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The machine spirit. It is inside all of the spirits, but one question remains. What is it? An extension of the emperor's will? I, personally, think it is the Void Dragon, a powerful C'tan, for a number of reasons. 1: The emperor fought a c'tan and sealed it in Mars, but couldn't kill it (powerful, trapped in home of techpriests). 2: Anakyr, a necron (the race who broke the c'tan into shards) can possess machines, this overriding the machine spirit. 3: The empror is holding the forces of chaos at bay, he can't be in all the tanks of the imperium at the same time, really.

It's the remnants of AI code that used to exist in just about every device made by Mankind during the Dark Age of Technology, mixed with the various attack/defense software used in the war against the Men of Iron, combined with the most destructive electronic warfare agents deployed during the Horus Heresy.

The concept of the Machine Spirit predates the Necrons' and the C'Tans' introduction into the IP.

It's the machines logic engine, people have become very dumb over ten thousand years that a simple inner workings of a pencil sharpener is now 'magic'.

I agree with what Psienesis says (as usual) - "The machine spirits" are the AI and basic software found in the ancient technologies the Imperium/Mechanicum still possesses, rather than a C'tan with a seriously unusual multiple personality disorder

I don't think the Mechanicus religion says that Omnisiah and Machine Spirits are one and the same, to my knowledge. Well, not every branch, at least.

It was stated that the Emperor out-gambitted the Void Dragon so that Mechanicus would form a religion inspired by him (the Void Dragon), but not focused ON him, wasn't it? IE, basically that the Void Dragon was used by the Emperor to inspire the idea of the Omnisiah but wasn't the Omnisiah itself (if anything, if true, that technically makes the Emperor the Omnisiah in terms of the Omnisiah being someone who guides mankind's direction of knowledge. He just "guided" mankind's direction of knowledge in a rather esoteric sense, using the Void Dragon as a tool to do it)

 Sautekh_The_Silent_King wrote:
The machine spirit. It is inside all of the spirits, but one question remains. What is it? An extension of the emperor's will? I, personally, think it is the Void Dragon, a powerful C'tan, for a number of reasons. 1: The emperor fought a c'tan and sealed it in Mars, but couldn't kill it (powerful, trapped in home of techpriests). 2: Anakyr, a necron (the race who broke the c'tan into shards) can possess machines, this overriding the machine spirit. 3: The empror is holding the forces of chaos at bay, he can't be in all the tanks of the imperium at the same time, really.

Machine spirits don't exist. It's part of the mechanism of control the mechanicum have. They are the holders of the knowledge, and in order to keep that knowledge they teach everyone else that all machines have spirits and only the priests can ever possibly hope to understand or create new technology or properly appease spirits. It's the principal tenant of most religion. Create a mythos that only the select echelon have communion and understanding with. Create mystery, and everyone else will follow. Anyone can replace a tire, but if only 3 people know the prayer to appease the wounded machine spirit for your jeep before you drive it off to battle, you can damn well bet you're doing whatever you can to get one of those 3 guys to do his thing otherwise your jeep might break down again.

I'd imagine it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some spirits will be the quirks of a particular machine, others may be some crude AI, and sometimes there are genuine spirits. The Mutilator's entry in the Chaos Space Marine codex talks about objects gaining spirits for example, an axe that kills and kills for years will gain an actual war-spirit, so maybe a cogitator that cogitates for centuries would get a machine spirit of its own.

Since belief can reflect in the warp I can imagine the Imperium's belief in spirits causing them to actually manifest too. Maybe a particular tank comes to be regarded by a Space Marine chapter as having a bellicose machine-spirit because the engines were unknowingly super charged during construction and over the centuries an actual spirit comes to inhabit the machine, brought about by the belief of the chapter.

It seems that warp entities do function the way the above poster mentions

The "Machine Spirit" is basically how the AM circumvents Imperial proscriptions on AI.

Since very few outside their organization actually understanding technology, they've created this myth of a machine spirit which must be nurtured and honoured, these rites forming the various means of repairing and maintaining equipment they don't want outsiders to fully comprehend. In most cases, it doesn't actually exist; a lasgun's machine spirit isn't, it's just part of AM dogma. A land raider, baneblade or Titan machine spirit actually is a kind of rudimentary, animalistic AI. It's not self-aware in any real capacity, as the AM can't dupe the Inquisition that badly, and they don't trust the concept themselves, but instead functions like a nervous system for advanced technology. A Titan can operate with a relatively small crew because of it, or even autonomously with limited function (basically stand in place, blast anything which threatens it directly), and there's a handful of cases of various vehicles with more sophisticated "machine spirits" acting much like a pet guarding its master, like Rynn's Might, a CF land raider which basically stopped a WAAGH without a crew. At least I think it was called Rynn's Might.

