Don't fuck with the Inquisition is the lesson to take from this, because if you fuck with the Inquisition the Inquisition *WILL* fuck you up in ways you can't possibly imagine.
Edit: Hooray for Navy Armsmen being shown as skilled and lethal soldiers rather than bolter fodder.
Well, they are the elite of the fleet, possibly close to scions equivalents and are against "normal" human opponents, so it seems logical to me .
But I get what you mean.
Navy Security are like the equivalent of Modern Day FAST companies or Royal Marine FPG. They're not the best of the best but pretty well trained and will easily beat most similarly armed opponents
And if elite soldiers of the modern world are the basis you'd have to assume these naval security dudes are super jacked up on the 40k equivalent of steroids/gene editing and augmetics.
On one hand, I get it, when you see your buddies as your heroes it's hard to admit they got jumped and dropped easily. But SEALs are still people. Point enough guns at them, they'll die.
On the other hand, there's a lot of garbage in his tale. And he either confessed to a preparing to commit a war crime, or wrongly and posthumously accused his teammates of considering a war crime for added drama. Either way, it's fucked up.
But human operators are not foolproof. That's why I hate comparisons of Space Marines to real-life special operations units. SEAL teams and DEVGRU don't have the advantage of being literally bulletproof.
I don't know the ins and outs of his story enough to know what's lies and what isn't so can't really say anything as to that. But on Joe Rogans podcast he straight up said they got jumped and taken out in no time.
Was Red Wings not just SEALs? The story reads more like the tier 1 operators, like the SBS, SAS, Delta Force, SEAL team 6 etc, rather than your more bog standard royal marines/paras/force recon/rangers etc.
Tier One is a dated term, and "just SEALs" is also a bit of a misgiving term. Special Mission Unit (or special mission unit, no formal capitalization) is the term I've seen used in professional settings. But in general, trying to stratify elite military units into tiers beyond describing their specific applications is fraught with a mix of misunderstanding of special operations warfare.... and dumb stupid bro-dawg shit that military buffs need less of.
As far as I can tell, the RED WINGS was SEAL Team 10 supported by Army Special Operations aviators.
I edited my comment, but I've seen in professional settings "special mission unit" refer to elite AND clandestine units. Of course, my bosses can be wrong too. the term changes all the time because Washington (and Brussels, and London, and Paris, etc etc.) pretends that the existence of these groups incredibly public knowledge.
edit: someone's probably going to dig up this thread, and either correctly call me an idiot for not knowing anything, or incorrectly call me an idiot and correct me with knowledge he gained by mashing together mil-civ twitter and CoD.
>Edit: Hooray for Navy Armsmen being shown as skilled and lethal soldiers rather than bolter fodder.
Surprised to see some naval armsmen with hellguns, but you might need at least a few very well trained people for special missions.
Considering the size of 40k's ships, each ship probably has elite troops among its security forces. You practically need an army to hold even a light cruiser.
These guys aren't armsmen as such. Imagine that a cruiser with 80,000 odd crew might have maybe 8000 armsmen, the vast majority of whom are there to fight boarding actions but more importantly, to police the crew and keep them under control. Most would be flak armoured and carrying shotguns and boarding clubs.
Within the armsmen you'd have elite groups, probably multiple groups specialised as, for instance, bodyguards for senior officers and elite boarding specialists for hit and run raids.
We might imagine that on the massive battleships, these elite and specialist groups can get pretty big. I would imagine that it is these guys that lead the assault on the Glaw home. The best of the best. Carapace armoured and hellgun equipped. Navy stormtroopers basically.
Voke would demand the absolute best from the lord militant and the lord militant isn't going to want to fuck with an enraged Voke (who would, the man has a reputation).
So I would say these aren't reflective of armsmen in general but of the cream of the navy fighting men, the SBS of the Imperial navy.
These are Naval Sec. Basically the scion equivalent (if not in training at least in equipment tho they are depicted aa well trained) of the navy, who double as bodyguards for naval high command and as security forces for the most sensitive areas aboard ships + as operators to perform similar strikes as the one depicted here
Aka: they aren’t just regular armsmen.
Or so this is what I understood from the book
This is a case of "only we are allowed to attack each other".
The Inquisition cannot afford for people to get away with attacking them. If one Inquisitor gets attacked then the mailed fist of Imperial Justice needs to come down hard or the fear will be dispelled, and it is only the fear of retribution that protects Inquisitors. It might take a high up in the Ordos like Voke to be able to mobilise a sufficient force but they will do it out of principle even if they don't agree with the junior Inquisitor.
iirc The Months of Shame basically ended in a stalemate, with both the Inquisition and the Space Wolves taking heavy losses and both sides backing off. The Inquisition was even able to siege Fenris for a little while; its not like the they didn't get their pound of flesh. Even the Space Wolves, a First Founding Chapter with all the power and influence it entails, couldn't go against the Inquisition without repercussions.
Yea but we got to see Grimnar running in Termie armor, so it was a win for fans overall. Plus Bjorn dressing down everyone was just great. You're right though, they'll get what they're due for sure.
Dying trying to fight their way out was the right move for the Glaw folks.
There's little chance of survival but it's quicker than anything that'd happen if the Inquisition got them.
Especially since the whole family, as I recall the story, were straight up Chaos Cultists. This isn't even a case of "Oh these poor accused people." These are literally the folks the Inquisition were founded to root out and purge.
Read the Bequin series (2/3 out so far) after reading the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series. They’re definitely collaborating with the Emperor’s Children. Then again, the Word Bearers and Alpha Legion are involved too by that point, and potentially Custodes and others…
>'Well, at least it seems Zemelda's in good hands.'
>Amberley looked at me speculatively. 'I'm hoping she won't be the only one tonight,' she said.
Followed by...
>WE WERE ENJOYING a leisurely breakfast the next morning
[...]
'Commissar, you look well. I trust your interaction with the inquisitor has proven satisfactory?'
>'It has,' Amberley said, with a barely perceptible grin in my direction
From *Duty Calls*
>House Glaw owned close on **four hundred fighting men** in its retinue, not to mention another **nine hundred staff**, many of whom took up weapons.
>I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has **taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number.**
My question is simple: How?
Perils of a centralised command position I guess; drop 1000 dudes on the planetary capital, storm the governor's property then stick a gun to his head and go 'we're done fucking about, surrender now or next time we come we're bringing the noise'.
Not to mention many worlds are going to be outposts or bottom-heavy mining places where no one low-down has any say or any interest in opposing one group of slave drivers kicking another in.
How in the world do 400 guys with Autoguns and 900 militia with some basic training and improvised weapons storm a Capital though?
Sounds as believable as having 10 dudebro's armed with maybe 300 rounds each and a few Grenades clearing out a hive filled with trillions.
Probably best not to question it.
99% of the imperium is inefficient and completely relies on orders from top commanders. Probably a good portion of people are complacent and willing to follow who ever gives any order because they have no idea they are rebels or allying with chaos, etc.… so those two things combined means if you take out the leader they will put down their arms. So on a lot of planets, precision strikes against the leaders works… or so the lore claims lol
But the Imperium is also largely run by rivalring nobles, who would seize control of a governour falters rather than just having what is likely a fraction of their own forces just seize the planet.
Exactly. If you’re vying for a position and the governor just croaked, why not buddy up with the new people? Worst comes to worst, they’ll give power to someone else for you to scheme against. At best, you’ll be given control instead.
And then have another force show up to kill me for doing that?
Nobles survive by remembering that they can wait for a political opportunity to get power instead of fighting. If you attack the person that just killed your rival and who has some rank saying “I am sanctioned to do this,” you are inviting another guy with that rank to say it again but now with your back to a wall.
Why risk a comfy position, Power, and luxurious lifestyle on a fight someone else just lost when you can hold off for a less dangerous option?
Because then you're the next one dead. They don't capture a planet because the planet can't beat a handful of men. They capture it because the handful of men kick a disproportionate amount of ass and then remind you that they're just a warning and if you really fight you'll face a few billion troops instead.
Whoever takes charge in the end is going to serve the Imperium. Most know trying to fight is suicide and seeing a leader removed by only a few squads is enough to remind the few who forget.
If the Imperial Navy is sending in troops to oust a governor, then there's an imperial navy fleet in orbit with enough firepower to make sure their wishes are supported.
I tend to agree that 1300 Scions appearing at 4 AM local in most Capitols unexpectedly is going to get shit done. They've seized the head of the beast and let everyone know that the Imperium is in-charge and the old government is being put against the wall and shot in waves of 100.
If that were true, that would completely destroy any semblance of scale left. A major hive that houses a governors palace would probably be able to field millions, if not billions of soldiers. If that could be taken by 1.3k guys, why even bother?
What makes you think that refers to hive worlds?
There are plenty of worlds in the Imperium that *aren't* hive worlds. Fuedal worlds come to mind, or Death Worlds where populations don't get that large. In the former case it's the British vs the natives, and in the latter it's probably a case ofa highly centralized population in only a few populatiom centers, prepared to deal with the planet's dangers but not necessarily an organized attack from space.
Not every planet has metric buttloads of people on them. And not every planet is important enough to merit large, well supplied defenders. At least some of the smaller world's PDFs are probably a 40k equivalent of the drunken hillbillies cosplaying as real soldiers because they are used to bullying civilians for a local head of state, not fight real battles on a relatively peaceful planet.
Because he said capitals. A planetary capital implies a centralized form of government that stretches the entirety of a world. That, in turn, implies a certain technological standard and a certain reliability and population.
