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I was wondering; are there any Officio Assassinorum operatives who have joined the forces of Chaos?

There's only one Assassin I can personally think of and that's the one who turns during the HH, but it seems unlikely that there haven't been more cases than just one (given how some of the Assassins' talents are potentially corrupting; the perfectionism of the Vindicare, the rage of the Eversor, the duplicity of the Callidus...)

It is one of those 'possible but unlikely' scenarios given the various methods the Assassins operate.

Vindicares are patient snipers. There is going to be little in the way that (assuming they do their job right) anyone will notice them before their job is done. There fluff in the codex for assassins has Vindicares waiting in place for weeks on end, so it shows they have a mountain of discipline and willpower to work with, so are unlikely to be tempted.

Culexus are by far the least likely to be corrupted, as their very existence is anathema to the Warp. Without any signature in the warp other than a painful blank, there is no real soul there to corrupt.

Eversors are possible, but given how they are deployed, unlikely. The only time an Eversor is deployed is for a single, specific mission. They come out of their sleep, are loaded to the brim with drugs and sent to do their work. As soon as that job is done, the Eversor is sent back to sleep, leaving no room for slow corruption. After all, the only time you see an Eversor is when it is in a killing frenzy, there's no downtime for it to think about other things. Also, the biochemical makeup of an Eversor makes them a walking bomb, if they die or go too long without returning, they will just pop, further limiting corruption.

Callidus I think are the most likely to be corrupted, but not by any failing of their own. This applies to all Assassins given their level of training, and I would imagine that it would be doubly so for Callidus, who have to infiltrate places of corruption. That said, maintaining a cover may require something like participation in a ritual that exposes them to corruption. To me, that is the most likely place where an Assassin could become corrupted.

While not infallible, I think the likelihood of corrupt assassins is quite low. There's not a lot of them, and when they are on mission, they are out for one mission and then recalled. There's very little in terms of time for corruption to happen, at least the more insidious kind. Of course, that still leaves open the possibility of massive, instant corruption through ritual or warp rifts, but there's no evidence to say it either way. I think the best assessment is possible but very, very unlikely.

Iirc they are kept in stasis between missions (or is that just eversors?) so there probably isn't much opportunity for one to fall. Death cult temples often fall to Khorne though.

They are kept on a tight leash by the most zealous branch of the Imperium (which is saying a lot) and undergo intense conditioning (brainwashing), so it just doesn't likely. Also, it would effectively be impossible for Calexus assassins to come under the influence of Chaos, since they are blanks.

Abaddon has a few blanks in his service, so that wouldn't be a reason to discount a fallen culexus. The brainwashing and restrictions would make it very difficult though. That said, nothing is impossible, especially in 7th ed

There are. At least dark mechanus on mars had nasty assasins in the 30k novels.

I don't see why there wouldn't be. Pretty much anything can happen in this universe. Plus I would love to see some awesome chaos assassin conversions.

 General Kroll wrote:
I don't see why there wouldn't be. Pretty much anything can happen in this universe. Plus I would love to see some awesome chaos assassin conversions.

That's the main reason I'm asking There's a lot of conversion potential in Chaos Assassins, I feel

As for it being unlikely, I agree that deployment in 'tainted' areas would probably be one of the few way they could get corrupted. After all, that's what happens to

you know, I was thinking about that kinda thing for a while. Like what if some word bearers got hold of one in stasis and managed to do a demon possessing ceremony on it, giving it demonic weapons of khorn, and then release it into a densely populated area like a hive world or forge world. I wonder if it would kill enough people and cause enough bloodshed to start a full scale daemon invasion....

It would be a good plot for a story, no?

I'm all for Tiger9gamer's idea, I think it COULD be fluffily justified if care and attention was taken over it.

Dark mechanicum had all sorts of assassins when it fell to chaos in 30k, but I think this point's been already made earlier.

You might want to delve deeper into "Vore Weapons"


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I looked it up those Martian assassins are called "Sisters of Cydonia" they aren't dark mechanicum but a seperate neutral faction.


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Saynay Clan are also really nasty. Not sure if they are true assassins or just mad and very hungry

I think the first thing to recognise is that anyone, save perhaps the Emperor, can become corrupted by Chaos- even a primarchs.

So since we've conceded it's possible to corrupt an assassin, the only thing that remains is to work out how an assassin became corrupt. The obvious answer is they were captured during a mission. Perhaps the Callidus' dosguise didn't fool the sorcerer's arcane sight. Perhaps the ship carrying the Eversor was lost in the warp or just dumb luck boarded by a Chaos raiding party? There's innumerable things that could go wrong during an assassin's missions that could leave them vulnerable.

Admittedly Cullexus are harder to do but even they will have a breaking point.