 It has been said, through the binaric canticles of the subjects of this record, that knowledge is power. While one finds oneself removed from them by gulfs that lie between our organizations, this humble chronicler cannot but agree with them in the strongest possible terms. Knowledge is the fuel that drives human existence, it is the means by which we measure our reality and impose our will upon it. Knowledge, science, discovery, it is with these tools that we have conquered the stars. The study of knowledge, the hunt for it, the dissemination of it, these should and must ever be the primary driving forces behind a human life. We must also seek to understand ourselves, our own strengths and weaknesses, as much as the world in which we exist as fleeting mortal shells. These are, however, not the times for such talk, and one risks the scrutiny of the Holy Ordos for even expressing such thoughts, let alone committing to record what I have recently committed. Were it not for the import of one's patron, and the material imparted upon these chronicles, it is likely I would exist only as a mind-broken servitor, or simply as a red mist receding into the air. May have this will eventually be my fate, who can tell? Anyway, I digress. Despite these ever-darkening days, there remain those who resist the encroaching blackness with the fiery tortures of learning, who attempt to cast back the tides of ignorance with the weapons of pure science and intellect. Know then, that this is a record of the origins and history of the priesthood of the Red Planet, the Scions of the Aminosia, Machine God and Motive Force, the origins of the Mechanicum of Mars. The roots of Red Mars are old, for man has walked on her surface longer than any other planet saved Terra. From what can be discerned from the most ancient archives within the Imperium, the world saw its first human colonies sometime in the early third millennium, serving as a gateway to the expanded Sol system, and providing much-needed settlement space to the swollen populaces of Terra and Luna. The Red Wastelands of the world were transformed through human ingenuity into verdant green plains reminiscent of old Earth itself, while within its no longer domed cities, the citizens of Mars did not have the opportunity to see the world as it was, but as it was, it was transformed into the world as it was, as it was, as it was, as it was, as it was. While within its no longer domed cities, the citizens of Mars developed ever more advanced devices and technology for use throughout the steadily expanding human stellar empire. The fleets of the once red planet roamed the galaxy, bringing Martian industry and science to thousands of undiscovered worlds and fueling the exponential expansion of the species. Modern technology allowed humanity to become rulers of the stars. Their ships allowed for longer and further warp jumps. Their weaponry threw back the predations of hundreds of Xenos races, and their standard template construct devices allowed humans to settle and flourish in even the harshest of environments. Mars of this era, however, was not as she is now, the hub of an empire. The humanity of the dark age of technology was a decentralized one, with as many kingdoms, empires, governments, and corporations as there were planets with humans upon them. While Mars begat many a world in its own image, they owed little in terms of direct fealty to their birth planet, and Mars did not desire to exert formal control when the wealth of the galaxy was already flooding in through her spaceports, even if she possessed a unified planetary regime capable of doing so. Records on this latter fact are inconsistent and spotty. This was the way of things for millennia, and for a time, it was good. The inexorable rise of empires always seems so during the ascent. For one, doubts any of Mars' children could have foreseen the path their own hubris was leading them to. One doubts they could have seen any possibility of their being, any error in their ways, as they explored the deepest mysteries of the universe with a science unbridled by restrictive morality or petty concerns. Likely, they instead marveled at their own genius as they gave birth to artificial intelligence. This blasphemy stands above all others as the most damnable and wicked creation of the humanity of this time, or in their desire for leisure and ease, they created thinking machines to do their labours for them, so that they may spend more time contemplating the secrets of science or frittering away their life spans upon idle desires. Whatever their purpose, the men of iron born of the hubris of man would ultimately lead to our cataclysmic downfall. As detailed in one's record upon the dark age of technology, the machine war tore the human realm asunder, as humanity unleashed their most devastating weapons to halt the advance of their creations. Omniphage swarms devoured planets within hours, sun snuffers uncoiled their tendrils around entire stars to erase their light from the universe. Entropic engines ignited the cores of whole planets, while mechanivores ate the raw data of reality itself, deleting people, cities and ideas from the fabric of existence, before glutting themselves on the informational fabric of what once was, and now simply was not. The green plains of Mars were not spared this, and her crust was soon soaked in the blood of the cybernetic revolt, as much as any of her colony worlds. By the end of the war, as she attempted to stymie the horrific damage the conflict had wrought, Mars would have to contend with an altogether different challenge, the loss of her realms. The depths of the Imitarium, a new greater