Omnissiah

"Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response."

– Arthur M. Schlesinger

In Warhammer 40,000, things are so grimdark that people have forgotten all of the science that was once known; the only remaining knowledge is encoded in religious ceremonies followed by the Adeptus Mechanicus. The deity central to mechanicus dogma is the Machine God, who is also known as the Omnissiah. In practice though, the Omnissiah is more like Machine Jesus to the Machine God, and most believe the Omnissiah is in fact the Emperor. Others believe, and there is a fair case to be made, that the Omnissiah is the Void Drag-*BLAM*

Attributes

The machine god is a god of logic, and reason; and any form of chaos and disorder is abhorrent to him (although the Dark Mechanicum that still believe in him would argue otherwise). He works through and manifests in machines, which are seen by his worshipers as the ultimate expression of his order. His sacred language is binary, which pretty much every single fucking techpriest is fluent in (and which the Inquisition has spent thousands of years trying to crack but hasn't even come close yet; you'd think they'd just ask a Techmarine for a proverbial Rosetta Stone, but that's 40K for you).

Worship of the machine

To venerate the machine god is to worship your coffee grinder, your showers, your collection of electronic dildos, your own computer you use to access this website, etc. It all involves long, complicated, and frankly needless praying and rituals to activate anything. Even turning on a light, you have to make a prayer first, probably do something with sanctified oil, speak a prayer of thanks that the electricity decided to satisfy your request, and thank the Omnissiah for bringing it all together.

Science is now an arcane art which is treated with danger and care. Literally, technosorcery. A techpriest really is a priest, learning more about hymns than how to properly weld something together. Essentially, this is one of the most blatant cases of literal irony. Because of that and the desire to dunk every piece of technology in oil, the sacred knowledge they guard so jealously has, over time, degraded along with their skills and ability to comprehend common sense.

Speaking of hoarding secrets, they have a habit of keeping information for the sake of it and not sharing unless forced to. It is because they believe the Omnissiah only wishes his chosen to know his knowledge. It is generosity like this that will save the human race from all the terrors that assault it.

The Adeptus Mechanicus has sixteen universal laws of the machine god, divided into eight mysteries and eight warnings as given below with helpful observations.

The Mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus:

• Life is directed motion.
• The spirit is the spark of life. (Ah, very Transformers there.)
• Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge. (Pity they don't take this lesson to heart...)
• Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
• Sentience is the basest form of Intellect. (Does that apply to Orks too?)
• Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
• Comprehension is the key to all things.
• The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all. (Unlike his servants.)

The Warnings of the Cult Mechanicus

• The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path (Which doesn't stop them when they want a look at all those Tau and Necron goodies. the "how" of those technologies is heretical, the science behind them is holy.)
• The soul is the conscience of sentience.
• A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
• The Soulless sentience (i.e. AIs) is the enemy of all (But since machine-spirits and servitors are derived from a mixture of organic and technological components, they're given a pass.)
• The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question. (This is true. Pity that knowledge is in the hands of idiots)
• The Machine Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.
• Flesh is fallible, but ritual honors the Machine Spirit
• To break with ritual is to break with faith. (Which doesn't stop them doing so when they are being shot at by chaos freaks)

History of the Machine

The rise of the machine cult is all but lost to history, although it is known that when the Emperor of Mankind began his Great Crusade, Mars was the first stop, and by then they had all been gay for the Omnissiah for so long that only a few of them got a hard on from seeing the emprah. And only then, because they believed he was the Omnissiah. Mars was a great power, with unrivaled technology and secrets, and the Emperor knew that if he was going to launch his Great Crusade, he would need Mars's support. However, this put him in a bind (because of his Imperial Truth, which said no gods or spirits or anything supernatural truly existed). This of course ruled out the Omnissiah as well, but the Emperor, like any good politician, decided to quietly brush it under the carpet and declared the techpriests were a one-off exception, since the alternative was having a potentially hostile force with a lot of valuable tech right on Terra's doorstep. Likewise, to humor their population, the techpriests for the most part declared the Emperor was an aspect of their God, which you can imagine he didn't like very much but was like "eh, fuck em" and let them get on with it.

