WH40K: “Kal Jerico, Sinner's Bounty” (part eighteen)

In the home stretch! Let's finish this.

Chapter 36: Underhive Rules​

Wart and her counselors are panicking, as things have suddenly gone from very right to very wrong. Their dire bats have gone mad, shaking off their own riders and then attacking the axechuck-wielders below. Can Amenute frenzy that many animals at once? Maybe the Black Sump-led coalition has some lower level psykers that are helping her or something. Speak of the devil, just as Wart is on the brink of strangling Tud for not being able to help her get her shit together, Amenute climbs out of a pipe entrance and makes her presence known.

More ratskin climb up from all around. Apparently, Wart's forces are in such forward deployment dealing with the explosion of the war rig and the ongoing attack against Perdition that her own camp is nearly undefended, and the madness of the dire bats has knocked out her own method of fast transport and communication with the front lines.

Amenute tells Wart that this dome is now Shadowroot territory again. Now, and forever. There is not going to be any oath of fealty to her from the local ratskin; instead, they are unilaterally taking back their territory. She's sparing Wart's life because she killed so many Cawdor for her, but she's still expected every single last axchuck to be cleared out of here by the time the embers of Perdition have gone out. Wart reluctantly withdraws. Her grand mutant alliance is broken, but she thinks she can rebuild it. Eventually. Maybe.

As she withdraws with her entourage, something weird descends from above. Winged, semi-humanoid, and many-limbed, covered in strange markings and runes. It tears her bodyguards apart, then grabs her and Tud and holds them up by the necks. Out from behind a convenient piece of debris steps Kelwin, that weirdo who's been nagging her about all the weapons his organization lent her. He has another winged monster-thing standing by his side; apparently, these were the two hulking, hooded, cloaked bodyguards he had with him before. Anyway, these things sound less like your typical underhive mutants and more like warp demon shenanigans.

Kelwin says that he doesn't like having to do this, but he needs to make an example of the two of them. The demon starts to strangle them, but...then a severed axechuck flies out of the darkness and cuts the monster down. It's Slabscale. Who survived a point blank plasma gun shot. And lay unconscious on a burning promenade full of rampaging monsters for however long it took him to regenerate from that. And then somehow made it back to Wart's camp, through the gun fights, the maddened dire bats, and the kraken that was in the process of eating the docks at the time he would have been recovering on them.

Come on Tzeench, you're normally subtler than this.

Slabscale fends off the two demons or whatever, and Kelwin escapes, because this is a comic book and no one important can actually die. Cut back to the bounty hunters.

Kal and Beatram's group meet up with the others back at what's left of Perdition. The mutants have withdrawn, and the surviving Cawdor and hangers-on are putting out fires and trying to salvage what they can of the citadel. The hunters wonder aloud how long Perdition can last, after this decimation. How much the larger Cawdor organization will commit to rebuilding and reinforcing it, given the proven resource sink. How many of its own people will be willing to stay, after the loss of Zoom's magnetic personality. I don't think any of them yet realize that Amenute isn't going to give them time to rebuild. Or, if she does, it'll be as vassals of the Neo-Shadowroot Confederation. Anyway, with Zoom gone and the siege lifted, all that's left as far as the bounty hunters are concerned is the matter of the Golden Sack.

They wander back into the central temple, where the remaining Cawdor priests are seeing to the many wounded. Also here is one of the two Goliath stooges who Beatram sent to sneak after Belladonna, laying on his back and pinned by Wotan. Apparently, he'd been stealthily on her trail before the cyberdog suddenly jumped him and has been holding him down ever since. I guess that Bane-wannabe finally used his hacking for more than just spying on Team Jerico.

Anyway, Kal is way the hell more suspicious of his cyberdog now; he already suspected that Wotan had been glitched ever since that latest overhaul, but this seems a little too purposeful to be just that. For now, at least, while Beatram is sure that Kal had Wotan do this on purpose, no one besides them and the Goliaths really cares. Rather, the other bounty hunters are all just annoyed at Kal and Beatram for not managing to recover any of Zoom's remains from the war rig explosion, which of course they both try to blame on each other. Which is reasonable; none of the others have reason to care about the other stuff.

