With a new three-part audio drama – Broken Saints – being released as part of Black Library’s 2019 Advent Calendar series, there’s no better time to hear from the fantastic Alec Worley about his ongoing series of Sister Adamanthea stories. If you haven’t read (or listened to) any of these stories so far, now is a perfect time to check out a series that’s continuing to grow and explore more angles of this intriguing character. I wanted to talk to Alec about this series, who Adamanthea is and what readers can expect from these stories, but also get his thoughts on the Sisters of Battle in general…
And boy has Alec delivered, with a thoughtful and thought-provoking deep dive into who the Sisters of Battle are, what makes them so interesting and why readers should check out stories about these characters! Without further ado, let’s get straight on with the interview.
Track of Words: What’s the elevator pitch summary for Broken Saints?
Alec Worley: Sister Adamanthea is an ex-Repentia haunted by a sin she believes can never be forgiven. Restored to her beloved Sororitas, hailed as a ‘living miracle’, Adamanthea has been invited to deliver a sermon to pilgrims gathered at the garden-temple of Concordia. But how can she speak of faith when her own is so uncertain? Her spirit is tested when she finds herself at the heart of an aeons-old conspiracy that threatens countless innocent lives. Will Adamanthea prove herself a legend of the Sororitas? Or is her faith nothing but a shroud of lies?
(Clearly, the elevator got stuck between floors!)
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
AW: The main character is Sister Adamanthea, a penitent forgiven and restored to her order as a Dominion Superior. Thing is, Adamanthea refuses to accept her own absolution! She believes that the mortal sin she once committed can never be excused. When this story begins, she’s undergoing a private crisis of faith. A seed of doubt has entered her mind (see her last story Martyr’s End), which is causing her to suspect that her continued self-mortification is unnecessary (it is), that the God-Emperor cares nothing for her suffering (He [possibly] doesn’t), that the Imperium is a horrendous institution that has screwed her up completely and denied her any chance of happiness (it has), and that – most frightening of all – she might have a choice regarding her own future.
Up until now she’s been very much the classic tortured loner, but in this story she gets a sidekick, Edmund Sark. He’s this longsuffering priest of the Ecclesiarchy, appointed to attend Adamanthea during her stay at Concordia. He’s Blackadder to her Prince Regent – if the Prince Regent were a murderous loon with a whacking great chainsaw. He’s also the story’s emotional anchor and moral compass.
Adamanthea also teams up with a legendary preacher named Nicolau Van Castrum, who’s the spiritual regulator of the Eight Provinces of Concordia. Adamanthea thinks he’s awesome and it was fun to write her struggling not to fangirl over him!
ToW: Where and when is it set?
AW: The action’s set on this vast city-ziggurat, the garden-temple of Concordia, which I imagined to be something like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, all carved sandstone and lush vegetation. The story, meanwhile, is set during the Dark Imperium, though we focus exclusively on Concordia here.
ToW: This is your fourth Sisters of Battle story; can you talk a bit about your other stories?
AW: This is also the fourth Sister Adamanthea story. The first one, Whispers, is the introductory tale, in which she’s summoned by a pilgrim to help find out why his converts have been disappearing on the edge of a spooky forest. Repentia is a flashback story about her time on a feral world when she was sent to help retrieve a sacred relic before the ruinous powers got it first. Martyr’s End is set in present day and sees her go totally off the rails while facing the T’au.
It’s been great watching Adamanthea evolve along the way. It’s really proved to me that you don’t need to come to a story with stacks of notes. I used to write up these ridiculous character sheets full of everything the character is about, all their quirks and foibles, what they like for breakfast, etc. (Probably as a result of my having played so much WFRP in my time) when really all you need is a strong perspective. You can’t write anything until you know how the character sees the world, and how they tend to deal with what comes at them. She did something I totally didn’t expect when I wrote Martyr’s End, the fallout from which influenced what happens in Broken Saints. And that comes from just defining a very simple perspective. Complexity of character comes from the variety of situations and opposing characters that challenge that perspective.
ToW: Should fans check those out first, or does Broken Saints work as a standalone story?
AW: Broken Saints TOTALLY works as a standalone. There’s no vital information you need to know about her in the previous stories. I always try and stick to Stan Lee’s rule of thumb when it comes to writing a series: “Every story is someone’s first.”
ToW: What’s the recommended reading order?
AW: With the Adamanthea stories I’m trying to alternate between present-day and flashback, so the whole thing unfolds like one big overarching story, while each tale within that structure is a standalone. So, the reading order, ideally, goes 1) Whispers, 2) Repentia, 3) Martyr’s End, 4) Broken Saints.
ToW: What interested you in writing about Sisters in the first place?
