Mechanicus Lore Question

[Calnus]

I seek the knowledge of our Machine-God worshipping brethren!  My Blood Angels Successor chapter is working (secretly we presume) upon a Knight or Warhound class war machine for Apocalypse scale conflicts.  While under construction, it was pointed out to me that the size of construct I am aiming for is rather the sole prodcut of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and not something a chapter of Marines is supposed to have.

 

So, is there any background of the Mechanicus I can prevail upon to gain custody of this mighty walker for my marines?  I already have the fortress-monastery located upon a world that is a heavy mining center (they are based there to protect it and its trade lanes), could that leverage the disposition of a Warhound-class machine to the marines for large-scale conflicts?

 

I know I could always claim it as an allied walker, but I'd like to give it a good backstory, and paint it in the army's current colors (bronze, red, black).  Suggestions?

[*Furyou Miko]

Knights and Titans are the sole purview of their ruling organisations - the Knight Houses and the Titan Legions respectively. Both are normally considered part of the Adeptus Mechanicus to those outside the Mechanicum, but consider themselves to be separate but allied political units.

[IamJacksUserName]

There is also nothing stopping your marines from closely allying with the adeptus mechanicus as your world is such a valuable source of materials required by the mechanicus.

And as your marines so valliantly guard the mechanics installations on your home world the mechanicus certainly wouldn't mind if your marines took a war hound or two out for a spin.

[dswanick]

There is also nothing stopping your marines from closely allying with the adeptus mechanicus as your world is such a valuable source of materials required by the mechanicus.

And as your marines so valliantly guard the mechanics installations on your home world the mechanicus certainly wouldn't mind if your marines took a war hound or two out for a spin.

The Mechanicus is as likely to allow an Astartes to "take a Warhound out for a spin" as a Catholic priest is to let a Mormon officiate a Mass. And that's assuming that the interface technology in a Titan is not completely incompatible with Astartes physiology and cybernetics.

[thade]

Dswanick, Miko, and Jack speak the truth: no way they'd let your marines pilot and manage the Titan themselves. Whatever Legion within the Ad Mech could rightfully lay claim to the Titan would be the ones that repair, maintain, and operate it.

 

What I think you want to do here, Calnus, is - as Jack suggests - forge a strong relationship between your chapter and the Ad Mech group that lays claim to your Titan. Maybe your chapter has been regularly handing off salvaged bits of old tech to them for a few centuries; and maybe there was a large scale conflict on their forgeworld where your marines were dug in defending them for years; perhaps that conflict is still ongoing. Your marines find and secure a Titan, and then they protect it while the proper custodians of it breathe life back into its spirit.

 

At the end of that conflict, whatever it was, the bond is permanently forged between your chapter and their house. Now your marines need to save (I dunno, something...their primary recruitment world) and the odds look very grim. They have strong allies in that Titan Legion though, and they bring the prize you gave them to help you.

[Squirrelloid]

I thought the point of apocalypse games was 'throw everything you have on the table'?  At which point, a titan or knight shows up.  They're all imperials, no big deal.

[dswanick]

I thought the point of apocalypse games was 'throw everything you have on the table'?  At which point, a titan or knight shows up.  They're all imperials, no big deal.

Correct. But that's a far cry from claiming that a Space Marine not only has the physical ability to interface with a God-Machine, but has the willpower to successfully bond with it and the arcane knowledge to direct and control it.

[BassWave]

 

I thought the point of apocalypse games was 'throw everything you have on the table'?  At which point, a titan or knight shows up.  They're all imperials, no big deal.

Correct. But that's a far cry from claiming that a Space Marine not only has the physical ability to interface with a God-Machine, but has the willpower to successfully bond with it and the arcane knowledge to direct and control it.

 

Actually that's not even the problem. The novel Helsreach has shown that a lone Master of the Forge is capable of doing just that albeit with an Ordinatus. So its not too much of a stretch that the same can be done with a titan. However the problem is acquiring the titan, transporting it, maintaining it, and keeping the Mechanicus (and probably the Inquisition) from wiping you out just for trying got keep it.

 

Its more trouble than its worth for a marine chapter to keep a titan. It would be easier for that chapter to just form a close alliance with a Titan legio as others have suggested.

[dswanick]

 

 

 

I thought the point of apocalypse games was 'throw everything you have on the table'?  At which point, a titan or knight shows up.  They're all imperials, no big deal.

 

Correct. But that's a far cry from claiming that a Space Marine not only has the physical ability to interface with a God-Machine, but has the willpower to successfully bond with it and the arcane knowledge to direct and control it.

