Of Chaos and Machinery (Warhammer 40,000)

[Zor]

This was something i was thinking about involving Warhammer 40,000 and Chaos and technoloogy.

How susseptable is Machinery to the corruption of Chaos? We have stuff like Defilers operated by a Daemon incased in them and Daemonic superblades and armor and such, but they are custom built machines designed for such corruption or specifically modified to be like that. I think the Imperiums fears of AI is because of Mechanical uprisings. Exactly how susseptable are machinery to the influences of the ruinous powers.

Lets take it as such, i am pretty sure that if you just take a random Cubic meter of Steel from our universe and plonk it in deep space in the WH40kverse its not going to become host to some evil manevolent, even if we slap a Chaos Wheel symbol on it beforehand or put it on Chaos World #21236 (this is of course before the Cultists melt it down to make it into guns and knives and such). A Laptop i can more easily see being corrupted, but this brings me to the Next Question. From what i read, the reason why the Adeptus Mechanicus is so unforgiving on AI is the fact that after the collapse of Eldar Civilization and the Birth of Slaanesh, Chaos Corrupted killbots killed alot of people before the Emperor Came. Never the less, the Tau Empire makes quite Heavy use of Robots to help the Cause of the Greater Good and as far as i know, the ruinous powers have never managed to subvert a Tau Drone.

This brings me to another point. How would chaos corrupt a Robot, from what i heard about the ruinous powers, it normally works (in terms of corrupting worlds in which the ruinous powers never had a presence beforehand) by "wispering into your ear" psionic sugjestions that may or may not convince you to start cults and preform rituals and such. Now how would that work with a Machine which...

A-Has no Warp Soul, thus disconecting it from the Inmaterium
B-Could be programmed with a very specific of instructions and Drives

To go into more detail, if a Slaaneshi worshiping corrupted Mechanicus guy decides to build a Fembot marked with a bunch of Chaos Emblems and all that and programs it to make chaos emblems, sacrofice stuff to their gods in rituals and have its role in Slaaneshi Orgies or tells the Slaanesh Worshipers to engage in a ritual for summoning a Daemon and putting it in said fembot, it getting possesed by a Daemon is quite easy and makes sense. Now lets take a cleaner-bot in some isolated Chaos Free world cut off from the rest of mankind and the Adeptus where the Locals have developed Robotics and AI for 15,000 years. Sort of an advanced night after the office building where it exist closes, it turns on, scrubs down the tiles, vacuums the carpet and picks up miscalanious peices of garbage for disposal before returning to it's recharing terminal. To get into the mind of this Robot, ALL it's tiny mind thinks about is stuff related to keeping the office clean (or more specifically, how to do specific tasks like running over each square foot of the office's floor, knowing what to scrub down and what to vacuum, when it's bag is full and what to toss in a rubbish bin and to return once things are done). Assuming the ruinous powers decided to contact this simple minded little Future Roomba and could try to say "do this for chaos" it would blow right over it's tiny mind. Power, wealth, knowlage, hope, lust, dispair and such are all well beyond it, it simply has one single minded drive and from what i heard, a highly structured, redgemented and disiplined life offers resistance to Chaos anyway.

So how susseptable are machines to the ruinous powers?

Zor

[Stormbringer]

How susseptable is Machinery to the corruption of Chaos? We have stuff like Defilers operated by a Daemon incased in them and Daemonic superblades and armor and such, but they are custom built machines designed for such corruption or specifically modified to be like that. I think the Imperiums fears of AI is because of Mechanical uprisings. Exactly how susseptable are machinery to the influences of the ruinous powers.

It's never quite explained how Chaos corruption or possession of software works but one would assume that it simply alters the programming. When you can manipulate energy, messing with electronic-magnetic doohickies is a logical step. But in general, the more sophisticated something is the greater the possible risk of corruption.

Things like the Defiler and other possessed vehicles are not usually simply grabbed. The Defilers are custom built all the way and are in fact meant as receptacles for the daemons bound inside. I believe one of the new Chaos cross-over wallet rapers has other vehicles likewise meant for daemonic habitation. Presumably things like tanks, Rhinos, and other war machines which are possessed like wise have been prepared or are sophisticated enough to make a ready home for a daemon.

