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.

Is it feasible for an Inquisitor to send in a team of special forces Imperial Guard/Stormtroopers into a daemon world to say, retrieve an artifact/relic or perhaps blow up a daemon relic with c4?

The lore behind my army is that they are a special forces group similar to Delta Force and the Vietnam war SOG that is under the command of an Inquisitor and their main purpose is to carry out covert operations in extremely dangerous war zones and in the lore I'm writing about them now(and how they're going to be modeled); they are sent into a fallen Imperial Shrine World that is in the process of becoming a full fledged daemon world, their task is to retrieve a sacred relic and also, destroy chaos ritual shrines if possible to weaken the influence of warp so that the Inquisitorial black ships can exterminatus the world before it fully transforms into a daemon world.

The way I'm going to model is them to be wearing something similar to CBRN/hazmat style equipment;
example:

Would something like, with the appropriate blessings of course, be enough to keep chaos corruption at bay for at least little while?

edit: forgot world after daemon

Read up on the Gaunt Ghosts book with a similar premise to yours, I forgot it's name, but it's definitely a possibility.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Read up on the Gaunt Ghosts book with a similar premise to yours, I forgot it's name, but it's definitely a possibility.

Interesting, did they have to wear any specialized gear?

DragonRaptor wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Read up on the Gaunt Ghosts book with a similar premise to yours, I forgot it's name, but it's definitely a possibility.

Interesting, did they have to wear any specialized gear?

Is this Gereon? If so it wasn't a demon world but a world conquered by Chaos.
They didn't have specialized gear but had to adapt to the planet's atmosphere (sick for a few days).
Very intriguing view of a conquered world. Also a nice view of a later full scale imperial guard invasion. Marines drop pods with a few marines. Guard drop entire regiments! IG HURR!

Gereon Resists!

honestly anhy normal human unit deployed to a deamon world is going as a one way trip. even those few who can survive the environs would be tainted and... disposed of

They try invading a daemon world in the Eye of Terror novel.

Ends badly.

In the Gaunt's Ghosts example, they aren't deployed on a dawn n world. It's a Chaos held world, but not daemonic. Nor did they have protective gear. Protective gear on a daemon world only protects from physical and environmental effects. The main issue on daemon worlds is corruption and possession, which hazmat is useless against.

There could easily be guardsmen hired by an inquisitor to do a mission on a daemon world, but it's a safe bet to say that most, if not all, the guardsmen would die. Their special gear would be worthless, and far better if kept for other regiments.
Seeing as most guardsmen would die, this is not a sustainable operation. The Inquisitor would be better off hiring Scions, Marines or Sisters to do this, instead of guardsmen.

Not to mention that C4 probably wouldn't be that useful in destroying daemonic relics. You need a psyker or some rituals which requires psykers to disable daemon relics.

Frazzled wrote:

DragonRaptor wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Read up on the Gaunt Ghosts book with a similar premise to yours, I forgot it's name, but it's definitely a possibility.

Interesting, did they have to wear any specialized gear?

Is this Gereon? If so it wasn't a demon world but a world conquered by Chaos.
They didn't have specialized gear but had to adapt to the planet's atmosphere (sick for a few days).
Very intriguing view of a conquered world. Also a nice view of a later full scale imperial guard invasion. Marines drop pods with a few marines. Guard drop entire regiments! IG HURR!

Gereon Resists!

Interesting; was the noxious atmosphere the result of the chaos presence?

Captyn_Bob wrote:They try invading a daemon world in the Eye of Terror novel.

Ends badly.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
In the Gaunt's Ghosts example, they aren't deployed on a dawn n world. It's a Chaos held world, but not daemonic. Nor did they have protective gear. Protective gear on a daemon world only protects from physical and environmental effects. The main issue on daemon worlds is corruption and possession, which hazmat is useless against.

There could easily be guardsmen hired by an inquisitor to do a mission on a daemon world, but it's a safe bet to say that most, if not all, the guardsmen would die. Their special gear would be worthless, and far better if kept for other regiments.
Seeing as most guardsmen would die, this is not a sustainable operation. The Inquisitor would be better off hiring Scions, Marines or Sisters to do this, instead of guardsmen.

Not to mention that C4 probably wouldn't be that useful in destroying daemonic relics. You need a psyker or some rituals which requires psykers to disable daemon relics.

