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Well, those who will be Sisters are still in the Schola around the age where they would have sex-ed classes, so I'm sure it's covered, though probably like a sex-ed class of the real world, it's more about biology than actual interpersonal relationships or the intricacies of such things.

 Lynata wrote:
Although the new Codex does not mention any Sisters getting corrupted, so there's no conflict in the same book.

Though it still mentions the Bloodtide, which I'm assuming still went down the same way.

Y'know, I'm just a little tempted to write to Ward (who I'm assuming wrote both pieces of fluff, or at least oversaw them) and ask for clarification on the matter, but that'd probably be futile. Most likely, the answer, if any, would be a non-answer.

Psienesis wrote:Well, those who will be Sisters are still in the Schola around the age where they would have sex-ed classes

Sex-ed at age 12? Sounds a bit young - of course, who knows what the Imperium thinks about "age of consent", or if they would even draw a connection between a lesson about procreation and romantic relationships. It could just be a short, basic lesson on human biology. Though, it might be just as plausible if they do not touch the subject at all. After all, why would they need this, as wards of the state? Every single one of them will be expected to become a cog in the machine - not raise a family. That's for normal people.

Troike wrote:Though it still mentions the Bloodtide, which I'm assuming still went down the same way.

Well, just because events are mentioned doesn't mean they still take place the same way. Take the "disappearance" of Ollanius Pius from the fluff about the Emperor's battle with Horus, for example, because the fight was moved from the palace to Horus' flagship. Or the subtle change about Saint Basilius in the Abyssal Crusade fluff from the 6E rulebook's timeline to the 6E Codex. In one he's already dead, in the other he gets executed.

Perhaps the Bloodtide reference in the new SoB 'dex is just what the Sisterhood knows of the incident, or perhaps the description in the GK 'dex is merely a flawed personal report, or perhaps neither of them are true, or perhaps this was a retcon. Anything is possible. It's a bit frustrating, but this is how the fluff works.

Troike wrote:Y'know, I'm just a little tempted to write to Ward (who I'm assuming wrote both pieces of fluff, or at least oversaw them) and ask for clarification on the matter, but that'd probably be futile. Most likely, the answer, if any, would be a non-answer.

Hmm, might still be worth a try, if you have his address. Maybe he's feeling generous and at least gives us a similar non-answer as Gav and Andy did?

At 12? Perfect age... here in the US at least, most kids are entering, or have already entered, puberty at that stage. That's roughly a 7th to 8th grade (middle or junior high school, depending on school district) age level, which is when we start having such classes.

Just took out my grey knights omnibus and I found this on page 239.

'Sisters, ready! Lachryma and the Knights will lead. Steel your souls, for the Enemy will try to take you first.' Ludmilla turned to Alaric. 'I know the Grey Knights have never had a brother lose their mind to Chaos. But the Adepta Sororitas have lost Sisters to the Enemy before. It is rare, and no one will admit to it, but...'
'It is bad enough that Ghargatuloth has used you,' said Alaric. 'I would not let any of you live on with your minds violated.'


OP just go for it.

This is how I see yes some sisters may have fallen its REALLY hard and its rare to make them fall considering their life style and if one did fall most likely records of them are expunged and its kept as a hidden secret and since they are fallen they are not considered a part of the adepta soroitas. This is my view on it.

 Lynata wrote:
The same gene-seed that was used to create the Primarchs, of whom half fell to Chaos? Consider, too, that psykers in particular are at risk from corruption.

Well it could just be my slant on it (more than likely) but I've always considered that the gene-seed of the Grey Knights is quite different to whatever techniques were used to create the Primarchs, afterall, the Emperor didn't even need gene-seed until the Primarchs were spirited away and so the process to make a Primarch is unique to itself. However the gene-seed were then made from Primarch material and this technique was then used on the Emperor to create gene-seed for the Grey Knights. So again, a different process with different results. Then of course there is the time the Primarchs spent unshielded in the Warp which Grey Knights don't experience and the lack of any notion of Chaos meaning the Primarchs were vulnerable to it through their ignorance which does not apply to Grey Knights and maybe even that the Emperor wanted the Heresy to happen(!). Obviously Emperor -> Primarch -> Astartes results in the possibility of Chaos corruption but Emperor -> Grey Knight does not.

Because to do so you would have to raise and indoctrinate your Grey Knights from birth, which is a hell of a lot more difficult than picking them up whenever you meet one, when you consider that they also need to be psykers and compatible with Astartes gene-seed. And perhaps they would even require a zealous belief in the existence of "something greater and omnipotent" like the Sisters with their religion, which could interfere with Inquisitorial orders.

Their resilience seems to work well enough most of the time, and when it doesn't they seem to possess "techniques" that make up for the deficiency, no?

My point was that the if a regular human through relatively mundane techniques can be made immune to Chaos the whole Grey Knights Chapter is really redundant. As you point out, the requisites for inclusion in the Grey Knights mean that only a tiny minority are worthy. Battle Sisters on the other hand, as products of the Schola Progenium, merely entered onto their life path because they are the orphans of Imperial servants. Sure enough they do go through a stringent selection process but none-the-less the requirments are vastly different and in the Battle Sisters case much more feasible. In that case, dispense with omni-Astartes and go for brainwashed humans instead.

