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It doesn't make any fethin' sense. The Imperium largely consists of fairly ordinary humans. People like you and me. The Inquisition too, except that some of them can be extremely stubborn.

Any organisation with a power of the Inquisition's magnitude must have some form of strict hierarchy. Just look at any IRL Inquisition-like organisation, past and present.

Such organisations can still abuse their power, but they can never do without some chain of command. In 40k, there are conclaves, but on whose authority are they called?

No organisation similar to the Inquisition and run by humans like you and me can function with such a loose power structure.

The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

A Conclave is called on the authority of an Inquisitor who needs a second opinion. Think of it less like a Judge going to the Supreme Court, and more like a Doctor calling in a second Doctor to double-check them.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

How is it possible for everyone to have authority over everyone else?

Correction: The Inquisition DOES have a hierarchy, even though it isn't as visible as in the other Imperial elements.

Also, keep in mind, that the Inquisition is not a clearly defined organisation, but a collective set of neurotic (some), annoying (most), and trigger-happy (ALL of them) detectives with nigh-limitless power to screw everyone over, if the victim's opinions won't match with the said Inquisitor's agenda.

Every Inquisitor has a pecking order about who obeys whom, and it is not unusual to be disputed over the fact that which Inquisitor's "rosette" is bigger.

Also: Inquisitorial Conclaves, look into them. Those are the conferences where the hierarchy intensifies... at least for the duration of the Conclave itself.

It has a system of rank, just is more subjective and flexible than most.

And those who go too far out of line, it enforces its own rules.

The elisihorn books and ravenor serris both show the subtle and not so subtle systems that exist within.

If a Guardsman falls, you've lost 1 man to Chaos. If a Sergeant falls, you've got 10 men taking commands from the Warp. If a Colonel falls, you've got 10,000 men under influence.

That's why the Inquisition has no strict chain of command. Inquisitors train and command a retinue, and an Inquisitor does report to a Lord Inquisitor if neccessary. But the Inquisition polices the Imperium and itself. Anyone can point the finger at anyone else in the Inquisition and rally some friends against them. The Inquisition is about connections, not heirarchy.

The inquisition functions similarly to our own scientific community.

Actions and persons are given credibility based on the percieved qualitiy and authority of the indiviidual in question.

This is observed when some inquisitors will come into conflict with each other, claim the other heretic, and wage open war on one another.

In those instances, the one who gathers the most influential inquisitors on their side typically wins.

Its a history is writ by the victors scenario. The reason they don't come into conflict more often is because they're actually ALL working toward the purpose of furthering mankind.

The problem is, with the invasiveness of Chaos, its difficult to tell whether they're actually acting in mankinds best intrests, or whether they're afflicted with Chaos-induced madness.

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
If a Guardsman falls, you've lost 1 man to Chaos. If a Sergeant falls, you've got 10 men taking commands from the Warp. If a Colonel falls, you've got 10,000 men under influence.

That's why the Inquisition has no strict chain of command. Inquisitors train and command a retinue, and an Inquisitor does report to a Lord Inquisitor if neccessary. But the Inquisition polices the Imperium and itself. Anyone can point the finger at anyone else in the Inquisition and rally some friends against them. The Inquisition is about connections, not heirarchy.

While this is true, an Inquisitor requires an air-tight case before accusing another Inquisitor. You only get one chance to make that accusation because, if you're wrong, the Inquisition executes you.

Functions a bit like the White Tower in the Wheel of Time.
Or like Communism.

Great theory, doesn't work.
Jordan does a good job of portraying the mess it leads to for Aes Sedai.

You'll find that they arrange themselves like kids in a classroom. Everyone is 'equal', but there's a definite hierarchy.

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

Or like Communism.

Great theory, doesn't work.

Excuse me, I think the Tau have proven that Communism does work.

 Mantorok wrote:

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

Or like Communism.

Great theory, doesn't work.

Excuse me, I think the Tau have proven that Communism does work.

