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Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

The undead plague continues to roll across the United States of America. The east coast is almost gone, and the midwest is under siege. Escaping the ruin of Summerland, Jane McKeene and nemesis-turned-ally Katherine Deveraux try to make it to a neighbouring town, where a scientist hopes to have unlocked a cure for the undead curse...or at least an immunisation. Betrayals threaten, and the last hope of California gleams on the horizon, if they can make it that far.

Deathless Divide is the sequel and follow-up to Justina Ireland's 2018 novel, Dread Nation, picking up moments after that book ended. The first half of the novel is essentially more Dread Nation, continuing story and character arcs directly from that book (you can't really read this novel as a standalone). This remains compelling, with Jane and Katherine's fiery frenemy relationship continuing to provide a solid dramatic spine for the story.

Halfway through, there's an abrupt time jump to a point where things have become considerably more apocalyptic, with Jane and Katherine now separated and pursuing different storylines, which eventually lead them back into contact and on the road to their much-dreamt goal of reaching California. This allows Ireland to explore the two characters' growth and change, or in Jane's case a regression as she becomes hyper-fixated on vengeance against someone who wronged her, to the point of destroying every other relationship in her life.

The book has a grimmer tone even than its forebear, with a real end-of-the-world vibe missing from a lot of other apocalyptic fiction, but Katherine's determination to be bright and optimistic and behave properly cuts through that in an entertaining fashion. The continent may have been consumed by a ravening horde of undead, but that's no excuse for not keeping your weapons cleaned and riding a horse in an appropriate manner for a lady.

Ireland continues to further her successes from Dread Nation: there is some excellent action, some good character arcs and development, and some great use of the premise to explore issues of Civil War and Reconstruction-era racism and resentment (no matter how insane that is in the face of a much bigger, all-consuming threat). She also provides some great zombie action (no easy thing for a foe this overexposed and tired), and the interesting idea of being able to create an inoculation against the undead, raising the bizarre idea of maybe people and zombies could just coexist?

Unfortunately, the book's structure provides its biggest weakness: the move from being a direct continuation of the fall of Summerland to a much larger-scaled story involving travelling to and across California feels a little jarring, and the action in the latter half of the novel, including some very major character beats as they find things they've been looking for since the opening of the first book, feels very compressed. I get the impression, accurate or not, that this could have been a trilogy with the two halves of the novel each serving as its own book. Instead, compressing the two distinct stories into one novel makes things feel a bit too rushed, especially in the rear half.

Still, Deathless Divide (****) is a worthy follow-up to its forebear, being entertaining, well-written and thought-provoking whilst delivering good action. It just feels like the story could have been improved with a little bit more room to breathe.

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Homeworld 3

Two hundred and thirty-five years have passed since the exiles returned to their homeworld, Hiigara. The Hiigaran Hegemony has since spread across the Inner Rim of the galaxy, defeating the Vaygr warlord Makaan and activating the long-lost Great Network of hyperspace gates to revolutionise galactic travel and trade. But the gates have now started going dark. A vast area of hyperspace dysfunction, the Anomaly, is growing. Karan S'jet, the ancient navigator who guided her people home, has vanished whilst investigating the phenomenon. Two decades later, her protégé, Imogen, is ordered to take control of the new Hiigaran Mothership, the Khar-Kushan, and complete Karan's work.

Few franchises have proven as stubbornly tenacious as Homeworld. The original game launched in 1999 and was a moderate hit, and was rapidly followed by a stand-alone expansion, Homeworld: Cataclysm in 2000, which also did reasonably well. Homeworld 2 sold very disappointingly in 2003 and had a mixed reaction from fans. Combined with complex rights issues, this basically halted the franchise in its tracks for over a decade, until Gearbox saved the IP rights from obscurity and released Homeworld Remastered in 2015. Blackbird Interactive, a company formed by much of the original development team of Homeworld and Homeworld 2, subsequently released the ground-based prequel game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak in 2016. But what fans really wanted was another space game.

Eight years on, Blackbird have delivered the third numbered game in the series, the fifth mainline game overall and, thanks to the recent release of Homeworld Mobile and Homeworld: Vast Reaches (a VR game), the seventh title overall. Not bad for a series that has only ever sold modestly and remains obscure to the general games-playing audience.

As with its forebears, Homeworld 3 is a space-based, real-time strategy game. It takes advantage of its setting to operate in full 3D, with battles taking place in all three dimensions and both you and the enemy being able to launch attacks from above and below.

As usual, you have a huge mothership, in this game the Khar-Kushan, which operates as your mobile command centre and ship foundry. Resource gatherers collect resources, normally by mining asteroids or leftover salvage, which provide you with income to build more ships. Ships come in multiple classes, starting with fighters and bombers, and then moving up through corvettes, frigates, carriers, destroyers and battlecruisers.

Ships have specific roles and are best deployed as hard counters to specific enemy ship types: assault frigates chew up fighters, ion cannon frigates are excellent anti-capital ship vessels and minelayer frigates can assemble enormous minefields to disrupt enemy attacks. Bombers can be a relatively cheap way of engaging enemy capital ships without threatening your own, expensive capital vessels. You can put ships into different formations and vary their responses to enemy forces, from passively ignoring them to aggressively pursuing and shooting everything in sight. You can also assign ships to guard other vessels, such as sending a group of fighters to escort your resourcers as they head across the map to acquire more funds.

In terms of controls, there's a modern, WASD-based system which treats the camera like it's a first-person shooter, whilst a "classic" scheme perfectly recreates the interface from Homeworld Remastered (itself based on Homeworld 2's system, and mostly similar to the original game). The addition of the third axis can make using the interface slightly clunkier than in other strategy games, but there are a number of QOL options to make the controls more flexible. Selecting one of your formations and ctrl-boxing an enemy formation will make your ships target and destroy everything in that group rather than having to individually click enemy units, for example. The game also has time controls, for the first time in the franchise since Homeworld: Cataclysm, with you being able to slow down events by 25%, 50% or 75%. You can also pause completely and issue new orders before rejoining the fray. This is important in the most frantic and largest battles.

