WH40K: “Kal Jerico: Sinner’s Bounty” (part 3)

Technically, the title of this book is Warhammer 40K: Necromunda: Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty. Which means that the proper title of this post is Warhammer 40K: Necromunda: Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty: A Review By Leila Hann: Part 3.

Chapter 5: Tithe Path​

Kal is stumbling his way through more scenery torture porn. This time, a toadstool-filled piping area infested with "sump guls" (I'm imagining the tofu birds from Wakfu, but with angry eyebrows drawn on them) and leaning diagonally because of past hivequakes. A hivequake is when the pressure of the overbuilt towers up above crush part of the rotting underhive infrastructure, causing slabs of what used to be buildings, machinery, etc collapsing downward until they get stuck on something else or hit rock bottom. So far, these have only been felt as mysterious tremors by the inhabitants of the upper levels, but it can't be too much longer before one starts a chain reaction that brings the entirety of Hive Primus down.

Which is kind of a perfect microcosm of the setting's entire galactic civilization, really.

Kal makes sure the steel canyon ahead is clear, and then leads Yolanda, Scabs, and the cyberdog follow him out of the drainage pipe that they've been walking through for the last several hours. They're all pretty glad that the map they got ahold of didn't just lead them into the maw of a giant carnivorous hive-vagina again, they were starting to get worried. Suddenly, Wotan the cyberdog senses something, and runs ahead to pick a fight with some religious weirdos from a faction called House Cordor who have built an unofficial tollbooth blocking the way ahead. The little fort and gate they've built for this purpose is covered in scripture and holy symbols made of trash, because I guess they're religious. No mention of a relation to the Redemptionists, but they seem to have a similar vibe. Also, they wear lit candles on their heads. I don't know if this detail predates World of Warcraft kobolds or not, but I also don't care enough to research it.

Kal calls the doggobot off before it can seriously hurt anyone and attempts diplomacy. Aha! It looks like there isn't only war in the grim darkness of the forty-first millennium after all! False advertising! Fraud! I demand my money back! Anyway, this toll booth is run by literal children, so Kal figures they should be able to intimidate or wheedle their way through easily enough. Only, then the kids try to kill them, and they have to beat them up after all. Okay, I rescind my complaint. Only war it is!

It's a pretty badly underleveled encounter, so they break through pretty easily, not much tension. They open the gate and move on. Still, it's lip service to the promised grimdark.

As they move on into this newly claimed Cordor thoroughfare, they see burned corpses hanging in gibbets from the pipes overhead. Got to keep the child soldiers entertained somehow, I guess. One of the cages contains a living, but very weak and malnourished, person, who Scabs recognizes as a member of his mother's ethnicity. Scabs immediately gets some dirty looks from his compatriots for daring to acknowledge that families are a thing that exists, with Yolanda reacting with the surprised exclamation "You have a mother?"

I'm actually not making this up. The other characters are pissed off at Scabs for implying that humans might have families in 40K. It's literally in the text.

Kal talks Yolanda down from escalating any further over this. However, the text does go out of its way to remind us that Scabs isn't actually his friend, and that in all their years of working together he's never deemed to talk to him about anything remotely personal, as an immediate follow-up. It has to do that, to compensate for him not joining Yolanda in sneering at the concept of humans not being spawned fully formed at ripe child soldier age from the ether. Reminding us that friendship doesn't exist just barely makes up for the possibility that family might.

Gold. Solid gold.

Scabs tries to release the prisoner, and the others are grudgingly allowing him to do so even though he's already on their shitlist for not being grimdark enough after that last stunt he pulled. Fortunately, a large group of older and much more dangerous looking Cordor thugs show up and menace them, so Scab reluctantly leaves the prisoner to rot. A few others of Scabs' mother's people call out for help as they continue on their way, just to punish Scabs even more for trying to ruin the setting. Serves him right. Yolanda is confused by Scabs being so upset as they move onward passed Cordor territory. Kal assures her that he's just spooked or something. The narration then assures us that Kal isn't just saying that, he's actually assuming that this is the case, and he's confused by the possibility that that might not actually be it. End chapter.


I think this was the strongest chapter so far. I was actually chuckling out loud for most of it. Even moreso than the random combat encounter chapters, I feel like this would work really well as a short story.

Next chapter!

Chapter 6: Two Pumps​

Our heroes arrive in the town of Two Pumps, which is described as an exceptionally awful place even by underhive standards. Just like all the other towns so far. It's a "coastal" place sort of floating on a trash island over liquid that, somehow, actually has fish living in it. They're probably radioactive and specially evolved to feed on human eyeballs, but still, there's stuff living in there!

Two Pumps also seems to have been conquered by the Cordos recently, and a few of their robed and masked enforcers are milling around the bazaar looking unapproachable. Kal is still confused by why Scabs is so uncomfortable around the Cordos, which is lol. They spot some Goliaths who seem to be traveling through here as well, who they infer are Corg's. Corg being the guy who's working with Beatram and the Guilders. Competition for the bounty on Zoom, in other words.