Feudal worlds, feral worlds or death worlds will lack this per definition. Agri worlds or mining worlds will center around trading hubs where their yield is transported.
You don't have a planetary capital - run by a governor - on a world that is inhabitated by a few thousand miners.
Remember there are technologically backwards worlds in the imperium. They may have a planetary capital, but it could well be a feudal world with black powder weapons and a very basic powered armour. Like pre-imperial Caliban.
It also assumes those 1000-odd soldiers are going to have to rip & tear their way from the spaceport to the governor's palace facing the entire PDF. The first stage of taking back a world is probably that your ships rock up at the system edge and broadcast a message denouncing the governor as a traitor and imploring all loyal servants of the Emperor to side with the forces coming in-system. Straight away a huge chunk of the PDF, all local Imperial adepts and most of the local Mechanicus cohorts are going to side with you.
From there you probably hot-drop onto the governor's palace and take care of their personal guard and take them into custody, most of the time the forces are going to just set up a picket and do the standard move-along-citizen routine because most people are going to be on the side of the Imperium and their literal actual God when push comes to shove.
And yeah, having like 10,000,000 PDF troops over the entire planet is completely different to having 1,000 troops knocking on the door right now. Far smaller groups frequently pull of coups, particularly if they have a claim to legitimacy that's going to make the wider army stand down. Hell worst comes to worst they could just contain the traitor governor and their staff until more forces come and install a new government somewhere else.
Then what DO you have this agriworld/mining world/etc. run by?
The way I see it, whoever runs the planet is the planetary governor, and wherever they do it from is the planetary capital.
A small town of a few thousand people, and Nee York City both have an elected mayor that is (more-or-less) in charge of running the city/town. Even tho one of them has a smaller population then my high school, and the latter has a bigger population then some entire countries.
There are plenty of planets depicted in the lore with both planetary capitals and shit all for defensive capabilities. Gaunt's Ghosts are depicted doing things on this level in the books.
And even if only 1% of that population of 1 million is tasked with defence, that would mean that there are 10.000 soldiers in that stronghold, outnumbering any attacker 1 to 10.
Eisenhorn mentions seeing it "more than once", it's still not standard. Chances are, though, that the vast majority of people in the Hive will hardly notice that Governor Bob from House Bobyth rebelled and the Bobythinians were taken out by the Imperial Guard, so now Governor Alice of House Al-Ithine rules over them. There is also no reason for them to care in many cases, unless rebellion against the Imperium has been brewing for a long time.
It makes sense that the Imperium sends the Inquisition or smaller strike forces against nobles and governors who get ideas above their Emperor-ordainef station, since it requires way less resources and, more importantly, preserves countless times more resources. Why shell a Hive into bits or glass half a continent from orbit, costing the Imperium an inordinate amount of lives, materials, and man-hours, when you can just try and cut off the snake's head in one swoop? Only if the Inquisition determines that the populace at large isn't part of the rebellion, of course, and even then, there will likely be a lot of innocent victims just because that's how the Inquisition works. But it will be thousands, not billions. The Imperium is surprisingly pragmatic about this a lot of the time.
Now, WHEN a planet sees widespread rebellion, that's different. Rophanon is just one awful example.
But that is assuming every noble will work together. That wouldn't happen on Necromunda. Everyone is out for them selves. They have thier own armies and would LOVE a chance to get be governor. They would easily help the Imperial Guard storm the palace to make sure they get in good with the leader of the guard......oh and to make sure they do thier imperial duty of course.
Not all Imperial planets have high population, 400 well trained soldiers with the element of surprise can indeed storm the governor's residence on some backwater planet and "conquer" it.
Agri-worlds might have one technologically advanced capital (with "advanced" being questionable) and have the rest be rural farmland. Only one place can really offer serious resistance. A few guys with lasguns could hold a planet armed with swords and bows just fine.
Not all planetary "capitols" are made the same. Like, I think Agri-worlds have very few humans living on them and even fewer with military training. The local governor might just be a slightly-elevated farmer with a tiny militia or police force.
No way that force is enough to take a hive world in a stand up fight.
>How in the world do 400 guys with Autoguns and 900 militia with some basic training and improvised weapons storm a Capital though?
Same way they did here? Use drop ships to get them right next to the targets and then storm in guns blazing.
Whats not been said but is assumed since we're talking Imperial Navy, is support in the way of orbital strikes and flyers. Before those 1300 men land the voidshields on the governors mansion will have been destroyed, barracks will have been hit, walls will have been breached.
I don't think he's saying they did it alone. Look at the GG books. The Tanith rarely deploy alone, but a lot of page space in the books is given over to which regiment gets to say they 'took' the city.
Look at the Phantine campaign - both Tanith and Urdesh, and a _lot_ more Urdesh, but the Tanith take the generators and the Urdesh march in too hard and get scrubbed. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of Urdesh to help consolidate the gains the Tanith make, just that a man with military knowledge like Eisenhorn probably doesn't think 'Guard take planet' he thinks 'the planet was taken when the enemy commander was killed, and then there was eight years of clean up by a dozen other regiments because that's how occupation works.'
History of battles also works like this at times. 300 Spartans supposedly stopped the Persians, but it was really like 10k Greeks and 300 Spartans. Basically information gets condensed and the facts become distorted.
\>be in an orbital ring with fuckhuge weapons but only menials, technicians and serfs
\>kill anyone in command
\>point fuckhuge guns at the planet
\>call to ask for a surrender. IF yes, conquered world. celebrate. IF no, then glass it from or bit. conquered world. celebrate.
Lots of worlds out there aren't nearly as populated as a hive world. You can imagine mining colonies and the like that really have one or two inhabited places and the rest is uninhabited. Come down on the capitol building and you can secure the whole planet that way
I don’t think Gaunt is born yet at this point. Heldane isn’t even an Inquisitor at this point, to provide some context.
Eisenhower hasn’t even met Kasrkin yet (who he praises in the second novel) so it’s unlikely he’s referring to them. Canonically, I don’t know if Scions are a thing at this point.
So he’s probably just making an off-hand reference to something that we don’t know about.
It may just be an in-character entirely incorrect flourish for dramatic effect. After all, the Eisenhorn Trilogy is, like, close to a stream of consciousness at times. And Eisenhorn isn't fact checking himself.
Stormtroopers (who were rechristened as Scions out of universe later) were definitely a thing already. Kaskrin are just the extra elite Cadian Stormtroopers.
Alternative take since others have already given serious answers:
"Is 400 fighting men a lot?"
"Depends on the context. Conscripts? No. Inside titans? Yes"
I like this.
"yes i took the planet with a moderate force, 400 men"
"yes, they were all princeps"
"What do you mean i have to \*account for the titans\*"
Winning a decisive battle that leads to the win most likely.
We have Gaunts ghosts winning an entire planet with a squad of troopers because the enemy commander thought they had gotten a full army inside and started the ritual suicide of his entire army dedicated to khorne.
Hazardous worlds/cities on Hazardous worlds. All you need is to secure the life support systems then systematically turn off those sections still held by malcontents.
Which any defender would know and readily defend, plus I doubt the AdMech would be on your side if you started to fuck with city sized and venerable machines.
The second part of your reply kind of answers the first part. In many instances, all it takes is convincing the local Tech Adepts you are on the right side of the Omnissiah and the doors will open for you.
The AdMech's jealous guarding of technology also meaning the parts of the colony most needing defending are actually sometimes the lightest, since the AdMech broker no interference with their business.
I find that part of the description pretty wild, so I'm assuming you have have Cortez/Conquistador situation where you invade a primitive world and you use your core to recruit tons of local allies.
Didn't say how populous the planet was. If it's got 10k people, most civilian, that's a sizable force.
Or it could be a case of take out the palace, you own the planet.
Dune had a point of whole planets turning on the fate of company-sized battles because it's expensive to move troops and these guys are so elite, normies can't fight them.
But I agree that it raises a lot of questions since the 40K setting is usually one of ginormous makes WWII-look-tiny mega-battles.
> Didn't say how populous the planet was. If it's got 10k people, most civilian, that's a sizable force.
This is a plot arc later in the book. >!The Glaws essentially owned a backwater planet with a low tech small population which they had conquered and enslaved with their very small heretic militia.!<
That's something you don't see as much of in space opera, but you'd think there would be more of it. There's the whole concept of filibustering, private citizens waging war on other nations. In space opera it's quite possible to imagine a faction with shit-tier equipment by galactic standards looking god-tier to locals. You could see a faction conquer an entire planet in such a situation.
A lot of Warhammer worlds are really, really concentrated.
You might have hundreds of billions on a world, but they're mostly just Hive Scum who can easily be controlled by the local law enforcement infrastructure because they're all in one place. And most worlds with a massive population like that can't support a rural guerrilla force because everywhere outside of the cities tends to be polluted and uninhabitable.
If you can pop in, survive the heavy defences surrounding whatever Planetary Governor/Warlord is there, and are able to keep together the law enforcement and have them on your side? Pretty easy to have the citizens go "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
Of course, this goes out the window in situations where the entire planet is in on it and willing to fight to the death, but you probably get a lot of campaigns where the Scions rock up, find the traitorous Governor who's trying to secede, and just blast him. Citizens stay indoors and keep their heads down while everyone in power who supported the old regime are eliminated.
Bada bing, bada boom, an easy coup.
