Kill Lupercal 1

I'm watching the Kill Lupercal animated series on Warhammer+, and this is my review of it. There may be very minor spoilers, but ideally no more than you'd get from the episode description.

There are apparently 3 episodes in this series, so this episode is a full third of the series and I have to admit that it's relatively sparse on story. It's dense with establishing the setting though, and there's plenty of visual detail for any fan of Warhammer to gaze at adoringly. Specific to my own interests, the main character is a Princeps of an Imperial Knight, serviced by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Those are the armies I play in Warhammer 40,000, so I'm always happy to get more media about them.

Of course, this isn't actually Warhammer 40,000 but Horus Heresy, which is set a full millennium before Warhammer 40k. This makes it even more satisfying for me, because the Space Marines in this episode wearing Mark VI armour, which match my Space Marine collection. Additionally, there are a bunch of tech-priests swarming around the knight Aurora Ferrum, which is nice to see because the Liber Mechanicum source book is pretty light on graphics and doesn't really show what the tech-priests of Mars looked like back then. It's nice to see that they looked pretty much the same, 10,000 years ago, because I've been using my 40k models in my Horus Heresy games. I'm perfectly happy for my Horus Heresy armies to be made pilfered models from 40k, but it's pleasant to see that tech-priests having changed basically nothing about their vestments for 10,000 is now canon.

Story

There's just barely a story so far. The Aurora Ferrum is undergoing repairs, and Princeps Scanlon (or something sounding like that) is anxious to get back out into battle. The Aurora Ferrum is protecting Holy Terra, and Princeps Scanlon is determined to hunt down and kill the traitor Warmaster Horus, once known affectionately as "Lupercal." She spends most of the episode getting the titan out of the hangar despite broken auspexes and stubborn machine spirits.

She's no Ship Mistress Livia Solken, but I like the Princeps so far. She seems like a no-nonsense expert pilot who desires above all else to protect the Emperor. Of course, at this time the Emperor was not dead, but a living man who had rallied humanity into a unified force. There was no Imperial Cult yet, and when the Princeps says a prayer to the Omnissiah, you know that her spiritual devotion is to the machine god and you can understand why. The technology around her is all but proof of the Omnissiah's presence and grace, so it's not hard to imagine how the machine cult justifies its worship. Not that it couldn't all be solved with good technical documentation, a lot less prayer, and a lot more development, but at least in the context of this episode you can see how they got to where they are.

Good Warhammer

This episode is good Warhammer 30k. The visuals are astounding, the sounds are perfect, and the music is by the definitive Warhammer composer, Jonathan Hartman. Whether you love Horus Heresy or Warhammer 40,000, the interiours and inner workings of a titan are awe-inspiring. These are the scenes of Warhammer you can't see in miniature. Even when you crack open the hull of Canis Rex and see the pilot sitting in the cockpit, you don't get the true scale of a titan. And even if you somehow own a titan, you don't get to walk within its halls. This episode brings the gods of war to life, and I'm ready for more.