I would imagine an invasion of a daemon world would end badly though rather than an invasion, I'm thinking of something along the lines of, a platoons worth of highly operators insert via valkyrie, locate the holy relic, extract it via fulton, place c4s on some chaos shrines, blow it up to slow down the daemonifcation, extricate, exterminatus

Also, as for the unit itself, it consists of veterans recruited from many different organizations, ranging from stormtroopers(I refuse to call them Scions!) to elite guard regiments all of which were vetted physiologically and are continually monitered

The hazmat gear is for protection against the heat and possible presence of miasma as a result of the warp warping the planet

I thought destroying chaos shrines could lessen the influence of chaos, thats how it was in dawn of war

I think your problem is that, there is a substantial difference between a chaos world (which your guys could operate in and would have relics etc) and a true demon world. On a demon world physics do not necessarily apply and everything is...changeable. There is one story of orks who invaded a demon world fighting it out with demons, being killed and then everything effectively reset by the demon lord who controls the planet, so that it happens over and over and over.... Sounds like Ork paradise actually.

As said a few times before, there's no hazmat or equipment that is going to help your guys not become possessed or tainted. If they land on a daemon world, it's going to happen with near certainty. Daemon worlds are places where reality itself just does not work, for example a Tzeentch daemon world may be a place where up is down and down is potato and that's if you're lucky.

Also keep in mind that no matter how elite they are, the soldiers are still just guardsmen, which are by in large the most abundant and expendable resource in the Imperial military across all departments. Cleansing a few squads after a mission like that is a literal case of a drop in the bucket, even for daily war losses. That isn't to say your idea is infeasible, but rather than a single army that somehow avoids corruption, your Inquisitor just conscripts those fragments of units into his retinue and sends them off to do the mission, knowing that if any make it back, well, hey, at least they died knowing the Emperor's will was served.

DragonRaptor wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

DragonRaptor wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Read up on the Gaunt Ghosts book with a similar premise to yours, I forgot it's name, but it's definitely a possibility.

Interesting, did they have to wear any specialized gear?

Is this Gereon? If so it wasn't a demon world but a world conquered by Chaos.
They didn't have specialized gear but had to adapt to the planet's atmosphere (sick for a few days).
Very intriguing view of a conquered world. Also a nice view of a later full scale imperial guard invasion. Marines drop pods with a few marines. Guard drop entire regiments! IG HURR!

Gereon Resists!

Interesting; was the noxious atmosphere the result of the chaos presence?

Captyn_Bob wrote:They try invading a daemon world in the Eye of Terror novel.

Ends badly.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
In the Gaunt's Ghosts example, they aren't deployed on a dawn n world. It's a Chaos held world, but not daemonic. Nor did they have protective gear. Protective gear on a daemon world only protects from physical and environmental effects. The main issue on daemon worlds is corruption and possession, which hazmat is useless against.

There could easily be guardsmen hired by an inquisitor to do a mission on a daemon world, but it's a safe bet to say that most, if not all, the guardsmen would die. Their special gear would be worthless, and far better if kept for other regiments.
Seeing as most guardsmen would die, this is not a sustainable operation. The Inquisitor would be better off hiring Scions, Marines or Sisters to do this, instead of guardsmen.

Not to mention that C4 probably wouldn't be that useful in destroying daemonic relics. You need a psyker or some rituals which requires psykers to disable daemon relics.

I would imagine an invasion of a daemon world would end badly though rather than an invasion, I'm thinking of something along the lines of, a platoons worth of highly operators insert via valkyrie, locate the holy relic, extract it via fulton, place c4s on some chaos shrines, blow it up to slow down the daemonifcation, extricate, exterminatus

Also, as for the unit itself, it consists of veterans recruited from many different organizations, ranging from stormtroopers(I refuse to call them Scions!) to elite guard regiments all of which were vetted physiologically and are continually monitered

The hazmat gear is for protection against the heat and possible presence of miasma as a result of the warp warping the planet

I thought destroying chaos shrines could lessen the influence of chaos, thats how it was in dawn of war

The problem with sending folks down onto a daemon world is someone getting possessed is not a question of if but when. The corrupting forces of chaos are just that strong. Some of those platoons that are being send down in valkyries are never going to make it, as someone on board will get possessed and blow their C4 before the drop. Once the drop occurs a good amount of the men are going to flee while others will be overcome with rage and start killing each other.
Vetted veterans might last 30 seconds rather than 15, but you can never really prepare for what is down there.

They could have some sort of mini gellar field, or something similar to what the Grey Knights have to protect them, or rites of whatever to protect them from possession, too, plenty of angles to come from.

