Has anyone read "Redemption Corps"?

[Inache]

If by occasionally you mean once? The Sisters are pretty much exclusively Thorian, with a bit of Recongregationism or Amalathianism depeding on the particualar group but they are violently opposed to Istvaanism, a belief set that believes that the Horus Heresy and The Age of Apostasy were good things for the Imperium.

 

:P

 

Well since Recongregationism is considered a Radical belief...

 

And one could argue that the Age of Apostasy was good for the Imperium because it gave us the Sisters, bastions of the Holy God-Emperor's Light in the grim dark.

 

Either way, it's not like the writer was saying all Sisters believe it. It's a one off, it happens. Strike the Sisters of the Immaculate Flame from the record, and expunge them from the memory of the Imperium.

[AbyssKnight]

Well, I am about half way through the book now. I have to say, I had a completely different take on the first scene than Gree did. Wow, its amazing how two people can read the same thing and come away with different impressions sometimes.

 

Mortensen, naked and drugged, does fight two Battle Sisters, armored and armed with "power lashes." But there are a number of things to keep in mind.

 

First, its not like he beats the crap out of them or anything. In fact, he fails to harm either of them. He does disarm one of them and trips them, but even so he realizes himself that "he was being played with." The Sisters weren't trying to hurt him, probably (this my opinion) using the combat to speed the drugs through his system.

 

Second, the drugs. When I say he was drugged, its important to realize he was shot with a drugged needler immediately before starting the fight and didn't even know he was drugged. It is only after fighting for a bit that he can feel the drugs start to affect him. Ergo my theory above.

 

Third, the "power lashes." Affixing the word "power" to different things in 40k means different things. Power armor is different from a power sword. Power fists are different from other power weapons. In this case the "power lashes" definately seem to fit the idea of the Neural Whip used by a Mistress of a Sister Repentia squad. First off, we know Sisters use such weapons, and secondly, the novel itself describes what the weapon was supposed to do, " To any ordinary man, the merest touch of the weapon would have felt like wearing a set of manacles pulled from a blacksmith's fire." Sounds like a pain/nerve based weapon to me. And since Mortensen's nerves are mostly burned out, it doesn't work very well on him. Of course, the Sister's aren't really trying to kill him anyway (if they wanted him dead, he wouldn't have been taken prisoner, or they would be using bolters, etc).

 

So, a naked veteran Stormtrooper who can't feel pain getting in one or two good licks on some Sisters who aren't even trying hard, just getting your pulse up so the tranquilizers work faster.....yeah I can buy that without blinking. Remember, I am only half way through, so things may change but I will cross those bridges when I get there.

 

Moving on to Preed. I agree, very hard to buy that scene (and not just Preed killing the Sister either, the whole scene really). I do have one thing in Preed's favor. The description of the Sister mentions her bolt pistol, her power sword, and wearing "ermine" (fur, presumably a cloak) but makes no mention of armor. It does mention her hair blowing in front of her face so she at least had no helmet, and since she died specifically from a broken neck I can buy that if Preed some how made it inside her guard his sheer bulk slamming her bare head into the wall or floor could have snapped her neck. Of course, I find it much, much more likely he would have been split open from crown to crotch, especially as a man that large really should be able to move fast at all.