Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I don't remember ever seeing tech-priestesses in canon lore or art.

Yep, Forges of Mars had a female tech priest that was pretty unconventional because she had more human-shaped augmentations and not giant gears and extra arms like most of them.

I don't think the Mechnicum has any preferences since machines aren't really gendered.

There's Felicia Tayber, an Enginseer who fought alongside Commissar Ciaphas Cain.

After a certain point you can't tell gender difference with tech-priests.

Can't recall exactly which others, but, there have been women tech-priests. I do recall the one ScarletRose mentioned. That was a fun series to read, btw.

It's often treated in a "There are no dwarf women" way. You've seen them, you just can't tell them apart from tech priest men, because they're so lost in the tech-augmentation sauce.

Yes.

Though worth remembering the concept of gender is largely moot to the Priesthood, especially once you start replacing flesh with machines.

Mechanicum features a female archmagos.

beast_gts wrote:
There's Felicia Tayber, an Enginseer who fought alongside Commissar Ciaphas Cain.

After a certain point you can't tell gender difference with tech-priests.

and she shows up in a later book as a Magos.

one of the other Cain novels, "The greater good" iirc, has a female Magos Biologis that plays a big role in the story.


and yeah, the mechanicum doesn't care your gender, and after awhile they're all more machine then flesh anyway so the point is moot.

male techpriests are more commonly seen in novels and such, but that seems to be largely just an unintentional bias on the part of the writers, common with most fiction.

Yes, there are, and tech-priesthood is also not necessarily celibate, although they'd probably frown on intercourse like they frown on most forms of biological life and processes. On the other hand, all sorts of curiosities and excentricities are pretty much par for the course for tech-priests, so some may still enjoy their biological functions. Some subsects may even incorporate such things in their beliefs and rituals, there are cults of the human form and the human genome for example, procreating biologically could fit in their dogma.

Thanks everyone!

Some people need to read their administratum approved Cain volumes! He had many "relations" with a member of the Mars cult who had a mechadendrite/tail thing, that was useful for other things. I forget the name, but she's in more than 1 book if I recall.

The various novels have quite a few women tech-adepts and tech-priests, as have some of the Warhammer+ videos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tsagualsa wrote:
Yes, there are, and tech-priesthood is also not necessarily celibate, although they'd probably frown on intercourse like they frown on most forms of biological life and processes. On the other hand, all sorts of curiosities and excentricities are pretty much par for the course for tech-priests, so some may still enjoy their biological functions. Some subsects may even incorporate such things in their beliefs and rituals, there are cults of the human form and the human genome for example, procreating biologically could fit in their dogma.

Indeed. While some adepts might eschew carnal pleasures, there is no reason to believe this would be the norm. The cult of mars still needs new recruits after all. And there is an entire portion of the order devoted to biology so there isn't a complete abandonment of the flesh, just an aknowledgement of its weaknessess. I suspect there are priests who specialize in certain "enhancements".

Some might treat it totally clinically. Going external and growing their children in test-tubes. Others might be more natural, but nothing wrong with enhancing your existing functions for both pleasure and practicality.

I believe there is a female tech priests in the day of ascension book. She is one of the yay sayers of the head tech priest.

Brutal Kunnin has male, female and non-binary Techpriests.

In the imperator novel the main tach priest uses non-gendered pronouns and is quite surprised when another tech priest uses gendered pronouns because it implies an importance to the “human” aspect over the machine.

Some took this as a woke thing but I read it more as an interesting take on the ad mechs desire to be the machine, seeing themselves as not human so not needing gender anymore.

 Gert wrote:
Brutal Kunnin has male, female and non-binary Techpriests.

Non-binary techpriests? Now that is heresy! What’s next, analog techpriests? quantum? Mars might not care about the fleshy bits, but it’s zeros and ones all the down the machine code. Probably. Who knows what computing languages are like in 40k, I’m not that up on mechancius lore. But I suspect they care more about what datastuctures and code runs the machine side than the meat parts.

Sorry, “non-binary" struck me as ironically funny in a cyborg organization, where it can be applied to different contexts.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Brutal Kunnin has male, female and non-binary Techpriests.

Non-binary techpriests? Now that is heresy! What’s next, analog techpriests? quantum? Mars might not care about the fleshy bits, but it’s zeros and ones all the down the machine code. Probably. Who knows what computing languages are like in 40k, I’m not that up on mechancius lore. But I suspect they care more about what datastuctures and code runs the machine side than the meat parts.

Sorry, “non-binary" struck me as ironically funny in a cyborg organization, where it can be applied to different contexts.

Took me far too long to get that. But it’s actually pretty funny.

