Sisters and Grapes

After Chen Xi placed a Canoness and a Palatine on Rostov II, the formation of the Sisters of Battle began.

Having secured construction slots for the Order of Sisters and some weaponry and equipment through the Ecclesiarchy, Chen Xi's Canoness began recruiting girls of suitable age from the Ecclesiarchy cities on Rostov II.

The Ecclesiarchy forces on Rostov II gave their full support, and some of the sisters came from the local Ecclesiarchy.

These young sisters were not Sisters of Battle. Though they had received some combat training before, they were still merely ordinary sisters with ordinary combat training.

Thus, after being selected as novice Sisters of Battle, they still required extensive training before they could become qualified Sisters of Battle.

Because of the Order of the Sacred Rose's particular customs, these Ecclesiarchy sisters and the other selected girls in training had to learn sacred hymn singing in addition to military drills and mental conditioning.

After all, the Sisters of Battle of the Order of the Sacred Rose sang hymns as they slew their enemies on the battlefield.

While observing the novices' training, Chen Xi suddenly had the idea of sending the sisters to sing hymns in the vineyards that had now begun cultivation.

The Canoness carried out the order. At Gutierrez's suggestion, she also had the novices take charge of all work in the vineyards, teaching them how to tend the vines and make wine with their own hands.

"Grapes grown while listening to hymns, tended and made into wine by devout Ecclesiarchy sisters— even without any special bonuses, that alone would be an excellent selling point and gimmick. It would effectively boost the wine's sales and reputation," Gutierrez said to Chen Xi, displaying the professional instincts of a wine merchant. "And this is the Warhammer universe. The sacred hymns of the Order of the Sacred Rose have all kinds of special effects; they can even be called miracle spells.

"Who knows whether listening to so many hymns might give these grapes some special properties? If the wine they make ends up with special properties, you'll strike it rich!"

"Uh, do you think Big E having maidens stomp the grapes and insisting on traditional methods might have had something to do with that too?" Chen Xi recalled that brewing recipe and could not help suspecting Big E had something planned.

"Who knows? Having maidens crush grapes underfoot to make wine really is an ancient method. Having a monastery handle the winemaking is an ancient method too! Recreating the traditional brewing methods of the 1K Era, a brewing technique personally bestowed by the Emperor—do you really believe there's nothing special going on there?" Gutierrez looked at the vineyard in the valley, removed his helmet, and revealed an utterly enraptured expression.

Gutierrez loved wine. His greatest dream had once been to earn enough money to buy a vineyard estate and retire there.

Now that he saw this wine estate, he was naturally captivated by it.

Looking at his face, Chen Xi shook his head. "Forget it. At the very least, Big E wouldn't harm us. Even if he has some scheme, it wouldn't be to our detriment, right?"

Chen Xi and Gutierrez were both veteran Warhammer fans. They had witnessed at least four editions of official rules updates and seen how many books Games Workshop had retconned.

Precisely because of that, they had a thorough understanding of what sort of figure the Emperor truly was.

Could they dare say there had been no calculation by the Emperor behind their transmigration into this world? They did not even dare believe it themselves.

Still, for them, some things did not need to be understood quite so clearly.

"Serve Big E, and at least we're still human. If you go worshipping those four lumps of Chaos, I'm afraid you won't even remain a person," Gutierrez said with a sigh.

Just like that Warhammer hell joke said, humanity had four Chaos Gods, but this galaxy had always had five.

Their human identities naturally inclined their position toward the Emperor's side.

"The Imperium might indeed be a piece of work, but at least you can still exist as a human. If you believe in those four Chaos things, you won't even get to be livestock," Chen Xi said, shaking his head with the same sigh.

As Warhammer fans, in the 3K Era they could indeed proclaim that they wanted to serve Khorne and chop people up, worship Slaanesh and have lots of wild sex, or even think that coming to the Warhammer universe meant believing in Nurgle was the only way out.

But once they had truly transmigrated here, anyone who dared believe in those four Chaos things would face nothing but a fate worse than death.

As for the "T'au are stronger" line that some armchair Warhammer fans praised to the skies—did anyone seriously think a space caste system was a good thing?

Though the T'au did treat the lower classes more humanely than the Imperium, from an ordinary person's perspective, joining the T'au Empire would indeed allow one to live a life that Imperial citizens could only consider blissful.

But that was contingent on being able to tolerate the T'au Empire's rigid class hierarchy.

The Fire Caste could only be warriors, the Earth Caste could only be scientists, and people of the Water Caste were all "born" diplomats...

The core T'au and the Ethereals stood above all other client species. They might work alongside you, but a human commanding T'au? That was something that could never happen.

All of it could be regarded as a space-age version of the caste system.

Although they could still be called wonderful compared to the Imperium's brutality, that was only because the T'au had not yet experienced this galaxy's true cruelty.

They had not poured all their resources into military expansion, nor had they been forced to take every kind of extreme measure to resist Chaos corruption.

Oh, no, the Ethereals had done so before. The famous Farsight incident, for example, was a T'au hero's rebellion brought about after the T'au finally witnessed the Chaos daemons.

To some extent, all the T'au Empire's splendor existed only because they were still in a stage of expansion and ascent, with sufficient resources and benefits to satisfy everyone's needs.

Their territory was also simply too small—small enough that they could maintain their development even without faster-than-light travel.

In fact, before the Third Sphere Expansion in 997.M41, the T'au Empire's territory consisted of only around a dozen Sub-sectors, which combined amounted to roughly the equivalent of 1.7 Imperial sectors.

With such a small area, they naturally did not need to consider the problems caused by overextended territory, and could mobilize resources for development far more conveniently.

If it were the Imperium, never mind 1.5 sectors—even if it had only the scale of Macragge's Five Hundred Worlds, the Imperium of Man would be countless times better off than it was now.

After all, the straight-line distance from Holy Terra to Macragge truly spanned tens of thousands of light-years, crossing the entire galaxy.

(The regular hexagon at the lower-right end of the Great Rift is the T'au Empire.)

But none of that held much significance for Chen Xi now. Developing his own planet and, before the Great Rift opened, developing the Sub-sector where he was located into his own backyard—those were the primary tasks at hand.