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Adeptus Mechanicus

2017-12-27T16:04:51Z

2601:581:8500:9027:E476:9AC7:E8BF:4745: /* Gallery */

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{{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]]
|Governmental Structure=Totalitarian Theocratic Technocracy (''Before Great Crusade'') <br> Semi-Autonomous Theocratic Technocracy (''Great Crusade'')
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Omnissiah]]
|Demographic=[[Humans]], various [[Servitors]], Assorted Transhuman
|Military Force=[[Skitarii]], [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Collegia Titanica]], [[Ordinatus|Centurio Ordinatus]], [[Legio Cybernetica]], [[Imperial Knight|Knight Houses]]
}}

''"War is the science of destruction."''<br>
- John Abbott

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

''"Sometimes I wonder why you submitted to the changes."''<br>
''"Improvements! I submit to no one. I chose them."''<br>
- A-4D & General Grievous

''"[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy-sVTaZRPk Our Wrath Has Come Online]"''<br>
- War Cant of Mars

Basically what happens when you combine the extreme technophilia and cyborg-fetishism of the [[Cyberpunk]] Genre with the religiosity and aesthetics of Medieval Gothic, 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) responsible for technology, engineering 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 thousands 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 [[Mars]], homeworld of the Adeptus Mechanicus, on which the most badass weapons ever known to man are made. Despite being part of the Imperium, the AdMech is actually its own nation and a respectable superpower in its own right. The 'being-part-of-the-Imperium' shlick is just a symbolic gesture of goodwill signed by the Treaty of Mars. Because of this, the AdMech is arguably more powerful then the Imperium as they hold claim to all the various Forgeworlds, Miningworlds and Research Stations needed for the production of machines of war for the Imperium. Essentially speaking, the AdMech can survive without the Imperium, while the Imperium can't afford to do the same.

[[Image:MECHANICUS.jpg|thumb|500px|left|The faculty of engineering never looked so cool!]]
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They also have a [[monopoly]] on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TvN5lCVkRk all the really cool shit for themselves]—like Titans, [[Ordinatus]], and other wonderful stuff—only letting the Imperials have it when really, really necessary (or if they're threatened personally). They have two armies of their own, which are not anything like the [[Imperial Guard]], as they are mostly composed of badass angry cyborgs and boxy technogrunge robots that are more violent than ED209, and giant, tank-crushing, [[Servitor|lobotomized minions]]. They are also technological rivals with the [[Tau]] and potentially have made a few advances beyond the [[Eldar]].

Only the [[Necrons]], an entire race of robots who's race-wide robotization was not their most advanced feat, eclipse them when it comes to technology; the Adeptus Mechanicus are mostly against this, seeing it as perverse because it's alien (Though there are some who even like or revere the Necrons because of this, and a few who may be jealous of the Necrons). Their primary reason for hoarding all the good shit is to keep it out of the hands of [[Chaos]] in case an army rebels, though they're also territorial as fuck when it comes to technology. They typically look like a cross between [[Star Wars|Jawas]] and [[/co/|Doctor Octopus]], as well as wearing the sort of rebreather 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 actually 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 the unnecessary stuff in dire situations while some abandon the unnecessary parts altogether. It's also implied that the so-called holy chants are really them repeating instructions to themselves, which would be 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 selling grox hamburgers if you study to be an engineer (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 and borderline developers and programmers, all the STCs found by the Mechanicus are more fucked up than Windows Vista. While often the recovered STCs are useless or incomplete, there are instances where they are actually functional, for example the STC data of the Land Raider and the Land Speeder as well as Centurion armour are well known, 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 to dissipate warp phenomena. 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, which will 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 what can be described as a massive 3-D Printer. The Adeptus Mechanicus also attempt sometimes 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.]]

Very rarely the Adeptus will actually invent something. While they do adapt designs occasionally the only things they actually invented from scratch is the [[Lascannon]], 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 Class and the Apocalypse Class, which were invented during the Age of Strife and the Dark Age of Technology respectively. Which is pretty odd, until you realize that they invented them [[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, supposedly, 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, it can be traced back to philosophers like Plato, ultimately the Mechanicus will play to no end with the meaning of the word "invent" to get the job done, as too often and despite /tg/'s cartoonish flanderization your average techpriest will have enough 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".

Also important to mention is what they ''do not do.'' The Mechanicus by and large are the greediest gits in the galaxy. 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 they're basically [[Monopoly|a mega-corporation that will try to own, buy, sell and take by force any existing technology]]. 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 a 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 rituals. That's arguably wrong. In the "Mechanicum" novel they are shown to have actual theoretical knowledge of physics. Yes, that's 31st millennium, but it's quite clear that even in the 41st they know about "normal" science like mechanic, thermodynamic, biology, optics, quantum physics etc. AdMech has probably as much science as we have today and more. And they are quite happy to play with it. What they don't really understand and they don't like to play with (unless they are really forced to) is the hyper advanced tech from the dark age of technology.

Take the lasgun as an example. There are almost infinite patterns of lasguns. They are almost all developed after the great crusade because we know that the lasgun wasn't that common back there. So they understand materials and mechanics well enough to create different stocks and triggers. They understand optics as they can focus the las beam with different barrel lengths. And they do use this knowledge to create new patterns. What they won't modify is the power pack. Because the power pack is a scary super advanced piece of technology that not only will hold enough energy for a hundred las shots powerful enough to kill an armored man, but it will be easily rechargeable thousands of times. And they don't have a clue on how that 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 far superior to humans, [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 the atheist Emperor would create a machine cult if not because it was the only way to retain a technology that the humanity would have no possibility to comprehend anymore once that the AIs would be wiped out?

This is interesting because it's said that the Emperor defeated the Dragon during the late Roman Empire, for this purpose. This means that he foresaw the rebellion of the machines and the long night and allowed it as a mean to develop a technology that could then be salvaged after.

Then the Horus Heresy came and fucked up everything. And yes, the cult mentality of AdMech involved probably more than should have been. But the real reason that they don't go around innovating and creating new stuff, it's that id 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 might hinder you from understanding advanced science to a point, yes. But it will absolutely wreck your ability to produce practical applications of said advanced science. Let me make an example, ok? 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 less efficient/polished/optimized than the original design.

So you don't really like to modify the original (standard) template (construct), unless you are '''really''' forced to. Does it remind you of something? Yep, that's the mechanicum mindset.

==History of the Adeptus Mechanicus==

The Mechanicus was established in the distant past, when a bunch of <s>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]]. After a while, 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 did one of three things: die, hide underground, or turn 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, did a new cult spread amongst the people of Mars, wherein they paid reverence to the Machine God. [[Just as planned]]. And then they joined the [[EMPRAH]] because they saw him as an aspect of the Machine God called the '[[Omnissiah]]'. As if the parallels aren't already tremendously clear at this point.

[[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.]]
Except it's giant load of bullshit. The Tech-priesthood were FORCED to acknowledge the Big E as an incarnate of Machine God quite literally 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. Needless to say, 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; then again 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, as well as access to Navigators and Astropaths for space travel, and all Archeotech found during the [[Great Crusade]]. Naturally, this managed to smooth 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, and gains control over machines. All those techpriests are going to have serious problems when it wakes up... Oh yeah. It's on Mars because the EMPRAH 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 Machine Spirits==
''"If you run from technology, it will chase you."''<br>
- Robert M. Pirsig
[[Image:Magos Dominus.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Your average Magos]]
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 pretty much everything electronic, a leftover from the Age of Strife. These "ghosts in the machine" quite literally 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 would seem to hold 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 just 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 Land Raider), and 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 version of a CPU. This interpretation of the "Machine Spirit" is particularly disturbing, to be sure, but is a necessity 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 have no ability to 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 (but not entirely) 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.

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. 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 promptly conscripted them into their Skitarii and Servitor forces -- by force. 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 Hersey, '''both''' of which turned traitor. They were saved at the last minute by the [[Eldar]], leading to them having a soft spot for Xenos. Home to the Xenarite faction, a faction that believes in studying Xenos technology. The official reason for this blatant tech-heresy is 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 that specialize in intuition, speculation, and improvisation. Ultimately they were considered "too big to fail," so 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. Oh, and they're 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! 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 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 Third War for Armageddon; their Princeps' decided that the best way to screw over the Orks was to fight the [[gargant]]s by over-extending like suicidal maniacs, and then ''become'' suicidal maniacs by self-destructing in the heart of the Ork forces. 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 it's 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 any more secret tech. Invaded by Hive Fleet Kraken, attacked by Typhus, and invaded by Demons.
* '''Deimos''': The moon of Mars, gifted to the Grey Knights of Titan at the end of the Horus Heresy. They 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.
* '''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 it's 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 it's 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 it's 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 that it is today, it's pretty much a matter of time now. The Necrons already attempted to raid Mars - and succeeded, well, sort of. They got vaporized before they could really even do anything, but the fact that they managed to even land proved a point the High Lords of Terra had been turning a blind eye towards for ages.

If the T-800s get what they want and party on Mars long enough to wake the Void Dragon up, you can bet it's going to be a pretty goddamned bad day for just about any human not [[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, thus 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 kilometers 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. Towards the close of the Heresy, Rogal Dorn sent some Space Marine operatives to wipe the planet clean of all life. 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 seeking 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, they never have, and they never will.

''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 materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fucking military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed and a whole swathe of the logistical side of your society, 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 exists 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 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 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."''<br>--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 Techpriests 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.

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.

==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
</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.

==Links==
*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].

