Dark Mechanicum

"The path of the Omnissiah has left humanity dithering in the darkness, incapable of advancing on the paths of knowledge. Embracing the warp reveals technology that the primitives on Mars could never dream of wielding."

- Magos Caine of the Five-Fold Path

The Dark Mechanicus is a sect of traitorous Tech-priests and members of the Collegia Titanica of the Adeptus Mechanicus who willingly swore their loyalty to the Warmaster Horus and the Chaos Gods as the Great Crusade came to a close and the terrible galactic conflict known as the Horus Heresy began in the early 31st Millennium. After the Horus Heresy ended in a pyrrhic victory for the Imperium, the traitorous Forces of Chaos that had served the Warmaster were driven towards the Eye of Terror during the brutal military campaigns remembered as the Great Scouring. The Renegade Tech-priests of the Dark Mechanicus were also driven from Mars by the resurgent Loyalists amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus. These Renegades fled the Imperium into the far corners of the galaxy and some also took refuge in the Eye of Terror. In exile, the Dark Mechanicus became even more enthralled to the power of the Warp and heretical technologies.

A God Incarnate
When the Age of Strife came to an end, the Emperor of Mankind was determined to bring to fruition his future plans for human unity in a very hostile galaxy. He knew the time had come after the birth of Slaanesh in the 30th Millennium reopened the galaxy to Warp travel and communication to unite all of humanity under one banner, and end inter-human conflict. With the use of genetically-modified warriors who presaged the development of the first Astartes, he quickly rose to dominance on Old Earth, uniting the once-divided nations of Mankind's birthplace during the Unification Wars. He then set his sights on the wider galaxy, and with his Legions of newly-created Space Marines at the forefront of his mighty expeditionary fleets, the Emperor launched his Great Crusade out into the void.

When the Emperor had first come to Mars seeking an alliance between his regime and the powerful Cult Mechanicus, the Tech-priests had recognised a kindred spirit; a man of science who valued the power of machines and technological advancement. As word of the "technological divinity" of this strange golden warrior reached the wider populace of Mars, some Tech-priests even began to equate the Emperor with the physical embodiment within the universe of their own Machine God -- the Omnissiah. The Emperor forged an alliance with the Mechanicum through the Treaty of Mars -- an alliance of two empires that marked the true foundation of the Imperium of Man. In return for supplying the needed materiel for his armies and building a mighty warfleet in the orbital shipyards of Mars' Ring of Iron for his crusade to reunite the stars, the Emperor promised to protect the Tech-priests and respect the autonomy of their Forge Worlds and their freedom to continue to practice their faith, despite the official atheism of the Imperial Truth that the Emperor intended to promulgate across all the other worlds of the newborn Imperium.

Dissension in the Ranks
For the masses of Mars, the Omnissiah was now a tangible being, a golden figure that trod the red surface of Mars, but a small minority believed that the Emperor was nothing more than a False God who had enslaved the Martian Priesthood to his will with lies. This bitter resentment, harboured over the next two centuries, would fester below the surface, until such time when this rancorous hatred would boil over into a terrible rebellion against the authority of this False God. This small sect of dissenters believed the Emperor purposely came to Mars in the guise of the Omnissiah, albeit an incarnate god who came at the head of an army of conquest. The peace that the Emperor had offered the Mechanicus was illusory, a conceit designed to conceal a darker truth. These dissenters believed that the Emperor offered peace with one hand whilst keeping a dagger behind his back with the other. In reality, the Emperor’s offer was an ultimatum, "Join with me or I will simply take what I need from you." Faced with a choice that was no choice at all, the Tech-Priests had been forced to bargain away the autonomy of Mars and see the sacred Red Planet become little better than a vassal world of Terra, Mars ancient rival for leadership among Mankind.

