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Star Trek

2020-02-21T00:08:11Z

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[[File:Enterprise.jpg|thumb|500px|right|If you aren't already hearing the theme song you might not belong here.]]

{{Topquote|Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!|James T. Kirk, third captain of the starship USS Enterprise}}

'''''Star Trek''''' is a multimedia science-fiction series and one of the cornerstones of nerdy media properties, and one of the few to crossover into mainstream popularity (alongside ''[[Star Wars]]'', ''[[Doctor Who]]'' and a few others). It's also one of the longest-running science fiction franchises, as it began when the the first episode of The Original Series aired in 1966, and since then has had over 50 years of geek history spanning several generations. Needless to say, it's had a huge influence on all things sci-fi, and, by extension, [[/tg/]].

Originally, ''Star Trek'' was [[noblebright]] beyond noblebright and, in many ways, was the polar opposite of ''[[Warhammer 40,000|Warhammer 40K's]]'' [[grimdark]]. The more recent reboot films, however, have taken a much, ''much'' more grimdark tone, which is delightfully [[skub]]tastic.

== Games ==
There's been plenty of tabletop games and [[/v/|vidya gaems]] featuring ''Star Trek'' without being merchandising bullshit (see: themed ''[[Monopoly]]'' sets), including one of the earliest action multiplayer wargame: ''Netrek''.

*'''''Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier''''' (1978) The very first Trek tabletop [[RPG]]. Written by, I shit you not, Michael Scott. Groggy (grokky?) as all hell, and due for an OSR.
* '''''[[Star Fleet Battles]] (SFB)''''' (1979-) The crunchiest starship combat game you're ever going to find outside of a computer. Based on the original series and not any of the later series, for licensing reasons. Takes some liberties with the setting, which (combined with the aforementioned licensing) is why "''Star Trek''" isn't actually in the title. It's had its own video game spinoff in the form of Starfleet Command. The series died when the last company owned by Interplay broke up in the early 2000s.
* '''''Star Trek: The Role Playing Game''''' (1982-1989) Made by [[FASA]], essentially ''[[Traveller]]''-lite, or a happier, shinier ''[[Rogue Trader]]''. Hasn't aged terribly well, what with having been made when the only canonical ''Star Trek'' materials to work with were the original and animated series, the first four films, and a couple of now non-canon novels. If you try to dust it off, expect tons of conflict with the rest of the show. Died as they were trying to update it for ''TNG'', because Paramount's corporate suits (surprise, surprise) had no idea what an RPG actually entailed and were worried about violence, and getting their cut, and... oh you know the drill by now. Welcome to the 80's.
* '''''Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator''''' (1983) FASA designed this, so it feels like ''[[Battletech]]'' but not as good.
* '''''Prime Directive''''' (1993-2008) The most successful tabletop RPG line (but that's not saying much), it's actually still in print. Produced by Amarillo Design Bureau, so again no direct name-dropping of "''Star Trek''." Lasted as long as it did by constantly evolving, in Borg-like fashion, to adapt to the current zeitgeist. Has had 4 editions, with the second using [[GURPS]], the third using [[Wizards of the Coast|d20]], and the fourth [[d20 Modern]].
* '''''Star Trek [[Card_Game|CCG]]''''' (1994-2007, 2011-2014, 2013-2015, 2018-) There's been a few of these, most notably the games released by [[Decipher]], but never globally popular. They also suffered from game balance problems from fans wanting their fave character, but needing extra rules for their quirks. There's also the problem of putting numbers to character stats, such as one game that asserted that [[Heresy|Picard having about twice the integrity of a Klingon pig]]. Later versions are "deck-building" games to try to cash in on the popularity of ''[[Dominion]]'' and ''[[Thunderstone]]''. And now virtual CCGs are the order of the day.
* '''''Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game''''' (1998-1999) The next attempt, made by Last Unicorn Games. Won an award for best new game, which makes it a complete shame that no one has ever played it.
* '''''Star Trek Red Alert''''' (2000) A Diskwars game themed to ''Star Trek''.
* '''''Star Trek Roleplaying Game''''' (2002-2005) When [[Decipher]] had the CCG license, they decided, "What the hell, let's make an RPG, too." It, like so many of its predecessors, died unnoticed and unmourned.
* '''''Star Trek Online''''' (2010-) An [[MMORPG|MMO]]. Decent gameplay mechanics, especially starship combat. Storyline leaves something to be desired, especially when the ostensibly [[Noblebright|peaceful]] Federation trades shots at least once with every other faction in the galaxy.
* '''''Call To Arms: Star Trek''''' (2011) [[Mongoose_Publishing|Mongoose]]'s license for ''Babylon 5'' expired, so they collaborated with Amarillo Design Bureau (the ''Star Fleet Battles'' guys), re-themed the game to Star Trek along with improving the system to make it more nifty. Less micro-management than SFB, and ships get some cinematic feats.
* '''''Star Trek: Expeditions''''' (2011) Ignore the tie-ins to the movie, Reiner Knizia designed this. Explore the gameboard, flip over missions, try to have the proper crew to get victory points.
* '''''Star Trek: Fleet Captains''''' (2011) Tile flipping, exploring, and spaceships fighting over resources
* '''''Star Trek: Attack Wing''''' (2013-) [[WizKids]] license the flightpath system from [[Fantasy Flight Games]] and adds ''Star Trek'' to the mix, [[Skub]] ensues. The game has been consistently plagued with balance issues, to the point that the rules errata is more than ten times longer than the actual rules. The actual current rules for things like the Borg special movement and fighter squadrons are completely different than the rules as written.
* '''''Star Trek: Ascendancy''''' (2016-) 4X table top boardgame from GaleForce9. Most of the races are represented, though the base set only has the Federation, Klingons and Romulans. Andorians, Vulcans, Cardassians and Ferengi can be purchased as expansions. There is even a Borg expansion that turns the game semi-coop as everyone tries real hard not to be assimilated.
* '''''Star Trek Adventures''''' (2017-) The latest attempt at an RPG, by Modiphius, coming out soon to tentative praise. It also comes with a whole range of miniatures of the various crews from the show.

== So why should I care? ==
Because between them, these six TV series and their assorted spinoff movies, books, etc. can provide inspiration for any sci-fi game you could care to run. If you want light-hearted action, look at the sort of things that happened in ''TOS'' or ''DS9'' to get the crew into some dangerous situation. If you want a charismatic villain, look at Gul Dukat or the Borg Queen. More serious issues are often handled with various degrees of success. Like [[Tolkien]] is to fantasy it's a prime gateway drug to science fiction and especially science fiction which is more than "action movie IN SPACE!"

Not to mention in any sci-fi RPG with remotely free-form rules you're likely to encounter ''Star Trek'' fanboys, so you might as well know what they're talking about. The unholy spawn of a Trekkie and a [[Furry]] is known as a [[Chakat]], and you should fear it.

At its best ''Star Trek'' is thoughtful, optimistic futurism with a positive human element and brings you to strange new worlds in the grand tradition of speculative fiction which is accessible to even the layman. At its worst ''Star Trek'' is arrogant, smug, hypocritical, preachy, dull, sloppy and prone to the strawman fallacy.

== Setting ==
Here's the Cliff's Notes on ''Star Trek''. A couple of general warnings; firstly, ''Star Trek'' likes to ''really'' take its "racial themes" bits just a little too far. Second, despite this, it's rare for an entire race to be completely irredeemable the way many fictional aliens are: there are heroic and sympathetic characters from nearly every race listed below, able to put more-positive spins on their racial themes. Thirdly, aside from very occasional appearances by [[H.P. Lovecraft|aliens who are so bizarre that humankind can barely comprehend them]], all of the aliens look like dudes with rubber masks on (because they are). In real life, this was because there was no budget for anything else, but in-universe it's been explained by some kind of [[Old Ones|Precursor]] race who seeded all of the planets with their broadly humanoid DNA, and every race evolved slightly differently from there. There isn't much [[fluff]] on what these precursors were like, and some of it was contradictory, and Gene Roddenberry didn't like the idea (although he still had to work with the rubber forehead stuff). The good news for fa/tg/uys who like [[homebrew]] is that this makes it fairly easy to write [[d20 system]] rules for all of the races - after all, most ''D&D'' races are just humans with rubber masks on...

=== A Composite Creation ===
This is a general note that one should consider: Star Trek was created in pretty much the opposite way as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked out a bunch of linguistic stuff and general history of Arda in his spare time, then decided to use that as the basis for some stories that he eventually gave to some publishers which in the end sold quite well.

Roddenberry by contrast pitched a very broad general idea (it's the future, things are good, we got guys some on a ship exploring space; a "wagon train to the stars") to the networks and eventually Lucy from "I love Lucy" took it up on it and had him work with a variety of writers and actors who added to this rough skeleton of an idea in a process that would continue on to this day.

This is not to knock either approach, but both have their advantages and disadvantages. In regards to Star Trek, a franchise which relies mostly on an episode of the week format that's been going on for more than half a century this means that the canon is a fucking mess. There were numerous people at the helm and many of them had often very different ideas about what should be done that were just thrown out to see what stuck, many of which were contradictory and some of which we'd frankly rather forget. In general fans and fluff writers have been spending a whole lot of time trying to straighten out things and much of the lore is basically a rough consensus of what people like and what fits in with it. Later series got more systematic about this, but there are still points of contention and a lot of flat out contradictions due to its scattershot nature.

=== Factions ===
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'''The Federation'''
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[[File:Federation_Ships.jpg|thumb|500px|left|Starfleet's ships of the Line (primary timeline)]]
Might as well talk about that main faction. The United Federation of Planets is what the [[Tau]] think they are. Its backstory is that in the distant future of the 1990s, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|übermensch]] [[Space Marines|created by genetic engineering]] began conquering the Earth. The [[Imperial Guard|normies]] fought back and won through sheer numbers, cryogenically freezing the Augments and kicking them out of Earth, but the damage and mass political unrest of World War III got half the planet nuked. This was why genetic engineering was banned. Fortunately, in 2063, a <s>drunken asshole</s> heroic visionary named Zefram Cochrane created humanity's first warp drive (though it functioned based on the principle that gravity bends space-time, and was therefore more akin to an Alcubierre drive than anything that's dependent on the [[Warp]]) and made first contact with the Vulcans. The Vulcans eventually helped humanity rebuild and overcome poverty, disease, war and hunger. With its Earthly problems solved, man turned to the stars and found out its three closest neighbors were [[Imperium of Man|racist xenophobic dicks trying to murder each other]]. Since any war between them would've swept up puny little Earth and gotten it glassed, humans decided to force their neighbors to sit down and talk things out. Incredibly, it worked, and the United Federation of Planets was born.

The Federation is a commie [[noblebright]] hippieland society with a strong democratic government ([[Mary Sue|pretty much Roddenberry's idea of utopia]]). As a result, Federation citizens work not because they have to, but because they want to. However, despite their advanced technology, transhumanism, that is intentionally making [[Space Marines|SPESS MEHREENS]] and mutants like the infamous antagonist Khan Noonien Singh, is illegal.

The Federation's Navy is almost always called Starfleet. It's a mix between a military, a coast guard and a space agency, and usually rates scientific research as a higher priority than defense. One of its quirks is that it doesn't subscribe to the "bigger is better" policy used in most [[Warhammer 40K|sci-fi]], and even by most of the other ''Star Trek factions''. If the Federation ''does'' make a large ship, it's because they want it to have a daycare, swimming pool and ice cream bar. If they want a warship, they'll take a little gunship half the size of a modern day destroyer and pack it with enough antimatter nukes and guns to exterminate a solar system. In some cases, especially when dealing with ships from several centuries into the future, the ship is bigger on the inside than on the outside [[Creed|allowing it to hide a vast array of powerful armaments, ''space-bending'' equipment, and even whole planetary landscapes]]. They can get away with this because they out-tech almost everyone else by a country mile. The reason for the series' infamous "technobabble" is that <s>even ''they'' don't know everything their tech can do!</s> their technology is always evolving, and they know it so well that they can often use it in ways that even the original in-show design schematics did not intend.

In theory, Starfleet follows a rule called the "Prime Directive", which says that you're not allowed to interfere with low-tech races ("low-tech" being defined as "not having invented the warp drive", since warp technology apparently follows naturally from the laws of physics) or else things like turning the locals into Nazis might happen. The Original Series talked about this rule all the time, and Captain Kirk threw it aside whenever there was a sexy alien babe in sight. From ''TNG'' onward, it tended to instead be brought up whenever a hack writer needed a reason for the heroes to ''not'' instantly resolve a given problem with their superior technology or a way of making our heroes look like assholes for following it rigidly (yes, we could save this species from extinction but that would be interfering with the cosmic plan!), though there were a few good episodes that took it seriously.

Some of the more important member races are:

'''Founding members:'''
* [[Humans]]: You know 'em, you love 'em. Comprise seemingly 90% of Starfleet for reasons in no way related to the cost of makeup/CGI.
* [[Vulcan]]: The Original [[Eldar|Space Elves]], very emotional, especially during "pon'farr" (see below), who followed the teachings of an enlightened sage and embraced logic and rationalism after their emotions nearly led to them [[Slaanesh|wiping themselves out]]. They are what the average race of fantasy elves think they are, except on ''Enterprise'' because the writers wanted to artificially inject tension into the show (some of that was retconned to be a Romulan plot). Occasionally enter a state called "pon'farr," where they need to either [[Dark Eldar| fuck something half to death]], kill it with the nearest sharp object, or die of a brain aneurysm to let out all that pent-up emotional tension. Fa/tg/uys may recognize this as the sensation they feel every time [[Games Workshop]] puts out a new army book. Pretty bro-tier overall.
* Andorians: Blue dudes with antennae and constant fits of passion, the polar opposite of Vulcans and their one time foes. Pretty much fa/tg/uys, right down to the romantic streak, in the technical sense. Also, they live underground on a diet of meatbread and rage. Most of what defined them happened in Enterprise as they rarely showed up in the TNG-era, and even then did so as set dressing, allegedly because one of the showrunners hated their antennae and banned anyone from using them.
* Tellarites: Space [[Dwarf|Dorfs]]; like insulting everyone and arguing a lot (no, really, petty insults are considered a polite gesture in Tellarite culture), mostly because the very first tellarite ever shown in the series got in an argument with Spock's dad and now it's their whole racial thing. “Sarek said something in a scene once that was meant to demonstrate that he was stand-offish and kinda rude, but we like Sarek so it's now the defining attribute of this species.” It's all in good fun you understand, your confidence in your ideas and actions should be sturdy enough to withstand honest assessment and critique.
'''Notable Additional Members:'''
* Betazoids: Invariably attractive humanoid aliens with telepathic powers. Half-betazoid, half-humans apparently only have "empathic" powers, so they are well-regarded by Starfleet captains for their ability to point out the obvious and fill out the tight bodygloves that make up the Starfleet uniform in a pleasing manner, especially since theirs seem to come in a custom cut for reasons entirely unrelated to Roddenberry's erection. Their homeworld is like dropping a really hippie college and Space Vegas into a blender. They were taken over during The Dominion war because Earth or Vulcan would be seen as bullshit due to their large post Borg attack defense fleets/ship yards. While the writers would have to actually add new characters for the Andorians and Tellarites(such as Ambassadors for a government in exile). So Betazoid took the hit to raise the stakes.
* Trill: Originally a one-off race introduced as a sapient parasite that possesses and controls a barely, or even unintelligent humanoid host, they were radically reworked in ''Deep Space Nine'', right down to losing their rubber foreheads in favor of spots. Now, the host is itself an intelligent humanoid, and some, but not all, of their kind are able to willingly merge with a symbiont (because someone can't spell) that allows them to access a mixture of the memories and personalities of all previous hosts, though in a way that, theoretically, enhances the host's personality rather than destroying it or subsuming it. Then, when they die, they can pass on the symbiont to another host, theoretically one they mentored. Also, because the makeup artist didn't want to ruin the leads' good looks on DS9, they went from having a rubber forehead to some spots.
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'''The Klingon Empire'''
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[[Image:Batleth.jpg|thumb|right|A Bat'Leth (sword of honor), one of several types of Klingon bladed weapons. Frequently mocked IRL for being a poorly designed weapon.]]
[[Commissar|''"It is a good day to die!"'']]

The Federation's main rival and (movie era and afterwards) the quintessential ''Star Trek'' race of lumpy foreheaded aliens. Originally they were a rough analogue to the Russians (though they took some elements from [[Communism|communist China]]) in a rough cold war allegory with the Federation (even though the Federation are as commie as they come, though admittedly much of that came around in the TNG era). Their defining feature was that they were militaristic and imperialistic while the Federation was scholarly and respected liberty. This gradually moved more and more into them becoming Imperial Japan/[[Vikings]] In SPESSS obsessed with honor, fighting and dying honorably in battle while worshiping at the altar of [[Sigmar|warrior Jesus]], even as they turned from the Federation's bitter enemies into that friend who's fun to be around when he's not getting into drunken bar fights. You see shades of it in during the movie era and it became more and more prominent through ''TNG'', culminating in ''DS9''. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Klingons are nothing more than barbaric savages however; with Worf being part of the crew, and with ''DS9'' dealing with Klingon politics an awful lot we can see Klingon society as it truly is. Even so they do often wander into self parody territory.

The Klingons, in their current iteration, are a feudal society ruled by a council made up of the most powerful families. Klingon society holds very little value on things such as currency and material gain (which results in the Klingon empire [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65l7RHUx2A having a very simplistic understanding of economics]), believing that anything you acquire without some form of blood, sweat and/or tears on your part is a pathetic and dishonorable way of going about things, much the same way many cultures used to hurl abuse at merchants and bankers. Another thing to keep in mind is that a Klingon's reputation is literally everything. This can be easily seen in the episode "The House Of Quark" where dying honorably can literally change the outcome of an entire noble house, later when the Grand Council is visibly disgusted at D'Ghor. No respectable Klingon uses ''money'' to defeat his opponents. And no respectable Klingon would be so eager to perform an execution of an unarmed Ferengi in what was supposed to be an honorable duel. Klingons are still capable of being cunning and crafty however, and having a high diplomacy score is viewed as honorable as they still have examples of cunning and clever heroes tricking boorish and stupid monsters.

[[Warhammer 40000|Klingons often carry swords into battle in an age of energy beam guns]]. In-universe, this is less suicidal than it sounds in the context of boarding actions and tight starship corridors. The Bat'leth is actually a rather shitty weapon. The Mek'leth is noted to be better in most situations. They use the same Disruptor weapons as the Romulans, and at one point used similar starship designs. While is explained as the result of a temporary and unholy alliance, given the eventual animosity between the two races, it was just an excuse to reuse props on a limited budget.

The Klingons are tied with the Vulcans and the Borg as being the most prominent and recognizable non-human species in Star Trek. Beloved of the Internet and the general public, to the point that there are published books like "A Klingon Christmas" in the world. The Klingons have their own constructed language. If you are ever worrying that you might not be a nerd, learning Klingon will solve that problem for you. Please note that this is in general considered by experts to be pathognomonic of [[Chris Chan|autism]]. You have not experienced Shakespeare until you hear it in the original Klingon.
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'''The Romulan Star Empire'''
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''"It's always chess with the Romulans"''

You know those [[Eldar|Vulcans]]? Well a few thousand years ago, as their planet was ravaged by war, some of them turned to intense emotional control and logic to tame their murderous passions, while most others left the planet altogether, founding a colony on the planet Romulus and dubbing themselves [[Dark Eldar|Romulans]]. Since said planet shares a name with a mythical figure known for founding [[Roman Empire|a city which built a vast empire]], and they had warp drive while those around them did not, you probably know that they turned to building an empire of their own. They hold the second place of prominence as immediate rivals to the Federation. Comically, they actually have better emotional control than the average Vulcan, since they gene-engineered most of their problems away years ago, and don't have to deal with the emotional blowback from pon'farr. The downside is that they lost some of their cousins' niftier powers, like mind reading and being able to transfer their soul into another person for safekeeping. Although Star Trek Online also revealed that their trip to Romulus was a terrible ordeal, and their gene-engineering was taking during that time resulting in them losing most emotions save for bitterness of being "forced out".

The difference between the Klingons and the Romulans is basically the difference between Gork and Mork, or Khorne and Tzeentch. Klingons will fight you up front with simple brute force. Romulans are sneakier guys, preferring to fight you when you're not looking with spies, cloaked ships and complex plots behind the scenes and playing the long game. There is a lot of political infighting among them, though where the Klingons would duel to the death Romulans would seek to discredit their rivals, have them die in unfortunate "accidents" or disappear. This difference has left both Romulans and Klingons with a big hate-boner for each other, to the Romulans the Klingons are crude brutish barbarians and to the Klingons the Romulans are a pack of scheming cowardly weaklings.