As for the Adeptus, they skirt the line between AI and not pretty closely. Machine spirits and mind-impulse links are both susceptible to corruption given time; we've seen examples of both. In that respect, the routine blessings also certainly have some beneficial value to them in preventing this sort of corruption. Out right AI is banned as being both easily corrupted and having a bad case of skynet syndrome.

Never the less, the Tau Empire makes quite Heavy use of Robots to help the Cause of the Greater Good and as far as i know, the ruinous powers have never managed to subvert a Tau Drone.

Mostly for lack of trying. Proportionally speaking, the Tau have had very, very few encounters with Chaos period. The Tau are pretty much nothing to the four powers and most of the major daemons. Tau fanboys aside, they're a backwater no where and simply not worthy of the time an attention of subverting their society It's notable that many Imperials, including Lt. Kage, note that Tau society in general is virtually wide open for Chaos corruption. For that matter, they're also fairly open to xenos subversion as well.

There's nothing particularly special about Tau drones and if I recall the daemon prince in Fire Warrior was doing the usual things with out any real problems.

[Shroom Man 777]

One of those Standard Template Construction (STC) things did get corrupted by Chaos in the Gaunt novels. The STC was manufacturing robots, and due to the effects of Chaos, they ended up producing evil warped and deformed robots.

[NecronLord]

It's worth noting that the Iron Warrior factory in First and Only, while not actually known (AFAIK) to the chaos forces, was in the Sabbatt worlds, and thus chaos held. Presumably some kind of ritual to 'corrupt alle the beystes and biyrdes and all thinges in these worlds' was responsible for its corruption, or some other human action during the Ages of Strife and the Imperium. In comparison, in Demon World a Golden Age of Technology sapient human warship sat in the exact centre of the Maelstrom for ten thousand years, and was fully operational when its (chaos) captain returned. In fact, not only was she fully operational, she was willing to take up arms directly against the Chaos Gods. It's probably 'not' an automatic procedure for corruption.

[Tanasinn]

That's not the only piece of corrupted technology that rears its head in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, either. Recall that daemonic tank that stalked them on Gereon, which apparently had been so changed that, before seeing it, the thought they were being stalked by a large predatory cat.

[NecronLord]

That's not the only piece of corrupted technology that rears its head in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, either. Recall that daemonic tank that stalked them on Gereon, which apparently had been so changed that, before seeing it, the thought they were being stalked by a large predatory cat.

No, actually. I've never read a Gaunt book end to end. I bought First and Only, couldn't stand the thing, and skipped to the bit about Iron Men when someone told me about it. Perhaps some day I'll buy the omnibuses and try and get through them. However, it's worth noting that the Sabatt worlds crusade book (oddly enough, I liked that) says the various types of demon engines in the crusade are very definately manufactured by chaos to be, err, demonic. Like defilers.

[SylasGaunt]

First and Only is easily the weakest book of the series. In fact the second one makes a much nicer intro to the Ghosts anyway.

[fgalkin]

First and Only is easily the weakest book of the series. In fact the second one makes a much nicer intro to the Ghosts anyway.

I could never understand that view. First and Only makes an awesome introduction to the series, IMHO much better than the utterly mediocre short stories from Ghostmaker.


Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Gil Hamilton]

It's never quite explained how Chaos corruption or possession of software works but one would assume that it simply alters the programming. When you can manipulate energy, messing with electronic-magnetic doohickies is a logical step. But in general, the more sophisticated something is the greater the possible risk of corruption.

I think that Tzeentch simply distributes Windows 40K install disks to the forces of Chaos, myself.

[Teleros]

I think that Tzeentch simply distributes Windows 40K install disks to the forces of Chaos, myself.

Given his sacred number, I'm guessing Win 999.M2x or something (assuming Microsoft collapsed during the Age of Strife at least... perhaps there's an Adeptus Microsofticus around in M41).