The game has three modes. The first is the story-based campaign, which follows up on the events of Homeworld 2 a hundred and twenty years later, with voice acting, cut scenes and dialogue explaining the plot. For the first time in the series, the cut scenes are pre-rendered in full 3D; the previous games were infamous for their minimalist, hand-drawn and originally black-and-white animated cut scenes. Deserts of Kharak began the process of "glowing up" these cut scenes into full colour and using rotoscoped animation, but Homeworld 3 goes full AAA with them. Well, AAA for 2007; the animation is surprisingly stiff in places and character facial expressions are sometimes cartoonishly exaggerated, which feels a bit off.

The story starts off very nicely, with a mystery unfolding over the fate of Karan and the nature of the Anomaly. Unfortunately, Imogen later develops the ability to talk to the main antagonist via a hyperspace connection, and she is a deeply underwhelming villain. The Taiidan Emperor, the Beast, Makaan and the Kiith Gaalsien, the villains of the prior games, were all worthy adversaries with some real menace and presence, but the Incarnate Queen is prone to histrionics and petulant fits which remove a lot of menace or tension. This is annoying as the story holds a lot of promise, and the way it is integrated into the mission design is often very good, such as having to defend a ship trapped in ice as it breaks free, or constructing an insane defence around a hyperspace gate to deal with an incoming enemy fleet of stupendous size (think of the battle for Zion's dock in The Matrix Revolutions). A mission where you have to guide your fleet through a colossal asteroid storm, navigating from safe zone to safe zone, is incredibly atmospheric. Another mission has you hiding like a submarine in an ice flow but surfacing to launch surprise attacks on passing enemies.

So the story goes off the boil, but the mission design remains extremely impressive, with some of the best missions in the entire franchise to be found here. It's not terribly long campaign. This is not unusual for Homeworld, which has always had controversy over its modest campaigns, but at just 12 story missions, Homeworld 3 is a startling four missions shorter than the original Homeworld. On normal difficulty, you'll probably put the story away in under 10 hours. For a full-priced release in 2024, this is eyebrow-raising in the extreme.

We have the standard multiplayer/skirmish mode as well, which is fine. More interesting, and possibly the ultimate test of the game's longevity, is the WarGames mode. This mode can be played solo or in co-op, and sees your fleet taking on escalating enemy forces whilst trying to complete objectives. As you go through the missions, you gain experience which allows you to build better fleets next time around. Failure is assumed; there's a roguelike element of learning from your failure, as experience remains in place and allows you to unlock new ships and options for the next run regardless of success. It's a pretty good mode and it has to be said the maps it uses are frequently gorgeous. Map design is in fact extremely strong through all of the game's modes.

The apparent killer feature of the game is, oddly for a space title, terrain. The story sees you investigating vast, ancient megastructures left behind by a long-extinct alien species known as the Progenitors, with battles taking place in close proximity to them. You can send fighters skimming along the surface of these structures or through tunnels in them to jump out and surprise enemies, and even use makeshift cover. This is a splendid idea, but after a while you kind of forget about these options. Your larger ships can't use terrain in this manner, so you usually end up forming a single large fleet and sending it around curb-stomping most opposition without too much trouble, without having to micromanage the terrain.

Homeworld 3 ends up as a reasonably worthy follow-up to the earlier games in the series and I ended up preferring it to Homeworld 2, at least in terms of gameplay. The story is one of the weaker in the series, replacing the epic themes and scope of the original games with something more rooted in a smaller number of individual characters. I am also not in love with the cliffhanger ending, which teases a sequel or later expansion that might never come.

The single-player campaign is also startlingly short. Yes, in 2003 you could get away with a single-player campaign that was 10 hours or less in a full-price game. But it's not 2003 any more. The multiplayer and skirmish modes are fine, but the WarGames mode is the game's secret sauce, being interesting and challenging with some stunning vistas and level design. That said, WarGames will probably, at best, double or triple the time investment of the campaign. I don't see it being something people will play for hundreds of hours on end. Although Homeworld 3 is obviously graphically far superior to 2017's Battlestar Galactica video game, Deadlock, that game did a much better job of combining a tense story campaign with dynamically-generated side-missions to create a much more engrossing campaign which gave the player more control of what was going on across not just a few hours but dozens of them.

Homeworld 3 (****) should be of interest to established fans of the franchise and anyone who likes exploring the central core appeal of good science fiction, namely 1) the wonder of exploring the cold vastness of the cosmos and 2) having really big spaceships which explode in a cool manner. Whether the game is worth buying at full-price is a little bit questionable, given the extremely modest campaign length, but the WarGames mode is different and interesting, and is especially fun for co-op multiplayer. If you're a total newcomer to the franchise, you'll be better served by picking up a copy of Homeworld Remastered from Steam for a more modest price for a lot more content. The Homeworld franchise's return can be said to have been a success, but not an unqualified one.

The game is available now on PC.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON and RINGS OF POWER both get second season trailers

HBO and Amazon have dropped the trailers for their forthcoming sophomore seasons of their big fantasy shows at the same time.

Amazon opened proceedings by deploying Hot Elf Sauron:

The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power can be best-summed as "okay but disappointing." Lots of potential, but mostly unrealised in the final product with some very strange plotting undercutting a killer premise and an apparent lack of trust in Tolkien's original story and timeline that makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place. Still, this might be worth watching for the insane Clark Kentness of nobody recognising Sauron because he's wearing a nice wig.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 hits Amazon on 29 August.

Not to be outdone, HBO dropped the trailer for their second season of Targaryen Royal Rumble a few hours later:

HBO know what their audience likes here: dragons, armies marching, some nice scenery and even some Stark teasing. Nice.

House of the Dragon Season 2 rolls onto the battlefield on 16 June.

