Inquisition: Ordos I
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| [//Inquisitor-Provost Brejak-Cassels, observing the Pentarchy of Blood. Ordo Astartes, formerly of the Ordo Malleus; dec. 853.M33. Notable investigations: action: Scuppering of the Plague Hulk Cyloc; action: Tattered Throng; action: Iron Consul Cessation; action: Dark Garden Heresy; action: War of the False [REDACTED]; action: Declaration of the //[data degradation+] [+incept newauth: orion – typeset:+ceasedesistSTOPsomethingsarebestleftforgottenSTOP+] [//peter_d_h;@pdh_neglected_fruits+] |
"Few men value the unalloyed truth. Make them a gift of it and it will be rejected, or discarded. Rather, one should hide the truth; and allow it to be discovered amongst ashes and dross; and studied then in secrecy. Those who invest sweat and pain and toil in drawing truth out from the chaff of falsehood will become not merely believers, but proselytes.
So knew my father; so I teach my sons. Lies are readily accepted when one wraps them in palatable truths. Thus, if you wish to be believed; present your truth in a shroud of lies."
[//attr. Volnoscere+]
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| [//His Will Be Done+] [//Pict-capt source unverified – recov. adjunct incertas; Szandor's Fault; prosecuting ork belligerents+] [//gunnar_l/@gunnarlopez08+] |
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The Inquisition during the War of the False Primarch
As with everything to do with this most shrouded and jealously-guarded of organisations, the nature of the Orders of the Inquisition is nebulous. A citizen approached by an Inquisitor will rarely quibble over the exact nature of the Inquisitor's office; any more than he or she might enquire over the precise pattern of pistol or blade held to their throat. Indeed, the Ordos themselves are largely Administatum niceties; labels applied by outsiders to create a comforting sense of formality and procedure to the Inquisition as a whole. This suits the purposes of the Inquisition well; for meaningless labels serve to divert and hide a history intentionally buried and redacted, lest some aspect of said history offer the enemies of mankind a lever to use against this august body.
The Ordos are labels that, to the naïve, falsely imply a process of oversight and regulation; or the potential for restraint or appeal. The Inquisition know no strictures. They are a group of individuals who – by their very definition – know no temporal or spiritual limits.
Prior to the War of the Beast, the Inquisition was – insofar as a true history exists – undivided, and purely dedicated to the warding of Imperial order from humanity's dark mirror, the chaotic freedoms offered by the Fell Powers – freedom from crushing strictures and laws, true; but also from sense, from sanity; from the very laws that govern the physical. In the wake of the galaxy-shaking War of the Beast, however, it is generally recognised that the Inquisition first declared its own specialisation, and divided its Offices Spiritual into the twin pillars of the Ordo Malleus – continuing unbroken the Inquisition's holy duties as they had stood – and the Ordo Xenos, whose adherents extended their purview to the less metaphysical and more bodily threat posed by the numerous species of alien that infest the galaxy. Nevertheless, even this self-imposed division has little weight in terms of specialisation; and is certainly no stricture upon the actions of any individual Inquisitor. An Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, for example, might easily turn to investigating the threat of an alien species, if so she decided to do. After all, who is to gainsay a person invested with the full authority of the Emperor himself?
The names of the Ordos Major and Minoris – of the imposing institutions that stentorious titles like Pacificus, Lucrum, Xenos, Trask and so forth – imply a level of hierarchy and rank; of chains of command that simply do not exist.
Inquisitors, so the proverb says, do not admit rank.
This, at least, is not quite true. While all Inquisitors are nominally equal, in practise their conclaves and cabals allow for compromise and action amongst their possessive and suspicious members; through the judicious election of one of their number.
Such titles are as many and varied as the conclaves themselves; a ranked 'Inquisitor Lord' or 'Master' is nevertheless a shifting and temporary office; a mark of respect and kudos granted by a coalition of unlinked equals, rather than a permanent status. Through their experience, deeds and wisdom, Inquisitors gain a fame and reputation of a sort within the group's own halls and communities. This, if anything, is a better understanding of the nature of the Ordos Minoris: groups are bound loosely, if at all, by a simple commonality of cause between the individualistic characters that make up the Inquisition; or those under their purview and command.
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| [//'Luckless' Lucas, Battle Chorister; Tempestus troops Theta – inducted into Inquisitor Malvolio's retinue in the wake of the Gurro Campaign.+] [//jamie_c/@mutantsnakeeyes+] |
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Ordo Pacificus
A broad and catholic order, the Inquisitors of Ordo Pacificus are linked by little more than their physical origin or proximity to the Great Segmentum itself. A fifth division of the Imperium, the marches and wilderness of Pacificus are host to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Inquisitorial staff. All are nominally Pacificus agents in the eyes of the Administratum and the Senate Imperialis – and if the office is so wide as to seem meaningless, then a curt reminder of the purview of the High Lords of Terra over the mind-blasting immensity of the Imperium is perhaps necessary.
