Starcraft Ghosts vs Officio Assassinorum

[Srelex]

How would a Terran Ghost fare against the main types of assassins of the Imperium--Vindicares, Callidus, and Eversors? We'll assume a one-on-one for each in a generic urban environment. If need be, it could be a specific Ghost like Nova.

Here's information on both:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Officio_Assassinorum
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Ghost

I do believe that there are Starcraft comics and novels that detail Ghost capabilitiess before anyone starts about gameplay.

[Thanas]

If it is Nova, then you go up against someone who is probably the most powerful psionic terran (depending where you rate Kerrigan on the scale - we know that Nova is a P10 on the scale and Kerrigan - pre infestation - is at least a P8). Nova is also able to move at four times the speed of a human.

She also is able to easily control control both human and zerg minds (unknown for Protoss) and has once fried the brains of over fifty people simultaneously when leashing out with her mind. She also is a very powerful and accomplished user of telekinesis.


So her capabilities are far above that of a typical ghost. The typical ghost is a very expert assassin but has usually no telekinetic abilities and has to focus upon specific minds to read them (unlike Nova, who has to make an effort not to read minds).

[Sinewmire]

Depends if Starcraft's Psionics and 40k's Psychics are linked. If so, a Culexus assassin is actually more dangerous to Nova than to the average ghost.

[Srelex]

Depends if Starcraft's Psionics and 40k's Psychics are linked. If so, a Culexus assassin is actually more dangerous to Nova than to the average ghost.

40k psionics is Warp-based; Starcraft's is not. Therefore, I doubt it.

[Shroom Man 777]

You read the Ghost novels, Thanas? How good are they?

[Thanas]

You read the Ghost novels, Thanas? How good are they?

I read them but did not pay money for them (a friend of me for some reason has a whole library of trash SF).

The Ghost Novel though is well done, as is Liberty's crusade. They are the only books I would pay money for (oh, and the Manga is surprisingly good as well - and more like a comic instead of manga stuff).

[Todeswind]

I'd argue that the 40k assassins were more dangerous if only because their range of abilities is far more specific and specialized. The ghosts seem to be generalists, in game they're snipers but they are ostensibly special forces troopers with enhancements to put them beyond the range of human abilities. The thing is that while they have a wider range of skills than the 40k assassins do they aren't as good at any one of them.

IF what you're asking is who would win in a fight I say it would depend on the context but I tend to put 40k elite ground troops on par or above par with most SF universes. The Ghosts are unquestionably dangerous but I'd argue that any assassin that has to sneak onto a deamon world, kill a deamon primarch and come back to tell about it is probably more so than the Ghost.

As to the ability of the Culexus assassin's abilities being amplified by being closer to a psychic I actually agree that the SC psyonics probably operate with something closer to what the C'Tan use to manipulate the material world than warp based abilities but even without the amplification they are not a force to be trifled with.

[Thanas]

I'd argue that the 40k assassins were more dangerous if only because their range of abilities is far more specific and specialized. The ghosts seem to be generalists, in game they're snipers but they are ostensibly special forces troopers with enhancements to put them beyond the range of human abilities. The thing is that while they have a wider range of skills than the 40k assassins do they aren't as good at any one of them.

The Ghosts are specialized - they do have sniper teams, assassination, commando types etc. Besides, even RL snipers get basic grunt training.

[Todeswind]

The Ghosts are specialized - they do have sniper teams, assassination, commando types etc. Besides, even RL snipers get basic grunt training.

Without a doubt, but their specialized training is still not to the extend that the 40k assassins are. This being the 40k world of grimdark and shadow everyone on the battlefied must have gone through some absurdly long and unrealistic system of selection. As far as their combat role on the field as snimpers is concerned the ghosts more or less comparable to the Vindicare assassins. If their psychic invisibility is more/less/equal to the stealth-suit used by the Vindicare is up for debate as well as the effectiveness of their respective rifles.

Where I feel that the strength of the 40k assassins lies in the other specializations that aren't battlefield specific. In terms of infiltration I feel that the Calladius is hard to compete with as the Callidus literally have the ability to shapeshift thanks to Polymorphine rather than just putting up the illusion of being someone else. There is one specific case that I'll try and find the specific source for (and if anyone can think of it before I find it please chime in) where a Callidus assassin abducts a target by swallowing them like a python and just walking out the door. Not to mention the Venenum and Vanus temples who are responsible for specalizing in poisions (and other biological weapons) and character assassination and demoralization.

And for sheer "shock troop" power I really struggle to think of something comparable to the Eversor or Culexus assassins.

[Thanas]

Though given the combat situation, how is this going to help them?

[Todeswind]

Though given the combat situation, how is this going to help them?

Well it would depend on the battlefield and under what circumstances they discovered each other/decided to blow each other to bits. How far away are they? How long has each side been at the battlefield/had time to prepare? Do they know in advance that the other is there and trying to kill them?

Even then I think you need to specify which assassin temple we're talking about specifically because the 40k assassins have drastically different styles by which they accomplish their missions.

The Vindicare versus the Ghosts is a crap shoot, they both do more or less the same battlefield role. The Vindicare accomplishes his stealth though technology rather than psyonics but it's more or less the same.

The Eversor versus the Ghosts is really dependent on how close the Eversor is to the Ghost and how many times the Ghost can shoot the drug addled sociopath before he's gotten too close and killing him detonates the explosives in his chest ala-predator. Eversors are suicide troops so living isn't really a big deal to them. They are designed to terrorize entire planetary populations for christ's sake.

The Callidus is also a close range fighter so at range they could be taken out, assuming of course that you can pick out which one they are ( I assume that as a psychic they could) but if they can get close you are screwed. Ignoring their prodigious martial arts skills and the 40k equivalent of a light-saber they use they are shape-shifters so they can bend their bodies in ways that would be physically impossible for other people to survive. The biggest issue would be a) seeing them and b) killing them before they get close.

And the Culexus are just, well outright evil really. It's another fighter best killed at a range considering its disgustingly powerful short ranged attack and how their absence of a soul affects those around them. Provided that you get within a moderate range of one of these however you're pretty much boned. I can't actually think of a fluff example of one of them dying, though their gameplay version is much more balanced.