intelligence was stirring, slowly beginning to form from the depraved activities of the Eildare race. While it would be many thousands of years before the galaxy of real space would feel the full impact of this thing's birth, the warp storms of its gestation sundered what little remained of the human polities of the old alliances from one another. Sectors, systems, worlds, all felt the horrible darkening of their galaxy. Navigators were unable to chart their paths through the now raging tides of the warp, heralding the true beginning of old night, the age of strife. Mars, struggling to heal in the wake of the machine war, was now removed from the vast network of supply she depended upon, for though the planet's terraforming had rendered her soil capable of sustaining life, she still depended upon the riches and resources of the galaxy, upon which to glut herself. The ships that so often flooded her docks from out system became a trickle, and then ceased to flow entirely. The Sol system suffered alongside her, for so swollen were the various planets and moons of humanity's cradle on the spoils of stellar empire, that they had, entirely neglected their own gardens, in some cases for thousands of years. It is a sad fact of our species, writ large in those days most keenly, that we are oft fulsome in our ideals and morality when our bellies are full, but cast us into the depths of hunger and low, you shall see us become as unto the beasts of our worst natures. Though it was upon the millions of worlds mankind still managed to claim as their own, and Mars was no different. Civil strife, fueled by rampant food and resource shortages, began to rapidly tear the planet apart as corporations and polities simply disintegrated. Both damaged in the wars of before, and neglected in the conflicts of now, the radiation shields built millennia before to terraform the wastes of Mars failed, one by one, and the poisonous rays of Sol began to scour the vegetation from the surface. Within scant decades, the fragile ecosystem that had taken thousands of years to cultivate was simply stripped away. The effluvia of continental sized forges choked her veins. Mars returned to what she had always been, a radiation bathed red wasteland, albeit now one filled with the decrepit remains of a once proud society, infested with rampant thinking machines, mutant slavers, and techno-barbarian warbands. She and her twin Terra were mirror images of one another, conflict-riven, radiation-soaked and desperately clinging to survival in a new dark age, centuries past. The planet putrefied, flagellating itself in rad-soaked death-throws. But then, in the failing crumbling ruin of one supreme Martian industry, a new power began to emerge. In a tunnels of manufactorums and laboratoria, red-clad holy men began to walk, taking with them a creed to the huddling, starving masses. They spoke of a divine trinity, of a mac and a deity they called the machine god, his messenger in the world, the omnisiah, and of the mote of force, the heavenly power that animates all things. These were the first harbingers of a faith that would come to define Mars forevermore. The Cult Mechanicus Adherents to the cult believe that knowledge itself is truly divine, a worldly manifestation of their machine god, itself not a crude, personified patriarchal god of old earth religions, but a fundamental, universal, deific presence. She is a means through which the machine god rules the universe, itself a macro-scale mechanism, and all within it are simply devices, extant within the universal engine, be they machines of metal or machines of flesh. Humanity is the machine god's chosen race, and unto it, it has sent its omnisiah, the messenger prophet who will lead humanity upon divinity's path. In each and every device lies a shard of the machine god, a machine spirit to be both worshiped for its nature and appeased to better ensure the correct fulfillment of its stated role within the universal mechanism. For the remnants of human life clinging to Mars, the cult was both saviour and protector, but also destroyer. While the priests of the machine god offered succor and shelter to all who asked for it, it came at the cost of total obedience to the new order. For some it was a price worth paying for their continued existence, yet this cannot, historically speaking, be the only reason for the cult's rapid rise to power. To survive the toxic wastes of Age of Strife Mars, humanity needed technology. The fires of millennia of war had done much to scour the surviving communes of the skills and knowledge needed to operate such devices. Technology was already something akin to a religion. The maintenance of precious life support systems barely understood and passed down through generations of dwindling engineers and savants, losing fragments with each passing year. The adepts of the cult mechanicum shared their knowledge with each other freely, pooling resources instead of hoarding it in the manner of the greedy warlords clinging to power in shattered hab doves. To the populations there, the red priests not only had the resources needed to save them, they also possessed something far greater, technological mastery long thought lost. To many it would indeed appear their machine god spoke and acted through them, and willing converts flocked to their banners. The new mechanicum, as it became known, quickly established itself amongst more and more archaeologies, eventually becoming a political force strong enough to field full armies that it would not hesitate to employ against those who attempted to waylay their ascension, or attempted to silence the word of their god. With each