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

World Eaters

2017-12-27T04:50:31Z

2601:581:8500:9027:E476:9AC7:E8BF:4745: /* Notable World Eaters */

{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = World Eaters
|Heraldry = [[File:Worldeaterslogo.png|250px]]
|Battle Cry = Pre Skalathrax: Blood for the Primarch! Skulls for the Twelfth Legion! (I shit you not, this was their original battlecry) After Skalathrax:
{{BLAM|"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"}}
|Original Name = War Hounds
|Number = XII
|Primarch = [[Angron]]
|Original Homeworld = Bodt (primary muster site), in no way Angron's homeworld of [[Nuceria]]
|Current Homeworld = Hell if we know (emphasis on [[Warp|'hell']])
|Champion = [[Kharn|Kharn the Betrayer]]
|Specialty = Khorne [[Berserkers]], mass infantry, raping everything in sight with chainweapons.
|Strength = A metric fuckton of Warbands, each with numbers ranging from 12 to 12000.
|Allegiance = [[Khorne]]
|Colours = Blood red and brass (formerly blue and white)
}}

{{Topquote|Cry 'havoc!' and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.|William Shakespeare}}

The '''World Eaters''', worshipping [[Khorne]], are the canon [[Angry Marines]], a Chaos Legion (or rather a collection of various warbands that all share kinship in that legion) dedicated entirely to the principle of [[rage]]. Their Primarch's name is a pun on the fact that they're so damn angry ([[Angron]]). How the Big E in all his infinite wisdom did not see the betrayal coming of a legion called the fucking "WORLD EATERS" is beyond me, but maybe it's because they were originally called the War Hounds. Anyway, they use any kind of ECKSBAWKS HUEG melee weapon capable of putting Terminator armor to shame, a pistol, their Berzerker-styled power armor and [[Khorne]]'s everlasting [[rage]], which turns them angry beyond all reason so that they simply refuse to run away when spilling blood for the blood god, even if they're hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by 100-1 (the Blood God isn't picky, it doesn't care whose blood it is:it must be spilled). It is unknown who pilots their tanks but they still have transports; it is very unlikely that the Khornate marines are driving their vehicles like their loyalist counterparts, as with their anger they will most probably use a Rhino as a makeshift powerfist instead of a transport and if somehow made to use a Rhino, they'll probably end up killing the driver and tear their way out of the vehicle onto the battlefield. ("We need a new driver, this one is dead!") Actually, they have drivers, but even they tend to prefer [[rip and tear]] which leads to them always having an axe or so in reach for the particular [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/File:Closer.jpg I ] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrCY7dgaqs want to hit them with his sword].

==Legion History==
[[File:World Eaters.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Before they went '''completely''' bonkers. A more accurate depiction would show Angron's armor with a fresh coat of chunky red paint.]]
From the beginning, the World Eaters, then called the War Hounds by the Emperor, were destined to travel a dark road. The initial recruits on Terra during the [[Unification Wars]] were picked from the most aggressive and bloodthirsty candidates, the legion usually being held in reserves for when Big E needed someone or something dead and [[get shit done|need it done fast]]. Once the [[Great Crusade]] kicked off, they became expert shock troops known to pacify worlds within less than a dozen hours. The majority of them were concentrated into an Expeditionary Fleet known as the "Bloody 13th", made up of various other human regiments and even Titans that just didn't give a shit about collateral damage. [[Sanguinius]], [[Red Thirst|ironically]], described them as a "carnival of monsters."

For their Primarch Angron, even as a baby, he didn't take any shit. The Eldar used their psychic powers to look into the future, and saw that if Angron ever grew to be a man, he would spend his whole life slaying everything in his path. 24/7, nonstop, all the fucking time. So the Eldar sent a contingent of elite warriors to kill him. But Angron tore their fucking eyeballs out so they couldn't see, then he ripped their fucking legs off so they couldn't run away, and he beat them into a bloody pile. Even as a literal infant, Khorne had his eye on the Primarch. To reiterate, Angron was only a kid when he did this. This really speaks volumes about his combat skills and the Eldar's [[Plot armor|hilarious ineptitude]] in combat.

So after being found by humans this time he was brought to a city called Desh'ea, on a technologically advanced planet called [[Nuceria]]. Said city was run by a bunch of fat fucks whose only purpose in life was to build armies of cyborg warriors and watch them kill each other, using a particularly nasty piece of archaeotech called the "Butcher's Nails" to make them unable to feel any pleasure outside of killing people. Cool hobby. But they fucked up when they recruited Angron for their cyborg army. First he went all Conan the Barbarian on the other cyborg guys, but spared any who fought well despite the damn thing in his brains urging him to kill. Naturally, this earned him the respect of the other cyborg guys, so he eventually went Spartacus on the ruler's fat asses and escaped with his buddies. Then word got out that there was a new fucking sheriff in town, even more guys started to defect, and pretty soon Angron had his own cyborg army ready to take over the whole planet. They started killing every warlord and their armies in sight non-stop, but eventually, Angron and his merry band of warriors faced a combined army of 7 warlords. They were readying themselves for their inevitable deaths because they were already outnumbered and outgunned, when the Emperor came down to talk to Angron, promising him an army of his own and a life of eternal war for humanity.

[[File:175px-WarHounds.jpeg|thumb|right|War Hounds Great Crusade icon, before the coming of Angron]]
But then, Angron said: "Fuck that shit, I'm taking care of business." And because the Emperor knew Angron would simply waste his life and [[Not as Planned|die in combat]], he forcefully beamed up Angron into his ship, just before the final assault, which naturally pissed off Angron for millennia to come because he didn't die along with his soldiers, thus earning an honorable death. This made Angron develop an ever-lasting [[Rage|hatred]] of his father that would eventually come back to bite him in his divine ass.

Much later when Angron was about to be presented to the Astartes Legion he was going to command, the Emperor gathered the War Hounds' Captains and commanded them to persuade their father to be their leader ''without'' laying a hand on him. Still frothing and outraged that he'd been denied death alongside his brothers and sisters, Angron outright refused to command the then-War Hounds Legion, taking out his rage on his own legionnaires (since Big. E and his bananas had wisely made themselve scarce). You can pretty much imagine the results: Angron killed every Captain that tried to negotiate with him, up until he got to Captain [[Kharn]] who somehow managed to talk him down and get him to assume the title of Primarch of the War Hounds, which he subsequently renamed the "World Eaters". Kharn, who had climbed up the ranks as Angron had killed all the other higher ranking Captains, would then go on to be Angron's "cool head", assuming the rank of Angron's personal equerry, even after receiving the mental upgrades that turned the World Eaters more bloodthirsty than they already were. Seriously, a hell of a guy that Kharn.

With that business concluded, first stop for the World Eaters was this planet they were supposed to help conquer with the Luna Wolves and the Ultramarines. Angron and his Legion, who were itching to go down to the planet's surface and get their hands dirty, grew irritated at Horus and Guilliman as they held back the Imperial forces in order to make a plan of attack. Foreshadowing the future events on Istvaan III, Angron jumped the gun, ignored his two brothers and deployed himself and his forces straight into the thick of the enemy and engaged the rebels in bloody melee. Unable to cease shit from hitting the fan, the Luna Wolves and Ultramarines could only watch in horror as the World Eaters hacked the defenders apart and decimated everything in their path. Horus and especially Guilliman, who had always tried to minimize casualties and overall damage to a rebelling planet and its infrastructure, were obviously furious at Angron not only for trashing their well-laid plans but more importantly for slaughtering most of the population and leaving the planet in ruins. Even the Emperor himself, when he eventually heard about this, was angry as well but he could not do much to reprimand the already disobedient Primarch as he had other things to take care of.

[[File:Chaos inthe imperium.jpg|450px|thumb|right|Let's get this bloody party started.]]

Angron then had his worst idea ever: in order to improve his Legion, he ordered (poor) copies of his Butcher's Nails to be added first to new recruits then to everyone else, removing their ability to feel or care about fear but increasing their [[rage|aggression]] by large amounts. Only the few psykers still in the Legion were not implanted, and even then this was only because the damn things malfunctioned when implanted in a psyker and killing him in the process. The [[Emperor]] eventually banned this practice after the World Eaters exterminated all life on a planet in one night, but Angron didn't listen. As it eventually turned out, the implants were reacting abnormally to Angron's physiology; the Adeptus Mechanicus predicted that they would kill Angron before the end of the Great Crusade. After numerous attempts at removing them from other World Eaters resulted in the death of the subjects, the Emperor 'wisely' decided to hide this from Angron and his Legion and drop the subject, aggravating an already delicate situation.

Leman Russ, acting both out of a sincere desire to help and on the orders of the Emperor to make Angron stop implanting the Butcher's Nails, attempted to talk some sense into his brother. Angron, furious that the Emperor was trying to have Russ push him around, attacked him in a fit of anger. The impromptu duel caused the dam to burst and a skirmish between the present forces broke out. In the end, Angron disarmed Russ, but in the process was surrounded by the Space Wolves, guaranteeing his own death if he tried to kill his brother. However, Russ called them off, insisting that he had proved his point and Angron did likewise, retreating with his sons. No one else was ever told what happened, but both Legions insisted they won, though no one was sure. Overall, the Space Wolves took more casualties and Angron had Russ pinned to the floor and disarmed, but Angron and the remaining World Eaters were outgunned and outmaneuvered, very likely being killed on the spot as well if Angron had gone through with killing Russ. In the end though, it proved futile: the Nails and Angron's own stubbornness had already broken down what rationality he had.

[[Horus]], [[Horus Heresy|corrupted and seeking to turn the Primarchs to his cause]], didn't have to do much to get Angron to [[heresy|side with him]], as all it took was to tell him that the Emperor was weak and to stir up his rage at preventing his honorable death on Nuceria. This might not have been the smartest of ideas as Angron proved to be uncontrollable, though, and Horus would more than once lament that those who sided with him weren't exactly [[Fulgrim|paragons]] [[Perturabo|of]] [[Night Haunter|mental stability]]. In the purging of the loyalists from the Traitor Legions on Istvaan III, Angron trashed Horus's plans for a clean [[Exterminatus]] by deploying to the surface to butcher the enemy, inevitably drawing out the slaughter and costing Horus precious time in consolidating his resources. They also participated in the battle on Istvaan V, where they massacred a fair share of the loyalists in bloody hand-to-hand combat. Angron even almost came to hands with [[Vulkan]] during the first part of that battle, challenging him to a duel; but heavy bombardment drove them apart before they could go mano-a-mano.