Imminent War
Two Terran centuries passed after the signing of the Treaty of Mars, and the individual known as Kelbor-Hal rose to a position of much prominence within the Adeptus Mechanicus. He had become the Fabricator-General of Mars, the master of the Red Planet's mightiest forge, Olympus Mons. The fact that such an ambitious and duplicitous individual ever rose to prominence and the eventual leadership of the Adeptus Mechanicus is one of the great tragedies of Imperial history. It is remarkable to Imperial scholars of today that an individual as extraordinarily gifted as Kelbor-Hal could be so wrong-headed as to bring so mighty and august a body as the Mechanicus over to the service of heresy and rebellion.

The Fabricator-General knew he should be proud of his accomplishments, for he had uncovered more of the secrets of technology than any before him and had overseen the longest reign of increasing production quotas in the Mechanicum’s history. But pride, like many other emotional responses, had all but vanished as the organic Cogitator once housed in his skull had been gradually replaced with synthetic synapses and efficient conduits for logical thought. The climate on Mars was full of discontent during this tumultuous time in the days just before Horus openly declared his rebellion against the Emperor. There were tense relations between the various Mechanicus Magi who governed Mars with sporadic outbreaks of espionage and violence being committed against the various forges that represented the primary sociopolitical units of Mars. There were even unconfirmed suspicions that the various Titan Legions of the Collegia Titanica, the most potent military forces available to the Mechanicus, had already secretly chosen sides in case of a potential conflict.

Rise of the Dark Mechanicus
At the outset of the Horus Heresy, the Warmaster Horus sent Regulus, an Adeptus Mechanicus representative who had already thrown in his lot with the Warmaster, to Mars to secure the tentative support of the Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus for his dreams of rebellion. Kelbor-Hal was skeptical at first, for the Emperor had been brought to his forge over two centuries earlier, and Kelbor-Hal had been forced to bend the knee to him. The ruler of the lowly Terran tribes had made empty promises of an equal role in his grand crusade of conquest, but that vaunted equality had never materialised in the Fabricator-General's view. The Mechanicus continued to toil in its myriad manufactorums and orbital shipyards across the galaxy's Forge Worlds to provide the Emperor's armies with the needed weapons of war, but received nothing for their efforts but platitudes. Kelbor-Hal knew Horus Lupercal was a warrior of vision, but Kelbor-Hal wanted to know what he could offer in addition to platitudes.

Regulus explained to the Fabricator-General that much had happened since the Emperor took his leave of the expeditionary forces after the success of the Ullanor Crusade and the installation of his favorite son Horus, as the Warmaster and his proxy in command of the Great Crusade. He assured Kelbor-Hal that alignments had shifted and that new powers emerged from the shadows, offering their aid to those with the strength of vision to heed them. Horus Lupercal was one such individual, and he was now assuredly a friend of the Mechanicus.

When it came time to strike at the Emperor and his Imperium, Horus guaranteed to be a friend to Mars as long as the Fabricator-General gave his loyalty--and his manufacturing capabilities--over to the cause of the Traitors. Horus also required the Fabricator-General to quash any dissent amongst his own Tech-priests so that the forces of the Warmaster would be able to launch their bid for supremacy within the Sol System without fear of counterattack. Any factions loyal to Terra must be brought to heel or destroyed before the Warmaster’s forces reached the Solar System. The Fabricator-General informed Regulus that the Warmaster had asked much of him and the Mechanicus already. They had already delivered, for they had already ensured that materials and weapons were priority-tasked to those expeditionary fleets of the Great Crusade that the Warmaster favoured and had delayed shipments to those not aligned with him. But the Mechanicus had no desire to trade one autocrat for another.

Regulus assured Kelbor-Hal that the Warmaster pledged to return the Martian Empire to its former glory, and furthermore, he swore to withdraw any non-Mechanicus forces from all of the Forge Worlds after the Emperor had been overthrown. To allay the Fabricator-General's misgivings, the Warmaster promised to provide the Mechanicus the lost secrets of ancient Standard Template Construct (STC) technology that had been recovered from the worlds of the recently subjugated Auretian Technocracy by the Warmaster's Sons of Horus Legion. The Fabricator-General was impressed with the Warmaster's gift, and admitted that it was a valuable STC database, but he wanted more. Regulus had anticipated this demand, and told Kelbor-Hal that the Warmaster promised to lift all restrictions on research into those technologies like Abominable Intelligence (A.I.) that the Emperor had declared forbidden. To cement the alliance between the Mechanicus and the Warmaster and display the Traitors' seriousness about their cause, Horus had provided Regulus with the protocols required to unlock the infamous Vaults of Moravec.