Warner Brothers announce new LORD OF THE RINGS film for 2026

Warner Brothers has confirmed it is working on a new Middle-earth movie. Joining the six extant films (nine if you count the animated features from the 1970s and 1980s), the Amazon TV show and incoming animated feature War of the Rohirrim is Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

The new film will star and be directed by Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Peter Jackson's movie trilogy. Lord of the Rings and Hobbit co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens will work on the screenplay, whilst Peter Jackson will produce and consult. New Line will helm the film for Warner Brothers, as it did the previous trilogies, and Weta will again provide visual effects.

The film has a tentative release date of "2026," suggesting that Warner Brothers will get the wheels moving on it soon.

The attention this year is on a cinematic re-release for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, overseen by Jackson, and animated film Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, the animated film is set 260 years before the original trilogy and tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, the Rohirrim king who defends his country from an army of Dunlendings. Brian Cox stars whilst Miranda Otto returns from the trilogy in the role of Éowyn, who is expected to provide voiceover narration. The movie is set for release on 13 December.

Amazon's wholly unrelated TV series The Rings of Power is expected to air its second season before the end of this year, after a mixed reception for its debut season.

Franchise Familiariser: Homeworld

This week sees the release of Homeworld 3, the latest in the venerable 3D real-time strategy video game series. There's never been a better time to jump on board the franchise, which has now expanded to tabletop games, mobile games and other entry-points to the series.

But what if you want to know more? Whose homeworld? Time for a Franchise Familiariser!

The original box art from Homeworld, released in 1999.

The Basics

Homeworld is a space opera saga spanning thousands of years in the history of the Hiigaran people. It tells the story of the exile of the Hiigarans to the desolate desert world of Kharak, their desperate battle for survival, the discovery of the great Hyperspace Core in the wreck of the ship that brought them to the planet, and their resulting battle to reclaim their original homeworld from the tyrannical Taiidan Empire. Subsequent entries in the series have expanded on the Hiigarans' return to galactic prominence and their survival in the face of new threats.

Almost all Homeworld video games are real-time strategy games set in a full 3D universe, allowing vertical movement and attacks to come from any direction. Each game features a series of missions, through which a narrative unfolds, as well as various multiplayer options. Many of the games are accompanied by manuals, PDFs and websites that further expand the franchise's background lore and storyline.

The video games have been developed by several companies, although the same core team including Rob Cunningham has made four of the five "main" games in the series, Homeworld (1999), Homeworld 2 (2003), Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016) and Homeworld 3 (2024), the first two at Relic Entertainment and the latter two at Blackbird Interactive. The remaining core game, Homeworld Cataclysm (2000), renamed Homeworld: Emergence in 2017, was made by Barking Dog Studios in consultation with Relic. The IP was originally owned by publishers Sierra (aka Vivendi), then sold to THQ and currently reside with Gearbox Software.

Both mobile and VR side-games have been developed, and Modiphius Entertainment have released a series of tabletop games based on the franchise.

Curiously, despite the franchise's age and well-developed lore, no comic books or novels have been written or set in the Homeworld universe.

The title card from my venerable History of Homeworld series.

The Canon

The Homeworld canon consists of seven video games, a remaster of two of those games, and a series of tabletop games.

The core canon consists of:

• Homeworld (1999)
• Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000), renamed Homeworld: Emergence in 2017
• Homeworld 2 (2003)
• Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (2016)
• Homeworld 3 (2024)

In 2015, Homeworld and Homeworld 2 were re-released as Homeworld Remastered, a thorough remake of the first two games with updating for compatibility with modern systems.

The spin-off games consist of:

• Homeworld Mobile (2022)
• Homeworld: Vast Reaches (2024)

The spin-off tabletop games consist of:

• Homeworld: Revelations (2022)
• Homeworld: Fleet Command (2023)

Homeworld tells the story of the Kushan people as they leave their desert planet of Kharak and journey across the galaxy to locate their long-lost homeworld, Hiigara.

Homeworld: Cataclysm, set fifteen years later, tells the story of the conflict between the Hiigarans and the mysterious organism known only as "the Beast."

Homeworld 2, set one hundred years after Cataclysm, tells of the battle between the Hiigarans and the Vaygr warlord Makaan.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is set 106 years before the events of Homeworld and tells of the desert expedition sent to find the long-lost First City of Kharak. The game is notable for being the only one in the series set on a planetary surface rather than in deep space.

Homeworld 3 is set one century after Homeworld 2 and revolves around the arrival of the Anomaly, a mysterious force threatening the galaxy. Karan S'jet, a key protagonist of the first two games, vanishes whilst investigating the Anomaly, sparking the commissioning of a new mothership to track her down.

Homeworld Mobile is a game designed for mobile phones. Set fifteen years after Homeworld 2, it tells of a Hiigaran expedition beyond the Eye of Aarran, into the mysterious Nimbus Galaxy where new threats await.

Homeworld: Vast Reaches is a VR game set shortly after Homeworld, telling of the conflict between the Hiigarans and the treacherous Radaa.

Homeworld: Revelations is a tabletop roleplaying game published by Modiphius, using their 2d20 rules system. Players create characters and take part in narratives set during any part of the Homeworld timeline.

Homeworld: Fleet Command is a tabletop wargame/board game using large numbers of model spaceships, where players can re-enact battles from the video games or take part in new campaigns. 

The planet Kharak during the events of Deserts of Kharak.

The Backstory

For a more detailed summary, check out my History of Homeworld series.

Prequel game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak sets the initial scene. The desert planet of Kharak is home to the Kushan, a humanoid species divided into several large, distinct family-clan structures, the kiithid. Most of the clans are united in the Coalition of the Northern Kiithid. Some years before the start of the game, it was discovered that the planet Kharak is dying. The small seas are drying up, the amount of fertile land is dropping dangerously and the planet will not be able to support life for more than another three centuries or so. The Kushan have launched satellites and even people into orbit, but are a long way from being able to evacuate the planet, and there is nowhere to evacuate to.

