"Her blade was her hand, her hand her blade, and with a single strike she did cleave the skulls of the first two abominations in her path. But this was only the beginning of her holy rage. She stood beneath the shower of sickly blood with pistol drawn and prepared to deliver the Emperor’s judgement…"
- — Litany of Canoness Briar, Sister Tariana, Imagifier of the Order of the Thorn
An Adepta Sororitas Imagifier in combat.
An Imagifier is a Sister of Battle of the Adepta Sororitas who carries the sacred Simulacrus Imperialis, a sacred relic of the Imperial Creed, into battle.
The role of the Imagifier is sacred amongst the Orders Militant of the Sororitas. To these fervent sisters falls the task of extolling the virtues of fallen Sororitas, and of preaching their deeds amidst the din of battle so that the martyr's spirit may inhabit the warriors of their order.
Within Seraphim squads the Veteran Sister Superior carries the holy symbol on her, effectively becoming an Imagifier.
Role
An Imagifier bears a stanchion mounted with a graven image of a revered martyr of the Adeptus Ministorum, inlaid with gold and silver and inscribed with holy texts. Held aloft, this image serves as a locus of faith to the Sisters of Battle and a beacon of martial purity.
The Imagifier recounts the martyr's many righteous deeds, her booming voice carrying above the crack of Boltguns and the jagged roar of Chainswords. Tales of holy rage inspire nearby sisters to new heights of violence; accounts of the martyr's stoicism fill those in earshot with new-found resolve; while stories of the fallen's miraculous defiance serve to steel the hearts and minds of the order's warriors.
Many sisters are brought close to tears in the presence of an Imagifier, for to have served the Emperor so valiantly and to have died in His name is the ideal to which all Sororitas aspire.
A given order often has multiple Imagifiers serving at any one time, often deployed across disparate war zones. On the front lines they accompany the ranking Canoness and serve as part of her retinue, ensuring that they are positioned wherever the fighting is thickest, and where the deeds of which they speak will have the greatest effect.
When faced with the enemy, the Imagifier plants her stanchion in the earth and takes up her weapons. Even while firing upon the foe does she continues to intone the glories of the fallen, missing not a syllable of the litanies as she guns down the Heretics before her and hurls grenades into their midst. When the way is cleared she lofts the martyr's image once more, carrying it over the broken bodies of the unrighteous.
Those Sororitas ordained to the rank of Imagifier have typically shown themselves to be worthy of the role while serving as Sisters Superior or Celestians, though in rare cases a lower-ranked sister has proved herself an exemplar of battlefield oration. An Imagifier trains for her new duty through painstaking phenomenological studies of a particular martyr, memorising not only the deeds of the revered warrior, but also the holy significance of their death.
Where possible the remains of the fallen are exhumed from the order's crypts and relaid in state, allowing the Imagifier to mediate over the corpse as she engages in her training. The Imagifier then guides sisters from the Orders Pronatus in crafting the martyr's image, ensuring that the relic perfectly immortalises the blessed dead.
Wargear
- Simulacrus Imperialis - A Simulacrum Imperialis is a sacred relic of the Ecclesiarchy wrought from the bones of an ancient saint or martyr. It is carried into battle by a member of the Ecclesiarchy to reinforce the faith of all those who look upon it.
- Boltgun
- Krak Grenades
- Frag Grenades
Sources
- Codex: Adepta Sororitas (8th Edition), pp. 51, 88
- Codex: Witch Hunters (3rd Edition), pp. 12, 29
- Codex: Sisters of Battle (2nd Edition), pg. 44
- White Dwarf 381 (US), "Codex: Sisters of Battle" (5th Edition), pg. 85