What If: Inqusition goes too far

[Melissia]

Also, in general we have been discussing the Inquisition here as if it were a single unified organization when this is emphatically not the case.

I already said that >.>



Your scenario is just so far fetched that it's just... illogical to even think about. Why should all Inquisitors ascend to daemonhood? Some inquisitors are Ex-Sororitas and quite possibly even Ex-Astartes, and, quite frankly, there are factions within the Inquisition that, even IF they were potentially heretical (which itself is a stretch), if one group turned daemonic the second one would side with the Imperium simply out of spite for the first group.

The Inquisition theoretically can call upon the entire Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy. If you're going to do what ifs and extremes, quite frankly no single enemy in 40K can withstand the amount of forces they can call upon even without their Orders Militant, but of all Inquisitors turned daemonic for some stupid reason (what kind of a lame-*** writer do you have to be to seriously consider putting something so contrived and random into a book?), they likely couldn't call on ANY loyal Imperial forces, EVER. But they probably could call upon daemonic and chaotic forces instead.

I doubt even all of the Inquisitorial Stormtroopers would side with them if they saw evidence of Inquisitors turning into daemons. Inquisitorial Stormtroopers are considered the cream of the crop, the top two percent (or less even) of all stormtroopers to graduate from the Schola Progenium-- the same school that initially trains Sororitas and Commissars.

[Nabterayl]

So in the thing mentioned earlier (All inquisitors asend to daemonhood) other than their own troops would they have anything to pull from?

Well, if all the inquisitors in the Imperium ascended to daemonhood overnight, they wouldn't have anybody to pull from; even their own household troops would turn on them. Of course, that's not how it would work; it's not like the Chaos gods just hand out daemonhood willy nilly. There are Chaos legionnaires who have served the dark gods for 10,000 years who haven't hit daemonhood yet.

A much more plausible scenario is that an inquisitor falls to Chaos over a period of time, quite possibly by accident, and take his household troops with him. In that sort of scenario it's highly unlikely that any troops from his Ordo's Chamber Militant would follow him.

To the other posters:

How about a planetary invasion

IE a traditional (@ least on TT campaign), start with Planet Strike, run a couple of missions, then finish it off with an apoc)

how would that equate into the background?

You could spin it a couple of different ways. If you wanted to be fairly literal about it, even an Apocalypse game probably represents a very small battle. For instance, the 12th Tallarn Armored regiment, a fairly typical Imperial Guard tank regiment, at the time of the Taros campaign, fielded one hundred and fifty nine Leman Russes, eleven Baneblades, ninety Sentinels, one hundred and six Chimeras, forty-eight Basilisks, twenty Hydras, and seventy-nine Salamanders, plus support vehicles. One regiment - one of two that fought in the Taros invasion, which was a small invasion by Imperial Guard standards. Since even the largest Apocalypse battle you're likely to be able to play is a tiny, tiny engagement by 40K standards, you have the luxury of making your campaign be about a single rogue inquisitor if you want it to be.

In fact, let's say you don't want to be quite that literal about it, but still want to run a campaign wherein marines from several chapters invade a planet and do battle with one or more inquisitorial players. That can still be quite a small number of inquisitors - as small as one - fluff-wise. Keep in mind the following:

1. Even a single rogue inquisitor could induct into his service as many Guardsmen and PDF troopers as he could lay his hands on. A handful of rogue inquisitors could easily possibly command tens of thousands of soldiers.
2. While the Chambers Militant would be unlikely to fight for a rogue inquisitor, it's not like rogue inquisitors go around with a flashing sign over their head that says "Rogue." Very often in 40K it's not clear who's rogue and who isn't. If you want, say, sisters of battle to fight with your inquisitor(s) in your campaign, it's easy enough to say that they simply disagree with the invading marines that the inquisitor has done anything wrong, and are going to fight to protect him or her.
3. A codex marine chapter has very limited manpower. In fact, merely crewing every vehicle in the chapter's armory will take most of the Sixth and Seventh Companies (organizationally, the reserve companies are really there to support the battle companies, which means that a marine chapter really has basically five "fighting" companies, plus support). As a result, chapter masters tend to be very cagey with their use of men. I won't say that they're cowards (unless I'm having a *****-fest with Melissia about how much I love to hate marines ), but they're very aware of how few men they can afford to lose. If you ask a chapter master to do a job that will take 1,000 marines to complete, he'll most likely tell you no - because that would mean putting his entire chapter at risk of annihilation, and very, very few missions are worth that to a chapter master. Instead, he'd try to get a coalition of chapters together, each of which only contributes a few hundred men, so that no one chapter is at risk of getting wiped out just because the mission goes south. It's not like the Ultramarines allocate all ten companies to a mission, then ask the Imperial Fists to allocate all ten of their companies to the mission, and then ask the Blood Angels to allocate all ten of their companies. If a mission requires that many marines, the Ultramarines would try to get, say, fifteen chapters each to commit two companies.
   
   What this means is that you can have a reasonable multi-chapter marine force in your campaign without the mission being so big that it requires the full resources of multiple marine chapters.

Helpful?

