Saint Celestine

The First Death

Celestine was an ordinary Sister of Battle of the Order of Our Martyred Lady when she fell in the Palatine campaign of 911.M41. She died saving a wounded comrade. By every Adepta Sororitas medical record her death was final.

Three days later she returned. She walked out of a closed funerary chapel wearing Saint Katherine's recovered armour, carrying a sword that had not been seen since Katherine's own martyrdom centuries earlier, and accompanied by two former Sisters of her own Order who had also been definitively dead and who walked beside her now without explanation.

The Ecclesiarchy convened a synod to determine whether to declare her a Living Saint. The synod was, eventually, a formality.

Death & Return

Celestine has been killed in combat many times since. Each time she has returned. The pattern of return varies — sometimes within hours, sometimes after a period the Sisters call her Silence. The Ecclesiarchy has stopped trying to explain it and has settled on simply documenting it.

Her companions the Geminae Superia — Sisters Eleanor and Genevieve — return with her each time. They are spoken of, in Sororitas theology, as Celestine's indivisible attendants. The Sisters who carry their bones in reliquaries between their reappearances do so as a ceremonial duty.

I have died for the Emperor. The Emperor has not yet, by His mercy, asked me to stay dead.

— Saint Celestine, attributed 941.M41

Notable Engagements

Celestine has appeared at most major Sororitas engagements of late M41 and M42 — the Promethean War, the defence of the Convent Sanctorum, the 13th Black Crusade where she fought alongside Cadian forces during the early collapse of the Cadian Gate, the Devastation of Baal where she rallied the Sisters who had answered Dante's call, and the early Indomitus Crusade where she has fought alongside Guilliman more than once.

She favours close-combat with the Ardent Blade — a flaming sword whose flame, by Adepta Sororitas record, is sustained by her faith rather than any conventional power-source.

Status

Celestine's current status is "active" in the sense that the Ecclesiarchy does not yet consider her permanently absent. She has been silent for an unusually long period in recent Indomitus Era records — the Order of Our Martyred Lady is keeping a watch and has not yet announced concern.

The Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus has, naturally, opened files. The files contain few conclusions. Celestine continues to be, in functional terms, the Ecclesiarchy's single most powerful field-deployable asset.