultivated his own ascension to a dark godhood to deny the Four Great Powers), they are often either too weak or ephemeral to prevail agains the Great Four or are merely adjuncts to or aspects of them, meaning that the metaphysics of this reallity is one of utter despair and abjection.
 
The raw, metaphysical horror of that situation (almost every soul in existence is ultimately condemned to Chaos, in some way, shape or form) is one that has been explored in the past, but rarely to any great degree. Likewise, the more horrific elements of forces like the various species of Undead that pervaded the Old World (and that now infest the Mortal Realms) have generally been passed over in favour of broader, more action-oriented tales of grand warfare that echo the table top miniatures wargames themselves.
 
With the destruction of the Old World and the establishment of the Mortal Realms, not only did Games Workshop take the opportunity to move the setting and its races away from their original influences, they have drawn upon an entirely new suite of inspirations to lend them more in the way of flare and originality.
 
Take the various stripes of Undead that now exist in the multiverse: originally, the Undead forces were the token “gothic horror” army, consisting of necromancers, raised skeletons and zombies, bats, wolves, spirits and vampires. Since that time, the force has split into various sub-factions, each of which has its own ethos and aesthetics, its own mythology and character:
 
Now, we have the various Legions of Nagash, which comprise forces formed entirely of raised skeletons and zombies, shambling hordes of classic Undead that resemble those that came before, but also the Night Haunts, entire armies of ghosts and spirits that draw aesthetic influence from sources as far flung as Edgar Allen Poe, the Dark Souls series of video games and even the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Disney's Fantasia. Counterpointed to them, we have the likes of the Flesh Eater Courts, a race of devolved and degenerate vampires that have become bestial, bat-like mockeries of their former nobility, cannibalistic hordes that live in cemetery wastelands and graveyard realms, feasting on the mouldering dead but believing themselves to be knightly houses and noble courts, their delusion in and of itself a peculiar form of horror.
 
The various forces of Chaos and its patrons have become even more densely characterised and distinct in this new setting, efforts being made to truly emphasise the variety of horror and disturbia they comprise: from the overt violence and mania of the Blades of Khorne to the far more subtle, conspiratorial Disciples of Tzeentch or the festering, “body-horror” grotesquery of the Maggotkin of Nurgle, the setting boasts so much potential for and so many shades of horror, it's truly a wonder that Games Workshop has not capitalised on this element of the background more sincerely before.
 
Then we have the fantasy setting's science fiction equivalent, Warhammer 40,000, a far-flung dystopia in which humanity has reached out from its birth-world of Earth (or “Terra,” as it is known here) only to find a universe of utter hostility; a condition infested with alien horrors and metaphysical threats, from the clearly Alien-inspired Tryanids and Genestealer Cults to the various forces of Chaos that simultaneously exist in this setting.
 
Argubaly even moreso than either Warhammer or its latter day incarnation, Age of Sigmar, Warhammer 40,000 has always had a more overtly dark, dystopian tone and exhibited its horrific influences far more freely:
 
The various forces of humanity are presented in no great flattering light here: the empire of humanity, known as “The Imperium of Man,” is a sprawling, theocratic dystopia in which the worth of an individual human being or even an individual world of human beings is meaningless: in which humanity itself is a resource to be lobotomised, surgically cultivated to its proscribed purpose and expended. Here, the empire of humanity is an impossible to organise, sprawling, byzantine nightmare in which individuals are granted the power to enact genocide on a whim, in which insitituions are given license to apprehend, torture, mutilate and murder as and how they will it in the name of the so-called “God-Emperor of Mankind,” in which science and technology have devolved to matters of superstition, being regarded as almost supernatural phenomena, technology taking on the quality of magic or miracles.
 
This is before we even get into matters such as the influence of Chaos, which warps the minds and bodies of its adherents into impossible, heaving nightmares of Cronenbergian abomination, the Genestealer Cults, the products of parasitic aliens that implant human beings with their own genetic material, resulting in the birth of human-alien hybrids that can infest and consume entire worlds, the alien Drukhari, a sub-set of the Aeldari race (essentially elves in space) that have created entire cultures and mythologies around the most exquisite sadism and atrocity.
 
The Warhammer 40,000 (or 40K, as it's more popularly known) universe is arguably even more ripe for the exploration of horror than The Age of Sigmar, being not only a setting pervaded by it but founded upon it: there is no hope in this universe, only desperation, madness and violence.
 
Recent examples of the fiction published by Games Workshop's own publishing house, The Black Library, have explored these factors in surprising detail, especially the much-lauded Horus Heresy series, which explores what is arguably the key event upon which the universe is founded and boasts influences as diverse as Phillip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, William Blake and Clive Barker.
 
However, it wasn't until very recently that the publishing house announced something of a grand experiment: a more “adult” toned sub-set of its publications aimed specifically at exploring the darker, more horror-based elements of the gaming universes:
 
Beginning with a trial run of three titles (Maledictions, The Wicked and the Damned and Perdition's Flame), the sub-set promises to engage fans who prefer the darker, more grizzly and conspicuous aspects of the settings, as well as opening up the fiction to potential new audiences.
 
The series already has some interesting names attached both as authors and readers of the material: no less than Doug Bradley himself, that many of you may recognise as the original “Pinhead” Cenobite from Clive Barker's Hellraiser, has already been announced as one of the audio-drama readers for the series, along with many more to come.
 
For my part, as a lifelong fan of both horror and Games Workshop, this is potentially a nightmare come true:
 
I have always, always been massively attracted to and inspired the setting's potential for far darker stories, tales of encroaching insanity, spiritual corruption, degradation of the flesh, the form, the mind. It has always been there, often skirted over in favour of more “comic book” style, action or combat-oriented stories, but always there, seething beneath the surface.
 
My sincere hope is that this allows some cross-pollination between demographics that I consider myself part of: that the new works and their sub-culture will draw in fans and audiences from horror circles just as it will allow fans of GW's more fantasy-based fiction to expand into new contexts.
 
The Black Library itself has been slowly edging towards this level of expansion for some years now, testing the elasticity of its central mythologies and determining how much fans are willing to accept in terms of deviation from tradition.
 
Now it has the potential to explore some decidedly dark and deviant avenues, as it has to some degree in the past (who can forget the toe-curling, incipient insanity of the Liber Chaotica books?).
 
My sincere hope is that they go for jugular: I want to see gothic horror involving vampires and zombies and the vile experiments of necromancers. I want to see surreal flights of Lovecraftian metaphysics as mortals make contact with the gods and daemons beyond. I want to see folk-loric horror as farming and woodland villages are raided by the very twisted beasts they tell their children tales of to keep them from straying into the woods. I want to see every stripe of dystopian despair, the horror of being ripped from one's life, ritually tormented, surgically altered, to lose oneself to the proscribed purposes of an uncaring, totalitarian civilisation. I want to see Cronenbergian body horror as alien cells activate within the bodies of unsuspecting, down-trodden civilians, as they twist and blossom and erupt into new and unlikely forms. I want to appreciate the exquisite sadisms within the bowels of the Drukhari city of Comorragh, where every waking or dreaming moment is one of the most obscene excruciation.
 
The potential here cannot be overstated. If GW play this right, they could draw in fans from far and wide, expanding the appeal of the hobbies they preside over exponentially. If, indeed, this new direction is designed to explore more adult-oriented factors of the gaming mythologies, there's no telling just how deep or distressing they could get.
 
I, for one, sincerely look forward to finding out.
 
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