[[Lorgar]] later brought the World Eaters back to Nuceria during his Shadow Crusade alongside his own [[Word Bearers]], ostensibly to find any information about how to keep Angron from being killed by his implants. In reality, Lorgar knew that when Angron learned that his former masters claimed that he had fled from battle, the resulting [[rage]] produced by Angron (and the World Eaters' subsequent annihilation of all life on Nuceria) would allow Lorgar to perform a ritual that would turn Angron into a Daemon Prince while also generating a warpstorm large enough to completely cut off Ultramar from the rest of the Imperium. Guilliman tried to intervene and stop Lorgar from completing his ritual, but even he and his Blue Boys were no match for Angron and the World Eaters when really angry and they had to retreat from Nuceria after Angron thrashed Guilliman and ascended.

When the Legions of Horus attacked the Imperial Palace, the World Eaters were at the forefront of the Traitor Marines, rushing into the breach and killing the most inside the palace. Sadly, they lost when Horus was killed aboard his flagship, and the World Eaters with Angron fled to the [[Eye of Terror]]. Kharn himself was killed and his corpse dragged from the debris, but Khorne blessed him with a second chance and resurrected him to slaughter and maim for millennia to come.

==World Eaters Schism and Khârn==
[[Image:Worldeater-awesome.gif|thumb|right|250px|Second Edition World Eaters were ''awesome''. Believe it or not, this guy is actually an apothecary.]]
A hell of a guy by the name of [[Kharn]] comes from this Legion. Hell of a guy that Kharn is... Even if he single handily split his legion into countless warbands.

The World Eaters are not organized anymore (at least no more than any other Chaos Legion). After the Heresy, the majority of the World Eaters legion stayed together whilst fleeing from the Imperium but rivalries and power plays continued to drive them apart. Angron had vanished into the Warp somewhere and the only other figurehead, Kharn himself, was in a comatose state after having his almost dead body dragged away from the Siege of Terra. The legion stumbled upon a planet in the warp, isolated by a barrier of normal space; a oasis of safety in the Warp. Unfortunately, the Emperor's Children had also found it. Half the Legion wanted to do their own thing, whilst half wanted to stay together and rebuild. Kharn suddenly woke up and proceeded to murder the shit of of an entire berserker assassination squad (no, really) that had been sent to off him. He then took authority over the leading legionary elements and proceeded to wreck pretty marine face.

The end result of this venture was that Kharn irrevocably split the Legion on [[Battle of Scalathrax|Scalathrax]] when the World Eaters were kicking the [[Emperor's Children|Emperor's Children's]] asses. Kharn got pissed off at his fellow Legionnaires for taking shelter from the Ice Cold Darkness, because the [[Grimdark|cold stuff on Scalathrax would freeze you to death]]. Kharn took a flamer and torched everyone's shelters and started killing everything in sight, while his fellow brothers fought for whatever shelters were left, even after [[FAIL|kicking the Emperor's Children's asses off the planet]]. The World Eaters are now fractured into Warbands, who sell their services to other Chaos Armies for the lulz (for the lul throne).

==Noteworthy Shenanigans==
*Cerberus Insurrection, where the legion engaged in a manly duel with [[Thunder Warriors|Thunder Warrior]] escapees, showing them the true power of rage(despite losing 4 to 5 for each Thunder Warrior). (Pre-Heresy)
*The Cleansing of Arrigata (Pre-Heresy campaign. This was noteworthy in that the World Eaters slaughtered the entire world's population in a single day.)
*Beat (and got beaten) the shit out of the Space Wolves when they were asked to come with them to get "Help by some doctors to make them not crazy anymore." A ridiculous battle, really. (Pre-Heresy)
*[[Battle of Isstvan III]]
*[[Drop Site Massacre|And Isstvan V]].
*The Shadow Crusade with Lorgar and his home boys, and making Rowboat Girlyman literally crawl away on Nuceria after getting his pompous blue ass kicked while Lorgar lol'ed.
*Siege of the Emperor's Palace. Where Angron got beat up by Sanguinius. In melee.
*Most of [[Abaddon|Failbaddon's]] Black Crusades.
*Cholercaust Blood Crusade - The World Eaters and Khornate followers in general curb-stomp the Imperium into the ground, until they're turned back by the fucking [[Legion of the Damned]] (a force around 200 strong, mind you, or [[Gav Thorpe|as many as necessary]]) because GW loves its stagnation and if they continued on they would have gotten to Terra and killed the Big E. This is also clear evidence that Khornates are the only Chaos Worshipers who [[get shit done]].
*Doombreed's actually successful black crusade. ('Success' is [[skub|debatable]], since the Imperium still stands. Doombreed's crusade did inflect one hell of a lot of damage to the Imperium. And to Chaos' side as well, but Khorne cares not where the blood flows from!)
*Angron's Dominion of Fire campaign, where 50,000 World Eaters and Angron wasted over 70 Imperial Sectors in two Centuries. That's one sector every 2.86 years... which means that Khorne must have blessed Angron with extra heroin-induced RAEG to get shit done ''this quickly.''
*First War of Armageddon. Where Angron <s>got raped by a Grey Knight</s> got his sword broken by a Grey Knight and proceeded to [[Rip and tear]].

==General need to know information==
[[File:WE_KhorneBerzerkers.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Can you believe they can drive a car? ROAD RAGE!!!]]
The World Eaters are all Berserkers according to the flop of a codex that is Chaos Space Marines 4.0, thanks to the partial lobotomization. They use Chain Axes, which are just close combat weapons in 4.0 now, and used to be some of the most brutal hand to hand units in the game, but lost their Feel No Pain, and have to be mechanized or they won't be effective. For [[Chaos Lord|Lords]], the mark of Khorne with wings turn them into the best Lords available to use, mainly with a [[Daemon]] weapon or with Dual Lightning Claws. However, because [[Games Workshop|GW]] sucks at maintaining army lists besides Codex: [[Ultramarine|Ultramarines]], everyone will try to argue with you that two Lash Princes are the optimal choice to take. Also, the World Eaters killed all their Librarians and Sorcerers in the name of Khorne.

[[Image:Angaron.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Angron is not a happy chappy.]]
The helmets that Berserkers wear are representations of the Khorne Skull icon, or the mark of Khorne. It's like a cool stylized eight thing. Khorne's favorite number is eight, so every Khornate Warband organizes its marines into squads of 8 and its multiples. Scary shit. But this also proves that World Eaters are just big nerds with rage, because they can do on-the-spot mathematics in the middle of a combat scenario just so they can make sure they do everything in multiples (or factors) of eight. Bet the Loyalists can't do that. Bet the Blood Angels with THEIR prissy version of RAEG can't do that. Thus it is proved that Zerkers are smart and can drive tanks.

==Summary==
Ruthless, [[Manly Marines|manly]], bloody, and [[awesome]]. They are the most angry and brutal Space Marines out there, even if their latest rules suck. Imperial equivalents are the [[Space Wolves]] or the [[Black Templars]]. Primarily due to the fact that they both act and fight the exact same way. [[Svane Vulfbad|For added lulz, whenever a Space Marine becomes a renegade and worships Khorne, nine out of ten times, that Space Marine will be a Space Wolf]]. This is due to the fact that in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], Khorne is worshiped by [[Warriors of Chaos|Vikings]].

It is also worth noticing that World Eaters and Space Wolves are the only marines in Warhammer inspired by Scandinavians, as Black Library has shown us. This is due to how World Eaters tend to get their names from towns in Scandinavia. For example, Skane the Destroyer (Skåne is a county in southern Sweden). Grunnar (who is of ''Jermanic'' descent), Hrothqar Furor (one letter off "Hrothgar", for you filthy heretics who never read Beowulf) and Kunnar (one letter off "Gunnar"!) Just ignore that there's a Wolf Lord in Scars called Gunnar.

==Trivia==

===Catch Phrase===

[[File:HGD.jpeg|250px|thumb|left|Despite the popular beliefs, they're not ''always'' angry. Just most of the time.]]

World Eaters use the most used catch phrase in [[Warhammer 40k|40k]] next to [[Ork|"WAAAAAAAAGH!!!!"]] or something for the [[Emperor]]. They scream [[Khorne|BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD]] in combat, while taking skulls for the skull throne. It is unknown what they scream while taking blood for the blood god, but it is probably SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE. Luckily the two activities are rather interchangeable, but at home life gets rather confusing as they bellow MILK FOR THE KHORNE-FLAKES while filling out their tax returns, or howl "POPKHORNE!!!!!!" whenever anybody suggests a movie.

===Colors===

The World Eaters Pre-Heresy colour scheme was white and blue, both colors which believe it or not in many cultures ironically stand for calmness (blue) and purity (white), white being cultural (all though with biological aspects to it) and blue being a biological human reaction (since most shades of blue have been scientifically proven to calm and relax the human mind).
Blue and white are also the colours of the Finnish flag, so yeah that's yet another Nordic connection.
If you factor in the biological responses to those colors, though, they would make sense for use by Angron's legionnaires as the sight of them would help stem their RAEG just briefly enough to avoid attacking their battle-brothers ("Friendly Fire" being something the Emperor probably wouldn't have appreciated much).

However in Japan and other Asian cultures white stands for death, and often bloody death, as the white brings out the color red. Also, corpses tend to go pale due to blood loss and/or lack of blood flow to the skin.

In Turkic (whom, depending on your interpretation, may technically count as Europeans) culture however, red is the colour of rage and anger, which is why the Turkic god of war, Kyazaghan, rides a red horse. White is, however, the colour of wisdom and forbearance, which is why the god of wisdom rides a white horse.

While most World Eaters repainted their armour after embracing Khorne (what with the bronze trim), according to fluff, some World Eaters never repainted their armor, the red is simply layers of dry blood. Which doesn't make much sense because dried blood is brown due to the iron in the blood oxidizing, unless they just keep adding new layers of 'paint'.