Since that wasn't done I would argue that whilst that process does make Sisters incredibly resilient to Chaos corruption, (speciffically, spiritual/moral corruption as opposed to physical corruption) it is not a perfect process. Like I said about the sensei (old fluff I know but it emphasises the physical alteration a Grey Knight undergoes) they were immune to Chaos because of their very essence as living beings, they had a teflon coating for Chaos which simply slipped right off them and I think the same happens to Grey Knights becuase of how they are made. Sisters though have immense resistance to Chaos.

I mean, look at that Korean death camp survivor. Certainly as a child he made a decision born out of his brain-washing. As an adult, no longer subject to that environment that indoctrination no-longer holds sway.

If I can go back to my painted metal idea again... If, through the process that creates them a Grey Knight is like stainless steel then, you could have them exposed to Chaos all the time but nothing would happen just like stainless would not rust of left outside for years on end. Steel however would rust of left outside if it is not protected with a coating. Now, if the coating is being constantly reapplied then the steel is corrosion free but if the coating is not reapplied then eventually it wears off and corrosion sets in. In a Sister's case, her secluded religious lifestyle is in effect, giving her a protective coating of faith which is constantly reapplied but if for any reason she were removed from that environment her faith coating would begin to ware away, she is not intrinsically protected even if brainwashed from birth (same kinda idea is seen in the film Soldier - taken at birth, indoctrinated, trained and so totally incapable of normal human thought until he ends up on his own and without that environment the training, the indoctrination begin to wear off and the simple matter of survival introduces scenarios that further make the soldier more human and so not a perfect, robotic warrior slave anymore). As we know Stainless can be corroded in the right circumstances, especially if ordinary steel fragments get into it and as the corrode, the corrosion can spread to the stainless it would appear a not dissimilar thing can happen to the Grey Knights which is why they needed to paint themselves in blood just to be on the safe side!

You still have your two types of Chaos corruption thought, a moral/spirtual one that sees someone 'fall' to Chaos and then a more simple physical corruption caused by exposure to the Warp and the raw stuff of Chaos especially enhanced with the correct rites. Obviosuly the former type of corruption is the least likely to happen to a Sister although, simply because they are human at the end of the day I just can't think that, given the perfect circumstances they could 'fall'.


I only argue these points to show a possibility and not because I hold to it. Obviously both versions, corruptable Sisters and incorruptable Sisters both appeal to me greatly but they are exclusive ideas so at the end of the day you have to pick which version of the 40K universe appeals more in a given scenario explained by either one of them being propaganda and falsehoods.

Well for me I find it hard to hold back natural urges. The sisters unlike space marines are still human and even the space marines retain a bit of their humanity. Even if there's something done to hold back these feelings like having certain parts removed they still feel wants and needs for other things. In my opinion these girls are emotionally stunted just like marines. Depending on when they were raised it also might be different if they left a life from previous. For me who is the mother and father figure for sisters? Would it be the cannoness or a priest?

For me a lot of this is hard to believe. You can tell a lot of people something is crap and maybe you can convince them it's true but if they find out it's a lie by experiencing it themselves (as the sisters still experience the outside world by fighting in it) then they start to doubt things. This doubt could turn into what they might consider heresy. Perhaps they are so blind to things even when confronted with the truth they believe but that would mean even if they saw one of their leaders do something wrong they'd probably follow like little sheep to it. Maybe in the end whatever their leader says is the truth to them and in this sense they hold more loyalty to their leader than the original words said by them. It's kind of like 'animal farm'. "Four legs good, 2 legs better!" or "Everybody is equal but some are more equal than others."

Then there's the issue that some people that hold a rigid lifestyle that are exposed to other things suddenly go in the complete opposite direction. In fact in my eyes when given temptation or forced it sisters would fall over like a wet paper house.

I mean the sisters are still effected and effect the outside world. Maybe they use butterflies for target practice but I find it hard to believe there isn't some flaw somewhere in all their teachings. It wouldn't be a dystopian universe if everything said or done was absolutely perfect and there was no trouble of any kind. For sisters to stay absolutely pure they'd have to be monitored all the time and to never even once experience the outside world including battle-zones with chaos and all sorts of other things. If a sister has to kill a young girl's parents in front of her due to possible heresy chances are that might deeply affect her on an emotional level as she can relate to the pain. Perhaps she'd think it was the parents fault and blame them but still it might hurt her to think of what she'd just done.

For me I just see seeds of doubt within the sisters and I see a possible chance of falling to chaos. Maybe I just see this as a universe where once you fall you can never come back sort of thing but being devout doesn't make you incorruptible. I just see it as some sort of written BS quotes that the order who wrote them says to sort of prevent others from thinking it's possible. For me I wonder if some thoughts of suicide and shootings in the real world happen in part because people are aware that others have done so. In a sense by not knowing they feel the chance a sister would start something heretical is lessened. Also the brainwashed sisters think themselves that it would never happen and they could never succeed in their heresy because to their knowledge and what they were told it's never happened or at least never gone anywhere.

I think we are perhaps understimating what true fanatics will do - they won't care about the child or the parents - they are a heretic - full stop, if anything they will be grateful that they had a chance to end the parents pain in serving false gods and release the child from potential bondage to the same. People truely believing in stuff is a very scary - epesicially if your God actually intervenes on occasion and proves his existance - its not a possible god, but rather it is a reality.