Like the Klingons, they served as a rough Cold War allegory. In this case, they were rough analogs to Communist China (as seen by 1960s Americans), a distant horde of inscrutable and potentially dangerous Orientals who generally were unseen and projecting vague menace, but when encountered face-to-face could pack quite a punch indeed: the first major Interstellar War that Star Trek Earth fought was with the Romulans, which was fought entirely in space with neither side ever seeing the other face to face. Afterwards they set up a 'Neutral Zone' between the Federation and the Romulan Empire that no one even tried to cross for a century. From the Original Series onward, they frequently squabble and bicker with the Federation, before joining forces with them to fight the Dominion in ''Deep Space Nine'' and having their government devastated in ''Nemesis''. Finally, Romulus itself got caught in a supernova as part of the Abramsverse's backstory. ''Picard'' has revealed that Starfleet was going to help evacuate Romulus before the nova hit, but then some rogue androids destroyed the shipyards that the rescue fleet was being built at, so the Federation shrugged, flipped the Romulans the bird, and let them get blown up. The surviving Romulans are now scattered across half the galaxy, and some of them have got hold of a Borg cube and are presumably up to some nefarious shit with it.
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'''The Ferengi Alliance'''
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[[Image:GW_Ferengi.jpg|thumb|left|A typical ferengi engaged in typical ferengi activities]]
''"A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all."''-Eighteenth Rule of Acquisition

Introduced in ''TNG's'' early days as the villains for the series, and what [[/pol/]] thinks Jews are. Some Jewish people have actually complained about their being subliminally Jewish and thus anti-Semetic, specifically mentioning that they were moneyhungry, lascivious, and ugly, and their large ear lobes were stand-ins for the sterotypical Jewish nose ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/08/14/science-fictions-anti-semitism-problem/?noredirect=on more on that here, we're not shitting you]), based on an old medieval stereotype that was enforced to prevent them owning land or assets. The idea was to make a caricature of capitalism as a contrast with the techno-communist Federation. This might have worked if these were not [[FAIL|''TNG's'' early days]]. Instead they overshot the mark by a light year or so, on top of other bad decisions, and you got a race of short (Gene wanted to make an evil short race as big evil races were overplayed), big-eared, [[goblin]]-like losers about as threatening as a grumpy pug. Over the first and second seasons they tried to make these guys threatening, but they fell flat on their face every time. Eventually the writers just said "fuck it" and the Ferengi got demoted to comic relief species, and their status as terrible enemies was demoted to propaganda designed to scare the Federation while the Ferengi government tried to figure out what to make of a species that rejected the acquisition of wealth as a goal. The Ferengi had some good moments in the later seasons of ''TNG'', but most of the best stuff that fleshed them out came from ''DS9'', which had an [[awesome]] Ferengi bartender named Quark as a major character. For an idea of what the Ferengi might have been like if the writers had their shit together, look up the Druuge of [[Star Control|Star Control II]] or the Magog Cartel from Oddworld.

Ferengi religion is only hinted upon in ''DS9'', but what is seen implies a simplistic system based on financial success. Ferengi all follow a rulebook/canon known as the Rules of Acquisition, which can be described as Ayn Rand IN SPACE and condensed into the form of Confucius' Analects. There are 285 of these, each a short piece of advice on how to stay in the black. Examples include "Peace is good for business," "War is good for business," "Never have sex with the boss's daughter," and "Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack." The first, and most important, of these is "Once you have their money, you never give it back." Sometimes, the Ferengi Randian spirituality extends into outright interpretations of the afterlife: according to some, the afterlife consists of the Divine Treasury and the Vault of Eternal Destitution, which are respectively analogous to Heaven and Hell. Entrance into one or the other depends on one's business ventures at the time of death; those that were turning a profit are allowed to enter the Divine Treasury, and the rest are damned to the Vault.

Ferengi government is ruled over by a Grand Nagus, a mix between a <s>pope</s>chief rabbi and a CEO, and he basically treats his civilization like some sort of company, with citizens regarded as workers. Directly below him is the Ferengi Commerce Authority, a [[what|quasi-religious]] organization dedicated to ensuring that correct business practices were followed and correct moral behavior was shown (including keeping the proles in line), although to the Ferengi, these are one and the same. The agents of the FCA are the Liquidators, who are essentially Inquisitors crossed with IRS auditors on steroids. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Ferengi females have no rights and are mentioned as [[PROMOTIONS|not even being allowed to wear clothes]], which leads to [[That Guy|boorish behavior]] on the part of Ferengi towards just about any species. Of course, we see female Ferengi on the show who push that envelope, but it seems that overall "regressive" does not even begin to describe the gender relationships in their culture. Quark's mother, a social climber who marries the head of their government, begins pushing through a women's rights movement during DS9, which proves more successful as time goes on.
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'''The Borg Collective'''
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[[Image:Borg cube.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Borg have assimilated and improved your [[d6|die]]. It always rolls six. Crap your pants, 'cause resistance is futile.]]
{{Topquote|We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture shall adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.|The Borg's opening hail. This is not a boast or a brag, it's them simply explaining you how things are going to go down.}}
{{Topquote|One other thing. You may encounter Enterprise crew members who've already been assimilated. Don't hesitate to fire. Believe me, you'll be doing them a favour.|Picard going full [[grimdark]].}}

The Ferengi were utter failures as serious villains, so they needed something to fill that gap. Thus they made the Borg, an aggressive [[Tyranid|hive-minded]] collective of hyper-adaptive, [[Necron|regenerating]] cyborgs that assimilates entire species into itself in its attempt to improve and evolve. Shit, that's like coming up with [[Warforged]] while trying to replace [[Kender]].

In many ways, the Borg are the truest dark reflection of the Federation, and despite their name, they're not Swedish. While the Feds want you to join their little club on your own, to "add your culture to the galactic community," the Prime Directive means they will ultimately accept you turning them down, even if you have shit they really want. The Borg say "fuck that" and just absorb you. While the Federation believes everyone should work together [[Tau|for the greater good]], they still have a very strong sense of individualism and a culture of personal accomplishment (unless your individual belief happens to run counter to the Federation's principles anyway, in which case you're just WRONG because the Federation is the best). The Borg pool all their minds together into a massive collective consciousness in the pursuit of group perfection, becoming an almost-literal personification of techno-capital. The Federation is all about beauty and tranquility and all that hippie stuff, and their tech is eco-friendly and dolphin-safe. Borg [[Tyranids|strip mine entire planets and drain entire oceans]] in the name of growth and efficiency.

Your standard Borg [[cube]] is a huge multi-kilometer [[Firaeveus Carron|metal box]] (yes, bigger than most [[Imperial Navy]] cruisers) able to go up against an entire Federation warfleet and win. That's right, one of their ships could threaten the entire Federation and [[Exterminatus]] Earth. When done right, [[Necron|they are a cold, calculating, nigh-unstoppable force, a threat to all life]] that wants to retain free and distinct personalities (although they will ignore a single person if not on an assimilation mission, as what they really want is to absorb whole civilizations). Apparently, in Picard's nightmare in ''First Contact'', the Borg assimilation process includes a surgical [[Grimdark|drill through the eye. While awake.]] Of all the stuff to come out of the TNG Era they are undoubtedly the most well recognized in mass pop culture.

Unfortunately the got a bad downgrade during ''Voyager'' (the Borg Queen blew up cubes full of tens of thousands of drones because a few of them have been severed from the Hive Mind), but even there they were frequently not to be messed with. One amusing thing to note for people that haven't watched ''TNG'': the Borg were actually only in six episodes (and three were breakaway drones) and one movie, yet they're arguably the franchise's most famous pure villains aside from Khan. Goes to show how good they were when written properly. Then in ''Voyager'' they get their shit completely pushed in when they discover a new race of extradimensional aliens which they label Species 8472, which were immune to being assimilated, and had to ask the Federation for help in dealing with them. [[Necron#Regarding_Fluff_Change_-_Sore_Butts_Everywhere.|Wait, this sounds familiar...]]
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'''The Cardassian Union'''
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Introduced in ''TNG'', they are third fiddle to the Klingons and the Romulans. If the Klingons are hypothetically-honorable techno-barbarian warriors and the Romulans are an empire of civilized and refined but sly and ruthless expansionists, the Cardassians are essentially scaly fascists re-enacting ''[[1984]]'' IN SPACE. Their trials announce the outcome at the beginning, and the defense attorney is executed if he wins. Also, THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

Originally a race of peaceable, spiritual artists called the Hebitians (ironically not dissimilar to the Bajorans), modern Cardassia was born in hunger and desperation when their homeworld began to suffer simultaneous mass famine, pandemic, resource depletion, and ecological collapse. A military junta seized power, figuratively and literally auctioned off the soul of their culture through liquidating all the planet's art and religious artifacts into cold hard cash, and turned the Cardassians into the opportunistic imperialists they are today.

Despite being a whole lot weaker than the Federation, the Cardassians manage to hold their own, partly because what they lack in resources and raw power is made up for by a combination of intense cunning and high charisma stats. Compared to the equally deceptive Romulans, the Cardies are more likely to flash you a smile while tickling your ribs with a knife. They'll use any tool they can to gain the upper hand and while that often means unpleasant and terminal sessions in dark rooms, strip mined planets and the enslavement of entire species, they'll gladly become your bestest buddy if it would achieve their goals. Their intelligence service, the Obsidian Order, is also one of the most ruthlessly efficient organizations in the entire sector, managing to outscale the Romulan Tal Shiar when it comes to producing magnificent bastards and manipulating the politics of entire worlds to their advantage. Unlike the Romulans or the Klingons, they don't tolerate the sort of literal infighting that is rampant in both those states, that shit only serves to weaken '''GLORIOUS CARDASSIA''' and needs to be stamped out with ruthless efficiency. Exposing that someone who just happens to be your enemy as being a dangerous subversive is just a benefit, although this can result in both sides of a conflict shouting "For Cardassia!" as they charge each other. Sort of how Democrats and Republicans are both for America, yet oppose each other.

Cardassia has a very fluid hierarchical government, similar to the political realities of post-Stalin but pre-Collaspe Soviet Russia. Broadly speaking, there are three different facets of the government: the Central Command (which holds all the power) the Obsidian Order (who holds the least amount of power, but controls the most puppets) and the Detapa Council (similar to the [[High Lords of Terra]] and just as worthless). Cardassian society holds a very strict view of family, placing family just below the needs of the State.

The State holds a semi-divine mythical status in the eyes of its citizens, with it being viewed as impossible for the State to ever make mistakes. The ideal Cardassian life was one of complete loyalty and servitude to the State and family, with the "repetitive epic," detailing how generations of Cardassians go on to serve both in exactly the same way over and over seen as the height of their culture. The Cardassian government is assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent by pretty much every Cardassian, with all Cadassians gladly giving of themselves to the State. Such was this level of belief that when Picard was tortured by the Obsidian order, the torturer saw nothing wrong with bringing his daughter to work because he was working for the State, and therefore the torture of Picard could never be disturbing or wrong. That's why their trials announce their sentences at the beginning and execute the defense attorney if he wins; their "trials" are more excuses to show off the power and infallibility of the State to the masses than actually determine guilt or innocence.

As far as plot significant activities went, they had a war with the Federation a few years before ''TNG'' which ended in the creation of a Demilitarized Zone between the two powers and (significant to ''Deep Space Nine'') abandoning the previously occupied planet of Bajor they had exploited for resources. After a disastrous war with the Klingons and The Maquis led to a popular revolution and overthrow of the existing government, one leader seized power, declared himself absolute leader, and joined the Dominion towards the end of ''DS9'', which was some serious bad news for the ''DS9'' crew.
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'''The Bajoran Republic'''
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The Bajorans are a species native to the Planet Bajor. They were, until shortly before the events of ''Deep Space Nine'', under a brutal occupation by the Cardassians who strip mined their planet. They had a fighting resistance which veered in and out of being considered terrorists and all in all were often represented as Palestinians IN SPEHSS. After that, they got their independence, although they're thinking about joining the Federation. The Bajorans have one system and are technologically backwards; the Federation is technically breaking the Prime Directive by interacting with them, but as they've spent years under the oppression of a warp-capable species, they can probably handle it. Also ''DS9'' proves that ancient Bajorans managed to travel at warp speeds to Cardassia using solar sails and an enormous amount of luck, which technically makes them a warp-capable species. The only reason why they are significant in terms of the politics of ''Star Trek'' is that they have a wormhole near their planet, which has some timey-wimey aliens living it that they worship as gods, and serves as the only way to get to or from the Gamma Quadrant that won't take decades, making it strategically priceless. Hilariously, this was discovered almost immediately after the Cardassians ''thought'' they'd extracted everything of value from the Bajorans and peace'd out, certain that the system was no longer worth the PR hit they were taking from it, only to get burned by some harsh seller's remorse. Also, their species has the oldest civilization (roughly a half-million years) of any major ''Star Trek'' race, and the wormhole aliens have gifted them some cool shit, like the Orb of Time.

The big thing that makes the Bajorans unique is that they actually have a serious religion going on -the human race is depicted as mostly non-religious. They're also probably one of the most accurate depictions of any highly religious alien race in a sci-fi franchise, because they are divided between the majority who interpret their religion as [[Noblebright|peace and love]], and a small but loud minority of bastards who interpret it as [[Grimdark|condoning acts of terrorism]]. A blatant attempt to simulate Israelis for criticism, although that can apply to many religions nowadays.
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'''The Dominion'''
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A vast empire which exists on the other side of the galaxy in the Gamma Quadrant. The Dominion is ruled over by a species of liquid shapeshifters called The Founders.(aka Changlings aka Odo's people) They have at their disposal a military composed of two genetically engineered species that worship the Founders as gods: the short and articulate Vorta who serve as ambassadors, bureaucrats, and political commisars and the big brutal Jem'hadar, who are vat grown, drug addicted, cannon fodder. These oversee a large number of vassal races, including (as of later seasons of ''DS9'') the Cardassians.

The Founders were once (according to them anyway) a peaceful, kind civilization of explorers who wished to see the galaxy, explore strange new worlds, and seek out new forms of life. Unfortunately, they did this in the wrong neighborhood, and quickly ran into species who did not tolerate others. The fact that the Founders were shapeshifters capable of mimicking almost anyone did not help either. Paranoia, mutual mistrust, and some very bad things eventually led to the Founders deciding "fuck this" and moving their planet into a nebula so nobody would bother them. So more or less, a [[Grimdark|grimmer]], [[Grimdark|darker]], counterpart to the Federation, but with spookier Real Aliens.

The Founders are obsessed with order and are both extremely racist and xenophobic, and believe that all alien life is inherently untrustworthy and evil, and the best thing to do is conquer/enslave them before they do the same to them. They don't care about the rights of "Solids", and will happily ignore any sense of decency when convenient. This can be seen when The Dominion runs a simulation of the Dominion dominating the Alpha Quadrant. When O'Brien is assaulted by a Jem'Hadar and severely beaten to the point of needing emergency teleportation to medical (the crime being "disrespectful"), the Founders (disguised as Federation Officers) do not press charges, and when Sisko comes barging in demanding answers, dismiss him with little concern about their own soldiers brutalizing citizens. Their overall ideology could be thought of as Qin legalism IN SPACE: people are inherently evil and the only way to make a better world is to impose order upon them through brute force from a position of absolute, unquestioned power.

The Founders, when not wandering around in various forms, tend to spend their time in a massive ocean literally made up of countless billions of Founders, something which is referred to as the Great Link. According to the Founders, this allows them to share information with each other and come to peaceful decisions. This is rapidly proved to be bullshit; when a separated-at-birth one of their own merged into the Great Link to share his memories of the Federation as peaceful and tolerant space hippies, not only did the Founders ignore his memories, but actively fucked with his mind in an attempt to turn him into a sleeper agent. And even if it weren't, it shows their hypocrisy through their willingness to share freedom and liberty among themselves while depriving all their various slaves and conquered peoples of the same.

The Founders are massive dicks, even to their own people. Failure among Jem'Hadar is rewarded with slow and painful death from deprivation of the drug they're created to need and their lifespans are incredibly short. To be even bigger dicks, the Vorta have no sense of taste and can't appreciate beauty. Not to make them better diplomats, but because they were raised from a primitive stone-age ape tribe, and the Founders think they shouldn't be ever allowed to forget that. (On the plus side, they did give the Vorta an immunity to poison that would make [[Mortarion]] himself jealous. [https://youtu.be/rACCZaBcq1g?t=1m29s Observe.]) This may also stem from their own neuroses: the Founders themselves have almost no bodily needs at all and require no nourishment, so they design their slaves to be like them. Notably, Vorta tend to come in [[Paranoia|packs of clones; a new one is activated when an old one dies, and they retain some memories and personality between "lives,"]] further hammering home how expendable they are to their makers.

And both races are literally engineered to love their makers for what they have done to them and worship and revere them as gods.

Continuing from the Cardassian Union section because the fate of both powers are linked in DS9. After joining the The Dominion. Everything was going seemingly for them and their leader Gul Dukat. They figured out how to bring down the minefield created by the Starfleet crew of Deep Space Nine to block access to the wormhole. (The Cardassians use its old name Terok Nor while in charge.)

However during the start of the sixth season the Founders learn that their not the only "gods" in the Galaxy. As the Sisko convinces the Bajoran Prophets to remove the Jem'Hadar reinforcements in transit. Forcing them to retreat back to Cardassian Space and Dukat's old friend Damar shoots Dukat's half Bajorion daughter Ziyal. This makes Dukat jump off the deep end as the sod loses his sanity and than goes full nutcase after his rehab transport is destroyed by the Jem Hadar, and ends up fighting an injured Benjamin Sisko after hiding inside some caverns on a hell planet for a few days.

After escaping he allows one of the evil wormhole aliens to possess him, kills Jadzia Dax, forgives Damar for killing a family member. Creates a cult of Bajorions dedicated to the Pai-Wraths,than abandons the cult when Major Kira knocks over the suicide pill jar that mixes it in with his fake. Than has sex with an old woman and becomes a demi-god. Bent on buring the universe despite the fact that his own people suffered heavily under the rule of the Dominion. After getting a final bitch slap from the Sisko who gets to have a happy ending living with his god alien parents. At the same time teaching them not to be huge dicks. While Dukat himself is trapped in the Fire Caves on Bajor.

His old friend Damar despite murdering a half breed woman is a lot more sane. Lacking Dukat's crimisa, things get worse for him and the Cardassians under Dominion rule. Most of their victories are off screen such as taking over Betazed. One of the none few major non founding planets of the Federation. This forces the Sisko to bring the Romulans into the war on the side of the Klingon-Federation alliance. With some underhanded methods from a former member of the Cassidian Obsidian Order(Elim Garak). I.e. blow up a Romulan Senator's shuttlecraft and tricking the pointy ears into thinking a damaged but fake datarod(an advanced form of Solid State Drive) was the real deal.

Thus the blame for his death will be switched from the Feds and pals are shifted to the Cardassians. By the final season this leads to the Dominion finding new best buds in the form of The Breen. Damar decides he has enough of the bullshit and in the ultimate irony realizes that the status of his people are now no different from the Cardassian occupied Bajor.

So after the Breen score the Domain a temporary victory over the Federation Alliance. Damar and his Cardi buds destroy a Dominion cloning facility while their backs are turned. Just so he can stick it to his "friend" the Vorta, Weyoun 8. Leaving them and the Klingons being the only thing stopping The Dominion from steamrolling over the Alpha Quadrant. As one Bird of Prey(doesn't say if its the frigate sized B'rel or Light Cruiser sized K'vort class. Though DS9 almost always used the former) was immune to the Breen energy dampening weapon due to modding its warp core. Gowron, due to being a moron who did nothing to change course after his most trusted advisor(Martok) turned out to be a Founder and the first time the Jem Hadar kicked their asses during the Klingon-Cardassian War. Decides to take glory for himself and discredit General Martok(who now how his pre Dominion internment job). This goes as badly as your thinking. Forcing Worf(now a legitimate badass compared to his TNG days) to kill him and turning the role of Chancellor to Martok.

Meanwhile the Feds decided to help out Damar's resistance by sending him Colonel Kira(who now has the rank of a Starfleet Commander), Odo and Garak(Ziyal's former simi-boyfriend). The resistance eventually get their hands on one of the Breen Energy Dampeners. During some infighting Damar realizes that the restoring the old Cardassia is pointless. Killing one of his old friends. The Breen and Jem'hadar do eventually one up the resistance. But not before their brutality turns more Cardassian against them. So during the final space battle this makes the Cardi military switch sides.
Damar is killed during the final raid on the Dominion HQ. Focing Kira and Garak to lead the final push into the compound.
The War between the Alpha Quadrant Alliance and The Dominion ends when Odo offers to share the cure to the disease created by Section 31(the Federation's answer to the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order) which he passed after the Founders tricked him for into return to the Great Link. While also promising to join the Great Link.
It's harder to say who are the bigger dicks here. The Founders for having Wayoon 4 infect Odo to return and turned him into into a solid(who was restored because dying a Changeling baby merged with him a season later) for killing a Founder who hacked the Defiant and almost succeeded at starting a war in the Alpha Quadrant. Or Section 31 for making the disease in the first place.

With all their advanced technology. One would think the Founders would have discovered a cure before being handed one. But the bad guys being just as flawed as everyone else is a common theme in Star Trek. Even in Star Trek Online despiste Odo being the one in charge a few decades later. As their Ambassador to the Federation. The experiments of the Founders sketchy past cause them and everyone else huge headaches including the dishonorable mention of the revived True Way movement.(i.e. the guys who hated that fact that the civilian Detapa Council ran Cadassaia.)

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'''Species 8472 / Undine'''
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The one and only race in the galaxy even the Borg don't want to fuck with. Introduced in Voyager, Species 8472 are three-legged creatures that live in a space called Fluid Space. It's similar to the [[Eye of Terror]] for the fact that it connects to an alternate dimension and [[Khorne|everyone will be ripped apart upon entering.]]

When the Borg first came around to try and assimilate them they were completely obliterated in a war in which 4 million Borg were killed in the first few days at the cost of almost no members of Species 8472. This war was such a roflstomp that the Borg were forced to call on the Federation for help. [[Tau|The Federation being the better people swallowed their pride and decided to help their sworn enemies,]] [[Eldrad|but were dicks and sent only one ship.]]

