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Gideon Ravenor

2018-10-25T18:08:28Z

2001:5B0:2400:4608:C478:46A:3F1C:5A:

{{Template:Spoilers}}
[[Image:Ravenor-omnibus.jpg|thumb|The titular character is a chair. This would not be a very interesting cover, so they went with a suitably [[GRIMDARK]] logo instead.]]
One of the few prominent [[Alienhunters]] we've actually seen, Inquisitor Ravenor of the Ordos Xenos is a motherfucking badass who got strapped to a force chair after some Chaos punk burnt the shit out of him on Thracian Primaris. But that's (mostly) okay, since Ravenor was a powerful psychic, and only got stronger when he was locked into the chair; and it being Inquisition hardware, it has all sorts of extras built in. He's also a paranoid ass who gets suspicious of an innocent (if psychic) boy just because his name ''sounds somewhat similar'' to Slyte, the daemon who possessed his drug addict interrogator. Ravenor is actually the second trilogy in a trilogy of trilogies (Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Bequin). It's written by [[Dan Abnett]] so you know its fuckawsome.

He began his service as an Interrogator under [[Gregor Eisenhorn]], but got promoted to Inquisitor and was an incredibly powerful psyker even before his ass got immolated. Not to mention he was an incredibly gifted warrior as well as apparently -fucking handsome- (basically seduced a space-amazon with a mixture of being a legit badass with a sword and aforementioned handsomeness). His psychic abilities naturally developed with age, experience and increased use after his immobilisation.

He fights the Eldar, allies with the Eldar, and fights the Eldar. It's a weird, twisted love affair. [[Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt]] reads and often quotes his works.

Unfortunately, Ravenor shines much more as an intellectual sherlock and leader than as a psyker, which is kinda ironic given that's kinda of supposed to be his shtick. Despite being talked up (both by others and himself) as being a monstrously, invincibly powerful psyker as a result of his condition, the most impressive things we actually see Ravenor do are go incorporeal and possessing people. Every psi-duel Ravenor gets into over the course of the books, he loses, having to either run away or be bailed out by somebody. Granted, one could argue that every psi-duel we see Ravenor get into is against foes more powerful than him, but that's the problem right there. We never see him confidently show off the supremacy he's supposed to have. Just once it would've been nice to see Ravenor casually turn some wannabe unsanctioned psyker inside-out, or get put through his paces by someone powerful, but ultimately win with his superior skill. Hell, the ''villain'' psykers are allowed to do that. But nope, not Ravenor, and he ends up looking just a bit toothless as a result, especially when compared to old Eisenhorn, who was almost always perfectly capable of doing all his own ass-kicking. In fact, the Ravenor series does a better job playing up ''Eisenhorn'', as in one of the interval short stories Ravenor's own followers make clear they'd fight Ravenor with their bare hands before they'd ''ever'' cross Eisenhorn, and in the very next scene old Eisenhorn [[awesome|cuts a motherfucking '''dreadnought''' in ''half'']]. Just goes to show that even the mighty Abnett is not entirely above dropping the ball.

==Dramatis Personae==
Ravenor is basically Professor X in Space, and his retinue consist of the basic fanservice, fuck-ups, and Fett-clones that you'd expect from an X-Men knock off (especially that shitty phase in the 90s when they forgot they were a Civil Rights allegory and fought aliens and space wizards):

* The previously mentioned interrogator and sidekick, Carl Thonius, possessed and eventually destroyed by Slyte. SPOILER ALERT He didn't do shit anyway, and acted like a hacker in a universe of sword-and-pistol combat. Barring that thing involving the glue, the grenade, and the dreadnought. Described as a 'pussy' THREE times in the first chapter he is in.
* Wystan Frauka, a porno-reading pothead pariah and psychic blank (untouchable). He also fat and horrible, and used to scare the shit out of Eldar witches. Equipped with standard issue erotic novels and brass balls.
* Kara Swole, a voluptuous acrobat(even though "voluptuous" bodies aren't really good for acrobatics. This is, however, pointed out more than once) who fucks an old Imperial Guard doctor.
* Patience Kys, a sexy pale flavoured telekinetic chick who wants to fuck Ravenor even though he's a gross burn victim in a coffin. It helps that he rescued her from a corrupt orphanage when she was a child - no wait, that just means she wants to fuck an old gross burn victim in a coffin that's also a FATHER FIGURE.
* Harlon Nayl, an old bounty hunter with shit ton of equipment (over 100 points! OH NOES) who fucks a girl that looks like Inquisitor Boxy's dead ex-girlfriend. He won't fucking die and used to work for [[Gregor Eisenhorn]].
* Zeph Mathurian, another ex-bounty hunter, the Silent Bob to Harlon's Jay, with a rotator cannon mounted on his forearms. He was killed by a daemon [[Meme|and then Zeph was a zombie.]]
* Zael Efferneti, That boy above, also addicted to drugs and a fine line of Italian sports cars. He is a 'mirror,' able to hear telepathy but not use it himself, and can copy and spam the psychic powers of those around him. Like a fucking X-Man. That little twat then took every level of badass possible and then later became [[Hyperion|a fucking Grey Knight]] with some help from Inquisitor Lilith and destroyed Angron's Black Blade during the First War for Armageddon. That's pretty much as big as service to the throne gets.
* Maud Plyton, an ex-Magistrum marshall, a hardass with adorable little facial features. Has a nice car and is claustrophobic.
* Cynia Preest, captain of the ''Hinterlight'', Ravenor's primary ship. Has no combat abilities making her kind of a pussy. Her description puts her as kind of hot but super old '200+ years old'
* Patrik Belknap - ex-Guard medic with balls of steel and super-faith, now back alley doctor. Loves the [[Emprah]]. Saves Kara's life via surgery and then gets to fuck her.
* Sholto Unwerth, another captain of another ship, the Arethusa. Starts off annoying but soon everyone grows to love him. Is actually a [[Squat]]. Which is weird, because if Squats were eaten by [[Tyranids]] and Tyranids weren't around yet in Ravenor's time...). Also has a dog-man sidekick/bodyguard.
* Already a powerful telepath (he has been described as "between high-level delta and low-level gamma" and an "Alpha plus psyker" at different times), Inquisitor Boxy-Burny makes his followers wear wraithbone pendants so he can possess their bodies in a process called "waring" that makes his host sick and dizzy, but Ravenor at the helm can do ridiculous Matrix bullshit.