 

Actually that's not even the problem. The novel Helsreach has shown that a lone Master of the Forge is capable of doing just that albeit with an Ordinatus. So its not too much of a stretch that the same can be done with a titan. However the problem is acquiring the titan, transporting it, maintaining it, and keeping the Mechanicus (and probably the Inquisition) from wiping you out just for trying got keep it.

Its more trouble than its worth for a marine chapter to keep a titan. It would be easier for that chapter to just form a close alliance with a Titan legio as others have suggested.

Hoever, the difference between a machine-spirit of an Ordinatus, and that of a Titan is the difference between a cherubim and an archangel.

[BassWave]

Same goes for an ordinary human and an Astartes, dswanick ;)

[thade]

Don't forget that techmarines aren't your ordniary Astartes, and not just because they trade more biology out for cybernetics than their brothers. They're a brainwashed and bona fide member of the Machine Cult: more Adeptus Mechanics than Adeptus Astartes, but still sworn to their brother-marines. They are a bridge between the two grouns: a living pact. They guarantee to their Chapter that the might of the Ad Mech will keep their warmachines in repair, and they guarantee to the Ad Mech that they'll personally see any tech recovered by the chapter rightfully returned to the nearest claimant or forgeworld. That goes double for the Master of the Forge.

[dswanick]

Same goes for an ordinary human and an Astartes, dswanick

Not exactly. From all the information I've ever read, an Ordinatus is the ultimate expression of vehicle warmachine technology. Take every system and device in any 40k vehicle (gun machine spirits, power train autorepair devices, augeries, etc...) give them the highest level of function and you have the technological underpinnings of an Ordinatus.

A Titan is a whole other level of tech. An amalgam of all of the above technologies, plus some that exist nowhere else. Bind it all together under the direction of a sentient AI with as much will as any human and then merge a man's personality to it using a Mind Interface Unit (a piece of technoarcana used in few other devices). Some of the past fluff indicates that removal of the pilot for extended periods of time leads to madness. Certainly not something you would dabble with in order to allow a Space Marine to "take a warhound out for a spin". And equally unlikely that a Chapter would want their Master of the Forge permanently ensconced in a Titan when there are other, better Ad Mech candidates who have been training since birth to manage and control a Titan in war.

[*Furyou Miko]

dsanwick, as far as I'm aware an Ordinatus is basically a tracked Titan, so...

[dswanick]

dsanwick, as far as I'm aware an Ordinatus is basically a tracked Titan, so...

Naw, no MIU, no fully-sentient AI.  An Ordinatus is a crowing achievement of technology, but nowhere do I find any information that it is at the same level of technomancy as a Titan.  I have no doubt they're close, but then again so is a Land Raider.

[Eddie Orlock]

It perplexes me sometimes how folk like to just assume marines can do stuff for no appearent reason beyond that they're marines. Black Library authors seem especially terrible for this.

 

From what I've gathered, to use a real life analogy, techmarines go off to Mars for a couple of years to get the 40k equivalent of a technical school diploma in battle tank repair to suplement their training as a jar-head. The master of the Forge is roughly equivalent to the general manager of the local garage, a mechanic with decades of experience. A titan crew member would be the wiz-kid who got picked out as a genious when he was in grade school and specially trained in a seperate program for the one specific role to a post-doctoral level just to be capable of managing the systems. Both are superhuman, but in very different ways.

 

Maybe it's like comparing the expected level of knowledge of the secrets of the order of a 2nd and a 32nd level freemason.

[*Furyou Miko]

Titans don't have a fully-sentient AI either. They have a mind-imprint built up of all of the previous Princeps who have ridden them that gives the impression of a personality.

 

Stop talking heresy.

[Eddie Orlock]

They have a mind-imprint built up of all of the previous Princeps who have ridden them that gives the impression of a personality.

What's the difference between the impression of a personality and a personality? If the titan could pass a Turing test, in this case have meaningful interaction with its Princeps, does it not have a mind of its own?

[thade]

 

 

They have a mind-imprint built up of all of the previous Princeps who have ridden them that gives the impression of a personality.

What's the difference between the impression of a personality and a personality? If the titan could pass a Turing test, in this case have meaningful interaction with its Princeps, does it not have a mind of its own?

 

 

This gets super, super complicated very quickly. We currently do not have anything I'd even call a reasonable definition of what a "personality" is; it's so ill-defined a term that the term "identity" has been picking up the slack for decades in psi research and diagnostics. (The DSM abandoned it. It's why things like "multiple personality disorder" are now like "dissociative identity disorder.") What is the difference indeed? Passing a Turing test doesn't mean the AI is necessarily equivalent in cognition to a human or exhibits any form of behavior/response pattern like a human...it just means the AI is at least good at duping that silly test.

