Grey knights

[Kabuse]

hey all, just a quick fluff question, is anyone else bothered by the new fluff regarding GK mind wiping or simply just rounding up and murdering all their allies? and is there anyway I can say mine don't without it braking cannon? like they don't believe in the murder of Imperial citizens so this Brotherhood just pretends to be a normal marine chapter with cool stuff? or they just keep out of the way so noone asks about them?

 

yea I'm a softy haha but I dont like the idea of my GK executing my guardsman after a doubles game, kinda takes the Hero feeling out of them haha, but I love the rest of the fluff and the models and the codex, this just keeps nagging at me.

[Dr von Hohenheim]

I also think it's absurd that they slaughter their allies just to maintain their secret identity.

 

So, I ignore it (like most of the fluff in the book). Mine don't do it!

[Drachnon]

The backstory of my Grey Knights is that they are 'loaned' to the blood angels to fight the upcomming daemon attack. In return the grey knights got stormravens -_-. No one can convince me it can't happen ^_^

[BrotherWasted]

You can deny it all youw ant, but Grey Knights have always been about doing what needs to be done in order to fend off the Daemons. If they need to kill a million citizens or destroy an entire Imperial Guard base world to contain a daemon infestation, so be it.

 

I will grant you that some of the feats in the new Codex are out of character, like slaying Sisters to protect themselves from taint. But Grey Knights are mentally beyond the concept of seeing team-killing as some unholy sin. If they needed to kill the Sisters to prevent the taint spreading, fair enough; but they didn't need their blood as some sort of daemon ward.

[Kabuse]

yea I get the whole 'do what must be done' thing, but surely as awesome and bad ass as they are, that would be a last resort? wiping out millions to prevent a deamon infestation? can't they do something clever to save them. Idk maybe I have played too many RPGs but there is always a clever, yet harder and normally sacrificing way to save the day and not murder hundreds of innocents. It just seems like the easy way out

[The Holy Heretic]

Grey Knights/Inquisition are the ultra fascist men-in-black(/silver).

 

They're the CIA, Mossad, KGB of the 40K universe, they do the job without regret or remorse. They're brainwashed zealots with a messiah-complex on a crusade to save the universe. They are not heroes or good guys, but just killers.

 

If you want heroes, you should join the boys in blue - or get an old realm of chaos book and make a star child warband :(

[Morollan]

yea I get the whole 'do what must be done' thing, but surely as awesome and bad ass as they are, that would be a last resort? wiping out millions to prevent a deamon infestation? can't they do something clever to save them. Idk maybe I have played too many RPGs but there is always a clever, yet harder and normally sacrificing way to save the day and not murder hundreds of innocents. It just seems like the easy way out

 

There's not always a 'clever' option available and you also have to consider whether any self-sacrifice is a worthwhile trade. There are only ~1000 Grey Knights in the whole universe. How many 'normal' folk is a Grey Knight worth? Even if it was just modern-day earth, you have a population of roughly 7,000,000,000. Just on a simple ratio, that makes each GK worth ~7,000,000 normal folk. Now multiply that by several million to take into account all the other worlds and you'll see that destroying an entire world is better than sacrificing a single Grey Knight. About the only thing that will save a daemon-infested world from Exterminatus is if the world itself is of value, strategically or materially. The population is expendable and unimportant.

[Dr von Hohenheim]

I don't so much mind them killing excessively to avoid demonic contamination. That does at least make a certain amount of sense.

 

But killing just to keep their existence secret? Ludicrous, and not likely to work anyway.

[Reclusiarch Darius]

:)

 

You all forget that Grey Knights have always been like this. The background about them slaughtering or mind-wiping everyone involved in the First War for Armageddon pre-dates the Daemonhunter codex (as does the stuff about Logan Grimnar impeding the efforts of the Inquisition and Knights).

 

Grey Knights don't have the luxuries of morality, time or mercy; they're all obstacles to victory over Chaos. If but a single corrupted mortal escapes a warzone and absconds to another world, another civil war or uprising could develop, making the prior efforts of wiping out Chaos wasted. Chaos never gives up, it never sleeps and it will resort to any means neccessary to enslave mankind. The Knights have to be equally ruthless and absolutist, because if they fail or falter, the Imperium will destroy itself.

