Forces of the Taghmata – Datasheets

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Archmagos are the lords of the Mechanician, each a master of one of the technological disciplines enshrined in the lore of the Mechanician. An Archmagos is served by a coterie of lesser Magos, with the number of their disciples an indicator of their power and prestige within the Mechanicum. When the army of a Forge World, the Taghmata, rallies for war, each Archmagos commands one of the Taghma that makes up that force. An Archmagos’ Taghma is composed of the various warriors mustered by their subordinate magos and reflects the unique teachings and focus of that Archmagos’ research.

Some Archmagos took to the battlefield on hovering tech-thrones known as abeyants. Each such device was a unique expression of its master’s skills, crafted by their own hand as a symbol of their skill and invested with all the power of their arts. For all their superficial differences, all fulfilled a similar role - serving as ponderous command platforms. They granted their passenger a wider view of the battlefi eld, greater protection from enemy fire and more sophisticated vox and augurs to control their servants, and were favoured by archmagos who preferred to avoid the press of the melee.

The magos of the Mechanicum arc the masters of individual forges, seekers after knowledge and master craftsmen. Each serves an Archmagos, their guide and political patron in the ways of the Mechanicum, learning from them both skills of artifice and of war. Study and improvement of their skills and even their own body, are the focus of a magos, each aspiring to one day become an Archmagos in their own right. When summoned to war by their Archmagos, a magos brings their personal guard and retinue to the battle, a force that is a reflection of their own specialisation within the Mechanicum.

The most ambitious Magos create abeyants, seeking both to emulate and impress their mentors and gain an advantage on the battlefield. Lesser than those created by their masters, each such device was still a potent artefact of the Mechanicum’s lore and artifice, as well as an expression of the unique skills of the magos that forged it. In battle they served as ponderous command platforms that allowed a magos to support the strategy dictated by their master and to command the warriors that made up their own retinue.

The Echidnax are the most complex of the various technical drones employed by the agents of the Mechanicum. They are tough and capable of aiding their master in a number of tasks, and even provide a measure of security with basic combat engrams. They are also relatively cheap to manufacture and are found in large numbers in most forge-fanes, however this comes with a reduced cognitive function in their cortex. The Echidnax require constant supervision or they return to standby mode, and as such are almost always found as the entourage of a Magos or tech-priest bound to some duty in service of the Forge World.

Scyllax are an advanced form of automata, their cogitator engines and power sources beyond the craft of any but the most experienced adepts of the Cult Mechanicus. They serve as close combat horrors and guardians of the most prominent leaders of the Mechanicum, as well as ostentatious symbols of their master’s power and influence. In battle their whipping mechadendrites are sheathed in a fearsome power field that can shatter armour and melt flesh, allowing them to cleave any attackers asunder long before they can assault their charges.

The most numerous of all the adepts of the Cult Mechanicus, the humble Tech-priest has been inducted into the base mysteries of their arcana and serves as craftsman, labourer and officer in the name of the magos they serve. In the forge they organise the lesser thralls and maintain the great machines forged by their masters, while on the battlefield they shepherd the automata and other war engines that make up the bulk of the Taghmata. The most senior Tech-priests may even have learned the basics of cybertheurgy, allowing them to further bolster the cold machines that make up the front lines of the Mechanicum’s armies.

The Knight Moirax was a variant of the Armiger chassis which saw little use before the darkest hours of the Horus Heresy, most often employed by Mechanicum armies with access to indentured Knight Households. The rad furnace ticking at the heart of the machine and the resultant reactor leaks and critical anbaric malfunctions often led to the tainting of both a Moirax’s machine spirit and its pilot. Those unfortunate pilots ordered to mount such a frame were considered expendable by the Magos that commanded the Taghma of the Mechanicum, and rarely returned to their Households regardless of the success of a campaign.

The Mechanicum makes use of the Termite for subterranean assaults, as well as for specialised mining operations. Due to the extreme hazard of such operations, forcing a beachhead within enemy fortifications, the most common practice is to fill Termite transports with tech-thralls and allow them to rampage and distract the enemy while other Mechanicum units advance and breach walls or gates by more common means.

The Triaros is a heavy transport found on almost every Forge World in the Imperium. Its combination of heavy armour, potent weapons and a built-in flare shield have been proven on a thousand worlds during the Great Crusade, marking it the equal of those transports used by the other armies of the Imperium. Within a Taghmata it primarily serves as the personal transport of more martially inclined Magos and covenants of the Myrmidax Cult. Forge Worlds whose production runs produce an excess of such vehicles have even been known to use the Triaros to ferry hordes of tech-thralls to battle, but such inefficiency is rare.

The Mechanicum makes use of the humble Tarantula sentry gun for the most menial of tasks, for its limited cogitator unit is seen as the least expression of the Machine God’s greatness, only one step above base servitor units. This simplistic automated unit is not considered worthy of inclusion in the provenance of the Cybernetica alone, and as such is used by all the tech-arcana where its tireless vigilance can allow other troops to be put to better use on the front lines of a conflict.