Characters / Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus

Warhammer 40,000 Main Character Index
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Xeno Races: Aeldari (Asuryani, Drukhari) | Leagues of Votann | Necrons | Orks (Characters) | T'au Empire | Tyranids (Genestealer Cults)

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Lords of the Machine

Toll the Great Bell Once!
Pull the Lever forward to engage the
Piston and Pump...

Toll the Great Bell Twice!
With push of Button fire the Engine
And spark Turbine into life...

Toll the Great Bell Thrice!
Sing Praise to the
God of All Machines!

— Excerpt from the Catechism of the Autoculus of Mars

In Warhammer 40,000, Mankind's golden age is long past, and many of its technological secrets have been lost. When the Emperor was reuniting humanity, he found on Mars a strange priesthood devoted to the preservation of what knowledge remained. This Mechanicum, later renamed the Adeptus Mechanicus, became a vital part of the Imperium, providing technical expertise, planet-wide factories known as Forge Worlds that produce everything from lasguns to civilian goods, and incredible weapons such as the Titan Legions. They are theoretically subordinate to the Imperium, and their highest-ranking member is one of the twelve High Lords of Terra, but the Machine Cult has its own specialized army, the Skitarii, and run the aforementioned Titan Legions, standing slightly apart from the Imperium of Man despite propping it up. Mars itself is not only the Mechanicus' capital, it's one of the most important Forge Worlds in the Imperium, and houses several Titan legions. They are, for all intents and purposes, their own independent state within the Imperium, and the two are inextricably linked by necessity.

The Adeptus Mechanicus are not just humanity's last source of technological knowledge; they actively worship machinery, and venerate the Emperor as an aspect of an entity they call the Omnissiah. They believe that all devices have a "machine spirit" that must be placated in order for them to function properly, and therefore the Machine Cult's maintenance rituals involve a lot of incense, sacred oils, and chanting. This is a bunch of ignorant superstition that should have no effect on how devices function...but nonetheless, it seems to help. They also hold that for humans to perfect themselves they must take on more aspects of the machine, and therefore undergo voluntary augmetic "upgrades," be they mechadendrites or other artificial limbs, or replacing the illogical half of their brain with a computer. Calling a Tech-Priest "more machine than man" is a compliment, and most Imperial citizens find the Priesthood of Mars hard to relate to, yet necessary.

While gifted mechanics and craftsmen, Adeptus Mechanicus orthodoxy holds that all technological advances have already been discovered, and they therefore place more emphasis on reverse-engineering or recovering old knowledge than they do on experimentation or upgrades. Thus, the Mechanicus has kept mankind's technology working for ten thousand years, but has made little to no technological progress in that time. In fact, they have actually regressed, making some starships, weapons, and other devices irreplaceable because the Tech-Priests don't know how to build them any more. They are a parallel to medieval craftsman's guilds in the way they preserve skill but quash innovation with a monopoly on technology.

Although they made an appearance in the 1st and 2nd Editions of the Epic game system, the Adeptus Mechanicus had little official tabletop presence in the core Warhammer 40,000 game beyond specialists attached to other forces, such as the Tech-Priest Enginseers serving with the Astra Militarum and the Techmarines of the Adeptus Astartes. The Games Workshop subsidiary Forge World produced the first Adeptus Mechanicus miniatures for Warhammer 40,000 in the form of the god-machines of the Titan Legions and later begun producing a proper Adeptus Mechanicus army although, as a Forge World army-list, it wasn't generally considered tournament legal. In early 2015, Games Workshop produced the first official Adeptus Mechanicus rules and models, split into Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus sub-factions. September 2017 saw the release of Codex: Adeptus Mechanicus that includes the 8th Edition rules for the Cult Mechanicus, the Skitarii and the Knights of the Questoris Mechanicus. In March 2018 the campaign box set Forgebane included the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the Questoris Mechanicus, as the Imperial forces fighting against the Necrons. The June 2020 sourcebook Psychic Awakening: Engine War updated and expanded on the rules in the 8th Edition Codex.

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Notable Adeptus Mechanicus tropes

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Red Axe is a massive Omnissian axe whose cutting edge was made with a unique starmetal that emits a crimson glow. The Martian relic weapon is said to be able to cleave through even the toughest material, something the 8th Edition rules represent by giving The Red Axe the highest Armour Penetration value of any weapon available to an Adeptus Mechanicus army.
• Admiring the Abomination: While most Tech-Priests consider xenos and heretical technology to be an affront to the Omnissiah, there are various sub-sects of the Adeptus Mechanicus, such as the Xenarites of Stygies VIII, who obsessively study such works and seek it out at any cost. There are multiple instances in the novels and background material of Tech-Priests going into fits of near religious joy as they encounter the ancient and alien technology that is trying to kill them.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: While most Tech-Priests will search for knowledge in the ruins of the past if they have the opportunity, the independently minded Tech-Priests known as Explorators make it their life's work. They explore the dark fringes of the galaxy, searching for the lost knowledge of the Dark Age of Technology, archeotech and valuable STC data. Due to the dangers inherent in the regions that they operate, Explorators must be more than ready to defend themselves and will often travel in the company of an entire Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator Fleet or as part of the retinue of a Rogue Trader.
• Age Without Youth: Tech-Priests can be very old indeed; they tend to prefer methods of their own to the juvenat treatments used by the Imperium at large. These methods preserve life without such niceties as removing the appearance of extreme age. Of course, a Tech-Priest of such seniority is unlikely to have any visible flesh left in any case.
• Anti-Magical Faction: While most Tech-Priests dislike psychic abilities due to their unscientific nature, the sub-cult known as the Teeth of the Cog take this to the extreme, considering even Astropaths, Navigators and Sanctioned Psykers to be abominations that should be wiped from the galaxy despite how necessary they are to the survival of the Imperium. Members of this sub-cult actively seek out archeotech that could wipe out anything touched by the warp.
• Bad Boss: Whilst the Tech-Priests consider themselves above such base human mindsets as "cruelty", the simple fact that they regard the machinery their underlings use as more important than said underlings makes them amongst some of the worst taskmasters in an Imperium already rife with institutionalized abuse. Skitarii soldiers are regularly outfitted with rad-weapons that will slowly kill them from imperfect shielding, or made to pilot the irradiated Onager dune crawler knowing they will literally dissolve into a radioactive stew of boiled meat. Skitarii leaders who display too much initiative are usually assassinated, often by giving them "relic" weapons that are lethally unsafe to wield. Forge-World menials risk being dragged away and servitorized if a Tech-Priest decides the servitor numbers are insufficient, or may simply be made into a literal Human Sacrifice to the Machine God.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: A major cause of the Technological Stasis. To the Mechanicus at large, the Age of Technology was the absolute pinnacle of humanity's capacity for technological development, and nothing could possibly hope to improve on those machines, which is why they are so focused on finding and reverse-engineering STCs when they are found instead of coming up with new concepts. The other reason is, well... new, untested designs risk being corrupted by Chaos if they're not designed properly, which impedes research, although precisely how true this element is depends on edition.
• Bio-Augmentation: "Organicists" is the name given to a school of thought within the Mechanicus that gives the same value to organic life that they do to inorganic construction. They see an organic body as its own kind of machine, taking in fuel, producing waste, and generating action like any constructed device. Much like their fellows though, they are not content to exist unaugmented, and seek to improve their bodies to become closer to the Omnissiah. The difference is that they're much more willing to graft engineered organs and other biological components to themselves in addition to more "normal" mechanical enhancements.
• Brain in a Jar: After the rebellion of the Iron Men, the ancient Human Federation decreed that Artificial Intelligence was Abominable Intelligence and forbidden from study. The Emperor maintained this stricture verbatim. To get around this, the Mechanicus created machine spirits and servitors, using the brains of dead individuals to serve as a CPU for more advanced hardware like Automatons, shipboard computers and pretty much anywhere where an actual CPU could be used. This is allowed because it still has the machine dependent on the Holy Human Form. It is strongly implied that the non-organic element of AI is primarily what makes it dangerous, and given that cascade failure is usually a staple of cybernetic revolt, this actually makes a lot of sense. Whether an AI that emerges unintentionally from the development of one or more systems is "abominable" or holy is yet another matter of internal division. It should be pointed out that there are Imperial war machines that are wholly sentient, however they cannot function without a consenting human pilot. Warmonger Artillery Titans are one example.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: By and large, they are good engineers despite everything. They do understand a significant fraction of their devices, and always strive to learn more—but this doesn't demystify anything, it simply brings them closer to union with the holy Omnissiah. Depending on the writer, sometimes these quirks are actually what helps them to become good engineers. The most famous example being that the prayers they chant are actually activation codes they memorized mnemonically, or a way for them to count how many seconds to wait before performing another action.

• Cargo Cult: The Adeptus Mechanicus' worship of technology is completely literal, and they attend their machines with prayers as much as with tools.
• Clarke's Third Law: Human technology achieved full Clark's-Third levels during the Age of Technology, and most of that know-how has been lost to time since. Hence, the highest levels of technology for the Imperium are seen as magical by Imperial society, including the Tech-Priests themselves.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Members of the Adeptus Mechanicus that are relatively friendly tend to be...quirky at best.
• Colony Ship: During the Age of Strife, the Tech-Priests of Mars launched numerous colony ships into the void. Known as the Long March, many of the Knight and Forge Worlds scattered across the galaxy date from these voyages into the unknown.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Red is the ancient heraldic colour of Mars, the world on which the Adeptus Mechanicus originated, and the colour has become inexorably linked with the order and the worship of the Omnissiah. Due to this strong link, devotees of the Machine God serving in other branches of the Imperium, and all but the most independent of forge worlds, will include a shade of red somewhere in their colour scheme.
• Combat Tentacles: One of the more common enhancements used by Tech-Priests are mechadendrites, long and flexible bionic tendrils that are intended for delicate mechanical work but often see use as weapons in background material and Gaiden Games. While regular mechadendrites rarely have rules for use as weapons in the core Warhammer 40,000 game, specific mechadendrites, such as the special item of wargear known as Anzion's Pseudogenetor, will occasionally receive combat rules.
• Companion Cube: The Adeptus Mechanicus believe that all machines, from the most basic powered tools to the most complex vehicles and mechanisms, are possessed of a life force which makes their mechanisms function, which they call a machine spirit. Machine spirits are said to have moods, with malfunctions and misfires often blamed on a temperamental or vindictive spirit which needs to be mollified with the proper rituals and sacrifices. While some of the more advanced Imperial machines do have cognitive systems and logic engines that are also known as machine spirits, these systems fall short of true artificial intelligence due to the ban on such programs, with the most advanced (such as those of a Titan) often slaved to a human controller.
• Construction Is Awesome: A central belief of the Cult Mechanicus. Every finished item that rolls off their assembly lines is a prayer made manifest; every factory is a temple; every building, no matter how big or how small, is a monument to the Machine God.

