Raven Guard Short Story "Prey" released

The Black Library has released "Prey" a short story about a Raven Guard Chaplain fighting a mysterious creature on Deliverance.

From The Black Library's author George Mann:

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently (some would say too much time), thinking about the Raven Guard. In particular, I’m interested in exploring everything that sets the Raven Guard apart from their brother Space Marines. Some of these traits are well established, of course: their ghostly white flesh, their obsidian eyes, their preference for stealth tactics and striking from the darkness. I’ve tried to incorporate all of these things into my Raven Guard stories so far. But one of the things that I’m really keen on delving deeper into is the rituals of the Raven Guard, their symbolism and beliefs.

In Helion Rain and Labyrinth of Sorrows I took inspiration from the recent Forge World models, which depict the Raven Guard as carrying bird skull fetishes on chains about their power armour. I named these tiny bird skulls ‘corvia’ and imagined that the Raven Guard harvested these skulls as part of their initiation as aspirants – that they had to put their stealthy skills to use in capturing these ravens in the forests of Kiavahr and make totems from the creature’s skulls.

However, when it came to describing the armour of a Raven Guard Chaplain for a new, forthcoming project, ++REDACTED BY THE INQUISITION++, I decided it was time to up the ante. If a typical Raven Guard aspirant was expected to capture a tiny Kiavahran raven with his bare hands, what trials must a Chaplain have to face?

Chaplain Cordae’s armour is unlike that of any Raven Guard seen before. His skull mask is formed from the head of a massive Roc – an enormous bird that lives high in the peaks of the Diagothian mountains of Kiavahr. The bird’s wing bones are spread across his jump pack, and its ribs form a brace across his chest. Cordae believes he carries the spirit of this massive, terrifying bird into combat alongside him, and the last thing his enemies see before they die at his feet is the looming, beaked skull of his mask, peering into their soul.

In Prey, a prequel, of sorts, to the campaign in the Sargassion Reach that began in Labyrinth of Sorrows, Cordae is hunting this beast. As the story opens he’s been in the mountains for nineteen days, wearing only a ritual loincloth, and he’s readying himself for his attack. But has he anticipated just how wily this deadly creature can be…?


The shorty Story is available for download on The Black Library site.  It costs a mere $ 1.25.

Alec