Imagine a situation: a xenos breed is confirmed to stay on a large spacecraft, amongst thousands of unsuspecting passengers. The Inquisitor knows, however, that this xenos could easily plant his, say, eggs into the bodies of humans without them knowing it. Basically, this means, that this xenos is suspected to contaminate the passengers, but only a few of them.

And the Inquisitor orders to destroy the whole ship in order to bring down the xenos and his possible contaminated victims.

I would say this is Radicalism, and my reason for that is in this case the Inquisitor acts in accordance with the "The end justifies the means" proverb, thus "crossing the line" by slaughtering the flock he is actually sworn to safekeep.

Do you think it's Radical?

I think to destroy the hole ship would be a to the core puritan desicion! A puritan Inquisitor would not take the risk to let this Xeno-Threat spread any further. The end justifies the means - its just like that in the imperium of mankind...

A radical Inquisitor would be more likly try to catch the Xeno and do some nasty experiments or such to use the Xeno abilities for his advantage or just to get some forbidden knowledge.

That xenos sounds similar to a genestealer in that it infects humans. Whole worlds get burnt to deal with genestealer infestations.

Sometimes the innocent have to die.

Not really. Depending on the severity of the threat, it would be considered Radicalism by some of the more Puritan inquisitors not to destroy the entire ship to prevent its possible spread, "tis the only way to be sure".

As horrible as it is to contemplate killing tens of thousands of innocent people, when the alternative is the possibility of losing a whole planet/system with a population in the billions, destroying a ship seems the logical approach. A more humane approach such as attempting to isolate the xenos pathogens and sythesise an antidote would be considered more Radical (espeically if the alterier motive was to then use the "tamed" virus as a weapon). Such are the moral quandries of being an agent of the Inquisition.

O RLY?

Maybe you can recall Gav Thorpe's Angels of Darkness, where the Space Marines were lured to sacrifice more and more innocents only to discover that the real enemy was actually two steps ahead of them? They have stopped doing so, because killing more of those they have sworn to protect would mean crossing the line, in fact, while a Radical in this case would have chased his quarry (even despite it's a verisimilar trap) stepping over the corpses of the innocents.

So basically, I wanted to make it clear: if the Inquisitor uses an atrocity against the probability of bigger atrocities (instead of risking by acting in more subtle ways), will that be Radical? I stress it: it's only probable that bigger atrocities might follow.

And yes, I actually referred to a genestealer.

And by the way, "the end justifies the means" is actually accorded to the radicals, judging by wh40k.lexicanum.com.

egalor said:

No, it is perfectly in keeping with a hard-line Puritan approach that sacrifices thousands of lives a day, "for the good a humanity".

Radicalism and "the end justifies the means" is more about delving deeper into forbidden knowledge and attempting to use the enemies own weapons against them. Destroying an entire ship to prevent the spread of an xenos infection, while not a nice thing to do, is not in of itself Radical. Attempting to resolve the situation using daemonic and/or xenos means would be.

I say it depends more upon the method of destroying the population. First, I'll assume that any more subtle and less damaging methods are already tried and failed, or that there is no time for them. Else we have a case of Incompetent Inquisitor rather than any sort of ideology.

If you kill the potential breeding ground by good honest imperiumcreated prometheum applied by sisters of battle or by having the imperial fleet bombard, then you are a puritan.

If you kill the potential breeding ground by sending in your ork mercenaries or by using the warp-vortex that is created when you poke your bound daemon, then you are a radical. In this case the radicalism is in the extra risk that comes from interacting with aliens or daemons, but you save the imperium manpower and resources compared to the puritan way.

And of course every major mover suffers the risk of being played. This is why "doing good" in the Imperium as well as everywhere else is defined as "doing the best I can think of given the information I have access to". Because Inquistors tend to have much more info than the common citicen, they often appear as callous or bloodthirsty.

Ok, all, I seem to be convinced, thanks... will have to research other aspects of radicalism then.

The main radical philosiphies at "present" are concidered to be:

Istvaanism

Kick over the ant hill and the survivors will come back stronger. Strength through conflict, avoiding the weakness and corruption that sets in when peace reigns for too long. The Istvaanists will cite the sweeping changes to the Imperium after the Horus Heresy (started in the Istvaan system), the Reformation in the wake of the Reign of Blood and the countless other instances of worlds and institutions which thrive through struggle.