=='''Villains'''==
Note: This list will only contain the BIG villains of the series. As it stands, there are a LOT of villains. Most not worth mentioning.

'''Zygmunt Molotch''' - The Moriarty to Raveneor's Sherlock. Trained by a special Chaos school (Literally. It trained people to be the bestest heretics ever), Zygmunt Molotch is a gigantic [[Mary Sue]]. He was "killed" by Ravenor twice before the series, and does some pretty ridiculous stuff in the books. Examples include hypnotizing someone with tiny finger movements, taking out an entire Inquisitorial hit squad ALONE, beating an armed Carthaen Swordswoman (pretty much the best swordspeople in the galaxy) one on one UNNARMED, and other feats. He even has a signature move. With a literal flick of his finger against your arm, your gun will go flying away. He is NOT a psyker, but is very knowledgeable on Chaos lore and rituals.

'''Orfeo Culzean''' - A "fascilitator". Basically someone who is smart enough to not be a complete balls-out heretic but able enough to help them with their rituals and any trouble-shooting that may be needed, hence his eventual involvement with Molotch. Orfeo collects trinkets he calles "deodands", basically whenever someone dies on accident, he takes the thing that caused their death and enshrines it as an object of fate (such as a slippery stone that caused someone to fall down a flight of stairs and break their neck). He's fat, but suave, intelligent, and surprisingly charming. Next time you read his parts, imagine him as John Rhys-Davies. It's awesome.

'''Leyla Slade''' - Orfeo's bodyguard. She's surprisingly disdainful of Molotch, his schemes, and other heresies, but extremely loyal to Orfeo.

''' Lucius Worna''' - A bounty hunter that has worked with Nayl in the past, and possibly a renegade Space Marine. He wears pearl-coloured power armor and is FUCKHUEG. Luckily for him, he isn't wearing a helmet, which lets his badassery shine through (and causes somewhat of a problem later). Completely and utterly ruthless and literally only in it for the money (and maybe some revenge on Nayl). He's pretty much the most unkillable bastard in the history of the Imperium, taking grenades, knives, bullets, lasers, ACID, fire, and a fucking lightning strike like a boss.

='''Overall Plot'''=
Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor, who in his interrogator days had an unfortunate run-in with an exploding Lightning fighter and got burned to a charred lump of meat, is now confined to a floating life-support chair. However, this does not prevent him from being an awesome psyker, and the book opens to him and his group of hardasses investigating a rogue trader cartel supplying the populace with warp-tainted superdrugs. After picking up the tweaking child psyker Zael on the capital world, they chase the leader halfway across the subsector, during which time Thonius loses an arm and gets all angsty despite it being reattached. It turns out all their leads were a trap and the cartel almost drives their ship into the local sun, but the traders conveniently forget about half the group, and the inquisitor's employees manage to retake the ship and blow the shit out of the cartel leader.

Suddenly everything gets more complicated: The drugs were just a side operation, and Ravenor finds out the cartel's real purpose is to smuggle abandoned Imperial machinery off daemon worlds and onto the subsector's capital world. The highest levels of subsector government have some sort of sneaky secret agenda, so Ravenor and his group covertly head to the capital world to try and unravel all of this nonsense. Somewhere along the way, Thonius dumbassedly tries to cure his angst with leftover warp drugs, with predictable results. They also have a run-in with Eisenhorn, now a million years old and still chilling with Cherubael, who reminds them how fucking badass he is and warns them of a daemon manifestation that's likely to occur in someone close to Ravenor within the next few months. Who could this be, really.

When they get to the capital world, they have to deal with both a cult trying to help the aforementioned daemon make his appearance, and various government officials working on a secret project to decode a pre-human language, Enuncia, that will allow them to royally screw up reality with a simple sentence. The Chaos-tainted machinery provided by the cartel allows them to translate the language without their equipment blowing up. In the meantime, the local Department of Special Crimes uncover a diagram hidden in a false ceiling in an Imperial temple. Immediately afterward, their division is promptly shut down by a higher level of the police force, and all the members are assassinated except the one that escapes, Maud Plyton, who vows to get to the bottom of this shit.

Around this time, Ravenor's cover is blown and Thonius has a really bad trip and (surprise, surprise) becomes the host for the daemon, Slyte. He keeps it a secret like a dumbass (seeing a theme here?). Patience Kys gets captured while working undercover in the Administratum, and the government nasties hire a man to send a daemon and a bunch of psykers after the inquisitor himself. Nayl is out dicking around and Kara is busy making moon-eyes at some doctor named Belknap, leaving Mathuin and Thonius to defend Ravenor from the attack. Mathuin unloads his rotator cannon on the daemon and stabs it in the chest for good measure, but gets killed anyway. Thonius, being a useless metrosexual, hides upstairs with Zael. However, Slyte takes over his body, kills all the psykers, boosts Ravenor's power so he can kill the daemon, and renders Zael comatose with fear. Somehow, Ravenor still does not suspect Thonius at this point (he suspects Zael).

Patience then escapes from the prison after a fanservice-based fight, and Nayl and Kara finally remember they have important things to do, and regroup, scooping up Plyton along the way, who fills in the gaps in their understanding of the governor's plans. It turns out the entire capital city was designed by a mad architect to channel warp energy, and the temple with the secret diagram is the focal point of it all. The governor and his lackeys are going to perform a ritual that allows them access to the complete and unabridged Enuncia dictionary, likely killing a bunch of people in the process, then killing millions more once they can fuck with the fabric of spacetime. Ravenor decides he won't stand for all this, and his group launches an assault on the temple right as the ritual is beginning. They are joined by Plyton and Kara's doctor, for some reason.

