


Potential Serious Flaw With Penitent Engines
The Sisters are an army I have a lot of interest in and will definitely be something I look to build in the future. As such, I've been reading up on them, but I've noticed a flaw that probably wasn't given much second thought by GW because of "rule of cool." I highly doubt I'm the first person to think of this, but maybe it was expanded upon somewhere and I missed it.
The subjects of penitent engines can range from criminals and heretics to other sisters whom the Orders Militant felt weren't up to the task or weren't pious enough. The crueler variant, the Mortifier seems to be reserved specially for sisters whom the Orders felt needed more severe punishment like Repentia and novitiates who fail their duties or sisters who committed crimes against the Order.
The thing is, sisters can end up hooked to these machines for rather ridiculous reasons, so what prevents some of these sisters from having "bouts" friendly fire against those who put them there? I know the sisters are so hyper-indoctrinated that some of them truly believe that they deserve such punishments even for something mundane, but let’s look at the example of that novitiate from that Warhammer plus animation. Long story short, a novitiate accidentally killed another novitiate in a training exercise, and was sent on a mission with her Palatine and some other sisters to redeem herself. The mission was completed, but the novitiate was the only one who survived. She was then put in the mortifier because a superior sister who was assessing her simply didn't like her (using her killing another novitiate as an excuse) and there was no one else of equal or higher rank to vouch for her. She felt betrayed and treated unfairly, but could do nothing more than beg and shout futilely as her sisters dragged her into the machine to suffer one of the worst fates imaginable in this universe.
Imagine being confined to a machine where you can't move, you can't scream, you can't hear, with it also being programmed to constantly inflict immense pain to you while simultaneously keeping you alive for as long as possible. Imaging being strapped to machine that's main purpose is to make you hate yourself every second of your miserable existence. Imagine being strapped to a machine that prevents you from killing yourself to end the suffering. Imagine feeling betrayed by the sisters that you thought had your back, and now you see them proudly killing enemies within their power armor while you have to suffer the humiliation of being strapped to a machine that makes your life a living hell. Surely, that would make some of them snap right? I surely would if I were in that position. They can't really give you a worse punishment than being strapped to a penitent engine or mortifier.
Maybe I missed something because the potential for those in these engines to retaliate against those who put them in there is a little to high to not really put any serious consideration into it.