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Eisenhorn & Company
Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn
"My name is Gregor Eisenhorn, and these deeds were mine."
The titular Inquisitor, and the trilogy's main character.
Gregor Eisenhorn was a renowned Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, active during the third and fourth centuries of M41.
Initially a Puritan of the Amalathian faction, Eisenhorn's ideology would alter over the course of his career so dramatically towards Radical Xanthism that other members of the Inquisition would consider him possibly heretical.
Indeed, Eisenhorn has officially been considered a rogue agent at least twice in his Inquisitorial career, only to be proved righteous both times.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Barbarisater is sharp enough to slice a man wearing power armour in half. In one of the Ravenor short stories, it can even bisect a Chaos Dreadnought with a single stroke.
- Amplifier Artifact: In Malleus, Eisenhorn commissions the creation of a runestaff for this purpose. With it, he can briefly increase the strength of his psychic abilities to Alpha-plus levels.
- Black Magic: While there is a fine, if blurry line between psychic powers and heretical powers, and wide margins within both, Gregor starts to use Chaos sorcery more and more as he becomes a senior inquisitor, marking him as a heretic and a renegade in the eyes of the Inquisition, who officially maintain a very black and white view of the matter. Further complicating and graying the matter: any Inquisitors who don't die young will almost certainly turn Radical, and Radicals have Loyalists like Eisenhorn and borderline Traitors like Quixos.
- Character Narrator: The entire trilogy is narrated from his first-person perspective.
- The Chessmaster: Eisenhorn resembles a Cold War spymaster with Implausible Fencing Powers and Psychic Powers.
- Compelling Voice: He can use the will to make people obey his spoken commands.
- Cowboy Cop: Roughly by the time of Malleus, Gregor's previous youthful zeal and dedication to the rules, and even his wide-eyed view have been abraded away by time and experience, and he's willing to play fast and loose with the rules. By the end of the same book, he's gone beyond Cowboy Cop, and is embracing sorcery and heretical practices.
- Dented Iron: By the time of the Ravenor trilogy, Nayl remembers Gregor as heavily scarred and held together by augmetics and a stubborn drive to eradicate the enemies of the Emperor. By the time of The Magos, he's added powered leg braces and is nearing 300, in spite of juvenat treatments. He is a battered old man, but still hale enough that he can take two men in a fight and still nearly win.
- Doom Magnet: Even by Inquisition standards, Eisenhorn has a bad streak of getting people killed or worse while in his service. The first two books end with him losing companions and the third ends with nearly all of his allies and subordinates across the sector dead.
- The Dreaded: Though information on him is classified to the citizens of the Imperium, his reputation is something that can cause heretics to start shaking in their boots, and the Inquisition to either loosen their efforts to actually find him or dedicate significant military resources to neutralize him, depending on the Ordo and Inquisitor in question.
- Face–Heel Turn: So far, averted. Gregor has been playing with Chaos sorcery and heretical leanings ever since the end of Xenos, something that reliably makes even Inquisitors turn radical, even into un/witting Traitor operatives. (As Pontius Glaw put it, "a professional hazard.") So far, Gregor has remained a staunch Loyalist.
- Frozen Face: Thanks to nerve damage sustained in Xenos he loses most of his ability to emote. In The Magos, this damage is repaired, but it takes a couple of books before he gets back in the habit of facial expressions.
- Handguns: Whenever he uses guns, Gregor is always seen using pistols. He alternates between his Tronsvasse pistol, which appears to be a Hand Cannon in its own right, and a bolt pistol. His first bold pistol was gifted to Eisenhorn by a Deathwatch Librarian in honour of him slaying Mandragore, though it does get lost in the course of his career and later replaced.
- Handicapped Badass: Gregor wracks up an impressive tally of scars over his career, some of them become crippling. By the end of Hereticus, he has lost function of his lower body; through sheer bloody-mindedness and stubbornness to see things through himself, he eschews his prospects of any long term recovery in favor of becoming mobile again immediately. He gets some robotic leg braces controlled by barebones cybernetics to regain mobility, though it doesn't seem to impair his skill with a blade, and certainly not his psychic skills.
- I Did What I Had to Do: This is already the Inquisition's job, but Eisenhorn practically has it printed on his business cards, especially in books two and three as he becomes more Radical and starts doing things like summoning and binding Cherubael, practicing Black Magic and so on.
- Magic Knight: In addition to his telepathic abilities, Gregor has used a few swords and a force staff over time, in addition to a collection of large bore pistols. Over time he added Enuncia and warp sorcery to his repertoire.
- Master Swordsman: He grows into this trope over the course of Malleus after he starts using Barbarisater.
- My Greatest Failure: Allowing Pontius Glaw to live, which costs him very dearly in book three.
- Necromancy: In Hereticus, he uses sorcery to reanimate a slain mercenary as an undead thrall that he can speak through and control from a distance. He sends it to meet with his enemies as part of a plan to Bluff the Impostor, before unleashing a contained warp-anomaly to kill them all. On a less damning note, he also holds a seance to connect Medea Betancore to the father she never met.
