Inquistors can get terminator armour in lore and in game, but I wouldn't say they can do it often. Most chapters only have a few dozen or so suits themselves. Besdies, Paragon Warsuits kinda fill that slot for the sisters already.
I actually always imagined inquisitor being far more like the lone traveler who shows up and snooos around. Asking questions and being more like undercover to avoid raising suspension and without revealing that he is an inquisitor until he needs to.
But it seems like they apparently are more traveling with their own army.
But I'd think it would make them get answers easier I'd people don't see them comming miles away.
"Normally, Interrogator, I am a man of the Emperor. My faith is my shield and my sword. But today... today I *am* the weapon of God."
*succumbs to Chaos corruption immediately*
Ah yeah I suppose the different inquisitor will work in different ways depending on circumstance and such.
I mean. I wouldn't be one to tell an inquisitor of the emperor how to do his work.
Must be a great job though.. You don't have to worry about lacking support or equipment. And you can hitch a ride on any ship going anywhere.
Some inquisitors don’t even have their own warp capable ships and often have to request passage with trade ships to get anywhere. Others might have what to amounts to a small battle fleet under their command, depends how influential they are.
Ordo doesn’t really matter, its not like they are forced into specific ordos, its more of a domain of expertize than a jurisdiction (Ordo Malleus will pursue xenos leads, Ordo Xenos will pursue regular heretics, Ordo Hereticus will confront daemons)
Now can an Ordo determine the amount of influence someone has? Possibly, but at least in theory any inquisitor can requisition whatever he deems necessary for his missions
Not true, an Inquisitor is only as powerful as they can make themselves
They technically have absolute power but only because everyone allows them to have it, a lone Inquisiotr with no real back up could easily have an accident
There are inquisitors who command way more than that directly.
Altho a retinue is technially just staff that makes up the direct entourage of an influential person I suppose
But yeah wouldn’t be surprised if some Inquisitors were at the top of a nebulous hierarchical tree comprising tens of thousands of peoples if not millions. Think about the staff : support, field investigation, site/lab investigation, site security, field ops, administration, intelligence (notably deep covert operatives and sleeper agents) and many more might be required by individual inquisitors
Inquisitor A will buy you drinks at the bar while weaving questions into normal conversation.
Inquisitor B will waterboard you.
Inquisitor C will use a psyker to learn everything you know, leaving you a drooling fool in the process.
Inquisitor D will start executing your family in front of you for information.
All 4 will get what they want out of you.
A and C are probably the most likely to get the actual answers though. B and D are most likely to get what the target thinks they want to hear to make them stop.
Even then the same inquisitor is not bound to there armour they could go about investigating most of the time in their normal armour and only whip out the terminator suit for when they know they’re about to do some heavy fighting
Exactly. Some will be the weird stranger that shows up and mucks about.
Others will be the gorgeous singer that shows up to perform at the governor's palace.
Yet others will be fighting against the worst daemons on foot wearing the thickest armor possible.
You should read the first Eisenhorn book. That's the exact debate Eisenhorn and another Inquisitor have. Both approaches are shown to have merit. Spoiler: >!Eisenhorn goes undercover and finds evidence a noble family are heretics but gets captured in the process. He's saved by the other Inquisitor basically commandeering an entire imperial guard regiment to bust down their door to save him.!<
And that example is exactly why I don't like Eisenhorn. His approach **doesn't** have nearly as much merit as people credit it with.
>!If Voke hadn't been there to intercede, not only would Eisenhorn be dead, but the heretics he discovered wouldn't have been found out, let alone stopped. Eisenhorn's insistence on playing spy and doing politics *instead* of using his Inquisitorial authority, instead of as part of a larger bag of tricks, already makes no sense for the average Inquisitor, but especially not for an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor whose job it is to deal with Xenos, *the threat without*, rather than Heretics, *the threat within*.!<
Abnett, not just in the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books that actually focus on Inquisitors, but in all his books, frequently ignores just how much authority Inquisitors actually have so that he can have them playing politics from the shadows... When the whole reason for that authority is so that they don't *have* to play politics to get shit done.
Inquisitors exist because Malcador recognised that sometimes, you have to have well-informed, capable people with the will and authority to cut through all the formalities and general bullshit and get things done.
I would contrast Eisenhorn with Amberley Veil a fellow Orde Xenos Inquisitor who>!also goes undercover, in order to get the lay of the land and assess all the big players in a situation where someone might be colluding with Xenos, but she still keeps her displacer field and digital weapon on her and as soon as it becomes evident that *someone* is doing something traitorous, she commandeers a guard regiment (and their ~~heroic~~ ~~cowardly~~ heroic Commissar), gets her power armour and her retinue and she stops playing coy.!<
Going undercover is something Inquisitors might do if they want to find out whether suspicious activity is the result of a threat against the Imperium (i.e. something the Inquisitor needs to stop) or just people plotting against each other (i.e. something so common an Inquisitor wouldn't give a shit about it and leave it for the Administratum, Arbites of Imperial Guard, whichever is appropriate, to sort out). Once they know it's something they needs to deal with, the mask comes off and the hammer comes down.
Just because an inquisitor has the authority to do things in a heavy-handed way, it does not always make it wise to do so. Remember that the more inquisitors tend to flex their power and step on people's toes, the more enemies they make as a result. (Yes even within the imperium and among loyalists) Be it rouge traders or planetary governors, or the very forces the inquisitor called upon to be their" hammer" ( read black dawn for example nice little short story about an Inquisitor who tries To use some space marines to get what he wants, only for the marines to see 5h3 artifact he's after is one of Chaos, so his plan backfires with the marines giving the inquisitor the ultumatum; either die with this relic or shut up. https://youtu.be/ByWtBeAx6oM?si=jxmgbl2PX9Sm79gP ) simply put, making enemies in the universe of 40k is not something a wise, and long lived person does lightly or without consequences. I don't see the mor bellicose manner of inquisitor lasting quite as long in such a universe. They're just asking to be assassinated or betrayed basically
Sure, but there's a difference between an Inquisitor using their authority and an Inquisitor being heavy-handed.
Amberley Vail is, again, a good example of this. She doesn't just walk up to Ciaphas Cain and demand his cooperation, she explains why she needs him and the Valhallan 597th on her side and it's Cain who, being convinced this way, gets the officers of the Valhallans on board. But whenever the situation calls for it she will to bully even planetary governors into compliance through the fearsome reputation of the Inquisition, because not making enemies is less important than protecting the Imperium.
But really, my point is more that people should stop saying 'Well, some Inquisitors, like Eisenhorn, operate this certain way so it must be viable' because even Abnett isn't shy about letting you know that Eisenhorn is a *terrible* Inquisitor who spends most of his time meddling with things outside his control in an area solidly outside his wheelhouse and constantly gets his best people killed. He's also spends half his time inches away from full chaos corruption, despite nominally being a Puritan.
Inquisitorial *agents* definitely operate like this routinely. There are some examples of Inquisitors acting undercover (e.g. certain parts of The Horusian Wars), but in general the Inquisitors themselves have so many important things going on that they can only get personally involved with whatever they judge to be the most critical.
It's a bit of a double edged sword. You routinely see horrors and learn about the terrible true nature of reality, you're almost certain to die in the Inquisitor's service and you're either a deniable asset or extremely unpopular with Imperial officials and the general public. Plus, your loyalty is *always* in question, and the measures of proving it are often extreme (The Watcher in the Rain has an example of an Inquisitor forcing an underling to torture their innocent mother to death, for instance)
If you prove yourself you do get a degree of autonomy, good resources, training and so on.
You’re running the risk of getting involved in horror that would make Lovecraft blush, while also being constantly involved in cloak and dagger bullshit where slipping up either means you are dead, or will *wish* you were dead, with the fate of billions riding on your decisions. It’s possibly more stressful than *any* job in real life.
They just have tools for every situation. Amberly Vale from the Caine series had a ~~terminator~~ (mistaken, she has artificer power armour, not terminator) suit but she doesn’t like wearing it, and only uses it for heavy combat situations. Daemonhunter inquisitors are much more regularly seen in terminator armour.
Ultimately every inquisitor is different. I don’t know of any who travel with literal armies though (but they are 100% out there). Why do that when you can just requisition anything and everything, including other peoples armies.
The “armies” are inquisitorial warbands. Darktide’s entire story is built off the idea that you’re initially a conscript but you eventually become a full member of the inquisitorial Warband.
It may not a planet conquering army but it’s often plenty to force people to let inquisitors do whatever they want.
They can in theory, but the Grey Knights will likely tell them to fuck off if it’s not about fighting major demon incursions. They’re technically under the authority of the inquisition, but they’re such a precious resource that there’s nothing one inquisitor can to do to them for saying no that won’t get them cut off from every other avenue of support via other inquisitors.
It basically amounts to having to say please come help me, there’s demons. How many demons? One. How big? Small. Wait come back.
I think the Daemonhunter game does a good job at displaying the powerlevel at work, as an Inquisitor showing up making demands to a Grey Knight strike cruiser is the premise of the game. The Grandmaster is not happy :D
Really irritated at that game for two reasons.
1. >!having the cool inquisitor lady get sacrificed to allow us to summon kaldor draigo, the mary-est of sues!<
2. Having a dreadnought dlc and only letting us use it in special dlc missions, not the actual game.
Ok, so... No, that's not how it works.
Unlike other Space Marine chapters where they operate almost completely autonomously pursuing their own agenda and deploying against the enemies of the Imperium because that's *part of* their agenda, the Grey Knights are an Inquisition asset, made by the Inquisition, for the Inquisition and they operate on Inquisition orders.