The Vaults of Moravec were a repository of forbidden knowledge that the Emperor had ordered sealed two centuries earlier after the signing of the Treaty of Mars, for the vaults contained innumerable artefacts of technology that had been fashioned or corrupted by the malign power of Chaos. Greedily, the Fabricator-General struck the dark bargain, accepting Horus' proposal and willingly joined forces with the Warmaster, assisting the Traitors with all of the technology of Mankind at his disposal.

Schism of Mars
When this repository was reopened, there was all manner of forbidden arcane knowledge and weaponry that had obviously been tainted by the corrupting influence of Chaos stored within. Soon the corruption spread throughout the forges and temples to the Machine God across the Red Planet as scrap code -- Chaos-contaminated digital source code that was infected with an arcane computer virus -- infested the logi-stacks and Cogitator (computer) archives of the Adeptus Mechanicus, causing literal Chaos to emerge in any Cogitator system that was networked to one of its infected counterparts.

The opening acts of treachery had already occurred, yet the Fabricator-General could not openly march to war against the Emperor without the appropriate pretense, providing the excuse to silence his detractors and eliminate his rivals. The Fabricator-General and his allies amongst, what would later be called the Dark Mechanicus, used the disruption unleashed by the scrap code attack to bide their time and marshal the strength of their forces. Kelbor-Hal and his allies also used the tactics of sabotage and assassination in an attempt to eliminate those who were unwilling to join their cause. But the opportunity to go openly to war eventually presented itself when the Techno-Magi Koriel Zeth, the Mistress of Magma City, declared that she did not believe the Omnissiah actually existed. This open apostasy from the sacred doctrines of the Cult Mechanicus was the excuse the forces of the Dark Mechanicus needed to finally wage open warfare against their enemies, declaring them to be heretics and apostates to the faith that had been sacred on Mars for millennia. Magma City would soon become a focal point in the struggle for those amongst the Mechanicus who remaiend Loyal to the Imperium. Open warfare eventually erupted across the Red Planet as Martian forces, both civilian and military, fought one another in a deadly and escalating civil war whose destructiveness mirrored that unfolding in the wider galaxy between Loyalist and Traitor forces.

Acts of Treachery
To help the Warmaster achieve his goals, Kelbor-Hal oversaw the construction of the mighty Battleship Furious Abyss in the orbital shipyard of Thule, a former asteroid, which had been towed by the Mechanicus into orbit of the gas giant of Jupiter in the Sol System, far beyond prying eyes and questions. This formidable warship was unlike any other of its kind. It was so heavily armoured that it could withstand even a concerted assault from a planetary laser defence battery. It was the greatest and largest vessel ever assembled by Mankind, unique in every way and powerful beyond reckoning.

Kelbor-Hal had sanctioned the construction of such a vessel because it suited his great purpose, namely the burgeoning desire, or rather intrinsic programming, within the servants of the Machine God to gradually become one with their slumbering deity. The Emperor had sought to place restrictions upon the Mechanicus' ability to explore every avenue of knowledge that might lead to a closer unity with the Machine God. Horus had promised to remove all of those restrictions and perhaps open even new vistas of knowledge for the Mechanicus to explore in the form of his allies amongst the entities of the Warp. Faced with such a choice, the question of Kelbor-Hal's allegiance and that of the Mechanicus factions loyal to him had required mere nanoseconds of computation.

The Furious Abyss had been intended to become the new flagship of the traitorous Word Bearers Space Marine Legion. None could know of the vessel’s existence until it was too late. Steps had been taken to ensure that remained the case. The massive Battleship had been created with one deliberate mission in mind: the annihilation of an entire Space Marine Legion. The Word Bearers' ultimate aim as part of the Warmaster's larger plan of conquest was to infiltrate the Realm of Ultramar in the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy and attempt to destroy the Ultramarines Legion and their homeworld of Macragge.

