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Is it just me, or was this disappointing? The Deathwatch have always been the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, and there was no real reason to change that, especially if they're going to release an entire line of minis with the symbol of the Inquisition all over them, especially if they're going to act like that was never the case. I imagine they're wanting to move the storyline ahead, and want the DW to be represent a large force with a big role in trying to push back the tide of Xenos threats encroaching on the Imperium from every direction rather than some specialist elite branch of the Inquisition. I get that, but why not acknowledge the decades of established lore and and write in something like a decree from the High Lords to expand of the organization with increased autonomy? Just plain dumb if you ask me.

As someone with some models in his SM force that are converted and painted to be DW alumni, I was also hoping for a little more than the complete vagueness they offered concerning tithed warriors returning to their Chapters.

The fluff in the book seemed quite poorly done overall to me, although I like the concept of the Black Shields.

As a Codex, in terms of units and game-play, it seems like there is a lot of awesome there, but I actually must confess I put the book down in disgust after reading up to the list entries, and moved on to Kill Team and Traitor's Hate...

here's an intreasting quote from the Deathweatch RPG adventure "final sanction"

Over six months ago, Inquisitor Kalistradi arrived on
Avalos chasing rumours of Genestealer infestation and
several reported sightings of a Space Hulk on the edge of the
system. After months of secret investigation, she discovered
that Genestealers had indeed taken residence on Avalos,
concentrated in the world’s primary city—Lordsholm. Without
the means to purge the infestation herself, and fearing the local
authorities had already been compromised, she sent a coded
astropathic communication to Watch Fortress Erioch issuing a
formal request for aid from the Deathwatch in exterminating a
Genestealer infestation on the world of Avalos. After reviewing
the evidence and assessing the threat of a Tyranid presence in
the Avalos system, the Watch Captain considered the danger
serious enough to dispatch a Kill-team.

intreasting part has been bolded for you.

so this isn't the first time we've seen evidance of some degree of authonmy for the Death watch. chances are they're getting constant requests for assiance, they likely HAVE to have some independance to prioritize, also myself I always thought it a bit silly that an orginization as PROUD as the Astartes would create an orginization COMPLETELY subordinate to the Inqusition. the idea of them working hand and hand but the death watch having the freedom to tell the Inqusition "yeah feth you, thats a dumb idea we're going to do this" makes a lot of sense.

that said it seems GW is making a concious attempt to de-couple the Inqusition from their orders millitant. something that we've seen as early as the 5th edition sisters codex.

I think that's a good thing. Astartes are not too hot for the Big =I= and I always thought that DW, as well as GK, should be separated from that organisation. Sure, there would be ties, but the idea of an Inquisitor telling a Space Marine what to do is simply weak.

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's a good thing. Astartes are not too hot for the Big =I= and I always thought that DW, as well as GK, should be separated from that organisation. Sure, there would be ties, but the idea of an Inquisitor telling a Space Marine what to do is simply weak.

Yeah, can't have anyone bossing the oh so mighty spessmuhreens around.
But seriously, why shouldn't an Inquisitor of good standing and with a valid reason have the authority to give a spacemarine, especialy one who was created/ recruited especialy to serve the Ordos, orders?

Nothing new. The Inquisition has been getting excised from its old position of power ever since the 5e GK book took away our private armies of Stormtroopers and cut off our traditional relationships with the Deathwatch and the Sisters.

The Grey Knights and Deathwatch no longer being Chambers Militant does feel odd.

I get the Sororitas - because the Adepta Sororitas has always had two masters; the Ecclesiarchy and the Ordo Hereticus. Balancing the needs of the two is a bit of a juggle, but then one of the points of the Ordo Hereticus (other than the psykers bit) is managing imperial High Politics. The conflict of them being both a chamber militant and the ecclesiarchy's fighting force is a nice point of conflict.

The Grey Knights being independent was a bit bizzare - the fact that they then essentially had to give them super-prescients to say "go intervene here" makes the Inquisition feel a bit redundant. The Deathwatch is the same.

