Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl led an expedition to Sotha with the aid of the Ultramarines and the remaining Firstborn Space Marines of the Scythes of the Emperor to study and perhaps use the Pharos' technology to close the Great Rift and defeat Chaos. The Eldar guided the expedition to Macragge where Cawl revealed that his precocious artifacts were the Emperor's Sword and a suit of Power Armour that could heal the comatose Primarch Guilliman. During the Ultramar Campaign Cawl was able to successfully work with the Eldar in resurrecting Guilliman, who drove the Chaos invaders from Ultramar. Cawl accompanied Guilliman in the subsequent Terran Crusade and was one of the few to reach Terra. Once on Terra Cawl talked with Guilliman of a secret pact with Mars and of his work nearing completion. He then made his way to the Red Planet to oversee its success. [3]

Does Not Like Magic: The majority of Tech-Priests have an inherent mistrust, at best, of psykers and Psychic Powers in general due to their inherent illogical nature. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the Mechanicus specific Tactical Objective "A Victory for Logic" that grants the Adeptus Mechanicus player extra Victory Points for killing enemy psykers. Cawl's humanity has long since been stripped away. He maintains different "files" of personalities, which he accesses depending on the situation. By the end of the Indomitus Crusade, Cawl had artificially replicated his own sentience to the point where he could no longer said to be a single individual. Cawl kept each "Sub-Cawl" limited to prevent the core intelligence from being threatened. Aboard his Ark Mechanicus Zar-Quaesitor dozens of sub-cawls swarm about, each undertaking a different task. [7] Enemy Scan: The Eye of Xi-Lexum, a techno-relic of Forge World Agripinaa, is an advanced servo-skull created from the remains of a highly talented Tech-Priest. The machine spirit of the Eye is able to analyse enemy vehicles during a battle, identifying their weaknesses with the same withering gaze that the Tech-Priest was renowned for in life. The 8th Edition rules for the Eye represent this by giving a re-roll to wound against nearby enemy vehicles. When the Trisolian System was assaulted by Traitor forces led by Horus himself Cawl was betrayed when his mistress Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma defected to the service of the Warmaster. Cawl was disgusted at the sight of the Chaos-corrupted Horus, but feigned submission to the servants of the Ruinous Powers to survive.Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work is an intense and intricate read. It is every bit as grand and complicated as I would have expected or hoped, given who we're talking about here. It's one of those novels that you can really sink your teeth into. Even those Tech-priests that began to understand the reality of the dire situation were loath to call upon their Imperial allies for aid against the Necrons for fear of being branded Hereteks. With Guilliman resurrected, the Primarch drove the invaders from Ultramar before deciding to make his way to Terra through the Warp anomalies roiling the galaxy to an extent not seen since the Horus Heresy. Cawl joined the Primarch on this Terran Crusade, his technological acumen and combat prowess aiding the Imperial forces of the Crusade in all their trials and tribulations in the Warp rift known as the Maelstrom. In fact, Cawl's work on Mars had been nothing less than an attempt to improve upon the Emperor's own works of creation. Learn more: The Horus Heresy book The Master of Mankind focuses on what the Emperor was up to during the Horus Heresy.

We begin with Our mechboy has come to Sotha to further the sacred quest for knowledge, and as always he is bisy at work… Belisarius Cawl, Archmagos Dominus of the Adeptus Mechanicus is the most brilliant mind alive. For 10,000 years he has furthered the cause of mankind, working under the aegis of the Emperor and Lord Commander Roboute Guilliman to prevent the inexorable march of the alien and the traitor. Many call him heretic, but all must recognise the magnitude of his achievements, for who else but he was entrusted to create a new generation of Space Marines? Who else but the great Belisarius Cawl could even accomplish such a task? Mechadendrite Hive - Hissing and slithering like a nest of mechanical snakes, the Mechadendrite Hive engulfs the foe in dozens of steel tendrils. Lashing, stabbing and throttling, the mass of Mechadendrites bloodily disassembles its victims with horrific speed.

