In my campaign one of the acolytes is a carrier of pariah gene and connected to Culexus Temple assassins. She is not a Culexus assassin, or even nowhere near it yet, but could be considered an "assassin in training". The idea is that since the fully-trained Imperial Assassins are literally one-man (or one-woman) armies they must have had very extensive training and experience before getting their official seal of approval from their respective temple.

For the Culexus assassins infiltrating one of their own trainees into ranks of Adeptus Arbites and Inquisition is a very nice chance to get her some up close and personal experience in heretics, witches, xenos and all other deviant psykers she would be hunting if she ever makes it alive to the graduation day. However, the official material always portrays Culexus assassins in their full-fledged equipment and skills, including Ethereum and Animus Speculum so I'm a bit short of ideas on what kind of weapons and combat training and special equipment she would be provided as a trainee? Its sure the temple would not even consider giving out Ethereum or Animus Speculum to a mere untested trainee, but she must have training and weapons to survive and learn to (maybe) one day become a fully trained Officio Assassinorum operative.

So, what do you think? What kind of weapon and/or unarmed training would she receive? What weapons and/or special equipment would the assassins perhaps provide to her as a trainee?

To be honest, im not sure the Culexus Temple would even release assassins that haven't been fully trained yet, simply because of the rarity of Untouchables.

I mean, they are an even rarer commodity than psykers, and if your intention is to train specialized assassins with this particular trait you probably can't afford to "lease them out" as Inquisitorial Acolytes until they have actually completed their training and become fully fledged Culexus Assassins.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Pretty much.

Culexus is the rarest and most specialiazed of an already ridiculously rare and specialized group.

I say it's an awesome idea to have an undercover culexus in training hidden in the acolyte group. It fits right in with the Over-the-Top-again, Rule-of-Cool-controlled setting of the 40k world. Indeed there might be reasons why most pariahs, starting Culexii are not trained in this radical manner, but maybe this one is a test run? A part of a silly bet among some bored lords of Terra? A lord of the Culexus temple pulling strings to help a child of an old friend of hers to get out and about, rather than sitting in seclusion his whole youth?

One pretty obvious thing would be to hand the culexus an automatic weapon that is shouldermounted and connected to track and aim with his head/eye movement, to get a natural feeling for aiming the weapons available later. Maybe even the laser-shooting bionic eye (might be a RT item, but it's awesome, see commissar Yarrik). Add a bit of grenade training.

Then loads of training, forbidden lores, some melee weapons, awareness, scrutiny, infiltration, interrogation... things like that. Maybe even Psynisense (however it is spelled, and it must be a matter of lore discussion....)

While I agree with Vernias Tybalt, I also like to think you can do what you like as GM, the Officio Assassinorum (especially the Culxus Temple) is my favourite organisation.

while the fluff often stats that Assassinorum candidates are taken and trained from a young age in secrecy (Culexus is especially high on this becouse of their "Unusual condition") there is still the information from the Assassins section stating that the Temples chose their young candidates from among the most talented of "normal" assassins.

if you want to follow the idea you stated (as I beleive you will since its yours) there are somethings that I would start by suggesting two things they however require that you have access to the Rogue Trader Rulebook, the first as Mellon said is the cybernetic called a Baleful Eye which work as a built-in Hellpistol (I would suggest it is piece of equipment to be "worn" rather that integrated into her brain however) the second is the one that would fit best but "fluff-wise" require the Temple to persenally have trained her at least a little, give her the Unamed Warrior talent.

I understand that Pariahs or Blanks are very rare commodity, but there are examples of organizations other than Officio Assassinorum having them. The Adeptus Astra Telepathicus had their Sisters of Silence and even Inquisition Ordo Xenos has had a whole team of blanks, called "Distaff", which was finally destroyed circa 386.M41.

When compared to these I'd say leasing out an undercover trainee assassin out is actually less risky and a far better investment for the temple that you might think. Sheltering the trainees in the temple for the full period of training would make sense only if most of them were expected to graduate. However, I do not think this can be the case.

