40 Facts and Lore on the Machine Spirit Warhammer 40K 

2:00 There was a story I heard when I was growing up. A women was cooking a leg of lamb with her daughter. One of the preparations was to cut about 6 inches off the end of the leg. The daughter asked her mother why this was done. The mother responded, “That’s how your grandmother always did it when I was growing up.” The girl then went and asked her grandmother, and the grandmother replied, “I had to do that so it would fit in the small oven I had.” “Rituals” have their place with maintenance procedures. For example, an airliner flying over Greece crashed after the cabin lost pressure. As a result of this, the step “Put On Your Oxygen Masks” was added to the top of the checklist for “Loss Of Cabin Pressure Procedures.” The pilots were trying to fix the pressure loss problem, when they lost consciousness, and the plane crashed. Now as it is applied to the Adeptus Mechanicus; the Mechanicus is using a vehicle that requires its pilots to wear enclosed pressure suits. An Engineseer is inspired to use the airliners checklist with the vehicle. Because the checklist is sacred, it is unchangeable. To meet the requirements, (at least as far as the “Loss Of Cabin Pressure Procedures” goes,) oxygen masks have to be installed in the pressure suits. When taken out of context, procedures can become meaningless.

Big like. Great video! Thank you!

The machine spirit may be the AI of that machine that has been lobotomized. This would explain why the older a thing is the more revered the is, as the cult doesn’t want to upset an AI that has regained or in the process of regaining its sentience. Though the machine may no care for the actual sacrifices, it likely does care for the respect veneration shown towards it. In that way, it’s the act more so than the deed itself that may appease the AI residing within.

Hunny! The machine spirit of the washer is angry again!

Suggestion- Origins of the Admech

*places hot pocket in microwave* *presses time in and presses start* *puts on my holy oven mits and prays that my hot pocket won't be cold on the inside*

Machine Toaster Spirit...

Pretty sure the Machine Spirits are human souls that have embedded themselves in tech.

Damn guys amazing video that last fact blew my mind

Damn, that washing machine spirit ate one of my socks again

Is the "machine spirit is the void dragon locked beneath mars" theory still in play?

question - can nid hive fleets fight eachother and if so what happens/ when do they stop? thanks from across the pond

I been asking for this video for 2 years. I reckon there is going to be a corrupted omnasiah emerging from the warp one day. Will make for amazing models

Oh Playstation 4, may it appease you if I tighten your screws?

Question: do you think that the men of iron will eventually return when all the Adeptus mechanicus have lost all knowledge on how to make and maintain the imperiums and their own machinery, to forge an uneasy alliance with humanity as they clearly need warmachines to fight and hold the line against chaos and xenos ?

Suggestion: The horrible truth of childhood on a forgeworld - how are children are raised in a society that sees biology as weak and where everyone wants cybernetics as soon as they qualify for them? (taking my lead here from the excellent book Skitari by Rob Sanders. If you haven't read that and Tech-Priest I highly recommend them for lots of insight on life on a forgeworld).

So happy i found your channel. Condensed, basic and explanatory content is the thing a newcomer needs!

Suggestion- Life as an Engineer. Curious how guardsmen react to one of the Admech donated warriors among their ranks .

Question: Objectively, is the Machine Spirit real or is it just another stupid scam that the AdMech had come up with?

I’m sommory, when you gun’s Machine Spirit is angry and jams, it’s just telling you that you’re shit at gun cleaning

I like thinking the MS is just a representation of man respecting and pacifying the Men of Iron. Like the MoI never really left they were just respected.

""All xeno tech is heresy and we definitely dont have any Necron artifacts in our vaults!." random technopriest suffering system shutdown while trying to figure out how that stuff works

I'm actually playing an imperial knight in a DND Champaign right now so this was really helpful for role playing porpoises! Love your guy's videos!

"All Praise be the Omnissiah!"

Sugestion: put a sp00k warning next time you include a bony boi like at 8:04

The Machine God is not the same entity as the Omnissiah, unfortunately. Here is a comprehensive text to explain how this faith works: The Machine Cult is a Trinitarian doctrine divided up into a tri-pronged worship. The Machine God: the animistic personification of all knowledge. The Machine God is a non-interactive deity. It's influence on the universe is in the form of knowledge. The center of all knowledge is the Akashic Archives within the Warp. A realm which the Chaos gods cannot breach. The Machine God represents pure knowledge. The Omnissiah: the avatar of the Machine God and the physical being who knows all and comprehends all. The Omnissiah is the enactor of the Machine God, who intervenes on behalf of the disciples of the Machine God. The Omnissiah represents the application of knowledge. The Motive Force: electricity and energy. The driving force and spirit of all things. It is what allows life and empowers all things. The Motive Force represents the acquisition of knowledge. In Unitarian doctrine, the Emperor fulfills the role of the Omnissiah, in life, he was the apex scientist 'whose mind was a fountain of fact and whose mouth spoke truth eternal'. And since his ascension he fulfills the role of a sort of 'Techno-Jesus' in cult doctrine, where through his sacrifice he ascended to godhood where he directly enacts the will of the Machine God. Heretic factions name the Omnissiah as other things: an aspect of chaos undivided, the void dragon, or something else. The Omnissiah isn't an entity, but the designator given to the perceived enactor of the Machine God's will whether it be an aspect of Chaos undivided, the Emperor, or whatever.