A malfunctioning satellite uncovers an unidentified but incredibly powerful energy signal coming from deep within the Great Banded Desert, a vast, borderline uninhabitable region on the equator. The Coalition launches an expedition to find the source of the signal, but they are attacked by the Gaalsien, an exiled kiith who inhabit the deep desert and have gained access to advanced technology from an unknown source. The Gaalsien are religious fanatics, believing that the pursuit of high technology and space travel will bring about a prophecy that will destroy the Kushan people. The Coalition desert carrier Kapisi breaks through the Gaalsien lines and discovers that there are myriad wrecked starships across the desert, some having apparently materialised in solid rock. The Gaalsien have ransacked these ships to gain access to new technology. The Kapisi refits with some of this new tech itself. Eventually it defeats the Gaalsien flagship and finds the source of the signal: a wrecked spacecraft known as the Khar-Toba. According to legend, Khar-Toba was the First City of Kharak, and the explorers find a vast city buried under the sands, centred on the ship.

In the succeeding decades, Khar-Toba is thoroughly explored and excavated. Two objects of immense interest are found. The first is a technological object generating the energy signature, apparently a quantum waveform generator capable of faster-than-light travel: the Hyperspace Core. The second is a map, made of stone that is not native of Kharak: the Guidestone. The Guidestone's three-dimensional coordinates pinpoint the location of a spot near the Galactic Core known only as Hiigara, the ancient word for "Home." This confirms the xenogenesis theory, that the Kushan are not native to Kharak, as they share no DNA or other genetic similarities with the planet's few native animal species. The Kushan instead came to Kharak some three thousand years ago, fell into a dark age of primitive barbarism, and then climbed back out to a level of technological development.

With the impending extinction of all life on Kharak, the Kushan agree to band together as never before and build an immense starship. This vessel and a support fleet will travel to Hiigara and reconnoitre the situation before returning to begin a mass evacuation. The vessel - known only as "the Mothership" when a more aesthetically pleasing name cannot be decided upon by all the parties involved - and its support structures take almost sixty years to build. More than 600,000 people are chosen to accompany the vessel and its crew of 50,000 in tightly-packed cryosleep chambers. Karan S'jet was chosen to undergo the dangerous neurosurgery required to merge with the Mothership's central processor to become Fleet Command.

Unfortunately, when the Mothership launches and tests the Hyperspace Core, the hyperspace interdiction field it was generating around the Kharakian system - causing interloper ships to materialise in solid rock or crash instead - vanished. A sensor network monitoring the field reported this development to its superiors. By the time the Mothership returned from its hyperspace test flight, it found Kharak burning in space, having been hit by multiple weapons of mass destruction. More than 300 million people had been killed. The Mothership returned in time to capture one of the attacking ships. Interrogating its crew, the Kushan learned that they came from the Taiidan Empire, a vast space confederation spanning much of the galaxy. The Kushan people, known to the Taiidan as "The Exiles," had been banished to Kharak more than three millennia ago with the agreement to never develop hyperspace technology or leave Kharak. Breaking that agreement - which the Kushan had no knowledge of - led to the destruction of Kharak.

The Mothership and its fleet were grossly outnumbered and outgunned but possessed one advantage: the Hyperspace Core they possessed was at least an orders magnitude more powerful than the drives used by the Taiidan. The Mothership and its fleet could jump thousands of light-years at a time, as opposed to the dozens of the Taiidan ship, allowing them to simply outrun the Taiidan border fleets all the way to Hiigara.

The journey of the Mothership from Kharak to Hiigara is covered in the original Homeworld, and sees the Kushan learn that they are the descendants of an ancient interstellar empire which grew too greedy and powerful, and was overthrown by a coalition of other races including the Taiidan and the incredibly powerful Bentusi, an "unbound" species of traders who have merged with their ships to live forever in space. The Bentusi do not hold the descendants responsible for the crimes of their ancestors, especially as the Taiidan Empire itself has become morally corrupt, brutal and tyrannical. The use of forbidden weapons of mass destruction spurs a civil war within the Empire, and censure by the Galactic Council. Eventually, aided by the Bentusi and the Taiidan Republican movement, the Mothership makes it to Hiigara. Its fleet destroys the Taiidan flagship and kills the Taiidan Emperor. The Empire collapses, with warlords and the new Republican government vying for power. The 650,000 survivors of Kharak reoccupy Hiigara, becoming known as the Hiigaran people once more. Karan S'jet survives extraction from the Mothership but with a mysterious side-effect: she no longer ages.

Fifteen years later, as depicted in Homeworld: Cataclysm (aka Homeworld: Emergence) a ship of the mining Kiith Somtaaw becomes embroiled in a secretive conflict. A million-year-old starship from another galaxy is discovered, harbouring a lifeform known as the Beast. Capable of subverting both biological and technological systems, the Beast takes over several Hiigaran and Taiidan fleets and destroys multiple Bentusi vessels (who are very susceptible to its influence), forcing many others to fleet. The Somtaaw make several technological breakthroughs and finally destroy the Beast with their advanced weaponry. The conflict is covered up to prevent mass panic, with the Somtaaw instead honoured for helping defeat an unspecified Taiidan warlord plot against Hiigara.

In the following decades, the Hiigaran people discover that the mysterious and ancient Progenitors, who existed more than ten thousand years ago before vanishing overnight, leaving behind many obscure ruins, built three great hyperspace cores, capable of jumping clear across the galaxy. The Bentusi discovered one, whilst the ancient Hiigarans discovered the second. The third remains missing.