- Psychic Powers: While psykers usually come in different flavors in 40k, and at least in the Eisenhornverse, sufficiently powerful psykers tend to be cross-disciplinarian, Eisenhorn is primarily a telepath. He becomes more powerful as the series goes on, dipping his toes into other powers. One of his more unique moments is, while still primarily a telepath, setting some papers on fire with a psychic attack.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Being an Inquisitor grants him authority over planetary governments and immunity from local laws. However, especially in the first book he far prefers to cooperate with local authorities when possible, explain his actions and share evidence that shows the validity of his investigations.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: He and Bequin have a deep emotional connection, but since he's a psyker and she's a Blank, it would be agony for him if they actually got together.
- The Stoic: He expresses little emotion, though it's not by choice: Cold-Blooded Torture from Gorgone Locke in the first book leaves Gregor with permanent nerve damage in his facial muscles, leaving him unable to smile or strongly emote.
- Sword and Gun: He typically wields a sword and large bore, solid projectile pistols as his main weapons.
- Unscrupulous Hero: Especially after seizing the Malus Codicium. He remains devoted to preserving the Imperium... but he's willing to use some very nasty weapons in that goal.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Like any in the Inquisition, Gregor is willing to do or overlook some very nasty things in the pursuit of protecting the wider Imperium. Even within that context, Gregor is still using some very shady methods and consorting with Chaos entities in pursuing that goal, something the Inquisition takes a very hard stance against.
Alizebeth Bequin
A Pariah that Eisenhorn meets during his investigation on Hubris in Xenos. She joins his team then, and goes on to become one of the longest-serving members of his retinue as well as one of his closest companions.
- Anti-Magic: As a Pariah, psychic powers and sorcery don't work in her presence, and she creates a blank spot where even the strongest psykers can't act or see into simply by being there.
- Character Death: A chaos-corrupted Battle-Titan overwhelms her blankness and incapacitates her at the start of Hereticus. While her body remains functioning, the backlash irreversibly destroys her mind and leaves her brain dead.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Bequin is working as a prostitute when she is first encountered, and is one of the nicer characters in the books.
- Ironically, despite being quite beautiful as prostitutes go, her status as a blank means she is rather bad at it. Her lack of a presence in the warp unnerves her clients.
- Naked First Impression: Eisenhorn first bumped into her during a raid on an apartment complex, where she'd been servicing clients. Naturally, she was quite mortified.
- Older Than They Look: By Malleus, Bequin is a hundred and twenty-five. She doesn't look a day over thirty thanks to augmetic surgery and regular juvenat treatments. By Hereticus she’s close to a hundred and seventy, and the only visible signs of her age are some crow’s feet.
Uber Aemos
Eisenhorn's savant, who previously served his mentor Inquisitor Hapshant.- Catchphrase: "Most perturbatory...", which he utters whenever he finds something peculiar or perplexing.
- Character Death: He dies from the strain of taking Cherubael into himself near the end of Hereticus.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Accidentally confesses to having read the Malus Codicium when he calls Cherubael by name despite Eisenhorn never telling him it.
- Non-Action Guy: Aemos is a frail old man with little to no combat experience, so he leaves the fighting to the younger and more capable members of Eisenhorn’s retinue.
- Photographic Memory: He never forgets anything he’s seen, and can remember things with perfect recall and incredible detail. He even memorizes the entirety of the Malus Codicium, allowing him to summon Cherubael near the end of Hereticus.
- Powered Armor: He relies on an augmetic exoskeleton to support his frail body. It gives him enough strength to break a man’s neck with one punch.
- The Smart Guy: The most learned and intelligent member of Eisenhorn's retinue, thanks in no small part to a meme-virus that compels him to learn as much information as possible, no matter how trivial. His primary role is to assist Eisenhorn's investigations by sifting through data and conducting research.
- Willing Channeler: He forces Cherubael to possess him near the end of Hereticus, keeping the daemon contained long enough to prepare a proper vessel for it. The strain of holding Cherubael inside himself this way kills Aemos.
Godwyn Fischig
- Demonic Possession: He becomes the host for Cherubael after his death.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His betrayal of Eisenhorn, while well-intentioned, makes the whole thing a lot more fraught and destructive.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Fischig ends up betraying Eisenhorn to the Inquisition because he believes he is helping a man he considers a friend, even if it means killing him to save his soul. Medea Betancore kills him before he can deliver the fatal shot.
Midas Betancore
A Glavian pilot and one of Eisenhorn's closest friends.- The Ace: Midas is easily the most competent and physically skilled member of the retinue in Xenos. He’s an ace pilot, an expert marksman with rifles and pistols, a master of stealth, and a talented musician.
- Ace Pilot: He comes from Glavia, a planet renowned for its pilots, and is exceptionally skilled even by their standards. At one point he manages to hide the guncutter inside of a narrow cave on an asteroid while shaking off a squadron of pursuing fighters, and fool them into thinking that he crashed.
- Brain/Computer Interface: His hands are laced with Glavian bio-circuitry, which can directly interface with the controls of any craft he pilots.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: He's killed offscreen between the first and second books.
- Guns Akimbo: He wields a pair of Glavian needle pistols as his weapons of choice.
- The Lancer: In Xenos, Betancore is the most trusted and competent member of Eisenhorn’s retinue, acting as the Inquisitor’s right-hand man.
- The Lost Lenore: He was in love with Lores Vibben, who dies only a few pages into the first book, and mourns her loss for a long time.
Gideon Ravenor
Eisenhorn's Interrogator by the time of Malleus, and the best pupil he's ever trained.For more information about him, see the character sheet for his own series.
Harlan Nayl
An ex-bounty hunter from Loki.For more information, see the Ravenor character sheet.