Current times

Today the cult of the Omnissiah is one of the state religions of the Imperium, no matter how much the Ecclesiarchy fumes about it. The techpriests get the Ecclesiarchy to buzz off by saying that the Emperor and the Machine God are the same deity, so two religions, one faith, or something. But when it comes to blows (as it has on a few occasions) the ecclesiarchs have cathedrals while the AdMech have cathedral sized killbots, so generally the Ecclesiarchy has to get over it.

The forge worlds are the centres of worship for the Machine God, although each regular Imperial citizen at least knows a little about him and at least generally respects him for the secrets of technology he has bestowed upon mankind.

Theories of true identity

While this may seem straight forward, the actual identity of Omnissiah has become the greatest game of 'Guess Who?' in 40k, as several theories of his true form have now come forward, which are covered below.

Theory One: God-Emperor of Mankind

The majority of tech-priests and other Adeptus Mechanicus personnel within all echelons and stratas of rank believe that the God-Emperor of Mankind is the Omnissiah, or at least a form of him. While there are always outliers and different schools of thought, especially in such a populous faction as the AdMec, it's worth remembering that the belief in Big-E as Omnissiah is by far in a way the predominant consensus of the organization as a whole; as in, probably north of 90% hold this view. These include the tech-priests who remained loyal to the Imperium of Man during the Horus Heresy, as well as their modern day contemporaries, all the way up to Belisarius Cawl himself. The Adeptus Mechanicus officially holds this view, and it is used to pacify the more zealous members of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition who doubt the Mechanicus' loyalty, though there are individuals who believe they are separate. This logically leads to conflict between the two bodies and it is something that will never truly be satisfied by either side. The novel Titanicus described documents from the Heresy era that purported to prove that the Emps and the Omnissiah are not the same. However, these documents were tampered with to an unknown degree by Tolemy, master of the archives, to facilitate his bid for power. It is unknown how much of the documents were factual. The novel Titandeath may provide some support for this theory as well; the short version is that near the end of the novel, with the death of the protagonist, her soul is passing on into the warp, only to be beset by its hostile denizens who begin to circle her. Right before the predators can strike her though, they are dispatched by a blinding golden presence bearing the emblem of the Machine God, which dispels the darkness and destroys those that reside within it, and because she had remained loyal even unto death, the protagonist's soul is welcomed into its domain (and by extension, it's protection). Draw your own conclusions. It is obviously not definitive proof in and of itself, but it does at the very least provide some interesting food for thought. But to be fair, let's be honest: it's usually a safe bet that, for all intents and purposes, gold + warp = Big-E. The blinding aura, protection of loyal humans, and anti-warpfuckery just kinda adds further credence to the theory.

For those wondering, this theory was NOT pulled out of someone's ass to shut the Inquisition up (even though it obviously does smooth things over on that front). For one thing, there is a common school of thought in the Mechanicus that organics are technically machines (human brains are used in place of computers, after all), just really inefficient ones. There are many "cyborgs" in the Mechanicus that don't have a scrap of metal in their bodies, just transplanted organs. The Emperor, being the perfect human, is the logical conclusion of this claptrap. It helps that the Mechanicus does indeed view humans as superior to all other life and divine every bit as much as the Ecclesiarchy. So, a human who is not a cyborg but is still a perfect machine would be, to them, the greatest epitome of man and machine as concepts coming together as one.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, the likes of Belisarius Cawl himself are among the most adamant of true believers in the Emperor as the Omnissiah. Though one's mileage may vary on the opinion of the man himself, especially amongst those of us here on /tg/, you can't really make the claim in good faith that Cawl's assessment on this matter doesn't carry a lot of weight. Arkhan Land and Zagreus Kane are two other easy examples to make of venerable individuals at the highest levels of authority within the AdMec who wholeheartedly consider Big-E to be the Omnissiah.

