Maeleum Datum : 979.M34
Since the days of the Heresy, Mars had been peaceful, if never quiet. The followers of Kelbor-Hal had fled from Mars at the same time the Traitor Astartes had run from Terra, knowing that they couldn't hold the Red Planet alone. Some had remained behind, either willingly or unable to secure transport off-world, and the resulting battles had been as violent and bitter as those which had been waged on the Throneworld itself. But in the end, Mars had been reclaimed, and the Adeptus Mechanicus had finally begun to rebuild over the ashes of its past glories.
To prevent another schism, the authority of the Mechanicus on the forge-worlds was much greater than that of the Mechanicum had ever been. Religious doctrine had supplanted politics and technological prowess as a mean of competition, with elements that had formerly belonged to the fringe of the Cult of Mars taking center stage in the wake of the Heresy's unwelcome revelations as to the true nature of the universe. Innovation and scientific progress, once the cornerstones of the Martian ethos, were now regarded with suspicion, considered gateways to the corruption of the Dark Mechanicum.
At the same time, the tech-priests grew ever colder and more inhuman, embracing what they perceived to be the perfection of the Machine over the human frailties they held responsible for the Horus Heresy. Human life, which had always been regarded as secondary to the pursuit of knowledge, became utterly worthless in their eyes save for what use it could be put to.
Though the priesthood of Mars became ever more repressive and secretive, struggling in part to hide just how much of its lore it had lost in the Heresy, the spark of innovation couldn't be so easily suppressed, and those tech-priests who possessed it often found themselves running afoul of their superiors in the Adeptus, who used their technology to run what was, in effect, the single most efficient oppressive and invasive regime in the history of Mankind. Through the omnipresent noosphere and use of cogitators to supplement the human brain, it was a challenge to keep even one's innermost thoughts from being heard.
Such was the environment in which rose the being who would only be known as the Prophet of Cogs. Born in the southern Martian hemisphere, the Prophet of Cogs resented the suppression of knowledge and innovation. They believed that the knowledge hoarded by the archmagi should be shared freely, instead of being left to gather dust before fading away when the one who had jealously guarded it inevitably perished. Having witnessed the harsh life of the tech-thralls and menial workers of the Mechanicus, whose lifespan were made pitifully small by their brutal working conditions, they judged that the way the Mechanicus ran things was not just cruel but also wasteful.
To them, every life spent in the wastelands and the foundries might just be the one who would rediscover some lost piece of lore, or the one who held the line against the xenos horrors that still plagued the galaxy. As they rose through the lower ranks thanks to their genius intellect and understanding of machines, they sought to better the lives of their subordinates, swiftly leading them to surpass the productivity of other groups. To the complete lack of surprise of the Prophet of Cogs, treating one's workforce decently resulted in them being far more effective than when they were kept on the precisely calculated verge of death by starvation, exhaustion and exposure.
Perhaps inevitably, this attracted the jealousy of the Prophet's peers and superiors. Accusations of techno-heresy and doctrinal deviance were thrown, and the Prophet was subjected to an invasive probe of their innermost thoughts – an experience which could be summed up as a violent mind-rape. No trace of tech-heresy were found, and their softer approach was considered quaint naivety that they would eventually grow out of.
The archmagi were mistaken on that count. The callousness with which they had been treated only soured the Prophet's view of the Mechanicus. They saw the hypocrisy and the ruthlessness of the organisation to which their very life belonged, and it infuriated them. Technology and science could and should be Humanity's sword and shield, not treated like arcane knowledge only a select few were worthy of wielding under a suffocating veil of religious manipulation.
Things had to change, and the Prophet was determined that they would make that change happen.
But reform, no matter how well-meaning, was not something easily accomplished, and in the Imperium of these days to even suggest it was necessary was to earn censure. For too long, the Imperium had kept watch against any infiltration by the servants of the Dark Gods and their sympathisers. For years, the Prophet of Cogs worked to rise through the hierarchy and attempted to spread their ideals further. Many of the lower-ranking techno-adepts were attracted by their idealism, but they were the only ones. The archmagi refused to consider that their way of doing things might be wrong, and lashed out violently when pressed.
