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, whose individual members are known as Techpriests, control 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, homeworld of the Adeptus Mechanicus, on which the most badass weapons ever known to man are made.
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.
They are also avid music lovers.
This is their theme done by HMKids.
History of the Adeptus Mechanicus
The Mechanicus was established in the distant past, when a bunch of machine worshiping technophiles normal people terraformed Mars during mankind's dominating of the Solar System and colonizing of the galaxy. Thus Mars became an extremely technologically advanced society of astronauts, scientists, engineers, manufacturers, and miners wherein they could pursue 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 took the sky from them, nuking 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?
The Machine Spirits
The "Machine Spirit" is the Imperium's version of Artificial Intelligence, mainly because after the reunification of Terra; the Emperor forbade the use of AI in machinery(Mostly to prevent the Void Dragon from skullfucking them, Skynet style).
The Techpriests of Mars got around in true WH40K grimdark fashion: cut out the "Artificial" part and make it organic. Nearly every piece of sophisticated machinery in the Imperium has a "Machine Spirit" which is basically the recycled brain of a human converted to function like a horrific version of a CPU. This "Machine Spirit" would serve as a combination of a CPU and AI, all still under the command of a human operator.
Thus, it can be easily understood why machines are revered by the Mechanicus and why they are treated like sentient beings. Although, the AdMech is a bit fuzzy just how sentient machines are; are they fully capable of thought or no more sentient than an AI?
The Commandments of the Mechanicus
The Mechanicus have some ideas that they abide by:
The Mysteries:
01. Life is directed motion.
02. The spirit is the spark of life.
03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
07. Comprehension is the key to all things.
08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.
The Warnings:
09. The alien mechanism is a perversion of the true path.
10. The soul is the conscience of sentience.
11. A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
12. The Soulless sentience is the enemy of all.
13. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
14. The machine spirit guards the knowledge of the ancients.
15. Flesh is fallible, but ritual honors the machine spirit.
16. To break with ritual is to break with faith.
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. Even things like Land Raiders and Land Speeders, which were said to have been given critically important parts by the famous Mr. Land himself, were actually just made from really old bits Land found in the galaxy's third biggest library/archive/warehouse (the one on Terra).
Also important to mention is what they do not do. The Mechanicus by and large the greediest gits in the galaxy. they hoard technology like it is going out of style, which it would be if they didn't hoard and defend it, but that isn't the point. The point is that getting a part, gun, computer, vehicle, schematic, program, eyepatch, cookie recipe, or even a tiny plastic model that wasn't specifically mass-produced and shipped to the Departmento Munitorum so they can give it to you, is nearly impossible. Anything with any kind of passing significance or interest to the Mechanicus is guarded by 7-foot cyborg death machines. Anything in the private possession of a Mechanicus operative that might be harder to make than a bolt or nut is treated like the holy grail. I dare you to try and take a 8,000 year-old flash drive from a techpriest who just found it. It's worse than taking little plastic models from fat men with beards.
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. The Eldar refer to it as the "Void Dragon", and the aircraft and pirate warband take their names from it.
Gallery
-
-
D'awwww.
-
D'awwww.
-
PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH!
-
Someone got Chaos on my Mechanicus, now with theme music!
-
-
showin' a little augmented leg
