Treaty of Mars

The Treaty of Mars is the formal name given to the binding agreements that regulate the coexistence of the Imperium of Man and the Adeptus Mechanicus since the start of the Great Crusade. To prevent a wasteful and costly war with the Martian techno-empire, the Emperor proposed them a generous compromise that would cement the collaboration of both entities for the next ten millenia. In essence, the Emperor warranted the sovereingty of the Mechanicus' Forge Worlds and would supply them with Navigators and Astropaths in exchange for the supply of weapons, materiel and technicians with the required expertise to keep those running for His armies.

The Age of Strife
In times long past, during the Dark Age of Technology, both Terra and Mars coexisted and colaborated peacefully. The onset of the Age of Strife would shatter this collaboration, as Terra descended into techno-barbarism. On Mars, the situation became even more dire, for the Red Planet's terraformation was still uncomplete. Because of lack of maintenance during that period, Mars' atmospheric radiation shields soon disintegrated, allowing deadly solar radiation to destroy the fragile ecosystem and wiping out sparse vegetation which had taken millennia to cultivate. Mars returned to being the red wasteland of the past. Plagues caused by high radiation levels slew most of the population and many of the survivors devolved into mutants or ghoulish cannibals. Faced with total extinction, a new idea began to spread among the people, a religion of survival - the Cult Mechanicus dedicated to the Machine God.

The religious devotees sought out the now scattered technology needed to rebuild temporary radiation shelters. The cult demanded absolute devotion from its followers, for only by selfless dedication and often personal sacrifice could machines be recovered or the planet saved. Under the direction of their Tech-priest leaders, the cultists set about restoring order to the world. They built shelters to protect themselves from the radiation storms, and oxygen generators and food processing machines to enable them to live behind the enclosed shielding.

There were few shelters even for the Tech-priests and none for unbelievers. Marauders and mutant raiders tried to force their way inside the hurriedly constructed buildings. Many of the cultists died defending their shelters and some early shelters were destroyed, but the survivors emerged all the stronger and more determined. The people interpreted their survival in the face of tremendous odds as vindication of the Cult Mechanicus. Their resolve and devotion to the cult became unshakable.

While rival warlords battled over the remnants of Terra the Tech-priests built Mars anew, and the first temples of the Machine God were built. The Tech-priests scoured the ruins of Mars for surviving machinery which they enshrined within the Temple of All Knowledge. Within the temple's plasteel shell shining pistons held the vaulted roof almost a mile above. The shafts of each piston were so constructed that they moved to raise and lower the roof, altering its acoustic properties to accentuate the hymns of praise sung to the Machine God. The High Altar within took the form of a vast database containing the whole knowledge of the Tech-priests. Even today every new discovery is dedicated to this altar. Every temple on Mars and throughout the Forge Worlds is connected to the High Altar by means of a living Transmat link, a psychic Servitor whose mind co-joins all altars of the Cult Mechanicus into one holy machine entity.

Now unified under the Cult Mechanicus, the Priesthood of Mars began to dispatch Explorator Fleets across the galaxy and even plundered the surface of war-torn Terra itself in hopes of discovering lost technologies. Facing resistance to their quest on the planets surface, the Adeptus Mechanicus soon became bitter enemies with the Techno-barbarians which plagued Earth. In the meantime, each discovered and colonised world was rebuilt in an image of Mars itself, a colossal temple to the Machine-God, a planet now known as a Forge World, where industry is religion.

The Emperor and the Treaty of Mars
When the Emperor finished uniting the tribes of Terra during the Unification Wars, he became aware of the existence of the Cult Mechanicus and the vast stellar empire it had colonised. Realising that waging war against Mars and bringing the Cult Mechanicus to heel would be a long and wasteful battle, the Emperor went to Mars in peace, and presented Himself before the Martian parliament led by their Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal. The arrival of the Emperor set the Red Planet in turmoil, for having expunged any trace of mutation in their stock long ago, the Martians were at a loss to explain the glory of the immensely powerful psyker that now strode amongst them. Capitalising on this, the Emperor spoke of the glories of the past where Terra and Mars collaborated and formed the very core of an interstellar human empire. He proposed the Martians a generous alliance, guaranteeing the sovereingty and almost-independance of any rediscovered Forge World, along with the access to Navigators and Astropaths which would allow the Mechanicus to more efficiently colonize or hunt for Archeotech; in exchange for the necessary weapons, materiel and Tech-priest technicians to launch the Great Crusade.

The Martians readily agreed to the terms, but the very existence of the Emperor was a dogmatic problem for them: here was clearly a non mechanical superior being, and yet the Emperor aggressively refused any form of religion, promoting his atheïstic Imperial Truth instead. Unable to abandon the religion who defined them, the Martians proposed a compromise that was reluctantly agreed by the Emperor: He would be presented to the masses of the Cult Mechanicus as the Omnissiah, the living incarnation of the Machine-God, the long awaited living repository of knowledge and wisdom who incarnated all of the values of the cult.

The terms of this alliance were then formalized into a binding agreement, named the Treaty of Mars, which would inextricably bind together Imperium and Cult Mechanicus for the next ten millenia. Although the collaboration almost died during the Horus Heresy and the Schism of Mars, it perdured, and in the 41st millenium, the Adeptus Mechanicus is still an almost autonomous furnisher of technology for the Imperium, spared most of the attention of the Adeptus Ministratum and Inquisition by the ten millenia old Imperial decree.

Souces

 * Warhammer 40,000 4th Edition Rulebook
 * Titan Legions Rulebook (Specialist game)

[[Category:T]]
 * The Titan Legions (White Dwarf 178) by Rick Priestley
 * Mechanicum (novel) by Graham McNeill