Once again, the Prophet of Cogs was accused of techno-heresy and ordered to subject themselves to a mind-probe. This time, however, the Prophet refused, knowing that the probability they wouldn't survive the dangerous procedure this time were unacceptably high, given how many of their superiors begrudged their success.
Within an hour of their refusal being sent across the noosphere, the first Skitarii legion marched to arrest them and all their followers, and so strife came once more to the planet that bore the name of a long-forgotten god of war. The followers of the Prophet of Cogs rose up in defense of their respected leader, turning their tools into weapons. The Prophet themselves bent their intellect to conflict for the first time in their life, and proved as gifted in it as they had been to every other field they had tried their hand at. Soon, the entire forge-city was in their hands, and they began to prepare for the inevitable retribution the Mechanicus would send their way.
One of the few advantages they had was that the Mechanicus didn't want the rest of the Imperium to notice rebellion was occurring on Holy Mars itself. As a result, they couldn't mobilize the Titan Legions or the greatest of their warmachines, lest the other Imperial factions vying for supremacy at the heart of the Emperor's domain take advantage. Instead, they mobilized more Skitarii legions, sending them toward the rebel forge through underground tunnels that avoided the rad-scoured winds of the surface, all while shipments of raw materials continued to be delivered from orbit, the crew of the Ring of Iron having no idea of the defiance taking place on the surface, so total was the archmagi's control of information.
Within the forge, production continued, and under the guidance of the Prophet of Cogs productivity soared higher than ever before. This allowed the rebel lord to continue their research and defiance while also fulfilling all the obligations of those they had overthrown. Perhaps some part of the Prophet of Cogs hoped that this would lead their superiors within the Mechanicus to reconsider their position, seeing the logic in embracing a new way if it was blatantly more efficient. If so, they were disappointed, for the leaders of the Adeptus Mechanicus were far too set in their ways and orthodoxy to consider the mere suggestion of reform as anything but heresy.
Martyrdom wasn't what the Prophet of Cogs wanted, whether for themselves or their followers. With the Ring of Iron surrounding Mars, however, escaping the Red Planet seemed impossible. Alone, they might have succeeded, but they refused to abandon their followers.
The Prophet's salvation came when the Ark Mechanicus Archimedes' Legacy returned to Mars, having led an expedition in Wilderness Space for the last four centuries. Its commanding archmagos, Gezireas Venagles, had been out of contact with the Adeptus Mechanicus, and didn't know of the Prophet's defiance of the established order.
Distrust toward someone who had spent so long away kept the Martian overlords from informing him, and the Legacy anchored where it always had on the Ring of Iron : directly above the Prophet's forge, where it began to unload its cargo of plundered relics and accumulated data. The Ark Mechanicus held more than enough space for all the people who had joined the Prophet's peaceful rebellion against the dictates of the archmagi, and the suggestion of seizing it and abandoning Mars to start again elsewhere soon gained traction among the Prophet's supporters.
The exodus, however, would be noticed by the archmagi, who were sure to react. The Prophet of Cogs wasn't sure what they'd do, but desperation may drive them to abandon all prudence and subtlety in order to keep the dissenters from escaping. Simulations of atomic fire and cover-ups blaming heretekal elements flickered through the Prophet's cogitators, and they decided on a drastic course of action. A diversion was needed, something which would keep all eyes on Mars' surface long enough for the hundreds of thousands of menials and tech-priests who followed them to reach orbit, capture Archimedes' Legacy, and escape Sol.
The Prophet had the means to accomplish such a diversion. They, too, had held back during the years of cold war. Part of the reason why had been to avoid proving their opposition right, but ethical concerns had also held their hand from unleashing the most terrible results of their research free of the Mechanicus' dogma.
But no longer. The Prophet of Cogs would not sacrifice their people just to make a point, especially when the other side had proven unwilling to even entertain the possibility that they might be wrong. And so, ten standard Martian days after the docking of the Ark Mechanicus, hordes of cybernetic horrors emerged from the Martian wastes. Since the days of the Heresy, uncounted millions of abandoned warmachines had lingered in the empty plains of the Red Planet, built by both sides of the terrible civil war that had sundered the Mechanicum.
