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In Honour guard, Gaunt sends a captured chaos cultist to deliver a message to his fellows who are besieging a saints shrine. The message is a demand that the chaos forces surrender. It is refused.

It made me think, had they accepted, what would the surrender of a chaos human army to an imperial one even look like? For context, the chaos army was comprised of guys dressed as imperial pilgrims, with blasphemous tattoos of the local imperial saint getting sexed by daemons. They had hung the local lords and set fire to a holy city.

Would they be imprisoned for life?
Burned by the inquisition?
Penal legion?

In that context the agreement would probably be just for the chaos force to head off and the Imperials.hoping they can finish their job and get out before they come back with more of their.mates. I don't think there is really an option for reintegration of corrupted individuals like that. Maybe the chaos troops would be executed, but their families/children could return without black Mark's against their names.

I think a lot would depend on who's running the show on the Imperial side, and the level of corruption.

If the cultist is 'lucky' (and shows no signs of corruption) they'd go the penal legion - if not, arco-flagellation, execution or handed over to the Inquisition for 'questioning',

Yea I assume Gaunt was giving them a chance to save their immortal souls rather than go back to normal life as an Imperial citizen.

You might say that surrendering only to be executed is a rum deal, but when choosing between an eternity of having your soul tortured by a Chaos god or bathing in the beneficent light of the Emperor's mercy maybe it doesn't look so bad...

 Kroem wrote:
Yea I assume Gaunt was giving them a chance to save their immortal souls rather than go back to normal life as an Imperial citizen.

You might say that surrendering only to be executed is a rum deal, but when choosing between an eternity of having your soul tortured by a Chaos god or bathing in the beneficent light of the Emperor's mercy maybe it doesn't look so bad...

I agree with this. The likely outcome if they have no use (ala Mabbon Etogaur) is execution with the chance to repent beforehand.

I do wonder what would happen to troops who didn't release they were 'on the wrong side'. One of the Iron Hands novels opens up with the PDF force defending their planet in the name of the Emperor but it's the Iron Hands who are invading - the Governor has sided with Chaos and they're here to retake the planet.

beast_gts wrote:
I do wonder what would happen to troops who didn't release they were 'on the wrong side'. One of the Iron Hands novels opens up with the PDF force defending their planet in the name of the Emperor but it's the Iron Hands who are invading - the Governor has sided with Chaos and they're here to retake the planet.

They're killed.

Siege of Vraks is pretty good for this. Basically arch cardinal is corrupted by his side-kick, and camps out on the planet convincing them that the rest of the Imperium has fallen to 'evil', and their world is one of the last holdouts for the Emperor's faithful. They proceed to fight a years long war thinking they're the good guys, or at least most of them do.

Keep in mind that the average citizen knows dick about anything other than the emperor. So if you paint chaos sigils on their armor, and make up some jargon about them being the emperor's runes / runes for his faithful, they'll buy it. That rot setting in? Emperor's mercy, it'll protect you. Comrades going insanely blood drunk in the field and gathering skulls? Overcome with the Emperor's vengeance. Those scary red dudes that lept out of the portal, have big ass swords, horns, and slaughter anything that comes close? Emperor's wrath made manifest.

A lot of the religion aspects of the Imperium involving suffering, to a degree. So you can supplant them with Chaos, which also causes suffering, and the lay people will be none the wiser.

and they'll kill those who have been tricked in such a way, because the nature of chaos being what it is, they cannot be sure. Mercy and the benifit of the doubt can have horrific concequences. Gulliman lost an important world after his return because he was willing to heal sick soldiers who had been fighting the death guard rather then take the precaution of putting them to the sword.

All it takes is ONE individual whom is corrupted escaping to destroyu whole civilizations

=Angel= wrote:In Honour guard, Gaunt sends a captured chaos cultist to deliver a message to his fellows who are besieging a saints shrine. The message is a demand that the chaos forces surrender. It is refused.

It made me think, had they accepted, what would the surrender of a chaos human army to an imperial one even look like? For context, the chaos army was comprised of guys dressed as imperial pilgrims, with blasphemous tattoos of the local imperial saint getting sexed by daemons. They had hung the local lords and set fire to a holy city.

Would they be imprisoned for life?
Burned by the inquisition?
Penal legion?

It is a great thought experiment On one hand, as a military leader, Gaunt would be insane not to let his opponents have a way of exit in order to make them fight less furiously and flee more easily. On the other hand... I highly doubt the Imperium have any way of leniency towards full on chaos worshippers. To my mind the only repentance regime enabling the heretic to "live" within the Imperium is the life of a lobotomized war servitor. That promise of redemption is not exactly gonna do the trick a great commander need it to play within the minds of the enemy.

Maybe, in extreme scenarios of scarcity and desperation, with no time to spare, I could se an Imperial force make use of some kind of disarm and dismemberment policy before letting their enemy flee to wherever they thought themselves safe. Something a kind to cutting of the right hand of all surrendered forces and taking all their armaments before letting them go on one overcrowded ship with its guns destroyed.

Kroem wrote:Yea I assume Gaunt was giving them a chance to save their immortal souls rather than go back to normal life as an Imperial citizen.

You might say that surrendering only to be executed is a rum deal, but when choosing between an eternity of having your soul tortured by a Chaos god or bathing in the beneficent light of the Emperor's mercy maybe it doesn't look so bad...

This is my best bet too. For some reason, It reminds me of the (maybe exaggerated) phenomenon of medieval and renaissance christians committing public murder as a form of suicide. With a death sentence, you would get to repent before your execution and thus you had a chance of heaven, as opposed to taking your own life, which led straight to hell. I don't know, it just struck me as similar.