Of great concern to those who know about it, however, is the location of the Golden Sack. From a reader's birds' eye perspective, it's pretty clear that Belladonna took it, or at least tried to. Though if she did, it's not at all clear how she plans to make it back to Wannabe-Bane or whoever else she might be working for on her own, through the bitter and chaotic remnants of Wart's army as they spread back out across the area.

Well, for now at least, the lot of them need some rest. Kal proposes drinks, assuming Perdition has any that didn't get ruined in the shelling and fire. Unspoken for now is the fact that Scabs hasn't returned yet. Kal has little way of knowing that Amenute and her forces are the ones responsible for driving off the mutants, given that she'd told him to expect a much longer wait. So, he's probably going to want to stay here a while to give Scabs time to make it back as well as wind down after that taxing battle. The other bounty hunters, now that they don't have a target to compete over and have just had each other's backs in battle, are much more relaxed around each other at this point, and everyone agrees that drinks would be great.

That's when Goethe bursts into the room and holds his guns on the lot of them, catching them off guard. I...don't think this is going to end well for him, even if he timed his entrance really well, but I guess I admire the audacity if not the stupidity.

Goethe announces that with Zoom dead, Perdition is now his own diocese. And, he knows that at least several of the bounty hunters - Jerico in particular, due to his background - have bounties on themselves. Also, Gor is a cow, so he needs to die or whatever. Beatram whines about how it's not fair, this is what HE was planning to do, minus the cow-lynching. Goethe just tells him to shut up before he decides that keeping him alive long enough to hand him over to one of his own many enemies isn't worth the annoyance. As Goethe speaks, more and more Cawdor either enter the room to back him up, or pull themselves away from the wounded they'd been tending to and draw weapons.

Yeah, these people are dumb.

Well, before the stupid Cawdor can get themselves blown up in a zany trick by Kal or Beatram, or distracted by a suicidal berserker rush from Yolanda or Gor that lets the others get the upper hand, a dire bat flies in through one of the broken upper windows. On its back are Amenute and Scabs. I kind of expected either them or Belladonna to break the standoff, honestly, as otherwise one of the overpriced plastic toys would probably have to get broken in the escape. Everyone backs away from the new arrival, which means the bounty hunters are no longer at gun point and have time to draw. The ratskin dismount, and Kal and Scabs have this amusing little exchange.


Scabs: What happened here?

Kal: The usual.

Scabs: Oof. That bad?


I did chuckle there, I'll admit.

Goethe recognizes Amenute from that time he put her in a cage, and demands to know what she's doing here. Amenute just shrugs him off, and says that he - as the new leader of Perdition - owes her for saving the place from Wart. Her payment will, of course, be the Perdition dome and its immediate surroundings. If they pay what they owe her, she will generously allow them to leave with their lives. She has the bunch of other dire bats circling around the fane all scream in unison, and a few show themselves in the windows. They've got well-armed riders of their own, now. Ratskin seem to have as much of a bat-riding tradition as the mutants, even without Amenute's animal telepathy, and the fallen Cawdor and mutant fighters around the dome have left plenty of guns for them to scavenge.

Goethe, hilariously, turns to the bounty hunters who he had just tried to betray and asks them how much it will cost to hire them. Unanimously, they tell him that they are not accepting new contracts at this time. This is probably the funniest passage of the entire book, honestly. Moreso than even the early chapter where everyone was pissed off at Scabs for not being grimdark enough.

Goethe refuses to lower his weapons from Amenute, so Kal steps up behind him and beats him unconscious. After that, the Cawdor start defeatedly filing out. The bounty hunters, deciding that drinks will have to wait, do the same, albeit less fearfully. Kal and Scabs bid their farewells with Amenute. They still don't trust each other, and they all acknowledge that they'd be stupid to, but this is still an amicable enough parting of the ways for now. Kal half-jokingly says that his team's bounty-hunting services are at her disposal whenever she wants and can pay for them, and she much more seriously replies that she'll likely be doing so in the not-too-distant future. Team Jerico might not have earned a bounty today, but they did pick up a new customer, so that's something. Before flying off though, she tells them that they had best leave this dome for now. There's going to be a lot of chaos as she consolidates her rule, and not all of the tribes in her alliance will neccessarily draw a distinction between Cawdor remnants and other "uphivers," so it won't be a good time for visitors for the next little while. Fair enough. Also, it bodes well that Amenute is just as aware of her own limitations as she is of her own powers. The mark of a good leader in the making, and seemingly one without as many unpleasant strings attached to her as Wart. This is probably the best possible ending for the underhive dome cavern previously known as Perdition.

