Codex: Imperial Agents

[Noeh]

 

Holy Boltguns! Could you imagine D6 s8 ap1 small blasts!!! 

Yes.

 

Yes, I could.

 

*smiles wistfully at the thought of all the purging*

 

 

...what? These heretics aren't going to purge themselves!

 

 

I'm still rather tempted to not correct them...but then I couldn't have precision shots..hmm..

[Lysimachus]

the detachment loses obsec so it's not really worth taking

I'm sure if the Vestal task force hadn't include the compulsory troops you'd see more if it as a command squad/exorcist support force with the named canoness but as-is it's a losing proposition.

I dunno... I think the best part about c:ia is you can take a 25 point priest as your manditory CAD HQ

Just a thought of putting these points together, but would it be worth using the Vestal Force with 2 minimal Troops (which then admittedly lose ObSec, but none of the other units in this Detachment were getting it in a CAD anyway so it's only lost for the 2 small squads?), then take a CAD as a second Detachment with a 25pt HQ and all the other BS squads you want (which will get ObSec). Best of both worlds?

[A.T.]

Best of both worlds?

 

Depends on what you are taking. Your first detachment will always be for obsec, and then if you reach the point where you need more slots and you feel you can absorb an extra hq, elite slot, and two non-obsec troops then you will look at the task force.

[BitsHammer]

So thanks to the magic of the internet I've finally gotten to see the fluff for our army:

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/D6VWNNv.jpg

 

 

 

So I just want to talk about a few things I noticed that are...well different. Be warned, I'm going to be a little grumpy about our SINGLE PAGE OF LORE.

 

• "The Adepta Sororitas is a penitent order..." I'm sorry, when did the ENTIRETY OF THE SORORITAS turn into the Order of the Valorous Heart (you know, the ones with pretty much 75% of all the Repentia in the Sisterhood)? And while this may just be a thing of language, but why is an entire faction made of multiple orders being referred to as a single order?
• When did Sisters become even more Catholic? It's been long standing that they aren't "deprived" of anything but willingly choose to live simple lives because they're brainwashed fanatical orphans raised by a religious cult run by the Imperium. Depriving them of things sounds like you're telling them "no" instead of them never considering the question in the first place (one can not "sin" if one does not even recognize the temptation in the first place after all).
• Okay, the descriptions in the actual text regarding the Sisters is actually pretty kick*ss. Excluding the Salamanders I can't think of Marines who would WALK THROUGH FIRE to kill Heretics. And of course we know Guardsmen are too flammable so they're right out.
• The text seems to imply that there are a lot of Sisters. "...significant force..." being used to describe the sort of deployment of Sisters on major Imperial worlds means that the old fluff didn't give them enough credit before.
• Sisters are now the MAIN FIGHTING FORCE of Wars of Faith. No longer are we just tag-a-longs to a Cardinal rousing up some Guard and/or Marines. That's a major step towards being on the main stage properly.
• We're back to being employed by the Ordos Hereticus, but I can't hate that. It makes sense. Besides, if we see a heretical Inquisitor who doesn't show enough FAITH it's not like we can't PURGE THE HERETIC.

 

So for a single page it starts with some silly nonsense but mostly contains things I like. We're still missing a LOT about Sisters, but that's what our own codex is for.

[WarriorFish]

I think you're paying too much attention to the particular wording. The whole God-Emperor theme is that humanity owes him a blood debt, the fanaticism and faith of the Sisters just takes this to the next level. The monastic thing just matches Marines, who are living weapons in much the same way. They have no time for Worldly possessions, and that's exactly how their leadership likes it. It doesn't say the Sisterhood are under the Ordo Heretic either, just that the Sisters would make for good allies in their cause.

 

So I don't see why you have an issue with this, it doesn't really change anything that wasn't already there in some form. What it does change is good; making the Sisters numerous and important to wars of faith as you mention. This is overdue and most welcome, putting them more centre stage to the Ecclesiarchy as they should be.