 

Naturally, when an author says "impression of personality" they're primarily being artistic...they're not begging a hard-science analysis of their dubious phrasing. When I see that phrase, I picture a sophisticated (necessarily black-boxed) heuristics machine which assimilates complex response patterns (behaviors that follow from stimuli in the environment) from "systems" (in this case, Princeps) that it interfaces with. For instance, it may "know" to respond to the odor-detection of steak with salivation (because one Princep one time really really liked steak...no I don't know where he got steak) but that "impression" is totally useless to it: it doesn't smell things and even if it does it doesn't need nutrition in order to function. But it has a response pattern in its massive, massive network of response patterns that will respond to that stimuli if ever it encounters it.

 

So what happens when the most recent Princep plugs him or herself into a Titan and that Princep has a contradictory response pattern to steak: let's say this Princep thinks steak is incredibly nasty and throws up in his or her mouth when they see it. Well, if we take this analogy past steak and throw other emotions (response patterns) at it - things like fear, rage, depression, anxiety - and other stimuli to respond to - things like combat, various political agendas, and steak - you have the setting for a struggle. This gets even more complicated if there's give and take: that is, if it's not just the Princep that imposes its response patterns onto the Titan, but if the Titan can also impose its response patterns on the Princep.

 

You need to be very well trained to handle this kind of stuff; not only to restrict what kinds of patterns you allow through the link, but which patterns you allow to have control. Impressions of former pilots will necessarily address issues far more important than steak: things like a battle four thousand years ago between legions that are currently allied but the Titan remembers otherwise. That Titan maybe "wants" very much to nuke that other Titan for its markings or call sig, due to some battle nobody remembers and some long dead Princep who was very motivated to do just that. That's the kind of thing I'd call a "personality impression" and maybe you can see why that kind of thing could present major difficulties.

[dswanick]

Titans don't have a fully-sentient AI either. They have a mind-imprint built up of all of the previous Princeps who have ridden them that gives the impression of a personality.

 

Stop talking heresy.

An except from warhammer40k.wikia.com which corresponds with my general knowledge of the situation -

 

"Imperial Titans are unique in the sense that their computer mind-cores are sentient, albeit in a highly-erratic manner. This is in contrast with the usually non-sentient "machine spirits" or onboard computer systems found in many other Imperial war machines like tanks and armored vehicles. In the "Titan" comic, the newly connected Princeps was formally greeted by Imperius Dictatio inside its mental landscape; there was also Laudator Magnificat, which was forcibly reactivated after falling in combat. This proved disastrous: the mind-core had suffered severe psychological trauma from its "death", and began attacking everything in sight in its mindless rage."

 

Although, since I'm still waiting for my house to sell so we can move, I'm unable to vet all of the sources. But it does match my recollections.  Whether by construction or accretion, Titans are fully sentient in a way no other Adeptus Mechanicus construct is.

[Octavulg]

...Since when have the Titan Legions considered themselves politically independent from the Adeptus Mechanicus?

[IamJacksUserName]

I think the short answer to all this is to just make friends with someone in a Titan legion who has a remarkably similar paint scheme to your chapter.

[BassWave]

 

dsanwick, as far as I'm aware an Ordinatus is basically a tracked Titan, so...

Naw, no MIU, no fully-sentient AI.  An Ordinatus is a crowing achievement of technology, but nowhere do I find any information that it is at the same level of technomancy as a Titan.  I have no doubt they're close, but then again so is a Land Raider.

 

I believe you are mistaken. On page 291 of the novel Helsreach, Jurisian (the black templar Motf) hooks up to an interface that sounds nearly identical to the MIUs in Titans, in fact the novel all but says its an MIU. Secondly, when the Ordinatus is activated, there is this quote found in the aforementioned page, "Its vague reforming consciousness did not detect a gestalt host of abased Centurio Ordinatus minds..." The novel then goes on to describe how the machine's spirit is pissed off (seriously, when are they ever happy), giving further proof that an Ordinatus is much closer to a titan than you give it credit for. HOWEVER, it then goes on to describe that Jurisian is barely able to operate the machine because it was never meant to be operated by one man, but an enormous crew of servitors and priests. He was able to drive it and fire its main weapon, but reloading it took forever by himself.

 

The point is, an Ordinatus is very similar to a Titan in the way it operates. Therefor, if a Master of the Forge can manage to operate an Ordinatus, he could do the same with a Titan.

 

Secondly, after reading Mechanicum, Titanicus, Wrath of Iron, and Helsreach ( all of which contain scenes with Titans),it is apparent to me that what makes a Titan difficult to operate is the amount of willpower necessary  to operate it. I think we can all agree that Space Marines generally have strong will power. HOWEVER, I will restate that using a titan to its fullest potential, and maintaining it would not be possible for an Astartes chapter. Making a titan move and shoot is very simple stuff in comparison.

