Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Celeste (section)

===The Order of the Sanguine Soul===

The Order of the Sanguine Soul is the only Order of the Sororitas to have a significant presence in the Cloudburst Sector, headquartered in a colossal and partially-subterranean fortress on the pristine beaches of Celeste.  The Order consists of a few tens of thousands of Sisters scattered over the sector and a few hundred more in the Circuit.  Though their greatest number consists of the Famulous Sisters, there are several Battle and Hospitaller forces throughout the sector as well.  They are well integrated into the local Ecclesiarchal hierarchy, with Canoness Minoris Gloria Anokane presiding over the large congregations of Celeste.

The Sisters here, having only a few thousand Battle Sisters total, depend on large Frateris Militia when prosecuting their wars of faith.  Their means of transport are limited, with only a small fleet of reconditioned Navy transports, stripped of their armaments in adherence to the Decree Passive.   The Ecclesiarchy maintains a single large ship for their own use in the collection of new Sisters from the Schola Progenum, and a few smaller troopships for the Sisters to be carried where they are needed.

The forces of the Ecclesiarchy in Cloudburst centralize their combat training, with the equipment they need supplied by the Mechanicus outfitters stationed in the asteroid belt of the Cloudburst system.  The outfitters don't make any of the Refractor and Displacer fields of the Ecclesiarchy, however, with those instead being manufactured on Cognomen.

The Sanguine Sisterhood, however, are vicious and utterly fearless combatants, each more than capable of flensing a heretic or burning a rebel in the Emperor’s name.  Though perhaps somewhat undersupplied compared to Ophelian or Terran Battle Sisters – the lack of Inferno Pistols for their Senior Seraphim is especially annoying – they make do with unbreakable faith, a wise and generous demeanor, and an unmatched victory record in infantry combat.  Even the Daggers have known defeat in past engagements; the Sanguine Soul remains unbeaten.  Of course, they also field at a strength of five battalions, which even the Black Templars can’t.

Daily life in the convent is one of reflection, but unlike those of most Orders of the Sisterhood, Sororitas of the Sanguine Soul are encouraged by the Ecclesiarchy to serve in the local chapels and cathedrals of the Emperor as direct clergy.  It is common for places of worship in the Celeste system to have a Sister or two serving within.  The Sanguine Soul Sisters have distinctive uniforms they wear on duty in this role.  Clad in armless cloaks with an angular front flap, a matte black dress beret with the classic fleur-de-leis in embroidered silver, muted blue and grey service robes and tabards, and pleated black dresses or trousers at their choice, they stand out against the bright gold robes and capes of local Ecclesiarchs.  In cold weather, they add a layer of leather or synth-wool under the robe.  The Sisters serve as genetic counselors for new nobility in the expanding Sector, and since many nobles in the Circuit and Sector’s new worlds are former military, they also perform screenings and confessorships for these veterans.

Sisters of the Order also serve other secular roles in Celeste and Cloudburst governing, such as administrating the larger Schola Progenum and training the Frateris Militia that sometimes accompanies Missionaries into the Circuit.  Primarily, of course, their role is a spiritual and martial one, and hundreds of Sisters have served alongside the Ordo Hereticus as their Chamber Militant.  The Sanguine Soul has somewhat better relations with the Astartes than most Orders, but this does not make them friendly.  The present view in the Order is that the Astartes are as much a part of the Emperor’s plan as they are, despite their genetic deviancy.

Rarely, the Sororitas will send out a force to do battle with the heretics of the Sector.  It has few, because of very careful colonist selection by Naxos and the heavy military presence in the Sector, but its history isn’t spotless.  Whole cities have burned because the Ordo Hereticus has ordered it, and the Sisters have lit the fires.  By far the most violent single incident in the Sisters’ history is the purging of Brotherhood, which involved the mobilization of every Battle Sister in the Sector.  Drawing on all the sisters of Celeste, Maskos, and Nauphry, the combined forces of seven Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors, their retinues and Throne Agents, and two Imperial Guard regiments, the conflict raged for only two weeks, but Brotherhood was left uninhabitable after it all.