If they are actually following the rules, mass torture-interrogation followed by a knife to the throat (lasbolts are too expensive).

And that's only if they are renegades. If they are actually corrupted by the Ruinous Powers and have any knowledge beyond "The warp makes navigators and astropaths do the thing" then the loyalists would also suffer the same fate.

Given how far Chaos has expanded recently, if the Imperium continues to hug closely to the policy of killing anyone who knows anything about Chaos who shouldn't (read, the vast majority of Imperial citizens), they'll practically do Abaddon's work for him. All he would have to do to destroy a planet is to summon a bunch of daemons in massive population centers, let them go wild until they are either destroyed or fade away, and then sit back and allow the Imperium to kill off the survivors who saw everything.

Multiquote's broke for me, i'll do my best to reply:

Retreat

It is a great thought experiment On one hand, as a military leader, Gaunt would be insane not to let his opponents have a way of exit in order to make them fight less furiously and flee more easily. On the other hand... I highly doubt the Imperium have any way of leniency towards full on chaos worshippers. To my mind the only repentance regime enabling the heretic to "live" within the Imperium is the life of a lobotomized war servitor. That promise of redemption is not exactly gonna do the trick a great commander need it to play within the minds of the enemy.

Maybe, in extreme scenarios of scarcity and desperation, with no time to spare, I could se an Imperial force make use of some kind of disarm and dismemberment policy before letting their enemy flee to wherever they thought themselves safe. Something a kind to cutting of the right hand of all surrendered forces and taking all their armaments before letting them go on one overcrowded ship with its guns destroyed.

In that context the agreement would probably be just for the chaos force to head off and the Imperials.hoping they can finish their job and get out before they come back with more of their.mates. I don't think there is really an option for reintegration of corrupted individuals like that. Maybe the chaos troops would be executed, but their families/children could return without black Mark's against their names.

I know its all highly dependant on the commander and theatre, and I can see Imperials letting Orks or Eldar or other Xenos retreat when its advantageous to do so. Even dissidents and separatists might get this treatment- but chaos is the literal devil. Gaunt is a pious man and understands what chaos is, I'd expected a much less pragmatic approach. Perhaps he knows that winning each battle is more important than the long term goal of eradicating all chaos worshippers from the Sabbat worlds. Its a weird example because the Tanith First and allies were not in a position of power over their besiegers. It was the Imperials who were retreating from Sagia, before the chaos forces. If that chaos army had wandered off, Gaunt couldn't have wiped them out, and would have had to proceed with his mission anyway.

I guess I'm having trouble picturing a scenario where a faithful Imperial commander, faced with the option of a costly annihilation of archenemy soldiers or accepting a bloodless surrender/retreat would choose the one that would allow the blasphemers to draw breath.

Aestas is probably close to the mark here- but that sounds like a great origin story for a chaos regiment with infernal-bionic hands. 'On induction to the Brass talon cult, the inititate has his right hand severed and replaced with a crude pig iron graft. Once the soldier has severed and collected enough trophy hands of the Imperial faithful, the chirurgions will reward him with a powerful augmetic. Trophy hands are worn at all times as a mark of status and a reminder of shame and failure that the cult must atone for. Hand puns, and phrases like 'all hands on deck' are forbidden in the regiment by holy writ, on pain of exsangination.'


Execute

They're killed.

Siege of Vraks is pretty good for this. Basically arch cardinal is corrupted by his side-kick, and camps out on the planet convincing them that the rest of the Imperium has fallen to 'evil', and their world is one of the last holdouts for the Emperor's faithful. They proceed to fight a years long war thinking they're the good guys, or at least most of them do.

Yea I assume Gaunt was giving them a chance to save their immortal souls rather than go back to normal life as an Imperial citizen.

You might say that surrendering only to be executed is a rum deal, but when choosing between an eternity of having your soul tortured by a Chaos god or bathing in the beneficent light of the Emperor's mercy maybe it doesn't look so bad...

If they are actually following the rules, mass torture-interrogation followed by a knife to the throat (lasbolts are too expensive).

And that's only if they are renegades. If they are actually corrupted by the Ruinous Powers and have any knowledge beyond "The warp makes navigators and astropaths do the thing" then the loyalists would also suffer the same fate.

Surrender is only attractive if you think its better than fighting to the death. Unless the soldiers in question are actually Imperial adherants that got caught up on the wrong side of the war someh ow, it will be hard to convince them to repent and be killed. Even opportunistic non religious or third party mercenary types aren't going to accept those terms, and all the other chaos forces we've seen are convinced they are in the right.

Also, the 'see daemonic, get purged' thing is a narrative dead end meme- it inhibits story telling. Its a nice way of showing how brutal the setting is, but it murders the potential continuity of novels and tabletop games and makes any victory against chaos forces that include daemons phyrric. Novel series outright ignore this- with Cain killing a Daemon princess and living to tell the tale, along with the Tallarn soldiers present. We can assume that any narratively significant fighting force or individual can ignore this when required- it only happens to ramp up grimdark and make the spacewolves look like good guys.

Redeem

If the cultist is 'lucky' (and shows no signs of corruption) they'd go the penal legion - if not, arco-flagellation, execution or handed over to the Inquisition for 'questioning',

You're probably right. None of that is attractive to any non imperial creeder though.

My current working theory is that Gaunt didn't have anything to offer the Infardi chaos cult other than withdrawal under ceasefire, death or lobotomisation. This means it was just a formality, dutifully offered by a faithful and honourable man rather than a genuine offer of peacefully taking prisoners as we would understand it.