The problem is that, as you pointed out, they're a rare resource, so when an Inquisitor thinks they need Grey Knights to deal with a situation, they might not get them because some other, more senior Inquisitor (or a whole conclave or cabal of Inquisitors) feels they need them more and tells them 'no', not because the Grey Knights themselves told them to fuck off.
That is how it works though. I was using hyperbole and humour to try and give what’s clearly a newcomer a better understanding of the intricacy of the Grey Knights relationship with the inquisition.
It’s more complicated than what I stated, yes, but the basic points are:
- That they normally only deploy to fight demons, they won’t agree to fight the Tau without any suspicion of Chaos being involved because some Inquisitor asks, for example.
- If any inquisitor retaliated against them, like they did against the Space Wolves for example, that inquisitor would be done.
- They can and will abandon and tell people to fuck off if they don’t agree with them. They bailed on Guilliman and told him he’s an asshole for interrogating a Lord of Change in the plague war series for example.
Basically since they are a tool for everyone they do exist *technically* in the hierarchy. However, they do not take orders due to their status, they hear petitions and decide who to help. If they suspect the Inquisitor they work for is tainted they will kill them as well.
It depends on the Inquisitor, but a lot of them roll with a small personal retinue that not at all coincidentally closely resembles an RPG party. It's generally random exceptional people they've picked up along the way, possibly supplemented by their Chamber Militant. They tend to work undercover but need a decent bit of firepower traveling with them for when they can't rely on conscripting the local PDF.
Then other Inquisitors do roll with a personal warship loaded with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and assume command of fleets.
Different Inquisitors do it differently
The Inquisitor in Nightbringer is like how you imagined
The one in Dawn of Fire goes around with an Alien and wearing carapace armour with the Inquisitorial “I” plastered in his chest
I would highly recommend reading the Eisenhorn series!
It shows inquisitors being able to set themselves up however they please. Eisenhorn, for instance, has quite the retinue but will frequently either task somebody with infiltrating the enemy position or take it upon himself to do so.
Also, I think it would depend on the ordo. If you're hunting heretics, that would require a deft touch and infiltation tecniques. If you're hunting massive genestealer brood, you would presumably need a large force to fight that battle and come out on top.
Tbh, I like the idea of them having a dedicated army, but they normally travel alone or separate to said army
Or they just take the local dudes to join up with them every time they show up somewhere
It varies, depending on their specialities, the Ordo they belong to (Xenos, Malleus, etc) and the assigned mission. Sometimes, you better just go snooping around undercover as a ganger to suss out a chaos cult, with an Assassin as backup. Sometimes, it's better to bring all medals and purity seals you have being carried by cherubs, donning a bolter pistol and being backed by a squad of Death Knights or Deathwatch, so that the heretics know that you're bringing the pain.
Most Inquisitors are the sneaky espionage types, and they are glad for having the Mono-Dominants around to keep the underworld nervously looking for highly visible witch-burning psychopaths. Makes interrogation easier
And others make it very clear in advance that they are coming to hunt someone or something, hopefully leading a pious/panicked populace to do some of the work for him
Inquisitors are for different things, and accordingly do things differently. Way back when, in 2nd ed, an Inquisitor was a wrecking ball on the tabletop as well.
I remember playing dark heresy and the book describes them as such. It even had a mechanic for the GM to use where it’s easier to infiltrate cults if your presence as inquisitors isn’t revealed yet
Some Inquisitors prefer to have a large retinue and others operate as lone agents infiltrating and then revealing their identity and dropping the Exterminatus.
They each have their own specialities and techniques that work according to their training and experience.
Amberley from the Cain books is one of the best examples. Has a lot of connections in the region of space she works in(Cain and Jurgen being prome examples), will often be in disguise, will show up in Rogue Trader or Imperial Navy ships, but has her own for when needed or wanted. Also has a terminator suit, but only uses it situationally.
That's the way I imagine most Inquisitors are. They have the resources to slip about unknown, or go in all flash if needs be.
The Eisenhorn books kind of show you the different ways Inquisitors can get things done. He's got a personal retuine and soldiers but they don't always move together.
> Inquistors can get terminator armour in lore and in game, but I wouldn't say they can do it often...
IIRC they might be mostly reserved for (and jealously horded by) the Ordo Malleus in particular? Definitely I remember that in the old distinct rules Hereticus Inqusitors didn't have the option.
Maybe in lore, but on the tabletop their functions are vastly different. More like Militarum walkers because they give up so many bring it down points (which can be fixed...), are vulnerable to anti-vehicle, and honestly don't even look the same in style or scale. They're MUCH closer to mini power armor nemesis Dreadknights in aesthetic.
IMO closer to terminators are Sacresants with the 4++ but without extra an extra wound and toughness it's just another GW failure of a unit. We only have Arcos Flagellents to fill the "doesn't die to a stuff breeze" role and now we're repeatedly punished for taking them.
My favorite DA Terminator armor incident is when the Dark Angels and a Successor chapter teamed up and full first companies of both deployed, leading to reports of more than 200 terminators. The DA obviously dismiss the fallacious reports.
because the grey Knights are the rarest of the rare.
most Imperials don't even know space marines exist.
most space marines don't even know grey knights exist.
> most Imperials don't even know space marines exist.
Definitely not. Pretty much all Imperials know Space Marines exist in some form or another. They know about the Emperor, and through the worship of the Emperor they know of his angels. who smite the enemies of mankind and "protect humanity" (quotations due to Space Marines across the board having varying opinions on the ideas of protecting humans, from Salamanders benevolence to Iron Hands apathy and outright scorn). Imperials will drop to their knees in prayer to Space Marines if they actually meet one because they know who they are.
You're not going to drop Space Marines on Imperial Worlds and have the majority of people go "who the fuck are you people".
Which brings to mind the accurate thing to say. Knowing about Space Marines is common, but what most Imperials don't get to do however is actually see a Space Marine in person.
It is incredibly hard for the imperium to produce terminator armor, and most of it is very likely produced on site in chapter monasteries or high-end forge worlds with direct astartes contracts.
So even getting a terminator armor for sisters is difficult but they do have their half armor paragon warsuit and they are essentially backed by all of the ecclesiarchy so lets say they can get a few.
First off we would nees to rework it so a human can use it since all terminator is designed ti be used by astartes.
She also could never use it aswell as an astartes since she lacks the black carapace.
They also would require constant power to use it effectively or just atop moving once it doesnt have power and battle damage is guaranteed.
None of the users would also be even close to having enough experience to even use such armour effectively as a fighter itself.
Astartes take centuaries to even reach the level of first company and thennbe granted the right to use them.
This is not only a mark of prestiege but also of incredible skill that the chapter entrust you to be the best use of such armour.
While there are cases of normal humans wearing it... it has to be extensivly customized as it's really really hard to make that practical to someone who's not super human... space marines already have trouble with their own plates.
Terminator armour is very rare and very valuable. It's incredibly difficult to make and maintain.
The fact that the Ecclesiarchy can supply the Sororitas with an abundance of power armour and bolters is already a show of their immense wealth and influence - terminator armour is \*that much\* more difficult to provide.
Its relatively common for inquisitors to own suits of power armour (terminator and otherwise), and its even more common for dedicated adherent of the Ordo malleus who operate directly on the field.
Its not common per say but at the scale of the inquisition (which, excluding all acolytes and support staff, probably only contains a couple dozen thousands inquisitors, maybe up to a few hundred thousands) it is not unusual. Most inquisitors, if they really focused on it, could probably find or afford some purpose built termi armour. Most won’t bother because they have no need for it (peoples underestimate the number of inquis who go into the field instead of delegating to minions) but some would.
Terminator plate only requires the same ports as other power armour which baseline humans can have (see Repentia models, they have the ports for power armour). The Astartes are special because the black carapace is a much more invasive and effective interface for power armour that you can’t just put in every day people.
The real purpose of terminator armor isn't that it's x% more protective than power armor. The purpose is the following:
1. It is capable of being teleported in.
2. It can carry heavy weapons that would otherwise need to be mounted on at least a light vehicle, and close combat weapons that are so heavy they're basically breaching tools.
The Sisters tactical doctrine doesn't involve teleporting not-really-man-portable weapons squads into close quarters combat in an attempt to kill enemy commanders or vital emplacements right at the start.
They're doing fine with their own model of combat, which is being so berserk on faith and flamer fumes that they can spit on Khorne from where they're standing.
The actual answer is because Games Workshop wants the faction models in-game to not be the same between factions
Im sure you can rationalize some lore to make sense of it, but at the end of the day that is the answer
I wouldn't say 'often'. Some Inquisitors have a personal set of terminator armour. They aren't equipping squads with the stuff.
That said, paragon warsuits surely take just as much resource, so I guess they just wanted to do them instead of terminators for a different visual.
When Hulk comes back to earth to take revenge for being sent in an Angron-like trip, he faces Wolverine and his indestructible adamantium skeleton. Except, his brain is a regular meaty brain, so he bounces his head around for the brain to pulp itself against the adamantium skull, rendering him useless.
Likewise, there is a world of difference between a transhuman inside a Terminator suit, and a well trainer but ultimately unenhanced war orphan. Marines survive a lot of stuff that would render humans into bags of broken bone and pulled muscles.
Also, engagement and military doctrine for both differ a lot, Sisters are far more numerous than Space Marines are and deploy into different roles. Plus, as mentioned, Paragons cover the niche now.
The inquisition doesn't often put anyone in terminator armour, because even they have issues getting suits. The model lore states it only goes to high ranking inquisitors, and they can't utilise them properly, and hector Rex's lore outright states he got to use a proper suit for himself, because he was a giant of a man (like almost astarte height) .
