A fun fact about those 'prayers' they're always reciting: Those aren't just nonsense words and random bits and bob of holy text, it is actually the machine's instruction manual. The Rite of Activation is just the Tech-Priest saying aloud "To turn this device on, press the button with line in the circle." It's just uttered in binary and High Gothic, and none of them really understand the meanings or principles behind the instructions, they merely know that doing as the chant says makes the machine work.

Mechanicus: Loses a Titan "I'm never going to finacialy revover from this"

"Caul is this an A.I. ?" This needs to be the next animated bit.

I love how in the game Mechanicus the necrons are more understandable and relatable than the Mechanicus who are human. The necrons have voice actors in English, while the tech priests speak garbled static

You say body horror, we say body perfection

Mars is a barren irradiated wasteland *shows picture of Cleveland* Correct

One of my favorite bits about the Ad Mech is how they keep looking for LosTech, and sometimes they find it by sheer dumb luck, like that one time they where looking for an STC while being attacked by Eldar Corsairs, and their own Ad Mech ship, an Arch Mechanicus ship, literally pulled out a gun that wasn't on ANY plans that they had for that ship, and fired a single shot at the eldar ship, not only did it hit dead center, it caused a temporal paradox around the ship, and forced two versions of the same ship to share the same spot in space and time, which led to them blowing up spectacularly and violently, and the ship's onboard AI basically let out a sigh and went back to chilling, as the AdMech dudes stood there, dumb founded, wondering what in the Emperor's golden crotch guard just happened.

Everybody Gangsta till the toaster starts chanting in High-Gothic

I love that the idea of machine spirits is literally that comic where one boxer starts to do the kamehameha and the other one quits immediately and after the match he says “I knew he probably couldn’t but I ain’t going to fuck around and see if he could.”

Neo-gothic dubstep is a great genre of music.

"What's the point of you, Wilhelm? What do you even want out of life?" "I'm really good at killing people. I wanna be a robot."

"they lobotomize infants" "oh noooo...." "theyre probably vat grown tho" "OH, ok thats fine then..." love it

One of the best mechanicus jokes that basically sums them up is How many mechanicus priests does it take to screw in a lightbulb, and the number keeps growing exponentially as they all discuss the appropriate rituals and pre-rituals required to make and screw in a lightbulb.

In the lore its stated that the emperor went to mars, simply touched a broken machine and it began to work. And that's how he became the omnissiah. Now big E was alive waaay before the cult, more than likely he just understood the labels on this thing and literally just did an IT job. He just switched it off and back on again.

I like Biologis Tech-priests because they view life as just a different form of machine.

I'd hate to be on Metalica during a thunderstorm. One bolt and the whole planet gets to Ride The Lightning

Quite Shy is the smartest ork kommando hiding among the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars.

"The Machine is my temple. Each one a sacred shrine. I name each piston blessed, and every cog divine."

“These people were like, revered.” *shows picture of engineer from tf2* Engineer gaming.

DK: "aw man this seems like it sucks" Bricky, Immediately: "dude, human life has no value" god I love ad mech

ERROR 404: DAMN NOT FOUND Still the best quote from Mechanicus.

The Admech are what happens when Wall E plays for Megadeth

Cawl is also a gestalt consciousness. He's quite literally had other people's minds melded into his own with his own GINORMOUS ego keeping him in control.

Part of what I love about the Adeptus Mechanicus is how they personify the slow degradation of knowledge as it is increasingly ritualized until none of the original context remains. As far as I can tell, many of their rituals began as genuine maintenance, but as Mars' culture went increasingly bonkers during the age of strife and beyond, a five minute tune-up becomes an hour-long ritual. The original motions are still there, but buried under generations of intellectual rot, where the turning of a screw or cleaning of a pipe is of no more or less meaning or significance to the adept performing the rite. Of course, sometimes the original purpose is completely divorced from what it eventually becomes, or a ritual has no origin other than raw superstition, but hey, that's the admech for ya

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine. Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is Immortal.

Guiliman: *looks doubtfully at the Cawl Inferior machine* "Cawl, is this an AI...?" Cawl: *sweating nervously* "uhm... No...?"