Tau aren't communist, they live in a distinct caste system based upon ideas of utilitarianism.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Mantorok wrote:

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

Or like Communism.

Great theory, doesn't work.

Excuse me, I think the Tau have proven that Communism does work.

Tau aren't communist, they live in a distinct caste system based upon ideas of utilitarianism.

The truth is never funny though.
That said, I don't think the Inquisition are very communistic in nature.
More like a totalitarian dictator when it comes to the resources of the imperium, and isolationist when it comes to sharing their resources with other inquisitors.

The White Tower functioned just fine for thousands of years until it was infiltrated by agents of the power they were diametrically opposed to since its creation, and the world around them, which they had been accustomed to dealing with with many, many times their current numbers, spun out of control with events that could not be easily contained, controlled or even accounted for.

Also the fact that they were human beings, tasked with saving the world, while also responsible for ushering in a prophesied figured who was going to destroy the world as they knew it. Talk about conflicting operational philosophies!

As a school of instruction for women possessing the ability to wield the One Power, it was fine. As a tool by which the Dragon Reborn could be trained in secret and hidden from the eyes of the world, who would (understandably) freak the feth out because the End Of Times was upon them? Not so good, possibly never could have hoped to be.

The Inquisition? Damned good at their job, doesn't need a strict heirarchy of control, because such power concentrated in the hands of the few, who are then directing all other Inquisitors in what to investigate, is a recipe for disaster. Leads to myopic viewpoints and overlooking dangers to the Imperium, where a decentralized system permits individual Inquisitors to investigate that which catches their fancy, in whatever manner best suits their talents.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

How is it possible for everyone to have authority over everyone else?

It means every Inquisitor is on an equal footing with each other. Its a check on each individual Inquisitor's power to prevent abuse.

Now, like any organization, the Inquisition has a huge amount of inner political conflicts which translates into a loose hierarchy of who has the most political sway.

That said, there are ranks which convey some positional influence in the Inquisition itself. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Inquisitor#Ranks These ranks do not give an Inquisitor any more power, their power is already absolute, but it is an indicator of respect and admiration among his peers. An Inquisitor Lord is more of an honorific term than anything that has a defined indicator of outranking another.

If there is internal conflict between Inquisitors, the conflict is usually resolved by which side has more support from other Inquisitors and/or personal forces.

Actually, it's more like the Emperor said that an Inquisitor would have authority over every subject of the Imperium.

He did not specify an exemption for other Inquisitors.

On the whole, the Emperor tended to make rulings about as watertight as the books written by Games Workshop's dev team.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

How is it possible for everyone to have authority over everyone else?

It means every Inquisitor is on an equal footing with each other. Its a check on each individual Inquisitor's power to prevent abuse.

Now, like any organization, the Inquisition has a huge amount of inner political conflicts which translates into a loose hierarchy of who has the most political sway.

That said, there are ranks which convey some positional influence in the Inquisition itself. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Inquisitor#Ranks These ranks do not give an Inquisitor any more power, their power is already absolute, but it is an indicator of respect and admiration among his peers. An Inquisitor Lord is more of an honorific term than anything that has a defined indicator of outranking another.

If there is internal conflict between Inquisitors, the conflict is usually resolved by which side has more support from other Inquisitors and/or personal forces.

one can imagine the sheer amount of chaos that would emerge from this loose organisation.

The unlimited power of an inquisitor is why you can't have much of a chain of command.

Formally, anyway.

A conclave is - broadly speaking - all the inquisitors active within a given region. They may or may not actually meet as a conclave, or have a single 'home base' or whatever. The stratification into ranks ('Lord Inquisitor' etc) and Ordos is something that evolves through tradition, which over centuries and millenia can be just as ironclad as law.

Politics, philosophy and tradition shape the inquisition, rather than a formal structure and laws. They can, after all, theoretically do whatever they want, but if they want to act on a large scale, they need their colleagues support - or at least their passive acceptance; any inquisitor can send instructions ordering an entire sector battlefleet to muster at a remote border world to support him on some minor activity, and the sector admiral has no right to refuse.....