One good thing about Two Pumps is that it's one of the better places in this sector of the underhive to buy drinking water, and one of the people selling it is an old not-actual-friend of Yolanda's named...Magril, I think? McGril? Muhgurl? Muhgurl. Yolanda complains about being married to Kal, and Muhgurl expresses her sympathy. Scabs nearly attacks Muhgurl's coworker for having some Ratskin scalps displayed, but Kal reigns him in for fear of Cordor peacekeepers responding. As they leave the store, Kal sees a hulking, cloaked figure nod at him before disappearing around the corner with some Goliaths. Beatram, mocking him? Maybe. Kal tries to remember who is shaped like that again, but can't. Most important day in Beatram's life, Kal Jerico's Tuesday, etc.

Yolanda and Kal talk about various other bounty hunters who might be inbound, and then she complains about Scabs caring about the ethnic cleansing of his own people some more. Kal reveals that he met Scabs as a little kid, shortly after being cast out of high society, and that he taught him to survive in the underhive. They aren't really friends though, and they never talked about personal stuff.

Just then, Scabs comes running back dragging another person after him. It's a girl with tattoos who looks vaguely familiar, but Kal isn't sure from where. Scabs exclaims that they need to GTFO right now, just before a band of armed Cordos come running toward them and accuse Scabs of having taken candle.

Cliffhanger! Excitement! Chapter Seven!

Chapter 7: Stand Off​

The girl Scabs rescued is one of the Ratskin prisoners left to starve in a gibbet outside the town. Kal is annoyed, especially since Scabs admits that he bribed the guard to let him rescue the girl with some of the group's funds, but not too annoyed to pull his laser gun on the attackers and call his cyberdog to his side. Also, Kal lightens up considerable when he learns that Scabs' "bribed" the guard by only knocking him out instead of killing him.

Why would he have said anything other than that in the first place? Presumably just because Reynolds came up with the line "I didn't kill him. That's a kind of payment, isn't it?" and wanted to use it. On one hand, understandable, it's a perfect one for this book. On the other, I think he could have waited for a more appropriate passage to insert it into.

Kal laughs and looks at the Cordos again. That's a fair tried, he insists, right? The life of a Cordo spared for the live of a Ratskin saved? The lead Cordo with the most candles on his head retorts that the woman is a witch, and witches must be killed for the safety of everyone. Kal raises his eyebrow at that. While witches, aka psykers, are very much a thing in this setting, it's pretty clear that the Cordos are just targeting Ratskins. Also, if she actually was a psyker, leaving her chained up to die slowly of thirst and exposure would be the absolute stupidest thing you could possibly do with her, and would have probably resulted in everything being on fire long before now. Kal tries to reason, but the Cordos don't seem able or willing to understand that witches and Ratskins are not the same thing, or that their treatment of Ratskins wouldn't make even the slightest amount of sense if they were. Still, candlehead doesn't like being pushed around on his own gang/cult's turf, and isn't backing down. Not even when it's clear that Yolanda has drawn her laser rifle and is perched overhead and has her girl, Muhgurl, ready to take her side. Not even when the hulking mystery figure who was hanging with the Goliaths before comes over to help Team Jerico as well.

I guess that's probably not Beatram, then.

Candlehead sounds an alarm, and a fight breaks out. Lasers and bullets flying everywhere. More Cordos jumping out to help, with some of the locals using this opportunity to kill some of the occupiers and take their stuff, or to kill their market competitors and take their stuff. It seems that Cordo control over Two Pumps was much more tenuous than they wanted it to seem. During the fighting, the big cloaked mystery man gets unhooded, and it turns out to be Gor Halfhorn, the cigar-smoking Minotaur who was mentioned a couple chapters ago. Gor and Kal seem to have met previously, and to be on relatively good terms. Also, the way that the Cordos react when they see the obvious mutant/posthuman unmasked makes it clear that Gor is sick of these people for the same reason Scabs was. New party member acquired!

The fighting continues for...I don't know, a while. It gets pretty monotonous. I think that if it hadn't been the multiple random encounter fights in the earlier chapters I'd have more to say about the prose and action here, but after so many they all just kind of run together. The chapter ends with the gang making their way to the docks, and Kal telling the ferrymen that they want to pay their way downriver. The ferrymen are pretty happy to get out of this warzone (it's a wonder they haven't left already), so off we go.


I'm looking at the length of this book, and it's starting to seem really daunting. Is it really just going to be 14 hours of mostly episodic fight scenes? Even with some more quality dark humor chapters like 5 scattered throughout, this is going to start boring me long before the halfway point, even if I alternate the posts with other reviews. I'm less than three hours into this fourteen hour monstrosity. Why is this book so long? It really doesn't seem like it needs to be.

I might just spread this out into more chunks and do it over a longer period of time, rather than the two I have written in the queue. So, my next Kal Jerico posts will be in a couple weeks. For now, more Wakfu coming up.