The People's Libertine Army

The PLA are led by a person now known as Chaux Na M’rrsee. She first enters recorded history as a Battle Sister of the Adepta Sororitas who were despatched to Vraks as part of the honour guard of the newly appointed Cardinal of the Obsurca Sector.

Along with many of her sisters, she was seized and incarcerated when the cardinal turned away from the Emperor. She spent many years in a cell under a stronghold of Chaos. She emerged once more into the Emperor’s light with small pox scars and radiation sickness. After her release and subsequent screening by the Ordo Hereticus, she spent four years as a Sister Repenta[1] before withdrawing from her Order Militant and began work as a missionary for one of the Orders Dialogous. At this point she was still Sister Shona.

Eventually her assignments brought her to the extremely wealthy planet of Devos IV. There she was appointed by the local Echlessiarchy to work within the community. The officials who had made her appointment were polarists[2] and most of the other people she worked with were redemptionist[3]. She was asked to befriend (in order to spy and inform on[4]) an all female group who had fallen under suspicion. Various members of this movement (some of them identified by Sister Shona herself) were identified as needing a little firm guidance. Death by torture was simply getting the rest of the ladies scared and more reactionary themselves, waves of near hysteria swept through the entire female population. Having witnessed the crowd dynamics on Vraks Sister Shona could see that the impending purge on the horizon and was acutely aware that it was being driven not by heresy in the population, but by institutional inflexibility in the Echlessiarchy.

Sister Shona tried to explain that the movement was nothing sinister and posed no threat to the Empire at all. The group with which she worked was small and less than half of the possible demographic were really interested in ‘weight loss plans’ other such things. Once again, the Echlessiarchy took this to mean that they were ingaged in sedition, heresy and the worship of chaos powers, rather than simply lacking the willpower to stick to a diet.

Sister Shona sincerely believed that the desire to be thinner, to weigh less and therefore to look better was in no way anathemical to the imperial cult. The women’s man complaint boiled down to a lack of romance, which Sister Shona quickly identified could be explained to the authorities as a bar to their duty to further increase the population of the imperium. She lobbied the Echlessiarchy for three years. A massive re-education programme took place. The women were advised that the only and infallible way to achieve their goal was through the medium of prayer to the god emperor of all mankind.

It was as this betrayal of the people by their religious leaders unfolded that Slaneesh began to whisper to Sister Shona. Perhaps Slaneesh had already spoken to Sister Shona when she was locked up under the Cathedral of Vraks. Determined that the women would get a real chance to loose weight, she set about supplementing the official, ineffective, regime with lessons from her own martial past.

Soon Shona was sending her acolytes out to other groups of women. Following her regime they did become slimmer and more attractive. In the way that these things do, her methods and organisation became a cult in itself. At first, the Echlessiarchy turned a blind eye; as Shona had promised them, they were increasingly surrounded by ever more attractive and younger looking women. The unofficial health and beauty programme spread like wildfire amongst the disaffected groups of women across all social boundaries and even to those who previously had not been members of a slimming club. The movement was soon harbouring psykers from the Ordo Hereticus, it was simply a natural progression from hiding outspoken fat women from other branches of the inquisition.

Their prayers had been answered (by Slaneesh). But now instead of the romance they craved being a distant dream they had to put up with near constant pestering from over amorous men. This was tiresome but manageable, after all, they did have their uses.

It was only when the now flawless and irresistible Shona rejected the advances of the planetary Deacon that he determined to call in some of “Sister” Shona’s former comrades that things began to spiral out of control. Shona knew that she could turn a unit of Sisters Repenta to her cause. But Battle Sisters and a Sister or Mother Superior were a danger that she could not countenance. There was only one reasonable course of action left. War.
[1] Why so long ? either she had a lot to repent for, or she enjoyed it.
[2] Believe in the absolute separation of humans and psykers; the two can be combined only in the Emperor. Even sanctioned psykers should for preference be turned into servitors or otherwise lobotomised.
[3] Militant sect, devoted to purging the sins of any and all deviants. Consider most non-members to be deviants.
[4] She could see the need for such an approach. But as a former Sister of Battle, she saw herself as the straight forward, direct action type. Asking her to do it, rather than someone else with a talent for subterfuge and lies really put her back up. The view of the Echlessiarchy was that as a woman, she already possessed all the skills necessary for intrigue and deception.