Things go pretty well until the end, when the ritual is nearly complete and a bunch of people are, in fact, killed in the process. Only Kara and Thonius have managed to actually get inside the temple and are hopelessly outclassed, so Thonius manifests Slyte ''again'' and kills all of the governor's henchmen, destroys the dictionary of evilness, and saves Kara from the resulting giant explosion (curing the brain tumor she had gotten along the way as part of the deal not to tell Ravenor). Half the city blows up. Ravenor finds Thonius and Kara completely unharmed in the epicenter of the explosion that killed thousands, and STILL doesn't suspect Thonius, writing it off as a miracle.

The governor somehow escapes all this, and the inquisitor's group sets off after him, with the new additions of Plyton and that damn tagalong doctor. Oh, and the governor is actually Ravenor's old nemesis Zygmunt Molotch, who somehow survived crash-landing his ship six years before and is up to his old tricks.

''(Hope you don't mind, different fa/tg/uy here finishing this article. Just finished the Omnibus! Let's get cracking, because things get whacky in the third book)''

After a surprisingly boring and uninformative short-story where we learn Patience's backstory, the novels resume again. Now, Ravenor and his psychos have headed off to a different planet after months of trying to track Molotch. Despite almost no evidence AND the Inquisition itself telling him he's wrong, Ravenor believes Molotch is there, due to what he says is a "hunch". After Ravenor is told to back the fuck off, a different Inquisitor's group handily locates Molotch and is promptly and completely slaughtered by him. The only survivors are Angharad, a Carthaen Swordswoman of such beauty and skill that she can take entire SQUADS without a second thought, and Ballack, the interrogator of the inquisitor who just got his shit pushed in who actually set the whole thing up. Molotch blows up the building to make it look like he died, and Ballack is understandably pissed off at being so expendable.

Meanwhile, Carl is basically manifesting Slyte all over the place, and fucking with everyone's perception just for funsies.

Ballack and Angharad approach Ravenor and tell him that Molotch didn't actually die, but someone in the inquisition must be corrupt! Molotoch apparently has ways to change peoples memories within seconds despite not being a psyker, so after a brief mind-probe Ravenor happily accepts and decides to go rogue so he can hunt down his nemesis without the pesky Inquisition getting in the way. Sometime around now Nayl starts a relationship with Angharad, what with her being pretty much the same character from the Eisenhorn series.

Ravenor's search takes him to a new world, a world with oceans so deep they are literally unexplorable AND covered with ice caps hundreds of meters thick. Ravenor and the gang take a submarine to a giant underwater sphere with spider legs called ''The Wych House'' in order to use the house's scrying powers to see where Molotch went. It turns out all you need to do is use a simple wooden door and it shows you what you want, sort of. The door is kind of a dick, and likes to screw with people. Ravenor, Carl, Ballack, and Angharad go through the door a few times and eventually find Orfeo Culzean, Molotch's main man and a very smooth operator. He tells Ravenor (and only Ravenor) that Molotch wants to team up to take down Slyte. Ravenor flat out refuses and leaves.

His mistake, however, as Molotch had trapped the door just in case Ravenor said no. They get stuck on a world overrun with Tyranids (thus, the future) and get royally fucked up (though they prove their badassery and Mary Sueness by murdering dozens of Tyranids each). Carl ONCE AGAIN manifests Slyte and mind fucks the door into taking them back into the Wych house, where the rest of Ravenor's crew was captured by bounty hunters under the employ of Molotch. Ravenor once again fails to notice Carl.

Back in the Wych House, the door won't close and it's bounty hunters versus Tyranids. I mean dead meat versus Tyranids. A few bounty hunters manage to teleport away, and the Wych House begins to explode. At this point, Ravenor's group is split in half.

Ravenor retreats back through the door with Nayl, Angharad, and Ballack. Everyone else is with Carl.

Ravenor uses his vast power to force the door to take them to were he wants, but for a laugh instead of taking them to the SHIP ''Arethusa'', it takes them to Listening Post Arethusa, 1,000 years in the past, but on the same day. There, Ravenor dies three times while Nayl tries to explain their situation. Eventually Ravenor convinces the base surgeon to help them and she springs them, helping them back to the door, which Ravenor uses again. Luckily this time he gets it right, as the surrounding trees were all psychically sensitive and boosted his power exponentially.

While this is happening, Carl's crew angsts around for a while and decides to try to go after Molotch on their own. Kys tries to kill Zael, believing him to be Slyte, and is stopped and thrown in the brig.

The crew of the ''Arethusa'' manage to find one of the ships Molotch uses (since it was in orbit above Water World to teleport the bounty hunters out) and Kara heads over and gets captured, but not before transmitting their destination, a planet Eisenhorn fans know well, Gudrun.

Kys endures 13 days in the ship's brig and the entire ship endures many unexplained psychic phenomena. This causes most of the crew to mutiny and leave the ship. Carl and the others (without Kys or Zeal and Frauka, who has been assigned his care giver) head to the planet to find out more. Kys escapes and regroups with Unwerth and the remaining crew members.

As Kys and Unwerth are deciding on what to do, the ''Hinterlight'' approaches. Ravenor had used the door to get them to the ''Hinterlight'' and had used his powers of deduction from his meeting with Orfeo to figure out the planet they were on. Ravenor then visits Frauka and Zael. Zael has SOMEHOW burnt out Frauka's blankness and uses him as a conduit. He explains that he had to induce a coma for himself so Slyte wouldn't kill him and feast on his delicious warp-soul. He then tells Ravenor that Carl was the daemons all the while. Ravenor seems legitimately surprised by this.

Oblivious to these developments, Carl, Belknap, Maud, and Ballack are infiltrating Molotch's castle. Ballack gets himself caught and executed, and Carl just gets himself caught. Turns out Orfeo knew Carl was Slyte, and wants to bind him when he transforms. Molotch, on the other hand, does not know of Orfeo's deception. Ravenor calls ahead and decides to team up with Molotch, causing Orfeo to betray them both. Luckily, Ravenor expected this and the rest of his team assaults the castle using the door.

