Quote Originally Posted by lord_khaine View Post
Honestly, how much more than "religious fanatic in power armor" does the Sister of Battle fluff contain?
It does for that matter not make to much sense that they look down on the Space Marines almost everyone else in the empire more or less revere as the Emperors Angels of Death.
Have you made any effort at all to look beyond the most cursory examination?

As others have said, their big deal is purity (not that kind, our nuns are different). Humans are the greatest thing ever and you can't make them better by fiddling around and changing what makes people human because then they aren't human anymore. See Astartes for the premier in universe example, they even refer to themselves as transhuman and repeatedly aknowledge that not only are they ex-humans, but that they're so far removed from humanity that it causes problems on occassion. The only reason it's OK is that the Emperor did it and, since he's the Emperor, it's OK for him to tamper because he's a the God. Now, like most religious positions, this is not quite as well thought out as it could be, but that's their thing.

Then there's the whole totally-not-the-ecclessiarchy's-private-army-at-all-no-sir thing they have after being expressly forbidden to have "men under arms" after the last 'bout of crazy that happened, some RAW is law rules lawyer decided that if he simply kept the girls in their bodyguard positions, then technically, the ecclessiarchy wouldn't be breaking the law. The rest of the imperium just sort of sighed, admitted it was actually kinda funny (and better than having all the male soldiers underarms removed) and let them go about their business.

There's the various orders (both military and civilian), the various uses for the various orders (more times is spent intimidating locals into either behaving themselves or paying up their tithes than fighting), advising govenors and such, being a figurehead and morale booster, the ties to the schola, the research done by the non-military orders, connections with the Inquisition, correcting wayward behaviour of various members of the ecclessiarchy, the list goes on.

Saying "lol, is there even more to SOB than being Nuns with Guns?" is like saying that spess muhreens have no backstory, 'nids are zerg knockoffs, there's no difference between DE and vanilla eldar, tau are the unequivocablly the "good guys" and the inquisition exterminatus every planet they come across. It's a combination of blatant ignorance of the setting and just being flat out wrong.