Species 8472 fought with fast moving, small ships and devastating beam weapons so the small ship of the Federation could keep up with them and helped the Borg force the species back into Fluid Space. The Federation were the villains on this one. That said, they eventually came to an accord with Species 8472, preventing further wars between the denizens of Fluid Space, except in lots and lots of video games that want to use a fresh antagonist.

That and that in ''Star Trek Online'', [[Awesome|they look like the fucking Predator.]]
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===The Q===

The Q are a race of beings who have elevated themselves to the point where they are basically gods. Most of them do not interact directly with the younger races, who they tend to consider with disdain- if they consider them at all. However a few of them take a more enlightened view, and one in particular has been known to fuck with individual humans from time time. They are mostly a TNG thing, and even there they work mostly by grace of John de Lancie's acting chops as a counterpoint to the charisma of Patrick Stewart, as de Lancie played the ''character'' Q, an all-powerful epic [[troll]] (no, not the fantasy kind) who's occasionally [[Tzeentch]]ian games sometimes appeared to be for his own amusement and sometimes acted as education or event protection to the human race. Various subplots involving the Q ''species'' range from somewhat thought provoking to mildly entertaining to ridiculous and banal, but the classic episodes that highlighted the charisma and chemistry of the two actors were often quite excellent.

=== The Mirror Universe ===
Not so much of a faction as an alternate setting, this is a parallel universe in which [[Alternate History|things have gone differently]] in Earth's History. The main point of divergence appears to occur when the Vulcan scientists who landed at Bozeman, Montana in 2063 are not welcomed with alcohol and music but instead are killed and have their ship looted. It is equally clear that where the main universe is Noblebright the Mirror Universe is Grimdark. Instead of a peace loving Federation searching for knowledge and friendly cooperation for the betterment of all, Earth gave rise to the ''Terran Empire'' which seeks out new life and civilizations to conquer and enslave, as it had done with the Klingons. Pretty much it's the PG-13 version of the Imperium of Man with a bit more Grimderp. Junior officers get promoted by killing their superiors, those that fail at that get thrown in the agony booth for their troubles and Emperor gets the job by usurping the previous incumbent. In general everyone in the Mirror Universe is a selfish asshole version of themselves and following comic book logic the uniforms for the female characters are more revealing. Occasionally people can cross over from one universe to the next due to technobabble and cause mischief in either realm.

Originally it was a one off TOS setting for an episode of the week, but it was brought back in a few novels and some romps in Deep Space Nine in which [[Fail|the Terran Empire had fallen]]. In Enterprise's fourth season it got a two parter that was pretty good and would have been an annual thing if the show had been renewed, this one having little crossover with the main universe (a ship from TOS ended up in the Mirror Universe and is salvaged after all it's crew have died). We also went there in Discovery, for better or worse. Voyager never did the mirror universe, but instead got a homage episode with some alien historians in the far future getting the details wrong like historians tend to.

== The Star Trek Crew ==
Whether the focus of the show is exploration, manning a space station in an important locale or trying to get home, all Star Trek series have a basic set up of casting and focus: namely on a collection of people who are usually the senior most officers on the ship. If you decide to make a Star Trek inspired game take this into consideration.

* '''The Captain''': Big cheese. Makes the hard decisions. Needs to be able to talk, think or fight out of situations as needed. The third option fetishist finding the balance between empathy and reason. (Two least skubby examples: Kirk and Picard, but the skub will fly hard if you say one is better than the other, sufficed to say that people like both of them alot but for different reasons)
* '''The First Officer''': Second in command and trusted advisor. Added after the original series, where the role was combined with and split between two others. (Two least skubby examples: Riker and Kira)
* '''The Science Officer''': Got high Int stats. Can analyze the situation and work out solutions. The voice of reason. Almost never human. (Two least skubby examples: Data and Spock)
* '''The Engineer''': Hard working technically minded guy who gets shit done. (Two least skubby examples: Scotty and Geordi)
* '''The Doctor''': Ship's healer with a secondary scientific role. The voice of empathy, whether prickly or serene. (Two least skubby examples: Bones and the EMH Doctor)
* '''The Security Officer''': Rough and tumble no-nonsense sort whose job it is to keep these guys alive when diplomacy fails, which it often does. Often has to juggle providing ship's security with working the tactical station on the bridge in a crisis. (Two least skubby examples: Worf and Odo)
* '''The Helmsman''': Got mad spacecraft piloting skills, either full-sized starships, shuttles, or fighters. (Two least skubby examples: Sulu and Tom Paris)
* '''The Other Guy''': A crewmember whose role doesn't cleanly map onto other positions, a role often restricted to a single show. Example positions include communications officer, ship's councilor, transporter chief, and linguist. (Two Least skubby examples: Uhura and Troi)
* '''The Outsider''': Someone who is a passenger and regular cast member, but exists outside the organization, looking in and commenting. Usually works a side-job, like tailor, bartender, or cook. Either a beloved fan-favorite or utterly despised, there is no middle ground. (Two Least skubby examples: Guinan and Quark)

Some of these hats may be worn by more than one character, some may be worn by no one at all. This is especially true in the original series, which had a smaller cast overall, and which put less emphasis on an ensemble and more on the main trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The usual roles and character dynamics were instead set down by ''The Next Generation'', which later series generally copied.

== The Shows ==
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===''The Original Series''===
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Created in 1966 by legendary sci-fi [[spiritual liege]] and money-grubbing sexist lounge lizard Gene Roddenberry and pitched as a "Wagon Train to the stars", it's a pulpy adventure sci-fi, full of fistfights, sword fights, and hammy speeches. (The guns never work.)

The USS ''Enterprise'' is tasked by the Federation to go on a five year mission to explore space: the final frontier, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly go where no man has gone before, though due to budget constraints, her crew often finds that man has in fact gone there before. Or at least something that looks exactly like a man but is actually an [[Xenos|Alien]]; most episodes split the difference. James T. Kirk sleeps with [[Hot Chicks|hot alien babes]] who either die tragically or leave tearfully at the end of the episode, but it's 'k because he's too in love with the Enterprise to ever love a mere ''woman'' more. Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are cold and logical and rash and emotional respectively, and their constant friction must be resulting in the best make-up sex in the world, Mr. Sulu and Lieutenant Uhura wait in vain for focus episodes that never come, Ensign Chekhov suffers horribly to the approval of American Cold War audiences, and Scotty [[gets shit done]]. Uniforms, while iconic, tend to look a bit civilian though. Miniskirts are apparently mandated attire for the ship's fan-servicey female "yeomen" and others, because 1966. The civilian nature of the attire (including, one must assume, the miniskirts, but they had a visual appeal all their own) were apparently an intentional design decision by Roddenberry who didn't want uniforms to look military. Further specialness on the part of Roddenberry demanded phasers not look like guns, instead looking like nothing in particular at all (although looking back at them today they look sort of like TV remotes, which would be invented much later), and also (probably the only sensible decision in this category) ships that didn't look like rockets, giving ships their distinctive and iconic saucer-engineering-nacelles look that still stands out today.

The Original Series frequently ran out of budget and entire episodes were filmed using spare costumes belonging to the production company, resulting in a series of extremely goofy excuses to go to planets full of gangsters or [[Nazi]]s. This is often copied by shows who don't realize it was done out of pure expediency, and nowadays this [[TVTropes|"Planet of Hats"]] gimmick is practically a box to check off when doing sci-fi adventure. The lack of budget also resulted in one of the more memorable inventions; unable to budget for a sequence showing the ''Enterprise'' or a shuttle landing on a new planet every week, the writers instead decided to invent the transporter to "beam" the crew down to planets or between starships. Also worth noting: despite its mediocre critical reception, ratings and eventual cancellation, not to forget the uneven quality of many episodes, especially in the Roddenberry-less third season where poor Fred Freiberger had to come onto a show he didn't understand and try to get better ratings with less money, ''TOS'' had a hell of a cultural impact thanks to syndication and it has been said that since it entered syndication in 1969, there hasn't been a 24-hour period without some TV station, in some country, playing Star Trek. Cancellation of The Original Series is now considered one of the worst decisions in TV history, and while much of its silly 60's campiness is now laughable, it often still manages to teach relevant and important lessons today.

Fun fact: the ''Enterprise'' and each of her 11 sister ships have enough firepower to [[Exterminatus]] a planet by themselves, after getting issued an order called General Order 24. This however is likely a time-consuming task. According to a later DS9 episode, it takes a fleet of 20 warships 1 hour of sustained bombardment to destroy a planets crust and 5 hours of sustained bombardment to destroy a planet down to its mantle. These 20 ships were also in service 100 years after the Enterprise so they were also more powerful.
Kirk has the distinction of being the only known captain to issue a [[Exterminatus|General Order 24]], because a planet was ''too'' much into wargames (he changed his mind after they dropped wargaming).
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===''The Animated Series''===
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The often forgotten middle child. More or less "seasons 4-5" of ''TOS'' with the same writing staff and actors, sans poor Walter Koenig. He was replaced by a weird camel person. He learned this at a convention, from a fan, while he was trying to announce he'd be writing an episode, which Gene promptly demanded he rewrite over and over. Classy.

Being animated allowed the staff to get a lot more creative with the alien designs and plots, and the writing and acting remain... well, top notch is a stretch, but certainly at the same levels as ''The Original Series'', with the occasional low point. Not ''nearly'' as bad as you're probably picturing from the name, although still limited by the low budget and primitive, cheap animation techniques of the television era it was aired in. Notably some sci-fi novelists were brought in to write some episodes, such as Larry Niven, and at least one episode, "Yesteryear," is considered such a pivotal moment in Spock's development that even people who hate the series enough to consider it all non-canon often make an exception just for that one.

Also, since the series now has no excuse for throwing in lots of Space Puritans and Space Wizards, it of course continued to do so to derptastic results, because by this point it had become traditional. The presence of a straight-up [[furry]] on the bridge, however, is downright unacceptable.
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===''The Next Generation''===
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Here's where it starts getting a little deeper and a little darker, although with a lot of left-wing political subtext turned up to 11. The USS ''Enterprise-D'' (the original and C were destroyed in action while A and B were retired) is, like its predecessor, tasked with going where no-one has gone before, but this time around the problems are less likely to be solved in a single episode. Jean-Luc Picard is the captain and he plots and negotiates his way to victory; Mr. Data is cold and unemotional, though not by choice - as an android, he'd very much like to change that; Riker takes over the captain's "sleep with alien babes" duties since Picard is married to the job; Worf the Klingon gets beaten up by monsters to show how tough the monsters are, meaning that Worf winds up looking incredibly weak by the end of the show's run and doesn't regain his badassery until his run on ''DS9''; Dr. Beverly Crusher is good old Bones minus his temper; Dr. Pulaski is Bones ''plus'' temper; Counsellor Troy is so badly written she becomes a running joke; and Geordi LaForge [[gets shit done]]. Only two things need to be said about helmsman Wesley Crusher: he was [[Mary Sue|Gene Wesley Roddenberry's shitty self-insert fanfic character]], and his sueness got to the point that even his actor started to hate him within the first season of the show.

Due to the massive success of The Original Series in syndication (and Paramount being [[Rage|pissed off]] by broadcast networks treating their most valuable IP like any other show), TNG was aired through syndication from the beginning. Although the first two seasons were laughably bad, the quality began to improve dramatically after an increasingly cocaine-addled Gene Roddenberry got too sick to keep ruining it and his partner-in-crime Maurice Hurley was thrown out on his ass, a moment often pinpointed via looking for when [[Meme|Riker grew a beard.]] The later seasons are widely considered to represent the apex of the franchise's episodic formula on the small screen (although ''DS9'' gave it a run for its money with a more serialized approach); sadly, this series only got one good movie.
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===''Deep Space Nine''===
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Unlike all the other series so far, ''Deep Space Nine'' primarily takes place in a fixed location - the titular space station Deep Space Nine, out near the borders of Federation Space. Said space station is near Bajor, which was recently freed from Cardassian occupation, and a wormhole to the other side of the galaxy which allows [[Warp|all sorts of of crazy shit to go down]]. If the other shows are a wagon train, this one's a border fort.

Benjamin Sisko is the captain, declared Emissary by the nearby Bajorans for making contact with the wormhole aliens they worship, and he successfully hybridizes the blow-the-shit-out-of-whatever-you-can't-punch Kirk approach with the talk-in-a-very-dignified-way-about-the-philosophy-of-the-thing-and-win-by-rhetoric Picard maneuver, in his ultimately-successful quest to become the baddest motherfucker in space, then literally becomes a space god. Kira the Bajoran ex-<s>terrorist</s> <S>''noble freedom fighter''</s> (who are we kidding she calls herself a terrorist) struggles to free and rebuild her people while coming to terms with the moral ambiguities of situations she prefers to see in black-and-white, Dr. Bashir works to find his character for several seasons before becoming a highlight, Dax gets often written poorly and has to switch bodies doing it, Odo IS ''Liquid Space Cop'', Quark runs his bar and [[troll|heckles]] the Federation, Garak pretends to be a tailor while definitely not being a super-spy and dropping killer lines, and Miles O'Brien [[gets shit done]]. Also, Worf wanders in halfway through, and actually gets to punch things instead of just getting punched by them. It's also a lot more political than other series (though ''TNG'' and ''Voyager'' have their moments) and the last series to have Gene Roddenberry's involvement (with less enthusiasm, in fact often much to the benefit of this particular series thematically, although Roddenberry's complete departure did not necessarily bode well for the franchise in general.)

It's the [[Awesome|closest the canon series ever get]] to [[Grimdark]], especially when the Dominion show up. The show has aged remarkably well and the terrorist/freedom fighter debate was repeatedly explored in a very mature and honest way. ''DS9'' is the most serialized of all Trek shows and could be considered a forerunner to the golden age of television with its long story arcs and deep character development. Overall, ''DS9'' has to be considered the most consistently good Trek show thanks to the excellent writing and fantastic performances from a truly wonderful ensemble cast. At least until the final season, when the writers who made it good were pulled to try and fail to make good movies, heralding the failure that was ''Voyager''. The finale episodes were mostly okay and tied up the story semi-satisfyingly, though a few die-hard subplots fell flat.

It wasn't without its controversies however. The show was airing around the same time as another thematically similar sci-fi show, ''Babylon 5''. Not only that but characters also shared similarities, as did the episodes. Interestingly, beginning of both series, introduction of characters and airing of similar episodes were often too close to each other for one show to copy the other but this did not stop massive [[Rage]] and [[/v/|fanboy wars]] from starting between fans of the two series accusing one another of plagiarism and having an inferior product. Happily, as time went on and both shows evolved, these hurt feelings have mostly faded.

How good is ''Deep Space Nine''? Every Star Trek series and even the reboot movies have pretty much ripped off ideas and concepts established during the series. Famously, within the "Trekker/Trekie" fan community, there's a little cell of fans who like it better than most other ''Star Trek''; these fans are typically called "Niners."
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===''Voyager''===
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Star Trek: Voyager centers around the eponymous USS ''Voyager'', a smallish ship which gets teleported over to the other side of the galaxy. The plot of the series centers on the crew's efforts to get back home, which COULD have made for an excellent premise. Unfortunately, there were few lasting story arcs, with most episodes being fully self-contained (as well as being littered with far too many episodes featuring holodeck or transporter incidents). As a consequence, despite being completely isolated from the Federation, no matter how bad things got Voyager always appeared in the next episode without a scratch, fully supplied, and with all its shuttlecraft intact. Think ''Gilligan's Island'' on a starship.

Like ''TNG'' and ''DS9'' it's a character-driven drama just as often as it is a sci-fi adventure romp, although compared to TNG only a few of the characters are particularly memorable. The captain and arguable "main character" is Kathryn Janeway, a Katharine Hepburn lookalike (I see what you did there) who is stern without being cold, and principled without being inflexible. The fan favorite is a character called "The Doctor" ([[Doctor Who|No relation]]); he's the solid-light hologram representative of the ship's emergency medical computer, who has to take on actual medical duties when their chief medical officer was conveniently killed in the pilot episode. Other than this, Chakotay is a peace-loving and spiritually rich indian <s>freedom fighter</s> <s>terrorist</s> [[FAIL|who was written with the help of a special cherokee consultant so native his name was Jamake Highwater and it turned out later on that he was actually jewish and didn't know dick about native cultures so he made everything up resulting in Chakotay basically being a borderline racist caricature of what you think indians are like. Akoochimoya.]] Tom Paris is an annoying jerk and is counterbalanced by Harry Kim who is the ideal boy-scout, making him only half as annoying and twice as boring. B'elanna Torres tries to perpetuate a lineage of dudes getting shit done but ends up blankly reciting her technobabble, having second degree plasma burns and – worst of all – systematically fails to get shit done whenever the warp core goes nuts. Tuvok tries hard to be as cool as Spock but ends up being a lame version of the n°1 Vulcan who uses logic to justify everything and makes it short for "you are wrong, I am right because I said so." Kes is passed as a fragile and nice character but it takes a couple of episodes to realize that having a short lifespan does not change the facts: [[powergamer|when you can boil someone to death from the inside of their body, drain life from everything around you to become stronger and do anything you want without knowing how, just by thinking of it]], you are a goddamn Mary Sue. From the fourth season onwards the only character the writers seemed to care about are Seven of Nine, [[Mary Sue|a human woman who recently escaped from Borg control and kept all of her cyborg enhancements but regained her free will]]; another Mary Sue, to be sure, but she's [[Hot Chicks|hot]], and the other characters are much worse, so that's not really a bad thing. Fortunately, The Doctor still received a lot of attention from the writers and almost single-handedly made the show watchable. There was also Neelix, who was the apparent inspiration for Jar-Jar Binks, and any sane crew would have pushed him out of an airlock on the first episode. Fans who stuck with the show despite its glaring failings were given one final slap in the face with the <s>controversial</s> shit final season, in which the producers decided "screw steadily crafting a satisfying conclusion to a story which we have wasted for most of the last seven years anyway; lets just ignore it until the final episode and then throw in some shit about trans-warp conduits and time travel, bitches love time travel!" If you did not care about any of the characters or the subplots or time travel making sense (the writers sure didn't), then the final episode was explosions (and the Borg got a major setback, just don't think about the setup too hard).

The Doctor never once stopped being totally fucking awesome though (enough so to even earn a cameo in First Contact), and the great acting from the cast carries the series from being horrific to ''occasionally'' watchable. Just goes to show that no matter how good your actors are, they can't make diamonds out of shit.

Overall, most Star Trek fans view Voyager's legacy with a shrug and a "meh." Unfortunately, hopes that Voyager's successor would revitalize the franchise would soon prove to be overly optimistic.

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===''Enterprise''===
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From the minute the Nickelback-tier theme tune started, Enterprise attempted to take Star Trek in a new direction and was only partially successful in doing so. The series never quite caught its footing, although it still managed to have some enjoyable moments. It was most notable for providing a first-hand view of the key events that directly led to the formation of the Federation. The Federation's founding races were also featured heavily, with Andorians, Tellarites, and Vulcans all enjoying significant screen time alongside the human characters.

It's a prequel to the rest of the canon, taking place on the first ''Enterprise'', before the Federation was founded and during the period when Earth was still an independent power- so there's a lot of primitive versions of things from other series. At least the uniforms were pretty cool in an Air Force sort of way. Captained by <s>that guy from ''Quantum Leap''</s> Jonathan Archer, in hindsight the fact that they had to rename him from their original choice of Jeffrey Archer to avoid confusion with the disgraced British MP and author of the same name probably cursed the series with bad karma before it had even begun shooting. In an unusual twist for a ''Trek'' series, his first officer isn't a <s>terrorist</s> ''noble freedom fighter,'' however she does share a trait with her ''Voyager'' predecessor in that the actress who portrayed her frequently criticized the show's writers in interviews. Other than that, well, Hoshi Sato screams a lot, Travis Mayweather was so dull even the writers forgot he existed, the resident Vulcan T'Pol serves as both the Science Officer and source of sexy fanservice, Malcolm Reed has an accent, Dr Phlox is a weird creepy alien with weird creepy alien moral (and gets surprisingly interesting when given enough screentime, which hardly happened), and Trip also has an accent and [[gets shit done]].

Was retooled twice, the third season tries to be ''24'' IN SPACE (stop some guys the Xindi from blowing up Earth) while the 4th season is a massive apology about the last three seasons that tries to fix all the problems they had, and as a result, the only season that's close to being good.

Unfortunately, the poorly-received final episode is set on the holodeck of the Enterprise-D, which leaves us with the firm impression that the producers would have much rather have just continued making ''The Next Generation''. Considering the mediocre quality of the ''TNG'' movies we got instead, this probably would have worked out better for all involved (Or not since ''Voyager'' was that; its first episode was even numbered 901, as in Season 9 Episode 1).

Yet despite all this bad directing, subpar plots, and frankly boring episodes, ''Enterprise'' still manages to be moderately enjoyable with occasional moments of awesomeness if you can suffer through a fair few awful spots and aggressive mediocrity almost everywhere else. The focus on founding Federation races like the Andorans was refreshing and the technology level, being somewhere between the original series and the real world present-day, was quite interesting. We also got to see the Vulcans portrayed as arrogant, superior dicks. Which makes a lot more sense than the way they're usually portrayed as fairly submissive towards humans because they are, obviously and objectively, the superior race. The Klingons certainly still considered themselves to be honorable but the show made it clear that the Klingon notion of honor is rarely analogous to the human concept which was interesting as all hell to watch. There have been a few small nods to it in discovery and the abrams movies.

And let's be fucking honest, [[/tg/]] loves 40k and the Xindi arc was about as grimdark as shit gets. And that was awesome.

