Review of Arks of Omen (Part 2)

Review of Arks of Omen: Farsight (part 2)

Apologies everyone, this second half is coinciding with a big PodCaste episode with some pretty neat additions.

Let's get back to it:

We have our own now! Thank you community member Tarm!

The Ork leadership has been decapitated, confusion reigns supreme on the planet below and the star system above when the Ark of Omen translates into system.

Aiming for Arthas Moloch, Farsight makes all haste even as The Unhallowed commanded by the Black Legion Greater Daemon Ughalax follows suit. Orks scramble to what is likely going to be a big fight.

And it is!

FIGHTING FOR TIME

That's Farsight's main goal is to hold out to a message "torpedo" he's sent toward the Tau Commonwealth with a call for aide. He promises them everything up to and including his own person to be taken into custody if they will just send military aide.

He just has to survive the interim. In the following weeks the Tau play a vast, planet wide game of cat and mouse, utilizing the wastes and turning them into killing fields as the numerically superior Orks and Chaos  forces smash into one another for weeks and months.

What proceeds is pretty much a shakedown of events without much detail so I'll keep it to a highlight reel.

- Brightsword dies after the Golghamael Chaos Knights.

- Ughalax seeks out the piece of the key while fighting a two way war. He's seeking out the Great Star Dias, the same place Farsight lost his ethereals 200+ years ago.

- The conflict spreads to space above with Air Caste and Ork reinforcements entangling in a sweeping void war.

Observations

-The fact that Brightsword dies is, or should be, mostly irrelevant as Kelly changed the fearsome Commander to be just a series of clones. The hope would be they drop this since cloning really should stay with people like Fulgrim and Fabius Bile. Of course that would mean he's dead.

Kill your darlings.

-It's odd Ughalax can't just see the kilometer spanning Star Dais from space, but I'm sure that's nitpicky.

-Also interesting that the Air Caste is described as very fast not something we usually see associated with the Tau.

-Ork warlords rise with suitable names and random locations are mentioned that seem to just be little more than narrative hooks for personal games. This really irked me since I get the feeling that I'm supposed to care about what Arthas Moloch is... and I don't. It's a dead world filled with mystery yet someone's spending the time to name things like "The Hollow Halls"?

ATTRITION

The war goes on and the only real thing of note for those interested is that Farsight continues his trend of losing massive numbers of his own people. This should be nothing new for those following the Commander's sordid past.

He's always been, simply, bad at large theaters of war with high costs being a theme during Arkunasha (half his forces), the Reclamation (half the Fire Caste with him-- numbering in the hundreds of millions? Against PDF?) Arthas Moloch where he loses his Ethereals, the War of Dakka and so on.

This new war on Arthas Moloch is proving to be no different except now Farsight is getting mad.

People are worried about him. Especially when he does what any supreme commander of potentially hundreds of thousands of warriors should do... he starts leading "dangerous offenses".

He kills people with names and even takes the head of a Baroness then somehow uses it as a lure for the Orks and... It ultimately isn't that important. I really wish it was but it's just a laundry list of random places and people we don't care about.

To note: Bravestorm, the engram chip of a pilot who pilots the Iridium suit of the Eight is damaged beyond recover... Of course, he's an operating system, so he should be fine.

During this time Farsight is also getting visions. It would have been great to expand on this, especially when we know that Tau don't have enough of a soul to be easily seen by daemon/warp sighted individuals and they don't even dream (dreams in 40k being the warp brushing against your mind). It would have been nice to understand what the Dawnblade is doing to him. Maybe it's imbuing him with the souls he's taking, growing his awareness more so than any Tau...

But this would be doing the writer's job.

Anyway, he kind of just shrugs off the vision in a flavor textbox.

Farsight gets word back from Aun'Va and... yeah, Aun'Va says he can die in the fires he built along with everyone with them...

Farsight, after blowing apart the messenger drone that magics it's way into his headquarters, concludes there's only one option left and that is to invite everyone to a party on the Star Dais.

Observations 

This is... bad.

I'm thankful for this book because it mentions Medusa V, the first time in a long time that worldwide campaign gets to be in print.

But, Aun'Va... is dead. He died in another of Kelly's books called Mont'ka and it's really really weird that Farsight seems to have forgotten this. There's absolutely no mention or hint that Farsight knows this and, frankly, it would appear the author forgot this key detail.

Surely, Farsight could have even threatened to unveil Aun'Va's new photonic origins to get the Ethereals to do something.

THE DAIS

It all builds to a fight on the Dais like before. Farsight realizes the only way to throw a last curve ball is to invite the Molochites over for dinner as the Orks and Choas forces converge.

It's the perfect time for Farsight to crack open the teachings of Puretide which gets him to calm down... a little. He readies himself for the final battle--

While high above, the Deathwatch choose their time to strike. The Alpha Legion operatives conclude they're going to get to the relic before Ughalax can.

(Odd that they're working together and that the Alpha Legion is the contingency plan but... chaos?)

They reveal themselves and assassinate the other Deathwatch. I wish we could have stayed more with these guys, Lord Glass sounds awesome.

The battle for the Star Dais not so much. It sounds like the most boring game of 40k imaginable since everyone's fighting on an oddly flat and nearly featureless plain. Farsight employs Kauyon to draw his enemies forward and--

We're back with Lord Glass and he just gets the fragments while no one's looking.

Ya! Win for Chaos!

-- Farsight and his army draws their enemies into a kill box, the literal blood count doing its thing and unlocking the limits of the ritual. The Molochites, who seem a little bit like Ruinstorm Daemons, rise up.

The Enclavites try and pull back from the region but they're running afoul of Ork and Chaos Titans and the gamut of the enemy armies. 

Farsight himself gets one last vision but, to make a very short story shorter, just thinks of Kais and Shadowsun and Puretide and the vision dissipates. He leads the retreat.

Plot twist: They make it.

Observation:

This final battle is skipped over and it wasn't really going anywhere anyway. The Tau get away, the Ark of Omen gets away and the Orks rally around some of their new leaders and it's a big nothing.

In the final round of flavor text we learn that Arthas Moloch has life returning to it...

But who cares? Arthas Moloch has never been that important of a world. Why is O'vesa excited about the discovery? Arthas Moloch is in Commonwealth space, why do they think they'll have a chance to take it or colonize it? If the Commonwealth forces had shown up I could see this working and Arthas Moloch becomes a kind of 'touchstone' world where both factions can parlay and maybe start to heal.

But... no. Nothing. 

Just a whole lot of nothing.

~Calmsword