"No weapon in the arsenal of the Imperium or the Traitor equals the Titan on the battlefield, and a Legion of such vast war machines can bring any world to its knees. In truth, a Titan has only three enemies: folly, hubris, and another of its own kind."
A Titan, sometimes colloquially called a "god-engine" or "god-machine," is any one of several classes of massive, crewed, robotic combat walkers fielded by the Titan Legions of the Adeptus Mechanicus' Collegia Titanica or by the forces of Chaos' Dark Mechanicum.
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Titans are the most sacred war machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus and they are thought by the Cult Mechanicus to be the greatest physical embodiments of the Machine God in the material universe, rightly called "god-machines" and "god-engines" by the Tech-priests.
The first Titans were built during the Age of Strife on Mars, as a way for the newborn religion of the Cult Mechanicus and its Mechanicum government (the ancient, pre-Horus Heresy predecessor of the Adeptus Mechanicus) to effectively fight its enemies in the raging wars to reclaim the Red Planet's irradiated surface from feral mutants and insane thinking machines. After Mars had been secured by the Tech-priests, the Titans later accompanied the early Mechanicum colonial fleets sent blindly through the Warp from Mars that established the first Forge Worlds, leading to the creation of the Titan Legions -- armed forces made up entirely of Titans specific to that Forge World.
Imperial Titans are unique in the sense that their computer mind-cores or "Machine Spirits" in the lexicon of the Mechanicus are sentient, albeit in a highly-erratic manner. This is in contrast with the usually non-sentient "Machine Spirits" or onboard computer systems found in many other Imperial war machines like tanks and armored vehicles.
Like a god of destruction, the Warbringer Nemesis rains explosive death on its foes. This immense war machine is designed to obliterate the largest and most indomitable enemies at extreme range.
The colossal Mars-Alpha Pattern Warlord Titan is among the most ancient and feared of the Imperium's war machines. Forged on the Red Planet itself, it is worshipped and venerated as the Omnissiah's will incarnate, and each god-engine is encased in layered armour and powerful void shielding, and armed with weapons that are capable of reducing armies to ash.
In addition to its Ardex-Defensor Mauler Bolt Cannon and Lascannon turrets, support weapons that would be considered main armaments on smaller war machines, the Mars-Alpha Pattern Warlord is commonly fitted with a pair of carapace-mounted triple-barrelled Laser Blasters and two Belicosa Pattern Volcano Cannons.
More than a war machine, these tremendous Titans are also icons of worship to the Imperial Cult Mechanicus, as they are seen as an avatar of the Omnissiah; the most noteworthy feature of an Emperor Titan is the fortified castle structure that occupies its entire upper half. These cathedrals possess ornate features like spired towers and stained glass windows.
During the Dark Crusade, the planet Kronus was discovered to be home to the right arm and Hellstorm Cannon of the Imperator-class Emperor Titan Aquila Ignis, dismembered in a titanic battle during the Horus Heresy ten millennia prior. The Hellstorm Cannon was so large that its firepower carved a huge trench in front of where it lay.
Thousands of standard years before the rise of the Imperium, Mankind reached out to the stars and settled many far away worlds. Among the apparatus of colonisation were formidable war machines known as Knights, which existed to protect the settlers from any threat.
Knights are small combat walkers that are a one-man version of a Titan. However, a Knight is smaller and less capable in combat than even the smallest class of true Titan utilised by the Titan Legions, the Warhound-class Scout Titan. Knights normally deploy in squadrons comprised of several of these war machines. These ancient battlesuits stand thirty to forty Terran feet tall, are protected by nearly impenetrable Ion Shields and armed with a devastating array of heavy weapons.
Imperial Knights are colossal war machines that tower over the battlefield. They are propelled into battle by powerful servos and have the power to kick over tanks and crush soldiers into red paste. Vulnerable limbs and joints are protected by sweeping armour plates of adamantium and supported by an incorporated Ion Shield which responds to the thought-commands of its Noble pilot. The presence of just one of these towering engines of destruction is enough to change the course of a battle, and only the Titans of the Collegia Titanica are more feared by the enemies of Mankind.
Often times, the Imperium no longer has the skills required to build new items of advanced technology, as the knowledge of their construction has been lost over the millennia due to the general decay of Imperial society. Titans, however, were not built using STC templates from the Dark Age of Technology (with one exception), and as such the Adeptus Mechanicus has maintained the necessary knowledge of how to build the majority of Titan variants. As the process of building any machine by the Mechanicus currently requires the performance of complex ceremonial rituals, the construction of a Titan is an immense undertaking, and sometimes requires many Terran centuries to complete, drawing on the skills of experienced and talented fabricators and the purest of raw materials.
