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It's written in the Codex that Sisters of Battle rarely have any contact with anyone from outside the order, and generally only the highest ranking of the order with have any dealings with people from outside their order.

No vow of chastity necessary. Oh, and before it starts, yes homosexuality would still be possible within the order, and did occur within real-life monastic orders that had a similar structure. This wouldn't preclude them from being virgins in a biological sense I hope I don't have to explain.

Not sure if I follow... what .. you are saying there, htj


I think really it is open to interpretation, you could make an argument for either side, and feel comfortable with the interpretation. I don't think it's as clear-cut as the issue with Marine relationships however, they are engineered to be something post-human. Otherwise, I think when considering a normal humans biology, even the strictest monastic orders might have had issue with relationships forming, whether they were tolerated or not.

biohazardcake wrote:People think about what you are arguing about I mean really
we have got a universe were orks fight with futuristic knights,
inquisition, aliens, super high tech aliens and deamons in space if you think about it it is ridiculous. It is cool but a bit silly the guys at GW have fun with it.

What does that even mean? What on Earth are you saying? Please improve your grammar so that we can understand.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!!

Just sayin. . . .

iproxtaco wrote:

biohazardcake wrote:People think about what you are arguing about I mean really
we have got a universe were orks fight with futuristic knights,
inquisition, aliens, super high tech aliens and deamons in space if you think about it it is ridiculous. It is cool but a bit silly the guys at GW have fun with it.

What does that even mean? What on Earth are you saying? Please improve your grammar so that we can understand.

I am saying that warhammer 40k is fairly silly ,cool and all but silly and I love 40k for it.

No. No no no no no. These things are important. 40k, while ridiculous at times, is still a fictional universe, with established rules and norms. If a particular fluff piece seems incongruous with established fluff, we will debate it. In case you didn't notice, this is the 40k background forum. It is here specifically to debate this kind of stuff. If you don't like this kind of discussion, then don't read it.
/rant

Back on topic, I have to agree with some of the earlier posters. While it may not explicitly say that the sisters are chaste, we can pretty much assume as much. Besides, where would they find the time to have a relationship? I doubt that space nun convents have a great dating scene.

Guildsman wrote:
Back on topic, I have to agree with some of the earlier posters. While it may not explicitly say that the sisters are chaste, we can pretty much assume as much. Besides, where would they find the time to have a relationship? I doubt that space nun convents have a great dating scene.

Well, one, it's not clear how much time they actually spend in the convents. IIRC in Faith and Fire and Blood of Martyrs, it's implied that the sisters actually spend much of their lives 'on deployment', and, in most of the BL books that sisters appear in, contact between the main headquarters and the orders minoris is.... irregular at best. In all honesty, I think that, considering that movement between orders is not uncommon, that viewing them though the lens of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood that were freely copied ...errr...based off of (see the illo of one in Blood of Martyrs and then Watch Lynch's version of Dune) with a dash of female medieval militant order thrown in for extra grimderp would make a lot of sense.

Faith and Fire did tend to focus on Celestians though. The majority of Sisters may be based at a central location.

Though the problems in communication between orders and convents is entirely expected, given that we are talking about the Imperium here.

I'd just like to point out that we're probably not going to see too many novels published about the Battle Sisters not, er, battling. So of course we see them in deployment most of the time we see them. I can't imagine a group of DH players getting together for the "never leave the convent" campaign, either.

Manchu wrote:I'd just like to point out that we're probably not going to see too many novels published about the Battle Sisters not, er, battling. So of course we see them in deployment most of the time we see them. I can't imagine a group of DH players getting together for the "never leave the convent" campaign, either.

The point was, however, that they talk about how rare it is they get back to the convent, not that we never see them at it.

It was really boring. Granted, they finally raped the last sister and then torched the place, but...

(To say they eagerly look forward to Black Crusade is an understatement)

Again, my dear Baron, I feel like we must have different copies of BoM.

Manchu wrote:Again, my dear Baron, I feel like we must have different copies of BoM.

It might be noted they were not playing AS the sisters, they were playing WITH the sisters...

Though Martyrs were, arguably, made.

It's quite saddening to read the threads posted these days, nearly all of them devolve into talking about Grey Knights or Ward in general. The thing that really gets me it that many haterz have never read a Matt Ward codex, never collected said armies and have never played against them, so are therefore riding the Bandwagon.

The main arguments against Matt Ward are -
His rules are broken and unbalanced
His rules are over-powered
He has a poor grasp of writing techniques
He writes over the top characters
He has a poor understanding of the 40k universe

Would anyone like to try and argue these points?

iproxtaco wrote:It's quite saddening to read the threads posted these days, nearly all of them devolve into talking about Grey Knights or Ward in general. The thing that really gets me it that many haterz have never read a Matt Ward codex, never collected said armies and have never played against them, so are therefore riding the Bandwagon.

The main arguments against Matt Ward are -
His rules are broken and unbalanced
His rules are over-powered
He has a poor grasp of writing techniques
He writes over the top characters
He has a poor understanding of the 40k universe

Would anyone like to try and argue these points?

1) Dreadknights type becoming jump infantry. Flying librarian dreadnoughts.
2) Teleporting Land Raiders with no terrain on the table.
3) Not really gonna carve into his technique per se, but he doesn't seem able to make the sort of compelling characters that most people would find interesting.
4) The sheer number of Draigo = Chuck Norris jokes alone should say all that needs to be said.
5) Arguably, no one understands the 40k universe. There is no canon. All that exists is a sort of consensus. Since what Ward has written seems to be diametrically opposed to the majority interpretation, then, yes, his understanding of it is weak.



