Chapter 4: The second schism of Mars

Summary:

Hello, everyone.

Before you wonder what this new chapter of the fanfic is about, let me explain.

As in Canon, in this AU there are certain important events that don't really fit into any Astarters index. So to make up for that I plan that every two indexes or so I'll post an entry about an event that happened in the universe of this AU. If you have any suggestions as to how I can deepen this AU's version of certain events in the canon, don't be afraid to comment!

Chapter Text

The second schism of Mars

-Background:

With the death of Sanguinius and the dissolution of the false unity that united the traitors, the former soldiers and commanders of the angel's armies lost the will to fight and fled desperately in the hope of escaping the wrath of the surviving legalists.

But one traitorous bastion remained, refusing to abandon its sacred land, said bastion being the red planet Mars. Even though most of the tech-priests of the Dark Mechanicum decided to abandon the planet and join the other traitors in the long war, a third of the Dark Mechanicum on Mars decided to stay and fight against the loyalists who would try to retake the red planet.

Knowing the threat posed by the hereteks on the red planet, and that the resources there would be needed to recover the galaxy from the traitors, the imperium was quick to prepare what was left of its armies to retake the fourth planet in the solar system.

A short but brutal war ensued. The hereteks were gradually pushed back by the combined attack of the legalists from Earth, and by the legalists who hid all over the red planet waiting for the moment to reveal themselves and attack the traitorous mechanicum. Thus, the forges of the Dark Mechanicum were destroyed, and the techno-priests and their creations were driven underground on Mars and all exits were sealed, to ensure that the technological aberrations that resided there would never rise again.

The legalists then set about rebuilding the red planet, thinking that few if any members of the Dark Mechanicum would survive the abominable intelligences that reside in the Martian underground.

The iron hell

During the Age of Strife, Mars was gripped by an unprecedented war that devastated the planet's surface and its atmosphere, making it impossible for anything but automatons to survive on the planet's surface, thus forcing the human survivors to hide in shelters and underground cities hundreds of meters below the surface. It was in these shelters that the mechanicum cult gradually took shape.

When the mechanicum rose up determined to reconquer the planet, they pushed the automatons into their own underground cities and tore down the entrances so that they would never threaten the mechanicum again.

Since then, AIs have been wandering around these ghost cities that hold technological wonders from when humanity was at its peak. Many Martian priests have traveled to these cities in search of STCs, but few have returned and even fewer have come back with their minds intact or with anything of value.

It's not known exactly how many automatons and robots there are in the Martian underground, each and every attempt made by tech-priests has resulted in them going mad or betraying their oath to the omnissiah. The only thing that is known is that these A.I. continue to hate any form of organic life, and that they roam the underground tunnels in search of a way out of their eternal torment and of unfortunate individuals who have somehow come across these steel monsters.

Unfortunately for the imperium, their exile underground didn't mean the end for the traitors.

Back in the Martian underground, the members of the Dark Mechanicum managed to contain the ancient automatons with their daemon engines and began looking for ways to take back the red planet. For years they wandered the underground tunnels, creating their own and mapping existing ones, looking for any way they could influence the surface.

Although the main entrances to the underground are sealed and heavily protected, the surface of Mars has been scarred by countless wars and is far from intact. So, after several hundred years, the priests of the Dark Mechanicum found small openings to the surface, so small that a servo skull could barely pass through them, but more than enough for the Martian traitors. So the traitor priests created small devices, either controlled by daemons or A.I., and sent them to the surface to influence the forges of the loyal mechanicum.

-The War of the Beast: The war for Mars

During the War of the Beast, several influential priests in the mechanicum, including the fabricator General Kubik, were upset about the current situation with the imperium, feeling that after the heresy they had become just another imperial branch, instead of an equal as they should in theory be. Added to this were several priests who were secretly keeping in touch with the traitors who lived underground on the planet, and it wasn't long before comments about the possibility of splitting from the adeptus Terra began to circulate among the higher echelons of Mars.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when an Ork ship with the ability to teleport was taken to Mars for study purposes, where the Martian priests not only made great leaps about how greenskin technology works, but also discovered how to replicate it and apply it on a larger scale. With such technology in their hands, it wasn't long before the anti-Terra priests and authorities began planning to teleport the entire red planet away from Terra while it faced the Orks of the Beast's Waaagh.

