Theological Matters

>>52323419
beep boop fuck chaos.

>>52323419
Though this might not be particularly helpful, as someone who's been writing the Mechanicus for a long time it's sometimes helpful to understand how GW came up with its Mechanicus jargon, if you have access to the Codices from the TT or just general books on the AdMech you begin to realise patterns in their speech and a really prevalent inclination towards 'word-jumbling', particularly between seemingly technological and theological wordings.

Things like Data-Psalms, Memetic-Chants, binharic imperatives and the like are decently good examples, essentially just make sure that even when you go full religious and start talking about the portents or plasms or texts or whatever, ensure that you sneak some general 40k technological terminology in there relevant to the situation, phrases like 'animus' 'binharic' 'imperatives' 'data' 'motive force' and the like to really sell yourself as a Techpriest. You basically need to make yourself sound like some sort of well-spoken scientist robot while also adding in a healthy dose of traditionally religious slogans.

Honestly I'm not that great at explaining this as it's gotten to the point where I do it intuitively, but if there's anything more specific you'd like me to try and explain I could have a go at it.

Sorry but if you dont have a clue about the character you are going to play then...... why play it?!

>>52323558
He does have a clue, though, the point is he feels as if he's missing out on the rarer or more obscure Mechanicus terminology. The problem therein lying that GW/BL never really made much of a list of definite terminology, most of it is fluff-jargon to characterise the Techpriest in question and is never used again, or otherwise only once or twice throughout the entire setting.

One thing that has been mentioned a lot now that I think of it, OP, is the concept of the 'Motive Force', the electrical animus that courses through most living things and machines, driving them onwards, it's basically the Mechanicus's term for 'motive energy' or energy in specified motion, typically associated with the idea of an animus.

>>52323558
Sometimes the best way to learn is to throw yourself in the deep end.

>>52323518
Is right also. The Mechanicum are a world apart from the regular Imperial Citizen or Soldier. I've never had Mechanicum players in my game, but every Mechanicum NPC tended to share certain traits and tics. Only when dealing with authority figures would social norms be even considered. This led to players (who were just Inquisition agents) being interrupted as Tech Priests would stride into the room, check an Inquisitor wasn't talking before loudly declaring "We must redirect our efforts!" Cutting people off mid-sentance and not returning salutes was rather fun.

A big part of my campaign was that I tried to play up the lack of individuality of each Tech Priest, they didn't have standardised names for example. And players had to rely on social prompts and queues to identify them. One Tech Priest had a sense of humor and would often advise in favour of grand planetary assaults by the Imperial Guard, so that the only ones left would be worth a lick of salt.This was followed by a hiccup-like "het het het het het" which was his laugh. The players quite liked him.

>>52323591
No he doesn't. Otherwise he wouldn't, excuse my language, ask such stupid questions

>>52323668
Why ya gotta bash on the curious and interested, anon?

>>52323741
>secondaries are good

>>52323668
Stupid questions like
"Hey what would a tech priest in a guardsmen unit call the control device of a Leman Russ?
"How would they describe in detail that the monkey fisted new recuit just jammed their lasgun?"
"How would they describe that, the solar panels on a solar cappacitor have been knocked out of alignment because the orcs they fought for control of the device last night used it as a backscratcher?"

These are not stupid questions anon. He is asking for guidance to be able to be able to accuately RP something that hasn't had much in the way of explaination.

>>52323419
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCTbIH924k

Lots of jargon and religious sentiment in this convenient and surprisingly well-voice acted trailer.

OP here. Definitely appreciate the help, especially >>52323518 and will check the video in that last post once I'm no longer a phone poster. I have read a fair bit of mechanicus stuff but hard to remember all the little bits. That general template does help.
I'll master techna-lingua itself, I swear.

>>52323558
Haha, jokes on you anon. I play whatever your settings discount hobbits are and I have no idea why the Shire folk are even in this setting I hate! I know nothing and I play them.

Because my friends like it, and I like hanging with my friends, and if they want to include me, god bless them for being generous and understanding.

Maybe over time I'll learn and start caring. Maybe Ill get into the setting.

But I won't if dicks like you demand I have preknowledge of the setting before getting into the setting.

>>52325288
>Primary interrogator here. Liturgical assistance parsed and compiled.
>ref; >>52323518 evaluated as Aleph-Index.
>Vid-pict logged for higher order study.
>Mnemonic coding in current cogitation array is limited but expanding according to script. Standard Template illuminations prove the Divine Omnissiah's hand in all things.
>Mastery of techna-lingua in itself is my inevitable end. Praise!

File: The Processor.jpg (492KB, 1041x1600px) Image search: [Google]

492KB, 1041x1600px

>>52323419
Pic: How I imagine a high charisma techpriest.

The inspiration of the adeptus mechanicus comes from the foundation cycle by Isaac Asimov. A scam religion was developed to ensure that people outside of the foundation may opertate technolog but never understand it.

The Adeptus Mechanicus understand their technology only superficialy scientificly, everything else will get a religion byname.