[Melissia]

And let's face it, even contributing just a single company is considered a major military investment for the Astartes chapters. They'd normally put in a couple squads at most.

[Ivarr]

Well, if all the inquisitors in the Imperium ascended to daemonhood overnight, they wouldn't have anybody to pull from; even their own household troops would turn on them. Of course, that's not how it would work; it's not like the Chaos gods just hand out daemonhood willy nilly. There are Chaos legionnaires who have served the dark gods for 10,000 years who haven't hit daemonhood yet.

A much more plausible scenario is that an inquisitor falls to Chaos over a period of time, quite possibly by accident, and take his household troops with him. In that sort of scenario it's highly unlikely that any troops from his Ordo's Chamber Militant would follow him.


You could spin it a couple of different ways. If you wanted to be fairly literal about it, even an Apocalypse game probably represents a very small battle. For instance, the 12th Tallarn Armored regiment, a fairly typical Imperial Guard tank regiment, at the time of the Taros campaign, fielded one hundred and fifty nine Leman Russes, eleven Baneblades, ninety Sentinels, one hundred and six Chimeras, forty-eight Basilisks, twenty Hydras, and seventy-nine Salamanders, plus support vehicles. One regiment - one of two that fought in the Taros invasion, which was a small invasion by Imperial Guard standards. Since even the largest Apocalypse battle you're likely to be able to play is a tiny, tiny engagement by 40K standards, you have the luxury of making your campaign be about a single rogue inquisitor if you want it to be.

In fact, let's say you don't want to be quite that literal about it, but still want to run a campaign wherein marines from several chapters invade a planet and do battle with one or more inquisitorial players. That can still be quite a small number of inquisitors - as small as one - fluff-wise. Keep in mind the following:

1. Even a single rogue inquisitor could induct into his service as many Guardsmen and PDF troopers as he could lay his hands on. A handful of rogue inquisitors could easily possibly command tens of thousands of soldiers.
2. While the Chambers Militant would be unlikely to fight for a rogue inquisitor, it's not like rogue inquisitors go around with a flashing sign over their head that says "Rogue." Very often in 40K it's not clear who's rogue and who isn't. If you want, say, sisters of battle to fight with your inquisitor(s) in your campaign, it's easy enough to say that they simply disagree with the invading marines that the inquisitor has done anything wrong, and are going to fight to protect him or her.
3. A codex marine chapter has very limited manpower. In fact, merely crewing every vehicle in the chapter's armory will take most of the Sixth and Seventh Companies (organizationally, the reserve companies are really there to support the battle companies, which means that a marine chapter really has basically five "fighting" companies, plus support). As a result, chapter masters tend to be very cagey with their use of men. I won't say that they're cowards (unless I'm having a *****-fest with Melissia about how much I love to hate marines ), but they're very aware of how few men they can afford to lose. If you ask a chapter master to do a job that will take 1,000 marines to complete, he'll most likely tell you no - because that would mean putting his entire chapter at risk of annihilation, and very, very few missions are worth that to a chapter master. Instead, he'd try to get a coalition of chapters together, each of which only contributes a few hundred men, so that no one chapter is at risk of getting wiped out just because the mission goes south. It's not like the Ultramarines allocate all ten companies to a mission, then ask the Imperial Fists to allocate all ten of their companies to the mission, and then ask the Blood Angels to allocate all ten of their companies. If a mission requires that many marines, the Ultramarines would try to get, say, fifteen chapters each to commit two companies.
   
   What this means is that you can have a reasonable multi-chapter marine force in your campaign without the mission being so big that it requires the full resources of multiple marine chapters.

Helpful?

Bear in mind though that all of this makes sense in the fluff because of the ridiculous numbers of guardsman available in any given system. And in the fluff a marine chapter committing a few squads is a lot when all of it works out...after all 2-3 squads of marine should be able to engage 1000s of guardsman and win. On the table top this does not seem much because the Marines are scaled back drastically and a small contingent of Marines would be run over by just a hundred guardsman or so.

[Nabterayl]

Bear in mind though that all of this makes sense in the fluff because of the ridiculous numbers of guardsman available in any given system.

As ponderous as it seems, the Guard is actually a mobile, offensive force. They have to be garrisoned somewhere, of course, but the job of system defense falls to the PDF, which is kind of a second class Guard. Not every system will be dripping in Guardsmen (or Navy squadrons), but every system will have plenty of PDF to be dragooned. And of course, some systems will be dripping in Guardsmen.

And in the fluff a marine chapter committing a few squads is a lot when all of it works out...after all 2-3 squads of marine should be able to engage 1000s of guardsman and win.

I don't actually think that's true. Thousands of guardsmen may not be able to stop two to three squads of marines from achieving their objective. But if you told thirty marines to literally go out and kill thousands of guardsmen, they would either a) fail or b) succeed, but only because the thirty marines have a strike cruiser that bombarded the guardsmen from orbit and the guardsmen had no way to hurt a starship. Remember that in a stand-up fight a hundred Avenging Sons were beaten by a single Tau hunter cadre (outnumbered roughly eight to one, with the marines lacking any armored support except for two dreadnoughts), and a hundred and fifty Red Hunters were wiped out to a man by a couple thousand heretic guardsmen and mutant rabble.

