Xenos Privateers - IQ Warband in the works

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

I don't see that a Dark Eldar will need any more justification than a Craftworld or Exodite... It's not like they're different or anything... Well they all look the same me.

I agree and I don't agree with a statement.  I have ever wanted to include dark eldar into my warband.  My biggest hangup is. "Why would they want to join my warband and not just kill it."  Everyone has a price.  That's easy enough.  But to the dark eldar currency comes in the form of souls.  It's difficult to justify and even more difficult to pay up.

Why would any of it want to be part of a retinue...
With Eldar you tend to have long term thinkers, planners who will drop you into a star when it suits them but may well play the subordinate when it suits their purposes.
There is the mercenary aspect of course and I highly doubt that their only means of trade is souls - if nothing else souls cannot be subdivided so they'd be a bit screwed if all they wanted was a mars bar.

But the biggest thing to remember is that Eldar are not Space Elves and Space Dark Elves. There may be parallels but they are alien species and do all kinds of hideous things.
They're degenerate sophisticates... I hear they do hideous things to their prisoners. They're all cannibals. My brother was on a spice freighter when it got hit, the entire crew were reduced to soup and left to rot in the bilges. Man, woman or Ork I hear they'll go through it...

The perception of Space Elves leads us to see a difference between the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar but they're the same, they took slightly different approaches to the birth of Slaanesh but that isn't something they talk about.
From the human perspective they are all "other". They have strange and disreputable customs, their values are twisted and they're skinny, warped and evil looking.

[DapperAnarchist]

And so the only people who work with them are those who are arrogant beyond sanity, or those who have just enough knowledge to be stupid. The first group would be Rogue Traders and Governors, the second Rogue Traders (again) and Inquisitors.

[Xantcha]

Ok, I have listened to all of you and many valid points have been made on both sides.  So I did more research into this and came to some frustrating dead ends.  To make it canon and still on the same concept was tough but I think I may have found the solution.

Alright here goes nothing. 

Kia Vossler was no one special, just lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time.  Growing up in the dregs of a hive in the Icharius system she was used to being stepped on by the upper class and having to be all but invisible lest her very sight offend someone.  No one really cares about the children of the underhives, and her teenage years were no different; just more lethal. However, while scrounging the alleyways next to the local monastery, she witnessed the Archbishop being handed a child by a man she knew to be a human trafficker. Rather than tell the authorities (of whom she had no trust in the first place) she went to rescue the child herself.  She hadn't gotten very far before she was on her knees staring down the barrel of a boltgun.  However the Sister Famulous who had caught her decided to see for herself and they burst into the Archbishops chambers only to uncover a Slaaneshi ritual in progress.  After the ugliness was settled Kia was sent to prison for having broke several laws in her attempt.  However the Inquisitor in charge of the investigation took pity on her and needed a guide through the underhives.  Vossler at first refused the man, but changed her mind shortly after upon hearing her execution schedule. She worked for Inquistor Melphane for almost ten years before she was awarded her own Rossette of the Ordo Hereticus. 

She spent many monthes on the front lines, rooting out heresy at the edges of Imperial space.  It was during this time she was on the fringe world of Attidecius that the Tau inavaded.  The world was taken swiftly and without much conflict; the world was lightly defended and unsupported.  In fact, as Vossler would find out later, the Imperium had written off the world.  Being a member of the Inquisition she was brought before the Aun for interrogation.  The Aun decided that the woman had indeed not been there to stop the Tau, in fact it wasn't even really in her jurisdiction and Kia Vossler was invited to be guest until she could be transported out of system.  The Imperium had other plans.  Initially there had been no knowledge of an Inquisitor being in the system except to a few, but when they learned that there had indeed been one, they panicked.  What tortures were they inflicting and more importantly, what important information had they gotten from her.  They viral bombed the entire system, wiping it clean of all life.  When Kia returned to the imperium and found out what had been done she flew into a rage and executed the entire commissariat involved and the Lord General Militant before fleeing back into Tau space, where she remained for several years living as a citizen of the Tau empire.  But the Inquisition has it's ways and Vosslers location was soon discovered and another Inquisitor was sent to retrieve her.

Her trial lasted three years during which her bitterness grew.  She had already witnessed some of the most horrifying aspects of the Imperium from the most unlikely places.  The Ministorum, the Administratum, the Militant arm.  When her sentence was passed down she complied completely with all of it, just so she could get away from there.  Once her probation was up and her Rossette was back in her hand she immediately went back to Tau space.  She recruited some of her old friends and picked up her old role of heresy investigation.  Several years later she ended up being one of several Inquistors sent to oversee a war that had sprung up between an Imperial World and the Eldar.  During the conflict Kia found herself pitted against an Eldar Warp Spider exarch.  Out matched in almost every way all the IQ could do was survive until she lured him into a building and ambushed him with the rest of her retinue.  Few survived.  But as fate would have it, a dark eldar Incubi had tried to kill her Archon and had to bring him the Soulstone of a eldar Exarch to pay for her transgressions.  Upon watching her prey slip into the hands of the enemy, she attacked in anger. Years of planning had gone into this war and no upstart Imperial princess was going to ruin it for her.  Had she fought under normal circumstances she probably would have been able to succeed, the the rage of her plans failing so randomly kept her from fighting at peak and she lost to the IQ and her band of strange xenos.  Vossler spared her life, wondering why such a creature would go through all this work for such a small item.  Using the Soulstone and the Incubi's life as leverage she forced the Dark Eldar into a five year term of service in exchange Kia would give her the Soulstone.  Agreeing only under the circumstances and knowing that there may be better opportunities in the future for her to take the stone Zythi joined the IQ for the time being.

