Adeptus Mechanicus

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Adeptus Mechanicus
Capital	Mars
Official Languages	Cant Mechanicus (Major dialect Lingua-Technis and local dialects), Low Gothic (local variants), High Gothic
Power	Galactic Client Superpower, acting as de jure tributary state to main Superpower
Size	Galactic 125 Known Forgeworlds totals presumably in the tens-of-thousands or possibly higher depending on total Imperial planets Numerous outposts and research stations Various enclaves or legally exlusive zones in the wider Imperium
Head of State	Fabricator-General of Mars Oud Oudia Raskian
Head of Government	Fabricator-General of Mars Oud Oudia Raskian, Martian Parliament, Planetary Archmagi Domini
Governmental Structure	Feudal Theocratic Technocracy (Before Great Crusade) Semi-Autonomous Corporatocratic Theocratic Technocracy (Great Crusade-Present)
State Religion/Ideology	Cult Mechanicus / Omnissiah worship
Demographic	Humans, various Servitors, assorted Transhumans and Cyborgs
Military Force	Skitarii, Collegia Titanica, Centurio Ordinatus, Legio Cybernetica, Knight Houses, Adeptus Mechanicus Fleets, Explorator Fleets

"I am... a machine"

– An ancient Terran Cybernetic law officer, serial numbers "R080-C0P" defended Hive City Detroit from those who would abuse the Omnissiah's subjects

"Sometimes I wonder why you submitted to the changes."
"Improvements! I submit to no one. I chose them."

– A-4D & General Grievous, in a galaxy far far away...

"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences."

– Freeman Dyson

"I’m an engineer, that means I solve problems. Not problems like, what is beauty, because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems."

– Dell Conagher, an ancient Terran, also known as “The Engineer”, who was likely the first to use cybernetics. Namely, his own new hand.

"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the blessed purity of the machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day, the crude biomass that you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the machine is immortal."

– Magos Dominus Faustinus

Basically what happens when you combine the extreme technophilia and cyborg-fetishism of the Cyberpunk/Raypunk Genre with the religiosity and esoteric practices of Scientology Gnostic cults, the Adeptus Mechanicus; Formerly known as the Mechanicum and often shortened as AdMech, is an organization in the Imperium of Man (In the loosest sense of the word) that simultaneously operates as a government ministry, religious organization and Technology Corporation, responsible for science, technology, engineering, manufacturing 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, own dozens, maybe hundreds of heavily polluted planet-factories known as forge worlds, which 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 its homeworld Mars, on which the most badass weapons ever known to man are made, most of which they refuse to share. Despite being part of the Imperium, the AdMech was actually its own nation and a respectable superpower in its own right throughout the Great Crusade and largely is to this day. The 'being-part-of-the-Imperium' shtick was a symbolic gesture of goodwill signed by the Treaty of Mars, but was codified when they became the "Adeptus Mechanicus" after their former leader fell to Chaos. They still secured quasi-independence and private property rights though, courtesy of marching an Imperator titan into the senate chamber and holding them at building-sized gunpoint.

The Adeptus Mechanicus is basically the definition of a Zaibatsu (Mega-Corporation, i.e. a Monopoly). Imagine Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon combined; they are simply so rich and powerful, and have totally privatized the production and manufacturing of technology for themselves, that they can basically buy the government and its politicians. The Imperium as a whole may despise the AdMech for being Heretics who worship a foreign materialist God, but they have private claim to all the various Forgeworlds, Manufactoria, Mining worlds and Research Stations needed for the production of Imperial war machines. Where else can you even buy a new cellphone or have repair maintenance for your servitors, if not your local Techpriest? Because of this privatized monopoly, the AdMech has become an Empire within an Empire, and can possibly survive without the Imperium, while the Imperium cannot survive without the AdMech.

They have a monopoly on all the really cool shit for themselves (aside from the overpowered DAOT artifacts in the Emperor’s basement) — like Titans, Ordinatus, and other wonderful stuff — only letting the Imperials have it when absolutely necessary or if they're threatened personally, with the justification of keeping the good shit away from Chaos in case an army rebels. They have two armies of their own, which are not anything like the Imperial Guard, as they are mostly composed of badass angry technogrunge cyborgs that are more violent than ED209, lobotomized minions manufactured out of clones and heretics, and giant, world-devastating Super Robots. They are also technological rivals with the space weeaboos with transforming mecha (at least in tech that doesn’t assrape the laws of physics) and potentially have made a few advances beyond the Eldar, though the Eldar are much more advanced in psionic technology (so much so that Craftworld technology is basically literal space magic).

Only the Necrons (being an entire race of robots, whose race-wide robotization was not their most advanced feat) and the Leagues of Votann (an entire race of DAOT-tier Dorfs) eclipse them technologically on all levels. The Adeptus Mechanicus are conflicted on how to perceive the Necrons; some see them as perverse because it's alien, some are envious of the Necrons, others revere them as agents of the Machine-God and tend to kill themselves attempting to loot Necron tombs (though there may be truth to this).

They typically look like a cross between Jawas and Doctor Octopus with a healthy dose of The Bene Tleilax, as well as wearing the sort of re-breather masks that you'll typically see on riot police. Take the post-apocalyptic monks in 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', motivations, demeanor and agenda included, and crank them up to eleven. So yeah, pretty fucking awesome.

Basically, you can build what you want but knowing how always comes from the Mechanicus. They are the cap on advancement and science and who knows what technological secrets and who is permitted to build what and where and for how long. It’s entirely justified as anyone trying to advance separately invariably learns the hard way that the AdMech’s superstitions of tech might not be all that superstitious after all.