Also when we talk about natural urges etc - we need to remember that the Astartes, in fact especially the Astartes often have huge Egos, they may not have sexual urges but their emotions - pride, anger etc can just as easily start them on the path to corruption. Thats why so many of them fall..... They have Brotherhood and Duty as a crutch but if anything causes them to question either then again - path of damnation beckons. The Grey Knights are not emotionless.........hence they retain this potential weakness.

The Sisters have true faith - and if in addiiton their souls are already pledged to the Emperor as a functioning Warp Power that pretty much safeguards them against spiritual corruption.

Neither G Knights or Sisters are immune to physical corruption of their bodies - but then IMO nothing, save maybe the C'Tan is..........and thats what the claim is - you can't touch their souls no matter what you do to their bodies........

If the Grey Knights were blanks rather than Psykers I think the teflon annology would work - but I think the current fluff sugests thats the Exorcist Chapter. Grey Kinghts have to carry out lots of rituals etc to make sure they are (mostly) immune.

If Space Marines can fall to Chaos then I don't know why it is so hard to believe that SoB could fall to Chaos as well. Just because they go through a lot of indoctrination does not mean that the Chaos Gods are not still there trying to tempt them. No matter how devoted you are to a deity, there will always be temptations that you have to fight against.

 MetalOxide wrote:
If Space Marines can fall to Chaos then I don't know why it is so hard to believe that SoB could fall to Chaos as well. Just because they go through a lot of indoctrination does not mean that the Chaos Gods are not still there trying to tempt them. No matter how devoted you are to a deity, there will always be temptations that you have to fight against.

Unless your soul is pledged to another Power - try tempting a Follower of Khorne with sex it won't be fun for you

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Well for me I find it hard to hold back natural urges.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I think we are perhaps understimating what true fanatics will do - they won't care about the child or the parents - they are a heretic - full stop, if anything they will be grateful that they had a chance to end the parents pain in serving false gods and release the child from potential bondage to the same. People truely believing in stuff is a very scary - epesicially if your God actually intervenes on occasion and proves his existance - its not a possible god, but rather it is a reality.

I think that Morden makes a good point. I do think that it's hard for some of us, here living our lives in the 21st century, to really understand the extremity of the Sisters. These aren't ordinary people like you or I, far from it. These people have been heavily indoctrinated from early childhood, and have mostly only ever lived in isolated places which constantly reinforce this heavy indoctrination. Any urges which get in the way of this indoctrination would have been stamped out quite firmly. And if they were to ever surface, the Sister in question would be, most likely, basically tortured until she conformed again.

 Gogsnik wrote:
Well it could just be my slant on it (more than likely) but I've always considered that the gene-seed of the Grey Knights is quite different to whatever techniques were used to create the Primarchs

Whilst their geneseed may offer them some sort of protection, their use of wards (ha!) and rituals do play a big part in their immunity.

 MetalOxide wrote:
If Space Marines can fall to Chaos then I don't know why it is so hard to believe that SoB could fall to Chaos as well.

Well, just look at the number of Chaos Space Marines in the studio canon.

Okay, now go look at the number of Chaos Sisters in the studio canon. Notice a difference?

A Space Marine falling to Chaos isn't some lofty, worst-case thing, considering how very many of them have fallen.

 MetalOxide wrote:
To the OP, screw fluff, do what you want to do, it's your own interpretation on the 40k universe. Plus creating a squad like this...

Spoiler:

... would be badass. I too am working on corrupted Sisters of Battle so I'd love to see how you make yours if you go ahead with the project.

Ah those girls won’t even manage to outlast cultist. I mean look at them, they don’t even have a bloody t-shirt save!

Love the pic and admire the artist but I would equally see it as an image of female cultists of Khorne

Nothing on those women indicate they were once Sisters. No fleur de lis tattoos, no Ecclesiarchal =I=s, none of the typical trappings of a Sister.

What they look like, to me, are women from a warrior-culture planet who were really, really good at it, who found something with the promise to make them even better.

Gogsnik wrote:Then of course there is the time the Primarchs spent unshielded in the Warp which Grey Knights don't experience and the lack of any notion of Chaos meaning the Primarchs were vulnerable to it through their ignorance which does not apply to Grey Knights

Every Grey Knight spends his childhood as a psyker, and those are not shielded from the Warp until they're taught how to do this. This is what makes psykers so dangerous, after all - they're a gateway for Chaos.

Also, I wouldn't say that the Primarchs were vulnerable to the Warp in their capsule-shielded foetal form, as personally I would expect mental corruption to actually require a functioning, conscient mind, and that more than not even half the Primarchs should have shown signs of taint. Even Horus didn't turn because lolchaos but because he simply had very human weaknesses.
This depends a lot on how you interpret the various versions of Primarch fluff, though.

Gogsnik wrote:I mean, look at that Korean death camp survivor. Certainly as a child he made a decision born out of his brain-washing. As an adult, no longer subject to that environment that indoctrination no-longer holds sway.