Medea Betancore
Midas' daughter, who inherits his position as the pilot of Eisenhorn's guncutter. She never knew Midas, as he died shortly before she was born; this left her with a strong desire to get revenge on Fayde Thuring, the man who killed him.- Ace Pilot: Takes after her father in this respect.
- It's Personal: Medea's normally coolly professional and snarky, but when she learns that her father's killer Fayde Thuring has been found at the beginning of Hereticus, she becomes very angry and demands that Eisenhorn let her be there to take him down.
- Revenge: She wants this for her dead father. However...
- Tell Me About My Father: After Thuring is killed, she realizes that what she really wanted was a chance to know her father, and asks Eisenhorn this.
Tobias Maxilla
Master of the rogue trader Essene, who joins Eisenhorn's motley band in Xenos.- Cyborg: Revealed to be mechanical from at least the chest down after being blasted by naval security officers (actually a bunch of Imperial Guard deserters sent to hunt for Eisenhorn).
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Eisenhorn believes Maxilla is so keen to help him because he is often in the company of his entirely machine crew and misses having flesh-and-blood people to show off his ship (and its associated treasures) to.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Done with as much audacity as he can manage. When Eisenhorn is at his wits end trying to figure out how his enemies could be operating on Cadia, Maxmilla surprises him by sneaking onto the fortress-world with no-one the wiser. When questioned, Tobias smugly reveals that he just borrowed Eisenhorn's credentials, since nobody would dare interfere with the Inquisition. This leads Eisenhorn to realize that the suspicious flights he had written off as the business of Inquisitor Neve were actually the villains, using her stolen credentials to mask their activities.
- Undying Loyalty: One of the few people who stuck with Eisenhorn even as he consorts with daemonhosts and disembodied heretics, believing wholeheartedly that Eisenhorn acted for the good of the Imperium.
- We Can Rebuild Him: His crew servitors take him to have his lower body rebuilt after the "boarding action" in Xenos.
Other Inquisitors
Inquisitor Hapshant
Gregor and Titus's mentor.- The Law of Conservation of Detail: He is discussed very little, presumably because he didn't lead a very notable career other than training Gregor and Titus, and playing a part in instilling Gregor with a sense of zeal which manifested as his early Puritanism and later his Radicalism as he sought out to use "alternative" means of serving the Emperor. Eisenhorn has distinct flashbacks to Hapshant warning his students against Radicalism and how it's a slippery slope.
- The Plague: His Cerebral Worms, which ultimately killed him. It's thought that he was the source of infection for Titus's on brain worms.
- Posthumous Character: He's dead by the time the novels begin, having died to Cerebral Worms.
Commodus Voke
A puritanical Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, whom Eisenhorn ends up working with during Xenos (to their mutual dislike).- Character Death: He dies at the hands of Prophaniti near the end of Malleus.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Downplayed example. Voke initially dislikes Eisenhorn due to their different methods and philosophies, but comes to respect him as Eisenhorn repeatedly demonstrates his competence. By the end of Xenos he’s become a staunch supporter of Eisenhorn, and even asks him to complete Heldane’s training when Voke believes himself to be on his deathbed. In Malleus, he’s willing to answer Eisenhorn’s summons and hear him out about Quixos even after Eisenhorn had gone rogue.
- In the Hood: Voke is frequently described as wearing a hooded robe.
- Overt Operative: Voke doesn't believe in stealth or subterfuge, believing that concealing one’s allegiance to the Inquisition is the mark of the radical. When he’s on the case, he openly throws his weight around and makes his status clear because he wants people to know that the Inquisition is in town. This is usually counter to the Inquisition's preferred methods of subtlety and espionage, and Gregor comments in his narration that throwing your weight around the way Voke does slams shut as many doors as it opens.
- Powered Armor: Voke is old and physically frail, so he relies on a powered exoskeleton to get around.
- Psychic Powers: He's a psyker, and his psychic abilities are clearly stronger than Eisenhorn's from their first encounter.
Golesh Heldane
A face you can trust.
Introduced as Voke's interrogator in Xenos, Golesh Heldane has become a full-fledged Inquisitor in his own right by the time Malleus rolls around.- Cold-Blooded Torture: His Modus Operandi for mind controlling people is to use painful mental and physical torture. He seems take pleasure in the process.
- Facial Horror: A carnodon mauls his face partway through Xenos. By Malleus, he’s had his face surgically reconstructed to exaggerate those scars, resulting in a literal horse face that unnerves friend and foe alike.
- Continuity Nod: Heldane's presence in the Eisenhorn series is this.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: He wants to capture the STC machine in First and Only so that he can give it to Dravere who intends to use the Iron Men it creates against Warmaster Macaroth to earn a Klingon Promotion.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40,000: Gaunt's Ghosts novel First & Only, Heldane attempts to Mind Control Rawne, but the Ghosts interrupt the torture. Later on, Heldane manipulates the "pawn" near Gaunt and Gaunt notices Rawne acting suspiciously. It turns out that Heldane only succeeded making Rawne sensitive to influence. This alerts him to Heldane's mental presence and the commands he gives to his real pawn, the spy Fereyd. When Heldane sends a command to Fereyd to kill Gaunt's party, Rawne intercepts the message and kills Fereyd first. Heldane, not expecting this, didn't prepare a failsafe in case his pawn was killed. The psychic backlash killed him and destroys Dravere's mobile fortress.
