why does the inqisition use torture? (lore question)

[00yiggdrasill00]

so i realize they will and must go to any lengths to protect the imperium given the cost of failure, but torture is known to result in poor or msleading information so why do they use it when their experience and analytical reports would show this? surely with access to psychic abilities they could just mind rape the poor sucker and get what they need? it just seems like a waste of precious time that they wouldnt waste given what they fight.

[Deadlypie is a cool guy.]

Literally every single race is a bad pun .

[00yiggdrasill00]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

1. they have functional "truth serum"
2. breaking a will makes being sneaky while being mindraped harder
3.they are mindraping him, the glass freezes over

redundancy
they dont do torture, they do torture too
as it makes the truth serum and mindraping more reliable
and the mindraping makes sure that people dont just admit to whatever they ask to make the torture stop
also, they dont want him if he breaks, if he admits
he doesnt need to admit anything
its to test his will because they plan to send him into chaos, and if a bit of torture breaks him he is doesnt have the will to do more then a little pirate hunting, and definetly isnt good enough to face off against a black crusade
if he admits like torture always is supposed to do, and the reason its unreliable
he failed
getting a negative out of torture is reliable, especially if you are also looking for a strong willed person
all the false positives are irrelevant, there are plenty more heretics to burn and plenty more promethium to do it with

makes perfect sense if you actually dig a bit deeper instead of jumping to your own biases

Originally posted by Awesomesauce:

The Inquisitor did not torture Admiral Spire for information, they had their sanctioned psykers use highly invasive techniques to confirm that Spire was loyal, and was speaking the truth.

These techniques will extract the requisite information, but they are very invasive, and thus extremely painful and strenous for the subject, physically and mentally. It's a testament to Spire's willpower and fortitude that he recovers fully from the procedure.

With the now firm knowledge the Spire is loyal to the Imperium, and the demonstration of will and character, they entrust him with fleet command.

40k is a grimdark universe, so everything has a horrible dark side to it, in this case the ultimate lie detector is extrordinarily painful and dangerous.

these sound the most likely answers. thanks. it was a bit of a confusing scene, the inqisition isnt nice by any streach pf the imagination, but everything ive gathered is that they are extremely pragmatic so i couldnt see why they would waste time regardless of right or wrong as we would see it.

Originally posted by Fosil:

there is nothing like "just telling a story". everything you write has your own views, biases and favoratism. stuff is not happening in a story randomly. if you ever try to write yourself, you should quickly realize that.

the fluff is disjointed, because it is a 34 years old legacy setting used to selling toys and they made the (imo good) decision early to not bother with a canon in the "make your own army" TT game. everything published is told by an "unreliable narrator", you can pick and choose what you want.

that said, why do you assume that the inquisition as an institution is capable of using any scientific method to verify their methods. try to tell karamazov that his conduct of trial may be flawed, if the only possible verdict is always guilty.

that does fit and i like the idea of an unreliable narrator. i do write (though only as a side hobby) and do understand that each writer has their own biases, but i feel one of the big things with writing is the ability to look at it from the characters point of view and see why they would think they are right and what is logical to them over just using your own opinions.....it just stikes me as lazy i suppose and its part of the reason i cant stand stephen king or terry goodkind. you do make a good point that i may very well be overestimating their ability to analyze their methods. i was assuming that as a group that hunts deamons, xenos and heritics and work to root them out of a population (given that to my understanding exterminatus is a last resort that brings scrutiny if abused) and holds councils on the long term threats to the imperium they would at least be able to do that on a personal level from experience.

[Fosil]

@preator americanus: you can read what rick priestley had in mind, when he wrote the w40k setting. you are free to "make it your own" by having your head-canon, but the authors intent is pretty clear.

PS: there is no scientific evidence, that torture is effective for finding out the truth. even if you disregard for example historic witch hunt trials, which had groups of people collaborating to a common story fabricated by the torturers, you can look at the US torture prisons like guatanamo to see similar bogus group confessions gained by more "modern" torture methods.