After battling the goons and shooting Orfeo in the gut, Ravenor, Molotch, and the rest are confronted with the now fully unleashed Slyte. They have no idea how to stop the gigantic, tentacled, goo-monster until Carl's ghost appears and mentions that they brought a hole into the warp with them, duh! So Molotch gets to work turning the door into a warp-nuke while Ravenor and the rest run. Except for Angharad, who is apparently as dumb as a stick and decides to sword fight the stories high tentacle beast. In an unintentionally funny scene is simply picks her up and eviscerates her with one of its beaks.

Luckily, Molotch's warp nuke works and Slyte is consumed. The craft the gang is escaping in crashes, and Molotch goes about 30 yards before Ravenor finds him and explodes his brain in a terribly anti-climactic moment.

We are then treated to an animal house ending, where Ravenor is awaiting Trial and thinking about his group.

*'''Harlon Nayl''' leaves Ravenor's service to go back to bring Angharad's sword back home. Ravenor doubts he will ever see him again.
*'''Kara Swole''' is awaiting interrogation after Ravenor, due to her foreknowledge of Slyte.
*'''Wystan Frauka''' is no longer an untouchable and is given over to the black ships so they can do what they will with him. It's possible he's actually not too mad about it because being made "touchable" might just mean he has a soul, something that almost all untouchables hope for.
*'''Patience Kys''' is awaiting Ravenor's release. (She's literally just kicking around the hive he's in.)
*'''Unwerth and Preest''' go back to being a trader and a rogue trader, respectively.
*'''Maud Plyton''' apparently stays in Ravenor's service and gives him a report she found about the surgeon 1,000 years ago. The Surgeon was executed for treason as soon as Ravenor left, refusing an offer to come with them to spare her the fate of a traitor.
*'''Patrik Belknap''' goes back to being a back-alley surgeon, extremely pissed that Kara kept Carl a secret.
*''' Zael Efferneti''' is also given to the Black Ships and becomes a Grey Knight librarian, goes on to break the sword of [[Angron]] as Battle Brother [[Hyperion]].

'''The End'''

{{Template:Famous members of the Inquisiton}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Imperial]][[Category:Inquisition]]

Gideon Ravenor

2018-10-25T17:32:43Z

2001:5B0:2400:4608:C478:46A:3F1C:5A:

{{Template:Spoilers}}
[[Image:Ravenor-omnibus.jpg|thumb|The titular character is a chair. This would not be a very interesting cover, so they went with a suitably [[GRIMDARK]] logo instead.]]
One of the few prominent [[Alienhunters]] we've actually seen, Inquisitor Ravenor of the Ordos Xenos is a motherfucking badass who got strapped to a force chair after some Chaos punk burnt the shit out of him on Thracian Primaris. But that's (mostly) okay, since Ravenor was a powerful psychic, and only got stronger when he was locked into the chair; and it being Inquisition hardware, it has all sorts of extras built in. He's also a paranoid ass who gets suspicious of an innocent (if psychic) boy just because his name ''sounds somewhat similar'' to Slyte, the daemon who possessed his drug addict interrogator. Ravenor is actually the second trilogy in a trilogy of trilogies (Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Bequin). It's written by [[Dan Abnett]] so you know its fuckawsome.

He began his service as an Interrogator under [[Gregor Eisenhorn]], but got promoted to Inquisitor and was an incredibly powerful psyker even before his ass got immolated. Not to mention he was an incredibly gifted warrior as well as apparently -fucking handsome- (basically seduced a space-amazon with a mixture of being a legit badass with a sword and aforementioned handsomeness). His psychic abilities naturally developed with age, experience and increased use after his immobilisation.

He fights the Eldar, allies with the Eldar, and fights the Eldar. It's a weird, twisted love affair. [[Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt]] reads and often quotes his works.

Unfortunately, Ravenor shines much more as an intellectual sherlock and leader than as a psyker, which is kinda ironic given that's kinda of supposed to be his shtick. Despite being talked up (both by others and himself) as being a monstrously, invincibly powerful psyker as a result of his condition, the most impressive things we actually see Ravenor do are go incorporeal and possessing people. Every psi-duel Ravenor gets into over the course of the books, he loses, having to either run away or be bailed out by somebody. Granted, one could argue that every psi-duel we see Ravenor get into is against foes more powerful than him, but that's the problem right there. We never see him confidently show off the supremacy he's supposed to have. Just once it would've been nice to see Ravenor casually turn some wannabe unsanctioned psyker inside-out, or get put through his paces by someone powerful, but ultimately win with his superior skill. Hell, the ''villain'' psykers are allowed to do that. But nope, not Ravenor, and he ends up looking just a bit toothless as a result, especially when compared to old Eisenhorn, who was almost always perfectly capable of doing all his own ass-kicking (Even Ravenor's own followers make a comparison a bit unfavorable towards Ravenor, making clear they'd fight Ravenor with their bare hands before they'd ''ever'' cross Eisenhorn). Just goes to show that even the mighty Abnett is not entirely above dropping the ball.

==Dramatis Personae==
Ravenor is basically Professor X in Space, and his retinue consist of the basic fanservice, fuck-ups, and Fett-clones that you'd expect from an X-Men knock off (especially that shitty phase in the 90s when they forgot they were a Civil Rights allegory and fought aliens and space wizards):

