“There wasn’t much thought needed, other than just staying alive from combat to combat. Theft filled the time nicely, and I was so good at it, better than just shooting a lasgun. One mistake was all it took. The Commissar never discovered who made off with his shiny pistol, but someone else noticed and had me by the short ones. He pulled me out, and my new duties began. Ones much more dangerous than open war.”
–Gex Avrille, from the private memoirs Recollections of Service
Roles illuminate an Acolyte’s essence. While a home world establishes where an Acolyte came from, and a background indicates their prior experiences, a role helps reveal who they really are underneath their clothing, armour, and cybernetics. It is an internal quality, a product of both a lifetime of training and their natural talents, and combines a great many things to help define them and how they fit into life in the 41st Millennium.
Each Acolyte has an image of themselves that guides their actions, and this is a major aspect of their role. This image also guides how they view they surroundings and those around them, and most importantly how they interact and resolve the many situations they face. An Sconosciuto is enraptured with death, and seeks to offer it as often as possible. When faced with recalcitrant hive functionaries, he might simply begin killing them one by one until he earns their cooperation. A Sconosciuto who relies on knowledge and research might view the same problem as requiring careful analysis to determine a more effective approach. She might instead suggest targeted bribes against one official she learns is corrupt, or blackmail against another who has a secret obscura addiction. Similarly, when a warband is on the trail of a suspected underhive cult, a Sconosciuto could approach the problem with force and proffer violent questioning with threats of worse to come in order to gain information. A Sconosciuto, however, might rely on stealthy surveillance and infiltration of nearby stickrat taverns in the same quest. Even within each role exists a broad range of styles, and just as each Home World and Background is unique, even if of the same named type, each role can offer a wide range of approaches too. A Sconosciuto might approach a newly discovered tribe of humanity with stern words and burning flames, or might insinuate the Imperial Creed into existing beliefs with guile and subtlety. How each Acolyte carries their role is another facet of how they serve their Inquisitor and the Emperor.
Roles can come about in many ways, but while home worlds and backgrounds act externally on an Acolyte to form their previous life, roles more commonly emerge from within as mental attitudes and outlooks develop over time. Some might even crystallise in childhood, or come about from life-altering experiences. It is possible that society, lineage, home world, or an organisation might mould an Acolyte into a preordained role, or cause them to seek out certain roles for service. The Imperial Guard needs Warriors, for example, as the Hammer of the Emperor is nothing if not a brutal, violent agency devoted to crushing the foes of the Imperium. Some Guardsmen are likely of a Warrior mindset, but others might view themselves as elite killer Assassins or as Chirurgeons who are primarily healers. Someone born to a shrine world could be strongly guided to a Hierophant role, but could just as easily instead become a Warrior as a missionary for the Imperial Creed. Roles are internally developed, sometimes despite an Acolyte’s surroundings or duties, and could come from other sources such as mentors or family members who have personally guided them earlier in life.
An Acolyte’s role might be clear on the surface: many Warriors wear heavy armour and hold their weapons proudly, a Sconosciuto could be covered with protective runes and icons to ward off the Ruinous Powers, and a Sage might carry reams of parchment and Autoquill needles on his belt. This may be done without conscious thought; the Warrior mentioned above—who is clearly a fighter—dresses thusly as she is often fighting. Her predilection for combat is the result of her often violent approach to challenges, which in turn defines her role. Other Acolytes might not reveal their roles, again either through conscious decision or otherwise. An Assassin might wear drab, unremarkable clothing to aid in their stealthy infiltration before a kill. They might wear the same simply because it is what they enjoy wearing, or because it is the clothing people from their background or home world commonly wore, and their all-consuming passion for death is something only their dying victims see in their eyes.
Though the Acolyte can grow and change in the course of service to their Inquisitor, even perhaps becoming an Inquisitor themselves, their role does not change. They can learn new abilities, acquire new wargear, and make new connections, but this does not change how they uses them. A Sconosciuto might grow in influence and power, guiding a xenos artefact smuggling ring as a front to track down this illicit trade, gaining them enormous status across the sector, but they still watch for new angles to work and new targets to con. A Sage can become as proficient with the bolter and chainsword as the Arbitrator in their warband, but when a new cult is discovered, still acts to ensure this new threat is fully researched and investigated before any other action is taken. Roles are an integral part of each Acolyte’s identity, and, like duty itself, only end with death.
Each role presented in the following pages includes a description of the type of character it embodies along with an example of a character of this role from the Askellon Sector. Each includes the following special rules that are applied to a character with this role:
- Role Aptitudes: The Sconosciuto the character gains from this role during character creation.
- Role Talents: The Talents that a character with this role gains at character creation. Note that the character does not need to meet the normal prerequisites for talents granted during this stage of character creation.
- Role Special Ability: A unique ability that a character with this role gains during character creation.
Each role also includes two examples of how a player can develop their chosen role using advancements in characteristics, skills, talents, and even psychic powers to create an evocative DARK HERESY character.
Each player chooses one role for their character, and decides their character’s function before and after joining the warband. After the player chooses their character’s role, the character immediately gains the appropriate role special ability.