Silent Sisters

Product Information

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska directed a feature film with the twins as the subject, starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance, based on the 1986 book The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace. Receiving help from an unexpected quarter, in the form of the mysterious Yvraine, high-priestess of the Aeldari god of the dead known as Ynnead, she led the Imperial defenders through a Warp Gate and into the Webway, away from their Chaos pursuers. It would take the VI Legion to bring Pentacanaes back to heel, and in the aftermath a billion dead were accounted for and half a world left a burned-out shell. They soon arrived in the Realm of Ultramar and made all haste to Macragge, the Chapter homeworld of the Ultramarines.

Their births were not unusual, nor were their dispositions as infants, but soon enough, their parents began to see that June and Jennifer Gibbons were not like other girls — and it wouldn’t be until one of the twins met her untimely death that any sense of normalcy would be reclaimed. Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance are excellent as the grownup June and Jennifer, two young women who withdraw into a vivid world of their own – to the profound dismay of their parents and intense irritation of their siblings, for whom June and Jennifer suck all the oxygen out of their young lives. It was also taken as fact that much of the initial sifting and processing of the Great Tithe took place not in the Sol System but elsewhere on several isolated and otherwise prohibited star systems nearby -- an understandable change from the tithe's early days given the sheer scale of the operation as the Imperium had expanded and the potential security risks involved in so many untrained psykers being concentrated in a single area. These Divisio Astra Telepathica-administered star systems were only known to other arms of the Imperium as vague and shifting code designations, but here the Silent Sisters alone held sway and what numbers, facilities and resources they possessed in these sovereign domains, none save they and the Emperor knew. Their mere proximity is enough to cause psykers discomfort and pain, and in truth they will even sow fear and disgust in the hearts of those whose minds are without the psyker's gift, no matter how strong-willed they may be.They were tasked with hunting and exterminating those who would use their psychic talent against the Imperium or their fellow Humans during the wars for Imperial Compliance. The powers of Chaos sent foully corrupted Heretic Astartes, Chaos Titans and other war machines into the Webway to try and force a victory. While other Imperial forces made planetfall at key targets, near two hundred warriors of the Auric Eagle Cadre of the Vigil Indomitus deployed around the capital's astropathic chori-spyre.

For the most part, Wallace noticed, June seemed to be more fearful of Jennifer, and Jennifer seemed to be the dominant force. But alas, the severely outnumbered Imperial forces faced annihilation, as the world of Cadia soon fell to the vile machinations of the dread Abaddon. Thousands of hideous Daemons poured into the Imperial extension of the Webway and immediately set about attacking the Imperial forces within. In 1974, a medic administering vaccinations at the school noted their impassive behaviour and notified a child psychologist.Photograph: Łukasz Bąk/Focus Features A vivid world of their own … Letitia Wright (left) and Tamara Lawrance in The Silent Twins. The gate would remain closed to the Daemons for as long as the Emperor was able to power it from His throne atop the golden portal.

Some later speculated that the whole Pentacanaes affair was arranged; a kind of bloody experiment -- a field test whose results were bought at the deliberate sacrifice of a billion lives.The Emperor summoned an army of loyal Imperial dead from the Immaterium including the dead primarch Ferrus Manus that took the form of blazing avatars to fight the Daemons. But like many things that occurred during those early years of the Imperium, much of the extant record has become unknowable. In some rare cases, these hunters learned to suppress their uncanny auras to some degree, and in living alongside others begot their own bloodlines.