Order of the Emperor’s Bounty

Order of the Emperor’s Bounty (formerly Order of the Sacred Bud; informally the Adipose Sororitas)

Order Originator: Order of the Sacred Rose

Purpose of Order’s Founding: Standing Force – “This area doesn’t have sufficient spiritual guidance, found an order”
First colonized in late M34, the Demeter sector is located in the Ultima Segmentum just outside of the Realm of Ultramar. Boasting a number of verdant agri-worlds as well as a handful of pleasure and hive worlds that lie within the various systems’ habitable zones, the Demeter sector has long been one of the breadbaskets of the Imperium, providing foodstuffs to much of the Segmentum and is often called upon to support crusades launched in the Eastern Fringe. For this reason, the Order of the Sacred Bud was formed to serve as an added component to the region’s garrison and to promote the Ecclesiarchy’s influence in the sector. Though since reformed into the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty, the Sisters continue to guard the trillions of souls of the Demeter sector.

When was the Order Founded?: M37
Order’s Flaw: Bad Ecclesiarch Relations – The Order has deviated from the Imperial Cult in a significant way
Although initially formed from Sisters of the Order of the Sacred Rose to protect the Ecclesiarchy’s assets in the region, the Order of the Sacred Bud has undergone numerous changes in its lifetime, the least of which include its rechristening as the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty. By far the most notable of these deviations is the Sisters’ unique training regime and beliefs. The core tenant of the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty is that each Sister must reflect the strength and prosperity of the Imperium in both body and deed. While on paper, this is a perfectly acceptable belief, the fact that the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty go about this by fattening themselves to a tremendous degree has marked them as deviant in the eyes of their fellow Sororitas Orders. Among its members, junior Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty are often merely overweight while senior Sisters can be mistaken for space marines in terminator armor given their bulk when donning their custom battle plate. Although much beloved in their home sector, the Order and its unique practices have raised a great number of questions from outsiders, ranging from concerns about the Order’s combat effectiveness to suspicious of heresy and even Chaos corruption. For the former, at least, a look at the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty combat record is enough to silence their criticism although this is not enough to remove the Order from the suspicious eyes of more puritanical inquisitors.

Order Demeanour: Sisters in Battle – Your sisters are your life!
Due to the Order’s violent past and censure by other Orders, the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty places the trust and bonds between Sisters as second only to faith in the Emperor in terms of importance. This sense of comradery is fostered throughout a Sister’s career. When the newest batch of inductees arrives at the Order’s fortress-convent, a large feast is held in their honor where the girls are directed to eat as much as possible. The purpose of this meal is twofold. First, to measure the girls’ appetites and stomach capacity. Second, to determine their initial loyalty to the Order and strength of will. Following this feast, the inductees are divided into groups and placed under the instruction of a senior Sister who will serve as their mistress until their training is complete. Beyond the expected lessons in weapon handling, combat drills, scripture, and meditation, the aspiring sisters are expected to gain a considerable amount of weight or face expulsion from the Order. For this reason, aspirants within these groups are expected to not only feed themselves but also each other. These feeding sessions, conducted either in pairs or groups, not only serve as a practical means of helping the aspirants gaining the minimum amount of weight needed to remain in the order but also a potent lesson that they must rely on their fellow Sisters to help push the limits of their bodies and devotion to the Emperor. At the end of their training period, the now fully inducted Sisters have the option to be reassigned to a different wing of the Order or to remain together as a squad, which most do. Even without the fear of expulsion for being found underweight, Battle Sisters frequently continue to feed each other, having grown accustomed to the act and to contribute to the further development of their figures.