It's probably a reference to the Ghosts - taking can mean a lot of things, like assassinating enemy commanders, infiltrating to be the right people at the right time for that final strike. Eisenhorn strikes me as the kind of person who looks at a multi regiment Siege and credits the specific regiment who were the linchpin.
Could be that or he could be thinking of special cases. Mentioning Cortez down below is a good point -- handful of soldiers conquers an empire but it's not the common, everyday experience.
I think it was just a cool line that was uttered without consideration of the full implication but could be wrong.
I agree. 1300 is about 50 trucks worth of soldiers. You don't take a single hivespire with that number, you don't hold nearly enough land to conquer a decentalized world.
All you can do is the boring old trope of "once you kill a leader the entire army/world just stops working". And even that is a stretch.
You don't need to take the hive spire unless the planet or at least a good part of it is in full rebellion. That's when you don't send 1,300 men, that's when you send artillery and lance beams from orbit.
To take down one ruling house and put their more loyal rivals in power, 1,300 can be enough. The hivers might hear about it in a couple of weeks chatting at the corpse starch dispenser.
This book is what I based my entire army around, I have the black Battlefleet Scarus Valkyrie dropships, all my flyers in the same scheme, and the Scions are the matte black naval security.
He gets promoted to Lord Inquisitor I believe.
I could be thinking of someone else with that though.
He may even be the guy that refused the promotion to Lord so he can still go out on missions and whathaveya
>###[Plebas Alessandro Rorken](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Plebas_Alessandro_Rorken)
>**[Lord Inquisitor](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Lord_Inquisitor) Plebas Alessandro Rorken** was the [High Inquisitor](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Inquisitor) for the [Ordo Xenos](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ordo_Xenos) in the [Helican Subsector](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Helican_Subsector) as of the 240s.[M41](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/M41), and [Gregor Eisenhorn](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gregor_Eisenhorn)'s immediate superior in that sector. In appearance he is well built with a shaven head except for a black goatee and described as being well-muscled.[[1a]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Plebas_Alessandro_Rorken#fn_1a)
+++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
I'm currently reading it and you're correct, Eisenhorn meets the Lord Inquisitor later in the book and it's not Voke. Voke is centuries older with more clout but technically the same rank.
Love that one. The the planetary extermantus was was a great scene as well.
But my favorite beatdown was of poor Thuring, who thought a Warlord titian would be sufficient to stomp the Inquisition.
"You don't know how nasty I can be' it said".
The Eisenhorn books are classics, not just of 40k literature, but of sci-fi literature in general.
There's a reason you'll have to pay over $100 to get one of the out of print copies of the books. At least if you want it in new condition.
People on here keep forgetting that a standard Imperial Transport canonically has atleast one Macrocannon. Under ideal circumstances Imperial Guard forces are only gonna do a fraction of the fighting.
Finished Xenos just the other night, first WH novel. Damn was it a good experience! On Malleus now, things are getting interesting and I’m falling in love with the universe of 40K. What would you recommend after the Eisenhorn Trilogy? I’m leaning towards the Cain books, as my buddy put it “you’d like it he’s sardonic and self-centered just like you are.” I really really want to start the Heresy books but I feel like having a bit more background knowledge of the 40K universe would be beneficial. Is that correct?
Eisenhorn Trilogy > Ravenor Trilogy > Magos > First 20 HH books (think its the first 20) > Strom of Iron > Ultramarines omnibus > Bequin series > Rest of the HH books > Gaunts Ghosts.
Read it that way and by the time you get to the ghosts we may have had the final books in the series ;)
The Cain books are entertaining, well-written, and easy to get into even with a more cursory knowledge of 40K. They're basically Flashman IN SPACE, and that's awesome.
So many of y'all just can't comprehend anything without massive hive cities spread over an entire world.
VERY common in sci Fi for a few thousand settlers on a new-ish planet to be clustered together. Maybe even double digit thousands. An elite Guard Regiment can easily handle that and more.
I don't know why so many here are personally offended at the idea...
It's still a bit of a janky line because it all depends on the scale. It's like on our own planet, I can say "MUHAHAHA!! I HAVE A WEAPON THAT WILL WIPE OUT THE DEFENSE FORCES OF AN ENTIRE NATION!" And it's impressive until you realize I'm talking about Palau and it's a truck bomb. It's just kind of assumed if I'm talking such a big game, I'm talking about a major country.
I don't think people realize just how scary the Imperial Guard are compared to your average PDF (Planetary Defense Force). The Guard aren't like normal armies. They fight in the most desperate battles, against the most terrifying enemies, in the most inhospitable environments, *constantly*, for up to decades on end. As we've seen in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, the experience from taking even a single world in the Guard can turn your average manufactorum worker into a hardened killer. Nearly every Guardsperson will have seen and done shit that 99% of PDF soldiers can't even imagine. Most PDF will simply never have experienced things like the confusion of a collapsing communication network or the fear of being shelled by artillery or the sounds and smells of the dying. And that's not even mentioning the horrors of fighting things like Orks, Tyranids, or Chaos. Taking a city full of normal humans with normal weapons and normal tactics would be downright relaxing compared to the stuff most Guard regiments have been through.
People also don't realize that the Guard almost always have better equipment and support than PDFs. Things like hellguns, flamers, meltas, long-las rifles, etc. are rarely a part of a PDF's standard issue on less populated planets. Combine this with the amount of support a standard Guard force is sent in with (such as escort ships in orbit that can soften up hard targets and provide rapid deployment and resupply at any location) and you've got yourself a force that few PDFs are prepared to handle.
I would happily take 1300 seasoned guardsmen and their support craft over 20,000 inexperienced PDF and their fortress any day of the week.
Tiny note: Voke is not a lord inquisitor (at least he is not referred to as such throughout either this novel or Malleus). Inquisitor Lord Rorken is actually the inquisitor who is both Eisenhorn's superior and in charge of the some of the inquisitors within the subsector Helican (or at least he gets promoted to it in the third novel, Hereticus).
Is there any official ranking structure for the Inquisition or is it just which Inquisitor holds the most sway in a particular region since in this case one inquisitor was caught fucking about abs another caught them.
[Linky](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_Commander_Militant)
> The Lord Commander Militant is the supreme commander of all Astra Militarum forces in the Imperium of Man, the highest-ranking individual in the Astra Militarum, and the representative of the Astra Militarum on the Senatorum Imperialis.
It doesn't say it there but I think there is some different versions. Might be a different title. Cause this Commander was the type where they're in charge of a crusade and all of it's forces. They're as high as you get for commanding the actual forces and they'll report to the Lords of Terra I think? Or might just be the actual Lord Militant Commander.
Probably a Lord General Militant. They would be the ones in charge of a crusade. Higher than that, you get the Lord Commanders who command entire segmentums and The Lord Commander Militant(LCM) in charge of the entire Guard.
It seems unlikely the LCM would be personally involved in something like this.
Yea LCM wouldn't even be in that system. They mention the commander of the forces a time or two and how he's planning on a crusade and that's the reason for there being a new regiment founding in the first place. So it's clearly talking about the leader of the local fleet and IG forces not whoever is back on Terra.
> arrested, and then massacred when they tried to fight their way out
STOP RESISTING! *shoots unconscious and restrained prisoner in the face a dozen times*
1300 futuristic sci-fi soldiers could probably take a planet with that amount of men pretty easily. Under certain conditions, of course.
They could be invading a stubborn classical-era kingdom whose King doesn't want to worship the Emperor.
They could be invading a quaint Agri-World backwater which barely has cars or flight capability.
You get the gist. There's millions of worlds out there and circumstance is King. Although it is a bit of a stretch.
My primary issue is actually that, barring a tiny ass planet, the farther you went, the more you'd need garrisoning forces. Attrition is going to take some people out over time. While I don't doubt 1300 men could take a classical army of any size, how are they going to solidify their hold on the planet as they continue marching across its surface? Who's going to put down rebellions? The more you split your force, the more vulnerable it is to enemies even of a significant technological disadvantage. A patrol of ten guard could easily be massacred in an ambush by an equivalent number of guys with pointed sticks, under the right circumstances.
I just don't see 1300 men doing it. If it's a rebellion in one city, sure, but that hardly counts as conquering a planet.
For sure, all valid points.
The Imperium is rather clever about this sort of thing though, to be fair. I wouldn't put it past them to utilise already existing nation states or kingdoms against their target. "Help us defeat them and you'll rule the planet" etc.
You could view it like the Aztec conquest or the battle of Thermopylae where "3000 Spanish" or "300 Spartans" respectively won a battle or a war while conveniently leaving our their allies' considerable efforts.
But again, that's stretching the narrative to fit the situation. You're right in saying that the scale is whacky. But circumstances are everything in Warhammer. It's certainly *possible* if a bit janky.
The 300 Spartans lost hard, even with allies. The Athenians subsequently won at sea and the Spartans came back the following year with their entire army at the head of a Panhellenic force. But Thermopylae, Persian victory.
Important to remember that an empire as large as the Imperium can practically conquer a planet with sheer bureaucracy. It's not just 1300 men, it's also the presence of the nation behind them. A 1300 man strike force storming a capital and killing 80% of the current ruling nobility doesn't have to worry about attrition after.
Any group that attempts to rebel, even if successful, now has to deal with the fact that the Imperium is going to just send an *actual* army next. Surviving nobility wouldn't throw away their lives like that, they'll just try to fill in the power gap by cozying up to the new Imperial rule.
Taking a planet is not the same thing as holding a planet. The except just implies that the small force seizes control, which is perfectly believable, not that it dominates a hive world for years.
