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How do!

Largely a speculative background thread, as this is one wing of the Imperial armed forces we know precious little about. So little, I feel confident I can kick us off with a quick summary of what’s known about their origins

1. As an organisation, they may or may not have pre-Unification origins. As with many things, they could be a bit of both, as in an existing cult folded in, and reorganised, rebranded or tweaked etc.

2. They’re composed entirely of Blanks, and Blanks are mind bogglingly rare, even in the modern Imperium

3. They’re also all female.

Where my interest lies in the “but, why?” of point 3, given the truth of point 2.

They serve a specific, and important purpose, where being a Blank is a major leg up. Ain’t no one better suited to wrangling those rascally unsanctioned psykers like combat trained Blanks, who are utterly immune to any kind of psychic shenanigans. And given mankind continues to throw up ever more Psykers, one has to ask why you’d limit yourself to just 50% or so* of available potential candidates.

But that’s not the whole of the mystery. Because they exist in frankly unfeasible numbers, given the purported rarity of Blanks as a whole.

And so it’s my speculation they’re not naturally occurring, that there’s some kind of modification or cloning going on, possibly with a Primarch analogous unseen being. And whether cultural or technological limitation, it only produces women.

That this technology could exist is at least partially supported by what we know of the Kin, and their Cloneskeins. See, part of their standard genetic makeup is “hardened souls”. A measure which reduces their psychic potential and presence in the warp, with the exception of the Grimnyr, who are deliberately psychic. And I see no reason why that technology couldn’t have been pushed to the point of creating Blanks. Certainly the Dark Age of Technology and Old Night would’ve provided ample motivation to try that out.

All just speculation though, and keep in mind I’m not an authority on this. There’s almost certainly stuff and background I’m not familiar with to be taken into account.

So chip in, and if you’ve specific background do share your citation so others can track it down

Origins as artwork - Horus Heresy, Collected Visions:

The Horus Heresy card game from Sabretooth (2003-2004) was the origin for much / all of the sisters of silence stuff at this time if I remember correctly.

Of the theories I've seen bandied about, the "They're artificially made," seems the most sensible.

Someone, in the Dark Age of Technology or somewhen else, made a cloning facility that works to crank out Blanks. Maybe the cloning vats only make women. Maybe they had some for women and some for men, but the only ones recovered were the women ones. Maybe the only data recovered to use with it was the women-pattern Blank.

Originis of the Pariah gene - Necron codex, 3rd edition, 2002.

Page 9 - "legends say that the Devoured Ones had sown a terrible crop in ages past"

Page 17 - "Crafted from a terrible symbiosis of Necron technology and human evolution, Pariahs represent the next phase of the C'tans ideal for the galaxy"

Worth keeping in mind the second quotation there refers to the Necrons utilising existing Blanks/Pariahs in a conversion process, and not necessarily* first creating the Blank/Pariah in the first place.

*it’s been a while since I read that Codex, and can’t recall if it’s explicit one way or the other there.

The moon also had gene-cults with sufficient knowledge the Emperor sought their help. It is entirely plausible this is the group that created the Sisters of Silence.

I was looking at Lexicanum trying to jog my memory and came across this instead:

The Cataclysm of Pentacanaes was an incident during the early Great Crusade.[1]

The incident began when a doomsday cult known as the "Final Banquet" was uncovered on the Hive World of Pentacanaes, a planet close to Terra. When it was known that there were "miracle" performing Psykers among the cultists, the Astra Telepathica deployed forces to try and apprehend them. However this force was rapidly defeated. In the aftermath of the massacre, riots, panic, and hysteria broke out across the Hive world as some sort of psychic force was unleashed. Despite the disaster only one force was able to resist the psychic corruption: a primarily female Imperial Army regiment known as the 5th 9-13 Indentured Irregular Infantry, informally called the Daughters of the Crow. The League of Black Ships commander in orbit Gigan Dantes quickly determined that this force must be made up of Blanks.[1]

The Daughters of the Crow were given Dantes full assistance, and he successfully used them to crush the heretical Psykers at the center of Pentacanaes' madness. It took the arrival of the VIth Legion to fully curb the madness of Pentacanaes. In the aftermath of the incident, the Daughters of the Crow were taken by Dantes' Black Ships to an unknown destination. It is said that this event is closely tied to the origins of the Sisterhood of Silence.[1]

Some speculate that the entire affair had been deliberately arranged, a sort of bloody test to gauge the effectiveness of the Sisters of Silence.[1]

Sources
1: The Horus Heresy Book Seven pgs. 125–126

Time to dig out Book 7...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
*it’s been a while since I read that Codex, and can’t recall if it’s explicit one way or the other there.

It implies but does not specify.

There is also something else later under the Deceiver noting that the c'tan had gathered followers amongst the ranks of the mechanicus to locate and capture Pariahs for conversion.

