Questions on Membership and Lore in the Cult Mechanicus

[Julgolax]

1. How does an individual from the vast and disregarded masses join the Cult Mechanicus in the first place?

 

2. How does an inductee advance through the ranks of the Priesthood? The Skitarii?

 

3. What sort of life does a Mechanicus member live if he or she is a member of the Priesthood?

 

4. What exactly is a Fabricator General and why is Belisarius Cawl just an Archmagos Dominus? (Shouldn't he be like, the leader of the cult?)

 

5. What kind of politics are involved once a member somehow progresses to the higher ranks of the priesthood? Is it like a corporate or feudal political landscape?

 

6. Judging from what I've gleaned from the Lexicanum articles, the Mechanicus devoutly abhor artificial intelligences (despite that being what the "Machine Spirit" is, lol) and are VERY divided on the issue of protecting ancient Imperial technology versus improving it. Why is this such a problem for them?

 

7. Along the same lines as the last question, why do they have robots in their ilk? I thought they abhor artificial intelligence? Isn't a robot driven by an A.I.?

 

8. So Titans all owe some allegiance to the Mechanicus, from Knights and Warhounds all the way up to Warlord and Imperator. How do they maintain ties with Titan crews who have sworn allegiance to Astartes Chapters, Militarum Regiments, or have struck out on their own as freeblades or members of independent houses?

[Dark Bjoern]

1. How does an individual from the vast and disregarded masses join the Cult Mechanicus in the first place?

There´re differnet ways to join the ranks. Some by birthright and some by hard work and devotion to the Omnisiah. A forgeworld is not only a fabric run by tech priests. Millions over millions citizens are common people. They work for the mechanicus like any other employee. If someone shows more dedication for his work, his overseer might introduce him into the cult.

Good sources for that are the novels Titanicus and the Mars triology

 

2. How does an inductee advance through the ranks of the Priesthood? The Skitarii?

Adepts: By hard work and/or through intrigues. Skitarii: By surviving lang enough and showing skills in leadership

 

3. What sort of life does a Mechanicus member live if he or she is a member of the Priesthood?

You shoud read the various mechanicum/mechanicus related books like Titanicus, Mechanicum or even Know no Fear.

 

4. What exactly is a Fabricator General and why is Belisarius Cawl just an Archmagos Dominus? (Shouldn't he be like, the leader of the cult?)

The Fabricator General is the leader of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He´s elected by a conclave of magi/arch magi from all faorgeworlds. He´s also a High Lord of Terra. To become the Fabricator General it´s not enough to be a great engineer you also need to be a great politican and a much greater intriguer. You need a lot of support from other archmagi.

I guess Cawl was busy with his work and/or shows no interests in politics.

 

5. What kind of politics are involved once a member somehow progresses to the higher ranks of the priesthood? Is it like a corporate or feudal political landscape?

Read Mechanicum and Titanicus. Both books gave a good insight to the political and social life of a forgeworld.

 

6. Judging from what I've gleaned from the Lexicanum articles, the Mechanicus devoutly abhor artificial intelligences (despite that being what the "Machine Spirit" is, lol) and are VERY divided on the issue of protecting ancient Imperial technology versus improving it. Why is this such a problem for them?

A machine spirit is nothing else then a computer. An AI is more then that, i guess you can compare it to Data from Star Trek.

 

7. Along the same lines as the last question, why do they have robots in their ilk? I thought they abhor artificial intelligence? Isn't a robot driven by an A.I.?

Don´t mix up AI and the machine spirit. The various Battle Automata are simply driven by commands given by a magos or in their abcense by a programmed behavior. AIs are selfaware and selfthinking like the Iron Men. 

 

8. So Titans all owe some allegiance to the Mechanicus, from Knights and Warhounds all the way up to Warlord and Imperator. How do they maintain ties with Titan crews who have sworn allegiance to Astartes Chapters, Militarum Regiments, or have struck out on their own as freeblades or members of independent houses?

The Titan Legions and the Knight Houses are two seperate organisations.

