Where do Sisters draw the line: Mutants and Psykers

[FlamingWalnut]

Hello everyone! Long time fan of the Sisters, used to have an army a few years back but had to get rid of them for various reasons. I have been meaning to return, and even started a slow conversion project for Plastic Sisters (hoping for that project to be shelved for actual plastic sisters! :D) But my real reason for this thread is to flesh out the lore for my upcoming Order. 

So the question is: Can a Adepta Sororitas Order be lenient or even accepting of Psykers and Mutants (Beastmen, etc.) if said psykers/mutants are devoted to the Emperor? I have a psyker heavy Space Marine army and an idea for an Abhuman heavy Imperial Guard army to work alongside my Sisters, but I am not sure if that would just be absolute Heresy, or if there may be enough wiggle room. The idea of the Sisters seeing themselves as guides for those who often drift from the Emperor's light but have enough redeeming qualities to make them worth redeeming seems wonderful.

As a secondary question: Would mutation WITHIN the Sisters be seen as damning or a gift? Basically, if I took the Angel motif for Seraphim and Living Saints to a major degree and gave them all actual feathered wings, could that be seen as an outright gift? Or a hint of Chaos?

Either way, I await my time in the Penitent Engine. lol

Thank you in advance for any comments. 

[Machine God]

Heretic!

[Beams]

It's YOUR army, do what you want. Your order can always be more or less lenient than others.

[Servant of Dante]

Well, hypothetically, Sisters have to work with Astropaths and Navigators (communication and warp travel respectively being impossible without them). Some will tell you Imperium-Sanctioned psykers (primaris psykkers, psychic Inquisitors, and so on) are fine, but personally, I refuse to put any model with the psyker rule in any of my Sisters armies. I imagine they treat the Astropaths and Navigators they do interact with as more or less tools ("stay in you quarters, and if anything weird happens I'll shoot you").

 

Personally, I look at mutants the same way, except that no mutant is necessary the way a few psykers are. No tolerance here in my opinion. On a side note, I think pariahs are really cool, so I think the Sisters of Silence are neat, but they are mutants, so I won't use them with my Sisters.

 

Though it's all up to you. You might say your Order is more lenient (not super likely imo since all Sisters are trained in the same place then assigned to an Order I'm not sure how an Order would end up being all people with a more lenient attitude, and even if it did happen, what happens when someone from another Order finds out? still, that's just me) or you could just imagine that all Sisters are a little more lenient (the headcanon option) either way, your choice.

 

 

 

 

But if you're asking for my opinion, it's BURN THEM ALL!

[Eddie Orlock]

I've always played my sisters as relatively pragmatic about it, but then I sort of backed into a sisters army having come to the WitchHunters 'Dex from the 'freakshow' side of things with a force built around arcos, arbites, and militias. It was good times, I miss that army.

 

Two ways of looking at it. One, by what measure is a mutation? Are blue eyes and blond hair a mutation? What about double jointed fingers? How far off the template can you walk before you need to run away?

 

Other way, and something that feels germane to the setting, is following the designation of a higher authority. I recall fluff that one of the features canonically used to distinguish abhumans, from degenerate mutants is whether they breed true or not. This is why they don't just purge homo sapiens gigantus, minimus, nor rotundus on sight. It's also why an Imperial sanction on a soul bound astropath renders her acceptable. The Emperor said so, so there.

 

So, to go back to back to the justifications of my sisters pragmatism about some of this remember: Human life is the Emperor's currency. Even if it's slightly debased it's still his to spend. As a corollary, were your sisters to launch a progrom against the faithful abhumans and sanctioned witches in my sisters parish they'd be honour bound to take your order to task for the heresy of squandering the Emperor's currency. Huzzah for a justification of the incredibly rare sister/sister mirror match.

 

As to sister's with wings, I go back to the true-breeding test to distinguish between purgable mutants and protected abhumans. So I'd need to see your fluff about the planet of homo sapiens avius before we apply that protection. Also, how did those pitiable abhumans make it into the schola progenum in the first place. As for the wings being the imperial equivalent to a gift of chaos, the star child never granted physical gifts, even during his gift granting phase as patron to sensei warbands in the realm of chaos supplement. So, if we saw actual wings, that weren't surgically implanted mechanicus prosthesis, I'd be compelled to conclude some malevolent entity has subverted your order's faith beyond the point of redemption of any mortal lesser than a sensei and it'd be safer to just purge the whole thing. Heretic.

 

With regard to sisters being a guide for wayward humans to return to the Emperor's light, there are entire non-militant missionary orders dedicated to this very cause. So naturally their militant sisters would support and laud their successful efforts at bringing the Grace of Him-on-Terra to the blighted masses.

[Willy Pete]

If it helps, back in the 1st ed. days, the Imperial Army had Beastman platoons.  The fluff was that the Beastmen were very sorry and ashamed that they were mutants, and wanted to make up for it by killing all the enemies of the Emperor, hoping that if they killed enough, the Emperor would posthumously forgive them for the sin of being mutants.

 

Working this into your Order, the Sisters could see them as expendable troops, sending them into battle so that they can kill the enemy and earn repentance for being born mutants.

 

Not sure if this is a good workaround, but at least it could make sense from a fluff perspective.

[Jacinda]

The following is my opinion only.  You build your army the way you want.

 

 

Working with sanctioned psykers is no big deal.  There will be a good amount of mistrust and no sister would hesitate in the slightest if the psyker needed to be put down but they work with psykers all time.  From Inquisitors down to the barely legit passangers of the Black Fleet.

 

Working with abhumans is similar.  As long as the dogs know thier place and are loyal to the Emperor, they are useful.  There will be distaste, dustrust and a lot of prejudice, but abs are still useful tools.

 

In both cases, Sororitas are pragmatic.  Psykers and abhumans are useful so ride them until they die and then get another one.

 

As a secondary question: Would mutation WITHIN the Sisters be seen as damning or a gift?

The vast majority of Battle Sisters would distroy themselves at the first sign of mutation.  None would let a fellow Sister be used by Tzentch in such a way.  When in doubt, purge with bolt and fire; then join the Repentia to attone for that moment of doubt.

[Servant of Dante]

 

As a secondary question: Would mutation WITHIN the Sisters be seen as damning or a gift? Basically, if I took the Angel motif for Seraphim and Living Saints to a major degree and gave them all actual feathered wings, could that be seen as an outright gift? Or a hint of Chaos?

Do you even have to ask :D

 

Feel free to ignore me. I know I'm rather hardline when it comes to mutants and psykers.

[GodwynDi]

I like the distinction that the dark heresy rpg books talk about for mutations. There is a difference between evolutionary mutations, and chaos caused mutations. The latter is a taint that must be cleansed in fire, the former is simply the variance in humanity of a galaxy spanning empire. The trouble is that unless one is a sensitive psyker, it is impossible to tell the difference, so burn them all to be safe. If you're wrong, the safe mutants simply get to meet the emperor sooner.

 

As for psykers, it is not for us to question the decisions of the emperor. Astropaths, navigators, sanctioned psykers, all aid the imperium in their own ways. Due to the dangers of thre warp, they may fail through no fault of their own. It becomes anyone's proper duty to free their poor soul from the grip of chaos through fire so that they can go to the emperor.