Amenute and Wart becoming friends and allies one day would almost certainly be too much to hope for. They've got deep personal as well as cultural grudges against each other at this point. But if they did, they could probably turn the underbelly of Hive Primus into something almost resembling civilization.

As they leave, Kal asks Scabs if he thought about abandoning bounty hunting and just joining the ratskins. Scabs said that he did consider it, but decided that bounty hunting would be a less perilous and nerve-wracking lifestyle than whatever the hell Amenute is going to try doing next. Also, he'd feel guilty leaving a dumbass like Kal to wander around the underhive without adult supervision. That's...well, he's not wrong.

Epilogue: the Needle​

Belladonna has somehow made it back up to one of the main underhive settlements on her own, and is reporting to Nemo. Seemingly in person, this time, rather than a hologram. He gives her a list of names of people involved in the ridiculous assassination-by-monster of her fiance at the altar, but tells him that he'll need some more work from her in exchange for the rest. She protests, but eventually relents when he makes it clear that this conspiracy goes deeper than either of them suspected, so there's lots more to research.

At that moment, the mysterious woman who we only very briefly heard interact with whatsisface the guilder way back in the beginning. Her name, or at least pseudonym, is Lady Gina, and she's an Inquisitor. For those not familiar, those are basically the Warhammer 40K analogue to Mass Effect's Specters, just with more resources, less competence, and a greater propensity for corruption and civilian casualties. Because, well, you know. Anyway, she's the one who's been waiting to pick up the Golden Sack. And implies that she knows Nemo's true name, which explains why she has his services.

Anyway, Belladonna has the Sack, so it's Inquisitor Gina's for the taking. Nemo also has something else that he wants both the women to see, though. He shows them some surveillance footage of that Kelwin guy making an irritable trip from spire to underhive, accompanied by his strange-silhouetted and fully suited bodyguards. Kelwin recently came to Nemo's attention, and his arming of Queen Wart gave him an opportunity to gather much more intelligence. He has concluded that Kelwin comes from Hive Secundus; another hive city that was bombed to rubble after tyranids (the resident xenomorph/arachnid wannabes of the setting) took it over, and whose buried underhive is presumed completely infested by the creatures. So, Kelwin is almost certainly a genestealer, and his bodyguards are some other tyranid form rather than demons as I first suspected. Presumably, he was arming Wart in the hopes of using her to eventually cause a much bigger conflict in Hive Primus that would leave it open to tyranid invasion.

Inquisitor lady and her not-all-that-trustworthy allies chasing tyranid cells. I can feel the dice in my hand.

In exchange for his assistance here, Nemo wants Gina to ignore the coup against Lord Helmawr that his other employers are currently arranging. She shrugs, and sighs, but reluctantly agrees. Even if her worst fear comes to pass, and Nemo is working for a *shudder*democraticuprising, that's still better than losing one of the Imperium's most densely inhabited planets to bargain bin xenomorphs.

The topic of Kal Jerico briefly comes up, in a way that hints that Gina might be his mother. So, she fucked Lord Helmawr at some point, and left the baby here somewhere for some reason. I think. It's hinted at, but not made explicit.

Finally, the taps a code into the storage safe that Belladonna brought. Inside of the container is not the God Emperor of Mankind's scrotum as I'd been assuming, but rather a tiny blue humanoid with functional wings. It wakes up from stasis and tries to fly away as soon as the container is opened, but Lady Gina grabs it. This thing is apparently called a caryatid. Nobody's sure exactly what they are. Apparently, there's a breeding population of them on Necromunda, and some people associate them with good luck. Though in that case, there must be something special about this particular specimen. Maybe it ate the God Emperor's nutsack or something.

Lady Gina tells the caryatid to be quiet and calm down, and it obeys. It starts climbing her arm, docilely. Belladonna realizes she's seen this specific caryatid before, by its pattern of gold markings. Apparently, Lord Helmawr kept it as a pet at one point. He had it with him when he attended Belladonna's wedding, before the cybug burst in the window and ate the groom.