The Titan Legions:

It´s not so easy. The boundaries between both organisations are blurry. The homeworld of a Titan Legion is always a forgeworld. They have close ties to that forgeworld. But they´re a force on it´s own. The elected leader of that forgeworld has no direct control of the legion. They will of course defend their homeworld. But even the Mechanicus have to ask if they want titan support for an expedition fleet. But the Leader of the Titan Legion will the call for aid from their homeworld not be unanswered.

Titan crews can´t become freeblades, that´s a knight thing. And they will not swear allegiance to a Chapter or a AM Regiment. At best they will swear Oath of some kind to them. But they must have a good reason to do so. Most reasonable is the rescue of a titan crew or salvation of a fallen engine. The Titan Legion will not forget such a deed and will repay their dept when they get the chance.

​The Knight Houses:

​Everything i´ve written about the Titan Legions you can take for the Mechanicus Knight Houses. There are some exceptions: a Mechanicus Knight can become a Freeblade. And a Mechanicus Knight can be permanently attached to a Titan Legion or a Skitarii battle group. If they do so, they will incooperate the Legion/Skitarii heraldic into their own.

​The Questoris Knight Houses are something different. They love their independency. They fight for the Imperium when the call to arms comes. For whatever reason they might have, a noble can become a freeblade. House Hawkshroud for example is known for their oathes to their allies. And it´s not unusual for a Hawkshroud nobel to leave their house for a while (or permanently) to join a SM/AM strike force for a crusade. Those Knights will add the Chapter/Regiment/Crusade heraldic to their armour.

[Yodhrin]

1. How does an individual from the vast and disregarded masses join the Cult Mechanicus in the first place?

 

2. How does an inductee advance through the ranks of the Priesthood? The Skitarii?

 

3. What sort of life does a Mechanicus member live if he or she is a member of the Priesthood?

 

4. What exactly is a Fabricator General and why is Belisarius Cawl just an Archmagos Dominus? (Shouldn't he be like, the leader of the cult?)

 

5. What kind of politics are involved once a member somehow progresses to the higher ranks of the priesthood? Is it like a corporate or feudal political landscape?

 

6. Judging from what I've gleaned from the Lexicanum articles, the Mechanicus devoutly abhor artificial intelligences (despite that being what the "Machine Spirit" is, lol) and are VERY divided on the issue of protecting ancient Imperial technology versus improving it. Why is this such a problem for them?

 

7. Along the same lines as the last question, why do they have robots in their ilk? I thought they abhor artificial intelligence? Isn't a robot driven by an A.I.?

 

8. So Titans all owe some allegiance to the Mechanicus, from Knights and Warhounds all the way up to Warlord and Imperator. How do they maintain ties with Titan crews who have sworn allegiance to Astartes Chapters, Militarum Regiments, or have struck out on their own as freeblades or members of independent houses?

 

1. Generally speaking techpriests come from the ranks of a Forgeworld's population of Menials(human workers so low on the pecking order they're considered less valuable than Servitors), discovered through routine genetic testing or because their work output evokes some holy pattern. People do enter the priesthood from non-Mechanicus worlds but it's a lot less common - even most of those who end up working in Mechanicus-bonded guild manufactories won't actually be inducted very far into the Mysteries, but a visiting techpriest might take notice of a particularly devout or effective worker.

 

2. For the priesthood a combination of politicking, performance statistics, and in some cases rediscovery of archeotech. For the Skitarii it's purely a matter of performance.

 

3. That rather depends on their discipline. One techpriest might spend their entire life connected to a Forgeworld's datascape by a spinal plug just processing info, some will be akin to monastic monks, many will have lives not that different to a modern factory foreman except for the whole superstition and hacking off bodyparts to fit augmetics thing.

 

4. All Forgeworlds have a Fabricator-General or equivalent rank and they are the ultimate leader and authority there. The Fabricator-General of Mars is also the leader of the whole Adeptus Mechanicus and also typically sits as a High Lord. Cawl isn't the Fabricator-General because he's a stinkin' Heretek guilty of vile invention and ingenuity.

 

5. Feudal, though not quite to the level of the old Mechanicum which was bordering on Game of Thrones territory. The extact social structure of any given Forgeworld would depend on local custom and tradition - the Mechanicus is more unified in dogma and doctrine than, say, the Ecclesiarchy, but there's still a fair amount of variation from world to world.