- Humiliation Conga: His first puppet assassin is unexpectedly destroyed by Corbec, his torture session with Rawne is cut short when Corbec hits him with a thrown stun baton and as he tries to retaliate, Larkin fatally shoots him in the neck. Even worse, his failure to finish his session with Rawne makes him aware of Heldane's mental presence and the commands he gives to Fereyd which in turn leads to Fereyd's death and his loss of the STC machine. If that's not bad enough the psychic feedback not only kills him and his chosen pawn, Dravere, but the ensuing explosion atomizes his body. On top of all of this, the epilogue to the Eisenhorn series makes it clear that he died in obscurity. None of this takes in account all of his defeats in that series as well including the death of his main backer, the radical Grandmaster Osma which wouldn't have been so bad if the former Puritan Grandmaster Rorken hadn't miraculously recovered from his illness.
- Hypocrite: He accuses Eisenhorn of being radical for using the Malus Codicium. He tries to have Eisenhorn executed... so that he and Osma can use the tome for themselves.
- Karmic Death: His death by psychic feedback is indirectly caused by his torture of Rawne.
- Made of Iron: Despite his failings, he shares his mentor's extreme resistance to death including getting his face horribly disfigured by a giant, crazed beast and years later having his legs crushed proceeded by immediately being set on fire by Cherubael. It takes a gunshot wound to the neck to take him down which takes over a day to finish him off. He ends up being killed by being atomized.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His downfall is caused by his arrogance, hypocrisy, radicalism, and a small amount of incompetence. However, he finally falls into this trope when he neglects to make a failsafe against psychic feedback. Had he done so, he wouldn't have indirectly killed Dravere who still had a chance of overthrowing Warmaster Macaroth without Heldane's help. To be fair, though, Heldane was fatally wounded at the time and Macaroth is only considered a slightly better leader than Dravere who should be noted as almost universally hated by his men.
- Nightmare Face: In-universe; he had his face surgically rebuilt to resemble a horse's between Xenos and Malleus, to inspire fear in the enemies of Man.
- Not Helping Your Case: He hates "blunt" bigots. He deals with them by using his psychic powers to cause mental and physic discomfort (messing with people's brains to induce vomiting and diarrhea) or he outright tortures them (show them what the warp shows psychics).
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Catching and making an "instrument" out of a high level Imperial Agent like Fereyd without anyone noticing can't be easy.
- Overly Long Name: His full name is Golesh Constantine Pheppos Heldane.
- Psychic Powers: He's a powerful psyker, and much stronger than Eisenhorn himself. He even manages to go toe to toe with Cherubael, who Eisenhorn considers a daemon prince in terms of power, for a surprisingly long time. With a sword!
- Smug Snake: His arrogance causes him to underestimate Gaunt. This leads to him being shot by Larkin. This fatal wound makes him careless later on by overplaying his hand. This leads directly to his death.
- The Rival: It's obvious Eisenhorn and Heldane despise each other, but Eisenhorn doesn't seem to regard Heldane as a rival, just a nuisance. Only Heldane seems to consider their relationship a rivalry especially once he learns of the Malus Codicium.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The gunshot wound to the neck was already fatal, but the psychic backlash from his pawn's death atomizes his body and a fortress the size of a small city.
- Torture Technician: He uses mental and physical torture to manipulate people through various methods of Mind Control. The method and length of the torture as well as he intended goal determines how much a person is put under his control. This bites him in the ass when the Ghosts interrupt his torture of Rawne as it made Rawne aware of his mental presence and commands.
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Unexpected Character: He originally appeared in Gaunt's Ghosts First and Only, but he shows up in the Eisenhorn Trilogy. Eisenhorn's series explains Heldane's strange equine appearance in First and Only. The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue is a Call-Forward to his death in First and Only. - Villain Ball: His eagerness to obtain the Iron Men STC machine causes him to accidentally reveal part of his true motives to Gaunt through Fereyd. This causes Gaunt to declare that he will destroy the machine forcing a desperate Heldane to have Fereyd attack Gaunt's party. However, he didn't prepare a failsafe in case Fereyd was killed. This leads to him suffering from psychic feedback. To be fair, though, the pain from his fatal wound made him careless.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: While he was originally a Puritan, his philosophy eventually changes. He believes that the Imperium must use Chaos against Chaos. He believes that "white" can't beat "black", but that "grey" can beat "black". He believes that Warmaster Macaroth is too pure and that Lord Militant General Hechtor Dravere would be a better leader for the Sabbat Campaign as he is willing to take more audacious risks.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Subverted in Xenos where Heldane shoots a psyker who was weakened after he forced a wall into revealing the location of the Saruthi Necroteuch.
Titus Endor
An Inquisitor who had been Interrogators with Eisenhorn, and Eisenhorn's only actual friend in the Inquisition.- The Alcoholic: He was always the more hedonistic compared to Eisenhorn, and he certainly enjoyed his drink. By the end of his life, he's probably not just alcoholic, but using alcohol to self-medicate for his increasing migraines.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Given that his competency was in charm and charisma, one might not think too highly of him, but this goes with becoming an Inquisitor. Titus has considerable skill in observation and infiltration that would be less obvious than his first impression. Still, his charisma could only carry him so far before his merit as an Inquisitor would determine his career trajectory.
