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.

The inquisition's favorite past time seems to be killing all those that have seen, heard of or imagined the forces of Chaos. This culling isn't limited to those who have had direct contact with the forces of the Warp, tens of Billions of loyal imperial souls were snuffed out following the first war for Armageddon for the sin of living on a world where a handful of imperial forces from Armageddon may have escaped to.

My question is how does the inquisition justify virus bombing an agricultural word to kill a dozen potential witnesses of Chaos attacks? I'm not asking whether they should have done these things, obviously they shouldn't have and this fact is shown to be true by virtue of the imperium still standing after hundreds of thousands of Armageddon Veterans escaped the inquisition's reach. I'm asking why they see these actions as necessary, what are they trying to prevent? What would happen if the knowledge of Chaos became commonplace in the Imperium?

Its done to prevent the spread of Chaos. Look at the volscanni cataphracts for example, fought heroicly as guardsmen, but in the end corrupted many years later, turning on the Cadian High Command and killing the planetary goveronor at the battle of Tyrok Fields.
As far as Inquisition is concerned, Chaos corrupts, the question is when if culling warranted?
Like armageddon where its anyone who fought against them? Only those in prolonged war? Take your chances and don't kill and risk another tyrok Fields?

I thought traditionally they only killed off people that witnessed daemonic incursions. EG Armageddon...

Though, I could see a reason for doing it for some traitor marines to hide the fact that marines can actually fall...

The vast majority of battles against chaos are just against generic cultists. In which case, they can be rationalised as, "loonies and mutants (a normal 40k occurrence) hooked on obscurae and following a crazy cult.

 Eetion wrote:
Its done to prevent the spread of Chaos. Look at the volscanni cataphracts for example, fought heroicly as guardsmen, but in the end corrupted many years later, turning on the Cadian High Command and killing the planetary goveronor at the battle of Tyrok Fields.
As far as Inquisition is concerned, Chaos corrupts, the question is when if culling warranted?
Like armageddon where its anyone who fought against them? Only those in prolonged war? Take your chances and don't kill and risk another tyrok Fields?

I thought the whole point of the Volscani Cataphracts was to infiltrate the Cadians by being heroic.

And also, the Inquisition is a bit too extreme. In most fiction I come off feeling like the inquisition is full of jerks.

Given how powerful and deep-seeded a Chaos corruption can be, it is pretty much nipping potential incursions in the bud. Think about it this way:

Let's say there's some squad, or regiment or even just a civilian who saw the mind-bending Chaos powers at work. What if they can't shake the memories of it? What if they keep thinking about it more and more until they start being consumed by it? And that way, corruption takes roots again, but multiplied by a factor of thousands or millions because of how many people may have seen that, and how spread out they (as regiments) may have been spread.

Are the Inquisition jerks? Absolutely. But it's kind of their job. Millions killed to save billions.

Chaos is a disease. It will spread, consume and multiply. Do Inquisitors go too far? Perhaps sometimes. But for the most part, these actions are completely necessary. That is the universe of 40k. We can't apply modern logic.

By modern logic, if we have a room full of 9 innocents and 1 criminal, but have no way of knowing who the criminal is, we must let them all go. The risk of falsely punishing 9 people outweighs any benefit.

In the same situation in 40k, it is sound logic to kill them all. Yes, 9 innocents will die, but the 1 chaos worshipper could corrupt hundreds more if he goes free. In fact, those 9 are probably corrupted just by being in the same room.

At the same time, we must consider that human lives are the most abundant resourse in the Imperium. Which means that they have little value. So Inquisitors will have few compunctions about sacrificing a few (million) Imperial citizens.

Thought for the day: Better that a thousand innocents should die than a single guilty man go free.

Yeah, they'd rather kill a few million soldiers then risk a fullblown chaos incursion 20 years down the road that ends up wiping out an entire subsector. When you have that perspective it makes complete sense.

"Its nothing personal, its just buisness."

The Armageddon culling was necessary because the army was lead by Angron, one of the primarchs. Imperial citizens don't know about the traitor primarchs, and that knowledge would cause mass outbreaks of dissent and doubt.

 curran12 wrote:
Given how powerful and deep-seeded a Chaos corruption can be, it is pretty much nipping potential incursions in the bud. Think about it this way:

Let's say there's some squad, or regiment or even just a civilian who saw the mind-bending Chaos powers at work. What if they can't shake the memories of it? What if they keep thinking about it more and more until they start being consumed by it? And that way, corruption takes roots again, but multiplied by a factor of thousands or millions because of how many people may have seen that, and how spread out they (as regiments) may have been spread.