 

I personally have no problems with the new background. Ward (and the other contributors) have gone to great lengths to establish the strange paradox of the Grey Knights. They are sorcerors of immense power, they understand truths and secrets that would shatter the sanity of lesser beings, and they even organise themselves according to the nature of Chaos (eight Brotherhoods, eight Grandmasters, one Supreme Grandmaster, their rituals etc). Yet, by being gifted with the purity of the Emperor's own flesh (the gene-seed), they can do all of this without being tempted by the power they wield.

 

Psychic powers have always been a matter of perspective. 'A Thousand Sons' demonstrates this especially well, with Ahriman showing his Rune Priest opponent that their powers (which the Rune Priest maintains are drawn from completely different sources) are in fact one and the same. The question is not the source, nor the power of Chaos (virtually nothing can match it, except maybe the Hive Mind or Necrontyr), it is how it is used and whether the wielder can prevent it controlling him.

 

With regards to secrecy, yes it is important. If it were more widely known that the Inquisition employs a specialist Astartes Chapter comprised entirely of psykers, what do you think the reaction of the Imperial Church would be? Or the citizenry themselves? Or even the other Astartes Chapters? The hatred of witches, xenos, mutants etc isn't some dictat imposed from on high. The very people of the Imperium possess this zealotry, (hatred of xenos stems from antiquity, hatred of mutants and psykers is partly due to the Church and also to events in the Imperium's past where powerful psykers have nearly wiped out humanity). Not to mention the various political, military, bureacratic organs of state would want to either destroy them, quarantine them until a decision is reached on their fate etc. The Emperor decreed their secrecy because it is what makes them so effective. Without the burden of being officially part of the Imperial war machine, and being outside anyone's authority (even the Ordo Malleus has to ask nicely), they can go about their duties to maximum effect.

 

There is also the issue of containment of knowledge. If you fight alongside the Knights, or witness them in combat, you will be privy to their battle sorceries, their wargear, the secret rites they perform to banish Daemons etc. You will also witness their opponents, which is even worse from the Inquisition's perspective. Just the mere knowledge that the Daemons that you are threatened with in church are real, and to have such memories of carnage and corruption (Daemons don't manifest for any other reason basically), is enough to be tainted irrevocably.

[Brother Valerius]

I don't so much mind them killing excessively to avoid demonic contamination. That does at least make a certain amount of sense.

 

But killing just to keep their existence secret? Ludicrous, and not likely to work anyway.

 

Indeed. Regardless of how old the fluff is, it's horrible fluff. I ignore it.

[Iron Lord]

Thing is- they don't kill people to keep their existance a secret, when they intervene in a non-daemonic battle. At least, in the new codex- which mentions the grey knights intervening against the orks, and as a result, tales of silver-armoured heroes go round.

 

It may only be daemon-fights, that have all witnesses killed afterward.

[Chairman_woo]

I don't so much mind them killing excessively to avoid demonic contamination. That does at least make a certain amount of sense.

 

But killing just to keep their existence secret? Ludicrous, and not likely to work anyway.

 

 

Yes but the very existence of the grey knights is evidence of the deamonic threat they are so desparate to supress all knowlage of, the two concepts go virtualy hand in hand. Mere knowlage of the existence of deamons is considered an extremely serious threat all by itself, hence mindwiping of entire companies/chapters and simply putting down those not valuble enough to warrant undergoing the difficult mindwiping proscess.

[thade]

Knowledge of demons presents a risk that people may turn to them...and while it's tiny, the risk is non-zero. Any tiny suddenly become significant on a billion worlds where each world may have several billion citizens. One citizen embracing Chaos may cost them a planet or even an entire sector. The threat is very real and it's why they were created in the first place.

 

They are a "by any means necessary" kind of force. If current world governments could wipe minds to cover up their covert options, you better believe they would. -_-

 

Why is their background fluff so bad anyway? I kind of like it, especially the Daemonhunter's codex.

