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JUst been having a discussion with a mate, who is sure they do. Can't remember if this is a must or not. Am asking this fluff-wise, rather than in-game

Nope, there are a number of stories that involve non-psyker inquisitors. Amberley Vail from the Ciaphas Cain novels comes to mind immediately, though there are others.

Not only do they not have to be psykers, but there are certain branches of the inquisition who feel that all Psykers are corrupted by Chaos and should be burned as Heretics...

Cheers guys. I thought as much. All stems from him just finishing Flight of the Eisenstein...

No...it's just that those one-in-a-million Human psykers who possess the mental strength to resist chaotic influence/daemonic possession usually become Inquisitors. Their talents find the greatest use/potential/risk in that line of work.

Just been wondering - why don't inquisitor acolytes (psyker or not) go through a similarly organised and brutal initiation as the Grey Knights? Leaving their training to individual inquisitors seems to be quite trusting and not very sensible seeing as they're going to be in such a high position of power.

Skarwael wrote:Just been wondering - why don't inquisitor acolytes (psyker or not) go through a similarly organised and brutal initiation as the Grey Knights? Leaving their training to individual inquisitors seems to be quite trusting and not very sensible seeing as they're going to be in such a high position of power.

This is because the Inquisition is not a single organisation with a single leader like the Grey Knights, due to the seperated nature of each order training is better done in the form of an acolyte.

And due to that, it's up the Inquisition to 'regulate' itself, i.e. Inquisitors end up hunting each other due to philosophical dispute.

BluntmanDC wrote:

Skarwael wrote:Just been wondering - why don't inquisitor acolytes (psyker or not) go through a similarly organised and brutal initiation as the Grey Knights? Leaving their training to individual inquisitors seems to be quite trusting and not very sensible seeing as they're going to be in such a high position of power.

This is because the Inquisition is not a single organisation with a single leader like the Grey Knights, due to the seperated nature of each order training is better done in the form of an acolyte.

I know that, but I don't agree that it's "better" to leave training to the Inquisitors. It's foolish to think that Inquisitors are above suspicion, and if one is corrupted, it would be almost certain that the acolyte is corrupted aswell. Also, if an inquisitor is a poor teacher the acolyte would probably be less capable or more susceptible to taint. If there were some sort of Inquisitorial academy, training could be standardised to make sure that an acolyte is as effective and resistant to chaos as possible.

Many are called, most are found wanting.

The job of an Inquisitor is broad, and ill-defined: Protect the Imperium of Man from the Enemy Within, the Enemy Without, and the Enemy From Beyond.

That's the whole job, divided amongst three major Ordos. Not a lot of description there, and even two Inquisitors from the same Ordo in the same sub-sector might go about their job in entirely different ways. Some Inquisitors prefer the cloak-and-dagger type stuff, while others will roll up on a planet they suspect of having Heretical taint with an entire Naval battlegroup, five regiments of Imperial Guard, 3 platoons of Stormtroopers and a dozen Sisters of Battle, and will convene what are basically witch-trials, consigning thousands, perhaps millions, to the pyre. Meanwhile, his James Bond buddy is sneaking around, going undercover, infiltrating cults, and assassinating cult-leaders and having the rest arrested and executed by the Arbites or just his/her own retinue.

Both methods are effective, just different.

Since were on that topic... Do inquisitors have authority over space marines ... Like can a inquisitor tell a space marine grunt Wat 2 do?

Technically, yes. The authority of an Inquisitor is second only to that of the God-Emperor Himself.

However, given the feudal nature of the Imperium, it is an unwise Inquisitor who goes around making demands of a Space Marine. Instead, if the assistance of Space Marines is needed, the Inquisitor drafts a formal request for assistance and dispatches it to the Chapter Master of the Chapter in question.

On the ground, in an emergency? The Inquisitor speaks with the authority of the God-Emperor.

usmcmidn wrote:Since were on that topic... Do inquisitors have authority over space marines ... Like can a inquisitor tell a space marine grunt Wat 2 do?

Not really, except for Grey Knights and Deathwatch, but only becasue they are chamber militant of the Ordos. Inquisitors still have to tread a thin political line when dealing with the Astates, they do command a lot of political power, but so do the space marine due to their independent nature. There has been cases of the Space Wolves firing on Inquisition vessels with no repercussions (mind you, they are a first founding chapter, and they carry the most political power out of all the chapters)

The Mad Tanker wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:Since were on that topic... Do inquisitors have authority over space marines ... Like can a inquisitor tell a space marine grunt Wat 2 do?

