I am new at playing DH and for my first character I decided to play a tech priest. I have not explored the religious aspect of the character. I have been playing him more of a Data like character. Not much emotion and just wants fix things. Now I am early on with this charter, just two game sessions. So there is till time to expand the character. I have read through the core book but, I haven’t got a full grasp of how to play the religious side. Do you feel it is more like a Druid where you are one with the machine? Or do you see Omnissah as a god where service to him is key. Tell me your thoughts.

The theology of the Machine Cult is complex and a little alien to our modern thinking. Also, I have never seen it clearly laid out in the background material. (Hey FFG, I'll say it again... a Mechanicus sourcebook would be great.)

From the Warhammer 40K (2nd ed) Codex Imperialis...

"According to the Adeptus Mechanicus, knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity and all creatures and artifacts that embody knowledge are holy because of it. The Emperor is the supreme object of worship because he comprehends so much. Machines which preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, and machine intelligences are no less divine than those of flesh and blood.* A man's worth is only the sum of his knowledge - his body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect."

Add to this an animistic belief that all artifacts possess a spirit and that spirit must be respected and a highly ritualized understanding of how technology works. Activating a machine in not merely the act of pressing the "On" button. Pressing the "On" button is part of a mystical invocation of the spirit of the machine, beseeching it to awaken and preform its function. (If you've ever begged your car to start on a cold morning when the engine just wouldn't turn over, you already have a basic understanding of this...)

*Note: this text predates the (IMO ill-advised) 3rd edition's inclusion of a pseudo-Butlerian jyhad into the 40K background.

I have found that getting into the mindset of tech priests, and any characters outlook on technology really, is one of the hardest things for people to do, especially those who are newer to the setting. This is partly because there are different ways to look at the Mechanicus, ranging on a spectrum from "know nothing of principles behind tech and all tech use is learned ritual" to "religious rituals purely a show to cloak restricted knowledge." Everyone has their own preference for how they're portrayed, but in general the religion aspects are animistic (even smaller machines having a kind of spirit that needs to be placated if it is to run smoothly) but with a higher power embodying the highest omniscient levels of knowledge (the Omnisiah)

As for roleplaying tips, I don't see most tech priests going around proselytizing as a cleric might. They know their beliefs are not exactly in accord with the more straightforward Emporer worship, and besides most have abysmal fellowship scores and are more inwardly focused. I could see them taking to task others who treat their machines and weapons as mere tools and show no respect to the machine spirits within. Or showing no tolerance for a poor scavenger scrounging up parts & tech without Mechanicus authorization or proper rituals. There really is some flexibility in how you want to play yours. Maybe he isn't as religiously inclined as other priests, but when interacting with other tech priests or on forge worlds needs to step up his religious rhetoric. I know once I described the Mechanicus to the tech priest in my game it was one of several things that eventually turned him more radical... his dream is to find some ancient human tech from before the cult monopolized technology. Another player, who since left the game, was more about becoming one with machines and replacing his frail flesh w/ bionics. Just keep in mind that certain technologies are heretical and would leave an orthodox T.P. aghast- true AI (Abominable Intelligence), blending the warp/demons and technology, messing around to much w/ humanities 'sacred' genes, cloning (I think), and such. This type of stuff might promote a religious response from a well roleplayed, puritan t.p. More "This tek-heresy is an affront to the Lux Omnisiah!" then "Capt., scans indicate this is hazardous technology."

FurtiveNoise said:

I favor the middle ground approach, which is in many ways the hardest for most modern players to understand. IMO, the Mechanicus understand the principles behind their technology but still sincerely believe in their religious rituals. That is to say that a Mechanicus automotive adept knows perfectly well what a carburetor does but he still believes that the carburetor, and the automobile, has a spirit which deserves veneration and respect. This adept knows perfectly well how to repair or replace the carburetor, but does so in the context of religious ritual because to do otherwise would be improper and an affront to the sacred nature of the work.

We today tend to separate religion and technology. We have a hard time accepting the idea of someone who understands all the inner working of a machine and still believes that the machine has an supernatural element that goes beyond the simple sum of it's component parts. I think that that understanding is the key to Cult Mechanicus. Your millage may vary...

>>Do you feel it is more like a Druid where you are one with the machine? Or do you see Omnissah as a god where service to him is key. Tell me your thoughts.<<

A little bit of both. Tech priests believe that all machines are part of the Omnisiah and he is part of all machines, yet he is also a reflection of the God Emperor - blessed be his reign and his servants forever - and as such an omnipresent entity in himself. The Omnisiah speaks to his servants through fluctuations in the machine spirits, signs in code or electrical impulses, which may direct them in their service - but, like the gods in our era, his messages are subtle and sometimes misunderstood; after all, his servants are still limited by the weakness of their flesh brains.

Using your Druid analogy, lesser machines are treated like simple plants or animals, part of the whole and sacred for that, but limited and serving their place in the greater program of techlife. Greater machines are venerated as symbols of the Omnisiah's greatness - like ancient forests or fantastic mountains are by druidic sorts.

It is the duty of the tech priest to interpret the needs of the machine spirits and promote their well being when possible. As with all things in nature, all things in tech have their place - weapons serve in once capacity, vox casters in another, and sometimes that places them in danger, sometimes it sees them destroyed ... it is a shame, but an understandable part of the cycle.