I'll grant you that a Ghost would probably take out the Venenus or the Vanus without breaking a sweat. They aren't really "combat types."

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

The question of psionics and how they relate is an important one, here.

The feats Thanas mentions puts Nova on par with roughly a Beta-level psyker in 40k terms. Beta-levels are, of course, very very dangerous on pure psychic ability alone (setting aside any paramilitary and spec-ops training for now). In the context of the 40K universe, one would not dispatch the usual Vindicare, Eversor, Callidus, etc. types against a Beta-level psyker; that is specifically what the Culexus Temple is for. Since Culexus assassins are specifically tailored to fight psykers, the question of whether or not Nova is considered a psyker is very important to the debate.

If she is a psyker, then a Culexus/Nova fight would likely come down to individual paramilitary skill and equipment. Since a Culexus is a highly-augmented and amplified untouchable, any psychic abilities would be at the very least nullified (such nullification can even hurt the psyker severely, but we can assume the additional training and augmentation done to a Ghost is enough to withstand that). So it becomes about relative speed, stealth, armor, etc., as well as whether or not and how much Nova could be harmed by the Culexus's arsenal of anti-psyker weaponry.

If she is not a psyker, then the fight is definitely more in Nova's favor. A "normal" assassin would have to contend with Beta-level psychic abilities, which would certainly make the assassin's life much harder. It's unlikely Nova could perform any telepathic trickery on an assassin, however, given how insanely mind-scrubbed and inhuman they're augmented to be. Mentally speaking, they're killing machines (literally), not human beings. Eversors in particularly would be mentally unreachable (see: that Bad End comic strip). So, it comes down to specific assassin Temples and how each fares against Beta-level telekinesis and Nova's own weapons and training.

How urban is the environment, exactly? That affects the Vindicare. Can he set up with a commanding field of fire? Does Nova (or the regular Ghost) have much cover?

The Eversor doesn't care what it's facing or where. Or why. Or how. It just obliterates everything indiscriminately; the question here is whether Nova survives the ensuing meltdown or not.

The Callidus is trickier. Can Nova's telepathy help locate or identify the Callidus? The Callidus appears as pretty much whoever or whatever he or she wants to appear as, and has a brain-frying energy pistol and what amounts to a lightsaber on crack.

[Ford Prefect]

Temple Assassins are pretty whack. A Veneum Assassin goes hand to hand with the notoriously quick and skillful Ragnar Blackmane blinded by acid and pretty much schools the Space Marine. In Soul Hunter a Callidus Assassin dodges hypersonic projectiles with her eyes melting out of her skull. There's also the graphic novel Samos Sanction which depicts a Vindicare sniping a the pilot out of a fighter jet while its on its attack run, and dodging laser beams while in freefall. Also the Vindicare rules in the Dark Heresy supplment Ascension allow them to dodge nuclear explosions.

[Thanas]

A few quote:

Hand to hand combat. Note that we do not know wether Nova is at this level or more powerful.

Mike sneaked into the devastation of the command center. It was easy to know where Kerrigan had gone; Mike just followed the path of broken and bleeding corpses. Men and women in full combat rig had been tossed around like rag dolls and now lay crumpled in pools of their own blood.

He found Kerrigan’s canister rifle, rammed through the front plexishield of a toppled Goliath walker. From up ahead came the sounds of battle. Despite himself, he cradled his own gauss rifle and pressed forward.

And he was rewarded with the privilege of watching Sarah Kerrigan fight.

It was blood poetry, war ballet. She had reached the center of the command center now, armed with her knife and a slugthrower. She would wink into existence, slit a throat, then wink out again. Marines would rush to that location, and she would appear a few feet away, firing a burst point-blank into the helmet of her target. Then gone, then back again, this time with a spinning kick that roke the neck of a bellowing officer.

Mike brought his weapon up but found he could not fire. It was more than just a reluctance to take human life. He could not tell where she was at any one time. And through it all she moved with a cat-like grace and determination that shredded every opponent she encountered.

She was very good with knives. More important, she was like the Protoss—glorious and deadly. He stood in the entrance for only a minute, but it was enough time for Kerrigan to dispatch every enemy in the command center. The only survivors were the ones who chose to flee at the outset.

Note that many of the terrans she dispatched were gene-engineered as well.


Specifically Nova:

It was Nadaner and a dozen of his associates, but their thoughts were focused on Nadaner—those that were focused at all. The man himself was chanting something. No, singing. He was singing a song, and half his people were drunk, no doubt secure in the knowledge that no one would find them in their jungle location, with its dampening field blocking any signals. [...]She was to kill them from a distance, using telepathy. Yes, her training was complete, and she should have been able to take down Nadaner and his people physically with little difficulty—especially since half of them were three sheets to the wind—but that wasn’t her assignment.
The mission was to get close enough to feel their minds clearly and then kill them psionically.
For the next two hours, Nova ran through the jungle, getting closer to her goal.

Two hours distance and she can read their focus and some of their thoughts already.



Effect of her blast:

The TPF had already cordoned off a four-block radius surrounding the skyscraper. When Mal went through the cordon, he saw why: There were bodies everywhere. Not a single sign of trauma on any of them. Also damage consistent with a major explosion, but without any of the signs. No burn marks, no scorching, no evidence of any kind of explosive agent. Plenty of broken glass, metal, plastic, and wood, though.
What was of special note was that the damage was the same regardless of the tensile strength of the material in question. To Mal’s now-trained eye that could only mean one thing: telekinesis.
Which meant this telepath was on a level greater than anything Mal had encountered. Meant a Psi Index of at least eight or higher. Any lower, and you just had telepathy; adding the ability to move things with your mind put you in a class all your own.
Mal had encountered only one PI8 in his six months on the job. That person was currently locked away in the basement of a government building, drooling uncontrollably and unable to form words.
As for the bodies, there was, in fact, one sign of trauma: bleeding through the nose, ears, mouth, and eyes. It was that fourth thing in particular that indicated the likely cause of death to be a psionic attack.
[...]
Shaking his head, Jack said, “Crap. I was hopin’ to keep this. We got somethin’ like three hundred bodies here, between everyone in the building and the people on the street around it. You know what three hundred closed murders’d mean for my promotion chances?”