 

It perplexes me sometimes how folk like to just assume marines can do stuff for no appearent reason beyond that they're marines. Black Library authors seem especially terrible for this.

 

From what I've gathered, to use a real life analogy, techmarines go off to Mars for a couple of years to get the 40k equivalent of a technical school diploma in battle tank repair to suplement their training as a jar-head. The master of the Forge is roughly equivalent to the general manager of the local garage, a mechanic with decades of experience. A titan crew member would be the wiz-kid who got picked out as a genious when he was in grade school and specially trained in a seperate program for the one specific role to a post-doctoral level just to be capable of managing the systems. Both are superhuman, but in very different ways.

 

Maybe it's like comparing the expected level of knowledge of the secrets of the order of a 2nd and a 32nd level freemason.

 

No, I disagree with your comparisons. A techmarine would be on the level of a general manager of the local garage. A MotF would have access to many of the Mechanicus' forbidden lores, putting him more of the level of Tony Stark (without all the ego, or women). But as I stated before, knowledge is not the most important thing in piloting a titan, its willpower.

[thade]

I'm not sure I follow your evidence to the same conclusions, Bass Wave. Two systems can have extremely similar - even identical - interfaces that are controlled in very similar - even identical - ways but are otherwise entirely different. Here I'll construct a real world example, dropping terms like "MIU", "titan", "Ordinatus", etc. for things that are more familiar.

In this corner we have a 2012 Alienware gaming PC. It's running Windows 7, dual SLI 580s, and over-the-top liquid cooling. It's interface is a 104-key keyboard and a hand-me-down Dell 2-button mouse.

And in this corner we have a mid-1980s Tandy 1000 running CGA 16-bit color "graphics" and MS-DOS 3.1. It's interface is an 83-key IBM keyboard (the cool clangy-clicky kind) and a state-of-the-art (for the time) two-button mouse.

 

We can even rule out time as a variable and replace the Tandy with a more modern system that illustrates the same thing: a LeapFrog Clickstart child's toy. This also has a keyboard and a mouse and it's only designed and built within the past few years.

 

These devices have nigh identical interfaces, but that's where the similarities end.

 

Princeps spend their entire lives training and ritualizing the steps necessary to comprehend and control systems where the underlying OS's version of "General Protection Fault" is an attempt to harness control of your own mind instead of just throwing up an error message with an Okay button. I wouldn't expect the general techmarine to be able to do this effectively; in fact I'd expect the general techmarine to rather not try, as it would be dangerous and an affront to whatever Legion lays claim to the device. Any example found of this really strikes me as an exception rather than a rule.

 

So, I have to admit, I find the  one example we've been given dubious and the foundation for it even more so. Perhaps that's just me though.

[Eddie Orlock]

...(seriously, when are they ever happy)...

They're happy when tended to by the skilled ministrations of diligent techpriests who are cogniscient of the rites of maintainance. Usually this happens off screen in antecedent action. When is your car 'happiest'? After a tune-up? When are they 'unhappy'? After some teenagers spent the summer driving on sandy beaches and hasn't changed the oil once.

No, I disagree with your comparisons. A techmarine would be on the level of a general manager of the local garage. A MotF would have access to many of the Mechanicus' forbidden lores, putting him more of the level of Tony Stark (without all the ego, or women). But as I stated before, knowledge is not the most important thing in piloting a titan, its willpower.

Do we have any evidence of Techmarines returning for further training? Where would they aquire further initiation into the rites of the machine beyond what they got in their apprenticeship and on the job from other Techmarines practical experience who have no more formal training than they do.

 

A Techmarine is very much analogous to the Techpriest Enginseers attached to Imperial Guard formations, and Enginseers have been noted several times as being one of the lower orders of the cult mechanicus. They might lead field workshops and ocasionally field refit guns, but these aren't the higher mysteries. Minor Tech-heresies like re-fitting unapproved guns aren't exactly the inner workings of large plasma reactor design.

 

It'd be like me walking over to the truckstop and hopping behind the wheel of a highway tractor. I bet I could make it move, but it wouldn't be safe and would probably be criminal. Nevermind that I'm fully qualified for most cars and light trucks. Being qualified for a landraider operators licence doesn't qualify you for a titan permit. Even if you can make it move in an emergency it's not safe even for the operator and is liable to damage the machine. Maybe a better example would be if I strolled onto the local airport. I bet I could get the cessna running and maybe even take off, but it wouldn't be safe for anyone.

[Hellios]

An Astartes could control a Titan if he had a strong enough will. However, the average Astartes won't have a will that is strong enough to run a large Titan, and if they do they risk losing themselves. Among the Astartes there will be exceptional individuals (just as there are among the great unwashed masses) who will have the strength of will to run a Titan. This doesn't mean the Mechanicus would let them anywhere near one.