So far as their overall purpose goes, they’re basically the replacement of the Unification Wars’ Terrawatt Clan (who might still exist on Terra, nobody knows). After the Primarchs weren’t around to keep people from being stupid, the Imperial Cult became gigantinormous and the Mechanicus went on basically a techno-jihad and assimilated every independent scientific community, group, club, and individual or just killed any that refused. Since the Ecclesiarchy can build such things as their Rosarius shield generators and powered armor among other major technologies despite refusing to work with the Mechanicus on tech unless there is no choice, it seems likely any surviving scientists fled to other branches of the Imperium like the Ecclesiarchy for protection (the main production of the Adepta Sororitas battle equipment is actually made on Mars, following an edict of G-o-g-e Vandire, granting the Mechanicum more freedom in their religion under Vandires rule, in exchange for high equality equipment for his bolter bitches. This edict was ratified by Sebastion Thor and all following rulers of the Ecclesiarchy). Or they got help from the Terrawatt Clan as a sort of Terran-based version of the Mechanicus. Either that or the Mechanicus rules the Imperium utterly and just pretends to keep the High Lords around as a rubber stamp. Or perhaps their techno-jihad was simply cut short as the Imperium would not react well to them trying to basically enslave it, which is what a monopoly on technology would do, and because hoarding knowledge goes directly against the Great Crusade (which is suicidal). This is 40k so either is equally likely.

It should be remembered that various civil wars in the Mechanicus, the reasons why the Steel Confessors were created, and other details seems to imply that by the 41st millennium the Adeptus Mechanicus has settled into its duty and become staunchly loyal to the Imperium and no longer circumvent or ignore laws and regulations although they are very much isolationists. Other than building stuff, the Mechanicus seems to have focused very heavily on its spiritual duties and doesn’t really seem to withhold technology that doesn’t require an artisan to handmake and a techpriest to babysit so long as you can afford paying them for it. The Mechanicum wouldn’t have done that, but the 41st millennium Mechanicus appears to have decided on just building the shit people ask for so long as those people are capable of pampering it (and paying), and repairing/maintaining the stupidly advanced super-tech not even they understand and gawk at. So, now the cause of Grimdark has shifted away from the AdMech hoarding as it no longer does without good reason and into the Imperium being incompetent (or just callous to the core) and its Planetary Governors obscenely greedy instead of just forking out the cash to buy the good shit for the Guard regiments they raise.

All-in-all, if you had to join a 40K faction, you'd want to join the Mechanicus. You don't even have to get augmetics or you can make them indistinguishable from human parts or implant ports on your body or a suit or something to interface with what would otherwise be implants or whatever. And in exchange you have the best protection, and clout, in the galaxy. Especially if they aren't so much "forgetting" tech as choosing to slowly withdraw from the Imperium. Oh, and they'll make you functionally immortal and your first (and standard no matter sect) alteration upon joining is replacing your blood with a substitute that increases your life span apparently by centuries or so. If the body-horror stuff in the form of servitors and cherubs and so on bothers you, don't worry, it's only because of the Imperium's restrictions on computers. Surely the Mechanicus wouldn't be stupid enough to make independent AI instead of just complex cogitators...right?

The Commandments of the Mechanicus

Map and legend of known AdMech worlds.

The Mechanicus have some ideas that they abide by:

The Mysteries:

1. Life is directed motion.
2. The spirit is the spark of life.
3. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
4. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
5. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
6. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
7. Comprehension is the key to all things.
8. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

The Warnings:

1. The alien mechanism is a perversion of the true path.
2. The soul is the conscience of sentience.
3. A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
4. The Soulless sentience is the enemy of all.
5. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
6. The machine spirit guards the knowledge of the ancients.
7. Flesh is fallible, but ritual honors the machine spirit.
8. To break with ritual is to break with faith.

What the Mechanicus does

"You may say, it is impossible for a man to become like the Machine. And I would reply, that only the smallest mind strives to comprehend its limits."
- Fabricator General Kane.

The main role of the Adeptus Mechanicus is to maintain the advanced equipment of the Imperium; which despite stereotypes, they are actually very good at. Most of their rituals to appease machinery are pretty much the same methods we would use to repair our machinery with a whole bunch of religious iconography mixed in. The terms used by the Mechanicus are quite similar to our engineers if you swap some of the words (replace machine spirit with A.I, sacred oils with lubricant etc.) Because of its religious nature some of the components of the rituals are unnecessary but almost all Tech-Priests skip or abandon the unnecessary stuff in dire situations. It's also implied that the so-called holy chants are really them repeating instructions to themselves-useful for remembering what you're doing. The cases where chanting is actually necessary is where they are working with something like a Land Raider or Titan - both of which have a temperamental machine spirit - that you don't want to piss off.

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 up selling groxburgers if you study to be a scientist (unless you have balls or are a spess mehreen artificer who might 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, Jokaero be damned. Thanks to glitches, lack of maintenance, and Chaos corruption, nearly all the STCs found by the Mechanicus are more fucked up than Windows Vista. While the recoverable STCs are often useless or incomplete, there are rare instances where they are functional, such as the STC data of the Land Raider and the Land Speeder as well as Centurion armour. Another nice example is the one found in the novel Skitarius by Rob Sanders, where the badass protagonist helps the Adeptus Mechanicus priests to find a sort of "Empyrean Bomb", capable of dissipating warp phenomena (this bomb's utilization would've negated the cause of the post-Iron War part of the Age of Strife, which was caused by humanity's worlds being cut-off by Warp storms). More often than not STC data comes from print-outs from fragmented STCs, or copies of these print-outs. These printouts, when discovered, are studied, translated and argued over for centuries before any useful products are made from them. If they ever find an undamaged complete STC, this would likely cause a schism within the Mechanicus and tear the Imperium asunder. Or they'd be so horrified by the monstrous inventions of the Dark Age ("flesh vats" and "stitch-horrors" come to mind) that they destroy it. Heck, maybe it's happened before. It's worth noting that different writers seem to have different ideas of what an STC is. Some depict them as a single blueprint for some high-tech equipment, some depict them as a database of those blueprints, and on at least one occasion an STC was portrayed as a massive 3-D Printer. The Adeptus Mechanicus also sometimes 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. The Priests of Mars also will not mind getting their hands on Xenos artifacts to see how such "blasphemies" can work, and maybe give a hint of how a "pure" design should have been.

