Weapons18

The eviscerator is a chain-cleaver the length of a man, and the Ordo Hereticus gives it to the hands that mean to end a heretic in one stroke. It is a two-handed labour to swing and slow to bring around — a body that lifts it commits to the blow before it lands — but what it lands it does not merely wound: the teeth tear through plate and flesh alike, and a witch caught in its arc is opened from shoulder to hip whatever wards he thought he wore. The zealot who carries one carries it as a sentence, not a weapon, and swings it as the last word in a sermon. Where the retinue's power blades execute with precision, the eviscerator executes with certainty, and leaves the corpse as a warning to the cult that watched.

The purging pyre of the witch-hunters — a gout of blessed promethium loosed to answer the horde a cult hides behind. Where the condemnor stake and the mark are surgical, the flamer is not: it is turned on cover, on a press of bodies, on the rubble where a heretic's rabble cowers, and it leaves nothing to crawl out. It carries the Template and Blaze traits; the fire clings and keeps its work long after the stream has passed, and a cultist set alight is a cultist already dead, whatever the flames finally take. It kills the many, so the toolbox may execute the one.

The boltgun is the disciplined workhorse of the Imperial armoury, and in the retinue's hands it is the Acolyte's reliable answer to nearly any foe. Each mass-reactive round punches into a body and detonates within, a hammering report that drops the target where it stands. Its Rapid Fire (1) lets a steady shooter loose a heavier volley when the range allows, and its bite carries at distance without fuss. Unglamorous and utterly dependable, it is the weapon the trained agent reaches for when the work is simply killing, cleanly and at range.

The bolt pistol is the boltgun's close cousin — a single-handed sidearm carrying the same detonating rounds in a shorter, faster frame. Its Pistol trait lets an Agent fire it even locked in the press of melee, making it the natural companion to a blade: a shot into the enemy's face before the sword falls. It lacks the reach of the longarm, but within a short stride it hits with the same brutal authority. Across the retinue it is the officer's mark and the duellist's opener, ever ready at the hip.

The combi-weapon is a master-crafted marriage of two guns in one frame — a boltgun paired with a single-use specialist barrel, flamer, melta or plasma, ready for the moment the standard round will not do. It gives an Agent the boltgun's steady work most of the time and one decisive answer held in reserve: a gout of fire, a lance of fusion heat, or a plasma bolt, spent when the right target presents itself. Its dual-profile flexibility is its whole virtue, letting a single fighter carry the tool for two problems and choose which to solve.

The condemnor boltgun is the witch-hunter's answer to the sorcerer — a boltgun with the same Rapid Fire (1) bark, mounting a blessed stake beneath the barrel that is loosed into a psyker at close reach. Its anti-psyker stake trait makes it a bane of the witch, the shot that pins a warp-touched foe to the ground and stills the power boiling inside it. Against an ordinary enemy it fights as a sound bolt weapon; against a psyker it becomes something worse, a purpose-built killer of the very thing the Inquisition hunts hardest.

Digital weapons are the Inquisitor's oldest conceit — a cluster of laser rings worked into the fingers of a gauntlet, small enough to pass for jewellery and lethal enough to end a duel. They hold a single charge apiece, loosed in one concealed burst before the enemy even marks the hand that killed them: a hidden pistol shot that costs nothing to bring and gives no warning. The bolt-strength beam bites through armour as surely as a sidearm, but the ring fires only once, its worth spent in that first surprise. Across a retinue they are the mark of rank and old privilege, the relic an Interrogator earns and an Inquisitor is never without — a killing courtesy folded into a handshake.

A force weapon is the psyker's blade — a sword or halberd wrought to channel the will of the mind that wields it, its Force trait waking to lethal power only in a sanctioned hand. Against ordinary flesh it cuts as fine warp-touched steel; against the daemon it becomes a banishing edge, unmaking the warp-thing and casting it back to the hell that spawned it. It is the Mystic's teeth and the Inquisitor's when the master is a psyker, the weapon that answers the enemies plate cannot stop. In an unblessed grip it is only a sword; in the right one, it is a doom.

The frag grenade is the retinue's answer to a knot of massed foes — a thrown charge that bursts in a lethal spray of shrapnel. Its Blast (3") catches a cluster of the enemy at once, and its Knockback sends the survivors staggering from the concussion. Weak against heavy armour, it is at its best flung into the open or through a doorway crowded with lightly-clad bodies, scattering and bloodying them in a single crack. Every Agent can carry one, a cheap and ready tool for breaking up the enemy before the retinue closes.

