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I am confused when it comes to this question.

I know that there is 6 major orders and unknown numbers of smaller ones.
So how many are we talking about? Thousands? Millions?

And everybody is saying, when regarding to this, that 5'th edition rulebook fluff "erased" 90% of Sisters from fluff by 2 paragraphs they are mentioned in.
Can someone point me to what 2 paragraphs because I was unable to find it.

There isn't any hard number for the Sisters Militant in M41, though GW's material and descriptions allows for some guesswork. For example, the 2E Codex stated that the "Big Six" (the Major Orders) usually have between 3.000 and 5.000 Sisters each, and the two main convents (Terra and Ophelia V) who are home to these Orders have facilities to house a grand total of 30k Sisters together.

The unknown factor is the Minor Orders and their small bases scattered throughout known space, as we don't know their number, only that they usually have about a hundred or perhaps several hundred Sisters each, and that the number of Minor Orders is given as "many" (not "thousands" or "countless").

All in all, this leads me to a very rough estimate of perhaps 50k Sisters of Battle, maybe a 100k, but definitively not "millions". This comparatively low number is also reflected in their appearance in battles throughout the fluff - for example, the 13th Black Crusade saw the Adeptus Astartes commited about 250.000 Space Marines to the war against Chaos, whereas the Sisterhood sent 15.000, including the ones from Minor Orders. The Third War on Armageddon has an even stronger disparity, showing 150.000 Marines and only 1.000 Sisters Militant in action.
Likewise, many Ecclesiarchy facilities actually lack Sororitas protection in spite of their importance (example: the cathedral on Bladen, most important holy site of the subsector, was defended only by its clergy and a regiment of Cadians), which further hints at the number of Battle Sisters not being large enough to cover the entirety of Imperial space in their holy tasks.

Furthermore, whilst we don't know the total number of SoB in M41, we do know it for M38 - about 2.500 years after the Orders were founded, the Ecclesiarchy managed to raise the total number of Sisters from 10.000 (survivors of the Age of Apostasy) to 30.000. I don't see how twice that time could result in millions or even billions, unless entry requirements and combat losses in the last two millennia were significantly lowered, which I don't deem likely.
In general, the Sisters simply don't show up in battles all that often - and when they do, it is usually the Major Orders, though I've found a very few instances of Minor Orders being mentioned by now.

There is also the Non-Military Orders such as the Hospitallers, Famulous and Sabine, yet Battle Sisters were said to make up the majority of Sororitas, so their numbers are capped by the headcount of the Orders Militant and the grand total of all Sisters, militant and civilian, would be somewhere around 500k, at least that is what I would think.

All of that is merely a very rough guess based on the fluff that GW has churned out so far, though. There will be other estimations (especially when you factor in non-GW material), and I can claim no "authority" on this topic. So take with a handful of salt.

Regarding the 5E rulebook - that is based only on a typo(?), as the short paragraph they are mentioned in gives the number of Major Orders with four instead of six, hinting at the destruction (or retconning) of the remaining two, and with them about 8.000 Sisters. I don't know where that "90%" is supposed to come from, unless someone for some reason assumed that there were millions of Sisters before, as the paragraph also hints at a comparative rarity.
It is worth mentioning that the missing two Orders were again mentioned in the new WD Minidex, so I suppose that line in the 5E Rulebook was either a mistake, or whoever wrote the WD 'dex didn't pay attention. The former would seem more likely, of course.

Lynata wrote:There isn't any hard number for the Sisters Militant in M41, though GW's material and descriptions allows for some guesswork. For example, the 2E Codex stated that the "Big Six" (the Major Orders) usually have between 3.000 and 5.000 Sisters each, and the two main convents (Terra and Ophelia V) who are home to these Orders have facilities to house a grand total of 30k Sisters together.

The unknown factor is the Minor Orders and their small bases scattered throughout known space, as we don't know their number, only that they usually have about a hundred or perhaps several hundred Sisters each, and that the number of Minor Orders is given as "many" (not "thousands" or "countless").

