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The Collected Visions book makes some mention of them, namely the Black Ships and the fight in the Conduit. I swore it also made passing mention of them in the siege of Terra, but I couldn't find any mention of it in that book.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
You asked for a source stating that they were used to guard the Black Ships. I provided that. What you choose to believe or keep as personal head-canon, I don't care. The stated purpose of the Sisters of Silence in the time of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy was, amongst other duties, to be stationed aboard the Black Ships.

You misunderstand me. I already have it as head-canon, but my head-canon not fluff. There is an uncertainty if the Sisters of Silence were culled or exterminated during or after the HH. That is my point, but I believe very few people believe that.. Heck I even argued for a logical cause of why they just are on the Black Ships with the very canon more and more psykers born with every generation and i think its like three or four times as many psykers fed to Empy as before. That came from the fifth edition rulebook. The last two things I stated, which is why I think the Sisters of Silence still is around.

That's not what he was answering. He's not giving a source about whether or not the Sisters of Silence survived past the Heresy. He's pointing out that their primary role during the Crusade into the Heresy was guarding Black Ships. Pretty simple, you seriously have to read posts more thoroughly.

You seem to read and answer stuff at random, creating mountains out of molehills. You have a rather interesting history with doing that. All I did was to point out that in the past the Sisters of Silence were crewing the Black Ships, and they still likely are, but they haven't been mentioned since the Horus Heresy. Maybe you should just meddle a whole less.

Well, no, you said they went on to crew them. As in they didn't, but after the heresy they went on to do so. And they aren't any more, Laurie Golding said they don't exist by M41. So they aren't still around.

Gonna regret that aren't I. Why do I do this to myself.

You'll note that he completely ignores the conversations that have ended not in his favour with the real citations and such he was begging for.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
You'll note that he completely ignores the conversations that have ended not in his favour with the real citations and such he was begging for.

Right back at you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Well, no, you said they went on to crew them. As in they didn't, but after the heresy they went on to do so. And they aren't any more, Laurie Golding said they don't exist by M41. So they aren't still around.

Gonna regret that aren't I. Why do I do this to myself.

The fluff play fast and loose with this one as usual. Nothing much to say there. I noted my opinion, but its just that.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
You'll note that he completely ignores the conversations that have ended not in his favour with the real citations and such he was begging for.

Pretty much. Even his rebuttals of "Right back at you" comes off as a childish "I know you are but what am I?" kind of response.

I'm sorry Beaviz but if you can't directly refute the points they're making and you keep throwing your arms about the sanctity of your opinion then I'm afraid you're not going to have many good responses. You reap what you sow. Just because you have an opinion doesn't make it right.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
You'll note that he completely ignores the conversations that have ended not in his favour with the real citations and such he was begging for.

Pretty much. Even his rebuttals of "Right back at you" comes off as a childish "I know you are but what am I?" kind of response.

I'm sorry Beaviz but if you can't directly refute the points they're making and you keep throwing your arms about the sanctity of your opinion then I'm afraid you're not going to have many good responses. You reap what you sow. Just because you have an opinion doesn't make it right.

Who the hell said you were the guy to tell me how to think and feel? You are nothing Grimskull except an idiot telling people how to think and feel. A completely worthless trait.

Whoa dude's---I'm no moderator---but why all the hate?

Ban incoming in 3.. 2... 1...

Why? He asked a sensible question.

 lordseamus wrote:
Whoa dude's---I'm no moderator---but why all the hate?

It's not "hate" so much as us being frustrated by Beaviz's refusal to engage with the material and evidence that is given to him, especially given the fact that he was the one that demanded it. To have it dismissed or ignored so frivolously while going about his own point of view without consulting it is poor form in a forum whose whole point is to create a conducive conversation on the source material, not merely conjecture, or at least with regards to the OP's question. If all we did was talk about our personal head-canon there would be no consensus or real answer to the OP other than "make it up yourself" which is not a very good basis of conversation.

Either way, thanks Beaviz for the being the better man by calling me an idiot. You don't see the irony in your signature do you?

SSSShhhhhhhh, Its a secret.

I suspect they were the emps attempts at female astartes. Horrible soul sucking beast's.
Deemed a failure at the time, they have now been sent into the webway to wave hand signals to communicate with the harliquinn mimes.

the ancient wrote:
SSSShhhhhhhh, Its a secret.

I suspect they were the emps attempts at female astartes. Horrible soul sucking beast's.
Deemed a failure at the time, they have now been sent into the webway to wave hand signals to communicate with the harliquinn mimes.

Not gonna lie, I misread your post the first time as saying soul sucking breasts instead beasts . Looks like we know how I view the Emperor's taste in women...

Obviously some users know about Rule no.1, however I will remind the rest of you that when you join DakkaDakka you agree to abide by a set of principles the first of which is to be polite to one another.

Users breaking the rules are liable to various sanctions from moderators.

 Grimskul wrote:

the ancient wrote:
SSSShhhhhhhh, Its a secret.

