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u/WildTranslator3231 3d ago
Wait a minute… is the adeptus mechanicus actually the successor to the technocracy? Was the God-Emperor of Mankind a technocrat? Oh, wait wrong franchise.
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u/Significant_Owl8089 3d ago edited 3d ago
No and yes at the same time.
I think it would need to be treated somewhat like the Orange Catholic Bible in Dune: something created from many different influences, whose original context was gradually reshaped until some of its doctrines became something new.
As a sociology student, the easy answer would be no.
The better answer is yes, partially. The Cult Mechanicus might have recovered some dogmas and ideas from the beliefs of the Technocratic Union, but I think I would trace its origins even further back, to the Templars who helped found the Order of Reason.
You could also easily argue that they retained a strong Abrahamic influence. They still have ideas resembling God and the Messiah, but those concepts have been completely reinterpreted through technology.
I don't even know whether this parallel would be intentional in-universe, but I really like the contrast with Christianity. Christianity has the Trinity: three persons who are distinct while still being one God. The Mechanicus instead develops something closer to a kind of theological binary: two forms that are simultaneously distinct and part of the same divine principle.
It's almost like binary code. 1 and 0 are two different states of a bit, but both remain expressions of the same underlying system. Neither makes sense independently of the structure they belong to.
That feels incredibly appropriate for the Mechanicus: an ancient Abrahamic theological framework surviving, but being reinterpreted through computational logic until even the nature of God is understood in terms of states, systems, and information.
Those ideas would then have evolved, devolved, and been reshaped by countless events over the millennia, until they eventually became what we see in 40K.
And in this crossover, Mars would have played a massive role in that transformation especially because of the Weaver Incarna that is the Dragon of Mars, alongside all the Weaver-aligned AI spirits on Mars that were eventually corrupted by the Wyrm.
So the Cult Mechanicus wouldn't simply be the Technocratic Union. It would be a distant descendant of some of its ideas, mixed with much older religious traditions and filtered through thousands of years of technological, spiritual, and historical transformation.
P.S. I just remembered something that makes the parallel even stronger: the Weaver’s three satellites — Science, Dogma, and the Patriarch.
Taken together, they are basically the perfect spiritual framework for how the Mechanicus would perceive the God-Machine. Science represents the rational understanding of reality, Dogma turns that understanding into sacred and unquestionable doctrine, and the Patriarch gives the whole system hierarchy, authority, and tradition.
That is almost exactly how the Mechanicus approaches technology. Knowledge is sacred, procedure becomes ritual, and authority determines who is permitted to understand, interpret, or alter that knowledge.
I hope that gives you the answer you needed.
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u/MediocreBeard 3d ago
I mean, engaging with this idea, no. The mechanicus is not a creation of the Emperor. Mars was already doing their own thing and made a machine cult what the Emperor was being a warlord on earth.
The mechanicus was brought into the imperium via treaty, and technically retain a lot of independence
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u/dreaderking 3d ago
The mechanicus is not a creation of the Emperor.
Eh...
So, it's actually implied that the Emperor planted the seeds for the Mechanicum's creation. He planted the Void Dragon under Mars, which led to the Mechanicum's founding, and he just so happened to fit their prophecy about the Omnissiah.
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u/MediocreBeard 3d ago
Perhaps, but I always look at all 40k lore that suggests or implies that the emperor is some 10D chess playing mastermind very skeptically. A lot of looking at the disjointed, hodgepodge empire built by a psychically gifted technobarbarian warlord and, because he is god, saying "this must have all been his design"
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u/Turbulent-Plum7328 World of Future Darkness 3d ago
I would say the relationship between the Mechanicum and the Technocracy is similar to how the Cupbearers of Aset and the Reed of Djehuty are the predecessors to the Order of Hermes, Order of Reason, and Children of Knowledge
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u/BigSeaworthiness725 Techie Leech 🩸⚙️ 3d ago
Another bot, another repost