Warhammer 40K’s newest tabletop RPG embraces the series’ pulp-fiction roots

polygon.com:

Warhammer 40,000 is a world where powerful transhuman warriors clash with terrifying alien monsters, but often its most interesting characters are the humans caught in between. Throughout the Black Library novels, Inquisitors Gregor Eisenhorn and Gideon Ravenor are shown to be incredibly powerful psykers, but they would be ineffective without the efforts of ex-bounter hunter Harlon Nayl or the acrobat Kara Swole. Similarly, author Dan Abnett’s Horus Rising is all the more stark and terrifying because its events are seen through the eyes of artists and journalists, remembrancers like Euphrati Keeler and Solomon Voss.

At Gen Con on Friday publisher Cubicle 7 announced it was expanding its line of 40K-themed role-playing games to include regular humans who, like Nayl and Keeler, work in service to more powerful patrons. Called Imperium Maledictum, this new game was inspired by previous d100-based games published by Black Industries — including classics like Dark Heresy. The subject of this new game stands in stark contrast to the higher-tier characters available in Wrath & Glory, Cubicle 7’s marquee 40K-themed tabletop RPG. Expect the fights to be close quarters, and the narratives deliciously pulp.

“With Wrath and Glory, you’re more action-focused,” creative director Emmet Byrne told Polygon ahead of the announcement. “You’re playing archetypes and units from the tabletop [wargame]. Imperium Maledictum is [about being] much more lower-level investigators trying to work against — or work within — the mechanisms of the Imperium.”

Players will build their party as a kind of warband, with each of its characters bound to a powerful patron. That patron could be an Inquisitor, like Eisenhorn or Ravenor, or it could be a remember