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15 May 2025

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Dismantling of historic Dunedin Gasworks chimney begins
It's hoped the 25-metre tall, earthquake-risk Gasworks chimney can be repaired and put back together in the future.

Changing the game: Female hunters find their tribe
Sammi Holland and Alesha Tomasi are behind Daughters of the Wild dedicated to women who hunt.

Ashburton farm fire: 14,000 hay bales go up in flames
Smoke is blowing over State Highway 1 from the fire.

Seoras Martin-Smith sentenced for indecent communications with teen and child exploitation images
When the teen tried to cut contact with him, he threatened to leak her naked photos.

Gary Lineker issues apology after sharing 'antisemitic' social media post
The BBC sports presenter says he reposted material which he’s since learned contained “offensive references.”

Boy, 9, told he can't play rugby with his friends because he weighs too much
The boy reportedly questioned ‘why am I so fat?’ and has opted out of all winter sports this year.

Tennis: Pope makes peace with Sinner
Jannik Sinner visited the new pope in Rome, gave him a tennis racquet and offered to play.

“Not trying to be his mate’: McIlroy hits back at DeChambeau
Rory McIlroy has hit back at Bryson DeChambeau, expressing bemusement that the American called out his silent treatment in the final round of the Masters.

Thousands of hay bales go up in smoke in barn fire near Ashburton
Fire crews south of Ashburton have been battling a large rural fire since last night.

Public doctors will quit if easy operations are outsourced to private hospitals, radiologist says
Private hospitals are being tasked with clearing 20,000 high volume, low complexity cases for the public hospital system.

New Zealand has highest child suicide rate, a survey of wealthy countries shows
The UNICEF report ranked New Zealand 32nd out of 36 countries for overall child wellbeing.

Global uncertainty sees luxury home-owners leasing out $8-20 million houses for short-term rentals
A luxury real estate agent says demand for short-term, expensive rentals is surging.

The stellar career path of Jo Townsend, the woman in charge of our $80 billion NZ Super fund – Money Talks
'Money was certainly not plentiful in our household,' Townsend tells Liam Dann.

Space Marine II is about to go wild with native mod support
Space Marine II now has official mod support baked into the base game, fresh from the devs’ hands to your eyeballs. This is big news, albeit for a very particular kind of fan. Allow me to give you some necessary context. Space Marine II is based in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Which, in terms of pop culture settings, is about as deep as it gets. Starting with a tabletop strategy game that was itself a spinoff, the setting has been going strong since the late 80s, with ten editions of the main game, all with deep accompanying lore; several alternate games (ditto); hundreds of novels; and dozens of video games. All of that is, to a greater or lesser degree, canon to the game’s story. A story that takes place across literally millions of planets and tens of millions of years, dozens of human and alien species, psychic magic, demons, and sci-fi tech, all rolled together in one miserable, glorious heap of grimdark fiction. Focus Entertainment It’s a lot. I think it’s very possible that Warhammer 40K might have the most information and lore of any media property, ever. It is so deep and so wide that it makes Star Trek look like Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. (What? Exactly.) And here’s the crazy thing: That’s just the official material. As a tabletop war game that also includes building, painting, and customizing your own incredibly delicate, tiny, and expensive army, 40K attracts the kind of fan who loves to literally get their hands dirty. You can spend thousands of hours and a small fortune painstakingly choosing your perfect fighting force, assembling them, and showing off your skills. And a lot of players aren’t content to simply go along with the game’s official story; they’d rather invent their own “chapters” or “factions” of the game’s various sci-fi legions. They do the same with the fiction itself. There are decades of fan content, an entire culture, surrounding this game, its stories and lore, and even its basic mechanics. I’m not exaggerating when I say you could spend the rest of your life obsessed with Warhammer 40,000 and still never see everything there is to see. Here’s one of my favorites, playing off the Ork’s latent psychic powers. 40K’s space Orks aren’t smart enough to make things like cars or spaceships, but because they believe a car-shaped thing should work like a car, it does. They also believe that painting a car red makes it go faster. For them, it actually does. Space Marine II knows this, knows that its most dedicated fans want to dive into all of that headfirst. While a single video game can only encapsulate a fraction of the full breadth of 40K’s official material and can’t even begin to accommodate all the unofficial stuff, it includes an impressive customization tool that lets you equip and “paint” your giant, grimdark supersoldier in an incredible variety of ways. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes a 40K fan’s heart go pitter-patter. But for the most dedicated 40K fan, that’s still not enough. Which is why the game now has official, native support for player-created mods. It’s a formula that’s worked well for tons of PC games, from Skyrim to Cities Skylines to Baldur’s Gate III. But because of Warhammer 40K’s unique relationship with both its own medium and its fans, it’s inevitable that an explosion of user-generated content is coming. Within the first release of the official Integration Studio, modders will get access to tools for making new levels, new modes, new NPCs and enemy behavior, and even the base game’s logic. But that’s just the bones of what players can make. They can recreate essential moments from 40K fiction, like, say, the Fall of Cadia or the throne room battle of the Horus Heresy. (That would be roughly equivalent to the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the Charge of the Light Brigade, for those not in the know.) They can add in iconic allies and enemies, from an Avatar of Khaine to Ciaphas Cain. They could bring in some Exodite Eldar and play as an alien elf riding a dinosaur, which Games Workshop has yet to give players in the real game. And again, that’s just emulating the stuff from the official fiction. Warhammer 40K fan content goes hard and crazy, often leaning into the setting’s most ridiculous elements or its largely forgotten satirical bent. (The humans and Space Marines are unequivocally and almost universally bad guys, if not necessarily the Bad Guys, something that’s often overlooked in the video games.) I can’t wait to see Buzz Lightyear marines, or the Angry Marines, or the best unofficial chapter: the Space Maids, who go around in pink maid dresses giving aid and comfort to the armies of the Imperium. This is a joke. But also it isn’t. The Space Maids have semi-official lore, as official as fan content can get. They have divisions of their army with documented insignias, and they have a “Primarch” or founder like all the other Space Marine chapters/legions. They’re based on cutesy anime tropes, including lots of catgirls and baked goods. They’re wonderful. Space Maid Marines are coming to Space Marine II. It is inevitable, and it’s going to be glorious.