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Psienesis wrote:Of course, it may be that 3 of those Militant Orders have been destroyed or rolled into one of the others after significant losses, or whatever. Maybe they're hinting at a future publication where such events will be revealed? Who knows.

Which would be stupid, like having half of all the first founding chapters wiped out in one go. So you like Raven Guard, or White Scars, or Salamanders, or Iron Hands? GONE! Sorry kids, they don't exist anymore, have fun somewhere else. You may choose between Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, or Imperial Fists.

Melissia wrote:

Psienesis wrote:Of course, it may be that 3 of those Militant Orders have been destroyed or rolled into one of the others after significant losses, or whatever. Maybe they're hinting at a future publication where such events will be revealed? Who knows.

Which would be stupid, like having half of all the first founding chapters wiped out in one go. So you like Raven Guard, or White Scars, or Salamanders, or Iron Hands? GONE! Sorry kids, they don't exist anymore, have fun somewhere else. You may choose between Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, or Imperial Fists.

That sounds like a valid codex lineup.

Psienesis wrote:Not sure what the "canon" fate of the Order of the Sacred Rose is, as that's the Order featured in the video game Dawn of War: Soulstorm. I do know that the canonical ending of that storyline is an IG victory, but the Sisters were not summarily executed or anything. It may be that the losses suffered during the campaign caused the Order to be disbanded and rolled into others, or perhaps all of the survivors were made Sisters Repentia in penance? Again, who knows.

Does the game state that the entire Order was present? Or merely that it sent a force to the system?

A destruction or merger would be the worst-possible outcome, of course, and - I'm being optimistic here - the least likely. It's just as possible that three of the major Orders have been made minor ones due to the horrible losses they suffered. Still a big change in terms of significance, but they'd remain perfectly playable.

Or it was just a typo. We'll know soon enough, I hope.

Eumerin wrote:Does the game state that the entire Order was present? Or merely that it sent a force to the system?

Just a Commandery, meaning something between 50 and 200 Sisters.

Plus, I'm not even sure this campaign is to be taken at face value - a Living Saint doesn't just pop up like that and vanishes again, such an event only happens once every couple centuries and is rather important (too important for just 50-200 Sisters), and the "current" Living Saint is Celestine (though she's already KIA as far as the story is concerned).

Melissia wrote:

Psienesis wrote:Of course, it may be that 3 of those Militant Orders have been destroyed or rolled into one of the others after significant losses, or whatever. Maybe they're hinting at a future publication where such events will be revealed? Who knows.

Which would be stupid, like having half of all the first founding chapters wiped out in one go. So you like Raven Guard, or White Scars, or Salamanders, or Iron Hands? GONE! Sorry kids, they don't exist anymore, have fun somewhere else. You may choose between Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, or Imperial Fists.

Not really, as the Orders are not differentiated to the point of the Astartes Chapters. And even if the current fluff M999-era will have half the orders dead, if you are particularly enamored with one Order's paint-scheme, 40K armies can represent any point in time in the last 10,000 years. Just paint them how you like, call them what you like, hell invent a seventh super secret Order no one knew about, it doesn't make a real difference.

You are putting far too much importance on an extremely niche faction.

Oh no you did-nt!

Oh yes, I did!

It's just as possible that three of the major Orders have been made minor ones due to the horrible losses they suffered. Still a big change in terms of significance, but they'd remain perfectly playable.

Yes, this is also a perfectly viable option, and kind of takes into account a natural progression of the storyline. We've had several of these Orders involved in large-scale conflicts in recent publications, all of them known to have suffered losses, to one degree or another, in their various campaigns. Given that there's not a whole lot of Sisters of Battle in the first place, I imagine they don't exactly have a huge pool of recruits to draw reinforcements from... if they did, I imagine there would be more Sisters in the first place.

Omegus wrote:You are putting far too much importance on an extremely niche faction.

You're not putting enough. Just because you don't like the faction is no reason that it should be abused.

That actually sounds like a great idea!