In a final act of treachery, Kelbor-Hal had the Jovian shipyards destroyed once the Furious Abyss was complete. There was no time to flee to safety for the workers at the yards and no survivors. Every Tech-priest, Servitor and Menial present at the yards was burned to ash. None would discover the massive starship that had been fabricated upon the asteroid’s surface until it was much, much too late. A great deal of precious technology technology was lost during Thule’s destruction and so it proved to be a steep price for the Traitor elements within the Mechanicus to pay for the absolute and certain secrecy required to bring to fruition the Warmaster's plan to destroy the Ultramarines. But in the end, the Fabricator-General’s will had been carried out and the Dark Mechanicus played its part in the tragedy that would ultimately unfold on a world called Calth.

Horus Heresy
The members of what became known as the Dark Mechanicus supported Horus during the start of the Horus Heresy and they participated in the attacks against the Loyalist Space Marine Legions on Istvaan V where they used dark and forbidden knowledge to help destroy the Loyalist forces. Later, the Dark Mechanicus, led by the Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal, unleashed the terrible civil war upon the Mechanicus known as the Schism of Mars in a bid to restore the autonomy of the Mechanicus from the Imperium of Man. This effort failed when Horus was slain at the end of the Horus Heresy during the Battle of Terra and the Loyalist elements of the Mechanicus succeeded in driving their Chaos-corrupted brethren from the Red Planet. Many of these so-called Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicus fled into the Eye of Terror alongside the other Traitors after the Great Scouring, when the Imperium recovered most of the territory across the galaxy that had been lost to Horus' Traitor forces.

Post-Heresy
Today the Tech-priests and Dark Magi of the Dark Mechanicus, who are considered Hereteks amongst their counterparts in the Cult Mechanicus, have pledged their souls to the worship of the Dark Gods of Chaos. Within the Eye of Terror they continue to service and maintain the war machines and wargear of the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions, the Traitor Titan Legions and the other Forces of Chaos with equal fervour and plumb the depths of secret and forbidden knowledge kept hidden by the Ruinous Powers. Still dedicated to the acquisition of all knowledge in the universe much like their Loyalist counterparts, the Dark Mechanicus believes their uncorrupted brothers and sisters in the Adeptus Mechanicus are fools, for they will never be able to fully comprehend the divinity that is true knowledge if they cut themselves off from the secrets offered by the Dark Gods. The Adepts of the Dark Mechanicus see the Omnissiah of the Cult of the Machine as being embodied in the power of Chaos Undivided rather than the Emperor of Mankind. As such, they pledge themselves to the destruction of the God-Emperor, who they believe is a false prophet who has led the rest of their fellows astray. The members of the Adeptus Mechanicus are horrified by what they view as their Chaotic counterparts' tech-heresy, and feel that the Dark Mechanicus' knowledge is a blasphemous affront to the Machine God and his Omnissiah, even as they are always curious to learn more about what their dark brethren are up to...

Beyond the Imperium
Those of the Dark Mechanicus were amongst the first group of those the Imperium brand as "heretics," fleeing to the Eye of Terror and living beyond Imperial control by living outside the Imperium. But the Eye of Terror was not the only region of space where these heretics fled to escape the Imperium's wrath. Though the Imperium is vast, its authority stretching from rim to rim of the galaxy, in reality there are vast swaths of space unknown to the Imperium of Man. These regions have many names, including but by no means restricted to, the "outlands," "wilderness space," and "The Halo Stars." Within them, whole civilisations can rise, prosper, and fall, without once knowing of the wider Imperium that surrounds them.

The Calixis Sector is one such region of space, existing amongst the edges of the galaxy, an established bastion of Imperial control amongst the hazy borders. Thus, it is surrounded by regions of space not under Imperial control. The most prominent is the Koronus Expanse in the Halo Stars, linked to the Calixis Sector by a fluctuating warp passage. Beyond this passage, Imperial rule ends, and all manner of human civilisations exist unknown and undiscovered. However, there are other outlands around the Calixis Sector as well, including the Hazeroth Abyss, the fringes of the Drusus Marches, and the nomad space between the Calixis and bordering Ixaniad Sector. These renegades are as varied as the regions of space they occupy.