Theory Two: Void Dragon

Other tech-priests equate the Omnissiah with the Void Dragon, one of the Star Gods of the Necrons. These tech-priests also tend to venerate the Necrons as the Omnissiah's angels. They then tend to do stupid things like poking around in Necron tombs, trying to probe them for secrets as part of their "Quest For Knowledge." They tend not to live very long, as Necrons don't care what any life-forms think of them; they are equal-opportunity destroyers. In the recent Horus Heresy fluff, it was shown the Emperor sealed a silver dragon under Mars in the distant past so humanity could have control over machines (wut? (The void dragon controls machines. So sealing him means we can use machines without fearing some eldritch skynet taking control of the toasters and microwaves and using them to control us or murder us in our sleep.)). Somehow he was able to make it so humans could take some of the dragon's power then for their own although in hindsight putting a super powerful creature in the same solar system as the capital of the Imperium might come back to bite them in the ass...

Hey, wait a minute. The C'tan are vulnerable to the Warp, right? The Mechanicus worships the Machine God, right? So, if the Mechanicus became aware of the Void Dragon and believed it to be the Machine God, would the effect in the Warp from that belief kill the Void Dragon via Warp? Or even subvert it into becoming basically enslaved to humanity due to the Machine Cult's belief that the Machine God is very much on humanity's side. Perhaps this is why the Emperor is implied to have created the Machine Cult. Sealing the Void Dragon on Mars may have been just the first step in a long road.

Theory three: Both theories one and two

Some versions of the myth tend to separate them in two, with the Void Dragon being the Machine God, and the Emperor being the Omnissiah who "tamed" him. It's unclear, really. Some people believe the emperor copied his memories into the void dragon therefore making a digital copy of himself or at least adding a portion of his memories to the completely inhuman ideas of the dragon enough to be able to speak with it and "tame" it. A surviving Man of Iron also posited that they are two related beings but the Emperor is not the Omnissiah.

Theory four: Chaos Undivided

The Dark Mechanicus, those tech-priests who sided with the Chaos Space Marines during the Horus Heresy or turned later, believe that the Omnissiah is a combined aspect of Chaos Undivided, worshiping Chaos as a form of progress and knowledge. Said tech-priests tend to take the mechanical augmentations a little further than one would like in a tech-priest. They also use bio-mechanics, which is very explicitly forbidden.

Theory five: Individual warp entity

It could be over time that like any other strong collective desire and belief the tech-priests have created their own God in the warp, which would be a Machine God of logic, machines and arcane processes. While he may have started off as one of the other theories, such belief just doesn't do anything and proof of previous miracles caused by strong belief in the god and his servants the machine spirits have been seen.

Theory six: Other

Presumably, any sufficiently-advanced machine will be taken for the Machine God by at least some tech-priests, like a functional Man of Iron, or other Dark Age technology. They could for example worship a rediscovered ipod as a significant avatar of his machineness.

In fact, the trilogy of Priests of Mars hints that there may be a kind of entity which goes far beyond the material and warp realm, with the most advanced pieces of technology created by mankind such as the Ark Mechanicus (yes, like that one that one-shot an Eldar capital ship) being sort of avatars of this transcendental being. The fact this entity was neither Chaos nor C'tan aligned and yet could interfere both with the Warp and the Star Gods' powers in their own respective fields. Furthermore, it confirms the existence of the below-mentioned Akashic Records, and points out indirectly how Horus was allowed to access knowledge which should not have been available even for a Primarch (something which happened in the Vengeful Spirit novel). Interestingly, this entity, or entities, seems to be actively hindering the destruction of the physical universe and the complete disruption of the Immaterium, and it is pointed out that it was already old at the time mankind started inventing the basics of mechanics (the lever, for instance). McNeill never clarifies the ultimate nature of this being, yet for all intents and purposes, and given the amount of shenanigans used by the Mechanicus in the novel, it may be the Machine God. It's worth noting that what we call Deus Mechanicus is what limited human capabilities can grasp of an eternally self-evolving singularity.

