Recently I've been interested in writing short stories chronicling the adventures and such of my Dark Heresy group, mostly for my own enjoyment.

Lately we've been between overarching campaigns (mostly doing one-shot adventures that only last a session or two) so I decided to write a quick story detailing what my Tech-priest was doing immediately before being assigned to the group's acolyte cell. I sent it to a friend of mine, who's a literature major and serves as my "editor" of sorts, and he told me that he liked it and that he was interested in seeing some more stories featuring the Tech-priest, so I decided to do a series detailing his life and times.

I'm pretty well versed with a majority of the fluff, but one thing that I've never really come across (aside from a few blurbs here and there) are details of the early life of the average tech-priest. But I figured that someone had to know, so here we are.

My questions are thus:

How are potential TPs recruited? As in, what makes a person (child?) stand out to become a member of the AdMech? Is it aptitude with tech? Chosen at random? Volunteer? Does family pedigree factor into it? Etc.

And

How are beginner TPs taught? Are they taught in college style classes, with a number of other recruits being taught by a single "teacher"? Or is it an apprenticeship style thing?

Thanks in advance.

That is a very interesting question. The AdMech is a strange organization, more of a giant machine than anything else. Every part is a tool or cog custom made to fill a specific purpose. I would imagine that it really depends on how much sway the AdMech has on an area as to what liberties they take to find new Tech-Priests. Forge worlds are obvious places, but also hive worlds with a number of Mechanicus holdings and starships are ripe recruiting. As far as I know, AdMech screens the public with basic aptitude tests in order to determine intelligence and potential of young candidates. I'm not sure if the parents of the candidates are given an "offer" for the children or if it's a mandatory tithe, but given the renown of the Mechanicus on these worlds, I would think that parents would be delighted, or at the very least proud, to have a child in the AdMech. The children might then be raised in a scholam to better doctrinate them into the Cult Mechanicus. Everything I've ever read on this topic about the AdMech says they purposely build people into what they want them to become. Therefore, I think it's safe to assume that Tech Adepts are no different. Only a handful of these custom crafted apprentices have the potential to become a true Tech-Priest, others are given jobs befitting their skills(such as in the Forge world entry in the Inquisitor's Handbook).

For the few who manage to make the cut, either a hard life of ambitious scrabbling or a monotonous drudge of mindless tasks awaits. All techpriests start on the a low level as part of a task force. Rather that a AdMech collegia, they begin working in groups of thirty or so under a full fledged highly specialized Tech-Priest. The Dan Abnett novel Titanicus shows this quite nicely. Tech Adepts who prove themselves are advanced into a smaller group performing a more important task until he is apprenticed alone to another Tech-Priest as a form of adjundant. His apprenticeship is declared complete only after the Tech-Priest releases him from service to fill another need of the AdMech as a whole, or if his master expires, in which case the apprentice is expected to fill his place. That's the best of my knowledge on this, judging by the evidence I've managed to pick up over the years. Like I said before, each member of the Adeptus Mechanicus is more of a cog than a living breathing person. The weirdest part about it is that they like it that way. After all, weve all seen the Tech Heresy that spawns from tools forgetting their purpose...