The blank gene is just one trait among many and alone doesn't make anyone a fully trained Culexus Assassin. In this respect I'd compare it with people having, for example, albinism. If you take out all the albinos on earth and put them through US Army Special Forces training program and Delta Force training regime, how many would really graduate in the end? Not many, I'd say. If the only selection criteria was being albino, how many of them would be able to psychologically handle themselves in real special operations? Even less.

If you have a batch of blanks as your recruit material and your intention is to produce a group of worlds most deadly assassins out of them you have to weed out the weak and mentally unsuitable. What better way to do that than to test them out there in "real action" even before they receive full training and are told all the secrets?

I'd go with just an untouchable following the assassin career to start and add in the other stuff as you go. Someone above suggested psyniscience, but as an untouchable that's right out.

One thing to remember about the covert angle however is this: While regular untouchables are undetectable by psychic powers, they make psykers uncomfortable (thus the Fel penalty with them), full-fledged Cullexus assassins are pariahs/psychic negatives to the extreme that they are void in the warp so abominable to psykers that it causes terror in psykers just by their presence. They need to be such in order to provide the anti-warp blasts from the Animus Speculum. An untouchable being groomed into a Cullexus may not be undetectable for long.

I'd expect more stuff on the comparable power-scale to temple assassins when Ascension comes out. In the interim, helmet mounted short ranged energy weapons, null rods, grenades and other anti-psychic weaponry seem to be the way to go.

Okay, so far I'm going with Assassin class and a few twists on skills and talents. To simulate her specific weapons and combat training I'll allow her to take talents Throwing Weapon Training, Pistol (Las), Unarmed Warrior, Unarmed Master and Duty Unto Death at any point of her career.

Also, I'll suggest she'll get the minimum skills of Acrobatics, Catfall, Dodge and Silent Move.

She is a Pariah, but has had no training on using her psychic negative abilities and is receiving heavy doses of suppressive medication from internal cybernetic implant. These are designed to keep her calm and emotionally detached so people are more likely to interpret any strange feelings about her to be because of her withdrawn and sullen behavior.

She is already suffering a heavy penalty to social rolls because of all this, but normal people are unable to pinpoint what makes them so uncomfortable. All psykers in her vicinity would certainly spot something seriously wrong, but unless they've heard of untouchables the psyker would be utterly incapable of describing what is actually wrong. At the moment this isn't much of an issue since she is (along with the other Acolytes) in Adeptus Arbites unit and they are pretty much shooting all psykers on sight anyway.

Naturally she is under surveillance at all times and the assassin "handler" set out to watch her possesses the remote control to her cybernetic implant making it possible to terminate her with an overdose of tranqualizing medicines if she does something very badly wrong or is about to end up in the hands of some hostile xenos.

When her "handler" feels she is ready for the next phase of training she will be provide with a mask that will for all purposes act like the Balefull Eye cybernetic implant with the exceptions that it is a wearable item and it must be loaded with normal power packs (using same clip capacity and reload rules as Hellpistol).

Polaria said:

The sisters of silence were created long before the Horus Heresy, and back then there's no indication that the Offico Assassinorum had been established yet.

As for Untouchables in the Inquisition, it's mainly because the Officio Assassinorum don't have the authority to "nab" an Untouchable belonging to an Inquisitor without that Inquisitors consent, even if they wanted to. And most Inquisitors consider it to be quite handy to have a walking psy-blocker around so they wouldn't want to separate from them most of the time. This was the case with the "Distaff" as they were a branch created by Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, and thus the Culexus Temple couldn't enlist people from the Distaff unless Eisenhorn gave his permission to do so.

Polaria said:

Hehe, have you read about where the Culexus Temple is located? They say that it is a very closely guarded secret, and it is rumoured to be located on a planet that orbits no sun and is well beyond the reach of the Astronomican. Even the eldar are afraid to go near it because they consider the place to be a rock inhabited by abominations.

I'd say that their sinister and feared reputation is quite well founded and they would have no problem in creating perfectly orchestrated training grounds for their candidates within the temple, never having the need to send their assassins out to "the real world" at all.