In short, a Machine Spirit is basically a cover name for AI and an important cornerstone of AM "lore," allowing the Imperial masses to use advanced tech without understanding it. However, the AM being the AM, the AIs they use occasionally develop a little further than they would prefer, with the odd machine achieving a malevolent self-awareness at one point or another, occasionally due to Chaotic influence.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
The "Machine Spirit" is basically how the AM circumvents Imperial proscriptions on AI.
----snip---
In short, a Machine Spirit is basically a cover name for AI and an important cornerstone of AM "lore," allowing the Imperial masses to use advanced tech without understanding it. However, the AM being the AM, the AIs they use occasionally develop a little further than they would prefer, with the odd machine achieving a malevolent self-awareness at one point or another, occasionally due to Chaotic influence.

As far as BL fluff concerned - MS is all of above PLUS label explaining any errors, idiosyncrasies and quirks of sufficiently advanced tech, even w/o ANY computional capabilities (ie it's "gremlins" too).

As for C'Tan and Omnissiah - well, considering 10000+ years WIP on Omnissiah cult, i think even if C'tan initially WAS base for it, Machine Cult's perception of their god long overgrew it. And btw some passes in Priests and Lords of Mars also gave descriptions that i can not associate with star-devouring gods ...

I agree with the notion that a "machine spirit" is most likely ancient software that is passed on to knew hardware when techpriests replicate the technology.

Then there is the other kind of machine spirit that is within simpler technologies such as a bolter. It is believed that rituals and application of sacred oils keep the machine spirit happy - if the spirit is happy then the tech will work.

These "rituals" ensure the tech works because it is simple maintenance. A rusty bolter will fail to fire because its components will be jammed - not because some mythical spirit is unhappy. The problem is that the imperium isn't aware of this and is brainwashed into believing there are mysterious powers at work.

Imagine how much free time techpriests could have if they skipped the 5 hours of prayer and just went straight to applying oil to the machines

I started playing battletech before 40k, so I tend to view the Mechanium through the lens of Btech's "Comstar" orginization. which is scarily similer. they're basicly a religous order that has maintained technology and machines lost to the rest of mankind. over the centuries, the actual UNDERSTANDING of how the machines work has been replaced with simply a dogma.

they know E=MC2, however they don't understand the underlying science behind it. they just know E=MC2 because the "Canticle of Albert" says so. and the Canticle of Albert is holy canon.

This honestly isn't too far removed from the way a lot of people now live. Think about all the machines we use as part of our daily lives. Cars. Computers. Microwaves. Televisions. Smartphones.

Now think about how many people use these things without any kind of genuine understanding of how they work. We ALL know at least one person to whom a computer might as well be a literal magic box. Push the button, magic happens. STUFF appears on this rectangular surface that I can manipulate by moving a funny little oblong device and pushing on a bank of buttons.

Hell, there are TONS of people that I've met who have no clue how to change a flat tire, much less understand any of what's beneath their car hood. Again, it might as well be magic to them. I stick this shaped piece of metal into the proper receptacles, turn it a certain way, and the car roars to life and obeys my directions when I press certain pedals, move certain levers, and turn the wheel in front of me. Go and ask any random person on the street how exactly their steering wheel interacts with their car wheels. I'd be shocked, SHOCKED, if more than one in twenty could give you a correct answer.

Is it really any surprise that over 40,000 years and multiple catastrophic collapses in human knowledge and society it would be ritual and superstition that dominates the day?

Things are so dire that the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperium don't even know what they don't know. For instance, we know that many works of classical antiquity were lost when the Library of Alexandria burned down. The only reason we know is because some copies or fragments of copies survived elsewhere. Even today we have no idea of the full extant of knowledge that humanity collectively lost when one repository was destroyed. How much more so for the Mechanicus after ten thousand years and uncounted disasters.

I don´t think "Machine Spirit" and "Omnisshiah/Void Dragon" are actually related.

About what Machines Spirits are, I think the concept is taken from Frank Herbert´s "Dune" (a sci-fi universe that includes navigators, a God Emperor and something really close to Sisters of Battle). They are "wetware", a concept used in many fictional universes that is actually being developed right now as an alternative for AIs.

I am quoting myself from another thread:

 da001 wrote:

 PredaKhaine wrote:
I always thought they used actual human brains in order to install the 'machine spirits'.

Same here.
This topic was hot back in the eighties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_computer

Some Sci-fi books used wetware as AI equivalents, and I always assumed Machine Spirits are just that. They are alive, they can be possessed (and turn into demons), they have their own personality, they can rebel, and they look like brains. They can sleep, they react to adrenaline injected on them...

Also, this is from the last Space Marine codex (Ranged Weapons section):

The skyspear missile launcher fires pre-blessed savant warheads, each a relic in its own
right, housing the entombed remains of a distinguished chapterserf. This servitor’s
mummified brain augments the missile’s auto-targeters, allowing it to second-guess
enemy pilots or home in on the heretical emissions of their debased machine spirits.
Against the dogged pursuit of a savant warhead and its macabre pilot, there can be little
chance of escape, while the tank’s servo-loaders maintain a steady rate of fire.

Also, Lynata provided a picture of one:

 Lynata wrote:

Also

Spoiler:

M32 Cyclops-class "Machine Spirit"

About the Omnissiah being a facet of the God-Emperor or a captured C´tan, that´s a completely different topic.

I still think the machine spirit is pretty much another word for AI. Plus the whole dogma is a means of control, well thats how I see it.