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.

So I was just wondering how exactly interrogation or torture gets done in the 41st Millenium?
Is it all psyker based?
Are there machines which rip your thoughts out of your head?
What about Space Marines? They get your memories from eating your flesh
Are there ways to protect yourself from being interrogated, or a way to wipe your thoughts or is it all down to the trusty cyanide pill in your tooth?

There are as many ways to torture a heretic as there are torturers.

Mind-wipes are a known quantity, but not 100% effective.

Some have psi powers to do it, like Inquisitor Eisenhorn. Others prefer more visceral methods, like the Sisters Hospitaller.

You probably don't want to know how the Dark Angel chaplains go about it.

I always imagined Dark Eldar had some pretty fun kit to go about torturing people x3

The two that spring to mind are the Porta-rack and the Dark Angels Blades of Reason. I think the first is described as having thousands of filaments that burrow into the targets brain to provide access to the user for info and causing pain. The Blades are fancy knives. Can do a lot with a knife...

In one of the main Eisenhorn novels (Hereticus or Xenos), it is hinted how Inquisitorial Interrogation is structured.
Iirc, it is divided into levels: the first is just asking questions, and if the subject is reticent, a number of escalating procedures is applied, including but not limiting to torture - both physical and psychological - or psychic cohercition, but mentioning further levels of interrogation to the subject is a form of intimidation, so it is considered as the second level of interrogation.

I suppose Astartes and other Imperial methods vary only in the "length" of each level, where other races, or chaos, may employ different methods.

 Flinty wrote:
The two that spring to mind are the Porta-rack and the Dark Angels Blades of Reason. I think the first is described as having thousands of filaments that burrow into the targets brain to provide access to the user for info and causing pain. The Blades are fancy knives. Can do a lot with a knife...

The porta-rack sounds like a camping storage unit
The Blades of Reason sound like a debating team x')

I remember reading a while ago that Inquisitor carry a small device on them that when implanted on the subject it activates all there pain receptors. This is just considered a small portable version that is easy to use on the field of battle.

The Dark Eldar, the Inquisition, and the Dark Angels are the most competent interrogators in the setting; anything you'd find in reality plus more sophisticated methods of inflicting pain and telepathic techniques may be employed depending on the interrogator and the interrogatee.

The Inquisition has nine escalating levels of things; the first level is the Inquisitor just asking questions, the second involves describing steps three to nine, and steps three to nine are escalating levels of agony, people don't survive level nine.

I remember reading some Space Marines use the Pain Glove for torture.

Yeah here it is, the Imperial Fists:

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Pain_Glove

The Pain Glove is more for torturing themselves, though.

I'm not sure if I really call what the Dark Eldar do 'interrogation' - they tend to be more interested in the pain itself than the information.

Remember, the most difficult part of torturing someone is keeping them alive and awake while you do it. Well, once you get over the initial barrier of 'Oh, domine, I'm actually going to torture someone' anyway. I figure that bit's pretty easy for most 40k interrogator types though.

The Inquisition armies used to have an artifact called 'Excruciators', which were used to torture enemies - but it wasn't represented on the battlefield, the upgrade only activated at the end of the game.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Pain Glove is more for torturing themselves, though.

I'm not sure if I really call what the Dark Eldar do 'interrogation' - they tend to be more interested in the pain itself than the information.

Remember, the most difficult part of torturing someone is keeping them alive and awake while you do it. Well, once you get over the initial barrier of 'Oh, domine, I'm actually going to torture someone' anyway. I figure that bit's pretty easy for most 40k interrogator types though.

The Inquisition armies used to have an artifact called 'Excruciators', which were used to torture enemies - but it wasn't represented on the battlefield, the upgrade only activated at the end of the game.

This Excruciator sounds interesting.. Tell me more?

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition armies used to have an artifact called 'Excruciators', which were used to torture enemies - but it wasn't represented on the battlefield, the upgrade only activated at the end of the game.

This Excruciator sounds interesting.. Tell me more?

