History of the Adeptus Mechanicus? How old is this thing anyway?

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**Kid_Kyoto**

So based on what I remember, the Adeptus Mechanicus more or less as we know it, was established on Mars long before the Unification Wars and presumably goes all the way back to the Age of Strife and the Dark Age of Technology (so now we're talking about the year 20k).

After unifying Earth the Emperor went to Mars performed some miracles and was hailed as the Omnisassah and the AM joined his cause. During the great crusade (again IIRC) they found Forge Worlds already existing and welcomed them back into the cult of Mars.

All this implies the AM was a wide-spread religious cult long before the Horus Heresy going back to before the Age of Strife and the Long Night. While Mars may have created its own colonies during the Great Crusade, IIRC there were already Machine God worshiping Forge Worlds around the galaxy long before them.

Has this every been covered? Or how it happened?

Was the Machine God ever confirmed to be a C'Tan? Or was his worship ever confirmed to precede the Emperor? Is it C'Tan all the way down? Or did the Immortal Emperor plant something early on?

Anyone know?

**pelicaniforce**

Uh yeah there is a really explicit description in a Graham McNeil novel from the Heresy series.

I don't thubk theres a use for writing that at all. You'd think for a game setting, the novels would be on the same scale as player characters. You'd get more out of it if every novel was about John Yossarian or Richard Sharpe instead of The DaVinci Code grand conspiracy. Thay way players can model their characters on them.

I'll direct link a comment on reddit that has it if you want to read it. It's the comment, not the post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/zq4zuv/comment/j0y8fa4/

**Kid_Kyoto**

Thanks for the link, I remember Mechanicum, the book where Mary Sue the Machine Messiah took a long train ride to visit the Void Dragon and was never ever mentioned again.

For the record:

It's mentioned toward the end of Mechanicum, one of the earliest Horus Heresy novels. Passage starts right after a vision of the Emperor's fight with the Void Dragon. Semyon is the Guardian of the Void Dragon, a guy who was invested with a shard of the Emperor's power to keep it hidden from everyone, Mechanicum, Necrons or otherwise.

"‘The Emperor? Yes,’ said Semyon, turning and walking away as the reality of the desert landscape began to unweave. ‘He brought the defeated Dragon to Mars and bound it beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus.’

‘But why?’

‘The Emperor sees things we do not,’ said Semyon. ‘He knows the future and he guides us towards it. A nudge here, seeding a prepared prophecy of his coming there, the beginnings of the transhumanist movement, the push from humanity’s under- standing of science to its mastery... all of it by his design, work- ing towards one glorious union in the future where the forges of Mars would perceive the Emperor as the divinity for whom they had been waiting for centuries.’

‘You mean the Emperor orchestrated the evolution of the Mechanicum?’

‘Of course,’ said Semyon. ‘He knew that one day he would need such a mighty organisation to serve him, and from the Dragon’s dreams came the first machines of the priests of Mars. Without the Dragon there would have been no Mechanicum, and without the Mechanicum, the Emperor’s grand dream of a united galaxy for Humanity would have withered on the vine.’

Dalia tried to grasp the unimaginable scale of the Emperor’s de- signs, the clarity of a vision that could set schemes in motion that would not come to fruition for over twenty thousand years. It was simply staggering that anyone, even the Emperor, could have so carefully and precisely orchestrated the destiny of so many with such skill and cold ruthlessness."

IIRC the book has some canon issues, no followup, and since all this comes from an unreliable narrator some or none of this may be true.

**Gert**

The timeline for the Cult Mechanicus is all whacked out anyway.

It was supposedly founded during the Age of Strife but multiple major Forge Worlds founded in the Dark Age of Technology were already worshipping the Omnissiah.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

If memory serves?

The Cult Mechanicus and so the Mechanicum were one of a number of machine cults borne out of the Dark Age of Technology, after mankind’s previous empire fell.

And through internal conflict it emerged pre-eminent.

Now, how that spread from Forgeworld to Forgeworld, pre-unification and Great Crusade I’m not entirely sure. But it does suggest some level of at least sporadic communication between those planets, allowing the Mechanicum to spread, ultimately ensuring a willing welcome in the future?

**Charax**

Mars was terraformed in the 22nd century and became the first Hive World after being settled by industrial cartels.