Also, once taken to the Temple, it would be a safe assumption that the candidates will have a 100 percent graduation rate. Mainly because Untouchables are so incredibly rare, and those few untouchables of sufficient strength in their ability even rarer. They just don't have the resources to let any Untouchable go to waste, and thus would most likely not bother with "trial by fire's" like sending them out on probation periods with the Inquisition.

If there's any flaw that needs to be fixed with any candidate, be it in their mind, their soul or even their body, they would most likely have the resources to rectify such flaws either through bionics, vat-grown organs and tissue, torture-like psychological indoctrination. And if it is a matter of not learning the necessary skills fast enough, then this would mean their graduation is simply postponed.

Quite simply, they wouldn't spare any expenses into forming every single candidate into what they are destined to become. They can't afford to "flunk" candidates, because they are already extremely rare as it is.

Still, that being said, there is no mention of exactly when a person is brought in to the temple to become a candidate. While it has been written that "usually" the Culexus Temple recruits people from the Schola Progenium or from certain Feral Worlds when they are still pretty young, I don't see any reason why they would want to turn down even an adult Untouchable if they could get their hands on him/her. If that untouchable have certain unwanted memories adn experiences, then they can always simply mindscrub/brainwash that person before training begins.

So I can't see anything that would stand in the way of an Untouchable Assassin eventually being "discovered" by a Culexus Temple agent and taken in for training later on. But that wouldn't be appropriate for a starting character in DH. It could be a goal to achieve in the future of the campaign, but personally I just don't see the how or why the Culexus Temple would lease out their trainees.

Like I said, they are too expensive as a commodity and they really can't risk losing their trainees by simply letting them out of the temple too early on. They would most likely have everything they need to train them into fully fledged assassins on-site, and only releasing them into official service once they have graduated. Not ever before that.

That doesn't prevent the character from having certain "ties" with the Culexus Temple of course. Perhaps the character has been introduced to a recruiting agent, and that agent has expressed a certain interest in the character and would like the character to rise through the ranks to reach enough personal autonomy to eventually be persuaded into being recruited by the Officio Assassinorum. And that interest might manifest itself in "special favors" of sorts provided by the Officio Agent, simply because that Agent wouldn't want the assassin to get killed in Inquisitorial service before the assassin has become "ripe for the picking".

Polaria said:

I don't know if you've read it yet, but have you read Disciples of the Dark Gods for Dark Heresy? They deal with the game mechanics for Untouchables in that book, so it might be worth looking into if you haven't gotten it yet.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Except possibly the Heresy-era novel - called Nemesis - about the Assassins that's due out next year. It's likely to shed some light on the origin on the Officio Assassinorum...

Varnias Tybalt said:

This is the place where my opinions strongly differ from what Varnius' opinion. If we look at the unit stats of Culexus assassin in WH40K, we'll see that these guys and girls are tough enough to make any other human, no matter how well trained, look like wimps. Inquisitor High Lords, Adepta Sororitas Canonesses and all other hand-picked, highly trained heroes are still inferior in raw stats to single Culexus Temple assassin. I simply cannot believe that no matter having your own planet and having Imperial resources in your call you could quarantee a 100% success rate in producing this high level of operators unless the recruit material was already exeptional to start with.

Besides, all the other assassin temples have the same advanced science in their call and the Callidus, Eversor and Vindicare assassins, who are most certain to be hand-picked from the very best the Schola Progenum can offer, are still not superior in abilities to Culexus. Thus, I'd say its safe to assume that any Culexus assassin who actually makes it off the secret planet as a fully trained assassin wasn't just "joe-the-average with certain gene". No, they were were outstanding, special individuals and untouchables.

Now the problem that remains is of course the rarity of pariah gene... According to canon the random mutation is about 1 in billion affair and most of the random mutations are killed young by their fellow humans. This is, by the way, another reason why I don't believe Culexus are recruited from Schola Progenum and Feral Worlds like other assassins are. Schola Progenum trains only a miniscule fraction of all people born in Imperium and Feral Worlds, although common, have very small population.

