How are techpriest supposed to eat or feed?
I mean, one of their starting implants is the Respirator Unit, whose description states that «the lower half of their face is covered with a network of grilles and tubing»: no mouth then. No teeth, no tongue, no way to swallow (solid) foods.

I know this question may sound silly but it was the hub of our group’s last session: in fact one of my players' new character is a techpriest who joined the other acolytes yesterday.

Of course - like many images show - not every techpriest has a respirator unit implanted but this player says he likes the idea of having one. Therefore I ruled that one of his Electro-Grafts is some kind of recharger: the techpriest plugs in and takes all the power he needs, which is then converted in nourishment.
Yet I’m not satisfied at all by this solution, for much of his body is still flesh and needs more than just raw energy: so I think it’ll be fitter to add a «solid-food plug» to the Respirator Unit or, even better, a pipe on his body he can drip-feed from with special nourishing, high-vitaminized fluids.

Just out of curiosity, did you deal with this matter in your games? Are there bits of information somewhere?

Hinged respirator unit; the tech-priest lifts it up and ingests liquid through a straw through what is left of his/her mouth. Should be suitably grisly.

Ingesting energy would seem to require the whatever it's called Talent, and realistically (if that's important in your game) that would be far too inefficient to subsitute for physical food.

Velvetears wrote some fan fiction here www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp that included references to nutrient pastes. The work mostly focuses on an Assassin, but her Tech Priest partner is well done for flavour.

...and I love the way the Tech Priest in that thread also has numbered facial expressions that only sometimes get it right.

Sorry for double post, double posting is heresy.

ZAP ZAP ZAP!

Techpriests have a Hidden Cavity (see Talents section). I guess that's where they put the food in

We had this discussion a few months ago. The novel Scourge the Heretic describes the Tech Priest acolyte munching a few mushrooms without having anything like appetite. In my opinion it really depends how strongly augmented (and often thus how highly ranked) a Tech Priest is. Those of Magos rank (or those with Prosanguine) most probably have some sort of other way to take up the needed nutritions without munching mushrooms...

Here I was thinking "intraveinous" and you people have come up with all sorts of things that are ten times more disgusting. I like it =)

You are crawing information that is classified as:

Forbidden Lore (Ad Mech)

Steve-O said:

• Stage 1 - eats normally, taste buds probably atrophied
• Stage 2 - eat food paste with a straw-like attachment extending from his/her throat
• Stage 3 - food paste now directly injected into stomach via some sort of tube leading to the torso's skin layer
• Stage 4 - intravenous nutrition directly into the bloodstream (maybe even as some sort of "fuel can" attachment?)

This could even lead to a whole new range of equipment for a Tech-Priest, such as a "portable stomach" - a box that decomposes and transforms any kind of organic material into edible form (read: absorbable fluids), complete with efficient waste management to draw the maximum amount of energy out of any given food ...

I'd assume most mid-ranking techpriests use nutrient paste which is inserted through one of their many whatever-those-do-tubes. Travelling priests would take a blender abroad which renders most kinds of food into the requisite nutrient slurry.

Taking a techpriest with you to a formal dinner and expecting him to eat something while there may be considered bad form by all present.

Cifer said:

Or down right hilarious depending on your personality.

ItsUncertainWho said:

It's times like this I wish these forums had a 'Like' button. Oh well.

I had addressed this issue much in the same way that already had been said, although I specifically stated that the Cult of Sollex made 'food pills' that can basically be slotted into a small opening under the skin on their members which then slowly leaks nutrients, counting as a single dose of rations. This worked well as my TP is a Cult of Sollex, but I see them as being more militant, and therefore more likely to need easy to handle and quick food sources. Maybe the Skitarii make a similar pill?

I just started a game as a techpriest and was thinking of this as well.

For my character, with the typical sorts of facial tubes, I figured when he needed to eat, he detached a tube from his chest-box that connected to the respirator and vacuumed up the food, which is shredded and processed and passed through the mouth and down the throat. That way, he could still get 'flavor input'.

the respiratory and digestive tracks cross in weak-flesh, but it is an obvious engineering problem. with a simple bypass system, air can enter the throat directly from the neck, and can include optionally routing a pipe past the nasal cavity for a sense of smell. being able to turn off smell with a valve could be useful. Communication is by a bionic vox implant.

what this ends up meaning, is that we now have removed the risk of choking from ingesting nutrition. having a sense of taste can be useful, but chewing is inefficient, especialy with teeth that can decay or break. therefore, it makes far more sense to graft the taste buds further down the digestive track, and replace the lower jaw with a mechanical food-chewing device, resembling a blender. Simply place food in the intake valve, close the bladed hatch to bite off a portion, and run the internal blender, before sending the nutrition past the chemical sensor and to the stomach. an ability to create a simple vaccum is also necessary in order to use straws.

now, some may have a mask-like faceplate, but this is merely a question of aesthetics rather than function. all you really need are filtered air inputs, a nutrition intake, and a vox-speaker.

For some reason I now had to think of this ...

DH Errata 3.1

The Tech Priest starting equipment entry on page xx should also include: 'Food processor or portable blender'.

Or should that be part of the bionic package?

"How do you like the stir fry pork Magos?"

Clunk, whizzzzzz-grrrr-zzzzzzz, clunk. Swoosh!

"Yes, very nice thankyou".

Probably makes exactly the same noises at the other end too.

Captain Xenon said:

Since we're going for efficiency, why go through the work of sending the food all the way through the mouth and the esophagus? Just have a hatch in the abdomen with the internal blender there next to the stomach. That saves room in the face for the vox implant and other implants that are more conveniently located in the head.

I always saw the priests as injecting some ready-mixed mash of proteins and nutrients directly into their stomach through some valve/tube thing. Always ones for efficiency, these cogboys. No chewing or other wastes of time, just ready-chewed, distilled, concentrated food-stuff straight home!

So: blenders, feeding tubes on mouth or stomach, pills, straws, removable parts... I’m delighted by the disgusting ways of feeding you thought up, they’re more than enough to take a bystander’s hunger away!

Come on guys, you're all missing some key points here. Why, oh why, would a Tech Priest tolerate such things as indigestion, potential food poisoning, and the continued necessity of ingesting the nigh-undigestable fibre? Answer: They wouldn't. The entire digestive tract would be removed and replaced with some odd and ancient machines that turn food into nutrients that can be absorbed by cells directly and then sent through the bloodstream on a swarm of tiny machines. Probably most of the excess energy gained from breaking the food down goes into the potentia coil.

Awww come on Bang Bang, we're just having a bit of fun.

By the way, I drew a sketch of a tech-priest eating, how do I upload it if the picture isn't already on the net?

Personally, I recommend imageshack.us - quick and easy!

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/59/techpriesteating.pdf/

pleased let me know if this doesn't work.

Z.

LOL - this drawing is awesome!

Hmmh, it seems I have trouble seeing it - just gives me an "X" on the website interface, and Acrobat cannot open the URL at all. Perhaps you could upload it in a normal image file type (gif, jpg, jpeg, ... bmp)?

(I didn't even know you could upload pdf's on imageshack >_>)