The Game, Of Course.

Ironic that this would please the Emperor more than worshiping him would.

My character, Sister Catherine, of the order of the Valorous Heart. Or simply Cate to those who know her.

She needs an origin story.

A crisis of faith. She prays for guidance to Him on Earth. Surely he would not abandon one of His faithful in their hour of need?

She knelt in the chapel of the blessed Emperor. It was a place of calm and contemplation. Sisters came here to pray. But she was here now out of desperation. She needed Him to answer her, now more than at any time in her life.

"Holy Emperor, hear my prayer. I need your guidance. I have doubt. This has plagued me for months, years even. Please, help me. Guide me. Show me the path forward."

Her head was bowed, her hands clasped tightly together, praying, and hoping for a miracle. Something to relieve her of the doubt and the anguish she felt because of it. But she was only met with the silence of the empty chapel.

"You're not going to answer me, are you?" She said out loud.

She opened her tear stained eyes and looked up at the altar.

"You're not here, are you? You're on Terra, sitting on your golden throne."

She stared at the stained glass depiction of the Emperor. Magnificent in his golden armour, surrounded by the faithful, a halo of light above his head.

"You are not a god."

She half expected to be struck down there and then. Some bolt of unimaginable power incinerating her on the spot.

"The books my family died for, they were right. You are not a god. Written in your own hand, that is what my grandmother said. The inquisition killed them, burnt at the stake as heretics.."

She was only a child, but she remembered the fires. Her mother and grandmother were consumed by the flames. The inquisitor forced her to watch. A lesson, he had said.

"It is a lie. I have lived this lie my whole life. In the schola progenium, in my order. I have prayed to you, sang praises in your name. And I have killed, all in your name. How much blood must stain my hands because of you."

She cleansed her hands each day as instructed by scripture. Clean, pristine even. If she could see the blood, she imagined it would be of the deepest, darkest, red.

"And I am damned. For what can I do? If I confess my lack of faith, they will force me to be repentia, beating myself bloody until I see the light once again. Or worse. Locked in a machine and driven insane."

She had seen the penitent engines in battle. Wild, savage things. Their pilots lost to madness.

"If I run, the inquisition will hunt me. They will likely send my own sisters after me. There is no mercy for the heretic. Isn't that what you teach?"

She knew the tortures an inquisitor could inflict first hand. Both physical and mental. She would not let that be her fate.

"Must I die for you then? Is that my only choice? Or turn to the foulness of the warp. Must that be my salvation? What vile corruption would I have to endure."

She thought about the chaos tainted cultists she had fought in the past. Barely recognisable as even human anymore. Chanting dirges to their dark gods.

"No. I would rather turn my bolt gun on myself. If you are not a god, then neither are they. The creatures of the warp will not have me. I deny them. As I deny you."

The blasphemy she spoke. She would have killed someone outright if they had spoken like this to her. Now she speaks it herself. In his own chapel, no less.

"We go to war soon. Another crusade in your name. Do you know why? Do you even care?"

In the battles ahead, how many were going to die? How many deaths would she be responsible for? All for a lie. Maybe being condemned to a penitent engine would be a blessing. They at least did not struggle with faith.

"I still have my sisters. I depend on them, as they depend on me. They will be my faith from now on, my shield. I will fight for them."

She stood. She would have to lie to her sisters and convince them her faith is strong and beyond question. What choice did she have?

The Emperor is not a god.

A simple statement, yet so powerful it could condemn an entire world. What could it do to one sister of battle?

The cat: I identify as a menace, my pronouns are stop/that

Gender Reveal!

People keep fighting in the comments, so I thought I should make this clear.

Next question

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more the Templin Institute's female Space Marines video feels like something an anti-woke grifter would make. For the dark gods' and the Emperor's sake, it's titled "Female Space Marines and the Death of Canon". If someone told me to watch a video with that title, I'd expect it to be someone bitching about "how dare women exist in my totally exclusively male hobby" and how "the woke mob is trying to destroy warhammer", and not the exact opposite. The only part of the video that lines up with what I'd expect from the title is how poorly-constructed the arguments are.

I'll probably write up a proper response to the video next week when I'm on spring break, it's been weighing on me far more than it should.

Do I draw battleship Bismarck as a hot anime girl because Germans traditionally use feminine pronouns for their ships and I don't care what Nazis say?

Or do I draw Bismarck as a hot anime boy so I can draw toxic yaoi between him and French battleship Richelieu?

I made a sticker

I use them all the time, though.

"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

By the blood of Sanguinius.

As much as I do go on about how the Emperor's Children are a bunch of femboys, there is far more to them than that.

People tend to forget (in part due to how Slaanesh has been reduced to a sex addict) that the reason they fell in the first place was their obsession with being the best of the best. All the illicit experimentation began with that goal in mind.

They (and Fulgrim) wanted to be the best, and that blinded them to how good they actually were.

I swear, if I hear *one more person* simplify fulgrim to just "yassss queen slay" I am going to break something. He's such an interesting, tragic and relatable character and I wish people didn't simplify him to "haha pretty boy".

That third one is just a lore-accurate depiction of a knight world.

I've just discovered there's a reddit user that's editing warhammer into historical art peices and photos that Tumblr deserves to see

Credit to u/TheTwist, please check out all their edits, and if you have a reddit account, tell them what you think of their work.

and my personal favourite

they also have a series on warhammer characters in dresses titled "the prittiest X"

"It came to me in a dream" is more compelling credentials for a source than having asked ChatGPT.