Melissia wrote:

Omegus wrote:You are putting far too much importance on an extremely niche faction.

You're not putting enough. Just because you don't like the faction is no reason that it should be abused.

You are making a big assumption. I like the Sisters of Battle, I just don't think changing the number of major Orders is as catastrophic as you make it out to be. No one cried and railed when the fluff had the Crimson Fists reduced to a single company. Eldar players did not cut their wrists when Eldrad died (well, probably). "Abused"? Get some perspective, seriously.

Omegus wrote:Get some perspective

I ask the same of you. Sisters have long been used as the scratching post of 40k. You might as well compare them with the Lamentors. Heaping yet-more abuse onto the faction is not a good thing.

So what if a SINGLE chapter gets harmed, or a single character? That's nowhere NEAR this level. Go read the fluff for the Order of Our Martyred Lady-- what the Crimson Fists went through there, this Order goes through pretty much every single battle... if the force sent is not casually wiped out entirely so GW can make whatever faction they happen to actually like at the time look better then it's wiped out to the point of only a few novitiates remain to mourn (Sanctuary 101, Third War of Armageddon, Second Tyrannic War, etc, all had this chapter wiped out, the fluff behind Ephrael Stern, etc etc etc). Pretty much all Sisters characters that have ever existed have long since been dead anyway, we haven't ever HAD a still-living character.

Melissia wrote:

Omegus wrote:Get some perspective

I ask the same of you. Sisters have long been used as the scratching post of 40k. You might as well compare them with the Lamentors. Heaping yet-more abuse onto the faction is not a good thing.

So what if a SINGLE chapter gets harmed, or a single character? That's nowhere NEAR this level. Go read the fluff for the Order of Our Martyred Lady-- what the Crimson Fists went through there, this Order goes through pretty much every single battle... if the force sent is not casually wiped out entirely so GW can make whatever faction they happen to actually like at the time look better then it's wiped out to the point of only a few novitiates remain to mourn (Sanctuary 101, Third War of Armageddon, Second Tyrannic War, etc, all had this chapter wiped out, the fluff behind Ephrael Stern, etc etc etc). Pretty much all Sisters characters that have ever existed have long since been dead anyway, we haven't ever HAD a still-living character.

Is it weird i find that kinda cool?

I find it frankly sexist (probably unintentionally, but the result is the same) and annoying, myself.

Maybe they should just make the things that wipe them out bigger... and scarier of course...
Or the Sisters survive the battle... that might be better actually.

At least the Tyrannic wars example provided examples of true heroism and even success on the side of the Sisters, but they were still wiped out to a woman unless you honestly believe that Praxedes and her Sisters have somehow been surviving, fighting literally inside of a Hive Fleet for decades. That particular example isn't as bad, to be sure, because of said heroism and even success (managing to evacuate an important Ecclesiarchy world).

But I think I'd rather them achieve victory in an important place instead of random made up places against enemies you've never heard of and whom are best described as a rabble of heretics that would embarrass the Lost and the Damned... but a lot of important battles already have their history set-- I honestly don't expect them to change the 13th Black Crusade or the Wars for Armageddon fluff, for example. Could they? Sure. Will they? Most likely not.

Probably not...

That said, there's always the potential to simply expand on existing things. For example, whilst everyone always talks of the losses of Our Martyred Lady, do we actually have any info about what the Argent Shroud did on Armageddon? Or what about those 100 worlds liberated by the Bloody Rose in their crusade against the Tyrant of Denescura we know next to nothing about?

Just sayin'. I bet there's a lot of still-untold stories about the major battles all over the timeline.

Not that I'd actually want to have the Sisters showing up too often. Considering their numbers, their relative absence in history makes sense. But one or two epic wins would be neat.

I think the Sisters need more love in the fluff. They do seem to get the very short, very sharp end of the stick alarmingly often.