Primary Saint: (Formerly) Living Saint
Saint Isadora the Prosperous
A pious, compassionate, beautiful, and exceedingly fat woman in life, Saint Maria Isadora is the current patron saint of the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty as well as the cause for the Sister’s corpulent figures. Though her death remains a topic of debate among both historians and members of the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty, what is agreed upon is Isadora’s rise to sainthood when the sector was attacked by a Nurgle warband known as the Wasted and her role in restoring the land touched by their corruption, saving the faithful of the Demeter sector from a slow death at the hands of starvation.
Today, Saint Isadora is revered throughout the Demeter sector where she is a role model for young girls and women. Devotional images and icons of Saint Isadora often place added emphasis on her enormous curves, particularly her breasts, butt, and belly and remain the gold standard for feminine beauty. As Isadora is both a martial saint and an agrarian one, it is equally common for farms and female Imperial Guard/PDF barracks to have shrines devoted to her. Women worshipping in these shrines are expected to bring an offering of bread, meat, wine, or other dish and then consume it before her image, thanking the Saint for her generosity and benevolence, before receiving her blessing. While some worlds believe that larger or more lavish offerings will confer greater blessings, this belief is not consistent. Not finishing the offering, however, is considered universally blasphemous.

Deed of Legend: The individual was a stalwart enemy of the servants of Chaos, and slew a Daemon Prince
In 541.M38, Maria Isadora was born to on the agri-world of Ceres. Scrawny and underweight as a newborn, Maria was nevertheless a happy addition to her family, a pair of land-holding farmers and their six sons. Though a seemingly inauspicious birth, to understand the rise of Maria Isadora to sainthood, one must first understand the precarious situation of her home sector during her formative years.
Just a few years prior to Isadora’s birth, the Imperium had been wracked by Abaddon’s 9th Black Crusade. In response, Imperial Naval, Guard, and Astartes assets from across the galaxy were funneled towards the Cadian Gate. As the old adage goes, “an army marches on its stomach,” and the mobilization of billions of soldiers necessitates the movement of untold trillions of tons of food to keep them fighting. Even in the far-off Eastern fringe, the Demeter sector was forced to do its part and up food exportation. Over time, the Administratum’s demands expanded to include manpower in the form of newly raised and deployed Imperial Guard regiments to replace those who had been diverted away from the Galactic East as well as food. It was also around this time that the Imperial governors for the sector and the local nobility began instituting reduced food rations for laborers and artificially inflating food prices for the rest of the inhabitants of the sector. While the upper crust went largely unaffected by these changes, the majority of citizens who worked in the fields, orchards, ranches, and factory farms of the sector began to suffer the first signs of malnutrition. These years would be remembered as the Lean Times, the prelude to the darkest days for the sector and its people.
In 563.M38, a series of near-apocalyptic crop failures gripped the sector; billions of hectares of farmland failed to produce anything other than withered, twisted weeds, vast aquafarms and fish hatcheries became clogged with rotting seafood, and even the infamously hearty grox and biologis-engineered algae began to die out, all without apparent cause. Despite receiving numerous petitions to have the tithes adjusted to account for the sharp drop in productivity, the nobles and governors insisted that the Administratum would have its tithes paid in full regardless of the means. Left with few other choices and faced with threats of violence from the nobles’ hired goons, farmers and ranchers emptied reserve granaries and emergency food stores to make up the difference.
As the crop failures in the sector entered their second year, society on most worlds reached a tipping point. For decades, the people of Demeter spilled their sweat and blood for the Imperium in ever-increasing quantities while watching what little food they did have for themselves be taken out of their mouths and the mouths of their families. Insurrections began to flare up, raiding local warehouses for any scrap of food. Although Arbites units, aided by recently raised regiments of Guardswomen and Battle Sisters from the Order of Sacred Bud, did their best to squash these rebellions, the near-universal hunger that gripped the sector rapidly ate away at loyalist moral. On New Year’s Day 565.M38, after three days of suspended rations for the general population, a mass revolt on the hive world of Sito was launched with the aim of attacking the nobles’ spires and seizing their private storehouses. What they found rocked the sector to its core.
During their search through the upper levels of the hive, rebel forces uncovered shipping manifestos signed by their governor and a number of high ranking nobility, specifically those who had pushed the hardest for reduced rations and austerity measures, indicating that they had exaggerated the extent of the increased tithes and had sequestered the rest for themselves. Whipped into a frenzy at this news, the rebels fought through the nobles’ private guards to reach a series of hidden storehouses but were shocked to discover that their contents had been reduced to a foul-smelling slop and the inner walls were covered in foreign signals, which was later identified as the mark of the Chaos God of Decay, Nurgle. During the waning hours of the revolt on Sito, Chaos warships bearing the mark of the Wasted warband, began to drop out of the warp just outside of the star system. At the head of the largest concentration of these forces was the warband’s leader, Famine Lord Phthorus who proclaimed his and his army’s intentions for the sector on an open vox channel. Unlike most warbands devoted to Nurgle, the Wasted did not revel in the bloating decay characteristic of the Plague Father but, instead, found pleasure in the despair of deprivation and the beauty of slow, painful withering. For this reason, Demeter’s existence had long enticed Phthorus; a ripe fruit waiting to be snatched away from a starving Imperium and thrown back a desiccated husk. Now that the sector was at its weakest, deprived of much of its manpower and its remaining population barely strong enough to oppose them, the Famine Wars would begin.