Then he stopped.
He wasn’t sure why; he just couldn’t move. For some reason, he couldn’t put his leg back down. Or blink. Or move his arms. Or anything.
His head started to hurt.
No, it was on fire. Like someone drove a hot metal spike right through his skull.
This was worse than the time he ran his head through a brick wall just to see if it would work, worse than the time he lit his hair on fire to see how long it would burn, worse even than the time he took raw turk for the first and last time.
“AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”
It had been easier than she thought it would be.

“Agent Kelerchian, I’ve killed three hundred and eighty-two people, and felt thirty-two more, including my family, die in my head. I can tell you everything about every single one of those people—all four hundred and fourteen of them—including what they were thinking at the moment they died.”

Nova was not a PI8. The Wrangler had simply guessed she was at least that because of her telekinesis, just as she herself had when she’d done her surreptitious research into her abilities. In truth, she was a PI10, the highest in the program.

The average Ghost Academy trainee graduated after four years. Attempts to accelerate the program had proven disastrous, as rushing training of this nature simply resulted in bad Ghosts, which did the Dominion no good.
However, the program was such that an above-average trainee could graduate sooner, maybe in as few as three years. (A below-average trainee simply was removed from the Academy permanently.)
In the entire history of the Academy, under two different human governments, only one trainee had made it out in as few as two and a half years: Nova Terra.

Cocking her assault rifle—which she had brought as backup in case she encountered unexpected opposition or wild animals—she leapt down into the hatch, having telepathically determined that Nadaner and his people weren’t right under it.
They were about ten meters to the right of the hatch, and they were very surprised to see a young blonde in a white-with-navy-blue-trim bodysuit, holding a very large gun, leap in through the hole where their hatch used to be.
Twelve people leapt to their feet, some less steadily than others. All of them had had something to drink—except for Cephme, who was allergic to alco-hol—and many were very drunk.
A second later, they were all dead. Steve, who was looking forward to another opportunity to kill many people at once. Pratikh, who joined up because Arcturus Mengsk killed his cousin, and he wanted Mengsk dead in revenge. Cephme, who hated not being able to drink with the others. Yvenna, who loved hearing Nadaner’s stories, even though she knew they were lies. Ray, who wanted to be back home on Halcyon with his girlfriend. Geraddo, who wished Nadaner had some real drinks tonight instead of his usual swill. Alexandra, who was starting to get hungry. Thom and Joan, who’d just gotten married. Joel, who’d just gotten divorced. Alessio and Peter-Michael, the twins who secretly hated each other, but never did anything apart. And David, who hated everybody and everything, and joined Nadaner’s cause so he could have a focus for that rage.
She killed all of them in a second. The first time she deliberately killed someone—the Pitcher—it had taken a supreme effort. Ursitti, the cop who’d been skimming, had been even more difficult. Now, though, killing thirteen people was easier than snapping fingers.

Before his bleeding-through-the-eyes body could even hit the floor of this underground bunker, Nova had turned around and walked back to the hatch. Telekinetically lifting herself up to the surface, she then paused to catch her breath.

The bullets didn’t leave the chamber, thanks to the Ghost’s keeping them there telekinetically

For the rate of fire she has just stopped, see this.

Nova also can apparently shoot off the wings of a fly.

Some vids:

Cloaking technology, at the start
Nova being able to sneak up on a high-level ghost without him ever noticing her, plus cloaking technology
Just for fun

[Cykeisme]

Shouldn't we choose to compare exceptional "named" characters from each universe, or unexceptional characters from each?

Or perhaps Nova is representative of a small corp of elite Ghosts of which there are at least several?

[Shroom Man 777]

Awwww... Thanas-kun leiks Nova-chaaan! Man, that side-mission with her offing Tosh was pretty hilarious. I'm sure it's pure guilty-pleasure. Man. Voodoo-doll revenge attack! What a dick.

An awesome versus would be Nova versus the Vindicare assassin. Then we can find out if Love Can Bloom.

[OmegaChief]

Vindicator cannot shoot the Farseer Nova due to love.

[Todeswind]

@ Thanas: I dispute none of that. It's well established that the Ghosts are very good at what they do, that being said even within the SC cannon both Kerrigan and Nova are outliers. The vast majority of the ghosts aren't as good at what they do in the same way that the vast majority of Jedi would not have been equal to those who sat on the Jedi council.

On a side not I do love that bit with the voodoo doll though I feel that's more fanservice than a real indicator for psychic power.

The main issue we're facing is that both the assassins from Warhammer and the ghosts Starcraft are the consummate badasses of their respective covert-ops fields professions. In Nemesis they make a big deal out of the camoline stealth suit of the Vindicare assassin. The following are unquestionably outliers as well but give some idea as to exactly how absurdly specialized the 40k assassins are.

The literal invisibility is substantially better than the concealment used by the Vindicare assassins, but what they use is nothing to snub. The camoline material described in Nemesis seems to work as a more of a chameleon fabric than a cloaking device but as the Vindicare will regularly stake out their intended target for hours, days, weeks, or even months at a time without moving it seems to suit their purposes.

Edit: I'm sorry I do not have page numbers for the following, my copy is on my kindle.

Where it had impacted, a chunk of walls and floors was missing, as if something had taken a bite out of the building. Kell skirted the yawning gap that opened out to a drop of some fifty or more storeys and continued his climb. The fire-damaged levels stank of seared plastic and burned flesh, but the thick, sticky ash that coated every surface was dull and non-reflective – an ideal backdrop to deaden Kell’s sensor profile still further. He found the best spot in a room that had once been a communal laundry, and arranged his cameoline cloak between the heat-distorted frames of two chairs. Combined with the deadening qualities of his synskin stealthsuit, the marksman would be virtually invisible.

The sun was dipping towards the horizon when a piece of the desert seemed to detach itself and transform into the shape of a man. A cameoline cloak shimmered from the colours of the rust-sand to a deep night-black, revealing a muscular figure in a stealthsuit that was faceless behind a gunmetal spy mask. The mask’s green eye-band studied Valdor and Tariel, where the two of them had sought shelter in the lee of the parked GEV truck. A spindly rifle, easily as long as the man was tall, lay across his back.