<strike>There is apparently [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xqOf-KjdVY a song] about them. Damn, take any song that Debauchery made and it's about Khorne and his zerkers. Yes, even the "For the Emperor" one.</strike> FOLLOWERS OF THE EIGHT FOLD PATH LISTEN TO [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL19beIJSE0 BOLT THROWER] NEWFAG!

==Daily Rituals==
04:00 - The World Eaters rise up from the mountain of corpses.

04:30 - Morning Practice. The World Eaters start [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSpartanWay to train and work out.]

05:30 - Morning Meal. Nothing is prepared, the marines simply grab the nearest slave available, rip out their heads, and drink their blood. Eating their flesh is optional but encouraged for nutritional purposes. Eating yesterday's leftovers are also an option.

06:00 - Morning Firing Rites. The World Eaters conduct in target practice. Most marines attempt to practice marksmanship with their bolt pistols, but most of, if not all fail in this task. The practice typically ends with them simply throwing their pistols and axes at the target and mercilessly tackling them in frustration.

07:00 - Battle Practice. Not so much as practice as it is a giant gladiatorial game where the berzerkers fight just about anything from daemons, captured slaves, giant beasts, each other...etc.

14:00 - Tactical Indoctrination. Surviving marines are corralled into the briefing room, where the warlord simply shows a picture of the planet, the main objective, and the rest of the marines simply shout in approval. Injuries and fatalities arise from the more "overzealous" marines.

14:30 - Evening Firing Rites. The marines now attempt marksmanship training in the dark. It usually just ends up with them using the muzzle flash of their guns as a flash light so they can close in on the target. Some marines may now actually hit something with their guns while doing this, but its usually another marine using the same tactic.

15:00 - Battle Practice. The marines now attempt to spar with each other, it isn't complete unless it ends up with a handful of fatalities.

20:00 - Evening Meal. Typically, nothing is still prepared and the marines will simply use slaves for nourishment. But any slave or marine capable of cooking and still alive will attempt to create some dishes for their bloodthirsty brethren (blood sausage and blood stew is a common favorite). Anything from warpspawn or slave innards can and will be used.

21:00 - Evening Practice. Battle is the greatest form of worship to Khorne, the marines will then proceed to battle each other in a massive moshpit.

24:40 - Rest Period. By this point, most of the marines have knocked each other out or killed the ones still awake. The slaves enjoy a few hours of peace until their psychotic masters wake up in a few hours.

==Notable World Eaters==
*[[Angron]]
*[[Kharn]]
*[[Crull]]
*[[Lheorvine Ukris]]
*[[Zhufor]]

{{Template:Chaos-Official}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]]

Chaos Cults

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[[File:Cultist of tzeentch by ilacha-d7hytyz.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Give a man responsibilities, and he will be content with his life; Give a man the ability to choose his own responsibilities, and he will only be content with his highest hopes and dreams.]]

Imagine being a citizen of the [[Imperium of Man]]. The first thing you'll ever know is that your individuality is worth jack shit. You are nothing more than a drone, a coin spent in an unimaginably large system, so that other coins can be spent elsewhere, continuing the cycle. No one arround you is ever expected to show you any kindness, respect you, or see you as anything less than another drone in the system. No matter how lenient your planet and government is, how strong an influence the [[Ecclesiarchy]] is where you live and how tough work you are expected to perform, this is the unfortunate and unchangeable truth that makes the Imperium what it is.

But say you've overheard some of the other drones whisper at your Administratum workplace in the upper hive. Apparently, there are these meetings, completely secret, but supposedly very invigorating. Your daily life here is hardly of note, maybe you should go. You had seen Dallia look at you with a funny expression, like she'd wondered something. Say you found the courage to forget what you've learned, and forget the punishment you and everyone even remotely associated with you would get if you were caught by the Arbites, and go to one of these meetings. Deep down in a forgotten and unused part of the Hive, you hear faint chanting. Already, your heavy legs feel stronger, your mind sharpens and your body seem to have a longing that was stamped out years ago... And when you leave, your body is as heavy as was it before you came there, but the longing remains. As time goes by, thoughts of work and duty fade, and you begin to wonder: Why are your own powers and skills suppressed? Think of all you could accomplish with them, if only you were given the chance to do so! And those decadent nobles in their high towers? Why do they get to have fun and relax? If you had the power, things would be very different: Very different indeed.

In one fateful meeting, your demagogue announces that their masters are finally arriving: [[Chaos Space Marines|Worshippers of what is true and fair]] are coming on ancient ships and plan to take the entire system and wrest it from the grip of the corrupt Imperium. That's your chance, the chance you'd been waiting for. Finally, they'll see what power you possess, what strength and intelligence they had all been neglecting. Doesn't matter what the others think: Only you are right to take what is yours, and no one is gonna stop you.

It's fucking ''payback time.''

At least, that's what you think. In reality, you've just exchanged one form of miserable existence for another one that somehow manages to be '''even worse'''. But on the bright side, the Ruinous Powers will mess with your mind to the point you will neither notice nor care that your neighbor is adding your spouse's skull to the Khorne shrine and that the nice [[Daemonette]] you've been sleeping with is in the process of hollowing your soul out to make your body nice and comfy for the time she decides to take over it.

== Overview ==

[[File:Tomb of excess copyright ffg by yogh art-d67dbff.jpg|thumb|350px|left|Sick fuckery on silver plates: Ladies and gentlemen, a Slanneshi orgy.]]

A Chaos Cult is a group of people worshiping the Ruinous Powers, either selectively or as a unified power. Cults are often comprised of a large mess of people who for some reason or other have forsaken their duty, and a demagogue, who is the spiritual and sometime martial leader of the Cult. The goal of a Cult varies wildly, from overthrowing governments or aid other heretical organizations, or simply to get a kick (or more than a kick, if you're into that sort of thing). Worshiping Chaos is different, depending on the god in question, but it often involves desecration of holy stuff, sacrifices, mass-suicide, writing and preaching heretical material, summoning of Daemons, and of course jaywalking - All in all, incredibly heretical stuff.

What most Cults don't know however is that cults attract more corruption, in form of warp anomalies, mutations and daemonic incursion. Even worse, if your corrupt actions light the Warp up well enough, it may very well attract a fleet of Chaos Space Marines. This might seem cool at first glance, but the Marines will likely not have your best interests in mind: As a matter of fact, many of them will want to put the entire system into the Warp and use you either as recruiting stock, as meatshields, or as sacrifices. Needless to say, none of those is a pleasant experience.

Cults often worship one specific God, or sometimes a servant of that God, such as a Greater Daemon or a Daemon Prince, and the Cult is often different, depending on their allegiance. There are also a few other cult subtypes that aren't unique to any god in particular, but are used by all of them to some extent.

===Apocalyptic Cults===
Ever seen one of those crazy guys on the side of the street shouting at passerby about the coming apocalypse? You know, the kind of person with unkempt hair, a weird look in his eyes, and a crudely written sign announcing "THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR"? Get a whole bunch of people like him in one place, and you have an apocalyptic cult in a nutshell. As far as Chaos Cults go, they're pretty easy to understand- they're convinced that humanity's already doomed to be destroyed by Chaos no matter what it tries to do to stop the Ruinous Powers, so they try to lash out at civilization however they can to ensure the demise of mankind happens sooner rather than later.

You might think "if they're sure it's going to happen, why bother trying to speed it up?" The reason for this is simple: most members of an apocalyptic cult are completely insane and see no point in the Imperium's attempts to delay the inevitable.

===Nurglite Cults===

Cults to the Plaguefather are often compromised of people at the bottom of the Imperial hierarchy, such as mutants, slaves, poor and homeless, as these are often the ones to embrace the corrupting diseases of Nurgle, and because they are the most in need of the love that Nurgle so generously dispenses. They're also the ones most likely to succumb to his diseases as well, and with health care being a luxury in the Imperium worshiping Nurgle proves to be the only way to stop the pain and agony of his poxes.

A Nurglite Cult is by no means an industrious one. Often, the mere act of worshipping Nurgle is more than enough to corrupt anything in the vicinity of the Cult and their members. More diligent cults go a step further in spreading corruption- they poison water and food supplies, release pathogens onto an unsuspecting public, and forcefully use otherwise useless people to create huge piles of rot and decay. When a Nurglite Cult grows sufficiently powerful, it often succumbs to its own plagues (being mortals and all): either the souls simply get collected by Nurgle and he makes them into [[Plaguebearers]], or the entire Cult goes the way of Michael Jackson and [[Zombie Plague|zombifies itself]].

===Khornate Cults===

[[File:Chaos Cultist.jpg|thumb|300px|right|While some sit on their asses and get sacrificed for some corpse, others get out there and cut their opponents several new ones for a real god.]]

The Blood God's cults are not Cults so much as they are raging bands of maniacs out for blood - their own or their enemies'. A Khornate Cult often breaks out as simple rebellions on particularly rough Imperial worlds where the leadership didn't get V's memo and overly abuses their workforce. What happens then is that every man, woman and child with the ability to use a weapon immediately vents their frustration on said leadership in ways that end with the oppressor's heads being forcibly separated from their bodies. But it doesn't stop there- after a while the would-be revolutionaries go completely nuts and start killing everyone and everything around them, up to and including each other.

Some Khornate cults skip the "rebellion" part completely and jump straight to the orgy of violence. These typically exist as offshoots of primitive Feral World religious traditions venerating Khorne in the guise of a native war god, and almost always involve blood sacrifices in some form or another. Usually, these are dealt with by Ecclesiarchal missionaries in the early stages of introducing the Imperial Creed, but they can sometimes go unnoticed long enough to reemerge and cause just as much damage as any other cult. In other cases, they simply kill random people on the streets, relying on the inherent violence within the dregs of Imperial society to cover their tracks and keep the [[Adeptus Arbites]] thinking that the dismembered corpses that keep showing up are just hive gangers going at each others' throats again.