Also makes a neat pairing with ''Voyager'' in that they really mess with the Prime Directive and question the Federation.
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===''Discovery''===
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----
<s>A LOAD OF SOCIAL JUSTICE SHIT!</s> Ahem, let's start again, shall we?

A new "prequel" series set 10 years before ''The Original Series.'' Again. Run exclusively on CBS' paid streaming service (unless you live outside the US and Canada, in which case you can get it on Netflix) to try and drum up sign-ups and revenue, it features a mix of ''Enterprise'' and Abramstrek aesthetics despite supposedly taking place in parallel to the TOS "The Cage" pilot while [[what|having technology superior to late DS9]] and introducing [[dune|mushroom-based space travel]] that would imply [[retcon|all later events and warp travel would be outdated]]. The trailer has attracted a lot of concern over the fact that Klingons have been completely redesigned to look like slit-nosed ogres wearing ancient Egyptian cosplay, and rumors that the Klingons shown were [[Racial Holy War|primitives who had been trapped in stasis]] proved to be unfounded, so there is no excuse. Not having a cold war to posture about, the new villains are based off of Trump-inspired xenophobia by the admission of the authors. Also the lead character is Spock's human sister that he never mentioned before, aka the ''exact'' origin of the [[Mary Sue]] which is just fucking depressing. To further reinforce this, there are ''numerous'' examples of dialogue and exposition that serve only to show how the Mary Sue main character was right all along, usually in conjunction with the death of the character that had foolishly disagreed with her. Want a new Star Trek episode about racism and immigration? Try the now-banned [https://youtu.be/3VEZH8bqytA Star Trek Continues]. Want Star Trek with humor, keep an eye out for the upcoming [https://ew-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ew.com/tv/2018/10/25/star-trek-animated-comedy/amp/?fbclid=IwAR2WN6auDNm5YiunYhaqiu7vt9f-P08AuUjMpLA5LlpUgvTm9_xloJNRYb0 Star Trek: Lower Decks]; want a pseudo-Star Trek show about other modern issues? Try ''The Orville'' below; that's right, American Dad In Space may right now be a better Star Trek than an actual Star Trek series.

Initial reviews have been... well, it's shit. The writing is overly convoluted, the massive injection of grimdark into pre-TOS continuity is anathema to the hardcore fans (the ''human'' characters are often the ones doing the nastiest shit, including [[Marines Malevolent|trying to kill a Klingon party by planting an explosive on the corpse of one of their comrades for when they came to collect the dead]]) and the Klingons are so flat and devoid of characterization that they might as well be Larry the Cable Guy lookalikes wearing Trump hats. This is a massive disappointment for a series that promised to put a spotlight on Klingon culture but ended up retconning all the characterization that happened in TNG and DS9. It ''may'' get better with time (remember that it took two seasons for TNG to get really good) but given the release schedule (split between 2017 and 2018 with a long break) it may come too late for the fanbase to care. Currently it's cause for more fans to lose their shit over whether it's better or worse than the Abrams movies, which is a new record of [[Skub|Trek Skub]]. Releasing the show on CBS All Access instead of cable or broadcast TV makes it seem that executives don't really give a shit if the show succeeds or fails, bringing up the question of [[Bioware|whether they're deliberately putting Star Trek: Discovery in a no-win scenario where, no matter what happens, the executives have an excuse to cancel Star Trek altogether]].

Another stupid decision was not shelling out the cash to bring back Bruce Greenwood and Zachary Quinto as Captain Pike and Spock, respectively. Their ages wouldn't have mattered either if CBS and Paramount weren't too cheap to use the anti-aging CGI tech that is so commonplace these days. That being said, Anson Mount's portrayal of Captain Pike was a revelation that was BY FAR the most well-received aspect of Season 2.

There were also allegations that large chunks of the plot were stolen from previews of an in-development indie game (the unreleased 2014 game featured giant Tardigrades that had the ability to use an interstellar network to travel anywhere they wanted to- sound familiar?).

While Season 2 had some watchable moments, it was still middling at best, and nobody is ''ever'' going to let this series live down the garbage fire that was Season 1.
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===''Picard''===
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Set to be a continuation of the original timeline, featuring old man Picard with Patrick Stewart reprising the role. Hopes are not high, but at the very least Patrick Stewart's presence should make it watchable if nothing else.

The story so far: Picard ragequit Starfleet after they sat back and let the Romulans get blown up by the supernova mentioned in the first Abrams movie. This happened because some rogue androids orbitally bombarded Mars and blew up the rescue fleet that was being built there, so the Federation has banned all R&D on synthetic lifeforms and subsequently become [[Imperium of Man|isolationist, racist and xenophobic]] (does this remind you of anything?). Picard has been living in his family chateau ever since, making wine and hanging out with his dog and his Romulan housekeepers. Then a scared girl named Dahj turns up on his doorstep, and it turns out she's a highly advanced biological android constructed from the surviving bits of Data's positronic brain by the guy who wanted to dismantle Data in that episode "The Measure of a Man." Before Picard can really figure out what to do about her, she gets killed by a secret society of Luddite anti-Android Romulan assholes, but it turns it that's okay because she has a twin "sister" named Soji who is working with some other Romulans on a derelict Borg cube. Picard decides it's time to saddle up and go be a hero again. He starts putting together a crew that includes Agnes Jurati, a former cyberneticist; Raffi Musiker, his last executive officer, [[What|who is now an alcoholic drug-vaping hermit]] after getting kicked out of Starfleet; Cristobal Rios, a scruffy merc pilot whose ship is staffed entirely by holograms of himself; Elnor, a Romulan warrior monk raised by Romulan warrior nuns; and Seven of Nine, who has become a kickass pilot and is no longer wearing her infamous catsuit. Together, they're out to save Soji, stop the Romulans, and be the good guys in a galaxy that needs heroes, etc etc.

Key storytelling criticisms of the show include the idea that the Romulan Empire should have had enough infrastructure to effect an evacuation without help, and that even if they didn't, the Federation would ''never'' abandon a neighbor who was asking for help- not even a former enemy, and not even when doing so became difficult or inconvenient. Whether you like the series or not, it's clear that this series is not taking place in Gene Roddenberry's noblebright vision of the Federation, and the fact that it is yet another grim, sometimes violent entry into the franchise is a point that has sharply [[skub|divided]] reviews of the show.

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== Homages ==
Being such a long-running franchise with a wide audience, Star Trek has gained enough pop-culture recognition that it is often referenced in other works. In a few cases entire projects are made to pay homage Star Trek. Here are some examples.

=== Galaxy Quest ===
A sci-fi/comedy film released in 1999, directed by Dean Parisot. It parodies science fiction films and series in general, but particularly ''Star Trek'' and its fandom. The film stars big name actors including Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and the late great Alan Rickman. The plot revolves around the cast of a defunct cult television series called Galaxy Quest (for example, Tim Allen played the Kirk/Shatner expy and the late Alan Rickman played the Spock/Nimoy expy). They're also suffering fatigue that mirrors the experiences of the actual Star Trek actors (Rickman's character is typecast with his Galaxy Quest character and laments it, similar to how these things happened to the late Leonard Nimoy).

The cast are suddenly visited by actual aliens, the Thermians, who believe the series to be an accurate documentary (they have no concept of fiction and only the most bare bones idea of lying) and seek their help. The Thermians take the actors with them, who find themselves involved in a very real, and dangerous, intergalactic conflict, and unlike the show where it all wrapped up quickly they struggle to learn about and relate to the aliens. Spoiler; in a witty nod to the "rubber forehead aliens" so common in Star Trek, the Thermians look like humans with unnaturally pale skin and straight hair, but that's just a holographic disguise and the Thermian's true forms are squid-like. Can these actors find greatness within themselves, and possibly personal redemption? (Spoiler: yes, and it is incredible.)

Built around the basic premise of "What if the cast of ''Star Trek'' ended up on a real spaceship and had to actually do the shit they did in the show?" Featuring a veritable all-star cast of talented comedians and character actors, this is one of the best parodies ever made, and an affectionate love-letter to the franchise as a whole.

===Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning===
Another parody, parodying not only ''Star Trek'' but ''Babylon 5'' as well. The seventh in a series fan movies released in 2005, it's about Captain Pirk builds a starship called CPP ''Kickstart'', allies with Russia and takes over the world. He wants to take over more planets but the ships of his P-Fleet aren't fast enough to travel outside the Solar system. A maggot hole opens and it leads to an alternate reality. Pirk wants to take over the Earth of this reality, which leads to an [[awesome]] space battle between the P-Fleet and the fleet of the space station Babel 13 led by Johnny Sherrypie. The movie features some of the best special effects ever put in a sci-fi movie, which is pretty impressive, considering that this is an amateur film with a very low budget and was rendered in five years in someone's bedroom. The film is spoken in Finnish but subtitles are available for a wide variety of languages, including Klingon. They also made [https://web.archive.org/web/20070828010927/http://rpg.starwreck.com/ a role-playing game based on it], where your character [[Truenamer|becomes more incompetent]] [[Page 42|as he levels up]].

===Star Trek: Renegades===
Kickstarter Trek. The makers submitted their made-for-TV movie pilot to CBS in an attempt to get it made into a legit on-the-air series (and by god it shows), but they were not successful. As a result, while the project limped along for a few years afterward, it has good and bad in equal measure. As a non-official product it also cannot be considered canon. Some characters are actually interesting (about time we saw more of the Breen!) while others are pure Mary Sues (including a male Seven of Nine with a built-in Borg-gun/personal shield/fully-functional hand). Some of the ideas are interesting while others are boring or already-been-done. The CGI is all Hollywood-quality, but the practical effects are okay at best.
It's obvious that they made this without knowing that they were going to be able to make a TV show or not, and tried to cram the sort of build-up and intrigue we saw in DS9 into a span of 90 minutes. For now though, it's decidedly meh, and probably a dead project as well since it hasn't been mentioned on the maker's website in over a year as of late 2019.

===Star Trek Continues===
Of all the offerings listed here, Star Trek Continues is BY FAR the closest in theme and tone to the original 1960's series. Indeed, this is the whole point: from its inception, this fan-funded project was intended to represent a what-if "4th Season" of the Original Series, ending with the conclusion of the Enterprise's 5-year mission. It is surprisingly and at times ''delightfully'' watchable, with strong stories, consequences and arcs that carry over to later episodes, tons of attention to detail, unexpected cameos, and a cast that really came together, particularly in later episodes. It also delicately navigated a line between viewing female characters through the lens of a show that was rooted in 1960's culture while also not treating them as weak children dependent on men for protection. Star Trek Continues successfully concluded its "season" with all 11 episodes gradually released from 2014 to 2018, to heaps of industry awards and wide praise.

=== The Orville ===
A comedy drama sci-fi television series that began as a homage to Star Trek, created by and starring Seth MacFarlane of ''Family Guy'' infamy-- [[Skub|No wait, come back!]] The guy's a huge Trekkie and felt too many shows were up in their ass with grimdark, so he pitched his idea to the execs to make a loving comedic sendup of The Next Generation. Many of the executive producers and developers are notable industry Trekkies such as David Goodman (who wrote the ''Futurama'' Trek parody episode), or Trek alumni such as Brannon Braga. First airing in 2017, the series is about the strung-out not-Picard protagonist Captain Edward Mercer, played by MacFarlane himself, of the eponymous not-Enterprise spaceship "The Orville" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Orville likely named after one of the Wright Brothers]). His ex-wife Kelly is the first officer while the crew includes the not-T'Pol alien security officer Alara, gay beefy not-Worf alien Bortus, asshole not-Lore android Isaac, and John LaMarr and Gordon Malloy - an even more ridiculous parody of Harry Kim and Tom Paris. They explore the galaxy while dealing with personal problems and fighting various bad guys.

Season one started with a decent pilot about Ed and Kelly reconciling enough to work together, then had peaks and valleys to its final episode. Like Star Trek, there’s some commentary on real world issues. The episode "Majority Rule" has good commentary on social currency systems yet is also suspiciously similar to Black Mirror's episode "Nosedive". The episode "About a Girl" is a Bortus-centered story about gender-fluid/sex-changing aliens (surprisingly well-done though it treads [[SJW|certain waters]]; on that note, "Cupid's Dagger" poked the hornet's nest when it revealed Kelly and Ed split because Kelly banged an alien whose pheromones provokes questions about consent). Being a Seth MacFarlane show, there's also one subject The Orville's very preachy - pun intended - about, to a degree surpassing even Star Trek; [[Imperial Truth|atheism]], as a quarter of Season 1 episodes revolve around beating the “Religion is Bad” drum - "If Stars Should Appear", "Mad Idolatry" and "Krill". In fact, the titular Krill are aliens and the only religious race in the setting, so ''of course'' they’re fanatical devotees of a dangerous religion (a monotheistic one teaching that [[The Culture#Other civilizations|all non-Krill are soulless abominations to be subjugated or destroyed]]). Throw in cues from villains like Nosferatu (all deliberate according to the devs) including a pallid reptilian look and being killed by UV sunlight, and the Krill seemed set to be the show's go-to bad guys. Despite things like hit-and-miss humor and heavy-handed preachiness that could alienate even those who agree with the messages, The Orville did well enough for a second season.

In the second season, Alara was written out of the show halfway through. The character's actress, Halston Sage, was rumoured to be dating Seth MacFarlane and given the apparent distance between them later, this may have indicated a breakup. If the rumor was true, this likely factored into writing Alara out because [[Derp|dating a co-worker and subordinate 20 years younger than you almost never ends well]]. In any event, this change may come back to haunt them as she was one of the more well-received characters. In other events, Issac turns good at the last minute (becoming not-Data instead of not-Lore) and one episode has a plot hole where the Krill teacher Teleya - captured and imprisoned by Mercer and co. in Season 1 - comes back as part of a strike force targeting Ed with no explanation for her escape. Speaking of the Krill, they become the "lesser villains that need to team up with the good guys to fight worse villains" cliché, in a possible asspull given all the villainous setup they got in Season 1. The team up happens because the rest of Issac's robotic race, introduced this season and called the Kaylons, have gone [[Necrons|Full Skynet]] against organic life. The cast seems to be gelling better (rumoured friction between Seth and Halston aside), the writers have a better idea of what the show should be and the humour is now used in service of the stories. The criticized elements were dialed back but still remain, and while the show is getting a third season, it was moved from TV to streaming service Hulu.

Ultimately, some commend The Orville as a breath of [[Noblebright|fresh air]] in an overly [[Grimdark|stagnant]] genre with good special effects and bouts of genius. Others denounce The Orville as derivative with sophomoric preachiness and clumsy pop-culture references, consider MacFarlane's stunt-casting himself as the main character the height of vanity, and view his interactions with ex-wife character Kelly as uncomfortable to watch from the word "go." Some think both sides have a point. Trekkies are equally divided on the show; many Trekkies [[butthurt]] over Discovery endorse The Orville, a significant number of Discovery fans hate The Orville, and a small and overlooked group quietly enjoys both.

As always, stay tuned for how this turns out.

== Films ==
As a general rule, the even-numbered ones aren't complete shit.

* '''''Star Trek: The Motion Picture''''': AKA: The Slow Motion Picture, or the Motionless Picture. A giant space whatsit is flying towards Earth, the mostly-retired crew has to go figure out what's going on and stop it. Old school sci-fi geeks like the ideas, but terrible pace and interminable special effects that were clearly meant to capitalize on ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' while failing to understand what people like about that movie kill them dead for everyone else. Besides the uniform worn by Kirk, the uniforms also look like pajamas. So no wonder they were changed only a movie later. Features an entirely bald female alien who is [[What|so good at sex that she has to swear an oath not to get it on with the crew]]. Really. This is canon.
* '''''Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan''''': As Kirk starts to feel his age, a one-off villain from the show makes a dramatic reapperance: [[Meme|KKKHHHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!!]] Widely considered the best of all the films, and the only one considered a straight up great film, no qualifiers. If you haven't seen it, see it. So good many later movies in the franchise just try to rip it off instead of finding their own identities. Interesting fact: due to time constraints, actors of Kirk and Khan weren't available at the same time. So the entire script was written so that Kirk and Khan never need to meet face-to-face. But you'd never notice if it weren't pointed out to you. Roddenberry screeched autistically and objected to some of the actions of his characters, including Kirk shooting a [[Enslavers|brain eating space parasite]] rather than "[[Noblebright|keeping it for study]]." The fact that his strongest objections came to the most [[win]] of the films says a great deal about his deprecating value to the franchise around the TNG era.
* '''''Star Trek III: The Search for Spock''''': Where is Spock? ''He's on Genesis.'' ALL AHEAD FULL! Not really bad, just mediocre and run of the mill compared to the superior films that surround it. It was also saddled with the misfortune of undoing some of the previous film's more-daring decisions, and having its only daring decision reversed a film later. If you had to say that any film broke the "odd numbers suck" rule, it would be this one.
* '''''Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home''''': The crew of the ''Enterprise'' travels back in time to save the whales. No, literally and unironically. Scott tries to talk to a computer through the mouse, Spock nerve-pinches a punk on a bus in San Francisco, and somehow it works, creating something perhaps not quite in the genre intended but a classic in sci-fi dramedy. ''The Voyage Home'' is a zany comedy romp beloved by the general public and fandom alike, leaving only the most intractable fanbois to bitch and moan. Nimoy directed this one but there was a contract stipulation that Shatner would get whatever Nimoy got, thus leading to...
* <del>'''''Star Trek V: The Final Frontier''''':</del> <s>The epitome of the "odd-numbered Star Trek films suck" rule.</s> {{BLAM|Lies! There is no}} '''''Star Trek V'''''{{BLAM|! It was not called}} '''''The Final Frontier'''''{{BLAM|! It was not directed by Kirk's egotistical actor and did not have a plot that could literally be summarized as "Kirk is betrayed by his incompetent crew, yet goes on to fight God and win!" The films mysteriously moved from four to six and ''we are all improved because of this!''}}
* '''''Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country''''': The Space Cold War ends amidst searing mystery and drama. The sendoff for the original cast, except Kirk who got a worse send-off a movie later. Gene Roddenberry watched it, hated it, and was going to seek legal advice but died a week later. And good riddance to that, because it's a pretty sweet political thriller if your hippie-panties don't get into a twist at the thought that the Federation isn't a perfect place full of perfect people.
* '''''Star Trek Generations''''': Malcolm McDowell blows up planets to get into a magic space ribbon to live forever, no it does not make any more sense in context. An already-weak story hamstrung by its obsession with being daring and unconventional rather than good. Also, Kirk dies on the bridge in the most face-palming manner possible.
* '''''Star Trek First Contact''''': The ''TNG'' crew face off with the Borg to ensure the future happens. Lots of action, a script that sparks with energy and snark, and some quite effective performances make this the only good ''TNG'' movie (we don't blame you TNG cast). It sadly is also the only appearance of the Defiant on screen, doing a pretty decent job of fighting the Borg before the Enterprise E saves the day of course. The Borg Queen was also introduced here before Voyager, ruining what could have been a good idea.
* '''''Star Trek Insurrection''''': If you thought the [[Avatar|Na'vi]] were a bunch of badly-written [[Mary Sue]]s, you ain't seen nothing yet! B-b-b-baby you ain't seen n-n-n-nothing yet! Also, Riker shaves his beard, and that's basically a war crime. Aged from terrible to forgettably bad thanks to that one scene of Picard and Data singing ''HMS Pinafore'' going memetic.
* '''''Star Trek Nemesis''''': The last stand of the ''TNG'' cast, ending not with a bang but a whimper. It also required amending the even=good/odd=bad rule to "''Galaxy Quest'' counts as a ''Star Trek'' film so this one is also odd."
* '''''Star Trek''''' (2009): Alternate timeline "reboot" (sideboot?) with the original crew, albeit with new younger actors. Timey-wimey shit happens and old prime timeline Spock (reprised by old Leonard Nemoy) is hurled back in time along with a bunch of Romulan assholes. The dickbag Romulans begin fucking shit up, slightly altering history in a way that ensures gratuitous lens flare. [[skub| Skubtastic]], but at least watchable, which is more than ''most'' odd-numbered films can muster. If you still even count it as odd, without the ''Galaxy Quest''-amendment.
* '''''Star Trek Into Darkness''''': Some [[edgy]] shit. The second of the alternate timeline ''Trek'' films. Terrorism, conspiracy and flapdoodle. Even more skubtastic, but generally considered worse than its predecessor, partially because (like ''Nemesis'') it tries to be a remake of ''The Wrath of Khan'' and having Kirk at his most punchable.
* '''''Star Trek Beyond''''': Controversial, but more in a question of whether it's decent or quite good. Lots of good character stuff and a decent story revolving around a race of mysterious space pirates trying to conquer a colony, but the action photography is poorly-lit shaky-cam horseshit and the sound work is awful. If it's the last "Kelvin Timeline" movie, as it seems it will be, at least it ended on a good note.

== Novels ==
Like most long time franchises ''Star Trek'' has a massive line of books. Unlike most they're basically just fanfics as nothing but the show and the movies is canon so the writers can do whatever they want. This changed after ''Nemesis'' since they might never have another show or movie in the "Prime" universe, so the writers got their shit together and wrote a group of books as a tight community very close to the shows. The relaunch novels are a continuation of the show they're about. Also there's the ''Titan'' book series which is about Riker and Troi getting their own ship, which happens to be staffed by every race in the Federation including living rocks, [[awesome|space dinosaurs]] that smell like [[meatbread|toast]] and a [[what|space cyborg ostrich]].