On the one hand, I should save this episode up for tomorrow's miniature painting. On the other hand: *O M N I S S A I A H*

I'm surprised you didn't mention that time when the Mechanicus was so anti-alien, they decided to steal Ork Teleportation technology by taking thousands of ork corpses and running a current through them to power a tellporta that transported the Ork homeworld to where it is now...and renamed it Armageddon

It’s now time to pray to your new god,the 2003 Honda Civic

To be fare Girlyman was the one who commissioned Caul to invent better Space Marines

About the servo-skulls, in the imperium, having your skull used to become a servos is a great honor, because you were chosen to continue to be useful to the imperium and the emperor ( or the machine god for the mechanicus) even beyond death

The Mechanicus are my favorite of the human factions, and the game they mention is legit excellent. I recently tried to change my gmail password to "Flesh" but Google said it was "too weak".

:I am experiencing elevating levels of excitement: :releasing repressing agents:

Welp. It's time to pray to my new god, the 2003 Nokia N-Gage

Tech priest: Praise the Omnisaiah Fully functioning STC: Lol that shit ain’t real!

There's a bit of lore I absolutely love that perfectly encapsulates the relationship between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperium: the Steel Confessors. Basically they're the result of the Mechanicus head honchos saying "Hey guys, what if we made a Space Marine Chapter that was loyal to *us*, and not the Imperium?". The Inquisition eventually discovered that and took away their new toys, forcing the new Chapter, now called the Steel Confessors, to swear fealty to the Emperor over the Mechanicus. What Mars did there was, of course, absolute treason, and any other group would have been exterminated (or at the very least severely reprimanded) by the Inquisition for attempting something so insane. Yet the AdMech got away with a slap on the wrist. That's how powerful the Adeptus Mechanicus is, that even the Holy Inquisition, who have no qualms about destroying entire Space Marines Chapters, threads lightly when the Tech-Priests are concerned.

I shall prepare the home depot scented candles

Your Metallica reference: Long live machine The future is a frame Your man overthrown Spit out the bone

“There is no truth in flesh, only betrayal." "There is no strength in flesh, only weakness." "There is no constancy in flesh, only decay." "There is no certainty in flesh but death”

The practice of replacing flesh with metal started as a practical thing, since the people of Mars were in an eerily similar situation to the Necrontyr where the radiation was making their bodies frail and withered, until it became just another tradition. On that note, gonna "actually" here but I think it's important enough to do so, the Void Dragon is somewhat aware of the Mechanicus above it and does influence them, particularly through dreams. It's thought that the extreme obsession with machines might be due to that. Iirc there's also a very small group of the Mechanicus called the "Cult of the Dragon", whose job it is to make sure the C'tan stays asleep. The entity does actually commune with them sometimes I think. Best part? The Emperor is implied to be the one who put the Dragon there, *specifically for the purpose of cultivating this mechanically obsessed faction.* Another great type of Mechanicus Priests are the "Electro-Priests", or something to that effect. I'm not sure if they have models, but basically they're guys who have literal circuitry embedded into the skin on their remaining organic parts in the form of tattoos, and they can use these to hurl electricity of their foes. For shocking results some might say. Also, in the book Architect of Fate there's a very... Passionate Machine Spirit that goes on an angry rant about how it wishes it had "full bowels", so it could "void them" all over the Chaos Space Marines.

Something you didn’t mention about Space Hulks that I think is awesome is that they can contain materials impossible to find or reproduce anywhere else. When a Hemlock Destroyer gets no-clipped and welded with a Dauntless Light Cruiser, the ships merge at a molecular level impossible to replicate. This might leave you with a useless mess of scrap. Or, a slab of wraithbone from the engine room might merge with the adamantine door to the navigator’s sanctum, creating a whole new material with a whole new set of abilities. You’ll have to get past the genestealers, demons, and freebootahs first though.

Trazyn Probably has the STC for the Sydonian Dragoon somewhere in his collection.

Also, one interesting point about the machine spirits of Knights and Titans. They can actually take over the minds of the pilot if they aren't strong enough. Which is a good showcase that the Machine Spirits really do exist in some degree

You forgot about the Ark Mechanicus ship The Speranza that has a weapon that copy's the enemy's ship from the present send a copy back a nano second so it reappears on top of itself thus destroying it. The same said Ark could fire miniaturized black holes.