Getting a suit is hard to do, and astartes were already struggling to make/maintain suits. Even then, SoB power ar.our isn't the same as astarte ones anyway
For the same reason everyone isn't prancing around with masterwork personal shields, rosaries and weapons, shit is expensive and takes time to make. This applies to real life too, the life of a soldier isn't worth the cost of top of the line equipment.
I thought their power armour was essentially the Terminator class stuff for baseline humans.... Please note I am a dingus maximus taxonomically speaking so do not take that as fact
Humans power armour is rare outside sister's of battle and anathema Psykana. Human terminator is incredibly rare, like barely exists rare.
Lacking the black carapace normal power armour is clunky for humans, so terminator must be insanely so.
Terminator Armor is stupidly expensive, even most Marine-Chapters can barely get their hands on enough for a small number of Squads.
And the Sisters now have the PAragon-Warsuit for the "thickly armored and carrying big weapons"-niche
Because Terminator Armor is both valuable and hard to wear. It’s placed on Marines trained to use it because they can be trusted to use it. The Sisters are for the most part regular humans with human weaknesses. So it’d be more of a risk
One: Termie armour is pretty rare and expensive and fulfills battlefield roles the sisters don't usually do, like boarding crews and teleportation assault.
Two: in an open battle paragon warsuits are just as great if not better.
The first point is true but they’d also be great at repelling boarding crews and teleportation assaults, which SoB would probably find themselves doing pretty often considering their job of defending ecclisiarchal reps.
The second point is true but I’d also argue that paragon war suits are significantly bigger that terminator armor, so there’s be a lot of reasons for a priest to outfit a bodyguard of SoB with them
Inquisitor lords of a certain standing can get terminator armor in the same way that they can Exterminatus a planet - they're immensely powerful people with the ability to shift massive resources. If they decided to equip themselves with a shinny suit of terminator armor they would be able to do so.
Thats way different from the Adepta Sororitas getting entire units of some of the rarest and hardest to produce armors sets the Imperium can produce. Even the Emperors glorious angels can only acquire a few suits to outfit their most elite warriors.
Because it costs SO MUCH.
Like, geting a Indomitus set of Terminator armour is really, REALLY hard, to the point that chapters founded after Maybe M35-M36 wont have more than Maybe 30-50, If even that.
And fucking forget Cataphractii or Tartaros pattern suits.
Also, without the black carapace implant, power armour isnt super effective for mobility.
Multiply that by a load and thats regular humans in terminator armour…
Reasons I can imagine:
It's too much of a niche piece of gear for sisters. SMs get it because sometimes they have to go into places where mere existence can be deadly. Sometimes the most dangerous thing isn't a bolt round, glob of plasma, or xenos fangs, but radiation/biological exposure. "Couldn't sisters board space hulks too if they had termi armor?" Yes, but they lack the SM physiology, so even with termi armor they'd still be the wrong use case for it.
They don't have the Black Carapace implant. Sure, they do a fine job controlling power armor, but it'd get more and more difficult with larger armors.
Since they're not going to be boarding space hulks, on the occasion where heavy armor and mobility are needed for strategic reasons, it'd be cheaper and easier to just field traditional armor units.
The way I see it, the ecclesiarchy has strong political power. But when it comes to requisitioning war gear from the administratum and the mechanicus I'm sure the Space Marines and their ilk get first dibs.
And inquisitors are always an exception. And they aren't as numerous as plain old sisters.
Terminator armor is rare enough that maximizing the utility of each suit matters more than having a pissing contest over 'who has more pull'.
And the Ecclesiarchy *loses* all their pull if they pick a fight with the Adeptus Astartes as a whole. A given Chapter that is clearly treading on heresy or worse is one thing, but even then it's less doctrinally challenging to let the Inquisition take the lead on that. Seizing relics entrusted to the Astartes by the Emperor's own hand is something else.
One could say that the Ecclesiarchy has more 'pull' than the Emperor himself, that has been demonstrated rather compellingly in the past. That didn't exactly go *well* for the Ecclesiarchy, though. They would rather avoid a repeat.
And saying that they can make better use of Terminator armor than Space Marines can is that heretical.
It's also patently false enough that the Ministorum wouldn't be able to sell it even to themselves.
The Inquisition doesn't "put humans in terminator armor"
The richest, most powerful combat Inquisitors _sometimes buy_ Terminator armor. It's something they acquire, personally.
Only the Astartes have the influence to acquire and use them in numbers greater than 1.
A lot of people already said that terminator armor is INSANELY rare and that's very true
Keep in mind inquisitors have near limitless pockets and access to anything, anyone or any place within some common sense boundries.
It's not crazy to assume they, as in for themselves, can get and customize a single suit of terminator armor if they're lucky (it's not that common).
But you're not seeing inquisitors outfit out armor for their entire crew, something they'd probably gladly do if they could. So for the same reasons you're not going to see SoB or any guard regiments somehow deploying them
I guess that’s true but I imagine that an ecclesiastical priest for a whole sector would likely have enough money and sway to outfit at least thier own honor guard of SoB with them. I mean, there are people in the ecclesiarchy who have dominion over hundreds of worlds, right? No way they don’t have enough money to buy 5 suits of terminator armor
Access and connections is also a huge issue. Not many priests so high up they can pick up a terminator suit over a SM chapter waiting for one and be willing to throw themselves in the front line to use it lol
Don't get me wrong. If GW released a single sister in terminator armor, who was a special named character and got it through x reason, it wouldn't be lore shattering and completely unrealistic. But that hasn't happened yet that I'm aware of
Thats a different question tbh
I think the ecclesiarchy definitely can outfit small scale honour guard with termi armour just for the bling
But thats the sort of thing that won’t be represented on tabletop because it won’t fit the tactics of most SoB formations.
This is the sort of thing where I feel it's lore friendly to have some Sister at some time to have used Terminator Armor, but it's so vanishingly rare outside of Astartes Chapters (where it's already rare) that they don't have access.
The Ecclesiarchy had a lot of pull, sure, but their ability to acquire high technology items has always been a little limited as they're essentially ideological rivals to the Mechanicus.
The same reason Space Marines don't utilize it everywhere even having Black Carapace that directly interfaces their nervous system with power armour. Sisters of Battle are but physically conditioned baseline humans in ceramite full-plate. Space Marines have to undergo extremely intense training in order to be able to even walk properly in Terminator armour and you can't jump in it or get up without external help, hence the meme about Dawn of War 3 and Gabriel Angelos.
But inquisitors do have it, which means that it is possible to teach a human to use it correctly. Raise an honor guard from birth to use it and I think they could, we know that they were made in the dark age of technology for regular people so they must have been able to use them.
They [don't](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/11a0fha/wait_did_they_get_rid_of_the_ordo_malleus/) and even when a chosen few did back in the day it was not the same Tactical Dreadnaught armour that Space Marines wear because of 1) size and 2) black carapace. It was some sort of "heavily modified and scaled-down" power armour and its wearers had to be heavily augmented as well to use it, far more than is feasible to mass-produce e.g. in Sisters of Battle.
Yeah, i remembered after i commented that Astor Sabbathiel from comics recently got a short story and a novella and she does indeed wear what is described as Terminator armour, although on pictures it's barely above average human height while Tactical Drednought armour is somewhere about \~3 meters tall and weighs more than 1 tonne.
Terminator Armour for humans and for astartes are different - the astartes are bigger, ofc, but they also connect to the armour via the black carapace. And there weren't a lot of human-sized terminator armours made, they were mostly reserved for the Astartes. So some (very few) inquisitors could get them, but most still can't. And if SoB could, it wouldn't be in a big number. Maybe one main hero or something like that. You have to remember that most of the technology to make new Terminator suits is lost and current terminators are basically carefully preserved and extremely old relics, passed from one astartes to another.
Too expensive, the SOB are already extremely fortunate to be guaranteed power armor even if it is totally inferior to what an Astarte or even an Inquisitor might have. Astarte chapters especially some of the later founding ones sometimes can barely make a squad of terminators due to how expensive the armor is. Can’t imagine how SOB could get guaranteed terminator armors
Terminator armour is developed from industrial exo skeletal suits, but it’s not anywhere near as simple as those. They’re hard to make, hard to use, need a lot of maintenance, and they have a very niche role compared to more useful things like actual tanks. Tbh the sisters of battle shouldn’t even have power armour, it would be much better used going to stronger, more resilient, and better trained stormtroopers.
There used to be human-piloted dreadnoughts as well, they forgot how to make them work and the suits became too valuable to use that way.
Similarly, Terminator armour is ancient and comparatively rare. Makes sense a few Inquisitors use it but I doubt the Inquisition has enough suits or the knowledge to retrofit them for massed troops.
Them having mecha suits and demi-dreadnaughts as jet packs already was a thin ice walking to not violate laws about not allowing Eclesiarchy having real army.
Only few high ranking Lord Inquisitors have modified terminator armors in entire Imperium. Less then 100. Far Less.
Even Astartes chapters have no more then ~100.000 in entire Imperium.
...
All Ordo Militant Sister of Battle have ~100.000 power armors. ~60.000 in 6 Ordo Majoris orders and others in minor orders, sub-orders.
Their prime role is being bodyguard for Eclesiarchy and guarding shrines.
At the start of the book Dante, the Blood Angels lose a handful of Terminator suits in a fight against Tyranids. Dante mourns the loss of them as a tragedy. That shit is RARE. Not sure if it’s still written in books but it was once said that it’s so rare for a chapter to have a lot of Terminator armour that only first founding ones like the Dark Angels have enough for the whole first company (which backs up the existence of Primaris Bladeguard veterans- Primaris chapters probably have few if any suits at creation).
