If You Want a Job Doing... by George Mann

Author:George Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-08T08:48:28+00:00

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Awakenings Limited Edition

Astor Sabbathiel.

I imagine that for many of you picking up this book, it’ll be your first time meeting this clever, resilient and yet somewhat damaged inquisitor, but for me, Sabbathiel has been a part of my life for nearly six years.

The character was created for the Warhammer 40,000 comic book series I wrote for Titan Comics back in 2016/17, and grew out of conversations I was having with the estimable John French about the need for a more ‘human’ perspective in a story that was otherwise focused on the Dark Angels Space Marines. The story explores the machinations of one of the Fallen Dark Angels, who longs to expose the truth of his Chapter, but also the fallout of that secret conflict on the truth-seeking Sabbathiel, who eventually comes to believe (somewhat erroneously) that all Adeptus Astartes are traitors.

It’s not a position that works out well for her.

Sabbathiel’s appearance was devised by the remarkably talented artist Tazio Bettin (my partner in crime on the comic), and I may be misremembering, but I believe it was his early sketches that first suggested the pseudo-Elizabethan aesthetic that went on to become one of her defining characteristics, especially after we decided to give her a suit of artificer-crafted Terminator armour. (I love it when she goes full-on ‘warrior queen’.)

Sabbathiel’s adventures went on to run for thirteen issues of the comic - later collected into three trade paperbacks: Will of Iron, Revelations, Fallen - and she soon became a favourite of both ours and the readers. Indeed, her story grew to parallel that of Baltus, the main Dark Angels character, in both scale and scope. No longer was she a character prepared to sit on the sidelines of the story. No, Sabbathiel demanded attention.

At the end of the comic run, Sabbathiel is left for dead, shot by a Grey Knight for treachery (after consorting with a daemonhost bound in her ship), and lost in a massive warp storm that has con-sumed the entire Calaphrax System.

And there her story came to an end. At least for a while.

I always hoped I’d have the chance to return to Sabbathiel’s tale, and so a couple of years ago, when the fine folk at Black Library approached me to write a story for the latest incarnation of Inferno!, it seemed the perfect opportunity to migrate Sabbathiel from the pages of the comic to prose.

But where to pick up her story?

The last we’d seen her, she was close to death, and her entire retinue had been wiped out by the Dark Angels. Not only that, but a lot had happened in the Warhammer 40,000 setting since the comic ended, too. The Great Rift had opened and torn the galaxy asunder. Primarchs had awoken. The Indomitus Crusade had set sail across the stars. Time had moved on.

Somehow, though, Sabbathiel had to survive.

Thankfully, being lost in a warp storm can play havoc with time, and it seemed the correct thing to do to bring Sabbathiel right up to

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