The whole point of the Deathwatch - originally - was that because the Astartes chapters didn't really answer to the Inquisition as an organisation (except with extreme pressure), the Deathwatch took a bunch of veterans and swore them, as individuals, into direct inquisitorial service, so that an Inquisitor can order them around and direct them as required for (usually nefarious) ends.

The fact that the Inquisition formed their upper command structure was part of what made them make sense as "why isn't this job being done by just a normal space marine chapter".


It's like the classic thing with the Deathwing - given that they don't even trust 80% of their own bloody battle-brethren with much information about the fallen, how exactly do they go hunting for them? They're not going to tell non-astartes outside the chapter what to look for and listen for.

Yes, I get they have ravenwing scouts and fighters and teleporting and pursuit forces and all that stuff, but that's all battlefield stuff. How do the Dark Angels find out that there might be a fallen angel on Arseendofnowhere IV in the first place?

It's not like they can have a dude listening for rumours in a bar. A space marine can act as a scout, he cannot effectively act as a spy or investigator outside a warzone without drawing attention.

Except that the deathwatch codex actually says that Watch Masters have sometimes been Inquisitors.
If that's not an inquisitor bossing marines around I don't know what is.

Also, given that the Deathwatch are a (nominal) tithe, aka 10%, of some, but not all, loyal chapters and have no means to recruit for themselves, there are not very many of them. Which also, given that "there is only war" and most of it is actually against Xenos, means that they are going to have to pick and choose their battles for the sake of sheer logistics if nothing else.

Turns out, even if you have an ultra-elite force with basically no raw recruits, you still can't attend more simultaneous battles than you have warm bodies to fight them, plus there are probably a few engagements out there big enough that they might require more than one Marine to win them so that knocks it down a touch too.

I've always seen it as the GK and now the Death watch are part of the Inquisition not subservient to it, with all the powers and authority that comes with. The Inquisition already has a fairly loose and informal hierarchy among its human operatives as all Inquisitors are theoretically equal in rank. Any authority they have over other Inquisitors is by the consent of the majority of there peers. No reason that wouldn't extend to the Astares militant chambers, especially when one was created on orders from the Sigilite himself.

GoatboyBeta wrote:
I've always seen it as the GK and now the Death watch are part of the Inquisition not subservient to it, with all the powers and authority that comes with. The Inquisition already has a fairly loose and informal hierarchy among its human operatives as all Inquisitors are theoretically equal in rank. Any authority they have over other Inquisitors is by the consent of the majority of there peers. No reason that wouldn't extend to the Astares militant chambers, especially when one was created on orders from the Sigilite himself.

that IMHO makes sense. as I said in my earlier reply, the idea of space marines just being mindless subservant to any and all inqusitors seems... off

 Weboflies wrote:
The Deathwatch have always been the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, and there was no real reason to change that

The new Codex doesn't say that the Deathwatch are not [still] the Chapter Militant of the Ordo Xenos.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Weboflies wrote:
The Deathwatch have always been the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, and there was no real reason to change that

The new Codex doesn't say that the Deathwatch are not [still] the Chapter Militant of the Ordo Xenos.

and it implies they work together so closely there is some degree of a sharing of command structure

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's a good thing. Astartes are not too hot for the Big =I= and I always thought that DW, as well as GK, should be separated from that organisation. Sure, there would be ties, but the idea of an Inquisitor telling a Space Marine what to do is simply weak.

Inquisitors tell High Lords what to do. Astartes are no exception. Space Marines serve the Imperium, they do not rule it. In the wake of the Heresy, it is necessary that there be an Imperial body that can bring the Astartes to heel.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's a good thing. Astartes are not too hot for the Big =I= and I always thought that DW, as well as GK, should be separated from that organisation. Sure, there would be ties, but the idea of an Inquisitor telling a Space Marine what to do is simply weak.

Inquisitors tell High Lords what to do. Astartes are no exception. Space Marines serve the Imperium, they do not rule it. In the wake of the Heresy, it is necessary that there be an Imperial body that can bring the Astartes to heel.

