Adeptus Mechanicus
The Adeptus Mechanicus is an organization in the Imperium of Man responsible for technology, engineering and most of the Imperium's Industrial production, as well as the operation of the Titan Legions. The Adeptus Mechanicus controls thousands of forge worlds (think about any death metal/industrialist band CD illustration obsessed with heavily industrialized landscapes and you will get a bit close to the idea). Forge worlds are covered in massive manufactoria or, as they are known to speakers of Low Gothic, 'work'. The largest forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus is Mars, on which the most badass weapons ever known to man are made.
Common belief holds that they're pants-on-head retarded because they supposedly treat technology like magic, the reason is because they think machines have souls of their own called a "Machine Spirit." For example: the reason why the microwave doesn't work is it is tired of heating that high in cholesterol freeze food. However, one must note that the Machine Spirits DO exist, and they DO get into a fit whenever they get jury-rigged or put into the wrong line of work, which usually ends with them assploding for no reason or failing to function at all. Exactly how far this machine spirit goes is questionable, of course. Does your microwave actually have a machine spirit, or is it just that it's short circuted somewhere? Since it'd probably be an affront to the potential spirit to open it up and look, you're going to have to give it a soothing backrub anyway. Interestingly enough, since machines are often very specified or very complicated, such odd behaviors can be attributed to things like overspecailization and poor unsderstanding of the tools worked with. Problems and quirks can build into emergent behaviors that can wander into what some might call behavior, temperment, or personality (think the old car junkies that talk to their vehicles). And, with some of the HUGE computers made of rows and rows of giant oranic neural-optic crystals (its canon, look up the cortex!) it is plausable that primitive intelegences could evolve over the course of the hundreds of years these machines stay in service. But, they had at least thirteen thousand years to figure this out, they have no excuse to still be operating like this!
They also tend to hog all the really cool shit for themselves --like Titans and other wonderful stuff-- only letting the Imperials have it when really, really necessary (or if they're threatened personally). They have two armies of their own, which are not anything like the Imperial Guard, as they are mostly composed by badass angry cyborgs and boxy technogrunge robots that are more violent than ED209, and giant, tank-crushing, lobotomized minions.
History of the Adeptus Mechanicus
The Mechanicus was established in the distant past, when a bunch of machine worshiping techophiles normal people terraformed Mars during mankind's dominating of the Solar System and colonizing of the galaxy. Thus mMars became an extremely technologically advanced society of astronauts, scientists, engineers, manufacturers, and miners wherein they could persue advances in technology and power the Dark Age of Technology. After a while, during the Age of Strife, their precious atmosphere was punctured, and solar radiation beat down on their filthy heads burned the land, boiled the seas, and nuked all life. Everybody either did one of three things, dies, hid underground, or went feral. After hundreds of years of living from half-working mechanical bunker to partially-pressurized archaic hab spire; people began to look upon technology as a savior and way to return to the former heights of glory. Thus, did a new cult spread amongst the people of Mars, wherein they paid reverence to the Machine God. Just as planned.
And then they joined the EMPRAH because they saw him as an aspect of the Machine God called the 'Omnissiah'. As if the parallels aren't already tremendously clear at this point.
Hilariously, the "Machine God" may actually be the Void Dragon, one of the ancient C'tan Star Gods. The Void Dragon is actually one of the most powerful of the C'tan, and gains control over machines. All those techpriests are going to have serious problems when it wakes up... Oh yeah. It's on Mars because the EMPRAH clubbed it over the head and knocked it out on Mars. It's now guarded by the Mechanicus in their Noctys Labyrinth. This point of view is not canon, so the Machine God may be anything like the collective mass of all machines or the sum of all knowledge, neither would all Mechanicus accept a C'Tan as their lord. But it's a more fun version, isn't it?
What the Mechanicus does
They spend a lot of time traveling across the galaxy looking for some old laptops called "Standard Template Constructs" that have all the info necessary for the first human colonist do their job well (mostly a mix of Ikea and "high-tech for dummies" manuals). This is the reason why you will end selling grox hamburgers if you study to be an engineer (unless you have balls or are a spess mehreen artificer who make make something really good) in the Imperium: everything was already done by the ancients in the Dark Age of William Gibson and recorded in these STCs. Thanks to borderline developers and programmers, all the STCs found by the Mechanicus are more fucked up than Windows Vista or Windows ME FUCKING WINDOWS 95! So when they found an undamaged one, they get truly orgasmic. They also attempt to loot Necron tombs and will gladly put an entire world at risk for this, and act like it's blasphemy of the most serious kind when people wall it off because of the goddamn killer robot skeletons! The idiots.
Very very very very very rarely the Adeptus will actually invent something. While they do adapt designs occasionally the only things they actually invented from scratch is the Lascannon and all the Titans, except for the Reaver Class and the Apocalypse Class, which were invented during the Age of Strife and the Dark Age of Technology respectively. Which is pretty odd, until you realize that they invented them preheresy.
The Void Dragon
A lot of their tech stuffs come from the Void Dragon that the Emperor bested and imprisoned on Mars ages ago as so humanity could gain mastery over machines. While it might have worked pretty well back when the Imperium wasn't the festering porta-potty of a grimdark shitpit that it is today, it's pretty much a matter of time now. The Necrons already attempted to raid Mars - and succeeded, well, sort of. They got vaporized before they could really even do anything, but the fact that they managed to even land proved a point the High Lords of Terra had been turning a blind eye towards for ages.
If the T-800s get what they want and party on Mars long enough to wake the Void Dragon up, you can bet it's going to be a pretty goddamned bad day for just about any human not wearing loincloths and still bashing rocks together. The few Mechanicus agents who have figured this out have either gone rogue, blammed or gone totally bonkers, ripping all the implants from their flesh. And when you're a member of the Mechanicus, that's about 80% of your body.
Of course, the even worse possibility is that the void dragon enjoys this situation, as every time the tech-priests remove their flesh and place more machine into it, they could be feeding him a fraction of their soul. As there are quite a few tech-priests out there, and humanity being the rabbits they are, this would give him a lifetime of souls to be eating, and a personal army that is very much willing.
Btw, the "Void" Dragon is actually only called "The Dragon" in the official fluff, probably as a reference to Metropolis. But for God knows what unreasonable reason, /tg/ insists on calling him the "Void Dragon", thus confusing him with an eldar aircraft, or with an eldar pirate warband. Unless it's an obscure vidya reference. Whatever, maybe it just sounds cooler.
Gallery
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D'awwww.
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D'awwww.
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PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH!
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Someone got Chaos on my Mechanicus, now with theme music!
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showin' a little augmented leg