Frequently these peoples take the form of extended clans that share their knowledge only through their blood relatives, maintaining a level of knowhow about ancient technologies or local warp space conditions that astounds outsiders. The Adeptus Mechanicus is particularly sensitive to the existence of such hereteks (of which those in the Meratech clans are a particularly egregious example) and press other Imperial authorities to mobilise and capture or kill them as a matter of priority. Individual renegades sometimes slip into Imperium space to pursue their trade, but they find it a dangerous place to live. If caught and identified, they are tortured and executed by the Inquisition with no hope of mercy.

Dark Mechanicus Forge Worlds
There are those servants of Chaos who live beyond the normal ken of mortals within a realm not entirely of the material universe and not entirely of the warp: a Daemon World where the laws of nature and reason have been completely usurped by the whims of the Chaos Powers. Here daemons roam freely and are constantly nourished by twisting winds of magic and mortals become their playthings with a value only as champions or slaves. Daemon Worlds are a sanctuary for the worshippers of Chaos with the means and courage to flee to them. The Inquisition never rests in its efforts to eliminate the devotees of the Ruinous Powers, but a Daemon World defies even their shadowy reach.

A few Daemon Worlds are dominated by the remnants of the Dark Mechanicus that once followed Horus. These Dark Mechanicus Forge Worlds are wholly given over to daemon-machines and infernal industries, where mills grind flesh and suffering to make insane visions of its nightmarish masters real, and countless millions are enslaved to work in a world-spanning network of labyrinthine forges, churning out an endless supply of weapons and armaments for the Traitor Legion's Long War. The masters of these Dark Mechanicus Forge Worlds, half-daemon machines themselves, have long since left the shreds of their humanity behind and are beholden to none -- be they mortal or Chaos god. They sell or barter their unholy inventions and arms to the highest bidder, be they warlord, demagogue, Chaos Sorcerer or Daemon Prince without favour, and their coin of exchange is always the same, raw materials, the flesh and souls of slaves to the Dark Mechanicus Forge World's unquenchable hunger.

Heretek Savants
"++No Secutor, you may not move++ Even now conduction filaments are piercing your neural systems and unworthy flesh++ So they sent you to find me, did they?++ To carry out the Omnissiah’s judgment on me? ++ Well you found me —or more accurately I found you, foolish puppet of meat and iron ++ Well, now you will dance on my strings not theirs ++ Ah yes, your last paltry defences fall++ In a way I envy you; in a moment you will experience the most exquisite of agonies as I rip apart and overwrite your synapses one-by-one, it should be quite the experience++ Now Secutor, open wide, Here…I… Am."

- Cognitive data-chain forensically recovered from Secutor Rho–456-0, aftermath of the destruction of Forge-Control Lathe-Het Delta-9

The strictures and dictates of the Adeptus Mechanicus are many and harsh; they form a labyrinthine and iron-clad code that defines every aspect of the lives of the Omnissiah’s priesthood, their outlook and practices. Their purpose is as simple as it is unwavering: to control and regulate knowledge and its use, stifle innovation, and above all maintain the Machine Cult’s stranglehold on the Imperium’s technology. To become a Heretek Savant by that phrase’s purest definition is to abandon this code, at least in the Tech-Priest’s private thoughts. It is to embrace individual innovation, experimentation, and free will and stray from the path ordained by the teachings of the Archmagos Doctrinal. For a Tech-Priest to do so is every bit as rare, as radical and heretical as a Confessor of the Ministorum straying away from the Imperial creed, and the consequences for those that do stray, should their deviation be discovered, is every bit as harsh. Although rather than a pyre, Heretek Savants can look forward to having their implants ripped bodily from them while alive and whatever meat that remains useful recycled into servitor components to pay for their sins.

