Omnissiah

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.

Attributes

The machine god is a god of logic and reason and any form of chaos and disorder is abhorrent to him. He works through and manifests in machines, which are seen by his worshippers as the ultimate expression of his order. His sacred language is binary, which all techpriests are fluent in (and which the Inquisition has spent thousands of years trying to crack but hasn't even come close yet).

Worship of the machine

To venerate the machine god is to worship your coffee grinder, your showers, your electric razor, 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 and then speak of prayer of thanks the electricity decided to satisfy your request.

Science is now an arcane art which is treated with danger and care. A techpriest really is a priest, learning more about hymns then how to properly weld something and because of that and the desire to dunk every piece of technology in rusting oils the sacred knowledge they guard so jealously as over time degraded along with their skills and ability to comprehend common sense.

Speaking of hording secrets, they really do, 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 here)
• 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 goodies.)
• 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 hidden in the history although it is known when the Emperor of Mankind began his great crusade Mars was dedicated to the Omnissiah. Mars was a great power, with unrivaled technology and secrets. If he was going to launch his great crusade the Emperor needed Mars support although this put him in a pickle, 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 declared the Emperor was a part and aspect of their God, which you can imagine he didn't like very much but again he grinned and beared 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 forge worlds are the centre of his worship although each regular Imperial citizen knows of the machine god and at least respects him for his secrets of technology he gave mankind. Usually he is sold as an aspect of the Emperor as noted above.

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

Some tech-priests believe that the God-Emperor of Mankind is the Omnissiah, or at least a form of him. These include the tech-priests who remained loyal to the Imperium of Man during the Horus Heresy. The Adeptus Mechanicus officially holds this view, and it is used to pacify the more zealous member of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition who doubt the Mechanicum's loyalty, though there are many individuals who believe they are separate. This logically though does lead to causes of conflict between the two bodies and it is something that will never truly be satisfied by either side. The novel Titanicus somehow scientifically confirms that this is not actually the case, but both factions need each other.

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. 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...

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

Theory four: Chaos Undivided

The Dark Mechanicus, those tech-priests who sided with the Chaos Space Marines during the Horus Heresy, 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.

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 has 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 that ancient humanity must have learned things not through research but by connecting to the Akashic records in the Warp. To Zeth, a naturally innovative girl, Dalia Cythera, could do what she did not because of skill and heretical research, but because she was connected to these records. Though being Warhammer 40K, she was probably correct. Then this theory blurs all of the other theories together. Using the Astronomicon 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.

Trivia

• The Omnissiah's favourite colour is red. Hence all techpriests wear red robes. It's a rule.
• 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, editting and adding to knowledge pleases him.
• The first avatar of the Omnissiah was an anicent earthling known to the Techpriests as Bill of the Gates, named they believe for opening the gates of knowledge.
• The oldest tech relic on Mars hidden deep inside the catacombs is a strange disc titled 'Friends season three, disc two, episodes six to ten'. Obviously this highly precious creation is a gift of divine importance!
• The Omnissiah is Steve Jobs