It advanced on Cawl, growing writhing tentacles of light from its disc. Lightning lashed around the hole in space. When communicating with Guilliman, the Cawl Inferior claimed that it sought to seek to emulate Human interaction to make the primarch more comfortable with its aberrant existence. This preamble was to ease tension and re-establish bonds between Belisarius Cawl and the Imperial Regent. In the wake of the Great Rift, Belisarius Cawl turns his attention to the abandoned world of Sotha. Once home to the Scythes of the Emperor, it also hides a long-buried secret...and an ancient evil.

Cawl had argued what would be the difference if the primarch replaced one more lord? But Guilliman argued that the Imperium did not exert such authoritarian political control over Mars, in accordance with the tenets of the ancient Treaty of Mars, that the primarch could appoint his own fabricator-general, and the other Tech-priests would never accept it even if he could. Industrial World: Forge Worlds are factory complexes the size of planets, their surfaces covered by colossal factories dedicated to meeting the ever-increasing material needs of the Imperium, from ammo to bionic implants to Titans. Conditions there are usually hellish (pollution is rampant as a baseline, and sometimes the oceans and even the atmosphere are gone) and the worker population enormous, with most people being heavily modified just to survive working there. Despite the immense output of weapons, vehicles and wargear, some Forge Worlds are relatively defenseless and rely on Navy, Guard and Space Marine protection so as to leave room for more factories. The most famous is Mars, home of the Adeptus Mechanicus cult. It's also the location of the Noctis Labyrinth, the prison of the C'tan entity known as the Void Dragon, which is all but stated to be the Omnissiah worshipped by the Mechanicus. Arc Scourge - The raw might of the motive force dances between the splayed claws of the Arc Scourge. A potent weapon of technobanishment, this weapon is designed to target Heretic war engines and exorcise their Machine Spirits with jolts of agonising lightning, disrupting their electronic and mechanical systems. Belisarius Cawl and Roboute Guilliman, deep beneath the surface of Mars, oversee the final stages of development of the Primaris Space Marines. Even Evil Has Standards: The Priesthood may be a cult of techno-worshiping fanatics with few scruples, but one Tech-Priest was so horrified by their use of phosphex weaponry that he destroyed the last STC in existence containing their designs. As a result, the Mechanicus now has reverted to the less powerful phosphor weapons and the last few remaining phosphex guns have been relegated to being rarely-used, sacred relics... but not before being used to burn that particular Tech-Priest at the stake.

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Adventurer Archaeologist: While most Tech-Priests will search for knowledge in the ruins of the past if they have the opportunity, the independently minded Tech-Priests known as Explorators make it their life's work. They explore the dark fringes of the galaxy, searching for the lost knowledge of the Dark Age of Technology, archeotech and valuable STC data. Due to the dangers inherent in the regions that they operate, Explorators must be more than ready to defend themselves and will often travel in the company of an entire Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator Fleet or as part of the retinue of a Rogue Trader. Nearly completed, the gene-forged Primaris Space Marines lie in stasis, waiting to be awakened from their long slumber. It wasn't just Belisarius Cawl's character that I enjoyed so much, but all of the secondary and tertiary characters as well. They brought the world to life. Or more accurately, through them, Haley brought the world to life. I'm not sure I ever read a novel where the characters from this world felt so...human. Relatable. Given how grand and epic the characters from Warhammer 40,000 tend to be, that's probably not all that surprising. But it is an impressive feat here, nonetheless. Bio-Augmentation: "Organicists" is the name given to a school of thought within the Mechanicus that gives the same value to organic life that they do to inorganic construction. They see an organic body as its own kind of machine, taking in fuel, producing waste, and generating action like any constructed device. Much like their fellows though, they are not content to exist unaugmented, and seek to improve their bodies to become closer to the Omnissiah. The difference is that they're much more willing to graft engineered organs and other biological components to themselves in addition to more "normal" mechanical enhancements. Yet Guilliman believed that it was probable that the Cawl Inferior was a real machine intelligence masquerading as a non-intelligent device as a pretence. Guilliman was no technologist of the ability demonstrated by his brother primarchs Perturabo, Vulkan or Ferrus Manus, but he doubted that the archmagos was telling him the complete truth about how his creation truly worked, especially since it obviously also made use of power drawn from the Warp, which was one reason why Master Astropath Guidus Losenti preferred to never be in the machine's presence once he had activated it with the code Cawl had astrotelepathically transmitted to him.