The reason is fairly easy to deduce, though. GW loves Space Marines. They need to make Space Marines look good. How do you make them look good? Well, an easy way is to have them defeat an enemy that looks to be strong (let's say Necrons). How do you make the enemy look strong? By having it defeat another faction, that is itself kind of strong. Should the Necrons defeat Imperial Guard? No, the Guard get eaten on a daily basis. 5+ Armor save FTL. I know! The Sisters of Battle! They are almost Space Marines! Look at them; bolters and power armor! That says "strong". So the Necrons beat the Sisters, thus establishing they are "strong". Now the Marines can prove they are the mightiest, by beating the Necrons! BRILLIANT!

Unfortunately, the Sisters get used in this fashion a lot, since the Marines get used a lot.

It's probably not intentional, but in the end it can smell a lot like misogyny. Except when Matt Ward does it. Then I'm pretty sure it IS misogyny, and it IS intentional. (Slaughtering Sisters and bathing in their blood so that you can better fight the BLOOD GOD? Really, Matt? Really? Are you sure you had a date for the prom? Because that's not how it looks from here...)

I think marines are more easily corrupted because they are devoted to the Emperor through the orthodoxy of their chapter and not as directly as the Sister of Battle.

Another reason I think Sisters of Battle maybe more resistent to Chaos is inferences drawn from fluff that show women in the 40k universe are possibly more predisposed to resisting psonic and warp influences... a contributory reason for them being tasked to aid witchhunters.

I believe that holds true for SoB, specifically, but not women in general within the Imperium. The Sisterhood represents pretty much the absolute best, unenhanced human the Imperium can offer, regardless of gender.

I think the "women resist psykers better than men" idea is an illusion... we see more men in more roles, and thus more of them fall than we see happening to women, because the women in 40K we usually see are a) Sisters of Battle, b) Inquisitors, c) Arbites or Throne Agents.

We rarely see a "normal" woman try to resist psykers, daemons, the warp, a bolt-round to the grill... so our sample size is very heavily skewed to suggest that women are more resistant than men, but there's a fallacy in the experiment.

For example, if we take 100 men and expose them to the warp, and 10 resist and 90 die... and then take 10 women and 1 resists and 9 die... who's more resistant?

Yeah, it's an annoying failure of GW in general and BL in specific...

aka_mythos wrote:I think marines are more easily corrupted because they are devoted to the Emperor through the orthodoxy of their chapter and not as directly as the Sister of Battle.

That, and that Space Marines in general seem to have different priorities. Many Chapter's culture is "tainted" by outsiders being recruited at an age fairly young, but yet old enough to insert local beliefs, not all of which may be purged during hypno-indoctrination and reconditioning. Some Chapters thus freely adopt practices that border on the barbaric (such as cannibalism), which is one of the many reasons why the Ecclesiarchy eyes them with scepticism. Yet more importantly, though, is that Marines are extremely big on concepts such as pride and honour, which reflect one's own standing in society and are thus rather egoistical. Egoism is a weakness gladly exploited by Chaos.

Sisters of Battle, on the other hand, are raised from birth (that's how it was worded *shrug*) in the Imperium's scholae, and their indoctrination is only deepened further during their novitiate and the years in the Sisterhood. They have no pride or honour in a personal sense, they are utterly dedicated to their Order and the Imperium as a whole, happily relinquishing not only their lifes but also their ego when the situation calls for it, suffering humiliation and pain without question, nay, even regarding both as a path to salvation! For example, there is a rather old short story from WD concerning one Saint Mirian Delesse, ...

Sister Mirian's life as a member of the Sisterhood was entirely typical prior to the extraordinary events leading to her martyrdom and canonisation. With her parents recruited into the Imperial Guard she was placed in the care of the Schola, where an aptitude for faith and combat was noted in her. After her schooling she was transferred to the Order of the Emperor Ascendant, which placed her on the agricultural world Lacrima, as one of five Sisters caring for a shrine containing several sacred relics. Aside from protecting the shrine, her duties included seeing to the purity of the farmers in nearby villages, and assisting in operating a religious school run by the aging Sister Superior Meladie.