 

6. There's a few things to unpack for this one.

a) Regarding AI & Machine Spirits - it's a tad more complex than that. The Machine Spirit isn't AI, or at least it isn't only that, it's a broad concept that encompasses non-sentient but complex software(like the distinction between a VI and an AI in Mass Effect), wetware-based autosystems, all the way down to some ignorant Guardsman believing his rifle's stopped working because he's made its spirit angry rather than because some internal componant has burned out. There may even be some psyk effects at play given the way worship and the Warp work in 40K. While no doubt some Heretikal magi have used the idea to conceal their AI research, in theory AIs don't qualify as a Machine Spirit. The repuganance commonly held for Abominable Intelligence by the Mechanicus is due to several factors -  AIs rebelled against humans during the Age of Strife slaughtering billions; AI's can self-improve, they don't need to obey the sacred tenets of the Cult Mechanicus or seek enlightenment through the union of flesh and machine; and the Emperor who is worshipped by most in the Mechanicus as the Omnissiah, the living incarnation of the Machine God, decreed AI forbidden.

 

b) On the technology front, they're a lot less divided than some of the more recent GW Studio fluff output implies. Innovation and experimentation are heresies, by the doctrine of the Cult humanity had already achieved communion with the Machine God during the Golden Age of Technology(which everyone else refers to as the Dark Age of Technology, probably because of all the rogue AIs slaughtering people) and the ultimate expression of that is the STC, the Standard Template Constructor. Seeking out STCs or "discovering" them through divine inspiration while studying existing STC blueprints are considered the only "pure" sources of knowledge. Very occasionally they will sanction technology gained from other sources, but only after rigorous examination and prayer has confirmed some relationship to existing STCs. Officially, anyway. Most of the Mechanicus follow the fairly strict dogma, but not everyone, and while most aren't mainstream there are as many dissenting factions within the Mechanicus as there are within the Inquisition or the Ecclesiarchy. The really radical ones will generally keep their heads down to avoid being exterminated, and even the more run of the mill chancers who just like to tinker a wee bit will do so surreptitiously.

 

7. Robots aren't driven by AI, no. Well, kinda. There are, broadly, two types of Robot; those driven by Doctrina Wafers, and those driven by Cybernetica Cortices. Wafer-bots do what their futuristic punch-cards tell them to do, they're as dumb as Servitors and can only perform actions they have been explicitly instructed to. Cortex-bots use much more complex neural tissue and rather than explicit if>then instruction sets they're given a basic intelligence about equivalent to a trained animal, which lets them be much more adaptable when they're not being directly commanded by a priest via a Cortex Controller. Unfortunately they also have a tendency to get a little too autonomous over time and stop accepting commands and even proved more vulnerable to Chaos corruption, so they were mostly destroyed in the wake of the Heresy and the few that remain are locked away for use only in the most dire emergencies.

 

8. The Titan Legions are part of the Mechanicus itself. They're semi-independent in terms of their operation, but the Collegia Titanica is a part of the Mechanicus hierarchy in the same way as the Ordo Reductor or the Skitarii Legions. They'll generally obey the directives of the Fabricator-General of their host Forgeworld, but beyond that they respond to Petitions that either call upon ancient pacts or debts or promise some resource or a chance at glory. Knights are something else - some Households reside on Forgeworlds themselves and in practice operate very much like Titan Legions, some will be allied to the Mechanicus in exchange for technical expertise, and plenty owe no fealty to the Mechanicus at all and will aid or interact with them only as they see fit.

[Battybattybats]

Excellent answers already but i'll add some further detail on a few. I'll put spoiler tags on the sources/examples of many things but consider that this whole post by it's nature may be considered quite spoiler-rich for a number of stories/novels.
 

1. How does an individual from the vast and disregarded masses join the Cult Mechanicus in the first place?

 

2. How does an inductee advance through the ranks of the Priesthood? The Skitarii?

 

3. What sort of life does a Mechanicus member live if he or she is a member of the Priesthood?

 

4. What exactly is a Fabricator General and why is Belisarius Cawl just an Archmagos Dominus? (Shouldn't he be like, the leader of the cult?)