Faced with an uphill battle due to lack of reinforcements and many months of putting down insurrections while on half-rations, the Imperial defenders found themselves losing ground day by day. Phthorus, in an uncharacteristic show of magnanimity, had bestowed his personal blessing upon the warbands’ members by making them vectors for the Hollowing, a disease that rapidly drains its victims’ bodies of nutrients and vitality until nothing but an emaciated husk remains. Due to the debilitating effects of this affliction and its increased potency around members of the Wasted, Imperial formations continuously faltered as their malnourished bodies collapsed under their own weight. Even the Sisters of Battle, for all their zeal and servo-augmented strength, found themselves physically unable to effectively press the advantage when it presented itself, much to their escalating frustration.
In the intervening years since her birth and the beginning of the Famine Wars, Maria had grown into a strong, caring, and pious young woman. Inheriting her mother’s long flaxen blonde hair, and cream-like complication as well as her father’s striking blue eyes, her beauty would have inspired envy from her peers had she not been more than a hundred kilos heavier than them. Since her youth, Isadora possessed both a ravenous appetite and an equally strong desire to share food with others, qualities that had been readily fostered by her parents and brothers, now members of the Imperial Guard sent to distant battlefields.
As the waves of famine across the sector reached Ceres, Maria and her family donated what food they could to their neighbors when their harvests failed. This, however, could not stop the growing accusations that her family had been hoarding food when it became apparent that she was the only one not losing weight at a horrific pace. Fueled by both paranoia and hunger, a mob attacked the family’s farm and kidnapped Maria and her parents in the middle of the night. Unable to squeeze a confession out of either her parents, the mob instead chose to parade a stripped and grox-tied Maria through the fields and then burn at the stake. Despite her family’s protests, Maria calmly insisted that she would go along with the mob and claimed that if she was to die it would be the Emperor’s will.
The following morning, the mob tied Maria up and, with great effort, paraded her through the fallow fields to the waiting pyre. At the end of the procession, they offered Maria a chance to say her final words. True to her earlier conversation with her family, Maria stated that if she was to die it would be the Emperor’s will and began to recite a catechism. Incited by her apparent lack of fear, the burning commenced, but before the flames could engulf her, a child within the crowd began to shout. While all the adults had been so focused on torturing their prey, they had failed to notice that buds began to shoot out of the barren fields around them. Standing where they were, dumbfounded, the crowd watched the plants mature before their eyes and bear fruit and grain in quantities that should have been impossible even before the Lean Times. Breaking the silence, Maria, now cloaked in a blinding light, proclaimed that the Emperor did not wish to see his subjects suffer and that he had chosen her to release them from this terrible famine. Awestruck at the sight before them, the townsfolk scrambled to put out the fire and untie Isadora who appeared untouched either by the flames or the smoke.
In the ensuing months, Maria traveled throughout Ceres and wherever she walked, life reemerged in abundance. Crops ready for harvest burst from the ground, livestock grew fat and fertile, even those afflicted by the various diseases planted by the Wasted’s cultists returned to health. A loyal congregation quickly began to form around Isadora, swelling in number with each town she visited. It was only a matter of time before rumors of a fat woman and her similarly well-fed cohorts wandering through the sector performing miracles drew the attention of the Ecclesiarchy and the Order of the Sacred Bud. Initially, many in the Order were skeptical about an obese young woman from a minor agri-world being a conduit for the Emperor’s power but following a grueling series of trials to determine her purity, the Order’s Canoness Amelia Ursula and the local Cardinals announced that Maria Isadora was indeed a Living Saint.
To this end, the now-Saint Isadora requested that the entirety of the Order of the Sacred Bud assemble in their fortress-convent’s grand refectory. As the Sisters entered the convent’s massive hall, the full price of waging war against the Wasted became immediately apparent. Beyond the high number of casualties up to that point, the Hollowing had taken a mighty toll on the Sisters’ bodies. The worst cases, those who had refused to be pulled from the front until now, were unable to walk without their power armor and had to be carried in by their comrades. The last to arrive, Saint Isadora entered into the hall at the head of a procession of the Convent’s serfs, each bearing copious amounts of food cooked with all their skill and using ingredients from the worlds the Saint had visited; mountains of bread, succulent roasts, fish swimming in cream sauces, gently poached vegetable, sweetmeats, and so much more were presented before the Order. Needless to say, the assembled Sisters were perplexed by the apparent decision to have a victory feast before their first campaign even began. Already disheartened at the mauled state of their Order, a few began to balk that it had to be some kind of cruel joke for anyone to believe a bloated glutton could be an Imperial Saint, let alone lead them into battle. Isadora, once more radiant as she had been in the fields of Ceres, quickly silenced these outbursts, stating that the servants of the Emperor would need to gather their strength for the battle ahead and that they must trust in the Emperors will. Her detractors once more subdued, Isadora took her seat next to the Canoness Ursula and said grace, thanking the Emperor for the bounty before them and began to eat.
