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Within the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Grey Knights fortress-monastery on Titan lies a stasis vault, and within the vault lies scores upon scores of Tesseract Labyrinths given by the mysterious creator race of the labyrinths who contacted the Grey Knights many standard millenia ago to give over the technology to be used against their common foes among the forces of Chaos.

More info here.

I don't have a specific question about this... I just think it's a very interesting lore tidbit, and I'm surprised it has escaped me until now. You don't hear much about Imperium-Necron cooperation against Chaos. What makes it all the more unusual is that the Imperials accepting the help of xenos are Space Marines.

I suppose this would put the Grey Knights firmly on the Radical side of the Inquisition. They just want to get the job done by whatever means possible, even if it involves consorting with a "lesser evil". Good thing they're so secretive, or they would definitely butt heads with the Deathwatch, the Black Templars and the Adeptus Mechanicus (among others). A conflict with the latter would be especially interesting, given the shard of the Void Dragon on Mars.

All in all, I think the Imperium and the Necrons are intertwined in complex and interesting ways. There's so much they can fight over, but also so much they can collaborate on. Definitely one of the most flavorful yet under-explored relationships between two 40k factions.

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Careful with that source, the 40k Wiki doesn't cite things and just puts a list of references at the end.

A lot of stuff in those articles is conjecture, theory or straight up wrong info.

Hmm fair. I've done some quick googling, and discussion of this lore element is scarce (and sometimes in 10+ year old threads).

Lexicanum corroborates this, and is generally better referenced. It states:

“ Codex: Grey Knights (5th Edition) marks the first appearance of the tesseract labyrinths and mentions them being created by a mysterious alien race. Codex: Necrons (5th Edition) later shows that the Necrons are capable of creating them and are users of the technology.”

I wouldn’t put the Grey Knights being in possession of such toys beyond them. Whether they were gifted, or uh…liberated? Who knows.

But there are enough Tomb Worlds out there, discovered and undiscovered for them to be knocking about the Archaeotech market place.

In the old Daemon Hunters codex Grey Knights were actually banned outright from working for radical inquisitors, they were strictly puritan.

Though in that context it was concerning the usage of Chaos (specifically daemonhosts), they may not have a big problem with alien technology that isn't using the warp.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
In the old Daemon Hunters codex Grey Knights were actually banned outright from working for radical inquisitors, they were strictly puritan.

Though in that context it was concerning the usage of Chaos (specifically daemonhosts), they may not have a big problem with alien technology that isn't using the warp.

I can imagine branches of the Inquisition being inflexible Puritans when it comes to their specific field, but having Radical leanings when it comes to others.

It's all about their respective experiences or the reasons why they joined a specific Ordo in the first place. If an Ordo Malleus inquisitor has gazed into the depths of the Warp and seen Tzeentch himself looking straight back at him, he will likely sneer at the foolishness of his Ordo Xenos counterparts who waste their time and resources cracking down on some harmless consorting with the T'au.

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Yeah that was always my impression of them too.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
In the old Daemon Hunters codex Grey Knights were actually banned outright from working for radical inquisitors, they were strictly puritan.

Though in that context it was concerning the usage of Chaos (specifically daemonhosts), they may not have a big problem with alien technology that isn't using the warp.

I can imagine branches of the Inquisition being inflexible Puritans when it comes to their specific field, but having Radical leanings when it comes to others.

It's all about their respective experiences or the reasons why they joined a specific Ordo in the first place. If an Ordo Malleus inquisitor has gazed into the depths of the Warp and seen Tzeentch himself looking straight back at him, he will likely sneer at the foolishness of his Ordo Xenos counterparts who waste their time and resources cracking down on some harmless consorting with the T'au.

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Actually it entirely varies. If you read the two big named Inquisition series (the name of the first escapes me right now); you'll see that there's a lot of focus that each Inquisitor is almost essentially unique.
They run the gauntlet from entirely by the book to entirely not by the book and sometimes the line between an heretical Inquisitor and one who is simply considered "Radical" is a very fine line often defined as much by their politics and those around them; as by their actions.
They can also run the gauntlet from being almost loan operatives with small teams; all the way to commanding a fleet and engaging with mass battles


So yep you will get Inquisitors who will use alien tech; consort with xenos and even use psy and chaos powers. All for the good of humanity. Of course the latter uses of Chaos powers often fall to the corruption over time and get marked as Heretical.

Are you thinking Eisenhorn and Ravener?