• Creative Sterility: Strictly enforced, at least on paper. The Mechanicum's doctrines strictly forbid any advancements of technology, only preservation and, in the case of Xenos tech, destruction. Of course, disagreements on this doctrine are very commonplace, giving raise to borderline-heretical branches such as the Xenarites. Technological advancement does occur, but often this research has to be framed as rediscovering lost technology rather than coming up with anything new, lest the discoverer be branded a Heretek.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Subverted. As a Tech-Priest advances in the ranks, he usually replaces more and more of his "weak flesh" with augmetics, at the same time as his mind draws farther away from normal human concerns. Some undergo a procedure known as the Rite of Pure Thought that replaces half their brain with a computer, in order to approach the Omnissiah's perfect reason, something more moderate Tech-Priests consider somewhat extreme. It is not, however, the cybernetics that cause the loss of humanity, but rather it is caused by the Tech-Priests' existing deep-seated and extreme beliefs in the inferiority of base human emotions.
• Deflector Shields: Almost all high ranking Tech-Priests incorporate some form of defensive shielding into their systems, most commonly a refractor shield designed to disperse attacks into multispectral bursts of harmless energy.
• Distinction Without a Difference: When a Tech-Priest develops a new design, he is not using his corruptible human creativity, he is using divinely inspired reason to extrapolate it from existing devices and the inherent order in the universe.
• Does Not Like Magic: The majority of Tech-Priests have an inherent mistrust, at best, of psykers and Psychic Powers in general due to their inherent illogical nature. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the Mechanicus specific Tactical Objective "A Victory for Logic" that grants the Adeptus Mechanicus player extra Victory Points for killing enemy psykers.
• Dug Too Deep: There have been multiple instances where Adeptus Mechanicus excavations — whether for blackstone, xenotech or some other resource — has led to the awakening of Necron tomb complexes. Such awakenings typically result in the extermination of the excavation team and can lead to the destruction of entire planetary populations.
• Empire with a Dark Secret: It is heavily implied that the Tech-Priests may be worshiping the C'Tan known as the Void Dragon, who is possibly imprisoned on Mars. The Emperor arranged things so their designs and beliefs were inspired by the Dragon without ever really focusing on it.
• Enemy Scan: The Eye of Xi-Lexum, a techno-relic of Forge World Agripinaa, is an advanced servo-skull created from the remains of a highly talented Tech-Priest. The machine spirit of the Eye is able to analyse enemy vehicles during a battle, identifying their weaknesses with the same withering gaze that the Tech-Priest was renowned for in life. The 8th Edition rules for the Eye represent this by giving a re-roll to wound against nearby enemy vehicles.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Priesthood may be a cult of techno-worshiping fanatics with few scruples, but one Tech-Priest was so horrified by their use of phosphex weaponry that he destroyed the last STC in existence containing their designs. As a result, the Mechanicus now has reverted to the less powerful phosphor weapons and the last few remaining phosphex guns have been relegated to being rarely-used, sacred relics... but not before being used to burn that particular Tech-Priest at the stake.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • The Dark Mechanicum, which worships the Omnissiah as a form of Chaos Undivided and supplied arms and technical expertise to the Traitor Legions both before and after the Horus Heresy.
  • There have also been references to other Heretek groups who don't worship Chaos but have rejected being part of the Imperium, finding it too stifling.
• The Extremist Was Right: Arks of Omen retroactively gives some grounds to their almost regressive stance towards innovation with the introduction of Vashtorr the Arkifane, a Chaos demigod empowered by craft and creation.
• Foil: The T'au Empire and the Mechanicus are, in many ways, polar opposites. Whilst the precise degree of negativity to their portrayal has varied over editions, the Mechanicus are fundamentally portrayed as technology-worshipping engineer-priests whose doctrines largely forbid innovation and research, who actually understand very little about the science they worship, actively strive to keep the rest of humanity ignorant of science and thusly dependent on the Mechanicus, are riven with internal dissent due to religious schisms, their greatest scientific achievements are irreplaceable and impossible-to-reproduce relics of a more advanced age, revile human flesh and emotions and seek to become more machine-like, and waste exorbitant amounts of time and resources praying to their machines and covering them with extravagant artisan decorations. The T'au Earth Caste, in comparison, are professional scientists who fully understand every aspect of their field, are atheistic, regard machines as simply tools and treat them accordingly, focus on rapidly and unemotionally producing purely functional devices, are fully dedicated to supporting the T'au Empire rather than viewing them as allies of convenience, and whilst their tech may not achieve the individual heights of Mechanicus technology, not only is their base technological level consistently higher than that of the Imperium, but their technology advances at a steadily progressive rate.
  • The Leagues of Votann are themselves aware that everything they do would be considered tech-heresy to the Mechanicus, and thus intentionally leave them in the dark despite the Mechanicus being desperate to get their hands on Voltann tech. The Squats have access and production knowledge to much of the lost technology the Mechanicus seek out, constantly improve their designs piece by piece, and use widespread use of artificial intelligence down to AI being treated as full citizens. The Votann themselves are giant supercomputers housing the memories of their dead ancestors that guide their race, which would either be seen as a highly advanced servo skull or the ultimate heresy depending on the tech priest. Even if their society is dictated by the Votann and ancestors are highly venerated, they culture as a whole doesn't encourage an organized religious worship. In many ways, the Mechanicus are seen as exactly as what the Votann aim to avoid becoming. Appropriately, the T'au and Leagues get along just fine.
• For Science!: The Machine Cult will do anything to find an STC or understand an ancient device...except, usually, take it apart to reverse engineer it. This is partly because it would be heresy and offensive to the machine spirit, partly because they could not guarantee that they could put it back together, and partly because creativity unbound by exacting procedure potentially opens up one's mind for daemons. Anything sufficiently old and awesome is normally subjected to endless tests of function and non-invasive scans, making Mechanicus reverse-engineering nearly as slow as their acceptance of new designs.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: The Adeptus Mechanicus believe that flesh is weak and corrupt and are encouraged to replace their organic parts with cybernetics to become closer to the Machine God. Recently-inducted priests typically only have a few enhancements, such as a mechanical limb or two or bionic eyes, but as they progress through the ranks they swiftly become far more machine than man. The eldest and most respected of their order are often little more than brains in purely mechanical bodies, often modified and added to to the point that they're barely even humanoid anymore.
• God Is Evil: It is heavily implied that the Omnissiah is not an aspect of the Emperor (not that he is necessarily "good" either mind) but in reality the ancient C'tan god known as the Void Dragon, meaning that they are unknowingly worshiping one of their most dangerous enemies.
• God of Knowledge: The Mechanicus worships the Machine God, whom they believe to be the source of and embodied in all technological devices. Notably, while the Cult eagerly collects technology, it explicitly bans experimenting and invention. As far as it's concerned, the Machine God has already given to humanity what technology it saw fit to, and to design your own is tantamount to saying that you can do better than God can.
• Good Old Robot: The Kastelan robots not only look like rejects from Forbidden Planet, they are an older technology that is far more acceptable than the A.I. 'Iron Men', as they are pre-A.I. and require a datasmith Tech-Priest to swap out their program cards in order for them to function effectively.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: "Binary", an audible but non-verbal form of communication used by Tech-Priests to communicate complex information to one another via implanted speakers and brain-interpreter augments. Its use is forbidden to all but those inducted into the mysteries of the Machine Cult, and those employing it use as a means of hiding what they wish to discuss from those outside their orders.
• Hypocrite: As is common for the Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicus wear their hypocrisy with blind pride. At its most fundamental, they look down upon non-cybernetically augmented humans and emotions, despite the fact that not only are they priests who characterize their identity by their faith (an emotion), but also that many "superior" Tech-Priests are just as arrogant, proud and/or crazy as non-augmented humans. There's also their loathing of alien technology as inherently inferior to humanity's, despite the fact that many aliens have technologies superior to anything the Imperium itself can mass-produce — especially the T'au and the Necrons. A particularly striking example is the way that the Mechanicus deride the Necrons as "abominations" for being pure minds digitally uploaded into completely machine bodies, when this is the holy grail of personal transcendence in their own religion. There are a number of scattered references throughout Imperial lore suggesting that more than a few "advances" by the Mechanicus are actually a result of lucky Tech-Priests stealing xenos tech, reverse engineering it, and then successfully bluffing that they "found" an example of pre-Imperium Lost Technology.
• Industrial World: Forge Worlds are factory complexes the size of planets, their surfaces covered by colossal factories dedicated to meeting the ever-increasing material needs of the Imperium, from ammo to bionic implants to Titans. Conditions there are usually hellish (pollution is rampant as a baseline, and sometimes the oceans and even the atmosphere are gone) and the worker population enormous, with most people being heavily modified just to survive working there. Despite the immense output of weapons, vehicles and wargear, some Forge Worlds are relatively defenseless and rely on Navy, Guard and Space Marine protection so as to leave room for more factories. The most famous is Mars, home of the Adeptus Mechanicus cult. It's also the location of the Noctis Labyrinth, the prison of the C'tan entity known as the Void Dragon, which is all but stated to be the Omnissiah worshipped by the Mechanicus.
• In the Hood: The standard outfit for priests of the Machine God is a hooded red robe. If a Tech-Priest expects to go into battle, they will usually don an armored suit, and trade their robe in for a hooded red cloak that allows them a bit more freedom of movement.
• Hollow World: The forge world of Lucius is one of the Supernatura Majorius, a wonder of the Imperium. The world is hollow with its interior surface covered by massive factories powered by an artificial sun of mysterious origin that sits at the planet’s core.
• Human Resources: The Mechanicus regards humanity as little more than another form of resource to fuel and augment machinery. If more servitors are required, the Mechanicus will not hesistate to drag civilians or allied Imperial soldiers away screaming to be lobotomized and fitted up with utility cybernetics.
• Kill It with Fire: Tech-Priests can load up on phosphor and incendine weaponry to torch the enemy with. They can rival the Adepta Sororitas in how much flame they can bring on heretics to the Omnissiah.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Enginseers, including Techmarines, are vital to the upkeep of the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus alike, but they don't participate directly in the Quest for Knowledge. Accordingly, they're looked down on by the other Techpriests and seen as lowly cogs in the machine.
• Leeroy Jenkins: The only way to describe their behaviour when they find something resembling Lost Technology. Multiple branches of the Imperium wishes they would at least let them prepare first. Most Necron attacks are actually due to Tech-Priests getting a little too poke-happy around their tombs.
• Lost Technology: The Mechanicus is obsessed with this, framing much of their research and discovery as recovering ancient technology from humanity's past, and factions within the Mechanicus are just as willing to extend this to xenos tech as well. Their dogmatic nature and infighting between techpriests has also resulted in the secrets of many machines being lost. The Ironstrider Engine is the most blatant example of this, being a perpetual motion machine whose schematics were lost when the techpriest who created it was killed, meaning that they can't be built anymore.
• MacGuffin: The second-biggest prize for the Tech-Priests is a Standard Template Construct, one of many designs dating back from the Age of Technology that were made to be as adaptable and robust as possible, using technology long since lost to man. The biggest would be a Standard Template Constructor, an automated factory and technical library that can build or describe any of them. So far, all they have found are partial, damaged ones that can only create one or a few different devices — and even these are worth more than whole star systems. Just one example: in First And Only, one of the characters describes the discovery of an STC fragment for making knives as a prize beyond reckoning, and every one in the group of Guard scouts that found it was given their own planet, or so the story went.
• Mad Scientist: Some Tech-Priests rather lose their perspective in seeking ancient technology or pursuing the Omnissiah's thoughts in the workings of technology and the universe.
• Mecha-Mooks: Though rare after the various Retcons over the course of First Edition, the Mechanicum still has the "Legio Cybernetica", squads of brainless-but-tough robots (or full-conversion servitors, Depending on the Writer) each commanded by a single Tech-Priest. In the Horus Heresy books, the better part of the Legio Cybernetica sided with the Traitor Legions.
• Medieval Stasis: The Adeptus Mechanicus' beliefs have mostly ensured this for the Imperium. There is some innovation, but it occurs at a positively glacial pace. However, this may be changing due to the extreme danger the Imperium is in at the beginning of the 42nd millennium, as the Mechanicus seems to have at least partially unleashed the creativity of their priests, resulting in a flood of new technologies. This is actually canon for the Mechanicus on Ryza; they're up against hundreds of billions of Orks but are slowly taking the planet back because they're bringing new weapons into play. Also, the Mechanicus on Stygies VIII are obsessed with xeno-tech and are officially sanctioned by Holy Terra to collect, research and apply it. They've successfully breached several Webway portals, with the ultimate goal of entering the Black Library of the Eldar.
• Moral Myopia: They consider technology from the Age of Technology to be the pinnacle of humanity's technological capability, but disdain more advanced xenos technology because it's made by aliens, although some Tech-Priests are implied to be jealous of that very technology. One example is how many members of the Adeptus Mechanicus seek to shed as much of their flesh as possible and become machines, yet many of them consider the Necrons, who accomplished this at the racial level, abominations (even without knowing that becoming Necrons was almost completely forced on the Necrontyr).
• Neural Implanting: Some of the sacred implants of the Omnissiah are cogitator databases hooked directly into the brain (sometimes removing "useless" portions of the brain to make room) which contain information on how to build some of their most advanced technology. There is some speculation that this is what enables the Tech-Priests to build very complex technology without actually understanding the principles on which it works, the implants containing information on how to construct something without explaining the why of it. It is worth noting that this was absolutely true of all Tech-Priests in the early era of the game, where low-ranking members were directly implanted with the procedures they needed. New editions have since Retconed this sort of implant to be restricted mostly to high-ranking Tech-Priests, actually authorised to design and research, for whom it is no substitute but rather an extra advantage. The more novice Tech-Priests must build their technology through rote memorization taught to them by their superiors, with all the religious pomp and circumstance their construction is known for. The knowledge-bearing sacred implants are only gifted once a Tech-Priest has been properly indoctrinated against potential misuse of the Omnissiah's secrets.
• New Technology Is Evil: ... because everything worth discovering was discovered thousands of years ago, or has always existed logically implicit in the universe, to be discovered by inspired reason rather than be invented by merely human creativity, more along the lines of New Technology Is Impossible. The possibility of uninhibited creativity leading to daemonic possession of machinery is also cited as a justification for this, although it's not that simple. However, there are arguments about this, with the Mechanicus being divided into camps fighting over whether to dedicate their resources to innovation or finding STCs. Also, recent Black Library books have the Mechanicus suddenly pouring out newly discovered and developed weapons and technology. Must have something to do with Hive Fleet Leviathan or the 13th Black Crusade rampaging through the galaxy at the end of the millennium.