No description on what it looks like or actually does. But in my old Witch Hunters codex it's said to be a "fiendish device used to obtain information or otherwise show captured heretics and witches the error of their ways". The game effect requires the bearer to be alive at the end of the game, gaining you extra VP for every enemy psyker killed or otherwise removed from the board.

The inquisition obviously does the most interrogation but the dark angels are the best. To make an astartes crack is tallent, the inquisition will try to crack an astartes but odds are they dont(under an average inquisitor)

 namiel wrote:
The inquisition obviously does the most interrogation but the dark angels are the best. To make an astartes crack is tallent, the inquisition will try to crack an astartes but odds are they dont(under an average inquisitor)

I always imagined local Adeptus Arbites to do the most torture.. I mean, it's not like you can buy bail xD

The previous Necron codex has a couple of interrogation/questioning type scenes if memory serves, for at least a flavour of it.

 Tennants Lager wrote:
The previous Necron codex has a couple of interrogation/questioning type scenes if memory serves, for at least a flavour of it.

Any quotations?

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Tennants Lager wrote:
The previous Necron codex has a couple of interrogation/questioning type scenes if memory serves, for at least a flavour of it.

Any quotations?

Not off hand, but I think there's a reference to 'discomforting stimulus being applied' if the subject isn't co-operative. So there's physical torture of some sort involved. It's to do with the AdMech and C'Tan Void Dragon re Mars.

 Tennants Lager wrote:

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Tennants Lager wrote:
The previous Necron codex has a couple of interrogation/questioning type scenes if memory serves, for at least a flavour of it.

Any quotations?

Not off hand, but I think there's a reference to 'discomforting stimulus being applied' if the subject isn't co-operative. So there's physical torture of some sort involved. It's to do with the AdMech and C'Tan Void Dragon re Mars.

I'd have thought of all the races the Necrons would be the most obliged to simply tear the thoughts out of your brain rather than less effective, physical methods.
I wonder how the Tau torture people...

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Tennants Lager wrote:

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Tennants Lager wrote:
The previous Necron codex has a couple of interrogation/questioning type scenes if memory serves, for at least a flavour of it.

Any quotations?

Not off hand, but I think there's a reference to 'discomforting stimulus being applied' if the subject isn't co-operative. So there's physical torture of some sort involved. It's to do with the AdMech and C'Tan Void Dragon re Mars.

I'd have thought of all the races the Necrons would be the most obliged to simply tear the thoughts out of your brain rather than less effective, physical methods.
I wonder how the Tau torture people...

Nah it's humans involved on both sides of the interrogation here, specifically members of the AdMech. The Void Dragon/Necron presence on Mars was just what the interregation was about.

 BrotherOfBone wrote:
I always imagined local Adeptus Arbites to do the most torture.. I mean, it's not like you can buy bail xD

Then again, it's not like they care about confessions unless it's a really high-profile case. In obvious cases like riots or resisting an Arbiter they're perfectly happy to just mow down everyone with shotguns, then finish off survivors with a pistol.

Spetulhu wrote:

 BrotherOfBone wrote:
I always imagined local Adeptus Arbites to do the most torture.. I mean, it's not like you can buy bail xD

Then again, it's not like they care about confessions unless it's a really high-profile case. In obvious cases like riots or resisting an Arbiter they're perfectly happy to just mow down everyone with shotguns, then finish off survivors with a pistol.

True, there'll always be more humans to fill desks in the Munitorum.

To make an astartes crack is tallent

The Dark Eldar and Chaos Marines seem to do it easily. In a way it might be easier to torture them than an ordinary human, ordinary humans will black out or die in extreme pain, as someone who has experienced real life to the point where I passed out I can say that this is correct. Space Marine wouldn't be able to do this though, they'd stay alive, as put in Blood Gorgans "you astartes are a humonculis dream".