Fluff marines are good, but they're still mortal. Force them to fight in ways that are disadvantageous to them and they die just like everything else.

[Aenir]

"Fluff Marines:





TT Marines:







Could it been they were doomed b/c of the lack of armor instead of the Numbers?

Either that or he suffered from the DOW Sgt. Idiotness





Hmm, I always thought that if they deemed it neccessary, they would commit the whole chapter, its rare but it has been done

[Melissia]

Even in fluff, Marines get killed with some frequency. A single stray meltagun shot will utterly destroy a Marine, for example, and even a Marine would probably not relish the idea of facing down a barrage of multilaser/heavy bolter fire from a well-led armored fist platoon-- their armor will fail eventually. And let's not forget that Battle Cannons really ARE that devastating, and the Guard has ridiculous amounts of them when in major engagements-- in major conflicts, there are quite easily more Leman Russ tanks than there are Marines in a chapter.

[Just_Me]

I already said that >.>

No need to get defensive, I am fully aware that you already mentioned Inquisition factionalism. What I was saying was that the general tone of the thread has been to talk about “the Inquisition” as if it were a single body, and this is of course misleading, as I am sure most of us already know.

Your scenario is just so far fetched that it's just... illogical to even think about. Why should all Inquisitors ascend to daemonhood? Some inquisitors are Ex-Sororitas and quite possibly even Ex-Astartes, and, quite frankly, there are factions within the Inquisition that, even IF they were potentially heretical (which itself is a stretch), if one group turned daemonic the second one would side with the Imperium simply out of spite for the first group.
...

I doubt even all of the Inquisitorial Stormtroopers would side with them if they saw evidence of Inquisitors turning into daemons. Inquisitorial Stormtroopers are considered the cream of the crop, the top two percent (or less even) of all stormtroopers to graduate from the Schola Progenium-- the same school that initially trains Sororitas and Commissars.

Well, if all the inquisitors in the Imperium ascended to daemonhood overnight, they wouldn't have anybody to pull from; even their own household troops would turn on them. Of course, that's not how it would work; it's not like the Chaos gods just hand out daemonhood willy nilly. There are Chaos legionnaires who have served the dark gods for 10,000 years who haven't hit daemonhood yet.

A much more plausible scenario is that an inquisitor falls to Chaos over a period of time, quite possibly by accident, and take his household troops with him. In that sort of scenario it's highly unlikely that any troops from his Ordo's Chamber Militant would follow him.

I am fairly certain that the example of “all of the Inquisitors spontaneously ascending to Daemonhood” is not be presented as a serious possibility, rather as a “plot device” to of sorts to represent a set of circumstances wherein ALL marines would simultaneously go to war with the ENTIRE Inquisition. Think of it as the plot hole through which Yoda falls to end up in Soul Calibur IV, we just don't try to take it seriously, get over the fact that it makes no sense, and proceed to the mindless button mashing .

Moving on, as to the question of whether a handful of Marines represents the tactical equivalent of many hundreds of Guardsmen, I agree that as long as the Guard are able to fight "their" war the answer is no. But I have no problems believing those figures if the Astartes are able to dictate the battle, in close ranged fire fights, say through the halls of a ship or corridors of a building, where the Guard have no ability to bring their heavier elements to bear. If we arbitrarily decide to lock 20 Astartes in a (very big) room with 1000 Guardsmen sans mechanized support, I would actually put my money on the Astartes.

The problem with this entire debate is that the match-ups and comparisons are getting so ludicrously contrived, hypothetical, and arbitrary as to be useless. Sure, maybe if we locked a series of various different numbers and combinations of Imperial troops in a room together and told them to fight it out we might in the end know who has bragging rights over whom, but this would tell us absolutely nothing about the relative effectiveness of Imperial military organizations as a whole, and even less about the power dynamic between said forces (and yes, I am aware of the irony of something telling use "less than nothing").

To the other posters:

How about a planetary invasion

IE a traditional (@ least on TT campaign), start with Planet Strike, run a couple of missions, then finish it off with an apoc)

how would that equate into the background?

I am intrigued, is all of this really intended to generate information for a narrative campaign (an undertaking I wholeheartedly approve of by the way) of some sort? If so you will likely find it more effective to ask more direct and specific questions, rather the incredibly open ended ones we are all evidently trying and to answer.

[Aenir]

no, but i am using the ideas for a campaign down the line perhaps

It all started when i had a discussion with my buddy who swore up and down that the Astartes would have NO chance vs the inqusition, which I disagreed with, but as we could not come to an agreement, I decided to ask the Knowlegeable posters of BOLS (and Melissa, the Resident Soritas )

PS: Is it possible Melissa is a Sister of Battle who got lost in the Warp and ended up here?

[Just_Me]

PS: Is it possible Melissa is a Sister of Battle who got lost in the Warp and ended up here?

Nope, not a possibility. It is a virtual certainty .

Seriously though listen to what she says about the Sororitas (and the rest of 40k lore for that matter), she really seems to know her stuff…