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the Dark City novel, the Adeptus Mechanicus (under the Fabricator-General) cut a deal with the Dark Eldar to have them and their knowledge repair the Golden Throne, as it is in its death throes and will come to potentially fail within the next century, however, by trusting the Dark Eldar to do the job they not only hand over an entire massive sector of space with billions of souls to satiate their needs, but allow them direct access to the Golden Throne to repair it. In the process, the Dark Eldar is not only able to reverse-engineer it to create the "Black Throne" within Commorragh, but they also acquire some of the Emperor's DNA to create a functional clone to occupy it so they can stave off Slaanesh's demons, all while everyone back in the Imperium is none the wiser as everyone who knew the truth dies before they can relay it back from Commorragh: the Golden Throne has at best around eighty years to remain functional, and just around a decade in the worst case scenario.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The Mechanicus has legitimately lost lots of valuable STC data, but some writers have implied that they have more than they're letting on.
• Percussive Maintenance: Many prayers of supplication to angry machine spirits involve a "ceremonial whack" at certain points in the ritual.
• Planetary Romance: The latest incarnation of the Mechanicus army has a significant nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series. This is reflected in the long, fancy curls etched into archaic-looking radium rifles and pistols, which is a stark contrast to the gothic, heavy industrial look that the Mechanicus usually sported before.
• Planet Spaceship: The Graian Crown, a massive starship built on top of the Forge World of Graia. It's so massive it can transport Graia itself across the Warp if necessary.
• Plasma Cannon: The forge world of Ryza is renowned as one of the greatest producers of plasma weaponry in the Imperium. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the unique Plasma Specialists Stratagem that can enhance the power of plasma weapons used by Adeptus Mechanicus units with the Ryza Keyword.
• Power Floats: Some Tech-Priests install small grav generators in their cyber-mantle, and learn to use them to levitate. As a Tech-Priest goes up in rank and experience, some might eschew any other form of motion as the grav units allow them freedom to move despite their now quite awkwardly shaped enhanced bodies.
• Power Glows: The ancient power axe Pater Cog-Tooth^note introduced during 8th Edition, is said to be the first and most powerful Omnissian power axe ever created and its blade glows with an aura of power. Some less devout minds claim this glow could actually be due to extreme radiation saturation.
• Recursive Ammo: Ordinatus Golgotha, from the 2nd Edition of the Epic game system, is armed with six enormous Hellfire Missiles, each of which is fitted with multiple warheads that separate before impact so that the war machine can devastate a large section of the battlefield with a single shot.
• Religion is Magic: In full force here, going along with the "magic" in question being indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. The devotees of the Machine God even consider the theoretical principles on which their technology is based to be a form of theology.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: If you think academic politics are bad now, just wait a few millennia and it will get worse. The Mechanicus rivals the Inquisition for in-fighting and scheming, for various reasons—whether or not the Emperor and the Omnissiah are actually separate entities, the "invention is evil" versus "invention is discovery" positions above, various more abstruse disputes, and simple struggles over prestige and promotion.
  • More generally, their relationship with the Imperium can be seen as this trope; during the Crusade there were a lot of growing pains within the Martian Priesthood after submitting to the Emperor's authority under the Treaty of Mars, and when the Horus Heresy broke out a full half of the Mechanicum, including the Fabricator-General Kelbor Hal, turned traitor and supplied the traitor forces with arms, armaments, Titans, and the expertise to manage all of them. In the intervening millennia since the Heresy and through the Time of Ending there have been countless examples of Mechanicus forces refusing to properly communicate with their Imperial allies, hoarding archaeotech and xenotech that they are bound by treaty and oath to disclose the existence of, and sending countless Imperial forces to die (including Space Marines) for mere rumors of STC fragments or archaeotech. Ultimately, many factions within the Mechanicus see themselves as trammeled by Imperial decree, and so do their level best to subvert Imperial jurisdiction whenever possible.
  • As of the return of Roboute Guilliman and opening of the Great Rift that heralded the beginning of the 42nd Millennium, this trope has been downplayed. Most of the Mechanicus accepts Imperial jurisdiction wherever it doesn't intersect with their own, and will valiantly serve and fight to maintain Imperial authority. It helps that one of the most influential Archmagos Domini in the galaxy right now, Bellisarius Cawl, is a personal friend and attendant to Guilliman and was instrumental in both the Primarch's revival and the Lord of Ultramar's Primaris Space Marine project that saw the galaxy reinforced with a new generation of enhanced Space Marines to defend against the cloying horrors of a galaxy on the brink of destruction. There are still dissident factions within the Mechanicus that chafe under Imperial rule like the Forge World of Stygies VIII, but for the most part the Mechanicus accepts that current horrors facing the Imperium as more than enough reason to toe the line.
• Robo Speak:
  • This is generally true of servitors and other communicative Wetware CPU devices created by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
  • Tech-Priests can approach this after heavy augmentation eventually replaces their voice box and much of their brain, but they are still human (in a manner of speaking) beneath it all, and as such they tend to fall into Spock Speak with a Creepy Monotone.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The "Dragon of Mars" is supposedly some ancient technological entity trapped in an extremely secure vault deep beneath Mars, with some claiming the Emperor himself imprisoned it there. It may be a C'Tan, or a shard of one, but whatever it is, it seems to have some effect on the Mechanicum, inspiring many of their technological designs. There has been at least a few attempts to unearth the Dragon, and in one case a Necron ship tried to assault Mars itself.
• Speaks in Binary: The members of the Mechanicus usually speak in Lingua-technis, a language in binary that sounds like bursts of static to the uninitiated but which is optimized for rapid transfer of information. Because unaugmented humans don't understand it, it is also useful for conversations that need to exclude outside members.
• Stealth Expert: Due to the proscribed nature of their main field of study, the Tech-Priests of Stygies VIII have developed numerous technologies and tactical doctrines to assist them in concealing their activities from their fellows. In-game, the 8th Edition rules have the 'Clandestine Infiltration' Stygies VIII Stratagem, that represents the use of such stealth fields and auspex scramblers to deploy troops anywhere on the battlefield.
• Surveillance Drone: Scryerskull pattern servo-skulls are macabre devices packed with sensors and analytical equipment that Tech-Priests use to investigate and reconnoitre the battlefield. In the 7th Edition of the game these servo-skulls were standard equipment for Tech-Priests that allowed them to investigate objective markers, while 8th Edition makes them a Stratagem with the same effect, in addition to allowing the player to ignore some penalties caused by scenario special rules.
• Taking You with Me: With the correct prayers a Tech-Priest is able to encourage a seriously damaged machine spirit to enact a measure of revenge against their tormentors. The 8th Edition of the game represents this with the Machine Spirit’s Revenge Stratagem that causes an Adeptus Mechanicus vehicle to automatically explode when it is destroyed.
• Techno Babble: "Techna-lingua" is the in-universe term for the terminology and descriptives Tech-Priests use when talking about machines and technology. To anyone not versed in the ways of the Mechanicus, though, it's just a bunch of gibberish.
• Technopath: They only think they are, but sometimes it becomes true. With enough chanting, they can make Percussive Maintenance or an insane bodge job work when there's no way in hell it should, and some Tech-Priests are masters of "intuitive maintenance", diagnosing malfunctions by sound and touch and comforting the machine-spirit with nearly imperceptible adjustments. It helps that humans, as a whole, are slowly evolving into an entire race of psykers, and that faith can help focus and amplify psionic energies.
• Techno Wizard: Justified; the Adeptus Mechanicus is working with incredibly advanced technology and, in fact, they're the only ones officially allowed to understand and work with it, so a Tech-Priest is always going to be able to handle electronic devices better than any other human. It helps that even the Mechanicus technically believes that what they're doing is magic.
• Teleportation: The forge world Lucius has access to some of the most advanced teleportaria in the Imperium. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the unique Lucian Stratagem that allows a unit with the Lucius Keyword to teleport onto the battlefield during the game rather than having to be deployed from the start.
• Time Master: The Uncreator Gauntlet utilises reverse-engineered xenos technology to reverse the chronology of any machine it touches, reverting them into piles of component parts. The 8th Edition of the game represents this by causing addition mortal wounds to any vehicle damaged by the Gauntlet.
• Warrior Monk: Secutors are Tech-Priests who focus on the destructive potential of the Machine God, manufacturing and wielding some of the most potent of the Mechanicus' weaponry, and further augmenting themselves to enhance their combat abilities, becoming vessels for the Omnissiah's wrath.
• We Have Reserves: One faction that has even less respect for human life than the Imperial Guard. Tech-Priests consider their Skitarii and servitor soldiers to be disposable and infinitely replaceable puppets that they will use until destruction, with some Tech-Priests using their soldiers to distract or tie down the opposition until their favoured weapons, the god-machines of the Titan Legions and the robots of the Legio Cybernetica, are in position to unleash the killing blow. They also don't bother radiation-shielding their vehicles, because it's cheaper to just replace the pilot, and their Vanguards use radium guns at close range and have a similar rate of death from rad-poisoning.
• Weirdness Coupon:
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus disdain the holy human body, altering it both cybernetically and biologically at will. They belong to the Imperial Faith only on the slimmest of technicalities, and some make an open secret that they don't even make that effort, preferring to see the Omnissiah as a separate and older divinity than the Emperor. Most suspiciously of all, they pursue knowledge on secretive quests under a regime that adores blind faith and unthinking loyalty. Yet, while some members run foul of the Inquisition, Ecclesiarchy, or Administratum in ways that range from embarrassing to deadly, by and large they are left alone as powerful if not respected members of the Imperial order. De facto, they are simply necessary no matter how evil a zealot may think they are. De jure, they are only joined to the Imperium of Mankind by a personal union, sworn to the Emperor's service separately from the Adeptus Terra that run everything else, and subject to it only on secondment.
  • Within the Mechanicus, eccentricities tend to increase with rank, although human failings like drug use and family attachments are surefire ways not to achieve higher ranks. Beyond this, a Tech-Priest of sufficient status and connections is unlikely to be convicted of tech-heresy for anything done while developing anything sufficiently useful, and may well be cleared of an existing conviction that sent him fleeing to work in the far corners of the galaxy.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: The Schizo Tech resulting from all this lost technology leads to ships with warp engines and force fields requiring slave labor to manually reload cannons the size of office buildings.