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| [//Jan Van Kan, Ordo Pacificus – or at least, one of his many mind-sons. The psychically porous Inquisitor led his forces alongside those of the Firebreak's Guardians of Celeres company, during the Outrage on Frith. + [//francois_v/@with_teatea+] |
Thus the Ordo Pacificus is a blunt but useful phrase to describe the Inquisitorial staff who found themselves involved in the War of the False Primarch – and as is the nature of inquisitive and unaudited agencies, found themselves frequently opposed and at odds. Of all the Ordos Minoris, more than eighty per cent of the Inquisition staff would identify themselves as Ordo Pacificus first and foremost; the remainder being ex-Segmentum, deliberately obfuscating, or characteristically contrary.
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That the Inquisition fought a shadow war – a microcosmic civil war – during the broader War of the False Primarch would perhaps surprise the common citizenry of Heliopolis, or other mostly sophisticated Sectors. In fact, the nature of the Inquisition is inherently contrary; for a secret police unable or unwilling to prosecute and investigate itself would have little use. The battles fought by Inquisitors ranged from point-blank skirmishes on backwaters like Oke Oke, on Teo Sentimental; to grander and broader schemes.
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| [//Inquisitor Helsink, pictured to the right of Librarian Varn of the Wormwood Sons, during the Oke Oke Offensive, where the Wormwood Sons and their Marines Saturnine allies faced the assembled might of the swollen Red Talons and the infidious Star Warden recidivists that led the ambush.+] [//mikkel_h_w/@duckcalledsue+] |
The Ordo Pacificus is too diffuse and broad to admit a single head, and literally hundreds of small conclaves were formed from its members during the war, a significant proportion supporting the claim of the False Primarch; many pursuing parallel or opposing aims. The Ordo thus fought both against and on the side of the High Lords of Terra; for the stability of Orthodoxy requires forward momentum and movement. True stagnation for the Imperium would be fatal, even here at its zenith of power, as it collapsed and choked under its own weight. Better the shuffling stumble of progress – and if its own Inquisition must sting and bite and nag it onwards, so be it.
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Ordo Astartes
'Over-numerous, near-fatally divisive and belligerent.'
[//Master Aramis Enoch's infamous conclusion regarding the Spacewolves, prior to issuing the Edict of Obliteration on Lucan+]
The deliberate sidelining of the Astartes after the Great Heresy. Few things more starkly delineate the range and depth of the structural changes forced upon the Imperium of Man in the wake of the Guilliman Reforms, and the lengths to which the First High Lord of Terra was willing to go to secure and ground the Imperium of Man in the wake of the Emperor's near-martyrdom.
The formation of the Adeptus Astartes as part of these Reforms was intended to more firmly bind the workings of the Space Marines to the Will of the Throne, but within scant decades a number of newly-wrought Chapters had gone rogue, or loftily ceased communication with the Administratum. The Ordo Astartes was the High Lords' solution; an Inquisitorial Ordo dedicated to the monitoring of the Astartes, their specific task to drive out the potential for insurrection before it could take root and sour a Chapter whole.
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| [+ Inquisitor Nke had worked alongside the Iron Guard for long decades prior to the war. Her death was later regarded as a staging post for their fall into the influence of Volnoscere. +] [//francois_v/@with_teatea+] |
The establishment of the Vigilants at the behest of the Custodes, Inquisition and two Primarchs proved a method to protect and ensure the nominal safety of Inquisitors of the Ordo Astartes; less so because of the direct protection – for what use would one or two Astartes bodyguards be against an entire Chapter? – but for the political sense of unity and understanding it granted the body as a whole.
Great power breeds many offspring: ambition; restlessness; independence; pride – and that such power might properly be exercised, so its propensity to fecundity must be curtailed.
[//Roboute Guilliman, First High Lord of Terra+]
With the Second and Third Great Foundings, the number of Ordo Astartes Inquisitors increased in great leaps alongside the number of Chapters; the duty attracting many and varied Inquisitors, men and women of all stripes. As might be anticipated in a war involving such immense numbers of Space Marine Chapters – more than three score were recorded as primary or secondary agencies in the eventual clear-up – the War of the False Primarch drew in thousands of Ordo Astartes Inquisitors; some from far beyond the Segmentum. That their gathering might was a drop in the ocean of the overall conflict gives some measure of the scale of the war.