[Iron Lord]

Normally (except for a single paragraph in Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy) the number of worlds in the Imperium is given as of the order of one million.

 

Average number of people per world- unknown. The highest hiveworld population number given so far is Ichar IV at 500 billion (Terra and Necromunda might have more, but I haven't seen figures for those two). The lowest was in The Badab War book (I think, Badab itself) at about 7 billion.

 

Agriworld populations probably also vary- Santiago, in the short story Into The Maelstrom, had about 1 billion- some may have less.

[old git]

As I remember the old fluff, the practice of executing non astartes troops or militia/civilians, and of mind wiping marines was not so much about keeping the Grey Knights existence a secret. Rather, it was about keeping the existence of daemons and chaos in general a secret from the mass of imperial citizens. If you know something exists you might want to find out more about it and in the case of the daemonic this is not what the =I= wants. If, at the same time, the existence of the Knights is kept under wraps, all the better.

[Brother Valerius]

I don't so much mind them killing excessively to avoid demonic contamination. That does at least make a certain amount of sense.

 

But killing just to keep their existence secret? Ludicrous, and not likely to work anyway.

 

 

Yes but the very existence of the grey knights is evidence of the deamonic threat they are so desparate to supress all knowlage of, the two concepts go virtualy hand in hand. Mere knowlage of the existence of deamons is considered an extremely serious threat all by itself, hence mindwiping of entire companies/chapters and simply putting down those not valuble enough to warrant undergoing the difficult mindwiping proscess.

 

I don't buy that argument. As I said, it's idiotic fluff and I ignore it. I don't care if it goes all the way back to first edition, that doesn't make it good or reasonable fluff.

[number6]

I don't buy that argument. As I said, it's idiotic fluff and I ignore it. I don't care if it goes all the way back to first edition, that doesn't make it good or reasonable fluff.

"Quality" is indeed in the eye of the beholder. :)

 

There is no "right" or "wrong" fluff in 40K. It is what it is: contradictory, ever-changing. GW has no trouble making vast, sweeping retcons. Play your GKs with the fluff that you like best. That's the only way to be "right". :)

[Valerian]

As I remember the old fluff, the practice of executing non astartes troops or militia/civilians, and of mind wiping marines was not so much about keeping the Grey Knights existence a secret. Rather, it was about keeping the existence of daemons and chaos in general a secret from the mass of imperial citizens.

 

That's exactly right. It isn't about keeping the Grey Knights themselves secret, it is about keeping the Daemonic threat secret. In Slaves to Darkness it was stated that the true purpose of the Ordo Malleus (to investigate and fight the Daemonic) isn't known outside of the Order itself; everyone else is simply told that they are the internal organization that polices the rest of the Inquisition (which they do as well, but it is a secondary function).

 

Valerian

[thade]

...the voice of reason...

[Eddie Orlock]

I tended to the impression that the Inquisition, and the Knights by extension, were supposed and expected to practice morality at a grander scale.

 

Suppose you knew a cancer patient, and suppose this person had, for lack of a better and less humourous example 'Cancer of the Finger Nails', and further suppose, that like most cancers left untreated it'd eventually spread and kill this person. Now, further suppose this is not a unique case, and that many people have previously died to finger-nail cancer and digit preserving therapies were not reliably effective. Would you amputate the fingers? Would you amputate the fingers if our subject was a world famous pianist?

 

Now scale this up a absurdly as everything in the fortyfirst millenium is. There is a 'Cancer' on the planet, do you risk it spreading to other planets or do you amputate? Deperate times call for desperate measures.

 

In modern warfare, the highest achievement when fighting the soldiers of a civilised nation isn't to kill them, it's to wound them. A deadman is burried with no significant further account. A wounded man requires timely extraction and significant resources to patchup, and may or may not be able to return to the fray. Resources that could have potentially been used more efficiently to train up more replacements. If you have a finite number of troops this might be worth the trouble, if you have the infinite backing of the departemento munitorium, to quote chenkov, "Send in the Next Wave!"

 

This kind of morality and eye for the greater scope and implications of the struggle has historically been the doctrine of the knights, and in my opinion, a significant part of what differentiates them from being bland silver marines. That Guardsmen are cheap and expendable is fundemental to background of the Imperium and the setting itself, and integral to the desired 'Grim Darkness'. Civilians are cheaper yet.