new city that pledged acquiescence, the mechanicum grew stronger, not only in numbers but in knowledge, for whatever archives or technologies the latest converts brought into the fold were immediately logged, digested and distributed amongst the ranks for both study and implementation. Shards of information thought useless were combined with others to produce schematics and plans for technologies long thought lost. This production ballooned, as everything from fuel extraction to food supply to weapons grafting were improved upon exponentially. Everything compounded, and to those within the mechanicum it was as if the motive force itself was powering the unstoppable juggernaut of the deus mechanicus chosen. None could stand against the mechanicum, although many tried. It was during this time that the secrets of creating new night suits were properly revived, and from them came the birth of the titan legions, with the first triad pheromorgulum, legios mortis tempestus and ignetum. Technobarbarian holdouts that would not submit were meticulously purged with weaponry designed to preserve whatever precious data they yet hoarded. Elsewhere, the ravenous Psycarnivora hordes, degenerate mutant hives and rampant thinking machines, twisted remnants and echoes of the machine war, were given no quarter, with the sonorous horns of titan god machines, declaring their annihilation to all those who dared oppose their advance. These wars of extermination were no easy thing, for the mere shattered remnants of mankind's ancient machines were a foe not easily overcome, even with the might of a titan legio. It was only when the entirety of Mars' human population was united under the mechanicum that the full output of the planet could turn to reclamation. Where the abominable hordes could not be fully defeated, they were driven deep into the Martian catacombs, millions of kilometers of tunnels and subterranean arcologies burrowing through the red planet's crust. Therein they were sealed by mechanicum industry, locked forever in a lightless prison, the only entrances protected by the most advanced weaponry, annihilation code and data gin the priests could devise. There were some within the Psynaud that despair had the loss of so much potentially valuable buried technology, but ultimately the decision was won based on logic, and the data spoke only of the absolute danger and horrific costs of full scale subterranean reclamation. The fledgling empire simply could not afford the cost. Expeditions could be mounted at a later date, however, as the mechanicum had become, albeit unknowingly, the first unified planetary government the Sol system had seen in millennia. Instead of looking below, however, the mechanicum would instead look up to the stars, and humanity's lost stellar regime. When the astro-carta-graphica of the machine cult peered into their telescopes, to their dismay they saw only horror and madness. The era was as Mars had been before the coming of the priesthood, a horrific wasteland of feuding warlords and relentless barbers. Jupiter's near space was under the yoke of alien slavers, while the void-archologies and lunar colonies of Saturn barely possessed the military power to protect their own volume from raiders and pirates, let alone project any power beyond their rings. In the wider galaxy the warp was still a morass of seething tempests, unchanged from the storms that had severed Mars from her colonies in all those centuries before. Yet the mechanicum did not despair entirely, for their endless quest for knowledge compelled them to reach ever-outwards. Shipyards were constructed in Martian orbit, and the first keels of the Basilicon Astra were laid down. These arcs would be the first ships to leave Sol's Light for thousands of years, and they did so under no false hope of ever seeing the star again. The expeditions, laden with all the material wealth, knowledge and arms the mechanicum could muster, had two goals. To reconnect with the lost colonies of the Red Planet, and to establish forge veins on whatever shores they would arrive upon, many, so very many, were lost to the dust of history. Likely split apart by warped squalls, their crew devoured by the predators of the Imitarium. Some would succeed, however. The expedition to the Gryphon system was perhaps the most notable success, establishing a colonial empire in the local volume, fiercely loyal to Mars, and even possessed of the ability to communicate with the Red Planet. Elsewhere, more isolated forges, bereft of Gryphon's location, grew and developed a myriad of strange fractal cultures, although all sharing the common adoration of the machine god, and the Trinity Makina. As their fleets slipped anchor to explore the Outer Dark, the mechanicum additionally dispatched clandestine expeditions to Terra itself, out of a mix of technological greed and genuine concern for the knowledge that had perished, and was no doubt still perishing in the fires of the homeworld's seemingly constant war. Tech priests guarded by skittarii troops would descend upon unsuspecting Terran cities and habs, making off with whatever archaeotech their increasingly diffused network of informants had spied the local populace employing. It was during these raids, the Sainod first learned of a singular warlord, a mighty golden-clad man who dubbed himself the Emperor, and of his plans to unify the homeworld. Although they initially paid him little heed, as this Lord of Lightning's unification wars spread, the priests of Mars began to grow concerned. A cautious anxiety that blossomed into full-blown fear, as Terra was, for the first time in millennia, united under the raptor and