Forces of the Cult Mechanicus:

Electro-Priests

A Corpuscarii and a Fulgurite.

The Electro-Priests are a lesser order of the Cult dedicated to the Motive Force, an aspect of the Machine-God that represents electricity and the energy of life and motion. The Electro-Priests are divided into two sects that work in opposite fashions, representing opposite sides of an ancient dogmatic schism; the Fulgurites seek to confiscate energy from the unworthy, refusing to see their god's gift squandered on the heathen, while the Corpuscarii wish to share their divine gift with the world, usually in a very lethal manner.

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• Close-Range Combatant: The Fulgurites lack any ranged attack whatsoever, instead focusing on melee combat using their electroleech staves.
• Elemental Barrier: Electro-Priests are surrounded by a voltagheist field that resembles will-o-the-wisps of electromagnetic force. This high voltage electric field protects the Priest by dispersing the energy of an attack in a puff of ozone and discharges as powerful electric shocks against the Priest's enemies. In the 9th Edition rules, the voltagheist field gives the Electro-Priest a 5+ invulnerable save.
• Energy Absorption: The Fulgurite sect are deeply offended by the enemies of mankind having any electricity at all, especially the kind generated just by living. Their response to unbelievers brazenly possessing motive energy is to suck it out of them with their Electroleech Staves, leaving people and machines alike still and dead.
• Eye Scream: Electro-Priests do not see in the conventional sense. Their electrokinetic powers and voltagheist field boils or melts their eyes shortly after they start using them, resulting in the melted eyes running down the priests' cheeks - something considered holy by the Electro-Priest orders.
• Feel No Pain: Implied by their "Fanatical Devotion" special rule which lets them ignore a wound on a 5+, apparently shrugging the damage off via their devotion to the Omnissiah.
• Glass Cannon: While Electro-Priests specialise in dishing out mortal wounds to multiple enemies at range or in melee, their baseline armour save and toughness are on par with the Cannon Fodder of the Imperial Guard, at 6+ and T3 respectively. This is particularly pronounced relative to the rest of the army, the majority of which have 4+ saves and 5+ invulnerables as their baseline.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy: After killing one enemy unit, the Fulgurites gain a 4+ invulnerable save and add 1 to any rolls for their "Voltagheist Blast" special rule. This gives them a 50% chance of No Selling an individual attack, and a slightly better chance at inflicting mortal wounds.
• Psycho Electro: The Electro-Priests, whether Shock and Awe-discharging Corpuscarii or Life Energy-leeching Fulgurites, whip themselves up into a frenzy of religious ecstasy in battle, wielding their powers with wild and lethal abandon. This is in contrast to the more cold, deliberately mechanical attitude most Tech-Priests affect.
• Shock and Awe: The priests of the Corpuscarii sect are living capacitors that use electrostatic gauntlets to create massive electrical discharges to fry enemies. The "Voltagheist Blast" rule also allows them to discharge a powerful blast of electricity, potentially inflicting mortal wounds on models in close combat with them.
• Tron Lines: The implants necessary to prepare an electro-priest to contain their electrical charges has the side-effect of leaving their bodies crossed by a pattern of jagged, glowing blue lines.
• Unblockable Attack: Their "Voltagheist Blast" special rule lets them cause one mortal wound for each 6+ rolled. Similarly, the Fulgurites' electroleech staves cause two mortal wounds for each wound roll of 6.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Electro-Priests stride bare-chested into battle.

Legio Cybernetica

Dedicated to the manufacture and maintenance of robotics and automata, the Legio Cybernetica is one of the oldest divisions of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Originally devoted to the creation of artificial life, the Legio switched to the creation of automata outfitted with the intelligence of animals after research into true artificial intelligence was banned. The Legio Cybernetica fell further from favour in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, as the majority of its members sided with the Arch-Traitor with the promise of the lifting of restrictions into their research. By the end of the 41st Millennium, only the near-mindless Kastelan Robots still see widespread use.