* The previously mentioned interrogator and sidekick, Carl Thonius, possessed and eventually destroyed by Slyte. SPOILER ALERT He didn't do shit anyway, and acted like a hacker in a universe of sword-and-pistol combat. Barring that thing involving the glue, the grenade, and the dreadnought. Described as a 'pussy' THREE times in the first chapter he is in.
* Wystan Frauka, a porno-reading pothead pariah and psychic blank (untouchable). He also fat and horrible, and used to scare the shit out of Eldar witches. Equipped with standard issue erotic novels and brass balls.
* Kara Swole, a voluptuous acrobat(even though "voluptuous" bodies aren't really good for acrobatics. This is, however, pointed out more than once) who fucks an old Imperial Guard doctor.
* Patience Kys, a sexy pale flavoured telekinetic chick who wants to fuck Ravenor even though he's a gross burn victim in a coffin. It helps that he rescued her from a corrupt orphanage when she was a child - no wait, that just means she wants to fuck an old gross burn victim in a coffin that's also a FATHER FIGURE.
* Harlon Nayl, an old bounty hunter with shit ton of equipment (over 100 points! OH NOES) who fucks a girl that looks like Inquisitor Boxy's dead ex-girlfriend. He won't fucking die and used to work for [[Gregor Eisenhorn]].
* Zeph Mathurian, another ex-bounty hunter, the Silent Bob to Harlon's Jay, with a rotator cannon mounted on his forearms. He was killed by a daemon [[Meme|and then Zeph was a zombie.]]
* Zael Efferneti, That boy above, also addicted to drugs and a fine line of Italian sports cars. He is a 'mirror,' able to hear telepathy but not use it himself, and can copy and spam the psychic powers of those around him. Like a fucking X-Man. That little twat then took every level of badass possible and then later became [[Hyperion|a fucking Grey Knight]] with some help from Inquisitor Lilith and destroyed Angron's Black Blade during the First War for Armageddon. That's pretty much as big as service to the throne gets.
* Maud Plyton, an ex-Magistrum marshall, a hardass with adorable little facial features. Has a nice car and is claustrophobic.
* Cynia Preest, captain of the ''Hinterlight'', Ravenor's primary ship. Has no combat abilities making her kind of a pussy. Her description puts her as kind of hot but super old '200+ years old'
* Patrik Belknap - ex-Guard medic with balls of steel and super-faith, now back alley doctor. Loves the [[Emprah]]. Saves Kara's life via surgery and then gets to fuck her.
* Sholto Unwerth, another captain of another ship, the Arethusa. Starts off annoying but soon everyone grows to love him. Is actually a [[Squat]]. Which is weird, because if Squats were eaten by [[Tyranids]] and Tyranids weren't around yet in Ravenor's time...). Also has a dog-man sidekick/bodyguard.
* Already a powerful telepath (he has been described as "between high-level delta and low-level gamma" and an "Alpha plus psyker" at different times), Inquisitor Boxy-Burny makes his followers wear wraithbone pendants so he can possess their bodies in a process called "waring" that makes his host sick and dizzy, but Ravenor at the helm can do ridiculous Matrix bullshit.

=='''Villains'''==
Note: This list will only contain the BIG villains of the series. As it stands, there are a LOT of villains. Most not worth mentioning.

'''Zygmunt Molotch''' - The Moriarty to Raveneor's Sherlock. Trained by a special Chaos school (Literally. It trained people to be the bestest heretics ever), Zygmunt Molotch is a gigantic [[Mary Sue]]. He was "killed" by Ravenor twice before the series, and does some pretty ridiculous stuff in the books. Examples include hypnotizing someone with tiny finger movements, taking out an entire Inquisitorial hit squad ALONE, beating an armed Carthaen Swordswoman (pretty much the best swordspeople in the galaxy) one on one UNNARMED, and other feats. He even has a signature move. With a literal flick of his finger against your arm, your gun will go flying away. He is NOT a psyker, but is very knowledgeable on Chaos lore and rituals.

'''Orfeo Culzean''' - A "fascilitator". Basically someone who is smart enough to not be a complete balls-out heretic but able enough to help them with their rituals and any trouble-shooting that may be needed, hence his eventual involvement with Molotch. Orfeo collects trinkets he calles "deodands", basically whenever someone dies on accident, he takes the thing that caused their death and enshrines it as an object of fate (such as a slippery stone that caused someone to fall down a flight of stairs and break their neck). He's fat, but suave, intelligent, and surprisingly charming. Next time you read his parts, imagine him as John Rhys-Davies. It's awesome.

'''Leyla Slade''' - Orfeo's bodyguard. She's surprisingly disdainful of Molotch, his schemes, and other heresies, but extremely loyal to Orfeo.

''' Lucius Worna''' - A bounty hunter that has worked with Nayl in the past, and possibly a renegade Space Marine. He wears pearl-coloured power armor and is FUCKHUEG. Luckily for him, he isn't wearing a helmet, which lets his badassery shine through (and causes somewhat of a problem later). Completely and utterly ruthless and literally only in it for the money (and maybe some revenge on Nayl). He's pretty much the most unkillable bastard in the history of the Imperium, taking grenades, knives, bullets, lasers, ACID, fire, and a fucking lightning strike like a boss.

='''Overall Plot'''=
Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor, who in his interrogator days had an unfortunate run-in with an exploding Lightning fighter and got burned to a charred lump of meat, is now confined to a floating life-support chair. However, this does not prevent him from being an awesome psyker, and the book opens to him and his group of hardasses investigating a rogue trader cartel supplying the populace with warp-tainted superdrugs. After picking up the tweaking child psyker Zael on the capital world, they chase the leader halfway across the subsector, during which time Thonius loses an arm and gets all angsty despite it being reattached. It turns out all their leads were a trap and the cartel almost drives their ship into the local sun, but the traders conveniently forget about half the group, and the inquisitor's employees manage to retake the ship and blow the shit out of the cartel leader.

Suddenly everything gets more complicated: The drugs were just a side operation, and Ravenor finds out the cartel's real purpose is to smuggle abandoned Imperial machinery off daemon worlds and onto the subsector's capital world. The highest levels of subsector government have some sort of sneaky secret agenda, so Ravenor and his group covertly head to the capital world to try and unravel all of this nonsense. Somewhere along the way, Thonius dumbassedly tries to cure his angst with leftover warp drugs, with predictable results. They also have a run-in with Eisenhorn, now a million years old and still chilling with Cherubael, who reminds them how fucking badass he is and warns them of a daemon manifestation that's likely to occur in someone close to Ravenor within the next few months. Who could this be, really.

