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So with the void dragon being one of the few last remaining C'tan (and the strongest), and being imprisoned on Mars, it is believed
that whatever shard is left of this entity might be the actual 'Machine God'.

However, if this being were to awaken, what would this mean for the lore?

Would the Adeptus Mechanicus wage war upon the Imperium? Would the Mechanicus abandon their long and ancient religion?

Would they possibly ally with the necrons as the ultimate beings of machine?

Could they try to harvest the C'tan's energy if all that's left of it is just its shard?

Would this mark the beginning of the end for humanity in the 41st millennium?

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Void_Dragon

There would probably be a schism in the admech between those who see the Void Dragon as the true machine god, and those who still consider the Emperor to be the machine god, and the Void Dragon a xeno imposter.

So you're probably looking at another Heresy event, except between admech loyal to the Imperium and admech backed by necrons.

I really hope that happens, because that would be one hell of a party. I also want necron-aligned admech, which is something I wanted since I read the 3rd ed necron book 10 or so years ago,
I guess I could ally in skitarii, but that would mean using Come the Apocalypse allies...as well as the allies rules.

Ever read 'Titanicus' by dann abnett? Story line is similar, info is found that the machine god isnt the emperor so theres a bit of a schisum.

There is no Void Dragon. Only heretics belive that. There is only the Omnissiah. Blessed be his name.

 Daemonhost Cherubael wrote:
So with the void dragon being one of the few last remaining C'tan (and the strongest), and being imprisoned on Mars, it is believed
that whatever shard is left of this entity might be the actual 'Machine God'.

However, if this being were to awaken, what would this mean for the lore?

Would the Adeptus Mechanicus wage war upon the Imperium? Would the Mechanicus abandon their long and ancient religion?

Would they possibly ally with the necrons as the ultimate beings of machine?

Could they try to harvest the C'tan's energy if all that's left of it is just its shard?

Would this mark the beginning of the end for humanity in the 41st millennium?

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Void_Dragon

Some clarifications to consider:

1.) There is No Machine God. That's just a Belief upheld by the Adeptus Mechanicus due to a string of historical circumstances and the influence of the Dragon of Mars.

2.) The Emperor = Omnissiah. The idea of the Omnissiah was inserted into AdMech's religion by the Emperor (before he started bearing around the title of Emperor) in order for him to assume the role eons later so he could have AdMech under his control.

3.) Therefore the AdMech have incorrect viewpoints about the relationship between their Non-Existant Machine God and the Omnissiah.


IF the Dragon of Mars = Void Dragon (i'm of the opinion it is, but just for the sake of rigor...)

And if the Void Dragon woke up, you would probably arrive at a Schism of some sort within AdMech because:

a.) Some people will take their pre-existant beliefs of what the Machine God is = Void Dragon
b.) Some people will take their Pre-existant beliefs in the Machine God and =/= Void Dragon

Remember, the Machine God is a CONCEPT not a real being. So people will interpret their religious beliefs in a way that jives with their inclinations.

This is why even in the current time frame (and also in the novel Titanicus), you have people who feverently believe that the Emperor is/is not the Omnissiah.

Depends. The way the Void Dragon is portrayed in the fourth edition Codex: Necrons basically states that if it awakens, it will hook up the population of Mars to machines that suck out their souls. At the absolute best, Dragon Cultists would be Mindshackled and used to subvert Mechanicus colonies outside the Dragon's reach.
The popular portrayal (The Machine God is the Void Dragon) being true would end up with the Mechanicus splitting along ideological lines, and we would have a second Schism of Mars.
If they are indeed seperate entities (My point of view because of how worship works in 40K), the Mechanicus would likely view it as an advanced artificial intelligence to be destroyed, with some worshipping it as a Machine-God. In this case, we would have another split, but very much slanted towards the Imperial side.

 Daemonhost Cherubael wrote:
So with the void dragon being one of the few last remaining C'tan

No C'tan exist. See current Codex: Necrons.

The codex doesn't explicitly say that, actually. Just that Sautekh turned his weapons on the C'tan and sharded them.

