I am assuming that Priests of Mars are the engineers of the ship, or at least the main engineering officers. If so, where are the rules for them? The Chief Engineer would likely be a high level Dark Heresy Tech-priest if so, I assume.

How about the Explorator?

I mean, the Explorator wants to explore the galaxy for lost STC and such and such. But he or she's obviously not well funded or important enough within the AdMech to get his or her own ship so he/she has to make do with whatever means of transportation he/she can. In comes the Rogue Trader and says:

"Hey there, say I have a proposition. Im going to do some business on various different uncharted regions of the galaxy and I could sure use a knowledgeable Techpriest aboard my ship to keep the engine running and all that. So you get to go with me and prod different kinds of alien artifacts and pieces of STC that I find, and I get a reliable engineer aboard my vessel. Deal?"

Pretty much what Tybalt said.

The Havoc-class in my game runs about 2,000 crew in engineering, which includes about 40 junior tech-priests. The rest are ratings and lay members of the Machine Cult, performing the daily rituals of placation and maintainance by rote. Most of them came aboard as part of a draft from an Imperial Navy cruiser that was trying to end a multigenerational family feud between two of its engineering clans by removing one side of the argument. The priests are a mix of personnel seconded from the same cruiser and young adepts fresh from the Scintillan tech-seminaries. In addition to work with the drives and reactors, they are responsible for monitoring the genetic health of the engineering crew, who are understandably prone to mutation.

There are another nine dozen or so tech-adepts throughout the ship with other duties. The ones in engineering are specialists, and genetorium & propulsion is a larger departmentum than, say, cogitator support or auger calibration. The PC Explorator is the ship's senior tech-priest and in nominal charge of all members Adeptus Mechanicus onboard.

My set up is similar to Argoden.

There is a lead Tech Priest (Master of Enginarium who happens to be a player), quite a few supporting Tech Adepts, a bunch of enginseers (even more subservient tech types) and logicians (specialized near-servitors for cranking data or performing specialized tasks like keeping the plasma drives from overheating).

I have left the numbers deliberately vague so I can quickly modify to fit the storyline of the moment.

And the tech types are not restricted to only the engine room but do a lot of damage control, repairs, etc.

Godwinne

Godwinne Van Meer said:

I'll point out that the Logicians are a heretek cult dedicated to "progress" at any price. It's highly doubtful that the Adeptus Mechanicus would name a rank after them. I think the word for the position you're thinking of is "Technomat", people trained in rote maintenance rituals.

Godwinne Van Meer said:

I wasn't even allowing for servitors in my previous post. Engineering would have nearly a thousand of them, including some highly specialized models designed to resist the strong radiations, temperatures, and magnetic fields found near the genetorium and plasma vents. Even with added protection, breakdowns are commonplace and service lives are short - much like the regular ratings.

nick012000 said:

Actualy, Logister would fit better or, even more approreatly, a Lexmechainic (who's functio is to compile and ratinalize mass amounts of data faster then a cogitator alone could do).

Godwinne Van Meer said:

I thought this too. Does the highest level of Tech Priest from DH port over easily into the cheif engineer position?

I assume the more complicated chunks of a ship, like the engines, have massive numbers of crewman ranging from the junior tech-priests who keep the important bits blessed and perform maintenance rituals with the help of laymen to skilled technicians who were groomed by their fathers (who were groomed by their fathers etc. down the line) to pull the lever on the left if the red light goes on, until the red light turns green, then reset the lever. God-Emperor help the ship if one of them is colorblind. Anyway, I figure there are huge quantities of manual labor required to work levers, valves, and watch dials. They don't know what any of it actually does , just that doing it is a sacred duty. The guy who watched the pressure gauge doesn't understand anything about pressure buildup, he just knows that he needs to press a button when it swings one way and a different button if it swings the other. The button probably rings a bell that signals someone else to pull a lever, which opens a valve, which lowers another meter, which causes someone else to ...

... and so on.

Well, I have to think that they have at least a Victorian level of knowledge. Seriously, who wouldnt understand pressure build-up?