@00yiggdrasill00: I think it is quite hard to write a satirical piece / parody with believable characters, because exaggeration is such a central part of satire. thats one reason why I like GWs no-canon stance, because it gives their authors more leeway to do their take on the setting. for example compare dembski-bowdens black legion (which btw has imo barely any satirical elements from the original priestley fluff left. I believe the DE waifu is unintended parody) with their more common simple "heel" depiction in most 40k media. or just compare it to "bozgat's big adventure".

personally I find the "grim men have to take hard choices" take a bit silly. it's like "not getting the joke" about ork warboss margaret thatcher and inquisitor obiwan sherlock clousseau. don't take schlock seriously :).

[Gilgamesh]

Originally posted by 00yiggdrasill00:

so i realize they will and must go to any lengths to protect the imperium given the cost of failure, but torture is known to result in poor or msleading information so why do they use it when their experience and analytical reports would show this? surely with access to psychic abilities they could just mind♥♥♥♥♥♥the poor sucker and get what they need? it just seems like a waste of precious time that they wouldnt waste given what they fight.

Because they don't have the benefit of a sociology professor who's never interrogated anyone in his life to lecture them on what the studies show. They have a portal that'll open and unleash daemons if they don't stop some ritual, they have four alleged cultists they captured in a raid, and 36 hours until the eclipse/solstice/festival/coronation/whatever to figure it all out and somehow stop it.

Also yes, they do use psykers sometimes for interrogations/auguries, but that's just as risky if not more so, since using psychic powers you're communicating directly with the warp which is where the daemons hang out in the first place, so there's no guarantee the answers your getting aren't misinformation from daemons themselves, or that something won't possess your psyker, split his head open and kill everyone in the interrogation room.

Also, and probably most importantly, because it's supposed to be a dark and hopeless setting. It requires some suspension of disbelief, like any fiction.

[kknd]

The Inqusition fulfills the duty of it's office. It is not a pleasant duty and the news presented was extremely grave. If it's true, the Imperium needs to get mobilizing in a huge way immediately. If it's not, then all of those ships, troops and resources would be routed to the wrong place. The fact Spire's homeworld was purged for sedition is a massive problem because by the time you see that, usually some form of corruption has been festering for decades or even hundreds of years. Meaning Spire may be corrupt. Meaning this could be a trick of Chaos.

So Spire's loyalty and truthfulness need to be questioned in the most strenuous manner. The potential loss of one loyal imperial captain is weighed against mismobilizing an entire subsector. Sadly, that is not a hard choise to make. The process is accurately discribed as torture, yes. Psychic powers are not pleasant in the 41st milennium.

Spire proves not just that he is clean (not innocent, 'there is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt' is a common inquisitorial saying) and truthful, but that he is loyal and strong willed enough to command after this horrific trial.

As bad as the Inquisition can be, as much as we might detest them and their methods? The true horror of 40k as a setting is the fact they are right. That line about 'Some question my right to destroy an entire planets population. The more knowlageable understand I have no right to let them live.' isn't just some boilerplate response, it's an accurate summation of the nightmarish threat of Chaos. 40k's situation is so bad that 'The cruelst, most bloody regime imaginable' is the only thing keeping humanity from extinction. The idea of a situation so bad that this is the best thing to do? Nothing's more grimdark.

[Awesomesauce]

Originally posted by kknd:

The Inqusition fulfills the duty of it's office. It is not a pleasant duty and the news presented was extremely grave. If it's true, the Imperium needs to get mobilizing in a huge way immediately. If it's not, then all of those ships, troops and resources would be routed to the wrong place. The fact Spire's homeworld was purged for sedition is a massive problem because by the time you see that, usually some form of corruption has been festering for decades or even hundreds of years. Meaning Spire may be corrupt. Meaning this could be a trick of Chaos.

So Spire's loyalty and truthfulness need to be questioned in the most strenuous manner. The potential loss of one loyal imperial captain is weighed against mismobilizing an entire subsector. Sadly, that is not a hard choise to make. The process is accurately discribed as torture, yes. Psychic powers are not pleasant in the 41st milennium.

Spire proves not just that he is clean (not innocent, 'there is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt' is a common inquisitorial saying) and truthful, but that he is loyal and strong willed enough to command after this horrific trial.