Are the Inquisition jerks? Absolutely. But it's kind of their job. Millions killed to save billions.

This. It only take one person to bring down a world. One rogue psyker can open a hole to the warp and let daemons flood to the material realm, one corrupted guardsman can spread corruption through his regiment, one perverse Imperial noble can corrupt the entire social and political elite of a world. In the end killing millions is necessary in such cases since the odds are that enough people are corrupted to cause issues is very high. While every individual can be tested, it is simply not feasible, and individuals can slip through.

Can normal heretics without any psychic powers summon demons?

Horus654 wrote:
Can normal heretics without any psychic powers summon demons?

Probably not. But "summoning demons" is not the only measure or impact of corruption, either.

And it is possable for non-psykers to gain the power of chaos, and Daemons can be summoned with rituals. Not just by a psyker.

 ashrog wrote:
Chaos is a disease. It will spread, consume and multiply. Do Inquisitors go too far? Perhaps sometimes. But for the most part, these actions are completely necessary. That is the universe of 40k. We can't apply modern logic.

By modern logic, if we have a room full of 9 innocents and 1 criminal, but have no way of knowing who the criminal is, we must let them all go. The risk of falsely punishing 9 people outweighs any benefit.

In the same situation in 40k, it is sound logic to kill them all. Yes, 9 innocents will die, but the 1 chaos worshipper could corrupt hundreds more if he goes free. In fact, those 9 are probably corrupted just by being in the same room.

At the same time, we must consider that human lives are the most abundant resourse in the Imperium. Which means that they have little value. So Inquisitors will have few compunctions about sacrificing a few (million) Imperial citizens.

Thought for the day: Better that a thousand innocents should die than a single guilty man go free.

He is exactly correct. By todays standards, what they do is horrendous, but in an Imperium with trillions of citizens, they don't even bat an eyelash with a billion people(even a billion innocent ones) burn.

The Siege of Vraks would like to have a word with you.

Its hard to identify the exact nature of a Chaos exposure. Its better to kill thousands than to risk another outbreak of chaos controlled people.

Horus654 wrote:
Can normal heretics without any psychic powers summon demons?

If they learn the appropriate sorcerous rites? Absolutely.

I read that an Inquisitor forced a bunch of Deathwatch to kill some station workers somewhere who were keeping their objective ready. Killed because the objective was a giant Tyranid. Can someone explain that? The damn inquisitor blew up the station after killing the tyranid and the Mechanicus staff there. Plus, they wheeled away the dead 'nid without any hitches. No chaos or anything, just an eldar coffin thingy that contained the aforementioned 'nid ('twas a giant Trygon or something)

Who knows. Sometimes they take stuff to the extreme.

We are talking about human lives, are we ? Kill one to save many ? You can't trade lives like some cattle -but ofc in 40k you can ,
but don't tell me you have to...besides even servitors in 40k know existance of chaos, so the more they hide chaos with extreme mesures, it becomes more popular...

 Decio wrote:
I read that an Inquisitor forced a bunch of Deathwatch to kill some station workers somewhere who were keeping their objective ready. Killed because the objective was a giant Tyranid. Can someone explain that? The damn inquisitor blew up the station after killing the tyranid and the Mechanicus staff there. Plus, they wheeled away the dead 'nid without any hitches. No chaos or anything, just an eldar coffin thingy that contained the aforementioned 'nid ('twas a giant Trygon or something)

The inquisition operates best in the dark. While that does sound extreme, I don't know the exact situation, so I can't comment with complete accuracy, but by killing them the inquisitor is tying up loose ends. None of those people can be interrogated by his rivals to tell them what he is doing, none of them can decide that he did something wrong and seek to pursue him. The inquisition monitors itself and can be ruthless to itself. In order to survive you need to be ruthless to a degree, lest someone with differing ideals ends up finding a reason to call you a heretic or simply kill you outright.

The inquisition are basicly the TAU, FOR THE GREATER GOOD.

everything they do can be justified in those words.