Following suit, the Sisters began to eat as well. Though most began tentatively, either out of perceived protocol or being too weak to do otherwise, as they continued to eat they found themselves possessed by a singular ravenous hunger which drove them to stuff themselves well past what should have been humanly possible. This change in demeanor was matched by a similar change in their bodies. Sisters who had just returned from the front with bone-thin faces and exposed ribs rapidly began to plump up back to health and well beyond. Stomachs laden with food furiously converted their contents into fat that flowed over bone and muscle. Shallow, flat breasts ballooned with fatty tissue. Swelling rears and hips, forced their owners to spread out until the entire length of the refectory benches was overflowing. Minutes gave way to hours as the Sisters continued to glut themselves without the slightest hint of exhaustion; convent-serfs continuing to refill their mistresses’ plates whenever they were emptied.
As the last of the meat drippings and sauce were sopped up by rolls of bread clenched in pudgy fingers, the now hopelessly obese Sisters of Battle found themselves content for the first time in months. Seeing that the first half of her efforts to prepare the Order for the battle ahead had gone according to plan, Isadora stood up and revealed the second half. While the fighting Sisters of the Order had been nourished their bodies, countless tech priests and adepts worked furiously at Isadora’s behest to redesign and refit the Sisters’ vacant suits of power armor to accommodate their owner’s expanded figures. At her command, these adepts entered the refectory and began the process of equipping each Sister with their newly modified battle plate. Among this new equipment was a massive suit of beautifully crafted, gilded armor fitted specifically for the Living Saint. Now that both flesh and ceramite had been reforged under the Saint’s watch, Isadora made a final proclamation before the engorged Sisters, rechristening them the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty as it was their duty to guard the Emperor’s generous gifts against all who would despoil it and show to the galaxy the prosperity of the Imperium
As planned, the blessed girth acquired by the Sisters feasting allowed them to fight through the effects of the Hollowing even at close range. With this knowledge, the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty became the spearhead for a renewed Imperial offensive and at the tip was Saint Isadora, who’s presence and miracles, primarily the restoration of Chaos touched land to its former fertility, buoyed the morale and weights of all the women serving under her, regardless of whether they be Sororitas or Imperial Guard. Over the course of the next year, Isadora’s crusade pushed the Wasted off of planet after planet until only Sito remained.
Captured early in the Famine Wars, the hive world of Sito had since become the staging ground for all of the Wasted’s incursions into the sector. Under his rule, Phthorus had turned the once-thriving hive world into a ghost city. Across the spires, the bodies of its citizens lay in the streets, each little more than skin and bones kept alive by the vile energies of their overlord. Long ago had the last vermin been torn apart by skeletal hands and even cannibalism ceased to be a viable option as the Plague Lord’s victims were too weak to chew. Such wanton cruelty is not unusual for a Chaos Lord and very rarely is it without a greater purpose. While the Imperium had been on the back foot, Phthorus and his retinue underwent a dark ritual, using the suffering of Sito’s inhabitants as the catalyst for his ascension into daemon prince hood.
When Imperial forces arrived above Sito, many were surprised to find the planet unguarded from orbit. Suspecting a trap, Imperial forces landed well outside of the major hives and only began to move towards the massive cities once their full might had been rallied. Upon entering the cities, however, Guard and Sororitas units found their progress stalled by a deluge of emaciated zombies, cursed with unnatural strength by sorcery and driven by long-festering hunger. Realizing that they had returned to the cycle of attrition warfare from before Saint Isadora’s arrival, a strike force of Battle Sisters and Imperial Guard led by Cannonness Ursula and the Living Saint herself made landfall on the former capital spire. There, they were met by the now Daemon Prince Phthorus. Resembling a bone-thin parody of a Great Unclean One, Phthorus had merged  his essence with the Hallowing itself, amplifying the disease’s power to a level that even the Living Saint’s blessing could not fully nullify.
Seeing her companions’ bodies begin to wither and thin as they battled against the daemon prince, Isadora bid her allies to retreat before calling upon her powers, rocketing upwards into the air like a beam of light. Taking notice of the Saint’s departure, the daemon prince proclaimed to his enemies that the Corpse God’s champion had abandoned them, however, as his final words exited his mouth, nearly a full ton of ceramite and incandescent woman fell upon Phthorus, striking with the force of a small meteor. When the dust finally settled, the Lord of the Wasted’s body was broken and disintegrating, his foothold, in reality, slipped away. Sitting triumphantly atop him was Isadora; her gargantuan rear crushing the daemon prince back into the Immaterium.
The banishment of Phthorus broke the back of the Wasted’s grip on the Demeter sector but at a cost. Though it is agreed that Isadora disappeared shortly afterward, accounts vary on how and when. The accepted explanation is that after her final miracle, the purging of the Chaotic taint on Sito, was complete, Isadora proclaimed that she had completed her Emperor given duty and allowed herself to ascend off of the material plane. Others believe that the Saint left the sector with a small group of warriors to spread her prosperity throughout the Imperium, leaving behind a prophecy that she would return once again to the Demeter sector. A more controversial theory proposes that her direct contact with Phthorus had infected her with the Hollowing and she died a scrawny twig of her former self. Regardless, Isadora death marked her ascension as an Imperial Martyr whose legacy is carried on by the Sisters of the Emperor's Bounty.

