WH40K: Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty (part five)
It occurs to me that naming a planet "Necromunda" is basically just asking the necrons to land there and start hanging up new curtains and wallpaper. Maybe that's actually a ploy; trick the necrons into conquering this shithole of a planet, and then point and laugh as they try to run it. Anyway, more chapters!
Chapter Ten: Nemo
We're back to Beatram with this one. He's still in Steelgate, the town where he got his mission briefing from the guild guy and then listened in on his secret conversation with the unnamed aristocrat lady. We get some backstory on Beatram. Apparently, he started out as a debt collector in the midhive, who occasionally had to descend into the underhive to chase fugitive debtors. His underhive visits made him feel really good, since down there he was surrounded by people he could feel superior to without any effort or accomplishment required, so he decided to move there as a full time underhive bounty hunter. He assumes that the aristocrat-born Jerico may have come down here for similar reasons, which may or may not be true, but I'm thinking not. Kal "nothing personnel, kid" Jerico doesn't seem to care enough about other people to make life decisions around his feelings toward them. Whatever chased him down here, it probably wasn't that.
In his last POV chapter, Beatram was going on about how he despised Jerico for turning up the high life for the underhive. I guess there's some serious projection and self loathing issues going on here. Honestly, it's sort of too bad that Jerico isn't a deeper character in a story with more emotional range, because Beatram could have been a much stronger foil to him in that case.
For now, Beatram is just fuming at the various times Kal Jerico has stolen bounties out from under his nose and looking forward to revenge. He's stalking someone, but then notices some Goliaths following them, so he wheels around and holds them at gunpoint. They tell him that they're a security detail that his employer sent on Beatram's behalf, but Beatram isn't buying it since, you know, that's the kind of thing that he'd have told him about. They seem convinced, though, and he doesn't get the sense that they're lying, so in the end Beatram chalks this up to some stupid power play between his client and the Goliaths and just tells them to try to not get in the way of his investigation. They kinda sorta back off, and he goes into a mostly-abandoned bar that he's determined contains the person he's looking for.
He goes inside, has some posturing back and forth with the people inside who aren't as drunk as they're pretending to be, and is shown into a secret back room inhabited by a mysterious cyborg with an obscured face, a speech impediment like Bane's from "The Dark Knight Rises," and the name Nemo. Nemo is some sort of information broker, and Beatram knows that he, too, has some kind of grudge against Jerico. Also, Nemo is an incredibly frustrating person to talk to...and, it turns out that he's actually not in this building, or this town. This body he's talking through is some kind of remote avatar. The real Nemo is either hidden somewhere, or a secret Artificial Intelligence or warp demon. Interesting. Beatram manages to diplomacy the entity into trading intel, telling Nemo that he'll happily turn the Emperor's Scrotum or whatever it is that Zoom stole over to him instead of the guilder dude if he can help him beat Jerico to the bounty.
That makes sense, really. The guild as a whole doesn't know about the secret item, just the one dude and his small circle of accomplices who have limited investigative ability. So, Beatram can collect the aboveboard bounty on Zoom (which is from the Guild's actual leadership), then tell the one guy that Zoom didn't have the package (hehehe) when he caught him and that he must have already ditched it somewhere. The intel that Nemo can give him in exchange for the Golden Sack will give him a huge advantage, and he's okay with forfeiting the extra secret reward if it means improving his chances of both getting the main one and beating Jerico. Fair enough.
Beatram really lucked out, it turns out. Nemo's own grudge against Jerico seems to be pretty meaningful, because he's made a point of spying on him. Specifically, he's the one who hacked Jerico's dog. He can see and hear through it, and even take control of it for brief periods before its failsafes kick in. That said, Nemo tells Beatram that he wants Kal Jerico kept alive; no killing him allowed. Beatram says that he's fine with that. He doesn't want Jerico dead, necessarily, he just wants him humiliated and outperformed.
...
Man. Beatram really is an emotional trainwreck, isn't he? His entire life and career for the last however many years has been an extended autofellatio session, and he hates Jerico because he's the one thing that occasionally makes him feel like he's not better at everything than everyone around himself.
...
Anyway, Nemo's interest in Jerico is curious. I haven't read the previous books, so I don't know what it might be about. One possibility is that he's actually an alias of Jerico's father, who's the king of Necromunda or whatever, though that's not terribly likely. It seems like being Nemo would take a lot of the guy's time, and he does have official business to attend to running a planet, so yeah, probably not. Of course, if Nemo really is an AI or a powerful warp entity or the like, then being able to devote this much attention to Jerico might not require any time or effort at all; just one of several million simultaneous processes.
