Red-Marked

The Horus Heresy #Audio Drama

by Nick Kyme

A Horus Heresy audio drama

Sergeant Aeonid Thiel frustrates his superiors in the Ultramarines Legion once again, by leading a handful of rogue veterans against the traitor warbands still at large in Ultramar

Though the Word Bearers’ attack on Calth and the subsequent Shadow Crusade into Ultramar are but a memory, the borders of Imperium Secundus are far from secure. Sergeant Aeonid Thiel, stranded on the garrison world of Oran on his way back to Macragge, frustrates his superiors once again by pointing out the holes in their defence – traitor warband activity is increasing, and a series of key listening posts have fallen silent. Leading a handful of rogue veterans and wearing the red mark of censure like a badge of honour, can Thiel uncover the truth behind the mysterious ‘Nightfane’?

It's another chapter in the tale of everyone's favourite maverick Ultramarine. Last time, disobeying orders put him in the heart of the greatest battle the Ultramarines have ever faced. What will he end up part of now...?

Running time 75 minutes. Performed by Gareth Armstrong, John Banks, Steve Conlin, Jonathan Keeble, Toby Longworth, Saul Reichlin & Luis Soto.

Genres: Audiobook, Science Fiction, Short Stories, 40k

MP3

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Nick Kyme (b. 1977) writes mostly for Black Library. His credits include the popular Salamanders series and several audio dramas.

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in Eye of Terra anthology.

When key listening post stations on Oran garrison planet start going down one after one, the Ultramarines just dismiss it like nothing important, but for Sergeant Aeonid Thiel and his group of red-marked for censure "unworthy-of-being-space-marines"... Battles against traitors and redemption/glory follow as scheduled.

Average story, and the bad incipit really seems an uninspired rpg quest one.

Meh :/

[RatGrrrl · Rating 2 out of 5]

April 2024 Re-Read using the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project Reading Order Omnibus XIII Imperium Secondus I Hope's Kindling (https://www.heresyomnibus.com/omnibus...) as part of my Oath of Moment to complete the Horus series and extras.

Sadly, if less sassily, I have to concur with my initial review, although I do feel a bit about how disrespectful it was. I was really hoping finally knowing the Red Marked Saga order and having the context of the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project Reading Order would help, but alas.

This really is a meat and potatoes military honour story with Thiel proving that being a starched and judgemental commanding officer who throws away and treats awfully those marked for sensure is bad and dying honourably, but absolutely unnecessarily, is good, for reasons. It also introduces the concept of Night Fane, which I don't remember what it is, but I know that one of the audio dramas has a human in a hazmat suit on the front cover alongside Thiel, as that character is a card that gives infantry or Astartes Stealth--the truly ridiculous nature of a piss poor memory lol. Moreover, it shows the Shadow Crusade either isn't over and has moved to a new stage or that there's a whole new operation going in that's going to be a problem for the newly minted Imperium Secondus.

Dylan Moran has a bit about the SAS and their motto, "Death Before Dishonour", and the various things they would happily do to avoid death, including performing felatio on a smurf while cooking them an omlette. The point of the bit is that the notion of honour, particularly around machismo, chauvinist, state military concepts of honour, are bad and silly. I feel very similarly and believe most people would agree that there are different meanings of honour, but generally the idea is around being moral, ethical, honest and/ or good, especially when it's easier to be otherwise. I'm all for that, but tying your honour to institutions is just unfathomable to me and not something I can get behind.

What I'm trying to say is [I'm a pinko, lefty, Queer...] this is one of those stories that errs into backing up or at least not refuting some concept of the Imperium, and by extension potentially other imperial of state forces, such as the SAS, reinforcing the ideals of the thing Warhammer 40K was originally conceived to parody. Don't get me wrong, this is nowhere near, the genuinely repugnant and I will never listening to again after going back to confirm it is as bad as I though, Primarchs audio drama, Elysium by Darius Hinks, which presents and lauds the colonial atrocities and war crimes of Guilliman without recourse, ruining a character I actually thoroughly enjoyed in The Unremembered Empire. Anyways, my point is the politics of this story, while not being anywhere near as bad as it could be, makes me a little skeeved out and seems inappropriate for Black Library.

Unfortunately, on top of that, it's just a decidedly boring story with paper thin characters who are very obviously written to either have a total 180 of their opinions or have a tiny arc and be gone by the end.

I just didn't find this enjoyable or engaging, despite Kyme's actual prose being solid. This is just one of those where it has the combination of not being so good, falling into the trap of lauding the Imperial perspective unmodified, and being able to see the pencil marks and sticky tape that a published draft of a story shouldn't contain.