Given it's power, the fact the Machine Cult is pretty much techno-pseudo-Christianity, it could be that A) The Machine Cult is actually the primary sect of a future Christianity (based on the idea that God used science to create all things and therefore science is holy and knowledge is sacred or even divine, which is actually real life Christian belief and the Church has a scientific branch for exactly that reason) and B) that the Machine God is literally God and that the Mechanicus might eventually be able to access God's power or at least turn that power to humanity's advantage. Also, the Machine God seems to be on humanity's side or at the very least sympathetic to humanity's plight.

Theory seven: Akashic records

The novel Mechanicum presents the view that the Omnissiah may be the sum of all knowledge in the universe. Koriel Zeth, the tech-priest that was researching the Akashic records, did not actually take this view and thought that the Omnissiah just did not exist. Koriel Zeth sought to regain the level of technology that humanity had at its height, and though dangerously close to understanding the concept of science as we know it, that would be too sane for the Mechanicum and she decided not to rebuild that knowledge from redoing all that scientific research, but by connecting to the Akashic records in the Warp (the way, in her mind, that ancient humanity must have learned things). To Zeth, Dalia Cythera, a naturally innovative girl (read: a technopathic psyker) could do what she did not because of skill and heretical research (that she did do), but because she was connected to these records. Though being Warhammer 40K, Zeth was probably correct. Then this theory blurs all of the other theories together. Using the Astronomican and the Emperor's power, Zeth infuses a psyker with all the knowledge in the Warp. This psyker, now dying and omniscient, thought that the most important thing he could say with his new-found knowledge was to direct Dalia to re-imprison the Void Dragon, who she was destined to watch over and had a connection to. So, where does all knowledge come from? The Dark Mechanicus interrupted things, so the issue is never clarified. Worst of all, this being 40K, Zeth might have been right about how humanity developed its technology after all and no one realized it until she puzzled things out. After all, most truly useful and great inventions are created either by geniuses or by people who just had a one-off burst of brilliance. It is kind of...suspicious. This would also mean that killing weak psykers might actually be helping to prevent humanity from recovering its technological power, as many of them might be connected to the Akashic Records and so no more geniuses and spontaneous moments of techno-brilliance will be forthcoming among anyone of any reasonable level of authority in the Imperium as anyone with more than zip connection to the Warp (other than the human norm) but not strong enough to bother collecting on the Black Ships is killed.

Theory Eight: No God but the Emperor

Unlike the rest of the deities, the Machine God has no particular representation in the form of miracles or divine figures, and doesn't appear to be any entity within the Warp. On the one hand, this would imply that tying their theology to the Emperor fulfills the need for a machine god, or that the Mechanicus are hilariously inept theologians. On the other hand, the metaphysics of 40k almost demand that there should be a Machine God for all of Z eir faith, but, as the Warp feeds on emotions rather than prayers, the AdMech's disdain for frivolous aspects like "sentiments" and "humanity" make them just about unable to make a god for themselves. First of all, the Warp definitely feeds on prayers, probably more so than emotions. For evidence, prayers to the Emperor weaken the Chaos Gods, because the Emperor has a Warp signature that is "anathema" to that of the Chaos Gods. So yes, the AdMech should definitely have manifested some kind of Warp entity for the Machine God. The lore has made it perfectly clear that worship has no effect on the Dark Gods, only emotion and various aspects of reality empowers them. People worship them because people always worship any existence perceived as above themselves. That in no way indicates that Chaos gives a damn about their worship. The argument otherwise also completely ignores the nature of the Warp and the effect faith has on it. There is no evidence that worship matters to Chaos, other than some old lore suggesting they gain sentience from it which cannot be true since they gained sentience before anyone even knew they existed, and overwhelming proof that faith affects the Warp. Perhaps by imposing order on it in the form of what is believed.

