Grey Knights - Chapter Recruitment: Considering the role of the Grey Knights in the Inquisition, potential recruits are put through even more stringent trials than other Space Marine aspirants. It is the Chapter's "Gatherers" who set out across the galaxy in search of new recruits for the Chapter.The Gatherers are Grey Knights whose great age or severe injuries no longer permit them to undertake the primary work of the Chapter, but whose keen senses and minds can still detect an aspirant hero from amongst the common rabble of Humanity. It is the task of these battle-brothers to search the Imperium for suitable candidates and look into their minds for signs of weakness. As the most favoured agents of the Emperor, there are no sources of manpower denied to the Grey Knights -- the seed worlds of Space Marine Chapters, forbidding Penal Worlds and even the dreaded Black Ships are all open to them.The strongest recruits are brought back to Titan to be tested. The Chamber of Trials is where aspirants arrive and their training begins -- if they survive. Recruits are subjected to mental and physical torment to see if they will break, even before they face the horrors of the Warp.Shivering in the holds of antiquated shuttles, the recruits are brought down to the surface of Titan; some are taken to the Citadel of Titan but many are released onto the desolate plain and made to walk to the great fortress gates. Even though Titan was terraformed long ago to be habitable to Humans, its thin atmosphere remains freezing and inhospitable.This is more than just a test of endurance -- is it also one of conviction. Those recruits that turn from the distant black towers, favouring their chances in the wilds of Titan, have shown themselves undisciplined and willfully independent. The reward for this cowardice is always death. Those that reach the gates are given only the briefest chance to enjoy their accomplishment. They are immediately sent out once more into the cold, this time on a trek of a thousand kilometres to the shimmering tundra of caustic crystals, perpetually locked in a chemical haze, known as the Xanadu Region.To breathe the strange vapours of this place is to feel one's mind slipping away, stolen by alien thoughts and nightmare visions. Even to reach Xanadu, a recruit must brave a score of deadly zones, from the Anarch High Pass, where a whispered word can trigger an avalanche of choking chemical dust, and the Rusting Desert, littered with the hulls of broken voidships and roaming packs of servitors driven insane by time and decay, to the Saturnine Maze, an ancient weapon of war left over from the Emperor's conquest of Titan during the Great Crusade, filled with hidden nightmares and the spirits of vanquished warriors.During his journey the recruit must also contain his immature psychic powers, and an inhibiter collar is fixed around his neck which is keyed to explode should he lose control. This can become almost impossible when the recruit reaches Xanadu and breathes deeply of the toxic chemicals, as reality becomes undone around him.All who come to the Xanadu Region must bear witness to those who have failed, as thousands of headless skeletons are scattered across the landscape. Fewer than one in a thousand recruits will return from Xanadu. For those that do, long solar weeks of pain and sacrifice await.From the glyphite-stalked caverns beneath Ganesa Macula to the icy sub-surface oceans of Ios Antor, one test after another must be passed before the Grey Knights are content that the recruit has the strength of will and physical prowess to survive. Finally, the rare few that live to reach this stage are officially inducted into the Chapter as neophytes, so that their true training might begin.The most advanced bio-engineering and psycho-surgery available is utilised to condition these aspirants, and each recruit must pass the six hundred and sixty six Rituals of Detestation, to prove that he is capable of withstanding horrors that would break even the greatest of normal Space Marines. Upon success, the recruit also has all memory of his prior existence and identity erased using a mind-wipe, to better ensure his absolute and unwavering loyalty to the Emperor, and to prevent Daemons from using the aspirant's fears, memories, and feelings against him.One of the main criteria for selection into the Chapter is that the recruit must show great psychic potential, as the entire Chapter is made up of psykers. Once they begin to undergo the standard gene-seed organ implantation process to transform an aspirant into an Astartes of the Grey Knights, the new Grey Knight is also implanted with silver hexagrammic and pentagrammic Purity Wards under his skin which cover his entire body and help to prevent Daemonic entities from touching or contaminating him.Unlike standard Space Marines who first serve in their Chapter's Scout Marine company, Grey Knight initiates are awarded a suit of full power armour (or Aegis Armour) and are immediately pressed into service. They then move through the ranks as detailed above; this is due to their elite training. They surpass any other type of Space Marine in combat and in every trial. They are the elite of the Space Marines and serve as the right hand of the Emperor. They are the greatest army of the Imperium and Mankind's most potent weapon against the forces of Chaos.The creation of a Grey Knight is an expensive undertaking, even more so than the creation of a standard Astartes: it is said that only one in every one million aspirants will ascend to the rank of a full battle-brother of the Chapter.As an additional measure of protection, no Grey Knight bears the name he was given at his birth. This is in part to distance him from his previous life and loyalties -- an outward sign of having essentially been reborn into the service of the Inquisition. From the arcane lore stored within the Sanctum Sanctorum the Grey Knights bestow names to their new recruits, each one a carefully chosen title fashioned into a weapon.Just as every True Name holds power over the Daemon who bears it, so too do the true names of mortals have resonance within the Warp. For this reason, when a Grey Knight is recruited his name is one of the first things scrubbed from his mind, along with much of his past. Once a Grey Knight's identity has been erased and rebuilt during training, he is unlikely to remember his past.By the time the hulking transporters set down on the frozen surface of Titan the men within have forgotten much of their lives. They enter the Citadel of Titan not as the warriors they once were but as the refined materials the Chapter will use to create new battle-brothers.During the long solar days and months of training these men have no names, only the designation given to them by the Chapter. Those that fall are buried in unmarked graves, if they are buried at all. Only upon completion of his training is a Grey Knight granted his new name -- until that point neophytes are assigned only a number.The tiny fraction of recruits that survive the gruelling trials on Titan and the process of genetic implantation are finally gifted with new names. Each name is actually a fragment of arcane lore, divined by the labours of the Chapter's scribes to act in perfect opposition to the true name of a particular Daemon. Thus, even the Grey Knight's name is a weapon against his hated foe. Like the true names of Daemons, the auspicious names given to Grey Knights are ever in flux.Nonetheless, some have resurfaced again and again over the millennia, gaining in power just as a specific Daemon is reborn from the Warp. So it is that a Grey Knight's name might have been borne by many battle-brothers before him. Each name is derived from the True Name of a Daemon; a counter to its terrible meaning so that even to hear the Grey Knight's name spoken aloud causes the Warp creature pain, and to stand in the battle-brother's presence is the purest of agonies. Traditionally, it is considered an honour -- and a prophetic sign of great deeds in one's future -- to be given a name matching one of Saturn's moons. Such nomenclature is accordingly rare.The information on the Grey Knight's true identity after his rebirth does not exist outside the sealed records of the Inquisition. It does not even exist within the vast data-stacks of the Citadel of Titan's Librarius. This data is rarely accessed, and in truth this kind of lore was often archived and forgotten, rather than consciously buried in the Sol System's annals. Even amongst the Inquisition, only the most curious souls would care for such knowledge, as it is worthless beyond its value as a harmless curiosity. It offers no advantage over an enemy.The Grey Knights are trained and bound and scourged to rarely care about their former lives, and Inquisitors gain no special influence over them by possessing it. Few souls are curious enough to look. A handful every solar decade, but no more than that.