Rogue Trader: The Blasphemy of Kanesh

Sister Andromache was born in the depths of a hive city on Augereau, in the Acheron sector. As a child, she began laboring in the hive's massive factories, and had fate not intervened, that would have been where she spent the rest of her life. But when the call went out for volunteers to fight in one of the Imperium's endless wars, she lied about her age and was accepted into an Imperial Guard regiment, and hurriedly shipped to combat.

As a young soldier, she distinguished herself in combat, but it was what she did out of combat that proved more enduring. On the long warp voyage to the front, a preacher had taught her and several other soldiers to read, and she spent countless hours poring over the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. Impressed by her honest piety, her fellow soldiers asked her to lead them in prayer, and by the time the regiment left the frontline, she had been inducted into the missionary order of St. Electra the Light-bringer as Sister Andromache.

When the war was over, Sister Andromache stayed with the Order of St. Electra as a missionary, spreading the word of the Emperor in the Aradec Confederation and beyond. After a long career, she retired to one of the Order's convents on the shrine world of Termina Anastasiae. She spent many tranquil years at the convent, teaching young missionaries and immersing herself in the monastic life. She developed a strong interest in early Imperial theology, and became a recognized authority on some of the more obscure writings of Malcador the Sigilite.

This is where Sister Andromache's official biography ends. It was subsequently purged from all Imperial records, but can still be read in the Apocrypha of Krast. No-one knows what happened at the convent, but judging from what Andromache wrote, her studies in systematic theology drove her mad. She wrote a tome titled Metaphysica Divina, which was so blasphemously heretical that the first censor who read it went mad and committed suicide, hurling herself over a cliff next to the monastery. Sister Andromache was found in her cell, patiently awaiting her inevitable judgement. In recognition of her long service, she was granted the mercy of being executed before being burned with her book.

The book, however, would not die. Although no copies could possibly have been made before its destruction, on the day after Sister Andromache's pyre, eleven volumes of Metaphysica Divina were inexplicably discovered in the convent's library. Sisters at the convent testified to haunting dreams of Andromache and the dead censor; novices who could not have had access to the book mumbled passages from it in their sleep. Eventually the entire convent was purged, but the abbess in charge had delayed making a full report to her superiors, and some sisters had been able to leave the convent. Although they were subsequently tracked down and executed by the Ordo Hereticus, Sister Andromache's heresy had been allowed to spread. Persistent rumours on Termina Anastasia insist that some sisters of the convent escaped the Inquisition's attentions altogether.

Since then, the Metaphysica Divina has made inexplicable appearances in Imperial libraries. All knowledge of it was once thought to have been suppressed, until an Imperial expedition encountered a volume on the faraway world of Kanesh, leading to the work now being more commonly known as the Blasphemy of Kanesh. Possession of a copy is punishable by death.

**

Fragments from

Metaphysica Divina

or

The Blasphemy of Kanesh

by Sister Andromache the Doomed

**

By setting this quill to parchment, I commit suicide. I forsake my faith, my life and my soul. Yet the clamor in my head will not still, and I fear - I know - that even in death I will not find rest until I unburden my mind. I must write though it is my death.

**

It is not commonly known that the Emperor did not want humanity to worship him as a god. Even though this is an unthinkable blasphemy in our time, and many of the early documents have been redacted, a careful reading of the Theban Debates makes it clear this is what was discussed. Malcador opposed the Cult, but later changed his mind.

**

Why does he not strike me down? Where is the knock at the door? The Emperor must know I am writing this! Why does he permit it?

**

Though we must teach all humanity to abhor the Daemon, we know that we cannot think too deeply on the nature of the Enemy. To collect our thoughts is to invite damnation. Bitterly do I know this now.

Euphrosyne of Galatea teaches us that a Chaos God is a primal emotion, a being of the Immaterium brought to life by our mental energies. This is why we must teach the novices the Balance, but we cannot even hint at the Galatean Euphemisms for the reason why. Because the Enemy comes from us. It is our energies, and our souls, that power them.

**

In one of the tablets of the Euphratian Apocalypse, it is told that Malcador the Sigilite decided to support the Imperial Cult once he realized it would nourish the Emperor. Look at the exact words of the tablet, set it beside certain passages in the Liber Achelieus, and you will never again know a night of restful sleep.

No, I cannot write it.

I am tormented by a dream where the Emperor dances in a deep cave on Terra, building a tower of gold and brass that will make him a god.

My soul is forfeit.

**

In the Tome of St. Patricia, we learn of the death of St. Celestine, and her resurrection. She dies on Forrax - yet she does not die, and walks again. And she is only one of the Living Saints, revered immortal champions of the Emperor.

