<![CDATA[Latest posts for the thread "A cluster of questions!"]]>

locarno24 wrote:
Okay.....

Can an Order of the Adaptus Soritas be founded under the pretense of ensuring stable belief in the Imperial Cult and rooting out possible Chaos Incursions or do they need to have a more specified reason?

Rooting out Chaos Infiltration is more accurately a job for the Inquisition or the Arbites. The Militant Orders Of The Adepta Sororitas are soldiers (or security personnel) - they shoot people, they don't investigate.

That said, "The Ecclesiarchy has a shed-load of money to pay for it, there are important worlds in this area and it makes us feel important" is probably a good enough reason.
Founding an order properly needs to be approved by one of the Prioresses (Terra or Ophelia II) but that's it; it's not like an Astartes Chapter who need approval all the way up to the High Lords Of Terra.

Can Adaptus Astartes and Adaptus Soritas work consistently in conjunction with one another if present in the same system together?

Yes and no They can, they'll work together and they're both professional soldiers but I doubt they'll like one another very much.

To the Sororitas, the Astartes are aggressive teenagers turned into gene-amped mutants (Heresy) who refuse to acknowledge the Divinity of the God-Emperor (Heresy) and are descendants of the Astartes Legions - whose civil war was responsible for nearly destroying the Emperor's Divine Plan for humanity (Heresy, albeit precise details unclear).

To the Astartes, the Sororitas are close-minded zealots who are more interested in mysticism than tactics, and martyrdom than effective employment of assets, and who serve the Ecclesiarch who essentially betrayed and murdered the concept of The Imperial Truth the Astartes Legions fought for before the Emperor's body had even stopped twitching.

Where there are so many worlds and different representations of the Emperor, from being the sun to an omnipotent being of energy, could one cultures gods be portrayed as servents to this Emperor and not completely erased?

.....Erk. Maybe, maybe not. Decisions of 'what's acceptable deviation' is made by the closest Ecclesiarchal Authority (the Missionary on the ship who discovers a world, or the Cardinal Astral in whose Diocese a new belief emerges).

Pretty much any faith can be spun into Emperor-Worship by another name. But the key element is that it's going to have to be a monotheistic faith.
Saints, and ancestor worship, and spiritual animism is fine, but actual other 'gods' are a no-no.

So if the locals were worshipping their forefathers, then the Ecclesiarchy would say "they've gone to joint the emperor, but still watch over you". But if they insist that there's an actual pantheon of 'gods' other than the emperor..... I think I heard a flamethrower being lit over there.

It's said in rare cases Chapters serfs, in very rare cases are deployed beside Astartes. If so, could different offices of Serfs have specific training in specialized fields or must it strictly adhere to the basics?

No. Chapter Serfs are there to serve the chapter, crew its ships, staff its fortress and maintain and build its weapons. They're not there to fight. They don't get put into the line; they just have the ability to protect themselves when attacked - so you'd have armsmen amongst a chapter's warship crew, trained with shock maul and shotcannon for boarding actions, but they wouldn't drop onto the planet with the space marines.

Certainly you wouldn't train up recon units, or heavy weapons units, or anything like that.

The one exception I could see is for chapters who act a bit nefariously - a chapter serf's big advantage over his masters is that he can pass for (possibly is) an unaugmented human. Which makes things a lot easier for intelligence gathering. There's never been any particular background describing Astartes Chapters maintaining spy networks, but it's not exactly beyond imagination - especially for groups like the Unforgiven - who are incredibly insular but need to ferret out everyone else's secrets to pursue their hidden mission.

Besides Salamanders is it permitted for other Chapters to live among their originating people or are the Salamanders a special case?

It's entirely up to a chapter's own rules. The White Consuls maintain several star systems as protectorates, with detached battle-brothers acting as planetary governors.

The Astral Claws re-organised local PDF forces into the much more effective Tyrant's Legion, which had detached Astral Claw space marines embedded into it to make for much better planetary defence forces that could actually protect Maelstrom worlds from raiders and pirates.

Do Grey Knights still murder Sisters to banish demons or was that non-sense retconned?

I don't know if it's in the current codex, but even if it's not it's not specifically "removed" - nothing ever is. At best it's 'overwritten' or 'clarified' in later books (like some of the stuff coming out with the Horus Heresy, or The Beast Arises series including The Beheading - frankly I'm rooting for Vangorich seeing the eejits he had to work with!)

I agree it was badly written, but the idea was fair enough.

Ka'Jagga'Nath (the Bloodtide) was an incredibly powerful Khornate Daemon, and the 'everyone becomes a psychotic murderer' aura has been seen before (see Legion Of The Damned) where even space marines turned on one another.

Corruption doesn't necessarily mean "start worshipping khorne" - Grey Knights are specifically never to have fallen. That's not the same as being incorruptible in a sense of 'can't be killed or affected by a daemon's powers'. None of them might have turned to Nurgle, but they're not immune to poison or disease, for example. So it's possible that Ka'Jagga'Nath's aura of rage might have affected even them.

Equally, it doesn't specifically say that they murdered the Sororitas. They 'turned their blades on', but no-where did it say that the Sororitas didn't let themselves be sacrificed willingly to stop the shrine-world being corrupted (which I'm sure they would have done and would fit their character better).

It's already a known thing (albeit Muuuuuuuuch better written) that Grey Knight wargear is anointed with the blood of faithful and pure individuals as part of the process of consecrating it*, so given the power level of the daemon they were facing, this might be the only way to 'enhance' that protection enough to let them face the Bloodtide and stand a chance.

* Read the Justicar Alaric (Ben Counter) short story 'Sacrifice' - it's a very good story, featuring a...largely forgone conclusion of a fight between a grey knight and a pack of lesser daemons.

What makes it interesting is that it 'jumps' back in time on occasions as the various signature bits of wargear are employed.

Alaric aims, fires his stormbolter, and as it reloads, you cut back to see the history of the bolt shell that's just loaded.....

....Jumps to the last day in the life of an armourer on an imperial shrine world. The Armourer works in a sizeable weapons manufactorum, making exceptionally high tolerance ammunition for noblemen's duelling and sporting weapons. The Manufactorum is partly managed by the Mechanicus, but it's also part run by the ecclesiarchy and a consortium of noble houses.

Some components are delayed, leading him to find that someone's doing work 'off the books' - not much, but incredibly fine-detail, incredibly high tolerance and expensive work.....which if it's done on the black market, will probably be worth a huge amount of money. Being honest, and worried, he reports this to the overseer, who tells him he'll look into it and to keep quiet.

For his pains, he's kidnapped, and wakes up in the manufactorum.

The kidnapper is the planetary cardinal, who sadly explains to him that the manufactory is oathed to the Inquisition to produce a small number of bolt shells per year - a tiny amount, but in complete secrecy, to fantastically high quality, and blessed in every imaginable way.

The artisan has become a security risk because he's figured out it's happening, and told someone. The overseer (who tried to figure out who was doing it to blackmail them) has been quietly killed.

The last step in the blessing involves blood. His.

The artisan asks why they couldn't use the overseer's blood, or any other criminals.

The cardinal says no. The sacrifice has to be done by a good, pious man, and it has to be voluntary.

Well, then, says the artisan, I refuse.

The cardinal says; then we will kill your entire family and all your friends. Slowly and in great pain. We don't want to, but if that is the motivation you require, we will.

The artisan stands up, picks up a knife and steps forward....

.....and you're back in the 'present' as the bolt round locks into the breech, fires, and detonates in a daemon's skull,
*BLAM*