Would an Adept who takes the Psychic skills and talents join the harried ranks of unsantioned psykers? Or as a high ranking member of the Administratum do they gain exemption from a trip on the Blackship?

This one has been debated back and forth. Apart from the question whether the Loremaster actually develops psyker powers or is more of a better sorceror, it's relatively certain that he is unsanctioned. This leaves him with several possibilities: He could simply try to hide his new talents, though that won't exactly be easy if there are more psykers nearby. He could also hope for the mercy (and radicality) of his inquisitor, who might find a highly knowledgeable individual with psy powers to be more useful in his service than on the (quite likely one-way) trip to Terra. Depending on your view of an inquisitor's powers, he might essentially field-sanction the acolyte or just provide him with a fake-sanctioning brand.

However, any kind of legitimacy he hopes to receive can't come from the Administratum - hunting for psykers is the Inquisition's task and they're not exactly known for being interdicted easily.

I've combatted this by replacing the Psy Ratings that Adepts get with the Sorcerer and Master Sorcerer Talents, because as far as I'm aware, you're either a Psyker or you're not, whereas anyone can become a sorcerer, given enough time and research.

Both are great points. I just noticed the advance abilities and was planning to tell my players they had two ways to play a psyker (not counting the Nascent Psyker advance package). Now with two options I think I'll wait to see if it comes up and see how it will best fit in with the party. I was going with Ciphers take as traditional S.O.P. for the Inquisition and didnt even consider the Sorcerer/knowledge . Thanks for the great ideas.

user4574 said:

I think thats the point: if the player chooses to buy a Psy rating they always were a Psyker, albeit so borderline that either he was missed or the Inquisitor that employed them know they had the talent and decided to hold onto him should it ever emerge. If it's a hidden aspect then yes the unsanctioned status will be an issue, but if their Inquisitor knew about it it may play into a very interesting storyline where either the Adept or the entire crew are sent to Terra leading to either the Adepts death or a nice new shiny elite advance called "Sanctioned Psyker."

As for giving them the Sorcerer and Master Sorcerer talents instead...barring a radical Inquisitor that chooses to use the warp instead of one that just advocates using xenos weaponry will get him just as dead or perhaps even more so than an 'unsanctioned psyker'...at least the unsanctioned one might have a slim chance of surviving the testing.

Arbentur said:

Reading the description of Sorcerer and Master Sorcerer, it sounds very difficult to distinguish between someone being a Psyker and being a Sorcerer. The way it's written is that they gain an effective Psy Rating of 2 and 4, which implies that anyone using Psyniscience to detect their power would gain that information as oposed to 'They're not a Psyker, they're a Sorcerer'. But that's just my interpertation of it anyway.

My interpretation of being a Psyker is that they're born at nearly the same power level that they gain, they just need training. The reason I've opted for Sorcerer/Master Sorcerer instead of Psy Ratings for an Adept is because to me, it makes more sense that an Adept on that branch of the rank table is more likely to do research into more proscribed areas and would therefore learn how to manipulate the Warp without having ot be a Psyker. An example of this, albeit a fairly bad one because it isn't sorcery per se, Ill admit is when Kyril Sindermann summons a daemon from the Warp in the Horus Heresy series by reading from the Book of Lorgar.

user4574 said:

I completely agree that is feels more in place for an Adept to pick up Sorcery than a Psy rating like a Psyker or Verminspeaker, but like we both agree on it's all up to GM flavor and choice of how to swing it. I know the example, and how are we to know for sure if Kyril didn't have the cusp of understanding into enough mysteries that the Book of Lorgar didn't tip him over the scales into Sorcery or expand his natural latent Psy for a moment

Both options can work and both give wonderful storylines depending on the GM.

Reading the description of Sorcerer and Master Sorcerer, it sounds very difficult to distinguish between someone being a Psyker and being a Sorcerer. The way it's written is that they gain an effective Psy Rating of 2 and 4, which implies that anyone using Psyniscience to detect their power would gain that information as oposed to 'They're not a Psyker, they're a Sorcerer'. But that's just my interpertation of it anyway.

Actually, it's generally quite simple to distinguish between sorcerors and psykers - psykers don't need rituals or any other components to their powers. They may choose to employ one of a few accepted foci (like the tarot), but anyone actually drawing sigils, incanting stuff or waving their arms around is a sorcerer - and sorcerors trying to evoke their powers purely mentally have quite a few problems with that since they need an additional talent (and the 40 perc and 45 int that go with it) and have all their thresholds increased by 2 when even the Minor Arcana thresholds start beyond 10.

My original thought about the issue was that the Adepts brain unlocked the Psi potential inherint in all humans- as in the human race evolving into a Psi race. That was why it was a low level Psi rating with limited power as compared to a born Psyker. I was just wondering how the Imperium dealt with it , considering the amount of times it must have happened in the history of the Adminisratum.

Cifer said:

There's still a way around presenting yourself as an obvious sorcerer. The rituals/movements/incantations could be lied about, with the character trying to pass it off as Invocation, which uses the same kind of mechanisms to the outside observer. The other way to hide it is with Sublime Arts.