 

This is a bit like when I encountered the guy with the 'vegetarian' 'Nids. In his twisted view of the fluff they were co-exitsing on a peaceful planet with his buddies Tau colonists, and the occasionally fought war games to keep sharp incase xenophobic guardsmen like mine dropped in.

 

If you don't like the persona presented in the fluff of the army you're collecting, I'd encourage you to seriously investigate the background of other factions to see if you can't find something more agreeable to your specific tastes. You might enjoy it even more.

[Sothalor]

It's also worth mentioning that the Grey Knights' use of mass executions and mind wipes also has to do with the insidious nature of Chaos in this setting. Time and again it's demonstrated that mere exposure to the forces of Chaos can corrupt those who had no intention of serving the ruinous powers. If the group in question is deemed expendable enough (and in the 41st millennium, human life is one of the most expendable commodities the Imperium has) they probably consider it a "better safe than sorry" choice: better that thousands die straightaway rather than risk one be corrupted and cause the corruption and deaths of possibly millions or billions.

 

As a corollary to this, it is also important to remember that the Grey Knights typically show up only in the most dire of circumstances. Consider the scale: a thousand or so Grey Knights to defend and scour an entire galaxy and untold trillions of human lives. They most likely aren't showing up for anything less than the most absolutely desperate doomsday scenarios. This is less "cult uses all its resources to summon several lesser daemons" and more "daemon prince breaking through reality with horde to utterly consume key world." The greater the incursion, the greater the salient risks of exposure and corruption. Any survivors have undoubtedly come into contact with hideous facts that the Imperium denies to the vast majority of its subjects.

 

EDIT: That said, the fluff also does leave room for different outcomes. A unit that performs heroically enough and proves to be zealous and untainted may be spared such... summary judgments. You could have it so that the Inquisition only "disappears" several individuals or squads judged most high risk while swearing the rest to secrecy or even co-opting an entire battalion to serve as Inquisitorial units. The Inquisition and Grey Knights seem to work with several Space Marine Chapters routinely (the Exorcists come to mind). Individual Grey Knight Grand Masters may also hold differing attitudes. Draigo's background has survivors of the Cadian 912th recounting how he held a pass to cover their retreat. If you like, it shouldn't be too big a deal to have a Brotherhood with a Grand Master who prefers to perform preemptive strikes and pass his troops off as generic Adeptus Astartes precisely so allied Imperial units don't have to be exposed to dangerous knowledge. In fact the Dark Heresy RPG line encourages this as a way to have Grey Knights interacting with mortals.

[Brother Captain Kezef]

People forget that the Grey Knights are not really Human anymore.

 

Even the most ruthless marine from the most ruthless astartes chapter (Flesh Tearers and Black Templars come to mind) remember their past, their childhood, their link to humanity. Some chapters are closer than others (such as the Space Wolves and Salamanders). Many chapters go out of their way to surround themselves with links to their Humanity (Blood angels and their artwork).

 

What Humanity is left in a Grey knight? His memories are purged, anything that would link him to his humanity is erased and considered a weakness. They look upon Humanity and see no link, nothing in their mind resonates with "I am one of them". They are warriors with one goal, one purpose and anybody they see is either a tool to be used in that war (which is also how they view themselves), the enemy itself or smply in their way.

 

Grey Knights are the ultimate weapon against haos, but by becoming that weapon they are no longer remotely Human and thus more inclined to ruthless and genocidal acts as they just don't care is a billion humans die so that one greater daemon is destroyed.

[Fume]

Just face it. Our weak mortal minds just cant understand the logic of the demi-god space marine.

 

I think the issue here is seperating the protection of a human life, from the protection of the empire. They fight to protect the empire as a whole. Its ideals, culture and structure. They dont fight to protect it citizens.

 

I think they treat chaos much like we treat cancer today. Attempt to kill the cancer before you kill the patient. Think that Killing a million citizens is like removing a little bit extra healthy flesh, just to make sure you get all the tumour.