There are 10 types of people in this world - those who understand binary and those who don't.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Brutal Kunnin has male, female and non-binary Techpriests.

Non-binary techpriests? Now that is heresy! What’s next, analog techpriests? quantum? Mars might not care about the fleshy bits, but it’s zeros and ones all the down the machine code. Probably. Who knows what computing languages are like in 40k, I’m not that up on mechancius lore. But I suspect they care more about what datastuctures and code runs the machine side than the meat parts.

Sorry, “non-binary" struck me as ironically funny in a cyborg organization, where it can be applied to different contexts.

They use "Binharic" as a language, so I think digital binary is still going strong!

 Grey Templar wrote:
The various novels have quite a few women tech-adepts and tech-priests, as have some of the Warhammer+ videos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tsagualsa wrote:
Yes, there are, and tech-priesthood is also not necessarily celibate, although they'd probably frown on intercourse like they frown on most forms of biological life and processes. On the other hand, all sorts of curiosities and excentricities are pretty much par for the course for tech-priests, so some may still enjoy their biological functions. Some subsects may even incorporate such things in their beliefs and rituals, there are cults of the human form and the human genome for example, procreating biologically could fit in their dogma.

Indeed. While some adepts might eschew carnal pleasures, there is no reason to believe this would be the norm. The cult of mars still needs new recruits after all. And there is an entire portion of the order devoted to biology so there isn't a complete abandonment of the flesh, just an aknowledgement of its weaknessess. I suspect there are priests who specialize in certain "enhancements".

Some might treat it totally clinically. Going external and growing their children in test-tubes. Others might be more natural, but nothing wrong with enhancing your existing functions for both pleasure and practicality.

To be fair, the majority of a forgeworlds population is mostly made up of serfs and worker bees who aren't (voluntarily) getting augmetics or going into the whole "the penis is evil, the gun is good" mindset about reproduction, etc. The fluff for the most part seems to point to the idea that tech priests and the machine cult are more or less a sort of meritocracy, individual are brought in and inducted as a low level initiate or adept or whatever and work their way up. Theres never any mention that I can think of regarding "tech nobilitiy" or "noble houses of the adeptus mechanicus", etc.so hereditary lineage is presumably not really a thing amongst AdMech society, and it may very well be because their reproduction rates are low and that their ranks are made up of serfs and peasants and workers who were elevated up into the cult for whatever reason. I have vague recollections of certain fiction discussing how so-and-so was chosen for initiation into the cult because of their knack for getting certain stuff to work or displaying a certain level of skill or understanding operating a machine,etc. I also seem to vaguely recall discussions about how some basically win the lottery or got chosen for induction more or less at random because some important tech priest needs someone in their entourage for some menial task like oiling their mechadendrites or carrying a scroll or something, so Serf δ-24601 happens to be walking by at the time and press-ganged into the task on the spot. Over time, one thing leads to another and they get promoted up through the ranks in reward for good work and get initiated into the cult, etc. and become tech-priests themselves.

Do tech priests have gender? They replace their bodies with technology, I don’t think they are worried about having digital minky’s and dangleberries.

They don’t seem like the kind of folk much interested in protecting the fleshy little defenceless babies but it would be interesting to know how that works in the AD Mech.

As it’s 40K the simple answer is probably a underclass of unaugmented humans and the ones that show promise are taken from their families. Like the Jedi or Space Marines

mrFickle wrote:
Do tech priests have gender? They replace their bodies with technology, I don’t think they are worried about having digital minky’s and dangleberries.

They don’t seem like the kind of folk much interested in protecting the fleshy little defenceless babies but it would be interesting to know how that works in the AD Mech.

As it’s 40K the simple answer is probably a underclass of unaugmented humans and the ones that show promise are taken from their families. Like the Jedi or Space Marines

I'm sure there might be some worlds where it is like that. But I think it is just as, if not more, likely that there would be active eugenics programs among the Tech-priests. Selective breeding among the most talented tech-priests to make better priests in the future. Again, there is an entire sub-section of the mechanicus devoted to biology and everything associated with it. They are actually the ones responsible for advances and maintenance of augmetics. So they are far from a niche aspect of the Mechanicus, they are front and center.

Gender is unlikely to have much meaning to techpriests for the aforementioned reasons, but even genetic sex is probably pretty unimportant for techpriests who wish to reproduce. Any reproduction is likely to be via highly-artificial processes like in vitro fertilisation and artificial wombs, where the tech adepts can carefully control the variables, so I doubt there is much engagement in the physical acts of reproduction. In addition, the Adeptus Mechanicus easily has the technical base to manipulate the sex of the gametes used in reproduction- we pretty much already have this capability. So two same-sex magi could almost certainly produce a child if they deemed it advantageous by transferring genetic material from their gametes into surrogate gametes. Therefore even biological sex has low relevance to reproduction choices amongst such a rarified and advanced tech-elite.