Khornate Cults are dangerous as fuck to the Imperium, as of all the aligned cults, the Khornate cults are most likely to evolve into a terrifying fighting force that can rival several regiments of Imperial Guardsmen, to say nothing of their complete disregard for their own lives in their willingness to shed blood. As the adage goes, Khorne cares not where the blood flows from, only that it flows- and if they can't shed their enemies' blood, they'll settle for shedding their own blood instead.

===Slaaneshi Cults===
Cults of Slaanesh are sick fucks. While not as large as the other cults, and usually not as common (as if), a Slaaneshi Cult can really fuck up any society at the core. The common stereotype of them is a bunch of jaded nobles looking for new ways to get off, but in theory anyone who wants a little pleasure in life can fall under the sway of a Slaanesh cult. The exact brand of sick fuckery that it fosters can vary widely, but regardless of what it is they fixate on it'll be as excessive and hedonistic as they can manage. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't always equate to sex (that's so dark-goddamn vanilla); it can be anything from finding the most aesthetically pleasing pitch a person can scream at to mindlessly staring at a wall painted in a highly specific shade of purple, but still also can include more obvious things (like sex, drugs and ROCK) but turned up to "my dial's lowest setting is 11". It does, however, amount to obsession- a pleasure as seemingly harmless as listening to the crackling of wood burning in a fire can be warped to the point of monomania when someone starts tearing down houses to burn the wood that they're made of in order to gain that pleasure.

A good example of a non-sexualized Slaanesh-esque cult could be the first Bioshock game, in which you aid a drugged up artist with creating his ''magnum opus''... Which is [[Grimdark|four pictures of his dead students held up by corpses of dancers and performers encapsulated in white plaster]].

===Tzeentchian Cults===
Tzeentchian cults are made of [[Just as Planned]] or [[Not as Planned]] in equal measures. Either way works for the Architect of Fate. They usually get to work sowing intrigue and dissent through dissemination of forbidden knowledge and concepts. They tend to be much harder to pinpoint than other cults as the quiet little reading club can just as easily be a cult front as the sorcerous fanatics summoning demons and mind raping civilians. As befits the Chaos god of hope and ambition, many such cults often camouflage themselves under laudable political and social causes before pulling out the real "Hope and Change" that Tzeentch is so well known for. Sometimes the cult's members don't even realize that they're part of a cult at all until they start turning into [[Chaos Spawn|crimes against nature]].

Often it's only the leadership of the cult who are devout Tzeenchian followers, while the rest are just their unwitting pawns, believing they are just venerating Emprah in some of His unusual aspects, or at least are Chaos Undivided cultists. The reason behind this is that as the god of ''ambition'', Tzeentch cares much less about quantity of his followers compared to other gods and more about the quality thereof. This translates into a preference for recruiting mortals in a position of power- the better to use that power and any secrets they might know to his advantage. That's not to say he's snobbish about it, though- anyone with a penchant for deceit and cunning along with a heady dose of ambition has the potential to be a pawn too useful for the Great Conspirator to dispose of too quickly.

===Malalic Cults===
Malalic cults are rare to the point of being unheard of, and that partially has to do with the Lost God's modus operandi: individuals or small groups of people with comparatively vast amounts of power, as apposed to the masses of weak fodder that the other gods prefer. As such, cults dedicated to Malal tend to be a very small collective of people, no more then a few dozen at a time. Their relative scarcity is also dictated by the fact that they are enemies of literally everyone, especially other Chaos cults, and must be particularly cautious of detection. They might even be mistaken for an Apocalypse Cult by those unfamiliar with Malal, as they do tend to favor the anarchistic destruction their god is known for. That said, one would imagine the Inquisition keeps a close eye out for Malalic cults, for their presence can generally means that the other Ruinous Powers are lurking about as well.

===Mystery Cults/Secret Societies===
These cults center around the secrets and mysteries (hence the name) held within the highest ranks of the cult that the cult's power and authority stems from. In exchange for their loyalty and service to the aforementioned highest ranks, the cultists are promised the potential to learn and wield these secrets for themselves, which the cult guards carefully from any outsiders who might seek to learn them without pledging themselves to the cult in the process. The Warrior Lodges that formed within many of the Legiones Astartes near the end of the Great Crusade are a classic example of how a mystery cult operates, and their effects [[Horus Heresy|speak for themselves]].

Technically, these "mysteries" don't necessarily have to be Chaotic in origin or even particularly religious in nature, and one could easily argue that the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is the most successful of all mystery cults. They certainly have the "mystery" part down, given their persistent refusal to tell anyone outside the cult how the average machine works.

== See Also ==
*[[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Renegades And Heretics(8E)]] - Your means of creating your own tabletop legal Chaos Cult, courtesy of Forge World. Your demagogue's deity of choice can change which units are available. Not only that, but you can have radically different army lists based on what sort of HQ you take. Heretek Tech Priest? Have an army of bionic soldiers. Former Guard Colonel? You now have an army of storm-troopers. Slave Taskmaster? Congrats, you can take Ogryn as Troops choices.
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Imperial_Militia_and_Cults_(30k)]] - While not specific to chaos cults alone, the list does allow you to create your own generic "warp cult" or horde of mutants. Is perhaps more customizable than renegades since you can mix-match army provenances to create a style that suits you, and allows you to proxy whatever models you feel like.
*[[Chaos in the Old World]] - A board game where chaos cultists are the primary unit, despite being mostly harmless (unless you play Khorne). Their purpose is for spreading corruption, which is the means for ruining nations and leveling your deity up.

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]] [[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]]

Mortarion

2017-12-25T03:16:25Z

2601:581:8500:9027:E476:9AC7:E8BF:4745: /* Biography */

[[File:Mortarion Portrait.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Mortarion, the Death Lord, is in serious need of some chapstick.]]

{{Topquote|Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster . . . for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.|Friedrich Nietzsche}}

{{Topquote|Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.|Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Hindu religious text, the ''Bhagavad Gita''}}

{{Topquote|Forget no insult, my sons, as I have never forgotten those of my father, of the Emperor, nor those of Horus. Forgive no slight or grievance. Hold your bitterness deep within, and there let it fester. Let it roil and squirm and churn, until you are filled with bile so poisonous that all you touch falls to ruin. Thus shall you serve Nurgle best. Thus shall you spread his virulent gifts across the false Imperium, and watch its final rotting…|Mortarion}}

Also known as the '''Death Lord''' or the '''Prince of Decay''' after he got sick of [[Emperor|Daddy's]] shit, '''Mortarion''' is the [[Primarch]] of the [[Death Guard]] (XIV), a particularly gross legion of [[Chaos Space Marines]]. Has an absolute hatred of psykers, is a staunch believer of the Darwinistic principle, has some serious beef with the new and improved [[Roboute Guilliman|Rowboat Girlyman]] and is [[Nurgle|Grandaddy Nurgle's]] big special boy.

==Biography==
Mortarion was left on the plague planet [[Barbarus]] by the [[Chaos]] gods. He was found by the Overlord of Barbarus, who may or may not have been a xeno or possibly a sorcerer of Nurgle, but whatever he was, he was something that was less human than Mortarion. The Overlord, naming him Mortarion (to mean "Child of Death") took the infant Primarch and raised him, teaching him the arts of combat and warfare, after caging the child on a mountain top to acclimatize to the poisonous atmosphere. Mortarion's curiosity led him to leave home and set up shop in one of the human villages in a less plague-filled valley, where he simply helped with the harvest. When the village was attacked by a marauding warlord, Mortarion charged into the fray, defending his home with his scythe. After the battle was won, Mortarion taught the villagers, and other humans on Barbarus, the same lessons of warfare he had learned from his adoptive father. Soon, they were strong enough to take the fight to the warlords of Barbarus until only the Overlord remained. The Emperor showed up in a modest robe, as he feels like doing sometimes, and challenged Mortarion to slay the Overlord alone or swear loyalty to him.

Mortarion wasted no more time and went to kill his adoptive father, but he was too weak and succumbed to the poisonous upper atmosphere. Cue [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]] time and one hit kill. The Emperor stole Mortarion's kill and evil adoptive father (Mortarion resented both as a trivialization of his struggles against the warlords, and this resentment eventually caused his fall to Chaos).

===Great Crusade===
He was discovered 130 years into the Great Crusade and was taken to Terra, like all his other brothers were, to learn the ways of the Imperium. But unusually he was held for a bit longer on Terra than his brothers were on the reasoning that they were going to get all of the poisons and toxins out of his system, though this would obviously hit a snag since he got his armour customised to supply him with the Barbarus gases on demand ''(maybe he was dependent on them?)'', naturally all this waiting around got him a bit frustrated and annoyed.

Mortarion managed to sneak his way through the Imperial Palace and to the construction site of the future [[Golden Throne]] ''(yeah, despite being all giant and pungent, he was an excellent [[Ninja]], also evidenced by his rules below)'' When he demanded of [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcador]] what it was, he wouldn't accept the regent's excuses that it was nothing to concern himself over, since Mortarion knew [[Heresy|warp-tech]] when he saw it, and considered the Emperor & Malcador big giant hypocrites. The same went for his three brothers who set up the Librarius, and he didn't get on that well with the others. Apart from maybe the Khan, Mortarion had the least central role in the Crusade of all the Primarchs.

Thus Malcador revealed to Mortarion the Emperor's greater plan; which was to remove the reliance on psykers and warp travel entirely, and that they were already planning the [[Librarian|Council of Nikaea]] in advance and that Mortarion would be the one to make the case for reining it in.