WHAT A WONDERFUL GIFT THE OMNISSIAH HAS GIVEN ME ON MY DAY OF BIRTH, PRAISE BE. Edit: May the Omnissiah bless you all for your kind words and generosity.

I always figured the founding ideas of individual machine spirits came from a combination of “here’s how you work the OS.” And “yeah, if the screen goes on the fritz, just smack the side of the terminal and it’ll clear up.”

1:00:50 By the Omnissiah, please make the "Is this an A.I., Cawl?" bit an animation

I'm going to actually Bricky on the Striders, because it's actually STUPIDER than he said and I think he'd like to know how stupid. They don't put them on treadmills, they literally just have the servitor implanted in them run them around in circles until they're needed then corral them. It's dumb and I love it.

Cawl's backstory is the biggest clusterfuck in 40k since the birth of Slaanesh.

With the release of the Void Dragon shard, I decided to go full-on Heretec. I roleplay my Admech army a little. I made them a sect that wants to free the shard and complete the Void dragon with the hopes of obtaining all knowledge in existence.

The story about the "AI Cawl" that was made for Guilliman just sounded like Cawl had literally calculated millions of potential questions and answered them and just left them as records, but when I heard it lied and shit I was like "yoooo nooooo, Cawl made an AI copy of himself" and it made me think of Halsey/Cortana from Halo, how Cortana was made from a clone of Halsey's brain.

My favorite bit to "Mechanicus are dumb" lore is that they possess at least one (likely multiple) fully intact STC but they don't know that is what it is or how to use it. Ark Mechanicus ships, the same ones that are used to hunt the galaxy for the Holy Grail of an intact STC, contain them. The only Magos who figured it out had his mind erased by the STCs AI so that it could stay secret.

- has a sore neck - "From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me."

Finally... My mental state can survive the rest of the week.

I love that the doge vandire meme was recommended to me before this podcast episode. KZfaq algoritm has its priorities straight today

Interesting thing. In The Great Work, the book with the cover art of Cawl and the space marine, Cawl echoes Guilliman’s sentiment about being fabricator general, saying that he absolutely DOES NOT want the position because it would plunge the mechanics into civil war

The beliefs of the mechanicus are hilariously contradictory and I love it. “Artificial life is abominable, but flesh is fallible and let’s be machines” they must love the necrons, no if the necrons had brains in suits

Bricky: the surface of Mars is unliveable. *proceeds to show a picture of the city of Cleveland*

Never would have thought an STC would have one of the rawest lines in Warhammer 40k

Q: How do the Mechanicus view the Necrons? A: It's complicated.

I crave the strength and certainty of steel! My mechadendrites are quaking in anticipation!

2:58 Every Ad Mech fan just came.

With the Skitarii rangers that become batteries for this walker, I would imagine they're not only willing, they're _eager_ to do it. Because it involves interfacing directly with the machine spirit of the walker. As far as they're concerned, they spend the rest of their life (however long that is) mentally linked to the Machine God itself. Sounds like something they'd be really into. Not even in the sense of "if the Omnissiah wills it", but rather "fucking *finally!* ".

I kinda wish/ want Belisarius Crawl to meet that AI in that spake hulk. Hes probably the only human left in the entire race, other than maybe Big E who it might get along with, or even just not hate.

YYYYEEEESSSSS PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH!!!!!!!!!!!! LUBE UP THEM TOASTERS BOISSSSSSS!

The Talk between Kitten and the FabGen was brilliant

I believe it was Trazyn who looked at a Tech-Priest and said "We were fools that gave up our souls to become machines, and you are following our path. We would give up anything to become whole and be able to feel again. Do not follow our path human, your flesh is what keeps you whole."

I like to think there's a subgroup of Magos Biologis who consider the pursuit of the swole to be true perfection, and just spend all their time at the Mechanicus gym pumping iron.

The bit with Cawl and guilliman NEEDS to be animated

Tech Priest: "I swear, By the machine spirit!" sct: "SWEAR TO ME!"