A shimmering white figure stood up atop one of the nearby blockhouses, a longrifle in his grip. The white colouration faded into ink-black as the Vindicare deliberately reset his cameoline cloak to a null mode, allowing the Eversor to see him clearly.

And give the obligatory quote about never missing anything as well as citing some absurdly specific wargear (lip reading gunsights).

‘You almost missed that thug with the plasma gun!’ snapped the infocyte.
‘No,’ said Valdor, with a half-smile, ‘he did not.’ The sniper cocked his head. ‘I never miss.’ ‘You came to the Atalantic zone without your vox rig,’
Valdor went on. ‘Comm transmissions would have been detected,’ said
Kell. ‘It would have given me away to the bandits.’ ‘Hence our somewhat unconventional method of locating
you,’ continued the Custodian. Tariel’s eyes narrowed. ‘How did you know when to fire?’ ‘His weapon’s scope contains a lip-reading auspex,’ Valdor
answered for the sniper. ‘Your assignment was open-ended, I believe.’

Which is then backed up by him him shooting a moving gunship's pilot in the head mid bombing run stopping it before it can take out an ally in the seconds between the Culexus killing a target and the gunship's arrival.

Iota left the target’s vehicle and the area around her was suddenly drenched in brilliant white light. The downdraught from a gravity drive beat at the ground, stirring up debris and what remained of the warlord. The sensor suite inside her helm registered a gunship’s weapons grid locking on to her silhouette, and she paused, wondering if it were possible for her to die.
In the next moment, she saw a line of light across the infrared spectrum as a single high-impact bullet passed through the armoured canopy of the gunship, beheading both the pilot and the gunner. Suddenly unguided, the Cyclone’s autoflight system kicked in and brought it down to a soft landing.
Presently two men, one in the operations gear of the Vindicare clade and another in a more basic stealth rig, emerged from one of the smouldering buildings. Iota glanced at them, then went back to watching the spreading fires.

The vindicare's weaponry is likewise specialized as is the ammunition.

Every Vindicare used a longrifle that was uniquely configured for their biomass, shooting style, body kinestics, even tailored to work with the rhythm in which they breathed.

...a .75 calibre bullet manufactured on the Shenlong forge world to the exacting tolerances of the Clade Vindicare.

There was a high-velocity Splinter round in the chamber – on impact with an organic target it would fracture into millions of tiny hair-like fragments, each a charged piece of molly-wire. The wires would expand in a sphere and rip through flesh and bone like a tornado of blades.

The incendiary compound in his next shot hit the main promethium tank and combusted. A fist of orange fire flipped the shuttle over and engulfed it in flames. Shockwaves of damp air struck the flyer and the aircraft was forced down hard, the impact of the landing snapping off the undercarriage.

The Eversor charged again, and the rifle shouted. The first shot had been a kinetic impact round, the kind of bullet that could shatter the engine block of a hover truck or reduce an unarmoured man to meat; that had been enough to attract the Garantine’s attention. The next shot whistled through the frigid air, blurring as it impacted the Eversor’s chest. The round was a heavy dart, fashioned from high-density glassaic. It contained a reservoir of gel within, pressure-injected into the target’s flesh on impact; but it was not a drug or philtre. An Eversor’s body was a chemical hell of dozens of interacting combat medicines, and no poison, no sedative could have been enough to slow it. The gel-matter in the rounds was a myofluid with a very different function; when exposed to oxygen it created a powerful bioelectric charge, a single hit strong enough to stun an ogryn.

The shapeshifting of the Calladius alone makes them consumate infiltrators.

Koyne took a moment to prepare for the next template. Koyne knew Gergerra Rei as well as the actress who played Queen Jocasta, and would adopt him just as easily. The Callidus despised the term ‘mimicry’. It was a poor word that could not encompass the wholeness with which a Callidus would become their disguises. To mimic something was to ape it, to pretend. Koyne became the disguise; Koyne inhabited each identity, even if it was for a short while.
The Callidus was a sculpture that carved itself. Bio-implants and heavy doses of the shapeshifter drug polymorphine made skin, bone and muscle become supple and motile. Those who could not control the freedom it gave would collapse and turn into monstrosities, things like molten waxworks that were little more than heaps of bone and organs. Those with the gift of the self, though, those like Koyne, they could become anyone.
Concentrating, Koyne shifted to neutrality, a grey, sexless form that was smooth and almost without features. The Callidus did not recall any birth-gender; that data was irrelevant when it was possible to be man or woman, young or old, even human or xenos if the will was there.

But beyond the obvious stealth of shapeshifting there are some more esoteric abilities with equal military applications like say having plastique hidden inside your body.

Koyne ran through the screaming, panicking civilians, laser bolts ripping through the air, cutting them down. The assassin vaulted into the corridor and ran to the dead end of it. Red light from the giant Jovian storm seeped in through the observation window, making everything blurry and drenched in crimson.
Time, again. Little enough time. The Callidus concentrated and retched, opening a secondary stomach to vomit up a packet of white, doughy material. With shaking hands, Koyne ripped open the thin membrane sheathing it and allowed air to touch the pasty brick inside. It immediately began to blacken and melt, and quickly the assassin pressed it to the glassaic of the cupola.

Or surviving in a vacuum.

A thing with a strange iridescent carapace flittered in its confinement, catching his eye, and the sheen of the chitin recalled a recent memory. The flesh of the Callidus had looked just the same when they had pulled Koyne out of the vacuum over Jupiter; the shapeshifting assassin had done a peculiar thing, turning into a deformed, almost foetus-like form in order to survive in the killing nothingness of space. Koyne’s skin had undergone a state change from flesh to something like bone, or tooth. Tariel recalled the disturbing sensation of touching it and he recoiled once again.

Or altering their physiology and genetic template to conform to weaponry intented to prevent other species from using them like the C'Tan phase blade or the mid-shredding gun that are their staple weapons.