 Haighus wrote:
The moon also had gene-cults with sufficient knowledge the Emperor sought their help. It is entirely plausible this is the group that created the Sisters of Silence.

The moon had specifically *matriarchal* gene cults (e.g. the Selenar).

It’s quite possible that if the Emperor got them to cook the SoS up in a lab they made them all female because that was their default.

Possibly even with a bit of the Jurassic Park line of thought of not wanting their GMO blanks breeding with each other.

A.T. wrote:
Originis of the Pariah gene - Necron codex, 3rd edition, 2002.

Page 9 - "legends say that the Devoured Ones had sown a terrible crop in ages past"

Page 17 - "Crafted from a terrible symbiosis of Necron technology and human evolution, Pariahs represent the next phase of the C'tans ideal for the galaxy"

Pariahs were sooo f***ing cool.

One thing to keep in mind is that as rare as Blanks are, don't forget Terra can pull things from the whole Imperium to itself. Anything rare is going to be possible to have commonplace if they can pull it in.

Don't forget psychers are also rare and yet 1000 are sacrificed every single day without fail to the Golden Throne. That doesn't include all those that are trained, tamed and sent to the front lines as warriors.

Eisenhorn was even able to operate his own college of Blanks and train them up.


It's also possible that, due to their nature, Blanks might be rare, but more common than one might presume simply because they can hide without realising it. Unlike a psycher who will generally manifest powers at some stage and really stands out; a Blank is just "that person who puts you on edge for no particular reason at all"


Now is the Imperium then cutting blanks in half to have an only female force of elite warriors. Could it be some kind of Marine Initiation system that actually works on women and is kept insanely secret. Could be a huge cloning or breeding system - all and more of those ideas could be possible.
It's also possible that its not one approach in isolation, but could be a combination Growing blanks on the one hand and harvesting high quality ones on the other etc.

Sounds to me like when creating the Pariah unit, the Necrons were converting existing Human Blanks, rather than harvesting humans, fiddlin’ them become Blanks, then scooping out the fun bits and bunging them in the bodies?

Don't forget about the Culexes assassins. It could be that the assassin cults have an 'agreement' with the black ships and the Sisters of Silence to take only boys and leave the girls for the sisters.

I also like the idea of the Sisters of Silence being some kind of eugenics cult. Like the holy mothers from Dune. The daycares are gloomy, but the maternity leave has some pretty cushy bonuses.

That is a possibility.

So far as anyone can tell, Blanks are mutants. And even in 40K? Mutations are based in genetic changes. Sometimes caused by pollutants, sometimes caused by warp exposure/fiddlings, sometimes (like psykers) just good old evolution having a wee play and seeing what shakes out.

As such, I don’t think we can necessarily rule out that the Sisters of Silence do have a breeding programme of some kind.

40K being 40K, with all sorts of non-traditional baby making? It could be the result of harvesting the eggs from existing Sisters of Silence, doing a bit of IVF on all such harvested eggs, and screening the zygotes/embryos* for the desired trait, and bringing those ones to term.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they discount/destroy males with the trait. It could still be a limitation of the technology. I mean, in the world of made up genetic mutations, who knows whether it’s the male or female line it’s passed down?

If it is the male? Well let’s just say us blokes can help bring about more babies than a woman, even with vitae wombs removing the “one per nine months”, as we simply produce more gametes over our sexual maturity than a woman.

Maybe the screening is also done on the taddies, with one in a trillion lil’ swimmer carrying the necessary genetic quirk.

That would be a…well…not good, not reasonable, not as such, explanation why we don’t see their males. It’s because they’re all hooked up to machines which, ahem, perform a very specific function, and being a rare resource which, properly husbanded can perform that task for a good three or four decades, you keep them nice and safe.

The women? Hoik out the ovaries, and you’ve got their collective contribution right there.


Mmmm. 40K. As hideously dystopian as you’d like to make it!

*I’m not presenting these as interchangeable. I’m just not sure at which stage such genetic screening might be practicable, so used both.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I also like the idea of the Sisters of Silence being some kind of eugenics cult.

The Imperium does have eugenics - there is a branch of the Sororitas dedicated to it.


I think the most non-stretched logic for the Sisters of Silence being all female though is simply that they are a continuation of an order that was originally all female, just like regiments of firstborn and the like.

At some point during the great crusade perhaps the Emperor sequestered or formed them without any particular consideration to long term logistics and when the heresy was over their continued existence was simply part of a standing order that no-one but the Emperor could countermand.

That’s certainly another possibility.

His treatment of the Mechanicum and tolerance of their cult/religion does show some flexibility of approach, when it got Him what He wanted.

My assumption on that is the approach of “Of course I’ll respect your religion. For now”, and there was always an intent to start turning the superstition to understanding as a long term project. Possibly a work of many, many generations, given The Emperor is immortal.

A.T. wrote:

At some point during the great crusade perhaps the Emperor sequestered or formed them without any particular consideration to long term logistics and when the heresy was over their continued existence was simply part of a standing order that no-one but the Emperor could countermand.