Though the emotions thing does bring up a strange debate. Magos who've had their brains sufficiently computerized are said to devote small numbers of cycles to emotion equations and engines whenever they see fit to feel an emotion. Jury's still out on whether this kind of emotion is represented in the Warp or not, because if it doesn't then it MIGHT explain why the Machine God is taking so long to form. Or maybe it is already formed, or nascent, for the same reason the Sisters of Battles can use Acts of Faith, the Canticles of the Omnissiah may just as well be "miracles" from the Warp.

Or simply believing something strongly enough in a clap your hands if you believe universe is enough to have an effect on the materium. Like Ork WAAAGH!!! but less intense due to a lack of innate psychic ability, but a noticeable force due to sheer amount of believers in the same doctrine in a far more stable way than Orks. Especially given humans have a very close spiritual connection to the Warp.

(bruh, the machine god has done "miracles" in books before)(prayer is an expression of belief fucking neckbeards, technically "prayer" just means asking and isn't restricted to religion, but in this case yes)

Theory Nine: Taking Things at Face Value

The Omnissiah is a combination of the two words Omni and Messiah. Literally the All Messiah. Humanity, realizing how utterly screwed they are (like having the Void Dragon on Mars, yikes) in the greater scheme of things (at least for those that have 1/10th of a clue, so basically not too many, everyone else is basically brain washed into following the plot through the Imperial Creed) has clandestinely (through the Emprah's machinations, the Ecclesiarchy, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the High Lords of Terra, basically) set about the task of attempting to create their own Warp God (or I guess another, if you consider the Emperor to be a Warp God in his own right). It is meant to be the All Savior of Man Kind, thus the Omni Messiah, which has some pretty grim portents for everyone else in the galaxy considering how Xenophobic the Imperium is. Not that any players care since nearly all of the other species very much deserve to be wiped out. Besides, the Imperium has carefully cultivated a hatred of xenos with specific vile traits (like treachery and bloodlust). So, any Omnissiah god thing would likely pass over peaceful species due to not fitting what the Imperium views xenos as being. The Eldar, being aware of this fact and masters of just pooting out any old god they like (within reason) are aware of humanity's efforts and using the powers of the Farseers to meddle in Human affairs (ie. just destroying entire Imperial Worlds for apparently zero reasons given) to affect a favorable outcome of the possible eventual Awakening of the Omnissiah or perhaps prevent it all together (though likely the former due to Eldrad's prophecy regarding Humanity and Eldar sharing fates and possibly to use the mega nuke to fuck over Slaanesh as a side effect, plus the Eldar are quite willing to die out to get revenge on Slaanesh given their beliefs of how they will end, so they'd probably be fine with getting killed by a human Warp god if the thing will also destroy Chaos, that and they're unable to kill enough humans to matter anyway especially without making themselves easy prey to everything else). Where other races line up in their awareness of just what the Imperium is up to is unknown, but one could surmise Chaos also has a clue since their gods would be aware, and then likely also the Orks assuming Gork and Mork are real and Orks really do understand ALL technology.

This doesn't sound so crazy when you remember the prophecy that eventually the Machine Cult and Imperial Cult would join and become one and the same. If true, their gradual merging could be the final stage of the plan by uniting humanity's perception of the Emperor and the Omnissiah into one being. It already is for the Mechanicus (unless you want to be ripped part for heresy), but the extreme majority of humans don't even particularly think of the Omnissiah in the first place. So, getting them to conflate Emperor with Omnissiah would be critical to guide the psychic energy of their faith.

Long story short, the entire thing with the Emperor taking the guise of the Omnissiah and after his death being worshiped as a God, as well as the Mechanum's worship of the Machine God, is all just a plot to bring some sort of Apocalyptic Warp Deity about that somehow saves all of mankind from well, everything, while possibly wiping out THE ENTIRE REST OF THE GALAXY that isn't a faithful servant of the Imperium, like Slaanesh-ing everyone else and walking away scot-free. Essentially they're attempting to cook up a giant Warp Nuke that all at once BTFOs everything that isn't them (and possibly minor pacifist Xenos and the Eldar who would certainly be aware of such a major psychic plot and appropriately be able to latch on to their benefit) while simultaneously saving them from the utter technological stalemate they've developed that's leading to Humanity's slow decline via complete lack of innovation with one giant *BLAM*. However, the fact they're attempting to bring about a God that achieves so much means that it could take a very long time, and the Powers that be in the Imperium may have no idea how close or far away they are.