I'd say this is the result of that environment not being "perfect indoctrination". In every society, you need the stick and the carrot. Notice how he expected to be rewarded for ratting out his parents, for example? And how this then did not happen, but the opposite, because corrupt guards wanted that reward for themselves, because everyone there is poor and suffers from malnutrition?

No such thing with the Sisterhood.

What I consider remarkable, and which I think you are ignoring, is that up to the mistreatment by the guards, this inmate genuinely believed in doing the right thing. Up to that point, the indoctrination worked perfectly.

Gogsnik wrote:In that case, dispense with omni-Astartes and go for brainwashed humans instead.

But then you wouldn't have super-strength, super-toughness and psychic powers. Regardless of the Sisters' martial abilities, surely those are an advantage when fighting a daemonic incursion.

I mean, that's like argueing replacing all Space Marines with Cadian Kasrkin. It'd work on some level, but ultimately you'd notice that whenever you want to deploy the heaviest concentration of resilience and firepower on a single square meter, you better send a Marine, because he's just better at surviving the incoming punishment and returning fire. Even when you give everyone the same guns, on some level all that genetical enhancement provides an advantage. Even when it's just enabling the Marine to shoot a single round more than a normal human before going down, this is still an advantage that can decide entire battles.

Specialised troops for specialised jobs. I don't subscribe to the "replace Marines with Guardsmen" mentality that I sometimes see on the forums, just like I don't subscribe to the "Marines can win wars on their own" idea. To me, the truth is in-between. They're the best special forces the Imperium has available.

Gogsnik wrote:As we know Stainless can be corroded in the right circumstances, especially if ordinary steel fragments get into it and as the corrode, the corrosion can spread to the stainless it would appear a not dissimilar thing can happen to the Grey Knights which is why they needed to paint themselves in blood just to be on the safe side!

That still sounds biased in favour of the GKs. Ultimately, they apparently needed to augment their resilience, where at least most of the Sisters remained untouched due to nothing but their spiritual purity and zeal. This implies either that the Sisters' methods actually work better (as they did not do the blood thing), or that both are equally fallible.
"Blood of the innocent" is a fairly telling name, too.

Gogsnik wrote:Obviously both versions, corruptable Sisters and incorruptable Sisters both appeal to me greatly but they are exclusive ideas so at the end of the day you have to pick which version of the 40K universe appeals more in a given scenario explained by either one of them being propaganda and falsehoods.

Aye. The upside of all those contradictions is that we are publicly supposed to acknowledge that there is no singular truth, and that we are free to pick what we prefer.

I like the middle way with Miriael as the one unique exception. It comes across as more realistic in that it does away with an absolute and opens the door for a (very) limited number of repeat incidents, without truly attacking what I deem to be an important aspect of the army (spiritual purity and power of will).

In the same way I'd expect the GKs having their exceptions, too, though. There will be times when there's no Sisters to execute around. What would have happened on that planet if the Sisters had already died to the Bloodletters, or if there would've been no convent in the first place?

flamingkillamajig wrote:The sisters unlike space marines are still human and even the space marines retain a bit of their humanity.

Emotionally, I'd actually say the Marines are more human than the Sisters. At least they had a normal childhood, and they hang out with normal people (their Chapter serfs) more. And that's before you go into special cases like the Salamanders or the Space Wolves.

I'd argue that this is why so many of them turned, back then. Or why so many of them keep turning, like the SW on the "Wolf of Fenris" who preferred switching sides instead of dying in a heroic, but ultimately futile last stand as their cruiser was boarded.

In a way, I think this is also a disadvantage of their comparatively "worldly" lifestyle. Without a supposedly supernatural god and a heaven to believe in, the Space Marines have no afterlife other than (potentially) the memories of their comrades. As both history and our current age shows, belief in an afterlife can go a long way when it comes to deciding between facing certain death, or trading one's integrity for a prolonged life. For a Sororitas, death is merely a transition into another existence, and one at the side of their beloved god.

Marines of most Chapters will also think autonomous enough to ask many questions that a Sister would never ponder about, as the latter just soaks up everything it says in some piece of old scripture.

[quote=For me who is the mother and father figure for sisters?

For me a lot of this is hard to believe. You can tell a lot of people something is crap and maybe you can convince them it's true but if they find out it's a lie by experiencing it themselves (as the sisters still experience the outside world by fighting in it) then they start to doubt things. This doubt could turn into what they might consider heresy. Perhaps they are so blind to things even when confronted with the truth they believe but that would mean even if they saw one of their leaders do something wrong they'd probably follow like little sheep to it. Maybe in the end whatever their leader says is the truth to them and in this sense they hold more loyalty to their leader than the original words said by them. It's kind of like 'animal farm'. "Four legs good, 2 legs better!" or "Everybody is equal but some are more equal than others."

Why would they doubt? They see the Imperium outside the walls of their convent, and they see a world that is functioning as the God-Emperor intends it to be functioning. The purpose of life is to suffer, as He suffers, suffering brings you closer to the Golden Throne. Those who seek to change this, whether the bomb-wielding revolutionary or the liberal political reformer, are heretics, thinking themselves above the God-Emperor, thinking that they know better than He.

