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Post by Destecado on Jul 15, 2004 8:13:18 GMT -5
An earlier discussion of the Adeptae Soroitas spoke of an order perhaps being located within the dorvastor Subsector. I was wondering if any further work has been done n this idea or if a final descision has been made about what orders would appear in the subsector or in the Sector as a whole? (unfortunately the other topic is locked otherwise I would have brought this up there). If no descision has been made, might I suggest the Sororitas represented in the sector by instead of a militant order, an order of the Pronatus. These are the orders that specialize in retrieving, guarding, studying and repairing artifacts of value to the Ecclesiarchy. KeirLeslie brought up a similar idea..... The Convent is of the Order of the Celestial Rose, an Order Pronatus with strong ties to the Order of the Bloody Rose. They are mainly archivists, curators and writers of inspirational texts commemerating the deeds of St. Cariath and the God-Emperor. The Order maintains records of all the actions and Martyrdoms of Sisters in the Anargo Sector Part of the reason for my interest in where the issue stands is that currently I am working on the world of Sistina with CELS. Part of the discussion has centered around the name of the Planet originating from the name of a martyred sister of the adeptae sororitas. While writing up the story of her martyrdom, it became clear that we must also descide what orders would be present within the Sector.
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Post by Minister on Jul 16, 2004 9:49:14 GMT -5
The Subsector Commander, Lord Admiral and Cardinal Primus are in agreement that a contingent from the Order of the Bloody Rose is present, based on Dorvastor itself. This is primarily because that's my army and I'm zoggin' well using it! ;D
Past that, I don't belive any concrete agreement was made.
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Post by CELS on Jul 16, 2004 12:17:10 GMT -5
I don't suppose there's anything to keep us from having both the Order of the Celestial Rose and the Order of the Bloody Rose? Except, of course, that the names are very similar What size would these local Missions (or whatever the correct term is) have though? Are we talking about a handful of Sisters? Dozens? Hundreds? IIRC, the Adeptae Sororitas are even less numerous than the Adeptus Astartes, and spread across an equally large area, so... Anyway, the Pronatus definitely seem like an interesting bunch, retrieving holy relics from worlds that have fallen to the enemy, be it chaos or orks. Guarding important shrines in desperate situations, such as ork invasions or on Sistina, where the rest of the Imperium have all but abandoned these shrines. Studying artifacts... well, perhaps. Maybe they would be on a quest to recover more holy relics, and investigate stuff like... a bunch of priests claiming to have a scroll written by Saint Sebastian Thor, or something like that.
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Post by Minister on Jul 16, 2004 23:09:24 GMT -5
I am reminded of the Imperial cult known as the Gourdians, a group who claim to have, amongst other things, the cup from which the Emperor drank at His last meal, who are very much interested in the obtaining of any holy relic of the Imperium. I belive they got a single mention in a WD a while back, not long after Inquisitor came out. I shall have a look if I remember.
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Post by Destecado on Jul 17, 2004 4:16:04 GMT -5
Aren't the orders of the Celestial Rose and the Bloody Rose both militant orders? Where do the non-militant orders fit into the scheme of things? There is also the question of what it means to be a non-militant order. The Pronatus are a non-militant order, yet as stated earlier, they specialize in retrieving, guarding, studying and repairing artifacts of value to the Ecclesiarchy.
It would seem that their mission requires if not warriors at least those among their sisterhood that are skilled in the arts of combat and warfare. What then constitutes the main differences between a militant and non-militant order? Is it that the militant orders exist only for warfare and the non-militant orders though possesing the skills of warfare have other callings?
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Post by Minister on Jul 17, 2004 4:32:10 GMT -5
A Militant Order is one which upholds the idea of service to the Emperor and Humanity through the purity of soul (faith), mind (dedication) and deed (war) in a specialised manner. The Hospitalar shares the philosophy, but the relevant pure deed is healing (of mind or body). And so-on.
"Cross-Genre" orders could exist, but their nature would make them more prone to being small and focused entities with easily described goals. "Protect and venerate the relics of the Emperor and His Saints" is one such. Obviously, we're in minor orders teritory here. One thing I would like to say is that having them based solely in Anargo is going to be a bit of a push. Have them a small, neglected group overlooked by much of the Ecclesiarchy heirachy and spread throughout the region. Possibly date them back to a single catastrophic event which caused their founding (the loss of the relics stored within the Grand Cathedral on Torvonis to the depredations of heretics and their subsiquent scattering across a hundred sectors in private collections and splinter cults or something... I don't know.) In this case it could be that a task force pulled from several orders eventually congealed into a single entity over the centuries.
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Post by Destecado on Jul 17, 2004 4:51:16 GMT -5
That sounds reasonable and is pretty much in keeping with part of the fluff that CELS and I have been working on for the world of Sistina n the Archaios Subsector. Sistina was the martyrd saint for which the world was named.