Most of the Great Crusade wasn't designed as long term, it was designed to achieve the objective of the Great Crusade itself. It was supposed to work and then change; but we all know that didn't happen. The SoS could well have had a specific purpose being all female or were perhaps one of the many groups that were refound, reconnected and had developed some element of female dominated/military culture that he preserved to secure their services.


Regardless it could well have been a purely structural/religious/cultural aspect originally that's then, like a lot of the Imperium management, become set in stone for so long that it doesn't even strike them as a consideration to change something.

 Overread wrote:
The SoS could well have had a specific purpose being all female or were perhaps one of the many groups that were refound, reconnected and had developed some element of female dominated/military culture that he preserved to secure their services.

There is the example of the Daughters of the Emperor - originally all female simply because they were a convent of nuns and maintained that way through various iterations to the 'modern day' Sisters of Battle.

The decree passive was a loophole in the dismantling of the Frateris Templars and other Ecclesiarchy forces, not the reason there are no male Sororitas.

Worth noting Sebastian Thor allowed the loophole, accepting the Ecclesiarchy had a right and requirement to be able to defend itself.

We know male blanks exist and are used for culexis assassins etc.

The sisters are just a classic product of cultural inertia.

You could go into more sinister concepts, like the first ever identified blank was harvested and her eggs were used to clone/breed a line of girls with the genes before anyone knew there were others out there (by ensuring they're all girls you get an endless supply of eggs to harvest with those genes, allowing easier growth than trying to do it with men).

You can imagine back in the 25th millennium they discover this strange gene that shuts down the horrors of the warp and it becomes more valuable than gold so they do everything they can to preserve it, not knowing if it will show up again or is just a random mutation.

We have a 40k grimdark equivalent of Henrietta Lacks (although her actual story is itself pretty dark...) and the sisters of silence became a single stable flame in the insanity of the age of strife.

By the time you get back to normalcy and discover that there are others with that gene, the culture of creating the sisters of silence is entrenched.

What if big E wanted to recreate humanity from SoS and Astartes after the Great crusade? But Heresy happened way before he could get anywhere near phasee 2.. Sons and Daughters of the Emperor, all that?

Had he succeeded in everything, humanity would become all blanks, warp travel would be conducted via webway, chaos would effectively have been SOL'd..

Never thought of it like that before. But it does match that The Emperor wanted to save mankind, body and soul.

The Emperor didn't want humanity to become blanks, he wanted them to ascend as he had done and embrace their psychic potential.

Essentially do what the Aeldari did but not accidentally sexing an evil God into existence in the process.

Well originally the emperor was going to shepherd humanity into its natural super psyker state, so not sure about making them all blanks.

Unless that background has changed at some point.

A few stories imply that the custodes were some form of 'blueprint' for the future of humanity and they seem fairly close to blanks to me. So the theory that the SoS were part of the path towards weaning out psyker mutations doesn't sound that crazy.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
A few stories imply that the custodes were some form of 'blueprint' for the future of humanity and they seem fairly close to blanks to me. So the theory that the SoS were part of the path towards weaning out psyker mutations doesn't sound that crazy.

It's a massive about face if it's true though. The whole idea is that humanity is becoming a psychic race and it's going through growing pains. The emperor was intending to safely guide them to that end.


Also I'm not sure you could call the custodes blanks, they are just not psykers. A blank has no soul and can be a psychic black hole - an inverse soul. I've never seen the custodes described like that - if anything they are described as needing the sisters because they can't deal with psykers which they'd be able to do if they were blanks (and would make the sisters pointless).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Sounds to me like when creating the Pariah unit, the Necrons were converting existing Human Blanks, rather than harvesting humans, fiddlin’ them become Blanks, then scooping out the fun bits and bunging them in the bodies?

If you read that lore closely it implies the Necrons did something in the ancient past to cause human Blanks to be a potential evolution. That is the terrible crop sown in ages past. Then the Necrons later harvested those now existing Blanks and added further modification to result in the actual Pariah unit.

Another thought occurs. Maybe The Emperor was heading his bets?

Shepherding humanity through the growing pains of becoming a psychic race isn’t a bad idea, because we’re all familiar with the risks involved.

But, should that not pan out? Some capacity to generate blanks on demand (the sort that can comfortably walk up to a warp portal and force it closed with their mere presence) is an interesting backup. And being a genetic mutation, is perhaps something that could be forced upon people, either through old fashioned eugenics, or genhancement and other space wizard methods.

I’m now wondering how the Webway reacts, if at all, to a Blank within it?

Given that in Master of Mankind, there were whole squads of Sisters fighting in the imperial bit of the webway, it seems like blanks can travel into the webway without issues - if anything, it seems they're safer than your regular human, as they're immune to some of the effects of the webway itself (I seem to recall there was a psychic memory-fog of some sort, for example).