I wouldn't be surprised if young techpriests routinely store gametes in stasis for future use, so that high-quality gametes are available when they are finally deemed to be sufficiently successful/talented to reproduce at the age of 400 or something.

In the Grey Knights and Mechanicum video games, there are female tech priests, even magos. One or two will probably show up in Rogue Trader as well.

There's several in Ciaphas Cain novels, including one that had been infected by genestealers.

mrFickle wrote:
Do tech priests have gender? They replace their bodies with technology, I don’t think they are worried about having digital minky’s and dangleberries.

They don’t seem like the kind of folk much interested in protecting the fleshy little defenceless babies but it would be interesting to know how that works in the AD Mech.

As it’s 40K the simple answer is probably a underclass of unaugmented humans and the ones that show promise are taken from their families. Like the Jedi or Space Marines

Considering that they refer to the Omnissiah with masculine pronouns, I'm guessing that tech priests do have genders and consider them still useful. Either that or it's hypocrisy. Or either it's because of a belief that they can only shed it once they've completely shed their prison of flesh.

I totally forgot about the best Dark Tide character, Hadron Omega 7-7.

Altima wrote:
Considering that they refer to the Omnissiah with masculine pronouns, I'm guessing that tech priests do have genders and consider them still useful. Either that or it's hypocrisy. Or either it's because of a belief that they can only shed it once they've completely shed their prison of flesh.

In conjunction with the Emperor yeah but apart from that isn't the Omnissiah referred to by neutral pronouns? UR-205 certainly used neutral ones when it said that the Omnissiah (it) would be disappointed in the Imperials.

 Gert wrote:
I totally forgot about the best Dark Tide character, Hadron Omega 7-7.

Altima wrote:
Considering that they refer to the Omnissiah with masculine pronouns, I'm guessing that tech priests do have genders and consider them still useful. Either that or it's hypocrisy. Or either it's because of a belief that they can only shed it once they've completely shed their prison of flesh.

In conjunction with the Emperor yeah but apart from that isn't the Omnissiah referred to by neutral pronouns? UR-205 certainly used neutral ones when it said that the Omnissiah (it) would be disappointed in the Imperials.

One of the major points of theological dispute in the Mechanicum was the precise nature of the Omnissiah (this is probably modeled after various heterodox christian movements, like arianism) and if the Emperor was the real deal or just something like a manifestation or a prophet. IIRC disputing this is what led to Kelbor-Hals treason. So it's conceivable that there are some sect's that go 'it' and some that go 'he' or something else.

Kelbor Hal was more interested in getting rid of the Treaty of Olympus which he saw as a needless restriction on the advancement and rediscovery of technology and the subordination of Mars' foundries for the Emperor's wars.

But in the wider Mechanicum absolutely there was (and still is) great division on the exact nature of the Omnissiah and its relationship to/with the Emperor.

Surprised the gal with her own Hammer & Bolter episode hasn't been mentioned.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Some people need to read their administratum approved Cain volumes! He had many "relations" with a member of the Mars cult who had a mechadendrite/tail thing, that was useful for other things. I forget the name, but she's in more than 1 book if I recall.

That's Felicity Tayber, who was mentioned above. Note that Cain"s transcriber, Amberley Vaile, explicitly states that Cain never mentions being intimate with Tayber. But he does know that she has the mecha-dendrite under her robe, and notes the implication that Cain likely found out because he was sleeping with Tayber.

Eumerin wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Some people need to read their administratum approved Cain volumes! He had many "relations" with a member of the Mars cult who had a mechadendrite/tail thing, that was useful for other things. I forget the name, but she's in more than 1 book if I recall.

That's Felicity Tayber, who was mentioned above. Note that Cain"s transcriber, Amberley Vaile, explicitly states that Cain never mentions being intimate with Tayber. But he does know that she has the mecha-dendrite under her robe, and notes the implication that Cain likely found out because he was sleeping with Tayber.

Specifically, that it was attached to the base of her spine, and therefore he needed to observe the base of her spine (noting she wore the standard techpriest robes).

It was weird hearing the Audiobook for "Warboss" where there is an Ad. Mech named "Mitranda" whose voice is feminine, but their preferred pronoun is "they"- mostly because the amount of knowledge they've accumulated, but also because their sexual organs have gone the way of the Dodo.

Koriel Zeth is female, and also the inventor of the Noosphere- believe she shows up in Mechanicum HH novel- Along with the "Sisters of Cydonia" who were tech-assassins.. So, robo-callidus?