lightning-boat symbol of the Emperor's Banner. When Luna 2 was pacified, and the Selenar gene cults there with whom the Mechanicum had cautiously traded technology brutally brought to heel, the Sainod girded itself for war. For it was clear this Emperor's ambitions would not cease on Terra. They were, after a fashion, not incorrect in this assumption. However, it would not be in the manner they expected. Records on just when the following events occurred are bizarrely unclear, but it can be surmised that subsequent to the pacification of Luna by the 16th Legion Astartes in the 780s of M30, and entirely before the hollow logs state the Great Crusade was launched in 798 M30, the Emperor himself descended upon Mars in a starship of gold. Quite how the craft penetrated the defenses of both the Martial Orbitals and the Basilicon Astra without a single shot being fired is entirely unknown. But seemingly unchallenged, the Emperor descended upon Olympus Mons, the seat of the fabricator general of the Mechanicum himself. Records from the time speak of rain, the first rain in millennia falling upon the Martian sky, as if Mars herself wept at his coming, while this could simply be the result of the incredible atmospheric disturbances caused by the planetfall of the Emperor's city-sized starship. Its almost religious symbolism was incredibly potent for the priests of the Mechanicum. They possessed no technology like this, marveling at the wonders of engineering needed to keep this Golden Lord's craft afloat above the mountain, but this, quixotically, would pale in comparison to the miracle that would come. A single night suit of House Taranis, racing ahead of its fellows, came to rest at the ramp of the Emperor's craft, its ancient mechanisms fatally damaged by the dangerous ascent. The master of mankind, himself, approached the knight, and, placing a single hand upon the battered war suit, healed its internal mechanisms, making the thousand-year-old suit as new as if it had only rolled off the assembly forge. Word of the miraculous deed spread fast amongst the planet's new spheric communications that a speed and efficiency only binaric can't could communicate. One word set the planet aflame, a word redolent with power to those within the cult Mechanicum. Omnisia. It appeared, to most all, that the earthly messenger of the machine god, its physical incarnation, had arrived upon Mars's red soil, in the form of this Emperor of Terra. Mars knew well of Psykers, for the Mechanicum had spent much of the age of strife rooting out its own degenerate Psyker covens, and purging Martian bloodlines of those who displayed its dread mutation. The Psynaud Mechanicus saw the Emperor for what he was, a Psyker, true, but one of absolutely unparalleled ability and majesty. It was not just the common folk of the planet who proclaimed the coming of the Omnisia. For while the Emperor petitioned the fabricator general Kelbor Hale for audience, the Psynaud of the highest Mechanicum magi furiously debated it too, unable to simply deny the Golden Lord. Kelbor Hale bid him address the Martian Parliament. The Emperor spoke of his ultimate goal. Just as Terra had been unified under his banner, so too would the stars, the galaxy itself, be united under humanity's rule. One would gain, say, this manifest destiny, be they Xenos or human. The latter would perish, the former Neal. Should supplication not be offered, bolt and blade would make short work of any opposition. For the Emperor had at his behest twenty legions of the greatest soldiers ever to be created by the hand of man. The Legionnaires are starties. The Emperor bade the Mechanicum join him, but not as subject, as allies. Two Empires, united for the first time since mankind first reached the outer darkness. The Union of the Twin Planets of Terra and Mars. The offer contained no explicit threat, but the Mechanicum knew well of the Emperor's and of the sheer military magnificence and genius it would have taken him to win Terra. They were also not unaware that the Emperor came to them as an equal, not a tyrant. On the grounds that he dearly wished to avoid the horrific toll in manpower and material, the subjugation of Mars would cost him. They also knew, for they had run scenario after scenario, calculation upon calculation, that they would lose such a conflict. Holy Mars would become another factory at this Emperor's disposal. Their society would be subsumed into his nascent Imperium of man, their religion extinguished under the light of his Imperial truth, their history erased, their great works rendered to dust. This particular assertion has been debated throughout Imperial history. Certainly, Imperial historians wish to believe that victory of the Emperor was assured, whereas Mechanicus, historians, demure. It is the opinion of this chronicler that such a conflict would have ultimately, as said, led to the victory of Terra over Mars. Although the impediments this would have put upon the eventual victory of the Imperium and the Great Crusade, would have likely been so severe as to have almost not been worth the effort. The conquest would have taken decades, if not centuries. The cost, perhaps the sum total of all of Terra's potential resources, maimed as it had been by the Age of Strife. The point is almost root. One could argue that the Emperor would lose by expending so many resources that the Mechanicum would lose by simply opposing him. The fact remains that the Mechanicum was at a crossroads. The Treaty of Olympus, as what would follow would become known, was thus the thing of many facets. It was one born of religious conviction, for many of the Mechanicum did truly believe the