The true power of Chaos stems from our greed, and our weakness. Those who face Chaos are bombarded by deliciously tempting offers.

Just do as we ask, it's only a little thing. It won't hurt, we mean no harm, we just need your help. It's only a small thing. And we can reward you. Oh yes, we can reward you. Your deepest desires can all be yours, but first you must do as we ask. It's only a little thing...

And people do it. Sooner or later, they'll do it. Those kinds of offers stay with you, and they grow. When you're getting old, or the threat of failure and death is staring you in the face, even decades after that initial contact... and you know you can just do this small, simple thing and have all the rewards you want. No one has to know, it's just a small ritual you could perform in a closed room. Just some chanting and chalk and a bit of chicken blood, what could that hurt, right?

And of course, it's not just the people that come into direct contact with the Great Enemy that are at risk. It's everyone those people come into contact with as well, the people they tell about it, the people they pass those offers on to. They promulgate the idea of Chaos as a misunderstood entity who just needs a little help, who can give you anything you want, and all they ask in return is this tiny, little thing. Such a little thing...

So how do you, as an agency tasked with mitigating and policing that insidious influence, go about preventing it? What can you do? You could do extensive, dangerous, expensive and time consuming mind wipes. On millions and millions of soldiers, every time.

Or you could just kill them. Load them into their ships, and blow them out of the void. The cheap, final and one hundred percent effective solution.

 Decio wrote:
I read that an Inquisitor forced a bunch of Deathwatch to kill some station workers somewhere who were keeping their objective ready. Killed because the objective was a giant Tyranid. Can someone explain that? The damn inquisitor blew up the station after killing the tyranid and the Mechanicus staff there. Plus, they wheeled away the dead 'nid without any hitches. No chaos or anything, just an eldar coffin thingy that contained the aforementioned 'nid ('twas a giant Trygon or something)

I think the question is really, why not? Individuals are unimportant. Very, very unimportant. Better to just kill all the workers in question to eliminate loose ends.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
The Armageddon culling was necessary because the army was lead by Angron, one of the primarchs. Imperial citizens don't know about the traitor primarchs, and that knowledge would cause mass outbreaks of dissent and doubt.

IIRC even on Armageddon they did not kill them - they steralised them and enslaved them for rebuilding and worked them till they died.

 Kaldor wrote:
The true power of Chaos stems from our greed, and our weakness. Those who face Chaos are bombarded by deliciously tempting offers.

Just do as we ask, it's only a little thing. It won't hurt, we mean no harm, we just need your help. It's only a small thing. And we can reward you. Oh yes, we can reward you. Your deepest desires can all be yours, but first you must do as we ask. It's only a little thing...

And people do it. Sooner or later, they'll do it. Those kinds of offers stay with you, and they grow. When you're getting old, or the threat of failure and death is staring you in the face, even decades after that initial contact... and you know you can just do this small, simple thing and have all the rewards you want. No one has to know, it's just a small ritual you could perform in a closed room. Just some chanting and chalk and a bit of chicken blood, what could that hurt, right?

And of course, it's not just the people that come into direct contact with the Great Enemy that are at risk. It's everyone those people come into contact with as well, the people they tell about it, the people they pass those offers on to. They promulgate the idea of Chaos as a misunderstood entity who just needs a little help, who can give you anything you want, and all they ask in return is this tiny, little thing. Such a little thing...

So how do you, as an agency tasked with mitigating and policing that insidious influence, go about preventing it? What can you do? You could do extensive, dangerous, expensive and time consuming mind wipes. On millions and millions of soldiers, every time.

Or you could just kill them. Load them into their ships, and blow them out of the void. The cheap, final and one hundred percent effective solution.

 Decio wrote:
I read that an Inquisitor forced a bunch of Deathwatch to kill some station workers somewhere who were keeping their objective ready. Killed because the objective was a giant Tyranid. Can someone explain that? The damn inquisitor blew up the station after killing the tyranid and the Mechanicus staff there. Plus, they wheeled away the dead 'nid without any hitches. No chaos or anything, just an eldar coffin thingy that contained the aforementioned 'nid ('twas a giant Trygon or something)

I think the question is really, why not? Individuals are unimportant. Very, very unimportant. Better to just kill all the workers in question to eliminate loose ends.