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| [//ident: Valerie Roa – Ordo Astartes Inquisitrix affiliated to the Esperia Sector, Ultima Segmentum+] [//collection of marco_b+] |
Broadly falling into three or four philosophies, the Inquisitors of the Ordo Astartes mostly involved themselves in the empowerment or restriction of their particular charges. Dozens were directly sighted during the great battles of Ishim, Null, and Frith fighting alongside Partisan forces – and dozens more were doubtless hidden. Inquisitors who truly fell under the sway of their assignation were few, though the tale of Inquisitor Weemish is regarded as a warning note for those who would pursue their task too closely.
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Ordo Redactus
“The flick of a wrist might just as easily denote a throat being slit as the movement of quill on parchment. Both can signify murder. And yet, the strength of a blade is limited, individual; while that of the quill is immeasurable. Thus, with the barest notation, an Inquisitor may consign a world's population – or even a species – to their fate; Exterminatus or a Purgation Order rendering a world sterile and extinct, and making of it a warning to future generations.
"And neither is that the limit of our boundless strength. Exterminatus is a warning, aye, but one reliant on the observer's understanding of the past. For the Ordo Redactus, that extinction can be rendered still more comprehensive. If the written Edict of Obliteration is an act of boundless murder, what then are we to make of the erasure of memory itself?"
[//Inquisitor Lucille Ball, Ordo Xenos+]
In the wake of the forgotten Warmaster’s grand betrayal, the seeds of His Imperial Majesty’s Holy Ordos took root, its life burrowing into the very fabric of Imperial society. Even in its earliest years, the moral threat of the forgotten Warmaster and his limitless treachery was recognised. With slow and agonising patience, the task was set to expunge all memory of the great Heresy, to be remembered as little more than a myth, save by those who guarded the realms of His Imperium from the slumbering threat of that sentient malevolence. From this shared desire to forget, the first Edict of Obliteration was signed without His signature, and the Ordo Redactus was born.
Officially designated in the hierarchical structure of the Adeptus Administratum as the ‘Utilitatum Inquis Audit’, the Ordo Redactus is as much a respected body of the Administratum as it is one of the Ordo Minoris. It is here that the Redactus sees its work done, consigning the memory of heroes and legends to oblivion, sentencing the sacrifices and blasphemies of billions to the void. While, theoretically, all Inquisitors are invested the right to commence an Edict of Obliteration, it is the duty of the Ordo Redactus to see the task thoroughly investigated and completed. By their hand do the Administratum’s Historical Revision Units set to work, and by their will is the Edict of Obliteration seen to its inevitable conclusion.
While most Ordos, even among the Minoris, tend to wax and wane in their numbers, the Tribunal Suprema of His Imperial Majesty’s Ordo Redactus has ever maintained ten seats, structurally functioning as a council that has no one member above the other. These are not the warrior witch-finders that comb the galaxy for heretics and personally putting them to the torch. The Tribunal Suprema is made up of scholars, historians, and archivists, dutifully seeing to their grim work without ever stepping foot from Terra’s soil. The Tribunal oversees each and every Edict of Obliteration, expunging the imperial archives on Holy Terra, sequestering what little is permitted to remain in Ultima-level Libraria, and distributing the Remit of Purgation to necessary adepts across the galaxy.
Often, an Inquisitor may declare the Edict of Obliteration and simply see only to the most crucial of purgations, leaving the ‘little details’ of the remaining untold billions left to someone else. In these cases, it is the Ordo Redactus who handles the brutal work of weighing the lives of those who have committed the sin of forbidden knowledge. It is a duty that they see to with a thorough cruelty that only someone who never sees the faces of their victims can. Their arsenal of censure is vast: purgation labour camps, planetary-wide executions, radiation foundries, Alpha-Level psychic mind scourging, chemical lobotomization, generational sterilization, penal regimental drafting, servitor reclamation forge-ships, and the reliable Exterminatus-grade world enders. These are the tools of calculated holocaust, the fate of each planet and its population weighed purely on its usefulness to the Imperium and the cost-efficiency of its sentencing.
Only at the behest of the High Lords does the Tribunal Suprema send a member of its Ordo from Holy Terra, a representative that speaks and acts on behalf of the Tribunal as Executor Contritio and carries with them the reliquary Executioner’s blade of office, Mea Culpa. They command no military presence, nor take to the field of war. Their duty is to follow in the wake of the vanguard, to ensure the obliteration of all forbidden knowledge, and to judge the fate of those left alive.
At the time of the War of the False Primarch, a representative Executor Contritio was summoned by the High Lords of Terra for the fifth time in the Ordo’s history.