One hundred years later, in Homeworld 2, the Vaygr, an obscure species from the remote eastern reaches of the galaxy, suddenly invaded the rest of civilised space. The Vaygr quickly overran frontier settlements from numerous species, apparently jumping far beyond the abilities of their opponents. Karan S'jet realised that the Vaygr and their charismatic warlord, Makaan, had discovered the third great core. Makaan was now on a crusade to unite the three cores, which according to ancient, garbled history, would open the way to Sajuuk, one of the most famed Progenitors (and a key character in Hiigaran mythology). A new Mothership, the Pride of Hiigara, was constructed in record time.

In the Vaygr War, Hiigara came under siege but the Pride of Hiigara scoured the galaxy for clues on how to defeat Makaan. Eventually, in the ancient starship graveyard at Karos, it discovered a Progenitor Dreadnought. Making use of its power, the Hiigarans were able to destroy several Vaygr fleets. During one battle with Progenitor drones, the Bentusi flagship, the Great Harbour Ship Bentus, self-destructed to destroy the hardy foes. The Pride recovered the Bentusi core and pursued Makaan to Balcora Gate, a great hyperspace entry point to the black hole cluster at the centre of the galaxy. There the Pride finally destroyed Makaan, seized the third core and was able to reactivate Sajuuk, now revealed to be a Progenitor flagship vessel. Karan S'jet took command of the Sajuuk and raced back to Hiigara to destroy the last Vaygr forces threatening the homeworld, including the use of Progenitor planet-killing weaponry uncovered by Makaan.

Making full use of the Sajuuk's power and the three united cores, Karan S'jet discovered the Eye of Aarran, a vast hyperspace gateway. Unlocking the gate revealed the existence of an entire network of gates floating in the space between stars, linking all of the galactic sectors together with instantaneous travel. A new golden age of interstellar trade and diplomacy began. Or so it appears...

The Homeworld galaxy - what we call M51a - during the events of Homeworld and Homeworld 2.

The Setting

The Homeworld saga takes place in M51a, what we call the Whirlpool Galaxy, located 23.5 million light-years from Earth. Although the Homeworld series mostly revolves around humanoid or human-looking species, it has nothing to do with Earth at all, and Earth does not appear or is even mentioned. Some fan theories suggest that the mysterious Progenitors may be humans from Earth, or our descendants in a distant future, but there is little corroborating evidence.

The following are key factors in the setting:

The Progenitors

A mysterious, ancient civilisation who dominated the galaxy more than ten thousand years ago before vanishing overnight. The vast mega-structures in the Karos Graveyard and the derelict at Tanis are remnants of their civilisation. They had total mastery of hyperspace and built the Three, the great hyperspace cores allowing for Far Jumping. They also built the Great Hyperspace Gate Network. Only one Progenitor name has survived through history, Sajuuk, who built the ship of the same name and the Cores. Sajuuk became a religious figure to the Hiigaran people.

The Bentusi

Oldest of the known races, the Bentusi arose to become a spacefaring civilisation some millennia after the fall of the Progenitors. The Bentusi found the First Core and used it to become dominant in matters of trade. A peaceful species, the Bentusi founded the Galactic Council as a forum for interstellar diplomacy. They later forsook their homeworld and merged with their ships, becoming creatures of space: the "Unbound." The Bentusi were adversely affected by the Beast War, most fleeing the galaxy, leaving behind only their Great Harbour Ship, the Bentus. The Bentus was destroyed during the Vaygr War. The First Core was claimed by the Hiigarans.

The Hiigarans (aka Kushan)

The Hiigarans area a humanoid species who act as the primary protagonists of the Homeworld series. The Hiigarans established a galactic empire some four thousand years ago, but became rivals of the Taiidan, whom they believed had corrupted the Galactic Council into always taking their side. Discovering the Second Core in secret, the Hiigarans used it to launch a military attack on the Taiidan homeworld, crippling their fleets. The Bentusi forced the Hiigarans to surrender, but they (apparently) destroyed the Core rather than surrender it. In secret, the Hiigarans took the Core with them to Kharak, but forgot about it when their high-tech civilisation collapsed. The survivors took three millennia to rebuild a technology base and rediscover the Core, and then used it to return Hiigara. Only 650,000 Hiigarans survived the annihilation of Kharak by the Taiidan to repopulated their homeworld, but by over a century later the population had boomed to the hundreds of millions thanks to a high birth rate, genetic engineering and adopting outcasts from other species.

The Taiidan

A humanoid, space-faring species who established an empire to rival Hiigara some four thousand years ago. After the Hiigarans were exiled to Kharak, the Taiidan Empire became the premiere force in the galaxy. However, over the millennia they came more decadent and corrupt. The Empire's attack on Kharak using banned weapons of mass destruction spurred civil war and rebellion. The Taiidan subsequently splintered into independent warlord kingdoms and a democratic Taiidan Republic, allied to Hiigara. The primary antagonists of Homeworld, and play a supporting role in Homeworld: Cataclysm.

The Turanic Raiders

Pirates of the Outer Rim, employed by the Taiidan Empire as mercenaries. The Turanic Raiders aided the Empire in its attack on Kharak. Minor antagonists in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm.

The Kadeshi

Inhabitants of the Great Nebula. A splinter-group of Hiigarans/Kushan whose ships did not make it to Kharak, instead foundering inside the Nebula. The Kadeshi are fiercely insular and xenophobic. Minor antagonists in Homeworld.

The Beast

A powerful and hostile biotech organism of unknown origin. The Beast was discovered by extragalactic explorers who endured unusually long exposure to hyperspace on their way to the galaxy. The Beast was discovered and inadvertently released by Hiigarans of Kiith Somtaaw, but with the help of the Bentusi they were able to overcome and defeat the Beast. The primary antagonist of Homeworld: Cataclysm.

The Radaa

Duplicitous interstellar traders who are instrumental to Hiigara rebuilding its technology base after the reoccupation of the planet, but later turn on the Hiigarans. The primary antagonists of Homeworld: Vast Reaches.

The Vaygr

A species of raiders and warriors from the galactic east, divided into warring factions and groups. United the warleader Makaan after he discovered the Third Core, but defeated by Karan S'jet during the Vaygr War. The primary antagonists of Homeworld 2.

