The Internet: The Mechanicus has their 40K version of the internet known as the Datascape and its flow of data is so constantly on that machine priests feel bewildered and naked whenever they don't have access to it.

Classic Inferno! and the Lords of Mars - Warhammer Community

In Lords, Linya loses both legs as a result of the horrific burns she suffered when Amarok fell into a magma chamber. We Have Reserves: The tech-priests not only work their indentured bondsmen to death on a regular basis, but also kill thousands of them as a by-product of thwarting various dangers to the ship on several occasions. The bondsmen are horrified and outraged by this callous disregard for their lives, and in Lords they go on strike until the tech-priests agree to treat them more humanely. While most in the Mechanicus live in hypocrisy denying their lust for personal gain, Telok's story shows what chasing that goal with conviction leads to. The Forges of Mars omnibus starts out as a tale of exploration. So essentially McNeill is taking a Star Trek style story and giving it a 40K spin.His story is about an Adeptus Mechanicus expedition for a missing ship that traveled outside the known galaxy thousands of years ago. The flagship of this new expedition is a massive and ancient vessel known as the Speranza. It's almost like a planet and much of the action in the trilogy unfolds in its labyrinthine layout. It's a pretty fascinating locale that's almost a character unto itself. Time Abyss: Galatea is several thousand years old. Its creator, Telok, is equally old, having kept himself alive by replacing most of his original body with nanites.In Gods of Mars, the Breath of the Gods turns out to be as capable of obliterating spacecraft as it is of restarting the life cycles of stars and planets. a b Ebenezer Burgess (1989). P Ganguly, P Sengupta (ed.). Sûrya-Siddhânta: A Text-book of Hindu Astronomy. Motilal Banarsidass (Reprint), Original: Yale University Press, American Oriental Society. pp.26–27. ISBN 978-81-208-0612-2. Mind Hive: The artificially intelligent construct Galatea claims to be this, but the brains it totes around seem to be there for it to leech knowledge from more than anything else.

Lords of Mars (Novel) - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum

Yukio Ohashi (1999). Johannes Andersen (ed.). Highlights of Astronomy, Volume 11B. Springer Science. ISBN 978-0-7923-5556-4. Galatea's stated goal is to kill Telok for abandoning it aboard the Valette Manifold station. Gods reveals that this is a lie — Galatea is actually a bit of Telok's consciousness separated and made into its own being to help with luring Kotov.Arm Cannon: Bracha was the space marine who lost his arm to an Ork servitor and he had it replaced with a bionic arm with a built-in plasma gun. Nanomachines: In Lords, Telok’s abandoned flagship sits in the middle of a crystalline plateau which is full of nanites. These nanites guard the ship from intruders by reshaping the crystal into an army of constructs which mimic the forms of their opponents and possess deadly energy weapons. While the constructs are frail and somewhat stupid, they nearly overwhelm the expedition’s ground forces through sheer weight of numbers. Alien Geometries: The physical form of the Breath of the Gods is a mass of metal blades whirling around a core of glowing energy. The blades are not connected to or supported by anything, and they occasionally pass through each other as if they were intangible. The sight of it does funny things to the human mind.

For Alexander Dembski-Bowden.

The characters are mostly relatable, interesting, and flawed. Kotov and Blaylok are likeable in ways but also detestable. Surcouf is interesting .The Tychons and Anders are just all around awesome. I liked that the Tech-Priests felt distinct, with their own goals and quirks and even physical descriptions that were memorable without being over the top. Language Barrier: When Kotov meets Telok, they struggle to communicate at first because Kotov’s augmetics are not reverse-compatible with the obsolete form of binary that Telok speaks. Similarly, Linya finds it difficult to communicate with Galatea’s other victims because they aren’t equipped to receive the hexamathic code she speaks. I Have Many Names: When Kotov communicates with the Speranza's machine spirit during the fight against the Starblade, the Speranza tells him that in its millenniums of existence "Speranza" is only the latest name for the ship and over the ages it was had many other names including Yggdrasil.A further issue that that many of the points brought up within the story are not resolved or directly discussed. While there are some very interesting revelations and character moments, all of which easily justify this book’s worth despite its flaws, too often they seem to only be set-up for later on. While certain elements like the mutiny are resolved to varying degrees of success and give the characters something to react to, others are just ignored. Combined with the revelations provided in the final few chapters, it’s obvious a great deal of this book is just set-up for Gods of Mars. Roborte Surcorf takes a minor role in this novel, where in the first the rogue trader was a central character. The Eldar are obviously using him and are going to play a major role in some kind of conflict that stops Kotov, whatever happens. It all seems all to obvious. The creators of the Breath of the Gods are described as such. Turns out they were Necrons, and the Breath of the Gods itself is powered by a C'tan shard. We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: The Speranza, as with all Imperial ships, requires enormous amounts of manual labor to function. Most of the laborers are "conscripted", being kidnapped from the streets by Imperial authorities and turned over to the Mechanicus as slave labor. A few of those slaves are main characters, and showing off the awful quality of life for Mechanicus-indentured laborers is a major part of their story. In Lords of Mars, this becomes a plot point: said slaves go on strike— every last one, including the normally mindless servitors— until the Mechanicus improves their working conditions. It's revealed that the Halo Scar was created by the Breath of the Gods and is a byproduct of using said technology.