- A Death in the Limelight: The short story ''The Strange Death of Titus Endor''. Titus is pursuing a deviant criminal. In the middle of the story, his "Interrogator" reminds Titus that he has been a full Inquisitor for some years, Titus has been dismissed from the Inquisition for some time, and the Titus already caught the man he is pursuing. The narration continues with Titus dismissing these claims outright, and becomes increasingly disjointed as he pursues his "case," [[spoiler: as he's riddled with alcoholism and what's essentially dementia.
- Internal Affairs: He was blackmailed into joining the Ordo Malleus to spy on Eisenhorn. While the revelation at the end of Malleus was seen as an outright betrayal given Eisenhorn's persecutors and ended their friendship, he had taken a number of personal risks to forewarn Gregor that he was under scrutiny. Notably, this is something that would normally be handled by Ordo Hereticus, but Gregor's (then) alleged association with Chaos entities put him in the Ordo Malleus's crosshairs instead, while Titus was collateral damage.
- Never My Fault: Towards the end of his life, "just circumstances" became something of an internal catchphrase, and something of a Madness Mantra. He never quite got over the fact that he had been forced to betray Eisenhorn, lest he face censure.
- Odd Friendship: Titus is cheerful and hedonistic and fairly irresponsible, where Eisenhorn is gritty and determined and will do whatever it takes to get the job done. They bonded in their youth, when (a then much more laid back) Eisenhorn had a more open personality. Gregor eventually became much more hardnosed, while Titus essentially remained the same. Despite their shared past and past attitudes, their friendship wouldn't survive the years.
- Turn in Your Badge: By The Strange Death of Titus Endor, he's been dismissed from the Inquisition due to his growing unreliability due to a form of dementia brought on by Cerebral Worms. It would kill him shortly afterwards.
Konrad Molitor
A radical Inquisitor brought onto the investigation of House Glaw. He has a keen interest in the Necroteuch.- Evil Gloating: Molitor has Eisenhorn at his mercy near the end of Xenos, but chooses to gloat for several paragraphs rather than finish him off right away. This gives Midas and Bequin enough time to catch up with their boss and rescue him, leading to Molitor’s death.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: He tries to kill Eisenhorn after ordering the fleet to flatten the Saruthi structure they’re both in, with the intended explanation that Eisenhorn got lost inside and couldn’t escape before the structure was destroyed.
- Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: His eyes are consistently described as yellow, and he’s quickly established as a shifty, untrustworthy person perfectly willing to go behind Eisenhorn’s back in pursuit of his own goals. He even tries to murder Eisenhorn near the end of Xenos.
Leonid Osma
Another Malleus Inquisitor; he's introduced as head of the Ordo Malleus' branch in the Ordos Helican in Malleus, and becomes Grandmaster of the entire Ordos Helican partway through Hereticus.- Boom, Headshot!: Maxilla vaporizes Osma’s head with a shot from his digital weapon.
- Cyborg: He has a cybernetic lower jaw. It’s the only part of his head left after Maxilla shoots the rest of it off.
- Hypocrite: In Hereticus, he condemns Eisenhorn as a heretic for his possession of Cherubael and the Malus Codicium, but the questions he and Heldane ask Eisenhorn make it clear that they want the book and the daemonhost for themselves.
- Inspector Javert: In Malleus, he arrests Eisenhorn on charges of consorting with daemons and causing the Thracian atrocity. Eisenhorn didn’t commit these crimes and repeatedly states his innocence in the three months that he’s held captive, but Osma refuses to believe him. He comes after him once again in Hereticus, and this time Eisenhorn is guilty, though Osma turns out to be no better.
Neve
An inquisitor-general stationed on Cadia. Eisenhorn consults her during his investigation into Cherubael’s connection to the Thracian atrocity.- Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Cadia is such a hotbed of cult activity that Neve can barely keep up with the day-to-day business of destroying those cults, leaving her sleep-deprived and ill-tempered. She isn’t happy when Eisenhorn shows up asking her to reopen a case that her predecessors closed.
- Handicapped Badass: She has a bad limp and relies on a crutch to get around her offices. In the field, she uses a lift-assist cane with a built-in grenade launcher instead.
- Jerkass: Played with. Neve ticks a lot of boxes in The Jerk Index, and isn't shy about showing it. However, much to Fischig's surprise...:
- Eishenhorn: You were wrong. I do like her.Fischig: That hard nosed bitch?!Eisenhorn: I like her because she's a hard nosed bitch!
- Reasonable Authority Figure: While she initially has little patience and pleasantness for Eisenhorn, after he proves himself to be a capable investigator and demonstrable enemy of Chaos, she becomes an ally of his. She even helps him escape Cadia and the local Knight Templar Puritan Inquisitor, even though it would put her under severe scrutiny.
- Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: In her late 110s, and at best extremely blunt and abrasive to everyone she talks to.
Quixos
An infamous Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, Quixos was once held up as an exemplar of his Ordo by other Inquisitors before he began to dabble with the powers of Chaos and fell from grace. He vanished hundreds of years ago, and was assumed dead by his peers. In reality, he's very much alive...- All There in the Manual: While he is remembered as an upright Puritan, by the time Gregor meets him, he's not only full Radical, but twisted and monstrous by the influence of Chaos. Codex: Daemonhunters of 40k 3rd Edition had a blurb about him which expanded on his journey somewhat, while fighting a daemon, the tip of the daemon's claw broke off in his heart. With the options being limited to removing it and killing him, or leaving it in place, Quixos not only left it in place, but started to tap into its power, increasing his psychic ability and corrupting his body.