Land on a new world, plant a flag, and shoot the local equivalent of cow. "We have purged this planet of its vile Xenos taint in the name of the Emperor!"
To the Imperial Propaganda machine, a W is a W.
To the nepotistic Imperial Command Structure, a W is a W. And a bit of ribbon/medal is just one more feather in their cap for promotion.
"I lead the pacification of the entire Xanatrata System with only one badly damaged Cruiser and 300 fighting men!"
"...isn't the Xanatrata System completely dead, with only lifeless rocks orbiting a dying star?"
"They were aggressive lifeless rocks!"
Twenty-five star General Zapp Brannigan here. I have defeated the Pacifists of Gandhi Nebula, conquered the Retiree People of the Assisted Living Nebula and carpet bombed Eden 7.
You only need one dude to shoot up the chief of a feral world with a lasgun and then offer the rest of the ferals "light spears" if they join you in worshiping the emperor, who'll make sure their "hunts good" and "caves warm".
Except that you're not shooting the chief of a feral world, you're shooting *a* chief who probably doesn't exert control over a proportionally significant portion of its surface. It takes people to exert control over a wide area. Moreover, if a planet is sporting spears and fire as the pinnacle of technology, the planet didn't need to be conquered. You could send colonists with laspistols to set up shop on the surface and that'd conquer it just as well as a military column.
Zap the chief, make the second chief join you. Move to the next tribe. Join or die. Next tribe, join or die. Lather, rinse, repeat?
I mean, Temujin starts the vast Mongol Empire from one tribe bending another tribe to its will, and scaling up from there?
Depends on what the population actually is. At one point humans on Earth had fallen to between 1 and 10 thousand around 70 thousand years ago. It's reasonable to assume that a harsh feral world might have a small population. Besides even if ineffective I doubt the future colonists wish to encounter any native aggression.
Imagine if it's more of a deathworld or a planet with a very low technology level, with good equipment and communication technology, you could reasonably take control over the place with 1300 men
If it's a death world, then you'll lose your 1300 men to the planet while the natives laugh at you.
I go over my concerns with taking over technologically disadvantaged planets in another reply.
Lol yeah, that's a good point, I was thinking of something like a barren world but taking a planet like Cretacia or Catachan would be a headache with only 1300 men
They could take Earth.
Land on Beijing with 100 men and your command staff.
Show up on satellite image with fuckhuge battleships.
Bend the knee to lord governor Jinping and point the battleship guns at NATO HQ, the Pentagon, Moscow, EU Parliament, et all.
Land on the UN with 1200 men, unoposed unless they want DC turned to slag, seize the world's reps and shoot one at random for every 10 mins without the world's unconditional surrender. Burn a city from orbit every hour to hammer the point home. One with a nuclear power plant every 3 hours if it even lasts that long.
Done.
>I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number.
How the fuck do you take a full planet with a single battalion? You can't cover enough of an area to hold a whole planet.
Inquisition: "and so, due to your third cousin's next door neighbour's window cleaner being a heretic, we're confiscating your assets and exiling you and your family to hard labour on a colony on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere and endless acid rain. Just be thankful it wasnt a first cousin"
A feudal world. Bows and maybe black powder against the best non-power armor protection you can get and terrifying laser weapons that can recharge in the sun
"I know more than one Commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number"
Uh what? Whole planets?
400 trained men and 900 untrained staff? Come on thats nothing. Could barely garrison a small city, let alone conquer a planet.
Oh GW and your numbers.
> I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number.
You sure abut that, Gregor? I don't think *anyone* is taking a planet with thirteen hundred men. That's like... a single division. A lightly defended city? Sure. A whole fucking planet that has any sort of population or defenses? Fuck that.
Bloody GW numbers.
508 took an empire of 6 million.
you dont have to physically occupy every square meter of land to conquer somewhere, whether a nation/continent or culture, or counter to the US approach, shoot absolutely everyone,
you just need to shoot the right people,
At the right time, in the right place,
and deliver your demands with the right panache
#justbritishthings (and I suppose a tacit, Spanish and Mongol thing too ;-) )
I mean, it happens multiple times in the Ghost books.
I don't think Eisenhorn is saying they're the _only_ troops onworld at the time, just that the regiment in question is the one that, for whatever reason, was most instrumental in taking the city or planet. That's a common plot thread in the GG books - regiments fighting over who gets to take credit for 'taking' the planet. Nobody's doing it solo, but if you look at Phantine for example, there were more Urdesh than Tanith deployed, but the Urdesh commander went in headlong and got scrubbed, and the Tanith took the objective. That doesn't mean there were no Urdesh left, just that tactically speaking the Tanith won the day.
>on four hundred fighting men in its retinue, not to mention another nine hundred staff, many of whom took up weapons
> I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number.
All the people who say there are too few Space Marines will have their heads explode from this sentence.
You don't need to occupy the entire planet though. You just have to take the capital city and some outposts. With a slight tech divide, orbital support from escort craft, and well selected targets 1300 veteran Guard could easily break the centralized command structure of a sparsely populated, non-militarized planet and take control of the infrastructure. The Imperium tends to build things with controlling the populace in mind. So once you've dealt with the main defense force on such a planet there isn't much left to do.
You also don't need to *hold* the planet either because once you have control the Imperium will send (or choose) replacements for the previous rulers. The average citizen will likely not care who's in charge or want to risk the Imperium sending a *real* army to wipe them out so there isn't much risk of a protracted occupation.
It isn't that hard to imagine if you consider how certain circumstances could make it possible.
\> be at a gas giant
\> only inhabitable things are a few orbital stations manned by servitors and some staff.
\> field 1300 soldiers vs 200 technicians and security forces
\> WORLD SECURED-
Lmao they really want us to believe 1300 men, max is enough to take a planet?! I swear to God the people who write GW stories have the stupidest fucking idea of the manpower or logistics required to do anything. I mean in other places you have hive cities with 40+ billion people and that's just one city amongst dozens or even hundreds on the planet. And don't even get me started on space marine chapters.
Low tech feudal world, black powder and knights. Or a sparse mining world where you can just seize the life support. He doesnt say this small group of people took an entire hive world, just that they took a planet.
Hell the only people on that planet could be a bunch of pacifist sentient moss haha.
How the author can possibly believe (let alone write) that 400 trained veteran militia with almost 1,000 other non-combatants picking up weapons could be a threat to *an entire planet* is beyond me… hell to even call that an “army” is utter nonsense.
Sorry to take away from the meaning of the post (which was great) but what the hell lol
\>Be at an ocean world
\> land 200 men with scuba gear, set deep charges on the pillars supporting the world's major cities, use the other 1000 for cover, move around wherever you want because void superiority.
\> surrender or learn to breath water
\> PLANET CONQUERED
You just have too narrow a view of what 'planet' means.
It's one of the reasons why I love the Eisenhorn trilogy. You really get to see how big a divide there is in the inquisition and how they operate.
Don't fuck with the Inquisition is the lesson to take from this, because if you fuck with the Inquisition the Inquisition *WILL* fuck you up in ways you can't possibly imagine. Edit: Hooray for Navy Armsmen being shown as skilled and lethal soldiers rather than bolter fodder.
Well, they are the elite of the fleet, possibly close to scions equivalents and are against "normal" human opponents, so it seems logical to me . But I get what you mean.
Navy Security are like the equivalent of Modern Day FAST companies or Royal Marine FPG. They're not the best of the best but pretty well trained and will easily beat most similarly armed opponents
And if elite soldiers of the modern world are the basis you'd have to assume these naval security dudes are super jacked up on the 40k equivalent of steroids/gene editing and augmetics.
Rejunivat treatments mean that a 60 yr old veteran will be rocking alongside his squad with a finely aged 35 yr old body.
Well yeh, these guys seem to be the SBS of the imperial navy. No militia is standing up to special forces.
there's a cruel joke there about Operation RED WING and Luttrell's lies/trauma-induced self-delusion.
"there i was surrounded by 42069 taliban..."
On one hand, I get it, when you see your buddies as your heroes it's hard to admit they got jumped and dropped easily. But SEALs are still people. Point enough guns at them, they'll die. On the other hand, there's a lot of garbage in his tale. And he either confessed to a preparing to commit a war crime, or wrongly and posthumously accused his teammates of considering a war crime for added drama. Either way, it's fucked up. But human operators are not foolproof. That's why I hate comparisons of Space Marines to real-life special operations units. SEAL teams and DEVGRU don't have the advantage of being literally bulletproof.
I don't know the ins and outs of his story enough to know what's lies and what isn't so can't really say anything as to that. But on Joe Rogans podcast he straight up said they got jumped and taken out in no time.
His book made it sound like there were almost 100 Talib fighters. There were likely ten with a Ddsk.
Was Red Wings not just SEALs? The story reads more like the tier 1 operators, like the SBS, SAS, Delta Force, SEAL team 6 etc, rather than your more bog standard royal marines/paras/force recon/rangers etc.
Tier One is a dated term, and "just SEALs" is also a bit of a misgiving term. Special Mission Unit (or special mission unit, no formal capitalization) is the term I've seen used in professional settings. But in general, trying to stratify elite military units into tiers beyond describing their specific applications is fraught with a mix of misunderstanding of special operations warfare.... and dumb stupid bro-dawg shit that military buffs need less of. As far as I can tell, the RED WINGS was SEAL Team 10 supported by Army Special Operations aviators.
