SISTERS OF SILENCE
"We are mute but not without power, we are silent but not without resolve, we are untouchable but not without courage, we are sisters and have but one father. We are seekers and we shall find our prey, we are warriors and woe to those we oppose, the Emperor's mark is on our brow, all who deal with the Warp must beware, His Judgement and vengeance is ours to deliver!"
— Motto of the Sisters of Silence
The Sisters of Silence are an all-female order of Imperial Witch Hunters tasked with hunting down rogue psykers and other psychic threats across the galaxy. They also help to enforce the Imperium's rigid laws on the use of psychic powers. The Silent Sisterhood was most active during the time of the Great Crusade in the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. In the wake of the Horus Heresy they became far less active in Imperial affairs to such a degree that for most of the last 10,000 Terran years the order was wrongfully believed to have been disbanded. Yet the Sisters of Silence have recently returned to prominence in the Imperium of Man following the birth of the Great Rift and the start of the Era Indomitus.
The Sisters of Silence's original purpose was to hunt and kill rogue human psykers whose activities presented a terrible danger to the people of the newborn Imperium of Man and to oversee the tithe of psykers from every Imperial world to Terra. Also known as the "Silent Sisterhood," the "Witch-Seekers," the "Pale Scourge," the "Soulless Ones," the "Null Maidens," the "Eyrine" and the " Daughters of the Abyss," they were once the militant arm of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and were referred to internally within the records of the Adeptus Terra as the Departmento Investigates.
Riding the dark void between the stars upon the dreaded Black Ships during the Great Crusade, the Silent Sisterhood was the enforcers of the Great Tithe, known by some as the "Psyker Cull" and the "Hunt That Never Ends." Each one of the warriors of this order are psychic Nulls, a soulless being who inspires dread wherever they walk. The Sisters of Silence's primary base of operations was the Somnus Citadel on Luna, the moon of Terra, which was maintained by the ancient Selenite Cults of gene-engineers who had long governed that world.
Along with the Legio Custodes, the Sisters of Silence had the right and duty to walk freely within the inner sanctum of the Imperial Vaults deep beneath the Imperial Palace, the sovereign and sole domain of the Emperor and His household at the behest and license of the Master of Mankind. Following the end of the Horus Heresy, Mankind became superstitious and fearful of the unknown, and the Silent Sisterhood was cast out by a distrustful Imperium. They disappeared from Imperial history for nearly 1,500 standard years, until the Imperium faced annihilation at the hands of the massive Ork WAAAGH! led by the Warlord known only as The Beast in the 32nd Millennium. The last vestiges of the Silent Sisterhood would play a key role in defeating this Ork WAAAGH! and diverting disaster.