Order’s Homeworld: Hive/Agri-world
Homeworld terrain: temperate
Persephone
Located in the Demeter system, Persephone is one of the first worlds colonized in the sector and one of its most important trade hubs as well as an important producer for foodstuffs in its own right. Persephone’s surface consists of three major continents surrounded by oceans dotted with volcanic archipelagoes. Situated comfortably in the Demeter system’s habitable zone, the planet has a slightly reduced tilt compared to ancient Terra resulting in milder seasons overall and facilitating year-round harvests. The Order of the Emperor’s Bounty’s primary fortress-convent is located at the heart of the largest continent, just outside of the planet’s primary hive and spaceport. In addition to being the primary training facility for all Battle Sisters, the convent is the second most heavily guarded site in the sector, surpassed only by Saint Isadora’s homeworld, Ceres.

Influence over homeworld(s): Major influence
Prior to the Lean Times and the Famine Wars, the Order of the Sacred Bud stood somewhat aloof from the affairs of the various worlds under their stewardship. While a representative from the Order would attend meetings with planetary governors and other major figures, the majority of the Sisters would only leave their fortress-convent or lesser garrisons to perform training maneuvers or participate in stamping out the local ork presence. In those days, many members resented their position, seeing themselves as glorified nannies to a bunch of farmers instead of proper warriors for the Emperor. The Order suffered greatly for its complacency and hubris when the corruption that had grown under their noses almost cost the Imperium the entire sector.
Today, the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty plays a far more active role in shaping the culture and politics of the Demeter sector. Forced to deal with a major power vacuum after many of the sectors’ noble houses were purged during the Famine Wars, the Order has since taken stewardship over considerable swaths of land and industrial infrastructure across the sector. Sisters assigned to garrison duty near population centers are expected to take part in local events; at a minimum, this means taking part in processions and public services on major holy days, although, many voluntarily take part in local feast days and harvest festivals. The Order believes that this practice not only helps maintain a sense of unity among the sector’s inhabitants but also humbles the Sisters and reminds them of who they are fighting for.
Senior sisters may also find themselves rotated away from their posts to serve as ladies-in-waiting or confidants to the sector’s remaining noble houses. This is done both to exert a degree of soft power over the nobility and to root out heresy among those in power. While this has caused resentment among some noble houses as the Sisters are functionally a white elephant, they can neither refuse to accept them without raising suspicions towards themselves nor harm them without incurring the wrath the Order, others see this as an opportunity to ingratiate themselves to the Order and lavish their guests with all the luxuries afforded to them, primarily food.

