Why would they need to kill SoB for sanctified blood? They already have aegis suit armour.

Apparently it does not provide 100% protection.

Actually, I'd assume nothing does, because 100% protection sounds as realistic as 100% bug-free software.

It's all just about stacking bonuses. Sometimes, standard Astartes dedication and hypno-conditioning is all that's required. Then there are times where only their protective runes shield the Grey Knights from psychic assault (by whatever effect). And on some occasions, further ritualistic protection - perhaps using blood of the innocent as paraphernalia - is required. And perhaps part of what gives the Grey Knights their edge in fighting the daemonic is that they are among the very few Imperials who know about that.

Alternatively, you could assume that Aegis armour technically really does provide total immunity (if you really want such a thing to exist in your interpretation of the setting), but the GKs still want to make sure because it's a silly risk to take, yet they can never be sure because they are not omniscient.

On a sidenote, wouldn't it be real grimdark if both the runes as well as the blood sacrifice are only placebos? As in: they only work because the GKs believe they work, meaning technically they'd have the mental willpower to resist this corruption all along, but they require an artificial focus to attain the necessary conviction. After all, daemonic corruption works via the Warp, and the Warp can be resisted by mental fortitude.

Coincidentally, this would further cement how exactly the Sisters managed to resist the tain - by turning to faith and belief in divine protection as their own focus. Under this theory/interpretation, stuff like protective wards and blood sacrifice is but a self-fulfilling prophecy, or an alternate approach to the same state of mind.

My theory is the blood works because of Khorne going: "well done, shining knights and protectors of mankind, Bwahhahahaha! Yes fools! keep the blood flowing and I shall keep you safe from the cowardly arts of witchcraft!"

Somehow thats even worse than innocents being slain for a placebo...

It's all just about stacking bonuses.

Okay let's see how we can add even more protection: (I guarantee some players would do that in the RPG if given the chance)

Terminator armor+ aegis suit+ purity seals+ protective runes+ SoB blood+ Life suport casket containing the severed head of Black Templar SM (because they have bonuses to their "deny the witch" roll) + holy relics + necron tech that messes with the warp (what? we fight chaos, its okay to use xenos tech!)

Now me, I'd just get a Jokaero to make a man-portable Geller field generator.

Wait what? Did GK killed SoB for innocent blood? WTF? Is it another of matt ward stupid ideas?

Wait what? Did GK killed SoB for innocent blood? WTF? Is it another of matt ward stupid ideas?

Yes, along with the ubersue-ness of kaldor draigo, and those "legion of damned "knockoff spectral grey knights!

matt ranks somewhere between george lucas and michael bay when it comes to ruining my favorite franchises.

I just remembered this line from 1d4chan

"And for his next magical trick, Matt is going to make your favorite fluff disappear."

Life suport casket containing the severed head of Black Templar SM (because they have bonuses to their "deny the witch" roll)

I was about to mention that this would only work if the Black Templar was alive, but ... You mean a living head? lol, that idea is so crazy, some Inquisitor might actually try it!

Still, I would expect it to be a question of "state of mind", and that being put in a Futurama-style head jar might interfere with a Black Templar's ability to focus their faith.

Wait what? Did GK killed SoB for innocent blood? WTF? Is it another of matt ward stupid ideas?

They needed it for a ritual to shield themselves against daemonic corruption.

A lot of people seem to think this is crazy. Yet even though I think Matt Ward is ... prone to writing OTT, I think this is actually a nice idea in that it ties into and demonstrates both the Grey Knights' and the Sisters' primary army themes: purity for the Sororitas, and "do what it takes" for the GKs.

Imperium = Grimdark. Obviously how one perceives these things will depend a lot on how they interpret the armies, and I assume a lot of players may have allowed themselves to be "misled" by the Grey Knights' heroic moniker and shiny armour, forgetting that they are dealing with brainwashed Inquisitorial elite shock troops that frequently kill their allies just to preserve some secret.

Their behaviour so heavily contradicting the visual impression of virtuous knights in shining silver armour is what I'd actually consider a feature of the setting. It's the same with the Sisters' appearance - angelic, beautiful, pious ... until they whip out the flamethrowers and start torching villages. This is 40k to me, ladies and gentlemen. Horror and viciousness are not always so easily recognisable by having the appearance of some fiendishly clawed slavering monster from outer space.

And they still wonder why people would rather take their chances with chaos instead of bunch of brainwashed hypocrites

As much as i like grimdark i still think that lots of things are stupid and if imperium would work that way they would crumble long ago. I realize that back then GW didn't care about logical explanation since they were just selling cool miniatures but now when we have rpg, video games and other stuff related to 40k i really want that this universe be sensible.