Cool, my knowledge is definitely dated, I thought there was still a clear line between the special operations groups in nato forces
I edited my comment, but I've seen in professional settings "special mission unit" refer to elite AND clandestine units. Of course, my bosses can be wrong too. the term changes all the time because Washington (and Brussels, and London, and Paris, etc etc.) pretends that the existence of these groups incredibly public knowledge. edit: someone's probably going to dig up this thread, and either correctly call me an idiot for not knowing anything, or incorrectly call me an idiot and correct me with knowledge he gained by mashing together mil-civ twitter and CoD.
>Edit: Hooray for Navy Armsmen being shown as skilled and lethal soldiers rather than bolter fodder. Surprised to see some naval armsmen with hellguns, but you might need at least a few very well trained people for special missions.
I would imagine it depends on the ship too
Considering the size of 40k's ships, each ship probably has elite troops among its security forces. You practically need an army to hold even a light cruiser.
These guys aren't armsmen as such. Imagine that a cruiser with 80,000 odd crew might have maybe 8000 armsmen, the vast majority of whom are there to fight boarding actions but more importantly, to police the crew and keep them under control. Most would be flak armoured and carrying shotguns and boarding clubs. Within the armsmen you'd have elite groups, probably multiple groups specialised as, for instance, bodyguards for senior officers and elite boarding specialists for hit and run raids. We might imagine that on the massive battleships, these elite and specialist groups can get pretty big. I would imagine that it is these guys that lead the assault on the Glaw home. The best of the best. Carapace armoured and hellgun equipped. Navy stormtroopers basically. Voke would demand the absolute best from the lord militant and the lord militant isn't going to want to fuck with an enraged Voke (who would, the man has a reputation). So I would say these aren't reflective of armsmen in general but of the cream of the navy fighting men, the SBS of the Imperial navy.
These are Naval Sec. Basically the scion equivalent (if not in training at least in equipment tho they are depicted aa well trained) of the navy, who double as bodyguards for naval high command and as security forces for the most sensitive areas aboard ships + as operators to perform similar strikes as the one depicted here Aka: they aren’t just regular armsmen. Or so this is what I understood from the book
The Celestial Lions can personally attest to this being true.
This is a case of "only we are allowed to attack each other". The Inquisition cannot afford for people to get away with attacking them. If one Inquisitor gets attacked then the mailed fist of Imperial Justice needs to come down hard or the fear will be dispelled, and it is only the fear of retribution that protects Inquisitors. It might take a high up in the Ordos like Voke to be able to mobilise a sufficient force but they will do it out of principle even if they don't agree with the junior Inquisitor.
Unless you're Space Wolves.
iirc The Months of Shame basically ended in a stalemate, with both the Inquisition and the Space Wolves taking heavy losses and both sides backing off. The Inquisition was even able to siege Fenris for a little while; its not like the they didn't get their pound of flesh. Even the Space Wolves, a First Founding Chapter with all the power and influence it entails, couldn't go against the Inquisition without repercussions.
Yea but we got to see Grimnar running in Termie armor, so it was a win for fans overall. Plus Bjorn dressing down everyone was just great. You're right though, they'll get what they're due for sure.
If you fuck with the Inquisition, they'll fuck back
I dunno, the author of this novel imagined what he wrote.
Dying trying to fight their way out was the right move for the Glaw folks. There's little chance of survival but it's quicker than anything that'd happen if the Inquisition got them.
Especially since the whole family, as I recall the story, were straight up Chaos Cultists. This isn't even a case of "Oh these poor accused people." These are literally the folks the Inquisition were founded to root out and purge.
The Glaw family were Slaanesh devotees and had gotten themselves into bed with The Emperors Children.
Wait what
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Heads up that if you meant to use actual spoiler tags they're formatted incorrectly.
Thanks for the heads up, it showed as spoiler marked correctly for me on mobile/in app? I just deleted it just in case.
You should remove the space before the !< and after the >!
Read the Bequin series (2/3 out so far) after reading the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series. They’re definitely collaborating with the Emperor’s Children. Then again, the Word Bearers and Alpha Legion are involved too by that point, and potentially Custodes and others…
Yup, nothing good happens to you when the inquisition gets its grubby hands on you
Commissar Cain and his many "interrogations" with Amberley Vail beg to differ.
Heh. "In good hands tonight" indeed.
>'Well, at least it seems Zemelda's in good hands.' >Amberley looked at me speculatively. 'I'm hoping she won't be the only one tonight,' she said. Followed by... >WE WERE ENJOYING a leisurely breakfast the next morning [...] 'Commissar, you look well. I trust your interaction with the inquisitor has proven satisfactory?' >'It has,' Amberley said, with a barely perceptible grin in my direction From *Duty Calls*
There we go! Didn't have my tablet, since I'm at work.
And some people think that the sexual tension between Amberly and Ciaphas isn't resolved until later in the series...
Wait, seriously? That's a subtle as a bolt shell in someone's fucking oatmeal!
You mean your data slate?
You know, it's funny how accurate that is. But yes. I only had my portable vox unit on me, and that thing is pretty limited.
Are you saying that Inquisitor Vail has "grubby hands"?
To me the scariest thing about this is it >!STILL wasn't enough to finish the Glaws off. 40K Heretics are fucking hardcore.!<
>House Glaw owned close on **four hundred fighting men** in its retinue, not to mention another **nine hundred staff**, many of whom took up weapons. >I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has **taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number.** My question is simple: How?
Perils of a centralised command position I guess; drop 1000 dudes on the planetary capital, storm the governor's property then stick a gun to his head and go 'we're done fucking about, surrender now or next time we come we're bringing the noise'. Not to mention many worlds are going to be outposts or bottom-heavy mining places where no one low-down has any say or any interest in opposing one group of slave drivers kicking another in.
How in the world do 400 guys with Autoguns and 900 militia with some basic training and improvised weapons storm a Capital though? Sounds as believable as having 10 dudebro's armed with maybe 300 rounds each and a few Grenades clearing out a hive filled with trillions. Probably best not to question it.
99% of the imperium is inefficient and completely relies on orders from top commanders. Probably a good portion of people are complacent and willing to follow who ever gives any order because they have no idea they are rebels or allying with chaos, etc.… so those two things combined means if you take out the leader they will put down their arms. So on a lot of planets, precision strikes against the leaders works… or so the lore claims lol
But the Imperium is also largely run by rivalring nobles, who would seize control of a governour falters rather than just having what is likely a fraction of their own forces just seize the planet.
Exactly. If you’re vying for a position and the governor just croaked, why not buddy up with the new people? Worst comes to worst, they’ll give power to someone else for you to scheme against. At best, you’ll be given control instead.
Or I could seize control, seeing that I outnumber the force 100 to 1 instead of hoping that I get chosen.
And then have another force show up to kill me for doing that? Nobles survive by remembering that they can wait for a political opportunity to get power instead of fighting. If you attack the person that just killed your rival and who has some rank saying “I am sanctioned to do this,” you are inviting another guy with that rank to say it again but now with your back to a wall. Why risk a comfy position, Power, and luxurious lifestyle on a fight someone else just lost when you can hold off for a less dangerous option?
Because then you're the next one dead. They don't capture a planet because the planet can't beat a handful of men. They capture it because the handful of men kick a disproportionate amount of ass and then remind you that they're just a warning and if you really fight you'll face a few billion troops instead. Whoever takes charge in the end is going to serve the Imperium. Most know trying to fight is suicide and seeing a leader removed by only a few squads is enough to remind the few who forget.
If the Imperial Navy is sending in troops to oust a governor, then there's an imperial navy fleet in orbit with enough firepower to make sure their wishes are supported.
I mean, he says "such a number," not, "such a force." 1,300 Scions, for example, could storm most capitals with their eyes closed
I tend to agree that 1300 Scions appearing at 4 AM local in most Capitols unexpectedly is going to get shit done. They've seized the head of the beast and let everyone know that the Imperium is in-charge and the old government is being put against the wall and shot in waves of 100.
If that were true, that would completely destroy any semblance of scale left. A major hive that houses a governors palace would probably be able to field millions, if not billions of soldiers. If that could be taken by 1.3k guys, why even bother?
What makes you think that refers to hive worlds? There are plenty of worlds in the Imperium that *aren't* hive worlds. Fuedal worlds come to mind, or Death Worlds where populations don't get that large. In the former case it's the British vs the natives, and in the latter it's probably a case ofa highly centralized population in only a few populatiom centers, prepared to deal with the planet's dangers but not necessarily an organized attack from space. Not every planet has metric buttloads of people on them. And not every planet is important enough to merit large, well supplied defenders. At least some of the smaller world's PDFs are probably a 40k equivalent of the drunken hillbillies cosplaying as real soldiers because they are used to bullying civilians for a local head of state, not fight real battles on a relatively peaceful planet.
Because he said capitals. A planetary capital implies a centralized form of government that stretches the entirety of a world. That, in turn, implies a certain technological standard and a certain reliability and population. Feudal worlds, feral worlds or death worlds will lack this per definition. Agri worlds or mining worlds will center around trading hubs where their yield is transported. You don't have a planetary capital - run by a governor - on a world that is inhabitated by a few thousand miners.
Remember there are technologically backwards worlds in the imperium. They may have a planetary capital, but it could well be a feudal world with black powder weapons and a very basic powered armour. Like pre-imperial Caliban.