Using the vague number of ~1000 chapters that used to be used a lot, that gives us less than 100,000 Terminator suits in the hands of space marines.
I'm gonna wager the tradeoff just doesn't make sense for their role? Yeah you'll double or triple their strength, but what good is it if you cut their maneuverability in half? That's like asking why you don't just give rocket launchers to every infantryman, that will surely allow them to take down much bigger targets but they can only fire once every 30 seconds, plus it'd be a financial nightmare
Define "often" because even the Marines don't use those suits often. Chances are, if an Inquisitor or his retinue has one, it's personal property that they somehow got their hands on (Probably from a purged or extinct chapter).
Cause here's the thing, Terminator armor? Really, REALLY hard to make. As in, most of the ones a chapter has? AREN'T MADE. They're passed down relics, and the best ones are as old as the Horus Heresy. It's part of the reason why only the absolute best Marines in the chapter is allowed to wear the things. They're the least likely to die and risk losing the damned things.
Then you add in how SoB Power Armor has to be customized. Their suits are not the same as Marine suits, they lack the gene seed and skin implant that allows Marines to work with their armor, so the SoB use an entirely different model and make from the Marines, which would have to extend to the already difficult to make Terminator armor. While, again, Inquisitors DO have their own suits, those suits are also most likely HIGHLY customized to work with them, and would take even more time and resources to do so on a wider scale.
Because the armour is reserved only for the most elite of the elite and even the veterans of the First Company of a Chapter don't wear them all the time.
Incredibly rare, incredibly expensive, and unwieldy even for veteran Space Marines let alone a relatively normal sized human without the Black Carapace to fully integrate with it and take full advantage of its systems. As far as I'm aware a large portion of Terminator Armor held by chapters that aren't buddy-buddy with the AdMech or are master crafters like Iron Hands or Salamanders are ancient relics that are largely cobbled together with what the chapter can get a hold of and are only deployed into specific battles. Not to mention the walkers the Sisters already have more or less fill that role.
Logistics.
The power suits that the sisters already wear are relatively simple, easy to manufacture, controlled by the basic neural interface port that all sisters have in their neck.
Terminator suits can be used by normal humans (they were originally hazardous environment suits for normal humans, during the Golden Age of Technology) but they're expensive, large, cumbersome.
They do have large exoskeletons, like the Penitent Engine, but they're generally reserved for, well, Penitents.
Human scalempower armoire is expensive. Human scale terminator is beyond insanely expensive. And really rare.
Especially as any new suits are hand made artisan work.
Would be awesome but Terminator armour is stupidly rare. Especially if you got sets with full anti demaon wards.
Largely because human terminator armor is extremely rare and units of it are likely going to be to few for a unit since even most astartes chapters can’t get them. Now I can picture Sisters getting a suit here and there and would love to see it someday but not units of it.
Can someone please remind me if terminators can carry a heavy flamer?
Only asking because this thread was supplied to me alongside an advert for air fryers.
There are meals I'd rather not eat but would be happy if they were cooked.
>Asmodai did not register the strangeness around him, but saw the ongoing battle in a monochrome fashion: allies and targets. A tide of beetles crept over his black-painted armour, their carapaces shining like oil, turning him into a writhing statue of chitin and rage as he tried to sweep them away with the side of his combi-bolter and the butt of his crozius arcanum.
>‘Brother Allius!’ **The heavy flamer-armed Terminator turned as the Chaplain called his name.** ‘Cleanse me!’
>The Space Marine hesitated a moment and then opened fire, washing burning promethium over the Terminator armour of his superior. Warning lights and sirens flashed at the temperature rise but Asmodai was unconcerned; his suit was designed to withstand far worse. After a few seconds, Allius ended the gout of flames, leaving a sticky, drying crust crackling across Asmodai’s armour.
\- *Master of Sanctity*
++Calls the sommelier over++
A bottle of promethium please, I believe you've got some M37 vintage that's particularly potent?
"Sir, the word potent is an understatement for such a vintage."
Good, have it delivered to Vorokar. No idea what they're up to but it sounds like it could be useful.
"Yes sir. May I mention that we also have some melta bombs, M38 vintage, a good year for meltas."
Oooh that sounds interesting...
I don't know how much they are capable of using a terminator armour without the black carapace. But they don't really need them anyways, they've got the paragon warsuits that basically fill the same role.
In recent lore it's more the imperial church who fund them.
The eclesiarchy is so rich that they can equip all an army of "not men in arms" with power Armor.
Why don't they have Terminator Armor ? GW choice.. for now !
Doctrine for space marines is to have the entire elite first company equip with terminator armor, but this in reality ends up being more of a dream.
New chapters will *try* to be equip with around half of that number, but in reality they tend to end up with a few dozen refurbished suits.
It’s possible that there have been a handful of sisters who have acquired a suit one way or another, but from a doctrine standpoint there is simply no way for the imperium to really stretch any further and produce brand new suits for a militant order that.. technically speaking they have no control over.
Because the mission set of SOS does not require such heavy suits. They ussualy just fight atheists or cultists, if they find themselves facing a foe where a terminátor armor is needed you might aswell call the astartes or a wave of meat that is the astra militarum
If I am not mistaken, terminator armor is specifically designed for space marines and thus probably requires the black carapace just like the conventional space marine armor does.
If your question is "why don't Sororitae wear more powerful power armor variants" then I'd like to know the answer to that as well. My guess is that there will be an obscure lore snippet about some big momma armor.
I always thought the suit inquisitors use was a copy of terminator armor pattern, not an actual suit.
How do you fit a human in an astartes armor or a marine inside a terminator suit that a human can use?
Baseline humans drive Titans and Warhounds lest we forget so it’s nothing to do with being trans human or not. It’s more than likely just a product of history. I think sometimes people try to see more into these things ( or want to see more into them) than the simple explanation.
Space Marines came first they had a need for Terminator armour so it was developed for them simple. Inquisitors actually use a form of power armour that looks like Terminator but as others have said is artificer power armour in the main. Sisters of Battle were an extremely controversial creation as a way around the edict preventing The Ecclesiarchy having ‘men under arms’. They probably thought creating an Order of women in power armour was pushing it far enough at the time.
Human-sized terminator armour is yet to be developed: the ones Space Marines use is made to interface with a special suite of neural connections they have called the Black Carapace, so adapting it to unaugmented humans would require not just downsizing, but also reworking the circuitry to require a less direct connection to the wearer.
https://images.app.goo.gl/D42DKxdFbsvGoq6B8
Here is a link to a painted mini from the old days. Even the first 40k novel- Inquisitior had rhe main character in termi armour.
Wdym? There's always been Sisters of Battle in terminator suits kekw.
All jokes aside our chapter could smuggl--- gift some to the GLORIOUS Adepta Sororitas if they can interface. Last time i interfaced with terminator plate i had a shoulder lesion.
Inquistors can get terminator armour in lore and in game, but I wouldn't say they can do it often. Most chapters only have a few dozen or so suits themselves. Besdies, Paragon Warsuits kinda fill that slot for the sisters already.
I actually always imagined inquisitor being far more like the lone traveler who shows up and snooos around. Asking questions and being more like undercover to avoid raising suspension and without revealing that he is an inquisitor until he needs to. But it seems like they apparently are more traveling with their own army. But I'd think it would make them get answers easier I'd people don't see them comming miles away.
Different inqusitors do things differently. They're kinda designed to be as customisable as possible.
"Normally, Interrogator, I am a man of the Emperor. My faith is my shield and my sword. But today... today I *am* the weapon of God." *succumbs to Chaos corruption immediately*
Ah yeah I suppose the different inquisitor will work in different ways depending on circumstance and such. I mean. I wouldn't be one to tell an inquisitor of the emperor how to do his work. Must be a great job though.. You don't have to worry about lacking support or equipment. And you can hitch a ride on any ship going anywhere.
Some inquisitors don’t even have their own warp capable ships and often have to request passage with trade ships to get anywhere. Others might have what to amounts to a small battle fleet under their command, depends how influential they are.
I think it also depends on which Ordos as well. Expect an Heretic searching one to be smaller or at least have scouting
Ordo doesn’t really matter, its not like they are forced into specific ordos, its more of a domain of expertize than a jurisdiction (Ordo Malleus will pursue xenos leads, Ordo Xenos will pursue regular heretics, Ordo Hereticus will confront daemons) Now can an Ordo determine the amount of influence someone has? Possibly, but at least in theory any inquisitor can requisition whatever he deems necessary for his missions
Not true, an Inquisitor is only as powerful as they can make themselves They technically have absolute power but only because everyone allows them to have it, a lone Inquisiotr with no real back up could easily have an accident
I did particularly enjoy the example of this in fall of cadia.
Eisenhorn states in Xenos that while his own retinue was only ... six people? ... Commodus Voke's was more in the region of 100 - 200.
There are inquisitors who command way more than that directly. Altho a retinue is technially just staff that makes up the direct entourage of an influential person I suppose But yeah wouldn’t be surprised if some Inquisitors were at the top of a nebulous hierarchical tree comprising tens of thousands of peoples if not millions. Think about the staff : support, field investigation, site/lab investigation, site security, field ops, administration, intelligence (notably deep covert operatives and sleeper agents) and many more might be required by individual inquisitors
Vaults of Terra is another good inquisition series that has one with a small army
Inquisitor A will buy you drinks at the bar while weaving questions into normal conversation. Inquisitor B will waterboard you. Inquisitor C will use a psyker to learn everything you know, leaving you a drooling fool in the process. Inquisitor D will start executing your family in front of you for information. All 4 will get what they want out of you.
