Graver said:

Graver said:

Except that they're not, game mechanically, and the game mechanics reflect (are) the game reality. A player character may well not know that malignancies and mutation are not the result of sin and do not (usually) lead to further sin, but their Inquisitor likely does. Malignancies and mutations are the result of exposure to the Warp, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. They are symptoms of Warp contamination, not a product of one's goodness or badness. If a person acquired their corruption by freely cavorting with the daemonic, then they are sinners. If they acquired them by accident, then they are afflicted sufferers laboring under a curse. If Inquisitor Greg learns that his trusty acolyte Bob the Guardsman plunged into a warp storm in order to selflessly fulfill the Emperor's Will and, as a result and through no fault of his own, emerged on the other side with a tail but still recognizably the same trusty Bob, he might retire him from service but is unlikely to kill him.

That's my take on it, anyway.

****! Sorry about that wall of quoted text.

Xathess Wolfe said:

He doesn't WANT to become one of course, but he certainly can. And if he does, which is not unlikely, it's not like he's going to broadcast it.

Also, think practically. Let' say you're Sector Governor. Inquisitor Greg has been an invaluable force in rooting out heresy and the Xenos for a century and has an enormous web of irreplaceable contacts. Inquisitor Greg and Guardsman Bob have just eradicated a Slaaneshi cult and, in the process of their heroism, have acquired a weird deformed foot and a bizarre taste for rose petals. Are you going to order their destruction, and with them their entire network of contacts and decades of experience? Not smart.

Mutants must be purged!
Heretics must be purged!

Xenos must be purged!

If you are a member of the Inquisition, it's your job to take these threats out. If you're working for the Inquisition and you become a mutant, you kill yourself or ask one of your brethren to do it for you. If you don't that's the influence of Chaos within you taking effect.

Threats to humanity, whether perceived as small or not must not be tolerated.

That being said, it makes for a good tension and definitely brings loyalty to peers vs loyalty to your humanity into question. The stuff of great stories.

LeBlanc13 said:

But, in fact, the Imperium does not purge mutants and Xenos all the time. It even makes alliance with the foul Xenos on occasion, and mutants sustain the economy on many Imperial worlds (not usually Chaos mutants, true, but does the average Imperial citizen know the difference?). That's because ideology and reality (and reason) clash.

Hypocrisy is one of my favorite 40K themes.

bogi_khaosa said:

Game mechanics are not the reality of the game universe. They help to guide it but are not the reality it's self. If they were then every old man encountered should be feared for such an old man would be like a god. After all, if he's had 70 years to gather experance points verses the PC's meager 20-40 years, then he surely must have upwards of several hundred thousand xp. With that, he'd have every skill and talent under the sun (after filling up from his career at max rank, then he'd have to spend the rest on elite advances) as well as all of his stats maxed out. However, that's almost always not the case (at least in my game). Likewise, spontaneous learning would be the norm as well. After all, according to the rules, after someone experiences random stuff enough or simply sits around for enough time, they will suddenly be proficient in some skill or knowledge they formerly did not have even if said skill or knowledge has absolutely nothing to do with what they had been doing or sitting around day-dreaming about. But, according to the rules, all you need to get a skill is to have it available at your rank and enough xp to buy it. Some GM's my require a reason for purchasing a skill or talent, but such a requirement is not in the rules. Oh yes, and lets not forget that, according to the rules alone, getting shot by a .38 revolver in the face won't even really hurt much -it'll take at the very least two bullets to even slow down your average unarmored fella.

All of the rules are deliberately simplified and require additional interpretation to be any kind of reality model. Without additional interpretation, they are simply meaningless numbers and benchmark's.

You are correct that malignancies are merely a symptom of warp contamination and not a marker of someones "goodness" or "badness" and one can get such through shear happenstance by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, whether the malignancy or mutation was gained through willful interaction with the warp and it's inhabitants or not is irrelevant to the IoM. Chaos will use ignorant paws in it's plans just as much as unrepentant sinners. When someone displays a mutation or malignancies, they show that the warp has touched them. When the warp touches someone, it dose not let go. They have gained the attention of the dark gods and, whether willful or through shear accident, they have become a part of those dark gods' plans.

