Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, if a pariah-gene carrier came close to the Golden Throne, would it be game over? Dead emperor, astronomicon down the tubes, chaos gribbles popping out the webway, the works?
What do you think?

No, pariahs regularly get near the golden throne. There's a whole order of them.

DarknessEternal wrote:No, pariahs regularly get near the golden throne. There's a whole order of them.

What order are you referring to? And why would they be near the Throne? The only order of Pariahs I know of is the Culexus sect of the Officio Assassinorum, and quite why they'd be in the Throne room I don't know

sisters of silence?

In Ravenor, there is an occurrence of a Pariah getting burnt out over a long period of time by the presence of a powerful daemon.

Stepping up to the Emperer would probably burn them out straight away.

I'd say they would get burnt out pretty damn quickly

There's the case in Eisenhorn of Bequins untouchability getting overwhelmed by the psychic footprint of a titan. If a titan can do that, I'd hate to think of the effect of the most powerful psyker in history....

It wouldn't kill Big E but it would block him. However its questionable what The Emperor is doing anyway.
Pariah getting close to the Astronomicon on the other hand: Disaster!

The Inquisitor Trilogy has all sorts of odd things in and around the palace and the throne room.

Including some pariahs IIRC.

and yes, un official pariahs around the Astronomicon would be the bigger issue

As already stated pariahs can be burnt out and made "normal" by very powerful psykers. The Emperor being the most powerful "living" psyker would just burn them out in an instant. Im no imperial fan boy or anything this is just what the fluff has said thus far.

Remember how the sister of silence amendera kendral (sp) shies away from Malcador when he meets with her, qruze and Garro in FotE? she is the head of a sub order within the sisters so arguably a pretty effective pariah and experienced witch seeker, the Sigillite is an alpha level psyker and she winced from him, The Emperor is probably 1000 times more potent, a pariah wouldnt last a minute in his presence.

I thought the sisters of silence were quite a common sight in the Imperial palace before the HH. How did they manage to co-exist with the greatest psyker of all history? Was the Emperor somehow immune to their pariah gene?

he probably lowered his psychic footprint so as not to burn them out, makes sense to me

Another good question would be what would happen if a pariah got near the astronomicon instead?

I figured if a pariah would get near the astronomicon it would have some effect like if you say put a piece of cardboard on a side of a lightbulb were the shadow of that object blocks a good portion of your room.

*edit: Please note that thanks to "xlightscreen" it has come to my attention that my original post's substance is to be applied to blanks and NOT pariahs. For this reason this post should be ignored on the grounds that it is not applicable to the current discussion. If you wonder what I'm talking about, refer to Mr Nobody's quote a bit later in this thread.

Thank you to xlightscreen for pointing out and correcting my mistake.

Probable result: Pariah being burnt out.

-Cypher- wrote:

xlightscreen wrote:I figured if a pariah would get near the astronomicon it would have some effect like if you say put a piece of cardboard on a side of a lightbulb were the shadow of that object blocks a good portion of your room.

Interesting analogy, but (and I in no way mean this an offensive manner) that is not how pariah's work. The pariah's ability works like an area of effect spell. Everything in that aura is affected and everything outside that aura is not affected. To modify your analogy: if the cardboard is the pariah then the aura of said pariah fully encompasses the light bulb, not just one side.

Did I explain that adequately? (once again I in no way mean to have my tone come off as an affront; I merely wish to clarify for the purpose of furthering discussion in the correct direction)

So, as long as the psychic transmitter is outside the pariah's range, the signal can still travel through the pariah?

Yes, because the warp does not work with euclidean geometry.

Your thinking of "Blanks" Cypher.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Blank

basically a pariah, just simply not register in the warp. They put psykers at a weird stance becuase they feel extremely unnatural. Why a blank produces a aura that does block all physic abilities. A least that's what I remember reading in the books and such.

As for the geometry. It wouldn't be so much it goes threw that its such a small gap it would be like us seeing threw a pore of are skin.

edit: Matter of fact I just realized it probably wouldn't have any effect since it really just creeps people out since the astronomicon is a machine XD

xlightscreen wrote:Your thinking of "Blanks" Cypher.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Blank

basically a pariah, just simply not register in the warp. They put psykers at a weird stance becuase they feel extremely unnatural. Why a blank produces a aura that does block all physic abilities. A least that's what I remember reading in the books and such.

I stand corrected. I did indeed misallocate my facts. Thank you xlightscreen.

*edit follows:
It seems though, that such a mistake has been made throughout this forum as the group founded by Eisenhorn were blanks (the Distaff), and Ravenor's untouchable (Wystan Frauka) was also a blank and not a pariah. Both have been referenced.

The Sisters of Silence though are indeed pariahs, as are the Culexus assassins just to verify those references.

The difference is fuzzy to me, but that's a different topic entirely.

*second edit follows:
In response to xlightscreen's edit: Yes, I was thinking that as well. However, in "A Thousand Sons" the Sisters of Silence were brought to Prospero by the Space Wolves to aid in disrupting the Thousand Son's psychic abilities thus proving that while blanks have the ability to "shut off" a psyker's access to his powers, so do pariahs. That fact is the one from which my confusion stems.