Good point yeah.
A and C are probably the most likely to get the actual answers though. B and D are most likely to get what the target thinks they want to hear to make them stop.
Even then the same inquisitor is not bound to there armour they could go about investigating most of the time in their normal armour and only whip out the terminator suit for when they know they’re about to do some heavy fighting
It's great until you die a horrific death fighting any of the numerous enemies
Exactly. Some will be the weird stranger that shows up and mucks about. Others will be the gorgeous singer that shows up to perform at the governor's palace. Yet others will be fighting against the worst daemons on foot wearing the thickest armor possible.
You should read the first Eisenhorn book. That's the exact debate Eisenhorn and another Inquisitor have. Both approaches are shown to have merit. Spoiler: >!Eisenhorn goes undercover and finds evidence a noble family are heretics but gets captured in the process. He's saved by the other Inquisitor basically commandeering an entire imperial guard regiment to bust down their door to save him.!<
Ah thanks. I'll get to trading that once in done with MoM
And that example is exactly why I don't like Eisenhorn. His approach **doesn't** have nearly as much merit as people credit it with. >!If Voke hadn't been there to intercede, not only would Eisenhorn be dead, but the heretics he discovered wouldn't have been found out, let alone stopped. Eisenhorn's insistence on playing spy and doing politics *instead* of using his Inquisitorial authority, instead of as part of a larger bag of tricks, already makes no sense for the average Inquisitor, but especially not for an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor whose job it is to deal with Xenos, *the threat without*, rather than Heretics, *the threat within*.!< Abnett, not just in the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books that actually focus on Inquisitors, but in all his books, frequently ignores just how much authority Inquisitors actually have so that he can have them playing politics from the shadows... When the whole reason for that authority is so that they don't *have* to play politics to get shit done. Inquisitors exist because Malcador recognised that sometimes, you have to have well-informed, capable people with the will and authority to cut through all the formalities and general bullshit and get things done. I would contrast Eisenhorn with Amberley Veil a fellow Orde Xenos Inquisitor who>!also goes undercover, in order to get the lay of the land and assess all the big players in a situation where someone might be colluding with Xenos, but she still keeps her displacer field and digital weapon on her and as soon as it becomes evident that *someone* is doing something traitorous, she commandeers a guard regiment (and their ~~heroic~~ ~~cowardly~~ heroic Commissar), gets her power armour and her retinue and she stops playing coy.!< Going undercover is something Inquisitors might do if they want to find out whether suspicious activity is the result of a threat against the Imperium (i.e. something the Inquisitor needs to stop) or just people plotting against each other (i.e. something so common an Inquisitor wouldn't give a shit about it and leave it for the Administratum, Arbites of Imperial Guard, whichever is appropriate, to sort out). Once they know it's something they needs to deal with, the mask comes off and the hammer comes down.
Just because an inquisitor has the authority to do things in a heavy-handed way, it does not always make it wise to do so. Remember that the more inquisitors tend to flex their power and step on people's toes, the more enemies they make as a result. (Yes even within the imperium and among loyalists) Be it rouge traders or planetary governors, or the very forces the inquisitor called upon to be their" hammer" ( read black dawn for example nice little short story about an Inquisitor who tries To use some space marines to get what he wants, only for the marines to see 5h3 artifact he's after is one of Chaos, so his plan backfires with the marines giving the inquisitor the ultumatum; either die with this relic or shut up. https://youtu.be/ByWtBeAx6oM?si=jxmgbl2PX9Sm79gP ) simply put, making enemies in the universe of 40k is not something a wise, and long lived person does lightly or without consequences. I don't see the mor bellicose manner of inquisitor lasting quite as long in such a universe. They're just asking to be assassinated or betrayed basically
Sure, but there's a difference between an Inquisitor using their authority and an Inquisitor being heavy-handed. Amberley Vail is, again, a good example of this. She doesn't just walk up to Ciaphas Cain and demand his cooperation, she explains why she needs him and the Valhallan 597th on her side and it's Cain who, being convinced this way, gets the officers of the Valhallans on board. But whenever the situation calls for it she will to bully even planetary governors into compliance through the fearsome reputation of the Inquisition, because not making enemies is less important than protecting the Imperium. But really, my point is more that people should stop saying 'Well, some Inquisitors, like Eisenhorn, operate this certain way so it must be viable' because even Abnett isn't shy about letting you know that Eisenhorn is a *terrible* Inquisitor who spends most of his time meddling with things outside his control in an area solidly outside his wheelhouse and constantly gets his best people killed. He's also spends half his time inches away from full chaos corruption, despite nominally being a Puritan.
Inquisitorial *agents* definitely operate like this routinely. There are some examples of Inquisitors acting undercover (e.g. certain parts of The Horusian Wars), but in general the Inquisitors themselves have so many important things going on that they can only get personally involved with whatever they judge to be the most critical.
Ah so they got agents out. Yeah makes sense. That has to be some of the better jobs out there.
It's a bit of a double edged sword. You routinely see horrors and learn about the terrible true nature of reality, you're almost certain to die in the Inquisitor's service and you're either a deniable asset or extremely unpopular with Imperial officials and the general public. Plus, your loyalty is *always* in question, and the measures of proving it are often extreme (The Watcher in the Rain has an example of an Inquisitor forcing an underling to torture their innocent mother to death, for instance) If you prove yourself you do get a degree of autonomy, good resources, training and so on.
Not really, it's not really a job conducive to dying peacefully in one's own bed.
Really fun TTRPG, though.
Sure. But isn't it a better life than working your 12 hours a day doing mind grinding job?
You’re running the risk of getting involved in horror that would make Lovecraft blush, while also being constantly involved in cloak and dagger bullshit where slipping up either means you are dead, or will *wish* you were dead, with the fate of billions riding on your decisions. It’s possibly more stressful than *any* job in real life.
Yeah. I just figured that sure you might get killed but in 40K that's not that bad.
Nah, getting killed is probably the absolutely best outcome you could hope for as an acolyte. The other alternatives are far, far worse.
They just have tools for every situation. Amberly Vale from the Caine series had a ~~terminator~~ (mistaken, she has artificer power armour, not terminator) suit but she doesn’t like wearing it, and only uses it for heavy combat situations. Daemonhunter inquisitors are much more regularly seen in terminator armour. Ultimately every inquisitor is different. I don’t know of any who travel with literal armies though (but they are 100% out there). Why do that when you can just requisition anything and everything, including other peoples armies.
The “armies” are inquisitorial warbands. Darktide’s entire story is built off the idea that you’re initially a conscript but you eventually become a full member of the inquisitorial Warband. It may not a planet conquering army but it’s often plenty to force people to let inquisitors do whatever they want.
When does she have a terminator suit? I thought it was just power armor
Damn, yeah looks like I’m mistaken. I could have sworn she wears terminator armour one time, but her regular suit is artificer power armour. My bad.
Cushy job.. Well they can command the grey knights as far as I remember.
They can in theory, but the Grey Knights will likely tell them to fuck off if it’s not about fighting major demon incursions. They’re technically under the authority of the inquisition, but they’re such a precious resource that there’s nothing one inquisitor can to do to them for saying no that won’t get them cut off from every other avenue of support via other inquisitors. It basically amounts to having to say please come help me, there’s demons. How many demons? One. How big? Small. Wait come back.
I think the Daemonhunter game does a good job at displaying the powerlevel at work, as an Inquisitor showing up making demands to a Grey Knight strike cruiser is the premise of the game. The Grandmaster is not happy :D
Really irritated at that game for two reasons. 1. >!having the cool inquisitor lady get sacrificed to allow us to summon kaldor draigo, the mary-est of sues!< 2. Having a dreadnought dlc and only letting us use it in special dlc missions, not the actual game.
Ok, so... No, that's not how it works. Unlike other Space Marine chapters where they operate almost completely autonomously pursuing their own agenda and deploying against the enemies of the Imperium because that's *part of* their agenda, the Grey Knights are an Inquisition asset, made by the Inquisition, for the Inquisition and they operate on Inquisition orders. The problem is that, as you pointed out, they're a rare resource, so when an Inquisitor thinks they need Grey Knights to deal with a situation, they might not get them because some other, more senior Inquisitor (or a whole conclave or cabal of Inquisitors) feels they need them more and tells them 'no', not because the Grey Knights themselves told them to fuck off.
That is how it works though. I was using hyperbole and humour to try and give what’s clearly a newcomer a better understanding of the intricacy of the Grey Knights relationship with the inquisition. It’s more complicated than what I stated, yes, but the basic points are: - That they normally only deploy to fight demons, they won’t agree to fight the Tau without any suspicion of Chaos being involved because some Inquisitor asks, for example. - If any inquisitor retaliated against them, like they did against the Space Wolves for example, that inquisitor would be done. - They can and will abandon and tell people to fuck off if they don’t agree with them. They bailed on Guilliman and told him he’s an asshole for interrogating a Lord of Change in the plague war series for example. Basically since they are a tool for everyone they do exist *technically* in the hierarchy. However, they do not take orders due to their status, they hear petitions and decide who to help. If they suspect the Inquisitor they work for is tainted they will kill them as well.
they can request
It depends on the Inquisitor, but a lot of them roll with a small personal retinue that not at all coincidentally closely resembles an RPG party. It's generally random exceptional people they've picked up along the way, possibly supplemented by their Chamber Militant. They tend to work undercover but need a decent bit of firepower traveling with them for when they can't rely on conscripting the local PDF. Then other Inquisitors do roll with a personal warship loaded with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and assume command of fleets.