[dracpanzer]

On your first point. Penitent doesn't mean everyone is in a Repentia squad. (I doubt 75% of Repentia come from the OoVH) It has always been the Sisters way to be Penitent to the point that they may wear hair shirts, write with a pen with barbs in the handle etc.

 

The Sisters do look at death in the service of the Emperor as pretty much #1 life goal achieved, so yeah, Penitent.

[Goonbandito]

Be warned, I'm going to be a little grumpy about our SINGLE PAGE OF LORE.

Lol, all the factions in the book only got a single page of lore (even the Inquisition. I posted the lore pages for the Inquisition and Adepta Astra Telepathica too if you want to have a look).

 

I actually liked the fluff page. It presented the Sororitas as pretty cool women who doesnt afraid of anything. From purging heretics (including Heretical Space Marines - Sister Sin lives on!), to guarding pilgrims and shrines, to working closely with the Ordo Hereticus, to manning the Black Ships as well as providing non-martial duties through the Orders Hospitaller and Dialogus. I think that meshes well with basically anything in the previous fluff.

[BitsHammer]

 

Be warned, I'm going to be a little grumpy about our SINGLE PAGE OF LORE.

Lol, all the factions in the book only got a single page of lore (even the Inquisition. I posted the lore pages for the Inquisition and Adepta Astra Telepathica too if you want to have a look).

 

I actually liked the fluff page. It presented the Sororitas as pretty cool women who doesnt afraid of anything. From purging heretics (including Heretical Space Marines - Sister Sin lives on!), to guarding pilgrims and shrines, to working closely with the Ordo Hereticus, to manning the Black Ships as well as providing non-martial duties through the Orders Hospitaller and Dialogus. I think that meshes well with basically anything in the previous fluff.

 

I'm still grumpy because Sisters have been slowly losing lore since C:WH.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

God-Emperor! Witness me! *charges into a group of genestealers with 2 primed grenades*

[Servant of Dante]

So thanks to the magic of the internet I've finally gotten to see the fluff for our army:

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/D6VWNNv.jpg

 

 

 

So I just want to talk about a few things I noticed that are...well different. Be warned, I'm going to be a little grumpy about our SINGLE PAGE OF LORE.

 

• "The Adepta Sororitas is a penitent order..." I'm sorry, when did the ENTIRETY OF THE SORORITAS turn into the Order of the Valorous Heart (you know, the ones with pretty much 75% of all the Repentia in the Sisterhood)? And while this may just be a thing of language, but why is an entire faction made of multiple orders being referred to as a single order?
• When did Sisters become even more Catholic? It's been long standing that they aren't "deprived" of anything but willingly choose to live simple lives because they're brainwashed fanatical orphans raised by a religious cult run by the Imperium. Depriving them of things sounds like you're telling them "no" instead of them never considering the question in the first place (one can not "sin" if one does not even recognize the temptation in the first place after all).
• Okay, the descriptions in the actual text regarding the Sisters is actually pretty kick*ss. Excluding the Salamanders I can't think of Marines who would WALK THROUGH FIRE to kill Heretics. And of course we know Guardsmen are too flammable so they're right out.
• The text seems to imply that there are a lot of Sisters. "...significant force..." being used to describe the sort of deployment of Sisters on major Imperial worlds means that the old fluff didn't give them enough credit before.
• Sisters are now the MAIN FIGHTING FORCE of Wars of Faith. No longer are we just tag-a-longs to a Cardinal rousing up some Guard and/or Marines. That's a major step towards being on the main stage properly.
• We're back to being employed by the Ordos Hereticus, but I can't hate that. It makes sense. Besides, if we see a heretical Inquisitor who doesn't show enough FAITH it's not like we can't PURGE THE HERETIC.

 

So for a single page it starts with some silly nonsense but mostly contains things I like. We're still missing a LOT about Sisters, but that's what our own codex is for.