However, according to Lexicanum (which only deals in canon) "The Pariah gene is passed on as is any other gene, or occurs through random mutation." As we do not have canon on where or how the Culexus assassins are recruited in my campaign they arent found , they are bred . Culexus Temple keeps tabs on a few thousand genetic lines, all with Pariah gene in them, and constantly interbreed these lines to produce a high likelyhood of untouchable birth (Dune and Bene Gesserit de ja vu anyone?). After this all these individuals are tested and only the best are picked to be brought into Culexus Temple for full training. As Imperium is a huge places the methods of testing are various. Some "handlers" use training and observation in closed environment to pick the best, other use "trial by fire" methods, yet third might produce thousands of vat grown embryos, genetically scan them, abort all but the best few and bring them to Culexus Temple as children, raising them into Temple from babies.

Polaria said:

All Imperial Assassins, regardless of which temple have the exact same stats in the table top strategy game, so what do you mean with the Culexus being superior in ability to the other assassins?

Also, if you're using Lexicanum as a source of canon, then here's the low down of all assassins:

Assassins are recruited at a very young age, from the orphans of Imperial servants raised in the Schola Progenium, and from the populations of feral worlds. They then undergo ten years of intensive training at the School of Assassins on Terra. From then onwards they live and operate from one of the Assassin temples said to be located somewhere on Terra. They are harshly tested and trained, their senses and resolve heightened with implants . Even after the initial training, the life of an agent of the Officio remains hard and unforgiving.

The temples use many exotic types of equipment, such as synskin, a substance that once sprayed onto the body, forms a black outer skin which protects the wearer from the environment and enhances strength.

As you can see, even Culexus assassins are recruited from the Schola and from feral worlds. And as for the part in bold text, if the can heighten someones resolve with implants, it stands to reason that you could make that person train hard enough to reach the graduation standards required.

A body might break from exhaustion, but muscles can be healed and bones can be mended. Usually what separates those who succeed from those who don't is a matter of resolve. If they can increase that resolve with implants, then I don't see why they would have difficulties achieving a 100 percent success rate. There's more to the saying "mind over matter" than most people think, and if these institutions have managed to make people master their mind with the help of technology, then all of them should be able to reach the maximum of human potential, regardless of gender, background or personality.

As for comparisons with Inquisitors and Adepta Sororitas, they can't really be applied since neither Inquisitors nor the Sisters of Battle have to undergo the same standardized procedures and training that assassins do. The sororitas are just warrior nuns in power armour, driven by faith and little else. Inquisitors are a diverse bunch and can't be standardized at all.

Imperial Assassins are trained to be tools of murder. With the intention to be over-specialized unlike Adepta Sororitas and Inquisitors, who both have to master many disciplines and skills.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I think he was saying that the others weren't superior to Culexus.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Well, it says "assassins are recruited at very young age..." and so on, it doesn't say exacatle how this is done. In my campaign Culexus breed their recruits and thus you could say there are recruited from baby. And maybe they are bred in Schola Progenum just to make it easier to watch it. That way even my version of "how" would fill that text to letter.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Any man can be made to run fast

Any man can be made strong

Any man can be taught to shoot accurately

Any man can be taught how to fight

Still, I don't belive that joe-the-average can be made an super olympic athlete, perfect marksman, master of close combat and psyhcologically ready to use all his skills and abilities to kill another man when alone in extremely stressfull environment.

Heightening senses and resolve is not the same thing as giving someone unlimited willpower and the exact psychological talents needed. You could always argue that even these can be induced by outside influence, but I don't think you could do that with very large success rate without using some sort of psychic surgery and in this case I don't think they can make an imperial psychic mindwash a Culexus trainee...

Exceptional deeds still require exceptional people.

Varnias Tybalt said:

If you could make joe-the-average equal to Imperial Assassin just by increasing his resolve and putting him into intense training regime, then why won't Space Marines do they same and churn out thousands of troopers equal to Imperial Assassins in raw stats and ability?

Why is there so few Eversor Assassins? Or Vindicare Assassins?

For Space Marines, who do use medication, implants and DNA restructuring to make it clearly says: "Potential recruit is first subjected to testing, including tissue compatibility tests and psychological screening. Relatively few get past this initial screening process"

Even though this is not expressly stated in canon, I belive, and thus it stands in my campaign, that all Officio Assassinorum recruits are actually tested and screened even harder and whereas maybe 10% pass the Space Marine testing the same number in any assassin temple is even less. The Culexus simply make up for the rarity of required pariah gene by extensive breeding program... And, of course, there is still far less Culexus assassins than Vindicare, for example.