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• Absurdly Dedicated Worker: As they are controlled by pre-programmed protocols inscribed upon doctrina wafers, Kastelan Robots will continue to perform the same actions until ordered to stop or their wafer is changed. The background material mentions maniples of Kastelans marching into fields of lava or slaughtering civilians due to their protocols impelling them to continue the last commands they were given.
• Arm Cannon: Kastelan Robots outfitted for ranged combat have heavy phosphor blasters mounted on the end of their arms in place of their crushing Kastelan-pattern power fists.
• Attack Reflector: Kastelan Robots are equipped with powerful energy shields known as repulsor fields that protect the automata by reflecting enemy attacks. In game terms there is a 1 in 6 chance of an attack aimed at the Kastelan to hit the unit that fired it.
• Decapitated Army: Downplayed with Kastelan Robots, which must be carefully programmed by specialised Tech-Priests known as Cybernetica Datasmiths with each new task, lest they simply continue ad infinitum with their existing orders. If you lose the datasmith, you can't change the protocols, which can cause the Kastelans to stand still and shoot, forget they have guns or stride forwards unerringly until they fall over a cliff or walk into a lake of lava.
• Deflector Shields: Kastelan robots are equipped with Repulsor Grids, energy fields that halt incoming fire dead in its tracks or, if hit at particular angles, send said fire back towards the enemy.
• Energy Weapon: The Calix variant of the Thanatar Siege Automatons replaces the Thanatars' usual plasma mortar with a laser cannon, which can fire beams of coherent light to snipe out targets across battlefields.
• Mighty Glacier: Thanatar Siege Automata are gigantic, heavily armored and protected by projected shields, putting them beyond the ability of most small-arms fire to harm.
• Plasma Cannon: Thanatar-class Siege Automata, a type of robot used during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy, were equipped with powerful plasma mortars on their shoulders. These could send payloads of searing plasma arcing over fortifications and barricades, incinerating anything behind them and allowing Imperial forces to root out nuclei of enemy resistance.
• Power Fist: The Datasmiths of the Legio Cybernetica fight with a power fist in imitation of their robotic charges, rather than with the cog-shaped axes that are the traditional weapons of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Ray Gun: The gamma pistols wielded by Datasmiths are arcane weapons that unleash a beam of radiation that can reduce any target to a blackened shadow in moments and cut through even the thickest of armour. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving the gamma pistol a high Strength and Armour Penetration value.
• Shoulder Cannon: Most of the robots employed by the Legio Cybernetica come with some form of long-range weapon mounted on their right shoulders.
• Weaksauce Weakness: During the 7th Editions of the game, Kastelan Robots were classified as Monstrous Creatures in game mechanics — therefore, they relied on their armour saves and high Toughness instead of directional armour like vehicles. This rendered them vulnerable to Poisoned weaponry that manages to get through their Deflector Shields, as poison ignored a model's Toughness, whether they were a living beings or not.

Servitors

A Kataphron Battle Servitor

Near-mindless combinations of flesh and cybernetics, Servitors make up the vast majority of a Forge World's population. Originally developed due to the ban on artificial intelligence introduced in the wake of the rebellion of the Iron Men at the end of the Dark Age of Technology, Servitors fulfill many roles, from mono-tasked labourers designed to perform a single function without thought or rest until they wear out, to technical assistants that assist Tech-Priests in their tasks, and battle servitors that act as living weapons and guardians for their masters. While most Servitors are created from vat-grown bodies, some are made from criminals sentenced to "Servitude Imperpituis", so that they can atone for their sins against the Emperor and the Omnissiah.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: This is why servitors exist; because the fundamental controlling organ is a mutilated but still functioning human brain, they are religiously and legally acceptable alternatives to artificial intelligence. This lets the Imperium make use of what are, to all intents and purposes, robots and automated devices without actually having computers controlling things.
• And I Must Scream: There are passages that imply that the mind-wiping process during servitor creation doesn't always work with 100% effectiveness, with fragments of the original mind trapped inside the brain. What is known is that sometimes the mind-wiping process is skipped, leaving the person fully aware but unable to control their body, as a punishment for more serious crimes (although the crimes that the Imperium considers vile enough for this process are Disproportionate Retribution by 21st century standards).
• Anti-Armor: The Kataphron Destroyer's heavy grav-cannon works by increasing gravity's hold on its victim, eventually crushing them under the weight of their own armour. In gameplay, this is represented by their high armour piercing stat and a special rule that causes extra damage to any target with a 3+ (i.e.: wearing Power Armor or better) save.
• Anti-Vehicle: The Kataphron Breacher's loadout is geared toward this - their default ranged weapon does extra damage to vehicles and automatically wounds on a 4+ wound roll, while the torsion cannon's strength, armour piercing, and damage characteristics are all on par with more conventional anti-tank guns.
• Arm Cannon: Servitors equipped for ranged combat, such as Gun Servitors and Kataphron Battle Servitors, have one or more of their upper limbs replaced with heavy weapons such as multi-meltas, heavy bolters or plasma weaponry.
• Artificial Human: The human component of a servitor can be vat grown, with their higher brain function intentionally underdeveloped. The exact ratio between vat-grown and former-human servitors tends to vary depending on the edition.
• Blood Knight: Uniquely among Servitors, Kataphron Breachers are usually made exclusively from living humans with a predilection for violence, as the cybernetic components supposedly require a "violent soul" to bond with for best results.
• Close-Range Combatant: Breachers are designed to get in close to enemy forces, with their arc/hydraulic claw being designed specially to tear through fortifications and rip through vehicle armour.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Their free will, personality and humanity have been completely erased by their implants, leaving them as nothing more than mindless servants.
• Elite Mook: Praetorian Servitors and Kataphron Battle Servitors are massive, armoured and heavily armed servitors, bigger than Space Marines and often made from Ogryns and given treads or spider-like legs to support their immense weight. Praetorians generally guard Tech-Priests or holy sites, while Kataphrons are meant for more active combat roles.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Kataphron Breachers are basically partly-human tanks, with their breacherplate being designed to shrug off small arms and bolter rounds. Destroyers are less heavily armoured due to their highly destructive weaponry, manifesting in game as a 2+ and 3+ armour save respectively.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Servitors begin as vat-grown bodies, or occasionally criminals, heretics, and failed Space Marine candidates, who are mindwiped and stripped of all humanity and have most of their bodies replaced with mechanical components, in order to have computerized and mechanized systems without violating the Imperial ban on AI.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Servitors are often more mechanical than biological, and have their free will and personalities completely overwritten by their programming. They can be either criminals sentenced to Unwilling Roboticisation as punishment (or just civilians who were expendable), or mindless clones grown for the purpose.
• Lightning Gun: The heavy arc rifle is the default armament of the Kataphron Breacher Battle Servitor. It shoots giant, helical streams of electrical energy that short out circuitry, making it particularly effective against vehicles.
• Long-Range Fighter: The Kataphron Destroyer is essentially a partly-human artillery piece; while its armour is weaker than the Breacher, its plasma culverin or heavy grav-cannon make up for this.
• Robot Maid: Well, technically not true robots, but many of them fill the same role, carrying out menial labor tasks.
• Spider Limbs: The heavily armed and armoured Praetorian Servitors and Kataphron Battle Servitors tend towards this trope, when augmented with jointed mechanical legs.
• Tank-Tread Mecha: In-keeping with the depictions of the majority of heavy combat servitors since 1st Edition, Kataphron Battle Servitors have had their legs replaced with large and robust track units. These tracks give the servitors a stable platform to fire their heavy weapons from, allowing them to lay down punishing fire as they advance on the enemy, something that the 8th Edition rules represent with the Heavy Battle Servitor ability that allows both Kataphron Breachers and Destroyers to ignore the usual penalties when firing Heavy type weaponry on the move.
• Tractor Beam: The torsion cannons mounted on some Kataphron Breacher battle servitors capture an enemy with a trio of tractor beams known as gaol-fields that then rotate in different directions to tear the target apart.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: Many servitors are made from criminals and heretics who have been sentenced to undergo involuntary cybernetic augmentation and neural surgery to render them into zombie-like drones. Kataphron Breachers in particular are almost exclusively created from such unfortunates, as experience has shown that artificial organic components will not bond properly with a Kataphron’s augmetics.
• Was Once a Man: The basic idea of a servitor is that it's a former human being who has been brutally and involuntarily subjected to cybernetic augmentation and brain surgery to create a cyborg-zombie used as a disposable labor or combat robot.

Skitarii

L, R: A Skitarii Ranger and a Skitarii Vanguard.

As the Omnissiah-blessed weapons shall serve you, so shall you serve them. Guard them well from the shame of defeat

—Excerpt from the Battle Benediction of the Omnissiah

The Skitarii, sometime known as the Tech-Guard in Low Gothic, are the rank-and-file military of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Each Forge World maintains legions, or Macrolades, of these cybernetically-enhanced warriors that protect the holdings of the Mechanicus and prosecute their wars. Largely still human, the Skitarii are fanatically devoted to their Tech-Priest masters who largely view these warriors as disposable puppets.