Different Inquisitors do it differently The Inquisitor in Nightbringer is like how you imagined The one in Dawn of Fire goes around with an Alien and wearing carapace armour with the Inquisitorial “I” plastered in his chest
I would highly recommend reading the Eisenhorn series! It shows inquisitors being able to set themselves up however they please. Eisenhorn, for instance, has quite the retinue but will frequently either task somebody with infiltrating the enemy position or take it upon himself to do so. Also, I think it would depend on the ordo. If you're hunting heretics, that would require a deft touch and infiltation tecniques. If you're hunting massive genestealer brood, you would presumably need a large force to fight that battle and come out on top.
Tbh, I like the idea of them having a dedicated army, but they normally travel alone or separate to said army Or they just take the local dudes to join up with them every time they show up somewhere
Eisenhorn goes pretty detailed into inquisitor politics and methodology. There's a healthy blend of subtle and unsubtle inquisitors.
It varies, depending on their specialities, the Ordo they belong to (Xenos, Malleus, etc) and the assigned mission. Sometimes, you better just go snooping around undercover as a ganger to suss out a chaos cult, with an Assassin as backup. Sometimes, it's better to bring all medals and purity seals you have being carried by cherubs, donning a bolter pistol and being backed by a squad of Death Knights or Deathwatch, so that the heretics know that you're bringing the pain.
Most Inquisitors are the sneaky espionage types, and they are glad for having the Mono-Dominants around to keep the underworld nervously looking for highly visible witch-burning psychopaths. Makes interrogation easier
And others make it very clear in advance that they are coming to hunt someone or something, hopefully leading a pious/panicked populace to do some of the work for him
Inquisitors are for different things, and accordingly do things differently. Way back when, in 2nd ed, an Inquisitor was a wrecking ball on the tabletop as well.
inquisitors can be wrecking balls; ravenor is a monstrously powerful psyker and he's not even the biggest one on the planets he visits.
I said on the tabletop, ya dingus.
I remember playing dark heresy and the book describes them as such. It even had a mechanic for the GM to use where it’s easier to infiltrate cults if your presence as inquisitors isn’t revealed yet
Some Inquisitors prefer to have a large retinue and others operate as lone agents infiltrating and then revealing their identity and dropping the Exterminatus. They each have their own specialities and techniques that work according to their training and experience.
Amberley from the Cain books is one of the best examples. Has a lot of connections in the region of space she works in(Cain and Jurgen being prome examples), will often be in disguise, will show up in Rogue Trader or Imperial Navy ships, but has her own for when needed or wanted. Also has a terminator suit, but only uses it situationally. That's the way I imagine most Inquisitors are. They have the resources to slip about unknown, or go in all flash if needs be.
The Eisenhorn books kind of show you the different ways Inquisitors can get things done. He's got a personal retuine and soldiers but they don't always move together.
> Inquistors can get terminator armour in lore and in game, but I wouldn't say they can do it often... IIRC they might be mostly reserved for (and jealously horded by) the Ordo Malleus in particular? Definitely I remember that in the old distinct rules Hereticus Inqusitors didn't have the option.
Ya, but paragon warsuits look silly. Like a smaller and slighty less dumb dreadknight.
Exactly! Our closest model to a Terminator in function is the Arco-flagellants because they're the only ones who don't die to a stiff breeze.
What about other space marine armor i wonder
Maybe in lore, but on the tabletop their functions are vastly different. More like Militarum walkers because they give up so many bring it down points (which can be fixed...), are vulnerable to anti-vehicle, and honestly don't even look the same in style or scale. They're MUCH closer to mini power armor nemesis Dreadknights in aesthetic. IMO closer to terminators are Sacresants with the 4++ but without extra an extra wound and toughness it's just another GW failure of a unit. We only have Arcos Flagellents to fill the "doesn't die to a stuff breeze" role and now we're repeatedly punished for taking them.
It's exceptionally expensive and without a black carapace it is very unwieldy.
Even with black carapace a marine in terminator armour is not a straight upgrade it is a powerful sidegrade at least it tends to look like that
What are you talking about I just saw a terminator captain do a flip and smash their Warhammer40k into a greenskin in this cool game I played.
but i thought i was the real warhammer40k
he's just doing a grimnar, no biggie.
You joke, but I bet a Space Wolf can do that.
There is at least one Space Wolf that definitely can do that
I would also expect it has significantly more upkeep, so your then going to need a tech priest etc..
Terminator armor is stupidly rare and the fact Inquisitors have trouble getting even a single suit shows exactly that.
Meanwhile, the Grey Knights smugly sit on enough terminator suits to equip their whole chapter.
DA’s and GK’s laughing at the poor
My favorite DA Terminator armor incident is when the Dark Angels and a Successor chapter teamed up and full first companies of both deployed, leading to reports of more than 200 terminators. The DA obviously dismiss the fallacious reports.
Repent?
There was much repentance that day yes.
Damn good use of fallacious, well done. Also props for not mispelling it and accusing the DA of dismissing BJ reports 🤣
It was a sloppy report
Novamarines have enough suits to outfit their full first company just like Dark Angels
As they should.
Damn I'm proud to be a Son of the Lion
because the grey Knights are the rarest of the rare. most Imperials don't even know space marines exist. most space marines don't even know grey knights exist.
Most Xenos don't believe they exist until it's too late. Then the Xenos don't have to worry about believing....or existing.
> most Imperials don't even know space marines exist. Definitely not. Pretty much all Imperials know Space Marines exist in some form or another. They know about the Emperor, and through the worship of the Emperor they know of his angels. who smite the enemies of mankind and "protect humanity" (quotations due to Space Marines across the board having varying opinions on the ideas of protecting humans, from Salamanders benevolence to Iron Hands apathy and outright scorn). Imperials will drop to their knees in prayer to Space Marines if they actually meet one because they know who they are. You're not going to drop Space Marines on Imperial Worlds and have the majority of people go "who the fuck are you people". Which brings to mind the accurate thing to say. Knowing about Space Marines is common, but what most Imperials don't get to do however is actually see a Space Marine in person.
no, that's not accurate at all.
Dude, if you are contesting his claim you need to provide a counterpoint
Yes, it is.
Meanwhile, Custodes laughing at Grey knights with their total of 1 guardian spear wielded by their Watch Master
It is incredibly hard for the imperium to produce terminator armor, and most of it is very likely produced on site in chapter monasteries or high-end forge worlds with direct astartes contracts. So even getting a terminator armor for sisters is difficult but they do have their half armor paragon warsuit and they are essentially backed by all of the ecclesiarchy so lets say they can get a few. First off we would nees to rework it so a human can use it since all terminator is designed ti be used by astartes. She also could never use it aswell as an astartes since she lacks the black carapace. They also would require constant power to use it effectively or just atop moving once it doesnt have power and battle damage is guaranteed. None of the users would also be even close to having enough experience to even use such armour effectively as a fighter itself. Astartes take centuaries to even reach the level of first company and thennbe granted the right to use them. This is not only a mark of prestiege but also of incredible skill that the chapter entrust you to be the best use of such armour.
While there are cases of normal humans wearing it... it has to be extensivly customized as it's really really hard to make that practical to someone who's not super human... space marines already have trouble with their own plates.
Terminator armour is very rare and very valuable. It's incredibly difficult to make and maintain. The fact that the Ecclesiarchy can supply the Sororitas with an abundance of power armour and bolters is already a show of their immense wealth and influence - terminator armour is \*that much\* more difficult to provide.
"the inquisition often puts humans in terminator armor" Not often at all, its incredibly rare and expensive.
Its relatively common for inquisitors to own suits of power armour (terminator and otherwise), and its even more common for dedicated adherent of the Ordo malleus who operate directly on the field. Its not common per say but at the scale of the inquisition (which, excluding all acolytes and support staff, probably only contains a couple dozen thousands inquisitors, maybe up to a few hundred thousands) it is not unusual. Most inquisitors, if they really focused on it, could probably find or afford some purpose built termi armour. Most won’t bother because they have no need for it (peoples underestimate the number of inquis who go into the field instead of delegating to minions) but some would.
Terminator requires heavy augmentation and the creation of most terminator pattern are already lost to time
Terminator plate only requires the same ports as other power armour which baseline humans can have (see Repentia models, they have the ports for power armour). The Astartes are special because the black carapace is a much more invasive and effective interface for power armour that you can’t just put in every day people.
Saying that Inquisitors often wear terminator armor is a massive overstatement. More Inquisitors destroy planets than wear terminator armor.
ok but planets georg
Paragon armor is more cool anyways
Man they look so cool. I'm gonna convert one to chaos and use it as a Helbrute
No, it fkn sucks.
To each their own, chill out
Where do the legs go?
The Inquisition has access to *terminator-quality* suits of personalised artificer armour. It's not requisitioned, it's custom made.
The real purpose of terminator armor isn't that it's x% more protective than power armor. The purpose is the following: 1. It is capable of being teleported in. 2. It can carry heavy weapons that would otherwise need to be mounted on at least a light vehicle, and close combat weapons that are so heavy they're basically breaching tools. The Sisters tactical doctrine doesn't involve teleporting not-really-man-portable weapons squads into close quarters combat in an attempt to kill enemy commanders or vital emplacements right at the start. They're doing fine with their own model of combat, which is being so berserk on faith and flamer fumes that they can spit on Khorne from where they're standing.