Now lets take a cleaner-bot in some isolated Chaos Free world cut off from the rest of mankind and the Adeptus where the Locals have developed Robotics and AI for 15,000 years. Sort of an advanced night after the office building where it exist closes, it turns on, scrubs down the tiles, vacuums the carpet and picks up miscalanious peices of garbage for disposal before returning to it's recharing terminal. To get into the mind of this Robot, ALL it's tiny mind thinks about is stuff related to keeping the office clean (or more specifically, how to do specific tasks like running over each square foot of the office's floor, knowing what to scrub down and what to vacuum, when it's bag is full and what to toss in a rubbish bin and to return once things are done). Assuming the ruinous powers decided to contact this simple minded little Future Roomba and could try to say "do this for chaos" it would blow right over it's tiny mind. Power, wealth, knowlage, hope, lust, dispair and such are all well beyond it, it simply has one single minded drive and from what i heard, a highly structured, redgemented and disiplined life offers resistance to Chaos anyway.

I suppose if I were trying to corrupt it I'd start by trying to get it to mark out some significant symbol or somesuch on the floor. Maybe (for Tzeentch) do things in multiples of 9. Such a change in programming would probably be easier than making it think properly or something: otherwise why whisper in someone's ear when you can just mind control them from the Warp?
Perhaps more importantly though, I wouldn't necessarily need it to do anything more: once someone reacts the right way to the symbols and such, you can get a proper cult started: from what I've read, machines are at the bottom of the pile for Chaos - they're there to serve, whether as hosts for daemons or as dishwashers for the Blood Pact. So once my little Future Roomba had helped get a cult started, it's mission accomplished - the cultists can now start fiddling with AIs more directly, recruiting people, and generally corrupting the planet.

When you can manipulate energy, messing with electronic-magnetic doohickies is a logical step.

I wonder what would happen if the machine could do the same. For example, you notice that some daemon's re-writing your programming in HDD #2. Fire up the effectors and undo the changes done almost as they're happening (or if it's mere software, just restore from backup, re-write, clean the affected parts of the disc etc). This may explain why the Nightbringer's ship survived 65m years in the Warp yet still obeyed the C'Tan's instructions - of all the races likely to have Culture-style effectors and such, the Necrons are the most likely.

Out right AI is banned as being both easily corrupted and having a bad case of skynet syndrome.

I wonder if they're related. Going by what NL said about that sapient ship, it sounds like simply having an AI isn't a prerequisite - perhaps it must have sufficiently flexible programming or something (like say a human mind). In terms of falling to Chaos, most races and the like must ultimately make a conscious decision to worship the Chaos Gods from what I've read (or be the unwilling host in some nasty ceremony, go insane etc etc etc, but anyway...), so it's possible that a machine with sufficient intelligence and, for want of a better word, willpower, could simply say "no" .

[Falkenhayn]

As for the Adeptus, they skirt the line between AI and not pretty closely. Machine spirits and mind-impulse links are both susceptible to corruption given time; we've seen examples of both. In that respect, the routine blessings also certainly have some beneficial value to them in preventing this sort of corruption. Out right AI is banned as being both easily corrupted and having a bad case of skynet syndrome.

Titannicus was...very enlightening on the subject. Suffice to say, Skitarii who accompany Titan Legions are vat grown bio engineered bionically enhanced monstrosities supported by "sentient artillery" and combat servitors. The two factions, pro and anti IoM, in the AM, have done a lot simply for appearances sake...and since they're the only ones who fully understand the most high end of their toys, what the IoM dosen't know won't hurt it.

Massive Spoilers
The Ad Mech have definitive evidence that the Emperor is NOT the Omnissiah, and the revalation almost causes two Titan Legions to go to war. Also, the "Machine Spirit" of a Titan is so powerful that it will eventually overwhelm and absorb the psyche of its Princeps, assuming he dosen't retire. The Pro-IoM faction are so through pragmatism; the Cult of Mars and the IoM are inextricably linked allies, but at the same time two completely distinct entities in the minds of their respective subjects. The Pragmatic faction destroys the evidence before a full blown civil war starts.

[NecronLord]

of all the races likely to have Culture-style effectors and such, the Necrons are the most likely.

Actually, the Imperium of Man is. It most definately has 'effectors' in some of its technology. Mentioned in a few places in Dark Heresy, essentially used (along with 'sonic probes') to open locks and such.