Emperor to be the omnisire, calm at last. It was born of necessity, for neither could the Emperor afford to conquer Mars, nor did the Mechanicum wish to be annihilated by him. It was born of material consideration, for the Emperor needed starships, munitions, armor and armaments, and the forges and technologists of Mars far outstripped Terra's in both capacity and advancement. The Mechanicum eagerly desired the delicious lost knowledge the Galaxy no doubt held, and the Emperor yet possessed, for he had promised to deliver both to them. And finally, it was born out of a shared vision for human unity. This last point cannot be understated, for despite the obvious political considerations that went into the signing of the Great Treaty, we of this cynical age should remember that this was still an age of idealism. Hope and faith kindled anew, in a grand unifying vision, that our most beloved Emperor of mankind had at last brought to our species. He promised us the stars. It is hardly any wonder that the Mechanicum would wish to follow him there. There were, of course, other stipulations contained within the treaty. Mars was expected to arm the entirety of the Emperor's planned extra-solar expeditionary fleets, and consistently work to develop newer and better armaments for the Legion as a startes, and the Exertus Imperialis. It would also provide its own armed forces for secondment to these expeditions. The Caligia Titanica was levied, the god machines of the legios now bade to walk against the foes of man. The Mechanicum's multifarious Tagmata would as well, legions of skitarii warriors, the blessed ruinators of the Ordo Reductor, and the cold machine intelligences of the legio cybernetica. In exchange for these demands, the Emperor was himself generous. The Mechanicum, as a partner, not subject, would have first claimed to any technology discovered by the Crusade, as well as full and sovereign control, over any of the priceless standard template construct devices recovered. Additionally, to better outfit the Basilicon Astra in its quest for knowledge, the Emperor gave unto the Mechanicum six full houses of the Navis nobility, allowing the ships of Mars to sail with navigators once more. Finally, and in perhaps his grandest concession, the Emperor permitted the continued worship of the machine god, by those of the Mechanicum who desired to do so, as well as supplication to he himself, as the Omnissiah. This may seem odd to you devotees and acolytes of history, as it is well known that the Emperor during this period stringently denied his divinity. He was no god, for there were no gods. There was nothing behind the stars save for universal laws of purist science. He would brook no exception to this. Bar one, and that exception was the Mechanicum. It was, again, a concession born of necessity. The cult Mechanicus had allowed Mars to unify and become the power it was, and without it there would be no Mechanicum to outfit his Astartes and build his ships. It was the ultimate necessary evil, that of presenting himself as a god to his allies, rather than allowing his own subjects to die for the sake of its extermination. There were, however, final aspects of the treaty that were concluded in secret, between the Emperor and the fabricator general personally. Trouted at the time, these have become distinctly less so owing to the events that would happen not two centuries later. The Master of Mankind was aware that, despite it being largely frowned upon, research into certain areas of fringe sciences, some involving the use of warp energies and phenomena, others attempting the recreation of artificial intelligences, were not fully outlawed, and certain Magi continued to eagerly scrape at their secrets. Knowing better than any the horror that warp craft and sentient machines had inflicted upon the populaces of humanity during the Age of Strife, the Emperor bade that Kelbor Hall ban outright such practices, to be declared as absolute blasphemy, and that those Martian Catacombs under excavation and exploration by the Mechanicum be utterly sealed for all eternity. Unless he could trust the Mechanicum to shun such research, the Emperor declared an alliance to be impossible, and Mars in need of purgation for the safety of all humanity. Faced with such a choice, the fabricator general had no option but to relent. Raids were conducted upon suspected Magi, planned distinely, by agents of Olympus Mons, and all captured devices and research sealed irrecovably in the hidden vaults of Moravec. It was an act only a privileged few ever knew happened, yet one that would have simply unspeakable repercussions in centuries to come. Publicly, the Union of Terror and Mars was greeted with utter jubilation by the citizens of this burgeoning shared empire. The sister planets, united at last, now girded themselves for what was to come. Nothing short of the greatest endeavor ever undertaken by humanity since the age of technology millennia before, a great crusade to unite the galaxy under one banner, the twin-headed Aquila of the Imperium of Man. The rest, as it has been once said, is history. For further revelations upon the various tagmata, formations and orders of the Mechanicum during the great crusade, as well as later histories of the Adeptus Mechanicus, please revisit this stack at a future date, as records will be forthcoming. Until such a time, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash oculus imperia, and if you're looking to keep in touch with the channel, get regular updates, you can follow me on twitter at buttstuffkaiju, or check us out on discord, a link will be in the description and on the channel page.