Mortarion gets his own legion and swears allegiance to the big E. Weirdly, for all his dad and Malcador's worries about him, they didn't see fit to keep him fighting alongside the Emperor like (clearly sane and well-adjusted) Vulkan. After a few years of raping and pillaging those filthy Xenos he becomes best buds with [[Horus]] and that [[Konrad Curze|creepy pseudo-batman]]. He wasn't that bad of a guy, but he resented pretty much everyone whose upbringing hadn't been as awful as his, except Horus. There's a bit in Scars where he bitches and moans at Sanguinius, Jaghatai and Fulgrim about how they had it easy before snapping at the Khan that he ''doesn't resent it''. Hmm. The newly renamed Death Guard was moulded to resemble Mortarion's old army on Barbarus, as it began prioritising endurance over everything else. In combat Mortarion relied on his raw strength, which according to Jaghatai Khan, only Ferrus Manus had a hope of matching. In a primarch-on-primarch duel he just absorbed damage, tiring his opponent out.

===Horus Heresy===
When the [[Horus Heresy]] began, of all his traitor brothers, we don't quite yet know "why" Mortarion joined the Traitors since there haven't been many books with him as the protagonist. But it was presumably for [[Perturabo|ideological reasons]] rather than being outright [[Fulgrim|corrupted]], [[Angron|broken]] or [[Konrad Curze|renegade already]] since we know he already considered the [[Emperor]] and the [[Imperial Truth]] to be hypocritical and had never forgiven the Emperor for being the one to kill his foster "father" instead of him. He also felt that the whole goal of the Imperium was the wrong one- viewing non-combatants as unworthy, and hating the influence that civilians began to wield post-Ullanor. Horus' rebellion promised an order based on Might Is Right, and if the Warmaster died in the process of overthrowing the Emprah, then Mortarion might get a shot at the top job. So was probably like "Yeah I won't worship Chaos, but I'll follow you anyway!" with Horus. Then again, a flashback with Malcador tells us that Mortarion might've had mental scars just as big as Curze's and Angron's, between the jail-keeper relationship with his adoptive dad, wanting to kill said foster parent, failing and watching his real dad kill said evil dad and finally finding out that his real dad was also a psyker (basically everything that Mortarion hated).

If he was telling Jaghatai the truth, in Horus he saw a leader who could give the strong freedom to dominate the galaxy, driving out the weak and impure. At the same time, Horus might not keep the throne once he got it; there would be "room to rise" when the war was over. Specific, room for him to take Horus's place.

However, that wasn't as easy as he thought, especially when he saw just how many despised psykers, witches, and sorcerers were running around all over the place. As a last-ditch attempt to change the balance, he tried to recruit [[Jaghatai Khan]] on [[Prospero]], using the Warrior Lodges to subvert the [[White Scars]]. Being an architect of the [[Librarian|Librarius]] and a generally cool guy, the Khan told Mortarion he was an idiot and went to town on the Death Lord. Mortarion gave Jaghatai the fight of his life, but eventually ran away to take his butthurt out on the rest of the Prosperine system, all the while brooding over the Khan's taunts. He'd thrown his lot in with the thing he hated the most and now that he'd run out of allies, it was going to claim him. Scars kinda retcons the start of Mortarion's descent here- the Khan thinks that Mortarion's "power" has grown (probably psychically) and that the guy's face looks discoloured around his rebreather. Despite this, he still insisted on claiming he was the only "pure" Primarch.

Just after getting into that scrap with the Khan, he travelled to a library world that once belonged to the [[Thousand Sons]] and set about [[Exterminatus|purging it]] to find a particular person possessed by a daemon. This would prove a turning point, as he kept the daemon in order to [[Inquisition|extract knowledge on how to defeat daemons]], but ended up getting goaded into using sorcerous powers to blast the creature into a mushy pulp and declaring that he would learn all he could about his [[Daemon|enemy]] in order to learn how to [[Fail|better eradicate it]]. Which the daemon had forseen as the beginning of Mortarion's descent into [[Fifteen views of Asscrack|Nurgle's Pocket]]. The retcon continues here, as Mortarion's claims to "purity" are mocked to his face and we're told that a Chaos God has already staked a claim on him. It's also pretty clear that Mortarion's close to going nuts even before this push, as his quarters are littered with Scientific Anti-Warp Devices (AKA shit tons of charms, incantations and numerical codes which do hurt Daemons... once he starts using the Warp). Oh yeah, and he makes speeches about how destroying worlds is good for the soul.

Following this he went on a psychic binge on [[Molech]], using the daemon prince who his old captain Ignatius Grulgor had become to wipe out entire cities. However, he also [[Awesome|took a blast from a Stormhammer cannon in the face, stayed on his feet, and destroyed the Goddamn superheavy tank.]]

Apparently the tank shell was loaded with the rare substance known as "common sense" (and admittedly with his regular author back) so Mortarion retreated from the Warp again, smashing up his trinkets, locking Grulgor away, banning sorcery again (although that only applied to his own Legion and he was more lenient on his allies) and generally treating the whole thing as some kind of lost weekend. His paranoia only got worse when First Captain [[Typhon]] disappeared, and then Horus assigned him the task of destroying the White Scars. Mortarion was so suspicious that he accused Horus of trying to get him killed, not appreciating that he was the only one Horus could trust to Get Shit Done in this scenario until Horus explained that the other Primarchs had [[Fulgrim|fucked off]], [[Angron|were]] [[Konrad Curze|uncontrollable]], [[Perturabo|disillusioned]], [[Alpharius|not really fans in the first place]] or were [[Lorgar|too busy pursuing personal vendettas]].

To that end Mortarion worked alongside [[Eidolon]] of the Emperor's Children, and despite Eidolon being a glory-whore who was all for using Chaos to modify himself wherever he could while also employing sorcerers (while Mortarion's the polar opposite), the two got along really well (mostly because Mortarion made it clear Eidolon was working '''with''' him and not '''for''' him). Surprisingly Mortarion arguably treated Eidolon better than Eidolon's own Primarch, given how Mortarion was supportive and didn't cut Eidolon's head off. The mission would have gone swimmingly, if the Scars' head psyker hadn't opened up a [[Dark Glass|Webway gate]]. Still, Mortarion was able to break open the Khan's flagship and teleported aboard with three hundred Terminators... only to find the ship empty, with the Khan and co evacuated to another ship (admittedly Jaghatai hated doing it, feeling like he was a coward for running away). Next thing he knew, the shields came back and his force was zerg rushed by the last of the Sagyar Mazan death squads formed from disgraced(attempted to usurp the Khan) White Scars. So he watched as his nemesis escaped and the warriors he'd once hoped would force the Khan to join them redeemed themselves by delaying him. And best of all? They were laughing.

And all the while, all his ships were getting grimier and the mortals were getting sicker...

Eventually he'd use Eidolon's sorcerers to locate Typhon, his first captain would kill his [[navigator]]s, claiming they were secretly loyalists, and then he'd convince Mortarion that he could take them to Terra. Why Mortarion trusted a hidden Psyker who revealed himself as his first captain after butchering the navigators who served him quite well isn't fully known yet since those books haven't been written (hopefully there's a plausible explanation). When his big ol' fleet was pimping their way to Terra, they were caught in a Warp Storm, where they had to suffer diseases which would kill anyone else. The Death Guard's legendary endurance turned against them, holding them just on the edge of death, suffering so hard that it makes a [[Dark Eldar]] torture feel like massage (no, really). Well, what would be the best way to stop the disease? [[Derp|Start the worship of the God of the Diseases, of course!]] To be fair, Typhon was already doing that- in fact, he was the one who arranged them to be caught in the warp storm in the first place. [[Nurgle]] was pleased as the Death Guard swore loyalty to him, and he ended their suffering (but made them walking sacks of meat that simply won't die, our beloved [[Plague Marines]]). Mortarion instead became... actually he didn't change all that much. Seriously, aside from getting a scabby face he looks nearly identical to how he used to be.

This act of "swearing loyalty" takes on a different context when you realize that Mortarion utterly despised the Ruinous Powers (even if he may have been getting some assistance from them towards the end of the Heresy, if the events of <i>Scars</i> are to be believed) and only submitted to Nurgle because he physically couldn't suffer any longer or watch his sons do the same. Certain fluff sources literally state that as Mortarion lay in agony he pictured himself once again defeated atop his daemon-father's lair, too weak to fight on in the face of certain death, only this time he knew the Emperor wasn't going to save him from his fate (when you consider the importance he placed on strength and the refusal to surrender, this becomes an even bigger nightmare). And so, after a lifetime of striving to become the most grim, unstoppable motherfucker in the galaxy he crumbled when the stakes were highest, and lost his soul to Chaos, becoming everything he hated most. [[Grimdark]].

===Post Heresy===
[[File:Mortarion,_Prince_of_Decay.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Seriously, Morty was playing Ol'Grimmy before the [[C'tan|Nightbringer]] was ever thought up! So much for originality [[GW]].]]

After Horus got his ass kicked, Mortarion made epic formations, and marched his ships (yes, marched them!) to the Eye of Terror; as a reward for his service and his ability to keep his Legion from disintegrating on the way to the Eye, Nurgle made Mortarion a Daemon Prince and gave him a nice new home, known as the Plague Planet, which they started decorating and uhh... "cleaning". Yes, seriously. Mortarion changed the Plague Planet to resemble Barbarus which caused Typhon (now Typhus) to abandon him in disgust of the sentimentality (not to mention he was more interested in getting shit done). Nurgle on the other hand, likes good gardeners and wholly approved of the whole venture. Though Mortarion was somewhat displeased with Typhus' insubordination, he allowed Typhus to leave rather than trying to control his former Captain as the Emperor sought to control him.

Surprisingly, his appearance barely changed from how he used to be, and if you ignored the wings (and the immortality) you could be forgiven for thinking he wasn't a Daemon Prince at all. He even stayed about the same size as before (at least until GW released a new model that makes him as big as Magnus). [[Angron|Very different to]] [[Magnus|Nearly every other]] [[Fulgrim|Daemon Prince in the setting]].

Incidentally, did we mention that he built his fortress atop the high mountains shrouded in toxic miasma and rules over billions of slaves? You know, exactly like the Overlord of Barbarus all those millennia ago?