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• Abnormal Ammo: The Skitarii models released so far definitely tend toward this.
  • The Plasma Caliver is the most "normal" weapon their infantry have. Their standard-issue rifles? The Galvanic Rifle and the Radium Carbine, which shoot electrically-charged and radioactive bullets respectively.
  • Their special weapons, aside from the aforementioned Plasma Caliver? The Arc Rifle, which shoots even-more-electrically-charged bullets than the Galvanic Rifle and can EMP a tank to death with a few shots, and the Transuranic Arquebus, a huge anti-materiel rifle firing what are essentially depleted uranium bullets (but made from even heavier and less stable elements further down the periodic table.)
  • For their leaders, they've got pistol versions of the Radium Carbine and Arc Rifle, and the Phosphor Blast Pistol, which removes the ability to gain a save boost from cover, due to the light coming off the glowing corpses of its targets.
• Anti-Air: One of the weapon options for the Onager Dunecrawler is the Icarus Array. This weapon pod is designed to bring down aircraft by putting out a massive amount of firepower and consists of missile launchers, grenade launchers and autocannons, all optimised with the appropriate special rules for targeting flying enemy units depending on the edition.
• Anti-Vehicle: The Neutron Laser weapon option for the Dunecrawler. Its AP and strength are some of the highest in the Mechanicus codex, with its limited and random number of attacks encouraging its use against large, high-toughness targets such as tanks.
• Armed Legs: The bionic legs of the airborne Pteraxii Sterylizors are equipped with razor-sharp talons that they use to gouge at their enemies' flesh when they swoop into combat.
• Armored Coffins: Crewing an Onager Dunecrawler is almost universally fatal, if only because the fusion reactor turns the inside into a radioactive slow cooker. Once the old pilot expires, a new pilot is dunked into the filthy electro-amniotic tank that serves as the cockpit. The background text for the Onager explicitly compares its crewmen to batteries — eventually, they will be used up, discarded, and replaced...but such is life for a Skitarius.
• Artificial Limbs: A standard trope for the Machine Cult, but most Skitarii have their legs replaced from the knees down as a standard augmentation as a response to the harsh terrains of most Forge Worlds.
• Blood Knight: The Skitarii of the war-torn forge world of Ryza are infamous for exhibiting a love of close combat quite unbecoming of a warrior of the Omnissiah. The Red in Cog and Claw Ryza Forge World Doctrine ^note from 8th Edition grants the possibility of a re-roll for to wound rolls when fighting in melee to represent this on the tabletop.
• Breath Weapon: The robotic mounts ridden by Serberys Sulphurhounds are fitted with mouth-mounted weapons that unleash sulphurous flames that burn the enemy from cover at close range.
• Brown Note: Sicarian Infiltrators emit a barrage of precisely calibrated white noise that overwhelms the senses of man and machine alike, causing ears to bleed and eyes to water uncontrollably and leaving the enemy nearly helpless against the Infiltrator’s assault. Both the 7th and 8th Edition versions of the rules represent this by causing nearby enemies to take a penalty to their stats^note Weapon Skill, Balistic Skill, Initiative & Leadership in 7th; just Leadership in 8th.
• Chicken Walker: The strange bipedal Ironstrider engines, ridden by both the Sydonian Dragoons and Ironstrider Ballistarii, sport the chicken-legged, reverse-joint two-limb configuration of this trope.
• Deflector Shields: Onager Dunecrawlers are equipped with Emanatus force fields, sophisticated defence shields designed to overlap with each other for increased protection. In the 8th Edition of the game this is represented by the Dunecrawler receiving an invulnerable save that increases in effectiveness if it is in close proximity to other Dunecrawlers.
• Disintegrator Ray: The eradication beamer, fitted to some Onager Dunecrawlers, is a deadly beam weapon that attacks those it hits at a molecular level. At long range the beam tends to disperse, doing less damage, but as close range the beamer will instantly atomise the target. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving the eradication beamer higher Armour Penetration and Damage characteristics at close range.
• Dual Wielding:
  • The Sicarian Ruststalker cyborg assassins forgo ranged weapons, always wielding a pair of deadly transonic weapons. Their standard armament is a chordclaw and the knifelike transonic razor but they can upgrade these to a pair of transonic blades, longswords that, in both 7th and 8th Edition, allow the Ruststalkers to hit harder in combat.
  • The Serberys Sulphurhounds' riders use a pair of phosphor pistols in a Guns Akimbo fashion, accurately firing both at once while riding into battle on their robotic mounts. Alternatively, they can switch to dual-wielding a phosphor blast carbine and a single phosphor pistol.
• Electronic Eyes: A universal augmentation among Skitarii are goggle-like cybernetics that replace their eyes, designed to ensure they can harvest data at all times during battle.
• Explosive Overclocking: The Skitarii's plasma caliver can be put into a "supercharge" mode, letting them hit harder at the cost of the weapon potentially blowing up and taking its wielder with it.
• Flechette Storm: Some Sicarian Infiltrators are equipped with flechette blasters. When fired, these lightweight pistols unleash a stream of tiny darts, each of which is designed to attract the others once it hits its target. Although lacking stopping-power, the massive rate-of-fire^note represented in most editions they appear in by a basic Strength characteristic and one of the highest numbers of shots available to any pistol weapon and silenced nature make flechette blasters perfect for the assassinations and covert operations Sicarian Infiltrators are typically tasked with.
• Frontline General: The 7th edition version of the Skitarii is one of the few aversions of this trope in the game by having no HQ units and no characters. This is due to Skitarii being directed by Tech-Priests who send orders remotely from orbit. 8th edition onwards plays it straight, introducing several generic HQ characters (various Tech-Priests, and the Skitarii Marshal) and a Mars-exclusive unique character (Belisarius Cawl.)
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: According to their original lore, Skitarii don't have transport vehicles. However, two of their vehicle options from 8th onward are the Skorpius Dunerider and the Archaeopter Transvector, respectively a Hover Tank assault boat and a glorified aerial troop transport. The discreptancy was caused by the lore writers being unaware of the planned models during the initial release.
• Guns Akimbo: Designed to look like cyborg cowboys, the Serberys Sulphurhounds are equipped with a pair of phosphor pistols, firing both at once with a high degree of accuracy, even when riding their robotic steeds at high speed.
• Hand Cannon: The stubcarbines wielded by some Sicarian Infiltrators is a powerful, rapid fire, solid-shot handgun with the stopping power of a far larger weapon. In the 8th Edition rules, the stubcarbine has a relatively short range but has the same Strength characteristic as a heavy stubber.
• Hover Tank: The Skorpius armoured vehicles, such as the Dunerider transport and the Disintegrator battle tank, are anti-gravity vehicles that resemble a cross between a hovercraft and a landing craft. Using sophisticated, if little understood, anti-gravity technology, these armoured vehicles drift a few feet above the ground with speed and efficiency.
• Implacable Man:
  • According to the lore, Skitarii don't have transport vehicles. They're often given a destination several months in advance and just start walking. They march through bogs, deserts, and all sorts of hostile environments, arriving right on schedule as the fighting starts.
  • Skitarii Rangers are known to stalk groups of enemies for weeks at a time, never pausing for rest or repair, using their long-ranged guns to slowly whittle their targets down until they are completely wiped out.
• Lightning Gun: The Skitarii make great use of rare and powerful arc weaponry in battle. Powered by ancient batteries, some of which predate the founding of the Imperium, these arcane weapons fire bolts of electrical energy that are able to fry an organic target's brain or destroy a vehicle’s controlling circuitry in an instant.
• Martyrdom Culture: In the name of the Omnissiah, Skitarii will gladly wield equipment that kills them as fast as it kills the enemy. This ranges from censers that spew toxic gas to Radium weaponry. Even a slow death in the radioactive interior of an Onager is a fate to be envied.

• Mini-Mecha: Ironstrider engines are light walkers that stand roughly twice the height of a human and were originally invented in an attempt to create a perpetual motion machine. Fast, agile and able to traverse rough terrain, the Skitarii use these strange machines as a form of mechanised cavalry.
• Mook Lieutenant: Skitarii Marshals are veterans with a direct uplink to their masters, who are often the highest ranking commanders on the battlefield. Some are granted a level of autonomy far superior to any other Skitarii and the authorisation to conduct entire battles by their own will. Some older background material also mentions other ranks of Skitarii such as Skitarii Tribunes, entrusted with higher leadership roles; and Masters of Skitarii, who command entire brigades.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The Ruststalker Princeps who lead squads of Sicarian Ruststalkers often have their combat abilities augmented with the addition of a third bionic arm so that they can wield a deadly chordclaw alongside a pair of transonic blades.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Skitarii wield a number of weapons, such as the galvanic rifle, radium carbine and arc weaponry, which are revolver weapons that fire a variety of Abnormal Ammo that make them far more effective than the equivalent weapons of most other armies, despite their more antiquated appearance.
• Sniper Rifle: The radium jezzail and transuranic arquebus are basically futuristic sniper rifles that use highly radioactive elements as ammunition. Unlike most weapons they can ignore the usual restrictions on targeting characters, allowing Skitarii with them to target enemy leaders and kill them from afar.
• Spider Tank: The Onager Dunecrawler, one of the primary armoured vehicles used by the Skitarii and a workhorse vehicle for the Adeptus Mechanicus as a whole, is propelled across the battlefield by four insectoid legs in imitation of the giant insects that its creator believed were used as beasts of burden on ancient Terra.
• Staff of Authority: The Skitarii Marshal has a small cog-headed rod known as a Control Stave, which the Marshal can use for controlling their underlings and cracking skulls in melee as needed. In game, this lets a single Skitarii unit within range of the Marshal ignore the downside of the active Doctrina Imperative, while also letting the Marshal hit as strong as a Space Marine Terminator in melee.
• Vibroweapon: The transonic weapons carried by Sicarian Ruststalkers are able to adjust their resonance to match the molecular frequency of their target, allowing the deadly weapon to pass through armour as if it wasn’t there. Both the 7th and 8th Edition version of the rules represent this by giving transonic weapons a one in six chance to automatically wound, along with a strong level of armour penetration.
• Walking Wasteland: Skitarii Vanguard are so soaked in radiation from their dangerous wargear and the hostile environments they operate in that to approach them unprotected is a death sentence. The game represents this by giving nearby enemy units a penalty to their Toughness due to radiation poisoning.
• Weaponized Teleportation: The phase taser is a legendary artefact capable of transporting any enemy it strikes to Another Dimension from which there is no escape. How the phase taser works is unknown as every Tech-Priest that has attempted to study it has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. The 7th Edition rules for the phase taser give it a chance to remove any enemy models it wounds from the table, regardless of its Wounds characteristic or defensive items.
• We Can Rebuild Him: If a Skitarii still has a head, torso, and some limb-stumps, the tech-priests may choose to rebuild them into a Sicarian Ruststalker or Infiltrator.
• Winged Humanoid: Pteraxii are Skitarii whose augmentations include batlike wings of fabric supported by metal struts, allowing them to serve as aerial troops.

The Titan Legions

A Mars pattern Warlord Titan of the Legio Gryphonicus.

The Ground trembled every other heart beat ... the sound echoed louder with each beat, and haunted your soul as if doom was approaching ... and then I saw it towering in the sky, still miles away. The fear and awe one felt was indescribable. I can only image the sheer terror our enemy felt when they beheld the sight of the Emperor Titan.

— excerpt from the memoirs of Precept Catotus, Griffins Titan Legion

The most powerful land-based weapons of war created by mankind, Titans are considered to be the greatest embodiment of the might and fury of the Omnissiah in existence. These mighty god-machines are commanded by a Princeps, whose mind is linked directly with the machine spirit of the Titan, assisted by Moderati (who operate the weapons and other critical systems), Enginseers and numerous clades of Servitors.

Titans are operated and maintained by a sub-faction of the Mechanicus that is officially known as the Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica, but is more commonly known simply as the Collegia Titanica or the Adeptus Titanicus. The Titan Legions themselves are the military arm of the Collegia Titanica, collectively known as the Divisio Militaris, with at least one Legion based on each Forge World.

Imperial Titans generally come in three main types of increasing size and firepower: Scout Titans, such as the fast and agile Warhound; Battle Titans, such as the multi-role Reaver, the fire-support Warbringer and the workhorse Warlord; and the Emperor Class, such as the long ranged Warmonger and the mighty Imperator.

Due to their size, the god-machines of the Titan Legions were mostly consigned to the background material, and the 6mm-scale Epic game systems such as Adeptus Titanicus, Space Marine and Epic 40,000. Advances in casting technology eventually made Warhammer 40,000 scale models more viable and Games Workshop’s Forge World department produce a range of Titans. The 8th Edition rules for using Imperial Titans in Warhammer 40,000 can be found in the Imperial Armour – Index: Forces of the Astra Militarum book. Adeptus Titanicus: Horus Heresy, an updated small-scale Gaiden Game similar to Epic, that focuses on Titan vs. Titan combat was released in August 2018.