- Big Bad: Of Malleus. He orchestrated the Thrachian Atrocity which kicks off the novel's plot to cover up his kidnapping of an Alpha-plus psyker. He’s also the master of Konrad Molitor and the creator of Cherubael the daemonhost, making him indirectly responsible for their crimes.
- Early-Bird Cameo: He first appears in the prologue of Xenos, but doesn't become directly relevant to the plot until Malleus.
- Evil Weapon: His daemonic sword, Kharnagar.
- Fallen Hero: For a given value of "hero", anyway. By the time we meet him, he's become so twisted by the dark powers he was relying on that he's physically mutating and is doing some terrible things in pursuit of a mad scheme.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Was once a paragon of the Ordo Malleus, but by the time he appears in the book, his methods and goals are as monstrous as the forces of chaos he claims to fight.
- Hidden Villain: Eisenhorn doesn't learn that Quixos is even alive, let alone behind both Cherubael and the Thracian Atrocity, until fairly late in the book.
- Horned Humanoid: He’s grown rudimentary antlers as a result of his corruption by the time Eisenhorn encounters him.
- Master Swordsman: He's described as moving so quickly in swordfights that he can't be seen with the naked eye.
- Reduced to Dust: He crumbles into dust after Eisenhorn mortally wounds him, leaving behind his empty armour and cybernetic implants.
- Tautological Templar: He's convinced that only heretics would try to stop him from completing his work, work which even the most radical of Inquisitors would denounce as heretical. Even his last words are to condemn Eisenhorn as a heretic.
- Walking Spoiler: Thanks to being a Hidden Villain for most of Malleus.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: His end goal is to create duplicates of the Cadian Pylons, supercharge them with the energies of captive psykers, and use them to collapse the Eye of Terror in on itself. While the goal itself may be commendable, the methods he uses to achieve it—such as fostering Chaos cults to do his bidding, binding daemons into his service, murdering anyone who gets in his way, and committing acts of terrorism and mass murder against the very Imperium he ostensibly serves just to cover up his activities—are nothing short of monstrous, to say nothing of the fact that his method of closing the Eye of Terror could also destroy several subsectors. Eisenhorn speculates that Quixos knows this and doesn't care.
Imperial Citizens
Arnault Tantalid
A fanatical witch-hunter of the Ministorum, Arnault Tantalid has a grudge against Eisenhorn. He comes after Eisenhorn in Malleus, looking to settle the score.- An Arm and a Leg: In their final encounter, Eisenhorn cuts off Tantalid’s hand before slicing him in half.
- Badass Preacher: He’s a gun-toting, Powered Armor-wearing clergyman.
- The Dreaded: He’s known and feared throughout the Helican sub-sector.
- Fantastic Racism: He hates psykers, even those that might be of use to the Imperium. Before Malleus, he and Eisenhorn clashed over a group of psychic children that had been kidnapped by slavers. Eisenhorn wanted to free the kids so that they could go on to serve the Imperium, while Tantalid wanted to kill them.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Eisenhorn bisects him from the left shoulder to the groin.
- Villainous Rescue: He kills Beldame Sadia, who had a poisoned and dying Eisenhorn at her mercy, because he wants to kill Eisenhorn himself.
- Would Hurt a Child: In the backstory, he tried to murder a group of kidnapped children for the crime of being psykers. Though Eisenhorn drove him off, two of the kids were killed in the crossfire.
Crezia Berschilde
A former surgeon and old acquaintance of Eisenhorn’s, Crezia first met the Inquisitor when she operated on him after he lost his hand in a firefight. Eisenhorn seeks her out to treat Medea’s injuries following the attack on Spaeton House.- Call-Back: She’s the surgeon who gave Eisenhorn a new hand after he lost the original in the short story Missing in Action.
- Florence Nightingale Effect: She fell in love with Eisenhorn after performing surgery on him, and though they broke off their relationship long ago, she still has strong feelings for him by the time of Hereticus.
- New Old Flame: She had a relationship with Eisenhorn between the events of the first and second books, but isn’t introduced, or even mentioned, until book three.
Valentin Drusher
An aging Magos Biologis who has been trapped on the backwater world of Gershom for thirty years. Eisenhorn contracts him in The Magos with the promise of passage off Gershom to any planet he wants. His intellect and dry wit is only matched by his cowardice and crippling self-loathing.- Action Survivor: Despite having no combat training and being a self-admitted coward, Drusher has been forced to hold his own in a fight on multiple occaisions and came out alive each time.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Magos is told primarily from Drusher's perspective.
- Amazon Chaser: His ex-wife, Germaine Macks, was a member of the Adeptus Arbites. Fifteen years after their divorce, he still holds a candle for her.
- Ascended Extra: Drusher originally appeared in the short stories The Curiosity and Gardens of Tycho, which were unrelated to the Eisenhorn series, and became the focus character of The Magos.
- Butt-Monkey: No one ever hesitates to have a laugh at the poor man's expense. He believes he's this for the universe itself.
- Cowardly Lion: He's a feeble man, and he's terrified by the prospect of even holding a gun, but when push comes to shove, he'll stand his ground against rogue tyranids, murder servitors, and Cognitae agents. It earns him Harlan Nayl's respect.
