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What would be the mood of a Sister Hospitallier? i mean they can't be as angry and repressed as their fellow sisters as that would affect the survival-rate amongst the common men, but on the same them being all giddy wouldn't fit well with the Sister Hospitalliers.

Depends.

They're young Mother Theresa, all of them. Calm, collected, compassionate. Gentle nuns that take away your pain so you can once again serve the Emperor with honor - or at least be allowed to rest at His side if you don't make it.

Although I recall they can also serve as interrogators and torturers if the situation warrants it...

Mother Theresa scared even the Pope. She was fiery and faithful at times.

This: and if they don't have a vow of silence this too:

Um, OP seems to read as if this is meant to be a jokey thread but I'll be serious...I'll say the most likely answer is "extremely professional." I get the impression that no matter what their role is they are going to be 100% dedicated to the job.

Plus, I don't think their approach to medicine is going to be buckets of boiling pitch, etc. Judging from the BL stuff I've read recently (Eisenhorn and Ravenor being particular examples) the standard of medical care in the Imperium is pretty high on developed worlds and in the military and Adeptus-type organisations, so they're going to have access to plenty of supplies and modern equipment and be well trained.

This seems too broad of a question for a thread in itself don't you think? I mean it's one thing to ask what certain characters must think or feel about a certain situation (i.e. other Loyalist Primarchs viewpoint on the Council of Nikea's outcome) but this is about how someone feels....whenever.

For any general question such as this, like TheCustomLime said, it depends. No Sister Hospitallier is going to be exactly the same as the other as many would have various reasons to have ended up becoming one; whether it was their own idea of serving the Emperor even more or their own natural affinity towards it. People vary from person to person and emotions like everything else change depending on the context of the situation they are in.

It's like asking how a Guardsmen feels when he/she is going to war. It just leads to all sort of follow-up questions because it's too vague. What kind of guardsmen are you talking about? How old are they? Have they had any combat experience? Veteran or Conscript? Indoctrinated or not? Zealous or Pragmatic? Etc...etc...

 Fezman wrote:
Um, OP seems to read as if this is meant to be a jokey thread but I'll be serious...I'll say the most likely answer is "extremely professional." I get the impression that no matter what their role is they are going to be 100% dedicated to the job.

Very much so. Sisters are supremely dedicated to their work.

The Hospitalliers who arrive with Verity in Faith and Fire can be tough and intimidaing when they need to be. But yes, they're often not as angry or battle-hardened as their Militant comrades. Verity herself is a very good example of this. It's made clear that she's not used to combat like the Militants are. Though a Hospitallier who's been deployed to frontline combat might adopt the attitude of her Militant buddies.

So yeah, it'll vary.

As mentioned previously, "extremely professional". They're not candy-stripers, they're fully trained, competent doctors and surgeons.

Unless you reveal yourself to be a mutant, heretic or traitor... and then, well, that's when the buckets of boiling pitch come out. Death would be a merciful release.

Actually, they supposedly make bad torturers because they often kill the people they're torturing, according to some DH fluff.

True, then again, that's from the POV of the Inquisition, who are masters at the art, and keep people alive for, like, years. The Sisters may only manage days.

 Melissia wrote:
Actually, they supposedly make bad torturers because they often kill the people they're torturing, according to some DH fluff.

Odd. You'd think that their medical knowledge would make them good at knowing exactly how far to take it without killing somebody. Guess DH has them as fanatical as the Militants, then, if they're killing people they're meant to be torturing despite the aforementioned medical knowledge.

Dark Heresy's Sisters lore has a lot of flaws.

 Troike wrote:

Odd. You'd think that their medical knowledge would make them good at knowing exactly how far to take it without killing somebody. Guess DH has them as fanatical as the Militants, then, if they're killing people they're meant to be torturing despite the aforementioned medical knowledge.

It's not a matter of knowing how and where to cut but rather the simple notion that there is a heretic that isn't dead yet. The Hippocratic Oath only carries so far.

It's a mixed thing, on one hand it just further goes to show how complete they are in their convictions, on the other hand, Hospitallers can't be Pragmatic enough to realise the value of keeping them alive, at least for the time being?
This is especially odd when most the time Dark Heresy attempts to reinforce how competent the Adepta Sororitas truely are

Merely a matter of different interpretations/visions. Just like the various novels, these RPGs are written by a different studio and thus may at times propagate deviating ideas.

From the Codex fluff:
"Sisters Hospitaller are often called to serve the Inquisition in a number of capacities. To a Witch Hunter, a surgeon's ability to keep a subject alive despite the most grievous of injuries is most useful. In the persecution of heretics, even a Sister Hospitaller will put aside her compassion, so great is her chagrin should a man turn his back upon the Blessed God Emperor of Mankind."
- 3E C:WH p.11, Duties and Organisation of the Adepta Sororitas

Kettu wrote:This is especially odd when most the time Dark Heresy attempts to reinforce how competent the Adepta Sororitas truely are

... compared to hive gangers and IG conscripts, and armed with supernatural space magic rather than just an indomitable will.
To this day, I still prefer GW's original descriptions where they even get to purge entire Marine Chapters. The best that FFG credits them with is the ability to stand a chance against renegade Guardsmen and maybe even a bunch of Orks.
But of course that is only consistent, given that they have to work with "civilian" boltguns there... I kid you not, that's the actual wording in the books.

