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So, this is a thought that's been going around in my mind a lot recently and I wanted to share it.

I've been running a Wrath & Glory campaign for about a year now, and my players have now come across a Knight World, and been mingling with the nobles of the planet, and it just so happens that most of the barons and sirs and ladies of the planet are, for the standard of our mundane world, basically insane. And it occurred to me that every Knight Pilot, no matter the House or the allegiance, as to be mentally unstable on some level.

Consider the Throne Mecanicum of the Knight Suits. Every pilot leaves some sort of imprint of their conscience in it, and every pilot after they are bounded to a Knight Suit, joins their own conscience to the Machine Spirit of the suit, and therefore to that of their ancestor. And, as shown in lore the ancestors speak to the pilot. Giving advice, criticism, scrutinizing their descendant. And these "ghosts" so to speak have some degree of conscience left, in Assasinorum Kingmaker, we even see Ancestors of a Knight Armiger having a full on argument with each other !
Consider also the influence that the Machine Spirit and the ancestors have on the pilots and the Knightly Houses as a whole. The entire reason Knight Worlds are even a thing, is said to be the suits themselves. Influencing them towards honor, and protecting the innocent and things of the sort.
And, with each "spirit" of pilot staying in the suit, that "influence" grows and grows until you arrive at modern day Knight Houses.

Which leaves me to my earlier thought on the mental stability of the pilots. The suits push them to have an obsession over tradition, and glory and honor to an egregious extent, making them almost a parody of the general image of the "noble" knight, and in my opinion this is honestly the most interesting thing about them. They have to be insane, of on the brink of it constantly. Some suits are older than the Heresy and have seen the Great Crusade, imagine piloting a mech this old, with countless spirits bound in it each screaming and yearning for victory and the promise of glory.
And imagine the power you feel piloting such a machine towering over the battlefield decimating infantry with ease and reducing tanks to ash. Even without the ghost of your grandad screaming in your ear, this has to get to you at some point.

Obviously, basically everyone in 40k has to be insane in some way or another.. Most people are far from reasonable, and you're probably not supposed to really take apart the setting in such a way. I mean, you don't often think about the mental stability of SM after they've been brainwashed and conditioned for war before they even reach puberty.
But I do like to think of the Knights in this way. That they are insane warmongers with delusions of grandeur, obsessed with glory and tradition, each yearning for battle because the spirit of their ancient war machines that they barely even understand demands it, each pilot being pushed towards this path by their forefathers, still trapped in the suit. Forefathers that were themselves pushed on this path by the spirit of the ancestors before them, and the spirits before that in a cycle that started millennia ago.

There’s definitely a horror element to the Throne Mechanicus.

It seems the subtle mind nudging element dates back to the original design. Likely as some kind of societal failsafe to ensure such immensely powerful tools weren’t used against their own.

And I kind of doubt that the accumulated echoes of personalities was intended. Rather, I can see the Throne Mechanicus being a readily replaceable interface. So that phenomena didn’t become apparent until the understanding of the technology, and the ability to replace the Throne Mechanicus was lost.

It’s also possible the echoes were eventually seen as desirable. A direct link to one’s ancestors, and access to experiences not one’s own. So what was once an unintended issue became something embraced.

Naturally, 40K being 40K, the exact how very likely varied from planet to planet.

A deeper thought, and one I can’t entirely substantiate? If we look to the Votann lore, we see the strong suggestion their fleets were sent out by Mega Corporations, who were the ultimate benefactor of the goods and ores gathered by those who would become the Kin.

I think that does make sense. After all, a fleet is no small matter, and wouldn’t be cheap to build, crew and launch. So someone was footing that bill. Humanity being humanity, they likely wanted a return on that investment.

And so the quirk of the Throne Mechanicus may have been to ensure Company Loyalty. A way to ensure that subsequent generations of pilots kept their wards productive without requiring external oversight.

Over time, that kinda became corrupted, albeit in a fairly benevolent way. The company men became the noble houses, the workers became serfs. But they still provided the protection that was their original purpose.

Just be careful as not all Knight houses use the Throne Mechanicus.

House Taranis of Mars doesn't follow any of the Chivalry nonsense.

☆☆☆

If you want to read the best example of what it's like to be a Scion, read Assassinorum by Robert Rathe.

It's about a team of Assassin's infiltrating a Knight Household.

Best Knight book.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Just be careful as not all Knight houses use the Throne Mechanicus.

House Taranis of Mars doesn't follow any of the Chivalry nonsense.

☆☆☆

If you want to read the best example of what it's like to be a Scion, read Assassinorum by Robert Rathe.

It's about a team of Assassin's infiltrating a Knight Household.

Best Knight book.

House Taranis was founded on Mars itself, so their relation with the machine is obviously going to be different, and I guess you could say that about every Mechanicus aligned household. However, cult of chivalry aside, these pilots still link themselves to ancient machines they barely understand, and speaking of Assasinorum Kingmaker, I do remember the Armiger Jester being described as basically almost sentient and alive in it's own way, the machine spirit of even the smallest of knight suit is still an immense force. In Assasinorum, we get a really good description of a Ritual of Bounding, the pilot almost died because of the sheer force the Knight has.

That being said, my own understanding of the Throne Mechanicum is that, at the end of the day, it is how the pilot interfaces with the suit, so even without all of the chivarlic "Huzzah", the pilots of House Taranis still go through the ritual of becoming, and still get the mental backlash as a result, their point of view on the matter might be different, theirs being more about the purity of the machine and so on instead of the more "traditional" zealotry.
Besides, the Mechanicus might honestly be even more mired in rituals and weird obscure traditions than the rest of the IOM

I've kind of always thought that the Throne Mechanicum was "similar" to the honor bound AI of the Bolos (Sci-fi series written by Keith Laumer)... so the Throne itself is the impetus to do chivalric actions, so the Pilot either goes along with it or gets beat down until they die or accept it.

-STS

I think you nailed it when you said everyone in the imperium is a little crazy. My favorite part of the 40k universe is exploring what flavor of crazy is in each of the imperial factions.

I loved the idea that imperial knights boil down to the concept of 'Don Quixote in a mech suit'.

The Thrones and Helms Mechanicus also raise the distinct possibility of the same, behaviour enhancing/encouraging tech being applied elsewhere.

Consider farming equipment. With the STC, I think it’s entirely possible All In One Designs were possible. So a single machine for tilling, sowing, harvesting and baleing. And they have similarly bonded, specialist pilots.

Except instead of notions of honour, sacrifice and noble ideals and that? The Throne Mechanicus there is jacked in to weather monitoring satellites, a “how to grow crops” data base. And so the pilot becomes artificially privy to decades, centuries even millennia of farming experience. All in the name of efficiency and giving the colony the best possible chance of success.

Construction Mech STC things could likewise be pre-programmed with all sorts of architectural knowledge. That speeds and enchanted the building of settlements, the pilots/operators gifted the knowledge to do so and rapidly adapt to the unexpected.

Which all leads into the rapid collapse of societies and their tech levels, post STC. In short? Once those wonderful toys were taken away, mankind no longer educated itself the way we currently do. Why bother with years of education and training, when a simple neural jack can provide all you need, right there, right now.

Heck, if the Becoming is a heavily ritualised approach to bonding? It could be the draw toward chivalric and self sacrifice and that may simply have been subtle at first. Again, a way to ensure whoever wound up in the pilot seat didn’t abuse their new toys vastly power.