When they get to the capital world, they have to deal with both a cult trying to help the aforementioned daemon make his appearance, and various government officials working on a secret project to decode a pre-human language, Enuncia, that will allow them to royally screw up reality with a simple sentence. The Chaos-tainted machinery provided by the cartel allows them to translate the language without their equipment blowing up. In the meantime, the local Department of Special Crimes uncover a diagram hidden in a false ceiling in an Imperial temple. Immediately afterward, their division is promptly shut down by a higher level of the police force, and all the members are assassinated except the one that escapes, Maud Plyton, who vows to get to the bottom of this shit.

Around this time, Ravenor's cover is blown and Thonius has a really bad trip and (surprise, surprise) becomes the host for the daemon, Slyte. He keeps it a secret like a dumbass (seeing a theme here?). Patience Kys gets captured while working undercover in the Administratum, and the government nasties hire a man to send a daemon and a bunch of psykers after the inquisitor himself. Nayl is out dicking around and Kara is busy making moon-eyes at some doctor named Belknap, leaving Mathuin and Thonius to defend Ravenor from the attack. Mathuin unloads his rotator cannon on the daemon and stabs it in the chest for good measure, but gets killed anyway. Thonius, being a useless metrosexual, hides upstairs with Zael. However, Slyte takes over his body, kills all the psykers, boosts Ravenor's power so he can kill the daemon, and renders Zael comatose with fear. Somehow, Ravenor still does not suspect Thonius at this point (he suspects Zael).

Patience then escapes from the prison after a fanservice-based fight, and Nayl and Kara finally remember they have important things to do, and regroup, scooping up Plyton along the way, who fills in the gaps in their understanding of the governor's plans. It turns out the entire capital city was designed by a mad architect to channel warp energy, and the temple with the secret diagram is the focal point of it all. The governor and his lackeys are going to perform a ritual that allows them access to the complete and unabridged Enuncia dictionary, likely killing a bunch of people in the process, then killing millions more once they can fuck with the fabric of spacetime. Ravenor decides he won't stand for all this, and his group launches an assault on the temple right as the ritual is beginning. They are joined by Plyton and Kara's doctor, for some reason.

Things go pretty well until the end, when the ritual is nearly complete and a bunch of people are, in fact, killed in the process. Only Kara and Thonius have managed to actually get inside the temple and are hopelessly outclassed, so Thonius manifests Slyte ''again'' and kills all of the governor's henchmen, destroys the dictionary of evilness, and saves Kara from the resulting giant explosion (curing the brain tumor she had gotten along the way as part of the deal not to tell Ravenor). Half the city blows up. Ravenor finds Thonius and Kara completely unharmed in the epicenter of the explosion that killed thousands, and STILL doesn't suspect Thonius, writing it off as a miracle.

The governor somehow escapes all this, and the inquisitor's group sets off after him, with the new additions of Plyton and that damn tagalong doctor. Oh, and the governor is actually Ravenor's old nemesis Zygmunt Molotch, who somehow survived crash-landing his ship six years before and is up to his old tricks.

''(Hope you don't mind, different fa/tg/uy here finishing this article. Just finished the Omnibus! Let's get cracking, because things get whacky in the third book)''

After a surprisingly boring and uninformative short-story where we learn Patience's backstory, the novels resume again. Now, Ravenor and his psychos have headed off to a different planet after months of trying to track Molotch. Despite almost no evidence AND the Inquisition itself telling him he's wrong, Ravenor believes Molotch is there, due to what he says is a "hunch". After Ravenor is told to back the fuck off, a different Inquisitor's group handily locates Molotch and is promptly and completely slaughtered by him. The only survivors are Angharad, a Carthaen Swordswoman of such beauty and skill that she can take entire SQUADS without a second thought, and Ballack, the interrogator of the inquisitor who just got his shit pushed in who actually set the whole thing up. Molotch blows up the building to make it look like he died, and Ballack is understandably pissed off at being so expendable.

Meanwhile, Carl is basically manifesting Slyte all over the place, and fucking with everyone's perception just for funsies.

Ballack and Angharad approach Ravenor and tell him that Molotch didn't actually die, but someone in the inquisition must be corrupt! Molotoch apparently has ways to change peoples memories within seconds despite not being a psyker, so after a brief mind-probe Ravenor happily accepts and decides to go rogue so he can hunt down his nemesis without the pesky Inquisition getting in the way. Sometime around now Nayl starts a relationship with Angharad, what with her being pretty much the same character from the Eisenhorn series.

Ravenor's search takes him to a new world, a world with oceans so deep they are literally unexplorable AND covered with ice caps hundreds of meters thick. Ravenor and the gang take a submarine to a giant underwater sphere with spider legs called ''The Wych House'' in order to use the house's scrying powers to see where Molotch went. It turns out all you need to do is use a simple wooden door and it shows you what you want, sort of. The door is kind of a dick, and likes to screw with people. Ravenor, Carl, Ballack, and Angharad go through the door a few times and eventually find Orfeo Culzean, Molotch's main man and a very smooth operator. He tells Ravenor (and only Ravenor) that Molotch wants to team up to take down Slyte. Ravenor flat out refuses and leaves.

His mistake, however, as Molotch had trapped the door just in case Ravenor said no. They get stuck on a world overrun with Tyranids (thus, the future) and get royally fucked up (though they prove their badassery and Mary Sueness by murdering dozens of Tyranids each). Carl ONCE AGAIN manifests Slyte and mind fucks the door into taking them back into the Wych house, where the rest of Ravenor's crew was captured by bounty hunters under the employ of Molotch. Ravenor once again fails to notice Carl.

Back in the Wych House, the door won't close and it's bounty hunters versus Tyranids. I mean dead meat versus Tyranids. A few bounty hunters manage to teleport away, and the Wych House begins to explode. At this point, Ravenor's group is split in half.

Ravenor retreats back through the door with Nayl, Angharad, and Ballack. Everyone else is with Carl.