When a character reaches 100 cp's, they become a dyed in the wool servant of chaos. It's not an instantaneous thing, but a slow and gradual fall that the malignancies and mutations are supposed to represent just like wounds in combat show the slow breaking down and destruction of a persons health and bodily integrity due to physical trauma.

++++He doesn't WANT to become one of course, but he certainly can. And if he does, which is not unlikely, it's not like he's going to broadcast it.

Also, think practically. Let' say you're Sector Governor. Inquisitor Greg has been an invaluable force in rooting out heresy and the Xenos for a century and has an enormous web of irreplaceable contacts. Inquisitor Greg and Guardsman Bob have just eradicated a Slaaneshi cult and, in the process of their heroism, have acquired a weird deformed foot and a bizarre taste for rose petals. Are you going to order their destruction, and with them their entire network of contacts and decades of experience? Not smart.+++

Would leaving him and Bob running about the galaxy with such resources when it is clear that it is only a matter of time now before they turn traitor and become another weapon of chaos smart as well? After all, they've proven that they are not strong enough to resist the powers of chaos and keep it out of their minds, bodies, and soul -their deviations prove that.

Graver said:

If he's been following the Plumber career path, he probably has Trade (Plumbing) +20, Peer (People who Call Plumbers), and lots of Talents dealing with unclogging drains as a Free Action. Plus Barter. It's not a comparable career path.

BTW, the Corruption rules could be easily rewritten to reflect the "corruption = likely chaos agent" thesis. After every so and so many CPs, give the character a penalty to resist Charm attempts by daemons, or devise some variant of the Perils of the Warp that takes effect every time that they gain new CPs, or give them a Frenzy talent that activates randomly and does not differentiate between friend and foe. Something like that. As stands, the rules don't support this interpretation. I think.

bogi_khaosa said:

Then why are characters damned after 100 cp's if CP's aren't an indication of chaos' grip on a character?

What does "damned" mean, functionally? It means "taken out of play." How is obscure. Like getting 100 Insanity Points. What happens then? There aren't any rules for it other than "character gone now."

This is all academic, really. We all play our games the way we want and interpret the universe the way we want.

Bogi I have to agree, you're paying too much attention to the mechanics, while ignoring the underlying aspect of what the mechanics mean. You're concentrating too much on Roll Play, and less on Roleplay.

Simply put, corruption points are a arbitrator game mechanic trying to show how close you are to becoming corrupt, except that like most game mechanics they fail to capture the true meaning of corruption. So while sure you may only get five corruption points for summoning that lesser daemon, the fact remains that IC wise you've become more of a tool of Chaos.

And yes, Inquisitors do become mutants, just as much as Inquisitors become Servants of Chaos. Its the insidioius nature of Chaos, that most of the times the Inquisitors don't realize they''re becoming agents of chaos. No Inquisitor ever in the history of the Imperium has gone "Wait, I've got 39 corruption points, I think I need to stop doing what I'm doing.

No, they continue on, doing what they think is right, and yet the entire time strengthening Chaos to the point of no return, at which case some other Inquisitor kills them. So do Inquisitors become mutants, yes. Do they stop becoming Inquisitors when they do, no. But once they're found out, they're hunted and exterminated with EXTREME predujice by the rest of the Inquisitiion.

Interesting point of note, is that many of the "Top Ten Heretics" of the Calixis Sector, have high Corruption, but have almost no mutations. Interesting neh?

Meh. I'll go with my interpretation, and you can go with yours.

bogi_khaosa said:

I'm not sure how much of this hypocrisy comes from GW trying to sell people additional armies using their "allies" rules though. Aside from the occasional trip into the Black Library from specific Inquisitors, where in Novels or fluff text have Humans tolerated mutants or aliens?

I don't see this well represented in stories. Of course, I haven't read the majority of the GW novels. My experience is mainly from codexes.

Can anyone site something specific to show tolerance in the Imperium to mutants?

I'm certain there will be case by case exceptions, but the OP stated the mutation was an obvious nurgle-like infection that covered half the body of the individual in question with pustules and sores. To me, that screams "KILL HIM" in my interpretation of the Imperium.

We're talking a society where zero tolerance is the rule. This is not our modern-day society where everyone tries to be PC and accepting of those different from them. This is a society where the population has been roused by clergy and government agencies to hate anything dissimilar to themselves.

Purge the Unclean! Purge the Heretics!