During yet another novel continuity (Star Trek: Destiny), the Borg go nuts and eat Pluto... yeah... and then they finally get sick of the Federation somehow managing to not get assimilated all the time, so they finally just send every last cube they have with orders to Exterminatus the absolute SHIT out of the entire Alpha Quadrant. Pretty much every important character from TNG, DS9, and Voyager has to team up to stop them, and even then the Federation still gets its shit kicked in and winds up having to rely on a vaguely ridiculous deus ex machina to win, and [[Grimdark|billions of people still die and dozens of planets are blown to shit]]. It was pretty insane.

Then all the Federation's main enemies get together to form an anti-Federation and start poking the bear, all the while telling their allies that they're somehow warmongering dicks, Section 31 gets its cover blown in a big way, and Riker gets promoted to Admiral. Also, a lot of the newer TNG novels have been devoted to following up on one-shot aliens from the show, like the guys that sent out the probe that made Barclay super-smart and those fish monks that were abducting crewmembers for experiments. Now that the Picard show is coming out, though, this will all presumably be chucked in the dustbin.

== Video Games ==
=== Star Trek Online ===
''Star Trek Online'' is the free-to-play online game built by Cryptic Studios and run by Perfect World. With an official license CBS, recurring characters voiced by various Trek alumni, and recently a license to include references to the reboot chronology (officially known as the "Kelvin Timeline"), it's the closest existing thing to an "official" continuation of the "Prime" timeline, and contains history and fluff extending nearly 40 years from the end of Star Trek: Nemesis.

Taking place in the 25th century (around the year 2409-2410), the Hobus supernova (the event that kicked Nero and Spock into the past during Star Trek 2009) has devastated the Romulans, and its near-collapse and fragmentation causes tensions between a resurgent Klingon Empire and the Federation. The tensions blow up into a war, with members of a new, nicer, breakaway Romulan Republic playing both sides in exchange for development aid.

The game contains deep cuts from all over Trek lore, and answers questions about what happened to various key characters, including Data (took over the Enterprise-E, then retired), the Enterprise (now an even bigger ship run by Andorian captain Shon), and the Voyager crew (it took Harry Kim 30 years to make Captain lol). Raises barely-shown, unnamed, and otherwise obscure races to new prominence as big bad foes, including the Iconians (ancient aliens with god complexes who mutated into energy beings, currently live in dyson spheres and were only defeated by predestination paradox), Tzenkethi (4-armed halo guys whose weak points are the FRONT of their shields), and Na'kuhl (the alien nazis from Enterprise as time-traveling terrorists who blame the Federation for a throwaway event that happened in TNG's beach episode).

Ostensibly free to play, but don't let that fool you... the ''not-so-micro''transactions are the only reason the lights stay on.

=== Starfleet Command ===

''Starfleet Command'' was a series real time space battle games by Interplay based on the much older tabletop game Star Fleet Battles. It came out in 1999 and was followed by several sequels and expansions. Gameplay was much like ''Battlefleet Gothic'', but with the player only controlling one ship. SFC remains Interplay's best selling game, topping even ''Baldur's Gate''.

=== Armada ===

A series of low effort RTS's churned out by Activision in 2000. Tried to take on both ''Homeworld'' and ''Age of Empires'', both of which have recently gotten HD remakes and ''Armada'' hasn't so that should tell you all you need to know. However, for one of the first 3D model space RTS's it was surprisingly easy to mod, resulting in many ship mod packs being made for it.

== Would you like to know more? ==
And oh Lordy, is there more...
*[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/ Main Memory Alpha: A ''Star Trek'' wiki]
*[http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/ Main Memory Beta: The flip-side of Memory Alpha for the less than official stuff]
*[http://sfdebris.com/ SF Debris: opinionated episode reviews, has some non ''Trek'' stuff as well]

[[Category: Television]]

Morathi

2020-02-20T09:20:03Z

2600:6C58:637F:E506:4036:C84A:8009:880A: Undo revision 638618 by 65.94.53.160 (talk)

[[File:Morathi.jpg|500px|thumb|right|"Don't you wish your mother was hot like me?"]]
{{Topquote|A scratch from an envenomed dagger, a sip from a poisoned chalice, a slight to a proud warrior's honour... In time these things may do far more grievous harm than the broadsword or the axe, my love...|Morathi}}
{{Topquote|Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.|Groucho Marx}}

'''Morathi''' is the Queen of the [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Druchii]] from [[Warhammer Fantasy]], the supreme leader of their religious faction and mother to the racial leader [[Malekith]].

She is also perverted, incestuous, so-sexy-you'll-die-for-real-lolz, and pretty much a complete bitch as she was responsible for a lot of the actions that screwed over Elfkind. Don't believe us? Read and weep oh dear reader.

Her character suffered greatly from a 7th edition retcon, further worsened in 8e until in [[End Times]] her role in history was reduced to mostly "had a baby who is really important" and scheming on the side that kills a lot of people but contributes nothing to the story. Many fans were angered by her apparent and very disappointing death in the event, although it was later revealed she survived and may in fact still regain her glory as an important character.

She is usually seen mostly naked, although sometimes she covers her breasts or uses pasties, and always rides her Dark Pegasus named Sulephet into battle. Her model is one of the raciest in the Warhammer range as she wears a metal thong and little else, her perfect tits on display for everyone to see (something she uses with magic in a Black Library novel she gets a starring role in to render an entire mixed-gender garrison of soldiers into standing mutely while riding up and down in front of their fortress on Suluphet as they get shot to pieces with her crossbow forces). The model of her even has them helpfully pushed upwards for the best possible angle. It could be she does this because her son is so lacking in sex appeal she must make up for both of them....oh the harsh duties she must do!

==The Legend==
She was originally a mere maiden, rescued by the first Phoenix King [[Aenarion]] from a [[Chaos]] slave caravan and he was so taken with her that he took her to be his new wife, having recently lost his first wife the [[Everqueen]] to a [[Daemons|Daemonic]] attack. Considering her actions later, the rumors of her being a [[Slaanesh|Slaaneshi]] Sorceress and using her magicks to charm Aenarion were most likely true. Aenarion moved his court to [[Ulthuan|Nagarythe]] and fell into a hedonistic lifestyle while his armies battled the Daemon apocalypse raging all around. Morathi eventually gave birth to his third child, Malekith, and encouraged Aenarion to sit back and relax as everything would turn out ''juuuuuuust fine''. [[Caledor the Dragontamer]], Aenarion's old friend, hated Morathi bitterly and knew she was wreaking havoc on his already damaged mind. In a last act of desperation, Caledor gathered his Wizards and began channeling magic to create a Vortex that would suck excess magic out of the Warhammer World so Daemons would have difficulty manifesting forevermore. Morathi encouraged Aenarion to slay Caledor for his betrayal, although upon reaching the site of the ritual he instead defended his friend against the might of Chaos itself.

After the disappearance of Aenarion and the trapping of Caledor within the Vortex, Morathi planned and groomed her son to take the throne. When the actual election came however, Malekith assured the Princes of the land he was willing to accept a vote for him rather than simply claim the throne by birthright. In a retcon in [[End Times]] this turned out to be a gambit to ensure the loyalty of the Elf people and the manipulations of Chaos robbed him of his birthright; however, in original canon this was simply the only moral choice he ever made. His friend Bel Shanaar was chosen instead, and Morathi raved and ranted like a wild woman over their "treachery". Only Malekith could calm her, and assure her they had made the right choice. He then took to the sea to explore the world like his father had, being gone for many years. During his travels he encountered [[Warriors of Chaos|human Chaos worshipers]] and random undead, fighting them for control of a magical crown. Curious, he placed it on his head and saw a future where Chaos would conquer his people. He immediately rushed home.

Prior to the 7e retcon, Malekith began searching his homeland for Chaos worship and discovered the Cult of Pleasure revering Slaanesh, with his own mother Morathi as the High Priestess to Slaanesh himself having corrupted a very large chunk of the Elf race to her way of thinking. She fled to the city of Anlec where a large number of cultists resided. Malekith led an army consisting of both his own army and the supporting armies led by the princes of Ellyrion, Yvresse, Chrace and Saphery. Malekith was successful in breaching the cities defences and confronted his mother in the cities palace. Though Morathi had the upper hand with her great sorcerous powers, she was defeated. Morathi was spared from certain death by convincing her son that she would give him her full support of the cults and help him gain the Phoenix throne. She was brought before the court of the Phoenix king in the city of Tor Anroc. Though she would have been executed for her Crimes, Malekith convinced Bel Shanaar to imprison her instead (Despite Imrik of Caledor's insistence that she must die, even offering to strike the deathblow himself).

He called a meeting of the Princes of Ulthuan to reveal a discovery about the Cult. Rather than point the finger at his mother, he accused Bel Shanaar of the heresy as Bel lay dying from poison Malekith had slipped him. He then declared that he himself was the fit ruler of the Elf race, and stepped through the [[Asuryan|Flames of Asuryan]] which select who is fit to be Phoenix King. Due to his treachery and the fact the Flames are designed to root out the unworthy, his full-retard plan resulted in him burning to bacon. His followers quickly slaughtered the unarmed Princes while Morathi rushed him out and kept him alive with her magic until a priest of [[Vaul]] loyal to his family sealed him in a suit of frozen armor that would reduce the misery of his blackened body.

In the retcon, Morathi was not involved in the story at all; he returned knowing that he was the true Phoenix King as desired by Asuryan while Bel Shanaar had been shielded by magic which disqualified him from judgement, and Malekith himself was only rejected because he was immature and filled with fear. His followers killing the Princes was apparently justified somehow, and everything that happened was all the fault of the [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Asur]] because reasons and grimderpness. She still helped him survive however, and if anything was cast in a more motherly role than the manipulative one.

Either way, Malekith and Morathi gathered their supporters and their culture took a turn for the dark; pre-retcon Morathi summoned Daemons which feed on Elf souls to ravage the countryside while the formerly banned worship of the war god [[Khaine]] replaced all other faiths. Eventually the bitter civil war turned against the new Dark Elf faction, and as one final "fuck you" Morathi messed with the Vortex. When that backfired she, Malekith and the other Dark Elf sorcerers/sorceresses launched huge chunks of Nagarythe away from the land like boats, causing massive death and destruction across Ulthuan. They then settled in a new land to the west, a series of landmasses split by bodies of water that are vaguely in the shape of our real world North America, populated by vicious and nasty monsters as well as Chaos humans. These lands were called Naggaroth, and after destroying the High Elf colonies and humans who dwelled here the Dark Elves settled them (let's calmly bypass the unfortunate implications of the Native American/colonization parallels).

During this time, in early editions it was implied Morathi and Malekith were lovers who also constantly vied for control of their race while planning to kill each other. Dark Elves set up many batshit insane celebrations such as a night where the Cult of Pleasure and/or Cult of Khaine are allowed to take anyone they want who can't buy their own lives in huge amount of slaves and slaughter them in any way they wish ([[Gav Thorpe]] went on record in regards to Elf storytelling that numbers don't matter, High Elves can lose millions as a statistic or ten as a tragedy and either way they will be dying out, and although Dark Elves always lose massive population due to stupid reasons will always be only in jeopardy in regards to the future but not currently on the verge of extinction). Later lore did away with the incest, Slaanesh worship, and plotting; Morathi went from the ultimate hedonistic schemer and rival to her son like a cougar version of Caligula to his dear sad mother sadly stricken with a mild case of dementia as she continued to believe that she was living in the court of Nagarythe and sometimes mistook Malekith for Aenarion whom she genuinely loved rather than manipulated, all while continuing her duties as high priestess of the Elf god of pleasure [[Atharti]] (as Gav Thorpe thought Elves worshiping Slaanesh makes no sense, since he thinks of them as [[Eldar]] in rat-infested shitholes). Either way, Morathi went to great pains to keep herself youthful. She bathed constantly in blood made from screaming Elf babies, a technique learned either from Slaanesh or Khaine directly depending on pre or post retcon.

As Naggaroth grew in power, Malekith saw the Chaos worshiping Elves as a possible threat to his power. He established Khaine as the official god of the Dark Elves, although loyalty was ultimately only to himself. The Witches were nonetheless loyal only to Morathi and their gods, Khaine and (in older canon) Slaanesh with the two factions politicking against each other while hiding their true allegiance from the rest of the race (as an open secret lacking only proof of course).

Morathi found another rival in [[Hellebron]], a priestess of Khaine who was becoming dangerously powerful within Morathi's Witch Elf forces. Morathi cursed her with a hag-like appearance Elves rarely ever naturally attain, causing Hellebron to hate her more than anyone else. Ironically, after the retcon Hellebron features in history more importantly than Morathi herself.

During the Battle of Finuval Plains, one of the many battles between the High and Dark Elves, Morathi faced off in magical duel with [[Teclis]] while Malekith dueled [[Tyrion]] below. With the Dark Elves having overrun much of Ulthuan, the battle was the deciding point between the two forces; Morathi's own Daemon force lead by a powerful [[Keeper of Secrets]] named [[N'kari]] (later retconned to be just more of Malekith's assassins) had badly injured Tyrion and hunted the Everqueen Alarielle, and the burning of her forest had weakened her powers so she could not help. Morathi and Teclis were evenly matched, although after suffering great injury Malekith managed to escape into the [[Warp]] to avoid being killed, and sensing her son flee the battle Morathi herself immediately retreated leaving her army to be cut down. After the retcon, Morathi is absent from the battle and Malekith fought Teclis in a battle of magic while Tyrion fought his forces.

In the [[Defenders of Ulthuan/Sons of Ellyrion]] novels, Morathi engineers the main plot as a repeat of the invasion which involved the Finuval Plain battle, although this time using a captured Ellyrion Reaver as a Manchurian Candidate who would assassinate Teclis and Alarielle prior to the attack. She used her rank as Slaanesh's High Priestess to call upon the loyalty of Slaanesh's current champion, a Warrior of Chaos who was kept entertained with Elf slaves for him and his men to torture and defile (use your imagination) until Ulthuan was entirely destroyed, whereupon he would be allowed to do as he would with her (que both chuckling that the other Slaaneshi would not survive it). During the ongoing war, the Witch Elves and Slaaneshi spent their time raiding each other's camps and torture-killing their allies when supplies of still-living High Elves were low. Morathi's plan was partially successful, with the cursed dagger the unwitting pawn carrying consuming the body and soul of an Elf maiden he'd fallen in love with to incinerate Teclis like Malekith, then pierce Alarielle's heart. Malekith (who she feared greatly in the novel despite planning to kill him) lead his forces to assault Ulthuan from the south with their navy and slay the greatest heroes of Ulthuan while the Slaaneshi Dark Elves and Warriors attacked from west to east and meet him in the middle at Finuval Plain II. The Champion used Slaanesh's magic of pride to force High Elf commanders and champions into terrible decisions while her beguile and mind control wreaked havoc on the lesser Elf defenders. The plan began to fall apart however when their pawn sought redemption for his actions, reuniting with his brother and fiance before joining the defending army. Alarielle herself was saved by Isha, and the Everqueen entity (made up of Isha and EVERY Everqueen who ever lived) took control of her body and healed the wound before joining the battle herself. The Everqueen's magic purified the Slaaneshi Champion, burning away his blessings to reveal an ugly old man who regretted sacrificing his only love on an altar in exchange for eternal youth, and in a battle of wills between Isha and Slaanesh the Champion was turned into a [[Chaos Spawn]] that was hacked away by the Asur forces. With the loss of their commander and the [[Daemonettes]] turning to ash all around them, the Dark Elves and Warriors looked to their Queen to find her flying inland from the battle. The forces routed, and were destroyed by the triumphant heroes. Meanwhile, Morathi's true plan had been revealed; in her madness she was only using her entire race, her son, and all the humans as a distraction for her to undo the Vortex and summon Slaanesh directly into the world to prove herself as his greatest servant. The Vortex was on an island lost in time and half in and out of the Warp like magical interdimensional amber. She stabbed a Mage to death, and cackled out her monologue to Caledor the Dragontamer when he appeared before her as an emaciated long-dead skeleton of an Elf. After calmly replying that he never liked her and had always seen her as the selfish insane little girl she was, he revealed his true form within the amber as being stronger than he had ever been and as youthful as in his prime. He lashed out at her using only his knowledge of reality, searing her mind and driving her into hysteric wailing as she fled from the island with her very soul bleeding. She somehow flew Sulephet home to Naggaroth in this state, eyes wild and screaming all the way. Her son fled from his battle similarly, his dragon mortally wounded and bereft of a large chunk of his armor and gear. This story's canonicity is doubtful as ALL of the concepts the story hinges on were retconned out. Although considering Morathi's damaged mental state in End Times, it may have simply happened in a very different way and remained canon...

In [[Storm of Chaos]], Morathi brought the Cult of Slaanesh back and allied them with Warriors of Chaos before flaunting themselves openly in Naggaroth. This was implied to put Naggaroth in a civil/religious war between the Temple of Khaine and the Cult of Slaanesh, but Games Workshop retconned Storm of Chaos out of existence so now this never happened.

===The End Times===
In an effort to reboot Warhammer Fantasy, as it had been neglected for so long in favor of yet another Space Marine Chapter update, Games Workshop thrust the End Times upon the Warhammer world, where the slow slide into destruction becomes a non-stop express train. In the canon Naggaroth had become overrun with the legions of Khorne, with Karond Kar and Clar Karond destroyed. Ghrond was surrounded by an impenetrable thicket of magic thorns when Malekith and his army arrived fresh from liberating Naggarond. No longer able to coddle his spiteful but addled mother, Malekith left her alone in a tower there after destroying the entire Chaos invasion force and destroying everything of value from fortresses to slaves to silk handkerchiefs and anything else the enemy could claim, then gathered the entire Dark Elf race barring her guards to go claim his "rightful place as Phoenix King".

She left the tower however, disguising herself as one of her own followers who had been enlisted in Malekith's army, and tried to make Tyrion into Aenarion 2.0. Once Alarielle confirmed Malekith's legitimacy by marrying him (you know, her great great great great great great great great uncle) Tyrion and Morathi were wed, him drawing the [[Widowmaker]] like his ancestor and becoming Khaine's avatar (as well as her greatest lover). She was revealed to actually be the mortal incarnation of the goddess Hekarti.

After Tyrion was killed on the Isle of the Dead, Teclis undid the Vortex in order to bind the [[Warhammer Magic|Winds of Magic]] to mortals in an attempt to combat Chaos. She rushed to stop the whole thing, and broke down sobbing and shrieking when she saw Tyrion and Malekith die (though the latter was alive, but only just). In a fit, she killed all the mages in magic amber except Caledor the Dragontamer. Her actions created a breach that temporarily enabled Slaanesh himself/herself to partially manifest in the material world, forcing one of his/her arms through the rift to grab as many elves as he/she could. Realizing she'd fucked up worse than ever before in every sense of the term, Morathi tried to flee but Caledor held her down and both were taken by Slaanesh into the Warp.

Fans of Morathi, already unhappy with her increasing retcons rendering her useless, '''[[RAGE]]D'''. Her hatedom and High Elf fans cheered that Morathi was getting her just desserts (given Slaanesh's hunger for elf souls it could be literal). A small few continually insisted that it was just how she was going to be returned to Slaanesh's side, reincarnated as a Daemon Princess while others quickly bought her models thinking she would be removed from canon.

===Age of Sigmar===
In [[Age of Sigmar]], Morathi really did make a return. During the Age of Myth, [[Malekith]] awoke alone within the Realm of Shadow without any memories. He took on the name Malerion and attempted to find others of his kind. Eventually he found Morathi, who had escaped up from Slaanesh's belly and out her mouth while he was in a food coma digesting all the aelf souls she had consumed. But Morathi was "changed" by the experience. She now had two forms: The first is her normal aelf form, whilst the winged, coiling, serpentine Grecian Medusa is her true form (which she transforms into by her own will or whenever she loses her cool). As she regained her memories, Morathi formed beings of pure shadow who celebrated around her. She met up with her son Malerion, and though there was a lot of bad blood between them, they worked together to find more aelves.

[[Sigmar]] eventually found them, and they joined his pantheon made from an assembly of gods and other powers of the Mortal Realms. Morathi stayed with Sigmar and rest of the pantheon, trying to feel Sigmar's "Stormhammer" outside of battle. When Sigmar proved immune to her charms, she moved on to [[Nagash]]. With a cry of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FL_eXQb4C0|"BEGONE THOT!"] Nagash struck Morathi, hurting and upsetting her enough that her true serpentine form was revealed (say what you will about Nagash, he keeps his pimp hand strong). Humiliated, Morathi fled. During this time [[Tyrion]], [[Teclis]] and Malerion learned that [[Slaanesh]] had the aelf souls and sought to trap him. They approached Morathi and, with the promise of the share of the bounty, they used her as bait and managed to capture and imprison [[Slaanesh]] somewhere between the realms of Hysh and Ulgu, siphoning souls from him in increments (too many at once would draw the attention of Slaanesh's followers or fellow Chaos Gods, or allow Slaanesh to break free). Morathi took her share of the aelven souls Slaanesh had consumed and made aelves from them who would go on to become the [[Daughters of Khaine]].

She claims to be the Oracle of [[Khaine]] on account of having recovered his heart and leads the Daughters of Khaine, but in truth she is siphoning the prayer-power meant for the war god (stopping his potential rebirth in the process) in the hope of becoming a goddess herself- after that she plans to exact revenge on everyone who ever wronged her. Her war against the forces of Chaos and her bringing civilization to the Mortal Realms is mentioned, suggesting that she heavily influenced the Mortal Realms before the Age of Chaos.She has also since had another falling out with Malekith/Malerion and is said to be working as a part of Order only because she finds the other three Grand Alliances even less appealing to her tastes; she has become a sworn enemy to the forces of Chaos, the forces of Destruction are too uncivilized for her liking and the forces of Death too static and unappealing to someone whose people were nearly extinct (she probably also remembers the taste of Nagash's pimp hand).