All in all, this leads me to a very rough estimate of perhaps 50k Sisters of Battle, maybe a 100k, but definitively not "millions". This comparatively low number is also reflected in their appearance in battles throughout the fluff - for example, the 13th Black Crusade saw the Adeptus Astartes commited about 250.000 Space Marines to the war against Chaos, whereas the Sisterhood sent 15.000, including the ones from Minor Orders. The Third War on Armageddon has an even stronger disparity, showing 150.000 Marines and only 1.000 Sisters Militant in action.
Likewise, many Ecclesiarchy facilities actually lack Sororitas protection in spite of their importance (example: the cathedral on Bladen, most important holy site of the subsector, was defended only by its clergy and a regiment of Cadians), which further hints at the number of Battle Sisters not being large enough to cover the entirety of Imperial space in their holy tasks.

Furthermore, whilst we don't know the total number of SoB in M41, we do know it for M38 - about 2.500 years after the Orders were founded, the Ecclesiarchy managed to raise the total number of Sisters from 10.000 (survivors of the Age of Apostasy) to 30.000. I don't see how twice that time could result in millions or even billions, unless entry requirements and combat losses in the last two millennia were significantly lowered, which I don't deem likely.
In general, the Sisters simply don't show up in battles all that often - and when they do, it is usually the Major Orders, though I've found a very few instances of Minor Orders being mentioned by now.

There is also the Non-Military Orders such as the Hospitallers, Famulous and Sabine, yet Battle Sisters were said to make up the majority of Sororitas, so their numbers are capped by the headcount of the Orders Militant and the grand total of all Sisters, militant and civilian, would be somewhere around 500k, at least that is what I would think.

All of that is merely a very rough guess based on the fluff that GW has churned out so far, though. There will be other estimations (especially when you factor in non-GW material), and I can claim no "authority" on this topic. So take with a handful of salt.

Thank you, this was quite helpful indeed . But I am disappointed, I always thought that Sisters outnumber the Marines, not the other way around. This question was also inspired by Sousltorm Sister ending, the narrator there said that "millions of Sisters" are coming to Kaurava to pray and prepare for Crusade.

Regarding the 5E rulebook - that is based only on a typo(?), as the short paragraph they are mentioned in gives the number of Major Orders with four instead of six, hinting at the destruction (or retconning) of the remaining two, and with them about 8.000 Sisters. I don't know where that "90%" is supposed to come from, unless someone for some reason assumed that there were millions of Sisters before, as the paragraph also hints at a comparative rarity.
It is worth mentioning that the missing two Orders were again mentioned in the new WD Minidex, so I suppose that line in the 5E Rulebook was either a mistake, or whoever wrote the WD 'dex didn't pay attention. The former would seem more likely, of course.

I see, so until the new Sister codex we won't know anything about their numbers. Since 5'th edition rulebook mention those orders destroyed while WD update mention them again, but not destroyed.

Going off the FFG stuff, :

There's no overall number given . But the numbers that are given are as follows ;

There were around 4,000 surviving "Daughters of the Emperor" who survived the seige of the Ecclesiarchs' palace.

When Thor founded the initial orders - around 288M36 their ranks have swollen to over 10,000 battle sisters.

Each of the main 6 Orders Militant have spawned "dozens" of "far smaller" leser Orders Militant.

Aside from these orders there are the non militant orders ; the big 3 -- Famulous,Dialogus and Hospitaliers -- these are, aparently, as large as the Militant Orders, but there are " countless smaller orders, some as small as 12 or so sisters".

Some examples of these listed include

" The Order Madriga provide the all-female choirs that fill the cathedrals with sublime heavenly song..."

"The Order Planxilium form thousand strong processions ..."

No real mention of combat numbers, but it is noted that a deployment of a Palantine and 50 battle sisters is seen as significant on Iocanthos, whilst the largest concentration of the Order Dialogus on Solomon houses a full perceptory of Sisters Dialogus and is guarded by 1000 battle sisters.

