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Gideon Ravenor is an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos and one of the Inquisition's most powerful psykers. His body was destroyed, but he still investigates through his armoured force chair and by projecting his mind into others. He is the hero of Dan Abnett's Ravenor trilogy.
He is a powerful telepath able to project his mind into others and see through their eyes. He leads a team of acolytes who act as his hands. His investigations have taken him to Eustis Majoris and beyond, where he fought against Chaos cults and daemons. Gideon Ravenor is an Ordo Xenos inquisitor and a powerful psyker. He was trained by Eisenhorn, but as an interrogator he was horribly injured in the Thracian Primaris atrocity and has lived ever since in a life-sustaining force chair. He works through his psychic powers and his followers, and he fights heresy and xenos threats, including the investigation of flects in his own trilogy.
Origins
Born in 304.M41, he became Gregor Eisenhorn's acolyte and later his protégé. A terrorist atrocity on Thracian Primaris crippled him, leaving him confined to a life-support chair.
After the Thracian Primaris atrocity left him crippled, Ravenor continued his training under Eisenhorn from inside a force chair. He was raised to full Inquisitor in 346.M41, proving that his mind could do the work his body no longer could. In 402.M41 he began the investigation into flects that led him to Eustis Majoris.
Ravenor began as one of Gregor Eisenhorn's interrogators. One of his first missions was to stop Zygmunt Molotch, a heretic from the Cognitae, a Chaos cult disguised as an academy in the Scarus Sector. Molotch had been assigned to a Cognitae scheme to set up arcane mechanisms on the Sleef Outworld in 336.M41, meant to capture and control warp energy. Ravenor's early years also included a love affair with the Carthaen swordswoman Arianhrod. It ended in 338.M41 on Lethe XI, when a Drukhari Haemonculus of the Kabal of the Fell Witch killed her during the purge of a xenophile cult.
Key events
- Served as acolyte under Gregor Eisenhorn.
- Survived the Thracian Primaris atrocity, which left his body ruined.
- Became an Inquisitor who works through psychic projection and a band of loyal acolytes.
- Hunted the drug flects and their Chaos origins on Eustis Majoris, uncovering the daemon Slyte's influence.
- Grew philosophically apart from his former master Eisenhorn as their methods diverged.
Dan Abnett's Ravenor trilogy follows the hunt for the source of Flects, a warp-tainted drug, on Eustis Majoris. It leads to the city of Petropolis, where Molotch, posing as Barazan, tried to use a mechanism that was in fact the city itself, together with the Enuncia, to restore his own ruined body. Ravenor stopped him again, though not in the way he had planned. The cost was high. In 402.M41 secretists attacked Ravenor's hideout. Zeph Mathuin, a former bounty hunter whose cybernetic arm linked to an autocannon, tried to hold off the Incunabula, an ancient daemon called the Brass Thief and enslaved by the mercenary Orfeo Culzean. Mathuin died when his gun exploded.
Battles & campaigns
- Thracian Primaris: He was crippled in an attack engineered to free rogue psykers.
- Eustis Majoris: He investigated the flects trade and Molotch.
- The Bequin trilogy: He and Eisenhorn came into conflict.
Personality
Brilliant, compassionate and patient, and more willing than most Inquisitors to cooperate with outsiders.
He is thoughtful and empathetic, valuing his acolytes as people rather than tools. He is willing to bend rules but has firm ethical boundaries. His crippling injury has given him patience and resilience.
The trilogy also shows Ravenor's loneliness. Angharad, a Carthaen swordswoman who was Arianhrod's niece, joined his team and began a relationship with Harlon Nayl that the two hid from him. When Ravenor found out, the secret hurt him more than the affair itself. Angharad died on Gudrun in 404.M41 when the daemon Slyte broke into realspace through the body of Carl Thonius.
Weapons & Vehicles
Psychically attuned silvered blades, halberds and daemon hammers forged exclusively for the Grey Knights of Titan, channelling the wiel…
A belt-fed 1.0-calibre automatic support cannon known to Imperial troops as the "Backbreaker," scything down massed infantry and light …
A volatile directed-energy rifle that hurls bolts of miniature sun-hot plasma capable of vaporising Terminator plate and tank armour—at…
Storm troopers raised from childhood by the Schola Progenium, the finest unaugmented human soldiers in the Imperium.
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Connections
Characters (1)
Factions
- The Inquisition primary faction
Related units (1)
Also in this faction
Some links are thematic parallels (marked "parallel") rather than recorded meetings. See the connections web.
Legacy
Ravenor is Eisenhorn's pupil, a psyker who lost his body but kept his will. His work shows the Inquisition at its most principled, a mind devoted to the truth even when it costs him dearly. His uneasy relationship with his old master asks whether the student can avoid repeating the teacher's mistakes. Readers often contrast Ravenor's scrupulous, almost idealistic Puritanism with Eisenhorn's slide towards Radical methods. Ravenor is one of the most popular Inquisition protagonists, and his chair is iconic.
One of Ravenor's finds had a long future. Zael Efferneti was a teenage Flects addict and a psychic "mirror" who could briefly borrow other people's powers. He was handed to the Inquisition, taken to Titan and inducted into the Grey Knights. After a mind-wipe he became the Prognosticator Hyperion. The team's travels depended on Cynia Preest's Rogue Trader ship, the Hinterlight, whose stealth system is partly alien technology and partly powered by Ravenor's own mind.
Appearances & sources
- Ravenor, Ravenor Returned and Ravenor Rogue (Dan Abnett)
- Malleus (Dan Abnett)
- The Bequin trilogy