And you are happy with someone at your table trying to play that are you?

Someone with no interests, no opinions, no likes or dislikes, no attachment to anyone or anything?

A character who does nothing but stare blankly in to the middle distance?

--

As ever, I am less interested in what canon might say than in how profoundly retarded it is to write emotionless non-characters in to your entertainment property.

Just because a character is emotionless doesn't mean they have no personality. I don't know where you're getting that from. You just have to use different motivators, and recheck the definition of emotion. And not use overuse cliched plots, like love plots and whatnot.

jpomz said:

I've got to throw in with you here.

AluminiumWolf said:

Tech Priests are, well, priests of a cult that preaches the weakness of flesh and futility of emotion. That celibacy is in the doctrine seems a total no-brainer.

Just because they don't think with their dicks doesn't mean they aren't nuanced characters.

AluminiumWolf said:

AluminiumWolf said:

I really don't get your point. I don't think anyone on this thread has outright said that tech priests shouldn't have emotions, just whether they marry or not. The question isn't about emotional attachment which Tech priests clearly do have (to machines, to the ideals of their religion, even to the Imperium as a whole) but whether they would have emotional attachments to other humans.

Personally I think the idea that a character might have deep emotional attachments to purely abstract ideals to the exclusion of emotional attachments with other people both interesting from a story point of view and rather horrifying.

To answer the OP, personally I don't think Tech Priests marry or even have sex. They probably take the sperm/eggs/genetic material for future breeding purposes for leave it all in the hands of the Bio-Magos depertment.

As a rule I'd say that the vast majority of Tech-Priests don't arrange any permanent sort of marital unions. The Ad-Mech's power is absolute, there would be no political advantage to what is essentially already a monopoly that even the Ecclesiarchy is forced to acknowledge.

But, I also think that it's folly to imagine the Ad-Mech as some monolithic organization where no matter where you go it's always the same. The universe is vast and the permutations of the Ad-Mech could vary. Barring Forge-Worlds where the power of the Ad-Mech is absolute there are a possible myriad ways that tech-priests could live socially. Since the human body is also considered a 'machine' by the Biologis there could be vast sects of the Ad-Mech devoted to studying it (thus attempting to preserve it in it's purest form). Society and interaction is also considered a 'machine' and again most likely different Magi whom study it (perhaps even arranging underlings to perform tasks in it).

Though I think as a rule most tech-priests do not marry or even try to procreate, it isn't unlikely that one could find tech-priests who engage in certain social behaviors or physical behaviors as part of their dedicated specialty of research. Parts of this research might indeed be marriage or procreation.

The Ad-Mech is as wide and varying as the Ecclesiarchy so there is no 'definitive' answer.

I can definetly see where you're coming from but I would personally not allow Adeptus Mechanicus to accept that the body of flesh is a machine in the sense that the Adeptus Mechanicus would revere it. Even while Biologis might see the body as a kind of machine of weak flesh I think that they would consider it far less than the machine made from unyielding iron.

Maybe I'm a bit narrow-minded but I don't think that it would actually work like that except in some very limited and cases which the main body of the priesthood of Mars would frown upon.

From a purely practical point of view there needs to be a supply of new Tech Priests and they have to come from somewhere.

A sect who completely reject the flesh will quickly die out - a classic toxic meme.

--

See, I think you need an angle.

You can't have characters that are 'like Spock only with no deep seated emotions he struggles to suppress', or 'like Data but with no desire to be more human'. Well, you can but there is not a lot of character there once you get rid of the central pillar of their personality.

So if you are creating a character who on the surface is an emotionless robot, you need to be thinking about what angle you will take with them.

So IF you decide that most Tech Preists have all the personality of a lump of basalt, you have to then follow up with ...'but this tech priest is different because he is certain that he has been chosen by the omnissiah for greatness and will let nothing get in his way' or 'but this tech priest is different because he enjoys mind-******* anything with an interface jack'.

AluminiumWolf said:

I don't think you know what you're talking about. Tech priests recruit from non priests. All you have to do is join. Also, the second deviance you listed would certainly have the tech priest salavged for parts and soylent viridians. Differing from the norm in the Imperium is heresy. I respectfully disagree with your views on characterization, I actually find characters with no human attachments more interesting, because it takes different things to motivate them, and an in depth understanding of what is emotion and what isn't.