The faculty of engineering never looked so cool!

Very rarely does the Mechanicus actually invent something. While they do adapt designs occasionally, the only things they actually invented from scratch is the Lascannon, the Dunestrider perpetual motion machine (whose creator was promptly executed and all designs lost upon creation), as well all the Titans, except for the Reaver and Apocalypse Classes, which were invented during the Age of Strife and the Dark Age of Technology respectively. Which is pretty odd, until you realize they invented them pre-heresy. 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). Well, they also invented the Infernus pattern Predator. Sure they built it on the Rhino chassis, but they created a pattern without killing everyone involved. Of course, they aren't actually "inventing" it; they are using "divinely inspired reason" to create something that has always existed, implicit in the logical structure of the universe. This is, interestingly, not a new idea, traceable back to philosophers like Plato. Conveniently, the Mechanicus will play to no end with the meaning of the word "invent" if they must get a job done, as too often and despite /tg/'s cartoonish flanderization your average techpriest has the common sense to "feel divinely inspired" whenever his/her neck is on the line, you know, desperation is the mother of all inven... Ahem, I mean, "divinely inspired reason". More recently, several of the cogboys under the influence of Archmagos Belisarius Cawl have relearned actual innovation, producing entirely new designs like the Repulsor Tank. If they'll produce something that isn't a ripoff of crappier franchises is another thing else entirely. Most in universe and out just wish they could recreate mass Volkites in 40k and other 30k era shit that hasn't been ported over yet, as well as Plasma that doesn't explode when overcharged or requiring such a thing.

It's also important to mention is what they do not do. The Mechanicus by and large are the greediest gits in the galaxy, on top of being feudal as fuck. They hoard technology like it is going out of style, which would be fine, if they didn't hoard and defend it, but that isn't the point. The point is that each and every Forge World will basically try to own, buy, sell and take by force any existing technology while mostly paying lip service to Mars, and they're sure as hell not giving that STC of paperweight they found the other day to a neighboring Forge World. 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 an 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.

On the bright side, the Mechanicus will sell you any tech if you can afford it. Any Imperial world that has any population of note and is not stuck in the stone age or a medieval shithole will have a Mechanicus base or enclave on it which will (at the very least) hire out Techpriests to Nobles, Firms and similar which can afford them and assist the Imperial Presence on the planet. And luckily for the Imperial government, all the Imperium needs to do is provide the resources.

Mechanicum Understanding of Science

There's the common misconception that the AdMech don't really understand science and approach all tech with ritual and superstition. That's arguably wrong. First thing first, both Mechanicus and AdMechs are very much alike to a medieval guild: superiors wouldn't teach their pupils but the bare minimum needed to do their job. For example, a young Tech-priest would know that if the light isn't turning green, he should (akin to a ritual) switch that circuit breaker and press that button, but they wouldn't know what it actually does. It doesn't mean that they don't learn real science while progressing through the ranks. This is probably a security measure to prevent dumbfucks from messing with dangerous shit.

In the "Mechanicum" novel they demonstrate theoretical knowledge of physics. Yes, it's set in the 31st millennium, but it's quite clear that even in the 41st they know "normal" sciences like mechanics, thermodynamics, biology, optics, quantum physics, etc. The AdMech definitely has as much scientific knowledge as we have today, and probably more. And they are quite happy to play with it. What they don't really understand, and don't like to play with (unless absolutely forced to), is the hyper-advanced tech from the Dark Age of Technology. Basically, if it isn't so advanced that it's literal techno-sorcery, then they don't mind messing with it. Which is why we get goodies like Power Armor and Terminator Armor from back before such things started to decline; even volkite weaponry before that went out of style. But, they're not going to meddle with ridiculously advanced technology because they might create an abomination like something from the Long Night. In fact, it's entirely possible that's how horrifying techno monstrosities like those in the Age of Strife came into existence. Quite likely as humans are a reactionary species that usually does stuff without thinking it through. The outright terror that the Mechanicus has for meddling with high technology comes off as more desperate than offended. Like trying to stop someone from triggering an apocalypse. This implies they learned the hard and painful way not to do that.

Take the Lasgun for example. There are almost infinite patterns of lasguns, many developed after the great crusade as the lasgun wasn't all that common back then. The AdMech understand materials and mechanics well enough to create different stocks and triggers. They understand optics to a decent degree as they can focus the las beam with different barrel lengths. What they don't understand is the power pack, because the power pack is a scary super advanced piece of technology that will not only hold enough energy for a hundred shots powerful enough to kill an armored man, but it can be easily recharged thousands upon thousands of times. And they don't have the slightest clue as to how it works. Which sounds silly until you learn just how much freaking energy is needed to basically explode someone with a laser and that the power pack recharged using, among other sources, the background radiation of the universe. Such problems do not occur with more primitive technology: in the Calixis sector many stub cannons and autopistols are constructed from scratch by Techpriests during meditations.

There's a quite good reason to that. The ultra advanced science used in the Dark Age of Technology was developed with the aid of AIs and super advanced computers. It's entirely possible that even the scientists of that time didn't fully understand their science and a lot of r&d was done automatically by artificial intelligences far superior to that of any human's, with programing so complex no human actually knew how the damn thing was thinking. Now you can't do this anymore because you know that AIs will try to kill you. In the "Mechanicum" novel the Dragon Caretaker says that the Emperor engineered the creation of the Mechanicum. Why would the atheist Emperor create a machine cult if not because it was the only way to retain technology that humanity would have no possibility to comprehend anymore once the AIs were wiped out.

This is interesting because it's said that the Emperor defeated the Dragon during the late Roman Empire, for this purpose. This means that he foresaw the rebellion of the machines and the long night and allowed it as a means to develop a technology that could then be salvaged after. Or he just realized that a monster capable of controlling machines locked a stone's throw from Earth was really, really bad and decided to hedge his bets. If no AI rebellion, hyper-advanced cult of scientists dedicated to humanity. If AI rebellion, salvation for mankind. Either way, Man wins.