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

Nope, most of the menials have no clue what the buttons they're pushing actually do. They just know a ritual they have to perform to appease the machine spirit.

nick012000 said:

Highly debatable. The AM tech-priests probably encourage outsiders and lay members of the Machine Cult to do everything by rote and blind faith, but there's still origins to consider. Many hiveworlders are comfortable around tech and used to jury rigging it, and they often lack the religious background someone from a forge world would have. Void-born live there whole lives in space, and are likely to be more knowledgeable and more pragmatic than most tech-priests are going to be happy with. OTOH, they're also prone to superstitions and mistaken beliefs. No matter what your background, you'll never match the level of arcane knowledge that a skilled AM priest will have, but you certainly don't have to be an completely ignorant lump.

The truly clueless get stuck on sewage-clearance duties or in the galley - or both, if the crew's realy unlucky.

Argoden said:

Remember that many of those Hiveworlders will be comfortable around technology because they interact with the Mechanicus - sanctioned manufactories will make up a significant portion of the jobs on a Hive World, and the skills found in such places will be taught and sanctioned by the Mechanicus.

Argoden said:

Bear in mind that Voidborn will have a similar familiarity with Techpriests - afterall, growing up on starships mean you'll be exposed to the Mechanicus on a regular basis because those Techpriests are the ones performing the important rites aboard ship. While it may be passed down from generation to generation amongst the native crew, the knowledge will, at it's core, still be rooted in the teachings of the Mechanicus to lay-technicians and the like.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

If you get a chance, there is a movie you need to see, called "Sand Pebbles". Late 60's flick starring Steve McQueen as an engineering rating serving on a US gunboat in China. The ship has picked up a load of low paid Chinese servant-locals to do a lot of the scut-work, and the ones working in the engine room pretty much regard the workings of the boat's engines as magic.

There is a great scene where McQueen teaches Po-Han (one of the brighter coolies (played by Mako)) about HOW and WHY a steam engine works. You can just see the light come on as the knowledge works its way upstream.

That kind of curiosity and a willingness to tinker with and examine the unknown is highly frowned upon in the 40K universe however.

Me-can-icus/-Me-can't-icus. Depends on where you draw your lines. Somewhere there's folks doing it by rote. Somewhere there's someone who knows what they're doing.

Quite where that line is drawn is an odd 'un. I like and approve of the idea that the 'higher ups' are well aware of precisely why everything works the way it does. Getting promoted is a fine line between not being stupid and not being too bright. The basic workers buy into the religion in the same way that folks do today. They don't delve deep, they don't analyse, they probably don't even really think it over; they just do as they're trained. That's their job and they're good to do it.

As you progress through the ranks, some more and some others begin to see the stronger logical connections between things. They seperate out into the 'I do this but don't know why it works' and 'I do this and know why it works', presumably with their specialisation increasingly being found in the latter.

With that in mind, a ship's senior Magos (not necessarily their Explorator, but often one and the same) might understand the proper obesiances of tons of plasma power generators and void generators and the 'essential' ideas going into their workings (though perhaps not the intricate technology itself), but the inner workings of the warp engine itself could remain a solid mystery. Similarly

To my mind, I don't think a ship actually needs that many 'DH Techpriests' for operation. A few dozen to oversee things, but having too many would lead to the vessel becoming an Ad Mech ran ship! They'd seep out of the engine room then you'd have bored techpriests asserting to the Captain that they're absolutely necessary for overseeing toilet-flushing mechanism...

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

I'm pretty sure anyone with CL (tech), or trade (technomat) understands what pressure is, at least to the extend of your average middle schooler.

They could probably also know what the word or symbol for pressure gauge is (unless its archeotech), and that the needle going up means pressure is increasing, and that the needle being in the red is bad. The technomat probably even knows a ritual which MIGHT offset/prevent the buildup, if he has worked with this type of machine before.

I'd think that most of the workers in the engine room are lay people who have trade (technomat), with the smarter ones also having CL (tech). I agree that the total number of ad mechs is probably several dozen, and not all of them work in the engine room. There are probably also several hundred more underlings with trade (technomat) who work under them on these various jobs.

If a crew member or even a PC doesn't at least have one of these as basic skill then no, they don't understand pressure build-up. The feral born Arch Militant does not know what pressure is, the nobel born RT has servants to worry about such things, etc