No they don't, the Inqusition CANNOT dictate to the High Lords nor can they dicate to the space marines. they are, on paper, equal

An organization being a Chamber Militant of any given arm of the Inquisition does not imply that organization is subservient to the Inquisition, just affiliated with it to a certain degree.

The Deathwatch are an independent Anti-Xenos Astartes organization (Super-Chapter, or Supra-Chapter, I guess...) that is tasked with rooting out and destroying the alien threat wherever it can be found. The Ordo Xenos, inversely, is really good at finding it. That they work together to a common goal is a natural alignment of common interest, and the designation 'Chamber Militant' signifies that they are the organization they prefer to call upon (and probably support materially quite a bit, those big =I='s don't just appear on their gunships by themselves.)

Likewise, the others align with an inquisitorial branch in the same way, but there was never a question as to whether the Grey Knights were independent of the Inquisition, and the Sororitas are in fact directly affiliated with the Ecclesiarchy who align likewise with the Ordo Hereticus, but of the three are the most likely to independently pursue the same goal without talking to each other.

It all comes down to politics.

In theory, any Inquisitor is answerable to no one except the Emperor. An Inquisitor that has just received their rosette seal could in theory turn around and declare all the High Lords of Terra heretics and traitors and demand their execution. In theory, an Inquisitor could demand all the ships of a Segmentum answer his beck and call. In practice, such demands while perfectly legal in theory would be ignored and would result in the Inquisitor being found by his peers to be either insane or a heretic himself.

In theory, the Space Marines are also answerable to no one except the Emperor. They are under no explicit obligation to answer any call for assistance by any Imperial world or organization. Being autonomous it is up for debate whether they are technically even bound by prohibitions against contact with aliens or Chaos. However any Chapter that just sat around and ignored all calls for assistance or that engaged in private empire building such as Huron did with the Astral Claws, or collected Chaos artifacts like the Relictors, would alienate the rest of the Imperium and eventually result in the Chapter being punished or declared traitor by the combined forces of other Imperial organizations.

The behavior of both these groups therefore is constrained not just by what is technically legal and within their rights, but by what they can get away with by virtue of their political standing and connections.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
An organization being a Chamber Militant of any given arm of the Inquisition does not imply that organization is subservient to the Inquisition, just affiliated with it to a certain degree.

If we were talking about some rebel group I might be inclined to agree. In the context of a well established, tyranical, galactic empire, that statement seems a little silly to me. The Inquisition is not tithing warriors from The Astartes and equipping them so that they can "be affiliated with it to a certain degree". This is something else the book ignores, or is perhaps trying to rewrite, is that the inquisition created the Deathwatch. It was meant to be a specialist force available to The Ordo Xenos to assist it in the kind of work the Inquisition does. Investigating and rooting out dangerous new xenos threats, learning the enemy's weaknesses, sabotage, assasination, special operations, the like.

The prevailing attitude you seem to see these days, and we're seeing it here, in all these comments about "space marines being too bad ass to take orders from Inquisitors" is i think, unfortunate. Really? Even rank and file marines? Even Marines that up til now in the lore were sent by their Marine superiors to serve the Inquisition? It all plays into this ridiculous, hyperbolic, super-hero caricature that Space Marines have become. I miss the days when every second piece of art with more than one space marine in it depicted a Marine that was wounded or killed, or being wounded or killed. They were vastly superior to a man, humanity's best, but they were still human enough, and it was a very hostile universe out there. On a bad day they died like the rest. That felt more real and grittier to me. More grimdark, and less like the Saturday morning cartoon that the 40k mythos has wandered perilously close to becoming at so many points over the years.

The novel "Watchers in Death" has the origins of the Deathwatch. It wasn't instituted by the Inquisition, but something created by the Space Marine chapters as an emergency temporary measure, that proved very effective.

 Weboflies wrote:
An organization being a Chamber Militant of any given arm of the Inquisition does not
The prevailing attitude you seem to see these days, and we're seeing it here, in all these comments about "space marines being too bad ass to take orders from Inquisitors" is i think, unfortunate. Really? Even rank and file marines? Even Marines that up til now in the lore were sent by their Marine superiors to serve the Inquisition? It all plays into this ridiculous, hyperbolic, super-hero caricature that Space Marines have become.

