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Post by Canuovea on Jun 13, 2015 23:23:09 GMT
Wait, so this would make them even more irrational than anyone in the Church normally is, and even less able to think about things more logically...
So if you compare them to the Space Marines, who hold the more rational belief that the Emperor is just the best human man, the Sisters come out looking like hysterical crazy people who react to logic, or anything that might challenge their beliefs, with violence?
All for the radical brain surgery and all, but this would also result in them being tactically inflexible.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 13, 2015 23:47:56 GMT
Well the Imperium can be pretty tactically inflexible anyway. But you are right, that would give them kind of a weakness. Higher ranking ones could have the controls in their brains eased so they can think more rationally. The sisters would not see this as a blessing but a horrible burden and responsibility. High ranking sisters would need daily testing to make sure there thoughts had not become to aborrent.
The sisters are rational in a sense, its just that their thinking its very limited to accepted thoughts and concepts. They would seem pretty cold and unemotional to normal people, except when they are laughing insanely or screaming with hate during battles. They'd seemed kind of like automontons sometimes, like they just go into their dogmatic mode and repeat scripture in place of any rational argument.
The irony, of course, is the space marines are actually closer to what the emperor wanted (he didn't like religion and certianly didn't want to be considered a god!)
In the conflict between the sisters and the marines, a lot of times it would be the more practical space marines that would be in the right, making the space marines cool bad ass under dogs who save the day but then get dissed by people on their own side who want to undermine them. Space Marines are too essential to the Imperium to get rid of, but any chance to limit their power or any excuse to single out a chapter for punishment would be jumped on. See? I atually made space marines cooler via this plan.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 13, 2015 23:52:05 GMT
"The Emperor blessed the Adeptus Astrates and tried to raise them up, but they proved unworthy, selfish, arrogant and they squandered their gifts. Humanity failed this test and now the Emperor has shown us a new path to salvation. To add to mankind is futile. What is required, is that we start taking things away."
-Recorded message from the Supreme Canoness, played to new recruits, just prior to them under going stage one lobotomies.
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Post by zaealix on Jun 14, 2015 0:03:57 GMT
IDK about 40K but that does sound like nice, reasonable tension without particularly making any particular side look weak. As for making them look bad...Ehh, there is something to be said about knowing that your way is right and everyone else is wrong.
The trick is not to press the issue when you run out of ways to show the other fool the error of his ways! But these sisters don't do that so it's funtimes for everybody.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 14, 2015 0:09:45 GMT
Its important to keep in mind though, that the sisters are not entirely bad. At the end of the day, humanity is under siege by ridiculous cosmic horrors, alien hordes and extra galactic perils so vast they out number all life in the milky way.
In this version the sisters would sacrifice their humanity, becoming ultimately less than other people, for the great good of defending the human race.
They are facists and they do horrible things, but they are out there holding the line against the extinction of the entire species.
And some of their criticisms of the space marines are legitimate. Space Marines are scarey monsters and about half of them did turn against humanity and are engaged in a perpetual war to destroy it.
I think it strikes a good balanace. The sisters are frightening, but not just the baddies. They are harsh because they live in a harsh , merciless universe. Perhaps the ultimate truth they have to hide from themselves is that the human race is already doomed, and they need to supress that reality in order to keep up the struggle.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 14, 2015 0:19:21 GMT
It is certainly hilariously better than the current canon.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 14, 2015 1:09:12 GMT
I think whats important is the focus is on making them seem bad ass and focusing on what makes them special (IE their insaen religous devotion to their crazy war cult.) I don't want to focus on their gender because while that gives them a unique look, it shouldn't be what they are all about.
Space Marines don't constantly bang on about how much they have to shave their faces and watch sports, after all!
A bad example of this was in Necromunda, where their were 6 houses your could choose to have your gang come from. Their were the technological Van Saar, the sneaky Delaque, the thugish Goliath etc. One of the houses was called house Escher and their thing was that theyt had some genetic thing where their men were all pretty puny so the women had to do the ass kicking. Now this raised a couple of problems- 1- Why dont' we see warrior women from the other houses? 2- Why is this literally the only thing about House Escher?
You ended up with a situation where if some mad scientist had fixed their genetic problem tommorrow, there would literally not be one single interesting thing about their entire house!
What is this smurfette, male as the norm bullshit?
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 14, 2015 1:16:00 GMT
Well, it works. At least the sisters don't turn out to be some kind of male fantasy (even if there is a hint of the hysteria stereotype).
But yeah, overall, a huge improvement. Also a bit of an excuse for the arrogance and tactical inflexibility of the Sisters, rather than just suggesting they are dumb and pushovers because they're women (which is basically the current situation).
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 14, 2015 1:24:38 GMT
I like to think of them as coldly uncaring rather than hysterical. They can't feel empathy as much as normal people, and replace it with unthinking obedience. Their irrationality doesn't come from any kind of "being too emotional", but from having some of their emotions and thoughts walled off or removed.
I was thinking there could be ones that are considered too aborrent and so they give them the full deep brain clean, turning into little more than servitors, with shaved heads covered in scars that are used as suicide assault troops (since killing is basically all these unthinking warriors can do anymore.) What might be amusing would be if they had to check that candidates for this extreme process carefully, as functional sisters would sometimes volunteer. They might have become convinced they had mental flaws that didnt' exist or just viewed the total unthinking full brain replacement as the ultimate expression of faith and signed themselves up in the hope that some fault would be found to get more of their brains removed. Freedom is frightening and dangerous to the Sisters. Only the servitude of unyielding obedience can bring salvation. To be free of that terrible burden of thinking your own thoughts would be the ultimate purification of the soul!
After all, as the famous 40K quote goes, bless the mind too small for doubt.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 14, 2015 1:31:36 GMT
That is a distinction that saves it.
Pitch this to GW.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 14, 2015 1:36:30 GMT
Pffft games workshop don't want original ideas. They are as regressive and creatively bankrupt as the Imperium in their games. Also fans would hate it because it makes a big change to canon. Fandumb always hate that, even when the change is patently better.
And you'd get a load of gamergater types saying how its an evil feminist to have the sisters of battle be anything other than galactic sacrificial victims.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 14, 2015 1:39:39 GMT
Oh yeah, they'd never take it seriously. But it would be funny.
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Post by StyxD on Jun 14, 2015 17:24:05 GMT
I disagree. At first I assumed that Imperium is your run of the mill patriarchal fascism, so scarcity of women on battlefields was self-explanatory. But it's not the case apparently.
That being said, being a female monastic order that rose to power at the right time is a good enough reason.
To be honest, that's one rational belief the Marines hold. They can get pretty batshit too, to say nothing of the Chaos ones.
So the dynamic between rigid, but stable Sisters, and hugely varied Marine chapters (some may be more easygoing and rational, some may be like that little cute cannibal cult) would play off really well, I think.
I really like what you did, Hark. It takes the narrow-mindedness sadly implicit in religion and takes it to a dystopian extreme.
And the best thing is, with Marines defecting to Chaos, regular guardsmen to Tau, and Mechanicus potentially-maybe actually worshipping a C'Tan (although I don't know if this holds in the new-and-worse Necron canon), the Sisters may be right.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 14, 2015 18:43:30 GMT
The sisters will stay true to the cause. The cause may be insane, it may be horrific and it may be futile, but at least they will see it through to end.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 22, 2015 13:03:58 GMT
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