Ironclad Warlord wrote:

To make an astartes crack is tallent

The Dark Eldar and Chaos Marines seem to do it easily. In a way it might be easier to torture them than an ordinary human, ordinary humans will black out or die in extreme pain, as someone who has experienced real life to the point where I passed out I can say that this is correct. Space Marine wouldn't be able to do this though, they'd stay alive, as put in Blood Gorgans "you astartes are a humonculis dream".

That is true but Astartes have indomitable willpower and faith in the Emperor, and you also have to consider how weak-willed Imperial Citizens are.
Imagine someone living in poverty, and then take them and put them in a world where /literally nobody/ cares if they live or die. Probably not even their own families.
Then subject them to a lifetime of war.

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

True, there'll always be more humans to fill desks in the Munitorum.

Although I wouldn't mess with the Administratum if I were them.

Think about it.

Most Scholam Progena end up in the Administratum.

The Schola Progenium trains Stormtroopers, Sisters of Battle and Commissars. There are sufficient numbers of these that every guard army includes at least one representative of one of these groups. This means that there must be even more Progena in the Administratum.

Commissar Cain is the greatest swordsman in his time. Sword skills he learned in the Schola.

This means that almost every Administratum office will have at least one person, if not more, trained to a moderate level in close-quarters and hand-to-hand combat.

In the Cain version of the 40k-universe, at least, the Adeptus Administratum is populated by sword ninja moonlighting as pen pushers.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

True, there'll always be more humans to fill desks in the Munitorum.

Although I wouldn't mess with the Administratum if I were them.

Think about it.

Most Scholam Progena end up in the Administratum.

The Schola Progenium trains Stormtroopers, Sisters of Battle and Commissars. There are sufficient numbers of these that every guard army includes at least one representative of one of these groups. This means that there must be even more Progena in the Administratum.

Commissar Cain is the greatest swordsman in his time. Sword skills he learned in the Schola.

This means that almost every Administratum office will have at least one person, if not more, trained to a moderate level in close-quarters and hand-to-hand combat.

In the Cain version of the 40k-universe, at least, the Adeptus Administratum is populated by sword ninja moonlighting as pen pushers.

MOTHER OF GAHD

It's scary when you think about it. That Administratum Clerk you're hassling down at the Licensing Depot may just decide he's had enough of your gak and smash your skull to pulp with a stapler.


And you *know* the staplers in the Imperium are big, heavy and made out of solid adamantium with skulls all over them.

 Psienesis wrote:
It's scary when you think about it. That Administratum Clerk you're hassling down at the Licensing Depot may just decide he's had enough of your gak and smash your skull to pulp with a stapler.


And you *know* the staplers in the Imperium are big, heavy and made out of solid adamantium with skulls all over them.

Covered in purity seals with their own built in gellar field, just for that extra bit of punch.
It's more of a mini rosarius than a stapler, stapling is a secondary thing it does, it's actually more of a combi-bolter type weapon, part rosarius part stapler.
It's good when the Chaplain has lots of paperwork to do...

Nightlords have their methodes of torture aswell. They have some example in the Soul Hunter series one I recall being that they skin people alive making sure they don't die from the process then leaving them in agony until they die from infection, starvation or something else.
I would think they even use this as a form of interrogation.

I also heard about some Dark Angels capturing a DE Haemonculi and since he (or it) seem impervious to pain they locked him up in a chamber making him unable to feel anything and that finally made the haemonculi crack since the lack of sensation was to him, torture.

Well... Just don't ask how Ashmodi became head interrogator-Chaplin... your liable to find out the hard way.

 salix_fatuus wrote:
Nightlords have their methodes of torture aswell. They have some example in the Soul Hunter series one I recall being that they skin people alive making sure they don't die from the process then leaving them in agony until they die from infection, starvation or something else.
I would think they even use this as a form of interrogation.

I also heard about some Dark Angels capturing a DE Haemonculi and since he (or it) seem impervious to pain they locked him up in a chamber making him unable to feel anything and that finally made the haemonculi crack since the lack of sensation was to him, torture.

The Night Lord thing is awesome! Might have to paint up a skinned character....