ToyHammer

"In the grim darkness of the 21st century, there is only boredom."

ToyHammer is a Warhammer 40,000 Fanfic written by Rogue Psyker (who also wrote Zero Shock) which begins when Michael is dropped off at his home by his friend, only to find that most of his house has been turned into a warzone between the various races of the 40K universe: multiple Space Marine chapters, Imperial Guard regiments, Sisters of Battle, Grey Knights, and the attached elements of the Adeptus Mechanicus, as well as the major xenos factions: Eldar, Tau and Orks. The 'twist' in this is that, for reasons that have only been hinted at to date, all of the armies and their respective weaponry, mecha, and tanks have been shrunk to the size of the miniatures from the game...but their weapons still work just fine.

Hilarity Ensues as Michael tries to cope with the miniature freeloaders in his home, and they try to cope with Michael and the concept (not to mention execution) of living peacefully with each other.

A mashup of an Elsewhere Fic, Alternate Universe Fic, Crack Fic and slowly approaching Fan Verse with the Omake chapters and the fact that there are absolutely no canon characters used, ToyHammer is another take at the 4chan writefaggotry based around 'Mini-Hammer' style Fan Fics, involving Fun Size 40K characters appearing and running around in Real Life as a 'regular' human (called Terrans to differentiate them from the Fun Size and more numerous humans) and his friends try to cope with things.

While initially the fic focused around the interactions between a full-size human having to do riot control over a large number of tiny, armed 40K soldiers, it soon shifts its focus more to the soldiers of the eternal war and their reactions to living a more peaceful life, one that doesn't involve them killing everything else. Christmas traditions, Valentines, co-existing with 'foul xenos' and 'dirty monkeys' are explored.

And then, the fun ends (and starts) with Chaos making their rude entrance. The fic last updated on 5/21/2012; future updates will appear in pieces on Spacebattles.com before being posted on FF.net.

See Warhammer 40,000 for the tropes from that universe.

Tropes used in ToyHammer include:
  • Abusive Parents:
    • While nothing is said of his mother, Michael's father was stated to have left marks on him.
    • Batel's father is just short of explicitly abusive. After all, he drove Batel to summoning Chaos just to try and get rid of him...
      • Turned up to eleven in the chapter where he becomes a daemonhost and Batel is physically unable to move from the terror of facing him again.
  • Accidental Pervert:
    • The Warp Spider Urual in the first Omake, who managed to teleport himself into the bathing pool full of naked Howling Banshees. Hilarity Ensues.
    • Michael tends to get hit with this a lot whenever the facet of Zara's psyche that stores all her emotions shows up, since she's got a habit of glomping him and cuddling in a way that's very easy for the rest of Zara's psyche to over-analyze.
  • Action Girl: A given, considering their origins... and most of the female cast, which is definitely not such a given.
  • Action Survivor: Michael, Vincent, Alice and Batel...which is rather funny considering that all 4 of them are literal giants (say, Eva-scale) when compared to the miniatures.
  • Aesop: Do not touch tanks, or their gunners will shoot you. This leads to...
  • Aesop Amnesia: Vincent is shot by a tank gunner (with 'low setting' on their multi-las) for treating the tank like a toy. He forgets it by the next thought: "Cool, Land Raider."
  • Aerith and Bob: Given the mix of races, this is par for the course: normal human names like Alice and Vincent; 40K human variants like Ishabeth, Tomas and Eizak, and of course, Sohm Vekt; Madork Gunna (Ork) and Shas'ui Fi'rios Yon'anuk Eldi'myr (aka Sergeant Talon) (Tau).
  • All There in the Manual: Several of the the odder characters have descriptions in the author's personal forum on Fanfiction.net. There are also some hints as to what's to come.
  • Almighty Janitor:
  • And You Were There: Michael has a dream where Zara is his girlfriend, Emma is Zara's baby sister, and many of the Imperial commanders are friends and coworkers. It turns out to be a ruse from the Rose of Slaanesh.
  • Ascended Extra: Quite a few; many of the secondary characters have gone from Flat Characters who were added as padding to actual characters with Character Development and a dose of Badass.
  • Apocalypse Maiden: The Cultist may be going this way.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Batel really doesn't want to gut you like a fish...unless you're her stepfather. Then all bets are off.
  • The Atoner: Comes with the job description of being a Penitent Witch for Batel.
  • Audience Surrogate: This role is passed around between Alice, Michael and Vincent, giving different perspectives and opinions: Alice does not enjoy the fact that there's miniature warriors running around. Vincent is on full out Squee because of it. Michael is trying to deal with it.
  • Author Avatar: Vincent, per Word of God.
  • Back from the Dead: Eizak, with an absolutely delicious one-liner; (Answering whether the Last Rites should be administered) "That will not be necessary."
  • Badass Army: >90% of the characters in the story belong to at least one Badass Army or another.
  • Badass Boast: More than a few of these. For example:

"THOUGH I FACE THE SHADOWS OF THE WARP,

I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL, I SHALL FEAR NO FOE!