The Sanguine Convent is the Abbey from which the Sanguine Soul sisters set forth.  The building is a magnificent beachfront palace of the Ecclesiarchy.  The structure itself towers over the shores and rocky cliffs of the area.  The beach on which the Convent is built is the terminus of a mountain chain that stretches from deep within the continent to the edge of the water, and the Palace emerges from its end hills like a beacon.  Stained glass windows, soaring towers, and snapping banners throw bright colors on the rooftops of the building.  The air rings with the sound of crashing waves, singing choirs, and screaming Sarissae cutting through target dummies.  The enormous Convent is actually far larger than the current Order needs, but the Order is expanding at the insistence of the two Cardinals of the Sector.

The Order does not traditionally sustain a permanent Templar Militia.  The Sisterhood trains them as needed, instead.  Since they were established after the Reign of Blood, the Sisters here have no history of using Frateris Templar, either.  As such, the extent of permanent Templar forces in the system is a platoon of ceremonial guards, who oversee the personal quarters and starship of Cardinal Drake.  The Templars train with the Sisters to familiarize themselves with the battle callsigns and drills of the Sororitas.

Among the warriors of the Adepta, there number just over five thousand combatants in Celeste, with another thousand in the Maskos system.  The Battle Sisters here are defenders of Schola Progenum throughout the Sector and even in the few outposts of the Circuit.  The Convent palace also trains some of the Drill Abbots of the Schola, and more than a fifth of the Planetary High Priests of the Sector have studied here under the Abbess.
The Convent is more than a training facility or chapel, however.  It is a garage, a prison, a laboratory, a school, and a retreat, too.  All these functions together may explain why it is so large, given the Sisterhood’s general disdain for the wealth-centric model of the Cloudburst Ecclesiarchy.
Within its Ceramite and steel reinforcement and outer stonework, the building is a home to thousands of teachers, scholars, gene-techs, and guards, all of them drawn from the tens of thousands of Sisters of the Sector.  The teachers and scholars are a mix of all the Orders of the Sisterhood, including the more obscure Dialogous.  Here, future members of the non-militant Orders train in their sacred duties, including translating odd dialects of Gothic, treating alien parasite infestations, interpreting the human genome, preventing forgery and counterfeiting, and even decommissioning heretic armaments.
Among the responsibilities of the Orders here are preserving the master templates of the genetic stock of the Subsector Overlord families, to ensure that the families that rule in the Emperor’s name are not inbred.  For this reason, water-tight and over-pressurized vaults sit below the ground level in the core of the huge Convent building.  The Order Famulous oversees the vaults, and trains the gene-techs who work here to predict strains of mutantcy.  The gene-techs have another role: predicting the rise of a Living Saint of the Emperor.  So far, the Sector has produced none.
The Hospitallers of the Sanguine Soul are known as being unambiguously the best field chirurgia in the Sector, eclipsing even the Astra Militarum Battle Surgeons and rivalling the Blue Dagger Apothecarion (who have understandably more specialized skills).  The Hospitallers of Celeste take just pride in this, and their skills in healing the wounded and curing the sick have even reached the Deathwatch, who have consulted with the Hospitallers of the Sanguine Soul when they have encountered odd alien diseases in the Circuit.  The Hospitallers enjoy a whole wing of the Convent to themselves, guarded around the clock by six Cryo-Shock Seraphim elites, wearing state of the art power armor with full environmental seals and liquid nitrogen sprayers.  The security measures ensure that no strange illnesses escape the wing, but also prevent any of the hundreds of daily visitors to the Convent from entering the Hospitaller quarter.
Among the non-militant orders, the Dialogous are the smallest in number, but the Ministorum regards them as no less holy or indispensable for it.  The Cloudburst Circuit still contains dozens of regressive human worlds, and many more that could be colonized; a Dialogous Sister is invaluable to a Missionary or Rogue Trader active in the region.  The Dialogous Sisters of Celeste are also responsible for copying certain texts from religious thinkers and Missionaries of Cloudburst’s past, like the great Missionary Maskos or the Arch-Deacons of Jodhclan.  The sisters then send copies of the texts along with ships that travel into the Exo-zone or the Circuit, to spread the word of Cloudburst’s finest to the heathens beyond.

