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Death Guard Chaplain Murnau hunts a small force of Imperial Fists on a forest moon. As his foes elude him, he unleashes one of his Legion's most terrifying weapons: the Destroyers.

Love this one. A strong start if there ever was one. More than any other writer, Rob Sanders clearly has a talent for summoning fantastic set-pieces and locations. In “The Iron Within”, his short story for “The Age of Darkness“, he conjured the extraordinary set of an inverted Iron Warriors’ fortress to drive his narrative.

In “Distant Echoes of Old Night”, the location is once again a key player in the story. This time it is the sinking wreck of a crashed Imperial Fist spaceship, drowning in a fetid swamp of the Death Guard’s own making, as they battle their way down to the bottom of their own quagmire grave.

The ‘Distant Echoes of Old Night’ that give the story its name are the inhumane weaponry deployed by the Death Guard ‘Destroyers’ (which, in essence, are an elite-unit of Devastators I guess). Here, Sanders ventures down some Grim Darkness lanes that even 40K rarely dares to go. And his take on the Death Guard is a refreshingly original one.

Yet the highlight of the story is the fanatical Chaplain Murneau, whose fanaticism drives his Devastators from assured, but inglorious victory into their doom. The story is rife with symbolism of all sorts. Sanders also manages to write a story from the perspective of the “bad guys” and still keep them the “bad guys” through and through. No misunderstood, tragic and flawed heroes in this one. No. These Death Guard are as means as they get.

The ending is a killer. Beautifully set up and executed. This story alone is worth the price of the book.