The Inquisition (The Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition) is an organisation in the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe. They act as the secret police of the Imperium, hunting down any and all threats to the stability of the God-Emperor's realm. In fiction relating to the games, Inquisitors are usually represented by extremely powerful, intelligent, and talented individuals. In the games, Inquisitors are usually powerful combatants with a variety of specialized abilities with a party of followers who improve and protect the Inquisitor. Inquisitors also grant the player access to many new units, such as Imperial Assassins and Daemonhosts.
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Inquisitors have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe since the first edition of the game, Rogue Trader. However, they have had a higher profile since the release of the 54 mm miniatures game Inquisitor, which is a narrative game based around warbands which often comprise of an Inquisitor and his henchmen. The creation of Inquisitor was followed by a great deal of information about the Inquisition, and the organization attracted the interest of fans. This led to the creation of Codex: Daemonhunters and Codex: Witch Hunters, both based around armies led by Inquisitors (of the Ordo Malleus and the Ordo Hereticus, respectively). In addition there are online rules for using Deathwatch, the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos and one such Ordo Xenos Inquisitor has been released by Forge World. Following the end of the Inquisitor line, and the successful relaunch of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay by Black Industries, it was decided that the first roleplaying game to explore the Warhammer 40,000 universe would be Dark Heresy, a game in which the player characters are, by default, diverse agents of the Inquisition sent to investigate various mysteries and heresies on behalf of their Inquisitor.
In early editions of Warhammer 40,000, the Inquisition was a single, undivided organization, with a single inner order, the Ordo Malleus. The stated purpose of the Ordo was to police the Inquisition itself, but in reality it also existed to combat the threat of Chaos, then a secret hidden from most forces of the Imperium, including non-Malleus Inquisitors.
There were originally only two Orders within the Inquisition(Ordo Malleus and Ordo Xenos), but a third (the Ordo Hereticus) was added after the events of the Age of Apostasy.[1] A further fourth the Ordo Sicarius was formed following the Wars of Vindication.[2]
Within the narrative provided by source books and other media, a number of Inquisitors are considered to be famous. Those include Gideon Ravenor, Ario Barzano who is featured in the book Night Bringer by Graham McNeill, Jaq Draco, the main character in the Inquisition War series, written by Ian Watson, and Gregor Eisenhorn. In the graphic novel Daemonifuge, by Kev Walker, the character Silas Hand features prominently [3].
The development of other characters alludes to important literature works. Fydor Karamazov, Fyodor is known as the Pyrophant Judge of Salem Proctor. This is a reference to Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Proctor being the name of one convicted, yet innocent, witch; and Salem being the puritan township he lived in. His name is a reference to Russian authors Fyodor Dostoevsky's book entitled The Brothers Karamazov whose main characther is named Fyodor Karamazov and, included in the book, is a poem titled The Grand Inquisitor. [4]
A heavily armed and armored former psyker, from the graphic novel Daemonfuge, whose clash with the chaos entity Ashteroth comprised the climax of the book.
Gideon Ravenor was an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos - serving in the Scarus Sector of the Imperium - and a highly potent psyker, and the protagonist of the novels Ravenor, Ravenor Returned and Ravenor Rogue. Formerly the interrogator (an inquisitor-in-training) of the infamous Gregor Eisenhorn, Ravenor's career in the Ordos seemed promising until he was critically injured during an event that became known as the "Thracian Atrocity" on Thracian Primus. Crippled by the destructive crash-landing of a heretical aircraft and burned beyond recognition, Ravenor was able to continue serving the Inquisition by being placed in an enclosed mobile life support unit. The chair - a device specifically commissioned by Eisenhorn - was crafted with amplifiers that boosted Ravenor's psychic abilities. It is unclear just how powerful Ravenor's abilities are, but Orfeo Culzean suggests that he may be an Alpha-plus psyker. Despite being confined to his armoured chair, Ravenor is capable of using his powers to "ware" his companions; essentially possessing them and using their bodies as his own. While Ravenor served the Ordo Xenos - the Inquisition's alien termination unit - he collaborated with the Eldar during his early days as an inquisitor (although he allowed Eisenhorn to learn of this, he hid his association with the elder race from the rest of the Ordo). During his service to Eisenhorn, Ravenor encountered Zygmunt Molotch for the first time. The two, mirroring Eisenhorn's opposition to Pontius Glaw - would clash on a number of occassions over the course of a century. On several of these encounters, Ravenor believed Molotch to be dead, only for the heretic to return and prove otherwise.
