Editing Sisters of Silence (section)

==History==
[[image:Sisters of silence.jpeg|right|250px|thumb|The Sisters of Silence. NOT ELDAR! It's like reverse eldar, anti psykers that have the near same outfits...]]
Near the onset of the [[Great Crusade]], the Emperor formed them as a counter-measure against untrained psykers, whose numbers had increased at the start of the [[Age of Strife]]. To do this, the Emperor ensured that they were all [[Blank|pariah]]s, human beings with no presence in the [[Warp]]. As such, a psyker's abilities would have no effect on them, being cancelled out when they got close enough to the Sisters. In one of his stranger decisions, the Emperor explicitly had the Sisters take literal vows of silence upon becoming full Sisters. They could communicate via several sign languages (including [[Space Marines|Astartes]] battle-sign) but would not speak a word upon completion of their training. To ensure communication between other branches of the [[Imperium of Man]], Sisters-in-training would serve as communicators.

Given recent revelations about the nature of the Emperor, this [[skub|may or may not]] have been to stop them blabbing [[Neckbeard|what they saw]] under his glamours. It's revealed that what a Sister sees when she looks at a warp entity is not the same as what a regular being will see; Tannau Aleya describes [[Bloodthirster|Bloodthirsters]] for example as being big, disgusting, contemptible creatures but that's it. Rather than the spooky monsters the masses see, the description that the sister gives of daemons is one of revulsion, as if describing a cockroch, and is curiously similar to the descriptions made by [[Necrons]] in recent novels. Speaking of [[daemon]]s, recent fluff from the ''Horus Heresy''/''Siege Of Terra'' novels, as well as in the more current era ''Dark Imperium'' entries have really expanded on just how much the neverborn fear these ladies. Even the likes of Drach'nyen and [[Ku'Gath]] (among others), excessively powerful [[Greater Daemon|greater daemon]]s both, have outright stated that to be struck down by one of the Sisters will result not in merely getting banished back to the warp, but in a ''true death'', and for beings whose entire (for lack of a better term) identity and world view are built upon their own infinite existence, the notion of being snuffed out is exponentially more terrifying.

The Sisters of Silence are also consummate warriors. Actually, that's something of an understatement; don't make the mistake of assuming that they are comparable to the [[Sisters of Battle]], who for their part occupy a space somewhere between Guardsman and Astartes. They are not. It's not hyperbole to say that even the most elite of the Sisters of Battle are completely eclipsed by just an "average" Null Maiden. The Sisters of Silence operate alongside The Custodes, and what's more, are able to ''keep up with them'', which probably says more about their prowess than anything else could. The Silent Sisterhood are trained to at least the same levels as the old Space Marine Legions and are more than capable of taking down enemy Astartes on their own. Most likely, Astartes' blatantly physically impossible capabilities even without power armor comes from Warp shenanigans which would mean, given their own power armor and most likely extensive genetic modifications, the Sisters of Silence being able to match them would be reasonable. Recent fluff even depicted a SoS contingent engaging a larger contingent of goddamned [[Primaris Marine|Primaris]] [[Minotaurs]] and '''[[Awesome|WINNING]]'''; though to be fair, in all honesty, the Sisters would likely have suffered severe casualties had the Custodes not then intervened on their side, bringing the engagement to an immediate and definitive conclusion.

Using similar wargear to the Space Marines, such as [[bolter]]s and [[power weapon]]s, they are typically clad in SoB-like power armour, but made of golden Auramite (basically the 40k equivalent of Beskar) called [[Vratine Armour]], a distinction which they share with only The Custodes; theirs typically lacks an armored helmet or other head protection aside from the bevor that hides their mouths, which leads to a lot of deaths from headshots during the burning of [[Prospero]]. As a military force, they are formidable; during the Burning of Prospero, they were deployed to augment the [[Space Wolves]] and the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. While this was more because the pariah gene would neutralize the [[Thousand Sons]]' psyker abilities, they were more than capable of fighting against the Astartes. They would also in turn augment the Custodes, the [[Imperial Fists]], the [[Blood Angels]], and the [[White Scars]] during the [[Siege of Terra]], where the pariah gene became a boon fighting the [[Daemon]]s unleashed by the traitors.

===After the Horus Heresy===
For the longest time, the fate of the Sisters of Silence following the [[Horus Heresy]] had been an object of much speculation in the fandom. It is only recently that what they've been doing has been brought to light, and while some of the theories have been surprisingly spot-on (namely, that many Sisters were absorbed into the Inquisition to man the Black Ships), others... didn't quite hit the mark. Thanks to their own mini-codex, as well as the [[War of the Beast]] series, ''Watchers of the Throne'', and most recently the ''Dark Imperium'' series, a somewhat clearer picture of ''what'' happened to the Sisters can be reconstructed.