Further, the Imperium is not a society that holds to ideas of equality, or even much social mobility. One of the many "Imperial Thoughts for the Day" is a simple "Know Thy Place." It's a feudal society, where those at the bottom serve those above them, and they are not to plan to escape that situation, for it is as the Emperor commands it. Peasants do not become kings.

Then there's the issue that some people that hold a rigid lifestyle that are exposed to other things suddenly go in the complete opposite direction. In fact in my eyes when given temptation or forced it sisters would fall over like a wet paper house.

The Sisters look at the other aspects of Imperial life as near-blasphemous depravity and decadence. These temptations are a sure path to damnation, cast from the grace of the God-Emperor for eternity. Why would they forsake salvation, of a deity they *know* to exist, for some cheap thrill?

This isn't something like the USSR not having Levi jeans or Coca-Cola. The Sisterhood is a wealthy organization, and they possess, as an organization, pretty much anything they could want. Sisters, however, don't want much. They've lived their entire lives along strict religious orders and rules. They believe that anything they suffer is an act of religious devotion, it brings them closer to the God-Emperor. They're not tempted by a sugary drink or cotton pants.

I mean the sisters are still effected and effect the outside world. Maybe they use butterflies for target practice but I find it hard to believe there isn't some flaw somewhere in all their teachings. It wouldn't be a dystopian universe if everything said or done was absolutely perfect and there was no trouble of any kind. For sisters to stay absolutely pure they'd have to be monitored all the time and to never even once experience the outside world including battle-zones with chaos and all sorts of other things.

Sisters are monitored all the time, by themselves as individuals, by the Sisters of their Order, by the Ecclesiarchy and by the Inquisition in general (who monitor everyone). The most likely person to catch a Sister "slipping"? Herself.

If a sister has to kill a young girl's parents in front of her due to possible heresy chances are that might deeply affect her on an emotional level as she can relate to the pain. Perhaps she'd think it was the parents fault and blame them but still it might hurt her to think of what she'd just done.

The Sister would do it, and do it gladly and might well throw the child onto the pyre as well, for "sins hidden in the heart turn all to corruption." The Sister would do this task, and do it joyfully, for the Emperor commands that "thou shalt not suffer the witch, the mutant or the heretic to live".

And if the child were innocent? "Better that a thousand innocents should die than one guilty walk unpunished."

This is the Imperium, the "bloodiest regime imaginable", and the Sisters are part of that regime. They are the enforcers of the Emperor's will (as it is understood in M41), which includes the purging of traitors, heretics and mutants.

For me I just see seeds of doubt within the sisters and I see a possible chance of falling to chaos. Maybe I just see this as a universe where once you fall you can never come back sort of thing but being devout doesn't make you incorruptible. I just see it as some sort of written BS quotes that the order who wrote them says to sort of prevent others from thinking it's possible. For me I wonder if some thoughts of suicide and shootings in the real world happen in part because people are aware that others have done so. In a sense by not knowing they feel the chance a sister would start something heretical is lessened. Also the brainwashed sisters think themselves that it would never happen and they could never succeed in their heresy because to their knowledge and what they were told it's never happened or at least never gone anywhere.

While a Sister may, at times, experience a thought of doubt, she recognizes this, and goes off to find a Sister Superior to provide a faith-enhancing beating, or assignation to the Repentia. The Sisters are hard-core, and it really is possible, in 40K, to "beat the devil out" of someone... to use a real-world expression. It's basic negative-reinforcement conditioning... if she thinks that, then this happens. She doesn't like what "this" is, so she refuses to think of what "that" was. When "that" is heresy, and one's brain refuses to think about it, then there is no more heresy.

At the end of the day they're still humans, and so still susceptible to Chaos. Conditioning can only account for so much, and if marines are able to fall, so is everyone else (except perhaps GK).

I find it odd that people keep bring up "they're only human" as a point. Far, far more Astartes have fallen, yet we see no Chaos Sisters in studio fluff. Clearly, being more than human offers no special protection. So "even" Marines falling is hardly relevant to the Sisters, I'd say.

So what makes the Sisters special, where so many other humans and Asrartes have fallen? As has been said many a time, it's their faith. Belief and faith is what affords one protection against corruption, not physical form.

Banzaimash wrote:if marines are able to fall, so is everyone else

I must have missed which of the 19 implanted organs is the one responsible for improved Chaos resilience.

Or, to re-phrase - I think too many people have adopted a perception where Space Marines must be better at everything, when the fluff only talks about them being better at some things.

To expand upon my previous point, because it got me thinking, what makes the Marines vulnerable is their very diverse cultures, mannerisms and (for most) lack of faith. Corruption cares not about your physical form, but your mind. And with the Marines, their minds can have many openings in which corruption can take root. The Sisters, meanwhile, very specifically adress this issue. All of them. It's said that a Sister sees prayer as important a part of training as military drill, after all. Their unified, super-faithful culture is what protects their mind against corruption.

Perhaps a reason for why there are more examples of Marines falling is because there is more material on marines in general.

Wow, this thread went round and round in circles ahah. But yeah, seems that fluffwise there really isn't much support for it, although interpretation wise, I'm of the opinion that the touch of Chaos can get to anyone if necessary, and that talk of incorruptibility is a propaganda thing. I do count Grey Knights in this, for what it's worth.

