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What did the Emperor intend for the Mechanicum?


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This question has been on my mind for a while now. 

 

If the great crusade had gone as planned what would the Emperor do about the Mechanicum?

 

The treaty of Mars seems to be all about pragmatism and expediency on the part of the Emperor something of a necessary evil  to get

 

the materiel needed for his Great Crusade without crippling his nascent armed forces and wasting valuable time in a war with Mars.

 

However at the end of the great crusade would that still be the case ? 

 

Would he let the treaty of Mars stand allowing the Mechanicum to keep their religion (which seems to contradict the Imperial truth) and

 

semi independence within the Imperium, or would the legions have been unleashed on Mars and it's stellar empire of forgeworlds to

 

take back technology and it's means of production.

 

I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) that it has been at least implied that had the webway project been a success then the Navigators

 

would have been eliminated. So did the Emperor have a similar plan for the Mechanicum and if so what would it have looked like in it's

 

execution? If this has been explicitly stated anywhere could someone please point me in the right direction if not informed speculation

 

will do nicely :biggrin.:

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i dont think a war with them would have been his plan out of all the groups in the universe at that time realisticly they are the only ones capable of fighting him to a standstill. I think Lorgar would have been in his element converting forgeworld after forgeworld into the truth the rapid techniclogical advances on these worlds no unhindered by superstition would have outstripped mars pretty fast IMO

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I think, and I'm still early in the books, so may be very wrong, that his next phase was to do something with the Webway and 'awaken' humanity to the warp and its denizens in some form of controlled manner, so the dichotomy between the 'truth' and the 'imperial truth' may not have been such an issue?

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All-out war would never have worked - as humanity expanded outward, the Imperium only ever became more dependent on the Mechanicum for supplies and materiel, not less. 

 

I have to assume he had some kind of long-term plan to slowly integrate them into his vision.

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Perturabo in his primarch novel had an ordo chronos adept furnish him with schematics based on just the science, though only problem was the mechanicus symbol on the pages, otherwise he considered them perfect. They are capable of going straight science but you have to really twist their arm to do it. I think the Emperor wanted to bring them back to proper science and invention over time. I could see Ferrus, Vulkan etc having the same attitudes to tech in the Imperium. 

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Once a successful webway had been setup, I can see the need for the Mechanicus certainly diminishing. Much less need for spacecraft, less weaponry as the crusade ends. I could see a bloody engagement happening, or I could see them being steered toward The Emperor's will. Given they revered him as The Omnissiah, I could honestly see it going down either way.
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Once a successful webway had been setup, I can see the need for the Mechanicus certainly diminishing. Much less need for spacecraft, less weaponry as the crusade ends. I could see a bloody engagement happening, or I could see them being steered toward The Emperor's will. Given they revered him as The Omnissiah, I could honestly see it going down either way.

 

The Imperium is much like the Roman empire, a stagnant empire is a dead empire. Mechanicus would still be very much relevant even if the Imperials tapped into the web way successfully. There will always be a new enemy over the horizon and within due to the Imperium's size. 

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Either he would of allowed his legions to grow to such a degree that he could destroy the Admech swiftly with the Webway(How do you defend from 100,000 spawning in the back of your base?) or he would of slowly integrated the Imperial Truth more and more into Admech society. He also had the option of slowly removing the most devote of their followers(Assassins) and replacing them with priests like Cawl.

 

Remember he had to get rid of the Space Marines too and he wasn't going to be able to do it like the thunder warriors so maybe he was saving them for that final war.

Edited by Black_Knight
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To Purge them eventually, hence why I find the theory of wiping out the marines stupid the crusade would have never ended with the conquest of the milky way, but thats another topic.

I think allot of the mechanicum would have sided with the emperor & accepted his new direction for use of technology, remember to him he is the machine god.  Many would not and a civil war with the Imperium on the side of 1 faction of the mechanicum would prevail.  Not all tech priests and adepts were backwards, remember the girl from mechanicum and of course Arkan Land there are plenty of adepts who would grab the freedom the Emperor would give them with open hands.