Ravenor uses his vast power to force the door to take them to were he wants, but for a laugh instead of taking them to the SHIP ''Arethusa'', it takes them to Listening Post Arethusa, 1,000 years in the past, but on the same day. There, Ravenor dies three times while Nayl tries to explain their situation. Eventually Ravenor convinces the base surgeon to help them and she springs them, helping them back to the door, which Ravenor uses again. Luckily this time he gets it right, as the surrounding trees were all psychically sensitive and boosted his power exponentially.

While this is happening, Carl's crew angsts around for a while and decides to try to go after Molotch on their own. Kys tries to kill Zael, believing him to be Slyte, and is stopped and thrown in the brig.

The crew of the ''Arethusa'' manage to find one of the ships Molotch uses (since it was in orbit above Water World to teleport the bounty hunters out) and Kara heads over and gets captured, but not before transmitting their destination, a planet Eisenhorn fans know well, Gudrun.

Kys endures 13 days in the ship's brig and the entire ship endures many unexplained psychic phenomena. This causes most of the crew to mutiny and leave the ship. Carl and the others (without Kys or Zeal and Frauka, who has been assigned his care giver) head to the planet to find out more. Kys escapes and regroups with Unwerth and the remaining crew members.

As Kys and Unwerth are deciding on what to do, the ''Hinterlight'' approaches. Ravenor had used the door to get them to the ''Hinterlight'' and had used his powers of deduction from his meeting with Orfeo to figure out the planet they were on. Ravenor then visits Frauka and Zael. Zael has SOMEHOW burnt out Frauka's blankness and uses him as a conduit. He explains that he had to induce a coma for himself so Slyte wouldn't kill him and feast on his delicious warp-soul. He then tells Ravenor that Carl was the daemons all the while. Ravenor seems legitimately surprised by this.

Oblivious to these developments, Carl, Belknap, Maud, and Ballack are infiltrating Molotch's castle. Ballack gets himself caught and executed, and Carl just gets himself caught. Turns out Orfeo knew Carl was Slyte, and wants to bind him when he transforms. Molotch, on the other hand, does not know of Orfeo's deception. Ravenor calls ahead and decides to team up with Molotch, causing Orfeo to betray them both. Luckily, Ravenor expected this and the rest of his team assaults the castle using the door.

After battling the goons and shooting Orfeo in the gut, Ravenor, Molotch, and the rest are confronted with the now fully unleashed Slyte. They have no idea how to stop the gigantic, tentacled, goo-monster until Carl's ghost appears and mentions that they brought a hole into the warp with them, duh! So Molotch gets to work turning the door into a warp-nuke while Ravenor and the rest run. Except for Angharad, who is apparently as dumb as a stick and decides to sword fight the stories high tentacle beast. In an unintentionally funny scene is simply picks her up and eviscerates her with one of its beaks.

Luckily, Molotch's warp nuke works and Slyte is consumed. The craft the gang is escaping in crashes, and Molotch goes about 30 yards before Ravenor finds him and explodes his brain in a terribly anti-climactic moment.

We are then treated to an animal house ending, where Ravenor is awaiting Trial and thinking about his group.

*'''Harlon Nayl''' leaves Ravenor's service to go back to bring Angharad's sword back home. Ravenor doubts he will ever see him again.
*'''Kara Swole''' is awaiting interrogation after Ravenor, due to her foreknowledge of Slyte.
*'''Wystan Frauka''' is no longer an untouchable and is given over to the black ships so they can do what they will with him. It's possible he's actually not too mad about it because being made "touchable" might just mean he has a soul, something that almost all untouchables hope for.
*'''Patience Kys''' is awaiting Ravenor's release. (She's literally just kicking around the hive he's in.)
*'''Unwerth and Preest''' go back to being a trader and a rogue trader, respectively.
*'''Maud Plyton''' apparently stays in Ravenor's service and gives him a report she found about the surgeon 1,000 years ago. The Surgeon was executed for treason as soon as Ravenor left, refusing an offer to come with them to spare her the fate of a traitor.
*'''Patrik Belknap''' goes back to being a back-alley surgeon, extremely pissed that Kara kept Carl a secret.
*''' Zael Efferneti''' is also given to the Black Ships and becomes a Grey Knight librarian, goes on to break the sword of [[Angron]] as Battle Brother [[Hyperion]].

'''The End'''

{{Template:Famous members of the Inquisiton}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Imperial]][[Category:Inquisition]]

Dan Abnett

2018-10-25T17:20:10Z

2001:5B0:2400:4608:C478:46A:3F1C:5A: /* Not to Say He's Perfect */

<center>'''Dan Abnett is the most popular author of [[Games Workshop]] paper book publishing division, the [[Black Library]].'''</center>
<center>[[File:Dan-abnett.jpg|200px]]</center>

[[File:Awesomemarine.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Even his Spess Mahrines are godly (which they should be).]]

Series include [[Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt|''Gaunt's Ghosts'']] (<strike>an amazing starter book for people getting into the 40k fluff</strike>{{BLAM}} one of, if not THE best IG series, full of feels and brutality), [[Gregor Eisenhorn|''Eisenhorn'']] (fantastic) and ''[[Ravenor]]'' (OMGAWESOME-ICRIEDBUKKETS). Also, he saved [[Ollanius Pius]] from [[Squat]] territory. He. Fucking. Saved. Ollanius. Motherfucking. Pius. He then went on to save the Squats, too, and redeemed the Ultramarines and Guilliman from Mary Sue status. Well, they're still Space Marines and a Primarch but at least they are no longer Mary Sues among Mary Sues. [[awesome|He also co-wrote Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, THAT Guardians of the Galaxy]].

'''TL;DR:''' Dan Abnett is a godly writer who expresses ''[[Humanity Fuck Yeah]]!'' in the most epic way possible. Perhaps his only weakness is his marked preference for human vs human works. The number of his works that feature Xenos prominently can be counted with your hands. For those who are tired of Chaos, this can be a bad thing.

Dan is known for fun action writing and for occasional throwing off Warhammer [[fluff]] in favor of the rule of [[Awesome]], like Imperial Guardsmen weapon teams toting around Autocannons the size of a howitzer. And being able to fight anything the 40k Universe can throw at them, including killing tanks with tennis balls. Unlike a certain [[Matt Ward|molester of pen and paper]], this is not done flippantly, but mostly for the betterment of the work itself. He does occasionally do some stupid shit though, like letting Vulkan grow back a second fucking head in the space of about half a second... Then again Vulkan is a Primarch and indicated to be a Perpetual.

