Atheosis said:

Good point. On the topic at hand, when DW drops i hope someone comes up with house rules for the sisters of silence. I think they will be a fun addition.

MILLANDSON said:

Excuse my military background; but, show me the publication.  I personally (as a GM) prefer sexes to stay the same (pc=player, males def can't play females).  I know ffg will incorperate a way to get a sister of battle into a killteam, but I'm just saying there is nothing saying it CAN'T be done, as previously stated "out of a 1,000 chapters." And it's just fun, aka: samus, HALO , all those "surprise" females.

Mantis Sine said:

You actually preclude your players from playing opposite sex characters?  I don't know if you play D&D or the like, but do you also only allow them to play human?  They're called ROLEPLAYING games for a reason.

Mantis Sine said:

No offence intended, but the lack of ability for your players to play opposite sexes to their biological sex does not automatically extend to every other RPG player. I have in fact been told I can play female characters exceptionally well, and most of my players have played opposite sexes without any problem.

So please don't use such sweeping statements as "males def can't play females", as that can be proven to be incorrect. Frankly, being restrained to only play a male character by dint of my RL gender would be incredibly dull for me, and would result in me quickly finding another GM who was more open to variety.

Logan Ambrose said:

Someone already made a Sisters of Silence career for DH ages ago :) Dunno if it's still floating about but it was done on Dark Reign by a guy called the Patriot. Was pretty good but is a bit out of date now as it had an Untouchable ranking sytem like buying new psy ratings, and of course there has since been an actual Untouchable starting package made by FFG.

It's one of the few bits of work that the Patriot didn't use copyrighted images and writing in (he extensively copy/pasted GW owned articles into other pieces of his work) so it wasn't removed in the purge of his work when GW served Dark Reign with a C&D order which covered a lot of Patriot's other work. However, as stated, because of the rules released by FFG about Untouchables, etc, they will probably need further work on the part of the GM to use them in a way compatible with the current rules.

I found the Sisters of Silence document on the Dark Reign website, and I think its a great piece of work. The individual GM must of course make a decision on what rules of untouchables to use.

I guess that getting rules for Sisters of Silence is not very likely in a rule book on Space Marines, but one could always hope that someone will make an "Ascension" extension of the Sisters of Silence document so you could have a Sister working alongside Space Marines when needed. After all, it seems to be the case that the Astartes works together with Sisters of Silence every now and then. Personally I like the concept of the sisters and would love to see good ideas on how to "Ascend" a sister of silence to the level of play required to play along side a Space Marine. :)

One poster above said that the organization was destroyed in the Horus Heresy, is that true?

Well, if you like the concept of the Sisters of Silence this is an important bit right here:

They no longer really exist. They're seemingly a branch of the Sisters of Battle and not really mentioned now.

For a bit more information on The Sisters of Silence, try Lexicanum: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Sisters_of_silence

From the information contained in this entry, it is unclear if the Sisters still exist in the 41st millennium.  I think it would be reasonable to assume that at the very least they may still operate in the Black Ships. 

If this is the case, the Sisters may form a (very) small part of the crusade in the Jericho Reach - I can see the crusade incorporating some form of psyker containment or Black Fleet capacity. 

From this assumption, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a scenario that brings the Deathwatch into contact with the Sisters.

Looking at it not as a female character, but more as a novelty character, we are after all dealing with a person who communicates only in a secret sign language only known to her peers, when ever she interact with non sisters she uses a novice that still has not taken the vow , but has learned the code. While it might be fun or a session or two they would make very bad long term characters with little or no interaction with npcs or the other players beyond talking in "boltgun" capitals and then standing around looking brooding.

There's absolutely no evidence of the Sisters of Silence existing at any other time period than the Heresy.  At a guess they took massive casualties and were effectively disbanded during the later parts of the Heresy and the survivors were absorbed into the Officio Assassinorum and what would become the Inquisition. 

What isn't speculation in my part is that they are no match for Space Marines.  A bunch of them are assigned to assist Russ in bringing down Magnus in Thousand Sons and they are quickly and easily killed by Thousand Sons marines when they realize that the Sisters are the ones screwing up their sorcery. 

UncleArkie said:

I agree that it does not look like these Sisters are around much lately, so I guess I need to be a little creative if I insist on having them around in my campaign. :)

On another note, the silence issue is not really a problem, since Sisters of Silence are known to understand Astartes battle signs, and if the SM players learn the Sisters sign language, you can just assume that they understand each other without too much effort, i.e. they can talk freely without having to role play it. NPC interaction could be a challenge now and then, but I kinda see it as a strength that can be roleplayed on. :)

 Sure its a roleplaying opportunity to play on once in a while, but its not too much fun in the long run. As for the sisters themselves they are still around as far as I can see, responsible for the black ships, now the only example I can come up with right off my toes is that one of the side effects of being sanctionite in the DH book is being afraid of bald women.

UncleArkie said:

That's a funny jab at Dune, just to point out, because all Bene Gesserits (women with various "psychic" powers) in that setting are bald women, and use techniques such as nerve induction (they use it in the Dune movie on Paul Atrades) in their training of those with potential powers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit

So sorry, but that bit has nothing to do with the Sisters of Silence.

Atheosis said:

Just a small nit-pick here: according to the most recent DH books, it is the Adaptus Astratelepathica that are responsible for running the Black Ships, anticipating, and collecting the Psyker Tithe. The Inquisition isn't responsible for any part of the Imperium or how it is run. Ideally, the Imperium is supposed to run without the intervention of the Inquisition, but it is far from an ideal world. They are the trouble shooters and step in when things fail. Saddling them with one of the greatest responsibilities in the Imperium would tie them down and keep them from being the roving trouble-shooters they are supposed to be. So, the Adaptus Astratelepathica handles the gathering and sanctioning of psykers but Inquisitors do like to hitch rides on the Black Ships to monitor psyker populations, find anomalies in psyker tithes, hunt rogue psykers running from the ship when it arrives, conduct secret blasphemous experiments on the spykers taken aboard, etc, but they're not in charge of the show... though like anything, they could take over the show if they wanted to.

Of course, none of that has any bearing on whether the Sisters were absorbed into the fledgling Inquisition or not, which seems like a logical thing to have happened. So, sorry for being a touch off topic.