I am currently running a campaign where the Inquisitor is at complete odds with the PCs. I know they will plan to kill the Inquisitor later on in the game and I just want some advice as to whether they are allowed to actually do this. The Inquisitor is a radical whom uses Xenos relics against both other Xenos and forces of Chaos. There is even circumstances where he would ally with Xenos for the greater good. Now I don't want the Players to kill the Inquisitor and not suffer the penalties for it. How exactly should I handle it in this situation?

Lokan said:

As with many things in DW…it depends.

In the right circumstances a Deathwatch marine could kill an Inquisitor with relative impunity. Those situations aren't exactly common however. As noted in the book, some Inquisitors end up dead who try and overrule the authority of the Deathwatch.

How well does the Inquisitor get along with the Watch Captain/Commander? How well do they get along with the Inquisitor of the Chamber? How radical is too radical for the authorites that be in your world? Is the Inquisitor an ally or the mission authority?

I would put them on trial, and have them make their case in court. Tracking down witnesses that corroberate their justification could be a whole mission in and of itself. Make the players sweat some blown social skills rolls, and have every Imperial official they have offended during the campaign testify against them. Try to make the players as nevous as possible by holding the disgrace of being stripped of their place in the Adeptus Astartes (and, oh yeah, also executed) as the potential penalty; but, if they can make a compelling argument, let them off with an official judgement of justifiable homicide. If they can't make a good case for their actions, well… Black Crusade , anyone?

Well even If in eyes of their peers their action would be justified, remember that this Radical Inquisitor have more Radical friends. So they would be hunted by dead men acolytes and throne agents and his colleagues, other Inquisitors. As we know from Ascension, Throne Agents are totally overpowered .

If an Inquisitor is foolish enough to offend a Space Marine, he deserves what he gets.

AluminiumWolf said:

If a Space Marine is foolish enough to believe he can kill off an Inquisitor on a whim, he deserves what he gets.

Space Marine don't care.

AluminiumWolf said:

Yeah, see how that works when your actions get your chapter declared Excommunicate Traitoris by the dead guy's friends.

Best option is to have an allied Inquisitor condemn the enemy as a radical and use the Deathwatch as his tool of purgation. At least then your have Inquisitorial remit on your side, but best gear up for an inevitable shadow war.

I essentially want it to be that they either do as the Inquisitor says or simply kill him. I wont make it easy as the Inquisitor knows that people on both ends of the spectrum are after his life. I was thinking of having it as a twist where they kill someone posing as an Inquisitor (and the real one simply uses him as a cover).

In all seriousness, the issue is very murky. On one hand, nobody **** with the Inquisition and lives to tell the tale. On the other hand, Deathwatch is supposed to be a semi-independent structure with high prerogatives, and the word of a distinguished Astartes should carry a lot of weight, even with the Inquisition.

So, it would boil down to the exact circumstances. Do they do it on a mission with the Inquisitor? Do they do it just as he does something outrageously radical, or do they wait for the first opportunity when there are no witnesses, and lie about the whole thing later? How well connected is the Inquisitor in question? What were his relations with the commander of the Watch Fortress? Was he the Inquisitor of the Chamber there, or just one of the Inquisitors requesting DW assistance?

Depending on those, the fallout may be either overt or covert. I do believe some Insanity and Corruption points are in order for them killing their theoretical superior, and realizing that even the Inquisition is corruptible. More Corruption if they conspire and hide the truth, less if they admit everything freely and willingly submit to judgement.

Like I tend to say, if it comes down to a competition between who is cooler - the Space Marine PCs and a Not A Space Marine NPC, in a Space Marine game the Marines win.

And it isn't like a rogue Inquisitor is an unusual boss fight. I think that if at the end of an adventure it turns out that an Inquisitor did it and you kill him, very few players are going to be deeply surprised. So, like, don't punish the players for showing some proactivity and selecting their own targets based on an entirely in universe worldview rather than waiting for the GM to flag the Inquisitor as attackable. Just act as if you intended the guy to be a villain all along.

So if you want, there is no need to treat a radical Inquisitor flaunting his heresy in front of some hardline Marines and getting offed for his trouble as basically nothing more than an unfortunate industrial accident.

And when all is said and done, the guy is a filthy Xenos loving heretic and must be purged.

:0)

(So, I would have their Watch Captain agree with their assessment that the guy needed killing for the good of the Imperium and go to bat for them in any fallout that might result. Possibly, in the vein of a Police Captain talking to a Maverick Cop who has just killed an obviously corrupt Senator, he will suggest that he can buy them 24 hours to gather evidence to show the evil of the Inquisitor. And said evidence is readily obtainable at the Inquisitors secret base, where the depths of his deviancy will be revealed…)

Morangias said:

I must disagree with you on this one. Why would they get Insanity Points or Corruption Points for killing an Inquisitor? Its not all that different from killing other guys except for cultural issues and since they are not acting under influence from daemonic powers why would they get Corruption Points?

Gurkhal said:

I believe finding treachery and heresy in the very heart of your own organization warrants some psychic backlash. Whether it should be in the form of Insanity or Corruption is debatable, but I'd definitely hand out a few points, if only to increase the drama.

p278 of the DW core book cites amongst other way for battle brother to gain insanity points:

"acts of betrayal by fellow Battle-Brothers or trusted allies"

If their supposed superior is exposing views that are counter to the Imperium as the battle brothers have been indoctrinated to believe in, yes, there is scope for mental turmoil.

Corruption? No, because that solely has to do with the warp and the insidous tendrils of Chaos.

