Tech-thrall

Tech-Thralls were Cyborg servants created by the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras, through basic augmetics and cranial surgery as the need for them arose and, in the case of the Legio Cybernetica, the use of captured prisoners and criminals requisitioned from local authorities was common. Considered a lower order of being than even Servitors by their masters, the ultimate fate of most tech-thralls was to end their lives recycled into servitor components and their implants harvested for use in future thralls as their bodies failed under the relentless toil to which they were subjected. In times of war Tech-thralls were formed into expendable units called Adsecularis and armed with basic weapon systems such as the Mitralock, a compact multi-chambered variant of the Laslock, designed to discharge a simultaneous volley of las pulses in a fan effect. It is not known if this type of cyborg servant is still present within the ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the modern 41st Millennium.

History
Tech-Thralls were specialised troops of the Legio Cybernetica created by the Mechanicum through basic augmetics and cranial surgery as the need for them arose, especially during the massive Imperial expansion during the Great Crusade and later the inter-galactic civil war known as the Horus Heresy. They were not servitors, which used often formerly human biological matter as a component system, but rather could be considered cyborgs as consciousness and memory was not extinguished before they were reprocessed into their new forms, merely mutilated and overridden. The conversion process commonly awaited the laity of a Forge World's population should it prove failing or commit some transgression against their masters, for few other criminal punishments existed in the Omnissiah's domains. Tech-Thralls served many purposes, but principally that of a flexible pool of expendable labour in the Forge Worlds, but in times of war, this same fate befell many to create a quickly produced and ultimately expendable military resource known as the Adsecularis. In these cases, the organic human bodies of the Tech-Thralls, already altered to lift heavy loads, functioned in hostile environments and obeyed the orders of their masters until death, were fitted with basic weapons systems and bodily protection. On the battlefield they served as expendable troops, unskilled but relentless and indefatigable; an army of the alive-yet-dead, puppeted by the Magos who commanded them.

Wargear

 * Flak Armour
 * Las-Lock - A somewhat archaic alternative to the mass-produced lascarbines favoured by many regiments and war hosts of the Imperial Army, las-locks were shoulder arms whose design favoured stopping power over rate of fire or range. Mitra-locks were a compact, multi-chambered variant of the las-lock, designed to discharge a simultaneous volley of las-pulses in a fan effect at short range akin to a shotgun blast.
 * Close Combat Weapon
 * Heavy Chainblade

Optional Wargear

 * Frag Grenades
 * Carapace Armour

Upgrades

 * The Rite of Pure Thought - A squad with this upgrade has undergone massive cranial surgery to destroy the emotional and instinctual responses centres of the brain.
 * Revenant Alchemistery - Certain Forge Worlds, particularly those far from the direct oversight of Mars, were commonly held to contain elements which practiced the forbidden arts of the Dark Age of Technology. Rumours of the use of the forbidden Sarcosa Wave and Black Alchemistry were rare before the war of the Horus Heresy, but as anarchy and bloodshed erupted on a galactic scale, some Taghmata on both sides of the divide of Traitor and Loyalist were accused of fielding Tech-Thralls animated from the battlefield dead using such terrible and prohibited knowledge.

Gallery
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