- Fatal Flaw: Low self-esteem. Drusher has a bad habit of thinking the worst of himself, and pretty much rolls over for anyone who kicks him. It is, in part, what cost him his marriage, after his wife got fed up with his self-pity and threw him out.
- Genius Ditz: Drusher isn't very good with social cues and overthinks pretty much everything, but he's such a brilliant Biologis that he can apply his understanding of animal behaviour to criminal pathology with staggering accuracy.
- Hero of Another Story: Drusher was the protagonist of The Curiosity and the Gardens of Tycho, two of Abnett's short stories that were entirely unrelated to the Eisenhorn saga and described as "CSI 40K".
- Not That Kind of Doctor: In a meta sense. In general, Magos is a title reserved for the AdMech, and Magos Biologis is a Magos of the Biologis division, a wing of the Mechanicus. Despite his title, Drusher does not have any ties with the Adeptus Mechanicus, and his title is used as synonymous with "Doctor of Biology". He is simply a freelance, albeit highly qualified, zoologist and botanist.
- Perpetual Poverty: Drusher's life is marked by constantly being down on his luck, sometimes by circumstance, often by his own bad choices. The Curiosity had him fairly well off, having just completed a commission for the complete taxonomy of the world of Gersham, the aftermath of which had him staying on planet for about two years, in which his money ran out and he can't afford passage offworld. By The Gardens of Tycho, he's reduced to teaching and even supplementing that by tutoring in water color painting to make ends meet. By The Magos, he's renting out a seaside shack in the middle of nowhere.
- Prematurely Grey-Haired: Drusher's hair had already lost all color before he turned forty.
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: The events of The Magos help him grow enough of a spine to reconcile with his ex-wife.
- Smart People Know Latin: He's been shown to have at least a decent grasp of High Gothic.
The Forces of Chaos
Murdin Eyclone
Also called "the Recidivist," Murdin Eyclone is a heretic who acts as a mercenary, selling his services to various Chaos cults. Eisenhorn tracks him down on the planet Hubris and kills him at the beginning of Xenos.- Boom, Headshot!: Eisenhorn shoves a gun into Eyclone’s mouth and blows his brains out.
- Posthumous Character: In many ways. He dies quickly in the first few chapters of Xenos, but most of what Eisenhorn and company do for the remainder of the trilogy is shaped, or at least initiated, by the clues they picked up from Eyclone.
- Starter Villain: He was Eisenhorn’s first major nemesis, with Eisenhorn hunting him for six years prior to the events of the book. He’s dead by chapter three.
- Storyboard Body: When inspecting his body Eisenhorn sees evidence of tattoos that have been removed to mark his shifting allegiances.
- Taking You with Me: What he intended to do to Eisenhorn with the metallic worm hidden under one of his fingernails.
Pontius Glaw
An infamous heretic who was killed more than two hundred years before the events of the first book; while his physical body was slain, he lives on as a preserved consciousness inside an arcane device called "the Pontius".- And I Must Scream: He was trapped in a crystal for centuries, unable to do anything.
- Deader than Dead: Eisenhorn destroys Glaw's soul crystal at the end of Hereticus, killing him once and for all.
- Flechette Storm: By spinning at a high speed, he can fire the blades that make up his cape at people. One of Eisenhorn’s associates is on the receiving end of this: he crumbles like cottage cheese.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Pontius was just a bored, thrill-seeking nobleman until he put on a cursed torc one day. The torc corrupted him instantly, and he became the most infamous heretic in the Helican subsector.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Glaw isn’t much of a threat in the first two books. He has no body, after all, and he’s prevented from using his psychic powers in various ways. Then Magos Bure builds him a robotic body, and he becomes far more dangerous, rebuilds his powerbase, wipes out most of Eisenhorn’s associates in a single day, and nearly gets his hands on a dead god’s superweapon that could destroy the universe.
- Sense Loss Sadness: Being nothing more than a mind preserved in a crystal for centuries has left Glaw unable to experience the finer things in life, like the wind on his face or the taste of fine food.
- Villainous Breakdown: He flips out when Eisenhorn rips up the Malus Codicium in front of him, and desperately tries to recover the pages. He’s so fixated on this that he forgets Eisenhorn is there, which allows the weakened Eisenhorn to kill him.
- We Can Rebuild Him: Eisenhorn successfully wrests a great deal of information out of him by promising to have a custom robotic body built for him that his Soul Jar can be mounted in and controlled by. Eisenhorn is true to his word, which costs him dearly by the end.
Oberon Glaw
The current lord of House Glaw. Though he and his house maintain a front of loyalty to the Imperium, Oberon and his kin are just as heretical as their ancestor Pontius.- Big Bad: As the ringleader of House Glaw’s conspiracy to obtain the Necroteuch, he is arguably the main villain of Xenos.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He dies from an explosion hurling part of an axle through his skull.
- Just Between You and Me: Defied. He refuses to tell Eisenhorn anything about his plans, even when he has Eisenhorn helpless and at his mercy.Eisenhorn: What is the Pontius?Glaw: If you don’t know, I’m hardly going to tell you.
Gorgone Locke
A rogue trader in service to House Glaw, Locke is one of the main antagonists of Xenos.- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, Locke bleeds out after being crushed by falling debris, with Eisenhorn literally and figuratively branding him as a heretic as he dies. The videogame has Eisenhorn fatally stab Locke after defeating him in a boss fight, and omits the branding.
