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Over many millenia of enhancement after enhancement, new device after new device, would it be with in reason for some thing/one from the Adeptus Mechanicus to become larger than normal, say, as large as dreadnaught? Or would that violate some religous code?

in 30k, there's a magos who's so terrified of death he's basically now the size of a castellax/kastellan bot.

Inst the human form sacred? In the Ecclesiarchy certainly, but the admech too?
I reckoned that the admech added to and embellished the human form but didn't stray too far from it. Mechadendrites to help the hands, bionics to improve the hands, but not straight up 3rd arms.
Even ruststalkers? (the skitarri cc troops) would benefit from being full on General Grevious 4 armed monstrosities but are humanoid.

And the titans and knights and so on are bipedal and humanoid(ish)

I can see a magus being a dreadnought or wiring his human frame into a massive life support engine of some kind. I believe there was one in Storm of Iron who had wired himself into his facility/memory banks and become increasingly divorced from reality.

That said, with the spectrum of radical mechanicus and tech heresy, the skys the limit. literally. Mechanicus who wire themselves into bipdedal frames which convert to fighter jets?
Thats my 40k.

 =Angel= wrote:
Inst the human form sacred? In the Ecclesiarchy certainly, but the admech too?
I reckoned that the admech added to and embellished the human form but didn't stray too far from it. Mechadendrites to help the hands, bionics to improve the hands, but not straight up 3rd arms.
Even ruststalkers? (the skitarri cc troops) would benefit from being full on General Grevious 4 armed monstrosities but are humanoid.

And the titans and knights and so on are bipedal and humanoid(ish)

I can see a magus being a dreadnought or wiring his human frame into a massive life support engine of some kind. I believe there was one in Storm of Iron who had wired himself into his facility/memory banks and become increasingly divorced from reality.

That said, with the spectrum of radical mechanicus and tech heresy, the skys the limit. literally. Mechanicus who wire themselves into bipdedal frames which convert to fighter jets?
Thats my 40k.

actually there may, potentially be a scientific reason for that as much as a religious reason.
I remember once reading somewhere, A shadowrun sourcebook I belive, that addressed why generally you didn't see people with cybernetics adding arms and what not to them. the answer was that the human brain is the limiter and that we're wired to be able to control a 4 limbed bipedal body. and if you dropped a human brain in say... a insectile body we'd not be able to handle the additional limbs.
Now obviously brain implants is a pretty doable thing for the admech, but it could be that anything more complicated then adding a few mechatendrils might require more brain rewiring then they feel is worth it...

anything at all is a go short of completely going AI, still needs to have human componenets.

we have had things that float, no legs, tracks instead of legs, snakes style slithering motion.

3 arms, 4 arms, snake arms, no arms

as long as there is still a biological component thats the thing that stops it being heresy.

btw, a lot of what is acceptable now would not have been acceptable back before the heresy. I think the admech get away with a lot more now than they ever did

TheWanderer wrote:
btw, a lot of what is acceptable now would not have been acceptable back before the heresy. I think the admech get away with a lot more now than they ever did

And yet they can't use the same battle automita any more since they were to close to AI I think you may have it a bit backwards. I mean, in 30k they were allowed to innovate, so long as they didn't go full AI, now-a-days not so much.

In the Of Mars series, there were a good spread of techpriests. One of them was a tracked carriage with his brain split up into five or six jars as the only remaining biological part of him. Azuramagelli I think. He was about Cyclops sized.

Then there was the Magos of the party, who was a head with interchangeable bodies. His war body was Primarch-sized.

In Hellforged is a massive brute of a Magos with a rivetgun.

I've been re-reading Gaunt's Ghosts Necropolis and I figure, if a single human being can be plugged in directly into an entire hive's defence systems, why would the mechanicus limit themselves to humanoid scale at all?

Having one Magos' spinal column acting as the control system for a living forge, lathes, assembly lines, packaging systems et all isn't really beyond the realm of practicality. Even with our current technology, albeit limited to optical displays.

if you don't believe me, play factorio

There's a Magos that gets captured in one of the chaos novels (I think it was the Word Bearer's series?) that has multiple brains wired onto his bulky machine body. He uses them like databases. I'd say there's no real limit, it's just more of a matter of "Do I want to be me or do I want be part of something else?".