Not really, except for Grey Knights and Deathwatch, but only becasue they are chamber militant of the Ordos. Inquisitors still have to tread a thin political line when dealing with the Astates, they do command a lot of political power, but so do the space marine due to their independent nature. There has been cases of the Space Wolves firing on Inquisition vessels with no repercussions (mind you, they are a first founding chapter, and they carry the most political power out of all the chapters)

The Inquisition has authority over everyone.
However the Astartes are proud of their independence and if ordered by an Inquisitor they may decline or suddenly find their companies deployed to areas where they are unavailable to help the Inquisitor.
So it's better to ask instead.

purplefood wrote:

The Mad Tanker wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:Since were on that topic... Do inquisitors have authority over space marines ... Like can a inquisitor tell a space marine grunt Wat 2 do?

Not really, except for Grey Knights and Deathwatch, but only becasue they are chamber militant of the Ordos. Inquisitors still have to tread a thin political line when dealing with the Astates, they do command a lot of political power, but so do the space marine due to their independent nature. There has been cases of the Space Wolves firing on Inquisition vessels with no repercussions (mind you, they are a first founding chapter, and they carry the most political power out of all the chapters)

The Inquisition has authority over everyone.
However the Astartes are proud of their independence and if ordered by an Inquisitor they may decline or suddenly find their companies deployed to areas where they are unavailable to help the Inquisitor.
So it's better to ask instead.

Even if asked, if the Chapter is deploying to a critical warzone, say a Black Crusade, then they're not obliged to obey either. Just as the Lion said; "Defending Terra means nothing if the rest of the empire is ash."

No Inquisitor is going to draw SM away from a Black Crusade for some other task when he can, more easily, commandeer an entire Naval Battle-group and a quarter of a million Guardsmen.

Fluff-wise, an Inquisitor can call upon the Astartes that aren't Death Watch or Grey Knights, but only if the situation is urgent and use of Astartes over the more readily available/disposable Navy and Guard is necessary.

Psienesis wrote:No Inquisitor is going to draw SM away from a Black Crusade for some other task when he can, more easily, commandeer an entire Naval Battle-group and a quarter of a million Guardsmen.

Not going to be easy either way - in a Black Crusade, the High Lords are gonna prioritize the Cadian defense; it has to be really serious for Imperial Commanders to withdraw/divert that much resources from the reinforcement fleets headed to the Eye.

The High Lords are far away, on Terra.

The man (or woman) with the Inquisitorial Rosette is standing right here, on the bridge of your battle-cruiser, with a pair of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, and the authority to order every man, woman and child aboard your vessel walked out the nearest airlock.

Who are you going to listen to?

Psienesis wrote:The High Lords are far away, on Terra.

The man (or woman) with the Inquisitorial Rosette is standing right here, on the bridge of your battle-cruiser, with a pair of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, and the authority to order every man, woman and child aboard your vessel walked out the nearest airlock.

Who are you going to listen to?

With respect, Inquisitor, I cannot simply direct this fleet of one thousand ships escorting six million guardsmen away from the Eye. Our orders are explicit and encoded to be from the High Lords of Terra themselves: we are to proceed to the Eye at all speed, and no deliberate detours will be tolerated.

I understand what your saying, but I doubt even an Inquisitor would want to divert a reinforcement fleet that large away. Maybe a smaller fleet, but a fleet that size? Most likely, the Inquisitor would grit his/her teeth and find other alternatives.

Depends on what, exactly, the Inquisitor in question is dealing with.

Maybe there is a Black Crusade on...

... and, all of a sudden, one of the Munitorum supply depot planets behind Cadia, responsible for providing materials to the frontlines of the defense against this Crusade, is suddenly suffering the awakening of a Necron Monolith.

Or a never-before-heard-of Daemon Prince is tearing his way through the Warp to manifest, a la Slyte, being a literal mountain of flesh and tentacles, right outside this major depot.

You won't see an Inquisitor requesting the aid of an entire Naval Battlegroup and a quarter million Guardsmen unless the need is fething dire. Inquisitors don't want the headaches of all that paperwork, primarily, and if they can do it with fifty guys, they'll take those fifty guys and go get it done. The vast majority of Inquisitors, like, 99.99999% of them, don't go strutting around, pulling out the Rosette for free drinks and chips, joyriding a Luna-class cruiser for the hell of it or any other such shenanigans.