Recongregationism

The Imperium is rotting from within, and requires massive reform. To a Recongenerator it is far better that the inefficient systems be cast down and risk utter failure for the chance of triumph than to sit still and be content with things not getting much worse.

Xanthism

The most traditional radical groups, Xanthites advocate the use of Chaos to fight Chaos. They will use warp tech, traffic with daemons and curse the innocent to eternal damnation as the cost of ultimate victory.

"Better to burn a thousand innocents than to let one heretic go free"

Sounds like Puritanism to me

Thank you all,

-Thanquol

Nope, it's fine. You can bloe a planet up and sleep soundly at night knowing that the Emperor is pleased that you killed that one Metalworker with differing views. The Emperor loves you. The Innocent must die that the Tainted are destroyed.

Radicalism, is just that Radical. it is using radical means to accomplish regular or radical goals. like getting rid of xenos by capturing and studying them or getting rid of ghosts and evil spirits with witchcraft. they use the evil against itself.

Men must die so that Man endures few for the many a puritan would blow up a ship to save a world, a world for a system, or even a system for a galaxy because they know what one rotten apple can do to the bunch. a radical seeks out the apple and takes a bite of it instead of blowing it up.

Killing innocents during the quest of protecting the Imperium is standard Inquisitional practise :-)

I think these answers show why a secret war wages within the Inquisition. Every Inquisitor has there own take on what is the Imperial Truth and how that should be served. A Puritian to one Inquisitor will be a Radical to another...

"There is no such thing as Innocence...only guilt by degrees"

Is another not so often used Imperial saying. And it really gets to the heart of the whole debate as presented here. To the Puritian there is no such thing as innocence. If a world burns because some of its population brought forth the deamon then it was their own lack of vigiliance that brought forth the cleansing flames of Exterminatus.

This view, too many in the Imperium would be considered Radical but within the Inquisition itself is fairly Orthodox (Puritian).

Take the First War for Armaggedon. After facing off the World Eaters and the Deamon Hoardes led by their Traitor Primarch, the population of Armaggedon was interred into labour camps and on the whole sterilised. This was considered the soft option by the Inquisition, as Exterminatus was unviable in such circumstances (Armaggedon being too important a Hive World).

This uncomprimsing view of humanity was not shared by Logan Grimmnar Chapter Master (Wolf Lord?) of the Space Wolves chapter who bitterly resented the ignoble fate of those who had fought bravely. To him the Inquisition surely acted in a way outside the spirit of the Empero's law, in other words as Radicals.

My point is that Puritian and Radical are ingame terms so they are important labels, but that said they are just labels.

As a wise old Jedi ghost once said "you will find many things in life depend on our own point of view".

There are elements of all the 'Inquisitorial' philosephies that are both Radical and Puritian. For example the Imperium will allow humans to settle deathworlds without re-Terraforming them or otherwise making them more habitable. Deathworlds provide a great source of guardsmen in some circumstances because only the strongest, fittest survive a life of constant conflict. This reasoning is ultimatly Isstavanian at heart.

By contrast Monodominate philosephy is a touchstone for most Imperial citizens yet an Inquisitor who went out of his way to hunt down and destroy all Rouge Traders who contacted or traded with Xenos would probably be considered a dangerous Radical.

The Imperium hates and fears psykers and Inquisitors who activly promote the psychic evolution of mankind are Radicals, yet it is fundamentally Puritian to worship the Emperor...who is a Psyker.

The Grey Knights come to mind here.

Much of their personality and memory is erased as part of the process to turn them into a Grey Knight. Effectively killing the person, but leaving his body in a usable state once the new personality has been built.

The novel Grey Knights mentions that the crew of grey knights cruisers are also mind cleansed to make them more resistant to chaos. One of the knights in that book regularly thinks about how many innocents were sacrificed just to get them to the fight.

I haven't heard about and Inquisitor complaining about the Grey Knights sacrificing innocents (though that might be because the grey knights are very secretive). Especially since no grey knight has defected to chaos. Are there any groups that can say the same ?