The Cult Mechanicus became the dominant religion of Mars during the Age of Strife and the Mechanicum had sent out its own colony ships, just like Terra, and they were cut off as well. During the Unification Wars the first Explorator Fleets were dispatched to attempt to reestablish contact with the colonies of Mars and found their own colonies that went on to become Forge Worlds

and then the Treaty of Olympus happened and Mars became an official ally to the Imperium, before the creation of the Adeptus Mechanicus during the Binary Succession (which was only supposed to be a temporary thing)

**Gert**

Book 1: Betrayal has the Cult founded during the Age of Strife when Mars was cut off from its empire.

We do see examples of pocket empires or worlds that are clearly connected to the pre-Mechanicum Mars like the Auretian Technocracy who have high levels of technology and STCs but don't follow the Cult.
Metalica is one example where it had its Titan Legion and armies but it's not explicitly said they worshipped the Omnissiah prior to joining the Imperium though Martian diplomats did realise they had similar cultures during peace talks during the Crusade.

I guess we can just chalk it up to missionaries making it out into the darkness to where Mars knew some enclaves might still exist to spread the good word.

**Charax**

Gert wrote:
Book 1: Betrayal has the Cult founded during the Age of Strife when Mars was cut off from its empire.

No, it has it rising to dominance during the early centuries of the Age of Strife. It says nothing about when it was actually founded

**Gert**

Fair enough however it would also simultaneously have to have risen to power on almost every single other major Forge World in the galaxy in almost exactly the same way for the power base that the Cult had to make any sense.

GW being unclear about timelines is hardly a new thing.

**Eumerin**

At least some of it can probably be hand-waved to "Oh, right, the Omnissiah. We call him Dei-Engine here, and our chante are slightly different. But other than that, it's pretty much the same Obviously our guy is just another facet of your guy "

**Haighus**

The classic lore was that the Cult Mechanicus was essentially a cargo cult arising in the ashes of Mars during the Age of Strife, gaining control of the whole world through their salvaged technology.

They then sent out colonisation vessels and fleets during relative lulls in the warp storms of the Age of Strife, with some of these surviving to colonise or conquer worlds and create new forge worlds in the image of Mars. Some of the closest even retained intermittent contact with Mars during this period. These would be crusade fleets full of zealous, well-equipped missionaries, so I can see them being able to conquer even technologically-advanced, pre-Mechanicus forge worlds weakened by Old Night.

Generally speaking, these worlds willingly submitted to Mars when found by the Great Crusade, although occasionally they joined the Imperium but vied with Mars for political independence.

As Gert points out, the dates have since become very mixed up. As a meta analysis, I think a lot of GW writers get the Dark Age of Technology confused with the Age of Strife, and think the Dark Age was the bad times, when in reality it was the height of humanity and merely a time that few records survived from that is shrouded in myth for the scholars of the Imperium. But now we have to deal with that.

I'd play the unreliable narrator card personally. This is stuff that happened over thousands of years prior to the Great Crusade, happened during (or maybe prior to) a great, galaxy-wide calamity that devastated humanity for millennia, and is inherently wrapped up in foundation myths and religious dogma for the Cult Mechanicus that emerged. None of these factors make for reliable historiography.

**StudentOfEtherium**

Haighus wrote:

As Gert points out, the dates have since become very mixed up. As a meta analysis, I think a lot of GW writers get the Dark Age of Technology confused with the Age of Strife, and think the Dark Age was the bad times, when in reality it was the height of humanity and merely a time that few records survived from that is shrouded in myth for the scholars of the Imperium. But now we have to deal with that.

ironically, the same thing happens when talking about the real Dark Age

**Haighus**

StudentOfEtherium wrote:
Haighus wrote:

As Gert points out, the dates have since become very mixed up. As a meta analysis, I think a lot of GW writers get the Dark Age of Technology confused with the Age of Strife, and think the Dark Age was the bad times, when in reality it was the height of humanity and merely a time that few records survived from that is shrouded in myth for the scholars of the Imperium. But now we have to deal with that.

ironically, the same thing happens when talking about the real Dark Age

True, I try and avoid using the term these days and stick to early medieval period.