I think this "You're not the boss of me" attitude was a major cause of the Heresy. Marines started thinking they should be the ones in charge over normal humans, and became increasingly contemptuous of non-Marines. The natural end of this slippery slope is the sort of society seen in the Eye of Terror, where Marines are a warrior overlord class with everyone else as slaves to their whims.

I'm pretty sure they are still subservient to the Inquisition, but they undoubtedly have orders from higher powers to use their discretion if it is worth expending the valuable resources of the Deathwatch on a certain cause.

A minor Ork uprising that could be dealt with by PDFs armed with flamersisnt something a Watch Commander will entertain. What if they are dispatched to that and a call comes in about a Hrud migration?

The Watch Commander probably sorts the frivolous requests from the ones that actually warrant the attention of the Deathwatch - they still come at the beck and call of the =][=.

Likewise, most Space Marine chapters would be hard pressed to deny a request from an Inquisitor of decent standing, though an Inquisitor that presses his luck could find himself with only a token response and being left out to dry.

BrianDavion wrote:
the idea of them working hand and hand but the death watch having the freedom to tell the Inqusition "yeah feth you, thats a dumb idea we're going to do this" makes a lot of sense.

It's not even anything new. The Kal Jericho comics had Deathwatch turn up led by an Inquisitor in one of the stories. And ofc this particular Inky had a personal dislike for the Inky who had just recruited Kal for the same job. Well, technically the same job - one wanted to loot a space hulk while the other wanted to destroy it before the bad stuff got loose.

After watching the two inquisitors call each other names for a while the DW Captain pointed weapons at both of them and told them to disarm while he sorts out what trickery one or both are up to. ;-)

 Psienesis wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's a good thing. Astartes are not too hot for the Big =I= and I always thought that DW, as well as GK, should be separated from that organisation. Sure, there would be ties, but the idea of an Inquisitor telling a Space Marine what to do is simply weak.

Inquisitors tell High Lords what to do. Astartes are no exception. Space Marines serve the Imperium, they do not rule it. In the wake of the Heresy, it is necessary that there be an Imperial body that can bring the Astartes to heel.

No they don't. An Inquisitor could bring a High Lord to justice, if he had a sufficent evidence, but they're not omnipotent.

my signature discusses the power of the Inqusition, the fact of the matter, at the highest levels of authority in the IoM, with Inqusitors, Space Marine chapters, and the high lord, things get.. kinda murky, there's no clear direct line of heirarchy, (they all on paper answer to the same guy, so are, ON PAPER, equal) as such an Inqusitor's ability to deploy their power is what he can sweet talk or bluster,. getting back to the death watch specificly, the astartes wouldn't simply form a unit of their people and have them unquestionably answer to the Inqusition. for several reasons..

Despite Eisenhorn's famous line about his authority being limitless, pratically speaking thats not exactly true

Yeah, I've seen it more like only the inquisition can request their aid, yet they can refuse to give it. A typical marine chapter or guard regiment couldn't, because they don't have the authority to ask, but also because they likely don't know where to send the message to go direct.

If they want help, they have to contact the inquisition, who will then decide if it is worthy, and then the deathwatch or GK can decide to respond or not.

That doesn't even take into account the amount of AM generals who don't even know the GK's or DW exist. And it could be the same with certain marine's in command. If the mission being conducted is only being overseen by a company captain, or chaplain or even just a Vet sergeant, they may not know they exist either.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Yeah, I've seen it more like only the inquisition can request their aid, yet they can refuse to give it. A typical marine chapter or guard regiment couldn't, because they don't have the authority to ask, but also because they likely don't know where to send the message to go direct.

If they want help, they have to contact the inquisition, who will then decide if it is worthy, and then the deathwatch or GK can decide to respond or not.