Of course, when the average citizen thinks of Adepta Sororitas, he thinks of lethal warriors in power armor, burning heretics and hedge witches with holy flame and hate.  True enough, the Battle Sisters of the Convent are the most highly trained mortal soldiers in the Sector (with the possible exception of the Night Slaughter).  The Sisters would reject the word ‘soldier’ as a description, though.  Nobody could mistake them for unfit fighters, of course, but soldiers are professional military and nothing more, the Sisters here claim, while they have responsibilities most soldiers never will, and they also do not follow a traditional Astra Militarum hierarchy.  The Battle Order of the Sanguine Soul are ruthless, potent, and awe-inspiring warriors and paramilitary enforcers of the Ecclesiarchy’s will, and the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus Cloudburst.  On no fewer than fifteen occasions, the Ordo Hereticus has mobilized over one thousand Sisters from Celeste or Maskos to engage and destroy heretics and witches in the Sector, once destroying an entire planet in the process during the scouring of Brotherhood.<br>
An entire wing of the building holds the vast fleet of vehicles and spare power armor the Sisters here deploy.  The garage holds Immolators, Incarcerators, and Repressors, as well as the dedicated Rhino and Penitent Engine fleets of the Sisterhood.  Unfortunately, the Sisters do not have the means of making Exorcists, as Cognomen was not issued a copy of the STC.  However, the Sisters here do sometimes work alongside the Inquisition, which fields the comparable Whirlwind Artillery Tank.

The land outside the Convent is a training field for the Sisters.  Girls as young as twelve and women in their nineties after juvenat spar, shoot, and exercise, under the frosty eye of Celestian trainers and Retributor practice leaders.  The training ground is as much a punishment field as it is a practice one, however.  After daily drills have concluded, Sisters and Initiates who have failed in some duty are sent out into the field with magnetic combs, and tasked with picked up every shard of metal scrap and shell casing they can.  The next day, if the penance for their failures are deemed insufficient, the penitent Sisters must practice barefoot, so that if they missed a shard, they will be the first to know, a practice that visiting Celestial Guard drill instructors have noted is intimidatingly hardcore.

More experienced Sisters train on elevated platforms, reinforced with steel lattices.  The platforms hold grav-plates manufactured in nearby cities and operated by Mechanicus-blessed servitors, and simulate the differing gravities of alien planets.  On the platforms’ surfaces, target dummies and ambulatory sparring machines attempt to block Sister trainees from crossing pre-determined pathways to the other side, by either physically obstructing them or setting them on fire.  Other platforms have rope assault courses, environmental hazards like whirling blades and electric prongs, or hidden spring panels that can send inattentive Sisters flying back to the start of their courses.

Specialists practice in their own areas of the training fields.  Retributors use their heavy weapons in an area cordoned off from the rest of the fields, to prevent friendly fire.  Jump pack equipped Sisters train inside a hollow tower of the Convent itself, flying from spar to spar and girder to girder in a simulated construction area, firing their bolt, flame, and limited Inferno weapons in training mode at holographic targets.

Even the most relentless and faith-fueled warrior of the Emperor needs to rest their bodies after days of nonstop training.  Holo-field generators block nearby observation of the beaches of the Convent.  On the mile-wide stretch of sand, Sisters meditate on emblems of the Emperor and Terra that Initiates painstakingly sketch into the sand every sunrise.  With the tides from Cloudburst overhead, the emblems erode, in an object lesson about the impermanence of labor unless it is life-long.  At the edge of the water, Sisters practice swimming, for either training or recreation, one of the precious few forms permitted at the Convent.  Naturally, the presence of a mile-wide stretch of unobservable tropical beaches filled with thousands of athletic women has intrigued many a paparazzi or salubrious neighbor, who are invariably captured and given bone-chilling punishments for trying to peek on their spiritual betters.