Yup living head.

They needed it for a ritual to shield themselves against daemonic corruption.

Imperium = Grimdark. Obviously how one perceives these things will depend a lot on how they interpret the armies, and I assume a lot of players may have allowed themselves to be "misled" by the Grey Knights' heroic moniker and shiny armour, forgetting that they are dealing with brainwashed Inquisitorial elite shock troops that frequently kill their allies just to preserve some secret.

I dunno...Ibelieve that if you kill innocents to ward of daemonic corruption, you are already (moraly) corrupt.

Also those were adepta sororitas: a proper fighting force in its own right. Couldn't the GK just wipe out on orphanage to get innocent blood? Now it's all a big waste of warrior nuns packing flame throwers!

That's not grimdark it's grimstupid!

And what happened to that whole "My faith is my shield, my contempt is my armor, the emperor's got my back, ooohrah!" stuff? Cowardly GKs...

As much as i like grimdark i still think that lots of things are stupid and if imperium would work that way they would crumble long ago. I realize that back then GW didn't care about logical explanation since they were just selling cool miniatures but now when we have rpg, video games and other stuff related to 40k i really want that this universe be sensible.

Wouldn't it be un -logical if the Grey Knights refused to ward themselves this way out of moral concerns, and then fall to Chaos corruption instead of accomplishing their mission?

Just because it's Vulcan logic ("the needs of the many") instead of losing the war because you do not wish to fight fire with fire doesn't mean it's not sensible. In a way, you could compare it to the US nuking Japan to end the war. To some, it's an atrocity, to others this action actually saved more lives than it cost. It all depends on whether you are analysing a situation based on cold, hard numbers and logical math, or blend out logic and judge an action based entirely on emotion / moral stance.

Couldn't the GK just wipe out on orphanage to get innocent blood?

From how I understand the source, any orphanages on that planet had long been destroyed as the Bloodtide swept over the planet. The Sisters were the only uncorrupted human beings left on the planet, still making a stand - much to the surprise of the Grey Knights who approached them.

Otherwise that may have indeed be an option, if the sacrifices were young (innocent) enough.

And what happened to that whole "My faith is my shield, my contempt is my armor, the emperor's got my back, ooohrah!" stuff? Cowardly GKs...

GK's aren't as faithful as Sisters, else they could do Acts of Faith as well.

(come to think of it, I don't think they are even religious at all, and instead follow the usual Astartes perspective of "he was a great man but no god")

The Sororitas being the purest warriors of the Imperium has forever been a part of their theme, just like Space Marines are the most powerful ones. What the GKs did here was simply making use of the former perk in an attempt to combine these strengths to have a chance against the enemy.

Know what the delightful irony of that situation is if we take the content in Blood of Martyrs as canon?

The Grey Knights could have just asked the Sororitas to bless their armour to repel the touch of Daemons, instead of killing them to achieve the result in a more inefficient manner.

Nah, they would've already spent all their Fate.

But if we were to take the RPG as canon, the Grey Knights wouldn't have required that anyways, as FFG Marines don't really care about CP.

I did specify Blood of Martyrs only! lol.

But it's true, in Daemonhunter they do not gain corruption. Ever. Which strikes me as a little off. Resistant to it, maybe. Idk.

Well in the Fluff, ignoring the incident itself, Grey Knight are demonstrably less vulnerable to warp/chaos corruption than the Sororitas are.

It used to be there was only Mirael Sabathiel (sp?) as the sole Sororitas who had Fallen while no Grey Knight had.

Nowadays, there've been entire convents that got corrupted or mindraped or ignored corruption under their noses, while not only have no Grey Knights ever Fallen, there's one of them running around in the Warp indefinitely bitchslapping daemons left and right.

GW and the Black Library haven't exactly shown the Sororitas a lot of love, have they?

I just remembered this line from 1d4chan

"And for his next magical trick, Matt is going to make your favorite fluff disappear."

Meh I'm used to worse. GW eraced an entire race and playable faction when they retconned the Squats out of existence.

Don't forget they also gave necrons ability to speak

Well in the Fluff, ignoring the incident itself, Grey Knight are demonstrably less vulnerable to warp/chaos corruption than the Sororitas are.

GW and the Black Library haven't exactly shown the Sororitas a lot of love, have they?

It depends on where you look. In GW's own material, you won't find a single example for a corrupted Sister. Meanwhile, the Grey Knights apparently depend on them for resisting Chaos corruption. Indeed, White Dwarf #211 described the Sisters as "totally incorruptible".