I suspect they were the emps attempts at female astartes. Horrible soul sucking beast's.
Deemed a failure at the time, they have now been sent into the webway to wave hand signals to communicate with the harliquinn mimes.

Not gonna lie, I misread your post the first time as saying soul sucking breasts instead beasts . Looks like we know how I view the Emperor's taste in women...

Pffft Dunno whether Emps would know how to have a good time, can't seem to do anything else right according to most here
Still pretty tame compared to Slaanesh

 lordseamus wrote:
Ravenor had--a guy--I think--whose name I cannot recall at present.

I don't think anyone answered this, its Wystan Frauka who as far as I've read also happens to be the only one mentioned to use an Inhibitor which can 'turn off' his blankness, I've always assumed that others may have had access to them as well though. Its not like the Inqusition gets a lot of write ups.

I'd say post Golden Throne, the Imperium has limited the amount of blanks/pariahs who can inhabit an area, as in numbers, they block out the astronomicon. The Inquisition and Black Ships probably took on survivors and spread them round, dissolving the Sisters of Silence in the process.

SkyD wrote:

 lordseamus wrote:
Ravenor had--a guy--I think--whose name I cannot recall at present.

I don't think anyone answered this, its Wystan Frauka who as far as I've read also happens to be the only one mentioned to use an Inhibitor which can 'turn off' his blankness, I've always assumed that others may have had access to them as well though. Its not like the Inqusition gets a lot of write ups.

I'd say post Golden Throne, the Imperium has limited the amount of blanks/pariahs who can inhabit an area, as in numbers, they block out the astronomicon. The Inquisition and Black Ships probably took on survivors and spread them round, dissolving the Sisters of Silence in the process.

Inhibitors are a thing in the Daniverse. Bequin uses one, too, as do her Blank-compatriots in Pariah. They're, basically, a plot device to allow Blank characters to get over the effects they normally incite in people (which is disgust and loathing).

The 30k fluff spins the idea that the sister's of silence had a 'blank' gene that made them they way they were. I guess it is possible for males to have it as well, though why there wasn't a 'silent brotherhood' or something like that is interesting. It is probably just how the fluff or story line has developed. Oh well, I guess we will only know when the Black Library guru's let us know what happened.

 Psienesis wrote:

SkyD wrote:

 lordseamus wrote:
Ravenor had--a guy--I think--whose name I cannot recall at present.

I don't think anyone answered this, its Wystan Frauka who as far as I've read also happens to be the only one mentioned to use an Inhibitor which can 'turn off' his blankness, I've always assumed that others may have had access to them as well though. Its not like the Inqusition gets a lot of write ups.

I'd say post Golden Throne, the Imperium has limited the amount of blanks/pariahs who can inhabit an area, as in numbers, they block out the astronomicon. The Inquisition and Black Ships probably took on survivors and spread them round, dissolving the Sisters of Silence in the process.

Inhibitors are a thing in the Daniverse. Bequin uses one, too, as do her Blank-compatriots in Pariah. They're, basically, a plot device to allow Blank characters to get over the effects they normally incite in people (which is disgust and loathing).

Obviously it was done for plot convenience (so blanks can go undercover, have romances, etc.), but I've gotta say, blank "inhibitors" make no sense to me. While psykers need to tap into the warp and activate their power, blanks' powers are an inherent property of their existence. It's always "on" and it's a part of who they are. Also, it's caused by the ABSENCE of something. How do you treat that? Do the inhibitors contain a soul? Was some radical Inquisitor experimenting with Eldar spirit stones and discovered by a fluke that they could be used to tap into and stop a blanks' abilities? Actually... that would be a pretty cool explanation.

And to answer lordseamus, blanks can definitely be male. Just take a look at the male Culexus Assassin models. Why were the Sisters of Silence all women? Who knows. The Emperor did tons of things that make no sense. Maybe he did it for aesthetic reasons. "I've got the Astartes, who are all male, now I need an all female group in my crusade to even things out!"

 fallinq wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

SkyD wrote:

 lordseamus wrote:
Ravenor had--a guy--I think--whose name I cannot recall at present.

I don't think anyone answered this, its Wystan Frauka who as far as I've read also happens to be the only one mentioned to use an Inhibitor which can 'turn off' his blankness, I've always assumed that others may have had access to them as well though. Its not like the Inqusition gets a lot of write ups.

I'd say post Golden Throne, the Imperium has limited the amount of blanks/pariahs who can inhabit an area, as in numbers, they block out the astronomicon. The Inquisition and Black Ships probably took on survivors and spread them round, dissolving the Sisters of Silence in the process.

Inhibitors are a thing in the Daniverse. Bequin uses one, too, as do her Blank-compatriots in Pariah. They're, basically, a plot device to allow Blank characters to get over the effects they normally incite in people (which is disgust and loathing).

Obviously it was done for plot convenience (so blanks can go undercover, have romances, etc.), but I've gotta say, blank "inhibitors" make no sense to me. While psykers need to tap into the warp and activate their power, blanks' powers are an inherent property of their existence. It's always "on" and it's a part of who they are. Also, it's caused by the ABSENCE of something. How do you treat that? Do the inhibitors contain a soul? Was some radical Inquisitor experimenting with Eldar spirit stones and discovered by a fluke that they could be used to tap into and stop a blanks' abilities? Actually... that would be a pretty cool explanation.