.... and a Squadron of Imperial Navy Ships !

Brother Coa wrote:But I am disappointed, I always thought that Sisters outnumber the Marines, not the other way around. This question was also inspired by Sousltorm Sister ending, the narrator there said that "millions of Sisters" are coming to Kaurava to pray and prepare for Crusade.

I think it fits to the lack of coverage the Sisters receive in terms of fluff; they'd have to be mentioned way more often otherwise. And truth be told, their equipment is very costly to produce, they only take the very best of the Schola's female orphans, and they are said to have a high rate of attrition. All of these would be factors that influence the grand total. Marines have it a bit easier since (rather ironically) as they don't have such high recruitment requirements (they don't care if someone is an orphan or not, they simply take the best they can find from a locally limited area in Chapter vicinity), yet the average Marine would still live a lot longer than the average Sister Militant.
And last but not least, I would say that the Inquisition and the Senate would likely become sceptical of the Ecclesiarchy, were it to amass such a large military force again. The Sisters are pretty much a loophole as they are, so the Church would probably do wise not to "overextend" its ambitions.

As for Soulstorm, that one puzzled me as well. I suppose you could easily explain it away as not mentioning a dedicated timeframe. Meaning: over a course of thousands of years (which isn't even as big a timespan in the context of 40k), that planet could indeed have been visited by millions of Sisters on their pilgrimage. Either that, or it's simply yet another licensed product that didn't really stick to the studio's own interpretation. Why should a game be exempt from what novels do all the time? Just look at the Space Marine shooter and the liberties it took.

All in all, I've grown fond of the idea. It's an interesting deviance from the usual "weaker = more numerous / stronger = more rare" formula that works with Marines and Guard.

Brother Coa wrote:I see, so until the new Sister codex we won't know anything about their numbers. Since 5'th edition rulebook mention those orders destroyed while WD update mention them again, but not destroyed.

If we get a new Codex, yeah. Though I have to add, the newer Codices don't seem to care for this level of detail anymore, mostly bothering with hearsay and vague descriptions? Just an observation I made whilst reading the last Marine Codices ... there wasn't nearly as much "hard" info as in the old books.

reds8n wrote:Going off the FFG stuff, :
No real mention of combat numbers, but it is noted that a deployment of a Palantine and 50 battle sisters is seen as significant on Iocanthos, whilst the largest concentration of the Order Dialogus on Solomon houses a full perceptory of Sisters Dialogus and is guarded by 1000 battle sisters.

Oh yes, FFG really ramped up the numbers, didn't they?

To explain how 50 Battle Sisters could be described as "significant" when other places have a thousand - Iocanthos is from when the RPG was still written by Black Industries, the latter number is from when FFG took over.
Fantasy Flight also employs some "guest writers", at least one of whom have already stated on FFG's forum that they follow their own ideas rather than studio material when they think their stuff is better, which may explain the "disconnect".
This is not to say that I support everything Black Industries has written, but I'm not the only one who has noted that the RPG took a different turn after the license changed owners. Did you know that, before FFG, the only presence of Space Marines in the Calixis Sector was an ancient Black Templar shrine guarded by a single Dreadnaught, as well as a deserted Chapter fortress?

35,000

I believe that's still the case in DH. Deathwatch takes place in the Jericho Reach, on the other side of the galaxy, north of Segmentum Ultima.

Psienesis wrote:I believe that's still the case in DH. Deathwatch takes place in the Jericho Reach, on the other side of the galaxy, north of Segmentum Ultima.

But the Storm Wardens are indeed from the Calixis Sector, it's where their Chapter Homeworld is. They just popped up over night as DW was released.

Just one of a few "adjustments" that came with the transition from BI to FFG. For what it's worth, though, it's not like GW has never done the same thing. It may only be a bit impractical because all of FFG's books are essentially still of the same edition. Or, well, their fluff gets treated as such. The rules have obviously evolved as well (in a similar powercreep, some may say). And in a way, the retcon has been done in a rather elegant way, by keeping this planet some sort of "state secret", i.e. your DH characters may simply not know about it.

