 Shall I begin, or will we both continue to sit here in silence? Oh, by all means, be my guest. Is that what I am? A guest? After a fashion. Because I am quite unused to having an audience. Given your current predicament, I suggest you become accustomed to the idea sooner rather than later. I know my feelings on the matter don't, well, matter. Obviously, your eyes are upon my records, your pens upon my work. Is that what you think of us? That we would dedicate precious order resources to monitoring the work of a lone scribe on a world of billions? That I have agents redacting whatever you pen that does not meet my own personal standards? That we disseminate your work, robbed of whatever truths you so desperately work to fill it with? Blunted. Toothless. Worthless. The cruelty is the point, is it not? Proceed with your record. Just pretend I'm not here, even if I am absolutely here. The Holy Ordos of His Imperial Majesty's most divine Inquisition serve the Golden Throne of Terror as a clandestine organization dedicated to the investigation of and defense against the myriad threats to the God Emperor's Imperium. Through the actions of its Inquisitors is darkness held at bay. The distinction, staved off for another day, is the battle for the Emperor's soul waged far from the eyes of oblivious civilian populations. The Inquisition is, in essence, a secret police force, but one, unbeholden, to any form of centralized organization. The Inquisition's authority, by design, comes from the Emperor himself. Most of the Ordos are thus unrestricted in who they may investigate, who they may accuse, and what means they utilize to conduct their work. The only boundaries placed upon an Inquisitor are their own morals, convictions, and capabilities. Anything less, and their ability to pronounce judgment upon the Imperium, could be irrecovably curtailed and hampered. They are not so much above the law as outside it, beyond it. Designed, in effect, to operate completely removed from the Lex Imperialis in order to perpetuate its enforcement. The justification is, of course, in the nature of the threats the Inquisition counts under its remit. The Alien, the Demon, the Heretic. The Galaxy is a place most dangerous, and the enemies of humanity myriad in their malevolence. The means to oppose them are, by the Inquisition's word, justified by the destruction of the foe, heedless of any cost to the Imperium itself. The Ordos are concerned with nothing but the survival of humanity. And if humans have to die to achieve this, then that is simply the cost of mankind's endurance. I sense some criticism edging into your tone, Oculus. Oh, far be it from me to presume to know what the material cost of human life is when weighed against insuring the death of a Heretic. You truly do not. Neither, I imagine, do you. When you see people as coins spent to balance ledgers, how can their lives possibly mean anything? Unlike the coin in Imperial coffers, human life isn't bound by even the faintest notion of scarcity. The average life expectancy on a mid-high of menial on terror is 40 years, planetary standard. Even that has been reduced significantly since the Noctis Eterna and the subsequent efforts to re-establish law and order. Do you truly believe such an existence has more value than the God-Emperor's eternal dominion? The survival of our species? That the calculation has to be made, marks us as unworthy of survival. Continue with the record. The origins of the Inquisition are, as you may expect, unclear. The Inquisition itself has seen the formation of the Ordo Originatus, a minor Ordo dedicated to unraveling the secrets of the organization's founding. Although these cabals frequently find themselves in conflict with those of the Ordo Redactus, who seek to expunge as much inquisitorial history as possible for the preservation of modern minds from past wretched deeds. It is broadly understood that the Inquisition was founded in the dying days of the Horus Heresy, seeing its origins in agents of Malkador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra and right hand of the Emperor himself. The Sigillites chosen operated in a similar fashion to modern inquisitors, albeit with a centralized figure to lead them, dispatched on critical missions, they were granted essentially limitless powers to curtail the influence or activity of the warmaster Horus' traitor forces, and were selected for their abilities and characters that set them apart from their peers. The reported founding members of the Inquisition are believed to have been present with the Sigillite during the final days of the Siege of Terra. Former iterator Primus under Horus Lupercal's sixty-third expeditionary fleet, Promeus, formerly Lemuel Goemon, Remembrancer attached to the Thousand Sons Legion, Zaracexanthus, and Moriana Mohausen. Conflicting accounts exist of the circumstances that brought about the modern Inquisition's birth. The death of the Sigillite robbed the chosen of the central authority and direction, and if records are to be believed before his internment in the Golden Throne in the Siege's final hours, Malkador psychically bequeathed his agents with directives, lore, and genders, apparently randomly. A telepathic informational dump that, considering the vast intellect of the man, must have been utterly disorientating to the chosen that received it. I must wonder if in that moment the mind of Zaracexanthus broke. Felt the heretic. It is my understanding that Zaracexanthus insisted his