Anyways, the "mood" of the Sisters Hospitaller would be just as dependent on which source you are looking at, given that some novels seem to utilise a lighter, less hardcore interpretation of the Sisterhood.
If we were to go by Codex fluff, I would simply point out that they are all recruited from exactly the same inhumane Schola Progenium brainwashing program as the Battle Sisters, and as Melissia correctly recited are just as dedicated to their work (this bit is from the WD article that talked about the lifestyle in their convents, iirc).

Like any other character it all depends on how you write her. I like the idea of a scene with an injured Guardsman being wheeled in, a gorgeous SH is on hand, she evaluates him with a critical eye and instead of words of comfort she turns to the field medics who dragged him in "Damn it all trooper I'm a surgeon not a veterinarian."

Hahaha, surgeon, not a veterinarian, then he is a mutant pure and simple and she would then put him out of misery with her bolter. I mean you can have medics and doctors and you have religious fanatics with the skill-set of a doctor.

She was more going for "What's this pathetic excuse for a human being doing bleeding on my floor" then calling him a mutant.

Your interpretation is insane AKA47. And a true Sister Hospitallier wouldn't do that unless he gave her a very bad death-bed-confession like he secretly rapes puppies and such. That would cause her to strangle him on the spot and tell the commissar to never speak about the guy ever again.

Not really, the highly sarcastic and clinical medical professional isn't an uncommon trope in fiction of all kinds or reality.

Yeah especially about the Sister Hospitalliers, sorry your rebuttal is disregarded already. I rather have the Sister Hospitalliers to be like Angels of Mercy.

Generally speaking, they are considered to be the Angels of Mercy (or, if you prefer, the Sisters of Mercy... and I don't mean the Goth band)... you don't really find Sister House in the mentions of the Hospitallers.

....you're special aren't you? It's a fictional entity in a fictional universe of a couple hundred trillion human beings, with a couple hundred million if not more sisters among all orders. There's room for Sister Hospitaller Superior McCoy in all of that. Or House for that matter. Especially given their roles as combat medics, having known a fair number of trauma surgeons, battlefield medics, corpsmen, etc those guys and girls tend to be sarcastic donkey caves, angels of mercy and heroes? No doubt to it, I have friends who wouldn't be here today without their help, but caustic fethers? Also yes.

So here's the real question, why would you start a thread asking for the opinion of others if your mind is already made up on a fixed set of behavior for the group you're asking about?

While there is a couple hundred trillion human beings... there's only a few thousand Sisters Hospitaller. What little background fluff we're provided on them (the Sisters Militant get the most stories of the SOB) paints them as saintly and caring, as well as competent and professional to a degree not commonly seen, even amongst the Biologis.

While they might feel worn down by the horrors of war, sarcasm has absolutely no place in their faith, and to express their weariness would be to express a doubt in the God-Emperor, which they will not do where a patient might hear. They don't deal with a bureaucracy like House does. They don't deal with hospital politics, funding issues, inter-departmental romance drama, or anything of the sort.

One can absolutely be the consummate professional and still be a complete donkey cave, and still feel they are serving God Emperor and Unit well.

Possibly, but that doesn't fit with the information about them that GW has provided, is all I'm saying.

We've had a couple paragraphs, we've seen the span of human emotions and attitudes across all the Imperial forces we've spent any amount of significant time with including the SoB, it's odd to assume that the Hospitaller are any different then mere mortals any where else.

All Sisters are different from mere mortals. That is why they are the Adeptus Sororitas.

There is certainly some measure of differentiation between the individual Sisters - personally, all I would add to the discussion is that the range of possibilities there is much, much more narrow than within a normal human community. Much like with the Space Marines or the Commissars, this is what makes it so very difficult to portray one, be it for a story or for the purposes of roleplaying, and it takes a talented author to pull it off, hitting that small space between "bland clones of one another" and "too human". I always thought that James Swallow did nicely with the personalities of the various Sisters Militant - rash Miriya, by-the-book Imogen, pragmatic Galatea - that gave them all unique personalities, even allowing for some inter-faction conflict, without truly bending the shape established by GW. I'm just not sure whether I agree with his take on the Hospitallers, though, as Verity always felt a bit too ... squeamish?

Anyways, these girls have effectively been brainwashed; they grow up in an environment that teaches them a very rigid code of behaviour, and they are made to conform. Their lifestyle must seem utterly alien to the average Imperial citizen, as exemplified in a mini-story from the 3rd edition rulebook.

When comparing Schola Progenium education to real life, the best example that springs to my mind is the so-called Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt (NaPolA) of the Third Reich, where young children were drilled into becoming the SS Elite of tomorrow. There's a rather interesting movie about that topic, in case anyone is interested, made under involvement of former students. Or perhaps think of those terrorist-funded Quran schools that turn kids into suicide bombers. That's the kind of mindset we're looking at here.

(as usual, operating solely from GW fluff here - I'm aware that some licensed products paint a less grimdark picture of the subject)