Back at the tail end of 2007, Games Workshop (through its Forge World subdivision) introduced the world to the Death Korps of Krieg with the campaign sourcebook Imperial Armour Vol. 5: The Siege of Vraks – Part One.
Originally conceptualized as a variant of the Steel Legion in the Second Edition of the game, Imperial Armour greatly expanded and fashioned the Korps into the form most are familiar with today.
Fittingly enough, we’re returning to the site of that legendary battle for Steve Lyons’ third novel featuring the Guard regiment of the moment with Siege of Vraks, the winner of the Black Library Book of the Year for 2024.
Lyons has become the de facto storyteller for the Korps, also penning 2010’s Dead Men Walking and 2022’s Krieg. The latter had an interesting structure, consisting of not one but two separate narrative strands braided together across the course of the book as it told both a “present day” tale of military action as well as the enigmatic Krieg’s origin story.
Telling the Tale
Lyons plays with structure once again with Siege of Vraks, being neither character- nor narrative-driven, but rather episodic in nature. In other words, it can at times feel like a connection of loosely-interlinked short stories rather than a fully fledged novel. I found that to be a feature rather than a bug for two reasons.
First, if you’ve read enough actual-world military histories (or played enough video games like Battlefield 1), this is a very common device. We’ll be introduced to Cpl. Johnson as he leads the charge to take a key bridge, or OLt. Schulz conducting a crucial tank ambush- and then, their part having been played- they exit stage left.
While that approach doesn’t give you a depth of emotional attachment to one individual or another, it certainly conveys that war is a full tapestry of the threads of human lives interwoven together through blood and bravery and tragedy. This isn’t a “quest” story of one plucky band of heroes.
Second, it lets Lyons step back and tell a larger epic. Initial estimates of the war for Vraks predicted a 12-year campaign, but of course plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. By its inevitable conclusion, seventeen years later, fourteen million Kriegsmen had found their final rest in the soil of that benighted world. That’s far too much to fit into a single novel without recourse to time skips (and their corresponding perspective shifts).
The Krieg
As a result, this is less a tale about specific Krieg so much as a tale about the Krieg. And here is where Lyons truly excels.
Thanks to their characteristic three f’s (fanaticism, fatalism, and facelessness), the Krieg are particularly susceptible to being the most two-dimensional of any of the Imperial Guard. You can’t mention the Krieg on social media without the inevitable references to trench shovels and “happy gasmask noises.”
The easy workaround here is to simply have some un-Krieg Krieg, soldiers from the Death Korps that add, say, a splash of Cadian personality. Martinets still, but martinets with some sparkle. Lyons instead goes for the approach of enriching and deepening the Krieg but remaining within their characteristic parameters. What does it really mean to be a Kriegsman? What stirs in a breast whose visage is hidden behind their perpetual mask?
Consider this, when Lyons ponders how the masks would contribute to a sense of anonymity both within and without the Death Korps:
As far as Maugh could tell, most Krieg remained masked even around each other. The mask was part of their uniform, which made it part of them. Hailing as they did from a radioactive hellhole, they also knew how swiftly invisible poisons could spread and they were forever prepared.
The mask had other benefits too, less often acknowledged. They distanced the Krieg from each other. If they didn’t know their comrade’s faces, didn’t have names for them, then how could they mourn them when they died? Only in a general sense. Their masks discouraged them from thinking of each other – by extension, of themselves – as individuals. They belonged to a faceless collective, no member more important than another.
The masks dehumanised their wearers. Perhaps this encouraged the likes of Lord Commander Zuehlke to value Krieg lives as cheaply as they did their own.
Lyons fills the book with these touches, treating these most peculiar Guardsmen not like memes or curiosities, but the men and women they are.
Each Korpsman had a duty and wouldn’t shirk from it – now, it seemed, more than ever, as if recent events, rumours of a regiment’s disgrace, had only stiffened their resolve. Each one was fighting for the Emperor, for the home world, each driven by the need to make a difference, even if it was only by taking a bullet so the Korpsman behind didn’t have to. Tenaxus felt humbled by their faith.
These humanizing elements are superb, giving them depth and dimension.
A Very Human Weakness
One of Warhammer’s grand, overarching themes has long been the notion that within humanity lies the seeds of its own undoing. Chaos is not prevalent in the universe through raw force of might, but rather because it has seduced humanity, finding ingress through our weaknesses and vanities.
Lyons plays in this space for Siege of Vraks, to terrific result. The Krieg- faceless, fanatic, and fatalistic as they are- are humans still. What sins could sway their souls to action?
For Lyons, it’s pride. When the society you belong to is ultra-conformist, how does one contend with the nascent stirrings of individuality? Again here Lyons shows a fitting subtlety and deft hand. He teases it out through conversations with a supporting (non-Krieg) character here, through whispered internal questioning there.
It’s no spoiler to say that there isn’t a moment in this book where some self-actualizing Krieg tears off the mask and casts away the shackles of society, choosing their own name and vowing to strike out on their own. We don’t get a Drizzt Do’Uden of the Krieg here.
Rather, it’s an examination of what the sin of pride might look like in that culture, and it’s a fascinating throughline.
Overall
Siege of Vraks is an excellent war story and I struggled to find where it put a foot wrong. Lyons’ prose is very economic and direct, avoiding the languid tidepools and eddies of thought that can sometimes bog down the pacing of battle narratives. Each of the story’s different Acts moves the tale forward, bringing us a new ensemble to follow while retaining some links with what has already transpired.
Those wanting a tale focused on one set of characters that develop and grow as the tale unfolds are likely to be a bit disappointed, but the Black Library has no shortage of such.
Krieg had a compelling mystery that kept the pages turning as it slowly teased out how their people came to be, but I wondered how Lyons would keep the reader hooked beyond just the action sequences. As it turned out, through an examination of what it meant to be a Krieg.
Steve Lyons seems poised to do for the Death Korps what Aaron Dembski-Bowden did for the Night Lords, pleasing the base while attracting new fans. 2024 had some terrific reads for Black Library fans, and I’ll admit to being a little surprised when it was announced that Siege of Vraks had taken first place. Now having read it, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
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