However, several Pro-Terra priests were horrified by the separatists' idea and were quick to form an alliance between their forges to oppose the separatists, and the leader of said alliance was none other than Belisarius Cawl.

Belisarius Cawl

Like most priests of the mechanicum, Belisarius Cawl was born into a Vat-born as a teenager. Due to a flaw in the device that gave birth to him, Cawl was born with a superior mind, being able to speak and write coherently within seconds of his birth. Because of this, it didn't take long for him to become a prodigy and he soon became an apprentice to the magical master Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma, a master of cloning and the art of soul merging, a branch of science that focuses on moving and absorbing an individual's memories.

When Kebor-hal revealed his true allegiance and betrayed the Emperor, Cawl was meeting his master on Mars in a meeting with other prestigious priests of the mechanicum.

It was at this meeting that Hester revealed her affiliation with the angel armies and that she had planned the meeting in order to absorb the memories of those present. She then bound those present and began to absorb their memories one by one. After she had finished absorbing the memories of the other Magi, Hester tried to take over Belisarius' body in order to seize his naturally superior mind. However, Cawl was able to overpower his master's mind and became the body's dominant personality.

After gaining all the knowledge his master had acquired, Belisarius proceeded to contact the Emperor's troops on the red planet and informed them of all the offensives and plans Hester's traitors knew about. This information was extremely valuable to the loyalist forces, as it thwarted several traitorous attacks, which earned Cawl enormous prestige among the Martian loyalists. The priest continued to contribute to the war on Mars by analyzing the traitor war machines for weaknesses, and he was also among the group of priests who purified the sonic weapons for use by the loyalists.

With such a renowned tech-priest on their side, the pro-Terra alliance began to attract more and more forges that planned to remain neutral, and so the alliance grew until it was on a par with the separatists. Fearing that his opponents would denounce his plans to the other High Lords, Kubik configured the noosphere so that no message he didn't approve of could reach the cradle of humanity.

This action by the fabricator general went relatively unnoticed on Earth throughout the crisis with the Orkish moons coming towards the solar system, but it didn't go unnoticed by his opponents on Mars, who began to oppose the separatists more aggressively. As a result, the discussions between the two parties became increasingly heated, while small skirmishes took place between both sides.

The situation continued to escalate, the pro-Terra refusing to leave Mars for fear that the separatists would teleport the planet when they did, while the separatists planned to neutralize the pro-Terra threat before teleporting away from the cradle of humanity. So when the Ork moons arrived in the solar system, Kubik ordered that the iron ring should not allow any ships to enter or leave Mars. And with that order from the fabricator general, the second Mars schism began.

Like all wars on Mars, the second Martian schism was brutal and devastated the surface of the red planet. Both sides led their mechanized legions against the rival forges and armies at the same time as the titans and imperial knights leveled entire kilometers of surface with their devastating weaponry.

Contrary to what the mechanicum and the inquisition report about this confrontation, most of the separatists were not chaos cultists or even allied with the followers of the dark gods. The truth is that the Dark Mechanicum played little or no part in the conflict itself.

When the forges allied to the Dark Mechanicum revealed their connections to the corrupt priests, both the Pro-Terra and the remaining separatists turned against them and, for once during the war, both sides united to eradicate the followers of Chaos. This is because even their former separatist allies saw the Dark Mechanicum as a group of madmen corrupted by demons, and they lost focus on the mechanicum's true mission in the search for humanity's lost knowledge. Thus, it wasn't long before the Heretek armies were devastated and by the end of the war only one forge survived under their control.

With the Dark Mechanicum neutralized, the war between the separatists and the Pro-Terra continued for several weeks in which both sides relentlessly tried to subdue the other. However, it wasn't either side that put an end to the conflict, but the Terra itself.

After the destruction of the Orkish moons in the solar system, the High Lords of Terra sent a fleet to the red planet to find out why it hadn't helped defend the system. As guardians of the crew of said fleet, and to implement brute force if necessary, several companies of the Raven Guard and 500 custodes accompanied the officers aboard the fleet.