Of course, this image changes drastically once we delve into the Black Library and other licensed products, though here it changes from a single exception (Miriael Sabathiel) to one convent per week or so, depending on who is writing it.

Myself, I'm in the Sabathiel camp. It seems like a good "middle ground" between the two extremes of "none" and "lots". As mentioned before, I consider absolute immunity to be somewhat unrealistic, even for Sisters - yet a single exception still preserves the army's important theme of spiritual purity.

Plus, Miriael is a pretty badass character, yet obviously her idea would be cheapened if someone would just go and make it a regular occurrence.

Ultimately, as with all 40k, this is something each of us must decide for themselves, though.

Well, there's one minor detail of fluff that came along about Bloodtide since Ward.

It's not a daemon. It's a WMD left over from the DAoT, a nanovirus that causes world wide exsanguination. Yes, everyone instantly bleeds to death. Needless to say, this has a lot of appeal for old Khorne and co, and causes what happens in C:GK to make even LESS sense...

Oh, where is that from? Did they retcon its nature?

I do recall it was some sort of "WMD", but I was under the impression that it originated in the Warp.

Though, even if the Bloodtide was an ordinary virus ... keep in mind that the GKs do not actually have to be threatened by daemonic corruption to trigger their protocols. They just need to believe they are. *easy mode cop-out*

Come to think of it, this would be even more grimdark, as it'd render the GKs' safety measures as unnecessary as the Tech-Priests praying to their toasters in the hopes of appeasing some deus ex machina. Or the Inquisition using medieval witch hunt tests to determine guilt or innocence (see: Trial of the Blade).

All diseases belong to Nurgle. Even the man made ones!

Why do you think our symbol for "biohazard" looks the way it does?

Oh, where is that from? Did they retcon its nature?

I do recall it was some sort of "WMD", but I was under the impression that it originated in the Warp.

Though, even if the Bloodtide was an ordinary virus ... keep in mind that the GKs do not actually have to be threatened by daemonic corruption to trigger their protocols. They just need to believe they are. *easy mode cop-out*

Come to think of it, this would be even more grimdark, as it'd render the GKs' safety measures as unnecessary as the Tech-Priests praying to their toasters in the hopes of appeasing some deus ex machina. Or the Inquisition using medieval witch hunt tests to determine guilt or innocence (see: Trial of the Blade).

It was in the BL novel Hunt for Voldorius by Andy Hoare. It's a hive minded nanite swarm that is dug up and enslaved by the Daemon Prince Voldorius. While the main hive is destroyed in the novel, a small amount escapes in an infected woman. Which is probably how it was unleashed later against the GKs (since the novel happens before the Bloodtide in C:GK)

Ah. Well, GW doesn't necessarily care what it says in some novel, just like novels have been known to throw a bunch of studio background out of the window when the writer thought their idea was better.

"It all stems from the assumption that there's a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or 'true' representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth."

-- Andy Hoare himself, on Aaron Dembski-Bowden's blog

Not that I would automatically discard Andy's input/idea here, at least not without further research. It does sound interesting. I just wanted to point out that if it somehow results in the Codex making "less sense", then that would simply be the fault of GW not enforcing greater consistency between the different products of its IPs.

One of the reasons for why I'm not a fan of this strategy, artistic freedom be damned.

I'm kind of curious now, though - what effect did Voldorius' corruption have, exactly? It sounds like he basically "mind controlled" those nanites, overriding their programming to use them in a more controlled fashion rather than letting lose? Or did he change the way they work, or possibly empower them in some way?

(and thanks for the description so far!)

None, surprisingly. Once the thing realized the Space Marines were Voldorius enemies, it told them how to kill it, as it resented being his slave.

BTW: if the novel is true, this thing would have been done in ten seconds against the SoB. It's weakness is fire. So, really, if you get down to it, the GK made the situation MUCH WORSE.

None, surprisingly.

That kind of sounds like a plot hole. A nanovirus Gestalt conscience controlled via Warp magic, yet somehow capable of forming a Skynet-type sentience that is capable of feeling remorse at being enslaved? And then not being enslaved enough to prevent it from disclosing critical information undermining its master's efforts?

Or ... could it be that the Chaos corruption actually infused what was supposed to be a mere machine with a will of its own, like a sort of daemonic "hive possession"?

BTW: if the novel is true, this thing would have been done in ten seconds against the SoB. It's weakness is fire. So, really, if you get down to it, the GK made the situation MUCH WORSE.

To be fair, even if you want to force a connection between the codex and the novel ... a couple dozen flamethrowers would've probably not been enough to save an entire planet from a self-replicating nanite swarm. The Sisters were dug in and about to be overrun anyways, as far as I recall the description. They certainly were not on the offense.