Then the Horus Heresy fucked up everything. And yes, the cult mentality of AdMech were involved probably more than they should have been. But the real reason that they don't go around innovating and creating new stuff is because it doesn't pay off. The real "power" of their technology comes from the Dark Age of Technology stuff and they are not able to touch that.

And this is not all. The lack of AIs and uber computational power hinders understanding advanced science to a point. it also absolutely wrecks your ability to produce practical applications of said advanced science. Let me make an example. You are fifty years in the future and fusion energy is an everyday reality from fusion power plants. ITER worked after all. You are transported on to a desert island and you have all the scientific knowledge of humanity in your brain. You are asked to build a practical fusion based power source. You can use any tool and component but you don't have access to computers. Can you do it?

Nah. You can understand perfectly how the thing should work and how to design one. But without computers you don't have the ability of run the extremely complex calculations and simulations to optimize the reactor to the point that it produces more energy than it consumes. So they hand you a blueprint of a currently working reactor. Can you build it now? Sure. You have a blueprint and the theoretical knowledge to understand what you are doing, so you build the damn thing.

Then they ask you if you can build another but slightly different. Bigger? Smaller? More powerful? Less powerful? Doesn't matter. Can you do that?

Well... maybe? You have the blueprints of a working design and you have the theoretical understanding on how it works, so you can try to modify it. But you still don't have the computational power to validate your modifications so... you can try? Best case scenario, it works. Worst case scenario? You nuke the whole fucking island. On the average? It will kinda work but it will be less efficient/polished/optimized compared to the original design.

So you don't really like to modify the original (standard) template (construct), unless you are really forced to. That's the mechanicum mindset. People who think they're better than this almost always become examples demonstrating that the Mechanicum and later Mechanicus have the right idea.

It's even worse than that. STC technology is basically lego-tech. To be able to achieve the interchangeability and keep that all the way from sharp rocks to sun-snuffers would make the Necrons scratch their heads in confusion. And everything in the Imperium relies on technology being compatible.

The main proof of higher echelons of AdMechs actually knowing what they are doing is the existence of Tech-heresy. Apart from AI and other Dark Age of Technology forbidden stuff, pretty much anything NOT supported by the STC falls into this category (like Space Wolves Techpriests mounting Lascannons inside Predator turret). In many FFG books, for example, it's implied quite a number of Magi actually invented something and then went through a long and hazardous process of proving that it totally was in the STCs all this time and they just happened to stumble upon it. Most likely it comes down to inventing things capable of interfacing with STC-based technology. Since if your invention cannot do so, then it requires special care all on its own, special construction, and its parts will not be interchangeable with anything and therefore it will be almost useless on the scale the Imperium needs stuff for. The STC tech is lego-tech up to eleven and to achieve something like that is incredibly advanced.

The concern about experimentation is probably why they’re wary of merely slapping new guns on existing tanks. Sure, it’s harmless and not something that’ll go wrong, but they prefer not to set a precedent for modification.

The absolute worst-case possibility is, of course, that the AdMech hoards STCs because it doesn’t largely have a scientific understanding of anything more advanced than the tech produced on Hive Worlds and Civilized Worlds. The terrible possibility exists that knowledge is being lost because it was not known in the first place and all that was possessed was instructions on building things. Of course that doesn't explain why they can't just watch something being made they lost the instructions for and write it down. And what's happening in the factories that build the parts to build the factories for the lost knowledge tech and watch the builders build new factories of those things and so on.

History of the Adeptus Mechanicus

Who said they are not human or lack the human factor? And thanks to Priests of Mars this is canon. Also, DAWWWWWWWWW!

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. 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 died, hid underground, or turned 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 saviour and way to return to the former heights of glory. Thus, 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.

Except it's giant load of bullshit. The Tech-priesthood were FORCED to acknowledge the Big E as an incarnate of Machine God at gunpoint. This happened after they sent pretty much their entire fleet and army to Terra to prevent the Unification of meatbags, so they can continue to raid ancient Terran tombs and libraries once or twice a century. To be fair, they thought the Terrans were still a bunch of Mad Max murderhobos, so them unifying would have been pretty dang bad. The Emperor's fleet fucked them so hard only one in ten returned to Mars to tell the tale, so the Fabricator-General was very cooperative when the Emprah's armada arrived in Mars' orbit. At least they managed to get a special exemption from the "no religions" rule, possibly because the Emperor already knew about the Dragon of Mars (see below; though it wouldn't be the first time a head of state was a hypocrite or practiced double standards). In exchange for giving the Imperium all the guns and tanks they needed, the Emperor promised the Fabricator-General full autonomy on all Forge Worlds, access to Navigators and Astropaths for space travel, and all Archeotech found during the Great Crusade. Naturally, this smoothed things over between the two factions, resulting in the Treaty of Mars and the beginning of the Imperium; As a sign of their alliance, the Emperor changed his sigil from the lightning bolt, as used by the Thunder Warriors, to the two-headed Aquila.

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, controlling all machines. All those techpriests are going to have serious problems when it wakes up...It's on Mars because the EMPRAH roofied it and turned it into an angry cave on Mars. It's now guarded by the Mechanicus in their Noctys Labyrinth. This point of view is not certain, 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 that's the point, they don't know it's a C'tan if it is). But it's a more fun version, isn't it?

The Mechanicum only lasted till midway through the Heresy. Loyal tech magi were evacuated from Mars when the Death of Innocence hit the planet and a new Fabricator General was elected. This posed a bit of a problem for the Mechanicum as a whole as the previous Fabricator General was technically still the head of the Mechanicum and still held Mars. Various allied and vassal parts of the Mechanicum had a legal meltdown as to who they were supposed to be loyal to - the nation they were a part of and technically still subordinate to or the overarching Empire they had sworn fealty to by proxy. Martian loyalists suggested the creation of a new Adeptus to put the Mechanicum on a level playing field with the other sections of the council of Terra, gaining a voice in the running of the Imperium as a whole. The other sections weren't keen on the idea but took the opportunity to roll other Martian assets into Terra's direct control. The Martian ambassador resolved the complicated Binary Succession issue by literally walking an Imperator Titan right outside the council chambers until the council agreed. Thus the modern Adeptus Mechanicus was formed.