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I'm not sure. The Emperor intended to conquer the galaxy. With all the encroaching threats the unforeseeable future may hold (the Tyranids for a start and how many other "unknown" races are yet to be a threat in the far future) it doesn't make sense to demilitarize your strongest asset.  Scale down or impose a limit per legion however, most definitely! yet  only enforce this when the galaxy is secure (if such a thing is even possible) or re introduce a reintegration program for astartees, allowing them to potentially have some form of retirement.

 

In terms of the mechanicus however, they have always been a "We do as you ask but not as you command" sort of establishment.  Ironically a very archaic form of establishment for those who work towards technological excellence. They have  also always been a sort of  Red Elephant in the room in terms of identity. Are they apart of the Imperium or not? Would they support the Imperium in a time of crisis or exploit them?  It's really hard to get any sort of bearing on them. I'd imagine ambiguity around potentially the 2nd most powerful faction in the imperium would lend weight to "annihilate the threat" scenario. But what if they could be proven worthy and loyal, would they still be wiped out?

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The Emperor does come off as discarding things that have become useless to him sometimes, but I'm curious about how much of it is "you have outlived your usefulness" and how much is "you've gone from an asset to a liability."

The nuance is subtle, but it amounts to whether you get rid of someone because you don't need them anymore or because they've gone on to do more harm than good—when they've not become an actual threat.

Incidentally, for all the things the Emperor was a hypocrite about, self-sacrifice doesn't seem to be one of them and as such, I wonder if he'd actually have bowed out and let the curtain fall if he had indeed managed to safeguard humanity from all foreseeable threats.

Focusing on the Mechanicum, I've gathered that there was more evidence in favor of the Emperor getting entirely blindsided by the Heresy (or at least by its scale and/or who turned out to rebel) than seeing it coming. Meanwhile, bits and bobs I've read on this forum point towards preparing himself for a war against the Mechanicum while they themselves carefully planned for a future optimal for them; for them alone, if necessary.

If this information checks out, without the Horus Heresy, civil war between the Imperium and the Mechanicum wasn't a matter of if but a matter of when. With the sole variable being who fires the first shot.

As the God Empress of Mankind points out, it wouldn't be "everyone in the Imperium" against "everyone in the Mechanicum." Some of the latter would side with the Emperor, some of the former would side with Mars—or more probably, against the Emperor.

Regardless of whether "what's left of the Mechanicum" is actually all of them because several miracles happened and there was no war or not, it's possible he might have had to enforce his own 'Codex Mechanicus.' Shielding mankind from Chaos is useless if the Half-Men of Iron wipe it out anyway, and the one core principle of Guilliman's Codex Astartes that was NOT negotiable was making sure no one could wield enough power to threaten humanity's existence ever again.

A Fabricator-General sounds like someone who could be such a threat. He wouldn't even need to take up arms, all it'd take is making sure everyone else wouldn't be able to. He's literally in charge of all the equipment in the Imperium, and "High Lords of Mars" has such a nice ring to it...

I'm not up to date with the human council established by the Emperor before the Horus Heresy but if they're anything like their successors, there are several counter-powers at work, even if they're fueled by each High Lord's personal interests. I'm not so sure about the highest echelon of the Mechanicum.

If he intended or expected to be out of the picture when a new existential threat appears—something I'm not sure can be verified—I can only guess he assumed the various leaderships of humanity would unite against it and go back to bickering among themselves once mankind's survival was secured once more.

I've been told the War of the Beast didn't quite work out that way, but hindsight is 20/20.

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I think it all boils down to mutual need.

 

The mechanicus need the manpower of the imperium as much as the imperium need the weapons they supply them with.

 

Mutual benefit will always overshadow potential threats or even coo's. If mars going renegade in the biggest imperial civil war didn't guarantee their demise not much (if anything ever) will.

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