Have you considered that maybe the inquisitor has ties to the Ordo Sicarius? I'm not entirely sure how that ties into your campaign, but i believe that that could provide the most plausible reason for the team to have an initiate/potential assassin in their team, because the inquisitor of the Ordo Sicarius pulled a few strings.

But even then, i don't imagine that this happens often.

If the Master Culexus has decided to pursue a breeding program, perhaps this character is the first of a such a program (sort of consolidating the two notions of how assassins are recruited) and in order to justify the probably massive cost of such an endeavour, Sicarius wants one of their field agents (who has experienced the Culexus before) to make a judgement about the results of such a breeding program?

Just an idea.

If you're interested, the Thorian source book possesses a story concerning a Callidus(pg 15) from when she was recruited to when she was experimented on by the Assassinorum. It also contains some pretty good background on the workings of inquisitors and the thorians (i wish they had done the same with the other factions).

I highly doubt the said contained there in is standard, and does it necessarily disprove what Tybalt says about assassins and how their recruited.

In response to what you said about their not being as many assassins if there was a 100% success rate (which also the story indicates is not the case for the callidus at least), such a process does not mean that it is highly efficient (in fact, if it is imperial, it can't be efficient!) and the technology probably can't be mass produced much further beyond an individual scale.

Cool idea, i look forward to seeing how it develops.

The story of Asaid Virenus in Thorian Faction Sourcebook is actually one of the things why I believe Assassin temples don't have (or even try to have) 100% pass rate in training. Although arguably Asaid was recruited in rather non-standard manner she was presented to Callidus Temple because of her natural talent in infiltration, disguise and mimicry. She had proven "track record" in being able to accomplish pretty huge things in this field even with no training at all. Still Callidus tested her physical ability, intelligence and personality before taking her in and might have flunked her there and then because her personality profile didn't please them. After five years of training (which must have costed a pretty penny) it still looked like her personality was unsuitable for service and they would have terminated her training (and ended her life) if not for Inquisitor stepping in.

This raises some very interesting points:

If you could enhance human physical potential almost infinitely what do you need physical testes for?

The recruits were tested for intelligence, presumably to see if they were intelligent enough to pass the training. According to modern science IQ is partly genetic and inheritary but also affected by the experiences of very early age (first few years of baby). After certain age you can't "teach people to be intelligent".

Nonselfish, compliant and loyal personality was needed and apparently the training had its limits in shaping that. Otherwise why bother wasting five years of training on someone just to put on bullet on her head when she doesn't do what asked?

If Callidus temple screens recruits by physical talents, intelligence and personality why wouldn't Culexus do the same?

Surely Culexus has a very small pool to recruit from in the first place (unless they breed untouchables in which case it might not be that small) but then again do we really know what the recruitment standards of Callidus, Eversor or Vindicare are? We know Culexus assassins are more rare than others, but it doesn't mean the other temples wouldn't be looking for one-in-million individuals.

If Callidus can't fix trainees personality and are ready to kill her off because of that why would Culexus choose to recruit or train someone with obvious personality flaws?

Then we have to take into account the huge size of Imperium. When you look at the typical populations of planets its easy to conclude that any one sector must have thousands of billions of inhabitants. Accordingly the who Imperium might easily have a populations of several trillions. In this scale the thousand chapters of thousand marines each aren't a huge mass of troops. In a population of, say, 10 trillion, a million marines would mean one in 10 million inhabitants. That literally means even marines are practically hand-picked. According to sources the pariah gene is one in billion mutation, meaning that in average planet of 5 billion inhabitants you'd have maybe one such induvidual born every generation. This still means that in the scale of the whole Imperium you would have 200 untouchables born every year. Even if you didn't find all of them you'd still have room for failure there.