They also created a Chapter of Space Marines meant to be loyal to them over the rest of the Imperium once. The Imperium actually reacted rather well, only taking their toy away instead of smashing the fuck out of every Forge World and mind-raping every Tech-Priest and servitor involved, which the Imperium is fully capable of doing but it wouldn't be worth nearly the effort unless something extremely stupid happened.

The Machine Spirits

Your average Magos

"If you run from technology, it will chase you."

– Robert M. Pirsig

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 (partly because of the ancient rebellion of the Men of Iron, but mostly to prevent Chaos-corrupted AIs from skullfucking them, Skynet style).

For all the importance of Machine Spirits to the Mechanicus, it's not entirely clear what they actually are. One theory holds that there is actually a semi-sentient AI fragment in virtually everything electronic, a leftover from the Age of Strife. These "ghosts in the machine" must be appeased, or else they'll fuck with the targeting systems in your Bolter at the worst possible moment, start doing doughnuts with your Land Raider, and generally act like dicks. All the ritual and apparent silliness of the Cult Mechanicus, then, is actually necessary to keep the machines operating.

The prevailing theory within the Mechanicus itself seemingly holds is that a Machine Spirit is a fragment of the Machine God itself. Whether this is simply rhetoric (you need to keep your gun oiled, or it'll backfire, and the cogboys are really picky about how you oil it) or the actual truth (the Machine God extends its awareness to literally every machine in the universe, which is disturbingly more possible than one might think), the fact remains that Machine Spirits are real enough to severely ruin your day (or your continent, in the case of an itinerant Titan). The ritual and mysticism surrounding the Cult Mechanicum's everyday activities is far more important to them than even the Imperial Creed.

The Techpriests of Mars got around the restrictions against "Abominable Intelligence" in true WH40K grimdark fashion: cut out the "Artificial" part and make it organic, and vice versa. Nearly every piece of sophisticated machinery in the Imperium operates via a cogitator, analogous to a modern-day microchip, which is basically the cloned or recycled brain of a human converted to function like a horrific cyborg CPU. This interpretation of the "Machine Spirit" is particularly disturbing, to be sure, but is necessary because the Iron Men incident and Age of Strife in general made the Imperium fear the "Silica Animus". The only true difference between a semi-organic cogitator and a true AI is that their machine spirits cannot learn or improve on their own, and therefore must be manually programmed by their operators if they need to learn or do anything that is outside their current programming. Thus, it is now nearly impossible for machines to rebel on their own, quelling the fears of the Imperium.

In any of these cases, 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 somehow capable of thought like organics or no more sentient than your bread toaster at home?

Forge Worlds

See Forge World#Planet for a comprehensive list of all Forge Worlds.

Forge Worlds are all based on Mars. Literally so -- the AdMech so revere the nuke blasted hellscape of Mars that they intentionally terraform other planets into it. Filled with a combination of research labs, libraries, churches, forges, warehouses and factories, the Forge Worlds provide the Imperium with the vast majority of their equipment. However this didn't stop the Mechanicum from setting up shop anywhere they could during Old Night and the Great Crusade, including the volcanic Mezoa and frozen Altus Ferro.

Each Forge World has their own color scheme, themes, and specialties, similar to Space Marine chapters or Imperial Guard regiments.

8th Edition's Forge Worlds of choice are:

• Mars: The original. Likely has a C'tan (The Void Dragon) buried inside it. Mars is a radioactive desert wasteland where factories and other forge world bits are built on top of kilometer deep ruins of previous bits, all infested with insane robots, sentient demonic warp viruses, and other things that go bump in the night that have been dicking around since the Horus Heresy. Immediately after the Dark Age of Technology they went full Kin-Dza-Dza and devolved into atmosphere-less techno-barbarianism until the Emperor showed up after he conquered Earth.
• Lucius: Teleportation and Armor specialists, as well as known for a strange "solar blessed" metal called Luciun. Lucius is hollow, with an artificial star inside. Was attacked by Hive Fleet Leviathan, they survived by hiding inside their planet and sending out hordes of Servitors, letting them get eaten, then using Servo-skulls to pull the techy bits back underground and put them on new cloned bodies before the biomass could be absorbed, effectively starving the Leviathan forces to death. Had a civil war called the Inculcata Schism that almost caused the planet to implode (teleportation specialists is a nice way of saying "experiments with warp tech"), so they wear red as a way to kiss up to Mars. This is a common theme among forge worlds as Mars seems to be the only one with even a speck of sanity and at least performs it's dumbass experiments on other planets instead of their own home.
• Agripinaa: Right outside of and now the front line to the Eye of Terror. After Cadia fell a good number of refugees fled to Stygies VIII and Agripinaa... who forcibly conscripted them into their Skitarii and Servitor forces. They effectively blackmailed millions of desperate refugees, trapped on their planet and in orbit, and turned them into various flavors of mindless or brainwashed combat cyborgs (well, maybe brainwashed, they might just be cyborg soldier badasses sworn to Agripinaa). Although, given Agripinaa became basically the replacement of Cadia in a way, their reaction is probably a justified act of desperation especially since they weren't know for doing that to refugees before. Also known for sending incursions around and occasionally into the Eye of Terror.
• Stygies VIII: Had two Titan legions based on it during the Horus Heresy, both of which turned traitor. They were saved at the last minute by the Eldar, leading to them having a soft spot for Xenos (mind, they still fully believe in human superiority and conquering/exterminating aliens..it's just that they will consider appreciating that Xenos aren't totally worthless all the time). Home to the Xenarite faction, a faction that believes in studying Xenos technology, officially to better understand why Humanity's technology is superior. Stygies is also home to the "Runic Priests," (No, not those), a faction of AdMech specialized in intuition, speculation, and improvisation. Ultimately considered "too big to fail," the High Lords of Terra declared they were to be left alone, despite flirting with Xenos crap and Heretekal science (because the High Lords generally are extremely pragmatic and don't give a shit about almost anything non-Chaos). Eventually the Inquisition found out and decided to purge the planet anyway, in the Xenarite Schism. Stygies VIII responded by unleashing a computer virus that constantly purges the Administratum and the Ordo Xenos' computer systems of any evidence or discussion of how Stygies VIII is technically a Heretek world, while the Xenarites went mostly underground. Deathwatch Kill Teams still frequently attack them, alongside various Xenos forces who want their tech back. Stygians are stealth specialists, which they will deny whenever asked; they're also known for pretending to be from Mars when needed due to their color scheme. Currently invading the Eldar Webway in an attempt at raiding the Black Library.
• Graia: Even more aspie than normal AdMechs, Graia are nearly immune to psykers due to being too logical to manipulate. Notable for their space station that covers a huge portion of their planet, which is actually a space ship which Graia move around, and even take through the warp! Recently it returned to Graia and then again departed, this time bringing Graia with it (making us all wonder how big 40K ships really are even if this is a giant one). Both Chaos and the Necrons target them for it. The whole Forge World lives on this yellow submarine space thing due to opening some sort of portal to somewhere on the planet's surface long ago. Known for refusing to retreat even when losses are guaranteed because to do so would mean their logical predictions were wrong (or there is some human spirit remaining deep inside...nah it's totally sheer ego). Red on their uniform is ostensibly because they are loyal to Mars, but actually because they like blood (because logic).
• Metalica: Metalica is a completely sterile world, no atmosphere, no life, no anything but metal. This may or may not be due to an ancient copyright scouring by a musical group bearing a similar name. Their Titan Legion was nearly destroyed during the Second War for Armageddon; their Princeps was ordered by Planetary Governor and notorious incompetent boob/traitor Herman von Strab to attack a horde of Gargants that outnumbered them three-to-one with no support like suicidal maniacs, and when that predictably failed the Legion then became suicidal maniacs by self-destructing in the heart of the Ork forces because they weren't allowed to retreat. Totally not the noise AdMech -- their guns are intentionally loud to proclaim the glory of the Omnissiah. Metalica is also known for being the first Imperium force to go on a Tyranid safari. That's right, they're actively hunting Hive Fleet Leviathan. They are, in fact, so metal. Currently being besieged by Typhus, who wants to claim the entire sector for Nurgle, who views its sterility as an insult; although he wasn't able to outright conquer it, he was able to corrupt it with a techno-virus that continues to manifest and cripple the planet every seven cycles.
• Ryza: Energy shield and plasma specialists, who have nothing to do with the Tau because they managed to remain relatively unmolested until the Mechanicus found them again during the Great Crusade. They have been invaded by Orks repeatedly, to the point that most of their Forge World's output goes directly to its own self defense. The more red on a Ryzan's robe, the more important they are. Led an aborted invasion of the Maelstrom in an attempt to go after the DarkMech world of Sarum. Ryza has a sect of Ruststalkers that have gone rogue, but still worship the Omnissiah so whatevs, it's all good. Known for being very enthusiastic towards melee combat, may or may not be due to Ork influence. In short, their shield good, plasma good, and rip and tear good. Fuck yeah!

8th Edition was nice enough to flesh out several back-canon Forge Worlds as well:

• Triplex Phall: Isolated, on the far east side of the galaxy, Triplex Phall has recovered a ton of STC and Archeotech but refused to give it to Mars. Basically AdMech Protestants. Mars now has a Skitarii Legion following them around with express instructions to warn Mars if Triplex Phall forces find anymore secret tech. Invaded by Hive Fleet Kraken, attacked by Typhus, and invaded by Daemons. We can only imagine the only reason the rest of the Mechanicus hasn't crushed them and taken their stuff is either the STCs are that potent or that the Machine Cult would rather space Protestants have it than to risk the data being damaged or destroyed. Or their STC data is useless junk important solely for religious purposes but not worth bothering with in the practical. Or the AdMech already stole it as it is extremely doubtful that Triplex Phall has the data to avoid however Mars has learned to enforce its will over the last ten thousand years (and the Inquisition's help, probably). That, or the daemons corrupted everything or Mars fears they have.
• Deimos: The moon of Mars, gifted to the Grey Knights of Titan at the end of the Horus Heresy. Originally responsible for building the favored patterns of Rhino and Predator during the Great Crusade, they now make Grey Knight wargear and use Servitors to transfer the material between the Grey Knights and Deimos, mindscrubbing them at each end, allowing both organizations to keep their secrets. Deimos has three different Knight houses, because apparently the Grey Knights aren't enough knights for Deimos. Considering Deimos is about 10 miles across they are probably miniature knights, Epic Scale if you will.
• Voss Prime: The most Mars-fanboyish of the Mars Fanboys, has a focus on Legio Cybernetica robots. Closest Forge World to Armageddon. Voss has a huge asteroid field that repelled an Ork Waaagh merely on accident. Known for good tanks, but crappy plasma weapons. Not to be confused with Voss, which is another Forge World not too far away from Voss Prime. During the Great Crusade they made enough lasguns to arm the entire Solar Auxilia with. Builds weird ships the Imperial Navy didn't ask for, like slow light cruisers and frigates with torpedos. Also, either Voss or Voss Prime builds ships double the size they normally are. Which makes for utterly terrifying monsters of the stars. Imagine a Retribution or Apocalypse or Emperor=class that's double sized.
• Gryphonne IV: The lost Forge world. They are responsible for a lot of Imperial Guard support-tank patterns, thanks to the real-life Forge World. The Tyranids ate their planet after they refused to listen to Inquisitor Kryptman, so they have become the first nomadic Forge "World": a space fleet actively seeking out a planet they can terraform into a new Mars. Whether or not Gryphonnians want to terraform said world into (degenerate-biome barren world) present-day Mars, or a (lush and properly-terraformed) Dark Age of Technology Mars is anyone's guess. Gryphonne IV is definitely not copying anything. Bet they won't hesitate to listen when Inquisition experts tell them shit's about to go down next time.