Gina takes Lord Helmawr's former pet, and leaves. Nemo tells Belladonna that since Gina wants him to keep an eye on Kal, and also to try and stop this tyranid infiltration without her having to nuke Hive Primus to do so, he plans to hire Kal and Co to take down Kelwin. And he wants Belladonna to play a certain role in it as well. I guess that's another sequel hook to go with whatever mission Amenute is going to have for them later.

Dissonantly grim and dramatic musical overture. End book.


Long book, but I don't think it needs a particularly long analysis, because as I may have mentioned once or twice the story was 70% padding and/or shoehorned marketing by mass. What remains after that is decent, though. It's got the mixture of dark humor, atmospheric backdrop, and occasionally surprising amounts of heart and sensitivity that seems to be characteristic of the new era of media we seem to be entering these last couple of years. It still had way the hell too much going on for its own good though, even after you trim out all the gratuitous bounty hunters who don't do anything and fight scenes that don't further the plot. The ratskin stuff, the mutant stuff, the Cawdor stuff, the Nemo stuff, you could easily get two or three more reasonably sized interconnected books out of this. But still, the material itself was mostly fine.

Moving on from that general assessment, project commissioner@Lupercalhas told me that she chose this book in particular because she wanted to see my thoughts on this side of Warhammer 40K. Unusually for the franchise, "Sinner's Bounty" humanizes all sides of its main conflict, at least to varying degrees, and it lets its more introspective characters question the greater status quo of the world instead of everyone including the author blindly accept it. To that assessment, I would agree. But what does this say on 40K's behalf, exactly?

It says that, in rare and exceptional cases, Warhammer 40K can rise to the same level of depth and literary merit asevery other mediocre pop scifi franchise in existence.

Do you want me to give it a fucking prize?

Does it deserve a cookie?

So, yeah, 40K can potentially be as good as its many, many game-or-movie-derived airplane book competitors when it pulls its head out of its own ass. Any setting can be used to tell good, or bad, or mediocre stories, depending on who's writing it and how much effort they put in. I really just don't see how this is supposed to be an accomplishment.

The only places where I'd say "Sinner's Bounty" rises above any slightly-better-than-average Star Wars or Battletech book are the areas in which 40K has always stood out. That sense of scale and magnitude, both in terms of space and of time, that few other scifi settings manage to nail. The alienating and hopeless weight of a world that's so big and so broken that nobody can meaningfully change it.

Though...hmm. In some ways, I feel like this book actually sabotages that one great thing that 40K has going for it at times, even as it scores much better than average for the franchise by other metrics.

Kal Jerico's farcical "my father is king of the planet, my mother is (probably) a space warlord" backstory makes him automatically important everywhere he goes. Not only is all this narrative attention wasted on him due to him being such a flat, uninteresting character, but it also works against that sense of grim grandeur. Every gang leader and faction underboss in this city of several billion inhabitants knows about Kal Jerico. The ruler of the planet is connected to him. The mysterious shady information brokers all have special interests in him. The visiting generals ask about him when they stop by to deal with mass alien infestations that have been brewing underground for millennia. Having these characters all care about someone, somewhere, is an important part of humanizing them. Having them all care about theprotagonistturns the setting into a theme park. Combined with the knowledge that this supposed decaying and uncaring setting crumbling under millennia of human folly and natural entropyisn't allowed to kill anyone with a toy of them for sale, and...well, it still manages to preserve that sense of scale and powerlessness, but not by a very comfortable margin.

I guess one thing I can also give this book credit for is that it puts women in a diverse set of roles without resorting to archetypes or stereotypes. Belladonna, Yolanda, and Lady Gina have abitof tropey baggage to them, being connected to the story mainly by virtue of the men in their lives, but those aspects of them are really downplayed here for the most part. And then there are Amenute and Wart, who lack any trace of those issues altogether. That's actually, honestly commendable. That's something that most airplane scifi action novelsdon'tdo. Hell, it's something that way too many high brow bestsellers by famous authors fail to do. And it does it so organically that you don't even notice just how unusually feminist the book is until you're a good way into it. So, the author deserves full marks there at least.