It could be said that we have too many story lines. Hmmm . . . . nah!

Is the Corvus Cluster too broad in its storytelling? Is it juggling too many story lines for a narrative campaign?

These questions came to mind when I wrote a recent story where the Slannesh daemon, Lady Adriana, planned a little mischief involving my favorite Rogue Trader, Adeon Drake.

Lady Adriana, a heretical source of vile mischief, and depravity

Years ago, there had been a wonderful little skirmish between these rival scalawags on the planet of Morkai, so I thought it was time for a rematch.

To my surprise, when I looked up their last fight, I discovered it was fought 10 years ago. (A year in the campaign mirrors a year in “real life.”)

Wow. An entire decade?

That got me looking at the broader “reporting” of events on this website. As it happens, the fighting on Hegira, Dar Sai, Dozaria, Myopolis, and many other war zones sometimes have gone unmentioned for a year or two (or more).

Same goes for my stable of “heroes” and their smaller adventures. We can go years without mentioning them.

So, my question to myself was if the Corvus Cluster could be accused of being “choppy” in its reporting. There is no single, sweeping narrative. Instead, the narrative is erratic, scattershot, haphazard.

But I decided that was okay.

You see, the Corvus Cluster was not designed to be a narrative as found in a novel.

The greenskins are an implacable menace, constantly attacking Imperial lines on the moon of Hegira.

It was created, at first, to serve as a record of our gaming adventures—a place where we could go and read upon past battles, to relive our tabletop experiences . . .  a bit of nostalgia. So this website’s objective is, primarily, to report what we actually do on the tabletop.

Second, its intent is to provide a background for future battles. We didn’t want to just play a series of “one-off” battles. We wanted each battle to be a part of something “greater.”

For example, in our early years, we fought lots of battles between orks and Imperial troops on Hegira. The Gaffer and I fought every weekend these huge battles, and they formed the foundation of that particular war zone.

Then the Covid pandemic hit, and the Hegira campaign (and all in-person gaming) stopped for a while. When we returned to gaming as a group, we got interested in fighting with other armies. So what? The campaign wasn’t designed to lock us into a constant ork-human war. The campaign goes where we go.

The wonderful thing about this approach is that it has taken on a life of its own. New campaigns open as our interests shift. We builf new armies. We start new campaigns. We started doing more skirmish gaming. That expanded the scope of the Corvus Cluster, and that was fine with us.

So, now I have a solid perspective of what we’re doing. The Corvus Cluster reports on “news.” The fighting on Hegira isn’t over. It’s just that people’s attention (and the media’s focus) has shifted to the “hot” topic of the week.

A large Imperial fleet has entered the Tau Empire in hopes of crushing the xeno menace.

Right now, there’s a lot of attention focused on the Damocles Gulf Crusade. But recently we’ve read a bit about the ongoing Tau invasion on Dar Sai, the Inquisition on Regno Borealis, and the devastation of Canopus at the hands of the Tyranids.

If you’re following along on this crazy ride, you are watching from the perspective of an Imperial citizen listening to Imperial voxcasts, propaganda, and rumors swirling around the neighborhood pub.

You’ve got a general sense of how things are going. You’ve heard about a few colorful characters and military heroes. And the next “news” that you hear could be about whatever has caught the public’s attention this week.

Looking at our “reporting” from that perspective, we  like the broad and haphazard approach of our campaign. It would be fun to fight a multi-year campaign over one planet, and write up the story as if writing a novel.

But we’re like little kids in a toy store. There’s always a new army to swoon over. There’s a new battlefield we want to fight on. Our story is about a larger universe and not a single world or war. It’s about the story of the Corvus Cluster, a vast, multi-sector backwater of the Imperium.

And that’s not to say we’ve totally ignored our other warzones. On occasion, we write “updates” that tell what’s been happening since our last tabletop battle, and now that I solo game a lot (I’m retired), I occasionally revisit these worlds with a new tabletop battle—letting the tabletop results determine the direction of that planetary campaign.

What we have is this: As with a newspaper or TV news show, we report the news as it happens. We report on a universe that largely is ignored by the galaxy as a whole, but it is filled with adventure, horror, and, most of all, war.

So, that’s why our narrative campaign is as it is. We didn’t plan it this way; it just evolved that way. And, as it turns out, it’s so much fun that we embrace it as it is.

I hope you enjoy it, too.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our hobby adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.