AW: The Sisters really grabbed me the first time I saw them in White Dwarf, back in… ‘97? And that second edition Codex with the John Blanche cover – with props to writer Gav Thorpe, I believe. Blanche was pretty much God for me at that time, his work on the Fighting Fantasy books having already been seared into my brain, and the Sisters were just that perfect expression of the grimdark aesthetic. All that gnarly medieval grotesquery, like some kind of deranged pageant, a modern Hieronymus Bosch, all so extreme and surreal that it verges on parody – but not quite. The Sisters drive into battle in a tank shaped like a church organ, for God’s sake! (I’m beginning to feel like Blanche may be the British Frazetta. His Warhammer output crystallized the British grimdark genre in much the same way Frazetta nailed American sword and sorcery with his Conan covers in the ‘60s. Discuss…)
Anyway, the Sisters are more than just ‘nuns with guns’. For me, they’re the soul of Imperium; dark, twisted, haunted and maniacal. The new models are just fan-bloody-tastic! My favourite has got to be the Pulpit of War, which is a perfect example of how the designers have carried over the Sisters’ original craziness, while devising something new and even more insane. Just brilliant!
I find the Sisters’ real-world cultural heritage really interesting too. That second edition Codex came out when the post-Tarantino craze for grindhouse cinema was at its peak and UK video distributers like Redemption started licensing a lot of Italian nunsploitation movies from the ‘70s (stuff like Killer Nun, The Nun and the Devil, and The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine). So, the concept of crazed nuns was certainly swilling around the geek subculture at the time. Because that kind of medieval Catholic iconography – the flagellation, submission, repression – lends itself so well to kink, I wonder if that’s the reason why I’ve heard a few people over the years accuse the Sisters – the Repentia in particular – of being little more than fanboy fantasies.
Well, if you’ve ever read fan fiction pretty much everything in geek culture is someone’s fantasy! I suspect that early reputation has got more to do with the – um, imaginative? – online fan art that proliferated for so long in the absence of any official material from Games Workshop. That’s another reason why it’s so great to see the Sisters brought back into the 40k fold and showcased as the awesome warrior order they always were!
But going further back – way back – the Sisters are all descended from Joan of Arc, right? They’re these idealistic visionaries with a direct line to the Man Upstairs, but with a horrific 40k twist. Their innocent idealism becomes this warped zealotry and their visions aren’t of peace but of wholesale slaughter. They’d torch your grandmother in a heartbeat if they thought she was a heretic! They’ve got that moral dissonance that 40k inherited from classic 2000 AD, that sense that the heroes are also the bad guys. To paraphrase Aaron Dembski-Bowden, “Everyone is 40k is a different shade of wrong”.
Most obviously, the Sisters provide the opportunity to add gender-diversity to 40k. Representation when writing stories is crucial, of course. It’s also best-practice in a very mechanical sense – and it has been since the days of Homer – especially when writing melodrama. You’re always looking to approach potentially trope-y material from a fresh perspective, because everything – even fresh representations such as the ‘strong female character’ – gets stale super-quick! Creators have to keep their fingers on the pulse of popular feeling and question that feeling; always, always question!
It shouldn’t be about an author trying to impress people and score brownie points (which is the kind of selfishness and narcissism that actually becomes an obstacle to progress) and more about their stories responding to genre in ways that questions and probes the material. M. John Harrison once said (paraphrasing again): “Ask what the genre is afraid of, what it’s trying to hide – then write that.” That’s how we find new voices. That’s how we advance. That’s how we create and share new ideas and gain a broader perspective on what it is to be human and all that jazz. But it’s also how compelling drama works. It’s how we get incredible, groundbreaking, exciting stories like Horus Rising and Gaunt’s Ghosts!
So, yay for Sisters-centric diversity and representation, for sure, but are they icons of feminism? Only if your conception of feminism is limited to ‘women hitting things’! I’ve seen one or two misguided grumbles about the Sisters being a gateway for ‘them feminists’ to come and take away ‘our’ hobby. But the Sisters are surely a feminist’s worst nightmare! They’re brainwashed zealots possessed of no personal liberty and happy to remain in thrall to a flaccid patriarchy. And this is the point, of course! 40k is a rancid dystopia in which everything is either hopelessly corrupted or else a warped interpretation of a heroic ideal. It’s that dramatic conflict that drives the main 40k narrative. Ironically, the Sisters do possess equality, but only in that they’re mired in this hellscape of blood and shite along with everyone else!
Within that spectrum we get to see them strut their stuff and generally be awesome badasses, which is just catnip for me! I love their mysticism too, that spooky side that transcends the material politics of the Ecclesiarchy. Like Joan of Arc, the Sisters fall into that classic archetype of the female visionary – the seer or sibyl, the ghost-whisperer, the conduit to the unknown. It’s a figure that’s played out across literature from Cassandra of Troy to Judge Anderson. From a typical male perspective, these characters are usually objects of awe, rather than desire. And that’s certainly how I’ve written the Sisters so far, though I’d like to dig a little deeper, challenge myself (‘question, always question!’) and explore how these women see themselves. I doubt the Sisters would see themselves as anything other than humble servants of the God-Emperor. But what if one of them didn’t…? I’d also love to explore that notion that faith could be a psychic manifestation, kinda like the Ork WAAAGH! Hmmmm. *starts scribbling notes for next story*
The Sisters’ humanity always has great appeal. They’re indoctrinated killing machines, and trying to find the fallible human beneath all that will always be a great engine for a character.