purity and loyalty were entirely uncorrupted. Show me a heretic that insists upon their innocence, and I will show you all the stars in the sky. Of course. Innocence proves nothing. Just so. Xanthites are a scourge upon the Ordos. The legacy of Zaracexanthus is one of misbegotten pride and reckless meddling in the most malevolent forces in the universe. I would not waste my spit to extinguish the ashes of his corpse. And yet within his work lies the origins of the powers that permit you to wear that rosette. Within the most noble of intent is oft the seeds of downfall, Oculus. You, more than any, should be painfully aware of that. Continue. From this point onwards the details are shrouded. No doubt in large part thanks to the unremitting devastation of the siege's end and the tumult of reform and reorganization that swept the Imperium following the internment of the Emperor within the Golden Throne. The legacy of pre-internment organizations and leadership persisted but now bereft of the guidance of the monumental figures that had now passed. It is unclear, and one doubts there will ever be a definitive answer on precisely how the Inquisition was able to lay claim to the supreme and unquestionable authority it has come to possess. With the codification of the Lex Imperialis by the 13th Primarch, Robert Gulliman, and the Adeptus Terra, the formation of the Sanatorium Imperialis' High Twelve from the Lateral Council of Terra, and the formalization of many emergency legislative features into inviolable law. It is perhaps not hard to see how the chosen of the Sigillite bearers of not only Malkador the hero's heritage but the overwhelming body of knowledge he had personally bequeathed unto them would have immediately sought to place themselves outside of traditional imperial authorities, operating now as they had done under the region's direct purview, beyond the boundaries of the law for the sake of preservation of the state. It would appear that the surviving Primarchs and civilian authorities ceded to this, deeming it a necessity in the horrific days of the scouring that were to come. The Imperium was post-catastrophe, a wounded, frantic polity struggling to define itself after what had been essentially regicide, seeking to not only re-establish its authority over an entire galaxy but root out possible recidivist elements that yet remained within itself. Historically, regimes on a war footing seldom transition out of one with ease. The Imperium simply never has. The Archenemy, the forces of chaos, were everywhere, and in this the Inquisition was vital in combating it. Insidious and omnipresent, the Dark Pantheon were everywhere and nowhere. Their influence extended over a hapless and bleeding galaxy. And the starties with a bolter could combat their corrupted soldiery, but what could combat the idea of chaos? The early days of the Inquisition were defined by this conflict. There were no Ordos. The Primordial Annihilator was the only enemy. It is pleasing to see you grasp the necessity of it. Do you really believe I do? Whether you want to or not, you are, fundamentally, aware that sometimes you need someone to commit an act for the sake of the betterment of the whole, regardless of moral judgment. Necessity has always been the excuse of those who simply desire power. Every monstrous act committed upon the innocent by those who sought dominance has always been for the right reasons. It has always been done because there was simply no other choice. Necessity is a cloth draped over a gun, so that whoever holds it does not have to look too hard at what it is precisely they are doing. Spurkin like someone who has never had to hold a gun. Go on. The foundation of the Inquisition is likely a matter of both emergency and convenience. The power vacuum left by the siege had mauled the institutions previously dedicated to the suppression of rogue elements within the Imperial State. The loss of so many of the Ligio Costodes, during the latter years of the heresy, had no doubt mauled their efferoy sodalities quite terribly. The order Elucidatum, whose role had once been to monitor and purge the Imperium of hazardous religious cults, had been disbanded by the Sigillite himself prior to the heresy's end. Its reams of data folded into his other clandestine bodies. The officio assassinorum, however secretive, had never been tasked with intelligence-gathering, only acting on the directives of higher organizations, and the divisio-investigates of the adeptus Astra Telepathica, the silent sisterhood, were as badly wounded as their Costodes counterparts. Military intelligence wings of the Exertus Imperialis and the newly founded Command Prefectus, with their bowetharks, were too disparate and specialized to form coherent working groups. Into this morass of competing bodies, competing interests, came the Inquisition, an organization capable to operate within, around, and as the exception to every single other secretive enforcement or intelligence division within the Imperium. The earliest of Inquisitors were no doubt born of and recruited directly from many of these other organizations. Only the Costodes, sisterhood, and assassinorum were, of course, exempted from providing acolytes to the Founders, although these groups were nominally able to be utilized by Inquisitors themselves for whatever operations they deemed necessary. Since the beginning it has been so. The Inquisition by law has the ability to elicit the aid of any other Imperial body for