Ever since getting the Plague Planet Mortarion hasn't done all that much (though he's far from being the laziest Primarch in the setting). The whole enslavement and broken-by-plague thing has probably hurt Mortarion's motivation a little bit, whereas Fulgrim, Angron and Magnus all get to have some fun with their Chaos abilities, Mortarion is just stuck in a mess of self-hatred. He's basically ended up like his adoptive father, punishing all his subjects for being too weak to rebel against him - by proxy, punishing himself for his own weakness. In those moments he was not completely consumed with self-loathing, though, he got creative and designed toys for his sons to play with like the [[Plagueburst Crawler]].

To his credit, he did make himself useful in the Fall of Sanctia in 437.M36 by sending an army of diseased [[Orks]] to soften the planet up, then made their corpses explode into a massive horde of Nurglings when he and the Death Guard landed, wiping out all life in less than a day. It's also emerged that he helped Typhus concoct the Plague of Unbelief, which helped raise the curtain on Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade. More recently, he led the Death Guard's invasion of [[Ultramar]] to kick off the Plague Wars.

Apparently at some point in time after his ascension he spent a millennium tracking down the soul of his foster "father", which he now keeps in a jar to torture when he's in a bad mood. Better late than never, right?

===The Draigo Incident===

Tl;dr: he got his ass handed to him by [[Kaldor Draigo]] who carved the name of the previous SUPREME GRAND MASTER, Geronitan, into one of Mortarion's hearts.

The longer story, as told by the Audio Drama ''Mortarion's Heart'': Geronitan more or less baited Mortarion and allowed whole sectors to die under the Primarch's massive force (every Nurgle cult and warband within 100 sectors) until he showed up at Kornovin, which was one of the few places the Grey Knights could perform the ritual to bind his soul and kill him for good. It failed due to the fact that Geronitan forgot to wear a helmet so Mortarion just Plague Winded him to death and laughed as the entire Grey Knights Chapter cried (yes this happened.)

Afterwards, Kaldor got elected, mostly because he's the most expendable Grand Master who's also skilled enough to fight the Death Lord. Grand Master Crom gave Kaldor a potent weapon, the true name The Emperor gave to Mortarion.

After a laughably short and one sided fight, which was really just Mortarion punching Kaldor in the face over and over again, Kaldor was able to light Mortarion's cape on fire when Mortarion eventually got a hand cramp. Mortarion paused for a second because that was his VERY favorite cape and became distracted enough to allow Kaldor to slip Mortarion's true name into the Death Lord's mind, which caused him to [[wat|FUCKING EXPLODE]] somehow, regardless of the fact that in every other instance of true names ever the worst that can happen is your combat stats getting halved. Though it might be because in this case the name itself originated from the Emperor, and anything that has to do with the Big-E will mess up anything Daemonic big time. Kaldor then crawled over to a helpless, nearly broken in half Mortarion and wrote Geronitan's name on Mortarion's heart in magic marker.

He is still incredibly bitter about his loss. More so than usual, anyway.

===Plastic Model===

With [[Magnus the Red]] getting a Daemon Primarch model, rumor has it that either Mort or Angron will receive one next. Kaldor probably will show up and autograph his other heart, though. As of early 2017, a supposed image of Daemon Mortarion is floating around the internet. HYPE!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BceinBiT9jQ New video] on Warhammer tv. His model is confirmed, as well as plastic plague marines! Manreaper looks [[awesome]]! Yaaaaay! MOAR IMPERIAL SLAUGHTER!!! MOAR!!! Not sure what else is getting the [[Thousand_Sons | Thousand sons]] treatment though. Plastic Typhus?

As of writing, a picture of Mortarion's model has been released. It's beautiful. (See gallery)

===The Plague Wars===

Mortarion was sulking in a pile of slime as usual when the winds of the Warp whispered that his brother [[Roboute Guilliman]] had finally been pulled off life-support and took the position of Lord-Commander of the Imperium. Morty was [[RAGE|not pleased]] that Rowboat got a second chance at life while he remained in Grandpa Nugle's clutches, so the Death Lord decided to finally get off his ass and start acting like a Deamon Primarch for once!

He brought the Death Guard to real space after [[Abaddon]]'s 13th [[Black Crusade]] succeeded in expanding the Eye of Terror (and nothing else). [[Magnus]] failed to kill Guilliman when he had the chance so, prepared to [[get shit done]], Morty Boy planned out a massive campaign called the Plague Wars to meticulously rot and plague every single planet in [[Ultramar]]. He released many different plagues, including several variations of Typhus' [[Zombie Plague]]: Shoot the zombies and you only [[FAIL|make it worse]] since they explode into a swarm of full-grown [[Nurgling]]s. For a guy who spent 10,000 years sitting on his ass and getting beat up by [[Mary Sue]]s, he proved surprisingly effective at [[Anal circumference|penetrating]] deep into Ultramar before Gorillaman was able to halt his advance. Nurgle's little scythe boy managed to carve out 3 whole star systems for the Death Guard to use as their base of operations in real space: '''The Scourge Stars.'''

Alas, Mortarion's big Ultramar come-back tour was bound to end eventually. Guilliman's waifu [[Yvraine]] headed into the Warp and retrieved an eldar artifact called the Rose of Isha , which let the Ynnari take back the Hand of Darkness and slow the spread of the Death Guard's plagues, leading to the Ultrasmurfs pushing the rotting bastards back. Mortarion and Guilliman clashed personally on the hospital world of Iax. Unlike his duel with Magnus, Robby G didn't have the [[Adeptus Custodes]] or [[Sisters of Silence]] backing him up, so the two were at a complete stalemate, Mortarion's strength and resilience vs. Guilliman's [[Creed|tactical genius]]. The Death Guard eventually had to retreat, as [[Khorne]] and [[Tzeentch]] had grown jealous of Nurgle's fledgling empire and were sending forces to take it for themselves while the Death Guard was away.

'''''<span style='color:green;font-size:110%;font-family:serif'>*Nurgle: I'm so proud of my little plague bringer, he's finally giving my love to the galaxy like I always wanted! *sluuuuurp*

==Tabletop==
===Heresy===
[[File:FW_Mortarion.jpg|260px|thumb|right|Here's his mini teaching all of us how to properly wield a scythe.]]

{| class=wikitable
! || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Mortarion:''' || 7 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 7 || 5 || 5 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}

Mortarion is a tough oponent : with the Primarch rule, T/W 7, flat dice wounds like poisoned and fleshbane wound on 6's, rerollable IWND and Toughness tests, 2+ armor save and a 4+ invulnerable save, he's basically a Gargantuan Creature for all intents and purposes. He negates Maledictions affecting him or his unit on a 4+, ''(which isn't a Deny the Witch, so Adamantium Will doesn't help and you get his 5+ DtW after, though it works out to being exactly the same as nullifying them on a 3+ anyway)'', Death Guard gain Stubborn and Poisoned (4+) on all frag grenades and missiles which is pretty sickening. For weapons he has the Lantern pistol which is almost a pistol meltagun, phosfex bombs (an unlimited supply of them, and he can throw them at double the range!), frag grenades and Silence, a S7 AP 2 no longer unwieldy power scythe with sweep attacks that causes Instant Death and reroll failed penetration rolls. Great for getting rid of that annoying Praetor or captain. Notably, he's also one of the only characters in fiction who knows how the hell you're supposed to hold a scythe! Take that, Poldark!

they also gave him the Shadow Of The Reaper rule. It makes enemy units take a fear check at -1 leadership. By itself in normal 40k rules, it's situationally great, making it pretty mediocre on the whole, but in the pre-ATSKNF 30k setting, it's much more useful. But much more importantly, it gives him a special move in the shooting phase: if Mortarion isn't locked in combat or embarked and doesn't shoot or run, he can take a leadership test and teleport 10 inches away from his current position. It does not count as moving, does not scatter, and does not prevent him from charging (But he does count as making a disordered charge. Not that big of a problem, seriously). There are some other caveats, but he effectively has a minimum 18" charge range without factoring in his base size, and he is fleet to boot. [[Awesome|Because he's fucking terrifying.]]

Mortarion is among the top 3 best Primarchs for his points, as SotR lets him reach combat by turn 2 unless you fail your Ld test. Furthermore, Stubborn is an absolute game-changer in 30k, as it drastically reduces your odds of breaking in Assault and Poisoned allows you to functionally ignore [[Iron Hands|certain legions]] [[Imperial Fists|Toughness shenanigans]] (and it makes it easier to hurt Mechanicus). He doesn't really need a transport or retinue, giving you more points to put towards dakka, and provided you're smart enough to avoid concentrated AP2 you're very likely to see the end of the game. He can't fight Land Raiders, but with 5 S7 Sunder attacks you shouldn't underestimate his ability to fuck up Dreadnoughts. Ultimately, his biggest strength is that unlike [[Angron]] or [[Vulkan]] he is an effective force multiplier who gives a lot to his army while needing almost no support in return.

His model is equally as badass as his rules, if you can get past the fact that he doesn't have a rebreather (it's a part of his armor's chest piece now, which still begs the question, why not just give him a rebreather and shut fa/tg/uys up on the subject?). Although the designer probably thought that he didn't really need to breathe, and he's probably immune to anything poisonous anyway (on Prospero the Khan had to go in totally suited up, whereas the Death Lord just strolled in dressed just the same as normal, and Girlyman established that Primarchs can breathe in an incredibly thin atmosphere - he can apparently fight in near-vacuum for hours on end without a helmet, because [[Heresy|fuck physics]]). (Even in-universe, Guilliman's ability to fight in the void without a helmet and little oxygen has Imperial scholars going "WTF?")

===40k===

This is Mortarion's stat line in 40k:

{| class=wikitable style="text-align:center;"
! Name || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv || Power
|-
| '''Mortarion''' || * || 2+ || 2+ || 8 || 7 || 18 || * || 10 || 3+/4++/5+++ || 24
|}

His movement/attacks are based on his wounds remaining.