Also people need to stop using Marines as a reason. There's too many reasons for why Marines are vulnerable to chaos...To the point where, as an outsider, you wonder if it wouldn't be better to scrap them all.

When it comes to Marines and Chaos, while lots of them have fallen, they also defeat a gakload of enemies for the Imperium, so it becomes a risk analysis sort of thing:

"Is the possible loss of this Chapter to Chaos worth the absolute tons of ass they will kick before that might happen?"

... so far, the Imperium has said "yes".

Banzaimash wrote:Perhaps a reason for why there are more examples of Marines falling is because there is more material on marines in general.

Well, this isn't a new development that could be attributed to the ever-increasing gap between the two factions' treatments - that half the Marines fell to Chaos during the Heresy has been a huge element ever since GW came up with the idea of Chaos an the Marines as we know them in 2nd Edition. At the same time, Sisters have always been presented as big on purity, with words like "incorruptible" accompanying their earliest rules to the present day.

The number of Marines falling to Chaos hasn't really increased for more than 20 years. It has always been kind of a thing with them. Additional imeline events or stories about individual people and incidents won't change a general tendency that is simply absent whenever the studio material talks about the SoB.

Whilst I really, really don't wish to derail the thread...Their cost, as in to create and use, when compared to their output seems a bit...Ehhh. Factoring in their Chaos vulnerability...Although there is the propaganda factor of the Angels thing.

Verses wrote:Whilst I really, really don't wish to derail the thread...Their cost, as in to create and use, when compared to their output seems a bit...Ehhh. Factoring in their Chaos vulnerability...Although there is the propaganda factor of the Angels thing.

Imo, they suck when you try to view them as an "army", but they are awesome as soon as you regard them as shock troops and special forces.

Another dakkanaut, I think it was Crimson(?), described their effect as a "force multiplier", which I think is absolutely correct. The Imperium's best battles are when you have the Marines work in concert with the Guard. Let the scalpel open up a weak spot so that the hammer can come crushing down.

Yes, the Imperium has other elite forces such as the Sisters or the Munitorum Storm Troopers (both apparently less numerous) or the Cadian Kasrkin and other elite regiments, but none are quite exactly as good or even better as the Marines at projecting the maximum of raw power and resilience into a single infantryman. And at times, this trait can be important enough to decide the outcome of a battle, especially in a combined-arms operation.

2x210 wrote:
I'm thinking of modeling some Sisters into Chaos Chosen for a squad in my army, but I'm not sure if this would be fluffy or not any examples of sisters serving with chaos forces?

Play what you like. That's always more important than enslaving yourself to the fluff.

I've got plans for an eventual army project where an Order of Sisters are lost to the Warp for over 800 years when their Shrine World falls into a Warp Storm. When they come out they have gone insane, think Khorne is a manifestation of the Emperor's Wrath and begin purging the "Heresy" that they see everywhere (all of this happens in M42 of course just to not contradict any fluff ). The intent is to give me an army that is 150% fluffy to play against any other army by building 2 identically structured armies, but one wearing the mark of Khorne instead of the Imperial Eagle on their shoulder, and the like.

Though "PURGE THE HERETIC" is always a good excuse, sometimes you want to play the bad guy.

 Lynata wrote:

Verses wrote:Whilst I really, really don't wish to derail the thread...Their cost, as in to create and use, when compared to their output seems a bit...Ehhh. Factoring in their Chaos vulnerability...Although there is the propaganda factor of the Angels thing.

Imo, they suck when you try to view them as an "army", but they are awesome as soon as you regard them as shock troops and special forces.

Another dakkanaut, I think it was Crimson(?), described their effect as a "force multiplier", which I think is absolutely correct. The Imperium's best battles are when you have the Marines work in concert with the Guard. Let the scalpel open up a weak spot so that the hammer can come crushing down.

Yes, the Imperium has other elite forces such as the Sisters or the Munitorum Storm Troopers (both apparently less numerous) or the Cadian Kasrkin and other elite regiments, but none are quite exactly as good or even better as the Marines at projecting the maximum of raw power and resilience into a single infantryman. And at times, this trait can be important enough to decide the outcome of a battle, especially in a combined-arms operation.

That is a pretty fair point.

 Lynata wrote:

Verses wrote:Whilst I really, really don't wish to derail the thread...Their cost, as in to create and use, when compared to their output seems a bit...Ehhh. Factoring in their Chaos vulnerability...Although there is the propaganda factor of the Angels thing.

Imo, they suck when you try to view them as an "army", but they are awesome as soon as you regard them as shock troops and special forces.

Another dakkanaut, I think it was Crimson(?), described their effect as a "force multiplier", which I think is absolutely correct. The Imperium's best battles are when you have the Marines work in concert with the Guard. Let the scalpel open up a weak spot so that the hammer can come crushing down.

Yes, the Imperium has other elite forces such as the Sisters or the Munitorum Storm Troopers (both apparently less numerous) or the Cadian Kasrkin and other elite regiments, but none are quite exactly as good or even better as the Marines at projecting the maximum of raw power and resilience into a single infantryman. And at times, this trait can be important enough to decide the outcome of a battle, especially in a combined-arms operation.