Ok that's the rough draft.  I tried to cover as much as I could: Her bitterness towards the Imperium and it non functioning departments, her liking of Xenos (Tau at least), the reason why a Dark Eldar would follow her (Soulstone of an Exarch is a powerful enough object to barter for the services of a Dark Eldar i think), etc.

Let me know, thanks.

[MarcoSkoll]

Once her probation was up and her Rossette was back in her hand

The only revocation of the rank of Inquisitor is death. There's no such thing as probation for Inquisitors.

The closest thing would be being very closely monitored for signs of corruption (possibly to the point of being constantly accompanied), probably with the added threat of the Inquisition equivalent of an internal affairs agent turning up and lopping your head off if you put a toe out of line. (Of course, the Inquisition IA might turn up on anyone's door, but in this case, you've singled yourself out for close scrutiny.)

But that's quite a lot of bother and it would only really be extended to those who were either too valuable or too well backed to just be rid of. Most Inquisitors that needed to be that closely watched to be safe would probably get a free bolt pistol trepanation instead.

Soulstone of an Exarch is a powerful enough object to barter for the services of a Dark Eldar I think

The idea of a "Soulstone of an Exarch" doesn't really exist. It's "Soulstones of an Exarch", because an Exarch is ultimately the amalgam formed by dozens of 'lost' Aspect Warriors, several parts making the whole.

And even then, that's only if you assume the suit itself isn't integral to the identity and spirit pool of an Exarch.
Some sources suggest so, others otherwise - the Spiritseer Iyanna Arienal is supposed to be accompanied by a Wraithlord powered by the spirit pool of an Exarch. But I find that a rather bizarre idea though, as that spirit pool could just as easily have waited with its armour for its next occupant...

[Xantcha]

True probation isn't really the way of the IQ, but exceptions have been made in the past.  Although I think you're right and a more reasonable explanation would be her being followed and monitored closely for awhile.  I'll go with that.  As for the Soulstone, you are correct, it is an amalgamation of  many to create one, but it can still be removed from the armour can it not.  I have seen pictures and read stories of pendants and other such things housing soulstones.  The Eldar are enigmatic species and GW likes to keep it that way apparently.

[MarcoSkoll]

As for the Soulstone, you are correct, it is an amalgamation of  many to create one, but it can still be removed from the armour can it not.

Soulstones can indeed normally be removed from the armour - as most Eldar don't go around wearing their armour the whole time, they have to be able to otherwise wear their soulstone while they're not in armour.

However, an Exarch does wear their armour the whole time, and does NOT have a single soulstone, being the combination of the identities of a great many individual Eldar, each with their own soulstone. Any one of the dozens of individual soulstones that studs the suit only represents a facet of that Exarch, and the true amalgam that could be called an Exarch does not exist without all the soulstones combined by the miniature infinity circuit of the suit.

The soulstones could probably still be removed in some fashion, but calling any single one of them "the soulstone of an Exarch" would be a bit like taking a car apart, then taking the drive shaft and calling it "a car". It's part of a car, sure, but it's not a car in of itself.

[Xantcha]

Ok yeah, now I see what you're getting at.  I suppose she could just have taken all of them then?

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

An Exarch might well spend all of his time in his armour TBH, he/she is stuck on a path that requires the armour (and most importantly the mask) after all.

I'm not sure what the fluff says now but AFAIK the older stones tend to assist rather than amalgamate (at least initially) with the living Exarch in command of their (mini) Infinity Curcuit - Given that it might be possible to separate the living Exarch and his soulstone from the armour (though not from each other) and therefore acquire a single "Exarch Waystone"?

The Exarch title is just a description of someone who has lost themselves on the warrior path afterall - it doesn't guarentee combat ability or history (or anything else) (it's possible in a very small group for example for it to be the first person to get lost on that path...).


However:
Slanneshi Ritual.
Wierd ritual perhaps but Kai wouldn't know Slannesh from Adam (despite the breast).
And if it were Slanneshi then she wouldn't survive to find out - anyone who could tell her would have been eliminating anyone who'd ever come in contact with those involved...


Ambushing a Warp Spider...

In an building...

The Warp Spiders are ambush predators - think of the scene in Predator II where the punks are gearing up in their armoury... Now imaging them turning to soup in a mass of whipping gossamer threads rather than being dragged away... They empty mag after mag where they thought it came from, only to lose another guy from a different direction.

Or think of Nightstalker's assault on the Oval Office in X-Men (whichever one it was, II I think) as he bamphs around, eliminating secret service guys like... well like a Warp Spider Exarch might... Though with less tomato soup...

[Xantcha]

Ah yes, I had though of the Warp Spider being like that, but in the oval office they didn't have kroot with sensor spines so delicate they can detect pressure changes, and Tau, who have armour so advanced in can detect incoming projectiles, and then top that with an IQ who can detect you with her mind and make your limbs do funny things.  I think My group against one Exarch could do it.  Casualty free...probably not.  And I also was not thinking of a millenia old exarch who knows everything in the book.  And the reason why I chose an exarch was I remember reading somewhere in some warhammer fiction somewhere of a dark eldar saying that it is their souls that taste best.  But I enjoy the words of wisdom and I'm working on it.  The players I'm with tell me I should drop the IQ and just do a xenos team....we'll see.