In the novel Daemon World there are plenty of unaugmented humans living on the aforesaid Daemon World.

The Sorcerers Planet have a lot of "ordinary" humans wandering around, that the TS sorcerers (that rule the world) captures for labour and thrall wizards. These humans may advance into the non-Marine military forces and even become TS sorcerers themselves.

That indicates that humans can avoid both death, possession and mutation for many years, without any protection. Since the deamon world in question seems to be a former "normal" world in transition to a daemon world I doubt it would be worse than the Sorcerers Planet.

The Imperium must have equipment that lets IG fight in vacuum, Death Worlds, heavy polluted environments (Krieg ...) etc. To create a "anti-daemonic protective suit, single use, only expandable personal" should be fairly easy. To give protection against Chaos itself there are several possibilities, from Null Rods, incorporting something like Truesilver into the suits, wearing holy relics, brain surgery (replace verunable parts with Machinarium hardware), adding people that have been possessed but rejected the daemon (and therefore are immune) or a Blank.

Most likely would be to recruit some Sisters of Battle. Power armour against enviromental dangers, Faith against supernatural dangers and no expectations of returning alive.

 Bobthehero wrote:
They could have some sort of mini gellar field, or something similar to what the Grey Knights have to protect them, or rites of whatever to protect them from possession, too, plenty of angles to come from.

there comes a point where you're throwing so much special equipment at them you have to ask, why you're not sending Grey Knights on this task. (which would be my first choice for a hit and fade against a demon world target)

DragonRaptor wrote:
Is it feasible for an Inquisitor to send in a team of special forces Imperial Guard/Stormtroopers into a daemon world to say, retrieve an artifact/relic or perhaps blow up a daemon relic with c4?

The lore behind my army is that they are a special forces group similar to Delta Force and the Vietnam war SOG that is under the command of an Inquisitor and their main purpose is to carry out covert operations in extremely dangerous war zones and in the lore I'm writing about them now(and how they're going to be modeled); they are sent into a fallen Imperial Shrine World that is in the process of becoming a full fledged daemon world, their task is to retrieve a sacred relic and also, destroy chaos ritual shrines if possible to weaken the influence of warp so that the Inquisitorial black ships can exterminatus the world before it fully transforms into a daemon world.

Would something like, with the appropriate blessings of course, be enough to keep chaos corruption at bay for at least little while?

edit: forgot world after daemon

All sounds cool -

not be too South Park but........... The Sororitas do a very similar thing in one of the codexes and come back safe

DragonRaptor wrote:

Interesting; was the noxious atmosphere the result of the chaos presence?

It was more that the 'taint' of Chaos sinks into absolutely everything over time, every blade of grass and grain of dirt. But the Imperium seems to have foreseen, and be capable of taking steps to counteract that.

........The ague was a broad and non-specific term for all kinds of infections and maladies suffered by personnel transferring from one world to another. A body might acclimatise to one planet's germ pool, its pollens, its bacteria, and then ship out on a troop transport and plunge into another bio-culture. These changes required adjustment, and often triggered colds, fevers, alliergies, or simply the lags and fatigues brought on by Warp-space transfer. Gereon was going to make them all sick. That was a given. Potentially, they all might get very ill indeed, given the noxious touch of Chaos that stained this world....

...."Everyone's got this." She pulled back her cuff.Her pale forearm was dotted with a prickle pattern like angry heat rash...."We've all got it. It's an allergic reaction all right. To this world. To the taint here. Major Cirk says it afflicted everyone on Gereon in the first few weeks after the invasion. When it fades...that's when I'll worry. Because that's when we've become acclimatised".

...."It's an expression of the warp", Plower said. "That's what I was told. The archenemy has branded our world in every way, even the atmosphere. A glyf is the way Chaos makes its mark on the very air..."

..A flask of inhibitor suspension from her case...The inhibitor solution contained a number of compounds manufactured by the Departmento Medicae to counteract the effects of warp contact on the human metabolism. The fluid they were suspended in was blessed water from the Balneary Shrine of Herodor.

In other words, the Chaos 'taint' on a world would appear to consist of two elements. Daemon worlds are afflicted by the same two elements, just to a greater degree. They are

-some form of airborne biological viral component which infects all living things, and
-a low-level background warp residue, which functions in a similar manner to radioactivity.