Order’s Strategy: Ranged Combat
While it is easy to assume that the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty’s preference for ranged weapons is another unique product of their beliefs and the Sisters’ bulkier figures, this is not the case. The Order of the Emperor’s modern tactics have their origins in their parent Order, the Order of the Sacred Rose, who are famed for their disciplined and clinical use of bolter and melta fire. These inherited doctrines were further emphasized during the early phases of the Famine Wars as the threat of contracting the Hollowing made dispatching enemies at range with small arms or artillery a necessity.
Even so, their preference for ranged warfare does not imply any real deficiency in close quarters combat. Thanks to their intensive physical training and modified power armor, the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty are just as lethal as more conventional members of the Adeptus Sororitas in melee. When closing the distance between themselves and the enemy becomes necessary, the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty will leverage their added mass and armor to their advantage, literally crushing their enemies in devastating charges.

Order Divergence: Radically Different (Modified Jump Pack)
Ophanim squads
Following the Order’s reformation as the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty, it became rapidly apparent that the Order’s existing stock of seraphim equipment was incompatible with their new users. While the armor itself was easy enough to modify, tech priests found that the combination of heavier Sisters and heavier armor overtaxed the jump packs’ thrusters and consumed fuel at an alarming rate. Aware that stripping the suit’s armor or forcing the occupant to slim down was not an option, the tech priests instead chose to pair the bigger suits with bigger engines and fuel tanks. The end result was a new model of jump pack that closer resembles an oversized assault marine’s jump pack. While the new packs were still unsuitable for sustained flight, they were capable of providing short, high speed bursts of acceleration to lethal effect. A short period of battlefield testing revealed that in a thrust assisted charge, the combined mass of the enlarged Sister, armor, and jump pack could flatten lightly armored targets and mangle heavy infantry and certain vehicles. Following this discovery, the Order’s seraphims combat doctrines of hit-and-run tactics with anti-infantry weapons was replaced by one of emphasizing alpha strikes and anti-armor weapons, such as power mauls, axes, melta guns, and, if available, inferno pistols. These newly christened ophanim squads have been a mainstay of the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty ever since, bringing the might of the sisterhood upon its enemies in single a fiery, earth shaking blow.

Order’s Methods of Worship: Honour to the Hero(ine)
To say that the Order’s patron saint, Saint Maria Isadora, has served as the cultural linchpin for the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty since their reformation at the end of the Famine Wars would be a gross understatement, and depending on who you ask, borderline on blasphemous. It was Saint Isadora’s stalwart faith and bountiful miracles which saved the Order and the Demeter sector and it is her legacy which has guided the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty since then.
 Beyond emulating the Saint’s piety, generosity, and stoic resolve in the face of both skeptics and heretics, the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty actively cultivate their bodies as their predecessors did thanks to Isadora’s blessings. Although there is no official rule linking advancement in the Order with weight, almost all senior sisters are some form of obese and members that gain at unusually high rates are considered to have been blessed by the Saint.