The Keepers

AI-controlled spacecraft and artefacts left behind by the Progenitors, and almost impervious to harm. They seem to be in perfect working order despite the passage of at least ten millennia. Minor antagonists in Homeworld 2, after a brief appearance in Homeworld.

The Nimbus Galaxy

Another galaxy, located an unknown distance from the Whirlpool Galaxy and only accessible via the Eye of Aarran gate network. This galaxy is home to the Tanoch Empire, the Yaot Federation, the Amassari Remain, the Iyatequa Traders and the Cangacian pirates. The main location for Homeworld Mobile.

The Anomaly

An unidentified phenomenon which appears to be destroying the Great Hyperspace Gate Network; its appearance sparks the events of Homeworld 3.

The artwork of British SF artist Chris Foss and his contemporary Peter Elson was a key influence on Homeworld.

Behind the Scenes

Work on Homeworld began in 1997 as the first project at Relic Entertainment, a new video game studio based in Canada. The original idea was to create a video game inspired by the art of pioneering science fiction artists Peter Elson and Chris Foss, and using a similar premise to the 1970s show Battlestar Galactica (a remake of which began airing shortly after the release of Homeworld 2).

Homeworld was released in late 1999 and was an immediate hit. Publishers Sierra (later Vivendi) were keen on a sequel, but Relic were contracted by Microsoft to make a new game for much more money, which became Impossible Creatures. Sierra instead commissioned Barking Dog Studios to make an expansion, Homeworld: Cataclysm, but the expansion ended up becoming a larger and more original game, so they released it as a stand-alone title in late 2000.

Relic released Homeworld 2 in 2003, but the game did disappointingly. Budget limitations meant the original concept, of "Dust Wars" fought amidst vast space derelicts, was dropped in favour of a linear campaign similar to the original game. Shortly after release, Relic were acquired by THQ and put to work on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, which was released to enormous success in 2004. The company then made the similarly successful World War II historical RTS Company of Heroes (2006).

After the release of Company of Heroes, many of the founder and original team at Relic left to found Blackbird Interactive in 2007. The company began work on Hardspace: Shipbreakers, a "spiritual predecessor" to Homeworld revolving around exploring wrecked spaceships on a desert planet.

Also in 2007, THQ bought the Homeworld IP from Vivendi, leading to speculation that Relic would make a new game, but with the original development team now at Blackbird, there was limited interest in pursuing the project. Relic instead made Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (2009) and Company of Heroes 2 (2013). In 2013 THQ collapsed and Relic was acquired by Sega; Sega refused to buy the Homeworld IP, which was instead acquired by Gearbox.

Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive entered discussions on a collaboration, which resulted in Hardspace: Shipbreakers becoming an official Homeworld prequel game, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, released to a solid reception in 2016. The two companies also collaborated on Homeworld Remastered (2015), a thorough revamping of the original games.

In 2019 Gearbox and Blackbird used crowdfunding platform Fig to fund early development of Homeworld 3, the first mainline new entry in the series for over twenty years. Increased awareness of the franchise also led to Modiphius Entertainment creating spin-off products, namely the tabletop roleplaying game Homeworld: Revelations and tabletop wargame Homeworld: Fleet Command. Gearbox also expanded the video game franchise with Homeworld Mobile, developed by Stratosphere Games, and Homeworld: Vast Reaches, a VR title from FarBridge.

Homeworld 3 is due for release on 13 May 2024.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

RIP Bernard Hill

News has sadly broken of the passing of British actor Bernard Hill, at the age of 79. Hill has a lengthy and distinguished career in British theatre and television, but is best-known to international audiences for playing Captain Smith in James Cameron's Titanic and the role of Théoden, King of Rohan, in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

Hill was born in Blackley, Manchester in 1944. He had a strong working-class background, with his Catholic family mostly working in the mining industry. Hill noted his interest in acting came out of nowhere and took everyone, including himself, by surprise. He studied drama at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama, graduating in 1970.

He acted in local theatre roles but kept an eye out for screen opportunities. In 1973 he made his screen debut in Hard Labour, an episode of the BBC's Play for Today anthology series. He made an impact playing John Lennon in the Beatles biographical play John, Paul, George, Ringo...and Bert in 1974, and followed that up with his movie debut in It Could Happen to You  (1975). He played Gratus in two episodes of legendary BBC historical drama I, Claudius in 1976.

In 1978, Hill originated the role that would first make him famous. Returning to Play for Today, he starred as Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale's drama The Black Stuff. The TV film revolves around a group of tarmac-layers from Liverpool on a job near Middlesbrough. The film attracted a great deal of acclaim when it was finally released in 1980, inspiring Bleasdale to expand the premise into a full TV series.

Boys from the Blackstuff debuted in October 1982 and ran for five episodes. The premise is that the main characters from The Black Stuff have lost their jobs and are now searching for work. The episode focused on Hill's character struck a cord with the general public, with Yosser Hughes urgently seeking a new job whilst Britain's real-life economic situation appeared perilous, with over 3 million unemployed. His cry of "Gizza job!" became an instant catchphrase. The episode was praised for its mix of comedy with tragedy: Hughes' unemployment and inability to care for his children pushes him to the edge of sanity.

The same year Bernard Hill played the role of Sergeant Putnam in Gandhi. He also appeared in The Bounty (1984) and Shirley Valentine (1989). He reprised his role as John Lennon for the TV film A Journey in the Life (1985), and had notable appearances in Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) and Once Upon a Time in the North(1994).

In 1997 Hill was cast as Captain Edward J. Smith in James Cameron's epic film Titanic. Despite Cameron's tyrannical reputation whilst making the film, Hill and the film's British cast mostly got on well with Cameron, finding his no-nonsense film-making style refreshing in Hollywood. The scene where Smith stoically decides to go down with the ship attracted some acclaim and attention to Hill.

