Wargear22

The Jokaero re-forge is not an item a fighter carries but a service the bound artisan performs between battles. Given a single gang weapon, the Jokaero works its incomprehensible craft and banks a permanent uplift — a lasting +1 to one profile value — onto that gun. Battle by battle the retinue's arsenal climbs, one re-forged weapon at a time, until a plain bolter has become something the enemy has never faced before. It is the slow heart of the Xenos campaign: the warband that keeps its Jokaero alive keeps getting harder to fight.

The xeno-targeter is the Ordo Xenos lean on the hunter's scope — a photo-visor stocked and calibrated to the declared prey. A fighter that takes an Aim and then fires may re-roll its Hit, and the shot ignores the cover the target hides behind, the sight finding the alien's heart no wall can shield. It is the marksman's most coveted accessory: patience rewarded with a killing certainty against the one breed the warband came to hunt.

The special-issue magazine is a campaign upgrade to the warband's armoury — a stocked, tuned case of rounds that brings a second weapon into the ammo-select doctrine. Once it is issued, another of the retinue's guns can load the same Hellfire, Kraken, Dragonfire and Vengeance shells the Marksman carries, widening the adaptive line beyond a single specialist. It is not carried into a fight so much as unlocked between them, the arsenal deepening as the hunt goes on.

The xeno-toxin reservoir is a phial of alien poison distilled from the declared prey and fed into a Death-Cult killer's blades. Against that named breed the coated edge bites a full step deeper, its melee weapons gaining +1 Damage where the toxin was brewed for that alien's flesh. It is the close-kill answer to the hunt — the round for the gun and the venom for the blade, both tuned to the one thing the warband came to end. Against anything but the prey it is inert, a poison waiting for the right vein.

An armoured bodyglove is the agent's worn underlay — a mesh of protective weave drawn beneath plate or robe, improving the wearer's save by one. It is the quiet edge of a professional: no bulk, no display, just an extra layer of survival for those whose work takes them into places no armour column would follow. Slipped under carapace it hardens an already sound Agent; worn alone by an infiltrator, it is the thin margin between a clean withdrawal and a body left behind.

Augmetics are the bionic replacements of a much-rebuilt Agent — a mechanical arm, a bionic eye, a reinforced joint grafted where flesh has failed. They mark a fighter who has served long and suffered for it, and they offset the lingering harm of old wounds that would otherwise slow a lesser body. Sturdier than the flesh they replace, they let a veteran keep fighting where injury should have set them aside. In the Inquisition's endless hunts, the truly experienced Agent is often as much iron as blood.

An auspex is a handheld bio-scanner — a sensor wand that reads heat, motion and life-sign through smoke, wall and darkness. In the bearer's hand it drags hidden and infiltrating fighters into the open, denying an enemy the ambush it was counting on, and it sharpens the retinue's efforts to spot a threat before it strikes. For a warband that fights by surprise and precision, seeing first is half the kill, and the auspex is how the Inquisition refuses to be the one taken unaware.

Blade venom is the Death-Cult's edge — a phial of fast toxin painted along a melee weapon before battle, lending it a poison bite for the duration of the fight. A shallow cut that would barely trouble a fighter becomes a killing wound as the venom takes hold. It is cheap, ugly work, favoured by the retinue's assassins who ask only that a weapon reach the flesh once. Against a lightly-warded foe it turns a glancing blow into a corpse; against the heavily armoured it does nothing the plate does not first allow.

Carapace armour is the standard plate of the retinue — rigid, well-fitted sections over the vital body, granting a 4+ save. It is the honest measure of the Inquisition's durability: not a superhuman hide nor a miracle field, but sound Imperial craftsmanship that keeps a trained Agent alive through the fire that would fell a lightly-clad soldier. Nearly every Throne Agent wears it as a matter of course, the baseline protection on which the retinue's quality is built.

Combat stimms are the agent's edge in a vial — a cocktail of battle-drugs injected on the eve of action that wrings a burst of speed and ferocity from the body for a single fight. For that one battle the fighter runs faster, strikes harder, or shrugs off pain it should not, spending tomorrow's strength today. The Inquisition tolerates the toll because its work is decided in moments, and a specialist pushed past its natural limit for one crucial engagement may be worth a dozen it never fights.

A cortex implant is a mind-lock seated at the base of the skull — a disciplined circuit that steadies thought against fear and coercion. Once set, it lets the bearer re-roll a failed Cool or Willpower test, forcing clarity where terror or witchcraft would cloud it. It is sanctioned discipline made permanent, the surgeon's guarantee that an Agent's nerve will not fail at the moment it matters most. On a body already schooled against fear, it is the last insurance against the mind breaking before the enemy does.

