Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

From what I can tell, Sisters will have a new codex sometime middle or late next year.

Something like this:

Dark Eldar (this fall?)
Grey Knights (dec/jan?)
Necrons (next spring?)
Sisters (next summer/fall?)

Cool, if I have managed to finish my Eldar and Tau by then I may look into Sisters Seriously again.

thegrav wrote:Heh, I have read both Codices, in fact SoB almost became my second army.

As far as the religious zealot bits, I think the bigger point may be the Fanaticism and Zealotry are bad. Not that women are stupid. Not saying you are arguing against that (that the authors are making women stupid) with your response, but I have got the feeling form a few other Dakka members in other SoB topics. I could be wrong of course.

Hell no - I never meant (and don't think) that Mitchel or any other author has a problem with women. Mitchel clearly just plain doesn't like the Sisters of Battle - not because they're women, but because they're Sisters of Battle. He just as clearly loves the Necrons - fair play to him and all that, Necrons are cool.

Here's the rub: The sisters are fanatics and they are zealots. They've been indoctrinated to be so from the moment they entered the Schola. And these are, objectively speaking, character flaws - or at least, they would be in real people. In fictional people they aren't so much.

James Bond is a sociopath, a sadist and a racist, Sharpe is a fanatic and a misogynist, Harry Flashman is a complete monster, Aragorn is a zealot, Lyra Bellaqua is just a ghastly little girl. I wouldn't want to hang out with any of them - but I love their books.

I strongly believe it's possible to write a story about a character who is fanatical, and a zealot and intelligent, thoughtful and fun to read about, hell, even sympathetic.

Case in point: Daemonblood (am I starting to sound like a broken record? - I'll stop pluging this story after this post.) Sister Aescarion is all of those things. It's her fanaticism which drives her to hunt one man for so many years, and her zealous faith which drives the conclusion of the story.g

Also, there's many aspects of zealous faith . Sometimes it's firebrand faith, while other times, it's more of dutiful humility. Most people assume the former, but I prefer the latter.

I hear yah on all that. Although I think you were too kinda with good old James.. I would have added: alcoholic, womanizer, at the least!

Characters always will have flaws, and bad ones, so we can easily see them, this is kinda a rule in creative writing. In fact I chose the Word Bearers for this very reason, they are so damn Fanatical it is AWESOME! and I decided that before the HH books!! I also love the Eisenhorn novels, if there wasn't a bigger example of a Paladin on the edge of falling...

I was just offering the opinion that perhaps in our current world authors may be presenting the SoB and the SM has brash Fanatics and Zealots on purpose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:Also, there's many aspects of zealous faith . Sometimes it's firebrand faith, while other times, it's more of dutiful humility. Most people assume the former, but I prefer the latter.

Zealotry was originally a political movement in first century Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the holy land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt (66-70). Zealotry was described by Josephus as one of the "four sects" at this time.

We are talking about Religious Zealotry and Zealots, not being zealous in your religion..

Then I would argue not all Sisters are Religious Zealots. A Sister could easily be shown as having a quiet, contemplative, and pure faith rather than a loud, fiery, and hateful faith.

It'd be more interesting to read about at any rate.

I've always thought that the religious aspects of 40k are a
British attempt to deal with (in the psychological sense) "Dark Age" Christianity after 400 years of anti-Catholic propaganda. All the xenophobic, hateful, and violent things that Christians are currently lampooned as believing and thinking (and no doubt some actually believe and think) are present in 40k, dressed up in the Gothic fetishes of (especially) Victorian English romantics who misunderstood, hated, and ultimately reveled in their ambiguous, sensual, demanding medieval heritage. As Azazel just noted, these kinds of beliefs and thoughts can be easily derided and dismissed IRL but in 40k they are not only necessary but also laudable. In this respect, the Sisters are the ultimate expression of the morality of 40k.