Here is the rough outline for her story, which seems to mesh with the concept youhave put forward. I apologize for how poorlyit is written. since we have yet to fully solidify the presence or influnce of the sisterhood witin the Sector at this time I wanted to leave it generic (the same goes for the relic being recovered).
Saint Sistina was a member of an order pronatus. Rather than being a sister of long standing, she was but a novice when she was martyred. Sistina was part of an expidition to recover a blade that fell into the hands of a local chaos cult.
When the sisters went to retreive it with the help of sisters from one of the militant orders, they found the blade had become corrupted and was wielded by a space marine champion of chaos (Alpha Legion).
The blade burned with a sickly red flame. Its cut a swath through the sisters. In desperation Sistina prayed to the Emperor for strength and threw herself upon the blade. The blade pierce through her and exited her back, but became lodged. Try as he might, the chaos champion was able to wrest the blade from within her.
The flames of the blade cause the ceremite plates of her armour to curl up and blacken as so much paper. Her close cropped hair and skin were also set ablaze, yet no sound was heard from Sistina. Many beleive that she was already dead by this time, but those sisters near the battle state that she still struggled with the spawn of chaos to keep the blade lodged within her.
Her sisters were not lax. They used Sistina's sacrifice to cut down the champion. Even after the champion fell the battle continued as they sisters slew the remainder of the cult members present. It was only afterwards that they turned their attention to their own fallen, among them Sistina.
The heat and flames from the blade had been intense. Little but charged remains were left, but a miraculace thing had occured. The blade no longer burned with the corruption of chaos. On closer inspection not a trace of chaos could be found upon it. It has pierced Sistina through the heart.
Some beleive that it was her courage, faith and unwillingness to relinquish the sword back to chaos that had purified it.
Again, sorry for the poor write up, but hopefully it can begin to give us a framework for a zealous order pronatus which will stop at nothing (even giving their lives) to retrieve and protect the artefacts of the Imperium.
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Post by KeirLeslie on Jul 17, 2004 12:26:16 GMT -5
The Orders Pronatus is, in my view, composed primarily of non-combatants, but has a small wing dedicated to retrieving relics.
I do not however wish to see the Order Pronatus become a primarily military force. For want of a better word, they are the librarians of the Sisters of Battle.
They would definitely be intrested in studying relics and so on. Also, the relics will over the course of time deteriorate into dust. Therefore will there not have to be 'curators', preserving the holy relics?
As for the origins of the Order I favour that a relic is lost by the Order of the Bloody Rose who get a mission together to hunt down the relic.
They retrieve the relic, but take heavy losses and do not re-intergrate with the rest of the Bloody Rose Order so are split off into the Order of The Celestial Rose. Maybe the loss of Saint Sistina divides the Order? One group believes she was a Saint the others don't?
After a long struggle Sistina is recoginised as a Saint, but there is already too much bad blood so they split?
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Post by Minister on Jul 19, 2004 8:42:24 GMT -5
No more ideas right now, so I will just mutter approval for others' ideas.
***Mutters approval***
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Post by Minister on Jul 30, 2004 10:31:25 GMT -5
So then, are we going to have an Order Militant, or a non-militant order?
I would remind that, despite the title, it has been known for some amongst the non-militant orders to take up arms in their cause, it is merley not their primary function (and they are conciderably less equipped to do so).
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Post by KeirLeslie on Jul 30, 2004 10:39:30 GMT -5
I favour a non-militant Order with a small fighting force. It would be equipped with a lot of older gear, and would have tops, 60 or so suits.
This wouldn't do a lot of pitched battles, but an amount of theft and so on.
The rest of the Order would not be fighters, just archivists.
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Post by CELS on Jul 30, 2004 12:02:35 GMT -5
Hmm, if I had to choose, I would say non-militant, and that the Orders Pronatus (is this an official term by the way, or did we coin it?) would be escorted by other forces (or other Sororitas orders) if need be. Actually, I wouldn't have it any other way. If these girls need to retrieve a relic that has fallen to the enemy, chances are that they can't do this on their own, even if they are a militant order. Sisters of Battle don't usually appear in great numbers, after all. So let's be original, and steer away from Tactical Dreadnought armour with ceramite breast-supporters
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Post by KeirLeslie on Jul 30, 2004 20:19:51 GMT -5
CELs, I don't mean for the Order to be able to fight a pitched battle or anything. They'd rely on other forces to retrieve Relics fallen to the enemy, but they would be able to retrieve Relics from Imperial worlds.
They'd definitely not be a force capable of fighting an actual battle.
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Post by Minister on Jul 31, 2004 11:18:01 GMT -5
Seems reasonable to me. A thought which does ocour is that, whilst a few of the more favoured "field agents", if you will, may have power armour, it will often be of a non-standard sort, acquired from the same breadth of sources as the Inquisitors and the like.
Not even a group which would be that good for 40K scale battles, but a great wee-group style thing for Inquisitor, RPGs and fiction.
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Post by KeirLeslie on Aug 13, 2004 16:41:47 GMT -5
Does anyone have any major objections to the above?
If not, should I start a 'history' of the Order?
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