The Ravenor trilogy - a spin-off of the Eisenhorn trilogy in which Ravenor originally appeared - focuses on Ravenor's investigation into a mysterious cartel of traders which smuggle "flects" (small shards of glass taken from a warp-scoured world, which become a popular high as the warp energy encased in each flect induce hullucinations and peculiar visions) into the Imperium. The hunt to find the ringleaders of the cartel leads Ravenor and his team to discover a far darker conspiricy, in which a heretical cult called the Divine Fratery attempt to bring about the "birth" of a daemon named Slyte into the material universe. Although Ravenor and his team believe that they foil the plot, Slyte secretly possesses Ravenor's own interrogator, Carl Thonius. When Ravenor sets out to persue his nemesis, Zygmunt Molotch, he is forced to become a rogue inquisitor and even travels through time in his hunt.
At the end of Ravenor Rogue, Ravenor is forced to account for his actions to his masters and is taken into custody of the Inquisition. Several members of his retinue leave to persue their own duties, although Ravenor does not begrudge them for doing so. One other member, Kara Swole, is also held in custody for concealing the fact that Thonius was Slyte.
Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn was one of the original characters created for the game. The three books in the series follows: Xenos (2001), Malleus (2001), and Hereticus (2002). The books are named after the three major divisions of the Inquisition; the Ordo Xenos, the Ordo Malleus and the Ordo Hereticus. The titles also played off the themes of the books themselves.
The Eisenhorn trilogy follows the eponymous character as he conducts investigations in the Scarus Sector of the Imperium over a period of a century and a half. Most notable of these is the "Pontius Affair", in which he clashes with elements of a rogue faction attempting to ressurect a long-dead heretic named Pontius Glaw. Despite crushing the initial plot to do so, Glaw manipulates events and succeeds in returning in a prosthetic body. Throughout the novels it becomes clear that Eisenhorn's fate is linked to that of a daemon - Cherubael - whom he encounters in the form of a daemonhost. When Eisenhorn is forced to stray from the path of the Puritan and become a radical inquisitor, he binds Cherubael to his service and confronts Glaw. After defeating the heretic at the trilogy's climax, Eisenhorn remains in self-imposed exile despite the fact that the charges of heresy against him were lifted. It is implied in Ravenor Returned (part of a spin-off series, see below) that Eisenhorn was killed by the Divine Fratery when he was caught in the destruction of a building he was facing them in. However, this has yet to be proven.
The Eisenhorn trilogy resulted in a spinoff series about Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor, a crippled psychic genius who appeared as a secondary character in the second and third Eisenhorn books. Eisenhorn arguably makes his final appearance in the short story Thorn Wishes Talon which is found as part of a collection in the book What Price Victory, and also as the linking story between the Ravenor trilogy novels Ravenor and Ravenor Returned. Eisenhorn arranges a meeting with Ravenor to warn him of the possibility that Ravenor or one of his entourage will cause the "birth" of a daemon in the early fourth century of the 41st millennium. Following this meeting, the group of cultists attempting to stop Eisenhorn delivering the warning to his protogé apparently bomb a building that they cornered him in.
In the introduction to the Eisenhorn trilogy, Abnett describes how he had become interested in the idea of such a story after seeing early concept art from the Inquisitor game (in particular a piece named "Inquisitor Tannenberg" by the artist John Blanche). The end of the Eisenhorn books was designed to bring the character to the point at which he is described in the Inquisitor rulebook, so that players can then create his further exploits for themselves if they wish. The Eisenhorn trilogy has since been re-released as a single compendium volume (Abnett, 2004), complete with the three novels, two connecting short stories, and a foreword by the author.
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