Meanwhile, Koyne had discovered a case that was totally out of place among all the others. It resembled a whorled shell more than anything else, and the only mechanism to unlock it was the sketch of a handprint etched into the bony matter of the latch – a handprint of three overlong digits and a dual thumb.
‘I have no idea what that may be,’ Tariel admitted. ‘The container, I mean, it looks almost as if it is–’
‘Xenos?’ said Koyne, with deceptive lightness. ‘But that would be prohibited, Vanus. Perish the thought.’ There was a quiet cracking sound as the Callidus’s right hand stretched and shifted in shape, the human digits reformed and merging until they became something more approximate to the alien handprint. Koyne pressed home on the case and it sighed open, drooling droplets of purple liquid on to the decking. Inside the container, the organic look was even more disturbing; on a bed of fleshy material wet with more of the liquid rested a weapon made of blackened, tooth-like ceramics. It was large and off-balance in shape, the front of it grasping a faceted teardrop crystal the sea-green colour of ancient jade.
‘What is it?’ Tariel asked, his disgust evident.
‘In my clade it has many names,’ said Koyne. ‘It rips open minds, tears intellect and thought to shreds. Those it touches remain empty husks.’ The Callidus held it out to the Vanus, who backed away. ‘Do you wish to take a closer look?’

Or making pockets within themselves to hide weapons

It fit snugly, but the adjustment of the fluid-filled morphing bladders layered underneath the Callidus’s skin allowed the assassin to alter body mass and dimension to accommodate it a little better.

And the ever practical ability to mimmic the vocal patters of anyone she's ever heard perfectly.

‘Good.’ Koyne stood up. ‘We don’t want the alarm to be raised before we are done here.’ Concentrating on a thought-shape and impressing that on flesh, the Callidus altered the dimension of its vocal chords, mimicking the tonality of an officer caught on one of the intercepted vox broadcasts. ‘We will proceed.’

And the Eversors are just, well, evil. They make due with drugs and genetic enhancements rather than psychic powers but they do damn well. They are literally so dangerous that they're kept sedated at all times when they aren't being deployed for battle.

It was the manner of his life that he existed in the thick of the killing. He had a dim understanding of the other times, the times when he would lie in the baths of amnio-fluids as the patient machines of his clade healed his wounds or upgraded the stimjectors and drug glands throughout his body. The times when, in the dreamless no-sleep between missions, hypnogoge data streams would unfold in his head like blossoms of information, target profiles linked to mood-triggers that would give him bursts of elation for every kill, jolts of pleasure for each waypoint reached, jerks of pain if he deviated off-programme.

‘Eversor.’ The sniper’s voice issued out from the earpiece of his skull-mask. ‘There’s a group of irregulars to the south, under the broken chronograph near the monorail entrance. They’re dug in with a heavy gun.’ The Garantine took a look around the urn and saw the shattered clock face. He grunted an affirmative and Kell went on. ‘They’re holding off a unit of Defence Force troopers. Not many of the PDFs left. Hold and observe.’
That last sentence actually drew a laugh from the Eversor. ‘Oh, no.’ He jumped to his feet, the hissing of stimjectors sounding in his ears, and rolling fire flooded through him. The Garantine’s eyes widened behind his mask and his body resonated like a struck chord. Kell was saying something over the vox, but it seemed like the chattering of an insect.
The Garantine leapt into the air from the balcony overlooking the ticketing plaza and fell two storeys to land on the top of the smashed clock, where it hung from spars extending from the ceiling. The weight of his arrival dislodged the whole construction and he dropped with it, riding it to the tiled floor below to land behind the makeshift gun emplacement. The clock exploded into fragments as it struck the ground, ejecting cogwheels and bits of the fascia in all directions, the shock of it staggering the men behind the autocannon.
Kell had called them irregulars; that meant they were not soldiers, at least in an official sense. His drug-sharpened perception took in all details of them at once. They were garbed in pieces of armour, some of it PDF or Arbites issue, and the weapons they carried were an equally random assortment. At the sight of the towering, skull-masked monster that had fallen from the skies above them, the men on the autocannon hauled the weapon around on its tripod, swinging it to bear on the Garantine.
He roared and threw himself at them, his shout lost in the scream of the Executor. Bolt shells broke the bodies of the men in wet, red bursts, and he fell into their line, raking others with the spines of his neuro-gauntlet. The barbs of the glove bit into flesh and sent those it touched reeling to a twitching, frenzied death. Those on the autocannon he killed by punching, putting his fist through their ribcages. As an afterthought, he kicked the tripod gun away, and it rolled to the tiled floor.
Shivering with the rush, he laughed again. Through his adrenaline haze, he saw the men in the PDF uniforms warily peer out of cover, and then finally advance towards him with laser carbines ready.

And as the drug dispensers within their heads give them a narcotic reward based upon how challenging their last fight was they tend to be... utterly psychotic in their pursuit of a target. This also shows another example of the Callidus hiding weapons inside of herself. One of the reoccurring plot points in the novel is that the Eversor is quite determined to get the chance to kill a space marine, they believe that by killing Horus it will cause the traitors to give up/lose entirely so it is possibly his last chance and it's early enough after Istaavan that there wouldn't have been too many opportunities.

