@SFaccountant  
Now Im not heretic but all deamons are based off of the emotions of the materium. Not just hate and voiolence. They are just the two most commen in the known universe. With the most holes in that part of space and time. It is compleatly plossable that there are deamons based off of compassion and mercy joy, greed, envy,mischievous, playfulness, ect. Ill be it a lot more rare.
 
Also religon is complex inf 40k because of how the warp works. Belife in something in mass numbers with given rules and such thus means that it becomes reality. (IE Ork tech. though they where designed to simi control the warp around them) so…yes and no. The prayers work and dont work.
 
 
@infinita est lux Solis  
you win.
 
 
@Steel Accord  
in the case of any other mecanicus factions you would be wrong. but this is dark mecanicus. so you may pass.

ITS THE OMNITWIA

Go and wreck that edge-lord’s shit up, Twilight!

@gasmaskangel  
On the other bionic hand, of course, it also leads to a lot of arguments like this.
 
“The Void Dragon is the Omnissiah.”  
“Nuh-uh. C’tan can’t be Gods.”  
“He’s not actually a God like the others, but he is the Omnissiah.”  
“But in (insert book) they said (insert line), so (plot explanation X) doesn’t make any sense! My theory is blah blah blah blah…”

@Background Pony #21F6
 
@SFaccountant  
Hmmmm… that’s an interesting way to look at it.

@Barhandar  
The Void Dragon is on Mars. It was stated pretty clearly in the novel Mechanicus.  
Of course, we don’t know if that’s the C’tan “shard”, or the complete thing, or the C’tan “corpse”, or what. Or what effect it even has on anything. Pretty much the only thing Mechanicus told us about the Dragon is that the Emperor beat it and imprisoned it on Mars.  
Also featured in that book, incidentally, was a bunch of lost technology in a vault forbidden to the Mechanicus by the Emperor. As soon as the head Techpriest got his mechadendrites on it, he was corrupted by malevolent scrapcode and turned to Chaos. Hmmmm…
 

So? You already established that the construction and function of the Imperium’s tanks have nothing to do with the Machine God. While the Techpriests build the Imperium’s stuff and base their industrial religion on the Omnissiah, no supernatural religious properties are actually needed to make that happen. They’re just window dressing.
 
And on the topic of praying to the Omnissiah not doing anything, that’s kind of my point. Established Gods in 40K can actually respond to and empower their followers. The Chaos Gods do it, the Eldar Gods did it, even the Emperor - despite his “no, I’m not actually a God you guys, really” - does it. You pray to the Void Dragon, jack diddly is going to happen. So what claim, exactly, does the C’tan have to being the Machine God? If he woke up and appeared on Mars, do you seriously think the Techpriests would look at the ancient star-sucking monster and think “Okay, yeah, this is sort of completely different from what I THOUGHT I was worshipping all this time, but sure. I guess this is the Omnissiah now”?  
What I’m pointing out is that a bunch of Techpriests decided that Chaos was the Omnissiah, and started praying to THAT, and then their prayers to that particular Omnissiah DID start doing something. Daemonic power can be used to power and control tanks, walkers, and entire void ships, has been used to create entirely new ones, and Chaos can take control of enemy machine spirits. So as a claim to being a Machine God, Chaos has a much better case than any C’tan or even the Emperor.
 
@gasmaskangel  
That’s something I actually like a lot about the 40K universe. Rather than feeding us everything explicitly, they leave hints and mysteries everywhere, and have numerous conflicting accounts. It’s confusing, but at the same time, immersive. It makes you feel like you’re actually trying to piece together an entire galaxy of constant, confused warfare from reports edited for secrecy and second-hand accounts exaggerated to make them seem more dramatic.

@gasmaskangel  

 
That’s pretty much the whole point. A mish-mash of sci-fi tropes and power fantasies unified under a single roof held together by spit and duct tape.
 
Some people simply don’t understand British humour and thus take it dead seriously.  
The whole Dark Age of Tech is lifted completely from Dune, for instance.

@Barhandar  
P.S. If you pray for counsel while a priest is nearby and they come and help you, it’s the priest who responded, not the god you prayed to.  
Your side of the “which seems more like the Machine God” thing hinges on a faulty and incorrect premise that Omnissiah responds to prayers. Omnissiah does not respond to prayers, Machine Spirit, individual to each STC machine, does.

@SFaccountant  
>and enslaved the C’tan rather than the other way around.
 
Nobody knows where Void Dragon Shards are, Omnissiah therefore hadn’t been touched, be it whole C’Tan or just a Shard.  

 
Again: Machine God doesn’t respond to prayers or anything at all. Machine Spirit is not the Machine God.  
Your comparsion is like saying that because factory produces things, it must be personally run by the company CEO who owns it, them working all the machines.
 
Also, Chaos possession warps the hell out of things, and Imperium’s tanks aren’t warped.

@SFaccountant  
That would be the Emperah, heretic.
 
Seriously though, 40k’s canon is such a convoluted mess of retcons that I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that the Omnissiah is really Gork or Mork.

@Barhandar  
I’ve never really bought that “Void Dragon is the Omnissiah” thing. Even if they were ever planning going anywhere with that, it was retconned into oblivion after the Necrons got personalities and enslaved the C’tan rather than the other way around.  
Praying to a C’tan isn’t going to do anything, because they’re not Warp creatures or even psykers.
 
Now, what’s REALLY interesting is that the Dark Mechanicus (which comprises a large number, but not all, of the galaxy’s Hereteks) believes that the Omnissiah is the united Chaos Pantheon. You know, the collection of Gods that directly respond to prayer, communicate with their followers, and have been known to possess machines against their user’s will. It is an indisputable fact that Chaos power can control mechanical devices and that daemons can animate machines. So can Necrons, of course, but they have to do it through technology (which makes total sense). Daemons know exactly nothing about engineering, being manifestations of hate and fear and such.
 
So, which seems more like the “Machine God” to you?

@Blissey1  
@gasmaskangel  
You’re confusing two things. Omnissiah, the Machine God, is C’Tan Void Dragon, Mag’ladroth. The Machine Spirit is an AI that all STC machinery from the Dark Age of Technology has. Adeptus Mechanicus are in denial, because AI rebellion is the reason Golden Age of Humanity is called “Dark Age of Technology”. But it’s very much a thing, even with all maintenance and stuff disguised as rituals and sacred ceremonies.

@Blissey1  
It might have been retconned into that, which isn’t nearly as brilliant as just having the Imperium as a whole having forgotten how ancient tech works so thoroughly that they’ve decided it must be magic, and now changing your oil is a sacred right to appease the machine spirit.

@gasmaskangel  
I thought the Machine Spirit was real, but it’s actually just c’tan or something like that

Needs a heresy tag.

I love that all Hereteks are pretty much just admechs that figured out that machines aren’t really magical and that Emps pulled a fast one on them back in the day.