#vigilators

Euphemia King

Mistress of the Argent Lynx Vigilator Cadre

83rd Dominion of the Silent Sisterhood

Chamber of Oblivion

The Argent Lynx Cadre of the 83rd Dominion is a unit of which no official record can be accessed either before or after its involvement in the Battle of Tizca, as it is believed to be part of the stationed garrison of one of the Black Ships which shadowed the main Censure Force. It is far from alone in this as regards the involvement of the Sisterhood in the battle is concerned, but has been chosen because the deeds of its Mistress, Euphemia King, are attested to with some clarity thanks to the vox and pict-evidence of Field Assessor Jaqueus Quilp of the Administratum Logistica Corpus, attached as an observer to the 10th Sarcosan Voltigers of the Imperialis Auxilia.

During the second wave landings of the Censure Force, after the battle had been fully joined and th.e increasing destruction prompted Constantin Valdor to land his forces, the Argent Lynx Vigilator Cadre, as well as two Prosecutor Cadres, were assigned to the beleaguered Sarcosan Voltigers, who had come under heavy counter-attack while attempting to hold a second line position behind the Space Wolves advance as it tore through the 'Old City' of Tizca. Precisely targeted sniper and psychic assaults had pinned down the human auxilia, shredded its command staff and slain the Imperial overseers assigned to them, leaving the entire regiment in disorder and near rout. The few Silent Sisterhood Cadres on their arrival took charge, and with Quilp as intermediary succeeded in rapidly restoring order through determined leadership and bloody-handed enforcement of discipline. For the next several hours the Voltigers held through counter-attack, psychic maelstrom and buckling reality, and despite nearly 60% casualties maintained their position, thanks principally to the presence of the cadres and the tactical leadership of Euphemia King in particular, though only she and five other Silent Sisters out of the detachment of thirty, all injured, would survive the battle.

Almatra Cravare

Frost Spider Vigilator Cadre

17th Dominion of the Silent Sisterhood

Chamber of Oblivion

Archetypal of the Sisters of Silence present in the Censure Force despatched to Prospero from Terra, Almatra Cravare was a veteran of the Great Tithe, and such extant records that survive from the Somnus Citadel on Luna indicate that she had more than two decades of service in the League of Black Ships. As a Vigilator - one of the execution blade-equipped close combat elite of the Silent Sisterhood - it was her task and the task of cadres like hers to close rapidly in combat with enemy psykers and dispose of them with the bloody certainty of a power blade strike, preferably one inflicting a decapitating blow. While they relied not only upon their power as Psychic Nulls, but also their skill and speed as well as the protection of their advanced armour to defend them from harm in such close assaults, to serve as a Vigilator was still to invite peril and death, but this was an honour that the Silent Sisterhood's ranks aspired to above all. The risk of such service was never more evident than upon the deadly, reality-warped battlefields of Prospero.

Amid the fury of the darkest hours of the Battle of Tizca, the selfless sacrifice of the Vigilator cadres was perhaps the deciding factor in many sectors of the battle, allowing their comrades both of the Custodian Guard and the Space Wolves to close with the foe without being swept aside on a tide of warp-conjured horror. Almatra Cravare stands as a testament to this, fighting on despite bolter and shrapnel wounds which should have felled an unaugmented human being several times over, she gave up her life only after plunging her blade through the torso of Magister Gul Hadrastep of the Thousand Sons’ Order of Ruin, disrupting the skein of psychic energy with which he drove on the psi-automata at his command, allowing them to be overcome.

Vigilator Cadres

White Falcon, Frost Wolf, Ice Dragon Cadres

Chamber of Oblivion

As the most senior of the mainstay of the Silent Sisterhood’s tactical formations, the Vigilator Cadres are often deployed in battle in order to identify and excise the key components of an enemy force at close quarters. Whether their quarry is a single rogue psyker among a civilian hab-block or a resistance movement thousands strong, they serve to root out the command centres responsible and remove them, allowing the other units deployed in tangent to destroy the scattered resistance.

In larger detachments, the Vigilator Cadres also provide a greater level of versatility to the frontline assault, and the effect of their sweeping blades on the ranks of a cult rabble or rebel militia is as much a psychological weapon as a direct tool of war. Nor is the weapon itself idly chosen, as since time immemorial beheading is ever considered sure proof of death against the witch and those accursed by dark forces, and often this has in practice proved true, even against those riven with the power of the empyrean.

As their name implies, the Vigilators’ charge outside of direct militant action is often to oversee the collection of the Great Tithe and the escorting, under threat of death, of individuals to the Black Ships.