their own purposes. Former Elucidatum Tallymen could now command the might of a sisterhood pursuer cadre, for instance, or a Remembrancer elevated to Inquisitor could second to their forces a fleet of Starships. All should they need to be dire enough? Should this form of essentially unbridled power seem to be at odds with the spirit of the times, it should be remembered that once human demigods had reduced the works of the Imperium to ash and rubble, the Lygiones Estates had turned on us and demolished the works of the God Emperor. His own son had interred him eternal upon the throne. Human, human control was needed to reign in the excesses of the past and steer us towards a prosperous future. Certainly the reformation of the Lygiones Estates into the Adeptus Estates, strengthening of the powers of the Senator and the Imperialis, and civilian arms of the government or defining traits of the era, was nevertheless a simple transfer of absolute rule from a soul individual to a rotating body of twelve. All of whom operate under the eye of the Inquisition. Ah, yes, the famed oversight of the Lord's Marshall Temporal and Atlesiastical. Tell me, Inquisitor, about the time that you investigated Bardo Slithst for potential conflicts of interest, or vetted earth who he metallian for ideological purity. Because from where I'm sitting, that's just two members of the High Lords who completely evaded inquisitorial oversight to launch a coup against the Primarch, not years hence. And, might I add, with the inquisitorial representative on the High Twelve itself? Lady Cleopatra Arx is a woman of unimpeachable ability, and operates on a scale you simply cannot comprehend. Well then maybe you should question her yourself about the disappearance of one inquisitor Erasmus Crowell. How precisely do you know that name? Madam, this is Terra. I would suggest that you continue with your record, Oculus. This particular thread is one even you may not wish to pull on too hard. Matters pertaining to the activities of the earliest inquisitors are still a matter of investigation for oneself and one's colleagues within the Logos Historic Avertia. As is no doubt obvious, we face extreme resistance from such attempts at chronicling the organization's foundational years, not to mention the difficulty in uncovering any material at all regarding the turbulent years of reform and reconquest that history has come to term a scouring. There were initially no Ordos. The remit of the Inquisition was blunt in the post-Harris-y days, hunt down and destroy traitors, uncover their sympathizers, enforce the Lex Imperialis in a galaxy that had known not but death and destruction for over a decade. It was not until the Imperium faced existential threats approaching that of Horus that reform and specialization was deemed necessary. The War of the Beast in M32 brought crashing to an end the post-scouring prosperity and stability the Imperium had enjoyed, and the sheer ingeniousness of the alien orc menace shook the complacent Inquisition into the formation of the Ordo Xenos, dedicated to pursuing, studying, and eliminating the myriad alien threats that would now bear their fangs following that calamitous conflict. The third and thus far final Ordo Majoris was created in the aftermath of the Age of Apostasy, the mad tyrant Goge Vandier had usurped the High Lord's seats of both Ministorum and Administratum to usher in his reign of blood. The Hereticus now exists to police the Imperium internally, whereas the Malius and Xenos Orders may have concerned themselves with rogue chaotic elements or alien elements operating within the Imperium's borders. This new Ordo was now explicitly concerned with the policing of the heaving masses of the Imperial populace, rooting out recidivism, illegal psychana, and petty heresies with the same ruthlessness the Imperium meted out upon its external enemies. Inquisitors had ever been the subjects of fear, and whispered about authority stalking the quiet roots of the Imperium upon dread business. Now that fear was to be brought to bear upon the population that fledged to the God Emperor himself. This is in large part what has led to the consistently ever more fragmentary nature of the Inquisition. Always a body created to monitor itself, the only thing that may gain, say, the word of an Inquisitor is that of another Inquisitor. A statement they routinely make to assure that the organization is rigorously self-policing. Not even the executors of fear can be free from fear. An agent dedicated to rooting out clandestine enemies will begin, slowly but surely, to see enemies everywhere. Ordos minoris are myriad these days, dedicating themselves to some aspect of their eternal secret war, often in direct conflict with other minor Ordos of their supposed colleagues. You are once again displaying an extreme inability to grasp the nature of necessity, Oculus. I am so utterly exhausted with that word. Its use has stripped it of all meaning. Would you rather the Hereticus did not exist? Are you certain, you wish to state, that their formation after the reign of blood was not for the benefit of the Imperium? I stated no such thing, madam. To my eyes, the founding of the Hereticus allowed the Inquisition to achieve its logical end state. An institutional ideal of horrific perfection carefully honed over the course of millennia. Oh, do please elaborate. You have annihilated any distinction between the enemy abroad and the population at home. In truth, I doubt there