The Callidus could hear the animalistic panting of the Eversor as he moved like lightning back and forth across the Space Marine’s line of sight, goading the Astartes into firing after him. Stimm-glands chugged and injectors hissed as the Garantine’s bloodstream was flooded with bio-chemicals and cocktails of drugs that pushed him beyond the speed of even an Astartes’s enhanced reflexes.
Koyne’s gun, slick with mucus and fluids, finally vomited itself out of the assassin’s stomach and on to the floor. The Callidus clutched at it and released a shot in the direction of the grey-armoured hulk. The neural shredder projected a spreading plume of sickly energetic discharge around the Son of Horus and the warrior staggered with the hit, one hand coming up to clutch at his helmet.
The Garantine roared past, sprinting over Koyne where the Callidus lay propped up against a wall. ‘My kill!’ he was shouting, the words repeating and coming so fast they became a single stream of noise. ‘My killmykillmykillmykill–’
He was a blur of claws and gun, too fast for the eye to process the images. Sparks flew as the Eversor assassin collided bodily with the Astartes and knocked him down, the Garantine firing his Executor into the impact holes in the warrior’s chest at point-blank range, clawing wildly at his helmet with the spiked talon of his neuro-gauntlet. Koyne could hear the Astartes snarling, angrily fighting back, but the Eversor was like mercury, slipping through his clumsy armoured fingers.
Then dark, arterial blood spurted as the armour was cracked and the Garantine dug into the meat he found inside. His bolter dry, the Astartes punched and bludgeoned the Eversor, but if any pain impulses reached the Garantine’s mind, the brew of rage-enhancers and sense-inhibitors swimming through his bloodstream deadened them to nothing.
With a croaking, wet rattle, the Astartes sank back and collapsed. Chattering with coarse laughter, the Garantine swept up the fallen combat blade and pressed all his weight behind it. The weapon sank through sparking power cables and myomer muscles until it pierced flesh and cut bone.
After a minute or so, the Eversor dropped to the floor, still shaking with the aftershock of his chemical frenzy. ‘Ss-so…’ he began, struggling to speak clearly, forcing himself to slow down with each panting gulp of breath. ‘Th-this is how it feels to k-kill one of them…’ He grinned widely behind the fanged mask. ‘I like it.’

And really anyone who can kill "clusters" of space marines at close range with a pistol and a freaking sword has a pair of brass ones the size of basketballs. He does die, but he kills a shitload of Space Marines in the process and in the ensuing explosion.

The Eversor ran screaming into the cluster of rebel Astartes, blasting the first he found off his feet with a screeching salvo of rounds from the Executor. He collided with the next and the two of them went down in a crash of ceramite and metal. The Garantine felt the boiling churn of energy racing through his veins, his mech-enhanced heart beating at such incredible speed the sound it made in his ears was one long continuous roar. The stimm-pods in the cavities of his abdomen broke their regulator settings and flooded him with doses of Psychon and Barrage pumped directly into his organs, while atomiser grilles in the frame of his fang-mask puffed raw, undiluted anger-inducers and neuro-triggers into his nostrils.
He rode on a wave of frenzy, of black and mad hate that sent him howling with uncontrollable laughter, each choking snarl rattling like gunshots. He was so fast; so lethal; so satisfied like this.
The Garantine had been awake now for the longest period of his life since before they had found him in the colony, the gnawed bones of his neighbours in his little child’s hand, the tips sharpened to make a kill with. He missed the dreamy no-mind bliss of the stasis cowls. He felt lost without the whispering voices of the hypnogoges. This kind of living, the hour-to-hour, day-by-day existence that the rest of them found so easy… it was a hell of stultifying torpor for the Garantine. He hated the idea of this interminable yesterday and today and tomorrow. He craved the now.
Every second he was awake, he felt as if the pure rage that fuelled him was being siphoned away, making him weak and soft. He needed his sleep. Needed it like air.
But he needed his kills even more. Better than the hardest hit of combat philtre, more potent than the jags of pleasure-analogue that issued from the lobo-chips in his grey matter – the kills were the best high of them all.
He was pounding on the Space Marine’s helmet, smashing in the eye-lenses, beating his clawed hands bloody. The Executor was a club he used to bludgeon and swipe.
Impacts registered on him, blasts of infernal heat throwing him off his victim, driving him hard into the road. Heavy, drug-tainted vitae frothed at his mouth and bubbled through the maw of the fang-mask. He felt no pain. There was only a white ball of warmth in the middle of him, and it was growing. It expanded to fill the Garantine with a rush the like of which he had never felt before. The implants in him stuttered and died, shattered by glancing bolter hits and knife stabs. He had nothing but rags below the right knee.
Every muscle in his body shuddered as the death-sign triggered a dormant artificial gland beneath his sternum. The engorged, orb-shaped organ spent its venom load, bursting as the end came close. The Terminus gland poured a compound into the Garantine that made the blood in his veins boil, turning it to acid. Every drug and chemical mixed uncontrollably, becoming potent, toxic, explosive.
The soft tissues of the Eversor’s eyes cooked in their orbits, and so he was blind to the final flash of exothermic release, as his body was consumed in an inferno of spontaneous combustion.

Their sensor auspex package is designed to help them find even the smallest targets at breakneck speeds.

There was a flurry of movement and the Eversor had his Executor aimed upward, the sensor mast of his Sentinel gear drawing a bead; the combi-weapon’s needler made a snapping sound and the bird died in mid-turn, falling to the ground like a stone.

And they're fucking insane... in case I forgot to mention it.

The Garantine greedily gathered armfuls of hardware, taking bandoliers of melta-grenades, a wickedly barbed neuro-gauntlet and the rig for a sentinel array. With another guttural laugh, he snagged a heavy, blunt-ended slaughterer’s sword and placed it under his arm. ‘I’ll be in my bunk,’ he sniggered, and wandered away under his burden.
Iota watched the Eversor go. ‘Look at him. He’s almost… happy.’

And even if you do kill them you have to contend with a sizable failsafe.

For a second Kell’s finger tightened on the trigger; but to murder an Eversor rage-killer at point-blank range would be suicidal. The gene-modifications deep inside the Garantine’s flesh contained within them a critical failsafe system that would, should the assassin’s heart ever stop, create a combustive bio-meltdown powerful enough to destroy everything close at hand.

And of course the mandatory slaughtering of an absurdly large group.

Their auspexes ranged all over the city, networking with aerial patrol mechanicals, ground troops, law enforcement units, even traffic monitors. They were looking for threats, trying to pinpoint bombers or snipers or anyone that might upset the Governor’s plans for this day. If anyone so much as fired a shot within the city limits, they would know about it.
They did not expect to find an assassin so close at hand. Firstly the Garantine let loose with his Executor combi-pistol, taking care to use only the needler; bolt fire would raise the alarm too soon. Still, it was enough. Two-thirds of them were dead or dying before the first man’s gun cleared its holster. They simply could not compete with the amplified, drug-enhanced reflexes of the rage-killer. All of them were moving in slow-motion compared to him, not a one could hope to match him. The Eversor killed with break-neck punches and brutal, bullet-fast stabbing. He wrenched throats into wreckage, stove in ribs and crushed spines; and for the one PDF officer who actually dared to shoot a round in his direction, he left his gift to the last. That man, he murdered by putting the fingers of his neuro-gauntlet through his eyes and breaking his skull.
With a rough chuckle, the Garantine let his kill drop and licked his lips. The room was silent, but outside the crowd cried for the Sons of Horus.

