False Identities?

[DapperAnarchist]

I've been going over my characters again, and this time adding pre-worked out false identities, such as Traders, pilgrims, or in one case a minor Heretic and itinerant Tarot reader, for them. I was wondering if anyone else does something like this? Or am I just weird? 

[GAZKUL]

it's not really much of an issue for my main unit but sometimes a fake ID is a good idea such as the time one of my unit impersonated the Captain to gain the trust of some renegades. i have used alternate identities in the past for NPCs and Frostspear's inquisitor has an alias too i think.

[RobSkib]

It's an excellent idea! Inquisitor is all about deception, lies and general backstabbery. I try as hard as I can (as the GM) to confound, outwit, bamboozle and thwart the player's preconceptions of their objectives and their enemies. If you've come up with some genius false IDs for your characters, that gives you a huge edge when it comes to roleplaying encounters;

"Arbites! Lets see some ID! Hmmm... Trader and Tarot readers eh? Very well, be on your wa-" *backstab*

[MarcoSkoll]

Yes, yes and more yes. It's a rare character of mine who doesn't use false identities - some use them more than others.

Some use them habitually (or by necessity), some occasionally (either because of some complication or objection) but there's the odd one who just can't act very well.
That's usually a spanner in the works, when a character completely forgets who their cover identity is meant to be. Fun though.

[DapperAnarchist]

Part of my problem here is actually that some of the false IDs I've invented are almost cooler than the original character, like a cyber-enhanced religious fanatic who is under both a vow of silence and an eternal contract of service. I almost feel like dropping the original and using him, apart from the humour of the fact that the "vow of silence" is that, when using that ID, the Inquisitor paralyses his vocal chords to keep him quiet, as he is usually foul-mouthing shouting drunk. With industrial shears for hands.

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

Not only would I encourage building false identities for your characters I would encourage building more than one for some of them and, as Inquisitors and such tend to have either the raw mind or the resources to ensure that holes tend to be easy enough to fill, I would also encourage the use of the 20 Questions to flesh out each false ID (though with some slight tweaks (like why does the false Identity have industrial shears for hands for example :-)*

*Modifications of that degree tend to be reserved for sub-human characters IMHO, mostly the mindless (servitors, arco-flaggelants...etc) In the former case to install that level of cybernetics in a host who has not been mindwiped is considered a TechnoHeresy (and likely a Heresy in the Cult of the Emperor too given its focus on the "purity of the genome"), in the latter it would seem that it is seen that the crimes represent a deliberate choice to step outside the genome and therefore, by forsaking their humanity they also forsake the rights therewith.

[JoelMcKickass]

I have double identities for every single character, and in some cases more than one. A big part of Inquisitor, for me, is the obscurity of Inquisitors. I like the idea of Hereticus hunting down Rogue (note, not Radical), Inquisitors, but then in a reality the size of the Imperium, how do they know they have the right man?

Also, my false id's tend to be rather boring. A ganger, a lowly adept, an aristocratic youth looking to waste money on obscure xenos narcotics, that kinda thing.

[Adlan]

My Inquisitor doesn't so much have a secret identity, as he just reverts to his old one, he was an itinerant armsman before he got involved with the inquisition, and he can just slip back into it, as well as the handy disguise of pilgrim, preacher, monk, beggar or veteran. In a galaxy of a million worlds, human lives are naught but dust.