Hello all.

I must ask this, as I've wondered about it quite a bit:

As a Deathwatch Gamemaster, has anyone managed to get
the inquisitorial faction's plots and schemes across as a result
of inquisitors belonging to the puritan view or the radical one?

And, has this in any way affected the marines in their work?


This is core questions for me as I plan to incorporate this in my
DW GMing soon, if at all possible. All answers are welcome.

I think that any organization like the Inquisition is bound to have a certain degree of infighting, but you don't even need to have radical or orthodox enter in to it - There's plenty of room for the power struggles of individual Inquisitors, even within the same faction, to cause loads of problems. When members of an organization given as much leeway as the Inquisition fight, you get **** like planets being given the Exterminatus as the fallout from that kind of thing - definitely high-stakes conflict.

Yes, I think I've done a decent job in my campaign of showing my players the friction between different factions of the Inquisition. I started by having the kill team work for different inquisitors on different missiions and emphasized through roleplaying their different personalities and phrasing their mission objectives in ways that reflect their faction or their level of puritanism or radacalism. Even making tertiary objectives included that would raise players' eyebrows as being particularly radical (capturing xenos tech that should be destroyed, for example) or particularly puritan (mass execution of innocent citizens on unsubstantiated suspicion of relatively minor crimes). Giving them a clear example of what the differences are is a good start. Then I put the kill team in the middle, two of the inquisitors got in a fight on the watch fortress at the peak, then there was a trial and since its been a long simmering feud between those two, while other inquisitors either took sides or used the drama to conduct side business on Eiroch. Like i said, the biggest thing is to show the players the differences between different factions, then add drama that emphasizes those differences. Hope it was helpful without too much rambling.

Two good answers! Thanks you very much, and surely I detected no ramblings there!

The question is now how I'm going to conduct this in the next part of TEP, part 2,
where I've replaced the original scenario with the one in the GM's Kit "Shadows of
Madness". I have also totally ditched Inquisitor Quist (I mean seriously - who the
Huckleberry H*CK came up with that name???) - Quizzie Quistie in my ears - with
my own Inquisitor Carmelius (which sounds like caramels - I know, sorry).

I've also changed the way the marines work for The Inquisition. To me, The Holy
Inquisition is definately above ALL the marines, even the Watch Commander is
taking all orders directly from the Tower of Brass. And in my version, every KT that
is to go on a mission is called to "The Door". That's not the Omega Vault Door, but
instead the main entrance to the Tower of Brass top level = Inquisitor Office HQs.

Here, the door looks like the front of the DW Collector's Edition box (but much bigger),
with the laser-eyed skull relief measuring everyone standing outside it, up and down with
the laserlight. Then a hatch opens under the skull and one can make of the silhouette
of a man in an Inquisitor's cowl talking gravely and curtly about the order ahead.

Then an envelope is handed through the hatch slit, which details the mission in greater
detail, and the hatch then slam shut. This is oftenly the only contact KTs have with
Inquisitors - if they don't accompany the KT on the mission.

I'd like this Carmelius to be a really strict puritan, with absolutely no understanding for
the study of Xeno artefacts, etc. That's also why he likes the aloof dealings with the
KT marines. In his mind, everyone is better off if the marines are held at bay, and only
used as a superb weapon, not to socialize with.

I am going to include the missing inquisitor from the "A Stony Sleep". Well that's I have
right now...

That is a pretty cool method of doing things. I wish i had done something early on where I made clear the team is subordinate to the inquisition, because I now have to deal with my players trying to step up to inquisitors, and its really irritating to have to keep reminding my players that they cant say anything they want just because they dont like that inquisitor. Anyway, reguardless of how the marines get their mission, inquisitors still operate in the field, and presumably there isnt a taboo on inquisitors meeting their teams in the field, even if Carmillus, being the highest ranking inquisitor, has her signature on every mission reguardless of what inquisitor is really preparing the mission. Especially if ur trying to emphasize intrigue between factions, that is a way to circumvent carmillus that other inquisitors up to no good (or on lines of inquiry that carmillus would not approve of). As for Quist, I use her periodically, as a radical especially since the team is made up of mostly Dark Angels and Black Templars, and they're all pretty puritanical. With the Emperor Protects, i can't say too much. I've read it but havn't run it so i dont want to presume too much to how it works when players are confronted with it. I ran Shadows, and as written it went fine, but ur talking about a Stony Sleep? It would take come cleverness but to recover an inquisitor could be an achievable mssion, but it would be more likely to come to the team as just kill him from the start. When I do run it, im not allowing one of humanity's most badass defenders, someone who presumably has seen (and inflicted) some of the worst situations and atrocities the qalaxy offers, to be a crying, quivering child-like pathetic pile. Not happening. There are pleanty of ways a persons mind can be broken without emarassing the inquisition and the charachters like that.

