The Order of the Valorous Heart
(A collection of gathered and mostly copied informations + House Rules)
Death in service to the Emperor is its own reward. Life in failure to Him is its own condemnation.
– Epistles (Verse 93)
Founder: Alexis XXII
Honoured Saint: Lucia
Convent: Convent Sanctorum (Ophelia VII)
Founding: 37th Millenium
The Sisters of the Order of the Valorous Heart believe they must atone for the unwitting sedition committed by the Daughters of the Emperor during Vandire’s Reign of Blood. The Order’s founding saint, Lucia, was the most penitent of Dominica’s companions, and her Battle Sisters strive to emulate her example, demanding expiation for the slightest perceived sin. As a result, a disproportionate number of its Battle Sisters willingly exile themselves and seek redemption as a Sister Repentia. Saint Lucia is often depicted holding the skull of the executed Lord Vandire – a reminder to never hearken to the words of false prophets – and with a drop of blood running down her cheek, representing the blood sacrifice expected of every Battle Sister.
Order Colours
The Sisters of Battle of the Order of the Valorous Heart wear black Power Armour as well as black cloaks with white linings. Their Order badge and Ecclesiarchy symbol is red.
Order Badge
The icon used by the Order is a white maltese cross with a red heart in the center of it. The Order’s banner depicts Saint Lucia, a single drop of blood running down her cheek. Sometimes, she is represented with Vandire’s severed head, which the Daughters of the Emperor received after Dominica executed him. These depictions reinforces her image as an ideal Battle Sister.
The Order in Battle
The following rules are based on informations about the new codex of November 2019.
Rules
Orders Convictions – Stoic Endurance: 6+ FNP to models with this . In addition, ignore AP-1, and ignore AP-2 within 6″ of the Imagifier if the Tale of the Stoic is in effect.
Warlord Trait – Impervious to Pain: 5+ Feel No Pain.
Relics – Casket of Pennance: -1 Toughness to enemy models within 1″ of a model with this relic.
Stratagems – Blind Faith (1 CP): Use at the start of your Shooting Phase. A single unit may ignore to-hit modi
Notable wars of the Order
555.M38 – The First Savaven Crusade
Having fallen prey to a cult uprising amongst its bloated population of crypt-dwelling tomb-helots, the Cardinal World of Savaven is retaken by the Battle Sisters of Order of the Valorous Heart in a decade-long crusade of fire and zeal.
903-922.M39 – The Orphean War of Faith
With several worlds firmly in the grip of the vile adorators of Chaos in the distant Orpheus Sector of Segmentum Tempestus, the Order respond to the call to arms issued by Arch-Confessor Marduk of Helvamon, which was later beatified. Guided by his sacred visions of the Emperor, the Arch-Confessor rallies the remaining Imperial worlds behind him. In a gruesome twenty year long campaign that would see a full fifth of the Sector’s population die, the Order of the Valorous Heart purged several worlds of the vile touch of Daemons, Mutants, renegades and Chaos Space Marine alike. The Order however does not stand alone as it fights alongside their Sisters of the Order of the Black Sepulchre and the Space Marines of the Angels Revenant Chapter and the secretive chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus, the Grey Knights.
307.M40 – The Ashen War
The Aschen War was a series of brushfire revolts and incursions that erupted across the Aschen Sub-sector between 300.M40 and 307.M40, after a bloody Chaos Cult-inspired revolt on the Cardinal World of Dimmamar exposed how overstretched Imperial control over the surrounding region had become. Slowly stripped of much of its defences over the course of several generations to provide for the needs of other pressing conflicts nearby, this border region was ill-equipped to stave off catastrophe when it came. The Imperial counter-invasion was led by the combined forces of two Space Marine Chapters – the Dark Hands and the Exorcists, backed by the Necromundan 54th and 60th Imperial Guard Rifles and the Battle Sisters of the Order of the Valorous Heart. The Exorcists quickly realised that one of the keys to victory would be locating and destroying the single dark master of many names that lurked behind the divergent Chaos cults in the region, a daemonic creature that on Dimmamar was known as the Horned God. The Exorcists finally cornered the Daemon Prince in the maze-like pre-human ruins of the Dead World of Belphago. The Exorcists with the aid of a hastily composed Ordo Malleus strike team managed to banish the vile Daemon Prince back to the Immaterium, but fully a third of the Exorcists Chapter had perished. But with this victory the tide of the war was now in the Imperium’s favour, and within a year, the sub-sector was brought back under Imperial control.
777.M41 – The Achilus Crusade
The Achilus Crusade is an ongoing Crusade of the Imperium, begun in 777,M41 to reclaim the Jericho Reach region from Xenos and Heretics. Under the command of Lord General Militant Solomon Tetrarchus, he commands not only Imperial Guard detachments but also Space Marine detachments, Titan Legions, Adeptus Mechanicus forces and small Detachments of several Orders of the Adeptus Sororitas.
938.M41 The Battle of the Penitent
The Orders of the Valorous Heart and Ebon Chalice suffer great losses against Warboss Blackaxe’s Orks and are pushed back to the walls of the Cathedral of Saint Dufaux. The attackers are held back only due to the unyielding determination and sacrifice of hundreds of Sisters Repentia. However, their martyrdom buys time for the Battle Sisters to open the vast cathedral gates. The greenskins are slaughtered shortly thereafter as two dozen Penitent Engines rampage across the battlefield, staining it with Ork blood.
Unknown.M41 – The Serpheris Secundus Intervention
Several squads from the Order of the Valorous Heart were sent to help augment Inquisitorial forces in quelling a series of mutant riots on the planet of Sepheris Secundus in the Calixis Sector.
Notable heroes of the Order
Saint Lucia
Lucia was the youngest of the five sisters of Alicia Dominica, the founder and patron of the Adepta Sororitas. Lucia went on to become the founder of the Order of the Valorous Heart. In the mid to late 36th Millennium, Lucia was captured by Imperial recidivists, who gouged out her eyes and forced her to endure the death screams of a thousand innocents and the murder of a number of her own sisters, who remained resolutely silent, before she met her own martyrdom. Mere days after word of her death reached the Holy Synod, Lucia was canonised as a Saint by the Ecclesiarchy
A Heretic may see the truth and seek redemption. He may be forgiven his past and will be absolved in death. A Traitor can never be forgiven. A Traitor will never find peace in this world or the next. There is nothing as wretched or as hated in all the world as a Traitor.
– Cardinal Khrysdam, Instructum Absolutio
Sisters of Saint Nora 