Edit: Oh my dear god. I just read what I pray is only a rumor that Ward will next defile my beloved Black Templars.



Where is a hero when you need one?

Thank you for the response, I'd like this thread to get back on course.

1) I fully understand that he has written rules that many people disagree with, and those two are good examples. The point I was trying to make is that he doesn't write broken SETS of rules. Each of his codex's have been powerful, and quite internally balanced. Each has the capability to take on any list with multiple builds.
2) I guess this point could be combined with the first. Like I said, each codex is powerful, but balanced often more powerful than previous codices written by other authors. When their is a particularly powerful rule in an already powerful codex, said rule becomes over-powered. This is not a defence of the rule, I agree that little thought went into this particular example.
3) He seems to use a lot of very descriptive words and words like 'thus'. None of his stories are convuluted, but I have to admit that a few can get a bit over the top, The Purging of Jollona being the only example in the Grey Knights codex I could find. His technique does make the text appealing to me, and their is hopefully no, or very few grammatical mistakes in a published product.
4) Draigo I will exempt, general cunsensis is that he is a ridiculous character and that little thought went into how the community would react. The other characters I think are some of the best produced by GW in recent years (just my opinion on that part). Crowe for example has another side to him apart from the all-powerful leader of the purifiers. The Daemon sword that he safeguards is another duty on top of his duty as a Grey Knight. It constantly whispers to him, tries to tempt him into using the swords true power and fall to Chaos. He's been put in a very difficult position. He doubtless sometimes nearly loses his faith, almost falls to its temptation. Mordrak is the second character. He's haunted by why happened to his brothers. His psychic might imprinted their memories into him, and now they appear to protect him when he is in danger. He is deeply disturbed by their presence, and is driven to put them to rest by killing Huron Blackheart.
5) Not too much of the fluff contradicts previous fluff directly. It's either expansion, or brand new. You've alwasy got ot remember that fluff changes over time, but I think it should be an evolution, rather than a direct contradiction. I agree that few, if any, people have a good grasp of the 40k universe as a whole, but Ward seems to have worked well within his context. The Grey Knights have kept their image and place in the universe whilst evolving to better fit their role in the Imperium.

The main point I want to make is that much of the hate for Matt Ward is in the majority, unfounded, over-exaggerated, or coming from people hopping the the Bandwagon. I gladly accept valid points from people who actually read the codices and then form their opinions.

Can someone give me an example of a direct contradiction in fluff?

The closest I can come is that GK will now work with daemonhosts.

That would be the one very obvious example. I know Grey Knights are supposed to be radical, using the Warp against Daemons. But actively working with the Daemonic is a tad too far.

Manchu wrote:Can someone give me an example of a direct contradiction in fluff?

The closest I can come is that GK will now work with daemonhosts.

IIRC Coteaz was a puritan, now he has radical leanings. Previously Titan still orbited Saturn. Previously it was the Inquisition that was implied to secretly know how to resurrect the Emperor, not the Grey Knights. Previously the entire reason that the Imperum's starships had a minimum size around a kilometer was that it took that much space for the hardware, even in the past, to give the ship a Geller field strong enough to protect inside. Now it fits in a dreadnaught, but starships still have the same minimum size, because recent fluff still insists that they have to be a km long or so to produce a Geller field. I don't mind fluff inconsistencies between current and past editions but both these contradicting statements were in two books published less then a month apart.

You're stating contradictions, that's fine, but go into more detail and give us the sources of these contradictions.

I thought Titan still does orbit Saturn.
It's not implied that the Grey Knights know how to resurrect the Emperor. They have the last resort, if this were resurrecting the Emperor, they would do it.

There are many ships smaller than a km that traverse the warp. The rest aren't inconsistancies just story developement. You'll have to be more specific with Cortez.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess going from 3000 GKs to 1000 is a contradiction. It's a retcon but all retcons are contradictions.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:There are many ships smaller than a km that traverse the warp. The rest aren't inconsistancies just story developement. You'll have to be more specific with Cortez.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess going from 3000 GKs to 1000 is a contradiction. It's a retcon but all retcons are contradictions.

Not anymore. The official smallest warp capable ship (in a rule book) is the Viper class scout sloop, at 0.95km long. So, I suppose you are correct, as it's 50m under a km, and is approximately the same dimensions as the Wandering Star from Eye of Terror. There are a few examples of unique craft that are smaller in BL novels, however, it might be pointed out that all of them suffer from the phrase 'unique and none understand how it works' because the author wants to emulate the Millennium Falcon dynamic while acknowledging that it totally breaks fluff for starships.

There's many civilian craft that are not ginormous. You're not going to find cruise liners and private yachts in the rule books.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:There's many civilian craft that are not ginormous. You're not going to find cruise liners and private yachts in the rule books.

Point of fact, most of those are either not warp capable, or can be in excess of 16 km long(!). (Thank you, FFG for providing stats for all sorts of interesting civilian vessels)

Remember that warp travel is extremely rare, with the only 'legal' ships belonging to either the battlefleet, chartist captains, Rogue Traders, the Inquisition, or some other 'offical' body. Not that many 'illegal' operations don't also operate, but even those made outside of the Imperium and forged of archeotech and heresy (Hello Shrike Class!) are still above the 1km limit.

The number one, easiest to build and maintain ship ever devised by humans, the Iconoclast, (A ship so easy to fix it has a special rule for it in RT, making it the Rhino of Rogue Trader) is still 1.3km long.

What does any of this have to with dreadnaughts?