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In almost all of the Dawn Of War Games, the Imperial Guardsmen witness Daemons and even fight them with an inquisitor around; how come they weren't executed after the battle?

Also how did the Space Marines get away without being mind wiped?

Not every Inquisitor does the whole 'no witness, innocence proves nothing' thing. Perhaps that Inquisitor didnt think the guardsmen had been corrupted by the experience.

Or maybe he did execute them later on & we just didn't hear about it. Who knows?

Finally, I dont think SMs ever get mind wiped due to contact with daemons. They're just too valuable a resource, & judged to be more resilient to corruption than the average guardsman.

SM have been Mind wiped. They've not gone through the same Psycho-Conditioning as the GK to prepare them for combat with Daemons.

They mind wipe them because they must, they can't kill them because they're to valuable. Mind wipe is expensive and time consuming. Perhaps if money was short and they passed a scouring looking for corruption then they can just leave.

I'm just going to pretend mind-wiping and execution due to exposure to daemons does not exist.

InquisitorVaron wrote:SM have been Mind wiped. They've not gone through the same Psycho-Conditioning as the GK to prepare them for combat with Daemons.

They mind wipe them because they must, they can't kill them because they're to valuable. Mind wipe is expensive and time consuming. Perhaps if money was short and they passed a scouring looking for corruption then they can just leave.

Every time they encounter Daemons?

I can imagine they do it in the most extreme circumstances but in every case? I'm not so sure.

It would be a little counter productive in some cases, I guess that Cadians have fought Daemons before and you would want them remembering what the best way to kill them is.

Space Marines are certainly not mind wiped after fighting Daemons, they have knowledge of Chaos and are trained to resist it. Most are after encountering Grey Knights though.

That's where the hitch is.
I remember why they're mind wiped. If a major excursion happened the Grey Knights would be there.
Thats why they get mind wiped. They just kill the IG and I think they might do that anyway unless they're under constant exposure like the Cadians. Even then I would kill them for fear of corruption.

somecallmeJack wrote:Not every Inquisitor does the whole 'no witness, innocence proves nothing' thing. Perhaps that Inquisitor didnt think the guardsmen had been corrupted by the experience.

Or maybe he did execute them later on & we just didn't hear about it. Who knows?

Finally, I dont think SMs ever get mind wiped due to contact with daemons. They're just too valuable a resource, & judged to be more resilient to corruption than the average guardsman.

All true... Pre-Ward GK Codex....

Ahh, sometimes I like to get my Daemonhunters Codex out and stroke it, and remember the good times...

When he hadn't nerfed the Daemonhost.
The most powerful being supposedly now reduced to a pityful 10p creature.

wasn't Inquisitor Toth being controlled by the daemon? I really don't know as far as Winter Assault or any of the other ones.

They got away with it because the Inquisitor in question didn't feel like they needed to.

Assuming you mean Andrastia from Retribution.

Where inquisition stormtroopers killed off as well?

PresidentOfAsia wrote:In almost all of the Dawn Of War Games, the Imperial Guardsmen witness Daemons and even fight them with an inquisitor around; how come they weren't executed after the battle?

Also how did the Space Marines get away without being mind wiped?

Killing Imperial Guardsmen is more a Grey Knight thing currently. Because of their 'secret santa' status, If the Grey Knights ever make an appearance or fight alongside Imperial Guard or Space Marines, they kill the former and mind wipe the latter because Guardsmen are easy to replace.

Have fun when the Emperor dies you silver-armored, over-hyped ninkers.

*Ahem*

Inquisitors are actually more reluctant to kill Guardsmen for the fact that its hard to find a Space Marine when you need one at the moment. And those Guardsmen that survive the ordeal--while being scrutinized--often stay with the Inquisitor or become recruited as the Inquisitor's private army (or was it house?) of Inqisitorial Storm Troopers, sometimes becoming apart of the Inquisitors Retinue.

Its hard to keep a Space Marine in your employ for a exaggerated length of time.

Deathly Angel wrote:Space Marines are certainly not mind wiped after fighting Daemons, they have knowledge of Chaos and are trained to resist it. Most are after encountering Grey Knights though.

They were, though now it has been retconned so they are not.

Used to be after any incounter with Damonic influences, if you're a space marine you're lucky and mind wiped of the experience of the event; not everything. If you were a guardsmen or weren't an important enough Ordo Hereticus/Xenos Inquisitor, then execution. This was to avoid any thoughts of daemons, as even the thought of them gave them power.

To simplify it I'll leave this here.

n0t_u wrote:

Deathly Angel wrote:Space Marines are certainly not mind wiped after fighting Daemons, they have knowledge of Chaos and are trained to resist it. Most are after encountering Grey Knights though.