The "big" Forge World remains Mars, with Cawl being the only unique character in the AdMech force. (Hieronomus Tezla says hello.) Lucius and either Metalica or Ryza (depending on the edition) round out the "main three" Forge Worlds, fluff wise.

However, each world has their own rules and details in the fluff, although the new ones remain somewhat intentionally vague for your dudes purposes -- Triplex Phall lends itself to odd conversions because "It's Archeotech!"; Deimos lends itself to borrowing some Grey Knights aesthetic and allies; Gryphonne IV being nomadic lends itself to battle damage and the like. Even the "old" forge worlds get some additional flavor in the new fluff -- Stygies VIII lends itself well to sneaky types or Xenos conversions and allies; Agripinaa force-conscripting refugees encourages Servitors / Skitarii converted from Imperial Guard (or even Ecclesiarchy and Necromunda). Metalica going on a fucking safari for Hive Fleet Leviathan splinter fleets just screams "Nid Hunter" Skitarii.

The Religion of the Adeptus Mechanicus

(Forgive OP's bellicose statement, but the fluff and novels pertaining to the AdMech are rather obscure to whether or not they truly understand what they talk about.)

Begin Rant/file exc.//>>

Children, I'm fucking fed up with your shit. Cult Mechanicus IS NOT a replacement of rational thought with religion for the sake of operating machines.It's a (in-universe) developed philosophy of collective rationalism. AdMechs don't throw their critical thinking out of the window. They just already took this thinking, put it on a pedestal, brought it to its apex (Dark Age), suffered for it, suffered for it again (Horus Heresy, Schism of Mars), then looked at it and asked : "What do we do now?" Every Mechanicum is a rationalist, in a meaning that when he goes through all the critical thinking to the basic reason of his existence, he takes on the dogma of Quest for Knowledge. That he exists to Rationalize the Universe, move towards learning and understanding the Universe and its laws. It's also a collective quest - adept doesn't seek knowledge just for himself, he sees all the Adeptus Mechanicus as one single huge Gnostical Engine, a Machine of Comprehension designed to learn. He's just a single little gear in the heart of enormous Over-Intellect gathering and producing knowledge.

For what sake? AdMechs thought a lot about this question, and took one answer.

For the sake of Mankind.

Now THIS is where shit gets religious.

As of it now, humanity utilizes science for egoistical purposes of survival (scientists need something to eat) and/or domination, which can be understood by every human through his instincts. Society of Mars, however, got devoid of this motivators, as they dropped their human instincts, so they had to find new goals. This is where the Schism takes roots, as well as the "Cult" part. Every rational human can tell you that objectively life has no meaning. Accepting that fact is what brought the galaxy Necrons and Iron Men. AdMechs knew that this is what they wish to avoid. And the most effective way to avoid that is to walk the irrational way and put a sense for your existence through Faith.

This is what they did.

They are the fanatics in the sense that they BELIEVE that Universe CAN be comprehended, while they have 0 proof of that. They BELIEVE that critical thinking works, while living in a Galaxy that laughs at any attempts of rationalization. They BELIEVE that Quest for Knowledge can be completed. And it this faith, they are being paradoxical and irrational. And they know it. Lets have a look at Universal Laws, that Mechanicum use as the foundation of their philosophy.

The Mysteries

01. Life is directed motion.

This gives a definition to "life", as existence of individual. A definition that basically says "Only that thing which irrationally takes a (faith) direction for its way can be called a Living Thing".

02. The spirit is the spark of life.

Here they recognize the illogical existence of Souls and Warp, and their defining roles in being representation of one's beliefs.

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.

Here they define ability for rational thinking.

06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.

07. Comprehension is the key to all things.

And HERE they put this thinking as their Way to exist.

08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

And establish an ideal, to which they are heading. --Anon

End Rant/file//>>

Another Magos adds: There's definitely variation in the creed between forgeworlds and different cults-- even post Heresy, Mars is not unified-- but a lot of them operate on this sort of platonic/hermeticist logic. Regardless of whether they believe all knowledge already exists or that the disciplined mind can create new things, the religion is trying for union with some perfect being. Whether that's taken to mean "become a robot because the flesh is weak", "find salvation in logic", or even "cultivate the Omnissiah within you" (which would lead to radical differences in practice, from penitent cyberization cults to contemplative engineering orders, which we see in the many faces of the Mechanicum, Koriel Zeth, Forgeworld Mezoa, the Myrmidon Orders, etc), it all leads back to a cautious quest to be the best you can be with logic as your guide.

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 portaloo of a grimdark shitpit it is today, it's pretty much a matter of time before it escapes. The Necrons already attempted to raid Mars - they got vaporized before they could really even do anything, but the fact 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, 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. Ironically, given this, it could mean the Void Dragon might side with humanity as an endlessly increasing supply of soul-stuff. The Mechanicus gets its implants and technology and does not lose enough of their souls to not pass on when they die, the Void Dragon gets a bit of soul from each of them and their numbers endlessly increase with humanity's ever growing population. Everyone wins and, as we all know, Dragons are rather protective of their hoards....

By the way, 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.

UPDATE: The new Codex: Necrons written by our Spiritual Liege reveals the necrons are no longer enslaved by the C'tan, instead they are their sworn enemies for tricking them into giving up flesh. They were probably going to Mars to capture the Imperial held C'tan shard of the Void Dragon as they won't see humans reliable, or perhaps they were under control of another shard, and wanted to liberate it, oh whatever, for what we know it may have been Trollzyn trying to loot Mars. Or, maybe they simply realize that having a C'tan that can control technology on a planet-sized machine-scape is a bad idea. It is unlikely that the Void Dragon would have been shattered, though. Because it is hard to do that to something with technology when that something has complete control over all technology. Yeah. Which, in hind-sight, might be part of the reason why the Necrons went into hibernation. Because when you are a living machine and you just pissed off something that controls machines... it is a good time to run away really fast.

