I'm rather new to Dark Heresy - would the Inquisition get involved in fighting a Xenos threat instead of your garden-variety Chaos-cult?
I'm looking to GM a slightly wider range of campaign-arcs, and my core-rulebook hasn't arrived just yet.
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The Inquisition are the secret police of the Imperium responsible for guarding the souls of humanity. They fight against all threats. There are 3 major orders within the Inquisition:
Ordo Xenos will get involved with any threat to humanity from aliens. They will also get involved any time humans try to deal with the xenos. For subtle threats where they don't want their interference detected the Ordo will guile and stealth.
For more open threats the Ordo is served by Deathwatch Space Marines and will send them in for violent fighting. For extreme threats to humanity or when the xenos scum are too entrenched on a planet they can call in Exterminatus.
Indeed!
There exist many orders within the inquisition that handle various threats to the Imperium of man, and Inquisitors are not tied to any one specific order.
Typically the Ordos Hereticus handles the rise of cults within the Imperium, while the Ordos Xenos handles the rising threat of the Xenos. However, it is not unheard of (rather common really) that the Ordos Hereticus finds Genestealer cults or cults led by eldar psykers rather than the gods of chaos.
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Inquisition
Here is a link to a wiki that has a lot of information about the Inquisition in general. It also has links to information on the Ordos Hereticus and Ordos Xenos.
Yes and No. As already mentioned, the Inquisition is based on the three major orders. Your Inquisitor belongs to one specific order and will send your warband to an incident it suspects to be caused by the threat his order is fighting. However, suspicions can be wrong.
The guy suspected as a chaos cult leader may as well be
There are three orders of the Inquisition, one of them being Ordo Xenos (alongside Malleus (Demons) and Hereticus (Heretics)). Ordo Xenos is specifically for weeding out the alien influence from mankind's galaxy.