In Skitarii the Explorer Magos is described just "as big as a dreadnaught". He was seen as a bit strange by the rest of Cult Mechanicus, but it was for his willingness to spend decades away from the Mechanicum (Forge Worlds, large Exploration fleets etc) - not for his body size/form

As pointed out a lot of different Magos have been described in the books - from the Baneblade technician that prefered to keep his original bodyparts instead of replacing them with tech to "brain in a bottle" Magos. And that is probably only a small part - in the "of Mars" series a military Magos (that likes to lead from the front and get down and dirty) was very different than the technical/academic Magos, so the nerds of AM, that never leave their laboratories or are seen by non-AM could look completely non-humanoid/inhuman.

In theory a Magos could be as big as a Titan, but that would be both expensive, inpractical and probably lead to mental problems. The human brain is designed and used to a human shape and size.

In short, a Magos can be as big or "normal" (i.e human, retaining biological parts) as He/She pleases. The only limit seems to be the writer making the story.

If you want a Magos of your own, they can be whatever you want them too.

One of the other magos in Of Mars chose to retain her human appearance but was almost entirely mechanical in nature under that.

 Brennonjw wrote:

TheWanderer wrote:
btw, a lot of what is acceptable now would not have been acceptable back before the heresy. I think the admech get away with a lot more now than they ever did

And yet they can't use the same battle automita any more since they were to close to AI I think you may have it a bit backwards. I mean, in 30k they were allowed to innovate, so long as they didn't go full AI, now-a-days not so much.

Yeah the fluff around it sadly changes with the winds as new writers want to add in their little roy the robot toys.

One minute its a big no no the next some writer wants to make more robots so its fine then its back to being heresy again....

What was the innovation btw? I dont think they made anything new back then did they? All the legio cybernetica stuff was left overs from ebfore the Great Crusade I always took it.

It depends on what precisely is heresy, as well.

Magos Antigonus, for example, in the novel Dark Adeptus, gains the ability to move his consciousness between various machines, at one point inhabiting the body of a Warhound Titan to trod upon his foes at the climax - that's pretty large indeed. He does this in front of (and with the assent of) an Archmagos Veneratus, who doesn't seem to notice it at all aside from being impressed when it is first demonstrated.

That form of consciousness-uploading, however, is known as the Proteus Protocol in the Calixis Sector, and is one of the three great heresies that will see you put to death.

For what it's worth, in my fluff my 30k Archmagos Ordinator is indeed experimenting with the Proteus Protocol to make his war machines more effective (uploading a consciousness to the Ordinatus engines to meld with the machine-spirit), because even the 40k the Centurio Ordinatus is one of the few remaining institutions within the Mechanicum able to innovate (so long as it is for the noble good of improving the power of their war engines), so I reasoned that the 30k Centurio Ordinatus was given an even wider mandate.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It depends on what precisely is heresy, as well.

Magos Antigonus, for example, in the novel Dark Adeptus, gains the ability to move his consciousness between various machines, at one point inhabiting the body of a Warhound Titan to trod upon his foes at the climax - that's pretty large indeed. He does this in front of (and with the assent of) an Archmagos Veneratus, who doesn't seem to notice it at all aside from being impressed when it is first demonstrated.

That form of consciousness-uploading, however, is known as the Proteus Protocol in the Calixis Sector, and is one of the three great heresies that will see you put to death.

For what it's worth, in my fluff my 30k Archmagos Ordinator is indeed experimenting with the Proteus Protocol to make his war machines more effective (uploading a consciousness to the Ordinatus engines to meld with the machine-spirit), because even the 40k the Centurio Ordinatus is one of the few remaining institutions within the Mechanicum able to innovate (so long as it is for the noble good of improving the power of their war engines), so I reasoned that the 30k Centurio Ordinatus was given an even wider mandate.

thats quite a good one, I like that. Opens up the can of worms of where his soul is and is there a soul et al in the same way that star trek transporters do though. but I suppose put in the right way that in its self could be quite interesting