Lost and the Damned - Ranks of the Lost and the Damned: Apostate Cardinal - Apostate cardinals, a general term for any one of many thousands of the demagogues active in the Jericho Reach, preach resistance to the Achilus Crusade and the enforced conversion to the Imperial Creed that follows close behind it. They whip their followers into a frenzy of hate, sometimes literally, sometimes with words of bile and sometimes with promises of a blessed afterlife for those that die in defence of their faith. Apostate Cardinals rule over a staggering range of cults and sects. Some are Warrior-Brotherhoods preaching martial virtues, while others are mendicant or penitent. Many are a bizarre hybrid of pre-Imperial religions, merged in the 31st Millennium with the Imperial Creed, and then diverging throughout the Jericho Reach's Age of Shadow.Chaos Champion - A Chaos Champion is an individual who has dedicated himself to further the cause of his or her particular patron Chaos God, or Chaos as a whole in the form of Chaos Undivided. He or she is either an extremely powerful warrior, including a Chaos Space Marine, or a psychic Chaos Sorcerer. Chaos is attractive for the simple reason that it offers enormous power to those willing to turn away from the light of the Emperor and dedicate themselves in body and soul to the Ruinous Powers. For many who walk its dark path, it offers the only hope of betterment in a galaxy ruled by an often oppressive Human Imperium. Opportunities for true happiness and advancement are the prerogatives of only a tiny, privileged minority, and the only escape from literal starvation or persecution by a tyrannical and uncaring bureaucracy often lies in the egalitarian favours of Chaos. For unlike the Imperium of Man and so many of the other servants of Order in the galaxy, Chaos judges its servants on merit and skill alone and rewards them for their successes or failures harshly, but fairly. In fact, many of those who serve the Dark Gods would claim that only Chaos offers true justice to the peoples bound into the corrupt and dying realm ruled over by the Corpse Emperor.Chaos Cultists - Chaos Cults are the most dangerous of all those organisations that plot to overthrow the rule of the Imperium of Man from within. All planets and civilisations belonging to the Imperium can harbour Chaos organisations, which themselves are as diverse in practice and membership as is imaginable. From the blood-soaked sacrificial cults of Feral Worlds to the philosophical secret societies of more advanced planets, the temptations of Chaos can capture all. The objective of the Chaos Cult is to survive and eventually dominate the society in which it dwells. Mere survival is particularly important on Imperial worlds, where Chaos worship is the greatest of heresies and Inquisitors are always vigilant and ready to wipe out any taint of Chaos. Generally clandestine in nature, as discovery could bring with it attention from the local Adeptus Arbites contingent all the way up to the Inquisition, cults often hide behind the front of some form of legitimate Imperial organisation in their attempt to accumulate local or planetary power, such as trade unions, charitable organisations, accepted religious groups and even local variants of the Imperial Cult. Extreme political parties make good fronts for cults, as they naturally attract power-hungry and mentally unbalanced individuals, who make particularly good material for potential cult members. A very successful organisation can achieve real political power, even gaining enough power to make it possible for the cult to become the governing body of the planet without having to resort to outright rebellion.Hive Mutant - Hive mutants are the result of a hive city's population's exposure to radiation, pollutants, carcinogens, and diseases that are circulated though a hive's food, air and water supplies. Mutation is common in the largest hives, and relatively minor mutations are tolerated by the main population in most hives within some sectors, though the more refined circles of hive nobility are not so forgiving. A degree of mutation within a hive population is tolerated for the most part out of necessity. A hive city exists on the toil of its population, and the labour of a mutant is as good as that of any other. Indeed, in many hives where slight mutations would not be tolerated, the industry and wealth of the hive could not be sustained. This tolerance is, of course, not universal or without bounds; mutation, after all, is commonly regarded as a sign of sin and corruption. In many hives gross mutation is not only shunned but rooted out and purged by law. Many hive mutants flee down into the deeper parts of a hive city where they can exist out of the reach of persecution.Forsaken Priest - A Forsaken Priest is a faithful priest of the Adeptus Ministorum who has been drawn into the service of an Inquisitor of a Radical creed and has sacrificed himself to the learning of dark knowledge and the forbidden arts of sorcery. The knowledge and use of sorcery are blasphemous acts that eat away at those who acquire and wield such dark arts. Nevertheless, the power of sorcery and daemon lore is a potent weapon against the manifold threats faced by the Imperium, and so it may be wielded by those who know that they are damning themselves but are willing to sacrifice their souls in the defence of Humanity. Forsaken Priests are rare, even in the ranks of the Radical factions of the Inquisition, and though exceptions exist, they are almost exclusively found among those who follow either the Xanthite or Oblationist doctrine, often for very different reasons.Heretek Savant - The strictures and dictates of the Adeptus Mechanicus are many and harsh; they form a labyrinthine and iron-clad code that defines every aspect of the lives of the Omnissiah's priesthood, their outlook and practices. Their purpose is as