Let’s take a look at the Order of Our Martyred, and the only Sister of Battle to willingly fall to the taint of chaos, in this piece of Sisters of Battle Lore!
Via our good friends at Lexicanum
The Order is based in the Convent Sanctorum on Ophelia VII. The order was originally called the Order of the Fiery Heart and was founded by order of the Ecclesiarch Alexis XXII when the Convent Sanctorum was split. Their first leader and Patron Saint was Canoness Katherine, who led her order for many decades before being murdered by the Witch-cult of Mnestteus. So moved by her death were her Sisters that they changed the orders name to the Order of Our Martyred Lady in her honour.
The Order wore the black of mourning for their lost lady for many centuries afterward, a style consisting of black armor and black cloaks with red lining, with red used for weaponry and white used for unit insignia and piping around the cloaks. After the Order’s losses on Armageddon, the majority of the Preceptories changed the cloth color to all red, with the first line of the Fede Imperialis stitched between parallel lines of silver along the bottom edge to remind them of the martyring of their Sisters on Armageddon.
The Order has determination beyond even their fellow Sisters of the other orders, forever driven to avenge the death of Katherine and their Sisters who fall in battle. To their enemies, they are not known for mercy, but instead for thorough and utter destructiveness.
Though records are incomplete, it is believed that the Order of Our Martyred Lady was the force that invaded the Saint Garrat Scriptorum at the order of Inquisitor Tannenburg and brought hundreds of Adeptus Terra scribes to Nemesis Tessera excruciation chambers before razing the scriptorum with fire. Complaints lodged were quickly withdrawn when Tannenburg produced the scribes, dead, in specimen jars with their mutations laid bare and easily apparent.
The order operated a convent on Sanctuary, known as Sanctuary 101, which was destroyed by the Necrons in 897.M41, leaving no survivors. Canoness Sepherina visited the site in 909.M41 to reconsecrate the ground and construct a memorial to her Sisters in the form of a number of small statues of Saint Katherine, one for each sister, to watch over the site of their martyrdom. The bodies of the Sisters were collected by Inquisitor Hoth, and had not been returned to the Order by the time Sepherina made her visit. It is not known if their bodies were ever returned.
A mission of the Order was sent to Parnis to investigate a lost convent of sisters. Ephrael Stern, a Seraphim, was the only survivor of the expedition, and returned without explanation for what happened on Parnis, barely sane and suspected of Chaos taint. The sister later ended up missing after a second expedition to the world led by the Inquisitor Silas Hand again resulted in Ephrael as the only survivor. The Inquisition is torn between killing her or capturing her.
Miriael Sabathiel was a Sister Superior of the Order and is the only sister acknowledged to have willingly fallen to Chaos. A Canoness of the Order, Olga Karamanz, was murdered by Miriael when she tried to apprehend her, even as the Canoness proclaimed a desire to help Miriael.