A cyber-mastiff is a bonded attack companion — a heavy augmetic hound, part muscle and part machine, loyal to the Agent who keeps it. Loosed on command it runs down fleeing quarry and tears into the enemy with iron jaws, a savage extra body that answers to no fear. It guards its keeper's flank as readily as it hunts, and asks nothing but the hunt itself. For the retinue it is a rare thing: a companion that adds weight to the line without spending a trained Agent to do it.

A grav-chute is the retinue's insertion kit — a compact repulsor harness that arrests a fall into a controlled descent and lets the bearer drop onto a target from above. It turns a height into an avenue, carrying an Agent past the ground the enemy expects them to cross and setting them down where they are least wanted. In the surgical raids the Inquisition favours, it is the tool that puts the right blade in the right place at the right moment, unlooked-for and already too close.

Inquisitorial power armour is the elite plate of the retinue's most senior Agents — powered ceramite worked with the mark of the Ordo, granting a 3+ save. It turns aside blows that carapace would let through, and marks the fighter who wears it as one of consequence. Rare and jealously kept, it is reserved for the master or a favoured Champion rather than issued freely, the heaviest worn protection an Agent of the Inquisition is likely to bear.

The Inquisitorial Seal is the master's authority worn openly — a rosette and sigil that no servant of the Imperium dares refuse. Its bearer may re-roll a failed Leadership or Nerve test, for the seal steadies both the one who holds it and those who behold it. Once per battle it may be raised in true command: name a friendly group activation and compel it, one such call at most. It is the seal made portable, extending the reach of the Inquisitor's Authority beyond the master's own shadow and pressing the retinue forward on the strength of the mandate alone.

A medicae kit is the retinue's narthecium — a case of counterseptics, stabilisers and surgical tools carried by an Agent trained to use them. In the field it can drag a downed fighter back from the edge, steadying a grievous wound before it kills. Afterward, in the quiet between battles, it mends injuries that would otherwise leave a body broken or lost. In a retinue this small, every Agent kept in the fight is worth a great deal, and the kit is how the Inquisition holds onto the specialists it cannot easily replace.

A null-rod is an anti-warp relic — a wand of blackstone or worse, quarried from things the Imperium fears, that drinks the power of the empyrean into a dead and silent nothing. Held aloft, it can nullify a psychic power worked within its reach, snuffing the witch's working before it lands. It is the surest counter the Inquisition owns to sorcery and the daemon alike, a relic so potent it borders on cursed. Kept for the gravest hunts, it is drawn only when the enemy fights with powers no plate or field can answer.

A preysight is a targeter fitted to a weapon's sight — a machine-eye that overlays range, lead and vitals onto the marksman's aim. After the bearer takes an Aim, it grants a re-roll of the Hit, and it reads through obscurement that would spoil an ordinary shot. It is the patient shooter's instrument, rewarding the fighter who steadies before firing rather than the one who sprays. In the hands of a marksman it turns a good shot into a certain one, and a half-seen target into a dead one.

A psyber-eagle is a bonded raptor laced with cybernetics — a recon and attack companion that rides the air above its keeper. From on high it marks hidden foes and carries the sight of the battle back to the Agent it serves, then stoops in a rush of talon and augmetic claw when loosed to kill. Swift and hard to pin, it reaches ground the retinue cannot. It is a scout and a striker in one wingbeat, another instrument in the toolbox that costs the warband no fighter of its own.

A psychic hood is the anti-witch field — a crested device of psi-reactive circuitry that senses a hostile power reaching for the bearer and lashes back against it. When an enemy Wyrd Power targets the wearer, the hood grants a chance to re-roll against it or to smother it outright before it takes hold. It is the disciplined counter to the sorcerer, a defence woven for the Agent who expects to be marked by the warp and means to shrug the marking off. Against a foe that fights with the mind, it is worth more than any plate.

A rosarius is a bought invulnerable field — a conversion device worn at the throat or breast that throws up a shimmering ward against the killing blow, a 5+ or 4+ save that no armour-piercing edge can diminish. Where plate is defeated by a heavy enough strike, the field simply refuses it. It is the Inquisitor's last line, the ward that lets the master walk into fire that would end a lesser body outright. Precious and rare, it is the closest the retinue comes to a miracle, and it is spent nowhere but on those who can least be lost.

A servo-skull is a hovering familiar built from a sanctified skull and a repulsor core, bonded to a fighter's service. Depending on its fitting it scouts ahead, bears a medicae array, or carries spare munitions to the line. It drifts at its keeper's shoulder, a small extra hand doing the work no Agent should be spared for. In a retinue of so few bodies, the servo-skull earns its keep by freeing a trained fighter from the errands a lifeless drone can run instead.