If you're the Admiral of a Naval fleet and an Inquisitor suddenly teleports herself aboard your bridge? You better be sure that her need is extremely urgent.

Tadashi wrote:I understand what your saying, but I doubt even an Inquisitor would want to divert a reinforcement fleet that large away. Maybe a smaller fleet, but a fleet that size?

About a third of all the inquisitors I have read about were pretty mad/delusional to some degree. If it's one from the more radical side of the spectrum he may well have convinced himself some long lost artifact will end chaos once and for all and so the fall of Cadia is perfectly acceptable.

Psienesis wrote:The vast majority of Inquisitors, like, 99.99999% of them, don't go strutting around, pulling out the Rosette for free drinks and chips, joyriding a Luna-class cruiser for the hell of it or any other such shenanigans.

I think that percentage is rather high. The main characters in books are mostly of the covert kind yes, because those are more exciting to read about but I've read both inquisitors Eisenhorn and Vail complain about their less-than-subtle colleagues who flash their rosetta's on every occasion and burn half a planet's population to root out a cult.
If memory serves I have read about some of them too. The best ones won't come to mind but for example I don't think you'll find Hector Rex sneaking through some hive sewer.

Psienesis wrote:Depends on what, exactly, the Inquisitor in question is dealing with.

Maybe there is a Black Crusade on...

... and, all of a sudden, one of the Munitorum supply depot planets behind Cadia, responsible for providing materials to the frontlines of the defense against this Crusade, is suddenly suffering the awakening of a Necron Monolith.

Or a never-before-heard-of Daemon Prince is tearing his way through the Warp to manifest, a la Slyte, being a literal mountain of flesh and tentacles, right outside this major depot.

You won't see an Inquisitor requesting the aid of an entire Naval Battlegroup and a quarter million Guardsmen unless the need is fething dire. Inquisitors don't want the headaches of all that paperwork, primarily, and if they can do it with fifty guys, they'll take those fifty guys and go get it done. The vast majority of Inquisitors, like, 99.99999% of them, don't go strutting around, pulling out the Rosette for free drinks and chips, joyriding a Luna-class cruiser for the hell of it or any other such shenanigans.

If you're the Admiral of a Naval fleet and an Inquisitor suddenly teleports herself aboard your bridge? You better be sure that her need is extremely urgent.

Excellent points...I agree that Inquisitors have absolute authority, more often than not gaining immediate compliance, but even they have to consider politics and strategic situations (I don't think economics count much in the Imperium).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TiB wrote:

Tadashi wrote:I understand what your saying, but I doubt even an Inquisitor would want to divert a reinforcement fleet that large away. Maybe a smaller fleet, but a fleet that size?

About a third of all the inquisitors I have read about were pretty mad/delusional to some degree. If it's one from the more radical side of the spectrum he may well have convinced himself some long lost artifact will end chaos once and for all and so the fall of Cadia is perfectly acceptable.

Once the Imperium kicks the Great Enemy out of Segmentum Obscuris, that Inquisitor's gonna find himself/herself dodging vengeful Inquisitors and Astartes, not to mention Assassinorum agents, all out for his/her life.

Psienesis wrote:The vast majority of Inquisitors, like, 99.99999% of them, don't go strutting around, pulling out the Rosette for free drinks and chips

I know you're being hyperbolic, but given the likely number of Inquisitors in the Imperium, that would mean less than one Inquisitor did. Because that's a fraction of one in ten million, and I can't imagine there being 10 Inquisitors for each and every planet.

The Conclave forums put an estimate in of more like half a million Inquisitors, of which most would act only almost exclusively through agents and never personally get their hands dirty. The idea of overt Inquisitors who lead crusades to smack daemons upside the head with big hammers is going to be pretty useless versus the threats that are actually sensible enough to keep themselves hidden and take extensive investigation to uncover at all.

As to the original question, no they don't, and personally, I think that far too many are (in the background material. I'm ignoring army lists - where it's done for gameplay, not fluff). Psykers are rare, mistrusted and more easily corrupted. Fewer are going to have the necessary blend of intelligence, willpower, force of personality, knowledge and skill, and even those that do may never be trusted enough by their master to be considered as a potential trainee (as, in practice, almost all explicators/interrogators/etc will have been part of their Inquisitor's staff for a long time before earning that promotion. The idea that appears in some people's character backgrounds of "OMG, a 12 year old defeated a daemon. Despite never having met him before or knowing if he has the required traits, I shall take him on and train him as an Inquisitor" is implausible and illogical).

