10 RESULTS
2025Friday 26th September 2025Keynote SpeakersOnlineMain image from Martyrs of Elysia by Chris Dows

In defence of the topofocal approach to story development – Worldbuilding as an aid to narrative creation and the expansion of Elysian Drop Troops lore

The British literary critic and author M. John Harrison defines Worldbuilding as an ‘attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there’. Worldbuilding is one of the most important aspects of genre fiction and is an undeniable factor in the success of the 40K universe, which is appropriately recognised for the scope, depth and detail …

2025OnlinePanel 17Saturday 27th September 2025Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

New Dark Age – Synthesizing Historical Understanding through Warhammer

The Warhammer universe, in its totality, has exploded in popularity in the twenty-first century, crossing the boundary from niche tabletop wargame to vast multimedia franchise, spanning novels, video games, and television. Yet with this increasing cultural cachet comes a significant question – why, in this particular historical moment, has this famously “grimdark” setting gained significant …

2025OnlinePanel 15Saturday 27th September 2025Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

A People’s History of the Imperium of Man: Warhammer 40,000’s Unreliable Narrator, Canonicity, and Historiography

There are, to date, close to four hundred books in the Black Library catalogue set in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. The vast majority of these books remain valid canon, as do the bulk of supplemental material, faction codexes, rule books, video games, and the models themselves. Unlike many other fictional settings, Warhammer 40,000 has the …

2025OnlinePanel 12Saturday 27th September 2025Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

“Victory, as the galaxy burns”: Narrative State Transitions and the Commercial Context of Warhammer 40k

This presentation builds on previous research relating to narrative state transitions and nemein-seeking behaviour by applying this context to the various narratives present within Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe. By reference to Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the minimum complete plot this presentation identifies and explores how narrative state transitions are managed within the 40k …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 7Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

“The more things change, the more they stay the same” – Narrative Development vs. Setting-Stagnation

For a game to be successful, it must generate interest in its target group. To be successful for a long time, this interest must also be kept up for a long time. This is usually done by creating new content, for example, new adventures to play or additions to the game. At the same time, …

2024Panel 10Saturday 28th September 2024Warhammer 40k

What happened to the Lost Primarchs? Or, a case of invitational incompleteness

Everyone who’s interested in 40K lore knows that the Emperor of Mankind gene-crafted 20 “sons” to be his superhuman generals in the Great Crusade to reunite humanity. Equally well known is that two of these Primarchs – the second and the eleventh – were “lost”: everything about them was intentionally deleted from Imperial records. But …

2024Friday 27th September 2024OnlinePanel 9Warhammer 40k

Intertextuality as a double-edged chainsword – is writing for Warhammer a barrier to narrative invention?

Julia Kristeva’s poststructuralist concept of intertextuality applies to the creation of all genres and formats of texts, but when it comes to working within an existing universe such as Warhammer, the relationship with what has come before and, challengingly from wider narrative and character arc perspectives, what may come in the future, takes on a …

2024Friday 27th September 2024OnlinePanel 9Warhammer 40k

The Power of Ensembles: How Warhammer Novels Introduce Worldbuilding and Create Tension through Multiperspective Storytelling

Worldbuilding is an integral part of the science fiction and fantasy genres. A major challenge of these genres is introducing the setting to readers in a way that is natural and doesn’t overwhelm them. This can be done through a reader surrogate character, a character that is either new to the setting (such as Neo …

2024Friday 27th September 2024OnlinePanel 5Warhammer 40k

Excommunicate Traitoris – On Defining Canon, Communities, and the Building of Narrative Worlds

Abstract “Everything is Canon” or so goes the meme which exploded through the Warhammer 40,000 online community in mid April 2024. In reaction to the ostensibly new revelation of female Custodes in the 10th Edition a proportion of 40K fans declared this news as “heretical” and a betrayal of the fandom. In response Games Workshop …