Arco-flagellation

Arco-flagellation is a penal process administered by the Adeptus Mechanicus but usually appointed by the Ecclesiarchy or Inquisition. It can be used to punish those who have committed any number of crimes against the Emperor of Man, but most commonly it is used to punish heretical views, actions and utterances.

Subjects are fitted with a variety of cybernetic weapons, including cutting claws, pneu-mattocks and (most popularly) electro-flails. Further cybernetic enhancement, usually including canisters for the storage and dispensement of combat stimms, serve to enhance the subjects' destructive power. This is combined with extensive mental reconditioning, ensuring that the subject is reduced to a gibbering berserker with tremendous physical power and no interest in self-preservation. To control them, subjects are also fitted with a pacifier helm, which connects directly to the cerebrum and spinal cord to calm and control the arco-flagellant when needed, usually projecting Imperial symbols, litanies, sermons and other Imperial theology and allowing the subject to be only barely conscious of the outside world. Groups of arco-flagellants are often used as shock troops by the Ecclesiarchy and the Ordo Hereticus, their pacifier helms being deactivated by a trigger word whenever they are needed to fight.