Officially designated in the hierarchical structure of the Adeptus Administratum as the ‘Utilitatum Inquis Audit’, the Ordo Redactus is as much a respected body of the Administratum as it is one of the Ordo Minoris. It is here that the Redactus sees its work done, consigning the memory of heroes and legends to oblivion, sentencing the sacrifices and blasphemies of billions to the void. While, theoretically, all Inquisitors are invested the right to commence an Edict of Obliteration, it is the duty of the Ordo Redactus to see the task thoroughly investigated and completed. By their hand do the Administratum’s Historical Revision Units set to work, and by their will is the Edict of Obliteration seen to its inevitable conclusion.
While most Ordos, even among the Minoris, tend to wax and wane in their numbers, the Tribunal Suprema of His Imperial Majesty’s Ordo Redactus has ever maintained ten seats, structurally functioning as a council that has no one member above the other. These are not the warrior witch-finders that comb the galaxy for heretics and personally putting them to the torch. The Tribunal Suprema is made up of scholars, historians, and archivists, dutifully seeing to their grim work without ever stepping foot from Terra’s soil. The Tribunal oversees each and every Edict of Obliteration, expunging the imperial archives on Holy Terra, sequestering what little is permitted to remain in Ultima-level Libraria, and distributing the Remit of Purgation to necessary adepts across the galaxy.
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| [//Inquisitorial Master Osric Domalde, Ordo Redactus+] [//alexander_l/@noctuscornix+] |
Often, an Inquisitor may declare the Edict of Obliteration and simply see only to the most crucial of purgations, leaving the ‘little details’ of the remaining untold billions left to someone else. In these cases, it is the Ordo Redactus who handles the brutal work of weighing the lives of those who have committed the sin of forbidden knowledge. It is a duty that they see to with a thorough cruelty that only someone who never sees the faces of their victims can. Their arsenal of censure is vast: purgation labour camps, planetary-wide executions, radiation foundries, Alpha-Level psychic mind scourging, chemical lobotomization, generational sterilization, penal regimental drafting, servitor reclamation forge-ships, and the reliable Exterminatus-grade world enders. These are the tools of calculated holocaust, the fate of each planet and its population weighed purely on its usefulness to the Imperium and the cost-efficiency of its sentencing.
Only at the behest of the High Lords does the Tribunal Suprema send a member of its Ordo from Holy Terra, a representative that speaks and acts on behalf of the Tribunal as Executor Contritio and carries with them the reliquary Executioner’s blade of office, Mea Culpa. They command no military presence, nor take to the field of war. Their duty is to follow in the wake of the vanguard, to ensure the obliteration of all forbidden knowledge, and to judge the fate of those left alive.
At the time of the War of the False Primarch, a representative Executor Contritio was summoned by the High Lords of Terra for the fifth time in the Ordo’s history.
“Rejoice, my brothers and sisters, for your labours shall be your deliverance. Through your contrition of sweat and blood, you will be martyrs all. Know, then, that this a sacrament of boundless mercy from Him on Terra.”
[//Excerpt from the sermon delivered to the remaining populace of Morgant before process into Purgation Labour Camp 3C429–842-µ16+]
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I Want to Know
"What value is wisdom won without struggle? So rekes the commoner. Suffer the laity, therefore. Once they have been forced to crawl halfway towards the object of their belief, they will never turn back – for more vivid and true for them is the memory of the pain they have suffered than the nebulous possibility of future pain; pain that they believe might be averted. Be wise, therefore. Suffer the laity sufficiently to draw them halfway to the truth they seek, then substitute it with your own. More will press on than will turn about."
[//Cardinal Prime Morgetheon; private conference with Confessor Ricephanes+]
Uniting all of the warring factions within the Inquisition was the underlying nature of the figure variously known as 'Volonoscere', 'the False Primarch', and 'the Abomination'. This concern was of primary interest to the Inquisition – and the nature of its progeny, the Silver Stars, almost equally so. That someone or something could destabilise an entire Sector was of concern enough; but more than that was the frustratingly vague nature of the scant reports that were returned.
Its very presence was destabilising; and felt by many amongst the Inquisition to have the potential to alter the Imperium indelibly, perhaps fatally. Ever-divided, the Inquisition was ultimately to prove here little but the danger of too great a level of subtlety and sophistication. The mystery of the False Primarch and his forces would be revealed not through subterfuge, but through strength of arms and the directness of the Chapters comprising the Pentarchy of Blood.
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| [//Brother Lukyan; MIA. Contact lost during engagement with Riven Lords during the Nomad Star Conflict.+] [@matt_t/@spacedhulk] |
"Blood begets blood."
[//Chapter Master Gorn of the Charnel Guard, prior to the Myrean League Outrage+]
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