Order’s size: Ranks Completely Full
Although conflicts such as the Famine Wars as well as the invasion of Hive Fleet Behemoth have left the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty dangerously under strength, the Order has always recovered admirably during the many years of rebuilding following these conflicts. Due to the reformed Order’s strong public presence and stewardship over vast swaths of the sector, their recruitment pool has grown well beyond the normal schola graduates. While schola students have the advantages of adapting to a heavily regimented lifestyle from an early age and general military training, admission into the Order to open to the general public and many girls aspire to join the ranks of the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty, undergoing homegrown regimes of training and eating, to mixed success.

Order’s Allies: Imperial Guard (local regiments)
Having shed blood side by side during the Famine Wars and in numerous conflicts afterward, the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty and the IG regiments raised in the Demeter sector consider themselves sisters in arms. Stories, such as by the 23rd Persephone Rifles and Sister Karkov’s Retributor squad’s stand on Hill 256, the assault on the Tainted Vineyard by the 154th Demeter mechanized division and the Sister Priscila Agnes’ Celestines, and the final battle against Phthorus lead by storm troops from 1st and 2nd Ceres Saint’s Guard and the Canoness Amelia Ursula’s command squad have become part of a common tapestry of legends and stories which bind the two groups together.
Although the Sisters of the Sacred Bud received their expanded figures as a direct result of Isadora’s blessing, many guardswomen who partook in the food produced by the Saint’s miracles also found themselves growing fatter and more resistant to the Hollowing. Indeed, many regiments have similar traditions to the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty regarding the Saint and gaining weight. One particularly interesting practice that springs up when the two groups meet is eating competitions. While these competitions are mostly one-sided affairs, as the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty mutual feeding and virtually unlimited access to food when not on the battlefield gives them truly ferocious appetites, this has not stopped certain regiments from forming friendly rivalries with the Sisters. Demeter Guard Regiments consider it a point of pride when a particularly gluttonous guardswoman manages to out-eat a Battle Sister. Certain regiments may even take this one step further by having a designated “grox” who is fed left-overs from her comrade’s meals, making her a ringer for these competitions and de facto shrine to Saint Isadora. This practice has proven particularly divisive among the commissariat who are split between reprimanding soldiers for actively debilitating one of their own and turning a blind eye to it as units ostensibly for moral reasons. That said, there are a handful of unorthodox commissars who have taken the moral increasing role of the “grox” to heart and have volunteered themselves for the role.

Order’s Enemies: Chaos (Major), Tau (Minor), Tryanids (Minor)
Due to the Demeter sector’s relative proximity to the Realm of Ultramar, many of the threats that assail the homeworlds of the Ultramarines spill over into the sector. In M41, during the Invasion of Hive Fleet Behemoth, the Sisters of the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty were placed on high alert as the vast amounts of biomass on their agri-worlds were determined to be prime targets for the Hive fleet. Though the bulk of the invasion force was diverted away from the sector as the fighting around Ultramar escalated, splinters of the hive fleet that entered the Demeter sector were met with bolt round and las bolts from battle sisters and their guard allies. Although no major planets were lost and the Tyranid fleets were effectively dispersed, losses among the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty reached levels unseen since the Famine Wars. To this day, one of the responsibilities of Sisters assigned to serve in noble courts is to discretely screen members for genestealer infiltration and initiate a purge of the household if necessary.
By contrast, the Tau are a completely different opponent in terms of manner although no less indigenous. The Tau, like the Imperium, acknowledge the strategic value of the Demeter sector’s breadbasket for feeding both armies and newly acquired territories. For the past several decades, water caste diplomats have made various bids to sway the inhabitants of the sector to serve the Greater Good. Whether this is done by offering worker drones to agri-worlder through their Rogue Trader contacts or spreading subversive propaganda, preying upon lingering memories of how the wider Imperium effectively abandoned the sector during the Famine Wars, the Tau have thus far appeared willing to resort to any method short of an invasion fleet. These attempts, however, have been met with only marginal success in large part due to the presence of the Order of the Emperor’s Bounty who’s popularity with the masses and tight grip over the elite leave few footholds for the Tau to exploit. That said, the ethereal and water castes have been taken note of the “unique” beauty standards of the sector and plan to exploit it for their own ends.
However, the most recent and by far the greatest threat to the sector is the resurgence of Chaos in the segmentum brought upon by the Nurgle and his daemon prince Mortarion’s crusade against Ultramar. The Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty have spent millennia hunting down and eliminating any remaining Chaos cultist that may have survived the Famine Wars but rumors still persist that Phthorus has not forgotten his first banishment at the hands of St. Isadora and will reform the Wasted to once again bring starvation and ruin to the sector.