Err, Pariahs are just another term for Blanks AFAIK. Technically they're human Blanks turned into necron monstrosities, but for the purpose of human social categorization they're Blanks, Untouchables, Soulless, and probably a thousand other things depending on what world you're on. The lexicanum article doesn't cite its source on the distinction between the two.


It's more like a scale anyway AFAIK.

From Alpha Plus as the strongest, to Iota which is the weakest true psyker. Then Kappa to Omicron are weak psykers that don't even know they're psykers. Then pi and rho are normal humans. Tau and sigma are psychically dense, and are oblivious to manifestations of psychic talent but still effected by them if used against them, then upsilon to psi have varying degrees of resistance, before finally Omega, the Blanks, and Omega Minus, the Culexis Assassins being the only known example of these.

Yes the article wasn't very distinct, but even thinking back to my readings whenever blanks or pariahs made an appearance, I still can't seem to remember anything definitive.

However, I did not know about the scale system though now that you said it, it fits perfectly. Thanks for the new info.

The Dark Heresy novels reference a zeta-grade psyker, so there must be more to it than that scale.

The chances were strong that the girl was already tainted by the warp, and a zeta grade would hardly be worth the effort of trying to salvage anyway.

I always read it as "blanks" and "pariahs" just being different terms for the same thing, though. I could swear that I've seen them used interchangeably too...


Oh, and the blank in Ravenor is burnt out by an unusual psyker, not a daemon. Not necessarily a particularly powerful psyker either, just one that operated in an unusual way. This is also treated as an unprecedented occurrence. In Eisenhorn, Bequin is also not burnt out by contact with the possessed Titan, but severely injured by the backlash of being connected to it. It would not appear that they're burnt out by contact with particularly powerful psykers or warp entities, and we also know that the effect can be dampened through certain technology (and the anti-psyker effect can be replicated through other technology, which shows up in several novels), so having blanks walking around the palace on Terra wouldn't pose a problem for either the Emperor or the blanks.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The Dark Heresy novels reference a zeta-grade psyker, so there must be more to it than that scale.

You don't know your greek alphabet much do ya?

Alpha - Beta - Gamma - Delta - Epsilon - Zeta - Eta - Theta - Iota - Kappa - Lambda - Mu - Nu - Xi - Omicron - Pi - Rho - Sigma - Tau - Upsilon - Phi - Chi - Psi - Omega

The Assignment also includes Alpha Plus and Omega Minus, a step above Alpha and a step below Omega.

Personally I think it's strange that they would think a Zeta, a psyker with above average power (eta/theta/iota being the average psyker), is not worth attempting to save. It's not like Zeta would mean they're overwhelmingly powerful. Just moreso than most.

Melissia wrote:You don't know your greek alphabet much do ya?

Not anymore, no. Studied both ancient Greek and Latin in highschool, barely remember any of either these days. Made more embarrassing by the fact that I was damn good with both at the time... scary how fast things fade away when out of mind, that was only four years ago.


I'm not sure what most sanctionites are, or how strong they have to be before the schola psykana is willing to actually try to indoctrinate them rather than just feed them to the golden throne, should there be any doubt as to whether they're already loyal. The one in question could only sense emotions (which is something else that seems to indicate greater complexity: while particularly powerful psykers are frequently shown as having a wide range of psychic abilities, lesser ones seem to only have one particular vein of talent or another (telekinesis, mindreading, summoning fire, etc), even after training) and was already a fugitive psyker at the time.*


*

From my understanding, the weakest psyker who is commonly considered a psyker proper would be an Iota psyker. Anything below that and it's not true conscious psychic power but instead a sub/unconscious thing which they cannot control. Mind you there are many categorizations of psyker power levels, and even then they change over time as the psyker grows or shrinks in knowledge, willpower, and skill, but Zeta is AFAIK the point at which the psyker's powers are considered beyond normal.

I'm a big Abnett fan but the part in Ravenor were a Pariah is burnt out is the stupidest thing he's written. To the point were I don't even consider it Cannon. I don't see how that can happen if anything the Pariah would burn out the psyker.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I'm a big Abnett fan but the part in Ravenor were a Pariah is burnt out is the stupidest thing he's written. To the point were I don't even consider it Cannon. I don't see how that can happen if anything the Pariah would burn out the psyker.

I agree with that. Why would a powerful Psyker burn out a Blank? It doesn't make any sense... Blanks project an aura that is a blank in the Warp, why would a powerful Psyker make them burn out?

Scarey Nerd wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I'm a big Abnett fan but the part in Ravenor were a Pariah is burnt out is the stupidest thing he's written. To the point were I don't even consider it Cannon. I don't see how that can happen if anything the Pariah would burn out the psyker.

I agree with that. Why would a powerful Psyker burn out a Blank? It doesn't make any sense... Blanks project an aura that is a blank in the Warp, why would a powerful Psyker make them burn out?

Indeed. The Psyker is the flame. The Pariah is the lack of oxygen. This only goes one way.