The inferno pistol is a hand-held fusion gun — short of range but ruinous within it, its Melta trait boring through armour and flesh alike with a lance of sub-atomic heat. It is the retinue's answer to the target nothing else will crack: a heavily-armoured elite, a warded horror, a machine that shrugs off bolt-fire. The bearer must close to bring it to bear, and once spent at range it does little, but at a pistol's reach it reduces the mightiest foe to slag. It is a killing tool for one decisive shot, carried by those who mean to be that close.

The krak grenade is the frag grenade's harder sibling — a focused demolition charge that trades a wide burst for a single armour-rending detonation. Where frag scatters shrapnel across a crowd, krak drives all its force into one point, punching through plate, bulkhead and heavy hide. It is the Agent's thrown answer to an armoured elite or a fortified position, a way to crack open what small-arms cannot. One well-placed throw can breach a wall or gut a machine, and every fighter can keep one ready for the moment the retinue meets something too tough to shoot.

The needle pistol is the assassin's quiet sidearm — a slender dart-thrower that spits toxin-tipped needles with barely a whisper. Its own strike is feeble, but the Toxin trait means it need only break the skin to work, the poison finishing what the wound begins. The Silent trait keeps its shot from betraying the shooter's place, so a Death-Cult Agent may kill from the shadows and remain unseen. It is a weapon of stealth and precision rather than force, prized for the deaths it deals without a sound to mark them.

The needle weapon is the Death-Cult's envenomed blade — a slim, wicked edge that carries the same lethal principle as the needle pistol into close reach. Its raw cut is slight, but the Toxin trait turns the shallowest score into a killing wound as the poison races through the blood. In the hand of a swift assassin it is a whisper of a weapon, ending a foe with a single grazing pass rather than the weight of the blow. Against the armoured it struggles to find flesh, but let it touch skin once and the fight is over.

The power fist is a gauntlet sheathed in a disruptive field — a slow, brutal weapon that crushes armour, bone and machine alike in a single ruinous blow. It strikes with punishing strength and tears through the heaviest plate, dealing wounds no lesser weapon could inflict. The price is speed: a fist is a ponderous thing, and a quicker foe may land its own strokes first. But when the fist connects, little survives it. It is the answer an Agent brings to a target too armoured for a blade and too close for a gun.

The power maul is a crackling bludgeon — an energy-wreathed haft that trades the power sword's cutting edge for concussive force. It hits with strength enough to stagger, and its Knockback trait sends a struck foe reeling, driving the enemy off its feet and off its purpose. It is a controller's weapon as much as a killer's, favoured for breaking a line and hurling a fighter back from a doorway or a wall. Less refined than the blade, it makes up for finesse in sheer momentum, clearing a path by main force.

The power sword is the retinue's duelling blade — an energy-sheathed edge that shears through armour as though it were cloth. Its Parry trait rewards the skilled swordsman, turning a foe's blow aside as readily as it lands its own, so a practised Agent can hold a superior enemy at bay and cut it down between exchanges. Balanced, elegant and deadly, it is the weapon of Interrogators and Crusaders who fight with finesse rather than brute mass. In a trained hand it is both shield and killing stroke in one arc of light.

The psyk-out grenade is the Inquisition's signature anti-witch munition — a charge packed with refined psycho-reactive dust that bursts in a Blast (3") of warp-deadening static. Its anti-psyker trait makes it a terror to the sorcerer and the daemon: a psyker caught in the cloud is struck down unless its will holds, and a warp-thing recoils wounded from the choking nothingness. Against ordinary flesh it does little, but that is not its purpose. It is the tool an Agent reaches for the instant an enemy witch begins to work, thrown to smother the power before it can bloom.

The storm bolter is a twin-barrelled bolt weapon that pours out fire where a single boltgun spits it — its Rapid Fire (2) throwing a storm of detonating rounds down the lane. In the retinue it is the Crusader's weapon of choice, braced against the heavy plate that lets the bodyguard stand firm and hose the enemy off its master. It drinks ammunition and rewards the shooter who has a target worth the deluge. Where the line must be swept clear in a heartbeat, the storm bolter is the tool that does it.