Yes those are the series!

Angron: The Red Angel shows pretty clearly the mindset the Grey Knights have when it comes to things you'd traditionally consider radical. They operate on a Messiah Complex. Any action is acceptable because the Grey Knights, by cosmic definition, are pure and so any action they take is also pure. Whether that be slaughtering a city's worth of people or using xenos technology.

Any Imperial citizen party to such rite as Graucis had just performed would have decried it all as rank sorcery, but the warp was contexual. The Emperor's Gift rendered all that it touched divine. He had to believe that wherever a Grey Knight acted in the defense of mankind, it was pure by definition. If he did not then there would be no refuge from his doubts.

 Flinty wrote:
Lexicanum corroborates this, and is generally better referenced. It states:

“ Codex: Grey Knights (5th Edition) marks the first appearance of the tesseract labyrinths and mentions them being created by a mysterious alien race. Codex: Necrons (5th Edition) later shows that the Necrons are capable of creating them and are users of the technology.”

and it is very possible that the Necrons learned the technology from someone else rather then inventing it themselves. could well have been old ones tech the necrons stole and reverse engineered. and which some eldar faction decided to donate to Malcador the Sigilite prior to the great Crusade.


though the idea that Trayzan gave the Grey knights thousands of the things, with the intention to come and steal select ones back after a few dozen thousand years would be amusing.

Thing is with technology? One person inventing a thing doesn’t remove the knowledge of how to invent that thing.

Multiple brainy boys came up with calculus independently of each other. And whilst it’s hard to think to any right now as typically a country or global civilisation only needs a thing to be invented the once, that doesn’t extend to other species.

And so as far as we can tell, they’re something the Necron made extensive use of? Once they went sleepy-night-snoozy-snooze, there’s nothing really to stop another civilisation inventing it again. Either from scratch, or reverse engineering from an existing example.

Just don't say you're the Necrons. Wear dark cloaks with hoods and say you're the Mysterions, and your race is almost dead because Chaos blew up your homeworld but we invented this box to fight them and we know humanity is the galaxy's last hope.

Overread wrote:
They can also run the gauntlet from being almost loan operatives with small teams; all the way to commanding a fleet and engaging with mass battles

Hi, Inquisitor Steve of Ordo Grammaticus here. Your use of loan in this sentence threw me for a loop. I briefly envisioned a sly Inquisitor loan sharking on the side to supplement his nearly limitless financial resources from his Ordo. I tried to make it make sense. Then I realized you meant lone.

Dysartes wrote:Are you thinking Eisenhorn and Ravener?

Ravenor - super psyker Inquisitor who has three books written about him by Dan Abnett.
Ravener - genus of tyranid with serpentine bodies.

It's ok, though. I once got a box of Raveners in the generic box. The sticker called them Ravenors. So even GW can't keep it straight.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Overread wrote:
They can also run the gauntlet from being almost loan operatives with small teams; all the way to commanding a fleet and engaging with mass battles

Hi, Inquisitor Steve of Ordo Grammaticus here. Your use of loan in this sentence threw me for a loop. I briefly envisioned a sly Inquisitor loan sharking on the side to supplement his nearly limitless financial resources from his Ordo. I tried to make it make sense. Then I realized you meant lone.

Dysartes wrote:Are you thinking Eisenhorn and Ravener?

Ravenor - super psyker Inquisitor who has three books written about him by Dan Abnett.
Ravener - genus of tyranid with serpentine bodies.

It's ok, though. I once got a box of Raveners in the generic box. The sticker called them Ravenors. So even GW can't keep it straight.

Hey you can't be Ordo Grammaticus!

I'm pretty sure the Imperium would make such a position something for a servitor - now just walk this way and we'll scoop all that pesky independent thinking out of your skull and improve you with more cogitative capacity for grammatical tracking and correction.

Inquisitor Ravener: the Loan Operative should be the next BL book.

I’d buy that for a dollar, if I could just find someone I could borrow some cash from…

 Flinty wrote:
I’d buy that for a dollar, if I could just find someone I could borrow some cash from…

Send me 60€ and I'll send you a crisp $1 bill. (To cover shipping/handling/tariffs/etc.)


I love reading about the morons that are the Grey Knights.

There is a great passage in Watchers of the Throne, where a Custodes wonders if the Grey Knights are even cognizant of the fact that their hatred of khorne Daemons feed the Daemons and make them stronger and harder to fight.