And I really cannot overstate the absurd power behind the Culexus assassin's weaponry. The following scene directly follows the warlord calling for an airstrike in an area he is inside of specifically because he believes he has a better chance of surviving being bombed than surviving the Culexus's attack. Even assuming that the null-field generated by the Culexus cannot nullify the Ghost's powers it would a vastly difficult foe.

The guardian, half in and half out of the door, coughed suddenly and blood spluttered from his mouth. He turned, the pain in his skull burning like cold fire, as a figure in glistening black fell the distance from the roof to the courtyard floor. A ring of invisible force radiated out from it, causing a halo of rain to vaporise into mist.
‘Kill her!’ shouted the warlord, his voice high and filled with terror. ‘Kill her!’
The psyker took a foot in the spine and Jun shoved him out of the safety of the car, onto his knees. The gull wing door slammed shut and sealed tight.
The Culexus assassin stepped forwards as the guardian got up again, catching sight of the rain rolling down the contours of her skull-helm, dripping from the orbit of the single ruby eye as if she were weeping. The guardian reached inside himself and went deep, past the blazing pain, past the horrific wave of nothingness that threatened to drown him. He found a breath of fire and released it.
The pyrokinetic pulse chugged into existence, streaming from his twitching fingertips. The blast hit the Culexus dead on, and she backed away, shaking her distended steel head; but the tiny flare of hope the guardian experienced died a second later as the fire ebbed, almost as if it had been pulled into the ribbing of the assassin’s sinister garb.
He was aware of the car moving forwards in fits and starts, but his attention could not stray from the grinning, angular skull. The sapphire eye-clutch shimmered and the punishing gaze of the weapon known as the animus speculum was turned upon him.
Power, raw and inchoate, sucked in from the fabric of the warp and from the guardian’s abortive attack, drawn in like light from the event horizon of a singularity, was now unleashed. A pulse of energy flashed from the psychic cannon and blasted the warlord’s bodyguard backward, slamming him into the wall of the courtyard. As he tumbled to the ground, he combusted from within, the fire consuming his flesh and his screams.

The oversized helmet worn by the Culexus apparently has the ability to scan the surrounding area, though I couldn't speak to the range and am having trouble finding the specific quote. On the other hand I did find the specific reference to grenades made with the specific intention of stopping psychic powers from working entirely.

The woman plucked one of the grenades from the case and sniffed it. Her eyes narrowed. ‘What is this? It smells like the death of suns.’
‘I am not permitted to know the full details,’ admitted the infocyte. ‘But the devices contain an exotic form of particulate matter that inhibits the function of psionic ability in a localised area.’
Iota studied the grenade for a long moment, toying with the activator pin, before finally giving Tariel a wan look. ‘I’ll take these,’ she said, snatching the box from his hand.

Plus the whole soulless thing makes them hard to even look at. They regularly refer to her as invisible till she does something to draw direct attention to her.

Iota’s pariah soul – or lack thereof – made people turn away from her, made them avert their eyes from the shadowed corners where she moved. It was a boon for her stealth, and with it she entered the sanctuary encampment without raising an alarm. She scrambled up a disused crane gantry, across the empty cab and along the rusted jib. Old cables whined in atonal chorus as the winds plucked at them.

The Venenum's abilities to create virulent and bizzare toxins is equally absurd.

Conventional poisons were worthless ranged against the physiology of an Astartes; they could ingest the harshest of venoms as Tobeld might sip wine. But Tobeld was here precisely because poison was his weapon of choice. It could be swift; it could be patient, escaping detection, lying dormant. He was one of Clade Venenum’s finest tox-artisans; in his apprenticeship he had manufactured killing philtres from the most base of components, he had terminated dozens of targets and left no trace. And he slowly came to believe that he was capable of this, if fate would only grace him with a single opportunity.
The weapon lay in the vial. Tobeld had created a binary agent, a mixture of molecular accelerant gels suspending a live sample of gene-altered Baalite thirstwater – a virulent fluidic life form that could consume all moisture within living tissues in a matter of seconds.

And their weaponry likewise reflects their fondness for poisons toxins and virulent substances.

‘Jenniker!’ Sinope cried out her name as a shape blurred towards them. The Venenum felt a massive impact against her and she was thrown aside, losing her grip on the chest. She managed to fire two quick bursts from the bact-gun as she tumbled, rewarded with the pop and hiss of acids striking flesh.

As is their willingness to kill entire population centers for the purpose of getting to a single target.

The purpose of a Venenum poisoner was as part of the original exit strategy for the Execution Force. The detonation of several short-duration hypertoxin charges would sow confusion among the human populace of the city and clog the highways with panicking civilians, restricting the movements of the Astartes. But now they would do without that – and Kell felt conflicted about it. He was almost pleased she was not here to be a part of this, that she would not be at risk if something went wrong.
The echo of that thought rang hard in his chest, and the press of the sudden emotion surprised him. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had entered the room in the Venenum manse – the coldness and the loathing. It was identical to the expression she had worn all those years ago, on the day he had told her he was accepting the mission to find mother and father’s killer. Only then, there had also been pity there as well. Perhaps she had lost the capacity to know compassion, over time.

Vanus are not battlefield soldiers but rather the information gathering arm of the officio assassinorum.

Vanus’s contribution to the Execution Force, one of the clade’s newest operatives, with a skull crammed full of data and a willingness to serve. They called Tariel’s kind ‘infocytes’; essentially they were human computing engines, but at the very far opposite of the spectrum from the mindless meat-automata of servitors. In matters of strategy and tactics, the insight of an infocyte was unparalleled; their existence cemented Clade Vanus as the intelligence-gathering faction of the Officio Assassinorum. It was said they had never been known to make an error of judgement. Valdor considered that as little more than disinformation, however; the creation and dissemination of propaganda was also a core strength of the Vanus.

However that is not to say they are less efficient assassins.