Through using the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project (www.heresyomnibus.com) and my own choices, I have currently read 23.41 Horus Heresy novels, 14 novellas (including 1 repeat), 76 short stories/ audio dramas (including 5 repeats), as well as the Macragge's Honour graphic novel, 13 Primarchs novels, 4 Primarchs short stories/ audio dramas, and 2 Warhammer 40K further reading novels...this run. I can't say enough good about the way the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project suggestions. I'm loving it! Especially after originally reading to the releases and being so frustrated at having to wait so long for a narrative to continue.

***

Initial Review

One of those stars is for the audio drama producers and the other is for the voice actors. This is a remarkably well put together piece, at least in how it sounds. It's such a shame that such a tight production went this absolute nothing burger of a story.

I like Thiel. I like Kyme. The amount varies, but I've been enjoying the red head saga for a while now to varying degrees, but this just isn't anything.

Painfully boring. Nothing happening. Mind numbingly empty.
Honestly, if this had been any longer, I would have DNF'd.

It's just a very boring military story with some Ultramar Blue poured on.

Thiel deserves better and Kyme can do better.

I was genuinely upset to see the next audio drama is the continuation of this storyline.

STOP TRYING TO MAKE THE HELMETS SEEM INTERESTING! I WAS PROPERLY EXCITED DURING KNOW NO FEAR WHEN IT WAS FIRST A THING, BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP MILKING IT AS IT EVERY TIME IT COMES UP WE ARE GOING TO SWOON.

[DarkChaplain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found Red-Marked to be very disappointing.

It fills the gap between Censure (which was pretty good) and Stratagem , where Sergeant Aeonid Thiel returns to meet with Primarch Guilliman and introduces his tactics and the Red-Marked to him. From there, we know he's taking care of traitors throughout Ultramar and featured in Deathfire .

So Red-Marked goes way back to be somewhat of an origin story for his elite group. Neat, or it would have been, if it had been released closer to when it was announced, years ago. This should have been out before The Unremembered Empire at least, before Deathfire at the very latest. As such, we already know the essential survivors from Deathfire, and that it all goes well.

It is an average story with few big moments, in my opinion. Some cool one-liners, a reference to the Furious Abyss (from the much-maligned Battle for the Abyss (which I thought wasn't remotely as bad as it is made out to be, if mediocre)), but really out of order and at this point simply unnecessary.

We know the state of Ultramar at this point, from Deathfire and the recently released Pharos , so all this audio drama can really bring to the table is a dirty dozen-style rogue mission that gives us an insight on various reasons for an Ultramarines' censure and disciplinary actions. Most of the story is made up of action scenes, though, which might sound engaging in the audio drama format, but to me, gets old very quickly. The dialogue is where the medium shines, not the chainsaw sounds or explosions.

To be fair, though, I still enjoy Aeonid Thiel as a character. He is unconventional for Horus Heresy times, resulting in decent dialogue with other Ultramarines, and a certain sense of humor. There is a scene in this drama where he gets challenged to an honour duel by a Night Lord - who, let's be real, can't be trusted in such matters. At all. Instead of going for it, Thiel simply shoots him. Good job, buddy. I just didn't think that this was the best use of the character at this point.

Red-Marked wasn't bad. It was just plain mediocre, unsurprising and way late to the party.

[Dylan Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Red-Marked, the latest audio drama from Nick Kyme featuring the most interesting Ultramarine Aeonid Thiel and his marry band of red-helmed... delinquents, for lack of a better word. The sound effects are great, and possibly the best of any of the audio dramas thus far (with the exception of Honour to the Dead). This audio drama serves as a sort of origin story for Thiel’s force of “red-marked” legionaries. It takes place between the audio dramas “Censure” and “Stratagem”, which both take place quite a bit before Deathfire, where we see Thiel briefly. I feel like this story really should have been told earlier, as all of those stories are fairly old as far as the HH is now, but it is still a good story despite that. The action is awesome, the voice acting is really top notch(though I wish the CD was out so I could read the script alongside it, as most of the characters can get fairly confusing when relying strictly on voice). The story was certainly interesting, though I would have liked to see Nightfane have a bigger impact, as well as it be something that 22 Legionaries couldn’t have stopped. 3/5 because Black Library audio dramas are always greatly done as of late, and the story definitely had a decent number of great spots. It also had a decent number of not so great ones and came VERY late to the party.

[Liam Tondeur · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars given because the quality of the audio dramas are always good. No stars given to the story, however.

The gist is that Imperium Secondus is under constant attack and some Ultramarine early-warning listening posts go dark. So, what does the Captain in charge of them do? Sweet FA. Sergeant Aeonid Thiel wants to go check out them going silent and is called insubordinate and crazy but is allowed to take twenty-two shamed warriors with him to go take a looksie. During the inevitable battles they find themselves and each other. It's all very touching.

The true villain of this series isn't Horus Lupercal; it's Nick Kyme.

[Slevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn loved it, great stuff. Happy I found this great writer.

Aeonid Thiel!!!! : )

[Luke Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must confess I prefer Horus Heresy era Ultramarines to 40K era ones... Aeonid Thiel doing what he does best, dismantling traitor operations once again...

[Ross Cudmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

First appearing in “Know no Fear” and again in the audio-drama “Censure”, Sergeant Thiel of the Ultramarines continues to battle against the traitors in the outer reaches of the Ultima Segmentum.
The story is supposed to be about a bunch of Ultramarines who have been censured by their Legion, and now are on a desperate mission to either win back the respect of the Legion, or perhaps earn back their own internal sense of honour and pride.

I think there is a good concept there, of censured warriors trying to regain a sense of honour, but the story is just so action packed it all begins to blur together. The story isn’t told in a chronological narrative, which makes all the action more distracting and harder to follow.

Thiel later reappears in “Stratagem” and “Deathfire” alongside his Red-Marked warriors.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure this was a good place to jump in. The story didn't make a huge amount of sense with regards who the characters were, and it wasn't a great story in and of itself either.

A bunch of monitoring stations go silent. Ultramarines shrug their shoulders and go oh it's probably nothing, renegade group go off and investigate it and quelle surprise the stations have gone silent because they've been attacked and there's an evil plan.

So the whole story revolves around these supposedly perfect soldiers being dumb enough to just ignore a whole bunch of their monitoring bases dropping off the grid.

[Alexander van der Pol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best ultramarine hands down, but very mediocre story.

[Regan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story made difficult to read by jumping back and forth constantly. Just tell the story from start to finish.

[Callum Shephard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certain mistakes can be hard to shift from a creator's name. M Night Shyamalan might have begun to resurrect his career, but sadly some people will remember him always as the man who botched The Last Airbender. Or, to cite something Star Wars fans will often know, Kevin J. Anderson will sadly always be remembered for his Jedi Academy Trilogy despite his spectacular work with Dark Horse Comics as an an editor.

This sort of negative trend is something I personally try to avoid unless it is truly, absolutely, well deserved. Yet, sometimes it can be attached to authors I otherwise genuinely think are good. Enter Nick Kyme. While I do have general grievances with certain views on the canon, he has produced some genuinely great work for Black Library, but given we so often cover his lesser works it can seem like he's viewed as a terrible author on here. So, this time we'll be stopping to look at one of his recent greats to show off what he's capable of while at his best: The Red-Marked.

Synopsis

The story is a side-story following on from the events of Mark of Calth but before Unremembered Empire and Deathfire. Despite his successes in the War for the Underworld on Calth, Sergeant Aeonid Thiel has been withdrawn and tasked with assisting in guarding the outermost worlds of the Imperium Secundus. Finding himself repeatedly butting heads with his his superiors, garrison duty is ill suited to Thiel and he frequently opposes their more conservative approaches to war. However, after several outposts go silent and the mysterious "Nightfane" is mentioned, he is granted a small strike force to investigate the smaller garrisons.

However, things await on those worlds which Thiel that his group is ill prepared to face. With many still haunted by their own demons, it seems unlikely that any Ultramarine will escape alive...

The Good

Previous reviews have discussed the difficulty some writers have in getting to grips with an audible format. Some of the more infamous ones have this habit of producing a story which often states the unnecessary, such as ending every line with "he said" or "she said" and dragging out the action as a result. This definitely isn't the case here, and the Red-Marked gets the balance between the need for environmental descriptions and letting the actors just do their thing absolutely right. It flows from dialogue heavy sequences to action orientated assaults without missing a beat, and there's never a moment where it seems like the script is intruding upon a more personal moment, or robs the environment of descriptions.

This balance is rapidly established during the initial introduction, which is arguably one of the strongest opening scenes any audio drama has had for this setting thus far. While heavy on combat and fast moving, it manages to establish several major characters at a rapid pace, picks out the desperation of the situation and even hooks the reader with a seemingly impossible fight. It's enough to get right in on the action with a few scant minutes of work, before it moves on to start establishing just what is going on.

Sticking to a non-linear form of storytelling with plenty of flashbacks and previous events thrown into the mix, it pushes to try and tell a large scale story in a relatively short amount of time. Thankfully it succeeds, as we see the initial conflict, recruitment and objectives of Thiel's mission play out alongside their own investigations. While this is unfortunately something of an overdone tactic these days and it can lead to confusing gaps in the narrative, it serves the story well here. It works as a chance to further examine a much greater event in a very small space of time, while also skipping over much of the unnecessary busywork or fat which could have drawn out events.

It should go without saying that the voice acting and audio effects are absolutely spot on. By this point that should be obvious of course, but this is one of the few produced by Black Library themselves rather than Heavy Entertainment or Big Finish. Despite ditching the more experienced audio drama studios however, you'd hardly notice a dip at all. If anything the sound quality surpasses their own work at various points, and has added in a few more dynamic elements when it comes to explosions, gunfire or impact damage.