AluminiumWolf said:

They come from recruits. Just like those that are born with the psyker gene there are those that are born that have exceptional technical aptitude. Not to mention there are those that have the aptitude but are not willing to complete remove themselves from humanity to become one with the machine. They are the ones that would live on a forge world and marry. Their children would be indoctrinated into the tech priesthood from the day of their birth.

You also have to remember that those of the tech priesthood live much longer lives than their human counterparts, new supply is not vastly needed when you can extend your life long past the most expensive juvinate treatments available to only the über rich and powerful.

AluminiumWolf said:

There is no shortage of Catholic priests. Or are you trying to tell me most of them are actually illegitimate children of other priests?

Tech Priests are recruited from the populaces of the worlds on which they operate, both their very own Forge Worlds and the various worlds of the Imperium of Man.

All those inhabitants of the Forge Worlds that aren't Tech Priests, they're free to mingle, breed, and experience emotions in whatever little free time they have. It was determined right after their birth that they can never become Tech Priests, so it would be illogical to expect them to uphold the same high standard of behavior.

The problem you're creating has long been solved, in a logical manner.

AluminiumWolf said:

Lower ranking Tech Priests are like Spock, period. They are normal humans with metal bits stuck in various places who feel the whole scale of human emotions and bodily needs, but are expected to supress and rise above them. That includes pretty much all TPs below Magos rank.

AluminiumWolf said:

Tech Priests, even the entirely emotionless Magos, all have distinct personalities. They have beliefs, convictions, goals and rivalries. And they most certainly have quirks, sometimes truly unsettling ones.

Except for the whole sex and attachment thing, it's not really on the menu for them. And that's good, because the whole "priest of a church requiring celibacy that really likes his sexual pleasures" and "emotionless machine yearning for love" are such boring, overused cliches.

Morangias said:

Well sure, but there is a reason people use them. If you want to eschew the easy cliches you are going to have to work harder to replace them with something else. And it is very easy to fall in to the 'Machines don't marry' trap, whereby showing any individuality at all is seen as doing it wrong.

Real emotionless characters who stay that way are very, very rare. For a reason.

The Borg got Hugh, Locutus of Borg and the Borg Queen (and Seven of Nine, and whatever else happened in Voyager). The Cylons from Battlestar Galactica - well, I've still only watched about two and a half seasons but issues around just how much individual personality they had seemed to be a thing, and they did appear to be have got some hardcore monotheistic religion going. Universal Soldiers learn to love or hate.

So I just think it is going to be easier if Tech Priests come across as eccentric wizards rather that cold fish.

Basically, don't be in so much of a hurry to file off personality, because you will swiftly find that you don't have any left!

AluminiumWolf said:

And in the case of Tech Priests, they are.

On a given Forge World, you'll have hundreds of millions of laborers, millions of Skitarii, millions of Technomats and other low-ranking members of the clergy, and only a handful of Magos. Only the latter are expected to actually be emotionless.

AluminiumWolf said:

"Easier" does not a good story make.

AluminiumWolf said:

That's only a problem for the creatively limited. I ran and played dozens of Tech Priest characters on all levels, including those completely emotionless, No two came out alike, barring the necessary visual similarities.

I would say it is not marriage per se, but a geneticor should see the usefulness of mixing bodly fluids with another compatible mate to create an 'Ultimate Organic machine', simply a human who's genetic background might make him inclinded toward whatever the geneticor wants his creation to do, from high tech genetic scans and tests upon tests and analysis to get the perfect match, or do something akin to animal husbandry to, in a few generation (from what I saw, most TP appears to be the more patient type, or at least waiting to spend a good chunk of time to get their project comes to an end) , he'll have his almost tailor made troops, technomancers, servitor materials, workers, assistant....

Morangias said:

Then feel free to tell us about some of them.

AluminiumWolf said:

I've never played a tech priest, but I have run a few tech priest NPCs and one of my players run a tech priest PC. For NPCs I tend to err on the side of twisted freak. It's usually more fun when NPCs aren't quite what they seem or should be. My player, however, runs his pretty much by the fluff. His character is ten ways of torn over the ideal of perfection he believes in. To give an example, recently he invested a huge chunk of his resources in some entirely unnecessary replacements, because he put a friend above triage procedure and can't figure out how to handle it as anything other than a failure of the flesh. Yet for a very long time he's held off on pursuing body mods, because he recognises that his desire to turn himself into a mechanical monster is, in fact, a desire. And thus something he shouldn't have or at least try to suppress.

Basically, the character is batshit crazy. Just in a very outwardly calm, self-eradicating and probably eventually self-destructive way.