And this is just assuming Culexus recruited from general population alone. As pariah gene is passed on like any other gene and Culxus do have a whole planet of their own in their use breeding untouchables doesn't seem like a far fetched idea. Why waste resources on trying to weed out the desirables from a population the size of whole imperium when you can homegrow your stock and control their upbringing right from start?

(This forum need "edit" button)

Continuing on the last one. As with many other things the "canon" of where and how the Assassins are recruited seems to be conflicting on several points. As previously mentioned some sources point ot Schola Progenum and Feral Worlds as a source of recruits who would then be trained from very young age in the Temples.

On complete reversal of this Dark Heresy sourcebook says following about Assassins:

"Unbeknownst to even the aspirants that belong to these semi-legal organizations and cults most, if not all, are fronts for Assassin Temples that form the highly secretive Officio Assassinorum, for this is where the Temple Masters recruit and induct the most promising individuals

...

If an Assassin survives long enough into his career and his superiors deem him worthy, he will be unknowingly tested. The trials are likely extremely lethal, and so those deemed lacking are unlikely to survive. The few who do succesfully make it through the trials become initiates in one of the Assassin Temples, although Assassin is unaware of this even at this stage."

Polaria said:

Perhaps to determine exactly how much you need to augment the individual candidate, and be able to calculate the costs versus the benefits?

I mean, you don't need to improve an individual's strength that much if the individual is already strong as an ox from the get go. It would just be a waste of resources.

The same goes for intelligence tests and personality tests. They need to assess exactly how much need to be improved or changed before putting the operative into service, and they'd also need to be able to calculate how much time in training the operative would need before being complete. (how much mindscrubbing that needs to be done and so forth)

Also, much in the way of bionics, cybernetics and vat-grown organs and tissue needs to be custom made for the user in order to operate at maximum efficiency, if you want everything to work smoothly and make a better killer.

While the other temples might afford to be more selective about their candidates since neithe Callidus, Eversor or Vindicare assassins need much in the way of "special" abilities like the Culexus do. The Culexus Temple is normally more hard pressed to make do with what they get/find (barring your personal addition to the setting where you say that they breed untouchables, which isn't mentioned anywhere in the original canon), mainly because Untouchables are too rare to pass up simply because the unaugmented candidates don't live up to certain requirements.

Hence the Culexus Temple's equations in assessing viable candidates would most likely be a lot more forgiving than the other temples. When trying to create the perfect killer you might afford to be selective and only take "the best of the best", but you can't "train" someone into being an untouchable. It's an extremely rare genetic trait, that doesn't even show signs of being hereditary either (most generations only seem to act as carriers of the pariah gene rather than actually having it as a dominant gene).

So Culexus will most likely be much more accepting of their candidates, but will seek to outweigh their lacking skills, talents and abilities by heavy modification, both mental and physical, in order to make them fit the standards.

Polaria said:

(this forum has got an edit button )

I don't think that conflicts much at all with what we're discussing here. The Officio Assassinorum isn't only comprised of the four Temples featured in the Daemonhunters and Witchhunters codexes you know. It's just that the Vindicare, the Callidus, the Eversor and the Culexus focus primarily on training specialist assassins, designed to take on very specific tasks under specific circumstances.

But the Officio Assassinorum have plenty of other Temples under it's control as well (the Temple Venenum and the Temple Vanus being two of them), it's just that these four are the most infamous and sinister ones who have gained a mythical reputation in certain circles of imperials society. The other temples can number in the hundreds of thousands, but they are most likely relatively small, localized and more secretive. And it is most likely these temples that the Assassins in Dark Heresy unknowingly work for or are tested by.

You could say that the four infamous temples are to the more obscure temples, what Space Marines are to the Imperial guard.

Besides, if the Officio Assassinorum was only comprised of four temples, it wouldn't be reasonable to have an entire Ordos of the Inquisition tasked at regulating and controlling their activities. The Ordo Sicarius will most likely have to deal with assassin activities everywhere in the Imperium of man, commited by a wide variety of assassins of a multitude of different temples with their own creeds and specializations. Temples (or "deathcults") like The Moritat, The Sons of Dispater or The Astral knives. All of them are likely to have some sort of connection with the Officio Assassinorum and being under the scrutiny of the Ordo Sicarius.