As bad as the Inquisition can be, as much as we might detest them and their methods? The true horror of 40k as a setting is the fact they are right. That line about 'Some question my right to destroy an entire planets population. The more knowlageable understand I have no right to let them live.' isn't just some boilerplate response, it's an accurate summation of the nightmarish threat of Chaos. 40k's situation is so bad that 'The cruelst, most bloody regime imaginable' is the only thing keeping humanity from extinction. The idea of a situation so bad that this is the best thing to do? Nothing's more grimdark.:raven:

This ^^

[Ivlichnov]

Warhammer 40,000 started out as a dark futuristic sci-fi version of the ‘Warhammer Fantasy’ universe.

LORE - Warhammer 40k Lore in a Minute!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM

[kknd]

Originally posted by Ivlichnov:

Warhammer 40,000 started out as a dark futuristic sci-fi version of the ‘Warhammer Fantasy’ universe.

LORE - Warhammer 40k Lore in a Minute!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM

It's incomplete, (good enough though) but damn if that didn't bring a tear to my eye again. TB really did love 40k.

[Eunostos]

What is with the modern fashion of whining that an original creator wanted to say something? (At least in the original incarnation).

That's an ~aspiration~ of good fiction, FFS. Actively pushing in the direction of lore for the sake of content and engagement (despite that it's inevitable for a long running setting) is an idiocratic regression :/

[connormacaulay]

Inquisitors will use different methods of obtaining information. It all depends on two main points, the ordos of the Inquisitor, and the personal preferences and abilities of said Inquisitor. The Ordo Malleus, which is probably the most likely to be involved here (as a black crusade is happening) has a surfiet of sanctioned pykers. These pykers can break into the mind of a subject, but unless the subject is inordinatly gifted with their own abilities this takes an immense toll. This will cause many to become insane (or outright kill them) The ordo Xenos tend to use chemical agents reminicent of "truth serums" in order to pry information from captives. The ordo hereticus somtimes uses pykers, but generally the threat of painfull death, then torture followed by burning is used.

[Di]

how else are you gonna get information?

[Alex_x86]

Originally posted by LeperousKhan:

Because in this universe, there are no good guys. Everybody is an a-hole.

This is why we love this universe: it has fun puns and there are no good guys :) And Imperium is just a exaggarated Medeival Europe in SPAAAACE!

[Gobboman]

Originally posted by Luagha:

What is with the modern fashion of whining that an original creator wanted to say something? (At least in the original incarnation).

That's an ~aspiration~ of good fiction, FFS. Actively pushing in the direction of lore for the sake of content and engagement (despite that it's inevitable for a long running setting) is an idiocratic regression :/

Most likely because inferring that fascism and fundamentalism is bad via satire gets certain parts of the population angry. And that's all I'm willing to say since we aren't supposed to talk politics here.

[00yiggdrasill00]

Originally posted by HemoGoblinFive:

Originally posted by Luagha:

What is with the modern fashion of whining that an original creator wanted to say something? (At least in the original incarnation).

That's an ~aspiration~ of good fiction, FFS. Actively pushing in the direction of lore for the sake of content and engagement (despite that it's inevitable for a long running setting) is an idiocratic regression :/

Most likely because inferring that fascism and fundamentalism is bad via satire gets certain parts of the population angry. And that's all I'm willing to say since we aren't supposed to talk politics here.

i understand where you are both coming from....and as long as we keep it away from becoming a political talk i dont see why we cant debate the value it has on story telling.

my big issue with it is how often its used blindly, the writer believes something is wrong so the characters believe something is wrong...but how would the characters ACTUALLY act, feel, think and believe within the setting they are raised in and with the experiences they have had? what are the pragmatisms they must live with? how would other characters influence them? now i know that no matter how hard you try something of yourself will go into the character, but the idea of a character following its creators morality and ideas when the situations they are in can be so wildly different is something i dont like in a story. a story teller can tell a story as a lesson, im fine with that, but an inability to SEE and FEEL from as close to the characters perspective as one can get is what i believe makes for great storytelling.

[Aleksei]

Originally posted by Fosil:

the imperium is supposed to be the bad guys. the setting is among others a spoof of 2000AD comics and the creators intention was to critize religion and authoritarianism with the over the top imperium of man.

Their intention never was to critize religion. You should not put in your own headcannon into it. It started more of satire and grew into its own thing according how well it was received back in day. Look some old articles of orginal creators in old White Dwarf magazines. Dont try to push your own headcannon through other peoples work.