Wow, that was a long-ass ramble! So, to summarize, I like Sisters for loads of reasons. But it’s mainly the hair. They all have great hair.
Sisters is cool!
ToW: Why do you think 40k fans should check out stories about Sisters of Battle as opposed to the MANY other factions available? What will they get that they don’t from other stories?
AW: They’re perhaps the best faction for understanding what fundamentally motivates the Imperium, that crazed spirituality which drives it to endure in its current zombie state. The Sisters are embodiments of the Imperial faith. They’re super-creepy, really. It’s been great watching Guilliman struggling not to freak out having woken up to find everyone worshipping his dad. ‘Goddamn it, Imperium! I leave you alone for FIVE MINUTES…’
The Sisters’ backstory in the Age of Apostasy is epic, as well! Remember, back when they were the Brides of the Emperor, they saved the Imperium from the bloodiest civil war since the Heresy. Okay, so they were also duped into executing the High Lords of Terra… BUT ANYWAY!
Plus, you’ve got all the Orders Non-Militant, like the Hospitaller, the Dialogus, etc, who can interact with all these different aspects of the 40k-verse in so many interesting ways. They can each offer a different window onto life in that (terrible) world.
ToW: Who make the best antagonists for Sisters of Battle stories, and why?
AW: Heretics are the obvious adversary, I guess. But the internal struggles they have are just as compelling. You’ve got that conflict between the ego and the id, between faith and human fallibility, which is especially interesting when they exist in a universe where humanity is a weakness.
It’s easy to be a Space Marine when you’ve got implants up the wazoo, but being human is much tougher and therefore more compelling. The Sisters are like the Guard in that respect. It’s much easier to make them relatable and memorable.
ToW: Are there any particular writing challenges that Sisters pose, and which make writing about them tricky?
AW: For me, it’s the same as any other 40k character. It’s finding that interesting internal motor, that hook that makes this Commissar or that Space Wolf different from every other Commissar and Space Wolf. Plus, the lives of these characters are so mercilessly regimented and have so little freedom that you can sometimes struggle to find reasons for them to be in the situations you want them to be in.
ToW: There aren’t anywhere near as many Sisters-focused Black Library stories as, say, Space Marines or Imperial Guard, but there are still a fair few. What did you look back on for influences or inspiration when writing your Sisters stories?
AW: James Swallow flew the flag for the Sisters pretty much on his own for years. Now you’ve got ace writers like Danie and Rachel doing brilliant work in the same faction and really opening out that world. So, I always try and keep up with those books. But mostly I try and stick to the Codexes as it’s really the vision of those writers and designers, which you’re carrying out and expanding upon.
ToW: What about wider influences? Do you have go-to references – GW art, old background, other media etc. – for use when planning and writing Sisters stories?
AW: Writers like Angela Carter and Marina Warner give a great perspectives on characters like these. On the more pulpy side, it’s stuff like Red Sonja comics. I also end up with Pinterest boards full of Catholic devotional art, atmospheric paintings of ruined monasteries in the snow, and photos of weird relics like gold-plated skulls and wotnot. I think it’s always important to try and root what the Sisters do in some kind of reality, to get a proper sense of how they think and fight. So, I’ve got quite a few military and religious handbooks on hand as well.
ToW: How did you find writing a three-part audio? What different challenges did it throw up compared to writing a single hour-long story?
AW: It was a lot like writing a serialized comic for 2000 AD. The challenge was in designing the story so that it fit the required breaks. Working within that rigid timeframe also means you have to keep the story really tight.
ToW: What do you hope 40k fans will get out of your Sisters of Battle stories by the time they’ve finished them?
AW: A better sense of the Sisters’ world, why they fight, who they are and what it means to be them. There’s much to explore in the lore. But really, I always just want to connect with the reader and excite them, make the feel the way I did when I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark or Aliens. I’m always looking for the best way to get across that visceral experience where you can’t wait to find out what happens next and you’re getting caught up in the twists and turns of the plot, and going through it all with a character you can actually care about. That’s the intention anyway. You’re trying to marry an exciting story to the fluff and creating a window into life within that universe.
ToW: Do you have plans for more Sisters of Battle stories still to come?
AW: Hell, yeah! 😀
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As always, thanks so much to Alec for taking the time out of his busy schedule to contribute such fascinating answers in this interview! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I have – if you want to know more about the previous Sister Adamanthea stories you can find all of my reviews right here – or check out my review of Broken Saints here.