Hill followed that up with a memorable turn as Abel Magwitch in the 1999 BBC version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

In 2000, Hill decamped to New Zealand for a lengthy stint to film Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Playing Theoden, King of Rohan, Hill appeared in the second and third films in the series, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. His role was acclaimed, particularly for his speech rousing the Rohirrim to battle at the Pelennor Fields. He struck up strong friendships amongst the cast, particularly with Viggo Mortensen and Miranda Otto, and developed a fondness for the country of New Zealand. He returned in 2014 to film the mini-series Hope and Wire.

On Viggo Mortensen's last day of shooting on Lord of the Rings, Bernard Hill seized control of his make-up bus and drove it into the studio so the cast and crew could pay tribute to his work.

In 2015 he played Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, in the BBC mini-series Wolf Hall.

Hill was due to appear at a convention alongside fellow Lord of the Rings castmembers this weekend, but pulled out due to ill health. The convention dedicated their panel to his memory, and much of the time was taken up by attendees sharing fond memories of working alongside him.

I had my own brief encounter with Bernard Hill in the mid-1990s, when I and my mother met him on a trip to Southwold in Suffolk (Hill owned a house nearby). I had no idea who he was - this being many years before he was cast in Lord of the Rings - but my mother was a huge fan of Boys from the Blackstuff and chatted to him for some time. He was very kind and complementary of our pet dog, a very nice man.

Bernard Hill was a well-loved and respected actor across multiple decades and in many countries. His performances were iconic and his presence will be felt for many years to come. He will be missed.

Blogging Roundup: 1 September 2023 to 30 April 2024

 

The Wertzone

News

• AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER sequel film gets voice cast
• HBO casts Dunk & Egg for A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS
• MACROSS and ROBOTECH to join Disney+, with some caveats
• AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER renewed for two more seasons at Netflix
• Marvel changing plans to recapture the zeitgeist
• Marvel casts the Fantastic Four
• Concept art for abandoned ROBOTECH movie emerges
• New DEUS EX game cancelled
• Netflix releases trailer and release date for AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER
• BABYLON 5 reboot still in development, streaming services showing interest
• Marvel finally, officially canonises the Netlix Marvel-verse
• Keanu Reeves and China Mieville to collaborate on new novel
• Amazon and Games Workshop sign agreement to develop WARHAMMER 40,000 projects for the screen
• GOOD OMENS renewed for third and final season at Amazon
• MURDERBOT DIARIES TV series greenlit at Apple+
• OTHERLAND TV series in development
• Rockstar unveils first trailer for GRAND THEFT AUTO VI
• HOUSE OF THE DRAGON Season 2 trailer released
• FALLOUT TV show gets its first trailer
• HOMEWORLD 3 gets March 2024 release date
• FURIOSA trailer arrives
• Plot details and pictures from the FALLOUT TV series
• DOCTOR WHO celebrates its 60th anniversary
• BioWare unveil teaser for fifth MASS EFFECT game
• DOCTOR WHO's first Dalek story gets major revamp for 60th anniversary
• BBC and Disney+ confirm DOCTOR WHO airdates
• FALLOUT TV series gets airdate
• Ultra-expensive video game SQUADRON 42 becomes feature-complete, moves towards release
• Entire (existing) run of DOCTOR WHO to be available on BBC iPlayer
• CYBERPUNK 2077 live-action project in the planning stages
• Rumour: Netflix interested in developing a BALDUR'S GATE adaptation
• New DOCTOR WHO 60th anniversary specials trailer unveiled
• Rumour: Bethesda were planning OBLIVION & FALLOUT 3 remasters back in 2020, along with a possible DISHONORED 3
• MECHWARRIOR 5: CLANS announced
• Steam turns 20 years old
• Rumour: THE EXPANSE's Shohreh Aghdashloo cast in THE WHEEL OF TIME

Reviews

• Fallout: Season 1
• Ciaphas Cain: The Greater Good & Old Soldiers Never Die by Sandy Mitchell
• Dune: Part Two
• Halo: Season 2
• Ciaphas Cain: The Last Ditch by Sandy Mitchell
• Starfield
• The Last of Us: Part I
• For All Mankind: Season 4
• Ciaphas Cain: The Emperor's Finest by Sandy Mitchell
• Blade of Dream by Daniel Abraham
• The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
• Baldur's Gate III
• Alan Wake II
• Alan Wake Remastered
• One Piece: Season 1
• Secret Invasion

Articles

• Franchise Familiariser: Fallout (2024 Edition)
• RIP Vernor Vinge
• RIP James M. Ward
• RIP Christopher Priest
• Happy 50th Birthday to DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and the tabletop roleplaying genre
• Franchise Familiariser: BattleTech (2024 Update)
• RIP Howard Waldrop
• The SFF All-Time Sales List (2024 Edition)
• RIP Tracy Torme, STAR TREK writer and SLIDERS co-creator
• RIP Jennell Jaquays, D&D designer and artist and video game designer
• RIP Bryan Ansell, WARHAMMER legend
• RIP James McCaffrey, the voice of Max Payne
• RIP Andre Braugher
• Happy 20th Birthday to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (2.0)
• RIP Michael Gambon
• RIP David McCallum

Atlas of Ice and Fire

• Historical Maps of the Forgotten Realms 05: The Second and Third Crown Wars
• Historical Maps of the Forgotten Realms 04: The First Crown War
• Fallout Maps (Revised 2024)
• Forgotten Realms: A New World Map of Toril (2023)
• Forgotten Realms: Resting Places of the Netherese Enclaves

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Fallout: Season 1

2296. Two hundred and nineteen years have passed since the world was devastated in the Great War. Tens of thousands of people in the United States survived in vaults, vast underground complexes dedicated to human survival. When Vault 33, under Santa Monica, Los Angeles, is raided by surface dwellers and its Overseer captured, it falls to his daughter Lucy to set out in search of him. She finds her search complicated by an overlapping quest to find a technological gizmo that could save the wasteland, with multiple other factions searching for the same device, including the Brotherhood of Steel and a ghoul bounty-hunter. Lucy has to overcome her initial naivete about the world to accomplish her mission.