.....however, he's going to be located on the sector capital, and as a senior fleet admiral will probably have some conduit to communicate his (perfectly sensible) objections with representatives of the sector conclave, who will tell him [i
"Quite right, he's being overly dramatic. Send a couple of cruisers."[/i]

That's the point - at the level of 'peers of the Imperium', the Imperium operates on mutual politics for the most part, because even Inquisitors need some level of active co-operation to function. To a greater or lesser extent, Cardinals, Warmasters, Rogue Traders, Archmagos, Chapter Masters and Imperial Governors are all above the law - although Inquisitors are definitely the animal more equal than others.

The downside is that whilst an Inqusitor can requisition whatever the hell he wants (in theory) his authority doesn't actually grant him a specific domain - he has no resources that are actually his on a permenant basis on any large scale in the way a Chapter Master does. Which means that actually getting things done tends to involve co-opting someone elses resources, which means that the relationships with other Adeptus are critical.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
one can imagine the sheer amount of chaos that would emerge from this loose organisation.

Not necessarily. Inquisitors seem to be significantly more rare than even Space Marines, so the number of instances in which one would be in conflict with another should be incredibly low.

And a lot of Inquisitors work behind the scenes, hidden even from their peers. They act through intermediaries. On some Hive World, a Chaos Cult is "by happenstance" found out by an Arbites Purity team. An anonymous tip alerts a Commissar of soldiers under him engaging in the Cold Trade. A suddenly-announced "live-fire exercise", the first in centuries, for a planet's PDF garrison ends up repelling a Dark Eldar raid.

Such things are, of course, manipulated by Inquisitors, sitting at the heart of a web of contacts, informants, allies, colleagues and peers, giving just a bit of a nudge to the right people at the right time to ensure the Imperium is defended.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
How can the Inquisition function without any formal hierarchy?

It doesn't.

There is an ordo dedicated to uncovering the Emperor's past.
There is an ordo dedicated to destroying all traces of the Emperor's past.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Inquisition don't need to function as an organisation because each and every Inquisitor has unlimited authority over everyone, including other Inquisitors.

How is it possible for everyone to have authority over everyone else?

It means every Inquisitor is on an equal footing with each other. Its a check on each individual Inquisitor's power to prevent abuse.

Now, like any organization, the Inquisition has a huge amount of inner political conflicts which translates into a loose hierarchy of who has the most political sway.

That said, there are ranks which convey some positional influence in the Inquisition itself. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Inquisitor#Ranks These ranks do not give an Inquisitor any more power, their power is already absolute, but it is an indicator of respect and admiration among his peers. An Inquisitor Lord is more of an honorific term than anything that has a defined indicator of outranking another.

If there is internal conflict between Inquisitors, the conflict is usually resolved by which side has more support from other Inquisitors and/or personal forces.

one can imagine the sheer amount of chaos that would emerge from this loose organisation.

Precisely. Virtually every book written about the Inquisition deals with Inquisitors fighting other Inquisitors. Eisenhorn vs Osma. Quixos vs Eisenhorn. Thonius vs Ravenor. Ravenor vs Eisenhorn. Valeria vs Darkhammer. On and on it goes.

If by your original question you wanted to know how it functions efficiently? It doesn't. Seriously, that's part of the point. It gets in its own way, there's nothing (like, literally nothing) to stop one Inquisitor from naming another heretic and torturing them. Shoot, if they do it quickly enough and quietly enough they can even kill another Inquisitor, claim he was a heretic, and move on with their lives. (Sure, the other guy's allies will be gunning for the victor, but they are suspect now too, so it's a problem that tends to suggest its own solution.)

There's a great deal of chaos inherent in the system.

The problem is there is a school of thought within the Inquisition, the Monodominants, that seem to throw all subtlety out the window. It really is surprising there aren't more widespread or frequent civil wars within the Imperium as a result of this lack of formalized hierarchy within the Inquisition.