Ad Mech will bring peace to the galaxy because everyone will look at them and say "they okay" Well except maybe Necrons

Probably my favorite part of 40k world building is the butterfly affect you can get. Some Age of Strife engineer trying to keep his group of survivors’ tech running complains to his buddy that it feels like there’s some kind of spirit messing with the machines, and 10s of thousands of years later you have a galaxy spanning cult.

So I started to go for more walks to lose some fat... and I can't really go without hearing to some podcast. The fact that you've made the extra episodes is a blessing. And I need MORE. Even to someone who came here from watching/hearing most of Luetin's stuff, this is so enjoyable

I generally feel bad for the STC, imagine an A.I actually being so nice to its captain and crew members and being friends only to discover the end of humanity and warn the Imperium but, only to be tortured by your own people, because you no believe in emperor, and the STC carrie's this memory with it in anger knowing humanity is in the wrong path to grace.

Minor correction: They're not phasing out the old Space Marines anymore. That was scrapped idea from before 8th edition launched because the old CEO wanted to pull an AOS with 40k. Primaris are an expansion pack to Space Marines, not a sequel.

I would love a story about a Tech priest mistaking a AI for a Machine spirit and they become friends.

Thank you for covering the admech, they really do need more love and it’s nice to see you giving the toasterfuckers their time in the spotlight. That being said, I suggest the Schola Progenium as a topic for a bonus episode.

TikTok will find a way to steal that video. They always do.

I know most of this lore but I just live hearing two nerd friends go over it. And FINALLY the mechanicus episode!

"the Surface was unlivable" *shows picture of Cleveland* God damn I love this show

Don't worry toaster, they won't get you this time, I promise

I was so pleased when AdMech became a proper faction. They've always been one of the coolest parts of 40K, IMO

I loved this episode. You didn't even overdo the toaster meme. *chef's kiss*

Who here agrees that Belisarius Crawl is the Julius Caesar and Einstein of 40k, because he breaks the rules in order to make the Imperial Guard, the Navy, and Astartes better

Glad to see you guys doing one of my main 3 favorite armies. Mechanicus is best faction in imperium

I'mma have to actually Bricky here, becoming a Servitor is punishment, but becoming a Servo Skull is a great honor, as for Cherubs, they're _mostly_ vat grown and not actual babies. EDIT: Oh he clarified the last one.

mechanicus has such a good opening, gives me chills everytime

Children of the Omnissiah 1 hour version on in the background... let's go!

Cawl doesn't appear to want to be the Fabricator General, Cawl Inferior does, Cawl seems suprised that his creation requested the position. This is in the Great Work which gives Cawl quite a bit of fleshing out.

"Now is a great time to be an Ad Mech fan." They moved Toaster-Sex Day to today?

My understanding is that skittari are generally mind-linked to their tech priests, but certain mods are removable for the very rare promotions into the mechanics proper, once again allowing them free thought and action, instead of only being semi-independent.

These dudes are like the ultimate form of the bitcoin dudes buying all the graphics cards

I'm reminded of a moment from the book "Gunheads" where the Imperial Guard is fighting against the Orks on Golgotha to get back Commissar Yarrick's personal Baneblade. During the final battle the Orks use said Baneblade against the Imperial forces and they're instructed: "Do not damage the Baneblade" which means they can't really shoot back. That IS until one of the tank commanders goes: "Frak that" and fires an anti armor shell into it and tears off the orkish plate revealing the Baneblade underneath. INSTANTLY the Ad-Mech are on the Vox yelling and screeching about how they're damaging a priceless relic to which the Imperial Commander responds to the effect: "When you get off your asses and do some fighting I'll consider what you have to say, but I would rather turn that tank to scrap then lose my whole army." Suffice to say they got the Baneblade back without a scratch because Cadians, fuck yeah

That takes some skill to explain to a complete newbie the basics of the Mechanicus in one minute, and make it that badass at the same time.

I always loved ancient AI in warhammer giving glimpses of humanities previous power.

Pi Braine screaming intensifies.

Me who's too poor to support the Patrion: *Leaves a like* It ain't much but its honest work

“You’ve got Graia, which is really cool.” *Angry Pi-Braine sounds echo in the distance.*

STC: has a new item in the Spring Catalogue Ad Mechanicus: *nuts instantly*

*From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh... it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.*