The only thing that changes as a result of that is once the Void Dragon (shard or whole, who knows?) wakes up, it will be the only C'tan with ready access to an army, and a pretty damn huge one at that- so it's not only going to be a real bad day for the Imperium, but the Necrons as well.

UPDATE 2: And now it seems the World Engine of Astral Knights fame was supposed to be en route to Mars in order to allow his usurper Phaeron to get himself a new Void Dragon Pokémon, good thing he got sabotaged.

Why Everything is so Grimdark

"The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fucked. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one-tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not.

The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find shit, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you.

If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fucked with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fucking grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fucking Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seek to kill you.

Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron Men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fucking please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day shit. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed.

This is why they do not like ANYONE fucking with technology because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to fuck with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works can be fine in a 21st-century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 401st-century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fucked everything up and the Heresy double-fucked it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, and they never have.

This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra material that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fucking military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty-five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity.

This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exist for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built.

Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade.

Since some still don't get the idea, try this.

Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you when there's a whole library there?

Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fucking-where near it. Where the fuck did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them from using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden.

Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right to read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have.

Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling.

The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer.

The Imperium isn't grim because things suck by choice and could be fine if a sensible person came along. That sensible person wouldn't survive fifty seconds of the reality. The Imperium is grim because every single shit decision, every single sacrifice, every single death, every single man woman and child suffering a shit life in the worst conditions imaginable, is the absolute best that can be done. It is a study of the worst happening to everyone and what part of your humanity must be sacrificed today just to stand a chance of survival, and all it asks is whether or not it would have perhaps been better to die. • Baron von Evilsatan (accurate except that technology progresses rapidly in war solely because scientific research does. Tech advancement relies entirely on science advancement. If it froze, tech would not advance at all, it doesn’t grow on trees.)

On the Tabletop

See also AdMech 9E Tactics

8th Edition has landed, and the AdMech are resurgent. Having Cult Mechanicus and Skitarii merged together into one list was good enough, but they also merged Imperial Knights as "Questor Mechanicus" -- AdMech aligned Imperial Knight houses. Imperial Armor: Fires of Cyraxus is coming out "real soon now" which will have AdMech vs Tau and promises a bunch of new stuff, as well.

The biggest change, outside of the Knights now being part of AdMech (which means they can be repaired!) is the promotion of the Enginseer from Elite to HQ, allowing for a cheap HQ option if a tax is needed.

The Mechanicus received an entire army's worth of new plastic models and rulebook! Praise the Omnissiah!

At the moment, the AdMech is divided into a number of different mini-factions. Currently, the Skitarii and the Cult Mechanicus army have been fully released. There is also the "Titan Guard" Secutarii on the way, but they're a Forge World army. The Legio Cybernetica is also part of the Adeptus Mechanicus, though aside from the Kastelan, they're Horus Heresy only. There's also the Taghmata, which are like feudal troops, but they're not as much of a thing in the lore of 40K (though they have a HH dex, see below).

The current releases include Skitarii, who are like if the Guard were badass technogrunge medievalpunk super-soldiers with access to all the good shit, spider-tanks, scout walkers that are basically the Sentinel if it was good, Servitors on tank treads that will wreck your shit, giant crazy-tough robots that will wreck your shit harder, and a plastic Magos HQ unit! Truly, venerate the Omnissiah, and He will provide. The Cult Mechanicus, meanwhile, consists mainly of half-naked tech-priests with a fetish for electricity and some battle servitors, including the aformentioned Kastelan. Tech-Priest Magos are also the only figures in modern 40k that carry Volkite weapons. The upcoming Titan Guard are divided into Peltasts and Hoplites, which are fitting descriptions as the former look to be ranged skirmishers, while the latter are heavily armored spearmen (the spears happen to shoot electricity).

Newly released units include cavalry units (riding mechanical dogs), winged Pteraxii, a new HQ, and an honest-to-Omnissiah ornithopter.

Notable Members

• Archmagos Belisarius Cawl: Creator of the Primarines, their wargear, and Big G's current armor.
• Arkhan Land: An archivist who discovered STC fragments which brought about anything with the name "Land" in it.

Gallery

This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.

• 
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  D'awwww.

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  SANS SKULL

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  D'awwww. By the way this is canon.

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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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  We're not sure if that's tech-heresy or an actual activation ritual. Ask your local Magos for clarification.

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  showin' a little augmented leg

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  Science in the 41st Millennium.

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  TECHPRIESTESS TITTIES (extra heretical) Only Xenos are heresy.

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  Nice Spot for a purity seal.

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  A female tech priest with some differences compared to some of the other girls here.

See Also

• Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World Creation Tables
• Skitarii Army Creation Table
• Adeptus Mechanicus 40k Tactics.
• Heresy Era Mechanicum Tactics. - 6th/early 7th edition rules. Very different from the 40k version.
• Mechanicum: Taghmata (30k) - Current 7th edition rules. Still very different to 40k.
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus - The official Vidya Gaem
• Pleician Tome
• Steel Confessors
• Praetors of Orpheus

Links

• The Mechanicus video game, an XCOM-style game where you play as a bunch of tech-priests raiding a Necron tomb. It's definitely one of the better 40k games to come out in the past few years.
• The soundtrack from the Mechanicus video game, which is easily some of the best 40k music out there.
• The Adeptus Mechanicus are avid music lovers.
• This is their theme done by HMKids.
• And one for the Machine Cult.
• And their War Cant, play it the next time your Techpriest needs to get pumped before a battle.
• The Adeptus Mechanicus, whenever not cockslapping toasters.