That doesn't even take into account the amount of AM generals who don't even know the GK's or DW exist. And it could be the same with certain marine's in command. If the mission being conducted is only being overseen by a company captain, or chaplain or even just a Vet sergeant, they may not know they exist either.

The Astra Militarum generals wouldn't know about the GKs or DW because the majority of Guardsmen will go their entire career without seeing an Astartes, Traitor or Loyalist. Cadia seems to be an exception--which kind of makes sense since you have the whole Astartes Praeses thing(18 Chapters assigned to guard the Eye of Terror and commonly seeing action with the Cadian forces in the area because of it)--in that regards, but even then the Deathwatch as an organization might not be known by name.


The complete opposite is true surrounding Astartes. They know the Deathwatch exists. Right down to Battle Brothers and Scout Initiates.
Why? Because Chapters have elaborate send-off ceremonies for those members who have been inducted into the Deathwatch.

The complete opposite is true surrounding Astartes. They know the Deathwatch exists. Right down to Battle Brothers and Scout Initiates.
Why? Because Chapters have elaborate send-off ceremonies for those members who have been inducted into the Deathwatch.

Definitely. But they don't necessarily know how to contact them - certainly not within a militarily useful timescale - other than asking the Ordo Xenos for help.

locarno24 wrote:

The complete opposite is true surrounding Astartes. They know the Deathwatch exists. Right down to Battle Brothers and Scout Initiates.
Why? Because Chapters have elaborate send-off ceremonies for those members who have been inducted into the Deathwatch.

Definitely. But they don't necessarily know how to contact them - certainly not within a militarily useful timescale - other than asking the Ordo Xenos for help.

Again, that's not true.

The returning members of Deathwatch would know where to find a Watch Fortress to send communications to. They don't get mind-wiped or anything after returning to their parent Chapter.

I feel like they just kind of had a corporate restructuring of the Inquisition. lol

They've been "modernized" to have a less "top-down" command structure and a more "distributed" structure. This means that, rather than the DW (for example), sitting around waiting for orders, they are fully empowered to make their own decisions and carry out their own operations as they see fit. In the absence of orders from, say, an Inquisitor, they can simply make their own orders. This is often used by organizations that have small numbers but need to cover a large amount of ground. It enables each group to do have enough authority to do as it sees fit without completely destroying the chain of command. This is strategically sound and often very beneficial if your force carries enough sufficiently experienced/elite people that they do not require hand holding.

So basically, the GK and DW still are part of the Chamber Militant, it's just that the command structure is way less rigid and direct than it used to be. Whether or not that's a happy accident, or GW actually deliberately thinking it through? Well that's the million dollar question!

 Weboflies wrote:
...especially if they're going to release an entire line of minis with the symbol of the Inquisition all over them...

I think it's important to note that the Deathwatch do NOT have the symbol of the Inquisition all over them. The Deathwatch and the Inquisition instead both have the symbol of Malcador the Sigillite all over them. I have yet to read Watchers in Death yet, so I'm not sure the reason for using the Sigillites symbol. It might possibly have come to them through the Inquisition. It might not have. Anyone who has read the book can likely confirm.

I think it's important to note that the Deathwatch do NOT have the symbol of the Inquisition all over them.

I always thought Malcador's symbol was the capital letter "I" with two vertical lines on either side of the "I" and a stylized eye symbol in the middle. The Deathwatch all appear to have the proper Inquisition "I" , but with the addition of a skull in the middle. Is that just a different version of Malcador's symbol?

 Psienesis wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's a good thing. Astartes are not too hot for the Big =I= and I always thought that DW, as well as GK, should be separated from that organisation. Sure, there would be ties, but the idea of an Inquisitor telling a Space Marine what to do is simply weak.

Inquisitors tell High Lords what to do. Astartes are no exception. Space Marines serve the Imperium, they do not rule it. In the wake of the Heresy, it is necessary that there be an Imperial body that can bring the Astartes to heel.

It feels like I have quoted the Chapter Master entry from Codex: Space Marines a billion times now, but it still very explicitly states that a CM is answerable only to others of his kind.