It doesn't even specify that Llandru'gor is dead.

The Emperor is the Omnissiah.
There is no Dragon on Mars.

I can't help but think that most of the Adeptus Mechanicus would side with the Imperium if for no reason other than the Emperor beat up and imprisoned the Void Dragon so therefore the Void Dragon cannot be the Omnissiah. Plus I imagine many powerful Psykers are capable of controlling machinery to some extent or other plus there's scrapcode so I'm unsure why they'd see it as anything special outside of the eating them part.

Also have an image of the Dragon awakening, trying to wreak havoc and then getting dumped on by the vast numbers of Psykers within Sol. If anywhere outside the Eye of Terror is going to be a place to make C'tan unhappy Sol would be it.

Just gonna toss this out there, what if the void dragon, after getting blasted by the black stone fortress, what we have no on mars is only a shard of him, had a few millennia to self reflect.

What if now he is cool with the imperium, and dare i say it...chilling with the emperor on a space station, working on creating relams on which each race can live, as he was the only survivor of the end times, and became sigmar- OH wait god damnit!!

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Daemonhost Cherubael wrote:
So with the void dragon being one of the few last remaining C'tan

No C'tan exist. See current Codex: Necrons.

Outsider might still be loafing around in his dyson sphere somewhere. They never really clarified that.

I'd imagine when the Void Dragon wakes up, he'll lay low a little while. He'll hate what the Necrons did to him and his people and would probably whisper to the Mechanicus the co-ordinates of sleeping tomb worlds to blow up. He'd subvert the ruling caste of the Mechanicus either with Mindshackle scarabs or Necrodermis body clones (terminator style). When he wakes up the Imperium will topple because one way or the other this war will be centered around Mars and Terra, leaving the Imperium all too much to loose.

What I'm more looking forward to is when the Golden Throne fails, Terra is ripped apart by a Warp Storm and the Void Dragon wakes up to daemons knocking at his door. As one of the only major C'tan left that would be an amazing fight.

GrapeApe wrote:

 Daemonhost Cherubael wrote:
So with the void dragon being one of the few last remaining C'tan (and the strongest), and being imprisoned on Mars, it is believed
that whatever shard is left of this entity might be the actual 'Machine God'.

However, if this being were to awaken, what would this mean for the lore?

Would the Adeptus Mechanicus wage war upon the Imperium? Would the Mechanicus abandon their long and ancient religion?

Would they possibly ally with the necrons as the ultimate beings of machine?

Could they try to harvest the C'tan's energy if all that's left of it is just its shard?

Would this mark the beginning of the end for humanity in the 41st millennium?

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Void_Dragon

Some clarifications to consider:

1.) There is No Machine God. That's just a Belief upheld by the Adeptus Mechanicus due to a string of historical circumstances and the influence of the Dragon of Mars.

2.) The Emperor = Omnissiah. The idea of the Omnissiah was inserted into AdMech's religion by the Emperor (before he started bearing around the title of Emperor) in order for him to assume the role eons later so he could have AdMech under his control.

3.) Therefore the AdMech have incorrect viewpoints about the relationship between their Non-Existant Machine God and the Omnissiah.


IF the Dragon of Mars = Void Dragon (i'm of the opinion it is, but just for the sake of rigor...)

And if the Void Dragon woke up, you would probably arrive at a Schism of some sort within AdMech because:

a.) Some people will take their pre-existant beliefs of what the Machine God is = Void Dragon
b.) Some people will take their Pre-existant beliefs in the Machine God and =/= Void Dragon

Remember, the Machine God is a CONCEPT not a real being. So people will interpret their religious beliefs in a way that jives with their inclinations.

This is why even in the current time frame (and also in the novel Titanicus), you have people who feverently believe that the Emperor is/is not the Omnissiah.

There could actually be a machine god of sorts, since all belief goes to the warp, and then eventually becomes a being of sort sort, so a minor chaos god of technology, entirely possible.

I completely agree with Formosa. As I have said before and will say again, all of that technology-worship is going to do something eventually. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if a major forge world became a new Rye of Terror, and the Machine-God was born in Slaaneshesque fashion.