It turns out that the Sisters were never "officially" disbanded by the [[Administratum]]. However, in the wake of the Emperor's interment within the Golden Throne, the surviving Sisters suddenly found themselves without direct support from the Imperial Bureaucracy. This made a lot of the surviving Sisters bitter obviously, but a number of others just shrugged, and decided to continue with their Emperor-given mandate anyway... just with less resources than they're used to.

As previously mentioned, some Sisters were absorbed into the [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] to crew its [[Black Ships]], or served as retinues to important [[Inquisitor]] Lords. Many others, however dispersed, back into the general populace, settling down to have normal lives, and in doing so passed down the Pariah gene down to their descendants. Lastly, some quietly found secret Convents in out-of-way worlds, far from view of the average Imperial citizen. It is one of these Convents that [[Slaughter Koorland]] approached and convinced to aid the Imperium in the [[War of the Beast]].

By M32, the Sisters of Silence refused to recognize the Imperium in its political form, seeing it as a corrupted simulacrum of what the Emperor actually intended, but they still acknowledge the Emperor as the focus of their loyalty. Thus, when their services are required again, they accept the calling and return to Terra, where they are granted an audience with the Emperor in his sanctum, a privilege that not even the High Lords are afforded. [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Just how exactly that would've worked is a mystery, given how the Emperor can presumably only communicate psychically at this point, which probably wouldn't work at all on a group of nulls.]] Of course, blanks/nulls/whatever have been overpowered by strong psykers before, so it wouldn’t take the Emperor any real effort. Or he sent Astropaths to deliver messages via secretaries or something.

Although that particular Convent was wiped out slaying the Beast, many more survived through the millennia, and by the end of the 41st Millennium, the number of Sisters had swelled into the tens of thousands. And it was just as well too, as the Imperium would need their aid really REALLY soon.

===Returning to the Fray: The Rise of the Primarch===
[[image:Sister-of-silence.jpg|right|250px|thumb|You, Psyker. Yeah You. Fuck You.]]

Shortly after the reappearance of [[Magnus the Red]] during the [[Fenris]] campaign, the High Lords of Terra issued a writ that would summon the Sisterhood back to Terra, where they would be used once again. It transpired that [[Trajann Valoris]], Captain-General of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] had pre-empted this decree and had quietly been collecting disparate Sisters to Terra in advance, knowing that the time may come when they were needed again; the knee-jerk response of the High Lords of Terra simply rendered it legal.

Some of the exiled Sisters resented this greatly, having been ignored for millennia. In the novel ''Watchers of the Throne'', one particular sister, the previously mentioned Tannau Aleya, spends most of the book (quietly) raging about how her convent was left without support for so long, especially how the Custodes seemed to be "pampered" by comparison, despite being stuck on Terra for nearly ten millennia. Aleya also "talks" a fair bit about the mentality of the Silent Sisters, stating that the Sisters ironically crave human fellowship, as it temporarily fills the void they feel inside due to their nature as blanks. This also leads to extremely <strike>Lesbian</strike> close bonds between the Sisters described as a fierce almost desperate love, due to sharing such a unique bond and having been reviled and hated by most of the people they'd ever come across.

The sisters also seem to grow close to the Custodes they fought with during the Great Crusade, to the extent Custodes could tell what a sister was trying to convey without her even having to sign it to him, something that later made one sister immediately realize Drach'nyen was impersonating a Custodes. If Valerian and Aleya are any indication this bond between Custodes and Sisters is likely to reemerge in the 41st millennium. They also never entirely get used to the reaction they cause in others, with every twitch and every appalled expression twisting the knife every time they see that reaction.

Overall they come across as rather tragic, as they spend their lives protecting a species that can't even stand to be in the same room as them, and hates them without even being able to articulate why.

The Sisters' first "official" action was to deploy with the Custodes on Luna to save a recently resurrected Lord Guilliman from being used by Magnus to mop the floor, and they later helped fight back against a [[Khorne]] daemon invasion of Terra directly. When Guilliman returned from his audience with the Emperor, he dissolved the standing order that restricted the Custodians to Terra, and he ordered the Sisterhood to coordinate with them and join the front lines.

Still, no matter how hurt or angry they are, they still answered the call to defend humanity from Chaos again.