Omg yes so much this. I always imagined space marines as special forces rather than 100 or so marines coming down and destroying an entire planet's worth of baddies. At least this is how I wished they were. They can react quickly to a situation and win where it matters most but I always imagined them as having a hard time fighting a protracted battle.

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Back on the subject of the space marines it's more they're not totally human. I always viewed marines as emotionally stunted. I also kind of imagined them as castrated too since they're warrior monks but that's a bit of fluff people aren't sure of (because marine players would totally rage against it ;P).

With grey knights however I think the issue is more they think it's the gene-seed of the emperor being used and for some reason this makes them totally immune to corruption as the emperor is and in a sense they're a bit of him. I imagine that sisters counterpart to be chaos followers rather than the daemons themselves. I imagine grey knights to be the counterpart to daemons and somewhat chaos marines. However even being somewhat of the emperor I still don't view them as entirely incorruptible. Being psykers makes this much harder for them.

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For me I also think it's weird considering their rigid life-style that you never hear space marines or sisters of battle possibly talking about their day and other stuff to their fellow soldiers even possibly during the down time of a battle. I'm not sure if any of you have seen this but it's kind of like that moment in 'Charlie Wilson's War' where it shows the soviet pilots in the helicopters gunning down afghani people while they are casually talking about one of them trying to get with some woman and the other two are basically teasing him. Then the afghani people use some of the U.S. provided rockets to kill one or try to shoot one down and they start to panic and go into battle mode. Course the afghani people destroyed all 3 helicopters though and killed their pilots.

I think the thing about some of these strict orders you still have people talking during the down time or the more un-exciting bits. Possibly even sisters just talk normally to each other when the job is to put a bullet in the head of an un-armed heretic they found. It's more a matter of even if it's a job where you work most of the time you tend to at least talk to your co-workers during the down time so even then you still have a bit of a social life. You could work almost all the time and still have a bit of a social life. It's just it'd mostly exist at work. Same goes for soldiers as it's not like they can go anywhere else.

I understand some may say that the point of a rigid life-style for the 'sisters' is that they never talk about daily life almost. I mean more along the lines of a 24/7 type of thing means you tend to talk about other stuff during the down time. For me it's a little hard to believe they wouldn't talk casually with certain things like guard duty and being stationed somewhere. Even if their talks include acts of penance and something more suited to sisters i'd still find it hard to believe they wouldn't talk about things in general.

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@lynata: Don't worry I always imagine you're actually pretty nice except when really provoked so saying one thing I said is 'idealistic' or a bit 'naive' isn't too bad esp. when you try to throw out you're not trying to offend. I suppose i'm a bit gullible at times so yeah the naïve part can fit the bill. I'm a bit idealistic too but at the end of the day reality hits and you realize things don't really change so drastically over a short time for the most part.

If I had a say on how things were run it'd possibly be that everybody is held accountable by at least somebody else or another group and often times several others. Sure sometimes freedom allows you to do whatever you want but without some control people do absolutely whatever they want even at the expense of others. I feel when somebody isn't held responsible for their actions often enough they get used to it and it becomes a normal thing and expected. If everybody is held responsible for their actions then everybody is held in check and abuses of power and freedom are often held back. It might sound weird but it's true that absolute freedom is chaos and anarchy. I'd rather be more free than strictly controlled but i'm not happy about absolute freedom either.

Sorry for going off topic heh. Anyway as far as people here go I like you so don't feel bad if you come off a certain way. If it really gets to me make sure you straighten out what you meant if it sounds incendiary in nature or at least fix things afterwards.

 Lynata wrote:
What I consider remarkable, and which I think you are ignoring, is that up to the mistreatment by the guards, this inmate genuinely believed in doing the right thing. Up to that point, the indoctrination worked perfectly.

I don't ignore it, I just don't see it as that relevent. Yes, the indoctrination worked, he believed in what he was doing.

However, the important fact is that he is no-longer indoctrinated. He regrets what he did then and given a second chance his current self would not make that decision.

We are to believe that if this story was about a Sister she would still be perfectly indoctrinated.

My point about this aspect of the discussion is that a Sister, as a human being, could well end up in a situation where the constant flood of indoctrination she has in her every waking moment and that constantly reinforces her beliefs could end and thence lead to her corruption, especially a very concentrated, sentient and infinite corruption like Chaos.

As pointed out elsewhere a Sister would not be tempted by the chance for some chocolate and nice pants but Chaos is so much more than that, so much more.

But then you wouldn't have super-strength, super-toughness and psychic powers. Regardless of the Sisters' martial abilities, surely those are an advantage when fighting a daemonic incursion.

I mean, that's like argueing replacing all Space Marines with Cadian Kasrkin. It'd work on some level, but ultimately you'd notice that whenever you want to deploy the heaviest concentration of resilience and firepower on a single square meter, you better send a Marine, because he's just better at surviving the incoming punishment and returning fire. Even when you give everyone the same guns, on some level all that genetical enhancement provides an advantage. Even when it's just enabling the Marine to shoot a single round more than a normal human before going down, this is still an advantage that can decide entire battles.

Specialised troops for specialised jobs. I don't subscribe to the "replace Marines with Guardsmen" mentality that I sometimes see on the forums, just like I don't subscribe to the "Marines can win wars on their own" idea. To me, the truth is in-between. They're the best special forces the Imperium has available.