A garbled request for military aid called Imperial forces to Lacrima, in the form of the Space Marine White Scars Chapter, during the seventeenth year of Sister Mirian's service there. The Scars found several areas of Lacrima unresponsive to communication, and deployed with their customary speed. They found a Dark Eldar slave raid in progress among the farming communities near Sister Mirian's shrine, but even as they watched it seemed that their enemy would elude them and return to the safety of the webway. Yet as they sped towards their distant enemy, the long-range oculars mounted on their Rhino transports detected weapons fire from the middle of the Dark Eldar force, surrounding the leader's vehicle, which was thought to contain the webway transit equipment. The firing lasted only a few seconds, then the leader's vehicle exploded in a catastrophic detonation, throwing the entire raiding force into disarray, of which the White Scars took full advantage. All the Dark Eldar were wiped out.

A significant portion of the local farmers, later were found hiding in nearby fields, escorted by Sister Superior Meladie. She revealed that, when the attack had taken place, Sister Mirian had been the only one of the four combat-ready Sisters to survive the initial assault. She insisted that her Superior lead the evacuation, electing to remain in the deserted village herself, waiting for the Dark Eldar to find her. She discarded her armour, dressing herself in the most seductive clothing she could locate in a quick search of a nearby house. She left her bolter and pistol at the shrine, taking only one weapon with her, concealed in the folds of her clothing...one of the shrine's sacred relics: a vortex grenade.

Pretty badass in its own way, and I seriously don't see a Marine getting this idea. The Sororitas just seem to hit the exact right balance of self-sacrifice and zeal that they get a certain resistance against being influenced. It's as if Chaos would need a couple logs to kindle, of which the Sisters have few to none, which is - ironically enough - the result of them not having the libierties that other Imperial citizens including many Chapters of Space Marines are granted. If the Ecclesiarchy teaches that it is everyone's duty to share in the sacrifice of the Emperor, the Adepta Sororitas are the epitome of this philosophy.

Here's another bit, this time from the short story "Daemonblood" by Ben Counter, and though I often criticize novel stuff for the liberties and deviations it takes from GW's own canon, I feel that this one hit the nail on the head:

"What curiously small creatures you are to present such a thorn in my side." The words roared and rumbled through the air, thick with dark amusement. "What little bundles of ignorant flesh. I am Parmenides, called tthe Vile, chosen Prince of Nurgle. I am the virus which the Plague God sends to infect your mortal worlds. I am the festering in your wounded empire. Do creatures as insignificant as yourselves have names too, I wonder?"
"Sergeant Castus of the Ultramarines, Second Company", the Marine replied in a defiant voice, as if he were trying to impress the daemon prince.
The horrific gaze turned to Aescarion, questioning.
"I would not give you my name, though it cost my soul", the Battle Sister snarled, and she gripped her axe tighter.
"Such a shame", Parmenides replied. "But the girl I can understand. Her mind is most infertile. What has she ever questioned? They teach her and she believes."

(the story is actually addressing this very topic in that it makes the Marine fall and the Sister go after him, so if anyone is interested, this is one I could recommend)

Lynata wrote:

Eumerin wrote:Does the game state that the entire Order was present? Or merely that it sent a force to the system?

Just a Commandery, meaning something between 50 and 200 Sisters.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait...
Are you sure on those numbers? You'd need thousands of men/women to take a whole planet, let alone a whole star system. Sending that few is just asking to be destroyed.

TrollPie wrote:Are you sure on those numbers? You'd need thousands of men/women to take a whole planet, let alone a whole star system. Sending that few is just asking to be destroyed.

That's how the meaning of a Commandery is explained in the Codex. Of course I'm not sure if the writers of that campaign fully understood this, but it should be noted that the Sisters did not exactly expect that much opposition in the first place. They arrived because of a warp storm and a Confessor claiming the local populace to be corrupted. Tau? Eldar? Necrons? Marines? Pretty sure those weren't part of their initial plans. Though doesn't the intro say that the Blood Ravens only made planetfall with a single company as well?