For example, an Inquisitor (or even Inquisitor Lord) of Sector A can denounce an Inquisitor of Sector B and demand military forces from Sector A follow him to purge Sector B. An Inquisitor from Sector B can accuse the Inquisitor of Sector A of going too far and demand the military forces of Sector B to follow him and purge Sector A. This can be repeated at a smaller scale on the scale of sub-sectors even. And given how Inquisitors are almost certainly involved in some shady activities over the course of their careers, it is quite possible for both sides to have some basis for their claims that the other side is corrupt. Cue civil war. Note neither side has to genuinely be corrupt or fallen to Chaos or anything else. Both can believe they are righteous and acting in the interests of the Imperium.

....Yup, pretty much.

See what happened between Eisenhorn and Qixos.

The reason it rarely gets involved at an open fight on that scale is that mobilizing a sector's forces takes ages and is going to come to someone else's attention - inquisitor's are rare but there is probably someone else keeping tabs on a region of space the size of a sector. At which point the rest of a local conclave is likely to ask inquisitor A 'what in the name of the Throne do you think you're doing?' - at which point, he will hopefully produce the evidence of said shady dealings - and be told "well, take it to the sector B conclave and have him assassinated, then. It'll cause less of a mess and be faster".

Remember that one of the largest and most powerful factions - largely becuase they're the 'moderates' rather than the puritans or radicals - are the Amalathians, whose guiding creed is "don't rock the boat".

Quixos genuinely was damaging the Imperium with his criminal lack of project oversight. He was trusting half-bound daemonhosts to operate on his behalf, for the Emperor's sake!

inquisitors when they go rouge, you only ever send another one after them. one for reasons of authority but also the fact they do not want such information leaving a very small circle as they can.

Such wide spread would undermine the authority of the whole, such cannot be allowed.

Inquisitors have other Inquisitors there to ensure something like a Civil War doesn't happen. If an Inquisitor becomes a rabbel-rouser or tries to start a war, 4 more Inquisitors come along with all of their contacts and resources, and kill the unstable element. They are capable of policing the entirety of the Imperium because, if they don't, the other Inquisitors will have them eliminated and replaced because of incompetence.

Remember that no one who is truly incompetent gets a Rosette. They don't hand those things out like door-prizes. It is possible for an Inquisitor to get involved with something that lies beyond his or her expertise or ability to handle, of course, but those abilities and expertise are going to be a significant cut above the vast bulk of the rest of the Imperium's population.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Mantorok wrote:

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

Or like Communism.

Great theory, doesn't work.

Excuse me, I think the Tau have proven that Communism does work.

Tau aren't communist, they live in a distinct caste system based upon ideas of utilitarianism.

Actually it is more a combination of Taoism and Maoism (with a lot of other Asian philosophies and religions thrown in too, it isn't really a developed thing, just a bunch of general Asian stuff depending on the author), and has little to nothing to do with utilitarianist philosopy, but that is off topic.

I think the comparison of the Inquisition to the scientific community is very good. There are no formal ranks or leadership, yet some scientists have much more authority than others nonetheless.

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
If a Guardsman falls, you've lost 1 man to Chaos. If a Sergeant falls, you've got 10 men taking commands from the Warp. If a Colonel falls, you've got 10,000 men under influence.

That's why the Inquisition has no strict chain of command. Inquisitors train and command a retinue, and an Inquisitor does report to a Lord Inquisitor if neccessary. But the Inquisition polices the Imperium and itself. Anyone can point the finger at anyone else in the Inquisition and rally some friends against them. The Inquisition is about connections, not heirarchy.

But each Inquisitor has nigh-unlimited power, and they can invite others almost freely. Surely this would lead to cronyism and allow corruption to spread?

 Psienesis wrote:
While this is true, an Inquisitor requires an air-tight case before accusing another Inquisitor. You only get one chance to make that accusation because, if you're wrong, the Inquisition executes you.

Not as black & white either I think. IIRC Eisenhorn was accused but cleared without resulting in accuser getting executed.

Does lead to loss of face and with that influence but it's hardly automatic execution.