Ordo Malleus

“Do not attempt to understand the things that emerge from that foul realm, my Sisters. It is only necessary that you hate them.”

–Canoness Challant, before the Purging of Ferrom

The region of space that encompasses the Askellon Sector has long been tied to the Warp. This is also true of those who live under Askelline stars, a link that the Pandaemonium's unending cry for vengeance rails against with each surge of the Great Storm. Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus and their Acolytes have made examining any relation of this nature, especially between the founders of Askellon and the Great Storm, a priority in their work within the sector. Though there are many suspicions, there are also countless layers of secrecy. The many centuries have turned any semblance of fact into mythical lore, and the ongoing efforts of the powerful to ensure their histories remain undisturbed, such that even Inquisitors have found themselves stymied when attempting to forcefully wield their authority. Unravelling any hidden connections has thus become a silent war, fought through deceit and cunning.

Perhaps this connection began even before humanity first encountered Askelline worlds, for the Lay of Askellios relates how the original settlers braved many Warp storms and other perils after departing Terra so many millennia ago. Unseen hands seemed to raise up eldritch barricades at every turn along their journey, and many were lost to horrors for which they had no comprehension or defences. Finally, after what seemed like ages of travel, the fleets found a serene area free of storms. It was far from their projected colonisation zone, but after so long in space, its peace projected a sense of welcome that few could refuse. Those who voiced any concerns that there might have been unknown influences guiding their journey were quickly silenced— through violence where necessary.

Over the following millennia, the humans of Askellon discovered that this serenity was not common for their stars. During the many Wars of Purgation against the xenos species who dared exist where Mankind was present, almost every alien civilisation encountered had records of the Warp and the entities that crept from that unholy realm. Tales of terrible gods permeated these tales, often as part of the crumbling ruins of long-extinct races. The rise of the Pandaemonium, later traced back to the union of the original colonists under one rule but seemingly to have existed even before those shrouded days, grew with each generation as well. A number of Askelline sages feared the sector would suffer a fate similar to that of civilisations before them, something else that grows with each generation.

Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus who operate within the sector see these tales as a sign that Chaos has also operated in Askellian space from times immemorial, and had a clawed talon in the destiny in innumerable empires. That even these once-mighty races fell to the Ruinous Powers is yet another sign that the threats from beyond are surely the greatest Mankind faces. Many have been tied to specific Daemon Princes and other entities too dangerous to be named, with visitations throughout the millennia that doomed one race after another. Many of these Warp-tainted ruins have been kept secret—buried or razed to dust—lest others discover the horrid nature of what destroyed these alien dominions. A populace that retains its ignorance of the Enemies Beyond is one that can be saved—while one that knows of these dangers is one already lost.

“My oath of service will be the death of me. If I do not give up my life in battle, then to become worthy I must become something that means the death of the man I am now. I have seen that change in my mistress, and it haunts me. And my fear of it is what shows me I am still unfit to carry on her work.”

–Jerren Oberzin, Acolyte to Inquisitor Diala Endenvarr

In theory, the remit of the Ordo Malleus is simple. Wherever the Daemon seeks entry to reality, deny it; wherever the Daemon sets foot in reality, destroy it; wherever the Daemon leaves a trace of itself in reality, obliterate it. In practice, this war is maddening, thankless, and never-ending. Even its victories are often as cruel to the Imperial servants who win them as to the enemies they vanquish.

The saying that knowledge is power has never been truer than of the daemonic. The other Ordos confront humans with different beliefs or aliens with different biology, but the Ordo Malleus battles an enemy from a different reality defined by utterly foreign and unnatural laws. Part of that difference is that knowledge of the daemonic is not a neutral thing: it is active, animate, and works on the minds and souls of those who study it. But while there are stories of staunchly Puritanical Inquisitors who try to maintain a safe ignorance by filtering knowledge of the enemy through data engines and expendable servants, the fact remains that without understanding the unique powers and weaknesses of The Enemy Beyond , the war against the Daemon is doomed to fail.

The Ordo Malleus works to expand its knowledge in many ways. The most basic is to comb through the vast accumulated history of the Imperium, picking out evidence from humanity’s millennia of experience against this enemy. This is still not a simple task. The Imperium’s obsession with documentation has created insane quantities of records and archives, whole landmasses and even planets being given over to storing them. At the same time, it is shockingly callous about burning gigantic datavaults and executing regiments of scribes and clerks to suppress the most trivially inconvenient facts. Neglect, incompetence, and the simple inertia of the vast Adeptus Administratum bureaucracy also compounds the damage wrought by malice and active error, but still there are many gems of data to be found amidst crumbling mountains of parchment, dataslates, and scrolls.