Unlike certain other branches of the Ministorum, the Sanguine Soul Order members endure sets of prohibitions against conduct that the Convent Abbess deems inappropriate.  Some Orders are simply held to such a high standard (and drilled to such a high standard) that inappropriate conduct is unthinkable to them, but the Sanguine Soul Sisters have these strictures enforced, thanks to the past misconduct of a few who ruined things for all their successors.  The partaking of intoxicant chemicals besides alcohol and prescription medication is outright forbidden, as is gambling at a house-cut establishment, and private ownership of a vehicle.  The vehicle restriction stems from some highly embarrassing and public incidents of sector noble families from Thimble gifting their skycars to Sisters in thanks for resolving family disputes, and the untrained Sisters promptly crashing them.

Starting families is not forbidden to the Sisters, though of course few ever find the time.  The few Sisters who do usually raise their children within the Scholae Progenum of nearby Civitavecchia until the girls are old enough to train in the Convent and the boys are old enough to do something with their lives.  Notably, the present Canoness Superior, Monica Lanbrie, is a grandmother, which some of her critics use as a point against her spiritual purity, but most see as being a piece of trivia at best.  Lanbrie is no common Canoness, either, for she is by the direct order of Cardinal Drake the Canoness Extraordinary of the Celeste system, and even visiting Sisters from other Orders must answer to her while present in the Diocese Celeste.

The Convent has two other facilities that set it apart from a typical Ecclesiarchal facility.  The first is the prison.  Deep below the waves, under two hundred feet of sand and rock and another hundred twenty feet of salt water, the Sisters stand guard over dark secrets of Mankind.  In a field of humming capacitors and silent Multi-lasers and Multimeltas, fifty Celestians of the Order keep grim vigil over four hundred stasis, cryo, and immersion cells.  These cells host the worst heretics, recidivists, and Traitors in the Sector, captured by the Ordos Hereticus and Malleus and sent to the Convent for eventual interrogation.  Inquisitors sometimes arrive by stealth shuttle in the dead of night, having transferred to the fleet of matte-painted Aquila shuttles the Convent maintains in a space station in orbit if they didn’t bring their own.  The Inquisitors have delivered such prisoners as the Arch-Heretic Deacon Woldenbar, who led a million souls to damnation with the whispers of Chaos, the wicked Soul-Shrivener of Clegran, who found xenotech that let him part a body from its spirit, and even Renel Abbas, a former Thousand Sons Marine, captured alive on Oglith eight hundred years ago leading a cult of ritualists.  Other cells contain Chaos-tainted pirates the Navy captured leading Traitor raider fleets, Glasian officers captured alive during Migrations, and the one Primary of the Cult of Unbound Good ever taken sane.

The other unique facility is less grim, and unlike the prison, is common knowledge among the Sisters and Initiates.  Ironically, many also hold it in contempt; they see it as a sign of the Cloudburst Ecclesiarchy’s carnal corruption.  One wing of the ten-armed Convent fortress hosts a resort for the senior members of the Ministorum in the Sector and Circuit, who may come here free of charge to relax and meditate.  The wealth-obsessed Cloudburst Ministorum promptly turned the wing into a combination hotel and bar, to the displeasure of their subordinate Sororitas.  The suites in the wing are decorated to gaudy extremes, while the rectory kitchen more strongly resembles that of a Rogue Trader gourmand than a monastery.  While the Sisters were able to enforce successfully a prohibition on joygirls and joyboys in the building, some priests and Missionaries visiting the facility do insist on bringing rather larger and more youthful retinues than a meditative journey would strictly require.

The [[Inquisition]] is aware of this trend, and views it with equal disgust, but has yet to act.  The possibility of Slaaneshi corruption in the beating heart of the Ministorum’s military headquarters, however, is not one they are willing to discount.  The Ministorum is unaware of how close to ordering a purge of the resort some Inquisitors have come, or how eagerly the Sisters would follow such an order.