They were, though now it has been retconned so they are not.

Used to be after any incounter with Damonic influences, if you're a space marine you're lucky and mind wiped of the experience of the event; not everything. If you were a guardsmen or weren't an important enough Ordo Hereticus/Xenos Inquisitor, then execution. This was to avoid any thoughts of daemons, as even the thought of them gave them power.

To simplify it I'll leave this here.

Guardsmen 01: "Lookit! A Blood Angel!"

Weren't the Sky Sentinels mindwiped after Sondheim V?

Sup guys. I know you're all going to be executed after this battle against those demons so I want you all to stay focussed on the task at hand and not just kill me and bugger off into town to get pissed.
Uh...guys?
*lasgun shots*
*sounds of drunken revelry*
It'd be impossible to keep morale up during a campaign if the troops knew they'd be executed after the battle, and it'd probably be pretty common knowledge.
Also deamons appear several times in the Guant's Ghosts series and nothing seems to happen to the guys who saw it.

The thing is they wouldn't know, outside of the Ordo Malleus and high ranking Inquisition, none even knew about Daemons.

They'd be more like:

"Good work men, lets go celebrate this victory in the Emperor's name!"
*Guardsmen put away weapons and prepare for transport out of battle zone*
"In fact you did so well the Inquisitor would like to express his gratitude to us all"
*Few Grey Knights, Inquisitorial Storm Troopers walk into the room*
*Inquisitor locks the door*

The only benefit to the Commissar is he'll either be executed first or last, if he's important enough he may get mind wiped otherwise he's the captain of the same boat all the guardsmen and civilians are in.

So no one in the imperium has heard of demons? Even the word "demon" is unknown to them? It must be, or they'd know what one was.
I find it very difficult to beleive that they hadn't heard of demons. We're not talking 1984 here, there's always survivors, and people talk, and people tell other people, and rumors abound.
Not to mention the logistics of trying to kill an entire army of veterans who are armed to the teeth and probably not very happy about being executed...I just can't see it happening.

It was unrealistic and likely there were leaks (there were daemonic cults after all), but the Ordo Malleus did go to extreme lengths to try and keep the lid on the whole Daemon thing.

They're supposed to be pretty damn subtle though (as often the Ordo Hereticus is/was the only known part of the Inquisition to most of the population) so they may have just done it the simple way and gassed transport ships or disabled life support systems.

It's rare many guardsmen would survive fighting daemons anyway. They'd probably be lucky to have a hundred or so left after a fight out of thousands. But of course that's been retconned to try to make it more grimdark by not having them so secret. I guess some could still get executed though just for being there.

Joey wrote:So no one in the imperium has heard of demons? Even the word "demon" is unknown to them? It must be, or they'd know what one was.
I find it very difficult to beleive that they hadn't heard of demons. We're not talking 1984 here, there's always survivors, and people talk, and people tell other people, and rumors abound.
Not to mention the logistics of trying to kill an entire army of veterans who are armed to the teeth and probably not very happy about being executed...I just can't see it happening.

They have heard of Daemons, but from fairytale and folk lore. You forget that most Imperial Hives hold countless billions of people who never see anything past their mundane job and their lack-luster habs. Most of what they hear is considered myth or legend: Space Marines, The Emperor, Daemons, Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines, the Warp itself.

Yes ordinary people 'know' of daemons; as a means to keep children in line with a prayer on their lips and bed sheets over their heads.


The Logistics of killing an Imperial Guard Army is not that hard. The Inquisition kills planets on a day-to-day basis, so something as small scoped as a Regiment of Guard isn't that difficult.

Naval/Merchant ship that survives a minor Gellar field malefunction?

All psykers? Navigators especially?

I don't understand how they keep a lid on everything, the whole, Daemons don't exists, lalalala schtick doesn't seem to follow for a lot of 40k. Obviously people know (Select few outside of the =I= but still a lot of people), otherwise cults probably wouldn't pop up so frequently. I think the executions are only when the Grey Knights arrive. Because the Grey Knights must be secret. Because......They're secret.


I think the executions

Another way to "execute" guardsmen regiments that have encountered Chaos is to keep sending them into missions with low to no chance of survival without allowing them contact with the Imperium at large.

This wouldn't even appear out of the ordinary.

BrainDeleted wrote:Naval/Merchant ship that survives a minor Gellar field malefunction?

All psykers? Navigators especially?

I don't understand how they keep a lid on everything, the whole, Daemons don't exists, lalalala schtick doesn't seem to follow for a lot of 40k.