FOR I HAVE MOAR DAKKA THAN YOU, BITCHES!"

  • Badass Bookworm: Vincent kind of plays this straight, since he's a military otaku with lots of spare time and YouTube. Averts I Just Shot Marvin in the Face because of this. However, Vincent then semi-subverts this since he's not at all fit (A quick run from one side of a parking lot to the other? Exhausting enough to get him mildly out of breath) and gets his ass handed to him by the Daemonhost.
  • Battle Couple:
    • Justicar Amadeus and Canoness Samisha are definitely headed this way. Their parting gesture when about to head into battle? A knuckle tap. Others are starting to form, but whether its an actual couple or not is up to debate.
    • The Stealthsuit team from the Valentines Omake are a Battle Foursome.
    • Possibly Danilov and Raquel.
  • Battle in the Center of the Mind: The Mind War arc is all about this.
  • Beta Couple: Several Token Romances are the background.
  • Beyond the Impossible:
    • In chapter 20, the Orks actually team up with Order to fight the Chaos incursion.
    • The Assault Marine commander even lampshades this, rationalizing that Orks team up with Order because everyone else will be there, while Chaos troops will be only available for a limited time.
  • Blessed with Suck / Cursed with Awesome: Turns out, both Michael and his sister are psykers.
  • Bonus Material: Actually called Omake chapters, these are semi-related chapters presented as one-shot gag shorts, especially with the main story taking the Darker and Edgier track.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Doubles with Brown Note when the forces of Chaos realize that their former Emperor has joined the battle.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Batel vs Ryan. Ready... FIGHT!
  • Cerebus Syndrome: Starts setting in around chapter 8, although it doesn't lose the comedic elements.
  • Chunky Salsa Rule: Used whenever bolt weapons are involved.
  • Click. "Hello.": Tomas, using a Hell-Pistol.
  • Combat Pragmatist:
    • Vincent's first weapon? A can of spaghetti. Followed by a bag of flour, which is then turned into an improvised explosive. Silverite is also this, with his backstory.
    • Also; given a choice between a lightsaber, a chainsword, a psychic sword, a spear and every other weapon imaginable, what does Michael pick? A fire extinguisher.
      • Which really came in handy when his opponent started using fire-ball attacks.
    • Michael, in the Mind War arc, goes beyond the regular summoned small arms that's the local fare, and begins breaking out the laser-linked gatling weapons for crowd control.
    • Michael even uses himself against The Rose: sneezing on her face as a distraction, biting her tongue when she is trying to kiss him, as well as a list of other solutions to some very...uncomfortable situations.
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Averted, in that while Michael does live alone in a big house, its because of his grandfather's will - his family is still alive and well, with both parents alive.
  • Contest Winner Cameo: Kinda, since its more 'thanks for a critique', although many characters (such as Trooper Sohm Vekt, Madork Gunna, Miles Henderson and Silverite, to name a few), are actually expanded upon to become AscendedExtras in the omake chapters or in the main plot.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Batel's claim to The Woobie status is her being the Chaos Gods' bitch and her father's... uh... plaything. Michael and the rest may or may not be part of a plan of some kind.
  • Creepy Child: Subverted by Emma in ch. 20; see The Reveal below.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Silverite.

It was the strangled, near-panic cry of one of his men, “Brother Timmae“, and it was soon followed by the dakka dakka dakka of Silverite's twin bolters. Of course, that didn't last long until a roaring Ork stopped the firing. A series of crunches and another dakka followed. The Ork's voice was next heard whimpering for mercy.

Justicar Amadeus gnashed his teeth. Near heretical he may be, but Silverite was not a coward nor incompetent.