Suffice to say, his characters are very well developed, and are both distinctive ''and'' original. He is a versatile writer that can write a god-damn action scene better than any; the areas Dan describes sound achingly beautiful. Look... he's won tons of awards for his stuff, many believe he's the best Black Library have got, he's written around 20 books for them and each one is brilliant. His book ''Titanicus'' is currently the only book wherein the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] are shown in a competent light, interacting with normal humans realistically and aren't all evil kleptomaniacs. He even made his own ([[awesome]]) Space Marine chapter known as the IRON SNAKES, that comes off looking like the Ultramarines [[Reasonable Marines|if they were actually intelligent, adapted their battlestyle depending on the enemy (they do have a disdain for tanks though), and came across as likeable individuals AND godlike beings]].
His graphic novels include "Imperial Gothic", "Damnation Crusade", "Lone Wolves" and "Condemned By Fire".

Dan Abnett has also teamed up with another BL author [[Mike Lee]] to make the ''Malus Darkblade'' Warhammer Fantasy book series. Dan Abnett also wrote a book detailing an adventure of Matt Smiths incarnation of the Doctor for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary collection, which is one of 11 books, 1 for each Doctor. Dan Abnett also wrote the script for the Ultramarines movie. It's a fair assumption that he only wrote for about 45 minutes work of the (90 minute) movie, as the action-scenes and dialogues are passable, but there's a whole lot of silent walks through the desert.

He, along with [[Sandy Mitchell]] and [[Graham McNeil]] make up the holy trinity of awesome 40k writers. Obviously, Dan takes the role of God. (<strike>WHAT DOES THAT MAKE [[Aaron_Dembski-Bowden|ADB]] THEN, VIRGIN MARY?</strike> They're the Chaos Gods of awesome 40k writers, obviously, with Abnett as Tzeentch, Mitchell as Khorne, McNeil as Nurgle and ADB as Slaanesh. ''Obviously.'' Given ADB's love for World Eaters, this makes the comparison [[Just as planned|hilarious]].)

He also writes some pretty cool comics with his <strike>probably-best</strike> ex friend Andy Lanning. The two are known in [[/co/|comic reading circles]] as "D'n'A". Surprisingly, this list includes IDW's ongoing ''Transformers'' series. So maybe, just maybe there is a teeny tiny reason to fear a Transformers-Warhammer 40k crossover somewhere down the line.

It should be noted that his cosmic Marvel comics with probably-best friend Andy Lanning are not at all shit, and are in fact some of the greatest modern Marvel comics. ''The Thanos Imperative'' stands out amongst them, and is worth a read even if you have no familiarity with Cosmic Marvel or the Marvel Universe at all. D'n'A also wrote the reboot of ''Guardians of the Galaxy'', which now has a movie. A movie that is pretty much loved universally, and considered one of, if not THE best in the MCU (which you may have heard of). He also helped write the script for the new Aliens Isolation game just so you know.

He also helped write a [[Judge Dredd]] comic called Insurrection, not sure on quality but the villains look like Necrons on the cover. It's military sci-fi with power armored Mega City 1 Spess Mehreens going Exterminatus-lite on what essentially amount to the heretics of that universe which he wrote based on the 2000AD people asking for a story "like the stuff you do for the other guys".

==Not to Say He's Perfect==
Abnett has written some fantastic sci-fi, true, but recently there have been a lot of grumblings on /tg/ about the changes he's made to the Horus Heresy fluff. A lot of fa/tg/uys feel that additions such as the Perpetuals, the Cabal, and Enuncia were shoehorned into 40k fluff and don't belong. The change of Ollanius Pius from a badass regular guardsman to an immortal Perpetual has received a mixed response, and a lot of people felt the addition of the Alpha Legion's subplot with the Cabal (You guys gotta' help Chaos to destroy Chaos or else the Emperor will become a god and by the way humanity has to go extinct too sorry guys) was retarded and poorly thought out. Also, Unremembered Empire is generally agreed to be a shit burrito, but much of that was the result of Abnett trying to tie together a long line of shit produced over the course of the Horus Heresy series.

His Gaunt's Ghosts series is another victim of obscene reasoning, be it their ability to wear hobbit cloaks that make them so sneaky they cannot be found with Auspex, Chaos Space Marines falling to crossbow darts (although, to be fair, the darts were also poisoned, it took turning the marine's entire face into a dart pincushion to kill him, and his face was focused on as his only weak point due to him not wearing a helmet), or simply wearing more plot armour than Batman. His love for the colour ochre was worrying, pre-dating Tau fashionistas. Perhaps his worst sin is obsessing with pretty mary sues whose gorgeous looks prevent execution, despite the chapter prior saying they had just died (I'm looking at you Beaquin who died... but didn't, and Mersadie who was killed by that daemon... but didn't). Sometimes the women of the Ghosts read like Baywatch in Camo. Related to this, he has a bit of a thing for characters being very specifically copper-skinned, but that's more harmless recycling.

Abnett also has a big problem with endings. More often than not, his books will end with a large explosion and then a one page wrap-up. This is especially noticeable in his earlier Ghosts books, which trend towards the shorter side, culminating in a ridiculous number of plot threads in Sabbat Martyr being resolved in the span of about twenty pages. Also rears its ugly head in Legion, which is essentially a book worth of build-up to a single paragraph.

He wrote "I Am Slaughter" for the Beast Arises series. Which while a good book, did not have Orks until the last couple of chapters. And even then, they didn't do anything except show up. You can argue that their attack moon was the entire plot of the book, but who wants to read a book where the main antagonist is the gravitational pull of an artificial moon?

The verdict? That's up to you. Abnett's still a kickass writer, but whether or not he's always made the best choices in 40k is up to debate.

[[Category:Writers]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[category:Black Library]]