Um, I didn't explain completely; there was a Mechanicus guy accompanying the Deathwatch who was supposed to be the Mechanicus top-staffer rival (A Magos Biologis who made a deal) so they killed the Biologis, who had kept the station running for a supposed promotion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jeez, I'm surprised no Guard Regiments/ marine Chapters have revolted already. 'Cause while the higher up people care less about the statisics, the normal people are the ones who are trying to avoid being one of those little casualties.

 Decio wrote:
Um, I didn't explain completely; there was a Mechanicus guy accompanying the Deathwatch who was supposed to be the Mechanicus top-staffer rival (A Magos Biologis who made a deal) so they killed the Biologis, who had kept the station running for a supposed promotion.

It doesn't matter. The Inquisition is the ultimate authority in the galaxy, accountable to no one. If they want to eliminate a Magos Biologis to clean up some loose ends, that's their prerogative. It might be policy, it might be something personal, or it might just be a whim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jeez, I'm surprised no Guard Regiments/ marine Chapters have revolted already. 'Cause while the higher up people care less about the statisics, the normal people are the ones who are trying to avoid being one of those little casualties.

True, but the actions of the Inquisition are kept very secret. Most regiments would have no way of communicating with other regiments, and so no way of knowing their fate.

^ Oh. Thanks for explaining. Dammit.
I hate the Inquisition even more.

 Decio wrote:
^ Oh. Thanks for explaining. Dammit.
I hate the Inquisition even more.

lol, don't forget that, while they might get carried away every now and then, the role they fulfill is very important. If they didn't, there's every chance mankind would have been destroyed by Chaos already...

Most people in the galaxy (98.999% if that) will never see an inquisitor. and even if they do see one they will probably not know either way. they are like ghosts to most people and if one ever did introduce themself to you, you and everyone you know would be in some very deep even if that inquisitor is friendly to you, let alone if they want to kill you!

Horus654 wrote:
The inquisition's favorite past time seems to be killing all those that have seen, heard of or imagined the forces of Chaos. This culling isn't limited to those who have had direct contact with the forces of the Warp, tens of Billions of loyal imperial souls were snuffed out following the first war for Armageddon for the sin of living on a world where a handful of imperial forces from Armageddon may have escaped to.

My question is how does the inquisition justify virus bombing an agricultural word to kill a dozen potential witnesses of Chaos attacks? I'm not asking whether they should have done these things, obviously they shouldn't have and this fact is shown to be true by virtue of the imperium still standing after hundreds of thousands of Armageddon Veterans escaped the inquisition's reach. I'm asking why they see these actions as necessary, what are they trying to prevent? What would happen if the knowledge of Chaos became commonplace in the Imperium?

I don't think you can make that argument. Among the veterans, there were undoubtedly some who were touched by Chaos. The Emperor's Gift makes it pretty clear that the Inquisition/GK don't relish killing these people, but as an organization that has specialized in dealing with the demonic for thousands of years, and whose members have seen time and time again the smallest ember of corruption plunge entire sectors into the flames of heresy, they probably know better.

Buttons wrote:

 Decio wrote:
I read that an Inquisitor forced a bunch of Deathwatch to kill some station workers somewhere who were keeping their objective ready. Killed because the objective was a giant Tyranid. Can someone explain that? The damn inquisitor blew up the station after killing the tyranid and the Mechanicus staff there. Plus, they wheeled away the dead 'nid without any hitches. No chaos or anything, just an eldar coffin thingy that contained the aforementioned 'nid ('twas a giant Trygon or something)

The inquisition operates best in the dark. While that does sound extreme, I don't know the exact situation, so I can't comment with complete accuracy, but by killing them the inquisitor is tying up loose ends. None of those people can be interrogated by his rivals to tell them what he is doing, none of them can decide that he did something wrong and seek to pursue him. The inquisition monitors itself and can be ruthless to itself. In order to survive you need to be ruthless to a degree, lest someone with differing ideals ends up finding a reason to call you a heretic or simply kill you outright.

 Somedude593 wrote:
Most people in the galaxy (98.999% if that) will never see an inquisitor. and even if they do see one they will probably not know either way. they are like ghosts to most people and if one ever did introduce themself to you, you and everyone you know would be in some very deep even if that inquisitor is friendly to you, let alone if they want to kill you!

Basically, they're like the CIA and the Men In Black all wrapped up in one.