Well . . . The Order of the Valorous Heart is kinda my favorite, but that is a bit annoying. OML's defining feature is not penitence :P

 

I'd say being deprived rather than depriving themselves would be less "Cathiolic" but that's largely irrelevant here. But really, the Ministorum is just grimdark catholicism, which is fun :P

 

Signifigant is a very relative term. The 2E codex is the bass of my Sisters headcanon, and based on the numbers in there I can't imagine there are more than 100,000 Sisters Militant even at times of peak membership. Whether that's a significant force is up for debate.

 

This little line contradicts a good chunk of established fluff, so I'll be ignoring it :P Although, the Sisters don't have to be numerous to form the backbone of a War of Faith. Wars of Faith that are not also Crusades have always been just the Sisters and the Frateris Militia. So I don't think this line goes into enough detail to really capture the nuances (such as they are) of the situation *shrug*

[BitsHammer]

Sisters have always been more devotional by choice than requirement (one of the reasons they're chosen to be Sisters) so the need to deprive them of things they don't even care about is silly.

 

Also I just want to dig out some old math that used some heavy low balling and still ended up with a massive number:

 

About a year ago a friend of mine and myself sat down with the idea of trying to figure out about how "big" the Imperium was roughly population wise (and about how many Sisters of Battle would fit the setting). So we dug through all the information on population levels from old rulebooks and what we could find and here's what we worked out while trying to keep the numbers on the low end as possible:

 

To keep the numbers reasonably low we worked off the following rules:

 

1% of the entire Imperium meets the very basic criteria to be considered for becoming a Sororitas.

1% of those complete their "basic" training successfully

1% of those are on active status at any time (the other 99% have been deactivated for any number of reasons). This last one was to really just push the number a lot lower based on the "stuff happens" quotient.

50% of the final total is Militant Orders, the rest is divided into the various Non-Militant Orders (which makes each of those smaller than the combined Militant Orders).

 

So running some basic numbers we figured that from the Hive Worlds (all 32,380 of them) had a rough average of 50,000,000,000 (we went with 50 Billion a Hive, which is about the middle of the range (10-100,000,000,000), and 10 Hive a planet, which is a bit lower than half as the range is 5-20) 16,190,000,000,000,000 people on the hives.

 

To keep the math easy we went with an average of 5 Billion people on average on every other planet in the Imperium (working from 1,000,000 that means 967,620 worlds) which is lower than our current population on Earth. That gave us another 4,838,100,000,000,000 more people.

 

This gave us a total of 21,028,100,000,000,000 people in the Imperium on a lowball math run (that is 21 Quadrillion people for the record).

 

Of these 210,281,000,000,000 meet the very basic criteria (1% of the population).

Of those 2,102,810,000,000 complete the basic training (1% of those who meet the basic criteria).

Of those 21,028,100,000 are on any kind of active duty (1% of those who complete the training).

Of those 10,514,050,000 are Battle Sisters (50% of those who are active duty).

 

With 1 Million Worlds in the Imperium this means the Sisters could in theory put as many as 10,514 Sisters on every world on average (the real spread is likely much more varied depending on combat operations, duties on Shrine Worlds, escorting pilgrimages, ect. This is just to give a rough idea of how many there could be.)

 

Now understandably 10.5 Billion sounds like a lot, but considering the scale of the Imperium it turns out to only be .00005% of the entire Imperium (for a comparative basis it'd be like 300 Sisters in the United States,or 6 Sisters to every state in the US), so still plenty "elite" for the setting.

 

So yeah, they could consolidate those ten billion to just major hive/shrine worlds and still not be excessive. Why? Because it's a settibg that measures people by the quadrillions. At that point "billions" becomes just a drop in the bucket.

 

But that's just my take on the setting and scale.

[Servant of Dante]

Sisters have always been more devotional by choice than requirement (one of the reasons they're chosen to be Sisters) so the need to deprive them of things they don't even care about is silly.