What does the Book of Proscriptions tell us the ultimate temptation, the greatest boon offered by the Ruinous Powers is? Immortality.

For most of those who turn to Chaos, this prize remains forever out of reach. They die in the service of the daemons, and their deaths are more power to their foul gods.

What of us, who are trained to diligently look for the least spark of the curse of the witch in our charges, and to deliver the cursed to the Black Ships? Do we not likewise feed our god with our faith, and with their deaths? Their sacrifice?

Do we not nourish him?

**

The Immaterium - the Warp - is a hell to us, full of daemons that would rip us to pieces and consume our very souls if they could.

What are we to them?

**

What is the Emperor?

WHAT IS THE EMPEROR?

What do we serve?

[fragments end]

Warhammer 40,000: Ooarai Girls Academy

"We're lucky the school's on a carrier ship."
- Girls und Panzer 1

Vincent van Gogh: Still life (Vase with twelve sunflowers), 1888

**

As my opponents seemed to quite like the idea of tanks, the obvious thing to add to our Imperial army was a Leman Russ battle tank. I wanted to do something a little bit different for the model, though, and this is what I ended up with:

The model is a Panzer IV ausf. D from Warlord Games, and it's excellent; admittedly there were a couple of unsightly lumps of resin, but they were fairly easy to remove, and maybe I don't entirely know what to do with almost any of the metal doohickeys, but I think overall the model is very good and definitely worth its price.

Accompanying the tank is in the image above is a Gestapo officer from Warlord's delightful Guarding the Chateau set, i.e. Herr Flick of the Ordo Hereticus.

I'll admit that the reason I chose a Pz.IV for our Leman Russ was Girls und Panzer. Seeing as how I've done my master's thesis on tanks, I was vaguely aware that it existed, and I encountered the full absurdity of the manga when buying a goon a tank-related present. So when browsing 1/56 scale tanks online, I ended up buying the Pz.IV ausf. D that the protagonists use in their tankery exercises in the first manga.

Of course, one thing leads to another. I originally intended to have just a single Leman Russ named Ooarai Girls Academy. However, because it would be advantageous from a rules standpoint to field an entire spearhead detachment of tanks, it seems like it might be a decent idea to collect three more Ooarai tanks, one of them an HQ tank. So I googled for a female tank commander miniature - only to find that something called Company B sells not only Ooarai decals but also anime tank commanders. So obviously I ordered some.

Here's the Ooarai Girls Academy Panzer IV, then, with proper markings and everything:

The running gear was painted Vallejo Gunmetal Grey, and given a wash of Smoke and Black Glaze. The hull color is German Grey.

**

One of the most delightful and senseless absurdities of Girls und Panzer is that for some reason that completely escapes me, all of the tankery high schools are based on aircraft carriers. With Japanese entertainment, I find one just has to accept some things. This does, however, make a Warhammer 40,000 conversion remarkably easy from a fluff standpoint. Clearly the 40k Ooarai Girls Academy is an arm of the Schola Progenium that trains orphan girls into Imperial Guard tank crews on a giant starship. It makes as much sense as anything else.

Because the Ooarai tanks will eventually form their own detachment, they'll benefit from a regimental doctrine. Clearly the best doctrine for a detachment of Leman Russes is Tallarn. So if anyone finds 28mm models of Japanese schoolgirls dressed like they're in the Afrika Korps, let me know!

Char B1 bis

This Warlord Char B1 bis represents the Public Morals Committee tank. As it's the obvious candidate to be a Commissar Tank if someone wants to field one at some point, it needed a commander from Company B; I assembled this as a French tank in all other respects, but accommodating the commander in the turret required the German hatch as opposed to the original French cupola.

Here's the finished article with a Commissar tank stripe.

Pz.38(t) ausf. B

Next up: the student council tank, a Pz.38(t) from Warlord. For 40k purposes, I want this to be the HQ tank. Because a Tank Commander has a BS of 3+, it seems compulsory to take sponson weapons here, but they really interfere with the Girls und Panzer aesthetic. The solution? Magnets.

Those are plasma cannons from the Sentinel kit; they look a little big on an actual 28mm vehicle, but then everything smaller would just look like a plasma gun.

Here's the unpainted tank without plasma cannons:

And here with.

I think it painted up all right.

And the plasma guns are delightfully easy to attach and detach.

This is such a cute little tank!

M3 Lee

Finally, the volleyball team. Compared to the other tanks, the M3 is the size of a house.

**

I had also ordered a Renault FT 17 from Warlord ages ago, and as part of this project, I painted it up in Ooarai colors as well.