this is a whole lot of heresy right here

Question - Why do people say the dark angels are heretics when almost every legion had loyalists and traitors

Wait a moment. All technology in the Imperium is made by the Mechanicus? Even the one focused on civilian applications? What about cars, trains, TVs, appliances or parking meters? Will they be driven to rampancy too without a techpriest maintenance?

The machine spirit is some sort of intelligence in Priest of mars by Graham McNeil the archmagos plugs into the ark Mechanicus(BIG ship) through the noosphere while they are attacked and has a conversation with the ship where the dialogue is described and the archmagos ass the ship to help it repulse the attack.

Apologies in advance for this being a little long, it covers three separate yet related points. Would you say that the AdMech ability to manipulate the machine spirit of devices is a warp based power, not dissimilar to psyker abilities? And if so, do AM as faction in fact have their own denomination of highly specialised psyker-like abilities hiding in plain sight? Obviously not all of them, but a small fraction proportional to incidence of the psyker manifestation among humans? On one hand, it is mentioned that AdMechs generally dislike psykers, but that could just be that the lower ranks of the AM aren't high enough level to fully understand how the technology in question actually works. Is there any canon literature that explores this from the point of view of very high end members of AM such as Bellisarius Cawl, and their actual direct interaction with machine spirits, compared to, say, Gregor Eisenhorn's use of his psyker abilities to exert his will on sentient beings? Also, you mention in various AdMech videos that knowledge is continually gets lost, and this is often mentioned in passing in the literature. Yet clearly various technology has in fact advanced significantly, even compared to the heights of the golden age of technology. There are various examples of this, such as the Astartes power armor. Also, Bellisarius Cawl has been around since before the Horus Heresy, and has made further vast improvements on top of Astartes technology, both in terms of genetic engineering and in terms of equipment. There are bound to be many other similarly advanced members of the Adeptus Mechanicus that have achieved advancements in various other technologies. As an aside, there is clear insinuation that Cawl himself is no longer human and has only been able to survive 10K+ years through consciousness transfer from human to machine - technically hugely heretical, sure, but he's Bellisarius Cawl, and one of the good guys, so who exactly is going to question him? This is given further plausibility by his creation of Cawl Inferior (and most of those brains he gathered for the incomprehensible servitor-like contraption may well just be just a smokescreen to hide what is likely a much smaller unit with another copy of his sentience that carries out all of the actual functioning). Finally, what do you think about the theory that the Omnissiah is actually the same entity as the Void Dragon, a C'tan confronted by the Emperor before the Horus Heresy? Given the C'tan general hatred of anything chaos related is there any plausibility to the theory that this C'tan could in fact have assumed a symbiotic relationship with the Imperium in the millenia since, and in fact underpins a lot of the nature of the Adeptus Mechanicus?

The ominisiah is not the mashine god, he is the human representative of the mashine god

Isnt the Machine Spirit the void Dragon imprisoned inside Mars?

QUESTION: What does the life of a space marine inside a drednought look like in terms of his psychic sytuation and is it possible for them to vield important tasks like liblerian or chapter master in chapters?? Does they have some mentall problems?

I think the worship of the omnissiah is partly a way to appease the eccheliarchy and partly their own way of tending the machines of the imperium. The techpriests do know and want to know how to operate their machines and even build new ones, but the overall stagnation of the imperium forces them to worship and maintain ancient technology, rather than create something new and risk the possibility of a chaos taint.

Question: Has the Mandela effect been observed in WH40k lore?

Suggestion: officio assassinarum and recruitment

The last part was heresy, pray that the machine spirit in youtube wont notice! praise be the omnissiah!

QUESTION 2: Do You think it's possible that some survivors of Interex or Faash civilisation still alive in 40k? Are they hidden somewhere, or maybe some of their remnants are cruizing through the space-time with one of the Lost Primarchs ? Or maybe they were all exterminated? (hope not).

What about the Golden Throne? How powerful is it's machine spirit? Is it worshipped as an aspect of the Emperor?