If I wasn't clear I agree on this point

Also I just want to dig out some old math that used some heavy low balling and still ended up with a massive number:

 

About a year ago a friend of mine and myself sat down with the idea of trying to figure out about how "big" the Imperium was roughly population wise (and about how many Sisters of Battle would fit the setting). So we dug through all the information on population levels from old rulebooks and what we could find and here's what we worked out while trying to keep the numbers on the low end as possible:

 

To keep the numbers reasonably low we worked off the following rules:

 

1% of the entire Imperium meets the very basic criteria to be considered for becoming a Sororitas.

1% of those complete their "basic" training successfully

1% of those are on active status at any time (the other 99% have been deactivated for any number of reasons). This last one was to really just push the number a lot lower based on the "stuff happens" quotient.

50% of the final total is Militant Orders, the rest is divided into the various Non-Militant Orders (which makes each of those smaller than the combined Militant Orders).

 

So running some basic numbers we figured that from the Hive Worlds (all 32,380 of them) had a rough average of 50,000,000,000 (we went with 50 Billion a Hive, which is about the middle of the range (10-100,000,000,000), and 10 Hive a planet, which is a bit lower than half as the range is 5-20) 16,190,000,000,000,000 people on the hives.

 

To keep the math easy we went with an average of 5 Billion people on average on every other planet in the Imperium (working from 1,000,000 that means 967,620 worlds) which is lower than our current population on Earth. That gave us another 4,838,100,000,000,000 more people.

 

This gave us a total of 21,028,100,000,000,000 people in the Imperium on a lowball math run (that is 21 Quadrillion people for the record).

 

Of these 210,281,000,000,000 meet the very basic criteria (1% of the population).

Of those 2,102,810,000,000 complete the basic training (1% of those who meet the basic criteria).

Of those 21,028,100,000 are on any kind of active duty (1% of those who complete the training).

Of those 10,514,050,000 are Battle Sisters (50% of those who are active duty).

 

With 1 Million Worlds in the Imperium this means the Sisters could in theory put as many as 10,514 Sisters on every world on average (the real spread is likely much more varied depending on combat operations, duties on Shrine Worlds, escorting pilgrimages, ect. This is just to give a rough idea of how many there could be.)

 

Now understandably 10.5 Billion sounds like a lot, but considering the scale of the Imperium it turns out to only be .00005% of the entire Imperium (for a comparative basis it'd be like 300 Sisters in the United States,or 6 Sisters to every state in the US), so still plenty "elite" for the setting.

So yeah, they could consolidate those ten billion to just major hive/shrine worlds and still not be excessive. Why? Because it's a settibg that measures people by the quadrillions. At that point "billions" becomes just a drop in the bucket.

 

But that's just my take on the setting and scale.

 

As for the number of Sisters, I remember the post you're quoting, and your numbers make sense . . . except that for me the 2E Sisters 'dex is the foundation of my headcanon, and it is quite explicit that each of the Orders Majoris numbers (normally) 3000-4000 Battle Sisters (with peak numbers reaching maybe 7000 for each order). That means that the Orders Majoris total to 18,000-24,000 Sisters Militant normally, and might occasionally sum to as many as 42,000. This of course does not account for the Orders Minoris, and while there is no real fluff saying how many of those there are, I would think that the Orders Majoris would contain at least a third of all Sisters Militant (but that's just conjecture based on what feels right to me - the major orders are supposed to be the main forces of the Orders Militant), so I would put the average number of Sisters Militant around maybe 50,000, with peak numbers maybe exceeding 100,000, but that's only if you hold to the 2E codex numbers.

 

Also, % of the total population meeting the basic requirements seems high (they would have to be girls raised from infancy at a Schola Progenium), and I tend to think that the Orders Militant are vastly outnumbered by the Orders non-militant (but that comes from how small the Orders Militant are described as being).

[Beams]

Penitent doesn't mean Repentia or a punishment. It's like, they are penitent (feeling or showing sorrow and regret for having done wrong; repentant) which is something that's always been in the fluff.

[BitsHammer]

The post was more a critique of mine on how the Sisters don't match the scale of the setting hence why I provided some maths to give something more concrete.