And to answer lordseamus, blanks can definitely be male. Just take a look at the male Culexus Assassin models. Why were the Sisters of Silence all women? Who knows. The Emperor did tons of things that make no sense. Maybe he did it for aesthetic reasons. "I've got the Astartes, who are all male, now I need an all female group in my crusade to even things out!"

Possibly. There are, after all, Puritan Inquisitors who refuse to use a "living" psyker, and so instead use psychic brains kept in jars and activated for a specific function (read as: a Psychic Power) with the press of a button, so a limiter may contain something along those lines. More likely, it's simply a device that, through techno-arcane means, masks a Blank's presence by generating some sort of biometric energy signal that masks the reflexive repulsion others feel around them.

OK, here are my two cents. The current Dark Eldar codex states that one of the failsafes employed by Vect in the whole Khaines Gate affair was the use of a number of "nulls". Taking into account the spacebound piritical nature of DE they could have abducted a few Sisters from a Blackship.

I had really not given much thought to the inhibitor device that inquisitors use. I think Eisenhorn--when dealing with Bequin first used one. I know that I have read how the Emperor employed the Sisterhood into cloaking his presence. I know that Ravenor did this and I am pretty sure that Eisenhorn did as well (it has been a while since I read the series). Anyway, I never gave to much thought as to whether the Emperor was effected by the presence of the Sisterhood. Maybe being the Emperor--or one of his offspring even--their presence does not revolt them. However, they are still very useful having the power to cloak psyker's. Just as long as the psyker is able to stand their presence. The inhibitor makes sense. However--we still don't know for certain what happened to the sisterhood. Having read about them they were well equipped and organized. They were very powerful. The Space Marine's continued on....but no Silent Sisterhood. I find that odd.

Eisenhorn never equipped his Distaff with inhibitors - one of the big conflicts in the series was the Gregor/Bequin romance-that-could-never-be because they loved each other, but they were psyker and blanker.

Ravenor was the one who introduced the inhibitors, and given that he also used wraithbone pendants to puppet his warband in emergencies and fitted his ship with Eldar psionic cloaking devices and power boosters, it seems highly likely that the inhibitors are Eldar tech.

Ok--as I stated--it has been a while since I read the Eisenhorn series....for that matter Ravenor too. It would definitely make since that the inhibitors were Eldar tech given Ravenor's usage of Eldar technology.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
'make sense' is what I meant.

 fallinq wrote:


Obviously it was done for plot convenience (so blanks can go undercover, have romances, etc.), but I've gotta say, blank "inhibitors" make no sense to me. While psykers need to tap into the warp and activate their power, blanks' powers are an inherent property of their existence. It's always "on" and it's a part of who they are. Also, it's caused by the ABSENCE of something. How do you treat that? Do the inhibitors contain a soul? Was some radical Inquisitor experimenting with Eldar spirit stones and discovered by a fluke that they could be used to tap into and stop a blanks' abilities? Actually... that would be a pretty cool explanation.

Another possibility is that the 'wrongness' people sense from a blank isn't the blank's absence of a soul, but the 'bleeding off' of psychic energy as it dissipates or drains off into the soulless void of a blank. If some sort of energy field prevents the psychic energy from being dissipated, the blank is still soulless, but the psychic energy cannot be bled off into the void.

As an analogy, you don't feel cold (the absence of heat energy); you sense the heat energy being dissipated into an area which lacks it.

40K has already established that Geller Field technology can be used to wall off warp disturbances from real-space; maybe the inhibitor functions in some similar manner. It might simply prevent or even just radically slow down the dissipation of psychic energy into blanks.

Indeed it could, and that's a pretty good explanation for a device that, otherwise, isn't described in detail, other than to say that they can be broken (as happens in Pariah).

I would have to check the book again, but I believe Bequin disables her limiter on the first or second time that Eisenhorn meets Cherubael. While the entirety of the Distaff may not have worn them, I seem to recall the books mentioning them a few times. Then again, I might just be conflating the two series.

You are, Bequin only gets a limiter in Pariah (AKA 'book seven').

In 7th retribution there is a blank who has a collar that dampens her blank effect, similar to a psychic dampener. Hope this helps

So...Besides Bequin...and presumably Bequin and Eisenhorn's daughter(?), Ravenor's null and the blank mentioned by 2Blackjack1...not to mention the Culexus Assassins...it appears that blanks are nothing new to the 30k--40k universe. And it appears that both men and women can be one. Still we do not know what happened to the Sister's of Silence. I guess only time...and the writer's at BL will tell.

Oh, yeah, Blanks aren't at all new. They go at least as far back as the original Necron Codex, who (at that time) created the Pariah Gene and inserted it into Mankind's genetic imprint for some at-the-time future plan of galactic harvesting.

That fluff has changed significantly, but, yeah, Blanks/Pariahs have been around for decades in the game.