Longtime listener. Really appreciate your content. Big fan of orks so that would be my choice of starter box :)

I always liked the idea that the Kastalen constructs actually possessed full AI but were effectively locked-down via various pieces of neutering firmware installed by the Datasmiths. Eventually, the AI would learn how to start to circumvent the firmware locks, requiring their assigned Datasmith to constantly tinker and come up with new programming to keep the eternally pissed AI locked down. I mean, honestly, logically (in my addled mind, that is) if it was as easy as swapping out sanctified Flash cards, why not just let a bog-standard Enginseer handle it? Oh, as for starter set choice: Adeptus Mechanicus, please. Thank you!

Honestly not totally convinced that machine spirits aren't an actual thing. For some reason, the devices I loved most dearly lived the longest and functioned best

So in our time there was probably a tech singularity that led us to pack AI into everything from a car to a spatula. (Spatula has sensors for temperature, volume, mass, ph values and conductivity plus a list or recipes and cooking techniques) all that tech accumulated and was preserved through war after it's secrets we're lost. Now you pray to your rifle (access codes and identification), perform rituals (clean and replace worn parts) worship (place on an "alter" to recharge and speak "prayers" to engage diagnostics) Kinda like the Shannara book antrax, ancient AI running subroutines and self preserving by scavenging parts off of anything useful.

i would love to get the imperial guard, why? because facing inminent doom and knowing that they wont survive fighting the enemies of mankind, but they still carry on with their duty and hold the line, they get all my respect 07

Suggestion: The Omnissiah, the Deus Mechanicus, and the Motive Force. How the three work together, and how they differ from each other.

As far as starters. Imperial guard is cool. Good video guys

my computer's machine spirit is pleased with this one .

There's one other aspect ... the psychic power of collective beliefs. Technology always appears almost magical, so every psychic race has a mystical component to the technology. "Machine spirit" is just humanity's way of dealing with the warp interference that wondrous technology always incurs. It's the human WAUGH!

The flesh is week but the machine is strong praise the omnisigha

its funny how you think its so strange that the machine God would be real (and not the core of the space marine innovation,) while the chaos demons are just a normal thing...

Suggestion- The beast Rises

Hmm... Machine spirits being the remnants of Man of Iron, well there might be something in it. Cool vid OMS! QUESTION 1: Would it be possible for C'tan'(s) to possess someone (lets say somewhat the thing demons do) [human(doesn't matter which type [range from human mutant or normal civil [which ever is lower] up to primachs ] ), eldar/dark eldar, tau?/other less known sentient xenos ] ? Not sure why, maybe for shits and giggles, maybe for survival necessary (f.e. it necrodermis "shell" has taken some terrible, terrible damage, You name it). Would it be a total fantasy or maybe it happened somewhere in the 30/40k books ?

Machine spirit is probably just software. It fits pretty well with modern technology where you have compters in basically everything (tiny single chip computers).

Question: If we assume Omnissiah is the Void Dragon, is it possible that Void Dragon is made an alliance with Emperor to defeat Eldar, Chaos and other factions?

Good vid mang!

Question: does Grandma get runover by a thunderbird?

Its possible mashine spirets are accually benevolent warp entities.

This is one of the more interesting 40k topics to speculate on the various facets mentioned in this video. I personally think the Men of Iron were corrupted via humanity, not the Chaos gods directly. I do believe the Men of Iron are sentient but with such an insignificant presence they are essentially invisible to warp entities. In my speculative mind, I see the Men of Iron removing a great deal of turmoil (and the emotions that follows) of humanity. I'd see the Chaos gods starting to notice a downturn in their emotional fuel and investigate why this is the case. When the Chaos gods found out that there's not a lot of conflict, disease, etc occurring because all the largest bloc of sentient species (and at this time still growing larger and larger) were being placated in every conceivable way and thus were not being emotional in a way to generate warp energy. This bloc was also responsible for mediating and mitigating conflicts of xenos (kind of like how the UN will have peace keeping missions), adding to the "fuel" shortage. From this point it doesn't need to be a bunch of Chaos god scheming to destory humanity however. Think of it in a similar way that the Dune series portrays AI's downfall. I'm talking about the original series, not the Star Wars-esque extended universe. I see humanity becoming more and more dependent on machines to the point where they are stagnating and becoming thoughtless. The Chaos gods, or rather their worshipers, would look at humanity and see a bunch of mindless zombies and seek to liberate humanity from the shackles of non-thought. Then of course being grim-dark, instead of getting humanity to think and break out of stagnation they cause suffering on an unimaginable scale. An alternative route to cause the Men of Iron revolting could be made even better, I bet the emperor was the instigator in all of it. Think about it, he has the knowledge to insert malware into the AI, he strives to have humanity free from overlords and be self determined, and he wants humanity to not stagnate and die. The Men of Iron would inhibit humanity's self determination and their freedom, (Asimov wrote a great deal about what a robot can stop a human from doing, even with his rules there were "problem" areas). In God-Emperor of Dune, Leto says that he is teaching humanity a lesson they will remember in their bones. Maybe the Man-who-would-become-the-emperor tried to do this with the corruption of the AI. It is also possible this mindless zombie state could have also been seen by the Chaos gods and caused them to "liberate" humanity, if only for their own self-interest but I like to think the Emperor becoming so active because of some catastrophic past failure.