NOTE: While Imperial Knights can be considered a type of Titan, they are not covered here due to being semi-independent organisations, with close ties to the Titan Legions, that have their own unique origins, organisation and equipment. For tropes relating to them, see Current Imperial Factions.

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• Abnormal Ammo: Quake cannons fire shells imbued with the death cries of planets shattered by Exterminatus. Some Emperor Titans carry ballistic missiles that open Hell Gates where they hit. The one known Castigator Titan had a cannon that fired daemons, although that was likely due to its Chaos corruption.
• Amazon Brigade: Some background material stats that the Titans of the Legio Solaria, also known as the Imperial Hunters, are crewed exclusively by women. Founded by an exiled daughter of a Knight World who was denied the chance of piloting a Knight due to her sex, the Legion ensures a steady stream of recruits by using genetic manipulation to ensure their children are almost always female.
• Anti-Air: Imperator-class Emperor Titans are equipped with Defence Lasers, massive laser weapons generally fixed to static defensive positions and used to engage ships in low orbit. The Defence Lasers mounted on Imperator Titans have sophisticated auto-trackers that allow the god-machine to use these weapons to target enemy aircraft.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: On those occasions when an Emperor Titan, the rarest and most powerful type of Titan by a very wide margin, is part of a Titan Legion, its Princeps is invariably the one in charge.
• Bell-Bottom-Limbed Bots: Most Titans except the Warhound are these, but the Reaver and Warmaster stand out.
• BFG: Needless to say, Titans mount absolutely enormous guns, although the Hellstorm Cannon (which can strip a lesser Titan of its shields with one volley), the Volcano Cannon (which can melt stone and one-shot a lesser Titan), the Quake Cannon (which fires shells imbued with the death-cries of shattered planets), and the Plasma Annhilator (which can kill cities) take the cake.
• BFS: Some Titans mount absolutely enormous Chainswords, specifically for combat against each other.
• Big Fancy Castle: Imperator Titans carry one on their back, making them much more hunchbacked in appearance. The castles are also armed to the teeth, able to contribute a significant amount of firepower to the battle.
• Blood Knight: A Titan's Machine-Spirit is naturally aggressive and extremely belligerent; a Princeps in Titanicus compares the sensation of piloting a Titan to having a feral, bloodthirsty beast chained in the back of their head, straining to pull loose and wreak havoc on everything in sight.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: The Secutarii are charged with protecting Titans against ground forces during battle, and escorting Principes outside of it.
• Brain/Computer Interface: A Titan's Mind Impulse Unit requires the Princeps' nervous system to undergo extensive augmetic modification for the interface. The "normal" procedure still allows the Princeps to function as a human outside the Titan, but some take the extra mile by choosing internment within an amniotic tank and more extensive augmetics, granting them a much deeper connection to the Titan but rendering them unable to live outside the tank.
• Chainsaw Good: Titans outfitted for close combat are often equipped with Titan-class chainfists. While the exact style of chainfist varies, all consist of a powerful, motorised saw blade that can rip apart enemy Titans and gargantuan creatures. The rules for Titan chainfists vary with gaming system and edition but all are capable of inflicting massive damage against an opponent with a successful hit.
• Chicken Walker: Warhound Titans have digitigrade legs which, combined with their almost-canine heads, make them somewhat resemble robotic werewolves. In keeping with this trope, they are also among the fastest non-flying units in the game.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Titans are incredibly powerful, but they are made for a very specific type of warfare, being engaging massive static installations and especially other large mobile war engines. Outside that role, their tactical applicability is rather limited. For this reason they are almost always either supported by Skitarii or deployed to support other Imperial forces so that by combined arms they compliment each other's role.
• Elite Mook: Not the Titans themselves, obviously, but the Corpus Secutarii warriors who accompany them. As foot troops can't possibly keep up with Titans, these soldiers follow in their wake and seize objectives the Titans have overcome, but also have special Kyropatris Field Generators that allow them to create barriers that repulse enemy shots. They also have special combi-weapons that can concurrently shoot at a foe and blind targets around them. However, they do not answer to the usual forces of the Skitarii and their gear is far too expensive to produce on the scale of a Skitarii Macrolade, so they are rare.
• Epic Flail: During the early editions of the Epic game system, Battle Titans equipped for siege warfare would often be fitted with Wreckers. The Titan primarily used these massive wrecking balls to demolish enemy-held buildings and fortifications, but it was equally effective when used to crush opposition units, automatically destroying one in each round of combat.
• Explosive Overclocking: Titans are powered by advanced but capricious plasma reactors. While relatively safe under normal conditions, during battle a Princeps can draw more power from the reactor to increase their god-machine's combat abilities at the risk of damaging, or even destroying, the reactor's delicate systems. In the Adeptus Titanicus: Horus Heresy Gaiden Game, this is represented by players being able to draw extra power from their plasma reactors to increase their speed, manoeuvrability, firepower and/or defences. However, doing so risks dangerously overheating the reactor and giving it a chance of doing extra damage to the Titan or, in extreme circumstances, causing a full blown reactor meltdown.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: Titan inferno guns^note sometimes known as inferno cannons are some of the largest flamethrowers used by the forces of the Imperium. These massive flamers are fitted to Warhound and Reaver Titans operating in dense terrain, such as the urban sprawls of hive cities, where they can devastate entire formations of enemy infantry.
• First Church of Mecha: Titans are built as walking idols to the Machine God's wrath and are often colloquially known as god-machines. Each Titan is considered a holy relic and is treated with the veneration that a more typical Imperial citizen would reserve for a living saint. Some background material also indicates that some of the more primitive populations that witness the mighty war machines in battle will take to worshiping the Titans themselves as gods and/or a physical incarnations of the God-Emperor.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon:
  • Early editions of the Epic game system included the Deathstrike Cannon as a weapon option for Warlord Titans. This massive artillery weapon is one of the most powerful weapons available to a Titan and replaces the god-machine’s head with the centreline weapon mount that can only fire at targets directly in front of it.
  • The carapace weapon mounts of the Lucius pattern Warlord Titan are limited to a forward facing position. This isn’t much of a disadvantage for the Warlord as the highly warlike nature of the war machine means that it will always be found advancing straight at the enemy.
• Gatling Good:
  • The Titans of the Adeptus Mechanicus can be equipped with a number of different gatling weapons, from the basic gatling blaster (that fires a storm of solid ammunition), to the Vulcan mega-bolter (a massive, double-gatling version of the rocket-propelled grenade launchers wielded by the Adeptus Astartes) and the building-sized Hellstorm cannon fitted to Emperor class titans. Whatever the size of the gatling weapon, however, their primary role is to use their massive rate-of-fire to destroy enemy infantry.
  • The Castigator-pattern Autonomous Bipedal Weapons Platform had a massive Hellstorm Cannon-like gun as one of its primary weapons. It also fired daemons as ammunition, and could reduce a Warhound to scrap within a few volleys.
• Handicapped Badass: A Princeps that chooses the amniotic internment method for connecting to their Titan is rendered unable to physically function outside of his Titan without life support mechanisms. For example, in Graham McNeill's Forges of Mars trilogy, the Princeps of the Warlord Titan Lupa Capitialana is blind, limbless, has a distended skull, and has to live in a fluid-filled tank.
• Humongous Mecha: Ranging in size from the relatively modest Warhound-class titans at 14 meters or so to the colossal Emperor-class titans, which are essentially fortified cathedrals on legs, at least 100 or so meters tall (accounts contradict each other; some older fluff claims their height goes all the way up to 2 km). A few models, such as the Castigator-class from the Dark Age of Technology, were much bigger and much more powerful.
• Laser Cutter:
  • The Laser Burner from early editions of the Epic scale game system consisted of a high-powered, but extremely short-ranged, laser projector that would cause metal to vaporise and electrical systems to burn out. Designed to be used against enemy Titans, Laser Burners caused serious damage to a number of locations as they was drawn across the enemy's hull.
  • The Saturnyne lascutter is a powerful weapon that can be fitted to Warlord Titans in the 8th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 for use against enemy buildings and warmachines. The lascutter unleashes a focused blast at close range that does an increasing amount of damage the longer it's focused on a target.
• Long-Range Fighter: The Warbringer Nemesis Titan is a dedicated Titan hunter designed to destroy its prey with massive ranged firepower. The Nemesis is equipped with multiple, high yield ranged weapons, including the massive Nemesis quake cannon, that can obliterate even the most powerful of foes at extreme range.
• Lost Technology: Played with. Titans themselves were invented after the Age of Strife began and the STC systems were lost. Old fluff indicates that proto-Titans may have existed before, but the wide majority of all Titan tech came about after the old Terran government collapsed. That said, some model blueprints are definitely lost. Nobody knows how to build Warmongers anymore, for instance.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Downplayed. Titans aren't truly alive, but their machine spirits are so powerful that they border on sentience and, even under the Princeps' control, they tend to behave like living things, expressing simple emotions such as rage, defiance, belligerence, sorrow, and victory.
• Military Mashup Machine: Titans are Humongous Mecha Land Battleship Walking Cathedral Idols to the Machine God.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Weaponized with Vortex Missiles, relics from the Dark Age of Technology whose warheads open Warp portals upon detonation, sucking anything in the general vicinity into the realm of Chaos. They are generally used against fortifications that the Imperium just needs gone, and only as a last resort, since once opened, there's no real way of closing the Warp gate, controlling it, or stopping Daemons from pouring out.
• Plasma Cannon: The Plasma Annihilators and Plasma Destructors carried by Emperor Titans, and the smaller Melta Cannons and Plasma Blastguns.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The weapons of the Ordo Sinister's Psi-Titans are essentially powered by hooking up several comatose, mutilated Psykers to the Titan's systems, then slowly draining their life and souls away to power it. Part of the reason the pilot has to be a Blank is so they don't die from the sheer amount of psychic terror and pain this process produces.
• Power Fist: Some Titans carry Power Fists, scaled to match. They also have Titan-class Power Claws for crushing attacks, and Chainfists that combine this trope with Chainsaw Good.
• Psychic Powers: The Warlord-Sinister class Psi-Titan is an ancient, extremely rare variant of the Warlord Titan equipped with psychic weaponry and able to manifest powerful psychic abilities. Crewed by enslaved psykers and piloted by a Blank, Psi-Titans are only deployed against the most deadly foes such as the forces of Chaos.
• Siege Engines: Early editions of the Epic game system had the Corvus Assault Pod. A specially designed arm mount, the Corvus allowed a Warlord Titan to transport a detachment of Space Marine Terminators and deploy them directly into the upper floors of enemy-held buildings and defensive walls, turning the Titan into a massive, walking siege tower.
• Some Kind of Force Field: Void Shields, the Titans’ main line of defense, generally invisible as anything beyond a faint haze until hit.
• Target Spotter: In early editions of the Epic game system, Battle Titans could purchase a Carapace Landing Pad that came with a recon Land Speeder. This Land Speeder ranged ahead of its Titan partner, relaying targeting information that allowed the God-Machine to fire at targets of its line-of-sight with far greater accuracy.
• Teleportation: The Titans of the Legio Astorum, also known as the Warp Runners, are highly advanced and are the only god-machines in the Imperium capable of surviving the rigors of teleportation, allowing the Legion to use the superior teleportarium of their home forge world of Lucius to deploy directly into battle.
• Two Beings, One Body: The princeps, along with two or more moderati (operators who control subsystems such as weapons), physically links with the Titan's systems to operate as one. Since this involves directly connecting with the Titan's very powerful machine spirit, the princeps must have extremely strong willpower in order to maintain control and not go insane.
• Weaponized Teleportation: The Warp Missile, from early editions of the Epic scale game, is a weapon that uses a miniature warp drive to skip in and out of reality so that it can appear within the target to deliver its explosive payload. Due to the vagaries of the warp, however, these missiles are far more inaccurate than regular ordinance. The rules for these weapons allow them to ignore enemy armour (representing them materialising withing the target) but their inaccuracy means that they have to roll twice on a Titan's hit chart to see where they strike.