There'd have to be a fair number of them around. Hundreds of thousands at least even assuming there were just a handful of squads. They're used as garrisons for important Shrine and Cardinal worlds, escorts for Important Cardinals, an they do their stint with Hereticfus and on the Black Ships IIRC.

That's just for Sisters of Battle directly. The other Orders add in even more and they all can technically fight as well, although they don't typically serve in a battlefield role.

Connor MacLeod wrote:They're used as garrisons for important Shrine and Cardinal worlds, escorts for Important Cardinals, an they do their stint with Hereticfus and on the Black Ships IIRC.

The Cathedral on Bladen (see: Cityfight Codex) didn't have a Sororitas garrison, and it was said to be of sub-sector importance; a place where the Emperor Himself had once set foot when it was used as a field hospital during the Great Crusade. Its Cardinal was left to defend the building with only his Confessors - and a regiment of Cadian Guard. So the Sisters' protection only seems to extend to very important Ecclesiarchy facilities, apparently on a sector-wide level. As for the Black Ships, this is a duty they share with IST squads, which would suggest that these (just like any Ordo Hereticus assignments) are only temporary assignments.

We'd probably be able to make a better guess if we knew how many important Shrine and Cardinal worlds there are in the Imperium, but this information is just as sparse, allowing for a wide range of personal interpretation.

The above assignments are where I see the many small Minor Orders being very active, by the way. The high degree of specialization (guarding a holy site, purity control sweeps, inquisitorially authorized assassinations, etc) or a locally limited operation range (for protection detachments) would be perfect for the scattered outposts of the Sisterhood, freeing the Major Orders up for large-scale wars of faith and crusades - neatly explaining why you only see the Big Six show up in the fluff 90% of the time (apart from the vast majority of the Minor Orders lacking the capabilities to engage in this kind of warfare).

Quotes for the quote god, citations for the citation throne.

Codex: Sisters of Battle, 1997.Pg. 35The Sisterhood is most commonly associated with the Battle Sisters of the Orders Militant, but this is not its only role in the Imperium. There are three other major Orders of the Adepta Sororitas and many others numbering perhaps only a hundred or so individuals each.
[...]
When Sebastian Thor ascended to the position of Ecclesiarchy there were roughly 4,000 Daughters of the Emperor under his command. [...] With recruits passing through the hands of the Schola Progenium once again, the Adepta Sororitas' ranks soon grew to over 10,000 fighers [...]
[...]
Two and a half thousand years later, two more orders were created by Deacis VI (the Orders of the Bloody Rose and Sacred Rose) and the Convent buildings were extended to accommodate almost 15,000 warriors each. In recent years, the number of the Militant Orders' members has declined slightly and each Order now numbers between 3,000 and 4,000 Battle Sisters, of which perhaps 500-750 will be trained as Seraphim. There warriors are spread throughout the galaxy in various battle zones and on extended tours of duty. The size of an Order waxes and wanes irregularly, depending on the quality of recruits available and battle losses. On occasion an Order may number no more than a few hundred warriors, all fighting the enemies of the Emperor, while at other times it may reach a peak of six or seven thousand warriors, with much of the Order fighting in distant wars but still leaving a reserve of several thousand Battle Sisters and Seraphim that can be despatched if needed.

Codex: ArmageddonForce Dispositions in the Third Armageddon War ADEPTA SORORITAS
Order of Our Martyed Lady . . . . . Equiv. 3 Companies
Order of the Argent Shroud . . . . Equiv. 7 Companies

Codex: Witch HuntersPg. 6As numbers within the Orders Militant waxed and waned, varying from a couple of thousand warriors to many thousands, the subsidiary convents began to take on an importance all their own. [...] Though the original six Orders are by far the most numerous and active of the Orders Militant, the new Lesser Orders Militant, or Orders Minoris, became especially useful in the frequent purity sweeps and pogroms instituted by the Witch Hunters.