 Verviedi wrote:
I completely agree with Formosa. As I have said before and will say again, all of that technology-worship is going to do something eventually. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if a major forge world became a new Rye of Terror, and the Machine-God was born in Slaaneshesque fashion.

I'm....skeptical.....if only because we don't know how Belief is actually "tabulated" in the Warp.

ie: There's never been a kind of i guess you can call an equation or metric that actually defines what Belief does to the Warp.

I mean - your right in the sense we know the broad outlines of what it does. Yet, we don't really have a host of theoretical entities running around the Warp - no expanded pantheon like in Warhammer Fantasy.

My assumption is that whatever belief could empower such entities isn't enough to withstand the might of the Ruinous Powers or their servants. So said theoretical god that just popped into existence 10 seconds ago in the Warp will become a meal for Khorne in the next 6 seconds.

Here's another Unanswerable - How does Belief Effect the Emperor?

That's a major question that ties back to the Machine God business too.

So we have an untold number of human beings believing in the God-Emperor of Mankind as if he were a God........yet he's not one. Not like Tzeentch is a God, or Gork and Mork (if they really exist).

I know there are a thousand and one theories about Star Childs, or Ynnead, or 5th Chaos God of Order etc.

But does all that Faith and Belief, directed at the Emperor for 10,000 years have some sort of.......effect?

Tying this to the Machine God question - you have millions and millions of orthodox AdMech believers who geniuinely believe the Emperor is the Omnissiah.

They also share the believe that the Omnissiah is the Incarnation of the Machine-God....... ie: Omnissiah = Machine God.

So their faith in the Machine God is ultimately once again directed at the Emperor....



Which means the only ones who would be feeding the "Chaos Machine-God" of the Warp would be those who don't believe the Emperor = Omnissiah.

We know from the fall of the Eldar Empire that belief/worship in a certain god is not required to empower it. For example, the Eldar didn't know Slaanesh existed, but their acts empowered her. Obviously, I can't tabulate exactly whether 40,000 years of industry, invention and techology-worship is enough to equal the Eldar Empire's debauchery, but it's reasonable to assume that it would do something.
Secondary evidence for the "Action, not worship empowers gods" - This is important. The usage of the life eater virus empowers Nurgle. The Imperium doesn't worship Nurgle (citation needed), but their actions still empower him.
A rebuttal for that "minor gods get eaten" argument is relatively simple. Slaanesh wasn't eaten, in fact, she was born powerful enough to fight Khorne and win, warp-seconds after being created. (There's also the fact that Slaanesh created herself, but that's not important)
Please note, the Golden Throne ties the soul of the Emperor to the material plane. This would prevent the actions that would normally empower the Emperor from doing so, because he technically isn't a warp being. Yes, he has a vast psychic presence, but because his soul is stuck in the material plane, he isn't able to become a god or take proper advantage of actions and belief that empowers him. (Evidence - the fact that a thousand psykers a day must be fed to his material body, instead of being sustained by actions and belief).
In addition, the Mechanicus does not actually believe the Emperor is the Machine-God. Some probably do, but the vast majority believe he is actually the Omnissiah. The Omnissiah and Machine-God are entirely different entities. The Omnissiah is the "avatar", or most powerful servant/messenger of the Machine-God. The Machine-God controls the Omnissiah. Therefore, the Mechanicus does not actually worship the Emperor as the Machine-God.
There's really four possible scenarios here.
1. I'm right, but the nascent Machine-God is being fed so slowly that it won't be able to be fully born, or will be a minor god/eaten.
2. I'm right, the amount of action and belief is enough to serve as a catalyst for a Slaanesh-birth class event, and the Machine-God is instantly born as a major Chaos God level entity.
3. I'm wrong, C'tan are also empowered by actions and belief (which makes no sense from what I've read, because they have no warp presence), and the Void Dragon is fed instead of the Machine-God.
4. I'm wrong, the Emperor is somehow fed by actions and belief in the Machine-God.