 

Also that 1% initial number was the number of orphans who meet Schola requirements. Of that 1% were qualified to be candidates to be Sisters.

 

All things considered the GW numbers given couldn't support proper Wars of Faith, much less hold a single planet properly.

[Servant of Dante]

The post was more a critique of mine on how the Sisters don't match the scale of the setting hence why I provided some maths to give something more concrete.

 

Also that 1% initial number was the number of orphans who meet Schola requirements. Of that 1% were qualified to be candidates to be Sisters.

 

All things considered the GW numbers given couldn't support proper Wars of Faith, much less hold a single planet properly.

Maybe. But Sisters don't fight Wars of Faith themselves. Many Wars of Faith are also Crusades, so they have plenty of help from the IG and Astartes and so on, and the ones that don't just have to rely on vast numbers of Frateris Militia, I guess.

 

And Sisters don't really hold planets on their own do they? Planets have PDF to do most of that work (in the case of rebellion or whatever), with any Sisters present being a sturdy, elite auxiliary force. Between their training and equipment, a couple thousand Sisters should be enough to launch an attack on a planet (maybe :P). In any case, I'm sticking with the 2E numbers. Also, Witch Hunters mentions that a Preceptory (200-1000 Sisters) is about as much as a singe Order ever fields in a single place.

 

In any case, there's nothing wrong with your interpretation, I just prefer the idea of a much smaller Sisterhood, and holding to the GW numbers.

[Aqui]

"The Adepta Sororitas is a penitent order..." I'm sorry, when did the ENTIRETY OF THE SORORITAS turn into the Order of the Valorous Heart (you know, the ones with pretty much 75% of all the Repentia in the Sisterhood)? And while this may just be a thing of language, but why is an entire faction made of multiple orders being referred to as a single order?

I was always of the opinion, that ALL Orders are penitent, but that the Valorous Heart takes it a lot further than the rest.

[Drider]

I'm think i'm going to post on the 40k FB page asking for some clarification. Anybody have any suggestions of stuff to add/remove/change/rephrase?

A few questions about Codex Imperial agents in regards to Codex Adepta Sororitas 6E and Canoness Veridyan

 

The Data Slate for Veridyan states that "full details of this models special rules can be found in C:AS or C:IA." Does this mean that Veriyan picks up all of the normal Canoness' rules for example wargear and relic options?

 

There has been a lot of contradictory information floating around in regards to C:IA and C:AS 6E. The Data Slate for Veridyan states that "full details of this models special rules can be found in C:AS or C:IA." And that Black Library are still selling C:AS 6E. Does this mean that both Codecs are valid sources to field an Adepta Sororitas army from? (If this is incorrect does that mean we can look forward to a new C:AS (7E?) as Veridan's data slate states that is where to locate her rules?)

 

Assuming that the supposition for the above question is correct.

 

A number of rules have updated verbiage are such as, the effects of Acts of Faith lasting until the end of the turn (new), which used to read as until the end of the phase (old). Does the new verbiage overwrite the old verbiage if you were using both books.

 

A number of units have had their Force Organisation slots updated. Does this overwrite Force Org slots in C:AS 6E or would you have to specifically field a force from C:IA to take advantage of the new Force Org Slots? 

 

Can Units from both books be taken in the same detachment and be considered a legal Battle-forged Army or would you have to field separate detachments, a cad from C:AS 6E  and a cad/Vestal task Force C:IA to be a legal battle-forged army? 

 

The same question only more specific, can I take St Celestine in a Vestal Task Force or would I have to run a separate cad to be able to take her in a legal battle-forged army?

 

[BitsHammer]

The post was more a critique of mine on how the Sisters don't match the scale of the setting hence why I provided some maths to give something more concrete.

Also that 1% initial number was the number of orphans who meet Schola requirements. Of that 1% were qualified to be candidates to be Sisters.

All things considered the GW numbers given couldn't support proper Wars of Faith, much less hold a single planet properly.