The actual answer is because Games Workshop wants the faction models in-game to not be the same between factions Im sure you can rationalize some lore to make sense of it, but at the end of the day that is the answer
This. It's the boring answer, but giving them units that play like but aren't Terminators gives you more visual variety, and more products to sell
I wouldn't say 'often'. Some Inquisitors have a personal set of terminator armour. They aren't equipping squads with the stuff. That said, paragon warsuits surely take just as much resource, so I guess they just wanted to do them instead of terminators for a different visual.
When Hulk comes back to earth to take revenge for being sent in an Angron-like trip, he faces Wolverine and his indestructible adamantium skeleton. Except, his brain is a regular meaty brain, so he bounces his head around for the brain to pulp itself against the adamantium skull, rendering him useless. Likewise, there is a world of difference between a transhuman inside a Terminator suit, and a well trainer but ultimately unenhanced war orphan. Marines survive a lot of stuff that would render humans into bags of broken bone and pulled muscles. Also, engagement and military doctrine for both differ a lot, Sisters are far more numerous than Space Marines are and deploy into different roles. Plus, as mentioned, Paragons cover the niche now.
The inquisition doesn't often put anyone in terminator armour, because even they have issues getting suits. The model lore states it only goes to high ranking inquisitors, and they can't utilise them properly, and hector Rex's lore outright states he got to use a proper suit for himself, because he was a giant of a man (like almost astarte height) . Getting a suit is hard to do, and astartes were already struggling to make/maintain suits. Even then, SoB power ar.our isn't the same as astarte ones anyway
The cost to produce terminator armor keeps it in the arsenals of the space marines, custodes and very few inquisitors if needed.
Why do Sisters of Battle have better anti psyker bolters than Sisters of Silence?
For the same reason everyone isn't prancing around with masterwork personal shields, rosaries and weapons, shit is expensive and takes time to make. This applies to real life too, the life of a soldier isn't worth the cost of top of the line equipment.
I thought their power armour was essentially the Terminator class stuff for baseline humans.... Please note I am a dingus maximus taxonomically speaking so do not take that as fact
Humans power armour is rare outside sister's of battle and anathema Psykana. Human terminator is incredibly rare, like barely exists rare. Lacking the black carapace normal power armour is clunky for humans, so terminator must be insanely so.
Oh huh neat thanks bud!
Terminator Armor is stupidly expensive, even most Marine-Chapters can barely get their hands on enough for a small number of Squads. And the Sisters now have the PAragon-Warsuit for the "thickly armored and carrying big weapons"-niche
Because Terminator Armor is both valuable and hard to wear. It’s placed on Marines trained to use it because they can be trusted to use it. The Sisters are for the most part regular humans with human weaknesses. So it’d be more of a risk
One: Termie armour is pretty rare and expensive and fulfills battlefield roles the sisters don't usually do, like boarding crews and teleportation assault. Two: in an open battle paragon warsuits are just as great if not better.
The first point is true but they’d also be great at repelling boarding crews and teleportation assaults, which SoB would probably find themselves doing pretty often considering their job of defending ecclisiarchal reps. The second point is true but I’d also argue that paragon war suits are significantly bigger that terminator armor, so there’s be a lot of reasons for a priest to outfit a bodyguard of SoB with them
Inquisitor lords of a certain standing can get terminator armor in the same way that they can Exterminatus a planet - they're immensely powerful people with the ability to shift massive resources. If they decided to equip themselves with a shinny suit of terminator armor they would be able to do so. Thats way different from the Adepta Sororitas getting entire units of some of the rarest and hardest to produce armors sets the Imperium can produce. Even the Emperors glorious angels can only acquire a few suits to outfit their most elite warriors.
Because it costs SO MUCH. Like, geting a Indomitus set of Terminator armour is really, REALLY hard, to the point that chapters founded after Maybe M35-M36 wont have more than Maybe 30-50, If even that. And fucking forget Cataphractii or Tartaros pattern suits. Also, without the black carapace implant, power armour isnt super effective for mobility. Multiply that by a load and thats regular humans in terminator armour…
Reasons I can imagine: It's too much of a niche piece of gear for sisters. SMs get it because sometimes they have to go into places where mere existence can be deadly. Sometimes the most dangerous thing isn't a bolt round, glob of plasma, or xenos fangs, but radiation/biological exposure. "Couldn't sisters board space hulks too if they had termi armor?" Yes, but they lack the SM physiology, so even with termi armor they'd still be the wrong use case for it. They don't have the Black Carapace implant. Sure, they do a fine job controlling power armor, but it'd get more and more difficult with larger armors. Since they're not going to be boarding space hulks, on the occasion where heavy armor and mobility are needed for strategic reasons, it'd be cheaper and easier to just field traditional armor units.
The way I see it, the ecclesiarchy has strong political power. But when it comes to requisitioning war gear from the administratum and the mechanicus I'm sure the Space Marines and their ilk get first dibs. And inquisitors are always an exception. And they aren't as numerous as plain old sisters.
Terminator exosuits are fuckin expensive.
Terminator armor is rare enough that maximizing the utility of each suit matters more than having a pissing contest over 'who has more pull'. And the Ecclesiarchy *loses* all their pull if they pick a fight with the Adeptus Astartes as a whole. A given Chapter that is clearly treading on heresy or worse is one thing, but even then it's less doctrinally challenging to let the Inquisition take the lead on that. Seizing relics entrusted to the Astartes by the Emperor's own hand is something else. One could say that the Ecclesiarchy has more 'pull' than the Emperor himself, that has been demonstrated rather compellingly in the past. That didn't exactly go *well* for the Ecclesiarchy, though. They would rather avoid a repeat. And saying that they can make better use of Terminator armor than Space Marines can is that heretical. It's also patently false enough that the Ministorum wouldn't be able to sell it even to themselves.
The Inquisition doesn't "put humans in terminator armor" The richest, most powerful combat Inquisitors _sometimes buy_ Terminator armor. It's something they acquire, personally. Only the Astartes have the influence to acquire and use them in numbers greater than 1.
A lot of people already said that terminator armor is INSANELY rare and that's very true Keep in mind inquisitors have near limitless pockets and access to anything, anyone or any place within some common sense boundries. It's not crazy to assume they, as in for themselves, can get and customize a single suit of terminator armor if they're lucky (it's not that common). But you're not seeing inquisitors outfit out armor for their entire crew, something they'd probably gladly do if they could. So for the same reasons you're not going to see SoB or any guard regiments somehow deploying them
I guess that’s true but I imagine that an ecclesiastical priest for a whole sector would likely have enough money and sway to outfit at least thier own honor guard of SoB with them. I mean, there are people in the ecclesiarchy who have dominion over hundreds of worlds, right? No way they don’t have enough money to buy 5 suits of terminator armor
Access and connections is also a huge issue. Not many priests so high up they can pick up a terminator suit over a SM chapter waiting for one and be willing to throw themselves in the front line to use it lol Don't get me wrong. If GW released a single sister in terminator armor, who was a special named character and got it through x reason, it wouldn't be lore shattering and completely unrealistic. But that hasn't happened yet that I'm aware of
Thats a different question tbh I think the ecclesiarchy definitely can outfit small scale honour guard with termi armour just for the bling But thats the sort of thing that won’t be represented on tabletop because it won’t fit the tactics of most SoB formations.
This is the sort of thing where I feel it's lore friendly to have some Sister at some time to have used Terminator Armor, but it's so vanishingly rare outside of Astartes Chapters (where it's already rare) that they don't have access. The Ecclesiarchy had a lot of pull, sure, but their ability to acquire high technology items has always been a little limited as they're essentially ideological rivals to the Mechanicus.
The same reason Space Marines don't utilize it everywhere even having Black Carapace that directly interfaces their nervous system with power armour. Sisters of Battle are but physically conditioned baseline humans in ceramite full-plate. Space Marines have to undergo extremely intense training in order to be able to even walk properly in Terminator armour and you can't jump in it or get up without external help, hence the meme about Dawn of War 3 and Gabriel Angelos.
But inquisitors do have it, which means that it is possible to teach a human to use it correctly. Raise an honor guard from birth to use it and I think they could, we know that they were made in the dark age of technology for regular people so they must have been able to use them.
They [don't](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/11a0fha/wait_did_they_get_rid_of_the_ordo_malleus/) and even when a chosen few did back in the day it was not the same Tactical Dreadnaught armour that Space Marines wear because of 1) size and 2) black carapace. It was some sort of "heavily modified and scaled-down" power armour and its wearers had to be heavily augmented as well to use it, far more than is feasible to mass-produce e.g. in Sisters of Battle.
Not a retcon they still do, someone even mention Hector Rex Fluff isn’t always representative of lore
Yeah, i remembered after i commented that Astor Sabbathiel from comics recently got a short story and a novella and she does indeed wear what is described as Terminator armour, although on pictures it's barely above average human height while Tactical Drednought armour is somewhere about \~3 meters tall and weighs more than 1 tonne.
Terminator Armour for humans and for astartes are different - the astartes are bigger, ofc, but they also connect to the armour via the black carapace. And there weren't a lot of human-sized terminator armours made, they were mostly reserved for the Astartes. So some (very few) inquisitors could get them, but most still can't. And if SoB could, it wouldn't be in a big number. Maybe one main hero or something like that. You have to remember that most of the technology to make new Terminator suits is lost and current terminators are basically carefully preserved and extremely old relics, passed from one astartes to another.
Too expensive, the SOB are already extremely fortunate to be guaranteed power armor even if it is totally inferior to what an Astarte or even an Inquisitor might have. Astarte chapters especially some of the later founding ones sometimes can barely make a squad of terminators due to how expensive the armor is. Can’t imagine how SOB could get guaranteed terminator armors
Terminator armour is developed from industrial exo skeletal suits, but it’s not anywhere near as simple as those. They’re hard to make, hard to use, need a lot of maintenance, and they have a very niche role compared to more useful things like actual tanks. Tbh the sisters of battle shouldn’t even have power armour, it would be much better used going to stronger, more resilient, and better trained stormtroopers.