{| class=wikitable style="text-align:center;"
! Wounds || Move || Attacks || Host of Plagues
|-
| 9-18 || 12" || 6 || 4+
|-
| 5-8 || 10" || 5 || 5+
|-
| 1-4 || 8" || 4 || 6+
|}

'''Toxic Presence''': Enemy models with 7" must subtract 1 from their Toughness characteristic.

'''Host of Plagues''': Depending on Morty's remaining wounds, roll a die for each enemy ''unit'' within 7"; on a success, the unit takes D3 mortal wounds.

So what do we get? With 18 wounds, a 4++ save, and Grandaddy's trademark Disgustingly Resilient rule, he will prove quite hard to bring down, and his survivability can be boosted further with Nurgle's stratagems. He has the best (at the moment) anti-horde weapon in the game, his huge scythe ''Silence''. It can dish out Ax3 (18 base!!!) S:U AP:-2 D1 Plague Weapon attacks per phase of combat (and incidentally, his WT lets him and everyone near him using a Plague Weapon reroll all failed to wound rolls), which will annihilate tarpits like there's no tomorrow. To deal with anything requiring more killing, ''Silence'' has a second profile being S:x2 AP:-4 D:1d6 Plague Weapon. His 'command aura' affects every enemy unit standing within 7" of him, giving them -1 toughness and they will receive 1d3 mortal wounds on a roll of 4+ (scaling down as he takes wounds, alas). He still carries his old ''Lantern'' pistol that can cause quite a bit of damage to lined units for it hits automatically every unit in a straight line between him and the one he aims for, but only once per shot. He still carries his phosphex bombs that deal 2D6 S5 AP-1 hits (They're not Plague Weapons, though), and he can perform a bunch of weaker attacks on top of his normal ones thanks to his retinue of Nurgling helpers. Cherry on top, he's now a psyker. (Yeah, the very thing he hated back in the days but, hush. No more tears, only Nurgle's happiness now!) He knows 3 powers from the Contagion discipline, he's able to cast two and deny three every turn. All this is in addition to the fact that he is the fastest piece in the army, moving 12" with FLY. And as ultimate finger flip, if he does somehow go down he explodes like a vehicle for a few parting mortal wounds. All in all a really, REALLY strong big daddy.

Unlike Magnus, Mortarion's command aura doesn't boost his sons but weaken his enemies so there's no reason whatsoever to hold him back. Do note however that while he's tanky he's far from invulnerable and always keep in mind that he is a massive fire magnet. Just like in 30k, you'll need supporting units and a plan to get the most of ole Morty. [[Deathshroud]] Terminators are a shoe-in for that role, of course, especially if Mortarion buffs them up first.

==Mortarion VS other Primarchs:==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying (especially with Mortarion who can mathematically always go the entire game in a Primarch duel), with that in mind this section is how Mortarion fares against other Primarchs Mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities, with the exception of Blind, are taken into account (Blind is ignored because it never changes the outcome of the fights, the winner is still the winner with or without it) and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

* Mortarion VS Horus
**Horus will use Worldbreaker (as wounding on 2's is better than re-rolling to wound) and hits 3.999 times, wounds 3.332 times, 1.666 after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.111 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222.
**Mortarion loses this fight.

* Mortarion VS Angron
**Round 1: Angron has Hatred, so on the first turn he will instead hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Round 2: Angron hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion just barely loses this fight by one turn as his extra wound almost allows him to outlast Angron.

* Mortarion VS Fulgrim
**Fulgrim hits 5.333 times, wounds 2.666 times (Fireblade)/1.777 times (Laer Blade), 1.333 times (Fireblade)/0.888 times (Laer Blade) after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778/0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222.
**Mortarion loses this fight either by a little or a lot depending on whether or not Fulgrim has Fireblade or not.

* Mortarion VS Ferrus
**Ferrus with Forgebreaker: hits 2 times and 0.5 with his servo arm, wounds 1.666 times with Forgebreaker and 0.333 with his Servo-Arm (1.999 total), 0.999 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.444 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Ferrus with Bare Hands: hits 2 times and 0.5 with his servo arm, wounds 1 time with his hands and 0.333 with his Servo-Arm (1.333 total), 0.666 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.111 times at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.25 times, 0.416 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.083.
**Even though Mortarion is tough in the end Ferrus wins pretty easily thanks to his superior save and damage.

* Mortarion VS Konrad Curze
**Curze hits 4 times, wounds 2.221 times, 1.11 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves and 0.5 wounds after IWND.
**Mortarion wins as even though he does less damage he'll outlast Curze.

* Mortarion VS Vulkan
**Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.278 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.25 times, 0.415 wounds after saves and 0 wounds after IWND.
**Mortarion loses as mathematically he's incapable of harming Vulkan.

* Mortarion VS Lorgar
**Lorgar hits Mortarion 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 after saves and IWND will take that to 0.278 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Round 1: Mortarion hits 2.961 times, wounds 1.752 times, 0.876 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.543 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Round 2: Mortarion hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.222 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Even with forcing Mortarion to re-roll 5's and 6's for the first round Mortarion still beats Lorgar. He also loses to invisible Lorgar Transfigured just like every other Primarch (mathematically he causes 0 wounds to him).

*Mortarion VS Perturabo
**Perturabo hits 2.666 times (both types), wounds 1.333 times (Normal)/2.221 times (Forgebreaker), 0.666 wounds (Normal)/1.11 wounds (Forgebreaker) after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.111/0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and 0.222 wounds after IWND.
**Mortarion wins but only if Perturabo doesn't bring Forgebreaker.

* Mortarion VS Alpharius
**Alpharius hits 2.92 times and wounds 1.136 times, 0.568 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.0124 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.833 wounds after saves and 0.5 wounds after IWND.
**Mortarion wins

* Mortarion VS Rogal Dorn
**Dorn hits 2.666 times (Normal)/1.333 times (Sundering Blow), wounds 1.48 times (normal)/1.183 times (Sundering Blow), 0.74/0.59 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.185/0.035 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666, 0.833 wounds after saves and 0.5 wounds after IWND.
**Mortarion wins in 12 turns as Dorn does a lot less damage in return.

* Mortarion VS Corvus Corax
**Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 2.221 times (Scourge)/1.666 times (Shadow-walk), 1.11 wounds (Scourge)/0.833 wounds (Shadow-walk) after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.556/0.278 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion hits 2.5/1.666 times, wounds 1.666/1.11 times, 1.11/0.74 wounds after saves and 0.777/0.407 wounds after IWND.
**Mortarion wins either way in this fight, he causes more overall damage, has more wounds, and regenerates faster. In addition even if Corax runs away Mortarion's ability to teleport will mean he'd catch Corax very quickly after he re-appears so he cannot run away to heal which would render this a stalemate.
**Note: Corax could attempt to "cheat" his way to victory thanks to his special rules, especially Sire of the Raven Guard (which grants him Super-Furious Charge) and Hit & Run. With this he could disengage at the end of Mortarion's assault phase, in order to charge him again during his turn. Using this tactic he would Shoot with his pistols for 1.9444 hits, 0.648 wounds, 0.108 wounds after saves, then charge in with Hammer of Wrath gaining 0.333 wounds, and 0.0555 wounds after saves, then attack with the Panoply which hits 4.5 times (scourge), wounds 3.375 times, 1.6875 after saves and 1.132 with IWND for a total of 1.296 Wounds. This, combined with Shadow-walk during Mortarion's assault phase in order to mitigate his retaliation barely lets Corax win if he goes charging scourge in round 7, then scourge again in round 8 as he strikes before Mortarion, compared to 8 rounds needed for Mortarion to kill Corvus (this is including Overwatch with The Lantern).
**Though this looks like a close fight at first glance, this tactic relies completely on Hit and Run (which is more akin to Corvus's fighting style), as well as assumes the Charging always works out in Corvus's favour and so the strategy will mathematically fail over the eight rounds needed to kill Mortarion (as there's mathematically one turn that either Hit and Run or Charging will fail when Mortarion consolidates away from Corvus's consolidation) giving the victory to Mortarion again. But that's actually the same chance of Corax Blinding Mortarion (Not included in the fights), so the odds are still the same.

* Mortarion VS Roboute Guilliman
**Round 1: Guilliman hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times (With Hand of Dominion), 1.042 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.486.
**Round 2 and after: Guilliman hits 3.333 times (Thanks to Preternatura Strategy), wounds 2.777 times, 1.388 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.833.
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666, 0,833 after saves, 0.417 wounds after Armor of Reason, and after IWND they become 0.083 wounds.
**Guilliman wins in 8 turns as Mortarion's damage is almost irrelevant.

* TLDR version: Mortarion's good against Konrad Curze, Vanilla Lorgar, Hammerless Perturabo, Alpharius, Rogal Dorn, Corvus Corax and bad against Horus, Angron, Fulgrim, Ferrus, Lorgar Transfigured, Vulkan, Perturabo with Hammer and Guilliman, putting him quite in the middle of the road for Primarch duelling.

* Dirty Trick: Use Morturg and put Endurance on Mortarion, if you do this Mortarion can beat everyone (including Lorgar Transfigured) except Horus, Fulgrim (with Fireblade) and Vulkan as his damage output will exceed theirs or his extra wound will allow him to outlast them and/or they will be unable to hurt him at all mathematically. The reason Horus Vulkan and Fulgrim still win is because Mortarion will eventually be unable to hurt Horus thanks to Disabling Strike, Fulgrim just causes too much damage (and some of his attacks ignore FnP) and Vulkan's Instant Death hammer ignores FnP.

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==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:I am the bringer of Death by SharpWriter-1-.jpg|Seriously badass.
File:Mortarion.jpg|''"Not just yet. When Terra is ashes... ''then'' you have my permission to die."''
File:Mortarion sneak peak.png|Cool model from what we've seen so far
File:DaemonMort.png|The Rotten Angel Cometh.
File:Daemon Primarch Mortarion.png|The official model of Morty, with no Slaaneshi colours, unlike the leaked model.
</gallery>
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[[category:Chaos]]