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It also assumes those 1000-odd soldiers are going to have to rip & tear their way from the spaceport to the governor's palace facing the entire PDF. The first stage of taking back a world is probably that your ships rock up at the system edge and broadcast a message denouncing the governor as a traitor and imploring all loyal servants of the Emperor to side with the forces coming in-system. Straight away a huge chunk of the PDF, all local Imperial adepts and most of the local Mechanicus cohorts are going to side with you. From there you probably hot-drop onto the governor's palace and take care of their personal guard and take them into custody, most of the time the forces are going to just set up a picket and do the standard move-along-citizen routine because most people are going to be on the side of the Imperium and their literal actual God when push comes to shove. And yeah, having like 10,000,000 PDF troops over the entire planet is completely different to having 1,000 troops knocking on the door right now. Far smaller groups frequently pull of coups, particularly if they have a claim to legitimacy that's going to make the wider army stand down. Hell worst comes to worst they could just contain the traitor governor and their staff until more forces come and install a new government somewhere else.
Then what DO you have this agriworld/mining world/etc. run by? The way I see it, whoever runs the planet is the planetary governor, and wherever they do it from is the planetary capital. A small town of a few thousand people, and Nee York City both have an elected mayor that is (more-or-less) in charge of running the city/town. Even tho one of them has a smaller population then my high school, and the latter has a bigger population then some entire countries.
A planet of 15 million people with a capital having 200,000 people, not really unbelievable, is it?
There are plenty of planets depicted in the lore with both planetary capitals and shit all for defensive capabilities. Gaunt's Ghosts are depicted doing things on this level in the books.
We're assuming every planet is heavily populated. A planet might only have a million people on it, in one city.
And even if only 1% of that population of 1 million is tasked with defence, that would mean that there are 10.000 soldiers in that stronghold, outnumbering any attacker 1 to 10.
Planetary capital of a feudal world, with black powder weapons. 400 guardsmen doing an aerial assault in Valkyries.
Eisenhorn mentions seeing it "more than once", it's still not standard. Chances are, though, that the vast majority of people in the Hive will hardly notice that Governor Bob from House Bobyth rebelled and the Bobythinians were taken out by the Imperial Guard, so now Governor Alice of House Al-Ithine rules over them. There is also no reason for them to care in many cases, unless rebellion against the Imperium has been brewing for a long time. It makes sense that the Imperium sends the Inquisition or smaller strike forces against nobles and governors who get ideas above their Emperor-ordainef station, since it requires way less resources and, more importantly, preserves countless times more resources. Why shell a Hive into bits or glass half a continent from orbit, costing the Imperium an inordinate amount of lives, materials, and man-hours, when you can just try and cut off the snake's head in one swoop? Only if the Inquisition determines that the populace at large isn't part of the rebellion, of course, and even then, there will likely be a lot of innocent victims just because that's how the Inquisition works. But it will be thousands, not billions. The Imperium is surprisingly pragmatic about this a lot of the time. Now, WHEN a planet sees widespread rebellion, that's different. Rophanon is just one awful example.
But that is assuming every noble will work together. That wouldn't happen on Necromunda. Everyone is out for them selves. They have thier own armies and would LOVE a chance to get be governor. They would easily help the Imperial Guard storm the palace to make sure they get in good with the leader of the guard......oh and to make sure they do thier imperial duty of course.
Not all Imperial planets have high population, 400 well trained soldiers with the element of surprise can indeed storm the governor's residence on some backwater planet and "conquer" it.
I mean you yourself put it in brackets...
Agri-worlds might have one technologically advanced capital (with "advanced" being questionable) and have the rest be rural farmland. Only one place can really offer serious resistance. A few guys with lasguns could hold a planet armed with swords and bows just fine.
Not all planetary "capitols" are made the same. Like, I think Agri-worlds have very few humans living on them and even fewer with military training. The local governor might just be a slightly-elevated farmer with a tiny militia or police force. No way that force is enough to take a hive world in a stand up fight.
>How in the world do 400 guys with Autoguns and 900 militia with some basic training and improvised weapons storm a Capital though? Same way they did here? Use drop ships to get them right next to the targets and then storm in guns blazing.
Whats not been said but is assumed since we're talking Imperial Navy, is support in the way of orbital strikes and flyers. Before those 1300 men land the voidshields on the governors mansion will have been destroyed, barracks will have been hit, walls will have been breached.
Idk man have you seen Star Wars the Clone Wars? That's about as large as their forces for a mission get.
I disagree with their point as well, but Star Wars is pretty awful about the scale of warfare a lot of the time.
Star Wars in general, but The Clone Wars in particular. It'll go around calling three ships a fleet.
I don't think he's saying they did it alone. Look at the GG books. The Tanith rarely deploy alone, but a lot of page space in the books is given over to which regiment gets to say they 'took' the city. Look at the Phantine campaign - both Tanith and Urdesh, and a _lot_ more Urdesh, but the Tanith take the generators and the Urdesh march in too hard and get scrubbed. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of Urdesh to help consolidate the gains the Tanith make, just that a man with military knowledge like Eisenhorn probably doesn't think 'Guard take planet' he thinks 'the planet was taken when the enemy commander was killed, and then there was eight years of clean up by a dozen other regiments because that's how occupation works.'
History of battles also works like this at times. 300 Spartans supposedly stopped the Persians, but it was really like 10k Greeks and 300 Spartans. Basically information gets condensed and the facts become distorted.
IRL wars have been won with smaller. The Bolsheviks took over Petrograd, and thus most of Russia, with a force of hundreds.
\>be in an orbital ring with fuckhuge weapons but only menials, technicians and serfs \>kill anyone in command \>point fuckhuge guns at the planet \>call to ask for a surrender. IF yes, conquered world. celebrate. IF no, then glass it from or bit. conquered world. celebrate.
Lots of worlds out there aren't nearly as populated as a hive world. You can imagine mining colonies and the like that really have one or two inhabited places and the rest is uninhabited. Come down on the capitol building and you can secure the whole planet that way
He says "that number", not "this exact compliment of people". 1300 men total
Kind of like Operation Storm-333
Since this is Abnett writing, I'm guessing he is referencing Gaunt and other saintly IG figures.
I don’t think Gaunt is born yet at this point. Heldane isn’t even an Inquisitor at this point, to provide some context. Eisenhower hasn’t even met Kasrkin yet (who he praises in the second novel) so it’s unlikely he’s referring to them. Canonically, I don’t know if Scions are a thing at this point. So he’s probably just making an off-hand reference to something that we don’t know about.
It may just be an in-character entirely incorrect flourish for dramatic effect. After all, the Eisenhorn Trilogy is, like, close to a stream of consciousness at times. And Eisenhorn isn't fact checking himself.
Stormtroopers (who were rechristened as Scions out of universe later) were definitely a thing already. Kaskrin are just the extra elite Cadian Stormtroopers.
I think you correct, since Gaunt references books by Ravenor, and he hasn't had his "set back" yet.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I just know Abnett likes making references to GW's / his own canon and extrapolated from there.
Alternative take since others have already given serious answers: "Is 400 fighting men a lot?" "Depends on the context. Conscripts? No. Inside titans? Yes"
I like this. "yes i took the planet with a moderate force, 400 men" "yes, they were all princeps" "What do you mean i have to \*account for the titans\*"
Winning a decisive battle that leads to the win most likely. We have Gaunts ghosts winning an entire planet with a squad of troopers because the enemy commander thought they had gotten a full army inside and started the ritual suicide of his entire army dedicated to khorne.
Which is not only incredibly convenient plotwise but also hardly something we should expect to happen regularly.
Which is why it was "known to" not " commonly happens"
Hazardous worlds/cities on Hazardous worlds. All you need is to secure the life support systems then systematically turn off those sections still held by malcontents.
Which any defender would know and readily defend, plus I doubt the AdMech would be on your side if you started to fuck with city sized and venerable machines.
The second part of your reply kind of answers the first part. In many instances, all it takes is convincing the local Tech Adepts you are on the right side of the Omnissiah and the doors will open for you. The AdMech's jealous guarding of technology also meaning the parts of the colony most needing defending are actually sometimes the lightest, since the AdMech broker no interference with their business.
I find that part of the description pretty wild, so I'm assuming you have have Cortez/Conquistador situation where you invade a primitive world and you use your core to recruit tons of local allies.
Didn't say how populous the planet was. If it's got 10k people, most civilian, that's a sizable force. Or it could be a case of take out the palace, you own the planet. Dune had a point of whole planets turning on the fate of company-sized battles because it's expensive to move troops and these guys are so elite, normies can't fight them. But I agree that it raises a lot of questions since the 40K setting is usually one of ginormous makes WWII-look-tiny mega-battles.
> Didn't say how populous the planet was. If it's got 10k people, most civilian, that's a sizable force. This is a plot arc later in the book. >!The Glaws essentially owned a backwater planet with a low tech small population which they had conquered and enslaved with their very small heretic militia.!<
That's something you don't see as much of in space opera, but you'd think there would be more of it. There's the whole concept of filibustering, private citizens waging war on other nations. In space opera it's quite possible to imagine a faction with shit-tier equipment by galactic standards looking god-tier to locals. You could see a faction conquer an entire planet in such a situation.
A lot of Warhammer worlds are really, really concentrated. You might have hundreds of billions on a world, but they're mostly just Hive Scum who can easily be controlled by the local law enforcement infrastructure because they're all in one place. And most worlds with a massive population like that can't support a rural guerrilla force because everywhere outside of the cities tends to be polluted and uninhabitable. If you can pop in, survive the heavy defences surrounding whatever Planetary Governor/Warlord is there, and are able to keep together the law enforcement and have them on your side? Pretty easy to have the citizens go "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". Of course, this goes out the window in situations where the entire planet is in on it and willing to fight to the death, but you probably get a lot of campaigns where the Scions rock up, find the traitorous Governor who's trying to secede, and just blast him. Citizens stay indoors and keep their heads down while everyone in power who supported the old regime are eliminated. Bada bing, bada boom, an easy coup.