The Prophet of Cogs had designed a noospheric plague capable of overriding the shattered minds of the forsaken constructs, while also being harmless against the Mechanicus' own augmented humans. As the Martian overlords panicked at the sight of the cyberghouls and scrambled to defend their forges against the hordes driven from hiding and at their walls, the Prophet made their move. They led their people up to the Ring of Iron in a great flock of ships, and boarded the Archimedes' Legacy, subduing its crew with more of the secret weapons their leader had designed in their private laboratory.
The situation on Mars had drawn the eyes of all of Sol by that point, and the Ark Mechanicus disengaging from the Ring of Iron didn't surprise anyone, especially when the Prophet of Cogs broadcast a message claiming they were withdrawing to avoid contamination by the noospheric plague. By the time the Martian archmagi realized what had happened, the Legacy had reached the Mandeville point, and vanished into the Warp.
Though they had escaped the Imperium, the Mechanicus dissidents were far from safe. Horus knew well how important the Machine Cult was to Humanity, and had made many attempts to divide Mars and Terra. The Prophet's rebellion had nothing to do with the Warmaster's agents on Mars, but those agents had reported it to him.
The Prince of the Eye saw an opportunity in the Prophet of Cogs, and believed that they could be of great use to his cause if properly approached and convinced of the righteousness of his rebellion against the Golden Throne. He would need to make contact as an ally, offering aid to survive and prosper in a hostile galaxy, and slowly influence the Prophet and their followers until they saw things as he did. It would be the work of decades, but Horus was confident he could do it : half the Imperium had once broken its oaths to his father on his word, after all.
Unfortunately for Horus, but fortunately for the galaxy, he wasn't the only one to notice the potential of the Prophet of Cogs. The daemons of Tzeentch had their own ears in the Horusian Dominion, and one Duke of Change decided to act in order to suborn the Prophet. The hope of beneficial change, the pursuit of true knowledge in service of Humanity, those things that the Prophet of Cogs championed against the stagnation of the Mechanicus were irresistible to the Greater Daemon. It yearned to corrupt them, to twist the Prophet's dreams into nightmares of selfish ambition and unfettered madness.
The Archimedes' Legacy came under attack in the Warp, with the Duke of Change leading a daemonic incursion. Its attempt to turn the Prophet of Cogs to Tzeentch's service failed miserably, and instead ended with its banishment at the Prophet's own hands using a blessed Mechanicus power axe. For all their knowledge, the Prophet had never been witness to the true nature of the Warp, having never even left Mars in their entire life, and the experience scarred them deeply, as it did all their followers. They knew now that daemons were both real and evil, and in a speech broadcast all across the Ark Mechanicus, the Prophet swore that they would forever stand against such corruption, without succumbing to the pitfalls that had beset the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Eventually, the Legacy dropped out of the Warp, emerging in a lifeless system within Segmentum Pacificus. The dissidents had been dragged far off course by the Warp Storm the daemons had hurled at them, and the Ark Mechanicus was too damaged to risk another journey even if there hadn't been the threat of another daemonic attack. Under the Prophet's guidance, they began the work to settle on the system's worlds, determined to overcome the challenges they faced and build the utopia they had been stopped from turning Mars into.
When Horus learned of these events, he ordered his Sorcerers to drag the Duke of Change responsible from the Warp. The Warmaster's plan to slowly turn the Prophet to his cause was doomed now, as they would regard any approach by him or his agents with utmost suspicion. But he needed to know whether the Duke's failure had been just that, or if there was a deeper game being played by the Court of Change.
And, of course, Horus also fully intended to vent his frustration on the hapless Greater Daemon of Tzeentch. There were torments that even the Neverborn feared, and the Prince of the Eye intended to visit them all upon the creature which had ruined his plans.
AN : The Prophet of Cogs is actually a canon character, who appeared on Mars during the North-South Schism in 979.M34 and unleashed the hordes of cyberghouls in the Martian wastes on both sides of the conflict, driving them to unite against them. But then, the same lore also claims that there are rumors the Prophet is still active in the Alpha Centauri System ... which is the closest star system to our own. Somehow I find it difficult to believe that such a famed heretek would be able to hide so close to the Throneworld.
Another week, another chapter. My health has been improving, so I am hoping that I will be able to spend more time writing. The next chapter of A Blade Recast is in the works, and the last few chapters of this story are planned out (so if there is something specific you want to see in Prince of the Eye, you should hurry up and mention it, because there is little time left).
Zahariel out.