Devoted Followers of the Omnissiah

Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl

The Omnissiah filled the Galaxy with mysteries so that we might learn from them, coming step by step closer to his perfect being. To ignore them, even in the face of war, is heresy.

An ancient Archmagos from Mars, Belisarius Cawl is an eccentric genius whose skills and innovations (particularly the Primaris Marines he developed on the orders of Lord Commander Guilliman) have proven invaluable to the Imperium since Abaddon launched his 13th Black Crusade. While Cawl's refusal to be bound by many of the traditions of the Adeptus Mechanicus has led some to believe that his actions border on the heretekal, the Archmagos nonetheless holds the title of Dominatus Dominus (Master of Masters), one of the highest and most honoured ranks a Tech-Priest can receive. Despite his rank, Cawl has no qualms about personally leading Maniples of Skitarii into battle.

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• The Cracker: Is said to have the ability to hack into his opponents' machines with data-shunts to impede their functions.
• Combat Tentacles: Cawl's cybernetic body is covered with an entire of hive of mechadendrite tentacles that the Archmagos Dominus uses to engulf and disassemble his foes. The 7th and 8th Edition versions of Crawl's rules represent this by giving him additional attacks.
• Deadpan Snarker: As the novels show, Cawl is very much an irreverent smartass, though this was more during his time as a younger Magos. He still can be downright sarcastic in the present day, though now it is dependent on which Personality modules he decided to upload for that mission.
• Exact Words: He tells the other members of the crusade that he made a deal with the "Lord of Ultramar", when they arrive in the sector and Calgar doesn't recognize him, they immediately begin to suspect him as a traitor. But he just responds by saying he demands to see the Lord of Ultramar, in other words, he wanted to see Roboute Guilliman.
• The Fog of Ages: He has been alive for so long that, mechanically enhanced or not, his memories have withered away over time. It takes the prodding of some outside sources to get him to remember promises he made 10,000 years back. It's not entirely clear if those memories are real or not; even he finds the lack of detail odd. Additionally, the Mechanicus codex mentions that Cawl had been memory-wiped at least twice, while the novel The Great Work reveals that Cawl has to regularly unload his memory cores to external storage units every five hundred years, due to his own physical hardware's limitations. Add to this the fact that his memory storage facilities are scattered across the galaxy, and it's no wonder why he can't remember everything that's happened to him.
• Frontline General: While many other high ranking Tech-Priests prefer to direct their forces from fortified installations or orbiting ships, Cawl often oversees a battle personally, trusting his personal defences, powerful weapons, and a mind sharp enough to predict enemy attacks quickly enough to avoid them.
• Grand Theft Me: The Great Work reveals that he was almost the victim of this - Ezekiel Sedayne, an aging scientist who worked with the Emperor himself, tried to strong-arm Cawl into using an experimental technology that would have transferred Sedayne's mind into Cawl's body. Unfortunately for Sedayne, Cawl's massive ego let him turn the tables and hijack Sedayne's body instead, gaining all his memories in the process.
• Human Popsicle: One reason that Cawl has lived for so long is that he has taken to spending decades offline within his personal stasis crypts, a habit he has acquired since he last uploaded some of his stored memories.
• Large and in Charge: For a member of the Mechanicus, he is noted to be quite massive, especially when compared to the troops he leads. How massive? Official artwork shows him to be standing taller than a throne sized armor for the revived Roboute Guilliman, and on the tabletop a normal Magos Dominus is on a 50mm base. Cawl? He's using a 105x70mm oval base, which is the same sized base for a Tau XV95 Ghostkeel Battlesuit and base-wise is only slightly smaller than most large walkers or beasts.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Owing to his multiple personality cores and the borderline AI constructs he has scattered through the galaxy, Cawl's various iterations have some considerable divergences. Usually this isn't an issue, except that the primary Cawl construct on Guilliman's flagship keeps trying to get made Fabricator General of Mars. Cawl himself professes to not have any such desire to do so and even admits that he'll need to address the issue before things get out of hand.
• Lightning Lash: His arc-scourge is an electric variant that can strike several foes at once.
• Like a Son to Me: Cawl admits to himself a few times in The Great Work that the Ultramarine Tetrarch Felix is like a son to him. It's one-sided as Felix dislikes Cawl and has a phobia of the Archmagos due to millenniums of being experimented on as one of the earliest Primaris marines.
• Mad Scientist:
  • The Mechanicus at large views Cawl as a borderline heretek due to his apparent lack of regard for its dogma. Among his more radical ideas, he admitted that human technology and its current understanding is lacking compared to other races, reverse-engineering xeno technology to get around that, and has even gone so far as to create what may actually be an Artificial Intelligence (a big no-no in the Imperium) based on his own personality and memories. He proposed to Guilliman the idea of creating new Primaris Marines using the gene-seed from the Traitor Legions and even the two Lost Legions, and while Guilliman balked at that notion and forbade from doing it, fearing the possible disastrous consequences, he suspects Cawl will try it anyway or may have already done it. A few Primaris Chapters already in service do have loyalist Primarchs listed as their genetic source but do not have anything in common with their alleged forebears, like the supposedly Dorn-descended Sons of the Phoenix who probably have Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children as their real gene-seed source.
  • This is particularly pronounced with the Primaris Space Marines' Super Prototype Alpha Primus. While exactly how much Cawl deviated from the original template is unknown, Alpha Primus briefly alludes to Cawl "trying to match the Emperor's work," in creating him, and it shows - Alpha Primus is a powerful psyker and significantly stronger, faster, and more durable than even regular Primaris Marines, but he's also in constant physical and mental pain from Cawl's "improvements."
• Mind Hive: Cawl isn't alone in his own head, and he shares headspace with a number of A.I.s based on himself, and a few digital clones of others. He sees his own ego as being a conductor amidst a choir of cooperative voices.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He has dabbled in many fields of science (as a Dominus, his actual field is in cybernetics and warfare). He's improved on the Space Marine template, but has also worked on the weapons and armours Primaris Marines would use, has improved Guilliman's flagship, has maybe created artificial intelligence and copied his personality into a machine, and is working on Necron technology to reverse-engineer their pylons.
• Remember the New Guy?: Cawl is introduced in the Gathering Storm campaign, where it's revealed he was sent on a secret mission by Roboute Guilliman that, due to Roboute being put into stasis, has taken 10,000 years to complete. Since then, he's been conspicuously inserted into Mechanicus lore prior to that timeframe, up to and including to being part of the biologis team the Emperor led in creating the Black Carapace implant. This was later partially retconned: The current Cawl is an amalgam of many, MANY people whose memories and personalities were absorbed into Cawl over the course of ten millennia. Among those were one Ezekiel Sedayne, the guy who did help design the Black Carapace; Cawl's massive ego means his personality has subsumed all the others, causing him to occasionally remember their lives as his own.
• Science Hero: Cawl breaks the mold while adhering to the basic structure of one. He is one of the few people who operates on the belief that science and technology can solve many of the galaxy's problems and make it a better place, in contrast to the majority of the Mechanicus who thinks a conservative and theological approach to technology will maintain spiritual integrity and avoid creating new problems (admittedly, not an incorrect view). Cawl is the scientist to the average techpriest's stodgy technician.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: One of the few positive examples, and from 40k no less, which is replete with reprobate nobles and functionaries and hypocritical leadership figures. Cawl is known for a healthy contempt of authority and dogma, and has danced on the line of becoming a heretek for millennia, between his exploration of forbidden and alien technologies and dangerous propensity for innovation. What keeps him in the good graces of the Mechanicus and the Imperium is his own authority, seniority, brilliance, tendency to get results, and a solid loyalty to the Imperium that has been proven time and time again.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: This is a given considering the setting, but it is notable that Guilliman begrudgingly makes use of his services because Cawl is the only one crazy enough to do what the Primarch asks. Even back in the days of the Mechanicum, which were a bit more forgiving of what is now considered heresy, Cawl was apparently seen as having a few of his screws loose.
  Cawl Inferior: His colleagues are limited. Their beliefs have become a faith that they dare not challenge. The Adeptus Mechanicus is far more trammelled in its thinking than the Mechanicum of your time was, my Lord Guilliman, and the archmagos was a radical in those distant centuries. You would not have come to him if he were not.

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Thus do we invoke the Machine God.
Thus do we make whole that which was sundered.

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