As part of her transformation, she has not only bound the Bloodwrack Medusae to her will as her high priests, but also created two new species of [[monstergirls|monstrous yet beautiful female elf-kin]]; the [[lamia]]-like [[Medusa|Melusai]], and the Khinerai, who resemble either bat-winged [[Avariel]] or a less-monstrous take on the [[Harpy|Harpies]] of old Warhammer.

Ironically, Morathi's new fluff as having mutated into a [[lamia]]-like form as a result of exposure to the [[daemon]]ic powers of [[Slaanesh]] makes her kind of similar to the now-lost Slaaneshi champion, [[Dechala]].

Recent fluff has shown that she and her son have made up again and have started plotting against the other gods most notably [[Sigmar]].

==On The Tabletop==
In her current incarnation, Morathi has two forms. Her basic form, High Oracle of Khaine, is a caster of absurd power, and not a slouch in close combat either. She can cast three spells per turn (and Unbind twice), her unique spell which is basically Arcane Bolt on steroids, adds 1 to her casting rolls and doubling the range of her spells, as well as her Command Ability that lets her choose 2 Daughters of Khaine units within 14 inches and have them either shoot or pile in immediately. She also has 6 attacks with her bladed wings and 3 attacks with her spear Heartrender, which is better than a lot of combat characters get. On defense, she has a 4+ Armor, a 6+ Ward (from her Daughters of Khaine allegiance), a -1 to hit from how gorgeous she is AND she can only take 3 wounds per turn.

But that's not all. Either when you choose or when you roll under the number of wounds Morathi has taken, she can get super angry and turn into her giant <s>Snake Mom</s> Shadow Queen form. In this form she loses a lot of her trickier abilities (all of her casting bonuses, -1 to hit, command ability, although she keeps her max of 3 wounds per turn) and instead turns into one of the most brutal beatsticks in the entire game, capable of going head to head with Nagash or Archaon and coming out on top. She gains a shooting attack that allows you to instant kill a model if roll over its number of wounds, between 6 and 2 attacks with Heartrender (which now does a flat 3 wounds as opposed to D3 in her Oracle form), 5 attacks with her Crown of Serpents, and 1 with her tail that does between 6 and D3 damage. That's a max of 29 wounds when she's at full health, enough to wreck anyone's day. Unfortunately, any wounds she takes as Oracle are double in Shadow Queen, so you're better off letting her transform, than waiting for her to take damage. All of this will cost you 480 points, so best make sure you're getting your points worth. It helps that she's one of the best models in the game (in a faction that already has a lot of the best models in the game).

==Total War: Warhammer==
To the surprise of very few Morathi, alongside her son, is set to appear in [[Total War: Warhammer II]] as one of the starting legendary lords for the Dark Elves. She even got to narrate the Dark Elf faction trailer, with her voice actress sounding fittingly manipulative and conniving. Interestingly Morathi as presented in game seems to mix traits of both older and newer lore, she and her faction spread Chaos corruption, and a number of her skills indicate worship, or at least the willingness to deal with, the Chaos gods. However she can also be heard referring to, or beseeching various Cytharai gods like Khaine and Atharti. Of course even in recent lore Morathi was presented as someone willing to treat with, if not outright worship, the Chaos gods and their various daemons.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Morathi Model.jpg|The offical [['Eavy Metal]] paintjob.
Image:Morathi Mini.JPG|Morathi's miniature. Despite being older, and GW's well-known issues with female sculpts, its one of the better ones they've made.
Image:Morathi Original.jpg|Morathi's original model. It was noticeably more conservative in dress.
Image:Old Morathi.jpg|Morathi's earlier look in artwork. ([[Mark Gibbons|MG]])
Image:Morathi MMO.jpg|Rita Repulsa wishes she was this awesome.
Image:Morathi And Teclis.jpg|Morathi and Teclis duel at Finuval Plains. In the narrative it was on opposite sides of a valley, but whatever.
Image:Morathi Regal Fanart.png
Image:Morathi Kung Fu.jpg
Image:Morathi Doesn't Like It When You Look Over Her Shoulder.jpg
Image:Morathi Color.jpg
File:The Sundering Malekith and Morathi.jpg
File:Morathi 8th Edition.png
Image:Morathi And Alarielle Diplomacy.jpg|Its her pleasure...
Image:Morathi Fanart.jpg
Image:Morathi Malekith Comic.jpg|Morathi and Malekith from the [[Warhammer Online]] comic.
File:Morathi Total War.jpg|If you don't conquer Ulthuan this time Malekith, you're grounded!
File:Morathi AOS Elf Form.jpg|Morathi's new look.
File:Morathi Snek.jpg|Morathi's other new look.
</gallery>

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]][[Category:Dark Elves]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:40k and Fantasy Gods]][[Category:Daughters of Khaine]]

Centaur

2020-02-20T09:18:15Z

2600:6C58:637F:E506:4036:C84A:8009:880A: Undo revision 638607 by 65.94.53.160 (talk)

[[File:Elmore Lyra.jpg|thumb|right|400px|Female Centaurs: attractive but anatomically frustrating]]
The '''Centaurs''' are a race of mythical creatures from Greek [[mythology]], best known for being a literal mix of man and horse - they have a human's upper torso (that is, the body from the top of the hips up to the top of the head) replacing the head. They're also noted for being horny bastards and massive drunks. Centaurs were one of the less important monsters of their myths, with only a handful of references. Even so, they did get a constellation, and appear in various fantasy settings throughout the world now.

==Who ''were'' they?==

In their creation myth, the centaurs were descended from a mythical culture called the Lapiths, via their douchebag king Ixion. In short, Ixion was an asshole who murdered his father-in-law by burning the dude alive - [[Heresy|a ''huge'' no-no for the Greeks]]. Somehow, Zeus decided to be a super-chill guy, and not only forgave Ixion, but actually brought the asshole to Olympus to have dinner with the gods. Did Ixion realize just how lucky he was? Nope; asshole started eyeing Zeus's wife/sister, Hera. Zeus got suspicious, so he made a double for Hera out of clouds, called Nephele, and had her take Hera's place serving Ixion some dinner. Ixion promptly attacked and raped Nephele, for which Zeus smote his ass with a lightning bolt, then tied his spirit to a burning wheel and sent it spinning endlessly through the "sky" of Tartarus. Nephele got pregnant and her kids were fucking half-horse somehow.

Ironically, one of the Centaur myths describes their interactions with the Lapiths. The Lapiths invited the Centaurs to one of their weddings, and then things went haywire very, very fast. Though the Centaurs had been benevolent beforehand, the copious amounts of wine being served got them all drunk, which meant they turned on a plate during the wedding, trying to rape the women and kill the men of the Lapiths. This ended up as one huge brawl, ending with a Lapith victory. This was the Greek way of saying [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|"Hey, nature? You suck."]].

Chiron, a great healer and teacher of heroes in Greek myth, was a rare case of a friendly centaur. The constellation Sagittarius is rendered in Chiron's image. Consequently, the prefix "sagittar-" is commonly used to denote centaurs, blissfully ignorant of the fact that "sagittarius" translates to "archer" (Chiron's favorite way of killing shit) in ''Latin'', not "centaur".

A centaur by the name of Nessus was also responsible for slaying Hercules (or, to give him his original Greek name, Heracles). Nessus tried to kidnap Hercules' wife Megara to rape her at his leisure, and Hercules shot him with one of his poisoned arrows for it. As he was dying, he told Hercules' wife to secretly soak a cloak in his blood, promising that if Hercules' eye started to wander, all she'd have to do is make him wear it and he'd fall back in love with her. She believed him, but the gory cape was actually poisonous and drove Hercules so mad with pain. In one version it caused him to kill her and their children then awaken and see what he'd done causing him go on another adventure to atone for it; in another, he simply burned himself alive on a funeral pyre to find relief.

If you want to know about the real world origin of the Centaur, well, consider where Greece is. Go too much farther north and your hit the Ukrainian and Russian Steppe, where the horse was first domesticated and where nomadic tribesmen practically learned to ride before they could walk. It's believed that the early Greeks saw either early horsemen or the first horsemen at a distance and could not understand that they were looking at a human ON an animal (a distinction that the Spanish report the Aztec had trouble grasping), and instead saw a horse with the top half of a man. And thus the Centaurs were born.

==Biology==
Centaurs are a fascinating example of a complete [[/d/|can of worms]] when looked at from a scientific standpoint, mainly because the way the Centaur is structured consists of two torsos (removing the horse torso would make it a [[Satyr]], removing the human torso would make it a horse-themed [[Sphinx]]).

In theory, a centaur has two different sets of ribcages. Depending on how the setting has the internal anatomy work, a centaur could have two pairs of lungs, two hearts, an extra stomach and possible extra intestine leading to the horse stomachs, two livers, two sets of kidneys, and most anatomy exclusive to both dedicated carnivores and to dedicated herbivores. If this version of Centaur actually existed, it would possibly be the most unspecialized and energy-efficient diet in the setting. More often however, the human half is explained to have large lungs and a large heart while the rest of the anatomy is contained within the horse half. This presents the problem of having a ridiculously long esophagus which has an elevated risk of choking while the Heimlich Maneuver would have greatly reduced ability to save the Centaur's life, although as long as food manages to make it past the human half the rest of the esophagus would not require more than a drink of water to alleviate discomfort.

They do not need to wipe their own asses, because their horse anus wipes itself through layers of sphincters. Any additional cleaning for social reasons however would require a sponge or towel on a stick. Likewise, putting garments on the horse half for reasons of modesty would be extremely difficult unless it's something like a horse blanket you can almost drape over the body.

Human babies are born completely helpless and unable to do much of anything by themselves other than emit noise. Horse babies immediately run once the birth awl is cleaned off by the mother. In theory, this means centaur babies run around and play while the human half flops around helplessly. More likely is that centaur babies would have both halves as developed as that of a regular horse since the horse womb's larger opening gives more time for the head to grow. (Head growth is not the only reason for helpless human infants, however. Human brains must take time to grow their connections while interacting with their environment, for which they need a massively extended period of maturation. Horses, like most animals, do not need to be young for long as they do not need to learn in this manner. There would always be a mismatch in development unless the horse part could be held back to the pace of the human part.)

<gallery>
Image:Horse Ass.png
Image:Centaur Babies.png
Image:Centaur Anatomy.jpg
Image:Centaur Muscles.jpg
Image:Centaur Wut.png
</gallery>

==Dungeons & Dragons==

[[File:Elmore 3e Centaur.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Centaurs can be very pretty from the waist up.]]
Centaurs and other "tauric" creatures have appeared throughout the editions and settings of [[Dungeons & Dragons]], from the half-lion wemics of [[Forgotten Realms]] to the [[Drider]]s that have become so iconically linked with the [[Drow]].

Flavor-wise, centaurs are pretty much identical to the standard [[Elf|Wood Elf]]; they are a "sylvan" (read: [[fey]]-lite) race who inhabit the deep woods and unspoiled meadows of the world, existing as nomadic hunter-gatherers with a deep respect for nature, always striving to live in balance with their environment and to replace what they take. Their population is kept small due to their massive caloric intake, which gives them a reputation as drunkards due to how much liquor they can consume in a sitting. They are generally disinterested in the [[demihuman]] races, save elves and forest [[gnome]]s, and are more likely to keep company with other sylvan races, such as [[dryad]]s and [[satyr]]s.

This portrayal is pretty consistent, having begun all the way back in [[Mystara]] and remaining throughout most settings. But, this is different in the [[Nentir Vale]] setting; here, they are considered a type of [[fey]] (rather than their traditional monstrous humanoid) and a warlike tribal people who inhabit the steppes, plains and prairies of the [[Feywild]], although they may also be found in the mortal world, particularly in close proximity to elven lands. [[World Axis]] centaurs maintain permanent settlements, and do not suffer trespassers lightly. An emotional and rugged people, they swear allegiance to [[Kord]] and [[Melora]], rather than the gentler and more refined [[Corellon]]; they are renowned for the wild parties they throw to celebrate battles, hunts and births, which are full of boasting, sport and drink, and do not fear death. They have even been known to hire their services out as mercenaries to [[eladrin]], elves or any other race willing to meet their price. They are still dedicated to protecting the unspoiled wilderness, though, and if anything are more assertive about it.

Centaur are rarely used as Player Character races due to the difficulties of a Centaur performing non-running feats of agility, but those players who do use them find that they are both quite powerful and also have the perk of not having to buy a mount. In fact, centaurs have been playable in most editions of the game, having appeared in: "Tall Tales of the Wee Folk" for Basic D&D; "[[Complete Book Series|The Complete Book of Humanoids]]" for Advanced D&D; and the [[Monster Manual]] 1, [[Races of X|Races of the Wild]], the [[Dragonlance]] campaign setting book, Races of [[Krynn]] and Races of [[Faerun]] splatbooks for 3rd edition. Absent in 4th edition, they made a return in the 2018 May issue of [[Unearthed Arcana]] for 5th edition before being made official in the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.

===BD&D Stats===
::Ability Score Minimums/Maximums: Requires 9 [[Strength]] and 5 [[Constitution]]. All other scores have a base minimum of 3. All scores have a maximum of 18.
::Prime Ability Requisite: Strength. A centaur PC gains +5% EXP if their Str is 13+, and +10% if their Str is 16+.
::Natural Armor Class: AC 8 at level -1, AC 7 from level 0.
::Centaurs can achieve 8th level in both the [[Shaman]] sub-class and the [[Wizard|Wokani/Wicca]] sub-class. To become a shaman requires Int 13+ and Wis 10+, whilst to become a wicca requires Int 13+ and Wis 13+. In both classes, progressing requires Int 15+ and Wis 13+. A centaur can choose to progress in both the Shaman and Wokani/Wicca class by way of the [[Multiclassing|dual-classing]] mechanic; stopping their advancing in one and beginning advancing in the other.
::A centaur can strike with its hooves, inflicting 1d6 damage per hoof.
::A centaur wielding a lance can inflict double damage by charging, as if a mounted [[fighter]], but cannot use its hooves in the same round in which it does so.
::Centaurs require a special combination of human armor and horse barding to protect themselves.
::Centaurs may use magic items permitted to [[Fighter]]s.
::Centaurs make Saving Throws as per a [[Fighter]] of the same level.

Centaur Racial Level Advancement Table
::Level -1: -4,000 EXP, 2d8 Hit Dice
::Level 0: 0 EXP, 4d8 Hit Dice
::Level 1: 4,000
::Level 2: 12,000 EXP, 5d8 Hit Dice
::Level 3: 28,000 EXP, 6d8 Hit Dice
::Level 4: 60,000 EXP
::Level 5: 124,000 EXP, 7d8 Hit Dice
::Level 6: 250,000 EXP, 8d8 Hit Dice
::Level 7: 500,000 EXP
::Level 8: 800,000 EXP, 9d8 Hit Dice
::Level 9: 1,100,000 EXP, 10d8 Hit Dice
::Level 10: 1,400,000 EXP, 10d8+2 Hit Dice

Subsequent levels cost +300,000 EXP and grant +2 HP.

===AD&D Stats===
::Ability Score Minimum/Maximum: Strength 11/18, Dexterity 3/16, Constitution 11/18, Intelligence 3/16, Wisdom 4/18, Charisma 3/18
::Ability Score Adjustments: +1 Constitution, +1 Wisdom, -2 Dexterity
::Class & Level Limits: [[Fighter]] 12, [[Ranger]] 10, [[Mage]] 12, [[Druid]] 14, [[Shaman]] 7, [[Bard]] 12
::+4 hit points at 1st level
:::Available [[Kits]]: Tribal Defender, Pit Fighter, Sellsword, Wild Protector, Hedge Wizard, Humanoid Scholar, Outlaw Mage, Shaman, Oracle, Wandering Mystic, Humanoid Bard (mandatory for Centaur Bards)
:::[[Multiclassing]] Options: Fighter/Mage, Fighter/Thief, Ranger/Shaman
:::Thieving Skill Adjustments: -10% Move Silently, -5% to Hide in Shadows and Read Languages
::Natural Armor Class: 5
::Can make 3 melee attacks per round; once with weapon, twice with a forehoof (hooves do 1d6 damage).
::Centaurs armed with lances can Charge for double damage, but cannot attack with their hooves in that same round.
::Centaurs take damage as Large creatures.
::Centaurs have difficulty negotiating underground settings.
::Weapon Proficiencies: Composite Long Bow, Medium Horse Lance, Great Club
::Nonweapon Proficiencies: Animal Lore, Agriculture, Animal Noise, Armorer, Artistic Ability, Bowyer/Fletcher, Brewing, Drinking, Eating, Fishing, Hunting, Leatherworking, Natural Fighting, Running, Set Snares, Survival (Forests), Tracking, Weaving, Winemaking

{{D&D2e-Races}}

===3e D&D Stats===
Amazingly, despite appearing in multiple different splatbooks for both 3.0 and 3.5, the Centaur maintained a singular set of stats across all of them.

::+8 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +4 Constitution, –2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom.
::Large size: –1 penalty to Armor Class, –1 penalty on attack rolls, –4 penalty on Hide checks, +4 bonus on grapple checks, lifting and carrying limits double those of Medium characters.
::Space/Reach: 10 feet/5 feet.
::A centaur’s base land speed is 50 feet.
::Darkvision out to 60 feet.
::Racial Hit Dice: A centaur begins with four levels of monstrous humanoid, which provide 4d8 Hit Dice; a base attack bonus of +4; and base saving throw bonuses of Fort +1, Ref +4, and Will +4.
::Racial Skills: A centaur’s monstrous humanoid levels give him skill points equal to 7 × (2 + Int modifier). His class skills are Listen, Move Silently, Spot, and Survival.
::Racial Feats: A centaur’s monstrous humanoid levels give him two feats.
::+3 natural armor bonus.
::Automatic Languages: Sylvan, Elven. Bonus Languages: Common, Gnome, Halfling.
::Favored Class: Ranger. Centaur rangers often choose magical beasts or some variety of humanoid as their favored enemy.
::Level adjustment +2.

===Pathfinder===
Like virtually all OGL monsters, the only changes to centaur in [[Pathfinder]] were system wide changes (Monstrous Humanoid HD is now D10 and 4 + int skill points).

Advanced Race Guide gave a [https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/more-races/monstrous-races-21-30-rp/centaur/ centaur as an example of its race creation system]. Since they decided to keep the absurdly high stat adjustments it's power level is, by the book's own admission, unusable by player characters in normal campaign.

Dreamscarred Press included Centaur as one of the monster classes they published. It's pretty much just 4 levels that give you all the stuff in the 3.5 example (except the level adjustment) with the PF RHD changes.

===5e D&D Stats===
How to pull off a 5e centaur PC race was something that was debated on /tg/ ievery now and then; how should you handle the size issue? What effects should having a horse for legs have on getting around? Well, WoTC came up with surprisingly elegant solutions when they debuted a centaur in the [[Unearthed Arcana]] for May 2018. They even took the time to address the most unbalancing aspect of being a centaur in 3e, which was that your racial type not being standard Humanoid made you immune to a lot of common spells, a somewhat flawed design idea that was brought back for 5e.

Unfortunately, because the design team persistently overvalues both natural weapons and Powerful Build, they're also a bit... bland. Not bad, per se, but uninspired. And because no positive effects target monstrosities but not humanoids, it's strictly a bad thing, though even ''that'' will barely come up, they don't even count as mounted for feats or the Cavalier archetype. That said, because of the ability to inflict what's effectively a crit on demand the amount of damage they can do, in theory, on a charge is almost stupidly high. At level one with 17 strength, with an average roll of 7 of a 2d6 weapon and +3 mod becomes 20 damage, enough to one shot a lot of things at level one or 1/6 of an ogre and an ''actual'' crit stacks with this to become out-and-out devastating. In an ideal situation of +5 mod, 12 damage,+5 magic bonus and a crit: your looking at '''88''' damage. While that is strictly speaking unlikely, there are rerolls for all those rolls, (champion crit extension, and great weapon fighting style rerolls of 1's and 2's) so it is far from impossible. All in all: Centaurs may be a one tricky pony, but it can be one hell of a trick.

::Abilities: +2 Strength, +1 Wisdom
::Size: Medium
::Speed: 40 feet
::Vision: Normal
::Charge: You can make a charge attack by moving at least 20 feet towards a target and then hitting it with a melee attack in the same turn. If you hit with this charge attack, roll your weapon's damage dice twice and add the results together to determine how much damage you have inflicted. Once you have made a charge attack, you must complete a short rest or a long rest before you can make one again.
::Hooves: You possess hooves, which are a natural weapon that you have proficiency in. A hoof attack inflicts 1d6 + Str modifier Bludgeoning damage.
::Equine Build: You count as one size category larger to determine your capacity to carry, push and drag. However, when climbing, each foot of movement costs you +4 extra movement instead of the normal +1 foot. You can allow a creature of Medium or smaller size to ride on your back, but you still act independently when you have a rider.
::Survivor: You have Proficiency in the Survival skill.
::Hybrid Nature: You count as being both a Humanoid and a Monstrosity in terms of Creature Type, and thus can be affected by any game effect that specifically targets either of your types.