was ever a way for a secret police force to regard its jurisdiction as being merely external. You would have inevitably subsumed the adeptus arbites, but you barely waited at all. To operate with any degree of coherency, organizations such as yours have needed to be placed under some degree of law and oversight, lest you inevitably turn upon those from whom you draw your mandate. But we derive our mandate from the God-Emperor of the Imperium. Precisely. A divine Godhead who does not communicate directly with any of his flock. We are granted a measure of his divinity to ensure his will be done. And thus freeze you from any oversight. As I have said, the only force that monitors an Inquisitor is another Inquisitor. You are unbound by the strictures of the Lex. Law is, by definition, restriction and constraint upon power. You have none. We need none. Place an iota of restriction upon what questions an Inquisitor can ask, and you have robbed yourself of all defence against threats of which you cannot conceive. Because only absolute power can give you what you need to fight the enemy? That may be the most astute observation you have made thus far. An absolute power can demand nothing, but absolute loyalty. Again, two in a row. You're starting to impress me. But how can you claim to be of the Imperium? You exist outside it. Above the state, for you are not of the state. You can't be. You have all the trappings of an Imperial institution, but you are anything but. We are the custodians of his vision. Of his soul. You justify your absolute authority by invoking an absolute authority that will never hold you to account. Do you dare to suppose the Emperor does not weave his intercession into the threads of every single act I have undertaken in my service to him? Well, I am supposing that you are remarkably good at saying he does. What you are capable of, Inquisitor Calendra. It's not limited by the Lex Imperialis. It is limited only by raw materials. Your political capital, your own will. I'm sure you wish to consider the latter the most important factor, but in reality I believe we both know that it is politics. What is an Inquisitor who cannot requisition an army or a fleet? Despite what you may say, how is such an individual any more effective to the throne than a grox farmer or a white shield with their first las-rifle? I think you underestimate the will of someone capable of becoming an Inquisitor in the first place and vastly overestimate what you can say in my presence. Oh, how blithely dismissive. Reduce everything to individual choice. Remove the systemic. It is not the fault of how your organization operates and robs an Inquisitor of their efficacy. No, it's merely that Inquisitor's fervor. No wonder so many of you run to hide yourselves in zealotry. Unable to cope with the sheer idiotic degree of power you've been handed, you flee to the most readily available refuge rather than face the truth of what you are. Appealing to an even more nebulously absolute authority than the one you operate under is the most basic refuge of the coward. Did you see how easy that was? Did you even see me move? It would be a matter of utter simplicity to end your existence. To end this heretical drivel. Silence that flapping idiotic tongue. And you wouldn't even know. Why don't you? Just do it. If you mean to end me, then just end me. At this point it is better than all of this. I think I'm curious to see precisely where your little diatribe will end. And whether it warrants sending the next round straight through that iris scrawled on your forehead. Because that's the best weapon in your arsenal, is it not? Terror. Mass. Terror for the mass population. For that's all we are to you, isn't it? A vast heaving undifferentiated mass. Human resources. Capital to be spent or leveraged or utilized. The heresy stripped away what little facets of differentiation we plebs could even have had the chance to possess. The imperial regime allows for no political organization. No differing interests. There's only the god emperors, and by definition the imperiums interests. They dedicate our place, our purpose, our self. We are chaffed to be turned at its will. In the past, I am aware, policies like this would usually enact steep costs in souls and people. Blood tithe. That even the maddest of tyrants could not easily pay. The price of total authority, of total domination, is measured in steel and promethium, yes. But also in bodies. But that is one thing you do not lack. That is the abundance of the imperium manifold. The great human herd, boundless, uncountable, limitless. And when the use for these great masses is finally made superfluous, barely anything other than a line item right beside shells and uniforms on a production line, when that happens, you are limitless. There is nothing you cannot simply throw bodies at. No great gears you cannot clog, grind to a halt with piles of pulped human meat and bone. All you lack would be the will to do what is necessary. And then what does it mean for the people? Or should I say the masses? It is likely easier for you to think of us that way. People, well, people have feelings. Wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares, lives. Masses, well, those are just numbers. Data points on a graph. Ticking down, ticking up. A resource to be dug out of the ground and thrown upon the furnace. Where those wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares, and lives are eaten. You are the terror that stalks