There used to be human-piloted dreadnoughts as well, they forgot how to make them work and the suits became too valuable to use that way. Similarly, Terminator armour is ancient and comparatively rare. Makes sense a few Inquisitors use it but I doubt the Inquisition has enough suits or the knowledge to retrofit them for massed troops.
Not enough to go around. Besides, they wouldn't fit
The only faction with good access to terminator armor is Grey Knights, but that's mostly because there's so few of them that need it.
They're not 8 feet tall. And like the Guard - a soldier is only worth so much. The SoB don't get terminator armor because they're not worth the cost.
Them having mecha suits and demi-dreadnaughts as jet packs already was a thin ice walking to not violate laws about not allowing Eclesiarchy having real army. Only few high ranking Lord Inquisitors have modified terminator armors in entire Imperium. Less then 100. Far Less. Even Astartes chapters have no more then ~100.000 in entire Imperium. ... All Ordo Militant Sister of Battle have ~100.000 power armors. ~60.000 in 6 Ordo Majoris orders and others in minor orders, sub-orders. Their prime role is being bodyguard for Eclesiarchy and guarding shrines.
At the start of the book Dante, the Blood Angels lose a handful of Terminator suits in a fight against Tyranids. Dante mourns the loss of them as a tragedy. That shit is RARE. Not sure if it’s still written in books but it was once said that it’s so rare for a chapter to have a lot of Terminator armour that only first founding ones like the Dark Angels have enough for the whole first company (which backs up the existence of Primaris Bladeguard veterans- Primaris chapters probably have few if any suits at creation). Using the vague number of ~1000 chapters that used to be used a lot, that gives us less than 100,000 Terminator suits in the hands of space marines.
I'm gonna wager the tradeoff just doesn't make sense for their role? Yeah you'll double or triple their strength, but what good is it if you cut their maneuverability in half? That's like asking why you don't just give rocket launchers to every infantryman, that will surely allow them to take down much bigger targets but they can only fire once every 30 seconds, plus it'd be a financial nightmare
Define "often" because even the Marines don't use those suits often. Chances are, if an Inquisitor or his retinue has one, it's personal property that they somehow got their hands on (Probably from a purged or extinct chapter). Cause here's the thing, Terminator armor? Really, REALLY hard to make. As in, most of the ones a chapter has? AREN'T MADE. They're passed down relics, and the best ones are as old as the Horus Heresy. It's part of the reason why only the absolute best Marines in the chapter is allowed to wear the things. They're the least likely to die and risk losing the damned things. Then you add in how SoB Power Armor has to be customized. Their suits are not the same as Marine suits, they lack the gene seed and skin implant that allows Marines to work with their armor, so the SoB use an entirely different model and make from the Marines, which would have to extend to the already difficult to make Terminator armor. While, again, Inquisitors DO have their own suits, those suits are also most likely HIGHLY customized to work with them, and would take even more time and resources to do so on a wider scale.
Because the armour is reserved only for the most elite of the elite and even the veterans of the First Company of a Chapter don't wear them all the time.
Incredibly rare, incredibly expensive, and unwieldy even for veteran Space Marines let alone a relatively normal sized human without the Black Carapace to fully integrate with it and take full advantage of its systems. As far as I'm aware a large portion of Terminator Armor held by chapters that aren't buddy-buddy with the AdMech or are master crafters like Iron Hands or Salamanders are ancient relics that are largely cobbled together with what the chapter can get a hold of and are only deployed into specific battles. Not to mention the walkers the Sisters already have more or less fill that role.
Because Paragon Suits are way cooler.
Logistics. The power suits that the sisters already wear are relatively simple, easy to manufacture, controlled by the basic neural interface port that all sisters have in their neck. Terminator suits can be used by normal humans (they were originally hazardous environment suits for normal humans, during the Golden Age of Technology) but they're expensive, large, cumbersome. They do have large exoskeletons, like the Penitent Engine, but they're generally reserved for, well, Penitents.
*Reaches in to their space closet and grabs a dusty Saturnine suit* Here you go! May the Emperor protect and whatnot.
Because that lore hasn't been made up yet.
Human scalempower armoire is expensive. Human scale terminator is beyond insanely expensive. And really rare. Especially as any new suits are hand made artisan work. Would be awesome but Terminator armour is stupidly rare. Especially if you got sets with full anti demaon wards.
Largely because human terminator armor is extremely rare and units of it are likely going to be to few for a unit since even most astartes chapters can’t get them. Now I can picture Sisters getting a suit here and there and would love to see it someday but not units of it.
Sisters don't have a black carapace and cannot interface with Terminator Armour. Iunno how inquisitors do it but they do.
Black carapace is not necessary for terminator armor, but it helps.
Can someone please remind me if terminators can carry a heavy flamer? Only asking because this thread was supplied to me alongside an advert for air fryers. There are meals I'd rather not eat but would be happy if they were cooked.
>Asmodai did not register the strangeness around him, but saw the ongoing battle in a monochrome fashion: allies and targets. A tide of beetles crept over his black-painted armour, their carapaces shining like oil, turning him into a writhing statue of chitin and rage as he tried to sweep them away with the side of his combi-bolter and the butt of his crozius arcanum. >‘Brother Allius!’ **The heavy flamer-armed Terminator turned as the Chaplain called his name.** ‘Cleanse me!’ >The Space Marine hesitated a moment and then opened fire, washing burning promethium over the Terminator armour of his superior. Warning lights and sirens flashed at the temperature rise but Asmodai was unconcerned; his suit was designed to withstand far worse. After a few seconds, Allius ended the gout of flames, leaving a sticky, drying crust crackling across Asmodai’s armour. \- *Master of Sanctity*
++Calls the sommelier over++ A bottle of promethium please, I believe you've got some M37 vintage that's particularly potent? "Sir, the word potent is an understatement for such a vintage." Good, have it delivered to Vorokar. No idea what they're up to but it sounds like it could be useful. "Yes sir. May I mention that we also have some melta bombs, M38 vintage, a good year for meltas." Oooh that sounds interesting...
MadLad
I don't know how much they are capable of using a terminator armour without the black carapace. But they don't really need them anyways, they've got the paragon warsuits that basically fill the same role.
In recent lore it's more the imperial church who fund them. The eclesiarchy is so rich that they can equip all an army of "not men in arms" with power Armor. Why don't they have Terminator Armor ? GW choice.. for now !
Doctrine for space marines is to have the entire elite first company equip with terminator armor, but this in reality ends up being more of a dream. New chapters will *try* to be equip with around half of that number, but in reality they tend to end up with a few dozen refurbished suits. It’s possible that there have been a handful of sisters who have acquired a suit one way or another, but from a doctrine standpoint there is simply no way for the imperium to really stretch any further and produce brand new suits for a militant order that.. technically speaking they have no control over.
SoB aren't 8 feet tall. I don't know of non-transhuman units that can get terminator armor but I could be wrong.
Hector Rex is an inquisitor human that wears terminator armor
Because the mission set of SOS does not require such heavy suits. They ussualy just fight atheists or cultists, if they find themselves facing a foe where a terminátor armor is needed you might aswell call the astartes or a wave of meat that is the astra militarum
Real answer because we don't have models for that yet. Lore answer, paragon warsuits fill the same role.
If I am not mistaken, terminator armor is specifically designed for space marines and thus probably requires the black carapace just like the conventional space marine armor does. If your question is "why don't Sororitae wear more powerful power armor variants" then I'd like to know the answer to that as well. My guess is that there will be an obscure lore snippet about some big momma armor.
There are a few suits of terminator armour which have been adapted to be used by "regular" people, most of the time Ordo Malleus Inquisitors.
Thank you for the correction.
I always thought the suit inquisitors use was a copy of terminator armor pattern, not an actual suit. How do you fit a human in an astartes armor or a marine inside a terminator suit that a human can use?
Baseline humans drive Titans and Warhounds lest we forget so it’s nothing to do with being trans human or not. It’s more than likely just a product of history. I think sometimes people try to see more into these things ( or want to see more into them) than the simple explanation. Space Marines came first they had a need for Terminator armour so it was developed for them simple. Inquisitors actually use a form of power armour that looks like Terminator but as others have said is artificer power armour in the main. Sisters of Battle were an extremely controversial creation as a way around the edict preventing The Ecclesiarchy having ‘men under arms’. They probably thought creating an Order of women in power armour was pushing it far enough at the time.
Considering GS retcons to please amazon, the answer is « Oh they always did use them » Got to empower woman after all….imagine the mysoginy
Because you can't get terminator armour with a plunging neck line.
Human-sized terminator armour is yet to be developed: the ones Space Marines use is made to interface with a special suite of neural connections they have called the Black Carapace, so adapting it to unaugmented humans would require not just downsizing, but also reworking the circuitry to require a less direct connection to the wearer.
Inquisitors can be equipped in terminator armour or has that been removed?
That's news to me.
https://images.app.goo.gl/D42DKxdFbsvGoq6B8 Here is a link to a painted mini from the old days. Even the first 40k novel- Inquisitior had rhe main character in termi armour.
Give it a bit and we will get the "hurr durr dey always had these!"
Wdym? There's always been Sisters of Battle in terminator suits kekw. All jokes aside our chapter could smuggl--- gift some to the GLORIOUS Adepta Sororitas if they can interface. Last time i interfaced with terminator plate i had a shoulder lesion.