**StudentOfEtherium**

Haighus wrote:
StudentOfEtherium wrote:
Haighus wrote:

As Gert points out, the dates have since become very mixed up. As a meta analysis, I think a lot of GW writers get the Dark Age of Technology confused with the Age of Strife, and think the Dark Age was the bad times, when in reality it was the height of humanity and merely a time that few records survived from that is shrouded in myth for the scholars of the Imperium. But now we have to deal with that.

ironically, the same thing happens when talking about the real Dark Age

True, I try and avoid using the term these days and stick to early medieval period.

surely there's some Imperial scribe somewhere in the galaxy who has realized this issue as well, and will be dedicating their life to a campaign to change the Imperium's terminology to something more proper

**FlubDugger**

Keep in mind, "Dark Age" was also Enlightenment spin. The "Dark Age" was depicted as an age of cultural, intellectual and moral decline compared to the contemporary society governed with reason and upstanding moral values.

In the context of 40k, the Dark Age of Technology could also be a Dark Age of moral failures, where Humanity allowed itself to be governed by AI and thinking machines instead of believing in their own ability.

**Grey Templar**

I presume the "Machine Cult" was really an amalgamation of potentially hundreds of religions founded in the Age of Strife and DAoT which all worshipped a technological deity of some kind. The Omnissiah has so many monikers and the various Machine cults on different worlds have many different practices.

As the Great Crusade unified world after world the various machine cults could easily coexist as their specializations and differences could just be written off as specific aspects of the overarching Omnissiah. This is an advantage of monotheistic religion, you can coopt smaller religions as simply worshipping an aspect of your main god(most of the time). It would be particularly easy for a Technology cult to do this too. "Hey, you like this ancient tech you have on this planet. I too love ancient technology! Let us compare notes my fellow disciple and share these wonderous mysteries! We can have your head priest come to Mars and see the wonders there"

It's going to be like nerd book club any time a new machine cult is found on an isolated world, assuming they aren't doing anything outright heretical like putting daemons into computers or something.

**Haighus**

Grey Templar wrote:
I presume the "Machine Cult" was really an amalgamation of potentially hundreds of religions founded in the Age of Strife and DAoT which all worshipped a technological deity of some kind. The Omnissiah has so many monikers and the various Machine cults on different worlds have many different practices.

As the Great Crusade unified world after world the various machine cults could easily coexist as their specializations and differences could just be written off as specific aspects of the overarching Omnissiah. This is an advantage of monotheistic religion, you can coopt smaller religions as simply worshipping an aspect of your main god(most of the time). It would be particularly easy for a Technology cult to do this too. "Hey, you like this ancient tech you have on this planet. I too love ancient technology! Let us compare notes my fellow disciple and share these wonderous mysteries! We can have your head priest come to Mars and see the wonders there"

It's going to be like nerd book club any time a new machine cult is found on an isolated world, assuming they aren't doing anything outright heretical like putting daemons into computers or something.

I don't think it is an advantage of monotheistic religions, syncretism has been a thing for pretty much as long as we have history. If anything, It seems easier to adopt new concepts into a pantheon, but in practice people have been happily co-opting different religious and cultural practices for millennia from and into every kind of religious structure.

**Iracundus**

Haighus wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
I presume the "Machine Cult" was really an amalgamation of potentially hundreds of religions founded in the Age of Strife and DAoT which all worshipped a technological deity of some kind. The Omnissiah has so many monikers and the various Machine cults on different worlds have many different practices.

As the Great Crusade unified world after world the various machine cults could easily coexist as their specializations and differences could just be written off as specific aspects of the overarching Omnissiah. This is an advantage of monotheistic religion, you can coopt smaller religions as simply worshipping an aspect of your main god(most of the time). It would be particularly easy for a Technology cult to do this too. "Hey, you like this ancient tech you have on this planet. I too love ancient technology! Let us compare notes my fellow disciple and share these wonderous mysteries! We can have your head priest come to Mars and see the wonders there"

It's going to be like nerd book club any time a new machine cult is found on an isolated world, assuming they aren't doing anything outright heretical like putting daemons into computers or something.

I don't think it is an advantage of monotheistic religions, syncretism has been a thing for pretty much as long as we have history. If anything, It seems easier to adopt new concepts into a pantheon, but in practice people have been happily co-opting different religious and cultural practices for millennia from and into every kind of religious structure.

There is also room for all sorts of heterodox or alternative beliefs within the Adeptus Mechanicus. Their whole thing is that knowledge is hoarded and guarded. There would be sects or mystery cults, revealing their technological secrets only to initiates, and engaging in struggles with other sects. One example would be the Electro-Priests and their split into the two main factions of the Corpuscarii and Fulgurites.