You should not forget that the Adeptus Mechanicus consists of different factions and specialities.
Some tech-priest may be shaped into the role that he is able to communicate with guardsman. Of course these kinds of techpriest will still be cold sons of bitches. But atleast they understand human interaction.
One possiblity if you thing playing a traditional techpriest is to hard.

>>52325442
>>52325480
Tech Priests are often displayed as emotionless, due to the rigid nature of their dogma and physical augmentations.

But do we have any good canon sources of how cogboys behave around each other? Do tech-priests have "AdMech humor" or something that only they would get? What do they do in their spare time? Even a dogmatic cyborg would have hobbies, or things they do recreationally with friends, I imagine, even if those things seem completely alien to regular people.

Just trying to find more ways to add variety and spice to AdMech characters.

>>52325755
There's been references to how different they act around each other, what rank/knowledge base, and around more normal humans. Sometimes the forget how and have to review old data that has stuff like friendship in it.

The magos in the eisenhorn book, the mechanicus civil war book in the HH series, stuff in Titanicus off the top of my head. Even the dark mechanicus in the night lords series tries to remember how to be more personable. Badly, but it tries.

>>52325755
On humour, I would think they don't really 'tell' jokes. They present data and if you do the formula, calculations, follow the procedure, etc. correctly, you come up with the punchline yourself.

>>52323518
As a non-mechanicus roleplayer I like to use the word Technosorcery as much as possible.

File: 1480704771547.png (180KB, 600x900px) Image search: [Google]

180KB, 600x900px

>>52325755
The age of the Priest probably comes into play too.
The younger ones probably have far fewer augmentations, and thus are probably less removed in their own minds from humanity in general, unlike the oldest priests who probably have trouble remembering any time before they were almost entirely machine.

I would love to see an outlier techpriest, who just happened to continue to be close to normal even after all of his augs & brain bleeches. He walks around trying to high-five others but they can no longer understand it.

File: 1458950374064.jpg (713KB, 789x1169px) Image search: [Google]

713KB, 789x1169px

>>52330821
I once played a Tech-priest in a rouge trader game who tried to be as amiable as possible to people.
mostly that's because he remembered his brother doing that, and people liked him.

Ridiculously high-power game, so said tech-priest was forced into interacting with people more because he was the second son of a Knight house with mechanicus ties. His Elder-brother and most of his family died in a warp-related incident off-world, and he was the new head of the house hold.

Fun as hell to play.

>>52332281
Badass pic, i love tech priests but most look like sweaty cyborgs with downs syndrome. Gonna save that image, got anymore like it?

>>52335770
Looks like a Skitarii.

>>52336555
Aren't skitarii, for whatever reason, basically described as techno-barbarians in most stuff i've read? Like, essentially just a horde of savages with ray guns, combat drugs and bionics and looking like they came straight out of a marauding steppes horde or something.

>>52336667
Sounds about right. Forge world planetary defense forces.

>>52327142

I guess in a way it's like typing 80085 in a calculator and then passing it off to someone or doing some advanced graphing that, when plotted out, takes the shape of words.

Now I'm imagining an Admech guy trying to flirt with qt3.14 mech girl this way.

Since we're on the discussion of Mechanicus culture how do you think the Cult would be seen when filtered through various cultural trends? I mean, this is done a lot with the Imperial Guard and Space Marines so why not have Zen Buddhist Mechanicus or Kebab Mechanicus or something of the sort. They seem the most resistant to having unique cultural identities

>>52336667
Depends on the planet/force/commanding magi. They can be everything from mind wiped murder drones to crusaders of the Omnissiah to posthuman operators.
There is no such thing as a standard Skitarii.

>>52337271
Actually they have even more.
Mechanicus communities are relativly isolated. Sure there are plenty, but for every World that belongs to Mars a shitton belong to Terra. For everyone who prays to the Omnissiah there's a legion worth of faithful to big E.
They are very insular.

And they do as a whole do not have more contact with each other than the regular fleshbags.
Diverging cultural trends should be a given.

From the point of a regular emprah fearing imperial citizen even more so, as the Mechanicus are pretty much a different human race.
Every Mechanicus can see some sort of a Datasphere. Can be the Noosphere, can be something more sturdy or primitive. In any case their way of experiencing the world is augmented.
More or less another sense.

From their point of view working with imperials is like explaining colours to a blind. From the imperials point of view the mechanicus is a antisocial prick that can barely talk.

>>52337224
Calling her literally qt3.1415etc might even be flirty. A cog boy turing to a coggirl & saying something like,

"Greetings QT3.141592 Your breasts are of adaquate proportions & your hips within the desired dimentions for bearing offspring. I wish to engage in coupling with you. This would be benefitial for you as i have a 8 inch mating organ of considerable girth to derive pleasure. If i fall below acceptable standards of a probabale mate, please list any faults in my design so that i may upgrade & be reevaluated."

>>52323419
Take a quick dip through the various rulebooks/1d4chan's tactics pages for Skitarii, Cult Mechanicus and the Taghmata Omnissiah list. A lot of the special rules have the kind of vocabulary you're looking for.

>>52341859

As funny as that is I doubt the mechanicus are nearly as ...robotic as we meme them out to be. Although if you want to go that far the way Vulkans are shown to show affection would be a good route