As for killing the Inquisitor, as secret operations specialists, they can surely engineer an opportunity to off the Inquisitor. But keeping the murder or their involvement hidden will be brutally hard. Between interrogation, auto-seances, divination and verispex work, the Inquisition has many means to ascertain what actually happened. Then it's down to political connections and how well the battle brothers can justify themselves to their superiors and allies.

Decessor said:

You're probably right.

I think early in Black Industries design process for Dark Heresy, they had three mechanics: insanity, corruption and taint (the latter becoming the modern corruption). So while some of the early BI books had "corruption" handed out for moral failings those were likely artefacts that weren't removed by the design process.

Another thought on the inquisitor. The DW core book has a bit to say about radicals and puritans on p317 and notes that "extremists tend to moderate their position when working with, or making requests of, the Deathwatch". That suggests an Inquisitor who is too brazen on either end of the spectrum would court trouble. Inquisitors do not act with caution unless they have reason to, *especially* the extremists. If this radical is being so blatant about his actions then perhaps his allies won't miss one who acts with such incaution and who brings them into disrepute with the powerful Deathwatch.

I am simply suggesting that maybe the Inquisitor does have radical beliefs in how he perceives both Chaos and Xenos. The inquisitor justifies his actions as few resources are at their disposal at this time and would prefer having Xenos fight with chaos or amongst each other for the better of the Imperium. I talked about the idea of a radical inquisitor with one of the players and he believes it would be more interesting to have a more conservative Inquisitor rather than a Radical. The player (more knowledgeable about 40k than me) had said that Deathwatch use Xenos technology against the Xenos. I was confused as they would be completely opposed to all Xenos.

Lokan said:

It is pretty easy to play a narrow minded, xenophobic, warmongering, fascist bigot in 40k and say that you are just playing your character. Some probably even think that is part of the fun, although you probably shouldn't admit that to your mum.

'An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded' and all that.

As ever, 'I was just playing my character!' is not really an excuse for doing stuff that another participant doesn't enjoy.

So I don't know. If the guy consorts with Xenos most of the Imperium and a hefty fraction of the Inquisition itself are going to think he is irredeemably corrupt, so you could just write him off as a bad guy. If you were feeling especially kind he could turn out to have been turned by the Tau or an Eldar infiltrator simulacrum all along, and well done the players for figuring it out.

But, I mean, part of the problem is that as a player the only NPCs worth killing are the ones the GM doesn't want you to kill, so the problem may rear its head again even if you give in.

On the issue of using Xenos technology against them, this is indirectly addressed in the core rule book in the form of the Masking Screen, which is derived from Tau stealth technology. Additionally, the Forge Master in Rites of Battle features both fluff and mechanics that support the possibility of begrudging use of Xenos tech, so I wouldn't say it never happens.

Well…this guy is an inquisitor so he is very radical and has lots of "friends". I have a saying the best way to deal with radicals is with more radicals. Get the ordo hereticus to try him for hearsy. I would have the pc's do some personal favors for the imquistor trying him to ensure he is found guilty. Could make this favor be any sort of seemingly moraly wrong thing the kill team wont feel great about doing and if you do it right they might even feel regret.

AluminiumWolf said:

Wolf, what you never seem to get when it comes to questions like this, is that people are usually trying to come up with an answer that generally makes sense within the universe. That is, using as little Handwavium in the situation as possible. What makes your advice so.. counter-productive is that comments like the above suggest they using 100% Handwavium. Being the PC's (or Space Marines) doesn't automatically give them a get-out-of-jail-free card for killing an Inquisitor. If OP had decided upon that already, they wouldn't have really made the thread.

Now with that done. Space Marines are one of the wild cards of the Imperium, Chapter Masters being a Peer of the Imperium (that is, roughly about equal rank as Inquisitors, Rogue Traders, and other high up muckity-mucks). Aside from some general guidelines, rather than hard and fast rules, they have the freedom to tell other parts of the Imperium to go screw themselves, if they want to. In the case of Space Marines, this includes matters of discipline and censure (so the Inquisition can't order a Chapter Master to execute this soldiers). And while some Chapters have been excommunicated, with few exceptions it's been for good reasons (by the fluff). Even more importantly to the current topic, Inquisitors doing investigations on Astartes Chapters who enjoy their privacy (like the Dark Angels) have been known to have 'accidents', with no further apparent reprecussions for the Chapter.

As for the Radical, well honestly it depends on how Radical they are. Summoning daemons and that sort of thing is definetly going to earn them a bolt round to the brainpan. But tricking Xenos and Chaos in to decimating each other instead of the Imperium? Well, that depends on how tight he appears with either side, but in general only the most extremely puritan would call that heresy (some Inquisitors would call it genius).

Blood Pact said:

Thing is, it does depend on who you think is cooler.

What does the Universe (especially from a storytelling perspective) respect more - the Inquisitors Authority or the Marines personal combat prowess and direct lineage to the God Emperor?

And, I mean, surely in a game where what the PCs have is personal combat prowess, it should turn out that that is a pretty cool thing to have.

Is this an inquistor or a lord inquistor because the importance is a big factor. If he is a normal inquistor even then he is a highly valued and well restected member of the imperim. You cant just go around killing inquistors willy nilly even if you are a marine and to think so is just plain dumb. Find a more legal way to take care of him becuause if you dont than the inquistion is comeing for you and you are screwed.

'Carte blanche' is boring . It's much more interesting from a storytelling perspective for PCs to have to carefully consider the consequences of their actions.