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.

Hello it is me again and this time I want to ask about the loyalty of the inquisitors. The question specifically is that: how loyal and why are the inquisitors, as it seems strange to me that normal humans could be incorruptible, but that if they are not incorruptible how can they be trusted so much to destroy corruption? If this question has been asked before please give me a link. Thanks for your answers.

It all depends on their point of view. I like what Ravenor says about them all becoming radical at some point or another, it's when, not if.
Inquisitors are totally corruptable, but they know how to hide if they do go renegade, ans they tend to do a lot of in-house cleaning.

The amount of Inquisitors that have turned traitor in the setting is really high. "Free will" and "loyal" do not get along in the Imperium.

The thing with Inquisitors is that they're a very varied bunch - so saying "how loyal" they are is like asking how tall they are - it varies!

Mind you, a fair few do go over to the "dark side" as it were, and I seem to remember someone in Eisenhorn/Ravenor saying that most Inquisitors go too far (if they don't get killed) and what matters is how much good they do before that happens.

As Inquisitor Harvey Dent said: "You either die a puritan or you live long enough to see yourself become a radical."

As the saying goes, "power corrupts" - the interesting thing is that an Inquisitor can totally believe that the ends justify the means, and that the pursuit of forbidden arts or technology can be justified if it is "for the greater good". Needless to say, this is a really slippery slope, and that's why the threshold between Puritan and Radical is so hard to define. What one Inquisitor would condemn as "too much" might be totally okay in the eyes of another. Which of them is right? is one of them too reckless, or is the other too rigid?

The Inquisition seems like both a curse and a blessing for the Imperium. At times, you need an individual with ultimate authority to prevent something bad before it's too late - the extreme levels of bureaucracy and the unreliability of interstellar communication and space travel are too much of a hindrance. Other times, an Inquisitor him- or herself can become a liability, and that the Inquisition is the only organisation capable of policing itself undoubtedly risks a lot of collateral damage before the (supposedly) rogue Inquisitor is neutralised. The only good things are that the Inquisition is too fractured and disorganised to allow any single Inquisitor to become immune to his or her peers, and that Inquisitors aren't that numerous to begin with, at least as per GW's rulebook fluff.

There was an entire 54mm scale war-game GW released forever ago called "Inquisitor" which was specifically about Inquisitors clashing with each other, from the most puritan of Inquisitor out hunting down and killing anything that even smells like heresy, to radical inquisitors fighting chaos with chaos, to closet heretics willfully corrupting the Imperium from within.

I would highly recommend giving at least the front fluff bit a good read. It is likely the most detailed source on the Inquisition they've released. And as an added bonus, in a move uncharacteristic of GW as we know them today - they have the entire thing and some supplements on their website for free:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=cat480007a&categoryId=6700005a§ion=&aId=21500020a&_requestid=2009813

But in essence, this shows that Inquisitors are not only immune from corruption, but for the most part they aren't even the unified force we would otherwise believe - instead they are countless independent operatives who apparently fight with each other almost as much as they fight the enemies of man.

Most Inquisitors are completely and totally loyal to the Imperium. Actually, its more than most. Almost all of them are completely loyal.

Even the Radicals.

Loyalty is not WHAT you do, it is WHY you do it. Inquisitors, all of them, fight to preserve the Imperium and Mankind. Even though their methods vary widely, their ultimate goal is the same: save humanity and defend the Imperium.

Now, some think that the Imperium can be saved only by using Chaos artifacts and whatnot to stab Chaos and Xenos in the face. Others think the Imperium can only be saved by working with Xenos and learning from them. Others think that anything that has even heard of the *idea* of heresy needs to be purged from the gene pool...

Their methods differ, but their ultimate objectives are the same. In their own minds, whether Radical or Puritan, they are loyal to the Imperium. The act out of that loyalty. Whether they are right or wrong about their methods is irrelevant; their loyalty is unquestionable.

Now, for an Inquisitor to turn traitor, to ACTUALLY turn traitor (not just get called a traitor by his Puritanical peers) is a pretty rare thing, indeed. You'd be talking about an Inquisitor who has become dedicated to the destruction of the Imperium and the final defeat of the Emperor... and I can't name one off the top of my head. Even the most Radical Inquisitors from the Dark Heresy game are all still loyal, in their own way (even the mad-bast*ard Phaenonites want to 'save' the Imperium from the tyranny of 'lesser' intellects, not tear it down and cackle wickedly amongst the ashes). I'm sure, in the 8,000 years since the Inquisition was founded, one or two have gone full-blown traitor (not just Radical) but I don't know of any, myself.

What squidhills said is spot-on. A Radical Inquisitor might make use of daemonhosts, Chaos Weapons, Xeno mercenaries, Xenotech, hidden cults on human worlds and forbidden technologies and science....

... that doesn't make him or her a traitor as long as the results of the use of these things result in a net-win for the Imperium. It might mean that the Inquisitor in question is a mutant and hopelessly corrupted... but as long as they are serving the Imperium, they are not yet traitors.

Their colleagues might say different, though.

 da001 wrote:
As Inquisitor Harvey Dent said: "You either die a puritan or you live long enough to see yourself become a radical."

Here, have an exalt for the ache in my sides XD

i would like to think that the imperium wasn't stupid enough to keep the inquisition around if every single inquisitor eventually turned into a heretic. I love abnett's inquisitor novels dearly, but this does piss me off. Clearly not every single inquisitor eventually becomes a heretic, or the inquisition would spend all its time investigating its older members.

Realistically corruption is an obvious pitfall for inquisitors, and it can lead to some interesting dilemas and as a plat device in novels. But i'd like to think that a majority of inquisitors stayed more or less loyal, if only because most people simply don't have the creativity to become evil

Corrupt does not equal traitor.

Quixos, for example, was a terrible, terrible mutant who caused a whole lot of death and destruction.

He was also right, and had Eisenhorn not killed him, he would have activated a Necron Pylon network that would probably have been able to destroy, or at least seal, the Eye of Terror.

Inquisitors are absurdly loyal, and it is rare that one turns traitor.

Usually, however, those that turn traitor are the oldest and most influential ones, and thus they are quite capable of doing damage.

he thinks it would have. Trying to use forbidden xeno tech in a large project is quite clearly a bad idea. Who's to say it would have worked? Who's to say it wouldn't have awoken a necron tomb world that went on to destrroy the sector? Or summoned a host of demons, etc.

That is quite clearly heretical behaiveiour and is far beyond what even a radical inquisitor would do.

Abnett very heavily implies that Quixos was right, Eisenhorn stopped him because of more immediate, more personal concerns... and he was, of course, right to do so, but in doing that denied the Imperium a (potential) very great victory.

The important thing in the Eisenhorn vs Quixos arc is that, just as the Inquisition never refutes Eisenhorn's case against Quixos (while Eisenhorn himself was on charges), neither does Eisenhorn ever say that Quixos' plan is wrong.