It would appear however, to be possible to take steps to counteract these elements, and the Imperium possesses the knowledge with which to do so.The stated method is the usage of a combination of two elements, the first being a synthesized drug designed to fight the biological component. This is likely the easiest to source. I would speculate that the biological viral component is designed to cause flesh to become more inclined to mutate on a cellular level, and break down natural bodily resistance for the second aspect, the warp residue.

The means of combating this warp residue in turn, would appear to be manifold. It is evidently possible to utilise an ingestible/injectable 'blessing of the Emperor' (for want of a better phrase). In the case of Gereon it is holy water, but doubtless a Christian style consecrated bread wafer would perform a similar function, as would proximity to a holy artifact or suchlike. Strength of spirit would also appear to be a basic deterrent against that warp taint. We can ascertain that by the lack of taint upon both Gaunt's Ghosts on Gereon and the Ultramarines Captain who visited Medrengard, who emerged untainted.


Armed with that knowledge, it is not unfeasible that heavily indoctrinated stormtroopers in sealed biological containment armour dosed up to the max with vials of blessed water could survive untainted for a period of time upon a daemon world.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
They could have some sort of mini gellar field, or something similar to what the Grey Knights have to protect them, or rites of whatever to protect them from possession, too, plenty of angles to come from.

there comes a point where you're throwing so much special equipment at them you have to ask, why you're not sending Grey Knights on this task. (which would be my first choice for a hit and fade against a demon world target)

As far as I know there are no mini gellar field, it could be something the Inquisitor came up with and needs to test, in that case having more expandable people to use instead of Grey Knights.

Thanks for the input guys
So instead of a full on daemon world, I think a chaos controlled world in the early stages of demonic taint taking over would work better, similar to the chaos stronghold level in dawn of war soulstorm in which the world seems normal, but there is something obviously evil about it and daemons and chaos mutated abominations roam the surface

Air is likely tainted so an external supply of untainted oxygen will be useful as so the operators don't suffer any nauseous effects
All equipment is to be blessed before the excursion and disposed of after
All survivors will go through psychiatric evaluation and followed by a mindwipe if necessary

A raid on a daemon world could work. There is a few instances in the fluff of people getting to a daemon world and making it out alive (though that is extremely rare). But yeah, there is no way the Inquisition is going to let anyone live who has seen a daemon world, if they find out someone's been there. Maybe only if it is a very radical Inquisitor and the people in question are too valueable to be 'cleansed'.

Maybe it could even be a special unit of blanks, that'd be interesting.

The Adepta Sororitas raid went like this (AS Codex) which is very much along the lines you are consdiering.

One of the many issues is that unless its an Inquistorial or Mechanicus mission, Guardsmen don;t have their own void craft and have to rely on the Navy unlike the Astartes, Sororitas and Mechanicus.

835.M41 THE WAR FOR PIETY
The shrine world of Piety rematerialises after being swallowed by a Warp storm two centuries earlier. The planet is, however, almost unrecognisable, having transformed into a hideous Daemon world. Canoness Sariah of the Order of the Sacred Rose immediately
leads a force of Battle Sisters to the planet to retrieve artefacts from the Reliquary of Hope, one of the few sites on the whole world to have withstood the corrupting touch of Chaos. As the rest of her forces establish a formidable perimeter around the reliquary,
Sariah leads several Celestian and Dominion squads into the labyrinthine corridors beneath it. For three days, Canoness Sariah and her Sisters battle through monsterinfested passageways; bolters cut down scores of blood-hungry Daemon-hounds and
flamers burn swathes of Nurglings and bloated plague-beasts. Only Sariah and two Celestians survive to rejoin the Battle Sisters on the surface, having recovered the left thigh bone of Saint Dolan and three pages of the ominous Lexicon of Falsehoods from a
stasis vault. The surviving Battle Sisters withdraw to orbit with their prizes just as a fleet of Grey Knights vessels arrives and lays waste to the planet with cyclonic torpedoes.

The Admech are organizing millions of Skitarii to invade that one demon world in order to recover a dataslate with all the STCs.

Militarum Tempestus codex IIRC, don't have it in front of me, a group end up on a Daemon World and, to their credit it says, last two full days before being killed.

I've noticed a lot of alleged operations against daemon worlds conclude with a healthy dose of exterminatus for good measure, but I thought daemon worlds couldn't be subjected to exterminatus due to the whole 'not following the laws of physics' thing.

At that point, I don't see why any object recovered from such a place would be considered anything but horrifically corrupt.

Conquered worlds are definitely the better choice. They might actually have holdouts, untainted maguffins, and actual sabotageable infrastructure,all things a crack team of acolytes could be sent after.