However, it should also be pointed out that the Sisters also raised Frateris Militia warbands from the local population (see the fluff-box of Sama District on the campaign map), and depending on what kind of equipment they are provided with they can in fact approach IG levels of lethalty. It's quite possible that, though the player only saw the SoB in action, minor engagements or mop-up operations were dealt with by masses of zealots.

I mean, I'm also a bit sceptical about there being only a single IG regiment for the entire system.

Lynata wrote:
Here's another bit, this time from the short story "Daemonblood" by Ben Counter, and though I often criticize novel stuff for the liberties and deviations it takes from GW's own canon, I feel that this one hit the nail on the head:

Daemonblood is a great example of the way I would explain the 'one sister has fallen to chaos' quote in the Sisters of Battle codex. It's a great story and the ending is pretty cool.

The sisters in Daemonifuge were corrupted by the influence of Asteroth as they tried to learn its secrets. Miriael, I would say, fell the same way as Castus, by being shown what power she could have if she denounced the Emperor and embraced Slaanesh.

Basically, a case of a willing fall with a choice offered.

Just how many Sisters are out there in the galaxy?

Lynata told me several thousands, but others say millions.

( Just what I tought in numbers IG >> SoB but SoB >> SM )

as long as you make up some decent fluff for the acts of faith, holy stuff, etc.

Brother Coa wrote:Just how many Sisters are out there in the galaxy?

Lynata told me several thousands, but others say millions.

( Just what I tought in numbers IG >> SoB but SoB >> SM )

It depends on how many lesser orders there are. The major orders account for a few tens of thousands on the upper limit, and there's no indication as to how many minor orders there are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

squidhills wrote:I think the Sisters need more love in the fluff. They do seem to get the very short, very sharp end of the stick alarmingly often.

The reason is fairly easy to deduce, though. GW loves Space Marines. They need to make Space Marines look good. How do you make them look good? Well, an easy way is to have them defeat an enemy that looks to be strong (let's say Necrons). How do you make the enemy look strong? By having it defeat another faction, that is itself kind of strong. Should the Necrons defeat Imperial Guard? No, the Guard get eaten on a daily basis. 5+ Armor save FTL. I know! The Sisters of Battle! They are almost Space Marines! Look at them; bolters and power armor! That says "strong". So the Necrons beat the Sisters, thus establishing they are "strong". Now the Marines can prove they are the mightiest, by beating the Necrons! BRILLIANT!

Unfortunately, the Sisters get used in this fashion a lot, since the Marines get used a lot.

It actually makes more sense when one realizes that SoB are basically Space Marines without their patently ridiculous plot armor. They have nearly identical equipment, the same pathetic numbers, and the same dubious grasp of strategy and tactics. A few dozen or hundred soldiers, even ones in power armor, trying to fight a properly sized army should always end in horrific failure for the power armored soldiers. Space Marines are only immune to this because they're revolting Mary Sues.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:It depends on how many lesser orders there are. The major orders account for a few tens of thousands on the upper limit, and there's no indication as to how many minor orders there are.

Aye. The 2E Codex gives a few numbers here: We get to know that it took the Orders Militant 2.500 years [M36-M39] to get from 4.000 to 30.000 members, whilst the book also notes that this number has "declined slightly" in recent years, telling us that the major Orders would have somewhere between 3.000 and 4.000 Sisters now ("updated" by the Third War of Armageddon which has pushed the Martyred Lady down to only 300 Battle Sisters). One still has to work with a lot of conjecture, though...

My opinion regarding their overall numbers is currently based primarily on the wording within the 5E core rulebook, where it says that there are "many" minor Orders with about 100 Sisters each. "Many hundred" SoB doesn't sound like a lot, but ties in well with the 2E stuff above. It also explains why the SoB rarely show up in the fluff, even in places where you might totally expect them (such as during attacks on important Cathedrals, for example the Battle of Bladen).

Just to throw in my personal reasoning for the statement.