Summary
Cyborg priest-engineer of the Cult Mechanicus, devoted to the Omnissiah and to the recovery and maintenance of sacred technology.
Lore
The Tech-Priests are the priest-engineers of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a galaxy-spanning priesthood of cyborg savants headquartered on the red sands of Mars. They are the jealous custodians of the Imperium’s vast and ancient arsenal, producing the weapons and war-engines that flow to every Imperial army.
Their flesh is replaced over time with bionic enhancements; the ruling castes are described as robed zealots whose flesh is replaced over time with bionic enhancements. Each carries a bewildering array of titles, and each specialises in some branch of arcane knowledge or esoteric lore, perpetuated with religious fervour.
A Tech-Priest commands legions of augmented cybernetic soldiers — the Skitarii — and is attended by mind-wiped servitors modified for labour or war. The greatest of their order rule entire planets converted into manufacturing complexes, the forge worlds.
Doctrine
The Tech-Priests are devoted to the Omnissiah, the Machine God, whom the wider Imperial Ecclesiarchy holds as another aspect of the God-Emperor. By the Treaty of Mars they retain the unusual right to administer their own worlds as they see fit, and to worship their own god.
Central to their doctrine is the prohibition of invention: for the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, innovation is heresy, as the Omnissiah’s creations may not be corrupted by mortal hands. The only sanctioned path to advancement is the Quest for Knowledge — the recovery of long-lost artefacts from Humanity’s golden age, chief among them the Standard Template Constructs.
Ranks and Specialisations
Tech-Priests bear a vast taxonomy of titles, each marking a specialisation:
- Tech-Priest Enginseer — field-engineer attached to Astra Militarum regiments, tending vehicles and machine spirits.
- Tech-Priest Manipulus — bears a galvanic cell within a bulbous augmentation, channelling Motive Force and draining new sources of power with their mechadendrites.
- Tech-Priest Dominus — a master of the Cult Mechanicus, possessed of prodigious talent and hunger for war.
- Technoarcheologist — specialist Tech-Priest hunting for archeotech and STC fragments.
- Archmagos — the senior rank, ruling forge worlds and Explorator fleets.
Belisarius Cawl, Archmagos Dominus, is among the most renowned of the order — once a Forge Lord, a Lexico Arcanus, and a Magos Biologis.