Heretek Savants can come to their renegade position for a variety of reasons, the most common of which are to do with the simple exercising of their free will away from the structured environments of the Machine God’s domains. Such tech-heresy is particularly prevalent among those Tech-Priests who serve in the Explorator cadres or are assigned to the Inquisition’s service. The consequences of self-reliance and forced adaptation in the field away from help can affirm the Omnissian faith for some Tech-Priests, but for others it can lead them increasingly to question and to innovate in order to overcome adversity and seek their own answers. Others come to tech-heresy for darker reasons, such as personal ambition and the obsessive quest for power and knowledge which will allow them no respite and lead them to increasingly rail against the narrow confines of the Cult Mechanicus’ approved technologies and patterns. Regardless, the path of tech-heresy is a dangerous one and as perilous in its way as tampering with the powers of the warp. Exposure to the artefacts and lore of the alien and the sins of humanity’s ancient past can be every bit as corrupting, both for the body and soul.

Secrecy is as vital for Heretek Savants as for any other whose knowledge and actions would condemn them in the eyes of the Imperium because discovery will lead to sanction and destruction by the power of the Cult Mechanicus. This usually leads to a slow distancing of themselves from their fellows in the Mechanicus and a deep-seated paranoia of discovery. As a result Heretek Savants rapidly gain a merciless and suspicious streak centred on their own self-preservation, increasingly favour implanting (often heretical) weaponry and defensive systems into their own bodies, and will stop at nothing in the service of the quest for knowledge. Becoming a Heretek Savant is a matter of choice and opportunity rather than induction into a secret cult or service to a master, and all that is needed is for the Tech-Priest to turn his back on the sacred doctrines of the Omnissiah and have the will to do so. From this point on, they risk censure and destruction by the Cult Mechanicus if their heresies are discovered, and while there is nothing to stop them furthering their rank and position in the Adeptus Mechanicus, they are forever more false of heart and must remain eternally vigilant.

Hereteks
Because of the nature of their split from the Imperium, these fallen Tech-priests lack a central authority or consistent belief structure. As a result, their reigning ideology is far more diverse than that of their former brethren within the Adeptus Mechanicus. Hereteks may shun the Omnissiah entirely as a false god, worship him as an extension of Chaos, or simply ignore their former beliefs to focus solely on their research. Their slaves to hate the Imperium and to despise the Emperor with an unholy passion.

Even among the unusually open-minded Explorators of the Adeptus Mechanicus, there are subjects which must be avoided at all cost to remain true to the dictates of the Machine God. A Heretek enthusiastically violates all such strictures, exploring xenos technology, archeotech from the Dark Age of Technology, and dabbling in all facets of technology related to the manipulation of the Warp. He may even be bold enough to develop entirely new technologies, combining components in forbidden manners to produce the ultimate tech-heresy for many in the Cult Mechanicus -- innovation. He may go as far as sharing the tools of his trade and the secrets of its ways with those who have not been trained in the mysteries of the Machine God. A Heretek actively seeks out new technology and continuously experiments with new techniques in ways that were once forbidden. He no longer believes that any information, experiment, or device can be ignored. Rather, he deliberately focuses on those technologies that the Mechanicus' teachings once taught him to avoid, with a particular interest in developing Warp-based technologies.

Few inquiries concerning technology are beyond a Heretek’s interest, though inevitably many of his inventions and much of his research tend towards the development of tools of destruction. As he builds these weapons for his fellow devotees, the Heretek has also invariably rebuilt his own body. It may be that he has few organic components left and those that remain are often marked by the mutational "gifts" of the Chaos Gods. His cybernetic and sometimes biological enhancements not only improve his technological acumen, they also grant him additional abilities in combat. A Heretek is likely to be much physically hardier as well as much more powerfully armed than even the highest-ranking Magos of the Mechanicus.

Some in the Imperium think of those referred to as Hereteks to be a unified force, like the Adeptus Mechanicus itself. This is not the case, as there is no galaxy-spanning organisation dedicated to tech-heresy, including the Dark Mechanicus, which is often treated erroneously as being a monolithic entity like the Adepta from which it schismed. Rather, there are countless fiefdoms and Dark Forge Worlds, each ruled by a fallen Magos (or several Magi) powerful enough to dominate cadres of their fellows and enslave Mechanicus thralls and servants. Just like the warbands of the Traitor Legions and the other servants of Chaos, the corrupt Tech-priests war amongst each other, or prefer to exist aloof from all of their fellow servants of the Dark Gods.

