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Recently, GW has released rules for Sister of Silence and revealed that they possess an impressive initiative of 5. How can this be justified fluff wise? This speed is greater than that of Space Marines (except for a handful few heroes), superior to any normal human and equivalent to that of most eldar units. So, what could explain this? To my knowledge, Sister of Silence, beside being psychic nuls, were normal human women in peak phyical condition. Is there any explanation for this?

Implants
Possibly gene enhancenments but possibly just bionics/muscle additions.

Space marines are not the only humans with superior enhancements out there. The Ad Mech have hundreds of processes that enhance the human form. The Space Marine processes is merely the most complete/long lasting/cost effective.

Inititive also seems to be one of those things that GW is willing to give you just on practice. Regular eldar are I4. Aspect and regular DE are I5. Harlequins/Wyches/Hellions/Reavers are I6 Archons are I7. Succubus is I8. Lelith is I9. Somehow she has managed to more than double her initiative just by fighting in an arena.
There are some combat drugs being passed around here, but not all of them.

The first thing I thought of was that being nulls messes with their opponents physically & mentally (since it freaks people out), making them slower.

That would be more fitting as a debuff to their opponent's initiative, but maybe this was easier and balanced better.

I'm fairly sure Initiative is a measure of speed, combat prowess, critical reactive thinking, and other similar measures of how one is able to fight.

A unit that is mostly focused on CQC and nullifying the ranged advantage most Psykers have, it only makes sense that they are more at home in combat and have learned to read opponents/react more quickly in combat, or just be faster overall.

As for the enhanced bit, it's perfect likely that they have some sort of physical enhancement, considering they are fairly large for the scale of the game.

 Exergy wrote:
Implants
Possibly gene enhancenments but possibly just bionics/muscle additions.

Space marines are not the only humans with superior enhancements out there. The Ad Mech have hundreds of processes that enhance the human form. The Space Marine processes is merely the most complete/long lasting/cost effective.

Inititive also seems to be one of those things that GW is willing to give you just on practice. Regular eldar are I4. Aspect and regular DE are I5. Harlequins/Wyches/Hellions/Reavers are I6 Archons are I7. Succubus is I8. Lelith is I9. Somehow she has managed to more than double her initiative just by fighting in an arena.
There are some combat drugs being passed around here, but not all of them.

Regular eldar aren't initiative 4 anymore. Considering their level of initiative, they would have to have better bionics than Sicarans, elite skitarii who serve as close combat specialist and have fully robotic legs and arms. That's pretty impressive.

I would say that is is because initiative is a stat that has very little consistency.

There are some general rules like space marines are at least 4, normal humans are 3, eldar have high initiative, but other then the general rules initiative seems to have nothing to do with fluff. Like Exergy said GW just hands out initiative stats for game effect.

For example, lord commissars are WS 5 while storm trooper commanders are WS 4, so they both went to the same school and received the same training but lord commissars are better at fighting (probably due to experiance) but the commanders are I 4 while lord commissars are I 3, so why are commanders more responsive to combat when lord commissars are more experienced but otherwise have the same training?

Also every piece of fluff for Necrons other then the ward dex portray high ranking Necrons as very fast and precise in combat, and the ward dex generally makes out their slow strikes as a choice rather than an inability to strike quickly, with the dex flat out stating becoming robots made them faster. Yet all Necrons are init 2.

 NL_Cirrus wrote:
I would say that is is because initiative is a stat that has very little consistency.
For example, lord commissars are WS 5 while storm trooper commanders are WS 4, so they both went to the same school and received the same training but lord commissars are better at fighting (probably due to experiance) but the commanders are I 4 while lord commissars are I 3, so why are commanders more responsive to combat when lord commissars are more experienced but otherwise have the same training?

They both went to the same school (Schola Progenium) when they were teens. Commissar train in their own academy, the Officio Prefectus, while Scions train in the Tempestor academy. Both trainings are different and thus produce different results. Commissar Lord most certainly have higher WS and attacks because they are more experimented, but have a lower initiative because they are older and when you grow old you get slower. Seems logical to me.

Death cult assassins, despite also being "normal humans" are of similar initiative. All I can suggest is "don't poke the plot holes".

A lifetime of training, light weight armour that may be boosted in some way, genetic and/or cybernetic enhancements and selective breeding could all play a part. So to answer the OP, probably.

locarno24 wrote:
Death cult assassins, despite also being "normal humans" are of similar initiative. All I can suggest is "don't poke the plot holes".

Death cult assassins were gene enanced and/or used extansive bionics (at least in the 3rd edition codex of Witch Hunter). They heven had 4 of Strength. They were considered the cheap man assassins next to the official one's (who were much weaker in this edition than those we have now).