Fallout is a video game franchise which has worn a lot of hats over its twenty-seven years in existence. It's been a dark comedy, a horror fable, a tale of political intrigue, a survival story and an action piece. Each one of the nine games to bear the Fallout banner has been notably different from the others, with different emphases on things like comedy, character or worldbuilding. This has made Fallout almost uniquely contentious as a franchise: every game in the series is somebody's favourite (okay, maybe not 2004's terrible action game Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel) or somebody's most reviled. Each game has a different tone and style, and as each game is somebody's first Fallout experience, they go away thinking of that as being "real Fallout" and anything that deviates from that is a mistake.

When you're making a Fallout TV show, that gives the production team a headache. How can you thread the needle between sometimes wildly different source material, with an infamously contentious fanbase, which also appeals to the general audience? It turns out, pretty well.

Fallout: The Show on Television takes advantage of its format to have an ensemble cast. We mostly focus on Lucy (Ella Purnell) as she leaves Vault 33 and steps onto the surface world for the first time and has to contend with its whacky and weird inhabitants, but we also follow the misadventures of Squire Maximus (Aaron Moten) of the Brotherhood of Steel as he tries to rise through the ranks. No less than two storylines follow the character of Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), the first as he experiences the events leading up to the Great War first-hand, and the second in the present, where Howard, now transformed into an immortal ghoul by radiation, is a bounty hunter searching for the tech-macguffin. Amusingly, these characters map to three distinct playstyles for the game: Lucy as the optimistic do-gooder, Maximus as the bumbling anything-goes character, and Cooper as the murderhobo whose first response to even the merest hint of a challenge is comically over-the-tope ultraviolence.

These characters are surrounded by an utter galaxy of great supporting turns, from the small to the substantial. Johnny Pemberton as Squire Thaddeus steels every scene he's in (and demonstrates what over-encumbrance would look like in real life). Moises Arias has the meatiest dramatic subplot as Lucy's brother, who stays behind in Vault 33 to investigate some weird goings-on at home (ably supported by Dave Register as Cousin Chet). Leslie Uggams (Deadpool's Blind Al) is outstanding as Betty, a senior member of Vault 33's ruling council. Kyle MacLachlan as Lucy's father Hank is obviously brilliant. Lost and Person of Interest's (strangely ageless) Michael Emerson is terrific as a troubled scientist on the run. Matt Berry, Michael Rapaport and Chris Parnell all have small, but memorable moments of scene-stealing excellence. Also a word of approval to the latest incarnation of  Dogmeat (sorry, CX404), who is present and correct and portrayed as they would appear in-game (and you start realising that such a canine might not be altogether right in the head).

As excellent as the cast is the production design. Many production designs on adaptations like to change all the designs (presumably so they can put the new designs in their portfolios), but the guys on Fallout clearly just took designs from the games and whack them on screen. The vaults all look like they've been snapped together from the prefab pieces in Fallout 4's Vault-Tec DLC. Even the door buttons look exactly the same. Characters improbably heal quickly from ludicrous injuries by just injecting lore-accurate stimpaks. The creatures are pretty much high-res versions from the game, although they do throw in a couple of new entries. The Brotherhood power armour is all fantastic. Nothing's been changed here for the sake of change, and, to paraphrase someone involved in the franchise, it just works.

The TV show certainly is not perfect, though. At eight hours there's a couple of moments of wheel-spinning. The shifts in tone mostly work, but there's a few jarring shifts that aren't as well-signposted. The Vault 33 storyline is a bit thin and is strung out across the entire season through relatively brief sequences, maybe that could have been punched up a little bit. There's one continuity error regarding a date on a chalkboard which caused some fans to freak the hell out, but the debate over that was later shut down (and also by the cliffhanger ending of the season). This isn't a very weighty series, it doesn't have the emotional depth of, say, The Last of Us, but then it's not really aiming for that so that's not much of a complaint.

Fallout: The Gogglebox Version - Season 1 (****) is relentlessly entertaining, well-acted with just the right degree of dark humour, tragedy and horror. It's good pulp entertainment which is both true to the source material but also brings some more interesting ideas to the franchise (like the ensemble cast and the greater focus on the pre-war era). It's not the highest of art, and some will bounce right off it, but it does what it's trying to do with aplomb. The show is available now worldwide on Amazon Prime Television. A second season has already been commissioned.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER sequel film gets voice cast and working title announcement

Nickelodeon and Paramount have released some more information about their upcoming animated Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel film, which has a 2025 release date.

The film currently has the working title Aang: The Last Airbender and is set some years after the events of the animated series. It will depict Aang and his friends Zuko, Katara, Sokka and Toph as adults taking on a new threat in the form of a villain who will be played by Guardians of the Galaxy and Dune actor Dave Bautista.

Eric Nam, Dionne Quan, Jessica Matten and Roman Zaragoza will also be part of the voice cast. It's unclear if any of the original Avatar voice cast will return, although several of them are no longer active in the industry.

Original Avatar co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are behind this new project, alongside Avatar veteran Lauren Montgomery, who will direct. The team previously explored this era in a series of comic books, although the new film is not believed to be a direct adaptation of any of them.

The film will be the first project to be released by Avatar Studios. The team also have a new series in development, rumoured to be about the Earthbender Avatar who succeeds Korra, so will presumably be set many decades even after The Legend of Korra (which in turn was set ~70 years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender), if the report is accurate.

The studio is also reportedly developing a number of other potential projects from all over Avatar's timeline.

Nickelodeon are likely keen to strike whilst the iron is hot on new projects after the success of the live-action show on Netflix. Although the critical reception was mixed, the show attracted a large number of viewers and Netflix has agreed to fund two further seasons to bring the story to a conclusion.