Inquisitorial agents also study the sites of incursions. Even when a daemonic manifestation has gone, there is valuable information to gain from forensic analysis, psychometry, and possibly from the ravings of victims and witnesses before they are released into the Emperor’s Grace. Inquisitors and their Acolytes even travel outside the Imperium’s borders on such missions, drawing information from xenos relics, degenerate human cultures, or strange quasi-natural Warp-signs. Most perilously of all, some are drawn into acquiring and studying works of outright heresy, obscene treatises created not as a guide to combating the daemonic but as a tool for Warpcraft.

The Ordo Malleus puts this knowledge to use by creating weapons and techniques to employ in battle. The creation of such specialised equipment is challenging without some knowledge of its eventual use, so the Ordo Malleus struggles to commission equipment from Imperial sources—there is much lore it does not even entrust to the Adeptus Mechanicus, or only parcel out in fragments too small to reveal their true purpose. As a result, the Ordo Malleus has become expert at creating its own wargear, and secretive forges produce force weapons, Warp deflecting Aegis Suits, and other devices to combat the daemonic threat. Meanwhile, its Inquisitors labour under the burden of their sanity-stretching knowledge to better understand how to thwart, repel, and banish their enemies.

Open battle with the Daemon is the final calling of the Ordo Malleus, and every last one of its Inquisitors must be prepared to sacrifice life, soul, and sanity in confrontation with the Warp if needed. Because they cannot trust or educate any outside the Ordo Malleus on the true threat they face, many Daemonhunters specialise in combating their foes face to face—either on their own, or leading a force of the Ordo Malleus’ Chamber Militant, the Grey Knights.

A Great and Terrible Burden

Knowledge of the Daemon is infection, not information. It does not remain passive in a human mind, but gnaws at its carrier’s thoughts and desires, and tries to spread itself to new hosts. To those who do not understand this, the Ordo Malleus’ brutal suppression of such knowledge seems barbaric; to those who do, it is a necessary sin which sits heavy with those who act as the Emperor’s Will.

After an incursion has been vanquished and all the Warp’s mortal vessels and instruments have burned, the Ordo Malleus must carry out the sombre work of concealment, cauterising Imperial society at the contact point. Any who witnessed the manifestation of daemonic forces with enough clarity to understand what they were seeing are granted the Emperor’s Mercy. Those further removed—they who saw the aftermath, or only a scrap of the manifestation that they cannot understand or explain—may well be rounded up and killed alongside the closer witnesses, but such sentences have been known to be commuted. Inquisitors may also eliminate those who try to protect or comfort any survivors.

Valued assets such as Space Marines or Officio Assassinorum agents (or possibly novice Acolytes not prepared for such truths) might be mind-wiped, although the fierce debates about how effective this is are unlikely to ever end, for while the mind may not remember, the soul can never forget. Harsh as this is, the archives of the Ordo Malleus record too many times when soft-heartedness undid an Inquisitor, a hive, or an entire world. Whether it is a single round through the skull of a pleading witness, or the Exterminatus of a world of billions, those of the Ordo Malleus must be prepared to drench their hands in blood.

“I am familiar with the arguments. They utterly appal me. Radical thought is heretical.”

–Attributed to Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn (in his younger years)

It is the oldest and most fundamental temptation of the Inquisitor: to harness the psyker, enslave the Daemon, use the power flowing from the Warp as a weapon against the very entities who manifest from that power. The feud between Puritan dogma and Radical experimentation has defined the Inquisition since its inception. Treatises and debates on the matter could fill a whole planet of libraries—indeed, somewhere in the Imperium it undoubtedly has.

The work of the Ordo Malleus distils the temptation to Radicalism into an almost mythic clarity, making every aspect of it brighter and more vivid: the impossibly high stakes, the grandeur of the power and success it offers, the horror of the consequences of failure. All this comes during a lifelong war against an enemy whose merest touch is enough to taint human judgement and subtly distort the moral compass. Small wonder, then, that even Inquisitors who fiercely cling to the Puritan path can end up unbalanced at best, or obsessive and deranged extremists at worst.