Lionus said:

Thanks for your open-hearted comments. I think you could toughen up the whole situation if the marines think they're above the Holy Inquisition. Make a drastic change in how things operate. Maybe the inquisitor now in charge is assassinated or "dethroned" and replaced with another MUCH more stern inquisitor who'll bear no insolence, or the marines will find themselves in the brig! Or, as I will make happen, the ammo supplies on Erioch is going to blow up to about 80%, which makes ammunition scarce and therefore the missions that more precarious (this has nothing to do with your situation, but it's an example of drastic change). It's a certain Diaz Lan (infected by a genestealer) that's makes this possible. As the is caught collecting a lot of xenos artefacts and the Inqusition doesn't take lightly to that kind of affairs, he gets an ultimatum. Let the Inquisition impound all these artefacts or stand trial right away! The infected Lan complies, but also complains of being "stripped" of good defensive weapons, and pleads to the Deathwatch for atleast one new Imperial weapon of choice. The Inquisition accepts the deal and lets the rogue trader into the weapon stores to choose which weapon he wants. That's when he slips a bomb in there. Then Diaz Lan departs from Erioch and the DW starts to hear reports about sabotage to relay stations (as described in the TEP text).

I feel I should point out that Space Marine chapters and the Inquisition are more or less on par as power and influence go in the Imperium. The Astartes are not acolytes or minions to be pushed around at will, nor does it serve the Imperium all that well to sabotage them because they made a comment about the Inquisitor's mother...

LockLock said:

Your views are duly noted, but they are not mine. No offense, but in my version of DW (which stands), the Holy Inquisition are the brains, and marines are the superb fighting force of those brains. Not that marines are not intelligent - they're just not expected to make the big overall decisions of the Holy Inquisition.

So, the interesting situation comes, when the marines actually START to think and make decisions that are quite often on a crash course with the orders they have from above. That's the real fun in Deathwatch IMHO.

dracopticon said:

No offense taken. I merely pointed that out because, fanboy that I am, I always feel a bit annoyed when an Inquisitor figuratively pisses all over the Spehs Mehreens, and the method of delivering a mission for the kill-team kinda stepped on my toes a bit. Doesn't help I had little sleep tonight and have a chronic dislike for inquisitors. xD

Anyway, I think the DW RPG books portray the Deathwatch as a far more independent organization than previously, when they were "just" the chamber militant of the Ordo Xenos. Possibly they exaggerated its independence from the Inquisition a bit, at least from what I read. That said, I've never played a campaign with you, so I'm probably making a storm out of a glass of water.

EDIT: All that said and done, and to get this back on track, I do believe that the Deathwatch are as likely to become involved in the internal affairs of the Ordo Xenos as any other group. It's pretty much the plot of Warrior Brood (Deathwatch novel). The Space Marines are sent to clean up a mess that had its origin in a radical Inquisitor's.. Experiments. I won't spoil it more for those who haven't read it.

LockLock said:

Thanks for the input! Chronic dislike for Inquisitors?? Please read Dan Abnetts Eisenhorn trilogy - it's astonishingly good! And astonishingly different in how the inquisitors work from my point of view. In one of the books there's even some Deathwatch marines accompanying Eisenhorn, and they are described in such an interesting way. You've probably read those books. So, can it be you dislike inquisitors in the DW game - as a gamemaster??

Lack of sleep does horrendous things to peoples personalities - I've been there. And you did not offend me in any way if you thought that. Thanks for the explanation. I see what you mean with the "figurative pissing". But IMHO, Inquisitors is to marines, what commissars is to guardsmen: meddling busy-bodies with more power than any one individual can handle. And they are many times in their right to wield such power since no one else KNOWS what could happen if they didn't intervene. They can see stuff in the long run, what will come out of patterns of behaviour among citizens and xenos alike.

I will take Inquisitor Carmelius from his office and make him accompany the marines in the adventure I think. He'll be hellbent on destroying any and all xeno artefacts they come across, which will be foolish in the extreme as the marines and the Inquisition needs samples of what the Samech are up to, to be able to sniff out what's cooking.

That Warrior Brood book sounds real interesting. Who's the author??

dracopticon said:

Lack of sleep does horrendous things to peoples personalities - I've been there. And you did not offend me in any way if you thought that. Thanks for the explanation. I see what you mean with the "figurative pissing". But IMHO, Inquisitors is to marines, what commissars is to guardsmen: meddling busy-bodies with more power than any one individual can handle. And they are many times in their right to wield such power since no one else KNOWS what could happen if they didn't intervene. They can see stuff in the long run, what will come out of patterns of behaviour among citizens and xenos alike.

Space Marines are perfectly capable of seeing things in the long run as well - they're peak-intelligence humans with oftentimes centuries of experience and some of the best resources in the galaxy at their beck and call. Running Inquisitors as the masterminds pulling the strings and the Space Marines as hapless mooks is pulling against type pretty hard; I'd think that it wouldn't really be standard Deathwatch at that point.

dracopticon said:

Do you mean Inquisitor Carmillus? Who is a 'she?'

Once again I think the quoting system on this page malfunctioned. But I got your question.
No I have replaced her (Carmillus) also, with Carmelius (a he).

Sorry for the delay in replying.

The Deathwatch novels were written by C.S. Goto, who is not the most popular author due to his work in the Dawn of War novelization. I can say however that I remember Warrior Brood as an enjoyable book.

LockLock said:

Ok, maybe that book is good. I did make a try to read his first Deathwatch novel, but I'm too influenced by Dan Abnett's excellent writing style. Graham McNeill, Ben Counter and James Swallow are also good, but not as enjoyable as Abnett IMHO.