I think you're right, Manchu. As much as I hate to speak for every Briton, I'm going to. we have a fairly messed up love/hate thing going on with religion in the country - have done for centuries and I do think that 40k draws directly from that mindset.

The same goes, as it happens for the gothic aesthetic. The sisters are far and away the most gothic of the armies - just look at the Exorcist... Jesus...

That's what first drew me to them, the glorious look and feel of them, combined with the zealous faith. two things which I would run a mile from in reality.

For my part I have to believe that there are sisters running the whole spectrum of zealotry. Foaming-at-the-mouth firebrands all the way to fierce inner strength, calm surface. In fact, my Seraphim Superiors, to my mind, embody the polar opposites of that spectrum, and I like them both.


Oh, and it's 'Azezel' with an 'e' in the middle. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels (well, more complicated than that, but basically) so I stuck an 'e' in my nick for reasons that seemed good when I was 15.

40k is way influenced by the Gothic movement of the 14th-15th centuries. And I can see the mentioned ties to Victorian era politics and high society as well. I find it interesting how different the Empire becomes in the 41st, considering according to booth old fluff and the HH Fluff the 31st was very much about science and reason.

It is as if the Empire is in a new Dark Age of Strife and refuses to admit it.

You chaps may get a kick out of this thread:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/262901.page#1073961

Very nice! I dig.

Azezel wrote:
That's what first drew me to them, the glorious look and feel of them, combined with the zealous faith. two things which I would run a mile from in reality.

Exactly the same here.

Azezel wrote:Hell no - I never meant (and don't think) that Mitchel or any other author has a problem with women. Mitchel clearly just plain doesn't like the Sisters of Battle - not because they're women, but because they're Sisters of Battle.

Well, Goto has a problem with women, but he is/was too busy mistreating female Eldar main characters (his record so far: torturing an injured female Eldar Farseer for 180 pages before she is finally allowed to die ->"Tempest" ).

Mitchel or rather his main character Cain just doesn't like fanatics, so dogmatic Sisters are an easy and obvious target for his humour.

Which makes handing the prequel to Faith and Fire off to Mitchel... well, a WEIRD choice.

Can people who think that GW isn't presenting Sisters in a positive light please explain what presenting them in a positive light would look like? The impression I'm getting from this thread (reinforced by other, recent threads) is that it would be an organistion of Mary Sues who always win.

Fanwank, in short.

If that's not what it is that you want to see, then please elaborate on what it is that you actually want to see.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:Can people who think that GW isn't presenting Sisters in a positive light please explain what presenting them in a positive light would look like? The impression I'm getting from this thread (reinforced by other, recent threads) is that it would be an organistion of Mary Sues who always win.

Fanwank, in short.

If that's not what it is that you want to see, then please elaborate on what it is that you actually want to see.

Getting them a new codex with a set of books.

That's... not quite what I meant. More about what happens in fiction about them and less about whether or not they get books and a new codex released at all.

They don't always have to win.

I suppose what we want is something like this:

1) A series of novels.

That doesn't seem too much to ask. You can't move for Space marine and Guard multi-volume serials. The Grey Knights, Rogue Traders, Deathwatch, Inquisitors you name it. Every Imperial outfit but one has at least one series.

2) Said books should remain true to the unique characteristics of our army.

As I said before, they are fanatics and zealots. But they are not superhuman or centuries old. They are mortal hummans who have (so far as they are concenred) the greatest and most terrible responcibility in the galaxy - that of saving humanity's soul with nothing but a bolter and limitless faith.

3) Whilst we don't demand the Sisters always win - we'd like them maybe to win in their own books.

I'm looking at you, here, Faith and Fire. At best that's a neutral outcome. The sisters seriesly messed up to start with and then fixed it later, bringing them back to zero.


On a personal note I will say again that a novel where the sisters hunt down and purge a rogue chapter of Marines is a novel I want to read.

It'd be a perfect opertunity to explore the differences between the Sisters and those other yoyos with power armour and bolters.