Finally, since we were buying World War II vehicles, how could we resist a Salamander Recon Tank from the Imperial Armor index, represented by a Warlord Games Sd.kfz 222, i.e. Lieutenant Grüber's little tank from 'Allo 'Allo.

**

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I really like Warlord vehicles! These little tanks were a lot of fun to paint.

Let's Read Tolkien 81: The Grey Havens

The clearing up certainly needed a lot of work, but it took less time than Sam had feared.

The victorious hobbits liberate Sharkey's prisoners, including Lobelia and Fredegar Bolger, and get to work fixing the Shire. All of the horrible modern buildings are destroyed, and Sam puts Galadriel's gift to use replanting trees. Everything is great, there's a bumper crop at the next harvest, Sam gets married and everything. Frodo, though, still suffers from his wounds, and eventually the time comes: Frodo and Sam ride out to meet Elrond, Galadriel and Bilbo, on their way to the Grey Havens. There, Frodo and Bilbo get on a boat with the elves and Gandalf. Merry and Pippin show up just in time to say goodbye, and the ship sets sail over the Sea to Valinor. The three hobbits left behind head back home, and the novel ends with Sam arriving home to his family.

**

So, Sharkey is gone, and the Shire can be restored to how it was always meant to be. You might think this would be a moment for some reflection on how things work there, given that an enterprising tobacco merchant managed to accidentally transform it from a minarchist utopia to Mordor on the Brandywine in what, two years, but no, everything will go back to exactly how it was. Remember, making things better is Sarumanism.

The restoration of the Shire is maybe where the analogy to the world wars is clearest. Tolkien finished the Lord of the Rings after the war, and after Labour won the 1945 elections with a landslide, getting a clear mandate to build a new society. It wasn't just Britain; we now know that the time after the Second World War would become the Great Acceleration, ushering in the most profound period of change in the history of mankind. So there's a sense, at least looking back, in which the rebuilding of the Shire is a fantasy alternative to what actually happened after the Second World War: in reality, the factories, airbases and hospitals weren't knocked down and replaced with an agrarian utopia, but it's easy to believe that Tolkien wished they had been.

The Shire, of course, was never a utopia for everyone. This time, it's Frodo who doesn't fit in, underlined by one of Tolkien's most direct biblical references: "Frodo dropped quietly out of all the doings of the Shire, and Sam was pained to notice how little honour he had in his own country."

But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
- Mark 6:4

Apart from prophethood, Frodo is troubled by his wounds, especially the Morgul-knife at Weathertop, but also by the after-effects of the Ring. You'll need to read the appendices to find this out, but in fact, even Sam doesn't live happily ever after in the Shire: eventually he, too, takes to the Havens as the last Ringbearer. The last event in the history of the Fellowship is when Legolas and Gimli eventually cross the Sundering Seas to arrive in Valinor, presumably to be greeted by "Legolas what the fuck" when the dwarf disembarks. Somehow it makes me happy that the end of the story is three hobbits and a dwarf hanging out in elf Valhalla.

**

So, here we are: I started this whole thing in November 2013, made it as far as the Lord of the Rings in May 2016, and now it's finished. It's been quite a project. I'd like to thank my three regular readers and especially my regular commentator! The first offline consequence of all this will hopefully be a lecture on Tolkien and the heresies of the early church, to be delivered at the Helsinki Adult Education Center when circumstances permit. I might also try to publish a little something; we'll see. But it's been a real pleasure doing this.

Do I have some kind of final verdict on the Lord of the Rings? I don't know. It's still almost certainly one of the best-selling novels of all time, and the horrible movies supposedly based on it have cemented its status in popular culture to such an extent that it feels like it doesn't matter what I think of it. I hope I've been succesful in demonstrating that the Lord of the Rings is more complicated and more interesting than the strawman it's so often made into, and how understanding at least a little bit about Tolkien's theology sheds some light on quite a few things about it that I feel are otherwise misunderstood.

Other than that, I don't really have any grand conclusions to offer. Personally, I think the theology is complete nonsense, and some parts of the Lord of the Rings quite objectionable on many grounds. I also first read it at a sensitive age, and while I could certainly do without some of it, the world Tolkien created, and the compelling story he set in it, have been a major inspiration in my life and continue to be. I use that inspiration to try to do my part to make the world a better place for everyone. Sarumanism, Tolkien would say, which is frankly reactionary garbage. Tolkien's stories inspire me to do work which is directly contrary to the ideals he held. Make of that what you will, I guess.

Next time: well, let's see. I'm taking a break for a bit, but I think I might then do something completely different.

Thank you for reading!