Hi all,

My character has just been elevated to an Inquisitor and I am looking for fluff or opinions on the process of picking which of the Ordos to follow? I scoured the IH and it gives some good stuff, especially if an inquisitor leaves one Ordo for another, which is extremely taboo. Makes one wonder how Vownus Kaede went from Xenos to Hereticus and survived.

I am just looking to see if this choice of Ordo is a big deal with pomp and ceremony with other inquisitors, perhaps declaring said Ordo before the Conclave or is it just "Hey, I am Ordo Xenos" and away we go? Does my inquisitor have to find an Ordo Xenos inquisitor to sponsor them or no?

Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

~ alemander

Most of the Ordos are very ad hoc. The older ones, Xenos, Hereticus, Malleus are bit more formal and then may have more formal leanings.

It's up to the GM to make the decision how exclusive is it joining an Ordo. It can be as simple as introducing yourself and saying from what Ordo you are to having different Ordos recruit the newly rosette'd Inquisitor for their own internal political reasons.

It can also be that the applicant has to do something special to join - and of course it may all turn out to be a vast prank as well.

In short, you can make it as simple or as complicated as you wish.

If you're an inquisitor then you're using Ascension I'm assuming. Ask your GM to give you a rundown of the ordos in there, also look at Radical's Handbook for the description of the major and minor ordos as well.

The ordos are only as important as the gamemaster will make them. So ask him/her about it as well.

I would think an Inquisitor's Ordo would be dictated by their area of expertise. You frequently fought daemons as an Acolyte? Welcome to Ordo Malleus. You made your name thwarting alien invasions? Congratulations, you are now an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. You earned the promotion infiltrating heretic cults and destroying them from within? The Ordo Hereticus looks forward to your service.

I should imagine each individuals induction is different depending on the ordo. Simple as 'hi, I'm ... and I would like to join Ordo...'. Potentially a super intense job interview or challenges. I would read the Warhammer 40k wiki ( http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Warhammer_40k_Wiki ) and perhaps ask your GM depending on how 'inducted' you are into the 40k lore.

The nature and portrayal of the Ordos depends a lot on the sources you read. My preferred version is the one that lends most importance to the character's associates and contacts, in particular the Inquisitor who recruited them.

The Inquisition is a complicated web of acquaintances, vows of loyalty and interpersonal feuds, and by the 41st millennium, the Ordos have become to behave more like tightly-knit fraternities that just happen to lay claim to specific areas of expertise out of obligation to their original purpose, rather than specialised departments that acknowledge and select candidates based solely on their individual aptitudes. Of course you may also have more wilful Inquisitors who choose to go their own way rather than playing into the political bickering and childish rivalries within and across the Ordos, and their Acolytes may be afforded more freedom when it comes to selecting their future path, but at the same time this is bound to come with a certain stigma that would affect said individual's reception when dealing with other, more conservative Inquisitors. The same goes for those intrepid souls who are genuinely interested in applying their talent to where they feel they can be most of use, regardless of what their master thinks. Then again, perhaps they manage to find an advocate in the Ordo they would wish to join ... come to think of it, I wouldn't assume you can join one without having an advocate, anyways.

But the normal situation? I'd assume it to be like it worked with one's profession centuries ago. "His father was a shoemaker, so that's what he'll become."

This also neatly explains how you can have Inquisitors still investigating incidents that do not directly concern their own Ordo's specialisation. Because officially, all those Ordos do not exist at all, anyways, and there is just "the Inquisition".

I would think an Inquisitor's Ordo would be dictated by their area of expertise. You frequently fought daemons as an Acolyte? Welcome to Ordo Malleus. You made your name thwarting alien invasions? Congratulations, you are now an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. You earned the promotion infiltrating heretic cults and destroying them from within? The Ordo Hereticus looks forward to your service.

This, along with the fact that in my mind, you'd most likely become part of the Ordo that you have previously been serving and the Ordo of your Inquisitorial master (or the Lord-Inquisitor that makes you into a Inquisitor).

This is a bit of a moot point, though, because obviously, if you have been serving an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, you've been dealing primarily with xenos, and it would already make the most sense to become an Inquisitor of Ordo Xenos.

I would think an Inquisitor's Ordo would be dictated by their area of expertise. You frequently fought daemons as an Acolyte? Welcome to Ordo Malleus. You made your name thwarting alien invasions? Congratulations, you are now an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. You earned the promotion infiltrating heretic cults and destroying them from within? The Ordo Hereticus looks forward to your service.

This, along with the fact that in my mind, you'd most likely become part of the Ordo that you have previously been serving and the Ordo of your Inquisitorial master (or the Lord-Inquisitor that makes you into a Inquisitor).

This is a bit of a moot point, though, because obviously, if you have been serving an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, you've been dealing primarily with xenos, and it would already make the most sense to become an Inquisitor of Ordo Xenos.

This is true.

Odds are that you're going to wind up - at least initially - a de facto member of the same Ordos as your Inquisitor, and quite possibly a member of some of the same sub groupings and other organizations. However, once you've got the Rosette, you can shift focus and/or enter other membership groupings and alignments.

That said ... while there may not technically an 'official' or formal indebtedness to your Inquisitor and those who raised you to the Rosette, there's a strong unofficial bond. For one thing, sure, you're an Inquisitor now, and probably have some limited networks and resources of your own, but you've also been reliant on your master to build those networks, and expanding those resources and networks to do your job as a full Inquisitor is not going to be easy, and you will probably need some help to do it.

The Inquisition's internal organization is said to be somewhat feudal, and that's a fair analogy ... as far as it goes. It doesn't really cover the larger scale or the organization into the various Ordos and the inter-Ordos relationships. At best it covers the relationships between Inquisitors while the Ordos and other organizations don't really fit into the analogy very well.