Nick Kyme

Aye, I’ve been working on Fall of Damnos.

Have to say, I’m loving it. Only about 33,000 words in but it’s going well and I’m enjoying balancing the multiple story lines and characters.

By way of ‘the skinny’, it’s kind of a loose sequel Assault on Black Reach as it continues the story of Scipio, Iulus and Praxor as part of Cato Sicarius’s Second Company a century or so later as they try to liberate the stricken world of Damnos.

Fans of the background (those who’ve read Codex: Space Marines, anyway) will know that this is one of the key bits of established mythos of the Ultramarines and as it featured Sicarius and the gang seemed like the natural way to tell a new and longer story about the characters I enjoyed creating so much for Black Reach (they’re also in Graham’s The Chapter’s Due, which is awesome by the way – thank you Mr McNeill).

Slightly more surprising was how much I’m digging writing about the necrons right now. I guess you’ll see them in a slightly different light in this book (an emerald, sickly, flesh-stripping one presumably).

Don’t really want to say too much more than that. One thing does occur, though, and that’s the difference with writing something that’s based on a story that’s already ‘known’ (albeit as background fluff, without characterisation or a proper narrative) and something you’re inventing yourself. Like with Black Reach, part of the challenge with Fall of Damnos was finding the bits in between the lines of the existing story to hopefully surprise and delight the fans with stuff they didn’t know.

There’s a human element to the tale, that’s for sure. I find human characters very useful to play off Space Marines, who can get a little dry if you overload on them and end up suffering from ‘Marine Grind’ as one author I know termed it.

Anywho, I should probably be working on it now. More on the book later when I’ve hit the midway. Ta, ta!