    • The named Grey Knights tend to be CMH Bs or inverted; the three Grey Knights in Chapter 23 are more Crouching Badass Hidden Morons, since they are extremely badass but with a hint of moron (like feeding a normal human Space Marine-grade alcohol. For them its 'tipsy'. For Michael, its 'almost dead from alcohol poisoning'.)
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Batel vs the Daemonhost. Also a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Cute Clumsy Girl: Little!Zara and Ishabeth.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Batel has either these or the not-so-cute variety depending on whether or not she's suffering from Demonic Possession.
  • Cry Cute: Of all people, Little!Zara.
  • Dark Action Girl: The Rose is a scarily competent one.
  • Demonic Possession: Batel's step-father becomes a daemonhost.
    • Although this may also extend into More Than Mind Control, if one listens to the Sorcerer's threats in Chapter 20.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Hilariously averted as Michael is more than willing to bite The Rose's tongue while she's trying to kiss him.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • A lot of the Imperials have these in the Chaos forces.
    • The Rose is played up as one for Batel.
  • Evil Laugh: The Chaos Sorcerer is not a nice man.
  • Evil Sounds Deep:
    • The Daemonhost pulls this, along with Voice of the Legion levels of distortion.
    • Averted with The Rose, who has a very soft, seductive voice.
  • Evil Twin: Although not an actual evil twin sibling, the not!Zara comes real close. Comes with False Crucible.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Bows of Frustration[1]
  • Expy:
    • After watching Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back, Yoza becomes one of Yoda, intentionally. When the going gets tough, he drops the act.
    • A young woman who dual-wields two BFGs, one of which has an extended barrel and scope. Meryl from MGS, anyone?
    • Cultist-chan/Batel's appearance and speech patterns are taken from the /tg/ Fanon.
    • Briefly appearing (and seen but not named in later chapters), the Space Marines Dreadnought is the same as Fanon's Tankred.
  • Expospeak Gag: "A lot of the crystalline data storage structures also seem to be irrecoverably damaged." = "We ruined his DVDs."
  • False Crucible: Teaching Michael that daemons will come at him in any shape and form, even the bitchy Tsundere
  • Fan Verse: ToyHammer, The Enoch File, and Tomas Sturm are all connected. (Commissar Enoch was a classmate of Commissar Tomas Sturm, and the same Tomas is the IG Regimental Commissar in Toy Hammer).
  • Fang Thpeak: Batel
  • Fantastic Racism: Par for the course at the start of the fic, but gradually diminishes as the factions learn to co-exist in Michael's house, and eventually team up for various reasons. They aren't completely comfortable around each other, but they've realized that given the circumstances, it's far better that they all work together.
  • Fastball Special: Used by Silverite and some Orks.
  • Fish Out of Temporal Water: Every miniature in the story.
  • Five-Man Band:
  • Fridge Brilliance:
    • Even the Emperor of Mankind is made Fun Size in this setting!
    • Why do the 40K characters occasionally spout pop culture shout outs (particularly egregious with Porthos the Grey Knight? Because they are assimilating modern (ancient) society; quirks, references and all.
  • Funetik Aksent: The Orks, obviously.
  • Fun Size: All the minis. Also, see Fridge Brilliance above.
  • Gangsta Style: Attempted, but the pistol stovepiped.
  • Genre Shift: From a whimsical Gag Series to a more serious and Crazy Awesome (but still funny) epic tale that twists the canon while still respecting it, showing us what happens when the more reasonable minds of the Grimdark future try to co-exist.
  • Grammar Nazi: Used by Michael to piss off The Sorcerer.

"YOU DARE STRIKE ME!? WHAT ARE YOU TO DO? WHAT WEAPON SHALL YOU FACE ME WITH!?"
"Uh, buddy, you just ended a sentence with a preposition."

I HAVE KILLED MILLIONS! SET WHOLE WORLDS TO THE TORCH! BILLIONS HAVE COWERED BEFORE ME AS I DESTROYED THEIR CHAMPIONS! YET, YOU MOCK ME!?

  • Lighter and Softer: Very much so in comparison to the source material. All the human, Eldar, Tau, and even (to some extent) Ork characters seen so far are decent people who actually care about their fellow soldiers and are even willing to ally with xenos once they start getting adjusted to living in Michael's house.
  • Little Miss Snarker: Emma, of all people. She apparently enjoys being this.
  • Masquerade: Michael tries to keep one up, but real people keep seeing through it.
  • Meaningful Name: A coincidence, and a few purposeful ones:
    • 'Vincent' means 'conqueror', and he later becomes the Supporting Leader (kind of).
    • Batel is a Hebrew name for 'Daughter of God'. Which God is still questionable since she was once a Chaos cultist.
    • We also have Miles, which means 'Soldier'. The guy was a combat engineer.
    • 'Shas'ui Fi'rios Yon'anuk Eldi'myr' = Fire-caste veteran trooper of the Fi'rios colony, hunter-bird winged-knife' = 'Sergeant Talon of Fi'rios'. The author is showing his work here.
  • Modern Major-General: Imperial Guard General Faust. He's really good at logistics and organization; combat, not so much.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • Played for laughs at the end of Chapter 23. Michael has just been dragged off by a Slaaneshi cultist with a heavy rose theme, and promptly whiplashes into absurdity when his nose starts sniffling from his hay-fever.
    • Continually through chapter 24. Especially when the Rose goes from cheerfully teasing Michael to slitting the throat of a young girl (thankfully it was only a memory mannequin) within the space of two paragraphs.
  • Morality Pet: Michael may in fact be this for the minis, since there's no other reason to not fight each other than the fact that Michael is around to keep them from doing so. Oh, and this pet's of the 'cat' stereotype with a fire extinguisher.
  • More Dakka:
    • Orks. 'nuff said.
    • A possible Chekhov's Gun is the gun club Michael has connections with, gives us a potential increase in Dakka if implemented.
    • Michael has the Grey Knights materialize a dozen Sentry Turrets from Modern Warfare 2 and has them all blazing at full-auto at an advancing pack of daemons. The front ranks evaporate.
  • Noodle Incident: Just how did Vincent and Alice get subdued by a coalition army that had trouble handling ONE human?
    • We do know, however, that they fired an anti-tank rocket as a 'warning shot'... at Vincent's face.
  • Normally I Would Be Dead Now: A variant.