The combat itself is excellent thanks to both these effects and Kyme's writing working off of one another near perfectly, until you can easily picture the battles thanks to running dialogue. These sequences go the extra mile to throw almost anything of interest into the mix and to really experiment with what they can pull off, from officers dueling to heavy weapons assaulting entrenched emplacements, and the only thing it really lacks is air combat to finish it all off. In total honesty, this audio drama is likely to become the bar against which all future Horus Heresy releases are measured.

While many of the characters in question are admittedly fairly two-dimensional from what little we see, or have very little story to them, the Red-Marked uses them well. They're more here to speak about the nature of the Ultramarines or a few issues surrounding the Great Crusade, and also to depict the sorts of astartes who would make up his personal assault forces. A few even manage to get running story-arcs, with one Sergeant in particular reflecting upon a few issues fighting alongside other Legions. That and delivering one of the best self-aware jokes Warhammer has seen in years.

Finally on the positive scale of things, the story on the whole does a lot to help flesh out Thiel, his tactics and his overall personality. While a famous figure within the Heresy and one of the first astartes to help develop tactics against the other legions, he has been something of a blank slate. While there are no long sequences inside his head or personal monologues, what we get nails his style of command, personal tactics and a clear emphasis upon what made him stand out among the other legionaries. There's much more of a person behind the faceplate than anything we received during Know No Fear or Censure, and more opportunities to see why he was arguably the sort of naysmith all too many legions needed.

Unfortunately, as you might guess, there are still flaws here.

The Bad

For all the praise offered, what many people are likely going to note here is that the story does have the habit of dipping into some very played-out cliches at points. Especially military cliches. Now, on the one hand anything to help push the idea that the Legions were somewhat more like a typical military force rather than a Templar order is great. It helps to show further differences between M31 and M41, and gives a real sense of evolution over the course of ten thousand years. With that said however, you can likely predict a lot of these story elements coming from mile off. You have the hard-ass officer who dislikes the loose cannon who can get results, undercutting him until he's finally pushed into letting the Sergeant do his job. You have the failed soldiers who are still effective, each grounded for minor offenses and picked out to reclaim their glory. You have the haunted Sergeant, the officer who overlooks the obvious, and the man with the score to settle with an old foe.

Tropes are tools to be sure, but when you're hitting this many of them, you need to either cleverly disguise them until the listener doesn't pick them out, or pull them off so well they simply don't care. Well, unfortunately the former doesn't happen and the latter only occasionally comes into play. There are some great scenes with them to be sure, but the overarching tale sadly pushes any listener's suspense of disbelief to the limit.

There are also a few moments present in the story which never seem to be properly resolved. Many of these are brushed under the table, but they're set up as if there is going to be some big reveal or explanation beforehand. Thiel, for example, needs to know about "Nightfane" so we get a brief mention of him having picked it out from vox chatter long beforehand. Something which sadly proves to be both unsatisfying and fairly cheap. Equally, the presence of traitor marines who were never involved with the Shadow Crusade should have been a big heads up of sorts, but it amounts to nothing in the long run. Hell, even the very existence of these traitors or why they are here is never fully outlined, leaving a mystery force present well behind enemy lines. It honestly feels as if another story is needed to clear up points from this one at times, or that the drama didn't have the time to fully resolve them.

Furthermore, there are some questionable lines at times which just seem out of place at times. The opening statement alone is one which might put off some people with a "Guilliman lies" speech which seems to suggest the primarch is denying inconvenient truths he was otherwise aware of. Equally, while I personally liked the implication of a flaw among the Ultramarines which would be ironed out or exaggerated depending upon the chapter, it seemed to be playing towards an overly stereotypical view of the Legion. The sort of thing which, to cite another work, Warsmith Honsou joked about in exaggerated mockery all the way back in Dead Sky, Black Sun. So, to see that same idea be almost played out straight faced is eyebrow raising to be sure, but it could still play out to be an interesting element in a later story.

Verdict

While Red-Marked ultimately sticks to a basic and direct tale, the beauty of the work comes from its execution. Many story ideas are more teething elements than anything else, and to be completely honest, they're the sort of thing you only tend to seriously pick up on during a second listen-through or thinking back on events. Plus, even when the story does add them in, you'll likely have forgotten them by the next scene thanks to something better having come along in its place.

In all honesty, the Red-Marked is another great entry following a lesser known character with a major impact in the Horus Heresy, and one with the potential to start another Garro-style side story. If you're after an engaging Ultramarines tale which doesn't overplay their greatness or simply want a fun outing away from some of the big battlefields, I would definitely recommend this one over a lot of the competition.