Codex: Eye of TerrorForce Dispositions at the Outset of the Thirteenth Black Crusade of Abaddon the DespoilerRECORDED ADEPTA SORORITAS
Greater Orders:
Order of the Bloody Rose . . . . . . . . .6 Preceptories
Order of the Ebon Chalice . . . . . . . .4 Preceptories
Order of Our Martyred Lady . . . . . . 5 Preceptories
Lesser Orders
Order of the Ermine Mantle . . . . . . 3 Missions
Order of the Wounded Heart . . . . 1 Commandery
{Nb. Preceptory = "up to 1,000 Battle Sisters", Commandery = "up to 200 Battle Sisters", Mission = "a number of squads". Ref; Codex: Witch Hunters, Pg. 11}

Warhammer: 40,000 main rulebook, 5th edition.Pg. 120There are three major Orders of Adepta Sororitas, the fighting strength of each numbering several thousand warriors, as well as many lesser sisterhoods comprised of around a hundred or so Battle Sisters. An Orders warriors rarely fight as a unit, but instead are commonly spread throughout the galaxy in various battle zones.
{Nb. "Adepta Sororitas" is here used to mean "Battle Sisters of the Orders Militant"}

White Dwarf #380, Chapter Approved: Sisters of BattlePg. 92The Orders Minoris vary in size, and though some only number as few as a hundred or so Battle Sisters[...]

That's all the information I could find putting numbers to the Sisters of Battle within GW material.

Must of the fuss over the 5E rulebook quote is that it claims there are only three major Orders Militant. The 2E Codex: Sisters of Battle claims there are four "major Orders of the Adepta Sororitas", but lists them as the Orders Militant, Orders Hospitaller, Orders Dialogus and Orders Famulous (pg. 35-36). The 5E rulebook is only describing orders within the Orders Militant, and as there are 6 Orders Militant (the Orders of the Ebon Chalice, Valorous Heart, Our Martyred Lady (formerly 'Fiery Heart'), Argent Shroud, Bloody Rose and Sacred Rose) and these Orders contrast with the Orders Minoris or Minor Orders, it seems natural to consider the 'big 6' major Orders.
However, to my knowledge the 6 Orders Militant are never explicitly described as 'major Orders', so it may be possible that three of them are more important than the others. The Orders of the Sacred Rose and the Bloody Rose were both founded some 2 500 years after the initial four, one might consider them to be of lesser import. Similarly, the Order of Our Martyred Lady suffered grievous losses on Armageddon, so might be considered to have a correspondingly reduced influence.
Ultimately though, these are conjectures. As Our Martyred Lady only fielded around 300 Battle Sisters in the 3rd War for Armageddon but managed to field up to 5 000 during the 13th Black Crusade they don't seem to be diminished that much, and the two Rose orders have been a part of the Adepta Sororitas for 1 500 years, more than enough time to gain influence. It seems more likely to me that whoever penned that line in the rulebook was mistaken, perhaps confused by there being 3 Orders Militant based at each of the two Convents.

Thanks for posting the quotes, it's always neat to offer interested readers the actual texts. Kudos for the formatting, too!

As for the six big Orders Militant - the Codices consistently group them together, and establish that the Orders Minoris form a sub-group by themselves (see the organizations diagram on p. 18 of the 2E Codex, or the 3E bit you quoted yourself). It was my understanding that anything that isn't a Minor Order (or Ordo Minoris) would have to be a Major Order (or Ordo Maioris).

You bring a plausible explanation for why someone may have mixed up the numbers in the 5E rulebook, though!

Oh, and to correct myself, in the first post I thought the 5E book would omit only two Major Orders instead of three. Sorry about that, memory lapse! Good thing you had the actual quote at hand.

Thank you all for your posts they were very informitive, especially lynata and Æscholt ones - thanks you very much

KamikazeCanuck, you quote wins this thread, it is simple and goes straight to the point

Why mess around with all that hard work.

Because we want to know more them simple 7,8 decimal number?

Well it's a good thing Lynata showed up then.