Anything which corrupts the purity of the machine spirit - demonic or void born energies, even the attempts to produce false spirits as in the case of A.I.s - is a horrific heresy to the Adeptus Mechanicus and to be apposed at all costs. Just as there is forbidden and corrupting knowledge in the spiritual realm, so too are their such things in the mechanical - knowledge which must be controlled and destroyed or hidden away for the greater good of the Omnisiah and all tech spirits.

Young priests, still learning their place in the religion probably have very limited understanding of the operation of things. They know how to start a vehicle and how to repair it, but not why these things are done the way they are, or why they work ... and they are always certain to perform the necessary rituals in the process. As one becomes further indoctrinated he begins to understand the anatomy of the machine - the way its mechanical humors interact with one another - and deeper mysteries open up to him. He knows now why fuel and electricity are like blood and breath to tech and how poor use and communication with a machine mind might cause it to become so confused its spirit must be cleansed and rebooted. (restored) But, like a christian priest studying medicine, he still respects these interactions as part of the Omnisiah's design.

The greatest of Magos and Archtechs truly begin to transcend the limitations of their flesh and become enlightened as they merge closer and closer to the machine spirit and the Omnisiah. Many may all but forsake their flesh forms through extensive augmentation, until only portions of their flesh brains and organic systems remain intact. For some this is seen as the ultimate achievement, as their thinking is no longer cluttered by the random information produced through emotion and human uncertainty ... some others, however, may feel that the place of the adeptus mechanicus is to bridge the barrier between men and the machine and see forsaking one for the other as a failure of philosophy. The machine spirit is glorious, but only as men do we possess the ability to truly appreciate its glory; this, I see, as an eternal debate within the hierarchy of the religion.

At least, that is how I see it.

I find it extremely easy to understand, as probably has anyone else thats owned pre-1980's cars without any EFI, ECU's and most analogue electronics equipment like amplifiers, that can be literally fixed with the application of vile curses/desperate prayers (depending if you're inside or out in the rain) and the liberal applications of hitting it really hard a few times... and checking the oil. The engineering side of my brain knows full well that its all sorts of things which make stuff stop working so I can fix or replace capacitors leaking oil, dry solder joints, stuck carberettors or air fuel meters, clogged fuel and air filters and loose belts, but that's beside the point, swearing, praying with the odd thrown spanner and hitting it makes ME feel better.

Its beside the point if you really want to have gremlins and spirits living in 40k machines, for the tech priests praying and hitting stuff to make it work, makes THEM feel better about it. Where this comes from is essentially the 18th, 19th and some 20th century where the industrial revolution brought about a number of technological changes which to some extent even the inventors of devices only really half knew how it worked and the legacy they left behind was maintained by engineers who for the most part knew even less to keep a machine working. But they did know through a combination of experience and rote learning how to maintain the machine to keep it working, they knew how to copy a broken component in a machine shop and they passed that onto the next generation after them, who for the most part knew ****-all about how it worked and maybe after several generations they could improve on the machine making a better moustrap so to speak but its usually a very slow, expensive process that often isn't needed.

Does making a 5hp steam engine bigger and now 10hp, make it better? Not really when you can fit two of them together side by side, your engineers can make sure they work because they've been doing it for generations and if needed they can find plenty of 5hp steam engine parts lying around because people have been making them for a long time. The other thing to consider is that phasing out the 5hp steam engines and everyone running 10hp engines is an expensive process in terms of materials, time and labour... the more pertinent thing though is the 10hp heretek engine is that you've just managed to annoy the absolute piss out of everyone involved in the manufacture, repair and maintence of the 5hp existing STC engine. The machinists hate you, the suppliers hate you, the spares admin guys hate you, the guys who fix it, really hate you... the guy you sold it to who had to wait 10 years for it to be shipped out from Mars really hates you even more because you've just given him something which will work for 5 years, then stop working, so he's got to send a message back to Mars (10 years) because his machine shop and engineers have NFI what to do to fix it, they send out parts (10 years) and someone to repair it. So, they can have an entire generation not knowing what artificial lighting is for 20 years, or they can hook up two of the old 5hp engines they had lying around out the back and have electricity.

The guiding principle of the machine cult in 40k is essentially two very simple things-

1: Keep stuff working, if you dont then you look incompetent and will soon find out that other people will get sick of you very quickly for being useless and wonder why they keep you around eating food. If you cant fix something which isnt a standard template then its BAD and must be replaced with something you can.

2: Keep the riff-raff out of the trade that is YOUR trade and justifying your place in the Imperium of mankind, if someone muscles in with something better... shoot them in the face to stop it and embargo anyone else who agrees with the now deceased heretek so they end up back in the stone age. Prayers and hitting things also keep the riff-raff away because they've got NFI what you're doing from any logical engineering perspective.

Thank you all for your input. You have given me a good starting point to open up gameplay.

You'll find plenty of information and inspiration here.

I especially like Reason' inspired input

I just wanted to put my 2 cents in

As i see the machine cult is its a mystery cult a tech priest don't preach, because he's a tech priest for the knowledge and the knowledge is restricted to the cult. Sort of like with the free masons, and like the Scientology its a layed organisation where every one i searching for enlightenment.

Just do the robot dance and talk in a goofy, halted monotone voice. No need to play up the religious aspects of the role.