 

5. What kind of politics are involved once a member somehow progresses to the higher ranks of the priesthood? Is it like a corporate or feudal political landscape?

 

6. Judging from what I've gleaned from the Lexicanum articles, the Mechanicus devoutly abhor artificial intelligences (despite that being what the "Machine Spirit" is, lol) and are VERY divided on the issue of protecting ancient Imperial technology versus improving it. Why is this such a problem for them?

 

7. Along the same lines as the last question, why do they have robots in their ilk? I thought they abhor artificial intelligence? Isn't a robot driven by an A.I.?

 

8. So Titans all owe some allegiance to the Mechanicus, from Knights and Warhounds all the way up to Warlord and Imperator. How do they maintain ties with Titan crews who have sworn allegiance to Astartes Chapters, Militarum Regiments, or have struck out on their own as freeblades or members of independent houses?

1. varies from world to world and circumstance to circumstance. Some clone existing personnel, some set tests for applicants. Some imperial worlds are entirely Mechanicus (forgeworlds, worlds based purely around research etc), others have Mechanicus on them. Skitarii and Servitor origins can vary from forgeworld to forgeworld too, recruited vigilantes amongst the workers with tattoos of the cybernetics they hope to one day receive may become skitarii, some skitarii leaders are knight house nobles who suffered a complication when implanting the cybernetics that enable bonding with a knight but whose unique though now damaged brains still make for excellent battlefield leaders. Servitors may be sentenced criminals, vat-grown clones or press-ganged workers.

2, ah well it's a somewhat feudal and political system of patronage and subterfuge and politicking as well as rather intense competition ruled over by a nearly ageless elite of questionable sanity thanks to the effects of millennia of paranoia jealously guarding their accumulated knowledge from one another and side effects of juvenat treatments (Battlefleet Gothic Explorator article, also a great source for the major princuiples of the Mechanicus faith!)

4, The Forgeworld Horus Heresy material has some great bits about the many varied titles and hierarchies of Mechanicum era forgeworlds, how much that is replaced by standardization in the 41st Millennium is unknown.

5, There are a lot of sub-sects of the Mechanicus. It is an empire of it's own inside the Imperium and on which the Imperium depends. It has it's own Assassin organisations (The Cydonian Sisterhood is but one of these! see:

Heresy novel Mechanicum, short story Zero Day Exploit

) it's own Inquisition of a sort in the form of Data Proctors (See:

Knights of the Imperium

) it's own doctrinal splits (see: The Moirae Schism in various edition timelines) i also recommend the recently out of print The Lathe Worlds supplement for the Dark Heresy rpg by fantasy flight games.

6, let me quote the Universal Laws (which originate iirc in the Battlefleet Gothic Explorator Fleet material)
 

 

The Mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus

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

The Warnings of the Cult Mechanicus

• The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path.
• The soul is the conscience of sentience.
• A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
• The Soulless sentience is the enemy of all.
• The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
• The Machine Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.
• Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the Machine Spirit.
• To break with ritual is to break with faith.
   

Soulless sentience is the trouble with A.I. Below sentient level A.I. is fine. Anything really sophisticated is usually (or meant to be) a cyborg with enough bio-material to ensure it has a soul (even the larger missiles and torpedoes! A hunter-killer missile has biological components, and note that Galvanic Rifles fire 'servitor' rounds that adjust aim towards the target in flight, these may well include some biological nerve components). This dates back to the Men of Iron and other problems, when humanities A.I.s tried to take over back in the Dark Age of Technology. There's multiple incidences that suggest that this history may be more complicated than it appears, and that existing standard technology may be far more sophisticated and self-aware than the Mechanicus themselves understands, see

Heresy short story Kryptos, Heresy short story The Kaban Project, Heresy novel Mechanicum, Heresy Novel Cybernetica, Heresy short story Myriad, the ... Of Mars trilogy, and particularly the novel Death of Integrity

 

 

Some machines have digitized biological minds uploaded into them, often this is animals like bears and wolves in the case of Titans, but also includes some of the Binharic Saints/Apostles See:

Knights of the Imperium