... because it isn't 40k. The Imperium as a whole "knows" daemons exist, as that-bad-thing-that-must-not-be-mentioned. Each planet has its flavor of evil creatures, some quite a bit different than others-- there's a slaaneshi creature for example that effects groups of artists, getting them to try to create perfection but without the ability to do so, and thriving off of their torment before slaughtering them all and doing it all over again.

The issue isn't people knowing daemons exist, but preventing them from knowing enough to be dangerous. A little knowledge is all it takes to scare the ever-loving crap out of them and make them stay away, for the most part.

Melissia wrote:

BrainDeleted wrote:Naval/Merchant ship that survives a minor Gellar field malefunction?

All psykers? Navigators especially?

I don't understand how they keep a lid on everything, the whole, Daemons don't exists, lalalala schtick doesn't seem to follow for a lot of 40k.

... because it isn't 40k. The Imperium as a whole "knows" daemons exist, as that-bad-thing-that-must-not-be-mentioned. Each planet has its flavor of evil creatures, some quite a bit different than others-- there's a slaaneshi creature for example that effects groups of artists, getting them to try to create perfection but without the ability to do so, and thriving off of their torment before slaughtering them all and doing it all over again.

The issue isn't people knowing daemons exist, but preventing them from knowing enough to be dangerous. A little knowledge is all it takes to scare the ever-loving crap out of them and make them stay away, for the most part.

Except in the eyes of most Imperial common citizens they consider things like the Warp and Space Marines myths and bed time stories, since they do not see the universe from within their Habs and Imperial Propaganda/Dogma. Now some citizens might fall under the Preachings of the Ecclesiarchy and fear Daemons from a moral whole as we do today.

This also happens to fuel alot of harmless, 'wishful' cults from young-minded citizens who want to 'rail' against Imperial Society. These cults can become dangerous however, if there's a latent psyker involved. Most cults become full blow Chaos Cults when a Daemon manages to tap into a psyker and begins affecting the material plane.

Now their are also 'Rogue Psykers' who are obviously touched by the Warp and seek to sew Chaos Cults directly.

That's why its important for Inquisitorial Agents take Cults to the Flame, so the Cult doesn't spread a Daemon's actual existance into the populace. Its not necessarily knowing about Deamons would scare citizens away, however, its more along the lines of the Inquisition being terrified of how many citizens would want to join Chaos.

What Melissa is getting at is, I believe, that the Imperium at large (the unwashed masses) know a highly censored and revisionist version of what Chaos and Daemons and such are, much in the vein of (but perhaps not nearlya s over the top as) the Uplifting Primer's depiction of various alien races. In other words, propoganda.

It's much the same way the Emperor handled things during the Great Crusade - he never really revealed the true nature of what Chaos was, even to the Primarchs. HE gave them some information and that in a highly editorialized version at that.

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before but; in one of the gaunts ghosts novels a soldier meets a daemon on his first action in the guard. Ive not yet red into Blood Pact but as far as I know the character is still alive. Just as an example.

The galaxy is a big place, a lot can happen.

if I remember commissars are specifically trained to know about and resist demons because they have to know about them and how the work to do their job. I dont know if thy would be executed for encountering one, but executing guardsmen who do does not seem so unlikely.

Remember that guardsman's lives are worth less than their equipment. They are called the Hammer of the Emperor, and used for protracted campaigns of attrition for a reason. However, the imperium does not look lightly on simply wasting imperial resources and killing off a largely populated planet would be a tremendous waste.

The more likely scenario is that if demons are encountered (or necrons which the inquisition likes to keep under wraps too, or used to before the new codex), an inquisitor would come along and do the pretty tedious task of scouring through all the soldiers and the general population. If the situation looks salvageable a few questionable people will be executed the rest will be put back to work where they can die another day. If it looks like the rot is a little too deep, then killing the lot is the only real answer.

I don't think space marines would be mind wiped for a normal demon encounter. The combat experience that a space marine accumulates is just too valuable to wipe away. Large scale demonic intrusions where taint is possible though, I can see them being wiped, but in general a space marine that knows how best to kill a demon is a considerable asset to the imperium.

DarknessEternal wrote:Another way to "execute" guardsmen regiments that have encountered Chaos is to keep sending them into missions with low to no chance of survival without allowing them contact with the Imperium at large.

This wouldn't even appear out of the ordinary.

This is the way I picture it, much better for them to get rid of them that way, then just to gas the lot. I would also imagine that guardsmen far far from the frontlines, (Artillery, Reserves, Supply runners, etc etc) wouldnt be placed under the sword,

And for the mind-wiping of Space Marines, I think that is Pants on Head stupid, always have, always will.

F the Inquisition