Few Inquisitors fling themselves headlong into Radicalism at the outset of their careers—neither the Ordo Malleus or the Inquisition as a whole could have survived without learning how
to police its new and aspiring members. While some cunning Radicals have succeeded in advancing their equally far-gone protégés to become Inquisitors themselves, by and large the Ordos have kept their new members within stable and orthodox bounds. A taste for Radical thought is more likely to develop as part of the work of the Inquisition itself.

Even setting aside the poor souls who fall victim to daemonic weaponry (such as the tragic and infamous wounding of Inquisitor Quixos), the Daemon is cunning and protean, able by its nature to flow into shape around its adversary’s mind. Anger, pride, ambition, despair, vengeance—all offer cracks through which wonderful enticements are glimpsed. Some see the power to destroy the enemy with its own energies. Others feel the pride saying that those who succumbed and fell were weak, that this time it will be different, that they are only taking a small step and are still in control. The Daemon needs only the slow turn of morality, so that simple knowledge and curiosity seem innocent, free of consequence or moral dimension; even the lure of noble self-sacrifice is a deadly weapon, when fanned into false and selfish fantasies of heroic martyrdom.

The Taxonomy of Radicalism

Inquisitors’ careers are as unique as their often-extreme personalities, but the trajectory into Radicalism within the Ordo Malleus tends to follow broadly recognisable stages, even if only in hindsight as a fallen Inquisitor’s colleagues pick over the evidence of his life. A very common first step is simply the acquisition of knowledge. The virtuous pursuit of the small, clean, and ignorant mind is a luxury that Inquisitors must set aside before they assume their position—all must know their enemy. It is a rare Inquisitor who can stick to the narrowest reading of that saying, learning only the broadest generalities, having Acolytes strip each new observation of context so that a growing body of knowledge cannot bewitch their minds with the promise of secrets. Most Inquisitors find it essential to their calling to know daemonic marks and names, and to study infamous case histories and treatises.

Often, it does not stop there, for it is a basic human urge to understand, to fit experiences into the framework of a known and knowable world. Once an Inquisitor has witnessed the transformative power of the daemonic at first hand, there comes the terrible instinct to try to make sense of it, reduce the unknowable blasphemy of the Warp to something that sits within a sane worldview. During this search for understanding, the first drops of forbidden knowledge feel very right. They seem to recast the enemy into something rational and controllable, even as that enemy’s influence begins to distort the Inquisitor’s judgement and rot his mind.

When knowledge is power, the short step from acquiring such lore to using it seems perfectly rational. If an Inquisitor would not balk at using a Daemon’s true name to drive it back into the Immaterium (and very few would), then employing slightly more esoteric divining practices to discover that true name would seem a small and sensible compromise. When that research also uncovers a way to foresee the Daemon’s next manifestation, then how many members of an organisation that prides itself on ruthless pragmatism for a higher cause would decide that the end justifies these means? With this, the steps begin to lead downward.

After abstract knowledge comes concrete practices and forbidden artefacts. While Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus and their Acolytes diligently study how to obliterate the creations of the
Warp, inanimate as well as “living,” many artefacts come into their hands that for whatever reason they cannot simply destroy. Some are made so powerfully that it is beyond the Inquisition’s abilities to unmake them, while some are too dangerous to destroy—there are cases on record of such efforts going horribly wrong, freeing bound Daemons or creating rifts into the Immaterium. Such items must be kept safely sealed away. But just as with knowledge, such things eat at the memory, becoming a source of fascination. From burning books and sealing away artefacts, an Inquisitor starts to rationalise sparing Warp-tainted trappings from destruction, then keeping them for study, then secretly hiding them from his colleagues, and then adding items to his Warp-touched collections by increasingly foul means.

Inquisitors easily rationalise the collection of a heretical library, or the addition of an unhallowed device or ritual to an arsenal. Only a few are driven by extremity or drawn by their own dark thoughts into the final descending arc of Radicalism, though—actual trafficking with the creatures of the Warp. There are many known ways to trap and bind a Daemon, and the Radicals who utilise them of course defend such tactics. They point to the power it grants them to battle these enemies, even claiming a sort of symbolic justice in this. They also claim that a
bound Daemon is a tiny sliver of strength stolen from the Ruinous Powers, weakening them just that little for as long as it is unable to return to the Warp and reunite with its master. Those straddling the line between Radicalism and outright heresy even say that unbound Daemons are a mixed threat, convincing themselves that Inquisitors can treat with and learn from such entities as though they were simply another kind of mortal principality. Inquisitors who reach this point, no matter how they protest their superior insight and higher goals in defence of humanity, have surely lost the last traces of their kinship to the human race and are walking into the maw of damnation.