In addition to supplying Beatram with intel from the hacked cyberdog, Nemo also supplies him with material assistance in the form of a tall, tough looking anime lady with spiky white hair and a wedding bow. Beatram recognizes the anime lady as another famous Necromundan mercenary and bounty hunter named Belladonna. Apparently she works for Nemo these days, and Nemo knew Beatram was coming today and called her here ahead of time; presumably, so that she could either join Beatram's posse if things went well, or kill him if negotiations went south. Additionally, Nemo knows that Desolation Zoom has adjusted his course, so he gives Beatram details on his new vector which should let him catch up to the target before Jerico can.
Finally, Nemo warns him about something more sinister going on in the deep underhive in Zoom's wake, so be careful. This is probably related to whatever is going on with the axchuck mutants.
So, with everything worked out, Beatram acts out a little by shooting a little robot hidden in the corner of the room. The avatar of Nemo vanishes; it wasn't even a robotic proxy, just a holographic projection. So too do the pretending-to-be-drunk security people out in the main room. The only people in the building this whole time have been Beatram and Belladonna; Nemo just had the one robot onsite. I'd ask why Beatram decided to piss his new patron off by doing this, but well, you know. End chapter.
I didn't mention it at the time, but throughout the conversation there were so many little ways that Nemo was judging Beatram. Mostly subtextually, but occasionally overtly (for instance, when Beatram tells him that his initial plan was to let Jerico follow Zoom's trail and then snatch the prize from him, Nemo groans about Beatram showing his upper class sensibilities in profiting from other people's labor, and it's with clear contempt). This might be why Beatram decided to annoy him at the end there by damaging his holoprojector bot.
Anyway, I liked this chapter quite a lot. Nemo is easily the most charismatic character to be introduced thus far, partly because of Mark Elstob's Bane-ish voicework for him, but mostly just because of how he's written. It's kind of a pity that he's more interesting and (at least based on his appearance so far) nuanced than Kal and Co. Not more sympathetic, necessary, but just the fact that he seems to think about things skeptically makes him seem like a breath of fresh air compared to all the others. Makes me wish Nemo was the protagonist.
Next chapter.
Chapter 11: Slime Ferry
Probably refers to the vessel Team Jerico are riding across the polluted sump water, but since I'm listening rather than reading and thus couldn't see the spelling my first thought was of a goopy Tinkerbell.
Kal and the others are sitting up on deck, along with twenty-odd other passengers. Most of them look like the usual underhive merchants and scavengers, but there's also that gang of armed and battle-hardened Goliaths who are keeping near the gang. Kal is sure that the Goliaths are watching them, and infers that they're thinking the same thing he is, ie wondering if this is competition for the Zoom bounty.
Meanwhile, the ferry travels under some very high, vaulting scaffolds and archways, and flocks of birds and what sounds like pterosaurs fly overhead. Even the narrator has to admit that the underhive has beauty to go with the ugliness, in the places where life has adapted to it the most. I'm wondering where the pterosaurs came from, personally. A native necromundan animal that happens to have convergent evolution'd with Mesozoic earth? A Dark Age of Technology project of resurrecting extinct earth fauna? Something new and superficially pterosaur-like that hyperevolved out of some other reptile or pseudo-reptile in the mutated underhive mess? Could be anything. Once again, the sheer scale and breadth of possibility and creative space of Warhammer 40K doesn't quite make up for its many shortcomings as a world for telling stories in, but it's a huge selling point nonetheless.
As they watch the wildlife, Kal asks Scabs if he's ever seen the sky. He hasn't, but he did see the sands of the desert outside of Hive Primus once. Scabs asks Kal if he misses the sky, and life in the Spires in general. Kal scoffs, and says hell no. Then they glance down at the lower deck siderail, and happen to spot Skullface. He was one of the other bounty hunters who was mentioned to be after Zoom a while ago, so I figured he'd show up eventually. It's kind of improbable that he, Kal, and Gor would all happen to be on the same ferryboat but, well, you know.
Skullface is a very thin, almost skeletal, figure, lipless, with a Terminator-ish faceplate covering his ruined eyes and nose; hence the name. He's said to have suffered some extensive chemical burns in the past, which is why he looks like this. Skullface is accompanied by two accomplices, Wiley Pete and Ivers. Wiley Pete is not a southern accented fire elemental that wants to put his superheated cock in your eye, but rather a small, ash-covered man with an obvious flamethrower packed under his cloak. Ivers is a roided-out musclemonster in armor with a giant mohawk, real X-Com 2 aesthetic. Ivers is apparently a real publicity hound, and has a little crowd of admirers around him that Skullface and Pete are just sort of quietly tolerating. Kal muses that he didn't know those two were working for Skullface these days, but it's not too surprising given how competitive the market is getting.
