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I have often pondered on the subject of the Grey Knights and the fact they are Psykers. I have always thought that they should have recruited Pariah's, as it would automatically make them a weapon and make them an anathema to warp entities?

Except that the Grey Knights operate on the fact that to defeat something you must first understand it and by doing so, use it's power against itself.

One could argue that Grey Knights are in fact Sorcerers as their abilities far exceed that of the strongest Librarians due to the fact that they tap into the warp on a much more precedented scale then that of other psykers.

Iranna.

The simple answer would be that at the time the Grey Knights were founded there already existed a military force of Pariahs/Blanks in the Imperium - the Sisters of Silence.

Speculatively, since the effects of the geenseed seem to be beyond science to explain (the Black Rage, for example) and entail some kind of immaterial connection to the Primarch, it's possible that the implantation process simply wouldn't work on Blanks.

The emperor had sisters of silence in his service. He still decided to create Grey Knights the way they are.
Maybe he put more faith into the abilities shown in control of the warp?

Plus we don't know if the pariah gene is still part of the background as the source , ie a C'tan is changed now.
Until the whole story of 'pariah' , 'blanks' etc is put back onto its feet where can we base our guesses ?
Material on the creation of anti-psykers is rare if existant at all. ( thanks to the fog of war covering the latest codex yet ).

Nulls/Pariahs are exceedingly rare. Considering only one in a million recruits ever make to be an aspirant, from the already particular rules of recruitment, the chances of finding a suitable candidate is just not workable for the Grey Knight's needs.

There's also the case of the Sister's of Silence already being active at the time of their creation, and the fact that the Grey Knights already project and aura that is harmful to Daemons. Sorcery is a much better weapon to actually fight Daemons with. It evens the playing field, Grey Knights can use to actively attack and cause harm to Daemons, understand their existence and how to fight them in the best way. Blanks could not do this. They may cause harm to Daemons by their presence, but it also renders the Aegis, Nemesis Force Weapons, psybolt ammunition, Psycannons, pretty much all of the Grey Knight's wargear that are proven to be the best weapons for the job, useless.

Yeah. The fluff has frequently noted (from 2nd edition to the HH series, the Tales of Heresy novel most recently IIRC) that there is like one Pariah for every billion or so of humans. Contrast this with 1 psyker for every million to 100,000 humans (depending on source. One per a million is more often repeated though) You're going to get 1000+ psykers for every Pariah. And even if only 1% of that 1000 or so is Grey Knight potential, you still have more psykers than Pariahs.

And a Blank can only stop a deamon from using its Psyker powers...It can still use its size/strength against you.

A pariah is protected from daemons but GKs don't just want to be protected from daemons they want to destroy them. You need psychic powers to obliterate a daemon otherwise you're just banishing them back to the warp.

There is no such thing as oblitirating a daemon, they always get banished.

And blanks do banish daemons with their very presence in the material world. They cannot exist with the null zone a blank creates.

Soladrin wrote:There is no such thing as oblitirating a daemon, they always get banished.

And blanks do banish daemons with their very presence in the material world. They cannot exist with the null zone a blank creates.

No Daemons can be permanently killed, although it's a near impossible task. Plus, the can be bound and captured.

1hadhq wrote:The emperor had sisters of silence in his service. He still decided to create Grey Knights the way they are.
Maybe he put more faith into the abilities shown in control of the warp?

Plus we don't know if the pariah gene is still part of the background as the source , ie a C'tan is changed now.
Until the whole story of 'pariah' , 'blanks' etc is put back onto its feet where can we base our guesses ?
Material on the creation of anti-psykers is rare if existant at all. ( thanks to the fog of war covering the latest codex yet ).

Unless I'm very much mistaken Nulls/Blanks/Pariahs in fluff pre-date the C'tan by a few years; they were first detailed in the Assassins' Codex for 2nd Ed., at which time the C'tan were just a name attached to a few bits of wargear that ignored saving throws.

English Assassin wrote:
Unless I'm very much mistaken Nulls/Blanks/Pariahs in fluff pre-date the C'tan by a few years; they were first detailed in the Assassins' Codex for 2nd Ed., at which time the C'tan were just a name attached to a few bits of wargear that ignored saving throws.

Possibly, thats why I said rare fluff. Background of editions 1&2 isn't common now, a lot of these publications ceased to be available and many
have joined the hobby later.
Thus based the point on GW's most recent source of 'pariah', which was codex necrons. ( plus i don't know ed 1&2 ).
The blanks will continue to exist in the background.
But the past may have changed and the source of specific genes in the human race too.