Iron & Bone by James Swallow

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

James Swallow

London, August 2020

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Sisters of Battle Collection Limited Edition: Volume II

In the introduction to Faith & Fire, the companion volume to this book, I describe the qualities of the Adepta Sororitas that inspire me as an author, and the great power of the Sisters of Battle as narrative figures.

One of the greatest strengths of the Warhammer universes is that they have such a grand, epic and mythological scope to them, and I've often said that what we Black Library writers do in those universes is tell action-packed sci-fi stories in the manner of classic pulp fiction - but at the same time we are also reaching back to mirror the original heroic myths of ancient history, with timeless warrior-women characters such as Athena, Freya, Morrigan and Artemis serving as the inspiration behind the Sororitas.

But the spur for our Warhammer stories also grows out of the extant lore as well, and that is the point of origin for the narrative of Hammer & Anvil.

I'd originally conceived of the plotline for this novel to form the basis for my first Sisters of Battle book, but ultimately the editorial team decided that Faith & Fire's story should have the Sororitas facing off against rogue psykers and heretics rather than deadly xenos - so my plans for an epic battle pitting the Sisters against undying alien mechanoids was held back to form the spine of the tome you're now holding in your hands.

The genesis of Hammer & Anvil can be found in a single piece of colour text, a small side-bar segment of lore in the 3rd edition version of Codex: Necrons. The text is a fragment of a diary entry by one Canoness Sepherina, in which she recounts the arrival of an Adepta Sororitas mission to a ruined convent on the planet Sanctuary 101, which has been sent there to re-consecrate it after it has been destroyed by the deadly xenos species. When I first read that, I knew I had the opening moments of a Sisters of Battle novel.

As so often happens when writing in the grim future of Warhammer 40,000, it is the dangling threads of the tales left untold that entice us authors into wanting to follow up on them, and this time was no exception. Unbeknown to me, at the same time as I was developing the storyline for Hammer & Anvil, a new edition of the Necrons codex was being written, one that would greatly expand and revise the lore of that alien faction far beyond the scope of the 3rd Edition rules. In the end, we decided to hold back the publication of Hammer & Anvil so that I could get an early look at that new codex and be the first to include the next iteration of Necrons in a Black Library novel - and the book is all the stronger for it, introducing what in 2011 were new concepts and new threats from the realms of the Necrons for the Sisters to fight.

Hammer &

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