LeBlanc13 said:

The first Caiphas Cain book. Cain and his Inquistor boss work with the Tau. The Inquistor explicitly says that although the Tau are occupying man's galaxy that is the Emperor's by right blah blah blah (pious sermon) that as a matter of practicality one needs to cooperate with them.

bogi_khaosa said:

My favorite part of your quote was the "blah blah blah".

Tau and Craftworld Eldar I can personally see as allies, however some of the other pairings seem to stretch the walls of believability. I don't think "good" imperial citizens would ever consort with obvious agents of chaos or with orks, tyranids, necrons, etc.... Also, I still don't see "good" imperial citizens, specifically those working for the inquisition consorting with obvious mutants on any level other than to purge them. The OP specified the Inquisitor involved was puritanical in nature; not a radical. So to me, I'd think his retinue and hirelings would be very anti-mutant. Especially within their own ranks.

Perhaps I need to start getting into reading the novels a bit more. I've only read Scourge the Heretic and was quite unimpressed.

The first Caiphas Cain book. Cain and his Inquistor boss work with the Tau. The Inquistor explicitly says that although the Tau are occupying man's galaxy that is the Emperor's by right blah blah blah (pious sermon) that as a matter of practicality one needs to cooperate with them.

That was less "cooperating" and more "not having the firepower at hand to eradicate them". These two are not quite the same.

Yes, there may be a few inquisitors who employ mutants. They are at the end of the radical score, along with the guys creating daemonhosts. If they're ever found out by their peers, that's it for them. The Imperium cannot afford to have its most glowing servants publicly employ the creatures it officially purges and only seldomly allows to live. There's even a relatively simple reason for it: One of the possible mutations is Psyker-ism. Now you said that psykers are also accepted in inquisitorial service, but that's not quite correct - the one-in-a-thousand psyker that makes it back from Terra is accepted. Anything created by mutations is by definition not among the sanctioned crowd...

Further, the game explicitly acknowledges that the corruption system is used mainly for PCs. NPCs that encounter chaotic forces capable of inflicting CPs will mostly go mad, sprout mutations and become servants of Chaos unless they're somehow fortified against this.

Don't know what the current codex says but at least as recent as 2nd edition one of the defining features of the Blood Axe Ork clan was that some of them worked as mercenaries for humans from time to time in exchange for gear. That's how the tribe learned a slight semblance of discipline and tactics.

Cifer said:

And cooperated with them against a common enemy (Tyrannids). Sure in a "perfect" world the Imperium would have purged all the Xenos, but they didn't, because the world isn't perfect. That's sort of what I've been trying to get at in my posts in this thread. Sometimes Killing the Mutant is STUPID.

LeBlanc13 said:

I've only read one of the Soul Drinkers novels (sucked), Horus Rising (adequate), and Inquisitor: Ordo Xenos (not half bad, if strained in parts).

DocIII said:

That's with humans though, not with the Imperium. Though it could happen.

The Imperium is not a monolithic organization, and parts of it don't communicate with each other for decades. Each planet has its own ideology. Could a planetary governor somewhere in BF Nowhere hire some Orks? Sure, why not?

Sometimes Killing the Mutant is STUPID.

Would you mind reading the second part of my post too?

LeBlanc13 said:

In Eisenhorn Malleus, there exist Mutant enclaves in the slums.

warpdancer said:

Indeed and the planet Sepheris Secundus in the Calixian Sector uses a mutant underclass to work the worst and most dangerous mines (see the Shattered Hopes quick start adventure, the DH core rule book, Purge the Unclean and the novel Scourge the Heretic).

Nerd King said:

Oh sure, confuse the situation with your "facts".

Actually, looks like I need to read into my sources more closely.

Personally, I don't think a puritanical Inquisitor would allow for an obvious mutation in his retinue of hirelings. Most likely neither would his peers tolerate it. Even if they didn't kill him, they'd probably strand him somewhere or kick him out of the group rather than risk the wrath of their puritanical masters.

On on a world-by-world basis, mutants will be treated differently. Sometimes tolerated and sometimes purged by the general population. Inquisitors, escpecially puritanical ones, as noted by the OP would not tolerate a mutant in their fold. Those harboring him (the PC's) would be seen almost in the same light if it was discovered. I still think the mutant needs to be purged from the group.

Nerd King said:

Ah! Citation for one's assertions! So rare! So useful! Bravo!