Furthermore, it may be working, although ever so slowly, as the Warp has started to essentially resonate back on their myriad prayers. In fact the Omnissiah may already exist in some form, it just happens to be in it's infancy, much like the notion Slaanesh is still but just a child that may not have even fully awakened yet.

It may be possible not even most members of the Mechanicum are aware of the exact implications of this, as they worship the Emperor as the Omnissiah and he basically saved them from nothing, as far as technology is concerned, as well as the fact they were worshiping the Omnissiah before the Emperor ever appeared to them. If the truth of the reality ever came to light it likely means the Tech-Priests of the galaxy would undergo a MASSIVE schism, so large it could likely tear the Imperium apart in a way not seen since the Horus Heresy. On the other hand, the Horus Heresy novels included an implication that the Emperor had purposely engineered the creation of both the Mechanicum and the Machine Cult more than ten thousand years before the Great Crusade, even before the Iron Rebellion (Iron War, which also sounds way more awesome and...metal) and the Age of Strife... Just as Planned.

Trivia

• The Omnissiah's favourite colour is red. Hence all techpriests on Mars wear red robes. It's a rule.
  • Some forgeworlds, however, have white or black as a dominant colors of their robes, though red strips are there too.
  • DATZ WOY ITZ FASTAH!!! *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM* No Orks allowed.
• The Omnissiah's holy waffle iron makes the best waffles. It is the holy bread of his church.
• Don't let Tzeentch mess with his computer again; he hates that.
• The Omnissiah is the God of Wikis and their contributors, for their ordering, editing and adding to knowledge pleases him.
• The first avatar of the Omnissiah was an ancient Terran known to the Techpriests as Bill of the Gates, named they believe for opening the gates of knowledge. *BLAM* HERESY! While one of the avatars of the Omnissiah, Bill of the Gates was certainly not the first. We all know that the true avatar was Linus of the Torvalds.
  • The REAL first avatar of the Omnissiah was known by the denomer of Charles Babbage, theories abound as to why he was called that.
    • Correction: Babbage was the last of the prophets, the one who brought forth the physical form of the mind in the machine, the original host in gleaming brass and complex mechanisms. The first avatar is she Ada, who netted in the spirit of the machine in a lace of love. For is not the gathering and interpretation of information in indexed form and in orderly means and ways, "programming"?
• The first Heretek was a man named Richard Matthew Stallman, who glorified heretical research ("hacking"), which is one of the basic activities of the Dark Mechanicus.
• The oldest tech relic on Mars, hidden deep inside the catacombs of Olympus Mons, is a strange disc titled 'Friends season three, disc two, episodes six to ten'. Obviously this precious creation is a gift of divine importance, and is thus guarded fiercely by a crack legion of Skitarii, with only the Fabricator-General of Mars allowed regular access!
• It is believed the first sect of the Mechanicus was known as DARPA, to them the Machine God gave the inspiration to build INTERNET, the first material reflect of the Akashic Records and basis to all databanks to come, hence ensuring mankind will never lose the Gift of Wisdom (which it then did).
• Little known fact, but the Omnissiah in ancient Humanity's past once held sway over much of Slaanesh's domains. In those olden days, the Omnissiah was used as a shepherd for various debaucherous materials, his dataslates and cogitators of those early eras were used by young humans from across Terra to masturbate to cartoon women procreating with tentacled chaos spawASAHKAGHDKAGHAKOHFUCKITHURTSAAAAAAAAAAAHHGHDEAK! *BLAM* NO CYKA ALLOWED.