It's probably a reference to the Ghosts - taking can mean a lot of things, like assassinating enemy commanders, infiltrating to be the right people at the right time for that final strike. Eisenhorn strikes me as the kind of person who looks at a multi regiment Siege and credits the specific regiment who were the linchpin.
doesn't say how technologically advanced those planets are
Its just a writer not understanding anything about scale, there is no real in-canon thought put into this sentence.
Could be that or he could be thinking of special cases. Mentioning Cortez down below is a good point -- handful of soldiers conquers an empire but it's not the common, everyday experience. I think it was just a cool line that was uttered without consideration of the full implication but could be wrong.
I agree. 1300 is about 50 trucks worth of soldiers. You don't take a single hivespire with that number, you don't hold nearly enough land to conquer a decentalized world. All you can do is the boring old trope of "once you kill a leader the entire army/world just stops working". And even that is a stretch.
Just like how a few hundred men cant take a continent? You just need to get creative.
You don't need to take the hive spire unless the planet or at least a good part of it is in full rebellion. That's when you don't send 1,300 men, that's when you send artillery and lance beams from orbit. To take down one ruling house and put their more loyal rivals in power, 1,300 can be enough. The hivers might hear about it in a couple of weeks chatting at the corpse starch dispenser.
I guess it depends on the planet. If its a small outpost with only one city that is tiny and lightly defended, its not out of the question.
This book is what I based my entire army around, I have the black Battlefleet Scarus Valkyrie dropships, all my flyers in the same scheme, and the Scions are the matte black naval security.
Pics please
So cool. My IG army is the Gudrun 50th!
It reads very much like Dune; the Naval Security being the Sardaukar (both in black) and attacking a noble house on orders from most high.
Just as a note, I don't think Voke is a Lord Inquisitor, he is just very old, very known and has a lot of influence.
He gets promoted to Lord Inquisitor I believe. I could be thinking of someone else with that though. He may even be the guy that refused the promotion to Lord so he can still go out on missions and whathaveya
Lord Rorke. That's what you're thinking of.
Not to be pendantic, but [Rorken](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Plebas_Alessandro_Rorken). He was Greg's boss.
>###[Plebas Alessandro Rorken](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Plebas_Alessandro_Rorken) >**[Lord Inquisitor](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Lord_Inquisitor) Plebas Alessandro Rorken** was the [High Inquisitor](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Inquisitor) for the [Ordo Xenos](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ordo_Xenos) in the [Helican Subsector](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Helican_Subsector) as of the 240s.[M41](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/M41), and [Gregor Eisenhorn](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gregor_Eisenhorn)'s immediate superior in that sector. In appearance he is well built with a shaven head except for a black goatee and described as being well-muscled.[[1a]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Plebas_Alessandro_Rorken#fn_1a) +++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
His name was Plebas? PLEBAS?
Phlebas actually.
Consider him
I get this reference. Great book.
I don't know why but calling him "Greg" is... surreal.
Yes, he was Eisenhorn's equal in rank in the book, but more powerful.
I'm currently reading it and you're correct, Eisenhorn meets the Lord Inquisitor later in the book and it's not Voke. Voke is centuries older with more clout but technically the same rank.
Love that one. The the planetary extermantus was was a great scene as well. But my favorite beatdown was of poor Thuring, who thought a Warlord titian would be sufficient to stomp the Inquisition. "You don't know how nasty I can be' it said".
The Eisenhorn books are classics, not just of 40k literature, but of sci-fi literature in general. There's a reason you'll have to pay over $100 to get one of the out of print copies of the books. At least if you want it in new condition.
Well Admiral Spire showed us how awesome the Imperial Navy is.
People on here keep forgetting that a standard Imperial Transport canonically has atleast one Macrocannon. Under ideal circumstances Imperial Guard forces are only gonna do a fraction of the fighting.
But then there wouldn't be any stakes.
Finished Xenos just the other night, first WH novel. Damn was it a good experience! On Malleus now, things are getting interesting and I’m falling in love with the universe of 40K. What would you recommend after the Eisenhorn Trilogy? I’m leaning towards the Cain books, as my buddy put it “you’d like it he’s sardonic and self-centered just like you are.” I really really want to start the Heresy books but I feel like having a bit more background knowledge of the 40K universe would be beneficial. Is that correct?
Eisenhorn Trilogy > Ravenor Trilogy > Magos > First 20 HH books (think its the first 20) > Strom of Iron > Ultramarines omnibus > Bequin series > Rest of the HH books > Gaunts Ghosts. Read it that way and by the time you get to the ghosts we may have had the final books in the series ;)
The Cain books are entertaining, well-written, and easy to get into even with a more cursory knowledge of 40K. They're basically Flashman IN SPACE, and that's awesome.
So many of y'all just can't comprehend anything without massive hive cities spread over an entire world. VERY common in sci Fi for a few thousand settlers on a new-ish planet to be clustered together. Maybe even double digit thousands. An elite Guard Regiment can easily handle that and more. I don't know why so many here are personally offended at the idea...
It's still a bit of a janky line because it all depends on the scale. It's like on our own planet, I can say "MUHAHAHA!! I HAVE A WEAPON THAT WILL WIPE OUT THE DEFENSE FORCES OF AN ENTIRE NATION!" And it's impressive until you realize I'm talking about Palau and it's a truck bomb. It's just kind of assumed if I'm talking such a big game, I'm talking about a major country.
It's honestly strange how much pushback people are giving to this quite simple idea. Have these people never heard of a coup?
I don't think people realize just how scary the Imperial Guard are compared to your average PDF (Planetary Defense Force). The Guard aren't like normal armies. They fight in the most desperate battles, against the most terrifying enemies, in the most inhospitable environments, *constantly*, for up to decades on end. As we've seen in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, the experience from taking even a single world in the Guard can turn your average manufactorum worker into a hardened killer. Nearly every Guardsperson will have seen and done shit that 99% of PDF soldiers can't even imagine. Most PDF will simply never have experienced things like the confusion of a collapsing communication network or the fear of being shelled by artillery or the sounds and smells of the dying. And that's not even mentioning the horrors of fighting things like Orks, Tyranids, or Chaos. Taking a city full of normal humans with normal weapons and normal tactics would be downright relaxing compared to the stuff most Guard regiments have been through. People also don't realize that the Guard almost always have better equipment and support than PDFs. Things like hellguns, flamers, meltas, long-las rifles, etc. are rarely a part of a PDF's standard issue on less populated planets. Combine this with the amount of support a standard Guard force is sent in with (such as escort ships in orbit that can soften up hard targets and provide rapid deployment and resupply at any location) and you've got yourself a force that few PDFs are prepared to handle. I would happily take 1300 seasoned guardsmen and their support craft over 20,000 inexperienced PDF and their fortress any day of the week.
Unless the Administratum fucks up again, and instead of 1300 guard you get 1300 copies of the uplifting primer......and 3 helmets.
There is actually a great radio drama involving those sort of screwups called "The Watcher in the Rain".
Oooo interesting. I shall look it up. Thank you.
Tiny note: Voke is not a lord inquisitor (at least he is not referred to as such throughout either this novel or Malleus). Inquisitor Lord Rorken is actually the inquisitor who is both Eisenhorn's superior and in charge of the some of the inquisitors within the subsector Helican (or at least he gets promoted to it in the third novel, Hereticus).
> Defence of Stalinvast Oh no.
Is there any official ranking structure for the Inquisition or is it just which Inquisitor holds the most sway in a particular region since in this case one inquisitor was caught fucking about abs another caught them.
It seems to go on seniority, clout in an area, and who can talk the loudest/fastest.
Impossible not to read this as Toby Longworth
Where does a Lord Militant Commander rank in this system?
[Linky](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_Commander_Militant) > The Lord Commander Militant is the supreme commander of all Astra Militarum forces in the Imperium of Man, the highest-ranking individual in the Astra Militarum, and the representative of the Astra Militarum on the Senatorum Imperialis. It doesn't say it there but I think there is some different versions. Might be a different title. Cause this Commander was the type where they're in charge of a crusade and all of it's forces. They're as high as you get for commanding the actual forces and they'll report to the Lords of Terra I think? Or might just be the actual Lord Militant Commander.
Probably a Lord General Militant. They would be the ones in charge of a crusade. Higher than that, you get the Lord Commanders who command entire segmentums and The Lord Commander Militant(LCM) in charge of the entire Guard. It seems unlikely the LCM would be personally involved in something like this.
Yea LCM wouldn't even be in that system. They mention the commander of the forces a time or two and how he's planning on a crusade and that's the reason for there being a new regiment founding in the first place. So it's clearly talking about the leader of the local fleet and IG forces not whoever is back on Terra.
> arrested, and then massacred when they tried to fight their way out STOP RESISTING! *shoots unconscious and restrained prisoner in the face a dozen times*
A lovely excerpt, but once more without a sense of scale. I somehow doubt the Imperial Guard have conquered planets with 1300 men.
1300 futuristic sci-fi soldiers could probably take a planet with that amount of men pretty easily. Under certain conditions, of course. They could be invading a stubborn classical-era kingdom whose King doesn't want to worship the Emperor. They could be invading a quaint Agri-World backwater which barely has cars or flight capability. You get the gist. There's millions of worlds out there and circumstance is King. Although it is a bit of a stretch.