Even with several Iron Ring officers trying to prevent the Terra fleet from parking, the fleet docked at the mega structure and it wasn't long before its passengers were informed of the crisis the red planet was experiencing.

Feeling insulted by this attack on their master's empire, the Custodes contacted Cawl and together with the armies of the arch-magos, the Custodes and the Raven Guard marched to the foot of Mount Olympus with the intention of putting an end to this conflict.

With the news that Terra had finally learned what they were up to, and that a group of ten thousand was already on Mars to bring justice to the traitors, several separatist priests resigned from the group and some even tried to escape the planet to escape the fury of the imperium. The few who remained sent their troops to join the defense of Mount Olympus, but several armies were so far from the fortress of the fabricator general that they would not arrive in time to join the defense.

The legalists then reached the fabricator general's fortress and faced the surrounding defenses in one last bloody battle. Seeing that it was almost impossible to escape alive at this point, Kubik decided to end his own life as a way of escaping the punishment he would receive. The news of the fabricator general's death soon reached the armies around Mount Olympus, and this blow to morale caused several separatist tech-priests to finally surrender to the loyalist forces.

Thus, the second schism of Mars ended, and as a way of ensuring that the union between the red planet and the cradle of humanity remained strong, Belisarius Cawl was appointed the fabricator general of Mars, a title he still bears today, more than nine thousand years after his appointment. Cawl's first action as fabricator general was to strongly support the rest of the imperium in the fight against the WAAAGH of the beast, the Martian armies being vital in putting an end to said war.

-Consequences:

The main and clearest consequence of the second schism was the appointment of Belisarius Cawl as fabricator general of the mechanicum and all the reforms he carried out.

Under Cawl's command, the mechanicum underwent a shape-up of almost the same magnitude as the one that followed the heresy and made it more similar to its counterpart from the time of the great crusade. After long discussions with the Martian parliament, the general fabricator was able to bring back the innovation that characterized the old mechanicum. Under pressure from the parliament, and to ensure that a war on the scale of heresy doesn't happen again, Cawl imposes strict rules and restrictions on research into new technologies, restrictions which, if not followed to the letter, could result in the wizard who carried them out being wiped of his memories, until he is directly transformed into a servant.

Any innovation would go through a long and meticulous analysis by agents of the general fabricator of Mars himself to ensure that it did not contain the slightest heresy in its construction. These processes were so time-consuming that the wizards who devised the new technology were often dead for decades by the time it was finally approved.

This has meant that even though the imperium has lost the ability to build certain technologies from the great crusade, humanity is still slowly but surely advancing technologically.

Another of Cawl's most important actions was the creation of a mechanistic cult totally focused on the art of assassinating the Omnissiah's enemies.

Cocinerrum

Even before the Emperor set foot on Mars, the mechanicum was accustomed to assassins for hire or orders of outlaw assassins, but never in its history had the cult officially formed an order of assassins. This order was founded as another way of neutralizing the mechanicum's enemies before they became a threat.

This cult would be known as Cocinerrum, and it would implement the most diverse technologies against the enemies of Mars, ranging from the use of Acuitors or Ruststalkers, to the implementation of technologies capable of absorbing light and causing artificial shadows to make it easier to ambush their victims.

Among the ranks of the fabricator general's opponents, many whisper that through the shadows Cawl uses said cult to eliminate rising opponents within the mechanicus, and that it is thanks to this and his strong political ties that he has been able to remain fabricator general for so long. However, these theories have yet to be confirmed.

Thanks to Cawl's actions and a strict search for any Tech-priest who is being influenced by the Dark Mechanicum's actions, no wars on the scale of the Mars schisms have taken place since the end of the War of the Beast on the red planet, and in the rest of the mechanicum few civil wars have taken place under Cawl's iron rule. But unfortunately for the fabricator general, every day he gains more enemies and opponents as priests dissatisfied with his management join forces to bring change to the mechanicum.

So even with this tenuous stability, many within the Terra adepts and across the galaxy are worried that we may be on the brink of a new civil war within the mechanicum as the dark millennium draws to a close.