Misc notes
Order organization
As the Order was originally founded as a standing force for the sector, the Order of the Emperor's Bounty maintains sub-convents and garrisons on planets with either major population centers or strategic value in addition to their primary fortress-convent on Persephone. Upon completing their training, a Battle Sister is given the option to return to her homeworld to join its garrison or remain with the bulk of the Order on Persephone. The Order also maintains a sizable number of void born transports to better facilitate movement between garrisons as well as a fleet of vessels leftover from the Famine Wars.

The Grand Refactory
Among all the facilities in the fortress-convent, the Grand Refectory stands out due to its central role in the legend of Saint Isadora and the lives for the Sisters of the Emperor’s Bounty. Upon entering the room, one’s senses are bombarded not only by the refectory’s cathedral-like appearance, a vaulted ceiling with stained glass murals and frescos, but also the aroma of delicious food being prepared and eaten by its occupants. Though efforts have been made to maintain as much of the original room as possible, the Grand Refectory has undergone numerous expansions and renovations to accommodate both the Order’s swelling members and its swelling ranks. Though many inductees are initially intimidated by the sanctity of the facility and the size of the seats they are expected to fill out, to eat in the Grand Refectory is to become a tangible part of Saint Isadora's legacy. Similarly, to be assigned to cook or wait for the Grand Refectory is considered the highest honor a convent-serf may achieve in life and there can be fierce competition among serfs for the privilege of serving the Sisters. A common rumor among the general population is that the most powerful person in the Sector is the Refactory’s head chef or that they have the power to veto any action the Order may take provided it interferes with their ability to put food on the table. These are, of course, unsubstantiated.

Traditions

The Feast of St. Isadora
The Feast of St. Isadora, which commemorates both the final defeat of the Wasted and the first harvest of the year, is one of the most important holy days of the year in the Demeter sector and is considered on par with the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension. A week-long affair, although some worlds will limit the celebration to just one day for logistical reasons, the Feast begins with six days of fasting where only the most basic foodstuffs, i.e. bread, water, and corpse starch, are allowed to consumed to represent the war with the Wasted. On the sixth night, citizens gather for a holy precession and midnight mass, often overseen or led by Sisters of the Orders of the Emperor’s Bounty. The following morning, a large festival is held to represent the rise of Saint Isadora and the end of the famine.
Although customs vary between planets, common elements of these festivals include reenactments of specific events in the life of Saint Isadora, competitions, and, of course, feasts. On agri-worlds, dishes usually spotlight local crops and specialty products, such as wine, cheese, or grox. On hive worlds, feasts can be lavish affairs with a diverse array of foodstuffs for the upper and middle classes, although even the lowliest of workers can expect a double ration of food and alcohol from their overseer. For many women, the Feast of St. Isadora is also considered to be a prime opportunity to attract potential suitors although many find themselves shown up in terms of size and gluttony if a Sister of the Emperor’s Bounty happens to be present.
Within the Order, the Feast of St. Isadora is a distinctly bittersweet affair. For them, the celebration is both a testament to the perseverance of the sector and to humanity as a whole and a reminder of their failure to protect their charges from the corruption they allowed to take root in the sector. For this reason, the Sisters take the traditions associated with the days very seriously; its members are required to fast for the entire six day period and attend special masses on each night where oaths of vengeance and devotion are sworn or renewed either in person on Persephone or by proxy. That said, the feast presented in the Fortress Convent’s Grand Refactory at the end of the fasting period is truly a sight to behold. In order to feed several hundred, now very hungry women on this most holiest of days, the Fortress Convent’s culinary serfs begin weeks if not months in advance to plan out and prepare every dish and course that will be served. Recipes passed down over generations are meticulously recreated with those that were served at the first feast of the Saint being reserved only for the head chef and their personal cadre of sous-chefs. For an aspiring serf, to have their recipe added into the menu is to become immortalized as part of the Saint’s legacy.