While I don't doubt that psychic Inquisitors are proportionally more common than psykers in the general population (because it is ultimately a useful trait and thus worth trying to get in an apprentice), they should still be outnumbered by their non-psychic peers.

On that note, untouchable/Pariah Inquisitors should be almost entirely unheard of, because a) They're rarer than psykers and harder to detect and b) it's not just a culturally ingrained prejudice against them (as it is with psykers), it's an innate hatred that anything with a soul cannot escape. The concept is hard to understand for us, as we don't really have an equivalent - we're used to the fact that hatreds are learnt.
I have heard a very very very few good reasons/explanations for Pariah Inquisitors and an awful lot of very bad ones that include a "But his master realised he wasn't that bad and got over the fact he was a Pariah" either explicitly or implicitly somewhere in there.

With the scenario of the Inquisitor on the bridge of an un-compliant Admiral...
Wouldn't the Inquisitor just shoot the poor admiral and promote someone more afraid or compliant :L

Maybe.

However, you've got to remember that the Admiral himself will have a lot of bodyguards on the bridge and a lot of powerful allies elsewhere. An Inquisitor who just goes around shooting non-compliant high ranking members of the military is going to find himself with a lot of enemies and a torso full of bullets.

MarcoSkoll wrote:Maybe.

However, you've got to remember that the Admiral himself will have a lot of bodyguards on the bridge and a lot of powerful allies elsewhere. An Inquisitor who just goes around shooting non-compliant high ranking members of the military is going to find himself with a lot of enemies and a torso full of bullets.

In other words, sooner or later finding themselves facing trial by very irritated fellow Inquisitors trying him/her for disrupting Imperial stability. Not to mention killing talented and experienced officers simply because those officers preferred following strategic orders from the High Lords of Terra over an Inquisitor. The High Lords don't give orders simply because they have time to kill, but because they need to. Inquisitors may be absolute, but even they have to keep the Imperium's needs over their agendas.

MarcoSkoll wrote:On that note, untouchable/Pariah Inquisitors should be almost entirely unheard of, because a) They're rarer than psykers and harder to detect and b) it's not just a culturally ingrained prejudice against them (as it is with psykers), it's an innate hatred that anything with a soul cannot escape.

Yes they should be much rarer since blanks are even more extremely rare than psykers, but I don't see a blank and an inquisitor as being mutually exclusive. I'd say a blank is at least if not more as useful a tool than a psyker in an inquisitors' posse. Vail and especially Eisenhorn (with his Distaff) can attest to that.

And as for the ingrained hatred; not every inquisitor is especially diplomatically touchy feely and some would even like striking fear and hatred into others. Inquisitor Heldane even had his face remade into that of a horse to scare people into submission.

The hatred doesn't even need to be so bad. Cain's aide Jurgen was a blank and people didn't hate him. They just shied away from him due to BO and blankness and would rather not stand next to him but that's as far as the dislike went

Tadashi wrote:Inquisitors may be absolute, but even they have to keep the Imperium's needs over their agendas.

The problem is that not necessarily everyone agrees on what those needs are.

I think i read in one of the fantasy flight games books that Inquisitors rank policlicly with planatary goveners,space marine chapter masters and fleet admrals; yes they have the power but what are they going to do if told no start a war for troops or ships that they want to use in another war?

It's been known to happen, but keep in mind that "political authority" is not the same thing as an Inquisitor's generalized "authority" to prosecute the heretic, the xeno and the daemonic in the name of the God-Emperor. Much like the variable authority of others, depending on circumstances, in the event of an obvious threat pertinent to the Inquisitor's remit, his/her authority may be vast and far-reaching indeed.

Also, keep in mind that FFG publishes an RPG, which needs, for balance purposes, to establish some kind of limit on the power of the PC party, otherwise it becomes a game of Inquisitorial Thugs and their Space Marine buddies. They have a variable scale of authority based on the variables of authority of other, NPC occupations within the game system, which does not necessarily reflect the 40K universe as a whole. Though, by the same token, a Planetary Governor can mobilize vast armies and navies, so it's still a powerful rank within the FFG game.