- Torture Technician: He’s a master of the strousine neural scourge, and uses it to torture Eisenhorn for information.
Mandragore
A Chaos Space Marine of the Emperor's Children; he works with the Glaws to recover the Necroteuch in Xenos.- The Brute: He's not given much characterization beyond being a big, scary monster-man, and he dies on the same planet he is introduced on.
- Off with His Head!: Eisenhorn manages to do this after Mandragore becomes entranced by the Necroteuch. He immediately bursts into flames for good measure.
- Spontaneous Human Combustion: His flesh bursts into green fire after his death; Eisenhorn exploits this by sliding the Necroteuch inside the blazing furnace that used to be Mandragore's torso armor, destroying it.
Cherubael
A powerful daemonhost who takes a keen interest in Eisenhorn as the series goes on...- Affably Evil: Straddles the line between this and Faux Affably Evil a lot. He speaks in a friendly familiar manner to Eisenhorn whenever they meet, despite the fact that he is always going to be doing something murderously evil.
- Blasphemous Boast: He mocks Eisenhorn with one in Hereticus. Eisenhorn is not impressed.Eisenhorn: The Emperor protects.
Cherubael: The Emperor craps himself at the sound of my name. - Captured Super-Entity: Like all daemonhosts, Cherubael is a powerful daemon bound into a human body and forced to serve a mortal master. First Quixos, and then Eisenhorn.
- The Chessmaster: His reason for ensuring that Eisenhorn is pulled into Inquisitor Quixos' plans was the foreknowledge that Eisenhorn would be the one to free him from Quixos' control. This backfires when it turns out that Eisenhorn doesn't appreciate being used.
- Cross-Melting Aura: In Hereticus, a priest brandishes an Aquila at Cherubael. It keeps Cherubael at bay for a little while, but then the Aquila melts in the priest’s hands.
- Demon of Human Origin: The chaos entity known as "Cherubael" is a Daemon Prince, meaning it was originally a mortal being, possibly a human, who embraced Chaos and became a thing of the Warp.
- Dragon with an Agenda: He’s effectively Quixos’s right-hand man, but his servitude is completely involuntarily and he wishes to be free. He manipulates Eisenhorn in order to bring this about.
- God Guise: Cherubael established a minor cult on Cadia that worships him as a god. He exploits this cult to take measurements of the Cadian pylons for his hidden master.
- Humanoid Abomination: He’s a Daemonhost, so it comes with the territory.
- Light Is Not Good: His host's eyes radiate a white light, but you shouldn't let that fool you.I had always presumed white light to be pure and somehow chaste, to be noble and good. But this whiteness was unutterably evil, chilling, its purity an abomination.
- Meaningful Name: "Cherub", after a kind of angel most people associate with plump little cheerful creatures; "Bael", after a name for the devil. Perfect fit for a character who embodies Light Is Not Good.
- One-Winged Angel: He showed up in what was possibly his true form early in Hereticus when Gregor summoned him unbound from a host. Unlike most daemon princes, which appear as a monstrous humanoid, Cherubael appeared as a sinisterly simple and pure ball of white light. A Ministorum priest mistook him for a manifestation of the Emperor.
- Seers: He can see the future to some extent, and foresaw that he and Eisenhorn would have a shared fate, particularly that Eisenhorn would be the one to free him from Quixos's control a century in advance. He did not foresee that Eisenhorn would enslave him afterward, however.
- Time Abyss: One account states that he plagued the galaxy for thousands, if not millions of years before being bound.
- To the Pain: He delivers this charming little threat of torture to Eisenhorn and Bequin in Xenos.'Let us both be abundantly clear about this, Gregor. You will give me the primer. Either you will hand me the primer now, or I will come over to you and take it. And break every bone in your body. And rape that girl at your side. And break every bone in her body too. And then drag your jiggling carcasses down into the chamber below and string you both up on the hooks, and burn out your agony centers as I wait for the bombardment to flatten this place.'
He paused.
'Your choice.' - Villainous Friendship: His relationship with Eisenhorn is...complicated. Gregor hates and fears him, but eventually comes to rely and even trust him, even if he doesn't like Cherubael. Between his changing masters, Cherubael often switches between furious with Eisenhorn and liking him, even when trying to kill him.
Prophaniti
Another daemonhost bound to the same master as Cherubael. Eisenhorn first encounters Prophaniti on Cadia while investigating the Sons of Bael cult.- Alien Blood: Its host body bleeds glowing white ichor.
- Body Surf: He can possess another person whenever his current body is destroyed.
- Bullet Catch: When Eisenhorn shoots at Prophaniti with a storm bolter, he effortlessly catches each round in his bare hands and tosses them aside. He focuses all of its attention on Eisenhorn to do so, however, leaving him vulnerable to follow-up attacks from the Inquisitor's retinue.
- Deader than Dead: Eisenhorn impales Prophaniti with his runestaff and channels so much power through it that he annihilates the daemon outright.
- Humanoid Abomination: He’s a Daemonhost, a Daemonic entity of the warp bound into a host body, so it comes with the territory.
- Punny Name: It’s a play on the word “profanity”.
- Super-Toughness: His host body can withstand injuries that would kill a normal person many times over, and he takes one hell of a pounding before finally being obliterated by the guncutter’s cannons. Even then, destroying Prophaniti’s body doesn’t actually stop him.