Normally, I'd be dumbstruck, but since the Grey Knight had been kind enough to give me a four-line rhyming warning, I reacted.

  • Nosebleed: When Warp Spider Urual accidentally teleports in on the Howling Banshees' bathtime.

Urual coughed. Blood leaked from his nose, yet he had never been struck in that whole time.

  • Oh, No, Not Again: Michael, to blacking out.
  • Oh Crap:
    • Michael, when he is found with little!Zara in a very intimate embrace by the Banshee!Zara, Warlock!Zara and Avatar!Zara.
    • The Chaos soldiers also experience this (partly literally) when Emma shows up.
  • One of Us: A few trope names (Batel is noted to be an Expy) are dropped. Not really surprising, considering that Vincent, the Author Avatar, is egregiously stated to be One of Us.
  • Percussive Maintenance: Epitomized by Ad-Mech Cogboys.

Eldar Bonesinger: I do wonder, mon-keigh, is how are you able to simply hit the thing and make it work?
Cogboy: It may take two seconds to learn how to hit a machine, xenos, but it takes two decades to learn where to hit a machine.

Thank you, Infinity Ward.

It was hard to describe, as I think there are few words in the English language to describe the mishmash of bizarre materials and machinery before me. There might be one in Eldar, though. They're assholes like that.

    • In the first Ordo Vermin omake, the extermination (vermin, not Exterminatus) company is lead by a man going by Buck, there's also a Dutch as one of his subordinates, and they both call Michael 'Rookie'.
    • The Incredible Hulk is given one in the second Ordo Vermin omake.
    • In chapter 20, Vincent has a quick shout out to The Dresden Files:

"I shall feast on thy soul!"
"Its THINE, ya stupid bastard!"

    • And then we have a BioShock (series) and Half Life shout out when Vincent is deliberating which tool he should use for a weapon: He pulls out a crowbar and a Stillson wrench, the melee weapon of choice for Gordon Freeman and Jack, respectively.
      • Taken even further that he had gotten the wrench from a hardware store called 'Ryan and Son'.
      • 'Fountain Street' which sounds similar to 'Fontaine Street'
    • In a Shout-Out to both Final Fantasy and Ciaphas Cain (who used the description for a Red Mage for a Mechanicus Adept), two of the Zara personalities have descriptions matching up to that with a Black Mage and a White Mage. The 'musician' also has a close description to that of Ragnarok Online's Dancer class.
    • Continuiing the Ciaphas Cain references:
      • Chapter 22 has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the Valhallan 597th in Ishabeth's memories.
      • Cain himself may have been referred to here: isn't Chain-Blade a suitable callsign for a particular Commissar that favors chainsword weapons? Not to mention gets lost (to the point of where 'Valkyria' admits that this is not the first time they've lost contact with him) and loves his tanna tea.
    • Throughout ch. 22, The Sorcerer constantly quotes Darth Vader almost word for word, and they are all in context.
    • Someone on the vox has the callsign 'Spartan', and hails from the Cadian's 117th regiment...
    • MC Hammer is given many a classic shout out in Chapter 23, which is titled "Hammer Time" and goes with it from there.

"Can't touch this." STAB

    • The Rose uses a rose-petal-whirlwind type attack that is very similar to Byakuya Kuchiki's bankai.

"Scatter!"

"Jane. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a woman of far sight and grace."

"My head is not a black hole. No robot arms are going to be jumping out of them, okay? I have not had a psychotic girl hit me in the head with a Rickenbacker."

    • Three Grey Knights are named after The Three Musketeers.
    • Two imperial Psykers are named Elrick and Alphonse.
    • The Farseer Days: Frustration interlude ends with Michael entering the Eldar-inhabited bathroom of his house with a particularly boisterous greeting:

Michael: "GOOD MORNING ELDAR!"

"Sergeant! Pass me some krak grenades. The ones on your left...no, your other left! Up two grenades, and your other left one. Yes, those."

  1. ↑ translation: Head Desk
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