Azezel wrote:3) Whilst we don't demand the Sisters always win - we'd like them maybe to win in their own books.

Just on this point specifically, ignoring fiction focusing on other organisations and species completely, do you want Sisters to win 100% of the time in their own books?

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:Can people who think that GW isn't presenting Sisters in a positive light please explain what presenting them in a positive light would look like?

How about having a story where large portions of Sisters don't get wiped out and/or turned to chaos?

Guard wins all the time in their books, at least the seven or so that I've read; they usually end up winning their battles, often quite conclusively and without overwhelming casualties.

Melissia wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:Can people who think that GW isn't presenting Sisters in a positive light please explain what presenting them in a positive light would look like?

How about having a story where large portions of Sisters don't get wiped out and/or turned to chaos?

I assume it also wouldn't involve having them drop into Taco Bell for the entirety of the story and have them trading quips for two hundred pages.

What do you actually want to see?


(Good to know that you've accepted that SoBs can fall to Chaos.)

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:[snip]

1: Maybe something about a group of Sisters as bodyguards to an ecclesiarchal official during a ceremony celebrating the ascension of a new sub-sector governor... only at the zenith of the governor's speech, an empty drop pod fitted with symbols of the four dark gods slams through the building and crushes the governor. The Sisters are forced to investigate the situation, looking into the corruption inherent in the noble spires and the governor's own sordid past, being attacked by heretic assassination squads just when they're about to find some crucial information every time. Eventually, near the climax of the book, it is found that the Ecclesiarchy official they were supposed to guard was the culprit, and was orchestrating things in order to weaken the world for an invasion by Chaos forces. They just barely manage to stop him before he ignites a war between two of the major noble houses, and the book ends with the Chaos fleet arriving, engaging the loyalist fleet, and the Sisters are left to help prepare the defenses-- motivating Guard, organizing the Guard and PDF regiments (the General having been killed by assassins), and readying themselves for a major invasion.

2: I never said they couldn't. I said it has only happened once in canon.

1. Would it end before the invasion?

2. >How about having a story where large portions of Sisters don't get wiped out and/or turned to chaos?

I seem to recall there being an entire convent or something going traitor?

1: The first book would.

2: Miriael Sabathiel was the only one that turned to chaos worship. BL books tended to ignore this, just as BL writers conveniently ignore other facts of the fluff whenever they believe it'll make a good story / whenever they forget / whenever it allows them to spank their characters more / whenever they can get away with it.

But Faith and Fire is a valid reference for what life is like in the Sisterhood.

Either Black Library is canon or it isn't.

Some books are better than others. Grouping them all together and saying "all or nothing" is something I don't buy.

GW state that there is no official cannon, but generally it goes something like:

Core book>Codex>Black Library - so when the Sisters' codex says only one has ever fallen, it trumps the Sandy Mitchel having an entire convent pall around with his Hitler expy.

Also, I was referring to books within a same group. Compare C.S.Goto's work with, say, Dan Abnett.

@Melissa: You are reading the Gaunt's Ghost books right? Cause if you are and you don't think that the Tanith are dieing in droves you need your head checked... You are a huge SoB fan so I can understand your needs and wants.. But BL wipes up blood in port-a-potty's with the IG ALL the time!

thegrav wrote:@Melissa: You are reading the Gaunt's Ghost books right? Cause if you are and you don't think that the Tanith are dieing in droves you need your head checked... You are a huge SoB fan so I can understand your needs and wants.. But BL wipes up blood in port-a-potty's with the IG ALL the time!

Actually, the Tanith themselves seem to get off relatively lightly when compared to the much voiced "ZOMG's the Guardsmens are dyings!" in many codexes, all of which find it easiest to wail on the IG. The only time where the Tanith 1st seriously took a beating was the third book, Necropolis I think, and they were refreshed with new characters and Hiveworlders afterwards. Sure, the IG regiment to the right and left get's the crap beaten out of them, but the Tanith always seem to pull through with minimal casualties.