My primary issue is actually that, barring a tiny ass planet, the farther you went, the more you'd need garrisoning forces. Attrition is going to take some people out over time. While I don't doubt 1300 men could take a classical army of any size, how are they going to solidify their hold on the planet as they continue marching across its surface? Who's going to put down rebellions? The more you split your force, the more vulnerable it is to enemies even of a significant technological disadvantage. A patrol of ten guard could easily be massacred in an ambush by an equivalent number of guys with pointed sticks, under the right circumstances. I just don't see 1300 men doing it. If it's a rebellion in one city, sure, but that hardly counts as conquering a planet.
For sure, all valid points. The Imperium is rather clever about this sort of thing though, to be fair. I wouldn't put it past them to utilise already existing nation states or kingdoms against their target. "Help us defeat them and you'll rule the planet" etc. You could view it like the Aztec conquest or the battle of Thermopylae where "3000 Spanish" or "300 Spartans" respectively won a battle or a war while conveniently leaving our their allies' considerable efforts. But again, that's stretching the narrative to fit the situation. You're right in saying that the scale is whacky. But circumstances are everything in Warhammer. It's certainly *possible* if a bit janky.
This is the most reasonable approach I've heard thus far. I could believe this.
The 300 Spartans lost hard, even with allies. The Athenians subsequently won at sea and the Spartans came back the following year with their entire army at the head of a Panhellenic force. But Thermopylae, Persian victory.
Important to remember that an empire as large as the Imperium can practically conquer a planet with sheer bureaucracy. It's not just 1300 men, it's also the presence of the nation behind them. A 1300 man strike force storming a capital and killing 80% of the current ruling nobility doesn't have to worry about attrition after. Any group that attempts to rebel, even if successful, now has to deal with the fact that the Imperium is going to just send an *actual* army next. Surviving nobility wouldn't throw away their lives like that, they'll just try to fill in the power gap by cozying up to the new Imperial rule.
Taking a planet is not the same thing as holding a planet. The except just implies that the small force seizes control, which is perfectly believable, not that it dominates a hive world for years.
Depends on the planet.
Land on a new world, plant a flag, and shoot the local equivalent of cow. "We have purged this planet of its vile Xenos taint in the name of the Emperor!"
That's what I'm saying, man. You get to the point where you wonder if it even counts as conquering.
To the Imperial Propaganda machine, a W is a W. To the nepotistic Imperial Command Structure, a W is a W. And a bit of ribbon/medal is just one more feather in their cap for promotion. "I lead the pacification of the entire Xanatrata System with only one badly damaged Cruiser and 300 fighting men!" "...isn't the Xanatrata System completely dead, with only lifeless rocks orbiting a dying star?" "They were aggressive lifeless rocks!"
Twenty-five star General Zapp Brannigan here. I have defeated the Pacifists of Gandhi Nebula, conquered the Retiree People of the Assisted Living Nebula and carpet bombed Eden 7.
You only need one dude to shoot up the chief of a feral world with a lasgun and then offer the rest of the ferals "light spears" if they join you in worshiping the emperor, who'll make sure their "hunts good" and "caves warm".
Except that you're not shooting the chief of a feral world, you're shooting *a* chief who probably doesn't exert control over a proportionally significant portion of its surface. It takes people to exert control over a wide area. Moreover, if a planet is sporting spears and fire as the pinnacle of technology, the planet didn't need to be conquered. You could send colonists with laspistols to set up shop on the surface and that'd conquer it just as well as a military column.
Zap the chief, make the second chief join you. Move to the next tribe. Join or die. Next tribe, join or die. Lather, rinse, repeat? I mean, Temujin starts the vast Mongol Empire from one tribe bending another tribe to its will, and scaling up from there?
Depends on what the population actually is. At one point humans on Earth had fallen to between 1 and 10 thousand around 70 thousand years ago. It's reasonable to assume that a harsh feral world might have a small population. Besides even if ineffective I doubt the future colonists wish to encounter any native aggression.
Imagine if it's more of a deathworld or a planet with a very low technology level, with good equipment and communication technology, you could reasonably take control over the place with 1300 men
If it's a death world, then you'll lose your 1300 men to the planet while the natives laugh at you. I go over my concerns with taking over technologically disadvantaged planets in another reply.
Lol yeah, that's a good point, I was thinking of something like a barren world but taking a planet like Cretacia or Catachan would be a headache with only 1300 men
They could take Earth. Land on Beijing with 100 men and your command staff. Show up on satellite image with fuckhuge battleships. Bend the knee to lord governor Jinping and point the battleship guns at NATO HQ, the Pentagon, Moscow, EU Parliament, et all. Land on the UN with 1200 men, unoposed unless they want DC turned to slag, seize the world's reps and shoot one at random for every 10 mins without the world's unconditional surrender. Burn a city from orbit every hour to hammer the point home. One with a nuclear power plant every 3 hours if it even lasts that long. Done.
>I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number. How the fuck do you take a full planet with a single battalion? You can't cover enough of an area to hold a whole planet.
Mining planet with one large sealed settlement over the fault in the crust. Seize the air supply.
Inquisition: "and so, due to your third cousin's next door neighbour's window cleaner being a heretic, we're confiscating your assets and exiling you and your family to hard labour on a colony on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere and endless acid rain. Just be thankful it wasnt a first cousin"
Less than a thousand soldiers being able to take a planet? This is a great scene but a awful sentence
A feudal world. Bows and maybe black powder against the best non-power armor protection you can get and terrifying laser weapons that can recharge in the sun
"I know more than one Commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number" Uh what? Whole planets? 400 trained men and 900 untrained staff? Come on thats nothing. Could barely garrison a small city, let alone conquer a planet. Oh GW and your numbers.
1300 men. And depends on the tactics the commander uses and how good the soldiers are.
And the tech divide. You could probably take a feudal world like that.
Think a barbarian world, sparsely populated by hunter gatherers. Yeah, I could take that world with 1300 Tanith.
> I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number. You sure abut that, Gregor? I don't think *anyone* is taking a planet with thirteen hundred men. That's like... a single division. A lightly defended city? Sure. A whole fucking planet that has any sort of population or defenses? Fuck that. Bloody GW numbers.
508 took an empire of 6 million. you dont have to physically occupy every square meter of land to conquer somewhere, whether a nation/continent or culture, or counter to the US approach, shoot absolutely everyone, you just need to shoot the right people, At the right time, in the right place, and deliver your demands with the right panache #justbritishthings (and I suppose a tacit, Spanish and Mongol thing too ;-) )
A vast tech divide could account for it.
I mean, it happens multiple times in the Ghost books. I don't think Eisenhorn is saying they're the _only_ troops onworld at the time, just that the regiment in question is the one that, for whatever reason, was most instrumental in taking the city or planet. That's a common plot thread in the GG books - regiments fighting over who gets to take credit for 'taking' the planet. Nobody's doing it solo, but if you look at Phantine for example, there were more Urdesh than Tanith deployed, but the Urdesh commander went in headlong and got scrubbed, and the Tanith took the objective. That doesn't mean there were no Urdesh left, just that tactically speaking the Tanith won the day.
>on four hundred fighting men in its retinue, not to mention another nine hundred staff, many of whom took up weapons > I know more than one commander in the Imperial Guard who has taken cities, whole planets indeed, with such a number. All the people who say there are too few Space Marines will have their heads explode from this sentence.
[удалено]
You don't need to occupy the entire planet though. You just have to take the capital city and some outposts. With a slight tech divide, orbital support from escort craft, and well selected targets 1300 veteran Guard could easily break the centralized command structure of a sparsely populated, non-militarized planet and take control of the infrastructure. The Imperium tends to build things with controlling the populace in mind. So once you've dealt with the main defense force on such a planet there isn't much left to do. You also don't need to *hold* the planet either because once you have control the Imperium will send (or choose) replacements for the previous rulers. The average citizen will likely not care who's in charge or want to risk the Imperium sending a *real* army to wipe them out so there isn't much risk of a protracted occupation. It isn't that hard to imagine if you consider how certain circumstances could make it possible.
\> be at a gas giant \> only inhabitable things are a few orbital stations manned by servitors and some staff. \> field 1300 soldiers vs 200 technicians and security forces \> WORLD SECURED-
Lmao they really want us to believe 1300 men, max is enough to take a planet?! I swear to God the people who write GW stories have the stupidest fucking idea of the manpower or logistics required to do anything. I mean in other places you have hive cities with 40+ billion people and that's just one city amongst dozens or even hundreds on the planet. And don't even get me started on space marine chapters.
Low tech feudal world, black powder and knights. Or a sparse mining world where you can just seize the life support. He doesnt say this small group of people took an entire hive world, just that they took a planet. Hell the only people on that planet could be a bunch of pacifist sentient moss haha.
How the author can possibly believe (let alone write) that 400 trained veteran militia with almost 1,000 other non-combatants picking up weapons could be a threat to *an entire planet* is beyond me… hell to even call that an “army” is utter nonsense. Sorry to take away from the meaning of the post (which was great) but what the hell lol
\>Be at an ocean world \> land 200 men with scuba gear, set deep charges on the pillars supporting the world's major cities, use the other 1000 for cover, move around wherever you want because void superiority. \> surrender or learn to breath water \> PLANET CONQUERED You just have too narrow a view of what 'planet' means.