‘In effect. I discovered through program artefacts uncovered during routine information-trawling that he was in the process of embezzling Imperial funds as part of a plan to finance a move against several senior members of the Ministorum. He was attempting to build a powerbase through which to influence Imperial colonial policy. Through the use of covert blinds, I inserted materials of an incendiary nature into Braganza’s personal datastacks. The resultant discovery of these fabrications led to his death at the hands of his co-conspirators, and in turn the revelation of their identities.’

The biggest difference between a ghost and an Imperial Assassin is that the GEoM assassins have literally no concept of collateral damage.

Collateral damage was a term she refused to allow into her lexicon, and yet here they were, their presence more damaging to the locals than the guns of the nobles.

The aforementioned exit strategy involved the releasing of powerful BWMDs in population centers as a distraction not as a way of killing the target a freaking distraction. It is this callous disregard for their own lives and suicidal dedication to killing the other person that, in my mind, makes the GEoM assassins more dangerous.

[Thanas]

So if we use this one on one, then I suggest we try to answer the following things:

a) Are WH40K assassins able to mask their telepathic presence, in essence appearing dead?
b) Are they able to handle telekinesis as described in the quotes?

Because while the feats at close combat are excellent, they are worthless in what is sure to amount to a sniper duel, or worthless in close combat if they cannot avoid getting their neck snapped with telekinesis.

[white_rabbit]

So if we use this one on one, then I suggest we try to answer the following things:

a) Are WH40K assassins able to mask their telepathic presence, in essence appearing dead?
b) Are they able to handle telekinesis as described in the quotes?

Because while the feats at close combat are excellent, they are worthless in what is sure to amount to a sniper duel, or worthless in close combat if they cannot avoid getting their neck snapped with telekinesis.

Nova isn't an example of the average Ghost, by any method of assessing them. You can't use her as a baseline for the average Ghost, since they don't actually have the ability to snap someones neck with telekinesis. Some might not even have any at all. Their cloaking equipment isn't even standard issue either. I'm sorry, but your Nova quotes simply aren't representative of Ghosts, they show what Nova can do. Its like asking what can the average Marine librarian do, and picking Mephiston as an example.

For A, at what sort of range are you saying they would need to do this ? A Vindicare can shoot someone through the eye at more than ten kilometers, he's not designed to run up and shoot someone in the head. An Eversor wouldn't bother, he might have a stealth suit, but he's still a rampaging killing machine, and far better equipped for it than any Ghost.

The Culexus is dependent on whether or not we are assuming some sort of interoperability twixt psionics on both sides, and the Callidus would be walking around as someone else, then stabbing the ghost in the head or something, not running about in the face of gunfire if it could help it.

[Thanas]

Nova isn't an example of the average Ghost, by any method of assessing them. You can't use her as a baseline for the average Ghost, since they don't actually have the ability to snap someones neck with telekinesis. Some might not even have any at all. Their cloaking equipment isn't even standard issue either. I'm sorry, but your Nova quotes simply aren't representative of Ghosts, they show what Nova can do. Its like asking what can the average Marine librarian do, and picking Mephiston as an example.

So her capabilities are far above that of a typical ghost. The typical ghost is a very expert assassin but has usually no telekinetic abilities and has to focus upon specific minds to read them (unlike Nova, who has to make an effort not to read minds).

In response to

If need be, it could be a specific Ghost like Nova.

That is all I am arguing. You want to make a different argument than the one I am making and for good reasons - said reason being that the Novels are about Nova and Kerrigan. I have not read anything about other ghosts and any capabilites we can ascribe to them are murky at best.

So this is why I asked if the enemy assassins can block their thoughts or have telekinesis. Because if they tried any of your targets against Nova and they can do neither, they will end up dead, with the possible exception of a long range sniping duel.

[Serafina]

So if we use this one on one, then I suggest we try to answer the following things:

a) Are WH40K assassins able to mask their telepathic presence, in essence appearing dead?
b) Are they able to handle telekinesis as described in the quotes?

Because while the feats at close combat are excellent, they are worthless in what is sure to amount to a sniper duel, or worthless in close combat if they cannot avoid getting their neck snapped with telekinesis.

The Culexus-Assassins are psychic blanks and therefore have no normal telepathic/psychic presence at all. Their "psychic presence" amounts to being inobservable over long distance, and physically painful to psykers at closer ranges (and it even affects non-psykers). Of course, they are not trained snipers, so we won't get a sniper duel.
As a general note on detectability, temple assassins are masters of stealth, and their equipment shields them from a lot of technological detection (e.g. infrared) as well.

Culexus-assassins are also outright immune to any psychic powers that affects them directly (you could throw a chair at them via telekinesis, but you could not throw them directly). As noted above, their presence is extremely stressful for psykers, so once they are close actually using their psionics will also get quite hard.

Other Temple-Assassins do not have the same innate abilities as the Culexus-assassins. However, the Imperium has a number of technological devices that can replicate these things to an extent: This ranges from personal defenses against direct psionic attacks via forcefields, over devices that disrupt all psionics over a larger area (ranging in size from a few meters to a few dozen meters) to weapons that blanket an area with psionic-supressing dust.
These are not standard-equipment for assassins, but if they are called upon to fight a psyker they have reasonable access to such things.


Of course, all of that assumes that the anti-psyker stuff from 40K works against the psyker-stuff from StarCraft.

[Thanas]

So in essence, one has to assume the telepathic powers from Starcraft work the same as the ones from WH40k. as Srelex pointed out above, this is far from being a certainty.

[Simon_Jester]

But if we don't make the assumption of interoperability we're left with nothing; we could equally well say that since the psychic presence of humans in 40k is warp-based and Ghosts can't access the Warp, the 40k humans will be invisible to the Ghosts... in which case their abilities become useless, and any 40k assassin would be psychically undetectable to Ghosts.

[Thanas]

^Well, you are left with ordinary sniper duels though.

That said, without interoperability the Ghosts still have their cloaking and possibly telekinetic skills. WH40K is left with...pretty much all their tools, but won't be able to detect the ghosts except if they bring specialized sensor equipment.

At which point it comes down to a lot of circumstances and other factors.