The commander of a Titan is an individual who is a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus' Collegia Titanica called the Princeps, a rare individual in that he can retain his sanity after connecting with the "Machine Spirit" (computerized artificial intelligence) of the Titan through an MIU (Mind Impulse Unit) neural interface. The Princeps controls the Titan by means of the mental link provided by the MIU. Using this ancient technology, the Princeps merges his or her consciousness with the Titan's sentient "Machine Spirit" -- its artificial intelligence. The Mind Impulse Unit enables this link by creating an interactive and immersive sensory space -- sometimes referred to as "the Manifold" -- in which the Princeps can comprehend his war engine and his environment when he becomes the towering war engine. The Titan is operated, in enforced cooperation with the Machine Spirit, through mental commands issued in the Manifold by the Princeps. Such neural enmeshing is extremely taxing, and most Princeps cannot bear the strain of controlling all of a Titan's systems -- and those who do, only can for short periods of time. Thus the Princeps must be assisted in operating the war machine by junior officers called Moderati, whose purpose is to operate some of the Titan's systems in their commander's stead.
Internment in an amniotic tank allows the Princeps within to enmesh with the Titan's Machine Spirit more completely than he would ever be able to utilising only hard-plug connection. This greater and even more immersive connection grants an advantage in comprehension of the war engine and speed of reaction over a Princeps using the more traditional connection methods. A Princeps utilising amniotic interfacing is also at all times in remote communion with his war engine, even when the Mind Impulse Unit is deactivated and the Titan itself is shut down. Because of this permanent neural connection, these Princeps suffer none of the symptoms of withdrawal or the pain of separation which are the domain of pilots using standard hard-plug connection. However, due to this constant mindlink, and because of the atrophied state of their bodies, they are more exposed to the Mind Impulse Unit's effects on the psyche. This is only natural, for as the body atrophies and grows weaker from lack of use, the mind further withdraws into the depths of the Manifold and the personality is degraded. The human within slowly but surely is detached from his humanity, and eventually becomes nothing more than a dysfunctional part of the machine, his consciousness lost in the artificial mental landscape created by the Mind Impulse Unit.
When the Princeps is linked to a Titan's MIU, he feels the Titan's body as if it was his own -- his hands become weapon arms, his senses are turned into powerful Auspexes and his skin becomes the thick adamantium hull -- an experience of supremacy and escape from human frailty that addicts every Princeps to his or her link with a Titan. The Princeps is then able to command the Titan intuitively -- he merely needs to think of undertaking an action and the machine complies. During this operation, the Princeps does not lose conciousness of his own body, and is able to simultaneously move and act as normal within the Titan's cockpit. It requires a strong will to maintain this connection, and Titans can go out of control on rampages of destruction should the Princeps fail to maintain dominance over its sentience. Particularly ancient and war-worn Titans are known to hold neural imprints of all their previous Princeps' personalities in their machine spirit. There has also been noted rare instances where a Princeps has died while connected to the Titan, thus creating a digital "ghost" of themselves that remains inside the Titan's Machine Spirit. This is often referred to as a "ghost in the link".
The process of linking the human mind to a God-Machine is very difficult and dangerous, as a Titan is possessed of a ferociously potent Machine Spirit; one that is unlike any other, harbouring its own savage and instinctive intelligence. The Princeps must break the machine's opposition and bind it to his will -- a feat requiring enormous willpower. Because of this, Princeps are rare individuals, and one of the tasks the Collegia Titanica carries out is to discover them wherever they can be found and train them to command the colossal war engines. Whilst normally the Adeptus Mechanicus searches for its personnel within the Cult Mechanicus, the sheer rarity of such individuals requires the Mechanicus to search in the broader populace of the Imperium. Barely one in ten million possess the necessary qualifications to serve as a Princeps, and even fewer of this number make it through the training to finally command a war engine. Because of this reality, Princeps are immensely valuable individuals, and their home Forge World will spare no effort to recover them should they go missing in action, and if the slimmest chance exists that they are still alive. There are two ways in which one can become a Princeps -- undergoing training in Collegia Titanica academies, as mentioned above, or advancing from the rank of a Moderatus to a full Princepture, which is usually the command of Warhound-class Scout Titan. 2ff7e9595c
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