Maybe. But Sisters don't fight Wars of Faith themselves. Many Wars of Faith are also Crusades, so they have plenty of help from the IG and Astartes and so on, and the ones that don't just have to rely on vast numbers of Frateris Militia, I guess.

And Sisters don't really hold planets on their own do they? Planets have PDF to do most of that work (in the case of rebellion or whatever), with any Sisters present being a sturdy, elite auxiliary force. Between their training and equipment, a couple thousand Sisters should be enough to launch an attack on a planet (maybe ). In any case, I'm sticking with the 2E numbers. Also, Witch Hunters mentions that a Preceptory (200-1000 Sisters) is about as much as a singe Order ever fields in a single place.

In any case, there's nothing wrong with your interpretation, I just prefer the idea of a much smaller Sisterhood, and holding to the GW numbers.

According to the new lore stuff Sisters are the main army in a war of faith. So yeah, we now need to have more Sisters than was canonically correct before.

I assume 2nd ed was true when it was new where the timeline hadn't reached M40 completely yet, but in M40.999 we need more Sisters than we used to and it's safe to assume that we've been amassing a proper army of zealots to properly purge the growing threats of heresy, mutation and xenos that continue to try and invade what has been given to humanity by the God-Emperor himself.

[Warsmith Aznable]

Picked up the book today. Store owner brought out a Canoness Veridyan from behind the counter for me (it's nice that there's store owners out there that take care of regulars) so I got to get her before she sold out.

 

Material looks to be Finecast. Mine is perfect, no flaws, if you're wondering.

 

So, it's nice to finally have the rules in a physical book. That next to nothing has changed from the e-dex is both disappounting and relieving. I hope Celestine comes back some how, probably will trade her points for a Cardinal counts-as Inquisitor.

 

The detachment is pointless, the formation is not exciting, but probably I will end up using the Inquisitorial Warband decurion and an AS CAD.

 

So... back to Witchhunters, I guess.

 

Weeeee..

[Noeh]

I felt pretty bad, my local shop owner knew I played Sisters so he ordered one of the models for the new canoness. Luckily one of the other guys at the table said he would buy her..because that model is still seriously gross looking. But I blame the art that it's based on. I just felt bad that he essentially ordered it thinking I would want it and just..ugh..

[jacqualine47]

My Flgs only got one instead of two, so I didnt get mine. The other guy that preordered doesnt play sisters and wanted it as a collector piece. I was first to preorder, but they gave it to him bcause he spends a lot more than I do in store...

 

So I cancelled my book preorder and am waiting for the web restock

[Noeh]

My Flgs only got one instead of two, so I didnt get mine. The other guy that preordered doesnt play sisters and wanted it as a collector piece. I was first to preorder, but they gave it to him bcause he spends a lot more than I do in store...

 

So I cancelled my book preorder and am waiting for the web restock

 

I woulda sent you the one they got for me if that was arrangable, heh. I'm just going to convert my own version of her since my units look nothing like the squat and weird metal sister minis. Here's hoping the sisters of battle get the sisters of silence treatment. Dear Allfather those models look nice.

[Drider]

Your FLGS doesn't sound so F

[Blackarmor_redtruth]

Mine is a GW store, so by default "just" a LGS. And as the only active AS player... I get not even a nod and a Hey about all this stuff coming out. Oh well, still getting it, and s&h is free there. I do dig that big buffing their presence in the universe, and I do love the math above, but that then just proves that the math IS incorrect. Because GW. It will be interesting to see those questions and clarifications posted and answered.

[CaptainMarsh]

Our FLGS got ours in. While I am not a fan of finecast or the model (due to the art it is based on), I can't say no to a new Sisters model.

As for Sister numbers: I like Fulkes' mathing. I take those numbers and I further it by saying take those numbers only 1% of them would have ever had the opportunity to ever even become a Sister because of the way they are raised at first. So that is still around 10.5 million Sisters, which is what, supposed to be ten times as common as Space Marines?:D