Perpetual (Audio Drama)
cover art | |
Author | Dan Abnett |
Performer | Gareth Armstrong, John Banks, Ian Brooker, Cliff Chapman, Steve Conlin, Penelope Rawlins, Saul Reichlin, Luis Soto |
Publisher | Black Library |
Series | Horus Heresy Series |
Released | December 2016 |
Collected in | The Burden of Loyalty |
Length | 27 minutes |
Perpetual is an audio drama in The Horus Heresy series written by Dan Abnett. It has a running time 27 minutes and is performed by Gareth Armstrong, John Banks, Ian Brooker, Cliff Chapman, Steve Conlin, Penelope Rawlins, Saul Reichlin, and Luis Soto.
Cover Description
Oll Persson stands apart from the rest of mankind. He is one of the old ones, one of the undying. One of the Perpetuals. Now, fleeing from the ruins of Calth with his band of fellow refugees, the vagaries of the warp have brought him through the backways of time and space to a city that rests on the edge of oblivion... and no further. The path has ended abruptly, and Oll's enemies are finally closing in. Will his immortality be enough to save him this time?[1]
Story
Six years after fleeing from Calth and making their way through time by use of a stole Athame blade, Persson, his servitor Graft, and his companions Hebet Zybes, Neve Rane, and the psyker Katt arrive at the city of Andrioch at the tail end of M23, during the rebellion of the Iron Men which led to the Malthusian Catastrophe. They were trapped in the city for 2 years due to his warp compass become calm and they were no longer able to find the next path forward. Although he originally tried to keep his party ignorant of their actions, they kept asking when and where they were located, and he began to answer their questions but limited his response to protect them from emotional harm or insanity from learning the complete truth.[2]
In a previous location, when in a bunker beneath the pole of a dead colony world, Persson explained the background about the Horus Heresy, Chaos, and the danger to humanity. He explained that he fought on the Emperor's side, but he did not explain that he never liked the Emperor and only did so to stop Chaos from destroying everything. By this time, he was 45,000 years old, and he didn't want to be part of the war, but he was dragged into it by John Grammaticus and knew that he needed to go to Terra.[2]
They were stuck in Andrioch, a human colony that was once magnificent but was destroyed by the time they arrived. Half of the city was missing, and it sat along a massive chasm that pierced all the way to the planet's core. Persson speculated that the wound could have been formed by powerful weapons used by Iron Men and the human alliances: sun snuffers, mechnavores that could hurl continents, or omniphage swarms that could devour biological matter. In particular, the city was probably destroyed by a mechanvore that was able to wound both the physical and spiritual universe.[2]
While musing about a possible way forward, Persson is approached by Grammaticus, who tells him that he led them to that dead end to protect him from the Cabal. He seemed to be a psionic projection, and he was there to tell Persson how to get back by returning to the cemetery world Albanoch, their previous location, and then move onto early colonial Cadia. However, he told Persson that he had to ditch the others, including Katt due to her psychic abilities that would prevent her from reaching Terra. Katt appears at that moment, and Persson realizes that Gramaticus was not a psychic projection but physically there. This leads to a fight, and Persson ends up slaying the imposter with the Athame, revealing him to be an Alpha Legionary. With the trap revealed, Persson gets the group together to move forward, and the only way to do that is to jump off the cliff and try to cut their way to a new location.[2]
Sources
- 1: Black Library
- 2: Perpetual
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