Scabs wonders if maybe they should give up on Zoom, if they have this much competition for the bounty. It's a big bounty, but is having to deal with this many other parties really worth it? Kal shrugs that suggestion off, saying that their reputation has been slagging a bit recently, and reputation is everything for a bounty hunter. So, they've got to show the flag here, if nothing else. Scabs argues, so Kal changes the subject by asking him where Amenute is and why he isn't keeping an eye on her before she gets them into trouble again. Amenute then makes Kal jump out of his skin by adressing him from atop the ferry's covering, just a few feet above and behind him. If she'd been an enemy, she could have easily killed him and vanished by now.
Kal is starting to appreciate the possible uses of this girl. Odds of longterm party member status increasing.
Also, she's taken off her cloak, and is in a form-fitting adventuring outfit made of rat fur and buckskins. Where the hell did she get that? Are there underhive deer? Do they graze on powdered concrete and grow antlers of barbed wire?
She also tells Kal that he's rude and his robodog is stupid. She looks way stronger and healthier than she did just hours ago. Then she looks at the sumpwater, and murmurs something about monsters watching the boats from beneath. Maybe she actually is a low-caliber psyker after all, just with all her points in ESP and none in blasty stuff. Kal stalks off, and she and Scabs have a conversation of their own.
First she asks Scabs why he's even working with Jerico. Scabs can't really provide a good answer to that, aside from "we're friends," his assessment being based on Kal not having killed him yet. Okay, yeah, but there are a lot of other people who Kal hasn't killed lol. She remarks that uphivers don't have friends, they have slaves. Scabs reminds her that Ratskins also practice slavery, but she scoffs and tells him that her specific people don't. Also, even if they did, there's a difference between "practices slavery" and "practices slavery in lieu of friendship," though she doesn't go quite so far as to say that explicitly. Damn, laying it out there isn't she!
Scabs asks her if she's actually a witch. She denies it, but doesn't sound too sure of herself. She also, upon being prodded, admits that the old man in the gibbet wasn't her grandfather, but one of her family's retainers. She's some sort of tribal elite (not any sort of hereditary nobility, but some sort of important person) and had been on a diplomatic mission before the Cawdor caught her. As for how and why they caught her, apparently that's an intrafactional issue. Some branches of the Cawdor act like a legitimate religious organization, spreading the word, providing education and humanitarian aid, etc, while others are just thugs looking for a cause to mask their thuggery in. Her people never trusted the Cawdor, but they still had dealings with the friendlier branches of the cult, and she overestimated her own understanding of how to deal with the more violent ones. As for what she was on a mission to DO, it seems to have something to do with the mutant activity. She hints that Zoom wasn't the only Redemptionist poking around in the deepest depths of the underhive; he's part of something bigger and more secret.
So, big plot going on. This other cult seems to be allied with Cawdor, but its an Al-Queda and Taliban sort of relationship, with the latter not totally realizing what they might have been getting themselves into. Zoom is taking point in the operation, stealing the critical mystery item and drawing all the fire, since he's old and looking to martyr himself, but he might not be the mastermind behind it.
Just then, one of the Goliaths from across the deck wanders over and starts picking a fight with Amenute and Scabs for no reason. He seems to be tweaking. Unfortunately, his tweaker-ness doesn't discourage his two buddies from coming to his aid when Amenute cuts him. Chapter ends on a cliffhanger with one of the Goliaths about to throw Scabs overboard. I guess either Kal and Yolanda will come to the rescue, Mr. Skullface and his fellow supervillains will intervene for reasons of their own, or Amenute will risk a Perils of the Warp check and use the big psychic guns she's been sitting on. Or Scabs will drown in the radioactive sludgewater, that could also happen.
The story is getting much more interesting now. Scabs always had more going on character-wise than the other two, and Amenute has the same kind of charisma and mystery allure as Nemo. It might not be strong, but there are indications that these three might actually care about things that aren't totally abstract and/or unrelatable.
It's a pity that most of the time we're in Kal's POV, and that Yolanda is getting nearly as much screentime as Scabs. They're by far the two most boring characters. There's just nothing to them. Kal has some stuff in the background I guess, with his royal family that he ran away from, but that isn't something he's usually engaging with, and even when he does there's not any strong emotions or inner conflicts on display. Yolanda is the same, but moreso. Even Beatram is a more engaging protagonist when we're in his head. He's not sympathetic, but his psychological mess is at least interesting and has dynamic things going on.
I think two chapters per post is good. I wanted to do the next March Comes In Like a Lion episode today as well, but my computer decided to spend six hours shitting its pants.