I fully agree with the points here and the others in the thread about why Marines are worth the 'cost' and the stengths/weaknesses they have over other human troops.

The point I am trying to make though is that, unlike the Astartes, whose inductees must be genetically compatible with the organs that turn a human into an Astartes before their temperant and attitude are even considered, the Sisters attain their nature from pure lifestyle.

There is nothing inherent in a Sister's creation that could not apply to any human. We know there are no Brothers of Battle because of the Decree Passive, but, given the emphasis placed on these formative Schola years that produce the Sister's faith because it has been drummed into them from birth, what of the other Progena who had the same upbringing and as much faith as these girls but could not become Sisters by simply being male?

Of course, the Schola is only the start of what makes a Sister but if the from birth aspect is so crucial then what happens in a Commissar's later life or a Storm Troper's later life or an Inquisitor's later life that the benefit of this childhood wears off and makes them open to corruption? If it can wear off for them then it could wear off for a Sister too since the reason why it continues to remain effective is the Sister's continued religious lifestyle. Take that lifestyle away though and...

As to the other point about making troops that recreate the Sisters incorruptable nature their lifestyle could easily be recreated. Not for warriors of the Ecclesiarchy because of the Decree but as generally God-Emperor Fearing soldiers; the cloistered lifestyle, the training, the religious devotion and the indoctrination could be recreated.

Also, I am aware that not all female Progena are suitable for the Sisters but the high expectations of the Sisterhood which discards certain individuals could still be re-created in a none Ecclesiarchy environment and also, not just for the orphans of Imperial Servants either but for as many children as could be got and put into this environment which would churn out legions of utterly loyal, faithful and 'incorruptable' soldiers. They would not need to replace any other troops but as a resource they would be incredibly potent.

It doesn't happen though and I don't suppose speculating on that is worth the effort here but I wanted to clarify why I brought it up earlier.

That still sounds biased in favour of the GKs. Ultimately, they apparently needed to augment their resilience, where at least most of the Sisters remained untouched due to nothing but their spiritual purity and zeal. This implies either that the Sisters' methods actually work better (as they did not do the blood thing), or that both are equally fallible.
"Blood of the innocent" is a fairly telling name, too.

Aye. The upside of all those contradictions is that we are publicly supposed to acknowledge that there is no singular truth, and that we are free to pick what we prefer.

I like the middle way with Miriael as the one unique exception. It comes across as more realistic in that it does away with an absolute and opens the door for a (very) limited number of repeat incidents, without truly attacking what I deem to be an important aspect of the army (spiritual purity and power of will).

In the same way I'd expect the GKs having their exceptions, too, though. There will be times when there's no Sisters to execute around. What would have happened on that planet if the Sisters had already died to the Bloodletters, or if there would've been no convent in the first place?

I do think there is a bias in favour of the Grey Knights though because of what they are as creatures. I think their very nature makes it very hard for Chaos to even begin trying to corrupt them, just like being a Blank makes it hard for a daemon to even see that person. It doesn't follow that Blanks are immune to Chaos but in a given situation the Blank and a Grey Knight are outside of the scope of Chaos to a large extent (note I am not confusing why a Blank is resistant with why a Grey Knight is also resistant I just want to emphasise the physical quality of that resistance). Even as psykers, yes their souls burn so brightly that Chaos is drawn to them like a gourmand to an all-you-can-eat buffet but thir psychic nature, suitably trained can given them a much, much better chance of withstanding Chaos. Non-psykers by comparrion have to rely on being less tasty to get them by but once targeted have no power to use to protect themselves.

Then, once you get past that aspect, faith itself becomes important. So much of what Chaos is and the power it has is based on symbolism and belief (it's a bit like the Matrix, there is no spoon ) belief can act as a shield and barrier but only to an extent. I think that for the Grey Knights, unlike many other Space Marines (who mostly should have little concept of Chaos since it's all hush-hush but that's another debate entirely) also have a mentality, designed to protect them as well. Even so, what we are told is that no Grey Knight has ever fallen to Chaos so far but that does not necessarily mean that they could not fall. It's a bit like saying the Golden Throne is failing, so far so good, but in another ten thousand years, in twenty?

I agree that the whole point of the Sisters is to be the purest of the pure, the most faithful, the most devoted and not just religious troops who only exist because of some rules lawyering about 'Men Under Arms' but I still don't think that means that in the right circumstances and with the right concentration of effort they could not be broken.

 Lynata wrote:
At the same time, Sisters have always been presented as big on purity, with words like "incorruptible" accompanying their earliest rules to the present day.

The number of Marines falling to Chaos hasn't really increased for more than 20 years. It has always been kind of a thing with them. Additional imeline events or stories about individual people and incidents won't change a general tendency that is simply absent whenever the studio material talks about the SoB.

That is the problem though right there isn't it; 'whenever the studio material talks about the SoB'. The Sisters have had very little love from the Studio and much of what we know of them, even in the most recent background is pretty mich the same background copied into the latest edition. We would need a big effort from the studio that really fleshes out the Sisters to get some movement with them. For Marines, the Heresy and the fall of Chapters hasn't changed much in content but the fleshing out of it all is immense. Compare the material that covers Marines to that which covers Sisters; it doesn't even compare.