They made a surprise reappearance in the Guildmaster's Guide to [[Ravnica]], acquiring an official writeup that was similar to, yet different from, the version presented in [[Unearthed Arcana]]:

::Ability Scores: Str +2; Wis +1
::Size: Medium
::Speed: 40 ft.
::Age. Centaurs mature and age at about the same rate as humans.
::Alignment. Centaurs are inclined toward neutrality. Those who join the Selesnya are more often neutral good, while those who join the Gruul are typically chaotic neutral.
::Size. Centaurs stand between 6 and 7 feet tall, with their equine bodies reaching about 4 feet at the withers. Your size is Medium.
::Fey. Your creature type is fey, rather than humanoid.
::Charge. If you move at least 30 feet straight toward a target and then hit it with a melee weapon attack on the same turn, you can immediately follow that attack with a bonus action, making one attack against the target with your hooves.
::Hooves. Your hooves are natural melee weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
::Equine Build. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push or drag. In addition, any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your equine legs. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 4 extra feet, instead of the normal 1 extra foot.
::Survivor. You have proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Animal Handling, Medicine, Nature, or Survival.
::Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Sylvan. Sylvan is widely spoken in the Selesnya Conclave, for it is rich in vocabulary to describe natural phenomena and spiritual forces.

You will note that this version of the centaur is far weaker. Charge is now basically pathetic and only grants you an additional 1d4 on a hit, even if it's no longer a short rest ability.

If the canon 5e centaur stats don't tickle your fancy, you could always try out the ones from the [[Midgard]] Heroes Handbook, which present their own take on the concept.
::Ability Score Increase: +2 Strength, +1 Wisdom
::Size: Large - but see Humanoid Torso
::Speed: 40 feet
::Type: Monstrosity
::Natural Attacks: You can make a single attack with your hooves, which you are considered Proficient in and which deal 2d6 Bludgeoning damage.
::Centaur Weapon Training: You have Proficiency with the Pike and the Longbow.
::Pike Charge: If you move at least 30 feet straight toward a target it and then hit it with a Pike attack on the same turn, the target takes an extra 3 (1d6) piercing damage, which increases to 6 (2d6) at level 6 and 9 (3d6) at level 11. You can only make one Pike Charge per turn, and can only make a number of Pike Charges per day eqal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1). You recover all uses of this ability when you complete a Long Rest.
::Humanoid Torso: Though you take up space as if you were a Large creature, you are still considered a Medium creature for purposes of weapons and armor.
::Quadruped: You have Disadvantage on Stealth checks and also suffer problems when dealing with architecture designed for humanoids, such as ladders and manholes.
::Self-Sufficient: You have Proficiency in the Medicine skill.

==[[Warhammer Fantasy]]==
The closest example fantasy has for Centaur are Centigors. A type of [[Beastmen]] whose upper part is that of a Gor (humanoid goat), and the standard lower horse part. Centigors are the Beastmens primary cavalry unit, they are good as shock troops and charging into the fray at lighting speed. Now if only their stats match their lore.

If that's not enough then things get bigger with Dragon Ogres, because regular centaur isn't awesome enough. Dragon Ogres have the upper part of an Ogre and their lower parts are four dragon-like legs. These Ogres made a pact with the Chaos Gods that they would serve them, in exchange for immortality (at the cost of having no female Dragon Ogres to fuck, or possibly having females but all being sterile; it's hard to say from the fluff). They are one of the oldest creatures in the Old World, and are supercharged when struck by lightning. The oldest and largest Dragon Ogres are Shaggoths.

In between those two are the Bull Centaur, which are half Chaos Dwarf and half bull, which are the result of worshiping of Hashut, the bull Chaos God. They are big, mean, muscular, have horns on their heads and curly beards like the rest of the Chaos Dwarfs.

==[[Warhammer 40K]]==
Though the Centaur in and of itself hasn't been discovered as of yet in the dark millennium (it is perfectly possible that they exist somewhere in the galaxy, mind you - there is [[Abhuman|''weirder'' shit]] out there), the [[Interex]] had a heavy infantry platform which had the shape and appearance of the Centaurs of myth. The human soldier was fit into the front of a mechanical, horselike body (where the head would've been on a real horse), so only the upper body was visible. They even went so far as giving the soldiers laser-crossbows.

Though most would argue that this was freaking [[awesome]], they were exterminated by the Imperium, and as far as we know, the Mechanicum haven't kept anything from the [[Interex]]... But who knows, maybe the next Imperial Guard Supplement will include cyborg horse-human hybrids (of course you can make these anyway and just proxy them as rough riders on the table top). You can't know with [[Games Workshop|GW]] these days.

A centaur body is one of the common Chaos mutations, though given the nature of Chaos you may end up with a snake tail, a giant bloodhound body, or a fucking spider torso instead of your legs, and that's if you get lucky - some poor Nurglite sod may get a snail or maggot body instead of his legs, or even a twisted mess of tentacles that have the mind of their own and immediately start raping all asses in proximity, including their own.

Additionally, an [[Imperial Guard]] short story (''Children of the Emperor'') from the [[Into the Maelstrom]] anthology features a guardsman stranded on a lost, feral world with super-high gravity, populated by [[abhuman]]s whose ancestors gave themselves centaur bodies and super-enhanced muscles to cope with high gravity and abundance of deadly predators. He gets involved with a struggle between the Emperor-worshipping locals and a [[Khorne|Khornate]] heresy, but the best he can do is to report to the Imperium when he escapes that the planet is feral, too dangerous & resource poor to colonize, and houses only some unimportant alien species, thus preventing the loyalists from being slaughtered as [[mutant]]s by more Puritanical Imperials.

Also we have the [[Zoats]], a now-abandoned race of reptilian taurs that were originally envoys and propagandists for the Tyranids, before they fully embraced the Horde of Alien Locusts thing.

==[[Warcraft]]==
Warcraft features many types of Centaur as well as centaur-like creatures. The earliest Centaur are descendants to the demigod Cenarius (half-Night elf half Stag), his sons are called Keepers of the grove, they have the upper part of a night elf with antlers on their heads, one of their hands is wood like, and they have the lower parts of a stag. The female versions of them are Dryads who are female night elf and half doe.

They also have regular Centaurs who are a bastard race born from a Keeper of the grove and (the rather ugly) spirit of Earth, they thank their father for creating them by killing him. They have the traditional Centaur look, with a nomadic Mongol-like culture mostly built on harassing the cow-like Tauren.

The Burning Legion has Annihilan which are massive demons that have an upper part of a demon and a lower part of a four legged dragon. They serve as among the Legions commanders and wield enormous weapons that can smash armies in one swing.

==Centaur [[Monstergirls]]==
{{monstergirls}}
Centaurs invite ceaseless argument over whether they count as [[monstergirls]] or as [[furry]]. On the one hand, they do have human-like heads and not muzzles (though Japanese hentai seems to like portraying them with horse ears instead of human ears, and this has become more common in western art too). On the other hand, they have horse-junk at their business end (except, again, for some Japanese hentai, where they have human pussies at the front of their horse bodies instead or in addition to mare-cunts at their ass-end), which makes them in many ways ''more'' like bestiality than regular furries.

Not helping things is that both sides of the divide have embraced them. In fact, centaurs are so popular that the idea of replacing the horse with other critters that sound cool or sexy is rather popular; lions, wolves, tigers, [[drider|spiders]]... heck, [[lamia]]s can be described as "centaurs that are half-snake instead of half-horse". The idea is so popular that a whole new word (arguably descended from the furries), "tauric", has popped up as a shorthand for it.

[[/d/]] alternatively loves them (because they're an excuse for pictures of huge buff guys with huge horse cocks, [[monstergirls]] with huge-ass tits, or monstergirls [[dickgirl|with huge-ass tits AND huge horse cocks]]) and loathes them (because of the aforementioned furry/bestiality connotations).

Surprisingly, despite the fact that centaurs are iconic creatures from western "Classical Mythology", the vast majority of centaur MG depictions have come from Japan. This may be because, unlike westerners, Japanese smutfans don't really make so much of a distinction between [[furry]] and [[monstergirl]], and so they don't get bothered by the whole "you're fucking a horse's hiney" thing since they pass the [[Harkness Test]].

Perhaps because of the strong association between the cavalry and the [[samurai]] caste - or because Japanese dig soft, sweet chicks to an almost disturbing degree - almost all known Japanese centaur MGs have been tsunderes or yamato nadeshikos, i.e. either sweet-girls who act like bitches because they don't wanna admit their feelings, or very sweet and demure girls with a steely core. A more mythology-accurate centaur MG would be a total ladette - a she-jock who loves to fight, hunt, drink and fuck like there's no tomorrow and aggressively chases after good-looking guys. Sort of a bro with the body of a super-model who's fine with letting you grope her titties and cunt (wherever it is), or kills you on a whim.

Additionally there are several factors of horse anatomy one should keep in mind when discussing sex with centaurs:
*The above-discussed reason why horses don't need to wipe their asses after taking a dump would doubtlessly affect anal sex in some way, for better or worse.
*Giving Centaurs rear horse junk would be likely to complicate masturbation.
*Given the thing male horses are so infamous for worldwide, a centauress(?) that has horse junk would be likely to find human men ''quite'' underwhelming.
*On that note, getting any meaningful length of a horse penis inside a human frequently kills real-life zoophiles due to organ rupture, and deepthroat would probably require you to dislocate your jaw and find some acid-proof horse condoms.
*Like with [[minotaur|minotaurs]], there's also the issue of whether a centauress would have human boobs or a horse udder when you think about it. There are many more lulzy ways to interpret this than the minotaur offers, however, such as centaur women with two perfectly human and hairless boobs dangling from the fucking ''horse'' torso like a ballsack (you could even nickname these body parts the breasticles or chesticles).

===[[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]]===
[[File:MGE Centaur.jpg|thumb|250px|right|There may be a reason why the MGE centaur looks like a half-horse half-[[elf]]...]]
In the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]], centaurs are a race of tsundere nomadic archers. They do still love booze, though, and have a tendency to lose control and become horny drunks who'll rape men... of course, being tsunderes, they'll bitch at the ''men'' to "take responsibility" after they sober up, which is as tired a cliche in hentai as "OMG it's so big" is in western porn. For many years, constant arguments frequently sprung up about where the genitals are. The author decided to split the difference by decreeing they have two sets of genitals, one on each end. All this served to do was re-draw the battle lines so as to be fought over whether this succeeded in solving the problem or is the stupidest thing in the history of ever.
{{clear}}

===[[Life With Monstergirls]]===
Centaur have a long and noble history as knights and paladins, and most of their race still carry themselves with dignity. Female Centaur often adopt knightly demeanor and customs. Their females are only fertile during certain periods of the year (like real horses), and must use this time to produce offspring. Their sex drive is greatly reduced (although not non-existent) outside of this period, which also like with real horses is called estrus.
Centaurs have long had a history where the sexually selected traits for males were general raw strength and bravado. This unfortunately resulted in most modern Centaur men being unattractive fratboys. Recently, their culture is shifting towards effeminate and polite men being attractive, and this means that Centaur women are beginning to more and more desire human men. The product of a human/Centaur union is a full-blooded Centaur (no word on the results of a horse-centaur union), but the practice is still highly taboo. Instead Centaurs have been relying on human men as "teasers", a role that yet still exists in real life horse breeding (although in real life the role is thankfully filled by other horses). The human man more or less arouses a female who is in estrus until she can bear to reproduce with her husband.

==See Also==
*[[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition races]]

<gallery>
Image:Centaur Breeding.jpg|Centaur sexual habits in Daily Life with Monstergirl
</gallery>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Dungeons & Dragons Races]][[Category:Monsters]][[Category:Greek Mythology]]

Minotaurs

2020-02-20T09:16:46Z

2600:6C58:637F:E506:4036:C84A:8009:880A: Undo revision 638612 by 65.94.53.160 (talk)

{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
|Name = Minotaurs
|Heraldry = [[File:Minotaurs Symbol.jpg|200px]]
|Number = N/A
|Battle Cry = Moooooo!!! (Presumably)
|Founding = [[21st Founding]] (Supposedly)
|Successors of = '''+++Classified by order of the [[High Lords]]+++''' (The original Minotaurs are unknown; the new Minotaurs are all but confirmed to use Iron Warriors geneseed. Hints that one of the two are chimeric, money's on the unstable psychopaths)
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chapter Master = [[Asterion Moloc]]
|Primarch = Unknown
|Homeworld = Fleet Based
|Specialty = (Old) Being psychotic [[Leeroy Jenkins]]; (New) Beating the shit out of other [[Space Marines]], taking their stuff, pissing off the [[Ultramarines]], siege warfare, and being the [[High Lords]]' personal army.
|Strength = 1000 (Officially)
|Allegiance = [[Imperium]]
|Colours = (old) Ketchup & Mustard stripes; (new) Bronze with a little Red.
}}
''If you are looking for the bull-headed beastmen from Greek mythology, see [[Minotaur]].''

==Out with the old...==
The '''Minotaurs''' were a [[Chapter]] of [[Space Marine]]s and massive dicks. They were formed in the [[21st Founding|Cursed Founding]] as psychopathic berzerkers and were possibly successors to more stab-happy legions, like the [[Blood Angels]] (looking at you [[Sanguine Berzerkers]]) or [[World Eaters]]. They first appeared in [[White Dwarf]] as one of the playable Chapters for the Chapter Approved Cursed founding article where they were also mentioned to have beaten the shit out of the [[Lamenters]] during the [[Badab War]], because the Lamenters chose the wrong side and the Minotaurs wanted an excuse to [[RIP AND TEAR]]. Then they disappeared. (to everyone's relief). Their color scheme was also fucking atrocious.

==...and in with the new==
[[File:Minotaurs Tact. Marine.jpg|250px|thumb|left|The Minotaurs have many suits of MKVIII "errant" pattern Power Armor.]]
The Minotaurs later popped up in [[Imperial Armour Volume 10]] and had their lore (and thankfully colour scheme) overhauled. They're still massive dicks though. Now the psycho-Minotaurs apparently disappeared thousands of years before the [[Badab War]], instead its these cunts who stomp stomp the poor Lamenters (and also take their stuff). They now dress like [[Iron Warriors|ancient Greeks]] and their Chapter Master, one [[Asterion Moloc]], appears to have pilfered the prop department from 300 for his outfit. They no longer maintain the "psychopathic berzerkers' flavour; instead (while still liking melee combat) they make and execute detailed battle plans focusing on siege and attrition warfare, being brooding, paranoid about security protocols, and very pragmatic. Example of that last trait being in [[Imperial Armour Volume 12]] here they let a good chunk of the [[Imperial Navy]] fight and die before they stepped in to give themselves a better chance against the Necrons (what assholes). They are essentially Greek-ier [[Iron Warriors]], who steal shit like the [[Blood Ravens]] (but instead of hijacking your stuff when you aren't looking, they will just mug you and take it). This better explains why they stole the Lamenters' stuff like the school bully shaking down the class nerd for his lunch money, once the old fight between the Lamenters and Minotaurs was retconned to have happened with these Minotaurs instead.

They now have vast stores of incredibly rare wargear, which includes: shittons of Arkonak and Tartaros-pattern [[Terminator]] armour, Mk8 [[power armor]], loads of [[Dreadnoughts]] (including rare Contemptor-pattern), [[Storm Eagle#Roc Pattern|their very own Storm Eagle variant]], and at least one [[AWESOME|power spear/lascannon combo]] that might have been <s>jacked</s> gifted from the [[Adeptus Custodes]]). With their [[High Lords of Terra|sugar daddies on Terra]] and taking the good wargear from Chapters they beat down, they have no shortage of the best toys available to the Astartes.

They also act as the [[High Lords of Terra|High Lords']] attack dogs now, only acting on orders from the High Lords themselves, telling anyone in their way to piss off. Oh, and the [[Administratum]] records are sealed (under direct order of the [[High Lords]]), so that not even [[inquisitor|Inquisitors]] can easily (if at all) access them. Which implies something about them (gee, wonder what?) has at least some Inquisitors worried.

One of their [[Brother-Captain]]s insulted [[Marneus Calgar]] right in front of an [[Ultramarines]] descendant, and the chapter later tore the [[Inceptors]] chapter apart and stole all their stuff, pissing off all the other [[Ultramarines]] successors. They also may or may not have shot down a [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight]] strike cruiser in order to take down a renegade Chapter they were supposed to destroy together. Essentially they've told both of [[Matt Ward]]'s special snowflakes to go raw dog a plasma gun.

Needless to say, [[/tg/]] thinks they're pretty cool (and they are still massive dicks).

==Current Events==
After Big Bobby G woke up from his 10,000 year power nap, he had many of the High Lords of Terra purged and retook his place as Lord Commander. The Minotaurs don't seem to have cared, since they joined in the Indomitus Crusade and got to fight the [[Thousand Sons]]. Guilliman is a High Lord, after all.

Later, the [[Death Guard]] directly besieged their space-borne [[Fortress-Monastery]] and poisoned their gene stocks beyond repair, so as of now they're racing towards [[Terra]] to restock their gene-vaults. While they're currently out of the fight, hopefully their trip to Terra will cause some revelations on their origins.

==Chapter and Geneseed Confusion==
There is a significant amount of [[DERP]] surrounding who their daddy is, how long they've been around, or if these are even all the same group of dicks. While there is not really another example of two chapters sharing the same name, even the sourcebooks point out that the [[Cursed Founding]] Minotaurs and the bronzy Minotaurs are so different that it's a possibility there are multiple chapters who have the same name. There isn't much of a question around only "a" Minotaurs chapter being made during the [[Cursed Founding]] in M36, the same books leaves it ambiguous by alluding to there having been different Minotaurs chapters (essentially keeping the ketchup-mustard-psycho Minotaurs canon alongside the "new" Minotaurs). Pulling things like having records of the "Minotaurs" being around as far back as back in M32 (tag teaming a bunch of Chaos-spark rebellions with some other Chapters, and noticably not just wiping their asses with the battle plans before bolting hell-for-leather into melee range), even tho psycho "Minotaurs" chapter is listed as M36 [[Cursed Founding]]; pointing out that "chimeric" geneseed Astartes (especially from the [[Cursed Founding]]) tend to be mentally/physically unstable, but the "new" Minotaurs are about as stable as you can get (the "old" Minotaurs tho....yeah); and highlighting the difference in behavior, look, and combat doctrines of the bronze colored Minotaurs compared to records of the yellow/red Minotaurs.

Given the yellow/red Minotaurs tendencies to absolutely annihilate whatever is in their way, completely forgo any sort of intel gathering or battle plans, and a [[Rip and tear|psychotic need to just rage rush the enemy to get their stabby-stab on]], it's certainly possible for them be successors to one (or more) of the more bloodthirsty legions such as the [[Blood Angels]] or [[World Eaters]]. A chimeric blend with another gene-line would certainly make sense with their [[Cursed Founding]] origins (and batshit insanity).

The bronze Minotaurs being the chimeric ones makes markedly less sense, since they are pretty much free of any mutations and have in fact one of the highest [[gene-seed]] acceptance rates of any Chapter. Given their "brooding, maligned, paranoid, and pragmantic" behaviors; obsessive and meticulous data-analysis; noted mastery of siege and attrition warfare (with a secondary preference for close range combat); and heavy ancient Greek theme, they are a near 1-1 match of the [[Iron Warriors]]. Their 5th/6th/7th edition chapter tactics are even the same as the 30k Iron Warriors Legiones Astartes rules. This makes sense, given their depiction in the [[Imperial Armour]] books basically being [[Iron Warriors]] with a bronze color scheme.

If the bronzy Minotaurs are [[Iron Warriors]] successors, it would go a long way in explaining why the [[High Lords]] keep their records well and far away from the [[Ordo Hereticus]].

According to Eadwin Brown, one of the developers of the Badab War: The current incarnation of the Minotaurs was formed by a garrison of [[Iron Warriors]] who were allowed to rejoin the Imperium (but put on a short leash by the High Lords) back during the [[Great Scouring]]. The reason for their lack of/confusing history (including a different chapter getting the same name) being a mix of deliberate actions of the [[High Lords]] (who don't want to lose their personal pet Astartes) and the difficulty of the (pretty shit anyway) Administratium's record keeping.

==Other Information==
[[File:Minotaurs Tartaros.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Terminator Sergeant Ixthalion of the Minotaurs in Tartaros pattern armor.]]While the Minotaurs are strict followers of the [[Codex Astartes]], they're almost never seen as small groups or even individual companies. Every time they're deployed its always been at full Chapter strength. Their incredible effectiveness just goes to prove the Codex is awesome at a Chapter level and above. It isn’t like Guilliman didn’t study his brothers’ tactics, too. They fight in only one war zone at a time with the entire chapter fighting together. This makes them essentially a massive fucking beatstick that the High Lords call upon when shit hits the fan. They also have an unusual preference for killing other Space Marines, which made them feel right at home during the Badab War. Given their fancy new gear, their borderline omnicidal tendencies, and always operating as a full chapter, it would seem that the job of the "Emperor's Executioners" no longer falls upon the [[Space Wolves]] (so the "[[High Lords]]' Executioners"?). They were probably created for fighting Chaos and renegade Marines and just sorta turned out pretty handy for forcing idiot [[Chapter]]s into line.

To the High Lord’s credit, the Minotaurs seem to not be an abuse of power. The Chapters they beat up are let go if they flee or surrender early instead of digging in. Those that keep fighting are curbstomped, but not exterminated. And when they beat on Marines, it’s hard to argue that the receivers of said beating didn’t deserve it (save in [[Lamenters|very specific instances]]).