simple as it is unwavering: to control and regulate knowledge and its use, stifle innovation, and above all maintain the Machine Cult's stranglehold on the Imperium's technology. To become a Heretek Savant by that phrase's purest definition is to abandon this code, at least in the tech-priest's private thoughts. It is to embrace individual innovation, experimentation, and free will and stray from the path ordained by the teachings of the Archmagos Doctrinal. For a tech-priest to do so is every bit as rare, as radical and heretical as a Confessor of the Ministorum straying away from the Imperial Creed, and the consequences for those that do stray, should their deviation be discovered, is every bit as harsh. Although rather than a pyre, Heretek Savants can look forward to having their augmetic implants ripped bodily from them while alive and whatever meat that remains useful recycled into Servitor components to pay for their sins.Malefic Scholar - A Malefic Scholar studies and acquires proscribed knowledge concerning the nature of the Warp, the power and nature of Daemons, and the manipulation of the Warp by the arts of ritual and sorcery. These are the wizened masters of Warpcraft who can summon Daemons, open portals into the ether, see things far off and days remote, and create artefacts of occult and unclean power. Such dedication is motivated by an obsession with knowing what should not be known, or by the desire to wield unnatural power that is beyond that open to most Humans. The power of a Malefic Scholar has potential that is only bound by the weakness of the Human mind when confronted with truths greater than it can cope with. Most Malefic Scholars are an obvious threat to the fabric and security of the Imperium; their pursuit of forbidden knowledge can unleash Warp entities, provide a point of incursion for daemons and may corrupt all they touch. For Inquisitors of Radical factions which embrace the use of Warpcraft, a Malefic Scholar is a valuable servant and weapon to be used to fight the enemies of Mankind.Warp-touched - There are places where the barrier between reality and the Warp is thin. Across such thinned barriers the influence of the power of the Warp can touch those who are near. This is not the touch of the intelligences that form in the tides of that other realm's psychic energy and are called Daemons. It is a caressing, violating, warping tendril of the boiling psychic energy that leaks across into reality like an invisible fog or a howling gale; marking and changing all that it touches. Those who are touched by the Warp may possess strange powers that they carry in their blood, bone, and mind; making them almost inhuman. So subtle and dangerous are the seeds planted by the Warp that almost any servant of the Inquisition would burn one so touched -- but for a few within the Holy Ordos, such touched individuals are to be embraced and bound to service, if for no other reason than to see what they may become.Tainted Psyker - Tainted Psykers are psykers who have given themselves over to the raw power of the Warp. These psykers are teetering on the brink of complete damnation and being drawn into the thrall of dark and thirsting gods. Though it is fraught with risk and peril, the power that can be achieved by opening oneself further to the possibility of the Warp is immense. Like opening a crack in the casing of a blast furnace to realise the roaring inferno contained inside, the power of the Tainted Psyker is as awful as it is terrifying. Storms of psychic force, uncanny control of flesh, and terrible ways of using the power of the Warp are the weapons the Tainted Psyker has bought at the cost of his mind, body, and soul.Warp Dabbler - Warp Dabblers, sometimes referred to as "warplocks" and petty sorcerers, are individuals tampering often blindly with the malignant arts of psychic sorcery. Whether cultists, noncompliants, recidivists or even servants of the Inquisition, these individuals have had contact with forbidden knowledge and have decided to succumb to the possibilities it can offer. These are not true sorcerers or savants of the forbidden, but instead are dark-hearted warriors, soiled enforcers, spiteful adepts, and twisted killers who have acquired a degree of Warp lore and have made the perilous decision to put it into use. Although they may never achieve the terrible heights of occult power and knowledge that the true masters of sorcery can, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. This knowledge, in particular, makes most Warp Dabblers very dangerous indeed. Warp Dabblers may have walked almost any path before they begin their dalliance with Warp craft. In the case of recidivist Heretics, they may be cultists, criminals, smugglers or even gang bosses. The intelligence and strength of will to study the forbidden is not something that all can do, but should one with the potential be presented with forbidden power, they will often seize it and put it to imaginative and horrible use.Beastmen - Beastmen are Abhumans descended from baseline Human stock who combine the physical appearances of Humans and Terran animals, usually goats or rams. Beastmen do not necessarily look alike, and different animal traits can manifest themselves in each individual, but apart from this form of phenotypical variation they are a genetically stable Human subspecies, and are considered to be a form of Abhuman rather than an actual mutant. The origin of Beastmen is unknown, though it is likely that they they are the result of experiments in genetic engineering stretching back to the Age of Technology before the birth of the Imperium of Man who proceeded to breed true. Other Imperial savants claim that Beastmen are Abhumans whose unusual forms were the result of exposure to the influence of the Warp but that the subspecies somehow managed to maintain an unusual degree of genetic stability across generations.