Hereteks often follow a path of constant innovation. A Heretek may be capable of drawing power for his devices directly from the Warp and controlling them with summoned Warp entities. He might dabble with concepts of artificial intelligence, memory transference, or even attempt to capture and preserve the souls of sentient beings within his devices through his arcane knowledge of the Warp. Many of these inventors mindlessly hew to the idea that the new and the novel is always preferable for accomplishing a given end as established techniques. For them, the joy of a new idea or the recovery of an unknown bit of knowledge is a triumph, even if that idea has already been made obsolete. With each new advancement, his passion for further such successes grow as does his appetite for ever more knowledge, regardless of its source.

The Heretek is often driven by his hunger for knowledge and is quite willing to use the Ruinous Powers and their daemonic servants as a source. At other times, he seeks out xenos technology and archeotech. He may even coordinate raids upon Imperial strongholds for the sole purpose of recovering their records of where such devices can be found. In many Hereteks’ minds, there is no greater purpose in life than serving the cause of the advancement of technology and knowledge. Any sacrifice is justified in the pursuit of this end.

It is relatively rare for a Heretek to be raised by the Dark Gods as a Daemon Prince. All too often, Hereteks end up as a component of one of their own inventions, with too little left of the original body or its personality to even receive such a reward from the Dark Gods. However, those few who are granted this gift continue to spread their Chaos-tainted technology across the galaxy.

Arch-Hereteks
"Those fools and their talk of spirits and rites; technology is cause and consequence, mechanism and effect, and should not be so restrained and mishandled as those red-robed simpletons would believe."

- Rephenesti Korvane, Heretek

Within the Eye of Terror and many parts of the Halo Stars there exist those who defy the dictates and traditions of the Adeptus Mechanicus, choosing to experiment with technology and try to understand how it works without the sanction of the Cult Mechanicus. Condemned as techno-heretics, or hereteks, these individuals are hunted for their blasphemous acts, and shown no mercy should they be caught. Many of these individuals flock together for mutual protection and the benefits of their illicit studies. Such groups often find that the employ of pirates and smugglers grants them the freedom and mobility they need to survive, and the opportunity to work with advanced machinery beyond the gaze of the Mechanicus.

Over the years, certain hereteks have arisen in the Koronus Expanse accompanied by tales of infamous actions. Their sinister reputations have generated a collective moniker amongst the low-born populaces from Footfall to Damaris. Now in the Expanse a fallen Tech-Priest of sufficient skill and infamy is likely to be labelled an Arch-Heretek by the populace. Though there are no set criteria for what makes an Arch-Heretek, they are often a match for true Tech-Priests and Explorators in terms of their understanding and proficiency with machines. The greatest of them were once Tech-Priests, now turned from the worship of the Omnissiah. Arch-Hereteks are highly valued by void-faring criminals, both for their expertise in all things technical and their unique abilities.

Hereteks & Dark Forge Worlds
While some Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicus serve the Ruinous Powers alongside the Traitor Legions others control Dark Forge Worlds dedicated to tech-heresy in the name of Chaos Undivided. Most of these hellish factory worlds were originally Imperial Forge Worlds that fell to the Forces of Chaos. However, some like the world of Xana II, were created anew by the Dark Mechanicum deep within the Eye of Terror and other territories controlled by Chaos like the Maelstrom Warp rift. From these heavily fortified bases Hereteks can pursue their own dark goals, which they finance with slaves, souls and raw materiel gained from various different Chaos Lords in return for the Dark Mechanicus' weapons, technological assistance and the support of their Traitor Titan Legions on the battlefield. The Forge Masters of a Dark Forge World have usually left all vestiges of their humanity behind and exist as unholy amalgamations of heretical technology and daemonic energy.

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