Unlike most Chapters, the Minotaurs appear to be able to replenish their numbers at an accelerated rate, to the point that they could recover from losses in a fraction of the time it would take other Chapters a century or two to fully recover from. This allows them to quickly rebuild their force to full Chapter strength, even after suffering what would normally be unsustainable causalities. Imperial observers during the Antigonis campaign theorized that this may have something to do with the heavy use of hypnotherapy and neuro-cerebral therapy used in the training of neophytes and frequently "refreshed" with the help of Apothecaries in the Chapter. This has proven to have some unpleasant side-effects- the Minotaurs are highly xenophobic and paranoid, even by the high standards of the Imperium.

There's also a good chance that they recruit from Terra itself thanks to their connections with the High Lords, giving them a massive recruit pool, as the Imperial Fists are also able to replenish losses equally fast thanks to having billions of potential candidates. This is mostly due to the Imperial Fists building recruitment posts on every world they rescue from invasion. Even then they request permission first as Dorn said he "...want recruits, not vassals". The Black Templars also do this and benefit greatly from this method. And since the Minotaurs gene-seed tithes are locked away nice and tight, no one is sure who their progenitors are.

Aside from the hideous old ketchup-and-mustard motherfuckers and the Greek muggers, there are also a pair of Chapters called the [[Brazen Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs wearing the [[Taurans]]' chapter badge) and [[White Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs but with a white Tauran bullhead badge). There isn't much fluff on them.

==(In)famous Campaigns==
*'''[[Solar Rebellion]]''' - The Chapter is listed among the Imperial Forces tasked with bulldozing a Chaos-sparked rebellion within the Segmentium Solar. The interesting part is, this was in M32...the [[Cursed Founding]] was in M36..
*'''[[Macharian Heresy]]''' - The Chapter is called to deal with the petty star empires created by the former generals of [[Lord Solar Macharius]]. They crush one after the other, following all of the High Lord's orders without question, and causing a lot of collateral damage in the process.
*'''Euxine Incident''' - ''The'' action that earned the Chapter their reputation. Still during the [[Macharian Heresy]], the [[Inceptors]] Chapter got involved in a fight with the Doom Warriors. They were supposedly drinking buddies before-hand but their friendship was broken over [[Lawful Stupid|matters of "honor"]]. The Imperium, not wanting ''more bullshit'', sent in the [[Minotaurs]] to beat some sense into them. The Minotaurs, in their [[rape|usual style]], hit both chapters at once. The Doom Warriors, having some sense gained from this initial strike, left the Euxine system. The Inceptors did not leave. Instead they dug in and fought the Minotaurs like men. They lost, and the 100 surviving Inceptors were forced to surrender at barrel point. After they surrendered, [[That Guy|the Minotaurs robbed their relics, jacked Battle-Barge, and left.]] The [[Ultramarines]], seeing at how one of their own [[second founding]] successors got treated like shit, declared that the Minotaurs were permabanned from [[Ultramar]].
*'''Defense of Hermetica''' - The heavily-fortified capital of a sector located in the [[Segmentum]] Solar finds itself overwhelmed when the [[Word Bearers]] suddenly dropped from a warp rift in a motherfucking [[Space Hulk]] filled to the brim with [[Mutant]]s. The Minotaurs are the first imperial force to respond: they track the [[Dark Apostle]] into the main cathedral, and decide to blast their way in with orbital bombardement and tanks regardless of civilian casualties. [[Asterion Moloc]] and his [[Terminator]]s slaugther their way into the catacombs, but the Dark Apostle escapes before he can be dealt the killing blow.
*'''[[Badab War]]''' - You know this one: [[Lugft Huron]] declares independance from the [[High Lords of Terra]], and a fuckton of chapters are sent his way to remind him why that is not a thing. The Minotaurs gained several important victories during this time, but would be more infamously remembered for the shit they did to the poor [[Lamenters]]. (The same thing they did to the [[Inceptors]]) Suffice to say, if anyone had any doubts on their behavior before, those doubts were quickly dispelled after that.
*'''Battle of Rynn's World''' - The Minotaurs saw action on Rynn's World during the attempt to reclaim the [[Crimson Fists]]' homeworld from the [[Orks]]. Surprisingly, they didn't attempt anything like scavenging he ruins of the Crimson Fists [[Fortress-Monastery]].
*'''Harrowing of the Night Reapers''' The aforementionned [[Chapter]] had been sent on penitent crusade to the a dengerous backwater nebula as punishment for abandoning a Shrine World to the forces of Chaos. They went radio silent after a while, and steadly started to deviate from [[Codex]] doctrine, tactics, and equipment. Six years after last contact and many suspicious raids in the area, irrefutable proof of their attack on a [[Rogue Trader]] vessel earned them an ''Excommunicate Traitoris''. Four companies of the [[Avenging Sons]] went after them, but that chapter can't do anything right and got ambushed by the Night Reapers, who captured one of their [[Space Marine Strike Cruiser|Star Cruisers]] and mauled another. They blamed their humilliating defeat on "Warp flame weapons" that bypassed [[Void shields]], so the High Lords had to send someone who could actually [[get shit done]]: The Minotaurs and the [[Red Hunters]]. (now we're talking) The two Chapters fought the Night Reapers and their heretekal Xeno-tech across a dozen star systems until they cornered them at a pre-human space wreck so massive it had it's own athmosphere and ecosystem. The Night Reapers were searching for a weapon that they beleived would allow them to defeat the Imperials, when a [[Grey Knights]] ship showed up demanding all Imperial forces to pull back. The Minotaurs, naturally, didn't give a fuck and kept fighting. The Knights of Titan had to launch their teleport assault in the midst of the battle. Shortly after, something happened that caused everyone to get BTFO to kingdom come: Minotaurs, Night Reapers, and Grey Knights alike. [[Asterion Moloc]] was the only survivor.
*'''[[Orphean War]]''' - Karma finally starts catching up to the Chapter's douchebaggery when they have to face the Necrons of the [[Maynarkh Dynasty]]. They lose their stolen ships in the desperate assault against the necron fleet over Amarah Prime, and take many casualties that would be sorely felt later in their race back to [[Terra]]. Moloc almost dies again, this time by achieving a mutual KO against the Maynarkh [[Necron Overlord|Overlord]].

==Daily Rituals==
:04:00 Wake Up: The Minotaurs arise from their beds (each Minotaur has their own king-sized bed with luxury mattress and comforter). They make sure to beat up a dummy space marine before leaving.
:05:00 Morning Prayer: The Minotaurs gather in the chapel to praise the Emperor. They also praise the High Lords of Terra. Any battle brother who prays to not have to kill other space marines is put in the "patience chamber".
:06:00 Morning Firing Rituals: The Minotaurs pull live space marines from the "patience chamber" to practice firing upon. Any battle brother whose shot kills the space marine instantly is put into the "patience chamber".
:08:00 Morning Battle Practice: The Minotaurs release captured prisoners within the "patience chamber." Imprisoned members include failed Minotaurs, rebellious Ultramarines (and successors), Lamenters, Marines Malevolent, Fallen, and Grey Knights. The <s>victims</s> participants are then forced to fight the entire chapter with substandard equipment.
:10:00 Morning Tactical Indoctrination: The Minotaurs finish off the last of their prisoners and gather together in the Great Hall to discuss strategy. Common tactics involve marching right through enemy fire, throwing allied units into enemy fire THEN marching through whats left, missile strikes on engaged melee units, and techniques to kill other space marines. Any battle brother who points out the faults in these tactics is put in the "patience chamber" (any actual faults are noted for later tactical refinement).
:11:00 Afternoon Prayer: The Minotaurs give thanks to the High Lords of Terra for allowing them to be such dicks. In a sacred ritual, each battle brother is required to kiss the butt of golden statues honoring the High Lords Of Terra. Any battle brother who claims this is gay is sent to the "patience chamber".
:12:00 Afternoon Meal: The Minotaurs gather to feast upon fine meats and food provided by their besties: the High Lords. Serfs rush quickly to ensure that each marine is fed to his heart's content.
:13:00 Afternoon Battle Practice: The Minotaurs descend to any number of worlds in order to hone their space marine killing skills. The Lamenters are the most frequent target, but Baal and Ultramar are also popular destinations. A number of the the targeted space marines are captured and put in the "patience chamber". The food stocks of enemy forces are taken for Evening Meal.
:15:00 Afternoon Firing Rites: The Minotaurs practice shooting at cutouts for once. These cutouts are usually painted [[Ultramarines|blue]], [[Lamenters|yellow]], or [[Grey Knights|grey]].
:16:00 Enhanced Tactical Indoctrine: The Minotaurs learn how to most effectively teamkill each army in the Imperium. During this time, they also will use artillery and vehicle simulators in order to practice causing the most possible destruction upon space marines fortifications such as: driving tanks straight through walls and orbital strikes on Astartes medical station.
:18:00 Evening Meal: The Minotaurs feast once again, devouring the food stocks taken during Afternoon Battle Practice, infront of the survivors of who they took it from. Any brother who feels guilty about this is sent to the "patience chamber".
:17:00 Recruitment: <s>Slaves</s> Fresh recruits arrive from Terra. These are forced to either serve as serfs for the chapter, or begin the Minotaurs' <s>forced reprogramming</s> training process. Imperial Officials are ordered to turn a blind eye to this process, causing the Salamanders to [[RAGE]].
:20:00 Propaganda: The Minotaurs gather in the Great Hall [[Bullshit|to listen to the brilliant, enlightened, sophisticated, and productive conversations that the High Lords partake in.]] Any battle brother who dozes off or claims the High Lords are full of shit is sent to the "patience chamber".
:22:00 Free time: The Minotaurs are granted free time. This mostly involves reading the excessive number of manuals on how to kill space marines, beating each other up as practice, and repainting wargear taken from other Chapters.
:23:00 Bed Time: The Minotaurs retire to their quarters for the evening. Before falling asleep, they beat up the space marine dummy again.

==Tabletop==

===Chapter Approved===
When the first Minotaurs were introduced as one of the Cursed Founding chapters, for +10 points per model, or +20 per dreadnought (on top of the regular costs) you could give your entire army Fearless and +1 Attack though they had to move towards and assault the nearest enemy they could (even if they had no chance of hurting it) and had to sweep advance, but nobody did it because painting them WAS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. Both because they had the most annoying colour scheme (worse than the quarter ones like the [[Howling Griffons]]) and because their colours made them look fucking ugly.

===5th Edition/Imperial Armour===
Their revamped rules from the Imperial Armour books essentially make them play as 40k version Heresy-Era Iron Warriors, being all about Siege Siege Siege!

===7th Edition===
With the updates they got their own Chapter Tactics. Minotaurs Chapter Tactics models don't take morale checks from shooting attacks, and can re-roll failed pinning tests. In addition they have crusader USR, and +1 to charge distance when in the enemy deployment zone. Overall one of the [[fail|worst]] Chapter Tactics. Crusader certainly is nice to have, but ATSKNF makes re-rolling pinning and no morale checks from shooting pretty redundant. If you're gonna play Minotaurs you're gonna have to bring Moloc, who is a fucking monster in CC while gaining a VP per character executed in a challenge ''and'' giving your guys Prefered Enemy (Space Marines). So if you didn't get the memo, Minotaurs are meant to be run with Moloc as your Warlord against other Space Marine armies. If a friend of yours is running a really annoying Space Marine army, especially if he has Smashfucker, sic these guys on him and watch him cry.

===8th Edition===
How 8th Edition treated Forge World chapters is an issue of [[skub|intense debate]]. Sure, you can choose whatever tactic you want, but it still feels like an afterthought on the part of Games Workshop. That aside, Moloc and Aiakos came out of the update relatively unscathed, still being hard nuts to crack and very lethal overall, but with loss of initiative, and Moloc has lost the main thing he was taken for - the godsent army-wide Preferred enemy: Space Marines. Instead he can "do the wulfen" now. Ivanus, however, has lost all of his utility and is just an overpriced Chaplain with attacks and wounds of a captain, and no longer gains an extra attack from having two specialist weapons. Kraatos also no longer exists as of the FAQ, with Forge World telling you to just [[fail|use him as a regular devastator marine]]. ROC pattern Storm Eagle still rocks though.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Minotaurs_Original_Scheme.jpg|[[Fail|Their original scheme]], just try and paint an entire Chapter of them.
File:Veteran_Brother_Isskar.PNG|Stylized red markings are used to identify [[Veteran Squad]]s...
File:Sternguard_Veteran_Thoul.PNG|...And sergeants
</gallery>

{{Marines-Official}}

Adeptus Mechanicus

2020-02-20T09:16:10Z

2600:6C58:637F:E506:4036:C84A:8009:880A: Undo revision 638609 by 65.94.53.160 (talk)

{{awesome}}
{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= Adeptus Mechanicus
|image= [[Image:AdMech_Flag.jpg ‎|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital=[[Mars]]
|Official Languages=Lingua-technis, Low Gothic, High Gothic
|Power=Galactic Superpower
|Size=Galactic <br> 125 Known Forgeworlds <br> totals presumably in the tens-of-thousands <br> Numerous outposts and research stations
|Head of State=[[High Lords of Terra#Members|Fabricator-General of Mars]]
|Head of Government=[[High Lords of Terra#Members|Fabricator-General of Mars]], Martian Parliament
|Governmental Structure=Totalitarian Theocratic Technocracy (''Before Great Crusade'') <br> Semi-Autonomous Corporatocratic Theocratic Technocracy (''Great Crusade-41st Millennium'')
|State Religion/Ideology=Cult Mechanicus / [[Omnissiah]] worship
|Demographic=[[Humans]], various [[Servitors]], assorted Transhumans and Cyborgs
|Military Force=[[Skitarii]], [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Collegia Titanica]], [[Ordinatus|Centurio Ordinatus]], [[Legio Cybernetica]], [[Imperial Knight|Knight Houses]]
}}
{{Topquote|Go go gadget Rocket boots!|An Ancient Terran Skitarii protector, code name "Gadget", seen as a living saint among the early Mechanicum}}
{{Topquote|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}}
{{Topquote|Sometimes I wonder why you submitted to the changes."<br>"Improvements! I submit to no one. I chose them.|A-4D & General Grievous, in a galaxy far far away... }}

Basically what happens when you combine the extreme technophilia and cyborg-fetishism of the [[Cyberpunk]] Genre with the religiosity and aesthetics of Medieval Catholicism, the '''Adeptus Mechanicus'''; [https://youtu.be/7p3H5avBJs0 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 (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]] Legions.

The Adeptus Mechanicus, whose individual members are known as [[Techpriest]]s, own dozens, maybe hundreds of heavily polluted planet-factories known as [[Forge World#Planet|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 [[Awesome|marching an Imperator titan into the senate chamber and holding them at building-sized gunpoint]].

The Adeptus Mechanicus is basically the definition of a Mega-Corporation, or a [[Monopoly]]. 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 may hate the AdMech for being Heretics, but they have private claim to all the various Forgeworlds, Manufactoria, Mining worlds and Research Stations needed for the production of Imperium 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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TvN5lCVkRk all the really cool shit for themselves (aside from the overpowered DAOT artifacts in the emperors 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, [[Servitor|lobotomized minions]] manufactured out of clones and heretics, and [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|giant, world-devastating Super Robots]]. They are also technological rivals with the [[Tau|space weeaboos with transforming mecha]] and potentially have made a few advances beyond the [[Eldar]], though the Eldar are much more advanced in psionic technology.

Only the [[Necrons]], an entire race of robots whose race-wide robotization was not their most advanced feat, eclipse them technologically. 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 [[Looted|loot]] Necron tombs (though [[Void Dragon|there may be truth to this]]).

They typically look like a cross between [[Star Wars|Jawas]] and [[/co/|Doctor Octopus]] with a healthy dose of [[Dune|The Bene Tleilax]], as well as wearing the sort of re-breather masks that you'll typically see on riot police.

==The Commandments of the Mechanicus==
The Mechanicus have some ideas that they abide by:

'''The Mysteries:'''
#Life is directed motion.
#The spirit is the spark of life.
#Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
#Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
#Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
#Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
#Comprehension is the key to all things.
#The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

'''The Warnings:'''
#The alien mechanism is a perversion of the true path.
#The soul is the conscience of sentience.
#A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
#The Soulless sentience is the enemy of all.
#The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
#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.

== What the Mechanicus does ==
[[Image:Mechanical-man.jpg|thumb|300px|right|[[Awesome|"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."<br>- 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 Construct]]s" 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 [[Cyberpunk|William Gibson]] and recorded in these STCs. 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 Storm|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. 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 [[Orky|"pure" design should have been.]]

[[Image:MECHANICUS.jpg|thumb|500px|left|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 [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|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 [[Horus Heresy|pre-heresy]]. Even things like [[Land Raider]]s and [[Land Speeder]]s, 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 Transport|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 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#Phased_Plasma_Fusil|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 [[Monopoly|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 [[Miniatures|tiny plastic model]] that wasn't specifically mass-produced and shipped to the [[Departmento Munitorum]] so ''they'' can give it to you, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TvN5lCVkRk 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 [[rage|take an 8,000 year-old flash drive from a techpriest who just found it.]] It's worse than taking little plastic models from [[tg|fat men]] [[neckbeards|with beards]].

=== 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. 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.

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.

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 intelligence's far superior to that of any human's, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo&t 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 [[Void Dragon|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.

== History of the Adeptus Mechanicus ==
[[File:Techpriests_are_still_human_deep_inside.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Who said they are not human or lack the human factor? And thanks to Priests of Mars this is canon.]]
The Mechanicus was established in the distant past, when a bunch of <s>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk machine worshiping technophiles]</s> 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 <s>beat down on their filthy heads</s> 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. 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 [[Grimdark|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 [[Steel Confessors|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 ==
[[Image:Magos Dominus.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Your average Magos]]
{{topquote|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 [[Earth|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 [[dick]]s. 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.
* '''Agripinaa''': Right outside of and now the front line to the Eye of Terror. After Cadia fell all the 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. 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 superority 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, [[Space Wolves|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. 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. Both Chaos and the Necrons target them for it. The whole Forge World lives on this <s>yellow submarine</s> 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. Red on their uniform is ostensibly because they are loyal to Mars, but actually because [[Blood Angels|they like blood]].
* '''Metalica''': Metalica is a completely sterile world, no atmosphere, no life, no anything but ''metal''. This may or may not be due to an [[retcon|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 [[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 [[Death Korps of Krieg|''became'' suicidal maniacs]] by [[Astral Knights|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 '''[[Awesome|actively hunting Hive Fleet Leviathan.]]''' They are, in fact, ''so metal.''
* '''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.

=== 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.
* '''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.
* '''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 [[lasgun]]s 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.
* '''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#Company|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'' [[Craftworld|copying anything]].

The "big" Forge World remains Mars, with [[Cawl]] being the only unique character in the AdMech force. (Hieronomus Tezla says hello.) Lucius and (Metalica or Ryza depending on the current Edition) round out as 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 [[Feral World|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. <s>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.</s> 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 [[Matt Ward|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 [[Trazyn the Infinite|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 is fine in a 21st-century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th-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

== On the Tabletop ==
''See also [[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Adeptus_Mechanicus(8E)|AdMech 8E 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.)

== 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 [[Land Raider|with the]] [[Land Crawler|name "Land"]] [[Land Speeder|in it]].

==Gallery==
{{Promotions}}
<gallery>
image:Adeptus_Mechanicus.jpg
Image:TechpriestChiyo.jpg|D'awwww.
Image:Mechanicuuuuus.jpg
Image:AdMech_Couple.jpg|D'awwww. By the way this is canon.
Image:CircleA_AdMech.jpg|PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH!
Image:rave_heretek_by_psykerscum.jpg|Someone got Chaos on my Mechanicus, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAUwi4D3Ew now with theme music!]
image:1318818198286.gif.jpg|We're not sure if that's tech-heresy or an actual activation ritual. Ask your local Magos for clarification.
Image:Leokadia chernabog by mr culexus-d3hxqx2.jpg|showin' a little augmented leg
Image:AdMech Scientific Method.jpg|Science in the 41st Millennium.
Image:Madonna mechanicae by sexual yeti-daubney.jpg|TECHPRIESTESS TITTIES
Image:T girl by skeenlangly-d2y4n3p.png
Image:Time to technical inspection by SkeeNLangly.jpg
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Adeptus_Mechanicus(8E)|Mechanicus Tactics.]] - [[Awesome|Yes, they have rules now.]]
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Mechanicum_(30k)|Heresy Era Mechanicum Tactics.]] - 6th/early 7th edition rules. Very different from either of the 40k versions.
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Mechanicum:_Taghmata_(30k)|Mechanicum: Taghmata (30k)]] - Current 7th edition rules. Still very different to the 40k versions.
*[[Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus]] - The official Vidya Gaem

==Links==
*[https://store.steampowered.com/app/673880/Warhammer_40000_Mechanicus/ 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.
*[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyLLeKcxw24U8s8C24FyUQ0EVS30stymM The soundtrack from the Mechanicus video game,] which is easily some of the best 40k music out there.
*The Adeptus Mechanicus are [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17PM-UMVud8 avid music lovers.]
*This is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ecvLRxb3MU their theme] done by [[HMKids]].
*And one for [https://youtu.be/Jb8J1zx2Lrg the Machine Cult].
*And their [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy-sVTaZRPk War Cant], play it the next time your Techpriest needs to get pumped before a battle.

{{Mechanicus}}
{{Imperium}}
{{WH40k-Factions}}
{{Template:40k-Governments}}

Minotaurs

2020-02-20T09:12:02Z

2600:6C58:637F:E506:4036:C84A:8009:880A: removing monkey brained bullshit