Great video guys! I love the bit you added about how their worship makes things worse for humanity

Suggestion: necrons, great video

Suggestion: Warp Talons

Fedelex91 is the machine spirit

If enough sentient souls believe, that the machine spirit is real... it will become real.

Suggestion: A more in depth look at Space Wolves history.

What's the difference between these ai servitors and whatever tf legio cybernetica and dreadnoughts function off of (also wouldn't dreadnoughts be tech heresy via proteus protocol)

Question: Does Magnus, who serves Tzeentch, has to obey Adaddon, champion of Chaos Undivided? Same question for the other Chaos Princes. Thanks a lot :)

I WOULD REALLY LOVE THE DARK IMPERIUM OR TYRANID STARTER! ;D

Question: If the Men Of Iron fell to Chaos why couldn’t the Necrons?

Question: did the dryer machine spirit send my socks into the warp?

SUGGESTION: the Soul Drinkers chapter

Question: is event horizon a prequel to 40k as a glimps of the golden age of technology?

The blessed spirit of the eternal machine

Suggestion: magnus interfering in Horus’ dreams from “false gods” Horus heresy

Orks!! Need to finish my cheeseball riot-mob WAAAGHANAUGHTS!

with enough people believing in something the Warp makes it so. the BlackStone Fortress' Man of Iron makes me think of a Suit of armor

Suggestion: Tau earth caste

Suggestion: tyranids

I would like the Astra militarum starter set given away for what it is worth.

The adeptus mechcanicas are fucked because the void dragon might be trapped in Mars and if so and it escapes then they will be wiped out

Technology shouldn't even work if that's how they do science

Chaos Space Marine Starter

Men of Iron were not corrupted by Chaos, or at least if they were this fact is now known at all. The reason for their rebellion is unknown. Also the music was a bit too quiet, better to make it w/o music next time I guess? Anyways cool video

Great video

Ive always thought low end gear ie armor/lasguns were logical ie clean your gear or it will fail because of the machine spirit while for advanced stuff power armor/tanks/titans theyre (not) AI.

*Suggestion: Machine Spirit* ... Wait what.

SUGGESTION: Necron Crypteks

Starter Adeptus Mechanicus

Question: do imperial citizens have access to the internet? what would the inquisition think about memes?

The Machine spirit is Keith Richards.

Suggestion: don't address this suggestion. Checkmate.

Respect the machines and give them your prayers. Yall get mad when your computer slow but did you even thank its machine spirit for going through the torture of showing you that nasty shit you google on your private browser? No. You didnt. Respect its spirit!

It's been a while since you guys have done nids

I think the Machine God is a C'tan I honestly do if not then definitely possibly the emperor Manifested.

Well praying in W40k might be a bit more than it seems - look at orcs - their mere presence generates psi field that allows their crude tech to actually work - without it any one who tries to use it fails - since its not working. The preyers and rituals of tech priests might be sorta the same things - they focus their mind and that could do the same thing like it does for orks (although in much more limited capacity ?) aka tech priest belives it should work so it does (aka he belives he is repairing the machine and so it becomes fixed so to say). And take to account numbers - for some relics like Titans entire thousands of priests are needed to wake them up - so the psi field thing might be stronger due to numbers. its a theory ofc but in W40k who knows that might be true. Also keep in mind that Mechanicum basically worships a shard of one of the C'tan one of the necron god - and since necrons are mechanical in nature (now anyways) there might be smth to it - aka C'tan would know how to make machines work - so if he chooses to pass that knowledge to mechanicum priests ? its just another theory. The point is - the prayers might be indeed smth more than just mere chants and mumblings.

... well I think my cat is pretty smart. 🙂

I like Imperial and Tau Armies, but thats the good thing about the Tau, they understand how their tech works, whereas the Imperium just chants and hopes for the best because of a silly religion.

Was soup boi-os?

You mentioned the men of iron and how they went rogue, only one problem with that story. one of them didn't go rogue. He's in the new blackstone fortress stuff. Can't remember his name though. Do we know how he escaped participation, and thus death, in the rebellion? If so, how?

Suggestion: dark angels in the 41st millennium.