them. Far more so than the alien or the heretic or the demon. You need to be. What is your favorite mantra? Innocence proves nothing? Maybe in another time that would have been ludicrous hyperbole, but not for you, no. It is the perfect distillation of all that you are. The consequence of unlimited authority run amuck. That power is only as good as those who wield it. When I said before that you are limited only by your political capital, you are limited by how much terror you are willing to apply. And what use is precision to terror? If anything, it works better when it's wielded indiscriminately. Wantonly trampling under your boot the lives of the innocent is the point. You seek to cast a shadow so wide, so all-encompassing that every soul under it will wonder, am I next? That's the point of you. Who was from the very beginning? It's the end state of the Inquisition. No one is innocent. Innocence doesn't exist. Dealing with an actual enemy, one of the never-born or an orc, that simply relieves you of the burden of arbitrary choice, because we, the masses, are just as undesirable, just as likely to be the enemy. Facts are dead. They cannot matter in a regime such as this. Truth is a lie meant to stall and obfuscate. Every crime your mind can concoct must be punished, even if it has not been committed. Innocence proves nothing. One simply... Must possess the will. It is a triumph of it. Is it not? The Inquisition. Humanity can offer. Untrammeled by whims of genetic enhancement and psychoconditioning, unrestrained by law or politics, unlimited in resource or supply. Humanity unleashed. Capable of anything to which we put our minds. Our will. Have you no justification for it beyond that? Is that what you want? Justification. An explanation. A reason why. You disgust me. How can you comprehend something so thoroughly and yet be so utterly naive in the same instant? Did you hear nothing of the effluent that spewed from your own mouth? You apathetic. Can you not see you spent all this time in your little library with your scrolls and records, reading about the concept of absolute power without for once grasping the reality behind it? The authority is the justification. Control. Power. It is the reason. It is the only thing that matters. My ability to control your life. To wield it as I see fit for my purpose. It does not matter if I am an ardent believer in my ends justifying my means, or a psychopathic dullard unaware of the cacophonic tragedies they inflict on the world as they careen through it. The power is the point. I have all of it. You have none of it. And you can do nothing to stop me. That is just the way I like it. It is the order of things. It is not. If you even begin to say the word, fair, I will lose what scant measure of respect I yet restrain for your intelligence. Do you even know how many thousands of you I have ordered kill? How many millions I have had thrown into dark places to rot? They all thought themselves unique too. Awaken to the truths of all things. You utterly perplex me, your type. A person of learning so resolute in knowing what's right, but unwilling to do anything about it. Unable. A failure of will. If you wished, you could leap across the table and throttle me this very instant. You could spit in the face of authority and try to wring the life from it with your own hands. And I would be dead before my hands even made contact. Yes, but you would have tried. Your statement to authority would have been made, unobserved, uncelebrated, filed away, and comfortably forgotten, but it would have been made. And maybe I would step over your corpse with a measure of admiration for the consistency between what you say and what you do. But we both know you never will. The shadow of your terror. Is limitless. I think we're about done here. My record is not completed. Well, I trust you to finish it in your own time, submit it in your own time, and let whosoever has clearance, pass it in their own time. And why have me here? I wanted to see what you would do. To see if you would kill me? Oh, Oculus. No. You do remain useful. You do retain some measure of efficacy. Your work is not bad by any means, even given your flights of fancy, permissible to the correct eyes, tolerable, at least for now, and quite manageable. And if I am to kill you, it will not be anywhere like this. The theatrics earlier, oh my. They don't understand how this works, do you? Your death, if and when it arrives, will come with no notice, no warning, and no realisation. At one moment you will be, and another you will not. Your work will be attributed to others, or far more likely reduced to so many ashes. Those who knew you will purge themselves of all memory, let the shadow of your sins fall upon them. Everything you were, are, and will be, will end. And as far as the galaxy is concerned, you will never have existed at all. It truly is that simple. It will almost certainly be my decision, but you will never know of it, or even if it was me. That is how you will live. Your sentence is existence, for as long as I will allow it to continue. You will toil away down there, clacking away at your cogitator, in the dark among the stacks. Chronically and compiling, hoping your work makes a difference, but knowing it probably does not. Hoping someone is listening, but knowing you are alone, except for me. And the gun held right at your forehead. This sentence you to life, Oculus. That is my will. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.